<|startoftext|>Chapter 1: Born to Kill Year 0 “Is this the one?” “Yeah I guess.” “What do you mean you guess? It either is or it isn’t.” “I dunno I lost the list.” “You what? That’s just great. You realize how much we’re going to get our asses chewed out because of your fuck up? I’m sick of paying for your mistakes.” “Will you calm down? How the hell are they gonna know anyway? You seen one ugly little baldy, you’ve seen ‘em all. All babies look the same.” “Not the elven ones.” “Enough with your elf fetish. These babies are all under the care of the Empire anyway, they’re here for the taking. “Yeah, the key word being the Empire. You know we need the proper paper work, which you just fucking lost!” “So what, I can forge it. You really worry too much, there’s so much red tape they ain’t gonna know the difference and what does it matter? The Empire’s getting a body for their purposes anyway.” “Yeah, but you know how they like the best.” ”How the fuck can they really tell at this age? They do all the real testing later. Look he’s got all his limbs, and he doesn’t display any signs of impurity. I’d say he’s a prime candidate for whatever they have in store for this poor little bastard.” “Yeah I guess…damn. I can’t imagine what it’s like being brought up like that.” “Me either, this program has only been going on a few years, but I’ve already heard some fucked up stories about it…y’know its things like this that sometimes make me question the logic of our glorious leaders.” “Shhhh! Are you mad? Don’t talk like that! It’s not our place to question anything, we’re just supposed to do our jobs! Besides, the logic is quite obvious. If they train people from birth they’ll have superior combat skills and utter loyalty to the Empire.” “That’s my point though. Is it really necessary? The Empire already produces so much propaganda that it does the job pretty well in producing loyal citizens and if that doesn’t work it also instills so much fear in most that even if someone wanted to start a rebellion; it’s highly unlikely they would.” “Don’t be so sure, it has happened in the past.” “The past? When? Like four hundred years ago when the Empire was still in its own infancy? Pfft. Wouldn’t happen anymore and as for having elite combat troops, again what’s the point? We’ve already got camps to train elite groups like the Shadow Guard who are not to be fucked with and we have more than enough resources to create an army of golems that would be just as loyal and kick the shit out of our enemies.” “Look, I don’t want to talk about this anymore! Our superiors have their reasons, as does the Emperor! Let us just take this baby and be done with this task!” The two clerks left the infirmary with you that day where upon you were accepted as a suitable candidate and put into The Eternal Program. You don’t remember too much during the time of your very young years, except that you are mostly confined to a room where all your basic needs are met. On a daily basis, a couple bigger people come in to check on you. They have you perform various physical tasks as well as spending time to teach you things like basic reading and writing. Sometimes they ask you various questions and write down your responses while other times they come in and stab you with painful needles with fluid in them. (You don’t like those times) You don’t really understand it all, except that you know that the Emperor is always watching you. He is everywhere even if you don’t see him. He is keeping an eye on your actions and you must always obey his will, lest you be punished. You know this to be true because you have this repeatedly told to you. Eventually your relative isolation would come to an end. > Years later... Year 5 You are sitting in a gray room at a desk with several other children your age. All of you glance at each other a lot and it is obvious that there is much curiosity, but nobody speaks. This is very unusual for you, up until now, you have only had minimal contact with others. Most of them are male like you, but a few of them are female. Soon the silence comes to an end when a dark skinned woman walks into the room. She has long hair and sharp features. One thing you notice is that despite her long hair covering her ears you can still see that the tips of them are pointed. She must be elven, but in the pictures you’ve seen in books, you’ve never seen one with dark skin before. “Hello children, and congratulations on maintaining dignified silence during your time by yourselves. It’s nice to see that your previous human minders aren’t totally incompetent. Still, if you were Svelk children you would’ve been much better trained by now. Ah, but it is not my place to dwell on the limitations of the lesser born. I am merely here to oversee your training into proper Eternals so that you may serve the Emperor to your fullest capabilities. Now before we begin, I suggest you all ask questions now, because this will probably be the only time I will be in the mood for your ignorance.” For a moment nobody speaks, but when the elven lady insists, one brave soul raises their hand. “Yes, you.” “Are you an elf?” “Yes, I am. While the ignorant would use the vulgar term dark elf to describe me, my kind are more properly known as the Svelk. In fact WE are the purest of the elven race. All others you may have the misfortune of meeting are merely diluted members of our bloodline. They are truly pitiful creatures really only fit for extermination. Remember this.” “Yes, you.” “What is your name?” “My name is unimportant, but you and the rest will always address me as Mistress. Failure to do so will earn my wrath, and more importantly the wrath of the Emperor. Remember this.” “Yes, you.” “What will you teach us?” A second passes after the question, when a small bolt of light from the Svelk’s finger tips and hits the child in the chest asking the question. He falls backwards out of his chair and on to the floor. The rest of you jump in your own chairs and look back at him. He is breathing very erratically. “I will teach you to OBEY my commands when I give them!” Mistress shouts, she then warns the rest of you. “Don’t you dare touch him, let alone help him! (Sigh) And here I thought you lot had been trained better! It occurs to me that I will have to be extra strict in my discipline. As to the question about what I will teach you… I will teach you to be warriors. I will teach you to be wizards if you display the talent. I will teach you to shed yourselves of weakness. I will teach you to serve the Emperor without question and kill without mercy and you will always obey for you will find strength in obedience. You will find joy in order. You will find love in murder. You shall be instruments of terror and genocide if he so wishes it. You will be Eternals…or you will die. Remember this.” After Mistress’ speech, the child she struck down eventually struggles back up and gets back in his seat, clutching his chest and still wheezing. “I trust you have learned your lesson?” “Y…yes…Mistress…” he gasps. “Good, now one more question before we begin…you there. What is your question? Speak up!” Mistress demands while pointing at you, though you have not raised your hand. You don’t wish to disagree with Mistress, so you stumble and try to think up a question. “Uh…er…I was just wondering when will you teach us to fight Mistress?” Mistress raises an eyebrow and gives a smirk as she approaches you. “Fight? And what makes you think that YOU are even ready to learn yet? Do you have even the slightest knowledge of combat tactics?” “No, Mis…” before you can even complete the sentence Mistress knocks you out of your chair with a quick jab with her hand, the pain from your face spreads to your chest when Mistress steps on it with her boot. She digs it into you and presses all her weight on it, while the rest of your class looks on. “Damn right, no you don’t. You weren’t even alert enough to anticipate my attack. You let me get in close and now look at you, you’re completely at my mercy. I am in a position to do whatever I like with you, while you are only in a position to beg or die. So what will it be worm? Are you going to beg for your miserable life, or should I save the Empire’s time and money by killing you now?” > You beg The pain is great and you want it to be over with as quickly as possible so you cry out and scream for mercy to Mistress. To this, she merely laughs cruelly and continues to step on your chest. “Ha ha ha ha! If this was a real fight do you think an enemy would should you mercy? You truly are pathetic, how did the Empire ever decide that YOU would be a worthy candidate to be an Eternal? Begging for your wretched life as if it was important. It isn’t. Your life is nothing! ALL of your lives are nothing! Your lives will never be anything more than warm bodies to serve the Emperor! The question is, will you even be able to live up to that honored status? The answer is no, if you do not learn mercy is for the weak. Remember this.” At this point Mistress finally takes her foot off of you and much like your other classmate hit by her magic bolt, you slowly get up and back in your seat, clutching your chest. You sniffle and try to keep yourself from crying, but the tears are still there. A glare from Mistress causes you to quickly wipe your eyes and try to compose yourself the best you can. Time passes by under the harsh guidance of Mistress. She teaches you all that she promised she would and then some. Your lessons are not only that of a combat nature, but of an academic one as well. You wouldn’t be aware of it, but you and your classmates are probably much better educated than other children your age. As for you, Mistress never lets you forget of how you begged for your life in front of everyone. While it is true that she sadistically taunts everyone at one time or another, it doesn’t make your emotional and psychological scars go away. This shame you experience causes you to become more insecure and you constantly feel the need to prove to everyone that you aren’t weak. When you are called upon to spar with your fellow classmates, you always fight aggressively. For the most part you usually win, and you typically break a few bones of some of your fellow classmates. The lessons of being humiliated by Mistress have not been forgotten. You can’t ever let yourself be put in a vulnerable position again and you must be brutal, it’s the only way you’ll be able to please the Emperor. Your personality doesn’t go unnoticed by your instructor and watchers, they make note of it and decide how you should be handled in the next step of your training. Year 12 You are in a room with a few of your fellow classmates standing in a row. Most of your class has been separated for reasons unknown to you. All you know right now is there is a scarred orc in worn battle armor arguing with a well dressed man who is human. They are speaking about you, but not actually speaking TO you… “What? I thought the whole point of this program was to create an elite fighting group like the Shadow Guard, why are you splitting them up and intending to put some of them in regular military units?” the orc questions. “Things have changed since the program’s inception. Besides, if the latest military reports are any indication I’d say you could use a better quality of recruits, or at least I hope that’s the problem and it isn’t due to a lack of proper training.” the man dressed in black formal wear calmly retorts. “Hey! I train every grunt I get to be the best killer they can be! I’ve conquered more territory for the Empire than anyone! My record speaks for itself and I could do a hell of a lot more if you put me on the front lines again, so don’t try to tell me I’m not doing my fucking job!” “Be that as it may, I’d say you still could benefit by having a few Eternals in your ranks, if nothing else than to be a good example.” “Good example? HAH! We haven’t even seen one of these so-called Eternals in action yet! It’s all been just speculation, and a waste of time and money if you ask me! The Empire should be providing better equipment and more of it, for soldiers on the Rask Frontier, it’s a fucking meat grinder out there and we’re constantly having to put down rebellions by the natives.” “Well nobody ASKED you, captain and your problems are not mine to deal with. This is the Emperor’s project and he has his reasons. If I were you I’d watch your tone. Victories or not, you are a servant of the Emperor and you will obey orders or you will be replaced.” The orc captain steps back from the well dressed man then he takes a deep breath, before speaking. “You are lucky that I do serve the Emperor, for that is the only thing keeping me from ripping out your throat, human…very well I shall take these so called Eternal whelps, but let it be known that I shall be testing them to the limit and then some. If they fail, they shall die like anyone else unable to keep up.” “As you wish commander, I leave it in your capable hands. You will keep me apprised of their progress on a weekly basis. Good day.” The well dressed man says and leaves the room, leaving you all alone with the orc commander. You’ve never seen a real orc in person before, but he looks every bit as intimidating from what you’ve read about them, even if he is much more articulate than you expected. He walks up and down the row sizing you all up before speaking. “I am Captain Gruz, and I will be in charge of the rest of your training until the Emperor deems otherwise. I imagine that your former instructor was that dark elven bitch, so I trust you all know by now that failure and weakness have no place here. Correct?” “Yes Captain!” you all shout in unison. “Heh, well glad to see her skills in teaching discipline are still as effective as ever. Good. Now let’s see how good your combat skills are…” At this point you and your fellow classmates instinctively start to pair up to spar with each other, but Gruz stops you. “What are you lot doing? I didn’t tell you to get out of formation!” “But captain, you said to prove our combat skills.” One boy speaks up. “I…oh wait I see. She had you fighting each other. Typical dark elven training. Create mistrust and loathing even when there is no need for it. (Sigh) I can see I’m going to have to undo some of the shit she instilled in you if I’m going to mold you into the proper killing tools.” Time goes by and Captain Gruz begins to train you in various forms of combat, though it’s different. He teaches you and your classmates to fight as a team. This usually involves various large beasts similar to what you have already fought or even small groups of goblinoids. It takes awhile for you to adapt, but after seeing the first couple of casualties, you and the rest manage to pull together to defeat your enemies. Academically speaking, you are not taught much. Captain Gruz figures that Mistress taught you enough math and literacy to get by in life. Besides not much need for all that fancy learnin’ stuff when you’re going to be chopping people’s heads off on the battlefield. Captain Gruz is just as uncompromising as Mistress in his training, but he seems less gleeful about it. His verbal abuse is more direct and to the point rather than gloating about your failures. He still reminds you all regularly about how it is your sworn duty to serve the Emperor, but you hardly need him to tell you that, to believe otherwise is unthinkable. As for you, you find yourself given a role of leadership. Captain Gruz noted your tendency to be one of the first to charge into battle. He however also has some advice for you. “I respect your desire for battle, but if you do not control your insecurities you will one day find yourself needlessly unprepared. I suspect that dark elven bitch did something humiliating to you that has resulted in your behavior. Effective in some ways I suppose, but if you truly want to be a leader of men and command respect, you need to master your emotions as you would your weapons. You must do away with insecurities and be fully confident in your abilities. You must walk into battle already KNOWING that you will win, not charging in with a chip on your shoulder with some misguided desire to prove yourself. That’s a quick way to get yourself killed. Contrary to popular belief, your goal is NOT to die for the Emperor. Your goal is to survive and make the other dumb bastards die so that you may continue to serve the Emperor. Think on this when you lead your fellows into your next training assignment.” The captain’s words carry much weight with you and in the years during your training you manage to purge most of your doubts about yourself as well as becoming an accomplished warrior. Your instructor and watchers once again note your growth and skills, and as usual they make decisions on how you will best serve the Emperor. > Year 16 You are called into Captain Gruz’s office, when you arrive you see the well dress man that you saw four years ago standing with him… and debating with him again. “I’m telling you Mr. Mol, I think they should work in the same unit. They’ve trained together and they’ve worked together so well at this point that splitting them up would be folly. Hell, these people have known each other since birth! You know that better than anyone!” Gruz says. “Yes, captain I’m well aware of the situation, and normally I might agree if their were more of them, but I think their expertise would better serve if we deployed them separately in problem areas of the Empire.” Mr. Mol replies. “You don’t break up a well oiled machine! I guarantee having them all in the same unit will be a better idea. I mean we still haven’t sent them into a real battle yet! Wouldn’t it be better to see if they can get the job done first before placing them in charge of others?” “And what a perfect opportunity to lose them all, if something unexpected should happen.” “Oh for…look that could’ve happened here! And if you’re so worried about them all getting killed in battle then what was the fucking point then? Besides, if they do prove to be useless in battle, better we find that out sooner rather than later when they’re in charge of others and getting them killed as well!” Mr. Mol thinks for a moment and then replies. “Hmmm, very well you do have a point captain. We’ll try it your way at first and go from there. Have them deployed in the Nalin province. Your services here have been useful as ever. Good day.” Mr. Mol, steps out and commander Gruz addresses you. “Well you heard all that, you and your fellow Eternal babies are being sent to the Nalin province. It’s not the Rask Frontier, but it’s a suitable first challenge for you guys. We’ve been trying to settle the conquest of that place for a few years now, and technically it is part of the Empire, but we’re still having problems with the Kobold population there. Little bastards are determined to resist and have been conducting a fairly effective guerilla war since we arrived. Though I blame that more on the incompetence of the commander in that region. If I was stationed there, this shit would’ve been taken care of a long time ago…but I’m not, so unfortunately you will have to report to Captain Pollo.” Captain Gruz approaches you closer before continuing. “Now I’m putting you in charge of your unit for reasons I’m sure you’re aware of. While I’m confident I’ve made the right choice, the burden will ultimately be on you to prove to be an effective leader. Remember, you’re not just a normal soldier, you’re supposed to be an Eternal. An instrument of destruction ordered by the Emperor himself. Failure is never an option for you. Even now there are rumors about your kind, and when you finally show yourselves you will be met by fear, awe, hatred and even distain. Prove yourselves and you will live up to the name that your were given. Anyway, the caravan picking you up will arrive tomorrow. Good luck and dismissed.” With this you leave and tell the rest of your people about where you’re going and the general nature of what to expect. They all seem pretty excited to prove themselves, and to be honest so are you. At last you will get the chance to prove yourself and can only imagine that the Emperor will be pleased by what he will see. The next day, you and your unit are picked up and the ride there is uneventful, but your unit spends a little time talking about things they see on the way. This is the first time all of you have probably been away from the training center you’ve spent all your lives in. Curiosity about some of the surroundings is natural, but it isn’t just the casual talk that’s different. Your comrades are different. They are less reserved than they once were. Captain Gruz might’ve been a strict instructor, but in addition to encouraging teamwork he was also prone to encourage you guys to have a few hours of free time. This loosening of the reigns a bit, allowed a certain amount of familiarity with each other that wasn’t just on a professional level anymore. Even you have felt yourself changing personality wise. Still you are all Eternals, and you are loyal to the Emperor. You will never forget that your duty comes first. Eventually you all arrive at Fort Glory in the Nalin province where you are stared at by several soldiers who whisper among themselves. None of you pay it any mind though, you simply report to Captain Pollo. He doesn’t look anything like Captain Gruz. He’s human for one thing and wears lighter armor which is impeccably clean. When he sees you, he almost looks bored, like you were interrupting him, but you when you came in he was reclined in his chair and not doing anything of importance. “So…you are the Eternals I’ve heard so much about. Humph. I don’t see anything special except that pretty one over there. Oh no, not you dear. That blonde muscular one in the back. Yes, delicious.” Captain Pollo says pointing to one of your men and not even getting out of his chair. “Captain Pollo, we are here for our assignments so that we may serve the Emperor.” You say. “(Sigh) I suppose you are this unit’s leader?” “ Yes, captain. I am currently their leader and holding the rank of sergeant due to my excellence in my training exercises.” “Sergeant? YOU? Why you’re a mere boy! All of you are just children! I ask them for more men and they send me children! The only thing you all would be good for is cleaning the fort! In fact that’s what you can go do right now, starting with the toilets!” This is exactly what Captain Gruz said would happen. This is your first test. “Captain, we have been trained in several forms of combat and fully ready to fight. Send us into battle and we will prove ourselves. We are here to perform our duty for the Emperor and all that entails.” “All that entails eh? Okay, you want a fight? A few miles east of here, you’ll find a town called Dalt. Its filled with ignorant peasants that constantly whine to us that there are a nest of kobolds lurking in the hills near them. We’re stretched out as it is and can’t spare anymore troops to waste on towns that are of no military importance in the grand scheme of things. Go there and take care of their problem, then maybe we’ll have more to talk about.” You nod and all of you leave, but before you are able to Pollo calls you back. “Oh one more thing sergeant. Order one of your men to stay here with me. I think you know by now which one I mean.” At this point you’re in genuine shock. You may be young, and even a little detached from normal ‘society” but you know exactly what Captain Pollo is implying. You can honestly feel more than surprised by this though. “Captain, I will need all of my team to have the best chance to succeed in this mission.” You say. “Oh? Well sorry, but you’ll have to make do like everyone else here does. Or you could clean the fort like I first ordered you to do, which you chose to ignore.” It’s a no win situation, though you try to figure out a loophole that takes the responsibility off of you. “Captain, you are of a higher rank than me, surely you could just order him yourself.” “Ha ha, nice try. No. You want to be a leader of men? You need to make this decision yourself. Tis quite easy I would think. Sacrifice one for the good of the rest. If anything I’d say he’s the lucky one. He gets to stay here enjoying the pleasures of the flesh, and won’t have to be mucking about with kobolds and dealing with idiotic peasants.” > You leave him behind Unfortunately Pollo is right, the only decision that makes sense is to leave Gerald behind. Still, you aren’t fond of the idea though not necessarily for the moral reasons that most would be. This is an unproductive use of your team’s talents and pointless in the scheme of things. You can’t believe the Empire would allow such a petty man to be in charge of the safety of a province and why isn’t the Emperor aware of such inefficiency? “Very well.” “I knew you’d see things my way. Have fun playing with the kobolds. You’re dismissed.” You leave Pollo’s office where your team is still waiting for you. “Gerald, I regret that you will not be coming with us on this mission. The Captain wants you to stay with him.” You say. “What?! But I’m ready to fight!” he protests. “There will be other missions, I promise you. We will prove ourselves so well on this one, that they will have no choice but to send us out on a regular basis. However, your orders are clear in this matter, you are to remain here with Captain Pollo.” “B…yes sir.” Just before Gerald goes into the captain’s office, you whisper into his ear. “Accidents happen.” He’s a little puzzled by this comment, but you and the rest of your team proceed to your assignment and nobody says anything more about it. When you finally get to the town, it’s a sorry sight. A lot of the buildings are damaged and the streets are filled with debris. There are a few people attempting to clean up the place, but it’s clear that they’re all very demoralized. ‘Oh, I see the Empire has finally decided to help us; well you’re too late! The kobolds raided this town last night and as you can see completely trashed the place!” says a disheveled man. “The Empire has many places it has to protect citizen. It is regrettable that your town was attacked, but we are here now to eliminate the problem.” “You’re here now? Where the fuck were you last night when my wife was killed by those ugly little bastards?” the man says getting in your face. “Calm yourself citizen, this will not help your situation.” “My situation? I just said my wife is fucking DEAD! I don’t give a shit about my situation anymore you fucking Empire dickhead! Fuck you and your fucking Emperor!” It is at this point the man unwisely pushes your chest with his hand and you instantly grab it and break his whole arm. He predictably crumples in excruciating pain, screaming as the bone juts out of the skin and blood runs out of his body into the mud. All the other towns people who have seen this back off or hide, as they are rightfully worried about what you’re going to do next. “Now listen up citizens of Dalt! I understand that you’ve all been through a lot, but that is not a reason to give in to insolence! You are all Empire subjects and you will show proper respect or what’s left of this town will suffer in such a manner that you’ll think what the kobolds did was a birthday party.” The man whose arm you broke begins to scream more obscenities at you in between his regular howls of pain. You look at Kane and nod. Kane finishes the man off by quickly decapitating him. You take his head and throw it before one of the crowd of peasants who look on in horror. “Remember this.” You say. You remain in the town of Dalt for the night and get rooms from an overly cooperative innkeeper. He also tells you a little information about the kobolds such what direction they came from, what sort of equipment they were using and how many there were during the attack. Before getting some rest you spend a little of the time discussing strategy with your team. You all don’t show it too much, but you are all a little excited about tomorrow. The next day you set off towards the wooded hills, it doesn’t take long before you see a kobold patrol wandering around. They look exactly like how you’ve seen them in books, sort of like scaly goblins, but from what you’ve heard, a lot more cunning. Your team attempts to be stealthy, but perhaps it’s due to the excitement of this first “real” battle. Edgar isn’t as silent as he should be and clumsily steps on a few twigs alerting the patrols. The kobold patrol sees all of you, yell excitedly in their language and run away. Edgar is about to chase them, but you knock him to the ground. “What the hell?” he says wondering why you stopped him. “Trap, Edgar. Look.” You say and point to a tripwire that would’ve triggered a spiked log that he almost stepped on. “Oh.” He says. “You were trained better than that Edgar and we went over this last night! This area is probably going to be filled with traps. Now come on, we don’t have the luxury of a surprise attack any more.” The remainder of this attack is a tedious exercise in cautiousness broken up by quick battles. The kobolds really have set up traps everywhere and take full advantage of your team’s slow movement to launch periodic ambushes themselves. Fortunately they are very poor warriors even in large numbers and you easily dispatch them. All your fighting eventually leads to a cave, which you sort of figured it would. You warn your team that this place is probably going to be a maze and heavily trapped as well. “Should we split up so we can cover more ground?” Brenda asks. “No, we’re going to be neck deep in them when we go into that cave. They may be poor warriors, but even enough of them could overwhelm one or two of us. If we stick together we’ll be fine. Besides, we’re going to be here awhile anyway.” There “awhile” isn’t an exaggeration. You spend the remainder of the day and night killing kobolds. Your team seems to enjoy it, but you eventually start to get bored of the monotony. You don’t even bat an eye when you come across what seems to be a breeding chamber and you exterminate all the female kobolds and their young. Eventually you reach a large cave clearing where you meet the leader. “Sssss! Defilersss! Murderersss!” a slightly larger kobold hisses at you from some sort of primitive throne and then orders his guards to attack. It’s rather pathetic, as they fare no better than the rest. A few quick sword and axe blows and this kobold chieftain is alone. While the rest of your team is eager to kill him like the rest, you have a slightly better idea for him. You engage him in singles combat, which is over pretty quickly. You then subdue him with some rope you have in your pack. “Why are we taking him as prisoner? We’re Eternals! We don’t take prisoners!” Edgar shouts. “Yeah, we also aren’t supposed to miss obviously placed traps either, so there’s a first time for everything. Besides I’ve got a good idea for this one.” You drag the kobold leader back to town who curses you the whole time in a mixture of his language and yours. When you arrive it is now dawn and the townspeople are surprised to see you back, let alone with a kobold in tow. You tie the kobold leader to a tree near the center of the town and address everyone. “Citizens of Dalt! The kobold nest has been completely destroyed. This…thing was the leader of this particular nest and most likely orchestrated the raid; do with him as you will. There of course are other kobold nests in this province, but the Eternals will be taking care of this long overdue problem. All the Empire needs in this matter is your continued obedience and loyalty.” After giving this speech you and your team take your leave and hear the screams of the kobold leader as the villagers torture and rip him apart. When you arrive back at Fort Glory, other soldiers are surprised to see all of you back alive. It was assumed that at best, half of you would be dead. There is a possible thought of whether you actually succeeded and didn’t just come back in failure, but given that Kane took it upon himself to take “trophies” his gruesome necklace of kobold ears makes it pretty clear that the job was done. When you report however, it seems the fort has undergone a change in leadership “I’m Lieutenant Anu and now in charge of Fort Glory until further notice. First things first, did you accomplish your mission? “Mission accomplished, we killed them all lieutenant. All of their warriors, all of their women, all of their babies, pets, their leader, all of them.” “Well always helps to be sure. Which brings me to the next point. Your man Gerald is currently in the stockade. In fact he may be facing execution.” “Might I inquire why, sir?” “I’d say you’d probably know as much about it as I do, but if I had to guess? Captain pervert put the moves on him and your man took exception to it and killed him. He claims it was an accident, but there’s no way the captain twisted his own head ALL THE WAY AROUND just by tripping and falling over.” “If Gerald says it was an accident, then I believe him sir.” “Okay look, I’m not going to sit here and say that the captain wasn’t complete scum. I should know I had to serve along side him for the past five years. I saw how he’d have teenage boys brought to his office. Now I know you guys are these Eternals that we’ve all heard about, but dammit man, we can’t just have murders within the ranks, we have to respect some sort of order here!” “We’re all about respecting order sir…I suppose if it is absolutely necessary to execute Gerald, then that will be regrettable. I would however say that Gerald’s actions actually contributed to more order here and will better for the Empire in general.” “How so?” “The removal of captain Pollo, has allowed you to move up in rank and judging by your feelings on this matter you are a person who respects military decorum. I have no doubt, the fort will be run more efficiently now.” Lieutenant Anu chuckles a bit. “I’d almost think you were trying to butter me up to save your guy, but I already know you genuinely believe what you’re saying and you’re right anyway. (Sigh) Well…I suppose accidents do happen. Nobody here is going to miss Pollo, so I’ll have Gerald released and write up a report.” “Sir, can I make a request?” “Don’t you think you’re pushing your luck?” “Not my intention sir, but I was going to ask if there’s anything my group could do here that’s a little more challenging than killing kobolds?” “Hmm, yes I imagine you would feel that way...well on the furthest southern edge of the province there have been bands of nomadic raiders and there have been rumors of them organizing under some sort of shaman. Dunno if it’s true or not. Of course we could also transfer you someplace where the battle is a little more suited to your violence level.” > You request transfer You don’t see much point in staying in this place anymore, you would most likely serve the Empire better elsewhere. Captain Anu grants the request, though he mentions he knows that a Mr. Mol is taking interest in your progress here, so it’ll have to go through him first. A couple days pass and it is all straightened out. Mr. Mol approves, but he goes with his original plan of separating you all. Brenda and Gerald remain in the Nalin province, Roldan and Warrick go to the Felkan border. You, Kane and Edgar all wind up at the Rask frontier, specifically Fort Defiance. The split is a little odd for all of you, considering you’ve all been together so long. You say your goodbyes to Brenda and Gerald first when the caravan comes for you. Next you say your goodbyes to Warrick and Roldan when they make their stop. The remainder of the trip is in relative silence, though sometimes Edgar remarks about how he can’t wait to display his true combat skills against better challenges. Eventually you arrive at the Rask frontier and make your stop at Fort Defiance. You haven’t gotten off the caravan five minutes when a man wearing battle armor approaches you. “Hey are you the Eternals?” “Yes we are.” “I’m Captain Ian, I’ve heard about you and while you don’t look like much, we’ll take anyone at this point. Though I would’ve preferred more battle mages or even orcs at this point. Captain Ian begins to give you a run down on the entire area. He mentions that the mortality rate here is high so morale isn’t the best. He goes on to mention that Shadow Guard detachments have been assigned here to help out, but between the ogres and the giants there’s only so much that even they can do. He mentions since you three have already worked together he’s just going to leave you together, but will be assigning you to a new unit where you will have others to command as well. With the caravan leaving, the three of you head to your new unit. When you see them, quite a few of them are predictably much older than you, but surprisingly you see that half of them are around your age. “So, you’re those Eternals huh?” one the older soldiers says almost dismissively. “Yes? Did you need something corporal?” you say sensing the hostility. “Nothing, sergeant. I just wondered if you were.” He says backing down from confrontation. The three of you settle in as you begin your assignment at Fort Defiance. Year 18 “Kane watch out!” you shout as the wind whips around you and the snowfall nearly blinds your vision. You can just make out the figure, which you know to be Kane roll out of the way of a club strike from an ogre attempting to attack him from behind. You look around and see the bloody dead bodies of several members of your team and the ogres that ambushed you. You knew that patrolling the Kragen Pass during a blizzard was a stupid idea, but Captain Ian insisted that you had to go and do it. It’s no wonder progress hasn’t been made up here with the captain making inept decisions at every turn. He’s not like Captain Pollo, but he’s not much better. You are starting to seriously wonder about how the Empire keeps allowing such incompetence to pass through. You run as fast as you can in the snow to help Kane battle the last two ogres. You cleave at the legs of one of the large monsters causing him to fall into the snow then finish him off with another strike through his head. Kane dispatches his own ogre opponent and the battle is finally over. “Looks like we’re the only two left again.” Kane says. “Yeah, I’m getting used to that scenario. Come on, let’s head back. This blizzard isn’t letting up and we’ve done all we can here.” You and Kane leave behind the bodies and make your way through the blizzard in silence. It’s times like this you half expect Edgar to start going on about how well he did in battle, of course he hasn’t done that ever since you lost him in that battle against some giants last year. You never exactly approved of his reckless ways and it’s ultimately what got him killed, but you still miss him sometimes. You are almost at the end of the pass when a large rumbling is heard. You look overhead and even in this blizzard you can see the large figures looming on the cliffs and it’s what you originally were concerned about when you had to patrol this path. “GIANTS! RUN!” you yell and the pair of you attempt to make it out of the pass. Large boulders crash down along side the cliffs with an equally large amount of ice and snow. Kane runs faster and makes it ahead of you, but this only results in you seeing him crushed completely by a falling boulder. You are engulfed in snow and swept up and buried in the stuff. You’re disorientated, tired, freezing and slowly suffocating, but with determination, you manage to dig yourself out. Unfortunately several giants face you when you do dig yourself out. You’re out numbered and trapped in the pass. You know that this is most likely going to be your last battle. You draw your sword and walk towards the giants. It will be a good death, but your only regret is that you will not survive to serve the Empire for longer than you would’ve liked.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Unfortunately Pollo is right, the only decision that makes sense is to leave Gerald behind. Still, you aren’t fond of the idea though not necessarily for the moral reasons that most would be. This is an unproductive use of your team’s talents and pointless in the scheme of things. You can’t believe the Empire would allow such a petty man to be in charge of the safety of a province and why isn’t the Emperor aware of such inefficiency? “Very well.” “I knew you’d see things my way. Have fun playing with the kobolds. You’re dismissed.” You leave Pollo’s office where your team is still waiting for you. “Gerald, I regret that you will not be coming with us on this mission. The Captain wants you to stay with him.” You say. “What?! But I’m ready to fight!” he protests. “There will be other missions, I promise you. We will prove ourselves so well on this one, that they will have no choice but to send us out on a regular basis. However, your orders are clear in this matter, you are to remain here with Captain Pollo.” “B…yes sir.” Just before Gerald goes into the captain’s office, you whisper into his ear. “Accidents happen.” He’s a little puzzled by this comment, but you and the rest of your team proceed to your assignment and nobody says anything more about it. When you finally get to the town, it’s a sorry sight. A lot of the buildings are damaged and the streets are filled with debris. There are a few people attempting to clean up the place, but it’s clear that they’re all very demoralized. ‘Oh, I see the Empire has finally decided to help us; well you’re too late! The kobolds raided this town last night and as you can see completely trashed the place!” says a disheveled man. “The Empire has many places it has to protect citizen. It is regrettable that your town was attacked, but we are here now to eliminate the problem.” “You’re here now? Where the fuck were you last night when my wife was killed by those ugly little bastards?” the man says getting in your face. “Calm yourself citizen, this will not help your situation.” “My situation? I just said my wife is fucking DEAD! I don’t give a shit about my situation anymore you fucking Empire dickhead! Fuck you and your fucking Emperor!” It is at this point the man unwisely pushes your chest with his hand and you instantly grab it and break his whole arm. He predictably crumples in excruciating pain, screaming as the bone juts out of the skin and blood runs out of his body into the mud. All the other towns people who have seen this back off or hide, as they are rightfully worried about what you’re going to do next. “Now listen up citizens of Dalt! I understand that you’ve all been through a lot, but that is not a reason to give in to insolence! You are all Empire subjects and you will show proper respect or what’s left of this town will suffer in such a manner that you’ll think what the kobolds did was a birthday party.” The man whose arm you broke begins to scream more obscenities at you in between his regular howls of pain. You look at Kane and nod. Kane finishes the man off by quickly decapitating him. You take his head and throw it before one of the crowd of peasants who look on in horror. “Remember this.” You say. You remain in the town of Dalt for the night and get rooms from an overly cooperative innkeeper. He also tells you a little information about the kobolds such what direction they came from, what sort of equipment they were using and how many there were during the attack. Before getting some rest you spend a little of the time discussing strategy with your team. You all don’t show it too much, but you are all a little excited about tomorrow. The next day you set off towards the wooded hills, it doesn’t take long before you see a kobold patrol wandering around. They look exactly like how you’ve seen them in books, sort of like scaly goblins, but from what you’ve heard, a lot more cunning. Your team attempts to be stealthy, but perhaps it’s due to the excitement of this first “real” battle. Edgar isn’t as silent as he should be and clumsily steps on a few twigs alerting the patrols. The kobold patrol sees all of you, yell excitedly in their language and run away. Edgar is about to chase them, but you knock him to the ground. “What the hell?” he says wondering why you stopped him. “Trap, Edgar. Look.” You say and point to a tripwire that would’ve triggered a spiked log that he almost stepped on. “Oh.” He says. “You were trained better than that Edgar and we went over this last night! This area is probably going to be filled with traps. Now come on, we don’t have the luxury of a surprise attack any more.” The remainder of this attack is a tedious exercise in cautiousness broken up by quick battles. The kobolds really have set up traps everywhere and take full advantage of your team’s slow movement to launch periodic ambushes themselves. Fortunately they are very poor warriors even in large numbers and you easily dispatch them. All your fighting eventually leads to a cave, which you sort of figured it would. You warn your team that this place is probably going to be a maze and heavily trapped as well. “Should we split up so we can cover more ground?” Brenda asks. “No, we’re going to be neck deep in them when we go into that cave. They may be poor warriors, but even enough of them could overwhelm one or two of us. If we stick together we’ll be fine. Besides, we’re going to be here awhile anyway.” There “awhile” isn’t an exaggeration. You spend the remainder of the day and night killing kobolds. Your team seems to enjoy it, but you eventually start to get bored of the monotony. You don’t even bat an eye when you come across what seems to be a breeding chamber and you exterminate all the female kobolds and their young. Eventually you reach a large cave clearing where you meet the leader. “Sssss! Defilersss! Murderersss!” a slightly larger kobold hisses at you from some sort of primitive throne and then orders his guards to attack. It’s rather pathetic, as they fare no better than the rest. A few quick sword and axe blows and this kobold chieftain is alone. While the rest of your team is eager to kill him like the rest, you have a slightly better idea for him. You engage him in singles combat, which is over pretty quickly. You then subdue him with some rope you have in your pack. “Why are we taking him as prisoner? We’re Eternals! We don’t take prisoners!” Edgar shouts. “Yeah, we also aren’t supposed to miss obviously placed traps either, so there’s a first time for everything. Besides I’ve got a good idea for this one.” You drag the kobold leader back to town who curses you the whole time in a mixture of his language and yours. When you arrive it is now dawn and the townspeople are surprised to see you back, let alone with a kobold in tow. You tie the kobold leader to a tree near the center of the town and address everyone. “Citizens of Dalt! The kobold nest has been completely destroyed. This…thing was the leader of this particular nest and most likely orchestrated the raid; do with him as you will. There of course are other kobold nests in this province, but the Eternals will be taking care of this long overdue problem. All the Empire needs in this matter is your continued obedience and loyalty.” After giving this speech you and your team take your leave and hear the screams of the kobold leader as the villagers torture and rip him apart. When you arrive back at Fort Glory, other soldiers are surprised to see all of you back alive. It was assumed that at best, half of you would be dead. There is a possible thought of whether you actually succeeded and didn’t just come back in failure, but given that Kane took it upon himself to take “trophies” his gruesome necklace of kobold ears makes it pretty clear that the job was done. When you report however, it seems the fort has undergone a change in leadership “I’m Lieutenant Anu and now in charge of Fort Glory until further notice. First things first, did you accomplish your mission? “Mission accomplished, we killed them all lieutenant. All of their warriors, all of their women, all of their babies, pets, their leader, all of them.” “Well always helps to be sure. Which brings me to the next point. Your man Gerald is currently in the stockade. In fact he may be facing execution.” “Might I inquire why, sir?” “I’d say you’d probably know as much about it as I do, but if I had to guess? Captain pervert put the moves on him and your man took exception to it and killed him. He claims it was an accident, but there’s no way the captain twisted his own head ALL THE WAY AROUND just by tripping and falling over.” “If Gerald says it was an accident, then I believe him sir.” “Okay look, I’m not going to sit here and say that the captain wasn’t complete scum. I should know I had to serve along side him for the past five years. I saw how he’d have teenage boys brought to his office. Now I know you guys are these Eternals that we’ve all heard about, but dammit man, we can’t just have murders within the ranks, we have to respect some sort of order here!” “We’re all about respecting order sir…I suppose if it is absolutely necessary to execute Gerald, then that will be regrettable. I would however say that Gerald’s actions actually contributed to more order here and will better for the Empire in general.” “How so?” “The removal of captain Pollo, has allowed you to move up in rank and judging by your feelings on this matter you are a person who respects military decorum. I have no doubt, the fort will be run more efficiently now.” Lieutenant Anu chuckles a bit. “I’d almost think you were trying to butter me up to save your guy, but I already know you genuinely believe what you’re saying and you’re right anyway. (Sigh) Well…I suppose accidents do happen. Nobody here is going to miss Pollo, so I’ll have Gerald released and write up a report.” “Sir, can I make a request?” “Don’t you think you’re pushing your luck?” “Not my intention sir, but I was going to ask if there’s anything my group could do here that’s a little more challenging than killing kobolds?” “Hmm, yes I imagine you would feel that way...well on the furthest southern edge of the province there have been bands of nomadic raiders and there have been rumors of them organizing under some sort of shaman. Dunno if it’s true or not. Of course we could also transfer you someplace where the battle is a little more suited to your violence level.” > You face the raiders You decide that it might be wise to maintain a presence here, after all there is still work to be done and you’re confident that things will be better at the fort now. Lieutenant Anu nods and says you can set out in a couple days to the town of Jekka. He mentions that the nomads have never been a problem like the kobold are, but lately they have been reaching that level. He also says they aren’t native to Nalin, but rather the desert land south of it. You spend the next couple of days at the fort are spent honing your weapon skills and telling your team to do likewise. Gerald joins you after being released from the stockade. He looks a little embarrassed and you reprimand him for his lack of finesse, but welcome him back. Eventually you set off for the southern Nalin border. The journey isn’t as uneventful as the first mission and you encounter a few kobolds attacking travelers along the roads. You easily dispatch them of course. The town of Jekka is in much better shape than Dalt, but its obvious the people here have been suffering from attacks. “Empire soldiers? Here? I thought you lot were chasing down kobolds to waste time with the likes of us.” A man says to you. He looks to be some sort of town sheriff. “All Empire towns are under our protection citizen. We have heard this one is suffering heavy raids from the desert nomads.” “ Well, we’ve been doing okay so far, but a few of the other border villages have gotten it pretty bad. One of them was totally destroyed. Those lizard riders have never been this bad or numerous before. The weird thing is, they just destroy and kill, they don’t actually do any proper raiding or looting, not that it really matters. but for the past few months.” “We heard rumors of a shaman uniting them.” “Yeah that’s the rumor, but really nobody knows what’s going on with them. They make quick attacks and then run back to their accursed desert. So when are more Empire soldiers coming?” “They aren’t.” “What?! We’ve been holding out for months with no hope in sight and now that you give us a little bit, you take it away again?” “Citizen, I advise you to calm yourself.” You warn, wondering if you’re going to have to make another point like you did in Dalt. You don’t since thought since the sheriff has more sense. “Alright, alright, but I’m telling you there are a lot of those lizard riders! I hope you’re more than just regular Empire soldiers. You guys Shadow Guard or something?” “We’re Eternals.” You set up your staging point in Jekka. The desert raiders will probably attack this town again as usual, so you might as well take advantage of the fact. The waiting is tedious, but eventually after few days it pays off. Several of the raiders appear in the distance and make no hesitation in their attack. The raiders are trying to rely on intimidation, because they sure aren’t relying on strategy and only attack the town from one direction. The lizard creatures that the raiders ride might be intimidating to the average citizen, but you’ve fought bigger creatures during training. They’re rather clumsy beasts actually and when you and your team begin to use your own hit and run tactics, they start to collide into each other causing problems for the raiders. As for the raiders themselves, they prove to be barely better fighters than the kobolds after dismounting several of them. Underneath the desert protection gear they wear, they don’t appear to be human or any other race you’re familiar with, but they bleed just like all them and that’s the important thing. As many battles often go, this one is over quicker than it felt. The remaining raiders run off and you order your people to mount up and chase them down which is fairly easy to do. Jekka suffered some damage and a few dead, but overall the townspeople couldn’t be happier with the outcome and most shower you with praise. However, you get the impression that you’re going to be facing more of these raiders in the near future and you’re right. A couple days pass and another raid on the town of Jekka occurs in the same exact manner, then again a few days after that. A week passes and there are no more raids, but that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped. You already know they’ve been attacking several settlements, so you tell Warrick and Roldan to scout out the closest ones to see what their situation is while you try to build some proper defenses for Jekka. A week passes and you learn more about your foes from a villager who survived the destruction of his home. The desert raiders (or the Usksha as you’ve come to find out their proper name) have indeed been united under one banner by a shaman of some sort. The villager says he saw this being with his own eyes and was spared for the sole purpose to warn all that the Usksha will no longer tolerate a foreign presence encroaching on their desert. This shaman said he has been chosen personally by their god Usk to destroy all those that do and that the town of Jekka will not be able to resist the inevitable destiny that it will fall. “So, he’s coming here then? Good, saves us the trouble of hunting him down.” You reply. “Combined with this information and based on what Warrick and I have scouted out, it sounds like there will be even more of them. Possibly a full blown army. We might need reinforcements from Fort Glory.” Roldan says. “Reinforcements? Hah! We’ve beaten them several times with ease!” “Would they even get here in time? We don’t exactly know when the attack will come.” Brenda asks. “They might or they might not, still we should try. Find out who the best runner is in this town and have them travel to Fort Glory with this news. We can continue to prepare in the meantime.” You say. The next morning several Uskshas appear in the distance like the other times you fought them. Then more show up, then even more. The town sheriff completely panics and says he’s never seen this many before. This of course causes most of the other townies to panic as well. You slap him and tell him if he and anyone else aren’t going to be helpful then they need to stay out of the way and find someplace to hide. They come at you screaming and yelling in their barbarian language and suddenly a huge worm thing comes out of the ground in the center of town. “Ha ha! At last a real fight!” Edgar yells and runs at it immediately as it destroys the nearby tavern. You order Kane to come with you to help Edgar while the rest try to delay the rest of the usksha. You just hope the barricades hold up long enough for them to greatly whittle the numbers down. You, Edgar and Kane approach the great worm, which bashes its great body into the side of another building, killing many townspeople hiding inside. “YOU! You think you can destroy me? I am an avatar of Usk! How can you destroy a god when you are, but a mere child of a corrupt empire?” you suddenly hear in your mind. It takes a split moment, but you realize that this beast is the shaman. He has used magic of some kind to transform himself into this thing. It doesn’t matter how much favor he has from his god though, he isn’t one and will die like the rest. Using his daggers like climbing gear, Kane jumps as high as he can and sink them into the shaman, while you and Edgar attempt to chop at his body like it was a tree. The shaman roars and attempts to smash you with his body, but you pull Edgar out of the way and Kane jumps off before being crushed. The shaman burrows back into the hole he came from and a few moments later he breaks through in another area of the town and begins destroying the barricades. You reach the shaman just in time for him to sink back into his hole again, while usksha pour in through the broken wall. “Shit!” Edgar shouts in exasperation. “Plug up that opening with their dead bodies!” you shout as you chop off the head of one their lizards before doing the same to the fallen rider. Holding the back the tide of usksha isn’t exactly what you want to be doing though, you want to take down that shaman, do that and this battle is over. When you hear him break through the ground again elsewhere in town, you tell Kane and Edgar to hold the line here, while you go see if you can get him. You see him near the center of town again trying to finish destroying the buildings there. You chop down a few usksha near him and resume attempting to bring him down. He uses his crushing attack like last time, but this time you anticipate and not only dodge, but you manage to run your sword into his eye when his head is at your level. He bellows in pain and attempts to escape again, but you won’t let go of your sword and pull it towards you as he pulls backwards. You fall to the ground as the sword finishes slicing through the shaman’s flesh leaving a gapping wound where his eye and part of his “face” would be. You then see the worm collapse to the ground and begin to glow. Some of the others nearby, human and usksha alike stop fighting to stand and watch in wonder. The shaman transforms back into his natural form, his head and body displaying heavy wounds. “No…can’t…you…why…we hate you…you aren’t…wanted…your empire will die…we will reclaim what is oursss…” are the scattered words you hear in your head as you approach the shaman’s broken body. “Stop talking.” You say and run your sword through his other eye. It is at this point you hear the howls of several usksha as their mental link with their leader has been severed. You, your team and even a few vengeful townspeople butcher the remaining usksha that don’t get away while attempting to retreat. Jekka is half in ruins and many are dead, but the battle has been won. The following day a detachment of troops arrive from Fort Glory. They look at the carnage and the platoon leader reports to you. “I’m Corporal Delan and I’m here to help you with…shit, what the hell happened here?” “Victory, corporal. Victory.” You say. “So…the threat is gone?” “I wouldn’t say it’s gone, but it won’t be rearing its head for a long time.” “I say we should march into that desert and wipe them out permanently, then we’d never have to worry about them ever again!” Edgar says. “Well, if you decide to do that, we’ll help. I know you’ve been busy down here so I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’ve made great strides in eliminating the kobolds, so Captian Anu told us to help you with this problem as much as we can. > You march into the desert The usksha are broken and on the run, the opportunity to eliminate them as a future threat is certainly there, along with extending the Empire’s influence south of the Nalin province. Your recent victories have filled you with confidence and you agree you should mount an attack on the usksha. “You can’t be serious! Look I know you guys are Eternals, and I won’t deny that you’re the best warriors I’ve ever seen, but even you won’t be able to conquer the usksha in their desert! They’ve lived there for centuries, even before the Empire existed! They know it like nobody else, you’ll be outnumbered and fighting the elements themselves!” the Jekka sheriff exclaims. Somehow he survived the battle by hiding no doubt. Perhaps he is content on being a coward all his life, but you were meant for much more! You are an Eternal and the Emperor himself will reward you himself when you make the first steps in civilizing the desert. You slap him again and tell him that you’ll need as much water as everyone can carry. After a period of rest, you, your team and Delan’s men set off for the desert. You figure the best way to approach this is to follow the usksha’s tracks. This works out well at first as the lizard mounts are heavy footed creatures that leave deep prints, so you come across several small bands of fleeing usksha. When you begin to leave the Nalin province and enter the desert, the prints get harder to track. You follow tracks for two days before you find more usksha. Still, you aren’t finding any large settlements. By day four and Delan’s men are starting to complain. He tries to maintain order, but it’s obvious they can’t take the heat of the day and cold of the night. Your own team is fairing better, but even a couple of them are starting to make comments. On the seventh night, you’re ambushed by several usksha who spring up from the sands itself; they manage to kill several of Delan’s men before you dispatch them. “Sergeant, I think we need to get the hell out of this desert. There’s nothing here, but sand and death!” “Then leave weakling! We’re more than able to carry out this mission ourselves! We don’t need anybody! We’re Eternals!” Edgar shouts. “I don’t doubt our abilities sir, but I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t a waste of time. We’ve defeated the usksha and chased them deep into their own land. Maybe we’ve made our point.” Roldan says. “I’m finding myself agreeing sir, we could better serve the Empire elsewhere.” Gerald adds. “Duly noted. We’re sticking with the original plan and as for you Delan, you’re under my command too, so you aren’t going anywhere either, now I advise you to find your guts and keep what men you have left in line, before I take away what little authority you still have left.” Corporal Delan obeys and silently slinks back to his men. Your own people obey as well, but you know that the voices of dissent are already there. Still, you’re convinced that you’ll find something of importance out here along with wiping out usksha. On day ten, a strange reptilian creature attacks you. The first instinct is to defend yourself of course, but when it turns Warrick and Gerald to stone instantly, even you find yourself worried. “Don’t look at it! It’s got some sort of magic attack!” you shout and put your shield to cover yourself. Delan and his couple remaining men don’t even stick around they turn and run completely. Edgar closes his eyes and swings wildly at the beast, but only manages to get himself mauled by the creature’s sharp teeth and claws. The distraction is enough for Brenda to shoot several arrows in the beast while its back is to her. The beast gives a final bellow and dies. You survey the damage and it’s pretty bad. You’ve lost two men, and looking at Edgar on the ground it’ll soon be three. He can’t even form any words, he just looks up at the sky gurgling and spitting up blood and trying to clutch at an arm which is no longer there. “I told you! I told you we should’ve gone back!” Roldan screams. “Silence! I’m in charge here and you won’t speak to me like that again!” you say. “Somebody needs to tell you something, because…” You lose your patience from a combination of the disrespect, the loss, the failure, the heat, all of it. You punch Roldan causing him to fall to the ground. He looks up in disbelief at first, but then begins to laugh. “Ha ha…ha ha ha ha ha! We…ha ha ha! Found more usksha!” he laughs and points. You all turn to see a sizable group of mounted usksha in the distance. They don’t move in either, instead they shoot at you with their bows. Brenda catches an arrow to her leg before you can sound a retreat. You and Kane run, but Roldan just sits there still laughing, the next time you turn your head to look back, he’s no longer sitting up. Brenda tries to keep up, but the arrow in her leg slows her down and eventually she catches two more arrows in her back, killing her much in the same way she killed that strange beast. Eventually you and Kane get away, but in all the excitement you don’t know where you are and you don’t even have the tracks you were following to go back to. Under better and less stressful conditions you might get your bearings again, but you never do. Your next few days involve wandering the desert being continually worn down by usksha ambushes and the sun. You leave Kane’s dehydrated body and continue alone, but not for long as you eventually also succumb to the heat. As you lay dying your thoughts of glory are gone and though dehydrated, you manage to shed a single tear for your failure to serve the Emperor.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide that it might be wise to maintain a presence here, after all there is still work to be done and you’re confident that things will be better at the fort now. Lieutenant Anu nods and says you can set out in a couple days to the town of Jekka. He mentions that the nomads have never been a problem like the kobold are, but lately they have been reaching that level. He also says they aren’t native to Nalin, but rather the desert land south of it. You spend the next couple of days at the fort are spent honing your weapon skills and telling your team to do likewise. Gerald joins you after being released from the stockade. He looks a little embarrassed and you reprimand him for his lack of finesse, but welcome him back. Eventually you set off for the southern Nalin border. The journey isn’t as uneventful as the first mission and you encounter a few kobolds attacking travelers along the roads. You easily dispatch them of course. The town of Jekka is in much better shape than Dalt, but its obvious the people here have been suffering from attacks. “Empire soldiers? Here? I thought you lot were chasing down kobolds to waste time with the likes of us.” A man says to you. He looks to be some sort of town sheriff. “All Empire towns are under our protection citizen. We have heard this one is suffering heavy raids from the desert nomads.” “ Well, we’ve been doing okay so far, but a few of the other border villages have gotten it pretty bad. One of them was totally destroyed. Those lizard riders have never been this bad or numerous before. The weird thing is, they just destroy and kill, they don’t actually do any proper raiding or looting, not that it really matters. but for the past few months.” “We heard rumors of a shaman uniting them.” “Yeah that’s the rumor, but really nobody knows what’s going on with them. They make quick attacks and then run back to their accursed desert. So when are more Empire soldiers coming?” “They aren’t.” “What?! We’ve been holding out for months with no hope in sight and now that you give us a little bit, you take it away again?” “Citizen, I advise you to calm yourself.” You warn, wondering if you’re going to have to make another point like you did in Dalt. You don’t since thought since the sheriff has more sense. “Alright, alright, but I’m telling you there are a lot of those lizard riders! I hope you’re more than just regular Empire soldiers. You guys Shadow Guard or something?” “We’re Eternals.” You set up your staging point in Jekka. The desert raiders will probably attack this town again as usual, so you might as well take advantage of the fact. The waiting is tedious, but eventually after few days it pays off. Several of the raiders appear in the distance and make no hesitation in their attack. The raiders are trying to rely on intimidation, because they sure aren’t relying on strategy and only attack the town from one direction. The lizard creatures that the raiders ride might be intimidating to the average citizen, but you’ve fought bigger creatures during training. They’re rather clumsy beasts actually and when you and your team begin to use your own hit and run tactics, they start to collide into each other causing problems for the raiders. As for the raiders themselves, they prove to be barely better fighters than the kobolds after dismounting several of them. Underneath the desert protection gear they wear, they don’t appear to be human or any other race you’re familiar with, but they bleed just like all them and that’s the important thing. As many battles often go, this one is over quicker than it felt. The remaining raiders run off and you order your people to mount up and chase them down which is fairly easy to do. Jekka suffered some damage and a few dead, but overall the townspeople couldn’t be happier with the outcome and most shower you with praise. However, you get the impression that you’re going to be facing more of these raiders in the near future and you’re right. A couple days pass and another raid on the town of Jekka occurs in the same exact manner, then again a few days after that. A week passes and there are no more raids, but that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped. You already know they’ve been attacking several settlements, so you tell Warrick and Roldan to scout out the closest ones to see what their situation is while you try to build some proper defenses for Jekka. A week passes and you learn more about your foes from a villager who survived the destruction of his home. The desert raiders (or the Usksha as you’ve come to find out their proper name) have indeed been united under one banner by a shaman of some sort. The villager says he saw this being with his own eyes and was spared for the sole purpose to warn all that the Usksha will no longer tolerate a foreign presence encroaching on their desert. This shaman said he has been chosen personally by their god Usk to destroy all those that do and that the town of Jekka will not be able to resist the inevitable destiny that it will fall. “So, he’s coming here then? Good, saves us the trouble of hunting him down.” You reply. “Combined with this information and based on what Warrick and I have scouted out, it sounds like there will be even more of them. Possibly a full blown army. We might need reinforcements from Fort Glory.” Roldan says. “Reinforcements? Hah! We’ve beaten them several times with ease!” “Would they even get here in time? We don’t exactly know when the attack will come.” Brenda asks. “They might or they might not, still we should try. Find out who the best runner is in this town and have them travel to Fort Glory with this news. We can continue to prepare in the meantime.” You say. The next morning several Uskshas appear in the distance like the other times you fought them. Then more show up, then even more. The town sheriff completely panics and says he’s never seen this many before. This of course causes most of the other townies to panic as well. You slap him and tell him if he and anyone else aren’t going to be helpful then they need to stay out of the way and find someplace to hide. They come at you screaming and yelling in their barbarian language and suddenly a huge worm thing comes out of the ground in the center of town. “Ha ha! At last a real fight!” Edgar yells and runs at it immediately as it destroys the nearby tavern. You order Kane to come with you to help Edgar while the rest try to delay the rest of the usksha. You just hope the barricades hold up long enough for them to greatly whittle the numbers down. You, Edgar and Kane approach the great worm, which bashes its great body into the side of another building, killing many townspeople hiding inside. “YOU! You think you can destroy me? I am an avatar of Usk! How can you destroy a god when you are, but a mere child of a corrupt empire?” you suddenly hear in your mind. It takes a split moment, but you realize that this beast is the shaman. He has used magic of some kind to transform himself into this thing. It doesn’t matter how much favor he has from his god though, he isn’t one and will die like the rest. Using his daggers like climbing gear, Kane jumps as high as he can and sink them into the shaman, while you and Edgar attempt to chop at his body like it was a tree. The shaman roars and attempts to smash you with his body, but you pull Edgar out of the way and Kane jumps off before being crushed. The shaman burrows back into the hole he came from and a few moments later he breaks through in another area of the town and begins destroying the barricades. You reach the shaman just in time for him to sink back into his hole again, while usksha pour in through the broken wall. “Shit!” Edgar shouts in exasperation. “Plug up that opening with their dead bodies!” you shout as you chop off the head of one their lizards before doing the same to the fallen rider. Holding the back the tide of usksha isn’t exactly what you want to be doing though, you want to take down that shaman, do that and this battle is over. When you hear him break through the ground again elsewhere in town, you tell Kane and Edgar to hold the line here, while you go see if you can get him. You see him near the center of town again trying to finish destroying the buildings there. You chop down a few usksha near him and resume attempting to bring him down. He uses his crushing attack like last time, but this time you anticipate and not only dodge, but you manage to run your sword into his eye when his head is at your level. He bellows in pain and attempts to escape again, but you won’t let go of your sword and pull it towards you as he pulls backwards. You fall to the ground as the sword finishes slicing through the shaman’s flesh leaving a gapping wound where his eye and part of his “face” would be. You then see the worm collapse to the ground and begin to glow. Some of the others nearby, human and usksha alike stop fighting to stand and watch in wonder. The shaman transforms back into his natural form, his head and body displaying heavy wounds. “No…can’t…you…why…we hate you…you aren’t…wanted…your empire will die…we will reclaim what is oursss…” are the scattered words you hear in your head as you approach the shaman’s broken body. “Stop talking.” You say and run your sword through his other eye. It is at this point you hear the howls of several usksha as their mental link with their leader has been severed. You, your team and even a few vengeful townspeople butcher the remaining usksha that don’t get away while attempting to retreat. Jekka is half in ruins and many are dead, but the battle has been won. The following day a detachment of troops arrive from Fort Glory. They look at the carnage and the platoon leader reports to you. “I’m Corporal Delan and I’m here to help you with…shit, what the hell happened here?” “Victory, corporal. Victory.” You say. “So…the threat is gone?” “I wouldn’t say it’s gone, but it won’t be rearing its head for a long time.” “I say we should march into that desert and wipe them out permanently, then we’d never have to worry about them ever again!” Edgar says. “Well, if you decide to do that, we’ll help. I know you’ve been busy down here so I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’ve made great strides in eliminating the kobolds, so Captian Anu told us to help you with this problem as much as we can. > You leave it alone Marching into the desert without a grand plan other than simple slaughter isn’t much of a plan. The usksha are nomads anyway, you’d never be able to catch all of them in their home turf. “No, I believe we’ve taken care of the major problem, but I think you should stay here and oversee the safety of this town now. We’ll head back to Fort Glory and report the situation.” You tell Delan. As you pack up and start to leave, Edgar begins to complain. “What are we doing? We should be trying to hunt down the rest of the usksha!” “Our mission here is done, the usksha have been defeated. If we get ordered to mount an expedition into the desert then we shall do so.” “Bah! Anu is probably going to assign us to fight kobolds again! We should be taking the initiative!” “It seems every time you take the initiative, I end up having to help you in some way. I’d recommend that you worry less about fighting and more about your combat techniques.” At this point Edgar gets noticeably mad, but says nothing and walks off. You’re starting to get slightly concerned about him. You’d rather not have to teach him a lesson like you did when you were still training under Mistress. When you arrive at Fort Glory and report to Captain Anu he’s pleased with what you’ve accomplished and is impressed. He says he’d like to keep you here to finish up wiping out the kobold infestation, but he’s received word from the top that your team is to be transferred elsewhere. “Where are we going sir?” “The Rask frontier and I don’t mind saying I don’t envy you.” “I’ve heard of the place before. What is the situation there?” “Bad, worse and downright horrible. As far as I know the Empire has been trying to establish order there for decades and not making any progress.” “Captain, I certainly hope you don’t make it a habit of saying disparaging things about the Empire.” A man says walking into the room. It’s Mr. Mol. “Uh no sir. Sorry sir.” Captain Anu says sheepishly. Mr. Mol overlooks his comments and speaks to you directly. “Ignore the captain’s words, everyone exaggerates the situation at the Rask frontier. While the area is having some problems, the fact remains if it really was so bad there, we would’ve pulled out a long time ago. Anyway, congratulations on your latest mission. Couldn’t help overhearing your report in the next room, quite impressive. Which makes me believe it was a good idea to transfer you now.” “The Eternals are ready to serve the Emperor wherever he may need us sir.” You say. “And the Emperor will always appreciate your service. He has been watching you, you know. He always is. That is why he believes you would be most effective apart from each other.” “Sir?” “You are Eternals, m’boy. You were bred to lead as well as fight. You’ve already proven yourself to be able to do both, but your fellow Eternals will never reach their fullest potential if they live under your shadow. All of you will be separated and given your own commands in territories the Emperor needs you the most. I have no doubt you all will be successful and honor the Emperor with your future victories.” “W..we will sir, but you said territories. Are we not all being sent to the Rask frontier?” “Oh I think the captain misunderstood. A few of you are being sent there, but some of you are staying here, and others are yet being sent elsewhere. Here, here’s your orders, you can inform the rest of your team, I’m sure they’ll be excited to hear this news too, oh and consider yourself promoted to lieutenant. The rest of your team members will probably be promoted to sergeant rank when they officially get their assignments. I think that’s about it. A caravan will be here to transfer some of you to your new assignments in a few days. Good day.” As Mr. Mol goes walking out the office, you feel a little strange. Your team has been together so long, it feels weird to know that you’re going to be split apart. “Sorry for the wrong information, I thought all of you would be sent to the Rask frontier. Well I guess I’m glad to know some of your are staying, heh…are you okay?” Captain Anu asks. “Huh? Oh yes. I’m okay captain. If you’ll excuse me I have to inform my team of their new assignments.” “Certainly. Dismissed.” You inform your team of the news and there is a mixture of feelings. There is some excitement of gaining their own commands, but are still a little apprehensive about splitting up. Well all of them except Edgar who seems to be solely overjoyed that he’s getting his own command. “Okay, Roldan and Brenda, you’re staying here.” “Damn, I was hoping I’d at least get to go some place different.” Brenda says. “Make no mistake, this area still needs order established. I believe you and Roldan will do a fine job in continuing the reputation of excellence that we have built here.” You continue with the list. “Gerald and Warrick, you’re being assigned along the Felkan border. Apparently the non-aggression treaty the Empire had with the Felkan Kingdom has expired and tensions have been high. War with them may even break out.” “Interesting. Well if war does break out, we’ll be the first one to show the Felkans the error of defying the Emperor’s mercy.” Warrick says. “Yeah, yeah! Let’s get on with it, where am I going?” Edgar interrupts. You glare at Edgar and then continue. “You, Kane and I are all being sent to the Rask frontier.” “As it should be. My skills were going to waste here.” “Edgar, I’m going to say this while I’m still your superior. I certainly hope you realize that this isn’t a game and you’ll prove yourself to be a competent leader.” “Hey, I’m just as much of a leader as you are! The difference is I take risks and that will be a trait that will necessary in a place like the Rask frontier! I will rise up in the ranks and bring honor to the name Eternal and glory to the Emperor!” “You mean glory to yourself because you feel like you have something to prove.” You say. “And you don’t? You’re a hypocrite anyway! Always were ever since we trained under Mistress! I still recall you begging for your life to her as she crushed you under her boot. From that day on you were always trying to prove yourself and beating the bloody pulp out everyone.” “And as I recall you were on that end several times Edgar. Is that why you’re still trying to prove yourself?” “You wanna try that now?” Edgar says getting in your face and at this point all of your fellow Eternals intervene to break up a potential fight. “Hey come on you guys! We can’t be seen fighting each other like this! We’re Eternals, we put all that stuff behind us back in training. We’re professionals and supposed to be setting the example for the Empire!” Roldan says. Edgar brushes himself and backs off. “Tell you what Roldan. You set the example for the Empire. All of you set the example. In the meantime, I’ll be scoring victories and actually serving the Emperor by conquering land in his name.” And with these last words, he takes his leave all of you. The last few days together are a little awkward with what transpired between you and Edgar. Still you say your goodbyes to Roldan and Brenda when the caravan comes. A few days after that, you then say your goodbyes to Warrick and Gerald. You, Edgar and Kane sit in silence for the remainder of the trip. Eventually you arrive at the Rask frontier and make your stop at Fort Destiny. You haven’t gotten off the caravan five minutes when a woman wearing battle armor approaches you. “Hey are you the Eternals?” “Yes we are.” “I’m Captain Krozer, I’ve heard a lot about you and wanted to meet you personally. Welcome to hell.” Captain Krozer begins to give you a run down on the entire area. She mentions that the mortality rate here is high so morale isn’t the best, but she hopes that you and the other Eternals assigned here can rally some sort hope here again. Captain Krozer also goes on to tell you that there’s been a slight change of plans in your assignments. She says that you’re still staying here, but that Kane and Edgar are going to Fort Defiance, which is further north. Probably for the best considering what transpired between you and Edgar. Kane nods a dignified goodbye to you, and gets back on the caravan; Edgar of course isn’t as pleasant and gives you a hostile glare before leaving. With the caravan leaving, you head to your new unit. When you see them, quite a few of them are predictably much older than you, but surprisingly you see that half of them are around your age. “So, you’re one those Eternals huh?” one the older soldiers says almost dismissively. You’re in no mood to warn anyone this time, so you go straight to the point and throw him to the floor with his arm painfully twisted behind his back. “Correct, and you’ll address me as sir or lieutenant if you want to keep this arm, because it’ll be very hard to continue doing your duty for the Emperor with just a stump. Understand?” “Argh. Y..yes sir!” And so begins your assignment in the Rask frontier. > Chapter 2A: For The Empire! Year 20 “Watch it the last ones are coming from the left side!” you shout, pointing at the barbarian wolfmen breaking through the barricade. Two of your number go down before the might of the wolfmen. As always you find yourself having to do things yourself. Not that you’re adverse to placing yourself in the thick of battle, but sometimes you get a little tired of having to micromanage. One of the wolfmen goes down by your blade with ease, the other three however are shot full of bolts, though you were very nearly in the crossfire. “DAMMIT, watch where you’re shooting!” You shout at the dark elven mercenaries. “Oh stop being so dramatic, we’ve been shooting with these crossbows longer than you’ve even been alive I’d wager.” One of them replies, followed by a few snickers. You shake your head at the fact that you have to routinely work with them, let alone having to put up with their kind. Then again you’ve had to put up with a lot around here for the past four years. “Are we done fighting these dogs now? When are we going to get back to killing more sveld? That’s a lot more fun.” One of the mercenaries says. “You aren’t getting paid to have fun svelk! You’re getting paid to do your job. If you really want to go murder your tree loving cousins so bad, we’re not stopping you.” You say. “Whatever monkey, our job here is done, we’re heading back. Let us know when you need our help again.” The mercenary says and they leave. You survey the damage to the logging camp and it’s going to be awhile before this place is up and running to it’s full capabilities again. Still, today is a victory and despite everything, you’ve managed to eliminate more enemies even if it does seem like they are everywhere in this harsh cold land. Unfortunately nowadays the Rask frontier isn’t the only place where the Empire has been having problems. Open war broke out with the Felkan Kingdom a couple years ago. Sometimes you wonder how things are going with Warrick and Gerald, but you’ve never heard anything about them, or from them. In fact you rarely hear news from anywhere unless it directly concerns you defending mining towns, logging town, or outposts from barbarians or the forest elves. It’s never pretty here, but you can only imagine what they deal with up at Fort Defiance where they routinely face ogres and sometimes even giants. You have heard that Edgar has made quite a name for himself with some of his actions. In a way you’re glad, because he’s living up to the title of an Eternal and doing honor by serving with distinction…still, knowing him he’s doing it all to try to “beat” you. As for you, you’ve made quite a name for yourself as well. You have improved the mortality rate of the soldiers here a little (most notably the ones serving under you), but you’ve also managed to successfully defend several towns with low citizen casualties too. The greatest accomplishments of yours are the complete destruction of several hostile barbarian tribes. The Black Wolves, the Enclave of the Bear, the Blood Boars, and other minor shape changing tribes have all been exterminated thanks to your relentless nature. Indeed, you’ve become so infamous that the barbarian tribes in this land have come to call you the “The Bane of Rask.” This recent battle was a last desperate regroup attack by one of the tribes, the “Silver Fangs” after you wiped out all their women and children in an attack on their camp. Grim business to be sure, but it wasn’t first time and it certainly won’t be the last. These tribes must learn that they cannot stand against the might of the Empire or the Emperor. If they can only learn that with their extinction then so be it. You report your victory to Captain Krozer. “Excellent as always lieutenant. I know time after time I can count on you. Which leads me to the next major task. From what I can tell we’ve managed to eliminate the major threats in this particular area of the Rask frontier, but we have two left. The forest elves and the Wendigo tribe are the two in question and I’m wondering which one we should focus our attention on first.” “Well I can tell you that the Wendigo tribe will be a challenge. They’re the biggest, toughest and meanest of all the barbarian shape shifters. So far we haven’t had a large battle with them yet, but with our extermination of the other tribes, the time is getting closer. As for the elves, it will be more tedious than anything as they use a lot of guerilla tactics and such. We’ve still never found any sort of home, base or camp of theirs, but I suppose those dark elven mercs will be more than willing to help us with eliminating them. I’m sure their leader, Edolith will most likely demand a high price as usual though.” You say. “(Sigh) Yeah, I’m sure she will. Things are never easy here. Fuck it; we’re pushing forward on both groups right now and putting an end to it once and for all. The question is, would you prefer to lead a company against the Wendigo tribe or go on a seek and destroy mission on the forest elves.” > You attack the Wendigo tribe “While I have every desire to see both of these blights erased from the Empire’s lands, I believe my abilities would be best served in leading the attack against the Wendigo tribe, captain.” You say. “I had a feeling you’d be more drawn to that idea, and you are probably the best person for it, seeing how many victories you have against the barbarians tribes here. Very well, I shall send another officer to lead the mission against the elves and I hope those mercenaries lower their price in exchange for a chance to kill their tree loving kin. In fact I may go along on that mission.” Captain Krozer replies. “You are captain?” “Yes, someone needs to keep an eye on those shifty bastards. Besides I find that I’ve been getting stuck behind the desk too much lately. It’ll be good to be back out in the field. Don’t want to become like one of those fat self-important generals that do nothing except point to maps and make equally fat musings on tactics. A true leader should lead from the front, I’m sure you agree.” “It is preferable yes…but I do understand the need to keep those with keen military minds safe from major war zones. Such people have their place as all do in their service of the Emperor.” “Why lieutenant, are you complimenting me on my intelligence? It’s not like you to flirt.” Captain Krozer asks in a tone slightly friendlier than usual, it catches you a little off guard. “I…no! I mean yes, you are very intelligent, but…” “Relax lieutenant, just having a little fun, didn’t mean to put you on the spot. Anyway, we’ll pick this up later, you better get prepared for your mission, and good luck.” You do exactly that, get prepared. You know this will not be an easy battle. You fought a member of the wendigos by yourself before and it was one of your greatest fights. Fighting an entire tribe of them even with an entire company behind you will not make it easier. Most of the men while capable soldiers, they are still just recruits in some ways when facing the shear might and savagery of these barbarians, let alone a tribe like the wendigos. At this point you wish you had a few battle wizards or even orcs in your ranks, but most of those have been assigned either at Fort Defiance or on the frontlines of the Felkan War. You march through the ice and snow towards wendingo territory, along the way you come across a small village completely decimated. Looks like it was a fairly new one made up of some determined settlers. Still, no amount of determination could have possibly made it a good idea to start building a new settlement that was so close to wendigo territory without Empire protection. Houses have been burned, and the gory bodies of the dead are everywhere and in pieces. Some of the bodies have even been partially eaten. Not surprising, considering the wendigo tribe will cannibalize their own people if necessary. A couple of the newer recruits throw up at the grisly sight. The march eventually leads you a wooded hill area where they make their home. It’s there where you have your first major encounter with the wendigos. Their aren’t a lot of them, but they’re completely vicious and without fear. They think nothing of attacking you despite being outnumbered and bellow their terrible howl. A howl so dreadful it can affect the mind and causes a few of your men to lose their courage completely. “It’s all in your head! The Emperor’s Will protects us! Find your nerve or die!” you shout and clash with the nearest wendigo. It’s just the first of many such battles. The only good thing is the wendigos are pretty easy to find and make no attempts to hide from you, meaning you don’t really need to make a big effort at hunting them down. The bad thing of course is little by little your company is worn down by their attacks along with the land already being harsh and food being scarce. It’s not just that though, this land of theirs, it’s making you feel weird, to say nothing of your men. The howls of the wendingos seem to be on the very winds here. It’s constantly there sapping your mind and making yourself feel strange thoughts. “Lieutenant, I’m starting to feel really hungry. A lot of the men are.” Your second says to you. “We just stopped to eat.” “I know, but I dunno I’m still hungry.” “Well we’re not stopping again. We need to keep moving the quicker we do this, the quicker we can go back home and have a proper meal.” “Yes, a proper meal with meat. Lots of meat. Heh heh.” Your second says and walks away. By the fifth day, you finally come across a large wendigo encampment and it is there where you see some sort of leader. You knew they had to have one, these types always do. He’s predictably the largest of his kind and covered in pure white fur. When your company arrives, the wendigos make their howl, but more disturbingly some of your men make a rival howl of their own and charge into battle even before you give the command. The battle is a slaughter on both sides. You struggle against the wendigo leader striking several blows that would kill a normal man, but of course then you’re not fighting a man. He swipes you across the chest destroying your breast plate and lands another blow to your head which probably would’ve killed you had you not been wearing a helmet. It is enough to knock you down however. “Your combat skill is impressive, Bane of Rask. It will be an honor to add it my own when I devour your heart.” You suddenly hear in your head as you struggle to get up. You’ve heard this sort of talk before. Namely when you were fighting against the usksha shaman. You shake off the wendingo leader’s mental attempts to throw you off guard and narrowly avoid his foot stomping on your head. You grab your sword nearby and with all your might, you swing it at the very foot that just tried to crush your head and chop it clean off. The wendigo leader howls again, but this is one of pain as he tumbles to the ground. You waste no time and shove the blade down the beast’s gullet. While this would be enough to kill most, the leader manages punch you aside with all his thrashing and then tries to stand up on one foot with a sword still stuck through his mouth and coming out the other side of his head. It would be a darkly comical sight under different circumstances watching this beast hop around trying to pull a sword out of his head, but you’re in no mood to laugh. You charge into him as hard as you can to knock him down and grab the sword yanking it back and forth until you succeed in sawing off the top part of his head. To their credit, the remaining wendigos continue to fight and die with their leader. The battle is won and even you take a moment to rest. This rest is to be short lived. “Bane of Rask, you’ve just won a fierce battle wouldn’t it be nice to celebrate by filling your belly with meat? There is a lot in the pot over there.” “…what?” you say to yourself and hold your head in your hands. “The pot over there. Lots of tasty meat that this tribe was going to eat before you so rudely interrupted them. No sense in letting it go to waste.” “…no I just killed you.” “Did you? Of course if you wish you could just pick a body on the ground and start eating. Why not? You deserve it.” You know what’s going on here. The wendigos aren’t truly flesh and blood creatures! They’re some sort of spirits or something otherworldly. No wonder you’ve felt strange the entire time you’ve been here. You get up and call your men to leave immediately, only to see some of them have already fully succumbed to the wendigo curse. Eating the bodies laying on the ground and beginning to look less than human and more feral. > You run The longer you stay here, the more likely all of you are going to get possessed. This entire land is cursed and you need to get out of here. You and the rest of your unprocessed troops begin to back off while still keeping an eye on the new wendigos. Their preoccupation with fresh bodies is limited however and they soon begin to turn towards you. They howl that dreadful noise again and begin to transform. It is at this point some of your men run as fast as then can, others begin to hold their heads telling a voice to shut up. “Bane of Rask, join us or die here today!” you hear the voice hiss. Several wendigos run after the men who fled, while the others stay to attack you. For whatever reason, they’re not fighting with as much reckless abandon anymore, it’s almost as if they’ve absorbed the fighting skills of your soldiers. Despite this, you manage to pull out a victory, but you’re exhausted and wounded. You see some of your other men already beginning to transform having been possessed by the wendigos and you spare no time in killing them before they can transform as well. “Your skills for killing are misused, if you just embraced the primal instinct, you would be able to use your skills to the fullest extent and without the shackles of any higher authority.” “SHUT UP!” you shout. Between the constant assaults to your mind and your wounds, you struggle to make your way out of wendigo territory. It doesn’t help that you’re also still being periodically attacked by the wendigos that presumably finished off the rest of your men who ran away. You run your sword through the face of a wendigo and ignore his claws ripping through your own armor and your flesh. You’re tired, but a rage is growing within you due to these constant assaults. You grab the already mortally wounded wendigo and as hard as you can you summon all your strength to break its neck. It falls to the snow in a heavy heap and you do as well. “Do it…nobody is around…feed to sustain your strength…” you hear. You sink your teeth into the body of the wendigo and begin to feed…or rather the carcass of its former host as the wendigo itself has left its body and managed to weave itself into your mind. Your barrier against it finally shattered, your mind is truly not your own anymore. While you are “alive” you are merely a puppet now. You spend the remainder of your days seeking out fresh flesh, until ultimately your mind is completely absorbed and under control of the wendigo.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“While I have every desire to see both of these blights erased from the Empire’s lands, I believe my abilities would be best served in leading the attack against the Wendigo tribe, captain.” You say. “I had a feeling you’d be more drawn to that idea, and you are probably the best person for it, seeing how many victories you have against the barbarians tribes here. Very well, I shall send another officer to lead the mission against the elves and I hope those mercenaries lower their price in exchange for a chance to kill their tree loving kin. In fact I may go along on that mission.” Captain Krozer replies. “You are captain?” “Yes, someone needs to keep an eye on those shifty bastards. Besides I find that I’ve been getting stuck behind the desk too much lately. It’ll be good to be back out in the field. Don’t want to become like one of those fat self-important generals that do nothing except point to maps and make equally fat musings on tactics. A true leader should lead from the front, I’m sure you agree.” “It is preferable yes…but I do understand the need to keep those with keen military minds safe from major war zones. Such people have their place as all do in their service of the Emperor.” “Why lieutenant, are you complimenting me on my intelligence? It’s not like you to flirt.” Captain Krozer asks in a tone slightly friendlier than usual, it catches you a little off guard. “I…no! I mean yes, you are very intelligent, but…” “Relax lieutenant, just having a little fun, didn’t mean to put you on the spot. Anyway, we’ll pick this up later, you better get prepared for your mission, and good luck.” You do exactly that, get prepared. You know this will not be an easy battle. You fought a member of the wendigos by yourself before and it was one of your greatest fights. Fighting an entire tribe of them even with an entire company behind you will not make it easier. Most of the men while capable soldiers, they are still just recruits in some ways when facing the shear might and savagery of these barbarians, let alone a tribe like the wendigos. At this point you wish you had a few battle wizards or even orcs in your ranks, but most of those have been assigned either at Fort Defiance or on the frontlines of the Felkan War. You march through the ice and snow towards wendingo territory, along the way you come across a small village completely decimated. Looks like it was a fairly new one made up of some determined settlers. Still, no amount of determination could have possibly made it a good idea to start building a new settlement that was so close to wendigo territory without Empire protection. Houses have been burned, and the gory bodies of the dead are everywhere and in pieces. Some of the bodies have even been partially eaten. Not surprising, considering the wendigo tribe will cannibalize their own people if necessary. A couple of the newer recruits throw up at the grisly sight. The march eventually leads you a wooded hill area where they make their home. It’s there where you have your first major encounter with the wendigos. Their aren’t a lot of them, but they’re completely vicious and without fear. They think nothing of attacking you despite being outnumbered and bellow their terrible howl. A howl so dreadful it can affect the mind and causes a few of your men to lose their courage completely. “It’s all in your head! The Emperor’s Will protects us! Find your nerve or die!” you shout and clash with the nearest wendigo. It’s just the first of many such battles. The only good thing is the wendigos are pretty easy to find and make no attempts to hide from you, meaning you don’t really need to make a big effort at hunting them down. The bad thing of course is little by little your company is worn down by their attacks along with the land already being harsh and food being scarce. It’s not just that though, this land of theirs, it’s making you feel weird, to say nothing of your men. The howls of the wendingos seem to be on the very winds here. It’s constantly there sapping your mind and making yourself feel strange thoughts. “Lieutenant, I’m starting to feel really hungry. A lot of the men are.” Your second says to you. “We just stopped to eat.” “I know, but I dunno I’m still hungry.” “Well we’re not stopping again. We need to keep moving the quicker we do this, the quicker we can go back home and have a proper meal.” “Yes, a proper meal with meat. Lots of meat. Heh heh.” Your second says and walks away. By the fifth day, you finally come across a large wendigo encampment and it is there where you see some sort of leader. You knew they had to have one, these types always do. He’s predictably the largest of his kind and covered in pure white fur. When your company arrives, the wendigos make their howl, but more disturbingly some of your men make a rival howl of their own and charge into battle even before you give the command. The battle is a slaughter on both sides. You struggle against the wendigo leader striking several blows that would kill a normal man, but of course then you’re not fighting a man. He swipes you across the chest destroying your breast plate and lands another blow to your head which probably would’ve killed you had you not been wearing a helmet. It is enough to knock you down however. “Your combat skill is impressive, Bane of Rask. It will be an honor to add it my own when I devour your heart.” You suddenly hear in your head as you struggle to get up. You’ve heard this sort of talk before. Namely when you were fighting against the usksha shaman. You shake off the wendingo leader’s mental attempts to throw you off guard and narrowly avoid his foot stomping on your head. You grab your sword nearby and with all your might, you swing it at the very foot that just tried to crush your head and chop it clean off. The wendigo leader howls again, but this is one of pain as he tumbles to the ground. You waste no time and shove the blade down the beast’s gullet. While this would be enough to kill most, the leader manages punch you aside with all his thrashing and then tries to stand up on one foot with a sword still stuck through his mouth and coming out the other side of his head. It would be a darkly comical sight under different circumstances watching this beast hop around trying to pull a sword out of his head, but you’re in no mood to laugh. You charge into him as hard as you can to knock him down and grab the sword yanking it back and forth until you succeed in sawing off the top part of his head. To their credit, the remaining wendigos continue to fight and die with their leader. The battle is won and even you take a moment to rest. This rest is to be short lived. “Bane of Rask, you’ve just won a fierce battle wouldn’t it be nice to celebrate by filling your belly with meat? There is a lot in the pot over there.” “…what?” you say to yourself and hold your head in your hands. “The pot over there. Lots of tasty meat that this tribe was going to eat before you so rudely interrupted them. No sense in letting it go to waste.” “…no I just killed you.” “Did you? Of course if you wish you could just pick a body on the ground and start eating. Why not? You deserve it.” You know what’s going on here. The wendigos aren’t truly flesh and blood creatures! They’re some sort of spirits or something otherworldly. No wonder you’ve felt strange the entire time you’ve been here. You get up and call your men to leave immediately, only to see some of them have already fully succumbed to the wendigo curse. Eating the bodies laying on the ground and beginning to look less than human and more feral. > You fight As grim as it might be and as tired as you are, you can’t just let the spirits infect your men. For one thing it isn’t any way for a soldier to go down. For another they’ll just become the “new tribe” you just cleared out. Maybe this land is cursed, but you’ll not let it be infested with hosts for the spirits that dwell here. You draw your sword and several of your men who haven’t been affected do likewise. Those that have been infected finally stop their gruesome feast and look at you. “So hungry, must have more flesh, must be fresh, must be YOU!” your second in command screams ghoulishly and attacks you. Another battle takes place, though not as long or nearly as hard as the first, but you and what’s left of your company make a full retreat as fast as possible when it’s over. It isn’t a smooth retreat though. The thoughts of hunger are filling your minds constantly and being tired just makes it easier for the spirits to infect your men. Several more times you have to put down members of your own company who have turned. It isn’t until you leave those accursed wooded hills that you start to feel more like yourself, but even then the journey back isn’t easy. The cold, the hunger, and the overall mental and physical exhaustion takes its toll on your last remaining men. By the time you reach the nearest friendly settlement you have six left. “Heh, just like the old days, you silently chuckle to yourself, briefly thinking of your six Eternal fellows. You don’t think you’ve ever been pushed to the limit like this before. Truly it is only by the Emperor’s strength that you managed to make it through. You only hope you have not shamed him too much with your failure. Eventually you arrive at Fort Destiny and report to Captain Krozer, who is celebrating with several others in the fort. You don’t know what’s causing this unorthodox behavior, but you’re certainly surprised by it. “Captain, I have my mission report.” “Hey! You’re back Bane of Rask! Isn’t that what they call you around here? Ha ha! I’m glad you’re back, I figured your mission would be as successful as mine! Have a drink!” “Uh maybe later captain, but I…did you say there was a victory?” “Well we wouldn’t be sitting here getting drunk if there wasn’t now would we? The campaign against the forest elves was completely successful. I have to give those svelk credit, they can sniff out their kin better than anyone. Was hardly even a fight, when we eventually did find their major home as it was filled mostly with non-combatant women and children. We’d killed most of the warriors trying to get there. Still, always grim business dealing with the enemy civvies. We managed to enslave most of the children at least without killing them, though if the svelk had it their way they would’ve raped and killed everyone. Uncivilized vicious bastards.” The general says taking another drink. “You enslaved them?” you ask being slightly confused by the idea. “Well sure…what you think I’d just kill them? I know that’s the way you do things lieutenant, and probably with those shape shifting barbarians its for the best, but let’s just say I’m a little more merciful than you. Hope it doesn’t ruin your perception of me.” “Uh… not at all. I’m sure you are right captain. The elven children can be indoctrinated to become productive citizens of the Empire. They will learn that our way of life is superior and the correct way.” “Ha ha, that’s why I like you lieutenant. You don’t know any better. Hey let’s take this conversation back to my office, it’s a little loud here.” You say okay and begin to follow her, but she grabs your hand in an effort to lead you. You aren’t sure of how to react, so you just let her. When you get there she sits on her desk and smiles at you. “Relax, lieutenant. I know you’re an Eternal, but you’re always so serious.” “It’s just I really need to report my mission to you captain.” “Oh very well, I know it’s important to you.” She says taking another drink. You tell her exactly what happened and she listens intently to your story. “Well lieutenant, looks like you managed to pull out a victory against all odds once again. I figured you would.” She says. “Victory? I don’t feel like it was a victory, captain. I lost most of the company.” You reply. “Normally I might agree, but from what you told me, it’s amazing you survived at all, let alone bring anyone back alive. Evil spirits, cursed lands, having to kill your own men turning into insane beasts…not something I’d want to face and I’ve seen my fair share of battles. Besides it sounds like the spirits can’t leave that area and you eliminated a majority of their hosts, as well as depriving them of more by doing what was necessary with our transformed soldiers. We’ll probably always have the odd wendigo running around due to idiotic adventurers exploring places where they shouldn’t, but the danger has been curtailed greatly thanks to you.” “The Emperor’s will guided me and his vigor gave me the endurance to succeed.” “Perhaps, but you really should’ve had a battle mage with you. I have no idea why central command has not sent us any despite my requests, things can’t be that bad with the Felkans! Sometimes I wonder what the hell they’re doing down there. Oh well at least I had you right?” she says and gets off her desk. “Of course, I’ll be here for as long I am needed here general.” “Good.” She says and puts her arms around you and kisses you on the lips. You’re taken completely off guard and are completely out of your element. You’re reminded of Captain Pollo’s advances on Gerald, but this is different since you feel a little something for Krozer even though you’ve tried to not think about it. As the time you’ve spent here has gone by, your thoughts of Captain Krozer have sometimes been more than a little “friendly”, but you’ve tried to suppress them. You don’t know how to react except you sort of back away. “Is something wrong lieutenant?” the general asks “I…uh…I don’t….should we be doing this?” “Oh the ranks? Forget about it. I just want sex, it’s not like I’m planning on falling in love. Unless you really feel uncomfortable about protocol, I’d respect it of course, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed.” “Well, no, I mean… I’ve been having these feelings of lust for you too captain.” You say untactfully. “Ha ha! Well that’s good to know I guess.” The captain laughs. “So what’s the problem then?” “…I just…I’ve never…” “Never…ohhhhh! Really? Though I guess it makes sense. You were trained to kill from birth; going from battlefield to battlefield quoting Empire doctrine (sigh)” the captain touches your face. “Sometimes I wonder if we go too far. Well don’t worry about it; we’ll have time to catch you up. And like I keep telling you, just relax… and call me Alison.” You and the cap…Alison have an interesting time. It certainly isn’t anything you’ve experienced before, but its possibly the most pleasurable thing you’ve ever experienced. You understand a little more to as why other soldiers hold it in such high regard. You know not to let it affect your duty and after a few days of down time, you are ready to serve the Emperor again. Everyone is, Captain Krozer is going to do it elsewhere though, namely the Arat province on the Felkan border. She calls you in to tell you that someone by the name of Mr. Mol has been impressed with your abilities and thinks you are able to handle the Rask frontier without any supervision. As of now you are in charge of Fort Destiny and been promoted to captain. You don’t know what to say. “Congratulations on your new command, though I will say I don’t envy it! After being here for six years myself, I’ll be glad to be sent to the Arat province. Those Felkans can’t possibly be any worse than the shit we’ve faced here.” “It was an honor to serve with you captain.” You say respectfully. “Oh come on, you don’t need to put up a tough front with me, I know you’ll miss me and cry in your pillows at night.” She says with a smirk. “I…won’t! I mean I’ll miss you, but…” “Keep working on developing that sense of humor, but it’s nice to know I’ll be missed.” She says and kisses you on the cheek “Good bye and remember to take a rest from all the killing sometimes and enjoy what you can okay?” With those last words, Alison walks out of her office…or rather your office. And so begins your command of Fort Destiny. > Year 25 “Another protest? What the hell is going on now?” you say. “I don’t know the exact details, just that the miners are protesting their work conditions in the town of Keplavisk.” Lieutenant Verant replies. “I’m getting sick of these protests, the Empire provides everything for these ungrateful wretches and they complain? They ought to be lucky we haven’t sent slaves to do their job! Alright send a detachment there and if they don’t break it up, kill a couple to make a point and remind them that it could be much worse.” “Yes sir.” You sit stuck at your desk wondering when something worthwhile is going to happen. When you were first assigned to this job, the frontier was still dangerous. Even with the elimination of the wendigos and the elven home, there were still minor hostile barbarian tribes running around and sometimes even tribes of ogres or the odd giant who had wandered down from further north. Eventually you eliminated all of those threats to a degree that they were no longer a factor. Then boredom set in as the area became peaceful. For a moment you tried to take Alison’s advice she once gave you, but the problem is, the peace lasted too long, at least for you. Lately though the boredom has become annoyance. There has been a shift in the average Empire citizen’s attitude, namely one of insolence. many have started to complain about their jobs, their food, their freedom, everything. At first you questioned if it wasn’t some sort of supernatural influence as that could at least be a rational explanation of this mass madness. When the first open protests started, you handled them in an efficient manner and they stopped for a while, but only for a while. It’s as if the citizens want you to kill them. And apparently the problem isn’t just here. If anything this sort of open disobedience has been rearing its ugly head in other parts of the Empire a lot more than it has here and a lot sooner. Don’t these people understand that the Empire protects them and gives them everything? If it were not for Emperor’s wisdom to expand, they wouldn’t even have their homes, jobs in whatever province they hail from, never mind the constant vigilance to protect them against monsters that would rip them apart. Sometimes you wish you had been transferred to the Arat province. At least there’s a war going on there. You can only imagine that Warrick and Gerald don’t have to put up with this nonsense. Assuming they are still alive, as you have heard nothing about them and despite your new ranking, you can’t seem to get any information on them either. No word about about Roldan or Brenda either, but you do know that the Nalin province is known to be one of the most orderly places in the Empire now. You would even settle for being transferred to Fort Defiance at this point, they at least have to still have to stem the tide of beasts and monsters from the north. You’ve also wondered about Kane and Edgar. They’re the only two you do have some updated information on, but while you’ve all been in this territory for years you haven’t seen them since the day you separated company. Oh you’ve heard a few stories about Edgar killing giants single handedly, but that’s about it. In fact you’re surprised that neither one of them has earned command of Fort Defiance like you have with Fort Destiny. Sometimes it’s funny how thinking about something causes it to happen. You get a message from Fort Defiance and it’s from Kane! He states that he’s just taken command of Fort Defiance and would like to speak with you in person about some possible joint military operations. You naturally leave for Fort Defiance immediately. A certain excitement and even happiness dwells within you, it’ll be good to see a fellow Eternal again, even if Edgar is probably going to still be combative with you. Who knows though? Maybe he’s changed, it’s been years after all. Your trip to Fort Defiance is uneventful and when you arrive at the fort it’s as large as you’ve heard, but then it would have to be to fend off giants. You are greeted by several heavily armored orc troops and what looks to be a battle mage. (You still never managed to get either assigned to your fort) “Welcome to Fort Defiance captain! I am to take you to General Kane. He is most eager to see you! Come this way!” the battle mage says and as you are escorted through a series of dimly lit corridors one thought goes through your mind: “General?” When you arrive at Kane’s office he looks a little different with his head completely shaved, but other than that he hasn’t changed. He also has another man in his office dressed in dark leather armor, with a cloak. You’ve heard of their reputation, but this is the first time you’ve seen a member of the Shadow Guard. You knew a few were stationed up here though. Kane stands up and greets you. “Well if it isn’t the Bane of Rask! Ha ha ha! How are you my brother?” Kane says in a jovial manner. “I’m fine…brother?” you reply being a little confused by Kane’s demeanor and him calling you brother. “Yes! Of course! We are brothers! We grew up together, we trained together, and we fought together, and we are Eternals! Would that not constitute a brotherly bond?” he says. “Heh, I suppose it would. Never thought about it before I guess.” You reply with a smile. “Hey I’d like you to meet another brother of ours, this is Cyrus. Remember him? He was in our class, but he got transferred to the Shadow Guard when they first separated us.” “Cyrus…oh yes, I do remember him. I have sometimes wondered what happened to some of during that first separation. I guess the rest went to the Shadow Guard then?” “Yes, but only a few of us survived Shadow Guard training. Very few.” “Sounds like us, a few of our class didn’t make it through our training either.” “No, it was nothing like what you went through. Trust me.” Cyrus says coldly. Kane quickly intervenes. “Don’t mind Cyrus, he’s a little on the serious side, sort of like you eh?” “As I recall I don’t remember you being so talkative or jolly either.” You say. “Hey what can I tell you, I’ve changed as the years went by! I’ve learned to take more joy in life and not worry so much about duty or about the Empire!” This last comment is cause for concern. “Not worry about the Empire? What kind of talk is that for an Eternal? And I have a few questions, how did you get promoted to general? I mean why would they need a general up here, this fort has been doing fine without one, the Rask frontier is as quiet as ever and there’s a war going on with the Felkan Kingdom. In fact, where is Edgar? I’ve heard so much about his deeds that I would’ve figured that he might get promoted to command here and certainly not to general.” At this point Kane and Cyrus look at each other and Kane looks back at you with a less cheery disposition. “Very well. It was only a matter of time before I was going to have to bring this up to you anyway. I’ve made myself general and as of recently this fort is no longer under Empire authority.” “You what?!” “I saw the light, with the help of Cyrus here I suppose. The Empire is crumbling, I give it a decade at best and we need to make sure we have a good position when the shit goes down. Don’t you see? That’s why I called you here. You’ve got the plebs further south of the Rask frontier under control and if we combined forces, nobody could stop us! You’re in shock for a moment. Nothing could have prepared you for something like this. “…Kane, you can’t believe that I would go along with something like this!” “But why not? Surely you have heard the reports of the mass civil unrest going on in the Empire, why even in your own area you have had to put civvies in their place.” “Yes, and that just means we have to work harder to preserve the Empire, not abandon it in its time of need!” “Bah! Why bother? It had its time in the sun and now its time for something new to take its place. What better than us? We’re Eternals after all. Just think we could even unite with some of our other siblings in this dying Empire to make ourselves even stronger!” You hold your head in your hands at Kane’s words of secession and treason. This is not the same man you knew, and he is certainly not your “brother.” You never thought the day would come when you’d have to kill a fellow Eternal. > You accept his offer It takes everything in you to not attack, but you’re hoping you can bide your time to gain a better advantage. You’re never really lied before though, so you take deep breath before speaking. “Kane… I think you’re right. Maybe I’ve always known on some level, but it just took someone close to me to point it out. I will join your cause… my brother.” Kane smiles and is certainly overjoyed at your response, but Cyrus looks less than enthusiastic, in fact he’s looking past you. “That’s great! I knew you’d join us! I told you Cyrus!” Kane says looking at Cyrus, but Cyrus is still looking past you, he makes a nod. “Cyrus…wait no!” Kane shouts “He’s lying Kane! Kill him!” You attempt to get up and attack the battle mage behind, but unfortunately he’s already anticipated that and stepped far enough way for you to not get to him in time before he’s already cast a lightning bolt straight in your face. If it had been your body, perhaps you would’ve survived, but a straight blast to your face fries not only your eyes so badly that they melt, but your brain as well. You drop down dead before you can hear Kane’s argument that you could’ve been “turned” to the cause.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 25 “Another protest? What the hell is going on now?” you say. “I don’t know the exact details, just that the miners are protesting their work conditions in the town of Keplavisk.” Lieutenant Verant replies. “I’m getting sick of these protests, the Empire provides everything for these ungrateful wretches and they complain? They ought to be lucky we haven’t sent slaves to do their job! Alright send a detachment there and if they don’t break it up, kill a couple to make a point and remind them that it could be much worse.” “Yes sir.” You sit stuck at your desk wondering when something worthwhile is going to happen. When you were first assigned to this job, the frontier was still dangerous. Even with the elimination of the wendigos and the elven home, there were still minor hostile barbarian tribes running around and sometimes even tribes of ogres or the odd giant who had wandered down from further north. Eventually you eliminated all of those threats to a degree that they were no longer a factor. Then boredom set in as the area became peaceful. For a moment you tried to take Alison’s advice she once gave you, but the problem is, the peace lasted too long, at least for you. Lately though the boredom has become annoyance. There has been a shift in the average Empire citizen’s attitude, namely one of insolence. many have started to complain about their jobs, their food, their freedom, everything. At first you questioned if it wasn’t some sort of supernatural influence as that could at least be a rational explanation of this mass madness. When the first open protests started, you handled them in an efficient manner and they stopped for a while, but only for a while. It’s as if the citizens want you to kill them. And apparently the problem isn’t just here. If anything this sort of open disobedience has been rearing its ugly head in other parts of the Empire a lot more than it has here and a lot sooner. Don’t these people understand that the Empire protects them and gives them everything? If it were not for Emperor’s wisdom to expand, they wouldn’t even have their homes, jobs in whatever province they hail from, never mind the constant vigilance to protect them against monsters that would rip them apart. Sometimes you wish you had been transferred to the Arat province. At least there’s a war going on there. You can only imagine that Warrick and Gerald don’t have to put up with this nonsense. Assuming they are still alive, as you have heard nothing about them and despite your new ranking, you can’t seem to get any information on them either. No word about about Roldan or Brenda either, but you do know that the Nalin province is known to be one of the most orderly places in the Empire now. You would even settle for being transferred to Fort Defiance at this point, they at least have to still have to stem the tide of beasts and monsters from the north. You’ve also wondered about Kane and Edgar. They’re the only two you do have some updated information on, but while you’ve all been in this territory for years you haven’t seen them since the day you separated company. Oh you’ve heard a few stories about Edgar killing giants single handedly, but that’s about it. In fact you’re surprised that neither one of them has earned command of Fort Defiance like you have with Fort Destiny. Sometimes it’s funny how thinking about something causes it to happen. You get a message from Fort Defiance and it’s from Kane! He states that he’s just taken command of Fort Defiance and would like to speak with you in person about some possible joint military operations. You naturally leave for Fort Defiance immediately. A certain excitement and even happiness dwells within you, it’ll be good to see a fellow Eternal again, even if Edgar is probably going to still be combative with you. Who knows though? Maybe he’s changed, it’s been years after all. Your trip to Fort Defiance is uneventful and when you arrive at the fort it’s as large as you’ve heard, but then it would have to be to fend off giants. You are greeted by several heavily armored orc troops and what looks to be a battle mage. (You still never managed to get either assigned to your fort) “Welcome to Fort Defiance captain! I am to take you to General Kane. He is most eager to see you! Come this way!” the battle mage says and as you are escorted through a series of dimly lit corridors one thought goes through your mind: “General?” When you arrive at Kane’s office he looks a little different with his head completely shaved, but other than that he hasn’t changed. He also has another man in his office dressed in dark leather armor, with a cloak. You’ve heard of their reputation, but this is the first time you’ve seen a member of the Shadow Guard. You knew a few were stationed up here though. Kane stands up and greets you. “Well if it isn’t the Bane of Rask! Ha ha ha! How are you my brother?” Kane says in a jovial manner. “I’m fine…brother?” you reply being a little confused by Kane’s demeanor and him calling you brother. “Yes! Of course! We are brothers! We grew up together, we trained together, and we fought together, and we are Eternals! Would that not constitute a brotherly bond?” he says. “Heh, I suppose it would. Never thought about it before I guess.” You reply with a smile. “Hey I’d like you to meet another brother of ours, this is Cyrus. Remember him? He was in our class, but he got transferred to the Shadow Guard when they first separated us.” “Cyrus…oh yes, I do remember him. I have sometimes wondered what happened to some of during that first separation. I guess the rest went to the Shadow Guard then?” “Yes, but only a few of us survived Shadow Guard training. Very few.” “Sounds like us, a few of our class didn’t make it through our training either.” “No, it was nothing like what you went through. Trust me.” Cyrus says coldly. Kane quickly intervenes. “Don’t mind Cyrus, he’s a little on the serious side, sort of like you eh?” “As I recall I don’t remember you being so talkative or jolly either.” You say. “Hey what can I tell you, I’ve changed as the years went by! I’ve learned to take more joy in life and not worry so much about duty or about the Empire!” This last comment is cause for concern. “Not worry about the Empire? What kind of talk is that for an Eternal? And I have a few questions, how did you get promoted to general? I mean why would they need a general up here, this fort has been doing fine without one, the Rask frontier is as quiet as ever and there’s a war going on with the Felkan Kingdom. In fact, where is Edgar? I’ve heard so much about his deeds that I would’ve figured that he might get promoted to command here and certainly not to general.” At this point Kane and Cyrus look at each other and Kane looks back at you with a less cheery disposition. “Very well. It was only a matter of time before I was going to have to bring this up to you anyway. I’ve made myself general and as of recently this fort is no longer under Empire authority.” “You what?!” “I saw the light, with the help of Cyrus here I suppose. The Empire is crumbling, I give it a decade at best and we need to make sure we have a good position when the shit goes down. Don’t you see? That’s why I called you here. You’ve got the plebs further south of the Rask frontier under control and if we combined forces, nobody could stop us! You’re in shock for a moment. Nothing could have prepared you for something like this. “…Kane, you can’t believe that I would go along with something like this!” “But why not? Surely you have heard the reports of the mass civil unrest going on in the Empire, why even in your own area you have had to put civvies in their place.” “Yes, and that just means we have to work harder to preserve the Empire, not abandon it in its time of need!” “Bah! Why bother? It had its time in the sun and now its time for something new to take its place. What better than us? We’re Eternals after all. Just think we could even unite with some of our other siblings in this dying Empire to make ourselves even stronger!” You hold your head in your hands at Kane’s words of secession and treason. This is not the same man you knew, and he is certainly not your “brother.” You never thought the day would come when you’d have to kill a fellow Eternal. > You decline his offer The idea is so repugnant to you that you can’t even bring yourself to even lie about joining him. It probably wouldn’t work anyway; you’ve never been a good liar. You breathe deeply before speaking again. “Kane, I am NOT going to help you. Now you do what you must, and I shall do what I must.” “Told you this was a waste of time, let us be done with this.” Cyrus says and points a small crossbow on his wrist and fires it at you, though Kane knocks his hand away causing the bolt to just hit your shoulder. You fall back in your chair and grab the battle mage who was still standing by. He falls to floor on top of you and you break his neck. You feel a little dizzy though; whatever was in that dart is putting you to sleep fast. You hear Kane and Cyrus arguing as large orcs stomp into the office and begin kicking you as you fall unconscious. When you wake up, you hear an unexpected familiar voice, though the most unexpected thing is that you woke up at all. “Hey, get up. Good thing that weak ass poison doesn’t work on us very well.” Edgar says helping you up. “Edgar? What’s happened here?” You ask looking around and finding yourself stripped of most of your clothing and in a cell. “I knew he wouldn’t be able to convince you. I told Kane that, but he kept going on about how you’d understand, just like how in time I would come to understand. He said that siblings may have their fights, but in the end they always make up.” “Is that how come he hasn’t killed us?” “I guess so, though I don’t think Cyrus would have such sentimental feelings and would have us killed if he had more say in the matter.” “Well, Cyrus at least seems to be thinking like an Eternal in that respect. Kane has apparently gone completely mad though…how the hell did this happen?!” “You got time for a story?” Edgar asks rhetorically before explaining from the beginning. Edgar says that when he and Kane first arrived they were met with a little hostility from everyone else and while their prowess in battle earned them respect, they still were never really “accepted” by anyone. Edgar says he didn’t care of course and was content with the respect that he had earned and getting accolades for slaying giants and such. Kane wasn’t handling the isolation as well and was becoming increasingly more withdrawn. He did his job, but he behaved in a manner that even the orc soldiers found a little unnerving. Nobody wanted to even eat with him, got to a point where the captain of the fort had to send him out primarily on scouting missions by himself. Edgar believes that Kane must’ve really taken the split of the team harder than any of you could’ve known. He suspects that might’ve first lead to his quirk of referring to other Eternals as siblings. He would often mention to Edgar sometimes about how much he missed spending time with you all and couldn’t wait for the day when you all would be together again. “(Sigh) All he needed was for me to interact with him on a regular basis, but I was too busy concerned with my own glory. Time in this cell has really given me time to reflect on a lot of bad choices I’ve made in the present and the past.” “What’s done is done now, but where does Cyrus come in?” you ask. Edgar explains that Cyrus was transferred here four years ago as part of a replacement Shadow Guard detachment to help with the latest giant incursion. He knows Kane was sent on a mission with the Shadow Guard during that time and that’s probably where they started to talk more to each other. Normally Shadow Guards don’t interact with anyone other than other Shadow Guards, but Kane hung around him to such a degree that Cyrus eventually began to talk with Kane on his own accord. “I don’t think Cyrus’ Shadow Guard buddies approved of it too much, but he was their leader so they didn’t say much.” Edgar says. “So how did they control over the whole fort?” Edgar explains again that Cyrus and Kane must’ve cooked up this plan in secret for years, as in time various changes began to occur. The only initial thing that Edgar began to notice was the increase in orc troops being sent here. Granted there was always some stationed here, but now they were starting to out number the human soldiers, and he thought they were mostly going to the front lines on the Felkan border. However, this area was still very dangerous, so ultimately more orc troops here didn’t raise any immediate alarms. The next thing he noticed was that there were less and less attacks by giants and ogres, but Edgar chalked that up to him killing so many of them that naturally they would probably have less members to spare now. Not to mention with all the orcs here now, the giants were having a tougher time of it. The third thing he noticed was Kane becoming less introverted and more aggressive towards the orcs. He witnessed several fights that Kane himself started with various orc leaders. He won with ease of course and it appeared as if he was just being combative out of boredom, but in retrospect there was very real purpose. To establish no doubt to as who is the “real leader.” Captain Ian wasn’t fond of this sort of behavior in any way though and reprimanded Kane several times, but it was obvious he didn’t care. “It was at this point I finally started to talk to Kane on a serious level, just to figure out what was going on with him. All he said to me, was you’ll see in another year brother, with a great big grin on his face. Of course when that year came I found out everything. His private orc army. his alliance with the neighboring giant and ogre tribes, his plans to unite this land completely under him and take on the Empire itself. As you can see I didn’t agree with his plans. I know I have my faults, but disloyalty isn’t one of them.” “He’s allied with ogres and giants? So wait, how long has Kane taken control of this place?” You ask. “We were still getting reports from here from Captain Ian up until last month.” “Hah! Captain Ian’s been dead for more than a few months now! Kane’s just been going through the motions of sending reports and messengers, probably to make sure you or nobody else sent anyone to investigate before he was ready to openly defy the Empire.” “By the Emperor I can’t believe I was so close and never suspected anything wrong going on up here, let alone treason!” you say. “If it’s any consolation, you weren’t the only one. Besides like I said, I was here and I should’ve been the one to do something before anyone. Instead I got myself captured. Tried to bust out a few times, I figured I’d either escape or die trying. There’s just too many of those tough orc bastards though. Even when I managed to get a weapon the blasted battle mage would cast some sort of spell and I’d go completely weak and groggy. Then I’d end up back here again. Heh, Kane’s so crazy now that he still believes that I’ll eventually side with him.” “Did you say battle mage? As in one?” “Yeah, used to have two and they probably would’ve liked to get more stationed here before unleashing their plan, but they had to make due with the ones that cooperated. I killed one of them before my first capture.” “Well they don’t have any now, because I killed the other one before I got sent here.” Edgar tries to contain his enthusiasm. “That’s great! I mean with you by my side and none of that magic shit to complicate things, you’ve given us a much improved chance to escape for good!” Never thought you’d hear Edgar to be so happy to fight along side you, and normally you might even be a little happy too, but right now you’re concerned with escape. The longer you’re gone, the more likely Lieutenant Verant will send someone up here to investigate. They’ll be killed of course and then Kane will undoubtedly push a full attack on to Fort Destiny ad you don’t have the highest hopes that they’d survive an attack by a combined army of orcs, ogres and giants without being prepared at least. You waste no time coming up with a plan. Simplest ones often work the best, Edgar tells you that it’ll be feeding time soon and that you should remain “unconscious” and he’ll do the rest. You get into position and eventually hear the footsteps of your orc jailer. “Here’s yer food, Ed!” one of them says carrying a bowl. “Hey! Why’d you dump a dead body into this cell with me?” Edgar says. “Wha? He ain’t dead he’s just knocked out! I should know I was one of guys that kicked him in da head! Har har har har!” “Well he died in his sleep then from your kick to his head. I recognize him as an Eternal and Kane’s gonna be pissed that you killed him!” “He ain’t dead! He sleep!” “I’m telling you he’s dead! Don’t believe me, you better check yourself.” “Oh no, I know you Ed. You gonna try bash my skull in as soon as I open door. If he really dead, then I just say you killed him.” “And you really think Kane’s gonna believe that? He knows Eternal don’t kill each other, that’s why he’s keeping me alive even though I escape!” The orc pauses for a moment and decides he can’t take the chance. “Bah, alright, I’ll check, but I’m tellin’ you he’s just still unconscious! That shadow guy hit ‘im with one of doze bolts of his. But YOU are gonna do something first.” The orc tells Edgar to turn his back and get close to the cell bars, at which point the orc shackles him so her is unable to attack him. Thank the Emperor that most orcs are still not the brightest lanterns. The orc approaches you and that’s when you spring into action. You struggle with the orc jailer until you manage to grab his dagger and repeatedly stab him in the throat with it to the point where you nearly decapitate him. After kicking the dead orc in the face you grab his keys and release Edgar. “Okay I know of a route we can try to escape through, nearly made it the last time, but again the mage showed up. That won’t be a problem this time and they probably won’t think I’ll try it again.” Edgar says. The obvious thing to do is to concentrate on escaping the fort, though another part of you wants to go back to find Kane and Cyrus to kill them. > You escape As much as you’d like to kill both Kane and Cyrus, you’re outnumbered and you can’t even be sure if you’d catch them together again in this big fort. Better to escape and come back later better prepared to punish them. Still you’re going to need some sort of gear to survive the cold outside of the fort. “We can’t just escape half naked like this. We’re going to need some sort of clothing or better yet armor and weapons.” You say “Yeah, there is a small supply room on the way. It isn’t the main one, but it shouldn’t have any guards by it either. We have to make our way to the kitchen area first, should be relatively empty right now.” It takes some sneaking around, but Edgar’s knowledge of the layout gets you there with relative ease. When you do get to the room you find some old battered armor and dull weapons. It will have to do. Edgar mentions that there is a garbage dump chute in the kitchen which leads underground, from there, there’s a long tunnel which eventually leads to a dead end with a hidden hatch. He says he’s knows it leads into a forest area, but not much more than that since the battle mage zapped him and he was dragged back by that time. You and Edgar sneak into the kitchen, but it isn’t completely empty. The cook and a couple of his assistants are there, you and Edgar make quick work of them before they notice you, though Edgar is a little sloppier than you and the assistant that he cuts down knocks over a bunch of pots as he body hits the floor. The clatter is quite loud and you waste no time in looking for the garbage chute. It’s foul and disgusting, but there’s no other option. You jump in and slide down quite easy due to the slimy remains of food greasing the chute. When you reach the bottom a giant pile of garbage cushions you. The smell is almost overpowering, but you have no time to worry about awful smells as you are attacked by larger than normal vermin feasting through the pile. Your boots squish through the disgusting muck as you swing your weapon to drive away or kill the aggressive rats. Edgar comes crashing down from the chute and helps you. “Ugh, forgot how bad this place smelled.” Edgar says kicking a rat. “Guess you forgot about the giant rats as well?” “No, but I figured it wouldn’t be that big of a surprise for you.” You and Edgar manage to fight your way down the small mountain of trash and make your way down the tunnel until you eventually get to a built in ladder leading up to a hatch. “Is this it? It seems like a terrible idea to have this at the fort. Anyone could sneak down here and infiltrate.” You mention. “Nah, it’s pretty well hidden from the outside, in fact it can only open from the inside. Not like any ogre is bright enough to notice it and a giant certainly couldn’t get down here. Plus it locks shut when you get outside. I think it was originally supposed to be an escape tunnel in the first place, but it looks like it got turned into a garbage pit instead. Come on.” Edgar opens up the hatch and holds it open for you as you make your way to the cold outside world. You look around and it is just as Edgar said, a forest area with no major distinguishing markers. You see that the sun is setting and use that as a guide for which general direction you need to go. You figure it’ll probably take a few days to get back to Fort Destiny, but you should be able to make it. You and Edgar walk a good half hour before you realize something is wrong. “Shhh. You hear that?” you ask. “Can’t be ogres, they would’ve attacked us by now.” “It probably isn’t…find cover!” you exclaim. Several bolts whiz past you as you duck down rolling around in the snow and run in a zig zag fashion getting behind several trees so as to not get hit. Edgar isn’t as quick as you and he is hit by two of the bolts. Not enough to kill him, but if they have that same toxin that you experienced on them he’s not going to stay conscious for long. The Shadow Guard assailants finally show themselves and jump out of the trees. Edgar is feeling the effects of the toxin, but he struggles to stay awake to defend himself. You find yourself fighting three of the shadows that circle around you. One of them attacks and you grab his arm breaking it in one quick move, when another attacks you, you shove his broken arm friend into his blade. They both fall to the ground. The third one lands a couple of hits on your back; cutting through the poor armor you’re wearing. You deliver a hefty back kick to his gut and follow up with a spinning swipe with your sword. Your sword’s edge is dull and not sharp enough to cleanly decapitate the shadow, instead it makes a large cruel gash in his neck which spurts blood like a small fountain. The result is still effective and he collapses into the snow. Your other adversary has gotten up off the ground and throws a dagger at you, which you just narrowly avoid. He tries to fight you fairly, but it’s clear he is no match for you and you easily dispatch him. You then finish off the shadow with the broken arm and wound in his belly. Edgar is still fighting the two shadows attacking him. Under normal circumstances, he’d probably easily dispatch them, but the toxin is having its effect and from the front and back their short swords stab him. He falls to the ground when the shadow behind him cuts at his tendons. You strike your blade into the skull of one of the shadows when he only crumples to his knees, you slam the dull blade on his head again splitting it open and revealing the gooey brains within. The last shadow tries to run away, and climb to a nearby tree in the hopes of escaping you, but you manage to jump up and grab hi dangling legs and pull him crashing to the ground. After a small scuffle you wrap your forearms around his neck and break it. You walk over to Edgar who is still struggling to stay awake, but he’s fighting more than just the toxin now, his wounds are quite severe. You kneel down beside him, it seems odd for you given your past history, but you feel a sense of sadness. “He…hey…did you get him?” “Yeah, Edgar, I got him.” “That’s… good. I’m sorr..” “It’s in the past Edgar. Don’t worry about it.” You tell him, as you know what he’s going to apologize for. He then quietly loses consciousness and stops breathing altogether. After a few moments of silence, you carry on to Fort Destiny without Edgar. You think about all the things you plan to do to Kane and Cyrus if you manage to get your hands on them the entire time you’re traveling back to Fort Destiny. Eventually you get to a town where you ride the rest of the way to Fort Destiny. Lieutenant Verant is relieved to see you. He says was just about to send someone up to Fort Defiance to see what happened to you. You’d really like to raise your entire force from the fort and march upon Fort Defiance immediately, but you question if you’d be able to take it. Other than the defenses being on full alert now, Kane may have already rallied his ogre and giant allies. It might be best if you report this back to the generals at home. Surely they’ll spare you some reinforcements for something like this, not to mention they’ll need to be warned anyway due to the Shadow Guard revolt that’s already been in planning for quite some time. Still, it could be awhile for you to wait, not to mention they may not send you any at all. All which would be wasted time you could’ve spent attacking Kane so he doesn’t get too dug in. > You wait for reinforcements With all the extra allies Kane has, you can’t possibly take the fort without heavy losses and with all the problems you’ve been having with peasants you’re still going to need enough troops to keep them in line afterwards. You need at least another army up here. You tell Verant to send a message to the generals back home about the situation and if they can provide reinforcements then to do so right away. In the meantime you’re going to build up the defenses on the fort and the towns in the surrounding area. A week or so passes before you get any sort of reply. You are given orders to hold the area, but that’s about it. With this new revelation of the Shadow Guard treachery and dissention within the orc ranks the generals are busily attempting to weed out any more within the home territories as well as having to redistribute regular soldiers where Shadow Guard were keeping the peasants in line. The war with the Felkans is also still going on, so any immediate reinforcements would go to that area first anyway. In short, you’re on your own as usual and reports are already coming in about ogre attacks on the outer villages. It’ll only be a matter of time before those are giants or Kane’s entire army of orcs. You curse your situation and prepare yourself for a long ongoing war. Year 26 “Shoot the bastards!” you shout at the catapult crews. They unleash another volley of rocks on the attacking giants. Several of the rocks hit their targets, but it’s not like you’re not taking a barrage of large boulders either, in fact the orcs have taken to lobbing large balls of dung over the walls and it’s already been starting to cause sickness among your troops. Especially after days of ongoing attack, a dwindling food supply and no relief in sight. The months of battling Kane’s traitor brigade has all lead up to this, completely surrounded by them. You did your best to hold them back, but ultimately Kane could replace his losses faster thanks to the brutality of his own troops. After ogres destroyed several of the smaller villages completely along with the mere threat of giants it wasn’t long that some of the peasant communities were willing to accept Kane’s “rule” more readily than the Empire’s, which they were already disgruntled with due to the lack of proper protection among other things. The Shadow Guard didn’t help matters as most of them that had been rooted out in the home territories fled up to the Rask under Cyrus’ leadership, along with some of the orcs that had heard about the rebellion. Any towns that hadn’t immediately fell under the sway of the direct fear from Kane’s army fell to the subversive and terror tactics of the Shadow Guard. “Get those orcs on the north side! They’re climbing up the fucking walls!” you shout. Boiling oil is thrown over the side of the wall, scalding the orcs on ladders. Some of them fall, others are tougher and maintain their grip. You shove the ladder back, making sure to get the ones that the oil failed to. You look around and see that the orcs have begun to break through the front door. You then have that familiar sense that you’ve had so many other times over the past few months. You duck down and roll while swinging your sword in front of you. You hit something and uncloak a Shadow Guard that has managed to infiltrate the fort. He isn’t the only one though. Several more appear nearby to kill the remaining men you have defending the walls. You continue to fight valiantly, cutting down many of the Shadow Guard that have managed to get inside the fort. A boulder crashes into the side of the wall destroying it and causing you to fall off the walkway and to the ground within the fort. You get back up as quickly as you can to see orcs pouring into the front gates and the remainder of your men slaughtered. Griping your sword one last time your only regret is not taking the opportunity to kill Kane and Cyrus a year ago when you were captured at Fort Defiance. Indeed you played everything a bit too cautiously. None of it matters now though, the only thing you can do is go out like a true warrior. If not victory, then you can take comfort in that at least. “For the Empire!” you shout and charge into the horde.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as you’d like to kill both Kane and Cyrus, you’re outnumbered and you can’t even be sure if you’d catch them together again in this big fort. Better to escape and come back later better prepared to punish them. Still you’re going to need some sort of gear to survive the cold outside of the fort. “We can’t just escape half naked like this. We’re going to need some sort of clothing or better yet armor and weapons.” You say “Yeah, there is a small supply room on the way. It isn’t the main one, but it shouldn’t have any guards by it either. We have to make our way to the kitchen area first, should be relatively empty right now.” It takes some sneaking around, but Edgar’s knowledge of the layout gets you there with relative ease. When you do get to the room you find some old battered armor and dull weapons. It will have to do. Edgar mentions that there is a garbage dump chute in the kitchen which leads underground, from there, there’s a long tunnel which eventually leads to a dead end with a hidden hatch. He says he’s knows it leads into a forest area, but not much more than that since the battle mage zapped him and he was dragged back by that time. You and Edgar sneak into the kitchen, but it isn’t completely empty. The cook and a couple of his assistants are there, you and Edgar make quick work of them before they notice you, though Edgar is a little sloppier than you and the assistant that he cuts down knocks over a bunch of pots as he body hits the floor. The clatter is quite loud and you waste no time in looking for the garbage chute. It’s foul and disgusting, but there’s no other option. You jump in and slide down quite easy due to the slimy remains of food greasing the chute. When you reach the bottom a giant pile of garbage cushions you. The smell is almost overpowering, but you have no time to worry about awful smells as you are attacked by larger than normal vermin feasting through the pile. Your boots squish through the disgusting muck as you swing your weapon to drive away or kill the aggressive rats. Edgar comes crashing down from the chute and helps you. “Ugh, forgot how bad this place smelled.” Edgar says kicking a rat. “Guess you forgot about the giant rats as well?” “No, but I figured it wouldn’t be that big of a surprise for you.” You and Edgar manage to fight your way down the small mountain of trash and make your way down the tunnel until you eventually get to a built in ladder leading up to a hatch. “Is this it? It seems like a terrible idea to have this at the fort. Anyone could sneak down here and infiltrate.” You mention. “Nah, it’s pretty well hidden from the outside, in fact it can only open from the inside. Not like any ogre is bright enough to notice it and a giant certainly couldn’t get down here. Plus it locks shut when you get outside. I think it was originally supposed to be an escape tunnel in the first place, but it looks like it got turned into a garbage pit instead. Come on.” Edgar opens up the hatch and holds it open for you as you make your way to the cold outside world. You look around and it is just as Edgar said, a forest area with no major distinguishing markers. You see that the sun is setting and use that as a guide for which general direction you need to go. You figure it’ll probably take a few days to get back to Fort Destiny, but you should be able to make it. You and Edgar walk a good half hour before you realize something is wrong. “Shhh. You hear that?” you ask. “Can’t be ogres, they would’ve attacked us by now.” “It probably isn’t…find cover!” you exclaim. Several bolts whiz past you as you duck down rolling around in the snow and run in a zig zag fashion getting behind several trees so as to not get hit. Edgar isn’t as quick as you and he is hit by two of the bolts. Not enough to kill him, but if they have that same toxin that you experienced on them he’s not going to stay conscious for long. The Shadow Guard assailants finally show themselves and jump out of the trees. Edgar is feeling the effects of the toxin, but he struggles to stay awake to defend himself. You find yourself fighting three of the shadows that circle around you. One of them attacks and you grab his arm breaking it in one quick move, when another attacks you, you shove his broken arm friend into his blade. They both fall to the ground. The third one lands a couple of hits on your back; cutting through the poor armor you’re wearing. You deliver a hefty back kick to his gut and follow up with a spinning swipe with your sword. Your sword’s edge is dull and not sharp enough to cleanly decapitate the shadow, instead it makes a large cruel gash in his neck which spurts blood like a small fountain. The result is still effective and he collapses into the snow. Your other adversary has gotten up off the ground and throws a dagger at you, which you just narrowly avoid. He tries to fight you fairly, but it’s clear he is no match for you and you easily dispatch him. You then finish off the shadow with the broken arm and wound in his belly. Edgar is still fighting the two shadows attacking him. Under normal circumstances, he’d probably easily dispatch them, but the toxin is having its effect and from the front and back their short swords stab him. He falls to the ground when the shadow behind him cuts at his tendons. You strike your blade into the skull of one of the shadows when he only crumples to his knees, you slam the dull blade on his head again splitting it open and revealing the gooey brains within. The last shadow tries to run away, and climb to a nearby tree in the hopes of escaping you, but you manage to jump up and grab hi dangling legs and pull him crashing to the ground. After a small scuffle you wrap your forearms around his neck and break it. You walk over to Edgar who is still struggling to stay awake, but he’s fighting more than just the toxin now, his wounds are quite severe. You kneel down beside him, it seems odd for you given your past history, but you feel a sense of sadness. “He…hey…did you get him?” “Yeah, Edgar, I got him.” “That’s… good. I’m sorr..” “It’s in the past Edgar. Don’t worry about it.” You tell him, as you know what he’s going to apologize for. He then quietly loses consciousness and stops breathing altogether. After a few moments of silence, you carry on to Fort Destiny without Edgar. You think about all the things you plan to do to Kane and Cyrus if you manage to get your hands on them the entire time you’re traveling back to Fort Destiny. Eventually you get to a town where you ride the rest of the way to Fort Destiny. Lieutenant Verant is relieved to see you. He says was just about to send someone up to Fort Defiance to see what happened to you. You’d really like to raise your entire force from the fort and march upon Fort Defiance immediately, but you question if you’d be able to take it. Other than the defenses being on full alert now, Kane may have already rallied his ogre and giant allies. It might be best if you report this back to the generals at home. Surely they’ll spare you some reinforcements for something like this, not to mention they’ll need to be warned anyway due to the Shadow Guard revolt that’s already been in planning for quite some time. Still, it could be awhile for you to wait, not to mention they may not send you any at all. All which would be wasted time you could’ve spent attacking Kane so he doesn’t get too dug in. > You march upon the fort now You can’t wait. You may serve the Empire and be against Kane’s traitorous ways, but there is an unfortunate element in truth in what he says. If you need to get anything done around here, you’ll have to do it yourself, not rely on the Empire. You tell Verant to send a message to the generals back home about the situation and if they can provide reinforcements then to do so right away, but in any case you’re attacking Fort Defiance immediately. You muster up all your forces, troops, siege weapons, everything that could help you and leaving only a skeleton crew back to guard Fort Destiny. When you begin your march, you try to remain confident that you can take the fort. As soon as you start to enter the long stretches of snowy wilderness that precede Fort Defiance, tribes of ogres attack you. Kane’s already prepared. Within a mile of Fort Defiance and you can see large looming figures in the distance almost as big as the fort itself. You have to remind your troops to find their courage and that no overgrown abomination is going to best any soldier of the Empire. On the first day of the siege your catapults hurl their boulders at the fort and your ballistae fire at the giants. It’s an impressive volley, which damages the walls and critically wounds some of their giant allies, but the counter attack is just as brutal to your side. Multiple boulders comes crashing down on your men hurled by the giants. Fort Defiance’s own ballistae aim for your siege weapons, destroying several of them. By the third day, you pull your sword out of the last giant after stabbing him several times in the neck and jump several feet to the ground just before his falling body and crush you. Your men are still attempting to break down the doors of the fort which is heavily reinforced. Attempting to scale its walls results in them being scalded to death by boiling oil. The orcs have even resorted to catapulting their dung at you; it’s only going to be a matter of time before disease starts to take effect on your men. You would’ve tried the same thing, but orcs are notoriously resistant to such biological warfare. By the fourth day, your troops are dwindling and you’re still no closer to capturing the fort. Ogre tribes harass your people from the outside and you lead your best men to the hidden hatch you escaped from. Upon finding it again, you destroy the hatch door and descend. When you and your men arrive at the garbage pile though, you’re in for a minor surprise, as a troop of orcs are waiting for you. Apparently somebody figured you might try to get in this way. The battle with the orcs isn’t a pleasant one. Along with the smell, there is also the disgusting ichor that’s ankle deep as you fight the orcs. Through the filth and trash though you manage to maintain your composure and dispatch the orcs with the help of your men. After the fighting is over, your next plan is to climb up the chute and do damage from within. It takes a little exertion due to the chute being incredibly greasy, but eventually you manage to apply pressure to the sides of the chute and start climbing up it slowly. Your men do likewise. You’re about midway through this slimy tube when all of a sudden the top part opens up and your heart sinks when an orcish face appears. “Hah, boss waz right. Time to burn now!” he says and throws at torch at you. Normally this wouldn’t do much damage by itself, but with the combination of grease, oil and other flammable muck you’ve been rolling around it, you light up like a tinderbox along with the entire grease covered chute. You lose your grip and slide back down crashing into your men and setting them on fire as well. When you hit the pile of garbage below, you’re completely engulfed by the flames and the garbage pile goes up like an inferno. The screams of your men burning alive and your own skin crackling are the last sounds you hear.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The idea is so repugnant to you that you can’t even bring yourself to even lie about joining him. It probably wouldn’t work anyway; you’ve never been a good liar. You breathe deeply before speaking again. “Kane, I am NOT going to help you. Now you do what you must, and I shall do what I must.” “Told you this was a waste of time, let us be done with this.” Cyrus says and points a small crossbow on his wrist and fires it at you, though Kane knocks his hand away causing the bolt to just hit your shoulder. You fall back in your chair and grab the battle mage who was still standing by. He falls to floor on top of you and you break his neck. You feel a little dizzy though; whatever was in that dart is putting you to sleep fast. You hear Kane and Cyrus arguing as large orcs stomp into the office and begin kicking you as you fall unconscious. When you wake up, you hear an unexpected familiar voice, though the most unexpected thing is that you woke up at all. “Hey, get up. Good thing that weak ass poison doesn’t work on us very well.” Edgar says helping you up. “Edgar? What’s happened here?” You ask looking around and finding yourself stripped of most of your clothing and in a cell. “I knew he wouldn’t be able to convince you. I told Kane that, but he kept going on about how you’d understand, just like how in time I would come to understand. He said that siblings may have their fights, but in the end they always make up.” “Is that how come he hasn’t killed us?” “I guess so, though I don’t think Cyrus would have such sentimental feelings and would have us killed if he had more say in the matter.” “Well, Cyrus at least seems to be thinking like an Eternal in that respect. Kane has apparently gone completely mad though…how the hell did this happen?!” “You got time for a story?” Edgar asks rhetorically before explaining from the beginning. Edgar says that when he and Kane first arrived they were met with a little hostility from everyone else and while their prowess in battle earned them respect, they still were never really “accepted” by anyone. Edgar says he didn’t care of course and was content with the respect that he had earned and getting accolades for slaying giants and such. Kane wasn’t handling the isolation as well and was becoming increasingly more withdrawn. He did his job, but he behaved in a manner that even the orc soldiers found a little unnerving. Nobody wanted to even eat with him, got to a point where the captain of the fort had to send him out primarily on scouting missions by himself. Edgar believes that Kane must’ve really taken the split of the team harder than any of you could’ve known. He suspects that might’ve first lead to his quirk of referring to other Eternals as siblings. He would often mention to Edgar sometimes about how much he missed spending time with you all and couldn’t wait for the day when you all would be together again. “(Sigh) All he needed was for me to interact with him on a regular basis, but I was too busy concerned with my own glory. Time in this cell has really given me time to reflect on a lot of bad choices I’ve made in the present and the past.” “What’s done is done now, but where does Cyrus come in?” you ask. Edgar explains that Cyrus was transferred here four years ago as part of a replacement Shadow Guard detachment to help with the latest giant incursion. He knows Kane was sent on a mission with the Shadow Guard during that time and that’s probably where they started to talk more to each other. Normally Shadow Guards don’t interact with anyone other than other Shadow Guards, but Kane hung around him to such a degree that Cyrus eventually began to talk with Kane on his own accord. “I don’t think Cyrus’ Shadow Guard buddies approved of it too much, but he was their leader so they didn’t say much.” Edgar says. “So how did they control over the whole fort?” Edgar explains again that Cyrus and Kane must’ve cooked up this plan in secret for years, as in time various changes began to occur. The only initial thing that Edgar began to notice was the increase in orc troops being sent here. Granted there was always some stationed here, but now they were starting to out number the human soldiers, and he thought they were mostly going to the front lines on the Felkan border. However, this area was still very dangerous, so ultimately more orc troops here didn’t raise any immediate alarms. The next thing he noticed was that there were less and less attacks by giants and ogres, but Edgar chalked that up to him killing so many of them that naturally they would probably have less members to spare now. Not to mention with all the orcs here now, the giants were having a tougher time of it. The third thing he noticed was Kane becoming less introverted and more aggressive towards the orcs. He witnessed several fights that Kane himself started with various orc leaders. He won with ease of course and it appeared as if he was just being combative out of boredom, but in retrospect there was very real purpose. To establish no doubt to as who is the “real leader.” Captain Ian wasn’t fond of this sort of behavior in any way though and reprimanded Kane several times, but it was obvious he didn’t care. “It was at this point I finally started to talk to Kane on a serious level, just to figure out what was going on with him. All he said to me, was you’ll see in another year brother, with a great big grin on his face. Of course when that year came I found out everything. His private orc army. his alliance with the neighboring giant and ogre tribes, his plans to unite this land completely under him and take on the Empire itself. As you can see I didn’t agree with his plans. I know I have my faults, but disloyalty isn’t one of them.” “He’s allied with ogres and giants? So wait, how long has Kane taken control of this place?” You ask. “We were still getting reports from here from Captain Ian up until last month.” “Hah! Captain Ian’s been dead for more than a few months now! Kane’s just been going through the motions of sending reports and messengers, probably to make sure you or nobody else sent anyone to investigate before he was ready to openly defy the Empire.” “By the Emperor I can’t believe I was so close and never suspected anything wrong going on up here, let alone treason!” you say. “If it’s any consolation, you weren’t the only one. Besides like I said, I was here and I should’ve been the one to do something before anyone. Instead I got myself captured. Tried to bust out a few times, I figured I’d either escape or die trying. There’s just too many of those tough orc bastards though. Even when I managed to get a weapon the blasted battle mage would cast some sort of spell and I’d go completely weak and groggy. Then I’d end up back here again. Heh, Kane’s so crazy now that he still believes that I’ll eventually side with him.” “Did you say battle mage? As in one?” “Yeah, used to have two and they probably would’ve liked to get more stationed here before unleashing their plan, but they had to make due with the ones that cooperated. I killed one of them before my first capture.” “Well they don’t have any now, because I killed the other one before I got sent here.” Edgar tries to contain his enthusiasm. “That’s great! I mean with you by my side and none of that magic shit to complicate things, you’ve given us a much improved chance to escape for good!” Never thought you’d hear Edgar to be so happy to fight along side you, and normally you might even be a little happy too, but right now you’re concerned with escape. The longer you’re gone, the more likely Lieutenant Verant will send someone up here to investigate. They’ll be killed of course and then Kane will undoubtedly push a full attack on to Fort Destiny ad you don’t have the highest hopes that they’d survive an attack by a combined army of orcs, ogres and giants without being prepared at least. You waste no time coming up with a plan. Simplest ones often work the best, Edgar tells you that it’ll be feeding time soon and that you should remain “unconscious” and he’ll do the rest. You get into position and eventually hear the footsteps of your orc jailer. “Here’s yer food, Ed!” one of them says carrying a bowl. “Hey! Why’d you dump a dead body into this cell with me?” Edgar says. “Wha? He ain’t dead he’s just knocked out! I should know I was one of guys that kicked him in da head! Har har har har!” “Well he died in his sleep then from your kick to his head. I recognize him as an Eternal and Kane’s gonna be pissed that you killed him!” “He ain’t dead! He sleep!” “I’m telling you he’s dead! Don’t believe me, you better check yourself.” “Oh no, I know you Ed. You gonna try bash my skull in as soon as I open door. If he really dead, then I just say you killed him.” “And you really think Kane’s gonna believe that? He knows Eternal don’t kill each other, that’s why he’s keeping me alive even though I escape!” The orc pauses for a moment and decides he can’t take the chance. “Bah, alright, I’ll check, but I’m tellin’ you he’s just still unconscious! That shadow guy hit ‘im with one of doze bolts of his. But YOU are gonna do something first.” The orc tells Edgar to turn his back and get close to the cell bars, at which point the orc shackles him so her is unable to attack him. Thank the Emperor that most orcs are still not the brightest lanterns. The orc approaches you and that’s when you spring into action. You struggle with the orc jailer until you manage to grab his dagger and repeatedly stab him in the throat with it to the point where you nearly decapitate him. After kicking the dead orc in the face you grab his keys and release Edgar. “Okay I know of a route we can try to escape through, nearly made it the last time, but again the mage showed up. That won’t be a problem this time and they probably won’t think I’ll try it again.” Edgar says. The obvious thing to do is to concentrate on escaping the fort, though another part of you wants to go back to find Kane and Cyrus to kill them. > You fine Kane and Cyrus “We can’t leave yet, we have to take care of Kane and Cyrus.” You say. “What? You don’t think it wouldn’t be a better idea to escape and then come back with an army or something?” Edgar replies “It would be preferable yes, but by that time they’ll be entrenched and possibly already on the move with their own army of giants, ogres and orcs. That’s less likely to happen without Kane or Cyrus here.” “You don’t think someone else will take their place?” “I KNOW someone else will take their place, but by getting rid of Kane and Cyrus that shaky allied army that they’ve built up will fall apart. It will then be far easier to handle seeing as it won’t commanded by Eternals.” “Well, that’s true…okay let’s do it.” Edgar suggests getting some basic armor with helmets to disguise and protect yourselves in and mentions the supply room in the human section of the fort should have some. It takes some sneaking around, but Edgar’s knowledge of the layout gets you there with relative ease. When you do get to the room you have to kill a couple human guards, and get dressed in some armor without raising an alarm. At least not an obvious one. “I told the others that you wouldn’t try to escape. Glad to see I was right.” A man’s voice says from somewhere. You and Edgar both grab weapons and look around putting your backs to each other. “Knew it was too easy.” Edgar says. “It still can be.” The voice remarks. “Who are you? Show yourself!” you demand. “And have you possibly kill me? Oh no, I know the skill and ruthlessness of the Eternals all too well having served with Cyrus for years, not to mention seeing Edgar in action. And your own reputation speaks on its own, Bane of Rask. There is no need for animosity however, I am willing to help you.” “It’s a Shadow Guard, he’s using his blasted magic tricks to stay invisible to us.” Edgar whispers. “If you’re here to help, why have you allowed this to treason to happen in the first place?” you ask still keeping your guard up. “Oh various reasons, but let’s just say the major reason is that Cyrus is a very convincing fellow. He probably doesn’t seem like it to you, but he has a certain charm about him. It’s how he’s managed to convince Kane to go along with all this I imagine.” “So this was all Cyrus’ idea.” You say still scanning the room. “Eh, it’s a little more complicated than that I think, even I’m not privy to all the details. I only know as much as I do because Cyrus is a little more talkative after sex…” “Okay, I didn’t need to hear about that!” Edgar exclaims. “Look we could stand around and talk all day until the guards realize something is wrong, or you can accept the help of me and the rest of the Shadow Guard. We have come to realize for a while now that this plan is not in our best interest and will only lead to our destruction.” The voice says, “You do realize that you have already participated in treason and this attempt at switching sides because you know you’ll lose anyway, will not save you?” you say undiplomatically. “Ha ha! Yes, I would expect no less from the Empire and especially not from an Eternal such as yourself. You Eternals, you think in such absolutes and that’s why you’ll be the death of us all…not YOU of course, but for the rest of us. (Sigh) I think the Shadow Guard should’ve broken away from the Empire years ago before you lot popped up. Anyway it hardly matters now, I’m still offering my help…” Before the man can complete his sentence you have managed to locate his whereabouts in the room and grab him. His invisibility disappears to reveal a mundane looking man in a gray cloak. As you hold your sword to him, Edgar does likewise. “I hate to burst your ego, but this isn’t the first time an Eternal has managed to detect me, you took longer though.” The gray-cloaked man says. “How can I trust someone who has defied the Emperor and participated in treasonous acts?” you ask, ignoring the Shadow Guard’s flippant nature. “You can’t. And being a Shadow Guard probably makes me even less trustworthy. The only thing I can say is you’ll have to make a leap of faith Eternal. I will confess this though. The Shadow Guard’s loyalty to the Empire is starting to be less than absolute. Granted there are still debates about this within our order and not everyone can decide on how we should do it. Personally I felt we should all just leave and not make a big mess about it. Obviously some, like Cyrus feel otherwise. Now I have just relayed perfectly good intelligence on a potential major threat to the Empire. You will be able to warn others after you take care of Kane and Cyrus.” > You trust the Shadow Guard You still don’t trust the Shadow Guard, but if what he’s claiming is even partly true then it is indeed something you need to warn others about. This idea of mass treason by the Shadow Guard is troubling to you as their reputations for loyalty to the Empire are impeccable…but then Eternals were supposed to be without disloyalty either. There will definitely be a reckoning after this immediate problem is taken care of. “Very well, we’ll accept your help, if only because there’s nothing you can do to stop us anyway.” You say releasing the man. “Spoken like an Eternal. Okay while you track down and face Kane, my brother and sister shadows will create chaos with the orc troops. That should give you plenty of time to kill him and escape.” “What about Cyrus?” you ask. “He’ll probably be with Kane discussing strategies as usual, at least I hope he will be. I don’t relish the thought of having to face him myself even with the rest of the shadows behind me. That would be a rather bloody break up and probably not in my favor. But I’m sure you two will have no problems. Let’s get to it shall we?” At this point you and Edgar reluctantly leave the Shadow Guard to carry out his part of the plan. “You don’t really trust him do you?” Edgar asks. “Of course not, but if there is the chance that he’ll help it’s a gamble I’m willing to take. We’re already severely outnumbered and in hostile territory if he was lying then nothing was really lost. Let’s get to Kane’s office, that’s probably where he’ll be.” You manage to walk through the halls of the fort without difficulty thanks to the face covering helmets. Everyone just assumes you’re just two soldiers going about your routines. When you arrive near the office there are several heavily armored orc guards milling around there. You and Edgar briefly wonder how quickly you can kill them before more come running, but fortune strikes, when another one comes running for a completely different reason. “Ay! Ay! You guyz! The prisoners have escaped and doze shadoze are in on it! They snuck up and attacked us in our own quarters! Come on!” the orc yells. “Wha?! Never did trust dat lot! We can’t leave, da boss is in his office!” one of the guard says. “We gotta tell ‘im anyway!” another guard adds about to enter the office. “Hey we’ll tell the general and you take care of the shadows. You orcs are tougher so you’ll be able to handle the situation better than we would. Besides you should go get yourselves some payback for what those bastards have done.” You pipe up and say. “Yeah! Da humie iz right! Okay, you tell da boss and we’ll take care of doze shadoze!” one of them says and they all going running off without realizing a thing. “You know I’ve been serving along side these orcs for years and it still baffles me how Captain Gruz was so articulate and intelligent when compared to the rest of his kind.” Edgar remarks. “Wonder about it later, we’ve got more important matters.” You say opening the door, and stepping into Kane’s office. Kane steps out of his private quarters wondering what’s going on. “What the hell is going on out there, I heard all this…you’re not my bodyguards!” “An Eternal shouldn’t need them, but then you’re no Eternal, you’re a traitor!” you shout. Kane draws his weapon and the fight commences. Kane always was one of the more skilled fighters when he served under you, but it’s obvious that he’s improved even more when he manages to disarm Edgar within moments and knocks him into the wall. “Why are you doing this brothers!? I’m trying to help us! We could join forces! We could all be a family again! It’s not too late!” Kane pleads while defending himself. “It is too late for you! You’ve been a fool to believe Cyrus’ lies, where is he?” you yell narrowly missing Kane. Kane ignores your questions and fights back with less reluctance. Edgar attempts to help you again, but Kane once more proves to be the better fighter, smashing him in the face and stabbing him in the leg. Edgar falls to the floor. “Cyrus was right, I wasted my time with you! And you never were the great warrior you thought you were!” Kane says almost landing a killing blow on Edgar, but you manage to save him by deflecting the sword blow. Kane attempts to counter attack but fails and you land a blow across his chest and then another across his face, blinding him in one eye. He drops his weapon and staggers back holding his hand on the gaping bloody wound. “(Pant) Why…you…I can’t…” he wheezes and tries to escape past you, but you stop him completely by running him through. You wrench the sword upward to slice further into his internal organs. Blood spills out from the wound and onto the floor and your feet. He looks at you with his remaining good eye. Surprisingly, he smiles. “I…forgive you…broth…” he gasps and dies. It’s strange; you feel satisfaction for killing a traitor to the Emperor, yet a small part of you feels something else. Sadness perhaps? You turn and see Edgar recovering from his wounds. “Thanks. Saving me again, must feel like old times.” Edgar says. “Old times didn’t involve me killing one of us, speaking of which we need to go find Cyrus.” You and Edgar leave Kane’s office and hear the sounds of chaos filling the halls. A human soldier turns the corner and you nearly decapitate him before he shouts at you to stop. He doesn’t recognize you since you still have the helmets on. “Hey hold on! I’m human! Man, looks like you guys must’ve fought some of those orc fuckers as well. Have you seen General Kane? He’s supposed to be keeping these idiots under control and they’ve completely lost it!” “General Kane’s dead. The orcs killed him.” You say. “He’s fuckin’ dead? Great, he and Cyrus got us into this mess and he’s dead and the other one is missing!” “Where is Cyrus?” you ask. “I don’t know, but what I do know is all those Shadow Guard assholes caused all this strife by attacking the orcs in the first place! Then they just took off! At this point I don’t know why I ever listened to this idiotic scheme of breaking away from the Empire! If we get out of this alive, we’ll be lucky if the Empire doesn’t hang us all for treason!” “You needn’t worry about that, I’ll take care of that right now.” You say and strike down traitor before he can act. You curse the fact that Cyrus and the rest of his shadows got away, but there’s no way to track them now, so you and Edgar decide to make your escape from the fort. Your escape is fairly easy. When you and Edgar arrive back at Fort Destiny where Lieutenant Verant says he was just about to send someone up to Fort Defiance to see what happened to you. Your own command is to raise every soldier from Fort Destiny and march upon Fort Defiance. By the time you arrive, the fort is half in ruins and burning. All the human soldiers have been killed and the surviving orcs have reverted back to their uncivilized nature. It’s a bloody battle, but after it’s all said and done, every orc is slaughtered for their lack of loyalty. You report the events to your superiors and tell them everything that happened and Edgar backs up the story with his confirmations as well as his own experiences at Fort Defiance. The news is devastating and drastic measures are taken in an attempt to maintain order. The first thing is Fort Defiance is completely abandoned with no plans to rebuild it. The area falls back under the dominion of giants and ogres once again. The small villages that do exist up there are soon destroyed, as they have no protection at all anymore. Fort Destiny takes up the duty of driving away the monstrous tribes that do wander further south now. The lives of the Empire citizens in the Rask frontier are now as hard as they were when you first arrived at the place. Next a full investigation is made on every Shadow Guard member, at least the ones the Empire manages to get a hold of. Many openly resist, while other still just make their escape when they can. After a series of major decisions, the Shadow Guard is purged, even some of the ones who claimed their undying loyalty. Their number, while small to begin with, is reduced to zero and bounties are placed on the few that escaped. Including Cyrus. As for the orcs, their kind is spared from any sort of major investigation, though it might be because most of them are serving on the front lines of Felkan War and enough of them are getting killed there to thin out their ranks. Not to mention they’re generally not seen as intelligent to be as much of a major threat and it was only due to the manipulation of Cyrus and Kane that they turned. Still, they are watched and they are never to be stationed in such a way that they outnumber human troops again. Questions still abound to as who allowed such orders to transfer so many to Fort Defiance in the first place. Oddly even though Cyrus and to a lesser extent Kane were the leaders of this attempted secession, no Eternal is investigated. If anything you’re rewarded with a medal for your service to the Empire. Edgar isn’t though for some reason. You maintain your post at the Rask frontier though Edgar is transferred to the Felkan front. You say your goodbyes to him on a friendlier note this time, which after what happened with Kane, you’re glad to do. Your position at Fort Destiny is less monotonous now, but its a thankless one as always. The citizens in the area still complain and protest even though you’re protecting them. And despite all their precautions and attempts to crack down on order, the events at Fort Defiance are just the beginning of what the Empire has yet to experience in the years to come. > Year 30 “This place won’t be the same without you sir. I don’t know how I’ll be able to run this place as well as you.” Lieutenant Verant says as you finish packing your things. “You’ll do fine lieutenant, or should I say captain. You’ll probably get an official promotion soon. Just remember, when the citizens protest I’ve found that flogging one family with children at random keeps the rest in line. Can’t really afford to execute them like we did in the old days, too many ogre attacks already doing a good job of that. Well at least you don’t need to worry about the giants as much anymore.” “You always did know best sir.” “Well, I tried to do what I could up here. I don’t know why I’m being stationed to Delerg Province. It’s one of the more peaceful places of the Empire next to the Nalin province. I would prefer to be here or on the Felkan frontlines where I could do more to serve, but I suppose the Emperor knows best where my skills will be used.” “Oh well I’ve heard the war with the Felkans is coming to an end soon.” “Yes, I’ve heard that as well…and it concerns me the things that I’ve heard why it’s ending. Mass riots in the major cities of the Empire, soldier shortages, even heard about some of those traitorous shadow criminals carrying out terrorist tactics. And because of these problems what do we do with the Felkans? Another non-aggression pact! We should be butchering them and burning down their cities, not making peace with them again. If all of the Emperor’s enemies had one neck, I would sever it with one sword swipe.” Verant says nothing after your rant. Indeed over the past few years he’s heard you rant about the troubles of the Empire a lot more and knows to keep quiet. But if you’re making more outbursts than usual, it’s only because the Empire has more problems than usual. Lately you’ve been questioning how “great” the Empire is supposed to be. This is not the place you heard about when you were being trained by Mistress or Captain Gruz. In fact, during your first assignment in the Nalin province you encountered decadent officers and disobedient citizens even then. This questioning of the Empire then makes you question the Emperor which causes you great concern for that it treasonous thinking. But still…how is it he has allowed this to happen to his land? He is supposed to be all wise and all-powerful, but you’ve not seen much evidence of either. Never mind the fact that you’ve never seen him at all. It’s a rare thought, but there have been even a few times where you wondered what would’ve happened if you had joined Kane when he asked. You leave Fort Destiny without another word and board the carriage to the Delerg province. A few days later you arrive and Delerg is everything you’ve heard about, very swampy. The town you’re scheduled to arrive in looks like it’s sinking into marsh, which might explain why it’s even called Sinkhole. While you don’t know why you’re here, you do know you’re supposed to meet with a contact here, though you don’t know who that is or where you’re supposed to meet. As you take in the sights of this dismal town, the villagers look like they can barely contain their fear of you. You aren’t sure if it’s because they’ve heard of your reputation, or if it’s due to their natural suspicious nature. The swamp folk have always been known to be that way. They were one of the few people that didn’t resist Empire dominion at all when they first came to this land, but despite this submissiveness the swamp folk still maintained their wary ways. “Well if isn’t the Bane of Rask! It’s been a long time!” a voice calls out to you. You turn around and see not one, but two familiar faces. “Roldan? Gerald?” you say seeing how much older they’ve gotten. It makes you realize just how much time has passed. “Of course it’s us!” Roldan says. “Yeah, we didn’t know you’d be the contact.” Gerald adds. “Contact? I’m not anyone’s contact. I’m supposed to meet someone here, you guys aren’t it?” you say. “Erm, no. In fact when Gerald arrived I thought he was the contact and vice versa. Well this is odd. I wonder who we’re supposed to be meeting?” You reply that you don’t know and then begin to feel slightly uneasy. With all your past experiences, you start to feel like this might be a trap, then another carriage comes into the town. When the passenger steps out, it’s an old, but still tough looking orc in battle armor. It’s Captain Gruz! He sees all three of you milling about in the open and shuffles over to you. “What in blazes are you lot doing out in the open like this? Any potential assassin could strike you down! I thought I taught you better than that! Come on let’s get into the tavern, we can talk there.” He scolds and then heads towards the tavern, you, Gerald and Roldan follow. The tavern is dark and nearly empty. The patrons inside see you four sit at a table and then move as far away as possible. “You thirsty? I sure am. Four ales!” Captain Gruz says. “I’m not thirsty captain.” You say. “They’re not for you, they’re for me! You guys order your own drinks! Anyway I imagine you’re all wondering what this small reunion is all about. Well let’s just say the Empire finally saw fit to take me off the sidelines and place me in charge of something worthwhile for a change. I’ll get right to the point and tell you, the Shadow Guard is here, or at least what’s left of them. For awhile we thought that they might be working with the Felkans, but they’re just taking advantage of the war.” This news causes you to sit forward and then look around. “Oh don’t worry, they’re not right HERE, lad. They’re in this province though; and you might be interested that Cyrus is the one leading this miserable little band of shadows. I imagine you and he got some unfinished business. In fact that’s why you’re here, since you’ve had a lot of experience in dealing with this situation before. As for you two, your own records are excellent and you’re Eternals. The only ones that are going to be skilled enough to handle this situation I think are Eternals.” “How come Edgar isn’t here? He also had experience with the Shadow Guard and was with me during the Fort Defiance incident.” “Eh, Edgar’s skills are best served on the Felkan frontlines right now. I know the war might be coming to an end, but there’s still quite a bit of fighting going on. Besides best not to have all you guys in one place.” “That’s a different perception than I remember you having when you were arguing with Mr. Mol fourteen years ago.” You say. “Heh, remembered that did you? Well, as I’m sure you know things change, ideas change. You get older and see things differently. Wouldn’t you agree?” You pause before answering, which causes Gruz to study you for a moment. “Yes, I suppose so.” You reluctantly reply. “Of course you do, lad. You’d be a bleeding idiot if you didn’t.” Gruz says taking a drink of one of his ales. “So, where are these Shadow Guard fanatics anyway?” Gerald asks. “An old temple deep in the swamps. Used to be their old place of worship back before their Empire days apparently. Looks like Cyrus really bought into that dead religion, though it’s also arrogant of him to try to hide right underneath our noses. Hell, who knows? Maybe he knew he’d get discovered eventually and was just itching for a fight. Anyway, we’ll have some extra help when we arrive there. Trust me, I’ve got it set up.” The remainder of the time is playing a little catch up with your former team members while Captain Gruz enjoys his ale. It’s interesting to see how vastly different their experiences have been. Gerald says his time was initially boring until the war broke out. From then on he and Warrick were constantly paired up to perform commando mission deep into Felkan territory. Dangerous work, but he says they were treated pretty well by everyone and held in high regard among their fellow soldiers. Even the citizens were less troublesome in the Arat province and the local women threw themselves at him and Warrick every night he laughs. Roldan mentions his time was mostly spent cleaning up the rest of the kobolds in the Nalin province, breaking small bandit rings, and ultimately trying to keep the peasants in line. No problems from the usksha again though. When Captain Anu was promoted and sent to the Felkan frontlines, Brenda got promoted to command Fort Glory. The most surprising thing though, he and Brenda apparently married. Wasn’t anything fancy and there was paperwork that had to be filled out (A lot of it) but it was completely approved of by the Empire. Your own tales sound remarkably grim when compared to theirs. The strangest thing about all this is how they’ve all had contact with each other either directly or through messages. Gerald and Roldan even mention how they got letters from Kane years ago before his actions at Fort Defiance. They both confirm how the letters sounded very longing of the “old days” and referring to them as “brother.” Warrick and Brenda apparently got similar ones too. You ask Gerald if he met Edgar when he was transferred there. He replies that he did, but said that he was mostly sent to fight Felkan armies directly right along side most of the orcish detachments. “Sheesh. He’s gotta love that considering his experiences with orcs at Fort Defiance.” You say. “Edgar’s an idiot. Always has been. I saw that even when I was training you guys. He’s a good warrior, but lacks vision. Surprised he’s lasted this long.” Captain Gruz suddenly replies. “Well, I agree he’s always had a tendency to act without thinking, but after my last dealings with him, I think he’s improved a bit. Changed his outlook. You know, got older and sees things differently now.” You reply. “Hmm. Maybe, but as far as I’m concerned being a meat shield is about the best thing he’s ever been good for, just like all the rest of dumb fuckers on the Felkan frontlines.” “Hey, I’m on the Felkan frontlines!” Gerald protests. “Yeah, and you’re not marching straight into those Felkan shooty weapons either. You’re being a lot more than just a meat shield like the rest of those stupid ass orcs.” “Rest of those orcs? Not to point out the obvious, but you’re an orc, I mean aren’t those your people?” Roldan asks. “Yeah and? Does that make us all relatives or some shit? Fuck my people! I got no patience for any of them anymore…” Captain Gruz begins to get loud and cause a scene. “Okay captain I think you’ve had enough. I think I saw an inn across the way, let’s get some rooms there and make plans to deal with the shadows tomorrow.” You suggest. “Grrm, maybe you’re right…” Captain Gruz replies and then promptly falls to the floor. Gerald tries to pick him up. “Somebody go get the rooms and the other person help me carry the captain.” Gerald says. > You help carry the captain “Go get the rooms Roldan, I’ll help Gerald.” You say. “Okay.” Roldan agrees and leaves. You and Gerald help the Captain Gruz up who is mumbling things the whole time. “Fucking idiots. It was perfect…who I am kidding? It was futile to begin with.” “Just settle down sir.” Gerald says trying to calm him down. “Or what? You’ll kill me too? Hey I’m not tryin’ ta put the moves on ya, you got your arm around me!” Gerald gets quiet really fast and even you start looking around. “Oh what? You think I didn’t hear about that incident? Ha ha ha! Relax, ya did the right thing, fuckin’ degenerate deserved it…” Gruz laughs. You’re just about to get to the door and that’s when you hear yelling and an explosion coming from the outside followed by screams. The force of it is enough to cause you all to fall back a bit. “Shit!” you blurt out and leave Gerald to tend to the captain. You look around and see a couple of damaged buildings, more than a few dead bodies in pieces. Your heart sinks though when you see Roldan lying on the ground in front of the damaged inn. When you rush over to him, his insides are clearly visible and one of his legs is gone. He struggles to breathe as he looks up at you. You can’t do anything for him. “Fuck. Damnit…” you quietly say and kneel down towards his bloody body. “…tell Brenda that I love her.” “I will.” “That’s good…that’s good…hey if we’re all…all siblings like Kane said…that…that doesn’t make Brenda…my sister…does it?” Roldan asks with a small smile. “Heh, I don’t think so, and even if it did so what? You found happiness with her.” You smile back. “Yeah…you’re right. You… usually were.” he says and then drifts away. This time you do feel sadness at the loss of one of your own. Especially when you had just gotten to know him again. Gerald dashes over to you and even captain Gruz has sobered up a bit from this incident and is now interrogating the nearest hysterical citizen. “Who the fuck did this?! Answer me woman!” he demands and slaps her a few times, but she just pathetically cries and begs him to stop. “Captain! Stop it! It’s obvious she doesn’t know anything!” Gerald shouts. “Maybe not, but someone here does.” You say. “Alright, listen up! I am an Eternal and the man laying dead next to me was also an Eternal! My wrath for his death shall be the likes you’ve never known and you don’t want to know. One of you saw something, so someone better start talking or else this little town you call home is going to get a whole lot bloodier.” Nobody says anything for a while and there’s just dead silence, but eventually a little girl comes out from behind a barrel and speaks up. “I saw something Mr. Eternal.” “Good, glad to see this town isn’t completely infested with cowards. You’re coming with me.” You say and take the girl to a room at the inn and proceed to question her. The girl is still a little nervous at first, but soon opens up quite a bit. She mentions that she was walking home from the general store and she saw Roldan leaving the tavern. He was almost to the inn when she saw these two figures shimming like they were almost invisible. She then says what happened next was very quick. The figures ran up to Roldan and then these two men appeared in gray cloaks. They both stabbed him several times before he could defend himself. Despite his wounds, he managed to stab one through the neck and grabbed the other when he tried to escape. She said at this point she had been hiding behind the barrel, but saw that the man in gray produced a gas sphere plant from his cloak and he yelled something she couldn’t understand. A blackish field started to emanate from the man, Roldan then fell to the ground and then the large explosion occurred killing several people that didn’t have the sense that the little girl did to get the hell out of there as soon as possible. “So much for the shadows not being here.” Gerald remarks. “Shit, I fucked up. I should’ve known that they might’ve realized that we we’re coming.” Captain Gruz says. “Doesn’t matter anyway. It’s obvious they’re prepared for a last stand sort of fight, if they’re willing to blow themselves up. No sense in depriving them of that, though I’m hoping they don’t start favoring blowing themselves up. It’s going to make fighting them more dangerous than it should be.” You say. “Mmm, I know what you mean. Serving on the Felkan frontlines I had to experience several of their own explosive type weapons first hand, but from what I’ve heard those gas plant spheres aren’t common and grow rarely even in this area. Even then, they aren’t explosive on their own. The shadow probably used some sort of magic to make it explode like that. Is that right little girl?” Gerald asks to confirm, to which she nods. “Alright enough talk, we all need to get some rest before wiping the bastards out tomorrow.” Captain Gruz says and lies down on his bed. At this point you send the little girl away and tell her she’s served the Empire well and leave with Gerald. “Do you really think Gruz should be coming with us tomorrow? I mean with his leg and his age and all.” Gerald asks. “If he wants to go on one last mission then I’m not going to deprive him of that. Don’t worry, he’ll keep up. I get the impression this is sort of personal to him.” “Personal to him? I imagine it’s personal to you a lot more.” “True, but I’m trying to not let it.” Of course that’s pretty hard to do when you have to put Roldan in a casket and sent back to Brenda. Gerald writes the letter to her. You can only imagine what her reaction is going to be about this news. This makes you wonder about the whole scenario that they were in love and got married. You know you briefly spoke to Roldan about this back at the tavern, but a lot of it still baffles you. How did it first come about? What was it like? Who initiated it? Was the attraction always there, even back when you were all in training? Could something like that ever happen to you? You think about the time you were with Captain Krozer and that’s the closest equivalent you have, but you know that wasn’t anything like love. You did respect her though and you’re pretty sure the feeling was mutual. Perhaps that’s how it started, but Brenda and Roldan were just in contact with each long enough to develop it further. Eventually you dismiss all these meaningless thoughts and rest up to prepare for your mission tomorrow. The next morning, you Gerald and Gruz set off on your journey. The trip through the swamps isn’t an easy one; it actually makes you long for the days of stomping through ice and snow. The whole time you’re traveling you’re constantly alert and feel like at anytime you could be attacked, which turns out to be true with the oversized insects and other minor hostile swamp animals dwelling here, but they aren’t the enemies you’re expecting. “So how many Empire troops are we going to have as back up?” Gerald asks Gruz during the trip. “Empire? I’m lucky I managed to get them to accept my request to go on this mission! They didn’t send me anyone, not that they’d be much help anyway. Most Empire soldiers would stick out like a sore thumb and get themselves killed before they even reached the place. No, I’m relying on the ones that found these ruins to begin with. Dark elven mercs. If anyone can hide out better than the shadows, it’ll be them.” Gruz replies. Dark elves. You hated having to work with them back in your early years on the Rask frontier, but you can’t deny their effectiveness. “Shh! Do you hear that?” you ask. “Probably another Sul Monkey. Those things are all over the place. Just glad it’s not mating season for them, otherwise we might be in big trouble. Hey, aren’t you humans related to them in some way?” Gruz asks. Gerald is about to reply, and then you hear a whizzing sound followed by a “thunk” sound. You then see Gerald with a large crossbow bolt directly in the center of his head. A single trickle of blood comes from the wound and drips off his nose. “I…been hit…” Gerald says and his eyes roll back as he falls into the soft mushy ground. “Shit!” Gruz shouts and ducks down into the mud. > You duck down into the mud as well You instinctively duck down into the mud like Gruz did; regrettably the hidden assassin anticipated that and begins shooting downward. You and Gruz both receive several bolts to the back. Gruz manages too shake off these annoyances partly because he’s wearing heavy armor and the other because as an orc his skin is pretty tough to begin with, especially with his experience. While you’re certainly wearing protective gear as well and an Eternal to boot, the bolts sink into your flesh a lot easier and deeper. The pain is great, but you manage to get back up in an effort to find better cover. Gruz spots the shadow assassin and engages him unfortunately two more shadows jump down from the trees to finish you off. Under normal circumstances you’d easily be able to handle the pair of them even with bolts in your back, but in typical shadow fashion, the bolts were dipped in some sort of poison, not strong enough to kill you, but enough to make you sleepy. And it’s this drowsiness that is your downfall. You swing at the two shadows a few times before they manage to land their own attacks on you. A quick slash to your neck releases an arterial spray and you’re dead before you even hit the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Go get the rooms Roldan, I’ll help Gerald.” You say. “Okay.” Roldan agrees and leaves. You and Gerald help the Captain Gruz up who is mumbling things the whole time. “Fucking idiots. It was perfect…who I am kidding? It was futile to begin with.” “Just settle down sir.” Gerald says trying to calm him down. “Or what? You’ll kill me too? Hey I’m not tryin’ ta put the moves on ya, you got your arm around me!” Gerald gets quiet really fast and even you start looking around. “Oh what? You think I didn’t hear about that incident? Ha ha ha! Relax, ya did the right thing, fuckin’ degenerate deserved it…” Gruz laughs. You’re just about to get to the door and that’s when you hear yelling and an explosion coming from the outside followed by screams. The force of it is enough to cause you all to fall back a bit. “Shit!” you blurt out and leave Gerald to tend to the captain. You look around and see a couple of damaged buildings, more than a few dead bodies in pieces. Your heart sinks though when you see Roldan lying on the ground in front of the damaged inn. When you rush over to him, his insides are clearly visible and one of his legs is gone. He struggles to breathe as he looks up at you. You can’t do anything for him. “Fuck. Damnit…” you quietly say and kneel down towards his bloody body. “…tell Brenda that I love her.” “I will.” “That’s good…that’s good…hey if we’re all…all siblings like Kane said…that…that doesn’t make Brenda…my sister…does it?” Roldan asks with a small smile. “Heh, I don’t think so, and even if it did so what? You found happiness with her.” You smile back. “Yeah…you’re right. You… usually were.” he says and then drifts away. This time you do feel sadness at the loss of one of your own. Especially when you had just gotten to know him again. Gerald dashes over to you and even captain Gruz has sobered up a bit from this incident and is now interrogating the nearest hysterical citizen. “Who the fuck did this?! Answer me woman!” he demands and slaps her a few times, but she just pathetically cries and begs him to stop. “Captain! Stop it! It’s obvious she doesn’t know anything!” Gerald shouts. “Maybe not, but someone here does.” You say. “Alright, listen up! I am an Eternal and the man laying dead next to me was also an Eternal! My wrath for his death shall be the likes you’ve never known and you don’t want to know. One of you saw something, so someone better start talking or else this little town you call home is going to get a whole lot bloodier.” Nobody says anything for a while and there’s just dead silence, but eventually a little girl comes out from behind a barrel and speaks up. “I saw something Mr. Eternal.” “Good, glad to see this town isn’t completely infested with cowards. You’re coming with me.” You say and take the girl to a room at the inn and proceed to question her. The girl is still a little nervous at first, but soon opens up quite a bit. She mentions that she was walking home from the general store and she saw Roldan leaving the tavern. He was almost to the inn when she saw these two figures shimming like they were almost invisible. She then says what happened next was very quick. The figures ran up to Roldan and then these two men appeared in gray cloaks. They both stabbed him several times before he could defend himself. Despite his wounds, he managed to stab one through the neck and grabbed the other when he tried to escape. She said at this point she had been hiding behind the barrel, but saw that the man in gray produced a gas sphere plant from his cloak and he yelled something she couldn’t understand. A blackish field started to emanate from the man, Roldan then fell to the ground and then the large explosion occurred killing several people that didn’t have the sense that the little girl did to get the hell out of there as soon as possible. “So much for the shadows not being here.” Gerald remarks. “Shit, I fucked up. I should’ve known that they might’ve realized that we we’re coming.” Captain Gruz says. “Doesn’t matter anyway. It’s obvious they’re prepared for a last stand sort of fight, if they’re willing to blow themselves up. No sense in depriving them of that, though I’m hoping they don’t start favoring blowing themselves up. It’s going to make fighting them more dangerous than it should be.” You say. “Mmm, I know what you mean. Serving on the Felkan frontlines I had to experience several of their own explosive type weapons first hand, but from what I’ve heard those gas plant spheres aren’t common and grow rarely even in this area. Even then, they aren’t explosive on their own. The shadow probably used some sort of magic to make it explode like that. Is that right little girl?” Gerald asks to confirm, to which she nods. “Alright enough talk, we all need to get some rest before wiping the bastards out tomorrow.” Captain Gruz says and lies down on his bed. At this point you send the little girl away and tell her she’s served the Empire well and leave with Gerald. “Do you really think Gruz should be coming with us tomorrow? I mean with his leg and his age and all.” Gerald asks. “If he wants to go on one last mission then I’m not going to deprive him of that. Don’t worry, he’ll keep up. I get the impression this is sort of personal to him.” “Personal to him? I imagine it’s personal to you a lot more.” “True, but I’m trying to not let it.” Of course that’s pretty hard to do when you have to put Roldan in a casket and sent back to Brenda. Gerald writes the letter to her. You can only imagine what her reaction is going to be about this news. This makes you wonder about the whole scenario that they were in love and got married. You know you briefly spoke to Roldan about this back at the tavern, but a lot of it still baffles you. How did it first come about? What was it like? Who initiated it? Was the attraction always there, even back when you were all in training? Could something like that ever happen to you? You think about the time you were with Captain Krozer and that’s the closest equivalent you have, but you know that wasn’t anything like love. You did respect her though and you’re pretty sure the feeling was mutual. Perhaps that’s how it started, but Brenda and Roldan were just in contact with each long enough to develop it further. Eventually you dismiss all these meaningless thoughts and rest up to prepare for your mission tomorrow. The next morning, you Gerald and Gruz set off on your journey. The trip through the swamps isn’t an easy one; it actually makes you long for the days of stomping through ice and snow. The whole time you’re traveling you’re constantly alert and feel like at anytime you could be attacked, which turns out to be true with the oversized insects and other minor hostile swamp animals dwelling here, but they aren’t the enemies you’re expecting. “So how many Empire troops are we going to have as back up?” Gerald asks Gruz during the trip. “Empire? I’m lucky I managed to get them to accept my request to go on this mission! They didn’t send me anyone, not that they’d be much help anyway. Most Empire soldiers would stick out like a sore thumb and get themselves killed before they even reached the place. No, I’m relying on the ones that found these ruins to begin with. Dark elven mercs. If anyone can hide out better than the shadows, it’ll be them.” Gruz replies. Dark elves. You hated having to work with them back in your early years on the Rask frontier, but you can’t deny their effectiveness. “Shh! Do you hear that?” you ask. “Probably another Sul Monkey. Those things are all over the place. Just glad it’s not mating season for them, otherwise we might be in big trouble. Hey, aren’t you humans related to them in some way?” Gruz asks. Gerald is about to reply, and then you hear a whizzing sound followed by a “thunk” sound. You then see Gerald with a large crossbow bolt directly in the center of his head. A single trickle of blood comes from the wound and drips off his nose. “I…been hit…” Gerald says and his eyes roll back as he falls into the soft mushy ground. “Shit!” Gruz shouts and ducks down into the mud. > You hide behind a tree From the trajectory of the bolt, the assassin is in front and probably was trying to hit you instead of Gerald. You immediately run for the nearest tree as several more bolts whiz past you. When you reach the tree two Shadow Guards jump down from it and attempt to stab you. You kick one in the groin as hard as you can, while deflecting the blow of the other with your sword. You dodge another attack by falling to the ground and chopping the shadow at one of his legs, nearly hacking it off. When he falls in agony you finish him off with your sword. The one staggering around with damaged man part, finally recovers, but attempts to disappear again. You throw your dagger at him as he begins to turn invisible, impaling him in the stomach. Meanwhile it appears that Captain Gruz is taking care of the one who was shooting bolts at you. “Bastard!” he says with his boot on the shadow and chopping the shadow’s head in two with his axe. Blood and brains splatter everywhere. You move around and scan the area cautiously and try to see if there’s any more shadows lurking about, but if there were they would’ve either attack you by now or run off. When you’re confident that none are left you walk over to Gerald who is dead already. “FUCK!” you shout while kicking a nearby piece of clumped up mud. You don’t feel sadness this time so much as you feel frustration. All those years he was performing commando raids in Felkan territory and he gets killed like this? Not even in close combat! Somehow it doesn’t seem right. Just like how Roldan died. You search Gerald’s body and find the letter he was planning on sending Brenda about Roldan, it seems you will have to do it now. Perhaps even alter it. Captain Gruz walks over to you, he has a few bolts in him, but he doesn’t seem particularly bothered by them. “Feh, I’ve had way worse than this.” He says as he pulls them out. “Y’know we’re on our own now.” “What do you mean?” you ask. “I’m saying these bolts, they ain’t Shadow Guard, these are dark elven quality. That fucker over there with his head cleaved in two had one of those fancy repeating dark elven crossbows too. And while I know dark elves to be treacherous bitches that’ll switch sides to whoever’s paying the most, they would NEVER allow anyone to use their equipment. My guess is those mercs that were going to meet us are all dead, well either that or they ran off.” “Good, I want to kill the rest of these shadows anyway.” You say and proceed on to the ruins. Your next step of your journey confirms Gruz’s theory. You and he see signs of battle on your way to the ruins. Several of the bodies are dark elven, but an equal amount are Shadow Guard. “Looks like they were ambushed. Heh, pretty hard to do with dark elves. Still, it also looks like the dark elves gave the shadows a hell of a fight. Looks like those are the ruins up ahead. I’m guessing there probably aren’t too many left, this should be over pretty quick.” You and Gruz dispense with caution and boldly march into the ruins. You both look around as the crumbling statues of old forgotten gods loom over you. Eventually you find who you’re looking for in the remains of a temple that’s covered in vines and partially sinking into the swamp A single Shadow Guard stands over the bodies of several others of his kind. Near the bodies are empty flasks. “I’ll be with you soon my brothers and sisters. And especially you Draven.” Cyrus says looking at the bodies and ignoring you completely. “Aw, how sweet. Glad you decided not to pussy out like the rest of your buddies by poisoning yourself and are at least are willing to face your death like a man.” Gruz replies. “Yes, well it still remains to be seen Gruz. Though speaking of being a man, I’m impressed that you actually showed up here. I thought that you would’ve continued to hide and try to keep your involvement of these events a secret as you have for all these years.” This statement from Cyrus causes you to pause and look at Gruz. He looks guilty of something for a moment and then gives a toothy smile. “I wasn’t hiding Cyrus. I was waiting. Waiting until the day when I could finally track you down. It wasn’t my fuck up that got us into this mess. We could’ve been strong enough together to make a break from the Empire if you hadn’t decided to backstab us at Fort Destiny to save your own skin. Hah! See how well that turned out. Look at you now.” Even as jaded as you have become about the Empire, you are somewhat surprised about Captain Gruz…but in retrospect, somebody had to have some sort of input on having all those orcs transferred to Fort Defiance. Despite this revelation you’re too numb to excessively care. All you know is over the past few days you’ve seen two of your fellow Eternals die ignobly while doing their duty for the Empire. Something these traitors have obviously disregarded a long time ago. “Well, what’s it gonna be lad? You killin’ me or the shadow first?” Gruz asks. “I think I’ll stick with the original plan. We’ll kill the shadow together, then you and me are going to settle up.” You say calmly. “That’s the spirit boy!” Gruz laughs and steps towards Cyrus. Cyrus makes no more small talk or last minute threats. He focuses purely on combat. You expect him to use his Shadow Guard tricks like poison or invisibility, but he doesn’t. He easily dodges Gruz’s powerful yet clumsy attacks and lands a few well placed strikes on him, but Gruz shrugs them off like you’ve seen him do the whole time you’ve been fighting along side him. You can only imagine what an unstoppable juggernaut he must’ve been back in his younger days. As for you, you match Cyrus in sword skill. Whatever he learned from the Shadow Guard won’t help him in a face-to-face battle with you. All it takes is for you to take advantage of his divided concentration and you land a mortal blow, slicing his side clean open. Cyrus falls and deflects your attempt to split his head open, but he drops his sword from the force of your blow in the process. Weaponless, tired and bleeding out from a deep hole in his side, Cyrus accepts defeat. “Do it. Eternal slave of the Empire.” He says coldly and then you fulfill his request by decapitating him. You quickly turn to face Gruz, who already has his axe ready. “Alright Eternal, let’s finish this.” You and Gruz clash weapons. As you battle, you’re reminded of the times when you were still a child and how he taught you to fight. CLANG! How he told you to keep a calm head in battle. TING! How he told you to serve the Empire. SHING! How he had confidence in your skills. CLANK! How he saw you as a leader. CLANK! How he told you not to die for the Emperor…but to make the other dumb bastard die so that you could continue serving the Emperor SWIPE! SLICE! SLISH! SLISH! SLASH! How he told you that failure wasn’t an option. Gruz finally succumbs to his multiple wounds and falls to one knee leaning on his axe in an effort not to completely collapse. “Damn…shit….” Gruz gasps as he breathes heavily and feels his strength completely leaving him. “Why?” you ask him. “Why? Heh heh.” Chuckles a bit while at the same time coughing up some blood. “After all you’ve experienced in your service of the Empire, you have to ask me why? My people had already been tamed and conquered decades ago and I bought into the same bullshit you did when I was a little green snot that didn’t know any better. I worked my way up the ranks and did pretty good for myself, but for what? To be a lap dog that begged for a treat every time I did something right and get slapped down because I was rising too much above my so called station? I was still holding on to an idea that was long gone or never existed to begin with. It wasn’t until shortly after your training was complete that I started to seriously change my mind. The Felkan war and the conspiracy that the Shadow Guard came up with just made it easier… I think I’m gonna just lay down for a while.” Gruz says as he loses his last battle with staying conscious. You step towards him with your sword ready to strike, but instead you just watch him slowly drift off and hear his last words. “I lived a lot longer than I should have. This is a good death for an orc. I’ve seen your new replacements Eternal. They’re monsters. They’ll finish off what’s left of this decaying husk of an Empire, not save it. Good riddance. Heh, don’t worry though; you’ll probably survive the coming shit storm. You’ll outlive everyone.” He says and then finally dies. With the way things have been going lately, Gruz may be correct. It doesn’t necessarily make you feel any better though. > Year 35 Another rebellion put down. You wipe your sword of blood and shake your head as you look around at the chaos. This is the Quala province, the very heartland of the Empire. You shouldn’t have to be trying to maintain order here only a few miles away from the capital itself. “Ha ha ha! Come on bitch, give it up! I’m an Eternal, you oughta be flattered that I’m even wasting my time on your normal ass!” private Felding says as he attempts to rape a nearby girl. You briskly walk over to Felding and pull him off her. You know damn well that the rest of his kind are probably doing stuff like this all over the place, but this one is in your direct sight and under your command. “What the hell, captain? If you wanted first dibs you could’ve just said so! Ah look, now she’s getting away!” “We’re here to maintain order private, not create more chaos.” “Oh yeah? Coulda fooled me by destroying the entire town like this.” “Regrettable, but during battle only victory matters.” “Exactly! We won! So now it’s time to have our fun with these disobedient peasants. Y’know instill fear in them so they won’t do it again.” “You’re not instilling fear though, you’re just satisfying your own desires.” “Hey, who says we aren’t supposed to have fun while doing it?” It’s like talking to a brick wall. You’ve had these “New Eternals” under your command for a few months now and they are some of the most undisciplined troops you’ve ever had. You can try to encourage them, you can try to reason with them, you can punish them, and none of it has a real effect. The only constant is that they know of your reputation and know that you’re also an Eternal, which makes them just fearful of you enough that they don’t attempt to directly challenge your authority like they have with so many of their other commanders. If it were up to you, you would’ve had them all killed for treason as soon as they murdered their first CO, but for whatever reason the Empire wants them active. You’re guessing because the Empire’s desperate. So they were ultimately transferred to you and unfortunately you’re not allowed to kill them either…well unless they try to kill you first. You swear this must be what it’s like to be a svelk. They are like children, malicious hateful little children. It’s not even their suspect loyalty that baffles you; it’s their complete lack of discipline. Even Kane and Cyrus who opposed you had discipline. Hell, Edgar who was arguably the most emotional and hotheaded of the group was a hundred times more disciplined than any of these new “Eternals.” You remember back to your own training and there were a few of your fellows that didn’t learn proper discipline either. They never made it past Mistress and the few that did, didn’t survive Gruz. Whoever was in charge of their training did a horrible job and should’ve been executed for incompetence along with the rest of these vicious monsters. That old orc was right, they will destroy what’s left of the Empire, but you doubt if they’ll survive long after its downfall. You think back to all the real Eternals. You, Edgar and Brenda are the only ones left, as Warrick killed in the final days of the Felkan War. At least you assume that’s what happened, his body was never found and you know he would’ve rather died than let himself be captured to rot in a P.O.W. Camp. Either way it’s truly a loss you never ever got to talk with him again. From what you know Edgar is still stationed in the Arat province, probably trying to keep his own “eternals” in line to keep the peace there. As for poor Brenda you know she has her command in the Nalin province and probably still quietly grieving for Roldan. After all you’ve been through, it’s come to this and you’re wondering what the hell you’re still fighting for. The Emperor? You haven’t cared about that unknown ruler for years. For all you know he’s some feeble minded inbred idiot figure head that his advisors keep locked away while they bumble around ruling things probably about as well as he would. The Empire? Perhaps at one time, but as it has lost territory, respect and apparently all resemblance of sanity over the years you’ve lost all faith that it can ever regain any sort of glory it might have had, if it ever had it to begin with. You’ve tried your best to stem back the tide of chaos, but you’re only one man even if you are an Eternal. While you ponder your potential future, private Felding interrupts you. “Hey, cap? You’re in a bit of a daze there. So if you’re done I’m going to go now.” “Hold on, I have one more thing to tell you.” “(Sigh) What?” Felding says with an exasperated tone. “You’re not a fucking Eternal. None of you little shits are.” You say and run Felding through and pull up on the sword unleashing his blood and guts onto the ground. Felding makes a high pitched scream and slumps on top of his entrails after you remove the sword. “Shit! The cap just killed Felding!” another so called eternal shouts while he and his buddy have just come back from looting some farmer’s home. The pair of them look like they want to run, but you make it easy on them. “Go ahead and run or stay. I don’t care anymore. I’m leaving. I will tell you this though, if the Empire sends any of you unruly scum after me, know that I shall take great pleasure in not just killing you, but in drawing it out for as long as possible. Remember this.” And with that last warning, you leave your service to the Empire. The question now is, where will you go? What will you do? This all feels so wrong when you think about it. You’ve killed so many for abandoning, opposing, or attempting to betray the Empire and here you are doing the same thing. Was it all for nothing? Was it worth it? You don’t know. You always believed at the time you were right and that you were doing the right thing. Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t. You just know that you can’t serve something you don’t believe in anymore. Especially when everyone else around you doesn’t either. Speaking of not knowing, you don’t know how to do anything except kill people. While you’re certain that you’d be able to hire your skills out somewhere, the idea of being a mercenary is a little distasteful for you. You’d rather not push the svelk comparison that far. You could swear loyalty to another government you suppose. Perhaps the Felkan Kingdom? You’re not sure they’d want you, what with all their high tech weapons and your own government once fighting against them. The only other alternative for you is to carve out your own territory and rule it as your own. While it’s true you do have leadership qualities, you know nothing of actually running a government. You honestly wouldn’t know where to begin. > You become a mercenary You have no desire to serve another government that’s likely to be just as corrupt and useless as the one you served. You don’t really feel like carving out your own territory either, what could you gain, the petty power thrill of being another tyrant with delusions of grandeur? You’ve seen that story play out several times and it hasn’t gotten the people who pursued it anywhere. Maybe the svelk had it right. Ultimately serve nobody, but yourself. After all you’ve pretty much had to do that most of the time since the Empire rarely ever saw fit to help you out in any meaningful manner. The question is where can you find work as a mercenary without needing to work for any sort of government. You then remember, Rask. The Rask territory completely broke off from the Empire and declared itself independent years ago. No attempt has been made to retake it either, as far as you know Fort Destiny was just completely abandoned. The towns there have banded together as a loose alliance for protection and trade, but nothing more than that. Despite this, they still have need for warriors and such to defend against the many monsters that lurk in the wilderness. Sounds like a perfect place for you to earn a living and you’re already are quite familiar with the area. You find a nearby horse and set off for the north. Along the way you see the landscape of the Empire, which at one time was orderly and even idyllic is now burning and in tatters. Despite the chaos you don’t need to do any battle, not even when passing groups of angry peasants who are taking every opportunity to get revenge on their oppressive government and its agents in all forms. You can only assume your reputation is enough to scare them off or they don’t even recognize you. If it’s the latter then it only confirms your belief that you weren’t making that much of a difference in the Empire anyway. When you eventually make it to the Rask borders the cold chill and snow are almost welcoming to you. As bad as it was here at times, this harsh place is probably the closest you can call home now, you only hope you can still make one here without too much problem. A few miles in and you see Fort Destiny in the distance, it looks about the same. You wonder what it’s being used for now, but you see several young men standing around outside, they look like guards. You approach and are stopped. “Halt, this is Kenneth’s Rest. If you’re here to trade then you may enter, but don’t cause any trouble or you’ll find yourself in more than you bargained for!” a young guard says. He’s wearing a patchwork Empire uniform, all of them are. You wonder if these were young recruits that just stayed when the Empire abandoned the place. If so then there are probably others as well, in fact the name Kenneth sounds familiar, but you can’t place it. In any case you could do with a small break so you decide to stop here, you also figure this would be as good a place as any to start looking for work. You tell the young man that you are not here to cause trouble, but to look for work. The young guard tells you that you might want to look for Kenneth as he usually needs various jobs done. He says he’s usually found at the inn that being where he keeps his office. You enter the fort and see that it has changed quite a bit with various traders selling and buying with each other in the courtyard. It still seems to have most of its defensive siege weapons, though they look like they’re in disrepair. You notice there are still guards patrolling the top walkways, though significantly less than when this place was still a military installation. It is at this time an older guard patrolling in the crowds sees you. “Hey! I know you! It’s the Bane of Rask!” he shouts. With this call, everyone else now turns to you. Some of the other older guards with long memories begin to realize it’s you as well and move in to advance with their halberds. The younger guards who never served under you do likewise, but from their own hesitation its apparent that stories about you have been told. One of the guards whispers to another who runs off. You take all this in stride; you figure that they believe you’re here to punish them all for desertion or treason. Amusing, since at one time that would’ve been true, but you’re actually here for the same reason. “Alright you just get off that horse slowly. We don’t want any trouble, we’re just trying to make a new life for ourselves.” “I understand that, but if I have to get off my horse for any reason, I promise you it won’t be in your best interest that I do so. I’m not here to cause trouble anyway. I just want to talk to Kenneth, I heard he’s the one who has several jobs that need done.” “Sounds like a trick to me.” One of the younger guards says. “I assure you as any of the men that have served under me here can attest to, I do not trick. How about I just wait here for Kenneth and the rest of you go about your business… or continue to hold your weapons pointed at my direction if you believe it will make you any safer. That’s fine too.” You wait a few minutes still on your horse, hoping you don’t need to turn this place into a bloodbath, and then Kenneth finally appears. That’s when you suddenly remember the name. “Lieutenant Verant! I knew the name Kenneth sounded familiar. Just forgot it was your first name, never having called you by it on a regular basis and all.” You remark. Kenneth looks like he’s about to collapse from fear. “Oh shit. Now look sir, we can explain all this. I mean…we thought…uh…” You hold up your hand for him to stop before he has a heart attack. “Verant…Kenneth. There is nothing you can say that could possibly prevent you and everyone here executed for treason to the Empire. Fortunately for you, I am no longer in the service of the Empire.” “You…you’re not?” “No. I am shall we say a free agent and looking for a way to put my combat skills to use.” “I…don’t know what to say.” “How about saying that you have some work for me?” And so your career as a mercenary begins… > Chapter 3A1: Bane of Rask Year 45 “Bastard!” you say landing a killing blow on the last auravrax. You do a double check of the cave just to make sure you’ve got all the beasts. It’s times like this you’re reminded of your kobold hunting days. Of course auravraxes are a lot furrier and stupider. Doesn’t make them any less dangerous though considering they’re basically balls of hair with lots of teeth and a vicious streak a mile wide. You wonder how it was you never encountered them before when you were posted up here. You can only assume that the larger creatures like ogres and wendigos kept them in check. Thanks to your depletion of such creatures other predators managed to gain better dominance. Nature is wonderful at balancing things out that way. After making a check you pile up the bodies and start skinning. You figure between the payment for this job and the sale you’ll make on the pelts you’ll have enough money for at least of week’s worth of wine, women and song. “Nah, to hell with the song. More women.” You chuckle to yourself. Thoughts about such “common” pleasures would’ve never entered your head decades ago. Makes you realize how much you’re changed since then, but it’s a good change you think. For the first time, you’ve actually been enjoying life rather than just going through the motions of it like a golem. Life is so much simpler and easier when you don’t have anyone to answer to; especially when that “someone” doesn’t even know what the fuck they’re doing half of the time. Life of course still has its bad moments, but compared to your time serving the Empire, it’s like a non-stop party. The Empire, now just another government resigned to the trash heap of history. All of its years of power and whatever glory it claimed it had completely gone. And of course much like Mother Nature, the smaller predators get to take their chance in the sun now that the big one is extinct. One of those smaller predators being one your old fellow Eternals, Edgar. You don’t know all the details, but from the rumors you’ve heard he’s declared himself a general and is calling the territory in his control, The Eternal Dominion. He apparently managed to get some of those chaotic eternal wannabes in some semblance of order to help him as well. When you first heard about this you could only shake your head in disappointment. Not even so much for what he’s doing, but more with how he’s doing it. It’s almost like he’s going down the same path that Kane did, but with even less planning and followers that are probably more duplicitous than Shadow Guards. You’d think that he would’ve learned something from that mess. Still, it’s his life and you have yours. You stop reminiscing about the past and concentrate on skinning the auravraxes. When you’re finished you cook up one of them to eat and then get some sleep. The next day you set off to Keplavisk with your furs. When you get to Keplavisk, the usual people acknowledge you. Some are friendly, some aren’t, and others with longer memories hate your guts for your action when you were trying to maintain order here a long time ago. Just one of the things you have to put up with, after all you still have your reputation of being… “Bane of Rask! Bane of Rask! Hey wait up!” Ulivik yells. “(Sigh) Boy, I told you to stop calling me by that ridiculous name. In fact I told you to stop following me period!” “Sorry, Mr. Bane. Hey are those auravrax furs? Did you kill all of them? I bet you just went in and totally destroyed them without fear!” Ulivik says while making sword whooshing sounds. You roll your eyes at the teenager’s over enthusiasm and resign yourself to him following you while you head to the town hall. For whatever reason he sees you as some sort of brave “hero” though you wish he wouldn’t. You can’t get too mad at him though, not his fault he’s a dark elf brought up by humans. There’s got to be a lot of confusion going on there. You mostly ignore Ulivik’s incessant questioning until you get to the town hall where upon his guard run him off with racial slurs and threats. You enter the building and see the mayor. Mayor Stundle is sitting his fat ass at his desk doing nothing of any importance as usual. “Ah Mr. Bane, I can see by the numerous pelts you’re carrying that you’ve taken care of the problem, I knew you would. That’s why you’re the best merc in the Confederation. Your payment is on the desk there.” “Good, and my name isn’t Bane you know. I keep telling people that.” “Indeed it may not be, but that’s what everyone knows you as. Can’t fight fame or maybe in your case infamy. Heh heh.” “Yeah, anyway I showed you the proof, I’ve got some furs to sell.” “Got a special job for you if you want.” “Maybe later, I’m going to enjoy myself.” “Okay, but I can’t promise you it’ll be available when you get back.” As you leave Mayor Stundle’s office, Flog is just entering with several ogre scalps. He displays his obvious dislike of you as usual. As thorough as you were when you destroyed Fort Defiance, Flog survived because he did the smart thing of running away and hiding as soon as he saw your army approaching. “Outta da way Bane, Flog has to see fat mayor!” “He’s all yours.” You remark not really wanting to deal with his attitude today, of course in typical orc fashion, Flog feels the need to press the issue. He sees the auravrax furs and makes his move. “Gruh. You kill little furry things. Flog kill big ogres! More proof that Flog better merc than you!” “Sure Flog, whatever.” You say dismissively which of course annoys Flog even more. “Flog gonna kill you one day Bane!” he shouts as you walk away. “Sure Flog, whenever you’re ready.” You say almost yawning. Another time and place you would’ve killed him for speaking to you in such a manner, but over the years you’ve mellowed with age. Besides he’s been threatening to kill you for the last eight years. The first few times you took him seriously. Now it’s just boring. If he really ever wants to try he knows where to find you, not like you’re hiding. After selling your furs you make you take your money to the closest tavern where you proceed to make good on your claim of relaxing. After a couple days of carousing you’re lying in bed with a couple of serving wenches and you decide that you should probably get back to work. No point in waiting around until all your coin is gone, you’ve had your fun now its time to get back to what you’re really good at, killing stuff. You tell the girls in your room to leave and get prepared to go find some more work. You’ve barely stepped out of the inn and Ulivik has already found you and nearly gets himself stabbed for sneaking up on you. “Hey Mr. Bane, it’s just me!” he says with a worried tone. “Boy, didn’t I tell you to never sneak up on me like that? I could’ve killed you and I doubt if anyone would’ve blamed me for it!” you shout “Sorry, Mr. Bane. Hey are you going on another mission?” “What do you think?” “I think you are! But Mayor Stundle already gave out all of the jobs, you’ll probably have to go to another town.” “And how do you know this?” “Because I tried to sign up, but I got thrown out of the town hall and called names.” “Sounds about right, but how did you get in there in the first place?” “I snuck in. I think I’m getting really good at it!” “Hmm, sounds like your svelk heritage is finally paying off.” You say. “Svelk?” Ulivik asks as if you’ve spoken a made up word. “Svelk, you know it’s the proper name for you dark elves, you mean you’ve never heard the term?” “No, I’ve been called a dark elf before, but I mostly get called a lot of other names.” “Well life’s tough kid, now you go run along…” “Hey why don’t I come with you on your next mission!?” And there it is. You knew the day was coming where he’d start asking you to bring him with you. “Yeah, no. I work alone.” “Aw come on! I need the experience! I try to sign up for even the easy jobs and I get thrown out! I’ve even tried going door to door asking if there are any monsters they need killing and they usually just say, yeah the one standing front of me! Then they slam the door in my face! It’s not fair!” “Why do you want to be a merc anyway? I mean I know you’ve got a family that takes care of you. They must, if they were willing to take on the ostracizing that would come in raising a dark elf baby.” “They do and I know they love me, but working as a hide tanner is boring! I want to be a mercenary and live a life of adventure! I mean I’ve heard stories of how my race is composed of nothing but mercenaries! Just think, a long proud line of brave ancestors that lived a glorious life of excitement! I should be as noble as them!” You almost laugh when hearing how Ulivik has spoken of his race. He truly is out of touch as there is absolutely nothing glorious, proud or noble about them. Even brave is debatable most of the time. “Ulivik, if you really want to be a merc, why not just go to Kenneth’s Rest? He doesn’t give a shit who he hires. Hell, he hires dark elves on a regular basis.” “I would, but uh, I’m not allowed to leave the town…but I know if you were with me, my parents would let me go! So can I please come with you?!” This scenario is just so bizarre; you hardly believe that it’s happening, a dark elf practically begging you to teach him to be a mercenary. The crazy thing about all this is you’re actually considering it. You must finally be suffering from some of the blows you’ve taken to the head in the past. It’s the only explanation. > You take Ulivik with you You decide to humor the boy and agree. Chances are, he’s not going to get permission from his parents anyway and when that happens he’ll be less likely to bother you again. If he does get permission, well it’s not that far to Kenneth’s Rest and you were going there anyway. Plus you’ll have given him the chance he wants and again he’ll be less likely to bother you. “Alright Ulivik, you go ask your parents, but I’m taking you to Kenneth’s Rest and no further. And when we get there, you’re on your own, don’t think that you’re going to be tagging along with me anywhere else.” “Okay! That’s great! I’ll be right be back…uh could you come with me, so they know I’m telling the truth?” “Oh fer…fine.” You follow Ulivik back to his parent’s store which smells heavily of leather. The pair of them are working on some sort of the hide when you both walk in. “Mom! Dad! Mr. Bane said he’d take me to Kenneth’s Rest and teach me to be a mercenary! So can I go now?” “Hey wait I never said I’d teach…” you start to say before Ulivik’s dad interjects his own comments. “Oh is that right? And how do you know that? How do you know he won’t just rob and kill you along some lonely road?” “Or worse!” his mother says. “Hey wait a minute now…” “But this isn’t fair! You said if I could find somebody to teach me, that you’d allow me to go!” Ulivik whines. “Yeah, well we didn’t think you’d actually be successful, let alone get a cold hearted killer like Bane here to agree. Which makes me wonder why he did…” “Trust me, at this point I’m wondering the same thing.” You reply. “Ulivik, why can’t you just be interested in the family business? It’s a more honorable profession than being a mercenary. It’s honest work.” “Yeah and the workin’ man is a sucker! Look at where we live!” “Hey! We get by just fine, and this business has put food in your belly, clothes on your back and a roof over your head! So don’t you dare bad mouth this proud family tradition!” “Yeah, well I’m not really your son anyway! And you’re not my real parents! I hate this place and every here hates me!” Ulivik screams and leaves slamming the door. You’re left in an awkward situation with his parents. “Okay, so I guess that settles that, I’ll just be going now…” you say. “No, you get back here you sonofabitch.” Ulivik’s dad says. “Excuse me?” “I called you a sonofabitch, now if you want to kill me for that you can do it after hearing what I’ve got to say first.” “Heh, okay. It’s been a weird sort of day today anyway, I’ll play.” You say with a smile. “Yeah, well I ain’t playing. Look, I know all about you, and you probably don’t know me at all but I remember your ruthless reputation when you were still in service of the Empire. There was a family that lived down the block from me and my wife. We we’re friends and they even had a couple of children. Children that we would sometimes love to entertain because we couldn’t have any of our own. But this family wasn’t happy with the Empire’s rules so they along with several others protested…” You stop the tanner right there. “Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re going to say, I had them all killed for treason and had their heads put on pikes. Well I was trying to maintain order and I did what I had to do to get the job done. I’m sure this story pales in comparison to others have screamed at me in the past and you don’t even need to make your point about hating me, because I’m used to it anyway. Besides you don’t want your son going to Kenneth’s Rest and I’m certainly not going to drag him along. If anything I’d wish he’d stop looking up to me as some sort of hero and following me around. I was hoping by doing this for him I’d finally be rid of him. So if you don’t mind, I’ll be going now and I’ll also be disappointing you again, by not killing you before I leave.” You turn to leave and that’s when you get another unusual request. “If you take him to Kenneth’s Rest, will you also look after him?” Ulivik’s mother asks. “What?!” “If you want money to do so, we can pay. Just can you look after him for a while at least?” “Okay…now I’m confused. I thought not only did you not want him to go, but that I was also a ruthless bastard that would probably rob and kill him along a lonely road?” “Yeah, we don’t want him to go, and yeah you are a ruthless bastard…but I also know you actually do have some sort of code of honor. You might’ve left the Empire behind, but the regimented way of thinking you have is still there. You wouldn’t bother killing my boy unless you felt he was a direct danger to you, and I think we both know that isn’t the case.” Ulivik’s dad says. “Well that’s the truth.” “The other thing is…we’re not going to be able to stop him. He’s been getting more and more restless about this, and he’s going to want to pursue this career path whether we want him to or not. At this point he’s just going to run away from home and who knows what trouble he’ll get into. (sigh) Maybe it’s just his nature, bein’ a dark elf and all, but for good or ill, me and my wife have taken on the responsibility of raising him. And part of that is making sure he has the survival skills that he’ll need to make it in this world. We can’t teach him that, but you could. Look, like my wife said, we can pay you a good sum just for you teach him the basics, or whatever else is involved, if you need more, I dunno we’ll try to figure out something.” You’re speechless for a moment. Just when you think you’ve seen the worst in people, something like this happens and surprises you. “I’m not sure what you expect me to do. I mean this job isn’t something I can teach like from a book. Most of what he’s going to have to learn is going to be from direct experience. I mean I suppose I could teach him some combat skills, but the rest is going to mainly be up to him.” “Well do what you can, and take this in the meantime.” Uliviki’s mother hands you a small bag. When you look inside, it’s nothing but gold coins. This has to be some of their savings, possibly all of their savings. They must really trust you, if they’ve given you this much. “I’ll do my best. You have my word as an Eternal.” You say and pocket the bag of coins. With those last words you exit the tanner’s store intending to find Ulivik. Fortunately you know he isn’t far. “Ulivik, I know you’re around the corner. Stop sulking, or pouting or whatever teenage angst you’re doing and let’s go.” Ulivik slowly comes out from behind the corner. “You’re taking me with you?” “Yeah, I scared your parents into letting you come with me. Now grab whatever gear you want to take and let’s go before all the good jobs are taken.” Ulivik is completely giddy at this turn of events and runs back into the store to get his stuff. You on the other hand are wondering how the hell you got yourself into this. Then you feel the bag of coins again and remember. On your journey to Kenneth’s Rest, you explain to Ulivik some of the things he should know such as haggling for better prices on jobs and the art of intimidation. You also teach him a few combat moves. He’s a rookie to be sure, but his agility allows him from getting hurt too badly. When you get to Kenneth’s Rest, the place is as busy as always. Ulivik is more than a little distracted by the surroundings, and you have to keep reminding him to stay alert. “Hey stop staring at the harlots and pay attention! Just because fighting isn’t supposed to be allowed here, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. In fact people around here love to start trouble. Don’t stare at anyone in the eye for too long and make sure you don’t bump into anybody. You could either get into a fight, or someone might even try to pick your pocket.” “Okay. Here isn’t the job board that way?” “Job board? Hah. I never use those things. I go straight to the source. Trust me, if you want to get a job that pays well; get to know and make contact with the owners or government officials. Fortunately Kenneth used to work for me at one time, so it was quite easy for me to make contact with him. And when we find him, just keep your mouth shut, and let me do all the talking.” Eventually you find Kennth, he’s as jumpy as ever whenever you first see him. “Sir! I didn’t expect you to be down this way so soon? What can I do for you today?” “Kenneth, will you relax? It’s been what, like ten years now? I’m not your superior officer anymore; you don’t have to keep calling me sir and getting all nervous and shit.” “I know sir, just old habits you know? Who’s this with you?” “This here is Ulivik, and he’s going to be my apprentice for a while.” “Apprentice? Seriously? Never pegged you as the teaching type.” “Right, Kenneth, like all those years of training soldiers in this very fort count for nothing at all.” “No, that’s not what I mean…I just oh I dunno. It’s just odd I guess. He’s a svelk, how come he’s not with his own people?” “That’s a long and unusual story, and one I don’t have time to go into. Besides we’re not here to satisfy your curiosity, we’re here for jobs, but seeing as this is Ulivik’s first time and all, can we get something maybe a little less…lethal?” “Hmm, usually that sort of stuff is on the boards, but I think I got something. Oh! There’s a nest of auravraxes a few miles from here.” “Ugh, more of those furry things? I just wiped out a nest of them a week ago!” “Well that’s all I got that’s on the easy side. I mean I’ve got some other jobs too, but you said this was more for training your apprentice than anything else.” “I can take on a harder task Mr. Bane. I mean I have to learn from experience right?” Ulivik pipes up forgetting that he was supposed to keep his mouth shut. Still, he might have a point. > You take on the easy job Ulivik might think he’s ready, but he’s definitely not. Killing auravraxes might be easy for you, but they’ll be more than enough for him to handle. Anything harder and he may very well be killed in the blink of an eye. Normally this would just be on the job training, but you were sort of paid to look after him for a while at least. “Give us the auravrax nest job.” You say. Ulivik looks a little disappointed, but he doesn’t speak out of turn again. Kenneth proceeds to tell you exactly where the creatures have been spotted in large quantities and the pair of you are on your way. Along the way, you tell Ulivik how he should approach fighting these things and how not to take them lightly as they can easily take an arm off or any other limb if you aren’t careful. He seems to understand the risk. As you get closer to their nest, you begin to encounter the furry fiends. Ulivik slightly freezes up when they spot you and attack. You have to snap him out of it and take up the fighting slack. “Come on kid, move in and attack! This is the moment of truth!” you shout. Fortunately, this motivates him to do just that. Of course after the fight, he’s got a very different view of things now. He’s out of breath, his heart is racing and he’s probably feeling a mix of excitement and fear, or perhaps just fear in his case. “So, is it everything you expected it to be?” you ask. “I…yeah, I mean no. I mean…(pant) that was intense.” “Yeah, well it’s about to get even more intense, we’ve still got a whole bunch more to kill.” The auravrax nest is another typical hole in the ground filled with them. Standard stuff for you, but its Ulivik’s true test. If he can make it through alive and in one piece, he might just have what it takes after all. You let him do most of the fighting, only intervening when it really looks like he’s going to get himself eaten or when you’re directly attacked. After he thinks he’s killed them all, you point out that he should double check the entire dwelling just in case. “What? But we got ‘em all! I mean if any were still alive they would’ve attacked by now.” “Not necessarily. A few of the smarter ones will actually find some place to hide and attack when you think you’re safe and let your guard down. Trust me, you better double check. It might be boring, but this is part of the job and you will do it if you want to stay alive. And while you’re at it bring the bodies of the dead ones back here for skinning. You always need proof and the furs usually fetch a good price. It’s a good way to earn extra money. Off your go, and if I hear any more whining from your apprenticeship is at an end and you truly will be on your own.” Ulivik certainly doesn’t want that, so he obeys what you tell him to do. You can sort of tell his “hero worship” is already starting to wane a bit though, but that’s good. It’ll keep him grounded and show him that this isn’t some glorious profession that he thinks it is. You figure after about a week of this and he’ll probably be ready to go back to wanting to take up his dad’s business or at least considering it. Eventually after all the double checking, skinning and some sleep you head back to Kenneth’s Rest. “I know I asked you this earlier, but it bears repeating. Is it everything you thought it would be?” “Some of it I suppose, I dunno it’s weird. Part of me almost wants to go back to take up my dad’s business.” He says, causing you to smile to yourself at being correct. “Well if you want to get out, the best time to do it is when you’re ahead. If you’re going to stick with it though, I’m going to warn you, my combat training is only going to get tougher.” “Tougher? But you saw me handle myself.” “I saw you nearly get your head bitten off several times if I hadn’t been there to help. And if you think if I’m being mean, you have no idea what being mean really is. MY first training instructor was a sadistic svelk bitch and out of all the people I’ve ever met, she still ranks number one.” “So is this why you agreed to train me? Some sort of revenge then?” Ulivik asks. “Ha ha ha! Is that what you think? If I was going to hold grudges for something like that, I’d be bringing genocide to the svelk race. No, if anything she helped me survive and that’s what I’m trying to do for you, assuming you even want to pursue this path. I’d say you’d better decide what your priorities are between now and by the time we get our payment from Kenneth.” Ulivik is silent for the rest of the way, makes for a nice change. Still, you are wondering if he’s going to let his steadily decreasing opinion of you change his mind about being a merc. Eventually you get back to Kenneth’s Rest which is busy as usual, you also run into another face you haven’t seen in a while, though you weren’t really missing it in the first place. “Well if it isn’t the infamous Bane of Rask, heard you were around.” Eldolith remarks with her small group of svelk milling about behind her. “Eldolith, I notice your little band of cutthroats is getting smaller and smaller. Keep this up and you’ll soon have no more warm bodies to hide behind and actually have to do the fighting yourself.” “And I’ve heard you acquired yourself a new one. What’s wrong, human aging finally catching up with you at last Eternal? Is this him? A svelk? Hmmm he is very young, is he your pleasure boy?” Before you can reply, Ulivik steps up and speaks. “I am a mercenary, like you and the rest of our kind!” This of course causes laughter among Edolith and her men. “You? You’re no mercenary, let alone one of our kind following around a human like some harlot in heat. No, what you are is a poor mockery of what a svelk should be. Now be gone, your mere presence offends me.” Edolith says and turns her back on you both. Ulivik nearly takes the bait, but you intervene and hold him back from getting himself killed. Eldolith and the rest of her group laugh and head to the inn. “Easy, there. Words nothing more. I’m sure you’ve heard worse when you were still working as a tanner.” “Perhaps, but this is different! I’m a mercenary now, not some weakling tanner!” “To most you’re still a snot nosed kid that doesn’t know shit and that would be a correct assessment, especially to a svelk. Now I’m sure harsh words from one of your own kind has filled you with a bruised ego, anger and disappointment, but if you try to challenge her, she’d cut you down before you even knew what was happening, as would any of her men.” “We could take them together!” “We? No, I might be able to take them. You on the other hand would get in my way and get yourself killed. Besides I am here to train you to become a mercenary, not be your personal avenger. Part of this training is learning when to pick your battles. Now I suggest you ignore her words for now, and let us get our payment from Kenneth. Money tends to cheer most up.” Ulivik obeys and follows, then he asks an amusing question. “Is she the svelk bitch you spoke of that trained you?” “Ha ha, no not her. Eldolith pales in comparison. No, she’s just another arrogant svelk merc that likes to do a lot of posturing. She’s actually really insecure about her leadership position. Always has been, even when she was hired by the Empire decades ago, but those are stories for another time.” You and Ulivik soon meet up with Kenneth who gives you your payment. This does cheer up Ulivik a little and soon he’s forgotten Eldolith’s insults. Predictably he spends most of his coin on some strumpet looking for an easy mark, she still gives him a good time though. The next day, Ulivik’s training continues as it does for at least a year after which time you figure he’s ready to go out on his own. He’s still a little reckless for his own good, but you can sense he really does want to be independent. His hero worship of you is gone and he may even dislike you now, but the respect is still there as it always has been. Part of you feels glad that the “job” is over with, but another part of you feels a sense of loss. As strange as it may seem, you started not minding Ulivik’s company. It’s been a long time since you’ve lead anybody into battle or otherwise. Ulivik may have only been one svelk trainee, but it still brought back memories of the “old days”. The old days, back when you had more of a purpose. In some ways training Ulivik gave you a higher purpose than just killing for coin again. You also think back to Eldolith’s words about human aging. Sure they’re meaningless now, but how long can you truly keep up a mercenary life? You are definitely in better shape than most humans your age and barring violence you still probably have several years left, but the future is something you are starting to ponder about. Despite being an Eternal, you ARE still human, and from your own experience, being an Eternal does not make one immortal. Growing “old” is something you never considered, at one time you always figured you’d just die in battle one day. That day may still come, but even you have to admit that the prospect of dying in battle no longer holds the same “appeal” as it once did when you were in the service of the Empire. At one time you also wondered what other skills you had besides killing. Now you see that you haven’t given yourself as much credit as you should have. You have decades of combat experience behind you, experience that you could easily pass on to others if they were willing to pay for the knowledge. You begin to entertain the idea that maybe you should open up some sort of combat training school. The more you think about it, the more the idea appeals to you. You’re going to have to remain a mercenary for quite awhile still as you attempt to gain the coin to get such a place started, and probably still go on jobs even a little afterwards, but you feel like you have a true purpose again. And so you set off with your new goal in mind… > Year 55 After another hard day of training various citizens of Rask, you lie in your bed thinking about how much has changed over the years. Never did you think that you’d be running a real business, though to be honest if it wasn’t for legitimate paranoia on the part of the Rask Alliance, you’d probably be spending all of your time still as a merc, as it stands you’re practically responsible for training the closest thing to an army that Rask has, though it’s probably more of an organized militia. It’ll be the first line of defense if the Eternal Dominion starts to look to this way for expansion. When the ED started re-conquering the old territory of the Empire it was only natural that the towns and villages of Rask started getting worried. They didn’t break away from the Empire only to replace it with something similar or worse. It was just their luck (and yours) that you wanted to become a professional combat instructor. Soon people from all over Rask were coming to see you. You hardly ever have to do any sort of mercenary work anymore and the mayor of Keplavisk is overjoyed by the fact that you set up shop in his town. As for the Eternal Dominion threat, you aren’t sure what to think. There has been no formal declaration of war or even a diplomatic visit to Rask yet, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be, Rask has lots of resources after all. Still, the ED has its hands full still trying to keep everyone in line from the top to the bottom while attempting to gain more holdings. Mass orc migration to Rask are becoming common, even the svelk are more welcome in Rask again. Partly due to the possible need for more mercs if war comes to pass and partly due to dark elves being disliked by the ED, which apparently frowns upon mercenaries (and probably the attitudes of the dark elves in general). You have to hand it to “General” Edgar though, you didn’t think he’d be able to get those chaotic brats calling themselves “eternals” organized, though it sounds like they’re still as sadistic as ever and if the rumors are true, another generation of Eternals are being trained as well. You can’t even imagine what they’re going to be like. If war is coming like everyone thinks it is, you know immediately that you’re probably going to be nominated and begged by the various mayors and council members to be some sort of commander. You aren’t sure if you’d accept the position though you probably will mainly because you don’t want to be bothered moving anymore and you’ll be damned if you’ll live under the rule of some half assed Eternals. Part of you wonders what the hell is going through Edgar’s mind. He seemed more level headed the last time you saw him, like the incident with Kane forced him to mature, but you guess his aspirations for personal glory were just too great to keep suppressed for long. You also wonder about Brenda, she’s the only other old Eternal that was left, and you have no idea if she’s even still alive or serving with Edgar. You get your answer and then some in a few days. Another hard day of training various citizens of Rask and you’re ready to close up shop and then two figures wearing hoods enter. You have flashbacks to fighting the Shadow Guard and you draw your sword. “Hold on! It’s me! Warrick! See?” a familiar voice says and reveals himself from under the hood. The face is much older than you remember and sporting an eye patch, and the hair is now nearly gone. But considering you thought Warrick to be dead, you aren’t completely convinced until the second cloaked figure reveals herself and speaks. “I told you wearing these things was a bad idea. He probably thought we were Shadow Guards!” she says. Her face is also much older and the hair is completely gray, but you definitely know this one is Brenda. Between the pair of them it truly makes you realize how much time has passed since you saw them. “And I told you, we need to keep a low profile, this situation is dangerous to the both of us.” Warrick says. “Warrick back from the dead and Brenda, I was just recently thinking about what had become of you.” “We need to talk to you about Edgar.” Warrick says cutting right to the point. “Yeah I thought so…okay let me lock up and we can talk about this in my quarters.” The first thing you find out is that Warrick is now working for the Felkan Kingdom. He says it’s a long story, but it has its roots in his becoming disillusioned with the Empire much like you did. Warrick also goes on to say that’s one of the reasons why he’s here. Edgar definitely has plans to attack it in the future and the crown hopes to avoid another long and troublesome war by recruiting allies this time. He mentions real Felkan diplomats will probably be arriving in Rask soon to speak with the leaders of the towns, but he was sent to specifically reach out to you, because whether you knew it or not, your reputation here carries weight. As for Brenda, her position is much more dangerous. She is currently serving the Eternal Dominion, (another long story) but is trying to encourage an underground dissident movement. Not really difficult considering how oppressive Edgar’s regime is. It is the hope of the Felkan Kingdom that the ED will wear itself out on keeping down riots and other potential conquests like Rask before it turns its eyes on the Felkan Kingdom. You tell Warrick that he’s probably wasted a trip as the paranoid mentality of the Raskians are already preparing for war with the ED and will have no problem allying with the Felkan Kingdom and that you’ll no doubt be called upon to command the people you’ve been training. Warrick seems relived to hear that, and you and he begin to do a little catching up. Brenda participates as well, though the whole time she seems a little preoccupied. Eventually as the night goes on, Warrick says he must be getting back to report to his superiors. Brenda says that she is not ready to leave as she wishes to speak to you about Roldan and his last days with you. Warrick understands, but warns her that she should not be away for too long so as to arouse suspicion. He would hate to have her sacrifices should lead to her death. “Sacrifices…as if he would know about such things. When the Empire needed him the most what did he do? He ran to the fucking enemy. Now his new masters give him commands and the running lapdog thinks he’s free, but he’s still a slave.” She remarks with distain, before continuing. “Edgar may be an egomaniac with delusions of grandeur like he always was, but he at least tried to keep the Empire together, even if it is in a different form now. He believes in something better, even if he’s not exactly intelligent enough to carry out that idea. And you, you’re worst of them all. You just dropped out altogether and dedicating yourself to nothing, but coin like a fucking svelk. What the hell happened to you? You used be our leader.” “I’m not exactly sure what your point is, but if this all pent up anger at me due to Roldan dying I…” “Don’t you dare fucking mention him! I heard enough of hollow apologies in that damn letter you wrote to me.” “They were Eternals as we all are. Dying in combat is always a possibility for us, I know their deaths weren’t the most glorious, but at the time they died doing something they believed in. I can hardly help that the institution that they believed in, crumbled soon afterwards. I tried like hell to maintain my own belief in the Empire despite having it time after time again tested. Eventually I saw the light when I had to command a bunch of those new eternals while attempting to put down mass riots near the capital. Was leaving the right decision? I don’t know, but it was for ME. The fact is ALL of our lives were nothing but duty and dedication to a corrupt government that deserved none of it. Kane knew that, Gruz knew that, and as much as I still hate them to this day, the Shadow Guard knew that. When the Empire was in its death throes it affected us all differently. I can’t help the fact that you decided to stay loyal and it didn’t work out resulting in you eventually having to capitulate to Edgar later on. At least you and Roldan had an experience that none of us will ever have. You have at least that to cherish.” Brenda is silent for a moment as she takes in your statement. She looks at a ring on her finger, which is obviously still her wedding ring to Roldan. She smiles and then speaks. “You’re right I suppose. You usually were when we all served under you. Even you couldn’t have prevented the Empire from falling, the damage was done long before we came into existence. I guess I just never got over Roldan’s death and had nobody except you to blame since you were the only one still alive. The funny thing is I didn’t start blaming you until I found out you left the Empire. You were always our leader, and it seemed unthinkable that you would leave willingly. You know I think none of us really saw anyone else as their leader except you. It’s probably why Kane wanted you to join him, it’s no doubt why Warrick insisted on reaching out to you and it’s why Edgar sent me…” “Excuse me?” “One of the things you were wrong about and Warrick too. I am not helping him though he still thinks I am. There is no underground resistance, or at least none that matters. Warrick and his Felkan masters think they can undermine the Eternal Dominion, but they are quite wrong. When Edgar first came to me and explained his cause and ideas I realized it was a just and worthy one. I joined in an effort to help with some of the details that Edgar himself is not nearly as skilled at, still he has proven himself to be more charismatic than he once was, at least to the other eternals and that’s who is mainly important. He wants to create a nation where we Eternals are in control, as it should’ve been.” “…so why would he want me for, wouldn’t he consider me an enemy like Warrick?” “No, not like Warrick. While your abandonment did sadden Edgar, he always figured you had a good reason. He never questioned it. And now that you’ve told me your views I see he was right. It’s really quite odd to see how high of regard he holds you. I guess your time with him during Kane’s attempted secession really impacted him.” “Brenda, this is a lot to take in, what exactly are you expecting from me then?” “As Warrick said, your reputation carries weight here and you have the ear of several of the mayors here. Perhaps you could explain to them that even with training that resistance will be useless and that the ED will just slaughter everyone. Better that they should surrender now and have a benevolent overseer such as…you running things.” “And you really think Raskians are going to go for that idea?” “What does it matter? They are going to be conquered eventually anyway. I merely suggest other options to Edgar’s plan, which was to convince you to just come with me where you could take command of a battalion to conquer Rask seeing as you know the place the best.” “Heh, sounds like him. So what was the plan if I refuse altogether? Killing me I suppose?” “Didn’t come up though I even asked him about it, but as I said Edgar really believes that you’ll help us. Perhaps in some way he didn’t want to think about the alternative. I’m guessing that you are considering the alternative?” “Don’t see why I shouldn’t, do you?” “You would have a true purpose again. Serving an idea greater than yourself.” “I have a true purpose now. I’m training others to fight against those that would take their lives. The Raskians don’t want to be ruled over and quite frankly neither do I, let alone by Edgar.” “No! You would be different! You, like myself would be given an equal place in the decision making process! Even the other Eternal don’t get that.” “Yeah, that’s the other thing, I’m loathed to live in a land that considers those new…things, eternals.” “They are much different now, true they still have their sadistic streak, but only towards the non-eternals and who cares about them?” “I’m sure the non-eternals do, and while they may very well be inferior, enough of them can topple any government. We saw it happen, and it’ll happen to you too if you aren’t careful.” “So are you saying you won’t join us?” You get the impression that if you say no, she’s going to attack you and you’ll have to defend yourself. Killing Brenda is something you do not want to do, but lying and saying yes is duplicity you’d rather not engage in. > You say no You didn’t lie to Kane when he wanted you to join him and you aren’t going to lie to Brenda, but you are going to try to reason with her. “Brenda, I didn’t join Kane all those years ago, because his path wasn’t mine and I’m not joining you and Edgar for the same reasons. However I would hope that we don’t end up like me and him did.” “What you think I’m going to try to kill you? No, I doubt if I could by myself. I fear I probably haven’t kept up my combat skills as honed as you have. To be quite honest, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, if you rejected the offer. I guess I’ll give Edgar the bad news, but I know he’s not going to take it well and he’ll definitely attack this place with his army and I doubt if you’ll be spared for old times sake.” “Then you’re going to have to convince him not to. Look, this place is not going to bend to his will. The paranoia and the idea of freedom is stronger here than it has ever been. If you attack Rask, be prepared to suffer considerable losses as I personally will make sure of it. This is my home now. I’m not leaving and I’m not serving another empire either. Even if you win, you will not easily recover from the losses let alone be able to fight the Felkan Kingdom, in fact they will most likely take advantage of the chaos. Now you’ve been in contact with Warrick long enough to know that the Felkan Kingdom is counting on you being disorganized and weak from attacking Rask. If you want to play it smart? Attack them instead and don’t worry about Rask.” “What’s stopping Rask from attacking us if they ally with the Felkan Kingdom?” “They won’t trust me. The Felkan Kingdom can send all the diplomats they want, but the Raskians are ultimately not going to stick their necks out for them.” “And you think Edgar will go for this idea?” “You know what? He’ll go for it, because if he TRULY respects me, he’ll fucking listen to my advice which has never steered him wrong, not to mention I saved his damn life more than once. I’m telling you to tell him, that he needs to consolidate his forces, get his house in order, maybe retake a few other areas of the old Empire and THEN attack the Felkan Kingdom if he absolutely needs to. Rask is just death zone, it didn’t do the Empire any good and they only held on to it for as long as they did because I was here. I say that not as a boast, but as truth. Does Edgar have anyone like me in his army? I doubt it. The hostile inhabitants here didn’t call me the Bane of Rask for nothing. A name, which I’m still called, even by those I’m helping. If he sets an army in these lands, I’ll make sure they’ll start calling me the Bane of Edgar.” Brenda smiles a bit again at your last remark. “You always did have a way with words. I missed that sometimes. Okay, well I guess I’ll go then, to deliver your message.” “Brenda y’know there is another option. You could stay here, or go somewhere else. You don’t need to follow Edgar. You’re fully capable of doing something else with your life.” “Trust me, it’s tempting. I even thought about joining Warrick when he first approached me, but it’s not for me. Warrick’s path to me is one of a traitor, even if I do understand it and your path is one of freedom…something I guess I just can’t comprehend. I still need the structure and hierarchy. I dunno, maybe I just need to be with other likeminded Eternals. None of them are Roldan, but I don’t feel as lonely.” And there it is at last. The real reason why Brenda is following Edgar, you knew it couldn’t be because she blindly believed in his cause. You can’t imagine what is going on in her head and there will be no talking her out of her choice, but you’re glad you won’t have to fight her and hopefully her message to Edgar will get through to him as well. You bid farewell to Brenda, probably for the last time. You go to bed that night, but you don’t really sleep, you just wonder what events the coming months will hold. Months pass and just as Warrick said, diplomats from the Felkan Kingdom visit Rask. As you thought, they get a lot of promises of an alliance and some trade deals, but that’s about it. The general consensus of the Raskians is that they won’t be committing any troops unless war comes directly to their doorsteps. Great, now you just hope that Edgar follows your advice… Year 58 Edgar took your advice, or at least you guess he did. He never attacked Rask. Never even sent anyone, he did however send thousands across the Felkan borders a couple years ago. The war is still going on and you hear it’s even more brutal than the one with the Empire. Edgar has adapted with the times unlike the Empire and is implementing stolen technology from the Felkans. You can only imagine how Warrick is faring and while it is unfortunate, you stopped being their “leader” decades ago and their motives, goals and dreams are their own concerns not yours. And your only concern lately is getting old. Every day you notice new pains in your joints and muscles. You’re slower than you once were and not quite as strong anymore. You wonder how your fellow Eternals feel about getting old, though perhaps due to still being engaged in warfare, maybe they don’t dwell on it as much. Brenda and Warrick will probably expect to die in battle, as for Edgar, the fool probably believes he’ll live forever. You don’t have as many students anymore, as many of the other towns have taken to creating their own combat schools, mostly run by those you taught. Mercenary work is even harder to come by nowadays; thanks to you each town actually has competent militias that can clean out hostiles without much mercenary aid anymore. Indeed they need something to do considering Edgar never attacked Rask. Even the ogre tribes in the far north have settled down. Last you heard, Flog “retired” at one of their primitive villages, a forced wedding to an ogre bride for killing her husband to be. Bet he wishes he’d died with his fellows at Fort Defiance now! Eldolith ended up taking her remaining men to work for the Felkan Kingdom, one of the last mercenary squads to stay in Rask. Ulivik said his goodbyes to his family and you even before the mercenary work dried up. Said he was bored of it and wanted to see more of the world and become an “adventurer.” You think his parents were even less pleased to hear that than when he wanted to be a merc, and you’ve never quite understood the appeal of the wandering life of an adventurer either, but you wished him the best. When he left, he thanked you one more time for taking the time to teach him when nobody else would. You were always glad he got over his resentment of you due to your harsh training. And while it is true you did initially train him for coin and swore an oath to his parents to look after him during that time, it is because of those actions that you discovered a little more about yourself and focused yourself in the direction to open up your combat school. Of course your actions have now changed Rask to an extent that you may have very well put yourself out of a job, but you aren’t worried. You still get students from Keplavisk, so you’ll probably always have a bit of business. Even if you don’t, you’ve been doing some saving over the years. You can only prepare yourself now, for whatever changes might come in the future. > Year 65 You get a knock on the door to which causes you to wonder who would be bothering you at this time of night. You’re more than a little annoyed since you were sleeping. “Go away, I ain’t getting up.” you say from your chair trying to go back to sleep. “Open the fuck up, you useless old man!” you hear from outside and it’s enough to motivate you to answer it and punch out the fool who said it. When you open it however, an unexpected visitor meets you. “Ulivik?” “Yeah, it’s me! Well, aren’t you going to invite me in?” he laughs. “Yeah sure.” You say and the both of you head to your quarters to sit and talk. You still shaking the cobwebs after being awaken from your slumber. “Were you asleep?” “Yeah, what of it?” “Nothing! Just sort of surprised, I mean I know it’s night, but its still pretty early.” “Eh, it’s been kind of a lazy day today, felt like sleeping for most of it.” “You didn’t teach a class today?” “Class? School’s been officially closed for about two years now. I mean I get few people that seek me out looking to increase their skills every once in awhile, but nowadays everyone goes to that new military academy they opened up here.” “Oh, I was wondering what that big new building looming near the edge of town was, so they didn’t offer you a job there?” “Eh, they did, but I didn’t want it. People who I originally trained run it and most of them I didn’t even like when I was teaching them, so I’d rather not have to follow whatever silly guidelines they’ve come up with for that place. Anyway, I sometimes get paid to give speeches on tactics and strategies there. I get by. So where have you been and what brings you back?” Ulivik mentions he mainly returned to when he heard his father had died and that he’s probably going to be around for a while to look after his mother. He then excitedly goes on about his various adventures of exploring ruins, caves and finding treasures and lost trinkets. Not enough to get rich, but he’s not in it for that. You enjoy hearing about it all, it’s not like you really go anywhere or do as much anymore. And as the years go on, you are finding yourself with less and less to do. You sort of thought your school and teaching would occupy your time and that if you got bored of that you could always break it up with a little mercenary work. But both of those options are pretty much closed off to you at this point, at least in Rask. The place is less wild and more peaceful now than it ever was under the Empire. You could move you suppose, but it’s not such a bad life maybe you should just settle in and enjoy your elderly years in relative peace… “..and so then I got my head split open and my entrails eaten by the clawbeast and died. Hey! Are you still with me?” Ulivik asks. “Huh? Yeah you got your entrails eaten and died.” You answer. “Well glad to see you’re still listening.” Ulivik laughs. “Sorry, just a little preoccupied. Anyway, go on.” Ulivik knows something’s up with you, and he’s got a pretty good idea what it is. “Hey, have you ever thought about leaving Rask and joining your old buddies in the Eternal Dominion?” he asks. “Wha…oh I don’t think that’s for me. Besides I only have two there, dunno if one of them is even still alive and I never really was exactly friends with Edgar. Speaking of which did you have much trouble traveling through the ED? I heard they aren’t too fond of svelk there ever since most of your people have been hiring themselves out to the Felkans.” Well as you once pointed out, we’re not really liked anywhere we go, but I never really kept to the populated areas while in the ED so I didn’t have too many problems. However, I did find that dropping your name helped me a few times. You’re sort of known there.” “Huh. Dunno, why I would be, not like I was ever part of the place. Guess Edgar really did look up to me. Unexpected.” “Didn’t he offer you a job too one time?” “Yeah. Don’t think it’s still available though. Like I said, my time serving big governments is over with. I wasted more than thirty years of my life doing it. Not going to waste the remaining years I have left even if it’s a high position of power. Besides, I’m still not sure that I wouldn’t have to kill Edgar if I ever got into an argument with him over something.” “Surely it would be more interesting than sleeping all day.” “Hah, probably. I dunno, I just feel like Edgar’s Eternal Dominion is just mimicking a lot of the old Empire. Sure it’s doing well now, but ultimately it’s going to fall just like the Empire did, so what’s the point?” “Hmm, well you could offer your services to the Felkan Kingdom, I think they could use the help.” “Yeah, no. I’m not into lost causes. Did that before too and saw the results. The Felkan Kingdom could’ve won the war if they didn’t fight so defensively. There were many times early in the war where they should’ve pressed an attack and took territory. Their fate is probably sealed at this point. Only a matter of time, assuming the ED keeps with it’s policy of total conquest, and doesn’t fuck it up. Anyway don’t get me started on how I nearly got dragged into serving on both sides of that conflict.” “Okay, but how about another proposal?” “I’ll bite. What is it?” “Well, as you know I’m going to be here awhile looking after my mother, but I need something to do. Rask still has areas of it that are largely unexplored. I sort wondered if you’d like to come with me on an adventure in this very area.” “Oh? And where would this place be? Most of the places you’re speaking of involve mountains, and as bored as I am, I’m not about to go dragging my ass up a fucking mountain.” “Ha ha, nah not the mountains, though it still might involve a little bit of climbing.” “Okay, so where?” “The Wendigo Hills.” Now there’s name that’s spoken of in only whispers nowadays in Rask. Everyone knows about it and doesn’t speak about it, let alone go near it, from humans to ogres and even the few giants still left. Ever since you wiped them out forty five years ago, there have been little problems from those evil spirits. Years later after you first left Rask you heard the various villages got their holy men together to perform some sort of ritual to make sure none of the spirits managed to ever escape from those cursed hills ever again. Of course every once in a blue moon some unfortunate idiot…usually an adventurer gets himself possessed and no expense is spared in hunting down the creature and destroying it. Now it looks like Ulivik is intent on being that new unfortunate idiot. “Have you lost your fucking mind, because if you haven’t, then you will if you go there and that’s if you’re lucky. I went to that blasted place once, I had a company of soldiers with me and I was in my prime. I barely got out of that place alive and you know what happened to the few soldiers that survived with me? Four of them ultimately committed suicide from their nightmares and the other two got discharged and thrown in the asylum for just going batshit insane. No, I’m not going and if you got any sense, you won’t either. That place does shit your mind. The spirits there are pure evil, and they are not to be trifled with.” "No, I have a remedy for that! Look at these!" Ulivik says and produces two amulets with a faint blue glow. "Let me guess, these things are magical and they're supposed to protect us from getting possessed." "Correct! Even when I was little, I heard there was supposed to be great treasure in those hills. Nobody has ever had the skill to go in there and claim it, but I want to be the first because I truly feel like I'm ready now. You're the about the one who has traveled the most in those hills and survived. You would be a great help and we can even share whatever we find! Come on, it'll be like old times!" "Old" being the key word here. While you were wondering if you were becoming more complacent in your old age, you aren't sure if going to the Wendigo Hills is something you want to do just to prove "you still got it." > You help Ulivik Ulivik may be an accomplished warrior now, but out of all the tales he’s told you about his adventures; he still hasn’t faced anything like the wendigos and he’s going to get himself killed or worse if he goes into this with just the hope of some magic bauble around his neck. As much as you’re loathed to go through this again, you decide to help Ulivik. “Alright I’ll go, but as soon as I think we’re in a shitload of danger that we can’t handle, you better listen to me, because this isn’t going to be the fun adventure you think it’s going to be. Understand?” “Sure, but I really don’t think it’s going to be as bad as all that.” “No, it’ll probably be worse. Now if you don’t mind I’m going to get some sleep and get my mind focused on this fool’s task.” “Fool’s task? You’re coming with me.” “Yeah, which says more about my own foolishness than yours, because you don’t know any better. I know we got these magic amulets or whatever, but these… things are going to try to get inside your head and if they succeed, it’s all over. If that happens to you, I won’t hesitate to put a sword through your head, and I expect you to do the same.” “Ha ha you’d kill me so easily?” Ulivik laughs, but you’re in no mood. “Hello, I don’t believe we’ve met…by the gods have you remembered nothing of the stories of my past? Of course I’d fucking do it so easily! I’ve killed innocent men and their entire families just because they disagreed with how the Empire was doing things, hell I even killed one of my Eternal brothers because of it. Wouldn’t be anything to kill someone who was turned into a mindless beast even if…” You stop yourself right there. “Even if what?” Ulivik asks. “Even if…he’s too stupid to see this is a really bad idea! Anyway, I’m ranting and I’m tired. I’m going to bed, you can let yourself out. And don’t say that I don’t have to go, because I’m already committed now. I gave you my word as an Eternal.” Ulivik knows when you say something like that, you’re being serious, so he just nods and tells you he’ll be by tomorrow morning before leaving. As for you, you head off to bed with a myriad of thoughts going on in your head. “Can’t believe I nearly said he was like a son to me. What the fuck am I thinkin’ about? Better get your head in the game old man, because wendigos are going to thrive on that. They live on weakness.” You mumble before drifting off to sleep. The next morning you and Ulivik set off for the infamous Wendigo Hills. Along the way, you go on about your own major conflicts with them, even when they were originally just thought to be people infected with lycanthropy like the rest of the old barbarian tribes around Rask. Ulivik listens to you in fascination like he did when he was much younger as you’ve never spoken of your experience with the wendigos before to him except in passing. It’s good to know he’s still listening. “So after that battle, no wendigo has ever left those hills?” Ulivik asks. “Eh, we had a couple that still managed to snag bodies and kill a few people before being brought down and exorcised by some of the local hedge wizards we recruited later, but that was mainly due to people idiotically still going into the hills in the first place. Sort of like what we’re doing.” You say. “But if they’re spirits can’t they just float about possessing people?” “You’d think so, but for whatever reason they can’t leave these the hills in pure spirit form, they need a body. That’s why when they’re killed they immediately try to hop into a new one or else they get pulled back to the hills. Dunno why, and I don’t think anyone’s bothered to learn the history either. Everyone’s just glad they were deprived of nearly all of their bodies by a certain Eternal decades ago.” “Ha ha, but what about animals? Couldn’t they just possess animals and leave the hills that way?” “Always wondered that myself, but again if they could I’d imagine they’d still be a major threat. Besides, when I traversed those hills I didn’t see a single animal, not one, of course I assumed that they probably ate them all. The wendigo are basically consumption and hunger in its purest form. They aren’t big thinkers in the scheme of things and it’s fortunate that they never organized past their barbarian tribal hosts.” “Sounds like it, but if they are all spirits as you say, then we shouldn’t experience any physical combat at all and with these amulets and our steel trap minds we should be fine! We might even find some sort of ancient lore about how the wendigos came to be tied to those hills!” “Well you’re as optimistic as ever. I suppose that’s good, it’ll keep your mind better prepared when the wendigos try to oppressively crush your free will. Y’know, now that I think about it, I think that’s what partially saved me. My mind was so dedicated to the Empire back in those days, the wendigos were trying to crush something that wasn’t really my own to begin with.” “And now?” “Now? I got my impenetrable cynicism to protect me, which I’ll definitely put more stock in than this ridiculous magical amulet that’ll undoubtedly fail to do anything.” “Looks like you’re off to a good start with your cynicism.” The after a couple days of travel, you eventually make it to the base of the Wendigo Hills. The markings and warning signs line stretch up, down and all the way around as far as you know. No real physical barriers of course, but even those dumb ass ogres that can’t read know better than to pass the line. Of course they usually knew better to begin with, which proves that they’re smarter in that respect. You take a deep breath and step past the markings and make your way up the forested hills. It’s at this point your amulet starts to glow a brighter blue, Ulivik claims “that’s how you know that it’s working!” Great. Still, you don’t hear any sinister whispers yet, but there is still that dead silence you remember. As if nothing living is here. Ulivik, mentions that he found a crude and well worn map of some of the Rask area during his trip through Eternal Dominion lands and wants to explore some ruins that are clearly marked on it. You mention you haven’t been here in a long time, but you don’t remember ever seeing any, so you can’t be as of much help as he might’ve thought. Ulivik says he doesn’t care though, he’s just glad to have you along. “That map is probably old Empire. Like really old Empire, and much might’ve changed since then. It could also be inaccurate to begin with.” “Yeah, that’s true, but we might as well find out. It’s the journey, not necessarily the destination that’s important! That’s what adventuring is all about.” “Funny, I always thought it was the misguided hope of finding lots of loot and the avoidance of a real job.” You reply. “That’s just a bonus.” Ulivik comments and you allow yourself to chuckle. Never thought you’d do that while in this cursed place. After a half hour or so of walking, you start to get an uneasy feeling of being watched. You mention this to Ulivik and he says he’s getting that impression too. You ask him if he’s hearing anything, but he says he isn’t except the snow crunching under foot. Neither are you, maybe the amulets are working, but it’s obvious the presence of the wendigos is near. Another hour of travel and you and Ulivik see something you didn’t expect. “Do you see that? That’s a rabbit! I thought you said nothing was living here?” Ulivik says. “When I came through I didn’t see a living creature, so I just assumed there wasn’t. I guess there is though.” You reply. “Maybe the wendigo aren’t here anymore and everyone has been scared of this place for decades for no reason.” “I wouldn’t go that far. Something is definitely here and just because we’re seeing rabbits doesn’t mean it’s safe. It just means animals must not be suitable hosts for them.” “Well…hey that rabbit it’s hopping towards us. Hmm, a little larger than average and hopping towards people is rather unusual behavior for a ra…” Before Ulivik can finish, his leg is leaped upon and viciously attacked by the rabbit. After some hollering from the surprise, you grab the little furry beast and break its neck. You toss its lifeless body in the snow while Ulivik examines the bite marks in his pants “Fuck, that thing chewed through my pant leg and broke the skin! You never mentioned killer rabbits on your travel to here.” “That’s because I didn’t encounter any, and I doubt if that was really a rabbit anymore. It would seem that animals CAN be hosts after all, they just need a human one or something similar to leave the hills. Anyway, we should really get out here, there are more coming.” “What? So? I’m sure we can handle a few overgrown possessed rabbits.” Ulivik says still preoccupied with his very minor wound. “A few, sure, but how about hundreds of them?” you say and draw his attention to literally that number popping up all around you. The glaring red eyes of hundreds of possessed bunnies are upon you and their herbivore buck teeth have now been replaced with the toothy fangs of a carnivore hungry for flesh. And they look like they haven’t tasted a bi-ped in a long time… > You fight your way back home You slash out at the nearest rabbits and shout at Ulivik that you need to get the hell out of here. “What?! We can’t run from rabbits! We’ve both fought worse than this!” Ulivik shouts chopping down a few more of them. “First of all they aren’t just rabbits, they’re rabbits with wendigos in them. Second of all rabbits are notorious for breeding at an alarming rate. Chances are there are even more bunny bodies for the wendigos to take control of even if we manage to kill all of the ones here. Running from rabbits might not exactly be the bravest thing, but constantly being assaulted by a horde while going deeper into enemy territory and trying to find something that might not even be there anymore is just stupid.” You say hacking at more of them and shaking off the ones jumping on you. “…agh! Oh all right!” Ulivik shouts and the pair of you manage to cut a path through the rabbit mass and make a break for it.” You and Ulivik run chopping up rabbits along the way as the “little” nippers are hopping after you and occasionally leaping on you and get a few bites in. This might all be very comical if your life wasn’t in mortal danger. “SHIT!” Ulivik shouts when a group of rabbits catch up and pile on one of his ankles, biting and clawing at it. He falls down face first into the snow and you immediately get rid of the rabbits around Ulivik who is doing likewise. “Get off! Get off!” he shouts killing them. While you’re kneeling down trying to help, one of the rabbits jumps on your back and with his teeth takes the amulet chain and leaps off with it. “What the…get that little furry bastard!” you shout when you feel it lifted from around your neck, but it’s too late the rabbit has run off with it and the rest of the horde is coming. “Come on we gotta get outta here!” Ulivik says and the pair of you resume your escape. Unfortunately you’re starting to hear the whispers again. The multitude of them, though one in particular stands out. “Welcome back Bane of Rask, we’ve been waiting for you…I’VE been waiting for you.” A voice in your head says. “Shit, it’s starting, they’re getting inside my head!” you say stomping on another rabbit. “Just ignore it like you did last time!” Ulivik exclaims. “Easy for you to say! Argh dammit! My fucking head!” “You’ve gotten old Bane…you should just give up and let me take over, you’ll be able to lifetimes…” the voice says. “Shut up.” “Why do you resist, you’re too weak now. Just submit and this will all go easier…” Between the spiritual assaults on your mind and Ulivik’s chewed up ankle the pair of you aren’t exactly running the fastest anymore. You have to stop many times to fight your way through, but it may be true that luck favors the fool and the pair of you have been mighty foolish for doing this in the first place, and eventually you see the end in sight. “There! The markers! If we get past those we’ll be fine!” Ulivik speaks too soon however as it is at this point several hundred white rabbits who were blending in with the snow open their eyes and reveal the glowing red pin points of evil within them. They sit between you and the closest escape and a larger gray rabbit comes bounding out of a nearby hole in the ground. It’s nearly the size of a bear. You fought a gray wendigo before; you would guess this is the same one. Their leader and the main one that’s been taunting you the whole time. “Give up Bane! Your time on this earth is over!” “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” “Become meat then! I’ll just use your svelk friend since you seem to care for him so much!” You hadn’t heard it yet even with the assault on your head, but all of the rabbits in unison make that awful howling noise that you tried so hard to forget about. Even Ulivik with his magical protection winces at the noise. The battle is then joined as they run at you. You feel bites and slashes of several little claws and teeth breaking your skin. In a way the physical pain helps since its counter acting the mental attack still going on in your head. The wendigo leader clumsily leaps towards you even stepping on his own smaller brethren. You roll away and give him a couple chops to his head, succeeding in lopping off part of his ear. This only serves to anger him further and he does a short rush into you, knocking you down. Other rabbits immediately take advantage of the situation and hop on top you and start to bite. You’re busily trying to get them off of you and then the leader smacks you in the head with his oversized claws. You fall into the snow again, this time in a daze. “You call yourself an Eternal…such arrogance of an incredibly short lived race. WE have more right to be known as eternals and I will make you suffer for your hubris!” you hear the voice say and then several long fangs sink into the lower part of your leg as the leader attempts to eat you alive. Now you aren’t exactly sure at this point due to the extreme physical pain, but you believe the wendigo leader has most likely bitten straight through your leg and if it hasn’t been completely severed yet, it’s only hanging on by broken bone and torn skin. You yell out and muster all your remaining strength, sit up and bring your sword down onto the wendigo leader’s head. Blood spurts everywhere as you twist it into his skull and your own leg is still chewed on in the death throes of the wendigo’s host. Ulivik, who was being overwhelmed by the rest of the rabbits, finally manages to get to you and runs his own sword into the side of the gray wendigo several times causing it to finally release its fangs from your mangled leg. You quickly remove it from the wendigo’s mouth and see a good portion of your leg completely destroyed and bleeding profusely. Despite this fact, you’re determined that you are NOT going to die today. You didn’t get this far just to be eaten by some possessed fucking rabbits. Ulivik helps you up and you hop as fast as you can towards the markers leaving a trail of gore in your wake. When you fall, you crawl as fast as you can instead. Ulivik tries to carry you, but you tell him to just keep the rest of the rabbits off of the pair of you. Exhausted and severely injured you manage to make it past the safety barrier, causing the attack to completely cease and you no longer hear the whispers in your head any longer. The rabbits all stare at you from afar. You’re only about ten feet away and you can feel their hatred all the way from here. Ulivik drags you further away from the wendigo area until you tell him to stop. “Hey! Stop it, I’m not a fucking rag doll!” you shout. “I need to do something about this leg and fast, I’m beginning to feel really dizzy over here. Make a fire and quickly!” One quick look and you know there’s no way it can be saved. It’s only hanging on as it is. You make the decision and chop through the remaining bone and muscle that was still connecting it to the rest of your body. This part doesn’t hurt as it’s mostly already disconnected from any nerves anyway. The following part of applying your heated sword to stop the bleeding hurts like hell though. Dizzy and weakened from this whole ordeal, you see that you’ve stopped the bleeding and fall unconscious mumbling “Don’t leave my leg here.” A couple days later you finally wake up, though you almost weren’t expecting to. “Ah, you’re up, good. Your new leg is finished; I had the wood carver make one for you after I dragged your body back to town. The people here were shocked to see you laid out in such a manner. They thought you were dead at first.” “Ugh, I sort of wish I was…I’m hardly the supreme warrior I once was, if I’m getting my leg chewed off by oversized rabbits. I’m just not quite ashamed enough to kill myself over it, my will to survive is just too strong I guess.” “It’s my fault anyway, I should’ve went into that area myself…” “Oh no. Don’t start doing that. Blaming yourself for what MIGHT have happened is a losing battle. Trust me, I’ve had that same battle. I’m an adult I make my own decisions and I chose to go with you, besides if I hadn’t have come you would’ve had all those little killer wendigo bunnies all over your ass instead and knowing you, you would’ve still insisted on heading to those ruins and gotten yourself killed in the process.” “Ha ha, maybe so.” “(Sigh) fucking rabbits...you know they must’ve been cannibalizing themselves in those forms for years. Well the wendigos might not have killed me, but I’m sure my reputation is. Ah fuck it, if I get a few snickers from the locals for losing my leg to a damned rabbit, it’s not the worst thing in the world.” “Yeah, about that…I sort of lied. I told everyone you saved my life from a ten-foot wendigo that had taken host in an ogre turning it into a complete abomination with rows of teeth and that it was planning to organize a way for the rest of its fellows to leave the barrier.” “What?!” “I know you don’t like to lie, but I just thought it sounded a lot more impressive. I mean you know the situation was really dangerous and I know the situation was really dangerous, but everyone else would just think…rabbits? And then laugh like you said.” “First of all, I’m not actually opposed to lying, I just don’t do it when I respect the person enough not to do it to them. Anyway, I guess you were just concerned about my reputation. I won’t argue the point and it’s done now, besides it’s not like anyone’s going to confirm it by going up there. Hopefully I just don’t get anymore snot nosed kids following me around town begging me to train them because those days are long over.” You laugh. You and Ulivik both talk for a few more hours before he eventually leaves to go see his mother. You take the opportunity to inspect your new wooden leg and try it on. It’s going to take some time getting used to, but most major changes do and you’ve survived those. > Year 75 As the years creep up on you and despite missing part of your leg, you still feel don’t feel in any ill health. It’s mostly just aches and pains from your more physical years catching up with you. After the leg incident though, you took that permanent position at the Keplavisk military academy as a strategy instructor, though nowadays it’s looking like it’ll become the Rask military academy. Rask is in the process of becoming a “real nation” rather than just a collection of allied towns. You don’t really know all the politics of it, but the main guiding force was justified Raskian paranoia again. Ever since the Eternal Dominion’s war with the Felkan Kingdom grinded to a halt, the ED has been making overtures to Rask to join them in the veiled form of threats rather than any sort of diplomatic alliance agreements. While starting a war on two fronts is always a bad idea you’re guessing Edgar needs the resources that Rask has to make his final push to conquer the Felkans once and for all. You’re also guessing he’s intent on ignoring your advice of not attacking Rask too, you’re just surprised he held out this long. You’re not really worried about it if it comes to war. The Raskians may not have the unnaturally bred “eternals” like the ED does, but they’re trained well enough to make the cost very high if they are in invaded. You should know, you trained most of them. You hear a knock on your door and you slowly make your way over. “Mail for you Mr. Bane.” A delivery girl says to you when you open up the door. You toss a gold coin to her and take your letter. At first you figure it’s from Ulivik, no doubt telling you about whatever grand adventure he’s on this time. The last time he was here, he was for his mother’s funeral. He kept his composure for the most part, but it still wasn’t a good time for him. He didn’t say it in so many words, but he did say that you were the only family he had left. You didn’t follow up, but the pair you said your goodbyes both of you knowing that you had that bond similar to that of a father and son. But this letter isn’t from Ulivik, it’s mysteriously labeled as from “a friend.” Considering you’ve never really had any, you’re baffled to as who it could be. When you open it you see that it’s from Edgar, several pages in fact. You sit down to read all of it. The beginning of it hopes that the letter has found you as he wants you to take in all of what he has to tell you. He begins by stating that he’s dying. He mentions his health is deteriorating by the day and he doesn’t know how much longer he has left. His “successors” are likely to start a war with Rask soon after his death, it’s only due to their respect that they don’t. The same way his respect for you caused him not to. The majority of the letter explains that he wants you to understand why he did what he did and how he wished that you had joined him. He says the incident with Kane never left him and how if he’d only been there to listen to him and help him more, none of that might’ve happened. Perhaps even the Empire would’ve survived. (You doubt that though, it would’ve just taken longer) When the Empire was in its last days he saw how chaotic the new eternals were and realized they needed guidance and a purpose much like Kane did. He always thought that you’d do it, but you left leaving him as the only person willing to. He says it was very difficult and while they ultimately they fell in line, but without the purpose of conquest they wouldn’t stay that way for long. So he began forging a new empire as it were, with the eternals as the leaders as it always should’ve been. The newer generations of eternals were better disciplined, as he made sure their training went very much the same way yours did. Still, they are much more arrogant that he ever was. They believe it is their destiny to rule the world and he believes that he’s set something in motion that even he is no longer in control of. “Ah Edgar, always getting yourself in over your head.” You say to yourself. The rest of the letter mentions that you two are the last of the old Eternals. Warrick died in Battle of Yaquan when the ED successfully took the city from the Felkans eleven years ago. He says that while he still considered him a traitor to side with former enemies like that, he took no pleasure in his death and heard he died well. Brenda died four years ago, but she apparently had become increasingly withdrawn years before that, to the point where she no longer even participated in the major decisions concerning the ED. She was found dead by her own hand with a note stating that she wished to be burned and her ashes scattered near Fort Glory like she did with her husband Roldan. This wish was of course granted. Edgar’s last portion of the message also states that he has a last request as well, he wants you to come to the Eternal Dominion as he would like to see you again. He knows that you’ve had your differences and you weren’t ever friends, but right now, you’re the closest thing he’s got. He’s already made the arrangements to let you through and will have an escort waiting for you on the Rask/ED borders for the next few days. He also has placed a separate message with his seal on it, so that they may identify you. The message ends there. > You take a trip to the Eternal Dominion If Edgar wants to see you, then why not? If he had anything sinister planned for you like having his escort kill you when you arrive. Besides you’re old and you didn’t worry about dying in combat when you were twenty, you’re not going to start worrying about it now. You pack a few things for your trip and get your horse ready since you know Rask carriages don’t travel through ED territory anymore. It’s hard getting on damn a horse ever since losing part of your leg, but you’re not about to walk the way there! When you reach the border the next day, you see a group of soldiers camped out in the distance beyond it. You see an ED Flag flying so you assume that’s the escort Edgar told you about. When you approach several of the soldiers point muskets at you…heh you sometimes forget of how technology has marched on. They immediately ask for identification and you state your name and hand them the message with Edgar’s seal on it. The leader, who is a blonde woman with fair features reads through it and greets you. “Greetings sir. My apologies on the initial caution, but we had to be sure. I am Sergeant Kalah, and I am to escort you to Prime Eternal Edgar. I am told he will be most pleased to see you, though I must admit I was also curious about you myself. Many are, as the Prime Eternal has mentioned you several times in high regard.” “Heh, yeah I’ve heard about that before. Never get used to it though. Well let’s get on our way then.” Sergeant Kalah is very talkative on your trip, and goes on about great the ED is, and how it provides for all. She sounds very much like you did a long time ago. You’re a little curious about something so you interrupt her propaganda speak. “Tell me sergeant, you and your men are all on the youngish side, what generation of eternal are you exactly?” “Me sir? I am fourth! We all are, we are newest eternals to serve directly in combat and I’m proud to say that we are so far the first to have natural night vision!” “You can see in the dark eh? That must come in pretty handy. Wish I’d had that back in the day.” “Oh yes, the glorious Eternal Dominion was able to fight those treacherous svelk mercenaries that the cowardly Felkans employ on equal footing when we were deployed!” “Hmm, any other natural abilities?” “The fourth generation also regenerates better than the third even though they were the first to have such abilities. Under the right circumstances we can potentially regenerate a lost limb.” “Now THAT is something I definitely would’ve liked to had!” you say knocking on your wooden leg. “Still, with all these advantages I’m sort of surprised you haven’t utterly crushed the Felkans yet.” “I believe we would, even with our resource shortages. Most of us do! We have the Felkans on the run, I do not understand why we have not pressed forward with our attacks, I long to be in combat again…but it is not my place to question the Prime Eternal’s decisions, I’m sure he has a good reason…” Wow, that line sounds familiar. “Well all I can say is, sometimes the political aspects of a nation are more complicated than the wars.” You reply Sergeant Kalah doesn’t argue, but just says that you may have more wisdom about such things. Kalah and you continue to speak with each other about various subjects and she’s courteous the entire time, in fact she’s downright friendly. You definitely weren’t expecting that and it’s sort of a nice change of pace. While traveling through a town, a couple of pathetic peasants are being beaten in the streets by another soldier, though his uniform seems to be a different color even though it has the same markings. “You there! Why are you beating these peasants! What crime have they committed?” she demands. “Ma’am! These peasants were caught stealing food.” “Well you shouldn’t be beating them just for that…you should be chopping their hands off!” Kalah says, followed by pleas and screams of the peasants. “…yes ma’am…alright get over here you lousy thieving scum, let’s make this quick!” the soldier says drawing his sword and striking out at the screaming peasant. However, in his enthusiasm to follow orders he ends up hacking off the peasant’s entire arm. More screaming arises from the female peasant who rushes to what is probably are dying husband. Sergeant Kalah rolls her eyes. “I swear never let a human do an Eternal’s job…men shoot all three of them.” “No wait!” the soldier says before several musket balls hit his body. The two peasants are also killed instantly. The onlookers of this event duck and hide, but the sergeant makes her point known. “Listen up! This town is now on watch! If I hear of anymore thievery or other crimes, I’ll be back to burn down this whole town! And for those of you in charge of keeping the law around here, I better see more competence displayed in the future than I saw today or I’ll have you drawn and quartered! You are ALL servants of the Eternals! We are your masters, we know better than you and you will OBEY.” And there it is, the ruthless arrogance. It would appear than Kalah’s friendliness extends only to other Eternals. Can’t say you’re surprised though. You all move on and eventually you reach the capital and the palace where Edgar resides. Funny how this is the first time you’ve ever been to the palace after all those years serving the Empire. “This is where we part company, but I must say I hope we meet again in the future, it was an honor to meet you.” “And it was a pleasure to meet you too…” you say and then you decide to give her a big fat thrill. “…and if I may say if we have more eternals as pretty and commanding as you, we will no doubt rule for thousands of years to come.” “…I…oh…well thank you sir!” she stutters and smiles before riding off. New guards accompany you into the palace and through it. You’ve never been in here before, so you do a little sight seeing as you walk. Eventually you reach the royal bedroom. An older woman is sitting on a chair outside sobbing. She looks regal. Did Edgar get married? You’ve never heard of their being any sort of “queen” of the ED you always assumed he was just ruling alone. Another older muscular man with a stern expression is standing nearby pacing. When you arrive, he frowns even more. “Oh so you decided to come after all. A pity.” He says. “Well, I certainly can say your military is politer than the royalty around here.” “That is probably because they believe all the stories Prime Eternal Edgar says about you. Such is the foolishness of youth.” “And who the hell are you exactly?” “Hmm, not surprised a deserter like you doesn’t remember me. My name is Rissok and I served under you during the Empire riots. I saw you kill my friend in cold blood. A true eternal who served with honor!” “Oooooh now I remember. You and your other buddy were looting houses while Felding was attempting to rape a woman. Yeah, real honor there.” You say and Rissok gets in your face. “Don’t mock me! You are only here because the Prime allows it! If it were up to me, I would have you labeled as a traitor and have you killed!” “Well nothing is stopping you. You got the guards here, Edgar’s too sick to prevent it and I’ve only got one leg, so I’d say it’s a fair fight.” You remark. “Stop it! Stop it please! My Edgar is dying! Can’t we have one moment without murder and killing?” the woman sobs. At this point Rissok storms off without another word, the guards stick around and tell you that you may enter at any time. Before you do, you have to ask the woman who she is because you get the impression she isn’t an eternal. You just sense it. “My apologies, I didn’t know that Edgar was even married. What title do you go by, queen? Emperess?” “(sniff) No, I’m none of those things. I’m just Eva. Sometime Lady Eva if we’re being formal, but I am not married to Edgar nor am I common knowledge to a majority of the public, I am merely his companion of sorts. He could not marry me, for concern of marrying a non-eternal might weaken his position of leadership. I understood this from the beginning though and do not blame him for it. Eternals have more wisdom on these matters.” You’re pretty sure that isn’t necessarily true, but you understand Edgar’s rationale and Eva seems to genuinely be in love with him. You ask her if she wants to come in with you, but she says she has already said her goodbyes and that he wants to see you alone when you arrive. Having no other questions, you enter the bedroom. When you see Edgar, he’s lying in his bed and looking completely unwell. He’s pale and his face has a gaunt looking appearance. You can’t even believe this is the same man you fought along side at Fort Defiance. “Edgar? ” “(wheeze) ah…you came…I knew you would. (cough cough) You’re also looking much better than I am…minus a leg I see. How did that happen?” “Long story…but you! How the hell did you get this sick?! Other than physical pains racking my body, I’ve never been actually sick. I didn’t think we could!” “Well…after you’ve suffered five or six assassination attempts all laced with various poisons, it tends to fuck up your body a lot quicker…anyway there isn’t much time left I doubt if I’ll make it through the night (cough cough) you’ve read my letter I take it?” “Yes.” “Well then you know that when my death comes, anarchy will ensue.” “Don’t you have a successor? What about Eva?” “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we can’t have children. We Eternals seem to be sterile or barren. I’ve had people try to look into this problem, but they haven’t come up with anything yet. It would seem what makes us superior, takes away our ability to reproduce. Maybe it’s nature balancing itself out, so that we don’t take over the world like so many of our younger eternals seem to want to do.” “Hmm, I have to admit, I always wondered why all those strumpets I slept with during my merc days never came back with little bundles demanding support.” You reply. “Anyway (cough cough) I’ve drawn up official forms for the person I think could be a successor…” You already know where Edgar is going with this. “Oh no…don’t say that’s why you dragged me out here…Edgar they aren’t going to listen to me! I haven’t even been living in the ED since it’s formation!” “That doesn’t matter! You’re still an Eternal! One of the first and probably the best of us! (wheeze cough) They’ll listen more likely than you believe, why do you think I always spoke so highly of you? The younger ones will most likely follow without question, your major opposition will probably be the second generation…but there aren’t too many of them left, you could easily purge them all if you had to.” Sheesh, you haven’t even agreed to anything and Edgar’s already suggesting mass purges. It’s like you never left the Empire. “Please…I tried to build something here…(cough) I tried to do what you might’ve done if only you’d taken the reins of power, but I can’t go on any longer. The only person who can guide the Eternal Dominion into something worthier is you. I’m asking you not just as former comrade in arms…but as a (cough cough) a fellow Eternal…” Edgar’s trying to guilt you into this mess, but it’s just not going to work. This plan of his is doomed to fail and you know it. Every high ranking Eternal is probably going to be vying for power and that idiot Rissok will probably the worst of the lot before Edgar’s body is even cold. Still, this is his dying request. You could always accept his proposal just to appease him on his deathbed. > You lie and tell him you'll accept the position This is his last request, what could it hurt to reassure him on his deathbed? It’s not like he’s going to know after he dies. “Okay, Edgar. I’ll take it, but I’m still skeptical that I’ll do as good a job as you.” You say to Edgar who manages to smile. “Thank you, but as I have said, you will find that you will have more support than you think. Now then, let us talk, I wish to know what you’ve been up to. So many years have passed and my own time is short.” You oblige Edgar and try to tell him as much as you can about what you’ve been doing since you first left the Empire. He seems to enjoy your tales while interjecting a few of his own, but he mostly just listens as the hours pass his life tether to this world begins to slip away. Finally he has stopped listening completely and died. You sit in silence for a moment to say goodbye to your former comrade in arms…no, a brother. You are about to leave and that’s when Rissok comes barging in with a couple of guards and Eva. “Is he dead yet?” Rissok asks. “Yes, and show some fucking respect.” You say. “Respect? I have been serving the Prime with distinction for years! What have you done, except turn your back on the eternal name! You’re no better than that traitor Warrick! Worse, you think to come here to steal the throne, well not on my watch!” At this point Rissok pulls out a flintlock pistol and points it at you. “Steal the throne? Hah! I wouldn’t want to run this asylum even if I was begged to, which I was.” “I knew it! I knew the Prime wanted to see you for such a reason!” “Yeah, and I said I wasn’t interested, so you can just calm the hell down…” “Rissok stop it! Is your lust for power so overwhelming that you can’t even contain yourself even in the presence of my dead loved one’s body?” Eva shouts tearfully. “Shaddup, ya human harlot!” Rissok says and smacks Eva in the face with the flintlock, dropping her to the floor. You take this opportunity to rush at Rissok, but unfortunately you aren’t as fast as you used to be. Rissok manages to step backward just in time to shoot you in the chest. You fall to the ground mortally wounded. “And so ends the first generation. You had your time in the sun, now it is time for the seconds to take over where you failed. Guard, finish this relic off.” “Nah, we’re not following you either.” A guard says and raises his own musket to Rissok and blows his head off. Rissok’s body collapses on to the floor next to you, blood, skull and brains leaking all over the place. Staring at Rissok’s headless body, you chuckle in between your dying gasps before finally passing from this world.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If Edgar wants to see you, then why not? If he had anything sinister planned for you like having his escort kill you when you arrive. Besides you’re old and you didn’t worry about dying in combat when you were twenty, you’re not going to start worrying about it now. You pack a few things for your trip and get your horse ready since you know Rask carriages don’t travel through ED territory anymore. It’s hard getting on damn a horse ever since losing part of your leg, but you’re not about to walk the way there! When you reach the border the next day, you see a group of soldiers camped out in the distance beyond it. You see an ED Flag flying so you assume that’s the escort Edgar told you about. When you approach several of the soldiers point muskets at you…heh you sometimes forget of how technology has marched on. They immediately ask for identification and you state your name and hand them the message with Edgar’s seal on it. The leader, who is a blonde woman with fair features reads through it and greets you. “Greetings sir. My apologies on the initial caution, but we had to be sure. I am Sergeant Kalah, and I am to escort you to Prime Eternal Edgar. I am told he will be most pleased to see you, though I must admit I was also curious about you myself. Many are, as the Prime Eternal has mentioned you several times in high regard.” “Heh, yeah I’ve heard about that before. Never get used to it though. Well let’s get on our way then.” Sergeant Kalah is very talkative on your trip, and goes on about great the ED is, and how it provides for all. She sounds very much like you did a long time ago. You’re a little curious about something so you interrupt her propaganda speak. “Tell me sergeant, you and your men are all on the youngish side, what generation of eternal are you exactly?” “Me sir? I am fourth! We all are, we are newest eternals to serve directly in combat and I’m proud to say that we are so far the first to have natural night vision!” “You can see in the dark eh? That must come in pretty handy. Wish I’d had that back in the day.” “Oh yes, the glorious Eternal Dominion was able to fight those treacherous svelk mercenaries that the cowardly Felkans employ on equal footing when we were deployed!” “Hmm, any other natural abilities?” “The fourth generation also regenerates better than the third even though they were the first to have such abilities. Under the right circumstances we can potentially regenerate a lost limb.” “Now THAT is something I definitely would’ve liked to had!” you say knocking on your wooden leg. “Still, with all these advantages I’m sort of surprised you haven’t utterly crushed the Felkans yet.” “I believe we would, even with our resource shortages. Most of us do! We have the Felkans on the run, I do not understand why we have not pressed forward with our attacks, I long to be in combat again…but it is not my place to question the Prime Eternal’s decisions, I’m sure he has a good reason…” Wow, that line sounds familiar. “Well all I can say is, sometimes the political aspects of a nation are more complicated than the wars.” You reply Sergeant Kalah doesn’t argue, but just says that you may have more wisdom about such things. Kalah and you continue to speak with each other about various subjects and she’s courteous the entire time, in fact she’s downright friendly. You definitely weren’t expecting that and it’s sort of a nice change of pace. While traveling through a town, a couple of pathetic peasants are being beaten in the streets by another soldier, though his uniform seems to be a different color even though it has the same markings. “You there! Why are you beating these peasants! What crime have they committed?” she demands. “Ma’am! These peasants were caught stealing food.” “Well you shouldn’t be beating them just for that…you should be chopping their hands off!” Kalah says, followed by pleas and screams of the peasants. “…yes ma’am…alright get over here you lousy thieving scum, let’s make this quick!” the soldier says drawing his sword and striking out at the screaming peasant. However, in his enthusiasm to follow orders he ends up hacking off the peasant’s entire arm. More screaming arises from the female peasant who rushes to what is probably are dying husband. Sergeant Kalah rolls her eyes. “I swear never let a human do an Eternal’s job…men shoot all three of them.” “No wait!” the soldier says before several musket balls hit his body. The two peasants are also killed instantly. The onlookers of this event duck and hide, but the sergeant makes her point known. “Listen up! This town is now on watch! If I hear of anymore thievery or other crimes, I’ll be back to burn down this whole town! And for those of you in charge of keeping the law around here, I better see more competence displayed in the future than I saw today or I’ll have you drawn and quartered! You are ALL servants of the Eternals! We are your masters, we know better than you and you will OBEY.” And there it is, the ruthless arrogance. It would appear than Kalah’s friendliness extends only to other Eternals. Can’t say you’re surprised though. You all move on and eventually you reach the capital and the palace where Edgar resides. Funny how this is the first time you’ve ever been to the palace after all those years serving the Empire. “This is where we part company, but I must say I hope we meet again in the future, it was an honor to meet you.” “And it was a pleasure to meet you too…” you say and then you decide to give her a big fat thrill. “…and if I may say if we have more eternals as pretty and commanding as you, we will no doubt rule for thousands of years to come.” “…I…oh…well thank you sir!” she stutters and smiles before riding off. New guards accompany you into the palace and through it. You’ve never been in here before, so you do a little sight seeing as you walk. Eventually you reach the royal bedroom. An older woman is sitting on a chair outside sobbing. She looks regal. Did Edgar get married? You’ve never heard of their being any sort of “queen” of the ED you always assumed he was just ruling alone. Another older muscular man with a stern expression is standing nearby pacing. When you arrive, he frowns even more. “Oh so you decided to come after all. A pity.” He says. “Well, I certainly can say your military is politer than the royalty around here.” “That is probably because they believe all the stories Prime Eternal Edgar says about you. Such is the foolishness of youth.” “And who the hell are you exactly?” “Hmm, not surprised a deserter like you doesn’t remember me. My name is Rissok and I served under you during the Empire riots. I saw you kill my friend in cold blood. A true eternal who served with honor!” “Oooooh now I remember. You and your other buddy were looting houses while Felding was attempting to rape a woman. Yeah, real honor there.” You say and Rissok gets in your face. “Don’t mock me! You are only here because the Prime allows it! If it were up to me, I would have you labeled as a traitor and have you killed!” “Well nothing is stopping you. You got the guards here, Edgar’s too sick to prevent it and I’ve only got one leg, so I’d say it’s a fair fight.” You remark. “Stop it! Stop it please! My Edgar is dying! Can’t we have one moment without murder and killing?” the woman sobs. At this point Rissok storms off without another word, the guards stick around and tell you that you may enter at any time. Before you do, you have to ask the woman who she is because you get the impression she isn’t an eternal. You just sense it. “My apologies, I didn’t know that Edgar was even married. What title do you go by, queen? Emperess?” “(sniff) No, I’m none of those things. I’m just Eva. Sometime Lady Eva if we’re being formal, but I am not married to Edgar nor am I common knowledge to a majority of the public, I am merely his companion of sorts. He could not marry me, for concern of marrying a non-eternal might weaken his position of leadership. I understood this from the beginning though and do not blame him for it. Eternals have more wisdom on these matters.” You’re pretty sure that isn’t necessarily true, but you understand Edgar’s rationale and Eva seems to genuinely be in love with him. You ask her if she wants to come in with you, but she says she has already said her goodbyes and that he wants to see you alone when you arrive. Having no other questions, you enter the bedroom. When you see Edgar, he’s lying in his bed and looking completely unwell. He’s pale and his face has a gaunt looking appearance. You can’t even believe this is the same man you fought along side at Fort Defiance. “Edgar? ” “(wheeze) ah…you came…I knew you would. (cough cough) You’re also looking much better than I am…minus a leg I see. How did that happen?” “Long story…but you! How the hell did you get this sick?! Other than physical pains racking my body, I’ve never been actually sick. I didn’t think we could!” “Well…after you’ve suffered five or six assassination attempts all laced with various poisons, it tends to fuck up your body a lot quicker…anyway there isn’t much time left I doubt if I’ll make it through the night (cough cough) you’ve read my letter I take it?” “Yes.” “Well then you know that when my death comes, anarchy will ensue.” “Don’t you have a successor? What about Eva?” “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we can’t have children. We Eternals seem to be sterile or barren. I’ve had people try to look into this problem, but they haven’t come up with anything yet. It would seem what makes us superior, takes away our ability to reproduce. Maybe it’s nature balancing itself out, so that we don’t take over the world like so many of our younger eternals seem to want to do.” “Hmm, I have to admit, I always wondered why all those strumpets I slept with during my merc days never came back with little bundles demanding support.” You reply. “Anyway (cough cough) I’ve drawn up official forms for the person I think could be a successor…” You already know where Edgar is going with this. “Oh no…don’t say that’s why you dragged me out here…Edgar they aren’t going to listen to me! I haven’t even been living in the ED since it’s formation!” “That doesn’t matter! You’re still an Eternal! One of the first and probably the best of us! (wheeze cough) They’ll listen more likely than you believe, why do you think I always spoke so highly of you? The younger ones will most likely follow without question, your major opposition will probably be the second generation…but there aren’t too many of them left, you could easily purge them all if you had to.” Sheesh, you haven’t even agreed to anything and Edgar’s already suggesting mass purges. It’s like you never left the Empire. “Please…I tried to build something here…(cough) I tried to do what you might’ve done if only you’d taken the reins of power, but I can’t go on any longer. The only person who can guide the Eternal Dominion into something worthier is you. I’m asking you not just as former comrade in arms…but as a (cough cough) a fellow Eternal…” Edgar’s trying to guilt you into this mess, but it’s just not going to work. This plan of his is doomed to fail and you know it. Every high ranking Eternal is probably going to be vying for power and that idiot Rissok will probably the worst of the lot before Edgar’s body is even cold. Still, this is his dying request. You could always accept his proposal just to appease him on his deathbed. > You tell the truth and decline You didn’t lie to Kane when he asked you to join him. You didn’t lie to Brenda when she asked you to join the Eternal Dominion And you aren’t going to lie to Edgar now. It might not be what he wants to hear, but it’s what he’s going to hear. “Edgar, I’m not accepting this position. First of all it’s not realistic despite what you want to believe and I think deep down you know that. Second of all, if I wanted the reins of power as you say, I would’ve taken them a long time ago. Did I ever think about it? Sure, but I came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t lead to anywhere good…and given your condition I’d say I was half right. I say half right, because it is apparent that you did gain a loving wife out it, or whatever she is to you.” Edgar is silent while you continue. “And while I don’t say my own path was any better, it was ultimately mine and it’s one I intend to finish whatever the future may hold for it. Edgar, don’t worry about what you accomplished and if it’ll last. Just be proud of it now and spend your last moments with your wife. That’s who you need to be concerned about.” Edgar hacks and coughs up blood and spits it into a nearby bucket and struggles to breathe, but manages to answer you. “Very well…you’ve made your point. And you’re probably right. You usually were. (wheeze) Bring my…my wife in. I do wish to spend the last moments with her…and farewell…my brother.” “Farewell Edgar.” You say with a nod and leave. You step outside and tell Eva that Edgar wants to spend his remaining time left with her. She seems happy with this idea though of course still upset. She runs in and one of the guards says he will escort you out. On the way out, you run into Rissok in the halls and once again he gets into your face. “Leaving again are we? Just as well you aren’t welcome here anyway. In fact I’d suggest you make it quick. As soon as Edgar’s breathes his last breath I’m going to make a lot of changes around here.” “You’re saying you’re going to be in charge after Edgar?” “Of course! Others might say they are, but they’ll be silenced soon enough, just like all traitors will be. I am the only one qualified to run this nation! “Hm, well…we can’t have that.” you say and with a quick motion you pull out your dagger and stab Rissok in the neck. Blood spurts out like a fountain when you pull it out and Rissok gurgles clutching his throat attempting to curse you the entire time. You pretty much expected to get your head blown off by the guard standing next to you, but he just stood there and did nothing. “I had a feeling you were going to do that.” He says in an almost bored tone. “How old is that dagger anyway? That design was outdated even before I was born. We use a much lighter weight metal now that allows a for a smoother cut.” “Still gets the job done. So I’m guessing by me being still alive, you have no objections with his death?” “Feh, you could’ve killed him in front of the entire army and nobody would’ve lifted a finger. He was an asshole and I know I wouldn’t have followed him even if the entire Eternal Dominion depended on it. Besides, we third generation eternals are more fit to run things than any of the seconds. Just glad you didn’t decide to stick around, would’ve hated to have to kill a legend.” “Well if you ever decide to go to war with Rask, you might still get your chance.” You say and the pair of you leave Rissok’s body behind in the corridor as you exit the palace. A carriage takes you back to the border where a horse is supplied to you to make the rest of journey home. And you are certainly glad to get back. It’s certainly been a strange few days for you, but then you’re use to strangeness going on in your life. A couple days later you get the news that Edgar has died and that the new leadership of the Eternal Dominion as of now is uncertain. Rask of course is still fully expecting war to come their way, but you suspect that probably other than a few skirmishes, most of the fighting will be within the ED itself, or pushing ahead against the Felkan Kingdom. You also realize that you really are the last one left now. Kane, Roldan, Gerald, Warrick, Brenda and Edgar all gone. The thought saddens you and you’re reminded of the phrase Gruz told you as he died. “You’ll outlive everyone…” It looks like it’s come true at last. Oh sure there still are all the newer eternals around, but you were the first to be the perfect Empire soldiers in the misguided hope that you could save it. A project that failed utterly for its leaders. You think about some of the other Eternals in your class that didn’t even make it past training, or the few like Cyrus that were transferred to the Shadow Guard. You also heard there was a group of eternals that came before you, though all of them died in training and never even made it into the field while the Empire was still “perfecting” their plan. You wonder if all of you had made it and kept together as a separate unit, would it have made a difference? Who knows? You wonder if you’ll even be remembered as the years go by. Not just years or decades, but centuries. Edgar tried to create something to last and while he’ll probably have the best chance out of everyone in your group, ultimately history may just list him as a footnote as some obscure ruler. As for the rest of you, you’ll be forgotten. At best, you may have the “honor” being brought up in tall tale by drunkards and bards in taverns, which you can live with, but you’d like the rest of your old friends… no, your old brothers and sister to be remembered. That’s when you get the idea. You shall write you memoirs. Maybe nobody will read them or care, but what the hell, you need something to occupy your time in your twilight years. You’ve got a lot of it after all. Grabbing a quill and some parchment you begin to write. You want to get as much down as you can, but of course a lot of history has passed and you’re having a little difficulty of where to start. “Damn, I should’ve done this a lot sooner…oh yeah…might as well start with her.” Mistress was her name, and that was about the only thing I ever knew about her. Oh that and the fact that she was a sadistic svelk bitch that helped trained me and my bothers and sister to be killers. Not just killers though, Eternals. This is our story.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 75 As the years creep up on you and despite missing part of your leg, you still feel don’t feel in any ill health. It’s mostly just aches and pains from your more physical years catching up with you. After the leg incident though, you took that permanent position at the Keplavisk military academy as a strategy instructor, though nowadays it’s looking like it’ll become the Rask military academy. Rask is in the process of becoming a “real nation” rather than just a collection of allied towns. You don’t really know all the politics of it, but the main guiding force was justified Raskian paranoia again. Ever since the Eternal Dominion’s war with the Felkan Kingdom grinded to a halt, the ED has been making overtures to Rask to join them in the veiled form of threats rather than any sort of diplomatic alliance agreements. While starting a war on two fronts is always a bad idea you’re guessing Edgar needs the resources that Rask has to make his final push to conquer the Felkans once and for all. You’re also guessing he’s intent on ignoring your advice of not attacking Rask too, you’re just surprised he held out this long. You’re not really worried about it if it comes to war. The Raskians may not have the unnaturally bred “eternals” like the ED does, but they’re trained well enough to make the cost very high if they are in invaded. You should know, you trained most of them. You hear a knock on your door and you slowly make your way over. “Mail for you Mr. Bane.” A delivery girl says to you when you open up the door. You toss a gold coin to her and take your letter. At first you figure it’s from Ulivik, no doubt telling you about whatever grand adventure he’s on this time. The last time he was here, he was for his mother’s funeral. He kept his composure for the most part, but it still wasn’t a good time for him. He didn’t say it in so many words, but he did say that you were the only family he had left. You didn’t follow up, but the pair you said your goodbyes both of you knowing that you had that bond similar to that of a father and son. But this letter isn’t from Ulivik, it’s mysteriously labeled as from “a friend.” Considering you’ve never really had any, you’re baffled to as who it could be. When you open it you see that it’s from Edgar, several pages in fact. You sit down to read all of it. The beginning of it hopes that the letter has found you as he wants you to take in all of what he has to tell you. He begins by stating that he’s dying. He mentions his health is deteriorating by the day and he doesn’t know how much longer he has left. His “successors” are likely to start a war with Rask soon after his death, it’s only due to their respect that they don’t. The same way his respect for you caused him not to. The majority of the letter explains that he wants you to understand why he did what he did and how he wished that you had joined him. He says the incident with Kane never left him and how if he’d only been there to listen to him and help him more, none of that might’ve happened. Perhaps even the Empire would’ve survived. (You doubt that though, it would’ve just taken longer) When the Empire was in its last days he saw how chaotic the new eternals were and realized they needed guidance and a purpose much like Kane did. He always thought that you’d do it, but you left leaving him as the only person willing to. He says it was very difficult and while they ultimately they fell in line, but without the purpose of conquest they wouldn’t stay that way for long. So he began forging a new empire as it were, with the eternals as the leaders as it always should’ve been. The newer generations of eternals were better disciplined, as he made sure their training went very much the same way yours did. Still, they are much more arrogant that he ever was. They believe it is their destiny to rule the world and he believes that he’s set something in motion that even he is no longer in control of. “Ah Edgar, always getting yourself in over your head.” You say to yourself. The rest of the letter mentions that you two are the last of the old Eternals. Warrick died in Battle of Yaquan when the ED successfully took the city from the Felkans eleven years ago. He says that while he still considered him a traitor to side with former enemies like that, he took no pleasure in his death and heard he died well. Brenda died four years ago, but she apparently had become increasingly withdrawn years before that, to the point where she no longer even participated in the major decisions concerning the ED. She was found dead by her own hand with a note stating that she wished to be burned and her ashes scattered near Fort Glory like she did with her husband Roldan. This wish was of course granted. Edgar’s last portion of the message also states that he has a last request as well, he wants you to come to the Eternal Dominion as he would like to see you again. He knows that you’ve had your differences and you weren’t ever friends, but right now, you’re the closest thing he’s got. He’s already made the arrangements to let you through and will have an escort waiting for you on the Rask/ED borders for the next few days. He also has placed a separate message with his seal on it, so that they may identify you. The message ends there. > You write a letter back to Edgar While Edgar may not have any ill will towards you, you just aren’t sure about his subjects. You decide it wouldn’t be the best idea to go deep into Eternal Dominion territory, but Edgar does deserve a letter back, so you begin to write. When you’re finished with the letter, the next day you have a professional letter carrier take care of it with your instructions to where it is suppose to be sent. Hopefully it gets to Edgar. As the days pass into weeks, you receive the news that Edgar has died and that the Raskians are all concerned that war with the ED may come soon. You aren’t really concerned about such things, but you do feel a little bad that you didn’t visit Edgar now. You hope he got your letter in time, but you guess you’ll never know. It feels odd knowing that you’re the last eternal left from the “original” group. The rest of your days are spent mostly going about your business. War never comes to Rask as the Eternal Dominion seems to descend into civil war after Edgar’s death. There are some changes in Rask society, but you just find yourself with less and less to keep yourself occupied. Still, you do enjoy the visits from Ulivik whenever he has the time. Year 101 During one of Ulivik’s visits, you finally lose the battle you’ve successfully been fighting for over a century and death at last takes you peacefully in your sleep. The day after your death Ulivik finds you. After his own short immediate morning period, he makes the arrangements to have your body burned as requested. He then takes your ashes to a high hill and scatters them to the winds. “Rask may not have originally been your home, but it became your home. And now you’re part of it forever.” He says as his final words to you. While never remembered on a large scale, tall tales about you pop up in taverns in Rask from time to time of various things you did or didn’t do and Ulivik would always speak fondly of you whenever he was asked about his own past.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ulivik may be an accomplished warrior now, but out of all the tales he’s told you about his adventures; he still hasn’t faced anything like the wendigos and he’s going to get himself killed or worse if he goes into this with just the hope of some magic bauble around his neck. As much as you’re loathed to go through this again, you decide to help Ulivik. “Alright I’ll go, but as soon as I think we’re in a shitload of danger that we can’t handle, you better listen to me, because this isn’t going to be the fun adventure you think it’s going to be. Understand?” “Sure, but I really don’t think it’s going to be as bad as all that.” “No, it’ll probably be worse. Now if you don’t mind I’m going to get some sleep and get my mind focused on this fool’s task.” “Fool’s task? You’re coming with me.” “Yeah, which says more about my own foolishness than yours, because you don’t know any better. I know we got these magic amulets or whatever, but these… things are going to try to get inside your head and if they succeed, it’s all over. If that happens to you, I won’t hesitate to put a sword through your head, and I expect you to do the same.” “Ha ha you’d kill me so easily?” Ulivik laughs, but you’re in no mood. “Hello, I don’t believe we’ve met…by the gods have you remembered nothing of the stories of my past? Of course I’d fucking do it so easily! I’ve killed innocent men and their entire families just because they disagreed with how the Empire was doing things, hell I even killed one of my Eternal brothers because of it. Wouldn’t be anything to kill someone who was turned into a mindless beast even if…” You stop yourself right there. “Even if what?” Ulivik asks. “Even if…he’s too stupid to see this is a really bad idea! Anyway, I’m ranting and I’m tired. I’m going to bed, you can let yourself out. And don’t say that I don’t have to go, because I’m already committed now. I gave you my word as an Eternal.” Ulivik knows when you say something like that, you’re being serious, so he just nods and tells you he’ll be by tomorrow morning before leaving. As for you, you head off to bed with a myriad of thoughts going on in your head. “Can’t believe I nearly said he was like a son to me. What the fuck am I thinkin’ about? Better get your head in the game old man, because wendigos are going to thrive on that. They live on weakness.” You mumble before drifting off to sleep. The next morning you and Ulivik set off for the infamous Wendigo Hills. Along the way, you go on about your own major conflicts with them, even when they were originally just thought to be people infected with lycanthropy like the rest of the old barbarian tribes around Rask. Ulivik listens to you in fascination like he did when he was much younger as you’ve never spoken of your experience with the wendigos before to him except in passing. It’s good to know he’s still listening. “So after that battle, no wendigo has ever left those hills?” Ulivik asks. “Eh, we had a couple that still managed to snag bodies and kill a few people before being brought down and exorcised by some of the local hedge wizards we recruited later, but that was mainly due to people idiotically still going into the hills in the first place. Sort of like what we’re doing.” You say. “But if they’re spirits can’t they just float about possessing people?” “You’d think so, but for whatever reason they can’t leave these the hills in pure spirit form, they need a body. That’s why when they’re killed they immediately try to hop into a new one or else they get pulled back to the hills. Dunno why, and I don’t think anyone’s bothered to learn the history either. Everyone’s just glad they were deprived of nearly all of their bodies by a certain Eternal decades ago.” “Ha ha, but what about animals? Couldn’t they just possess animals and leave the hills that way?” “Always wondered that myself, but again if they could I’d imagine they’d still be a major threat. Besides, when I traversed those hills I didn’t see a single animal, not one, of course I assumed that they probably ate them all. The wendigo are basically consumption and hunger in its purest form. They aren’t big thinkers in the scheme of things and it’s fortunate that they never organized past their barbarian tribal hosts.” “Sounds like it, but if they are all spirits as you say, then we shouldn’t experience any physical combat at all and with these amulets and our steel trap minds we should be fine! We might even find some sort of ancient lore about how the wendigos came to be tied to those hills!” “Well you’re as optimistic as ever. I suppose that’s good, it’ll keep your mind better prepared when the wendigos try to oppressively crush your free will. Y’know, now that I think about it, I think that’s what partially saved me. My mind was so dedicated to the Empire back in those days, the wendigos were trying to crush something that wasn’t really my own to begin with.” “And now?” “Now? I got my impenetrable cynicism to protect me, which I’ll definitely put more stock in than this ridiculous magical amulet that’ll undoubtedly fail to do anything.” “Looks like you’re off to a good start with your cynicism.” The after a couple days of travel, you eventually make it to the base of the Wendigo Hills. The markings and warning signs line stretch up, down and all the way around as far as you know. No real physical barriers of course, but even those dumb ass ogres that can’t read know better than to pass the line. Of course they usually knew better to begin with, which proves that they’re smarter in that respect. You take a deep breath and step past the markings and make your way up the forested hills. It’s at this point your amulet starts to glow a brighter blue, Ulivik claims “that’s how you know that it’s working!” Great. Still, you don’t hear any sinister whispers yet, but there is still that dead silence you remember. As if nothing living is here. Ulivik, mentions that he found a crude and well worn map of some of the Rask area during his trip through Eternal Dominion lands and wants to explore some ruins that are clearly marked on it. You mention you haven’t been here in a long time, but you don’t remember ever seeing any, so you can’t be as of much help as he might’ve thought. Ulivik says he doesn’t care though, he’s just glad to have you along. “That map is probably old Empire. Like really old Empire, and much might’ve changed since then. It could also be inaccurate to begin with.” “Yeah, that’s true, but we might as well find out. It’s the journey, not necessarily the destination that’s important! That’s what adventuring is all about.” “Funny, I always thought it was the misguided hope of finding lots of loot and the avoidance of a real job.” You reply. “That’s just a bonus.” Ulivik comments and you allow yourself to chuckle. Never thought you’d do that while in this cursed place. After a half hour or so of walking, you start to get an uneasy feeling of being watched. You mention this to Ulivik and he says he’s getting that impression too. You ask him if he’s hearing anything, but he says he isn’t except the snow crunching under foot. Neither are you, maybe the amulets are working, but it’s obvious the presence of the wendigos is near. Another hour of travel and you and Ulivik see something you didn’t expect. “Do you see that? That’s a rabbit! I thought you said nothing was living here?” Ulivik says. “When I came through I didn’t see a living creature, so I just assumed there wasn’t. I guess there is though.” You reply. “Maybe the wendigo aren’t here anymore and everyone has been scared of this place for decades for no reason.” “I wouldn’t go that far. Something is definitely here and just because we’re seeing rabbits doesn’t mean it’s safe. It just means animals must not be suitable hosts for them.” “Well…hey that rabbit it’s hopping towards us. Hmm, a little larger than average and hopping towards people is rather unusual behavior for a ra…” Before Ulivik can finish, his leg is leaped upon and viciously attacked by the rabbit. After some hollering from the surprise, you grab the little furry beast and break its neck. You toss its lifeless body in the snow while Ulivik examines the bite marks in his pants “Fuck, that thing chewed through my pant leg and broke the skin! You never mentioned killer rabbits on your travel to here.” “That’s because I didn’t encounter any, and I doubt if that was really a rabbit anymore. It would seem that animals CAN be hosts after all, they just need a human one or something similar to leave the hills. Anyway, we should really get out here, there are more coming.” “What? So? I’m sure we can handle a few overgrown possessed rabbits.” Ulivik says still preoccupied with his very minor wound. “A few, sure, but how about hundreds of them?” you say and draw his attention to literally that number popping up all around you. The glaring red eyes of hundreds of possessed bunnies are upon you and their herbivore buck teeth have now been replaced with the toothy fangs of a carnivore hungry for flesh. And they look like they haven’t tasted a bi-ped in a long time… > You fight your way to the ruins You’ve come this far, no sense in running back home now especially not from rabbits, even if they are possessed by wendigo spirits. “Come on let’s get to that ruin of yours, hopefully we’ll be less out in the open there!” you shout slashing out at the nearest bunch of bunnies. “It should be nearby, this way!” The pair of you run chopping up rabbits along the way as the “little” nippers are hopping after you and occasionally leaping on you and get a few bites in. This might all be very comical if your life wasn’t in mortal danger. After about fifteen minutes of this, you’re still practically waist deep in rabbits and no closer to your goal. You’re starting to regret your initial decision. “Ulivik, what the fuck man? I though you said it was close by?!” “It is! It is! I just need to look at my map again!” Ulivik says fumbling with his map. “Ulivik we don’t have time for all that! We’re getting surrounded, and like normal rabbits they seem to have multiplied severely. They’re going to wear us down by attrition if this keeps up.” “Hold on I, agh!” White rabbits, which were blending into the snow, suddenly pop up and bite at the legs and ankles of you and Ulivik. This causes Ulivik to fall to his hands and knees in the snow as they continue their attack. “Get off! Get off!” he shouts killing them, unfortunately one the rabbits jumps on his back and with his teeth takes the amulet chain and leaps off with it. “Ulivik no! Your amulet! We need to get the fuck outta here now!” “Arrrrgh! My head feels like it’s going to explode! Shut up! Shut up!” Ulivik yells. The mental assault has already begun and you tell Ulivik to quickly try to think about other things and drown out the wendigo voices, he’s obviously in pain though. In the meantime you’re attempting to drag him back the way you came while still fighting off rabbits. More and more of the ferocious furballs leap on to you and Ulivik, and sure enough your own amulet chain is eventually broken off as well. “Welcome back Bane of Rask, we always knew you’d come back.” You hear in your head and then a gray rabbit the size of a bear comes bounding out of a hole in the ground. It is at this point, the wendigos make their awful howl in unison. Ulivik screams in pain and you’re not feeling so great yourself, but you refuse to be beaten by an overgrown rabbit. You quickly run over to the wendigo leader and hack at its head, putting out one of its eyes. The beast roars and succeeds in smacking you to the ground with its claws. “Foolish mortal! You cannot hope to win this battle! Give up now and let me take over…” You ignore the taunts of the wendigo leader, you ignore the whispers of the wendigos’ mental assault, you ignore the countless bites into your flesh from their hosts. You just focus on one thing. Killing that gray sonofabitch. You roll out of the way the leader’s attack and shove your sword in his side and then using your dagger you put out his other eye. Blind and still enraged he clumsily tries to lash out against you with his claws again, but once again you dodge and pulling your sword of his side, you shove it into his head this time and twist it back and forth making sure it cuts through skull, brains and everything else. “You haven’t won…” you hear in your head while stomping on some nearby rabbits still biting at your ankles. Ulivik is staggering towards you with a trail of his own dead rabbits in his wake. “Ulivik, come on we still need to get outta here, before the leader regroups with a new body!” you say and grab at Ulivik to help pull him towards you. Ulivik stares at you blankly for a moment, and then his demeanor changes to a less friendly one. Your heart sinks knowing what has happened, and you try to let go, but his own grip becomes very tight as his nails dig into your flesh. “I told you, you couldn’t win.” In Ulivik’s body, the wendigo is much quicker than you and manages to knock your sword out of your hand and then knock you to the ground. You scramble for your weapon, but you feel a kick to your head followed by a couple of stomps to it. Bloody and dazed, you lose consciousness before you are made into the wendigo’s long awaited meal.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 65 You get a knock on the door to which causes you to wonder who would be bothering you at this time of night. You’re more than a little annoyed since you were sleeping. “Go away, I ain’t getting up.” you say from your chair trying to go back to sleep. “Open the fuck up, you useless old man!” you hear from outside and it’s enough to motivate you to answer it and punch out the fool who said it. When you open it however, an unexpected visitor meets you. “Ulivik?” “Yeah, it’s me! Well, aren’t you going to invite me in?” he laughs. “Yeah sure.” You say and the both of you head to your quarters to sit and talk. You still shaking the cobwebs after being awaken from your slumber. “Were you asleep?” “Yeah, what of it?” “Nothing! Just sort of surprised, I mean I know it’s night, but its still pretty early.” “Eh, it’s been kind of a lazy day today, felt like sleeping for most of it.” “You didn’t teach a class today?” “Class? School’s been officially closed for about two years now. I mean I get few people that seek me out looking to increase their skills every once in awhile, but nowadays everyone goes to that new military academy they opened up here.” “Oh, I was wondering what that big new building looming near the edge of town was, so they didn’t offer you a job there?” “Eh, they did, but I didn’t want it. People who I originally trained run it and most of them I didn’t even like when I was teaching them, so I’d rather not have to follow whatever silly guidelines they’ve come up with for that place. Anyway, I sometimes get paid to give speeches on tactics and strategies there. I get by. So where have you been and what brings you back?” Ulivik mentions he mainly returned to when he heard his father had died and that he’s probably going to be around for a while to look after his mother. He then excitedly goes on about his various adventures of exploring ruins, caves and finding treasures and lost trinkets. Not enough to get rich, but he’s not in it for that. You enjoy hearing about it all, it’s not like you really go anywhere or do as much anymore. And as the years go on, you are finding yourself with less and less to do. You sort of thought your school and teaching would occupy your time and that if you got bored of that you could always break it up with a little mercenary work. But both of those options are pretty much closed off to you at this point, at least in Rask. The place is less wild and more peaceful now than it ever was under the Empire. You could move you suppose, but it’s not such a bad life maybe you should just settle in and enjoy your elderly years in relative peace… “..and so then I got my head split open and my entrails eaten by the clawbeast and died. Hey! Are you still with me?” Ulivik asks. “Huh? Yeah you got your entrails eaten and died.” You answer. “Well glad to see you’re still listening.” Ulivik laughs. “Sorry, just a little preoccupied. Anyway, go on.” Ulivik knows something’s up with you, and he’s got a pretty good idea what it is. “Hey, have you ever thought about leaving Rask and joining your old buddies in the Eternal Dominion?” he asks. “Wha…oh I don’t think that’s for me. Besides I only have two there, dunno if one of them is even still alive and I never really was exactly friends with Edgar. Speaking of which did you have much trouble traveling through the ED? I heard they aren’t too fond of svelk there ever since most of your people have been hiring themselves out to the Felkans.” Well as you once pointed out, we’re not really liked anywhere we go, but I never really kept to the populated areas while in the ED so I didn’t have too many problems. However, I did find that dropping your name helped me a few times. You’re sort of known there.” “Huh. Dunno, why I would be, not like I was ever part of the place. Guess Edgar really did look up to me. Unexpected.” “Didn’t he offer you a job too one time?” “Yeah. Don’t think it’s still available though. Like I said, my time serving big governments is over with. I wasted more than thirty years of my life doing it. Not going to waste the remaining years I have left even if it’s a high position of power. Besides, I’m still not sure that I wouldn’t have to kill Edgar if I ever got into an argument with him over something.” “Surely it would be more interesting than sleeping all day.” “Hah, probably. I dunno, I just feel like Edgar’s Eternal Dominion is just mimicking a lot of the old Empire. Sure it’s doing well now, but ultimately it’s going to fall just like the Empire did, so what’s the point?” “Hmm, well you could offer your services to the Felkan Kingdom, I think they could use the help.” “Yeah, no. I’m not into lost causes. Did that before too and saw the results. The Felkan Kingdom could’ve won the war if they didn’t fight so defensively. There were many times early in the war where they should’ve pressed an attack and took territory. Their fate is probably sealed at this point. Only a matter of time, assuming the ED keeps with it’s policy of total conquest, and doesn’t fuck it up. Anyway don’t get me started on how I nearly got dragged into serving on both sides of that conflict.” “Okay, but how about another proposal?” “I’ll bite. What is it?” “Well, as you know I’m going to be here awhile looking after my mother, but I need something to do. Rask still has areas of it that are largely unexplored. I sort wondered if you’d like to come with me on an adventure in this very area.” “Oh? And where would this place be? Most of the places you’re speaking of involve mountains, and as bored as I am, I’m not about to go dragging my ass up a fucking mountain.” “Ha ha, nah not the mountains, though it still might involve a little bit of climbing.” “Okay, so where?” “The Wendigo Hills.” Now there’s name that’s spoken of in only whispers nowadays in Rask. Everyone knows about it and doesn’t speak about it, let alone go near it, from humans to ogres and even the few giants still left. Ever since you wiped them out forty five years ago, there have been little problems from those evil spirits. Years later after you first left Rask you heard the various villages got their holy men together to perform some sort of ritual to make sure none of the spirits managed to ever escape from those cursed hills ever again. Of course every once in a blue moon some unfortunate idiot…usually an adventurer gets himself possessed and no expense is spared in hunting down the creature and destroying it. Now it looks like Ulivik is intent on being that new unfortunate idiot. “Have you lost your fucking mind, because if you haven’t, then you will if you go there and that’s if you’re lucky. I went to that blasted place once, I had a company of soldiers with me and I was in my prime. I barely got out of that place alive and you know what happened to the few soldiers that survived with me? Four of them ultimately committed suicide from their nightmares and the other two got discharged and thrown in the asylum for just going batshit insane. No, I’m not going and if you got any sense, you won’t either. That place does shit your mind. The spirits there are pure evil, and they are not to be trifled with.” "No, I have a remedy for that! Look at these!" Ulivik says and produces two amulets with a faint blue glow. "Let me guess, these things are magical and they're supposed to protect us from getting possessed." "Correct! Even when I was little, I heard there was supposed to be great treasure in those hills. Nobody has ever had the skill to go in there and claim it, but I want to be the first because I truly feel like I'm ready now. You're the about the one who has traveled the most in those hills and survived. You would be a great help and we can even share whatever we find! Come on, it'll be like old times!" "Old" being the key word here. While you were wondering if you were becoming more complacent in your old age, you aren't sure if going to the Wendigo Hills is something you want to do just to prove "you still got it." > You stay home Complacent or not, you’re really thinking that this is just a bad idea all the way round. “Ulivik, I’m telling you, this isn’t a good idea. I’m not about to place your faith in some amulet that may or may not work and you shouldn’t either. I know you’re an adventurer and all, but some places are just better left alone.” “Oh come on! The man I knew wouldn’t have backed down from a challenge like this!” “The man you knew was twenty years younger, and I still had a purpose for my wandering. I was a merc, remember? Look, if the fact that I won’t go traipsing around in wendigo territory looking for ruins that might not even be there and wearing an amulet hoping it’ll protect me disappoints you, well I guess I’m just going to have to disappoint you.” Ulivik does indeed look disappointed, but he doesn’t argue the point anymore. Instead he just abruptly gathers his belongings and starts to leave. “Ulivik, I really wish you’d heed my advice on this. Think about it, have I ever lead you wrong?” He stops for a moment, and thinks, but continues his exit. “No, maybe you haven’t, but just as you have picked your path to become an old man who is content on resting on his laurels now. I still feel the zest for excitement and danger, and I am compelled to do what I must. It’s just a shame we couldn’t have shared in it together just one more time.” Ulivik says and leaves. Once again you are left by yourself to reflect on your life and Ulivik’s words. He might have his own point about resting on your “laurels” but what the hell, it’s not like you haven’t deserved it. You could go back and forth on such things, but honestly you’re a little more concerned about Ulivik and what he’s potentially going to get himself into. Still, he’s an adult and capable of making his own decisions. Days pass and you don’t hear anything from Ulivik. True he was a little mad at you, but you’re pretty sure he’d come back to see you before he left. You begin to fear the worst. You end up going to his mother’s house to see if he’s been there or shown up, but she says she hasn’t seen him. She’s worried as well, though she’s understandably more upset about it. Your next move is to go to the militia and make a report, you don’t expect anything to be done, but you figure that the “risk” of a possible wendigo possession is more than enough to keep all the towns alert about it. You are nearly tempted to go looking for him in wendigo territory yourself, but you decide that it would only serve in getting you killed as well, and there’s no way you’d even be able to track him. Weeks pass into months and there is still no sign of Ulivik. No wendigo attacks either, so you can only assume that he wasn’t possessed, just killed and eaten. Many times you go back and forth in your head wondering if you’d just gone with him that maybe he’d still be alive…or maybe there would be two dead instead of one. Can’t second-guess your decisions, you learned that a long time ago, but still you feel saddened by Ulivik’s passing. He had a lot of potential and in some odd way he almost felt like a son to you. Life goes on though, but it feels a little emptier. Year 73 The rest of your years have been spent mostly going about your life with increasingly less and less for you to do. There are some changes in society, but ultimately you begin to feel the decline of your own will to live. You never thought you’d feel that way, but there it is. You just don’t have anything else to keep you motivated anymore. The thrill of living finally disappears from you entirely and you are found dead by your own hand. While you were not sick and still in relatively good health for a man your age, you decided that you would end it before you might not be in such a condition to do so. A note explaining your suicide is left nearby and the town gives you a proper cremation. Some of your old students turn out for it and say a few words, but in time you are soon forgotten and only brought up as the subject of “tall tales” by drunkards in Rask taverns every once in a blue moon.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 55 After another hard day of training various citizens of Rask, you lie in your bed thinking about how much has changed over the years. Never did you think that you’d be running a real business, though to be honest if it wasn’t for legitimate paranoia on the part of the Rask Alliance, you’d probably be spending all of your time still as a merc, as it stands you’re practically responsible for training the closest thing to an army that Rask has, though it’s probably more of an organized militia. It’ll be the first line of defense if the Eternal Dominion starts to look to this way for expansion. When the ED started re-conquering the old territory of the Empire it was only natural that the towns and villages of Rask started getting worried. They didn’t break away from the Empire only to replace it with something similar or worse. It was just their luck (and yours) that you wanted to become a professional combat instructor. Soon people from all over Rask were coming to see you. You hardly ever have to do any sort of mercenary work anymore and the mayor of Keplavisk is overjoyed by the fact that you set up shop in his town. As for the Eternal Dominion threat, you aren’t sure what to think. There has been no formal declaration of war or even a diplomatic visit to Rask yet, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be, Rask has lots of resources after all. Still, the ED has its hands full still trying to keep everyone in line from the top to the bottom while attempting to gain more holdings. Mass orc migration to Rask are becoming common, even the svelk are more welcome in Rask again. Partly due to the possible need for more mercs if war comes to pass and partly due to dark elves being disliked by the ED, which apparently frowns upon mercenaries (and probably the attitudes of the dark elves in general). You have to hand it to “General” Edgar though, you didn’t think he’d be able to get those chaotic brats calling themselves “eternals” organized, though it sounds like they’re still as sadistic as ever and if the rumors are true, another generation of Eternals are being trained as well. You can’t even imagine what they’re going to be like. If war is coming like everyone thinks it is, you know immediately that you’re probably going to be nominated and begged by the various mayors and council members to be some sort of commander. You aren’t sure if you’d accept the position though you probably will mainly because you don’t want to be bothered moving anymore and you’ll be damned if you’ll live under the rule of some half assed Eternals. Part of you wonders what the hell is going through Edgar’s mind. He seemed more level headed the last time you saw him, like the incident with Kane forced him to mature, but you guess his aspirations for personal glory were just too great to keep suppressed for long. You also wonder about Brenda, she’s the only other old Eternal that was left, and you have no idea if she’s even still alive or serving with Edgar. You get your answer and then some in a few days. Another hard day of training various citizens of Rask and you’re ready to close up shop and then two figures wearing hoods enter. You have flashbacks to fighting the Shadow Guard and you draw your sword. “Hold on! It’s me! Warrick! See?” a familiar voice says and reveals himself from under the hood. The face is much older than you remember and sporting an eye patch, and the hair is now nearly gone. But considering you thought Warrick to be dead, you aren’t completely convinced until the second cloaked figure reveals herself and speaks. “I told you wearing these things was a bad idea. He probably thought we were Shadow Guards!” she says. Her face is also much older and the hair is completely gray, but you definitely know this one is Brenda. Between the pair of them it truly makes you realize how much time has passed since you saw them. “And I told you, we need to keep a low profile, this situation is dangerous to the both of us.” Warrick says. “Warrick back from the dead and Brenda, I was just recently thinking about what had become of you.” “We need to talk to you about Edgar.” Warrick says cutting right to the point. “Yeah I thought so…okay let me lock up and we can talk about this in my quarters.” The first thing you find out is that Warrick is now working for the Felkan Kingdom. He says it’s a long story, but it has its roots in his becoming disillusioned with the Empire much like you did. Warrick also goes on to say that’s one of the reasons why he’s here. Edgar definitely has plans to attack it in the future and the crown hopes to avoid another long and troublesome war by recruiting allies this time. He mentions real Felkan diplomats will probably be arriving in Rask soon to speak with the leaders of the towns, but he was sent to specifically reach out to you, because whether you knew it or not, your reputation here carries weight. As for Brenda, her position is much more dangerous. She is currently serving the Eternal Dominion, (another long story) but is trying to encourage an underground dissident movement. Not really difficult considering how oppressive Edgar’s regime is. It is the hope of the Felkan Kingdom that the ED will wear itself out on keeping down riots and other potential conquests like Rask before it turns its eyes on the Felkan Kingdom. You tell Warrick that he’s probably wasted a trip as the paranoid mentality of the Raskians are already preparing for war with the ED and will have no problem allying with the Felkan Kingdom and that you’ll no doubt be called upon to command the people you’ve been training. Warrick seems relived to hear that, and you and he begin to do a little catching up. Brenda participates as well, though the whole time she seems a little preoccupied. Eventually as the night goes on, Warrick says he must be getting back to report to his superiors. Brenda says that she is not ready to leave as she wishes to speak to you about Roldan and his last days with you. Warrick understands, but warns her that she should not be away for too long so as to arouse suspicion. He would hate to have her sacrifices should lead to her death. “Sacrifices…as if he would know about such things. When the Empire needed him the most what did he do? He ran to the fucking enemy. Now his new masters give him commands and the running lapdog thinks he’s free, but he’s still a slave.” She remarks with distain, before continuing. “Edgar may be an egomaniac with delusions of grandeur like he always was, but he at least tried to keep the Empire together, even if it is in a different form now. He believes in something better, even if he’s not exactly intelligent enough to carry out that idea. And you, you’re worst of them all. You just dropped out altogether and dedicating yourself to nothing, but coin like a fucking svelk. What the hell happened to you? You used be our leader.” “I’m not exactly sure what your point is, but if this all pent up anger at me due to Roldan dying I…” “Don’t you dare fucking mention him! I heard enough of hollow apologies in that damn letter you wrote to me.” “They were Eternals as we all are. Dying in combat is always a possibility for us, I know their deaths weren’t the most glorious, but at the time they died doing something they believed in. I can hardly help that the institution that they believed in, crumbled soon afterwards. I tried like hell to maintain my own belief in the Empire despite having it time after time again tested. Eventually I saw the light when I had to command a bunch of those new eternals while attempting to put down mass riots near the capital. Was leaving the right decision? I don’t know, but it was for ME. The fact is ALL of our lives were nothing but duty and dedication to a corrupt government that deserved none of it. Kane knew that, Gruz knew that, and as much as I still hate them to this day, the Shadow Guard knew that. When the Empire was in its death throes it affected us all differently. I can’t help the fact that you decided to stay loyal and it didn’t work out resulting in you eventually having to capitulate to Edgar later on. At least you and Roldan had an experience that none of us will ever have. You have at least that to cherish.” Brenda is silent for a moment as she takes in your statement. She looks at a ring on her finger, which is obviously still her wedding ring to Roldan. She smiles and then speaks. “You’re right I suppose. You usually were when we all served under you. Even you couldn’t have prevented the Empire from falling, the damage was done long before we came into existence. I guess I just never got over Roldan’s death and had nobody except you to blame since you were the only one still alive. The funny thing is I didn’t start blaming you until I found out you left the Empire. You were always our leader, and it seemed unthinkable that you would leave willingly. You know I think none of us really saw anyone else as their leader except you. It’s probably why Kane wanted you to join him, it’s no doubt why Warrick insisted on reaching out to you and it’s why Edgar sent me…” “Excuse me?” “One of the things you were wrong about and Warrick too. I am not helping him though he still thinks I am. There is no underground resistance, or at least none that matters. Warrick and his Felkan masters think they can undermine the Eternal Dominion, but they are quite wrong. When Edgar first came to me and explained his cause and ideas I realized it was a just and worthy one. I joined in an effort to help with some of the details that Edgar himself is not nearly as skilled at, still he has proven himself to be more charismatic than he once was, at least to the other eternals and that’s who is mainly important. He wants to create a nation where we Eternals are in control, as it should’ve been.” “…so why would he want me for, wouldn’t he consider me an enemy like Warrick?” “No, not like Warrick. While your abandonment did sadden Edgar, he always figured you had a good reason. He never questioned it. And now that you’ve told me your views I see he was right. It’s really quite odd to see how high of regard he holds you. I guess your time with him during Kane’s attempted secession really impacted him.” “Brenda, this is a lot to take in, what exactly are you expecting from me then?” “As Warrick said, your reputation carries weight here and you have the ear of several of the mayors here. Perhaps you could explain to them that even with training that resistance will be useless and that the ED will just slaughter everyone. Better that they should surrender now and have a benevolent overseer such as…you running things.” “And you really think Raskians are going to go for that idea?” “What does it matter? They are going to be conquered eventually anyway. I merely suggest other options to Edgar’s plan, which was to convince you to just come with me where you could take command of a battalion to conquer Rask seeing as you know the place the best.” “Heh, sounds like him. So what was the plan if I refuse altogether? Killing me I suppose?” “Didn’t come up though I even asked him about it, but as I said Edgar really believes that you’ll help us. Perhaps in some way he didn’t want to think about the alternative. I’m guessing that you are considering the alternative?” “Don’t see why I shouldn’t, do you?” “You would have a true purpose again. Serving an idea greater than yourself.” “I have a true purpose now. I’m training others to fight against those that would take their lives. The Raskians don’t want to be ruled over and quite frankly neither do I, let alone by Edgar.” “No! You would be different! You, like myself would be given an equal place in the decision making process! Even the other Eternal don’t get that.” “Yeah, that’s the other thing, I’m loathed to live in a land that considers those new…things, eternals.” “They are much different now, true they still have their sadistic streak, but only towards the non-eternals and who cares about them?” “I’m sure the non-eternals do, and while they may very well be inferior, enough of them can topple any government. We saw it happen, and it’ll happen to you too if you aren’t careful.” “So are you saying you won’t join us?” You get the impression that if you say no, she’s going to attack you and you’ll have to defend yourself. Killing Brenda is something you do not want to do, but lying and saying yes is duplicity you’d rather not engage in. > You lie and say yes This is probably going to bite you in the ass later, but you just can’t bring yourself to kill Brenda…at least not this day. It may very well come in the future though. “Alright Brenda, I’ll help you, but I’m staying here in Rask. Forgive me, if I’m not quite trusting enough to go walking into ED territory just yet.” “Well I guess I can understand your caution, but what are you going to do up here to help us?” “I’ll do what you said I’ll try to convince people that they should submit to the ED, it will most likely still require a lot of bloodshed and it this goal isn’t going to be an immediate one. However, I’m confident that I can do this, I have enough supporters to raise an a big enough army to get me started. I know this territory the best so any wannabe freedom fighters hoping to escape into the wilderness to wage a guerilla war won’t be a problem either. When I think the time is right, I’ll contact the ED to step in to mop up and to reinforce order, but I really think your armies would be better spent on hitting the Felkan Kingdom and hard. If they’re putting out feelers for alliances with Rask, then they’re probably desperate. You tell Edgar I’ve personally suggested this, he’ll listen. He should, after all I’ve never given him bad advice before.” That last part is very difficult for you to say, knowing that you’re blatantly lying. The worst part is Brenda doesn’t even question you. She too believes that you’re being completely genuine and requires no further “proof” that you’re actually going to do what you say other than your word and your impeccable past reputation. She leaves a little happier than when she arrived. You on the other hand are a little sadder. At best The Edgar will follow your advice and the Felkan Kingdom will do enough damage to the Eternal Dominion that they won’t be in any condition to attack Rask. It may even collapse. Not exactly great for Edgar or Brenda, but at least you wouldn’t need to fight against them. At worst…well you’d rather not have to think about that, but you’ve always prepared for the worst. The next day you suggest to the mayor of Keplavisk that Rask seriously invest in thinking about building a proper military academy, possibly even a professional army. In the following months several meetings with the heads of the Rask towns occur. You give your opinion on the Eternal Dominion situation, but you leave out the whole meeting with Brenda and Warrick of course. Eventually the politicians agree that more protection might be necessary and steps to ensure it are taken. Since you brought all this to their attention, you are nominated to run the military academy. Year 58 Edgar took your advice…at least initially. He sent thousands across the Felkan borders a couple years ago. The war with the Felkan Kingdom is currently at a stalemate, but you hear it’s even more brutal than the one with the Empire. Edgar has adapted with the times unlike the Empire and has implementied stolen technology from the Felkans. You can only imagine how Warrick has fared, but you got your own problems due to your lying, though maybe it was inevitable, who can say? When it became apparent that you weren’t actually doing anything to help bring Rask under the Eternal Dominion banner, Edgar correctly came to the conclusion that you lied. Sensing that Rask may even be gearing up for their own invasion, Edgar risks a two front war and strikes out at Rask. While the Eternal Dominion is certainly short of man power due to their war with the Felkan Kingdom, they make up for it with ruthless fanaticism and of course the fact that they’re using updated technology as well. Their first major push is at Kenneth’s Rest. The old fort stands strong for a day before it is taken. Everyone that wasn’t killed during the battle or escaped was executed upon capture. This happens with a couple of the smaller villages before the Raskian army manages to stop the advance. From the butchery that the ED troops have been displaying it’s obvious that they aren’t taking prisoners. On the Raskian side, patriotism goes up and they have no intention on surrendering if that was even indeed an option. Mercenaries, who were previously beginning to leave due to the lack of jobs for them suddenly become in the market again. They are used mainly for harassment purposes such as destroying supply lines. Flog has turned out to be quite the asset. He sees the Eternal Dominion to be nothing more than the Empire under a new name (And he really hated the Empire) and has managed to unite some of the more “civilized” ogre tribes to help destroy the inheritors of the Empire legacy. Eldolith still runs her small svelk band and charges the highest price as usual for her services. Ulivik even has a small group of humans following him now. They mostly consist of survivors who managed to escape death at the hands of the ED attacks on their homes and in it for revenge not the money, in fact neither is Ulivik anymore. Ever since the invasion he gave up his mercenary life in exchange for that of a patriot fighting for his family and home. You’re glad to see he has become a competent warrior. Due to your warning of this threat years before, your position at the academy and all your years of combat experience you are made into a full blown general and practically given extensive powers over all military functions. A very powerful position, in fact it’s rather ironic. You didn’t ask or even want to “rule” over Rask, but your current arrangement practically makes you a potential dictator. Even more so due to the fact that you’re an Eternal, a representation of a past oppressor and a current aggressor towards Rask. While the politicians have given you this role, not all Raskians are happy with this idea, but as long as you’re fighting the Eternal Dominion no disgruntled Raskian has tried to assassinate you yet. While you miss being able to personally lead troops into battle, you still try to be as close to the action as you can, by traveling with the army rather than staying in an office somewhere. The war with the ED has already taken quite a toll on Rask, and it doesn’t look lik it’s going to end anytime soon. The best you can do is dig in and make sure you make the ED pay for every inch they step deeper into Rask territory. > Year 65 As you settle down for the night, you think about how you got in this position. As the war started to drag on, the tactics changed from one of conquest to one of annihilation. The ED began outright destroying any village and town they managed to capture. They sent in suicidal fanatics to blow themselves up or blow up mines and other areas of production. They managed to poison the water supply of one towns, but the worst was their intentional sacrifices in the Wendigo Hills. The ED dragged over a hundred of their own citizens into the Wendigo Hills, which had been off limits to any right thinking being ever since you went into that cursed territory. The wendigos had been confined there for decades with no sentient hosts to possess and allow their escape, but that all changed when presented with the new ones the ED provided. The wendigos of course immediately ran amok with their new bodies and became a problem for everyone. In the meantime the ED attempted one last push on Keplavisk. It was a bloodbath on both sides and the cost was high, but ultimately it never fell, and it was that the last major battle with the ED. Hostilities with the Eternal Dominion aren’t over, but they have stopped mostly due to their own internal problems. As powerful as they were, they couldn’t keep up a two front war with two foes that had no intention on rolling over. It was only a matter of time before attrition took its toll on the ED and fortunately the arrogance of the younger eternals caused them to finally question Edgar’s abilities to lead properly. Wasn’t long before they started squabbling amongst themselves. Of course the damage they did to Rask left a permanent mark. You were initially hailed as a hero by most and the rebuilding process begun, but Rask was in terrible condition. Towns and villages that hadn’t been completely destroyed were still wrecked to a degree that would take months or even a year to recover. This wouldn’t be so bad, if they weren’t also under protected due to a shortage of soldiers from the war. Wendigos, bandits, other monsters and even rogue eternals from the ED are such a problem that it makes the rebuilding process even longer and you conclude that spreading the soldiers too thin will ultimately hurt you in the long run. You argue with the remaining politicians that what needs to be done is to cluster and re-group. Keplavisk is still the most intact and has always been the “capital” of Rask of sorts and it’s the biggest town to the point that’s its practically a city. You say that the remaining Raskian population should move to Keplavisk where the focus can be directed into rebuilding it and protection can be easier. This isn’t a popular decision. Some Raskians don’t understand why you can’t just station more troops at their respective towns, but the fact remains you won’t have enough to defend Keplavisk, if you stretch them out any more and quite frankly Keplavisk is the most important city if Rask has any hope of not descending into anarchic wilderness again. Some citizens of Keplavisk don’t especially like the idea of “immigrants” moving into their city, but the major accusation is that since the mayor of Keplavisk was killed (along with most of his immediate staff) in the last battle with the ED, you’re about the closest thing to a leader. As such, some of the pessimists who claimed you would become a dictator with the powers that were given you at the start of the war are sort of becoming true. So you ultimately play the role that was given you. The first thing you do is call back all soldiers to Keplavisk and urge all other Raskians to do likewise. You say nobody has to come and you won’t force anybody, but as of now, you’re focusing only on Keplavisk and defense will be solely on the shoulders of the towns themselves. Fortunately as a successful military leader, you’re popular with the soldiers, so most of them return. Some originally lived in Keplavisk, some had no home any more, and some sensed a better life so they brought their families with them. With absolutely no more protection anymore, this has the bonus effect of bringing in non-military Raskians to Keplavisk as well though a lot aren’t exactly happy about it. The citizens that stubbornly stayed to rebuild their own homes didn’t last too long. By the end of the year only a few of the villages far north (that were mostly spared the ravages of war anyway) exist as other beacons of civilization. Kaplavisk on the other hand is transformed from a town half in ruins to a well defended prosperous city state by the end of that same year. No longer is town hall the “center of government”, but rather the military academy, which also serves as your new home. Defenses are as best as you can get them, sturdy walls, cannons, implementation of firearms and when you can draft them, people with minor magic powers to upkeep wards to prevent wendigos from sneaking into the city. True there are still the occasional protests about how there is much less “freedom” now, but it never really gets out of hand. Well at least not yet. The major rabble-rouser unfortunately is Ulivik of all people. His years as a “freedom fighter” against the Eternal Dominion have changed a bit of his outlook on life, namely he sees that Rask won the war just only to be conquered by an Eternal anyway. You tried to speak to him personally about this, but he seems firm in his beliefs. He states that when you trained him to be a mercenary even though you were tough, he still respected you. When you fought against the ED he mentions that his original worship of you almost returned as nobody did more to prevent them from taking over than you did. But now that you’ve allowed people to die without protection just because they wouldn’t do what you say and turned his home into a police state he cannot just stand by and do nothing. He says he doesn’t want to fight you for a couple reasons, but if it comes down to it, he will. He’s put you in a difficult position, which normally wouldn’t be very difficult if he were anyone else. You have a slight soft spot for Ulivik, but that soft spot only goes so far. You’ve got to deal with him some how because if you let him continue he’ll gain more followers, despite his svelk origins. Capitulating to him isn’t an option either, you start giving in now, you’ll have to give in later, maybe not even to him, but others with similar ideas and you can’t afford to start loosening up the reins. At least not anytime soon. You need to come up with an idea before you can get some sleep tonight. > You execution It is with a heavy heart and regret that this has to be done, but the only way you’re going make this problem go away is by making an example out of him. While it’s possible he’ll become a martyr, his “cause” is still manageable for your soldiers if a riot breaks out. After he’s dead, it’s unlikely anyone else will take up the mantle and those that might’ve been on the fence will fall in line. Besides he’s a svelk, who is going to shed many tears over him? Having made this decision you finally get some sleep, though not very restful sleep. The next day you order for Ulivik’s arrest along with his main followers. This doesn’t go over well. Ulivik refuses to be taken into custody and puts up a fight. A very good fight that involves him escaping completely and several soldiers dead. You order a full manhunt for Ulivik, but he proves quite elusive. In the meantime you execute his followers, but this is when other citizens start expressing a dislike for how you’re handling things. The major advantage you have is the military, but as you crack down harder, the soldiers become slightly overworked. Some of them even have their own disagreement with how you’re doing things. Before you know it you’ve got small riots in the streets and Ulivik keeps popping up every now and then just to stir the chaos even more. Before you know it, work places like woodmills and mines have to shut down due to you having to keep more troops inside the city rather on the outside to protect the workers. It’s all falling apart. You put down riots, execute more people, but ultimately it all come to a head one late night in your own room. You wake up and grab your weapon to see Ulivik lurking in the shadows. He’s obviously snuck in, and most likely killed any guards nearby. Doesn’t matter, you’ll either kill him or he’ll kill you before anyone arrives. “I figured it would come to this.” You say and prepare for battle. The two of you clash and you give him a good fight, but his youth, speed and dedication to his cause are an advantage, while you are old, slower and at this point you don’t even care anymore. He eventually slashes you across the chest and runs you through. You fall to the floor feeling the life drain from you. “Ugh…shit that really hurts (cough).” You say coughing up blood. “Why didn’t you just give the people more freedom?” Ulivik asksin a demanding tone. The strange thing is, in retrospect you don’t have a really good answer except… “I…guess the old Eternal ways of (cough) domination and war just got the better of me…heh knew there was a reason why I originally didn’t try to become a tyrant all those years ago. It never ends well…” “It didn’t have to be this way!” Ulivik now exclaims almost as if he’s holding back tears. “Maybe…but now’s your chance to make it better. Hope you’re prepared for it…I was getting tired of it anyway…” you say and pass from this world.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 65 As you settle down for the night, you think about how you got in this position. As the war started to drag on, the tactics changed from one of conquest to one of annihilation. The ED began outright destroying any village and town they managed to capture. They sent in suicidal fanatics to blow themselves up or blow up mines and other areas of production. They managed to poison the water supply of one towns, but the worst was their intentional sacrifices in the Wendigo Hills. The ED dragged over a hundred of their own citizens into the Wendigo Hills, which had been off limits to any right thinking being ever since you went into that cursed territory. The wendigos had been confined there for decades with no sentient hosts to possess and allow their escape, but that all changed when presented with the new ones the ED provided. The wendigos of course immediately ran amok with their new bodies and became a problem for everyone. In the meantime the ED attempted one last push on Keplavisk. It was a bloodbath on both sides and the cost was high, but ultimately it never fell, and it was that the last major battle with the ED. Hostilities with the Eternal Dominion aren’t over, but they have stopped mostly due to their own internal problems. As powerful as they were, they couldn’t keep up a two front war with two foes that had no intention on rolling over. It was only a matter of time before attrition took its toll on the ED and fortunately the arrogance of the younger eternals caused them to finally question Edgar’s abilities to lead properly. Wasn’t long before they started squabbling amongst themselves. Of course the damage they did to Rask left a permanent mark. You were initially hailed as a hero by most and the rebuilding process begun, but Rask was in terrible condition. Towns and villages that hadn’t been completely destroyed were still wrecked to a degree that would take months or even a year to recover. This wouldn’t be so bad, if they weren’t also under protected due to a shortage of soldiers from the war. Wendigos, bandits, other monsters and even rogue eternals from the ED are such a problem that it makes the rebuilding process even longer and you conclude that spreading the soldiers too thin will ultimately hurt you in the long run. You argue with the remaining politicians that what needs to be done is to cluster and re-group. Keplavisk is still the most intact and has always been the “capital” of Rask of sorts and it’s the biggest town to the point that’s its practically a city. You say that the remaining Raskian population should move to Keplavisk where the focus can be directed into rebuilding it and protection can be easier. This isn’t a popular decision. Some Raskians don’t understand why you can’t just station more troops at their respective towns, but the fact remains you won’t have enough to defend Keplavisk, if you stretch them out any more and quite frankly Keplavisk is the most important city if Rask has any hope of not descending into anarchic wilderness again. Some citizens of Keplavisk don’t especially like the idea of “immigrants” moving into their city, but the major accusation is that since the mayor of Keplavisk was killed (along with most of his immediate staff) in the last battle with the ED, you’re about the closest thing to a leader. As such, some of the pessimists who claimed you would become a dictator with the powers that were given you at the start of the war are sort of becoming true. So you ultimately play the role that was given you. The first thing you do is call back all soldiers to Keplavisk and urge all other Raskians to do likewise. You say nobody has to come and you won’t force anybody, but as of now, you’re focusing only on Keplavisk and defense will be solely on the shoulders of the towns themselves. Fortunately as a successful military leader, you’re popular with the soldiers, so most of them return. Some originally lived in Keplavisk, some had no home any more, and some sensed a better life so they brought their families with them. With absolutely no more protection anymore, this has the bonus effect of bringing in non-military Raskians to Keplavisk as well though a lot aren’t exactly happy about it. The citizens that stubbornly stayed to rebuild their own homes didn’t last too long. By the end of the year only a few of the villages far north (that were mostly spared the ravages of war anyway) exist as other beacons of civilization. Kaplavisk on the other hand is transformed from a town half in ruins to a well defended prosperous city state by the end of that same year. No longer is town hall the “center of government”, but rather the military academy, which also serves as your new home. Defenses are as best as you can get them, sturdy walls, cannons, implementation of firearms and when you can draft them, people with minor magic powers to upkeep wards to prevent wendigos from sneaking into the city. True there are still the occasional protests about how there is much less “freedom” now, but it never really gets out of hand. Well at least not yet. The major rabble-rouser unfortunately is Ulivik of all people. His years as a “freedom fighter” against the Eternal Dominion have changed a bit of his outlook on life, namely he sees that Rask won the war just only to be conquered by an Eternal anyway. You tried to speak to him personally about this, but he seems firm in his beliefs. He states that when you trained him to be a mercenary even though you were tough, he still respected you. When you fought against the ED he mentions that his original worship of you almost returned as nobody did more to prevent them from taking over than you did. But now that you’ve allowed people to die without protection just because they wouldn’t do what you say and turned his home into a police state he cannot just stand by and do nothing. He says he doesn’t want to fight you for a couple reasons, but if it comes down to it, he will. He’s put you in a difficult position, which normally wouldn’t be very difficult if he were anyone else. You have a slight soft spot for Ulivik, but that soft spot only goes so far. You’ve got to deal with him some how because if you let him continue he’ll gain more followers, despite his svelk origins. Capitulating to him isn’t an option either, you start giving in now, you’ll have to give in later, maybe not even to him, but others with similar ideas and you can’t afford to start loosening up the reins. At least not anytime soon. You need to come up with an idea before you can get some sleep tonight. > You exile You don’t think you could bring yourself to kill Ulivik directly or indirectly, besides it’s not likely to help anything. He’d most likely become a martyr and you’d never be done fighting future uprisings in his name. You then come up with an idea: Exile. If people are really unhappy here they can get the hell out and they can take their chances making it on their own. It has the potential to cause an exodus, but you doubt if it will. Not many with families will be willing to leave and it’s still less harsh than execution. You are giving people a chance to live after all, it’s up to them if they can survive in Rask without the benefit of protection or survive long enough for them to leave it entirely. Not killing dissidents, it’s a radical idea in it’s own right, but you’re going to gamble on it. Having made this decision you finally get some sleep, though not exactly restful sleep. The next day when Ulivik is protesting with his little group in front of the academy you and several soldiers march up to him. “Okay Ulivik, this ends today.” You say. “And so it begins, I was wondering when you’d finally let loose and start threatening people for speaking out against you. That’s what you used to do back in your Empire days isn’t it? Well we aren’t going quietly to be executed, as I said, if you want a fight, I’m more than willin to give it to you right here and now!” “I’m not executing you Ulivik.” “Well we’re not going to rot in your jails either.” “Will you shut the fuck up? I’ve heard your complaints outside my window for the past several months, the least you can do is listen to me for a change.” “Very well, but this better be good.” “Don’t presume to tell me what is good, because this isn’t a compromise. I’m going to say this once and once only and this is going out to all of you. Any more dissension or acts of stirring up shit for no reason, and you’re gone. And what I mean by gone, I mean exile. And not just you, I’m talking ALL your family, all your friends and even your fucking pets. All of you that don’t like how things are being run in this city, well you can get the fuck out. Let’s see you do better out there. Lots of luck…” Ulivik is a little surprised by your tactic, but it doesn’t deter him and he gets in your face. You keep your soldiers back. “You can’t just throw people out of the city! These people have a right, we ALL have a right to live here and voice our concerns when the government is failing to provide a suitable quality of life!” Ulivik exclaims. “Failing? What the hell are you talking about? We’re protecting everyone from bandits, monsters, eternal dominion hold outs and do I even need to mention the wendigos? Nobody starves, everyone has a job, and all people have to do is follow a few simple fucking rules. I’m not demanding people bring me their virgin daughters! I’m not having people routinely tortured for not believing in some religion! Yeah there have been some sacrifices like food rationing and curfews, but I’ve been pretty damn fair about everything and YOU of all people should know that!” Ulivik stops for a moment and while it seems like he knows you have a point, he refuses to back down still. Perhaps you taught him too well. “So basically what you’re saying is we should just be grateful that you’re not Edgar…” And that’s the last straw, you lose your temper and proving you can still be quick for your age, you punch Ulivik in face. He staggers back and is disoriented enough for your soldiers to get a firm grip on him. He tries to twist free, but you have four soldiers lift him up grabbing one of his limbs each. “Let me go tyrant! Too cowardly to face me in battle? So much for your eternal bravery!” “Lucky for you, since you weren’t even fast enough to dodge my punch, open the gates and throw his ass out. And if the rest of you want to join him, you can pack your shit and go too!” As you and the soldiers escort Ulivik out of the city, the rest of his followers lose their courage. Most of them have families and friends and aren’t willing to risk your wrath anymore. Other citizens look on at the spectacle and just stare in silent awe. The only one making any sort of noise is Ulivik who is cursing you and everyone else who isn’t helping him. You ignore his curses, and just simmer in anger at the situation. Eventually you reach the gates and with a mighty heave your soldiers throw Ulivik a few feet and face first into the snow. He scrambles to get up and upon turning around; your soldiers draw several muskets on him. “Goodbye, Ulivik, don’t come back or else I won’t be as merciful next time.” You say from the gate. “Merciful? You’re throwing me out of my own fucking home you bastard!” “At least I’m not throwing your mother out as well, and at least you’re still alive.” “Fuck you. I can’t believe I used to look up to you.” “And I never told you to, you chose to do that! And you chose this path as well. I’m merely doing what I think is best, just like I did then. (sigh) I’m sorry it has to be this way, but you’ll survive Ulivik…I know I taught you that…close the gates.” As the gates close you see Ulivik just standing by himself looking very alone. It’s sort of sad. He started out as a disliked “outsider” due to his race in this town when he was growing up and now he has at last been banished from it for good. Not even one of his so called followers or even a bystander pleaded for him or even joined him by leaving. He did a lot for Rask during the war and he was speaking out for their “rights”, but that doesn’t seem to account for shit in the scheme of things to people. While it’s a fortunate situation, it still doesn’t seem right even if he was opposing you. Over the next few months you half expect Ulivik to be attacking soldiers outside the gates of the city and holding some sort of one man vendetta or possibly even gathering a small group of bandits robbing the miners or loggers and such, but that doesn’t happen. He’s gone, but you’re confident he’s not dead. You just hope he’s moved on to better things. As for you and everyone else life goes on. Year 75 With age catching up on you every day you sometimes wonder if it’s even worth getting out of bed anymore. You tire of the tedious act of governing, but you have no real successor to take your place. There are a couple of officers you have in mind, which could do a competent job you suppose, and that’s when you make a major decision. You decide to step down from power and hand this mess over to someone else. Since you know whoever you pick is going to have to be a strong leader and nip any potential coups in the bud, you pick the three most charismatic, intelligent and loyal that you can think of and call them into the training area in front of an audience of soldiers. You then announce that the three men will fight to the death and whoever is left standing gets to be in charge. The three officers look a little surprised and the audience is silent, but it doesn’t take long for one of the men to try to sneak attack on one of the others. The fight is a good one. As you watch you fight back to the days when you watched your classmates fight each other for Mistress. That was so long ago and as crazy as it seems you’ve actually been missing those days lately, everything much simpler at least. All of them are gone now. Last you heard of Edgar is that he was assassinated four years ago as the Eternal Dominion continued to fragment into petty fiefdoms ruled by equally petty eternal warlords. You don’t know about Warrick or Brenda, but you sometimes like to think they managed to escape the madness and are living satisfying lives. Barring that, you hope they died well in whatever battle that was their last. Eventually one man is left standing. Bruised, bloody and battered, but victorious. It is at this point you stand up and congratulate him and make another announcement to the crowd. “Captain Eddings has proved himself worthy of succeeding me. I trust you will serve this man as well as you have served me all these years. Congratulations Eckers, you’ve just been promoted to…uh general I guess.” “Thank you sir, I will do everything in my power to ensure the safety and prosperity of the city.” Eddings remarks with pride. “I’m sure you will, I’m sure you will, why don’t you head to the infirmary first though. As for me I’m going back to sleep. You can catch up with me later if you need some explanation on anything, but I left some notes on my desk for you as a general guideline.” You say and head back to your room. You know you’ll probably still be running things for a while at least and probably be consulted many times, but you still feel as if a weight has been lifted off you. The problem is, you wonder how you’ll spend your free time. You’ll think of something you suppose.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to humor the boy and agree. Chances are, he’s not going to get permission from his parents anyway and when that happens he’ll be less likely to bother you again. If he does get permission, well it’s not that far to Kenneth’s Rest and you were going there anyway. Plus you’ll have given him the chance he wants and again he’ll be less likely to bother you. “Alright Ulivik, you go ask your parents, but I’m taking you to Kenneth’s Rest and no further. And when we get there, you’re on your own, don’t think that you’re going to be tagging along with me anywhere else.” “Okay! That’s great! I’ll be right be back…uh could you come with me, so they know I’m telling the truth?” “Oh fer…fine.” You follow Ulivik back to his parent’s store which smells heavily of leather. The pair of them are working on some sort of the hide when you both walk in. “Mom! Dad! Mr. Bane said he’d take me to Kenneth’s Rest and teach me to be a mercenary! So can I go now?” “Hey wait I never said I’d teach…” you start to say before Ulivik’s dad interjects his own comments. “Oh is that right? And how do you know that? How do you know he won’t just rob and kill you along some lonely road?” “Or worse!” his mother says. “Hey wait a minute now…” “But this isn’t fair! You said if I could find somebody to teach me, that you’d allow me to go!” Ulivik whines. “Yeah, well we didn’t think you’d actually be successful, let alone get a cold hearted killer like Bane here to agree. Which makes me wonder why he did…” “Trust me, at this point I’m wondering the same thing.” You reply. “Ulivik, why can’t you just be interested in the family business? It’s a more honorable profession than being a mercenary. It’s honest work.” “Yeah and the workin’ man is a sucker! Look at where we live!” “Hey! We get by just fine, and this business has put food in your belly, clothes on your back and a roof over your head! So don’t you dare bad mouth this proud family tradition!” “Yeah, well I’m not really your son anyway! And you’re not my real parents! I hate this place and every here hates me!” Ulivik screams and leaves slamming the door. You’re left in an awkward situation with his parents. “Okay, so I guess that settles that, I’ll just be going now…” you say. “No, you get back here you sonofabitch.” Ulivik’s dad says. “Excuse me?” “I called you a sonofabitch, now if you want to kill me for that you can do it after hearing what I’ve got to say first.” “Heh, okay. It’s been a weird sort of day today anyway, I’ll play.” You say with a smile. “Yeah, well I ain’t playing. Look, I know all about you, and you probably don’t know me at all but I remember your ruthless reputation when you were still in service of the Empire. There was a family that lived down the block from me and my wife. We we’re friends and they even had a couple of children. Children that we would sometimes love to entertain because we couldn’t have any of our own. But this family wasn’t happy with the Empire’s rules so they along with several others protested…” You stop the tanner right there. “Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re going to say, I had them all killed for treason and had their heads put on pikes. Well I was trying to maintain order and I did what I had to do to get the job done. I’m sure this story pales in comparison to others have screamed at me in the past and you don’t even need to make your point about hating me, because I’m used to it anyway. Besides you don’t want your son going to Kenneth’s Rest and I’m certainly not going to drag him along. If anything I’d wish he’d stop looking up to me as some sort of hero and following me around. I was hoping by doing this for him I’d finally be rid of him. So if you don’t mind, I’ll be going now and I’ll also be disappointing you again, by not killing you before I leave.” You turn to leave and that’s when you get another unusual request. “If you take him to Kenneth’s Rest, will you also look after him?” Ulivik’s mother asks. “What?!” “If you want money to do so, we can pay. Just can you look after him for a while at least?” “Okay…now I’m confused. I thought not only did you not want him to go, but that I was also a ruthless bastard that would probably rob and kill him along a lonely road?” “Yeah, we don’t want him to go, and yeah you are a ruthless bastard…but I also know you actually do have some sort of code of honor. You might’ve left the Empire behind, but the regimented way of thinking you have is still there. You wouldn’t bother killing my boy unless you felt he was a direct danger to you, and I think we both know that isn’t the case.” Ulivik’s dad says. “Well that’s the truth.” “The other thing is…we’re not going to be able to stop him. He’s been getting more and more restless about this, and he’s going to want to pursue this career path whether we want him to or not. At this point he’s just going to run away from home and who knows what trouble he’ll get into. (sigh) Maybe it’s just his nature, bein’ a dark elf and all, but for good or ill, me and my wife have taken on the responsibility of raising him. And part of that is making sure he has the survival skills that he’ll need to make it in this world. We can’t teach him that, but you could. Look, like my wife said, we can pay you a good sum just for you teach him the basics, or whatever else is involved, if you need more, I dunno we’ll try to figure out something.” You’re speechless for a moment. Just when you think you’ve seen the worst in people, something like this happens and surprises you. “I’m not sure what you expect me to do. I mean this job isn’t something I can teach like from a book. Most of what he’s going to have to learn is going to be from direct experience. I mean I suppose I could teach him some combat skills, but the rest is going to mainly be up to him.” “Well do what you can, and take this in the meantime.” Uliviki’s mother hands you a small bag. When you look inside, it’s nothing but gold coins. This has to be some of their savings, possibly all of their savings. They must really trust you, if they’ve given you this much. “I’ll do my best. You have my word as an Eternal.” You say and pocket the bag of coins. With those last words you exit the tanner’s store intending to find Ulivik. Fortunately you know he isn’t far. “Ulivik, I know you’re around the corner. Stop sulking, or pouting or whatever teenage angst you’re doing and let’s go.” Ulivik slowly comes out from behind the corner. “You’re taking me with you?” “Yeah, I scared your parents into letting you come with me. Now grab whatever gear you want to take and let’s go before all the good jobs are taken.” Ulivik is completely giddy at this turn of events and runs back into the store to get his stuff. You on the other hand are wondering how the hell you got yourself into this. Then you feel the bag of coins again and remember. On your journey to Kenneth’s Rest, you explain to Ulivik some of the things he should know such as haggling for better prices on jobs and the art of intimidation. You also teach him a few combat moves. He’s a rookie to be sure, but his agility allows him from getting hurt too badly. When you get to Kenneth’s Rest, the place is as busy as always. Ulivik is more than a little distracted by the surroundings, and you have to keep reminding him to stay alert. “Hey stop staring at the harlots and pay attention! Just because fighting isn’t supposed to be allowed here, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. In fact people around here love to start trouble. Don’t stare at anyone in the eye for too long and make sure you don’t bump into anybody. You could either get into a fight, or someone might even try to pick your pocket.” “Okay. Here isn’t the job board that way?” “Job board? Hah. I never use those things. I go straight to the source. Trust me, if you want to get a job that pays well; get to know and make contact with the owners or government officials. Fortunately Kenneth used to work for me at one time, so it was quite easy for me to make contact with him. And when we find him, just keep your mouth shut, and let me do all the talking.” Eventually you find Kennth, he’s as jumpy as ever whenever you first see him. “Sir! I didn’t expect you to be down this way so soon? What can I do for you today?” “Kenneth, will you relax? It’s been what, like ten years now? I’m not your superior officer anymore; you don’t have to keep calling me sir and getting all nervous and shit.” “I know sir, just old habits you know? Who’s this with you?” “This here is Ulivik, and he’s going to be my apprentice for a while.” “Apprentice? Seriously? Never pegged you as the teaching type.” “Right, Kenneth, like all those years of training soldiers in this very fort count for nothing at all.” “No, that’s not what I mean…I just oh I dunno. It’s just odd I guess. He’s a svelk, how come he’s not with his own people?” “That’s a long and unusual story, and one I don’t have time to go into. Besides we’re not here to satisfy your curiosity, we’re here for jobs, but seeing as this is Ulivik’s first time and all, can we get something maybe a little less…lethal?” “Hmm, usually that sort of stuff is on the boards, but I think I got something. Oh! There’s a nest of auravraxes a few miles from here.” “Ugh, more of those furry things? I just wiped out a nest of them a week ago!” “Well that’s all I got that’s on the easy side. I mean I’ve got some other jobs too, but you said this was more for training your apprentice than anything else.” “I can take on a harder task Mr. Bane. I mean I have to learn from experience right?” Ulivik pipes up forgetting that he was supposed to keep his mouth shut. Still, he might have a point. > You take a harder job Nothing like trial by fire, if Ulivik thinks he can handle it, he’ll learn soon enough. “Kenneth just give us whatever job pays the most currently right now.” You say. “Oh okay then, that’s easy. There’s a troll somewhere south of here near the old Empire border. Dunno exactly where he’s making his home, I’m guess there’s a hole in the ground somewhere though, anyway it’s been eating a lot of travelers and merchants on the roads whenever it’s feeling a little hungry. It’s only just arrived, but it’s hurting business and for some reason none of these fucking cowards will go and kill it!” Kenneth shouts so everyone in the bar can hear him. “A troll? Where the hell did he come from? They’re rare enough as it is, and even less likely to wander around above ground.” You remark. “I have no idea, but it’s ruining business. So are you going to take the job?” “Yeah sure, should be interesting.” You say. You and Ulivik get up and leave who looks less enthusiastic now. “What’s wrong with you?” “Oh uh, nothing. Just didn’t expect it would be a troll. You only hear about them in stories.” “Yeah, well this ain’t no story and they’re quite real. I should know I’ve fought one before when I was serving as a soldier here. Damn thing blended in the darkness of the cave and took out three men before we even knew what was going on. Now it’s a common misconception that you can only kill them with fire, but that’s probably the best way to kill ‘em anyway given how tough their skin is, let alone their regenerative abilities…” At this point Ulivik begins to look pale, an amazing feat for a dark elf. You address the situation before continuing. “Okay and I can tell by your look, you’re having second thoughts about all this. If you want to back out, there’s still time you know. Do you want to back out?” Ulivik’s silence isn’t an answer. “Look, you better tell me now because when we’re facing nine feet of green and black horror I don’t want to be having to pull your fat out of the fire because you’re freezing up in terror.” “I’m not backing out and I won’t freeze up!” he exclaims. “Okay then, come on we need to get a few extra supplies.” Ulivik’s answer doesn’t exactly convince you that he still isn’t scared about all this, but sometimes fear can be a good thing. Keeps you on your toes. Besides one would have to be a complete moron to not be a little worried about facing a troll. The only time you faced one, wasn’t exactly a picnic and you had the advantage of numbers on your side. Normally you don’t waste your money on things like explosives, but you make an exception and buy a couple of firebombs along with some oil flasks, torches and a whetstone to make sure your sword is extra sharp. Along the way to your destination, you tell Ulivik how he should approach fighting the thing and whatever he does to not let it corner him or get the drop on him. If either one happens he’s dead. You also tell him that unlike an ogre or a giant, trolls are a lot faster and sneakier than their size would indicate. You travel for about a good portion of the day on your way towards the southern Rask border. You stick to the road since you figure if the troll has been ambushing merchants and travelers, he’s got to be stalking the road. When night comes you make a camp along side of it, but there still is no sign of any troll yet. “Hey you said these things don’t usually come out from underground?” Ulivik asks. “Well the one I encountered was living in a cave that was being mined, and all the other stories I’ve heard and you’ve probably heard is that they’re completely subterranean. Whatever the truth is, this one has been lurking above ground and out in the open, so maybe they just don’t like sunlight. Probably has a home somewhere nearby, but there aren’t any hills or mountains in this part of Rask, just forest. Could be living in there I suppose, but I’m betting he’s probably got a hidden entrance in the ground somewhere and he’s living right underneath us.” This of course causes Ulivik to start looking at the ground around him. “How do we know it’ll even show up?” “We don’t, but if it’s been attacking people like Kenneth says it has, then us lingering around the road will probably draw its attention. Of course there’s no point in sitting around and using up all our energy by staying up all night. We’ll be taking shifts. You seem to be alert already so you’re taking first watch while I get a little rest.” When you close your eyes you begin to slowly drift off, though you’ve always been sort of a light sleeper, so you never really fall into a deep sleep. What wakes you up completely is a sickening cracking sound and heavy breathing. You stand up with your sword in hand and you’re just in time to see a large gangly figure with its hands around Ulivik’s head which is now completely backwards. He didn’t even have a chance. Seeing you, the troll emits a low growl and drops Ulivik’s body. The troll lurches and leaps about in a chaotic manner. It tries to circle you in such a way that it’ll be behind you, but you don’t allow that to happen. Eventually it gets frustrated and attacks you head on. Fighting the troll is harder than the last time you fought one before and not just due to the fact that you had back up. The open space of the outside world is actually more beneficial for the troll’s fighting style which is jerky and involves a lot of leaping around. Many times the creature manages to smash you with its hardened fists due to its extended reach alone. Feels like getting hit by fucking battering ram. Your own hits against it don’t seem to do anything, except the one time when you actually manage to cleave one of the troll’s legs off just below the knee. This doesn’t deter its attack though. It merely backs off long enough for it to change its fighting style. It comes at you on all fours (or rather threes in this case). During this time you’ve taken the opportunity to light up one of the firebombs to throw at the thing, but by the time you light it, it’s already upon you and knocked you down. Pinnining you to the ground as best it can, the troll punches you in the face, breaking your nose to a point where it practically explodes into a mess of blood. You gasps for air as it follows up by sinking its teeth deep into your sword arm. The sound of bone cracking is a sure sign that it won’t be long before the troll chews it off completely. In the meantime the firebomb you lit fell close by and its fuse is still burning down. Somehow between your eyes covered in blood, the difficulty breathing and the pain wracking your entire body while a troll is eating you alive, you manage to grab the firebomb with your good arm and hold it right near the troll’s head. You get a minor satisfaction at the troll’s expression when he sees the bomb just before it goes off, blowing the pair of you up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3A1: Bane of Rask Year 45 “Bastard!” you say landing a killing blow on the last auravrax. You do a double check of the cave just to make sure you’ve got all the beasts. It’s times like this you’re reminded of your kobold hunting days. Of course auravraxes are a lot furrier and stupider. Doesn’t make them any less dangerous though considering they’re basically balls of hair with lots of teeth and a vicious streak a mile wide. You wonder how it was you never encountered them before when you were posted up here. You can only assume that the larger creatures like ogres and wendigos kept them in check. Thanks to your depletion of such creatures other predators managed to gain better dominance. Nature is wonderful at balancing things out that way. After making a check you pile up the bodies and start skinning. You figure between the payment for this job and the sale you’ll make on the pelts you’ll have enough money for at least of week’s worth of wine, women and song. “Nah, to hell with the song. More women.” You chuckle to yourself. Thoughts about such “common” pleasures would’ve never entered your head decades ago. Makes you realize how much you’re changed since then, but it’s a good change you think. For the first time, you’ve actually been enjoying life rather than just going through the motions of it like a golem. Life is so much simpler and easier when you don’t have anyone to answer to; especially when that “someone” doesn’t even know what the fuck they’re doing half of the time. Life of course still has its bad moments, but compared to your time serving the Empire, it’s like a non-stop party. The Empire, now just another government resigned to the trash heap of history. All of its years of power and whatever glory it claimed it had completely gone. And of course much like Mother Nature, the smaller predators get to take their chance in the sun now that the big one is extinct. One of those smaller predators being one your old fellow Eternals, Edgar. You don’t know all the details, but from the rumors you’ve heard he’s declared himself a general and is calling the territory in his control, The Eternal Dominion. He apparently managed to get some of those chaotic eternal wannabes in some semblance of order to help him as well. When you first heard about this you could only shake your head in disappointment. Not even so much for what he’s doing, but more with how he’s doing it. It’s almost like he’s going down the same path that Kane did, but with even less planning and followers that are probably more duplicitous than Shadow Guards. You’d think that he would’ve learned something from that mess. Still, it’s his life and you have yours. You stop reminiscing about the past and concentrate on skinning the auravraxes. When you’re finished you cook up one of them to eat and then get some sleep. The next day you set off to Keplavisk with your furs. When you get to Keplavisk, the usual people acknowledge you. Some are friendly, some aren’t, and others with longer memories hate your guts for your action when you were trying to maintain order here a long time ago. Just one of the things you have to put up with, after all you still have your reputation of being… “Bane of Rask! Bane of Rask! Hey wait up!” Ulivik yells. “(Sigh) Boy, I told you to stop calling me by that ridiculous name. In fact I told you to stop following me period!” “Sorry, Mr. Bane. Hey are those auravrax furs? Did you kill all of them? I bet you just went in and totally destroyed them without fear!” Ulivik says while making sword whooshing sounds. You roll your eyes at the teenager’s over enthusiasm and resign yourself to him following you while you head to the town hall. For whatever reason he sees you as some sort of brave “hero” though you wish he wouldn’t. You can’t get too mad at him though, not his fault he’s a dark elf brought up by humans. There’s got to be a lot of confusion going on there. You mostly ignore Ulivik’s incessant questioning until you get to the town hall where upon his guard run him off with racial slurs and threats. You enter the building and see the mayor. Mayor Stundle is sitting his fat ass at his desk doing nothing of any importance as usual. “Ah Mr. Bane, I can see by the numerous pelts you’re carrying that you’ve taken care of the problem, I knew you would. That’s why you’re the best merc in the Confederation. Your payment is on the desk there.” “Good, and my name isn’t Bane you know. I keep telling people that.” “Indeed it may not be, but that’s what everyone knows you as. Can’t fight fame or maybe in your case infamy. Heh heh.” “Yeah, anyway I showed you the proof, I’ve got some furs to sell.” “Got a special job for you if you want.” “Maybe later, I’m going to enjoy myself.” “Okay, but I can’t promise you it’ll be available when you get back.” As you leave Mayor Stundle’s office, Flog is just entering with several ogre scalps. He displays his obvious dislike of you as usual. As thorough as you were when you destroyed Fort Defiance, Flog survived because he did the smart thing of running away and hiding as soon as he saw your army approaching. “Outta da way Bane, Flog has to see fat mayor!” “He’s all yours.” You remark not really wanting to deal with his attitude today, of course in typical orc fashion, Flog feels the need to press the issue. He sees the auravrax furs and makes his move. “Gruh. You kill little furry things. Flog kill big ogres! More proof that Flog better merc than you!” “Sure Flog, whatever.” You say dismissively which of course annoys Flog even more. “Flog gonna kill you one day Bane!” he shouts as you walk away. “Sure Flog, whenever you’re ready.” You say almost yawning. Another time and place you would’ve killed him for speaking to you in such a manner, but over the years you’ve mellowed with age. Besides he’s been threatening to kill you for the last eight years. The first few times you took him seriously. Now it’s just boring. If he really ever wants to try he knows where to find you, not like you’re hiding. After selling your furs you make you take your money to the closest tavern where you proceed to make good on your claim of relaxing. After a couple days of carousing you’re lying in bed with a couple of serving wenches and you decide that you should probably get back to work. No point in waiting around until all your coin is gone, you’ve had your fun now its time to get back to what you’re really good at, killing stuff. You tell the girls in your room to leave and get prepared to go find some more work. You’ve barely stepped out of the inn and Ulivik has already found you and nearly gets himself stabbed for sneaking up on you. “Hey Mr. Bane, it’s just me!” he says with a worried tone. “Boy, didn’t I tell you to never sneak up on me like that? I could’ve killed you and I doubt if anyone would’ve blamed me for it!” you shout “Sorry, Mr. Bane. Hey are you going on another mission?” “What do you think?” “I think you are! But Mayor Stundle already gave out all of the jobs, you’ll probably have to go to another town.” “And how do you know this?” “Because I tried to sign up, but I got thrown out of the town hall and called names.” “Sounds about right, but how did you get in there in the first place?” “I snuck in. I think I’m getting really good at it!” “Hmm, sounds like your svelk heritage is finally paying off.” You say. “Svelk?” Ulivik asks as if you’ve spoken a made up word. “Svelk, you know it’s the proper name for you dark elves, you mean you’ve never heard the term?” “No, I’ve been called a dark elf before, but I mostly get called a lot of other names.” “Well life’s tough kid, now you go run along…” “Hey why don’t I come with you on your next mission!?” And there it is. You knew the day was coming where he’d start asking you to bring him with you. “Yeah, no. I work alone.” “Aw come on! I need the experience! I try to sign up for even the easy jobs and I get thrown out! I’ve even tried going door to door asking if there are any monsters they need killing and they usually just say, yeah the one standing front of me! Then they slam the door in my face! It’s not fair!” “Why do you want to be a merc anyway? I mean I know you’ve got a family that takes care of you. They must, if they were willing to take on the ostracizing that would come in raising a dark elf baby.” “They do and I know they love me, but working as a hide tanner is boring! I want to be a mercenary and live a life of adventure! I mean I’ve heard stories of how my race is composed of nothing but mercenaries! Just think, a long proud line of brave ancestors that lived a glorious life of excitement! I should be as noble as them!” You almost laugh when hearing how Ulivik has spoken of his race. He truly is out of touch as there is absolutely nothing glorious, proud or noble about them. Even brave is debatable most of the time. “Ulivik, if you really want to be a merc, why not just go to Kenneth’s Rest? He doesn’t give a shit who he hires. Hell, he hires dark elves on a regular basis.” “I would, but uh, I’m not allowed to leave the town…but I know if you were with me, my parents would let me go! So can I please come with you?!” This scenario is just so bizarre; you hardly believe that it’s happening, a dark elf practically begging you to teach him to be a mercenary. The crazy thing about all this is you’re actually considering it. You must finally be suffering from some of the blows you’ve taken to the head in the past. It’s the only explanation. > You don't take Ulivik While it’s an interesting possibility, you’re not training soldiers anymore; you’re done with that mess and quite frankly, you doubt if Ulivik would make a good warrior of any kind. “Look kid, I’ve put up with you for quite some time now, but enough is enough. I told you, go down to Kenneth’s Rest and get a job. If you’re too much of a sissy to disobey your parents, then you ain’t gonna have what it takes to be a merc in the first place. Now leave me the hell alone, or I’m gonna hurt you very very badly and you don’t want that.” Ulivik tries to beg some more, but after a few menacing glares and threatening steps towards him, he backs off, saddened by your hostility. Having gotten rid of Ulivik, you set off for a different town further north, they’re always having problems up there. A few months later when you’re back in Keplavisk, you fully expect Ulivik to be bothering you again, but you see no sign of him which is odd since he always seems to know exactly when you come into town. While getting a drink at the tavern you ask the barkeep in passing where he is. “Oh that dark elven boy? Ran off and got himself killed a couple months ago. Damn fool was trying to be a mercenary and I guess some bandits finally taught him that he wasn’t. Good riddance I say. Don’t need any of their kind around, didn’t like ‘em when they were doing thug work for the Empire…erm, no offence Mr. Bane…” “Hmm, just gimme my drink.” You say. While Ulivik’s death doesn’t affect you on any emotional level, you are a little surprised to hear about it. You didn’t think he actually would have the heart to try to strike out on his own. Oh well, that’s how it is in this business though, one moment you’re here the next you aren’t. Everything is fleeting and you can’t worry about tomorrow, you just have to live for today. Life for you continues on as usual. Year 50 You wake up from another night of debauchery and predictably you feel pretty terrible from it. Your head hurts and your body aches all over, of course your body would ache anyway. The years have been taking a toll on how you push yourself physically and the battles you fight. The excessive parties in between really don’t help though. You just lay in bed for a while dreading the fact that you’ll be running out of coin soon again and have to go to work again. It’s an endless cycle, and while the freedom you’ve enjoyed since leaving the Empire has been nice, the past couple of years you’ve started feel like something is missing. Namely purpose and direction. The Empire had numerous faults, but in the beginning it did give you such things and part of you misses it. You begin to wonder if you shouldn’t go join Edgar in his Eternal Dominion or maybe offer to serve the Felkan Kingdom to give yourself some sort of goal larger than yourself. You quickly dismiss such thoughts though for several reasons, one of the biggest ones being that you now you’ve had your taste of freedom, you don’t really want to be following orders from a large government again. (Let alone Edgar) Of course maybe you just need a change of scenery and just leave this area entirely. There certainly nothing really tying you down except perhaps your own comfort of familiarity. You’ve spent more than half of your life in Rask, hell it’s actually been more of your “home” than the Empire ever was so despite your emotional disconnect with people, you ‘re a little attached to the area. > You leave Rask You’ve lived in Rask as an “occupier” and as a “citizen” and neither one have really fulfilled you. You decide that it might very well be time to leave. You have no idea where you’re going to go or what you’re going to do, but you guess you’ll figure it out eventually. You pack up what belongings you can carry and do a little shopping for other necessities before you set off on your journey. When you eventually get to the Rask border, you take a look back, wondering if you’ll ever return one day… You don’t. You spend your remaining years traveling far from Rask, far from old Empire territory and far from any land you’ve ever known. While some of it is interesting, you still never feel “content.” You mostly support yourself just by living off the land and doing some occasional mercenary work when passing through towns and villages. You never do settle down in one area for long though. You might be an Eternal and your fighting spirit is always willing, but that doesn’t stop the ravages of time from taking their toll on your body. Between the constant traveling and the combat, your body is aching all the time. You aren’t as fast or as strong as you used to be and you often forget you aren’t young anymore, or more likely you have full knowledge of it and are just too stubborn to change. Your unwillingness to settle down and die peacefully in your bed eventually catches up with you during a mercenary job you take in some small town in a far away land. Bandits are raiding the town on a regular basis and you take part in defending it. You do well enough for a man your age, but ultimately you are brought down by several of them who manage to surround and gain the advantage over you. You fall to several sword blows to your body and collapse in a bloody heap in the streets of the town.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While it’s an interesting possibility, you’re not training soldiers anymore; you’re done with that mess and quite frankly, you doubt if Ulivik would make a good warrior of any kind. “Look kid, I’ve put up with you for quite some time now, but enough is enough. I told you, go down to Kenneth’s Rest and get a job. If you’re too much of a sissy to disobey your parents, then you ain’t gonna have what it takes to be a merc in the first place. Now leave me the hell alone, or I’m gonna hurt you very very badly and you don’t want that.” Ulivik tries to beg some more, but after a few menacing glares and threatening steps towards him, he backs off, saddened by your hostility. Having gotten rid of Ulivik, you set off for a different town further north, they’re always having problems up there. A few months later when you’re back in Keplavisk, you fully expect Ulivik to be bothering you again, but you see no sign of him which is odd since he always seems to know exactly when you come into town. While getting a drink at the tavern you ask the barkeep in passing where he is. “Oh that dark elven boy? Ran off and got himself killed a couple months ago. Damn fool was trying to be a mercenary and I guess some bandits finally taught him that he wasn’t. Good riddance I say. Don’t need any of their kind around, didn’t like ‘em when they were doing thug work for the Empire…erm, no offence Mr. Bane…” “Hmm, just gimme my drink.” You say. While Ulivik’s death doesn’t affect you on any emotional level, you are a little surprised to hear about it. You didn’t think he actually would have the heart to try to strike out on his own. Oh well, that’s how it is in this business though, one moment you’re here the next you aren’t. Everything is fleeting and you can’t worry about tomorrow, you just have to live for today. Life for you continues on as usual. Year 50 You wake up from another night of debauchery and predictably you feel pretty terrible from it. Your head hurts and your body aches all over, of course your body would ache anyway. The years have been taking a toll on how you push yourself physically and the battles you fight. The excessive parties in between really don’t help though. You just lay in bed for a while dreading the fact that you’ll be running out of coin soon again and have to go to work again. It’s an endless cycle, and while the freedom you’ve enjoyed since leaving the Empire has been nice, the past couple of years you’ve started feel like something is missing. Namely purpose and direction. The Empire had numerous faults, but in the beginning it did give you such things and part of you misses it. You begin to wonder if you shouldn’t go join Edgar in his Eternal Dominion or maybe offer to serve the Felkan Kingdom to give yourself some sort of goal larger than yourself. You quickly dismiss such thoughts though for several reasons, one of the biggest ones being that you now you’ve had your taste of freedom, you don’t really want to be following orders from a large government again. (Let alone Edgar) Of course maybe you just need a change of scenery and just leave this area entirely. There certainly nothing really tying you down except perhaps your own comfort of familiarity. You’ve spent more than half of your life in Rask, hell it’s actually been more of your “home” than the Empire ever was so despite your emotional disconnect with people, you ‘re a little attached to the area. > You stick around You may be in a “rut” but you realize you’re too old to just start all over again, somewhere else and quite frankly you don’t really want to. Rask is your home now, and while life might not be perfect here, it’s a lot better than how your life was during the Empire. You just need to push that lingering Empire indoctrination from your mind that you thought was gone. You roll out of bed and get yourself in the frame of mind to go to work again… Year 54 “And that’s how I killed the last giant in Rask! Another round!” you exclaim as everyone in the tavern hangs on your every word. Later you continue your tradition of bedding whatever wench that is pretty enough and willing that night. The past four years have been relatively good for you, or at least you’ve been trying to make the best of them. Since your last self reflection you’ve funneled your energy in not only your mercenary work, but to be the best one in Rask by deliberately taking on the most dangerous jobs as well as blatantly stealing jobs from other mercs. While this has made you a lot more famous with the average citizens who appreciate your monster and bandit slaying, it’s also made you quite unpopular with all the rest of the mercs. Naturally this unpopularity puts a target on your back and while most of the mercs are far too scared to actually to confront you face to face they do eventually build up a coalition to take you out once and for all. One day on your way to take out what you believe to be a bandit hideout, you’re traveling into a wooded area and get the impression that something is amiss, like you’re walking into an ambush. At first you think it might be the bandits who caught on to you, but you’ve dealt with too many of those types to know that they’re either too stupid to lay an ambush or they’re smart enough to have already run away. That’s when you draw your sword… “Alright, I know you’re all out there! I guess this has been a long time coming, so let’s get this shit over. The merc population needs a little thinning out anyway.” You shout. Predictably Flog comes out hiding with a motley group of humans and even a couple of ogres he must’ve intimidated into joining him. “Flog told you he’d kill you one day! Today is da day!” “Took you long enough and you still need a group to help you…” you hear the crunch of a twig behind you and you instinctively duck and roll to your left as several bolts go flying into trees narrowly missing you. “Reload!” you hear a female svelk voice shout while you run for cover behind some rocks. “Hey! This is Flog’s kill! Told you not to try to kill him, just prevent his escape!” “Hah! You got Eldolith to help you? You working for orcs now Eldy? My how far you’ve come from once working for the Empire!” you mock. “You won’t be laughing for too much longer Eternal. You’ve stolen your last job from us!” Eldolith shouts back. While you hide behind the rocks, Flog orders some of the other mercs to go after you, doesn’t take any time for you at all to kill several of them. Eldolith orders another volley of bolts from her men, but you use a merc you grabbed as a shield and run deeper in the forest. Flog’s ogres run after you and thanks to their great stamina, they manage to catch up to you before long, you stop your running, spin around and with as much force as you can you chop at one of the ogre’s legs. He doesn’t stop in time and you nearly chop it completely off, unfortunately he crashes into you bellowing in pain the whole time. You crawl out from under the one leg ogre and finish him off, only to have his buddy nearly cave your head in with his club. You shove your dagger upwards into the ogre’s balls and his low growls and snarls become high-pitched squeaks as his manhood is now shredded. He falls to his knees and before you can finish him off, the svelks arrive with their blasted repeating crossbows again. A couple take aim immediately while two others attempt to run around behind you. Having little in the way of options you run to the nearest tree for cover and try to get close enough to cut one of them down. You succeed in dodging and reaching the first two, who put up a poor showing of swordsmanship, but the other two that ran around in back of you fire their own volleys and you feel the piercing pain of two bolts going into your left leg and another going into your back. You collapse on top of one of the other dead svelk. The pain is coursing throughout your body, but you’re in a vulnerable position, and in order to survive you can only hope you’re fast enough to get the drop on them. Playing dead you rely on your hearing to sense how close the svelk are stepping through the snow to check on you. This is harder than in sounds with a severely wounded ogre moaning about his wounds the whole time. You also see two other images running towards you, it’s Flog and Eldolith. You can’t wait any longer. You grab one of the dead svelk’s crossbows and with all your strength you roll on your back (Biting your lip at the pain due to the bolt there) and fire at the surprised svelks moving towards you. You were never an expert on ranged weapons, but you don’t miss at your range and the two svelk go down. You then point it at the balless ogre and put him out of his misery with a single bolt to his head. “Shit! He’s got one of the crossbows!” Eldolith shouts and pulls out her own with taking cover. Flog on the other hand doesn’t seem particularly worried. “No more hiding! Flog put an end to Bane once and for all!” he yells and charged at you with his axe. You shoot your remaining bolts at him, but only succeed in hitting Flog in the arm, which barely stops his stride. You scramble to get up and throw the crossbow at Flog who bats away the oncoming object. Flog swings his axe and catches you with a glancing blow to your chest, ripping your armor and breaking the skin. You stagger backwards trying not to fall again. “Yooze gonna die today Bane! Ha ha ha ha ha!” Flog laughs followed by a sudden yell of pain as he feels several bolts go into his own back. He immediately stops his advance on you and falls to one knee coughing up blood. “Traitorous dark elven bitch!” he shouts. This gives you enough time to stagger away again and grab another one of the dead svelk crossbows and hide again. You aren’t feeling so great yourself; you know the svelk bolts probably were dipped in some sort of poison. In fact you’re surprised it hasn’t incapacitated you yet. You just hope you can get through this quick enough to drag yourself back to the closest town. You look out from behind your cover just in time to see Flog attempting to advance on Eldolith and her firing another volley into his body. She ends up having to step back quite a bit and reload again before finally finishing him off. He falls backwards into the snow looking like a pin cushion. “Bad move Eldy. Should’ve let Flog wear me down a lot more and then killed him.” You shout. “Wear you down? Hah, he would’ve killed you, in your current condition. No, I want the pleasure of killing you myself.” While she pontificates you attempt to shoot at her from behind your cover, but you miss. “Nice try. How are you feeling over there Bane? Not too good I imagine. Had to make sure the poison was really strong, I know how you Eternals got that annoying resistance to the stuff.” At this point, you are indeed starting to feel quite unwell. You begin to feel nauseous and you’re having a hard time standing up. When you begin retching, you hear Eldolith speak again. “You know Bane, this is near the same area where I helped your old captain kill all those elves. That was a good day too. You’re starting to sound pretty bad over there Bane, how about you just give yourself up and let me finish you off? Wouldn’t you rather be killed by a worthy foe rather than just succumb to the poison? There’s no shame in being beaten by your betters.” You’re running out of time and you know it. “Alright…you got a point damn you. I’m coming out, here I’ll throw out the crossbow just to reassure you!” you shout and throw your crossbow from behind your cover. “Good, good, glad to see you submitting to the inevitable. Now come out slowly.” The way you’re feeling right now, you doubt if you could come out any other way. You see Eldolith pointing her crossbow at you while stepping out from her own cover and moving closer towards you. She smirks and in typical svelk fashion can’t help but gloat. “I must say I am surprised that you decided to surrender, I would’ve thought your eternal pride would’ve prevented such a thing. But I guess those days are long gone just like the Empire you once served eh?” “Just get this over with.” You say and then fall to your hands and knees in the snow vomiting up blood. “Mmm, perhaps I’ll enjoy watching you squirm some more. The once great Bane of Rask finally…” You knew you could count on Eldolith being a typical svelk. While she’s taunting you, she doesn’t pay attention that your hands are doing something rather simple such as balling up the hardened snow. With all your strength you throw the snowball at her. Being caught off guard she dodges it and shoots wildly at you. You manage to roll out of the way and grab the crossbow you threw away. You unload the entire thing at her and as luck would have it, the bolts land true for the most part. Three of them go into her side and another into her neck. She falls into the snow coughing up blood and holding on to her side. You hear her cursing you with her dying breaths as you attempt to leave the area. While you have won, you know you aren’t going to survive too much longer. You manage to crawl a few more meters before the poison finally takes it toll. Your last thoughts are nostalgic ones. You allow yourself to smile at the times you got to enjoy life and your past victories, even this one. Yes this is a good death you think and then you pass on.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3A1: Bane of Rask Year 45 “Bastard!” you say landing a killing blow on the last auravrax. You do a double check of the cave just to make sure you’ve got all the beasts. It’s times like this you’re reminded of your kobold hunting days. Of course auravraxes are a lot furrier and stupider. Doesn’t make them any less dangerous though considering they’re basically balls of hair with lots of teeth and a vicious streak a mile wide. You wonder how it was you never encountered them before when you were posted up here. You can only assume that the larger creatures like ogres and wendigos kept them in check. Thanks to your depletion of such creatures other predators managed to gain better dominance. Nature is wonderful at balancing things out that way. After making a check you pile up the bodies and start skinning. You figure between the payment for this job and the sale you’ll make on the pelts you’ll have enough money for at least of week’s worth of wine, women and song. “Nah, to hell with the song. More women.” You chuckle to yourself. Thoughts about such “common” pleasures would’ve never entered your head decades ago. Makes you realize how much you’re changed since then, but it’s a good change you think. For the first time, you’ve actually been enjoying life rather than just going through the motions of it like a golem. Life is so much simpler and easier when you don’t have anyone to answer to; especially when that “someone” doesn’t even know what the fuck they’re doing half of the time. Life of course still has its bad moments, but compared to your time serving the Empire, it’s like a non-stop party. The Empire, now just another government resigned to the trash heap of history. All of its years of power and whatever glory it claimed it had completely gone. And of course much like Mother Nature, the smaller predators get to take their chance in the sun now that the big one is extinct. One of those smaller predators being one your old fellow Eternals, Edgar. You don’t know all the details, but from the rumors you’ve heard he’s declared himself a general and is calling the territory in his control, The Eternal Dominion. He apparently managed to get some of those chaotic eternal wannabes in some semblance of order to help him as well. When you first heard about this you could only shake your head in disappointment. Not even so much for what he’s doing, but more with how he’s doing it. It’s almost like he’s going down the same path that Kane did, but with even less planning and followers that are probably more duplicitous than Shadow Guards. You’d think that he would’ve learned something from that mess. Still, it’s his life and you have yours. You stop reminiscing about the past and concentrate on skinning the auravraxes. When you’re finished you cook up one of them to eat and then get some sleep. The next day you set off to Keplavisk with your furs. When you get to Keplavisk, the usual people acknowledge you. Some are friendly, some aren’t, and others with longer memories hate your guts for your action when you were trying to maintain order here a long time ago. Just one of the things you have to put up with, after all you still have your reputation of being… “Bane of Rask! Bane of Rask! Hey wait up!” Ulivik yells. “(Sigh) Boy, I told you to stop calling me by that ridiculous name. In fact I told you to stop following me period!” “Sorry, Mr. Bane. Hey are those auravrax furs? Did you kill all of them? I bet you just went in and totally destroyed them without fear!” Ulivik says while making sword whooshing sounds. You roll your eyes at the teenager’s over enthusiasm and resign yourself to him following you while you head to the town hall. For whatever reason he sees you as some sort of brave “hero” though you wish he wouldn’t. You can’t get too mad at him though, not his fault he’s a dark elf brought up by humans. There’s got to be a lot of confusion going on there. You mostly ignore Ulivik’s incessant questioning until you get to the town hall where upon his guard run him off with racial slurs and threats. You enter the building and see the mayor. Mayor Stundle is sitting his fat ass at his desk doing nothing of any importance as usual. “Ah Mr. Bane, I can see by the numerous pelts you’re carrying that you’ve taken care of the problem, I knew you would. That’s why you’re the best merc in the Confederation. Your payment is on the desk there.” “Good, and my name isn’t Bane you know. I keep telling people that.” “Indeed it may not be, but that’s what everyone knows you as. Can’t fight fame or maybe in your case infamy. Heh heh.” “Yeah, anyway I showed you the proof, I’ve got some furs to sell.” “Got a special job for you if you want.” “Maybe later, I’m going to enjoy myself.” “Okay, but I can’t promise you it’ll be available when you get back.” As you leave Mayor Stundle’s office, Flog is just entering with several ogre scalps. He displays his obvious dislike of you as usual. As thorough as you were when you destroyed Fort Defiance, Flog survived because he did the smart thing of running away and hiding as soon as he saw your army approaching. “Outta da way Bane, Flog has to see fat mayor!” “He’s all yours.” You remark not really wanting to deal with his attitude today, of course in typical orc fashion, Flog feels the need to press the issue. He sees the auravrax furs and makes his move. “Gruh. You kill little furry things. Flog kill big ogres! More proof that Flog better merc than you!” “Sure Flog, whatever.” You say dismissively which of course annoys Flog even more. “Flog gonna kill you one day Bane!” he shouts as you walk away. “Sure Flog, whenever you’re ready.” You say almost yawning. Another time and place you would’ve killed him for speaking to you in such a manner, but over the years you’ve mellowed with age. Besides he’s been threatening to kill you for the last eight years. The first few times you took him seriously. Now it’s just boring. If he really ever wants to try he knows where to find you, not like you’re hiding. After selling your furs you make you take your money to the closest tavern where you proceed to make good on your claim of relaxing. After a couple days of carousing you’re lying in bed with a couple of serving wenches and you decide that you should probably get back to work. No point in waiting around until all your coin is gone, you’ve had your fun now its time to get back to what you’re really good at, killing stuff. You tell the girls in your room to leave and get prepared to go find some more work. You’ve barely stepped out of the inn and Ulivik has already found you and nearly gets himself stabbed for sneaking up on you. “Hey Mr. Bane, it’s just me!” he says with a worried tone. “Boy, didn’t I tell you to never sneak up on me like that? I could’ve killed you and I doubt if anyone would’ve blamed me for it!” you shout “Sorry, Mr. Bane. Hey are you going on another mission?” “What do you think?” “I think you are! But Mayor Stundle already gave out all of the jobs, you’ll probably have to go to another town.” “And how do you know this?” “Because I tried to sign up, but I got thrown out of the town hall and called names.” “Sounds about right, but how did you get in there in the first place?” “I snuck in. I think I’m getting really good at it!” “Hmm, sounds like your svelk heritage is finally paying off.” You say. “Svelk?” Ulivik asks as if you’ve spoken a made up word. “Svelk, you know it’s the proper name for you dark elves, you mean you’ve never heard the term?” “No, I’ve been called a dark elf before, but I mostly get called a lot of other names.” “Well life’s tough kid, now you go run along…” “Hey why don’t I come with you on your next mission!?” And there it is. You knew the day was coming where he’d start asking you to bring him with you. “Yeah, no. I work alone.” “Aw come on! I need the experience! I try to sign up for even the easy jobs and I get thrown out! I’ve even tried going door to door asking if there are any monsters they need killing and they usually just say, yeah the one standing front of me! Then they slam the door in my face! It’s not fair!” “Why do you want to be a merc anyway? I mean I know you’ve got a family that takes care of you. They must, if they were willing to take on the ostracizing that would come in raising a dark elf baby.” “They do and I know they love me, but working as a hide tanner is boring! I want to be a mercenary and live a life of adventure! I mean I’ve heard stories of how my race is composed of nothing but mercenaries! Just think, a long proud line of brave ancestors that lived a glorious life of excitement! I should be as noble as them!” You almost laugh when hearing how Ulivik has spoken of his race. He truly is out of touch as there is absolutely nothing glorious, proud or noble about them. Even brave is debatable most of the time. “Ulivik, if you really want to be a merc, why not just go to Kenneth’s Rest? He doesn’t give a shit who he hires. Hell, he hires dark elves on a regular basis.” “I would, but uh, I’m not allowed to leave the town…but I know if you were with me, my parents would let me go! So can I please come with you?!” This scenario is just so bizarre; you hardly believe that it’s happening, a dark elf practically begging you to teach him to be a mercenary. The crazy thing about all this is you’re actually considering it. You must finally be suffering from some of the blows you’ve taken to the head in the past. It’s the only explanation. > You ulivik (Outcast) Ulivik is a strange young man. First of all he’s a svelk that had been abandoned as a baby, presumably by one of the many mercenaries that travel through the area. It’s not uncommon for dark elf mothers to abandon their young if they are an “inconvenience”, it is however less common for these babies to survive, let alone taken care of by others. Ulivik was that lucky rarity that a human couple that couldn’t have any children of their own literally stumbled upon him in the woods. Other than that, he hasn’t exactly been all that lucky. Given the reputation of his kind, it’s hardly surprising that he’s practically run off or insulted everywhere he goes. How his adopted parent’s business hasn’t suffered is amazing, but it’s a small enough town that people understand that the couple was trying for a child for a very long time and keep their dislike for the svelk youth to a minimum. Doesn’t stop other youths from being complete bastards to him though. Perhaps due to his outcast nature he’s latched on to the idea of a mercenary life of being a glorious life of excitement and adventure. Naturally when he found out that you were one of the best mercenaries in the region, he attached himself to you almost immediately and whenever you’re in town, he asks you a bunch of questions. Even getting hostile with him doesn’t drive him away since he’s so used to it, so nowadays you just resign yourself to the temporary annoyance. He’s sort of a good example of the whole nature vs. nurture nonsense you overheard some drunk philosopher babbling about in a local tavern once. You have to admit, sometimes you feel a little sorry for him, never thought you’d feel that way towards anyone, let alone a svelk.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 35 Another rebellion put down. You wipe your sword of blood and shake your head as you look around at the chaos. This is the Quala province, the very heartland of the Empire. You shouldn’t have to be trying to maintain order here only a few miles away from the capital itself. “Ha ha ha! Come on bitch, give it up! I’m an Eternal, you oughta be flattered that I’m even wasting my time on your normal ass!” private Felding says as he attempts to rape a nearby girl. You briskly walk over to Felding and pull him off her. You know damn well that the rest of his kind are probably doing stuff like this all over the place, but this one is in your direct sight and under your command. “What the hell, captain? If you wanted first dibs you could’ve just said so! Ah look, now she’s getting away!” “We’re here to maintain order private, not create more chaos.” “Oh yeah? Coulda fooled me by destroying the entire town like this.” “Regrettable, but during battle only victory matters.” “Exactly! We won! So now it’s time to have our fun with these disobedient peasants. Y’know instill fear in them so they won’t do it again.” “You’re not instilling fear though, you’re just satisfying your own desires.” “Hey, who says we aren’t supposed to have fun while doing it?” It’s like talking to a brick wall. You’ve had these “New Eternals” under your command for a few months now and they are some of the most undisciplined troops you’ve ever had. You can try to encourage them, you can try to reason with them, you can punish them, and none of it has a real effect. The only constant is that they know of your reputation and know that you’re also an Eternal, which makes them just fearful of you enough that they don’t attempt to directly challenge your authority like they have with so many of their other commanders. If it were up to you, you would’ve had them all killed for treason as soon as they murdered their first CO, but for whatever reason the Empire wants them active. You’re guessing because the Empire’s desperate. So they were ultimately transferred to you and unfortunately you’re not allowed to kill them either…well unless they try to kill you first. You swear this must be what it’s like to be a svelk. They are like children, malicious hateful little children. It’s not even their suspect loyalty that baffles you; it’s their complete lack of discipline. Even Kane and Cyrus who opposed you had discipline. Hell, Edgar who was arguably the most emotional and hotheaded of the group was a hundred times more disciplined than any of these new “Eternals.” You remember back to your own training and there were a few of your fellows that didn’t learn proper discipline either. They never made it past Mistress and the few that did, didn’t survive Gruz. Whoever was in charge of their training did a horrible job and should’ve been executed for incompetence along with the rest of these vicious monsters. That old orc was right, they will destroy what’s left of the Empire, but you doubt if they’ll survive long after its downfall. You think back to all the real Eternals. You, Edgar and Brenda are the only ones left, as Warrick killed in the final days of the Felkan War. At least you assume that’s what happened, his body was never found and you know he would’ve rather died than let himself be captured to rot in a P.O.W. Camp. Either way it’s truly a loss you never ever got to talk with him again. From what you know Edgar is still stationed in the Arat province, probably trying to keep his own “eternals” in line to keep the peace there. As for poor Brenda you know she has her command in the Nalin province and probably still quietly grieving for Roldan. After all you’ve been through, it’s come to this and you’re wondering what the hell you’re still fighting for. The Emperor? You haven’t cared about that unknown ruler for years. For all you know he’s some feeble minded inbred idiot figure head that his advisors keep locked away while they bumble around ruling things probably about as well as he would. The Empire? Perhaps at one time, but as it has lost territory, respect and apparently all resemblance of sanity over the years you’ve lost all faith that it can ever regain any sort of glory it might have had, if it ever had it to begin with. You’ve tried your best to stem back the tide of chaos, but you’re only one man even if you are an Eternal. While you ponder your potential future, private Felding interrupts you. “Hey, cap? You’re in a bit of a daze there. So if you’re done I’m going to go now.” “Hold on, I have one more thing to tell you.” “(Sigh) What?” Felding says with an exasperated tone. “You’re not a fucking Eternal. None of you little shits are.” You say and run Felding through and pull up on the sword unleashing his blood and guts onto the ground. Felding makes a high pitched scream and slumps on top of his entrails after you remove the sword. “Shit! The cap just killed Felding!” another so called eternal shouts while he and his buddy have just come back from looting some farmer’s home. The pair of them look like they want to run, but you make it easy on them. “Go ahead and run or stay. I don’t care anymore. I’m leaving. I will tell you this though, if the Empire sends any of you unruly scum after me, know that I shall take great pleasure in not just killing you, but in drawing it out for as long as possible. Remember this.” And with that last warning, you leave your service to the Empire. The question now is, where will you go? What will you do? This all feels so wrong when you think about it. You’ve killed so many for abandoning, opposing, or attempting to betray the Empire and here you are doing the same thing. Was it all for nothing? Was it worth it? You don’t know. You always believed at the time you were right and that you were doing the right thing. Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t. You just know that you can’t serve something you don’t believe in anymore. Especially when everyone else around you doesn’t either. Speaking of not knowing, you don’t know how to do anything except kill people. While you’re certain that you’d be able to hire your skills out somewhere, the idea of being a mercenary is a little distasteful for you. You’d rather not push the svelk comparison that far. You could swear loyalty to another government you suppose. Perhaps the Felkan Kingdom? You’re not sure they’d want you, what with all their high tech weapons and your own government once fighting against them. The only other alternative for you is to carve out your own territory and rule it as your own. While it’s true you do have leadership qualities, you know nothing of actually running a government. You honestly wouldn’t know where to begin. > You serve another government You can’t bring yourself to be some lawless mercenary like a svelk and you can’t fathom even trying to run your own piece of territory. You’re no ruler. You’re a warrior that currently has no direction or mission. The only chance to find purpose is to pledge yourself to another nation. Again, the only one you know of any note is the Felkan Kingdom. You only know a little about them based on the propaganda the Empire has told you as well as the brief conversation you had with Gerald when you temporarily reunited with him. Technically the Empire is at peace with the Felkan Kingdom, but there are still skirmishes. Though nowdays it’s due to rogue Empire soldiers (and peasants too) becoming outright bandits rather than any patriotic reason. The Felkan Kingdom has been trying to keep out Empire refugees as well, which means you’ll probably just get turned around, if not outright fired upon. Still with shitty situation you’re in, getting shot doesn’t even seem like a bad option at this point You find a nearby horse and set off for the west. Along the way you see the landscape of the Empire, which at one time was orderly and even idyllic is now burning and in tatters. Despite the chaos you don’t need to do any battle, not even when passing groups of angry peasants who are taking every opportunity to get revenge on their oppressive government and its agents in all forms. You can only assume your reputation is enough to scare them off or they don’t even recognize you. If it’s the latter then it only confirms your belief that you weren’t making that much of a difference in the Empire anyway. When you get to the Arat province you find it in a bit better condition than other territory you’ve rode through, though when you ride through the town of Bucklesberg the peasants give you hateful glances or just outright run into their homes. You see in the middle of the town square several heads stuck on pikes with their eyes gouged out, some of them of children. In the very center of that is a pole with a sign attached. THIS TOWN IS UNDER THE DOMINION OF THE ETERNALS. LAW WILL THRIVE UNDER THE NEW ORDER. DISOBEDIENCE WILL BE CRUSHED. OBEY AND LIVE. REBEL AND DIE. -GENERAL EDGAR You read the sign twice you to make sure what you’re reading is correct. You almost wish you could say you’re surprised, and perhaps that small naive part of you still is, but you’re disappointed more than anything else. You of course don’t know the whole story, but quite frankly you don’t even want to know. All this revelation does is make you want to get out of Empire lands as quick as possible because it seems like it really was ever good for is turning everybody into a wannabe sovereign. You hasten your pace to the Felkan border as you don’t wish to have any potential conflict with this new “regime” that seems to be trying to form here. It’s a shame, because you did think about trying to find Edgar before going to the border hoping that maybe he’d join you. Now? He’d probably try to convince you to join him. Seen that story play out too, you’d rather not have to go through it again. Edgar obviously has chosen his path to deal with the Empire’s inevitable collapse and you must choose yours. Eventually you get to the Felkan border which is predictably well guarded by several men with their fancy musket weapons. From what you’ve heard they aren’t very sporting, but can blow through even a heavily armored orc instantly. Could’ve used some of those yourself ten years ago. “Alright just stop right there. You come any closer and you’ll have a brand new hole in your body.” One of them says pointing his weapon at you. “Sheesh Harry, can’t you come up with a better threat than that?” “Fuck you Wally, we’re turning back refugees every damn day, they can’t all be winners.” “Uh guys, I don’t think this one’s a refugee, he’s wearing military armor.” Another one says which at this point all of them point their weapons at you. You take this in stride you figured they wouldn’t exactly be welcoming. “Alright I don’t know why the hell an Empire soldier is here, but I suggest you just turn right back around. We’re supposed to be at peace now in case you didn’t know it, which judging by some of you lot you don’t.” Harry says. “I no longer serve the Empire, I request to serve your kingdom instead.” You say. “Ha ha ha, yeah right. Look even if we were inclined to believe you, we don’t need your kind especially since you can’t even keep your own shit together. We know you’re having a civil war or whatever it is right now. You’re lucky our king is such a pussy that he refuses to take advantage of the situation otherwise, we’d fucking own the Arat province right now.” Harry replies. “Hell yeah Harry! We should’ve just marched in and took it when they were begging for peace!” Wally adds The one soldier’s words are most interesting. Especially how he speaks about his ruler so freely and without fear. It is apparent that despite their dislike of their ruler, yet they are very dedicated to their nation. It is sort of a comforting thing to see after so many you’ve encountered over the years weren’t. Perhaps you could find a place here, assuming you can get past this first obstacle. “Very well gentlemen the only thing I can tell you that might convince you, is that I am an Eternal, born and bred for combat. I say with no boast that I am the best of my kind and while I am not yet familiar with your weapons, I dare say my combat skill and knowledge would allow me to learn rather quickly. All I ask is that I be allowed to speak with someone with more authority so that I can be given a proper chance.” “Eternal? You ain’t no Eternal, you’re way too old. I’ve seen those bastards running around on the other side of the border and they’re either in their twenties or younger. Dunno why you’d claim to be one of them for anyway, they’re not even human, they’re fucking soulless monsters. Heard enough horror stories from all the refugees we have to turn away. Some of those stories…pretty heartbreaking stuff…” Harry says getting a little choked about one of the stories he seems to be thinking about. It’s at that point one of his buddies pipes up. “Hey, uh maybe he’s one of those OTHER Eternals.” “Oh an original? I dunno, didn’t they not make too many of them?” Wally asks as if any of his buddies know. “How the hell should I know Wally?” “Well you were the fucker that brought it up! All right there’s an easy way to do this. Chuck, head back to Fort Soot, and see Captain Warrick, he’ll…” “Hold on did you say Captain Warrick?” you ask. “Yeah? And?” “I know him seeing as we practically grew up together. He was believed to be dead, how is it that he’s a captain in the Felkan military?” “Hmm, well perhaps you can ask him that yourself, if you really do know him. Okay change of plan, we’ll take you to see Captain Warrick, but you better not try anything funny. We’ll need you to get off that horse and hand over your weapons. Chuck and Wally, you’re with me, the rest of you keep an eye on the border as usual, we’ll be back soon.” You comply with their demands and have them march you to Fort Soot. The thing you notice immediately are all the trenches built into the land. Left overs from the war you imagine. When you get to Fort Soot it isn’t particularly large, though it does seem to be heavily defended with weapons you’ve heard about before. Cannons they’re called, and they are very devastating. You remember Gerald telling you how they could destroy stone golems as if they were made of paper. Makes you wonder why for all it’s power that the Empire didn’t fund money and time into developing such wonders as it certainly would’ve helped a lot more than their Eternal project. You quietly chuckle at the irony of that thought briefly thinking what you would’ve been doing now if there hadn’t been such a project. Probably not marching into a Felkan fort that’s for sure. When you are brought into Warrick’s office it’s like a trip to the past. Warrick’s changed quite a bit. He’s wearing an eyepatch for one thing and he’s lost most of his hair, but you’d still recognize him. He also recognizes you though he’s still having trouble believing it. “By the gods, is it really you?” “Yes, it’s me. By the gods? Not by the Emperor anymore I see.” “Nope and never will be again, which brings me to my next question. Why have you come here? I certainly hope it isn’t on some fool mission to bring me to justice for being a traitor…” “Ha ha. Maybe at one time, but not anymore either. I guess you could say, I’m also a traitor, though I don’t think I am. The Empire betrayed itself a long time ago and I can’t serve a place that has not even the slightest concept of honor or loyalty even if it was the one that taught me such ideals.” “I must say, I am a little surprised that you of all people would come to that conclusion. You were the most dedicated of all of us. I know that you are telling the truth though, as you were never a liar. So you’ve left the Empire then and come here to…?” “Pledge myself to the Felkan Kingdom, though it seems I wasn’t the only one who had that idea.” “Hah, yeah a bit of a long story that. Before we continue I’ll have to clear this with a lot of people first, and you’re probably going to have to prove yourself several times, but if you’re serious about this then you’ll most likely be accepted. I’ve found things work with a little more leniency in the Felkan Kingdom.” “All I want is a new chance.” And so began your service to the Felkan Kingdom. > Chapter 3A2: For the Kingdom! Year 40 “I don’t understand why the hell we haven’t just gone marching into the Arat province and taken it from the Eternal Dominion. We have superior weaponry, and they aren’t even that organized. I don’t care how skilled they are in combat, they can’t stop a bullet.” A soldier complains. “So, do you think we’ll really be going to war again?” his buddy asks. “Is there any fucking doubt? The Empire might be dead, but that Eternal Dominion or whatever it’s called took its place and from what I can gather the ones running that are complete monsters. No small feat considering how the Empire was run…uh no offense sarge.” You shake your head as a sign that you could care less how they discuss the Empire, as you’re busy keeping on the look out for potential enemies and you tell them to stop talking and do likewise. Felkan soldiers tend to be a little more chatty than you’re used to, they also tend to be a little over confident in battle at times due to their reliance on firearms. Their melee skills aren’t bad, but they aren’t anywhere near those of a say an Empire soldier, let alone an Eternal. You learned how to handle a musket pretty quickly, but much like the same reason you avoided using bows and such, ranged combat just isn’t quite your thing. Still, you appreciate their destructive power and having an advantage so you have no problems carrying around a couple of flintlock pistols on your person. Another thing that’s different is a government that isn’t actually interested in conquest despite its people often expressing such desires. You’ve never met the king or any of the royals, but from what you’ve heard the king is more of a scholar rather than a warrior ruler. Some consider this a weakness, but you aren’t convinced that it is. The king apparently believes conquest would just drain the coffers of what is currently a healthy economy (despite a recent war) and it’s better to put that money to other uses. The Felkans in general are always looking for new ways to advance the quality of life for all through scientific advancement. You don’t remember that sort of thing in the Empire where the status quo was law. While magic was reserved for the elite and still not common in the Empire, it’s practically non-existent in the Felkan Kingdom, which might explain their tendency towards scientific endeavors. Well that, and the fact that a good number of gnomes live among them who probably produce most of the great inventions in the kingdom. Still, you often hear a lot of criticism about the king; sometimes it makes you wonder if there shouldn’t be cause for concern. If this were the Empire you would’ve been expected to harshly discipline all of those soldiers that insulted the Emperor. Here, there is a lot more freedom in what you can say. Yes, there are so many differences from the Empire and you often feel out of place. Hell you feel strange enough only being a sergeant again. Five years and they still haven’t felt that you warrant a promotion to a higher rank, you don’t know why they still don’t trust you as much as they trust Warrick considering he actually fought against them directly. Of course he actually saved the lives of some important Felkan royals, so that’s probably the reason. They don’t keep you stationed on the frontlines of the Arat border like they do with Warrick either, for the past several years you’ve been stationed at a fort at the other end of the kingdom, though the fort is so small it’s more like an outpost. Fort Green is located near a small village called Blossomdale and that’s basically what you’ve been defending. It’s a rather dull assignment and only broken up by the occasional skirmishes with gnolls, bandits or other denizens living in the untouched forests and the hills. You’ve tried to make the best of things. You keep your mind mostly focused on your job like you always do. One good thing is that the soldiers that serve under you don’t seem to mind your Eternal origins, but you do get the impression they’re a little afraid of you. Your superior officer Captain Eckers seems okay with you as well. He’s the only one stationed here that’s older than you and probably sees you as someone he has a little more in common with, not to mention you bring a little more discipline to the fort and encourage more drilling and combat training. Eventually your shift is over and as usual, nothing happened today. Your replacements take over your post and you make your way back to the fort. The rest of the soldiers head to Blossumdale presumably for a little R&R as they often do. When you get back to the fort, somebody tells you that Captain Eckers wants to see you, so you proceed to his office. “Have a seat sergeant. So was today any different than yesterday? Any hostiles to be dispatched or anything?” “No sir, things were quiet as usual.” You answer. “I figured as much. It’s been like this for the past eight months. You know it’s always been slow around here, but lately…(sigh) I don’t know. I suppose we should be glad this place isn’t under attack constantly, but the boredom of nothing to do is frustrating.” “I know the feeling sir.” “Heh, I’ll bet. Bred for war and all that…you once had a command at a fort at one time did you not?” “Yes sir I did, in Rask.” “Yeah, I’ve heard about that area. I’ll bet you never ran out of fighting up there.” “Well sir, we sort of did since I did my best to try to exterminate the most dangerous threats. For a while things got slow then we had a series of uprisings became a problem and I had to be in involved in putting those down so I wasn’t quite as bored anymore.” “Uprisings. Now that would be an interesting event, though I don’t think I’m quite that bored yet. Still, I wonder if one wouldn’t do some good. Get those royals off their asses and actually do something for a change.” “I’m sure they do what they can…the land is prosperous after all.” You say unsure of how to react and still wondering why you were called in here. “Yeah, yeah, I know, but really what good is that going to do when the Eternal Dominion comes beating down our door? I served on the front lines of the war with the Empire from beginning to end, and I saw shit that even I wasn’t prepared to see. Even with our technological advantage, sometimes I don’t know how we managed to hold the Empire off…I guess you guys really had a lot of internal problems.” “Yes, yes we did sir. A lot.” “Right, and that’s the only reason why we held out. If the Empire had been a united front like it used to be… well me and you probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.” “Captain, if I may interject for a moment. I have heard citizens and soldiers on more than one occasion suggest that the Felkan Kingdom should become more aggressive. I’m puzzled to as why if things are going well. after all the Empire engaged in continual conquest and I think we know how that turned out.” “You have a point about the Empire, but you also should remember the Empire lasted several centuries before collapsing. I don’t presume to know exactly all the problems you had, but I can tell you what the problems we have are and why the people are getting sick of it.” “And what are those sir?” “Fucking gnomes.” “Gnomes? Don’t they provide all the wonderful inventions for this Kingdom?” “Yeah, and they also have been using us as protection for decades and the royals are in their fucking pockets. We aren’t really ruled by the royals, the damned gnomish inventors and businessmen rule us. They don’t want us expanding too much, because then we just might be harder to control. They also don’t want us to become too strong militarily because we just might turn it against them. I mean hell, I think you’ve seen how our soldiers aren’t exactly the best fighters and rely on firearms. I shudder to think if we ever had to actually fight without them. It didn’t always used to be that way, at least not back in my day. That’s why you’re a damn breath of fresh air. You’re actually a REAL warrior.” You just sit and listen as the captain begins getting even angrier during his rant. “You know why I’m stationed here in the ass end of nowhere? Because I spoke my mind on what I thought about gnomes and suggested we needed to stop being pussies and actually start taking more land. I mean take this place for example. If we had just a couple more platoons, and the orders, we could march into those hills nearby and wipe out all those damned gnolls for good. But what do we do instead? Wait around for the fuckers to attack us then sit here with our thumbs up our asses until they rebuild and do it all over again. We’re better than that! Or at least we used to be!” at this point Captain Eckers slams his fist on his desk. He’s silent with his head looking down for a moment and then looks up to address you. “…forgive me sergeant, I get a little emotional about this stuff sometimes. I really shouldn’t. Thank you for your report and listening. I just need someone to speak my mind to sometimes…anyway dismissed.” You get up and leave, thinking about what has transpired. It basically sounds like the captain doesn’t believe in his government anymore. You know what that’s like, but you just aren’t sure if it’s as bad as he’s claiming or he’s just a bitter old man that’s mad because times changed and he pissed off the wrong people in charge of his career. However as you’re reminded he isn’t the only person you’ve heard speaking out, he just happens to be the only one that’s gone into more detail than you’re used to. You also wonder if he told you all this stuff for a reason, is he hinting for you to do something? And what could you do? You’re a lower rank than him and not exactly high on the hierarchy. You’re also pretty much an outsider. Stirring up trouble isn’t exactly something you should be doing, and you pledged yourself to serve the kingdom and its king, not overthrow it. If you were going to be doing that, you might as well have joined the Eternal Dominion. You aren’t sure of what to make of all this gnome business though, if that is even true. You’ve never paid too much attention to them being in a lot of the positions of power. Part of you though does make you wonder about who you’re really serving and if it is really the gnomes like the captain claims, then your whole oath to the kingdom is pretty much a joke. Then again if they really are controlling everything, does it really make a difference? Things seem to still be running well and you personally just don’t have any real proof that there is some conspiracy even though it wouldn’t surprise you too much if there was one going on. One thing you know though, if others are feeling like the captain does, this isn’t going to go away. This is going to get worse; in fact it may already be too late to stop something from occurring. You could very well find yourself serving in another collapsing government again. > You report to the captain You don’t know if this is actually going to do any good, but if the captain ever decides to suddenly secede from the Felkan Kingdom, you want someone to know that you weren’t part of it from the beginning. The problem there isn’t a higher-ranking officer at the fort and you don’t really know anybody that you could report this to. You suppose you write a letter to Major Samuels at Fort Smoke. He’s in charge of the whole Ibim province, but then you think what if he feels the same way as the captain? If that’s the case, then you’d probably become hated not just at your fort, but in other circles as well. You’d possibly even be demoted or worse. You’ve managed to make a life here with minimal friction, and you’d hate to just throw that all away, but you have to do something. For good or ill your duty is to the kingdom now and you need to defend against all potential threats, external and internal, and from your experience the internal ones are the worst. That’s when you come up with the idea that you’ll write to Warrick about this. He might not be able to do anything about it considering he’s in another province, but he’s about the only one you can trust and maybe he knows something and can at least give you advice. You write a letter to Warrick that night and hand it to a professional courier in Blossumdale the next day. Not having anything else to do, you return to your duties. Days pass into weeks and weeks pass into months. Just when you’re starting to wonder if your letter got intercepted and someone having sinister plans for you, you get a letter back from Warrick. You’re anxious to see his reply and you find a quiet place to open it up and read it private. You’re expecting a long letter, but instead you get a short one that’s to the point. Things are already in motion to remedy the situation soon and your duty to the kingdom has been noted. Warrick You can only guess that Captain Eckers will soon be gone with wording like that. You didn’t expect anything to be done either, just advice. Warrick must have better connections than you thought. Another week passes since you received Warrick’s reply and Fort Green is visited by a general with his personal assistants, a couple of royals and a well-dressed gnome. The visit is unexpected by everyone, especially Captain Eckers since he’d know first if anyone was scheduled to visit. Captain Eckers and several others are taken into rooms and questioned separately. The rest of you are ordered to go about your business and to not interfere. Later you are called in as well. You find yourself face to face with one of the generals. General Benson. He’s probably about the same age as Eckers, though obviously more successful. “Sergeant, I’m going to make this quick. You are the one who wrote the letter to Captain Warrick are you not?” General Benson asks. “Yes, sir.” “And why did you write to Captain Warrick about your concerns? Why not write to Major Samuels? He is the superior officer in charge of this province.” “Well, I wasn’t sure if I should sir. For all I knew he might’ve had sympathies with Captain Eckers and if that had been the case, my situation would not have been a good one.” “Hold on sergeant, are you telling me Major Samuels is also part of this?” “No, I don’t even know the Major sir, I was just being cautious on my part. I wrote to Warrick because…well he’s the only person I felt I could absolutely trust.” The general is silent for a moment while he looks you up and down. “Tell me, have you had any conflict while being here?” “Conflict with the other soldiers? No sir, can’t say that I have, I tend to just do my job and keep to myself as far as social matters are concerned.” “What about your relationship with Captain Eckers?” “It’s a respectful one sir, I feel no malice towards him nor perceive any towards me.” “Yet you felt the need to report him.” “Well sir, I thought it was something that might be needed to be brought to the attention of those in a higher position than me. Dissension in the ranks is no good sir. These sorts of things need to be taken care of before they spread. I know from direct experience, sir.” “Hmmm, yes I suppose you would…” General Benson continues to study you as if he’s trying to read your mind, after a minute of this, he backs off and starts to pack up some papers on a nearby desk. “I think we have everything we need to know. We weren’t exactly sure about you for a long time, and quite frankly some of us still aren’t. Your lack of trust among your fellow soldiers is concerning, but considering what we’ve found here, possibly understandable. As of now, I’m promoting you to captain and putting you in charge of Fort Green until further notice. You’ll be receiving some new soldiers soon to replace the men that will be leaving here. And hopefully this reward for your dedication to the Kingdom alleviates some of your trust issues.” “It will sir. It will. Thanks you sir.” “Very good, you’re dismissed.” You step out of the room feeling a sense of accomplishment. This is truly the first time since you pledged loyalty to the Felkan Kingdom that you feel appreciated. With this new command you actually feel like you’re back to where you’re supposed to be again, which is something you haven’t felt since you were taken off of your command in Rask. Granted Fort Green is no Fort Destiny, but it’s better than where you were. As for Captain Eckers, he and several other soldiers are escorted out of the fort as the rest of you stand by and watch. On his way out Eckers glares at you, he doesn’t say anything, but you can feel as if his stare is burning a hole in you. He knows someone said something, and he knows that someone was you. It’s too bad it had to be this way, but what’s done is done and it’s time to move on. Over the next few months you begin running the fort a lot more efficiently, the soldiers aren’t particularly thrilled about it since they’ve gotten used to not doing as much under Captain Eckers, which is another good reason why he needed to leave. Instead of whining, he should’ve been thinking up stuff to keep everyone’s mind’s occupied. After a few more months of extra training, you pick the soldier who has shown the most promise and pull them aside in your office for a talk. “Let’s see… Sergeant Dawn Young…easy name to remember. You’re one of the newer transfers here. Says that before you came here, you served on the Kilania Plains. Not exactly familiar with that area, but I hear it’s infested with centaurs. Half man half horse or something like that?” “Yes sir, they are little more than wild beast. They get drunk, breed, start fights and from what I can tell that’s about it.” “Hmm, bet they were a joy to fight. Well from your record it says you successfully lead several attacks on them. I’m guessing they are no longer a problem anymore?” “Well they are less of a problem than they were. I was told to hold back, by my commanding officer at the time. I know if we had pressed against them though we could’ve wiped them out completely though.” She remark with a slightly annoyed tone. Sounds like typical Felkan policy. You have to admit, Eckers did have a point about certain things. While you’re not going to support possible rebellion like he did, you are going to change some things. “Okay you sound like the kind of soldier I need. Consider yourself promoted to lieutenant and you’re my new second.” “…wow…thank you sir!” “Don’t go thanking me just yet, you still have live to enjoy it. I want you to take two platoons of soldiers, march over to those hills a few miles away and I want you to wipe out ALL of the gnolls that you see.” “All of them sir?” “All of them. Their warriors, their citizens, their women, their children. If there are little baby gnolls sucking on marrowbones in their cribs, I want you to kill them too.” Your orders are a little shocking to Dawn. She’s probably never heard anyone commanding the murder of infants before let alone the total war doctrine you’re following, even if it is against a bunch of barbaric monsters. “Lieutenant, am I going to have to find someone else to do this?” you ask. “…Um no sir. I just…well…the other soldiers sir. I’m not sure if they’ll follow such orders.” “Oh yes they will. Because it’s going to be YOUR job to make sure they follow them. Besides I’ve noticed guns tend to take away a lot of the emotional impact of killing. Not even like you have to look someone in the eye and take away their life. You can sit back comfortably from a few feet away and pull the trigger. They’ll be able to kill baby gnolls a lot easier than you think, and after this first time, it’s only going to get easier. I’m sure you’ll do fine, I have faith that you’re up to this task. I wouldn’t have picked you if I didn’t. You’re dismissed.” Looking a little overwhelmed, Dawn nods and leaves your office. Now all you have to concern yourself about is whether your changes get you thrown out of the fort like Captain Eckers. > Year 45 “They’ll probably attack at night sir.” Dawn says to you. “Yeah, gnolls are predictable that way. Is Blossumdale under control? “Yes sir, we executed most of the rabble rousers, the rest have shut up complaining about food rationing and troops permanently stationed in the town now sir.” “Good. Ooooooh I’m gonna hear it for that one.” You groan. “I don’t see why sir, you were merely keeping order and doing what needed to be done to help protect the kingdom.” “Perhaps, but the top brass won’t see it that way. There won’t be any way to keep this one quiet. News is going to travel eventually, despite the fact that I’m already keeping a lot of stuff out of the reports as it is. Hell, I’ve been getting blamed for stirring up a so called hornet’s nest with the gnolls since this war began.” “That’s not true sir, if you hadn’t sent me into those hills all those years ago, we wouldn’t have found out that they’d been planning a mass invasion for quite some time.” “That may be the case, but it doesn’t change the fact that they need to blame me for whatever reason.” “Sir if they’re so displeased with you, why have they not just replaced you?” “Good question. I imagine it’s because the gnolls are a very real threat and that I am actually doing a good job at holding back the gnolls with what little resources I do have. Everyone is still so worried about the Eternal Dominion possibly invading that they’re shoving all the troops along that border. Oh well, I guess I should be grateful they finally sent us some new cannons, though it took three years to get them. Okay lieutenant, that will be all, I suggest you prepare everyone because I get the feeling the gnolls’ attack tonight is going to be a big one.” Dawn nods and leaves your office. She’s a good second; you couldn’t have picked a better choice. You’re actually proud of how all your soldiers have stepped up over the past few years. All they needed was a little more discipline and something to keep them focused like a relentless army of hyena men eager to rip them apart and feast on their bodies. Despite the fact that the top brass nearly hates you and you’re on the eve of what is probably going to be a vicious battle. You feel good, like the best you’ve felt in years. You have a command, you have soldiers that are utterly dedicated and you have a ruthless enemy to fight. The excitement of battle is near and you can’t wait to bask in the violence of it. This is what you were BORN for. As darkness falls, you stand on top of the battlements and see the gnolls arrive right on time. They might be fierce warriors, but their ongoing crap strategy of throwing as many troops at you as possible isn’t working for them. You think orcs might’ve even been smarter than that, well at least Gruz would’ve been. There are an awful lot of them though this time, it appears that you were right, tonight’s battle is going to be a big one. As the horde gets closer, you also see several flying creatures in the distance. Wyverns. The bastards actually managed to tame wyverns. Looks like they’re a little brighter than you initially gave them credit for. You tell the cannon crews to fire upon the wyverns as soon as they get in range, all musket men on top of the fort as well. You stare down at the temporary wall you’ve built around the fort where some of your other troops are guarding and hope it’ll hold up well. They’ll eventually break it down, but hopefully not before heavy losses. You also hope the fortifications at Blossumdale will hold out. You couldn’t spare as many troops there, but you’re confident that Dawn will be able to handle the situation if the gnolls split up their attack. The battle starts off with the gnolls attempting a rain of arrows technique, fortunately you prepared for that by having everyone equipped with shields nearby. The Felkans as a general rule don’t use them too much anymore due to their reliance on firearms, but your re-emphasis on close combat training made your request for a shipment of shields quite logical. The wyverns then dive in from above while the horde concentrates on below. A couple of your new cannons prove their worth by landing a nice cannon ball into the side of one their heads, even better when it crashes into the gnoll horde. Another cannon ball tears a hole in the wing of another causing it and it’s rider to attempt a crash landing in the distance. Out of the remaining three wyverns, one veers away and heads to Blossumdale, while the other two focus on the fort. You order all your men to fire upon one of them which riddles it with gunshot wounds. Not enough to kill it however as lands on the fort and manages crush and bite some of the cannon crews. It’s rider fires a bow taking out a musket man next to you, and that’s when you make a running leap forward to stab the wyvern right in the neck. Blood gushes out and the beast flails about, causing the rider to fall off and over the fort walls to the ground below. You dodge the beast’s attempt at biting you in two and make a long slash cut through one of it’s wing so it can’t fly away. It tries to smash you with it’s tail, but you roll out of the way and finally land a killing blow by jumping on its back and running your sword through the top of it’s head. The other wyvern has been faring better against the remaining men on the fort roof, though it’s rider lies dead with a gunshot wound to his face. Since the beast is intent on hovering above rather than actually landing you have to make another running jump to grab on to one of its feet. The creature attempts to shake you off, but you manage to hang on long enough to stab upward several times into it’s soft underbelly. The creature twists and roars in pain, this time managing to cause you to fall to the fort roof, you are then covered in gouts of wyvern blood and chunks of entrails. You order your remaining men to fire upon it as it desperately tries to fly away. The musket balls do their job and the beast falls to the war zone bellow, unfortunately crashing into one of the temporary walls you put up. Granted the dead beast’s bulk is now acting a small block now, but the gnoll horde has a slightly easier access than it did before. You tell your men to start firing upon the horde, which is starting to surround the entire fort, while you rush down to the ground floor to help out the rest of your troops. You also notice that some of the horde is indeed breaking off into a separate group and moving past the fort towards Blossumdale. Ladders go up to scale the walls, and axes attempt to bring them down completely. Some of the gnolls have already gotten in. Won’t be long before they completely overrun this first layer of defense. After hacking down several of them, you tell all your men to fall back to the front gates and inside the fort. You have everyone barricade the doors as best you can while telling several soldiers on top to start dropping firebombs on the gnolls from the roof. Several explosions deafen the ears of all involved in this battle, smokes completely envelopes the fort and gnoll body parts are covering the battlefield. After briefly falling back, the gnolls continue their attack and try to scale the fort walls with ladders and break down the front gates with a battering ram. “We’re out of firebombs and we’re running low on gunpowder sir!” one of your men says. “We’ve greatly decreased their numbers now, we can take the rest of them hand to hand, hell just start dropping the rest of the cannon balls on their heads when they try to come up!” The gnolls fail at scaling the walls, but their size and strength makes their attempts at breaking down the front gate a lot more successful. Dozens of them come pouring in and you’re the first one to charge into battle. You aren’t even paying much attention to the rest of your troops at this point, you’re goal is to just kill as many as these gnolls as possible. You were covered in blood already, now you’ve just replaced one coat of blood for another. Eventually after lopping off the heads of several of these hyenas you see one their number arrive standing much larger than the rest. It’s the leader. The biggest one is ALWAYS the leader with these types. After making that annoying laughing growl sound that they love to make the gnoll leader sees you and swings his huge morning star into the floor near your feet. When he lifts it up to strike again you attempt to close the gap and you duck just in time for it to miss your head. You bring the gnoll leader down with a chop to his shins. Like a great tree he falls to his knees and you chop his head off like you’ve done with so many of his other kin. One of the gnolls seeing their leader dead, and already taken considerable losses, the gnoll shouts something in his strange language and they begin to retreat. “We’ve won!” a soldier shouts. “No, not yet, we’ve still got gnolls at Blossumdale, not to mention not all of these fuckers are running away yet.” While you are pretty certain the battle here is indeed finishing up, you aren’t sure what the situation is at Blossumdale. Besides Blossumdale, part of you is specifically concerned about Dawn, you know you really shouldn’t be as she’s a very capable soldier, but the concern is still there. There is still mopping up to do around the fort, but you really should send reinforcements to Blossumdale, the question is whether or not you should lead them personally. > You lead the reinforcements personally The situation at Blossumdale needs to be looked after directly, the fort will be fine now. Besides saving the town, your concern for Dawn is great and you want to make sure she’s okay. After dispatching the remaining gnolls in the fort, you order a platoon to accompany you to Blossumdale while the rest of the soldiers reinforce the fort. You rush as quickly as you can to Blossumdale. Call it bad luck, rash behavior, or the fate of the battle, but unfortunately you never make it. On your way to Blossumdale, gnolls that retreated from the fort are still very much lurking about on the fringes of the area. A group of them notices you, but you’re in such a hurry you don’t notice them in time. Several arrows fly out from their hiding spot and bring down several of your men. You try to look for somewhere to hide and take cover, but you’re completely out in the open. A couple more arrows fly and they hit their mark, and one that flies into your neck is the last one you feel. As you lay dying, you can only hope that Dawn is alive and well, because you aren’t due to your lapse in judgment.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 45 “They’ll probably attack at night sir.” Dawn says to you. “Yeah, gnolls are predictable that way. Is Blossumdale under control? “Yes sir, we executed most of the rabble rousers, the rest have shut up complaining about food rationing and troops permanently stationed in the town now sir.” “Good. Ooooooh I’m gonna hear it for that one.” You groan. “I don’t see why sir, you were merely keeping order and doing what needed to be done to help protect the kingdom.” “Perhaps, but the top brass won’t see it that way. There won’t be any way to keep this one quiet. News is going to travel eventually, despite the fact that I’m already keeping a lot of stuff out of the reports as it is. Hell, I’ve been getting blamed for stirring up a so called hornet’s nest with the gnolls since this war began.” “That’s not true sir, if you hadn’t sent me into those hills all those years ago, we wouldn’t have found out that they’d been planning a mass invasion for quite some time.” “That may be the case, but it doesn’t change the fact that they need to blame me for whatever reason.” “Sir if they’re so displeased with you, why have they not just replaced you?” “Good question. I imagine it’s because the gnolls are a very real threat and that I am actually doing a good job at holding back the gnolls with what little resources I do have. Everyone is still so worried about the Eternal Dominion possibly invading that they’re shoving all the troops along that border. Oh well, I guess I should be grateful they finally sent us some new cannons, though it took three years to get them. Okay lieutenant, that will be all, I suggest you prepare everyone because I get the feeling the gnolls’ attack tonight is going to be a big one.” Dawn nods and leaves your office. She’s a good second; you couldn’t have picked a better choice. You’re actually proud of how all your soldiers have stepped up over the past few years. All they needed was a little more discipline and something to keep them focused like a relentless army of hyena men eager to rip them apart and feast on their bodies. Despite the fact that the top brass nearly hates you and you’re on the eve of what is probably going to be a vicious battle. You feel good, like the best you’ve felt in years. You have a command, you have soldiers that are utterly dedicated and you have a ruthless enemy to fight. The excitement of battle is near and you can’t wait to bask in the violence of it. This is what you were BORN for. As darkness falls, you stand on top of the battlements and see the gnolls arrive right on time. They might be fierce warriors, but their ongoing crap strategy of throwing as many troops at you as possible isn’t working for them. You think orcs might’ve even been smarter than that, well at least Gruz would’ve been. There are an awful lot of them though this time, it appears that you were right, tonight’s battle is going to be a big one. As the horde gets closer, you also see several flying creatures in the distance. Wyverns. The bastards actually managed to tame wyverns. Looks like they’re a little brighter than you initially gave them credit for. You tell the cannon crews to fire upon the wyverns as soon as they get in range, all musket men on top of the fort as well. You stare down at the temporary wall you’ve built around the fort where some of your other troops are guarding and hope it’ll hold up well. They’ll eventually break it down, but hopefully not before heavy losses. You also hope the fortifications at Blossumdale will hold out. You couldn’t spare as many troops there, but you’re confident that Dawn will be able to handle the situation if the gnolls split up their attack. The battle starts off with the gnolls attempting a rain of arrows technique, fortunately you prepared for that by having everyone equipped with shields nearby. The Felkans as a general rule don’t use them too much anymore due to their reliance on firearms, but your re-emphasis on close combat training made your request for a shipment of shields quite logical. The wyverns then dive in from above while the horde concentrates on below. A couple of your new cannons prove their worth by landing a nice cannon ball into the side of one their heads, even better when it crashes into the gnoll horde. Another cannon ball tears a hole in the wing of another causing it and it’s rider to attempt a crash landing in the distance. Out of the remaining three wyverns, one veers away and heads to Blossumdale, while the other two focus on the fort. You order all your men to fire upon one of them which riddles it with gunshot wounds. Not enough to kill it however as lands on the fort and manages crush and bite some of the cannon crews. It’s rider fires a bow taking out a musket man next to you, and that’s when you make a running leap forward to stab the wyvern right in the neck. Blood gushes out and the beast flails about, causing the rider to fall off and over the fort walls to the ground below. You dodge the beast’s attempt at biting you in two and make a long slash cut through one of it’s wing so it can’t fly away. It tries to smash you with it’s tail, but you roll out of the way and finally land a killing blow by jumping on its back and running your sword through the top of it’s head. The other wyvern has been faring better against the remaining men on the fort roof, though it’s rider lies dead with a gunshot wound to his face. Since the beast is intent on hovering above rather than actually landing you have to make another running jump to grab on to one of its feet. The creature attempts to shake you off, but you manage to hang on long enough to stab upward several times into it’s soft underbelly. The creature twists and roars in pain, this time managing to cause you to fall to the fort roof, you are then covered in gouts of wyvern blood and chunks of entrails. You order your remaining men to fire upon it as it desperately tries to fly away. The musket balls do their job and the beast falls to the war zone bellow, unfortunately crashing into one of the temporary walls you put up. Granted the dead beast’s bulk is now acting a small block now, but the gnoll horde has a slightly easier access than it did before. You tell your men to start firing upon the horde, which is starting to surround the entire fort, while you rush down to the ground floor to help out the rest of your troops. You also notice that some of the horde is indeed breaking off into a separate group and moving past the fort towards Blossumdale. Ladders go up to scale the walls, and axes attempt to bring them down completely. Some of the gnolls have already gotten in. Won’t be long before they completely overrun this first layer of defense. After hacking down several of them, you tell all your men to fall back to the front gates and inside the fort. You have everyone barricade the doors as best you can while telling several soldiers on top to start dropping firebombs on the gnolls from the roof. Several explosions deafen the ears of all involved in this battle, smokes completely envelopes the fort and gnoll body parts are covering the battlefield. After briefly falling back, the gnolls continue their attack and try to scale the fort walls with ladders and break down the front gates with a battering ram. “We’re out of firebombs and we’re running low on gunpowder sir!” one of your men says. “We’ve greatly decreased their numbers now, we can take the rest of them hand to hand, hell just start dropping the rest of the cannon balls on their heads when they try to come up!” The gnolls fail at scaling the walls, but their size and strength makes their attempts at breaking down the front gate a lot more successful. Dozens of them come pouring in and you’re the first one to charge into battle. You aren’t even paying much attention to the rest of your troops at this point, you’re goal is to just kill as many as these gnolls as possible. You were covered in blood already, now you’ve just replaced one coat of blood for another. Eventually after lopping off the heads of several of these hyenas you see one their number arrive standing much larger than the rest. It’s the leader. The biggest one is ALWAYS the leader with these types. After making that annoying laughing growl sound that they love to make the gnoll leader sees you and swings his huge morning star into the floor near your feet. When he lifts it up to strike again you attempt to close the gap and you duck just in time for it to miss your head. You bring the gnoll leader down with a chop to his shins. Like a great tree he falls to his knees and you chop his head off like you’ve done with so many of his other kin. One of the gnolls seeing their leader dead, and already taken considerable losses, the gnoll shouts something in his strange language and they begin to retreat. “We’ve won!” a soldier shouts. “No, not yet, we’ve still got gnolls at Blossumdale, not to mention not all of these fuckers are running away yet.” While you are pretty certain the battle here is indeed finishing up, you aren’t sure what the situation is at Blossumdale. Besides Blossumdale, part of you is specifically concerned about Dawn, you know you really shouldn’t be as she’s a very capable soldier, but the concern is still there. There is still mopping up to do around the fort, but you really should send reinforcements to Blossumdale, the question is whether or not you should lead them personally. > You stay behind and secure the fort You need to stay here and oversee the purging of this fort, and the surrounding area. You can’t start running off half assed because you’re a little worried about one soldier even if she is one of the best ones you’ve had under your command. (Not including your fellow Eternals of course) After slaying all the gnolls still in the fort, you regroup your soldiers and tell one of the sergeants to head over the Blossumdale with a couple platoons and help in whatever way they can. You tell the rest of your soldiers to start rebuilding the walls, clear out the dead bodies and to help you do a sweep of the area. Your sweep of the area is a tedious, but vital one. A lot of the gnolls retreated to various areas just enough to be out of sight, but were obviously still attempting to regroup again. Good thing you stayed behind to mop up all these little clusters so they didn’t form a big one again. By the time you’re satisfied with your results, the sun is coming up and you return to the fort more than a little tired. When you get back, you’re happy to see Dawn there. “Sir, Blossumdale still stands sir, the rest of the soldiers are securing it and the area.” “Glad to hear it, and glad to see you made it out in one peace. Was the fighting heavy?” “It was, but from the looks of it, the fighting was worse here. The only problem we had is with a wyvern.” “Lucky you only had one. We had four of them and I had to kill two of them myself.” “That’s one more than me then, sir.” You smile at her remark and after a brief discussion on what the next course of action will be, you get some rest. Over the next few months the gnoll attacks die down, but they don’t stop completely. Most of your activities involve going further into the wilderness and taking out whatever villages or camps they have. In the meantime your superiors are telling you to stop your actions as the war has been won and now you’re just using up valuable manpower and resources. You really aren’t though; you’ve been doing just fine with the limited supplies that they see fit to give you. Somehow this situation seems very familiar… While your superiors do a lot of complaining, nothing actually happens to you. It would seem they’re bitching at you just for the sake of bitching. The gnolls might not actually be able to invade properly anymore, but if you let them regroup again, they’ll try it. Your goal is to purge them all, or at the very least drive them away so they don’t try it ever again. Year 50 “This is bullshit sir, executing those protestors was the right thing to do!” “Calm down lieutenant.” You say to Dawn. “No sir, this isn’t right! They can’t punish you just for doing your fucking job!” “Okay lieutenant I said calm down! Now listen, I need you on your best behavior, because they’re going to question all of us. I saw this happen to my predecessor. (sigh) Who knows maybe I did go too far, I mean I haven’t exactly been following Felkan policies, I’ve been sort of doing my own thing out here for the past ten years.” “Yeah, but your actions are protecting the kingdom! How can that be wrong?” You look at Dawn and see that she’s changed quite a bit since she stood here in this office several years ago hesitant to kill baby gnolls. She’s practically like an Empire soldier now. Everyone in this fort is and that’s what is no doubt getting you into trouble. Still, they shouldn’t be blamed for what you just ordered them to do. “Well, maybe I was protecting the kingdom, but I still wasn’t following the laws. And I certainly broke enough of them. Just don’t worry; I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nobody here gets blamed. I mean you were all just following orders.” “Thank you sir, but I knew exactly what I was doing and if they put you against the wall in front of a firing squad for treason, then I want to be standing right next to you.” “…that’s a very…enthusiastic sentiment, but I don’t think that will be necessary. I mean maybe this won’t even be all that bad, they did at least warn me that they were coming. They didn’t even do that with Eckers. Look lieutenant…Dawn, whatever happens don’t go doing something foolish like trying to save me or sacrificing yourself or something. Just continue to serve the kingdom and try to follow the laws the best you can, okay?” Dawn is visible upset by all this. She turns her head for a moment while sniffling, then turns back to you and agrees. She then excuses herself to get ready for this investigation. Wasn’t really until this moment that you see that you’ve have a very deep effect on her. You didn’t expect to, as you treated her like any one else under your command, well maybe you did compliment her a little bit more, but that’s only because she did more. Eventually the investigation group gets arrives. To your surprise it consists of only two people, General Benson, and that gnome you saw before during Captain Ecker’s investigation, you certainly hope this turns out a lot better. All your troops stand at attention and you greet the general. After a brief exchange the well dress gnome parts company with the general who approaches you and just shakes his head. “I knew we made a bad decision.” He says and motions you to your office. You sit down and the general sits down and he begins his questions right away. “Let’s get right to it shall we? You are aware that you’re serving the Felkan Kingdom aren’t you?” “Yes sir.” “Oh? You do? Well then, is there any particular reason why you’re treating this area as if you still serving your long dead Empire?” “I’m not sure I follow you sir.” “Don’t play stupid with me, I’ve read the reports and followed all your actions for the past ten years! You’ve trained these soldiers to the point that they’re fanatically loyal and dedicated, you started a war with the gnolls and didn’t stop hostilities until you completely eliminated their species, during which time you executed several Felkan citizens in Blossumdale and now you’ve done it again! Tell me, is war, murder and genocide all they taught you in the Empire?” “Basically.” “You might not want to be so flip with me, Eternal, your ass is just a step away from the gallows yourself.” “Sir, with all due respect if I was such a problem for the past ten years, why not get rid of me before now?” “Ohhh, believe me, if I’d had any say in the matter you would’ve been.” “Sir, everything I’ve done has been for the good of the Felkan Kingdom. I mean loyal and dedicated soldiers, since when is that a bad thing? Soldiers are supposed to follow orders of their superiors and government. That’s sort of their whole purpose.” “That’s rather ironic coming from you who seems to blatantly ignores orders like not starting wars.” “Sir, the gnolls were an ongoing problem even if they weren’t planning an invasion. Isn’t it better that they’re all dead so that Felkan citizens don’t have to worry about getting robbed and killed on the roads? Blossomdale probably wouldn’t be standing if we hadn’t stopped them.” “Do you really want to bring up Blossumdale captain?” “Why the hell not? You’re bringing everything else up.” You say starting to get angry. “Watch your tone, and if you insist…I already know your half assed excuse for executing citizens during the war with the gnolls, but please explain to me why you did it again this time, just so I can try to understand your fucked Eternal logic.” “Well it’s rather simple, some of the citizens were protesting the new tax that the king imposed. They were in front of the town hall screaming at their mayor as if he was directly to blame. We stepped in to calm them down, they started getting more violent and began throwing rocks. We told them to stop, they didn’t, so we opened fire on them. After rounding up the main rabble rousers who didn’t get shot the first time, we executed them properly.” “And that’s it? That’s your excuse for gunning down several citizens?” “If they hadn’t done , what we told them not to do, they’d still be alive right now, sir.” “And there it is again, they didn’t do what you told them to do, so they got killed, but when it comes to you, you apparently do whatever the hell you want.” “That’s not true sir I was trying to stop a potential rebellion, you can ask the mayor and any of my soldiers about the situation and…” “I’m not asking them, I’m asking you! You wantonly executing protestors like that is more likely to cause a damn rebellion not stop one! Or… maybe that’s what you really want Eternal? I mean that’s what you’re doing isn’t it? You train the troops to be utterly loyal, not to the Kingdom but to YOU. You’re starting wars, you’re executing Felkans which is going to cause more harm than good. Maybe this is your way of getting revenge on us? Perhaps you’re trying to start your own little Empire with you as the emperor this time?” You can’t believe these accusations. Here you’ve been doing what you can for the Felkan Kingdom by fighting off hostiles and putting down dissidents and you’re the one getting accused of treason. You just rub your hands over your face trying hard not to chuckle too much at the dark humor in all this. General Benson just stares at you disapprovingly as he usually does, but remains silent. It is at this point the well-dressed gnome walks in and nods at the general, he lights up some pipeweed and stands in the corner observing. It’s at that moment you think back to Captain Ecker’s accusations on the gnomes. Maybe he was right after all. Hardly matters at this point, because as far you’re concerned everyone in charge here has been an asshole. “Sir, I chopped up a shitload of gnolls and executed dissidents in the service of this fucking kingdom and the whole time I’ve done it all I’ve gotten is bitching and general ungratefulness, yet I haven’t complained. I didn’t even complain when you fuckers never sent me supplies on time to help fight the gnoll invasion. I execute some worthless fucking peasants stirring up shit, and I’m the fucking bad guy some how. Sir, I don’t need to re-create the Empire, because as fucked up as the government policies are here, I THOUGHT I WAS STILL SERVING THE FUCKING THING!” you shout. You slump back in your chair still fuming after your outburst, and that’s when the gnome speaks up in between puffs of his pipe. “So, Eternal did you want to leave?” he asks. “What?” “I’m asking you, did you want to leave? If you can’t find a place here, then perhaps it would be better if you left. In gratitude of all your service to the kingdom, this is a one time offer for you to leave free and clear. There will be no repercussions except that you can never return here.” > You leave You’ve tried to fit in here, but maybe it just isn’t meant to be. The Felkan Kingdom hasn’t given you the sense of purpose that you wanted except during the time you were fighting the gnolls and that’s only because you created an environment that you felt comfortable in. This place operates in such a way that is at odds with how you do things and this “generous” offer that the gnome has given you is probably the best you’re going to get, if you insist on staying. When you tell the gnome you’re going to leave, General Benson is obviously pleased, though the gnome doesn’t gloat. He simply nods and tells you that perhaps this is for the best. He assures you that nobody will be punished for any of the actions taken place her and that Lieutenant Young will take command of the fort. He also says he hopes you can find somewhere you belong. You pack up your stuff and attempt to make a silent exit, but that’s doomed to failure. Most of your soldiers want you to stay and even want to join you, but you tell them all that the Felkan Kingdom needs them and that there duty is here. Dawn is the most upset, but she manages to keep it together As you put Fort Green and the Felkan Kingdom further behind you, you start to wonder what you’re going to do now. Thinking back to what the gnome said, “Some place you belong” and you wonder if you do belong in the Eternal Dominion. From what you’ve heard Edgar’s been getting more organized, he’s even managed to conquer some of the old territories that the Empire lost. Perhaps he could use your help and maybe you could find your place there. Another part of you wonders if you shouldn’t just leave this whole region. Travel to someplace far away and completely different. Maybe you need a brand new start. > You travel to the Eternal Dominion You’re an Eternal and while you never cared much for the new generation of Eternals, it’s probably the best chance you’ve got at feeling a sense of greater purpose. Eternal Dominion is in its own way sort of the successor to the Empire, so maybe with a little work, you can get things going to how you like them again. As you make your trek back east, you get the feeling that you’re being followed, but when you reach the outskirts of the Eternal Dominion you no longer have that feeling. You travel through the southern portion of the Arat province and stop at a small village where you ask the local innkeeper where the nearest Eternal stronghold is. He tells you there’s a new fort several miles away where there are some Eternals stationed, he also mentions that you shouldn’t go messing around with them as they don’t like anyone who isn’t an Eternal to be wandering near there without reason. “Well guess they’ll like me then.” You say and leave. When you get to the fort you are predictably stopped and given the hard looks. You’re not intimidated in the least and explain who you are. They seem a little skeptical at first, obviously they’ve heard of you, but since they never served directly under you, they aren’t sure what you look like. One of them tells you to wait, while one of their fellows goes to ask someone inside. You stand around waiting, while the remaining guards continue to give you dirty looks. Eventually one of them comes back out. “Well? You confirmed who I was?” “Yeah, our captain said he served under you, during the rebellions in Quala. Watch your head.” This strange remark causes you to instinctively look up just in time to see someone pointing a musket at you from the top of the fort. Then you hear a loud blast and the top of your head is blown off in an explosion of skull and gray matter. You continue to stand and stare up for a moment and with what’s left of your brain you realize the bastard who just shot you was one those new eternals present when you killed private Felding. Your body then collapses in a heap, while the rest of the new eternals congratulate their captain on his shot.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve tried to fit in here, but maybe it just isn’t meant to be. The Felkan Kingdom hasn’t given you the sense of purpose that you wanted except during the time you were fighting the gnolls and that’s only because you created an environment that you felt comfortable in. This place operates in such a way that is at odds with how you do things and this “generous” offer that the gnome has given you is probably the best you’re going to get, if you insist on staying. When you tell the gnome you’re going to leave, General Benson is obviously pleased, though the gnome doesn’t gloat. He simply nods and tells you that perhaps this is for the best. He assures you that nobody will be punished for any of the actions taken place her and that Lieutenant Young will take command of the fort. He also says he hopes you can find somewhere you belong. You pack up your stuff and attempt to make a silent exit, but that’s doomed to failure. Most of your soldiers want you to stay and even want to join you, but you tell them all that the Felkan Kingdom needs them and that there duty is here. Dawn is the most upset, but she manages to keep it together As you put Fort Green and the Felkan Kingdom further behind you, you start to wonder what you’re going to do now. Thinking back to what the gnome said, “Some place you belong” and you wonder if you do belong in the Eternal Dominion. From what you’ve heard Edgar’s been getting more organized, he’s even managed to conquer some of the old territories that the Empire lost. Perhaps he could use your help and maybe you could find your place there. Another part of you wonders if you shouldn’t just leave this whole region. Travel to someplace far away and completely different. Maybe you need a brand new start. > You travel to a distant land You don’t feel as if the Eternal Dominion is really the place for you. You couldn’t stand the new generation of eternals and you doubt if you’ll like the ones coming after them. You aren’t even sure if Edgar would be all that friendly to you as it’s a pretty fair bet that he knows you went to join the Felkan Kingdom. Who knows how he’d react and with an entire nation under his command the odds wouldn’t be in your favor. So that only leaves one choice for you. Leaving these lands completely and finding your place elsewhere. It’s a little daunting as you’re wading into unknown waters as it were, but after all the things you’ve faced in your life you’re ready for the next challenge. You travel further west putting the Felkan Kingdom far behind you. Over the course of the next three days you live off the land and basically just observe your surroundings. You haven’t even been attacked, which you figured you would be by something the further you got from civilization. You have gotten the impression that you’re being followed however… The next night you make camp as usual and go to sleep, or at least you pretend to. You “sleep” for a couple hours and then get up in the middle of the night to circle around whoever it is that’s following you. Eventually behind a large rock in a small copse of trees you find your stalker. You had a feeling who it might be, but you weren’t sure. “I really hope you aren’t following me, why I think you’re following me.” You say to Dawn. She awakens slightly groggy, but still fully aware of her surroundings. “Damn, I thought I was being sneaky.” Dawn remarks while slowly getting up. “You might’ve been had it been anyone other than me, so why are you following me?” “I’m not here to kill you, if that’s what you think sir.” “I didn’t actually, though I sort of wish you were, might make this a whole lot easier.” “You…you aren’t going to kill me are you?!” Dawn says in alarm. “What? No! What I am going to do is send you back home. I’m sure you’ve been AWOL long enough.” “I’m not going back home sir, I resigned my position shortly after you left.” “You what? Dawn, why did you do that? You had a command position!” “I didn’t want it sir, I don’t want to serve the Felkan Kingdom, I want to be with you.” “(Sigh) See this is the reason why I hoped you weren’t following me.” “Sir, I…” “Stop calling me sir! I’m not your commanding officer anymore! Look…I think I know why you’re following me and I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Dawn doesn’t immediately comment and the both of you are silent for a moment, as the pair of you knows you’re referring to feelings she has for you go beyond simple respect. And while you’ve been pretty closely guarded about the situation as well, it would be a lie to say you don’t feel something for her as well. “Oh… and why is that exactly?” she slowly asks. “Because I don’t know where the hell I’m going or know what the hell I’m going to do with myself now. All of what I was taught to believe in, is gone and there is no getting that back. I’m literally lost and I doubt if I’ll ever settle down.” “Well if I come with you, perhaps you’ll be a little less lost with another set of eyes helping you.” “Dawn. You have a country. A home. A life. You even have a command if you get back there quick enough. You have something to fight for, do you really want to give that up?” “If I don’t have you, then yes. Maybe because of your upbringing, you hold such things in very high regard. Most people don’t work that way, you know.” “(Sigh) Yes I know, but what I’m saying is coming with me is unlikely to result in us settling down and living out our lives in some sort of wedded bliss with a house and kids.” “And who says I want that? I will be happy just as long as I’m by your side. If that means forever wandering, then I’ll be right there wandering next to you. My life before I met you, wasn’t a great one as you probably know and I only joined the military as an escape from poverty. You believed in me enough to give me my very first command. You taught me that I was capable of more when I sometimes wasn’t even sure myself. After all you’ve done for me it wouldn’t be right for me to leave you when you’re feeling something similar now.” Even you can’t help but be touched by that remark and you aren’t exactly sure of how to respond. When Dawn approaches closer to you, and the pair of you look into each other’s eyes, the response is certain and the pair of you kiss, finally taking those first steps towards your love for each other. The next morning after your passionate embrace, you and Dawn begin your journey together and leave the known region far behind. In the years that follow the pair of you wander, seeing new sights and getting into adventures. Several times you genuinely attempt to find a place where you feel comfortable, but it just never happens. While the pair of you never do settle down, your love continues to last. What ultimately happens to the both of you is lost to time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need to stay here and oversee the purging of this fort, and the surrounding area. You can’t start running off half assed because you’re a little worried about one soldier even if she is one of the best ones you’ve had under your command. (Not including your fellow Eternals of course) After slaying all the gnolls still in the fort, you regroup your soldiers and tell one of the sergeants to head over the Blossumdale with a couple platoons and help in whatever way they can. You tell the rest of your soldiers to start rebuilding the walls, clear out the dead bodies and to help you do a sweep of the area. Your sweep of the area is a tedious, but vital one. A lot of the gnolls retreated to various areas just enough to be out of sight, but were obviously still attempting to regroup again. Good thing you stayed behind to mop up all these little clusters so they didn’t form a big one again. By the time you’re satisfied with your results, the sun is coming up and you return to the fort more than a little tired. When you get back, you’re happy to see Dawn there. “Sir, Blossumdale still stands sir, the rest of the soldiers are securing it and the area.” “Glad to hear it, and glad to see you made it out in one peace. Was the fighting heavy?” “It was, but from the looks of it, the fighting was worse here. The only problem we had is with a wyvern.” “Lucky you only had one. We had four of them and I had to kill two of them myself.” “That’s one more than me then, sir.” You smile at her remark and after a brief discussion on what the next course of action will be, you get some rest. Over the next few months the gnoll attacks die down, but they don’t stop completely. Most of your activities involve going further into the wilderness and taking out whatever villages or camps they have. In the meantime your superiors are telling you to stop your actions as the war has been won and now you’re just using up valuable manpower and resources. You really aren’t though; you’ve been doing just fine with the limited supplies that they see fit to give you. Somehow this situation seems very familiar… While your superiors do a lot of complaining, nothing actually happens to you. It would seem they’re bitching at you just for the sake of bitching. The gnolls might not actually be able to invade properly anymore, but if you let them regroup again, they’ll try it. Your goal is to purge them all, or at the very least drive them away so they don’t try it ever again. Year 50 “This is bullshit sir, executing those protestors was the right thing to do!” “Calm down lieutenant.” You say to Dawn. “No sir, this isn’t right! They can’t punish you just for doing your fucking job!” “Okay lieutenant I said calm down! Now listen, I need you on your best behavior, because they’re going to question all of us. I saw this happen to my predecessor. (sigh) Who knows maybe I did go too far, I mean I haven’t exactly been following Felkan policies, I’ve been sort of doing my own thing out here for the past ten years.” “Yeah, but your actions are protecting the kingdom! How can that be wrong?” You look at Dawn and see that she’s changed quite a bit since she stood here in this office several years ago hesitant to kill baby gnolls. She’s practically like an Empire soldier now. Everyone in this fort is and that’s what is no doubt getting you into trouble. Still, they shouldn’t be blamed for what you just ordered them to do. “Well, maybe I was protecting the kingdom, but I still wasn’t following the laws. And I certainly broke enough of them. Just don’t worry; I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nobody here gets blamed. I mean you were all just following orders.” “Thank you sir, but I knew exactly what I was doing and if they put you against the wall in front of a firing squad for treason, then I want to be standing right next to you.” “…that’s a very…enthusiastic sentiment, but I don’t think that will be necessary. I mean maybe this won’t even be all that bad, they did at least warn me that they were coming. They didn’t even do that with Eckers. Look lieutenant…Dawn, whatever happens don’t go doing something foolish like trying to save me or sacrificing yourself or something. Just continue to serve the kingdom and try to follow the laws the best you can, okay?” Dawn is visible upset by all this. She turns her head for a moment while sniffling, then turns back to you and agrees. She then excuses herself to get ready for this investigation. Wasn’t really until this moment that you see that you’ve have a very deep effect on her. You didn’t expect to, as you treated her like any one else under your command, well maybe you did compliment her a little bit more, but that’s only because she did more. Eventually the investigation group gets arrives. To your surprise it consists of only two people, General Benson, and that gnome you saw before during Captain Ecker’s investigation, you certainly hope this turns out a lot better. All your troops stand at attention and you greet the general. After a brief exchange the well dress gnome parts company with the general who approaches you and just shakes his head. “I knew we made a bad decision.” He says and motions you to your office. You sit down and the general sits down and he begins his questions right away. “Let’s get right to it shall we? You are aware that you’re serving the Felkan Kingdom aren’t you?” “Yes sir.” “Oh? You do? Well then, is there any particular reason why you’re treating this area as if you still serving your long dead Empire?” “I’m not sure I follow you sir.” “Don’t play stupid with me, I’ve read the reports and followed all your actions for the past ten years! You’ve trained these soldiers to the point that they’re fanatically loyal and dedicated, you started a war with the gnolls and didn’t stop hostilities until you completely eliminated their species, during which time you executed several Felkan citizens in Blossumdale and now you’ve done it again! Tell me, is war, murder and genocide all they taught you in the Empire?” “Basically.” “You might not want to be so flip with me, Eternal, your ass is just a step away from the gallows yourself.” “Sir, with all due respect if I was such a problem for the past ten years, why not get rid of me before now?” “Ohhh, believe me, if I’d had any say in the matter you would’ve been.” “Sir, everything I’ve done has been for the good of the Felkan Kingdom. I mean loyal and dedicated soldiers, since when is that a bad thing? Soldiers are supposed to follow orders of their superiors and government. That’s sort of their whole purpose.” “That’s rather ironic coming from you who seems to blatantly ignores orders like not starting wars.” “Sir, the gnolls were an ongoing problem even if they weren’t planning an invasion. Isn’t it better that they’re all dead so that Felkan citizens don’t have to worry about getting robbed and killed on the roads? Blossomdale probably wouldn’t be standing if we hadn’t stopped them.” “Do you really want to bring up Blossumdale captain?” “Why the hell not? You’re bringing everything else up.” You say starting to get angry. “Watch your tone, and if you insist…I already know your half assed excuse for executing citizens during the war with the gnolls, but please explain to me why you did it again this time, just so I can try to understand your fucked Eternal logic.” “Well it’s rather simple, some of the citizens were protesting the new tax that the king imposed. They were in front of the town hall screaming at their mayor as if he was directly to blame. We stepped in to calm them down, they started getting more violent and began throwing rocks. We told them to stop, they didn’t, so we opened fire on them. After rounding up the main rabble rousers who didn’t get shot the first time, we executed them properly.” “And that’s it? That’s your excuse for gunning down several citizens?” “If they hadn’t done , what we told them not to do, they’d still be alive right now, sir.” “And there it is again, they didn’t do what you told them to do, so they got killed, but when it comes to you, you apparently do whatever the hell you want.” “That’s not true sir I was trying to stop a potential rebellion, you can ask the mayor and any of my soldiers about the situation and…” “I’m not asking them, I’m asking you! You wantonly executing protestors like that is more likely to cause a damn rebellion not stop one! Or… maybe that’s what you really want Eternal? I mean that’s what you’re doing isn’t it? You train the troops to be utterly loyal, not to the Kingdom but to YOU. You’re starting wars, you’re executing Felkans which is going to cause more harm than good. Maybe this is your way of getting revenge on us? Perhaps you’re trying to start your own little Empire with you as the emperor this time?” You can’t believe these accusations. Here you’ve been doing what you can for the Felkan Kingdom by fighting off hostiles and putting down dissidents and you’re the one getting accused of treason. You just rub your hands over your face trying hard not to chuckle too much at the dark humor in all this. General Benson just stares at you disapprovingly as he usually does, but remains silent. It is at this point the well-dressed gnome walks in and nods at the general, he lights up some pipeweed and stands in the corner observing. It’s at that moment you think back to Captain Ecker’s accusations on the gnomes. Maybe he was right after all. Hardly matters at this point, because as far you’re concerned everyone in charge here has been an asshole. “Sir, I chopped up a shitload of gnolls and executed dissidents in the service of this fucking kingdom and the whole time I’ve done it all I’ve gotten is bitching and general ungratefulness, yet I haven’t complained. I didn’t even complain when you fuckers never sent me supplies on time to help fight the gnoll invasion. I execute some worthless fucking peasants stirring up shit, and I’m the fucking bad guy some how. Sir, I don’t need to re-create the Empire, because as fucked up as the government policies are here, I THOUGHT I WAS STILL SERVING THE FUCKING THING!” you shout. You slump back in your chair still fuming after your outburst, and that’s when the gnome speaks up in between puffs of his pipe. “So, Eternal did you want to leave?” he asks. “What?” “I’m asking you, did you want to leave? If you can’t find a place here, then perhaps it would be better if you left. In gratitude of all your service to the kingdom, this is a one time offer for you to leave free and clear. There will be no repercussions except that you can never return here.” > You continue to stay As tempting as it might be to leave, you did that once before and it hasn’t turned out that great. Besides where would you go now? The only place that you know of that has any resemblance of civilization is the Eternal Dominion, and you’re fairly certain you wouldn’t be welcomed. Right now you’re sort of wishing that you’d stuck around during the last days of the Empire instead of leaving. Perhaps you could’ve made more of a difference than you thought, or maybe you could’ve fit in better among the ranks of the Eternal Dominion. The general was probably correct on a few points. You have tried to make this place more “Empire like”, but it’s all you know. You can only change so much. You wonder how Warrick managed to adapt as well as he did in a much shorter period of time. The only other option is leaving this land far behind and living as a directionless wanderer hoping that you find something. You can’t do that either. You’ve made your choice and you have to stick by it now for good or ill. “I want to stay. I pledged myself to this Kingdom and I meant it. So whatever punishment you feel is necessary, I’ll accept, but I just ask that you don’t punish anyone under my command. They’re good soldiers and only did what they were told to do.” The gnome asks the general to step outside and for you to stay put. You do so and wait in your office mostly staring at the various objects in it. Eventually the gnome returns, he pulls up a chair and sits across from you. “First things first, you’re not going to be punished for and anything and your actions have been appreciated. Perhaps not by everyone in the kingdom, but in certain circles they are. Personally, I don’t think you were intentionally trying to carve out your own piece of land, I truly believe you were doing what was best for the Felkan Kingdom. However, some are still concerned with your Empire past. I know you can’t help what you were and in some cases still are, but there is always a slight fear there. Especially you being one those Eternals and all.” “Warrick’s an Eternal, he directly fought against the Felkan Kingdom and he seems be accepted.” You point out. “Warrick, is a special case…(sigh) I probably shouldn’t even be telling you this, but considering the cluster fuck this situation is becoming, I’m going to be just as honest as you have with me. Warrick didn’t voluntarily join the kingdom, he was made that way.” “Made? What do you mean? Mind control? Torture?” you say in shock at this revelation. “I doubt if any torture would cause anyone to switch their allegiances, at least not permanently and we don’t engage in any sort of magic mumbo jumbo around here. No, Warrick was a dedicated foe against the Felkan Kingdom. We tried to get him and his partner for a long time, but never could catch them. Things got even worse when his partner was replaced by that Edgar fellow. By the gods, Edgar was a menace on the battlefield…anyway back to Warrick. Warrick as you probably know was mainly engaged in sabotage and similar tactics. Well, his luck just ran out one day ironically towards the last days of the war. Had a small explosive hit the side of his face by one of the many traps set up.” “But he lived.” “Yes, but he wouldn’t have if our medics hadn’t been nearby at the time. When he was found he was bleeding from his eye socket and didn’t even know where he was or who he was. Soldiers probably would’ve probably killed him, but like I said, he was luckily found by a couple of gnome medics, they decided to…re-align him instead. Memories are an unpredictable thing, so attempting to practically reconstruct his entire past would’ve been a fool’s errand, instead they just slowly over time convinced him that he had willingly joined the Felkan Kingdom due to his disillusionment of the Empire as he healed up. It worked a lot better than we thought, I can only guess that Warrick may have had some genuine disillusionment with the Empire.” “But isn’t that still risky? Couldn’t he still remember what really happened one day?” “Doubt it, as I’m sure you’re aware from talking with him, his memory when discussing anything before his injury is patchy. In any case we also keep an eye on him…you seem to be taking this well, I would’ve thought you might’ve been angry and trying to kill me by now.” “Maybe at one time I would’ve been furious, perhaps a small part of me is, but I’m more baffled by the idea that you’d go through the trouble that you as opposed to the more efficient task of killing him.” “Ahh yes, well that is one of the failings of my race I believe. A lot of us are non-violent at heart; ironic considering that we also develop some of the most destructive weapons in the known world. Peace through superior firepower I suppose.” With the way the gnome is speaking, he’s practically telling you how things are really run in the Felkan Kingdom. His very presence is proof of it. “So it’s true? The gnomes do really run the kingdom?” you ask. “Heh, I wish that was the case, certainly we have a lot of influence, but nothing is ever certain. There are always complications.” “So why are you telling me all this? Aren’t you worried that I’ll kill you and try to free Warrick from your brainwashing techniques or try to stir up anti-gnome rhetoric like Eckers or others?” “You could certainly try, but I doubt if you’d be very successful. The only thing you might be able to do is easily kill me and start a small rebellion with your company of Empire-like troops. You’d probably do a lot of damage, but you wouldn’t topple the kingdom. Besides what I’m telling you, I’m telling you for a reason.” The gnome stops smoking completely and leans forward as best he can with as short as he is. “There are changes coming Eternal, necessary changes to keep the Kingdom from falling and quite frankly I believe we NEED someone like you. The conspiracy theory that we gnomes run everything is only half true. The fact is, we’re suffering from as much infighting as any other race does. Tell me Eternal, were you aware that a long time ago the gnomes used to live in the Empire as slaves? Hell we were responsible for most of the technological advancements that the Empire even had, like the aqueducts and such. Good thing we never discovered gunpowder during that time, we’d probably still be living under Empire boots.” “Yes, I did study Empire history when I was little, it was required. Don’t remember anything specific being said about your people though, just that you were slaves.” “Heh, figures that they would play down our achievements. Truth is, while we were slaves we had comfortable positions. We were treated well and kept safe. Wasn’t until we saw what the Empire did to our Halfling cousins that we made the decision to make a mass exodus. They were slaves too, but not treated as well, so naturally they wanted equal rights like any normal citizen. When they didn’t get that, they pushed harder. When the Empire pushed back, it wasn’t a pretty.” “Yes, the Halfling uprising. I read about that.” “Uprising? It was more like a slaughter. We tried to warn them against such actions, but they were too proud even though they had no chance. The Empire as you know wiped them all out. I believe it was the first time we saw the Empire practice genocide on such a scale. We couldn’t fight the Empire, but we couldn’t stay for fear of our own lives. After all what would’ve happened if the Empire decided that we were also getting too uppity one day? When we eventually arrived to these lands the Felkans didn’t even have a kingdom yet, but when it started looking like they would get organized, we made the decision to ingrain ourselves into helping shape it. We would not become slave again, but living in a powerful nation could protect us if the Empire ever started expanding this way, and given the past few decades I’d say we were right.” A fascinating little part of history you have to admit, but you still aren’t sure what this all has to do with you. “So, exactly how do I fit in here?” “The Empire might be gone, but you and specifically the Eternal Dominion are its successors. And from what I can tell the ED looks like its every bit as ruthless as the Empire, perhaps even more so. Some of us are starting to believe the Felkan policies on aggression need to be altered. Due to our past with seeing first hand of what happened to the Halflings, our people are generally disgusted by the thought of slavery or total annihilation of any race. Hence all the policies against engaging in wars of conquest and aggression and the more relaxed political views…well at least until you came along.” “Well I know why I act the way I do, but there were others who obviously don’t agree with the policies long before I showed up.” “And that’s true too. Mostly humans though, I suppose humans just have a natural tendency towards conquest. That’s why my circle believes we need to let go of our past a bit and start changing before the grumblings get worse. Perhaps a little nationalism is what the Felkan Kingdom needs to direct the hatred towards external threats rather than crumbling from within. And as bad as I feel saying this, what you did with the gnolls was very necessary.” “Well if it eases your conscience I probably didn’t strictly wipe out ALL the gnolls, I’m sure quite a few of them just ran far away.” “Doesn’t really matter, they’re gone and no longer a threat. The fact is we’re probably going to need more like you when we eventually go up against the ED, if only because of your experience, let alone your mindset. You’re going to be transferred; in fact everyone here is going to be transferred to Fort Soot. You’re going to be needed on the frontlines.” “Isn’t that where Warrick is stationed?” “Yes, but we’ve got another task for him, his sabotage and stealth skills can be used to help us as opposed to all those years he was working against us. Now there’s some other stuff that needs to be done as well, but you really don’t need to worry about it. All I need you to do is to prepare everyone along the Arat border for a possible invasion. The ED is getting more organized everyday and we can’t afford to be caught off guard. You said you pledged yourself to defend this kingdom…I trust even after all of what you’ve learned here, that pledge is still true?” “I gave my word and you’ve revealed much about the real way things work around here. That’s probably more than the Empire ever did. The Felkan Kingdom has my loyalty, but I must be allowed to do things my way when it comes to battle and war.” “That…will be arranged. As I’ve said, other things need to be taken care of, but rest assured you will have support, just one thing, could you stop killing protesting peasants? I understand that’s a hold over from your Empire training, but that’s something you’re really going to have to stop doing.” “I will. My apologies.” “It’s alright, just no more of it in the future unless you’re specifically given the order to do so. Anyway probably won’t be a problem, not many villages along the Arat borders anymore since the last war. Okay, I believe that’s it, oh by the way, my name is Klemto Zookwinkle and I’ll most likely be in touch in the future.” The gnome shakes your hand, straightens his hat and leaves the office, leaving you to take in all of the new information thrust upon you. Oddly the only thing you can immediately think is: “Klemto Zookwinkle? That’s silly fucking name!” you laugh. > Year 55 Another clear night and you look out across the Arat border from the fort roof knowing that the ED could invade soon…though you’ve been waiting for about five years now. If anything you’d wish that they’d hurry up and do it or as you’ve often suggested to Klemto, that you strike at the ED first. He of course claims he’s still trying to sway the royals to do such a thing, most importantly the king. Seems the gnomes are still playing tug of war with their puppet strings. You suggested that a few assassinations would do the trick, but Klemto was a little upset at you for that suggestion. In any case Klemto better hurry up and get this war started, because more anti-gnome groups are starting to pop up and it’s getting harder to keep them quiet, especially since they aren’t wrong about their accusations. As for you, you’re a major now and you’re not only in charge of Fort Soot, but the entire Gan province as far as military is concerned. You’ve been busying yourself with having the soldiers keep to their patrols and training. Instilling the same routines that you did at Fort Green. Your results have been more or less just as successful. Dawn is still your second, though she’s a captain now and she’s more of a concern to you than any potential war right now. You really should’ve transferred her to another fort, as she’s certainly competent enough to run one and even during the gnoll war you suspected that she had feelings for you that were more than just a professional respect. The problem is, you had feelings for her too and by the time both of you admitted them to each other it unleashed itself in a night of passion. This wasn’t like what happened between you and Alison at Fort Destiny though, you didn’t separate love and sex from each other and now you’re too attached to Dawn to have her transferred. It hasn’t been an excessive problem in day-to-day operations, but to you it’s a definite weakness on your part. You don’t even know how the hell you can even feel love as you’ve never really experienced it before, but then you remember Brenda and Roldan and they did. They even worked together and married. Perhaps you’re over thinking it. Speaking of Brenda, you’ve finally got information on what she’s been up to thanks to Warrick’s intelligence gathering missions. She’s apparently still in charge of all of the Nalin province and the only other Eternal that has equal rank to Edgar. She joined the Eternal Dominion years ago when Edgar came to her in Nalin, but Warrick has told you that she isn’t happy with the situation. Warrick has said that she is willing to give out Edgar’s plans and troops movements. So far they’ve been updating their equipment and consolidating their territory still. She claims that Edgar has his sights on either re-conquering Rask or invading the Felkan Kingdom, but nothing is certain yet. The big thing is Edgar has actually managed to completely unite the new eternals under a doctrine that only they are fit to rule and new generations of eternals are still being trained. You have to say, you’re a little impressed by his accomplishments. Edgar a despot, Warrick a brainwashed spy, Brenda a traitorous informant and you in charge of an army that was once an enemy. If someone told you when you were fresh out of Gruz’s training school that this is how the four of you would end up, you never would’ve believed it. “Roldan, Gerald…Kane, I can only imagine what you’re thinking as you watch us all from wherever you are.” You say out loud, briefly thinking about the good old days when things were simpler. You stop with the nostalgia to return to your room to get some rest, where you find Dawn sleeping. You try not to wake her, but you’re doomed to failure. She moves over to cuddle next to you. “Go back to sleep.” You tell her. “Hey, if you’re here, who’s in charge of the fort?” she groggily asks. “Lieutenant Baker.” “Him? Ugh, I better go on duty…” “Hey come back to bed. He’s capable of handling it, besides, it’s not like anything is going on.” “I guess so. I just feel more comfortable with you or me in charge.” “Yeah, well you’ve been working too hard anyway. You probably need more rest than anyone, so go back to sleep.” “Mmmm, I’m up now, but if you’d like me to stay in bed, we could do something else…” Dawn says rubbing your chest and kissing the side of your face. Yeah, you’ve been over thinking the possible downsides of this relationship too much lately. You take Dawn up on her offer and have fun living for the moment rather than pondering the past or concerning yourself about future. The next morning you return to your duties as usual. For most of the day it looks like it’s going to be another routine one, and that’s when you get an unexpected visit from Klemto. When he arrives in your office, he has a slight frown in his face. “I’m suspecting bad news.” You say. “Well, it’s fifty fifty I suppose. Warrick has just given me news that Edgar is planning on attacking the Rask frontier. Not exactly sure how long it’ll take him, before he sets his sights on us again though. There isn’t really a government system in place there, it’s more of a collection of isolated towns relying on mercs to keep monsters at bay from what I’m told.” “Edgar and I were both stationed at Rask for many years. He’s got the advantage of knowing the area and everything else, but he also has to know that the place tends towards lawlessness. He might be able to easily conquer towns, but the manpower involved in keeping them under control is a constant drain. Not to brag, but if it hadn’t been for me keeping a tight leash on things there, the Empire would’ve never gotten control of it as well as they did. “Heh, well the ED has several eternals to keep a tight leash on it as you say.” “And those eternals aren’t me.” “Well, you seem to be in proud mood today.” “Just stating the facts.” “I see, well in any case that brings me to the next bit of news. You may be getting a transfer soon.” “Transfer? Why?” “Well the king and several others have always been uncomfortable with you in charge of the armies here on the frontlines as you probably know. It’s only due to the threat of the potential invasion and my circle’s influence that we managed to keep you in power here.” “Are you fucking kidding me? After all their worrying about an invasion for years, you mean they’re suddenly not anymore, because Edgar’s attacking Rask? That’s pretty fucking short sighted.” You say. “No, the intention is to still keep up the defenses here and keep the same procedures you set in place of course, but just uh, replace you.” “Right, because I could suddenly raise an army and try to overthrow the throne at any given time…fuck. I thought you were supposed to calm those fears!” “I tried! I really did! I mean I think I’m lucky we accomplished what we did! And I tried to fight for you on this too, but it’s just too much now and they want you gone. It’ll make everyone feel better.” “Yes, everyone but me obviously.” “Hey you’ve always claimed to be a soldier dedicated to the kingdom for good or bad. Isn’t this one of those times where you stepping down quietly to make everyone feel better would be best for the kingdom, instead of causing a fuse and potentially causing more problems?” “So I accept this, and then what happens? Where am I getting transferred to? Some fort in the middle of nowhere again?” “Well, that’s just it, you’re kind of going to be transferred to the uh…private sector. Are you familiar the merchant’s guild at the capital? Well, you’ll be the new head of security there!” Klemto says trying to make it sound impressive. You can’t believe this. “Are you telling me I’m not even going to be part of the damn army anymore? I’m just going to be a glorified guard?” “You’ll be well paid and get a better place to stay than this dreary fort!” “You know I don’t give a shit about all that, I’m a warrior! I want to fight!” “And that’s still an option! I mean it’s not like you’ll be sitting around doing nothing. In fact with the guild could use a little extra protection since the rise in anti-gnomism going on lately.” “Trust me, there’s some of that going on here too, right now.” Klempto seems like he wants to pat your arm reassure you, but decides better of it. “Look, I’m sorry about all this. It sucks I know, but the popular opinion is just not in our favor. That’s why we want you at the guild; most of my faction of likeminded fellows are there. We think we could still remedy this later.” “You’d think with all your influence and control of the economy you’d be able to do something about this now.” “Yes, well it isn’t as easy as you think.” “Yeah, well it could be.” You say. Klempto musters up all his courage and points a finger at you. “And I don’t want to hear you talking like that anymore! I know what you’re implying and the answer is no! Unlike you humans, we gnomes don’t kill one another despite our disagreements! Now I suggest you prepare for your transfer, take care of all your affairs here and a carriage will come and get you in a few days. I suppose you’ll want that Dawn girl to take over here, which will be acceptable. I managed to convince the opposition of that.” “Gee, thanks for small favors.” At this point Klemto just backs away from you and begins to leave, before he does though he speaks once more. “Y’know, you shouldn’t really see this as a bad thing. I mean think about how old you are getting. You humans don’t have that high of a life span. Shouldn’t you want to start slowing down on the war and battle a bit and start concentrating on enjoying your approaching elderly years?” “If you’re still trying to convince me you’re failing miserably, because that’s the biggest load of shit I’ve ever heard for several reasons that I’m not even going to get into. But I’ll address the age thing briefly. Yeah I know I’m not twenty, but I fucking know I’m still a better warrior than any of the soldiers under my command, let alone an average Felkan soldier. And while you keep saying I’m human, I’m not. I’m a fucking Eternal. We’re better than a normal human and when the ED invades they’re going to SHOW you that they are mainly because they aren’t afraid to do whatever it kill their enemies, unlike you lot.” Sensing he better leave this time, Klemto quickly runs off out of your office, leaving you to ponder your situation. Just last night you were feeling good in the arms of Dawn, and now you got a bunch of shit shoved at you that you’re supposed to just sit and eat it. It’s enough for you to attack the Eternal Dominion anyway > You follow orders As much as you don’t like it, if even a third of what Klemto said is true, if you went ahead and did your own thing again, you could very well destabilize the kingdom even more, possibly even a civil war. You aren’t looking to become like Kane, and if it means you have to step down to preserve the kingdom, then that’s what you’ll do. It just frustrates you that after all you’ve done, you still aren’t trusted, but perhaps it will always be this way. If anything its perhaps something of a phenomenon that they accepted you in the first place, though if Warrick is anything to go by, it’s only to exploit you. Resigned to your orders, you make preparations to pass your command to Dawn. She doesn’t like the news any better than you do, in fact she suggests that you should attack the Eternal Dominion anyway, but you explain the repercussions of such actions. “But you did that with the gnolls and that worked out!” “Yeah, and that was a different situation. Don’t have the luxury of doing whatever anymore even if I do think it would be in the kingdom’s best interest. Listen, you’re going to be in charge here, so I don’t want you doing anything rash either. No point in you getting into trouble, you understand?” “Yes, but I still don’t like this. And I don’t think this is a good idea.” “Neither do I, but we have our orders.” “Well maybe you like your orders, but I still don’t. If you’re not going to be commander here, then I don’t want to serve here anymore either.” “What?! You can’t just throw away your career like that because of me! Besides without me here, this place is going to need a good leader.” “I don’t care about all that. I care about you, and if the kingdom isn’t seeing fit to give you the respect you deserve then it doesn’t deserve me as a leader. Besides if all is so great as they claim then they won’t need me there.” “I really think you should think this through. Besides what are you going to do, if not this?” “I’m pretty sure with my vast skill set, I’ll find something, I’ll also probably move to the capital and get married.” “Married?” you say not grasping her insinuation immediately, then when she touches your hand, you get it. A lot of upcoming changes has been dumped on you this day, you just hope you can adapt to all of them. Year 58 The Eternal Dominion gains ground every day, yet the people here in the capital act like everything is going well. If you’d attacked like you wanted to, the Felkan Kingdom wouldn’t have gotten caught off guard like it did. Warrick and whatever other spies the Felkan Kingdom had on the field were all fed bad intel, and while the soldiers in the Gan province fought well, the commander who was put in charge of the province was an idiot that allowed most of it get overrun. Even if shitty intel, you’re damn sure that you would’ve at least prevented that from happening. Dawn would’ve too. You regret not ignoring orders and going through with your plan. Dawn isn’t as hard on herself, but she does sometimes wonders if she should’ve stayed on as commander of the Gan armies. But it’s too late for any of that now. The pair of you just go about your less exciting lives. She a combat instructor at an academy and you still head of security for the merchant’s guild. In the beginning your job was slightly more engaging, with all the anti-gnome stuff going on. You even prevented a nutjob from blowing up the guild once. Nowadays the anti-gnome sentiment has more or less disappeared. It’s sort of hard to be angry at the little guys who are continuing to make weapons that blow up an enemy that’s bashing the door down. As a result you’re mostly attempting to figure out the best guards for the various caravans that get sent out. Sometimes you go out on these as well just to break up the monotony. Predictably they’re always supply caravans to the frontlines so you can get the latest and best information on what’s going on, because the gods know that they never claim anything bad is going on in the capital. Here, closer to the fighting is where you feel a little more comfortable. You really miss it. While your current married life with Dawn is good, and you have no major worries, you still feel the call of war, but you are unable to participate. It’s a very frustrating situation that you never get used to and you never will. It’s just not in your nature. One day on one of your supply runs, you travel to a town called Yevdin which is in desperate need of almost everything as it is being held by only a few soldiers. Most of the civilians have evacuated save for a few of the stubborn ones unwilling to run. You respect that. It’s of some surprise that you meet Warrick there; he’s equally surprised to see you as well. While you wait for the supplies to be unloaded, you go over and speak to him. “What’re you doing here?” Warrick asks. “Staving off the boredom of my current assignment, and you?” “Waiting for my impending death.” “Well at least your punishment will be over soon…I thought you were a captain. Why are you a sergeant now?” “Got busted down for being wrong on the intelligence reports, all those years ago. I guess I should be lucky I didn’t get executed for gross incompetence. I really fucked up on that one.” “Oh, I’d say you’re in good company as far as that’s concerned, so don’t be too hard on yourself. Besides even if you’d done your mission right, you might’ve just gotten drummed out of the military altogether.” You say. After a brief discussion with Warrick, you learn that this town is facing an imminent large-scale invasion. Not that the town is really important, but it happens to be in the way of another important target, so it’s going to be overrun on the way. These supplies aren’t so much as to ensure the soldiers’ survival, but rather their survival long enough to make it a costly victory for the Eternal Dominion. Warrick doesn’t appear to be concerned though. “So, I never did get the whole story, why’d you get removed?” Warrick asks “Long story, but let’s just say I think the ones running things like things the way they are right now.” “Surely you’re joking. Why would anyone in the Felkan Kingdom want this situation?” You could tell Warrick all about the things you’ve overheard, things you’ve suspected and things you’ve outright seen just by being closer to the gnomes in the merchant’s guild. But it wouldn’t make any difference. Warrick’s been on a string for a long time now and despite his own situation, he seems in a very positive mood. Perhaps ignorance is bliss, or perhaps its because he’s still fighting and doing what he always was meant to do. The same thing you were meant to do. “Come on, we’ve delivered the stuff, let’s get the hell outta here!” the gnome merchant shouts to you. “You go on ahead with the rest of the guards. I’m staying here.” You say. “What?! Are you crazy? This place is about to be destroyed!” “Yeah I know. Tell my wife I really tried, but that this is what I was meant to do.” The gnome doesn’t try to talk you out of your plan, he just shakes his head and gets in the carriage ordering the rest of the guards to ride off as quick as possible. Warrick says nothing about your decision either. Even though the pair of you haven’t really been in close contact since you both served together in Nalin, he knows why you made your decision. The next few days aren’t filled with impending doom, but rather one of contentment. In between keeping a look out, and checking your defenses you and Warrick do a lot of catching up on the past, though the pair of you mostly stick to the happier memories of when you both were in the Empire. The other soldiers listen in on your stories. They don’t quite get all of them, but seeing the good spirits of their leader, seems to put them in a slightly better mood as well. And that’s good, their last moments should be as unpleasant as possible, there will be plenty of time for that when the Eternal Dominion arrives. Eventually the Eternal Dominion arrives with an impressively large force. The small part of you that believed you’d make this out alive shortly disappears, but this doesn’t make you second-guess yourself. You’re still comfortable in your decision and this is certainly preferable to what you’ve been doing for the past three years. “Sir, it’s been an honor to serve with you.” Warrick suddenly says to you, even giving you the old Empire salute. “The honor is both of ours.” You say. “For the Empire, sir.” “For the Empire, Warrick.” You reply. The first volley of cannon shots strike the front ranks of the Eternal Dominion troops and the battle is joined… “Prime Eternal, the town of Yevdin was taken, but we suffered massive casualties, we need reinforcements before we can take Fort Everlast.” A messenger says. “What?! You idiots! You see what we’re working with here Brenda? I expect this sort of incompetence from our human soldiers, but that army had a good portion of Eternals in it! Bah! These new ones for all their extra abilities, they still lack that spark that we have!” Edgar cursed. “Why did we suffer so many losses at Yevdin? Do the Felkans have a new weapon?” Brenda asks. “Reports indicate no new weapon, but there were a group of soldiers that seemed to be incredibly determined. Even when the town was taken, a few of them had taken to an underground shelter beneath the town and skirmished with the force for five more days.” “We should be so lucky to have Eternals such dedication.” Edgar mutters. “Any description of these enemy soldiers?” Brenda asks. The messenger reports that there was nothing out of the ordinary about any of the soldiers and doesn’t have a description since he didn’t know that it was important. He says he knows the leader had an eye patch which clues Edgar and Brenda that that was Warrick. He also mentions one other that wasn’t in a soldier uniform, but was the last to be killed. Edgar and Brenda briefly wonder a bit, and then nod to each other before dismissing the messenger. “It was stupid of the Felkans to remove him from command in the first place, but I guess even they couldn’t keep him off the battlefield forever.” Brenda says. “No, and that was that spark I was referring to earlier. Just think if the pair of them had stayed here instead? Think of all the things we could’ve accomplished! Such a waste. Well it’s over now and with those two out of the way, I think our plan is going to be a lot easier.” “True, but I still wish things had been different.” “So do I Brenda, so do I.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 55 Another clear night and you look out across the Arat border from the fort roof knowing that the ED could invade soon…though you’ve been waiting for about five years now. If anything you’d wish that they’d hurry up and do it or as you’ve often suggested to Klemto, that you strike at the ED first. He of course claims he’s still trying to sway the royals to do such a thing, most importantly the king. Seems the gnomes are still playing tug of war with their puppet strings. You suggested that a few assassinations would do the trick, but Klemto was a little upset at you for that suggestion. In any case Klemto better hurry up and get this war started, because more anti-gnome groups are starting to pop up and it’s getting harder to keep them quiet, especially since they aren’t wrong about their accusations. As for you, you’re a major now and you’re not only in charge of Fort Soot, but the entire Gan province as far as military is concerned. You’ve been busying yourself with having the soldiers keep to their patrols and training. Instilling the same routines that you did at Fort Green. Your results have been more or less just as successful. Dawn is still your second, though she’s a captain now and she’s more of a concern to you than any potential war right now. You really should’ve transferred her to another fort, as she’s certainly competent enough to run one and even during the gnoll war you suspected that she had feelings for you that were more than just a professional respect. The problem is, you had feelings for her too and by the time both of you admitted them to each other it unleashed itself in a night of passion. This wasn’t like what happened between you and Alison at Fort Destiny though, you didn’t separate love and sex from each other and now you’re too attached to Dawn to have her transferred. It hasn’t been an excessive problem in day-to-day operations, but to you it’s a definite weakness on your part. You don’t even know how the hell you can even feel love as you’ve never really experienced it before, but then you remember Brenda and Roldan and they did. They even worked together and married. Perhaps you’re over thinking it. Speaking of Brenda, you’ve finally got information on what she’s been up to thanks to Warrick’s intelligence gathering missions. She’s apparently still in charge of all of the Nalin province and the only other Eternal that has equal rank to Edgar. She joined the Eternal Dominion years ago when Edgar came to her in Nalin, but Warrick has told you that she isn’t happy with the situation. Warrick has said that she is willing to give out Edgar’s plans and troops movements. So far they’ve been updating their equipment and consolidating their territory still. She claims that Edgar has his sights on either re-conquering Rask or invading the Felkan Kingdom, but nothing is certain yet. The big thing is Edgar has actually managed to completely unite the new eternals under a doctrine that only they are fit to rule and new generations of eternals are still being trained. You have to say, you’re a little impressed by his accomplishments. Edgar a despot, Warrick a brainwashed spy, Brenda a traitorous informant and you in charge of an army that was once an enemy. If someone told you when you were fresh out of Gruz’s training school that this is how the four of you would end up, you never would’ve believed it. “Roldan, Gerald…Kane, I can only imagine what you’re thinking as you watch us all from wherever you are.” You say out loud, briefly thinking about the good old days when things were simpler. You stop with the nostalgia to return to your room to get some rest, where you find Dawn sleeping. You try not to wake her, but you’re doomed to failure. She moves over to cuddle next to you. “Go back to sleep.” You tell her. “Hey, if you’re here, who’s in charge of the fort?” she groggily asks. “Lieutenant Baker.” “Him? Ugh, I better go on duty…” “Hey come back to bed. He’s capable of handling it, besides, it’s not like anything is going on.” “I guess so. I just feel more comfortable with you or me in charge.” “Yeah, well you’ve been working too hard anyway. You probably need more rest than anyone, so go back to sleep.” “Mmmm, I’m up now, but if you’d like me to stay in bed, we could do something else…” Dawn says rubbing your chest and kissing the side of your face. Yeah, you’ve been over thinking the possible downsides of this relationship too much lately. You take Dawn up on her offer and have fun living for the moment rather than pondering the past or concerning yourself about future. The next morning you return to your duties as usual. For most of the day it looks like it’s going to be another routine one, and that’s when you get an unexpected visit from Klemto. When he arrives in your office, he has a slight frown in his face. “I’m suspecting bad news.” You say. “Well, it’s fifty fifty I suppose. Warrick has just given me news that Edgar is planning on attacking the Rask frontier. Not exactly sure how long it’ll take him, before he sets his sights on us again though. There isn’t really a government system in place there, it’s more of a collection of isolated towns relying on mercs to keep monsters at bay from what I’m told.” “Edgar and I were both stationed at Rask for many years. He’s got the advantage of knowing the area and everything else, but he also has to know that the place tends towards lawlessness. He might be able to easily conquer towns, but the manpower involved in keeping them under control is a constant drain. Not to brag, but if it hadn’t been for me keeping a tight leash on things there, the Empire would’ve never gotten control of it as well as they did. “Heh, well the ED has several eternals to keep a tight leash on it as you say.” “And those eternals aren’t me.” “Well, you seem to be in proud mood today.” “Just stating the facts.” “I see, well in any case that brings me to the next bit of news. You may be getting a transfer soon.” “Transfer? Why?” “Well the king and several others have always been uncomfortable with you in charge of the armies here on the frontlines as you probably know. It’s only due to the threat of the potential invasion and my circle’s influence that we managed to keep you in power here.” “Are you fucking kidding me? After all their worrying about an invasion for years, you mean they’re suddenly not anymore, because Edgar’s attacking Rask? That’s pretty fucking short sighted.” You say. “No, the intention is to still keep up the defenses here and keep the same procedures you set in place of course, but just uh, replace you.” “Right, because I could suddenly raise an army and try to overthrow the throne at any given time…fuck. I thought you were supposed to calm those fears!” “I tried! I really did! I mean I think I’m lucky we accomplished what we did! And I tried to fight for you on this too, but it’s just too much now and they want you gone. It’ll make everyone feel better.” “Yes, everyone but me obviously.” “Hey you’ve always claimed to be a soldier dedicated to the kingdom for good or bad. Isn’t this one of those times where you stepping down quietly to make everyone feel better would be best for the kingdom, instead of causing a fuse and potentially causing more problems?” “So I accept this, and then what happens? Where am I getting transferred to? Some fort in the middle of nowhere again?” “Well, that’s just it, you’re kind of going to be transferred to the uh…private sector. Are you familiar the merchant’s guild at the capital? Well, you’ll be the new head of security there!” Klemto says trying to make it sound impressive. You can’t believe this. “Are you telling me I’m not even going to be part of the damn army anymore? I’m just going to be a glorified guard?” “You’ll be well paid and get a better place to stay than this dreary fort!” “You know I don’t give a shit about all that, I’m a warrior! I want to fight!” “And that’s still an option! I mean it’s not like you’ll be sitting around doing nothing. In fact with the guild could use a little extra protection since the rise in anti-gnomism going on lately.” “Trust me, there’s some of that going on here too, right now.” Klempto seems like he wants to pat your arm reassure you, but decides better of it. “Look, I’m sorry about all this. It sucks I know, but the popular opinion is just not in our favor. That’s why we want you at the guild; most of my faction of likeminded fellows are there. We think we could still remedy this later.” “You’d think with all your influence and control of the economy you’d be able to do something about this now.” “Yes, well it isn’t as easy as you think.” “Yeah, well it could be.” You say. Klempto musters up all his courage and points a finger at you. “And I don’t want to hear you talking like that anymore! I know what you’re implying and the answer is no! Unlike you humans, we gnomes don’t kill one another despite our disagreements! Now I suggest you prepare for your transfer, take care of all your affairs here and a carriage will come and get you in a few days. I suppose you’ll want that Dawn girl to take over here, which will be acceptable. I managed to convince the opposition of that.” “Gee, thanks for small favors.” At this point Klemto just backs away from you and begins to leave, before he does though he speaks once more. “Y’know, you shouldn’t really see this as a bad thing. I mean think about how old you are getting. You humans don’t have that high of a life span. Shouldn’t you want to start slowing down on the war and battle a bit and start concentrating on enjoying your approaching elderly years?” “If you’re still trying to convince me you’re failing miserably, because that’s the biggest load of shit I’ve ever heard for several reasons that I’m not even going to get into. But I’ll address the age thing briefly. Yeah I know I’m not twenty, but I fucking know I’m still a better warrior than any of the soldiers under my command, let alone an average Felkan soldier. And while you keep saying I’m human, I’m not. I’m a fucking Eternal. We’re better than a normal human and when the ED invades they’re going to SHOW you that they are mainly because they aren’t afraid to do whatever it kill their enemies, unlike you lot.” Sensing he better leave this time, Klemto quickly runs off out of your office, leaving you to ponder your situation. Just last night you were feeling good in the arms of Dawn, and now you got a bunch of shit shoved at you that you’re supposed to just sit and eat it. It’s enough for you to attack the Eternal Dominion anyway > You disobey orders You wouldn’t have gotten promoted if you hadn’t reported Captain Eckers, and you wouldn’t have gotten this command if you hadn’t took it upon yourself to launch an attack on the gnolls. The fact is, throughout most of your life, you’ve followed orders, but it’s only when you’ve taken matters into your own hands on important decisions that you’ve gotten anywhere. Why should this time be any different? For one thing, just because there are reports that the ED aren’t planning an invasion any time soon, doesn’t mean that’s true. Not that you doubt Warrick’s skills as a spy, but there’s always a possibility that false information is being leaked intentionally and that someone is on to him. Hell, maybe its even Brenda pretending to be on his side, you don’t know. The other thing is even if the info is true it’s not like they couldn’t still invade during or after their invasion of Rask. And it would be better to catch THEM off guard instead of the other way around, because you’re pretty sure they aren’t expecting the Felkan Kingdom to attack first. You’re most likely going to get into a shitload of trouble for all this, but when you get this war started, the ED isn’t going to listen to diplomacy, when they get attacked; they’re not going to stop. When that happens the kingdom isn’t going to have any choice but to help you. Or it could just backfire horribly. It’s all a gamble, but one you’re willing to risk, because you’re damned if you’re going to grow old and just become a guard for fat gnome merchants after all you’ve done and sacrificed. And if you die in battle, then it’ll be a death you’ve been destined for since birth. You find Dawn and tell her that you want orders put out to all the forts in the province. A full offensive across the Arat border and into ED territory is to be launched. “So the ED is invading soon?” Dawn asks. “No, but after we destroy a couple of their forts and towns they will be. Have the message sent out that all forces are to converge on that ED town about twenty miles past the border, Bucklesberg. I’ll meet the rest of the battalion commanders there and plan the next attack after the place has been razed to the ground.” “Wait, you’re going?” “Yes, I’m leading this attack personally. I’m not some helpless old man you know!” “I didn’t say…wait, this plan isn’t official is it? What did that gnome tell you?” “A bunch of shit as usual. Now I’m going to need you here to keep things orderly on this side of the border. It might get ugly, but I know you can handle it. Just remember, we’re doing this for the good of the kingdom, even if its leaders are too stupid to see it.” Dawn looks a little concerned and it reminds you of when you first asked her to completely wipe out a gnoll village, but then she proves herself, as you knew she would. “It will be done, my love.” She says and leaves to send out the messengers. You order all troops in the fort to ready themselves for battle save for a skeleton crew to protect the fort. When they’re completely ready, you ride your horse up and down the line of them and are glad to see the dedication they are displaying. You can see that they have no need for any sort of long-winded motivating speech; they’ve been anticipating this moment for years, just as you have. “For the kingdom!” you shout which is followed by a loud cheer from your soldiers, then your army begins its march to war. When you get within a mile of Bucklesburg, a scout reports that the town isn’t completely undefended. In fact there is a larger than normal group of soldiers there along with Eternals. There may even be a mage there. “Hmm, it might appear that Edgar might’ve been amassing troops to prepare for an invasion after all, either that or he’s just distrustful. Doesn’t matter, we’re killing everything there anyway.” The battle of Bucklesburg is a massacre. The ED puts up as good a fight as they could have, but ultimately they’re overrun and outnumbered. The town is completely burned to the ground and the only survivors are the few villagers that had sense to run when you were seen coming in the distance. This is just the first step of the plan. When the rest of your soldiers arrive from the other forts you march again. By day nine, you’ve taken one the Eternal Dominion’s forts. It’s very damaged from the fighting, but you figure it will serve as a temporary base of operations while you plan your next attacks. After this battle you’ve also confirmed from various documents that you’ve found in the commander’s office that Edgar WAS planning to invade the kingdom, meaning you were right to attack. On day sixteen you get a message from Dawn, stating that the entire Gan province has been declared “under hostile control” and that all fort commanders are to relinquish their control to the kingdom immediately. Naturally this hasn’t happened, but the rest of the kingdom’s soldiers are supposedly being prepared to take back the province by force, however there is a lot of civil unrest going on as well due to some of the public opinion openly agreeing with conquest. She says that it’s part of the anti-gnome movement that claims they’ve been keeping the kingdom weak on purpose. She also says she is doing everything in her power to keep control of the Gan province and sends her love. On day twenty-two you get a visitor to Fort Ruin (as you’ve renamed it). “Hello Klemto, I hope your journey here wasn’t too dangerous, we’ve been trying to keep the road to the kingdom somewhat safe.” You say. “Eternal, we’ve got a lot to talk about.” “Yes, I suspect we do. So here, this’ll save time.” You say and throw a journal at Klemto who catches it. “What’s this?” “It’s the ex-captain of this fort journal. Makes mention of all the plans for the invasion on the kingdom, as well as a few amusing sexual desires. Second generation eternals certainly are a twisted bunch even when brought under control.” “At least they can be brought under control, which is more than can be said for you.” “I don’t understand, I’m did this for the kingdom and the proof is right there that I’m right! Don’t believe me? I’ve got more official documents I can give you.” “It doesn’t matter if you’re right! It never fucking mattered! What you were supposed to do is obey orders! You pushed a boundary that’s too far this time I can’t fix this! Not now!” “I question if you ever could in the first place. I’m sure you only kept me around as long as it served your purpose. Build up the pitiful defenses along the Felkan borders and then just get shuffled off to defend your fat merchants because they’re getting death threats from bigots that actually have a point whether they even know it or not. Face it, YOU fuckers helped create the Felkan government and you share part of the problems with it. Me? I’m just serving it. I told you before, I pledged myself to the kingdom, but my only stipulation was that I do things my way and that I not be held back in doing it. You got in my way and I had no choice, but to defy you. You can’t give a sword to me, and tell me not to kill the enemy with it. That’s what a fucking sword is for.” Klemto, rubs a hand over his face and sits down in silence. His face has a slightly gaunt appearance than you last remember it. Every time you’ve seen him he’s always been dressed very nice, but even his expensive clothing is a bit disheveled, even a small tear in his jacket. He takes a deep breath and speaks. “Major, you really don’t know what’s going on back home do you?” “Dawn sent me a letter recently about a week ago about some of what’s going on. I hear the Gan province has been declared hostile and the rest of the kingdom army is planning to retake it.” “Yes, and even that is being put on hold, you know why? Because somebody blew up the merchant’s guild two days ago! The day before? A duke was executed for conspiracy to kill the fucking king! At this point the Eternal Dominion doesn’t need to invade us, the Felkan Kingdom will be in ruins by the time their armies even arrive! You haven’t saved the kingdom, you’ve destroyed it!” he shouts with his eyes beginning to water and nearly hyperventilating the whole time. You have to say, you’ve never seen him ever this upset. You quickly get some water from a nearby pitcher and pour him a glass. “I don’t know what we’re going to do…I don’t know what we’re going to do…” he says in between drinks. “Look calm down Klemto, maybe it isn’t as bad as you think.” You tell him. “Bad? It’s fucking tragic! With the destruction of the merchant’s guild, the economy is going to go down the fucking privy hole, the king is an ineffectual idiot that’ll probably be successfully assassinated in a couple months, we’re suffering from civil revolts, we got a rogue province and on top of everything we’re at war with the Eternal Dominion!” Sounds pretty familiar. “Well, maybe it is as bad as you say. The question is what are YOU going to do about it?” you ask. “Do? What can I do? I’m just one gnome! I’m hated in general by most non-gnomes and even most of my own people since they personally blame me, for having a hand in allowing you to be in charge of all the military in Gan. Even most of my friends that agreed with me were all killed in the bombing! I have nobody to help me fix this!” “You’re wrong there, you’ve got me. Look, take all these documents concerning the invasion plans, and do your best in convincing everyone and anyone important that this first strike was very necessary. If you’re telling me that the king already is in danger of being assassinated…well maybe it’ll be best to let that happen and place someone who is more likely to support the cause. I have to imagine that there’s some power hungry royal ready to step up to the task.” “Assassinate the king, this is what it’s come to? I don’t know maybe you’re even right, it’s just I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. We gnomes have been puppet masters, but we’ve never engaged in assassination tactics before.” “Well, I think you’re going to have to forget your previous tactics if you want the kingdom to survive regardless of who is actually on the throne. It’s either that or cut your losses and leave like I did with the Empire. I caution you though, if you truly believe in the kingdom and love it like I think you do, you might later regret that decision.” Klemto calms down a bit and looks at you to see that you speak from experience with that last remark. And it is true; there is a part of you that misses the Empire for all its faults. You’re making the best of things and you even manage to be content most of the time, but there is always something “missing” and you can’t get it back. “Okay, Eternal. Okay. Hand me all the documents that you mentioned, and I’ll get started on a plan. (Sigh) I just hope you can hold back the full wrath of the Eternal Dominion all by yourself.” “Don’t you worry about that, I brought this problem on, so I’ll be the one to take care of it. Just try to keep the rest of the Felkan army off of my back, even if they aren’t going to help.” Klemto leaves with the documents and you return to your duties. You can’t be sure what’s going to become of the kingdom, but one thing is certain, you aren’t going to abandon your duty like last time. > Year 58 Your soldiers stand ready at camp as a single enemy approaches you. He shows no fear and has a look of determination and blazing fury in his eyes. He might even be able to cut down everyone in his path just to get to you, but that won’t be necessary, as you have ordered everyone to stand down. This is between you and him. He’s an Eternal, a true one that you once served with, if either of you are to die today, it should at the hands of the other. No others are worthy. He’s stood in opposition to you for a few years now and now that his side has finally lost completely, his side has resorted to acts of desperation to continue a long lost battle. This is just another example of that desperation. The pair of you look at each other and say nothing. It wouldn’t do any good anyway, neither of you is going listen. You both believed in the same thing once, but not anymore. In his eyes you ruined all that. The two of you clash swords. You remember when you saw him after a long stretch of distance from each other; you felt a sense of relief. There you were in a hostile environment not exactly knowing what would come next and you saw a friendly face that was more than willing to help out. You land a kick to his stomach and smash his face with the pommel of your sword, destroying several of his teeth. He staggers back mouth filled with blood, but manages to block your next attack. After that last time you saw him you were soon separated again. Oh sure, you heard about him, and he probably heard about your deeds as well, but you haven’t actually seen each other until this moment. No matter who wins, it’s going to be the last time. You feel the deep cut of the sword sinking into your shoulder. Fighting through the pain, you manage to keep a firm grip of your sword and swing it into his side. You both hear a crack signaling that not only have you opened up a severe wound, but also broken a rib or two. He reels back from you as his side now drips red with gore. He’s unsteady and breathing hard, but he’s not going to stop. He’s got nothing left to lose. If you were in his shoes, you wouldn’t stop either. The funny thing about this is you always thought you’d be having this battle with Edgar, not Warrick. A slash at your leg brings you down to one knee, but Warrick isn’t able to capitalize on bringing his sword down on your head, since you slash upward into his groin. He screams out, dropping his weapon and you painfully lift yourself up on your one good leg and land your own strike across his head. The sickening sound of skull meeting metal is heard and he falls to the ground with blood and brains leaking out the side. He gurgles a few unintelligible things, but some of it starts to form complete thoughts. “You…? Wha…what are you doing here? I thought…you were still stationed in …Rask… I…don’t rem…gnomes…” After all this time, his memory is starting to come back. Your hit to his head, must’ve done something. You kneel down beside his bloody body and provide him a better last memory. “I was sent here to help you Warrick. It was a very important mission for the Empire. You got blown up by a trap, but we succeeded Warrick. We won. Remember this.” “We…won…yeah…we…” Warrick mumbles and then finally expires. You tell your soldiers to burn his body and not to disturb you for the rest of day, despite the medic insisting that you really should have your wounds seen to. You sit in your tent in silence trying to rationalize killing yet another one of your former comrade in arms. He was trying to kill you. Warrick was on the wrong side of the civil war. A new king had to be installed and new policies had to be implemented. It had to be done, to protect the kingdom. Just like you had to kill Kane to protect the Empire… It was a shitty end to an honorable man, but death by your hand is probably the best thing you could’ve done for him and at least in his final moments he believed he was elsewhere. You sometime wish you were. The next day, you get your wounds properly patched up and get back to the business of holding off the Eternal Dominion, which hasn’t been the same since Edgar was assassinated last year. Apparently the new eternals didn’t agree with his leadership since it wasn’t producing the results they wanted. They might not have agreed with it, but he was doing better than whoever the idiot that’s in charge now is. You wonder what happened to Brenda, you knew she was up there with Edgar in ranking, but since she’s not in charge of the ED you can only assume that she was killed along with Edgar. You’re the last one left and you think back to Gruz’s last words to you. “You’ll outlive everyone…” It’s finally come true. Year 65 More aches and pains as you slowly get out of bed. With every passing year you feel more of them and it’s getting to a point where you can’t reasonably get into the thick of battle anymore with sword in hand. Sure you’re still a good fighter, but you’re slowing down and don’t have the strength that you once did. Of course some would say you weren’t supposed to be doing that anyway as a leader should stay in the back and give orders from behind the safety of his soldiers. But then you always did cling to your old ways. Still, it’s not like you need to anymore, as the Eternal Dominion hasn’t been a threat in years. You knew they’d fall apart soon after Edgar died. Their territory or what’s left of it basically consists of petty warlords fighting each other more than fighting anyone else, let along the kingdom. Nowadays your job as a general mostly consists of pushing a few bits around on a map. Sometimes you still try to remain active by visiting areas that are experiencing heavy combat. With no real opposition anymore and a stronger king in charge, the Felkan Kingdom is entering a period of aggressive expansion. With the newly acquired Arat province under control right now the king is looking towards Rask due to its resources. Diplomatic feelers were sent to see if the towns up there would join willingly, but no luck. You know from experience how difficult it is to hold, as the land is wild and its people are fiercely independent minded especially since they threw off the shackles of Empire rule and aren’t willing to have another large government tell them what to do. While you’re certainly the most qualified to carry out an invasion on Rask, you aren’t sure if you still have the energy anymore. Granted you wouldn’t be personally, but you still remember the headaches of holding the place. Ever since Dawn retired to become an instructor, she’s been dropping hints about you retiring as well. Perhaps it’s time to follow in your wife’s footsteps and join her. > You continue as general You can’t retire, at least not yet. Despite your aches, pains, and old age, you still feel the call of war within and the fire of it still hasn’t disappeared from you. You wonder if it ever will, but until that time, your place is on the battlefield despite your diminished capacity. Within a few months the decree in passed. Rask is to be invaded, as you knew it would. You know how the powers in charge work. They want results and they want them fast so you’re going to try your best to provide just that, you amass a large army and send it forth to conquer. Since you’ve got access to more powerful weapons this time, perhaps this invasion won’t be as difficult as you think if you show an overwhelming display of force. The first strike is against Kenneth’s Rest which you once knew as Fort Destiny. The place apparently had been converted into a hang out for mercenaries and a trading spot. Your army faces a lot of dark elven mercenaries that were enjoying their pay at the time, but most of them flee seeing as there isn’t any profit in defending a place they don’t actually have any loyalty to. When Kenneth’s Rest is taken, you ride out to it so you can carry out your orders closer to the action. “So you’ll be leaving soon again?” Dawn asks. “You know how it is, if I don’t make a personal appearance they’re likely to fuck up my orders.” “They can’t handle it themselves?” “While I’m sure they could, I’m still the most familiar with the area. I think it would be best if I went there myself. Dawn, you shouldn’t really worry. I mean I’m not even going to be on the frontlines and there were more times in the past of when I could’ve been killed.” “It’s not that, it’s just I dunno, when we got married and as we both get older I suppose I just figured we’d settle down a bit more so we could enjoy our remaining time together.” “Like a normal married couple?” “Well, yes.” “Dawn, I think you know you didn’t exactly marry a normal person.” “Yes, I know that too. Still, I do wonder when you’ll eventually realize that you don’t need to prove yourself anymore. I think everyone knows you aren’t an armchair general. Ever since the new king took the throne, you’ve actually had nothing but support. I’m pretty sure your name will go down in history.” “It’s not about that, I pledged myself to this kingdom and its survival. Part of that is me making sure this invasion of Rask doesn’t go badly, because while we’re on top now, I’d rather make sure we stay that way and it doesn’t become a drain on our kingdom which then has a chain reaction of making things worse.” “You didn’t abandon your duty.” Dawn says to you. “What?” you ask, turning to face her. “You didn’t abandon your duty to the Empire. I know that’s why you try so hard here and still do. I’ve always known that the first time you told me of your past. You always speak in such a way about it with a mix of regret and frustration yet always with a sense of pride. You still struggle with that one thing that you consider a failure on your part, when if you think about it…it was the best thing you ever did.” You hold Dawn’s hand and the pair of you look at each other’s wedding rings. She has an argument that can’t be debated as far as that is concerned. If you hadn’t left the Empire when you did, you doubt if you would’ve been married. Most likely you probably would’ve gotten a knife in the back by one of those treacherous new eternals by this point. You hold Dawn tightly and kiss her, before explaining. “You’re absolutely right of course. It was the best thing I could’ve done, but that’s not the whole picture. I was raised different than anyone in the Felkan Kingdom, hell I was raised different than most in the Empire. I was brought up not just for war, battle and combat, but also to this ideal. An ideal that wasn’t reality unfortunately, but there it was still implanted in my mind regardless. The thing is while that ideal barely existed in the Empire as I knew it, I see the spark of it coming to pass here in the Felkan Kingdom, and it’s like I finally belong here and I want to be apart of it’s glory as much as I can before I’m too old to be of any more use. Maybe I’m trying to live out the rest of my life as IF the Empire had never fallen. Perhaps that’s what I’ve been doing all along for the past few decades.” Dawn nods and understands, but you know she would still prefer you to stay closer to home. “Someday Dawn, someday.” You tell her before you leave for Rask. You almost feel like history repeating itself when you enter Kenneth’s Rest, though it’s a comforting feeling. Using Kenneth’s Rest as your base of operations in the Rask province, you decide the next attack should be the largest town in the region, which is Keplavisk. While Rask doesn’t strictly have a proper central government, Keplavisk is the closest thing to a capital. Take that out and everything else should be a lot easier. You tell your captain that when he enters the smoldering ruins of the town to relay a message to the survivors. “Tell them that the Bane of Rask has returned.” Year 75 You have to admit, that while retirement has it’s good and bad points, you think you’ve finally gotten your “struggle” out of your system now. You initially thought after you retired you would still have that “pull” but you don’t. Your successful campaign in Rask was truly a bookend of sorts. Maybe it was a kind of closure for you. Your retirement basically consists of you spending a lot of time with Dawn which is time well spent as you grow old together. You sometimes wonder if Dawn wanted children, though she never specifically addressed it. Nature never took its course in that area. Dawn is about twenty years younger than you, and she was still in her childbearing years when you first got together. You don’t think it was a problem with her though, you hold the belief that it probably was with you. Perhaps Eternals weren’t meant to reproduce, or maybe you weren’t. Still, you know that Roldan and Brenda never had any children that you know of, so you maintain the belief that it’s one of the limitations of an Eternal. After all if an Eternal could breed offspring his attention might not be solely on war. Besides your time with Dawn, you sometimes fill your time giving instruction at one of the military academies. You attend the occasional special royal event and recently you just accepted an award for everything you’ve done for the kingdom. There are also plans on having a statue made of you, but that isn’t set in stone (literally) yet. You sometimes walk down the streets of the capital and see how much it’s changed in such a short time and continuing to thrive. Soldiers marching down the street keeping order. Citizens going about their business, proud of their nation and not trying to overthrow anything. This is what the Empire should’ve been like. This is what you were taught to believe in. And it fills you with happiness that it was you that was part of making this come true.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 58 Your soldiers stand ready at camp as a single enemy approaches you. He shows no fear and has a look of determination and blazing fury in his eyes. He might even be able to cut down everyone in his path just to get to you, but that won’t be necessary, as you have ordered everyone to stand down. This is between you and him. He’s an Eternal, a true one that you once served with, if either of you are to die today, it should at the hands of the other. No others are worthy. He’s stood in opposition to you for a few years now and now that his side has finally lost completely, his side has resorted to acts of desperation to continue a long lost battle. This is just another example of that desperation. The pair of you look at each other and say nothing. It wouldn’t do any good anyway, neither of you is going listen. You both believed in the same thing once, but not anymore. In his eyes you ruined all that. The two of you clash swords. You remember when you saw him after a long stretch of distance from each other; you felt a sense of relief. There you were in a hostile environment not exactly knowing what would come next and you saw a friendly face that was more than willing to help out. You land a kick to his stomach and smash his face with the pommel of your sword, destroying several of his teeth. He staggers back mouth filled with blood, but manages to block your next attack. After that last time you saw him you were soon separated again. Oh sure, you heard about him, and he probably heard about your deeds as well, but you haven’t actually seen each other until this moment. No matter who wins, it’s going to be the last time. You feel the deep cut of the sword sinking into your shoulder. Fighting through the pain, you manage to keep a firm grip of your sword and swing it into his side. You both hear a crack signaling that not only have you opened up a severe wound, but also broken a rib or two. He reels back from you as his side now drips red with gore. He’s unsteady and breathing hard, but he’s not going to stop. He’s got nothing left to lose. If you were in his shoes, you wouldn’t stop either. The funny thing about this is you always thought you’d be having this battle with Edgar, not Warrick. A slash at your leg brings you down to one knee, but Warrick isn’t able to capitalize on bringing his sword down on your head, since you slash upward into his groin. He screams out, dropping his weapon and you painfully lift yourself up on your one good leg and land your own strike across his head. The sickening sound of skull meeting metal is heard and he falls to the ground with blood and brains leaking out the side. He gurgles a few unintelligible things, but some of it starts to form complete thoughts. “You…? Wha…what are you doing here? I thought…you were still stationed in …Rask… I…don’t rem…gnomes…” After all this time, his memory is starting to come back. Your hit to his head, must’ve done something. You kneel down beside his bloody body and provide him a better last memory. “I was sent here to help you Warrick. It was a very important mission for the Empire. You got blown up by a trap, but we succeeded Warrick. We won. Remember this.” “We…won…yeah…we…” Warrick mumbles and then finally expires. You tell your soldiers to burn his body and not to disturb you for the rest of day, despite the medic insisting that you really should have your wounds seen to. You sit in your tent in silence trying to rationalize killing yet another one of your former comrade in arms. He was trying to kill you. Warrick was on the wrong side of the civil war. A new king had to be installed and new policies had to be implemented. It had to be done, to protect the kingdom. Just like you had to kill Kane to protect the Empire… It was a shitty end to an honorable man, but death by your hand is probably the best thing you could’ve done for him and at least in his final moments he believed he was elsewhere. You sometime wish you were. The next day, you get your wounds properly patched up and get back to the business of holding off the Eternal Dominion, which hasn’t been the same since Edgar was assassinated last year. Apparently the new eternals didn’t agree with his leadership since it wasn’t producing the results they wanted. They might not have agreed with it, but he was doing better than whoever the idiot that’s in charge now is. You wonder what happened to Brenda, you knew she was up there with Edgar in ranking, but since she’s not in charge of the ED you can only assume that she was killed along with Edgar. You’re the last one left and you think back to Gruz’s last words to you. “You’ll outlive everyone…” It’s finally come true. Year 65 More aches and pains as you slowly get out of bed. With every passing year you feel more of them and it’s getting to a point where you can’t reasonably get into the thick of battle anymore with sword in hand. Sure you’re still a good fighter, but you’re slowing down and don’t have the strength that you once did. Of course some would say you weren’t supposed to be doing that anyway as a leader should stay in the back and give orders from behind the safety of his soldiers. But then you always did cling to your old ways. Still, it’s not like you need to anymore, as the Eternal Dominion hasn’t been a threat in years. You knew they’d fall apart soon after Edgar died. Their territory or what’s left of it basically consists of petty warlords fighting each other more than fighting anyone else, let along the kingdom. Nowadays your job as a general mostly consists of pushing a few bits around on a map. Sometimes you still try to remain active by visiting areas that are experiencing heavy combat. With no real opposition anymore and a stronger king in charge, the Felkan Kingdom is entering a period of aggressive expansion. With the newly acquired Arat province under control right now the king is looking towards Rask due to its resources. Diplomatic feelers were sent to see if the towns up there would join willingly, but no luck. You know from experience how difficult it is to hold, as the land is wild and its people are fiercely independent minded especially since they threw off the shackles of Empire rule and aren’t willing to have another large government tell them what to do. While you’re certainly the most qualified to carry out an invasion on Rask, you aren’t sure if you still have the energy anymore. Granted you wouldn’t be personally, but you still remember the headaches of holding the place. Ever since Dawn retired to become an instructor, she’s been dropping hints about you retiring as well. Perhaps it’s time to follow in your wife’s footsteps and join her. > You retire As much as you might like to go on, you decide that perhaps it is finally time to pass the torch to younger and more energetic men and women than yourself. You also know it would probably make Dawn happier. You’ve done quite a bit for the Felkan Kingdom and served as well as you could have under the circumstances. You just wish you had time to do more, or at least the youth, if not the time. When you step down, its sort of a surprise to the entire Felkan military, they always figured you’d never willingly step down and probably die in office. Even the new ruling class is a little disappointed to see you leave, you were after all instrumental in their rise to power. A small service celebrating your years of dedication to the Felkan Kingdom is held which you naturally attend and you even give a small speech. It’s all very patriotic and keeps the up the morale and optimistic outlook of the kingdom for everyone. Shortly after your retirement, you do indulge in the frivolities of said retirement; this pretty much consists of not doing much of anything or spending time with Dawn. It’s fun for a while. When you start to keep up on the news on the Rask invasion, you become increasingly dismayed by what your successor is doing. There are victories at first, but they eventually become costly ones. The Raskians begin organizing enough to make further conquest difficult. Eventually several lower ranking officers begin calling for you to return if only as a consultant or strategic advisor. You actually would gladly volunteer as you definitely want to help the kingdom and you’re starting to find your retired life a little boring. Unfortunately the current general doesn’t want that, as he wants to take all the credit for the conquest of Rask and if he’s able, to surpass your victories. The fool manages to sway the king in his favor by pointing out that they hold most of the territory and are plundering its resources. The king of course is just concerned with the bottom line, so he keeps him on. Of course the biggest problem with this, is it’s incredibly short sighted. The Raskians sabotage their mines and fight a guerilla war that makes things even worse. Felkan soldiers die by the thousands over the course of several years and this begins to have a downward spiral. Not a grand one, but it’s noticeable that the cracks are starting to show and people are beginning to protest again. You don’t agree with how the government is handling things, but you’re a patriot to the end and one day you get into an argument with a group of them on the street. Dawn tells you to let it go, but the more they get in your face, the more you won’t let it go and eventually you feel that call to violence again… You punch out one of the protestors, which causes more shouting from the rest of the crowd as well as the soldiers attempting to keep order. One the soldiers respectfully attempts to hold you back, but you continue to try to attack the rest of the protestors and screaming at them of how ungrateful they all are. With tensions heating up on all sides, it’s only a matter of time before things escalate and somebody fires a shot and it isn’t from the soldiers, it’s from one of the protestors carrying a concealed pistol. You feel the impact to your chest and fall to the ground as mass chaos erupts all around you. Dawn screams for a medic and attempts to drag you out of the way, but you’re already coughing up blood and gasping for breath as the chest wound continues to bleed out your vital fluids. “Dawn…(gasp, gurgle)” is all you can utter before your heart stops beating.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 58 Your soldiers stand ready at camp as a single enemy approaches you. He shows no fear and has a look of determination and blazing fury in his eyes. He might even be able to cut down everyone in his path just to get to you, but that won’t be necessary, as you have ordered everyone to stand down. This is between you and him. He’s an Eternal, a true one that you once served with, if either of you are to die today, it should at the hands of the other. No others are worthy. He’s stood in opposition to you for a few years now and now that his side has finally lost completely, his side has resorted to acts of desperation to continue a long lost battle. This is just another example of that desperation. The pair of you look at each other and say nothing. It wouldn’t do any good anyway, neither of you is going listen. You both believed in the same thing once, but not anymore. In his eyes you ruined all that. The two of you clash swords. You remember when you saw him after a long stretch of distance from each other; you felt a sense of relief. There you were in a hostile environment not exactly knowing what would come next and you saw a friendly face that was more than willing to help out. You land a kick to his stomach and smash his face with the pommel of your sword, destroying several of his teeth. He staggers back mouth filled with blood, but manages to block your next attack. After that last time you saw him you were soon separated again. Oh sure, you heard about him, and he probably heard about your deeds as well, but you haven’t actually seen each other until this moment. No matter who wins, it’s going to be the last time. You feel the deep cut of the sword sinking into your shoulder. Fighting through the pain, you manage to keep a firm grip of your sword and swing it into his side. You both hear a crack signaling that not only have you opened up a severe wound, but also broken a rib or two. He reels back from you as his side now drips red with gore. He’s unsteady and breathing hard, but he’s not going to stop. He’s got nothing left to lose. If you were in his shoes, you wouldn’t stop either. The funny thing about this is you always thought you’d be having this battle with Edgar, not Warrick. A slash at your leg brings you down to one knee, but Warrick isn’t able to capitalize on bringing his sword down on your head, since you slash upward into his groin. He screams out, dropping his weapon and you painfully lift yourself up on your one good leg and land your own strike across his head. The sickening sound of skull meeting metal is heard and he falls to the ground with blood and brains leaking out the side. He gurgles a few unintelligible things, but some of it starts to form complete thoughts. “You…? Wha…what are you doing here? I thought…you were still stationed in …Rask… I…don’t rem…gnomes…” After all this time, his memory is starting to come back. Your hit to his head, must’ve done something. You kneel down beside his bloody body and provide him a better last memory. “I was sent here to help you Warrick. It was a very important mission for the Empire. You got blown up by a trap, but we succeeded Warrick. We won. Remember this.” “We…won…yeah…we…” Warrick mumbles and then finally expires. You tell your soldiers to burn his body and not to disturb you for the rest of day, despite the medic insisting that you really should have your wounds seen to. You sit in your tent in silence trying to rationalize killing yet another one of your former comrade in arms. He was trying to kill you. Warrick was on the wrong side of the civil war. A new king had to be installed and new policies had to be implemented. It had to be done, to protect the kingdom. Just like you had to kill Kane to protect the Empire… It was a shitty end to an honorable man, but death by your hand is probably the best thing you could’ve done for him and at least in his final moments he believed he was elsewhere. You sometime wish you were. The next day, you get your wounds properly patched up and get back to the business of holding off the Eternal Dominion, which hasn’t been the same since Edgar was assassinated last year. Apparently the new eternals didn’t agree with his leadership since it wasn’t producing the results they wanted. They might not have agreed with it, but he was doing better than whoever the idiot that’s in charge now is. You wonder what happened to Brenda, you knew she was up there with Edgar in ranking, but since she’s not in charge of the ED you can only assume that she was killed along with Edgar. You’re the last one left and you think back to Gruz’s last words to you. “You’ll outlive everyone…” It’s finally come true. Year 65 More aches and pains as you slowly get out of bed. With every passing year you feel more of them and it’s getting to a point where you can’t reasonably get into the thick of battle anymore with sword in hand. Sure you’re still a good fighter, but you’re slowing down and don’t have the strength that you once did. Of course some would say you weren’t supposed to be doing that anyway as a leader should stay in the back and give orders from behind the safety of his soldiers. But then you always did cling to your old ways. Still, it’s not like you need to anymore, as the Eternal Dominion hasn’t been a threat in years. You knew they’d fall apart soon after Edgar died. Their territory or what’s left of it basically consists of petty warlords fighting each other more than fighting anyone else, let along the kingdom. Nowadays your job as a general mostly consists of pushing a few bits around on a map. Sometimes you still try to remain active by visiting areas that are experiencing heavy combat. With no real opposition anymore and a stronger king in charge, the Felkan Kingdom is entering a period of aggressive expansion. With the newly acquired Arat province under control right now the king is looking towards Rask due to its resources. Diplomatic feelers were sent to see if the towns up there would join willingly, but no luck. You know from experience how difficult it is to hold, as the land is wild and its people are fiercely independent minded especially since they threw off the shackles of Empire rule and aren’t willing to have another large government tell them what to do. While you’re certainly the most qualified to carry out an invasion on Rask, you aren’t sure if you still have the energy anymore. Granted you wouldn’t be personally, but you still remember the headaches of holding the place. Ever since Dawn retired to become an instructor, she’s been dropping hints about you retiring as well. Perhaps it’s time to follow in your wife’s footsteps and join her. > You year 61 (Klemto's Lamentation) As you think about your own possible future and if your “time” has come to settle into old age and compromise, you also think back to another who was struggling with his own future… “Eternal, come drink with me one last time!” Klemto says sitting in a very basic chair near an equally unimpressive table. He’s not drunk yet, but he will be soon, if he keeps drinking. You take a quick glance at his home and most of it is very simplistic and lacks the luxury that he once had. It’s obvious he’s fallen on hard times now that the civil war has wrapped up. He no longer wears a suit; instead he has on a drab torn shirt and a pair of plain pants. Even one of his shoes has a hole in it. “No that’s okay, Klem…it is my understanding that all of the remaining gnomes in the kingdom are leaving on their own accord. I thought that you would be busy making preparations to join them.” “Of their own accord? Hah! That’s rich! Richer than me anyway! No, my dear Eternal, I think the change in the regime has made it quite clear that our kind are not wanted in any capacity. In fact I got a personal warning from that bastard calling himself king right now. After all the shit we did for him too…oh well. At least they’re letting us leave peacefully this time. Lot more than I can say for the Empire.” You aren’t exactly sure how to respond, but it doesn’t matter because Klemto is in a talkative mood. “Y’know though, I don’t blame him.” “You don’t?” “Pfftt no. He’s a fucking human. And all humans are alike, power hungry and ready to backstab someone as soon as they get it and crush all those when they get on top. I get it. They got short life spans. Gotta get shit done a lot quicker. All of them do and if persecuting, enslaving or killing an entire race stands in their way, so be it.” “You seem to be taking all this well.” “Well? Well how else can I take it? I certainly can’t do shit about it can I? Hell, I’m just lucky I backed the right side of the civil war, otherwise we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation and I’d be in a mass grave right now.” “That’s a good way to look at things. By surviving you can still make a life for yourself and rebuild.” Klemto bursts out laughing, spitting out most of his drink. “Ohhhh, that’s a good one Eternal. I guess that’s why I don’t blame you either. You don’t know any better.” “Blame me? I didn’t put you in your current position.” “Oh and you mean to say you had NOTHING at all to do with the current change in regime? The expansion of the Felkan Kingdom? Hell, even the rise in nationalistic fervor? You can stand here and look me in the fucking eye and say you had absolutely NOTHING to do with that?” “…very well. Perhaps my actions did set certain events in motion, but I did it for the kingdom!” “Right! You’re right. You DID do it for the kingdom and that’s why you don’t know any better. You aren’t even human. You look like one. You sound like one. Hell, you must even have some feelings like one given your marriage. Still a little surprised about that one…but like you once said to me, you aren’t human. You’re a fucking abomination that managed to finish a job that a corrupt dead society set in motion long ago.” “And what is that exactly, Klemto?” “Conquest and genocide. My people…my people escaped the slavery of the Empire centuries ago, and for what? For us to be practically destroyed by YOU. Whether you did it knowingly or not, you managed to complete the job. The Felkan Kingdom? It’s not the Felkan Kingdom anymore. It’s the fucking Empire. My people? My people are scattered and more divided in away that we’ve ever known! We…turned on each other…(sob)…we KILLED one another (choke)…you…you did so…(sob) much damage…” Klemto breaks down completely at this point and cries softly to himself. You really don’t know how to respond at all. Part of you actually feel sorry for him, as odd as it may seem. You and he didn’t always get along; you never really trusted him and you certainly never forgave his kind for what they did to Warrick... And yet, besides Dawn, he’s the closest you’ve had to a “friend” since you’ve been in the Felkan Kingdom. Despite all of what he is saying to you, the fact remains he did help you several times. And that’s where the problem lies… “(Sniff) And despite all of the damage you did, you are not to blame. We are, or rather I am. I was the fool who believed that you could bring about change for the better. I was the fool who helped you the entire time. There is no way you could’ve gotten away with most of what you got away with had I not intervened with my connections and even convinced some of my fellows to go down the path to hell. If I had any of the great intelligence that we gnomes are supposed to be known for, you should’ve been executed the first time we met, but I had to be an optimist. Idealism…the disease of idiots.” Klemto takes a long swig of his bottle draining it completely before throwing it to the floor. “Klemto…I did appreciate your help when you gave it. I mean that.” “I know you did, just wish I could help myself.” “You can. Like I said, you’re a survivor and intelligent. You can rebuild somewhere else maybe even better than ever.” “Heh, while I appreciate your words of encouragement Eternal, I don’t think so. You see, I’m not just an exile from the Felkan Kingdom, I’m also an exile from my own people now, or what remains of them. Seems they blame me for what’s happened as well…I guess I can at least take solace in the fact that their hatred of me has kept them united them on some level.” “But, surely you could make it on your own, somewhere!” “I don’t think so. We gnomes have always been communal in nature. Perhaps in some ways we DO rely on integrating into other societies to protect us. Hopefully one day we won’t and we’ll carve out a land of our own. But in any case I won’t be there to see it, and I’m too old to try to make it on my own even if I was going to attempt such a mad plan. No Eternal, there comes a time in your life when you realize it’s time to retire. I think I probably should’ve done so a LONG time ago, but I stayed in the game because I thought I could do some more good. Instead I just made things worse, A LOT worse. Sometimes you have to look back at your past, smile at the good times, forget about the bad and enjoy old age. Unfortunately for me there are too many bad times to forget and no place for me to enjoy the good times…” You begin to get a little apprehensive by Klemto’s tone and words. “Klem…” Klemto suddenly pulls out a flintlock pistol and points it to his head. “Goodbye Eternal.” And with those last words you saw Klemto blow his brains out. Naturally you don’t have the same problems as he did, but perhaps he could’ve been right about there coming a time to retire. Quitting while you’re ahead so to speak, and not screwing up your past accomplishments by being too stubborn. You certainly wouldn’t want to end up in a hopeless position like poor Klemto.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wouldn’t have gotten promoted if you hadn’t reported Captain Eckers, and you wouldn’t have gotten this command if you hadn’t took it upon yourself to launch an attack on the gnolls. The fact is, throughout most of your life, you’ve followed orders, but it’s only when you’ve taken matters into your own hands on important decisions that you’ve gotten anywhere. Why should this time be any different? For one thing, just because there are reports that the ED aren’t planning an invasion any time soon, doesn’t mean that’s true. Not that you doubt Warrick’s skills as a spy, but there’s always a possibility that false information is being leaked intentionally and that someone is on to him. Hell, maybe its even Brenda pretending to be on his side, you don’t know. The other thing is even if the info is true it’s not like they couldn’t still invade during or after their invasion of Rask. And it would be better to catch THEM off guard instead of the other way around, because you’re pretty sure they aren’t expecting the Felkan Kingdom to attack first. You’re most likely going to get into a shitload of trouble for all this, but when you get this war started, the ED isn’t going to listen to diplomacy, when they get attacked; they’re not going to stop. When that happens the kingdom isn’t going to have any choice but to help you. Or it could just backfire horribly. It’s all a gamble, but one you’re willing to risk, because you’re damned if you’re going to grow old and just become a guard for fat gnome merchants after all you’ve done and sacrificed. And if you die in battle, then it’ll be a death you’ve been destined for since birth. You find Dawn and tell her that you want orders put out to all the forts in the province. A full offensive across the Arat border and into ED territory is to be launched. “So the ED is invading soon?” Dawn asks. “No, but after we destroy a couple of their forts and towns they will be. Have the message sent out that all forces are to converge on that ED town about twenty miles past the border, Bucklesberg. I’ll meet the rest of the battalion commanders there and plan the next attack after the place has been razed to the ground.” “Wait, you’re going?” “Yes, I’m leading this attack personally. I’m not some helpless old man you know!” “I didn’t say…wait, this plan isn’t official is it? What did that gnome tell you?” “A bunch of shit as usual. Now I’m going to need you here to keep things orderly on this side of the border. It might get ugly, but I know you can handle it. Just remember, we’re doing this for the good of the kingdom, even if its leaders are too stupid to see it.” Dawn looks a little concerned and it reminds you of when you first asked her to completely wipe out a gnoll village, but then she proves herself, as you knew she would. “It will be done, my love.” She says and leaves to send out the messengers. You order all troops in the fort to ready themselves for battle save for a skeleton crew to protect the fort. When they’re completely ready, you ride your horse up and down the line of them and are glad to see the dedication they are displaying. You can see that they have no need for any sort of long-winded motivating speech; they’ve been anticipating this moment for years, just as you have. “For the kingdom!” you shout which is followed by a loud cheer from your soldiers, then your army begins its march to war. When you get within a mile of Bucklesburg, a scout reports that the town isn’t completely undefended. In fact there is a larger than normal group of soldiers there along with Eternals. There may even be a mage there. “Hmm, it might appear that Edgar might’ve been amassing troops to prepare for an invasion after all, either that or he’s just distrustful. Doesn’t matter, we’re killing everything there anyway.” The battle of Bucklesburg is a massacre. The ED puts up as good a fight as they could have, but ultimately they’re overrun and outnumbered. The town is completely burned to the ground and the only survivors are the few villagers that had sense to run when you were seen coming in the distance. This is just the first step of the plan. When the rest of your soldiers arrive from the other forts you march again. By day nine, you’ve taken one the Eternal Dominion’s forts. It’s very damaged from the fighting, but you figure it will serve as a temporary base of operations while you plan your next attacks. After this battle you’ve also confirmed from various documents that you’ve found in the commander’s office that Edgar WAS planning to invade the kingdom, meaning you were right to attack. On day sixteen you get a message from Dawn, stating that the entire Gan province has been declared “under hostile control” and that all fort commanders are to relinquish their control to the kingdom immediately. Naturally this hasn’t happened, but the rest of the kingdom’s soldiers are supposedly being prepared to take back the province by force, however there is a lot of civil unrest going on as well due to some of the public opinion openly agreeing with conquest. She says that it’s part of the anti-gnome movement that claims they’ve been keeping the kingdom weak on purpose. She also says she is doing everything in her power to keep control of the Gan province and sends her love. On day twenty-two you get a visitor to Fort Ruin (as you’ve renamed it). “Hello Klemto, I hope your journey here wasn’t too dangerous, we’ve been trying to keep the road to the kingdom somewhat safe.” You say. “Eternal, we’ve got a lot to talk about.” “Yes, I suspect we do. So here, this’ll save time.” You say and throw a journal at Klemto who catches it. “What’s this?” “It’s the ex-captain of this fort journal. Makes mention of all the plans for the invasion on the kingdom, as well as a few amusing sexual desires. Second generation eternals certainly are a twisted bunch even when brought under control.” “At least they can be brought under control, which is more than can be said for you.” “I don’t understand, I’m did this for the kingdom and the proof is right there that I’m right! Don’t believe me? I’ve got more official documents I can give you.” “It doesn’t matter if you’re right! It never fucking mattered! What you were supposed to do is obey orders! You pushed a boundary that’s too far this time I can’t fix this! Not now!” “I question if you ever could in the first place. I’m sure you only kept me around as long as it served your purpose. Build up the pitiful defenses along the Felkan borders and then just get shuffled off to defend your fat merchants because they’re getting death threats from bigots that actually have a point whether they even know it or not. Face it, YOU fuckers helped create the Felkan government and you share part of the problems with it. Me? I’m just serving it. I told you before, I pledged myself to the kingdom, but my only stipulation was that I do things my way and that I not be held back in doing it. You got in my way and I had no choice, but to defy you. You can’t give a sword to me, and tell me not to kill the enemy with it. That’s what a fucking sword is for.” Klemto, rubs a hand over his face and sits down in silence. His face has a slightly gaunt appearance than you last remember it. Every time you’ve seen him he’s always been dressed very nice, but even his expensive clothing is a bit disheveled, even a small tear in his jacket. He takes a deep breath and speaks. “Major, you really don’t know what’s going on back home do you?” “Dawn sent me a letter recently about a week ago about some of what’s going on. I hear the Gan province has been declared hostile and the rest of the kingdom army is planning to retake it.” “Yes, and even that is being put on hold, you know why? Because somebody blew up the merchant’s guild two days ago! The day before? A duke was executed for conspiracy to kill the fucking king! At this point the Eternal Dominion doesn’t need to invade us, the Felkan Kingdom will be in ruins by the time their armies even arrive! You haven’t saved the kingdom, you’ve destroyed it!” he shouts with his eyes beginning to water and nearly hyperventilating the whole time. You have to say, you’ve never seen him ever this upset. You quickly get some water from a nearby pitcher and pour him a glass. “I don’t know what we’re going to do…I don’t know what we’re going to do…” he says in between drinks. “Look calm down Klemto, maybe it isn’t as bad as you think.” You tell him. “Bad? It’s fucking tragic! With the destruction of the merchant’s guild, the economy is going to go down the fucking privy hole, the king is an ineffectual idiot that’ll probably be successfully assassinated in a couple months, we’re suffering from civil revolts, we got a rogue province and on top of everything we’re at war with the Eternal Dominion!” Sounds pretty familiar. “Well, maybe it is as bad as you say. The question is what are YOU going to do about it?” you ask. “Do? What can I do? I’m just one gnome! I’m hated in general by most non-gnomes and even most of my own people since they personally blame me, for having a hand in allowing you to be in charge of all the military in Gan. Even most of my friends that agreed with me were all killed in the bombing! I have nobody to help me fix this!” “You’re wrong there, you’ve got me. Look, take all these documents concerning the invasion plans, and do your best in convincing everyone and anyone important that this first strike was very necessary. If you’re telling me that the king already is in danger of being assassinated…well maybe it’ll be best to let that happen and place someone who is more likely to support the cause. I have to imagine that there’s some power hungry royal ready to step up to the task.” “Assassinate the king, this is what it’s come to? I don’t know maybe you’re even right, it’s just I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. We gnomes have been puppet masters, but we’ve never engaged in assassination tactics before.” “Well, I think you’re going to have to forget your previous tactics if you want the kingdom to survive regardless of who is actually on the throne. It’s either that or cut your losses and leave like I did with the Empire. I caution you though, if you truly believe in the kingdom and love it like I think you do, you might later regret that decision.” Klemto calms down a bit and looks at you to see that you speak from experience with that last remark. And it is true; there is a part of you that misses the Empire for all its faults. You’re making the best of things and you even manage to be content most of the time, but there is always something “missing” and you can’t get it back. “Okay, Eternal. Okay. Hand me all the documents that you mentioned, and I’ll get started on a plan. (Sigh) I just hope you can hold back the full wrath of the Eternal Dominion all by yourself.” “Don’t you worry about that, I brought this problem on, so I’ll be the one to take care of it. Just try to keep the rest of the Felkan army off of my back, even if they aren’t going to help.” Klemto leaves with the documents and you return to your duties. You can’t be sure what’s going to become of the kingdom, but one thing is certain, you aren’t going to abandon your duty like last time. > You year 56 (Wedding Day) You never thought such a day would come for you, ever. But here you are standing before a woman that you’ve come to feel closer to than anyone else. Not even your fellow Eternals, who at this point are all pretty much hostile to you, even Warrick, now that he’s taken the side of the loyalists in the Felkan civil war. You are hardly surprised though; you knew it was bound to happen given what the gnomes did to him. Even Klemto, who managed to convince most of his brethren to join you, can’t undo the unwavering loyalty they instilled in him. The civil war pales in comparison to the war you’re fighting with the Eternal Dominion, you might’ve gotten an initial advantage over them, but they are certainly trying to make up for it now. Edgar must be enraged. But none of that matters right now. A Felkan civil war and war with the Eternal Dominion, and still you are able to put all those more pressing conflicts aside to focus on Dawn. You look at her youthful face and into blue eyes and it makes you realize just how much younger she is than you. You wonder briefly if her youth is part of what makes her so desirable. Not for the superficial reasons that most would consider, but her youth itself. Looking at how young she is, makes you forget how old you are. You dismiss such thoughts, as you have enough aching joints and pains to always remind you how old you’re getting. Besides, it’s a much deeper connection and the pair of you knows that. She has been with you through all of this and supported you the entire way. You don’t even think you could’ve accomplished all of this without her. It is like the pair of you is in perfect harmony with each other at times. You can’t imagine yourself without her in someway. You think you now understand what Roldan was talking about when he spoke of Brenda. With war looming all around the pair of you, death is always a possibility, but this gesture, this ritual, this bond that you both are going through will signify that even if the unfortunate should occur to either one of you, you know that the love you felt was always there, and will always be there. The pair of you aren’t even paying attention to the local holy man performing the ceremony or the few soldiers in attendance as witnesses, it’s just you and her as the pair of you embrace and kiss.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t know if this is actually going to do any good, but if the captain ever decides to suddenly secede from the Felkan Kingdom, you want someone to know that you weren’t part of it from the beginning. The problem there isn’t a higher-ranking officer at the fort and you don’t really know anybody that you could report this to. You suppose you write a letter to Major Samuels at Fort Smoke. He’s in charge of the whole Ibim province, but then you think what if he feels the same way as the captain? If that’s the case, then you’d probably become hated not just at your fort, but in other circles as well. You’d possibly even be demoted or worse. You’ve managed to make a life here with minimal friction, and you’d hate to just throw that all away, but you have to do something. For good or ill your duty is to the kingdom now and you need to defend against all potential threats, external and internal, and from your experience the internal ones are the worst. That’s when you come up with the idea that you’ll write to Warrick about this. He might not be able to do anything about it considering he’s in another province, but he’s about the only one you can trust and maybe he knows something and can at least give you advice. You write a letter to Warrick that night and hand it to a professional courier in Blossumdale the next day. Not having anything else to do, you return to your duties. Days pass into weeks and weeks pass into months. Just when you’re starting to wonder if your letter got intercepted and someone having sinister plans for you, you get a letter back from Warrick. You’re anxious to see his reply and you find a quiet place to open it up and read it private. You’re expecting a long letter, but instead you get a short one that’s to the point. Things are already in motion to remedy the situation soon and your duty to the kingdom has been noted. Warrick You can only guess that Captain Eckers will soon be gone with wording like that. You didn’t expect anything to be done either, just advice. Warrick must have better connections than you thought. Another week passes since you received Warrick’s reply and Fort Green is visited by a general with his personal assistants, a couple of royals and a well-dressed gnome. The visit is unexpected by everyone, especially Captain Eckers since he’d know first if anyone was scheduled to visit. Captain Eckers and several others are taken into rooms and questioned separately. The rest of you are ordered to go about your business and to not interfere. Later you are called in as well. You find yourself face to face with one of the generals. General Benson. He’s probably about the same age as Eckers, though obviously more successful. “Sergeant, I’m going to make this quick. You are the one who wrote the letter to Captain Warrick are you not?” General Benson asks. “Yes, sir.” “And why did you write to Captain Warrick about your concerns? Why not write to Major Samuels? He is the superior officer in charge of this province.” “Well, I wasn’t sure if I should sir. For all I knew he might’ve had sympathies with Captain Eckers and if that had been the case, my situation would not have been a good one.” “Hold on sergeant, are you telling me Major Samuels is also part of this?” “No, I don’t even know the Major sir, I was just being cautious on my part. I wrote to Warrick because…well he’s the only person I felt I could absolutely trust.” The general is silent for a moment while he looks you up and down. “Tell me, have you had any conflict while being here?” “Conflict with the other soldiers? No sir, can’t say that I have, I tend to just do my job and keep to myself as far as social matters are concerned.” “What about your relationship with Captain Eckers?” “It’s a respectful one sir, I feel no malice towards him nor perceive any towards me.” “Yet you felt the need to report him.” “Well sir, I thought it was something that might be needed to be brought to the attention of those in a higher position than me. Dissension in the ranks is no good sir. These sorts of things need to be taken care of before they spread. I know from direct experience, sir.” “Hmmm, yes I suppose you would…” General Benson continues to study you as if he’s trying to read your mind, after a minute of this, he backs off and starts to pack up some papers on a nearby desk. “I think we have everything we need to know. We weren’t exactly sure about you for a long time, and quite frankly some of us still aren’t. Your lack of trust among your fellow soldiers is concerning, but considering what we’ve found here, possibly understandable. As of now, I’m promoting you to captain and putting you in charge of Fort Green until further notice. You’ll be receiving some new soldiers soon to replace the men that will be leaving here. And hopefully this reward for your dedication to the Kingdom alleviates some of your trust issues.” “It will sir. It will. Thanks you sir.” “Very good, you’re dismissed.” You step out of the room feeling a sense of accomplishment. This is truly the first time since you pledged loyalty to the Felkan Kingdom that you feel appreciated. With this new command you actually feel like you’re back to where you’re supposed to be again, which is something you haven’t felt since you were taken off of your command in Rask. Granted Fort Green is no Fort Destiny, but it’s better than where you were. As for Captain Eckers, he and several other soldiers are escorted out of the fort as the rest of you stand by and watch. On his way out Eckers glares at you, he doesn’t say anything, but you can feel as if his stare is burning a hole in you. He knows someone said something, and he knows that someone was you. It’s too bad it had to be this way, but what’s done is done and it’s time to move on. Over the next few months you begin running the fort a lot more efficiently, the soldiers aren’t particularly thrilled about it since they’ve gotten used to not doing as much under Captain Eckers, which is another good reason why he needed to leave. Instead of whining, he should’ve been thinking up stuff to keep everyone’s mind’s occupied. After a few more months of extra training, you pick the soldier who has shown the most promise and pull them aside in your office for a talk. “Let’s see… Sergeant Dawn Young…easy name to remember. You’re one of the newer transfers here. Says that before you came here, you served on the Kilania Plains. Not exactly familiar with that area, but I hear it’s infested with centaurs. Half man half horse or something like that?” “Yes sir, they are little more than wild beast. They get drunk, breed, start fights and from what I can tell that’s about it.” “Hmm, bet they were a joy to fight. Well from your record it says you successfully lead several attacks on them. I’m guessing they are no longer a problem anymore?” “Well they are less of a problem than they were. I was told to hold back, by my commanding officer at the time. I know if we had pressed against them though we could’ve wiped them out completely though.” She remark with a slightly annoyed tone. Sounds like typical Felkan policy. You have to admit, Eckers did have a point about certain things. While you’re not going to support possible rebellion like he did, you are going to change some things. “Okay you sound like the kind of soldier I need. Consider yourself promoted to lieutenant and you’re my new second.” “…wow…thank you sir!” “Don’t go thanking me just yet, you still have live to enjoy it. I want you to take two platoons of soldiers, march over to those hills a few miles away and I want you to wipe out ALL of the gnolls that you see.” “All of them sir?” “All of them. Their warriors, their citizens, their women, their children. If there are little baby gnolls sucking on marrowbones in their cribs, I want you to kill them too.” Your orders are a little shocking to Dawn. She’s probably never heard anyone commanding the murder of infants before let alone the total war doctrine you’re following, even if it is against a bunch of barbaric monsters. “Lieutenant, am I going to have to find someone else to do this?” you ask. “…Um no sir. I just…well…the other soldiers sir. I’m not sure if they’ll follow such orders.” “Oh yes they will. Because it’s going to be YOUR job to make sure they follow them. Besides I’ve noticed guns tend to take away a lot of the emotional impact of killing. Not even like you have to look someone in the eye and take away their life. You can sit back comfortably from a few feet away and pull the trigger. They’ll be able to kill baby gnolls a lot easier than you think, and after this first time, it’s only going to get easier. I’m sure you’ll do fine, I have faith that you’re up to this task. I wouldn’t have picked you if I didn’t. You’re dismissed.” Looking a little overwhelmed, Dawn nods and leaves your office. Now all you have to concern yourself about is whether your changes get you thrown out of the fort like Captain Eckers. > You dawn Young (Personnel File) Dawn grew up in a poor neighborhood with a mother that barely wanted her to begin with. Despite this disadvantage and her humble upbringing she was determined to not stay stuck with her lot in life and turn to a life of crime like so many of her peers. Instead she decided to make something of herself by joining up with the Felkan military at sixteen; a younger age than most in the Felkan army, which is usually at least eighteen. She’s about twenty now and from what you can tell she’s served pretty commendably wherever she was stationed. You can also respect the fact she overcame the obstacles that life placed in front of her and it’s probably what made you choose her over a couple of the other potential candidates. She also transferred here shortly after you replaced Eckers, which might explain why she doesn’t have the bad habits that a lot of the other troops have which also made her the best candidate. She seems capable, and you’re confident you’ve made a good choice in picking a second.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3A2: For the Kingdom! Year 40 “I don’t understand why the hell we haven’t just gone marching into the Arat province and taken it from the Eternal Dominion. We have superior weaponry, and they aren’t even that organized. I don’t care how skilled they are in combat, they can’t stop a bullet.” A soldier complains. “So, do you think we’ll really be going to war again?” his buddy asks. “Is there any fucking doubt? The Empire might be dead, but that Eternal Dominion or whatever it’s called took its place and from what I can gather the ones running that are complete monsters. No small feat considering how the Empire was run…uh no offense sarge.” You shake your head as a sign that you could care less how they discuss the Empire, as you’re busy keeping on the look out for potential enemies and you tell them to stop talking and do likewise. Felkan soldiers tend to be a little more chatty than you’re used to, they also tend to be a little over confident in battle at times due to their reliance on firearms. Their melee skills aren’t bad, but they aren’t anywhere near those of a say an Empire soldier, let alone an Eternal. You learned how to handle a musket pretty quickly, but much like the same reason you avoided using bows and such, ranged combat just isn’t quite your thing. Still, you appreciate their destructive power and having an advantage so you have no problems carrying around a couple of flintlock pistols on your person. Another thing that’s different is a government that isn’t actually interested in conquest despite its people often expressing such desires. You’ve never met the king or any of the royals, but from what you’ve heard the king is more of a scholar rather than a warrior ruler. Some consider this a weakness, but you aren’t convinced that it is. The king apparently believes conquest would just drain the coffers of what is currently a healthy economy (despite a recent war) and it’s better to put that money to other uses. The Felkans in general are always looking for new ways to advance the quality of life for all through scientific advancement. You don’t remember that sort of thing in the Empire where the status quo was law. While magic was reserved for the elite and still not common in the Empire, it’s practically non-existent in the Felkan Kingdom, which might explain their tendency towards scientific endeavors. Well that, and the fact that a good number of gnomes live among them who probably produce most of the great inventions in the kingdom. Still, you often hear a lot of criticism about the king; sometimes it makes you wonder if there shouldn’t be cause for concern. If this were the Empire you would’ve been expected to harshly discipline all of those soldiers that insulted the Emperor. Here, there is a lot more freedom in what you can say. Yes, there are so many differences from the Empire and you often feel out of place. Hell you feel strange enough only being a sergeant again. Five years and they still haven’t felt that you warrant a promotion to a higher rank, you don’t know why they still don’t trust you as much as they trust Warrick considering he actually fought against them directly. Of course he actually saved the lives of some important Felkan royals, so that’s probably the reason. They don’t keep you stationed on the frontlines of the Arat border like they do with Warrick either, for the past several years you’ve been stationed at a fort at the other end of the kingdom, though the fort is so small it’s more like an outpost. Fort Green is located near a small village called Blossomdale and that’s basically what you’ve been defending. It’s a rather dull assignment and only broken up by the occasional skirmishes with gnolls, bandits or other denizens living in the untouched forests and the hills. You’ve tried to make the best of things. You keep your mind mostly focused on your job like you always do. One good thing is that the soldiers that serve under you don’t seem to mind your Eternal origins, but you do get the impression they’re a little afraid of you. Your superior officer Captain Eckers seems okay with you as well. He’s the only one stationed here that’s older than you and probably sees you as someone he has a little more in common with, not to mention you bring a little more discipline to the fort and encourage more drilling and combat training. Eventually your shift is over and as usual, nothing happened today. Your replacements take over your post and you make your way back to the fort. The rest of the soldiers head to Blossumdale presumably for a little R&R as they often do. When you get back to the fort, somebody tells you that Captain Eckers wants to see you, so you proceed to his office. “Have a seat sergeant. So was today any different than yesterday? Any hostiles to be dispatched or anything?” “No sir, things were quiet as usual.” You answer. “I figured as much. It’s been like this for the past eight months. You know it’s always been slow around here, but lately…(sigh) I don’t know. I suppose we should be glad this place isn’t under attack constantly, but the boredom of nothing to do is frustrating.” “I know the feeling sir.” “Heh, I’ll bet. Bred for war and all that…you once had a command at a fort at one time did you not?” “Yes sir I did, in Rask.” “Yeah, I’ve heard about that area. I’ll bet you never ran out of fighting up there.” “Well sir, we sort of did since I did my best to try to exterminate the most dangerous threats. For a while things got slow then we had a series of uprisings became a problem and I had to be in involved in putting those down so I wasn’t quite as bored anymore.” “Uprisings. Now that would be an interesting event, though I don’t think I’m quite that bored yet. Still, I wonder if one wouldn’t do some good. Get those royals off their asses and actually do something for a change.” “I’m sure they do what they can…the land is prosperous after all.” You say unsure of how to react and still wondering why you were called in here. “Yeah, yeah, I know, but really what good is that going to do when the Eternal Dominion comes beating down our door? I served on the front lines of the war with the Empire from beginning to end, and I saw shit that even I wasn’t prepared to see. Even with our technological advantage, sometimes I don’t know how we managed to hold the Empire off…I guess you guys really had a lot of internal problems.” “Yes, yes we did sir. A lot.” “Right, and that’s the only reason why we held out. If the Empire had been a united front like it used to be… well me and you probably wouldn’t be having this conversation.” “Captain, if I may interject for a moment. I have heard citizens and soldiers on more than one occasion suggest that the Felkan Kingdom should become more aggressive. I’m puzzled to as why if things are going well. after all the Empire engaged in continual conquest and I think we know how that turned out.” “You have a point about the Empire, but you also should remember the Empire lasted several centuries before collapsing. I don’t presume to know exactly all the problems you had, but I can tell you what the problems we have are and why the people are getting sick of it.” “And what are those sir?” “Fucking gnomes.” “Gnomes? Don’t they provide all the wonderful inventions for this Kingdom?” “Yeah, and they also have been using us as protection for decades and the royals are in their fucking pockets. We aren’t really ruled by the royals, the damned gnomish inventors and businessmen rule us. They don’t want us expanding too much, because then we just might be harder to control. They also don’t want us to become too strong militarily because we just might turn it against them. I mean hell, I think you’ve seen how our soldiers aren’t exactly the best fighters and rely on firearms. I shudder to think if we ever had to actually fight without them. It didn’t always used to be that way, at least not back in my day. That’s why you’re a damn breath of fresh air. You’re actually a REAL warrior.” You just sit and listen as the captain begins getting even angrier during his rant. “You know why I’m stationed here in the ass end of nowhere? Because I spoke my mind on what I thought about gnomes and suggested we needed to stop being pussies and actually start taking more land. I mean take this place for example. If we had just a couple more platoons, and the orders, we could march into those hills nearby and wipe out all those damned gnolls for good. But what do we do instead? Wait around for the fuckers to attack us then sit here with our thumbs up our asses until they rebuild and do it all over again. We’re better than that! Or at least we used to be!” at this point Captain Eckers slams his fist on his desk. He’s silent with his head looking down for a moment and then looks up to address you. “…forgive me sergeant, I get a little emotional about this stuff sometimes. I really shouldn’t. Thank you for your report and listening. I just need someone to speak my mind to sometimes…anyway dismissed.” You get up and leave, thinking about what has transpired. It basically sounds like the captain doesn’t believe in his government anymore. You know what that’s like, but you just aren’t sure if it’s as bad as he’s claiming or he’s just a bitter old man that’s mad because times changed and he pissed off the wrong people in charge of his career. However as you’re reminded he isn’t the only person you’ve heard speaking out, he just happens to be the only one that’s gone into more detail than you’re used to. You also wonder if he told you all this stuff for a reason, is he hinting for you to do something? And what could you do? You’re a lower rank than him and not exactly high on the hierarchy. You’re also pretty much an outsider. Stirring up trouble isn’t exactly something you should be doing, and you pledged yourself to serve the kingdom and its king, not overthrow it. If you were going to be doing that, you might as well have joined the Eternal Dominion. You aren’t sure of what to make of all this gnome business though, if that is even true. You’ve never paid too much attention to them being in a lot of the positions of power. Part of you though does make you wonder about who you’re really serving and if it is really the gnomes like the captain claims, then your whole oath to the kingdom is pretty much a joke. Then again if they really are controlling everything, does it really make a difference? Things seem to still be running well and you personally just don’t have any real proof that there is some conspiracy even though it wouldn’t surprise you too much if there was one going on. One thing you know though, if others are feeling like the captain does, this isn’t going to go away. This is going to get worse; in fact it may already be too late to stop something from occurring. You could very well find yourself serving in another collapsing government again. > You leave it alone Captain Eckers is probably just venting, you doubt if he’s actually going to do anything. Besides the captain is about the only one you can slightly relate to around here and he’s always been all right with you so you decide it wouldn’t be a good idea to report him. You return to your duties as usual without giving it anymore thought. In the passing months, the captain never spouts off anything else to you so you figure you were right in your assumption that he was just venting. Nothing to major worry about except the increasing boredom of not having much to do at the fort. You haven’t seen a gnoll in months now and you don’t really like it. They’ve never disappeared for this long of a stretch and it makes you suspect they could be up to something because you refuse to believe that they’ve just decided to leave you alone. The next time you see the captain, you tell him that you’d like to take a platoon up into the hills to scout out the area, and while he says he’d like to send you, he has his orders. “But you said yourself, that we could do a lot more good if we just went into the hills and wiped out all the gnolls.” You point out. “I know what I said that day, and perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken out like that to a subordinate. (sigh) Look, despite my feelings on this situation I know I’ve damaged my career enough as it is. If I go disobeying orders, I’m just going to get myself in deeper. Besides if the gnolls have been as quiet as they have been perhaps we did kill them all, or at least scared them so much that they won’t attack ever again.” You of course aren’t convinced, but there is little you can do. If the captain is content on sitting on his hands you’re going to have to do some hand sitting yourself. It’s very frustrating. Year 41 “They’re breaking down the doors!” a soldier yells. “Hold ‘em dammit! Don’t let these hyena bastards step one foot into this fort!” Captain Eckers commands. The captain can order everyone all he wants, but the fact is those gnolls ARE breaking down that door. They have an overwhelming superiority of numbers on their side and even of reinforcements did arrive right now, you’re still sure that it wouldn’t be enough to save you in time. As you grimly prepare yourself for the onslaught that’s about to bust through the doors, you think about how bad of a choice you made seeking to find your place here in this kingdom of cowards and fools. If you’d stayed with the Empire instead of leaving it, you wouldn’t be in this situation now. Even if you failed to keep it from collapsing, you would’ve at least died honorably in its service. But this? There will be no honor in this death. You’re going to die, because your superiors and their superiors were either too timid or idiotic to do what was necessary and you’re an even bigger idiot for following along into oblivion. No more time for regret now though, the gnolls are breaking through. Already the first soldiers still trying to keep the doors shut are screaming their death cries from the axes cleaving into their flesh and spilling their innards onto the floor. Captain Eckers displays a pitiful showing as a gnoll with a halberd severs his head from his body before he can even attack once. As for you, you make the gnolls earn every inch they step into the fort. The first two that step to you have their heads blown to gooey pieces with your flintlocks, and then you resort to tried and true methods of slaughter. You hack down several of their number before suffering any major wounds. Even then, you continue to fight with the determination of ten men. The bodies of gnolls pile up, the blood is everywhere and you’ve just suffered an injury that should’ve rightfully killed you, but you continue to fight. All the anger you feel at this situation is being directed utterly towards the gnolls until it finally burns itself out and your body pushes itself past its limitations of physical exertion. An axe cleaves into your skull, followed by another into your arm, severing it just enough to hang from a bit of tendon. You fall to your knees, then to the floor and that’s when you feel another axe to your back destroying your spine. A finally kick by a hefty boot to the face and the gibbering laughing howls of the gnolls is the last thing you hear.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t bring yourself to be some lawless mercenary like a svelk and you can’t fathom even trying to run your own piece of territory. You’re no ruler. You’re a warrior that currently has no direction or mission. The only chance to find purpose is to pledge yourself to another nation. Again, the only one you know of any note is the Felkan Kingdom. You only know a little about them based on the propaganda the Empire has told you as well as the brief conversation you had with Gerald when you temporarily reunited with him. Technically the Empire is at peace with the Felkan Kingdom, but there are still skirmishes. Though nowdays it’s due to rogue Empire soldiers (and peasants too) becoming outright bandits rather than any patriotic reason. The Felkan Kingdom has been trying to keep out Empire refugees as well, which means you’ll probably just get turned around, if not outright fired upon. Still with shitty situation you’re in, getting shot doesn’t even seem like a bad option at this point You find a nearby horse and set off for the west. Along the way you see the landscape of the Empire, which at one time was orderly and even idyllic is now burning and in tatters. Despite the chaos you don’t need to do any battle, not even when passing groups of angry peasants who are taking every opportunity to get revenge on their oppressive government and its agents in all forms. You can only assume your reputation is enough to scare them off or they don’t even recognize you. If it’s the latter then it only confirms your belief that you weren’t making that much of a difference in the Empire anyway. When you get to the Arat province you find it in a bit better condition than other territory you’ve rode through, though when you ride through the town of Bucklesberg the peasants give you hateful glances or just outright run into their homes. You see in the middle of the town square several heads stuck on pikes with their eyes gouged out, some of them of children. In the very center of that is a pole with a sign attached. THIS TOWN IS UNDER THE DOMINION OF THE ETERNALS. LAW WILL THRIVE UNDER THE NEW ORDER. DISOBEDIENCE WILL BE CRUSHED. OBEY AND LIVE. REBEL AND DIE. -GENERAL EDGAR You read the sign twice you to make sure what you’re reading is correct. You almost wish you could say you’re surprised, and perhaps that small naive part of you still is, but you’re disappointed more than anything else. You of course don’t know the whole story, but quite frankly you don’t even want to know. All this revelation does is make you want to get out of Empire lands as quick as possible because it seems like it really was ever good for is turning everybody into a wannabe sovereign. You hasten your pace to the Felkan border as you don’t wish to have any potential conflict with this new “regime” that seems to be trying to form here. It’s a shame, because you did think about trying to find Edgar before going to the border hoping that maybe he’d join you. Now? He’d probably try to convince you to join him. Seen that story play out too, you’d rather not have to go through it again. Edgar obviously has chosen his path to deal with the Empire’s inevitable collapse and you must choose yours. Eventually you get to the Felkan border which is predictably well guarded by several men with their fancy musket weapons. From what you’ve heard they aren’t very sporting, but can blow through even a heavily armored orc instantly. Could’ve used some of those yourself ten years ago. “Alright just stop right there. You come any closer and you’ll have a brand new hole in your body.” One of them says pointing his weapon at you. “Sheesh Harry, can’t you come up with a better threat than that?” “Fuck you Wally, we’re turning back refugees every damn day, they can’t all be winners.” “Uh guys, I don’t think this one’s a refugee, he’s wearing military armor.” Another one says which at this point all of them point their weapons at you. You take this in stride you figured they wouldn’t exactly be welcoming. “Alright I don’t know why the hell an Empire soldier is here, but I suggest you just turn right back around. We’re supposed to be at peace now in case you didn’t know it, which judging by some of you lot you don’t.” Harry says. “I no longer serve the Empire, I request to serve your kingdom instead.” You say. “Ha ha ha, yeah right. Look even if we were inclined to believe you, we don’t need your kind especially since you can’t even keep your own shit together. We know you’re having a civil war or whatever it is right now. You’re lucky our king is such a pussy that he refuses to take advantage of the situation otherwise, we’d fucking own the Arat province right now.” Harry replies. “Hell yeah Harry! We should’ve just marched in and took it when they were begging for peace!” Wally adds The one soldier’s words are most interesting. Especially how he speaks about his ruler so freely and without fear. It is apparent that despite their dislike of their ruler, yet they are very dedicated to their nation. It is sort of a comforting thing to see after so many you’ve encountered over the years weren’t. Perhaps you could find a place here, assuming you can get past this first obstacle. “Very well gentlemen the only thing I can tell you that might convince you, is that I am an Eternal, born and bred for combat. I say with no boast that I am the best of my kind and while I am not yet familiar with your weapons, I dare say my combat skill and knowledge would allow me to learn rather quickly. All I ask is that I be allowed to speak with someone with more authority so that I can be given a proper chance.” “Eternal? You ain’t no Eternal, you’re way too old. I’ve seen those bastards running around on the other side of the border and they’re either in their twenties or younger. Dunno why you’d claim to be one of them for anyway, they’re not even human, they’re fucking soulless monsters. Heard enough horror stories from all the refugees we have to turn away. Some of those stories…pretty heartbreaking stuff…” Harry says getting a little choked about one of the stories he seems to be thinking about. It’s at that point one of his buddies pipes up. “Hey, uh maybe he’s one of those OTHER Eternals.” “Oh an original? I dunno, didn’t they not make too many of them?” Wally asks as if any of his buddies know. “How the hell should I know Wally?” “Well you were the fucker that brought it up! All right there’s an easy way to do this. Chuck, head back to Fort Soot, and see Captain Warrick, he’ll…” “Hold on did you say Captain Warrick?” you ask. “Yeah? And?” “I know him seeing as we practically grew up together. He was believed to be dead, how is it that he’s a captain in the Felkan military?” “Hmm, well perhaps you can ask him that yourself, if you really do know him. Okay change of plan, we’ll take you to see Captain Warrick, but you better not try anything funny. We’ll need you to get off that horse and hand over your weapons. Chuck and Wally, you’re with me, the rest of you keep an eye on the border as usual, we’ll be back soon.” You comply with their demands and have them march you to Fort Soot. The thing you notice immediately are all the trenches built into the land. Left overs from the war you imagine. When you get to Fort Soot it isn’t particularly large, though it does seem to be heavily defended with weapons you’ve heard about before. Cannons they’re called, and they are very devastating. You remember Gerald telling you how they could destroy stone golems as if they were made of paper. Makes you wonder why for all it’s power that the Empire didn’t fund money and time into developing such wonders as it certainly would’ve helped a lot more than their Eternal project. You quietly chuckle at the irony of that thought briefly thinking what you would’ve been doing now if there hadn’t been such a project. Probably not marching into a Felkan fort that’s for sure. When you are brought into Warrick’s office it’s like a trip to the past. Warrick’s changed quite a bit. He’s wearing an eyepatch for one thing and he’s lost most of his hair, but you’d still recognize him. He also recognizes you though he’s still having trouble believing it. “By the gods, is it really you?” “Yes, it’s me. By the gods? Not by the Emperor anymore I see.” “Nope and never will be again, which brings me to my next question. Why have you come here? I certainly hope it isn’t on some fool mission to bring me to justice for being a traitor…” “Ha ha. Maybe at one time, but not anymore either. I guess you could say, I’m also a traitor, though I don’t think I am. The Empire betrayed itself a long time ago and I can’t serve a place that has not even the slightest concept of honor or loyalty even if it was the one that taught me such ideals.” “I must say, I am a little surprised that you of all people would come to that conclusion. You were the most dedicated of all of us. I know that you are telling the truth though, as you were never a liar. So you’ve left the Empire then and come here to…?” “Pledge myself to the Felkan Kingdom, though it seems I wasn’t the only one who had that idea.” “Hah, yeah a bit of a long story that. Before we continue I’ll have to clear this with a lot of people first, and you’re probably going to have to prove yourself several times, but if you’re serious about this then you’ll most likely be accepted. I’ve found things work with a little more leniency in the Felkan Kingdom.” “All I want is a new chance.” And so began your service to the Felkan Kingdom. > You warrick (AWOL) “So when did you decide to leave the Empire?” you ask. “Oh that was a slow drawn out process actually. After all the shit I saw, I began to feel a severe amount of disillusionment for the Empire. Even on the front lines and being involved in a lot of fighting, I saw all the corruption going on, the incompetence of lazy commanders…it was like Captain Pollo multiplied by ten. I mean here we are trying to conquer an enemy that was somewhat equal to us as far as military and in some cases superior and we’re just throwing soldiers into the field, without any regard for tactics or strategy!” “Sounds pretty bad, last time I spoke to Gerald, he never mentioned all the problems.” “Heh, well I think Gerald didn’t like to focus on the negative, but trust me when I tell you it was a complete fuck up from beginning to end. The only competent officer I remember was a Major Krozer…” “Wait, did you say Krozer? As in Alison Krozer?” you interrupt. “Yeah I guess. Never knew her first name, never really met her either, but she was sending out orders that were making a whole hell of a lot more sense for a while. A shame she got assassinated by a fucking bomb only a few months after her arrival.” You don’t say anything to this news. You sort of figured that maybe she had gotten killed, but a part of you sort of hoped that maybe she found a way out of the Empire as well. Seems silly to have a strong feeling about her given you hadn’t seen her in so long and your one night tryst, but even not counting that, she was still a good officer that always played straight with you. The fact she got killed in a similar manner than Roldan did, certainly makes you feel that she deserved better. Warrick begins to notice your silence, and then you quickly pick the conversation up again. “So…how did you lose your eye?” “To be quite honest I don’t even remember, though that’s probably due to me losing the damn eye in the first place. I remember reaching my limit with the Empire towards the last days of the war. I mean we were supposed to be making peace with the Felkans, because we couldn’t get our own shit together and we still had commanders throwing soldiers at the Felkan borders! What kind of logic is that? Anyway, at that point I just said fuck it and decided to leave. I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going to go, and I don’t remember exactly what happened soon after, but I’m guessing I must’ve crossed into Felkan territory or something, because the last thing I remember was a flash and everything went black. Guess I was so pre-occupied, I forgot to stay alert for traps. Next thing I knew, I woke up on a Felkan medic table. They said they found me and kept me alive, but couldn’t save my eye. I still have memory problems about other parts of the past too, but nothing serious.” “Surprised they didn’t kill you, or leave you to die instead.” “Eh, the Felkans have always been a little odd that way. Their medics have some sort of code or something, but still here was a hated enemy and they were treating me a hell of a lot better than the Empire ever did. That’s pretty much when I offered my services to them. Took a while for them to trust me, but eventually they did. Of course it helped later on I saved the lives of some royals, but that’s a tale for another time. I think we need to get you started on your own new life here.” “Yeah, I still feel a little odd about all this.” You say. “You’ll get used to it, and in time you’ll see that your efforts will be better appreciated here than they ever were in the Empire. Trust me, you’re on the winning team now.” You just smile and nod at Warrick’s statement. While you don’t doubt that you’re on “the winning team” only time will tell if you will be truly appreciated.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 35 Another rebellion put down. You wipe your sword of blood and shake your head as you look around at the chaos. This is the Quala province, the very heartland of the Empire. You shouldn’t have to be trying to maintain order here only a few miles away from the capital itself. “Ha ha ha! Come on bitch, give it up! I’m an Eternal, you oughta be flattered that I’m even wasting my time on your normal ass!” private Felding says as he attempts to rape a nearby girl. You briskly walk over to Felding and pull him off her. You know damn well that the rest of his kind are probably doing stuff like this all over the place, but this one is in your direct sight and under your command. “What the hell, captain? If you wanted first dibs you could’ve just said so! Ah look, now she’s getting away!” “We’re here to maintain order private, not create more chaos.” “Oh yeah? Coulda fooled me by destroying the entire town like this.” “Regrettable, but during battle only victory matters.” “Exactly! We won! So now it’s time to have our fun with these disobedient peasants. Y’know instill fear in them so they won’t do it again.” “You’re not instilling fear though, you’re just satisfying your own desires.” “Hey, who says we aren’t supposed to have fun while doing it?” It’s like talking to a brick wall. You’ve had these “New Eternals” under your command for a few months now and they are some of the most undisciplined troops you’ve ever had. You can try to encourage them, you can try to reason with them, you can punish them, and none of it has a real effect. The only constant is that they know of your reputation and know that you’re also an Eternal, which makes them just fearful of you enough that they don’t attempt to directly challenge your authority like they have with so many of their other commanders. If it were up to you, you would’ve had them all killed for treason as soon as they murdered their first CO, but for whatever reason the Empire wants them active. You’re guessing because the Empire’s desperate. So they were ultimately transferred to you and unfortunately you’re not allowed to kill them either…well unless they try to kill you first. You swear this must be what it’s like to be a svelk. They are like children, malicious hateful little children. It’s not even their suspect loyalty that baffles you; it’s their complete lack of discipline. Even Kane and Cyrus who opposed you had discipline. Hell, Edgar who was arguably the most emotional and hotheaded of the group was a hundred times more disciplined than any of these new “Eternals.” You remember back to your own training and there were a few of your fellows that didn’t learn proper discipline either. They never made it past Mistress and the few that did, didn’t survive Gruz. Whoever was in charge of their training did a horrible job and should’ve been executed for incompetence along with the rest of these vicious monsters. That old orc was right, they will destroy what’s left of the Empire, but you doubt if they’ll survive long after its downfall. You think back to all the real Eternals. You, Edgar and Brenda are the only ones left, as Warrick killed in the final days of the Felkan War. At least you assume that’s what happened, his body was never found and you know he would’ve rather died than let himself be captured to rot in a P.O.W. Camp. Either way it’s truly a loss you never ever got to talk with him again. From what you know Edgar is still stationed in the Arat province, probably trying to keep his own “eternals” in line to keep the peace there. As for poor Brenda you know she has her command in the Nalin province and probably still quietly grieving for Roldan. After all you’ve been through, it’s come to this and you’re wondering what the hell you’re still fighting for. The Emperor? You haven’t cared about that unknown ruler for years. For all you know he’s some feeble minded inbred idiot figure head that his advisors keep locked away while they bumble around ruling things probably about as well as he would. The Empire? Perhaps at one time, but as it has lost territory, respect and apparently all resemblance of sanity over the years you’ve lost all faith that it can ever regain any sort of glory it might have had, if it ever had it to begin with. You’ve tried your best to stem back the tide of chaos, but you’re only one man even if you are an Eternal. While you ponder your potential future, private Felding interrupts you. “Hey, cap? You’re in a bit of a daze there. So if you’re done I’m going to go now.” “Hold on, I have one more thing to tell you.” “(Sigh) What?” Felding says with an exasperated tone. “You’re not a fucking Eternal. None of you little shits are.” You say and run Felding through and pull up on the sword unleashing his blood and guts onto the ground. Felding makes a high pitched scream and slumps on top of his entrails after you remove the sword. “Shit! The cap just killed Felding!” another so called eternal shouts while he and his buddy have just come back from looting some farmer’s home. The pair of them look like they want to run, but you make it easy on them. “Go ahead and run or stay. I don’t care anymore. I’m leaving. I will tell you this though, if the Empire sends any of you unruly scum after me, know that I shall take great pleasure in not just killing you, but in drawing it out for as long as possible. Remember this.” And with that last warning, you leave your service to the Empire. The question now is, where will you go? What will you do? This all feels so wrong when you think about it. You’ve killed so many for abandoning, opposing, or attempting to betray the Empire and here you are doing the same thing. Was it all for nothing? Was it worth it? You don’t know. You always believed at the time you were right and that you were doing the right thing. Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t. You just know that you can’t serve something you don’t believe in anymore. Especially when everyone else around you doesn’t either. Speaking of not knowing, you don’t know how to do anything except kill people. While you’re certain that you’d be able to hire your skills out somewhere, the idea of being a mercenary is a little distasteful for you. You’d rather not push the svelk comparison that far. You could swear loyalty to another government you suppose. Perhaps the Felkan Kingdom? You’re not sure they’d want you, what with all their high tech weapons and your own government once fighting against them. The only other alternative for you is to carve out your own territory and rule it as your own. While it’s true you do have leadership qualities, you know nothing of actually running a government. You honestly wouldn’t know where to begin. > You rule your own territory You can’t bring yourself to be some like the svelk and be mercenary scum who have no other goals than to earn coin. By the same token you’re not going to pledge yourself to yet another government that will probably be just as corrupt and decadent as the one you just left. Maybe in a way, Kane was right. He was obviously suffering a mental breakdown as well as being manipulated, but the concept of forming your own nation would be the surest way to ‘get it right.” You could run things the way they SHOULD be. The question is where to start? You’d need at least an army to conquer anything and right now you don’t really have that. You’re sure you could probably get those “new eternals” to follow you, but there still isn’t enough of them even if you were inclined to subject yourself to the torture of futility. Regular soldiers would probably follow you, but nowadays they’re so scattered that you’d literally have to travel all over most of the Empire to collect them, not to mention all the fighting you’d have to do during this state of anarchy. The only place you can think of is the Nalin province. It’s virtually the one place still left in the empire that isn’t suffering outright revolts, though the citizens are reportedly still severely disgruntled, Brenda is also there in command of Fort Glory. Perhaps she’ll see the wisdom of your plan and help you, if that’s the case you should be able to pull it off. You find a nearby horse and set off for the south. Along the way you see the landscape of the Empire, which at one time was orderly and even idyllic is now burning and in tatters. Despite the chaos you don’t need to do any battle, not even when passing groups of angry peasants who are taking every opportunity to get revenge on their oppressive government and its agents in all forms. You can only assume your reputation is enough to scare them off or they don’t even recognize you. If it’s the latter then it only confirms your belief that you weren’t making that much of a difference in the Empire anyway. When you get to the Nalin province you find it in much better condition than the rest of the places in the Empire that you’ve ridden through. Fort Glory looks slightly different, namely it looks more heavily fortified and a lot better cared for than when you left this place. When you approach Fort Glory, you are momentarily halted by the guards, but when you tell them who you are and that you need to see Brenda they immediately let you in. Brenda is very surprised to see you. She looks a lot different from the teenage girl you parted company with. Her hair is going gray and she has a very “tired” look about her. As if the whole weight of responsibility is crashing down on her, but she still carries herself with confidence and strength. “When my soldiers told me it was you I couldn’t believe it, it’s been so long since we’ve seen one another. Wow you haven’t really changed at all.” She says almost smiling. “It is good to see you too, Brenda. Still as pretty as ever.” You say, unsure of how to respond. “Pretty? Now that’s a word I never thought I’d hear you say. Let alone to me. Maybe you have changed more than I thought.” “Well I mean I never thought you were ugly, Brenda. I was just trying to reply to your compliment with one of my own.” “Ha ha, a complete lack of tact. That’s more like the old you. Still it’s nice to hear, though I hope for your sake, you’re a better sweet talker to the other girls out there.” “Brenda, I have to talk to you in private about something it’s very important and I don’t know how you’re going to react.” You say by passing her statement. “Oh geez, you’re not going to suddenly confess some sort of hidden love for me that you’ve kept to yourself all these years are you?” “What?! NO! This is something important!” Brenda’s a little amused by how you worded your statement especially since she was joking. You just aren’t in a “joking mood” though right now and after what you have to tell Brenda you doubt if she will too. “Look, I apologize for my outburst. It’s just that this is really important.” “Okay, we’ll go to my office and speak privately there.” When you get to Brenda’s office you don’t bother beating around the bush and you just tell her everything. Your thoughts, feelings, actions and ultimately your plan and why you came here. Now she really is amazed. You of all people were practically a paragon of duty and loyalty and here you are openly confessing that you’ve abandoned the Empire. “Okay, wow. Well you’ve just been full of surprises today.” “Will you help me?” “What exactly am I supposed to do? I mean are you seriously asking me to just hand over control of this fort to you while you play pretend emperor?” “No! I mean shit I don’t know I haven’t thought out all the details yet I guess. It’s just (sigh) Look Brenda, I just left ALL I’ve known. Everything I’ve ever been taught to believe in is GONE, if it ever existed to begin with. I didn’t have many choices on what to do next and this seemed to be the best choice all things considered. I came here because I didn’t know where else to go quite frankly. I see now that this was just as foolish an idea leaving the Empire in the first place, I guess…” “No it wasn’t.” “What wasn’t?” “Leaving the Empire. I mean I certainly understand your reasons. I share them. Maybe not in the exact same way, but they are there. Hell I think in these dark times, everyone shares them. I dunno perhaps you just made that extra step that the rest of us here aren’t quite willing to make yet.” “What do you mean?” you ask. “I mean everyone in this fort and probably the entire province would be for seceding from the Empire at this point. I think the only reason why nobody has done it yet or even rioted is due to way we run things here at Fort Glory. We found it much better by just letting people go about their business if we’re not threatening them all the time and actually defending them from real external threats. The only real problem here is the high taxes which the Empire imposes on this region, that of course tends to make people a little grumpy, but not quite enough to riot. They remember what this place used to be like after all." “Not threatening people you say? That’s a pretty wild concept. Did you think that one up?” “Nah, the credit goes to Roldan, he was the first to suggest it. He probably would’ve made a better fort commander too and if he had been promoted instead of me, he might still be here…” “Brenda, okay you can’t think like that. If he’d been promoted then you’d probably be dead and…” “I know, I know. I just get a little sad thinking about him not being here sometimes. Okay, anyway let’s do it. Let’s break away from the Empire. Like you said, shouldn’t take much convincing, though I hope you’re prepared for a shitstorm from this. We might not much problem from the population, as I said they’ll probably be relieved to not have to pay the high taxes any more, but we’re going to get Empire armies to come down here eventually.” “Possibly, but it’s pretty bad Brenda. I’m not sure if they’ll be able to really do anything, the government is on the brink of collapse. If anything we might be getting an influx of people wanting to come here to join. You’re just lucky they didn’t saddle you with those new eternals. If they had, I guarantee this place wouldn’t be as nice as it is now.” “So I’ve heard. I suppose I am lucky. This whole province is lucky.” Brenda takes a deep breathe before speaking again. “Okay so how exactly are we doing this? I mean what system are we going to have in place?” “Well, given what you’ve told me about how you’ve been running things, I’ve had one new idea. How about YOU run this place and you be the leader?” “ME? But…I don’t know anything about running a nation or anything like that!” “Seems to me you’ve been running this place pretty well for years. You know the people and better yet, they know you. I think if I was in charge…well they’d think they were living under the Empire again. No, I realize now my place isn’t to rule, but to fight. It really is what I’m good at. About the only thing.” “Now come on, you have great leadership skills!” “Leadership skills for combat perhaps, but not for ruling. I think whatever is it that you had with Roldan made you and him more in touch with human nature and that’s a good thing.” “Yes…it was a good thing. I just wish he was here. I could certainly use his help right now.” Brenda says reminiscing. You pat Brenda on the shoulder in your effort to comfort her; she tells you she’s fine though. You and Brenda at that point set your plan in motion to split from the Empire. > Chapter 3A3: Remnant Year 45 In all the years you served the Empire, you always felt like you were being held back in some way; lack of supplies, lack of equipment, ungrateful rioting peasants, or incompetent commanding officers. In most cases it was never a failing on your part. For the past few years, you’ve come to appreciate no longer having any of those limitations. In Nalin everyone more or less works for the greater good of the country. In fact it could be argued that this is more the case here than it ever was in the Empire, at least as far as you saw. Brenda eventually declared the biggest town (Now a city) Dalt to be the capital and moved there to better manage things. You of course are head of the army and remained at Fort Glory. Despite her initial inexperience at running a nation, Brenda has proven to do a fair job at it. Hand picking town mayors and other bureaucratic types to help run things certainly helps. What also helps is Nalin is a much smaller nation than the Empire was. The long arm of the army doesn’t need to go far to catch someone doing something against the law. Your intimidating reputation as head of the army obviously keeps people in line as well. Still, it isn’t complete fear; they know you’ll also keep them safe. When Usksha raiders started gathering around the southern borders again, you made sure to strike at them before they could attack any of the southern towns. You wish you could just go into the Usksha Desert and wipe them all out, but you know you just don’t have the resources for such a thing. Still, you did find a temporary solution in the form of an equally old annoyance. The kobold tribes who eventually realized that continuing to fight against you would result in genocide, agreed to relocate to the edges of the southern Nalin border where they would help defend it. This has worked out quite well. The harsh terrain conditions closer to the desert as well as the occasional Usksha raids keep the kobold population down as well as aid as a front line defense without having to waste valuable troops. For the most part everything has been running quite well, perhaps a little too well to the point where you get a little bored, but you don’t even mind that now. You’re just glad to be part of a nation that isn’t crippled by corruption. “This is the last remnant of the true Empire.” You sometimes think. Of course a certain person might disagree with that thought, namely Edgar. Edgar hasn’t contacted you or Brenda. Brenda wonders if it’s because he considers you both traitors for seceding from the Empire, and while that sounds like Edgar, you suspect it’s more because he’s been very busy. Ever since the Empire fell, Edgar has been busily trying to unite all the new “eternals” under his command and his results are quite surprising. He’s not only managed to do it, but he’s forged his own nation calling it the Eternal Dominion. He claims it is the successor to the Empire and as general he has vowed to reunite all the old lands by any means. So far he’s had varying success, but he’s doing well under the circumstances. He’s also created a strict hierarchy system where Eternals are considered to be the superior ruling class and everyone else is below them. You aren’t exactly sure what to make of this ideology. Assuming he’s successful, you know it’s only going to be a matter of time before Edgar comes marching an army from the north. Brenda has the same concerns and lately a majority of the military has been stationed on the northern borders. You just aren’t sure it’ll be enough. Brenda wonders if an alliance would be best, but the only other major power in the region is the Felkan Kingdom, and you’re not exactly sure if they would even be in a position to help, let alone willing to help. The enemy of my enemy isn’t always your friend. This ties in with the other matter that has come up is expansion. Nalin has had a steadily growing population for quite some time and since the south is hostile desert, the western side of Nalin is covered by an equally imposing mountain range and to the north is old empire lands suffering from destroyed infrastructure and near anarchy, the only logical conclusion is to the east. Slowly over time Brenda has encouraged Nalin citizens to systematically settle the eastern wilderness. The Empire for some reason never colonized this territory. It probably was marked, but just never exploited due to other more pressing matters. In any case, things have gone more or less peacefully as there have been no encounters with any hostile natives and it has proven to be great farming land. While things are peaceful there now, there’s no telling what could happen later and due to all the troops on the northern border, the eastern territory has a minimum number of soldiers there. Right now you and Brenda are discussing on how to best to maximize your defenses. “Have you sent envoys to Edgar? Is it possible that he wouldn’t be a problem in the future?” you ask Brenda. “I actually have a couple times over the years and none of them ever returned. Which is why I’m convinced he’s pissed at us.” “Hmm, well guess we better up keep the defenses on the northern borders then. Still, my own reports say he’s still nowhere near us. He’s been trying to tame the core region of the old Empire as well as maintain order in places he’s already conquered. There is the option to take redeploy some of the troops to the east.” “But of course that would weaken us in the north.” “Well yes, but if you’re really worried about the east, then that’s all I can suggest other than conscription.” “Yeah, thought about that, and I’m not exactly keen on that idea. The people have been happy for quite awhile. We start conscripting like the Empire did, they might not be as happy.” Brenda says “They’ll be even less happy, if Edgar comes barging down here declaring them all inferior while letting his Eternal troops run amok.” “You wouldn’t allow that to happen.” Brenda says. “Well I certainly would try my best to not let it happen, but let’s just say I’m not as certain about things as I once was, there is always the chance things can go horribly wrong.” “Yeah, I understand that. (Sigh) Well, I suppose we can restart conscription. It’s not going to be popular, but I think if we stress how much of a threat Edgar potentially is, we’ll prevent the civil unrest. I’ll get my civilian advisors to start spinning the propaganda. I’ll leave it up to you how you want to deploy the troops; I think it would be best to put most of the conscripts on the east though, as I think we’ll need most of the experienced troops on the northern borders.” “I’ll certainly consider all the options. I guess I’ll get to it then and leave you to your work as well.” You say and are about to leave when Brenda calls out to you. “Hey, I know you’re very duty bound anyway, but I just want to say, I’m glad you’re here to help me.” “Well I’m happy to help, but I’m sure you’d do just as well without me here.” “Perhaps, but it’s sort of comforting to have another Eternal around to talk to. I just feel like we connect a lot better you know?” “Yes, I do agree. We do share a bond that most others will never know.” Brenda goes to hug you and you’re a little unsure of how to react at first, but you hug her back. Before you leave Brenda asks you one more question. “Do you think Edgar’s ideology for his nation is correct? Do you think Eternals are superior to everyone else?” You think about the question for a moment, then answer. “I think Edgar thinks it is correct. In one aspect, I agree with it, I mean look at the pair of us. We’re both in the highest positions of power and people seem to be accepting of it. However, from my own experiences with the new Eternals I’m not actually convinced that THEY are superior to the average human except in combat and sadism which I suppose are good enough to instill fear into the masses.” “Heh, but isn’t that what we do?” “Of course, but we do it because we know it’s necessary to maintain order. The new Eternals engage in pointless cruelty because they enjoy it. They’re no better than svelks in that regard. They’re so eager to move on to next atrocity that they let their emotions cloud their purity of battle. I believe this is a weakness on their part and that is why I do not consider them superior.” Brenda smiles a bit at your answer. “The Empire really should’ve made you a general straight out of training. I’m certain you would’ve single handedly saved it.” “I don’t know. Perhaps it was beyond saving by that time. If you’ll excuse me…” you say and leave Brenda’s office. As you leave the capital building, you think back on how you left the Empire. While you’re satisfied with your decision, part of you does wonder IF you could’ve done anything. Not just at that time, but before then. Is there another decision you could’ve made that would’ve prevented the situation you’re in now? After a brief run down in your mind of endless possibilities you quickly dismiss such thoughts as a fool’s game. You were right, the Empire was beyond any help you could’ve provided. Nalin is your concern now and you need to make the decisions to how to best protect it starting with deciding where to send the conscripts when Brenda enacts her decree. > You send them to the northern borders As much of a threat Edgar could potentially be, he’s not knocking down your door right now and as safe as the east seems to be, it’s still mainly uncharted territory. Anything could be lurking over there. Best to have experienced troops there just in case, in fact you’re going to have them make scouting expeditions. When Brenda enacts conscription there is a lot of grumbling as was expected, but nothing more. Many of the conscripts are a little nervous about being put on the northern borders after hearing all the scary things about Edgar and his “baby eating” army. You make sure to keep enough vets there to keep them in line until they toughen up a bit more. You also make sure to keep a close eye on the situation. Months pass a life goes on as usual, and you begin to get reports on the eastern wilderness. Most of the scouts say that there is evidence of other denizens living further east. In fact there seems to be a small tribal war going on between four separate groups. Two of those are human barbarian tribes, one them is elven, but much wilder than what you know of them and the last one is a race you’re not familiar with called the Slin. They’re apparently reptilian in nature though, similar to the kobolds, but much larger and meaner. All of them save for one of the human tribes have been hostile to your scouts. Your scouts report that most attacks were accompanied by slurs and curses against the Empire. Even the Slin have been reported to utter a few recognizable insults in their strange reptilian tongue. You can only guess that all of these folks at one time came in contact with the Empire and it wasn’t a good experience. Makes sense they would mistake you for Empire troops as well considering that all your troops are either still wearing the same armor or very similar armor. Some of the really old guard are still wearing the same insignias. Sort of like you do actually. While you’re confident that individually these uncivilized savage tribes wouldn’t be a match in a straight up fight, there is always the possibility that they could all unite against you which would make things a little more difficult. They’ve all most likely been living here a long time too, so they’ll have the advantage of knowing the land better. Right now the situation is similar to the one you have with Edgar. They’re all preoccupied fighting each other and not immediately close to any Nalin settlements. Stirring up a hornet’s nest by marching east could bring that tribal alliance that you don’t really want. Then again you have been getting sort of bored lately…maybe you DO want it a little. You make the decision and you’re wiping out these troublesome tribes before they become a major problem. You’re also going to personally lead this campaign of expansion; it’s been far too long since you’ve experienced a real battle again. Brenda is supportive of the idea, though she reminds you that if trouble comes to the northern borders she’s going to have to pull everyone back immediately. Since that could happen at any time, you decide you need to handle this as quickly as you can, but at the same time, not sloppy. First thing you do is establish a sizable war camp near the closest Nalin village in the eastern wilderness. You then have your scouts contact the human tribe that wasn’t hostile and to tell them that you want to meet their leader to discuss about destroying their enemies. Your scouts return with a crude map and report that the chieftain of the Belkaz Tribe is willing to listen, but that you must come meet him in his own village several miles away towards the southern hills and that if you arrive with more than five men he will consider you hostile and order an attack. “Acceptable. I was going there by myself anyway.” You say taking the map. “Sir?” one of your scouts says after looking at the other in surprise. “It’s fine. Corporal Bajin isn’t it? You did your job. Take a break, and tell the rest that I’ll be back soon.” “But…don’t you think you should take some of us with you? I mean they’re barbarians and not exactly trustworthy.” Bajin says. “Oh I know that, but if I can’t handle a simple mission every once in awhile, well what kind of general am I? Relax, I’ll be back.” You say and gallop away on your horse towards the village. As you get closer to your destination, you start noticing the usual primitive totems typical of such tribes establishing their territory. Eventually several barbarian types wrapped in furs and other crude cloth stop you. “This is Belkaz territory! You go back or die!” one of them shouts as they all point spears at you. “I have business with your chieftain. My scouts contacted some of your fellows about it not too long ago.” After speaking amongst themselves for a moment, one addresses you again. “You must be leader of the Empire men to the west. Other tribes hate you. Scared of you. Very funny because you are not scary. Not even that big. But other tribes cowards, we not. Come with us and do not try anything!” You follow the Belkaz to their village which is a fairly large one. You assume that there are probably others, but that this is just their “capital.” You get off your horse and look around and see the usual trappings of a primitive village. This whole situation is starting to remind you of your time in Rask. Though you hope that these particular barbarians aren’t shapeshifters or spirits in disguise otherwise this idea of yours is not going to go well. The Belkaz chieftain comes out of his hut. He’s certainly a big muscular man. Almost ogre sized. Hell, he may even have ogre blood in him. Heavily tattooed, various tribal piercing. All proof of his manhood and tolerance to pain no doubt. A worn looking axe hangs by his side. Probably has seen a lot of battle. You figure he slaughtered his way to the top like most of his kind do. Whether it was enemies of the tribe or rivals within the tribe, it doesn’t matter, he’s proven himself to be the best warrior and that’s what makes him the leader. The rest fall in line when he give them an order. He stands before you looking down at you. Probably wondering how someone so small could be a leader of anything. “Huh. Empire man. You wanted to discuss a possible alliance?” “No, I wanted to discuss destroying your enemies.” You say looking up. “Hrm? Yeah, I said alliance. You need help destroying other tribes.” “Yes, I need help, but no I do not need an alliance.” “You speak in riddles Empire man.” “My apologies. Perhaps this is something you would better understand.” You say and draw your sword. The Belkaz immediately goes for his axe, but fails you draw it in time since you land a heavy blow on his forearm nearly chopping it completely off. He bellows in pain and falls back holding on to his dangling bloody limb. Two Belkaz attempt to spear you in the back, but you easily dispatch them with spinning swing to their bellies unleashing their innards all over the ground. You run another Belkaz through as you advance towards the chieftain who has managed to draw his axe and recover from the initial shock of losing a vital limb which still partially dangles by the skin and bleeds profusely. He swings his axe recklessly at your head screaming the whole time. The battle was over long ago for him though as you easily duck such an attack and aim your sword directly at his groin. Literally destroying his manhood, his screams suddenly become much higher pitched as the useless member falls to the ground along with its two friends. Dropping his axe, falling to his knees and attempting to hold himself up with his one good arm, you finish him off with a chop to his head, and then another, and then another until his head splits in two. Already dead at this point, you then stomp on his split skull crushing the brain matter leaking out. The rest of the Belzak tribe at this point is either hiding or staring in awe of how easily you dispatch their leader. You look around and after catching your breath, you speak. “This man did not lead your tribe to victory against your enemies. As such he was also your enemy and needed to die. This will be your fate as well if you do not submit to my army. If you wish to live and see victory over your enemies, then you will join me. If not…well you will join him.” You say and point at their dead chieftain with your sword. You get back on your horse unopposed and ride back to your camp where some of your soldiers have been mildly concerned about you. You address the camp and one of your lieutenants in particular. “Everyone get some rest tonight our path to victory begins tomorrow. Lieutenant Harren I’m going to need you to take a platoon and head out to the main Belzak village tomorrow. Be on guard, as usual, but I think you’ll find the natives quite agreeable with helping you in any way they can. In fact I dare say after this is all over they’ll be some of the most loyal of our newest citizens.” > Year 46 It took longer than you expected, but you’ve at last tracked down the main lair of the Slin. They’ve stretched this little war out the longest, but this is where it’s going to end. Arrows unleashed by Slin bows hit some of your Belzak skimishers, but your own soldiers advance on the cave opening undeterred with their shields held up to protect them. You shake your head when you see the remaining Belzak run away. They’ve actually been completely useless when fighting the Slin. The only time they seemed to prove useful is when you were wiping out the Fleg tribe. The Fleg were pretty odd as you came to find out that they were decedents of once regular Empire citizens that started believing in some weird cult that took hold in the Nalin province long before you were around. The Empire stomped it out, but obviously the remainder fled here. Surrender and backing down wasn’t an option for them. When you got to their last village you found that they all committed ritual suicide. Their cult finally wiped out. You and your men fight your way into the cave entrance, several large Slin come lumbering from various tunnels hissing and charging at you. You like that. You appreciate a foe that gives no quarter and doesn’t run even in the face of certain death. It’s more than can be said of the wild elves. They were fierce fighters at first, but after you wiped out the Fleg and started making great progress against the Slin, something in them must’ve changed. It’s as if all their courage left them. Their elder came to you and begged you to spare them from genocide. These elves were all former slaves that managed to run away from the Empire long ago. The elder spoke of how he should’ve known it was folly to run away and that eventually the Empire would eventually find them again even if it took them hundreds of years. You told him that the Empire was no more, but his peoples’ attacks on your soldiers was something that couldn’t be forgiven. Taking a page from Captain Krozer’s handling of elves in Rask, you had all the adults and elderly killed. Any children were taken to become wards of the state. While slavery doesn’t exist in Nalin as it did in the Empire, you figure these children can still be indoctrinated to be proper citizens and given a second chance at a better life. Sometimes mercy can be a good thing. Several Slin lie dead at your feet. More of them continue to pour in as you and your remaining men travel further into the cavern. No, there will be no capitulation, or cowardly escape through suicide here. Before you killed the elven elder, he told you that the Slin apparently once lived in the Delerg swamps before being driven out by the Empire. (With the help of the Shadow Guard) Funny how all these people managed to settle in the same area and fight each other rather than unite, but then they all had different reasons and ways of life. The Slin don’t even realize that the Empire has fallen, and attempting to explain it to them at this point wouldn’t do any good even if you wanted to bother with such a thing. You’re close enough to being one of their oppressors in their eyes and your goals of kill or be killed were locked in as soon as you stepped into their territory The final confrontation takes place in what you guess to be brood chamber. Even Slin children are vicious enough to take part in battle. The Slin matriarch isn’t as big as the ones you’ve been fighting, but she has the advantage of some sort of primitive magic. She casts a poisonous cloud causing several of your troops that had followed you, immediately gag, cough and vomit. They eventually succumb to the toxins and choking on their own blood and bleeding from every orifice. The cloud doesn’t make you feel too well either, but being an Eternal you’re made of stronger stuff and have natural immunities to most poisons. Her brood bite at your legs as you attempt to fight through the haze of the poison cloud. You slaughter all of them and ignore the pain of several teeth cutting through your leggings and into your flesh. The matriarch hisses at you backing away as you advance towards her. She attempts to cast another spell, but you interrupt her by slashing her staff out of her hand. Lacking any other weapons, she resorts to her natural ones that are just as good to kill someone with. She lunges at you and wrestles you to the ground where you lose your sword in the process. Having a hard time seeing and breathing due to the cloud, you begin to feel a lot weaker and you struggle to free your arms from her talons. “Babies! Ssss! You kill my babiessss!” She says attempting to bite your face off. You more your head in such a manner that she only manages to bite your ear off instead. At this time you finally manage to free one of your arms and bring a fist to the side of her head. It isn’t enough to knock her off of you, but it’s enough to daze her enough so you can free your other arm. With both hands free you take your thumbs and jam them into the red orbs of the matriarch succeeding in pulling one out completely. The matriarch shrieks in pain holding her face and you push her off of you. Blind and crawling on the ground, she attempts to look for her staff. You stand up and easily grab your own weapon and put the matriarch out of her misery with a chop to her leathery neck. Another severs her head completely. You stagger out of the Slin brood chamber coughing up some blood from all the poison you inhaled from the now dissipating cloud. Some of your troops that were still fighting Slin in other parts of the cavern see that you’re not feeling your best and go to help you. You don’t remember exactly what happened after that. You must’ve passed out briefly because the next thing you know you’re lying outside the cave surrounded by some of your soldiers and a few of the belzaks who must’ve regained their courage after they ran away. You’re still not feeling good, who knows how much of that poison is in your system. “I’ve seen this before! He needs certain herbs to cure the poison, and I have some, I can mix up an antidote right here!” one of the belzak says. “Shut the fuck up tribal, you oughta be glad we’re not executing you right now for desertion on the battle field! In fact let’s take care of that right now!” a soldier remarks and you hear a scuffle and protests of wanting to help and begging for life. You struggle to get up, and you manage it just barely. You feel like you’re going to collapse again and you aren’t sure if you’re going to make it to the medic back at the war camp. In the meantime the belzakians are begging you to call off you soldiers. > You call off the execution You’re feeling so ill at this point that if these deserters can actually do something to help you, you’ll give them a pass. “Release them…let them make their antidote.” You gasp. Your soldiers are hesitant, but fulfill your orders and release the belzakians so that they can do their work. The one who spoke up thanks you immediately and starts asking his buddies to help him mix up the antidote. You lie on a bed roll drifting in and out of deliriousness hoping they hurry up with that antidote, eventually one of them approaches you. “This is for you, my merciful general!” You grab the wooden bowl that they’ve mixed the antidote in and struggle to sit up. After gazing into the green liquid you drink deeply. “Yes, drink, soon all your pain will be no more!” the belzak exclaims You might be ill and your hearing might be off due to missing an ear now, but the tone of the belzak’s voice is a little concerning. And you have every right to be concerned unfortunately it’s a little too late. Your throat and your entire insides feel like they’re on fire. If you were ill before, that “antidote” you just drank made it ten times worse. You struggle to breathe and attempt to grab at the belzak who avoids your feeble attempts, though your other soldiers grab him and his fellows. “YES DIE TYRANT! DIE FOR MAKING MY TRIBE SLAVES!” he screams before one of your soldiers cuts his throat. It’s no victory though; your own life ends soon after as the mixture of poisons in your system shut down your body completely.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 46 It took longer than you expected, but you’ve at last tracked down the main lair of the Slin. They’ve stretched this little war out the longest, but this is where it’s going to end. Arrows unleashed by Slin bows hit some of your Belzak skimishers, but your own soldiers advance on the cave opening undeterred with their shields held up to protect them. You shake your head when you see the remaining Belzak run away. They’ve actually been completely useless when fighting the Slin. The only time they seemed to prove useful is when you were wiping out the Fleg tribe. The Fleg were pretty odd as you came to find out that they were decedents of once regular Empire citizens that started believing in some weird cult that took hold in the Nalin province long before you were around. The Empire stomped it out, but obviously the remainder fled here. Surrender and backing down wasn’t an option for them. When you got to their last village you found that they all committed ritual suicide. Their cult finally wiped out. You and your men fight your way into the cave entrance, several large Slin come lumbering from various tunnels hissing and charging at you. You like that. You appreciate a foe that gives no quarter and doesn’t run even in the face of certain death. It’s more than can be said of the wild elves. They were fierce fighters at first, but after you wiped out the Fleg and started making great progress against the Slin, something in them must’ve changed. It’s as if all their courage left them. Their elder came to you and begged you to spare them from genocide. These elves were all former slaves that managed to run away from the Empire long ago. The elder spoke of how he should’ve known it was folly to run away and that eventually the Empire would eventually find them again even if it took them hundreds of years. You told him that the Empire was no more, but his peoples’ attacks on your soldiers was something that couldn’t be forgiven. Taking a page from Captain Krozer’s handling of elves in Rask, you had all the adults and elderly killed. Any children were taken to become wards of the state. While slavery doesn’t exist in Nalin as it did in the Empire, you figure these children can still be indoctrinated to be proper citizens and given a second chance at a better life. Sometimes mercy can be a good thing. Several Slin lie dead at your feet. More of them continue to pour in as you and your remaining men travel further into the cavern. No, there will be no capitulation, or cowardly escape through suicide here. Before you killed the elven elder, he told you that the Slin apparently once lived in the Delerg swamps before being driven out by the Empire. (With the help of the Shadow Guard) Funny how all these people managed to settle in the same area and fight each other rather than unite, but then they all had different reasons and ways of life. The Slin don’t even realize that the Empire has fallen, and attempting to explain it to them at this point wouldn’t do any good even if you wanted to bother with such a thing. You’re close enough to being one of their oppressors in their eyes and your goals of kill or be killed were locked in as soon as you stepped into their territory The final confrontation takes place in what you guess to be brood chamber. Even Slin children are vicious enough to take part in battle. The Slin matriarch isn’t as big as the ones you’ve been fighting, but she has the advantage of some sort of primitive magic. She casts a poisonous cloud causing several of your troops that had followed you, immediately gag, cough and vomit. They eventually succumb to the toxins and choking on their own blood and bleeding from every orifice. The cloud doesn’t make you feel too well either, but being an Eternal you’re made of stronger stuff and have natural immunities to most poisons. Her brood bite at your legs as you attempt to fight through the haze of the poison cloud. You slaughter all of them and ignore the pain of several teeth cutting through your leggings and into your flesh. The matriarch hisses at you backing away as you advance towards her. She attempts to cast another spell, but you interrupt her by slashing her staff out of her hand. Lacking any other weapons, she resorts to her natural ones that are just as good to kill someone with. She lunges at you and wrestles you to the ground where you lose your sword in the process. Having a hard time seeing and breathing due to the cloud, you begin to feel a lot weaker and you struggle to free your arms from her talons. “Babies! Ssss! You kill my babiessss!” She says attempting to bite your face off. You more your head in such a manner that she only manages to bite your ear off instead. At this time you finally manage to free one of your arms and bring a fist to the side of her head. It isn’t enough to knock her off of you, but it’s enough to daze her enough so you can free your other arm. With both hands free you take your thumbs and jam them into the red orbs of the matriarch succeeding in pulling one out completely. The matriarch shrieks in pain holding her face and you push her off of you. Blind and crawling on the ground, she attempts to look for her staff. You stand up and easily grab your own weapon and put the matriarch out of her misery with a chop to her leathery neck. Another severs her head completely. You stagger out of the Slin brood chamber coughing up some blood from all the poison you inhaled from the now dissipating cloud. Some of your troops that were still fighting Slin in other parts of the cavern see that you’re not feeling your best and go to help you. You don’t remember exactly what happened after that. You must’ve passed out briefly because the next thing you know you’re lying outside the cave surrounded by some of your soldiers and a few of the belzaks who must’ve regained their courage after they ran away. You’re still not feeling good, who knows how much of that poison is in your system. “I’ve seen this before! He needs certain herbs to cure the poison, and I have some, I can mix up an antidote right here!” one of the belzak says. “Shut the fuck up tribal, you oughta be glad we’re not executing you right now for desertion on the battle field! In fact let’s take care of that right now!” a soldier remarks and you hear a scuffle and protests of wanting to help and begging for life. You struggle to get up, and you manage it just barely. You feel like you’re going to collapse again and you aren’t sure if you’re going to make it to the medic back at the war camp. In the meantime the belzakians are begging you to call off you soldiers. > You have them killed “Kill these fucking deserters and get me to the medic.” You say. The screams of the belzak deserters begging for their lives and death squeals fall on deaf ears…or rather ear as the case may be now. Eventually you manage to make it to the medic who immediately starts administering an antidote to you. You’re out of commission and very sick for a couple of days, but after which time you’re at least able to stand without feeling ill anymore. Your chewed off ear isn’t an excessive problem as you can still hear relatively well, still you do feel a sense of “loss.” In any event the expansionist eastern campaign is over. All the tribes have been either wiped out or subdued to the point of submissiveness. Brenda will be relieved to hear it, as you know she was always concerned about having most of the veteran troops there instead of the northern borders. She’ll also be pleased that there weren’t many losses overall. You’re satisfied with the results, though now you’re just wondering what you’re going to do with yourself again. Year 50 “Our defenses are strong in the north. Have been for years. No need to be concerned about that.” You say. “I know, but this is a big thing. I mean after all these years now Edgar wants to speak with us?” Brenda asks. “My reports say he’s gotten a lot more organized and isn’t dealing with anarchy in his ranks anymore. He even re-conquered the old core lands of the Empire. It could be that he wants to see how strong we really are. His message said he’s coming alone without anyone else.” “Well, maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe he just wants to talk.” “Or maybe he wants to kill us both to a great show of strength so Nalin will capitulate with minimum fuss.” You point out. “Yeah…there is that tactic. (sigh) Well I guess we all knew this day was coming. Guess I better practice my combat skills., which sadly have probably declined from lack of use. Would you spar with me?” “Of course. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’re not that out of practice.” You remark. You and Brenda go to her personal training room where you and her prepare to spar. Brenda makes a few remarks about this being like the old days when Mistress made you fight each other. Brenda mentions the time when you broke Gerald’s arm and Kane’s nose when she pit them both against you. “Yeah, I remember that. That was my first match. Mistress had it in for me after I begged for my life. I was always pretty aggressive after that, well at least until Gruz told me I should master my anger better, and I did…anyway let’s get on with this.” You say not really wanting to think about those days or any of the names mentioned. Brenda isn’t quite as skilled as you remember her to be and she has indeed let her talents decline. Then again as you remember she always was more skilled with the bow. Something you never quite got the hang of yourself. You begin to get more in a “drill instructor mode” and shout commands at her to watch her techniques. “Alright, alright, I told you I was out of practice.” She shouts back. “Well you shouldn’t have let it get this bad in the first place.” You say. After this remark, Brenda begins to get a little annoyed, which of course means she makes even more mistakes. “Brenda, come on I know you’re better than this! Focus!” “I am!” “Well prove it!” “Well, I’m sorry I’m not the fucking lord of war that you are!” “You don’t need to be me, you just need to be an Eternal!” “What the hell for? The Empire is fucking dead and we’ve just been upkeeping a parody of it for the past fifteen years! I don’t even know what I’m doing trying to run this fucking country anymore! I never wanted this! I…I just wanted…to spend the rest of my…(sob) life with Roldan…(sob)” At this point Brenda sits down on the floor and completely breaks down in tears. You can honestly say you weren’t expecting this. “Brenda…” “I’m sorry, but I can’t be the Eternal you are. I can’t even be the Eternal that Edgar is. I lost that edge when I fell in love. I wasn’t supposed to and neither was Roldan! If we hadn’t been so weak, he’d still be alive and…” “Dammit Brenda, you can’t keep blaming yourself for his death! Your relationship and whatever feelings you had for each other had nothing to do with some insane asshole blowing him up. What’s bringing this all on? Edgar? I think you’re worrying about him more than you need to. I mean for all we know he just wants play catch up and even if he doesn’t we’re going to be ready for him and his army of half assed Eternals…” Brenda shakes her head and tries to compose herself. “No, it’s not Edgar. It’s you.” “Me? What do you mean? Out with it.” “I…I think I’ve developed the same kind of feelings for you that I did for Roldan.” Brenda says. Another surprise for you today, not exactly the best timing with all that’s coming up soon. “…Uh…I don’t know what to say…I guess…I mean…are you sure?” you ask. “I think I’d know. It’s been building up slowly over time. At first I was just happy to have you around, another Eternal to talk to. Sure you weren’t Roldan, and you’re certainly less fun loving than he could be, but there was that familiar bond. Then when you were so instrumental in helping to keep order in this place, I remembered why we all admired and respected you as a leader so much back in the day. It also began to remind me of how Roldan and I complimented each other in keeping order here during the days of the Empire. You were bringing the memories of those good old days back and making them reality again.” “You probably just still miss him and are transferring those feelings.” “I thought so too, which is why I didn’t do anything before. In fact I was feeling guilty about it, I thought I was dishonoring Roldan’s memory. Wasn’t until I heard about your close call with death during your campaign in the east that I knew it was more than mere transference. I was so happy that you were still alive, I nearly told you how I felt when you came back. I just didn’t think you suffered from such weaknesses and I wanted to remain strong because your respect was more important than my silly attractions.” You don’t have much experience with any of this, but you need to say or do something make Brenda feel better. “Brenda, you’ll always have my respect. As for anything between us, I never thought about it because I figured you’d always be carrying a torch for Roldan. I’m not opposed to the idea however. I mean we do have much in common and contrary to popular belief, I’m not quite the unfeeling golem that most consider me to be. I do have feelings, even if I don’t show them a lot and I would’ve thought you knew that.” “I know you do, but you’re in control of them or you at least direct them better. I worry that if by some chance something would to occur between us, that you would lose your edge. I don’t want you to become weaker or distracted because of me. You’re needed as you are now.” You’re about to reply, and then there’s a knock on the door. “Sorry to disturb your training, but I’ve been told that the leader of the Eternal Dominion has been spotted at the northern border. He’s on a horse by himself, and several soldiers are already escorting him to Fort Glory. Did you want to meet him there or did you want us to escort him all the way to the capital?” a voice asks from behind the door. The pair of you didn’t expect him this soon, let alone be in the middle of the discussion you’re having now. You’d probably both like to wrap this up before having to focus on Edgar, though the question is if you’d have enough time to do it anyway. > You meet Edgar at the fort You and Brenda might have a bit more on your mind now, but this is much more important. “Brenda, I know emotions are running high right now, but I think we need to go meet Edgar. We can talk more about this later.” You say. “Yes. Yes, of course. We need to get back to business. I’ll be okay. This was silly anyway. Need to focus.” Brenda says standing back up and wiping her eyes. You and Brenda ride off to Fort Glory. The ride there is done with minimal talking, but that’s sort of to be expected. The thing is you never seriously thought about Brenda in that way until she just brought it up today. Sure you always knew you had that bond from both of you being Eternals and the fact that you’ve served together for so long. You may have even had the occasional sexual thought about her, but like you said to her, you always figured she would’ve carried a torch for Roldan. You would’ve just been a substitute at best. Now you’re having scenarios in your head about the two of you being together in a closer way and you really shouldn’t be thinking about that at this moment. Maybe she’s right in a way maybe if you did have something together it would cause you to lose your edge. It’s certainly clouding your judgment right now and you’re not even together. When you get to Fort Glory you’re told that Edgar is waiting for you in your meeting room. When you ask how he seems, the soldiers say he’s been stand offish, but not overly hostile. About what you expected. When you and Brenda reach the meeting room, you ask her if she’s ready, and she remarks that she is. The door opens and you both step in and see Edgar sitting in a chair with a big grin on his face. He stands up and addresses the both of you. “Well it’s about time! I’ve missed the both of you! Come here!” he says jovially with his arms out walking towards you. “Uh… yeah, hey Edgar. Good to see you too.” Brenda says when he gives her a big hug. Looks like it’s going to be a day of surprises… Edgar stops hugging Brenda and then looks at you. You stand a little back from him as you don’t want to be hugged, but Edgar doesn’t try it. “Oh don’t worry, I know you’re the serious minded Bane of Rask! Bane of Nalin too now I hear! Heh, but how are you?” “I’m fine Edgar.” You say. “Good, good. I just have to say it’s really great seeing the both of you again! I mean you two are like my brother and sister! No, you ARE my brother and sister!” The last time you heard this sort of sibling talk before was from Kane and if you weren’t wary before, you certainly are now. “Edgar, I’m glad you seem to be in a good mood and all, but I sent envoys to contact you several times in the past and none of them ever returned. We always assumed you had them killed and were angry at us.” Brenda says. “You did? When was the last one?” “Mmm, last one was about six years ago I believe. After that, I saw no need to waste lives.” “Aw! You should’ve kept sending them! I don’t know if you’re aware of just how much anarchy and infighting I’ve had to put up with! Those envoys probably got killed by the new Eternals and nobody ever told me about it! Hell, they might’ve even gotten killed by run of the mill bandits, it was pretty lawless back in the early days! Shit, if I had known you guys weren’t pissed at ME, I would’ve made this trek sooner!” “Wait, so you weren’t mad at us?” “Mad at you guys? What the hell for?! Oh you mean seceding from the Empire? Well I have to say I was more shocked than angry about that. I mean YOU especially.” Edgar says pointing at you. “But in time I heard about what you two were doing down here and I respected what the pair of you were attempting to do.” You and Brenda look at each other, wondering what Edgar THINKS you both were trying to do. “Oh? And what was that exactly?” Brenda asks. “You saw that the Empire was a lost cause, but you were trying to uphold a portion of it, though this patch of territory. I’ve heard about your great success in keeping order and how you’ve even added more land to your nation. Only an Eternal could do something like that and that’s why both of you were successful!” Edgar isn’t far off, at least from your perspective. Though he probably has a more idealistic vision of it than the reality, which was this; you didn’t know where else to go and over time Nalin was transformed into a “mini Empire” because you didn’t know any other way. Brenda’s reasons are probably based on simple emotional attachment. “Well, we were doing the best we could under the circumstances, but you forged a whole new nation, so you’ve been successful too Edgar.” Brenda says. “Ah yes, but it wasn’t easy! There were many times I almost wanted to give up and come join you two! But I knew I couldn’t do that, I had a vision that I had to make work! A nation run by Eternals and I’m proud to say it’s all finally coming together and I think it’s finally time for us, to reunite like we were meant to!” You and Brenda look at each other again. “Edgar, I don’t think it’s quite as simple as all that. We’re going to have to discuss this, all of it.” Brenda remarks and the three of you sit down to do just that. Edgar starts off by saying that while he respects what you’ve done, he doesn’t think that you’re going about things the right way and that you’re still thinking like “The Empire” and clinging to the old way of doing things. He points out that within his new regime he’s pushed for advances in weapon technology like the Felkan Kingdom has and managed to even “acquire” such gunpowder based weapons. He’s also managed to get a few mages to help in getting the Eternal process started again. When you bring up your experience with the new Eternals, Edgar reassures you that they don’t have the discipline issues at all anymore. He says he’s manages to instill the pride of being an Eternal into them and they’ve shaped up enough to no longer behave like the bloodthirsty children you knew them to be. He also says the next generation of Eternals are almost ready to prove their worth now as well and says he has made sure that their training was stricter and more in line with how you were trained. “Don’t you see I’m creating a new nation like the Empire, but how it should’ve been run! A nation run by us Eternals! Only we are able to efficiently run things. The lessers can either wisely listen to us, or be crushed underfoot.” “That sounds very nice Edgar, but what is our place in this new nation?” you ask. “Well, you’d be helping of course! I mean we would be ruling as…uh…a council! Yes! A council of three! The Eternal Council!” “A council huh? Don’t you think that might ruin your standing with the new eternals who you’ve probably conditioned to listen to a single strong leader?” you ask. “And they’ll still listen to me, because if they don’t they’ll get executed!” “So…you’d actually be in charge then.” “Well yes. I mean no. I mean…fuck, why are you fighting me on this!? I just want us to all work together again like we should’ve been doing a long time ago!” Edgar says in an exasperated tone. He’s actually getting upset. You’re not really being a dick on purpose, but you have a lot of reservations about this plan Edgar has, even if he has genuine good intentions. Brenda has been fairly silent for a while, but she suddenly stands up and says to Edgar that she needs to speak to you outside. He says okay, but is obviously troubled by how this is going. Brenda and you leave and after dismissing the soldiers standing outside, you’re standing in an empty corridor. “I think we should join Edgar.” Brenda says. “What? Just like that? You’d be giving up control of your own nation. Don’t you have some concerns?” “Not really. I think you heard me say not too long ago, that I never wanted it. And you heard him, it sounds like Edgar’s done a good job so far and just wants our help.” “And I’m not sure if I want to. I know he claims to have those second generation Eternals under control, but I just don’t trust them. And now he’s saying there’s a whole new batch to deal with.” “I’m sure we can handle it, that’s probably why he wants us to help. Besides, we’d be with others of our kind at least; don’t you wish for that sometimes? To not constantly be alone?” “Maybe my experiences are different, but not particularly. Besides, you’re not alone. You’ve got me.” There is an uncomfortable silence with that statement. The unresolved issue between the pair of you has reared its ugly head again. “I know, but I still have conflicting feelings about you and if we don’t join Edgar he’s going to declare war on us. Can we truly have any sort of meaningful relationship then? Would you become less focused with me on the back of your mind? If we join Edgar, the pressure to constantly run things would be off of us. We would have time to explore the potential for a deeper relationship. Look, I know your feelings on the new Eternals, but I don’t think it’s just that. You’re in charge here at least in the military aspect of things, which quite frankly is the only thing that does matter to you. You don’t want to give that up and I understand, but I think you need to look at the bigger picture here.” > You join Edgar Maybe Brenda’s got a point; maybe you need to let go of your control a bit. Edgar has certainly proven to be a more capable leader than when you last knew him, and he seems to genuinely want you and Brenda to have an equal partnership. You’re still a little skeptical of that, but you’ll see how it goes. There’s also your unresolved situation with Brenda. She has feelings for you and you realize you do have them for her. If there is the potential for something deeper here, maybe it would be better if the pressures of potential war with the Eternal Dominion were eliminated. Plus she wants to join, and you feel as if trusting in her judgment would be a positive step in your relationship. “Okay Brenda. I agree. Let’s join the Eternal Dominion.” You say. Brenda smiles and gives you a hug added with a kiss, which startles you a little. You both very nearly make out in the hallway, but then you remember Edgar is still waiting for you. You and Brenda return to the room where Edgar looks a bit on edge. You decide to let Brenda break the news to him. “Edgar, we’ve talked it over and we accept your offer.” Edgar looks incredibly relieved and leaps out of his seat to shake both of your hands. “Great! That’s great! Whew! For a moment I thought you weren’t going to go for it, but I should’ve known you’d see the wisdom in this! This is going to be the best thing for all of us! You’ll see!” “You realize, there’s going to be a lot of things to sort out Edgar.” You say. “Oh yeah! I know we’ll hammer out the details and we’ll be equals in this. You don’t know what this means to me! The rest of our family united again, nothing can stop us! Not even that traitor Warrick!” “Warrick?” you and Brenda ask in unison. “Yeah, he joined the Felkan Kingdom didn’t you know? He joined a former enemy of the Empire! I guess you two probably wouldn’t know being so far away from it and all. Oh well, doesn’t matter we’ll take him down like with did with Kane! Eh? Remember that?” Edgar says nudging you. “Yeah I remember Edgar.” You reply. Edgar is so happy right now, you think he’s almost about to cry. It’s definitely not a side you’ve ever seen of him before. “Ah, well I wish I could stick around longer to celebrate, but I have to return. Got some things to take care of and prepare before the great merging of our territories! But we’ll be seeing a lot of each other soon enough!” Edgar leaves in good spirits and biding you both goodbye. As you and Brenda see him ride off, you shake your head in almost disbelief after all that’s happened today. “It’s been an overly emotionally day for you today I imagine.” Brenda says. “You’re not joking. I guess I am an emotionless golem compared to the rest of you.” “Oh I wouldn’t say that. You handled everything very well, for a golem.” “Heh. I just hope this is the right decision.” “You still think you and Edgar will clash?” “After today, it’s not really Edgar that I’m concerned about, there’s still all those newer generation of Eternals to deal with. I hope Edgar really does have them under control.” “I’m sure everything will be fine. Odd news about Warrick though, thought he was dead.” “Yeah, that was just one of the many surprises today.” “Well enough about them, I think we’ve got us to discuss.” You and Brenda retire to your quarters at Fort Glory. After an hour or so of talking, you both decide that it’s time to take it to the more physical side of things. The night of passion you spend with Brenda is just one of many you hope in the years to come. Year 53 You and Brenda now oversee the Nalin territory as a married couple. The transition hasn’t been a completely easy one, there was a lot of outright dissent when the announcement that Nalin was going to be annexed by the Eternal Dominion. Many of the citizens saw you and Brenda as their protectors against the ED, and then you went and joined it, and they had no say in the matter. Multiple rebellions had to be put down, Edgar wanted to send in Eternals to take care of the problem, but you and Brenda disagreed with that idea as it would just reinforce the fears of the less rebellious population. You instead resorted to more traditional means using normal Nalin troops, though your soldiers weren’t exactly happy about it as they felt betrayed as well. While things in Nalin eventually settled down, the area feels like it could erupt with another rebellion at any time. You and Brenda haven’t really been able to enjoy your newfound relationship with all the problems cropping up, though you do make the time when you can. In the meantime Edgar has suggested that you and Brenda move into the royal palace and live there instead. He’s wanted you to do that for some time. He’s also been hinting and letting the Eternals go in and reinforce law and order at Nalin once and for all. “We’ve already joined the Eternal Dominion why not leave and live in the palace? It is the capital after all and we are partial rulers.” Brenda asks. “Because there’s still problems here and I’d like to fix them before traipsing off to some cushy palace.” You reply. “You’re just stalling. We’ve done the best we can to get this place to assimilate, and at this point it really would be for the best to let the Eternals come in and maintain the order now. We’ve moved beyond this, and we deserve spending some downtime together. Besides, I would’ve at least thought you’d want to talk with Edgar about his battle plans to invade the Felkan Kingdom. Best way you can do that is to be at the palace.” “Because…ah shit. You’re right. I am stalling. It’s still hard to let go of personally managing this place I suppose. There’s also the fact that I still don’t like the idea of having to deal with those second gen Eternals on a daily basis.” “Oh come on, you’ve spoken with some of them when we visited the palace before. They all seem pretty respectful.” Brenda says. “Yeah, I suppose, I dunno…okay let’s move to the palace. I suppose we do deserve the break of living on the edge of dirty peasants possibly storming the gates.” Brenda moves closer and hugs you in a loving way and kisses you. Despite all the shit you’ve had to deal with concerning Nalin, you’ve never felt happier than you have with Brenda. It is still weird to you that you can even feel this way. You never thought it was possible to feel so comfortable with another person on this sort of level, not even with another Eternal. Brenda has a way about her that manages to make you feel like everything is going to be okay. Safe even. You and Brenda send word to Edgar that you’re both making your preparations to move and he sends a letter back stating how pleased he is and will send one of his personal royal carriages to come pick you. You accept, what the hell, why not ride in needless luxury? You both pack what you can and intend on sending for the rest of your things later. The pair of you board the carriage when it arrives and settle in for a long ride. “See, told you the new Eternals respect us, you saw how polite our drivers are.” Brenda says. “Well these ones seem to be anyway. But I have been thinking more about it and I’m starting to accept the idea of making this change. I’ve been thinking of some ideas about Edgar’s plans for the Felkan Kingdom invasion.” “I figured you’d see a bright side to it.” “Yeah, he’s going to need my direct help on that plan. I’m just glad I managed to talk him out of invading Rask. That would’ve been a disaster.” You excitedly tell Brenda what you plan to tell Edgar for the Felkan Kingdom invasion, and she listens intently, but also gives her own input on some things. You take some of her ideas into consideration and generally enjoy this time you have. Later the pair of you begin to drift off together, not exactly the easiest thing to do in a carriage, but you’ve always been a light sleeper any way. Times passes and then suddenly… “SHIT! ATTACK!” you hear one of the Eternal drivers shout followed by the sound of a pistol shot. You instantly wake up and Brenda does likewise. You look out the window on your side and see several people armed with bows firing at the carriage. You then hear a loud crash that sounds like it came from in front of you, then the carriage screeches to a halt. The sounds of dying whinnies of horses soon follow. You grab your own flintlock and fire off a shot from inside the carriage; Brenda meanwhile loads up her bow and fires off arrows from her side. You can hear the two Eternal drivers jumping off and yelling about getting to cover and closing the gap on these attackers. That’s exactly what you had in mind; you never did get the hang of these gunpowder weapons. You step out of the carriage and head for the nearest tree to get some cover. You look over at the other two Eternals ducked behind a large rock and motion them to run around the other way to help Brenda, They seem to understand. In the meantime you manage to dodge arrows by ducking tree to tree and when you finally close the gap, you cleave one of your attackers’ heads clean off. The rest of them draw their own swords and axes to attack, but in close combat it’s no contest. You dispatch all of them with ease. They don’t appear to be the unwashed rabble you’ve been pissing off lately, they’re too well armed and armored. You doubt if they’re simple bandits either. These are probably mercenaries, but you don’t have time to figure out right now who hired them, you turn around to go help Brenda. By the time you get to the half destroyed carriage again, you don’t hear anymore sounds of battle. When you see the Brenda’s side of the carriage has been opened and some blood stain you begin to worry. Running over to the other side, you see several bodies of the attackers and then a few feet away, you see Brenda lying face down on the ground. Your heart sinks. You run over to her and turn her over and your worst fears are confirmed, her eyes show no signs of life. Your eyes begin to water and a mixture of rage and sorrow causes you to cry out. As you hold her body you don’t see any arrow or sword wounds, you do notice two gunshots to her chest though… Upon the realization of who killed your beloved Brenda, you don’t even get to face the treacherous dogs. The two Eternal drivers blast you from afar, one shot to your back and one to your head, killing you instantly. Your deaths are blamed on an ambush by some of the disgruntled population of Nalin. To his credit, Edgar doesn’t believe the story and has the two Eternals executed for suspicion and incompetence. It’s of minor consequence though, the real conspirators of this assassination remain uncaught and you’re still dead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and Brenda might have a bit more on your mind now, but this is much more important. “Brenda, I know emotions are running high right now, but I think we need to go meet Edgar. We can talk more about this later.” You say. “Yes. Yes, of course. We need to get back to business. I’ll be okay. This was silly anyway. Need to focus.” Brenda says standing back up and wiping her eyes. You and Brenda ride off to Fort Glory. The ride there is done with minimal talking, but that’s sort of to be expected. The thing is you never seriously thought about Brenda in that way until she just brought it up today. Sure you always knew you had that bond from both of you being Eternals and the fact that you’ve served together for so long. You may have even had the occasional sexual thought about her, but like you said to her, you always figured she would’ve carried a torch for Roldan. You would’ve just been a substitute at best. Now you’re having scenarios in your head about the two of you being together in a closer way and you really shouldn’t be thinking about that at this moment. Maybe she’s right in a way maybe if you did have something together it would cause you to lose your edge. It’s certainly clouding your judgment right now and you’re not even together. When you get to Fort Glory you’re told that Edgar is waiting for you in your meeting room. When you ask how he seems, the soldiers say he’s been stand offish, but not overly hostile. About what you expected. When you and Brenda reach the meeting room, you ask her if she’s ready, and she remarks that she is. The door opens and you both step in and see Edgar sitting in a chair with a big grin on his face. He stands up and addresses the both of you. “Well it’s about time! I’ve missed the both of you! Come here!” he says jovially with his arms out walking towards you. “Uh… yeah, hey Edgar. Good to see you too.” Brenda says when he gives her a big hug. Looks like it’s going to be a day of surprises… Edgar stops hugging Brenda and then looks at you. You stand a little back from him as you don’t want to be hugged, but Edgar doesn’t try it. “Oh don’t worry, I know you’re the serious minded Bane of Rask! Bane of Nalin too now I hear! Heh, but how are you?” “I’m fine Edgar.” You say. “Good, good. I just have to say it’s really great seeing the both of you again! I mean you two are like my brother and sister! No, you ARE my brother and sister!” The last time you heard this sort of sibling talk before was from Kane and if you weren’t wary before, you certainly are now. “Edgar, I’m glad you seem to be in a good mood and all, but I sent envoys to contact you several times in the past and none of them ever returned. We always assumed you had them killed and were angry at us.” Brenda says. “You did? When was the last one?” “Mmm, last one was about six years ago I believe. After that, I saw no need to waste lives.” “Aw! You should’ve kept sending them! I don’t know if you’re aware of just how much anarchy and infighting I’ve had to put up with! Those envoys probably got killed by the new Eternals and nobody ever told me about it! Hell, they might’ve even gotten killed by run of the mill bandits, it was pretty lawless back in the early days! Shit, if I had known you guys weren’t pissed at ME, I would’ve made this trek sooner!” “Wait, so you weren’t mad at us?” “Mad at you guys? What the hell for?! Oh you mean seceding from the Empire? Well I have to say I was more shocked than angry about that. I mean YOU especially.” Edgar says pointing at you. “But in time I heard about what you two were doing down here and I respected what the pair of you were attempting to do.” You and Brenda look at each other, wondering what Edgar THINKS you both were trying to do. “Oh? And what was that exactly?” Brenda asks. “You saw that the Empire was a lost cause, but you were trying to uphold a portion of it, though this patch of territory. I’ve heard about your great success in keeping order and how you’ve even added more land to your nation. Only an Eternal could do something like that and that’s why both of you were successful!” Edgar isn’t far off, at least from your perspective. Though he probably has a more idealistic vision of it than the reality, which was this; you didn’t know where else to go and over time Nalin was transformed into a “mini Empire” because you didn’t know any other way. Brenda’s reasons are probably based on simple emotional attachment. “Well, we were doing the best we could under the circumstances, but you forged a whole new nation, so you’ve been successful too Edgar.” Brenda says. “Ah yes, but it wasn’t easy! There were many times I almost wanted to give up and come join you two! But I knew I couldn’t do that, I had a vision that I had to make work! A nation run by Eternals and I’m proud to say it’s all finally coming together and I think it’s finally time for us, to reunite like we were meant to!” You and Brenda look at each other again. “Edgar, I don’t think it’s quite as simple as all that. We’re going to have to discuss this, all of it.” Brenda remarks and the three of you sit down to do just that. Edgar starts off by saying that while he respects what you’ve done, he doesn’t think that you’re going about things the right way and that you’re still thinking like “The Empire” and clinging to the old way of doing things. He points out that within his new regime he’s pushed for advances in weapon technology like the Felkan Kingdom has and managed to even “acquire” such gunpowder based weapons. He’s also managed to get a few mages to help in getting the Eternal process started again. When you bring up your experience with the new Eternals, Edgar reassures you that they don’t have the discipline issues at all anymore. He says he’s manages to instill the pride of being an Eternal into them and they’ve shaped up enough to no longer behave like the bloodthirsty children you knew them to be. He also says the next generation of Eternals are almost ready to prove their worth now as well and says he has made sure that their training was stricter and more in line with how you were trained. “Don’t you see I’m creating a new nation like the Empire, but how it should’ve been run! A nation run by us Eternals! Only we are able to efficiently run things. The lessers can either wisely listen to us, or be crushed underfoot.” “That sounds very nice Edgar, but what is our place in this new nation?” you ask. “Well, you’d be helping of course! I mean we would be ruling as…uh…a council! Yes! A council of three! The Eternal Council!” “A council huh? Don’t you think that might ruin your standing with the new eternals who you’ve probably conditioned to listen to a single strong leader?” you ask. “And they’ll still listen to me, because if they don’t they’ll get executed!” “So…you’d actually be in charge then.” “Well yes. I mean no. I mean…fuck, why are you fighting me on this!? I just want us to all work together again like we should’ve been doing a long time ago!” Edgar says in an exasperated tone. He’s actually getting upset. You’re not really being a dick on purpose, but you have a lot of reservations about this plan Edgar has, even if he has genuine good intentions. Brenda has been fairly silent for a while, but she suddenly stands up and says to Edgar that she needs to speak to you outside. He says okay, but is obviously troubled by how this is going. Brenda and you leave and after dismissing the soldiers standing outside, you’re standing in an empty corridor. “I think we should join Edgar.” Brenda says. “What? Just like that? You’d be giving up control of your own nation. Don’t you have some concerns?” “Not really. I think you heard me say not too long ago, that I never wanted it. And you heard him, it sounds like Edgar’s done a good job so far and just wants our help.” “And I’m not sure if I want to. I know he claims to have those second generation Eternals under control, but I just don’t trust them. And now he’s saying there’s a whole new batch to deal with.” “I’m sure we can handle it, that’s probably why he wants us to help. Besides, we’d be with others of our kind at least; don’t you wish for that sometimes? To not constantly be alone?” “Maybe my experiences are different, but not particularly. Besides, you’re not alone. You’ve got me.” There is an uncomfortable silence with that statement. The unresolved issue between the pair of you has reared its ugly head again. “I know, but I still have conflicting feelings about you and if we don’t join Edgar he’s going to declare war on us. Can we truly have any sort of meaningful relationship then? Would you become less focused with me on the back of your mind? If we join Edgar, the pressure to constantly run things would be off of us. We would have time to explore the potential for a deeper relationship. Look, I know your feelings on the new Eternals, but I don’t think it’s just that. You’re in charge here at least in the military aspect of things, which quite frankly is the only thing that does matter to you. You don’t want to give that up and I understand, but I think you need to look at the bigger picture here.” > You don't join Edgar Brenda’s argument that you don’t want to give up a lot of your autonomy is correct in many ways. Perhaps you are a little stuck in the past as well. You still remember having to save Edgar’s life on more than one occasion. The idea of him telling you what to do is something that just doesn’t sit right with you, even if you have put away your differences with him a long time ago. His council idea, while a valiant attempt is doomed to failure. Ultimately there can only be one real leader and while you don’t mind following Brenda, you are not going to follow Edgar. The moment you disagree with him on something major it’s going to get ugly again. “Brenda I understand that you’re officially in charge of Nalin so ultimately it is your decision, but call it pride or even a hunch, but I feel that joining with Edgar would only lead to bad things occurring. What we control now is stable and with minimal chaos, maybe it isn’t the Empire or even the Eternal Dominion, but it is ours. If Edgar declares war on us for not joining, then so be it. At least that tells us where we always stood with him in the first place. And as for us, well if there is anything at all between us, then that relationship won’t be effected whether we’re at war with Edgar or not, so you shouldn’t even let that cloud your judgment on this matter.” “And what if I decided that we should join with the Eternal Dominion? Would you leave?” Brenda asks. “Honestly I don’t know what I’d do…(sigh) I suppose I’d support your decision even though I didn’t agree with it. Where that would leave us as far as a relationship is concerned, well as I said before, if there is anything genuine and meant to be there, then it’ll survive it. Wouldn’t change my feelings for you.” Brenda smiles at your remark. The first you’ve seen her do so all day. She then approaches and kisses you and you embrace her. You then both remember you’ve got Edgar waiting for an answer. You and Brenda return to the room where Edgar looks a bit on edge. You decide to let Brenda break the news to him. “Edgar, I’m sorry, but we both feel that Nalin should remain independent of the Eternal Dominion at this time.” “But…but you’ve seen everything I’ve done! I’ve done all this for us! Eternals! Don’t you see that?!” Edgar says in an aspirated tone. “We…know you did and we appreciate it, but I think our path is different from yours.” Brenda says and then looks at you. Edgar notices this and tries a different tactic. “Oh wait. You two are together now? Well that’s great! I mean I wasn’t aware of it, but that’s great! You weren’t worried I was going to try anything did you? Ha ha, I’ve got tons of concubines! I wouldn’t dream of coming between you two! Heh, so if that was your only concern, you can join me and…” “No Edgar, it’s not that. We’re just happy with the way things are, but thank you all the same.” Brenda says. And here it comes. Edgar’s face changes to red and he begins breathing heavier. “HAPPY? How the fuck can you two be so damn happy living in such mediocrity?! You’re fucking Eternals! We’re supposed to be ruling the fucking world! You two are no better than that traitor Warrick!” “Warrick?” you and Brenda ask in unison. “Yeah, he joined the Felkan Kingdom didn’t you know? He joined a former enemy of the Empire! Of course you two probably haven’t been keeping up on events since you’ve been playing grab ass with each other for the past fifteen years! By the Emperor’s dead cock, you didn’t wait long for Roldan to be dead did you?” This remark causes Brenda’s calm demeanor to shift entirely and she stands up and draws her weapon. “You say one more fucking thing about my dead husband, and I’ll send you back to the Eternal Dominion in fucking pieces!” Edgar draws his own weapon, but was a little surprised by her response. It’s all you can do to hold Brenda back. “Alright, I think…” you start to say before Edgar cuts you off. “And you! What the fuck happened to you? You were supposed to be the BEST of us! You were the one that was the leader! Now look at you! You’re following Brenda because she’s spread her legs for you? Where the hell are your balls? You know when we were young I disliked you a lot, but I always respected you. After our escape from Fort Defiance I liked you as well as respected you. Now? I can’t say I feel either.” “Okay Edgar…” “Out of all of us YOU were the one that was supposed to prevent the Empire from falling! What did you do? You ran away! You know what I did? I stayed until the bitter end picking up the pieces! I saw the fucking capital in flames! I tried so hard to prevent it…I tried…and you didn’t help me, (sob) none of you did…” At this point Edgar collapses back in his seat sobbing and going on about how he failed. His motivations for everything he’s done are a little clearer now. Even after the verbal abuse he laid down on Brenda, she sees now he probably didn’t mean any of it. After all these years, Edgar is still like a teenager trying to prove himself by over compensating. You actually feel sorry for him. You can only imagine the internal torment he’s been going through all these years since the Empire fell. Justifications, rationalizations, outright blocking out reality, he’s probably done it all. You sit down next to Edgar and pat him on the back. “Edgar. There was nothing any of us could’ve done. It was a doomed mission to begin with. You did your best and that’s all anyone could’ve done. Even an Eternal.” Edgar tries to compose himself while you give your pep talk. “You’ve accomplished much and you should be proud of your achievements on their own merits, not as compensation for perceived failings. This is your path and your destiny. Brenda and I, we have our own path.” “Okay…okay…” Edgar sniffles. Before he leaves he apologizes to Brenda and says he has no intention on invading Nalin, but he still hopes that one day you’ll reconsider in joining him “It’s possible. Perhaps one day our paths will reunite.” You answer. “I hope that day will be soon, goodbye my Eternal brother.” Has says extending his hand. “Goodbye Edgar.” You reply and shake his hand. After Edgar leaves the fort you sit down and run your hands over your face and taking a deep breath from all the emotional baggage you had to put up with today. “It’s been an overly emotionally day for you today I imagine.” Brenda says. “You’re not joking. I guess I am an emotionless golem compared to the rest of you.” “Oh I wouldn’t say that. You handled everything very well, for a golem.” “Heh. Well anyway that’s one less thing to worry about.” “You don’t think we shouldn’t still be concerned about him? I mean I know he said he wouldn’t invade, but there’s always the possibility of a sneak attack.” “Edgar’s a lot of things, but he not a backstabber. At least he wouldn’t be for us. If he ever does decide to do it, I promise you, it’ll be announced in a very dramatic fashion weeks in advance.” “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Odd news about Warrick though, thought he was dead.” “Yeah, that was just one of the many surprises today. But I guess that was his path and how he dealt with the fall. It’s all in the past now anyway, I’m not going to judge him.” “Well enough about them, I think we’ve got us to discuss.” You and Brenda retire to your quarters at Fort Glory. After an hour or so of talking, you both decide that it’s time to take it to the more physical side of things. The night of passion you spend with Brenda is just one of many in the years to come. > Year 55 You and Brenda now rule the nation of Nalin as a married couple. There has been some issue on what your official titles are now. The simplest choices would be emperor and empress or king and queen. Eventually Brenda settled for imperatrix, which would officially make you imperator, though you still go by general for the most part. In any case life has been good. You don’t even mind that things have been slow since you conquered all those tribals in the east. You’ve been taking a slightly more active role in running the nation from an administrative point of view, but sometimes you still long for the day of a good battle. When that day comes you’ve also tried to keep up on the changing times of changing warfare. While the days of close combat are far from over, if the Eternal Dominion is starting to slowly incorporate firearms into their ranks, then you better do likewise if only to maintain a show of strength. The ED isn’t hostile though and you maintain a good trading relationship with them. Edgar still hopes you’re going to join him one day, especially since you know he’s got designs on going to war with the Felkan Kingdom (You gave him some friendly advice to not bother with invading Rask). He’d probably like you to at least be involved in a joint military operation with him, but you think he’s over extending himself and the Felkan Kingdom is no pushover. It’s not exactly like you’re near the Felkan Kingdom as far as location is concerned either. All you’d be doing is having soldiers die in a war that doesn’t even directly benefit your nation. That being said, Nalin hasn’t sided with the Felkan Kingdom either in any way. Again, due to your location, you’ve had minimal contact with them. Brenda thought about allying with them in the past, but that was never seriously considered (Good thing too). Somehow though you imagine you’re going to get dragged into this saber rattling between the Eternal Dominion and the Felkan Kingdom. Funny how that feeling turns out to be true. Late one night you and Brenda are awakened from your sleep. Some envoy from the Felkan Kingdom has sudden decided to show up in the middle of the night. Demanding to see the pair of you and claiming it’s very urgent. You and Brenda don’t get much sleep as it is, so you’re inclined to tell your soldiers to just shoot him and go back to bed, but you’ve got a good idea of who it is. “You really think it’s him?” Brenda ask. “You really think it isn’t? It was only a matter of time. Ugh, I guess we better get this over with.” You shout at the guard behind the door to hold the envoy in the meeting room and keep a close eye on him until you and Brenda get there. After grumbling and getting dress you and Brenda head to the meeting room where you see a familiar face. He’s missing an eye, all of his hair and his face has a few more winkles and scars on it now, but you still recognize him. “Warrick, you better have a damn good reason for waking us up in the middle of the night.” You say. “…you aren’t surprised it’s me?” “Not really, I actually thought you’d show up sooner, and how the hell did you manage to join the Felkan Kingdom anyway?” “It’s a long story…but well anyway, I’m glad to see you both. I was surprised to hear about your marriage. Didn’t think that…” “Warrick, I’m tired as well. It’s not easy running a nation and I’ve been doing it even longer than my husband has, so get to the damn point of the visit or let this wait until tomorrow.” Brenda demands rubbing one of her eyes. Warrick looks a little hurt by your remarks, but he gets on with it. “Very well, to business. The Felkan Kingdom wants an alliance with you.” “Yeah sort of figured that. Anything else?” you ask. “Erm, no, but…” “Okay then, the answer is no. We can talk more about old times tomorrow, if you want. Good night.” Brenda says starting to turn around to go back to bed. “Hey wait! No? Just like that?! You don’t even want to consider the benefits?” Warrick asks. “What benefits? If we ally with the Felkan Kingdom, all it’s going to do is piss off the Eternal Dominion who we have a good relationship with diplomatically and tradewise. What is the Felkan Kingdom going to offer?” Brenda replies. “How the fact that we’re more likely to leave you alone after the war with the Eternal Dominion is over?” “Warrick…Warrick…you should know threats aren’t going to sway us.” You remark. “What?! NO! I meant, argh look. What I’m saying is if the unfortunate should happen and the Eternal Dominion wins don’t you think that they’ll try to invade you next?” “I suppose it’s possible yes.” “Whereas if the Felkan Kingdom wins, we have no intention on even expanding our borders.” “Probably true, but that still doesn’t help us during the war. A war that is really between you and the ED.” “I can’t believe I’m trying to convince YOU of all people to go to war. I would’ve thought you would’ve jumped at this chance!” Warrick says in a raised tone. “Things change Warrick, and just because I’m not jumping through your hoops doesn’t mean I’ve lost a taste for battle. But I’m thinking on a grander scale now. Going to war with the Eternal Dominion doesn’t do us or Nalin any good. It’s just going to result in dead soldiers at best. We’ve found that our continued expansion eastward is much better in building up the country. Maximum gain with minimum losses.” You say. Warrick paces a bit and sputters. He obviously thought this was going to go better. “So that’s it then huh? You just take Edgar’s side over mine. I thought you didn’t like him anyway.” “Warrick, it’s not about taking sides. If you haven’t noticed we’re not exactly allied with the ED either. We trade with them and are on friendly terms, but that’s out of convenience more than anything. Trust me, Edgar’s been trying to get us to join for years. I don’t know what you’re even worried about, the Eternal Dominion is formidable I’m sure, but the Felkan Kingdom survived a war with the Empire. I’m guessing you should be able to handle the ED.” “I don’t know if we can.” He calmly states. There’s a moment of silence where you weren’t expecting him to say such a thing so blatantly like that. “Look, I didn’t want to say anything. The Felkan Kingdom is what I serve now and I serve it to the best of my abilities as I did the Empire. To do anything less would be a failure as an Eternal on my part.” “But?” “But I see the weaknesses that we have and I can’t ignore them. It’s not public knowledge to anyone outside the kingdom, but we’re also suffering a large gnoll invasion from the west. It caught us completely by surprise. The Felkan Kingdom is a mighty nation, but right now it’s straining its resources just to stay alive. A war with the ED…and we all know it’s coming, could break us. The funny thing is I feel like I’m in the Empire all over again. You know during the bad times.” “I think they were ALL bad times Warrick. We just made the best of them.” Brenda says. “Perhaps. (sigh) I guess I can’t convince you ally with us, I mean you’ve got a good thing going on here and you shouldn’t wreck it. I’m glad. Glad that some of us are doing well. But couldn’t you at least break off your trade routes? I mean that would at least cause Edgar’s attention to be diverted. He might suspect you’re up to something and not attack the Felkan Kingdom. At least not right away. It might be enough time for us to put up a better defense.” “Yeah and he might also attack us instead.” Brenda remarks. “I don’t think he will, because then he has to divert his own soldiers and resources and then he’ll be worried that we will attack. He can’t fight a two front war, even Edgar’s smart enough not to risk that. And that’s if he dares fighting you in the first place.” “That’s a big if, there Warrick.” You say. You and Brenda tell Warrick you’ll both discuss this in a little more detail outside. He says he understands and will await your decision. You and Brenda don’t have too much to talk about really, since it’s basically coming down to helping out a former comrade in arms and starting a possible war with another one or avoiding the situation entirely. Brenda is for staying neutral; oddly you’re actually of two minds of this. > You stay neutral As much as you might like to help Warrick out, you just really aren’t in a position to do so on any meaningful level. Breaking your trade routes with the Eternal Dominion is just foolish. You tell Brenda you’ll break the news this time. You both enter the room where Warrick awaits your answer. “Sorry Warrick, while we do understand your troubles, we can’t help you. What you’re asking for is too much and we see no benefit for us or Nalin in general.” Warrick’s face doesn’t drop and he doesn’t get any angrier, All in all, he takes your response a lot better than Edgar did. “Very well. I shall tell my superiors that you are not interested in any sort of alliance with us. I hope that one day this may change. I suppose I will also take my leave now, sorry to have bothered the both of you, but it was still good to see you again.” He says and leaves immediately. You and Brenda remark on he was probably more disappointed than he let on, but what’s done is done and you’ve all made your choices now. The pair of you go back to bed and try to get some sleep. Year 56 “We’ve got to do something about this epidemic. If this keeps up we’re not going to have a population left to rule over!” Brenda says. “Well so far the problem has hit the eastern territory of Nalin yet. We’ve scoured the land for healers, medics and a few hedge wizards and they’re doing all they can, but this thing is really bad in a few of the towns. I’ve quarantined all of the major areas where this plague is taking place, but understandably a lot the soldiers aren’t exactly keen on their duties there mainly because they don’t want to get sick either. The only ones who aren’t kicking up much of a fuss about it are soldiers with families in those towns.” You reply. “(Sigh) Shit. I’ve talked to all of the advisors and nobody has a clue where, who and why this thing might’ve started. You got any ideas?” “Unfortunately the only one I can think of just a hunch, and I’d rather not believe it. I think Warrick, or at least the Felkan Kingdom had something to do with it. For all we know they could’ve had saboteurs in here for years planning this.” “If it was them, I hope Edgar rips them a new asshole now that he’s at war with them.” “Be that as it may, I’m still hoping that wasn’t the case, not because I don’t want to believe a former friend could do this to us, but more because it doesn’t reflect well on my duties to protect the nation. I mean if the Felkan Kingdom had saboteurs here, how was it that I didn’t see it until now?” “You can’t start doubting yourself, we need to focus on the problem at hand first.” “You’re right of course. Well as I see it, if we really want to stop the plague, we need to kill everyone in the quarantined areas, then cleanse everything with fire.” “Wait, hold on. There’s no other way? Can’t we just have more medics and healers transferred to those places?” “I don’t see what good that would do. From the reports a lot of these people are practically dead or dying as it is. It doesn’t do any good for them to linger and possibly get others sick. Better to just kill them now and save the medics to observe the places that only have a few sick people.” “You do realize that something like this is not going to be popular right? I mean are the soldiers even going to be willing to do such a thing?” “Well we try pretty hard to keep up the old ways of Empire indoctrination, I don’t think we should have major problems, though I suppose those with families might protest (Sigh) I guess we’ll have to take care of them as well.” “This isn’t sounding like a great idea. Maybe we should just keep the quarantine and let them all slowly die off. We could always say we’re looking for a cure, and whether one comes or not, the problem will take care of itself.” Brenda suggests. “The problem with that plan is we’re diverting soldiers from more important duties and continuing to risk lives that can still be useful to Nalin.” You say. You and Brenda weigh the pros and cons of your limited choices. > You kill everyone in the quarantine Ultimately, when in doubt killing everyone has worked for you on several occasions in the past, no reason to change tactic now. Brenda really doesn’t think this is such a good idea, but you convince her that if there is going to be problems you might as well get them over with quickly. First thing you do is get every remaining “old guard” officer that’s still serving since the days of the Empire and have them put in charge of this operation. You know they won’t even question this command coming from you. Then you tell them to go through their personnel rosters to see who is going to be up for this grim task. You personally suggest to include all of those elves you made into orphans years ago. While they may all be good indoctrinated soldiers now, you think they wouldn’t hesitate at a chance to kill some humans and would be good candidates for this job. Besides, elves seem to be more resistant to the plague anyway. Three entire towns are put to the sword, gun and torch until there is nothing left, but burned corpses and hollowed out buildings. In keeping with non-humans being seemingly less affected by the plague, you have kobolds remove the bodies and clean out what they can. They’re more than happy to do this as they get the chance to loot some stuff for their own impoverished reservation you’ve set aside for them. This action causes an outcry, which hasn’t been seen in a long time. Not even when conscription was implemented were things this bad. As predicted you have to execute several soldiers who took up arms against you during the cleansing. Many Nalin citizens aren’t happy with the fact that you’ve implemented several non-humans in helping with this massacre as well. Indeed some begin calling you their inhuman “Eternal overlords.” As far as the plague goes, you did successfully wipe it out from being an ongoing danger. Medics, healers and the like are able to focus their attentions on the places where it’s less of a problem and eventually it is gone completely. The repercussions of this action are that you now have a split nation. Eastern Nalin is still prosperous as the plague barely even reached the area. You also still have all of your supporters mainly from there who appreciate the fact that you stopped the plague from spreading. Western Nalin however is a mess and pockets of lawlessness begin to appear. You naturally take steps in trying to curb this problem by being more oppressive… Year 60 “You want to move the capital?” “I don’t see why not. It’s obvious that eastern Nalin is where the prosperity is, I don’t see why us as rulers shouldn’t be living there instead.” Brenda remarks. “I do. By having the seat of power here, we still maintain control over this area and are displaying a show of dominance. If we go running to the east, it looks like we’re effectively abandoning the area and that’s going to make the less desirable elements here even more motivated to pursue whatever lawlessness they want. We need to maintain control.” “Well what if I don’t? Ever since the plague hit, it’s been a downward spiral for western Nalin. We’ve tried and tried to get it back to what it once was, but throwing soldiers at the problem is just a bandage. It didn’t help that you had soldiers shaking down people looking for other possible Felkan Kingdom saboteurs.” “I had to be sure to make sure something like the plague didn’t happen again!” “Look, I know you don’t like losing control of anything and we’ve had arguments about how the plague was handled to begin with, but we are in a spot now that we need to make a serious change in things if we want to avoid getting overthrown by mobs and our heads on pikes in the future.” “Oh come on, like that’s going to happen.” “I said in the future, not immediately. And don’t be so sure of yourself, you’re not twenty anymore you know.” “I know that!” “Do you? Because sometime I wonder. I love you and you’re still a great warrior and you’re probably still better than most men half your age, but you can’t go around thinking you’re invincible anymore. There are guns now you know, someone could just assassinate you from a few feet away and not even engage you in combat. The days of the Empire are over, you have to realize that.” “I know that too, Brenda.” “And that’s why you’re frustrating to deal with sometimes, because you DO know it, yet sometimes you completely lapse into the mindset of the good old days.” “So what the hell are you proposing? That we just relinquish complete control of the western Emp…Nalin? That we run and hide to the east, because it’s easier?” “Let me put this into terms you can understand. Eastern Nalin is healthy, thriving even. Western Nalin is very sick and slowly dying. It can’t be cured, so what’s the best way to deal with it? Cut it off and focus on the more important area that is still of use.” Brenda’s analogy to your idea of how you handled the plague makes sense even if you don’t want to admit it. Brenda’s right about a lot of things, you aren’t young anymore. You haven’t been for a long time and even though you aren’t even on the frontlines of any fighting anymore you find yourself getting tired and weary of the constant conflict that Nalin has been suffering from the past few years. You’ve tried to halt the ravages of time to the best of your abilities, but ultimately even as an Eternal, you’re not immune to such things. You begin to wonder if the past few years were more about you wanting to relive your “youth” a bit rather than seeking out possible traitors, saboteurs, and other dissidents. You could insist on staying and Brenda would probably go along grudgingly, but she’s also right. You’re just going to become even more hated by the citizens in this area and it only takes one dumb ass peasant with a with a gun or even a bomb, to kill you. Maybe at one point you wouldn’t have even cared if that had happened, but you’ve had a long and enjoyable life with Brenda for several years now. A relationship you never even dreamed of before it happened. You see now that want to live as long as possible with her as your older years advance, because ultimately she is the only other one you have in your life and the only other one that is going to understand you. “Okay Brenda. Let’s cut off the sick limb.” You say. Brenda is happy you see reason and her plan is set in motion. Over the next few months, the Nalin government is relocated to one of the bigger central towns in the eastern territory, Adlen. The town soon swells to become a city with the influx of people. Military is pulled out of the west next. A few soldiers desert and don’t follow in this exodus, but you just let it go. If they don’t want to be here, then it’s better off that they aren’t. Most merchants and businesses are the next to follow. After these major transfers, western Nalin is declared no longer under protection and an independent territory. This causes some debate on if eastern Nalin is still “Nalin” since technically it was never part of the territory originally. After some discussion eastern Nalin is renamed the nation Naleen. Most of the eastern citizens have oddly developed an accent in which they’ve been pronouncing “Nalin” like that anyway for years. As for Nalin, the people that still dwell there are either happy about it or too poor to move. You figure the biggest winners will be the kobolds, at least until the Eternal Dominion sends in forces to take the land, assuming they have the time and manpower. You’ve heard they’re doing well against the Felkan Kingdom, but things could always change. In any event none of it is your concern anymore. Still, you hope that this really is the last time you have to make a big move like this again, you don’t know if you want to bother with a third time. > Year 70 It’s a calm night and you stand outside on the balcony of your palace and look down at the city of Adlen. Brenda comes out to join you. “It’s good when everything is going well isn’t it?” Brenda asks. “It’s definitely going better for us now. Certainly going better than it is for Prime Eternal Edgar too.” “Always thought that was a ridiculous title. I don’t understand how he’s at a stalemate with the Felkan Kingdom, he was doing so well against them for the longest time.” “I figured he’s eventually over extend himself, though he’s also had a few personal set backs like several assassination attempts for one. From his last letter he doesn’t sound like he’s doing too well healthwise. He says the last two times he’s been stabbed, the assassin’s knife was coated with a heavy duty poison. The bolt that went into his back was too. If he wasn’t an Eternal he’d probably be dead by now.” “Well that’s better than Warrick.” “Yeah, but from that letter Edgar sent, he said Warrick died at the battle of Yaquan six years ago. Regardless of his loyalties, he died like how an Eternal is supposed to die. Edgar will be lucky if he dies from a successful assassination, because it’s sounding like the poison build up in his system might get him first. He’s sick and weak. It’s a shame really, I remember him being so hale and hearty at one time. If I were him I’d probably give up the ruling nonsense, join his soldiers in the next battle and die in one last blaze of glory.” “Is that how you wish to die? You want to go out in one last blaze of glory?” Brenda asks. “Eh, sometimes I still think about it, but not really seriously. I guess I’ve finally grown past it.” You laugh. “Didn’t think that would happen actually.” “Well, if Naleen starts suffering an unstoppable rebellion I guess I still got a shot at it. I’ll meet the unwashed mobs with sword in hand.” “Heh, well if that happens I guess I’ll join you, because I’m too old to be moving the capital again.” You both smile and hold each other side by side still looking out at the city. Yes, life is good when things are running well. Year 75 You, Brenda and your elite guards step into Edgar’s palace, and it’s every bit as impressive as you thought it would be. Lots of statues, symbols of war, etc. Certainly a lot of bigger than your humble palace, but then Edgar always was one for overcompensation. You all are taken through the palace to see Edgar, along the way you and Brenda continue to take in some of the sights. “Isn’t weird that all those years we served the Empire that this the first time we’ve ever stepped foot into this place?” Brenda says. “Yeah, Edgar must’ve spent a fortune rebuilding it.” “Did he ever actually meet the emperor?” “No he never did. He said he assumed that he either fled or burned up in the fire, by the time he got to the palace. For all we know, maybe there never was an emperor.” “Just one of life’s mysteries I guess.” Eventually you reach the royal bedroom. An older woman is sitting on a chair outside sobbing. She looks regal. You wonder if this is “Eva” that he’s referred to a couple times in his letters. She’s not exactly his queen since she’s human, but you know she is definitely his companion. Another older muscular man with a stern expression is standing nearby pacing. When you arrive, he frowns even more. “Oh so you two decided to come after all. A pity.” He says. “And who the hell are you exactly?” you ask. “Hmm, not surprised a deserter like you doesn’t remember me. My name is Rissok and I served under you during the Empire riots. I saw you kill my friend in cold blood. A true Eternal who served with honor!” “Oooooh now I remember. You and your other buddy were looting houses while Felding was attempting to rape a woman. Yeah, real honor there.” You say. “Don’t mock me! You are only here because the Prime allows it! If it were up to me, I would have you labeled as a traitor and have you killed!” At this point your guards take up a defensive stance and Rissok’s do likewise. “Well if you’re going to make a move, better do it quick.” You say. “Stop it! Stop it please! My Edgar is dying! Can’t we have one moment without murder and killing?” the woman sobs. At this point Rissok storms off without another word, the guards stick around and tell you that you and Brenda may enter at any time, but your own guards must stay outside. Before you do, Brenda addresses the woman. “We apologize, we did not mean to cause you distress. Are you Lady Eva by any chance?” “(sniff) Yes. Yes I am.” “Edgar’s spoken highly of you in his letters.” Brenda says which causes a slight smile on her face. “I know that he’s better than me in everyway being an Eternal, yet he shows such compassion and sweetness by making me, a non-eternal, his only companion. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve such an honor, but I will always be grateful for it.” Brenda asks her if she wants to come in too, but she says she has already said her goodbyes and that he wants to see you both alone when you arrive. Having no other questions, you both enter the bedroom. When you see Edgar, he’s lying in his bed and looking completely unwell. He’s pale and his face has a gaunt looking appearance. You can’t even believe this is the same man you fought along side at Fort Defiance. “Edgar?” you ask just to make sure. “(wheeze) ah…you both came…I knew you would. (cough cough) There isn’t much time…I trust you’ve read my letter?” “Yes.” “Well then you know that when my death comes, anarchy will ensue.” “Don’t you have a successor?” “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I imagine Brenda has and that’s we can’t have children.” You look at Brenda and she nods and mentions she learned that with Roldan when they were together. It’s never been a topic you’ve brought up, but you always had your suspicions. Edgar continues his speech. “We Eternals seem to be sterile or barren. I’ve had people try to look into this problem, but they haven’t come up with anything yet. It would seem what makes us superior, takes away our ability to reproduce. Maybe it’s nature balancing itself out, so that we don’t take over the world like so many of our younger eternals seem to want to do. Anyway (cough cough) I’ve drawn up official forms for the only two I think could be proper successors…” You already know where Edgar is going with this. “Oh no…don’t say that’s why you dragged us out here…Edgar they aren’t going to listen to us! We aren’t even ED citizens!” “This is rather unrealistic Edgar.” Brenda adds. “That doesn’t matter! You’re still Eternals! (wheeze cough) They’ll listen more likely than you believe, why do you think I always spoke so highly of you two? The younger ones will most likely follow without question, your major opposition will probably be the second generation…but there aren’t too many of them left, you could easily purge them all if you had to. Please…I tried to build something here…(cough) but I can’t go on any longer. The only people who can guide the Eternal Dominion into something worthier are you two. I’m asking not just as a dying man or friend …but as a (cough cough) a fellow Eternal…” You and Brenda look at each other and you both know your answer. Edgar’s trying to guilt you into this mess, but it’s just not going to work. This plan of his is doomed to fail and you know it. Every high ranking Eternal is probably going to be vying for power. And you and Brenda have your own nation, your own lives, and you’ve told Edgar this before, but it’s time to tell him one last time. “Edgar, we’re not accepting this position. First of all it’s not realistic despite what you want to believe and I think deep down you know that. Second of all, these are your final moments Edgar. Don’t worry about what you accomplished and if it’ll last. Just be proud of it now and spend your last moments with your wife or whatever you consider her. That’s who you need to be concerned about.” Edgar hacks and coughs up blood and spits it into a nearby bucket and struggles to breathe, but manages to answer you. “Very well…you’ve made your point. And you’re probably right. You usually were. (wheeze) Bring my…my wife in. I do wish to spend the last moments with her…and farewell…my Eternal siblings.” “Farewell Edgar.” You say with a nod. Brenda says goodbye as well before you both leave. You step outside and tell Eva that Edgar wants to spend his remaining time left with her. She seems happy with this idea though of course still upset. She runs in and you, Brenda and the rest of your group are escorted out and back to the carriage that brought you here. When you finally get back to Naleen, you and Brenda are both glad to be home, though you both talk for quite awhile about this recent event and how it’s odd to think that you both are going to be the only original Eternals left soon. A couple days later you get the news that Edgar has died and that the new leadership of the Eternal Dominion as of now is uncertain. Fortunately you don’t really have to worry about it. Naleen is strong enough and far enough away that any sort of chaotic attack from the new ruler is very unlikely. You suspect that most of the fighting will be within the ED itself, or pushing ahead against the Felkan Kingdom. In the meantime you wonder about your own legacy and if you’ll be remembered on any meaningful level. Brenda isn’t really concerned about it; she figures you’ll both be in the history books as the first rulers of Naleen if nothing else. That sounds fine, but you wonder if that would necessarily be the case, after all you never met the emperor, you don’t even know his name or really anything about him except what you were taught as a child and that was most definitely all propaganda. You know even less about his predecessors. History may very well remember the Empire, but information on its rulers is either going to be sketchy or non-existent in another century. Edgar will probably be forgotten in even less time. You get the idea that a solid written record is in order. “Since when are you a writer?” Brenda asks. “I’m not, but maybe we can work on this together, I mean you are part of this too.” “Well that’s certainly true. Okay, so how did you want to go about this?” > You create a book painting you in a positive light While you toy with the idea of creating a book telling the complete truth, but decide it would probably be better to just do one as a partial propaganda piece. People have enough excuses to complain about you, no need to add more sticks to the fire. “Sounds like that might be for the best. So are you going to still start from the beginning?” Brenda asks. “Well I’ll briefly touch upon some of my time serving the Empire, but I’ll mostly deal with when Nalin broke away from it and beyond. Obviously I’ll focus on the most memorable parts, not the times where I just sat around reading skirmish reports.” “Still going to take a while you realize.” “I know it’s not going to be in one night, but I feel like a lasting record of us should exist. I mean after we’re gone, who’s to say that we won’t be forgotten soon after? I mean I understand what Edgar was trying to do, but sadly I don’t think he’s going to be remembered in the scheme of things. I don’t think the Eternal Dominion is even going to survive too much longer now that he’s dead.” “Hmm, you might be right about that. So you don’t mind that the book might be excessively biased?” “Brenda, ALL history is biased in favor of its victors. Why should we be any different? Besides, I’m sure people will make up more than enough lies about us to make up for it when we’re gone.” “Heh, you’re probably right about that too. Okay then, let’s get started, I want to make sure I’m in a good portion of this history as well.” Brenda says with a smile. You and Brenda immediately get to work on your project. You and her take turns doing the writing for the most part, but the pressures of ruling sometimes get in the way, so it takes longer than it probably would have if you both didn’t have other responsibilities. Your ambitious project takes more than a few years to complete, but when it is finally finished you definitely feel a sense of accomplishment. It may not be conquering an enemy or territory or anything like that, but if this goes the way you want, you will have achieved much more than simple victory. You will have achieved a kind of immortality. The huge tome immediately copied several times when it is complete. The great thing about being a ruler is you’ve got underlings that can do this. You make sure to keep the original writing for yourself. The first copies go out to a few Naleen schools, libraries and other places of higher learning where you decree that it is to become required reading. (Another great thing about being in charge!) In time there probably isn’t a single citizen that hasn’t at least heard of the book, if not read it. There are a few criticisms about the book from intellectual types claiming that it is little more than the usual propaganda, but such people don’t voice such opinions for very long or they quickly shut up about them. For the most part though, the book brainwashes the masses enough that you at least never have to worry about any possible uprisings again. Year 101 “Brenda…did you say that our book Eternal Vigilance has reached lands outside Naleen?” you ask. “Yes, I have been told as much, but from what I’ve heard it isn’t popular like it is here. It’s been dismissed as little more than the fat musings of tyrants…that would be us.” “Ah, I suppose everyone’s a critic. Well I guess we at least we’ll probably be remembered by our subjects, for however long that lasts.” “You shouldn’t worry about such things right now, it’s not important.” “I know Brenda. I suppose it was just a last foolish attempt to keep the Empire alive. I know it sounds odd, but even though the Empire fell long ago, I still felt like it existed in a small form as long as we original Eternals lived. Silly I suppose.” “No, it was just something that you believed in. No sillier than any of the gods that people worship.” “Hrm. The gods. We never were a religious bunch were we? I wonder after I die if I’ll meet any of the gods if they even exist.” Brenda gets a bit quiet at that last statement, you don’t mean to upset her, but you’ve got to be realistic at this stage. “Brenda, I love you.” You say. “And I love you.” She says back and squeezes your hand. For a moment the two of you are just silent for a while. You’re were getting tired anyway, but the both of you don’t really need to speak to communicate. You know each other better than any two people could. You’ve been through a lot together and this is will be your final journey with her. As you begin to get sleepy, you surprise Brenda by making a small chuckle. “What’s so funny?” she asks. “Captain Gruz…he said I would outlive everyone. I’m glad to have proved him wrong.” You say and give Brenda a smile. She manages to smile back through the tears. Life is slipping away now. This your final battle against an opponent who has stalked you for over a century. “For the Empire…” you whisper as your last battle cry and finally succumb to eternal sleep. Your funeral is a big deal. All of Naleen comes out for it, and there is a lot military marching, saluting, and all of that. Various officials give several speeches in your honor about your deeds and accomplishments. Brenda says a few words, but your death has been an emotional drain on her and she saves her strength to get through the day. You’re ultimately placed in a fancy tomb with nice statues of you and Brenda in your “warrior prime” just inside the doorway of it. A couple months later Brenda joins you in death and she is placed in the same tomb by your side where upon it is sealed, shutting the pair of you in darkness forever. Your place in history is remembered best in the nation of Naleen, but as time goes on as time always does, you are remembered less fondly. Eventually there comes a day when the latest rulers have your books burned altogether as to establish their own cult of personality. Your book never reached many other far off lands and if it did, it wasn’t wide spread to cause any significant impact. The nation of Naleen goes through various changes of government systems as decades pass by and you and Brenda ultimately become just “names” of past rulers and not much more than that. Ultimately when it too ceases to be (Conquered by the great kobold/usksha alliance three hundred years later) you are forgotten altogether. Though the kobolds and usksha still stay far away from the graveyard ruins of your tomb, fearing it to be cursed and believing that disturbance will cause the vengeful spirits of the Eternals to rise up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 70 It’s a calm night and you stand outside on the balcony of your palace and look down at the city of Adlen. Brenda comes out to join you. “It’s good when everything is going well isn’t it?” Brenda asks. “It’s definitely going better for us now. Certainly going better than it is for Prime Eternal Edgar too.” “Always thought that was a ridiculous title. I don’t understand how he’s at a stalemate with the Felkan Kingdom, he was doing so well against them for the longest time.” “I figured he’s eventually over extend himself, though he’s also had a few personal set backs like several assassination attempts for one. From his last letter he doesn’t sound like he’s doing too well healthwise. He says the last two times he’s been stabbed, the assassin’s knife was coated with a heavy duty poison. The bolt that went into his back was too. If he wasn’t an Eternal he’d probably be dead by now.” “Well that’s better than Warrick.” “Yeah, but from that letter Edgar sent, he said Warrick died at the battle of Yaquan six years ago. Regardless of his loyalties, he died like how an Eternal is supposed to die. Edgar will be lucky if he dies from a successful assassination, because it’s sounding like the poison build up in his system might get him first. He’s sick and weak. It’s a shame really, I remember him being so hale and hearty at one time. If I were him I’d probably give up the ruling nonsense, join his soldiers in the next battle and die in one last blaze of glory.” “Is that how you wish to die? You want to go out in one last blaze of glory?” Brenda asks. “Eh, sometimes I still think about it, but not really seriously. I guess I’ve finally grown past it.” You laugh. “Didn’t think that would happen actually.” “Well, if Naleen starts suffering an unstoppable rebellion I guess I still got a shot at it. I’ll meet the unwashed mobs with sword in hand.” “Heh, well if that happens I guess I’ll join you, because I’m too old to be moving the capital again.” You both smile and hold each other side by side still looking out at the city. Yes, life is good when things are running well. Year 75 You, Brenda and your elite guards step into Edgar’s palace, and it’s every bit as impressive as you thought it would be. Lots of statues, symbols of war, etc. Certainly a lot of bigger than your humble palace, but then Edgar always was one for overcompensation. You all are taken through the palace to see Edgar, along the way you and Brenda continue to take in some of the sights. “Isn’t weird that all those years we served the Empire that this the first time we’ve ever stepped foot into this place?” Brenda says. “Yeah, Edgar must’ve spent a fortune rebuilding it.” “Did he ever actually meet the emperor?” “No he never did. He said he assumed that he either fled or burned up in the fire, by the time he got to the palace. For all we know, maybe there never was an emperor.” “Just one of life’s mysteries I guess.” Eventually you reach the royal bedroom. An older woman is sitting on a chair outside sobbing. She looks regal. You wonder if this is “Eva” that he’s referred to a couple times in his letters. She’s not exactly his queen since she’s human, but you know she is definitely his companion. Another older muscular man with a stern expression is standing nearby pacing. When you arrive, he frowns even more. “Oh so you two decided to come after all. A pity.” He says. “And who the hell are you exactly?” you ask. “Hmm, not surprised a deserter like you doesn’t remember me. My name is Rissok and I served under you during the Empire riots. I saw you kill my friend in cold blood. A true Eternal who served with honor!” “Oooooh now I remember. You and your other buddy were looting houses while Felding was attempting to rape a woman. Yeah, real honor there.” You say. “Don’t mock me! You are only here because the Prime allows it! If it were up to me, I would have you labeled as a traitor and have you killed!” At this point your guards take up a defensive stance and Rissok’s do likewise. “Well if you’re going to make a move, better do it quick.” You say. “Stop it! Stop it please! My Edgar is dying! Can’t we have one moment without murder and killing?” the woman sobs. At this point Rissok storms off without another word, the guards stick around and tell you that you and Brenda may enter at any time, but your own guards must stay outside. Before you do, Brenda addresses the woman. “We apologize, we did not mean to cause you distress. Are you Lady Eva by any chance?” “(sniff) Yes. Yes I am.” “Edgar’s spoken highly of you in his letters.” Brenda says which causes a slight smile on her face. “I know that he’s better than me in everyway being an Eternal, yet he shows such compassion and sweetness by making me, a non-eternal, his only companion. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve such an honor, but I will always be grateful for it.” Brenda asks her if she wants to come in too, but she says she has already said her goodbyes and that he wants to see you both alone when you arrive. Having no other questions, you both enter the bedroom. When you see Edgar, he’s lying in his bed and looking completely unwell. He’s pale and his face has a gaunt looking appearance. You can’t even believe this is the same man you fought along side at Fort Defiance. “Edgar?” you ask just to make sure. “(wheeze) ah…you both came…I knew you would. (cough cough) There isn’t much time…I trust you’ve read my letter?” “Yes.” “Well then you know that when my death comes, anarchy will ensue.” “Don’t you have a successor?” “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I imagine Brenda has and that’s we can’t have children.” You look at Brenda and she nods and mentions she learned that with Roldan when they were together. It’s never been a topic you’ve brought up, but you always had your suspicions. Edgar continues his speech. “We Eternals seem to be sterile or barren. I’ve had people try to look into this problem, but they haven’t come up with anything yet. It would seem what makes us superior, takes away our ability to reproduce. Maybe it’s nature balancing itself out, so that we don’t take over the world like so many of our younger eternals seem to want to do. Anyway (cough cough) I’ve drawn up official forms for the only two I think could be proper successors…” You already know where Edgar is going with this. “Oh no…don’t say that’s why you dragged us out here…Edgar they aren’t going to listen to us! We aren’t even ED citizens!” “This is rather unrealistic Edgar.” Brenda adds. “That doesn’t matter! You’re still Eternals! (wheeze cough) They’ll listen more likely than you believe, why do you think I always spoke so highly of you two? The younger ones will most likely follow without question, your major opposition will probably be the second generation…but there aren’t too many of them left, you could easily purge them all if you had to. Please…I tried to build something here…(cough) but I can’t go on any longer. The only people who can guide the Eternal Dominion into something worthier are you two. I’m asking not just as a dying man or friend …but as a (cough cough) a fellow Eternal…” You and Brenda look at each other and you both know your answer. Edgar’s trying to guilt you into this mess, but it’s just not going to work. This plan of his is doomed to fail and you know it. Every high ranking Eternal is probably going to be vying for power. And you and Brenda have your own nation, your own lives, and you’ve told Edgar this before, but it’s time to tell him one last time. “Edgar, we’re not accepting this position. First of all it’s not realistic despite what you want to believe and I think deep down you know that. Second of all, these are your final moments Edgar. Don’t worry about what you accomplished and if it’ll last. Just be proud of it now and spend your last moments with your wife or whatever you consider her. That’s who you need to be concerned about.” Edgar hacks and coughs up blood and spits it into a nearby bucket and struggles to breathe, but manages to answer you. “Very well…you’ve made your point. And you’re probably right. You usually were. (wheeze) Bring my…my wife in. I do wish to spend the last moments with her…and farewell…my Eternal siblings.” “Farewell Edgar.” You say with a nod. Brenda says goodbye as well before you both leave. You step outside and tell Eva that Edgar wants to spend his remaining time left with her. She seems happy with this idea though of course still upset. She runs in and you, Brenda and the rest of your group are escorted out and back to the carriage that brought you here. When you finally get back to Naleen, you and Brenda are both glad to be home, though you both talk for quite awhile about this recent event and how it’s odd to think that you both are going to be the only original Eternals left soon. A couple days later you get the news that Edgar has died and that the new leadership of the Eternal Dominion as of now is uncertain. Fortunately you don’t really have to worry about it. Naleen is strong enough and far enough away that any sort of chaotic attack from the new ruler is very unlikely. You suspect that most of the fighting will be within the ED itself, or pushing ahead against the Felkan Kingdom. In the meantime you wonder about your own legacy and if you’ll be remembered on any meaningful level. Brenda isn’t really concerned about it; she figures you’ll both be in the history books as the first rulers of Naleen if nothing else. That sounds fine, but you wonder if that would necessarily be the case, after all you never met the emperor, you don’t even know his name or really anything about him except what you were taught as a child and that was most definitely all propaganda. You know even less about his predecessors. History may very well remember the Empire, but information on its rulers is either going to be sketchy or non-existent in another century. Edgar will probably be forgotten in even less time. You get the idea that a solid written record is in order. “Since when are you a writer?” Brenda asks. “I’m not, but maybe we can work on this together, I mean you are part of this too.” “Well that’s certainly true. Okay, so how did you want to go about this?” > You tell the whole story While creating a book for all the masses to read and absorb might help solidify a remembrance of you and Brenda, you’re thinking on a bigger picture. “Wait, you want to tell your experiences from the past seventy five years?” “Well, just the most memorable ones. Obviously I’m not going to focus on the days where I just sat at a desk reading skirmish reports or what I was eating on a particular day.” “Do you realize how long that’s going to take?” “I know it’s not going to be in one night. I want to tell the whole story or at least as much as I can.” “That’s pretty ambitious. I figured you were just going to start from Nalin’s independence from the Empire at most.” “See that’s just it, I, WE didn’t just suddenly appear when we took official control of Nalin and later Naleen. We’ve got a lot of history behind us. We’re Eternals and we’re the last of our kind. There should be some sort of lasting record of us.” “Last of our kind? There’s a whole nation of them if you remember.” Brenda reminds you. “Yes and that’s exactly my point. Do you think it’s going to last? Do you think any of new generations are going to be stable enough to think beyond their own petty power? I’d wager that they don’t even continue the method to create anymore of them, now that Edgar’s dead. He was the only one who was trying to leave a lasting legacy beyond himself. The rest of them? They’re going to wonder why they’re creating potential rivals and no longer bother.” “You might be right about that. So, you weren’t interested in creating this in a more positive light for people to remember you?” “Ha ha, I’m pretty sure such a task is impossible. No matter how much propaganda I churned out for the masses, I’m certain it wouldn’t make the citizens start believing I’m a nice person. Even the military doesn’t think such a thing. This isn’t going to be about making me look good. I’ll let history decide that, but this written account will at least provide a solid guide from which they can judge.” “But won’t it still be biased?” “Probably, but given that I want to include everything, I’m still not portraying myself as some benevolent ruler with a pleasant background. Now you said you would help, did you still wish to? I mean I want to include everything, but I guess I can leave out anything that portrays you in a negative way.” “My love, I was right along side you on your less popular decisions, in fact I made a lot of them myself. I’m not innocent and I would imagine the average citizen wouldn’t consider me a nice person either. Well, maybe nicer than you, but you’re a hard act to follow.” Brenda says with a smile. You and Brenda immediately get to work on your project. You and her take turns doing the writing for the most part, but the pressures of ruling sometimes get in the way, so it takes longer than it probably would have if you both didn’t have other responsibilities. Your ambitious project takes more than a few years to complete, but when it is finally finished you definitely feel a sense of accomplishment. It may not be conquering an enemy or territory or anything like that, but if this goes the way you want, you will have achieved much more than simple victory. You will have achieved a kind of immortality. The huge tome immediately copied several times when it is complete. The great thing about being a ruler is you’ve got underlings that can do this. You make sure to keep the original writing for yourself. The first copies go out to a few Naleen schools, libraries and other places of higher learning where you decree that it is to become required reading. (Another great thing about being in charge!) In time there probably isn’t a single citizen that hasn’t at least heard of the book, if not read it. There is a slight backlash to “telling all” however. Some students, professors, intellectuals and other academics take the opportunity to use examples from the book to prove what tyrants you are and Brenda are and how if Naleen is ever going to achieve its maximum potential then relics of tyranny need to be gotten rid of. An increase in protests about silly “freedoms” and “rights” pop up a little more. An annoying side effect to be sure, but a predictable one. Executing them all would only prove their point of course, but you really don’t disagree with them in the first place. You and Brenda ARE relics of tyranny. In fact you stated as much in the book. You were created by a government obsessed with control and molded into Eternals to enforce that control. You can’t help what you are and you’re not going to apologize for any of your actions. In any case, if it wasn’t this, you would’ve gotten protests about something, it’s been a while. Besides you have more than your share of intellectual defenders as well your loyal military, so you’re not worried about revolutions anytime soon.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as you might like to help Warrick out, you just really aren’t in a position to do so on any meaningful level. Breaking your trade routes with the Eternal Dominion is just foolish. You tell Brenda you’ll break the news this time. You both enter the room where Warrick awaits your answer. “Sorry Warrick, while we do understand your troubles, we can’t help you. What you’re asking for is too much and we see no benefit for us or Nalin in general.” Warrick’s face doesn’t drop and he doesn’t get any angrier, All in all, he takes your response a lot better than Edgar did. “Very well. I shall tell my superiors that you are not interested in any sort of alliance with us. I hope that one day this may change. I suppose I will also take my leave now, sorry to have bothered the both of you, but it was still good to see you again.” He says and leaves immediately. You and Brenda remark on he was probably more disappointed than he let on, but what’s done is done and you’ve all made your choices now. The pair of you go back to bed and try to get some sleep. Year 56 “We’ve got to do something about this epidemic. If this keeps up we’re not going to have a population left to rule over!” Brenda says. “Well so far the problem has hit the eastern territory of Nalin yet. We’ve scoured the land for healers, medics and a few hedge wizards and they’re doing all they can, but this thing is really bad in a few of the towns. I’ve quarantined all of the major areas where this plague is taking place, but understandably a lot the soldiers aren’t exactly keen on their duties there mainly because they don’t want to get sick either. The only ones who aren’t kicking up much of a fuss about it are soldiers with families in those towns.” You reply. “(Sigh) Shit. I’ve talked to all of the advisors and nobody has a clue where, who and why this thing might’ve started. You got any ideas?” “Unfortunately the only one I can think of just a hunch, and I’d rather not believe it. I think Warrick, or at least the Felkan Kingdom had something to do with it. For all we know they could’ve had saboteurs in here for years planning this.” “If it was them, I hope Edgar rips them a new asshole now that he’s at war with them.” “Be that as it may, I’m still hoping that wasn’t the case, not because I don’t want to believe a former friend could do this to us, but more because it doesn’t reflect well on my duties to protect the nation. I mean if the Felkan Kingdom had saboteurs here, how was it that I didn’t see it until now?” “You can’t start doubting yourself, we need to focus on the problem at hand first.” “You’re right of course. Well as I see it, if we really want to stop the plague, we need to kill everyone in the quarantined areas, then cleanse everything with fire.” “Wait, hold on. There’s no other way? Can’t we just have more medics and healers transferred to those places?” “I don’t see what good that would do. From the reports a lot of these people are practically dead or dying as it is. It doesn’t do any good for them to linger and possibly get others sick. Better to just kill them now and save the medics to observe the places that only have a few sick people.” “You do realize that something like this is not going to be popular right? I mean are the soldiers even going to be willing to do such a thing?” “Well we try pretty hard to keep up the old ways of Empire indoctrination, I don’t think we should have major problems, though I suppose those with families might protest (Sigh) I guess we’ll have to take care of them as well.” “This isn’t sounding like a great idea. Maybe we should just keep the quarantine and let them all slowly die off. We could always say we’re looking for a cure, and whether one comes or not, the problem will take care of itself.” Brenda suggests. “The problem with that plan is we’re diverting soldiers from more important duties and continuing to risk lives that can still be useful to Nalin.” You say. You and Brenda weigh the pros and cons of your limited choices. > You let the healers find a cure Killing everyone might have its benefits, but perhaps a less bloodthirsty approach would be for the best right now. You and Brenda decide to keep the quarantine up and just encourage the medics to work harder on a cure. The next few months are relatively calm, there’s a lot of grumbling, but nothing serious yet. No cure has been found yet and while the less affected areas seem to be stabilized, the ones in the quarantine aren’t getting any worse either. This is somewhat of a problem, part of the hope is that they would ultimately just all die off if a cure isn’t found. As it stands, the ones that have managed to survive the plague are now just carriers which makes them a lot more dangerous. A few healers try their hand at various cures, but nothing works, if anything you just lose more physicians as they too become infected and have to stay inside. The situation gets worse when you have escapees and the soldiers stationed outside the quarantine area start to show symptoms of the plague and have to be shoved in as well. Eventually you station all those elves you made orphans (now proper Nalin soldiers) all those years ago around the quarantined area, as non-humans seem to be more resistant. You even “deputize” kobolds as soldiers as well as they’re virtually immune. This isn’t a popular decision, but purging the infected areas would be even less so. You hold out hope that a cure will be found soon. Year 60 You sit quietly contemplating everything that has transpired for the past four years. When the plague had managed to re-establish itself throughout Nalin, and worse in eastern Nalin and it became apparent that no one was close to a cure, you went through with your original plan of cleansing the infected areas. There were still protests against you carrying out such a grim plan, but such dissent was silenced. However it was a bit too late at that point. Several towns in eastern Nalin claimed you and Brenda were unfit as rulers for letting this happen and threatened to secede. Resistance probably would’ve been crushed with ease, but with a shortage of troops due to the plague, general dislike of your rule and others just taking advantage of the coming chaos, it wasn’t as easy as it could’ve been. Opposition was crushed, but ultimately large sections of Nalin had either been ravaged by the plague or civil war. Nalin wasn’t so much of a nation anymore than it was a collection of towns in a war torn land. Eventually the strain of holding so much land with the troop shortage you now suffered was too much and territory had to be abandoned anyway. After some restructuring, the nation of Nalin was much smaller than it was when the Empire ruled over it. It was a small poor miserable country, with equally poor miserable citizens. Edgar has offered to absorb Nalin into the Eternal Dominion and give you a place at his side, but you’re still too prideful to except such an offer, even if you know he means well. “Brooding again, dear?” Brenda says tapping you on the shoulder. “Just temporarily lost in thought.” You answer. “You figure out how to re-conquer all our lost territory yet?” “Not quite, but I’m working on it.” “Well I wouldn’t worry about it. I think we had a good run, we should just look at other options.” “Brenda are you seriously reconsidering joining the Eternal Dominion, because…” “No, but there are other options.” “You mean just focusing on building up what we have left?” “Well that’s certainly one possibility, but quite frankly I’m not interested in that either. This whole ruling business…it’s not fun anymore. I question if it ever was at least for me anyway. You sort of made it tolerable, but I think I’m done.” You get a little worried by this statement. “You’re not talking about suicide are you?” “What? No! Sheesh, I’m not ready for the grave, but it is something that is much closer than it was in the past. I mean is fighting over this little piece of shitty land and running it really what I want to be doing in my twilight years? Not really, life’s short enough as it is. I’ve come to that conclusion and that’s why I’m leaving all of this behind. I’m guessing you might feel a little different about it though.” “You’re damn right I feel different about it! We can’t just run away from this! We’ve got to re-establish our rule! I know it’ll take a while, but it can be done!” Brenda smiles and touches your face. “For what purpose? I hate to tell you this, but you’re not young anymore either.” “I…I know that!” “Do you? Because sometime I wonder. I love you and you’re still a great warrior and you’re probably still better than most men half your age, but you can’t go around thinking you’re invincible anymore. There are guns now you know, someone could just assassinate you from a few feet away and not even engage you in combat. The days of the Empire are over, you have to realize that.” “I know that too, Brenda.” “And that’s why you’re frustrating to deal with sometimes, because you DO know it, yet sometimes you completely lapse into the mindset of the good old days. Look, you know I love you, and I know you love me, but I can’t do this mini empire shit anymore.” “So what’s your solution then?” “Well, I was thinking we just leave.” “And go where?” “I dunno, someplace else. Further east I guess, someplace far away from this entire region though. I mean there’s probably a great big world out there, and we’ve just been stuck in a small portion of it.” “Hmm, so you’re suggesting we just live like vagabonds and wanderers with no set home?” “Well maybe for a time, but who knows maybe we’ll eventually find some place to settle down.” “Wait a minute you’re going on about how we’re not young anymore, yet you’re advocating wandering the wilderness like some young snot nosed adventurers. Sounds like you’re talking out both sides of your mouth…” “Okay fine, you don’t have to come with me, you can sit here and play brooding overlord until somebody either assassinates you or the unwashed masses storm the palace.” Brenda says turning away and walking. “Hold on! Wait! (sigh) Look, I know what you’re saying and you’ve got a point. It’s just really hard for me to give all this up. I’d feel like I would be abandoning my post and I did that once already with the Empire. And while it was the best decision I ever made, it still stays with me like a black spot, and I’m sure you know that. Abandoning Nalin is like history repeating itself all over again.” “Remember what you told Edgar when he visited? There was nothing any of us could’ve done. It was a doomed mission to begin with. You did your best and that’s all anyone could’ve done. Even an Eternal.” You give a slight smile and nod. “Okay, Brenda. Let’s get out of here.” You and Brenda pack some equipment and take your leave of your rulership of Nalin. You don’t even bother assigning a successor or anything like that, you decide whoever wants it bad enough can hold it if they have the desire. You and Brenda head east and stick to the wilderness when traveling through old Nalin territory, eventually you pass through it and you’re exploring new land. Living off the land is quite easy for you and the freedom is a nice change of pace. After a few months, you don’t miss Nalin at all, and are just glad to be spending more quality time with Brenda. In the years that follow the pair of you wander, seeing new sights and getting into a few skirmishes a long the way. Eventually the pair of you do settle down close to a small village in a far away land where you live out the remainder of your lives in complete obscurity and peace.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 55 You and Brenda now rule the nation of Nalin as a married couple. There has been some issue on what your official titles are now. The simplest choices would be emperor and empress or king and queen. Eventually Brenda settled for imperatrix, which would officially make you imperator, though you still go by general for the most part. In any case life has been good. You don’t even mind that things have been slow since you conquered all those tribals in the east. You’ve been taking a slightly more active role in running the nation from an administrative point of view, but sometimes you still long for the day of a good battle. When that day comes you’ve also tried to keep up on the changing times of changing warfare. While the days of close combat are far from over, if the Eternal Dominion is starting to slowly incorporate firearms into their ranks, then you better do likewise if only to maintain a show of strength. The ED isn’t hostile though and you maintain a good trading relationship with them. Edgar still hopes you’re going to join him one day, especially since you know he’s got designs on going to war with the Felkan Kingdom (You gave him some friendly advice to not bother with invading Rask). He’d probably like you to at least be involved in a joint military operation with him, but you think he’s over extending himself and the Felkan Kingdom is no pushover. It’s not exactly like you’re near the Felkan Kingdom as far as location is concerned either. All you’d be doing is having soldiers die in a war that doesn’t even directly benefit your nation. That being said, Nalin hasn’t sided with the Felkan Kingdom either in any way. Again, due to your location, you’ve had minimal contact with them. Brenda thought about allying with them in the past, but that was never seriously considered (Good thing too). Somehow though you imagine you’re going to get dragged into this saber rattling between the Eternal Dominion and the Felkan Kingdom. Funny how that feeling turns out to be true. Late one night you and Brenda are awakened from your sleep. Some envoy from the Felkan Kingdom has sudden decided to show up in the middle of the night. Demanding to see the pair of you and claiming it’s very urgent. You and Brenda don’t get much sleep as it is, so you’re inclined to tell your soldiers to just shoot him and go back to bed, but you’ve got a good idea of who it is. “You really think it’s him?” Brenda ask. “You really think it isn’t? It was only a matter of time. Ugh, I guess we better get this over with.” You shout at the guard behind the door to hold the envoy in the meeting room and keep a close eye on him until you and Brenda get there. After grumbling and getting dress you and Brenda head to the meeting room where you see a familiar face. He’s missing an eye, all of his hair and his face has a few more winkles and scars on it now, but you still recognize him. “Warrick, you better have a damn good reason for waking us up in the middle of the night.” You say. “…you aren’t surprised it’s me?” “Not really, I actually thought you’d show up sooner, and how the hell did you manage to join the Felkan Kingdom anyway?” “It’s a long story…but well anyway, I’m glad to see you both. I was surprised to hear about your marriage. Didn’t think that…” “Warrick, I’m tired as well. It’s not easy running a nation and I’ve been doing it even longer than my husband has, so get to the damn point of the visit or let this wait until tomorrow.” Brenda demands rubbing one of her eyes. Warrick looks a little hurt by your remarks, but he gets on with it. “Very well, to business. The Felkan Kingdom wants an alliance with you.” “Yeah sort of figured that. Anything else?” you ask. “Erm, no, but…” “Okay then, the answer is no. We can talk more about old times tomorrow, if you want. Good night.” Brenda says starting to turn around to go back to bed. “Hey wait! No? Just like that?! You don’t even want to consider the benefits?” Warrick asks. “What benefits? If we ally with the Felkan Kingdom, all it’s going to do is piss off the Eternal Dominion who we have a good relationship with diplomatically and tradewise. What is the Felkan Kingdom going to offer?” Brenda replies. “How the fact that we’re more likely to leave you alone after the war with the Eternal Dominion is over?” “Warrick…Warrick…you should know threats aren’t going to sway us.” You remark. “What?! NO! I meant, argh look. What I’m saying is if the unfortunate should happen and the Eternal Dominion wins don’t you think that they’ll try to invade you next?” “I suppose it’s possible yes.” “Whereas if the Felkan Kingdom wins, we have no intention on even expanding our borders.” “Probably true, but that still doesn’t help us during the war. A war that is really between you and the ED.” “I can’t believe I’m trying to convince YOU of all people to go to war. I would’ve thought you would’ve jumped at this chance!” Warrick says in a raised tone. “Things change Warrick, and just because I’m not jumping through your hoops doesn’t mean I’ve lost a taste for battle. But I’m thinking on a grander scale now. Going to war with the Eternal Dominion doesn’t do us or Nalin any good. It’s just going to result in dead soldiers at best. We’ve found that our continued expansion eastward is much better in building up the country. Maximum gain with minimum losses.” You say. Warrick paces a bit and sputters. He obviously thought this was going to go better. “So that’s it then huh? You just take Edgar’s side over mine. I thought you didn’t like him anyway.” “Warrick, it’s not about taking sides. If you haven’t noticed we’re not exactly allied with the ED either. We trade with them and are on friendly terms, but that’s out of convenience more than anything. Trust me, Edgar’s been trying to get us to join for years. I don’t know what you’re even worried about, the Eternal Dominion is formidable I’m sure, but the Felkan Kingdom survived a war with the Empire. I’m guessing you should be able to handle the ED.” “I don’t know if we can.” He calmly states. There’s a moment of silence where you weren’t expecting him to say such a thing so blatantly like that. “Look, I didn’t want to say anything. The Felkan Kingdom is what I serve now and I serve it to the best of my abilities as I did the Empire. To do anything less would be a failure as an Eternal on my part.” “But?” “But I see the weaknesses that we have and I can’t ignore them. It’s not public knowledge to anyone outside the kingdom, but we’re also suffering a large gnoll invasion from the west. It caught us completely by surprise. The Felkan Kingdom is a mighty nation, but right now it’s straining its resources just to stay alive. A war with the ED…and we all know it’s coming, could break us. The funny thing is I feel like I’m in the Empire all over again. You know during the bad times.” “I think they were ALL bad times Warrick. We just made the best of them.” Brenda says. “Perhaps. (sigh) I guess I can’t convince you ally with us, I mean you’ve got a good thing going on here and you shouldn’t wreck it. I’m glad. Glad that some of us are doing well. But couldn’t you at least break off your trade routes? I mean that would at least cause Edgar’s attention to be diverted. He might suspect you’re up to something and not attack the Felkan Kingdom. At least not right away. It might be enough time for us to put up a better defense.” “Yeah and he might also attack us instead.” Brenda remarks. “I don’t think he will, because then he has to divert his own soldiers and resources and then he’ll be worried that we will attack. He can’t fight a two front war, even Edgar’s smart enough not to risk that. And that’s if he dares fighting you in the first place.” “That’s a big if, there Warrick.” You say. You and Brenda tell Warrick you’ll both discuss this in a little more detail outside. He says he understands and will await your decision. You and Brenda don’t have too much to talk about really, since it’s basically coming down to helping out a former comrade in arms and starting a possible war with another one or avoiding the situation entirely. Brenda is for staying neutral; oddly you’re actually of two minds of this. > You convince Brenda to help Warrick Maybe it isn’t the most tactically sound decision, but he’s still an Eternal and you feel like you should give him a fighting chance. It takes some convincing, but Brenda eventually agrees with you, but she still thinks this isn’t one of your better ideas. You both go back inside to tell Warrick the news. “Okay, Warrick after talking it over, we’ll help you indirectly by breaking trade with the Eternal Dominion.” Warrick’s face doesn’t show a great degree of happiness, but one more of relief.. “Thank you. Thank you both, my friends. This might not seem like much, but it still helps. I’ll never forget what you’ve done here.” “Yeah, yeah, you better go before I change my mind.” Brenda says. Warrick, not wishing to wear out his welcome he bids you both goodbye and takes his leave. Brenda remarks again that she sees no good coming of this, but what’s done is done and you’ve all made your choices now. The pair of you go back to bed and try to get some sleep. Year 56 “Great that’s all we need a war with the Eternal Dominion while we have a fucking epidemic going on right now!” Brenda shouts throwing a paperweight against the wall in frustration. When the trade routes were broken with the Eternal Dominion, Edgar did not take it well, and while it was always a risk, you didn’t think he’d actually wage a two front war over it. He immediately suspected you both were in league with each other and declared war on you both. You would probably fare better against the ED, but a terrible plague has hit Nalin pretty hard around the same time. Nobody knows exactly where it came from or how it spread, but the common thought is that the Eternal Dominion has something to do with it. You on the other hand entertain another idea, one that you’d rather not believe and that’s Warrick had something to do with it. Destabilize your country and weaken it to a point where the Eternal Dominion can destroy it completely while they also waste their own manpower at the same time. Possibly even spread the plague to their own lands too. It’s a good plan. If that really is the case, you question your judgment and beginning to wonder if you’re even fit to command anything anymore. You know Brenda has been a little distant towards you lately, however to her credit she has not blamed you for the current situation. Though she wouldn’t since she’d only blame herself as well for agreeing to break trade with the ED to begin with. In any case, right now is not really the time to second guess or lament possible past mistakes, a serious situation rears it’s ugly head right now and it must be take care of. “Well, the plague hasn’t hit eastern Nalin yet and we’ve drafted every healer, medic and hedge wizard we can find to help cure this blight. We’ve managed to quarantine the towns and cities that have been hit the hardest. The problem with that though is we’ve had to redistribute soldiers to those places where we could desperately use them on the northern borders.” You explain. “Yes, I’m aware of the situation, what’s your solution?” Brenda demands. “Kill everyone in the quarantine and cleanse it with fire. No more people, no more plague and we can focus on the war.” Brenda chuckles. “Figures you’d suggest something like that.” “Well I’m coming up with the most efficient plan, waiting around for the docs to come up with a cure isn’t really time we can afford.” You say. “And massacring entire settlements isn’t going to endear us to anyone. You know what? To hell with it, I’m leaving this up to you, I’m sick of running this fucking country anyway…” Brenda says and walks out the room. You aren’t exactly sure of what to make of that response, but you go through with your cleansing plan since you can’t afford to wait around for some cure that may never come. Killing everyone has worked for you on several occasions in the past, no reason to change tactic now. First thing you do is get every remaining “old guard” officer that’s still serving since the days of the Empire and have them put in charge of this operation. You know they won’t even question this command coming from you. Then you tell them to go through their personnel rosters to see who is going to be up for this grim task. You personally suggest including all of those elves you made into orphans years ago. While they may all be good indoctrinated soldiers now, you think they wouldn’t hesitate at a chance to kill some humans and would be good candidates for this job. Besides, elves seem to be more resistant to the plague anyway. Three entire towns are put to the sword, gun and torch until there is nothing left, but burned corpses and hollowed out buildings. In keeping with non-humans being seemingly less affected by the plague, you have kobolds remove the bodies and clean out what they can. They’re more than happy to do this as they get the chance to loot some stuff for their own impoverished reservation you’ve set aside for them. This action causes a great outcry and you even have to execute several soldiers who took up arms against you during the cleansing. Many Nalin citizens aren’t happy with the fact that you’ve implemented several non-humans in helping with this massacre as well. Indeed some begin calling you their inhuman “Eternal overlords” and wonder if they aren’t already under the rule of the Eternal Dominion. As far as the plague goes, you did successfully wipe it out from being an ongoing danger. Medics, healers and the like are able to focus their attentions on the places where it’s less of a problem and eventually it is gone completely. As for everything else, western Nalin, is in horrible condition and soldiers from eastern Nalin have to be brought in to reinforce the northern borders which have now changed hands a bit as the ED army has pushed you back. Eastern Nalin is in good shape as it was spared the plague and isn’t in any immediate danger from the fighting, but there are rumors of the population aren’t happy. With the plague gone though, you dig in ready to focus on the Eternal Dominion invasion. > Year 60 “Fort Glory has fallen sir.” A disheveled messenger tells you while you look over a map of Nalin in your tent. “Doesn’t matter, it was no longer a priority anymore.” You say not looking up. “So you’re still going through with the plan involving the kobold sappers?” “Yes. I figure it’ll take a few days for those eternals get settled in their new conquest and then that fort crumbles right underneath them. A shame, I used to like that fort, but this is war.” “Sir, I don’t mean to question your orders, but how can you trust those little scaley bastards? They’re little more than animals.” “That may be, but they’re animals that are more scared of me than anything else, and that’s all that’s important. Speaking of which how do things fare in eastern Nalin?” “All major settlements are under martial law, lots of structures destroyed, several dissidents executed and there are reports of rebels in the wilderness, but most of it is still under our control.” “Good enough for now I suppose. Tell Captain Yasil, that I want her to mount an attack on Camp Conquest in a tomorrow. We’re going to make our major offensive soon and I want her to weaken that camp as much as possible.” “…you mean that large eternal camp in northern Nalin? The main one? That’s suicide! Her company is only at half strength from the last mission you sent her on!” the messenger exclaims. “Her sacrifice will be remembered. That will be all.” You say still not looking up. The messenger sounds like he would like to say something else, but realizes he better not and just leaves. Smart move on his part. You would’ve killed him. You have little patience for hesitation nowadays, especially since you’ve got nothing left to lose. You rub your eyes and stop looking at the map of Nalin and sit down to take a short break. You’re tired, but you don’t remember the last time you had a good night’s sleep. You look over at a portrait you had made of Brenda a long time ago before this war ever broke out. An image of her in happier times. You often speak to the portrait, during times like this and tonight is no different. “You were right, shouldn’t have broken that trade agreement with the ED (Sigh) just wish I would’ve been the one that paid for that mistake instead of you. Though I suppose I paid for it, when some suicidal asshole shot you in the head two years ago.” You focus more attention on the portrait “Maybe you’re better off…I mean you were getting increasingly unhappy. Heh, who knows maybe you would’ve just left altogether. You were right about ruling not being any fun too, I’ve been trying to do your job and mine, but I find myself just not caring about much lately. I’m half ready to just get up and leave it all behind, but I still feel the need to control and regain what has been lost. Maybe it’s that old Empire syndrome popping up again. I dunno. Recently I’ve just been focusing on the war. It’s about the only slight pleasure I get anymore. Sometimes I wade into battles, bones creaking, joints aching and five times slower and weaker than I once was, yet do it anyway. I guess I’m hoping to at least die a warrior’s death, but somehow I still manage to survive. The war’s not over yet though, so maybe there’s still time right?” You pick up the portrait and look directly into Brenda’s face. “I don’t know if you still loved me near the end of everything, but I still loved you. Still do. Maybe I’ll be with you soon.” You say. You put down the portrait and lie down on your bed. You won’t get a good night’s sleep, but you don’t need it. You just need a quick recharge before you go back to the business of war. The next couple of day pass and you’re ready for your final push. You have no idea if you’ll actually succeed in driving out the Eternal Dominion, but you’re ready to put an end to this one way or another. You lead the battalions to the north. When you arrive to the frontlines, you receive a report that Fort Glory completely collapsed and killed a couple of companies of eternals that were planning their next move from there. Kobolds took advantage of the chaos and finished off the wounded. Captain Yasil’s mission was also somewhat successful, you see the smoke in the distance from the main ED camp. The smell of gunpowder from the cannons lingers in the air; hundreds of trenches are filled with the living and the dead on both sides. You heard that this is how the battlefield looked when the Empire fought the Felkan Kingdom, seems like this is going to be standard for war, until something else changes in the way people kill others. You remember when things were much simpler though. The funny thing is that the Felkan Kingdom is despite being accustomed to this sort of fighting and more technologically advanced, they’re apparently having a much worse time holding off the Eternal Dominion than you have, though you imagine that they’re getting more of the brunt of the combat. You are approached by several of your officers; they say their respective companies are ready to advance, if you give the word. You nod and tell them the attack will commence. You watch as thousands of your soldiers run forward to kill and die for you. If there has always been one consistency with you, is you ability is muster up a shitload of people to do that, even when you’re not popular. And you’re REALLY not popular with the average Nalin citizen right now. But ungratefulness is something you’re used to. You experience the same thing in Rask, after you destroyed all the barbarian tribes. Peasants complain and know nothing of real sacrifice. Not like you do. The battle is going strong and a cannon ball from the other side even crashes a few feet away from you. One of your majors advises that you should step further back from the battle so you stay out of harm’s way. But maybe you don’t want to; in fact maybe you want to just end it all right now. > You walk into the battle You look out at the battlefield from your horse and get off of it. This is it. The time is right. The major is screaming at you to take cover and asking you what do you think you’re doing walking forward into the battlefield like you’re doing, but you ignore him. No sooner have you taken number of steps forward and large explosion occurs behind you causing you to fall forward. You push yourself up and look behind to see a small crater where the major and your horse once stood. Your head hurts and seems to be bleeding, but you shake off the cobwebs and crawl into the nearest trench. The stench of death fills your nose immediately. You see several dead soldiers with various fatal wounds. A few living ones are looking for their next opportunity to crawl forward to the next trench. They see you and are quite surprised. “Gen..general?” one of them says. “What are you lot waiting for? There’s a great big war out there just dying to be won!” “Uh, well the enemy cannons are…” “No excuses! Come on, follow me! I’ll lead you to fucking victory!” you shout excitedly and crawl out of the trench. The soldiers are a little reluctant to follow you at first, but they do so anyway. Explosions and gunfire are all around you as you crawl forward. The danger you’ve put yourself in right now is giving you a rush. You make your way to the next trench where you encounter even more of your soldiers who are in close combat with the enemy eternals. You help out with your own superior swordsmanship. “That’s how you do it!” you shout as you run your sword through the neck of an enemy. “Eternals my fucking ass! Back in my day, a single eternal could’ve killed the lot of you! And that Eternal would’ve been me!” you tell your men who are a little unnerved by your remarks. “But fortunately I’m helping!” you shout with a slight giggle and motion them to follow you forward. You crawl from trench to trench through mud, blood, guts, bodies, and all around nastiness and you love every moment of it. The soldiers you’ve “picked up” along the way believe you’ve gone completely mad, but they continue to follow since you’re actually making progress and your combat abilities still surpass their own. You don’t even know how many eternals and “regular” soldiers you’ve killed so far, but you aren’t keeping track. All that you do know is that you still haven’t reached your goal. Along with completely disregarding your safety, you start to become a little delusional as well, you end up shouting at your men that they need to watch out for possible wendigos in the area confusing the hell out of them. “Why isn’t there snow? There’s usually snow in Rask.” You mumble to yourself. You see the enemy camp in sight and there is already some fighting going on there, but by the Emperor, you are NOT going to miss this fight! “For the Empire!” you shout, which at this point your soldier aren’t even surprised by whatever you yell about now. They’re too busy thanking their gods that you managed to lead them to the enemy camp with no losses. Camp Conquest is in chaos. There is fighting everywhere and you jump right in the middle of it. You proceed with your bloodthirsty adrenaline crusade. You suffer several wounds that probably would’ve stopped a normal man your age in their tracks and even you’re starting to feel the effects. Fortunately you’ve still got your small personal troop behind you to take up the slack. “Look general there’s the commander’s tent!” one of them shouts. It would appear your enthusiasm has finally rubbed off. With sword cuts across your face, a bleeding gash on your left arm, your armor half destroyed and a bullet in one of your legs, you continue forward. You’re starting to feel a little wobbly though. “These Eternals will pay for their betrayal of the Emperor!” you mutter. The enemy commander with some of his own staff stands around several dead bodies and upon seeing you he pats his mace in his hand waiting for you to arrive. As you get closer, there’s something somewhat familiar about him. Like you knew him, but he’s older now. He bashes the face in of one of your soldiers before clashing with you. He starts to babble about how he’s wanted revenge on you for killing his friend twenty-five years ago. He kicks you to the ground and tries to crush your skull, but you roll out of the way. Your head is really starting to hurt, and you’re feeling a little dizzy. Images of the past and present begin to mix together and you have a moment of clarity of where you are, and it isn’t Rask and you aren’t serving the Empire. The bleeding from the back of your head was actually caused by shrapnel from the explosive cannon ball that nearly killed you at the beginning of the battlefield. You’ve been suffering from a mild brain injury the entire time, hence your delusions. This fool that’s trying to kill you now is one of those eternals that was under your command when you left the Empire and killed private Felding in the process. You dodge another mace swing as you try to regain your wits. You’re stating to feel your strength really ebb. This is what reality feels like and it sucks, you were enjoying yourself up until this point. You don’t know if you’re actually going to survive this, but you’ll be damned if you’re going to give this asshole the satisfaction of getting his revenge. You hack at his foot causing him to fall to one knee. You then strike out against one of his soldiers trying to sneak attack you. Before the commander to get back up, you hack his arm off at the shoulder. Blood spews from the stump and he screams in agony. He stops screaming when you kick his teeth in and sever his head from his body. You look around and see that your soldiers are winning the day. You know that the Eternal Dominion presence is still in Nalin, but it has now been greatly reduced with this victory. The war isn’t over yet, but maybe it is for you. You stagger to the asshole’s tent you just killed and lie down on his bedroll. You head hurts something fierce and you’re starting to feel like you’re about to pass out. One of your soldiers says he’ll go find a medic or healer, but really you don’t care anymore. You’re going to die here and that’s okay. You’ve had your last win and really even if you did survive to see final victory; you’d rather not go through the drudgery of ruling alone anymore. You’re too old and too tired and now that Brenda’s gone, you just don’t have the motivation anymore. “Brenda, I’m coming to join you.” You say and close your eyes. You never wake up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 60 “Fort Glory has fallen sir.” A disheveled messenger tells you while you look over a map of Nalin in your tent. “Doesn’t matter, it was no longer a priority anymore.” You say not looking up. “So you’re still going through with the plan involving the kobold sappers?” “Yes. I figure it’ll take a few days for those eternals get settled in their new conquest and then that fort crumbles right underneath them. A shame, I used to like that fort, but this is war.” “Sir, I don’t mean to question your orders, but how can you trust those little scaley bastards? They’re little more than animals.” “That may be, but they’re animals that are more scared of me than anything else, and that’s all that’s important. Speaking of which how do things fare in eastern Nalin?” “All major settlements are under martial law, lots of structures destroyed, several dissidents executed and there are reports of rebels in the wilderness, but most of it is still under our control.” “Good enough for now I suppose. Tell Captain Yasil, that I want her to mount an attack on Camp Conquest in a tomorrow. We’re going to make our major offensive soon and I want her to weaken that camp as much as possible.” “…you mean that large eternal camp in northern Nalin? The main one? That’s suicide! Her company is only at half strength from the last mission you sent her on!” the messenger exclaims. “Her sacrifice will be remembered. That will be all.” You say still not looking up. The messenger sounds like he would like to say something else, but realizes he better not and just leaves. Smart move on his part. You would’ve killed him. You have little patience for hesitation nowadays, especially since you’ve got nothing left to lose. You rub your eyes and stop looking at the map of Nalin and sit down to take a short break. You’re tired, but you don’t remember the last time you had a good night’s sleep. You look over at a portrait you had made of Brenda a long time ago before this war ever broke out. An image of her in happier times. You often speak to the portrait, during times like this and tonight is no different. “You were right, shouldn’t have broken that trade agreement with the ED (Sigh) just wish I would’ve been the one that paid for that mistake instead of you. Though I suppose I paid for it, when some suicidal asshole shot you in the head two years ago.” You focus more attention on the portrait “Maybe you’re better off…I mean you were getting increasingly unhappy. Heh, who knows maybe you would’ve just left altogether. You were right about ruling not being any fun too, I’ve been trying to do your job and mine, but I find myself just not caring about much lately. I’m half ready to just get up and leave it all behind, but I still feel the need to control and regain what has been lost. Maybe it’s that old Empire syndrome popping up again. I dunno. Recently I’ve just been focusing on the war. It’s about the only slight pleasure I get anymore. Sometimes I wade into battles, bones creaking, joints aching and five times slower and weaker than I once was, yet do it anyway. I guess I’m hoping to at least die a warrior’s death, but somehow I still manage to survive. The war’s not over yet though, so maybe there’s still time right?” You pick up the portrait and look directly into Brenda’s face. “I don’t know if you still loved me near the end of everything, but I still loved you. Still do. Maybe I’ll be with you soon.” You say. You put down the portrait and lie down on your bed. You won’t get a good night’s sleep, but you don’t need it. You just need a quick recharge before you go back to the business of war. The next couple of day pass and you’re ready for your final push. You have no idea if you’ll actually succeed in driving out the Eternal Dominion, but you’re ready to put an end to this one way or another. You lead the battalions to the north. When you arrive to the frontlines, you receive a report that Fort Glory completely collapsed and killed a couple of companies of eternals that were planning their next move from there. Kobolds took advantage of the chaos and finished off the wounded. Captain Yasil’s mission was also somewhat successful, you see the smoke in the distance from the main ED camp. The smell of gunpowder from the cannons lingers in the air; hundreds of trenches are filled with the living and the dead on both sides. You heard that this is how the battlefield looked when the Empire fought the Felkan Kingdom, seems like this is going to be standard for war, until something else changes in the way people kill others. You remember when things were much simpler though. The funny thing is that the Felkan Kingdom is despite being accustomed to this sort of fighting and more technologically advanced, they’re apparently having a much worse time holding off the Eternal Dominion than you have, though you imagine that they’re getting more of the brunt of the combat. You are approached by several of your officers; they say their respective companies are ready to advance, if you give the word. You nod and tell them the attack will commence. You watch as thousands of your soldiers run forward to kill and die for you. If there has always been one consistency with you, is you ability is muster up a shitload of people to do that, even when you’re not popular. And you’re REALLY not popular with the average Nalin citizen right now. But ungratefulness is something you’re used to. You experience the same thing in Rask, after you destroyed all the barbarian tribes. Peasants complain and know nothing of real sacrifice. Not like you do. The battle is going strong and a cannon ball from the other side even crashes a few feet away from you. One of your majors advises that you should step further back from the battle so you stay out of harm’s way. But maybe you don’t want to; in fact maybe you want to just end it all right now. > You stay where you are You tell you subordinate to fuck off and state that you’re not going to run away and cower in some tent. You’re going to observe and give assistance when necessary like a general should. He pleads with you once more, but you merely tell him that if he doesn’t get out of your face you’re going to kill him yourself. No sooner have you said that, a nearby explosion knocks you off your horse, which ends up falling on top of you as well. You feel a sharp numbness in your right leg, which is under the horse. You look over at the major who was speaking to you and half of his face has been blown off. You can’t hear a thing as the explosion has made you completely deaf though your hearing wasn’t the greatest with only one ear and all. Using all your strength you pull yourself out from underneath your horse, which is quite dead. A couple of your other officers see you and come to help pull you out and you see that your leg is broken to the point where the bone is coming through the skin. One of your lieutenants goes to stop the bleeding and she’s obviously yelling at others to get help, but you still can’t hear a thing. You can make out her saying something to you, probably that she’s going to put the bone back in place. You just nod quickly and shout at her to do it. She does and it’s one of the most excruciating things you’ve felt in a long time and you’ve had more than your share of wounds. It’s only through your own will power that you don’t scream out. While the lieutenant wraps up your leg with a splint, two others come with a stretcher. You don’t want to be helped up, but you are any way. “Standing up” straight you decline being put on the stretcher and insist that you’ll hop to the nearest horse if you have to. The female lieutenant says something to you while she continues to help prop you up, but you’re still deaf and can’t hear anything she’s saying. You can only guess it’s something about doing it for your own good. You aren’t going to be told what to do and you push her away, only to fall down. You curse and yell at your weakness and begin to crawl away. You can only assume the rest of your staff is yelling at you back, but you can’t see their faces, your eyes are staring at dirt right now. You crawl for a moment and that’s when you start to hear something again. “Gen……..mu….now! C… on!” You feel several hands turn you around and your staff is intent on forcibly putting you on the stretcher. You don’t bother struggling because that’s when through your damaged hearing that you hear a distinct whistling sound. “Brenda, I...” You say before the explosive cannon ball wipes you all out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Kill these fucking deserters and get me to the medic.” You say. The screams of the belzak deserters begging for their lives and death squeals fall on deaf ears…or rather ear as the case may be now. Eventually you manage to make it to the medic who immediately starts administering an antidote to you. You’re out of commission and very sick for a couple of days, but after which time you’re at least able to stand without feeling ill anymore. Your chewed off ear isn’t an excessive problem as you can still hear relatively well, still you do feel a sense of “loss.” In any event the expansionist eastern campaign is over. All the tribes have been either wiped out or subdued to the point of submissiveness. Brenda will be relieved to hear it, as you know she was always concerned about having most of the veteran troops there instead of the northern borders. She’ll also be pleased that there weren’t many losses overall. You’re satisfied with the results, though now you’re just wondering what you’re going to do with yourself again. Year 50 “Our defenses are strong in the north. Have been for years. No need to be concerned about that.” You say. “I know, but this is a big thing. I mean after all these years now Edgar wants to speak with us?” Brenda asks. “My reports say he’s gotten a lot more organized and isn’t dealing with anarchy in his ranks anymore. He even re-conquered the old core lands of the Empire. It could be that he wants to see how strong we really are. His message said he’s coming alone without anyone else.” “Well, maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe he just wants to talk.” “Or maybe he wants to kill us both to a great show of strength so Nalin will capitulate with minimum fuss.” You point out. “Yeah…there is that tactic. (sigh) Well I guess we all knew this day was coming. Guess I better practice my combat skills., which sadly have probably declined from lack of use. Would you spar with me?” “Of course. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’re not that out of practice.” You remark. You and Brenda go to her personal training room where you and her prepare to spar. Brenda makes a few remarks about this being like the old days when Mistress made you fight each other. Brenda mentions the time when you broke Gerald’s arm and Kane’s nose when she pit them both against you. “Yeah, I remember that. That was my first match. Mistress had it in for me after I begged for my life. I was always pretty aggressive after that, well at least until Gruz told me I should master my anger better, and I did…anyway let’s get on with this.” You say not really wanting to think about those days or any of the names mentioned. Brenda isn’t quite as skilled as you remember her to be and she has indeed let her talents decline. Then again as you remember she always was more skilled with the bow. Something you never quite got the hang of yourself. You begin to get more in a “drill instructor mode” and shout commands at her to watch her techniques. “Alright, alright, I told you I was out of practice.” She shouts back. “Well you shouldn’t have let it get this bad in the first place.” You say. After this remark, Brenda begins to get a little annoyed, which of course means she makes even more mistakes. “Brenda, come on I know you’re better than this! Focus!” “I am!” “Well prove it!” “Well, I’m sorry I’m not the fucking lord of war that you are!” “You don’t need to be me, you just need to be an Eternal!” “What the hell for? The Empire is fucking dead and we’ve just been upkeeping a parody of it for the past fifteen years! I don’t even know what I’m doing trying to run this fucking country anymore! I never wanted this! I…I just wanted…to spend the rest of my…(sob) life with Roldan…(sob)” At this point Brenda sits down on the floor and completely breaks down in tears. You can honestly say you weren’t expecting this. “Brenda…” “I’m sorry, but I can’t be the Eternal you are. I can’t even be the Eternal that Edgar is. I lost that edge when I fell in love. I wasn’t supposed to and neither was Roldan! If we hadn’t been so weak, he’d still be alive and…” “Dammit Brenda, you can’t keep blaming yourself for his death! Your relationship and whatever feelings you had for each other had nothing to do with some insane asshole blowing him up. What’s bringing this all on? Edgar? I think you’re worrying about him more than you need to. I mean for all we know he just wants play catch up and even if he doesn’t we’re going to be ready for him and his army of half assed Eternals…” Brenda shakes her head and tries to compose herself. “No, it’s not Edgar. It’s you.” “Me? What do you mean? Out with it.” “I…I think I’ve developed the same kind of feelings for you that I did for Roldan.” Brenda says. Another surprise for you today, not exactly the best timing with all that’s coming up soon. “…Uh…I don’t know what to say…I guess…I mean…are you sure?” you ask. “I think I’d know. It’s been building up slowly over time. At first I was just happy to have you around, another Eternal to talk to. Sure you weren’t Roldan, and you’re certainly less fun loving than he could be, but there was that familiar bond. Then when you were so instrumental in helping to keep order in this place, I remembered why we all admired and respected you as a leader so much back in the day. It also began to remind me of how Roldan and I complimented each other in keeping order here during the days of the Empire. You were bringing the memories of those good old days back and making them reality again.” “You probably just still miss him and are transferring those feelings.” “I thought so too, which is why I didn’t do anything before. In fact I was feeling guilty about it, I thought I was dishonoring Roldan’s memory. Wasn’t until I heard about your close call with death during your campaign in the east that I knew it was more than mere transference. I was so happy that you were still alive, I nearly told you how I felt when you came back. I just didn’t think you suffered from such weaknesses and I wanted to remain strong because your respect was more important than my silly attractions.” You don’t have much experience with any of this, but you need to say or do something make Brenda feel better. “Brenda, you’ll always have my respect. As for anything between us, I never thought about it because I figured you’d always be carrying a torch for Roldan. I’m not opposed to the idea however. I mean we do have much in common and contrary to popular belief, I’m not quite the unfeeling golem that most consider me to be. I do have feelings, even if I don’t show them a lot and I would’ve thought you knew that.” “I know you do, but you’re in control of them or you at least direct them better. I worry that if by some chance something would to occur between us, that you would lose your edge. I don’t want you to become weaker or distracted because of me. You’re needed as you are now.” You’re about to reply, and then there’s a knock on the door. “Sorry to disturb your training, but I’ve been told that the leader of the Eternal Dominion has been spotted at the northern border. He’s on a horse by himself, and several soldiers are already escorting him to Fort Glory. Did you want to meet him there or did you want us to escort him all the way to the capital?” a voice asks from behind the door. The pair of you didn’t expect him this soon, let alone be in the middle of the discussion you’re having now. You’d probably both like to wrap this up before having to focus on Edgar, though the question is if you’d have enough time to do it anyway. > You let the soldiers escort Edgar to the capital Edgar can wait, you need to wrap this up now, or at least get some sort of temporary closure on this situation. “Bring Edgar here, it won’t hurt him to ride a little longer!” you yell before turning your attention back to Brenda. “Okay, we’ve got a little more time and that’s all I need. Stop worrying about me, I’m not going to suddenly turn into some love sick idiot that can’t think things through if we have a deeper relationship! My question is, do you want one with me? Do you genuinely feel that strongly for me?” “Yes, I do.” Brenda says. “Then we shouldn’t avoid how we feel.” You reply and kiss Brenda. Brenda kisses you back and the pair of you give in to your physical desires. You’re both at it so long you lose track of time and you’re interrupted again with another knock at the door. “Erm, I hate to disturb you again, but I’ve just received word that general Edgar was attacked on the road by fanatics opposing our talks with the Eternal Dominion. We don’t even know what’s happened to him and soldiers are…” “WHAT?!” you shout. “Fuck, hold on!” In exasperation you get dressed as fast as you can and Brenda does likewise. You’re cursing the entire time, Brenda says nothing, but you can imagine that she’s already starting to blame herself for this. You question the advisor on what he’s heard and he mentions that Edgar and his escort were ambushed near the village of Helas. Apparently nobody even saw it coming, the guards that were assigned to escort had several crossbow bolts in their bodies. Edgar must’ve put up a fight since there were some of the assassins found dead at the scene, though no sign of him. There was a blood trail, but it disappeared after a half of mile or so. So far none of the villagers from Helas have been incredibly helpful, which pretty much indicates that most of them must’ve known about it. Brenda orders a complete search of the area, while you press forward to interrogating the entire village of Helas. You don’t have too much success and just find out how much the inhabitants really don’t like the idea Nalin becoming friendly with the Eternal Dominion. They assume if that happens then you’ll start lording it over them like the Eternals do in the Dominion (as opposed to the “nice” way you do it now) After executing half of the village, you proceed with the search, but you still can’t find any trace of Edgar. You suspect that he’s covering his tracks and making his way back home. You can’t allow that to happen, because if he does, he’s going to declare war on you probably believing this to be a set up, and while that may happen anyway, you’d at least like to try to convince him that it wasn’t. Or failing that, depriving the Eternal Dominion of their leader… You order double the amount of troops along the northern borders; you’re going to need them there regardless of what happens. Brenda and you have a long argument about how your feelings lead to this situation. Brenda of course says that it just proves her right and that you need to put an end to the relationship. You get to the point where you’re too frustrated with her to argue anymore and perhaps in some small way she has a point so you ultimately agree and say it’s business from here on out. A couple months pass and still no word on Edgar either. You aren’t exactly ready to declare him dead, but if he was still alive and managed to make it back to the Eternal Dominion, it really seems like he would’ve declared war on you by now. As it stands you haven’t heard a word from them. They haven’t even sent any threatening messengers asking about their leader (you assume he told them he was going to visit you). You chalk it up to whatever selfish power grab they probably got going on. Still there’s always the possibility they could attack even with disorganized leadership. However it isn’t really Edgar or the ED that you’re worried about, things are obviously strained with Brenda. Brenda and you barely even meet in person anymore and you mainly stay at Fort Glory. She’s been delegating a lot of responsibility to her staff and become increasingly withdrawn. You attempt to reach out to her, but she doesn’t respond positively and just requests that you leave her alone. From what her advisors tell you, she spends most of her time staring and talking to a portrait of Roldan a lot and constantly re-reading love letters he wrote to her. Mostly apologizing for straying from him and being responsible for his death. You step in to take up the slack of rulership, and there aren’t too many objections though things in Nalin haven’t exactly been the most calm as far as civil obedience goes lately. Year 51 “…and so I’m sorry. I’m sorry that my weakness diminished your strength. Even though we didn’t go through with a closer relationship, I know you were continuing to worry about me. I couldn’t let you be distracted with lesser concerns. I saw that happen with Roldan, and I wouldn’t let it happen to you too. I think this will be for the best. I feel like I’ve just been walking through a parody of life ever since Roldan died and I think you know that I was growing weary of rulership anyway. Assuming Edgar is indeed dead, I guess this will make you the last of the original Eternals. I guess what you once told me what Captain Gruz’s last words were are true. You outlived everyone. Thank you for your company and making the last fifteen years much more bearable, I wish you well in whatever your future plans are, but I’m going to be with my beloved Roldan now. May you always remain the paragon of the Empire that you are. Love Brenda You knew it was only a matter of time and you suspected it was coming, but perhaps this is the only way it could’ve been. Apparently she hadn’t been happy for a long time, still, you wish that things could’ve been different. Maybe you didn’t exactly have a relationship with Brenda like Roldan did, but you did have one of sorts for the past fifteen years and now you definitely feel a great sense of loss because she’s gone. However, life goes on. After shedding a few tears in private and composing yourself, you fold the letter and put it with the rest of your personal belongings. You then make arrangements for her funeral, which is a small one. You have her body burned outside Fort Glory since you know that she had Roldan’s body burned outside the fort as well. It only seems fitting. You officially take over as sole ruler of Nalin unsure of what the future may hold. > Year 56 “Sir, you want us to completely wipe out all settlements with the plague?” Colonel Gemma asks. “That’s what I said isn’t it? I’ve already assigned all the medics, healers and hedge wizards in the land to focus on the less affected areas. As for those places really bad off kill all the people, cleanse the area with fire, no more problem.” “But, you’re going to have mass riots! The people will protest, even soldiers! I mean some of their families are in the quarantined areas!” “Well I guess you better have those soldiers executed then if you think they’ll be a problem. In fact I’m surprised to hear you balk from these orders, I remember you when you were a young soldier wiping out Belzak women and children without hesitation.” “I…I’m not sir, I’m just concerned about the repercussions of potentially losing more of our army.” “You let me worry about the repercussions! Look here’s what you do, gather up all the old guard such as yourself to carry out this plan. In fact get those elves I made into orphans during the tribal wars. I’m guessing they should be good and obedient soldiers by now, but they probably won’t hesitate to murder some defenseless humans. The plague doesn’t seem to be affecting non-humans as much anyway, so they’re probably more resistant. In fact gather some of those kobolds too; they can clear out the bodies. Those little bastards seem to be immune altogether. That’s all for now.” Gemma nods and takes her leave. You have more concerns today, but you’re delegating them to the advisors as usual. If it isn’t a problem that can be solved by force, you’re not very interested in it. Brenda was right; ruling is a pain in the ass. When she was alive, you still had the “fun” part to focus on, now you have to do it all. This latest plague is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened in years. Still can’t figure out how and where it originated from though. A passing thought was it might be saboteurs from the Eternal Dominion, but they’ve been fighting amongst themselves ever since Edgar died. Never did find his body. You still wonder exactly what it was he wanted to discuss with you and Brenda. An alliance perhaps? A threat to submit? You’ll never know. The nation of Nalin has become a lot more totalitarian under your rule. You’ve actually made it even more “Empire like” than it already was mostly because it’s what you know, but also because it makes you at least feel like things are how they “should be”. Lately though even that hasn’t helped your mindset. You’ve become increasingly bored with just plain ruling, and after this plague nonsense is taken care of, you’re thinking of doing something to shake things up a bit. The obvious idea is to expand again, specifically aggressive expansion into Eternal Dominion territory. It’s been too long since you’ve experienced a good fight. The other idea you’ve had is one you probably wouldn’t have considered again, but at this point any change would be welcome. You’ve thought about just leaving. Leaving everything behind and the region entirely. > You expand You left the Empire behind because you no longer believed in it. Nalin has become a kind of substitute for it though and ever since Brenda died, you’ve tried to make it even more like the Empire. This may be the closest you’re going to get back to the “good old days” and with age ever creeping up on you, you need to make the best of things and not wallow in indecision or hesitation. You’re the last of the real Eternals and you’re going to act as such. Nalin WILL become the new Empire. After a few months of putting out some of the backlash of how you handled the plague, you make your plans for expansion. You also fully intend overseeing it personally. The first round of conquests go well. The disorganized Eternals and their slaves don’t give you too much trouble; indeed some of the population welcomes your intervention. Most of the new generations of Eternals have been so excessively cruel that their subjects are willing to accept any other tyrant as an improvement, even if it’s another Eternal. Eventually you do hit a brick wall of sorts, the remaining Eternals realize they need to unite against you. The Eternal Dominion is more advanced technology wise (having stolen ideas and equipment from the Felkan Kingdom), though through your initial conquests, you’ve made steps to try to close the gap in the availability of gunpower-based weapons for your own soldiers. Still, even with the current stand off with the Eternal Dominion, you victories restore some of the appreciation of your citizens in Nalin who are probably just glad your violence is focused on others for a change. The balance of power has been shifted enough for the Felkan Kingdom to take greater notice of you too, especially since now your territory borders some of their own. They send one of their own to speak to you, while you’re currently at a conquered ED Fort making plans for your next attack. To your surprise one of their own, is also one of your own too, or as least was at one time. “Warrick?” you ask. He’s obviously older, has a missing eye and no hair, but you still recognize him despite your near disbelief. “Yes, it’s me…see you’re missing a few body parts as well.” He says causing you to touch where your ear used to be. Sometimes you even forget that it’s missing. “Well you know how it is…but I thought you were dead! I mean I’d heard…how is it that you’re working for the Felkan Kingdom now?” “That’s a long story, but let’s just say I found my own path, like I see you found yours. Which is sort of why I’m here.” Warrick mentions to you that the Felkan Kingdom has been expecting an attack from the Eternal Dominion for more than a decade, even after the disappearance of their leader Edgar. However, now that the ED seems to be no longer a potential threat they’re worried about Nalin invading, perhaps even more so since you seem to be a more organized potential threat. “Well, you can tell your king or whoever, that I’m not interested in the Felkan Kingdom. The Nalin Empire isn’t in a position to attack such a powerful nation at this time.” “At this time…that implies that you might later.” “Heh, well you might be right, just as I might believe that you’re planning on attack us.” “True, and while you probably will rightfully remain suspicious, the Felkan Kingdom has no interest in conquest. Especially not right now. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but we’re still dealing with a massive gnoll invasion that hit our land years ago. Fighting another war isn’t something we want right now.” “Hmm, you’re right, you shouldn’t be giving vital intelligence away like that. This new information gives me an advantage. Knowing that you aren’t as powerful as I once thought, I may very well attack you now.” “Well I suppose you’ll do what you have to then, but if you’re still the leader I know you to be, you won’t. You don’t want to fight a war on two fronts either.” Warrick says in an unconcerned tone. “Ha ha! And you would be correct! But enough about power struggles, let’s talk for a moment just as Eternals.” Warrick’s tale of how he came to be in the service of the Felkan Kingdom is a little sketchy. He mentions that during the last days of the Empire he was still under orders to perform his usual sabotaging missions. He says that he managed to integrate himself in their favor by rescuing some of the royal family who were apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time. Children actually. He says he doesn’t remember all of it exactly though except there was a big explosion and the next thing he knew when he woke up is that he was missing an eye and was given a job. Already knowing how the Empire was beginning to crumble he accepted. You proceed to tell Warrick about your time since the Empire fell. He listens intently as you go on about the various thoughts you’ve gone through since that time. You mention Edgar to him, which interests him greatly. He says the Felkan government assumed that he was killed by one of his own men in a power struggle. He asks if you ever found his body or any evidence of his death. You tell him you never did, for all you know he still got killed by one of his own men, assuming he had managed to get back to the Eternal Dominion. You also mention Brenda. Warrick displays a bit of sadness when he hears the whole story, and you sort of relive some of that sadness as well. It hasn’t been that long since she died after all. “So, we’re really the last two left then?” Warrick says. “Looks that way, though to be honest I thought you’d been dead for years. Glad to see you’re still around.” “Even if we may be enemies one day?” “We’re Eternals. The originals. We’ll always have a bond that nobody else will and if we should end up on opposite ends of the battlefield it still doesn’t change that. Assuming that day ever comes and we’re both still in fighting condition, seek me out as I shall seek you out and we’ll settle things in the only way they can be.” Warrick nods at your proposal and is silent for a moment as if deep in thought. He then eventually gets up and tells you he has to leave. He mentions that he’ll tell his superiors that the Nalin Empire has no hostile intentions towards the Felkan Kingdom at this time. The pair of you shake hands and part company, possibly knowing if you ever do see each other again, it won’t be on friendly terms. Still, there is a small bit of you that was happy to see an old comrade again. You return to the business of waging war on the pathetic remains of the Eternal Dominion. Year 65 “Sir, you are incredibly lucky that the sword didn’t hit any vital organs and just pierced the top layer of muscle.” Lieutenant Davis says as he applies a mixture of some salve to the wound. “Agh! Yeah, lucky me. Just patch me up, I want to finish off these wannabes once and for all.” You say wincing at the burning sensation of the ointment working to seal the wound. “General, victory is assured, is it really necessary for you personally be involved in the combat? Your military expertise is better served as the mind. Colonel Gemma says she’s got a handle on things.” “Yeah, well if she’s got such a handle on things, why did I have to save her ass at the Battle of Julk Pass? And what’s this shit about my military expertise is better served with my mind? You’re lucky I don’t have you executed for saying shit like that! I was killing werebeasts, orcs and other shit you ain’t even heard about before you were even a twinkle in your parent’s eyes! I’m still every bit of a warrior as I… ah shit! My fucking head!” you suddenly shout and lie back down on the table. A couple of other medical types apply something cold to your head saying that you need to rest. The plate they put in your head from the bullet wound needs to be “adjusted.” You grudgingly comply and close your eyes. You hate this weakness. Old age, the only enemy you can’t outmaneuver, regardless of how hard you try. Death isn’t something you’ve ever been afraid of, indeed part of you never expected to even live this long. But death by old age? Natural causes? That’s something you never even seriously considered before, even if it was in the back of your mind. If you continue your insistence on believing you’re still in your twenties, you’re going to die on the battlefield. You know that, and you’re okay with that idea, but part of you wonders if it’s just foolish to throw your life away over being stubborn when you could still live and do more with you life. The Nalin Empire is thriving and you’ve almost conquered the Eternal Dominion which means you effectively restored most of the old Empire. A feat Edgar was probably trying to accomplish no doubt, but much like him, if you died suddenly, who knows how long it would last before it crumbled. If you want to leave any sort of real legacy, you would most likely have to step back now and begin to make preparations for a line of succession and you’d need a lot of time to do that to sort out all the details. This would mean you’d no longer be able to take such a personal approach to war again. Your days as a warrior would effectively be over and you’d be back to the drudgery of bureaucratic rulership again. You have to take a long look at yourself and decide now, if that’s what your fate is going to be. > You continue to lead by example You spend the rest of the day in your personal tent still recovering from your last battle thinking about your situation. Your head still hurts from where part of your skull was replaced with a crude metal plate and your body aches all over as it has been for years. You’re nearly deaf in your one working ear. You’ve got scars all over your face and body. You even have a couple of missing fingertips now. Yet for good or ill, you’re going to at least see this war through to its end. You have to be hands on when it comes to battle. You were raised to be a warrior, a killer, and an instrument of war. There have been times you’ve had stray thoughts on a different life, but ultimately it’s always come back to war. You weren’t meant to be an old man who dies on his throne either through natural causes or assassination, and you definitely weren’t meant to find a love and live happily ever after. You are an Eternal and you were meant to die in battle. Whatever happens afterwards is of minor importance. The next morning you muster up all your strength and stand. You’re a little wobbly, but you manage it and step outside. Several of your staff urges you to rest, but you ignore their concerns. You plan your attack on the “Eternal City” with your top staff. It was once the capital of the Empire, now it’s the last stand of the Eternal Dominion. At this point there really isn’t too much strategy involved. You just plan on blowing up the walls and storming the place with as many soldiers as possible. You remark that when the walls are down, you’ll be leading the first assault. “General! You can’t be serious! I understand you want to be involved in the battle, but this is going too far! You know very well the battalion that goes in first is going to suffer the most losses.” Colonel Gemma exclaims. “It won’t if I’m leading it.” You say. “However, when I fall, you’re next in line. I trust you know what to do. ALL of you know what you’re supposed to do.” This remark causes a dead silence among your staff. You didn’t even say IF you fall, you said WHEN you fall. You realize this and collect your thoughts in what you believe to be your last speech to all of them. “(Sigh) Look, I’m tired. I’m old. I got more scars than all of you put together. I’m missing portions of my body. I’m in constant pain and I got a fucking plate in my head. I appreciate all the service you’ve given in the past few years and in some cases decades. Your concern for my life is noted, but I know it’s time. I’ve lived a satisfying life. I won’t say good, because I’ve been through enough shit to know that isn’t true, but I can say it had its good moments. And I fully intend on making my last moments on earth satisfying as well by leading all of you to victory before it’s all over. So! You all have your orders, and if I’m wrong about my impending death…well I’ll see you all in the palace when this is over and you all can taunt me for being an overly dramatic old man. One taunt per person of course.” This last remark lightens the mood enough for a couple of them to smile. One even manages to give a small chuckle. You figure even if you don’t believe it, you should try to keep morale up. The attack on the city commences. It won’t really take long to bring the walls down. Never thought the day would come where you’d actually be attacking this place. It’s funny, in all the years you served the Empire, you never once set foot into it’s capital, let alone the Emperor’s palace. You sometimes wonder what exactly happened to the Emperor when the Empire fell. Was he killed? Did he escape? Was there really ever an Emperor at all? It’s all irrelevant now you suppose. After a couple days of bombardment by catapults and cannons you at last breach the walls enough that the opening cannot be repaired quick enough. That’s when you make your move. “ATTACK!” you shout while galloping forward with your horse, which is shaking you enough to make every bone in your body ache. You’ve never really liked riding horses, but if you want to be the first one in the city, you need the speed, because running just isn’t something you do much anymore. You get closer and closer to the city nearly getting blown to pieces in the process by the cannon fire. How you aren’t shot off your horse by a stray bullet is short of amazing. It’s just as well you’re nearly deaf, you doubt if you could stand the noise of the explosions if you weren’t. You reach the wall breach and it is there your horse rears up from the wall of pikes held by the enemy. This temporarily saves its life, but a few shots are fired and the beast makes one last neigh before collapsing. You are also hit in the leg by one of these shots, but you fortunately manage to avoid having the horse land on you when you’re thrown from it. Sensing that you’re an easy target some the enemy soldiers break their formation and attempt to attack you while you’re down, but you’re far from being out of this fight. Ignoring the pain, you stand up and meet your attackers head on, easily slaying them. You then proceed to fight your way through the breach just before the rest of your soldiers reach it to help you. The bodies of the dead surround you and the streets are quite literally running red with blood. The mixture of gunpowder and death fills your lungs when you breathe deeply and it smells a hell of a lot better than that poison cloud that Slin witch inflicted on you years ago. Limping around on one good leg, you help out the rest of your soldiers who are a little faster than you now in engaging the enemy. You tell them all to take the palace, a lot of them shout back at you, but you can only really read their lips due to the noise and your bad hearing. The Eternal Dominion’s last stand has them pulling out all the stops for this battle, at one point you find yourself facing a large group of orc troops in heavy armor and a single battle mage desperately trying to defend the gates of the palace. It’s been a while since you’ve faced either of these enemies, but you’re not going to run at this late stage. Your soldiers engage the orcs and you try to focus on the battle mage who is chanting something, a couple of shots are fired at him, but whatever magic barrier he has up blocks them. When you reach him, his eyes turn completely red and a ring of flame suddenly emanates from him burning you and several others nearby. You fall to the palace steps trying to put the flames out and after managing to do so you realize you’re now blind in one eye and the other eye sees a statue outside the palace beginning to move. “Fuck, he’s bringing it to life.” You say to yourself. Your body then feels a heavy mace blow to your left arm shattering several bones in it. It’s quite possible that you would die right there if not for a fellow soldier killing the orc that attacked you. Somebody helps you up and you’re feeling nearly delirious at this point. Someone shouts about you bleeding from the head, but you can’t really hear them, you’re still focused on the mattle mage, who has nearly brought the statue to life. Fighting through the pain as usual, you rush at the mage, even knocking an orc down in the process. The barrier doesn’t stop non-projectiles and you easily tackle him. He tries to cast a spell, but is unable to when you shove your armored fist into his mouth. As he chokes on his own blood and teeth, you pull part of his tongue out and then smash his skull open on the palace steps painting them with his brains. Whatever magic that was about to power the statue dies with him and it stops moving. You stand back up with great effort, one of your soldiers shouts something about getting into the palace and you just nod and limp your way inside. Victory is at hand. You step inside the palace and even in the midst of this carnage it is certainly impressive. You can only imagine what it looked like at the height of the Empire’s might. Several of your soldiers engage the last remaining hold outs, but you just wander about looking at the palace. You feel sort of odd, like almost delirious, but you try to ignore it. It has been a tiring day after all. You see the skirmishing going on in the hallways and rooms, but you’re looking for something in particular, the throne room. You eventually find it, and surprisingly it’s empty. A couple of vases and banner have been knocked to the floor, but other than that, it’s in relatively good condition. You gaze upon the single impressive platinum throne at the back and approach it. You feel a sudden sense of accomplishment and pride in your deeds. You’re also still feeling woozy and you collapse to one knee, but some how it seems appropriate. “I see. The Emperor…he was still watching…he was always watching…I’ve passed the test.” You says to yourself staring at the floor. You then look up at the empty throne. “I have restored the Empire. I have restored its glory. I will take my place with you soon.” You say and then pass out, never to wake up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You left the Empire behind because you no longer believed in it. Nalin has become a kind of substitute for it though and ever since Brenda died, you’ve tried to make it even more like the Empire. This may be the closest you’re going to get back to the “good old days” and with age ever creeping up on you, you need to make the best of things and not wallow in indecision or hesitation. You’re the last of the real Eternals and you’re going to act as such. Nalin WILL become the new Empire. After a few months of putting out some of the backlash of how you handled the plague, you make your plans for expansion. You also fully intend overseeing it personally. The first round of conquests go well. The disorganized Eternals and their slaves don’t give you too much trouble; indeed some of the population welcomes your intervention. Most of the new generations of Eternals have been so excessively cruel that their subjects are willing to accept any other tyrant as an improvement, even if it’s another Eternal. Eventually you do hit a brick wall of sorts, the remaining Eternals realize they need to unite against you. The Eternal Dominion is more advanced technology wise (having stolen ideas and equipment from the Felkan Kingdom), though through your initial conquests, you’ve made steps to try to close the gap in the availability of gunpower-based weapons for your own soldiers. Still, even with the current stand off with the Eternal Dominion, you victories restore some of the appreciation of your citizens in Nalin who are probably just glad your violence is focused on others for a change. The balance of power has been shifted enough for the Felkan Kingdom to take greater notice of you too, especially since now your territory borders some of their own. They send one of their own to speak to you, while you’re currently at a conquered ED Fort making plans for your next attack. To your surprise one of their own, is also one of your own too, or as least was at one time. “Warrick?” you ask. He’s obviously older, has a missing eye and no hair, but you still recognize him despite your near disbelief. “Yes, it’s me…see you’re missing a few body parts as well.” He says causing you to touch where your ear used to be. Sometimes you even forget that it’s missing. “Well you know how it is…but I thought you were dead! I mean I’d heard…how is it that you’re working for the Felkan Kingdom now?” “That’s a long story, but let’s just say I found my own path, like I see you found yours. Which is sort of why I’m here.” Warrick mentions to you that the Felkan Kingdom has been expecting an attack from the Eternal Dominion for more than a decade, even after the disappearance of their leader Edgar. However, now that the ED seems to be no longer a potential threat they’re worried about Nalin invading, perhaps even more so since you seem to be a more organized potential threat. “Well, you can tell your king or whoever, that I’m not interested in the Felkan Kingdom. The Nalin Empire isn’t in a position to attack such a powerful nation at this time.” “At this time…that implies that you might later.” “Heh, well you might be right, just as I might believe that you’re planning on attack us.” “True, and while you probably will rightfully remain suspicious, the Felkan Kingdom has no interest in conquest. Especially not right now. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but we’re still dealing with a massive gnoll invasion that hit our land years ago. Fighting another war isn’t something we want right now.” “Hmm, you’re right, you shouldn’t be giving vital intelligence away like that. This new information gives me an advantage. Knowing that you aren’t as powerful as I once thought, I may very well attack you now.” “Well I suppose you’ll do what you have to then, but if you’re still the leader I know you to be, you won’t. You don’t want to fight a war on two fronts either.” Warrick says in an unconcerned tone. “Ha ha! And you would be correct! But enough about power struggles, let’s talk for a moment just as Eternals.” Warrick’s tale of how he came to be in the service of the Felkan Kingdom is a little sketchy. He mentions that during the last days of the Empire he was still under orders to perform his usual sabotaging missions. He says that he managed to integrate himself in their favor by rescuing some of the royal family who were apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time. Children actually. He says he doesn’t remember all of it exactly though except there was a big explosion and the next thing he knew when he woke up is that he was missing an eye and was given a job. Already knowing how the Empire was beginning to crumble he accepted. You proceed to tell Warrick about your time since the Empire fell. He listens intently as you go on about the various thoughts you’ve gone through since that time. You mention Edgar to him, which interests him greatly. He says the Felkan government assumed that he was killed by one of his own men in a power struggle. He asks if you ever found his body or any evidence of his death. You tell him you never did, for all you know he still got killed by one of his own men, assuming he had managed to get back to the Eternal Dominion. You also mention Brenda. Warrick displays a bit of sadness when he hears the whole story, and you sort of relive some of that sadness as well. It hasn’t been that long since she died after all. “So, we’re really the last two left then?” Warrick says. “Looks that way, though to be honest I thought you’d been dead for years. Glad to see you’re still around.” “Even if we may be enemies one day?” “We’re Eternals. The originals. We’ll always have a bond that nobody else will and if we should end up on opposite ends of the battlefield it still doesn’t change that. Assuming that day ever comes and we’re both still in fighting condition, seek me out as I shall seek you out and we’ll settle things in the only way they can be.” Warrick nods at your proposal and is silent for a moment as if deep in thought. He then eventually gets up and tells you he has to leave. He mentions that he’ll tell his superiors that the Nalin Empire has no hostile intentions towards the Felkan Kingdom at this time. The pair of you shake hands and part company, possibly knowing if you ever do see each other again, it won’t be on friendly terms. Still, there is a small bit of you that was happy to see an old comrade again. You return to the business of waging war on the pathetic remains of the Eternal Dominion. Year 65 “Sir, you are incredibly lucky that the sword didn’t hit any vital organs and just pierced the top layer of muscle.” Lieutenant Davis says as he applies a mixture of some salve to the wound. “Agh! Yeah, lucky me. Just patch me up, I want to finish off these wannabes once and for all.” You say wincing at the burning sensation of the ointment working to seal the wound. “General, victory is assured, is it really necessary for you personally be involved in the combat? Your military expertise is better served as the mind. Colonel Gemma says she’s got a handle on things.” “Yeah, well if she’s got such a handle on things, why did I have to save her ass at the Battle of Julk Pass? And what’s this shit about my military expertise is better served with my mind? You’re lucky I don’t have you executed for saying shit like that! I was killing werebeasts, orcs and other shit you ain’t even heard about before you were even a twinkle in your parent’s eyes! I’m still every bit of a warrior as I… ah shit! My fucking head!” you suddenly shout and lie back down on the table. A couple of other medical types apply something cold to your head saying that you need to rest. The plate they put in your head from the bullet wound needs to be “adjusted.” You grudgingly comply and close your eyes. You hate this weakness. Old age, the only enemy you can’t outmaneuver, regardless of how hard you try. Death isn’t something you’ve ever been afraid of, indeed part of you never expected to even live this long. But death by old age? Natural causes? That’s something you never even seriously considered before, even if it was in the back of your mind. If you continue your insistence on believing you’re still in your twenties, you’re going to die on the battlefield. You know that, and you’re okay with that idea, but part of you wonders if it’s just foolish to throw your life away over being stubborn when you could still live and do more with you life. The Nalin Empire is thriving and you’ve almost conquered the Eternal Dominion which means you effectively restored most of the old Empire. A feat Edgar was probably trying to accomplish no doubt, but much like him, if you died suddenly, who knows how long it would last before it crumbled. If you want to leave any sort of real legacy, you would most likely have to step back now and begin to make preparations for a line of succession and you’d need a lot of time to do that to sort out all the details. This would mean you’d no longer be able to take such a personal approach to war again. Your days as a warrior would effectively be over and you’d be back to the drudgery of bureaucratic rulership again. You have to take a long look at yourself and decide now, if that’s what your fate is going to be. > You retire your sword Your head still hurts from where part of your skull was replaced with a crude metal plate and your body aches all over as it has been for years. You’re nearly deaf in your one working ear. You’ve got scars all over your face and body. You even have a couple of missing fingertips now. Even if you did go into battle again, you probably wouldn’t even make it to the city. You’ve finally realized that your days of battle are over, or at least over on any meaningful level. It’s a sobering thought and not one you’re happy with, but if you’re going to truly re-establish the Empire or have a reasonable successor nation, then you’re going to have to step back from the battlefield. The next day you call in your top staff and tell them that you will indeed pull yourself out of the final push on to the “Eternal City”, they all of course agree with your decision and state they are glad to hear you’ve made it. You tell them all what you want done still as far as the attack is concerned and you also say you aren’t going to be running off the battlefield just yet, as you still want to oversee things from a distance at least. There really isn’t too much strategy in the scheme of things. You plan on breaching the wall with cannons and catapults and then your soldiers will kill everything hostile within. Simple enough. You watch from outside your tent when the attack commences, hours pass and everything is going as planned and then your head begins to hurt once again. Cursing, you go back inside to lie down for a while. After a few minutes you begin to feel better, but now you’re tired. If your hearing was better you probably wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, but as it is, the faint sounds of the cannons and battle aren’t enough to keep you awake. You figure a small nap won’t hurt, so you allow yourself to drift off. You begin to have a dream where you are back in Mistress’ classroom. Everything is the same except you’re the only one there and you’re five years old again. Mistress then walks into the room with a sneer on her face. “You disappoint me, but then I should’ve expected such weakness from one that begs for his life when faced with the possibility of death!” Mistress says to you. “I…” is all you get out before she kicks you in the chest and steps on you. You look up and see her cruelly smiling at you. “Silence! Did you learn nothing from me? You lack discipline! You always did! You’re weak and soft! That’s why your Empire fell! You think you can restore it? It’s gone! Just like most of your fellow Eternals and you’ll be next, if you don’t beg. Now do it! Beg!” “No…I…” you gasp. “What?! You dare disobey me?” Mistress shouts and ceases stepping on you for a moment to pick you up and slap you across the face. You slap her back and she throws you into a bunch of chairs. “Impudent whelp! You will learn to obey!” she yells and moves towards you. You scramble back and stand up. She approaches closer and you pick up a chair and attempt to hit her with it, but she grabs it and yanks it from your hands. “Nice try Eternal, but it’s too late for fighting back.” You try to get out of the way, but you feel hard wooden chair smashing into your body which is already bruised and sore from being thrown. You collapse on the floor and feel something wet dripping from your head. It’s blood. You are picked up and turned around by Mistress; she spits in your face and lifts you in the air. You can barely focus on her face as you’re feeling very dizzy. “Is this the best you can do? You couldn’t even land one hit on me and you’re trying to restore the Empire? You need to just let it die. Its time came and went just like yours did. Yet instead of letting go and dying with dignity you’re choosing to live as a parody of yourself ruling a parody of the Empire. Pathetic!” Mistress says and throws you, though you don’t hit a wall like you expect to, you just continue to fly backwards in the air and then someone catches you. “Oof! What the hell son, I’m not carrying you, you fight your own battles!” you hear Captain Gruz say and then he drops you to the floor. When you stand back up you’re a little bigger. You’re twelve and in Gruz’s training room. “Now listen, I know we had our differences, but don’t you listen to that svelk bitch, she’s just projecting her own failures onto you. I say go for it. I mean I think you know you can achieve anything you set your mind to. So what if you’re an old broken down warhorse now? You can still restore the Empire. The hard part is over! It’s just the boring part that you have to take care of, and if you start on it now, you might even take care of all of it before you die! But remember you have to work with others, for it to succeed! Now go on, and for the Emperor’s sake, let go of the fucking past, it doesn’t need to be perfect! Nothing ever is!” At this point Captain Gruz points to a door and you comply and grab the handle and pull the door towards you… “Sir! Sir! It’s just me!” Colonel Gemma shouts. You open your eyes and see her blurry image and your hand strongly grabbing her wrist. She probably was trying to wake you up and you instinctively reacted. Seeing that you’re not in danger you let her go. “What the hell’s going on?” you say sitting up and rubbing your head. “I just wanted to inform you that we won. The city is uh…ours.” “Hmm, what’s that hesitation in your voice?” “No hesitation, just well…” “Colonel, my head still hurts so I’m in no mood for your sputtering, now out with it!” “The city is ours and the enemy has been defeated, but I’m afraid that the city has been totally destroyed.” “Destroyed? What the fuck happened?” ‘There were some complications…sir…I…” You don’t let her finish; you get off you bed, push her aside and are blinded by the light when you open the tent. When you fell asleep it was mid-day, now the sun is coming up! Were you asleep the whole damn day? You look in the distance and see the Eternal City with heavy smoke rising from it. In fact there is a weird purple cloud hovering over part of it as well. You can’t even see any of the large towers anymore and it looks like the palace was trashed as well, if the destroyed domes and spires are any indication. So much for making this the new capital or even stepping foot into a place that you never even got to visit when you were serving the Empire. “Why the hell didn’t someone wake me?!” you shout. Several officers nearby are silent. Gemma once again attempts to explain that someone did, but you were in a deep sleep and thought you’d only be angry if you thought they couldn’t handle things. You look at her and the rest of your staff. Here they are scared of your next reaction and there are several of them and one of you. Some are in very fit condition and all of them are armed with firearms as well as close combat weapons. If they were all of the mind to overthrow you by putting several bullets in your body they could easily do it, and quite frankly you wouldn’t even blame them either. Yet somehow their mixture of fear and respect for you prevents them from doing so. This is what you have to work with and this is as good as it gets. It could be a lot worse. “(Sigh) Alright. You all did well and I’m proud of all of you. There’s going to be some changes in command structure, but we can get to that later. I want a carriage sent here to take me back to the capital, but before that I guess a small victory celebration is in order.” “General, you don’t want the Eternal City?” someone asks. “Well it would’ve been nice, but no. In fact just leave it; I don’t even want it rebuilt. It’s a relic of a past that’s long dead. The Nalin Empire doesn’t need it.” You go back in your tent to lay down while hearing the faint sounds of cheering of your staff and surviving soldiers outside. You drift off again and hope you have better dreams this time around. > Year 75 Another day of aches and pains, getting old sucks. After a couple of years of finally putting down the rest of the new Eternal hold outs, you’ve been spending most of your time restructuring the Nalin Empire’s command structure, economy, security and all the rest that goes with it. You haven’t done a bad job considering you were bred for war, not administration, then again you’ve been doing it in limited capacity for years, you just decided to totally focus on it for once and the results are excellent. While you still have the reputation for ruthlessness, you’ve managed to temper that a bit in last few years even with all the changes you’ve made. Most rulers would probably have to worry about coups or assassination attempts, but those haven’t been a problem due to the high amount of respect you’ve earned from the military. General Cynthia Gemma is officially your second in command, so if anything happens to you, she takes over. Though sometimes you wonder if you’ll outlive her given your knack of surviving. Warrick who was the only other Eternal left besides you died last year. Before he did, he sent a letter informing you that his final hours were upon him. He didn’t exactly say what was wrong, just that he felt the combination of his age and old wounds catching up to him. It wasn’t a long letter, just mostly him saying how he was glad he never had to fight you as he still respected you as a leader. The respect was mutual. Indeed it was one of the factors to as why you never attacked the Felkan Kingdom. You mourned his passing as you morn the passing of all your fellow Eternals. Most of them deserved better ends. All of them actually. And now here you are the last of not just your old comrades, but of your kind. The last words that Gruz once told you, have at last come true…you outlived everyone. Whether you were tougher, smarter, or luckier than the rest you don’t know. Maybe it was something by design when the Empire altered you. Maybe it was just common sense and the simple will to live. Though lately you’ve been wondering about “living.” You don’t have too many thrills left anymore and the constant pain you’re in, doesn’t make things any easier. You didn’t quite understand all of Brenda’s choice to end her life at the time, but as you’ve reflected on it again and again over the years you get it now and you’re starting to wonder if it’s time to join your fellows. Besides all you victories in battle, you’ve practically rebuilt the Empire. At least you have as best you could’ve done, all things considered and that’s no easy achievement. You have done enough for anyone to feel proud of doing and if you died now, there would be no shame. Still, part of you wonders if you’ve lived this long what else could you accomplish if you went on a little longer? Granted you could mess up your already strong reputation, but you could also go on to other great things. > You end your life If you were younger perhaps you’d go on to try to conquer the world, but that’s a task for other more energetic leaders than yourself. You’ve had your battles and won your victories, now it’s time for your hard earned rest. However you fully intend on going out the same way you lived and you call Gemma and all your closest staff to assemble in the throne room. You dress in your old Empire gear and ignore the constant pain as you slowly walk to meet them there. When you arrive, they’re all at attention and respectful as usual. You look them all over and sit down on your throne to rest before you go through with what you have planned. “My loyal staff and soldiers, the time has come for me to realize that I may no longer be in fit condition to properly lead you all anymore. I believe I have done a good job all these years, but a good leader also knows when his or her time is possibly at an end.” Your staff and some of the guards look a little surprised by your remark. They would probably verbally disagree with you, but they’ve grown accustomed to know when to speak and now is not the time. “I’m not just getting old, I’m a shell of my former self, I have been for quite some time. However there was still work that needed to be done, so I persevered through the pain and the stress to achieve my goal. And that has been accomplished, the Nalin Empire is now a worthy successor to the old Empire.” You take a long pause and stand up again. The ache of this action alone makes you glad you won’t have to go through it anymore soon. You slowly step towards your staff and address them. “I may no longer be fit to lead…but then again maybe I am. There is still battle lust that rages in these old bones. I will not just step down and live out some sort of feeble existence where I am only trotted out during celebrations or when advice is needed. I won’t be some ancient relic to be handled with sympathy or awe. No, if my reign is truly meant to end today then it shall be by combat. General Gemma draw your weapon.” You say and draw your sword. “Sir, I…” “I SAID DRAW YOUR WEAPON OR I’LL KILL YOU WHERE YOU STAND!” you demand. General Gemma draws her weapon and steps forward. You stand back and position yourself into your fighting stance. “Alright now the rest of you listen, if the good general here kills me, you follow her. If not, then you still follow me. It’s pretty easy. And as for you, defend yourself!” you shout and attack. Your swords clash and the battle commences. At first Cynthia seems to only be on the defense, as if she’s unwilling to harm you, let alone kill you. You can see it in her eyes that this isn’t a battle she wants to fight, not so much due to fear, but due to respect. Part of you understands her reluctance and you appreciate it, so you figure you need to push her a bit. “What’s the matter? Can’t beat an old man? Then again you’re no spring chicken yourself, perhaps I should’ve chosen a younger successor.” It’s not the cruelest thing you’ve ever said, but it does the job. Cynthia begins to go on the offensive. Pain wracks your body with every sword swing, but even with your battered body and slower reflexes you’re still proving to be a match for Cynthia. She’s not an unskilled warrior, she wouldn’t be in her position if she was, but even with a few more taunts you’re getting the impression she’s still holding back…either that or you’re still that good. Perhaps it’s a combination of both, because Cynthia leaves herself wide open for a killing blow that you could easily take advantage of. You don’t think she even did it intentionally; she’s just so upset at having to fight you that her head is not completely in the fight. Of course that’s never really ever been a problem for you even during the worst of conditions, and there were some bad ones. You realize that you’ll probably win this fight and you weren’t really expecting to. You nearly laugh at the absurdity that you may very well have to kill half your staff before one of them is able to take your position through combat, and that’ll only be because you’d be so tired by that point. If you were even ten years younger you could probably kill them all. But that isn’t your goal today. You goal was to go out in one last battle and if that means you’re going to have to “help” events along then so be it. You don’t take advantage of the opening, but you do leave one for Cynthia. One that she can’t ignore, though there is a split second of hesitation… Then you feel the sharp blade rip past your flesh and into your upper chest. A couple of ribs break from the force and your heart is sliced open as it passes by it and out the other side of your back. You stop to look down and see the blade slowly being withdrawn from your body and covered in your blood. It won’t be long now and you feel death already beginning to take you. You see Cynthia convey a troubled expression on her face and look away as your body falls to the floor. Everyone else looks on in stunned silence. Coughing up blood and bleeding out all over the floor, the last thing you hear even with your near deafness is a quiet “I’m sorry.” and feel the touch of a hand. Then you feel nothing else ever again. Your funeral is a large event, with lots of military honors and grand speeches about your accomplishments. You are placed in a fancy tomb with an impressive statue nearby. It’s a fitting funeral. The memory of you exists for quite some time, but as time does with all things, eventually it wears away. Successor after successor become less capable of holding together what you have built. Nothing lasts forever. Civil wars, invasions, in fighting and countless other factors play apart in the eventual complete dissolution of the Nalin Empire as an entity three hundred years later and a new dark age begins once again. Still, every once in awhile various savage tribes stumble upon your weathered broken statues when scavenging through the various ruins that dot the landscape. They don’t know your name, they don’t know what you did, they know nothing of what you accomplished or where you came from. Yet the dominating stance and the determined look on the face still convey the idea that a great warrior once called these lands his own. It is hardly surprising that eventually one of these savages found inspiration in these statues to forge her own empire. Such is the cycle of things.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 75 Another day of aches and pains, getting old sucks. After a couple of years of finally putting down the rest of the new Eternal hold outs, you’ve been spending most of your time restructuring the Nalin Empire’s command structure, economy, security and all the rest that goes with it. You haven’t done a bad job considering you were bred for war, not administration, then again you’ve been doing it in limited capacity for years, you just decided to totally focus on it for once and the results are excellent. While you still have the reputation for ruthlessness, you’ve managed to temper that a bit in last few years even with all the changes you’ve made. Most rulers would probably have to worry about coups or assassination attempts, but those haven’t been a problem due to the high amount of respect you’ve earned from the military. General Cynthia Gemma is officially your second in command, so if anything happens to you, she takes over. Though sometimes you wonder if you’ll outlive her given your knack of surviving. Warrick who was the only other Eternal left besides you died last year. Before he did, he sent a letter informing you that his final hours were upon him. He didn’t exactly say what was wrong, just that he felt the combination of his age and old wounds catching up to him. It wasn’t a long letter, just mostly him saying how he was glad he never had to fight you as he still respected you as a leader. The respect was mutual. Indeed it was one of the factors to as why you never attacked the Felkan Kingdom. You mourned his passing as you morn the passing of all your fellow Eternals. Most of them deserved better ends. All of them actually. And now here you are the last of not just your old comrades, but of your kind. The last words that Gruz once told you, have at last come true…you outlived everyone. Whether you were tougher, smarter, or luckier than the rest you don’t know. Maybe it was something by design when the Empire altered you. Maybe it was just common sense and the simple will to live. Though lately you’ve been wondering about “living.” You don’t have too many thrills left anymore and the constant pain you’re in, doesn’t make things any easier. You didn’t quite understand all of Brenda’s choice to end her life at the time, but as you’ve reflected on it again and again over the years you get it now and you’re starting to wonder if it’s time to join your fellows. Besides all you victories in battle, you’ve practically rebuilt the Empire. At least you have as best you could’ve done, all things considered and that’s no easy achievement. You have done enough for anyone to feel proud of doing and if you died now, there would be no shame. Still, part of you wonders if you’ve lived this long what else could you accomplish if you went on a little longer? Granted you could mess up your already strong reputation, but you could also go on to other great things. > You continue to live No, there are still battles to be won even if they aren’t of the physical nature anymore. One of these battles is how to prevent all of what you’ve built from collapsing soon after you die. You don’t believe it’ll fall into complete anarchy immediately of course and you’re sure that your first few successors will probably do a good enough job since you’ve set it up in such a manner, but entropy and decline seem to be factors as certain as death. You wonder if this would be easier if you had been able to have children. You know that you can’t just by experience and your own past discussions with Brenda when she spoke of Roldan. No Eternals could have children. You never did know why and just chalked it up to it being something in the process of your creation. Maybe nature balancing itself? In any case you do come up with something. You think back to the old Empire and the emperor. You never did get to meet him…or her…or it! You once wondered if there even was an emperor. You assume there had to have been at one time, probably several, but something changed. Something changed to make people believe that the emperor wasn’t just a mortal anymore, but an immortal of sorts. It’s this sort of thinking that held the old Empire for a very long time. It occurs to you that you need to start this very same mindset now. Most of the citizens as of right now hold a certain respect for you and the military is in near awe. You need to keep that going even after you’re dead. The population needs to believe that you’re still alive, watching and protecting them forever. You’re not really looking for immortality for yourself so much as you’re looking for immortality for what you’ve struggled to rebuild. Even creating a strong cult of personality so that you still have “followers” long after your death won’t solve the problem. Basically, you can’t die and you mean you literally can’t die. Of course this is impossible, so you have to do the next best thing. Fake your life. Create the same lie that the Empire did. Granted you don’t know if they did, but you’re going to have to attempt it the best way you can. It’s a gamble and it might not even work, but you figure it’s worth a shot and you won’t really know if it fails or not since you’ll be too dead to care. You call General Gemma into your chambers. She arrives promptly as usual though she seems a confused as you never call anyone into your private chambers. “Ah good, you’re here. We’ve got some important things to talk about.” You begin to explain your plan to Cynthia. It’s a lot for her to take in, but she certainly understands it, she also provides some input that you didn’t immediately think about. In time a few more of your closest staff are informed of this plan and sworn to absolute secrecy then the plan is set into motion. You begin to make less public appearances and have little contact with anyone else except your staff, and begin to have propaganda spread about how you seem to be undergoing a transformation. You confine yourself to your private chambers most of the time and never leave the palace at all. It’s like a prison, but this is what you need to do in order to carry out this grand plan. You keep yourself busy by thinking up more ideas for your grand plan and making notes as you go. You think about having all your palace guards replaced by some sort of golem, but then that would require having mages around all the time and you’d rather not deal with that factor. So you do something else, you implement your own elite warrior program. The Silent Ones, utterly loyal soldiers conditioned from birth to serve the Nalin Empire and you no matter what. Their tongues are also removed so that they cannot speak any lies or speak out of turn. Year 88 The Silent Ones have replaced all other normal palace guards and nobody else other than a select few are able to enter the palace at all and only Cynthia is able to directly have contact with you. The palace becomes a very quiet place which you enjoy as you can now wander more around your own home without bumping into anyone other than your new guards. The Silent Ones may be young still, but you don’t doubt their loyalty or their skill. When you look them in the eyes, you can see the near worship they’ve been trained to have. Reminds you of the old days when you used to feel the same way about your leader, though at least they’ve gotten to see you and know you’re real, you felt you owed them that much for their indoctrination. Cynthia is supposed to meet with you today as she normally does. You figure it’ll be about the usual stuff She meets you in your private chambers as usual. “Hello Cynthia, I hope you are well today.” You say. “I’m fine sir, and you?” “The usual aches and pain, though ever since I threw everyone out of the palace, I’ve actually felt better than I have in years. Things sort of feel more relaxed when you don’t have a host of advisors constantly chattering in your ear all the time wanting to get your attention about something.” “Yes, it would be a blessing I suppose. You sure you don’t want a medic or anything to keep track of your health?” “What for? I’m going to live forever remember? Start bringing doctors in here and all there needs to be is one bystander to see it and start spreading lies about me possibly being dead or dying.” “Well there are a few rumors about you already…” “Ah yes, but just that there are strange goings on at this palace, changes and such. That coupled with the ongoing propaganda about me, the commoners and the average soldiers don’t really know what to think. It’s important that they believe that they don’t just have a series of tyrants watching them, they need an immortal sentinel.” “Why not just create a religion and tie it into the state?” “Oh no, not doing that. I’ve already seen some of that in action with my countless battles with barbarian tribes. In Rask, several of them were all practically worshipping the same faceless deities and continued to fight each other due to small disagreements in how it was interpreted. They would’ve done better to put aside their petty differences in doctrine and unite under it against us instead. Religion can unite people, but it can also divide them worse than anything else, it’s why I outlawed organized religions and cults a long time ago. It’s a silly concept anyway. The idea of beings with so much power over us, yet do nothing.” “But who says they don’t? Maybe they work through us or something…” Your eyebrows rise a bit. “Why Cynthia, I didn’t take you for a believer in the gods.” “I…I don’t know. I mean, even though there is less magic in the world nowadays, it still exists. There are so many fantastic things in this world that I just don’t think it’s out of the realm of impossibility to have gods.” “Hmm, well I’m not convinced. I think holy men of all kinds just perpetuate this lie to serve their own ends.” At one time Cynthia might’ve been a little too scared to approach you about this, but given how close you’ve been over the years, perhaps she has gotten a little more familiar. “But, isn’t that similar to the lie we’re trying to perpetuate?” she says. You look at her with a completely serious expression, one of annoyance actually. She looks slightly worried now, and then you smile. “You’re probably right, but in our case we’re doing it for the greater good!” you laugh. As your laugher can be heard throughout the quiet halls of the palace, somehow it brings a little joy to the Silent Ones. Your happiness brings them happiness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 56 “Sir, you want us to completely wipe out all settlements with the plague?” Colonel Gemma asks. “That’s what I said isn’t it? I’ve already assigned all the medics, healers and hedge wizards in the land to focus on the less affected areas. As for those places really bad off kill all the people, cleanse the area with fire, no more problem.” “But, you’re going to have mass riots! The people will protest, even soldiers! I mean some of their families are in the quarantined areas!” “Well I guess you better have those soldiers executed then if you think they’ll be a problem. In fact I’m surprised to hear you balk from these orders, I remember you when you were a young soldier wiping out Belzak women and children without hesitation.” “I…I’m not sir, I’m just concerned about the repercussions of potentially losing more of our army.” “You let me worry about the repercussions! Look here’s what you do, gather up all the old guard such as yourself to carry out this plan. In fact get those elves I made into orphans during the tribal wars. I’m guessing they should be good and obedient soldiers by now, but they probably won’t hesitate to murder some defenseless humans. The plague doesn’t seem to be affecting non-humans as much anyway, so they’re probably more resistant. In fact gather some of those kobolds too; they can clear out the bodies. Those little bastards seem to be immune altogether. That’s all for now.” Gemma nods and takes her leave. You have more concerns today, but you’re delegating them to the advisors as usual. If it isn’t a problem that can be solved by force, you’re not very interested in it. Brenda was right; ruling is a pain in the ass. When she was alive, you still had the “fun” part to focus on, now you have to do it all. This latest plague is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened in years. Still can’t figure out how and where it originated from though. A passing thought was it might be saboteurs from the Eternal Dominion, but they’ve been fighting amongst themselves ever since Edgar died. Never did find his body. You still wonder exactly what it was he wanted to discuss with you and Brenda. An alliance perhaps? A threat to submit? You’ll never know. The nation of Nalin has become a lot more totalitarian under your rule. You’ve actually made it even more “Empire like” than it already was mostly because it’s what you know, but also because it makes you at least feel like things are how they “should be”. Lately though even that hasn’t helped your mindset. You’ve become increasingly bored with just plain ruling, and after this plague nonsense is taken care of, you’re thinking of doing something to shake things up a bit. The obvious idea is to expand again, specifically aggressive expansion into Eternal Dominion territory. It’s been too long since you’ve experienced a good fight. The other idea you’ve had is one you probably wouldn’t have considered again, but at this point any change would be welcome. You’ve thought about just leaving. Leaving everything behind and the region entirely. > You leave You thought you left the Empire because it no longer felt like the government you swore to serve. Now that you’re actually in charge and made things more like how they should be, you still feel dissatisfied. Maybe you’ve just got too much “warrior” in you to deal with the minute details of rulership, maybe you just miss Brenda; maybe it’s a combination of several things. The point remains that you’re burned out on civilization in general and maybe you just need to be by yourself for a while. Granted you’ve always been a bit by yourself even among your fellow Eternals, but you’re thinking you need to be really alone. By yourself and maybe finding your own way elsewhere. So you pack up some of your belongings and leave. You don’t bother even telling anyone, you just go and head east. You keep to the wilderness and eventually when you step beyond the borders of eastern Nalin, you at last feel like a great weight has been lifted off your shoulders. After a few months, you don’t miss Nalin at all. In the years that follow you wander, seeing new sights and getting into a few skirmishes a long the way. Sometimes you genuinely attempt to find a place where you feel comfortable, but it just never happens and you continue your wandering. While you continue to feel the ravages of old age always creeping up on you, you stubbornly refuse to submit to them. Ever the warrior, you eventually meet your end in battle with a group of opportunistic svelk bandits.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 56 “Sir, you want us to completely wipe out all settlements with the plague?” Colonel Gemma asks. “That’s what I said isn’t it? I’ve already assigned all the medics, healers and hedge wizards in the land to focus on the less affected areas. As for those places really bad off kill all the people, cleanse the area with fire, no more problem.” “But, you’re going to have mass riots! The people will protest, even soldiers! I mean some of their families are in the quarantined areas!” “Well I guess you better have those soldiers executed then if you think they’ll be a problem. In fact I’m surprised to hear you balk from these orders, I remember you when you were a young soldier wiping out Belzak women and children without hesitation.” “I…I’m not sir, I’m just concerned about the repercussions of potentially losing more of our army.” “You let me worry about the repercussions! Look here’s what you do, gather up all the old guard such as yourself to carry out this plan. In fact get those elves I made into orphans during the tribal wars. I’m guessing they should be good and obedient soldiers by now, but they probably won’t hesitate to murder some defenseless humans. The plague doesn’t seem to be affecting non-humans as much anyway, so they’re probably more resistant. In fact gather some of those kobolds too; they can clear out the bodies. Those little bastards seem to be immune altogether. That’s all for now.” Gemma nods and takes her leave. You have more concerns today, but you’re delegating them to the advisors as usual. If it isn’t a problem that can be solved by force, you’re not very interested in it. Brenda was right; ruling is a pain in the ass. When she was alive, you still had the “fun” part to focus on, now you have to do it all. This latest plague is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened in years. Still can’t figure out how and where it originated from though. A passing thought was it might be saboteurs from the Eternal Dominion, but they’ve been fighting amongst themselves ever since Edgar died. Never did find his body. You still wonder exactly what it was he wanted to discuss with you and Brenda. An alliance perhaps? A threat to submit? You’ll never know. The nation of Nalin has become a lot more totalitarian under your rule. You’ve actually made it even more “Empire like” than it already was mostly because it’s what you know, but also because it makes you at least feel like things are how they “should be”. Lately though even that hasn’t helped your mindset. You’ve become increasingly bored with just plain ruling, and after this plague nonsense is taken care of, you’re thinking of doing something to shake things up a bit. The obvious idea is to expand again, specifically aggressive expansion into Eternal Dominion territory. It’s been too long since you’ve experienced a good fight. The other idea you’ve had is one you probably wouldn’t have considered again, but at this point any change would be welcome. You’ve thought about just leaving. Leaving everything behind and the region entirely. > You cythia Gemma (Personnel File) From all accounts Cynthia had a very average upbringing, though it would appear that her family was never big on the military lifestyle as most of them seem to have had a history of working as laborers of some sort. You can only guess she was a bit of a black sheep. Actually you’ve never really known Cynthia on a personal level, but you’ve known her to be a competent soldier and later officer. Though currently a colonel, in some ways she’s still a little “unready” than her position would suggest, as she has risen through some of the ranks due to the older officers retiring or dying off. Still, she’s served with distinction during the tribal wars in the east and has kept on top of the bandit rings that sometimes still pop up and you wouldn’t have suggested her promotions if you didn’t think she could handle it. She’s always been a little too eager to please at times, but you really can’t fault her for being loyal.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3A3: Remnant Year 45 In all the years you served the Empire, you always felt like you were being held back in some way; lack of supplies, lack of equipment, ungrateful rioting peasants, or incompetent commanding officers. In most cases it was never a failing on your part. For the past few years, you’ve come to appreciate no longer having any of those limitations. In Nalin everyone more or less works for the greater good of the country. In fact it could be argued that this is more the case here than it ever was in the Empire, at least as far as you saw. Brenda eventually declared the biggest town (Now a city) Dalt to be the capital and moved there to better manage things. You of course are head of the army and remained at Fort Glory. Despite her initial inexperience at running a nation, Brenda has proven to do a fair job at it. Hand picking town mayors and other bureaucratic types to help run things certainly helps. What also helps is Nalin is a much smaller nation than the Empire was. The long arm of the army doesn’t need to go far to catch someone doing something against the law. Your intimidating reputation as head of the army obviously keeps people in line as well. Still, it isn’t complete fear; they know you’ll also keep them safe. When Usksha raiders started gathering around the southern borders again, you made sure to strike at them before they could attack any of the southern towns. You wish you could just go into the Usksha Desert and wipe them all out, but you know you just don’t have the resources for such a thing. Still, you did find a temporary solution in the form of an equally old annoyance. The kobold tribes who eventually realized that continuing to fight against you would result in genocide, agreed to relocate to the edges of the southern Nalin border where they would help defend it. This has worked out quite well. The harsh terrain conditions closer to the desert as well as the occasional Usksha raids keep the kobold population down as well as aid as a front line defense without having to waste valuable troops. For the most part everything has been running quite well, perhaps a little too well to the point where you get a little bored, but you don’t even mind that now. You’re just glad to be part of a nation that isn’t crippled by corruption. “This is the last remnant of the true Empire.” You sometimes think. Of course a certain person might disagree with that thought, namely Edgar. Edgar hasn’t contacted you or Brenda. Brenda wonders if it’s because he considers you both traitors for seceding from the Empire, and while that sounds like Edgar, you suspect it’s more because he’s been very busy. Ever since the Empire fell, Edgar has been busily trying to unite all the new “eternals” under his command and his results are quite surprising. He’s not only managed to do it, but he’s forged his own nation calling it the Eternal Dominion. He claims it is the successor to the Empire and as general he has vowed to reunite all the old lands by any means. So far he’s had varying success, but he’s doing well under the circumstances. He’s also created a strict hierarchy system where Eternals are considered to be the superior ruling class and everyone else is below them. You aren’t exactly sure what to make of this ideology. Assuming he’s successful, you know it’s only going to be a matter of time before Edgar comes marching an army from the north. Brenda has the same concerns and lately a majority of the military has been stationed on the northern borders. You just aren’t sure it’ll be enough. Brenda wonders if an alliance would be best, but the only other major power in the region is the Felkan Kingdom, and you’re not exactly sure if they would even be in a position to help, let alone willing to help. The enemy of my enemy isn’t always your friend. This ties in with the other matter that has come up is expansion. Nalin has had a steadily growing population for quite some time and since the south is hostile desert, the western side of Nalin is covered by an equally imposing mountain range and to the north is old empire lands suffering from destroyed infrastructure and near anarchy, the only logical conclusion is to the east. Slowly over time Brenda has encouraged Nalin citizens to systematically settle the eastern wilderness. The Empire for some reason never colonized this territory. It probably was marked, but just never exploited due to other more pressing matters. In any case, things have gone more or less peacefully as there have been no encounters with any hostile natives and it has proven to be great farming land. While things are peaceful there now, there’s no telling what could happen later and due to all the troops on the northern border, the eastern territory has a minimum number of soldiers there. Right now you and Brenda are discussing on how to best to maximize your defenses. “Have you sent envoys to Edgar? Is it possible that he wouldn’t be a problem in the future?” you ask Brenda. “I actually have a couple times over the years and none of them ever returned. Which is why I’m convinced he’s pissed at us.” “Hmm, well guess we better up keep the defenses on the northern borders then. Still, my own reports say he’s still nowhere near us. He’s been trying to tame the core region of the old Empire as well as maintain order in places he’s already conquered. There is the option to take redeploy some of the troops to the east.” “But of course that would weaken us in the north.” “Well yes, but if you’re really worried about the east, then that’s all I can suggest other than conscription.” “Yeah, thought about that, and I’m not exactly keen on that idea. The people have been happy for quite awhile. We start conscripting like the Empire did, they might not be as happy.” Brenda says “They’ll be even less happy, if Edgar comes barging down here declaring them all inferior while letting his Eternal troops run amok.” “You wouldn’t allow that to happen.” Brenda says. “Well I certainly would try my best to not let it happen, but let’s just say I’m not as certain about things as I once was, there is always the chance things can go horribly wrong.” “Yeah, I understand that. (Sigh) Well, I suppose we can restart conscription. It’s not going to be popular, but I think if we stress how much of a threat Edgar potentially is, we’ll prevent the civil unrest. I’ll get my civilian advisors to start spinning the propaganda. I’ll leave it up to you how you want to deploy the troops; I think it would be best to put most of the conscripts on the east though, as I think we’ll need most of the experienced troops on the northern borders.” “I’ll certainly consider all the options. I guess I’ll get to it then and leave you to your work as well.” You say and are about to leave when Brenda calls out to you. “Hey, I know you’re very duty bound anyway, but I just want to say, I’m glad you’re here to help me.” “Well I’m happy to help, but I’m sure you’d do just as well without me here.” “Perhaps, but it’s sort of comforting to have another Eternal around to talk to. I just feel like we connect a lot better you know?” “Yes, I do agree. We do share a bond that most others will never know.” Brenda goes to hug you and you’re a little unsure of how to react at first, but you hug her back. Before you leave Brenda asks you one more question. “Do you think Edgar’s ideology for his nation is correct? Do you think Eternals are superior to everyone else?” You think about the question for a moment, then answer. “I think Edgar thinks it is correct. In one aspect, I agree with it, I mean look at the pair of us. We’re both in the highest positions of power and people seem to be accepting of it. However, from my own experiences with the new Eternals I’m not actually convinced that THEY are superior to the average human except in combat and sadism which I suppose are good enough to instill fear into the masses.” “Heh, but isn’t that what we do?” “Of course, but we do it because we know it’s necessary to maintain order. The new Eternals engage in pointless cruelty because they enjoy it. They’re no better than svelks in that regard. They’re so eager to move on to next atrocity that they let their emotions cloud their purity of battle. I believe this is a weakness on their part and that is why I do not consider them superior.” Brenda smiles a bit at your answer. “The Empire really should’ve made you a general straight out of training. I’m certain you would’ve single handedly saved it.” “I don’t know. Perhaps it was beyond saving by that time. If you’ll excuse me…” you say and leave Brenda’s office. As you leave the capital building, you think back on how you left the Empire. While you’re satisfied with your decision, part of you does wonder IF you could’ve done anything. Not just at that time, but before then. Is there another decision you could’ve made that would’ve prevented the situation you’re in now? After a brief run down in your mind of endless possibilities you quickly dismiss such thoughts as a fool’s game. You were right, the Empire was beyond any help you could’ve provided. Nalin is your concern now and you need to make the decisions to how to best protect it starting with deciding where to send the conscripts when Brenda enacts her decree. > You send them to the east If the Eternal Dominion ever does decide to attack, it’ll be better if your best soldiers are already assigned to the northern borders rather than having to scramble to pull them back from the east. You also figure the conscripts can put in their time exploring the eastern wilderness along with defending the few settlements you currently have there right now. When Brenda enacts conscription there is a lot of grumbling as was expected, but nothing more. Many of the conscripts are just glad you aren’t assigning them to the northern borders after hearing all the scary things about Edgar and his “baby eating” army. They won’t just be there without any supervision either, as you’ll still have a few veteran officers overseeing the situation. Months pass a life goes on as usual, and you begin to get reports on the eastern wilderness. Most of the scouts say that there is evidence of other denizens living further east. In fact there seems to be a small tribal war going on between four separate groups. Two of those are human barbarian tribes, one them is elven, but much wilder than what you know of them and the last one is a race you’re not familiar with called the Slin. They’re apparently reptilian in nature though, similar to the kobolds, but much larger and meaner. All of them save for one of the human tribes have been hostile to your scouts. Your scouts report that most attacks were accompanied by slurs and curses against the Empire. Even the Slin have been reported to utter a few recognizable insults in their strange reptilian tongue. You can only guess that all of these folks at one time came in contact with the Empire and it wasn’t a good experience. Makes sense they would mistake you for Empire troops as well considering that all your troops are either still wearing the same armor or very similar armor. Some of the veteran officers are even still wearing the same insignias. Sort of like you do actually. You’re very disappointed by the reports you’ve been getting on the various skirmishes your soldiers have had. Most of them involve heavy losses or in some cases outright defeats! Most of the conscripts apparently just aren’t cut out to handle these savages, they’re still too green and they also lack the desire to fight in the first place. The problem is worse than just losing soldiers though. Most of these were young males and females, sons and daughter taken from their homes that didn’t want to be soldiers in the first place. Predictably there is peasant backlash from this. Not willing to risk any more soldiers, you immediately order a halt to the scouting and make the decision that you’re going to have to go oversee things personally. Normally you wouldn’t mind this since you were getting bored lately, but you don’t like the circumstances to why you have to do it. Brenda certainly hopes you can fix things, because while keeping the peasants in line through force is a time-honored tradition, it isn’t really helping things right now. You can’t afford to have a full-scale revolt over this. What you’d like to do is wipe out every single one of those tribes as soon as possible before they can unite against you, but you know you can’t really do that without either toughening up the conscripts or taking your vets off the northern borders and since that really isn’t an option, you’re going to have to toughen up the recruits. The first thing you do is gather all your officers assigned there and reprimand them, stating if they were doing their job properly, you wouldn’t have to come here and do it for them. You might’ve even had some of them executed for incompetence, but you really can’t afford to lose anyone right now. Second of all you have a new camp built near one the eastern Nalin villages. This is where all the soldiers are going to be housed and training until further notice. Soldier rotations to be stationed at the few eastern settlements will be implemented. But most importantly a whole new training schedule is going to be put into action. You need to get these folks to start thinking the right way. It is your hope that in a couple of months, they start shaping up into the solider you need them to be. The first few weeks go pretty horrible. Your rigorous and harsh training causes some of the conscripts to go from low morale to suicidal. After three deaths, one of your officers claims you’re pushing them too hard and you’re going to have to ease up. “Captain Talger isn’t it?” you ask. “Yes sir.” “You did serve under the Empire didn’t you?” “Yes sir, for many years until we…uh seceded.” “You remember what the punishment was for questioning a superior’s decisions?” “…yes…yes I do sir.” He says in a very worried tone. After a moment of silence, you tell him to follow you outside to the training grounds. You and Captain Talger walk to the middle of the grounds where several people are training, if they aren’t you tell one of your other officers to call everyone to the grounds immediately. When everyone arrives, you address the crowd. “It has come to my attention that I may be training you lot too hard. This has been told to me, by Captain Talger here and he may have a point.” Talger looks slightly surprised to hear you say that, he also relaxes a little. “I understand that many of you do not want to be here. I also understand that many of you are not naturally killers. Few are. Most of you would just like to go back home and live nice little safe lives. And contrary to popular belief, I actually can understand that as well.” You walk over to a nearby weapon rack and examine a few swords, taking one of fairly good quality. You begin to speak again. “However, that’s not going to happen.” You say and throw the sword to the ground near Captain Talger’s feet. “Captain pick up the sword.” “Sir?” “I SAID PICK UP THE SWORD!” you shout. Talger immediately picks up the sword. You see him tremble a little, but manages to keep it together. The crowd looks on anxious to see what will happen next. “Good, now attack me.” You say and draw your own blade. Talger nearly speaks, but stops himself. He realizes he doesn’t really have any options in this. He closes his eyes for a brief moment presumably to calm himself and then approaches you. He attacks you with some skill and nearly manages to hit you, but ultimately you are the superior warrior and you stop holding back. You manage to smash his face with the pommel of your own sword. His nose nearly explodes into a mass of blood, but before he falls, you grab his sword arm and break it, causing him to drop his weapon and cry out before tumbling to the ground. You kick the sword away and address the crowd again. “You see this? This man knew he was facing potential death and he did not run away. He faced it like a soldier and tried to do his best. He showed true dedication. You all should be so brave. That’s all I’m asking, it is not such a difficult lesson to learn.” You look down at Captain Talger who is trying hard not to scream out in any more pain and is having a hard time breath due to his bloody nose. “However, this man also spoke out against me…Captain Talger are you ready for your sentence?” “…(wheeze)…argh….(wheeze)…I…acce…(wheeze) accept…” “Your life will serve as a lesson to the rest, you will have an honorable burial.” You quietly say and bring your sword down on his chest killing him instantly. The crowd remains silent as you draw out your sword from Talger’s body. “Learn from this man’s bravery and dedication…but also learn from his mistakes. DO NOT FUCK WITH ME! You all WILL become proper soldiers and you WILL serve Nalin with nothing less than your best! If you do not, none of you will leave here alive. For anyone thinking about suicide I suggest you just come down here now and let me kill you so I’m not wasting my time training you fucking grub worms! Oh and in case you all want to get cute and unite by walking down here together as a group, I suggest that you don’t if you value your lives, because I have no problem killing every last one of you by myself if I have to! I’ve destroyed entire villages of werewolves including their young, it’ll take me even less time to lay waste to you pathetic shitheads.” You continue your rant. “Let me make this clear you maggots, we have enemies to the east of us, that won’t fucking hesitate to rip your guts out and eat them. Do you really think if you all just go back home they’re going to leave you alone? No, they’re going to eventually advance westward and invade all those nice little peaceful homes you all so desperately want to go back to. You want a nice safe home, well you’re going to need to earn your keep and fight for it. You either die in here or die out there; it’s your choice. The big difference is out there you have a chance against those fucking savages. In here with me? You’ve got none. So I suggest you all start getting your shit together now, I don’t want to repeat this lesson again.” You take you leave and head back to your office, leaving everyone to ponder your words. A few days later there is an improvement in performance. Still a few suicides here and even some training deaths, but its just the weak being culled from the heard as usual. > Year 48 “We can’t take anymore forces off the northern borders you know that!” Brenda says. “I know that better than anyone, but we’re making progress against those barbarians in the east. I just need a company…” “And I said no! Look I know you’re mainly in charge of all the military stuff here, but you remember that I’m the one that’s in charge of the entire country! In fact I was running this area quite fine until you came along and started gradually changing things! Now I got a war in the east, peasant uprisings, a potential aggressor up north and a troop shortage that can’t possibly deal with all these problems! I’m beginning to wonder if you didn’t create all this chaos just to relive your Empire days again…” “Hey! I’m done nothing but try to protect this nation and build it up! And I think my success in the east has proven that!” “Look, I know you’ve done your part, and I hate to sound like an old Empire bureaucrat, but we can’t spare anymore soldiers for the eastern provinces. Can’t you make due with what you have?” “Believe me, I would if could. Molding the conscripts into proper soldiers took longer than expected and even after I was successful, a small portion of them died in the process. Then I had hoped to get the one tribe that wasn’t initially hostile to us to ally with us as a useful diversion, but due to our initial losses against the other three tribes, the savages assumed we were too weak to make an alliance with and began attacking us too. I still think we would’ve been okay though if they had all stayed fragmented. After we wiped out the Belkaz Tribe for their poor judgment, the other three tribes formed a truce and united under one banner. It’s made fighting them a lot more difficult especially since they know every inch of the land better and they outnumber us. The only good thing is they haven’t really launched any effective counter attacks on our settlements so far, but they have been getting better at it.” Brenda rubs a hand over her face before speaking again. “You can’t just build up the defenses on the villages and maintain a solid defense?” “Well that’s sort of where we’re at right now, and that’s the problem. The elves are no problem; the other tribe of humans isn’t either. It’s those Slin that are causing the most grief. They can replace their losses a lot quicker, or at least they must mature much quicker. In fact I’ve noticed a disturbing tactic by them, if they can call it that. Namely whenever there is a group attack by the three tribes, the Slin will deliberately hold back and the first to retreat when the battle starts to swing the wrong way. I see larger groups of them all the time yet they’re taking the least amount of losses from their side. At this point, I’m even wondering if there is an “alliance” so much as the Slin eventually enslaved the two remaining tribes and is using them to weaken us, while they continue to breed more lizards. If that is the case, we could be overrun even if we adopt siege mentality.” “So what is it that you want to do exactly?” “We know where the Slin home is at. I want to launch a full assault on it. I figure if we at least take them out, the other two tribes will be easy, they may even surrender, not that it’ll do them any good…” “Right and I imagine that you want to lead this attack personally.” “Of course.” “Uh huh, and don’t you think it’s very dangerous to go rushing into the heart of enemy territory outnumbered and undermanned like you are?” “Well I wouldn’t do it without the soldiers.” “Right, and that’s why you aren’t doing it at all. Look, even I gave you the men you require, you’d have to promise me that you wouldn’t let a single one get killed, and you and I both know that’s not going to happen. The other thing is, I can’t really afford to potentially lose you either.” “Brenda, have you so little faith in me? I’ve been in more dangerous situations than this! One time in Rask I…” “Yes, yes, I know all your deeds and they’re all very impressive, but you’re not in your twenties anymore and we don’t have the soldiers! I’m sorry, but we’re dealing with multiple problems right now and I need every capable commander possible even the stubborn ones like yourself. Now that’s it, and I don’t want to hear anymore about this!” Brenda’s remark dismissing your accomplishments and implying that you’re no longer in your prime is incredibly insulting and you lose your composure. It doesn’t help that you’re already frustrated with how the eastern campaign has been playing out. You grab one side of her desk and flip it over. This noise causes two guards rush in, but they’re a little unsure of how to react given that it’s you. Brenda leaps back and puts her hand on her weapon, instinctively you put your own hand on your weapon as well. “Have you lost your mind?!” she says. “No, my mind is quite clear, it’s you who has lost their mind if you think I’m going to just let you forget all the shit I’ve done, and let you just dismiss it like that! How soon you forget that I used to lead you into battle against kobolds and uskshas. I’ve been risking my life for years, what the hell have you been doing except stagnating here behind a desk much like this entire area would’ve been until I came along. I gave you a fucking purpose when the Empire fell!” You soon find that Brenda is every bit as mad at you as you are with her. “Yeah? Well maybe I didn’t fucking want it in the first place! You…you know what? If you want to take control, you go right ahead, because I’m done with it! Done! I’m leaving this shit behind.” Brenda walks past you, without fear and out the door. Her guards try to address her, but she pulls away and continues to walk, leaving you in her messy office. You’re still angry, so you don’t really believe she’s serious, however you ARE going to take those soldiers like you planned. A couple days pass and you’re about to make your way back to the east when you receive word that Brenda has completely disappeared. She can’t be found at all. You can’t believe that she would really abandon all this just because of an argument and part of you is a little concerned. You wonder if you should set aside your mission for a moment to find her. However, if she really is gone, then you’ll be head of Nalin by default, while this is somewhat appealing to you, it also means you have to deal with all the stuff that Brenda usually took care of, namely all the unfun stuff that doesn’t involve killing and battle. > You go look for Brenda You and her have been through too much to let this end like this, you don’t like it, but you decide to put off your mission. You tell the company commander to proceed to the destination and just help with the defenses until you return. You then inform Brenda’s advisors to take care of things while you personally search for her. They tell you that soldiers are already looking for her, but you say they aren’t doing a good enough job. You follow some leads based on previous reports, and while nobody else seems to be able to find Brenda, you’re a little more skilled in finding a fellow Eternal. Your tracking eventually leads further south into the kobold reservations. For some reason nobody thought to question these scaly bastards who turn out to be pretty helpful, though it’s probably because they’re very scared of you. They tell you they saw the “Eternal lady in charge of everything” walking by herself heading even further south towards the Usksha Desert. They think she’s going there to kill all the uskshas by herself, now they think you’re going to help her and seem pretty optimistic that the pair of you will eliminate the usksha forever. Brenda may be an Eternal, you still never pegged her as the sort to deliberately kill herself through battle. This can’t all be because of an argument. You quickly make your way to the last known direction that the kobolds saw her heading in. After a day of non-stop riding, you see her standing at the edge of the Usksha Desert. It’s obvious she hear you, but she continues to look out across the endless sand. “I thought you’d be on your way to wage war on those barbarians in the east by now.” She says as you get off your horse. “Brenda, this is silly and not like you. Come on back to where you belong.” You demand. Brenda laughs at this statement. “You think you can order me around like a common soldier? Fuck you! You aren’t my commanding officer and haven’t been in years. I’m my own person and I’ll do whatever the hell I want!” “And what do you want?” “What I want? I want my husband back and that’s impossible.” “So…you blame me for his death? Is that it?” Brenda shakes her head in exasperation. “No, no, no! This isn’t even about you! This is about me! It wasn’t until our argument, that I finally realized I’ve just been living a parody of life. The Empire is gone, my husband is gone. What the hell is my purpose for living anymore? I’ve just been running Nalin all these years, because quite frankly I don’t know what the hell to do with myself. You think I really care about any of that? No. That’s why I can leave it all behind, just like that.” “Brenda, something must’ve kept you going, if you only just recently came to this conclusion.” “Yeah, and that something were delusions. When you first came back, it was a nice. I knew we hadn’t seen each other in years, and I knew you were the same rigid emotionless golem you’ve been since we were young, but you were like a solid anchor in what was a sea of uncertainty during those dark days of the Empire’s fall. I had nobody else I could relate to, but we still had a bond of sorts. So I latched on to you and decided to go along with your ideas and it was comforting…for a while. Then as the years went by, I started to get bored, then dissatisfied. When the little war in the east began and problems began to crop up and headache after headache started, I seriously started questioning what I’m doing.” “Okay…so you’re bored by the administrative duties…” “I wish it was just that, but I don’t think you still understand. Let me see if I can explain it better.” Brenda approaches you and sits down on the ground. You do likewise, but you’re still alert about possible wandering usksha raiders who could ride by. Brenda comments on this. “See, look at you. Here we are just talking and you’re probably expecting to do battle with some wandering uskshas. That’s what gets you going. I know the fall of the Empire had to be pretty hard for you, seeing a system which you believed in fall apart and dissolve before your eyes. Even though you eventually knew it was all built on lies, a piece of you was still gone forever. However, I don’t think it was your true love. It might’ve been your first, but not your true love. Battle, war, killing. That is your passion. That’s your true love. As strange as that may be to some, I understand it.” Brenda’s somehow words ring true with you. You still aren’t quite sure on all this love stuff, but you’re listening. “The Empire was my first love as well. It probably was for all of us Eternals, but Roldan was my true love. I’m not getting him back, and I don’t even have the Empire to fall back on. I don’t know, perhaps by falling in love with Roldan, it weakened me as an Eternal and I should be stronger. I’m convinced it weakened Roldan.” “We’ve been making progress in making Nalin similar to the Empire. It could even be better or greater if we work at it.” You say, unsure of how to react to her Roldan comments. “Yes, I know that’s what you’ve been trying to do and for a while that’s what I thought might help me as well, but it’s not. Also, like I said, you at least can keep yourself happy for your love of battle. Nalin won’t replace the Empire, and even if it could, it won’t make any difference. It would be if I tried to replace Roldan with another…it won’t make me happier.” The way Brenda looks at you with that last statement implying that maybe she feels something for you. “Brenda, are you developing feelings for me?” you ask and she just smiles. “As I’ve always said, I’ve always liked your directness. Let’s just say I might’ve, but I came to my senses. And that isn’t an insult towards you; it’s just not meant to be for me. Okay, I think I’ve wasted enough time.” She says and stands up. She begins to walk towards the desert. “Hey wait!” you call out. “Goodbye, I’m sure you’ll make an excellent emperor for Nalin, or whatever you decide to call yourself.” You grab Brenda’s shoulder. “So this is it? You going to just commit suicide by walking into the desert?” “I assume the uskshas will overwhelm me before the heat gets me, and why are you trying to stop me. I would’ve thought you of all people would’ve approved of dying in battle.” “I would, but it just doesn’t make sense here! I mean you still have purpose! You’re still fully capable and healthy enough to accomplish many things!” “Perhaps, but the thrill of living is gone and I’m not waiting any longer to see if it comes back. Now I’m heading into that desert and you can’t stop me, well you could, but that would no doubt have the same result I’m looking for.” You let Brenda go and stand in silence for a moment. You think about your own goals and your own past briefly. Brenda is right about several things concerning your personality and your motivations, but she doesn’t know everything. You run up next to her as she makes her first steps into the desert. “What’re you doing?” she asks. “I’m joining you. I figure you could use the help.” “...I don’t believe you. I’m trying to end my life with dignity and on my own terms and you’re going to get in the way of that?” “Who said I was stopping you? I’m just traveling with you, I don’t have some magical ability to stop the usksha from attacking. And who said I was doing this all for you? My true love is battle remember? Fighting an endless amount of usksha in a hostile environment? Sounds like a challenge worthy of a warrior of my stature.” “But…you can’t just throw away your life like this!” “Who said I was? I fully intend on making it to the other end of the desert long after you’ve died.” You remark. Brenda begins to get annoyed. “What?! Look I know I’m out of practice, but I’m not going to die that quickly! I’m still a fucking Eternal you know!” “Yes, I do know and that’s why I’m coming with you. You made a lot of good points about me, but one you forgot is that I’m not quite the emotionless golem you make me out to be. My time with you has reminded me of that bond I used to have with all of you before we all got separated. We’re Eternals, and I’m not going to leave you. Now if that means we die together in this desert, then so be it. BUT I want to propose something.” “Oh? What’s that?” “If we do manage to get to the other side of this desert, you need to abandon your death wish.” Brenda chuckles a bit. “Okay, I guess that’s fair. Hell, if we make it through I might just have to re-evaluate my fleeting feelings for you.” You don’t answer her on that comment; you just keep an eye out for potential danger. The heat isn’t a problem right now since it’s getting dark, which is at least one good thing. As you continue to walk Brenda begins to speak again. “So what makes you think there IS another side to this desert? Not like it’s ever been explored before. For all you know it’s just endless desert” Brenda asks. “Oh I dunno. I just have a hunch. It has to end somewhere. Besides I’m curious now. I once briefly considered leading troops into here before, when we were first assigned to deal with the usksha.” “Really? What stopped you?” “The fact that Edgar was screaming in my ear about it meant it was bound to be a bad idea. Common sense mostly. Strange that I had more of it back then, than I do right now.” “There’s still time for you to turn back.” “What and run Nalin by myself? Not for me. I’d likely end up executing the entire nation. I wasn’t meant to rule…shh hear that?” “Yeah, sounds like those lizards that the usksha like to ride. They’ll be here soon. Just like old times eh?” “Like I never left.” “I…I’m glad you’re here with me.” Brenda says looking at you. You look at her and nod. “Me too Brenda. Me too.” The pair of you soon engage the usksha in battle, just one of many during your time in the desert. Many believe you both died in the desert eventually succumbing to the heat and your wounds. The kobolds still tell an interesting story of how you both died, but then became vengeful spirits that continue to stalk the usksha to this day. A few believe you managed to make it through and made a new life with each other in a far away land. What ultimately happened to you and Brenda is unknown and lost to time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 48 “We can’t take anymore forces off the northern borders you know that!” Brenda says. “I know that better than anyone, but we’re making progress against those barbarians in the east. I just need a company…” “And I said no! Look I know you’re mainly in charge of all the military stuff here, but you remember that I’m the one that’s in charge of the entire country! In fact I was running this area quite fine until you came along and started gradually changing things! Now I got a war in the east, peasant uprisings, a potential aggressor up north and a troop shortage that can’t possibly deal with all these problems! I’m beginning to wonder if you didn’t create all this chaos just to relive your Empire days again…” “Hey! I’m done nothing but try to protect this nation and build it up! And I think my success in the east has proven that!” “Look, I know you’ve done your part, and I hate to sound like an old Empire bureaucrat, but we can’t spare anymore soldiers for the eastern provinces. Can’t you make due with what you have?” “Believe me, I would if could. Molding the conscripts into proper soldiers took longer than expected and even after I was successful, a small portion of them died in the process. Then I had hoped to get the one tribe that wasn’t initially hostile to us to ally with us as a useful diversion, but due to our initial losses against the other three tribes, the savages assumed we were too weak to make an alliance with and began attacking us too. I still think we would’ve been okay though if they had all stayed fragmented. After we wiped out the Belkaz Tribe for their poor judgment, the other three tribes formed a truce and united under one banner. It’s made fighting them a lot more difficult especially since they know every inch of the land better and they outnumber us. The only good thing is they haven’t really launched any effective counter attacks on our settlements so far, but they have been getting better at it.” Brenda rubs a hand over her face before speaking again. “You can’t just build up the defenses on the villages and maintain a solid defense?” “Well that’s sort of where we’re at right now, and that’s the problem. The elves are no problem; the other tribe of humans isn’t either. It’s those Slin that are causing the most grief. They can replace their losses a lot quicker, or at least they must mature much quicker. In fact I’ve noticed a disturbing tactic by them, if they can call it that. Namely whenever there is a group attack by the three tribes, the Slin will deliberately hold back and the first to retreat when the battle starts to swing the wrong way. I see larger groups of them all the time yet they’re taking the least amount of losses from their side. At this point, I’m even wondering if there is an “alliance” so much as the Slin eventually enslaved the two remaining tribes and is using them to weaken us, while they continue to breed more lizards. If that is the case, we could be overrun even if we adopt siege mentality.” “So what is it that you want to do exactly?” “We know where the Slin home is at. I want to launch a full assault on it. I figure if we at least take them out, the other two tribes will be easy, they may even surrender, not that it’ll do them any good…” “Right and I imagine that you want to lead this attack personally.” “Of course.” “Uh huh, and don’t you think it’s very dangerous to go rushing into the heart of enemy territory outnumbered and undermanned like you are?” “Well I wouldn’t do it without the soldiers.” “Right, and that’s why you aren’t doing it at all. Look, even I gave you the men you require, you’d have to promise me that you wouldn’t let a single one get killed, and you and I both know that’s not going to happen. The other thing is, I can’t really afford to potentially lose you either.” “Brenda, have you so little faith in me? I’ve been in more dangerous situations than this! One time in Rask I…” “Yes, yes, I know all your deeds and they’re all very impressive, but you’re not in your twenties anymore and we don’t have the soldiers! I’m sorry, but we’re dealing with multiple problems right now and I need every capable commander possible even the stubborn ones like yourself. Now that’s it, and I don’t want to hear anymore about this!” Brenda’s remark dismissing your accomplishments and implying that you’re no longer in your prime is incredibly insulting and you lose your composure. It doesn’t help that you’re already frustrated with how the eastern campaign has been playing out. You grab one side of her desk and flip it over. This noise causes two guards rush in, but they’re a little unsure of how to react given that it’s you. Brenda leaps back and puts her hand on her weapon, instinctively you put your own hand on your weapon as well. “Have you lost your mind?!” she says. “No, my mind is quite clear, it’s you who has lost their mind if you think I’m going to just let you forget all the shit I’ve done, and let you just dismiss it like that! How soon you forget that I used to lead you into battle against kobolds and uskshas. I’ve been risking my life for years, what the hell have you been doing except stagnating here behind a desk much like this entire area would’ve been until I came along. I gave you a fucking purpose when the Empire fell!” You soon find that Brenda is every bit as mad at you as you are with her. “Yeah? Well maybe I didn’t fucking want it in the first place! You…you know what? If you want to take control, you go right ahead, because I’m done with it! Done! I’m leaving this shit behind.” Brenda walks past you, without fear and out the door. Her guards try to address her, but she pulls away and continues to walk, leaving you in her messy office. You’re still angry, so you don’t really believe she’s serious, however you ARE going to take those soldiers like you planned. A couple days pass and you’re about to make your way back to the east when you receive word that Brenda has completely disappeared. She can’t be found at all. You can’t believe that she would really abandon all this just because of an argument and part of you is a little concerned. You wonder if you should set aside your mission for a moment to find her. However, if she really is gone, then you’ll be head of Nalin by default, while this is somewhat appealing to you, it also means you have to deal with all the stuff that Brenda usually took care of, namely all the unfun stuff that doesn’t involve killing and battle. > You continue with your mission If Brenda wants to abandon her duty, you’re more than willing to take up the slack. Wouldn’t be the first time anyway. You don’t know if she’s just sulking or really not returning, but either way you’re pretty disappointed in her right now. You always thought she was stronger than that, you guess that’s what love does to someone. Makes them weak. It’s probably why Roldan wasn’t alert to stop that Shadow Guard that killed him. You can’t dwell on such things now; you’ve got more important matters to deal with. You tell Brenda’s advisors that as of now you’re taking over rulership of Nalin and that you want them to take care of things while you destroy the eastern barbarians. They tell you that there are several matters that really require your attention, but you say eliminating the threat in the east is your primary concern first. You head east with your company of veteran troops and meet up with the rest of your forces at Camp Steadfast. You explain your plan of attack and how it is to be carried out. Granted there isn’t much to it other than marching straight into the heart of Slin territory and wiping them all out, but you try to give a motivational speech, to improve their morale and mindset because it isn’t going to be easy. At the crack of dawn, you begin your march. Doesn’t take long before you face opposition. You defeat them with ease for the most part. When you begin to enter the woods though that’s when things get tougher. The elves and the degenerate human tribe known as the Fleg begin to attack you from the trees. Or more accurately, the elves stay in the trees and the Fleg throw themselves at you like the suicidal idiots they are. A few of your men catch arrows, and some of them are killed by the various traps the elves have set, but eventually the Fleg are all killed and the elves have either fled or run off as well. You take a moment to rest and regroup. Your company is still strong, but you aren’t at the numbers you’d like to face the Slin. You curse yourself for not spreading them out a little more, part of you is still a little pre-occupied with Brenda leaving. “Damn it, get your head in the battle.” You mutter to yourself. After taking a very short break, you continue towards where you know the Slin make their home. It’s a slightly swampy area. Not as bad as the time you spent in the Delerg Province, but it still isn’t the best of fighting conditions for you and your soldiers. You start meeting large groups of Slin hissing and lumbering at you from all sides. Your soldiers put up a good struggle as usual and you fight through what seems to be the endless horde, but you suffer many losses before you even make it their cave lair. One of your men begs you to turn back as he does not believe you have the numbers to take on the rest of the Slin. After all who knows how many are in there. You don’t listen though. You’re furious by their desire to leave everything, and it doesn’t help that you’re still angry about Brenda doing the same thing. “We’re nearly there and you dare suggest retreat on the verge of victory? I’ve faced worse odds and more dangerous enemies by myself! You’ve all been slacking off on the northern borders too long and getting weak! That ends today, I’m in charge of this company, I’m in charge of this army, I’m even in charge of the whole fucking nation of Nalin! Now we’re going to finish this and we’re going to win! There’s going to be a lot of changes after this is over, now come on!” You and your men fight your way into the cave entrance, several large Slin come lumbering from various tunnels hissing and charging at you. There’s so many that you sometimes have to resort to punching the beasts because there isn’t even any room to swing your sword. The Slin aren’t weaklings though and are creatures of great strength, you and your remaining soldiers are beaten severely. You continue to struggle, but several of your bones are broken, your flesh is ripped and torn and you’ve got a few chunks bitten out of you. As more Slin run towards your position, you look around and see you’re the last of your company left. You don’t understand what went wrong. You’ve been in worse situations, you’ve survived worse conditions, how is it that you’re losing and on the verge of death? In your last moments you see your loss as not your failure, but those around you for not being as strong as you. It hardly matters in the end as the Slin still put your skull as a trophy along side the rest of the “weaklings” they killed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t bring yourself to be some like the svelk and be mercenary scum who have no other goals than to earn coin. By the same token you’re not going to pledge yourself to yet another government that will probably be just as corrupt and decadent as the one you just left. Maybe in a way, Kane was right. He was obviously suffering a mental breakdown as well as being manipulated, but the concept of forming your own nation would be the surest way to ‘get it right.” You could run things the way they SHOULD be. The question is where to start? You’d need at least an army to conquer anything and right now you don’t really have that. You’re sure you could probably get those “new eternals” to follow you, but there still isn’t enough of them even if you were inclined to subject yourself to the torture of futility. Regular soldiers would probably follow you, but nowadays they’re so scattered that you’d literally have to travel all over most of the Empire to collect them, not to mention all the fighting you’d have to do during this state of anarchy. The only place you can think of is the Nalin province. It’s virtually the one place still left in the empire that isn’t suffering outright revolts, though the citizens are reportedly still severely disgruntled, Brenda is also there in command of Fort Glory. Perhaps she’ll see the wisdom of your plan and help you, if that’s the case you should be able to pull it off. You find a nearby horse and set off for the south. Along the way you see the landscape of the Empire, which at one time was orderly and even idyllic is now burning and in tatters. Despite the chaos you don’t need to do any battle, not even when passing groups of angry peasants who are taking every opportunity to get revenge on their oppressive government and its agents in all forms. You can only assume your reputation is enough to scare them off or they don’t even recognize you. If it’s the latter then it only confirms your belief that you weren’t making that much of a difference in the Empire anyway. When you get to the Nalin province you find it in much better condition than the rest of the places in the Empire that you’ve ridden through. Fort Glory looks slightly different, namely it looks more heavily fortified and a lot better cared for than when you left this place. When you approach Fort Glory, you are momentarily halted by the guards, but when you tell them who you are and that you need to see Brenda they immediately let you in. Brenda is very surprised to see you. She looks a lot different from the teenage girl you parted company with. Her hair is going gray and she has a very “tired” look about her. As if the whole weight of responsibility is crashing down on her, but she still carries herself with confidence and strength. “When my soldiers told me it was you I couldn’t believe it, it’s been so long since we’ve seen one another. Wow you haven’t really changed at all.” She says almost smiling. “It is good to see you too, Brenda. Still as pretty as ever.” You say, unsure of how to respond. “Pretty? Now that’s a word I never thought I’d hear you say. Let alone to me. Maybe you have changed more than I thought.” “Well I mean I never thought you were ugly, Brenda. I was just trying to reply to your compliment with one of my own.” “Ha ha, a complete lack of tact. That’s more like the old you. Still it’s nice to hear, though I hope for your sake, you’re a better sweet talker to the other girls out there.” “Brenda, I have to talk to you in private about something it’s very important and I don’t know how you’re going to react.” You say by passing her statement. “Oh geez, you’re not going to suddenly confess some sort of hidden love for me that you’ve kept to yourself all these years are you?” “What?! NO! This is something important!” Brenda’s a little amused by how you worded your statement especially since she was joking. You just aren’t in a “joking mood” though right now and after what you have to tell Brenda you doubt if she will too. “Look, I apologize for my outburst. It’s just that this is really important.” “Okay, we’ll go to my office and speak privately there.” When you get to Brenda’s office you don’t bother beating around the bush and you just tell her everything. Your thoughts, feelings, actions and ultimately your plan and why you came here. Now she really is amazed. You of all people were practically a paragon of duty and loyalty and here you are openly confessing that you’ve abandoned the Empire. “Okay, wow. Well you’ve just been full of surprises today.” “Will you help me?” “What exactly am I supposed to do? I mean are you seriously asking me to just hand over control of this fort to you while you play pretend emperor?” “No! I mean shit I don’t know I haven’t thought out all the details yet I guess. It’s just (sigh) Look Brenda, I just left ALL I’ve known. Everything I’ve ever been taught to believe in is GONE, if it ever existed to begin with. I didn’t have many choices on what to do next and this seemed to be the best choice all things considered. I came here because I didn’t know where else to go quite frankly. I see now that this was just as foolish an idea leaving the Empire in the first place, I guess…” “No it wasn’t.” “What wasn’t?” “Leaving the Empire. I mean I certainly understand your reasons. I share them. Maybe not in the exact same way, but they are there. Hell I think in these dark times, everyone shares them. I dunno perhaps you just made that extra step that the rest of us here aren’t quite willing to make yet.” “What do you mean?” you ask. “I mean everyone in this fort and probably the entire province would be for seceding from the Empire at this point. I think the only reason why nobody has done it yet or even rioted is due to way we run things here at Fort Glory. We found it much better by just letting people go about their business if we’re not threatening them all the time and actually defending them from real external threats. The only real problem here is the high taxes which the Empire imposes on this region, that of course tends to make people a little grumpy, but not quite enough to riot. They remember what this place used to be like after all." “Not threatening people you say? That’s a pretty wild concept. Did you think that one up?” “Nah, the credit goes to Roldan, he was the first to suggest it. He probably would’ve made a better fort commander too and if he had been promoted instead of me, he might still be here…” “Brenda, okay you can’t think like that. If he’d been promoted then you’d probably be dead and…” “I know, I know. I just get a little sad thinking about him not being here sometimes. Okay, anyway let’s do it. Let’s break away from the Empire. Like you said, shouldn’t take much convincing, though I hope you’re prepared for a shitstorm from this. We might not much problem from the population, as I said they’ll probably be relieved to not have to pay the high taxes any more, but we’re going to get Empire armies to come down here eventually.” “Possibly, but it’s pretty bad Brenda. I’m not sure if they’ll be able to really do anything, the government is on the brink of collapse. If anything we might be getting an influx of people wanting to come here to join. You’re just lucky they didn’t saddle you with those new eternals. If they had, I guarantee this place wouldn’t be as nice as it is now.” “So I’ve heard. I suppose I am lucky. This whole province is lucky.” Brenda takes a deep breathe before speaking again. “Okay so how exactly are we doing this? I mean what system are we going to have in place?” “Well, given what you’ve told me about how you’ve been running things, I’ve had one new idea. How about YOU run this place and you be the leader?” “ME? But…I don’t know anything about running a nation or anything like that!” “Seems to me you’ve been running this place pretty well for years. You know the people and better yet, they know you. I think if I was in charge…well they’d think they were living under the Empire again. No, I realize now my place isn’t to rule, but to fight. It really is what I’m good at. About the only thing.” “Now come on, you have great leadership skills!” “Leadership skills for combat perhaps, but not for ruling. I think whatever is it that you had with Roldan made you and him more in touch with human nature and that’s a good thing.” “Yes…it was a good thing. I just wish he was here. I could certainly use his help right now.” Brenda says reminiscing. You pat Brenda on the shoulder in your effort to comfort her; she tells you she’s fine though. You and Brenda at that point set your plan in motion to split from the Empire. > You brenda (Loss) After discussing a few more things about the plan to break away from the Empire, you change the subject to a more personal nature. “So other than the slow collapse of the Empire…how have you been doing?” you ask. “Me? I’ve been okay. Just been taking one day as it comes, I guess in times like this though, that’s about all anyone can do. I’ve just been keeping myself occupied, sometimes hard to do since like I said, it’s relatively peaceful here. Guess our plan might shake thing up a bit though.” Brenda remarks. “Yeah, hopefully for the better.” There is a long pause before Brenda continues the conversation “I just want to say, I appreciated the letter you sent when Roldan died.” Brenda says. “Well I felt it was only right, I probably didn’t have the words that Gerald might’ve had though.” “No, they were fine. I was almost just as upset to hear about him as well that day, even though I hadn’t spoken or seen him in years. Had a hard time keeping it together for the next few months, don’t really know how I did it.” “You’re an Eternal, and you’ll always have an inner strength to carry you through the hard times when you need it.” “Perhaps. (Sigh) It’s been a few years now and I still think about Roldan. I mean I know there was always the potential for danger, and one of us getting killed was a possibility, but I dunno it just doesn’t seem real at times. I remember when we first started to desire one another, it didn’t seem real either, but then it just felt so right. We knew each other, we grew up together, and we just operated in perfect sync.” “Yes, Roldan mentioned feeling the same way. He loved you very much.” “I know.” “So…where did you bury Roldan?” “I didn’t. I had his body burned and his ashes spread to the wind outside Fort Glory. He would’ve wanted it that way. He said when he died, he didn’t want some lavish military funeral. Still, a lot of the soldier still paid their respects by standing on the battlements and giving a salute in unison.” “Well, sounds a lot nicer than what I could do for Gerald. After the mission I dragged his body out of the swamp and back to Sinkhole. The local Empire officials said they wouldn’t bother with a proper funeral since he had no family and that it would’ve been better to just leave him in the swamp. After slamming that pencil pusher’s head into the desk, I went straight to the local undertaker and had him dig a hole for Gerald in the cemetary. Not the most elaborate of funerals, but he deserved a proper buried rather than just being left face down in the mud…though I guess in the scheme of things it hardly matters, its still in the ground and getting eaten by worms…” “No, no, you did the right thing.” Brenda says reassuringly. “You always did look out for the rest of us in some way. That’s why I never blamed you for Roldan’s death. I knew you would’ve prevented it if you could’ve.” “Yes, I would’ve.” “Well, let us not dwell on such dark issues too much longer, we’ve got other things to think about. Better ones for a better future, like you said.” Brenda smiles at you and you return the gesture. You feel sort of funny about it, but you briefly wonder if you had still been stationed here instead of Roldan, would you and Brenda gotten together?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>From the trajectory of the bolt, the assassin is in front and probably was trying to hit you instead of Gerald. You immediately run for the nearest tree as several more bolts whiz past you. When you reach the tree two Shadow Guards jump down from it and attempt to stab you. You kick one in the groin as hard as you can, while deflecting the blow of the other with your sword. You dodge another attack by falling to the ground and chopping the shadow at one of his legs, nearly hacking it off. When he falls in agony you finish him off with your sword. The one staggering around with damaged man part, finally recovers, but attempts to disappear again. You throw your dagger at him as he begins to turn invisible, impaling him in the stomach. Meanwhile it appears that Captain Gruz is taking care of the one who was shooting bolts at you. “Bastard!” he says with his boot on the shadow and chopping the shadow’s head in two with his axe. Blood and brains splatter everywhere. You move around and scan the area cautiously and try to see if there’s any more shadows lurking about, but if there were they would’ve either attack you by now or run off. When you’re confident that none are left you walk over to Gerald who is dead already. “FUCK!” you shout while kicking a nearby piece of clumped up mud. You don’t feel sadness this time so much as you feel frustration. All those years he was performing commando raids in Felkan territory and he gets killed like this? Not even in close combat! Somehow it doesn’t seem right. Just like how Roldan died. You search Gerald’s body and find the letter he was planning on sending Brenda about Roldan, it seems you will have to do it now. Perhaps even alter it. Captain Gruz walks over to you, he has a few bolts in him, but he doesn’t seem particularly bothered by them. “Feh, I’ve had way worse than this.” He says as he pulls them out. “Y’know we’re on our own now.” “What do you mean?” you ask. “I’m saying these bolts, they ain’t Shadow Guard, these are dark elven quality. That fucker over there with his head cleaved in two had one of those fancy repeating dark elven crossbows too. And while I know dark elves to be treacherous bitches that’ll switch sides to whoever’s paying the most, they would NEVER allow anyone to use their equipment. My guess is those mercs that were going to meet us are all dead, well either that or they ran off.” “Good, I want to kill the rest of these shadows anyway.” You say and proceed on to the ruins. Your next step of your journey confirms Gruz’s theory. You and he see signs of battle on your way to the ruins. Several of the bodies are dark elven, but an equal amount are Shadow Guard. “Looks like they were ambushed. Heh, pretty hard to do with dark elves. Still, it also looks like the dark elves gave the shadows a hell of a fight. Looks like those are the ruins up ahead. I’m guessing there probably aren’t too many left, this should be over pretty quick.” You and Gruz dispense with caution and boldly march into the ruins. You both look around as the crumbling statues of old forgotten gods loom over you. Eventually you find who you’re looking for in the remains of a temple that’s covered in vines and partially sinking into the swamp A single Shadow Guard stands over the bodies of several others of his kind. Near the bodies are empty flasks. “I’ll be with you soon my brothers and sisters. And especially you Draven.” Cyrus says looking at the bodies and ignoring you completely. “Aw, how sweet. Glad you decided not to pussy out like the rest of your buddies by poisoning yourself and are at least are willing to face your death like a man.” Gruz replies. “Yes, well it still remains to be seen Gruz. Though speaking of being a man, I’m impressed that you actually showed up here. I thought that you would’ve continued to hide and try to keep your involvement of these events a secret as you have for all these years.” This statement from Cyrus causes you to pause and look at Gruz. He looks guilty of something for a moment and then gives a toothy smile. “I wasn’t hiding Cyrus. I was waiting. Waiting until the day when I could finally track you down. It wasn’t my fuck up that got us into this mess. We could’ve been strong enough together to make a break from the Empire if you hadn’t decided to backstab us at Fort Destiny to save your own skin. Hah! See how well that turned out. Look at you now.” Even as jaded as you have become about the Empire, you are somewhat surprised about Captain Gruz…but in retrospect, somebody had to have some sort of input on having all those orcs transferred to Fort Defiance. Despite this revelation you’re too numb to excessively care. All you know is over the past few days you’ve seen two of your fellow Eternals die ignobly while doing their duty for the Empire. Something these traitors have obviously disregarded a long time ago. “Well, what’s it gonna be lad? You killin’ me or the shadow first?” Gruz asks. “I think I’ll stick with the original plan. We’ll kill the shadow together, then you and me are going to settle up.” You say calmly. “That’s the spirit boy!” Gruz laughs and steps towards Cyrus. Cyrus makes no more small talk or last minute threats. He focuses purely on combat. You expect him to use his Shadow Guard tricks like poison or invisibility, but he doesn’t. He easily dodges Gruz’s powerful yet clumsy attacks and lands a few well placed strikes on him, but Gruz shrugs them off like you’ve seen him do the whole time you’ve been fighting along side him. You can only imagine what an unstoppable juggernaut he must’ve been back in his younger days. As for you, you match Cyrus in sword skill. Whatever he learned from the Shadow Guard won’t help him in a face-to-face battle with you. All it takes is for you to take advantage of his divided concentration and you land a mortal blow, slicing his side clean open. Cyrus falls and deflects your attempt to split his head open, but he drops his sword from the force of your blow in the process. Weaponless, tired and bleeding out from a deep hole in his side, Cyrus accepts defeat. “Do it. Eternal slave of the Empire.” He says coldly and then you fulfill his request by decapitating him. You quickly turn to face Gruz, who already has his axe ready. “Alright Eternal, let’s finish this.” You and Gruz clash weapons. As you battle, you’re reminded of the times when you were still a child and how he taught you to fight. CLANG! How he told you to keep a calm head in battle. TING! How he told you to serve the Empire. SHING! How he had confidence in your skills. CLANK! How he saw you as a leader. CLANK! How he told you not to die for the Emperor…but to make the other dumb bastard die so that you could continue serving the Emperor SWIPE! SLICE! SLISH! SLISH! SLASH! How he told you that failure wasn’t an option. Gruz finally succumbs to his multiple wounds and falls to one knee leaning on his axe in an effort not to completely collapse. “Damn…shit….” Gruz gasps as he breathes heavily and feels his strength completely leaving him. “Why?” you ask him. “Why? Heh heh.” Chuckles a bit while at the same time coughing up some blood. “After all you’ve experienced in your service of the Empire, you have to ask me why? My people had already been tamed and conquered decades ago and I bought into the same bullshit you did when I was a little green snot that didn’t know any better. I worked my way up the ranks and did pretty good for myself, but for what? To be a lap dog that begged for a treat every time I did something right and get slapped down because I was rising too much above my so called station? I was still holding on to an idea that was long gone or never existed to begin with. It wasn’t until shortly after your training was complete that I started to seriously change my mind. The Felkan war and the conspiracy that the Shadow Guard came up with just made it easier… I think I’m gonna just lay down for a while.” Gruz says as he loses his last battle with staying conscious. You step towards him with your sword ready to strike, but instead you just watch him slowly drift off and hear his last words. “I lived a lot longer than I should have. This is a good death for an orc. I’ve seen your new replacements Eternal. They’re monsters. They’ll finish off what’s left of this decaying husk of an Empire, not save it. Good riddance. Heh, don’t worry though; you’ll probably survive the coming shit storm. You’ll outlive everyone.” He says and then finally dies. With the way things have been going lately, Gruz may be correct. It doesn’t necessarily make you feel any better though. > You letter to Brenda (An apology) Dear Brenda I’ve never been any good with this sort of stuff, but I hope this letter will explain the exact nature of what happened. It is with the sincerest regret to inform you that Roldan has died in the line of duty. I will be having his body shipped back to you, so that you may have a proper funeral for him or how ever you wish to dispose of the shell that once contained a great warrior. I suppose I should also mention that Gerald also died during the mission. He actually wrote the first letter to you, but given his death soon after, I felt that it be more appropriate to rewrite it altogether. How I wish I could at least tell you Roldan died a great noble death, slaying hundreds of enemies before falling, but that was not the case. Instead, he was practically assassinated by suicidal Shadow Guards that blew him up and themselves as well, because they were too cowardly to face him in an honorable fight. I know the two of you fell in love and were married. I am not an expert on such things, and I can’t imagine the sense of loss that you will feel because of this, but know that you have my sympathies. When I saw him die before my very eyes from a gutless attack I felt a sadness dwell inside me as I had lost a comrade in arms. I also felt anger. Anger that I wasn’t there to stop it and anger at those who did it. I realize though the anger at myself was pointless. There is no point in blaming yourself in situations like this. Better to deal with the direct cause of the problem and focus all of the anger towards that instead. I don’t know if it will be of any comfort, but I killed all those responsible. I wish I could’ve killed more, but most of the spineless shadows committed some sort of ritual suicide by the time we reached their hideout. I did manage to kill their leader Cyrus though. I also killed Captain Gruz. Turned out he was a traitor the whole time. I’m beginning to wonder who isn’t a traitor nowadays. The past few days have seemed surreal, like nothing is making as much sense anymore, but then I think things stopped making sense the day I had to kill Kane. The Empire isn’t like how we learned about when we were children. Everything was so much simpler then. I’m going to stop writing now, because I think I’m getting off focus of the important topic at hand and that’s Roldan. I’ll close this letter with letting you know that in his last moments he spoke fondly of you, and that he loved you. We should all be so lucky to have something so certain in life and actually have it last.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 30 “This place won’t be the same without you sir. I don’t know how I’ll be able to run this place as well as you.” Lieutenant Verant says as you finish packing your things. “You’ll do fine lieutenant, or should I say captain. You’ll probably get an official promotion soon. Just remember, when the citizens protest I’ve found that flogging one family with children at random keeps the rest in line. Can’t really afford to execute them like we did in the old days, too many ogre attacks already doing a good job of that. Well at least you don’t need to worry about the giants as much anymore.” “You always did know best sir.” “Well, I tried to do what I could up here. I don’t know why I’m being stationed to Delerg Province. It’s one of the more peaceful places of the Empire next to the Nalin province. I would prefer to be here or on the Felkan frontlines where I could do more to serve, but I suppose the Emperor knows best where my skills will be used.” “Oh well I’ve heard the war with the Felkans is coming to an end soon.” “Yes, I’ve heard that as well…and it concerns me the things that I’ve heard why it’s ending. Mass riots in the major cities of the Empire, soldier shortages, even heard about some of those traitorous shadow criminals carrying out terrorist tactics. And because of these problems what do we do with the Felkans? Another non-aggression pact! We should be butchering them and burning down their cities, not making peace with them again. If all of the Emperor’s enemies had one neck, I would sever it with one sword swipe.” Verant says nothing after your rant. Indeed over the past few years he’s heard you rant about the troubles of the Empire a lot more and knows to keep quiet. But if you’re making more outbursts than usual, it’s only because the Empire has more problems than usual. Lately you’ve been questioning how “great” the Empire is supposed to be. This is not the place you heard about when you were being trained by Mistress or Captain Gruz. In fact, during your first assignment in the Nalin province you encountered decadent officers and disobedient citizens even then. This questioning of the Empire then makes you question the Emperor which causes you great concern for that it treasonous thinking. But still…how is it he has allowed this to happen to his land? He is supposed to be all wise and all-powerful, but you’ve not seen much evidence of either. Never mind the fact that you’ve never seen him at all. It’s a rare thought, but there have been even a few times where you wondered what would’ve happened if you had joined Kane when he asked. You leave Fort Destiny without another word and board the carriage to the Delerg province. A few days later you arrive and Delerg is everything you’ve heard about, very swampy. The town you’re scheduled to arrive in looks like it’s sinking into marsh, which might explain why it’s even called Sinkhole. While you don’t know why you’re here, you do know you’re supposed to meet with a contact here, though you don’t know who that is or where you’re supposed to meet. As you take in the sights of this dismal town, the villagers look like they can barely contain their fear of you. You aren’t sure if it’s because they’ve heard of your reputation, or if it’s due to their natural suspicious nature. The swamp folk have always been known to be that way. They were one of the few people that didn’t resist Empire dominion at all when they first came to this land, but despite this submissiveness the swamp folk still maintained their wary ways. “Well if isn’t the Bane of Rask! It’s been a long time!” a voice calls out to you. You turn around and see not one, but two familiar faces. “Roldan? Gerald?” you say seeing how much older they’ve gotten. It makes you realize just how much time has passed. “Of course it’s us!” Roldan says. “Yeah, we didn’t know you’d be the contact.” Gerald adds. “Contact? I’m not anyone’s contact. I’m supposed to meet someone here, you guys aren’t it?” you say. “Erm, no. In fact when Gerald arrived I thought he was the contact and vice versa. Well this is odd. I wonder who we’re supposed to be meeting?” You reply that you don’t know and then begin to feel slightly uneasy. With all your past experiences, you start to feel like this might be a trap, then another carriage comes into the town. When the passenger steps out, it’s an old, but still tough looking orc in battle armor. It’s Captain Gruz! He sees all three of you milling about in the open and shuffles over to you. “What in blazes are you lot doing out in the open like this? Any potential assassin could strike you down! I thought I taught you better than that! Come on let’s get into the tavern, we can talk there.” He scolds and then heads towards the tavern, you, Gerald and Roldan follow. The tavern is dark and nearly empty. The patrons inside see you four sit at a table and then move as far away as possible. “You thirsty? I sure am. Four ales!” Captain Gruz says. “I’m not thirsty captain.” You say. “They’re not for you, they’re for me! You guys order your own drinks! Anyway I imagine you’re all wondering what this small reunion is all about. Well let’s just say the Empire finally saw fit to take me off the sidelines and place me in charge of something worthwhile for a change. I’ll get right to the point and tell you, the Shadow Guard is here, or at least what’s left of them. For awhile we thought that they might be working with the Felkans, but they’re just taking advantage of the war.” This news causes you to sit forward and then look around. “Oh don’t worry, they’re not right HERE, lad. They’re in this province though; and you might be interested that Cyrus is the one leading this miserable little band of shadows. I imagine you and he got some unfinished business. In fact that’s why you’re here, since you’ve had a lot of experience in dealing with this situation before. As for you two, your own records are excellent and you’re Eternals. The only ones that are going to be skilled enough to handle this situation I think are Eternals.” “How come Edgar isn’t here? He also had experience with the Shadow Guard and was with me during the Fort Defiance incident.” “Eh, Edgar’s skills are best served on the Felkan frontlines right now. I know the war might be coming to an end, but there’s still quite a bit of fighting going on. Besides best not to have all you guys in one place.” “That’s a different perception than I remember you having when you were arguing with Mr. Mol fourteen years ago.” You say. “Heh, remembered that did you? Well, as I’m sure you know things change, ideas change. You get older and see things differently. Wouldn’t you agree?” You pause before answering, which causes Gruz to study you for a moment. “Yes, I suppose so.” You reluctantly reply. “Of course you do, lad. You’d be a bleeding idiot if you didn’t.” Gruz says taking a drink of one of his ales. “So, where are these Shadow Guard fanatics anyway?” Gerald asks. “An old temple deep in the swamps. Used to be their old place of worship back before their Empire days apparently. Looks like Cyrus really bought into that dead religion, though it’s also arrogant of him to try to hide right underneath our noses. Hell, who knows? Maybe he knew he’d get discovered eventually and was just itching for a fight. Anyway, we’ll have some extra help when we arrive there. Trust me, I’ve got it set up.” The remainder of the time is playing a little catch up with your former team members while Captain Gruz enjoys his ale. It’s interesting to see how vastly different their experiences have been. Gerald says his time was initially boring until the war broke out. From then on he and Warrick were constantly paired up to perform commando mission deep into Felkan territory. Dangerous work, but he says they were treated pretty well by everyone and held in high regard among their fellow soldiers. Even the citizens were less troublesome in the Arat province and the local women threw themselves at him and Warrick every night he laughs. Roldan mentions his time was mostly spent cleaning up the rest of the kobolds in the Nalin province, breaking small bandit rings, and ultimately trying to keep the peasants in line. No problems from the usksha again though. When Captain Anu was promoted and sent to the Felkan frontlines, Brenda got promoted to command Fort Glory. The most surprising thing though, he and Brenda apparently married. Wasn’t anything fancy and there was paperwork that had to be filled out (A lot of it) but it was completely approved of by the Empire. Your own tales sound remarkably grim when compared to theirs. The strangest thing about all this is how they’ve all had contact with each other either directly or through messages. Gerald and Roldan even mention how they got letters from Kane years ago before his actions at Fort Defiance. They both confirm how the letters sounded very longing of the “old days” and referring to them as “brother.” Warrick and Brenda apparently got similar ones too. You ask Gerald if he met Edgar when he was transferred there. He replies that he did, but said that he was mostly sent to fight Felkan armies directly right along side most of the orcish detachments. “Sheesh. He’s gotta love that considering his experiences with orcs at Fort Defiance.” You say. “Edgar’s an idiot. Always has been. I saw that even when I was training you guys. He’s a good warrior, but lacks vision. Surprised he’s lasted this long.” Captain Gruz suddenly replies. “Well, I agree he’s always had a tendency to act without thinking, but after my last dealings with him, I think he’s improved a bit. Changed his outlook. You know, got older and sees things differently now.” You reply. “Hmm. Maybe, but as far as I’m concerned being a meat shield is about the best thing he’s ever been good for, just like all the rest of dumb fuckers on the Felkan frontlines.” “Hey, I’m on the Felkan frontlines!” Gerald protests. “Yeah, and you’re not marching straight into those Felkan shooty weapons either. You’re being a lot more than just a meat shield like the rest of those stupid ass orcs.” “Rest of those orcs? Not to point out the obvious, but you’re an orc, I mean aren’t those your people?” Roldan asks. “Yeah and? Does that make us all relatives or some shit? Fuck my people! I got no patience for any of them anymore…” Captain Gruz begins to get loud and cause a scene. “Okay captain I think you’ve had enough. I think I saw an inn across the way, let’s get some rooms there and make plans to deal with the shadows tomorrow.” You suggest. “Grrm, maybe you’re right…” Captain Gruz replies and then promptly falls to the floor. Gerald tries to pick him up. “Somebody go get the rooms and the other person help me carry the captain.” Gerald says. > You go get the rooms “I’ll get the rooms, you help Gerald.” You say. “Okay.” Roldan agrees and proceeds to lift up Gruz on the other side. You exit the tavern and make your way to the inn, which is across the road. You’re half way across when you sense something isn’t right. You notice a little girl across the road staring at something and that’s when you realize there are shadows about. The first one attempts to stab you in the back, but you spin and dodge, then stab him through the stomach. The second one aborts his own attack and attempts to escape. You however grab him with your free hand. It is at this point, he pulls out some sort of odd round plant and screams something you don’t understand and a black aura suddenly emanates from him. “Shit!” you shout and run him through in the hopes of killing him before he can complete whatever spell he’s casting. He drops the plant on the ground, but smiles at you. “It’s already done Eternal!” he laughs and then you are both engulfed in an explosion and blown several feet from where you were, though only part of you. What remains of your body is scattered in pieces along the road of Sinkhole. You actually manage to live a few more seconds to see the images of what you presume to be Roldan and Gerald running out of the tavern, then everything goes dark.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 30 “This place won’t be the same without you sir. I don’t know how I’ll be able to run this place as well as you.” Lieutenant Verant says as you finish packing your things. “You’ll do fine lieutenant, or should I say captain. You’ll probably get an official promotion soon. Just remember, when the citizens protest I’ve found that flogging one family with children at random keeps the rest in line. Can’t really afford to execute them like we did in the old days, too many ogre attacks already doing a good job of that. Well at least you don’t need to worry about the giants as much anymore.” “You always did know best sir.” “Well, I tried to do what I could up here. I don’t know why I’m being stationed to Delerg Province. It’s one of the more peaceful places of the Empire next to the Nalin province. I would prefer to be here or on the Felkan frontlines where I could do more to serve, but I suppose the Emperor knows best where my skills will be used.” “Oh well I’ve heard the war with the Felkans is coming to an end soon.” “Yes, I’ve heard that as well…and it concerns me the things that I’ve heard why it’s ending. Mass riots in the major cities of the Empire, soldier shortages, even heard about some of those traitorous shadow criminals carrying out terrorist tactics. And because of these problems what do we do with the Felkans? Another non-aggression pact! We should be butchering them and burning down their cities, not making peace with them again. If all of the Emperor’s enemies had one neck, I would sever it with one sword swipe.” Verant says nothing after your rant. Indeed over the past few years he’s heard you rant about the troubles of the Empire a lot more and knows to keep quiet. But if you’re making more outbursts than usual, it’s only because the Empire has more problems than usual. Lately you’ve been questioning how “great” the Empire is supposed to be. This is not the place you heard about when you were being trained by Mistress or Captain Gruz. In fact, during your first assignment in the Nalin province you encountered decadent officers and disobedient citizens even then. This questioning of the Empire then makes you question the Emperor which causes you great concern for that it treasonous thinking. But still…how is it he has allowed this to happen to his land? He is supposed to be all wise and all-powerful, but you’ve not seen much evidence of either. Never mind the fact that you’ve never seen him at all. It’s a rare thought, but there have been even a few times where you wondered what would’ve happened if you had joined Kane when he asked. You leave Fort Destiny without another word and board the carriage to the Delerg province. A few days later you arrive and Delerg is everything you’ve heard about, very swampy. The town you’re scheduled to arrive in looks like it’s sinking into marsh, which might explain why it’s even called Sinkhole. While you don’t know why you’re here, you do know you’re supposed to meet with a contact here, though you don’t know who that is or where you’re supposed to meet. As you take in the sights of this dismal town, the villagers look like they can barely contain their fear of you. You aren’t sure if it’s because they’ve heard of your reputation, or if it’s due to their natural suspicious nature. The swamp folk have always been known to be that way. They were one of the few people that didn’t resist Empire dominion at all when they first came to this land, but despite this submissiveness the swamp folk still maintained their wary ways. “Well if isn’t the Bane of Rask! It’s been a long time!” a voice calls out to you. You turn around and see not one, but two familiar faces. “Roldan? Gerald?” you say seeing how much older they’ve gotten. It makes you realize just how much time has passed. “Of course it’s us!” Roldan says. “Yeah, we didn’t know you’d be the contact.” Gerald adds. “Contact? I’m not anyone’s contact. I’m supposed to meet someone here, you guys aren’t it?” you say. “Erm, no. In fact when Gerald arrived I thought he was the contact and vice versa. Well this is odd. I wonder who we’re supposed to be meeting?” You reply that you don’t know and then begin to feel slightly uneasy. With all your past experiences, you start to feel like this might be a trap, then another carriage comes into the town. When the passenger steps out, it’s an old, but still tough looking orc in battle armor. It’s Captain Gruz! He sees all three of you milling about in the open and shuffles over to you. “What in blazes are you lot doing out in the open like this? Any potential assassin could strike you down! I thought I taught you better than that! Come on let’s get into the tavern, we can talk there.” He scolds and then heads towards the tavern, you, Gerald and Roldan follow. The tavern is dark and nearly empty. The patrons inside see you four sit at a table and then move as far away as possible. “You thirsty? I sure am. Four ales!” Captain Gruz says. “I’m not thirsty captain.” You say. “They’re not for you, they’re for me! You guys order your own drinks! Anyway I imagine you’re all wondering what this small reunion is all about. Well let’s just say the Empire finally saw fit to take me off the sidelines and place me in charge of something worthwhile for a change. I’ll get right to the point and tell you, the Shadow Guard is here, or at least what’s left of them. For awhile we thought that they might be working with the Felkans, but they’re just taking advantage of the war.” This news causes you to sit forward and then look around. “Oh don’t worry, they’re not right HERE, lad. They’re in this province though; and you might be interested that Cyrus is the one leading this miserable little band of shadows. I imagine you and he got some unfinished business. In fact that’s why you’re here, since you’ve had a lot of experience in dealing with this situation before. As for you two, your own records are excellent and you’re Eternals. The only ones that are going to be skilled enough to handle this situation I think are Eternals.” “How come Edgar isn’t here? He also had experience with the Shadow Guard and was with me during the Fort Defiance incident.” “Eh, Edgar’s skills are best served on the Felkan frontlines right now. I know the war might be coming to an end, but there’s still quite a bit of fighting going on. Besides best not to have all you guys in one place.” “That’s a different perception than I remember you having when you were arguing with Mr. Mol fourteen years ago.” You say. “Heh, remembered that did you? Well, as I’m sure you know things change, ideas change. You get older and see things differently. Wouldn’t you agree?” You pause before answering, which causes Gruz to study you for a moment. “Yes, I suppose so.” You reluctantly reply. “Of course you do, lad. You’d be a bleeding idiot if you didn’t.” Gruz says taking a drink of one of his ales. “So, where are these Shadow Guard fanatics anyway?” Gerald asks. “An old temple deep in the swamps. Used to be their old place of worship back before their Empire days apparently. Looks like Cyrus really bought into that dead religion, though it’s also arrogant of him to try to hide right underneath our noses. Hell, who knows? Maybe he knew he’d get discovered eventually and was just itching for a fight. Anyway, we’ll have some extra help when we arrive there. Trust me, I’ve got it set up.” The remainder of the time is playing a little catch up with your former team members while Captain Gruz enjoys his ale. It’s interesting to see how vastly different their experiences have been. Gerald says his time was initially boring until the war broke out. From then on he and Warrick were constantly paired up to perform commando mission deep into Felkan territory. Dangerous work, but he says they were treated pretty well by everyone and held in high regard among their fellow soldiers. Even the citizens were less troublesome in the Arat province and the local women threw themselves at him and Warrick every night he laughs. Roldan mentions his time was mostly spent cleaning up the rest of the kobolds in the Nalin province, breaking small bandit rings, and ultimately trying to keep the peasants in line. No problems from the usksha again though. When Captain Anu was promoted and sent to the Felkan frontlines, Brenda got promoted to command Fort Glory. The most surprising thing though, he and Brenda apparently married. Wasn’t anything fancy and there was paperwork that had to be filled out (A lot of it) but it was completely approved of by the Empire. Your own tales sound remarkably grim when compared to theirs. The strangest thing about all this is how they’ve all had contact with each other either directly or through messages. Gerald and Roldan even mention how they got letters from Kane years ago before his actions at Fort Defiance. They both confirm how the letters sounded very longing of the “old days” and referring to them as “brother.” Warrick and Brenda apparently got similar ones too. You ask Gerald if he met Edgar when he was transferred there. He replies that he did, but said that he was mostly sent to fight Felkan armies directly right along side most of the orcish detachments. “Sheesh. He’s gotta love that considering his experiences with orcs at Fort Defiance.” You say. “Edgar’s an idiot. Always has been. I saw that even when I was training you guys. He’s a good warrior, but lacks vision. Surprised he’s lasted this long.” Captain Gruz suddenly replies. “Well, I agree he’s always had a tendency to act without thinking, but after my last dealings with him, I think he’s improved a bit. Changed his outlook. You know, got older and sees things differently now.” You reply. “Hmm. Maybe, but as far as I’m concerned being a meat shield is about the best thing he’s ever been good for, just like all the rest of dumb fuckers on the Felkan frontlines.” “Hey, I’m on the Felkan frontlines!” Gerald protests. “Yeah, and you’re not marching straight into those Felkan shooty weapons either. You’re being a lot more than just a meat shield like the rest of those stupid ass orcs.” “Rest of those orcs? Not to point out the obvious, but you’re an orc, I mean aren’t those your people?” Roldan asks. “Yeah and? Does that make us all relatives or some shit? Fuck my people! I got no patience for any of them anymore…” Captain Gruz begins to get loud and cause a scene. “Okay captain I think you’ve had enough. I think I saw an inn across the way, let’s get some rooms there and make plans to deal with the shadows tomorrow.” You suggest. “Grrm, maybe you’re right…” Captain Gruz replies and then promptly falls to the floor. Gerald tries to pick him up. “Somebody go get the rooms and the other person help me carry the captain.” Gerald says. > You old Comrades (Catching up) “…and so that’s what Warrick and I have been up to. Just making things difficult as best we can for the Felkan Kingdom.” Gerald says. “I’m just surprised that put you on these sneaky commando raids, Warrick I can understand, he’s always been a stealthy individual, but you were usually rushing into battle like the rest of us.” You reply. “Hey, I’ve changed a bit since you last saw me. Besides, it’s not all sneaking around. Some of it requires just enough to get in and then we can raise as much havoc as we need to. Still, if it’s a mission that requires a lot of covert operations, then Warrick goes in by himself. I’d go to, but I’m too damn tall and stick out like a sore thumb sometimes.” “Heh, maybe they should put Edgar on your missions, he’s short enough.” Roldan laughs. “Yeah right, he’d go charging in screaming at the top of his lungs for the entire Felkan Kingdom to attack him.” “Oh I don’t know about that, he’s changed as well last time I saw him. He’s a lot better disciplined now. Speaking change, how the hell did YOU get married?” You ask Roldan. “Well you see, when a man and a woman love each other…” This causes a bit of laughing from Gerald and Roldan, but you’re as serious as ever. “You know what I mean, Roldan.” “Yes, I know what you mean, sheesh. I see some things haven’t changed. Well it’s rather simple. Brenda and I spent so much time together and our thoughts, our actions, and just I dunno everything about us seemed to be in relative harmony. It only seemed natural that we end up together. It was like…what other people call love I guess? Hard to know for certain, I mean I think we all know that wasn’t something we were trained to for. Anyway we just ended up taking the next logical step, but we were pretty worried that the Empire would frown upon it and possibly even split us up. Turned out of course they just made us fill out a bunch of annoying paperwork. I don’t even think whatever pencil pusher was in charge even realized we were Eternals. Just bureaucracy as usual.” “Bah, you just got lucky you had no real competition. Had I still been stationed there, things would’ve been a lot different!” Gerald remarks. While Roldan gives Gerald a light punch to his arm, you’re about to ask further questions about Roldan’s marriage when Gruz suddenly asks you a strange question. “Tell me Eternal, what are you going to do when you get old?” “Huh? Get old?” “Yes, when you get old, you do realize it will happen right?” “Well…uh yeah.” “Okay then, what are you going to do?” “I guess I never thought about it.” “Hm. Sounds about right. Most young people don’t.” he replies and goes back to his ale. This odd interlude is interrupted once again by Gerald and Roldan who were so preoccupied with their little playful banter that they didn’t even hear Gruz’s remarks. “So… big bad Bane of Rask! Heh.” Gerald says and does a little drumming motion on the table. “Heard a lot of stories about some of stuff you’ve done. Maybe you can clear up some of the rumors and truths.” “You mean like Kane?” you bluntly say. “Er…well actually I got some of that story about that from Edgar last time I saw him. I was certainly surprised how bad it was when he told me directly, but after one of the letters I got from Kane months before, it did have an odd tone to it…” “Wait a minute. Hold on. Kane sent you a letter?” “Yeah, I assumed he sent one to all of us. Warrick got one the same time I did.” “Brenda and I received letters as well. Very odd. Kept referring to us as his brother and sister throughout the thing.” Roldan adds. You’re at a loss that you didn’t receive one considering when Kane first met you he was very eager to have you on his side. You initially chalk it up to Cyrus’ meddling, but then Gerald asks another question. “You know speaking of letters, how come you never answered any of mine? I had a few sent to Rask a few months after we all got split up, but never got a reply. I was sort of worried you were dead for a while until deeds of your exploits started popping up.” “Letters? I never got any letters. Never got any letters from anyone.” You say. “Well that would explain your surprise at Brenda and I getting married because we made sure to send one to everyone on the team. Hell, even Edgar wrote back to congratulate us.” Gerald makes a remark to Roldan that maybe Rask has shitty mail service, and then Gruz pipes up again while they’re talking with each other. “Don’t worry about it lad. Isolation makes one stronger anyway.” “What?” “Teamwork, cooperation, greater good, its all bullshit. In the end it’s just about survival and who crosses that finish line between life and death last is the winner. Just sucks about those last laps though when you’re practically crawling towards it just to get the shit over with.” Gruz says taking another drink. You aren’t exactly sure what Gruz is going on about, but you’re getting the impression that he’s had more than enough to drink. You decide that you all need to start wrapping up this little get together soon so you can concentrate better at the true task at hand.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“We can’t leave yet, we have to take care of Kane and Cyrus.” You say. “What? You don’t think it wouldn’t be a better idea to escape and then come back with an army or something?” Edgar replies “It would be preferable yes, but by that time they’ll be entrenched and possibly already on the move with their own army of giants, ogres and orcs. That’s less likely to happen without Kane or Cyrus here.” “You don’t think someone else will take their place?” “I KNOW someone else will take their place, but by getting rid of Kane and Cyrus that shaky allied army that they’ve built up will fall apart. It will then be far easier to handle seeing as it won’t commanded by Eternals.” “Well, that’s true…okay let’s do it.” Edgar suggests getting some basic armor with helmets to disguise and protect yourselves in and mentions the supply room in the human section of the fort should have some. It takes some sneaking around, but Edgar’s knowledge of the layout gets you there with relative ease. When you do get to the room you have to kill a couple human guards, and get dressed in some armor without raising an alarm. At least not an obvious one. “I told the others that you wouldn’t try to escape. Glad to see I was right.” A man’s voice says from somewhere. You and Edgar both grab weapons and look around putting your backs to each other. “Knew it was too easy.” Edgar says. “It still can be.” The voice remarks. “Who are you? Show yourself!” you demand. “And have you possibly kill me? Oh no, I know the skill and ruthlessness of the Eternals all too well having served with Cyrus for years, not to mention seeing Edgar in action. And your own reputation speaks on its own, Bane of Rask. There is no need for animosity however, I am willing to help you.” “It’s a Shadow Guard, he’s using his blasted magic tricks to stay invisible to us.” Edgar whispers. “If you’re here to help, why have you allowed this to treason to happen in the first place?” you ask still keeping your guard up. “Oh various reasons, but let’s just say the major reason is that Cyrus is a very convincing fellow. He probably doesn’t seem like it to you, but he has a certain charm about him. It’s how he’s managed to convince Kane to go along with all this I imagine.” “So this was all Cyrus’ idea.” You say still scanning the room. “Eh, it’s a little more complicated than that I think, even I’m not privy to all the details. I only know as much as I do because Cyrus is a little more talkative after sex…” “Okay, I didn’t need to hear about that!” Edgar exclaims. “Look we could stand around and talk all day until the guards realize something is wrong, or you can accept the help of me and the rest of the Shadow Guard. We have come to realize for a while now that this plan is not in our best interest and will only lead to our destruction.” The voice says, “You do realize that you have already participated in treason and this attempt at switching sides because you know you’ll lose anyway, will not save you?” you say undiplomatically. “Ha ha! Yes, I would expect no less from the Empire and especially not from an Eternal such as yourself. You Eternals, you think in such absolutes and that’s why you’ll be the death of us all…not YOU of course, but for the rest of us. (Sigh) I think the Shadow Guard should’ve broken away from the Empire years ago before you lot popped up. Anyway it hardly matters now, I’m still offering my help…” Before the man can complete his sentence you have managed to locate his whereabouts in the room and grab him. His invisibility disappears to reveal a mundane looking man in a gray cloak. As you hold your sword to him, Edgar does likewise. “I hate to burst your ego, but this isn’t the first time an Eternal has managed to detect me, you took longer though.” The gray-cloaked man says. “How can I trust someone who has defied the Emperor and participated in treasonous acts?” you ask, ignoring the Shadow Guard’s flippant nature. “You can’t. And being a Shadow Guard probably makes me even less trustworthy. The only thing I can say is you’ll have to make a leap of faith Eternal. I will confess this though. The Shadow Guard’s loyalty to the Empire is starting to be less than absolute. Granted there are still debates about this within our order and not everyone can decide on how we should do it. Personally I felt we should all just leave and not make a big mess about it. Obviously some, like Cyrus feel otherwise. Now I have just relayed perfectly good intelligence on a potential major threat to the Empire. You will be able to warn others after you take care of Kane and Cyrus.” > You kill him There is no way you’re going to trust a Shadow Guard even if he has given you good information. He’s still a traitor that would betray you at the nearest opportunity he deserves no less than death. Without another word you run him through and muffle any yelps he might’ve made during his death. “Good idea, no way we could’ve trusted him.” Edgar says. “Come on, we should head to Kane’s office, that’s probably where he’s at, hopefully Cyrus is there as well.” You manage to walk through the halls of the fort without difficulty thanks to the face covering helmets. Everyone just assumes you’re just two soldiers going about your routines. When you arrive near the office there are several heavily armored orc guards milling around there. You and Edgar briefly wonder how quickly you can kill them before more come running, but unfortunately, when another one comes running your potential plans of distraction them are gone. “Ay! Ay! You guyz! The prisoners have escaped! Come on!” the orc yells. “Wha?! Well we can’t leave, da boss is in his office! Go get dem shadoze ta help!” one of the guard says. “Hey we’ll tell the general and you take care of the prisoners. You orcs are tougher so you’ll be able to handle the situation better than we would.” You pipe up and say. “Hmm, you might be right about us bein’ stronger, but even weaklings like you should be able to handle two unarmed prisoners. We gots orders, we stay here wit da boss.” “To hell with this.” Edgar suddenly says and attacks one of the orcs. You do battle with the orcs, though it isn’t an easy fight, they’re obviously Kane’s bodyguards for a reason. You haven’t even defeated all of them yet, when Kane comes out of his office. “What’s going…assassins!” Kane shouts, not immediately realizing it’s you and Edgar with your helmets on. You attempt to engage Kane, but one of the last orc guards knocks you into the wall and attempts to get you in a bear hug. You manage to get free, and after landing a couple of good strikes, the orc collapses to one knee where upon you finish him off. You turn around in time to see Kane taking advantage of Edgar’s own fight with the last orc guard. Kane runs his sword through Edgar’s side. Edgar pauses his attack from the blow which allows the orc guard to follow up with a good strike with his mace. A sickening crunch of Edgar’s skull along with the clang of metal accompanies his helmet being knocked off of him. Edgar crumples to the floor and doesn’t move. “Edgar?” Kane says to himself. You waste no time more time and attack. You dodge the last orc guard’s clumsy attack with his mace while blocking Kane’s own as well. “Why are you fighting me?! We should be on the same side brother!” he exclaims desperately, realizing who you are. The orc guard winds up another swing, and you aim low taking out his legs, when he falls to the floor, you kick Kane away from you so you can finish off the last guard. After killing the orc, Kane attempts to attack you but fails and you land a blow across his chest and then another across his face, blinding him in one eye. He drops his weapon and staggers back holding his hand on the gaping bloody wound. “(Pant) Why…you…I can’t…” he wheezes and tries to escape past you, but you stop him completely by running him through. You wrench the sword upward to slice further into his internal organs. Blood spills out from the wound and onto the floor and your feet. He looks at you with his remaining good eye. Surprisingly, he smiles. “I…forgive you…broth…” he gasps and dies. You don’t have time to check on Edgar or anything else when you feel several bolts go into your back. You collapse to the floor and feel that same toxin you felt when Cyrus shot you, except this time you feel a whole lot sicker, due to getting a heavier dose. “I have to say this probably worked out a whole lot better this way. With Kane out of the way, perhaps we can use these orcs to our more direct advantage after all.” You hear Cyrus remark as several Shadow Guards circle around you. “Don’t expect to wake up from this one.” Is the last thing you hear before another bolt goes into your skull.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 2A: For The Empire! Year 20 “Watch it the last ones are coming from the left side!” you shout, pointing at the barbarian wolfmen breaking through the barricade. Two of your number go down before the might of the wolfmen. As always you find yourself having to do things yourself. Not that you’re adverse to placing yourself in the thick of battle, but sometimes you get a little tired of having to micromanage. One of the wolfmen goes down by your blade with ease, the other three however are shot full of bolts, though you were very nearly in the crossfire. “DAMMIT, watch where you’re shooting!” You shout at the dark elven mercenaries. “Oh stop being so dramatic, we’ve been shooting with these crossbows longer than you’ve even been alive I’d wager.” One of them replies, followed by a few snickers. You shake your head at the fact that you have to routinely work with them, let alone having to put up with their kind. Then again you’ve had to put up with a lot around here for the past four years. “Are we done fighting these dogs now? When are we going to get back to killing more sveld? That’s a lot more fun.” One of the mercenaries says. “You aren’t getting paid to have fun svelk! You’re getting paid to do your job. If you really want to go murder your tree loving cousins so bad, we’re not stopping you.” You say. “Whatever monkey, our job here is done, we’re heading back. Let us know when you need our help again.” The mercenary says and they leave. You survey the damage to the logging camp and it’s going to be awhile before this place is up and running to it’s full capabilities again. Still, today is a victory and despite everything, you’ve managed to eliminate more enemies even if it does seem like they are everywhere in this harsh cold land. Unfortunately nowadays the Rask frontier isn’t the only place where the Empire has been having problems. Open war broke out with the Felkan Kingdom a couple years ago. Sometimes you wonder how things are going with Warrick and Gerald, but you’ve never heard anything about them, or from them. In fact you rarely hear news from anywhere unless it directly concerns you defending mining towns, logging town, or outposts from barbarians or the forest elves. It’s never pretty here, but you can only imagine what they deal with up at Fort Defiance where they routinely face ogres and sometimes even giants. You have heard that Edgar has made quite a name for himself with some of his actions. In a way you’re glad, because he’s living up to the title of an Eternal and doing honor by serving with distinction…still, knowing him he’s doing it all to try to “beat” you. As for you, you’ve made quite a name for yourself as well. You have improved the mortality rate of the soldiers here a little (most notably the ones serving under you), but you’ve also managed to successfully defend several towns with low citizen casualties too. The greatest accomplishments of yours are the complete destruction of several hostile barbarian tribes. The Black Wolves, the Enclave of the Bear, the Blood Boars, and other minor shape changing tribes have all been exterminated thanks to your relentless nature. Indeed, you’ve become so infamous that the barbarian tribes in this land have come to call you the “The Bane of Rask.” This recent battle was a last desperate regroup attack by one of the tribes, the “Silver Fangs” after you wiped out all their women and children in an attack on their camp. Grim business to be sure, but it wasn’t first time and it certainly won’t be the last. These tribes must learn that they cannot stand against the might of the Empire or the Emperor. If they can only learn that with their extinction then so be it. You report your victory to Captain Krozer. “Excellent as always lieutenant. I know time after time I can count on you. Which leads me to the next major task. From what I can tell we’ve managed to eliminate the major threats in this particular area of the Rask frontier, but we have two left. The forest elves and the Wendigo tribe are the two in question and I’m wondering which one we should focus our attention on first.” “Well I can tell you that the Wendigo tribe will be a challenge. They’re the biggest, toughest and meanest of all the barbarian shape shifters. So far we haven’t had a large battle with them yet, but with our extermination of the other tribes, the time is getting closer. As for the elves, it will be more tedious than anything as they use a lot of guerilla tactics and such. We’ve still never found any sort of home, base or camp of theirs, but I suppose those dark elven mercs will be more than willing to help us with eliminating them. I’m sure their leader, Edolith will most likely demand a high price as usual though.” You say. “(Sigh) Yeah, I’m sure she will. Things are never easy here. Fuck it; we’re pushing forward on both groups right now and putting an end to it once and for all. The question is, would you prefer to lead a company against the Wendigo tribe or go on a seek and destroy mission on the forest elves.” > You seek out the elves “I’ve had to work around those svelk for a while now. If they’re going to help us attack the elves, it might be a good idea for me to go on that one so I can keep an eye on them, captain.” You say. “Yes, you do have a reputation even among those shifty bastards, though they’d never admit it. Okay, sounds good. I shall send another officer to lead the mission against the Wendigo tribe. I may even just go along on that mission.” Captain Krozer replies. “You are captain?” “Yes, I find that I’ve been getting stuck behind the desk too much lately. It’ll be good to be back out in the field. Don’t want to become like one of those fat self-important generals that do nothing except point to maps and make equally fat musings on tactics. A true leader should lead from the front, I’m sure you agree.” “It is preferable yes…but I do understand the need to keep those with keen military minds safe from major war zones. Such people have their place as all do in their service of the Emperor.” “Why lieutenant, are you complimenting me on my intelligence? It’s not like you to flirt.” Captain Krozer asks in a tone slightly friendlier than usual, it catches you a little off guard. “I…no! I mean yes, you are very intelligent, but…” “Relax lieutenant, just having a little fun, didn’t mean to put you on the spot. Anyway, we’ll pick this up later, you better get prepared for your mission, and good luck.” You do exactly that. You know that this is going to be a tedious mission. The elves rarely ever fight in straight up combat. It’s typically a series of ambushes and hit and run tactics with some traps thrown in for good measure. Attempting to locate their hideout is going to be equally as tedious. While the dark elves will certainly be helpful, you wish you had a few battle wizards, but most of those have been assigned either at Fort Defiance or on the frontlines of the Felkan War. The first thing you do is talk with the leader of the dark elven mercenaries about how would be the best way to track down the elves. Eldolith normally is outwardly disdainful of humans, but she manages to just barely contain that distain in your case. She’s typical of her kind, arrogant and acts like she’s doing you a favor just by being in your presence. Reminds you of the days when Mistress trained you. “Ah the Bane of Rask, if it isn’t my favorite mon…human. What do I owe this dubious pleasure?” she asks while polishing one of her leather boots. “We want to find the elven home and destroy them for good.” “Finally ready to destroy those sveld eh? About fucking time. The whole time we’ve been playing around with your semi-evolved barbaric kin, I’ve had a few of my men out scouting this entire forsaken frontier. We got a lead a few months ago and we’re pretty sure it’s good.” “Wait. Hold on. You’ve known where they’ve been hiding and you didn’t report it to us?” “As I recall your superior isn’t paying us for reconnaissance. We’re just here to fight. Besides, it’s still not necessarily a one hundred percent sure thing.” “If you’re so opposed to doing jobs that you aren’t being paid for, why’d you do this secret scouting mission anyway?” “We’re also not just here for YOU, human. We have our own agenda. The only reason why we have not followed up on this lead, is because we’ve been busy helping you monkeys, not to mention we all felt it would also be best if we had more warm bodies to distract our hated kind with. Congratulations.” Eldolith sneers. In typical dark elf fashion she’s attempting to provoke you to get angry for her amusement and to put on a show for her men. Won’t work though. “Wise decision Eldolith. No way you could’ve handled them yourselves.” “We could have, but as I stated we were busy helping YOU.” “If you say so. Anyway I’ll expect to your group to be ready in a couple hours.” You say and leave, but your own dismissive behavior annoys Eldolith so much that she boldly grabs your arm. This is all the excuse you needed. “Don’t you turn your back on…ack!” Eldolith is interrupted when you quickly turn around grab her arm, spin her around and twist it behind her back. You other arm is wrapped tightly around her neck. Her men grab their crossbows and point them at you, but it’s a futile gesture, she’s in front of you, they’d be more likely to hit her than you. “Put your bows down you fools!” she struggles to yell. “I advise you all to heed your leader’s orders. Even if you did manage to kill me, not one of you would make it out of this fort alive. I might remind you that you initiated this by putting your hands on me in the first place, surely I had the right to defend myself correct?” “(Sigh) Yes, it would’ve been foolish to react in any other way I suppose. The mistake was mine. Ugh, I’m going to have the stench of human on me for days. Release me!” No please or begging of course, just more orders. Still, you’ve made your point. You let her go by shoving her down on the floor. As you leave you can hear her verbally abusing her own men. She’s going to have problems maintaining her leadership position now after looking so weak. You’re going to have to be careful as well, lest you “accidentally” get a bolt in the back during the heat of battle, but then again you’re always alert while dark elves are around. Eventually you set off on your mission. For a while it’s a simple uneventful march through ice and snow. Eldolith mentions that the Alabaster Pines are where they think the elves are making their home, but not in the traditional sense. There is evidence that they are actually making their home underground. “Can you believe it? Members of our kind actually living like those disgusting rock eaters? It shames me to even think that these sveld were actually even related to us at one time.” Edolith says. When you reach the Alabaster Pines, you remind your company to keep alert for traps and potential ambushes. You also tell them to keep alert of your so called “allies” as well. It doesn’t take long before you’re attacked. The elves predictably engage in their guerilla tactics. These attacks might’ve taken a greater toll, but with the help of the dark elves, the long range attacks that they favor are less effective. The deeper you go into the forest, the more desperate the attacks become. They begin to attack you directly in hand to hand combat and to the death. They scream curses and obscenities in your language and their own calling you all murderers and evil. The dark elves of course are enjoying all this. You and your company on the other hand aren’t. Not due to any sort of sympathy they are the enemy after all, but this is just another mission to you. Funny that you should have a more “detached” attitude than the mercenaries themselves. Soon you enter a part of the forest where the trees are so tall that they completely block out the sky. There isn’t even that much snow ground. Almost a “warm” feeling encompasses the place. “One of my scouts said they made it this far before and that’s where he found evidence that these sveld had an entrance to an underground lair. Should be near an odd blue rock. Let’s look around.” Edolith says to you. “Where’s that scout of yours, shouldn’t he be able to show us directly?” you ask. “The useless bastard is lying dead with two sveld arrows in him a mile back. Now come on, we’ll be able to find this place better if all us look.” “I’m not sure. Something about this seems too easy. Why don’t you look, and we’ll stay alert to make sure this isn’t an ambush.” “If the sveld were going to ambush us, they would’ve done it by now or haven’t you noticed how desperate their attacks have gotten? They probably already know we’re coming and building up defenses as we speak. The longer we take, the tougher it’s going to be to root them out.” > You help in the search Edolith’s right, the elves would’ve attacked already. You order your men to help in the search. It doesn’t take long to find what you’re looking for. “Lieutenant! I found a blue rock and it looks like there’s a hidden door in the ground.” One of your men yells. “Your monkeys are as subtle as ever with their howling.” Edolith says. You ignore her and make your way to the location along with the rest of your company. You look down the hole and see a long ladder descend into the darkness. This will probably be the most dangerous part as the elves could pick you off as you attempt to climb down. Elves can see in the dark, while you and your men are going to have to rely on torches. You’re about to go down, when several of your men volunteer first, claiming that they’d rather you not be placed in potential uncertain danger as your combat skills will be necessary for the final battle to come. You reluctantly agree and allow it. “Ah blind loyalty, such a wonderful thing is it not?” Edolith says. “I could only wish my own men would volunteer their lives so selflessly rather than me having to threaten them. Of course if I didn’t threaten them every now and then, they’d forget their place and try to stab me in the back.” While Edolith’s speech on dark elf culture is fascinating, you are in no mood to hear anymore of her musings, so you descend down the ladder next. As it turns out there wasn’t anything to worry about, your men that have proceeded before you are safely waiting for you at the bottom. They say they haven’t even noticed any traps, though it’s pretty dark down here. You call up and say you want the svelk to start coming down since their own night vision will come in handy. When enough of them have descended down the ladder, you begin to proceed ahead. You travel down a long corridor of dirt with a couple of the dark elves leading the way. You arrive at what is a larger open area with minor lighting and that’s when you hear more shouting followed by higher pitched screams. One of the dark elves yells at everyone to either get out of the way or duck. A bright ball of flame then appears. You just barely manage to scramble out of the mouth of the corridor and into the dirt before the fireball engulfs a good portion of it. Most of the people who were near the front end of it are incinerated instantly while the ones towards the back you can only hope that the blast didn’t travel that far. You and a the few dark elves that got out of the way engage what looks to be an older elf mumbling something in his language. He’s obviously a wizard. The dark elves attempt to take him down with their repeating crossbows, but he has some sort of magic shield up. The dark elves keep firing as he picks them off with well placed lightning bolts, you take cover behind some sort of house structure. You can hear whimpering inside and also hear the rest of your men and dark elves who didn’t get caught in the fire blast rush into the area. “Don’t just stand out in the open catching lightning bolts! Take cover and keep firing!” you hear Edolith shout. You peer out from behind your cover and see your men valiantly attempt to rush the wizard, but only succeeding in dying to his lightning spell which conducts and spreads very well due to their metal armor. The dark elves can’t break through his barrier either, the only option will be to get in close enough to chop his head off or get him to drop his shield, but how to do that without getting fried is another matter. Still hearing the whimpering from inside the house structure, you quickly run inside to investigate. Inside you see a female elf with a younger one cowering in the corner of their home. They say something in their language, which you can only guess is pleas for you not to kill them. You also see a crib with a baby in it and you quickly get a plan. You grab the baby and push aside the mother’s feeble attempts to stop you. Carrying the crying baby under your arm you run out of the house. You see the wizard still blasting bolts at the dark elves and you make a beeline towards him. He notices you and as he begins to cast his spell you throw the baby at him as hard as you can. The shock of having a baby thrown at him catches him severely off guard and he stops casting. He also drops his shield to catch the baby. “FIRE!” you hear Eldolith shout and the dark elves comply. Bolts sinks into the wizard’s head dropping him. Another bolt ceases the baby’s cries. Several more bolts enter your body. You crash to the ground severely wounded. You attempt to crawl away, but you’re coughing up blood and already breathing hard. Edolith runs over to you and kicks the sword out of your hand when you weakly attempt to defend yourself. “Baby throwing…I gotta admit that was a good one. A worthy tactic of even a svelk. It’s almost a shame I had to kill you. You weren’t bad for a monkey, but I got a reputation to maintain among my own men. Just business, nothing personal. Well okay, maybe it is a little personal.” You grab at her leg while she gloats, your grip is strong enough that she has to hack your arm off before she can get her foot away. You lose consciousness just before Edolith announces the gleeful massacre of the remaining elven women and children.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I’ve had to work around those svelk for a while now. If they’re going to help us attack the elves, it might be a good idea for me to go on that one so I can keep an eye on them, captain.” You say. “Yes, you do have a reputation even among those shifty bastards, though they’d never admit it. Okay, sounds good. I shall send another officer to lead the mission against the Wendigo tribe. I may even just go along on that mission.” Captain Krozer replies. “You are captain?” “Yes, I find that I’ve been getting stuck behind the desk too much lately. It’ll be good to be back out in the field. Don’t want to become like one of those fat self-important generals that do nothing except point to maps and make equally fat musings on tactics. A true leader should lead from the front, I’m sure you agree.” “It is preferable yes…but I do understand the need to keep those with keen military minds safe from major war zones. Such people have their place as all do in their service of the Emperor.” “Why lieutenant, are you complimenting me on my intelligence? It’s not like you to flirt.” Captain Krozer asks in a tone slightly friendlier than usual, it catches you a little off guard. “I…no! I mean yes, you are very intelligent, but…” “Relax lieutenant, just having a little fun, didn’t mean to put you on the spot. Anyway, we’ll pick this up later, you better get prepared for your mission, and good luck.” You do exactly that. You know that this is going to be a tedious mission. The elves rarely ever fight in straight up combat. It’s typically a series of ambushes and hit and run tactics with some traps thrown in for good measure. Attempting to locate their hideout is going to be equally as tedious. While the dark elves will certainly be helpful, you wish you had a few battle wizards, but most of those have been assigned either at Fort Defiance or on the frontlines of the Felkan War. The first thing you do is talk with the leader of the dark elven mercenaries about how would be the best way to track down the elves. Eldolith normally is outwardly disdainful of humans, but she manages to just barely contain that distain in your case. She’s typical of her kind, arrogant and acts like she’s doing you a favor just by being in your presence. Reminds you of the days when Mistress trained you. “Ah the Bane of Rask, if it isn’t my favorite mon…human. What do I owe this dubious pleasure?” she asks while polishing one of her leather boots. “We want to find the elven home and destroy them for good.” “Finally ready to destroy those sveld eh? About fucking time. The whole time we’ve been playing around with your semi-evolved barbaric kin, I’ve had a few of my men out scouting this entire forsaken frontier. We got a lead a few months ago and we’re pretty sure it’s good.” “Wait. Hold on. You’ve known where they’ve been hiding and you didn’t report it to us?” “As I recall your superior isn’t paying us for reconnaissance. We’re just here to fight. Besides, it’s still not necessarily a one hundred percent sure thing.” “If you’re so opposed to doing jobs that you aren’t being paid for, why’d you do this secret scouting mission anyway?” “We’re also not just here for YOU, human. We have our own agenda. The only reason why we have not followed up on this lead, is because we’ve been busy helping you monkeys, not to mention we all felt it would also be best if we had more warm bodies to distract our hated kind with. Congratulations.” Eldolith sneers. In typical dark elf fashion she’s attempting to provoke you to get angry for her amusement and to put on a show for her men. Won’t work though. “Wise decision Eldolith. No way you could’ve handled them yourselves.” “We could have, but as I stated we were busy helping YOU.” “If you say so. Anyway I’ll expect to your group to be ready in a couple hours.” You say and leave, but your own dismissive behavior annoys Eldolith so much that she boldly grabs your arm. This is all the excuse you needed. “Don’t you turn your back on…ack!” Eldolith is interrupted when you quickly turn around grab her arm, spin her around and twist it behind her back. You other arm is wrapped tightly around her neck. Her men grab their crossbows and point them at you, but it’s a futile gesture, she’s in front of you, they’d be more likely to hit her than you. “Put your bows down you fools!” she struggles to yell. “I advise you all to heed your leader’s orders. Even if you did manage to kill me, not one of you would make it out of this fort alive. I might remind you that you initiated this by putting your hands on me in the first place, surely I had the right to defend myself correct?” “(Sigh) Yes, it would’ve been foolish to react in any other way I suppose. The mistake was mine. Ugh, I’m going to have the stench of human on me for days. Release me!” No please or begging of course, just more orders. Still, you’ve made your point. You let her go by shoving her down on the floor. As you leave you can hear her verbally abusing her own men. She’s going to have problems maintaining her leadership position now after looking so weak. You’re going to have to be careful as well, lest you “accidentally” get a bolt in the back during the heat of battle, but then again you’re always alert while dark elves are around. Eventually you set off on your mission. For a while it’s a simple uneventful march through ice and snow. Eldolith mentions that the Alabaster Pines are where they think the elves are making their home, but not in the traditional sense. There is evidence that they are actually making their home underground. “Can you believe it? Members of our kind actually living like those disgusting rock eaters? It shames me to even think that these sveld were actually even related to us at one time.” Edolith says. When you reach the Alabaster Pines, you remind your company to keep alert for traps and potential ambushes. You also tell them to keep alert of your so called “allies” as well. It doesn’t take long before you’re attacked. The elves predictably engage in their guerilla tactics. These attacks might’ve taken a greater toll, but with the help of the dark elves, the long range attacks that they favor are less effective. The deeper you go into the forest, the more desperate the attacks become. They begin to attack you directly in hand to hand combat and to the death. They scream curses and obscenities in your language and their own calling you all murderers and evil. The dark elves of course are enjoying all this. You and your company on the other hand aren’t. Not due to any sort of sympathy they are the enemy after all, but this is just another mission to you. Funny that you should have a more “detached” attitude than the mercenaries themselves. Soon you enter a part of the forest where the trees are so tall that they completely block out the sky. There isn’t even that much snow ground. Almost a “warm” feeling encompasses the place. “One of my scouts said they made it this far before and that’s where he found evidence that these sveld had an entrance to an underground lair. Should be near an odd blue rock. Let’s look around.” Edolith says to you. “Where’s that scout of yours, shouldn’t he be able to show us directly?” you ask. “The useless bastard is lying dead with two sveld arrows in him a mile back. Now come on, we’ll be able to find this place better if all us look.” “I’m not sure. Something about this seems too easy. Why don’t you look, and we’ll stay alert to make sure this isn’t an ambush.” “If the sveld were going to ambush us, they would’ve done it by now or haven’t you noticed how desperate their attacks have gotten? They probably already know we’re coming and building up defenses as we speak. The longer we take, the tougher it’s going to be to root them out.” > You stay vigilant This still feels off to you, no your company isn’t going to scatter themselves looking for odd colored rocks, the dark elves first found this place they can do the leg work. Edolith of course is annoyed that you aren’t going to help and for a moment she almost says if you’re not going to participate in the search then they aren’t either. However it’s quite clear her desire to put more of her kin to the sword is a lot stronger than defying you, she throws up her hands, mumbles something about you being scared monkeys and orders all of her men to start searching the area. You tell your own men to set themselves up in a defensive perimeter, so just in case this is still an ambush, you’re at least no going to get caught off guard and have a weak point open. About an hour passes and one of the dark elves finds the rock with a hidden door in the ground nearby. “Well we found it, some of my more enthusiastic men have taken it upon themselves to head down there already. Just as well considering you monkeys can’t see in the dark.” Edolith says to you. You have your own men light up torches and follow the dark elves down the ladder and into the darkness. As it turns out there wasn’t anything to worry about. There was no trap waiting to pick anyone off the ladder, just like there wasn’t any ambush. When you finally get down into the elven hideout, many of the dark elves and some of your own men have already gone on ahead. Edolith has opted to stay near the back, closer to where you are. A few moment after traveling down the dark dirt corridor, you hear a bunch of yelling up front, followed by high pitched squeals further up ahead and then something spoke in the elven that sounds like a command. Then a bright light appears far in front of you. “SHIELDS AND DUCK DOWN!” you yell, realizing this is a fireball. There’s no place to run because you’re stuck in the corridor, you duck down behind the large shields that the men in front have and hope for the best. You feel the heat of the flame that incinerates the unfortunate souls caught in front, and you’re even burned a little, but you were lucky that the blast didn’t extend too far back. Having survived the blast, you and the survivors run over the burned bodies and out of the corridor into the large open dimly lit area beyond as soon as you can before another fireball comes at you. It is then you see an older elf mumbling something in his language. Obviously a wizard of some sort. The dark elves that survived are attempting to shoot bolts at him, but he has a magic shield up. He strikes a couple of them down with well placed lightning bolts. “Don’t just stand out in the open catching lightning bolts! Take cover and keep firing!” you hear Edolith shout. You tell your own men to take cover as well. With all their metal armor they’d end up being mass fried by the lightning. As for you, you find cover behind a house structure where you hear whimpering inside. You peer out from behind your cover and see your men pinned down behind cover, but safe. The dark elves can’t break through his barrier, the only option will be to get in close enough to chop his head off or get him to drop his shield, but how to do that without getting fried is another matter. Still hearing the whimpering from inside the house structure, you quickly run inside to investigate. Inside you see a female elf with a younger one cowering in the corner of their home. They say something in their language, which you can only guess is pleas for you not to kill them. You also see a crib with a baby in it and you quickly get a plan. You grab the baby and push aside the mother’s feeble attempts to stop you. Carrying the crying baby under your arm you run out of the house. You see the wizard still blasting bolts at the dark elves and you make a beeline towards him. He notices you and as he begins to cast his spell you throw the baby at him as hard as you can. The shock of having a baby thrown at him catches him severely off guard and he stops casting. He also drops his shield to catch the baby. “FIRE!” you hear Eldolith shout and the dark elves comply. Bolts sinks into the wizard’s head dropping him. Another bolt ceases the baby’s cries. “WATCH OUT CAPTAIN!” you hear one of your men shout and you instinctively attempt to get back into cover. Several bolts just miss you, but your still catch one to the leg before scrambling behind another rock. The sounds of battle between your men and the dark elves fills your ears as you try to pull the bolt out. You just get the bolt out of your leg, when Edolith attempts to cleave your head in. You roll out of the way and pick up your sword, though you’re having a little trouble standing. “I have to admit, baby throwing was a tactic worthy of a svelk. Too bad I have to kill you, you were okay for a monkey. But I got a reputation to maintain among my men.” “So do I.” you answer and clash weapons with Edolith. She’s quicker and lands a few good hits, but her mistake is getting in close enough for you to grab her long flowing hair. She attempts to pull free, but you yank hard and grab her wrist. You then break it causing her to drop her weapon. She holds back yelling out in pain and knees you as hard as she can in the groin and jamming her sharp fingernails straight into your eye. This doesn’t cause you to release your grip. With the pain slowly creeping up from your nuts and into your stomach and bloody ocular jelly leaking out your socket you take both of your arms and wrap them around Edolith’s waist and squeeze tightly in an attempt to break her back. You then smash her in the face several times with your head, breaking her nose completely and even knocking out a few teeth. The pair of you crash to the ground and you finish her off by viciously biting out her throat. The copper taste of her blood fills the taste buds of your tongue and you spit a thick glob of it on her face as she gurgles and dies. After it’s all said and done, you stagger to your feet victorious over your opponent. One of your men comes up to you. “Sir! Are you alright?” “No. But I’ll heal.” “Okay…well all the treacherous dark elves are dead and it looks like all the regular elves are too. There are only women and children left hiding in their homes and none of them are fighters.” “Are they still elves?” you ask. “Well yes.” “Then kill ‘em all. I’m sick of the whole fucking race at this point.” You say and stagger off. After the grim business of extermination the elves, you and the remainder of your company set off back to Fort Destiny. A day later when you finally arrive at the fort you notice it’s a lot more empty from when you left it. In fact Captain Krozer isn’t even here. Lieutenant Verant seems to be in charge though he’s almost subservient when you address him. “By the Emperor! Lieutenant I think you need to see a medic, you’ve got a limp, your skin is burned and cut up and your eye is missing!” he says when seeing your wounds. “Where’s Captain Krozer? I wish to report our total victory on the elves as well as the treachery of the dark ones that we’ll no longer have to pay.” “Captain Krozer? She went with most of the men to do battle with the wendigo tribe. Their territory is quite a ways, but I imagine she’ll be back soon. Congratulations on your victory, but go see the medic right away!” You nod and allow yourself to finally relax at the medic’s office. You’ve been running on adrenaline for quite some time and now that your safe, you at last feel like you can rest a little. Most of your wounds aren’t particularly bad, except for the eye, which can’t be repaired. The medic just does his best to remove the permanently damaged orb, clean the socket and give you a patch. “You’ll be able to fight good enough with one eye. You just have to move your head a lot more.” He says. You rest for a couple days, which are still pretty quiet around the fort. You and everyone else are expecting Captain Krozer to show up, but the worst is starting to creep into everyone’s mind. “We need to send a search team.” You say. “We can’t afford to! Between the men you lost fighting the elves, and the entire missing company that Krozer lead, we need all of them here in the area!” Verant says. “Oh come on Verant! We can’t spare at least ten? I’ll lead the search!” “(Sigh) Look I didn’t really want this responsibility. I figured she’d come back and I could go back to filing out reports!” “Well if we don’t find her or if she’s dead, then you’re going to be in this job a lot longer than you thought.” “I know…I know…hey why don’t you take over?” “What?” “Sure! You’re a leader of men and a big tough Eternal! You’d do a better job than me.” “Well of course I would, but doesn’t this have to be official, like assigned from a higher commanding officer?” “You said it yourself, Krozer may already be dead, if that’s the case then who’s really going to know? Besides I’m in charge I can hand over the reigns of power if I feel I am no longer fit to command.” “Okay, but what if she’s not dead? When she comes walking in, she’s going to wonder what the hell’s going on, and both of us are going to get in trouble and I am not getting in trouble over nonsense.” “I shouldn’t think we’d get in that much trouble. I mean you know Captain Krozer, she’s fairly easy going as far as commanding officers go. She’s probably yell at me more than anything, but not likely to put us on report or anything serious.” > You take command Verant is right about one thing, you’ll probably get more accomplish if you’re in charge. You agree and take command, of course your first order of business is to have Verant catch you up on what exactly has been going. He explains that in addition to Captain Krozer’s disappearance, there have been a few patrols not reporting in either, when you ask what has he done about this, he says nothing, in fact that’s why he didn’t want to send you out for fear of losing you too. “So your approach to everything has been to just adopt a siege mentality and not let any of the soldiers out while someone is obviously picking us off? By the Emperor I should have you killed right now for extreme incompetence, but quite frankly I’m going to need you for all the bureaucratic stuff that I’m not exactly familiar with.” You breathe deeply to contain some of the anger you’re feeling with Verant’s cowardice before continuing. “Okay I want double men on all the patrols, I want them to question every townsperson within the area about what they might know. I also want you to send word to the generals back home about the situation, maybe we can get some reinforcements up here. In fact send a well armed group up to Fort Defiance too, maybe they can spare some help too.” “Very well sir, and Captain Krozer?” Verant asks. “Well with this new information that you gave me with missing patrols, we probably should hold off on the search. If anything she’s probably dead and the wendigos are most likely behind the missing patrols too. This seems a little sneaky for them though, who knows maybe we’ve got another threat that we don’t know about.” Your first orders as head of Fort Destiny are carried out. It takes days of waiting, but eventually you get some results, though not all good. Your patrols aren’t attacked, but the townsfolk are very upset with how things have been going for them. They’ve been victims of kidnappings as well as the occasional outright murder. The main problem is nobody has been caught doing any of it. People are either just turning up missing, or pieces of their bodies are being found have eaten and mauled. Again, this part points to the wendigos, but this is still very odd behavior for them if it is them. They have never been known for their stealth tactics, and have always been the most outright brutal of all the barbarian tribes. You can only wonder if its due to them being the “last” major ones in the area that they’ve changed. Regardless, you don’t really have enough troops to go marching into wendigo territory now. Which bring you to your second problem. Word from headquarter approves of you taking command and even officially promotes you to captain. Another letter from Mr. Mol even states that he’s impressed with your progress and says you no longer need any sort of supervision. Unfortunately that’s all the help you get. The top brass claims that they can’t afford to send you anyone as most are needed on the Felkan border. As for the team you sent to Fort Defiance, it disappeared. You can only assume they were killed, this also makes you wonder if Fort Defiance is alright. You can’t think of a time any communication has really gone on between the two forts since you’ve been here. In any event you’ve got your own concerns for now and you’re going to have to figure out what to do with your limited resources… Year 23 “Get the bastards on the north side! They’re climbing up the fucking walls!” you shout. Boiling oil is thrown over the side of the wall, scalding the wendigos as they fall to the ground several feet below. You look around and see a nearby soldier laughing uncontrollably. “Its heh heh heh heh heh all so clear! We should stop fighting. We need to EMBRACE THE BEAST!” he snarls and runs at you. You decapitate him and throw his body over the battlements below. “Why do you resist us Eternal? Your skills would be most welcome to our…” “SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” you shout at the disembodied voice. The years of battling the wendigos has all lead up to this. Surrounded by an army of them. You did your best to try to curb their growth, but ultimately they replenished their numbers with greater ease than you did. Even when you did manage to get reinforcements it still was never enough. The wendigos as you would come to learn aren’t truly flesh and blood creatures. They are spirits that possess the minds of others. You demanded battle wizards, but none were sent. You demanded golems, but none were sent. You did get a company of orcs, but this was more of a detriment as their minds were even more susceptible to wendigo influence. You chop off the hand of another wendigo that attempts to make it over the wall. You look around and see that they’ve already broken through the front door. How the wendigos suddenly became so sneaky is still somewhat of a mystery and it hardly matters at this point, but if you had to guess; When captain Krozer attacked them all those years ago, they must’ve possessed her, learned from her and adapted her tactics. They realized that if they did not they would’ve been destroyed without any more hosts. So they watched, they waited; they picked off victims and possessed converts one by one. And even with you opposing them at every turn town after town fell. Those peasants that weren’t killed or turned, fled to the southern parts of the Empire. Even some of your soldiers deserted. The wendigos deprived themselves of food for far too long though and over the past few months it has finally unleashed itself into this orgy of violence. An all out attack on the fort, which really is the only bastion of civilization left in the Rask frontier. You see what few men you have left get slaughtered below before struggling against two more wendigos of your own. You shove your sword through a wendigo’s heart while trying to ignore the pain of it sinking its teeth into your flesh. Despite swiveling your head around as much as you can to see all your opponents, you feel a heavy blow to your back and claws ripping through your armor. You’re then thrown from the walkway and to the ground. You try to get back up as quick as you can and then foot to the face prevents you from doing so. Your weapon is ripped from your hand and another foot comes down on top of your head cracking your skull. The internal bleeding in your brain causes a delirious effect for one moment and then you pass out forever before the wendigos feat upon your body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This still feels off to you, no your company isn’t going to scatter themselves looking for odd colored rocks, the dark elves first found this place they can do the leg work. Edolith of course is annoyed that you aren’t going to help and for a moment she almost says if you’re not going to participate in the search then they aren’t either. However it’s quite clear her desire to put more of her kin to the sword is a lot stronger than defying you, she throws up her hands, mumbles something about you being scared monkeys and orders all of her men to start searching the area. You tell your own men to set themselves up in a defensive perimeter, so just in case this is still an ambush, you’re at least no going to get caught off guard and have a weak point open. About an hour passes and one of the dark elves finds the rock with a hidden door in the ground nearby. “Well we found it, some of my more enthusiastic men have taken it upon themselves to head down there already. Just as well considering you monkeys can’t see in the dark.” Edolith says to you. You have your own men light up torches and follow the dark elves down the ladder and into the darkness. As it turns out there wasn’t anything to worry about. There was no trap waiting to pick anyone off the ladder, just like there wasn’t any ambush. When you finally get down into the elven hideout, many of the dark elves and some of your own men have already gone on ahead. Edolith has opted to stay near the back, closer to where you are. A few moment after traveling down the dark dirt corridor, you hear a bunch of yelling up front, followed by high pitched squeals further up ahead and then something spoke in the elven that sounds like a command. Then a bright light appears far in front of you. “SHIELDS AND DUCK DOWN!” you yell, realizing this is a fireball. There’s no place to run because you’re stuck in the corridor, you duck down behind the large shields that the men in front have and hope for the best. You feel the heat of the flame that incinerates the unfortunate souls caught in front, and you’re even burned a little, but you were lucky that the blast didn’t extend too far back. Having survived the blast, you and the survivors run over the burned bodies and out of the corridor into the large open dimly lit area beyond as soon as you can before another fireball comes at you. It is then you see an older elf mumbling something in his language. Obviously a wizard of some sort. The dark elves that survived are attempting to shoot bolts at him, but he has a magic shield up. He strikes a couple of them down with well placed lightning bolts. “Don’t just stand out in the open catching lightning bolts! Take cover and keep firing!” you hear Edolith shout. You tell your own men to take cover as well. With all their metal armor they’d end up being mass fried by the lightning. As for you, you find cover behind a house structure where you hear whimpering inside. You peer out from behind your cover and see your men pinned down behind cover, but safe. The dark elves can’t break through his barrier, the only option will be to get in close enough to chop his head off or get him to drop his shield, but how to do that without getting fried is another matter. Still hearing the whimpering from inside the house structure, you quickly run inside to investigate. Inside you see a female elf with a younger one cowering in the corner of their home. They say something in their language, which you can only guess is pleas for you not to kill them. You also see a crib with a baby in it and you quickly get a plan. You grab the baby and push aside the mother’s feeble attempts to stop you. Carrying the crying baby under your arm you run out of the house. You see the wizard still blasting bolts at the dark elves and you make a beeline towards him. He notices you and as he begins to cast his spell you throw the baby at him as hard as you can. The shock of having a baby thrown at him catches him severely off guard and he stops casting. He also drops his shield to catch the baby. “FIRE!” you hear Eldolith shout and the dark elves comply. Bolts sinks into the wizard’s head dropping him. Another bolt ceases the baby’s cries. “WATCH OUT CAPTAIN!” you hear one of your men shout and you instinctively attempt to get back into cover. Several bolts just miss you, but your still catch one to the leg before scrambling behind another rock. The sounds of battle between your men and the dark elves fills your ears as you try to pull the bolt out. You just get the bolt out of your leg, when Edolith attempts to cleave your head in. You roll out of the way and pick up your sword, though you’re having a little trouble standing. “I have to admit, baby throwing was a tactic worthy of a svelk. Too bad I have to kill you, you were okay for a monkey. But I got a reputation to maintain among my men.” “So do I.” you answer and clash weapons with Edolith. She’s quicker and lands a few good hits, but her mistake is getting in close enough for you to grab her long flowing hair. She attempts to pull free, but you yank hard and grab her wrist. You then break it causing her to drop her weapon. She holds back yelling out in pain and knees you as hard as she can in the groin and jamming her sharp fingernails straight into your eye. This doesn’t cause you to release your grip. With the pain slowly creeping up from your nuts and into your stomach and bloody ocular jelly leaking out your socket you take both of your arms and wrap them around Edolith’s waist and squeeze tightly in an attempt to break her back. You then smash her in the face several times with your head, breaking her nose completely and even knocking out a few teeth. The pair of you crash to the ground and you finish her off by viciously biting out her throat. The copper taste of her blood fills the taste buds of your tongue and you spit a thick glob of it on her face as she gurgles and dies. After it’s all said and done, you stagger to your feet victorious over your opponent. One of your men comes up to you. “Sir! Are you alright?” “No. But I’ll heal.” “Okay…well all the treacherous dark elves are dead and it looks like all the regular elves are too. There are only women and children left hiding in their homes and none of them are fighters.” “Are they still elves?” you ask. “Well yes.” “Then kill ‘em all. I’m sick of the whole fucking race at this point.” You say and stagger off. After the grim business of extermination the elves, you and the remainder of your company set off back to Fort Destiny. A day later when you finally arrive at the fort you notice it’s a lot more empty from when you left it. In fact Captain Krozer isn’t even here. Lieutenant Verant seems to be in charge though he’s almost subservient when you address him. “By the Emperor! Lieutenant I think you need to see a medic, you’ve got a limp, your skin is burned and cut up and your eye is missing!” he says when seeing your wounds. “Where’s Captain Krozer? I wish to report our total victory on the elves as well as the treachery of the dark ones that we’ll no longer have to pay.” “Captain Krozer? She went with most of the men to do battle with the wendigo tribe. Their territory is quite a ways, but I imagine she’ll be back soon. Congratulations on your victory, but go see the medic right away!” You nod and allow yourself to finally relax at the medic’s office. You’ve been running on adrenaline for quite some time and now that your safe, you at last feel like you can rest a little. Most of your wounds aren’t particularly bad, except for the eye, which can’t be repaired. The medic just does his best to remove the permanently damaged orb, clean the socket and give you a patch. “You’ll be able to fight good enough with one eye. You just have to move your head a lot more.” He says. You rest for a couple days, which are still pretty quiet around the fort. You and everyone else are expecting Captain Krozer to show up, but the worst is starting to creep into everyone’s mind. “We need to send a search team.” You say. “We can’t afford to! Between the men you lost fighting the elves, and the entire missing company that Krozer lead, we need all of them here in the area!” Verant says. “Oh come on Verant! We can’t spare at least ten? I’ll lead the search!” “(Sigh) Look I didn’t really want this responsibility. I figured she’d come back and I could go back to filing out reports!” “Well if we don’t find her or if she’s dead, then you’re going to be in this job a lot longer than you thought.” “I know…I know…hey why don’t you take over?” “What?” “Sure! You’re a leader of men and a big tough Eternal! You’d do a better job than me.” “Well of course I would, but doesn’t this have to be official, like assigned from a higher commanding officer?” “You said it yourself, Krozer may already be dead, if that’s the case then who’s really going to know? Besides I’m in charge I can hand over the reigns of power if I feel I am no longer fit to command.” “Okay, but what if she’s not dead? When she comes walking in, she’s going to wonder what the hell’s going on, and both of us are going to get in trouble and I am not getting in trouble over nonsense.” “I shouldn’t think we’d get in that much trouble. I mean you know Captain Krozer, she’s fairly easy going as far as commanding officers go. She’s probably yell at me more than anything, but not likely to put us on report or anything serious.” > You seek out Captain Krozer first “I would still like to seek out the captain first. If I can’t find her after my search, then I will take command.” “But, what if YOU go missing then?” “Well I guess you’ll still be in power then won’t you? But you feel it would improve my chances of coming back then perhaps you better authorize some soldiers to come with me.” “Oh very well! But be careful!” You shake your head at Verant’s meek style of leadership and gather your men for a search mission. You have no idea why such a man would go into the military if he didn’t want the authority over others, let alone how he got as high as he did in the first place. When you gather your men, you set off on your journey to find out if Captain Krozer is dead or alive. As you make your way to Wendigo territory, you travel through a few towns you get a lot of pleas and complaints from the peasants. Apparently they’ve been suffering from attacks, but not in the traditional raiding sense. People have been going missing, or sometimes there have been pieces of bodies found, but no outright raids. You of course ask where are all the normal patrols that guard the area and the peasants either tell you that they’ve all disappeared or they stopped showing up days ago. More of Verant’s lack attention. The fool should’ve been investigating these incidents a long time ago, as soon as soldiers stopped reporting in. After this is over with, and assuming Captain Krozer is indeed dead, you definitely will be taking command and most likely have Verant executed for extreme incompetence. It’s obvious the Wendigo tribe must have something to do with this, but this doesn’t really seem like their style based on their reputation and your own brief combat with them in the past. They are the most brutal and vicious of the barbarian tribes, they out of any of them wouldn’t rely on covert tactics like this, something must’ve have severely changed. You continue your journey and just before you get to the territory of the Wendigos you pass through another town. This one looks like it was a fairly new one made up of some determined settlers. It also looks like it was attack recently which is amazing since there are actually survivors. Some of the townsfolk fixing a building see you, wave you over and you approach them “Citizens, why have you built a town here? Nevermind the fact that the Empire has not authorized such a settlement, but this is dangerously close to Wendigo territory. It would be for your own safety to leave this place.” You say. “Oh yes, we know, we suffered an attack by them about a week ago, but we won’t be scared off! Really they aren’t nearly as bad as their reputation claims.” The carpenter says while looking around at his fellows as they nod. Something is very strange about all this. The peasants all have a peculiar smirk like they’re hiding something. “Hey, wait aren’t you Roger from Keplavisk? Your wife mentioned her husband going missing and you match his description.” One of your men suddenly pipes up. “Huh, uh no. My name isn’t Roger and I’ve never been there. Never married either. You must have me mixed up with him. I just got one of those faces y’know. Hey why don’t you guys rest at our inn? I mean you probably will want to, before you fight the big bad Wendigos in their home territory and all.” The carpenter “Who said that’s what we were going to do?” you ask. “Well I assumed you were…if you aren’t well I suppose that’s fine too! But you’ll probably still want to rest in our inn.” “You’re acting very strange citizen…” It’s at this point you draw your weapon, the rest of your men do likewise. The townsfolk don’t look too bothered, but they do back up smiling the whole time which reveals that their teeth are decidedly less human looking. “Good, prefer it this way anyway. Fuck all this sneaking around!” one of them remarks and in complete unison they howl an unpleasant noise and begin to transform. You manage to chop down a few of them before they complete their change, it doesn’t make things any easier though. Despite their great strength, you and your men are winning the skirmish and that’s when more of that awful howling penetrates your ears. Many more Wendigos come running into the town, completely cutting you off from any sort of retreat. You continue to fight as your own men begin to fall under the onslaught of the Wendigos eventually you are the last one left and severely outnumbered. You attempt to ignore the pain of their claws digging into your flesh and their powerful blows knocking you around like a ragdoll, you do your best, but your weapons is ripped from you along with your hand that was welding it. Desperate, you bite the current Wendigo, holding you in his grip, though you find that his bite is much more damaging than your own when part of your shoulder is chewed off. You feel a snap and the bone in your other arm is broken through the skin. The wendigo throws you up against the wall of one of the damaged houses and you fall to the snow bleeding profusely from several wounds. You struggle to stand, but you just don’t have the strength left. You expect the killing blow to come soon, but you hear one more of those awful howls before it’s over. Captain Krozer stands over you, though you know it can’t be her. “Y..you are not th…the captain…” you say. “You would be correct Eternal, however she did mention before her mind was absorbed that you would stop us. Good thing her mind was so full of strategies and tactics for me to impliment. I think it really was time for us to update our way of life anyway. Can’t stagnate and remain in barbaric bodies forever. I would have you just us…but in your current state, well I just don’t think you would be as effective anymore. A shame, your body would’ve provided as an excellent host. Oh well I still should be able to enjoy the succulent life blood from your heart.” The last thing you see is the inhuman face of whatever it is inhabiting Krozer’s body as it reaches into your chest to pull out your still beating heart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Marching into the desert without a grand plan other than simple slaughter isn’t much of a plan. The usksha are nomads anyway, you’d never be able to catch all of them in their home turf. “No, I believe we’ve taken care of the major problem, but I think you should stay here and oversee the safety of this town now. We’ll head back to Fort Glory and report the situation.” You tell Delan. As you pack up and start to leave, Edgar begins to complain. “What are we doing? We should be trying to hunt down the rest of the usksha!” “Our mission here is done, the usksha have been defeated. If we get ordered to mount an expedition into the desert then we shall do so.” “Bah! Anu is probably going to assign us to fight kobolds again! We should be taking the initiative!” “It seems every time you take the initiative, I end up having to help you in some way. I’d recommend that you worry less about fighting and more about your combat techniques.” At this point Edgar gets noticeably mad, but says nothing and walks off. You’re starting to get slightly concerned about him. You’d rather not have to teach him a lesson like you did when you were still training under Mistress. When you arrive at Fort Glory and report to Captain Anu he’s pleased with what you’ve accomplished and is impressed. He says he’d like to keep you here to finish up wiping out the kobold infestation, but he’s received word from the top that your team is to be transferred elsewhere. “Where are we going sir?” “The Rask frontier and I don’t mind saying I don’t envy you.” “I’ve heard of the place before. What is the situation there?” “Bad, worse and downright horrible. As far as I know the Empire has been trying to establish order there for decades and not making any progress.” “Captain, I certainly hope you don’t make it a habit of saying disparaging things about the Empire.” A man says walking into the room. It’s Mr. Mol. “Uh no sir. Sorry sir.” Captain Anu says sheepishly. Mr. Mol overlooks his comments and speaks to you directly. “Ignore the captain’s words, everyone exaggerates the situation at the Rask frontier. While the area is having some problems, the fact remains if it really was so bad there, we would’ve pulled out a long time ago. Anyway, congratulations on your latest mission. Couldn’t help overhearing your report in the next room, quite impressive. Which makes me believe it was a good idea to transfer you now.” “The Eternals are ready to serve the Emperor wherever he may need us sir.” You say. “And the Emperor will always appreciate your service. He has been watching you, you know. He always is. That is why he believes you would be most effective apart from each other.” “Sir?” “You are Eternals, m’boy. You were bred to lead as well as fight. You’ve already proven yourself to be able to do both, but your fellow Eternals will never reach their fullest potential if they live under your shadow. All of you will be separated and given your own commands in territories the Emperor needs you the most. I have no doubt you all will be successful and honor the Emperor with your future victories.” “W..we will sir, but you said territories. Are we not all being sent to the Rask frontier?” “Oh I think the captain misunderstood. A few of you are being sent there, but some of you are staying here, and others are yet being sent elsewhere. Here, here’s your orders, you can inform the rest of your team, I’m sure they’ll be excited to hear this news too, oh and consider yourself promoted to lieutenant. The rest of your team members will probably be promoted to sergeant rank when they officially get their assignments. I think that’s about it. A caravan will be here to transfer some of you to your new assignments in a few days. Good day.” As Mr. Mol goes walking out the office, you feel a little strange. Your team has been together so long, it feels weird to know that you’re going to be split apart. “Sorry for the wrong information, I thought all of you would be sent to the Rask frontier. Well I guess I’m glad to know some of your are staying, heh…are you okay?” Captain Anu asks. “Huh? Oh yes. I’m okay captain. If you’ll excuse me I have to inform my team of their new assignments.” “Certainly. Dismissed.” You inform your team of the news and there is a mixture of feelings. There is some excitement of gaining their own commands, but are still a little apprehensive about splitting up. Well all of them except Edgar who seems to be solely overjoyed that he’s getting his own command. “Okay, Roldan and Brenda, you’re staying here.” “Damn, I was hoping I’d at least get to go some place different.” Brenda says. “Make no mistake, this area still needs order established. I believe you and Roldan will do a fine job in continuing the reputation of excellence that we have built here.” You continue with the list. “Gerald and Warrick, you’re being assigned along the Felkan border. Apparently the non-aggression treaty the Empire had with the Felkan Kingdom has expired and tensions have been high. War with them may even break out.” “Interesting. Well if war does break out, we’ll be the first one to show the Felkans the error of defying the Emperor’s mercy.” Warrick says. “Yeah, yeah! Let’s get on with it, where am I going?” Edgar interrupts. You glare at Edgar and then continue. “You, Kane and I are all being sent to the Rask frontier.” “As it should be. My skills were going to waste here.” “Edgar, I’m going to say this while I’m still your superior. I certainly hope you realize that this isn’t a game and you’ll prove yourself to be a competent leader.” “Hey, I’m just as much of a leader as you are! The difference is I take risks and that will be a trait that will necessary in a place like the Rask frontier! I will rise up in the ranks and bring honor to the name Eternal and glory to the Emperor!” “You mean glory to yourself because you feel like you have something to prove.” You say. “And you don’t? You’re a hypocrite anyway! Always were ever since we trained under Mistress! I still recall you begging for your life to her as she crushed you under her boot. From that day on you were always trying to prove yourself and beating the bloody pulp out everyone.” “And as I recall you were on that end several times Edgar. Is that why you’re still trying to prove yourself?” “You wanna try that now?” Edgar says getting in your face and at this point all of your fellow Eternals intervene to break up a potential fight. “Hey come on you guys! We can’t be seen fighting each other like this! We’re Eternals, we put all that stuff behind us back in training. We’re professionals and supposed to be setting the example for the Empire!” Roldan says. Edgar brushes himself and backs off. “Tell you what Roldan. You set the example for the Empire. All of you set the example. In the meantime, I’ll be scoring victories and actually serving the Emperor by conquering land in his name.” And with these last words, he takes his leave all of you. The last few days together are a little awkward with what transpired between you and Edgar. Still you say your goodbyes to Roldan and Brenda when the caravan comes. A few days after that, you then say your goodbyes to Warrick and Gerald. You, Edgar and Kane sit in silence for the remainder of the trip. Eventually you arrive at the Rask frontier and make your stop at Fort Destiny. You haven’t gotten off the caravan five minutes when a woman wearing battle armor approaches you. “Hey are you the Eternals?” “Yes we are.” “I’m Captain Krozer, I’ve heard a lot about you and wanted to meet you personally. Welcome to hell.” Captain Krozer begins to give you a run down on the entire area. She mentions that the mortality rate here is high so morale isn’t the best, but she hopes that you and the other Eternals assigned here can rally some sort hope here again. Captain Krozer also goes on to tell you that there’s been a slight change of plans in your assignments. She says that you’re still staying here, but that Kane and Edgar are going to Fort Defiance, which is further north. Probably for the best considering what transpired between you and Edgar. Kane nods a dignified goodbye to you, and gets back on the caravan; Edgar of course isn’t as pleasant and gives you a hostile glare before leaving. With the caravan leaving, you head to your new unit. When you see them, quite a few of them are predictably much older than you, but surprisingly you see that half of them are around your age. “So, you’re one those Eternals huh?” one the older soldiers says almost dismissively. You’re in no mood to warn anyone this time, so you go straight to the point and throw him to the floor with his arm painfully twisted behind his back. “Correct, and you’ll address me as sir or lieutenant if you want to keep this arm, because it’ll be very hard to continue doing your duty for the Emperor with just a stump. Understand?” “Argh. Y..yes sir!” And so begins your assignment in the Rask frontier. > You rask Frontier (History Lesson) Much like the Nalin province, Rask is on the outskirts of the Empire, except to the north rather than the south. It’s a cold, snowy land made up of a lot of mountain ranges and long stretches of forests. It’s also rich with resources and the Empire has made great strides in building mines and lumber mills here. The Empire’s been attempting to tame this area for decades, but its history here hasn’t been the best, as it almost seems that it is fighting the very natural order of things here. The environment is harsh all by itself, but when you add in the various denizens that live there, it makes things even more difficult. Several vicious barbarian tribes live here some of which carry various “conditions” that allow them to turn into beasts such as wolves or bears. Elves who have managed to escape the shadow of the Empire have made their homes here as well. The worst of the lot are the numerous ogre tribes and giants that live here, fortunately they stick further north, but every once in awhile they wander further south and cause trouble. The military presence is strong here, but isn’t as well supported like it should be and as a result it can only do so much. Svelk mercs are usually used to bolster the ranks a bit, but they’re not something the various fort commanders like to use. There are even a few battle mages, elite orc troops and Shadow Guard stationed here, though they are mostly further north where the ogres and giants are the problem. Another problem is the citizens themselves, for whatever reason the citizens in Rask tend to have a more independent mindset. Many that live here see themselves as pioneers taming the land despite the fact that if it wasn’t for the Empire, most of them would’ve been massacred, raped, or eaten by now. In any event, they’re more likely to openly criticize the government and its gotten to the point where most of the military barely bothers to do anything about it. They’ve got so many other concerns that unless the plebes are openly rioting, a few mouthy peasants don’t even rank on the countless list of dangers in Rask.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 16 You are called into Captain Gruz’s office, when you arrive you see the well dress man that you saw four years ago standing with him… and debating with him again. “I’m telling you Mr. Mol, I think they should work in the same unit. They’ve trained together and they’ve worked together so well at this point that splitting them up would be folly. Hell, these people have known each other since birth! You know that better than anyone!” Gruz says. “Yes, captain I’m well aware of the situation, and normally I might agree if their were more of them, but I think their expertise would better serve if we deployed them separately in problem areas of the Empire.” Mr. Mol replies. “You don’t break up a well oiled machine! I guarantee having them all in the same unit will be a better idea. I mean we still haven’t sent them into a real battle yet! Wouldn’t it be better to see if they can get the job done first before placing them in charge of others?” “And what a perfect opportunity to lose them all, if something unexpected should happen.” “Oh for…look that could’ve happened here! And if you’re so worried about them all getting killed in battle then what was the fucking point then? Besides, if they do prove to be useless in battle, better we find that out sooner rather than later when they’re in charge of others and getting them killed as well!” Mr. Mol thinks for a moment and then replies. “Hmmm, very well you do have a point captain. We’ll try it your way at first and go from there. Have them deployed in the Nalin province. Your services here have been useful as ever. Good day.” Mr. Mol, steps out and commander Gruz addresses you. “Well you heard all that, you and your fellow Eternal babies are being sent to the Nalin province. It’s not the Rask Frontier, but it’s a suitable first challenge for you guys. We’ve been trying to settle the conquest of that place for a few years now, and technically it is part of the Empire, but we’re still having problems with the Kobold population there. Little bastards are determined to resist and have been conducting a fairly effective guerilla war since we arrived. Though I blame that more on the incompetence of the commander in that region. If I was stationed there, this shit would’ve been taken care of a long time ago…but I’m not, so unfortunately you will have to report to Captain Pollo.” Captain Gruz approaches you closer before continuing. “Now I’m putting you in charge of your unit for reasons I’m sure you’re aware of. While I’m confident I’ve made the right choice, the burden will ultimately be on you to prove to be an effective leader. Remember, you’re not just a normal soldier, you’re supposed to be an Eternal. An instrument of destruction ordered by the Emperor himself. Failure is never an option for you. Even now there are rumors about your kind, and when you finally show yourselves you will be met by fear, awe, hatred and even distain. Prove yourselves and you will live up to the name that your were given. Anyway, the caravan picking you up will arrive tomorrow. Good luck and dismissed.” With this you leave and tell the rest of your people about where you’re going and the general nature of what to expect. They all seem pretty excited to prove themselves, and to be honest so are you. At last you will get the chance to prove yourself and can only imagine that the Emperor will be pleased by what he will see. The next day, you and your unit are picked up and the ride there is uneventful, but your unit spends a little time talking about things they see on the way. This is the first time all of you have probably been away from the training center you’ve spent all your lives in. Curiosity about some of the surroundings is natural, but it isn’t just the casual talk that’s different. Your comrades are different. They are less reserved than they once were. Captain Gruz might’ve been a strict instructor, but in addition to encouraging teamwork he was also prone to encourage you guys to have a few hours of free time. This loosening of the reigns a bit, allowed a certain amount of familiarity with each other that wasn’t just on a professional level anymore. Even you have felt yourself changing personality wise. Still you are all Eternals, and you are loyal to the Emperor. You will never forget that your duty comes first. Eventually you all arrive at Fort Glory in the Nalin province where you are stared at by several soldiers who whisper among themselves. None of you pay it any mind though, you simply report to Captain Pollo. He doesn’t look anything like Captain Gruz. He’s human for one thing and wears lighter armor which is impeccably clean. When he sees you, he almost looks bored, like you were interrupting him, but you when you came in he was reclined in his chair and not doing anything of importance. “So…you are the Eternals I’ve heard so much about. Humph. I don’t see anything special except that pretty one over there. Oh no, not you dear. That blonde muscular one in the back. Yes, delicious.” Captain Pollo says pointing to one of your men and not even getting out of his chair. “Captain Pollo, we are here for our assignments so that we may serve the Emperor.” You say. “(Sigh) I suppose you are this unit’s leader?” “ Yes, captain. I am currently their leader and holding the rank of sergeant due to my excellence in my training exercises.” “Sergeant? YOU? Why you’re a mere boy! All of you are just children! I ask them for more men and they send me children! The only thing you all would be good for is cleaning the fort! In fact that’s what you can go do right now, starting with the toilets!” This is exactly what Captain Gruz said would happen. This is your first test. “Captain, we have been trained in several forms of combat and fully ready to fight. Send us into battle and we will prove ourselves. We are here to perform our duty for the Emperor and all that entails.” “All that entails eh? Okay, you want a fight? A few miles east of here, you’ll find a town called Dalt. Its filled with ignorant peasants that constantly whine to us that there are a nest of kobolds lurking in the hills near them. We’re stretched out as it is and can’t spare anymore troops to waste on towns that are of no military importance in the grand scheme of things. Go there and take care of their problem, then maybe we’ll have more to talk about.” You nod and all of you leave, but before you are able to Pollo calls you back. “Oh one more thing sergeant. Order one of your men to stay here with me. I think you know by now which one I mean.” At this point you’re in genuine shock. You may be young, and even a little detached from normal ‘society” but you know exactly what Captain Pollo is implying. You can honestly feel more than surprised by this though. “Captain, I will need all of my team to have the best chance to succeed in this mission.” You say. “Oh? Well sorry, but you’ll have to make do like everyone else here does. Or you could clean the fort like I first ordered you to do, which you chose to ignore.” It’s a no win situation, though you try to figure out a loophole that takes the responsibility off of you. “Captain, you are of a higher rank than me, surely you could just order him yourself.” “Ha ha, nice try. No. You want to be a leader of men? You need to make this decision yourself. Tis quite easy I would think. Sacrifice one for the good of the rest. If anything I’d say he’s the lucky one. He gets to stay here enjoying the pleasures of the flesh, and won’t have to be mucking about with kobolds and dealing with idiotic peasants.” > You refuse to leave him behind Despite your desire to go on an official mission, you feel that it would be worse to leave one of your team members behind, especially what would lie in store for him. “I will not leave a member of my team behind. We need to be together to produce the best results, captain.” “I see. Well, we’ll see how true that is when you’re all cleaning out the toilets. You’re on clean up detail until further notice. That will be all.” Pollo says in a perturbed tone. You leave Captain Pollo’s office with the bad news to your team. “WHAT?! I was ready for a fight!” Edgar yells. “What happened in there?” Roldan asks. “Yeah, we were going on a proper mission and not we aren’t!” Gerald adds completely oblivious that he wasn’t going anywhere to begin with. “Look, there will be other times, let’s not dwell on it, we’ve got toilets to clean…” The rest of your team follows your lead and grumble a bit, but Edgar is doing the most of it. By the end of the day you’ve cleaned up a lot of the fort, but really, this isn’t what you want to be doing. The next day, Captain Pollo feels that you’ve done such a good job that he says that your talents would be wasted in battle. He feels that other more experienced soldiers can now be freed up from such trivial duties that your team is performing. You’re kept at the fort doing all sorts of menial labor. Day pass into months and the mocking never stops from the other soldiers in the fort who call you the “mop kids”. This angers all of you, but of course once again Edgar is the one that nearly comes to blows with other soldiers. You have to stop him several times. Eventually his anger is directed towards you. “Fuck! This shit is all your fault anyway! What the hell did you do to piss off Captain Pollo all those months ago?” “Nevermind Edgar! And you’re out of line, I am your leader!” “Hah! Some great job you got us fearless leader! We’re making the Empire safe from filthy shitholes and dirty floors!” Edgar says getting in your face. Before the others can break it up, you grab Edgar and slam him up against the wall. “You wanna know what I did? I refused to leave Gerald behind to get fucked by that sick dipshit captain!” you shout in his face. “What?” Edgar says. “He…he wanted to fuck me?!” Gerald says in disbelief “Well it was pretty obvious when we first met him, Gerald.” Brenda remarks. “Surprised he didn’t just order you to leave him, or more logically order Gerald himself.” Roldan adds. You let go of Edgar. “I dunno, I think he’s playing some sort of game. Maybe it’s a test even. Like if I’m willing to leave a man behind or not.” You answer. “Well I sure wish you had sergeant, because that would’ve been the smart thing to do! So what if Gerald would’ve had to please the captain? It’s not like it would’ve been a big deal. The greater good of the team and the Empire would’ve been better served with the rest of us chopping up some kobolds, not mopping floors and cleaning!” Edgar says unsympathetically. “HEY!” Gerald replies. “Right, Edgar, I’ll remember your speech the next time some sicko wants me to leave you behind instead.” “Look all I’m saying, is you gotta make tough decisions like that if you want to be a real leader! Just think if we were on a mission and you had to leave Gerald or any of us behind to die, to complete it? You would’ve probably froze up and got us all killed. I’m not sure if I believe in you as our leader if you can’t make simple choices…” Between the monotonous cleaning, the mocking, Edgar’s bitching and your own doubt about your leadership abilities, you can’t take it anymore. You punch Edgar in the face mid-sentence and knock him to the floor, he’s dazed for a moment, but doesn’t hesitate to attack you right back. The pair of you are going at it which draws the attention of several passing soldiers, who take the time to mock you. This is a mistake on their part as you and Edgar are in a heightened state of anger causing you both to attack them instead. This then escalates into others aiding them, which in turn causes your team to aid you as well. The brawl is chaotic and counter productive, but for a brief moment you actually feel “alive” again. You imagine most of your fellow Eternals do too after all this is the first “battle” they’ve had in months. Unfortunately Kane feels so alive, he forgets that he’s fighting fellow Empire soldiers and ends up killing three of them. The brawl ends with the opposing soldiers running and the rest of you standing around looking at Kane who doesn’t know why you aren’t celebrating your victory. When this is brought to the attention of Captain Pollo he’s furious and has you all put in the stockade and mentions that a trial will be held tomorrow to decide what to do with you. He already doesn’t like you, so you’re guessing it’s just going to be for show and then he’ll do whatever he likes anyway. “Look, Kane is the one who killed them, he should be the one to take the fall!” Edgar points out. “For the greater good of the team huh, Edgar?” Warrick replies. “Damn right! Look you know I’m right! If we try to fight this, the captain is just going to punish all of us!” “He’s going to punish us all anyway Edgar!” “And you’re probably right, but Kane here is the only one who’ll get the noose. I mean no offense Kane, but come on even you know I’m right on this!” As much as you’d like to punch out Edgar again, that’s what lead to this in the first place. Actually if you had just left behind Gerald, this could’ve all been avoided. Maybe Edgar’s right, the good of the many outweighing the needs of the few. You were taught that before in training, you don’t know why you questioning it now. Still, it doesn’t feel right just throwing Kane to the wolves, just like it didn’t feel right leaving Gerald behind. > You defend Kane You’re a team and you were trained together as one. You feel that you should do everything you can to protect one of your own, especially in this sort of situation. Besides, Captain Pollo is most likely going to punish you all anyway. You might well stand for what you believe in. Edgar naturally disagrees with you again, but grudgingly goes along with it since he doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of another one of your beatings. Everyone else agrees more readily. Kane while appreciative seems to be oddly detached from the situation, almost as if he doesn’t care. The next day all of you are marched into the cafeteria, which is serving as a makeshift court room. Many of the other soldiers are calling for your blood, but some of them are just sitting quietly. Captain Pollo asks both sides what exactly happened, and despite the other side making themselves look more sympathetic, fact remains Kane DID kill three of them. There really isn’t any way to defend against it. You attempt to direct blame to the other soldiers and claim it was an accident, but nothing works. Captain Pollo decides that all of you are at fault and says you’re all going to be executed for treason. It is at that point to make one last plea. “Captain! I beg you not to carry out this sentence! At least not on my team! I was the leader. I was the one who should’ve kept a better handle on them. This incident is my fault. If you have to execute someone, execute me, but not for treason, for incompetence in the service of the Empire. I may have failed to serve the Emperor, but the rest of my team may still make up for this terrible mistake that is mainly my fault.” It’s an impassioned plea. Even the soldiers that were cheering for your sentence are silent. Captain Pollo thinks for a moment and readdresses you. “Very well. I suppose you have a point. However Kane still killed three men, his crime can’t go unpunished. He will still be executed for murder and treason. The rest of your team members will be freed, but I’m having them all separated and transferred to other places. I can’t take the chance of having another incident like this happening again. Maybe the Rask frontier would be a better place for them since they want to fight so much. Execution will take place tomorrow morning. Court adjourned.” Before you’re taken away, you address the rest of your team one last time. “Learn from my mistakes. Be a better Eternal than I was and live up to the name. Serve the Emperor well.” You and Kane are taken to separate cells. You spend the rest of the night thinking about why you felt the way you did. It doesn’t make sense based on your training. Mistress beat duty and obedience into you, yet you rejected Captain Pollo’s initial request. Gruz certainly thought you were leadership material. He was obviously was wrong. A lot of questions go through your mind, but ultimately you realize it’s futile. You’re to be executed at morning and it’ll hardly matter what reason you had for any of your actions. You eventually fall asleep. The next morning, you and Kane are taken from your cells and marched to the gallows. The pair of you say nothing the entire time until the hangman puts the noose around your neck and you are asked if you have any last words. Kane continues to remain silent. You are slightly more verbal. “Long live the Emperor! Long live the Empire!” you shout before the lever is pulled and your neck snaps like a twig.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Despite your desire to go on an official mission, you feel that it would be worse to leave one of your team members behind, especially what would lie in store for him. “I will not leave a member of my team behind. We need to be together to produce the best results, captain.” “I see. Well, we’ll see how true that is when you’re all cleaning out the toilets. You’re on clean up detail until further notice. That will be all.” Pollo says in a perturbed tone. You leave Captain Pollo’s office with the bad news to your team. “WHAT?! I was ready for a fight!” Edgar yells. “What happened in there?” Roldan asks. “Yeah, we were going on a proper mission and not we aren’t!” Gerald adds completely oblivious that he wasn’t going anywhere to begin with. “Look, there will be other times, let’s not dwell on it, we’ve got toilets to clean…” The rest of your team follows your lead and grumble a bit, but Edgar is doing the most of it. By the end of the day you’ve cleaned up a lot of the fort, but really, this isn’t what you want to be doing. The next day, Captain Pollo feels that you’ve done such a good job that he says that your talents would be wasted in battle. He feels that other more experienced soldiers can now be freed up from such trivial duties that your team is performing. You’re kept at the fort doing all sorts of menial labor. Day pass into months and the mocking never stops from the other soldiers in the fort who call you the “mop kids”. This angers all of you, but of course once again Edgar is the one that nearly comes to blows with other soldiers. You have to stop him several times. Eventually his anger is directed towards you. “Fuck! This shit is all your fault anyway! What the hell did you do to piss off Captain Pollo all those months ago?” “Nevermind Edgar! And you’re out of line, I am your leader!” “Hah! Some great job you got us fearless leader! We’re making the Empire safe from filthy shitholes and dirty floors!” Edgar says getting in your face. Before the others can break it up, you grab Edgar and slam him up against the wall. “You wanna know what I did? I refused to leave Gerald behind to get fucked by that sick dipshit captain!” you shout in his face. “What?” Edgar says. “He…he wanted to fuck me?!” Gerald says in disbelief “Well it was pretty obvious when we first met him, Gerald.” Brenda remarks. “Surprised he didn’t just order you to leave him, or more logically order Gerald himself.” Roldan adds. You let go of Edgar. “I dunno, I think he’s playing some sort of game. Maybe it’s a test even. Like if I’m willing to leave a man behind or not.” You answer. “Well I sure wish you had sergeant, because that would’ve been the smart thing to do! So what if Gerald would’ve had to please the captain? It’s not like it would’ve been a big deal. The greater good of the team and the Empire would’ve been better served with the rest of us chopping up some kobolds, not mopping floors and cleaning!” Edgar says unsympathetically. “HEY!” Gerald replies. “Right, Edgar, I’ll remember your speech the next time some sicko wants me to leave you behind instead.” “Look all I’m saying, is you gotta make tough decisions like that if you want to be a real leader! Just think if we were on a mission and you had to leave Gerald or any of us behind to die, to complete it? You would’ve probably froze up and got us all killed. I’m not sure if I believe in you as our leader if you can’t make simple choices…” Between the monotonous cleaning, the mocking, Edgar’s bitching and your own doubt about your leadership abilities, you can’t take it anymore. You punch Edgar in the face mid-sentence and knock him to the floor, he’s dazed for a moment, but doesn’t hesitate to attack you right back. The pair of you are going at it which draws the attention of several passing soldiers, who take the time to mock you. This is a mistake on their part as you and Edgar are in a heightened state of anger causing you both to attack them instead. This then escalates into others aiding them, which in turn causes your team to aid you as well. The brawl is chaotic and counter productive, but for a brief moment you actually feel “alive” again. You imagine most of your fellow Eternals do too after all this is the first “battle” they’ve had in months. Unfortunately Kane feels so alive, he forgets that he’s fighting fellow Empire soldiers and ends up killing three of them. The brawl ends with the opposing soldiers running and the rest of you standing around looking at Kane who doesn’t know why you aren’t celebrating your victory. When this is brought to the attention of Captain Pollo he’s furious and has you all put in the stockade and mentions that a trial will be held tomorrow to decide what to do with you. He already doesn’t like you, so you’re guessing it’s just going to be for show and then he’ll do whatever he likes anyway. “Look, Kane is the one who killed them, he should be the one to take the fall!” Edgar points out. “For the greater good of the team huh, Edgar?” Warrick replies. “Damn right! Look you know I’m right! If we try to fight this, the captain is just going to punish all of us!” “He’s going to punish us all anyway Edgar!” “And you’re probably right, but Kane here is the only one who’ll get the noose. I mean no offense Kane, but come on even you know I’m right on this!” As much as you’d like to punch out Edgar again, that’s what lead to this in the first place. Actually if you had just left behind Gerald, this could’ve all been avoided. Maybe Edgar’s right, the good of the many outweighing the needs of the few. You were taught that before in training, you don’t know why you questioning it now. Still, it doesn’t feel right just throwing Kane to the wolves, just like it didn’t feel right leaving Gerald behind. > You place all the blame on Kane You already made one mistake by place one man’s welfare above the good of the team. You can’t afford to do it this time when all your lives may very be at stake. Edgar is of course happy you came to this conclusion, the rest of your team isn’t as happy. A couple even argue with you a bit, though it isn’t over so much that you’re not standing up for him, so much as you aren’t consistent. Kane on the other hand seems oddly okay with your decision. He says if it’s for the good of the team then so be it. It’s almost as if he doesn’t care. The next day all of you are marched into the cafeteria, which is serving as a makeshift court room. Many of the other soldiers are calling for your blood, but some of them are just sitting quietly. Captain Pollo asks both sides what exactly happened, and despite the other side making themselves look more sympathetic than they are, you do nothing to protect Kane in any way. You say that it was all his fault and you had no control over his actions. Kane accepts full responsibility and doesn’t even try to defend himself. While this keeps you and the rest of your team from facing the gallows, it doesn’t keep you out of complete trouble. Since you were the leader of the team, you are stripped of your rank and busted back down to private. Captain Pollo says that all of you are to be transferred as well since he doesn’t want something like this happening again. Kane is scheduled to hang in the morning. When court is dismissed all of you return to your room. Edgar goes on about how lucky you all were, but nobody is in the mood to hear it. Eventually he says he’ll be glad to get transferred from everyone anyway since you’re all holding him back, he then leaves to report to his cleaning duties. The next morning when Kane is executed none of you attend to watch it, indeed you’re all wonder where you’re going to be transferred, which is supposed to be in a couple days. As it turns out you didn’t need to wonder at all. Mr. Mol finds out about what happened and isn’t pleased about how it was handled. He allows the transfer of most of your team, since he believed you all would be better off separate to begin with, but you’re left at Fort Glory since he also believes that you utterly failed to show any leadership qualities. As such you’re not fit to be located anywhere important. Captain Pollo, who never liked you to begin with is even more perturbed that he couldn’t get rid of all of you (At least not the one he found attractive) keeps you on clean up detail and other menial jobs. You’re a private now, so it’s not even like you can use your rank as an excuse of how your skills are being wasted. The only thing that keeps you going is the delusion that maybe your service is still benefiting the Empire in some small way, even if you aren’t actively fighting for it. At least it does for a while. Year 17 “But captain, you’ve got kobolds running all over the countryside, there are those desert nomads destroying entire towns in the southern part of Nalin, you’re starting to get bandit reports…at least let me go on patrol!” you say to Pollo. “Everything is under control private, the last thing I need is your help! And why aren’t you attending your duties?” “Captain, if I may say, we do need every man we can get out there. Most of the ones we got are reluctant to even leave the fort at this point. Surely you must see that someone who wants to fight is a benefit, not a hindrance.” Lieutenant Anu interjects. “And when I want your opinion lieutenant I’ll ask for it! I gave you a chance to fight before and you didn’t take it, when you had the chance.” “Oh fer…captain I’d think you’d want anyone going out there to fight if only so you won’t have to do it.” “What are you implying lieutenant?” “I’m implying you’re a fucking incompetent asshole who worries more about procuring young boys from nearby towns rather than the safety of this province! And I for one can’t stand by and watch it any longer! As of right now I’m invoking the right to take command; you have proven a complete fuck up since I’ve been stationed here. Private, I’m giving you permission to get on a horse and out to the town of Yalef. They’re in the middle of a siege from the usksha there. Hopefully you can get there and do something.” Captain Pollo protests and he argues back and forth with his second in command, but when the guards enter the room, they are obviously on Anu’s side. Not wishing to get involved in this anymore than you are, you take the opportunity to follow Anu’s orders. Part of you is very excited about this, at last you feel like a weight has been lifted off your chest and you’re finally free to serve the Empire in a more substantial way. Your journey to Yalef isn’t an uneventful one. You’re actually attacked several times by kobolds. One of these ambushes succeeds in killing your horse. You dispatch the kobolds, but even with all your training you find that not being in any sort of combat for a year has made you slightly rusty. You carry on to the town of Yalef, fighting and resting when you must. By the time you get within sight of the town, half of it is in ruins and multiple horsemen surround the place. These must be the usksha or the desert horsemen you’ve heard about. Some of them see you and immediately attack. You do well against them all things considered that you’re outnumbered, fighting alone, tired and slightly wounded with your many skirmishes with the kobolds. The problems come when the usksha change up tactics and begin firing arrows at you instead. You’re caught by a couple of the arrows before you can get cover. As you hide behind a rock, trying to figure out how you’re going to actually get to the town, you feel a sharp pain in your body. This is followed by several more and you slump into the rock, struggling to breathe. You notices several more arrows in you, but these are smaller and you from you’ve seen all the usksha were in front of your near the town. Then sounds of inhuman high pitched giggling fill your ears. It’s another kobold ambush! The little fuckers must’ve been hiding in the mud and dirt nearby waiting for their own time to strike. You see several approach you, while others go off to engage the usksha, but you know your role in this is over. Your eyes close and are just glad your last moments were fighting for the Empire.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 16 You are called into Captain Gruz’s office, when you arrive you see the well dress man that you saw four years ago standing with him… and debating with him again. “I’m telling you Mr. Mol, I think they should work in the same unit. They’ve trained together and they’ve worked together so well at this point that splitting them up would be folly. Hell, these people have known each other since birth! You know that better than anyone!” Gruz says. “Yes, captain I’m well aware of the situation, and normally I might agree if their were more of them, but I think their expertise would better serve if we deployed them separately in problem areas of the Empire.” Mr. Mol replies. “You don’t break up a well oiled machine! I guarantee having them all in the same unit will be a better idea. I mean we still haven’t sent them into a real battle yet! Wouldn’t it be better to see if they can get the job done first before placing them in charge of others?” “And what a perfect opportunity to lose them all, if something unexpected should happen.” “Oh for…look that could’ve happened here! And if you’re so worried about them all getting killed in battle then what was the fucking point then? Besides, if they do prove to be useless in battle, better we find that out sooner rather than later when they’re in charge of others and getting them killed as well!” Mr. Mol thinks for a moment and then replies. “Hmmm, very well you do have a point captain. We’ll try it your way at first and go from there. Have them deployed in the Nalin province. Your services here have been useful as ever. Good day.” Mr. Mol, steps out and commander Gruz addresses you. “Well you heard all that, you and your fellow Eternal babies are being sent to the Nalin province. It’s not the Rask Frontier, but it’s a suitable first challenge for you guys. We’ve been trying to settle the conquest of that place for a few years now, and technically it is part of the Empire, but we’re still having problems with the Kobold population there. Little bastards are determined to resist and have been conducting a fairly effective guerilla war since we arrived. Though I blame that more on the incompetence of the commander in that region. If I was stationed there, this shit would’ve been taken care of a long time ago…but I’m not, so unfortunately you will have to report to Captain Pollo.” Captain Gruz approaches you closer before continuing. “Now I’m putting you in charge of your unit for reasons I’m sure you’re aware of. While I’m confident I’ve made the right choice, the burden will ultimately be on you to prove to be an effective leader. Remember, you’re not just a normal soldier, you’re supposed to be an Eternal. An instrument of destruction ordered by the Emperor himself. Failure is never an option for you. Even now there are rumors about your kind, and when you finally show yourselves you will be met by fear, awe, hatred and even distain. Prove yourselves and you will live up to the name that your were given. Anyway, the caravan picking you up will arrive tomorrow. Good luck and dismissed.” With this you leave and tell the rest of your people about where you’re going and the general nature of what to expect. They all seem pretty excited to prove themselves, and to be honest so are you. At last you will get the chance to prove yourself and can only imagine that the Emperor will be pleased by what he will see. The next day, you and your unit are picked up and the ride there is uneventful, but your unit spends a little time talking about things they see on the way. This is the first time all of you have probably been away from the training center you’ve spent all your lives in. Curiosity about some of the surroundings is natural, but it isn’t just the casual talk that’s different. Your comrades are different. They are less reserved than they once were. Captain Gruz might’ve been a strict instructor, but in addition to encouraging teamwork he was also prone to encourage you guys to have a few hours of free time. This loosening of the reigns a bit, allowed a certain amount of familiarity with each other that wasn’t just on a professional level anymore. Even you have felt yourself changing personality wise. Still you are all Eternals, and you are loyal to the Emperor. You will never forget that your duty comes first. Eventually you all arrive at Fort Glory in the Nalin province where you are stared at by several soldiers who whisper among themselves. None of you pay it any mind though, you simply report to Captain Pollo. He doesn’t look anything like Captain Gruz. He’s human for one thing and wears lighter armor which is impeccably clean. When he sees you, he almost looks bored, like you were interrupting him, but you when you came in he was reclined in his chair and not doing anything of importance. “So…you are the Eternals I’ve heard so much about. Humph. I don’t see anything special except that pretty one over there. Oh no, not you dear. That blonde muscular one in the back. Yes, delicious.” Captain Pollo says pointing to one of your men and not even getting out of his chair. “Captain Pollo, we are here for our assignments so that we may serve the Emperor.” You say. “(Sigh) I suppose you are this unit’s leader?” “ Yes, captain. I am currently their leader and holding the rank of sergeant due to my excellence in my training exercises.” “Sergeant? YOU? Why you’re a mere boy! All of you are just children! I ask them for more men and they send me children! The only thing you all would be good for is cleaning the fort! In fact that’s what you can go do right now, starting with the toilets!” This is exactly what Captain Gruz said would happen. This is your first test. “Captain, we have been trained in several forms of combat and fully ready to fight. Send us into battle and we will prove ourselves. We are here to perform our duty for the Emperor and all that entails.” “All that entails eh? Okay, you want a fight? A few miles east of here, you’ll find a town called Dalt. Its filled with ignorant peasants that constantly whine to us that there are a nest of kobolds lurking in the hills near them. We’re stretched out as it is and can’t spare anymore troops to waste on towns that are of no military importance in the grand scheme of things. Go there and take care of their problem, then maybe we’ll have more to talk about.” You nod and all of you leave, but before you are able to Pollo calls you back. “Oh one more thing sergeant. Order one of your men to stay here with me. I think you know by now which one I mean.” At this point you’re in genuine shock. You may be young, and even a little detached from normal ‘society” but you know exactly what Captain Pollo is implying. You can honestly feel more than surprised by this though. “Captain, I will need all of my team to have the best chance to succeed in this mission.” You say. “Oh? Well sorry, but you’ll have to make do like everyone else here does. Or you could clean the fort like I first ordered you to do, which you chose to ignore.” It’s a no win situation, though you try to figure out a loophole that takes the responsibility off of you. “Captain, you are of a higher rank than me, surely you could just order him yourself.” “Ha ha, nice try. No. You want to be a leader of men? You need to make this decision yourself. Tis quite easy I would think. Sacrifice one for the good of the rest. If anything I’d say he’s the lucky one. He gets to stay here enjoying the pleasures of the flesh, and won’t have to be mucking about with kobolds and dealing with idiotic peasants.” > You surviving Soldiers (Your Team) There were eighteen of you that were sent to Captain Gruz, now there are only seven of you left, but that’s because you all proved to be the strongest and you proved to be the most gifted of them all. While you were picked to be a “leader” fairly earlier on in your training, you never really interacted with your classmates as much on a social level since you felt as team leader you were supposed to keep a proper barrier between you and your subordinates. Still, you have gotten to know them all on a personal level due to practically growing up with all of them, even if you haven’t been excessively close to any of them. Gerald is blonde with fair skin and probably the tallest. You remember when Mistress first put you against him you were slightly afraid of him, though you learned that day that size does not always equal skill. Still, he has certainly improved since those times otherwise he wouldn’t be here. From other observations you’ve made, he is one of the more talkative members of your team, and tends to get along with everyone. Warrick is a brown skinned youth with very curly hair. He tends to be more serious minded than some of the others, but can be talkative when he wants to be. Warrick’s fighting abilities were always good, but never anything special. He has proven to be a lot stealthier than the rest of you, but other than that nothing stands out about him. Brenda is the only female that made it through training, though there weren’t many to begin with. Female Eternals weren’t given any special treatment, so the fact that she is here, means she has definitely proven herself. Her fighting skills are adequate, but it is with ranged weapons like a bow where she really shines. While you all were altered at birth to function slightly differently than a normal human, the biology of a teenager and all that entails still affects all of you on some level. On more than one occasion your fellow male Eternals have begun to look at her a little differently than each other and sometimes you hear discussions about her and her physical attributes (Mostly Edgar and Gerald). It is unknown if she thinks similar things about the rest of you. As always you have attempted to maintain a proper barrier, though even you cannot deny that you’ve let yourself get distracted a few times by her… green eyes. Roldan, like Warrick doesn’t stand out in any meaningful way, however he does display a great sense of duty like you do. His combat skills are also about the same as Warrick’s. He tends to try to diffuse disagreements between others in the team when they arise. Almost like a “peacemaker.” You find this behavior a little strange for an Eternal, but you appreciate his efforts in helping to support a cohesive unit. If you were looking for a second, it would be Roldan. He’s a stable influence on the team. Kane is probably the best warrior in the team besides you. Mistress pitted him against you in your first match as well. After you incapacitated Gerald, Kane nearly beat you, but you managed to pull out a victory. (Much to Mistress’ dismay) Since that first victory, Kane and you have had several sparring sessions. Most of the time you won, but there were times when he did. Every time he did though, he would always ask if you were okay. Outside of these sessions, he has always been very respectful of you. You might even consider him to be your second, but he tends to stay in the back even more than Warrick and takes no initiative on anything unless directly called upon. He barely speaks to anyone, has a rather distant demeanor towards everyone else and he keeps to himself even more than you do. Still, he works well in the team when the time comes and nobody can doubt his combat skills. Edgar is your “problem” teammate with fiery red hair and an equally fiery temper. He’s always been a little more emotional than the rest of you though that doesn’t detract from his combat skills, which rank up there with Kane’s though unlike Kane, he’s never beaten you, but oh boy would he like to. Edgar would like to do a lot of things; one of those things is be the leader. He borders on insubordination at times and is probably the most outspoken of the group and will be the first one to point out flaws in something even if he turns out to be wrong (which he usually is). He also is an arrogant braggart that boasts about his abilities or successes whenever they arise. Unsurprisingly, he tends to rub everyone else the wrong way and if there is ever a major disagreement on the team, he’s usually the center of it. However, he can back up most of his boasts and is more than willing to prove himself and is not a coward in any sense of the word. Your own opinion of him is that he would be a much better warrior, and possibly could be a leader if he became more disciplined, a LOT more disciplined. You’re guessing his short stature (only Brenda is shorter) is part of what makes him behave the way he does.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 16 You are called into Captain Gruz’s office, when you arrive you see the well dress man that you saw four years ago standing with him… and debating with him again. “I’m telling you Mr. Mol, I think they should work in the same unit. They’ve trained together and they’ve worked together so well at this point that splitting them up would be folly. Hell, these people have known each other since birth! You know that better than anyone!” Gruz says. “Yes, captain I’m well aware of the situation, and normally I might agree if their were more of them, but I think their expertise would better serve if we deployed them separately in problem areas of the Empire.” Mr. Mol replies. “You don’t break up a well oiled machine! I guarantee having them all in the same unit will be a better idea. I mean we still haven’t sent them into a real battle yet! Wouldn’t it be better to see if they can get the job done first before placing them in charge of others?” “And what a perfect opportunity to lose them all, if something unexpected should happen.” “Oh for…look that could’ve happened here! And if you’re so worried about them all getting killed in battle then what was the fucking point then? Besides, if they do prove to be useless in battle, better we find that out sooner rather than later when they’re in charge of others and getting them killed as well!” Mr. Mol thinks for a moment and then replies. “Hmmm, very well you do have a point captain. We’ll try it your way at first and go from there. Have them deployed in the Nalin province. Your services here have been useful as ever. Good day.” Mr. Mol, steps out and commander Gruz addresses you. “Well you heard all that, you and your fellow Eternal babies are being sent to the Nalin province. It’s not the Rask Frontier, but it’s a suitable first challenge for you guys. We’ve been trying to settle the conquest of that place for a few years now, and technically it is part of the Empire, but we’re still having problems with the Kobold population there. Little bastards are determined to resist and have been conducting a fairly effective guerilla war since we arrived. Though I blame that more on the incompetence of the commander in that region. If I was stationed there, this shit would’ve been taken care of a long time ago…but I’m not, so unfortunately you will have to report to Captain Pollo.” Captain Gruz approaches you closer before continuing. “Now I’m putting you in charge of your unit for reasons I’m sure you’re aware of. While I’m confident I’ve made the right choice, the burden will ultimately be on you to prove to be an effective leader. Remember, you’re not just a normal soldier, you’re supposed to be an Eternal. An instrument of destruction ordered by the Emperor himself. Failure is never an option for you. Even now there are rumors about your kind, and when you finally show yourselves you will be met by fear, awe, hatred and even distain. Prove yourselves and you will live up to the name that your were given. Anyway, the caravan picking you up will arrive tomorrow. Good luck and dismissed.” With this you leave and tell the rest of your people about where you’re going and the general nature of what to expect. They all seem pretty excited to prove themselves, and to be honest so are you. At last you will get the chance to prove yourself and can only imagine that the Emperor will be pleased by what he will see. The next day, you and your unit are picked up and the ride there is uneventful, but your unit spends a little time talking about things they see on the way. This is the first time all of you have probably been away from the training center you’ve spent all your lives in. Curiosity about some of the surroundings is natural, but it isn’t just the casual talk that’s different. Your comrades are different. They are less reserved than they once were. Captain Gruz might’ve been a strict instructor, but in addition to encouraging teamwork he was also prone to encourage you guys to have a few hours of free time. This loosening of the reigns a bit, allowed a certain amount of familiarity with each other that wasn’t just on a professional level anymore. Even you have felt yourself changing personality wise. Still you are all Eternals, and you are loyal to the Emperor. You will never forget that your duty comes first. Eventually you all arrive at Fort Glory in the Nalin province where you are stared at by several soldiers who whisper among themselves. None of you pay it any mind though, you simply report to Captain Pollo. He doesn’t look anything like Captain Gruz. He’s human for one thing and wears lighter armor which is impeccably clean. When he sees you, he almost looks bored, like you were interrupting him, but you when you came in he was reclined in his chair and not doing anything of importance. “So…you are the Eternals I’ve heard so much about. Humph. I don’t see anything special except that pretty one over there. Oh no, not you dear. That blonde muscular one in the back. Yes, delicious.” Captain Pollo says pointing to one of your men and not even getting out of his chair. “Captain Pollo, we are here for our assignments so that we may serve the Emperor.” You say. “(Sigh) I suppose you are this unit’s leader?” “ Yes, captain. I am currently their leader and holding the rank of sergeant due to my excellence in my training exercises.” “Sergeant? YOU? Why you’re a mere boy! All of you are just children! I ask them for more men and they send me children! The only thing you all would be good for is cleaning the fort! In fact that’s what you can go do right now, starting with the toilets!” This is exactly what Captain Gruz said would happen. This is your first test. “Captain, we have been trained in several forms of combat and fully ready to fight. Send us into battle and we will prove ourselves. We are here to perform our duty for the Emperor and all that entails.” “All that entails eh? Okay, you want a fight? A few miles east of here, you’ll find a town called Dalt. Its filled with ignorant peasants that constantly whine to us that there are a nest of kobolds lurking in the hills near them. We’re stretched out as it is and can’t spare anymore troops to waste on towns that are of no military importance in the grand scheme of things. Go there and take care of their problem, then maybe we’ll have more to talk about.” You nod and all of you leave, but before you are able to Pollo calls you back. “Oh one more thing sergeant. Order one of your men to stay here with me. I think you know by now which one I mean.” At this point you’re in genuine shock. You may be young, and even a little detached from normal ‘society” but you know exactly what Captain Pollo is implying. You can honestly feel more than surprised by this though. “Captain, I will need all of my team to have the best chance to succeed in this mission.” You say. “Oh? Well sorry, but you’ll have to make do like everyone else here does. Or you could clean the fort like I first ordered you to do, which you chose to ignore.” It’s a no win situation, though you try to figure out a loophole that takes the responsibility off of you. “Captain, you are of a higher rank than me, surely you could just order him yourself.” “Ha ha, nice try. No. You want to be a leader of men? You need to make this decision yourself. Tis quite easy I would think. Sacrifice one for the good of the rest. If anything I’d say he’s the lucky one. He gets to stay here enjoying the pleasures of the flesh, and won’t have to be mucking about with kobolds and dealing with idiotic peasants.” > You nalin Province (History Lesson) The Nalin province exists on the southern outskirts of the Empire and is one of the quieter areas of it, one might even call it “backwards” but that wouldn’t really be a fair assessment. The people here are slightly simpler than in the other parts, but they maintain a strong work ethic and loyalty for the most part. Due to its lack of importance, lack of “serious” problems and remoteness, only the barest amount of military is actually stationed here to oversee the province, probably not nearly enough, but until the Empire decides to explore the wilderness to the east of it or possibly the Usksha desert to the south, then the status quo will remain. The major problem that the Nalin province suffers is mainly the kobolds that infest the area. Citizens have complained, but nothing has really been done to eradicate the problem. Without a concentrated effort to root them out, they’ll always be a menace and while they may be small they are can do a lot of damage in large numbers, and that always seems to be the case. Other than kobolds, the only other common problem is with bandits, but lately there has been another threat coming from the desert. Odd nomads that ride lizard mounts have been sighted more and more on the edges of the desert and Nalin. There haven’t been many encounters, but the few there have been, have been hostile. Why they have been wandering from their desert is unknown, but they’ll be a bigger problem than kobolds if more of them decide to make sort of mass migration.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The pain is great and you want it to be over with as quickly as possible so you cry out and scream for mercy to Mistress. To this, she merely laughs cruelly and continues to step on your chest. “Ha ha ha ha! If this was a real fight do you think an enemy would should you mercy? You truly are pathetic, how did the Empire ever decide that YOU would be a worthy candidate to be an Eternal? Begging for your wretched life as if it was important. It isn’t. Your life is nothing! ALL of your lives are nothing! Your lives will never be anything more than warm bodies to serve the Emperor! The question is, will you even be able to live up to that honored status? The answer is no, if you do not learn mercy is for the weak. Remember this.” At this point Mistress finally takes her foot off of you and much like your other classmate hit by her magic bolt, you slowly get up and back in your seat, clutching your chest. You sniffle and try to keep yourself from crying, but the tears are still there. A glare from Mistress causes you to quickly wipe your eyes and try to compose yourself the best you can. Time passes by under the harsh guidance of Mistress. She teaches you all that she promised she would and then some. Your lessons are not only that of a combat nature, but of an academic one as well. You wouldn’t be aware of it, but you and your classmates are probably much better educated than other children your age. As for you, Mistress never lets you forget of how you begged for your life in front of everyone. While it is true that she sadistically taunts everyone at one time or another, it doesn’t make your emotional and psychological scars go away. This shame you experience causes you to become more insecure and you constantly feel the need to prove to everyone that you aren’t weak. When you are called upon to spar with your fellow classmates, you always fight aggressively. For the most part you usually win, and you typically break a few bones of some of your fellow classmates. The lessons of being humiliated by Mistress have not been forgotten. You can’t ever let yourself be put in a vulnerable position again and you must be brutal, it’s the only way you’ll be able to please the Emperor. Your personality doesn’t go unnoticed by your instructor and watchers, they make note of it and decide how you should be handled in the next step of your training. Year 12 You are in a room with a few of your fellow classmates standing in a row. Most of your class has been separated for reasons unknown to you. All you know right now is there is a scarred orc in worn battle armor arguing with a well dressed man who is human. They are speaking about you, but not actually speaking TO you… “What? I thought the whole point of this program was to create an elite fighting group like the Shadow Guard, why are you splitting them up and intending to put some of them in regular military units?” the orc questions. “Things have changed since the program’s inception. Besides, if the latest military reports are any indication I’d say you could use a better quality of recruits, or at least I hope that’s the problem and it isn’t due to a lack of proper training.” the man dressed in black formal wear calmly retorts. “Hey! I train every grunt I get to be the best killer they can be! I’ve conquered more territory for the Empire than anyone! My record speaks for itself and I could do a hell of a lot more if you put me on the front lines again, so don’t try to tell me I’m not doing my fucking job!” “Be that as it may, I’d say you still could benefit by having a few Eternals in your ranks, if nothing else than to be a good example.” “Good example? HAH! We haven’t even seen one of these so-called Eternals in action yet! It’s all been just speculation, and a waste of time and money if you ask me! The Empire should be providing better equipment and more of it, for soldiers on the Rask Frontier, it’s a fucking meat grinder out there and we’re constantly having to put down rebellions by the natives.” “Well nobody ASKED you, captain and your problems are not mine to deal with. This is the Emperor’s project and he has his reasons. If I were you I’d watch your tone. Victories or not, you are a servant of the Emperor and you will obey orders or you will be replaced.” The orc captain steps back from the well dressed man then he takes a deep breath, before speaking. “You are lucky that I do serve the Emperor, for that is the only thing keeping me from ripping out your throat, human…very well I shall take these so called Eternal whelps, but let it be known that I shall be testing them to the limit and then some. If they fail, they shall die like anyone else unable to keep up.” “As you wish commander, I leave it in your capable hands. You will keep me apprised of their progress on a weekly basis. Good day.” The well dressed man says and leaves the room, leaving you all alone with the orc commander. You’ve never seen a real orc in person before, but he looks every bit as intimidating from what you’ve read about them, even if he is much more articulate than you expected. He walks up and down the row sizing you all up before speaking. “I am Captain Gruz, and I will be in charge of the rest of your training until the Emperor deems otherwise. I imagine that your former instructor was that dark elven bitch, so I trust you all know by now that failure and weakness have no place here. Correct?” “Yes Captain!” you all shout in unison. “Heh, well glad to see her skills in teaching discipline are still as effective as ever. Good. Now let’s see how good your combat skills are…” At this point you and your fellow classmates instinctively start to pair up to spar with each other, but Gruz stops you. “What are you lot doing? I didn’t tell you to get out of formation!” “But captain, you said to prove our combat skills.” One boy speaks up. “I…oh wait I see. She had you fighting each other. Typical dark elven training. Create mistrust and loathing even when there is no need for it. (Sigh) I can see I’m going to have to undo some of the shit she instilled in you if I’m going to mold you into the proper killing tools.” Time goes by and Captain Gruz begins to train you in various forms of combat, though it’s different. He teaches you and your classmates to fight as a team. This usually involves various large beasts similar to what you have already fought or even small groups of goblinoids. It takes awhile for you to adapt, but after seeing the first couple of casualties, you and the rest manage to pull together to defeat your enemies. Academically speaking, you are not taught much. Captain Gruz figures that Mistress taught you enough math and literacy to get by in life. Besides not much need for all that fancy learnin’ stuff when you’re going to be chopping people’s heads off on the battlefield. Captain Gruz is just as uncompromising as Mistress in his training, but he seems less gleeful about it. His verbal abuse is more direct and to the point rather than gloating about your failures. He still reminds you all regularly about how it is your sworn duty to serve the Emperor, but you hardly need him to tell you that, to believe otherwise is unthinkable. As for you, you find yourself given a role of leadership. Captain Gruz noted your tendency to be one of the first to charge into battle. He however also has some advice for you. “I respect your desire for battle, but if you do not control your insecurities you will one day find yourself needlessly unprepared. I suspect that dark elven bitch did something humiliating to you that has resulted in your behavior. Effective in some ways I suppose, but if you truly want to be a leader of men and command respect, you need to master your emotions as you would your weapons. You must do away with insecurities and be fully confident in your abilities. You must walk into battle already KNOWING that you will win, not charging in with a chip on your shoulder with some misguided desire to prove yourself. That’s a quick way to get yourself killed. Contrary to popular belief, your goal is NOT to die for the Emperor. Your goal is to survive and make the other dumb bastards die so that you may continue to serve the Emperor. Think on this when you lead your fellows into your next training assignment.” The captain’s words carry much weight with you and in the years during your training you manage to purge most of your doubts about yourself as well as becoming an accomplished warrior. Your instructor and watchers once again note your growth and skills, and as usual they make decisions on how you will best serve the Emperor. > You captain Gruz and his kind (History Lesson) While you were under Mistress’ class you learned that orcs were conquered by the Empire long before you were even born. They probably would’ve been wiped out completely if someone didn’t have the great idea of enslaving them for their strength instead. In time someone suggested that they be used as shock troops for places where fighting was heavy. This wasn’t a popular idea at first, but was implemented with caution as by that time the first generation of conquered orcs had long died out. It turned out to be a good idea as most orcs have an ingrained love of battle in the first place and while usually not that intelligent, it’s enough that one can tell them to “go kill the enemy over there” and they’ll do it. Orcs were eventually “raised up” from a slave race to a more indentured servant one where most served in the military; it also helped keep their population down. Captain Gruz is a very rare orc in that he’s brighter than most of his kind. He’s probably smarter than some humans. Second, he’s in a much higher position than those of his kind are usually allowed. However he proved himself countless times in battle, and if there is something that usually gains respects from Empire officials, its combat victories. He also had the fortune to have superior officers that were open minded enough to promote him. During his training sessions, he always speaks highly of the Empire and of the Emperor and always reminds you all of your own duty to them both. He also has a tendency to tell tales of past battles he has had as examples to follow or to learn from. You don’t know about the rest of your class, but you find these tales fascinating. You know he must love to fight with how he tells these tales, and you also know he must be a great warrior. All of which makes you wonder why he isn’t still on the battlefield. Still, it isn’t your place to question such things.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 5 You are sitting in a gray room at a desk with several other children your age. All of you glance at each other a lot and it is obvious that there is much curiosity, but nobody speaks. This is very unusual for you, up until now, you have only had minimal contact with others. Most of them are male like you, but a few of them are female. Soon the silence comes to an end when a dark skinned woman walks into the room. She has long hair and sharp features. One thing you notice is that despite her long hair covering her ears you can still see that the tips of them are pointed. She must be elven, but in the pictures you’ve seen in books, you’ve never seen one with dark skin before. “Hello children, and congratulations on maintaining dignified silence during your time by yourselves. It’s nice to see that your previous human minders aren’t totally incompetent. Still, if you were Svelk children you would’ve been much better trained by now. Ah, but it is not my place to dwell on the limitations of the lesser born. I am merely here to oversee your training into proper Eternals so that you may serve the Emperor to your fullest capabilities. Now before we begin, I suggest you all ask questions now, because this will probably be the only time I will be in the mood for your ignorance.” For a moment nobody speaks, but when the elven lady insists, one brave soul raises their hand. “Yes, you.” “Are you an elf?” “Yes, I am. While the ignorant would use the vulgar term dark elf to describe me, my kind are more properly known as the Svelk. In fact WE are the purest of the elven race. All others you may have the misfortune of meeting are merely diluted members of our bloodline. They are truly pitiful creatures really only fit for extermination. Remember this.” “Yes, you.” “What is your name?” “My name is unimportant, but you and the rest will always address me as Mistress. Failure to do so will earn my wrath, and more importantly the wrath of the Emperor. Remember this.” “Yes, you.” “What will you teach us?” A second passes after the question, when a small bolt of light from the Svelk’s finger tips and hits the child in the chest asking the question. He falls backwards out of his chair and on to the floor. The rest of you jump in your own chairs and look back at him. He is breathing very erratically. “I will teach you to OBEY my commands when I give them!” Mistress shouts, she then warns the rest of you. “Don’t you dare touch him, let alone help him! (Sigh) And here I thought you lot had been trained better! It occurs to me that I will have to be extra strict in my discipline. As to the question about what I will teach you… I will teach you to be warriors. I will teach you to be wizards if you display the talent. I will teach you to shed yourselves of weakness. I will teach you to serve the Emperor without question and kill without mercy and you will always obey for you will find strength in obedience. You will find joy in order. You will find love in murder. You shall be instruments of terror and genocide if he so wishes it. You will be Eternals…or you will die. Remember this.” After Mistress’ speech, the child she struck down eventually struggles back up and gets back in his seat, clutching his chest and still wheezing. “I trust you have learned your lesson?” “Y…yes…Mistress…” he gasps. “Good, now one more question before we begin…you there. What is your question? Speak up!” Mistress demands while pointing at you, though you have not raised your hand. You don’t wish to disagree with Mistress, so you stumble and try to think up a question. “Uh…er…I was just wondering when will you teach us to fight Mistress?” Mistress raises an eyebrow and gives a smirk as she approaches you. “Fight? And what makes you think that YOU are even ready to learn yet? Do you have even the slightest knowledge of combat tactics?” “No, Mis…” before you can even complete the sentence Mistress knocks you out of your chair with a quick jab with her hand, the pain from your face spreads to your chest when Mistress steps on it with her boot. She digs it into you and presses all her weight on it, while the rest of your class looks on. “Damn right, no you don’t. You weren’t even alert enough to anticipate my attack. You let me get in close and now look at you, you’re completely at my mercy. I am in a position to do whatever I like with you, while you are only in a position to beg or die. So what will it be worm? Are you going to beg for your miserable life, or should I save the Empire’s time and money by killing you now?” > You die The pain is great and you want it to be over with as quickly as possible, but you know to beg for mercy would be shameful, so you gasp say you’d rather die than beg. This response surprises her to a point that she actually takes her boot off your chest giving you relief. “Truly, little one? You accept death so quickly? Have you no instinct for survival, or are you merely a fool? Still, your refusal to beg at least shows promise. It also shows that you know your place and that your life is ultimately not your own. It is nothing. ALL of your lives are nothing! Your lives will never be anything more than warm bodies to serve the Emperor! Remember this.” At this point much like your other classmate hit by her magic bolt, you slowly get up and back in your seat, clutching your chest. It hurts, but you compose yourself the best you can. Time passes by under the harsh guidance of Mistress. She teaches you all that she promised she would and then some. Your lessons are not only that of a combat nature, but of an academic one as well. You wouldn’t be aware of it, but you and your classmates are probably much better educated than other children your age. As for you, Mistress doesn’t treat you any worse or better than any of the other children, but your first experience with her did have an effect on your behavior. You take her lesson that your life ultimately not being important to heart and you become more and more withdrawn. So withdrawn in fact that you almost become invisible to your fellow classmates and even Mistress sometimes forgets that you’re there at all. If it was not for group projects and sparring lessons you probably would be forgotten. You obey commands and do your training and that is all. Why bother worrying about anything else when your life is not your own? You must follow orders even if it means your death, it’s the only way you’ll be able to please the Emperor. Despite your low key nature, your personality doesn’t completely go unnoticed by your instructor and watchers, they make note of it and decide how you should be handled in the next step of your training. Year 12 You are in a room with a few of your fellow classmates standing in a row. Most of your class has been separated for reasons unknown to you. All you know right now is there is a man in a dark robe speaking with a well dressed man. They are speaking about you, but not actually speaking TO you… “Far be it from me to question orders, but I thought the whole point of this program was to create a separate elite fighting unit. Why are they now being split up and more importantly why are some being placed with us?” “Things have changed since the program’s inception. Besides I would’ve thought the Shadow Guard would’ve appreciated such an honor of receiving such worthy candidates.” the man dressed in black formal wear calmly retorts. “That remains to be seen. I’m sure you’re fully aware of our strict guidelines on who is accepted. There are tests and rituals to go through.” “So, put ‘em through whatever it is you do. Look, I’d say you could benefit by having a few Eternals in your ranks, if nothing else than to keep you from getting lax.” “Lax? Our group has been the eyes and ears of the Empire for centuries, and our vigilance is beyond reproach. We haven’t even seen one of these so-called Eternals can do. It’s all been just speculation, and if I may be so bold, a misguided appropriation of time and funds. The Empire should be providing the regular military better equipment and more of it, so that we don’t have to be sent in to help them on the frontlines when we could be doing better things with our time such as keeping the Empire safe from subversives and other internal parasites.” “Your concerns are irrelevant. This is the Emperor’s project and he has his reasons. If I were you I’d watch your tone. For someone who doesn’t question orders, one wonders if you have to be reminded that you are a servant of the Emperor and you will obey or you will be replaced.” The robed individual steps towards the well dressed man before speaking. “Fortunately for you, I do serve the Emperor, for that is the only thing keeping me from ripping out your throat. Never question my loyalty again…very well I shall take these so called Eternals, but if they fail to live up to Shadow Guard standard, then they shall die like anyone else.” “As you wish brother, I leave it in your capable hands. You will keep me apprised of their progress on a weekly basis. Good day.” The well dressed man says and leaves the room, leaving you all alone with the robed man. You’ve never seen a Shadow Guard before, but while he doesn’t look quite as menacing from what you’ve heard about them you know that he is a force to be reckoned with by reputation alone. He walks up and down the row sizing you all up before speaking. “I am Brother Gray, and I will be in charge of the rest of your training until the Emperor deems otherwise. I imagine that your former instructor was that svelk woman, so I trust you all know by now that failure and weakness have no place here. Correct?” “Yes Brother!” you all shout in unison. “Hmm, well glad to see her skills in teaching discipline are still as effective as ever. Good. Now let’s see how good your combat skills are…” At this point you and your fellow classmates instinctively start to pair up to spar with each other, but Gray stops you and immediately knows what’s going on. “Oh no, you won’t be fighting each other. The svelk’s cultivation of mistrust and loathing in all of you has its place, but not for our purposes. As a Shadow Guard you will learn that the reliance on such emotions to be a hindrance, as all emotions are. I can see I will have to undo some of the foolishness she has instilled in you all.” Time goes by and Brother Gray begins to train you in various forms of combat. It’s actually similar to some of the stuff Mistress was starting to teach you as he goes on about unconventional warfare such as poisoning water supplies and assassinations. However he also teaches you and your classmates to work better as a team. One test involves fighting a strange beast called a Thought Lurker. It is one of the most grueling battles you’ve ever had and it doesn’t require weapons at all. It takes place all in your mind and it utterly destroys a few of your classmates. It is only when you and your classmates concentrate together as one you are ultimately successful in defeating it. Academically speaking, you are still given a well-rounded education. A strong mind and knowledge wins more battles than any blade did as Brother Gray says. Brother Gray is just as uncompromising as Mistress in his training, but he is not gleeful about it at all. His verbal abuse is a cold disappointment rather than gloating about your failures. He still reminds you all regularly about how it is your sworn duty to serve the Emperor, but you hardly need him to tell you that, to believe otherwise is unthinkable. As for you, you find yourself fitting in better here. It might be due to the conditioning that emotions are a hindrance and the emphasis on duty since you already had a slightly stoic personality coming in. There is a calming peace of knowing exactly what you need to be placing importance on. Despite your nature of blending into the background, you have not gone unnoticed by Brother Gray who approaches you to give you direct advice one day. “You are a little different from your fellows. I have noticed that you adapted much better to training than they did. You may even survive the ritual when the time comes, however I will give you a little advice. I can see that you do not believe your life is truly important. You believe that you feel it is merely your duty to serve and if you die in the process, then you will die. I imagine this might be the result of something that the Svelk woman did to you…in any event, this approach will not do. There is no weakness in maintaining a survival instinct while serving. Yes, you will be called upon to perform dangerous duties or even suicidal ones in the service of the Emperor, but you should always try to survive even if the odds are against you. The Shadow Guard has been doing it for centuries. Remember, the longer you survive, the longer you can continue serving the and there is no greater honor. Think on this on your next training assignment.” Brother Gray’s words carry much weight with you and in the years during your training you begin to discard your overly fatalistic approach to life well as becoming an accomplished warrior. Your instructor and watchers once again note your growth and skills, and as usual they make decisions on how you will best serve the Emperor. > Year 16 You and four of your fellow Eternals stand once again before Brother Gray this time though he is joined by another one of his fellow shadows. This man is almost indistinguishable from Brother Gray, similar robe, head covering hood, the only thing really different about him is that he’s slightly taller. “Eternals, you have survived this far when some of your fellows have not. This means you show promise in joining our order, but it does not yet mean you belong. There is one more test that you have to pass through, before that can happen. I shall let Master Ebon explain more.” With this, Master Ebon steps forward and begins to speak, it is at that moment you notice that something is slightly off about him. Like part of him is becoming translucent momentarily. “Eternals, I have heard much about you and how skilled you all are. So far I am not impressed. You have been given gifts and advantages from birth yet only a few of you actually made it this far. However, given Brother Gray’s sterling assessment of all of you that do remain, perhaps I just need to see it for myself. In any event, all of you shall be undergoing the Ritual of the Shadow. It is in this important ceremony that you will gain abilities such as this…” Master Ebon, suddenly disappears completely and before you know it, he is behind all of you, forcing you all to turn around. “This is just a simple ability, compared to others you will gain in time, assuming you survive the ritual. I should also mention this ritual will also open your eyes to the truth and bind you…all of us in a way you have never even pondered before. I am not sure if you Eternals have bonded despite growing up together, but you even if you have, that bond will not compare to that of the shadows. Our order has existed for a very long time and will continue to do so long after other systems haven fallen to the dung heap of history.” Master Ebon at this point turns around and begins to chant in some strange language. After about five minutes of this, a shimmering portal opens up, though it sort of fades in and out of existence. “And now Eternals, the ritual begins. You two, enter the portal together.” Ebon says pointing at Cyrus and Brian. The pair of them nod and walk into the portal. After a few moments have passed, Ebon speaks again. “You two, enter the portal together.” He says and Talia and David enter the portal leaving you by yourself. A longer stretch of time passes and even you begin to feel a little anxious despite your best efforts.” Master Ebon naturally notices this. “Since you have been spoken about in such high regard from Brother Gray, I have decided that you do not need to take this test, you are already skilled enough. In fact I believe that you probably do not belong in our order, and you would best serve the Emperor as a soldier. I will inform Mr. Mol of this and he will probably have you transferred to an appropriate post of your skill.” “Master Ebon, I’m not afraid to go through the ceremony! I want to do this!” you protest. “Hmm, didn’t expect you to protest. I was told that you have a habit of not questioning orders almost to a suicidal degree, though due to your skill, you manage to survive, so I know you are not afraid. However, while loyalty and obedience are certainly important traits to have, I believe that your particular mindset really would serve the Empire’s military instead. The military is a very simple place. Your superiors tell you to kill and you kill. They tell you to die, and you die. The Shadow Guard is a less…absolute branch that requires questioning and deeper thought at times. Contrary to popular belief we do not just snatch people off the streets because someone criticizes the Empire. Such a policy would undoubtedly depopulate countless cities and towns. No, we only seek out those that truly desire the fall of the Empire and sometimes that requires investigations.” “So you are telling me I am not intelligent enough to be a Shadow Guard.” “I didn’t say that. Again from what I’ve heard, you have exceptional intelligence. No, what I’m saying is your mindset is different. Now I know Brother Gray said he spoke to you about maintaining a survival instinct, but mere survival isn’t enough.” “I know this. I survive so that I may serve the Emperor longer.” Master Ebon at this point raises his hands and drops them. “And that’s exactly why you would better serve in the military. There is no shame in this, not everyone is meant to be a Shadow Guard, not even an Eternal. I will make the preparations to have you transferred.” Master Ebon turns from you to speak to Brother Gray and you’re left speechless. You’re also left with a lot of conflicting feelings. You feel disappointed, angry and confused all at the same time. Part of you is content on accepting Ebon’s assessment. He may even be right. He’s talking about questioning and complex thought and you don’t exactly know what he means by all that. What else could there be other than serving the Empire? Another part of you feels defiant. You want to prove that he is wrong, you want to jump into the portal before he can do anything about it. Maybe he’s expecting you to do that though. Maybe this is a test? But why would there be a test that encourages disobedience? In any event, if you’re going to make your move, you need to do it now. > You stay where you are You might not agree, but you aren’t going to disobey orders. Besides, maybe the military would be better for you. To be quite honest you thought you were going to be serving in it anyway. You are taken back to your room by Brother Gray who says he will be sorry to lose one so talented, but if Master Ebon feels you are not right for the order, then you should not be here. He says that Mr. Mol will be informed at once of the situation and he will give you your new assignment from there. You aren’t too sure what to think about everything, but you’re confident that you will be placed somewhere fitting to your skills. Hopefully soon, so you can start serving the Emperor properly. A couple days pass and it is all straightened out. Mr. Mol seems slightly disappointed that you’re being transferred out, but mentions that he knows where to put you. He has you transferred to the Rask frontier, specifically a place called Fort Defiance. It’s a long carriage ride to a cold snowy land, but eventually you make it there. You haven’t gotten off the caravan five minutes when a man wearing battle armor approaches you. “Hey are you one of those Eternals?” “Yes I am.” “I’m Captain Ian, I’ve heard about you and while you don’t look like much, we’ll take anyone at this point. Though I would’ve preferred more battle mages or even orcs at this point. Captain Ian begins to give you a run down on the entire area. He mentions that the mortality rate here is high so morale isn’t the best. He goes on to mention that Shadow Guard detachments have been assigned here to help out, but between the ogres and the giants there’s only so much that even they can do. He mentions the new unit you are to be assigned to and to report to it as soon as possible. With the caravan leaving, you head to your new unit. When you see them, quite a few of them are predictably much older than you, but surprisingly you see that half of them are around your age. Your superior gruffly introduces himself as sergeant Baily and that he expects you to pull your weight and then some, because there is no room for slackers here. You of course say you have no intention of slacking, and are thrilled to be here to serve the Empire. Your enthusiasm is met with dismissal from Baily and a couple of snickers from other soldiers, but nobody else really says anything. You are told to find a bed and make it your own. You settle in as you begin your assignment at Fort Defiance. Year 17 Knee deep in snow with minimal visibility due to a blizzard and chilled to the bone. This situation would be unpleasant even without ogres trying to cave in your skull at the moment. You dodge the ogre’s swing and cleave one of his legs causing him to fall into the snow, then you finish him off. You look around and see the bloody dead bodies of several members of the squad and of the ogres that ambushed you. “Damn it! I knew this was going to fucking happen! He does this every fucking year! He sends a bunch of unlucky bastards to patrol this pass during the worst winter month and they get torn up every time. To hell with this, we’ve been out here long enough, we’re getting outta here!” Sergeant Baily shouts to you and the remainder of the squad. You have to admit you didn’t see the logic in sending a group to patrol Kragen Pass either, but then you’ve noticed that Captain Ian isn’t the greatest mind for tactics or strategy. Your whole time here hasn’t been what you expected, but then you’re just glad that you’re doing something meaningful to serve the Emperor. Your squad leaves the bodies behind and makes its way through the blizzard in silence. You briefly think about how this time last year, you were a potential candidate as a Shadow Guard, funny how things change so quickly. You’ve seen some of the Shadow Guard that have been stationed here, but you’ve never spoken to any of them, they tend to keep to themselves, like they’re hiding secrets nobody else is supposed to know about. In any case, you appreciate their combat training, its certainly helped you survive in this harsh environment. During this momentary retreat into your own thoughts, a large rumbling is heard. You look overhead and even in this blizzard you can see the large figures looming on the cliffs. Given that you can actually make out the figures in this snow, you know that these aren’t more ogres. “GIANTS! RUN!” Sergeant Baily shouts to you and the remainder of the squad. You all attempt to run as fast as you can out of the pass. Large boulders crash down along side the cliffs with an equally large amount of ice and snow. You see two of your number crushed by the boulders thrown by the giants. You and Sergeant Baily make it a little further, only to be engulfed in snow and buried in the stuff. You’re disorientated, tired, freezing and slowly suffocating, but with determination, you manage to dig yourself out. You look around to find Baily, but apparently he was killed immediately or didn’t have the strength to dig himself out. It’s too bad, because you could’ve used his help when you see several giants now advancing on your position, though perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered. You know that this is most likely going to be your last battle. You draw your sword and walk towards the giants. It will be a good death, but your only regret is that you will not survive to serve the Empire for longer than you would’ve liked.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 16 You and four of your fellow Eternals stand once again before Brother Gray this time though he is joined by another one of his fellow shadows. This man is almost indistinguishable from Brother Gray, similar robe, head covering hood, the only thing really different about him is that he’s slightly taller. “Eternals, you have survived this far when some of your fellows have not. This means you show promise in joining our order, but it does not yet mean you belong. There is one more test that you have to pass through, before that can happen. I shall let Master Ebon explain more.” With this, Master Ebon steps forward and begins to speak, it is at that moment you notice that something is slightly off about him. Like part of him is becoming translucent momentarily. “Eternals, I have heard much about you and how skilled you all are. So far I am not impressed. You have been given gifts and advantages from birth yet only a few of you actually made it this far. However, given Brother Gray’s sterling assessment of all of you that do remain, perhaps I just need to see it for myself. In any event, all of you shall be undergoing the Ritual of the Shadow. It is in this important ceremony that you will gain abilities such as this…” Master Ebon, suddenly disappears completely and before you know it, he is behind all of you, forcing you all to turn around. “This is just a simple ability, compared to others you will gain in time, assuming you survive the ritual. I should also mention this ritual will also open your eyes to the truth and bind you…all of us in a way you have never even pondered before. I am not sure if you Eternals have bonded despite growing up together, but you even if you have, that bond will not compare to that of the shadows. Our order has existed for a very long time and will continue to do so long after other systems haven fallen to the dung heap of history.” Master Ebon at this point turns around and begins to chant in some strange language. After about five minutes of this, a shimmering portal opens up, though it sort of fades in and out of existence. “And now Eternals, the ritual begins. You two, enter the portal together.” Ebon says pointing at Cyrus and Brian. The pair of them nod and walk into the portal. After a few moments have passed, Ebon speaks again. “You two, enter the portal together.” He says and Talia and David enter the portal leaving you by yourself. A longer stretch of time passes and even you begin to feel a little anxious despite your best efforts.” Master Ebon naturally notices this. “Since you have been spoken about in such high regard from Brother Gray, I have decided that you do not need to take this test, you are already skilled enough. In fact I believe that you probably do not belong in our order, and you would best serve the Emperor as a soldier. I will inform Mr. Mol of this and he will probably have you transferred to an appropriate post of your skill.” “Master Ebon, I’m not afraid to go through the ceremony! I want to do this!” you protest. “Hmm, didn’t expect you to protest. I was told that you have a habit of not questioning orders almost to a suicidal degree, though due to your skill, you manage to survive, so I know you are not afraid. However, while loyalty and obedience are certainly important traits to have, I believe that your particular mindset really would serve the Empire’s military instead. The military is a very simple place. Your superiors tell you to kill and you kill. They tell you to die, and you die. The Shadow Guard is a less…absolute branch that requires questioning and deeper thought at times. Contrary to popular belief we do not just snatch people off the streets because someone criticizes the Empire. Such a policy would undoubtedly depopulate countless cities and towns. No, we only seek out those that truly desire the fall of the Empire and sometimes that requires investigations.” “So you are telling me I am not intelligent enough to be a Shadow Guard.” “I didn’t say that. Again from what I’ve heard, you have exceptional intelligence. No, what I’m saying is your mindset is different. Now I know Brother Gray said he spoke to you about maintaining a survival instinct, but mere survival isn’t enough.” “I know this. I survive so that I may serve the Emperor longer.” Master Ebon at this point raises his hands and drops them. “And that’s exactly why you would better serve in the military. There is no shame in this, not everyone is meant to be a Shadow Guard, not even an Eternal. I will make the preparations to have you transferred.” Master Ebon turns from you to speak to Brother Gray and you’re left speechless. You’re also left with a lot of conflicting feelings. You feel disappointed, angry and confused all at the same time. Part of you is content on accepting Ebon’s assessment. He may even be right. He’s talking about questioning and complex thought and you don’t exactly know what he means by all that. What else could there be other than serving the Empire? Another part of you feels defiant. You want to prove that he is wrong, you want to jump into the portal before he can do anything about it. Maybe he’s expecting you to do that though. Maybe this is a test? But why would there be a test that encourages disobedience? In any event, if you’re going to make your move, you need to do it now. > You run into the portal Test or not, you’re not going to stand here and accept the judgment that Master Ebon has passed on you. You’re more than strong enough to pass through the ceremony, you know you are and to prove it, you immediately make a run for the portal. “Master Ebon, the Eternal is running towards the portal!” you hear Brother Gray shout just as you make a leap into the shimmering portal. If Ebon said anything you didn’t hear it, in fact as soon as you pass through the portal you don’t hear anything. You also don’t see anything or even feel anything. It’s like you’ve stepped into a place that has sucked out all your senses. You even attempt to speak out loud, but nothing comes out, of course you wouldn’t really know since you can’t hear anything. You don’t believe you’re standing on anything and feels like you’re “floating” in some sort of void. As for your mental state of mind, your feelings have become muted. You still have them, but they aren’t as strong as they once were. Even before when you suppressed your feelings yourself, you never managed it to this degree. Everything has become deadened. All of this is so strange and you briefly wonder if you’ve made a mistake, but then you hear a voice, but it’s inside your head. It isn’t some sort of subconscious either. It’s a very real external force speaking to you in your mind. The voice is a whisper, but loud at the same time, almost overpowering. “You were not given permission to be here. Why have you disobeyed your superior?” the voice asks. “I…I wanted to prove I was worthy.” You answer. It is a strange sensation to speak with just your brain. “I see…so do you think you are worthy?” “Yes.” “Your confidence is admirable. Yet, you do not even where you are, let alone WHO you are.” “I am an Eternal.” “Are you? Tell me, how can one be an Eternal, when one has not even experienced life outside what your superiors have told you? How can one be eternal when one is a mere baby in terms of existence? How can one be eternal when you are before a being that has existed longer than you mortals first came up with the idea of your primitive methods of measuring time? No, you are not eternal. You are confused.” The voice is absolutely oppressive. Any feelings that were dead before are replaced with an extreme feeling of hopelessness and as the voice stated confusion. Within that moment you start to question everything you were taught. Not the skills, but the ideology. Still, you try to maintain your mind, by asking questions. “Are…are you the god of the Shadow Guards?” “That designation I suppose is accurate in a sense, but one should not get stuck with just one description, lest it confine you. I am many things as are you, even if you do not realize it yet, despite what your superior believes. Not to say he is wrong, just that he does not have the…insight I possess. Now your fellows that entered before you did are limited in their thought processes. Some have already failed due to their lack of complex thought. Tell me, are you loyal to your Emperor and your Empire?” “…of course!” you say, though due to your experience in this place, you feel a lot less certain of that, for the first time. This whole event is troubling to you. You almost feel suicidal for not answering with absolute certainty. “One cannot serve two masters, or at least not for long. The ones your Empire has designated the Shadow Guard are my loyal servants. They are loyal to ME, first. You cannot be a true member of this order if you place your Emperor above me. My followers have survived by hiding in plain sight and making themselves indispensable to the Empire. They have done this for centuries, but there will be a reckoning some day soon and the question is, who’s side are you going to be on?” You cannot answer. The concept of not placing the Emperor about all is so abhorrent to you that you can’t even comprehend it. Yet here you are being asked this question by a god no less. He’s even suggested a reckoning of some sort that indicates the Shadow Guard will betray the Empire in the future! How can you argue with such a being though? If you disagree it is likely to destroy you, but in this place you almost can’t help but to swear subservience to this god. You feel so helpless that it’s almost like the choice Mistress gave you except even worse. > You swear to serve the god to survive You want to live so much that nothing else matters to you, and no matter how much it sickens you utter “I…I will serve you…” with great effort. “Yes, you will serve, but do you mean it? I don’t think so. You’re lying to survive this encounter. This is interesting. I was correct in that you are not as rigid as your fellows. If you are willing to risk lying to me in an attempt to save your life, then you are possibly willing to do ANYTHING to save your own life…that means there is still hope for you. I’d advise you though, do not wait too long to pick a side, otherwise you may find that even your will to survive won’t be enough to save you. The feeling of oppression leaves you, and it’s instead replaced by a surge of pain jolting through your body. You’d probably cry out if you could, instead you suffer in silence. “You will be given the powers I bestow to all my worshippers. Whether you will use them to further the cause or not, is another matter, but one that shall be interesting to see unfold. I have a feeling we shall speak again Eternal.” And with those last words, you blackout and lose consciousness. When you wake up, you find yourself back in the room where you first stepped into the portal. Master Ebon, Brother Gray, Cyrus and Talia all stand around you. “He’s awake.” Brother Gray remarks. “Hmm, it truly is the work of Dendrin that he survived the process. Dendrin must’ve seen something in him that I did not. I will have to ask for forgiveness of my lack of vision tonight in my prayers. You two, help your brother up, he has proven worthy to be called a shadow and passed Dendrin’s judgement.” As Cyrus and Talia help you up, you’re feeling a little groggy and you ask who Dendrin is. Everyone goes silent as if you’ve said the wrong thing. “Who is Dendrin? Are you jesting? Dendrin is our god! Surely his name appeared in your mind when he spoke to you during the ceremony.” Talia exclaims. “Huh…oh…right…I dunno I feel so drained and woozy right now.” You sputter, so as to cover up your less than typical experience with Dendrin. “Hmm, well that does happen. Some new members take days to fully recover after being in the presence of his power.” Master Ebon remarks. “In any case, I welcome the three of you to the fold and you are now truly as brothers and sister to us. Our bond is stronger than any can hope to imagine and with Dendrin’s guidance there is nothing we can’t accomplish. You three shall report to Fortress Gloom, from there you will receive your future assignments and even additional training on your new powers. I shall take my leave now as I have other more important duties to perform. Brother Gray I trust you can take it from here.” Master Ebon leaves, and Brother Gray does indeed take over. He mentions that the four of you will be heading by carriage to Fortress Gloom, which is located in Quala, the home province of the Empire. Fortress Gloom is apparently the sole head quarters of all the Shadow Guard. On the carriage ride there Brother Gray speaks more on Gloom. “Personally we’d prefer it if we were located in the Delerg province, but since most of our assignments are in Quala, the Empire desires that we stay close by, still our home at least borders on Delerg so it isn’t all bad and things will be set right one day. “What is so special about Delerg?” you ask and once again you’ve said something that causes disapproving silence followed by scolding. “Sheesh, you really are out of it aren’t you? Delerg is the original home of the Shadows! You should know this when Dendrin open your mind to our history!” Cyrus shouts. Once again you apologize and claim you’re having problems with gaps in your memory and continued disorientation. Brother Gray is a little more understanding and says that you’ll soon recover and remember everything and that in the mean time you can refresh your memory with the books at Fortress Gloom. You thank him and decide to stay quiet until you can get a better understanding of your situation. It is apparent that you did not pass through the ceremony like everyone else did. Cyrus and Talia seem like they’re dedicated converts now. Brian and David are no where to be seen and nobody has mentioned them. You can assume that Dendrin destroyed them for some reason. Presumably because they refused to serve, but still that doesn’t explain why you were spared. Dendrin obviously knew you were just paying him lip service to save your own life, and he passed you anyway. Is there something else in store for you? You don’t know and you can’t do much about it right now. You just hope you can make it through this. Eventually the carriage stops at the edge of a forest area. “Okay we have to walk the rest of the way; it’s not too far though.” Gray remarks and all of you get out and the carriage driver quickly makes his way out of the area. Gray leads the way through the dark forest. The trees have so much foliage that they’re blocking out most of the sunlight. Several times you could swear something is watching you in the trees, but nothing attacks. Gray, Cyrus and Talia, aren’t on edge as you are, but then they wouldn’t have cause to be. Eventually you all an area with a large rock formation in the forest. Gray mumbles a few words and then another portal opens up in one of the large rocks. He tells you all to follow and you do. After a long flight of stairs downward, you finally reach Gloom proper. It certainly lives up to its name as you travel the corridors the entire place is barely lit, the place is also very quiet. Gray goes on to explain that the place used to be a former Derro stronghold, but they abandoned it for unknown reasons long before the Shadow Guard started to use it. After a small tour of a small portion of the fortress, Brother Gray tells you all that you will all share the same room with some of the other newer members for now, though he says that the room itself might currently be empty as they are probably on their duties right now. He also goes on to say that he wants you to test out your shadow powers in the training are tomorrow before you go on assignments, so you should try to rest in the meantime. You, Cyrus and Talia retire to your room and sure enough it is indeed empty of any other members right now. You all grab a bed that doesn’t look like it has been taken yet. Cyrus begins to speak. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going to test some of my powers now. I figure I should get a head start on the practice.” He says and then attempts to make himself invisible. He flickers for a moment, but then fails completely causing himself to collapse on the bed. “Wow, maybe I shouldn’t have tried something so hard at first.” He says breathing hard. Talia does something a little different; she begins to run from one end of the room to the other. For a brief moment she is a barely visible blur, but she too is winded from the effort. “I think we should wait until we have proper instruction first. You two are going to hurt yourselves.” You say. “Proper instruction? All the knowledge is right here! Dendrin saw to that!” Cyrus says pointing to his head. “All we need to do is practice.” “Leave him be brother, he’s still recovering from his experience being in the presence of Dendrin.” “Yeah, I guess. What an eye opener that experience was though! Seriously, all that stuff we learned was really enlightening. Don’t you agree sister?” “Oh yes. Just think, all those lies they told us just to try to keep us loyal to the so called Emperor. Murderous tyrant is all he really is and his day will come.” Talia says. You can’t believe what you’re hearing. It’s unreal to hear two Eternals you’ve practically grown up with to speak such…treason! You don’t know what they heard when they went through the ceremony, but it’s very apparent they have been corrupted. As much as you’ve been trying to keep your feelings on everything secret, you almost feel like you must speak or do something about it. > You confront Cyrus and Talia Cyrus and Talia are still Eternals and you have to believe that despite whatever divine indoctrination has taken place that they still have some sort of loyalty to the Emperor and not the Shadow Guard and certainly not Dendrin. In any case, you’re going to try to get through to them and you don’t know how to do that except just by being direct. “Do you two really think Dendrin is more powerful than the Emperor?” you ask. “Of course! How could he not be? Why would you even ask such a thing?” Cyrus says. “Dendrin showed us…all of us that the Emperor and the Empire is a lie and corrupt! He is the only true path! You were in his presence! How can you doubt him?” Talia adds. “I might ask you two how you can you suddenly revere Dendrin and turn your back on all of what has been taught us? Dendrin…whatever he is obviously is going to show us, or tell us whatever he wants for his own purposes, that doesn’t make it true! We’re Eternals first remember? We swore to serve the Empire, it’s why we were born!” “Stop it! Just stop! You’re speaking heresy and foolishness! I think your mind was too weak to withstand the greatness of Dendrin and has been damaged!” Talia says. “On the contrary I would ask how is it that I have maintained MY ability to question the Shadow Guard agenda? Why is it that Dendrin did not just destroy me if I wasn’t worthy? Perhaps I’m the strong one. I managed to hold on to my beliefs against a god while you two quickly abandoned them completely. Now you’ve got two options, you can either leave this place with me and we shall report this treasonous organization to the Empire and I swear I will not mention your own doubts in the Emperor.” “The only reporting you should be doing is to either Brother Gray or Master Ebon about your sickness and hope they know how to treat it! I’m warning you, continue to speak the way you have been or…” “Or else what Cyrus? You’ll kill me?” you ask and shake your head. “Do what you must then, but see now that I will not be able to get through to you. Now what about you Talia? Are you completely…” Before you can complete the sentence, Cyrus attacks you. You narrowly miss a blade to your chest and throw Cyrus face first into a nearby bed. You then follow up with a stomp to his spine though you fail to break it and instead he just grunts in pain. You pull out your own sword and then that’s when Cyrus starts using his new shadow powers. He rolls out of the way and turns invisible. You begin swinging at his closest location, but he slips by and stabs you in the foot. You wince at this pain and kick forward with your other foot. I lands somewhere into Cyrus, because he makes another sound. At this point he’s flickering in and out and also breathing heavy. His inexperience at the shadow magic has reared its ugly head again to your advantage. Unfortunately you were so focused on fighting Cyrus that you completely forgot about Talia, she however hasn’t forgotten about you. You feel two daggers go excruciatingly into your back and puncture your vital organs. You yell out in pain and collapse on to the floor. “(Wheeze) Thank you my sister. (Pant) Only a shadow for a little while and we’ve already managed to kill an enemy of Dendrin! I’m sure someone heard our fighting, but I’m going to go find Brother Gray, you stay here and watch his body, though I imagine he won’t give you anymore trouble.” Cyrus says and leaves. You aren’t dead yet, but you soon will be. Talia, stands far enough away from you so you can’t do anything sudden to her in your last moments. “Why did you have to say anything? Why didn’t you just submit to the will of Dendrin? You made me kill you!” Talia says with a tone of regret in her voice. “No I didn’t…I did my duty. You chose to abandon yours…” “I didn’t! I…” Talia’s voice quivers a bit, like she’s genuinely upset about having to kill you. You didn’t expect that, maybe it will cause her to question her priorities now. Perhaps your actions here have accomplish something after all and the seed of chaos has been planted to destroy the Shadow Guard from the inside before they can carry out whatever plans to betray the Empire. You comfort yourself with these thoughts as you pass from this world.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You want to live so much that nothing else matters to you, and no matter how much it sickens you utter “I…I will serve you…” with great effort. “Yes, you will serve, but do you mean it? I don’t think so. You’re lying to survive this encounter. This is interesting. I was correct in that you are not as rigid as your fellows. If you are willing to risk lying to me in an attempt to save your life, then you are possibly willing to do ANYTHING to save your own life…that means there is still hope for you. I’d advise you though, do not wait too long to pick a side, otherwise you may find that even your will to survive won’t be enough to save you. The feeling of oppression leaves you, and it’s instead replaced by a surge of pain jolting through your body. You’d probably cry out if you could, instead you suffer in silence. “You will be given the powers I bestow to all my worshippers. Whether you will use them to further the cause or not, is another matter, but one that shall be interesting to see unfold. I have a feeling we shall speak again Eternal.” And with those last words, you blackout and lose consciousness. When you wake up, you find yourself back in the room where you first stepped into the portal. Master Ebon, Brother Gray, Cyrus and Talia all stand around you. “He’s awake.” Brother Gray remarks. “Hmm, it truly is the work of Dendrin that he survived the process. Dendrin must’ve seen something in him that I did not. I will have to ask for forgiveness of my lack of vision tonight in my prayers. You two, help your brother up, he has proven worthy to be called a shadow and passed Dendrin’s judgement.” As Cyrus and Talia help you up, you’re feeling a little groggy and you ask who Dendrin is. Everyone goes silent as if you’ve said the wrong thing. “Who is Dendrin? Are you jesting? Dendrin is our god! Surely his name appeared in your mind when he spoke to you during the ceremony.” Talia exclaims. “Huh…oh…right…I dunno I feel so drained and woozy right now.” You sputter, so as to cover up your less than typical experience with Dendrin. “Hmm, well that does happen. Some new members take days to fully recover after being in the presence of his power.” Master Ebon remarks. “In any case, I welcome the three of you to the fold and you are now truly as brothers and sister to us. Our bond is stronger than any can hope to imagine and with Dendrin’s guidance there is nothing we can’t accomplish. You three shall report to Fortress Gloom, from there you will receive your future assignments and even additional training on your new powers. I shall take my leave now as I have other more important duties to perform. Brother Gray I trust you can take it from here.” Master Ebon leaves, and Brother Gray does indeed take over. He mentions that the four of you will be heading by carriage to Fortress Gloom, which is located in Quala, the home province of the Empire. Fortress Gloom is apparently the sole head quarters of all the Shadow Guard. On the carriage ride there Brother Gray speaks more on Gloom. “Personally we’d prefer it if we were located in the Delerg province, but since most of our assignments are in Quala, the Empire desires that we stay close by, still our home at least borders on Delerg so it isn’t all bad and things will be set right one day. “What is so special about Delerg?” you ask and once again you’ve said something that causes disapproving silence followed by scolding. “Sheesh, you really are out of it aren’t you? Delerg is the original home of the Shadows! You should know this when Dendrin open your mind to our history!” Cyrus shouts. Once again you apologize and claim you’re having problems with gaps in your memory and continued disorientation. Brother Gray is a little more understanding and says that you’ll soon recover and remember everything and that in the mean time you can refresh your memory with the books at Fortress Gloom. You thank him and decide to stay quiet until you can get a better understanding of your situation. It is apparent that you did not pass through the ceremony like everyone else did. Cyrus and Talia seem like they’re dedicated converts now. Brian and David are no where to be seen and nobody has mentioned them. You can assume that Dendrin destroyed them for some reason. Presumably because they refused to serve, but still that doesn’t explain why you were spared. Dendrin obviously knew you were just paying him lip service to save your own life, and he passed you anyway. Is there something else in store for you? You don’t know and you can’t do much about it right now. You just hope you can make it through this. Eventually the carriage stops at the edge of a forest area. “Okay we have to walk the rest of the way; it’s not too far though.” Gray remarks and all of you get out and the carriage driver quickly makes his way out of the area. Gray leads the way through the dark forest. The trees have so much foliage that they’re blocking out most of the sunlight. Several times you could swear something is watching you in the trees, but nothing attacks. Gray, Cyrus and Talia, aren’t on edge as you are, but then they wouldn’t have cause to be. Eventually you all an area with a large rock formation in the forest. Gray mumbles a few words and then another portal opens up in one of the large rocks. He tells you all to follow and you do. After a long flight of stairs downward, you finally reach Gloom proper. It certainly lives up to its name as you travel the corridors the entire place is barely lit, the place is also very quiet. Gray goes on to explain that the place used to be a former Derro stronghold, but they abandoned it for unknown reasons long before the Shadow Guard started to use it. After a small tour of a small portion of the fortress, Brother Gray tells you all that you will all share the same room with some of the other newer members for now, though he says that the room itself might currently be empty as they are probably on their duties right now. He also goes on to say that he wants you to test out your shadow powers in the training are tomorrow before you go on assignments, so you should try to rest in the meantime. You, Cyrus and Talia retire to your room and sure enough it is indeed empty of any other members right now. You all grab a bed that doesn’t look like it has been taken yet. Cyrus begins to speak. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going to test some of my powers now. I figure I should get a head start on the practice.” He says and then attempts to make himself invisible. He flickers for a moment, but then fails completely causing himself to collapse on the bed. “Wow, maybe I shouldn’t have tried something so hard at first.” He says breathing hard. Talia does something a little different; she begins to run from one end of the room to the other. For a brief moment she is a barely visible blur, but she too is winded from the effort. “I think we should wait until we have proper instruction first. You two are going to hurt yourselves.” You say. “Proper instruction? All the knowledge is right here! Dendrin saw to that!” Cyrus says pointing to his head. “All we need to do is practice.” “Leave him be brother, he’s still recovering from his experience being in the presence of Dendrin.” “Yeah, I guess. What an eye opener that experience was though! Seriously, all that stuff we learned was really enlightening. Don’t you agree sister?” “Oh yes. Just think, all those lies they told us just to try to keep us loyal to the so called Emperor. Murderous tyrant is all he really is and his day will come.” Talia says. You can’t believe what you’re hearing. It’s unreal to hear two Eternals you’ve practically grown up with to speak such…treason! You don’t know what they heard when they went through the ceremony, but it’s very apparent they have been corrupted. As much as you’ve been trying to keep your feelings on everything secret, you almost feel like you must speak or do something about it. > You remain silent As much as you want to, speaking about your own thoughts on this situation would be folly. Cyrus and Talia have obviously been brainwashed and you’re deep in a fortress that contains traitors that would undoubtedly overwhelm you even if did try to escape. No, your time will be better spent waiting until you are at least able to get out of the fortress and report to someone of importance in the Empire. It’s about the only thing you can do. In the meantime you’re going to have to do your best to fit in and learn. Instead of engaging in the practicing of your shadow powers (Which you’re still too worried about using to be honest) you take one of the books in a nearby shelf and begin reading about the laws and scripture of the Shadow Guard seeing as you didn’t experience the immediate knowledge of all this stuff during your encounter with Dendrin. You fall asleep reading, but you don’t exactly have a restful sleep. The next morning you are awakened and the three of you are taken to the training room as discussed the day before. Talia and Cyrus seem to master their new powers relatively quickly; you on the other hand have some problems. Your trainer, Brother Shade doesn’t understand why you are, but is somewhat frustrated that he has to spend more time with you. He never threatens you with any sort of physical punishment though, which is a relief. After a few weeks Talia and Cyrus have been sent on various assignments, meanwhile you’re still confined to the fortress due to your sub-par shadow magic (Though not your fighting skills) Brother Shade insists that you stay another few months before being sent on any mission. This gives you more cause for some anxiousness since you really want to leave in order to tell someone about this place. Instead you continue to try to learn as much as you can through reading. You don’t mix too much with the other Shadow Guards and mostly keep to yourself. You just don’t feel any connection with any of them even after studying more of the history and beliefs. You just look at them and see traitors to the Empire. The eeriest thing is how the Shadow Guard occasionally makes passing treasonous remarks and will mention how the Empire will fall soon, like it’s a foregone conclusion. Even Cyrus and Talia, are sort of distant now. The only time they really speak is to taunt you about your magic training. You have to wonder if they is a little revenge going on there as you were always a better close combat fighter than either of them. They of course are fitting in very well with the rest. Cyrus especially seems close to another Shadow Guard by the name of Draven. You try to remain positive though that you’ll eventually get the chance to leave this place. While to most people in your situation feeling fear and nervousness would be pretty natural, but for you it is definitely something that isn’t natural and you don’t like it at all. Eventually that day comes and you are summoned to Brother Gray’s office. “Okay, I believe you’re ready. I don’t understand why it took you so long though, you showed such promise during our initial training exercises.” “I suppose I’m just not magically inclined Brother Gray.” “Perhaps, but the power and knowledge that Dendrin infused into you, should’ve circumvented any of that…no matter I’ve been told by Brother Shade that your skill is good enough now. Still, I’m also trouble by the reports that you’ve been distant to your fellow Shadows. This is your family now, you shouldn’t be stand offish to them, you need to embrace them as your brothers and sisters because that’s what they are.” “I’m sorry Brother Gray, I guess I’ve just felt self-conscious about my lack of magic skills. Everyone else picked it up so easy compared to me and I didn’t feel like I belonged.” “Hmm, well I suppose you probably received some taunts, but family members do that too. You shouldn’t have taken it too personal, and I think if you would’ve asked, one of them would’ve helped you. Surely Brother Cyrus or Sister Talia would’ve helped given that you have the most in common with them.” “Maybe…I dunno. They fit in better.” “(Sigh) This won’t do at all. Here I am thinking that you were ready, but apparently you have some deeper issues. I swear you are the first to have such a problem. I mean you know that we are all on the same side here right? You know that we will stick together no matter what correct? We all have a duty to Dendrin and we are going to see to it that his glory be restored and that means teamwork, community and family.” “…yes I suppose you’re right.” “Well I’m not right about everything. I think you need to be involved in some more socializing around here, before we send you out.” “What? But I’m ready! I want to leave!” you say with a loud tone. “And I don’t think that’s a good idea. You obviously don’t feel welcomed by your fellow Shadows, and that’s not a good mindset to have out in the field if you don’t trust your own family.” “But…” “No buts! I know you’re probably anxious to start serving Dendrin in a meaningful way, but I still think you need to stay a little longer. There will be no more debate about this. Dendrin demands that his worshippers trust one another, for it is our unity that will ensure our struggle will succeed. I think you’ll need to stay in here for the remainder of the year, then I think you should be ready. You are dismissed, brother.” The remainder of the year, your heart sinks into further hopelessness. You don’t know if you can stand this place much longer, let alone have to make “friends” with the people here. Yet you must if you want to survive. And that’s what you did when you met Dendrin isn’t it? You did what you had to, to survive. You leave Brother Gray’s office. “By the Emperor, give me the strength to exist in this lair of traitors that seek to do you harm. May I be strong enough to survive and warn you in time.” You quietly say to yourself. As you head back to your room to attempt to make friends. You wonder why Dendrin let you live when he knew you would seek to destroy his followers. Is it some sort of sick game that a being like him finds amusing? It must be, because it’s the only rational explanation at this point. > Year 18 “And so I said to the blacksmith, well if you’re intending on killing the Emperor, you better damn well have a better plan than those group of thugs you’ve been supplying with weapons in the sewers. At least supply them to some thugs who the Emperor wouldn’t be able to smell six miles away!” you say, and this is followed by a few laughs from some of your fellow shadows. “Hah, good one brother! Tell me, what did you do to the blacksmith?” Brother Murk asks. “Oh we relocated him to our safehouse in Derlerg along with his buddies, reported that we eliminated him as a dissident…you know the usual. I must say, their surprise that we aren’t going to kill them is always amusing though.” You reply. “Yes, given our reputation, I imagine it is. Still, it’s all for a good cause eh, brother?” “Yes brother, it certainly is.” You say to Murk with a nod and take another drink of black tea. “Well I have to say I’m very glad you’ve finally managed to settle in brother, I have to admit, for awhile I was getting a little worried about you. You just didn’t seem like yourself after our ceremony initiation.” Talia says. “Yeah, well I guess I was just a late bloomer or something.” “Don’t worry about it brother, it’s all in the past. What matters now is that we’re all on the same page now.” Murk replies. On the same page…the problem is you really aren’t on the same page. You haven’t been since you got here. The other problem? You’re starting to feel like you might be getting there though. During the time you were forced to socialize you just swallowed your fear and self-doubt and proceeded like it was any mission. And you were successful. Perhaps a little too successful. Once you actually got sent out on a mission, you were paired up with Brother Murk. A fellow you had become semi-friendly with during your months of socializing. Your original plan was as soon as you left Gloom, you were going to run to the nearest Empire fort and make your report. Though for this plan to succeed in any meaningful way you would’ve had to kill Murk and despite your better judgment, you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You later cursed yourself for this temporary weakness and the next time you were sent out, you vowed to yourself that you’d do it again, the problem was you had only become friendlier with Murk within that time. You failed again. By the time they rotated your partnership and you were paired you with someone else, you still couldn’t do it, because now you actually started to feel like the Shadow Guard really was like a family to you. And you liked that feeling. In fact it was the best you’ve felt in a long time. Yet, now you are in a difficult position. You are still loyal to the Empire and the Emperor first, but you haven’t been able to find the fortitude to expose the Shadow Guard for what they are. You attempt to rationalize it in your mind, by claiming the longer you stay the more you learn about their exact plans, and while that’s certainly true, it really isn’t the TRUTH. The real truth is you’re starting to believe in the Shadow Guard’s cause slightly. You don’t know if it’s because you’ve spent so much time here that you’ve developed some sort of emotional attachment or some odd sort of subtle indoctrination. Is this what Dendrin really had in store for you? Did he know you could be turned even without his intervention? Before you had that experience everything was so certain, your feelings weren’t a constant source of ups and downs. Even under Mistress, you don’t remember ever feeling this. It was either success or death. It was very simple and you preferred it. Now you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Are you a traitor? Are you still loyal? Are you both? Are you neither? You excuse yourself from the rest of your brothers and sister and say you have to get some rest, though in reality you have to take a long look at your priorities. Once again you spend a few more months going through your usual routines and quietly suffering in silence. That comes to a halt when Murk comes into the barracks one day… “Hey, where are brother Cyrus and sister Talia?” he immediately asks you. “Uh, sister Talia I think is in the library and brother Cyrus is probably with brother Draven somewhere.” You reply. “Oh, well I’ll go get Talia, someone else can look for Cyrus, but you need to report to Master Ebon right away.” “What’s this all about?” “I don’t know, just that he wants you, Talia and Cyrus to see him. Something about someone from the Empire wanting to meet with all three of you. Sounds important.” You get up and walk to Master Ebon’s office which remains closed, so you wait. A few moments later, Talia joins you. “Hello, brother. Isn’t master Ebon here?” “If he is, he isn’t answering his door, so I’ve been waiting outside.” “Do you know what this is about?” “Dunno, just that someone from the Empire wants to see us.” Talia nods and remains silent. Soon Cyrus joins you and asks a similar question, to which you answer in a similar manner. He grunts at you and stands as far from you as possible, though he says something polite to Talia. Same old Cyrus. No sooner has Cyrus got there, when Ebon’s door opens. You hear a voice that tells you to come in. You didn’t even think he was inside, but you guess he was really waiting to see you all together. When you all enter, he tell Cyrus to close the door and gets right to the point. “You three have been summoned by Mr. Mol. Apparently he wants to ask you a few questions and is insisting on doing it somewhere in the capital I believe. In any case, he claims he wants to check on your progress as an Eternal, but I suspect he’s fishing for information about us.” “You don’t think he suspects anything do you?” Talia asks. “I do not believe he knows anything about our true goals, if he or anyone did, I have no doubt we would’ve been moved upon by now. No, I think this is just another Empire ploy to try to get more inside intel on our organization, which for the reasons I just mentioned they cannot know about.” “I won’t say a word to this running dog of the Empire! My eyes have been open a long time and my loyalty is and will always be to Dendrin.” Cyrus says. Master Ebon nods. “Yes, I know it will be. I have no doubt, but I still would like you all to just be on your guard when answering questions none the less. It probably won’t come to this, but kill yourselves if you have to. It won’t be ideal, since it’ll arouse suspicion, but it’ll still give us time to go ahead with our plan anyway, even if it would be a few years early. Anyway, the three of you are to make your way to the town of Lenet and from there you’ll take an Empire carriage to the capital. Return immediately if you are able. May Dendrin and the shadows hide your true intentions.” With those last words, Ebon sends you away and the three of you set off on your journey. You begin to feel nervous as soon as you leave Gloom, you weren’t expecting this happening, but deep down you did know that something like it was going to happen eventually. You remain mostly quiet during the journey as you try to get in a certain frame of mind of what you’re going to do or say. Cyrus is mostly silent as well, though you’re guessing that’s because he’s so firmly entrenched in his belief in Dendrin, that he knows what he’s going to say and do. Talia is the only talkative one and that’s mainly questions about what you both think Mr. Mol will ask you. You know she’s dedicated herself to Dendrin, but you sense that perhaps she’s a little nervous too, though you don’t know if it’s due to her new loyalty to Dendrin or because she’s been harboring secret loyalty to the Empire like you have. You decide to imagine it’s the latter, mainly because you want to make yourself feel better. Eventually the carriage from Lenet reaches Qale, the Empire’s capital and several soldiers immediately step forward to say they are here to escort you to Mr. Mol. The three of you are taken from the opulence of one of the main streets and quickly through a system of back alleys until you eventually reach a non-descript building. You enter and there you see Mr. Mol. It’s the well dressed man you saw speaking to Brother Gray six years ago. He’s also wearing the same formal black suit he was back then. “Ah, the Shadow Eternals. I’ve so wanted to catch up with your progress, but my attention was on your less subtle peers for a while. I think we’ve sorted them out though, so now it’s time to sort you out as well. Just a formality really, we just want to see if you’re achieving your full potential in the Shadow Guard. After all you’re Eternals first, and we wouldn’t want your talents to not be used to their fullest potential in the service of the Emperor, right?” Cyrus and Talia say nothing, but you feel obligated to acknowledge that question if only to not look suspicious. “Correct. All that we are, we owe to the Emperor’s will.” you say. “Glad to hear it! Now then we’re just going to be asking you some questions, these soldiers will take you to a place to wait. Off you go.” At this point the three of are marched out of the room and down a long hallway. The cold broken stone walls and desolation of this place almost makes Gloom look cheery by comparison. Eventually you reach a door on your left and Cyrus is told to wait inside the room. He enters without a word, but gives you and Talia a look like “Say nothing!” A few moments later you reach another door on the left, this time Talia is told to wait inside. She hesitates for a moment, but enters. She gives you a look as well, though this one is more of concern. Finally you reach the last door on the left and you are told to enter and wait. You do so without looking at anyone. The door shuts behind you and the ominous sound of a lock is heard. There isn’t much you can do, so you sit down at one of the chairs in the middle of the room and wait. And wait…and wait…and wait…and wait… You don’t know how much time has passed, but you get up and move about several times before sitting down again. You don’t quite panic as much as you think you would, but being alone with your thoughts is definitely not the best thing for you. Right now you’re already thinking they’ve managed to break Talia into talking and probably killed Cyrus. Maybe if you cooperate right now, there will be leniency? Why shouldn’t you cooperate? The Shadow Guard ARE traitors after all, and this is just the kick in the ass you needed to remind you of that. But then there’s the other part of you that feels loyal to the shadows and how you shouldn’t betray them. You go back and forth what you’re going to do several times, and then you hear the lock on the door. Mr. Mol enters… > You tell him everything You’re going to tell him everything. Yes, it is true that you’ve bonded a bit with the Shadow Guard and you can even understand their motivations, but Mr. Mol is right. You’re an Eternal first and your duty is ultimately to the Emperor. If you suffer any punishment due to not coming forward sooner then so be it. Mr. Mol sits down in the other chair in the room and before he can even say anything you get straight to the point. “The Shadow Guard is planning to betray the Empire. They have been for years. Centuries even. They’ve just been biding their time for the right moment to strike, and that moment is supposed to be soon.” Mr. Mol sits back and exhales deeply. “Well, I guess that saves me a little time. I certainly thank you for that, your fellow Eternals were disappointing in that regard.” “Are…are they dead?” “Dead? Oh no. They’re very much alive. Knew they were hiding something, but I assumed it was just typical Shadow Guard bullshit about their god and rituals. Possibly even manipulating things to benefit their order, but that’s certainly to be expected. (Sigh) We really should’ve been doing something about them a long time ago, and to a certain extent that’s why you Eternals were created. I’m glad at least one of you managed to avoid brainwashing…which brings me to another question. Why didn’t you come forward with this information before?” “I…I have no excuse…I felt very influenced sir. After I went through the shadow ceremony and their god spoke to me…I…” “Hold on, you actually spoke to Dendrin?” Mr. Mol stop you. “Yes, you know the god’s name?” “Of course I do, it isn’t as much of a secret as the shadows like to pretend. It just isn’t spoken out loud in public because that’s part of the original agreement. Certainly don’t need a bunch of religious fanatics gaining any more power by speaking highly of their god to the masses. Even if said fanatics are loyal to the Emperor, which apparently has never been the case if what you’re saying is true. Now start at the beginning and ALL of what you’ve learned.” You start from the moment you ran into the portal and continue about your experiences from there. Mr. Mol makes several notes and tells you to explain in greater detail on certain things. As you tell him all the shadow secrets you know, you feel a great weight lifted off of you, but you still feel very anxious since you don’t know what’s going to happen to you afterwards. “Okay…this is great information. Makes a lot of sense now any past attempts to infiltrate the Shadow Guard have never worked when their own god is indoctrinating them completely in their ceremony. Well except you of course. Guess nobody’s perfect, not even a god. Still, we shouldn’t have been so complacent either, but with this information I think we can get this under control within time.” “So what’s next?” you ask. “Next? Well you and your fellows go back to Gloom like nothing has happened. I’ll be in touch with you in the future to give you further instructions.” “You’re not going to destroy them now?” “Heh, well we certainly could with this information alone, but from what you’ve told me, the dissention is more than just the Shadow Guard at this point. They’ve got safehouses of dissidents in various locations…this is a big job and ideally, we want to neutralize the majority of this threat in one swoop. If we moved now all it would do is tear the Empire in half sooner rather than later. This isn’t going to be pretty even if our counter plan goes right, but the best thing is we do know that we need to focus internally now. Plans to invade the Felkan Kingdom again will have to wait unfortunately.” “So, I’m not to be punished?” “Punished? What for? Oh you mean because you felt influenced? Well, that is concerning, however considering you just told me everything after constantly being bombarded with shadow propaganda not to mention Dendrin’s own words I’d say your willpower is strong enough to resist anything. In fact I need to make a note of that too, it’ll help to know for future Eternals.” “Future Eternals?” “Oh yes, the project is still going on. In fact we’ll need more of your type to fill in the gap that will be left by the Shadow Guard when they’re gone. Those that know the value of loyalty and duty to the Empire like you of course. We’ll try to prevent mistakes like Talia and Cyrus this time. Like I said nobody’s perfect, but we can still strive towards it.” Mr. Mol then sits forward, puts a hand on your shoulder and stares into your eyes. “The Empire needs you more than ever to defend it from its enemies and you’re in the perfect position to do so. Is your duty clear?” “Yes, I live to serve the Empire and the Emperor. They will always come first, before everything else.” You confidently reply. “Good. Good. I’m glad to hear it and I certainly hope now you feel better and less alone knowing that you have the entire might of the Empire supporting you.” “I do. Thank you.” “Now then, I want you to go back with your fellows and carry on as normal. As I stated I will be contacting you in the future and your official mission now is to gather as much information of the Shadow Guard as possible. I know you’ve given me a lot already, but there’s always more that can be acquired.” This new sense of encouragement, purpose and direction coupled with telling Mr. Mol everything makes you feel a lot better about your choice. So much so, that you even volunteer to go beyond what he asks. “Did you want me to assassinate anyone?” “Heh, I like your enthusiasm, but it might be best for you to concentrate info gathering first. Though I suppose if you can somehow arrange a group of shadows to face with an accident without getting caught, I’m not opposed to it. Simple sabotage is good too, as long as they don’t get the impression that anyone is on to them.” You understand, and you are lead out of the room and back into the main room where you see Cyrus and Talia waiting with the soldiers. “Okay I believe we are done here. I am pleased to find that all of you are obviously living up to your potential. I was a little concerned only because a couple of your non-shadow Eternals already have proven to lack the discipline we thought they had. One was executed for killing his superior officer and another one died by breaking a solid fighting formation during a battle. I’m glad to see all of you are much better in that regard and I can only chalk that up to the Shadow Guard’s superior training techniques. Perhaps more Eternals in the future will join as it is obvious you all have tremendous willpower and great loyalty to the Empire.” Mr. Mol says glancing over at you with that last line. And with that, the three of you are lead back to the carriage, which takes you back to Lenet, and from there you walk back to Gloom. You’re all more talkative at this point, Talia and Cyrus go on about the questions with each other and you. Of course you lie and state you were asked similar ones. “So do you think he suspected anything?” Talia asks. “Doubt it. The Empire fool didn’t even ask anything remotely important. It is obvious Dendrin’s shadow covers his eyes from the truth. So much so that it required minimum effort on our part to even lie to him. I mostly just omitted truth.” Cyrus mocks. “Omissions of the truth are usually better than outright lies anyway. Less of a chance to get caught up in a web.” Talia comments. “Yeah, I didn’t even need to lie at all.” You say which causes you to laugh inside your head given the double meaning of that remark. After the three of you report to Master Ebon, he seems pleased with how things turned out, but states that he’s pushing to enact the plan sooner for concern that the Empire may still suspect something. He then says to expect things to get hectic soon, but with Dendrin’s guidance you all will surely prevail and the Empire will collapse. You retire to your bed to get some rest as it’s been a long stressful day. You’re finally glad to have settled your crisis of loyalty though. With these comforting thoughts you drift off to sleep… As you sleep you begin to dream. You dream that you’re in the same void like space when you walked into that portal two years ago. You feel nothing and you sense nothing for a long time then you hear the voice, that oppressive voice that invades your mind completely. “So Eternal, you have chosen to betray me.” “You said yourself that I was only saying I’d serve to save myself in your presence. Why are you so surprised?” “I am not, I’m merely observing your motivations which were equally unsurprising. I’m fascinated that one such as you would have the willpower and strength to defy a god, yet still be narrow minded enough to trust in a mortal government. You may as well be a golem.” “The Empire hasn’t threatened me with death, unlike you have.” The whispery voice suddenly lets out a hearty laugh to loud in your mind that it’s painful. “And you believe that? The Empire has done nothing BUT try to kill you from birth! Wasn’t until you arrived to train under the shadows that your risk for death was lowered! Even when you met me, I never directly threatened you with death, I gave you a choice for which you should be grateful!” “Deity, if I offend your omnipotence so much, then why not kill me now? You obviously have the power to invade my dreams and if I’m a threat, you should do what needs to be done.” “Eternal, Eternal, you are no more of a threat to me than your beloved Empire is. And your insolence does not offend me, it is your ignorance that offends me. If you believe this path is one of survival you are sadly mistaken.” “And joining a hopeless cause like your cult of fanatics is?” “Eternal, you will see. Eventually you will see. You ask me to kill you now and though I could, I wouldn’t because it will be interesting to see you running about trying your best to undermine my loyal followers. However, the major question is, will you survive in the process? The odds are against you Eternal. Severely against you.” “I will prevail.” “Perhaps, but at what cost?” With those last words, you wake up. You try to go back to sleep, but it isn’t easy. Just like actively spying on the shadows isn’t going to be easy, especially since Dendrin himself knows what you’re doing. You just can’t figure out why he is insisting on tormenting you like this, what can he possibly get out of this other than sadistic pleasure? You can even comprehend that aspect, but what you don’t get is why he wouldn’t immediately get rid of you in order to help his own followers. Is this an elaborate trick or does he just not give a shit about his worshippers? You don’t know. The best you can do is what you can achieve in the mortal realm and leave the motivations of any gods out of the picture. > Chapter 2B1: The Emperor’s Shadow Year 20 “So you say, Brother Cyrus and Brother Draven are going to be assigned to Rask soon?” you ask. “That’s what I’ve heard from Brother Gray. Them and a few others. Next year at the latest.” Murk says “What’s the reason, from what I’ve heard it doesn’t seem like the Empire has a good grip on Rask anyway.” “Well that’s sort of the point! By weakening the areas where the power isn’t as strong it causes the Empire to divert resources from other places and making those much easier to bring down as well. We’re going to need it too, Master Ebon was sure the Empire would’ve started another war with the Felkan Kingdom by now, but as it stands they’re practically friends with them, well as much as the Empire can be. Oh well there’s still time I suppose.” “We don’t have that much time, we should push things along in our favor with some international incidents.” Brother Shade says. “In fact, I’m going to mention that to Master Ebon next time I see him.” “You don’t think that he hasn’t already thought of such a plan?” Talia asks. “Perhaps, but let’s just say I’ve been here a little longer than the rest of you, and while I know Master Ebon is just waiting for the right time to strike, he’s been playing the waiting game a little longer than I think is necessary. In fact I think he’s been playing it so long that maybe his vision has become clouded from certain opportunities.” This statement from Brother Shade gets a lot of looks, but nobody says anything. The shock is too great. Even you are surprised as this is the first time you believe you’ve heard something close to an open criticism about Master Ebon or the leadership structure in general And that’s something you can definitely use. Soon after his statement Brother Shade leaves to attend his duties. “Brother Shade should watch how he talks about Master Ebon. Ebon speaks directly to Dendrin on a daily basis and knows best on how to proceed.” Murk remarks. “Then why did you not speak up, instead of just sitting there?” Sister Bianca asks. “Uh…well…” “Always trying to impress the ladies, eh Murk?” you chuckle and take your leave as well to go seek out Brother Shade, he hasn’t gone far and you catch up with him in the hallway. Fortunately nobody else is around. When you get his attention he’s not exactly cordial. “Oh it’s you, what do you want, I have duties to attend to brother.” “Nothing excessively important brother, I just wanted to say you aren’t alone.” “Aren’t alone in what?” Shade asks. “You aren’t alone in how you feel. I think we should strike against the Empire now as well. All this waiting around isn’t helping our cause.” “Well I suggest if you want to help our cause, you keep your feelings to yourself brother and focus on your responsibilities…and your magic skills.” “But brother, you said…” “Nevermind what I said! I spoke in haste to a bunch of snot nosed shadows that barely know what it truly means to serve Dendrin. Now leave me be!” Shade at this point pushes you aside and walks off. Well that didn’t go like you hoped; still, you can report this to Mr. Mol who you have to meet in a few days anyway. When you meet Mr. Mol at the usual spot, you tell him everything you know as usual. “So, planning to destabilize Rask, eh? Well I’ll see what we can do about that…tell me have you heard any plots involving orcs?” Mr. Mol asks. “Mmm, I don’t believe I have. I would’ve told you.” “Okay then, maybe it’s not related, but some of our orcish troops have been getting restless lately, mostly those stationed in Rask too. If we had proceeded with our invasion of the Felkan Kingdom like we wanted, we could’ve thinned out their ranks a little. As much as we need them in the far northern reaches of Rask right now, I fear that having them all in a large group is asking for trouble. I guess we’ll transfer some to Nalin, I hear they’re having problems with the usksha nomads and kobolds down there. Speaking of the Felkan Kingdom tell me about this plot to start a war with them.” “There isn’t one, so much as there have been suggestions to do so by a Brother Shade.” “Ohhh, dissention in the order. I like it. So is this guy losing his faith or something?” “I do not believe its that more so that he feels Master Ebon is being too cautious. He wants to strike now and he knows that Ebon’s plan hinged on the Empire being distracted with the Felkan Kingdom, so he suggested starting one ourselves in passing, though when I approached him about how I agreed that we were being too cautious, he told me to not speak of it again and to leave him alone.” “We can still possibly use this. The fact that he mentioned it says that he’s thinking about it, even if he himself isn’t totally committed to the idea. Try to speak to him some more on the subject of starting a war with the Felkan Kingdom.” “But if he does want to go through with the plan, won’t starting a war with the Felkan Kingdom be exactly what they want?” “Well, it’s a gamble to be sure, but quite frankly we were going to invade the Felkan Kingdom again anyway, but…ha ha I got it.” Mr. Mol says with a big grin on his face. “Okay forget what I told you about speaking with Shade, I’ve just gotten a better idea. I’m going to have to discuss this with a few others and the order is going to have to come from the Emperor himself, but I’m pretty sure he’ll agree to this.” “What the plan?” “I think we should send several Shadow Guard into Felkan territory to assassinate their king and other high ranking officials. We should even demand the best. This will occupy some of the shadows and hopefully this puts the Felkans in a state of chaos as well. While this operation is taking place, I doubt the remaining shadows will act just yet with several of their best fellows gone. In the meantime, we can start wiping out those safe houses and dissident hideouts you’ve been giving us the locations to over the years. This will no doubt alert what remains of the shadows that we’re on to them at this point, but it won’t matter. Thanks to you, we also know the exact location of Gloom and let’s just say we’ve got some allies that can help us with that underground fortress.” “That sounds like a good plan.” “Thanks, just thought of it, but like I said, I need to speak with a few others first. As usual I’ll be in touch, but all you need to do for now is go about your usual duties within the Shadow Guard. You’ve done excellent work as usual.” Mr. Mol shakes your hand as you part ways and you feel a great sense of pride in your accomplishments. You also feel better that this charade may all come to an end soon and you’ll be free of masquerading as a shadow. When you get back to Gloom, Brother Shade suddenly surprises you on your way back to your bunk. “Hey you, where have you been?” he demands to know. You’re so taken by surprise; all you do is stumble over your words. “Uh…well…” “Uh huh. Probably slacking with some cheap tart as usual. I know you sneak off sometimes to the nearby villages. I know you’re young and full of hormones, but you know very well that making yourself unclean with non-shadows is frowned upon.” “I…I’m sorry, Brother Shade.” You say. “Well you can ask for Dendrin’s forgiveness in your prayers later, right now I want to discuss something with you. Come with me.” You follow Brother Shade through the winding halls of Gloom until you eventually reach a small empty storage room. After doing a quick perusal, closing the door and casting a cloak of shadows spell, he speaks to you again. “Okay, it’s safe to speak. You and me are going to start a war with the Felkan Kingdom.” “What…you spoke to Master Ebon, about this?” “Yes, and the old fool is too set in his ways just as I thought he would be. Says it’s too risky. Bullshit. What better time than now?” “Well I suppose, but…uh…just us?” you say in an attempt to stall. “As far as I know you’re the only one who feels we need to do something now and I can’t wait around and investigate if others feel like you do. Besides we can easily do this. I know your shadow magic is weak, but your fighting skills are excellent.” You didn’t expect this. “Okay, so just us…sure. Dendrin shrouds us in protective darkness right? We can easily assassinate the Felkan king…” “Hold on there brother. Now we’re just starting a war, not destabilizing the government. Well, not their government anyway. Heading deep into Felkan territory to kill their leader isn’t necessary and will just serve to waste time. No, we just need to go in, make a statement and get out. Maybe take out a large portion of one of their outposts and leave a maimed survivor to tell the tale.” Sounds like Brother Shade has already planned this out. The problem is his plan doesn’t exactly fit your own. Mr. Mol wants to assassinate the Felkan King and possibly some other high ranking types. It’ll also bide a little time for him to get things in place. Brother Shade’s plan probably won’t throw the Felkan Kingdom into chaos, but will serve to anger them and that might distract the Empire too much if the Felkans are focused. Who could’ve thought starting a war would be so precise? In any event, you agree to Shade’s plan and he says the pair of you will head to the village of Venji in the Arat province near the Felkan border. From there, you’ll cross the Felkan border and infiltrate the nearest Felkan outpost to carry out the plan. When you ask about the others, Shade dismisses the consequences of his fellow shadows. He says when things have been set in motion they will have no choice but to accept the reality. He then mumbles about there possibly being some more changes before leaving. Of course you don’t want to carry out that plan, so you’re going to have to kill Brother Shade on the way. Not exactly an easy task, so you might try reporting him to Master Ebon or Brother Gray instead and try to have him taken care of using the shadow’s own code of conduct. > You kill Brother Shade His plan is going to mess everything up and reporting him probably will just result in him getting scolded and he’ll sneak off later anyway. You need to kill him. It’s part of your overall goal anyway. The next few days you spend mostly in the training room, trying to get yourself ready for what will probably be a grueling battle. Quite frankly if you do it right, you won’t have to fight him at all as you’re going to try to catch him completely with his guard down, but if that doesn’t work, you’re going to have a struggle on your hands and you need to be prepared. Brother Shade helped directly train your magic skills, so as usual you’re hoping your combat skills will be the deciding factor, but your major advantage will be the element of surprise. You make sure your blade is extra sharp and your arm crossbow is in good working condition. You fully expect Dendrin to harass you in your dreams, but that doesn’t happen. When the day finally arrives you and Brother Shade take your leave of Gloom and head to Venji. Brother Shade and yourself travel under the cloak most of the time, though up keeping such magic is tiring business, so you rest a few times on your way. During your time together, you find out more about Brother Shade’s thoughts. He goes on about how Master Ebon is not fit to speak for Dendrin anymore. Shade believes the old man isn’t even in contact with Dendrin anymore as Shade knows that Dendrin would not want to wait any longer for the shadows to live under Empire rule. Shade knows that Dendrin would want action to be taken right now and that only those that prove themselves to be proactive in these times will be rewarded when the dust finally settles. You can’t speak for Ebon, but from what you can tell, Shade doesn’t really know shit what Dendrin really wants. You don’t either, but then you aren’t one of his blind sheep that follows his orders. Still, it’s somewhat fascinating to see one of the shadows not fall completely in step with the rest. If Mr. Mol hadn’t suggested his idea, you probably would’ve gone through with Shade’s mission and try to sew a little more dissension on both sides to flame the fans of a shadow civil war. As it stands though, he needs to die, but you’re still trying to build yourself up to do it. You have no idea why either, you’ve had the opportunity a few times and you’re far enough away from civilization since you’ve been sticking to the back roads. Eventually the humble village of Venji is in sight, and you’re going to have to kill Shade soon. You think you’re going to pass the village, but Shade starts heading towards it. “We’re not actually entering it are we? So far we’ve managed to stay out of sight.” “And we’ll continue to do so, I can maintain the cloak, but if you’re feeling weak you stay here. I’ll be back soon anyway.” “But why are you going into the village?” “Because there’s bound to be a couple of Empire soldiers stationed there. We’re going to need a couple of disguises.” “You’re going to kill Empire soldiers?” “Yes, and why is that a problem?” It’s not. Actually it’s a perfect excuse for you. “No, I just didn’t know the entire plan. I guess I’ll wait here I am feeling a little drained from the magic and I wouldn’t want to jeopardize the mission.” You answer. Brother Shade grunts and turns his back to you, and just before he cloaks again, you raise your arm and fire your crossbow at him. Your aim is true and the bolt lands directly into the back of his skull. He’s dead even before he falls face first into the ground . It’s done and it was so quick. He didn’t suspect anything or even see it coming. Now you’ve got to get rid of the body and think up a story. Nobody saw you leaving together, you made sure of that, but you’ve both been gone awhile. You figure you’ll think of something on your way back to Gloom. You strip Shade of his robe, weapons, then you cut off his head and dig a small hole to toss it into along with his robe and weapons. You figure nobody is going to recognize him now and that’s not even counting the wolves or other wandering animals that will probably find the body to feast on first. When you finally get back, you get several people asking you where you’ve been. “Where in Dendrin’s name have you been? You just left without reporting to Brother Gray for assignment!” Brother Murk exclaims. “I was doing my usual patrols in the Quala province. I didn’t think I was being switched from them any time soon, so I just left. Was it a problem?” “Well sort of, Brother Shade is missing as well, you weren’t with him were you?” “No, I wasn’t, I haven’t seen him since I left Gloom a couple days ago either.” “Okay, well you’re going to need to explain that to Master Ebon, he believes Brother Shade went and did something rash.” “Oh? Like what?” “Like defying Master Ebon and the will of Dendrin. Anyway, you better hurry to Master Ebon’s office.” You do as Murk suggests. You just hope you can convince him as easily. You enter Master Ebon’s office and see him, Brother Gray AND Cyrus. You can guess what the first two are doing here, but you don’t know why Cyrus would. He’s giving you a dirty look from underneath his hood as usual. “At last, we can get to the bottom of this.” Brother Gray remarks. “I certainly hope so, because there are some serious allegations going on and conspiracy in the air.” Master Ebon says while looking at you. “I’m telling you I saw the pair of them together several times and the day they both left, he made sure to leave several minutes after Brother Shade.” Cyrus remarks. And there it is. Cyrus is on to you, well maybe not entirely, but apparently he was skulking around spying on you when you thought nobody was looking. And here you were thinking he was on assignment or with his boyfriend most of the time. “So what if I left several minutes after Brother Shade? What does that prove? Am I supposed to wait hours? A day? What would be enough time for you? And what’s this all about anyway? What did Brother Shade do?” “Oh like you don’t know.” “Brother Cyrus, quiet!” Master Ebon says before continuing. “And to answer your question, I’m sure you’re aware of Brother Shade’s recent behavior and his desire to move things along as far as our plan goes. He approached me not too long ago, about starting a war with the Felkan Kingdom, I told him no and he got very angry. Then he disappears for a few days when I specifically told him to stay here and concentrate on his prayers to Dendrin. We believe he’s gone and tried to do this himself. You being gone without reporting to Brother Gray wouldn’t normally be held to such scrutiny, but Cyrus here has said he’s seen you speaking with Brother Shade several times before his disappearance.” “So I shouldn’t have spoken to him? I can’t be the only one that spoke to him before he disappeared.” “Yes, but you are the only one that left without reporting to Brother Gray first, not to mention up until then I’ve been told that you and he never interacted much. All of this seems very suspicious and it grieves me something like this is being brought to me, especially when so much is at stake right now.” You’re trying to remain as calm as possible, but the pressure is on. Cyrus looks on with a faint smug expression like he’s anxious to see you get into trouble. You need to come up with an explanation and you aren’t sure if outright lying is going to help you. Maybe you should tell them the truth…up to a point of course. > You stick with your lies If you tell them you killed Brother Shade because of what he was planning to do, the first thing Master Ebon is going to ask is why you didn’t report it to him sooner and you’re libel to get yourself into more trouble. The best thing to do is just lie; after all it’s what you’ve been doing the whole time you’ve been here. “I tell you honestly and under the ever watchful gaze of Dendrin, that I was on my usual patrol in the Quala province…but…” “But what?” Master Ebon asks. “Well, I’m embarrassed as I have strayed from Dendrin’s lessons in restraint.” “What’re you talking about? Speak!” “I…uh was with a woman. A couple of them in fact…” This explanation isn’t one any of them expected. “In fact that’s why Brother Shade was speaking to me so much, he said he knew about my dealings with women of uh…low moral fiber and told me to stop it at once. I did and I tired, but when he left I assumed he was going on his own usual assignment in the Delerg province and wouldn’t know if I left to go meet with my…uh favorites…” At this point Master Ebon puts his hands over his face. Brother Gray gives you a stern look, and Cyrus starts shaking his head. “No, I don’t believe that. He’s lying!” he says. “Brother Cyrus I told you to be silent! I won’t tell you again!” Master Ebon snaps. “I’m not lying! In fact I assumed that’s partly why I was being called in here, I figured Brother Shade somehow found out I’d been whoremongering again and told all of you.” “Well you didn’t need Brother Shade to tell on you, because you’ve done a fine job of it yourself!” Brother Gray remarks. “I’m very disappointed in you.” Master Ebon stands up at this point. “Okay, enough. Obviously the only thing you’re guilty of is not keeping your dick in your robes. We’ve got more important things to worry about though. Brother Shade is still missing and possibly going to ruin our plans because of his own foolish impulsiveness. I want all available shadows to go searching for him and for Dendrin’s sake keep this dead silent! We don’t need the Empire suspecting anything.” “Understood, I’ll inform them now.” Brother Gray says and leaves. Master Ebon then stares at Cyrus. “Well? What’re you still doing here? Go find Brother Shade!” “But what about him? I know he’s lying and hiding something! My instincts tell me I’m right!” “And I suggest you stop listening to your instincts and start listening to Dendrin’s orders. Now I know you thought you were protecting the order, but I would remind you that falsely accusing a brother is considered forbidden. Next time you get the urge to do so, I’d advise you to have better proof or else it’ll be YOU who is in here facing the judgement of Dendrin. Dismissed.” Cyrus is obviously angry at this verdict, but merely nods and leaves. You’re about to as well, but Master Ebon calls you back. “Oh no, you stay. I’m not done with you just yet. There are still a few questionable things about your story and the only reason why I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt is because I hardly believe Brother Shade would’ve asked you of all people to help him. His open criticism of your shadow magic abilities displayed exactly how he felt about you, which wasn’t very fondly. I believe he would’ve asked Sister Dusk if he would’ve asked anyone to help him considering that was his lover. She’s already been cleared though. And speaking of lovers, I’d warn you to cease your whoremongering RIGHT NOW. If I find out you’ve relapsed, you’ll be undergoing the long abandoned ritual of the sexless shadow. I’ll let your imagination fill in the details.” You give a minor wince and nod. “Understood, Master Ebon. I shall pray for Dendrin’s forgiveness and strength to guide me.” “Very well, now go help your siblings search for Brother Shade.” You leave Master Ebon’s office and you don’t get far when Cyrus suddenly appears next to you. “You think you’re really clever don’t you?” he sneers. “Shouldn’t you be helping in the search for Brother Shade instead of spying on me?” you reply. “The search for Brother Shade…hah…that’s a laugh. I think we both know what happened to him.” “Well if you know then maybe you should tell Master Ebon, because I sure don’t know.” “Yes, play your little game. But I know you…we’re Eternals and we grew up together long enough for me to know you’re hiding something. I’ve noticed you leaving and disappearing during your off hours, this incident with Brother Shade isn’t the only thing you’ve been hiding. Something is going on.” “Cyrus, why the hell are you stalking me? Things not going well with Draven or something? Well I’m not interested, in case you haven’t been paying attention, my preference is female whores, not boys.” “Cute, but I’m going to find out what you’re up to, and when I do Dendrin himself will see who you truly are.” Cyrus says and then walks briskly past you. “Oh I think Dendrin already knows better than any of you who I truly am, which is why all of you are fucking idiots for following a god that doesn’t give a shit.” You mutter quietly. > You time passes... Year 21 “So do you think you’ll be going on the assassination mission?” Talia asks. “I dunno, I think I’m still under watch for my past indiscretions.” You reply. “Oh come on, even Master Ebon can’t believe you’re going to find some Felkan trollop to lay with while on your way to kill the king!” Murk laughs. You give a small chuckle and go back to poisoning your bolts. When Mr. Mol explained to you that the plan was going through, you wondered if you were going to be one the assassins. Mr. Mol said he was leaving it up to the Shadow Guard to pick “their best” as requesting you, might give you away especially given the mess you told him that followed with Shade. Mr. Mol congratulated you on how you handled that and as far as that event is concerned to the Shadow Guard, it’s still a mystery. His body was never found and it’s known he didn’t start a war with the Felkan Kingdom. The general consensus is he just left never to return due to his disagreement with Master Ebon. Brother Murk remarked on the irony that if he’d only waited a little longer, he could’ve been one of those sent to kill the Felkan King now. In any event you know the plan on both sides. As soon as the assassination mission is underway the Empire is going to start purging the shadow safehouses and all known dissidents before moving on to Gloom. From what you know, orc troops are going to be used liberally in this. Mr. Mol said it will thin out the ranks and put their restlessness more at ease. He also mentioned that he’s going to be sending in some of your former classmates as well. Your mission will differ depending on where the Shadow Guard send you. If you’re going on the assassination, then you’ll carry that out, but it will also be you job to eliminate all the rest of the shadows with you. If you’re left at home, then it’ll be your job to start sabotaging Gloom and taking out any shadow that gets in your way in the process. Mr. Mol mentions that some allies that owe the Empire a favor will be taking down the brunt of Gloom. Master Ebon has decided to make the move when the Felkan War is in full swing. Fortunately their plan to destabilize Rask was abandoned as all shadows were “suddenly” transferred out of there by decree of the Emperor. The Shadow Guard’s plan won’t even get off the ground if all goes well, at best, there will be a few major battles and then the hunting of escapees. Everything should go well for the Empire. The only perpetual pain is Cyrus. He’s only gotten more hostile since the Shade incident and even more so when he found out he wasn’t being sent to Rask. He claimed it was your fault and the pair of you had to be separated. He didn’t make any more accusations further than that, but he knows something is going on. You’re guessing he’ll probably be one of those on assassination mission. If he’s not around and you’re left behind, it’ll make your job a whole lot easier without the possibility of him spying on you. Then again if you’re both on the mission, it’ll give you an excellent chance to kill him, because at this point you want to as much as he probably wants to kill you and that idea certainly appeals to you. Later that day you pay a visit to Brother Gray. “Can I help you brother?” he says looking up from his desk. “Brother Gray, I know you’re still disappointed with my indiscretions, but I would like to prove myself that I am dedicated to Dendrin’s laws and commandments and I feel the best way to do that is to be on the assassination mission. I’ve even been practicing my shadow magic and while it isn’t as strong as say Sister Talia’s, I’m confident that it will be sufficient for the mission.” “Hmmm, well you were being considered, but you were still on the fence as it were. As for me being disappointed, you shouldn’t have been concerned with that, so much as you should’ve been concerned with offending Dendrin. However, if it puts you at ease, I ceased being disappointed a while ago. I’ve noticed that you’ve been more focused lately, so I know you’re trying to atone for your actions. It’s mainly why I was considering you for the mission. As for your skills, I’m still baffled to as why your magic abilities aren’t as strong as they should be, but I suppose your combat abilities make up for it and I think you’d be more than suitable for the mission in that regard, but I’m a little more concerned with sending you on any mission with Brother Cyrus since he is being considered as well. I’d rather not risk jeopardizing the mission, so I need to leave one of you here.” It’s apparent that whether you stay here or go on the mission that you probably won’t be dealing with Cyrus, which is a little disappointing and a minor reason to as why you wanted to go on the assassination mission in the first place. “I understand brother and I accept your judgment.” You say humbly. “Well I don’t have the final say, that honor belongs to Master Ebon and he ultimately answers to Dendrin as do we all. He will determine if you’re worthy or not, but I’ll see what I can do for you. So is that all brother?” “Yes. I shall take my leave and return to my duties.” You leave Brother Gray’s office, shaking your head at it all. Not about the mission, but more about the fact that Brother Gray still believes very much in you. In fact other than Cyrus and perhaps Draven you still can’t believe how you’re so accepted here, it never seems real to you. You can’t be exactly sure, but you think Talia has been examining you as a potential mate. Especially after all that business of you sleeping with countless whores became public knowledge. You can only guess she figures you’ve got a lot of experience, well that and the only other Eternal around is gay. Even Master Ebon hasn’t doled out any harsher punishment on to you more than what he did during your false confession. If you were in his shoes, you would’ve had yourself executed for the slightest possibility that you were involved in Brother Shade’s disappearance. Strange that the shadows’ treacherous nature would be so blind to someone so close to bringing them down. Their deity Dendrin hasn’t spoken to you in any dreams lately, or for quite awhile actually. Perhaps he got tired of taunting you or whatever game he’s playing. Though perhaps he’s lulling you into a false sense of security. You still always expect him to visit you any time you sleep. Of course maybe that’s part of his way of fucking with you as well. In any case, you return to your room and engage in your routine fake behavior of friendship. You’ll be so glad when this will be over, it sickens you when you actually start feeling like you’re actually friends with these traitors rather than crushing them under foot in the Emperor’s name. A couple days pass and you get called to Master Ebon’s office and when you get there, you also see Talia, Murk, Bianca and Dusk. He mentions that you’ve been chosen to go on the mission. He wasn’t sure at first, but after Brother Gray’s recommendation on your behalf and after consulting Dendrin for a sign, he says that you were chosen instead of Cyrus. He goes on to say he hopes that the pair of you straighten your feelings out soon, because there is going to be a great need for solidarity more than ever after this mission. Master Ebon also goes on to explain that Sister Dusk will be in charge of this mission and that you all will defer to her experience. Ebon brings up a bit of a change in the mission too, a change you’re not too pleased to hear. “We’re not assassinating the Felkan king. Dendrin showed me that our cause would be best served by deliberate incompetence.” “What?” you ask out loud, feeling a very real sense of having heard this plan before a year ago. “Killing the king would only throw the Felkans into disarray. We want them to be focused when they declare war on the Empire. Instead I want you to infiltrate the palace, kill a few guards and then get out as if it was a failed assassination attempt. This will definitely alert the Felkans to start beating their war drums and it hinders the Empire’s own plans. You all will be assumed dead by the Empire for obvious reasons, but in reality you will just return to us and will have to stay out of sight… which shouldn’t be too hard given our nature. When you do return, we shall put the final part of our plan in motion when the Felkans retaliate.” Maybe he’s not visiting you in your dreams anymore, but he’s definitely still fucking with you. Now you’ve got two things to take care of personally. You have to kill the shadow squad AND the king. Master Ebon tells you that the mission will be underway in the next few days and dismisses the lot of you. “Hey you got in after all!” Murk says after you leave the office. “I’m glad, you certainly deserve it.” Talia adds with a smile. When you return to your barracks, a death glare comes from Cyrus and Draven doesn’t look too happy with you either. The pair of them immediately leave the room. You can only imagine that he’s super pissed because you’ve been chosen to go on the mission rather than him. You wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to kill you in your sleep tonight. Not that you’re going to get any sleep, since you’re going to be up all night trying to figure out how you’re going to pull off your additional assignment. The day soon arrives and everyone gathers in the assembly hall to see you off. Master Ebon makes a small speech. “Brothers and sisters of the shadow, today is truly the beginning of the end for the Empire. These five have been chosen by Dendrin to carry out his plan. May their mission be a success and may all of them get back safely so that they may help the rest of us continue the fight at home. And if they should fall, know that they fall for a worthy cause and will pass from this world to serve in Dendrin’s shadow realm forever and there is no greater honor.” “Death to the Empire! For Dendrin!” Master Ebon shouts and everyone else follows suit, then the five of you leave. The first part of the trip to the Arat province is fairly laid back and the usual friendly banter goes on during this time, though Sister Dusk is consistently telling the rest of you to knock it off as your minds should be more focused on this mission. You’ve never really had too much interaction with Dusk before, but it is apparent to as why she was Shade’s lover. She seems very much like him in some ways. Yes, this mission is starting to feel all too familiar. In between the party banter, you’ve been coming up with various potential plans. One plan involves continuing the mission and during the infiltration of the palace you’ll try to kill them or get them killed by the guards. This allows you to get inside the palace with their help and you’re still in a good position to try to kill the king, of course this also means you’re going to have to be quick if you want to kill everyone without anyone getting away. The other plan would be to try to convince Dusk to split up the group and meet up at the Felkan palace. This would allow you to pick off a few of them before you get to the palace and perhaps make it more manageable. The problem is you’re going to have to come up with a good excuse, not to mention you’ll be a few bodies short in case you do run into trouble with the Felkan soldiers. Never mind the fact you’re going to have to convince Dusk of this in the first place. > You continue with the original plan Too complicated and too much can go wrong. It’ll probably be better to just play it by ear. You’re fairly confident that so much will be going on that you’ll be able to pull it off. The next part of the journey is your first big step. Crossing into Felkan territory. This is actually very easy. The outposts aren’t nearly as well guarded as they should be and combined with sticking to the wilderness and using magic to cloak yourself and its incredibly simple. The five of you camp out in a secluded wood where Sister Dusk addresses the situation. “Okay, now this is focus time. The Felkan capital Dessle, is still a long way to go, but I think we can get there by tomorrow night. It’s just as well since night is when we work best. Now remember we’re just breaking in, killing some guards and getting out. Don’t actually kill the king, assuming we run into him. Good thing we don’t have to, it’s not like we exactly have a map of the palace to go hunting him down.” “Can’t we just take out one of those outposts we passed by? I mean it would still start a war.” Murk jokes, but Dusk isn’t amused. “Brother, I suggest you stop joking about such things, you know the reason why, we’re doing things the way we’re doing them, but more importantly Dendrin wants it done this way!” Now get some rest, we’re going to need to be at full strength tomorrow.” Murk shuts up and mentally chalks up yet another way he embarrassed himself in from of Bianca. You also make mental notes, namely on who you should kill first. You wonder if you should take out the strongest or weakest first. You could probably easily dispatch Murk and Bianca without too much trouble. You aren’t aware of Dusk’s full abilities, but you know she is at least accomplished as Shade was. Talia, however is an Eternal and you know how strong she is. “You thinking about how you’re going to handle things if everything goes wrong?” Talia suddenly asks. “Huh? Oh. Yeah I guess you could say that.” “Figured. You’re always deep in thought, I’ve noticed you’ve been doing that a lot lately, especially at night in your bed.” “Hm, glad to see Cyrus isn’t the only one spying on me.” You answer. “I wasn’t really spying, so much as I was studying you, besides I think you noticed that I was.” “Yes, I did notice.” “Of course you did, because you’re always alert. You’re always aware. And I think you know of my desire.” Talia sits next to you very closely. While you were certainly aware of her interest, you didn’t expect it right now! You react immediately to her advances. “Talia, stop for a moment. Do you really think this is a good idea right now?” “What better time than now?” You’ve heard that line before though the situation is completely different than the one a year ago. This state of affairs is a little weird even for you, considering you were thinking about killing her not a few moments ago. “Talia, I really don’t think we have time for this. We need to get some rest, we’ve got a very important mission tomorrow.” You reply. “Well it won’t take that long will it?” “Won’t take long?” “Well I mean I know you’ve been with all those trollops, and your goal there probably wasn’t to make them feel good, but rather yourself. And I imagine you wanted to do that as quickly as possible. I don’t need to be pleasured…I mean perhaps I will express some interest in it during the act and maybe we can try for fun if the mission goes well, but right now I just want your essence.” “My essence? Wait a minute; you just want me to impregnate you?” “Well I want you to try. I suppose I should’ve come to you sooner with this, but I do see you as a potential mate. Even though we are all siblings and equals in the eyes of Dendrin, quite frankly WE…” Talia grabs your hand and puts it to her heart and then your own. “…are Eternals. We still have a bond that the others don’t and you’re the only one I believe is worthy for me. Our child will be an Eternal and a Shadow like us and we will raise him or her to follow Dendrin as we do. Now I believe you will come out of this mission alive and we will probably talk about our future together in greater detail later, but like you I also prepare in case something should go wrong. If you should fall in battle, then I want to at least have a part of you to live on through me.” This was definitely not something you anticipated. All these years of managing to distance yourself emotionally from all of these traitors and it’s been cracked within a few moments. Or maybe you still had the feelings and you never got rid of them, only buried them deeply. Doesn’t matter, you’re still left with the same problem, pangs of conscience. Weakness. Though perhaps it’s due to Talia being a fellow Eternal that has caused it. She obviously hasn’t abandoned all of her superiority complex. And she’s right; you do still have a bond. You just wish she was on the right side, because you don’t have time to convince her. You hope Dendrin’s having a good laugh at all this, because this is the best twist yet. Bastard. You could decline her advances, no you SHOULD decline her advances, but for whatever reason you accept them. Maybe it’s your weakness of will, maybe it’s your hormones or maybe it’s just your own twisted way of granting a dead woman her last request, even if she’s unaware of it. The pair of you leave the camp far enough away, cast a spell for privacy and embrace. At least neither of you will die not knowing the pleasures of the flesh. You have to admit, you were always a bit curious. How funny that your reputation as a whoremonger couldn’t have been any further from the truth. After it’s over you both return and go to your bedrolls without speaking another word. You notice Sister Dusk sleeping against a tree and open one eye as if to let you know what you were up to, but she doesn’t do anything else. Perhaps she understands the need for hasty copulation, having lost her own mate only a year ago. The next day, you set off. Murk tries to speak to you and makes a few comments about noticing that Talia was eyeing you a lot yesterday, but you tell him to leave it alone and focus on the mission. Dusk tells him the same thing when she sees him jabbering on as usual. As for Talia, she hasn’t spoken to you, though perhaps her mind is focused on the mission like it should be. Where your mind should be actually. You try to get back your focus and are finding it difficult. What are you supposed to do now? Throw everything away just for a one night with a woman? Even if she is an Eternal and you could reconcile yourself with being a traitor, you don’t fit in with the shadows and you never will. You’ve done too much to go back and the shadows are doomed at this point anyway. No, the Emperor and the Empire need you, and that’s who your life is dedicated to, nobody else. You spend the remainder of the journey cloaked and sticking to the less populated parts of the Felkan kingdom, though you eventually reach the capital and sneak over the walls of the city. Fortunately night is falling by that time. While you’re still struggling with your own dilemmas you do take the time to notice how much different the Felkan society is. A lot less soldiers first of all, though their soldiers all carry gunpowder based weapons in addition to their normal weapons. In fact their whole society is slightly more technologically advanced than the Empire, but that won’t mean anything compared to the sheer might of the Empire when they bring their full force to bear down on the Felkans. You hope that you’ll perhaps be part of that after crushing the shadows. Eventually the five of you are just outside the palace walls of where you presume the king is located. It is here where Dusk addresses the group again. “You all know the plan, get in, cause some havoc, don’t kill the king and get the hell out. Still, I think we’ll do a better job with the last part if we’re not all bunched up as a group. I want some of us to go to the other side of the palace and start from that side, the soldiers and guards will be less likely to gang up on all of us that way. I’d say about thirty to forty five minutes should do it and afterwards, we’ll meet up at that wood where we made camp yesterday, then we’ll continue the rest of the journey back to Gloom from there. Now I just need someone to volunteer to come with me and the rest of you can scale the palace wall here.” Well it looks like your original plan of trying to split up the group is going to come true after all, the question is do you want to take care of Dusk first or whoever decides to be on the second team? > You volunteer to go with Dusk This is a perfect time to get Dusk alone, so you immediately volunteer. “I’ll go, unless you’d prefer someone else.” You say. “No, you’ll do. Come on, we’re going around to the other side, as for the rest of you, wait about five minutes before scaling that wall, afterwards, I leave you to use your best judgment on how to handle things. May Dendrin’s shadow keep you safe.” You and Dusk leave the group and hurry as fast as possible to the other side of the palace. When you arrive you both cast your spider walk spell to scale the wall. The pair of you find yourself on the edge of some sort of palace garden. Farther away, a couple soldiers stand guard on a stone patio area near an entrance to the palace proper where some steps lead up to. “Well that was certainly convenient. We can use all this shrubbery to hide in, give our magic a rest for a moment.” Dusk says. “Great, I was getting drained anyway.” You remark. “Oh I don’t know brother, I think you’ve held up better than most give you credit for. I think after all this is over, I owe you a big apology.” “What for? Until this mission, we’ve never interacted for good or bad.” “Well let’s just say someone told me to never trust you because you were responsible for Brother Shade’s disappearance.” “(Sigh) Cyrus.” You say. “Yes, but I think your actions on this mission so far have disproved him…especially your meeting with Sister Talia yesterday. I believe if you really had any ill intent, you wouldn’t have submitted to her plan to be impregnated.” “Oh?” “Yes, Sister Talia has spoken to me about her plan to have you as a mate before, though I didn’t think she’d act on it during the mission. Obviously you have some connection to her as well, I guess it’s an Eternal thing. Anyway, let’s get on with the mission.” Sister Dusk slowly crawls through the bushes in the garden, steadily getting in range where she can take out the guards. Her back is to you and you slowly draw your blade. “You know these bushes are also good to hide bodies in so no wandering guards suddenly come across them.” You say and suddenly grab Dusk roughly with one hand over her mouth and then slashing her throat deeply with your knife. Dusk attempts to flail about, but you keep her from doing too much of it, but putting all your weight on top of her body and slamming her face into the ground. The gurgling death sounds she makes are muffled by the soil, which is now being watered by her blood. Eventually she stops moving, but apparently it was enough to move the bushes enough that one of the guards noticed something odd. You see the both of them through the cover of the undergrowth approaching your position. You wait until they’re close enough then stand up and throw your knife into the eye of one of them, and then before the other can lift his firearm, you fire your own bolt from your armbow. It strikes him in the chest and he falls down dead instantly. The one who got hit in the eye is still on the ground, groaning, but you quickly silence his moaning with a sword to his neck. You drag both of their bodies into the bushes to keep Dusk’s body company. Now you just have to figure out where the hell the king is in this big place. Hopefully you’ll bump into a servant or maybe even a royal family member who you can scare into giving you information, so you’re not wandering around while more Felkan soldiers pour into the place. You systematically search nearly twenty rooms, which probably doesn’t take you very long, but it feels like forever given how precious time is. You still can’t believe you haven’t run into any more soldiers yet, the Felkans seem to have a false sense of security with their superior weaponry and in general. About ten minutes pass of searching and while you’re in a spare bedroom you hear noise and shouting. Something about there being assassins in the palace and to get the king to safety. Talia and the others must be doing their work, and now you’ve got even less time to do your job. You curse and cloak yourself in a dark corner of the room fully expecting a guard to step in, but instead you finally have a bit of luck. “Come on inside here, lock the door and got through the secret passage in here.” A well-dressed young man says. “Are you sure? Shouldn’t we be with the guards?” a young female in a fancy dress says, locking the door. “Nah, we’ll be fine. These passages go all over the palace, even outside the city. The gnome builders did a good job of making sure this place had escape routes everywhere. Besides, you’re with me and I’ll protect you.” The young man says patting a flintlock pistol by his side. He pushes the bed and feels around the floor until you see him open up some sort of hatch. He starts to climb down and that’s when you make your move. The young man looks up just in time to see you materialize behind his girlfriend and slit her throat. He doesn’t even get a chance scream out, when you use your unnatural speed to kick him in the face. He loses his grip on the ladder and falls. You follow him down by jumping down the hatch, landing on top of him hard feet first. A crack is heard and you’re pretty sure you’ve broken one or two of his ribs. Despite the pain he must be in, he still tries to grab his pistol, but you easily take it from him and continue to kneel on top of his chest. He’s too busy trying to catch his breath to be able to scream now. “Don’t cry out and you might get out of this alive. You look like you might be important…you a royal or a noble or something?” He painfully nods and wheezes. “Okay, good then you probably know where the king is. Tell me or the pain you’re feeling right now will become ten times worse.” These royals must not have any sort of disciplined upbringing or even have the concept of honor at all, because the only thing the prevents him from telling you immediately is the extreme pain he’s suffering. You’re actually surprised he told you at all, you figured it would be a long shot. You also ask him where the exit to outside the city is from this passage and he tells you that as well. After you’ve gotten all you feel you need, you finish him off with a dagger to his throat. You run down the twisting dark passageway trying to look for the door that leads to the king’s room, and eventually you find it. You search and listen to the door first, just in case the young royal wasn’t as soft as he seemed and actually lied to you. You do hear some talking, but you can’t quite make out what is being said. Having little other options you unlock the door and enter. You exit through a big painting and find yourself in a very luxurious room with very fancy furniture. Two figures, a man and a woman, in regal clothing stare at you in a mixture of terror and disbelief. Four more figures are dressed in standard guard gear. “GUARDS! ASSASSIN!” the male figure shouts at which point all his guards lift up their firearms and point them at you. You speed up again and duck as the musket balls fly in slow motion above your head. You return fire on your own with your armbow. The bolt flies true and it strikes the male figure in the head. You’re going to take a guess that you just killed the king. You quickly run out of the entryway, before you even see his body hit the floor. A scream is heard from what is probably the queen as you run down the passage. The sound of guards chasing you soon follows. You feel like you’re going to pass out just by running and stopping to fight them isn’t an option, there’s going to just be more of them and they’ll easily overwhelm you in the state of exhaustion you’re in. You’re going to have to use your magic again, but that’s part of the reason why you’re feeling so drained. You’ve probably tapped into that blasted shadow magic more than you ever have for the past few days. While speeding yourself up seems like the logical thing to do, it drains you a lot more than merely cloaking yourself, which is aided by the natural darkness around you. You nip just out of sight and cloak yourself and continue on your way. You hear a couple guards shouting orders for some of them to go one way and they’ll go the other. You can hear three of them heading in your direction, though they obviously can’t see you and believe that you’ve ran so far ahead of them. You step into one of the passages entryways and hide, hoping they won’t think to examine it. Fortunately after one of them briefly glances at the entryway and sees nothing has been disturbed, they all pass you by. You could try to pick them off now, or you could go through the entryway and hope it leads somewhere secluded so you can rest a bit more. > You dispatch the guards You can’t afford to linger, you need to get out of here, if not only to escape but also to catch up with the other shadows so you can kill them before they reach Gloom. You head in the direction where the young royal you killed told you where an exit existed, or at least you hope it does. Along the way you see some of the guards up ahead still searching for you. Their backs are towards you, so it’s a simple matter of picking them off even in your exhausted state. A bolt hits one in the head for an instant kill, by the time the second one turns around to see his partner slump to the floor you’ve already run up and dispatched him with a dagger to his throat. The third one shouts for help and attempts to fire his weapon at you. You feel the hot burn of lead graze the side of your leg before tackling him and shoving your sword through his chest. You quickly examine your wound which isn’t life threatening, but it’s enough to cause you to limp a bit. You can hear more guards heading your way, so you continue to press onward, hoping you’ll get to the exit soon. Unfortunately you never make it. You’re so tired from all your magic use that you’re having trouble even staying awake, combined with the fact that you just used up your remaining energy dispatching those soldiers and your limp, you aren’t going very far. You pass out before the soldiers even capture you. When you come to you find yourself in chains and in a cell. The regal woman you saw when you killed the king stands before you with several soldiers and a dagger in her hand. “Good, I wanted you to be awake for this. Soldiers, open his mouth. We’ll start with his tongue first, I don’t feel like hearing whatever lies or final attempts at taunts while I show this Empire scum the true meaning of pain.” You attempt to struggle, you even bite part of a finger off, but it’s about the last damage you ever do to anybody. Some of your teeth are knocked or pulled out and then your tongue soon follows. The woman…the queen as you come to learn is quite upset with you killing her husband, but even more upset that the young royal you killed was apparently her son. She mentions how bloodshed for its own sake or revenge is mostly frowned upon in the kingdom, but in your case she’s making an exception. The queen puts you through a long list of agonizing tortures; she never does get the satisfaction of hearing you scream though. She begins to get angrier, which would cause you to laugh if you weren’t suffering in silence. The suffering you feel isn’t from the torture though, it’s from the fact that you only half completed your mission. You can only hope that your deeds will be enough for the Empire to bring down the shadows and the Felkan Kingdom. It will have to be. Eventually, the queen tires of torturing you and orders her men to put an end to your misery by slitting your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is a perfect time to get Dusk alone, so you immediately volunteer. “I’ll go, unless you’d prefer someone else.” You say. “No, you’ll do. Come on, we’re going around to the other side, as for the rest of you, wait about five minutes before scaling that wall, afterwards, I leave you to use your best judgment on how to handle things. May Dendrin’s shadow keep you safe.” You and Dusk leave the group and hurry as fast as possible to the other side of the palace. When you arrive you both cast your spider walk spell to scale the wall. The pair of you find yourself on the edge of some sort of palace garden. Farther away, a couple soldiers stand guard on a stone patio area near an entrance to the palace proper where some steps lead up to. “Well that was certainly convenient. We can use all this shrubbery to hide in, give our magic a rest for a moment.” Dusk says. “Great, I was getting drained anyway.” You remark. “Oh I don’t know brother, I think you’ve held up better than most give you credit for. I think after all this is over, I owe you a big apology.” “What for? Until this mission, we’ve never interacted for good or bad.” “Well let’s just say someone told me to never trust you because you were responsible for Brother Shade’s disappearance.” “(Sigh) Cyrus.” You say. “Yes, but I think your actions on this mission so far have disproved him…especially your meeting with Sister Talia yesterday. I believe if you really had any ill intent, you wouldn’t have submitted to her plan to be impregnated.” “Oh?” “Yes, Sister Talia has spoken to me about her plan to have you as a mate before, though I didn’t think she’d act on it during the mission. Obviously you have some connection to her as well, I guess it’s an Eternal thing. Anyway, let’s get on with the mission.” Sister Dusk slowly crawls through the bushes in the garden, steadily getting in range where she can take out the guards. Her back is to you and you slowly draw your blade. “You know these bushes are also good to hide bodies in so no wandering guards suddenly come across them.” You say and suddenly grab Dusk roughly with one hand over her mouth and then slashing her throat deeply with your knife. Dusk attempts to flail about, but you keep her from doing too much of it, but putting all your weight on top of her body and slamming her face into the ground. The gurgling death sounds she makes are muffled by the soil, which is now being watered by her blood. Eventually she stops moving, but apparently it was enough to move the bushes enough that one of the guards noticed something odd. You see the both of them through the cover of the undergrowth approaching your position. You wait until they’re close enough then stand up and throw your knife into the eye of one of them, and then before the other can lift his firearm, you fire your own bolt from your armbow. It strikes him in the chest and he falls down dead instantly. The one who got hit in the eye is still on the ground, groaning, but you quickly silence his moaning with a sword to his neck. You drag both of their bodies into the bushes to keep Dusk’s body company. Now you just have to figure out where the hell the king is in this big place. Hopefully you’ll bump into a servant or maybe even a royal family member who you can scare into giving you information, so you’re not wandering around while more Felkan soldiers pour into the place. You systematically search nearly twenty rooms, which probably doesn’t take you very long, but it feels like forever given how precious time is. You still can’t believe you haven’t run into any more soldiers yet, the Felkans seem to have a false sense of security with their superior weaponry and in general. About ten minutes pass of searching and while you’re in a spare bedroom you hear noise and shouting. Something about there being assassins in the palace and to get the king to safety. Talia and the others must be doing their work, and now you’ve got even less time to do your job. You curse and cloak yourself in a dark corner of the room fully expecting a guard to step in, but instead you finally have a bit of luck. “Come on inside here, lock the door and got through the secret passage in here.” A well-dressed young man says. “Are you sure? Shouldn’t we be with the guards?” a young female in a fancy dress says, locking the door. “Nah, we’ll be fine. These passages go all over the palace, even outside the city. The gnome builders did a good job of making sure this place had escape routes everywhere. Besides, you’re with me and I’ll protect you.” The young man says patting a flintlock pistol by his side. He pushes the bed and feels around the floor until you see him open up some sort of hatch. He starts to climb down and that’s when you make your move. The young man looks up just in time to see you materialize behind his girlfriend and slit her throat. He doesn’t even get a chance scream out, when you use your unnatural speed to kick him in the face. He loses his grip on the ladder and falls. You follow him down by jumping down the hatch, landing on top of him hard feet first. A crack is heard and you’re pretty sure you’ve broken one or two of his ribs. Despite the pain he must be in, he still tries to grab his pistol, but you easily take it from him and continue to kneel on top of his chest. He’s too busy trying to catch his breath to be able to scream now. “Don’t cry out and you might get out of this alive. You look like you might be important…you a royal or a noble or something?” He painfully nods and wheezes. “Okay, good then you probably know where the king is. Tell me or the pain you’re feeling right now will become ten times worse.” These royals must not have any sort of disciplined upbringing or even have the concept of honor at all, because the only thing the prevents him from telling you immediately is the extreme pain he’s suffering. You’re actually surprised he told you at all, you figured it would be a long shot. You also ask him where the exit to outside the city is from this passage and he tells you that as well. After you’ve gotten all you feel you need, you finish him off with a dagger to his throat. You run down the twisting dark passageway trying to look for the door that leads to the king’s room, and eventually you find it. You search and listen to the door first, just in case the young royal wasn’t as soft as he seemed and actually lied to you. You do hear some talking, but you can’t quite make out what is being said. Having little other options you unlock the door and enter. You exit through a big painting and find yourself in a very luxurious room with very fancy furniture. Two figures, a man and a woman, in regal clothing stare at you in a mixture of terror and disbelief. Four more figures are dressed in standard guard gear. “GUARDS! ASSASSIN!” the male figure shouts at which point all his guards lift up their firearms and point them at you. You speed up again and duck as the musket balls fly in slow motion above your head. You return fire on your own with your armbow. The bolt flies true and it strikes the male figure in the head. You’re going to take a guess that you just killed the king. You quickly run out of the entryway, before you even see his body hit the floor. A scream is heard from what is probably the queen as you run down the passage. The sound of guards chasing you soon follows. You feel like you’re going to pass out just by running and stopping to fight them isn’t an option, there’s going to just be more of them and they’ll easily overwhelm you in the state of exhaustion you’re in. You’re going to have to use your magic again, but that’s part of the reason why you’re feeling so drained. You’ve probably tapped into that blasted shadow magic more than you ever have for the past few days. While speeding yourself up seems like the logical thing to do, it drains you a lot more than merely cloaking yourself, which is aided by the natural darkness around you. You nip just out of sight and cloak yourself and continue on your way. You hear a couple guards shouting orders for some of them to go one way and they’ll go the other. You can hear three of them heading in your direction, though they obviously can’t see you and believe that you’ve ran so far ahead of them. You step into one of the passages entryways and hide, hoping they won’t think to examine it. Fortunately after one of them briefly glances at the entryway and sees nothing has been disturbed, they all pass you by. You could try to pick them off now, or you could go through the entryway and hope it leads somewhere secluded so you can rest a bit more. > You go through the door As much as you’d like to get the hell out of here, you’re in no condition to fight. You’re practically on the verge of falling unconscious. You take a risk and open up the door. You step inside and find yourself in some sort man sized wooden structure, almost like a box. Upon further inspection the top of it opens up and it basically is a box, though its really just an elaborate structure to blend in with the other wooden boxes in the storage room you appear to be in. The storage room proper also consists of a lot of barrels and other assorted junk. It’s not very big and the junk just makes it cluttered, though there is a single door that leads out. You have no intention of doing that though; you just need to rest a bit. You close up the passage entrance behind you and sit down in one of the corners of the “box” you’re in. Yes, you just need to rest a moment, and then you’ll be fine… You find yourself in total darkness without your senses again. “That last bit seems to have put you out. Just think how much easier this would’ve been if you had served me. Your magic wouldn’t cause you to feel so drained and it would be a lot stronger as well. Of course if you were following me, you wouldn’t be engaging in this elaborate duplicity.” Dendrin says “Duplicity? Your worshippers are dedicated to duplicity! You accuse me of such things, when you are doing nothing but reveling in such behavior! I am merely serving the Empire as I was always meant to. You on the other hand are supposed to be a god to your followers yet you do nothing to warn them.” you reply. “My reasons for how I treat my followers are my own and you are not worthy to know them.” “Worthy…like the rest of your worshippers that blindly follow you into destruction?” “No…but are you really so much different? You follow the Emperor blindly and he is just a man, at least the shadows are wise enough to revere a superior being. You believe you are superior to the shadows, but you are not. You do not see the flaws and that is why you’ve earned no explanation. Not because you aren’t a true shadow, but because of your own lack of vision. You will eventually see though, if not now then later. Of course by then it will be much too late. I’m sure we will speak again, no matter how much you deny me and crusade against the shadows, we will forever be linked…for as long as you’re alive anyway.” You suddenly wake up. After a moment of grogginess, you suddenly remember where you are. The Felkan palace! How long have you been asleep? You have no idea, but you’ve really dodged an arrow if nobody found you sleeping right in the heart of the enemy territory! You quickly open up the passage door again and it would appear that the coast is clear. Remembering what the young royal you killed earlier said you make your way to the exit that leads outside. Once again you expect there to be soldiers placed at the exit, but there are none. The Felkans must think you escaped already, either that or they’re very poor at security, either one doesn’t surprise you at this point. It’s about noon, and you’ve undoubtedly kept your “fellow” shadows waiting, if they are still waiting at all. They probably think you were killed along with Dusk. You have no idea if they know anything about the assassination, but you’re guessing they probably left before you completed your task. In any event, you’ve still got the job of killing them three and you don’t know if you’re going to get the chance now. Lacking a better idea, you head to the meeting point and hope that they’re still there. You finally get there just as it starts to get late in the day. No Felkan patrols in the area, but you still cautiously enter the woods. You aren’t completely out of luck as you see Murk pacing back and forth, looking around nervously. “Murk, where are the others?” you say, causing him to jump and nearly point his armbow at you. “Brother! You’re alive! Thank Dendrin!” he says with a bit of joy, though he look visibly upset. “It wasn’t easy, but where are the others?” “Talia went on ahead and assumed you and Dusk were dead. Bianca…she…(sniffle) didn’t make it.” He quickly wipes his eyes when he tells you. “Oh.” “I don’t understand, everything was going well and were already on our way to escaping, then all of a sudden there were Felkan soldiers everywhere! Bianca got shot in the back, by one of those infernal Felkan weapons! (sniffle) I know she didn’t see me as a potential mate, but I always hoped one day that…(sob)…sorry brother…I know there are more important things right now.” “It’s understandable brother, but how long ago did Talia leave?” “She left not long after we arrived here which was this morning. She’s probably already in Empire territory by now. I stayed just to make sure we hadn’t lost any more people. I had to hope. I’m glad to see you alive, but I hesitate to ask… Dusk isn’t with you. Did she fall as well?” “Yes.” “(Sigh) Another loss. Well as grim as this has been, I suppose we should get used to it in the coming months when we finally strike against the Empire properly. There are going to be a lot of our brothers and sisters that will probably fall in the cause of Dendrin.” “Well you’re right and wrong about that Murk.” You say, approaching him. “What do you mean?” “You’re right that a lot of shadows will fall in the cause of Dendrin…you’re wrong about thinking that I’d really consider any of you traitors to be my siblings!” you say and quickly grab him towards you and stab him in the stomach. The look of shock overwhelms him. “Wh…why broth…er…wh…” he sputters before you finish him off with a snap of his neck. You look down at Murk’s dead body and you feel nothing for him. You remember the times you nearly killed him before, but hesitated. Perhaps this is a good sign that you’re finally getting all these lingering feelings out of your system. Well three out of four were taken out, still not good enough though and you doubt if you’ll get to Talia in time for her to make her report to Master Ebon or Brother Gray. Still you have to try, so you make your journey right away and leave the body of Murk behind. You push your magic to the limit to speed your yourself up, you just hope Talia isn’t doing the same; it’s going to be hard enough to track her. You’re going to take a wild guess that she’ll probably use the same route you took to get to the Felkan border, at least you hope so. Night falls and you’ve made good time by getting into Empire territory as quickly as you have, but you’re getting incredibly exhausted. Even if you do get to Talia, you aren’t even sure you’ll have the energy to take her. You continue to press on though. “I will NOT be stopped by Dendrin’s petty favor of magic. My mind WILL overcome and I WILL use the gifts he gave me against him!” You mutter to yourself. Night eventually passes into day again and you manage get just outside the town of Lenet which is the closest town to Gloom. You still haven’t seen Talia, and can only hope she hasn’t made it to Gloom yet. In the meantime you feel horrible at this point and on the verge of passing out. You decide to head over to a small river that you know nearby and hope that some water will perk you up or at least prevent you from falling unconscious again. You retch and cough the whole time you drag yourself to the river. Finally you collapse nearly face first into the damned river. You look at your reflection which is just inches away from your face and you nearly see a stranger looking back. “What the…” you say to yourself. Your reflection doesn’t display the age that you know yourself to be, but rather that of an older you. You put your hands to your face and can feel the wrinkle lines. You hadn’t been noticing before, but you look at your hands and see how weathered they look. This overuse of shadow magic has taken its toll on your body. You may have even shortened your life span, you have no idea. “Brother! What are you doing over there by the river? Are you sick?” you hear a familiar voice ask. You turn around and see Talia. You must’ve somehow unknowingly passed her in your rush to reach her, since she is coming from the same direction you were. When she sees you, her surprise nearly matches that of Murk when you killed him. “You’re…alive! But…what happened to you? Your face! Some of your hair is white! What manner of magic did this?” she asks out of concern and begins to approach you. You look at Talia one last time as a fellow Eternal that once held the ideals of the Empire. There is so much you could say to her, but there really wouldn’t be any point. Better to just get this over before you get overcome with feeling again. You forgot to reload your armbow, but fortunately you still have the flintlock that you took from the young royal. You hope it’s reliable, because you don’t have the energy to fight her. Without another word, you pull out the flintlock and shoot it straight at Talia’s head. She falls instantly when she’s hit. You slowly stagger up and walk over to her and see that a good portion of the top left side of her head has been blown off. The deadness in her eyes is apparent, as are the brains leaking out. Mission accomplished. You stumble into the town of Lenet and make arrangements for a carriage to take you to the capital. From there you hope you can contact Mr. Mol. For now though you’re going to sleep the whole way there and hope you don’t get some annoying visit from Dendrin, because as of now you’ve finally freed yourself of the shadows. As far as your concerned the only time you want to be in their presence again is to face them in battle as a proper enemy and you are looking forward to that in the near future. > Year 25 “Good work on destroying another shadow cell, the sooner we get them all, the sooner we can focus all our attention on the Felkan Kingdom.” “I agree sir, especially since I would like to be involved in the conquest of the Felkans.” “Heh, well I’m sure something will be found for you. I assume you’ll report to someone else after this is over though.” Mr. Mol says. This bit of casual news surprises you a little; you can’t help but to question it. “Sir, where are you going?” “Me? Nowhere, but if you’re referring to reporting to someone else, what I mean is if you are transferred to serve in the Felkan war, I probably won’t be your superior anymore. You’d be a military matter as opposed to the unique situation you are now. Quite frankly if it wasn’t for you, I probably wouldn’t be in charge of anyone. Even the new Eternal Project is in the hands of another now, has been for years.” This seems like information that shouldn’t be freely shared with a subordinate, but once again Mr. Mol says it so casually its like he doesn’t care. He also notices that you’re wondering if you should inquire further, but he stops you. “Don’t worry about it. I spoke of things you needn’t have known or have to concern yourself with. Let’s focus on the task at hand.” “Very well sir.” You and Mr. Mol get back to the business of eliminating the remaining shadow cells. In some ways it is hard to believe that this is almost over. By your estimate there are probably only about thirty shadows left at best, most of them were killed three years ago during the destruction of Fortress Gloom. You wish you could’ve been involved in that, but for whatever reason, the Empire’s allies took care of it by themselves. You never met or even saw these allies, but you heard that it was the Derro. You do know that Master Ebon and Brother Gray died in this assault, meaning someone else took control of the remaining shadows, and you know that had to be Cyrus. Cyrus and the surviving shadows managed to incite the pathetic remains of dissidents the Empire hadn’t silenced yet, but nothing excessive thanks to the destruction of all those safe houses in advance. The only major cause of concern was very the minor orc revolt at a fort in Rask that was separate from shadow influence. It was lucky that Mr. Mol separated most of them with transfers and prevented the shadows from establishing any sort of presence there otherwise it might’ve been much worse. In any event this whole thing probably would’ve been over by now if the Empire’s attention weren’t also focused on the war with the Felkan Kingdom. Fortunately that’s going well too due to their own internal strife going on with the crown. “From what I can tell, they’ve pulled out of all the other provinces and mainly retreated to Delerg. Somewhat predictable, but I suppose it's the best place for them to hide out right now. I’ve tried to get more soldiers posted there to help, but again the Felkan war takes priority. I wish I could’ve even got one of your former classmates to help, but well, I’ve mentioned the problem with that.” “No matter, I’ll handle it with what help I’ve got.” “I know you can, but I’ve hired some extra hands anyway. I’ve got a dark elf mercenary attachment in Delerg I know they’re supposed to be helping with the barbarian tribes in Rask, but I’m paying for this out of my own pocket and they’ll go where the money goes. Besides I think this group is sick of the snow anyway.” “If you think they’ll help, then they’ll be put to good use.” You remark. “Their leader is called Tyren. Met him once and he’s a typical svelk, arrogant and condescending. His mercenary band is currently at the town Sinkhole. You’ll be meeting them there. Now I know you’ve worked with Empire soldiers and that’s worked out okay, but working with the svelk will be different…though I imagine that won’t be a problem for you. Just never turn your back on them and be on your guard.” “I will as always, but now I must ask, will they be more of a liability than help.” You ask. “No, I wouldn’t have bothered if I thought that. It’s just… well they’re svelk and all that goes with it. A lot of bullshit posturing by them that’s all. You’ll be fine, anyway I suppose you’ll want to get some rest before your trip to Delerg tomorrow. Carriage will pick you up tomorrow. That will be all.” The next day you take the carriage to the Delerg province. It doesn’t take long, but it does give you time to yourself, which you use to briefly reflect on the past few years and your possible future, among other things. When you get to Sinkhole it looks exactly like how the name describes it, half of the town in the swamp and the rest of looking like it’s about to collapse. Still, you’re not here to sight see, you’re here to hopefully put down the remainder of the shadows for good. Since you’re anxious to get this over with, you immediately head to the tavern where you’re guessing the svelk are hanging out. You anxious to get this over with too, granted you’ve only had a single experience with one of their kind, but that was enough even without Mr. Mol’s previous warnings. You enter the tavern, which isn’t much better than the outside of it. The dark elven presence is unmistakable since they’re the only ones in the place since they’re the only ones in the place save for the poor bartender and the couple of waitresses. You’d guess that the svelk intimidated the usual patrons. You wonder why there aren’t any Empire soldiers taking care of this, but again you remember, there aren’t many stationed here and they’re all probably at an outpost or a fort in the area. They see you and three of them approach. “Who let the monkey in? I thought their kind were content swinging in the trees in the jungles and swamps outside.” One of them says “You must have some sort of balls walking into this place monkey. We thought we did a good job of scaring the rest away, except the bartender and his lovely wait staff of course.” another says. “Lovely? If you like slumming I guess, but I suppose you males really will rut with anything won’t you? Monkey, I suggest you leave, before my comrade’s macho boasting is put into action.” A female svelk remarks. You don’t have time for this, and these mercenary svelk scum only respect one thing anyway. You don’t like using it anymore, but you feel an impression must be made and you tap into your shadow magic. In lightning speed you punch the female svelk in the nose and stab the bragging male svelk in the leg and trip him face first into the floor. The third svelk raises his crossbow, but you use your own armbow to shoot a bolt right through his hand. The three svelk all lie on the ground nursing their wounds, meanwhile the rest of them haven’t even moved to help their fellows, though a dark elf with long black hair speaks from the table he’s sitting at. “So, I’m guessing you’re our Empire contact. That traitor shadow we’ve heard so much about. I suppose your skills are impressive enough…for a monkey.” “And you must be Tyren and don’t address me as monkey again, let alone as a traitor shadow. I did not betray the shadows, they betrayed the Empire! I am an Eternal and loyal only to the Empire and the Emperor!” “Pity, you were more interesting as a traitor. Loyalty is overrated. Now…Eternal, if you’re done beating up my people, I have information where the shadows have been hiding out at.” “You already know where they are?” “Of course. We scoured most of this forsaken swampland as soon as that Mol guy hired us. Quite frankly it wasn’t hard to find them, they’re at some old temple dedicated to their god I think. Surprised the Empire with all it’s resources couldn’t do it, but then what do you expect from a government run by monkeys? Anyway, we’ve been waiting on you, Mol said that you’d want to take care of this personally. We’re just here for back up, so when you want to take them out, let us know, until then let us get back to our drinks.” “Wait, so what have the shadows been doing all this time?” “Hell if I know Eternal. They haven’t been stirring up trouble if that’s what you think though. As far as I can tell they’ve been doing their best to try to lay low, because they haven’t left that ruined temple of theirs in weeks. I mean I suppose it’s possible that some of them have been sneaking out to go elsewhere, but we’ve checked up on them a few times and the majority of them are still at the temple.” “And you don’t think that they don’t know that you’ve been spying on them?” you ask. “Hardly. Perhaps you humans clumsily stomp around when spying, but we svelk have been doing it for centuries! Even some religious fanatics with shadow magic aren’t going to detect us. Oh sure they probably know we’re in the area, but that’s about it. Trust me; we’re still going to catch them by surprise when we slip into their sad little temple.” Not exactly the kind of thing to fill you with confidence that the svelk are on top of things like their leader claims. Still, if the shadows haven’t been causing any problems like Tyren claims, then striking against them now before they can do any sort of regrouping might be the way to go. > You invade the temple now Even if the svelk weren’t as thorough as they claim, whatever defenses the shadows have or don’t have aren’t going to be enough to stop you anyway, so you decide to get this done with once and for all. “Alright Tyren get your people together, we’re going right now.” “Don’t presume to order me about human. Just because you took down a few of my weaker subordinates does not put you in charge here.” “No, the fact that I am on important Empire business and you’re just hired hands DOES put me in charge. If you would prefer a more physical demonstration of my authority however, I can certainly oblige.” Tyren gives you a look that he like to put you up to your threat, but common sense causes him to back down. Instead he forces a fake smile. “Sheesh, you Eternals are so damn serious about everything. Glad the Empire never cooked up more of your type. We’ll be ready to go in a few minutes, large bar tab to settle up with you understand. Wouldn’t want our sterling reputation be tarnished by not paying our debts.” You shake your head and wait outside. Naturally the dark elves take a little longer than a few minutes, but eventually they emerge from the tavern and all of you are on your way. The journey deeper into the swamp is fairly uneventful. Despite the unfriendly nature of the terrain, there aren’t any dangerous denizens in these swamps. The only creatures of any note are the Sul monkeys, which the dark elves continually make jokes about how humans are related to them. Tyren still gives you a glare every once in awhile, but that’s to be expected given that you threatened his authority in front of his people. He probably had to reassert it after you left the bar to wait for them. Eventually you start getting closer to the temple and you wonder if you should cloak yourself, but there really isn’t any point considering you’re traveling with all these dark elves. Actually you’re a little surprised you haven’t sensed or detected any shadows skulking around. You’d think they’d at least want to patrol the outer perimeter of their temple. Between that and what Tyren told you, this behavior of the shadows has been very strange, unless they believe they can hide for another couple hundred centuries to get revenge. If that is the case, they’ve gone completely delusional. “We’re here.” Tyren says when you arrive within the sight of the temple. “This is very strange. I would’ve thought they would’ve had a patrol or even a look out standing outside the temple. Even if they were cloaked I would’ve sensed something.” You reply. “Told you they haven’t been seen leaving the temple that much, so how did you want to handle this?” You’re a little amazed that Tyren openly asked for your advice. You tell him that when you get inside the temple to just be a little cautious as the shadows could be hiding anywhere insider it and maybe they set up traps inside. Tyren nods and relays a couple of orders in his native language to the rest of his people. All of you quickly move towards the temple entrance and suddenly you get that sense of something not being right, you at first figure it’s the shadows about to decloak for a surprise attack. The reality is a lot worse. The shadows cloaked something, but not themselves. They cloaked some sort of explosive which more than a few dark elves bump into when approaching the temple. They go off immediately and cause a spectacular chain reaction. The only thing that saves you, is the fact that you speed yourself up just quick enough to avoid the majority of the blast. Even then the explosion still catches you and you’re thrown into a tree at high impact several feet away. You’re hurt bad enough that you’ve broken a few bones and you struggle to stand up. You fully expect a shadow to come leaping out from somewhere or Cyrus himself to appear, but that doesn’t happen. In fact when you stagger back to the temple area, you see that it’s practically collapsed on itself (along with the charred remains of a lot of dark elves). You have no idea if the shadows planned to destroy their own temple, but if there were any inside, it would be unlikely that they survived. Still, you can’t take that chance, and you begin to limp over to the devastated temple. You hear a noise and swing around to defend yourself, but see that it’s Tyren and a couple of his people. One of them looks in pretty bad shape, and Tyren himself looks a little worse for wear. “(Cough cough) Shit…certainly didn’t expect that.’ He says. “Well maybe if you’d done your job correctly your little band of mercs wouldn’t be in pieces right now. Come on, we have to make sure all the shadows are dead. For all we know they aren’t even here and this was just a set up.” You reply and turn to head towards the temple. Maybe if you’d been thinking more clearly and weren’t still a little scattered from the explosion, you wouldn’t have turned your back on Tyren. However, you did and he took full advantage. You feel the piercing pain of the first bolt going into your back, followed by three more. You collapse to the muddy ground attempting to crawl away. You even try to use your shadow magic, but as fate would have it, it doesn’t work. It would appear Dendrin’s “favor” has been finally taken away. You’re left with the question to as why now of all times and there are several answers that pop into your head, but the only one that comforts you is that perhaps he finally lost all power due to losing all his followers. You’ll never know of course, just like you’ll never know if the svelk will be punished for killing you when the next bolt goes into your skull.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 25 “Good work on destroying another shadow cell, the sooner we get them all, the sooner we can focus all our attention on the Felkan Kingdom.” “I agree sir, especially since I would like to be involved in the conquest of the Felkans.” “Heh, well I’m sure something will be found for you. I assume you’ll report to someone else after this is over though.” Mr. Mol says. This bit of casual news surprises you a little; you can’t help but to question it. “Sir, where are you going?” “Me? Nowhere, but if you’re referring to reporting to someone else, what I mean is if you are transferred to serve in the Felkan war, I probably won’t be your superior anymore. You’d be a military matter as opposed to the unique situation you are now. Quite frankly if it wasn’t for you, I probably wouldn’t be in charge of anyone. Even the new Eternal Project is in the hands of another now, has been for years.” This seems like information that shouldn’t be freely shared with a subordinate, but once again Mr. Mol says it so casually its like he doesn’t care. He also notices that you’re wondering if you should inquire further, but he stops you. “Don’t worry about it. I spoke of things you needn’t have known or have to concern yourself with. Let’s focus on the task at hand.” “Very well sir.” You and Mr. Mol get back to the business of eliminating the remaining shadow cells. In some ways it is hard to believe that this is almost over. By your estimate there are probably only about thirty shadows left at best, most of them were killed three years ago during the destruction of Fortress Gloom. You wish you could’ve been involved in that, but for whatever reason, the Empire’s allies took care of it by themselves. You never met or even saw these allies, but you heard that it was the Derro. You do know that Master Ebon and Brother Gray died in this assault, meaning someone else took control of the remaining shadows, and you know that had to be Cyrus. Cyrus and the surviving shadows managed to incite the pathetic remains of dissidents the Empire hadn’t silenced yet, but nothing excessive thanks to the destruction of all those safe houses in advance. The only major cause of concern was very the minor orc revolt at a fort in Rask that was separate from shadow influence. It was lucky that Mr. Mol separated most of them with transfers and prevented the shadows from establishing any sort of presence there otherwise it might’ve been much worse. In any event this whole thing probably would’ve been over by now if the Empire’s attention weren’t also focused on the war with the Felkan Kingdom. Fortunately that’s going well too due to their own internal strife going on with the crown. “From what I can tell, they’ve pulled out of all the other provinces and mainly retreated to Delerg. Somewhat predictable, but I suppose it's the best place for them to hide out right now. I’ve tried to get more soldiers posted there to help, but again the Felkan war takes priority. I wish I could’ve even got one of your former classmates to help, but well, I’ve mentioned the problem with that.” “No matter, I’ll handle it with what help I’ve got.” “I know you can, but I’ve hired some extra hands anyway. I’ve got a dark elf mercenary attachment in Delerg I know they’re supposed to be helping with the barbarian tribes in Rask, but I’m paying for this out of my own pocket and they’ll go where the money goes. Besides I think this group is sick of the snow anyway.” “If you think they’ll help, then they’ll be put to good use.” You remark. “Their leader is called Tyren. Met him once and he’s a typical svelk, arrogant and condescending. His mercenary band is currently at the town Sinkhole. You’ll be meeting them there. Now I know you’ve worked with Empire soldiers and that’s worked out okay, but working with the svelk will be different…though I imagine that won’t be a problem for you. Just never turn your back on them and be on your guard.” “I will as always, but now I must ask, will they be more of a liability than help.” You ask. “No, I wouldn’t have bothered if I thought that. It’s just… well they’re svelk and all that goes with it. A lot of bullshit posturing by them that’s all. You’ll be fine, anyway I suppose you’ll want to get some rest before your trip to Delerg tomorrow. Carriage will pick you up tomorrow. That will be all.” The next day you take the carriage to the Delerg province. It doesn’t take long, but it does give you time to yourself, which you use to briefly reflect on the past few years and your possible future, among other things. When you get to Sinkhole it looks exactly like how the name describes it, half of the town in the swamp and the rest of looking like it’s about to collapse. Still, you’re not here to sight see, you’re here to hopefully put down the remainder of the shadows for good. Since you’re anxious to get this over with, you immediately head to the tavern where you’re guessing the svelk are hanging out. You anxious to get this over with too, granted you’ve only had a single experience with one of their kind, but that was enough even without Mr. Mol’s previous warnings. You enter the tavern, which isn’t much better than the outside of it. The dark elven presence is unmistakable since they’re the only ones in the place since they’re the only ones in the place save for the poor bartender and the couple of waitresses. You’d guess that the svelk intimidated the usual patrons. You wonder why there aren’t any Empire soldiers taking care of this, but again you remember, there aren’t many stationed here and they’re all probably at an outpost or a fort in the area. They see you and three of them approach. “Who let the monkey in? I thought their kind were content swinging in the trees in the jungles and swamps outside.” One of them says “You must have some sort of balls walking into this place monkey. We thought we did a good job of scaring the rest away, except the bartender and his lovely wait staff of course.” another says. “Lovely? If you like slumming I guess, but I suppose you males really will rut with anything won’t you? Monkey, I suggest you leave, before my comrade’s macho boasting is put into action.” A female svelk remarks. You don’t have time for this, and these mercenary svelk scum only respect one thing anyway. You don’t like using it anymore, but you feel an impression must be made and you tap into your shadow magic. In lightning speed you punch the female svelk in the nose and stab the bragging male svelk in the leg and trip him face first into the floor. The third svelk raises his crossbow, but you use your own armbow to shoot a bolt right through his hand. The three svelk all lie on the ground nursing their wounds, meanwhile the rest of them haven’t even moved to help their fellows, though a dark elf with long black hair speaks from the table he’s sitting at. “So, I’m guessing you’re our Empire contact. That traitor shadow we’ve heard so much about. I suppose your skills are impressive enough…for a monkey.” “And you must be Tyren and don’t address me as monkey again, let alone as a traitor shadow. I did not betray the shadows, they betrayed the Empire! I am an Eternal and loyal only to the Empire and the Emperor!” “Pity, you were more interesting as a traitor. Loyalty is overrated. Now…Eternal, if you’re done beating up my people, I have information where the shadows have been hiding out at.” “You already know where they are?” “Of course. We scoured most of this forsaken swampland as soon as that Mol guy hired us. Quite frankly it wasn’t hard to find them, they’re at some old temple dedicated to their god I think. Surprised the Empire with all it’s resources couldn’t do it, but then what do you expect from a government run by monkeys? Anyway, we’ve been waiting on you, Mol said that you’d want to take care of this personally. We’re just here for back up, so when you want to take them out, let us know, until then let us get back to our drinks.” “Wait, so what have the shadows been doing all this time?” “Hell if I know Eternal. They haven’t been stirring up trouble if that’s what you think though. As far as I can tell they’ve been doing their best to try to lay low, because they haven’t left that ruined temple of theirs in weeks. I mean I suppose it’s possible that some of them have been sneaking out to go elsewhere, but we’ve checked up on them a few times and the majority of them are still at the temple.” “And you don’t think that they don’t know that you’ve been spying on them?” you ask. “Hardly. Perhaps you humans clumsily stomp around when spying, but we svelk have been doing it for centuries! Even some religious fanatics with shadow magic aren’t going to detect us. Oh sure they probably know we’re in the area, but that’s about it. Trust me; we’re still going to catch them by surprise when we slip into their sad little temple.” Not exactly the kind of thing to fill you with confidence that the svelk are on top of things like their leader claims. Still, if the shadows haven’t been causing any problems like Tyren claims, then striking against them now before they can do any sort of regrouping might be the way to go. > You do some scouting of your own As much as you’d like to get this over with and put an end to Cyrus once and for all, you aren’t putting your faith in svelk recon. You’ll some of your own spying and if you even need them, you’ll enlist their help. When you ask Tyren where the temple is so you can do your own spying, he says that you’re just wasting your time and likely to just give your element of surprise away if you linger and insist on this foolishness. He doesn’t really care though since he’s getting paid either way, so he gives you the information. “You know where to find me, when you’re done fooling around.” Tyren says as you head towards the door. You look back and scan the three svelk sitting in a corner still bandaging their wounds. “From what I can tell, your people can’t handle it when I’m just fooling around. I question if they could handle it when faced with folks who won’t be.” You reply and leave. You immediately make your way deeper into the swamps towards the shadow temple. Despite the unfriendly nature of the terrain, there aren’t any dangerous denizens in these swamps. The only creatures of any note are the Sul monkeys and they seem to be content going about their normal routines. While you were in the Shadow Guard, you heard a few tales that a reptilian race called the Slin used to live here until the shadows removed them all at the request of the Empire. Eventually you start getting closer to the temple and decide to cloak yourself. Again, you hate to use the magic anymore, but as long as you don’t over do it, you’ll be fine. Actually you’re a little surprised you haven’t sensed or detected any shadows skulking around. You’d think they’d at least want to patrol the outer perimeter of their temple. Between that and what Tyren told you, this behavior of the shadows has been very strange, unless they believe they can hide for another couple hundred centuries to get revenge. If that is the case, they’ve gone completely delusional. You then finally see them, just outside the temple. You hide behind a nearby rock and spy on what they’re doing. You see them placing spherical plants in various places outside the temple. You’ve seen the plant several times in the swamp; they give off a faint harmless gas nothing more, but it looks like the shadows are doing something to change that. You see them infusing the plants with magic causing them to give a pulsating green glow. The shadows back away cautiously every time they do this. Then they cloak the plant. You’re guessing that bumping into or lingering too close to the plants causes something very bad to happen now. You watch them do this for about an hour before they go back into the temple. Another couple hours pass, and none of them have exited from it again. It would appear they have retired for the day and you’re left pondering what to do next. Going back and getting Tyren’s help would probably be the intelligent thing to do, but you really don’t know how they’re going to get past the plants. Even if they toss rocks at them to cause them to go off, you have no idea what the result is going to be. For all you know, the shadows might have an escape route to go through as soon as the plants do whatever it is they’re going to do. By yourself, you could probably speed your way past the plants without anything happening. You decide you’ll do this alone. You’ve practically been taking down the shadows since the beginning by yourself; you might as well finish it by yourself. If you fall in battle, then you fall, but either way, you’re making sure Cyrus dies today. You take a deep breath, mumble those infernal incantations and prepare yourself to speed past the plants, you’re just glad you saw exactly where the shadows placed them. As you’re running by them, you half expect them to still do something. They don’t though and you reach the entryway. The whole place is silent as you’d expect, but this seems different. It’s like you can’t even detect anyone here. Not to mention you’d expect to run into some shadows at least guarding near the entrance. Makes you question what the hell they’re doing in here. After moving deeper into the temple you soon find out. You see Cyrus standing over the bodies of several shadows. Near the bodies are empty flasks. “I’ll be with you soon my brothers and sisters. And especially you Draven.” Cyrus says looking at the bodies and ignoring you completely. “After all your talk of freedom and all your supposed dedication against the so called tyranny of the Empire, this is what it comes to Cyrus? Ritual suicide? I expected at least more of a fight during the last stand of the shadows.” You call out. Cyrus finally pays attention to you and his eyes display a distant coldness rather than outright hatred. “You never did understand us or the will of Dendrin, Empire puppet. You never will.” Cyrus says. “Oh I think I understood all too well, considering Dendrin spoke to me on several occasions. The difference is, I was strong enough to resist his lies. You call me a puppet, then what are you? A discarded toy by an uncaring god who has lead you to ruin? How fitting that your death is to be in one of his half forgotten temples. In another hundred years the shadows will be forgotten completely.” “It doesn’t matter. We carried out Dendrin’s faith as best we could…we can only hope that he will take mercy on us for our failure as we pass from this world to the next.” You shake your head at Cyrus’ words. You can hardly believe he’s speaking such rot and believing it. It’s actually making you angry to hear it. “You actually believe that shit? When you die here today, and you WILL die here. It will just be your corpse rotting until it finally disappears completely to time. Dendrin cares NOTHING for you or any of the shadows! He never did! If he did, he would’ve done a better job at helping you! He knew I was working against the shadows from the very beginning and yet he didn’t see fit to expose me! Did he come to any of you in a dream or a vision or anything? No, because ultimately he didn’t give a fuck and probably only saw the shadows as his personal playthings. Shit, the only person in that order that had any resemblance of sense was you of all people. YOU knew I was working against the shadows before anyone else suspected and nobody even listened to you! They told you that you were overacting and did nothing until it was too late. So why the hell would you still stay loyal to an order that is so short sighted?” Cyrus kneels down by the body of Dravin and touches his face. Cyrus looks up at you again, this time with a faint trace of emotion this time. It seems you might’ve misjudged his true motivations. “Perhaps all of what you say it true, but Dendrin did lead me to Dravin and for that alone earns my loyalty even if everything else was a lie. I pity you. Duty is all that is in your heart and it’s apparently all you’ll ever know.” He says. ‘Pity yourself. You’re even more weak willed than I thought if you did this for something as silly as love.” “I have no regrets, but I don’t owe you anymore explanations. You’re not here for that, you’re here to mindlessly carry out your duty. Well come on then and finish it!” Cyrus shouts and draws his sword. The battle between the pair of you is finally joined. There is no magic use or shadow tricks. It’s just one Eternal fighting another in straight up combat. Cyrus’ mistake. He would’ve done well to use magic as it could’ve put him on equal footing, perhaps even gave him the advantage, but perhaps he didn’t want it. Maybe this is his form of suicide. Eventually you land a mortal blow, slicing his side clean open. Cyrus falls and deflects your attempt to split his head open, but he drops his sword from the force of your blow in the process. Weaponless, tired and bleeding out from a deep hole in his side, Cyrus accepts defeat. “Do it. Eternal slave of the Empire.” He says coldly and then you fulfill his request by decapitating him. It’s finished. At last it’s finally finished. You begin to smile. “It’s finished Dendrin! You see this? In your own home! All of your followers, all of your sheep, fucking dead! Never again will you threaten the Empire! It has survived your treachery and you will be forgotten like you should’ve been centuries ago!” you shout, followed by your laughter. Some very loud explosions outside in turn follow your laughter. Someone or something has stumbled on to those plants. The temple, which was already in ruins, begins to crumble from the force of the explosions. You narrowly avoid getting hit by a large piece of ceiling, but the rest of it will be collapsing soon. Your first instinct is to speed yourself up to get out of the temple, but you find that your magic isn’t working. You quickly run to the entrance and find that it’s already blocked by debris. The temple is still collapsing and you’re either going to have to find another way out of act quickly to remove the rubble blocking the entrance. > You find another way out If you stand here trying to move rubble you’ll probably get crushed, surely there has to be another opening somewhere considering this place was falling apart before the explosions. You run back to the main room where all the shadows lay dead and you try to scan a possible opening you can get through while dodging pieces of concrete nearly hitting you. You think you’ve spotted an exit and run to it, but your luck finally gives out as fast as the ceiling. You feel a crushing blow to the back of your head. Not enough to knock you out immediately, but enough to do it eventually. You stagger back and forth as blood pours from the top of your head. “Damn it…can’t die…here…” you say and fall to the floor unconscious as the temple continues to collapse around you. Once again you’re in a place where your senses are completely dead. “No, Eternal you will not die here today, but you would’ve done better to do so I believe.” “Still speaking cryptically Dendrin? Face the truth, the Empire beat you. I beat you. Your followers are all gone and there is nobody left to spread your lies.” “I wouldn’t say that. I’ve still got you.” “No you don’t, you’ve NEVER had me.” “Perhaps not your mind, but as I said, we will forever be connected, whether you like it or not.” “I don’t think so, I tried using your magic and it didn’t even work! My link to you is so distant now that it will soon be severed!” “Is that what you think? Is it not more likely that I stopped you from being able to tap into the realm of shadow for your magic anymore? If anything you should be thanking me, since you obviously didn’t have the willpower to stop doing it yourself, despite all your bravado that you wanted nothing to do with the shadows.” You ignore Dendrin’s mocking; you won’t let him attempt to turn his ultimate defeat into some sort of “victory.” “I used your so called gifts against you Dendrin! I’ve won your little game and you have no more toys to play with. I will continue to live my life serving the Empire and you will have to find another way to amuse yourself.” “Well Eternal, you may be right on both accounts, but that doesn’t mean those two aren’t intertwined…but don’t worry Eternal, I don’t intend on visiting to bother you again. I doubt if anything I could say would change your mind about anything. Though I do wonder how you can justify your continued existence.” “What are you babbling about?” “You said the shadows were a threat to the Empire. You obviously felt this stronger than anyone considering that for the past four years you’ve been ruthlessly seeking them out. You even charged into this temple by yourself without any back up.” “Does this have a point?” “You’re the last shadow, Eternal. How can your beloved Empire survive as long as you do? How do you know that one day something within you doesn’t suddenly turn you against it?” “I AM NOT A SHADOW!” you manage to shout verbally in this ocean of sensory deprivation. The sound is so loud it becomes deafening, then painful and then you wake up. You look around you and find yourself still in the temple, or what remains of it. As it stands now there are plenty of exits since there a gaping holes in the walls. You rub your aching head and make your way out of the temple. On your way out you see several body parts strewn about the front of the temple. Upon further inspection they’re dark elven. You don’t see Tyren’s body (or head), but then he might’ve been blown up beyond recognition. You can only guess Tyren and his people came to the temple when they thought you’d been killed. Seems a little odd though considering they were pretty much content on swilling ale until you were going to give them the order to invade the temple. In any case you’ll relay all this information to Mr. Mol when you return to report to him. For now you’re in for a long walk back to Sinkhole. A few days later you get in contact with Mr. Mol who immediately sends a carriage to come pick you up. According to reports, you were assumed dead, apparently some of the dark elves that didn’t get blown up by the gas plants reported you dead without bothering to check. When you arrive in the capital a large group of soldiers escort you to Mr. Mol. Like more than the average amount, it makes you wonder what’s been going on while you’ve been gone. Maybe the Felkans made their own assassination attempt? When you arrive before Mr. Mol, he’s flanked by several more soldiers. In fact these ones are orcs. Mr. Mol sees you and looks down rubbing his fingers through his hair in a nervous manner. What is going on here? “I thought you’d died. Guess I should’ve known better than to trust those lazy svelk mercs. Guess I won’t be hiring them out of pocket ever again. Heh. So the shadows…are they all dead?” “Yes, though sadly most of them committed some sort of suicide by the time I got there. I did however slay Cyrus myself. So it’s over.” “Good. Good.” Mr. Mol says with a deep exhale. “Mr. Mol, what’s with all the soldiers? Was the capital attacked while I was away? Is there some sort of need for all this extra protection?” “No, the capital wasn’t attacked, but there is a need for extra protection…against you.” At this point Mr. Mol stands as far as he can from you and the heavily armed orc soldier step forward to block any potential advance you’d make on him. The soldiers behind you suddenly grab your arms to restrain you. You’re taken by surprise and natural instinct takes over and you react violently. A small scuffle ensues and Mr. Mol is shouting the whole time for them not to kill you, but only to restrain you. It’s doomed to failure, as you’re still more than a match for the soldiers and you kill two of them, before Mr. Mol tells them all to back off and calls more guards to come in. You’re left in a corner confused and angry with your sword drawn. “WHY?! What is this?!” you demand. “It’s a precaution. The shadows are dead and they need to stay that way! You’re the last of their kind.” “I’m not a fucking shadow!” “It’s not my call. This is a decree from an office higher than mine, probably from the Emperor himself. I did all I could, but it has to be this way.” You can’t believe this. You can’t believe what you’re hearing. “But I’ve proven my loyalty! I’ve proven that I serve the Emperor and the Empire!” you shout. Mr. Mol once again puts his hand over his face and breathes deeply before speaking. “I know, but how do we know it’ll stay that way? You told me Dendrin was playing head games with you on several occasions. How do we know your indoctrination won’t kick in at a later time? Maybe he’s always had power over you, maybe this is all just another part of his plan.” “NO! I beat him! My willpower and duty to the Emperor was stronger!” “…look…I believe you. I always have. But as I said, this is out of my hands. Honestly you were treading in dangerous waters as soon as you confessed the plans of the shadows and you were running on borrowed time when they transferred me out of the Eternal Project. It was only due to your over zealous dedication in hunting the shadows and my intervention that your existence was continued. When the extermination of the shadows was complete, you were to follow. I had hoped those svelk would’ve done the job, but I guess there were unforeseen complications. Just as well, I should’ve been brave enough to do it face to face anyway. You deserved that much. I apologize.” You ignore Mr. Mol’s attempt at justification. This all doesn’t seem real to you, you think that maybe this is some sort of mind fuck by Dendrin, but unfortunately it isn’t and you know it. You just can’t believe that you were lied to the whole time and about to be discarded as a tool that has no more use. Is this what you fought so hard to preserve? Is this your reward for all your hard work? Your whole life has involved nothing but lies, duplicity and treachery and you tried your best to persevere through all of it. You find yourself nearly laughing despite the anger you’re feeling right now. Dendrin’s last words to you, was how can you justify your existence due to being a shadow. You wonder if he knew the Empire would feel that way, even if you didn’t. Chances are, he did. Maybe that’s what he meant by your continued service to the Empire and his amusement being intertwined. The situation now isn’t good. Even if you did manage to fight your way out of here, where would you go? You’d be a wanted criminal of the Empire and that’s the only thing you’ve ever dedicated yourself to. Even though it wants to kill you right now, you can’t bring yourself to fight against it. You worked too hard to preserve it. And that’s when you remember a lesson you learned a long time ago in Mistress’ class. An important lesson that is going to get you through this: Submit and obey the Empire. You are nothing compared to the Emperor's glory and you will die if necessary to preserve his reign. You put your sword down slowly and address Mr. Mol. “You should not be apologizing sir. I should be the one to apologize as I have killed two men who were only doing their duty and I have also tried to prevent you from doing yours as well. If the Empire believes I am a potential danger then I must die. I will not see it destroyed after I have spent my life trying to defend it from internal threats, even if that threat could be me. We all may have to give our lives in the service of the Empire and today I will give mine.” Your speech is followed by several soldiers restraining you, though it’s hardly necessary. Mr. Mol approaches you with a display of regret on his face. “Maybe it won’t be widely acknowledged, but your service was important and as long as the Empire lives, you will also live. (Sigh) You deserved better though.” And with those words, Mr. Mol makes a nodding gesture and you feel several blades go into your body repeatedly. You don’t even feel the pain; you just put your mind in another place to numb yourself. One of those shadow tricks you learned. You guess perhaps it is better that you die if you’re still using such things. Maybe Dendrin was playing a sick waiting game with you. Well it won’t work and Cyrus was wrong too. You do know something of love. You love the Empire and the Emperor and that’s why you’ll willingly die for them. “Long live…the Em…pire…” you say and then expire.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as you’d like to get this over with and put an end to Cyrus once and for all, you aren’t putting your faith in svelk recon. You’ll some of your own spying and if you even need them, you’ll enlist their help. When you ask Tyren where the temple is so you can do your own spying, he says that you’re just wasting your time and likely to just give your element of surprise away if you linger and insist on this foolishness. He doesn’t really care though since he’s getting paid either way, so he gives you the information. “You know where to find me, when you’re done fooling around.” Tyren says as you head towards the door. You look back and scan the three svelk sitting in a corner still bandaging their wounds. “From what I can tell, your people can’t handle it when I’m just fooling around. I question if they could handle it when faced with folks who won’t be.” You reply and leave. You immediately make your way deeper into the swamps towards the shadow temple. Despite the unfriendly nature of the terrain, there aren’t any dangerous denizens in these swamps. The only creatures of any note are the Sul monkeys and they seem to be content going about their normal routines. While you were in the Shadow Guard, you heard a few tales that a reptilian race called the Slin used to live here until the shadows removed them all at the request of the Empire. Eventually you start getting closer to the temple and decide to cloak yourself. Again, you hate to use the magic anymore, but as long as you don’t over do it, you’ll be fine. Actually you’re a little surprised you haven’t sensed or detected any shadows skulking around. You’d think they’d at least want to patrol the outer perimeter of their temple. Between that and what Tyren told you, this behavior of the shadows has been very strange, unless they believe they can hide for another couple hundred centuries to get revenge. If that is the case, they’ve gone completely delusional. You then finally see them, just outside the temple. You hide behind a nearby rock and spy on what they’re doing. You see them placing spherical plants in various places outside the temple. You’ve seen the plant several times in the swamp; they give off a faint harmless gas nothing more, but it looks like the shadows are doing something to change that. You see them infusing the plants with magic causing them to give a pulsating green glow. The shadows back away cautiously every time they do this. Then they cloak the plant. You’re guessing that bumping into or lingering too close to the plants causes something very bad to happen now. You watch them do this for about an hour before they go back into the temple. Another couple hours pass, and none of them have exited from it again. It would appear they have retired for the day and you’re left pondering what to do next. Going back and getting Tyren’s help would probably be the intelligent thing to do, but you really don’t know how they’re going to get past the plants. Even if they toss rocks at them to cause them to go off, you have no idea what the result is going to be. For all you know, the shadows might have an escape route to go through as soon as the plants do whatever it is they’re going to do. By yourself, you could probably speed your way past the plants without anything happening. You decide you’ll do this alone. You’ve practically been taking down the shadows since the beginning by yourself; you might as well finish it by yourself. If you fall in battle, then you fall, but either way, you’re making sure Cyrus dies today. You take a deep breath, mumble those infernal incantations and prepare yourself to speed past the plants, you’re just glad you saw exactly where the shadows placed them. As you’re running by them, you half expect them to still do something. They don’t though and you reach the entryway. The whole place is silent as you’d expect, but this seems different. It’s like you can’t even detect anyone here. Not to mention you’d expect to run into some shadows at least guarding near the entrance. Makes you question what the hell they’re doing in here. After moving deeper into the temple you soon find out. You see Cyrus standing over the bodies of several shadows. Near the bodies are empty flasks. “I’ll be with you soon my brothers and sisters. And especially you Draven.” Cyrus says looking at the bodies and ignoring you completely. “After all your talk of freedom and all your supposed dedication against the so called tyranny of the Empire, this is what it comes to Cyrus? Ritual suicide? I expected at least more of a fight during the last stand of the shadows.” You call out. Cyrus finally pays attention to you and his eyes display a distant coldness rather than outright hatred. “You never did understand us or the will of Dendrin, Empire puppet. You never will.” Cyrus says. “Oh I think I understood all too well, considering Dendrin spoke to me on several occasions. The difference is, I was strong enough to resist his lies. You call me a puppet, then what are you? A discarded toy by an uncaring god who has lead you to ruin? How fitting that your death is to be in one of his half forgotten temples. In another hundred years the shadows will be forgotten completely.” “It doesn’t matter. We carried out Dendrin’s faith as best we could…we can only hope that he will take mercy on us for our failure as we pass from this world to the next.” You shake your head at Cyrus’ words. You can hardly believe he’s speaking such rot and believing it. It’s actually making you angry to hear it. “You actually believe that shit? When you die here today, and you WILL die here. It will just be your corpse rotting until it finally disappears completely to time. Dendrin cares NOTHING for you or any of the shadows! He never did! If he did, he would’ve done a better job at helping you! He knew I was working against the shadows from the very beginning and yet he didn’t see fit to expose me! Did he come to any of you in a dream or a vision or anything? No, because ultimately he didn’t give a fuck and probably only saw the shadows as his personal playthings. Shit, the only person in that order that had any resemblance of sense was you of all people. YOU knew I was working against the shadows before anyone else suspected and nobody even listened to you! They told you that you were overacting and did nothing until it was too late. So why the hell would you still stay loyal to an order that is so short sighted?” Cyrus kneels down by the body of Dravin and touches his face. Cyrus looks up at you again, this time with a faint trace of emotion this time. It seems you might’ve misjudged his true motivations. “Perhaps all of what you say it true, but Dendrin did lead me to Dravin and for that alone earns my loyalty even if everything else was a lie. I pity you. Duty is all that is in your heart and it’s apparently all you’ll ever know.” He says. ‘Pity yourself. You’re even more weak willed than I thought if you did this for something as silly as love.” “I have no regrets, but I don’t owe you anymore explanations. You’re not here for that, you’re here to mindlessly carry out your duty. Well come on then and finish it!” Cyrus shouts and draws his sword. The battle between the pair of you is finally joined. There is no magic use or shadow tricks. It’s just one Eternal fighting another in straight up combat. Cyrus’ mistake. He would’ve done well to use magic as it could’ve put him on equal footing, perhaps even gave him the advantage, but perhaps he didn’t want it. Maybe this is his form of suicide. Eventually you land a mortal blow, slicing his side clean open. Cyrus falls and deflects your attempt to split his head open, but he drops his sword from the force of your blow in the process. Weaponless, tired and bleeding out from a deep hole in his side, Cyrus accepts defeat. “Do it. Eternal slave of the Empire.” He says coldly and then you fulfill his request by decapitating him. It’s finished. At last it’s finally finished. You begin to smile. “It’s finished Dendrin! You see this? In your own home! All of your followers, all of your sheep, fucking dead! Never again will you threaten the Empire! It has survived your treachery and you will be forgotten like you should’ve been centuries ago!” you shout, followed by your laughter. Some very loud explosions outside in turn follow your laughter. Someone or something has stumbled on to those plants. The temple, which was already in ruins, begins to crumble from the force of the explosions. You narrowly avoid getting hit by a large piece of ceiling, but the rest of it will be collapsing soon. Your first instinct is to speed yourself up to get out of the temple, but you find that your magic isn’t working. You quickly run to the entrance and find that it’s already blocked by debris. The temple is still collapsing and you’re either going to have to find another way out of act quickly to remove the rubble blocking the entrance. > You move the rubble There’s no time to go searching for another exit, the whole place is probably going to collapse. You start moving rocks as fast as you can as the roof continues to tumble down. Unfortunately you’re not quick enough and while your attention is divided, you don’t evade the rest of the ceiling that crashes on your head. Buried under several pounds debris you begin to lose consciousness. “No…can’t die…not in this accursed place.” are your last words.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 25 “Good work on destroying another shadow cell, the sooner we get them all, the sooner we can focus all our attention on the Felkan Kingdom.” “I agree sir, especially since I would like to be involved in the conquest of the Felkans.” “Heh, well I’m sure something will be found for you. I assume you’ll report to someone else after this is over though.” Mr. Mol says. This bit of casual news surprises you a little; you can’t help but to question it. “Sir, where are you going?” “Me? Nowhere, but if you’re referring to reporting to someone else, what I mean is if you are transferred to serve in the Felkan war, I probably won’t be your superior anymore. You’d be a military matter as opposed to the unique situation you are now. Quite frankly if it wasn’t for you, I probably wouldn’t be in charge of anyone. Even the new Eternal Project is in the hands of another now, has been for years.” This seems like information that shouldn’t be freely shared with a subordinate, but once again Mr. Mol says it so casually its like he doesn’t care. He also notices that you’re wondering if you should inquire further, but he stops you. “Don’t worry about it. I spoke of things you needn’t have known or have to concern yourself with. Let’s focus on the task at hand.” “Very well sir.” You and Mr. Mol get back to the business of eliminating the remaining shadow cells. In some ways it is hard to believe that this is almost over. By your estimate there are probably only about thirty shadows left at best, most of them were killed three years ago during the destruction of Fortress Gloom. You wish you could’ve been involved in that, but for whatever reason, the Empire’s allies took care of it by themselves. You never met or even saw these allies, but you heard that it was the Derro. You do know that Master Ebon and Brother Gray died in this assault, meaning someone else took control of the remaining shadows, and you know that had to be Cyrus. Cyrus and the surviving shadows managed to incite the pathetic remains of dissidents the Empire hadn’t silenced yet, but nothing excessive thanks to the destruction of all those safe houses in advance. The only major cause of concern was very the minor orc revolt at a fort in Rask that was separate from shadow influence. It was lucky that Mr. Mol separated most of them with transfers and prevented the shadows from establishing any sort of presence there otherwise it might’ve been much worse. In any event this whole thing probably would’ve been over by now if the Empire’s attention weren’t also focused on the war with the Felkan Kingdom. Fortunately that’s going well too due to their own internal strife going on with the crown. “From what I can tell, they’ve pulled out of all the other provinces and mainly retreated to Delerg. Somewhat predictable, but I suppose it's the best place for them to hide out right now. I’ve tried to get more soldiers posted there to help, but again the Felkan war takes priority. I wish I could’ve even got one of your former classmates to help, but well, I’ve mentioned the problem with that.” “No matter, I’ll handle it with what help I’ve got.” “I know you can, but I’ve hired some extra hands anyway. I’ve got a dark elf mercenary attachment in Delerg I know they’re supposed to be helping with the barbarian tribes in Rask, but I’m paying for this out of my own pocket and they’ll go where the money goes. Besides I think this group is sick of the snow anyway.” “If you think they’ll help, then they’ll be put to good use.” You remark. “Their leader is called Tyren. Met him once and he’s a typical svelk, arrogant and condescending. His mercenary band is currently at the town Sinkhole. You’ll be meeting them there. Now I know you’ve worked with Empire soldiers and that’s worked out okay, but working with the svelk will be different…though I imagine that won’t be a problem for you. Just never turn your back on them and be on your guard.” “I will as always, but now I must ask, will they be more of a liability than help.” You ask. “No, I wouldn’t have bothered if I thought that. It’s just… well they’re svelk and all that goes with it. A lot of bullshit posturing by them that’s all. You’ll be fine, anyway I suppose you’ll want to get some rest before your trip to Delerg tomorrow. Carriage will pick you up tomorrow. That will be all.” The next day you take the carriage to the Delerg province. It doesn’t take long, but it does give you time to yourself, which you use to briefly reflect on the past few years and your possible future, among other things. When you get to Sinkhole it looks exactly like how the name describes it, half of the town in the swamp and the rest of looking like it’s about to collapse. Still, you’re not here to sight see, you’re here to hopefully put down the remainder of the shadows for good. Since you’re anxious to get this over with, you immediately head to the tavern where you’re guessing the svelk are hanging out. You anxious to get this over with too, granted you’ve only had a single experience with one of their kind, but that was enough even without Mr. Mol’s previous warnings. You enter the tavern, which isn’t much better than the outside of it. The dark elven presence is unmistakable since they’re the only ones in the place since they’re the only ones in the place save for the poor bartender and the couple of waitresses. You’d guess that the svelk intimidated the usual patrons. You wonder why there aren’t any Empire soldiers taking care of this, but again you remember, there aren’t many stationed here and they’re all probably at an outpost or a fort in the area. They see you and three of them approach. “Who let the monkey in? I thought their kind were content swinging in the trees in the jungles and swamps outside.” One of them says “You must have some sort of balls walking into this place monkey. We thought we did a good job of scaring the rest away, except the bartender and his lovely wait staff of course.” another says. “Lovely? If you like slumming I guess, but I suppose you males really will rut with anything won’t you? Monkey, I suggest you leave, before my comrade’s macho boasting is put into action.” A female svelk remarks. You don’t have time for this, and these mercenary svelk scum only respect one thing anyway. You don’t like using it anymore, but you feel an impression must be made and you tap into your shadow magic. In lightning speed you punch the female svelk in the nose and stab the bragging male svelk in the leg and trip him face first into the floor. The third svelk raises his crossbow, but you use your own armbow to shoot a bolt right through his hand. The three svelk all lie on the ground nursing their wounds, meanwhile the rest of them haven’t even moved to help their fellows, though a dark elf with long black hair speaks from the table he’s sitting at. “So, I’m guessing you’re our Empire contact. That traitor shadow we’ve heard so much about. I suppose your skills are impressive enough…for a monkey.” “And you must be Tyren and don’t address me as monkey again, let alone as a traitor shadow. I did not betray the shadows, they betrayed the Empire! I am an Eternal and loyal only to the Empire and the Emperor!” “Pity, you were more interesting as a traitor. Loyalty is overrated. Now…Eternal, if you’re done beating up my people, I have information where the shadows have been hiding out at.” “You already know where they are?” “Of course. We scoured most of this forsaken swampland as soon as that Mol guy hired us. Quite frankly it wasn’t hard to find them, they’re at some old temple dedicated to their god I think. Surprised the Empire with all it’s resources couldn’t do it, but then what do you expect from a government run by monkeys? Anyway, we’ve been waiting on you, Mol said that you’d want to take care of this personally. We’re just here for back up, so when you want to take them out, let us know, until then let us get back to our drinks.” “Wait, so what have the shadows been doing all this time?” “Hell if I know Eternal. They haven’t been stirring up trouble if that’s what you think though. As far as I can tell they’ve been doing their best to try to lay low, because they haven’t left that ruined temple of theirs in weeks. I mean I suppose it’s possible that some of them have been sneaking out to go elsewhere, but we’ve checked up on them a few times and the majority of them are still at the temple.” “And you don’t think that they don’t know that you’ve been spying on them?” you ask. “Hardly. Perhaps you humans clumsily stomp around when spying, but we svelk have been doing it for centuries! Even some religious fanatics with shadow magic aren’t going to detect us. Oh sure they probably know we’re in the area, but that’s about it. Trust me; we’re still going to catch them by surprise when we slip into their sad little temple.” Not exactly the kind of thing to fill you with confidence that the svelk are on top of things like their leader claims. Still, if the shadows haven’t been causing any problems like Tyren claims, then striking against them now before they can do any sort of regrouping might be the way to go. > The carriage ride (Self reflection) As you wait in the bumpy ride to Sinkhole, you think back on some of the things that have occurred to you within the past few years and your current situation. You remember soon after Gloom was officially destroyed, everyone figured mopping up the remaining shadows wouldn't take too long. Who knew they'd be able to hold out for four years? Though to be honest, you knew they'd be able to hold out for as long as they had the ability to do so, mainly because they were being lead by not just a shadow, but by an Eternal. No matter what his allegiances are, Cyrus is always going to be one and that is what truly makes him a formidable foe, not because of his silly faith in Dendrin. In fact his faith in Dendrin is what makes him weak like the rest. There were several times you nearly caught up to him, but he always managed to stay one step ahead of you. He ran like a coward with no sense of honor. With any luck, this will be his last holdout and he'll have nowhere to run this time. Dendrin. Another being that you haven't had much contact with in several years, thankfully. You don't know why. Maybe it's due to his loss of followers making him weaker or perhaps you've sufficiently distanced yourself now that he can't contact you anymore. Or maybe he just saw the futility of trying to play head games with you. You stood in the very heart of the enemy and won. He couldn't break you and is suffering considerable losses because of it. Yes, when Cyrus is finally dead, you'll be able to thrive and spread the Emperor's glory elsewhere. You continue to look forward to being transferred to the frontlines of the Felkan war zone. You just hope the war isn't won before you get there given how successful things have been on that front. Part of you does wonder about the new Eternal Project that Mr. Mol speaks of though. Will the new Eternal be the same as you or possibly better? If they are better, are you going to be considered obsolete? This is why you MUST prove yourself. You have to show that even by the time the new Eternals are ready, YOU will be still of value to the Empire. Perhaps it will even be you who will lead the new ones into battle. Part of you likes that idea. Not just leading troops into battle as you've done that before during raids on shadow hideouts, but leading other Eternals. Sometimes you wonder what life would've been like if you'd been one of the Eternals to serve as a soldier instead. You don't know much about those former classmates, but you do know not many of them are left either, though you have heard two of them ended up marrying each other. One of them is on the Felkan frontlines while other is stationed in the Nalin province defending it from desert nomads from the south. Makes you think about Talia, and how it was a shame that she had to die. She was a fine Eternal otherwise. Perhaps if she had been on the right side, you would've married her. She certainly wanted to produce a child with you. Though maybe its best you hadn't been assigned as a soldier or else the shadow plot wouldn't have been uncovered by you and then where would the Empire be? In a much worse situation most likely. Yes, your journey thus far while not an easy one, is one you can feel a sense of accomplishment in. You sit back and relax for the rest of the carriage ride, knowing that your deeds have probably prevented the Empire from plunging into mass riots or even rebellion. It fills you with pride and a little happiness that you have served it and the Emperor so well. You can only hope to serve with such distinction in the future.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Too complicated and too much can go wrong. It’ll probably be better to just play it by ear. You’re fairly confident that so much will be going on that you’ll be able to pull it off. The next part of the journey is your first big step. Crossing into Felkan territory. This is actually very easy. The outposts aren’t nearly as well guarded as they should be and combined with sticking to the wilderness and using magic to cloak yourself and its incredibly simple. The five of you camp out in a secluded wood where Sister Dusk addresses the situation. “Okay, now this is focus time. The Felkan capital Dessle, is still a long way to go, but I think we can get there by tomorrow night. It’s just as well since night is when we work best. Now remember we’re just breaking in, killing some guards and getting out. Don’t actually kill the king, assuming we run into him. Good thing we don’t have to, it’s not like we exactly have a map of the palace to go hunting him down.” “Can’t we just take out one of those outposts we passed by? I mean it would still start a war.” Murk jokes, but Dusk isn’t amused. “Brother, I suggest you stop joking about such things, you know the reason why, we’re doing things the way we’re doing them, but more importantly Dendrin wants it done this way!” Now get some rest, we’re going to need to be at full strength tomorrow.” Murk shuts up and mentally chalks up yet another way he embarrassed himself in from of Bianca. You also make mental notes, namely on who you should kill first. You wonder if you should take out the strongest or weakest first. You could probably easily dispatch Murk and Bianca without too much trouble. You aren’t aware of Dusk’s full abilities, but you know she is at least accomplished as Shade was. Talia, however is an Eternal and you know how strong she is. “You thinking about how you’re going to handle things if everything goes wrong?” Talia suddenly asks. “Huh? Oh. Yeah I guess you could say that.” “Figured. You’re always deep in thought, I’ve noticed you’ve been doing that a lot lately, especially at night in your bed.” “Hm, glad to see Cyrus isn’t the only one spying on me.” You answer. “I wasn’t really spying, so much as I was studying you, besides I think you noticed that I was.” “Yes, I did notice.” “Of course you did, because you’re always alert. You’re always aware. And I think you know of my desire.” Talia sits next to you very closely. While you were certainly aware of her interest, you didn’t expect it right now! You react immediately to her advances. “Talia, stop for a moment. Do you really think this is a good idea right now?” “What better time than now?” You’ve heard that line before though the situation is completely different than the one a year ago. This state of affairs is a little weird even for you, considering you were thinking about killing her not a few moments ago. “Talia, I really don’t think we have time for this. We need to get some rest, we’ve got a very important mission tomorrow.” You reply. “Well it won’t take that long will it?” “Won’t take long?” “Well I mean I know you’ve been with all those trollops, and your goal there probably wasn’t to make them feel good, but rather yourself. And I imagine you wanted to do that as quickly as possible. I don’t need to be pleasured…I mean perhaps I will express some interest in it during the act and maybe we can try for fun if the mission goes well, but right now I just want your essence.” “My essence? Wait a minute; you just want me to impregnate you?” “Well I want you to try. I suppose I should’ve come to you sooner with this, but I do see you as a potential mate. Even though we are all siblings and equals in the eyes of Dendrin, quite frankly WE…” Talia grabs your hand and puts it to her heart and then your own. “…are Eternals. We still have a bond that the others don’t and you’re the only one I believe is worthy for me. Our child will be an Eternal and a Shadow like us and we will raise him or her to follow Dendrin as we do. Now I believe you will come out of this mission alive and we will probably talk about our future together in greater detail later, but like you I also prepare in case something should go wrong. If you should fall in battle, then I want to at least have a part of you to live on through me.” This was definitely not something you anticipated. All these years of managing to distance yourself emotionally from all of these traitors and it’s been cracked within a few moments. Or maybe you still had the feelings and you never got rid of them, only buried them deeply. Doesn’t matter, you’re still left with the same problem, pangs of conscience. Weakness. Though perhaps it’s due to Talia being a fellow Eternal that has caused it. She obviously hasn’t abandoned all of her superiority complex. And she’s right; you do still have a bond. You just wish she was on the right side, because you don’t have time to convince her. You hope Dendrin’s having a good laugh at all this, because this is the best twist yet. Bastard. You could decline her advances, no you SHOULD decline her advances, but for whatever reason you accept them. Maybe it’s your weakness of will, maybe it’s your hormones or maybe it’s just your own twisted way of granting a dead woman her last request, even if she’s unaware of it. The pair of you leave the camp far enough away, cast a spell for privacy and embrace. At least neither of you will die not knowing the pleasures of the flesh. You have to admit, you were always a bit curious. How funny that your reputation as a whoremonger couldn’t have been any further from the truth. After it’s over you both return and go to your bedrolls without speaking another word. You notice Sister Dusk sleeping against a tree and open one eye as if to let you know what you were up to, but she doesn’t do anything else. Perhaps she understands the need for hasty copulation, having lost her own mate only a year ago. The next day, you set off. Murk tries to speak to you and makes a few comments about noticing that Talia was eyeing you a lot yesterday, but you tell him to leave it alone and focus on the mission. Dusk tells him the same thing when she sees him jabbering on as usual. As for Talia, she hasn’t spoken to you, though perhaps her mind is focused on the mission like it should be. Where your mind should be actually. You try to get back your focus and are finding it difficult. What are you supposed to do now? Throw everything away just for a one night with a woman? Even if she is an Eternal and you could reconcile yourself with being a traitor, you don’t fit in with the shadows and you never will. You’ve done too much to go back and the shadows are doomed at this point anyway. No, the Emperor and the Empire need you, and that’s who your life is dedicated to, nobody else. You spend the remainder of the journey cloaked and sticking to the less populated parts of the Felkan kingdom, though you eventually reach the capital and sneak over the walls of the city. Fortunately night is falling by that time. While you’re still struggling with your own dilemmas you do take the time to notice how much different the Felkan society is. A lot less soldiers first of all, though their soldiers all carry gunpowder based weapons in addition to their normal weapons. In fact their whole society is slightly more technologically advanced than the Empire, but that won’t mean anything compared to the sheer might of the Empire when they bring their full force to bear down on the Felkans. You hope that you’ll perhaps be part of that after crushing the shadows. Eventually the five of you are just outside the palace walls of where you presume the king is located. It is here where Dusk addresses the group again. “You all know the plan, get in, cause some havoc, don’t kill the king and get the hell out. Still, I think we’ll do a better job with the last part if we’re not all bunched up as a group. I want some of us to go to the other side of the palace and start from that side, the soldiers and guards will be less likely to gang up on all of us that way. I’d say about thirty to forty five minutes should do it and afterwards, we’ll meet up at that wood where we made camp yesterday, then we’ll continue the rest of the journey back to Gloom from there. Now I just need someone to volunteer to come with me and the rest of you can scale the palace wall here.” Well it looks like your original plan of trying to split up the group is going to come true after all, the question is do you want to take care of Dusk first or whoever decides to be on the second team? > You stay silent Dusk could pick you anyway, so there really isn't any need to volunteer. You're still going to have to find the king, kill him and the rest of the shadows regardless of who you're "working" with. Dusk ends up picking Talia and tells you, Bianca, and Murk to wait five minutes before scaling the wall after they leave to head to the other side. She then tells you she trusts you to use your best judgment on things. Killing Bianca and Murk should be too hard without Dusk or Talia here, the pair of their combat skills are nowhere near your own. The hard part will be tracking down the king. Within the five minutes you wait, you see Murk fail to impress Bianca as usual with his wooing attempts. You can't believe he'd waste his time on the eve of such of an important mission. As you see him fail for the umpteenth you have no idea why you ever considered him your "friend." He's an idiot even in the hierarchy of the shadows. "Why the hell did they even pick him?" you wonder. Maybe it's a lot of built up rage, hatred and other bad thoughts you've been keeping under wraps for years, but you can't help but continue to feel disgust for Murk. "Okay, I think about five minutes have passed. We should get going." Murk suggests. "Might as well, I'm not here to watch you bumble around all night trying to impress Bianca who obviously isn't interested in you and never will be." You say. There's a momentary silence and both Bianca and Murk give a look of surprise to the fact that you've said something so direct concerning their "relationship." "I…we…we'll speak on this later." Murk says and starts to cast his spider walk spell. "No, we really won't." you reply and cast your speed spell. You raise your armbow and hit Bianca with a bolt to her throat. She falls helplessly attempting to gurgle a spell. Murk, sees this tries to cancel his current spell to match your speed, but he isn't fast enough. You draw two daggers and impale him several times with them before he even hits the ground. You think he tries to ask you "why?" before he dies, but you aren't really sure because you're too busy driving your daggers into his skull for the kill at the time. After dealing with Murk, you go over to finish off Bianca who is still attempting to struggle against death. "Let this be known before you die, the Emperor shall reign forever and your dying god will be forgotten like he should've been centuries ago!" you say and stab her in the heart. You feel as if you've just taken your first steps towards freedom at last with the deaths of Bianca and Murk. Two more to go, but first you need to find the Felkan king and finish off that part of your mission before an alarm is raised when Talia and Dawn start killing guards. You cast your spider walk spell and quickly scale the wall. When you get to the other side you're near a lot of carts with stacks of supplies on them. A quick look reveals that they're mostly sacks of food. You must be outside the royal kitchen or something. Sure enough you hear several voices coming from a nearby door which opens up. "Alright start hauling in those sacks of potatoes; we got enough space for them in here now." A chef says with several of his staff following outside. Well you weren't planning on massacring an entire kitchen staff, but you don't have the luxury of waiting around or looking for another quick entrance and using any more magic right now is going to start making you feel exhausted. You ready your blade. The hapless kitchen staff is naturally unable to fend against you. The head chef throws a cleaver at you, but that's about the closest any of them come to hitting you. By the time you're finished, the entryway looks like it's leading into a cannibal's kitchen rather than a royal one. A few of the staff made some yelps of pain when you killed them, so you quickly leave the area and hope you can find the king. You search about eight rooms before you start hearing yelling and the sounds of alarm. A lot of them mention guards being killed. Surprisingly you haven't even run into any guards yet, so you're guessing Talia and Dawn must be to blame. You curse since that means they're probably already on their way to making their escape and this place is going to be crawling with soldiers. Never mind the fact that the king is probably going to be actively hiding now. Against your desires, you cloak yourself and speed yourself up in an effort to help your search. You kill several soldiers during this time, but no king. You do manage to get a hold of a couple fancy dressed women that look like nobility or royalty. It doesn't take much to scare them, but they claim they don't know where the king is, and tell you he's probably already been moved from the palace. There is just no way you're going to be able to assassinate the king and kill Dawn and Talia in time. In fact at this point, you aren't even sure if you'd be able to kill the king seeing as you have no idea if he has left the palace, or if he's still in it. That isn't even the main problem, the main problem is your excessive magic use has left you incredibly fatigued. You feel like you're going to pass out at any moment. While you're struggling to stake awake and decide on what to do next, the Felkan soldiers finally pinpoint your location and begin coming in force. Were they attacking you with close combat weapons, you might've been able to fight them off. Were you more alert, you might've been able to dodge their bullets. As it stands neither of those possibilities exist and several soldiers fire their muskets at you. Hot lead hits you in the arm and the leg. When you fall and try to crawl away another blast hits you in the back. "I've…failed…forgive me…my Emper…or…" are your last words.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 21 “So do you think you’ll be going on the assassination mission?” Talia asks. “I dunno, I think I’m still under watch for my past indiscretions.” You reply. “Oh come on, even Master Ebon can’t believe you’re going to find some Felkan trollop to lay with while on your way to kill the king!” Murk laughs. You give a small chuckle and go back to poisoning your bolts. When Mr. Mol explained to you that the plan was going through, you wondered if you were going to be one the assassins. Mr. Mol said he was leaving it up to the Shadow Guard to pick “their best” as requesting you, might give you away especially given the mess you told him that followed with Shade. Mr. Mol congratulated you on how you handled that and as far as that event is concerned to the Shadow Guard, it’s still a mystery. His body was never found and it’s known he didn’t start a war with the Felkan Kingdom. The general consensus is he just left never to return due to his disagreement with Master Ebon. Brother Murk remarked on the irony that if he’d only waited a little longer, he could’ve been one of those sent to kill the Felkan King now. In any event you know the plan on both sides. As soon as the assassination mission is underway the Empire is going to start purging the shadow safehouses and all known dissidents before moving on to Gloom. From what you know, orc troops are going to be used liberally in this. Mr. Mol said it will thin out the ranks and put their restlessness more at ease. He also mentioned that he’s going to be sending in some of your former classmates as well. Your mission will differ depending on where the Shadow Guard send you. If you’re going on the assassination, then you’ll carry that out, but it will also be you job to eliminate all the rest of the shadows with you. If you’re left at home, then it’ll be your job to start sabotaging Gloom and taking out any shadow that gets in your way in the process. Mr. Mol mentions that some allies that owe the Empire a favor will be taking down the brunt of Gloom. Master Ebon has decided to make the move when the Felkan War is in full swing. Fortunately their plan to destabilize Rask was abandoned as all shadows were “suddenly” transferred out of there by decree of the Emperor. The Shadow Guard’s plan won’t even get off the ground if all goes well, at best, there will be a few major battles and then the hunting of escapees. Everything should go well for the Empire. The only perpetual pain is Cyrus. He’s only gotten more hostile since the Shade incident and even more so when he found out he wasn’t being sent to Rask. He claimed it was your fault and the pair of you had to be separated. He didn’t make any more accusations further than that, but he knows something is going on. You’re guessing he’ll probably be one of those on assassination mission. If he’s not around and you’re left behind, it’ll make your job a whole lot easier without the possibility of him spying on you. Then again if you’re both on the mission, it’ll give you an excellent chance to kill him, because at this point you want to as much as he probably wants to kill you and that idea certainly appeals to you. Later that day you pay a visit to Brother Gray. “Can I help you brother?” he says looking up from his desk. “Brother Gray, I know you’re still disappointed with my indiscretions, but I would like to prove myself that I am dedicated to Dendrin’s laws and commandments and I feel the best way to do that is to be on the assassination mission. I’ve even been practicing my shadow magic and while it isn’t as strong as say Sister Talia’s, I’m confident that it will be sufficient for the mission.” “Hmmm, well you were being considered, but you were still on the fence as it were. As for me being disappointed, you shouldn’t have been concerned with that, so much as you should’ve been concerned with offending Dendrin. However, if it puts you at ease, I ceased being disappointed a while ago. I’ve noticed that you’ve been more focused lately, so I know you’re trying to atone for your actions. It’s mainly why I was considering you for the mission. As for your skills, I’m still baffled to as why your magic abilities aren’t as strong as they should be, but I suppose your combat abilities make up for it and I think you’d be more than suitable for the mission in that regard, but I’m a little more concerned with sending you on any mission with Brother Cyrus since he is being considered as well. I’d rather not risk jeopardizing the mission, so I need to leave one of you here.” It’s apparent that whether you stay here or go on the mission that you probably won’t be dealing with Cyrus, which is a little disappointing and a minor reason to as why you wanted to go on the assassination mission in the first place. “I understand brother and I accept your judgment.” You say humbly. “Well I don’t have the final say, that honor belongs to Master Ebon and he ultimately answers to Dendrin as do we all. He will determine if you’re worthy or not, but I’ll see what I can do for you. So is that all brother?” “Yes. I shall take my leave and return to my duties.” You leave Brother Gray’s office, shaking your head at it all. Not about the mission, but more about the fact that Brother Gray still believes very much in you. In fact other than Cyrus and perhaps Draven you still can’t believe how you’re so accepted here, it never seems real to you. You can’t be exactly sure, but you think Talia has been examining you as a potential mate. Especially after all that business of you sleeping with countless whores became public knowledge. You can only guess she figures you’ve got a lot of experience, well that and the only other Eternal around is gay. Even Master Ebon hasn’t doled out any harsher punishment on to you more than what he did during your false confession. If you were in his shoes, you would’ve had yourself executed for the slightest possibility that you were involved in Brother Shade’s disappearance. Strange that the shadows’ treacherous nature would be so blind to someone so close to bringing them down. Their deity Dendrin hasn’t spoken to you in any dreams lately, or for quite awhile actually. Perhaps he got tired of taunting you or whatever game he’s playing. Though perhaps he’s lulling you into a false sense of security. You still always expect him to visit you any time you sleep. Of course maybe that’s part of his way of fucking with you as well. In any case, you return to your room and engage in your routine fake behavior of friendship. You’ll be so glad when this will be over, it sickens you when you actually start feeling like you’re actually friends with these traitors rather than crushing them under foot in the Emperor’s name. A couple days pass and you get called to Master Ebon’s office and when you get there, you also see Talia, Murk, Bianca and Dusk. He mentions that you’ve been chosen to go on the mission. He wasn’t sure at first, but after Brother Gray’s recommendation on your behalf and after consulting Dendrin for a sign, he says that you were chosen instead of Cyrus. He goes on to say he hopes that the pair of you straighten your feelings out soon, because there is going to be a great need for solidarity more than ever after this mission. Master Ebon also goes on to explain that Sister Dusk will be in charge of this mission and that you all will defer to her experience. Ebon brings up a bit of a change in the mission too, a change you’re not too pleased to hear. “We’re not assassinating the Felkan king. Dendrin showed me that our cause would be best served by deliberate incompetence.” “What?” you ask out loud, feeling a very real sense of having heard this plan before a year ago. “Killing the king would only throw the Felkans into disarray. We want them to be focused when they declare war on the Empire. Instead I want you to infiltrate the palace, kill a few guards and then get out as if it was a failed assassination attempt. This will definitely alert the Felkans to start beating their war drums and it hinders the Empire’s own plans. You all will be assumed dead by the Empire for obvious reasons, but in reality you will just return to us and will have to stay out of sight… which shouldn’t be too hard given our nature. When you do return, we shall put the final part of our plan in motion when the Felkans retaliate.” Maybe he’s not visiting you in your dreams anymore, but he’s definitely still fucking with you. Now you’ve got two things to take care of personally. You have to kill the shadow squad AND the king. Master Ebon tells you that the mission will be underway in the next few days and dismisses the lot of you. “Hey you got in after all!” Murk says after you leave the office. “I’m glad, you certainly deserve it.” Talia adds with a smile. When you return to your barracks, a death glare comes from Cyrus and Draven doesn’t look too happy with you either. The pair of them immediately leave the room. You can only imagine that he’s super pissed because you’ve been chosen to go on the mission rather than him. You wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to kill you in your sleep tonight. Not that you’re going to get any sleep, since you’re going to be up all night trying to figure out how you’re going to pull off your additional assignment. The day soon arrives and everyone gathers in the assembly hall to see you off. Master Ebon makes a small speech. “Brothers and sisters of the shadow, today is truly the beginning of the end for the Empire. These five have been chosen by Dendrin to carry out his plan. May their mission be a success and may all of them get back safely so that they may help the rest of us continue the fight at home. And if they should fall, know that they fall for a worthy cause and will pass from this world to serve in Dendrin’s shadow realm forever and there is no greater honor.” “Death to the Empire! For Dendrin!” Master Ebon shouts and everyone else follows suit, then the five of you leave. The first part of the trip to the Arat province is fairly laid back and the usual friendly banter goes on during this time, though Sister Dusk is consistently telling the rest of you to knock it off as your minds should be more focused on this mission. You’ve never really had too much interaction with Dusk before, but it is apparent to as why she was Shade’s lover. She seems very much like him in some ways. Yes, this mission is starting to feel all too familiar. In between the party banter, you’ve been coming up with various potential plans. One plan involves continuing the mission and during the infiltration of the palace you’ll try to kill them or get them killed by the guards. This allows you to get inside the palace with their help and you’re still in a good position to try to kill the king, of course this also means you’re going to have to be quick if you want to kill everyone without anyone getting away. The other plan would be to try to convince Dusk to split up the group and meet up at the Felkan palace. This would allow you to pick off a few of them before you get to the palace and perhaps make it more manageable. The problem is you’re going to have to come up with a good excuse, not to mention you’ll be a few bodies short in case you do run into trouble with the Felkan soldiers. Never mind the fact you’re going to have to convince Dusk of this in the first place. > You try to convince Dusk of your plan Felkan soldiers aren't going to be a problem, but you need to get rid of Dusk and perhaps a few others before you get to the palace because you aren't going to have time to do it when you need to focus on assassinating the king. You approach Dusk as she stands away from the rest of the group examining the map. "Sister Dusk, why don't we split up and meet at the palace?" you ask. "For what purpose, brother? It would be more efficient to just all go together." Dusk replies. "If we run into major trouble during our journey in Felkan territory, it would be better if some of us still got to the palace in a timely manner. Besides a larger group will attract more attention." "And neither of those things are going to be a problem since we'll be cloaked the whole time." "Well how do we know the Felkans don't have something to prevent that? Wouldn't it be better to remain on the side of caution?" "I think it would be better for you if you had more faith in Dendrin's protection and stopped speaking nonsense. I'm in charge and I'm telling you we're all going as a group. Besides I don't want all five of us running around separately, because as you say if we do run into trouble, we'd be stronger as a group." "I didn't mean all five of us go separately, we could still be in groups. Like you and I go as one group and the other three go as another." "You and I? Seems like you've thought this out." "Despite Murk constantly failing to impress Bianca, they work very well together, so they should stay together and I assumed Talia would be the logical choice as a leader. Her skills are better than Bianca and Murk's so she could lead them. Granted my combat skills are probably better, my magic is not. I believe I would be better off with you where your magic and my combat abilities can complement each other. We're going to have to split up when we get to the palace anyway if our intent is to sow as much chaos as possible before escaping, better that we do it now before we get too comfortable with a larger group." Dusk still doesn't look entirely convinced, however she tells you to wait and she goes over to speak to the others. After a few moments of discussion, she turns back to you. "Okay, you might have a point. You'll come with me and we'll approach the Felkan capital Dessle from the north, Talia and the rest will approach it from the south. Neither of us are going to reach it today, but we'll definitely make it by tomorrow night where we can meet up and I'll relay the next course of action. Try to stick to the wilderness and non-populated areas until then. May Dendrin guide us all." Dusk and you set off, about five minutes in she states that she forgot to mention that the area Talia is suppose to be heading into is supposed to be have regular patrols, so she should be warned about that. You wait for Dusk to return pondering when the best time would be to kill her. Probably not until you a good ways into Felkan territory, maybe just before you get into Dessle. Eventually Dusk comes back and you're on your way again. Crossing into Felkan territory is very easy. The outposts aren’t nearly as well guarded as they should be and combined with sticking to the wilderness and using magic to cloak yourself it's incredibly simple. You eventually camp out in a secluded wood where Sister Dusk becomes more talkative. "We made pretty good time, with minimal problems. I guess you had a good idea. I suggest we both get some rest, tomorrow will be the big event." "Yeah, hopefully the rest are doing just as well." You remark. "Oh I wouldn't worry about them. I'm sure they're fine." Nodding in agreement, you decide this would probably be the best place as any to get rid of Dusk. You figure you'll pretend to go to sleep, wait until she's asleep and make your move. After waiting for about an hour, you finally get the impression she's asleep thanks to the sounds of snoring. Not very quiet for a shadow, but it helps you any way. You slowly get up and make your way towards her. Your blade is drawn and just before you strike, you feel a bolt go into your side. "Ah shit!" you cry out and fall to the ground. Another bolt goes into your leg and Dawn "wakes up". She wasn't the only one faking sleep it seems. "I knew it! I knew Brother Cyrus wasn't just ranting and I knew you probably were involved with killing my mate Shade. Filthy traitor!" Dusk exclaims, kicking you in the face. Talia, Murk and Bianca all come out from the underbrush. Dawn must've told them to follow you the whole time. They all look on in disappointment at you, but Talia especially. "I didn't want to believe it…how could you betray Dendrin like this? How long have you been a traitor?" Talia asks while reloading her armbow. "Me a traitor? No, it is YOU who is the traitor! All of you! All of you have betrayed the Emperor for your pitiful god who cares nothing for you!" you shout in defiance. "I know this because Dendrin himself has spoken to me on several occasions trying to convert me to his will, but it didn't work." "He does care, or else he would not have tried to bring you into the fold. How sad that you did not learn his wisdom and accept his mercy." Murk says. "How sad that you actually believe that. You're more pathetic than he is. If he really cared for any of you, he would've warned you about having a so called traitor in your midst. He didn't, so that says a lot about your revered deity." "Enough! I won't hear anymore of these vicious lies! Your treachery ends here today traitor." Dusk shouts back and attempts to finish you off with a sword blow, but you've got enough fight in you to roll out of the way and return with your own attack, hacking Dusk's foot off. It's a small victory though, the rest of the shadows move in and run you through several times. Defiant to the end you laugh and state that they've won nothing here and the Empire will survive as you die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>His plan is going to mess everything up and reporting him probably will just result in him getting scolded and he’ll sneak off later anyway. You need to kill him. It’s part of your overall goal anyway. The next few days you spend mostly in the training room, trying to get yourself ready for what will probably be a grueling battle. Quite frankly if you do it right, you won’t have to fight him at all as you’re going to try to catch him completely with his guard down, but if that doesn’t work, you’re going to have a struggle on your hands and you need to be prepared. Brother Shade helped directly train your magic skills, so as usual you’re hoping your combat skills will be the deciding factor, but your major advantage will be the element of surprise. You make sure your blade is extra sharp and your arm crossbow is in good working condition. You fully expect Dendrin to harass you in your dreams, but that doesn’t happen. When the day finally arrives you and Brother Shade take your leave of Gloom and head to Venji. Brother Shade and yourself travel under the cloak most of the time, though up keeping such magic is tiring business, so you rest a few times on your way. During your time together, you find out more about Brother Shade’s thoughts. He goes on about how Master Ebon is not fit to speak for Dendrin anymore. Shade believes the old man isn’t even in contact with Dendrin anymore as Shade knows that Dendrin would not want to wait any longer for the shadows to live under Empire rule. Shade knows that Dendrin would want action to be taken right now and that only those that prove themselves to be proactive in these times will be rewarded when the dust finally settles. You can’t speak for Ebon, but from what you can tell, Shade doesn’t really know shit what Dendrin really wants. You don’t either, but then you aren’t one of his blind sheep that follows his orders. Still, it’s somewhat fascinating to see one of the shadows not fall completely in step with the rest. If Mr. Mol hadn’t suggested his idea, you probably would’ve gone through with Shade’s mission and try to sew a little more dissension on both sides to flame the fans of a shadow civil war. As it stands though, he needs to die, but you’re still trying to build yourself up to do it. You have no idea why either, you’ve had the opportunity a few times and you’re far enough away from civilization since you’ve been sticking to the back roads. Eventually the humble village of Venji is in sight, and you’re going to have to kill Shade soon. You think you’re going to pass the village, but Shade starts heading towards it. “We’re not actually entering it are we? So far we’ve managed to stay out of sight.” “And we’ll continue to do so, I can maintain the cloak, but if you’re feeling weak you stay here. I’ll be back soon anyway.” “But why are you going into the village?” “Because there’s bound to be a couple of Empire soldiers stationed there. We’re going to need a couple of disguises.” “You’re going to kill Empire soldiers?” “Yes, and why is that a problem?” It’s not. Actually it’s a perfect excuse for you. “No, I just didn’t know the entire plan. I guess I’ll wait here I am feeling a little drained from the magic and I wouldn’t want to jeopardize the mission.” You answer. Brother Shade grunts and turns his back to you, and just before he cloaks again, you raise your arm and fire your crossbow at him. Your aim is true and the bolt lands directly into the back of his skull. He’s dead even before he falls face first into the ground . It’s done and it was so quick. He didn’t suspect anything or even see it coming. Now you’ve got to get rid of the body and think up a story. Nobody saw you leaving together, you made sure of that, but you’ve both been gone awhile. You figure you’ll think of something on your way back to Gloom. You strip Shade of his robe, weapons, then you cut off his head and dig a small hole to toss it into along with his robe and weapons. You figure nobody is going to recognize him now and that’s not even counting the wolves or other wandering animals that will probably find the body to feast on first. When you finally get back, you get several people asking you where you’ve been. “Where in Dendrin’s name have you been? You just left without reporting to Brother Gray for assignment!” Brother Murk exclaims. “I was doing my usual patrols in the Quala province. I didn’t think I was being switched from them any time soon, so I just left. Was it a problem?” “Well sort of, Brother Shade is missing as well, you weren’t with him were you?” “No, I wasn’t, I haven’t seen him since I left Gloom a couple days ago either.” “Okay, well you’re going to need to explain that to Master Ebon, he believes Brother Shade went and did something rash.” “Oh? Like what?” “Like defying Master Ebon and the will of Dendrin. Anyway, you better hurry to Master Ebon’s office.” You do as Murk suggests. You just hope you can convince him as easily. You enter Master Ebon’s office and see him, Brother Gray AND Cyrus. You can guess what the first two are doing here, but you don’t know why Cyrus would. He’s giving you a dirty look from underneath his hood as usual. “At last, we can get to the bottom of this.” Brother Gray remarks. “I certainly hope so, because there are some serious allegations going on and conspiracy in the air.” Master Ebon says while looking at you. “I’m telling you I saw the pair of them together several times and the day they both left, he made sure to leave several minutes after Brother Shade.” Cyrus remarks. And there it is. Cyrus is on to you, well maybe not entirely, but apparently he was skulking around spying on you when you thought nobody was looking. And here you were thinking he was on assignment or with his boyfriend most of the time. “So what if I left several minutes after Brother Shade? What does that prove? Am I supposed to wait hours? A day? What would be enough time for you? And what’s this all about anyway? What did Brother Shade do?” “Oh like you don’t know.” “Brother Cyrus, quiet!” Master Ebon says before continuing. “And to answer your question, I’m sure you’re aware of Brother Shade’s recent behavior and his desire to move things along as far as our plan goes. He approached me not too long ago, about starting a war with the Felkan Kingdom, I told him no and he got very angry. Then he disappears for a few days when I specifically told him to stay here and concentrate on his prayers to Dendrin. We believe he’s gone and tried to do this himself. You being gone without reporting to Brother Gray wouldn’t normally be held to such scrutiny, but Cyrus here has said he’s seen you speaking with Brother Shade several times before his disappearance.” “So I shouldn’t have spoken to him? I can’t be the only one that spoke to him before he disappeared.” “Yes, but you are the only one that left without reporting to Brother Gray first, not to mention up until then I’ve been told that you and he never interacted much. All of this seems very suspicious and it grieves me something like this is being brought to me, especially when so much is at stake right now.” You’re trying to remain as calm as possible, but the pressure is on. Cyrus looks on with a faint smug expression like he’s anxious to see you get into trouble. You need to come up with an explanation and you aren’t sure if outright lying is going to help you. Maybe you should tell them the truth…up to a point of course. > You tell them the altered truth Blatant lying tends to complicate things and if you're caught, it's only going to make you look worse. You might be better off telling the truth and omitting part of it. "Alright, alright, I'll tell you the truth, but I was only trying to protect Brother Shade's memory…and I was ashamed." "What are you talking about brother?" Master Ebon asks. "(Sigh) Brother Shade did speak with me, but he was mainly complaining. Stating that you didn't really know the will of Dendrin at all and action needed to be taken now regardless of what you said. At first I thought he was just spouting his usual rants, but the last time we spoke he wanted me to go with him to attack a Felkan outpost. The plan was to kill everyone there except one maimed survivor to tell the tale. He hoped that would bring war quicker and you'd have no choice, but to act on the plan." "Why didn't you report this?" Brother Gray snaps. "I told you, I didn't want Brother Shade to get into trouble just for having a momentary lapse in judgment and I thought I could talk him out of it. So I followed him and I caught up to him I tried to convince him his plan was folly. I failed and when I tried to physically stop him, he beat me and warned if I tried again he'd kill me. Fearing for my life I ran. That was the last I saw him." Master Ebon is silent and puts his face in his hands. Brother Gray gives a look of disapproval and shakes his head. Cyrus on the other hand takes the opportunity to question you. "You really expect us to believe your lies? You probably agreed to the plan, got scared and tried to back out of it. You killed Brother Shade and made up this story to…" "Brother Cyrus that's enough! You are not the one doing the interrogating here! Know your place in Dendrin's shadow! There has obviously been too much of people overstepping their bounds lately and you'd do well to not follow that same path. In fact, you need to leave. Brother Gray and I will handle it from here." Cyrus looks a bit put off by this order, but obeys. He gives a dirty look at you before leaving though. You're left standing in front of Master Ebon and Brother Gray. "Brother, do you realize what sort of position you've put us in?" "I realize it's bad, but…" "No, you don't! All of our plans could be ruined because YOU didn't report this like you should have! For all we know Brother Shade has completed his rash mission and the war will be occur too soon!" "And that's the best case scenario." Brother Gray adds. "Brother Cyrus' theory, though accusatory, does make me question if what you're saying IS the entire truth." "It is! I swear to Dendrin!" "Perhaps, but due to your deeds, a punishment still must be decided…I believe the silence of the shadow will do since you prefer to remain quiet. When your tongue is removed, I believe you shall forever know the price of your failure. Brother Gray please escort…" You aren't about to let yourself be mutilated by these religious fanatics, you draw your weapon, but Master Ebon mumbles a few words and you're held in place. "Brother, cease your hostility NOW! You will submit to this punishment or you will face much worse!" Brother Gray shouts. "Never! I'll never submit to you! The Empire will live forever and your order will be ground into dust! Long live the Emperor!" you shout breaking all pretense of your allegiance, which causes a look of surprise from Brother Gray's face. Master Ebon however just shuts his eyes. "Dendrin will preserve us through this unforeseen hardship, and we will prevail, just as he has said we would centuries ago. Your actions will not stop what cannot be stopped." Master Ebon says calmly and with a few quietly spoken words, your heart stops killing you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 2B1: The Emperor’s Shadow Year 20 “So you say, Brother Cyrus and Brother Draven are going to be assigned to Rask soon?” you ask. “That’s what I’ve heard from Brother Gray. Them and a few others. Next year at the latest.” Murk says “What’s the reason, from what I’ve heard it doesn’t seem like the Empire has a good grip on Rask anyway.” “Well that’s sort of the point! By weakening the areas where the power isn’t as strong it causes the Empire to divert resources from other places and making those much easier to bring down as well. We’re going to need it too, Master Ebon was sure the Empire would’ve started another war with the Felkan Kingdom by now, but as it stands they’re practically friends with them, well as much as the Empire can be. Oh well there’s still time I suppose.” “We don’t have that much time, we should push things along in our favor with some international incidents.” Brother Shade says. “In fact, I’m going to mention that to Master Ebon next time I see him.” “You don’t think that he hasn’t already thought of such a plan?” Talia asks. “Perhaps, but let’s just say I’ve been here a little longer than the rest of you, and while I know Master Ebon is just waiting for the right time to strike, he’s been playing the waiting game a little longer than I think is necessary. In fact I think he’s been playing it so long that maybe his vision has become clouded from certain opportunities.” This statement from Brother Shade gets a lot of looks, but nobody says anything. The shock is too great. Even you are surprised as this is the first time you believe you’ve heard something close to an open criticism about Master Ebon or the leadership structure in general And that’s something you can definitely use. Soon after his statement Brother Shade leaves to attend his duties. “Brother Shade should watch how he talks about Master Ebon. Ebon speaks directly to Dendrin on a daily basis and knows best on how to proceed.” Murk remarks. “Then why did you not speak up, instead of just sitting there?” Sister Bianca asks. “Uh…well…” “Always trying to impress the ladies, eh Murk?” you chuckle and take your leave as well to go seek out Brother Shade, he hasn’t gone far and you catch up with him in the hallway. Fortunately nobody else is around. When you get his attention he’s not exactly cordial. “Oh it’s you, what do you want, I have duties to attend to brother.” “Nothing excessively important brother, I just wanted to say you aren’t alone.” “Aren’t alone in what?” Shade asks. “You aren’t alone in how you feel. I think we should strike against the Empire now as well. All this waiting around isn’t helping our cause.” “Well I suggest if you want to help our cause, you keep your feelings to yourself brother and focus on your responsibilities…and your magic skills.” “But brother, you said…” “Nevermind what I said! I spoke in haste to a bunch of snot nosed shadows that barely know what it truly means to serve Dendrin. Now leave me be!” Shade at this point pushes you aside and walks off. Well that didn’t go like you hoped; still, you can report this to Mr. Mol who you have to meet in a few days anyway. When you meet Mr. Mol at the usual spot, you tell him everything you know as usual. “So, planning to destabilize Rask, eh? Well I’ll see what we can do about that…tell me have you heard any plots involving orcs?” Mr. Mol asks. “Mmm, I don’t believe I have. I would’ve told you.” “Okay then, maybe it’s not related, but some of our orcish troops have been getting restless lately, mostly those stationed in Rask too. If we had proceeded with our invasion of the Felkan Kingdom like we wanted, we could’ve thinned out their ranks a little. As much as we need them in the far northern reaches of Rask right now, I fear that having them all in a large group is asking for trouble. I guess we’ll transfer some to Nalin, I hear they’re having problems with the usksha nomads and kobolds down there. Speaking of the Felkan Kingdom tell me about this plot to start a war with them.” “There isn’t one, so much as there have been suggestions to do so by a Brother Shade.” “Ohhh, dissention in the order. I like it. So is this guy losing his faith or something?” “I do not believe its that more so that he feels Master Ebon is being too cautious. He wants to strike now and he knows that Ebon’s plan hinged on the Empire being distracted with the Felkan Kingdom, so he suggested starting one ourselves in passing, though when I approached him about how I agreed that we were being too cautious, he told me to not speak of it again and to leave him alone.” “We can still possibly use this. The fact that he mentioned it says that he’s thinking about it, even if he himself isn’t totally committed to the idea. Try to speak to him some more on the subject of starting a war with the Felkan Kingdom.” “But if he does want to go through with the plan, won’t starting a war with the Felkan Kingdom be exactly what they want?” “Well, it’s a gamble to be sure, but quite frankly we were going to invade the Felkan Kingdom again anyway, but…ha ha I got it.” Mr. Mol says with a big grin on his face. “Okay forget what I told you about speaking with Shade, I’ve just gotten a better idea. I’m going to have to discuss this with a few others and the order is going to have to come from the Emperor himself, but I’m pretty sure he’ll agree to this.” “What the plan?” “I think we should send several Shadow Guard into Felkan territory to assassinate their king and other high ranking officials. We should even demand the best. This will occupy some of the shadows and hopefully this puts the Felkans in a state of chaos as well. While this operation is taking place, I doubt the remaining shadows will act just yet with several of their best fellows gone. In the meantime, we can start wiping out those safe houses and dissident hideouts you’ve been giving us the locations to over the years. This will no doubt alert what remains of the shadows that we’re on to them at this point, but it won’t matter. Thanks to you, we also know the exact location of Gloom and let’s just say we’ve got some allies that can help us with that underground fortress.” “That sounds like a good plan.” “Thanks, just thought of it, but like I said, I need to speak with a few others first. As usual I’ll be in touch, but all you need to do for now is go about your usual duties within the Shadow Guard. You’ve done excellent work as usual.” Mr. Mol shakes your hand as you part ways and you feel a great sense of pride in your accomplishments. You also feel better that this charade may all come to an end soon and you’ll be free of masquerading as a shadow. When you get back to Gloom, Brother Shade suddenly surprises you on your way back to your bunk. “Hey you, where have you been?” he demands to know. You’re so taken by surprise; all you do is stumble over your words. “Uh…well…” “Uh huh. Probably slacking with some cheap tart as usual. I know you sneak off sometimes to the nearby villages. I know you’re young and full of hormones, but you know very well that making yourself unclean with non-shadows is frowned upon.” “I…I’m sorry, Brother Shade.” You say. “Well you can ask for Dendrin’s forgiveness in your prayers later, right now I want to discuss something with you. Come with me.” You follow Brother Shade through the winding halls of Gloom until you eventually reach a small empty storage room. After doing a quick perusal, closing the door and casting a cloak of shadows spell, he speaks to you again. “Okay, it’s safe to speak. You and me are going to start a war with the Felkan Kingdom.” “What…you spoke to Master Ebon, about this?” “Yes, and the old fool is too set in his ways just as I thought he would be. Says it’s too risky. Bullshit. What better time than now?” “Well I suppose, but…uh…just us?” you say in an attempt to stall. “As far as I know you’re the only one who feels we need to do something now and I can’t wait around and investigate if others feel like you do. Besides we can easily do this. I know your shadow magic is weak, but your fighting skills are excellent.” You didn’t expect this. “Okay, so just us…sure. Dendrin shrouds us in protective darkness right? We can easily assassinate the Felkan king…” “Hold on there brother. Now we’re just starting a war, not destabilizing the government. Well, not their government anyway. Heading deep into Felkan territory to kill their leader isn’t necessary and will just serve to waste time. No, we just need to go in, make a statement and get out. Maybe take out a large portion of one of their outposts and leave a maimed survivor to tell the tale.” Sounds like Brother Shade has already planned this out. The problem is his plan doesn’t exactly fit your own. Mr. Mol wants to assassinate the Felkan King and possibly some other high ranking types. It’ll also bide a little time for him to get things in place. Brother Shade’s plan probably won’t throw the Felkan Kingdom into chaos, but will serve to anger them and that might distract the Empire too much if the Felkans are focused. Who could’ve thought starting a war would be so precise? In any event, you agree to Shade’s plan and he says the pair of you will head to the village of Venji in the Arat province near the Felkan border. From there, you’ll cross the Felkan border and infiltrate the nearest Felkan outpost to carry out the plan. When you ask about the others, Shade dismisses the consequences of his fellow shadows. He says when things have been set in motion they will have no choice but to accept the reality. He then mumbles about there possibly being some more changes before leaving. Of course you don’t want to carry out that plan, so you’re going to have to kill Brother Shade on the way. Not exactly an easy task, so you might try reporting him to Master Ebon or Brother Gray instead and try to have him taken care of using the shadow’s own code of conduct. > You report Brother Shade Killing him is just going to complicate things for you, better to be a good little shadow and go through the proper channels in this case. You immediately go see Brother Gray and state you need to see Master Ebon. "And why do you need to see him right now?" Brother Gray asks. "It's about Brother Shade, I fear he's going to do something rash that could ruin everything the shadows have worked so hard for." "What is it?" You explain Brother Shade's plan in its entirety and how you pretended to go along with it so he wouldn't suddenly run away or attempt to attack you. "This is a very serious accusation, but…(sigh) not really all that surprising given his behavior lately. Before we take this to Master Ebon, I'm curious to as why he approached you of all people to help him. I don't believe hearing him ever saying a good word about you, so picking you is a bit puzzling to me. Is there something you should tell me?" "Well…I'm sort of embarrassed, but Brother Shade knew that I saw a few uh…women of low moral fiber during some of my patrols and threatened to report me, if I didn't help him." "(Sigh) Well…I'm glad you at least had the sense to come clean in the face of a greater threat. I'll keep this from Master Ebon, but we're going to have a serious talk about your own indiscretions later! As for Brother Shade do you know where he is now?" "I believe he's in his room getting his stuff prepared for the mission." "Okay, I'm going to send some brothers outside his room to make sure he doesn't leave while I go fetch Master Ebon. If Brother Shade even tries to escape instead of staying put, well that's going to prove his guilt, though I'm hoping it won't come to that and he'll at least stay put and submit the proper punishment that Master Ebon deems necessary." "What should I do?" you ask. "You, go back to your own room and stay there until you're called for to tell your story in front of Master Ebon and Brother Shade." You nod and head back to your bunk. Nobody is there though; they must be on their patrols. You wait a few minutes expecting Brother Gray or someone else to come get you to come confirm your story in front of Master Ebon or whoever, but nobody does. You do however begin to hear the sounds of fighting though in the halls. "Wonderful, they can't even hold their own defectors in place." You mutter and draw your weapon. You then cast cloak on yourself and hide in one of the corners of the room with your eyes on the doorway at all times. Eventually someone enters the room, but it's not Shade, its Murk. "Hey brother, are you in here? I just came back from patrol and heard Brother Shade is running amok through Gloom! What's going on?" "Shhh! Quiet you idiot! He's…" Before you can even complete that sentence, Murk is suddenly thrown face first into the floor. It would seem your instincts were right and he decided to get revenge rather than seek escape. You attempt to cast a decloak on Shade which works, but not in time for Murk to get his bearings. Shade smashes Murk's face into the floor. He may or may not have killed him, but in any event he's not going to be getting up to help you anytime soon. "You may have prevented me from serving Dendrin like the rest of these short sighted fools, but I guarantee that you will not live to see the fruits of your treachery." He says and attacks. You engage Shade in battle and the pair of you are fairly matched as far martial combat are concerned. The problems arise when Shade falls back on magic. He speeds himself up getting few good hits on you. You attempt to do the same thing and it helps, but you still are at a disadvantage. He matches every move you've got and has wounded you to the point where you're starting to doubt that you'll win this battle. You push yourself harder and hope your will to survive will win out. Eventually help comes in the form of several more shadows and Brother Gray. Several bolts go flying into Shade's back and he falls to the floor in a heap. You never thought you'd think this, but you're actually glad to see the shadows this time. "Brother are you alright?" Brother Gray asks. "Yes, I think so (Whew) lemme catch my…ulk!" you utter and then you feel a bolt go through your heart. You look down long enough to see Shade's armbow stretched out and then the rest of his body become still for the final time. You soon follow him, unable to believe that your service to the Empire came to such an abrupt end.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 18 “And so I said to the blacksmith, well if you’re intending on killing the Emperor, you better damn well have a better plan than those group of thugs you’ve been supplying with weapons in the sewers. At least supply them to some thugs who the Emperor wouldn’t be able to smell six miles away!” you say, and this is followed by a few laughs from some of your fellow shadows. “Hah, good one brother! Tell me, what did you do to the blacksmith?” Brother Murk asks. “Oh we relocated him to our safehouse in Derlerg along with his buddies, reported that we eliminated him as a dissident…you know the usual. I must say, their surprise that we aren’t going to kill them is always amusing though.” You reply. “Yes, given our reputation, I imagine it is. Still, it’s all for a good cause eh, brother?” “Yes brother, it certainly is.” You say to Murk with a nod and take another drink of black tea. “Well I have to say I’m very glad you’ve finally managed to settle in brother, I have to admit, for awhile I was getting a little worried about you. You just didn’t seem like yourself after our ceremony initiation.” Talia says. “Yeah, well I guess I was just a late bloomer or something.” “Don’t worry about it brother, it’s all in the past. What matters now is that we’re all on the same page now.” Murk replies. On the same page…the problem is you really aren’t on the same page. You haven’t been since you got here. The other problem? You’re starting to feel like you might be getting there though. During the time you were forced to socialize you just swallowed your fear and self-doubt and proceeded like it was any mission. And you were successful. Perhaps a little too successful. Once you actually got sent out on a mission, you were paired up with Brother Murk. A fellow you had become semi-friendly with during your months of socializing. Your original plan was as soon as you left Gloom, you were going to run to the nearest Empire fort and make your report. Though for this plan to succeed in any meaningful way you would’ve had to kill Murk and despite your better judgment, you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You later cursed yourself for this temporary weakness and the next time you were sent out, you vowed to yourself that you’d do it again, the problem was you had only become friendlier with Murk within that time. You failed again. By the time they rotated your partnership and you were paired you with someone else, you still couldn’t do it, because now you actually started to feel like the Shadow Guard really was like a family to you. And you liked that feeling. In fact it was the best you’ve felt in a long time. Yet, now you are in a difficult position. You are still loyal to the Empire and the Emperor first, but you haven’t been able to find the fortitude to expose the Shadow Guard for what they are. You attempt to rationalize it in your mind, by claiming the longer you stay the more you learn about their exact plans, and while that’s certainly true, it really isn’t the TRUTH. The real truth is you’re starting to believe in the Shadow Guard’s cause slightly. You don’t know if it’s because you’ve spent so much time here that you’ve developed some sort of emotional attachment or some odd sort of subtle indoctrination. Is this what Dendrin really had in store for you? Did he know you could be turned even without his intervention? Before you had that experience everything was so certain, your feelings weren’t a constant source of ups and downs. Even under Mistress, you don’t remember ever feeling this. It was either success or death. It was very simple and you preferred it. Now you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Are you a traitor? Are you still loyal? Are you both? Are you neither? You excuse yourself from the rest of your brothers and sister and say you have to get some rest, though in reality you have to take a long look at your priorities. Once again you spend a few more months going through your usual routines and quietly suffering in silence. That comes to a halt when Murk comes into the barracks one day… “Hey, where are brother Cyrus and sister Talia?” he immediately asks you. “Uh, sister Talia I think is in the library and brother Cyrus is probably with brother Draven somewhere.” You reply. “Oh, well I’ll go get Talia, someone else can look for Cyrus, but you need to report to Master Ebon right away.” “What’s this all about?” “I don’t know, just that he wants you, Talia and Cyrus to see him. Something about someone from the Empire wanting to meet with all three of you. Sounds important.” You get up and walk to Master Ebon’s office which remains closed, so you wait. A few moments later, Talia joins you. “Hello, brother. Isn’t master Ebon here?” “If he is, he isn’t answering his door, so I’ve been waiting outside.” “Do you know what this is about?” “Dunno, just that someone from the Empire wants to see us.” Talia nods and remains silent. Soon Cyrus joins you and asks a similar question, to which you answer in a similar manner. He grunts at you and stands as far from you as possible, though he says something polite to Talia. Same old Cyrus. No sooner has Cyrus got there, when Ebon’s door opens. You hear a voice that tells you to come in. You didn’t even think he was inside, but you guess he was really waiting to see you all together. When you all enter, he tell Cyrus to close the door and gets right to the point. “You three have been summoned by Mr. Mol. Apparently he wants to ask you a few questions and is insisting on doing it somewhere in the capital I believe. In any case, he claims he wants to check on your progress as an Eternal, but I suspect he’s fishing for information about us.” “You don’t think he suspects anything do you?” Talia asks. “I do not believe he knows anything about our true goals, if he or anyone did, I have no doubt we would’ve been moved upon by now. No, I think this is just another Empire ploy to try to get more inside intel on our organization, which for the reasons I just mentioned they cannot know about.” “I won’t say a word to this running dog of the Empire! My eyes have been open a long time and my loyalty is and will always be to Dendrin.” Cyrus says. Master Ebon nods. “Yes, I know it will be. I have no doubt, but I still would like you all to just be on your guard when answering questions none the less. It probably won’t come to this, but kill yourselves if you have to. It won’t be ideal, since it’ll arouse suspicion, but it’ll still give us time to go ahead with our plan anyway, even if it would be a few years early. Anyway, the three of you are to make your way to the town of Lenet and from there you’ll take an Empire carriage to the capital. Return immediately if you are able. May Dendrin and the shadows hide your true intentions.” With those last words, Ebon sends you away and the three of you set off on your journey. You begin to feel nervous as soon as you leave Gloom, you weren’t expecting this happening, but deep down you did know that something like it was going to happen eventually. You remain mostly quiet during the journey as you try to get in a certain frame of mind of what you’re going to do or say. Cyrus is mostly silent as well, though you’re guessing that’s because he’s so firmly entrenched in his belief in Dendrin, that he knows what he’s going to say and do. Talia is the only talkative one and that’s mainly questions about what you both think Mr. Mol will ask you. You know she’s dedicated herself to Dendrin, but you sense that perhaps she’s a little nervous too, though you don’t know if it’s due to her new loyalty to Dendrin or because she’s been harboring secret loyalty to the Empire like you have. You decide to imagine it’s the latter, mainly because you want to make yourself feel better. Eventually the carriage from Lenet reaches Qale, the Empire’s capital and several soldiers immediately step forward to say they are here to escort you to Mr. Mol. The three of you are taken from the opulence of one of the main streets and quickly through a system of back alleys until you eventually reach a non-descript building. You enter and there you see Mr. Mol. It’s the well dressed man you saw speaking to Brother Gray six years ago. He’s also wearing the same formal black suit he was back then. “Ah, the Shadow Eternals. I’ve so wanted to catch up with your progress, but my attention was on your less subtle peers for a while. I think we’ve sorted them out though, so now it’s time to sort you out as well. Just a formality really, we just want to see if you’re achieving your full potential in the Shadow Guard. After all you’re Eternals first, and we wouldn’t want your talents to not be used to their fullest potential in the service of the Emperor, right?” Cyrus and Talia say nothing, but you feel obligated to acknowledge that question if only to not look suspicious. “Correct. All that we are, we owe to the Emperor’s will.” you say. “Glad to hear it! Now then we’re just going to be asking you some questions, these soldiers will take you to a place to wait. Off you go.” At this point the three of are marched out of the room and down a long hallway. The cold broken stone walls and desolation of this place almost makes Gloom look cheery by comparison. Eventually you reach a door on your left and Cyrus is told to wait inside the room. He enters without a word, but gives you and Talia a look like “Say nothing!” A few moments later you reach another door on the left, this time Talia is told to wait inside. She hesitates for a moment, but enters. She gives you a look as well, though this one is more of concern. Finally you reach the last door on the left and you are told to enter and wait. You do so without looking at anyone. The door shuts behind you and the ominous sound of a lock is heard. There isn’t much you can do, so you sit down at one of the chairs in the middle of the room and wait. And wait…and wait…and wait…and wait… You don’t know how much time has passed, but you get up and move about several times before sitting down again. You don’t quite panic as much as you think you would, but being alone with your thoughts is definitely not the best thing for you. Right now you’re already thinking they’ve managed to break Talia into talking and probably killed Cyrus. Maybe if you cooperate right now, there will be leniency? Why shouldn’t you cooperate? The Shadow Guard ARE traitors after all, and this is just the kick in the ass you needed to remind you of that. But then there’s the other part of you that feels loyal to the shadows and how you shouldn’t betray them. You go back and forth what you’re going to do several times, and then you hear the lock on the door. Mr. Mol enters… > You keep quiet You’re fooling yourself. You’ve only been struggling with your loyalty issues because you were brought up to obey the Emperor and serve the Empire. But really what have you learned since then? You’ve learned that a great majority of it is all lies. True, the Shadow Guard has their own agenda, but it isn’t just based on following their god, it’s actively trying to free others under the tyranny of the Empire. And are they seeking to take the place of the Empire? No, they’re just going to return to Derlerg and return to how their lives used to be, before the Empire arrived, everyone else is free to do as they please. Is that something you really need to fight against? People that want to bring freedom to not just themselves, but to others as well? Dendrin said that he didn’t believe you were going to serve him and you were just saying you were to survive. He also said you weren’t as rigid as your fellows. He’s right on both accounts. You don’t think that you’ll ever be a true shadow, but perhaps you agree with their goals at least in this case. Besides, you’ve bonded more with the people at Gloom who have actively helped you in the past than you have with a faceless Emperor who you haven’t even seen let alone gotten any help from. If anything the Empire has nearly tried to kill you since the moment you were born. You make your choice within that moment. You’re going to remain quiet and not tell Mr. Mol anything, but if you get accused you doubt if you’ll kill yourself, you’re more likely to make a valiant escape attempt instead. Mr. Mol sits down and begins his line of questioning. “So how are you today?” he asks. “I’m fine.” “And how are your duties going in the Shadow Guard?” “Fine sir. The rooting out of dissidents and traitors to the Empire is a tireless one, sir.” “Yes, it is…” Mr. Mol says with a pause. “Tell me, are there times when you have found someone not guilty?” “Never sir.” “Never? Really? Surely not all your searches come up with violent dissidents. Perhaps some of the citizens are merely just speaking harmless nonsense?” “If they are, then they would’ve been wise to keep their mouth shut sir. The Emperor is not to be criticized and his will is what guides the greatness of the Empire.” “I see…” Mr. Mol says and takes some notes. “Tell me, what do you think of the Shadow Guard?” “They are the hands of the Emperor, sir.” “His hands huh? That implies they are so important that the Emperor cannot do without them.” “Not at all sir. The hands are nothing compared to the mind that controls it. The Emperor is the mind that controls the hands. They are nothing without his direction and guidance. This is known and accepted as it has been from the beginning. But I am not truly a Shadow Guard, I am an Eternal. My duty is and will always be to the Emperor first. If you order me to abandon the Shadow Guard because you feel my talents would be better served elsewhere, I shall do so.” “Hmm, no I do not think that’s necessary.” Mr. Mol asks you a few more questions and you answer in the best way you can. All in all Mr. Mol seems almost bored by your answers, like he was hoping to hear something much more exciting. You’re not sorry to disappoint him, but you’re definitely trying your hardest to maintain a cool demeanor in the face of certain treason if he suspects the slightest lie. Eventually he finishes and you are lead out of the room and back into the main room where you see Cyrus and Talia waiting with the soldiers. “Okay I believe we are done here. I am pleased to find that all of you are obviously living up to your potential. I was a little concerned only because a couple of your non-shadow Eternals already have proven to lack the discipline we thought they had. One was executed for killing his superior officer and another one died by breaking a solid fighting formation during a battle. I’m glad to see all of you are much better in that regard and I can only chalk that up to the Shadow Guard’s superior training techniques. Perhaps more Eternals in the future will join as it is obvious you all have tremendous willpower and great loyalty to the Empire.” Mr. Mol says. And with that, the three of you are lead back to the carriage, which takes you back to Lenet, and from there you walk back to Gloom. You’re all more talkative at this point, Talia and Cyrus go on about the questions with each other and you. Of course you lie and state you were asked similar ones. “So do you think he suspected anything?” Talia asks. “Doubt it. The Empire fool didn’t even ask anything remotely important. It is obvious Dendrin’s shadow covers his eyes from the truth. So much so that it required minimum effort on our part to even lie to him. I mostly just omitted truth.” Cyrus mocks. “Omissions of the truth are usually better than outright lies anyway. Less of a chance to get caught up in a web.” Talia comments. “Oh I dunno, all I did was lie and he never suspected a thing.” You say. After the three of you report to Master Ebon, he seems pleased with how things turned out, but states that he’s pushing to enact the plan sooner for concern that the Empire may still suspect something. He then says to expect things to get hectic soon, but with Dendrin’s guidance you all will surely prevail and the Empire will collapse. You retire to your bed to get some rest as it’s been a long stressful day. You’re finally glad to have settled your crisis of loyalty though. With these comforting thoughts you drift off to sleep… As you sleep you begin to dream. You dream that you’re in the same void like space when you walked into that portal two years ago. You feel nothing and you sense nothing for a long time then you hear the voice, but it isn’t oppressive like the first time. “So you did not betray me after all…I am a little surprised mortal. Perhaps you see after all.” “I see that the Empire is indeed a corrupt system that needs to be brought down, but I don’t feel the need to worship you.” “It is a start, but know that this path you take now will be very dangerous. As strong as you are your survival is not guaranteed. It shall be interesting to see you try however.” With those last words, you wake up. You try to go back to sleep, but it isn’t easy. Just like bringing down the Empire isn’t going to be easy. You just can’t figure out why Dendrin, doesn’t take a more active role in helping his followers. He obviously has the power, but you don’t know. The best you can do is what you can achieve in the mortal realm and leave the motivations of any gods out of the picture. > Chapter 2B2: Dendrin’s Shadow Year 20 “So Brother Cyrus and Brother Draven are going to be assigned to Rask soon?” you ask. “That’s what I’ve heard from Brother Gray. Them and a few others. Next year at the latest.” Murk says “Good idea, from what I've heard the Empire is always having problems with that area, though I think they'll start having problems in other areas too soon now that they're officially at war with the Felkan Kingdom." "Personally I don't think we should be waiting around now, we should push things along even more.” Brother Shade says. “In fact, I’m going to mention that to Master Ebon next time I see him.” “You don’t think that he hasn’t already thought of such a plan?” Talia asks. “Perhaps, but let’s just say I’ve been here a little longer than the rest of you, and while I know Master Ebon is just waiting for the right time to strike, he’s been playing the waiting game a little longer than I think is necessary.” This statement from Brother Shade gets a lot of looks, but nobody says anything. Even you are surprised as this is the first time you believe you’ve heard something close to an open criticism about Master Ebon or the leadership structure in general. Soon after his statement Brother Shade leaves to attend his duties. “Brother Shade should watch how he talks about Master Ebon. Ebon speaks directly to Dendrin on a daily basis and knows best on how to proceed.” Murk remarks. “Then why did you not speak up, instead of just sitting there?” Sister Bianca asks. “Uh…well…” “Always trying to impress the ladies, eh Murk?” you chuckle and take your leave to go about your duties as well. Later that night you fall asleep and have an encounter with someone you don't want to interact with unless you have to… "So I see you’re fitting in well after all. Glad to see it seeing as you still don't particularly hold a lot of faith in my help. You are a most puzzling creature Eternal." Dendrin says. "For someone with god powers, you aren't very omniscient. As I said, I joined the Shadow Guard's cause because it’s the best chance to bring down the Empire. Master Ebon is the leader and whether he's getting reliable guidance from you or not is irrelevant, he's who I'm following not you.” "Interesting, so you've just exchanged one Emperor for another." "No, for one I actually have interacted with Master Ebon and understand his motivations and goals better. As far as I know about the Emperor and the Empire, they're just into power for power's sake. And what do you care? I'm following Ebon and he follows you, so shouldn't you be happy?" At this point a low chortle pierces your brain. "Perhaps I am. Perhaps I am. As always I enjoy our little talks Eternal." Sometime later you wake up from your sleep, still wondering what the hell Dendrin's game is. Year 21 "Besides the hidden cells we already have, I think we can definitely count on the elven population for support when the time comes, I don't think there's a single one that would defend the Empire, if it meant a true end to it. As for the human population well its hit or miss. We know we'll stir up any slaves and probably criminal types looking to take advantage of the chaos. The poorer folk might be a bit divided. Some are still brainwashed fools happy to toil under the iron fist, though happily a lot seem to be grumbling as of late. It'll probably go more to our favor when the revolution goes full swing." You tell your fellow shadows. "Good to hear. The reports I get from Cyrus at Fort Defiance are promising as well. He says that he's made contact with the orc commander who has been stirring up a bit of rebellion in the orcs. He's been slowly transferring many of them to Rask and concentrating on having them all rebel there though. This Captain Gruz states it would be too risky to do it with the orc serving on the Felkan frontlines as well since he needs to keep his profile somewhat low and they're probably just going to get killed soon in that meat grinder anyway." Brother Gray remarks. "And I still say we should've pushed further on sabotage on that front, not to mention try to convince Gruz to influence the orcs stationed there anyway." "Yes, yes, so you've said. Brother Shade isn't it enough that your voice was heard on the orc issue at all? You should be satisfied with that fact rather than pushing for needless recklessness. Your idea contribution was utilized in the best way that will advance Dendrin's agenda. Be happy for such a thing brother." Brother Gray responds. Brother Shade sits back down and scowls, but says nothing else except a few grumbles. He does glare at you as if you're to blame, but it's not your fault. You've been putting in just as much work as everyone trying to cultivate dissension and looking for weaknesses to exploit when the time comes, you sort of hope it comes soon though because even you are getting tired of the waiting around. You're still an Eternal and the desire for combat on a grand scale is still there. After the meeting you head towards your room since you have no more duties for today. As you walk down the corridor Talia catches up with you. "Where is Brother Murk, normally he's by your side talking to you after these things." "He had to rush to the Delerg province; he had duties to attend to there immediately after the meeting. "I see, for a moment I thought you were going to tell me he was attempting to unsuccessfully attempt to charm sister Bianca again." "He probably still did that before he left." "I don't know why he puts himself through the hassle. It is obvious she will never feel that way about him." Talia remarks. "Oh I dunno, with enough time he might wear her down in twenty years." "Perhaps, but his time would better spent elsewhere pursuing a mate. Certain people just aren't made to be together, unlike say us for example." While you and Talia have grown slightly closer over the years, you weren't aware it was to that level! "Okay Talia, you're going to have to explain in greater detail on this issue, because I'm lost." "I intend to. Basically I am choosing you now as a mate. I think you know there is wisdom in this." "Wha? Now? Me? Why?" "Because even though we are all siblings and equals in the eyes of Dendrin, quite frankly WE…” Talia grabs your hand and puts it to her heart and then your own. “…are Eternals. We still have a bond that the others don’t and you’re the only one I believe is worthy for me. Besides, I'm sure you are sick of waiting around for the revolution to get started and are feeling the urge for combat a lot. I figure we could both blow off some of those urges with other intimate activities." "…does that really work?" "I dunno, I've heard it does. It's not like I've tried this before, I guess we'll have to find out, assuming you want to that is…you aren't like Brother Cyrus are you?" "Hah, no. I just haven't thought about it a lot about it in general. I guess I've got a lot on my mind most of the time." "I sensed as much, as you always seem to be deep in thought a lot. Is it anything in particular?" You almost want to tell her how your whole experience with the Shadow Guard has most likely been a lot different from everyone else's. How you don't have faith in Dendrin and how you've personally had several frustrating conversations with him. And most importantly how you always wonder if secretly attempting to overthrow the Empire is even going to work in the first place. You don't though because it's only going to complicate things and perhaps you should take the time to relax every once in a while. You aren't even going to wonder if getting it on with Talia is even a good idea at this time. You're just going to act on her advances. The pair of you find a secluded spot and embrace. While it's a completely new sensation to the pair of you, it somehow feels natural. Not just the act itself, but rather who you're with. Perhaps Talia was right in thinking that as Eternals you do still have a bond that the others don't. She was also right about another thing too, sex does help with some of the pent up energy you both have. The pair of you engage in this activity quite a bit in the months to come. Near the end of the year, the time to revolt is still no closer, but it would seem a spontaneous riot has broken out in one of the smaller towns just within province and several have been on the verge of doing so. Ever since the Felkan war broke out, the Shadow Guard haven't really been assigned there since the Empire has soldiers coming in and out of the area most of the time so it keeps the idea of rebellion down with the masses. However it would appear that's part of the problem in the first place as a lot of the soldiers have just been taking advantage such as supplementing their food supplies by emptying entire grain storages or fields. The rumors of worse things abound as well, but as always the Empire doesn't pay any attention to such things. The military and its conquest of the Felkan Kingdom is top priority. The peasants are just going to have to make do and suffer through it as always. Normally soldiers would put down the dissension going on in the province, but most of the military is currently attempting to make a big push on the Felkan Kingdom to break the current stalemate and it doesn't really want to divert any more soldiers than necessary. As the Shadow Guard are supposed to be the secret police enforcers in the first place, your order has been assigned to take care of the problem and the Empire wants an example made of the town of Hewlif which has openly rioted to the point where they've murdered all the Empire soldiers within it. While Brother Shade urges that this would be good time to openly strike, Master Ebon again says no and says the charade still needs to be kept. Even you find this to be a little strange since this would indeed be a good opportunity and judging by some of the other reactions of your fellow shadows they may be in agreement. "But how are we supposed to hide any potential rebels this time? I mean this is a whole town that the Empire wants us to wipe off the map!" Sister Bianca exclaims. "We aren't. We're going to obey the Empire on this one and do exactly what we're told." Master Ebon says. "WHAT?! Are you serious? This is supposed to be what we're fighting against! These average ordinary citizens have displayed more courage than you by taking matters into their own hands!" "Brother Shade!" Brother Gray snaps. "NO, I will not be silent this time! I must speak! We have the resources, we have infiltrated enough! Now is not the time to sneak about in the background, Dendrin wanted us to be free and I won't let you or this doddering old fool hold us back with your indecisiveness any longer!" Without another word, Brother Shade speeds himself up and moves in for the attack. He can't possibly win even if he does reach Master Ebon in time…unless you attempted to help him. > You help in the assassination Brother Shade has a point, waiting around for things to happen isn’t why you’re going along with the shadows. You thought they were actually trying to make major changes, but it’s apparent a change in leadership might be indeed necessary. You speed yourself up and fire your armbow at Master Ebon, but instead of hitting him it hits Brother Gray instead. He clutches his eye and falls to the floor. You really didn’t mean to hit him though; he just got in the way. Several shadows behind you tackle you to the floor, but this followed by more shadows assaulting your attackers. Apparently you and Shade’s actions have caused a minor civil war within the shadow ranks and those that disagreed with Master Ebon are taking their opportunity. While you’re trying to avoid getting trampled to death, Brother Shade’s attack isn’t as successful; he gets just within reach of Master Ebon before he’s struck down with whatever mind power that Master Ebon apparently has. He displays it quite prominently when Shade instantly clutches his head as if it's about to explode. While that doesn't happen, he does begin to bleed from his ears and nose. He lets out one long scream of pain before collapsing to floor, this causes the current in-fighting to stop and just stare at Master Ebon who is now displaying an expression of fury the likes you’ve never seen on anyone before. “SO THIS IS WHAT IT HAS COME TO?” He shouts and points over at Brother Gray’s body. “How can we possibly defeat the Empire if we’re killing each other and doubting Dendrin’s will? If Dendrin right now struck ALL of us dead for this blasphemy, I could not blame him! Nor would I because it is not my place, nor anyone else’s to judge his plans! It is obvious that this order must undergo purification before we are even able to overthrow the Empire! Centuries of planning completely gone, but this is how it MUST be if we are ever to be truly free under Dendrin’s blessed design.” Master Ebon pauses a moment and then points in your direction. “We’ll start with you for your murder of Brother Gray!” Before you can even react you feel a sharp pain wrack your brain then it courses throughout your entire body. It feels like your entire body is on fire and having thousands of blades stabbing you at the same time. You begin bleeding, screaming and writhing on the floor just like Brother Shade did with one importance difference, Master Ebon actually makes your head explode into gooey chunks just to get his point across about purifying the shadow order.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 2B2: Dendrin’s Shadow Year 20 “So Brother Cyrus and Brother Draven are going to be assigned to Rask soon?” you ask. “That’s what I’ve heard from Brother Gray. Them and a few others. Next year at the latest.” Murk says “Good idea, from what I've heard the Empire is always having problems with that area, though I think they'll start having problems in other areas too soon now that they're officially at war with the Felkan Kingdom." "Personally I don't think we should be waiting around now, we should push things along even more.” Brother Shade says. “In fact, I’m going to mention that to Master Ebon next time I see him.” “You don’t think that he hasn’t already thought of such a plan?” Talia asks. “Perhaps, but let’s just say I’ve been here a little longer than the rest of you, and while I know Master Ebon is just waiting for the right time to strike, he’s been playing the waiting game a little longer than I think is necessary.” This statement from Brother Shade gets a lot of looks, but nobody says anything. Even you are surprised as this is the first time you believe you’ve heard something close to an open criticism about Master Ebon or the leadership structure in general. Soon after his statement Brother Shade leaves to attend his duties. “Brother Shade should watch how he talks about Master Ebon. Ebon speaks directly to Dendrin on a daily basis and knows best on how to proceed.” Murk remarks. “Then why did you not speak up, instead of just sitting there?” Sister Bianca asks. “Uh…well…” “Always trying to impress the ladies, eh Murk?” you chuckle and take your leave to go about your duties as well. Later that night you fall asleep and have an encounter with someone you don't want to interact with unless you have to… "So I see you’re fitting in well after all. Glad to see it seeing as you still don't particularly hold a lot of faith in my help. You are a most puzzling creature Eternal." Dendrin says. "For someone with god powers, you aren't very omniscient. As I said, I joined the Shadow Guard's cause because it’s the best chance to bring down the Empire. Master Ebon is the leader and whether he's getting reliable guidance from you or not is irrelevant, he's who I'm following not you.” "Interesting, so you've just exchanged one Emperor for another." "No, for one I actually have interacted with Master Ebon and understand his motivations and goals better. As far as I know about the Emperor and the Empire, they're just into power for power's sake. And what do you care? I'm following Ebon and he follows you, so shouldn't you be happy?" At this point a low chortle pierces your brain. "Perhaps I am. Perhaps I am. As always I enjoy our little talks Eternal." Sometime later you wake up from your sleep, still wondering what the hell Dendrin's game is. Year 21 "Besides the hidden cells we already have, I think we can definitely count on the elven population for support when the time comes, I don't think there's a single one that would defend the Empire, if it meant a true end to it. As for the human population well its hit or miss. We know we'll stir up any slaves and probably criminal types looking to take advantage of the chaos. The poorer folk might be a bit divided. Some are still brainwashed fools happy to toil under the iron fist, though happily a lot seem to be grumbling as of late. It'll probably go more to our favor when the revolution goes full swing." You tell your fellow shadows. "Good to hear. The reports I get from Cyrus at Fort Defiance are promising as well. He says that he's made contact with the orc commander who has been stirring up a bit of rebellion in the orcs. He's been slowly transferring many of them to Rask and concentrating on having them all rebel there though. This Captain Gruz states it would be too risky to do it with the orc serving on the Felkan frontlines as well since he needs to keep his profile somewhat low and they're probably just going to get killed soon in that meat grinder anyway." Brother Gray remarks. "And I still say we should've pushed further on sabotage on that front, not to mention try to convince Gruz to influence the orcs stationed there anyway." "Yes, yes, so you've said. Brother Shade isn't it enough that your voice was heard on the orc issue at all? You should be satisfied with that fact rather than pushing for needless recklessness. Your idea contribution was utilized in the best way that will advance Dendrin's agenda. Be happy for such a thing brother." Brother Gray responds. Brother Shade sits back down and scowls, but says nothing else except a few grumbles. He does glare at you as if you're to blame, but it's not your fault. You've been putting in just as much work as everyone trying to cultivate dissension and looking for weaknesses to exploit when the time comes, you sort of hope it comes soon though because even you are getting tired of the waiting around. You're still an Eternal and the desire for combat on a grand scale is still there. After the meeting you head towards your room since you have no more duties for today. As you walk down the corridor Talia catches up with you. "Where is Brother Murk, normally he's by your side talking to you after these things." "He had to rush to the Delerg province; he had duties to attend to there immediately after the meeting. "I see, for a moment I thought you were going to tell me he was attempting to unsuccessfully attempt to charm sister Bianca again." "He probably still did that before he left." "I don't know why he puts himself through the hassle. It is obvious she will never feel that way about him." Talia remarks. "Oh I dunno, with enough time he might wear her down in twenty years." "Perhaps, but his time would better spent elsewhere pursuing a mate. Certain people just aren't made to be together, unlike say us for example." While you and Talia have grown slightly closer over the years, you weren't aware it was to that level! "Okay Talia, you're going to have to explain in greater detail on this issue, because I'm lost." "I intend to. Basically I am choosing you now as a mate. I think you know there is wisdom in this." "Wha? Now? Me? Why?" "Because even though we are all siblings and equals in the eyes of Dendrin, quite frankly WE…” Talia grabs your hand and puts it to her heart and then your own. “…are Eternals. We still have a bond that the others don’t and you’re the only one I believe is worthy for me. Besides, I'm sure you are sick of waiting around for the revolution to get started and are feeling the urge for combat a lot. I figure we could both blow off some of those urges with other intimate activities." "…does that really work?" "I dunno, I've heard it does. It's not like I've tried this before, I guess we'll have to find out, assuming you want to that is…you aren't like Brother Cyrus are you?" "Hah, no. I just haven't thought about it a lot about it in general. I guess I've got a lot on my mind most of the time." "I sensed as much, as you always seem to be deep in thought a lot. Is it anything in particular?" You almost want to tell her how your whole experience with the Shadow Guard has most likely been a lot different from everyone else's. How you don't have faith in Dendrin and how you've personally had several frustrating conversations with him. And most importantly how you always wonder if secretly attempting to overthrow the Empire is even going to work in the first place. You don't though because it's only going to complicate things and perhaps you should take the time to relax every once in a while. You aren't even going to wonder if getting it on with Talia is even a good idea at this time. You're just going to act on her advances. The pair of you find a secluded spot and embrace. While it's a completely new sensation to the pair of you, it somehow feels natural. Not just the act itself, but rather who you're with. Perhaps Talia was right in thinking that as Eternals you do still have a bond that the others don't. She was also right about another thing too, sex does help with some of the pent up energy you both have. The pair of you engage in this activity quite a bit in the months to come. Near the end of the year, the time to revolt is still no closer, but it would seem a spontaneous riot has broken out in one of the smaller towns just within province and several have been on the verge of doing so. Ever since the Felkan war broke out, the Shadow Guard haven't really been assigned there since the Empire has soldiers coming in and out of the area most of the time so it keeps the idea of rebellion down with the masses. However it would appear that's part of the problem in the first place as a lot of the soldiers have just been taking advantage such as supplementing their food supplies by emptying entire grain storages or fields. The rumors of worse things abound as well, but as always the Empire doesn't pay any attention to such things. The military and its conquest of the Felkan Kingdom is top priority. The peasants are just going to have to make do and suffer through it as always. Normally soldiers would put down the dissension going on in the province, but most of the military is currently attempting to make a big push on the Felkan Kingdom to break the current stalemate and it doesn't really want to divert any more soldiers than necessary. As the Shadow Guard are supposed to be the secret police enforcers in the first place, your order has been assigned to take care of the problem and the Empire wants an example made of the town of Hewlif which has openly rioted to the point where they've murdered all the Empire soldiers within it. While Brother Shade urges that this would be good time to openly strike, Master Ebon again says no and says the charade still needs to be kept. Even you find this to be a little strange since this would indeed be a good opportunity and judging by some of the other reactions of your fellow shadows they may be in agreement. "But how are we supposed to hide any potential rebels this time? I mean this is a whole town that the Empire wants us to wipe off the map!" Sister Bianca exclaims. "We aren't. We're going to obey the Empire on this one and do exactly what we're told." Master Ebon says. "WHAT?! Are you serious? This is supposed to be what we're fighting against! These average ordinary citizens have displayed more courage than you by taking matters into their own hands!" "Brother Shade!" Brother Gray snaps. "NO, I will not be silent this time! I must speak! We have the resources, we have infiltrated enough! Now is not the time to sneak about in the background, Dendrin wanted us to be free and I won't let you or this doddering old fool hold us back with your indecisiveness any longer!" Without another word, Brother Shade speeds himself up and moves in for the attack. He can't possibly win even if he does reach Master Ebon in time…unless you attempted to help him. > You stop the assassination Brother Shade has gone too far this time in this foolish attempt at a coup. You didn't think he attempt such a thing, but maybe you should've seen it was coming. As such you feel like it's your duty to try to stop him before he can do any major damage. You speed yourself up and fire your armbow at Shade just as he reaches Master Ebon and Brother Gray. It's not a fatal hit, since your bolt amusingly hits him in the ass; however it's enough to throw him off and whatever power Master Ebon has, he displays it quite prominently when Shade instantly clutches his head as if it's about to explode. While that doesn't happen, he does begin to bleed from his ears and nose. He lets out one long scream of pain before collapsing to floor. Everyone else stands silent as Brother Gray checks to see if he's dead and then confirms it. You hear a quiet whimper of "I told him." come from the crowd. It must be Sister Dusk who was Brother Shade's lover. Even she didn't help him. "This is a sad day for all shadows. To think that one of our own would…I cannot speak of it…(Sigh) I am only relieved to see that the rest of you still hold more faith in Dendrin than Shade did." Master Ebon say and then looks at you. "And I thank you for reacting so quickly brother. I always know your loyalty to Dendrin to be impeccable. I think that's why you need to be one to be in charge of this mission. I know it's grim, but our order has done such deeds in the past. Just think of this as being a means to an end. A means to an end before we're all truly free." "I…understand Master Ebon. And I accept your confidence in me." After some discussion on the events that just occurred you are instructed to gather together some shadows to help you put down the revolt in Hewlif. You already know who you're going to pick though, Murk, Bianca and Talia, though you're sensing they have the recent event on their minds. "It's just like Master Ebon said, this is just one of the things we have to do before we put our own plan into action." You say back at your barracks. "I just don't know. I mean I don't agree with Brother Shade's actions on trying to kill Master Ebon, but he might've had a point about all this waiting around. When ARE we going to strike out against the Empire properly?" Sister Bianca says. "Yeah, I mean I know we've had to kill a lot of innocent people here and there for the Empire to keep up appearances, but we're talking about an entire town here. I just don't know…" Brother Murk says. You can't believe what you're hearing right now. Why all the doubts? Is this the so called faith in Dendrin? You're so frustrated that you lash out. "Oh for…I thought we were all doing this to serve Dendrin! I mean Master Ebon gets his orders from him and then we follow Master Ebon! It's a hierarchy that I THOUGHT we were supposed to adhere to, that's why I tried to stop Brother Shade in first fucking place! I don't have time for this, look if you lack the stomach to do this, I'll wipe out the entire town myself, and won't think twice about it!" You turn from your fellows and storm out of Gloom. As you're walking out you can sense other shadows that don't agree with Master Ebon, give you a few glares on the way out. You don't understand any of this. You thought Dendrin's brainwashing technique made them all utterly loyal, you can see now that it has its limits. Granted the only one that actually did anything against the order was Brother Shade, and he at least had enough courage to try to carry out his convictions, unlike the rest who just stood around to watch him die. You find it ironic that you're probably least faithful when it comes to Dendrin himself, yet your loyalty to the order is a lot more secure. On your way to stop at Lenet, you sense someone following you. You turn and see Talia. "It's you." "And a big greeting to you too, brother! Sheesh, I thought you'd wait for me after your rant at least." "I didn't think anyone was interested in coming with me." "You should know better than that." "So you agree with what I did?" "Well, I have to admit…and I'd only admit this to you…I sort of thought Brother Shade had a point." "Well of course he had a point. I mean for the briefest moment I thought about helping him." "You did?" "Yes, but I didn't because as far as I'm concerned I've chosen a side and for good or ill I fully intend on carrying out its mission or die trying. So if that means I've got to wipe out every town in the Arat province to bring the Empire down, well so fucking be it." Talia smiles a bit at your statement. "Now that is why YOU are the only one worthy of me." "Oh, you just picked me because Cyrus turned out to be gay." "Ha ha! Nah, I already knew what was up with him even back when we were all in Mistresses class. He was always staring that that one classmate of ours…what was his name…oh yeah Gerald. Can't say I blame him though, Gerald was probably the most handsome in class." "Hmm. I didn't take much notice of any of that." "No I wouldn't expect you would've. You tended to lurk in the background and just focus on the training and your orders. Though you're still focused on your orders, you're a lot more pro-active about it rather than lurking in the background now. I suppose that sort of unquestioning dedication is what makes you a great fighter though." You thank Talia for her compliment. For the remainder of journey you and her keep the chatter to a minimum. After all it is true that you do prefer to keep your mind focused on the task at hand. When you finally arrive near the town of Hewlet, you see a group a ragged Empire soldiers standing nearby. They hardly look like the Empire's "best". "Are you the shadow people the Empire sent for?" one of them asks. He doesn't look very old, in fact he's probably younger than you are. All of them look like that. You didn't realize how bad it was on the Empire's recruitment front. "Yes, yes we are and who are you supposed to be?" "I'm private first class Jones and this is my squad. We're sort of supposed to be watching the town. To make sure none of the dissidents attempt to leave it." "And?" "And what…uh sir?" Jones asks unsure of how to address you. "And so have any of them left?" "Um, not really. Well I mean I guess a few did before we arrived, but it looks like the rest are hunkered down in the town. I think they're building barricades around it." "How come the Empire hasn't sent a company in there to just wipe them out." "Not sure sir, but they said it wasn't the army's priority right now and that's what you Shadow Guard were here for." You shake your head at the absurdity of this. If there was ever a good argument for overthrowing the Empire this would be it. The sheer inefficiency of this is just ridiculous. Instead of having a group of snot-nosed recruits to play sentry, the Empire could've easily sent in a company of well trained troops to put down the fucking uprising and been done with it! Unless the war with the Felkan Kingdom is going a lot worse than you've heard of course. Right now you're glad you decided to aid the Shadow Guard despite your recent frustration with them. "So uh, where are the rest of your people? Are they invisible or something?" Jones asks. "No, it's just us." You answer. "…just you? But there's at least two hundred people in that town!" "Two hundred? Then that probably means only about fifty have any sort of combat experience, and maybe out of those, ten of which have beyond the basics. The rest…hardly worth thinking about. Still with only two of us here there are bound to be a few escapees. Oh well, we'll do what we can, the rest of you just stay out the way." Due to your cold seriousness, Jones is at a loss of how to respond other than a yes sir. You look at Talia, who nods at you as an indication that she's ready. The pair of you don't speed up or use any shadow magic tricks on your way to the town. The sounds of threatening shouts are blocked out as you approach. A few arrows are shot at you, but they are so pitifully aimed you don't even need to dodge most of them. As you get closer, you feel the stirring of battle approaching and you can hardly contain yourself. Whether this will help the Empire or the Shadow Guard cause you don't care right now, because all you're thinking about is how finally you'll be getting into a proper battle. You sense that Talia feels the same way. The following is a bloodbath, the hapless townspeople are no match for you or Talia. You don't even bother speeding yourself up, you rely on natural raw skill. By the time you've butchered most of the combat capable people, the rest of the townsfolk have either run and hid or tried to run off completely. You catch most of the stragglers though when you find a group of small children cowering in their school house (after running one of their teachers through with a sword) you get an idea. "Children, this is your lucky day, for today you not only get to be witnesses but also messengers. It is an important message that I want you all to spread to whatever other town you to run to. Tell the people that if they continue to cause trouble, they won't have to fear the Empire, but the Shadows. Oppose the Empire, and you will die. Oppose the Shadows and you will beg for a death that won't come quick enough. We have displayed mercy here today. Remember this." You then dismiss the children with a wave of your hand who go running and screaming out of the room and probably in several different directions. When you leave the school, Talia waves at you. "Hey are we chasing these kids down too? I just saw a bunch of them rushing out of the school crying the whole time." "No, I sent them off with an important message." "Oh, what was it?" "Hopefully an incentive for when the big day eventually arrives, the people will be more likely to side with us than the Empire or at least more afraid of us that they won't oppose us. In any case we've done our job here and the Empire shouldn't be bitching about it anymore." You and Talia take your leave of the newly created ghost town. You wonder if your small idea will have any effect, probably not, though you guess you won't really know until the day of the big revolt comes. > Year 25 You settle into the bed of the dead Empire captain for the night. Normally you'd be a lot more alert, but you've got an entire group of shadows here at the conquered Empire outpost, not to mention several elven freedom fighters. You're fairly confident that they'll wake you if a counter attack comes. For now though you really need to get a good night's rest. You've been fighting non-stop for the past couple of weeks and you need a quick recharge at least. It doesn't help that the use of shadow magic drains you as well and probably why you don't use it much. Not that you really need to anyway, your natural skills work well enough. While the rebellion has only just gotten started, a lot of progress has been made. All the provinces from what you know of are suffering revolts on some scale. The worst of the lot being Rask where Cyrus has taken control of Fort Defiance. The shadow/orc alliance seems to be working well up there and the rest of the towns aren't exactly in line to help the Empire. Apparently the strongest resistance is from the second Empire fort called Destiny and another Eternal called Captain Kane is in charge. You barely remember him from class, though you heard he made a name for himself wiping out various barbarian tribes. Speaking of Eternals, one has been personally put in charge of attempting to eliminate the shadow striker cells like yours. A Captain Roldan. You do vaguely remember him from class. Tended to follow orders to the letter during training. Sort of like you in a way, but different. He was more extroverted you think, you guess that's why he was chosen to be a soldier rather than a shadow. You still don't know the reasoning was for making you a Shadow Guard candidate anyway, if you had to guess it was to try to spy on them. Of course this all makes you wonder what if you hadn't been chosen? What if you'd been a regular soldier? Would you have been content on just following Empire orders and never knowing any better? You'll never know of course. You've chosen your path and it's best to make most of it. Not that you regret your decision as the rebellion goes well. And with that positive thought you fall asleep. As you drift off you find yourself back in the numbness of the void… "It's finally happened. Rebellion across the Empire. Are you finally satisfied?" "I'm satisfied in that I'm glad we've finally stopped sitting on our hands. Why ask me anyway? You're the one that's been guiding the shadows all this time for centuries to rebel. Shouldn't you be the one that's excessively happy about it?" you ask "Oh I suppose…" "You suppose? I don't get you. You act like you don't care one way or another about it!" "Perhaps the time has passed." "What?!" "Oh don't get me wrong, I once wanted to see the Empire fall because it infringed on my own control over the mortals that were worshipping me at the time. And it's been interesting how over the decades and centuries that my little followers have been building up their strength to defeat them, but quite frankly I figured they would've done it long before then. Now? Well its okay, but I've lost a bit of interest since that time." If you weren't floating in a void of sensory deprivation you'd yell and scream at Dendrin so loudly that the rage would be felt throughout your body right now. "But that's your fucking fault. YOU were the one guiding them! If you wanted them to strike before now, you should've made some sort of sign to Master Ebon, or whoever was in charge at the time!" "Quite frankly I stopped giving them any advice centuries ago. I found it was much more interesting to see them figure out things on their own. The only time I speak to any of them is during the ceremony process." "If that's the case, why all the indoctrination, if you're such a fan of free will?" "How long do you think that actually lasts? It's only temporary! Just long enough to get them to have faith in me. Whether they continue to follow me or not is all them and on a related note, whatever so called signs the shadow leaders have been talking about are either ones they made up or made up in their heads. Glad to see Ebon finally decided to get off his ass and do something and be interesting for a change though." "So I was right! I've been right all along! You're nothing but a fucking fraud. You're not a god at all." "No, Eternal YOU got it wrong. It isn't I who is a fraud. It's the religion itself! I didn't originally call ANYONE to worship me. They did that naturally when one of those big hairless monkeys stumbled into a cave and messed around with some lost magical Derro object that opened up a portal where I dwelled. I was perfectly content spending infinity in my own realm until that time, but things change and I took an interest in these new creatures and their world. Wasn't my fault that they saw me as some deity just because they couldn't comprehend me in any other way." "You didn't exactly deter that thinking though." "Well you have me there Eternal. And I say so what? I gave these creatures purpose, meaning and even magical power! In return they worship me and serve. If you really think about it, is that not the definition of a god? And so what if I have lost interest in my subjects? True, they have proven loyal, but I grow bored with their antics. I seek other stimulus now." As strange as it may seem you sort of understand Dendrin's point of view. He views humans and mortals in general as you would watch insects. They're interesting to watch for awhile, but after some time has passed you're ready to move on. And really who's to say that if you weren't some powerful being you wouldn't do the same? Still, you have more questions. "Okay, but why not move on then if you're so bored?" "Because I'm not quite THAT bored yet. Besides when you arrived things started to get interesting again. Never had anyone resist my indoctrination so strongly before. I probably could've increased it, but that might've killed you besides I thought it would be more interesting to see if you followed me even without the indoctrination. It's interesting to see that while you have decided to follow the shadow's cause, you have been nothing but indifferent to outright hostile towards the religion even before you found all this out. That displays a grain of imagination and it's mainly why I've been in contact with you. In fact you're about the only mortal I've spoken to on a regular basis in centuries." "I guess I'm the lucky one then." You remark. "Your sarcasm aside, you actually are lucky, because I'm about to give you some friendly advice. Namely, don't go back to Gloom." "What? What are you talking about?" "That's all you get Eternal. Heed my advice or don't, it makes no difference to me. Talk to you again later perhaps." Once again you wake up though this time Dendrin gave you some direct information. Quite a bit of it really. You aren't even sure of what to make of all of it. You mean you always knew something was off with the whole shadow religion, but you didn't think he'd actually admit it all to you. Makes you wonder why he did, when he's been so cryptic in the past. Then against perhaps he knows you can't actually tell anyone, or rather you could, but wouldn't be believed and most likely attacked as a heretic. Perhaps that's his little joke on you. Yeah sounds like him. Still he's also given you a warning of not going back to Gloom. Why? Is something terrible going to happen there? Does he mean forever or just in the near future or is he just trying to play head games with you as usual? In reality, you aren't even scheduled to go back to Gloom anytime soon. Your job has been to sew as much chaos as you can across the Quala province. Still, if something bad IS going to happen there, maybe you should try to prevent it or warn somebody or something because right now Brother Gray and Master Ebon are supposed to be preparing a proper army of shadows to march directly on the capital, though not in the traditional way. Apparently they're going to try to use a magical gate to travel through the shadow world and pop up right in the heart of the Emperor's Palace. Such magic is very powerful to use, but also very time consuming and fatiguing. You know they have been going through some sort of long involved ritual which is involving several of the more powerful shadows to link their energy and even draw upon some of the weaker ones. You know Murk and Bianca are there rather than working in a shadow guerilla detachment. (They never quite looked at you the same way again after the incident with Shade.) Talia is also there, though she's one of those lending her powerful shadow magic skills to the ritual. And despite one of the most important events occurring at Gloom right now, the ONLY reason why you'd return there to possibly risk your own life is for Talia. You've grown closer to her in a way that you never thought possible. The relationship you've experienced with her is just one more reason why fighting against the Empire is the best idea you ever had. Still all of this might be for naught if something happens to Gloom. You still don't know WHAT that could be and for all you know it could just be something that will affect your life not anyone else's. (And from Dendrin's tone, not for the better) > You go back to Gloom yourself Considering you willingly chose to oppose the Empire, you'd say you've already gotten over the whole putting yourself in great danger bit. You might as well go back to Gloom to find out what's going on if anything at all. If something is happening, then you need to help anyway. If something isn't, well nothing will have been lost except time attending your own duties you suppose. Still there isn't any reason for you to hold up the rest of your group. You call to speak to one of your fellow shadows that you believe to be the most skilled. "Sister Yvette, I need to go back to Gloom and no I can't be talked out of it either, but I assure you it is incredibly important. I want you to take charge of this group until I return. I think you know your mission and I'm sure you'll do a fine job." "But brother, your orders from Master Ebon are to stay with this group, and do not need to report your progress. He's busy performing the ritual at Gloom at this time, what is so important that you have to go back?" "It's a long story, but let's just say I've had my own personal sign from Dendrin himself." "You…you have? Is something bad going to happen? Should we all go with you?!" "As I said, you stay here and carry on the fight. I don't know if something bad is going to happen, but if it does, we're going to need shadows like you still doing your job to help bring down the Empire." Sister Yvette reluctantly agrees though it's apparent she would either prefer to go with you or for you to stay with the group. You don't know why, since she's actually been a shadow longer than you and should have more confidence in her ability to lead, but it's like with anything, some people are just naturally more gifted than others, even if they are supposed to be equals. You make your way back to Gloom as fast as possible, even using some magic to speed yourself up. It's tempting to attack some of the stray Empire soldiers you hide out from along the way, but you need to focus on just getting back. One thing you've noticed though is that you aren't really encountering any soldiers heading in the direction of Gloom. You would've thought (even without the warning) that more Empire soldiers would've been marching that way. In fact this revolt has been going on for months now and there have been no attempts by the Empire to attack Gloom, they've just been focusing on putting out the fires you've been setting everywhere else. You don't know if that's because they're lacking the manpower to adequately attack it due to the Felkan War, if they're just biding their time or maybe it's just Empire incompetence due to them not anticipating this even happening and having a backup plan for it. Eventually you arrive at Gloom the next night. You're a little tired, but you can't let that bother you. When you approach the rock formation you chant the usual words to reveal the opening and descend down the stairs. Gloom is normally a pretty quiet place. Rare is the time where you can hear lots of shouting or the clomping of footsteps. Right now you're hearing both in abundance, followed by the familiar sounds of metal clanging against metal. Apparently your worst fears have been confirmed. You rush down the rest of the stairs and peer around a corner just in time to seem half a dozen heavily armored figures chopping a shadow to pieces with axes. The figures themselves aren't very tall, almost squat like, but their armor still makes them look massive and you can't even see their faces. It makes you pause a bit; these are a powerful unknown foe as you've never seen any soldiers like this before in the Empire military and you can only assume they're helping the Empire. You take a deep breath and cast a cloak on yourself along with speeding yourself up again before pressing forward with your attack. You try to drive your blade through the armor of one of the figures, but it resists your attempts. The only thing you do manage is to do is knock him off balance long enough for him to tip over completely. You fire a bolt from your armbow at another one. It pierces his full face helm and knocks him back, but apparently not enough to kill him because he doesn't fall down. The other four have now turned their attention to you and while you run around striking them with your weapon, your blades just aren't getting through their armor. With your cloak off and your speed wearing down, one of them helps their buddy off the ground and the one with the poison bolt in his face helm has rejoined the fight after having pulled it out. What sort of creatures are these? You decide to back off a bit and reassess the situation, and then you make a complete retreat when the six of them start advancing on your position. Your saving grace is they aren't very fast in that armor and you easily find a storage room to hide in. You think you're alone, but you aren't. "Brother… I never thought I'd see you again…" you hear familiar voice struggle to exclaim. You turn and see Murk lying in a corner bleeding profusely. One of his hands is missing and he's holding in his innards with the remaining one. "Murk? What's going on? What's happened here?" "It's the Derro…they've returned…(cough) always heard they abandoned this place. Guess they REALLY want it back." "The Derro? How? When?" "A couple days ago brother. We've been fighting them off here for the past two days, but unsuccessfully I'm afraid. Everything was going well with the ritual and we would've been making a full invasion right in the heart of the capital if they hadn't just suddenly showed up. They disrupted everything. They came out of the damn walls and even from underneath the floors. They aren't as big as us, but the little bastards are the toughest things I've ever encountered and who knows what they look like under all that heavy armor." "The Empire is probably behind this attack." "Probably, but does it matter? They're killing us and no matter how much we try, we can't beat them!" "They can't be invincible. Everything dies." "Oh yeah, you can kill 'em, just really hard to, due to all that armor. Even without that, though they seem to have some natural magic resistance. (cough) I saw one of those fuckers take a full blast of shadow fire from Master Ebon himself, and he kept coming at him like a golem. It wasn't until Brother Gray stepped in to help that they turned him into blackened heap of melted metal." "Where are Master Ebon and Brother Gray?" "Brother Gray is dead. I saw him surrounded and literally torn apart by those things, I mean they (choke) ripped his limbs off like a rag doll…it was horrible. I don't…even want to…" Brother Murk begins to get upset, but you really need him to continue so you can get a better idea of how bad this is and maybe find some way of turning it around. "Murk, what about Master Ebon?" "I don't know. Probably dead! Just like Brother Gray and (sob) Bianca…I tried! I tried so hard to save her!" "Sister Bianca is dead too?" "No, not the last time I saw her. A couple of the Derro were dragging her unconscious battered body in chains to one of their invasion entrances. I've noticed they've been doing that with several of the female shadows. I tried to save her, and what you see before you is the result of my attempted heroics. I know she never saw me as a potential mate, but…I don't want to think about what they'll do to her…(sob)." This new information suddenly makes you ask the question that you're afraid to ask. "Talia? Did you see them take Talia?" "No, brother. I haven't seen Sister Talia since the interruption of the ritual. She may still be alive and fighting. Oh why didn't Dendrin prevent this destruction? Why wasn't this foreseen? We were on the verge of victory and now all is lost!" Murk cries out. "Hey! All isn't lost yet! The Empire WILL fall, I promise you." You say looking at Murk. He manages a faint smile, but his life force is fading fast. "Perhaps it will brother, but I won't live to see it anymore …I'm sorry for…" "Murk, you don't have…" And you don't bother finishing you sentence. Murk is dead and even though you drifted apart slightly in last few years, you're going to miss him. Right now though you need to figure out what you're going to do. Tactically, this looks like a no win situation. From Murk's last words, the Derro have already managed to slaughter most of the shadows and have successfully overrun the fortress. You've already tried to fight a few and didn't make much headway. You might do better to get out of here and inform the remainder of the shadows topside of the bad news so that you can regroup. Of course the other part of you wants to at least try to find Talia, and even some other shadows that may need your help, because assuming you get out of this alive, you're going to need all the help you can get in continuing your plan to overthrow the Empire. > You leave Gloom This place is a mass grave at this point, these Derro have left nothing alive and if anyone is, then they’re probably dying like poor Murk was. You need to get out of here now and try to regroup the shadows above ground. You make your way back towards the entrance; unfortunately the large group of Derro that were in your way when you entered are still in your way while you’re trying to exit. They’re guarding the entry gate to the stairway up which is now locked so you aren’t going to be able to sneak past them and fighting them is obviously not a winning solution either. You find a spot nearby to hide in and wait for hours hoping that the group moves, but they just stand there like statues. You don’t even see them speaking to each other. After even more hours of waiting they still haven’t moved and you have to change your hiding spot anyway, because another group of Derro starts approaching uncomfortably close to your position. So you do the only thing you can think of, you sneak back to where Murk’s body was and hide there. You figure eventually they will have to move on. After one day passes you still hear the clanking of armored foot steps roaming about Gloom, you manage to sneak out again and to your dismay the Derro are not only still there, but they’re in the same exact positions. At this point you’re getting very frustrated; you need to get out of here! Since you’re trapped anyway, you decide to start looking for possible other survivor, though you’re less optimistic now than ever. You spider climb on the ceiling and cloak yourself to avoid the Derro, but you don’t find much save for massacred shadows and Derro patrols thoroughly searching Gloom. You can’t believe how relentless this race is. In your search you never do find Talia. Not even her body. You can only hope she somehow managed to escape and didn’t suffer the fate of Bianca. You’d actually rather not think about it. You do find Master Ebon’s body though. He was heavily wounded and alone in some forgotten room, not unlike Murk. Two more days pass and you’re still stuck in Gloom. You’ve managed to keep yourself going by raiding the kitchen for food and drink, but the Derro are still all over the place. (And still guarding the entryway) You don’t know if they’ve permanently moved in here or what, but you hope that isn’t the case because that’s going to make escape even harder. By day five you get desperate. You come up with a plan to try to kill a few of the Derro guarding the entryway. You fail utterly and are turned back, worse the Derro now realize there is still at least one shadow in the area so they double up on patrols around the entryway and other important zones like the kitchen On day nine you’re exhausted from evading Derro patrols. You don’t know how the hell they’ve been managing to track you, but your cloak spell isn’t working anymore. Just as well, because using your shadow magic is draining all your endurance at this point. On day twelve you’re awakened by several explosions followed by the stomping of metal boots at a much quicker pace. You can hear shouting in Derro tongue, but you have no idea what’s going on except more explosions are occurring shaking loose the stones and dirt above your head. You step out from your hiding spot and feel the rumbling all over and the strong scent of brimstone and smoke in the air. The Derro have purposely done something to collapse the entire complex! You immediately speed yourself up and rush to the entrance as you need to get out now or you’ll be buried alive. Fully expecting that at least the entryway will be open now, you are in for a brutal shock when you see the same group of Derro STILL guarding it despite the fact that the entire place is coming down. If you could even see their faces, it probably would be a look of unconcern on them, because the Derro are still more or less not moving while standing guard. With no more hope, you rush into battle in a vain attempt to escape. You don’t make it far, though you give as good of a fight as you can. The battle ultimately ends with you getting an axe in your spine, which is then followed by another axe blow to your left hand severing it. When you collapse to the ground mercy comes swiftly in the form of a large stone falling on your skull.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Considering you willingly chose to oppose the Empire, you'd say you've already gotten over the whole putting yourself in great danger bit. You might as well go back to Gloom to find out what's going on if anything at all. If something is happening, then you need to help anyway. If something isn't, well nothing will have been lost except time attending your own duties you suppose. Still there isn't any reason for you to hold up the rest of your group. You call to speak to one of your fellow shadows that you believe to be the most skilled. "Sister Yvette, I need to go back to Gloom and no I can't be talked out of it either, but I assure you it is incredibly important. I want you to take charge of this group until I return. I think you know your mission and I'm sure you'll do a fine job." "But brother, your orders from Master Ebon are to stay with this group, and do not need to report your progress. He's busy performing the ritual at Gloom at this time, what is so important that you have to go back?" "It's a long story, but let's just say I've had my own personal sign from Dendrin himself." "You…you have? Is something bad going to happen? Should we all go with you?!" "As I said, you stay here and carry on the fight. I don't know if something bad is going to happen, but if it does, we're going to need shadows like you still doing your job to help bring down the Empire." Sister Yvette reluctantly agrees though it's apparent she would either prefer to go with you or for you to stay with the group. You don't know why, since she's actually been a shadow longer than you and should have more confidence in her ability to lead, but it's like with anything, some people are just naturally more gifted than others, even if they are supposed to be equals. You make your way back to Gloom as fast as possible, even using some magic to speed yourself up. It's tempting to attack some of the stray Empire soldiers you hide out from along the way, but you need to focus on just getting back. One thing you've noticed though is that you aren't really encountering any soldiers heading in the direction of Gloom. You would've thought (even without the warning) that more Empire soldiers would've been marching that way. In fact this revolt has been going on for months now and there have been no attempts by the Empire to attack Gloom, they've just been focusing on putting out the fires you've been setting everywhere else. You don't know if that's because they're lacking the manpower to adequately attack it due to the Felkan War, if they're just biding their time or maybe it's just Empire incompetence due to them not anticipating this even happening and having a backup plan for it. Eventually you arrive at Gloom the next night. You're a little tired, but you can't let that bother you. When you approach the rock formation you chant the usual words to reveal the opening and descend down the stairs. Gloom is normally a pretty quiet place. Rare is the time where you can hear lots of shouting or the clomping of footsteps. Right now you're hearing both in abundance, followed by the familiar sounds of metal clanging against metal. Apparently your worst fears have been confirmed. You rush down the rest of the stairs and peer around a corner just in time to seem half a dozen heavily armored figures chopping a shadow to pieces with axes. The figures themselves aren't very tall, almost squat like, but their armor still makes them look massive and you can't even see their faces. It makes you pause a bit; these are a powerful unknown foe as you've never seen any soldiers like this before in the Empire military and you can only assume they're helping the Empire. You take a deep breath and cast a cloak on yourself along with speeding yourself up again before pressing forward with your attack. You try to drive your blade through the armor of one of the figures, but it resists your attempts. The only thing you do manage is to do is knock him off balance long enough for him to tip over completely. You fire a bolt from your armbow at another one. It pierces his full face helm and knocks him back, but apparently not enough to kill him because he doesn't fall down. The other four have now turned their attention to you and while you run around striking them with your weapon, your blades just aren't getting through their armor. With your cloak off and your speed wearing down, one of them helps their buddy off the ground and the one with the poison bolt in his face helm has rejoined the fight after having pulled it out. What sort of creatures are these? You decide to back off a bit and reassess the situation, and then you make a complete retreat when the six of them start advancing on your position. Your saving grace is they aren't very fast in that armor and you easily find a storage room to hide in. You think you're alone, but you aren't. "Brother… I never thought I'd see you again…" you hear familiar voice struggle to exclaim. You turn and see Murk lying in a corner bleeding profusely. One of his hands is missing and he's holding in his innards with the remaining one. "Murk? What's going on? What's happened here?" "It's the Derro…they've returned…(cough) always heard they abandoned this place. Guess they REALLY want it back." "The Derro? How? When?" "A couple days ago brother. We've been fighting them off here for the past two days, but unsuccessfully I'm afraid. Everything was going well with the ritual and we would've been making a full invasion right in the heart of the capital if they hadn't just suddenly showed up. They disrupted everything. They came out of the damn walls and even from underneath the floors. They aren't as big as us, but the little bastards are the toughest things I've ever encountered and who knows what they look like under all that heavy armor." "The Empire is probably behind this attack." "Probably, but does it matter? They're killing us and no matter how much we try, we can't beat them!" "They can't be invincible. Everything dies." "Oh yeah, you can kill 'em, just really hard to, due to all that armor. Even without that, though they seem to have some natural magic resistance. (cough) I saw one of those fuckers take a full blast of shadow fire from Master Ebon himself, and he kept coming at him like a golem. It wasn't until Brother Gray stepped in to help that they turned him into blackened heap of melted metal." "Where are Master Ebon and Brother Gray?" "Brother Gray is dead. I saw him surrounded and literally torn apart by those things, I mean they (choke) ripped his limbs off like a rag doll…it was horrible. I don't…even want to…" Brother Murk begins to get upset, but you really need him to continue so you can get a better idea of how bad this is and maybe find some way of turning it around. "Murk, what about Master Ebon?" "I don't know. Probably dead! Just like Brother Gray and (sob) Bianca…I tried! I tried so hard to save her!" "Sister Bianca is dead too?" "No, not the last time I saw her. A couple of the Derro were dragging her unconscious battered body in chains to one of their invasion entrances. I've noticed they've been doing that with several of the female shadows. I tried to save her, and what you see before you is the result of my attempted heroics. I know she never saw me as a potential mate, but…I don't want to think about what they'll do to her…(sob)." This new information suddenly makes you ask the question that you're afraid to ask. "Talia? Did you see them take Talia?" "No, brother. I haven't seen Sister Talia since the interruption of the ritual. She may still be alive and fighting. Oh why didn't Dendrin prevent this destruction? Why wasn't this foreseen? We were on the verge of victory and now all is lost!" Murk cries out. "Hey! All isn't lost yet! The Empire WILL fall, I promise you." You say looking at Murk. He manages a faint smile, but his life force is fading fast. "Perhaps it will brother, but I won't live to see it anymore …I'm sorry for…" "Murk, you don't have…" And you don't bother finishing you sentence. Murk is dead and even though you drifted apart slightly in last few years, you're going to miss him. Right now though you need to figure out what you're going to do. Tactically, this looks like a no win situation. From Murk's last words, the Derro have already managed to slaughter most of the shadows and have successfully overrun the fortress. You've already tried to fight a few and didn't make much headway. You might do better to get out of here and inform the remainder of the shadows topside of the bad news so that you can regroup. Of course the other part of you wants to at least try to find Talia, and even some other shadows that may need your help, because assuming you get out of this alive, you're going to need all the help you can get in continuing your plan to overthrow the Empire. > You search for Talia Your main purpose of coming here in the first place was to make sure Talia was safe. You can't leave now without trying to find her or at least her body if she's dead. You leave the storage room and decide your best bet would be to keep yourself cloaked the entire time while you search the fortress. You also decide to use spider crawl just to make sure you're really out of sight. As you stick to the ceilings of corridors and rooms you survey the carnage of what the Derro have wrought on the shadows. It's almost like they didn't have a chance. You now have to believe that this was why the Empire wasn't attacking Gloom, they had some sort of deal with the Derro to do it for them and since this used to be a Derro home at one time, they probably knew every ancient secret passage and entire layout of it. You progressively get more and more discouraged in your search and that's when you hear a voice in your head. Not Dendrin's though, it's distinctly a human one. "To…the left and down the hall…hurry…not much time…" you hear Master Ebon say. Lacking any other ideas, you follow his instructions and make your make to his location from where you are. As you do so, you notice there aren't any Derro in this direction, though there are a few dead ones. You're guessing that the rest of their fellows haven't searched this area as much. "The door…at the end…hurry…" Sensing that there are no Derro in the immediate area, you climb down from the ceiling and prepare to enter the door at the end of the corridor. When you arrive in front of it, you hear a loud click as it opens. "Quick, inside!" a brother says pulling you in by the arm roughly. A quick glance and you see a couple more shadows both in wounded condition. You then see Master Ebon in some sort of spell trance. He's also wounded, but his status looks a lot worse. He probably shouldn't even be alive with the deep bleeding gashes he displays across his body. A female shadow stands near him also wounded. When you see her face more clearly and recognize her as Talia, your worries are at least divided by half. "What are you doing here?" she exclaims. "I heard the voice of Dendrin and…" in that moment you realize you've just admitted you've heard his voice for the first time. You then realize this isn't the time to keep it a secret and you continue. "…he…uh gave me a warning… are you alright?" "Just a light wound…wait, you said Dendrin spoke to you? He warned you about the attack?" "Well, not in so many words. Look we need get out of here, I can explain everything later." You then hear Master Ebon's voice again. He still isn't speaking verbally though and is using his mind. "Dendrin spoke to you? Lucky lad. He hasn't spoken to me since I first became a shadow. I always thought he would eventually, but he never did. I assumed he was testing me, to make my own decisions. Perhaps I offended him by claiming those decisions came from him directly, but I didn't know what else to do…" "Master Ebon, we can discuss this later, right now we really need to leave!" "Is Master Ebon speaking to you through his mind?" Talia asks. "Yes, and what's he doing anyway? He's just sitting there with gashes in his chest deep enough for me to see his heart beating and bleeding out. As I said we need to leave before the Derro kill us all." Master Ebon interrupts you. "They've already succeeded in killing me I fear, but I still have powerful magic…enough to save the remainder of you…to carry on the fight…" Master Ebon's eyes begin to turn completely black, this is followed by his entire body. A shimmering portal then opens up nearby. "This…was to take us to strike at the very heart of the Empire…but now just an escape…to friends. Continue the fight there. The Empire will fall as long as you continue to fight. Dendrin I hope you can forgive my failures as I have served to the best of my abilities…I am ready to enter your realm of shadow if you will allow it…" "Master Ebon!" Talia shouts when she sees his body undergo his transformation. "He can't be helped and he's giving us a chance to escape. We need to take it now!" "But where is it going?" the shadow that grabbed you by the arm asks. "He said to friends, but quite frankly it could lead into the middle of an Empire battalion and I think we'd still have better chances! Now come on!" Without another word you all enter the portal. Within seconds your eyes are nearly blinded by the whiteness of snow and you feel a blast of cold air whipping around you. "DIE! Shadow bastard!" you suddenly hear and turn around just in time to avoid a sword strike to the head. Realizing that this is an Empire soldier and not a Derro, you quickly dispatch your assailant who falls turning the snow red. When you said being transported into the middle of an Empire battalion would be a better situation, you didn't actually mean it! Fortunately it isn't quite as bad as all that. Getting your bearings you notice you're on a battlefield. The bodies of several Empire troops lay on the ground and are mixed in with those of orcs and shadows. A great fortress looms in the distance. "Fort Defiance…" you say to yourself. "Brother, we're over here!" one of the shadows calls out to you and you run over to the group. (Apparently, all the others teleported to a place out of immediate danger!) "Are we in Rask?" the shadow who grabbed you asks. You still don't know his name, you can only guess he was one of the newer recruits after you joined. "Well it doesn't look like Delurg that's for sure. I'm guessing that group ahead of us fighting the Empire troops are our brothers and sisters from Fort Defiance." Talia says. "Looks like it, well no time like the present, we need to go help them." "But what about those two? They're badly wounded and can't fight properly." The new shadow asks. "(Sigh) Very well, you, what's your name anyway?" "I'm Brother Gannon. I just joined recently…" "Yes brother, we can get all that getting to know you stuff out of the way later. I want you to take those two and head over to that fort in the distance. I'm sure they can get help there. What about you Talia, I know you're wounded too, do you need any first aid?" Talia draws her weapon. "I'll worry about my minor cuts after we take care of this Empire scum." She answers in a harsh tone. "Okay then let's go down there and drive back the Empire!" you answer back. You and Talia sprint as fast as you can to where all the action is taking place. Swords are clashed, halberds are swung, skulls are smashed and heads are severed. Mostly all in your favor and the Empire troops were actually losing even before you got here. Still, it's good to be on a winning side of a fight today and you feel energized by the battle. A short reunion occurs as you finish off the last of the stubborn Empire soldiers. "What the…? What are you doing here?! I thought you were supposed to be in the Quala province!"Cyrus exclaims running his sword through an enemy. "Things change brother and how have you been doing?" you answer doing the same. "We've been getting wave after wave of Empire skirmishers recently, but nothing serious yet. Honestly I would've thought we would've had a full on assault by now. I think they're trying to whittle us down, it won't work though. We're entrenched and have people all over the area slowly turning the population of Rask against them…is that Talia over there? What's SHE doing here? Last I heard she was supposed to be back in Gloom helping with the ritual that Master Ebon and Brother Gray were doing." "Like I said, things change Cyrus." At this moment there is a lull in the fighting that allows Cyrus to actually stop fighting. He looks at you his expression is one you've never seen before. One of genuine worry. "Oh no…what happened?" You don't even know where to begin. "Cyrus let's just get through this battle and celebrate THIS victory over the Empire. We can dwell on the troubled times to come later." The pair of you say nothing more for the rest of the battle which soon ends with your victory. You just wish it was a better one, because it cannot possibly counteract the incredible loss you have suffered this dark day. You think back on how you told Murk in his dying breaths that the Empire would fall, you also think back to how Master Ebon believed it would fall in his on dying breaths. If you had to guess, you think Talia probably still believes it and you know Cyrus will even when you tell him all that has happened. The righteousness in the shadows' cause and its unwavering faith in Dendrin has always been its strength that it cannot lose no matter how bad the odds. Of course it would help if you actually believed all that nonsense. Which brings you to your next dilemma: You already let it slip to Talia that you spoke to Dendrin and Brother Gannon was also there to hear it (and maybe even the other two wounded shadows heard it as well) , so it'll probably be brought up after everyone is caught up to speed on the war front and what happened at Gloom. The fact that Dendrin spoke to you is actually why you're here in the first place. The question is should you even mention what Dendrin said to you or just lie about what he said? Your own feelings on the situation are that Dendrin, god or not, is not worth following let alone creating a fanatical religion around. He obviously doesn't give a shit about any of you and sees you all as amusing toys at best. However, given the grim situation, the misguided slavish devotion to Dendrin might be the only thing that'll keep their spirits up. Not to mention you wonder if you'd even be believed. Cyrus himself is a very dedicated believer, he may even turn violent and you aren't even sure if Talia would believe you. > You tell the truth about Dendrin You really can't pay any more lip service to Dendrin after what you know and it's silly to let this charade go on. What's the point of rebelling against the Empire if it was solely built on the whim of a being that doesn't even care about his own followers anymore? After Cyrus catches you up on the situation at Rask, you and Talia tell him what happened at Gloom. Talia fills in the details better since she was actually there. Cyrus seems a little distraught at hearing so many shadows dying nevermind losing the shadow home, but he doesn't seem broken in his goals to continue to fight the Empire. "It doesn't matter, we've still got agents in the Quala province and other places. Once we reconnect with the various cells we can regroup. We need to tell the others here though now, the sooner we get this information out the way the quicker they can deal with the loss. The Empire is desperate and we'll overcome whatever else they decide to throw at us because Dendrin will see us to victory." "Yeah, about that I've got some more to tell you, in fact Talia you'll want to hear this as well. And before I start I need to both to not interrupt until I'm finished. Afterwards you can do what you like." This gets their attention and they sit down to listen to your tale. You start from the moment Dendrin first spoke to you and go from there. The look on both of their faces is first one of shock then as you explain more, Cyrus' face is one of calmness with a simmering anger that is only growing with every "blasphemy" you speak about Dendrin. He eventually closes his eyes as if blocking out the sight of you will help keep him from attacking you. Talia's expression displays more of a concern than anger. You aren't sure if it's because she believes you or is pained by the idea that someone she loves is basically speaking out against something she has placed unwavering faith in. You'll soon find out you suppose. When you finish, there is a moment of silence and then Cyrus takes a deep and opens his eyes. You feel him staring right through you and you are ready to fight if necessary, but he speaks instead. "Is that it?" he asks. "Yes." You reply. "What the hell do you hope to gain by this?" "Wha? Nothing, I just feel that the…" "And I'm supposed to believe this shit?" "Believe what you want Cyrus, it's the truth." "No, it isn't! Look I can believe that Dendrin perhaps warned you about Gloom because it was a dire situation, but I DO NOT BELIEVE…" Cyrus catches himself raising his voice and then stops to calm down again. "I do not believe that you were speaking to him on a regular basis. Only Master Ebon could speak with him in such a manner!" "He couldn't speak to Dendrin at all! He even admitted as much before he died! Talia was there for that, come on back me up here!" Talia turns away and hides her face. It's obvious now that she believes you, but doesn't WANT to believe you. Her silence though doesn't help in convincing Cyrus. "Just because you're mates doesn't mean you're allowed to bully her into your heretical way of thinking!" "What? No! Look, I can drag in Brother Gannon and confirm it as well since I'm pretty sure he heard everything as well!" "No, you're not poisoning anyone else with this shit. I can't believe…I mean where do I fucking start? You've stood here and just admitted that you've never been a believer in Dendrin! That's the whole foundation of our organization!" "Okay first of all I never said I didn't believe in him. He's very real and I know because he's been playing games with the shadows for centuries and fucking with my head since I met the bastard." "Yes, so you've said. So why you? You say that when you first met him during the ceremony that you resisted him and then gave in only to save your own life. You even said you still weren't sure if you weren't going to turn us all in to Mr. Mol when he questioned us that one time. Why would Dendrin speak with someone whose faith in him was so lacking?" "Fuck, I don't know Cyrus! Don't you think I've tried to figure that out? My best assessment? He's a sadistic fucker that gets bored easily so he finds new ways to amuse himself." "You insult Dendrin one more time and it'll be your last." Cyrus warns. "Oh fuck you Cyrus, you've wanted to kill me since we were Mistresses class. Just admit it and stop hiding behind an excuse." "Really? Is that what you think? Because if it is, then you're wrong about that as well. Yes, it's true I didn't like you for a long time, but after that moment when all of us walked out of Mr. Mol's interrogation room without betraying the shadows and staying true to the cause my opinion of you changed. I saw then we really were as brothers. Pity it turned out to be a lie. A horrible vicious lie." At this point Talia steps in. "So where does this leave us?" "What do you mean?" you ask. "I mean you've been keeping this all a secret for years. Why tell us now when things are at their worst for us?" "I…don't know. Maybe because things ARE at their worst and if we're going to continue this fight against the Empire, then we need to do it for the right reasons rather than for the misguided devotion of a false god…" "DENDRIN IS NOT A FALSE GOD!" Cyrus snaps and attempts to tackle you. You and he roll around on the floor punching each other for a while until you both finally break a few pieces of furniture and back off to catch a breather. Talia tells the both of you stop fighting. As you stare at him from across the room, you know that some part of him must be questioning his beliefs. If he really thought you were completely full of shit, he would've made more of an effort to try to kill you. And this scuffle tells you is he's pissed at you for making him question his beliefs. Still doesn't mean he won't try to kill you later if you press this issue, but it's more than you could've hoped for. "Look Cyrus, I know this sucks and maybe Dendrin is a god… I know he certainly thinks he is, but I'm still not following him. It's enough that I have to listen to his cryptic warnings and outright taunts on a random basis. I do see the need for the Empire to fall because it's corrupt, it's inefficient, and it's oppressive. However, I also see that in this shadow organization. How can you be against something when you're part of something else that's just as bad?" Cyrus doesn't answer he's still standing there fuming at you, but Talia says something. "I understand what you're saying, but Dendrin has at least given us our powers and shadow magic. Maybe everything what you've said about him is true, but does it really matter? In a way he sparked this rebellion centuries before any of us were even around. Without him, would their even been a rebellion able to hurt the Empire as bad as it has? I mean even with all that happened at Gloom, I still believe as Cyrus does that victory will come. I'm sure the orcs, the elves, the poor, the criminals and others all have their own reasons for wanting to see the Empire fall. Does it really matter why as long their beliefs carry them to see it through?" "(Sigh) No, I guess it doesn't Talia, but maybe for ME it does and I can't be a shadow anymore, or at least not one that buys into this worship of Dendrin. I can't live a lie and just go through the motions anymore. Now I will continue to fight the Empire. I'm still here for that, if I wasn't I would've betrayed you all to Mr. Mol years ago. Though I might be fighting the damned Empire for the most cliché reason ever now, which is love. When we bonded Talia, that's what gave me more of a purpose to fight the Empire more than anything. It's why I even went back to Gloom AFTER Dendrin told me not to. I couldn't leave you in potential danger." "Oh fucking spare me your romantic sense of nobility!" "Cyrus stop!" Talia yells. "He's just using honeyed words to get you on his side and somehow excuse his blasphemy. I can't believe you're even listening to him or even trying to see his side of things." "Oh really Cyrus and your reasons for fighting the Empire are purely for Dendrin huh?" you say. "Of course, why else would they be?" "Oh I don't know, maybe a certain shadow by the name of Draven comes to mind? Sure you aren't just a little more dedicated because of him?" "You leave Draven out of this!" "Fine, but your little outburst just proved my point. You're ready to fight me again just for mentioning his name which proves you might be doing a little of this for love as well." "I'm ready to fight you again, because you're attempting to sew chaos and dissent and I for one have had enough! If you want to abandon Dendrin fine. If you want to continue fighting the Empire for your own reasons fine. But you're not doing it here. I want you out of my fucking fort and I don't want to see you ever again!" "You can't kick me out, you're not head of the fucking shadows." You laugh. "Oh no? All of our leaders are dead! WE are the next in line if you haven't noticed and quite frankly I've got more support than you do. Always have. And if I wanted to I could expose your heresy to the shadows in the fort and have your head right now. The only reason why I'm not? Because I'm doing this out of respect for Talia and at one time I did consider you my brother. But you're nothing to me now. You're not an ally, you're not a brother, you're not a friend!" You look over to Talia hoping for support, but she offers none. "Talia, aren't you going to help me over here? All your professed love for me meaning nothing? Aren't we supposed to be mates?" "And we always will be my love…but I cannot follow your path. I just can't…I'm sorry…" "But…" you start to say, but you see that it won't do any good. You thought you were getting through to them too, but it would appear that even in the face of the truth, they are willing to stay in denial. Not even love can overcome faith it seems. You gather up all your belongings and start to leave, but you turn to address both of them before doing so. "You both know I'm right and you know why? Because all three of us have another bond and that's the fact we're Eternals and as such we have a tendency to acknowledge a hierarchy especially among our own kind even if we don't want to do it. Cyrus, I'm stronger than you, I'm smarter than you and just better than you in general. You've always known that. If we were in any other organization, I would be your superior officer or leader and what I would say would be unquestioned because you'd know that as your superior, I'd ALWAYS be right. You just can’t admit it to yourself and let's face it, given how you flaunted how much support you had and how our leaders are dead, I'd say your true Eternal colors are finally showing. Talia…well I think you know where we stand. You were the one that brought up our bond as Eternals years ago. One would think that you would be listening to that instinct now, but for some reason you're not. When you're ready to tell me, I'll be around." With those last words you leave Fort Defiance wondering if they'll ever face the truth. In the mean time you now have to figure out how to fight a one man war against the Empire. A daunting task to be sure, but part of you feels strangely free now that you've officially broken away from the shadows. Time will tell if you've broken away from Dendrin however. > You time passes… Year 30 You throw another log on to the fire in an effort to keep warm. A futile task, but it's better than freezing. You'd like to stay in a town, but Empire troops seem to be everywhere in Rask nowadays ever since they halted the war with the Felkan Kingdom. From what you hear it wasn't exactly on favorable terms either, but you imagine that they needed to just so they had enough manpower to fight the rebellion. And if it isn't them, then it’s the shadows who you've had a few unfortunate runs in with over the past couple years. Seems Cyrus told everyone you were a heretic after all. You aren't really surprised though, you even understand it. He's trying to solidify his power base and he still sees you as a potential threat even though you have no desire to take anything he has, let alone the shadows. You haven't even heard Dendrin's voice since you left the shadows and while you're glad of that, it's still like everyone has completely abandoned you. (Your shadow magic abilities have weakened quite a bit, but aren't gone completely, so you're guessing Dendrin's probably still watching you for whatever twisted reason.) You wish you could figure out why Talia turned on you though, but the only answer you can come up with is her bond with the shadows was stronger than her bond with you despite everything you shared. It doesn't sadden you so much as it disappoints you though perhaps you had too much faith in the relationship. You laugh to yourself about that one since you probably lost faith in the Empire and Dendrin quicker than you did in Talia. Even now you still hold out the hope that she'll return to you and see that her own in Dendrin is incorrect. Of course this also makes you question why the hell you're still doing all this. Like fighting the Empire for instance, why are you still bothering? When you were first part of the shadows, you were united with them in their cause if not their reasons. It wasn't probably the best motivation, but it was enough for you at that point because back then you were so damn confused about who you should even be loyal to. When you got together with Talia, your motivation became stronger. However that motivation is all gone. Talia isn't around and the shadows have for the most part turned on you. Why bother? What are you getting out of it really? Even if the Empire does fall, then what? The shadows original plan was to go back to their old ways of private worship, but if Cyrus' leadership is any indication that plan will be thrown out. He'll most likely just try to carve out a nation of his own using similar oppressive measures. You doubt he'll get the chance though. Sure the Empire has been greatly weakened, but by your observations it'll eventually overwhelm the rebellion through sheer numbers alone and things will most likely go back to the way they were before and the people will just accept it. It's not like your efforts are even appreciated by anyone at this point. The more you think about it, the more you think how you probably should've just stayed loyal to the Empire. You would've saved yourself a whole lot of hassle. You wonder if you're just going through the motions because you don't have anything better to do. Though perhaps that's not entirely true, there is ONE thing that has stayed with you and that's your love of battle. You think that has to be a major part of it. You could be fighting Empire soldiers or shadows and it ultimately wouldn't matter to you (And it really doesn't at this point because they're both hostile to you) you just like getting into the thick of combat and striking down whatever enemy that's in your way. Makes you think you'd probably be better off working as a mercenary like those svelk do. Unfortunately you don't really have that option considering both sides of this conflict hate you. If you wanted to pursue that life you'd have to move on to a different land somewhere, after the world has to be a bigger place than what you've seen right? Still, you aren't and have never been motivated by money. You figure if it really is battle lust that's keeping you going then you might as well stay here since there's no shortage of it. And despite your brief period of re-assessing your situation, you are still hoping Talia will one day see the light and come back to you. In the meantime you're just going to have to live off the land and continue the fight though you don't even know how much longer that's going to last, Captain Kane has been pushing for final victory a lot harder lately. You know Cyrus has sent out assassination attempts against him, but they've all failed. Kane might not have the fancy shadow tricks, but he's still an Eternal and a pretty vicious one. Really you're sort of disappointed that Cyrus wouldn't at least try to do the deed himself, if he's serious about being a leader. Likewise Kane has tried to take Fort Defiance, but so far it has lived up to its name, the problem though is it won't for long. The Empire has slowly been putting down the major rebellions in the south, and Captain Roldan has been hunting the remaining shadows still down there and doing a good job of it too. This means more troops have been getting sent up to Rask lately. Not enough to finish off the shadows, but enough to start making a difference in swinging the long stalemate. It doesn't help that the alliance with the orcs has broken down with the shadows and you've heard rumors that their ring leader Gruz was finally caught in the act of sabotaging and misinformation and executed. Flog took it upon himself to take charge and didn't agree with how Cyrus was doing things since the orcs were still taking the brunt of the casualties. One would think this would've ended in bloodshed, but Flog apparently was remarkably forward thinking for an orc. Flog took the remainder of his people and headed even further north to where the giants, ogres and other manner of monsters make their homes. As far as he was concerned the Empire wasn't going to ever be able to extend its territory that far north in the state they're in and saw no more reason to waste more lives to help the shadows (who only saw them as tools anyway). As it stands the shadows, civilian dissidents and even some soldiers that turned traitor are about all that's left to defend Fort Defiance. Village and town support is next to nil now. There are probably still a few rebel bands hiding in the wilderness (much like you do) but you'd venture to say that they do even less damage than you do, which is pretty sad considering they at least have a bit more support and people than you do. This rebellion will be crushed in a few months if something doesn't change quickly and about the only thing that's going to do that at this point is doing something Cyrus has been failing to do: Killing Kane. Get him out of way and it'll probably take months for the Empire to get their shit together before they put in an equally competent person. (You'd guess that will probably be Roldan, but you'll have to deal with that later.) It'll give the rebellion a bit of breathing room up here in Rask at least. The question is how to do it. You could try to break into Fort Destiny, but security there is always at maximum and your shadow magic stealth tricks aren't as strong now. Even trying to disguise yourself as a guard might only get you so far. Still, you can always trust that your combat skills will get you through day if magic and trickery fail. You also could wait for an opportunity for Kane to leave the fort, he does do that from time to time when he wants to make an example of a town or engage in a major battle. The problem is the next major battle he'll probably engage in is trying to take Fort Defiance again, and by that time it'll be too late since he'll probably win this time. This means you're going to have to do something that'll make him so angry that he'll want to make an example of some hapless village that isn't falling in line with the Empire. > You sneak into the fort Elaborate plans usually mean more chance of failure, better to just stick with a simple assassination where you’re at least sure to face Kane. You make preparations mainly in the form of a making a strong poison. The shadows always used them on their bolts, but given that Kane’s an Eternal he’s not going to be floored by the stuff instantly. Ideally you’ll get a single shot while he’s asleep, but who knows how this is going to play out so you take the time to heavily poison several small throwing daggers you’ll take with you as well. Not very sporting perhaps, but you’re trying to accomplish a very difficult task by yourself as quickly as possible. The next day you make you way to the outskirts of Fort Destiny, making sure to avoid getting spotted by the multiple patrols along the way. One thing about the Empire is they typically stick to certain building designs. While you weren’t in Fort Defiance very long you do remember the layout. If you’re lucky, Fort Destiny’s layout should be similar. Sneaking about and scaling the walls of the fort aren’t really a problem for you. You don’t even need to rely on your magic that much. You make things easier for yourself by slitting the throat of an isolated guard in one of the towers and disguising yourself in his clothing and armor. It won’t fool everyone, especially if they take a closer look, but it should help. As you make your way through the fort you’re relieved to find that the layout is indeed very similar to Fort Defiant’s layout. This will make escape a lot easier. The closer you think you’re getting to Kane’s quarters the larger amount of soldiers standing around as guards. Eventually you get to a point where there’s no way you’ve going to be able to bluff or sneak your way in. You’re going to just have to kill them, the problem is that’s going to alert everyone. So you do the only thing you can think of. You cloak yourself and start tossing your poisoned throwing daggers at the soldiers. Naturally you catch them off guard and the poison is strong enough to kill them almost instantly. While you’ve cleared the way and done it as silently as you were able, there’s still enough noise of their lifeless bodies hitting the floor. This is just enough noise to alert Kane who was sleeping in his quarters, or perhaps he wasn’t sleeping since when he steps out of his room, he’s fully dressed in battle armor (It’s entirely possible he sleeps in it though) with axe in hand. He’s certainly as imposing as his reputation. Wasting no time you throw your remaining daggers at him and shoot your armbow bolt at him. The daggers unfortunately are deflected from his armor or he dodges them completely, the bolt sinks into his arm, but the poison doesn’t seem to slow him down. “Pfah! You shadows and your poisons. I developed immunities to those years ago! Now fight like a man!” he says and charges at you. You block his attack just barely. In fact he keeps on the pressure for a good five minutes before you can even maneuver in such a way to attack back. By this time more soldiers have arrived, but Kane shouts at them saying he wants to slay you himself. They obey, but there’s enough of them to block all the immediate exits. This is pretty grim, even if you win, you don’t see how you’re going to get out alive, unless you impress them so much with your victory that you break their morale. Of course first you have to win, and right now that’s looking more doubtful by the second. Kane is matching you in combat skill in everyway. In fact he’s actually a little bit better than you and you’re forced to rely on your shadow magic to give you a slight edge. It doesn’t give much of one though; Kane’s slaughtered so many shadows trying to assassinate him with magic that he’s developed his own battle style against them. Your own weak magic is more of a hindrance to you in the long run as you quickly begin to get fatigued from using it. “What’s the matter outcast? Weak magic, because you’re no longer Dendrin’s favored? Ha ha! I know who you are and you’re a disgrace to the name Eternal!” Kane remarks and slams you into the wall with all of his weight. You feel like all the air has left your body and you struggle to catch your breath when you receive another slam to your head with his metal gauntlet. Bleeding from your head and lying prone of the floor isn’t a great position during any sort of fight and this one is no exception. Kane wastes no time in finishing you off with an axe blow to your face. The Butcher of Rask has claimed another victory.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 30 You throw another log on to the fire in an effort to keep warm. A futile task, but it's better than freezing. You'd like to stay in a town, but Empire troops seem to be everywhere in Rask nowadays ever since they halted the war with the Felkan Kingdom. From what you hear it wasn't exactly on favorable terms either, but you imagine that they needed to just so they had enough manpower to fight the rebellion. And if it isn't them, then it’s the shadows who you've had a few unfortunate runs in with over the past couple years. Seems Cyrus told everyone you were a heretic after all. You aren't really surprised though, you even understand it. He's trying to solidify his power base and he still sees you as a potential threat even though you have no desire to take anything he has, let alone the shadows. You haven't even heard Dendrin's voice since you left the shadows and while you're glad of that, it's still like everyone has completely abandoned you. (Your shadow magic abilities have weakened quite a bit, but aren't gone completely, so you're guessing Dendrin's probably still watching you for whatever twisted reason.) You wish you could figure out why Talia turned on you though, but the only answer you can come up with is her bond with the shadows was stronger than her bond with you despite everything you shared. It doesn't sadden you so much as it disappoints you though perhaps you had too much faith in the relationship. You laugh to yourself about that one since you probably lost faith in the Empire and Dendrin quicker than you did in Talia. Even now you still hold out the hope that she'll return to you and see that her own in Dendrin is incorrect. Of course this also makes you question why the hell you're still doing all this. Like fighting the Empire for instance, why are you still bothering? When you were first part of the shadows, you were united with them in their cause if not their reasons. It wasn't probably the best motivation, but it was enough for you at that point because back then you were so damn confused about who you should even be loyal to. When you got together with Talia, your motivation became stronger. However that motivation is all gone. Talia isn't around and the shadows have for the most part turned on you. Why bother? What are you getting out of it really? Even if the Empire does fall, then what? The shadows original plan was to go back to their old ways of private worship, but if Cyrus' leadership is any indication that plan will be thrown out. He'll most likely just try to carve out a nation of his own using similar oppressive measures. You doubt he'll get the chance though. Sure the Empire has been greatly weakened, but by your observations it'll eventually overwhelm the rebellion through sheer numbers alone and things will most likely go back to the way they were before and the people will just accept it. It's not like your efforts are even appreciated by anyone at this point. The more you think about it, the more you think how you probably should've just stayed loyal to the Empire. You would've saved yourself a whole lot of hassle. You wonder if you're just going through the motions because you don't have anything better to do. Though perhaps that's not entirely true, there is ONE thing that has stayed with you and that's your love of battle. You think that has to be a major part of it. You could be fighting Empire soldiers or shadows and it ultimately wouldn't matter to you (And it really doesn't at this point because they're both hostile to you) you just like getting into the thick of combat and striking down whatever enemy that's in your way. Makes you think you'd probably be better off working as a mercenary like those svelk do. Unfortunately you don't really have that option considering both sides of this conflict hate you. If you wanted to pursue that life you'd have to move on to a different land somewhere, after the world has to be a bigger place than what you've seen right? Still, you aren't and have never been motivated by money. You figure if it really is battle lust that's keeping you going then you might as well stay here since there's no shortage of it. And despite your brief period of re-assessing your situation, you are still hoping Talia will one day see the light and come back to you. In the meantime you're just going to have to live off the land and continue the fight though you don't even know how much longer that's going to last, Captain Kane has been pushing for final victory a lot harder lately. You know Cyrus has sent out assassination attempts against him, but they've all failed. Kane might not have the fancy shadow tricks, but he's still an Eternal and a pretty vicious one. Really you're sort of disappointed that Cyrus wouldn't at least try to do the deed himself, if he's serious about being a leader. Likewise Kane has tried to take Fort Defiance, but so far it has lived up to its name, the problem though is it won't for long. The Empire has slowly been putting down the major rebellions in the south, and Captain Roldan has been hunting the remaining shadows still down there and doing a good job of it too. This means more troops have been getting sent up to Rask lately. Not enough to finish off the shadows, but enough to start making a difference in swinging the long stalemate. It doesn't help that the alliance with the orcs has broken down with the shadows and you've heard rumors that their ring leader Gruz was finally caught in the act of sabotaging and misinformation and executed. Flog took it upon himself to take charge and didn't agree with how Cyrus was doing things since the orcs were still taking the brunt of the casualties. One would think this would've ended in bloodshed, but Flog apparently was remarkably forward thinking for an orc. Flog took the remainder of his people and headed even further north to where the giants, ogres and other manner of monsters make their homes. As far as he was concerned the Empire wasn't going to ever be able to extend its territory that far north in the state they're in and saw no more reason to waste more lives to help the shadows (who only saw them as tools anyway). As it stands the shadows, civilian dissidents and even some soldiers that turned traitor are about all that's left to defend Fort Defiance. Village and town support is next to nil now. There are probably still a few rebel bands hiding in the wilderness (much like you do) but you'd venture to say that they do even less damage than you do, which is pretty sad considering they at least have a bit more support and people than you do. This rebellion will be crushed in a few months if something doesn't change quickly and about the only thing that's going to do that at this point is doing something Cyrus has been failing to do: Killing Kane. Get him out of way and it'll probably take months for the Empire to get their shit together before they put in an equally competent person. (You'd guess that will probably be Roldan, but you'll have to deal with that later.) It'll give the rebellion a bit of breathing room up here in Rask at least. The question is how to do it. You could try to break into Fort Destiny, but security there is always at maximum and your shadow magic stealth tricks aren't as strong now. Even trying to disguise yourself as a guard might only get you so far. Still, you can always trust that your combat skills will get you through day if magic and trickery fail. You also could wait for an opportunity for Kane to leave the fort, he does do that from time to time when he wants to make an example of a town or engage in a major battle. The problem is the next major battle he'll probably engage in is trying to take Fort Defiance again, and by that time it'll be too late since he'll probably win this time. This means you're going to have to do something that'll make him so angry that he'll want to make an example of some hapless village that isn't falling in line with the Empire. > You lure him out If you actually had a little help, you probably would be able to pull off killing him in the fort, but the risks are too great and while you might have a love of battle, you also have a strong sense of self-preservation. So luring Kane out it is. The next day you come up with a plan and your first step is seeking out a lone peasant. It doesn't take long and after you get him to calm down you ask him a few simple questions such as if he has family, where he lives, is he part of the rebellion, etc. Happily he's pretty informed on things being a travelling peddler and all. He ultimately tells you he has no ties to the rebellion, but he's aware of certain villages that he's visited that still have sympathies a lot stronger than they let on. You make a note of where to head to for the third step of your plan. The second step involving killing the peasant and disguising yourself as him, well not as him, but as another wandering merchant. After disposing of his body you set off towards the town of Volgst. You start off by assessing the Empire strength there. It's moderate, but nothing that couldn't be handled. It's obvious the people are just trying to go about their business, but if what the peddler said was correct, this place has just been temporarily cowed into submission due to occupation and closer proximity to Fort Destiny. You decide to head to the local tavern and take in some of the atmosphere. You order a drink sit at a table in the corner and pretend you're just going through some of your inventory. You get a few people asking you about some of the jewelry you have on the table. To you it looks cheap and it probably is, so you don't charge much, just what you think its worth since you aren't here for that anyway. You sit there a few hours and then finally some Empire soldiers come through the door. The tavern gets a bit quieter and that's when you decide to make things louder again. "Hey barkeep! Gimme another ale!" you shout walking up to the bar interrupting the soldiers who were attempting to order their own drinks. "Uh, hold on sir. I just have to serve these gentlemen first." "Oh come on, I was here first and they aren't supposed to be drinking on the job anyway!" At this point one of the soldiers addresses you. "We happen to be off duty right now citizen." "Off duty? When there are rebels running around all over the place? What the hell man? You should be out there killing the sons of bitches, not getting drunk!" "I can assure you we are, and citizen you need to calm down." "Why is it taking so long anyway? Is that captain of yours just sitting on his fat ass in that fort all day while rebels terrorize the area? I thought the Empire was supposed to be doing something about it, but it looks like it's as impotent as ever!" At this point now several bar patrons start to take notice, some try to get you to calm down, others just outright leave. The soldiers to your surprise haven't tried to kill you yet. It's almost like they're trying to diffuse the situation and dismiss you as some loudmouth drunk because all they really want to do is relax after a long day. Oddly enough, you can understand it, unfortunately you can't relax either. You step it up and physically push one of the soldiers. That does it, and the swords come out. You kill two soldiers almost immediately, the third one runs off for help, leaving the fourth one to try to finish you off. He fails miserably when you run your sword through his chest. Three bodies lay at your feet and several patrons are in shock along with a very scarred bartender. "What the fuck did you just do? We're all dead men!" he screams. "You were dead long before I got here. Now if you want to live, you'll help me fight these Empire assholes and get them the hell out of this town." "You dumb fuck, don't you realize they'll just send more troops? The Butcher of Rask himself will probably come here himself and lay waste to the entire town!" "That's what I'm counting on. Now I know this place still has rebellion sympathies, and I'm telling you right now, if you really want to be free of the Empire you'll start helping me rather than hiding…or don't if your conviction is lacking. Either way I'm stepping outside and I'm going to be killing Empire soldiers and I'm not stopping until all of them are fucking dead. Do what you like." You take your leave at this point and face the small platoon of soldiers that is running in your direction. You don't use any shadow magic, just pure skill to put soldier after soldier down. After you've killed about six of them in the open street, some of the citizens actually start growing a backbone and begin to help. A riot ensues and you've accomplished your mission. The remaining soldiers are quickly overwhelmed and those that aren't manage to run off. You could easily catch up with them, but you figure Kane will show up quicker if someone's alive to talk about what happened. While the celebrating is going on, you take the opportunity to slip away before someone holds you up as some sort of hero when you really aren't. This is all just a means to an end to you. Your escape back into the wilderness isn't completely unnoticed though and you draw your weapon again when you sense yourself being followed. "Alright I know somebody is following me…shadowing me even. Might as well come out now so we can get this over with because no cloak is going to help hide you." A lone shadow materializes. To your surprise it's Brother Gannon. He's little older now and a lot more worn looking, almost beaten. He has no intention of trying to kill you. "Did you have to do that? That place was one of the few towns left that was still able to sneak supplies to us! When Kane finds out what happened he's going to destroy the place! We're suffering from a lack of supplies and allies as it is!" he exclaims. "Yeah? Well maybe if Cyrus was taking a more personal hand in this war like I just did, he'd be inspiring more people to follow him more openly. What the hell happened to him? I've been out here on my own for five fucking years and I've seen nothing but Cyrus make mistake after mistake! Pulling back and attempting to lay low? Losing your orc allies? Not reconnecting with the shadows south of Rask?" "Actually we did try to do that, but…(sigh) nevermind you're right it's all gone horribly wrong. Master Cyrus' leadership isn't like Master Ebon's. I mean I know he's the one that's guiding us and speaking to Dendrin personally, but his need for control is so uncompromising sometimes. As much as I hate it, I'm actually glad I got assigned to be this town's liaison, anything to be out of that fort! He keeps saying that Dendrin won't let us lose and that final victory will come, but it seems so bleak now. I'm trying to keep the faith, I'm really trying, but…oh why won't Dendrin just hear our prayers and help us now?" You shake your head and smile at the delusion that continues to plague the shadows. "Why should he? It's more amusing for him to see you all desperately try to squirm out of your hopeless situation." This cynical (yet true) answer is met with a dead silence. Poor Gannon looks so forlorn that he's probably agreeing with you in his head. Gannon might come in useful though so you decide to try to not break his spirit completely. "However, MAYBE Dendrin did answer your prayers, namely in the form of me. I probably just bought you all a little more time." You add. "What? Your big plan to kill Kane? The Butcher of Rask? I heard you down there in the tavern! If Captain Kane even comes he's going to come with a company of elite soldiers not by himself! Besides, Cyrus sent the best shadows against him and he's killed them all! Why do you think you have a chance?" "Simple. I'm an Eternal and if Cyrus remembered that he was instead some Dendrin worshipping fool, we wouldn't be in this situation now." "Yeah? Well Sister Talia is one of you Eternals too, she could've done something as well. I don't see you blaming her." You grab Gannon by his collar before he can react. You stop yourself from killing him, because you know he's just pissed at his lot in life right now. Not to mention he's got a point. "You know what you're right. She could've. It's not really important right now though, what IS important is that we get prepared for Kane's arrival." "We?" "Oh yes. You want to help turn things around, you'll help me." "How?" How is a good question. The easiest way is to have him help you organize the townsfolk so that they can at least put up a good fight against the soldiers while you take care of Kane. The long shot would be to send him back to Fort Destiny to explain your plan and hope he can convince the shadows to come help you. It's a gamble, but maybe Cyrus hates the Empire just a little more than he hates you. > You send Gannon back While the people of this town can probably put up a bit of resistance, they aren't going to last too long if Gannon is to be believed. You need some help of worth, so you tell Gannon that he needs to go report back to his master. "What? Master Cyrus isn't going send anyone to help a heretic like you!" "He will if he wants to keep this town still supplying you lot. I'm not asking him to come down here himself, since I know that would be too much for him now, but I'm saying he could at least send some shadows down here to help kill someone who is detrimental in your continued existence. However, regardless of what you or Cyrus decide I’m going to be fighting the Empire, because contrary to popular belief, I'm not your enemy.” And with those words you head back to your campsite to get prepared. You check up on the town the next day and see they’re already starting to barricade the place. If they’re lucky, you figure they’ll only lose about a half of the town before the battle is over. A couple days later you scout a little further south of Volgst and that’s when you see a large group of soldiers approaching. Several on horseback, many more on foot and unfortunately a single catapult as well. If Kane is actually with them, you’d guess he’d be on horseback, but then you can’t tell at this distance. You find a good elevated spot in some trees and when the mass of troops get in range you do a little sniping with your bow which you’ve gotten a lot better with over these past five years thanks to your need to hunt on a regular basis (And certainly a lot better than your single shot armbow which you practically never use anymore) You fire at the ones on horseback first, you don’t get Kane, but you do find out he’s the one that starts shouting the loudest about getting that sniping sonofabitch. Turns out he was walking the entire time. You try to aim for him, but now the chaos is so great within ranks that he wisely takes advantage of getting lost in the mass. Doesn’t take long before they figure out where it’s coming from and start responding in kind. You immediately dash from your position and retreat deeper into the wilderness. A group of soldiers are sent to look for you though you dispatch them with relative ease as you use the terrain to your advantage. By the time you’re done with the goon squad that was sent after you, the rest of them are hastening their way towards Volgst. If Cyrus is sending anyone, they’re obviously coming at the eleventh hour, or more likely not at all. Can’t say you’re surprised, but it would’ve been nice to have some help. When you make it back to the outskirts of Volgst, you see that it’s prepared for a frontal assault. You watch from distance for about a half hour before Kane’s company arrives. He doesn’t bother with any sort of diplomacy and orders the catapult to fire. A rock smashes through the barricades and the make shift wall that was set up in front of the town. They’re wide open for the Empire troops to pour in now, with the Butcher leading the way. You make your way towards town and jump into the battle, which naturally isn’t going well for the citizens of Volgst. When you arrive it gets a little better, but even you can’t stop the carnage and what will probably be the utter destruction of Volgst. Right now though all you’re trying to do is seek out Kane and kill him. And as luck would have it, you bump into him, or rather the pair of you catch sight of each other in the middle of the chaos. He doesn’t dodge you or even make any sort of threatening war cry, he just walks straight towards you and you to him. When he stands before you, he certainly displays the signs of a battle-hardened warrior, but there’s something more to it than just his size, armor and scars. It’s his eyes. Not like a hate filled wraith behind them, but more like he’s experienced something that’s caused the light in them to go out. Almost soulless. “The Butcher of Rask, himself. At last we meet.” You say. “Yes, and you would be the shadow outcast and it will be a pleasure to finally bring you to the Emperor’s justice that you’ve evaded for so long.” “Hmm, guess you better get to it then.” Kane swings his axe, which you dodge and the battle is joined. “You’re weak. You cannot hope to win this battle.” He says preparing for another swing. “Right now, just getting rid of you will be sufficient.” You reply. “You think you can best me? This isn’t Mistress’ class anymore and you’re no Eternal. When I look at you, I see the mockery of what is supposed to be an Eternal. You’re not even a shadow. You are a pariah that has no honor at all. You’re part of the sickness that has infected the Empire. A sickness that will be cut out and purified like all others.” While Kane tells you what he really thinks about you, he’s also matching you in combat skills. To be quite honest you might’ve been a little too over confident in your abilities because he’s really putting you to the test. It doesn’t help that in the midst of this one on one fight you also have to dodge other attacks. You use a little shadow magic to speed yourself up and it helps, but it isn’t nearly as strong as it once was not to mention you feel the drain a lot quicker. You land a couple of good hits on Kane before you have to stop from fatigue. Kane however has no such problems and isn’t slowed at all by his wounds “Is that the extent of your precious shadow magic outcast? No wonder you were kicked out.” Kane says and catches you with a glancing blow across your chest followed by a hefty to your left knee, which causes you to lose balance and fall. You barely roll of the way of his next swing. You stagger back up only to get your sword knocked out of your hand when you attempt to block another of Kane’s axe blows. Becoming desperate you fire your armbow and a bolt flies into Kanes chest. It doesn’t stop him and he charges into you knocking you back onto the ground. He doesn’t follow up with his axe this time, instead he puts all his crushing weight upon your chest by sitting on it and attempting to choke the life out of you with his own hands. “You’re going to die here today, because you believe in nothing and that makes you nothing and when I’m finished choking the life out of your pathetic body I’m going to eat your fucking heart because I can.” Kane at this point pauses with a deranged little smirk. “Heh, maybe one of those wendigo bastards did get to me just a little…” then his face becomes deadly serious again. As you struggle to remain conscious all you can see are the souless eyes of Kane looking down upon you as he intends to make good on his threats. You punch him several times in the face to no avail. You even take out one of his eyes and he’s still not deterred as it dangles uselessly from its bloody socket. You’d probably be a lot more scared if you weren’t teetering on passing out. During this walk along the line of life and death a familiar numbness washes over you and you hear a voice you haven’t heard in a long time… “You’re lucky I still find you interesting.” Dendrin says and then within that moment you feel Kane’s hand release their death grip followed by him bellowing in pain. His weight is soon lifted off you and you attempt to regain your assessment of the situation. Still feeling woozy you grab a nearby sword and see Kane (with a brand new bloody dagger in his back) fighting what looks to be a blurry shadowy figure. It’s Talia and you’re glad to see her in more ways than one. Wasting no time, you run up behind Kane and hamstring him. He falls to his knees cursing you the entire time. Talia follows up with a slash to his neck. “(gurgle) Long live (sputter) the…Em (gurgle) pire…” he utters and falls to the ground dead. You take a quick look around at your surroundings and see that most of the town has indeed been destroyed or on fire. Bodies are everywhere, but it looks like what remains of the Empire is in retreat mainly due to the death of their leader who you have to agree was a pretty impressive figure. As for the townsfolk, a lot of them are just trying to help their wounded along with open grieving for their dead. The one thing you aren’t seeing are any shadows. Well other than Talia of course who is now walking towards you. “Thank you.” you say to Talia still trying to catch your breath. “You know that’s not necessary, but I do question what the hell you were thinking attempting to take on not just the infamous Bane of Rask by yourself, but a whole company of Empire troops as well.” “I thought I was trying to change the tide of the rebellion, because if you haven’t noticed it isn’t going well for you.” “I’m surprised you even still consider it your concern actually. You don’t believe in the Emperor, you don’t believe in Dendrin, why bother taking any side? You could’ve just left years ago.” “First of all you do know I believe in Dendrin, I just don’t worship him. Second of all I made a vow to you years ago and I’ve never abandoned it. So if your fight is still with the Empire then my fight is also still with the Empire. Besides, I’ve always believed the Empire is made up of a bunch of arrogant oppressive bastards that need to be taken down a peg anyway. So where are the rest of the shadows?” “There aren’t any. I’m it. Cyrus had no intention of helping you, in fact he even killed poor Brother Gannon for not attempting to kill you when he had the chance. That’s when I left.” “Didn’t he try to stop you?” “He made threats, but ultimately did nothing other than saying I was a heretic and mentioned that I would be considered an enemy of the shadows from now on.” “Well I’d probably tell you right now that you should’ve done that a long time ago, but considering you just saved my life, I won’t.” Talia shakes her head. “You realize you just said, “I told you so” anyway don’t you? Doesn’t matter though because my reasons for leaving are slightly different than yours. I still believe in Dendrin, I just don’t believe in Cyrus, at least not anymore. Though I was questioning his leadership ability for a few years now. Guess this suicidal attempt of taking on the Empire by you was just the final kick I needed to get me to leave because I never abandoned my vow to you either. So thank you as well.” “Not necessary.” You say with a smile and the pair of you embrace. There are still a lot of unresolved issues between you and Talia, but none of those really matter right now. What does matter is that when you needed help she helped you thus reconfirming your belief that not all your waiting was for naught. As for Dendrin, you can’t really be sure if he actually had anything to do with guiding her to you, or if he’s just giving the impression that he did, either way you’re still not worshipping him. Though you imagine you’ll have plenty of time to debate about religious philosophy with Talia now that the pair of you are reunited, it’s just a question of where you’re going to go and do now. > You time passes... Year 31 Sometimes it seems surreal that the Empire hasn’t attempted to retake Rask yet, but then there have been a few major changes all decidedly not in the favor of the Empire. First off, Kane’s death was a bigger deal than even you thought it would be. Kane’s “Butcher of Rask” infamy wasn’t exactly the most efficient way of keeping the plebs in line, but it was working better than nothing at all. Not to mention it was also keeping his command in line as well. When he died, Empire troop morale in Rask dropped and the native Raskians’ morale went up significantly. The towns finally unified enough that they declared Rask to be independent of Empire law and rule. You figured the Empire would send more troops to re-establish order, but instead they started withdrawing from the area entirely. Apparently some of the shadows still causing problems for the Empire south of Rask started engaging in suicidal tactics and taking out high ranking commanders, including Captain Roldan (Who you always thought would’ve been one of the first to be sent to Rask) With this set back, the Empire decided it would be better to crush all the opposition in places where they at least had a majority of control, hence Rask was left alone for now at least. In the meantime, the shadows are…well a shadow of their former selves. It is almost quite certain that all of them south of Rask are being ruthlessly hunted to extinction and there weren’t many left in the first place (even less when they started with suicide tactics). The last shadow “stronghold” is Fort Defiance where presumably Cyrus still rules over his small group of brainwashed followers. You say presumably because nobody has heard anything from them since Kane was killed. You haven’t even been the target of any revenge assassination attempts. The place is still intact, but has effectively closed itself off from the outside world. Despite the major shadow influence on starting the rebellion in the first place and people helping them in the past, nobody is in any particular hurry to thank them and Fort Defiance is looked upon as a monastery of religious fanatics that should be steered clear of. As for you and Talia, you’re exceptions, but not by much. You were known as a shadow outcast long before Kane’s death so nothing much has changed with how people treat you, though sometimes you get a few small thank yous for directly being involved in Kanes death, then on the flip side you also get a few fuck yous for indirectly being involved in the near total destruction of Volgst. Talia on the other hand doesn’t get much of either. It’s somewhat known that she was the one that actually killed Kane, but due to her continued dedication to Dendrin, she’s just looked upon as one of the “acceptable” religious fanatics, rather than any sort of hero. Not to mention nobody wants to piss off the killer of the Kane. In keeping with your outcast nature you and Talia have made yourself at home in one of the many abandoned cabins in the wilderness. It’s not much, but after fixing it up it’s a suitable home. You both are fairly self sufficient While things are currently peaceful, you’re finding it harder and harder to find ways to pass the time. Part of you is always on guard believing that one day the Empire will eventually come back or even closer to home, that shadows will attempt to kill you. You’ve set up many traps and scouted several potential escape routes as possible. Even with that large of a concern you’re still left with a lot of extra time which is mostly spent with Talia and that’s becoming another situation lately. Talia is also finding herself restless, possibly even more than you are. Part of the problem is that she was once part of a bigger community that she identified with and now she is effectively isolated from that community. That isn’t the only the problem though, she still believes in Dendrin and the “shadow way” and namely that means all her ideals and plans for the future have practically gone by the wayside. She once stated to you that one of the reasons why she bonded with you is because she had this idea that when the Empire was brought down you and her would spawn several Eternal shadows to become little Dendrin worshippers and presumably strengthen the community because of it. Well, the Empire hasn’t fallen, the shadows are near extinct and Talia hasn’t gotten pregnant despite how much the pair of you have had sex. To be quite honest you were never really paying too much attention to that last one until Talia started bringing it up recently. You always figured she was using some sort of shadow magic to prevent such a thing in the past due to how inconvenient it would be (You know planning a rebellion and all), but now in this time of “peace” it’s been brought to your attention that something must be seriously wrong. Given that you weren’t really a true shadow to begin with, the whole legacy thing wasn’t really something you were placing a priority on, though you do find it a bit odd. You can only come up with the conclusion that you, her or perhaps both of you just can’t produce offspring. Talia on the other hand feels that something NEEDS to be done to try to correct this, and that something is placing greater faith in Dendrin to bless you with children. This in it of itself is asking the impossible of you, but Talia also wants to travel to the Delerg province to locate his original temple. She remembers where it is and she figures that perhaps the connection to him will be stronger there. As one can imagine this has caused a great source of arguing on your part. Disregarding the fact that Derlerg is still Empire territory and that both of you aren’t exactly wanted there, there’s also the fact that you’re never going to “believe” in Dendrin like Talia, no matter how much she wants you to. The best you’d be able to do is fake it, and you’ve tried that before, didn’t work for you. You also aren’t really convinced that he’d bless you with children anyway, given how unhelpful he is in the first place and that’s assuming he’s even able to do such a thing. However, all of these arguments have fallen on semi-deaf ears. Talia is quite aware of your feelings on the matter, but she would like you to make the attempt. She tries to point out that Dendrin has been guiding or at least looking out for you in some way, because if he wasn’t he wouldn’t have spoken to you on a regular basis in the past or guided her to you when Kane was getting the better of you. If that were anyone else telling you about that last one, you’d think they’d be trying to get you to do what they want as “payment” for saving your life. However, given that it’s Talia, you know she’s being sincere in her belief, which makes it even harder to argue against since you can at least understand the idea of owing someone. At this point, if you really insisted on staying put you aren’t sure if Talia wouldn’t just leave again, after all she did put her faith of Dendrin over you before. This makes you question if this is even going to work out to anyway. Sure, you and Talia have had some good times in the distant past and even recently, but this just might be an obstacle that’s always going to be between you both and going to be insurmountable. > You stay in Rask Maybe Talia’s a believer, but you’re not and you aren’t about to go traveling across miles of hostile territory, let alone staying in it, just for the purpose of her religious beliefs. You’ve put up with enough of Dendrin and this shadow nonsense long enough and you’re not pointlessly risking your life because of it. You put your foot down and tell Talia that she can worship Dendrin all she wants, but you’re not going on some fool pilgrimage in the hopes of having children. Talia doesn’t argue anymore, she just resigns herself to her defeat. However, things between the pair of you are noticeably strained now, if they weren’t already. Year 33 She hadn’t been happy in a long time, you knew that due to the fact the pair of you barely spoke to each other anymore. You even figured you’d wake up or return from hunting one day and she’d be gone like last time. But you didn’t think it would be like this. You finish covering up her snowy grave and stand there for a while cursing the whole situation. The suicide note simply stating the words “I’m sorry” will forever be embedded in your mind. The thing is you don’t think it was just the conflict of religious beliefs or even the desire to have child (which was tied to her belief of Dendrin being able to help in that matter). To be sure those two factors probably didn’t help, but you always got the impression there was something else. Something you think she wanted to tell you, but couldn’t for some reason. Doesn ‘t matter now whatever the case may be. She’s dead and that’s that. You return to your cabin. Year 35 You always knew the Empire would come back to Rask, but you thought they’d come back to conquer it, not destroy it. There were always rumors, but you never paid too much attention most of the time mainly because you had so much else going on in your life, but when the announcement of the Empire’s new eternals came about, you had no choice but to pay attention especially since there was a lot more of them, hundreds actually. And the first place they sent them was to Rask to raze the place to the ground. Town after town has been completely obliterated by these new eternals and the people no matter how united can’t stop them. Some have tried to pledge their allegiance to the Empire again, but they were killed like everyone else. Not since the days of Kane has Rask experienced such brutality on a wide scale. You thought what remnants of the shadows are left would be trying to do more, but so far there hasn’t been a peep from them. Cyrus seems content on keeping all of them hold up in Fort Defiance. It won’t work because you know that they’re the main target, the rest is probably just combat practice and to send a message. When the time comes, Fort Defiance and all the shadows within are going to massacred. You’ve toyed with the idea that you could probably easily evade the advancing army if you went further north and laid low in the mountains or deep forests. You’re pretty confident that you’d be able to survive this onslaught that way. The thing is you’ve sort of lost the will to go on. You haven’t been the same since Talia died. Even when you were apart for five years the hope of her returning was still there to keep you going. Even when your relationship had been strained in the last years of her life she was at least still there. But now? She’s dead and she won’t be coming back and there’s no more reason for you to fight the Empire any longer. Even Dendrin hasn’t spoke to you in years; you’re guessing he’s moved on. Makes sense given that you haven’t been very entertaining lately. From your estimates an army should be passing through your area soon, you need to get prepared… The next day you visit Talia’s grave for the last time. “For what’s worth… I’m sorry too Talia.” You say and head towards the main road. You stand in the center and see a massive force in the distance, won’t be long now you think as you draw your weapon. Several hundred eternals march straight towards you on foot and horseback. They don’t even stop to see if this is possibly an ambush of some sort. Perhaps they don’t care or are confident that if it is, they’ll be able to handle it. Doesn’t take long before you can hear them shouting about how they’re going to enjoy killing you and the rest of your shadow “friends”. You can’t help but smile at that one. You do about as well as someone could be expected against an army of eternals. Meaning you kill about three of them, before you’re enthusiastically overwhelmed and ultimately chopped, stabbed, crushed and stomped into bloody pieces. You last dying thoughts are how these new eternals might be young but they’re already vicious bastards. Didn’t seem very disciplined though. Who knows, perhaps they will eventually become a problem for the very Empire that created them. You certainly did.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 31 Sometimes it seems surreal that the Empire hasn’t attempted to retake Rask yet, but then there have been a few major changes all decidedly not in the favor of the Empire. First off, Kane’s death was a bigger deal than even you thought it would be. Kane’s “Butcher of Rask” infamy wasn’t exactly the most efficient way of keeping the plebs in line, but it was working better than nothing at all. Not to mention it was also keeping his command in line as well. When he died, Empire troop morale in Rask dropped and the native Raskians’ morale went up significantly. The towns finally unified enough that they declared Rask to be independent of Empire law and rule. You figured the Empire would send more troops to re-establish order, but instead they started withdrawing from the area entirely. Apparently some of the shadows still causing problems for the Empire south of Rask started engaging in suicidal tactics and taking out high ranking commanders, including Captain Roldan (Who you always thought would’ve been one of the first to be sent to Rask) With this set back, the Empire decided it would be better to crush all the opposition in places where they at least had a majority of control, hence Rask was left alone for now at least. In the meantime, the shadows are…well a shadow of their former selves. It is almost quite certain that all of them south of Rask are being ruthlessly hunted to extinction and there weren’t many left in the first place (even less when they started with suicide tactics). The last shadow “stronghold” is Fort Defiance where presumably Cyrus still rules over his small group of brainwashed followers. You say presumably because nobody has heard anything from them since Kane was killed. You haven’t even been the target of any revenge assassination attempts. The place is still intact, but has effectively closed itself off from the outside world. Despite the major shadow influence on starting the rebellion in the first place and people helping them in the past, nobody is in any particular hurry to thank them and Fort Defiance is looked upon as a monastery of religious fanatics that should be steered clear of. As for you and Talia, you’re exceptions, but not by much. You were known as a shadow outcast long before Kane’s death so nothing much has changed with how people treat you, though sometimes you get a few small thank yous for directly being involved in Kanes death, then on the flip side you also get a few fuck yous for indirectly being involved in the near total destruction of Volgst. Talia on the other hand doesn’t get much of either. It’s somewhat known that she was the one that actually killed Kane, but due to her continued dedication to Dendrin, she’s just looked upon as one of the “acceptable” religious fanatics, rather than any sort of hero. Not to mention nobody wants to piss off the killer of the Kane. In keeping with your outcast nature you and Talia have made yourself at home in one of the many abandoned cabins in the wilderness. It’s not much, but after fixing it up it’s a suitable home. You both are fairly self sufficient While things are currently peaceful, you’re finding it harder and harder to find ways to pass the time. Part of you is always on guard believing that one day the Empire will eventually come back or even closer to home, that shadows will attempt to kill you. You’ve set up many traps and scouted several potential escape routes as possible. Even with that large of a concern you’re still left with a lot of extra time which is mostly spent with Talia and that’s becoming another situation lately. Talia is also finding herself restless, possibly even more than you are. Part of the problem is that she was once part of a bigger community that she identified with and now she is effectively isolated from that community. That isn’t the only the problem though, she still believes in Dendrin and the “shadow way” and namely that means all her ideals and plans for the future have practically gone by the wayside. She once stated to you that one of the reasons why she bonded with you is because she had this idea that when the Empire was brought down you and her would spawn several Eternal shadows to become little Dendrin worshippers and presumably strengthen the community because of it. Well, the Empire hasn’t fallen, the shadows are near extinct and Talia hasn’t gotten pregnant despite how much the pair of you have had sex. To be quite honest you were never really paying too much attention to that last one until Talia started bringing it up recently. You always figured she was using some sort of shadow magic to prevent such a thing in the past due to how inconvenient it would be (You know planning a rebellion and all), but now in this time of “peace” it’s been brought to your attention that something must be seriously wrong. Given that you weren’t really a true shadow to begin with, the whole legacy thing wasn’t really something you were placing a priority on, though you do find it a bit odd. You can only come up with the conclusion that you, her or perhaps both of you just can’t produce offspring. Talia on the other hand feels that something NEEDS to be done to try to correct this, and that something is placing greater faith in Dendrin to bless you with children. This in it of itself is asking the impossible of you, but Talia also wants to travel to the Delerg province to locate his original temple. She remembers where it is and she figures that perhaps the connection to him will be stronger there. As one can imagine this has caused a great source of arguing on your part. Disregarding the fact that Derlerg is still Empire territory and that both of you aren’t exactly wanted there, there’s also the fact that you’re never going to “believe” in Dendrin like Talia, no matter how much she wants you to. The best you’d be able to do is fake it, and you’ve tried that before, didn’t work for you. You also aren’t really convinced that he’d bless you with children anyway, given how unhelpful he is in the first place and that’s assuming he’s even able to do such a thing. However, all of these arguments have fallen on semi-deaf ears. Talia is quite aware of your feelings on the matter, but she would like you to make the attempt. She tries to point out that Dendrin has been guiding or at least looking out for you in some way, because if he wasn’t he wouldn’t have spoken to you on a regular basis in the past or guided her to you when Kane was getting the better of you. If that were anyone else telling you about that last one, you’d think they’d be trying to get you to do what they want as “payment” for saving your life. However, given that it’s Talia, you know she’s being sincere in her belief, which makes it even harder to argue against since you can at least understand the idea of owing someone. At this point, if you really insisted on staying put you aren’t sure if Talia wouldn’t just leave again, after all she did put her faith of Dendrin over you before. This makes you question if this is even going to work out to anyway. Sure, you and Talia have had some good times in the distant past and even recently, but this just might be an obstacle that’s always going to be between you both and going to be insurmountable. > You travel to Delerg Maybe you love Talia more than she loves you, or maybe you’re just tired of practically being a loner all the time and at least if you have Talia, you know you’ve got someone on your side. Whatever the reason, you tell Talia that you’re willing to go to Delerg with her. Her reaction is a happy one though she admits she’s a little surprised you agreed as quickly as you did. Later that night you fall asleep wondering how the hell you got yourself into this. Then a numbness washes over you… “So, ready to come back to the fold eh?” you hear Dendrin say. “Hardly.” You reply. “I didn’t think so, but you always continue to intrigue me. I mean here you are supporting a woman that obviously places faith over love. Why would you do such a thing? The Empire’s most fanatical soldiers have faith in their false Emperor and the shadows…what’s left of them still have faith in me yet they have no real proof that their respective masters approve of them or feel anything back. Yet you have proof that Talia’s faith in me is stronger than her love for you and you still stand by her.” “Because I’m an idiot obviously.” “That remains to be seen, but I don’t think so. In fact you’re being clever enough to avoid my question. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Is it possible that you’re heading to into Empire territory in the hope of getting into major battle again? Has been awhile and I know you do enjoy it so.” You don’t answer, you just try to go back to waiting out this “dream”, but Dendrin isn’t letting you. “Passive silence? That’s not your usual tactic with me. You’ve always been a fighter, a warrior! But I’ll take that silence as a sign that I was right.” “Take it however you want, but take it away from me.” “Hmm, not sure if I like this new approach to our talks, but if I had an opinion on your decision, it’s that you’ve made the right one. I think that you’ll find something else in my old temple too. Well now you will since I’ve just mentally transferred the position of a very hidden place in it. Hope the baby situation works out for you, I think fatherhood would suit you, and it’ll give me a new follower! I’ll be watching as usual.” In the next few weeks you and Talia make your preparations to leave Rask. When you tell her that Dendrin spoke to you and placed the image of a stone “button” to reveal a secret part of the temple, Talia is again overjoyed and remarks that this is a good sign that he cares for your well being and merely wants your worship in return. You don’t bother saying what you really think, but instead just nod and tell Talia that perhaps she’s right and that maybe one day your faith in him will be as strong as hers. The journey is a long one, it probably wouldn’t be if you could actually use shadow magic to speed yourself up without passing out anymore, but since you’re not yet a “true believer” again, looks like ol’ Dendrin’s withholding the perks still. Doesn’t seem to bother Talia, she’s very positive during the whole trip. She talks about how you can both make your home in the temple and start your new lives there. She goes on about how you can also put out feelers on how the rebellion situation is going on in Delerg and how maybe you can get it split from the Empire like Rask did. You have to admit you don’t mind that idea. There are a few times on the trip through the Quala province you could’ve avoided combat with Empire patrols, but you deliberately engage them when the time is right. You make an effort to leave no survivors in these attacks; every dead soldier is a blow to the Empire right? Eventually you make it to Delerg and the place is crawling with Empire troops, it looks like they’ve really been trying to clean up around here. You keep a lower profile here and it takes a lot of sneaking around, but eventually you make it to Dendrin’s temple which have several rotten heads on pikes facing the temple along with several rotten bodies (partially eaten by the wildlife and insects) strewn around and even inside the temple. “These are shadows.” Talia says with a touch of sadness in her voice. “I know…even with half her face covered in maggots I recognize that one. Sister Yvette. I always wondered what happened to her after I left her in charge of my cell when I went back to Gloom. (Sigh) I figured it would be something like this.” “Do you think these are all the shadows that we lost contact with south of Rask?” “Most of them I suppose. I guess maybe they had the same idea and made a last stand here where they thought Dendrin would protect them. Looks like…” you stop yourself from saying something completely negative like “he didn’t.” so you think of something slightly less negative and say: “they fought so hard that the Empire tried to make some sort of example out of them.” “We need to take them down off the pikes.” Talia says. “No we need to leave them be, since I’m sure the Empire has patrols come around here, and if they see all the heads suddenly gone, they’re going to correctly assume shadows are around. We need to keep a low profile if we’re going to stick around here remember?” “I…suppose discretion would be best right now.” You and Talia move past the pike heads and enter the temple, which is surprisingly in good condition though signs of battle obviously took place here. You waste no time in seeking out the stone “button” that will open up a secret place in the temple. Eventually you find it (which you doubt you would’ve been able to do if Dendrin hadn’t told you) and descend down. What you find is better than you could’ve hoped for when you first arrived and that’s living quarters for what you presume would be for the old shadow high priests or whatever. It isn’t fancy, but it’s fairly clean. You imagine that this place hasn’t been accessed in centuries. The walls are very solidly made so it doesn’t even look like signs of any natural intrusion have occurred either. There is one “room” that sticks out which isn’t man made and that’s a small natural cavern, which seems to be an underground garden of some sort with a shallow stream of fresh water flowing through it. Blue glowing fungus lights up the place and there are no exits other than the small openings the water is flowing through. With no suspicion whatsoever Talia immediately takes some purple berries off one of the bushes and pops them in her mouth and remarks how good they taste. “Hey those could be poisonous!” you exclaim. “Oh you doubter, Dendrin lead us here! We won’t come to any harm! “I’m being cautious. This cavern is strange; I mean wouldn’t a garden like this have overgrown or decayed without regular care? I imagine the water stream is seeping into the soil and sustaining them, but some of these plants wouldn’t survive without sunlight either.” “It’s obviously magical and don’t you see? Dendrin provides as usual. We now have a good supply have fresh sustenance and water. Why question it, for it is one less thing to worry about! With this place we could easily hide underneath the Empire’s noses and strike from the shadows again.” Talia says. “As long as they don’t call in their Derro buddies again, I agree that this will make a suitable hideout. I suppose you’re probably right about the garden being magical. Sort of odd though, never known Dendrin to be into the whole nature thing.” “Well we cannot hope to know all of a god’s interests and thoughts. As I’ve said, why question it? It is enough that it’s something good and we could use that right now. Now come, we should thank Dendrin for this together.” As you join Talia in thanking Dendrin, you can’t help but wonder if this is all some elaborate plan by Dendrin to actually get you to be a true believer, or if he doesn’t really care if you believe, just as long as you’re going through the motions. Either way, you’ll do this for Talia because that’s who you’re really faithful to. > Year 35 Despite your best efforts, stirring up more dissent in Delerg seems to be a losing battle. It’s not just the Empire though; it’s the people here in general. Most of them are content on being dominated. Funny how in the “birthplace” of the shadows, that rebellion would be less here. The best you’ve been able to do is organize small groups of society’s misfits, lowlifes and outright psychopaths and they’re just doing it for the shits and giggles for the most part, but whatever works at this point. You and Talia have been very careful about not giving the impression of any shadow activity in the area and that’s a good thing because lately the Empire has been throwing its weight around once more. Almost as if it’s gotten a second wind. And it has. There were always rumors, but you never paid too much attention most of the time mainly because you had so much else going on in your life, but when the announcement of the Empire’s new eternals came about, you had no choice but to pay attention especially since there was a lot more of them, hundreds actually. The first place they sent them was to Rask. Not surprising considering the Empire lost the territory. What wasn’t expected is that the Empire didn’t just send them to conquer the place. They sent them to destroy it. Town after town was completely obliterated by these new eternals and the people no matter how united couldn’t stop them. Some tried to pledge their allegiance to the Empire again, but they were killed like everyone else. Not since the days of Kane had Rask experienced such brutality on a wide scale. After most of the towns had been laid to waste, Fort Defiance was next. In fact this was the main objective in the first place. The rest of it? Just in the way and served to test the viciousness of the new eternals. Perhaps even to scare the remaining shadows still huddled up in that run down fort. “Defiance” was a reminder of an old wound. A loss. A humiliation. The Empire didn’t just lose a fort, or even a whole province; they lost it because of the shadows, the ones who caused all this in the first place. They had to be eliminated once and for all. You heard that the siege didn’t even last three days and Fort Defiance was destroyed along with all the remaining shadows inside. Cyrus himself was found dead with another male shadow (Who you presume was probably Draven) in an embrace. Apparently they had poisoned themselves rather than give the satisfaction to the Empire of killing them. Talia gets a little sad when she hears the news. While she left due to her feelings for you and Cyrus’ incompetence, she was there for five years and still considered them all her brothers and sisters. A loss of any of Dendrin’s faithful is a loss to all who revere him. While you aren’t exactly broken up about it, you certainly aren’t jumping for joy. Now that the Empire has satisfied its blood revenge on what they believed to be the last of the shadows, they’re going to unleash these new eternals on the rest of their provinces in full force too. They’ve already started deploying them in the Quala and Arat province. Delerg can’t be far behind. “While I hate to always be the cynic. Things are looking really damn bleak right about now Talia.” “They’ve been bad before and we’ve still pulled through. Dendrin will preserve us and the Empire will fall.” “Yeah…well…” “Oh come on now my love, don’t tell me you’re starting to lose your faith again.” It’s always so charmingly naïve of Talia to believe that you’re not just faking everything. Still, even while faking it, you can’t help but be a “doubter” sometimes. “Well no…but we’re the last two shadows left Talia. I mean, sure Cyrus was obviously a bad leader and all that, but above all else he was a devoted worshipper of Dendrin along with all the rest. I have to question why Dendrin isn’t doing something more direct to help his own followers now more than ever.” “Cyrus’ actions had obviously offended Dendrin, and he was punished along with all those that followed him. True, I weep for their passing, but they strayed from the teachings. They were no longer fighting the Empire or trying to carry out Dendrin’s will and as a result Rask was ravaged. We on the other hand were smart enough to leave and carry on the fight. For years now we’ve successfully hid ourselves right under the noses of the Empire. I know we’re careful, but we’re not that lucky. Dendrin has obviously clouded the Empire’s collective mindset from believing there are shadows here in Delerg. Your magic is back completely. I’d say Dendrin is looking out for only those that are worthy. When the Empire does finally fall, it will be a new era and it only takes two…” Talia takes your hand and looks into your eyes. “…to recreate the shadows stronger than ever.” While you’re glad Talia’s confidence in victory is so certain, you’re not convinced as usual. Even if Dendrin is helping you both out on some small level like Talia believes he is, he’s going to have to do a hell of a lot more. In the meantime you’re going to prepare yourself for the inevitable new eternal invasion. You begin setting up traps in and around the temple though you imagine the day when they actually get used is probably going to be the day you’re making your last stand. Months pass and you go through your usual routines of opposing the Empire, then that fateful day comes. A platoon of the new eternals arrive in Sinkhole. They aren’t there to destroy it, but they barely act like it. Under the cover of cloak you spy on them for a period of several days, and you see them routinely assaulting people even when there is no real cause for it other than pure sadistic glee. Even their non-eternal commander doesn’t have much control over them. Sometimes when he tells them to stop beating someone, they just look at him like he’ll be next. Whoever trained these eternals obviously didn’t do a good job, it’s like they have no discipline what so ever. That’s when you begin to wonder if the Empire hasn’t put the last nail in their own coffin. These monsters the Empire has unleashed upon the world are going to cause them more problems than they’re going to solve. You can see that even now. Another month passes and more of them arrive in Delerg. You and Talia engage small bands of them during their patrols, and they aren’t slouches in a fight either despite only being teenagers. Naturally when dead eternals start becoming more common, Delerg starts getting the thumbscrews put to it. While all the little villages in Delerg aren’t put to the torch a lot of them are. Sinkhole becomes a staging ground for public executions and worse. Eventually the few that were actually supporting the rebellion are all rounded up and killed. It gets harder and harder to sneak around the swamp ambushing patrols, and you and Talia never seem to get enough rest to recharge up your magic. And today is the day when all this catches up with you both… As you withdraw your sword from a dead foe, you hear the sounds of several bows being drawn behind you as well as above you. Fortunately, whoever is in charge has decided to be an overly dramatic fool and doesn’t attack immediately. You and Talia stand back to back trying to get a bit of a breather before the next assault. A young man appears from behind the archers. He’s obviously one of the new eternals though he’s wearing a captain’s rank, which strikes you as a bit odd. “Give it up shadow scum. Oh yes, we’ve figured out who you really are now. Should’ve known a few of you would’ve been sneaking around somewhere, but that ends now. You’ve exhausted yourselves and your magic won’t help you now. Even if you can outrun the arrows I’ve got eternals all over the swamp right now waiting for you in all directions.” The young captain sneers. “The Empire getting so desperate they’re promoting babies now?” you say. “The Empire is getting better now that we’re around. Our former captain was inferior so he was replaced. Only an eternal is fit to lead other eternals. Of course you two would know nothing about being real eternals having betrayed the Empire after all, but really even if you had stayed loyal, you’d be obsolete now anyway. Time to put an end to your kind in more ways than one.” “You brats talk too much.” You say and you and Talia speed yourselves up to run back into the undergrowth and avoid the arrow barrage to come. You’re successful, but you’re getting really tired really fast. Even Talia is experiencing fatigue. You need to run to safety to get some temporary relief, but chances are if they know about you being shadows, they’ll assume you’ll run straight to Dendrin’s old temple where there might be a larger group of eternals waiting for you. > You run to the sanctuary Given that the captain said he had eternals all over the swamp, going deeper into it probably isn’t going to help. Hell, who knows what else could attack, not like the swamps are exactly a friendly place and all you need to do is get yourself killed stepping into quicksand because you’re tired and not paying proper attention. You and Talia race to the temple, dispatching eternals that get in your way, but the constant arrows flying from what seems to be everywhere are what prove to be the most hazardous in this gauntlet because despite your unnatural speed, it doesn’t make it impossible to get hit. “Ah! Damn it!” you hear Talia shout and fall to the ground. She’s got an arrow in her back by some lucky shot. You barely avoid getting shot yourself when you stop to pick her up. “You got enough in you to cloak yourself?” “Yeah I think so…” “Okay do it.” The pair of you cloak yourselves and you get out of the area as eternals continue to fire blindly at where they think you’re located. It takes you a little longer to make it back to the sanctuary under cloak, carrying Talia over your shoulder, as well as trying to avoid the eternals swarming the swamp, but eventually it’s in sight. Unfortunately you were right and a large group of eternals are stand watch around the place. You sneak by just long enough to make it to the steps and that’s when your own energy starts to give out and you collapse breaking your cover completely. First eternal that reaches you gets a sword blow to his face causing him to fall backwards into two of his fellows. You engage two more and Talia, despite having an arrow in her back manages to fight off another one. Though she’s still far from peak condition. A sword strike catches her across the leg and then a dagger is shoved into her stomach. Before you can react to help her, she manages to helps herself by slitting the throat of the eternal who believed her to be already defeated. Talia manages to drag herself into the temple while you attempt to fight the rest of the eternals off as long as you can. When you dispatch them you see more eternals begin to swarm out of the swamp and approach the temple. Finding Talia in the temple entry way bleeding out, you pick her up in your arms once again and make haste for the sanctuary. While you’re running down one of the corridors you hear the work of your various traps going into action when death screams echo throughout the temple. “I told you not to enter the place you fools! I knew this place was going to be trapped! We’ll wait them out!” you hear another voice shout. Nobody sees you enter your sanctuary and only when you seal it up do you take time to worry about how much Talia’s been hurt. It’s bad and while you’re good at fighting and even some basic first aid, you can’t fix this. Not even your magic can. “They’re going to be waiting awhile…we’ve got unlimited food and water down here…” Talia says. “Shh, don’t speak. We gotta…Dendrin! Dendrin will help!” you say and start praying to Dendrin in desperation. After a few minutes of this, Talia speaks again. “Why are you praying…you don’t believe he’s going actually help anyway…you never have…it’s okay I know you did it for me. You’ve always done it all for me…that’s your real faith...” You stop and look at her; she looks so pale now due to the blood loss. “I’m going to go back up there and kill every last one of those sons of bitches!” you exclaim, trying to fight back the tears. “No…stay here with me my love…please…” You hold on to her hand and watch as life slowly ebbs from her and eventually she begins to drift into unconsciousness. “I…heard him…” she says with a faint smile and then passes on. You sit by her side quietly sobbing in a small pool of her blood on the floor for what is probably an hour or so. Eventually you pull yourself together and do what needs to be done. You take her body to the garden and bury it there. It’s as fitting of a gravesite as any for her and really you don’t have many options right now anyway. You were tired when you arrived here and now after burying your beloved you’re exhausted along with being emotionally drained. If those new eternals come for you now they’re going to have to kill you in your sleep, because that’s what you do in the garden. Unconsciousness takes you followed by the numbness, though now the numbness is welcome. “You probably don’t believe it, but you have my sympathies Eternal. Talia was always devoted, no matter what hardship was thrown in her face, she always believed even if her own logic told her not to at times.” Dendrin says. “And look where it got her.” “Yes, and look where it got her. Are you honestly going to keep blaming me for everything tragic in your life? You could easily blame yourself for not being quick enough to help her, or those new eternals for killing her in the first place.” “I’m done blaming you for anything, because ultimately you don’t DO anything, which is what I’ve been saying for years. Tell me, was it ever in your power to bless Talia with a child?” “No.” “Really? You admit this so freely? The great Dendrin admits to something he can’t do?” “Why wouldn’t I? You know there are already limitations to my power so why tell you I can do something when I can’t? I’m not a fertility god and I can’t cure the sterility that infects you eternals.” “Hold on, so you’re saying it wasn’t just Talia, it was me as well?“ “Yes. Cyrus too, though it wouldn’t have mattered in his case. So I imagine it has something to do with the process of how you Eternals are magically altered. Perhaps it’s nature’s way of balancing itself out. Who knows? But procreating was never really on your high priority list nor was creating a new line of shadows, so the question is what are you going to do now?” “Well when I wake up I intend on carrying out my promise of killing every one of those bastards up top.” “For what purpose? Revenge? Talia already killed the one directly causing her mortal wound and killing the rest won’t bring her back. Even if you did manage to kill all the ones currently up there, more are just going to come and you’ll fall to them eventually.” “Then that’s what will happen.” “Eternal I urge you to reconsider. I know of your love of battle, I know it’s probably one of the few things that stirs something within you and ultimately that’s how you want to die. I can respect that. But I also know that you have a strong survival instinct as well. Not to mention I don’t think Talia would want you to just throw your life away on a hopeless battle when there is no need to.” “Why the sudden sense of concern, afraid of losing your source of entertainment? Besides, I don’t think I’m going to have a choice anyway. If I wait down here, all they’re going to do is eventually storm the place anyway, traps or not. Then they’ll eventually find the button that leads down here.” “You’re correct on the first assumption with the traps, but they won’t find out how to get down here. They just won’t, trust me.” “Trust you? Are you trying to be funny?” “Not at all, but you do what you want. I can’t stop you. I will say this though, despite our unstable relationship I think you do know I HAVE been looking out for in small ways. Perhaps I haven’t helped the way you’d like me to, but I have helped. And yes it is true that if you died I would be losing my favorite form of entertainment, but I do genuinely like you Eternal and I don’t see your part in this world at an end yet. Far from it actually, I still see much potential in you, but you’re going to have to be patient for a while. There is always time for revenge if you still desire it. Trust me.” You can’t argue with Dendrin on that one, he would know all about planning and waiting to make the right time to serve revenge. That’s what the rebellion started by the shadows’ was all about for the most part. He seems pretty adamant that you won’t be found down here, so you’re guessing he’s probably going to make it impossible for anyone to even stumble upon the hidden button that leads down here. “Dendrin, I just have one more question. Did you really speak to Talia before she died?” “Yes. As I said, as devoted as she was, she deserved to hear the voice of her god.” “What did you say exactly?” “Ha ha. I fear that would be telling Eternal and also a private matter. Let’s just say the words were of a comforting nature in her final moments of life.” “Then I guess it was all worth it.” When you wake up, you don’t follow through with your suicidal plan of charging into battle and you decide to take Dendrin’s advice and wait. Fortunately the place is stocked with it’s own library. You never really bothered glance at the books before let alone read them, but there’s no time to start like the present. A few weeks pass and you start hearing noises from up above. You take that to mean that they finally got tired of waiting you out and are searching the temple along with many of them falling afoul of the traps no doubt. You stay alert at this time, believing that they will find their way down here eventually, but as Dendrin told you, they never do. At one point the whole underground sanctuary shakes and you hear several loud crashing noises from above. You’re ultimately okay, but if you had to guess they probably just destroyed the temple either with magic or maybe even with a catapult they dragged through the swamp. For all you know you might be trapped down here now, but you’re not worried. You’ll get out of here eventually, when you feel that the time is right. > Chapter 3B2: Last Shadow Year 45 You travel back to the sanctuary under cloak as you have many times before. The sanctuary isn’t much to look at anymore ever since it collapsed ten years ago, but one thing’s for sure, nobody ever comes around here, making it the perfect place to live ever since you started to live like a recluse. You scan the area to make sure there is nobody around before you go through your secret entrance; you remember how long it took you just dig your way out of the place. You probably could’ve stayed down there indefinitely, but there are only so many times you can read the same books over. It was only natural that you got curious about what was going on in outside world after the first few years of being buried had past. About another year of digging and it was a brand new world. The Empire had fallen, but not much had changed in the scheme of things. In some ways the situation might’ve been worse for the average person. You travelled under cloak to explore what used to be the territory of the old Empire, only to find that most of it was now divided up into petty fiefdoms run by the new eternals. You knew as soon as you saw these new eternals they were going to hasten the Empire’s fall, not save it. You also weren’t surprised to find most of them fighting over the scraps of their dead “parent.” They lack any sort of discipline of your generation, as far as you’re concerned they’re twisted mutants of eternals, but not real ones. Most of the population that had existed under the Empire has become practically enslaved under the new eternals. There are a few that remain autonomous, but this is mainly in Rask where the place is a war zone even compared to places like Quala or Arat. From what you’ve heard Flog and his orc/ogre horde have been spreading to southern Rask and making it hard for any eternal attempting to plant a flag and keep it there. It’s gotten so bad that what eternals do lay claim there have resorted to hiring svelk mercenaries to help. And the svelk aren’t exactly well liked by the new eternals (Though that’s one issue you’d have to agree with them on). The other area that remains free from of new eternal domination in Nalin, which is seemingly a beacon of “light” and under the control of the only other first generation eternal known to be alive, Brenda. She apparently has a non-aggression pact with the eternal upstarts, but has made it clear she will not let them destroy what’s left of what she considers to be the last remnants of the Empire. You don’t know whether it’s out of respect or fear that she has managed to avoid war with any of them. As for Delerg, it’s not a warzone, but it’s no paradise. Delerg is slightly unique in that it’s currently only “ruled” by one eternal by the name of Brutus, with no major competition. Brutus is not quite as ambitious either; he and his crony eternals seem content to just wallow in the swamp. One might think that perhaps he’s just biding his time and waiting for an opening to invade the weakest eternal in Quala, but in reality he wouldn’t have the means to do it anyway, his entourage is more of a gang rather than any proper army. He’s just lucky Delerg isn’t a profitable target by any other eternal or else he’d probably be wiped out by a real invasion. You’ve often wondered why you continue to stay in Delerg or even the general area even after you took your “tour” of the old provinces and saw the chaos for yourself. You have no real answer other than you have nowhere else to go and that you’ve lived at the temple for so long now that you consider it your home regardless of who is calling themselves ruler there. The other reason you guess is Talia. Even after all these years you still haven’t quite moved on. You speak to Talia a lot, but she’s not much of a conversationalist anymore, not that you mind. You’d rather speak with her than Dendrin who you don’t know why still insists on speaking with you at all though thankfully it’s been rare nowadays. Later that night you go through your usual routine of a little training to keep your skills sharp and eating your dinner. You then visit the garden and speak with Talia about what you did today. “Visited Sinkhole again today. Still the same rundown town it’s always been. You’d think since Brutus made it his headquarters that he’d actually have a little pride to build it up a bit. Instead he and his lackies seem to just enjoy kicking around the same pathetic peasants, molesting hapless young girls and generally being assholes. Must be nice to enjoy doing the same routine over and over again.” You grab a handful of dirt and throw it where you buried Talia. “Sometimes I feel like uncloaking and killing them all, just to see what they’d do, you know? I bet they’d be scared shitless. The return of the shadows! Ooooooooh!” You laugh a bit. “Of course you know I did feel like killing them all after you died, but now? What’s the point? It won’t bring you back, and most of those bastards get themselves killed over stupidity anyway. Hell I’d probably be honoring them by gracing them with my blade to their hearts.” You throw a stone in the small stream nearby. “I mean I suppose if I did kill them, I’d be helping out those they’re tormenting now…but why bother? Most of those wretches were content living under the yoke of the Empire, they can be happy with what that mindset got them! Remember when I was trying start up a minor rebel cell here? All I could practically get were the fucking criminals and other miscreants. I mean what the hell does that say about society when those are only type willing to fight against tyranny?” You start to get angrier at the predictable silence. “I mean it’s not my fight anymore! I did what I could back in the day and it wasn’t appreciated by anyone, sometimes not even by you! The Empire is dead! I’ve done my bit, so if someone else wants to play freedom fighter they can have at it. I’m done…I’m...I’m sorry…” you say as you slump down near Talia’s grave. You sit in silence for quite a while, and eventually you fall asleep. “You’re not still moping about are you? I thought you’d be over the hermit thing by now.” Dendrin says “I can’t really be a hermit when you keep interrupting my solitude all the damn time.” “Oh please, you secretly crave it! If you really cherished your solitude that much, why the hell do you even bother leaving this place to make your little trips all over the countryside?” “I only did that once because I was curious about the changes in the world.” “But you still continue to make your routine trips in Delerg at least. You know nothing has changed for quite some time, same eternals tormenting the peasants as usual. It’s almost as boring as a routine as you have, must be an eternal thing. My point is, if you really wanted solitude, you wouldn’t risk leaving this place at all. You wouldn’t lurk on the outskirts of civilization spying on what others are doing. You also wouldn’t still be talking to your mate who hasn’t been in any condition to talk back in quite some time. I don’t think this hermit thing is for you. You need to be doing something else.” “Oh like what? Entertaining you? Look if you’re so bored, why don’t you go bother someone else and leave me alone? I’ve repeatedly told you, I’m not here for your amusement.” “Obviously not. (Sigh) Very well Eternal, but you know I’m right. You can’t keep going on like this. You’re going to have to change your surroundings eventually, because you might as well be lying in a grave right next to Talia given that you’ve fallen asleep in the dirt and have small cave insects crawling on you.” “Don’t think I haven’t considered it.” “Stop talking nonsense. You’re not suicidal and even if you were, you’d be too cowardly to go through with it anyway. Just like you’re too cowardly to change your current situation by leaving this place.” “First you say I’m not really a hermit because I’m leaving here on a regular basis, but now you’re saying I’m too cowardly to leave it? How does that make sense?” “I’m saying you’re going about everything half assed! You want to be a hermit? Fine then you need to shut yourself off from the outside world completely and not run around topside and vicariously getting your socialization kicks by spying on others. However I don’t think that’s what you want. I think you WANT to go back to doing what you used to do, but you’ve been staying hidden from the known world so long that you don’t want to risk what peace you have. Its safer that way.” “And I haven’t earned a little peace? Given everything I’ve been through?” “Maybe you have Eternal. I don’t know, but what I do know is you don’t seem to be satisfied with it, so what I’m saying is you need to change your situation. Otherwise you might as well be dead because you’re not living, you’re just surviving.” “It’s enough.” “Are you sure?” “Always has been.” At this point Dendrin stops speaking. You don’t know if it’s because he’s just tired of arguing with you or if it’s because you’ve actually won the argument. Dendrin can’t really deny that surviving to a certain extent has been enough for you in the past. In any case the numbness eventually subsides and you wake up. After brushing yourself off you head back to your real bed and ponder what you’re really going to do since despite it all, Dendrin has once again managed to weasel a little truth in his words and its enough to make you think. > You continue to live here Dendrin can chatter in your ear all he wants it’s not going to make you change how you want to live your life. What the hell has he ever done for you? You the sleep the rest of the night in your bed and most of the day as well. In fact you don’t leave the sanctuary for over a month. Eventually you start to get restless again and you go for a walk in the middle of the night. “I’m leaving Talia, I’ll be back soon.” You say. Tromping around through the swamp at night isn’t something you normally do since the place is already a breeding ground for biting insects during the day, its even worse at night. The Sul Monkeys are usually a little more active as well. Sometimes they even get vicious if they sense an easy target; fortunately they seem to be scared of you. As you wander through the night you reminisce about the old days, back when you were in Rask and temporarily separated from Talia. It wasn’t an easy time, but you survived it, just like you’re surviving without her now. “Pfft. Dendrin thinks he’s so smart. Suggesting that I can’t…” you begin to whisper to yourself, but just then your thoughts are interrupted by shrieks and pleas nearby. This is followed by some loud obnoxious voices. “Go ahead a scream bitch, not like anyone’s going to save you!” a voice yells. “Hey are you taking your turn?” the second voice asks. “Naw, I’m just gonna fuck the boy, seein’ as we already beat him unconscious. Less trouble.” A third voice replies. “Suit yourself.” The second voice says. Great, you wandered in the middle of a sexual assault in progress. What is it with these new eternals and rape? They’re always engaging in it like its going out of style. Must be some sort of defect in their minds during their training or something because none of the first generation eternals that you know of were so focused on their genital region. Even Kane, as infamous as he was for his atrocities was never known for rape. Though given some of the other things he did to his enemies, that’s not saying much. You shake your head as the cries, grunts and laughter gets louder and louder. They presumably have all the same natural ability and training the first generation eternals had and this is what they do with it. You turn back to go home. “SHUT UP BITCH!” you hear followed by a smacking sound. “Hah! Teach her to open her mouth when she doesn’t have a dick in it.” Your hand tightens around your sword hilt as you stop walking for a moment. “I’m not getting involved. They don’t deserve my help. None of them ever did…” you mutter and take another step. “Shit! This bitch is tight! She must be a virgin!” “So must be her boyfriend’s ass!” You do a complete pivot. “(Sigh) Damn it…” You rush towards the sounds of the group and after passing through some tall swamp plants; you find two of the eternals on top of the bodies of their victims. The third one is standing around watching the pair of them, laughing. He stops laughing when he catches the sight of your blade shining in the moonlight. “Oh shi…” he utters and you split his head with your sword. The eternal on top of the girl manages to stop what he’s doing long enough to look up, which allows her to give him enough of a shove and crawl away backwards from him. The other eternal on top of the young man doesn’t even bother getting off his victim, instead he makes idle threats. “Come closer and I’ll break this boy’s fucking neck!” he shouts and pulls the unconscious young man’s head into his arms preparing to twist. “He’s better off dead anyway at this point.” You say. You hear a bone crack followed by the sound of your sword cleaving the neck of the eternal. He attempts to grab at you while making horrible gurgling noises, but he only manages to falls face first into the muddy ground. The third eternal at this point has pulled up his pants and drawn his weapon, but given that he hasn’t attacked you immediately like he should have, you know that means he’s scared. They haven’t been challenged in so long, they’ve forgotten what its like. You forgot too. You forgot how thrilling combat was. All those old feelings are starting to come back. You’re enjoying this. “Give me a fight.” You say. The eternal attempts to oblige your request, but does a poor job at it. A couple of sword parries and dodges later and you’ve already opened up a wound in his chest and hacked a deep cut in his leg. He drops his sword and collapses on his ass in the mud. “Please! Stop! Look, you can have the girl okay? Do whatever you want with her!” “How the hell did you idiots ever take over anything? You’re not eternals. You’re fucking pathetic.” “And what are hell are you?” “I’m a shadow of the past and right now the past is catching up with you.” A little dramatic, but you’re having too much fun. Your line is lost on the eternal anyway who continues to plea like the girl did when he was raping her. You show the same amount of mercy and smack him across the face with your hilt before shoving your sword into his crotch. His voice goes into a high scream and then silent when you finish him off with a couple stomps to his head cracking his skull. Another couple stomps and his body stops breathing. You look around the area and see the young girl still nearby. In this moonlight you can see she’s huddled with her knees up to her body and her arms wrapped around them. She’s also completely naked with bruises on one side of her face and partially covered in mud and dirt. She can’t be any older than twenty; her dead boyfriend was probably around the same age. She rocks back and forth sobbing. Even when the physical damage heals, this is event is still going to be a scar in her mind for as long as she lives. You have no reassuring words for her, only advice. “Go home girl and grow stronger from this experience.” You say and leave her to her misery. You eventually arrive back at the sanctuary and excitedly tell Talia about what happened tonight. “…yeah, it was something to see. I sort of wondered if I was going to be rusty, but it all came back pretty naturally. Didn’t even use any magic. Heh. I…I think I’ll be really busy soon. So if I forget to talk to you or anything, its not because I don’t love you. I’ll just have my mind on other things okay? Okay. I’m glad you understand.” Over the next few days you pick off a few more eternals that you catch unawares in the swamps. Doesn’t take Brutus long to start realizing that someone is standing up to him, though from conversations you’ve eve’s dropped on, he isn’t entirely sure who it is yet and even thinks it might be the pre-cursor to an invasion. He’ll wish that was the case by the time you’re through. The peasants though are still being oppressed as usual. Perhaps even worse than they already were, since the eternals are taking their frustrations out on them, you can’t understand why they aren’t at least being encouraged by the situation and trying to fight back. You briefly wonder if you should dispense with your secretive solitary operations and try to get a “rebellion” going again, but you quickly dismiss such ideas. Maybe you’re indirectly helping the people, but you’re mainly just doing this for your own personal reasons. You’re not going to do is try to enlist aid again. Those days are long gone you’re not putting up with the headache of them anymore. Someone else can do it if they feel so inclined. You’re working fine on your own. You’ve done it many times in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Besides if you were successful in starting up a rebellion, then you’d eliminate your targets too quickly. As it stands right now, you’re enjoying taking your time. If you wanted to kill them all as fast as possible, you could easily do it. Over the course of a few months you continue your activities. Brutus starts sending patrols in large groups. He also destroys one of the smaller villages claiming that they know who has been attacking them if not involved in the attacks directly. If something like that doesn’t motivate the people nothing will. As it turns out, it has motivated at least one and when you’re spying an eternal patrol camp you aren’t surprised to see a familiar smaller figure hiding nearby. She thinks that nobody sees her, and so far she’s correct as far as the eternals are concerned, but you see her as clear as day. She hasn’t seen you of course due to your cloak. Looks like she took your advice, but she has no idea what she’s doing. Her desire for vengeance is going to get her killed, though maybe she feels like she has no reason to live at this point. In any event, she’s going to get in the way of your own plans, if you don’t do something. > You approach her You’re not going to rush into battle when you aren’t entirely sure of the situation yet. You need to get her out of here before she messes everything up. You silently move towards her staying cloaked the whole time. You try to pay attention to what the eternals are doing while still moving towards the girl. When you finally reach her, she still isn’t quite aware of your presence, you she begins to look around as if she senses something. You’re just about to lunge at her, when her sense that someone is near causes her to panic and she ends up falling backwards causing enough noise to attract the attention of the nearby eternals. “Shit.” You curse and decloak before the girl. She’s very surprised to see you. “Don’t speak, just get the hell out of here!” you shout at her as you here the eternals rushing over to check what’s going on. “But…” she utters. “I said don’t…” you say and then feel a spear fly into your back from a second group of eternals that were just returning to camp. You manage to spin around and muster enough of a fight to dispatch a couple of the eternals advancing on you, but even you can’t hold your ground against such odds with a sharp object puncturing your vital organs. Even speeding yourself up only serves to prolong the inevitable and you eventually succumb to the onslaught. As for the girl she didn’t get far and the eternals make good on finishing her off this time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Dendrin can chatter in your ear all he wants it’s not going to make you change how you want to live your life. What the hell has he ever done for you? You the sleep the rest of the night in your bed and most of the day as well. In fact you don’t leave the sanctuary for over a month. Eventually you start to get restless again and you go for a walk in the middle of the night. “I’m leaving Talia, I’ll be back soon.” You say. Tromping around through the swamp at night isn’t something you normally do since the place is already a breeding ground for biting insects during the day, its even worse at night. The Sul Monkeys are usually a little more active as well. Sometimes they even get vicious if they sense an easy target; fortunately they seem to be scared of you. As you wander through the night you reminisce about the old days, back when you were in Rask and temporarily separated from Talia. It wasn’t an easy time, but you survived it, just like you’re surviving without her now. “Pfft. Dendrin thinks he’s so smart. Suggesting that I can’t…” you begin to whisper to yourself, but just then your thoughts are interrupted by shrieks and pleas nearby. This is followed by some loud obnoxious voices. “Go ahead a scream bitch, not like anyone’s going to save you!” a voice yells. “Hey are you taking your turn?” the second voice asks. “Naw, I’m just gonna fuck the boy, seein’ as we already beat him unconscious. Less trouble.” A third voice replies. “Suit yourself.” The second voice says. Great, you wandered in the middle of a sexual assault in progress. What is it with these new eternals and rape? They’re always engaging in it like its going out of style. Must be some sort of defect in their minds during their training or something because none of the first generation eternals that you know of were so focused on their genital region. Even Kane, as infamous as he was for his atrocities was never known for rape. Though given some of the other things he did to his enemies, that’s not saying much. You shake your head as the cries, grunts and laughter gets louder and louder. They presumably have all the same natural ability and training the first generation eternals had and this is what they do with it. You turn back to go home. “SHUT UP BITCH!” you hear followed by a smacking sound. “Hah! Teach her to open her mouth when she doesn’t have a dick in it.” Your hand tightens around your sword hilt as you stop walking for a moment. “I’m not getting involved. They don’t deserve my help. None of them ever did…” you mutter and take another step. “Shit! This bitch is tight! She must be a virgin!” “So must be her boyfriend’s ass!” You do a complete pivot. “(Sigh) Damn it…” You rush towards the sounds of the group and after passing through some tall swamp plants; you find two of the eternals on top of the bodies of their victims. The third one is standing around watching the pair of them, laughing. He stops laughing when he catches the sight of your blade shining in the moonlight. “Oh shi…” he utters and you split his head with your sword. The eternal on top of the girl manages to stop what he’s doing long enough to look up, which allows her to give him enough of a shove and crawl away backwards from him. The other eternal on top of the young man doesn’t even bother getting off his victim, instead he makes idle threats. “Come closer and I’ll break this boy’s fucking neck!” he shouts and pulls the unconscious young man’s head into his arms preparing to twist. “He’s better off dead anyway at this point.” You say. You hear a bone crack followed by the sound of your sword cleaving the neck of the eternal. He attempts to grab at you while making horrible gurgling noises, but he only manages to falls face first into the muddy ground. The third eternal at this point has pulled up his pants and drawn his weapon, but given that he hasn’t attacked you immediately like he should have, you know that means he’s scared. They haven’t been challenged in so long, they’ve forgotten what its like. You forgot too. You forgot how thrilling combat was. All those old feelings are starting to come back. You’re enjoying this. “Give me a fight.” You say. The eternal attempts to oblige your request, but does a poor job at it. A couple of sword parries and dodges later and you’ve already opened up a wound in his chest and hacked a deep cut in his leg. He drops his sword and collapses on his ass in the mud. “Please! Stop! Look, you can have the girl okay? Do whatever you want with her!” “How the hell did you idiots ever take over anything? You’re not eternals. You’re fucking pathetic.” “And what are hell are you?” “I’m a shadow of the past and right now the past is catching up with you.” A little dramatic, but you’re having too much fun. Your line is lost on the eternal anyway who continues to plea like the girl did when he was raping her. You show the same amount of mercy and smack him across the face with your hilt before shoving your sword into his crotch. His voice goes into a high scream and then silent when you finish him off with a couple stomps to his head cracking his skull. Another couple stomps and his body stops breathing. You look around the area and see the young girl still nearby. In this moonlight you can see she’s huddled with her knees up to her body and her arms wrapped around them. She’s also completely naked with bruises on one side of her face and partially covered in mud and dirt. She can’t be any older than twenty; her dead boyfriend was probably around the same age. She rocks back and forth sobbing. Even when the physical damage heals, this is event is still going to be a scar in her mind for as long as she lives. You have no reassuring words for her, only advice. “Go home girl and grow stronger from this experience.” You say and leave her to her misery. You eventually arrive back at the sanctuary and excitedly tell Talia about what happened tonight. “…yeah, it was something to see. I sort of wondered if I was going to be rusty, but it all came back pretty naturally. Didn’t even use any magic. Heh. I…I think I’ll be really busy soon. So if I forget to talk to you or anything, its not because I don’t love you. I’ll just have my mind on other things okay? Okay. I’m glad you understand.” Over the next few days you pick off a few more eternals that you catch unawares in the swamps. Doesn’t take Brutus long to start realizing that someone is standing up to him, though from conversations you’ve eve’s dropped on, he isn’t entirely sure who it is yet and even thinks it might be the pre-cursor to an invasion. He’ll wish that was the case by the time you’re through. The peasants though are still being oppressed as usual. Perhaps even worse than they already were, since the eternals are taking their frustrations out on them, you can’t understand why they aren’t at least being encouraged by the situation and trying to fight back. You briefly wonder if you should dispense with your secretive solitary operations and try to get a “rebellion” going again, but you quickly dismiss such ideas. Maybe you’re indirectly helping the people, but you’re mainly just doing this for your own personal reasons. You’re not going to do is try to enlist aid again. Those days are long gone you’re not putting up with the headache of them anymore. Someone else can do it if they feel so inclined. You’re working fine on your own. You’ve done it many times in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Besides if you were successful in starting up a rebellion, then you’d eliminate your targets too quickly. As it stands right now, you’re enjoying taking your time. If you wanted to kill them all as fast as possible, you could easily do it. Over the course of a few months you continue your activities. Brutus starts sending patrols in large groups. He also destroys one of the smaller villages claiming that they know who has been attacking them if not involved in the attacks directly. If something like that doesn’t motivate the people nothing will. As it turns out, it has motivated at least one and when you’re spying an eternal patrol camp you aren’t surprised to see a familiar smaller figure hiding nearby. She thinks that nobody sees her, and so far she’s correct as far as the eternals are concerned, but you see her as clear as day. She hasn’t seen you of course due to your cloak. Looks like she took your advice, but she has no idea what she’s doing. Her desire for vengeance is going to get her killed, though maybe she feels like she has no reason to live at this point. In any event, she’s going to get in the way of your own plans, if you don’t do something. > You launch your attack now Even as quiet as you are, if you head over to her location, you might miss your best opportunity to attack even if you were waiting for a slightly better opening. Still no point in taking chances, you speed yourself up just give yourself that extra edge. As your blade sinks into the back of one of the eternals you materialize before the rest of their eyes and they look as if they see a ghost. Their surprise doesn’t last long, but it’s enough for you to chop down another one before they can put up a decent defense. “Behind you!” you hear a voice shout and you instinctively duck down and spin around to shoot a bolt at whatever might be behind you. You catch an attacker in the leg with it, but from what you can see a bunch more eternals have arrived to help their buddies. This is why you wanted to wait a moment longer before attacking. One of the eternals in charge shouts at one of his men to go catch the girl that just shouted a warning to you. At this point running might not be a bad option for yourself. If you had your back against something, you might be better able to fight them, but being surrounded and outnumbered like this isn’t the best situation. You make a break for it, but the eternals are wise enough to not all chase you directly, some instead run along either side of you hoping to head you off. It doesn’t help that a few are carrying spears and are fairly proficient at throwing them. You cloak yourself and climb up a tree, which helps lose them. They continue to search the area where they last saw you. Eventually they give up and argue with each other about losing you. You wait about an hour in the tree before you decide its safe to come down. You head back to the sanctuary cursing your unpreparedness. That speed spell also took it out of you. You feel more drained than you have in a long time; it’s almost like the old days when you were complete crap at casting magic. You’re guessing your long detachment from Dendrin has made your shadow magic even weaker. At least you can still cloak without too many problems it seems. Eventually you get back home only to see a visitor waiting for you. It’s the girl and she’s sitting on a pile of rubble near your secret entrance. Now that you can see her in a better light, she’s much different looking from the wailing waif you last saw. She stinks of the swamp like she’s been living in it for days. Her face is healed up with a few minor scars, but her eyes display a stare that could be matched by some battle weary warriors. You’re actually a little surprised to see her since it implies that she knew where you lived, meaning she’s sneakier than you thought. “Nobody followed me. I lost my pursuer.” “Did you kill him?” “No.” “Then how the hell do you know you really lost him? Maybe he let you get away, just to follow you at his leisure. What the hell were you doing out there, you know damn well you’re no match for those guys.” “Neither are you it seems.” “I would’ve been had I waited a little longer to gather all the information instead of jumping into battle like an idiot.” “So why’d you jump in like an idiot?” “Because I saw you and you were already a factor I didn’t need to deal with if you decided to jump in like an idiot. So I did it instead, hoping that was all of them. Apparently not. Still, got a few of them I guess. There’s always tomorrow. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going inside and I don’t need you knowing exactly where the entrance is even if you already knew where I lived.” The girl doesn’t move. “So basically what you’re saying is you risked your life to prevent me from getting hurt.” “No, I told you why I did it. Don’t read into something that isn’t there, now I suggest you do what I told you to do last time and go home.” “I can’t considering they destroyed my village not long ago. Completely.” You exhale deeply since you heard about that, but of course you had no idea she was from there. “So that was your village? Was it random, or did they know you were there for the…first attack?” “I think they knew. They didn’t know exactly what had happened or who was there, but they guessed someone in the village knew something. Some in the village knew what I told them, like my family, Aaron’s family, and close neighbors, but nobody gave me up. I sort of wished they did, they’d all be alive right now.” “If you felt that way, why not turn yourself in?” “Because I was scared? Because I didn’t want to die? Because I’d somehow beaten the odds and endured something I shouldn’t have?” “Because you wanted to survive.” You say. “Yes, because I wanted to survive. Just like I wanted to survive when they started lining up everyone to more efficiently butcher them. I managed to run. I left my mother, my father, my little brother, my friends. I left them ALL behind. I didn’t try to save them Maybe I could’ve I don’t think so, but I didn’t even try. All I wanted to do is survive. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since, living in the swamp attempting to survive and plot revenge.” “Hmm, well you’ve got the survival bit down at least. So were you the only survivor from your village?” “I dunno, I think some others ran. Don’t know what happened to them though. So when are we going to attack again?” “I’M going to get some rest and I’ll attack again when I feel like it. YOU I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I suggest you go find some place to hide where those bastards can’t find you. Now leave. I’m not going to ask nicely again.” The girl hops down from her sitting spot. “No, I’m not going anywhere. YOU saved me. Twice. Which means right now you’re the closest thing I have to a friend and friends help each other out. Besides, I did warn you about that guy going to attack you. Surely that warrants me at least some place to stay. I won’t get in the way. I know how to take care of myself. I know I can do a lot more than I used to…” “Look this isn’t some shelter for lost girls! This is my damn home! I don’t owe you shit! Now get the fuck outta here!” you yell and stand directly in front of her, but she’s unmoved. “You’re going to have to fucking kill me then!” she shouts back in your face. At this point you’re more worried about your voices attracting attention. You feel like knocking her out, but that would only be a temporary solution and despite being a fairly ruthless killer, you’re not going to oblige her alternative. You push her out of the way and open up your entrance. She’s probably a little amazed that she was so close to it and didn’t realize it. “Well? Don’t just stand there with a dumb look on your face; get inside before we attract the attention of something other than Sul Monkeys.” You say and motion her inside. “What’s your name anyway?” “Lena.” Dendrin’s going to have a field day with this and you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself. > You time passes... Year 46 “Think the girl will survive your big attack plan?” Dendrin asks. “If she does, she does. If she doesn’t, well that’s the way it goes.” You reply. “You don’t mean that. You’re just trying to play tough. I know better.” “Well if you know better why do you insist on asking stupid questions?” “Tradition?” “Hah…okay I’ll admit that one was a little amusing.” “Glad to see you’re in a better mood nowadays, but I imagine having someone to converse back and forth with on a regular basis might be helping. I told you, that you couldn’t go on with your life as it was and I was right! And you say I don’t look out for you.” “Yeah, that must be why you’ve seen fit to deprive me of nearly all my magic abilities.” “You’re not a believer. I can’t give to someone who has no faith. Sorry, but I don’t make the rules. Besides, you were never a magic lover anyway.” “Perhaps not, but I found it useful in certain situations. Doesn’t matter, I’ve been making due…I suppose it has made me adapt, and kept me from relying on a crutch.” “Well if that’s your way of saying thanks, I guess I’ll take it. Good luck tomorrow.” You wake up. Today is the day, after months of carrying out a personal guerrilla war on Brutus’ gang (you refuse to acknowledge such rabble as any sort of “army”) you’ve managed to whittle it down to a manageable size to the point where he’s had Sinkhole barricaded. You’re not sure why considering its not going to stop you, but if the fool actually thinks building a shaky wooden wall and locking himself in his house is actually going to save him, so be it. While you get ready, Lena’s already set to go. You think she’s been anxious for this day more than you have. Lena has been helping you and for her part she’s done an adequate job. She’s taken to training well, though that’s probably because she doesn’t have much left anymore. You’ve had to pull her fat out of the fire on more than one occasion, but you expected you would when you first agreed to have her help you. And at least she’s helping you. That’s more than can be said about anyone else! Despite all the damage you’ve done to their oppressors, your actions have not inspired others to take up arms against what’s left of the eternals. You can’t say you’re surprised though. Lena on more than one occasion has travelled to a few of the swamp villages in the hopes of getting help, but no luck. You told her it was a waste of time, but she had to learn on her own your suppose. You probably never show it and you’d certainly never admit it, but you do respect Lena and don’t mind her company. Though there’s still another whose company you prefer. (And that that isn’t Dendrin) “I’m going now. I’ll be back later to tell you all about it.” You tell Talia before you leave. You and Lena make your way to Sinkhole. Along the way Lena makes her usual snappy comments. It’s one of her less endearing qualities. “So you couldn’t get Talia to help us for this one?” “Well maybe if I’d been a believer in Dendrin, he would’ve seen fit to raise her from the dead or something, but seeing as he’s as much of an asshole as you’re being right now, no I couldn’t get Talia’s help. Maybe next time.” You reply. “I’m sorry, I really shouldn’t have said that, I…” “Forget it. You’re nervous just like you are whenever we go into battle and you’re deflecting as usual. Just save those witty remarks for combat. Seems to work on those wannabe eternals who get flustered over the smallest taunts.” Sinkhole’s rickety wall doesn’t quite extend all the way around the town, but its enough that there’s no way to easily go around it without either wading through the deep marsh water or just barging through the front gate. If you still had your magic, you’d just scale the wall with the spider walk spell, but you don’t have that luxury anymore. Chopping or kicking through the wall would probably take time and attract attention. You’d like to at least catch the enemy a little off guard. So you decide to do the classic “pincer maneuver.” “Lena, you sneak around through the marsh where there is no wall and enter Sinkhole that way.” “Wait, where are you going to be?” “I’m going through the main gate of course. They’ll be focusing on me so much that you’ll probably be able to take down several of Brutus’ men before some of them converge on your position.” “Are you going to be all right?” “We’ve worked together for months now and you have to ask me that? Don’t worry about me, I’ve faced worse. A lot worse. Now Brutus will probably be hold up in that big house of his. Don’t try to enter it until I get there since the place will probably be trapped.” “What if I see him outside?” “I doubt it since the coward seems determined to throw everyone under his command at us while he hides. In the off chance you do see him, he’ll probably be trying to escape so by all means try to stop him in that case. Now let’s get going.” As you and Lena part company you know there’s a fifty fifty chance Lena is going to disregard everything you’ve said and try to enter Brutus’ home and try to kill him herself. You’re going have to be quick if you want to beat her there. Predictably several eternals guard the front gate and when you appear before them, the alarm is raised and they attack. If they’re lucky, they might actually last more than a five minutes against you… Four minutes later you’ve already fought your way through the main gate. You see several more eternals standing in the road with weapons drawn, but they look unsure to as whether or not to attack you or run away. Surprisingly one speaks up, he’s a short man with brown hair wearing leather armor. He’s very average looking and not at all anything like what the second generation eternals are supposed to be which are great hulking warrior types. “Hold for a moment! I would speak with you. There is no need for animosity.” “What, you trying to stall for time and set up an amubush? Not likely, let’s get on with this!” you reply and advance. He and the two other eternals standing behind him all back away while still attempting to hold a defensive position. “Wait just a moment, damn it! There are not enough of us left to set up a fucking ambush! We’re all that’s left, besides Brutus barricaded in his house. I mean we already know you could kill us all within seconds, is it really going to hurt to hear what I have to say?” “Alright, make it quick.” “Okay, we’re giving up. I mean just let us get the hell out of here and we’ll never enter this damn swamp ever again. This ain’t worth it and I certainly ain’t dying for Brutus.” “What makes you think I’d let you go?” “Look I know who you are. You’re not just some crazy ass old shadow; you’re also an eternal. A first gen. Oh yes, I heard stories about you in the old days and unlike most of my kind, I took them seriously. I also remember because I was assigned here when you were still causing trouble for the old Empire. Everyone thought you died when we collapsed the temple on you, but when our boys started getting picked off over the last year, I had a feeling who it might be. I tried to warn Brutus that we should just leave, but the fool wouldn’t listen. “Hmm, too bad you weren’t smart enough to leave yourself.” “Well, Brutus may be a fool, but he’s still my friend.” “Friends? Didn’t know you second gens, had the concept of it…but he’s so much of a friend, that you’re ready to abandon him now?” “I don’t like it, but if I have to chose between loyalty to my friend and survival, survival is going to win.” “While this is all very interesting, you still haven’t answered my question, why the hell should I let you go?” “Because I talked Brutus out of destroying this entire town and the rest of the little villages in this swamp? Did you know when you started murdering us, his first order was to wage systematic genocide on the people of Delerg? Granted he still wiped out a few villages completely, but I managed to save lives because even I thought that was going too far. Other did too, I was just the only one brave enough to tell him in a way that showed it wouldn’t be wise to do it.” “So that makes you a good guy?” “No, I didn’t say it makes me a good guy, I’m just saying that my deeds at least should be taken into consideration. I mean…fuck…you’ve killed a lot of us and you’ll likely kill Brutus as well. Isn’t that enough? We’re no threat to you and we’re not going to come back to launch some sort of sneak attack. You can have free reign of this place, I’d rather just put this shithole far behind me. You’ll never see us again.” This guy might not be playing for time to have more of his buddies ambush you, but he’s still taken up more than enough and there’s no indication of Lena showing up who probably would’ve attacked them by now. Since she hasn’t that can only mean she’s decided to take on Brutus himself, which means she’s probably going to get herself killed if you don’t reach the house soon. > You take care of the eternals first If Lena’s gone ahead without heeding your warnings, she’s going to have to fend for herself, because there’s no way you’re taking chances with just the word of this asshole. “If you paid attention to history and old stories like you say you do, then you’d also know that I was never one to show mercy to my enemies. You’re a bigger fool than your friend Brutus if you’re thinking I’m going to let you go for any reason.” “I had to try.” The eternal says with a resigned sigh. He turns and nods to his cohorts and they scatter in different directions while he advances on you. Great, now you’ll have to chase them all down. You dispatch the big talker fairly quickly, you manage to catch another one with your armbow before he gets too far and you finally chase down the third one just as he reaches the front gate. You notice several citizens starting to creep out from their homes and other hiding places. Still helpful as ever. You head quickly to the “mansion” sized home near the marshlands. You approach cautiously and that’s when you see Lena waiting nearby it. Apparently she decided to listen after all. “What took you so long? I’d like to get rid of this bastard and change out of these wet clothes.” “Glad to see you listened for once, but didn’t you think I’d need help?” “You told me, not to worry about you and to just wait for you.” “Hmm, I suppose I did. Nevermind, did you have any problems?” “Other than having to pull leeches off my body? No. There were a couple eternals near the area where I came through, but I killed them while they were still trying to make up their minds on whether or not to leave their posts to investigate the noise you were stirring up at the front gate. Besides that, I investigated the surrounding area outside this house and I haven’t seen any evidence that Brutus has tried to leave it.” “Let’s just hope he doesn’t have some sort of underground tunnel built. Let’s go.” After breaking down the door, you cautiously move throughout the house. While certainly bigger than the rest of homes in Sinkhole, it probably doesn’t look much better from the inside. The place is a wreck, you’d think as a leader he’d want to keep his own home in better condition, but then given that you live in an underground hole of a collapsed temple which was already in ruins when you arrived there, maybe you aren’t exactly in a position to make judgments as far as living arrangements are concerned. “No traps so far.” Lena whispers. “Considering there’s so much junk and garbage in this place, they could be well hidden. Keep a look out anyway, and stay quiet! No need to give our position away.” “I’m sure he already knows we’re…” Before Lena can complete her statement, Brutus appears from around a corner and nearly takes her head off with an axe. Fortunately for her, you block the attack. At last you get a close look at the great leader himself, and once again you’re unimpressed by what you see. Makes this whole endeavor hardly even worth it at this point. “I’ll make you wish you hadn’t come back from the dead shadow!” Brutus exclaims right before you shut him up with a head-butt and then slicing his belly open. Falling to the floor and desperately attempting to hold in his entrails he starts to scoot back from you. “You new eternals always talk too much.” You say. “Lena…if you’d like to do the honors.” Lena wastes no time in taking up your offer. She points her spear at Brutus, who makes a plea for his life through bribery. It doesn’t work and Lena skewers him in the chest with the spear. Then she does it again… and again… and again… and… “Sonofabitch! You killed my family! Bastard! Die! Die! Fuck you…” Lena sobs the whole time. “Lena he’s dead. You can stop now. He can’t order anyone else anymore. None of them can do anything anymore, we killed them all.” You say and grab the spear from her. She looks at you with tears streaming down from her eyes and for the first time since that first night you saw her assaulted she looks vulnerable again. The hardened exterior has allowed itself to collapse. She hugs tightly you and continues to sob. You aren’t exactly sure how to react except to reciprocate for a moment, but you’re uncomfortable so you gently push her away when you feel enough time has passed. She’s still upset, but begins to compose herself. “(sniff) So what’s next?” she asks. “What do you mean?” “What’s next? I mean we killed all of the eternals here in Delerg. Aren’t we going to go to Quala and continue? Where should we strike first?” You figured something like this would happen. Lena isn’t going to stop here. Already her desire for more vengeance is taking over. And while you certainly understand it and even agree with it to an extent, you just aren’t sure if this is truly the path for her. She has talent to be sure, but she’s attempting to take on a task that will far exceed her abilities even with you at her side. That’s the other problem. You fear that you might not even be on your best performance since you’ll always be worrying about her in the back of your mind. Still part of you would like to continue your partnership with her wherever that may lead. You certainly aren’t moping around like you used to and Lena’s enthusiasm bring a bit of a joy to your life. > You join Lena Lena will probably go whether you do or not so you might as well go with her to keep her safer. You can also continue training her which can only help in her survival. You also enjoy Lena’s company too and your spirits haven’t been remotely this high for a long time. “Slow down girl, we’ll get to them eventually. They aren’t going anywhere. Right now we should take a break before planning our next attack.” Lena nods and says that maybe you’re right and that you should take a break. The pair of you takes your leave of Sinkhole and head back home as the peasants start to slowly fill the streets again. When you get back home, Lena is definitely in a much better mood. “It felt so good killing all those bastards! I think I’m only just realizing just exactly how good though!” she says followed by a triumphant yell of victory. “Well you should be proud of what you managed to accomplish. It was a great victory and I’m proud of you too.” Lena smiles at your remark and hugs you again. “Oh I would’ve never done it without your help! You’ve been so good and helpful to me! We’ll go on to more victories against those eternal bastards, I just know it!” Lena’s body against yours so good to you right now. You feel closer to her than ever and not just in a physical way. During your embrace both of your eyes meet and it doesn’t take long before your lips follow along with other parts of your body. Later while she’s asleep beside you, you walk into the garden feeling somewhat guilty for your actions. “I…uh…I’m home. I meant to tell you sooner, but I…(sigh)…” you begin to say to Talia’s grave. It takes you a while to even muster up courage to speak again. “Talia, I’m sorry…but as much as I tried to fight them I have feelings for Lena. She’s a brave girl. She has that same fighting spirit. You know, like you did…” You take the silence that follows as accusatory. “No! I’m not replacing you! I just…NO! She won’t die like you did! I’ll make sure she’s safe! That’s why I’m going to look out and be with her! Look I can’t morn you forever! Why won’t you just let me move on? I have to move on right?! Wouldn’t you want me to do that?!” The further silence just makes you run out of the garden and into one of the other rooms. You begin to curse and sob at your situation. You know it’s completely irrational, but you don’t understand why you can’t move on. After you compose yourself, you head back to your room where Lena is still happily sleeping. Fortunately despite your rather loud outbursts, she hasn’t stirred at all. When you get back into bed she instinctively cuddles next to you. “Where’d you go?” she asks sleepily. “Uh…just thought I heard a weird noise. It was nothing.” You remark. “Oh.” She replies and drifts back to sleep. You on the other hand are practically up for the rest of the night trying to put a ghost to rest once and for all. You manage to succeed, but you still don’t feel good about it. Hopefully in time, you’ll be able to live with it, but in order to do that, you’re going to have to leave this place and not come back. There are just too many memories here. Year 50 Lena wanted to take the fight to the eternals, and she’s really been sticking to that promise. In the beginning you were mainly targeting eternal soldiers and such. This naturally drew the ire of whatever local warlord that had established dominance there. This wasn’t a problem since you mostly just moved on to another location in Quala. The problem was you weren’t just fighting eternals now, you were fighting the multitudes of human followers said eternal warlords have under their command. Given that you were only two people, you were more than a little outnumbered. Also while Lena may be better skilled than she was, but she still does not have the capability to assassinate a battle hardened eternal warlord commanding said armies. You probably might have had better luck, if you were younger and still had access to your shadow magic, as it stands though, you’ve lost that ability completely now. It would seem that Dendrin’s link to you has practically been broken at this point, though he has still spoken to you from time to time. Mostly to tell you that your actions are a pathetic attempt to live in the past and you’re just following around Lena like a glorified bodyguard. This has lead to the usual predictable arguments. Dendrin must’ve gotten tired of arguing with you though since he hasn’t been speaking with you in quite some time, which suits you just fine. Eventually, Lena once again attempted to stir up the local populations in the hopes of getting some more help, she was a little more successful this time, but nobody has ever lasted very long. They either they quit for various reasons after the first few missions, or they get themselves killed. The ones that do stick around are mostly criminal types who enjoy the violence along with the looting on the side. All of this pretty much means Lena’s the leader of a group of bandits masquerading around as “freedom fighters.” You and Lena are now wanted in several territories in Quala. Even a few eternal rulers have declared temporary truce just so they can send joint forces against you. Svelk mercs have also been hired to hunt you down. While you’ve been generally supportive of Lena’s misguided quest for vengeance, you haven’t always thought its necessarily the wisest thing to pursue. Your last raid on a small encampment got half of the gang killed and Lena wounded to the point where she’s going to be in no condition to go on another until she heals. Right now you’re siting beside her bandaged body while she rests. You wonder if you shouldn’t at least try to talk a little sense into her. Its getting to the point where you believe your luck is going to run out eventually and while you’re enjoying fighting side by side with her, part of you would like to pull back a bit. If only to ensure your survival so you can actually enjoy her company a lot longer. Just as you’ve completed pondering this situation, Lena starts stirring from her sleep. “Did we win?” she asks. “Yes, but it was at a high cost. I told you we should’ve prepared longer. And you shouldn’t have charged into battle like that.” “Doesn’t matter, as long as we got that bastard.” “You do realize that the sergeant was the only eternal in the platoon right? The rest were just regular humans.” “So? If they take orders from an eternal and do their bidding, they’re just as bad. You know that better than anyone.” There it is again. Her blind need for vengeance as usual. You’re beginning to think she cares more about that, than she does you. > You talk to Lena about quitting “Lena, you’ve been getting more reckless lately, and I’m starting to get concerned.” “What? These wounds? I’ll heal. And I don’t even need to wait that long anyway, I could be up and around before then.” “If you didn’t pick a fight every chance you get, and actually took time to step back for a moment, you’d probably suffer less cuts and bruises. And while I know the group we hang around with are a bunch of low life scum for the most part, we still can’t afford to lose them like we’ve been doing. Especially when the risk is starting to severely outweigh the potential rewards.” “Well, maybe its time we get some new people to help. Try to find some disgruntled peasant or something again.” You shake your head. “Lena, you’re not hearing me. I’m saying maybe its time to quit while you’re ahead. I mean what are we even doing anymore?” “We’re fighting against injustice and tyranny! I thought that’s what you used to do!” “Yeah, that’s what I USED to do. What I’m doing now I’m not so sure. Lena, you’re letting your desire for vengeance overwhelm you. You’re not thinking straight. You shoot down all my ideas when it comes to sound strategies. I mean lately you’ve just been throwing cautious right out the window.” “And you always played it cautious, when fighting the Empire?” “Y’know what? YES. Yes I did whenever it was possible, y’know why? Because they fucking outnumbered us in everyway that’s why! And despite the fact that I taught you how to fight, you are NOT me. You will NEVER be me. You passion for vengeance brought on by your unfortunate experiences, will never replace the rush I get when I get into a battle which always gives me an edge. And let me tell you something else. As good as I am, I can’t always be everywhere so that I can save you just in time.” “Well who the hell is asking you to save me?!” Lena says with a displeased look on her face. “Someone needs to save you, because you sure as hell haven’t been of clear mind to maintain your self-preservation anymore! Lena look, I know you’d like nothing more than to personally kill every eternal you could get your hands on, but it’s not going to happen. Even if you could, it won’t change what has already happened.” You hold on to Lena’s hand. “Lena, I’m asking you for me, stop this now, before it completely consumes you. Are your feelings for vengeance stronger than your feelings for me?” You look into Lena’s eyes and her previous expression of displeasure turns to one of avoidance. She tries to speak, but stops. Sensing that she needs to respond, she gives you an answer. “You, you know I love you.” “Yes, I’m sure you do, but you will not avoid my question so easily.” “I’m not…I…I…just…” At this point, you close your eyes and sigh deeply. “It’s okay Lena. It’s okay. This was probably my own damn fault anyway. Good luck.” You say and kiss her on the head before attempting to leave. “Wait! Where are you going?!” “I can’t stay with you Lena. You’re on a path to self-destruction that I can’t follow. I did that already with Talia and her dedication to Dendrin. Now that I think about it, this whole thing has been me trying to relive my own past by being with you. Trying to rekindle the same spark I had with Talia. I can’t even lie to myself about it anymore. Anyway I’m rambling now, so I bid you goodbye and I hope you eventually see that you don’t need to follow the path you’re on.” You exit the tent with the Lena still calling for you, but you just keep walking. You notice you aren’t the only one leaving. You see some of the thugs packing up their stuff and heading off to greener pastures no doubt. Maybe with less people to help, Lena will be less likely to mount foolish attacks. At least you hope she has that much sense. As for you, you realize that if you’re going to live in the past, you’re going to do it the right way. You travel back to Delerg. Back to the temple. Back home. The place is the same, its like you never left. You enter the garden… “I’m home Talia. I’m home and I shouldn’t have left. I see that now. I can only hope you can forgive me. Can you forgive me?” You approach Talia’s grave. “Yes. Yes of course you forgive me. Just like I forgave you. We…we were always meant to be together.” You say closing your eyes and unsheathing your blade. “I should’ve done this a long time ago.” You say and thrust your blade into yourself. You fall beside Talia’s grave as your life force drains out. Your last thoughts are peaceful ones.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Lena will probably go whether you do or not so you might as well go with her to keep her safer. You can also continue training her which can only help in her survival. You also enjoy Lena’s company too and your spirits haven’t been remotely this high for a long time. “Slow down girl, we’ll get to them eventually. They aren’t going anywhere. Right now we should take a break before planning our next attack.” Lena nods and says that maybe you’re right and that you should take a break. The pair of you takes your leave of Sinkhole and head back home as the peasants start to slowly fill the streets again. When you get back home, Lena is definitely in a much better mood. “It felt so good killing all those bastards! I think I’m only just realizing just exactly how good though!” she says followed by a triumphant yell of victory. “Well you should be proud of what you managed to accomplish. It was a great victory and I’m proud of you too.” Lena smiles at your remark and hugs you again. “Oh I would’ve never done it without your help! You’ve been so good and helpful to me! We’ll go on to more victories against those eternal bastards, I just know it!” Lena’s body against yours so good to you right now. You feel closer to her than ever and not just in a physical way. During your embrace both of your eyes meet and it doesn’t take long before your lips follow along with other parts of your body. Later while she’s asleep beside you, you walk into the garden feeling somewhat guilty for your actions. “I…uh…I’m home. I meant to tell you sooner, but I…(sigh)…” you begin to say to Talia’s grave. It takes you a while to even muster up courage to speak again. “Talia, I’m sorry…but as much as I tried to fight them I have feelings for Lena. She’s a brave girl. She has that same fighting spirit. You know, like you did…” You take the silence that follows as accusatory. “No! I’m not replacing you! I just…NO! She won’t die like you did! I’ll make sure she’s safe! That’s why I’m going to look out and be with her! Look I can’t morn you forever! Why won’t you just let me move on? I have to move on right?! Wouldn’t you want me to do that?!” The further silence just makes you run out of the garden and into one of the other rooms. You begin to curse and sob at your situation. You know it’s completely irrational, but you don’t understand why you can’t move on. After you compose yourself, you head back to your room where Lena is still happily sleeping. Fortunately despite your rather loud outbursts, she hasn’t stirred at all. When you get back into bed she instinctively cuddles next to you. “Where’d you go?” she asks sleepily. “Uh…just thought I heard a weird noise. It was nothing.” You remark. “Oh.” She replies and drifts back to sleep. You on the other hand are practically up for the rest of the night trying to put a ghost to rest once and for all. You manage to succeed, but you still don’t feel good about it. Hopefully in time, you’ll be able to live with it, but in order to do that, you’re going to have to leave this place and not come back. There are just too many memories here. Year 50 Lena wanted to take the fight to the eternals, and she’s really been sticking to that promise. In the beginning you were mainly targeting eternal soldiers and such. This naturally drew the ire of whatever local warlord that had established dominance there. This wasn’t a problem since you mostly just moved on to another location in Quala. The problem was you weren’t just fighting eternals now, you were fighting the multitudes of human followers said eternal warlords have under their command. Given that you were only two people, you were more than a little outnumbered. Also while Lena may be better skilled than she was, but she still does not have the capability to assassinate a battle hardened eternal warlord commanding said armies. You probably might have had better luck, if you were younger and still had access to your shadow magic, as it stands though, you’ve lost that ability completely now. It would seem that Dendrin’s link to you has practically been broken at this point, though he has still spoken to you from time to time. Mostly to tell you that your actions are a pathetic attempt to live in the past and you’re just following around Lena like a glorified bodyguard. This has lead to the usual predictable arguments. Dendrin must’ve gotten tired of arguing with you though since he hasn’t been speaking with you in quite some time, which suits you just fine. Eventually, Lena once again attempted to stir up the local populations in the hopes of getting some more help, she was a little more successful this time, but nobody has ever lasted very long. They either they quit for various reasons after the first few missions, or they get themselves killed. The ones that do stick around are mostly criminal types who enjoy the violence along with the looting on the side. All of this pretty much means Lena’s the leader of a group of bandits masquerading around as “freedom fighters.” You and Lena are now wanted in several territories in Quala. Even a few eternal rulers have declared temporary truce just so they can send joint forces against you. Svelk mercs have also been hired to hunt you down. While you’ve been generally supportive of Lena’s misguided quest for vengeance, you haven’t always thought its necessarily the wisest thing to pursue. Your last raid on a small encampment got half of the gang killed and Lena wounded to the point where she’s going to be in no condition to go on another until she heals. Right now you’re siting beside her bandaged body while she rests. You wonder if you shouldn’t at least try to talk a little sense into her. Its getting to the point where you believe your luck is going to run out eventually and while you’re enjoying fighting side by side with her, part of you would like to pull back a bit. If only to ensure your survival so you can actually enjoy her company a lot longer. Just as you’ve completed pondering this situation, Lena starts stirring from her sleep. “Did we win?” she asks. “Yes, but it was at a high cost. I told you we should’ve prepared longer. And you shouldn’t have charged into battle like that.” “Doesn’t matter, as long as we got that bastard.” “You do realize that the sergeant was the only eternal in the platoon right? The rest were just regular humans.” “So? If they take orders from an eternal and do their bidding, they’re just as bad. You know that better than anyone.” There it is again. Her blind need for vengeance as usual. You’re beginning to think she cares more about that, than she does you. > You continue to stand by her You’ve been a fool over one woman in the past, why not another one? At least you can identify with Lena’s obsession a bit better than Talia’s worship of Dendrin. It may be true that one day your luck will run out, but you’ve been running on borrowed time for decades. What better way to die in battle beside one you care about? Just like you should’ve years ago… “What’s wrong?” Lena asks due to your silence to her previous statement. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” You say and give her a kiss on the lips. “I’d just prefer if you listened to my ideas a little more in the future. I’m only looking out for your safety.” “I know. You’re probably right. I’d like to stay alive long enough to kill every eternal after all.” Lena says with a small chuckle and then holds on to her side when it causes a bit of pain. Lena spends the rest of the week healing up. It’s the longest amount of “downtime” you’ve had in quite a while. You’d actually enjoy it a bit more, if Dendrin didn’t visit you and continue to impart his views on your situation. “She’s going to lead you to ruin. I’m telling you Eternal.” Dendrin remarks. “Yes, yes, yes. You’ve been telling me that for years now. You should know at this point I don’t give a shit if it does. It’s better than living like I was. At least now I feel alive again. Besides you were always bitching at me for living like a hermit anyway.” “Yes, but I didn’t know you were exchange one self destructive lifestyle for another.” “Dendrin, my whole fucking life has been self-destructive, long before I even had the misfortune of meeting you. My first major choice I can remember was either to beg for my life or die when I was five. I chose to die. Pretty much tells you all you need to know about me. So how about you leave me alone once and for all and let me get back to it okay? You’ll get no more entertainment from this mortal.” “Apparently not. Very well then Eternal, go forth and die.” And that’s the last time you ever hear from Dendrin. Year 54 Here you are hold up in some abandoned cabin with svelk mercenaries shouting obscenities from outside. Lena lies on a dirty bed bleeding out and attempting to stay conscious. You’re not doing too good yourself. You knew it would end like this and you still don’t regret your decision in what is probably going to be your last moments on this world. It’s only a matter of time before the svelk just decide to burn you out. Somehow you can’t help but laugh at the fact that the first person who nearly killed you was a svelk. Everything has come full circle it seems. “Is..it…(cough) time?” Lena weakly asks. “Can you stand up?” “I don’t think so…I hurt all over and just want to sleep.” “Its okay, you’ll be able to sleep soon. We both will. Here I’ll help, just grab your dagger.” You pick up Lena in an attempt to stand her up and while she’s practically dead weight, you manage to do it. “Do…you ever regret saving me?” Lena asks. “Never.” You tell her and kiss her one more time before exiting the cabin with her. You and Lena make it five steps before the svelk open fire on you with their crossbows.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If Lena’s gone ahead without heeding your warnings, she’s going to have to fend for herself, because there’s no way you’re taking chances with just the word of this asshole. “If you paid attention to history and old stories like you say you do, then you’d also know that I was never one to show mercy to my enemies. You’re a bigger fool than your friend Brutus if you’re thinking I’m going to let you go for any reason.” “I had to try.” The eternal says with a resigned sigh. He turns and nods to his cohorts and they scatter in different directions while he advances on you. Great, now you’ll have to chase them all down. You dispatch the big talker fairly quickly, you manage to catch another one with your armbow before he gets too far and you finally chase down the third one just as he reaches the front gate. You notice several citizens starting to creep out from their homes and other hiding places. Still helpful as ever. You head quickly to the “mansion” sized home near the marshlands. You approach cautiously and that’s when you see Lena waiting nearby it. Apparently she decided to listen after all. “What took you so long? I’d like to get rid of this bastard and change out of these wet clothes.” “Glad to see you listened for once, but didn’t you think I’d need help?” “You told me, not to worry about you and to just wait for you.” “Hmm, I suppose I did. Nevermind, did you have any problems?” “Other than having to pull leeches off my body? No. There were a couple eternals near the area where I came through, but I killed them while they were still trying to make up their minds on whether or not to leave their posts to investigate the noise you were stirring up at the front gate. Besides that, I investigated the surrounding area outside this house and I haven’t seen any evidence that Brutus has tried to leave it.” “Let’s just hope he doesn’t have some sort of underground tunnel built. Let’s go.” After breaking down the door, you cautiously move throughout the house. While certainly bigger than the rest of homes in Sinkhole, it probably doesn’t look much better from the inside. The place is a wreck, you’d think as a leader he’d want to keep his own home in better condition, but then given that you live in an underground hole of a collapsed temple which was already in ruins when you arrived there, maybe you aren’t exactly in a position to make judgments as far as living arrangements are concerned. “No traps so far.” Lena whispers. “Considering there’s so much junk and garbage in this place, they could be well hidden. Keep a look out anyway, and stay quiet! No need to give our position away.” “I’m sure he already knows we’re…” Before Lena can complete her statement, Brutus appears from around a corner and nearly takes her head off with an axe. Fortunately for her, you block the attack. At last you get a close look at the great leader himself, and once again you’re unimpressed by what you see. Makes this whole endeavor hardly even worth it at this point. “I’ll make you wish you hadn’t come back from the dead shadow!” Brutus exclaims right before you shut him up with a head-butt and then slicing his belly open. Falling to the floor and desperately attempting to hold in his entrails he starts to scoot back from you. “You new eternals always talk too much.” You say. “Lena…if you’d like to do the honors.” Lena wastes no time in taking up your offer. She points her spear at Brutus, who makes a plea for his life through bribery. It doesn’t work and Lena skewers him in the chest with the spear. Then she does it again… and again… and again… and… “Sonofabitch! You killed my family! Bastard! Die! Die! Fuck you…” Lena sobs the whole time. “Lena he’s dead. You can stop now. He can’t order anyone else anymore. None of them can do anything anymore, we killed them all.” You say and grab the spear from her. She looks at you with tears streaming down from her eyes and for the first time since that first night you saw her assaulted she looks vulnerable again. The hardened exterior has allowed itself to collapse. She hugs tightly you and continues to sob. You aren’t exactly sure how to react except to reciprocate for a moment, but you’re uncomfortable so you gently push her away when you feel enough time has passed. She’s still upset, but begins to compose herself. “(sniff) So what’s next?” she asks. “What do you mean?” “What’s next? I mean we killed all of the eternals here in Delerg. Aren’t we going to go to Quala and continue? Where should we strike first?” You figured something like this would happen. Lena isn’t going to stop here. Already her desire for more vengeance is taking over. And while you certainly understand it and even agree with it to an extent, you just aren’t sure if this is truly the path for her. She has talent to be sure, but she’s attempting to take on a task that will far exceed her abilities even with you at her side. That’s the other problem. You fear that you might not even be on your best performance since you’ll always be worrying about her in the back of your mind. Still part of you would like to continue your partnership with her wherever that may lead. You certainly aren’t moping around like you used to and Lena’s enthusiasm bring a bit of a joy to your life. > You persuade against her idea This isn’t going to be easy or fun for you, but it is regrettably necessary. You’re going to not only have to convince her that she shouldn’t pursue this path, but also push her away in general. “Lena, you won, be happy with your victory. I know you’d like to kill every eternal out there, but it just isn’t feasible.” “I won? My family is still fucking dead!” “And? You think you’re the only one who’s ever lost something dear to them? Going on a vengeance crusade still isn’t going to bring them back and it’s just going to get you killed!” “What the hell else do I have to live for?!” “What do you have to live for? You’re still young for one thing, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Yes, what happened was tragic for you, but you’ve grown stronger because of it and you survived the ordeal. Now make the most of it. Live your life. Find someone to settle down with or whatever it is normal people do.” “Normal people…do you really think I can go back to a normal life? Be someone’s little housewife?” “Okay maybe not normal…look I’m just saying you going on some fool errand of trying to kill every one of those assholes claiming to be eternals is going to get you killed. Not all of them are going to be as inept as the ones that were hanging around here. The other ones? They’re constantly at war and are battle hardened. I guarantee they’ll be much tougher opponents and much more organized.” “But wouldn’t you be there to help? You could train me more and…you could start up a rebellion in Quala! Just like you did in the old days you told me about!” “Ha ha. No, those days are long over. I’ve told you that before. I’m not going anywhere and I’m not training you any more. You are not meant for this sort of life. I helped clear out this swamp and now I will probably go back to my previous life of solitude.” Lena begins to tear up again. It’s obvious she doesn’t like where this is going. “You’re kicking me out of your home aren’t you?” “(Sigh) You had to know this arrangement wasn’t going to last forever. I know you’ll find some place to be I mean I’m sure you’ll be treated very well by most people considering you just helped remove their oppressors.” “Save me your words, (sniffle) I thought we were…a team…I thought you cared…just go away. Leave me alone.” You don’t say anything else, because saying anything else is just going to make things harder and likely make things worse. So you just leave. It feels like forever getting back home, but eventually you do and head straight to the garden. “I’m back home, just like I said I would be. I even brought you something.” You say and put some blue flowers you picked on your way back home on her grave. “Oh Lena? Yeah she’s gone. I think its for the best she didn’t live here anymore y’know? Dendrin already impedes on us enough. Didn’t need her around too.” “I mean if she’d stayed she would’ve just been miserable here and eventually we would’ve ended up going to Quala like she wanted and she would’ve gotten herself killed. At least this way, she won’t do it now…well I suppose I can’t be sure of that, but I think the fact that she waited for me instead of charging into Brutus’ place by herself is a good indication. Showed me she’s always heeded my advice and not only that, she’s not as overly confidant as I thought she was. Without me around she’ll eventually abandoned her need for vengeance and settle into the normal life she was supposed to lead. She… deserves it, don’t you think?” you say with your voice quivering a bit. You begin to wipe your eyes and sniffle a bit. “No, of course I didn’t love her! What kind of opportunist would I be if I took advantage of some girl half my age that had a shitload of emotional baggage and a fragile personality? I’d be no better than those wannabe eternals that’s what. Besides, I didn’t think of her in that way, I just…look I’m tired all right? I’m going to bed.” You leave the garden and collapse on your bed. It takes awhile but eventually you start to fall asleep hoping that you don’t have to put up with any smart-ass comments from Dendrin anytime soon. He has uncharacteristically heard you for once because he leaves you alone for quite some time. You briefly consider doing what you told Lena not to do and that’s go kill eternals in the Quala region, but really that bores you already. Besides, you feel it isn’t going to be quite as much fun anymore without Lena around. It suddenly occurs to you that you should do some travelling again. You don’t have much else to do, so why not? Still, this will always be your home no matter what. You won’t leave for good. You just need a change of scenery. You decide that you’ll travel not to places you’ve already been or already know about, but to parts unknown, namely Delerg itself. Despite it being part of the Empire, much of it still remains unexplored. You decide you might as well stay relatively close to home if you have the intention of coming back. You pack up some gear and get ready to go, of course saying good-bye to Talia and telling her you’ll return eventually. Year 50 Passing the time by exploring uncharted parts of Delerg has kept you a bit busy over these past few years. It’s amazing that nobody had done it before, but the stories about the Delerg swamp being much more hostile the deeper you went were true. You travelled north for quite awhile, but eventually the swamp thinned out completely until it turned into vast bodies of water. Going further would’ve required a boat and you didn’t really have any wish to do that once you saw a glimpse of some of the things lurking in the water. Travelling east was an ordeal that you nearly didn’t survive. The swamp became more jungle like and it almost seemed as if the land itself was protecting something or otherwise it just didn’t want anyone going further east. You did battle with several beasts that you’d never seen before and probably nobody else from the “civilized” world had either. It wasn’t just beasts that were hostile, or even the plants, but also a short dark race of humans. Their small stature didn’t make them any less dangerous. Eventually you had to turn back because of the constant attacks that even you couldn’t keep defending against. You swear the trees must’ve been spawning the little bastards. Thankfully as an eternal you’re somewhat resistant to poisons, because it served you well during that time. Still if you stopped doing something just because it nearly killed you, you wouldn’t have accomplished anything in your life. So eventually you travelled south and beyond the swamp and jungle you discovered a whole new land, yet very much the same as the one you’re familiar with. Four tribes, two of them human, one elven and another one reptilian, all of them warring with each other and all of them fairly hostile towards you when confrontation was your only option with them. From what you could figure out, three of the factions were all displaced by the Empire in some way when it still existed. The reptilian tribe apparently was nearly exterminated by the shadows in the earlier days of the Empire as they once lived in the Delerg province. (Which explains why they were especially hostile towards you) You explored as much as you could and eventually departed leaving the factions to their private war. Naturally the whole time you were exploring you were periodically returning back home. Delerg itself never changed, it was the same quiet place it always had been. Every once in a while you’d attempt to trade goods in Sinkhole for the rare items you might need, people never accepted any payment you might offer and instead just handed it to you for free. Nowadays you’re considered the last shadow protector of the land and well respected. Of course you aren’t the only one. Lena is also well respected thanks to her deeds. Her assumption that she would never be able to fit into a normal life again were wrong as she did find someone to settle down. Though she was right that she would not be a simple housewife and is a hunter and trapper by trade. You know she lives in one of the smaller villages, probably much like the one she grew up in, but you’ve never spoken to her directly. You see no point in dredging up the past and you have both gone your separate ways now. You’re glad that she managed to move on, which is more than can be said for others… “Why have you been writing a lot lately? Never known you to pursue such interests.” Dendrin asks. “I dunno. Why not? Not like I’m currently wandering topside at the moment and I already read all the books here. Figured I’d write about stuff I encountered or did on my last travels.” “So you’re writing a book?” “More like a personal journal. Not like I’m going to share it with anyone.” “So why do it?” “As I said, why not? Don’t you have something better to do?” “Not really, though I thought you would be considering the impending invasion.” “Invasion?” “Yes, the invasion. I know you’ve been running all over the place lately, but haven’t you been keeping up on the local discussions, I assumed you had since I know you do visit Sinkhole on occasion. One of those eternals or several of them apparently have figured out this place has no active resistance of any kind and would be easy pickings.” “Oh that. Yes I’m aware of what’s going on and I’ve been preparing for the inevitable.” “What? Your usual training? You really think you’re going to be able to pull off what you did before by yourself? You do realize that if this place is invaded again, it won’t be occupied by the ones that were here before?” “Yes, I’m well aware and as I said, I’ll be ready.” “Are you planning on leaving?” “No, but I’m glad you’ve still got faith in my combat abilities…as I asked before, don’t you have something better to do?” “I might have to find something better to do soon if you aren’t around anymore.” Dendrin says. You wake up. You’re also left to ponder his “concern” for you. He’s right in that if there is an invasion, it’ll most likely be a proper army like when the Empire occupied Delerg. So what can you really do about it if it does happen? Leave? You’re past thinking like that. This is your home until the day you die. Fight? You probably will eventually just to break up the monotony, but you doubt if you’ll be able to keep your “secret” home a secret. Ever since you made your reappearance it’s a well known fact of where you live by most of the Delergites. Even the group of eternals you got rid of before eventually figured it out, though by that time they were too damned scared to ever launch any sort of offensive. The other problem to this is you are starting to feel your age. It’s partly why you stopped your exploring and returned home to rest. Fighting your own extended personal war by yourself for any reason is getting to be less of a viable option especially if this potential invasion force is dead set on keeping the province. And it isn’t like anyone else is going to help… Well perhaps one person might, but the situation would be vastly different and she has her own life now, though you wonder what sort of life that might be when the invasion comes. The only other option you have is to just lay low in the temple and never come out when the invasion arrives. You could easily seal up the entrance that even if it were found, it wouldn’t be easy to get in. > You live as you have You spent many years practically buried alive, you’re not about to spend your remaining life that way. Better you should just die in battle instead. Of course you only intend on doing that if there are no other options. So if this place stands any chance at all you’re going to enlist the help of the only person you know that will fight tooth and nail. You have no idea how Lena is going to react to seeing you again, but its something you’re going to have to do. You travel to the small village that lies to the south of Sinkhole where you know Lena has made her home. Its nameless, unspectacular and the people there live simple lives, but that’s usually the standard for the villages around here. After asking a few of the locals, one of them directs you to where Lena’s house is located. It doesn’t surprise you that it’s a bit isolated from the rest of the village. In any case it looks a lot better made than the rest. The muscular man outside chopping wood might have something to do with that though. He’s younger than you, though probably not more than ten years and probably a wood cutter by trade. He puts down his axe when he notices you walking up, which shows he doesn’t sense believe you mean him harm. While he’s probably a little surprised by your presence, it’s obvious he knows who you are, why not? Everyone does in this swamp. “So…the shadow finally comes to visit. I always wondered when this day would come. My name is Henry. Lena has spoken about you on several occasions.” “Nothing good I expect.” “On the contrary, she’s always spoken highly of you. If I was a more insecure man, I’d probably be jealous. However, I believe the bond I have with Lena is an unbreakable one…well save for death of course. Even love must give way for reality after all.” Shows how much he knows given that you still speak to Talia as if she were still alive. Of course you may not exactly be the beacon of sanity. “Anyway, if you’re here to see Lena, she’s out right now hunting, but should be back soon. I can’t promise that she’ll greet you warmly however.” Henry remarks and then crying is heard on the front porch of the house from a basket. He excuses himself to go see to it. You watch from a distance as you see Henry take a child from the basket and make the usual parental reassurances to calm the child. The child must only be a few months old, you didn’t know that Lena had a baby recently. You hear the name Tulla being said a few times and then Henry looks back over to you. “A handful this one sometimes. Still worth it though.” He says to you with a smile. “Worth fighting for I hope.” You reply. Henry’s smile disappears at your remark. “Of course.” “Well that would make you better than most parents in this forsaken swamp. But the willingness to fight isn’t going to carry the day you know.” “Neither is an old broken down eternal who belongs to a long dead order.” A familiar voice says. You turn around and see Lena carrying few dead Sul Monkeys and a small Croxidile. She’s changed a bit, a little older and weathered by life, but its still the girl you remember. She motions to Henry to go inside and he nods and complies. “So that’s the family huh?” you say. “I didn’t realize you had recently given birth. Congratulations I guess. I knew you’d find…” “Why are you here?” Lena asks as she sets up the Sul Monkeys for skinning. “Okay, right to the point then…there’s an invasion coming.” “Yes, I’m well aware of the rumors.” “I doubt if they’re rumors at this point.” “So? What are you suggesting then?” “I really don’t know. I mean…(Sigh) look if there is an army coming from Quala, they aren’t going to be the push overs that were here before.” “Yes, I’m aware of that too. That’s why I’ve been trying to build up a resistance. I dunno if they’ll be any good in a fight, but it’s better than nothing.” “Wait, you mean you actually got people to potentially help you? When?” “I’ve been doing it ever since you abandoned me. Making contacts, building up friendships and all that stuff. I’m surprised that you didn’t know about it, but then you have been traipsing around the swamp for the past few years. Surprised you didn’t just leave for good. I mean what is there for you here?” “Its my home too you know.” Lena snorts at your answer. “Home…you don’t have a home. You aren’t even a true shadow by your own admission. The only reason why you still live here is because you buried Talia in that wrecked temple you call home. You can’t move on.” “Perhaps, but someone else hasn’t moved on from her school girl crush either apparently. Henry’s nearly my age. He’s my height and his hair is even my color, one might call that… substitution.” “Don’t you dare criticize Henry! He’s a good man! Better than you’ll ever be!” Lena shouts, but you notice she is careful enough to throw down her skinning knife before getting in your face and poking you in the chest. Not that you would’ve taken it as a serious threat anyway. “Again perhaps, but I didn’t come here to criticize him or fight with you. Look, I’m going to be fighting the eternals regardless of your answer, but I thought it might be wise to contact someone else who I know is a fighter. Apparently though you’ve managed to find more though so perhaps you don’t need my help. Now if you don’t want or need my help, I shall take my leave, but it’s always here if you want it directly.” Lena says nothing other than picking up her knife and going back to skinning. You turn to leave and get about a few paces, before she calls back to you. “Wait. Since you’re more out of the loop than I thought, it might be good to bring you up to speed on the specifics of what is known and what is planned. If only to make sure you don’t get in the way of our own operations with your lone wolf tactics. So let me finish this first and you can come on in. We’ll have dinner before going over some of the details.” “Very well.” You respond. After your visit is over, you leave with a better grasp of what’s to come. You just aren’t optimistic about it being enough, but then fighting the odds has always been what you’ve done all your life. No point in changing precedent. > … Year 55 You always were one to defy the odds, but you knew it could only end like this. Luck certainly played a large factor in your favor at the beginning. First off the invasion rumors were still just rumors for quite a while. It gave you and Lena more time to prepare and it was definitely preparation that was needed. By the time the eternal warlord Victor sent anyone to establish dominance, most of the population had actually been motivated to help. This was mostly thanks to Lena again, as well others she recruited. Victor’s first attempt was surprisingly diplomatic, as he sent in an ambassador of sorts along with a company of his troops in Sinkhole. There was an attempt to talk the Delergites into just capitulating with assurances that no harm would come to them if they had. Ultimately these empty promises were wasted and with your help, the first battle of Delerg was a crushing defeat for Victor. There was a lot of celebrating afterwards. You knew it was just the beginning though. The first few years were a back and forth guerilla war. Victor immediately seized Sinkhole and made it his base of operations. Battles were fought throughout the swamp and jungle. Some of the villages were occupied during this time, but there was still hope. Then came the moment you knew was going to happen and that’s when Victor got tired of playing nice. Losing way more troops and spending a lot more time than he wanted to, Victor started making demands that if the Delergites didn’t surrender immediately he was going to set the whole province to the torch. He also wanted you personally to be delivered to him dead or alive. He probably assumed that since you were a shadow, you were actually the main one responsible for leading this thing. There were a couple attempts to assault your home, but you had made sure it was a death trap for anyone even entering the nearby area, let alone the ruins themselves. The other attempt was to surround the area to at least contain you, but that didn’t really work either considering you just used a different access route that you made years ago and they’ll probably never find that one since its nowhere near the ruins and you have to actually swim underwater to access it. Eventually an order was given to just try to kill you on sight when possible and that the subjugation of Delerg was the main priority. To her credit Lena managed to maintain the Delergites’ enthusiasm of resisting Victor and most continued to fight, but heart alone isn’t enough sometimes. Victor just sent in more troops and began to make good on his promises of setting the province on fire. Village after village burned. Those that weren’t killed were taken away, probably in slavery. Things got so grim that you briefly pondered the idea of praying to Dendrin for help if only to try to get your shadow magic back, but given that it didn’t save Talia, you saw no reason to bother. Dendrin even told you not to bother, as he knew you’d never be a believer. Apparently your mere lip service would no longer be sufficient at this point. Dendrin did suggest that you attempt to convert others to the shadow religion though and he’d be more than willing to grant them powers providing they went through all the normal procedures. You laughed at that idea, you’re no missionary and had no time to bother with whatever self-serving plan Dendrin was hatching. Besides, the Delergites weren’t interested in anything else except surviving the next attack by Victor, they were already committed to one “cause” and that was more than enough. And now here you are in Lena’s village, the last stand of the Delerg resistance. It doesn’t much resemble a village anymore so much as it resembles a small walled fort now. And when Victor’s forces attack again, it’ll resemble a smoldering ruin. As you look around the village through the rain you see so many wounded and many more just plain exhausted. Things weren’t even this bad for them under the Empire during its last days. They weren’t even this bad under Brutus’ gang. This is what fighting the good fight has brought them. Death for those that resist and slavery for those that gave up long ago. All of them have to be thinking or have already thought at one time: “Was it worth it?” Some probably think no. Some probably think yes. And they’d both be right. It’s definitely what you think and have thought in the past. The difference is you know that YOU can survive this. You’ll live to fight another day. Its what you’ve always done and it’ll probably what you’ll continue to do until some lucky bastard manages to kill you. Who knows? Maybe that day is sooner than you think. You really aren’t worried about yourself though; lately you’ve been slightly more concerned about someone else. And it isn’t Lena. “Hey Uncle Shadow, are the invaders coming today?” Tulla walks up and asks you seemingly oblivious to the fact that it’s raining. You have no idea where she got the idea to call you “uncle shadow”, but she’s been doing it for so long now that you don’t bother to tell her not to anymore. “Probably not in this rain. Victor’s soldiers are still going to need a catapult or battering ram to get through the gates. They aren’t going to be able to drag one of those things here in the mud at least not effectively. Not just mud either, but water as well; the rivers and marsh are overflowing because of the rain. If you look down there you can see we’ve practically got a small moat around us. No my guess is they’ll wait for the rains to stop and then a few days after so the water level drops.” You explain while fixing your hood over your head. “And then they’ll attack?” “Yes, and then they’ll probably attack.” “And will we win again?” You don’t answer; instead you motion Tulla to the overhanging roof at a nearby sleeping house. “Didn’t your mother teach you to come in out of the rain?” you say shaking off your own water soaked tunic. “I like the rain. It feels nice.” Tulla remarks. It’s funny to see how Tulla was brought up in such a warzone yet she maintains an innocent sense of appreciation for simple things like rain. “Where is your mother anyway? Shouldn’t she be looking out for you?” “Oh you know her, she’s busy a lot making plans with people to fight the bad people that attack us. It’s boring to sit there.” “Perhaps, but you still should stay near her. Its not exactly safe out here.” “But I am safe, because you’re here and you’re a great warrior! Mommy says so!” “Hmm. I’ll bet, but I’m also busy and I can’t keep an eye on you all the time.” “I’ll bet you can! Mommy says that you’re also the fastest warrior here!” “Mommy talks a lot about me to you does she?” “Yes! She says that you’re a lot more useful than daddy was.” You don’t even know how to respond to that. You always figured that even if Lena never did truly “love” Henry, you always thought she at least respected and cared for him. Henry wasn’t a bad guy; he just wasn’t cut out for fighting. It’s certainly not his fault that he died trying to defend this village. He’s only been dead a year and it really doesn’t seem right that she’s bad mouthing him to their daughter like this. Its not really right that she’s always been so distant to Tulla in general, but you’ve never understood that. Or maybe you do. Lena’s deluded herself that she’s always pursued this resistance because it’s about defending her family, other families and the homeland from tyranny, and it is to an extent. But her real reasons? She still hasn’t let go of the hate she has for eternals and she wants to kill as many as possible before she dies. (Never mind the fact that it’s mostly other humans actually making up the rank and file of Victor’s troops and Vic himself isn’t anywhere near the battlefield) In the scheme of things she never really wanted a family because as far as she was concerned her family died when she was a little girl and all that was left was the hatred that burned within. Everyone else to her is a secondary concern. You might be the exception because you managed to better focus her rage and possibly even quell the fire of it a bit. Who knows what might’ve happened had you taken Lena as some sort of youthful substitute for Talia. Who knows what might’ve happened had Victor not invaded. Would Lena still have insisted on her vendetta? You don’t know and it isn’t important because it’s the past and now is the present. She has obviously chosen a path and its not one you’re going down because you’re not responsible for her. You’ve helped as much as you could and you’re done. Still, while it probably won’t do any good, part of you feels like you should go confront Lena before you leave. > You confront Lena You’re going to try one last time with Lena. MAYBE you can talk some sense into her. “Come on.” You say and grab Tulla by her little hand to pull her along as you walk. “Where are we going?” “To see your mother.” Lena usually holds her meetings in a drab looking two-floor house near the center of the village which she’s made into her home since the village was walled up. You go there immediately and find her standing behind a table while she speaks to a bunch of other people standing in the room. It’s packed, but you make your way through the crowd. Lena notices and wonders if you’re here to tell everyone that there’s an attack coming. “What’s going on? Are those bastards coming to attack us?” Lena asks. “No, but I need to talk to you NOW.” “I’m in the middle of something, can’t it wait?” “No, this is something that needs to be addressed in private, and if you’re unwilling to do so, I’m going to start clearing this room out in a less civilized manner.” Knowing that you’ll do it, Lena tells everyone that the meeting is over and that everyone should go back to their duties. When the home clears out, you’re left with just Tulla and Lena in the room. You tell Tulla to go upstairs and find something to busy herself with. She complies though she’s not enthusiastic about it. She also isn’t a fool and knows when an argument is about to happen. “Okay everyone’s gone, now what’s so damned important?” Lena says. “Well for starters how about your own daughter? You let her wander away like this all the time, knowing damn well how dangerous it is.” “She seeks you out right? I trust that you’ll look after her.” “Yeah, but the problem with that is I’m not her damn parent and I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on other things that are of more importance remember?” “And? I just sit around all day doing nothing? What exactly do you think I do and have been doing?” “Losing a war and satisfying your desire for vengeance, but that’s not what I’m here about, I’m here to try to talk sense into you one last time…” “Oh here we go. Wisdom from the old shadow once again. Save your breath I’ve heard your fat musings about our situation time and time again. And as I’ve said before nobody is forcing you to stay. Go on back to your hole and hide with your beloved corpse. That is what you’re best at right?” “Lena, this isn’t about me, this is about YOU and your family, or what remains of it. This battle is lost, you know it and I know. Everyone probably knows it, but they’re still following you out of loyalty and desperation.” “You know damn well we can’t surrender.” “I’m not talking about that! I’m saying you need to take Tulla and just get the fuck out of here. You fought the good fight as long you could; you probably crippled Victor’s army and wasted his resources to the point where he’s probably struggling to maintain his holdings in Quala. I mean I think you’re way past even now.” “Even? Is that supposed to be a joke? Victor kills us and enslaves us all and because he’s suffering from a little manpower shortage we’re supposed be even? What kind of leader would I be if I just abandoned everyone?” “Fine then, if you really care about the people then talk them into leaving with you. Hell, I even know of an area where everyone could settle down anew. It’s not the friendliest place, but it’s the northern part of Delerg and out of reach from Victor or anyone else desiring to establish a military presence.” “Since when have you been some protector of the people?” Now you start to get exasperated. “Lena, we’ve had this discussion before, but if you insist…I was doing this YEARS before YOU were even a lust filled idea in your parents’ heads! Protector of the people…I’ve probably been doing more than YOU to protect the people of Delerg even now. At least I’m suggesting a way for them to survive, but let’s get serious for a second. You’re right, I don’t care about any of them, I only care about one in particular. Okay two, but you don’t want me to care in that way…you want me to want me to care on a whole other level but the time for has long since past if it was ever a possibility to begin with.” Lena’s expression, which is usually one of coldness nowadays, begins to crack a little. She turns her head a bit and brushes her hair in an effort to hide possible tears starting to form. “Look Lena, the first time you explained your reasons for staying to fight five years ago, you managed to convince me because you were right and despite how I knew this was going to play out, it was still a worthy cause. However, I’m right too. There is nothing to be gained by being a martyr or dying a hero, or whatever it is exactly you’re trying to do here. If you don’t care about your own life, at least think of your daughter’s life. You’ve been distant with her ever since she was born, one would think in these times you’d want to spend more time with her not less. Let alone bad mouthing her father who DID spend time with her or leaving her in the company of a complete stranger.” “I’m not leaving her with a complete stranger, I’m leaving her with you!” Lena says and begins to break down. “SHE’LL BE SAFE WITH YOU! SHE’LL BE HAPPY WITH YOU!” Lena collapses in a nearby chair with her head in her hands weeping. “She’ll…survive with you…(sob)” You suddenly realize the situation that Lena has placed you in, and you hate her for it. You shake your head in disbelief. Out of all the things that have happened in your life, this has got to be the most unforeseen to your mind. You have no words; you instead just leave Lena to her crying and walk out the front door. You stand outside the house for a moment as the rain continues to fall just trying to wrap your head around all of this. You don’t even know where to start. Did she always plan this? Was this a last minute decision? Does she just expect you to… “Hey Uncle Shadow are you and mommy done fighting?” you hear Tulla ask as she comes from around a corner. “Huh? Where’d you come from? I thought you were upstairs.” “I was, but I sneaked out while you and mommy were yelling at each other. Sneaked like you do! I wanted to play in the rain. So are you done fighting?” “Yeah…I think we’re done fighting…” you say looking back at the door. “That’s good. I didn’t like it when mommy and daddy fighted either.” She says. With her question answered, Lena’s attention has already been distracted by the rain, which she gleefully plays in by splashing a nearby puddle. She has no idea what the hell is going on and what just happened. You watch her play for a moment and then call her over. “Tulla, come here.” “Yes, uncle?” “Do you have any items that are special to you?” “Yes!” “Well go in and grab them, but ONLY the ones you think are really important. Some clothes too. We’re going on a trip and we won’t be back for a long time.” “Where are we going?” “We’re uh, going to your uncle shadow’s secret hideout. Nobody will be able to hurt us there.” “Yay! Is mommy coming too?” “No…she’s got important stuff to do here. Look, get your belongings and let’s go. I’ll be right here waiting.” Tulla goes inside and you wait. Doesn’t take long For Tulla to come back out with a small bag of her things. “I’m ready uncle.” “You say good bye to your mom?” “Yes. She was crying and sad when I first went inside, but when I told her I was leaving with you, she looked up at me and smiled a little. She told me that she loved me and to do what you say.” You nod at Tulla’s explanation of events. “Are you going in to say goodbye?” “No, your mother and I have said our goodbyes. Let’s go.” Your trip back to the temple is surprisingly uneventful. You don’t even need to avoid any patrols. You do take the long way though and go through your alternate entrance. This causes a bit of worry for Tulla since she’s never gone underwater before, but you reassure her that as long as she holds on to you, you won’t let her drown and will hold her up to catch her breath using the air pockets in the underground tunnel. Naturally she believes you can do anything so this immediately alleviates her fears. Eventually you’re home. “This place is dark and scary.” Tulla remarks looking around. “Yeah, but my home, and your home too now. You can stay in this room, it was your mother’s at one time.” “Wow there are a lot of books in that room!” “That’s the library.” “What in there?” Tulla asks and points to the cavern with the garden. “That’s…a private area. Don’t go in there without permission okay? Even if you talking or faint whispering.” “A ghost doesn’t live there does it?” “Heh, well sort of I suppose.” You smirk. “But don’t worry she’s friendly…in fact forget what I said, let’s go into that room right now.” You enter the garden with Tulla hiding somewhat behind you still nervous about the “ghost.” You point out Talia’s grave to Tulla. “There she is. She doesn’t speak or anything though. She just listens, mainly to me of course. Her name is Talia.” “Oh is she like my daddy?” Tulla asks making the connection that Talia isn’t a real ghost and just dead. “Yes, yes she is, but I still talk to her. Because I still love her.” Tulla starts to ask another question, but you are in mood to answer any more as its been a long strange day. You tell Tulla to go to her room and dry off and unpack. You then mention you’ll see her shortly. Tulla leaves you alone to be with your beloved. You sit down beside Talia’s grave and think about the strange situation you’re in. “Well Talia, it probably isn’t exactly how you ever envisioned it, but we have a child now.” > … Year 70 As the years go by, you know that day is coming soon that you won’t and shouldn’t keep Tulla sheltered from the surface too much longer. Granted you’ll still be with her when that day comes, but having been to the surface every once in a while to keep apprised of the situation, Delerg still isn’t exactly the friendliest place. Victor dumped so much into the campaign to conquer Delerg he’s been trying to get the most out of it by rebuilding Sinkhole into a proper town (Calling it Triumph). Apparently he’s also decided to make more plans to develop the area namely by chopping down the jungle to the south and to the east. This has been slow going though especially to the east which you know full well just how hostile the jungle flora and fauna get in that direction. (Oddly he hasn’t decided to expand north which is just as well since he’d probably call for the temple’s ruins to be dug up or built over, or something similar and you’d have to deal with his troops more directly.) As a result of all this redevelopment he’s not only got the pitiful remains of the enslaved Delergites working day and night, but he’s also imported many of his subjects from Quala to do work as well. A lot of these seem to be prisoners of varying types. Some are genuine criminals like murderers and thieves. Most though just couldn’t pay their taxes and it was either this or as a conscript to serve on one of the war fronts that Victor is engaged in with other Quala warlords. Amusingly you’re no longer on the “wanted list.” An eternal captain by the name of Brom that runs the military garrison in Triumph claims he killed you during the final battle for Delerg. (In fact that’s how he got his current promotion) You’re not exactly sure how he “proved” this, but you’re guessing he just threw a black cloak on some dead body, destroyed the face to the point of recognition and made everything up. Naturally he brags quite a bit about doing it. You’re not sure what’s funnier, the fact that he’s lying about it, or the fact that he managed to fool everyone into believing his lie (Including Victor, apparently). In any event, it doesn’t bother you since it makes life easier without some angry warlord trying to hunt you down. Besides you’ve got enough on your mind just looking after Tulla. “Come on, get your head out of those books, its time for your training.” You say to Tulla. “But we train all the time! Can’t I just finish this one book?” Tulla whines. “No! We have to keep to a schedule. Now let’s get to it.” Tulla puts away her book in defeat and leaves the library to head to the training room. It’s been more of an effort to get her to do her training lately. “Why do I have to train so hard? You never let me go up to the surface anyway.” Tulla says. “And you won’t be going up to the surface until I’m confident that you can take care of yourself. I know you think I’m just being mean, but trust me what I’m doing is going to ensure your survival. I won’t always be around, you know.” Tulla doesn’t reply to your remark she just picks up her wooden sword and gets into the fighting stance you’ve been teaching her. You and her spar for a few moments and fortunately despite her less than enthusiastic desire to be here, she does not slack off and proves to be absorbing everything you’ve been teaching her all these years. “Good. Glad to see you’re taking this seriously. Now let’s try something new.” You say and change up your style. You tell Tulla to pay attention. An hour later you and her are taking a break. Though it’s mainly for you. Every damn bone in your body aches and the ravages of time never let you forget that your earlier years of near perpetual combat have taken their toll. “Are you okay uncle?” Tulla asks in concern. “Yes, I’m fine. Just old war wounds acting up as usual. We’ll pick up training again in a few minutes.” While you lay prone recovering, Tulla decides to be inquisitive as usual. “Uncle, did you train as hard as this when you were my age?” Tulla asks. “Heh heh…I was trained harder than you at an even younger age.” You chuckle. “Was it the shadows who trained you so hard?” “Not at first. It was some sadistic svelk bitch that called herself Mistress. She trained me up until I was twelve, and then I was transferred over to the shadows.” “Oh. So is that when you learned magic?” “Yeah I learned it eventually. Never really liked using it though.” “I would like to use magic like a shadow! I’ve read you could turn yourself in invisible, make yourself really fast or even walk like a spider on a ceiling!” “Yeah some of it was pretty handy I guess. Haven’t been able to use any in years though. “Because Dendrin doesn’t like you anymore?” “Not exactly…but something like that…yes.” You’ve explained a little bit about Dendrin to Tulla in the past, you don’t think she fully understands all of it, but you do know that she spends a lot of time reading the old tomes about shadow history and such. Which is why she’s been getting increasingly more curious about him and the shadows in general. She probably would like to hear a more personal view of the organization. A view you don’t even want to get into anytime soon. So you try to change the subject. “Alright, we’ve rested enough, let’s get back to it.” You say getting off the floor. Just as you’re about to begin, Tulla makes a statement. “It’s a shame you and Dendrin don’t get along anymore. If you did, you could teach me shadow magic and it would help me survive better.” You say nothing and just tell her to focus on defending herself. Tulla complies, but she’s not the one that’s preoccupied, you are. The remark she’s just made is going to be the first step in a long series of questions and problems. You know she’s going to eventually ask why can’t she become a shadow. They already intrigue her the more she reads the books. What are you going to do? Tell her she can’t read anymore? Put further restrictions on her? The whole point of this is to make her independent and avoid sheltering her. You dwell on this for the rest of day and until you manage to fall asleep… Nothing happens. You fully expected Dendrin to visit and give some sort of “sagely” advice and most likely try to convince you to let Tulla become a shadow, but he doesn’t. Weeks go by while you’re still struggling with this decision and you still get no visit from Dendrin. This is one of the rare times you’d actually wish he’d show up and try to convince you just so you’d have a compass of doing the exact opposite. Of course maybe he doesn’t care. He did say he was bored of the shadows for centuries after all. In the end this isn’t up to him. This decision is on you. Tulla’s interest in the shadows is only going to increase and you’re going to have to let her find her own way or nip it in the bud now. The problem is despite all your own prejudices against Dendrin and the shadow religion in general, you’d be a complete hypocrite if you didn’t admit that the training did provide you with the means of surviving this long. The shadow magic also helped in that endeavor. Even Tulla made that connection. Tulla already shows much promise combat wise. If she could cast magic, she’d probably become very powerful indeed. > You allow Tulla to be a shadow After some further thinking you realize that its not really your decision either it’s hers. If being a shadow is what she wants to be, then you’re not going to stand in the way. The next day you approach Tulla about it and she’s noticeably happy about the situation. “So I’ll get to use magic?” she asks. “Well that’s part of it I suppose, but if you’re going to pursue this, you’re going to have to train even harder AND you’re going to have to do some of it on your own. I can tell you what I know, but I can’t cast magic anymore so you’ll have to really absorb what you learn in those spell books in the library and keep up on your prayers to Dendrin. Though I’m pretty sure as long as you’re praising him you’ll get your powers.” “What about the initiation ritual?” “The what?” “The initiation ritual. The ritual every shadow has to go through. I’ve read about it and it says it involves opening up a portal to Dendrin’s realm.” “Oh yeah, that. Well I dunno, I think that’s just a formality.” “No! I have to connect with Dendrin before I’m able to use the magic and even if I got the ritual right, I can’t open the portal unless I have magic ability to begin with!” “Okay okay…don’t worry, I’ll think of something.” Of course that “something” isn’t something that you particularly want to do, Later that night before you go to sleep, you pray to Dendrin. It isn’t exactly the most pious of prayers, but you figure you’ll at least get a visit this time. You figure right. “Well it’s been a long time since you’ve done that. I’m guessing you need something from me.” Dendrin says. “Yeah and you know what.” “No I actually don’t, why don’t you tell me, I’d be very interested in what has caused you to pursue such a desperate measure. For you of course.” “Determined to play this up for all its worth I see. (Sigh) Fine. Tulla wants to be a shadow, but she can’t be one until a portal to the shadow realm can be opened. Is there anyway you can help with that?” “Are you asking me to give you your magic powers back?” “I was actually going to ask if you’d grant powers to Tulla. She thinks that she has to go through the initiation ritual in order to gain them.” “She does. If it were as simple as worshipping me, then everyone would be doing it. So how are you going to open up the portal to my home?” “Come on you can’t help me out here?” “I’m sorry, but what do you want me to do? I have no connection with the girl and I can’t just grant her powers! Those are the rules.” “Alright so can you grant me powers so I can open up the portal then?” “And why would I want to do that?” “Because I’ve provided you with years of fucking entertainment that’s why! I mean shit, you can even take ‘em away after I open the damn thing if you want. One would think you of all people would want this anyway, it’s a new follower for you.” “You presume much Eternal.” “Yeah I suppose I do. Fine then, don’t help me. I’ll fine some way of helping myself as usual…” “Hold on, I never said I would help you, but tell me Eternal why do you want this so much? You do realize that once she enters my realm she will undergo a change that will cause her to become a proper devotee correct? In time her faith will only get stronger and your own influence on her will dwindle. I know you care for this little girl, so I’m asking you now are you prepared to make this sacrifice?” “If it will better ensure her survival, then yes.” You then think about Talia’s own devotion to Dendrin “Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time.” “Very well then Eternal, I shall grant you your magic powers temporarily so that you may help Tulla on her first steps to becoming a shadow. Who knows, perhaps you may even realize that I’ve actually been helping you all this time and come back to the fold…” “I won’t argue and claim that you haven’t given a few good pieces of advice or even genuinely helped me on occasion. But you and I both know that any help you’ve given me, is to help yourself as well as your own twisted fascination with me. I’ll always know that and it’s why I can’t ever worship you as a god.” “You do realize however, your life could’ve been a lot less painful if you had just complied and paid respect even to a superficial degree?” “I’m not sure how much more superficial I could’ve gotten. I mean I was practically walking on the unbeliever line at the best of times. After Talia died, what was even the point of that anymore? Besides, I’d say you giving me my powers back now despite my blasphemous ways is a win for me in my book.” “Ha ha, perhaps, but what of my influence over your daughter?” Its weird, even though you’ve taken care of Tulla like a daughter you’ve never called her that. Not even in your conversations with Talia. Dendrin’s choice of words you imagine is him trying to make some sort of point, but whatever it is you don’t care. “What of it? Despite everything I know about you, you’ve never been actively malicious towards me or even your own followers. Apathetic? Inattentive? Yes, but you’ve always done the bare minimum as far as help is concerned which is providing the ability to tap into the shadow realm so that your worshippers can cast spells. I don’t really see you being any more influential than that because it would actually require effort on your part. It’s why you just indoctrinate everyone during the initiation ritual. So Tulla will pray to an uncaring god of a silly religion. Whatever. As long as it helps her survive, I’m fine with your influence. The most you’ll do is take away the magic if Tulla ever overcomes the indoctrination and stops worshipping, which I don’t see happening. Not even Talia’s love for me overcame it.” There’s a brief silence followed by a low chuckle. “You’re lucky I’ve always liked you Eternal. Tell your daughter that I will be looking forward to seeing her soon.” You wake up and the first thing you do is try to cloak yourself. It takes a little effort, but it works. You then try to speed yourself up and that works as well. You decide to spare your endurance on anymore tests and head to the library. Unsurprisingly you see Tulla there reading by candlelight. “Oh, I didn’t know you were up. I was just reading up on some of the old shadow masters.” “”What you should be doing is reading up on one of those spell books rather than history. I’ll be preparing to open the portal to Dendrin’s realm after I study up on the spell first.” “You…you are? But how? Your magic…” “Its back, Dendrin has seen fit to bless me with the ability again if only to help you. He also says he’s looking foreword to seeing you.” “He is? I don’t know what to say! I mean this is an opportunity I’ve wanted for a while now.” “I know you have, so you better get yourself prepared because as I’ve already said, this will be a big commitment. When you go through that portal, you will be changed. You will think differently due to your connection to Dendrin. You may even dislike me afterwards…” “Oh that’s silly! Why would I dislike you? You’re the one who saved me from certain death and has trained me for all these years. You’re the one who is making this all possible and for that I shall always be grateful to you.” You see the sincerity in her eyes and the brightness in her smile when she says that. You can only hope that she retains that feeling. The next few days you spend reading over the initiation ritual. You remember reading about it before during your “hermit” years, never thought you’d actually ever be casting it though. Finally the day comes and you open up the portal much in the same way Master Ebon opened it up for you so long ago. It’s funny; Master Ebon actually tried to talk you out of entering the portal. Claimed you didn’t have the right mindset to be a shadow. Of course at the time, you had no idea what he was really talking about. You just saw it as an insult that you weren’t worthy enough and you just went in anyway disregarding orders just to prove you were worthy. That decision probably changed your life forever just like this will change Tulla forever, though in a different way. The shimmering portal to Dendrin’s realm fades in and out of existence and you watch Tulla approach. “Are you ready for this?” you ask her. “I am uncle.” She replies “Then enter the portal.” After a quick hug, Tulla composes herself and enters the portal. You watch and begin to wait for her return. > Year 75 “Well the liberation of Delerg seems to be going better this time around, Triumph has been seized. Let’s hope when Tulla wins this war, it’ll stay free of petty dictators once and for all.” You say to Talia. Tulla’s been succeeding in her goal nearly as soon as she put her mind to it, which wasn’t long after her shadow initiation. Tulla managed to recruit people even easier than her mother did, you guess she inherited her charisma in that way. Of course it helped that the people from Quala forced to live in Delerg weren’t very happy with Victor for a long time anyway. Not to mention all the criminal types that had been brought here to work off their sentences as well as the outright slaves. Delerg pretty much became a breeding ground of recruits. What was surprising is that Tulla managed to not only recruit them into a rebellion, but also got some interested into becoming shadows. That’s mainly where your help came in. You provided your home as the training ground along with performing the initiation ritual for said recruits. With their help you even managed to rebuild the temple a bit, though you still tend to keep to your underground sanctuary. It’s odd though, this new generation of shadows don’t seem quite as fanatical as the ones you were familiar with. They revere Dendrin of course, but they don’t regard someone like you with hostility. You remember you were shocked when Tulla first came back from the portal and you found that she treated you with the same respect that she always had despite your attitude towards Dendrin. At first you figured that maybe your previous influence over her had been so great that it over came Dendrin’s indoctrination, but its obvious now that Dendrin hasn’t been doing the old routine of indoctrinating the shadows with mindless loyalty anymore. You’d ask him about it, but he hasn’t been speaking to you lately. Besides, you’d rather not jinx a good thing. It’s enough that you’ve still got your magic to a small degree. “Just wish I could be of more help to her. Damn old body. I hate this weakness. I used to be so quick and strong.” You continue to say to Talia. You haven’t had a chance to speak with her like this in a while so you’re taking advantage of your sudden clearing of responsibility. “You ever think we could’ve actually won a sound victory against the Empire? I’ve been thinking about it, and I think we could’ve. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so proud and just never told you and Cyrus the truth about Dendrin. It might’ve kept us more united. Certainly would’ve help when I fought Kane practically all by myself. Remember that? What a battle! I was probably at my peak and I still couldn’t get the advantage over that tough bastard. I was really happy to see you when you showed up and not just because you saved my life either, though it played a big part of it at the time.” You suddenly stop reminiscing because your statement has now made you think about how you didn’t manage to save her life. After all these years, you wonder why you continue to do this to yourself and why you can’t move on. You can only guess its because what Talia once said. You’re Eternals and you had a special bond that nobody else did. There must be some truth to it, Brenda was the ruler of the Nalin Empire for decades and she never married or even took another lover after her beloved Roldan died during the Empire War. Last news you heard of her was that she committed suicide a couple years ago and her second in command Tarna took power. You guess the absence of her mate for so many years was just ultimately too much for her to bother going on. You wonder if it hadn’t been for your encounter with Lena and later your relationship with Tulla if you would’ve eventually done the same thing. Probably not in the same way, but still… It also makes you realize how many people you’ve outlived in general. If you were anyone else you probably would’ve been dead several times over already. You’re not just the last of the true Eternals, but as the second generation has been murdering each other out of existence, you might very well end up being the last one period. “Survival Talia, I always was good at it.” You say patting the earth near the grave. You suddenly hear Tulla calling for you. “Yes, Tulla I’m in here.” Tulla stands near the entrance of the cavern with a large black book in her hand. She knows when you’re speaking with Talia, she prefers not to disturb you. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were busy.” She asks. “It’s fine, I was finished anyway. What is it? The liberation of Delerg is going well I trust?” “Oh yes. Victor’s troops have been pushed back to the borders. Actually there are reports that he’s suffering strife in his territory in Quala as well.” “Not surprising. Most of those so-called eternals have little grasp on how to rule effectively. As soon as a crack forms their little dominions start folding like a house of cards. Look at Warden Matron Brenda. She ran the Nalin Empire for what, about thirty some odd years? She kept it stable and those second generation eternals never dared to attack her.” “I’m surprised to hear you praise her. Didn’t you fight against her in the old Empire war?” “Not directly, but it doesn’t matter. I can at least respect her even if she was on the other side. Who knows? Maybe if things had been different, we may have fought on the same side. Bah, I’m rambling nonsense, what was it that you needed?” “Oh, this book.” Tulla says and hands it to you. You glance through it and then close it. “Yes, what about it?” “Do you know what it is? I can’t really make any sense of the rest of it and most of it is in a language I don’t even understand.” “Oh yeah, I vaguely remember this book now. I tried reading it once during my hermit days, but I put it back pretty quickly and never looked at it again until just now. It holds a spell called the ritual of ascension.” “Ritual of ascension? Sounds pretty impressive.” “I suppose it does. It was supposedly passed down from Dendrin himself to the first Shadow Master. It wasn’t really clear what it does exactly except that it would strengthen the shadows link to Dendrin’s realm forever. I guess that means it would make the shadows more powerful. Dunno though. Seems weird that no Shadow Master ever tried to use it. Maybe it was more of a symbolic thing.” “Maybe…but maybe now is the time to try it!” “I doubt if you need this spell to win the war with Victor.” “No, but a chance to bring ourselves closer to Dendrin? Why shouldn’t we jump at such a chance?” “Eh...I think you’re asking the wrong person, Tulla.” “I know, but I’m so busy with coordinating the war effort, I just don’t have time to study this book like I would’ve been able to in the old days. I mean I suppose I could wait until after the war is won, but who knows how long that will be exactly? And there’s never a guarantee on survival.” “Don’t say that.” You remark. “You know better than anyone that life can be cut short in a blink of an eye.” “Hmm, I also know that sometime life can just go on and on and on…” you say causing Tulla to laugh. “Alright, I’ll study this book again, I’ve got the time after all. You just be careful out there.” You say. Tulla thanks you and after a couple more brief exchanges she’s on her way again, leaving you alone. “Well Talia, I said I wanted to help more, guess I better get to it.” You spend the next few days reading over the book. You thought you weren’t going to have any better luck than you did decades ago, but actually you understand it a little better now. You can even figure out some of the unfamiliar language. The problem though is you’re still not getting a good feeling about the ritual. It’s still vague on what exactly will happen, but the shadows would be linked with Dendrin’s realm not just in a spiritual sense, but also in a very real physical sense. The shadows essentially would become REAL shadows. Incorporeal and no longer susceptible to the weaknesses that most beings suffer. At least that’s what you think it means. Worshipping Dendrin is one thing, but becoming some sort of a wisp? An intangible being with real no sense of self? You can’t imagine wanting to transform yourself in such a manner regardless of the benefits. However you wouldn’t be involved, it would be Tulla and the rest of her shadows and they may be more willing to jump at the chance. True they aren’t the fanatics like the old shadows, but one never can tell. You even attempt to pray to Dendrin, just so you can ask him more about this ritual, but you have no luck. You’re on your own in this and you’re only left with a couple choices. You could just destroy the book and solve the problem that way or you can tell Tulla the truth about the spell and let her make her own decision. > You destroy the book You’re not taking any chances, this ritual doesn’t feel right to you and you’re not going to let Tulla put herself in any more danger in the name of Dendrin. You put the book to the flame. You half expected it to be invulnerable or something similar, but it burns fairly quickly and easily. You wonder if you should think up a lie to tell Tulla. Maybe tell her that you lost the book or something, but you can’t lie to her. Besides, you’re fairly certain she wouldn’t believe you anyway. You’re just going to have to deal with her getting angry with you. Unfortunately you don’t expect her to get quite as angry as she does. “You destroyed the book?! What’s wrong with you?! That was obviously a sacred book with a sacred ritual to Dendrin and the shadows! I trusted you!” Tulla yells. “I’m sorry Tulla, but that ritual didn’t feel right. Not in my heart. I couldn’t let you perform it and something bad happening to you.” “But that wasn’t your call! That was mine!” “Tulla, I know you’re a shadow and a dedicated follower of Dendrin and all that, but you really don’t know what a manipulative uncaring and unfeeling bastard he is. I know! I’ve been speaking with him for decades!” “Yes, I’ve heard all this countless times. And just because your relationship with him wasn’t positive, it doesn’t give you the right to dictate MY relationship with him!” You can’t contain your own anger at how Tulla is reacting to you just trying to look out for her. “What fucking relationship? Does he even speak to you? Does he? No! He doesn’t! You know why? Because he doesn’t give a shit about you! And the sooner you learn that fact, the better off you’ll be!” “Dendrin will speak to me when he deems it to be so. In fact maybe he’s not speaking to me because I’m still associating with you.” “Are you listening to yourself? How can you even say such nonsense?! I’M the one who even got your foot in the door to be a fucking shadow in the first place! I’M the one who’s been training you, and supporting you all these damn years! I’M the one who SAVED your life when you were a little girl! So don’t tell me that your associating with me is some sort of negative!” Tulla gets quiet and looks at you with a stare you’ve never ever seen her give to you before. “You know something uncle? You’re right. And I am grateful for everything you did for me up to this point. But I see now that our minds are not the same on this and our paths differ completely. I shall continue to respect you, but I believe our relationship will not be the same after this.” Tulla takes her leave immediately. You call out to her, but she doesn’t listen. You curse yourself for getting angry like you did, but you still believe you did the right thing. Days pass and you hear nothing from Tulla. There aren’t any of her shadows coming to the temple for training either. You begin to get concerned so you make a trip to Triumph and start asking questions. You find out that nothing has happened to Tulla, except that she’s been fighting directly on the front lines. You imagine that she’s probably working out her anger through battle. A bit reckless, but you’ve often turned to battle many times when you were angry so its one way of channeling it you suppose. Weeks pass into months and eventually into years. Victor has been driven out completely, yet you hear nothing from Tulla in all that time. You don’t hear anything from any shadow or Dendrin for that matter, not that you don’t mind his silence, but its like everyone has abandoned you completely. You learn that Triumph has been renamed New Gloom and a new shadow temple is in the process of being built there. When you attempt to find out more about Tulla, other shadows barely speak with you and only say that Tulla cannot be bothered as she has important business as Shadow Mistress. Naturally you become outraged that you’re not being allowed to see her and despite your best efforts you are only beaten by shadows for your troubles. If only you much younger and they weren’t hiding behind their shadow magic. As you drag your bloodied body out of New Gloom it is at that moment you realize that Tulla has not and will not forgive you for what you did. You feel a great sorrow that you haven’t felt since Talia died. You return home that day and go to the only one who has continued to stand by your side for decades. “Talia… I have tried to do the right thing whenever I could, but everyone I’ve ever cared about has either died or in this last case pushed me away. There is no longer a place for me in this world. I come to join you at last and put aside this life time of anguish once and for all.” You lie down beside Talia’s grave and thrust your blade into yourself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 75 “Well the liberation of Delerg seems to be going better this time around, Triumph has been seized. Let’s hope when Tulla wins this war, it’ll stay free of petty dictators once and for all.” You say to Talia. Tulla’s been succeeding in her goal nearly as soon as she put her mind to it, which wasn’t long after her shadow initiation. Tulla managed to recruit people even easier than her mother did, you guess she inherited her charisma in that way. Of course it helped that the people from Quala forced to live in Delerg weren’t very happy with Victor for a long time anyway. Not to mention all the criminal types that had been brought here to work off their sentences as well as the outright slaves. Delerg pretty much became a breeding ground of recruits. What was surprising is that Tulla managed to not only recruit them into a rebellion, but also got some interested into becoming shadows. That’s mainly where your help came in. You provided your home as the training ground along with performing the initiation ritual for said recruits. With their help you even managed to rebuild the temple a bit, though you still tend to keep to your underground sanctuary. It’s odd though, this new generation of shadows don’t seem quite as fanatical as the ones you were familiar with. They revere Dendrin of course, but they don’t regard someone like you with hostility. You remember you were shocked when Tulla first came back from the portal and you found that she treated you with the same respect that she always had despite your attitude towards Dendrin. At first you figured that maybe your previous influence over her had been so great that it over came Dendrin’s indoctrination, but its obvious now that Dendrin hasn’t been doing the old routine of indoctrinating the shadows with mindless loyalty anymore. You’d ask him about it, but he hasn’t been speaking to you lately. Besides, you’d rather not jinx a good thing. It’s enough that you’ve still got your magic to a small degree. “Just wish I could be of more help to her. Damn old body. I hate this weakness. I used to be so quick and strong.” You continue to say to Talia. You haven’t had a chance to speak with her like this in a while so you’re taking advantage of your sudden clearing of responsibility. “You ever think we could’ve actually won a sound victory against the Empire? I’ve been thinking about it, and I think we could’ve. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so proud and just never told you and Cyrus the truth about Dendrin. It might’ve kept us more united. Certainly would’ve help when I fought Kane practically all by myself. Remember that? What a battle! I was probably at my peak and I still couldn’t get the advantage over that tough bastard. I was really happy to see you when you showed up and not just because you saved my life either, though it played a big part of it at the time.” You suddenly stop reminiscing because your statement has now made you think about how you didn’t manage to save her life. After all these years, you wonder why you continue to do this to yourself and why you can’t move on. You can only guess its because what Talia once said. You’re Eternals and you had a special bond that nobody else did. There must be some truth to it, Brenda was the ruler of the Nalin Empire for decades and she never married or even took another lover after her beloved Roldan died during the Empire War. Last news you heard of her was that she committed suicide a couple years ago and her second in command Tarna took power. You guess the absence of her mate for so many years was just ultimately too much for her to bother going on. You wonder if it hadn’t been for your encounter with Lena and later your relationship with Tulla if you would’ve eventually done the same thing. Probably not in the same way, but still… It also makes you realize how many people you’ve outlived in general. If you were anyone else you probably would’ve been dead several times over already. You’re not just the last of the true Eternals, but as the second generation has been murdering each other out of existence, you might very well end up being the last one period. “Survival Talia, I always was good at it.” You say patting the earth near the grave. You suddenly hear Tulla calling for you. “Yes, Tulla I’m in here.” Tulla stands near the entrance of the cavern with a large black book in her hand. She knows when you’re speaking with Talia, she prefers not to disturb you. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize you were busy.” She asks. “It’s fine, I was finished anyway. What is it? The liberation of Delerg is going well I trust?” “Oh yes. Victor’s troops have been pushed back to the borders. Actually there are reports that he’s suffering strife in his territory in Quala as well.” “Not surprising. Most of those so-called eternals have little grasp on how to rule effectively. As soon as a crack forms their little dominions start folding like a house of cards. Look at Warden Matron Brenda. She ran the Nalin Empire for what, about thirty some odd years? She kept it stable and those second generation eternals never dared to attack her.” “I’m surprised to hear you praise her. Didn’t you fight against her in the old Empire war?” “Not directly, but it doesn’t matter. I can at least respect her even if she was on the other side. Who knows? Maybe if things had been different, we may have fought on the same side. Bah, I’m rambling nonsense, what was it that you needed?” “Oh, this book.” Tulla says and hands it to you. You glance through it and then close it. “Yes, what about it?” “Do you know what it is? I can’t really make any sense of the rest of it and most of it is in a language I don’t even understand.” “Oh yeah, I vaguely remember this book now. I tried reading it once during my hermit days, but I put it back pretty quickly and never looked at it again until just now. It holds a spell called the ritual of ascension.” “Ritual of ascension? Sounds pretty impressive.” “I suppose it does. It was supposedly passed down from Dendrin himself to the first Shadow Master. It wasn’t really clear what it does exactly except that it would strengthen the shadows link to Dendrin’s realm forever. I guess that means it would make the shadows more powerful. Dunno though. Seems weird that no Shadow Master ever tried to use it. Maybe it was more of a symbolic thing.” “Maybe…but maybe now is the time to try it!” “I doubt if you need this spell to win the war with Victor.” “No, but a chance to bring ourselves closer to Dendrin? Why shouldn’t we jump at such a chance?” “Eh...I think you’re asking the wrong person, Tulla.” “I know, but I’m so busy with coordinating the war effort, I just don’t have time to study this book like I would’ve been able to in the old days. I mean I suppose I could wait until after the war is won, but who knows how long that will be exactly? And there’s never a guarantee on survival.” “Don’t say that.” You remark. “You know better than anyone that life can be cut short in a blink of an eye.” “Hmm, I also know that sometime life can just go on and on and on…” you say causing Tulla to laugh. “Alright, I’ll study this book again, I’ve got the time after all. You just be careful out there.” You say. Tulla thanks you and after a couple more brief exchanges she’s on her way again, leaving you alone. “Well Talia, I said I wanted to help more, guess I better get to it.” You spend the next few days reading over the book. You thought you weren’t going to have any better luck than you did decades ago, but actually you understand it a little better now. You can even figure out some of the unfamiliar language. The problem though is you’re still not getting a good feeling about the ritual. It’s still vague on what exactly will happen, but the shadows would be linked with Dendrin’s realm not just in a spiritual sense, but also in a very real physical sense. The shadows essentially would become REAL shadows. Incorporeal and no longer susceptible to the weaknesses that most beings suffer. At least that’s what you think it means. Worshipping Dendrin is one thing, but becoming some sort of a wisp? An intangible being with real no sense of self? You can’t imagine wanting to transform yourself in such a manner regardless of the benefits. However you wouldn’t be involved, it would be Tulla and the rest of her shadows and they may be more willing to jump at the chance. True they aren’t the fanatics like the old shadows, but one never can tell. You even attempt to pray to Dendrin, just so you can ask him more about this ritual, but you have no luck. You’re on your own in this and you’re only left with a couple choices. You could just destroy the book and solve the problem that way or you can tell Tulla the truth about the spell and let her make her own decision. > You tell the truth You believe you’d probably be better off destroying the book, but this isn’t about you. Once again it’s about Tulla. You allowed Tulla to make her own decision on becoming a shadow; you’ll allow her to make this decision on her own as well. Doesn’t mean you can’t try to sway her against it though. A week passes and Tulla returns for a visit and asks you what you’ve learned about the ritual. You explain to her what is involved and what you think the result is after it is completed. She’s intrigued, which makes you a little worried. “Tulla, I know you might not want to hear this and you’ll probably think that I’m just displaying my own prejudices against Dendrin, but I don’t think going through with this ritual is a good idea.” “Oh? Why not?” “Because you’d be giving up you so much. I mean do you really want to be a real shadow that does nothing but serve Dendrin? I mean I know you’re happy serving him now, but you still have the chance to walk away if you should ever change your mind later. This ritual would be a one-way trip. And who knows what it will do to you exactly.” “It could be nothing like what you’re worrying about then.” Tulla points out. “Yes, or it could be something even worse than what I’m worrying about. (Sigh) I dunno Tulla, I mean it is ultimately your decision, but I do not believe performing this ritual is a good idea and I worry about you. It is supposed to be cast by a Shadow Master anyway. As it stands, this order doesn’t even officially have a Shadow Master. I mean I certainly don’t count, and I don’t know about you, has Dendrin spoken to you?” “No. Sadly Dendrin has not yet seen fit to speak with me in the same way he does with you. “Hmm, he hasn’t spoken to me in a long time either. I even tried asking him about the ritual, no luck though.” Tulla looks at you in silence for a moment. “Well given that we still need to worry about Victor, I suppose maybe this isn’t the best time to be messing about with unknown spells and rituals especially when we don’t exactly know what they do. Dendrin hasn’t seen fit to tell you and he hasn’t seen fit to speak to me, so perhaps we’re not worthy of performing it anyway. Maybe nobody has, which is why its never been cast. Another day perhaps.” Tulla says. “Perhaps.” You say causing Tulla to smile a bit and then give you a great big hug. You’re a little surprised at the suddenness of it given the situation. “Wha…what’s this for?” “For being so wonderful of course! You obviously had deep concerns about this ritual and worried about me in particular yet you still allowed me to make the decision. You have always allowed me to make my own choices, just like when I wished to become a shadow to begin with. You could’ve easily forbade me to become one, just like you could’ve destroyed the book.” “Trust me, it did cross my mind on both accounts.” “But you didn’t, because you encourage me to be my own person.” “Hmm, some might call that being overly permissive.” “Well I call it being a supportive father.” Tulla exclaims. The two of you just look at each other for a moment. The realization that Tulla just acknowledged you as her father takes only a few seconds to sink in. “And you’re the best I could ever have in a daughter.” You remark trying to not burst into too much emotion and the pair of you embraces tighter as if the pair of you never wants to let the other one go. Eventually you do though and Tulla gives you a small peck on the cheek before saying she has to get back to the battle for Delerg. “I can still help directly you know. I could lob a few shadow bolts a peoples’ heads.” you remark. “I know, but I worry about you as well. Besides, I’ve been having success in getting more people interested in being shadows. They’ll be coming here for brief training and initiation soon. Your skills a better put to use here.” “Very well, I’ll be here.” Tulla leaves and you’re soon left alone pondering all of what just happened. While you’re certainly glad you managed to convince Tulla against the ritual today, who knows what will happen in the future. Still, you can’t dwell on the possible doom and gloom of the future. You’ve done that most of your life. Right now you’re little more than happy that you’re no longer just “uncle” to Tulla. She considers you her father just as you’ve considered her your daughter for a long time. You naturally go to Talia and tell her the news. “Tulla called me her father today. Didn’t expect it and I have to say I got all choked up about it nearly to the point that I couldn’t reply back. Made me happy. Don’t think I’ve ever been exactly this happy in a long time. I mean I’ve had moments where I wasn’t unhappy, but I’ve haven’t felt this good since, well since before you died.” You sit down near Talia’s grave and touch the ground. “I…just wish you were here to experience it.” You say with a few sniffles. You rub your eyes a few times and just sit quietly near the grave until you eventually fall asleep… “You continue to surprise Eternal. I really thought you’d destroy that book and make it seem like an accident.” “Just shows you haven’t been paying attention for over sixty years. However, I am in good spirits and I won’t even let this visit from you bring me down.” “It’s never my intension I assure you. But you aren’t worried about Tulla one day casting the ritual of ascension?” “Sorry, like I said, I’m not going to dwell on such matters right now. If she does, then so be it. It’ll be her decision to make as usual. Oh and thanks for helping me out on that as usual. You could’ve at least told me what it does.” “Sorry, but you don’t get that knowledge. It’s something a shadow master just has to know to do when they feel the time is right. Their choice, not my influence. Something you’re encouraging in your daughter right? But if it’ll ease your mind a bit, she’ll never be able to perform it in your life time.” “What do you mean?” “She’s not a Shadow Master or Mistress in her case and she won’t be until the current one dies.” You don’t get it at first, but then you do which just raises further confusion. “Wait…so that means…me? I’M the Shadow Master? Since when?” “Unofficially since Master Ebon died, though when you were the last one left you were pretty much the only candidate left.” “Wha…but you never told me!” “You never asked, plus I doubt if I had told you, it would’ve made much of a difference to your antagonistic mindset.” “But…this still doesn’t make sense! I strayed so far that I didn’t even have shadow magic ability!” “Eh, you were still the closest thing to a shadow. Though I’m pleased that a new group will be able to carry on after you. It’s odd, I was bored with the shadows, but I think starting fresh like this has renewed my interest a bit. I think giving them a bit more free will and making them a little less mind numbingly devoted helps with that. Just think when the group starts numbering in the hundreds or thousands, oh the conflicts of doctrine interpretation they’ll have! I can just see the holy wars now! And I suppose I have you to thank for all of it.” You shake your head at Dendrin’s enthusiasm at his predicted carnage. He hasn’t changed at all, it’s all still just a game to him, but you’re hardly surprised. Still, you doubt if such a thing will happen any time soon and oddly, you are sort of pleased to hear that Tulla can’t perform the ritual even if she tries. Though you do wonder one thing. “So tell me, did you know all this was going to happen? Did you know that I would eventually bring about a new group of shadows for you to enjoy all over again?” “Well as I always said, I predicted you making a major change and you did.” “And that’s that?” “And that’s that.” Dendrin says. If you could see place a face with this reply, it would definitely be a smug one. You’re not getting any more information out of Dendrin, he’s back to being his usual cryptic self so you don’t bother trying anymore. “I shall leave you now Eternal, we will only speak once more to each other in the far future, but for now I give you a much needed rest from my divine discourse. Think of it as your reward for all your service…as a shadow.” Dendrin says with a laugh. You eventually wake up. You brush the dirt off of yourself and groggily look over at Talia’s grave. “Well Talia, Dendrin say’s he’s leaving me alone for a long time. I guess you were right, he does eventually answer all prayers.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 70 As the years go by, you know that day is coming soon that you won’t and shouldn’t keep Tulla sheltered from the surface too much longer. Granted you’ll still be with her when that day comes, but having been to the surface every once in a while to keep apprised of the situation, Delerg still isn’t exactly the friendliest place. Victor dumped so much into the campaign to conquer Delerg he’s been trying to get the most out of it by rebuilding Sinkhole into a proper town (Calling it Triumph). Apparently he’s also decided to make more plans to develop the area namely by chopping down the jungle to the south and to the east. This has been slow going though especially to the east which you know full well just how hostile the jungle flora and fauna get in that direction. (Oddly he hasn’t decided to expand north which is just as well since he’d probably call for the temple’s ruins to be dug up or built over, or something similar and you’d have to deal with his troops more directly.) As a result of all this redevelopment he’s not only got the pitiful remains of the enslaved Delergites working day and night, but he’s also imported many of his subjects from Quala to do work as well. A lot of these seem to be prisoners of varying types. Some are genuine criminals like murderers and thieves. Most though just couldn’t pay their taxes and it was either this or as a conscript to serve on one of the war fronts that Victor is engaged in with other Quala warlords. Amusingly you’re no longer on the “wanted list.” An eternal captain by the name of Brom that runs the military garrison in Triumph claims he killed you during the final battle for Delerg. (In fact that’s how he got his current promotion) You’re not exactly sure how he “proved” this, but you’re guessing he just threw a black cloak on some dead body, destroyed the face to the point of recognition and made everything up. Naturally he brags quite a bit about doing it. You’re not sure what’s funnier, the fact that he’s lying about it, or the fact that he managed to fool everyone into believing his lie (Including Victor, apparently). In any event, it doesn’t bother you since it makes life easier without some angry warlord trying to hunt you down. Besides you’ve got enough on your mind just looking after Tulla. “Come on, get your head out of those books, its time for your training.” You say to Tulla. “But we train all the time! Can’t I just finish this one book?” Tulla whines. “No! We have to keep to a schedule. Now let’s get to it.” Tulla puts away her book in defeat and leaves the library to head to the training room. It’s been more of an effort to get her to do her training lately. “Why do I have to train so hard? You never let me go up to the surface anyway.” Tulla says. “And you won’t be going up to the surface until I’m confident that you can take care of yourself. I know you think I’m just being mean, but trust me what I’m doing is going to ensure your survival. I won’t always be around, you know.” Tulla doesn’t reply to your remark she just picks up her wooden sword and gets into the fighting stance you’ve been teaching her. You and her spar for a few moments and fortunately despite her less than enthusiastic desire to be here, she does not slack off and proves to be absorbing everything you’ve been teaching her all these years. “Good. Glad to see you’re taking this seriously. Now let’s try something new.” You say and change up your style. You tell Tulla to pay attention. An hour later you and her are taking a break. Though it’s mainly for you. Every damn bone in your body aches and the ravages of time never let you forget that your earlier years of near perpetual combat have taken their toll. “Are you okay uncle?” Tulla asks in concern. “Yes, I’m fine. Just old war wounds acting up as usual. We’ll pick up training again in a few minutes.” While you lay prone recovering, Tulla decides to be inquisitive as usual. “Uncle, did you train as hard as this when you were my age?” Tulla asks. “Heh heh…I was trained harder than you at an even younger age.” You chuckle. “Was it the shadows who trained you so hard?” “Not at first. It was some sadistic svelk bitch that called herself Mistress. She trained me up until I was twelve, and then I was transferred over to the shadows.” “Oh. So is that when you learned magic?” “Yeah I learned it eventually. Never really liked using it though.” “I would like to use magic like a shadow! I’ve read you could turn yourself in invisible, make yourself really fast or even walk like a spider on a ceiling!” “Yeah some of it was pretty handy I guess. Haven’t been able to use any in years though. “Because Dendrin doesn’t like you anymore?” “Not exactly…but something like that…yes.” You’ve explained a little bit about Dendrin to Tulla in the past, you don’t think she fully understands all of it, but you do know that she spends a lot of time reading the old tomes about shadow history and such. Which is why she’s been getting increasingly more curious about him and the shadows in general. She probably would like to hear a more personal view of the organization. A view you don’t even want to get into anytime soon. So you try to change the subject. “Alright, we’ve rested enough, let’s get back to it.” You say getting off the floor. Just as you’re about to begin, Tulla makes a statement. “It’s a shame you and Dendrin don’t get along anymore. If you did, you could teach me shadow magic and it would help me survive better.” You say nothing and just tell her to focus on defending herself. Tulla complies, but she’s not the one that’s preoccupied, you are. The remark she’s just made is going to be the first step in a long series of questions and problems. You know she’s going to eventually ask why can’t she become a shadow. They already intrigue her the more she reads the books. What are you going to do? Tell her she can’t read anymore? Put further restrictions on her? The whole point of this is to make her independent and avoid sheltering her. You dwell on this for the rest of day and until you manage to fall asleep… Nothing happens. You fully expected Dendrin to visit and give some sort of “sagely” advice and most likely try to convince you to let Tulla become a shadow, but he doesn’t. Weeks go by while you’re still struggling with this decision and you still get no visit from Dendrin. This is one of the rare times you’d actually wish he’d show up and try to convince you just so you’d have a compass of doing the exact opposite. Of course maybe he doesn’t care. He did say he was bored of the shadows for centuries after all. In the end this isn’t up to him. This decision is on you. Tulla’s interest in the shadows is only going to increase and you’re going to have to let her find her own way or nip it in the bud now. The problem is despite all your own prejudices against Dendrin and the shadow religion in general, you’d be a complete hypocrite if you didn’t admit that the training did provide you with the means of surviving this long. The shadow magic also helped in that endeavor. Even Tulla made that connection. Tulla already shows much promise combat wise. If she could cast magic, she’d probably become very powerful indeed. > You don't allow it Forbidding her to do anything or restricting her is only going to cause her to resent you even more or worse run away completely. You aren’t going to let her be a shadow and become some indoctrinated idiot with no mind of her own though. There’s only one solution you can come up with, you’re going to have to leave this place and live elsewhere. If the temptation isn’t readily available then it the desire for it may eventually go away. Well you hope at least. But where could you go? Its not like the surrounding areas are exactly all that friendly. The only places you can think of that might be relatively free of strife are the Nalin Empire and the Felkan Kingdom. The Nalin Empire is closer since you’d only have to travel through part of Quala. It’s still run by Matron Warden Brenda, and from what you know she keeps it pretty orderly and safe. It’s somewhat amusing to think that you’d be running to a place that is basically the last remnants of the old Empire. Your only real concern with going there is that Brenda’s as old as you and you’ve heard rumors that her second in command Tarna is a very ambitious woman. You might end up heading to a place that will either be going on a war of conquest or even suffering a civil war soon. The Felkan Kingdom is a much longer trek and you’d have to travel through Quala and Arat, which is daunting prospect given how dangerous both places are. You also don’t know much about the Felkan Kingdom save for the propaganda that the Empire told everyone which probably means it isn’t that bad of a place. It still exists so you’re guessing it’s fairly stable. In any case you’ll figure it out later, right now you have to make preparations. When you tell Tulla the news that you need to leave this place and go to the surface her reaction is a mixture of confusion and joy. Confusion to as why it is so urgent to leave, but joy that she’s finally getting to leave. You make up a story of saying you’ve been noticing Victor’s people scouting the topside of the temple ruins lately and how you think its only a matter of time before they try to either start digging or collapse the place on you. This excuse seems to work. Tulla of course tries to pack some books with her, but you tell her to leave such things, as you need to go quickly and travel light. She complains a bit, but after you raise your voice slightly, she capitulates. “Okay, I’m ready to go uncle. Do you think it’s raining? I hope so, I really miss the rain.” Tulla remarks. “Well, we’ll know soon enough, but I need to do one more thing first. Wait by the entrance, I’ll be there shortly.” While Tulla waits, you head into the garden one last time. “Talia, I’m leaving now and I probably won’t be returning this time. I wish there was some other way, but I just can’t allow Tulla to become a shadow. I need to take her out of this place. Its for the best anyway, can’t allow her to become sheltered.” You move closer to Talia’s grave. “I’ll continue to honor your memory even though I won’t be here anymore. I promise. I love you you…goodbye.” You say and kneel down to touch her grave before leaving. Immediately after you and Tulla leave the temple, she happily takes in the outside scenery. “The sky! The trees! Its all as wonderful as I remembered!” she says. “Yeah, well keep the joy to a minimum, Delerg’s become an even less friendly place than you probably remember too. We need to keep a low profile until we reach our destination.” “So what is our destination?” Tulla asks. > You travel to the Nalin Empire The Nalin Empire is closer and quite frankly you’re too damn old to be sneaking around on long extended trips nowadays. “The Nalin Empire? Are you sure? I thought you told me it was run by an eternal.” Tulla says. “It is, but she’s like me. She’s a first gen and given that she’s run the place for several decades without any attacks or other major problems it’s one of the more stable places I can think of.” Your journey out of Delerg is fortunately without conflict. Your journey through Quala isn’t however, though you’re lucky enough to not get harassed by any professional soldier types and its just bandits. Tulla does well against them, you don’t do too bad yourself considering your age, but during the fight it’s never been more apparent of how old you actually are. “You okay uncle?” Tulla asks you after the battle. “Yeah…(pant)…just…well like I’ve said before. I’m just old. Though I can honestly say, I’m proud of you and glad to see that you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself. Now let’s loot these sons of bitches and hope they actually robbed some people before their pathetic attempt on us. I’m pretty sure we’re going to need some money when we get to Nalin.” When you eventually arrive in Nalin, you make your way to Dalt, which is one of the major cities in the land. Tulla is in awe. Most of her life has been spend underground in practical isolation. She’s never seen anything so busy, everything is almost overwhelming, but she seems to enjoy it. The funny thing is, you’re pretty much in the same situation as Tulla. Most of your life has been spent away from civilization and in isolation. Even when you were around other shadows you were still alone. Unlike Tulla though, you don’t feel comfortable here. “Uncle this place is amazing! There’s so much here to do!” “Mm, well keep in mind that while this place isn’t Delerg or Quala, there are still dangers here. Perhaps more subtle ones. Here.” You hand over what valuables you have to Tulla. “Now with this stuff, you can probably get a room at a quality inn for quite a while. I imagine you’d probably be able to get a job as a serving girl easily, but I doubt that’s something you’d want to do. So I suggest maybe something in the local security or maybe even the recruiting office. Given most of female soldier types I’ve noticed stomping around here, I don’t think they’d turn you away due to gender. Age maybe, but after you prove what you’re capable of, I don’t think you’ll have any problems.” You give Tulla a hug though she seems confused. “Uncle, I don’t understand.” “Tulla, this is your chance to start a new life. I wish you all the best with it, but this…” you make hand motions at the buildings around you. “This isn’t me. I wanted to bring you to a place where you can have a normal life, well as normal as it can get anyway. And I have. As for me, I’m too old to change and get accustomed to new situations.” “But where will you go?” “Oh, I’ll be around. You don’t think I’d just abandon you completely do you? I just won’t be here. Besides, I noticed when we took that short cut through the woods; we passed a run down old cabin on the way here. Pretty sure it’s abandoned. Seems like it would be a good place to spend my remaining years.” You give Tulla a hug. Tulla returns your hug and kisses you on the cheek, promising to visit you at some point when she gets the chance. You leave the city and return to the abandoned cabin you mentioned to Tulla. The place is indeed abandoned. Needs some fixing up, but you can get to that tomorrow, its been a long past couple days and you’re glad to have proper place to sleep for a change… “You really think this is what’s best for Tulla? Encouraging her to become some common soldier? A soldier of a government for all intents and purposes is a remnant of what you spent your life fighting against?” Dendrin asks. “Yeah, I’m amused by the irony myself.” You say. “But I believe she will thrive in this environment or least she’ll have a better chance than where she was.” “If you’d gotten past your irrational prejudices, and allowed Tulla to become a shadow she would’ve thrived a lot better no matter what environment she was in. “And that’s what you’re really pissed about isn’t it? You were hoping that the shadows would be resurrected somehow with Tulla? Well sorry to disappoint you, but the shadows die with me and as far as I’m concerned they already died long ago.” “You short sighted fool, this wasn’t about Tulla, this was a chance for you to finally achieve something worthwhile in your miserable life!” “Yeah, well I’ve never been here to impress you, so if I’m no longer a source of amusement or interest to you I guess you can start leaving me alone finally.” “I suppose so. You’re a great disappointment Eternal.” “I’m sure I am.” And that’s the last time you ever hear from Dendrin ever again. In the months to follow you spend fixing up your cabin and generally living a simple life. Tulla comes and visits you as she promised. The next time you see her she’s in a soldier’s uniform. Apparently she made an impression. She mentions that the Nalin Empire is always on the look out for new recruits anyway. A couple years pass and the ruler of Nalin dies. Apparently Brenda committed suicide, but given how ambitious her second is, you wonder if Tarna didn’t have anything to do with it. You briefly have a concern that Nalin will be plunged into civil war, but fortunately Tarna keeps the Empire together and it was never in such danger. Tarna is perhaps s a little stricter than Brenda is, not that it matters to you since you live a self-sufficient life in the middle of nowhere and have a “daughter” in the army. The only thing you ever have problems with is competing with the nearby kobold tribe for game. Tulla still visits you from time to time, but the visits get rare due to her responsibilities, but you don’t mind. She’s living her life after all and that’s what you always wanted for her. into decades and you live long enough to see the Nalin Empire embark on a war of conquest of Quala. You know Tulla was sent to the front lines because she made one last visit before leaving. You wished her luck as you always do, but you know better than anyone that war is an ugly business and death can come at any time. You never do see her again. You never know if she was killed or if she was just on assigned elsewhere. Eventually your last remaining years are spent as you most often lived: Alone and your thoughts mostly revolving around Talia. With your last dying breath you tell her that you’ll be joining her soon.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Forbidding her to do anything or restricting her is only going to cause her to resent you even more or worse run away completely. You aren’t going to let her be a shadow and become some indoctrinated idiot with no mind of her own though. There’s only one solution you can come up with, you’re going to have to leave this place and live elsewhere. If the temptation isn’t readily available then it the desire for it may eventually go away. Well you hope at least. But where could you go? Its not like the surrounding areas are exactly all that friendly. The only places you can think of that might be relatively free of strife are the Nalin Empire and the Felkan Kingdom. The Nalin Empire is closer since you’d only have to travel through part of Quala. It’s still run by Matron Warden Brenda, and from what you know she keeps it pretty orderly and safe. It’s somewhat amusing to think that you’d be running to a place that is basically the last remnants of the old Empire. Your only real concern with going there is that Brenda’s as old as you and you’ve heard rumors that her second in command Tarna is a very ambitious woman. You might end up heading to a place that will either be going on a war of conquest or even suffering a civil war soon. The Felkan Kingdom is a much longer trek and you’d have to travel through Quala and Arat, which is daunting prospect given how dangerous both places are. You also don’t know much about the Felkan Kingdom save for the propaganda that the Empire told everyone which probably means it isn’t that bad of a place. It still exists so you’re guessing it’s fairly stable. In any case you’ll figure it out later, right now you have to make preparations. When you tell Tulla the news that you need to leave this place and go to the surface her reaction is a mixture of confusion and joy. Confusion to as why it is so urgent to leave, but joy that she’s finally getting to leave. You make up a story of saying you’ve been noticing Victor’s people scouting the topside of the temple ruins lately and how you think its only a matter of time before they try to either start digging or collapse the place on you. This excuse seems to work. Tulla of course tries to pack some books with her, but you tell her to leave such things, as you need to go quickly and travel light. She complains a bit, but after you raise your voice slightly, she capitulates. “Okay, I’m ready to go uncle. Do you think it’s raining? I hope so, I really miss the rain.” Tulla remarks. “Well, we’ll know soon enough, but I need to do one more thing first. Wait by the entrance, I’ll be there shortly.” While Tulla waits, you head into the garden one last time. “Talia, I’m leaving now and I probably won’t be returning this time. I wish there was some other way, but I just can’t allow Tulla to become a shadow. I need to take her out of this place. Its for the best anyway, can’t allow her to become sheltered.” You move closer to Talia’s grave. “I’ll continue to honor your memory even though I won’t be here anymore. I promise. I love you you…goodbye.” You say and kneel down to touch her grave before leaving. Immediately after you and Tulla leave the temple, she happily takes in the outside scenery. “The sky! The trees! Its all as wonderful as I remembered!” she says. “Yeah, well keep the joy to a minimum, Delerg’s become an even less friendly place than you probably remember too. We need to keep a low profile until we reach our destination.” “So what is our destination?” Tulla asks. > You travel to the Felkan Kingdom The Felkan Kingdom is further away from the chaos and while it’ll be a long trek, you feel it’ll be a better place for Tulla to start a new life. “The Felkan Kingdom? That’s a long distance, are you sure you’re up for that?” Tulla asks. “Of course I am! I’m not so old that I can’t make a simple trip! Now let’s get going.” You snap. Your journey out of Delerg is fortunately without conflict. Your journey through Quala isn’t however, though you’re lucky enough to not get harassed by any professional soldier types and its just bandits. Tulla does well against them, you don’t do too bad yourself considering your age, but during the fight it’s never been more apparent of how old you actually are. “You okay uncle?” Tulla asks you after the battle. “Yeah…(pant)…just…well like I’ve said before. I’m just old. Though I can honestly say, I’m proud of you and glad to see that you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself. Now let’s loot these sons of bitches and hope they actually robbed some people before their pathetic attempt on us. I’m pretty sure we’re going to need some money when we get to the Felkan Kingdom.” You continue your journey through Quala and continue to feel your age. You don’t have too many more problems in Quala, but Arat is another story. As bad as Quala is, Arat is still in relative anarchy. You and Tulla are attacked several times and unfortunately it is during one of those attacks that your age catches up to you. In this case your attackers happen to be a small group of svelk. The svelk are more than a match for Tulla despite her skills, and you as well. Though you manage to at least fight long enough for Tulla to escape. You on the other hand succumb to your wounds and the svelk finish you off with a few bolts to your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re going to try one last time with Lena. MAYBE you can talk some sense into her. “Come on.” You say and grab Tulla by her little hand to pull her along as you walk. “Where are we going?” “To see your mother.” Lena usually holds her meetings in a drab looking two-floor house near the center of the village which she’s made into her home since the village was walled up. You go there immediately and find her standing behind a table while she speaks to a bunch of other people standing in the room. It’s packed, but you make your way through the crowd. Lena notices and wonders if you’re here to tell everyone that there’s an attack coming. “What’s going on? Are those bastards coming to attack us?” Lena asks. “No, but I need to talk to you NOW.” “I’m in the middle of something, can’t it wait?” “No, this is something that needs to be addressed in private, and if you’re unwilling to do so, I’m going to start clearing this room out in a less civilized manner.” Knowing that you’ll do it, Lena tells everyone that the meeting is over and that everyone should go back to their duties. When the home clears out, you’re left with just Tulla and Lena in the room. You tell Tulla to go upstairs and find something to busy herself with. She complies though she’s not enthusiastic about it. She also isn’t a fool and knows when an argument is about to happen. “Okay everyone’s gone, now what’s so damned important?” Lena says. “Well for starters how about your own daughter? You let her wander away like this all the time, knowing damn well how dangerous it is.” “She seeks you out right? I trust that you’ll look after her.” “Yeah, but the problem with that is I’m not her damn parent and I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on other things that are of more importance remember?” “And? I just sit around all day doing nothing? What exactly do you think I do and have been doing?” “Losing a war and satisfying your desire for vengeance, but that’s not what I’m here about, I’m here to try to talk sense into you one last time…” “Oh here we go. Wisdom from the old shadow once again. Save your breath I’ve heard your fat musings about our situation time and time again. And as I’ve said before nobody is forcing you to stay. Go on back to your hole and hide with your beloved corpse. That is what you’re best at right?” “Lena, this isn’t about me, this is about YOU and your family, or what remains of it. This battle is lost, you know it and I know. Everyone probably knows it, but they’re still following you out of loyalty and desperation.” “You know damn well we can’t surrender.” “I’m not talking about that! I’m saying you need to take Tulla and just get the fuck out of here. You fought the good fight as long you could; you probably crippled Victor’s army and wasted his resources to the point where he’s probably struggling to maintain his holdings in Quala. I mean I think you’re way past even now.” “Even? Is that supposed to be a joke? Victor kills us and enslaves us all and because he’s suffering from a little manpower shortage we’re supposed be even? What kind of leader would I be if I just abandoned everyone?” “Fine then, if you really care about the people then talk them into leaving with you. Hell, I even know of an area where everyone could settle down anew. It’s not the friendliest place, but it’s the northern part of Delerg and out of reach from Victor or anyone else desiring to establish a military presence.” “Since when have you been some protector of the people?” Now you start to get exasperated. “Lena, we’ve had this discussion before, but if you insist…I was doing this YEARS before YOU were even a lust filled idea in your parents’ heads! Protector of the people…I’ve probably been doing more than YOU to protect the people of Delerg even now. At least I’m suggesting a way for them to survive, but let’s get serious for a second. You’re right, I don’t care about any of them, I only care about one in particular. Okay two, but you don’t want me to care in that way…you want me to want me to care on a whole other level but the time for has long since past if it was ever a possibility to begin with.” Lena’s expression, which is usually one of coldness nowadays, begins to crack a little. She turns her head a bit and brushes her hair in an effort to hide possible tears starting to form. “Look Lena, the first time you explained your reasons for staying to fight five years ago, you managed to convince me because you were right and despite how I knew this was going to play out, it was still a worthy cause. However, I’m right too. There is nothing to be gained by being a martyr or dying a hero, or whatever it is exactly you’re trying to do here. If you don’t care about your own life, at least think of your daughter’s life. You’ve been distant with her ever since she was born, one would think in these times you’d want to spend more time with her not less. Let alone bad mouthing her father who DID spend time with her or leaving her in the company of a complete stranger.” “I’m not leaving her with a complete stranger, I’m leaving her with you!” Lena says and begins to break down. “SHE’LL BE SAFE WITH YOU! SHE’LL BE HAPPY WITH YOU!” Lena collapses in a nearby chair with her head in her hands weeping. “She’ll…survive with you…(sob)” You suddenly realize the situation that Lena has placed you in, and you hate her for it. You shake your head in disbelief. Out of all the things that have happened in your life, this has got to be the most unforeseen to your mind. You have no words; you instead just leave Lena to her crying and walk out the front door. You stand outside the house for a moment as the rain continues to fall just trying to wrap your head around all of this. You don’t even know where to start. Did she always plan this? Was this a last minute decision? Does she just expect you to… “Hey Uncle Shadow are you and mommy done fighting?” you hear Tulla ask as she comes from around a corner. “Huh? Where’d you come from? I thought you were upstairs.” “I was, but I sneaked out while you and mommy were yelling at each other. Sneaked like you do! I wanted to play in the rain. So are you done fighting?” “Yeah…I think we’re done fighting…” you say looking back at the door. “That’s good. I didn’t like it when mommy and daddy fighted either.” She says. With her question answered, Lena’s attention has already been distracted by the rain, which she gleefully plays in by splashing a nearby puddle. She has no idea what the hell is going on and what just happened. You watch her play for a moment and then call her over. “Tulla, come here.” “Yes, uncle?” “Do you have any items that are special to you?” “Yes!” “Well go in and grab them, but ONLY the ones you think are really important. Some clothes too. We’re going on a trip and we won’t be back for a long time.” “Where are we going?” “We’re uh, going to your uncle shadow’s secret hideout. Nobody will be able to hurt us there.” “Yay! Is mommy coming too?” “No…she’s got important stuff to do here. Look, get your belongings and let’s go. I’ll be right here waiting.” Tulla goes inside and you wait. Doesn’t take long For Tulla to come back out with a small bag of her things. “I’m ready uncle.” “You say good bye to your mom?” “Yes. She was crying and sad when I first went inside, but when I told her I was leaving with you, she looked up at me and smiled a little. She told me that she loved me and to do what you say.” You nod at Tulla’s explanation of events. “Are you going in to say goodbye?” “No, your mother and I have said our goodbyes. Let’s go.” Your trip back to the temple is surprisingly uneventful. You don’t even need to avoid any patrols. You do take the long way though and go through your alternate entrance. This causes a bit of worry for Tulla since she’s never gone underwater before, but you reassure her that as long as she holds on to you, you won’t let her drown and will hold her up to catch her breath using the air pockets in the underground tunnel. Naturally she believes you can do anything so this immediately alleviates her fears. Eventually you’re home. “This place is dark and scary.” Tulla remarks looking around. “Yeah, but my home, and your home too now. You can stay in this room, it was your mother’s at one time.” “Wow there are a lot of books in that room!” “That’s the library.” “What in there?” Tulla asks and points to the cavern with the garden. “That’s…a private area. Don’t go in there without permission okay? Even if you talking or faint whispering.” “A ghost doesn’t live there does it?” “Heh, well sort of I suppose.” You smirk. “But don’t worry she’s friendly…in fact forget what I said, let’s go into that room right now.” You enter the garden with Tulla hiding somewhat behind you still nervous about the “ghost.” You point out Talia’s grave to Tulla. “There she is. She doesn’t speak or anything though. She just listens, mainly to me of course. Her name is Talia.” “Oh is she like my daddy?” Tulla asks making the connection that Talia isn’t a real ghost and just dead. “Yes, yes she is, but I still talk to her. Because I still love her.” Tulla starts to ask another question, but you are in mood to answer any more as its been a long strange day. You tell Tulla to go to her room and dry off and unpack. You then mention you’ll see her shortly. Tulla leaves you alone to be with your beloved. You sit down beside Talia’s grave and think about the strange situation you’re in. “Well Talia, it probably isn’t exactly how you ever envisioned it, but we have a child now.” > You shadow shelter for lost girls (Dendrin's Input) “Planning on turning this place in an orphanage and calling it Uncle Shadow’s shelter for lost girls?” Dendrin mocks. You knew this was coming. “I’m really in no mood, you know.” You reply. “Oh you’re always in a mood. Just never a fun one.” “Well get your jabs in now and get it over with, I know you want to.” “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you think I’m going to make fun of you and this situation you’ve misjudged me as usual. On the contrary, I think it’s very brave of you to take on such an unfamiliar responsibility at your age.” “I wasn’t left with much choice, now was I?” “Sure you were, you could’ve just left the girl to die along with her mother. You didn’t though, I imagine for several reasons. Such as your not so secret need for living mortal company, or your dormant paternal instinct that apparently has gotten stronger in your later years. Even I didn’t see that one coming until you took in this girl’s mother a decade ago.” “Yeah… let’s not bring her up right now.” “My apologies. Anyway this should certainly be fascinating to observe.” “And there it is, the whole reason for your interest. Something new to view. Glad I can always be a constant source of amusement to you Den.” “Eternal you’re more than a source of amusement for me and I think you know that. I still believe as I did when I let you live during your shadow indoctrination ceremony that you are destined for important things.” “Well let me know what those important things are when you find out.” “It may be that you’re already involved in them.” Before you can make a retort about Dendrin’s usual vagueness, you wake up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 55 You always were one to defy the odds, but you knew it could only end like this. Luck certainly played a large factor in your favor at the beginning. First off the invasion rumors were still just rumors for quite a while. It gave you and Lena more time to prepare and it was definitely preparation that was needed. By the time the eternal warlord Victor sent anyone to establish dominance, most of the population had actually been motivated to help. This was mostly thanks to Lena again, as well others she recruited. Victor’s first attempt was surprisingly diplomatic, as he sent in an ambassador of sorts along with a company of his troops in Sinkhole. There was an attempt to talk the Delergites into just capitulating with assurances that no harm would come to them if they had. Ultimately these empty promises were wasted and with your help, the first battle of Delerg was a crushing defeat for Victor. There was a lot of celebrating afterwards. You knew it was just the beginning though. The first few years were a back and forth guerilla war. Victor immediately seized Sinkhole and made it his base of operations. Battles were fought throughout the swamp and jungle. Some of the villages were occupied during this time, but there was still hope. Then came the moment you knew was going to happen and that’s when Victor got tired of playing nice. Losing way more troops and spending a lot more time than he wanted to, Victor started making demands that if the Delergites didn’t surrender immediately he was going to set the whole province to the torch. He also wanted you personally to be delivered to him dead or alive. He probably assumed that since you were a shadow, you were actually the main one responsible for leading this thing. There were a couple attempts to assault your home, but you had made sure it was a death trap for anyone even entering the nearby area, let alone the ruins themselves. The other attempt was to surround the area to at least contain you, but that didn’t really work either considering you just used a different access route that you made years ago and they’ll probably never find that one since its nowhere near the ruins and you have to actually swim underwater to access it. Eventually an order was given to just try to kill you on sight when possible and that the subjugation of Delerg was the main priority. To her credit Lena managed to maintain the Delergites’ enthusiasm of resisting Victor and most continued to fight, but heart alone isn’t enough sometimes. Victor just sent in more troops and began to make good on his promises of setting the province on fire. Village after village burned. Those that weren’t killed were taken away, probably in slavery. Things got so grim that you briefly pondered the idea of praying to Dendrin for help if only to try to get your shadow magic back, but given that it didn’t save Talia, you saw no reason to bother. Dendrin even told you not to bother, as he knew you’d never be a believer. Apparently your mere lip service would no longer be sufficient at this point. Dendrin did suggest that you attempt to convert others to the shadow religion though and he’d be more than willing to grant them powers providing they went through all the normal procedures. You laughed at that idea, you’re no missionary and had no time to bother with whatever self-serving plan Dendrin was hatching. Besides, the Delergites weren’t interested in anything else except surviving the next attack by Victor, they were already committed to one “cause” and that was more than enough. And now here you are in Lena’s village, the last stand of the Delerg resistance. It doesn’t much resemble a village anymore so much as it resembles a small walled fort now. And when Victor’s forces attack again, it’ll resemble a smoldering ruin. As you look around the village through the rain you see so many wounded and many more just plain exhausted. Things weren’t even this bad for them under the Empire during its last days. They weren’t even this bad under Brutus’ gang. This is what fighting the good fight has brought them. Death for those that resist and slavery for those that gave up long ago. All of them have to be thinking or have already thought at one time: “Was it worth it?” Some probably think no. Some probably think yes. And they’d both be right. It’s definitely what you think and have thought in the past. The difference is you know that YOU can survive this. You’ll live to fight another day. Its what you’ve always done and it’ll probably what you’ll continue to do until some lucky bastard manages to kill you. Who knows? Maybe that day is sooner than you think. You really aren’t worried about yourself though; lately you’ve been slightly more concerned about someone else. And it isn’t Lena. “Hey Uncle Shadow, are the invaders coming today?” Tulla walks up and asks you seemingly oblivious to the fact that it’s raining. You have no idea where she got the idea to call you “uncle shadow”, but she’s been doing it for so long now that you don’t bother to tell her not to anymore. “Probably not in this rain. Victor’s soldiers are still going to need a catapult or battering ram to get through the gates. They aren’t going to be able to drag one of those things here in the mud at least not effectively. Not just mud either, but water as well; the rivers and marsh are overflowing because of the rain. If you look down there you can see we’ve practically got a small moat around us. No my guess is they’ll wait for the rains to stop and then a few days after so the water level drops.” You explain while fixing your hood over your head. “And then they’ll attack?” “Yes, and then they’ll probably attack.” “And will we win again?” You don’t answer; instead you motion Tulla to the overhanging roof at a nearby sleeping house. “Didn’t your mother teach you to come in out of the rain?” you say shaking off your own water soaked tunic. “I like the rain. It feels nice.” Tulla remarks. It’s funny to see how Tulla was brought up in such a warzone yet she maintains an innocent sense of appreciation for simple things like rain. “Where is your mother anyway? Shouldn’t she be looking out for you?” “Oh you know her, she’s busy a lot making plans with people to fight the bad people that attack us. It’s boring to sit there.” “Perhaps, but you still should stay near her. Its not exactly safe out here.” “But I am safe, because you’re here and you’re a great warrior! Mommy says so!” “Hmm. I’ll bet, but I’m also busy and I can’t keep an eye on you all the time.” “I’ll bet you can! Mommy says that you’re also the fastest warrior here!” “Mommy talks a lot about me to you does she?” “Yes! She says that you’re a lot more useful than daddy was.” You don’t even know how to respond to that. You always figured that even if Lena never did truly “love” Henry, you always thought she at least respected and cared for him. Henry wasn’t a bad guy; he just wasn’t cut out for fighting. It’s certainly not his fault that he died trying to defend this village. He’s only been dead a year and it really doesn’t seem right that she’s bad mouthing him to their daughter like this. Its not really right that she’s always been so distant to Tulla in general, but you’ve never understood that. Or maybe you do. Lena’s deluded herself that she’s always pursued this resistance because it’s about defending her family, other families and the homeland from tyranny, and it is to an extent. But her real reasons? She still hasn’t let go of the hate she has for eternals and she wants to kill as many as possible before she dies. (Never mind the fact that it’s mostly other humans actually making up the rank and file of Victor’s troops and Vic himself isn’t anywhere near the battlefield) In the scheme of things she never really wanted a family because as far as she was concerned her family died when she was a little girl and all that was left was the hatred that burned within. Everyone else to her is a secondary concern. You might be the exception because you managed to better focus her rage and possibly even quell the fire of it a bit. Who knows what might’ve happened had you taken Lena as some sort of youthful substitute for Talia. Who knows what might’ve happened had Victor not invaded. Would Lena still have insisted on her vendetta? You don’t know and it isn’t important because it’s the past and now is the present. She has obviously chosen a path and its not one you’re going down because you’re not responsible for her. You’ve helped as much as you could and you’re done. Still, while it probably won’t do any good, part of you feels like you should go confront Lena before you leave. > You just leave You’re not wasting any more time with Lena or stretching this out any longer than you have to. You begin to leave. “Uncle Shadow where are you going?” Tulla asks. “Home. And I suggest that’s where you go. Tell your mother if she’s got any sense of self preservation left she’ll get you and herself out of here too.” “But aren’t you staying to help us fight the bad men?” Tulla asks, not fully understanding the situation. “No, I’m not. (sigh) I’m sorry Tulla, but even if you don’t realize it yet you’ve been dealt a bad hand in life. If your mother doesn’t flee soon like I think she won’t then I can only tell you one last thing.” You put your hand on Tulla’s shoulder and look her in the eyes. “When the bad men come, you HIDE. Find a safe place and hide, and then run when you’re able. Even if you see or hear them doing bad things to your mother you continue to run or hide. They won’t show mercy and they will do bad things to you as well. If you want to survive, you will listen to me.” It’s a cold hard truth and Tulla just stares at you with the rain continuing to pour down on the pair of you. You think she’s probably more upset that you’re leaving than anything else you’ve told her. You can’t do anything for her though except hope that she absorbs your advice. As you start to leave, you briefly consider taking Tulla with you, but you dismiss the idea. You already “took in” one young girl in trouble and you can see how that turned out. You’re no parental figure and you’re not responsible for Tulla either. Your journey back home is an uneventful one. When you finally arrive you immediately head to the garden. “I’m back Talia. For good this time, as I don’t believe I’ll be making many more trips topside.” The silence continues to question you. “Why? Well because I’m done with it all that’s why. I mean I tried to relive the thrill of battle and that only has a temporary effect on my good mood, eventually it just gets boring. I’ve explored most of lands and found nothing of interest save for hostile people and unfriendly terrain. I’ve helped those in need and it only serves to either make their situations worse or prolong the inevitable. What’s the point of it all? I’ve come to realize that down here with you is where I belong and it’s where I shall stay for the rest of my life. However long that happens to be.” After telling all this to Talia, you feel like a great weight has been lifted off of you. It feels good to no longer have to worry about anyone other than yourself again. You excuse yourself to Talia and head off to your bedroom to get some much-needed sleep… “While I appreciate that you finally had the common sense to abandon a hopeless cause I’m a little concerned by your return to a hermit life style.” Dendrin remarks. “Yeah, well I would think by now that you’d know I don’t really care about your opinions on my life.” “But you can still be so much more, or at least you could still be destined for greater things. I see that, how come you don’t?” “Maybe I don’t want to be destined for such things even if they are true? Maybe I’m happy just spending the rest of my life here? What difference does it make? Besides I’m sure my so-called destiny would only serve to benefit you in some way so that’s not exactly a motivator either. And if you don’t like what I’m doing or you no longer find that I provide you with the amusement that your own pathetic existence so desperately craves then you can fucking leave me alone.” “Very well Eternal. I can see I should waste no more time with you. My only regret is I did not see your inadequacies sooner. Perhaps I should’ve picked someone more motivated. Oh well. Time to move on.” And with that, you never hear from Dendrin ever again. You also never go to the surface again. as they always do. You more or less keep yourself occupied by writing in your journal and speaking with Talia. It’s not much stimuli, but don’t seem to mind it at first. In time though you begin to get a little more detached from reality. You begin adding new people to speak with, such as arguing with Cyrus on a regular basis about how his tactics will not work against an Empire encampment or laughing at Murk on his latest tale of how he’s failed to woo Bianca. In other words, you practically go mad. One moment you’re fully aware of your surroundings and living in the present, the next you’re living in the past again. You’ve created your own reality and aren’t leaving it anytime soon. You continue like this for a few more decades until you eventually die as the mad hermit you are, and like most mad hermits, you leave no lasting presence in the world.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You spent many years practically buried alive, you’re not about to spend your remaining life that way. Better you should just die in battle instead. Of course you only intend on doing that if there are no other options. So if this place stands any chance at all you’re going to enlist the help of the only person you know that will fight tooth and nail. You have no idea how Lena is going to react to seeing you again, but its something you’re going to have to do. You travel to the small village that lies to the south of Sinkhole where you know Lena has made her home. Its nameless, unspectacular and the people there live simple lives, but that’s usually the standard for the villages around here. After asking a few of the locals, one of them directs you to where Lena’s house is located. It doesn’t surprise you that it’s a bit isolated from the rest of the village. In any case it looks a lot better made than the rest. The muscular man outside chopping wood might have something to do with that though. He’s younger than you, though probably not more than ten years and probably a wood cutter by trade. He puts down his axe when he notices you walking up, which shows he doesn’t sense believe you mean him harm. While he’s probably a little surprised by your presence, it’s obvious he knows who you are, why not? Everyone does in this swamp. “So…the shadow finally comes to visit. I always wondered when this day would come. My name is Henry. Lena has spoken about you on several occasions.” “Nothing good I expect.” “On the contrary, she’s always spoken highly of you. If I was a more insecure man, I’d probably be jealous. However, I believe the bond I have with Lena is an unbreakable one…well save for death of course. Even love must give way for reality after all.” Shows how much he knows given that you still speak to Talia as if she were still alive. Of course you may not exactly be the beacon of sanity. “Anyway, if you’re here to see Lena, she’s out right now hunting, but should be back soon. I can’t promise that she’ll greet you warmly however.” Henry remarks and then crying is heard on the front porch of the house from a basket. He excuses himself to go see to it. You watch from a distance as you see Henry take a child from the basket and make the usual parental reassurances to calm the child. The child must only be a few months old, you didn’t know that Lena had a baby recently. You hear the name Tulla being said a few times and then Henry looks back over to you. “A handful this one sometimes. Still worth it though.” He says to you with a smile. “Worth fighting for I hope.” You reply. Henry’s smile disappears at your remark. “Of course.” “Well that would make you better than most parents in this forsaken swamp. But the willingness to fight isn’t going to carry the day you know.” “Neither is an old broken down eternal who belongs to a long dead order.” A familiar voice says. You turn around and see Lena carrying few dead Sul Monkeys and a small Croxidile. She’s changed a bit, a little older and weathered by life, but its still the girl you remember. She motions to Henry to go inside and he nods and complies. “So that’s the family huh?” you say. “I didn’t realize you had recently given birth. Congratulations I guess. I knew you’d find…” “Why are you here?” Lena asks as she sets up the Sul Monkeys for skinning. “Okay, right to the point then…there’s an invasion coming.” “Yes, I’m well aware of the rumors.” “I doubt if they’re rumors at this point.” “So? What are you suggesting then?” “I really don’t know. I mean…(Sigh) look if there is an army coming from Quala, they aren’t going to be the push overs that were here before.” “Yes, I’m aware of that too. That’s why I’ve been trying to build up a resistance. I dunno if they’ll be any good in a fight, but it’s better than nothing.” “Wait, you mean you actually got people to potentially help you? When?” “I’ve been doing it ever since you abandoned me. Making contacts, building up friendships and all that stuff. I’m surprised that you didn’t know about it, but then you have been traipsing around the swamp for the past few years. Surprised you didn’t just leave for good. I mean what is there for you here?” “Its my home too you know.” Lena snorts at your answer. “Home…you don’t have a home. You aren’t even a true shadow by your own admission. The only reason why you still live here is because you buried Talia in that wrecked temple you call home. You can’t move on.” “Perhaps, but someone else hasn’t moved on from her school girl crush either apparently. Henry’s nearly my age. He’s my height and his hair is even my color, one might call that… substitution.” “Don’t you dare criticize Henry! He’s a good man! Better than you’ll ever be!” Lena shouts, but you notice she is careful enough to throw down her skinning knife before getting in your face and poking you in the chest. Not that you would’ve taken it as a serious threat anyway. “Again perhaps, but I didn’t come here to criticize him or fight with you. Look, I’m going to be fighting the eternals regardless of your answer, but I thought it might be wise to contact someone else who I know is a fighter. Apparently though you’ve managed to find more though so perhaps you don’t need my help. Now if you don’t want or need my help, I shall take my leave, but it’s always here if you want it directly.” Lena says nothing other than picking up her knife and going back to skinning. You turn to leave and get about a few paces, before she calls back to you. “Wait. Since you’re more out of the loop than I thought, it might be good to bring you up to speed on the specifics of what is known and what is planned. If only to make sure you don’t get in the way of our own operations with your lone wolf tactics. So let me finish this first and you can come on in. We’ll have dinner before going over some of the details.” “Very well.” You respond. After your visit is over, you leave with a better grasp of what’s to come. You just aren’t optimistic about it being enough, but then fighting the odds has always been what you’ve done all your life. No point in changing precedent. > The family (Henry and Tulla) While eating at the dinner table, you find that unlike Lena, Henry is actually very hospitable. You discover that your guess that he was a woodcutter by trade was correct. He’s also lived here all his life and still remembers when the old Empire claimed Delerg. “I do not ever recall seeing you in the resistance during the Empire days.” You remark. “I wasn’t. At the time I was more concerned with taking care of my first wife who was sick, than changing the government…besides as much as it may make me look like a coward, the Empire did not interfere much with our lives, so I saw no reason to fight. Especially since you shadows looked to have the matter well in hand.” “Hmm, glad we kept up a good appearance considering we ultimately lost.” “But the Empire did fall.” “It may have fell, but it got replaced with something far worse. Sometimes I think things would’ve been better if we hadn’t done shit. Your reasons for not fighting are certainly valid ones, but tell me, what did you do when the eternals first arrived? I have to admit I am not entirely familiar with the last years of the Empire and its immediate aftermath. I was trapped underground for a while you see. But I do know that there were a group of thuggish eternals that eventually laid claim here. I know because Lena and I eventually got rid of them. Why did you not fight then?” Lena starts to get agitated with you questioning her husband, but he calms her and says it’s quite all right. “When Brutus’ group came around and set up shop independently of the Empire I just laid low as I would never have been a match for any of them, even if they didn’t severely outnumber me. Fortunately laying low was easy as you can see this village is one of the furthest ones from Sinkhole. It’s practically on the ass end of civilization. Besides, my first wife had died of her illness around that time and I went through an extended period of mourning. I…uh sort of shut myself off from the world I guess. I was in no condition to fight anyone. If anything I might’ve welcomed death at that point in my life. All I did most of the time during those days was visit Alanna’s grave a lot and speak to it.” You can’t help but see a very strong similarity here. When you look at Lena, she looks away as if you’re going to call her out on her choice of husbands again. Of course you aren’t though, but it does prove you were right about some of your previous remarks about her. Meanwhile Henry finishes his tale. “But eventually I realized that I had to move on with life and eventually I accepted reality.” “Good for you Henry. It takes a brave man to face reality.” You say and drink from your cup giving Lena the option of calling you out on your own flights of fantasy concerning Talia. Of course she doesn’t. You chat a bit more with Henry. He says while he isn’t much of a fighter due to inexperience, he says that Lena has shown him a few things as she has been trying to teach others as well. “I have to say, I’ve never quite understood the Delergites’ unwillingness to fight. Well the majority of them anyway.” You mention. “Surely as a shadow, you know the reason.” “I do? I’m afraid you’ll have to enlighten me Henry. While I may be a shadow in name, let’s just say I may not be the best representative.” “Well you are aware of what most of us in Delerg are taught about the shadows right? I mean about how conquerors may come and go, but the shadows will always remain as they have for centuries. And that the shadows will always defend and protect this place. With the shadows around, most people just believe that eventually they’ll take care of the major problems.” “Yes, I am aware of it, I just never thought any of you lot bought into it so seriously. The dependency issues aside, why continue to believe it at all? The shadows belong to the rubble heap of history now. Surely YOU don’t still believe such things.” Henry thinks a bit, but not too long. “Well, yes.” “You do? Why?” “You’re still here to help aren’t you?” You give a smile and even chuckle a bit. “Heh, well maybe you’re right, Henry.” “However as I mentioned before outside I am willing to fight and not rely others. After met Lena, I found that there are some things worth fighting for. Now with my new daughter Tulla in this world I find that to be truer than ever.” Henry says while looking at the baby basket nearby. Lena reaches over to squeeze Henry’s hand briefly. You say nothing to this moment of closeness; you just get temporary lost in thoughts of long ago. You think about how this arrangement is probably similar to something Talia wanted. Well perhaps not exactly, but definitely the family part. The thing is, you never really seriously considered such things even when Talia spoke of it. Part of it was your foremost concern of surviving the next thing the Empire decided to throw at you. The other part is it just wasn’t something you were excessively interested in. Now though, looking at something like this a little more close up, you can’t help but think “what if?” Of course that’s not a “what if” that can ever be achieved. Even if Talia was still alive, you couldn’t have children anyway. Quite frankly you’ve spent so much time killing, wouldn’t really know what to do with the prospect of taking care of anything so helpless like a child, though you’d guess that perhaps Talia would’ve been more of the nurturing one while you trained it to fight or something you actually knew about. The funny thing is you get the impression that Henry serves more of that purpose of a “nurturer” than Lena does, who while obviously loving towards the child, she maintains more of a distance from it than Henry does. Almost as if she’s reluctant to bond with it on a major level.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You spent many years practically buried alive, you’re not about to spend your remaining life that way. Better you should just die in battle instead. Of course you only intend on doing that if there are no other options. So if this place stands any chance at all you’re going to enlist the help of the only person you know that will fight tooth and nail. You have no idea how Lena is going to react to seeing you again, but its something you’re going to have to do. You travel to the small village that lies to the south of Sinkhole where you know Lena has made her home. Its nameless, unspectacular and the people there live simple lives, but that’s usually the standard for the villages around here. After asking a few of the locals, one of them directs you to where Lena’s house is located. It doesn’t surprise you that it’s a bit isolated from the rest of the village. In any case it looks a lot better made than the rest. The muscular man outside chopping wood might have something to do with that though. He’s younger than you, though probably not more than ten years and probably a wood cutter by trade. He puts down his axe when he notices you walking up, which shows he doesn’t sense believe you mean him harm. While he’s probably a little surprised by your presence, it’s obvious he knows who you are, why not? Everyone does in this swamp. “So…the shadow finally comes to visit. I always wondered when this day would come. My name is Henry. Lena has spoken about you on several occasions.” “Nothing good I expect.” “On the contrary, she’s always spoken highly of you. If I was a more insecure man, I’d probably be jealous. However, I believe the bond I have with Lena is an unbreakable one…well save for death of course. Even love must give way for reality after all.” Shows how much he knows given that you still speak to Talia as if she were still alive. Of course you may not exactly be the beacon of sanity. “Anyway, if you’re here to see Lena, she’s out right now hunting, but should be back soon. I can’t promise that she’ll greet you warmly however.” Henry remarks and then crying is heard on the front porch of the house from a basket. He excuses himself to go see to it. You watch from a distance as you see Henry take a child from the basket and make the usual parental reassurances to calm the child. The child must only be a few months old, you didn’t know that Lena had a baby recently. You hear the name Tulla being said a few times and then Henry looks back over to you. “A handful this one sometimes. Still worth it though.” He says to you with a smile. “Worth fighting for I hope.” You reply. Henry’s smile disappears at your remark. “Of course.” “Well that would make you better than most parents in this forsaken swamp. But the willingness to fight isn’t going to carry the day you know.” “Neither is an old broken down eternal who belongs to a long dead order.” A familiar voice says. You turn around and see Lena carrying few dead Sul Monkeys and a small Croxidile. She’s changed a bit, a little older and weathered by life, but its still the girl you remember. She motions to Henry to go inside and he nods and complies. “So that’s the family huh?” you say. “I didn’t realize you had recently given birth. Congratulations I guess. I knew you’d find…” “Why are you here?” Lena asks as she sets up the Sul Monkeys for skinning. “Okay, right to the point then…there’s an invasion coming.” “Yes, I’m well aware of the rumors.” “I doubt if they’re rumors at this point.” “So? What are you suggesting then?” “I really don’t know. I mean…(Sigh) look if there is an army coming from Quala, they aren’t going to be the push overs that were here before.” “Yes, I’m aware of that too. That’s why I’ve been trying to build up a resistance. I dunno if they’ll be any good in a fight, but it’s better than nothing.” “Wait, you mean you actually got people to potentially help you? When?” “I’ve been doing it ever since you abandoned me. Making contacts, building up friendships and all that stuff. I’m surprised that you didn’t know about it, but then you have been traipsing around the swamp for the past few years. Surprised you didn’t just leave for good. I mean what is there for you here?” “Its my home too you know.” Lena snorts at your answer. “Home…you don’t have a home. You aren’t even a true shadow by your own admission. The only reason why you still live here is because you buried Talia in that wrecked temple you call home. You can’t move on.” “Perhaps, but someone else hasn’t moved on from her school girl crush either apparently. Henry’s nearly my age. He’s my height and his hair is even my color, one might call that… substitution.” “Don’t you dare criticize Henry! He’s a good man! Better than you’ll ever be!” Lena shouts, but you notice she is careful enough to throw down her skinning knife before getting in your face and poking you in the chest. Not that you would’ve taken it as a serious threat anyway. “Again perhaps, but I didn’t come here to criticize him or fight with you. Look, I’m going to be fighting the eternals regardless of your answer, but I thought it might be wise to contact someone else who I know is a fighter. Apparently though you’ve managed to find more though so perhaps you don’t need my help. Now if you don’t want or need my help, I shall take my leave, but it’s always here if you want it directly.” Lena says nothing other than picking up her knife and going back to skinning. You turn to leave and get about a few paces, before she calls back to you. “Wait. Since you’re more out of the loop than I thought, it might be good to bring you up to speed on the specifics of what is known and what is planned. If only to make sure you don’t get in the way of our own operations with your lone wolf tactics. So let me finish this first and you can come on in. We’ll have dinner before going over some of the details.” “Very well.” You respond. After your visit is over, you leave with a better grasp of what’s to come. You just aren’t optimistic about it being enough, but then fighting the odds has always been what you’ve done all your life. No point in changing precedent. > The warrior wife (Lena) Soon, dinner is over and Henry says that he’ll clean up, as he knows you and Lena have things to discuss concerning the possible invasion. Lena motions you back outside to talk. “Won’t Henry be joining us for this?” you ask. “He doesn’t need to, he’s already more up to speed on things than you are, besides he needs to clean up and look after the baby.” “Okay then.” While Lena goes over to speak with Henry about some more mundane domestic manner, yoou head back outside into the silent darkness. Usually there are a few Sul Monkeys making noises at night, but you’d guess that Lena being a hunter and all, the monkeys have learned to stay far away from this area. You find a nearby stump to sit on and wait for Lena who makes her appearance soon. “Okay I know we spoke about some of the this at dinner, but what exactly do you know about this impeding invasion?” “Like I said, all I know is its one of the local eternal warlords in Quala. I think he just calls himself The Victor or something silly like that because of his conquests.” “Something exactly like that, though I believe he thinks it’s a clever play on words due to his real name being Victor. He doesn’t seem to be an excessively cruel ruler for an eternal, just a very arrogant one. Believes everyone should serve him. His ego aside, he has been one of the more successful warlords in Quala, but I think he’s turned his sights on Delerg for extra conscripts and tribute to help fund conquests elsewhere.” “Well it isn’t like there’s much else here. So do you have any idea what his military strength might be?” “I’m not sure, but uh, I think it’s in the thousands.” “Is that low or high? I mean this does make a difference.” “I don’t know! I mean I think it might be around ten.” “Okay…so if its around ten and if he’s not a reckless idiot, that probably means he’ll only send around fifteen hundred troops maximum here, probably less initially since he won’t believe he’ll have any resistance. Now how many people do we have?” “Altogether we might have a little less than a hundred.” Lena as she continues to go on about how not all of those that she’s managed to enlist to help are even combat capable. Some have just agreed to help in a no combat way such as passing on information and such. Which means if they aren’t willing to fight, they’ll be practically useless when the battle starts getting heavy and Victor decides to just start decimating entire towns. Lena finally asks your opinion on the situation. “So what do you think?” “I think we’re fucked, that’s what I think. How much have you trained the people that will fight?” “Some of them already know how, and I’ve trained others a little. I intend on stepping up the training sessions more soon.” “Not going to be enough, I can tell you that right now, also when I say fight I’m talking at least your level or better. You better get on it fast. Now what about traps?” “What about them?” “Have you set any up? I mean time at least could be taken to do that; you are a damn trapper after all.” “And what do you expect me to do? Dig a hidden spiked pit in a road that people use on a regular basis? I can’t start setting up traps in public areas! I’ve done as much as I can around this village and even then I have to be careful. Some child playing in the wrong area and I’m the one getting blamed.” “(Sigh) Fine, I’ll figure out something then. I’ll start trapping the less travelled roads and the clearer parts of the swamp and jungle where an army might travel through. You might want to let people know if you’re that concerned with avoiding potential accidents.” “Why don’t you tell them? You are considered the revered protector of Delerg, last shadow.” “Because I’m done with people? Because I did all that shit in the past and it didn’t work? If I was really all that respected and revered, I should be able to walk into Sinkhole and say hey, you’re all in great danger and if you want a slim chance of surviving the shitstorm that’s going to come your way then you better follow me and have everyone do it with absolute loyalty.” “So you want to have the same sort of absolute authority that one of those eternal warlords has because you know what’s best for the lessers?” “That’s not what I meant, but if you’re going to go there, yeah it would make things a hell of a lot easier. Besides, YOU’RE the leader of this resistance, not me. I’m here to help as much as I can, but as good as I am, I can’t do every damn thing.” “So far the only thing you have done is point out that I’m doing everything wrong. When you actually start helping let me know.” You begin to get angry. “What Lena? You want me to pat you on the head like some doting father and say you’ve done a good job so far and that everything will be all right? Well I’m not going to do that, because the outlook on this isn’t fucking good! A superior force with better resources and most likely better fighting ability over all outnumbers us. You seem to forget I fought this battle before thirty damn years ago with better odds. You know how that ended? Complete destruction of my side, that’s how it ended. We fucking LOST Lena, spectacularly and completely. So what if the Empire fell soon after? Did it help anything in the long run? No, not one bit. Did drunken bards at taverns sing the valiant but hopeless deeds of the shadows or anyone else? No. Was it all fucking worth it at all? No. And do you think when Delerg is eventually overrun, its towns destroyed, its people killed and its jungles burned to the ground; it’ll make any bit of difference what we did? No. And you’re an idiot if you think it will.” At one time Lena might’ve cried or run away by your harsh words, but she’s much harder now of course. “If you feel we’re all doomed anyway then why help at all?” she asks. “Because I’m an a mean old bastard that doesn’t have much else to do with the remainder of life except enjoy a good fight from time to time. And my point is, that YOU aren’t. Remember how after we killed Brutus you wanted to go on a suicidal rampage of attacking eternals in Quala? Remember how I managed to guide you from that by pushing you away? Seems like that worked out pretty well didn’t it? You’re alive and have a family rather than the rotting corpse that you’d probably be if you’d went ahead with your original idea.” You take a deep breath and exhale and touch Lena’s shoulder before continuing. “Well I’m making another guiding attempt except I’m telling you straight to your face now. You have a family and you have something to fight for, it’s true. But you’re not winning this. You can get the hell out of this forsaken swamp and make a new life elsewhere. I know you have it within you. Even if you don’t care about yourself or even Henry, think about Tulla. I mean…” “Let me stop you right there asshole.” Lena says with authority. “So let me get this straight, you telling me I should just run away? That I should leave my home?” “I’m telling you, you should survive.” “Well survival isn’t enough sometimes. Maybe it was when I fled my village as it burned to the ground, but not anymore. I’m fighting BECAUSE of my family. This is OUR home and we aren’t going to be bullied by anyone or run away when things look bad. You once fought for a worthy cause, overthrowing the tyranny of the old Empire. You must have believed in it at one time or else you would’ve just fled the area at the nearest opportunity.” “To some extent yes, but if it wasn’t for Talia, I probably wouldn’t have stayed as long as I did.” “Yes, the great love of your life that was the reason for most of your choices…I know. But how long are you going to hide behind that ghost? You told me you once broke up with her for a few years due to a disagreement of faith. You didn’t even think you’d ever get back with her, yet you stuck around in that frozen wasteland Rask and continued to fight the Empire all by yourself. You still must’ve believed in your cause. When you saved me on that terrible night, you didn’t do that for Talia either. You didn’t even do it out of boredom, or the thrill of battle, or whatever other reason you want to hide behind. You did it because you felt it was the RIGHT thing to do.” You stand silent as Lena continues her speech. “You’re a survivor, but I do not believe that it’s enough for you either. You still want to fight for a worthy cause and your morality keeps getting more in the way than you’d like to admit. If you were truly just a survivor, you wouldn’t even be here. You want to help me, because you CARE. You’re even trying to convince me to leave because you care. I’m not leaving. Preventing Delerg from being occupied by a hostile force is a worthy cause to fight for. Many won’t fight, well I think as you once told me, they’re weak. And even though it may be frustrating and unrewarding sometimes its up to the strong to protect the weak. I believe that fighting for a positive cause will be setting a good example for Tulla and she will grow up seeing that. And if we die…then at least we all died fighting for something worthy and what we believe in. I would think you of all people would approve of such a death.” You have no argument. “I would. Very well, I believe I have most of the information I need here, I’ll probably start doing my own spying into the Quala province and find out more. I’ll keep you posted. I…um…well…” you start to fumble with an apology, but Lena stops you. “Don’t worry, I know. You’re just a mean old bastard.” She says. “Heh, yeah.” You chuckle and start to leave, but before you go Lena grabs your arm and leans in to kiss you on the cheek. “What was that for?” “For everything.” You and Lena look into each other’s eyes for a moment and then you turn to leave again. When you get few paces you turn to see Lena still watching you for a moment and then turn to head back to her home. “Shut up Dendrin.” You mutter as you walk back to the temple.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This isn’t going to be easy or fun for you, but it is regrettably necessary. You’re going to not only have to convince her that she shouldn’t pursue this path, but also push her away in general. “Lena, you won, be happy with your victory. I know you’d like to kill every eternal out there, but it just isn’t feasible.” “I won? My family is still fucking dead!” “And? You think you’re the only one who’s ever lost something dear to them? Going on a vengeance crusade still isn’t going to bring them back and it’s just going to get you killed!” “What the hell else do I have to live for?!” “What do you have to live for? You’re still young for one thing, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Yes, what happened was tragic for you, but you’ve grown stronger because of it and you survived the ordeal. Now make the most of it. Live your life. Find someone to settle down with or whatever it is normal people do.” “Normal people…do you really think I can go back to a normal life? Be someone’s little housewife?” “Okay maybe not normal…look I’m just saying you going on some fool errand of trying to kill every one of those assholes claiming to be eternals is going to get you killed. Not all of them are going to be as inept as the ones that were hanging around here. The other ones? They’re constantly at war and are battle hardened. I guarantee they’ll be much tougher opponents and much more organized.” “But wouldn’t you be there to help? You could train me more and…you could start up a rebellion in Quala! Just like you did in the old days you told me about!” “Ha ha. No, those days are long over. I’ve told you that before. I’m not going anywhere and I’m not training you any more. You are not meant for this sort of life. I helped clear out this swamp and now I will probably go back to my previous life of solitude.” Lena begins to tear up again. It’s obvious she doesn’t like where this is going. “You’re kicking me out of your home aren’t you?” “(Sigh) You had to know this arrangement wasn’t going to last forever. I know you’ll find some place to be I mean I’m sure you’ll be treated very well by most people considering you just helped remove their oppressors.” “Save me your words, (sniffle) I thought we were…a team…I thought you cared…just go away. Leave me alone.” You don’t say anything else, because saying anything else is just going to make things harder and likely make things worse. So you just leave. It feels like forever getting back home, but eventually you do and head straight to the garden. “I’m back home, just like I said I would be. I even brought you something.” You say and put some blue flowers you picked on your way back home on her grave. “Oh Lena? Yeah she’s gone. I think its for the best she didn’t live here anymore y’know? Dendrin already impedes on us enough. Didn’t need her around too.” “I mean if she’d stayed she would’ve just been miserable here and eventually we would’ve ended up going to Quala like she wanted and she would’ve gotten herself killed. At least this way, she won’t do it now…well I suppose I can’t be sure of that, but I think the fact that she waited for me instead of charging into Brutus’ place by herself is a good indication. Showed me she’s always heeded my advice and not only that, she’s not as overly confidant as I thought she was. Without me around she’ll eventually abandoned her need for vengeance and settle into the normal life she was supposed to lead. She… deserves it, don’t you think?” you say with your voice quivering a bit. You begin to wipe your eyes and sniffle a bit. “No, of course I didn’t love her! What kind of opportunist would I be if I took advantage of some girl half my age that had a shitload of emotional baggage and a fragile personality? I’d be no better than those wannabe eternals that’s what. Besides, I didn’t think of her in that way, I just…look I’m tired all right? I’m going to bed.” You leave the garden and collapse on your bed. It takes awhile but eventually you start to fall asleep hoping that you don’t have to put up with any smart-ass comments from Dendrin anytime soon. He has uncharacteristically heard you for once because he leaves you alone for quite some time. You briefly consider doing what you told Lena not to do and that’s go kill eternals in the Quala region, but really that bores you already. Besides, you feel it isn’t going to be quite as much fun anymore without Lena around. It suddenly occurs to you that you should do some travelling again. You don’t have much else to do, so why not? Still, this will always be your home no matter what. You won’t leave for good. You just need a change of scenery. You decide that you’ll travel not to places you’ve already been or already know about, but to parts unknown, namely Delerg itself. Despite it being part of the Empire, much of it still remains unexplored. You decide you might as well stay relatively close to home if you have the intention of coming back. You pack up some gear and get ready to go, of course saying good-bye to Talia and telling her you’ll return eventually. Year 50 Passing the time by exploring uncharted parts of Delerg has kept you a bit busy over these past few years. It’s amazing that nobody had done it before, but the stories about the Delerg swamp being much more hostile the deeper you went were true. You travelled north for quite awhile, but eventually the swamp thinned out completely until it turned into vast bodies of water. Going further would’ve required a boat and you didn’t really have any wish to do that once you saw a glimpse of some of the things lurking in the water. Travelling east was an ordeal that you nearly didn’t survive. The swamp became more jungle like and it almost seemed as if the land itself was protecting something or otherwise it just didn’t want anyone going further east. You did battle with several beasts that you’d never seen before and probably nobody else from the “civilized” world had either. It wasn’t just beasts that were hostile, or even the plants, but also a short dark race of humans. Their small stature didn’t make them any less dangerous. Eventually you had to turn back because of the constant attacks that even you couldn’t keep defending against. You swear the trees must’ve been spawning the little bastards. Thankfully as an eternal you’re somewhat resistant to poisons, because it served you well during that time. Still if you stopped doing something just because it nearly killed you, you wouldn’t have accomplished anything in your life. So eventually you travelled south and beyond the swamp and jungle you discovered a whole new land, yet very much the same as the one you’re familiar with. Four tribes, two of them human, one elven and another one reptilian, all of them warring with each other and all of them fairly hostile towards you when confrontation was your only option with them. From what you could figure out, three of the factions were all displaced by the Empire in some way when it still existed. The reptilian tribe apparently was nearly exterminated by the shadows in the earlier days of the Empire as they once lived in the Delerg province. (Which explains why they were especially hostile towards you) You explored as much as you could and eventually departed leaving the factions to their private war. Naturally the whole time you were exploring you were periodically returning back home. Delerg itself never changed, it was the same quiet place it always had been. Every once in a while you’d attempt to trade goods in Sinkhole for the rare items you might need, people never accepted any payment you might offer and instead just handed it to you for free. Nowadays you’re considered the last shadow protector of the land and well respected. Of course you aren’t the only one. Lena is also well respected thanks to her deeds. Her assumption that she would never be able to fit into a normal life again were wrong as she did find someone to settle down. Though she was right that she would not be a simple housewife and is a hunter and trapper by trade. You know she lives in one of the smaller villages, probably much like the one she grew up in, but you’ve never spoken to her directly. You see no point in dredging up the past and you have both gone your separate ways now. You’re glad that she managed to move on, which is more than can be said for others… “Why have you been writing a lot lately? Never known you to pursue such interests.” Dendrin asks. “I dunno. Why not? Not like I’m currently wandering topside at the moment and I already read all the books here. Figured I’d write about stuff I encountered or did on my last travels.” “So you’re writing a book?” “More like a personal journal. Not like I’m going to share it with anyone.” “So why do it?” “As I said, why not? Don’t you have something better to do?” “Not really, though I thought you would be considering the impending invasion.” “Invasion?” “Yes, the invasion. I know you’ve been running all over the place lately, but haven’t you been keeping up on the local discussions, I assumed you had since I know you do visit Sinkhole on occasion. One of those eternals or several of them apparently have figured out this place has no active resistance of any kind and would be easy pickings.” “Oh that. Yes I’m aware of what’s going on and I’ve been preparing for the inevitable.” “What? Your usual training? You really think you’re going to be able to pull off what you did before by yourself? You do realize that if this place is invaded again, it won’t be occupied by the ones that were here before?” “Yes, I’m well aware and as I said, I’ll be ready.” “Are you planning on leaving?” “No, but I’m glad you’ve still got faith in my combat abilities…as I asked before, don’t you have something better to do?” “I might have to find something better to do soon if you aren’t around anymore.” Dendrin says. You wake up. You’re also left to ponder his “concern” for you. He’s right in that if there is an invasion, it’ll most likely be a proper army like when the Empire occupied Delerg. So what can you really do about it if it does happen? Leave? You’re past thinking like that. This is your home until the day you die. Fight? You probably will eventually just to break up the monotony, but you doubt if you’ll be able to keep your “secret” home a secret. Ever since you made your reappearance it’s a well known fact of where you live by most of the Delergites. Even the group of eternals you got rid of before eventually figured it out, though by that time they were too damned scared to ever launch any sort of offensive. The other problem to this is you are starting to feel your age. It’s partly why you stopped your exploring and returned home to rest. Fighting your own extended personal war by yourself for any reason is getting to be less of a viable option especially if this potential invasion force is dead set on keeping the province. And it isn’t like anyone else is going to help… Well perhaps one person might, but the situation would be vastly different and she has her own life now, though you wonder what sort of life that might be when the invasion comes. The only other option you have is to just lay low in the temple and never come out when the invasion arrives. You could easily seal up the entrance that even if it were found, it wouldn’t be easy to get in. > You lay low You had a brief revival of the “glory days” when you first fought along side Lena. And while it was fun while it lasted, you believe you’re done with such things now. A storm is coming and you’re not going to stand in its path because it’ll ultimately be a fool’s game. You take steps to seal up the more accessible entrance to your sanctuary. It would take quite the effort to try to break in now, but you doubt if anyone will make the effort. You’ve been in this situation before and you handled it just fine. You can easily do it again despite what Dendrin might say. You do wonder how Lena will handle the situation. She’ll probably fight, but if she’s learned anything, she’d do better to flee with her family. In any case you’ve made your decision and you return to the familiarity of the garden. “Looks like I’ll be spending a lot more time with you again Talia, just like the old days.” Year 65 Several years have passed and you still haven’t a clue what’s been going on the surface nor do you care anymore. You haven’t even made the attempt to even take a peek, you’ve kept your entrance sealed and haven’t dug out any new ones. As predicted nobody has attempted to intrude on you, so why bother leaving? Throughout the years you’ve been trying to keep your mind occupied with your conversations with Talia and even Dendrin when he sees fit to speak to you anymore. You also continue to write in the journal you keep, but if anyone read it now, they probably wouldn’t understand any of it as your thoughts have become disjointed and not of a sound mind. You babble a lot to yourself nowadays, and not just in the usual way you do with Talia. Over the years you’ve actually been including others, such as arguing with Cyrus on a regular basis about how his tactics will not work against an Empire encampment or laughing at Murk on his latest tale of how he’s failed to woo Bianca. In other words, you’ve practically gone mad. One moment you’re fully aware of your surroundings and living in the present, the next you’re living in the past again. You’ve created your own reality and aren’t leaving it anytime soon. Dendrin tries to snap you out of it, but eventually he realizes the futility of the task and stops speaking to you altogether. Hardly matters as you’ve got more than enough disembodied voices in your head to keep you company. You continue like this for a few more decades until you eventually die as the mad hermit you are, and like most mad hermits, you leave no lasting presence in the world.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 46 “Think the girl will survive your big attack plan?” Dendrin asks. “If she does, she does. If she doesn’t, well that’s the way it goes.” You reply. “You don’t mean that. You’re just trying to play tough. I know better.” “Well if you know better why do you insist on asking stupid questions?” “Tradition?” “Hah…okay I’ll admit that one was a little amusing.” “Glad to see you’re in a better mood nowadays, but I imagine having someone to converse back and forth with on a regular basis might be helping. I told you, that you couldn’t go on with your life as it was and I was right! And you say I don’t look out for you.” “Yeah, that must be why you’ve seen fit to deprive me of nearly all my magic abilities.” “You’re not a believer. I can’t give to someone who has no faith. Sorry, but I don’t make the rules. Besides, you were never a magic lover anyway.” “Perhaps not, but I found it useful in certain situations. Doesn’t matter, I’ve been making due…I suppose it has made me adapt, and kept me from relying on a crutch.” “Well if that’s your way of saying thanks, I guess I’ll take it. Good luck tomorrow.” You wake up. Today is the day, after months of carrying out a personal guerrilla war on Brutus’ gang (you refuse to acknowledge such rabble as any sort of “army”) you’ve managed to whittle it down to a manageable size to the point where he’s had Sinkhole barricaded. You’re not sure why considering its not going to stop you, but if the fool actually thinks building a shaky wooden wall and locking himself in his house is actually going to save him, so be it. While you get ready, Lena’s already set to go. You think she’s been anxious for this day more than you have. Lena has been helping you and for her part she’s done an adequate job. She’s taken to training well, though that’s probably because she doesn’t have much left anymore. You’ve had to pull her fat out of the fire on more than one occasion, but you expected you would when you first agreed to have her help you. And at least she’s helping you. That’s more than can be said about anyone else! Despite all the damage you’ve done to their oppressors, your actions have not inspired others to take up arms against what’s left of the eternals. You can’t say you’re surprised though. Lena on more than one occasion has travelled to a few of the swamp villages in the hopes of getting help, but no luck. You told her it was a waste of time, but she had to learn on her own your suppose. You probably never show it and you’d certainly never admit it, but you do respect Lena and don’t mind her company. Though there’s still another whose company you prefer. (And that that isn’t Dendrin) “I’m going now. I’ll be back later to tell you all about it.” You tell Talia before you leave. You and Lena make your way to Sinkhole. Along the way Lena makes her usual snappy comments. It’s one of her less endearing qualities. “So you couldn’t get Talia to help us for this one?” “Well maybe if I’d been a believer in Dendrin, he would’ve seen fit to raise her from the dead or something, but seeing as he’s as much of an asshole as you’re being right now, no I couldn’t get Talia’s help. Maybe next time.” You reply. “I’m sorry, I really shouldn’t have said that, I…” “Forget it. You’re nervous just like you are whenever we go into battle and you’re deflecting as usual. Just save those witty remarks for combat. Seems to work on those wannabe eternals who get flustered over the smallest taunts.” Sinkhole’s rickety wall doesn’t quite extend all the way around the town, but its enough that there’s no way to easily go around it without either wading through the deep marsh water or just barging through the front gate. If you still had your magic, you’d just scale the wall with the spider walk spell, but you don’t have that luxury anymore. Chopping or kicking through the wall would probably take time and attract attention. You’d like to at least catch the enemy a little off guard. So you decide to do the classic “pincer maneuver.” “Lena, you sneak around through the marsh where there is no wall and enter Sinkhole that way.” “Wait, where are you going to be?” “I’m going through the main gate of course. They’ll be focusing on me so much that you’ll probably be able to take down several of Brutus’ men before some of them converge on your position.” “Are you going to be all right?” “We’ve worked together for months now and you have to ask me that? Don’t worry about me, I’ve faced worse. A lot worse. Now Brutus will probably be hold up in that big house of his. Don’t try to enter it until I get there since the place will probably be trapped.” “What if I see him outside?” “I doubt it since the coward seems determined to throw everyone under his command at us while he hides. In the off chance you do see him, he’ll probably be trying to escape so by all means try to stop him in that case. Now let’s get going.” As you and Lena part company you know there’s a fifty fifty chance Lena is going to disregard everything you’ve said and try to enter Brutus’ home and try to kill him herself. You’re going have to be quick if you want to beat her there. Predictably several eternals guard the front gate and when you appear before them, the alarm is raised and they attack. If they’re lucky, they might actually last more than a five minutes against you… Four minutes later you’ve already fought your way through the main gate. You see several more eternals standing in the road with weapons drawn, but they look unsure to as whether or not to attack you or run away. Surprisingly one speaks up, he’s a short man with brown hair wearing leather armor. He’s very average looking and not at all anything like what the second generation eternals are supposed to be which are great hulking warrior types. “Hold for a moment! I would speak with you. There is no need for animosity.” “What, you trying to stall for time and set up an amubush? Not likely, let’s get on with this!” you reply and advance. He and the two other eternals standing behind him all back away while still attempting to hold a defensive position. “Wait just a moment, damn it! There are not enough of us left to set up a fucking ambush! We’re all that’s left, besides Brutus barricaded in his house. I mean we already know you could kill us all within seconds, is it really going to hurt to hear what I have to say?” “Alright, make it quick.” “Okay, we’re giving up. I mean just let us get the hell out of here and we’ll never enter this damn swamp ever again. This ain’t worth it and I certainly ain’t dying for Brutus.” “What makes you think I’d let you go?” “Look I know who you are. You’re not just some crazy ass old shadow; you’re also an eternal. A first gen. Oh yes, I heard stories about you in the old days and unlike most of my kind, I took them seriously. I also remember because I was assigned here when you were still causing trouble for the old Empire. Everyone thought you died when we collapsed the temple on you, but when our boys started getting picked off over the last year, I had a feeling who it might be. I tried to warn Brutus that we should just leave, but the fool wouldn’t listen. “Hmm, too bad you weren’t smart enough to leave yourself.” “Well, Brutus may be a fool, but he’s still my friend.” “Friends? Didn’t know you second gens, had the concept of it…but he’s so much of a friend, that you’re ready to abandon him now?” “I don’t like it, but if I have to chose between loyalty to my friend and survival, survival is going to win.” “While this is all very interesting, you still haven’t answered my question, why the hell should I let you go?” “Because I talked Brutus out of destroying this entire town and the rest of the little villages in this swamp? Did you know when you started murdering us, his first order was to wage systematic genocide on the people of Delerg? Granted he still wiped out a few villages completely, but I managed to save lives because even I thought that was going too far. Other did too, I was just the only one brave enough to tell him in a way that showed it wouldn’t be wise to do it.” “So that makes you a good guy?” “No, I didn’t say it makes me a good guy, I’m just saying that my deeds at least should be taken into consideration. I mean…fuck…you’ve killed a lot of us and you’ll likely kill Brutus as well. Isn’t that enough? We’re no threat to you and we’re not going to come back to launch some sort of sneak attack. You can have free reign of this place, I’d rather just put this shithole far behind me. You’ll never see us again.” This guy might not be playing for time to have more of his buddies ambush you, but he’s still taken up more than enough and there’s no indication of Lena showing up who probably would’ve attacked them by now. Since she hasn’t that can only mean she’s decided to take on Brutus himself, which means she’s probably going to get herself killed if you don’t reach the house soon. > You let them go and help Lena Lena’s more important right now. This lot seems like they’re not eager for a fight. Even if they do regain their courage at a later date, you figure you can easily deal with them then. “Today is your lucky day, get the hell out of here and don’t let me see you again!” you say. The speaker of the group nods and thanks you while he and the rest of his fellows quickly run past you and out the front gate. You head quickly to the “mansion” sized home near the marshlands. You approach cautiously and that’s when you see Lena just arriving. You’re glad you got here in time. “Good there you are, did you have any problems?” you ask. “Other than having to pull leeches off my body? No. There were a couple eternals near the area where I came through, but I killed them while they were still trying to make up their minds on whether or not to leave their posts to investigate the noise you were stirring up at the front gate. Besides that, I investigated the surrounding area outside this house and I haven’t seen any evidence that Brutus has tried to leave it.” “Let’s just hope he doesn’t have some sort of underground tunnel built. Let’s go.” After breaking down the door, you cautiously move throughout the house. While certainly bigger than the rest of homes in Sinkhole, it probably doesn’t look much better from the inside. The place is a wreck, you’d think as a leader he’d want to keep his own home in better condition, but then given that you live in an underground hole of a collapsed temple which was already in ruins when you arrived there, maybe you aren’t exactly in a position to make judgments as far as living arrangements are concerned. “No traps so far.” Lena whispers. “Considering there’s so much junk and garbage in this place, they could be well hidden. Keep a look out anyway, and stay quiet! No need to give our position away.” “I’m sure he already knows we’re…” Before Lena can complete her statement, Brutus appears from around a corner and nearly takes her head off with an axe. Fortunately for her, you block the attack. At last you get a close look at the great leader himself, and once again you’re unimpressed by what you see. Makes this whole endeavor hardly even worth it at this point. “I’ll make you wish you hadn’t come back from the dead shadow!” Brutus exclaims right before you shut him up with a head-butt and then slicing his belly open. Falling to the floor and desperately attempting to hold in his entrails he starts to scoot back from you. “You new eternals always talk too much.” You say. “Lena…if you’d like to do the honors.” Lena wastes no time in taking up your offer. She points her spear at Brutus, who makes a plea for his life through bribery. It doesn’t work and Lena skewers him in the chest with the spear. Then she does it again… and again… and again… and… “Sonofabitch! You killed my family! Bastard! Die! Die! Fuck you…” Lena sobs the whole time. “Lena he’s dead. You can stop…” you start to say and then you feel a crushing blow to the back of your skull knocking you to the floor. You were paying so much attention to Lena’s breakdown that you didn’t hear anyone else enter the house. It’s the trio of eternals that you previously let go. You attempt to get up, but only get another smash to your head for your troubles. “We kept our word shadow, you never saw us again!” you hear one of them laugh and this is followed by a final blow to your skull which splits it open causing bits of brains to splatter nearby. Lena charges at them already in a rage from before and while she manages to wound one of them, they ultimately take advantage of her unhinged state and finish her off with ease.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Even as quiet as you are, if you head over to her location, you might miss your best opportunity to attack even if you were waiting for a slightly better opening. Still no point in taking chances, you speed yourself up just give yourself that extra edge. As your blade sinks into the back of one of the eternals you materialize before the rest of their eyes and they look as if they see a ghost. Their surprise doesn’t last long, but it’s enough for you to chop down another one before they can put up a decent defense. “Behind you!” you hear a voice shout and you instinctively duck down and spin around to shoot a bolt at whatever might be behind you. You catch an attacker in the leg with it, but from what you can see a bunch more eternals have arrived to help their buddies. This is why you wanted to wait a moment longer before attacking. One of the eternals in charge shouts at one of his men to go catch the girl that just shouted a warning to you. At this point running might not be a bad option for yourself. If you had your back against something, you might be better able to fight them, but being surrounded and outnumbered like this isn’t the best situation. You make a break for it, but the eternals are wise enough to not all chase you directly, some instead run along either side of you hoping to head you off. It doesn’t help that a few are carrying spears and are fairly proficient at throwing them. You cloak yourself and climb up a tree, which helps lose them. They continue to search the area where they last saw you. Eventually they give up and argue with each other about losing you. You wait about an hour in the tree before you decide its safe to come down. You head back to the sanctuary cursing your unpreparedness. That speed spell also took it out of you. You feel more drained than you have in a long time; it’s almost like the old days when you were complete crap at casting magic. You’re guessing your long detachment from Dendrin has made your shadow magic even weaker. At least you can still cloak without too many problems it seems. Eventually you get back home only to see a visitor waiting for you. It’s the girl and she’s sitting on a pile of rubble near your secret entrance. Now that you can see her in a better light, she’s much different looking from the wailing waif you last saw. She stinks of the swamp like she’s been living in it for days. Her face is healed up with a few minor scars, but her eyes display a stare that could be matched by some battle weary warriors. You’re actually a little surprised to see her since it implies that she knew where you lived, meaning she’s sneakier than you thought. “Nobody followed me. I lost my pursuer.” “Did you kill him?” “No.” “Then how the hell do you know you really lost him? Maybe he let you get away, just to follow you at his leisure. What the hell were you doing out there, you know damn well you’re no match for those guys.” “Neither are you it seems.” “I would’ve been had I waited a little longer to gather all the information instead of jumping into battle like an idiot.” “So why’d you jump in like an idiot?” “Because I saw you and you were already a factor I didn’t need to deal with if you decided to jump in like an idiot. So I did it instead, hoping that was all of them. Apparently not. Still, got a few of them I guess. There’s always tomorrow. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going inside and I don’t need you knowing exactly where the entrance is even if you already knew where I lived.” The girl doesn’t move. “So basically what you’re saying is you risked your life to prevent me from getting hurt.” “No, I told you why I did it. Don’t read into something that isn’t there, now I suggest you do what I told you to do last time and go home.” “I can’t considering they destroyed my village not long ago. Completely.” You exhale deeply since you heard about that, but of course you had no idea she was from there. “So that was your village? Was it random, or did they know you were there for the…first attack?” “I think they knew. They didn’t know exactly what had happened or who was there, but they guessed someone in the village knew something. Some in the village knew what I told them, like my family, Aaron’s family, and close neighbors, but nobody gave me up. I sort of wished they did, they’d all be alive right now.” “If you felt that way, why not turn yourself in?” “Because I was scared? Because I didn’t want to die? Because I’d somehow beaten the odds and endured something I shouldn’t have?” “Because you wanted to survive.” You say. “Yes, because I wanted to survive. Just like I wanted to survive when they started lining up everyone to more efficiently butcher them. I managed to run. I left my mother, my father, my little brother, my friends. I left them ALL behind. I didn’t try to save them Maybe I could’ve I don’t think so, but I didn’t even try. All I wanted to do is survive. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since, living in the swamp attempting to survive and plot revenge.” “Hmm, well you’ve got the survival bit down at least. So were you the only survivor from your village?” “I dunno, I think some others ran. Don’t know what happened to them though. So when are we going to attack again?” “I’M going to get some rest and I’ll attack again when I feel like it. YOU I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I suggest you go find some place to hide where those bastards can’t find you. Now leave. I’m not going to ask nicely again.” The girl hops down from her sitting spot. “No, I’m not going anywhere. YOU saved me. Twice. Which means right now you’re the closest thing I have to a friend and friends help each other out. Besides, I did warn you about that guy going to attack you. Surely that warrants me at least some place to stay. I won’t get in the way. I know how to take care of myself. I know I can do a lot more than I used to…” “Look this isn’t some shelter for lost girls! This is my damn home! I don’t owe you shit! Now get the fuck outta here!” you yell and stand directly in front of her, but she’s unmoved. “You’re going to have to fucking kill me then!” she shouts back in your face. At this point you’re more worried about your voices attracting attention. You feel like knocking her out, but that would only be a temporary solution and despite being a fairly ruthless killer, you’re not going to oblige her alternative. You push her out of the way and open up your entrance. She’s probably a little amazed that she was so close to it and didn’t realize it. “Well? Don’t just stand there with a dumb look on your face; get inside before we attract the attention of something other than Sul Monkeys.” You say and motion her inside. “What’s your name anyway?” “Lena.” Dendrin’s going to have a field day with this and you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself. > You lesson One for Lena (A conversation) “And this will be your room. You can fix it how you want, but don’t make a fucking mess. Also I don’t know what combat skills you’ve learned since I last saw you, but if you’re serious about this like you appear to be, you will be training under me starting tomorrow. I’m not taking you along if you don’t know how to handle yourself better.” You say. “Great. It’s what I want anyway.” “Hmm, you’ll probably rethink that, once I actually start training you. Anyway, goodni…” “Hey I know you have some magic abilities, but are you really a shadow?” Lena asks. Her question catches you off guard. “Yeah, I guess. I mean not really. Shit, I dunno. Just go to bed kid, you’ll need the sleep because you’ve got other things to worry about.” “What sort of answer is that?” “The only one I’m giving you right now. ” “Sheesh, I just figured it would be important if I knew if you were actually what you claimed when you killed those eternals that…assaulted me.” “What? What did I say? I remember a lot of killing and screaming, but that’s it.” “You said something like I’m the shadow of the past and right now the past is catching up with you. And then you killed one of them.” You now remember that line. That was rather over the top of you, and you’re sort of surprised you forgot it so quickly. “Heh, remembered that did you…but then I suppose it might’ve been more memorable for you…(sigh). The answer to your question is…complex. Officially I am a shadow, but I am not a faithful one as far as the crazy religion is concerned.” “So you don’t believe in Daylin?” “Dendrin is his name and I didn’t say I didn’t believe in him, I just don’t worship him. One would think he’d want to leave me alone because of it, but for whatever reason he still insists on speaking with me on occasion. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know either. Maybe he just finds me interesting because I’m an eternal.” Your statement causes Lena’s eyes to go wide. She wasn’t expecting you to say something like that. “Oh don’t worry, I’m an original eternal, not like the ones you know about.” “How did an eternal become a shadow?” “Long story and maybe I’ll tell you one day assuming you survive training, now that’s it for questions for tonight. You better get some rest, I’m serious.” Lena ceases her questions and realizes that she’s reached the limit on them for tonight. You leave her and head to your room wondering what the hell you’re thinking. You hesitate to sleep just because you don’t want to suffer through Dendrin’s predictable taunts and questions. So you end up heading to the garden to speak to the only person you can. “Hi Talia, as you might know we’ve got a visitor. It’s that girl that I saved a few months ago. She seems to think she’s a warrior now.” You say shaking your head and sitting by Talia’s grave. “Yeah I dunno what I’m doing either, but I figure if she wants to get revenge that bad, then maybe she’s earned the right to succeed and I should at least train her properly. I mean hell, it isn’t like I have much else to do and it wouldn’t be so bad having someone help me again.” You suddenly begin to feel a little nervous. “I mean of course she’ll never replace you. NEVER. I just…um…I look…” While you sit there trying to explain yourself to a dead woman, you don’t even notice Lena entering the garden. “What’s going on? Who are you talking to?” she asks in all innocence and you fly into a rage at being intruded on. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! DON’T YOU EVER FUCKING ENTER THIS PLACE AGAIN!” you stand up and shout while walking towards her. You’re menacing enough that Lena genuinely fears that you’re going to hurt her and she runs out of the room. While Lena runs back to her room, you calm down a bit and stop yourself at the entryway of the garden and realize that you might’ve gotten a little more upset than you should have. “(Sigh) Shit.” You quietly say and begin to head towards Lena’s room. When you get there you see her trying not to cry and packing what little belongings she owns. “Where are you going?” “I’m leaving, I guess you’re right, I shouldn’t be here.” “Lena, stop. Where are you going to go? Back to live in the swamp with eternals hunting for your head? Look I’m sorry, but I haven’t had anyone living here for quite a while and you caught me off guard during, well a private time. “So who were you speaking with?” “Talia, my dead wife. Except I like to pretend she’s still alive sometimes. Hmm, now that I think about it, that’s not a very strong incentive for you to stay.” You morbidly joke. You sort of expect Lena to agree and continue her attempt to leave, but she doesn’t. “I…suppose I understand. For a while after my boyfriend Aaron was killed, I still couldn’t quite accept the fact he was dead either. Sometimes I pretended he was just off travelling for an extended period of time. When the rest of my family died, well I didn’t hold that illusion for any of them or even Aaron anymore. I had to accept reality. No point in living in a fantasy land when it isn’t real right?” “Truer words have never been spoken. I believe you have the right mindset Lena and I also believe your training will go well.” As you turn to leave, Lena can’t resist asking that last question. “Uh, if you don’t mind me asking, but how did your wife die?” “In battle against the eternals, about ten years ago.” Lena’s expression is a puzzled one. Here you just congratulated her on her acceptance of reality, yet you’ve been drifting in and out of fantasy for a decade. You stop her before she even asks. “Lesson one, do as I say, not as I do.” You remark and leave.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3B2: Last Shadow Year 45 You travel back to the sanctuary under cloak as you have many times before. The sanctuary isn’t much to look at anymore ever since it collapsed ten years ago, but one thing’s for sure, nobody ever comes around here, making it the perfect place to live ever since you started to live like a recluse. You scan the area to make sure there is nobody around before you go through your secret entrance; you remember how long it took you just dig your way out of the place. You probably could’ve stayed down there indefinitely, but there are only so many times you can read the same books over. It was only natural that you got curious about what was going on in outside world after the first few years of being buried had past. About another year of digging and it was a brand new world. The Empire had fallen, but not much had changed in the scheme of things. In some ways the situation might’ve been worse for the average person. You travelled under cloak to explore what used to be the territory of the old Empire, only to find that most of it was now divided up into petty fiefdoms run by the new eternals. You knew as soon as you saw these new eternals they were going to hasten the Empire’s fall, not save it. You also weren’t surprised to find most of them fighting over the scraps of their dead “parent.” They lack any sort of discipline of your generation, as far as you’re concerned they’re twisted mutants of eternals, but not real ones. Most of the population that had existed under the Empire has become practically enslaved under the new eternals. There are a few that remain autonomous, but this is mainly in Rask where the place is a war zone even compared to places like Quala or Arat. From what you’ve heard Flog and his orc/ogre horde have been spreading to southern Rask and making it hard for any eternal attempting to plant a flag and keep it there. It’s gotten so bad that what eternals do lay claim there have resorted to hiring svelk mercenaries to help. And the svelk aren’t exactly well liked by the new eternals (Though that’s one issue you’d have to agree with them on). The other area that remains free from of new eternal domination in Nalin, which is seemingly a beacon of “light” and under the control of the only other first generation eternal known to be alive, Brenda. She apparently has a non-aggression pact with the eternal upstarts, but has made it clear she will not let them destroy what’s left of what she considers to be the last remnants of the Empire. You don’t know whether it’s out of respect or fear that she has managed to avoid war with any of them. As for Delerg, it’s not a warzone, but it’s no paradise. Delerg is slightly unique in that it’s currently only “ruled” by one eternal by the name of Brutus, with no major competition. Brutus is not quite as ambitious either; he and his crony eternals seem content to just wallow in the swamp. One might think that perhaps he’s just biding his time and waiting for an opening to invade the weakest eternal in Quala, but in reality he wouldn’t have the means to do it anyway, his entourage is more of a gang rather than any proper army. He’s just lucky Delerg isn’t a profitable target by any other eternal or else he’d probably be wiped out by a real invasion. You’ve often wondered why you continue to stay in Delerg or even the general area even after you took your “tour” of the old provinces and saw the chaos for yourself. You have no real answer other than you have nowhere else to go and that you’ve lived at the temple for so long now that you consider it your home regardless of who is calling themselves ruler there. The other reason you guess is Talia. Even after all these years you still haven’t quite moved on. You speak to Talia a lot, but she’s not much of a conversationalist anymore, not that you mind. You’d rather speak with her than Dendrin who you don’t know why still insists on speaking with you at all though thankfully it’s been rare nowadays. Later that night you go through your usual routine of a little training to keep your skills sharp and eating your dinner. You then visit the garden and speak with Talia about what you did today. “Visited Sinkhole again today. Still the same rundown town it’s always been. You’d think since Brutus made it his headquarters that he’d actually have a little pride to build it up a bit. Instead he and his lackies seem to just enjoy kicking around the same pathetic peasants, molesting hapless young girls and generally being assholes. Must be nice to enjoy doing the same routine over and over again.” You grab a handful of dirt and throw it where you buried Talia. “Sometimes I feel like uncloaking and killing them all, just to see what they’d do, you know? I bet they’d be scared shitless. The return of the shadows! Ooooooooh!” You laugh a bit. “Of course you know I did feel like killing them all after you died, but now? What’s the point? It won’t bring you back, and most of those bastards get themselves killed over stupidity anyway. Hell I’d probably be honoring them by gracing them with my blade to their hearts.” You throw a stone in the small stream nearby. “I mean I suppose if I did kill them, I’d be helping out those they’re tormenting now…but why bother? Most of those wretches were content living under the yoke of the Empire, they can be happy with what that mindset got them! Remember when I was trying start up a minor rebel cell here? All I could practically get were the fucking criminals and other miscreants. I mean what the hell does that say about society when those are only type willing to fight against tyranny?” You start to get angrier at the predictable silence. “I mean it’s not my fight anymore! I did what I could back in the day and it wasn’t appreciated by anyone, sometimes not even by you! The Empire is dead! I’ve done my bit, so if someone else wants to play freedom fighter they can have at it. I’m done…I’m...I’m sorry…” you say as you slump down near Talia’s grave. You sit in silence for quite a while, and eventually you fall asleep. “You’re not still moping about are you? I thought you’d be over the hermit thing by now.” Dendrin says “I can’t really be a hermit when you keep interrupting my solitude all the damn time.” “Oh please, you secretly crave it! If you really cherished your solitude that much, why the hell do you even bother leaving this place to make your little trips all over the countryside?” “I only did that once because I was curious about the changes in the world.” “But you still continue to make your routine trips in Delerg at least. You know nothing has changed for quite some time, same eternals tormenting the peasants as usual. It’s almost as boring as a routine as you have, must be an eternal thing. My point is, if you really wanted solitude, you wouldn’t risk leaving this place at all. You wouldn’t lurk on the outskirts of civilization spying on what others are doing. You also wouldn’t still be talking to your mate who hasn’t been in any condition to talk back in quite some time. I don’t think this hermit thing is for you. You need to be doing something else.” “Oh like what? Entertaining you? Look if you’re so bored, why don’t you go bother someone else and leave me alone? I’ve repeatedly told you, I’m not here for your amusement.” “Obviously not. (Sigh) Very well Eternal, but you know I’m right. You can’t keep going on like this. You’re going to have to change your surroundings eventually, because you might as well be lying in a grave right next to Talia given that you’ve fallen asleep in the dirt and have small cave insects crawling on you.” “Don’t think I haven’t considered it.” “Stop talking nonsense. You’re not suicidal and even if you were, you’d be too cowardly to go through with it anyway. Just like you’re too cowardly to change your current situation by leaving this place.” “First you say I’m not really a hermit because I’m leaving here on a regular basis, but now you’re saying I’m too cowardly to leave it? How does that make sense?” “I’m saying you’re going about everything half assed! You want to be a hermit? Fine then you need to shut yourself off from the outside world completely and not run around topside and vicariously getting your socialization kicks by spying on others. However I don’t think that’s what you want. I think you WANT to go back to doing what you used to do, but you’ve been staying hidden from the known world so long that you don’t want to risk what peace you have. Its safer that way.” “And I haven’t earned a little peace? Given everything I’ve been through?” “Maybe you have Eternal. I don’t know, but what I do know is you don’t seem to be satisfied with it, so what I’m saying is you need to change your situation. Otherwise you might as well be dead because you’re not living, you’re just surviving.” “It’s enough.” “Are you sure?” “Always has been.” At this point Dendrin stops speaking. You don’t know if it’s because he’s just tired of arguing with you or if it’s because you’ve actually won the argument. Dendrin can’t really deny that surviving to a certain extent has been enough for you in the past. In any case the numbness eventually subsides and you wake up. After brushing yourself off you head back to your real bed and ponder what you’re really going to do since despite it all, Dendrin has once again managed to weasel a little truth in his words and its enough to make you think. > You leave the area Whether you’re content on just surviving or not isn’t really the issue, staying here in what amounts to be an oversized grave wallowing in self pity from time to time probably isn’t the best thing for your mind. You’re already starting to go a little off kilter in that regard. There is really nothing for you here or Delerg or even the area in general. Maybe shouldn’t just change your surroundings, maybe you need to just leave them completely. It takes you about a month, but eventually you gather up the motivation to leave the temple for good. You visit Talia’s grave one last time before you leave. “I’m sorry Talia, but I have to leave you now. We’ll… be together again some day.” You keep your goodbyes to Talia short because if you draw it out any longer you’ll end up staying. When you leave the temple you aren’t exactly sure which direction to head in. You could head west through Quala, Arat and eventually to the Felkan Kingdom. From there you’ll decide your next course of action of what to do next. Of course you could do the unthinkable and do what even the Empire avoided and that’s head east deeper into the Delerg swamp. There are rumors of horrors that live further in and while that might be true, the swamp has to end somewhere. It isn’t like anyone to your knowledge has ever explored past it. Part of this intrigues you a bit. At the very least the danger would keep your mind focused on other things. > You head east into deep Delerg jungle The whole point of changing your surroundings is to go someplace where you haven’t been before. You’ve been through Quala and Arat and you’d rather not have to travel through them again. You’re going to off in a completely new direction. Your journey through the eastern swamp is an ordeal to say the least. The swamp eventually becomes more of a jungle it almost seems as if the land itself is protecting something or otherwise it just doesn’t want anyone going further east. You do battle with several beasts that you’ve never seen before and probably nobody else from the “civilized” world has either. It’s not just beasts that are hostile, or even the plants, but also a short dark race of humans. Their small stature doesn’t make them any less dangerous. If it wasn’t for your magic abilities you doubt if you’d be able to handle so many because you swear the trees must be spawning the little bastards. Thankfully as an eternal you’re also somewhat resistant to poisons. Still the constant attacks are taking their toll and you’re exhausted from fighting and magic use. The moment you are able to get a small bit of sleep, even Dendrin is suggesting that perhaps you should go back. You ignore him though. He’s always giving you contradictory suggestions. One moment he’s telling you to something like change your surroundings, and the next he’s telling you how that’s bad. You wish he’d just leave you alone once and for all. You press onward and eventually the jungle thins out a bit and you discover what looks to be some very old ruins. Another temple perhaps, but its design isn’t like the shadow temple. Your curiosity gets the better of you and you decide to enter. If nothing else, it’ll give you a bit of relief from the tree dwelling attackers. You cautiously explore, but so far the ruins seem empty. You don’t even come across any of the jungle fauna making their home here. Your guess that it was once some sort of temple seems to be on target as you come across several altars and odd symbols. Lot of drawing of snakes too. You’re guessing it was dedicated to some sort of snake god. Not finding anything of interest, you step back outside only to suddenly feel four sharp darts going into your body. The pygmies set up an ambush! You stagger back inside the ruins cursing yourself for not being more observant. You can hear them shouting excitedly from outside while you’re pulling out the dart from behind a fallen stone pillar. Given that they typically attack you with abandon of their own well-being, you fully expect them to come rushing into the temple to attack you. It’ll be taxing, but you’ll have the advantage in the cover of the darkness. That doesn’t happen however. They don’t enter the temple at all and seem to be waiting for you to come out. You wonder if they consider this place taboo or something. In any case you decide you’ll take advantage by resting a moment and when you feel like you’ve got the energy, you’ll cloak yourself and sneak past them all. You wait in the darkness for quite a while and keeping an ear out for the pygmies. Though while you’re listening out for them, you then hear another sound which sounds very close. A hissing sound that is right behind you… You turn around and swing your weapon, but the instant you do, an incredibly bright light blinds you. You then feel the whip of a tail smashing you in the chest causing you to fall backwards and hit your head on the stone floor. Through your grogginess and hazy eye sight you manage to just make out your attacker which seems to be some sort of serpent creature, but with arms like a human holding a staff with a glowing tip. You attempt to mumble a spell to speed you up, but the serpent creature is faster even without magical enhancements. Its head lunges forward and you feel its fangs sink deep into your throat puncturing the jugular. You die instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Whether you’re content on just surviving or not isn’t really the issue, staying here in what amounts to be an oversized grave wallowing in self pity from time to time probably isn’t the best thing for your mind. You’re already starting to go a little off kilter in that regard. There is really nothing for you here or Delerg or even the area in general. Maybe shouldn’t just change your surroundings, maybe you need to just leave them completely. It takes you about a month, but eventually you gather up the motivation to leave the temple for good. You visit Talia’s grave one last time before you leave. “I’m sorry Talia, but I have to leave you now. We’ll… be together again some day.” You keep your goodbyes to Talia short because if you draw it out any longer you’ll end up staying. When you leave the temple you aren’t exactly sure which direction to head in. You could head west through Quala, Arat and eventually to the Felkan Kingdom. From there you’ll decide your next course of action of what to do next. Of course you could do the unthinkable and do what even the Empire avoided and that’s head east deeper into the Delerg swamp. There are rumors of horrors that live further in and while that might be true, the swamp has to end somewhere. It isn’t like anyone to your knowledge has ever explored past it. Part of this intrigues you a bit. At the very least the danger would keep your mind focused on other things. > You head west to the Felkan Kingdom You think you’d still rather stick to familiar terrain first, so you decide that you’ll head to the Felkan Kingdom and see what happens from there. Your journey through Quala takes a while, but is fairly uneventful. Same chaos going on that you saw before with various eternal warlords squabbling over the scraps of a fallen regime. You don’t really see it getting better any time sooner. In fact you wonder if overthrowing the Empire made a damn bit of difference at all. In some ways things are even worse. Arat fairs even worse. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of law and order of any kind here. There isn’t even a petty dictator around, its just complete anarchy. The only semblance of order is on the Felkan boarders where the overworked Felakans are busily attempting to keep the riff raff from coming in. Naturally you simply cloak and sneak over. The Felkan Kingdom is something you’ve heard about usually in a negative light from the Empire, but of course like with most things that seems to have been propaganda. The Felkan Kingdom is very different from what you’re used to seeing though. The whole place seems to embrace technology and new ideas more readily than the Empire did. You see many instances of soldiers carrying around the “black powder” weapons you’ve heard about. You stay in the Felkan lands for a while mostly keeping to the more rural parts of it, but the land is currently involved in a war of its own against a race of creatures called Gnolls making those same rural parts fairly dangerous. You have many of your own run ins with them while attempting to make a home here. Eventually you decide to move on and leave Felkan territory. You travel for years to distant lands, never finding a place to call home. In time, Dendrin stops speaking to you altogether and you find that you no longer have any magic ability at all. You see it as a small price to pay for never having to deal with him again. What ultimately happens to you is lost to history.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 35 Despite your best efforts, stirring up more dissent in Delerg seems to be a losing battle. It’s not just the Empire though; it’s the people here in general. Most of them are content on being dominated. Funny how in the “birthplace” of the shadows, that rebellion would be less here. The best you’ve been able to do is organize small groups of society’s misfits, lowlifes and outright psychopaths and they’re just doing it for the shits and giggles for the most part, but whatever works at this point. You and Talia have been very careful about not giving the impression of any shadow activity in the area and that’s a good thing because lately the Empire has been throwing its weight around once more. Almost as if it’s gotten a second wind. And it has. There were always rumors, but you never paid too much attention most of the time mainly because you had so much else going on in your life, but when the announcement of the Empire’s new eternals came about, you had no choice but to pay attention especially since there was a lot more of them, hundreds actually. The first place they sent them was to Rask. Not surprising considering the Empire lost the territory. What wasn’t expected is that the Empire didn’t just send them to conquer the place. They sent them to destroy it. Town after town was completely obliterated by these new eternals and the people no matter how united couldn’t stop them. Some tried to pledge their allegiance to the Empire again, but they were killed like everyone else. Not since the days of Kane had Rask experienced such brutality on a wide scale. After most of the towns had been laid to waste, Fort Defiance was next. In fact this was the main objective in the first place. The rest of it? Just in the way and served to test the viciousness of the new eternals. Perhaps even to scare the remaining shadows still huddled up in that run down fort. “Defiance” was a reminder of an old wound. A loss. A humiliation. The Empire didn’t just lose a fort, or even a whole province; they lost it because of the shadows, the ones who caused all this in the first place. They had to be eliminated once and for all. You heard that the siege didn’t even last three days and Fort Defiance was destroyed along with all the remaining shadows inside. Cyrus himself was found dead with another male shadow (Who you presume was probably Draven) in an embrace. Apparently they had poisoned themselves rather than give the satisfaction to the Empire of killing them. Talia gets a little sad when she hears the news. While she left due to her feelings for you and Cyrus’ incompetence, she was there for five years and still considered them all her brothers and sisters. A loss of any of Dendrin’s faithful is a loss to all who revere him. While you aren’t exactly broken up about it, you certainly aren’t jumping for joy. Now that the Empire has satisfied its blood revenge on what they believed to be the last of the shadows, they’re going to unleash these new eternals on the rest of their provinces in full force too. They’ve already started deploying them in the Quala and Arat province. Delerg can’t be far behind. “While I hate to always be the cynic. Things are looking really damn bleak right about now Talia.” “They’ve been bad before and we’ve still pulled through. Dendrin will preserve us and the Empire will fall.” “Yeah…well…” “Oh come on now my love, don’t tell me you’re starting to lose your faith again.” It’s always so charmingly naïve of Talia to believe that you’re not just faking everything. Still, even while faking it, you can’t help but be a “doubter” sometimes. “Well no…but we’re the last two shadows left Talia. I mean, sure Cyrus was obviously a bad leader and all that, but above all else he was a devoted worshipper of Dendrin along with all the rest. I have to question why Dendrin isn’t doing something more direct to help his own followers now more than ever.” “Cyrus’ actions had obviously offended Dendrin, and he was punished along with all those that followed him. True, I weep for their passing, but they strayed from the teachings. They were no longer fighting the Empire or trying to carry out Dendrin’s will and as a result Rask was ravaged. We on the other hand were smart enough to leave and carry on the fight. For years now we’ve successfully hid ourselves right under the noses of the Empire. I know we’re careful, but we’re not that lucky. Dendrin has obviously clouded the Empire’s collective mindset from believing there are shadows here in Delerg. Your magic is back completely. I’d say Dendrin is looking out for only those that are worthy. When the Empire does finally fall, it will be a new era and it only takes two…” Talia takes your hand and looks into your eyes. “…to recreate the shadows stronger than ever.” While you’re glad Talia’s confidence in victory is so certain, you’re not convinced as usual. Even if Dendrin is helping you both out on some small level like Talia believes he is, he’s going to have to do a hell of a lot more. In the meantime you’re going to prepare yourself for the inevitable new eternal invasion. You begin setting up traps in and around the temple though you imagine the day when they actually get used is probably going to be the day you’re making your last stand. Months pass and you go through your usual routines of opposing the Empire, then that fateful day comes. A platoon of the new eternals arrive in Sinkhole. They aren’t there to destroy it, but they barely act like it. Under the cover of cloak you spy on them for a period of several days, and you see them routinely assaulting people even when there is no real cause for it other than pure sadistic glee. Even their non-eternal commander doesn’t have much control over them. Sometimes when he tells them to stop beating someone, they just look at him like he’ll be next. Whoever trained these eternals obviously didn’t do a good job, it’s like they have no discipline what so ever. That’s when you begin to wonder if the Empire hasn’t put the last nail in their own coffin. These monsters the Empire has unleashed upon the world are going to cause them more problems than they’re going to solve. You can see that even now. Another month passes and more of them arrive in Delerg. You and Talia engage small bands of them during their patrols, and they aren’t slouches in a fight either despite only being teenagers. Naturally when dead eternals start becoming more common, Delerg starts getting the thumbscrews put to it. While all the little villages in Delerg aren’t put to the torch a lot of them are. Sinkhole becomes a staging ground for public executions and worse. Eventually the few that were actually supporting the rebellion are all rounded up and killed. It gets harder and harder to sneak around the swamp ambushing patrols, and you and Talia never seem to get enough rest to recharge up your magic. And today is the day when all this catches up with you both… As you withdraw your sword from a dead foe, you hear the sounds of several bows being drawn behind you as well as above you. Fortunately, whoever is in charge has decided to be an overly dramatic fool and doesn’t attack immediately. You and Talia stand back to back trying to get a bit of a breather before the next assault. A young man appears from behind the archers. He’s obviously one of the new eternals though he’s wearing a captain’s rank, which strikes you as a bit odd. “Give it up shadow scum. Oh yes, we’ve figured out who you really are now. Should’ve known a few of you would’ve been sneaking around somewhere, but that ends now. You’ve exhausted yourselves and your magic won’t help you now. Even if you can outrun the arrows I’ve got eternals all over the swamp right now waiting for you in all directions.” The young captain sneers. “The Empire getting so desperate they’re promoting babies now?” you say. “The Empire is getting better now that we’re around. Our former captain was inferior so he was replaced. Only an eternal is fit to lead other eternals. Of course you two would know nothing about being real eternals having betrayed the Empire after all, but really even if you had stayed loyal, you’d be obsolete now anyway. Time to put an end to your kind in more ways than one.” “You brats talk too much.” You say and you and Talia speed yourselves up to run back into the undergrowth and avoid the arrow barrage to come. You’re successful, but you’re getting really tired really fast. Even Talia is experiencing fatigue. You need to run to safety to get some temporary relief, but chances are if they know about you being shadows, they’ll assume you’ll run straight to Dendrin’s old temple where there might be a larger group of eternals waiting for you. > You run deeper into the swamp You don’t want to risk heading back to the temple, it’s bound to be crawling with new eternals. “Talia, don’t go to the temple! This way!” you exclaim grabbing her arm. “What? We need to go where Dendrin will protect us the most!” “He’s not helping us now! Let’s gnnnt!” While you were standing around arguing you catch two arrows to the back and then another to your side. You’re down and Talia attempts to drag you into cover before cloaking the pair of you. Cloak or not, the arrows continue to be fired in your vicinity, won’t be long before more find their mark or worse the rest of the eternal chasing you catch up. “We need to get out of here and back to the sanctuary now! Can you stand up?” Talia asks. “Probably, but I’m not going to be going too fast all shot full of arrows, and with this pain I’m not sure how long I’m going to be able to upkeep the shadow magic. Look, just go on without me, I’ll figure out something.” “I’m not doing that! I already left you once when you needed help, I’m not doing it again!” “Well this situation isn’t looking good, you realize that right?” “I know.” You and Talia look into each other’s eyes and briefly kiss. You had some good times; your only regret is you won’t have any more with her. The arrows stop as more eternals start swarming the vicinity. While one of them is barking orders to find you, Talia decloaks and cleaves his head in starting the battle off. Despite your limited mobility, you manage to throw some of your attackers off their game by fighting low to the ground. A couple of them go down by your hand, but ultimately there are too many of them and you feel a crushing mace blow to your head followed by a blade to your chest. As your sight begins to fade, you see Talia still giving the eternals a good fight. Hopefully she’ll make it back to the sanctuary like she wanted to in the first place. You won’t.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe you love Talia more than she loves you, or maybe you’re just tired of practically being a loner all the time and at least if you have Talia, you know you’ve got someone on your side. Whatever the reason, you tell Talia that you’re willing to go to Delerg with her. Her reaction is a happy one though she admits she’s a little surprised you agreed as quickly as you did. Later that night you fall asleep wondering how the hell you got yourself into this. Then a numbness washes over you… “So, ready to come back to the fold eh?” you hear Dendrin say. “Hardly.” You reply. “I didn’t think so, but you always continue to intrigue me. I mean here you are supporting a woman that obviously places faith over love. Why would you do such a thing? The Empire’s most fanatical soldiers have faith in their false Emperor and the shadows…what’s left of them still have faith in me yet they have no real proof that their respective masters approve of them or feel anything back. Yet you have proof that Talia’s faith in me is stronger than her love for you and you still stand by her.” “Because I’m an idiot obviously.” “That remains to be seen, but I don’t think so. In fact you’re being clever enough to avoid my question. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Is it possible that you’re heading to into Empire territory in the hope of getting into major battle again? Has been awhile and I know you do enjoy it so.” You don’t answer, you just try to go back to waiting out this “dream”, but Dendrin isn’t letting you. “Passive silence? That’s not your usual tactic with me. You’ve always been a fighter, a warrior! But I’ll take that silence as a sign that I was right.” “Take it however you want, but take it away from me.” “Hmm, not sure if I like this new approach to our talks, but if I had an opinion on your decision, it’s that you’ve made the right one. I think that you’ll find something else in my old temple too. Well now you will since I’ve just mentally transferred the position of a very hidden place in it. Hope the baby situation works out for you, I think fatherhood would suit you, and it’ll give me a new follower! I’ll be watching as usual.” In the next few weeks you and Talia make your preparations to leave Rask. When you tell her that Dendrin spoke to you and placed the image of a stone “button” to reveal a secret part of the temple, Talia is again overjoyed and remarks that this is a good sign that he cares for your well being and merely wants your worship in return. You don’t bother saying what you really think, but instead just nod and tell Talia that perhaps she’s right and that maybe one day your faith in him will be as strong as hers. The journey is a long one, it probably wouldn’t be if you could actually use shadow magic to speed yourself up without passing out anymore, but since you’re not yet a “true believer” again, looks like ol’ Dendrin’s withholding the perks still. Doesn’t seem to bother Talia, she’s very positive during the whole trip. She talks about how you can both make your home in the temple and start your new lives there. She goes on about how you can also put out feelers on how the rebellion situation is going on in Delerg and how maybe you can get it split from the Empire like Rask did. You have to admit you don’t mind that idea. There are a few times on the trip through the Quala province you could’ve avoided combat with Empire patrols, but you deliberately engage them when the time is right. You make an effort to leave no survivors in these attacks; every dead soldier is a blow to the Empire right? Eventually you make it to Delerg and the place is crawling with Empire troops, it looks like they’ve really been trying to clean up around here. You keep a lower profile here and it takes a lot of sneaking around, but eventually you make it to Dendrin’s temple which have several rotten heads on pikes facing the temple along with several rotten bodies (partially eaten by the wildlife and insects) strewn around and even inside the temple. “These are shadows.” Talia says with a touch of sadness in her voice. “I know…even with half her face covered in maggots I recognize that one. Sister Yvette. I always wondered what happened to her after I left her in charge of my cell when I went back to Gloom. (Sigh) I figured it would be something like this.” “Do you think these are all the shadows that we lost contact with south of Rask?” “Most of them I suppose. I guess maybe they had the same idea and made a last stand here where they thought Dendrin would protect them. Looks like…” you stop yourself from saying something completely negative like “he didn’t.” so you think of something slightly less negative and say: “they fought so hard that the Empire tried to make some sort of example out of them.” “We need to take them down off the pikes.” Talia says. “No we need to leave them be, since I’m sure the Empire has patrols come around here, and if they see all the heads suddenly gone, they’re going to correctly assume shadows are around. We need to keep a low profile if we’re going to stick around here remember?” “I…suppose discretion would be best right now.” You and Talia move past the pike heads and enter the temple, which is surprisingly in good condition though signs of battle obviously took place here. You waste no time in seeking out the stone “button” that will open up a secret place in the temple. Eventually you find it (which you doubt you would’ve been able to do if Dendrin hadn’t told you) and descend down. What you find is better than you could’ve hoped for when you first arrived and that’s living quarters for what you presume would be for the old shadow high priests or whatever. It isn’t fancy, but it’s fairly clean. You imagine that this place hasn’t been accessed in centuries. The walls are very solidly made so it doesn’t even look like signs of any natural intrusion have occurred either. There is one “room” that sticks out which isn’t man made and that’s a small natural cavern, which seems to be an underground garden of some sort with a shallow stream of fresh water flowing through it. Blue glowing fungus lights up the place and there are no exits other than the small openings the water is flowing through. With no suspicion whatsoever Talia immediately takes some purple berries off one of the bushes and pops them in her mouth and remarks how good they taste. “Hey those could be poisonous!” you exclaim. “Oh you doubter, Dendrin lead us here! We won’t come to any harm! “I’m being cautious. This cavern is strange; I mean wouldn’t a garden like this have overgrown or decayed without regular care? I imagine the water stream is seeping into the soil and sustaining them, but some of these plants wouldn’t survive without sunlight either.” “It’s obviously magical and don’t you see? Dendrin provides as usual. We now have a good supply have fresh sustenance and water. Why question it, for it is one less thing to worry about! With this place we could easily hide underneath the Empire’s noses and strike from the shadows again.” Talia says. “As long as they don’t call in their Derro buddies again, I agree that this will make a suitable hideout. I suppose you’re probably right about the garden being magical. Sort of odd though, never known Dendrin to be into the whole nature thing.” “Well we cannot hope to know all of a god’s interests and thoughts. As I’ve said, why question it? It is enough that it’s something good and we could use that right now. Now come, we should thank Dendrin for this together.” As you join Talia in thanking Dendrin, you can’t help but wonder if this is all some elaborate plan by Dendrin to actually get you to be a true believer, or if he doesn’t really care if you believe, just as long as you’re going through the motions. Either way, you’ll do this for Talia because that’s who you’re really faithful to. > You talia's Revelation (Year 33) When you first got to Dendrin’s sanctuary (As it came to be called), you basically stayed in your underground paradise a lot, since Talia was still pre-occupied with the idea of you both having a baby during that time. It was actually fun shutting out the world completely for a while. Even the prayers to Dendrin you faked didn’t bother you. As months went by, it was apparent nothing was happening and Talia began to get noticeably upset. She started blaming you, stating that because you had turned from Dendrin he was still punishing you and her by association. Naturally you argued back pointing out that you’ve been praying to Dendrin right along side her and the fact you traveled here should be proof that’s you’re trying to change. It doesn’t help and ultimately she just gets more upset. Weeks pass by where you don’t even speak to each other, and that’s when you tried something voluntarily that you never thought you’d do. You genuinely prayed to Dendrin. Not for yourself, but for Talia. You even bargained with him stating that you’d actually become a true believer if he just granted her prayers. Predictably he never answered. All this caused you to do is get angry and curse him like you have so many times in the past. In the meantime, Talia wasn’t angry with you anymore so much as she had fallen into a depression. With Talia in a depression, you found yourself getting angrier at the situation. At Talia, at Dendrin, at the shadows, at the Empire and at yourself. Naturally you had to get your mind off things and that’s when you remembered what the hell you were there for in the first place. To stir up shit for the Empire here in Delerg again. You began leaving the sanctuary on a regular basis and ambushing Empire troops. Pretty soon you were back to a routine like you were in Rask during your isolated years. Talia never helps you during this time and mostly remains in her depression, but it hardly matters since you’re focused on Empire soldiers. This remains your routine for months. But recently things take an odd turn, namely you feel your shadow magic getting stronger again. You don’t know if was due to the temple or the prayers or Dendrin being a whimsical asshole as usual, but you try to focus on the positive and hope that maybe this will snap Talia out her general sadness as well. “Talia, I know you’ve been feeling down for the past year or so, but I think I’ve got some good news for you. My shadow magic is coming back.” “Really?” “Yes, so I imagine that this means Dendrin must be happy with me and if he’s happy with me, he’s gotta be happy with you right?” You see Talia temporarily smile, but then this drops as quickly as it appears. In fact the expression on her face looks even sadder if that was possible. “What the hell, I would’ve thought that this would’ve snapped you out of this long time depression you’ve been in.” “I wish it did (sob) but instead it only confirms what I think the problem has been all along. (sob).” Talia weeps. “I don’t understand.” “I should’ve told you before…” “What?! What should you have told me?” “You were never the problem, it was me! (sob) I wasn’t good enough! (sob)” “Talia, you need to calm yourself, and explain what you’re going on about.” “Dendrin, he speaks to you. He always has, regardless of your thoughts and beliefs about him he obviously sees the greatness in you. You couldn’t have been problem.” “Are…are you talking about getting pregnant? Talia, you don’t know that. I mean I probably have pissed off Dendrin on some level, and just because I got some of my magic back doesn’t mean he’s going to suddenly…” Talia interrupts you. “No! You don’t understand! I’ve tried this before and it didn’t work! I betrayed our vow! Our bond! And Dendrin is punishing me for not being patient with you!” This revelation causes a dead silence from you. It certainly wasn’t something you were expecting. You feel like you should be angry and you are, but you’ve got more questions first. “Wait so you had sex with someone else? When? It can’t have been recently unless you’ve been sneaking off to Sinkhole while I’ve been killing Empire soldiers.” “No, not recently. It was during the five years we weren’t together. I don’t know what sort of emotions you went through while we were apart, but I went through a lot. Kept them bottled up for the most part, but they were still there. I loved you, but after you left I saw all our future plans disappear. It was devastating. For the first couple of years I held out hope that maybe somehow you’d return, but then I realized you wouldn’t. So I thought I had to move on in my life and alter my future plans with someone else.” “So…what then? You fucked an entire barrack of shadows?” “Please! This is hard enough for me without you being judgmental and hostile!” “You know what Talia, I’m mad, but I guess I’m not really surprised. I mean you placed your faith in Dendrin over me, so why not someone else?” “I did not! Yes it is true that my faith in Dendrin will always be stronger, but I didn’t place my love for you under anyone else. I’ve never loved any other person except you! (sob) And I wasn’t fucking an entire barrack of shadows! I picked ONE. One that seemed strong and fairly intelligent. One that looked like he’d sire a strong child. One I thought might prove to be a suitable father even if he was a poor substitute for you. And I only did that, because I wanted the shadows to start preparing strong stock for the next generation of Dendrin worshippers, because I knew Cyrus wasn’t going to be able to fucking do it!” You rub your hand over your face. It always comes back to Dendrin. Why and how you fell in love with a religious fanatic is a mystery to you, but the fact is you are and despite this revelation, you really can’t stay mad at her. And really for all intents and purposes you weren’t a couple for those five years despite the fact that you might’ve pined over her a couple times. She probably did the same; she just did it in her own way. You almost ask who guy was, but you don’t bother. You probably don’t know him or if you did, you probably don’t remember him since all the shadows you knew from the old days in Gloom are pretty much a blur to you now. Besides it’s not like you’re going to travel all the way to Rask just to satisfy some macho need to kick his teeth in. The poor bastard is still living under Cyrus’ rule anyway, not much more you could do to him, assuming he is still alive in the first place. That just leaves you to deal with Talia, which you aren’t sure what to do. Her sadness and depression isn’t just a result of her perception of betraying you, it’s also her overall perception that she believes she isn’t worthy in Dendrin’s eyes. Personally, you think if Dendrin is even paying attention to this little drama at all he’s probably having a good laugh. Your own view here doesn’t matter, so you do what you’ve been doing. Fake it. “Talia, have you ever considered that maybe Dendrin has decided that now is not the time for you to have children?” you ask. “What do you mean?” she replies sniffling. “Well I mean wartime isn’t exactly the best time to have children. The Empire is still out for our blood and we have to remain alert. Harder to fight if you’re carrying a baby in your belly. You said Dendrin was the one who started the seeds of this rebellion, maybe he wants you…us to help finish it before blessing us with children which we can raise a lot better when we don’t have arrows flying at our heads.” This explanation, this rationale, this excuse causes Talia to reassess her thoughts. You watch her for a moment mentally thinking about how she’s going to fit this into her perception of the world. “Do you really think that’s the reason?” she asks. “I think it could be, but then I don’t presume to know Dendrin’s grand plan.” “Oh no, nobody could… but still it makes sense. Yes, I can see the wisdom in that plan.” “It is a wise plan. So, are you starting to feel a bit better?” “Yes, I suppose so. I really shouldn’t have let myself get like this in the first place. I should’ve had more faith in Dendrin. If I had, I wouldn’t have become weak like this!” “Don’t worry about it now, I’m sure this happened for a reason too. Everything is over and done with and whatever happened in the past is in the past.” This statement seems to be the last one that gets her out of her dark mood. As she hugs you, you breathe a sigh of relief that you managed to convince her. Actually you aren’t really sure if you did convince her, so much as she took your offer of something to support her mental defenses on facing possible reality. This problem might pop up again if you actually succeed in toppling the Empire, but given that you still have a lot to do before that’s a reality, you won’t have to worry about Talia’s self-doubt again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you actually had a little help, you probably would be able to pull off killing him in the fort, but the risks are too great and while you might have a love of battle, you also have a strong sense of self-preservation. So luring Kane out it is. The next day you come up with a plan and your first step is seeking out a lone peasant. It doesn't take long and after you get him to calm down you ask him a few simple questions such as if he has family, where he lives, is he part of the rebellion, etc. Happily he's pretty informed on things being a travelling peddler and all. He ultimately tells you he has no ties to the rebellion, but he's aware of certain villages that he's visited that still have sympathies a lot stronger than they let on. You make a note of where to head to for the third step of your plan. The second step involving killing the peasant and disguising yourself as him, well not as him, but as another wandering merchant. After disposing of his body you set off towards the town of Volgst. You start off by assessing the Empire strength there. It's moderate, but nothing that couldn't be handled. It's obvious the people are just trying to go about their business, but if what the peddler said was correct, this place has just been temporarily cowed into submission due to occupation and closer proximity to Fort Destiny. You decide to head to the local tavern and take in some of the atmosphere. You order a drink sit at a table in the corner and pretend you're just going through some of your inventory. You get a few people asking you about some of the jewelry you have on the table. To you it looks cheap and it probably is, so you don't charge much, just what you think its worth since you aren't here for that anyway. You sit there a few hours and then finally some Empire soldiers come through the door. The tavern gets a bit quieter and that's when you decide to make things louder again. "Hey barkeep! Gimme another ale!" you shout walking up to the bar interrupting the soldiers who were attempting to order their own drinks. "Uh, hold on sir. I just have to serve these gentlemen first." "Oh come on, I was here first and they aren't supposed to be drinking on the job anyway!" At this point one of the soldiers addresses you. "We happen to be off duty right now citizen." "Off duty? When there are rebels running around all over the place? What the hell man? You should be out there killing the sons of bitches, not getting drunk!" "I can assure you we are, and citizen you need to calm down." "Why is it taking so long anyway? Is that captain of yours just sitting on his fat ass in that fort all day while rebels terrorize the area? I thought the Empire was supposed to be doing something about it, but it looks like it's as impotent as ever!" At this point now several bar patrons start to take notice, some try to get you to calm down, others just outright leave. The soldiers to your surprise haven't tried to kill you yet. It's almost like they're trying to diffuse the situation and dismiss you as some loudmouth drunk because all they really want to do is relax after a long day. Oddly enough, you can understand it, unfortunately you can't relax either. You step it up and physically push one of the soldiers. That does it, and the swords come out. You kill two soldiers almost immediately, the third one runs off for help, leaving the fourth one to try to finish you off. He fails miserably when you run your sword through his chest. Three bodies lay at your feet and several patrons are in shock along with a very scarred bartender. "What the fuck did you just do? We're all dead men!" he screams. "You were dead long before I got here. Now if you want to live, you'll help me fight these Empire assholes and get them the hell out of this town." "You dumb fuck, don't you realize they'll just send more troops? The Butcher of Rask himself will probably come here himself and lay waste to the entire town!" "That's what I'm counting on. Now I know this place still has rebellion sympathies, and I'm telling you right now, if you really want to be free of the Empire you'll start helping me rather than hiding…or don't if your conviction is lacking. Either way I'm stepping outside and I'm going to be killing Empire soldiers and I'm not stopping until all of them are fucking dead. Do what you like." You take your leave at this point and face the small platoon of soldiers that is running in your direction. You don't use any shadow magic, just pure skill to put soldier after soldier down. After you've killed about six of them in the open street, some of the citizens actually start growing a backbone and begin to help. A riot ensues and you've accomplished your mission. The remaining soldiers are quickly overwhelmed and those that aren't manage to run off. You could easily catch up with them, but you figure Kane will show up quicker if someone's alive to talk about what happened. While the celebrating is going on, you take the opportunity to slip away before someone holds you up as some sort of hero when you really aren't. This is all just a means to an end to you. Your escape back into the wilderness isn't completely unnoticed though and you draw your weapon again when you sense yourself being followed. "Alright I know somebody is following me…shadowing me even. Might as well come out now so we can get this over with because no cloak is going to help hide you." A lone shadow materializes. To your surprise it's Brother Gannon. He's little older now and a lot more worn looking, almost beaten. He has no intention of trying to kill you. "Did you have to do that? That place was one of the few towns left that was still able to sneak supplies to us! When Kane finds out what happened he's going to destroy the place! We're suffering from a lack of supplies and allies as it is!" he exclaims. "Yeah? Well maybe if Cyrus was taking a more personal hand in this war like I just did, he'd be inspiring more people to follow him more openly. What the hell happened to him? I've been out here on my own for five fucking years and I've seen nothing but Cyrus make mistake after mistake! Pulling back and attempting to lay low? Losing your orc allies? Not reconnecting with the shadows south of Rask?" "Actually we did try to do that, but…(sigh) nevermind you're right it's all gone horribly wrong. Master Cyrus' leadership isn't like Master Ebon's. I mean I know he's the one that's guiding us and speaking to Dendrin personally, but his need for control is so uncompromising sometimes. As much as I hate it, I'm actually glad I got assigned to be this town's liaison, anything to be out of that fort! He keeps saying that Dendrin won't let us lose and that final victory will come, but it seems so bleak now. I'm trying to keep the faith, I'm really trying, but…oh why won't Dendrin just hear our prayers and help us now?" You shake your head and smile at the delusion that continues to plague the shadows. "Why should he? It's more amusing for him to see you all desperately try to squirm out of your hopeless situation." This cynical (yet true) answer is met with a dead silence. Poor Gannon looks so forlorn that he's probably agreeing with you in his head. Gannon might come in useful though so you decide to try to not break his spirit completely. "However, MAYBE Dendrin did answer your prayers, namely in the form of me. I probably just bought you all a little more time." You add. "What? Your big plan to kill Kane? The Butcher of Rask? I heard you down there in the tavern! If Captain Kane even comes he's going to come with a company of elite soldiers not by himself! Besides, Cyrus sent the best shadows against him and he's killed them all! Why do you think you have a chance?" "Simple. I'm an Eternal and if Cyrus remembered that he was instead some Dendrin worshipping fool, we wouldn't be in this situation now." "Yeah? Well Sister Talia is one of you Eternals too, she could've done something as well. I don't see you blaming her." You grab Gannon by his collar before he can react. You stop yourself from killing him, because you know he's just pissed at his lot in life right now. Not to mention he's got a point. "You know what you're right. She could've. It's not really important right now though, what IS important is that we get prepared for Kane's arrival." "We?" "Oh yes. You want to help turn things around, you'll help me." "How?" How is a good question. The easiest way is to have him help you organize the townsfolk so that they can at least put up a good fight against the soldiers while you take care of Kane. The long shot would be to send him back to Fort Destiny to explain your plan and hope he can convince the shadows to come help you. It's a gamble, but maybe Cyrus hates the Empire just a little more than he hates you. > You keep Gannon with you Cyrus isn’t likely to help you no matter what so the most help you’re going to get is Gannon and while that won’t be much it’ll be better than nothing. “Gannon I want you to go back to the town and do what you shadows are supposed to be doing, stirring up the people and getting them organized.” “What? I’m not doing that! When the Empire army arrives with or without Kane, the whole place is going to get leveled anyway!” “Look you either help me now and have a chance to make a difference or return to Cyrus and try to explain why you aren’t at your post. I’m pretty sure he’ll be able to sense if you’re lying given how nervous you constantly are. Now what’s it going to be?” “Oh alright I’ll help, but we’re all dead men anyway!” “Really need to work on that confidence Gannon. Maybe you should pray to Dendrin for some.” And with those words you head back to your campsite to get prepared. You check up on the town the next day and see they’re already starting to barricade the place. Gannon’s even taking a bit of a leadership role. If they’re lucky, you figure they’ll only lose about a half of the town before the battle is over. A couple days later you scout a little further south of Volgst and that’s when you see a large group of soldiers approaching. Several on horseback, many more on foot and unfortunately a single catapult as well. If Kane is actually with them, you’d guess he’d be on horseback, but then you can’t tell at this distance. You find a good elevated spot in some trees and when the mass of troops get in range you do a little sniping with your bow which you’ve gotten a lot better with over these past five years thanks to your need to hunt on a regular basis (And certainly a lot better than your single shot armbow which you practically never use anymore) You fire at the ones on horseback first, you don’t get Kane, but you do find out he’s the one that starts shouting the loudest about getting that sniping sonofabitch. Turns out he was walking the entire time. You try to aim for him, but now the chaos is so great within ranks that he wisely takes advantage of getting lost in the mass. Doesn’t take long before they figure out where it’s coming from and start responding in kind. You immediately dash from your position and retreat deeper into the wilderness. A group of soldiers are sent to look for you though you dispatch them with relative ease as you use the terrain to your advantage. By the time you’re done with the goon squad that was sent after you, the rest of them are hastening their way towards Volgst. You hope Gannon’s done a decent job in rallying the people. When you make it back to the outskirts of Volgst, you see that it’s prepared for a frontal assault. You watch from distance for about a half hour before Kane’s company arrives. He doesn’t bother with any sort of diplomacy and orders the catapult to fire. A rock smashes through the barricades and the make shift wall that was set up in front of the town. They’re wide open for the Empire troops to pour in now, with the Butcher leading the way. You make your way towards town and jump into the battle, which naturally isn’t going well for the citizens of Volgst. When you arrive it gets a little better, but even you can’t stop the carnage and what will probably be the utter destruction of Volgst. You haven’t seen Gannon at all, he’s either dead already or more likely the coward’s run off. Right now though all you’re trying to do is seek out Kane and kill him. And as luck would have it, you bump into him, or rather the pair of you catch sight of each other in the middle of the chaos. He doesn’t dodge you or even make any sort of threatening war cry, he just walks straight towards you and you to him. When he stands before you, he certainly displays the signs of a battle-hardened warrior, but there’s something more to it than just his size, armor and scars. It’s his eyes. Not like a hate filled wrath behind them, but more like he’s experienced something that’s caused the light in them to go out. Almost soulless. “The Butcher of Rask, himself. At last we meet.” You say. “Yes, and you would be the shadow outcast and it will be a pleasure to finally bring you to the Emperor’s justice that you’ve evaded for so long.” “Hmm, guess you better get to it then.” Kane swings his axe, which you dodge and the battle is joined. “You’re weak. You cannot hope to win this battle.” He says preparing for another swing. “Right now, just getting rid of you will be sufficient.” You reply. “You think you can best me? This isn’t Mistress’ class anymore and you’re no Eternal. When I look at you, I see the mockery of what is supposed to be an Eternal. You’re not even a shadow. You are a pariah that has no honor at all. You’re part of the sickness that has infected the Empire. A sickness that will be cut out and purified like all others.” While Kane tells you what he really thinks about you, he’s also matching you in combat skills. To be quite honest you might’ve been a little too over confident in your abilities because he’s really putting you to the test. It doesn’t help that in the midst of this one on one fight you also have to dodge other attacks. You use a little shadow magic to speed yourself up and it helps, but it isn’t nearly as strong as it once was not to mention you feel the drain a lot quicker. You land a couple of good hits on Kane before you have to stop from fatigue. Kane however has no such problems and isn’t slowed at all by his wounds “Is that the extent of your precious shadow magic outcast? No wonder you were kicked out.” Kane says and catches you with a glancing blow across your chest followed by a hefty to your left knee, which causes you to lose balance and fall. You barely roll of the way of his next swing. You stagger back up only to get your sword knocked out of your hand when you attempt to block another of Kane’s axe blows. Becoming desperate you fire your armbow and a bolt flies into Kanes chest. It doesn’t stop him and he charges into you knocking you back onto the ground. He doesn’t follow up with his axe this time, instead he puts all his crushing weight upon your chest by sitting on it and attempting to choke the life out of you with his own hands. “You’re going to die here today, because you believe in nothing and that makes you nothing and when I’m finished choking the life out of your pathetic body I’m going to eat your fucking heart because I can.” Kane at this point pauses with a deranged little smirk. “Heh, maybe one of those wendigo bastards did get to me just a little…” then his face becomes deadly serious again. As you struggle to remain conscious all you can see are the souless eyes of Kane looking down upon you as he intends to make good on his threats. You punch him several times in the face to no avail. You even take out one of his eyes and he’s still not deterred as it dangles uselessly from its bloody socket. You’d probably be a lot more scared if you weren’t teetering on passing out. Eventually darkness envelops you and Kane finishes you off with a brutal snap to your neck. For what it’s worth he doesn’t eat your heart afterwards.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your main purpose of coming here in the first place was to make sure Talia was safe. You can't leave now without trying to find her or at least her body if she's dead. You leave the storage room and decide your best bet would be to keep yourself cloaked the entire time while you search the fortress. You also decide to use spider crawl just to make sure you're really out of sight. As you stick to the ceilings of corridors and rooms you survey the carnage of what the Derro have wrought on the shadows. It's almost like they didn't have a chance. You now have to believe that this was why the Empire wasn't attacking Gloom, they had some sort of deal with the Derro to do it for them and since this used to be a Derro home at one time, they probably knew every ancient secret passage and entire layout of it. You progressively get more and more discouraged in your search and that's when you hear a voice in your head. Not Dendrin's though, it's distinctly a human one. "To…the left and down the hall…hurry…not much time…" you hear Master Ebon say. Lacking any other ideas, you follow his instructions and make your make to his location from where you are. As you do so, you notice there aren't any Derro in this direction, though there are a few dead ones. You're guessing that the rest of their fellows haven't searched this area as much. "The door…at the end…hurry…" Sensing that there are no Derro in the immediate area, you climb down from the ceiling and prepare to enter the door at the end of the corridor. When you arrive in front of it, you hear a loud click as it opens. "Quick, inside!" a brother says pulling you in by the arm roughly. A quick glance and you see a couple more shadows both in wounded condition. You then see Master Ebon in some sort of spell trance. He's also wounded, but his status looks a lot worse. He probably shouldn't even be alive with the deep bleeding gashes he displays across his body. A female shadow stands near him also wounded. When you see her face more clearly and recognize her as Talia, your worries are at least divided by half. "What are you doing here?" she exclaims. "I heard the voice of Dendrin and…" in that moment you realize you've just admitted you've heard his voice for the first time. You then realize this isn't the time to keep it a secret and you continue. "…he…uh gave me a warning… are you alright?" "Just a light wound…wait, you said Dendrin spoke to you? He warned you about the attack?" "Well, not in so many words. Look we need get out of here, I can explain everything later." You then hear Master Ebon's voice again. He still isn't speaking verbally though and is using his mind. "Dendrin spoke to you? Lucky lad. He hasn't spoken to me since I first became a shadow. I always thought he would eventually, but he never did. I assumed he was testing me, to make my own decisions. Perhaps I offended him by claiming those decisions came from him directly, but I didn't know what else to do…" "Master Ebon, we can discuss this later, right now we really need to leave!" "Is Master Ebon speaking to you through his mind?" Talia asks. "Yes, and what's he doing anyway? He's just sitting there with gashes in his chest deep enough for me to see his heart beating and bleeding out. As I said we need to leave before the Derro kill us all." Master Ebon interrupts you. "They've already succeeded in killing me I fear, but I still have powerful magic…enough to save the remainder of you…to carry on the fight…" Master Ebon's eyes begin to turn completely black, this is followed by his entire body. A shimmering portal then opens up nearby. "This…was to take us to strike at the very heart of the Empire…but now just an escape…to friends. Continue the fight there. The Empire will fall as long as you continue to fight. Dendrin I hope you can forgive my failures as I have served to the best of my abilities…I am ready to enter your realm of shadow if you will allow it…" "Master Ebon!" Talia shouts when she sees his body undergo his transformation. "He can't be helped and he's giving us a chance to escape. We need to take it now!" "But where is it going?" the shadow that grabbed you by the arm asks. "He said to friends, but quite frankly it could lead into the middle of an Empire battalion and I think we'd still have better chances! Now come on!" Without another word you all enter the portal. Within seconds your eyes are nearly blinded by the whiteness of snow and you feel a blast of cold air whipping around you. "DIE! Shadow bastard!" you suddenly hear and turn around just in time to avoid a sword strike to the head. Realizing that this is an Empire soldier and not a Derro, you quickly dispatch your assailant who falls turning the snow red. When you said being transported into the middle of an Empire battalion would be a better situation, you didn't actually mean it! Fortunately it isn't quite as bad as all that. Getting your bearings you notice you're on a battlefield. The bodies of several Empire troops lay on the ground and are mixed in with those of orcs and shadows. A great fortress looms in the distance. "Fort Defiance…" you say to yourself. "Brother, we're over here!" one of the shadows calls out to you and you run over to the group. (Apparently, all the others teleported to a place out of immediate danger!) "Are we in Rask?" the shadow who grabbed you asks. You still don't know his name, you can only guess he was one of the newer recruits after you joined. "Well it doesn't look like Delurg that's for sure. I'm guessing that group ahead of us fighting the Empire troops are our brothers and sisters from Fort Defiance." Talia says. "Looks like it, well no time like the present, we need to go help them." "But what about those two? They're badly wounded and can't fight properly." The new shadow asks. "(Sigh) Very well, you, what's your name anyway?" "I'm Brother Gannon. I just joined recently…" "Yes brother, we can get all that getting to know you stuff out of the way later. I want you to take those two and head over to that fort in the distance. I'm sure they can get help there. What about you Talia, I know you're wounded too, do you need any first aid?" Talia draws her weapon. "I'll worry about my minor cuts after we take care of this Empire scum." She answers in a harsh tone. "Okay then let's go down there and drive back the Empire!" you answer back. You and Talia sprint as fast as you can to where all the action is taking place. Swords are clashed, halberds are swung, skulls are smashed and heads are severed. Mostly all in your favor and the Empire troops were actually losing even before you got here. Still, it's good to be on a winning side of a fight today and you feel energized by the battle. A short reunion occurs as you finish off the last of the stubborn Empire soldiers. "What the…? What are you doing here?! I thought you were supposed to be in the Quala province!"Cyrus exclaims running his sword through an enemy. "Things change brother and how have you been doing?" you answer doing the same. "We've been getting wave after wave of Empire skirmishers recently, but nothing serious yet. Honestly I would've thought we would've had a full on assault by now. I think they're trying to whittle us down, it won't work though. We're entrenched and have people all over the area slowly turning the population of Rask against them…is that Talia over there? What's SHE doing here? Last I heard she was supposed to be back in Gloom helping with the ritual that Master Ebon and Brother Gray were doing." "Like I said, things change Cyrus." At this moment there is a lull in the fighting that allows Cyrus to actually stop fighting. He looks at you his expression is one you've never seen before. One of genuine worry. "Oh no…what happened?" You don't even know where to begin. "Cyrus let's just get through this battle and celebrate THIS victory over the Empire. We can dwell on the troubled times to come later." The pair of you say nothing more for the rest of the battle which soon ends with your victory. You just wish it was a better one, because it cannot possibly counteract the incredible loss you have suffered this dark day. You think back on how you told Murk in his dying breaths that the Empire would fall, you also think back to how Master Ebon believed it would fall in his on dying breaths. If you had to guess, you think Talia probably still believes it and you know Cyrus will even when you tell him all that has happened. The righteousness in the shadows' cause and its unwavering faith in Dendrin has always been its strength that it cannot lose no matter how bad the odds. Of course it would help if you actually believed all that nonsense. Which brings you to your next dilemma: You already let it slip to Talia that you spoke to Dendrin and Brother Gannon was also there to hear it (and maybe even the other two wounded shadows heard it as well) , so it'll probably be brought up after everyone is caught up to speed on the war front and what happened at Gloom. The fact that Dendrin spoke to you is actually why you're here in the first place. The question is should you even mention what Dendrin said to you or just lie about what he said? Your own feelings on the situation are that Dendrin, god or not, is not worth following let alone creating a fanatical religion around. He obviously doesn't give a shit about any of you and sees you all as amusing toys at best. However, given the grim situation, the misguided slavish devotion to Dendrin might be the only thing that'll keep their spirits up. Not to mention you wonder if you'd even be believed. Cyrus himself is a very dedicated believer, he may even turn violent and you aren't even sure if Talia would believe you. > You don't address it If this war against the Empire is going to succeed on any level, the unity and upkeep of morale must be there. You’re not going to destroy those things at such a fragile time, even if you do know that Dendrin’s opinion of the shadows hasn’t been high in a long time. Besides, you’ve paid lip service to the lie this long, you can do it a little longer. You have to, no matter how much you don’t like it. After Cyrus catches you up on the situation at Rask, you and Talia tell him what happened at Gloom. Talia fills in the details better since she was actually there. Cyrus seems a little distraught at hearing so many shadows dying never mind losing the shadow home, but he doesn't seem broken in his goals to continue to fight the Empire. "It doesn't matter, we've still got agents in the Quala province and other places. Once we reconnect with the various cells we can regroup. We need to tell the others here though now, the sooner we get this information out the way the quicker they can deal with the loss. The Empire is desperate and we'll overcome whatever else they decide to throw at us because Dendrin will see us to victory." “Indeed he will. I know its why he warned me to go back to Gloom and help who I could there.” You respond. Cyrus looks at you as if he’s unsure of how to take your claim. “Yes, so you mentioned before in how you even knew about Gloom. Are you sure it was Dendrin and just not perhaps some sort of instinct? We are all shadows after all and we do have a bond.” “There can be no mistake, Dendrin spoke to me and warned me in a dream. Even Master Ebon believed me in his final moments.” “It’s true, he did.” Talia says. “Forgive me brother, it’s not that I meant to call you a liar, it’s just I would’ve thought if Gloom was in danger that he would’ve spoken directly to Master Ebon about it or any other shadow at Gloom, like Sister Talia. “I cannot know the will of Dendrin brother, I can only follow the way he guides me.” You answer. Cyrus nods at you answer as if to acknowledge that it satisfies him. “True brother. Well, I suppose maybe this was all part of Dendrin’s great plan. I mean not to speak ill of Master Ebon as he was a great man, but perhaps Dendrin saw that he wasn’t the one to lead the shadows into the next era. Perhaps it was meant to be that a new leader take charge.” “Oh? And who do you think that leader is?” you ask. “I don’t know, but I’m sure Dendrin will pick the next Master when the time is right. In the meantime I think that we three should pick up the leadership slack.” Cyrus answers. “Yes, I agree.” After you agree, Cyrus excuses himself saying that he should break this news to everyone else. When he leaves it gives you and Talia a chance to speak. “Thanks for backing me up, I don’t think Cyrus really believed my claim.” “No problem, but I don’t see why he wouldn’t, I mean it makes perfect sense that Dendrin would warn you about Gloom. As I have often said, we may be shadows and devoted to Dendrin, but we’re also Eternals and are better qualified to lead. Perhaps Cyrus is right and Dendrin sees that as well. I heard Master Ebon when he said Dendrin never spoke to him. It’s obvious that he was never truly meant to lead the shadows.” “Maybe, but personally I’m just glad I got to you in time.” Talia smiles and moves closer to kiss you. With all that’s gone on today, you just enjoy the moment. In the weeks to come, the three of you are taking steps to regroup the shadows and the rebellion in general. Despite some of his earlier claims of reconnecting with shadows south of Rask, Cyrus doesn’t seem to put much effort in to it and focuses his attention mostly on consolidating power in Rask. Cyrus claims that if you get enough support pushing the Empire entirely out of Rask would follow and then you could get so entrenched that the Empire would never be able to take back the province. While that’s a not a bad idea, you believe it would ultimately be folly to only focus on such a plan. The Empire can’t be allowed to mop up the rest of the rebellion in other places. They need to have their attention and forces divided as much as possible. Cyrus of course feels it would be a waste of time to continue supporting the rebellion in other places and would only weaken your position in Rask overall. When Talia points out that it’s not just rebels, but fellow shadows that need help, Cyrus relents a bit, but he still doesn’t seem to eager to send people. So you take it upon yourself to reconnect with the other shadow cells. You tell Talia, that she should stay to help Cyrus since you can easily do it on your own and that Cyrus wants all the help he can get consolidating power in Rask. What you don’t tell her is that you’d like somebody in Rask to keep an eye on things since Cyrus is starting to act a little sketchy. You figure that if Cyrus is up to something, Talia will no doubt inform you. After a few months you manage to make contact with most of the shadow cells and get them regrouped to do the maximum amount of chaos. You were glad to find that Sister Yvette has been leading well in your absence. Her and another shadow cell leader, Brother Theo have joined together and have been doing their best in creating trouble for the Empire. After your new orders and some encouraging words about how Dendrin will still see the shadows to victory, you assign them both to be your “go to” shadows as far as rebellion operations outside of Rask are concerned. In the meantime, Talia has been attempting to fix the allied relationship with the orcs at Rask. The orc leader Captain Gruz still hasn’t been heard from, so it is assumed that he was found out and executed. The orc liaison Flog at this point has declared himself leader and is increasingly feeling underappreciated mainly because Cyrus has been more or less treating the orcs as battle fodder, which is exactly how the Empire was treating them. Not a great idea especially since he’s big on the whole idea of getting enough support to drive the Empire out of Rask. On the outside, Cyrus is supportive and even friendly at times towards you when you’re actually in his presence. Talia says other than what you’ve noticed, he hasn’t acted strange in any way. Cyrus has just been focused on stirring up more dissent in Rask, but you get the strong impression he’s plotting something more. You just don’t exactly know what it is yet, but you imagine you’ll find out eventually. Hopefully it won’t involve killing him because you didn’t fake your devotion to Dendrin just to have the shadows torn apart by a petty power grab. If it wasn’t for Talia, you’d be half tempted to just let it all fall into ruin at this point, but you’ll see this through for now. > … Year 30 “No, I say we take all of our resources and make a forward push on Fort Destiny. We can hit Captain Kane from the north and from the south.” Cyrus says. “And I’m telling you that we can’t do that. Our people aren’t grouped together on the southern Rask border ready to strike, they’re scattered all over the place and that’s how they should remain! I keep telling you this, besides I’ve got a better plan for the shadow cells in the Quala province.” You remark. “Brothers, this yelling isn’t helping.” Talia sighs. Another typical day on the “Shadow Council”, you and Cyrus arguing, with Talia stuck in the middle. You really wish that wasn’t the case, but it is just inevitable that you and Cyrus are going to always disagree on something. You don’t even know why you bother meeting to discuss battle plans nowadays, what usually happens is a bunch of arguing like this and then you both go off and do your own thing. This hasn’t really been a problem in the past mainly because your plans are all outside of Rask, while Cyrus’ plans are always within Rask so they never conflict for the most part. Also, the Empire’s attention was divided due to their war with the Felkan Kingdom. However things have changed. The Empire recently signed a non-agression pact with the Felkan Kingdom meaning they’ve been able to focus a hell of a lot better on the rebellion. You need to do something to swing the tide in your favor before they begin to gather enough momentum to roll right over you. Cyrus’ plan is the one he’s been endorsing for years. Consolidate Rask and drive out the Empire from it completely. As the war has raged on over the years this has been done for the most part. The only thing that really stands in the way are a few of the loyalist border towns and Captain Kane in Fort Destiny. The problem is that’s still a big obstacle to get over and a major assault would result in considerable losses. Cyrus has in the past sent groups of shadows to assassinate Captain Kane, but so far all attempts have failed. Kane’s reputation as the “Butcher of Rask” isn’t just for show and him being a battle hardened Eternal means he’s more than a match even for the average shadow. Cyrus probably would’ve sent more, but Talia convinced him that it was just pointlessly sending shadows to their deaths. You didn’t necessarily think the idea was without promise, but you suggested that an assassination attempt might work if you, Talia and Cyrus actually did it since you feel that you’d have the skill to pull it off, but Cyrus dismissed that idea, claiming that Talia is right and that assassination should be taken off the table. So a major assault it is, of course this is why Cyrus wants you to gather all of your shadow cells outside of Rask and have them attack from the south in a classic pincer maneuver. It would probably work, but you’d still have heavy losses especially those attacking from the south since the Empire could redeploy reinforcements early enough that your forces could be caught in the middle too. You imagine this idea would appeal to Cyrus since then options would be limited to just focusing on Rask and you wouldn’t have any forces at all anymore. You get the impression that when the Empire is finally defeated Cyrus has major plans for Rask given how badly he wants to focus on it. Perhaps he has some long-range goal of starting his own “empire.” However, he’s still short sighted as far as your concerned because even if you went along with his plan, it would just hold off the Empire a few extra years and wouldn’t stop them from taking back Rask given the new information you’ve received from your contacts. The Empire has been breeding new Eternals, the number is unknown, but it’s apparently enough to create an army of them. They’re not “ready” yet, but in a few more years they soon will be and if that happens you might not be able to stop them if the Empire unleashed them on Rask. However, you’ve received the information of where this new Eternal training camp is which is a remote location in the Quala province close to the Arat border. The only other information you have on the place is that the main complex appears to be underground since children. The place doesn’t appear to be heavily guarded up top, but who knows what security is like down below. Considering magic is involved in creating Eternals, it’s a sure bet that there are going to be wizard types about. Your plan is to destroy this place by leading a small group of the most skilled shadows you have. While this is going on, your other cells will strike out at vital areas in the Empire at the same time to keep them from immediately sending out reinforcements to the camp. You actually wouldn’t mind Cyrus to come with you since he is a skilled fighter, but you aren’t even going to ask since you know what his answer will be. Cyrus doesn’t even believe that it’s a top priority and claims that if Rask is liberated then you can attack the camp later since these new Eternals still won’t be battle ready for a while. If you go off and do your own thing, your concern is that Cyrus is going to do the same thing and get everyone under his command killed in his attempt to take Fort Destiny. Of course if you help him you’re left with the same problem that it’s very probable that your shadow cells are going to get hit pretty hard during the assault on Fort Destiny and Cyrus won’t actually lend any help when you want to destroy the new Eternal camp. There’s also the issue that you’re trying to maintain the unity as always. Cyrus is really pushing for this assault on Fort Destiny and doing your own thing this time might be the “last straw” and the last thing you need is to do is start a shadow civil war. After a lot more arguing, everyone decides to call it a day and make a decision tomorrow. Talia as always says she’ll side with whatever you decide, but would prefer if you and Cyrus actually worked together for once. That doesn’t exactly help you and you have a hard time sleeping. When you finally do get to sleep you still don’t get any rest… “So what are you going to do Eternal? You and Cyrus continue to clash and it’s only a matter of time before things between you are going to end badly.” Dendrin remarks. “Doesn’t take a god to figure that one out.” You say. “Yes, but it takes a fool to blatantly ignore the obvious. By continuing to not support Cyrus’ you’re just driving a wedge deeper in the shadow organization that will eventually split you in two. Something I thought you were trying to avoid given that you made such an effort to keep it together.” “Well someone had to, because you certainly weren’t doing it.” “I’m not here to hold the collective hands of the shadows. As I’ve said, I’ve done that already and it was a boring experience. Besides you seem to be enjoying your new leadership role, who am I to take it away from you?” “I’m not leader of the shadows, I’m….” “Nonsense! You ARE leader of the shadows. Perhaps you’re currently sharing that duty with your Eternal peers, but you’re clearly the strongest of that group. Talia certainly has potential, but her blind devotion to certain things is her weakness. It clouds her judgement.” “So she’s not worthy because she’s so loyal to you?” “Not just me, but to you as well. It doesn’t occur to her in the slightest that you’re keeping secrets or lying to her about your real feelings on the shadows. She just believes you, just like she misguidedly believes that one day she’ll have eternal shadow babies with you.” “Wait, she can’t have kids?” “No and neither can you. Neither can Cyrus for that matter, though I doubt it that’s ever going to come up with him. Don’t ask me why you can’t, I don’t know. I can only imagine it has something to do with how they magically altered you Eternals back in the labs. I’m not a fertility god either, so her constant praying to me isn’t going to help.” This sudden news does explain a few things. You’re going to have to inform Talia of this at some point, you just don’t know when would be the best time. Yet another thing for you worry about. Dendrin continues his speech “And for all of Cyrus’ bluster of being a shadow he obviously lacks as a good leader. I dare say if you weren’t around, the Empire would be on the verge of driving the shadows to extinction right now. He may be better liked than you, but even that’s starting to change and it certainly doesn’t hold true for any shadow not stationed in your little fort. You’ve got allies and support in places other than Rask, Cyrus doesn’t and it worries him. After all it’s well known now that you were the one that heard my warning about Gloom and attempted to save who you could.” “You didn’t warn me, you gave a cryptic comment and it wasn’t even one that urged me to return to Gloom. I just told everyone you did.” “See, lying to the rest of the shadows about something I didn’t actually say. You’re already doing a great job of following the traditions of shadow leaders!” Dendrin laughs. Is Dendrin mocking you, is he encouraging you, is it both? You can never quite tell. “So what are you saying? Are you officially appointing me as the new leader of the shadows?” “Official? Since when have you known me to be so formal? And I’m not appointing you as anything; you don’t even have faith in me anyway, but if you really want to be in charge just do it already. I’d be careful though, that Cyrus fellow might get the same idea someday soon and I suppose you’ll need to decide if the expense of your own ambition is worth keeping the shadows together.” Once again after Dendrin’s little mind games you wake up. Whether Dendrin’s encouraging you or not, you’re going through with you plan and if that hurts Cyrus’ fragile ego then you’ll deal with it later, because the Empire is still a bigger threat right now. The next day you tell Talia that you’re going through with your plan. “I figured you would, but you know Brother Cyrus isn’t going to be happy about this.” “Brother Cyrus needs to realize that Rask isn’t only front we’re fighting the Empire on and get over it.” “Yes, I know. (Sigh) Well I’ll try to keep things stable here while you’re gone. Hopefully I can convince him that now is not a good time to assault Fort Destiny.” “No, I’d rather you join me on this mission. I could use all the powerful shadows I can get, because I’m certainly not going to be able to get any other shadows to join me from here.” “You want me to go? I mean of course I’ll go with you, but aren’t you worried about what might happen here if I don’t stay to help look after things?” While Talia would certainly be a great asset to your mission, but she also serves as a bit of a counter balance to Cyrus when you’re not around. > You have Talia go with you As much as it might be wise to have Talia keep Cyrus in check, you’d rather her come with you on this mission, as you’ll need all the skilled help you can get. Talia’s shadow magic is certainly more powerful than your own, even though you’ve found in recent years that yours isn’t weak as it once was. When the pair of you confront Cyrus, he’s predictably furious claiming that the pair of you are wasting time and not following Dendrin’s plan like you should be. He goes on about how the attack on Fort Destiny should take top priority. You don’t bother arguing, it’s all been said before and if he wants to do anything about it, then he can try to stop you. He doesn’t of course, but there’s definitely a hostile glare as you leave. “You think he’ll go ahead with his attack anyway?” Talia asks. “If he does, I can only hope he’s as determined to drive the Empire out of Rask like he seems to be because that raw desire might just win him through the day. Anyway we’ll deal with it after this mission.” Talia and you travel a couple of days to the Quala province and eventually reach the meeting spot at night. There await around twenty shadows you picked which also includes Sister Yvette. You would’ve picked Brother Theo as well, but you needed someone to coordinate the other shadow cells in Quala. “As soon as I got the message that you were coming, our other shadow cells got into position to strike out at the other targets across Quala. I assume you’re ready to assault the camp brother?” Sister Yvette asks nearly as soon as you arrive. “Yes, let’s get this over with, because this is going to be pretty grim business. Now I know some of you have already done a few necessary things, but probably not on this scale. These new eternals are only going to be children, and if the rumors are true, hundreds of them. Despite this they will still be dangerous, as they have no doubt gone through some of the Empire’s brainwashing techniques and training. You are not to hesitate just because they are young. Slay all of them…for Dendrin.” You add at the end. “For Dendrin!” the rest of the shadows say in unison. “Also be aware that there will no doubt be battle mages around and who knows what else. Let’s try to do this as silently as possible until it’s no longer an option. Everybody cloak.” Sister Yvette and couple of the other shadows take the lead due to their basic knowledge of the outside of the camp and even some of the interior. When you have to go below ground though, it’s going to be anything goes. You know going in that you’ll be severely outnumbered, but the whole point of doing it this way is to utilize your strengths which is stealth and terror on a grand scale. Something Cyrus doesn’t really get despite his dedication to Dendrin. Neck snaps, bolts to the head and blades to the back dispatch the patrolling soldiers quietly and quickly. You then move from bunkhouse to bunkhouse slitting the throats of the sleeping soldiers inside. With everyone up top dead, it’s time to descend into the underground. “I’ll take the lead for this.” You remark. “Everyone remember, we’ve got a lot of killing tonight, there’s A LOT of these new eternals. Try not to speed yourself up unless it’s necessary. You don’t want to exhaust yourself prematurely. In fact save the magic for just cloaking if possible, we’re still going to try this the stealthy way.” You make your way through the underground complex, which is very well made. In fact the solid stonewalls remind you of Gloom…and that might not be a good thing. “Where do you think they’re keeping these new eternals?” Talia asks. “I don’t know, they have to be around though. I mean I’m a little surprised that they’d all be asleep. As I remember our training we didn’t get much of that and were even woken up in the middle of the night to perform tasks.” You reply. “True, I can still remember Mistress’ domineering voice commanding that we all wake up followed by a whip crack…maybe she’s not in charge anymore?” “I hope she is, I’d like to repay that bitch while we’re here.” You remark. “You don’t think they moved everyone out do you?” Talia asks. “We’ve been watching this place for a few months now and just yesterday I saw a large group of those new eternals training up top. I don’t see how they could’ve moved them all so quickly without us noticing.” Yvette answers “We are underground, who knows maybe they’ve got escape tunnels. (Sigh) Shit, I really hope that isn’t the case, because I’m already concerned with the architecture of this place.” You say. “What do you mean?” “The walls, the archways, doesn’t it look a little familiar? Like Gloom right? And who originally made Gloom?” “…the Derro.” Talia says. “Exactly and while I was expecting battle mages or elite guards, I wasn’t expecting those little armored juggernauts on legs. Okay fine, we’ll deal with it, we just need to decide on what to do next.” Your comment is met with silence, mainly because everyone figures that you’re the one to come up with the plan on what to do next. “Everyone stay here, Talia and I will scout ahead a little bit then come back with a plan.” You say. You and Talia continue down one of the corridors hoping to find something, almost anything really and that’s when you finally stumble upon an argument between a derro and a mage at the far end of the corridor. The pair of them don’t sense either of you, but there’s no reason to be foolish, you and Talia quickly get out of their possible line of sight and you listen for a moment. “When the hell are you dwarves going to start harvesting those trolls? I want to get on with the enchantment process!” a disheveled looking mage with a scraggly beard says. “When Marik’s done brewing the last batch of regeneration serum. No point in doing it until then and I’d remind you to watch your words with me wizard.” A short figure in heavy armor remarks in a very deep tone. This is the first you’ve ever heard a derro speak common before, you don’t know if that’s his voice or his armor causing it to sound like that. “Watch my words? I’ll do as I please! I don’t even want to be here with you rock eaters! Your boss is a mad man that barely knows what he’s doing. I swear we were better off with svelk mercenaries as trainers.” “I’m not surprised you would praise such a decadent race as your own race is decadent as well. You are lucky to even have us as allies due to a pact, now I suggest you go back to your quarters where the rest of your kind may play with your magic lights until you’re called upon to actually do something useful for a change. Do not speak with us again until such time.” The wizard nearly says something, but decides not to and storms off in one direction while the derro warrior walks off in the other. “Well if that’s any indication we know where the wizards are and we know where the derro are.” Talia says. “Yeah, but where the hell are the eternals?” “Perhaps we’ll find them after we dispatch those two groups first?” “I sure hope so.” “We probably should split up the group and tackle them at the same time, because I’m sure we won’t remain stealthy for too long while fighting either group and we certainly don’t want the other to come running and attack us from behind when they hear the sounds of battle.” As far as you can tell magic isn’t all that effective on the derro and while Talia’s an excellent fighter, her superior magic skills would probably be more effective eliminating the mages. You tell her that you’ll take on the derro and to go get the rest of the group. After retrieving the rest of the group, you and Talia part company. Yvette goes off with Talia as well. You’re confident that they’ll easily succeed in their task, you’re a little more concerned with how you’re going to accomplish yours though especially if it turns out to be a lot of derro. Your groups heads off in the direction that you saw the derro walking towards. Doesn’t take long for you to start seeing a few of them milling about in the hallways and side rooms. None of the shadows in your group have ever faced the derro before, they’ve just heard the stories of how they destroyed Gloom. Naturally they want revenge. “We’re not attacking them yet. We’ll find a better way… Dendrin always provides a better way.” You say which calms them down. You can’t believe how effectively either. It’s a little unsettling to control a group with just the mere mention of a name, but that’s how shadow masters have been doing it for centuries you suppose. Your group takes to spider walking on the ceilings to avoid the derro, It worked back in Gloom and it works here too. As you creep through, you can hear rumbling and monstrous growling followed by shouting in the derro’s language. You follow sound and eventually you reach a large lab area filled with contraptions, a lot of alchemy equipment and several metal boxes of what you would guess to contain very angry trolls. From their growling they sound as horrible as the stories you’ve heard. You’ve also heard how strong they were too; whatever the derro got them locked up in must be some very strong material because you can see several punch marks even from this distance. Several derro warriors stand near the boxes with weapons ready, a few more are standing guard at strategic areas. In the center of all this is another small figure, but this one isn’t armored. He’s bald with a gray skin color and dressed in a white robe of some sort, which is covered in blood, and several other unidentifiable fluids. He’s frantically going back and forth to several tables with mutilated bodies on them, waving a sharp knife in his hand all the while yelling in his language. You’re guessing that’s what one of these derro really looks like. Certainly less impressive. You have no idea what exactly is going on here and what it has to do with the new eternals, but you need to attack the derro fast before Talia attacks the mages and causes enough noise for some of the derro to investigate it. You suppose you and the rest could just drop down from the ceiling in a surprise attack, speed yourself up and hope for the best, but circumstances have given you something else to work with. It’s a simple magic trick that most shadows take for granted, in fact most never really appreciate its uses and that spell is one that unlocks regular locks which the derro have seen fit to use on the boxes they’re holding the trolls in. If you did that, you could unleash the trolls on the derro, of course the problem with that plan is you’ve never faced trolls before and they could be ten times worse than the derro. Not to mention you’d have to deal with both groups. > You drop down for a sneak attack Not wishing to add a third unknown element to the fray you decide to just deal with the derro. You signal to your group to speed yourselves up and jump down for the attack. The derro are surprised at first and due to your unnatural speed, your group actually manages to bring a couple down due to ganging up on them. The problem is you’re outnumbered and despite your speed, your weapons are largely still not very effective on them in one on one combat. It doesn’t help that the derro begin to haphazardly lob their firebomb weapons in order to stop the shadows from zipping around all over the place. It’s sloppy, but effective as you see several of your fellows get caught in the blasts. The derro on the other hand are mostly protected by their heavy armor. You see the unarmored derro run away to a locked door on the far side of the room, and just when he manages to open it; you shoot him in the back with your armbow, which causes him to collapse to the floor. You don’t know where he’s trying to go, but he’s not getting far. Unfortunately neither are you as a firebomb lands right near your feet and explodes. You feel the impact and the burning as you go flying in the air. Your death comes quickly when your burning body lands wrong and breaks your neck.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as it might be wise to have Talia keep Cyrus in check, you’d rather her come with you on this mission, as you’ll need all the skilled help you can get. Talia’s shadow magic is certainly more powerful than your own, even though you’ve found in recent years that yours isn’t weak as it once was. When the pair of you confront Cyrus, he’s predictably furious claiming that the pair of you are wasting time and not following Dendrin’s plan like you should be. He goes on about how the attack on Fort Destiny should take top priority. You don’t bother arguing, it’s all been said before and if he wants to do anything about it, then he can try to stop you. He doesn’t of course, but there’s definitely a hostile glare as you leave. “You think he’ll go ahead with his attack anyway?” Talia asks. “If he does, I can only hope he’s as determined to drive the Empire out of Rask like he seems to be because that raw desire might just win him through the day. Anyway we’ll deal with it after this mission.” Talia and you travel a couple of days to the Quala province and eventually reach the meeting spot at night. There await around twenty shadows you picked which also includes Sister Yvette. You would’ve picked Brother Theo as well, but you needed someone to coordinate the other shadow cells in Quala. “As soon as I got the message that you were coming, our other shadow cells got into position to strike out at the other targets across Quala. I assume you’re ready to assault the camp brother?” Sister Yvette asks nearly as soon as you arrive. “Yes, let’s get this over with, because this is going to be pretty grim business. Now I know some of you have already done a few necessary things, but probably not on this scale. These new eternals are only going to be children, and if the rumors are true, hundreds of them. Despite this they will still be dangerous, as they have no doubt gone through some of the Empire’s brainwashing techniques and training. You are not to hesitate just because they are young. Slay all of them…for Dendrin.” You add at the end. “For Dendrin!” the rest of the shadows say in unison. “Also be aware that there will no doubt be battle mages around and who knows what else. Let’s try to do this as silently as possible until it’s no longer an option. Everybody cloak.” Sister Yvette and couple of the other shadows take the lead due to their basic knowledge of the outside of the camp and even some of the interior. When you have to go below ground though, it’s going to be anything goes. You know going in that you’ll be severely outnumbered, but the whole point of doing it this way is to utilize your strengths which is stealth and terror on a grand scale. Something Cyrus doesn’t really get despite his dedication to Dendrin. Neck snaps, bolts to the head and blades to the back dispatch the patrolling soldiers quietly and quickly. You then move from bunkhouse to bunkhouse slitting the throats of the sleeping soldiers inside. With everyone up top dead, it’s time to descend into the underground. “I’ll take the lead for this.” You remark. “Everyone remember, we’ve got a lot of killing tonight, there’s A LOT of these new eternals. Try not to speed yourself up unless it’s necessary. You don’t want to exhaust yourself prematurely. In fact save the magic for just cloaking if possible, we’re still going to try this the stealthy way.” You make your way through the underground complex, which is very well made. In fact the solid stonewalls remind you of Gloom…and that might not be a good thing. “Where do you think they’re keeping these new eternals?” Talia asks. “I don’t know, they have to be around though. I mean I’m a little surprised that they’d all be asleep. As I remember our training we didn’t get much of that and were even woken up in the middle of the night to perform tasks.” You reply. “True, I can still remember Mistress’ domineering voice commanding that we all wake up followed by a whip crack…maybe she’s not in charge anymore?” “I hope she is, I’d like to repay that bitch while we’re here.” You remark. “You don’t think they moved everyone out do you?” Talia asks. “We’ve been watching this place for a few months now and just yesterday I saw a large group of those new eternals training up top. I don’t see how they could’ve moved them all so quickly without us noticing.” Yvette answers “We are underground, who knows maybe they’ve got escape tunnels. (Sigh) Shit, I really hope that isn’t the case, because I’m already concerned with the architecture of this place.” You say. “What do you mean?” “The walls, the archways, doesn’t it look a little familiar? Like Gloom right? And who originally made Gloom?” “…the Derro.” Talia says. “Exactly and while I was expecting battle mages or elite guards, I wasn’t expecting those little armored juggernauts on legs. Okay fine, we’ll deal with it, we just need to decide on what to do next.” Your comment is met with silence, mainly because everyone figures that you’re the one to come up with the plan on what to do next. “Everyone stay here, Talia and I will scout ahead a little bit then come back with a plan.” You say. You and Talia continue down one of the corridors hoping to find something, almost anything really and that’s when you finally stumble upon an argument between a derro and a mage at the far end of the corridor. The pair of them don’t sense either of you, but there’s no reason to be foolish, you and Talia quickly get out of their possible line of sight and you listen for a moment. “When the hell are you dwarves going to start harvesting those trolls? I want to get on with the enchantment process!” a disheveled looking mage with a scraggly beard says. “When Marik’s done brewing the last batch of regeneration serum. No point in doing it until then and I’d remind you to watch your words with me wizard.” A short figure in heavy armor remarks in a very deep tone. This is the first you’ve ever heard a derro speak common before, you don’t know if that’s his voice or his armor causing it to sound like that. “Watch my words? I’ll do as I please! I don’t even want to be here with you rock eaters! Your boss is a mad man that barely knows what he’s doing. I swear we were better off with svelk mercenaries as trainers.” “I’m not surprised you would praise such a decadent race as your own race is decadent as well. You are lucky to even have us as allies due to a pact, now I suggest you go back to your quarters where the rest of your kind may play with your magic lights until you’re called upon to actually do something useful for a change. Do not speak with us again until such time.” The wizard nearly says something, but decides not to and storms off in one direction while the derro warrior walks off in the other. “Well if that’s any indication we know where the wizards are and we know where the derro are.” Talia says. “Yeah, but where the hell are the eternals?” “Perhaps we’ll find them after we dispatch those two groups first?” “I sure hope so.” “We probably should split up the group and tackle them at the same time, because I’m sure we won’t remain stealthy for too long while fighting either group and we certainly don’t want the other to come running and attack us from behind when they hear the sounds of battle.” As far as you can tell magic isn’t all that effective on the derro and while Talia’s an excellent fighter, her superior magic skills would probably be more effective eliminating the mages. You tell her that you’ll take on the derro and to go get the rest of the group. After retrieving the rest of the group, you and Talia part company. Yvette goes off with Talia as well. You’re confident that they’ll easily succeed in their task, you’re a little more concerned with how you’re going to accomplish yours though especially if it turns out to be a lot of derro. Your groups heads off in the direction that you saw the derro walking towards. Doesn’t take long for you to start seeing a few of them milling about in the hallways and side rooms. None of the shadows in your group have ever faced the derro before, they’ve just heard the stories of how they destroyed Gloom. Naturally they want revenge. “We’re not attacking them yet. We’ll find a better way… Dendrin always provides a better way.” You say which calms them down. You can’t believe how effectively either. It’s a little unsettling to control a group with just the mere mention of a name, but that’s how shadow masters have been doing it for centuries you suppose. Your group takes to spider walking on the ceilings to avoid the derro, It worked back in Gloom and it works here too. As you creep through, you can hear rumbling and monstrous growling followed by shouting in the derro’s language. You follow sound and eventually you reach a large lab area filled with contraptions, a lot of alchemy equipment and several metal boxes of what you would guess to contain very angry trolls. From their growling they sound as horrible as the stories you’ve heard. You’ve also heard how strong they were too; whatever the derro got them locked up in must be some very strong material because you can see several punch marks even from this distance. Several derro warriors stand near the boxes with weapons ready, a few more are standing guard at strategic areas. In the center of all this is another small figure, but this one isn’t armored. He’s bald with a gray skin color and dressed in a white robe of some sort, which is covered in blood, and several other unidentifiable fluids. He’s frantically going back and forth to several tables with mutilated bodies on them, waving a sharp knife in his hand all the while yelling in his language. You’re guessing that’s what one of these derro really looks like. Certainly less impressive. You have no idea what exactly is going on here and what it has to do with the new eternals, but you need to attack the derro fast before Talia attacks the mages and causes enough noise for some of the derro to investigate it. You suppose you and the rest could just drop down from the ceiling in a surprise attack, speed yourself up and hope for the best, but circumstances have given you something else to work with. It’s a simple magic trick that most shadows take for granted, in fact most never really appreciate its uses and that spell is one that unlocks regular locks which the derro have seen fit to use on the boxes they’re holding the trolls in. If you did that, you could unleash the trolls on the derro, of course the problem with that plan is you’ve never faced trolls before and they could be ten times worse than the derro. Not to mention you’d have to deal with both groups. > You unlock the boxes You all move close enough so you’re above the boxes and then with a brief whisper, every lock on the troll boxes clicks. And then all the box doors are suddenly torn open. “TROLLS! TROLLS! TROLLS!” is all you can make out from the derro who are now shouting rushing into the lab to combat the trolls now emerging from their prisons. Their appearance is indeed as fearsome as you heard in stories. Tall with long gangly limbs and blackish green skin. You sort of expected them to be more massive much like an ogre, but there isn’t an ounce of fat on them, and even though they’re relatively thin they’re all solid muscle. They definitely look hungry though with their large teeth though. The trolls also prove to be a lot quicker than you expected as well. You watch them leap and dodge the derro attacks, which look slow and clumsy by comparison. You see a troll smash a derro to the floor with one punch, leap on top of him and easily peel off his armor with its talons. A scream soon follows when the troll eviscerates him. Several more derro begin lighting some sort of round metal objects and toss them at some of the trolls. These devices explode into flames and seem to hurt the trolls who howl in pain, but continue to attack while still on fire. The unarmored derro tosses a few glass beakers at the trolls too. You assume it must be some sort of acid given how it starts to eat away at a troll’s skin when it hits. As you and the rest of the shadows stay cloaked on the ceiling watching this carnage unfold, you’re unsure of whom to start attacking because you can’t let either group completely dominate the other. There are more derro, but the trolls are very tough and are putting up more than enough of a fight. You see the unarmored derro run away to a locked door on the far side of the room, and just when he manages to open it; you shoot him in the back with your armbow, which causes him to collapse to the floor. You don’t know where he’s trying to go, but he’s not getting far. “SHADOWS!” one of the derro shouts as you all decloak to join the fight. For the most part you all keep your distance when you can from the trolls and attempt to finish off any severely wounded derro. “Kill everything!” you shout and make your way to the staggering unarmored derro to finish him off. He fumbles with some sort of strange weapon he takes out of his pocket, but you kick it from his hand and smash him in the face with the pommel of your sword. “Shadows! You narrow minded religious fanatics dare desecrate the progress of science? Your actions will not go unpunished here toAGH!” the unarmored derro is cut short on his dying monologue with your blade to his chest. You look around and see that most of the derro have been literally shredded open by the trolls who have focused most of their attention on them, but they’ve started to pay more attention to the shadows now that the derro numbers have dwindled. Speeding yourselves up at least manages to match their own swiftness, but they’re still no pushovers as you find out when you’re locked into one on one combat with one of the trolls. Being this close to the creature, you get the full force of its horrible odor and that combined with the smell of its still burnt flesh are almost enough to put you off your fight. You haven’t smelled something so bad in…well ever. You do manage to overcome though only after nearly hacking off its leg long enough for you to realize that the derro were using fire and acid on the trolls for a reason. Troll may not instantly regenerate, but you need to stop it before you give them time to do so. As the troll continues to rapidly crawl after you on three limbs, you grab one of those firebombs from a dead derro and light it with a near by torch. You narrowly avoid the explosion when you toss it at the troll who is successfully blown to pieces. “Really hope those pieces don’t reform into little trolls.” You mutter. The remainder of the battle involves much of the same tactics, though some of your shadows aren’t quite as skilled as you are and fall in combat. Fortunately reinforcements come in the form of Talia and Yvette and with their help you finally finish off the remainder of the trolls and whatever derro that are still attempting to cling to life. “Were those things actual trolls?” Yvette asks. “Yep and if they weren’t such savage monsters I’d be thanking them for killing most of the derro for us. Are you two the only ones left?” “No, but only Brother Haze besides us made it and he’s currently tending to his wounds. He would’ve been in no condition to help fight the trolls and derro. The fight with the mages wasn’t an easy one.” Talia says. “I’ll bet, but I never had any doubt that you wouldn’t be victorious. Did you see any sign of any new eternals?” “No, the mages’ quarters didn’t seem to house any of them and there weren’t any other bedrooms in that direction either. I saw some training facilities and a large library, but nothing more. What about over here?” “Well other than this big lab, we haven’t seen anything of any note either. We passed a lot of derro bedrooms a long the way, but that’s about it.” “What about that door?” Yvette asks pointing over to the one where the unarmored derro lies dead. “I don’t know where that one goes to. That derro certainly was in a rush to escape out that way though. Guess we all might as well check it out.” You quickly take a head count and altogether there’s six of you left, seven if you count Haze who isn’t even with you. If this door leads to the hundreds of young eternals, you question if you’ll even be able to kill them all before they can overwhelm you. When you open it up you find yourself on a platformed level, which overlooks a huge room. It’s nearly the size of a small hamlet you think. There are several ladders that descend down to the lower level which contain translucent containers all hooked up with tubing and connected with each other and large strange machines. When you climb down the ladder you inspect the containers more closely and make out a small figure floating in liquid within it. There are hundreds of these containers, possible even a thousand. “I think we just found the new eternals.” You say. “Wait, are they in those tanks?” Talia asks. “I believe so. Looks like the Empire has a whole new way of breeding Eternals or at least altering them. I assume they take them out to train them and then pop ‘em back in when they aren’t needed. Pretty convenient I suppose.” “This…this all seems wrong somehow. Against nature. We should destroy this place as soon as possible. Those derro weapons you were using on the trolls were explosive, if we could find more we use some of them to collapse this place.” Yvette says. “Or maybe there’s a some sort of switch that kills them in the tank. Seems like the Empire would be inclined to implement something like that.” Talia adds. Normally you’d be all for killing all these little bastards while still lying in their “cribs”, but it suddenly hits you that you might have an opportunity here. You didn’t think about it before, because you thought you were going to have to fight these little runts in the corridors of this place. However circumstances have definitely changed. Maybe you could get them to be on YOUR side. Why not? They’re young enough that they could probably take re-indoctrination. Problem is, it still might take a lot of time and while this was a great blow to the Empire, it doesn’t put them out of the fight yet. They may eventually find out what’s happened and come back for this place and you’re not really in a position to defend it. > You kill the new eternals It’s a good idea, but probably impractical and you don’t have the luxury of being impractical at this time. You’d have to retrain them and everything. No, better to just kill them and get this mission over with. You and the rest of the shadows search for more derro explosives and find a whole room filled with them. You take your time setting up them up in areas, though quite honestly you don’t really know what you’re doing. Yvette seems to have a little better grasp on them for some reason, but even she’s just guessing since she’s never worked with such weaponry before. Talia tries to find some sort of “kill switch” as a safer alternative, but fails to do so. When you think you’re prepared, you tell everyone else to leave the complex and you’ll light the extended fuse. You assure Talia that you’ll be all right since you’ll just speed yourself up. Sister Yvette interrupts you however saying that she’ll volunteer to light the fuse since she feels that if anything does go wrong, it would be a greater loss to the shadows if you died instead. You ask Yvette if she really wants to take the risk and she assures you that risking her life to save a brother isn’t a risk, it’s an honor to all that serve Dendrin. “Well…I can’t argue with that I suppose. Okay, but I’m sure we’re all worrying over nothing.” “You’re probably right brother, but just in case we aren’t, I was honored to serve beside you brother.” Sister Yvette says. You and the rest of the shadows leave the complex as fast as you can and put a good deal of distance away from the camp before you hear a very large explosion. You turn around and see the entire camp sink into itself. You’re guessing it worked. “Does anyone see Sister Yvette?” you ask looking for a figure running in the distance. “No, but let’s wait a bit.” “Yes well we can’t wait too long, that explosion was loud enough to alert someone. Won’t be long before the Empire sends troops here.” You wait a few minutes, but Yvette still hasn’t shown up. Thinking that maybe she’s hurt, you insist on going back to the camp to search for her. There isn’t much left of the camp when you see the destruction caused by the blast. You all look around the wreckage, but you find no trace of her body. You get angry.” “Fuck! She surely had enough time to get out of the blast! I mean that’s what our speed spell is for isn’t it?!” you shout. “It is regrettable, but this mission was filled with danger right from the start and she died for a reason. That could’ve been you.” Talia says. “Yes, but…(Sigh) I dunno. If she had fallen in battle that would’ve been one thing, but to die like this after we already achieved victory? She deserved better.” You says. “Well, I’m sure she’s in a better place with Dendrin now as she has served him well.” “Yeah…” you mutter, severely holding back on what you really think about Dendrin. “Come on let’s get out of here before any Empire soldiers show up.” Before heading back to Rask you tell Brother Theo about the new changes. Fortunately he’s still alive, when you check to see how those other shadow cell attack turned out. Reports have started to come in about the attack on the camp, which isn’t too surprising despite all the chaos going on elsewhere that brother Theo caused. He is saddened to hear of sister Yvette’s death and says she was very instrumental in helping him coordinate the shadow cells, but he’ll make do. Eventually you make your way back to Rask which you’re happy to find out Cyrus was smart enough to not risk attacking Fort Destiny. Unfortunately he caused a different set back entirely. Talia was about the only one keeping the Flog and the rest of his orcs on good terms. You rarely interacted with him and he never got along with Cyrus who was usually condescending to him. While you were gone apparently a small skirmish ensued between the orcs and shadows. Amazingly nobody was actually killed, but several were wounded and ultimately Flog left with the remainder of the orcs. “Are you fucking kidding me?” you yell in exasperation. “Where did they go?” Talia asks. “How should I know, further north I think where the rest of those overgrown idiots dwell. I don’t care, we don’t need them anyway!” Cyrus says. After your recent loss of Yvette, you’re not really in any mood for Cyrus’ shortsightedness. “Oh well, I’m glad that YOU decided that for all of us! Did it even occur to you that we might need them if we were going to attack Fort Destiny?” “Now you think that’s a good idea? What about all the arguing you did, saying it was a rotten idea?” “I said it wasn’t the best idea at this time, I wasn’t opposed to it AFTER we got rid of the new eternals. Priorities!” “Sure, that’s great when they’re YOURS brother. When it comes to the rest of our plans you just ignore them.” “Well that hardly matters now, because you just fucking ruined your own plans by pissing off our orc allies. Nice going with the self sabotage brother!” Cyrus looks you up and down with distain in his face. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.” Cyrus begins to storm off “Wait, brother Cyrus where are you going?” Talia asks. “Well seeing as our chosen brother of Dendrin is obviously correct about everything and as he pointed out that we cannot do anything without our orc allies any longer, I’m going to follow his suggestion that he gave me not long ago. I’m going to lead an assassination squad myself to get rid of Kane once and for all.” “Hold on! Wait, we need to plan better for something like that we can’t just…” Talia runs after him. You dismiss Cyrus and whatever he plans to do, you don’t care anymore. You already offered your help to him on this before and the whole plan at the time was dismissed because of his own pettiness. If he succeeds then that’s good. He’s done something useful for a change, if not then he’ll be out of the way and no longer whining about his our feeble plans. Either way he’s on his own on this. Three days later reports come in on Cyrus’ death and all shadows he took with him on the mission. Kane wasn’t even severely wounded. In fact all this has done is raise his reputation. Talia doesn’t say it, but she implies that you should’ve helped Cyrus even if claimed he wouldn’t have accepted it. Draven is devastated by the news and commits suicide soon afterwards. With this sudden loss of several prominent shadows, morale takes a bit of a dive, especially since Cyrus was still well liked around Fort Defiance. Year 31 “So Flog’s dead?” you ask. “Yes, I couldn’t get through to him. He insisted that if he didn’t keep raiding the northern villages that support us, his people would’ve just seen him as weak and killed him anyway. Ultimately he said he would’ve preferred to die by my hand and so he did.” Talia replies. “Well, I suppose that’ll stop organized raids, but it won’t stop them completely.” “Indeed. Flog’s leadership was probably keeping the rest of his tribe in line and all those various ogre tribes as well. With him gone, it’s going to be chaos.” “I know. I know. Shit. Well we can only hope that they spend more time fighting each other. In the meantime I’ve got to figure out a way of keeping up the pressure south of Rask. Captain Roldan is starting to become as much of a problem as Kane, has he even left that fortress yet?” “Nope, report say ever since brother Cyrus’ attempts he doesn’t leave it anymore and he’s been getting an influx of troops as reinforcements lately.” “Damn it! (Sigh) All right, double up on the shadow protection in key towns. Last thing we need is Kane’s mindless scorched land tactics destroying the places that are helping us.” Year 32 You slash through the jugular of Kane and even as blood gushes from his throat he laughs madly claiming that you’ll never defeat the Empire. You shove his body out of the window just to shut up his final death throes. You look over at Talia’s body and curse yourself for allowing this to happen. You knew you should’ve gone on this mission by yourself, but she wanted to be by your side. You don’t even have time to morn right now as you hear the rest of the soldiers scrambling up the stairs to defend their now dead master. You climb out the very window you threw Kane out of and scale down the walls of the fort and make your escape. When you make it back home, you find plenty of time to weep and morn for your dead love. With Talia dead, a small portion of your own will to go on has died as well. Year 33 “The south wall of the fort has been breached!” Brother Gannon shouts. “Well get ready to kill the bastards that are going to be pouring in then damn it!” you shout back. The situation is grim and getting worse with every passing second. You can’t believe how the Empire has managed to turn this all around, though it didn’t help that you had a few set backs of your own. Now Captain Roldan is at your gates and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You watch as the remaining shadows desperately fight the overwhelming number of Empire soldiers. “Dendrin, if you’re still watching, I hope you had a good run of amusement, because it’s about to end.” You mutter and rush into the hopeless battle. During Roldan’s life, he would go on to speak about how you were a worthy opponent during conversations about the battle of Fort Defiance. Probably out of minor respect that you were an Eternal. Ultimately though history only remembered Roldan and how he gloriously destroyed the shadow traitors once and for all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You all move close enough so you’re above the boxes and then with a brief whisper, every lock on the troll boxes clicks. And then all the box doors are suddenly torn open. “TROLLS! TROLLS! TROLLS!” is all you can make out from the derro who are now shouting rushing into the lab to combat the trolls now emerging from their prisons. Their appearance is indeed as fearsome as you heard in stories. Tall with long gangly limbs and blackish green skin. You sort of expected them to be more massive much like an ogre, but there isn’t an ounce of fat on them, and even though they’re relatively thin they’re all solid muscle. They definitely look hungry though with their large teeth though. The trolls also prove to be a lot quicker than you expected as well. You watch them leap and dodge the derro attacks, which look slow and clumsy by comparison. You see a troll smash a derro to the floor with one punch, leap on top of him and easily peel off his armor with its talons. A scream soon follows when the troll eviscerates him. Several more derro begin lighting some sort of round metal objects and toss them at some of the trolls. These devices explode into flames and seem to hurt the trolls who howl in pain, but continue to attack while still on fire. The unarmored derro tosses a few glass beakers at the trolls too. You assume it must be some sort of acid given how it starts to eat away at a troll’s skin when it hits. As you and the rest of the shadows stay cloaked on the ceiling watching this carnage unfold, you’re unsure of whom to start attacking because you can’t let either group completely dominate the other. There are more derro, but the trolls are very tough and are putting up more than enough of a fight. You see the unarmored derro run away to a locked door on the far side of the room, and just when he manages to open it; you shoot him in the back with your armbow, which causes him to collapse to the floor. You don’t know where he’s trying to go, but he’s not getting far. “SHADOWS!” one of the derro shouts as you all decloak to join the fight. For the most part you all keep your distance when you can from the trolls and attempt to finish off any severely wounded derro. “Kill everything!” you shout and make your way to the staggering unarmored derro to finish him off. He fumbles with some sort of strange weapon he takes out of his pocket, but you kick it from his hand and smash him in the face with the pommel of your sword. “Shadows! You narrow minded religious fanatics dare desecrate the progress of science? Your actions will not go unpunished here toAGH!” the unarmored derro is cut short on his dying monologue with your blade to his chest. You look around and see that most of the derro have been literally shredded open by the trolls who have focused most of their attention on them, but they’ve started to pay more attention to the shadows now that the derro numbers have dwindled. Speeding yourselves up at least manages to match their own swiftness, but they’re still no pushovers as you find out when you’re locked into one on one combat with one of the trolls. Being this close to the creature, you get the full force of its horrible odor and that combined with the smell of its still burnt flesh are almost enough to put you off your fight. You haven’t smelled something so bad in…well ever. You do manage to overcome though only after nearly hacking off its leg long enough for you to realize that the derro were using fire and acid on the trolls for a reason. Troll may not instantly regenerate, but you need to stop it before you give them time to do so. As the troll continues to rapidly crawl after you on three limbs, you grab one of those firebombs from a dead derro and light it with a near by torch. You narrowly avoid the explosion when you toss it at the troll who is successfully blown to pieces. “Really hope those pieces don’t reform into little trolls.” You mutter. The remainder of the battle involves much of the same tactics, though some of your shadows aren’t quite as skilled as you are and fall in combat. Fortunately reinforcements come in the form of Talia and Yvette and with their help you finally finish off the remainder of the trolls and whatever derro that are still attempting to cling to life. “Were those things actual trolls?” Yvette asks. “Yep and if they weren’t such savage monsters I’d be thanking them for killing most of the derro for us. Are you two the only ones left?” “No, but only Brother Haze besides us made it and he’s currently tending to his wounds. He would’ve been in no condition to help fight the trolls and derro. The fight with the mages wasn’t an easy one.” Talia says. “I’ll bet, but I never had any doubt that you wouldn’t be victorious. Did you see any sign of any new eternals?” “No, the mages’ quarters didn’t seem to house any of them and there weren’t any other bedrooms in that direction either. I saw some training facilities and a large library, but nothing more. What about over here?” “Well other than this big lab, we haven’t seen anything of any note either. We passed a lot of derro bedrooms a long the way, but that’s about it.” “What about that door?” Yvette asks pointing over to the one where the unarmored derro lies dead. “I don’t know where that one goes to. That derro certainly was in a rush to escape out that way though. Guess we all might as well check it out.” You quickly take a head count and altogether there’s six of you left, seven if you count Haze who isn’t even with you. If this door leads to the hundreds of young eternals, you question if you’ll even be able to kill them all before they can overwhelm you. When you open it up you find yourself on a platformed level, which overlooks a huge room. It’s nearly the size of a small hamlet you think. There are several ladders that descend down to the lower level which contain translucent containers all hooked up with tubing and connected with each other and large strange machines. When you climb down the ladder you inspect the containers more closely and make out a small figure floating in liquid within it. There are hundreds of these containers, possible even a thousand. “I think we just found the new eternals.” You say. “Wait, are they in those tanks?” Talia asks. “I believe so. Looks like the Empire has a whole new way of breeding Eternals or at least altering them. I assume they take them out to train them and then pop ‘em back in when they aren’t needed. Pretty convenient I suppose.” “This…this all seems wrong somehow. Against nature. We should destroy this place as soon as possible. Those derro weapons you were using on the trolls were explosive, if we could find more we use some of them to collapse this place.” Yvette says. “Or maybe there’s a some sort of switch that kills them in the tank. Seems like the Empire would be inclined to implement something like that.” Talia adds. Normally you’d be all for killing all these little bastards while still lying in their “cribs”, but it suddenly hits you that you might have an opportunity here. You didn’t think about it before, because you thought you were going to have to fight these little runts in the corridors of this place. However circumstances have definitely changed. Maybe you could get them to be on YOUR side. Why not? They’re young enough that they could probably take re-indoctrination. Problem is, it still might take a lot of time and while this was a great blow to the Empire, it doesn’t put them out of the fight yet. They may eventually find out what’s happened and come back for this place and you’re not really in a position to defend it. > You attempt to convert them “I think we should take this opportunity to make them see the way of the shadows.” You say. “What?!” Yvette exclaims. “Are you serious?” Talia asks. “Well okay maybe not all of them, but I’d think that with the right teaching they could become valuable assets.” “NO! These are the enemy and must be destroyed! You said so yourself when we first began this mission!” Yvette says. “And perhaps I was a bit hasty. I can’t be entitled to speak out of turn and make a mistake once in awhile?” “No brother, but I think leaving these…abominations alive for whatever reason is a bigger mistake.” “Abominations…and I suppose you believe me and Talia are abominations too eh sister?” “Wha…no! I mean…(sputter) you’re different! You…” “How? Me, Talia, and Cyrus for that matter were all brought up from birth and indoctrinated to serve the Empire, but what happened? We saw the truth of Dendrin’s wisdom instead! Is it not possible that these…children who aren’t even as old as we were be re-educated to do the same?” “Well…I suppose, but…” “Think about it sister, some of the greatest enemies of the Empire were brought up within the very heart of it! Let’s continue to turn the Empire’s obsessive need for control against itself! And better yet, bring more servants into the fold of Dendrin.” Sister Yvette looks a bit hesitant, it’s obvious she has some real problems with this plan, but she isn’t really sure how to argue against you. Part of it stems from you making a bit of a point, and the other stems from the fact that despite her own confidence being better than it was, she still feels inferior to you…perhaps that’s just the aura you have as an Eternal though. “Yes…I suppose I see the wisdom in attempting to educate these children in the ways of Dendrin.” Sister Yvette says. She might not believe it now, but in time she’ll either convince herself or get used to it. Either way you just need her obedience. As for the remainder of the shadows if they have anything meaningful to say on the subject they keep it to themselves. That just leaves Talia, who is going to require a little bit more convincing since you sense her look of disagreement. “Um…sister Yvette, could you and the rest leave me and sister Talia alone for a moment.” As the rest of them leave, you move over to Talia who looks out over the hundreds of eternal containers. “I sense some disapproval from this plan?” “Not so much disapproval, but rather apprehension.” “What about the training? I know it won’t be easy, but I figure we can open up that ritual portal to Dendrin and let him decide if they’re worthy or not, you know, like he did with us.” “And you know how to do that? Because I sure don’t! It’s not like Master Ebon or Brother Gray imparted that knowledge on to me before they died!” “Well your magic is strong, and hey I know Cyrus has some old shadow tomes back at Fort Defiance, we can probably find something in there about it.” “Well I’m glad you seem to have this all figured out then, just wish you would’ve let me on this sooner.” “I would have, but this honestly just came to mind. I mean how was I to know that these kids were going to be safely locked up in oversized glass tubes? I thought we were going to be waist deep in their blood by now.” “So who is going to train them? I know it’s not going to be you. Me I suppose right?” “Well…you would be the best qualified…but hey Sister Yvette could help you and other shadows too! In fact I could have some transferred here just in case of an Empire attack when…” “Damn it I’m not worried about all that, I’m wondering WHY you came up with this plan at all! I know there’s another reason than just turning them against the Empire or even bringing new shadows into Dendrin’s fold and don’t say that there isn’t! We’re the same and we’ve bonded as lovers. I know there’s more going on in your head because I know YOU. Now tell me. Talia never was one to mince words and perhaps it is time you didn’t either. “Very well my love. You should know everything.” And from there you tell Talia everything…except you don’t. You tell her that Dendrin did not only speak to you on the day Gloom was attacked, you tell her he’s spoken to you in the past on several occasions. You just never said anything about it before Gloom because you didn’t want to be thought a liar and be labeled a heretic. You also tell her that Dendrin has urged you to follow your own path and to seize leadership of the shadows. You didn’t want to initially because you wanted to try to hold things together because things seemed so fractured, but given that Dendrin has recently warned you about Cyrus’ potential treachery you thought it might be best to have another group of allies in case the worst occurs. “So…we’re keeping this a secret from Cyrus?” “Yes, I think that would be for the best. If he knew about this, you know he’d be against it. Cyrus is clinging to the old shadow ways and still has clout, but that will be coming to an end soon.” “I dunno…I mean I agree that Cyrus shouldn’t be leader and that you would make an excellent shadow master especially since Dendrin talks to you, but hiding things from Cyrus and possibly planning for his death? I mean is there no other way? He’s not just a shadow, he’s one of us.” “So are a few other eternals from our class if you remember. These little bastards here were going to be against us until we intervened…which bring me to my other reason and this one is harder for me to tell because it involves you and me.” “All of this involves the both of us, what else could it possibly be that would trouble me more than conspiracy against one of our brothers?” You bring up the very real and unaltered truth that Dendrin told you about eternals. The fact that none of you are able to have children due how you were created. Talia gets quiet and sits down for a moment. She tries very hard not to cry, but her voice is obviously quivering when she speaks again. “…I…guess (sniff) that explains a lot…but um…I mean Dendrin could do something…I mean he…” “Dendrin… (Sigh) …how do I put this? Dendrin is…complex. It’s true that he helps us directly by granting our magical abilities and perhaps in ways of major importance when he warned me about Gloom, but he’s not here to collectively hold the hands of the shadows. (You can’t believe you just repeated Dendrin’s own words) He would prefer that the shadows made their own destiny as it were. I mean, I’m sure if he wanted to, he could’ve just laid waste to the Empire a long time ago, but he didn’t. He wanted the shadows to endure and in enduring grow stronger from the situation they were placed in. Just like you…we will have to endure in not being able to have children. But getting back to the heart of the matter, that’s part of why I decided that we should try to save these young eternals. I mean you’ll get to train them first hand in the ways of Dendrin. It would almost be like you were the mother of several hundred eternal shadows.” “But then they can never produce offspring either.” “Well we don’t know that. I mean it looks like they’ve been altered in a significantly different way. But even if they can’t so what? If we had had children there would be no guarantee that they’d all survive to reproduce either. You mustn’t worry about this, because after all is said and done, you will still be doing Dendrin’s work and serving him faithfully and really isn’t that what it’s all about?” You look into her eyes and touch her on the shoulder. She grabs your hand on her shoulder and looks down for a moment and breathes deeply. After a couple of seconds she looks back up at you. “Very well, this does seem to be a suitable course of action. But quite frankly I don’t think we can save all of these children. Some of them are going to be lost causes and if the Empire ever attacks this place in force, we’re going to have to collapse this place anyway, we can’t properly defend it, at least not at this time.” “Of course, I agree. I trust you will do what you can.” “I always do my love.” With this new plan settled, you and Talia kiss each other before parting company. You tell Sister Yvette that she is to report to Talia directly now and that you’ll be contacting Brother Theo about the new changes. Fortunately he’s still alive, when you check to see how those other shadow cell attack turned out. No reports have even come in about the attack on the camp, which isn’t too surprising given all the chaos going on elsewhere that brother Theo caused and the fact you didn’t leave any survivors or let anyone escape. Eventually you make your way back to Rask which you’re happy to find out Cyrus was smart enough to not risk attacking Fort Destiny. Unfortunately he caused a different set back entirely. Talia was about the only one keeping the Flog and the rest of his orcs on good terms. You rarely interacted with him and he never got along with Cyrus who was usually condescending to him. While you were gone apparently a small skirmish ensued between the orcs and shadows. Amazingly nobody was actually killed, but several were wounded and ultimately Flog left with the remainder of the orcs. “What?! They’re gone? Where?!” you ask. “How should I know, further north I think where the rest of those overgrown idiots dwell. I don’t care, we don’t need them anyway!” Cyrus says. “And where is Sister Talia? Did you get her killed in your foolish mission?” “No our mission was a success, and she’ll be taking care of some of the business we have in the south from now on because it’s apparent my attention should start being more focused here.” “Oh so now you’ve decided that, after all those times I’ve suggested that since you first arrived here? You know what, I’ve been putting in work here for nearly a decade now, what makes you even think you know what the best plan of action is here?” “Well I wouldn’t have pissed off our orc allies if I had the desire to attack Fort Destiny for one. (Sigh) Cyrus I’m on your side for Dendrin’s sake! I mean we’re supposed to be fighting the Empire, not each other. Can’t you see that brother?” Cyrus looks you up and down with distain in his face. “All I see is someone that talks a good game about serving Dendrin, but ultimately his words ring hollow to my ears. Always have. Time will tell though, brother and there will be a reckoning. Dendrin will not suffer false prophets and pretenders. I hope for your sake you aren’t one because his wrath will be terrible. Do what you want.” Cyrus says and leaves the room. Funny how Cyrus is probably the only one who can see through your bullshit, yet still be painfully wrong. More amusement for Dendrin you suppose. > Year 35 Finally after years of set backs, Rask is at last free of the Empire and the other provinces are sure to follow. Kane is dead and most of the last Empire fanatics in Rask are dead. The Empire can’t send any more troops because it’s barely holding on to what it has. It’s the beginning of the end for it, but for the shadows it’s just the beginning. For the past couple years during the mopping up process, the shadows have slowly been withdrawing from other parts of the Empire and heading to Rask. This consolidation of forces is something that Cyrus has been wanting for years, but of course you never felt it was the right time. Now with the Empire on the decline you can agree that it is something that can be done. Fort Defiance has become the new shadow home and has officially been renamed as Evergloom, not the most original name, but everyone seems to like it. Ironically Evergloom is about one of the only major beacons of “light” in Rask nowadays. The sheer destruction that Kane caused to most of the towns in Rask before he died has left little in the way of civilization. The rebuilding process is in swing, but it’ll be awhile before it gets back to the way it was, perhaps it’ll never be the same again and nature will reclaim the land. It hardly matters though; the shadows have their own rebuilding process to go through, one of which is how leadership is going to be settled once and for all. As it stands, you still haven’t officially taken full control of the shadows yet and it’s still more or less run by a “council” of sorts made up of you, Talia and Cyrus. Cyrus has been somewhat less antagonistic towards you since the Empire was driven from Rask, but that might be because he’s running out of supporters. Your decisions and victories have earned the respect of most shadows and they see you as leader. There are also the new eternal shadows that have been coming along in their training very well and the well-known fact that you’ve spoken directly to Dendrin, though you haven’t lately, not for a long time in fact. Doesn’t stop the fact that you say you have though when you want to get things done. Part of you feels like the biggest hypocrite in the world for it, but then the other part of you feels like your ends have justified the means at this point so why care about it? You’ve kept the shadows together with lies, but really the whole organization has been kept together through lies for centuries, you’re not really doing anything different. Perhaps though it isn’t so much the lying that gets to you, but rather the idea of being a shadow when you’ve never really “felt” like one. You stayed motivated by fighting the Empire because that was something you could get behind, but now what are you supposed to do? Revere Dendrin and worship him? Not something you’re really interested in doing full time especially considering your knowledge of him. Of course then there’s always Talia, who is practically the only reason at this point why you’d want to stay leader for the shadows, well that and the budding desire to be in charge thanks to your Eternal heritage. There’s also the fact that given how much effort you went through to hold the shadows together it would almost seem a waste to toss it all away. Yes, a decision is going to have to be made soon, but not today. You fall asleep later that night and after all this time you finally get some “divine” advice. “It’s been awhile.” You say. “Don’t tell me you actually missed me.” Dendrin remarks. “Hardly, though I was wondering if you’d lost interest at last.” “In you? Not at all, I’ve just been quietly observing. I’ve found that you seem to work best with minimal influence. Keep doing what you’re doing and I’m unlikely to ever lose interest in you.” “Keep doing what I’m doing eh? So you want me to officially take full leadership of the shadows.” “I didn’t say that. Not then and not now. Do what you want. I told you that before. If you’re asking me what I think, yes I would prefer you to take up as leader and quite honestly I’m surprised you haven’t done it already.” “I was planning to, but now that the Empire is on its way out, I’m not sure if I want to be bothered.” “Nonsense, you’re an Eternal. Aren’t you lot sort of born to lead?” “I suppose, but I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life living a priestly existence in our new monastery where all I do is tell people to kiss your ass all night and day, let alone do it myself.” This remark causes a booming laugh echo throughout your mind. “So don’t do that.” Dendrin remarks. “Well wouldn’t I sort of have to?” “You haven’t for this long, why would you start now?” “I mean I know I’d be faking it, but I still see it as a dreary existence.” “And like I said, don’t do that. You’re the leader, what you say goes. If you want to abandon the old shadow ways there isn’t anything keeping you from doing it. I don’t usually point out the obvious, but what you have right now is potentially very powerful. You have in your hands is the ability to guide a religion, an ideology. You shouldn’t waste that. Take advantage before someone else does.” “I’m not blind, I see that, but I question where do you come in? Surely if I some how lessened the shadows’ reliance on prayer, they’d also lose their abilities.” “Not entirely unless you made them stop worshipping me altogether.” “But I don’t worship you, I mean not really and I still have my powers.” “Well that’s because you’re special, but if you did have a little more faith in me, your powers would increase too. You could be as strong as your old Master Ebon for example. That’s just how it works and you have take the good with the bad, but I’m sure you knew that already.” “So it would seem.” You answer. Shortly after this exchange you wake up. “Something wrong?” Talia asks when she sees you waking up so suddenly. “Huh? Oh, nothing. Dendrin just spoke to me again.” “He did? What were his divine words this time?” “Oh…uh he said that now is the right time to officially become the Shadow Master. “That’s wonderful! Though I thought he would’ve told you a lot sooner…no matter though as I’m sure he had his reasons.” Good old trusting Talia. You love her, but you’ll never understand how naïve she can be when it comes to this. As you start to get ready to call a shadow gathering there’s a knock on your room door. “Who’s there?” you ask. “It’s me brother. Brother Gannon. Brother Cyrus wants to see you immediately in the meeting room. He says it’s extremely important.” “What’s it about?” “I dunno, he just said it’s really important and he needs to see you immediately.” “Okay then, thank you brother.” You reply. As you continue to get dressed, Talia speaks to you again. “What do you think he wants?” “With Cyrus, who knows?” “Do you want me to come with you?” “What for? You might as well get all the shadows together while I’m talking to Cyrus.” “But…I don’t know…I’m just a little concerned.” “Aren’t you always telling me I should try to get along with Cyrus? Besides, he’s actually been tolerable lately. Maybe with the Empire gone, he’s lightened up a bit.” “Maybe…well if you think it’ll be okay, I’ll go round up the brothers and sisters.” As you and Talia part company you make your way to the meeting room. On your way it occurs to you that Cyrus may very be planning to kill you rather than talk. You aren’t sensing anyone cloaked yet, but then maybe they’ll all be in the room with him. If this is an ambush, the only one he’s going to be able to count on to help him is probably Draven. Cyrus just doesn’t have the clout he once did in fact you believe if he tried, he wouldn’t be accepted as leader anyway. Of course you don’t have any intention of getting killed if this is what he’s planning. You open up the door and see Cyrus standing near the table by himself. You can’t sense anyone else; maybe he wants this to be a one on one matter. “There you are, I wasn’t sure you were coming. I want to speak to you on something very important and this has to be settled right now.” No doubt he’s talking about the leadership position. You know he still desperately wants it and he’s just going through the motions of being civilized about it right now. You aren’t waiting around… Before Cyrus even knows what’s going on, you fire your armbow at him. He reacts in time to move, but not before a bolt goes into his arm. “Agh! What the fuck are you doing?!” he says clutching his arm and backing away from you. “I’m settling this right now, we both know what this is all about. You’re going to kill me because you want to be in charge and that’s not happening.” You rush forward to attack and Cyrus once again dodges and backs away from you. He hasn’t even drawn his weapon yet. “What? No! Look! I just called you in to talk! I was going to tell you that I’ve come to the realization that you’re the worthy one to lead the shadows! I know it’s taken me a long time, but I see that you’re the chosen one of Dendrin.” “Bullshit, you’ve desired to be shadow master since Master Ebon died.” “And probably even a little bit before, but I see that I was wrong to think such things even if I never spoke them out loud. Perhaps Dendrin punished me for it by never speaking to me. He speaks to you and your actions have lead us to finally be free of the Empire. Why should I keep questioning your ability? It’s obvious that you have a greater destiny and I realize that I should just graciously step aside. Who am I to question the will of Dendrin? I yield to you shadow master.” Cyrus seems pretty sincere in his words and despite everything he has always been a dedicated disciple of Dendrin for good or ill. If he really believes that Dendrin has a plan for you, he wouldn’t stand in the way of it. Now that you really think about it, he’s never really done anything that would indicate that he was ever actively trying to kill you. It’s possible you’ve just been paranoid about this whole thing. > You allow Cyrus to live You think back on all the things you’ve been doing and some of it has been pretty questionable. True you thought you were doing what was necessary because you were trying to fight off the Empire. And your actions as ruthless as some of them were, they may have been necessary, but now? What’s the justification to kill Cyrus? Because you think he’ll try to kill you in the future? Honestly at this point you’d completely understand it if did, but as you look at him he’s obviously begging to be included in your plans now. You’ve overshadowed him so much that he’s given up and acknowledging your dominance much like a beta wolf does with an alpha. If you distrust him because you feel as an Eternal he’s going to take power from you, what of all those young eternals you rescued? Do you kill them too just in case? What of Talia? Where does it all end? Dendrin hasn’t helped either considering he’s been more or less favoring you to kill Cyrus and seizing power for a while now. Doing the opposite of what he suggests might be the right move. Sure Cyrus been a dick in the past, but you don’t need to continue your own ruthless behavior towards him. This is supposed to be a new beginning for the shadows after all and maybe putting aside old dusty quarrels is a way to start it. “Cyrus, I’m sorry. I should’ve been more trusting of a fellow shadow.” You say. Cyrus seems more surprised than anyone to hear you apologize. He pulls out the bolt before speaking again. “Thank you brother. And I meant what I said, I accept you as the new shadow master.” “Well, there are going to be a lot of changes around here and I’m going to need your help in implementing them. Let’s go to the gathering hall, I was going to make my official announcement as shadow master there.” You leave with Cyrus to address the rest of the shadows that are no doubt waiting for you in the gathering hall. When you arrive, they’re all waiting around for you as expected. You see Talia standing nearby and approach her while Cyrus goes to join Draven in the audience. “Is everything okay? I noticed Cyrus rubbing his arm.” Talia remarks. “Everything’s been settled. Cyrus and I have come to an understanding.” “Really?” “Well for now, but I’m hoping that it stays that way. We’ll see I suppose.” You give Talia a quick kiss before heading to the front of the hall and addressing everyone. “We may have defeated the Empire my fellow shadows, but that does not mean we can rest! Dendrin spoke to me again today and told me that today is the day that I claim the title of shadow master and lead the shadows properly into this new era. The first thing we need to do is rebuild and that involves spreading our faith when possible. We must be strong so that there will never again be the possibility of the shadows having to submit under another power ever again.” This reaction predictably gets a small shout of approval. “And though I am shadow master, I cannot do this by myself. I need all of your help, some of you more than others, but everyone will do their part in serving Dendrin’s will. This is a new era for the shadows and we will see it prosper.” You end your speech with a “For Dendrin” remark to solidify a positive reaction, which seems to do the trick. You take your leave and start making plans on restructuring the shadow organization and how things have been done. It’ll take a bit of time and you’ll have to slowly introduce a few things, but it can be accomplished. Later that night you predictably get another visit from Dendrin. “So…you didn’t kill him after all, you sure that’s wise?” Dendrin asks. “As I told Talia, we’ll see, but I’m not convinced he’s my enemy, if he ever truly was. He’s just overly devoted to an uncaring god and that’s warped his world view.” “Careful, all those overly devoted followers of that uncaring god are officially under your command now. You might want to start rethinking how you approach speaking to me if you wish to remain that way.” “Why? If you have something planned, I certainly can’t stop you. Besides, you’ve told me time and time again, the only reason why you pay attention at all any more is because of me. Maybe I don’t agree with you or the role that I’ve been thrust into, but I’m going to continue doing my best at it, because that’s just how I am. But if you’re going to kill me for the shits and giggles, just go ahead and do it and quit with the idle threats.” Again you hear that booming laughter echo throughout your head. “And that’s why I’ve always liked you Eternal. It’ll be interesting if you’re right about Cyrus or the shadows in general for that matter. But as you said, I guess we’ll see. I’ll be watching as always.” And so begins the new era of the Shadows… > Chapter 3B1: Shadow Master Year 41 “We had to kill another group of ogres sniffing around the fort today.” Cyrus remarks. “Yeah, I know the battle woke me up, by the time I got ready, all of them had been killed.” You reply. “I’m going to have to speak with Flog, because I thought we had an understanding that he was to keep the giant and ogre population down or at least manageable.” “I say we just kill him and be done with it.” “Hmm, yeah I know he’s not your favorite person, but he’s proven himself useful, vital even in the past. Besides he’s the only thing keeping that’s keeping that rabble in line.” “He’s also the only thing keeping them organized. Maybe he’s planning on making an army to march upon us.” “Yes, I have considered that too, I’m just wondering what’s worse. A completely hostile unchecked horde of giantkin or a semi organized army of the same which may or may not be reasoned with.” “Perhaps you may need to ask Dendrin for guidance on this matter.” Cyrus says. “Perhaps…” If Dendrin actually did have any advice on the matter, it probably wouldn’t do you much good anyway considering how whimsical he is, not to mention he’s chosen not to speak to you for quite some time, as he is prone to do. Being Shadow Master has been a bit of odd since you’ve taken the position mainly because you don’t feel like you have a specific purpose. The first two years were easy enough as you were still mostly concerning yourself with rebuilding Evergloom for defense, additional training for the shadows and making sure Rask kept its independence, but that was never truly ever an issue since the Empire never did make a come back and reports of their continual descent into chaos was assured. The next two years consisted of a halfhearted attempt at spreading “the faith” mainly to build up numbers. From what you could piece together of shadow history from the few books that Cyrus still had, the shadows never had an aggressive policy on such things, pre or post Empire days, they mostly relied on people either coming to them of their own free will or being “born” into it. There have been a few shadow births, but you’d rather have a more traditional way of gaining recruits because “breeding” a new order isn’t really going to be a big option seeing as your current ratio of men and women isn’t great and those with Eternal heritage can’t reproduce at all. While you could’ve easily told everyone to start putting the remaining Raskian towns to the blade and do the whole “convert or die” thing, you decided it wouldn’t be that great of an idea for several reasons. So you relied on a more missionary way of doing things like sending certain shadows to towns and stressing the benefits of being a shadow. It got a few people interested, but nothing major. The Raskians in general have become less trustful of the shadows over the years now that the war with the Empire is over, almost as if they are expecting you to start launching a religious crusade. You soon got the impression that the Raskians would prefer if the lot of you would just leave them alone now. Somewhat ungrateful considering all you’ve done in securing the country’s freedom, but hardly surprising. Last year was the official fall of the Empire, from what you heard the Emperor’s palace was in flames and the few remaining generals or strong military men have taken it upon themselves to carve out various fiefdoms for themselves while other places have gone the way of total anarchy. There was even a little bit of celebrating in Rask and among the shadows when it occurred. However, you couldn’t help but be a little disappointed that the great enemy you struggled so hard against was now gone forever. Like you craved the chance to fight them again if only for the opportunity to be in battle once again which has sorely been lacking. Now with the giantkin starting to become a problem once again, you’re half tempted to take Cyrus’ advice. You’re certain that it would be a sure victory for you and to an extent, Flog has been getting less and less reasonable as the years have gone on. Perhaps it is time to get rid of him and take your chances with more problems with giantkin in the future. Instead of talking with Dendrin about it, you choose to discuss this situation with someone that will have a better opinion on the situation. “It sounds like you’ve sort of made your mind up about Flog already.” Talia remarks. “You might be right, but I was wondering what your opinion was on the matter.” “Better you should ask Dendrin for guidance on that, rather than me. Though I suppose if he has become more militant maybe it’s for the best, but…” “But you think I should try to renegotiate with him?” “No, I wasn’t going to suggest that, I was going to say maybe we should leave Rask altogether.” “What? Why?” “The people here obviously don’t want us around, food isn’t the easiest thing to come by and we’re basically the first target whenever a group of ogres or giants come lumbering down south.” “We faced the Empire and survived against all odds, I think we can handle being disliked by the plebs and the occasional giant attack.” “You’re probably right, but I just feel like we’re stagnating here. Like we aren’t rebuilding the order the way that we should. We’ve also lost a lot of history, even certain rituals. I mean I’ve remembered as much as we were taught and tried to pass these lessons on to the new eternals when I first trained them and continue to do so. The tomes we still have here help a bit, but ultimately when we lost Gloom, we lost a lot more than just a home.” “Well, where would we go? “That I don’t know. Delerg perhaps?” “That’s quite the distance, not to mention the area isn’t all that much more hospitable in terms of environment given that it’s mostly swamp.” “Yes, but it is the birthplace of the shadows and we do have an old temple there.” “Yeah and it hasn’t been used in centuries and is probably a crumbling ruin that’s half sunk into the swamp by now! Has anyone here actually ever been there, because I’ve only ever heard about it.” “Yes, I believe a few of the older brothers and sisters have. They would know the best way to get there. I want to just say though, that this is merely my opinion. I do not know if moving all of us somewhere else is the best solution or if it will even help, but I just feel like the longer we stay here, the further away we’re going to get from our roots and in another couple of generations, the shadows won’t be anything like the ones of old. But perhaps that is Dendrin’s will, as I said I don’t know. Only you would know being the Shadow Master and able to speak to him directly for guidance.” You give an acknowledging nod, but in reality you’re just left with another decision to make all by yourself. What Talia is suggesting sounds crazy and quite frankly you don’t even care about shadow history, but what does make this idea appealing is the journey and the challenge. You were just thinking about a change of some sort and while killing Flog and his little band would break up the monotony, perhaps a whole change of scenery is really in order. > You kill Flog Making some sort of “pilgrimage” isn’t really what you need at this point. While you might be drawn to the journey because of the potential for combat in the end you’re going to be left with the same problem again when you finally do get settled. Not to mention who is to say the temple is even big enough or in any condition to act as a new home. Tomorrow you resolve to go out to the village where Flog has been making his home (Which he’s renamed “Flogtown”) and bring down the wrath of the shadows upon him. He probably won’t be expecting it, but he’s brought this on himself. Just as planned you tell Cyrus and the rest that you have asked for Dendrin’s guidance on the matter and he has stated that the orcs and giantkin must be purged. You decide to take Cyrus and most of the new eternals with you as they are the most eager for the chance to do battle. Talia offers to join you, but you tell her you want someone with authority to still maintain the fort while you’re gone. Though you don’t anticipate this being a drawn out conflict. Your trip is uneventful other than the beginning of some light snowfall. When you arrive at Flogtown, you see that Flog has made a few changes since the last time you were here. Namely he’s erected a tall crude fence around the village, the gate is open, but there are several orc guards standing by. When they see you, they immediately go into a battle stance and one of them runs inside the gate presumably to warn Flog. “Halt! You shadows have no audience with Flog or any business here, get out!” one of the guards says. You don’t respond, you just order a command to fire where upon several bolts pepper the outspoken guard and the rest of your people attack the remaining ones. When the gate closes down, all of you just spider walk over the walls and gain entry that way. The “town” itself looks like slave camp, and that’s probably because it is. Of it’s also because you allowed it in exchange for Flog’s help years ago. You can only imagine what the other few towns that Flog seized control of look like. You see miserable wretches of human beings locked in cages or in chains and making no effort to fight or even escape. It’s like the orcs have broken their spirit so much that they can’t even rejoice at the orc’s inevitable demise. The slaying of the orc and ogre contingent doesn’t take long in fact you’re almost bored while you do it. The younger eternals seem to be getting a kick out of it though, gleefully lopping heads off and laughing the whole time. You sometimes wonder about them. Even with all the indoctrination and discipline that Talia has instilled in them, you see a certain bloodlust that they continue to share and they just go completely wild when actually in battle. You can only chalk it up to whatever experimentation that occurred to them before you arrived. You then see one of them attempting to open up the cages with the slaves inside, at first you assume that he’s trying to free them. Then when he gets the door open he throws one of the women to the ground and… “Hey you! What the hell are you doing?” you question. “I’m taking the reward that Dendrin has provided master!” the eternal remarks without any hint of shame of what he’s attempting to do. “That isn’t a reward and more importantly the fucking battle isn’t over yet! So get your dick back in your pants and get back to fighting!” “Yes, master.” He sheepishly obeys and pulls his pants back up before going off on his way and leaving the slave woman who is still lying on the ground. You shake your head because know damn well Talia did NOT teach them that and none of them have even exhibited that sort of behavior before. You aren’t going dwell on it now, but you’re going to talk to Talia about it when you get back. In the meantime you attempt to help the woman, but she continues to be practically limp. Since there’s no place to really take her right now, you just put her back in the cage and tell her to stay there until the fighting is over. She mumbles some sort of acknowledgement, but that’s all you get out of her. Soon the fighting begins to die down, still no sign of Flog though, he apparently was never here. You’re going to have to hunt him down at one of his other villages. Still, that now leaves you with what you’re going to do with the now free townspeople. “They certainly aren’t the traditionally spirited people of Rask anymore. I don’t think they ever will be. They’re pretty pathetic, death might be a welcome release to some of these folks.” Cyrus remarks. “Maybe, but we’re not going to be the one to decide that. Let’s just release their shackles and open up the cages and move on to Flog’s other villages.” You order the enslaved villagers to be released and eventually some of them actually begin to speak. “Is…is it over? Are we free?” an older man asks you. “Yes, you are free now. Free to go about your business and your lives.” You say. “Well, I suppose that’s a good thing then…I just have one question shadow.” “What’s that?” “How?” “How what?” “How are we supposed to just go back to our old lives after this?” When you don’t answer right away, the old man then stands up straight as much as he can and looks you directly in the eye. “You did this shadow. I know, we all know. You think that orc bastard didn’t boast about how you all allowed him to enslave the lot of us in exchange for his help against the Empire? I can’t even blame the orcs, they’re brutes by nature, but you. You were supposed to be helping the people of Rask, but instead it looks like you were helping yourselves.” “That’s not even remotely true, we were still the main ones fighting the Empire and shouldering the brunt of their hostility. I made some tough decisions that would ultimately result in their downfall and it worked.” “Right, the Empire falls and everyone is free except for us. Being slaves and all we never got much in the way of news, but from what I heard, the Empire hadn’t been a real threat in a significant number of years. Did you even think that maybe when the threat of the Empire was over you should at least attempt to free us? Not that we would’ve been any less pissed at you, but it would’ve at least showed that you gave a shit to a minor degree.” “Old man you better shut your mouth right now! You are speaking to the Shadow Master! The Chosen One of Dendrin!” one of the new eternals shouts and pushes the old man to the ground. You stop him from going any further with it though. The old man wobbly stands back up. “Shadow Master huh? Chosen One? All sounds like emperor to me. So tell me, why DID you come? I get the impression it wasn’t to free us.” “No. Flog has been stepping out of line and needs to be dealt with.” “Ha ha ha ha! You hear that? The shadows’ pet orc was disobedient and that’s why we can have our freedom today! Thank the gods for the chaotic nature of orcs eh?” At this point the newly freed villagers are starting to find their “spirit” again and begin crowding around the old man in a show of solidarity. Your eternal shadows are more than willing to kill them, but this isn’t what you want. For one it wouldn’t be a fight, it would be a slaughter. Second they’re completely right to be angry and you can’t really blame them. “Look, I cannot apologize for the decision that was made. It happened and it can’t be changed. I don’t think you’d accept an apology anyway. Is there anything you need from us? Perhaps help in rebuilding or…” “No shadow. We need nothing from you. Well maybe one thing, none of us ever want to see you shadows in this town ever again.” “Very well, we shall take our leave.” You say and call your shadows to exit this forsaken town. The other towns that Flog controls are much further away and the snowfall and the wind are starting to get worse. You could go ahead and chase him now, but you didn’t exactly prepare for an extended pursuit. You could probably return to Evergloom and prepare properly, it isn’t likely that Flog is going to be leaving the area, and whatever pitiful defense he can muster isn’t going to be a match for you anyway. > You pursue Flog You need to take care of this now; you can’t risk the chance of Flog making things harder for you than they need to be. There’s also the fact that these eternals are still hyped up from battle. You’d rather they get it out of their system before taking them back home. Pressing on through the beginnings of a blizzard, you eventually reach the second town that you suspect Flog to be dwelling. Your reception there isn’t any better and battle predictably follows. The shadow magic and natural skill win out the day, but once again the shadows get a little overzealous in their desire to kill. “What the fuck…HEY! Leave the damn slaves alone!” you shout when you see a group of eternals near a bunch of them. They either can’t hear you due to the howling wind (very unlikely) or they are deliberately ignoring you because they’re so engrossed in what they’re doing. When you reach them, you push them aside and see several dead slaves, some of them children and the elderly. None of the eternals say anything, they don’t need to given that their weapons are covered in blood. “Why the fuck did you lot not only disobey my earlier orders, but blatantly ignore me when I shouted at you?” “Sorry master, but the slaves started attacking us for some reason and we only defended ourselves. It all just happened so fast that I guess we got focused on battle.” One of the eternals says, the others looks to him and agree. This has to be the absolute WORST lie you’ve ever heard. They surely can’t really believe you’ll accept it as an excuse. Nevertheless there it is, a bold face lie. They probably think that you’ll just chew them out, but they’re wrong about that… Without another word, you kill the one who came up with the lie with a slash to his throat. You then dispatch the other three as quickly as possible. The rest of the eternals look on intently. Cyrus makes no move to stop you either. Even after you’ve killed them, you’re still incredibly angry. It isn’t even so much about them killing the slaves. It’s the fact that they not only disobeyed you they also feebly tried to lie to your face about it. “Now you all are going to listen up, because I’m not repeating myself! I am the Shadow Master here! This means that I am Dendrin’s chosen and you ALL are to follow my orders without question or argue about them! I catch ANY of you disobeying me again, you can join your fellows lying dead in the snow over there! Now free the rest of the slaves, and let’s get the fuck out of here since Flog doesn’t seem to be here either.” You head to the front gates of the town, cursing the fact that you have to keep traveling in this horrible weather and put up with these disobedient eternals. Yes, you’re really going to have to have a LONG discussion with Talia, when you get back. Cyrus and the rest follow you out when they’re finished freeing the slaves. You leave immediately since you’re in no mood to hear any “scolding” from the newly freed population or you’ll be prone to start killing them yourself. The last town you know Flog enslaved is an even further distance, so much so it’s practically on the edge of giant territory. Makes you wonder how the hell the town survived as long as it did before Flog enslaved it. The snow continues to fall and the cold is getting near unbearable. Cyrus suggests that perhaps it might be a good idea to turn back to Evergloom since not even using magic to speed yourself up is very effective when the snow is getting knee deep. Even cloaking wouldn’t be an advantage due to tracks being left in the snow. You aren’t thinking clearly though and you insist on pressing forward. When you get to the last town, there is a giant standing guard. You dispense with any pretenses and order an immediate attack. Normally speeding around the giant and chopping him down like a tree would probably work, but as Cyrus pointed out even with unnatural speed, your movement is still hampered by the snow. It doesn’t help that the visibility isn’t the greatest either. The giant on the other hand has no such problems and manages to smash two of the eternals with his great club. While you’re all trying to take down the giant, an alarm sound is raised. You quickly order the eternals to climb over the walls and wipe out the orcs while you and Cyrus take care of the giant since they just seem to be getting in your way. You and Cyrus circle around the giant, dodging and stabbing when you can. Eventually the giant has so many holes in his legs that he loses balance and falls backwards onto the wooden fence of the town. The wooden posts naturally impale the giant in several vital organs finishing him off. You and Cyrus enter the village and see a few buildings crushed under the giant’s body. Not surprisingly there have also been a few people crushed under the giant as well, orcs, slaves and even eternals. This is turning out to be a mess, though at this point you don’t even care that you’re losing some of the eternals given how they’ve been acting lately. You shout at any nearby shadows to start looking for Flog who still hasn’t made an appearance of course it’s hard to see anyone at this point with the snow falling as heavy as it is. “We need to get into one of these buildings! This snowstorm is getting too strong!” Cyrus yells. “Alright, let’s get in that one!” you shout back in agreement. You approach a building that vaguely looks like a store of some sort. You try the door, but find it locked. Using all your might, you bash the door open and stumble inside. That’s when you find Flog, but unfortunately you never see him since he was hiding near the door and he cleaves you in the head with an axe when you bashed it open and stumbled in. It’s a sudden and ignoble death after surviving everything that you have. The only consolation is that Cyrus kills Flog in retaliation, but it hardly matters when you’re dead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Making some sort of “pilgrimage” isn’t really what you need at this point. While you might be drawn to the journey because of the potential for combat in the end you’re going to be left with the same problem again when you finally do get settled. Not to mention who is to say the temple is even big enough or in any condition to act as a new home. Tomorrow you resolve to go out to the village where Flog has been making his home (Which he’s renamed “Flogtown”) and bring down the wrath of the shadows upon him. He probably won’t be expecting it, but he’s brought this on himself. Just as planned you tell Cyrus and the rest that you have asked for Dendrin’s guidance on the matter and he has stated that the orcs and giantkin must be purged. You decide to take Cyrus and most of the new eternals with you as they are the most eager for the chance to do battle. Talia offers to join you, but you tell her you want someone with authority to still maintain the fort while you’re gone. Though you don’t anticipate this being a drawn out conflict. Your trip is uneventful other than the beginning of some light snowfall. When you arrive at Flogtown, you see that Flog has made a few changes since the last time you were here. Namely he’s erected a tall crude fence around the village, the gate is open, but there are several orc guards standing by. When they see you, they immediately go into a battle stance and one of them runs inside the gate presumably to warn Flog. “Halt! You shadows have no audience with Flog or any business here, get out!” one of the guards says. You don’t respond, you just order a command to fire where upon several bolts pepper the outspoken guard and the rest of your people attack the remaining ones. When the gate closes down, all of you just spider walk over the walls and gain entry that way. The “town” itself looks like slave camp, and that’s probably because it is. Of it’s also because you allowed it in exchange for Flog’s help years ago. You can only imagine what the other few towns that Flog seized control of look like. You see miserable wretches of human beings locked in cages or in chains and making no effort to fight or even escape. It’s like the orcs have broken their spirit so much that they can’t even rejoice at the orc’s inevitable demise. The slaying of the orc and ogre contingent doesn’t take long in fact you’re almost bored while you do it. The younger eternals seem to be getting a kick out of it though, gleefully lopping heads off and laughing the whole time. You sometimes wonder about them. Even with all the indoctrination and discipline that Talia has instilled in them, you see a certain bloodlust that they continue to share and they just go completely wild when actually in battle. You can only chalk it up to whatever experimentation that occurred to them before you arrived. You then see one of them attempting to open up the cages with the slaves inside, at first you assume that he’s trying to free them. Then when he gets the door open he throws one of the women to the ground and… “Hey you! What the hell are you doing?” you question. “I’m taking the reward that Dendrin has provided master!” the eternal remarks without any hint of shame of what he’s attempting to do. “That isn’t a reward and more importantly the fucking battle isn’t over yet! So get your dick back in your pants and get back to fighting!” “Yes, master.” He sheepishly obeys and pulls his pants back up before going off on his way and leaving the slave woman who is still lying on the ground. You shake your head because know damn well Talia did NOT teach them that and none of them have even exhibited that sort of behavior before. You aren’t going dwell on it now, but you’re going to talk to Talia about it when you get back. In the meantime you attempt to help the woman, but she continues to be practically limp. Since there’s no place to really take her right now, you just put her back in the cage and tell her to stay there until the fighting is over. She mumbles some sort of acknowledgement, but that’s all you get out of her. Soon the fighting begins to die down, still no sign of Flog though, he apparently was never here. You’re going to have to hunt him down at one of his other villages. Still, that now leaves you with what you’re going to do with the now free townspeople. “They certainly aren’t the traditionally spirited people of Rask anymore. I don’t think they ever will be. They’re pretty pathetic, death might be a welcome release to some of these folks.” Cyrus remarks. “Maybe, but we’re not going to be the one to decide that. Let’s just release their shackles and open up the cages and move on to Flog’s other villages.” You order the enslaved villagers to be released and eventually some of them actually begin to speak. “Is…is it over? Are we free?” an older man asks you. “Yes, you are free now. Free to go about your business and your lives.” You say. “Well, I suppose that’s a good thing then…I just have one question shadow.” “What’s that?” “How?” “How what?” “How are we supposed to just go back to our old lives after this?” When you don’t answer right away, the old man then stands up straight as much as he can and looks you directly in the eye. “You did this shadow. I know, we all know. You think that orc bastard didn’t boast about how you all allowed him to enslave the lot of us in exchange for his help against the Empire? I can’t even blame the orcs, they’re brutes by nature, but you. You were supposed to be helping the people of Rask, but instead it looks like you were helping yourselves.” “That’s not even remotely true, we were still the main ones fighting the Empire and shouldering the brunt of their hostility. I made some tough decisions that would ultimately result in their downfall and it worked.” “Right, the Empire falls and everyone is free except for us. Being slaves and all we never got much in the way of news, but from what I heard, the Empire hadn’t been a real threat in a significant number of years. Did you even think that maybe when the threat of the Empire was over you should at least attempt to free us? Not that we would’ve been any less pissed at you, but it would’ve at least showed that you gave a shit to a minor degree.” “Old man you better shut your mouth right now! You are speaking to the Shadow Master! The Chosen One of Dendrin!” one of the new eternals shouts and pushes the old man to the ground. You stop him from going any further with it though. The old man wobbly stands back up. “Shadow Master huh? Chosen One? All sounds like emperor to me. So tell me, why DID you come? I get the impression it wasn’t to free us.” “No. Flog has been stepping out of line and needs to be dealt with.” “Ha ha ha ha! You hear that? The shadows’ pet orc was disobedient and that’s why we can have our freedom today! Thank the gods for the chaotic nature of orcs eh?” At this point the newly freed villagers are starting to find their “spirit” again and begin crowding around the old man in a show of solidarity. Your eternal shadows are more than willing to kill them, but this isn’t what you want. For one it wouldn’t be a fight, it would be a slaughter. Second they’re completely right to be angry and you can’t really blame them. “Look, I cannot apologize for the decision that was made. It happened and it can’t be changed. I don’t think you’d accept an apology anyway. Is there anything you need from us? Perhaps help in rebuilding or…” “No shadow. We need nothing from you. Well maybe one thing, none of us ever want to see you shadows in this town ever again.” “Very well, we shall take our leave.” You say and call your shadows to exit this forsaken town. The other towns that Flog controls are much further away and the snowfall and the wind are starting to get worse. You could go ahead and chase him now, but you didn’t exactly prepare for an extended pursuit. You could probably return to Evergloom and prepare properly, it isn’t likely that Flog is going to be leaving the area, and whatever pitiful defense he can muster isn’t going to be a match for you anyway. > You return to Evergloom While it may be just a “little” snow and wind now, you’re quite familiar with just how bad the weather can suddenly change in Rask, especially as far north as you are. You aren’t going to get yourself half frozen to death due to bad planning. You tell everyone you’re all returning to Evergloom,. Nobody protests, but by the looks and whispering, you can tell they aren’t happy about it. They’re obviously all in the mood for more killing, but they’re going to just have to wait. You need to talk to Talia about some of the new eternals’ recent behavior anyway. When you arrive back at Evergloom, the snow has already gotten past ankle deep and it’s still falling. You believe now you’ve made the right decision and you probably won’t be able to pursue Flog until this sudden snowstorm lets up. In the meantime you go to Talia and explain the situation at Flogtown and what happened with one of the new eternals. The funny thing is she doesn’t seem entirely surprised by the behavior. “Well, it was definitely wrong for any of them to grumble about your orders. I will speak to all of them about this on our next training session, but I don’t think you need to worry, they are still just young and prone to a bit of undisciplined behavior at times. They all still know you are the Shadow Master and must be obeyed.” “Talia, I’m not even worried about that since I’m sure if they got too out of line I could handle any one of them. I’m more concerned with this uncontrolled bloodlust that they seem to display along with other more unsavory acts when engaging in battle.” “As I said they are just young and full of piss and vinegar. Besides, don’t you usually enjoy battle too?” “Yes I don’t deny that, I never have. I believe it’s part of being an Eternal, but I don’t get a sadistic gleeful pleasure out of it like they seem to do and I certainly don’t try to violate anyone.” “The one you’re speaking about, Brother Seminai, was he successful in his attempt?” “No, I told you I stopped him before he could.” “Hmm, perhaps you should’ve let him continue.” You are genuinely shocked to hear Talia say this. “What?! Are you seriously encouraging that we allow our people to rape others?” “Not encouraging, but…(sigh) look I’m sure you’re aware that the numbers of our order currently aren’t that great and the ratio of men far exceeds the women. Our human members are either single men or attached to other human women and while I expect our female shadows to do their duty to help bring in new shadows to this world, it still isn’t enough.” “Talia, We tried recruiting…” “Yes, I know and that hasn’t been successful either. Now my point was, our eternal shadows are also mostly male, there are currently only a couple of females and the pairing of an eternal male and female seems to result in no offspring. So…” “Wait a minute! Just stop right there. How do you know this?” “Simple, I caught two of them raping one of the girls in a storeroom three years ago and after nine months the act produced no offspring.” Now you’re floored. You can’t believe what you’re hearing. “And you never thought to tell me this?” “I never told you about it, since I saw no reason to trouble you with it especially since you had other matters on your mind at the time. The new eternals are primarily my concern and as such it was my responsibility to keep them in line. My initial thought was to put them to death obviously, but then I realized we don’t have the numbers to just throw away like that and I saw an opportunity to see IF the new eternals were fertile, unlike us. If they had been, it would’ve solved both of our problems by replenishing our numbers with superior eternal blood. So instead I only harshly punished the boys and reminded them that Dendrin does not permit the harming of fellow shadows and that if they ever do it again, then they will suffer final judgment by your hand. They obeyed and understood.” “And what of the victim?” “It took some time, but I calmed the sister and reassured her that it would never happen again, but to never speak of it for it may disrupt the order of the shadows. She understood. I watched her for a while to see if she was pregnant, but nothing ever showed up and that was the end of it. A pity, but I still held out hope that maybe it was only one gender that was sterile. I don’t know which one though, so that’s why I was saying earlier that it might’ve been in our best interest to let the Brother Seminai have his way with that peasant girl. A potential half eternal is still better than none.” You know Talia sees the new eternals to a certain extent as her “children” and as such she’s tends to do the protective mother thing on rare occasions. You also know that Talia still harbored the idea of re-creating the shadow order with hundreds of eternal babies. Especially after you told her of how you and her couldn’t have any, but you never thought she’d go to these lengths. This is almost delusional, no, it IS delusional and you’re putting a stop to it right now. “Talia, this is…misguided. It’s obvious that these eternals are just like us in that they are sterile. And I don’t think replenishing our numbers by raping the population is the answer.” “Oh? Just like your choice to allow Flog to enslave several towns was misguided? Well I don’t see you coming up with any better ideas on attempting to preserve the order from dying out, let alone the eternals! Don’t you dare make me out to be some monster, I’m only trying to figure out a way to keep us from just disappearing from history once we’re all dead and turned to dust!” Talia yells getting upset in the process. She’s completely ignoring all “protocol” that you’re Shadow Master at this point, but you don’t care about that, never have when it comes to her. Still, you’re going to have to settle this matter before the night’s over and to be fair, she’s right in that you aren’t in any position to judge her. Ultimately the both of you make up and you make the decision that you’re going to call a meeting of the shadows. It’s just as well you decide to get your “house in order” because the snowstorm only gets worse as the night goes on and you’re literally snowed in for about a month, but fortunately you’ve got more than enough food stored up. You take the time to re-establish the rules and what is acceptable and what isn’t. This goes about as well as can be expected. Nobody speaks up out of turn or protests, but you know that there is a simmering resentment underneath. By the time the snowstorm is over, you’re glad to send them all out to go seek out Flog and murder him along with anyone under his command.. When you get to the next enslaved village, you find the place in even worse shape than the first one. The snowstorm hit this place pretty badly and apparently not much food had been stored up. Gruesome sights of half eaten bodies on spits are prominent and not all of them consist of human slaves, some of them are of other orcs, even an ogre. You’re attacked on sight immediately, but it’s probably more due to hunger than anything else. After a quick skirmish you don’t find anything else alive in the village. All the slaves have either been eaten or froze to death. Flog apparently wasn’t here either, you shake your head and mutter “Of course it would have to be the last one.” Going to the final village, you find it in better condition than the last one, but that isn’t saying much. Looking at the mostly eaten giant laying outside the village, it looks like Flog got enterprising in his cannibalism and rationed out the meat on a larger target. The gate isn’t even guarded and you walk right in. Orcs and slaves alike both take notice. It is there you finally catch sight of Flog. “Flog.” You call out. “Shadow.” He answers. There is a brief pause of wondering what your intentions exactly are, but not for long and he orders his people to defend themselves. It’s a futile order as the new eternals have been itching for a real fight since they left Evergloom and are more than a match for the orcs and ogres. You can only hope none of them decide to take out their enthusiasm on the human slaves like last time. Flog himself is cut down in a joint effort between you and Cyrus. Flog never does question why you’re attacking him, probably because he was too busy trying to survive at the time. Wouldn’t matter anyway, his fate was decided long ago. “What are we going to do about the slaves?” Cyrus asks. “Free them before we leave of course.” You remark. “Do you think they’ll really survive? None of them look too good.” “Well of course they don’t, they’re fucking slaves, Cyrus. What are you suggesting, that we take them with us?” “Well no, I just wasn’t sure, since you seemed to want to help the ones in the other village.” “If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that we’ve done enough to these folks. The best thing we can do for them has been done. We’ve freed them. It’ll be up to them if they want to survive.” “Understood.” With that last bit of wisdom, the slaves are freed though none of them are in any particular condition to enjoy it. You take your leave before they muster up the strength to start cursing you like the last ones did. On the long trek back home, you ponder the future of what you’re going to have to do to keep this order sustainable and right now you’re coming up blank. You hope that you can to better than that soon, because that’s an unacceptable solution. It’s times like this when you wish you had a misplaced faith in a god so that you could pray to them for guidance. Of course it wouldn’t do you much good, if that god were anything like Dendrin. > Year 45 “It’s no use Master, I tried to speak with the mayor, but they refuse to deal with us anymore. They said it is no longer a good idea to trade with us anymore since they depend on other the trade of other villages and they’re more important.” Brother Gannon tells you. And that was the last of the known places in Rask to cut ties with you. Now you’re truly on your own. This has been going on for quite some time now ever since citizens of those enslaved towns you freed managed to make contact with the other towns south of you. There were always rumors, but nobody ever knew for sure, they may not have even cared, but when those ex-slaves told them of the exact horrors they faced, well it put you in a pretty bad light and you weren’t exactly on the honor list to begin with. One by one the towns started banning shadows from even entering and stopped trade with you. Normally two such things wouldn’t mean a lot, but given that were currently attempting to recruit through missionary work again, that is no longer an option at all now. As for trade, the shadows are self reliant, but the land is pretty harsh and sometimes a little trade for things you need helps a lot. You don’t have that option either anymore. The shadows are divided on their opinions. Some say none of it matters as long as they trust in Dendrin to provide. These are mostly from the older human shadows. Some of the ones with families are a little more concerned, but most of them have taken it upon themselves to become dedicated hunters and gatherers. Cyrus surprisingly is in this camp. He and Draven have been responsible for bringing in most of the basic supplies you need. Though sometimes they come back with things that don’t seem to come from the “wild”. You can only guess they’ve taken to thievery of some of the closer villages. Doesn’t matter to you, whatever works and as long as they don’t get caught. The eternal shadows on the other hand are militant as usual about things. They believe the villages should be paying you tribute for freeing them from the Empire in the first place. In a way, you can understand their frustration, but launching an assault on the Raskians isn’t going to help anything. In the meantime you’ve been trying to keep them occupied with killing giantkin that lumber down from the northern mountains. It helps a little, but there have been times you’ve had to stop one or two of them from starting fights with the human shadows. You’ve spoken to Talia repeatedly about their behavior, but she tells you that she’s done all she can. She thinks part of the problem is that they never heard Dendrin’s voice or been in his presence, so while she has attempted to indoctrinate them as best she could, only Dendrin could make it absolute. Barring finding a book (which no longer exists) to perform that same ritual that you, Talia and Cyrus experienced long ago, you’d have to speak to Dendrin himself about it, and he still hasn’t seen fit to speak to you for a long time. It’s been quite a while now, you wonder if he’s finally lost interest in you. Of course since you’ve wondered if that’s the case, he ends up popping up a few days later during your sleep. “Should’ve known better than to think you’d left for good.” You say. “Well, I did leave for quite awhile, I can see where you came up with that conclusion, sorry about that, but I was preoccupied with other matters. No need to worry yourself about them and anyway I’m here now! So rejoice that I may help you in your time of need!” Dendrin replies. “Yeah, don’t think that’ll be necessary.” “Oh no? From what I can tell you’re having a bit of trouble keeping those eternal shadows of yours under control. I would’ve expected better, but no matter as I’ve said I’m here to help.” “And just what did you have planned, were you going to offer to indoctrinate them like you tried to do with me?” “A possibilities, is that what you’d like me to do?” “Would it work?” “Of course, but loyalty to the shadows or to me isn’t their problem. Your mate has done an excellent job indoctrinating them herself. In fact they’re so loyal they’re ready to start kill the local population because of it. I say why not let them?” “Because you don’t have to deal with the headache of the situation and starting a potential war isn’t what I had planned.” “Well why not? You’re obviously failing to keep the order thriving under peace, you might as well go for more violent means. It is what you Eternals are good at and what you know isn’t it? I’m sort of surprised you’ve shied away from it.” “Does everyone believe me to some sort of warmonger? Look, yes its true I enjoy battle, I probably always will. I will also probably always feel a sense of boredom or dissatisfaction when going for long periods of time without doing it. However, I was never one to seek it out on a whim. I fought the Empire, because it was the right thing to do, I took out Flog for similar reasons and to correct mistakes of the past.” “You killed Flog because he wasn’t useful anymore and he was becoming a thorn in your side, don’t fool yourself, Eternal.” “Very well, but there was still a purpose. Attacking the Raskian people just because they distrust us or hate us? What is the purpose? Some sort of petty revenge because they won’t bow down? Why should they, and I can’t say as I blame them. Even not counting after they found out about the slavery incident, we were attempting to convert their people. People aren’t too fond of others pushing their beliefs on them. We were also part of the Empire too at one point. The shadows willingly aided it as a sort of secret security force in the hopes of betraying it one day. Sure there was always the claim that it was for “everyone” but at the core it was ALWAYS for the shadows first and foremost and you KNOW it because YOU were the one that set the rebellion in motion centuries ago.” “And? What if it was?” “Yes, the ends justify the means and I understand that, but I see no justification in attacking the Raskians. If my goal had been to carve out some sort of Shadow version the Empire I might as well had fought for the other side instead and saved myself the trouble. Besides if we did start attacking, they would see us exactly as how we saw Flog; A thorn in the side, which had outlived its usefulness. Sure we could easily subjugate them all, but only at a great cost of stretching ourselves very thin and we all saw how that worked out for the Empire.” ”Those are all interesting things to think about, but I think your real problem is clear enough and quite basic. You’ve primarily got a division of the flock and that’s your biggest concern. You’ve got normals and you’ve got Eternals. You aren’t going to be able to settle anything properly until get rid of one or the other and if you have any intention on keeping this order together like you’re trying to do…why are you at this point?” “Good question, but I think the only answer is the same one as usual.” “Oh yes, your mate…well I suppose that does make things a bit harder for you doesn’t it? I don’t even think she would want you disposing of her “children.” Might make for an unhappy marriage I suppose. Then again, the normal shadows are the only ones who can breed. Yes, looks like you’re going to have an interesting decision to make.” “I’m not ordering half of the shadows to death just for your amusement.” “You might not have to, events may thrust you into such a position where you’ll be forced to choose one side or the other anyway. Well I leave it in your capable hands as usual shadow. As usual I’ll be watching.” As usual Dendrin has not helped you at all. Nice to see some things never change. Still, the new eternals are the ones that have caused problems and will probably continue to do so in the future. It would be nice if they just went away. You flirt with the idea that maybe whittling down their numbers might at least make them more manageable. Unfortunately they’ve proven quite capable in combat, so you’d have to find some sort of excuse of sending them deep into giant country, namely the actual mountains. You’d probably have to lead them yourself too, just to make sure everything goes “right.” Of course if you did this, you’re not only potentially causing problem between you and Talia if she ever found out, but also you’d be engaging in double dealing on a level equivalent to selling out those villages to Flog and you just learned the hard way on how wrong that was. > You leave it alone As much of a pain in the ass as they may be, you can’t just start planning a mass assassination of them because of it. They really haven’t defied you directly yet anyway. Of course you’ve rather them not get to that point, so you’re going to hope that things get better… Naturally things like this never just “get better”. Year 46 “That’s it! They went too fucking far this time. You warned them and more importantly I warned them about this. I told them to stay AWAY from the damn peasants and the villages, they didn’t and now we’ve got a massacre on our hands! Our reputation in this country is bad enough without assholes with short tempers slaughtering a handful of peasants that were rightfully giving them suspicious looks!” you yell. “I think you need to calm yourself, this isn’t as bad as it may seem. Brother Seminai said that…” You interrupt Talia. “Ah yes, the usual instigator and trouble maker. Why wasn’t I surprised to hear it was he that came up with the idiotic plan to steal food from one of the local villages and why the hell were they doing it in the first place? Cyrus and Draven take care of that and they do a fine enough job of it!” “I believe he just thought it might impress or please you to show some initiative.” “If I wanted him to go skulking around pilfering supplies I would’ve given the order! His job and the rest of the eternal shadows are to just patrol our territory. It’s not that damn hard! If they were really bored they could’ve went hunting or even sought out a giant to kill. I mean they didn’t even use their cloak to go about their thievery! What the fuck were they thinking? They either wanted to get into a fight deliberately or they’re stupidier than I thought! Either way I’m not putting up with such incompetence, where are the five of them right now?” “They’re currently in the barracks, but I don’t think you should…” You push Talia out of the way and head to the barracks, she chases after you and tries to plead on their behalf, but you’re tired of it and them. After today, everything is going to be different in more ways than one. You get to the barracks and see several of the eternal shadows standing around talking, the five involved in the incident are in the center. All of them look at you when you enter the room. “You have disobeyed direct orders from me and more importantly Dendrin. I don’t care what your excuses are, because I’m tired of hearing them. The punishment will be death.” You say and draw your weapon. Talia cries out a “No!” but you are unmoved. To their credit, Brother Seminai and the other four step forward and kneel before you. “We accept your decision Shadow Master…but I beg you not to punish all of us. It was my idea. I beg not for my life, but those of my brothers who merely followed my lead.” “Then they deserve death even more than you, since they were foolish enough to simply follow like sheep. This is my final judgment and the will of Dendrin!” With those words you kill Brother Seminai first, then you go down the line. All the rest of the Eternals stand watching. You think this might be the first time they’ve actually paid any genuine attention to you. With your sword drenched in blood you point to the five bodies on the floor. “These five disobeyed and have paid their price, but we may still pay our own due to their actions. You lot always seem eager for battle, well I certainly hope you want that, because I guarantee that it will definitely be coming to us.” You turn to Talia, who is trying to cry as quietly as possible at seeing five of her “children” dead. You lift her chin up with your hand. “Talia…my love. See to it that they’re ready to attack Volgst in twenty minutes.” “(sniffle) You…you’re commanding an attack on one of the villages?” she asks in confusion. “What choice have I got? These fucking idiots just started an incident that can’t be repaired by diplomacy, which wouldn’t be an option for us anyway. The way I see it, we either start attacking fast and hard now, or we wait around for them to build up an army of some sort. We’re already going to be vilified, might as well go with it at this point.” Year 48 It’s amazing how quickly the tide of a war can change in just a couple years. You’re sure the Empire felt the same way. You stand amidst the ruins of Evergloom. Well not really the ruins so much as the “empty halls” of Evergloom. Almost all of the shadows are dead, you’ve spent most of the day clearing the bodies. You knew the Raskians would strike back, that was certain. It was also futile on their part. Even the most skilled militiamen their towns could muster wouldn’t be any match for the shadows. You also knew you wouldn’t feasibly be able to occupy the towns, so you didn’t bother, instead putting most of them to the torch. You might as well been called “The Shadow Butcher of Rask” (The old ghost of Kane must be laughing his crazy head off at that one.) However what wasn’t anticipated was the amount of wealth the Raskians scraped together in order to fight back. They hired lots of Svelk mercenaries to assist in the war. The dark elves proved to be better fighters and just as ruthless. You knew this having had to fight a few of them during the Empire war, but the new eternals let their arrogance get the better of them as usual and many of them were killed before they figured out that this wasn’t a game anymore. The major turning point was year ago at the battle of Keplavisk where the Raskians won their first outright victory against you. Since that time, it’s been one skirmish after another. Your numbers slowly dwindling and the Raskians getting support from a warlord south of Rask. (He’s an ex-Empire general, so he’s probably helping due to revenge as well as for his own personal gain on Rask) Then bad timing struck when Evergloom suffered giant tribe attack, you don’t know what caused them to suddenly stir from their mountains, but they struck hard. Didn’t help that the vicious svelk took advantage of this situation by slipping in their own assassination team. The target wasn’t you or even any of the eternals though. It was any child or mother they found in the Evergloom. They had succeeded in their plan by the time they were all cut down. This was devastating to the morale of the human shadows, who increasingly began blaming the eternal shadows for causing this mess in the first place. Eventually all that unifying faith in Dendrin bullshit went out the window and ultimately the tempers exploded into an orgy of violence. What you’re cleaning up right now is the bloody aftermath of four days of infighting. Only a few of the eternal shadows survived and they are now no longer the loyal disciples of Dendrin anymore. The events have changed them into the selfish cold blooded killers that they were always were at their core. The ones that survived abandoned Evergloom, presumably to go wage their own personal battle on the Raskians. You guess that they’ll probably be little better than common bandits and probably survive just as long as one. The funny thing is they were bred probably in the hopes of destroying the shadows, and they’ve actually done it. Perhaps a little later than what was planned, but the shadows are certainly no more. The Eternals will soon follow as well. Cyrus is dead. Died defending his “normal” lover Draven. You sort of wish you went out the same way, but ever the survivor you managed to live when others died. Besides, you had to kill Talia yourself when she sided with her “children”, claiming that you always hated them and how all of this was your fault. She never did get over the fact that you killed five of them in front of her and by the time the big fight occurred the both of you weren’t exactly on amicable terms anymore. Still you never did harbor the same sort of feelings of anger for her that she did for you. As you look down at her bloody body, you shed a few tears and say a few words telling her that you still love her. After a few more moments, you put her body with the rest and set the pile on fire, before leaving Evergloom forever. You briefly wonder if you should seek your death in battle with the Raskians, but you dismiss that plan since you’d hate to give them the satisfaction. Instead you decide to go further north, to the mountains where the giants roam. Surely you’ll be taken down eventually by a combination of them and the harsh elements alone. You figure you’ll get there quicker by speeding yourself up, but you immediately find out that your spell doesn’t work. In fact none of your magic works. It would appear that Dendrin has finally lost interest. “Huh. Well that’s one good thing at least.” You say and begin to walk.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 45 “It’s no use Master, I tried to speak with the mayor, but they refuse to deal with us anymore. They said it is no longer a good idea to trade with us anymore since they depend on other the trade of other villages and they’re more important.” Brother Gannon tells you. And that was the last of the known places in Rask to cut ties with you. Now you’re truly on your own. This has been going on for quite some time now ever since citizens of those enslaved towns you freed managed to make contact with the other towns south of you. There were always rumors, but nobody ever knew for sure, they may not have even cared, but when those ex-slaves told them of the exact horrors they faced, well it put you in a pretty bad light and you weren’t exactly on the honor list to begin with. One by one the towns started banning shadows from even entering and stopped trade with you. Normally two such things wouldn’t mean a lot, but given that were currently attempting to recruit through missionary work again, that is no longer an option at all now. As for trade, the shadows are self reliant, but the land is pretty harsh and sometimes a little trade for things you need helps a lot. You don’t have that option either anymore. The shadows are divided on their opinions. Some say none of it matters as long as they trust in Dendrin to provide. These are mostly from the older human shadows. Some of the ones with families are a little more concerned, but most of them have taken it upon themselves to become dedicated hunters and gatherers. Cyrus surprisingly is in this camp. He and Draven have been responsible for bringing in most of the basic supplies you need. Though sometimes they come back with things that don’t seem to come from the “wild”. You can only guess they’ve taken to thievery of some of the closer villages. Doesn’t matter to you, whatever works and as long as they don’t get caught. The eternal shadows on the other hand are militant as usual about things. They believe the villages should be paying you tribute for freeing them from the Empire in the first place. In a way, you can understand their frustration, but launching an assault on the Raskians isn’t going to help anything. In the meantime you’ve been trying to keep them occupied with killing giantkin that lumber down from the northern mountains. It helps a little, but there have been times you’ve had to stop one or two of them from starting fights with the human shadows. You’ve spoken to Talia repeatedly about their behavior, but she tells you that she’s done all she can. She thinks part of the problem is that they never heard Dendrin’s voice or been in his presence, so while she has attempted to indoctrinate them as best she could, only Dendrin could make it absolute. Barring finding a book (which no longer exists) to perform that same ritual that you, Talia and Cyrus experienced long ago, you’d have to speak to Dendrin himself about it, and he still hasn’t seen fit to speak to you for a long time. It’s been quite a while now, you wonder if he’s finally lost interest in you. Of course since you’ve wondered if that’s the case, he ends up popping up a few days later during your sleep. “Should’ve known better than to think you’d left for good.” You say. “Well, I did leave for quite awhile, I can see where you came up with that conclusion, sorry about that, but I was preoccupied with other matters. No need to worry yourself about them and anyway I’m here now! So rejoice that I may help you in your time of need!” Dendrin replies. “Yeah, don’t think that’ll be necessary.” “Oh no? From what I can tell you’re having a bit of trouble keeping those eternal shadows of yours under control. I would’ve expected better, but no matter as I’ve said I’m here to help.” “And just what did you have planned, were you going to offer to indoctrinate them like you tried to do with me?” “A possibilities, is that what you’d like me to do?” “Would it work?” “Of course, but loyalty to the shadows or to me isn’t their problem. Your mate has done an excellent job indoctrinating them herself. In fact they’re so loyal they’re ready to start kill the local population because of it. I say why not let them?” “Because you don’t have to deal with the headache of the situation and starting a potential war isn’t what I had planned.” “Well why not? You’re obviously failing to keep the order thriving under peace, you might as well go for more violent means. It is what you Eternals are good at and what you know isn’t it? I’m sort of surprised you’ve shied away from it.” “Does everyone believe me to some sort of warmonger? Look, yes its true I enjoy battle, I probably always will. I will also probably always feel a sense of boredom or dissatisfaction when going for long periods of time without doing it. However, I was never one to seek it out on a whim. I fought the Empire, because it was the right thing to do, I took out Flog for similar reasons and to correct mistakes of the past.” “You killed Flog because he wasn’t useful anymore and he was becoming a thorn in your side, don’t fool yourself, Eternal.” “Very well, but there was still a purpose. Attacking the Raskian people just because they distrust us or hate us? What is the purpose? Some sort of petty revenge because they won’t bow down? Why should they, and I can’t say as I blame them. Even not counting after they found out about the slavery incident, we were attempting to convert their people. People aren’t too fond of others pushing their beliefs on them. We were also part of the Empire too at one point. The shadows willingly aided it as a sort of secret security force in the hopes of betraying it one day. Sure there was always the claim that it was for “everyone” but at the core it was ALWAYS for the shadows first and foremost and you KNOW it because YOU were the one that set the rebellion in motion centuries ago.” “And? What if it was?” “Yes, the ends justify the means and I understand that, but I see no justification in attacking the Raskians. If my goal had been to carve out some sort of Shadow version the Empire I might as well had fought for the other side instead and saved myself the trouble. Besides if we did start attacking, they would see us exactly as how we saw Flog; A thorn in the side, which had outlived its usefulness. Sure we could easily subjugate them all, but only at a great cost of stretching ourselves very thin and we all saw how that worked out for the Empire.” ”Those are all interesting things to think about, but I think your real problem is clear enough and quite basic. You’ve primarily got a division of the flock and that’s your biggest concern. You’ve got normals and you’ve got Eternals. You aren’t going to be able to settle anything properly until get rid of one or the other and if you have any intention on keeping this order together like you’re trying to do…why are you at this point?” “Good question, but I think the only answer is the same one as usual.” “Oh yes, your mate…well I suppose that does make things a bit harder for you doesn’t it? I don’t even think she would want you disposing of her “children.” Might make for an unhappy marriage I suppose. Then again, the normal shadows are the only ones who can breed. Yes, looks like you’re going to have an interesting decision to make.” “I’m not ordering half of the shadows to death just for your amusement.” “You might not have to, events may thrust you into such a position where you’ll be forced to choose one side or the other anyway. Well I leave it in your capable hands as usual shadow. As usual I’ll be watching.” As usual Dendrin has not helped you at all. Nice to see some things never change. Still, the new eternals are the ones that have caused problems and will probably continue to do so in the future. It would be nice if they just went away. You flirt with the idea that maybe whittling down their numbers might at least make them more manageable. Unfortunately they’ve proven quite capable in combat, so you’d have to find some sort of excuse of sending them deep into giant country, namely the actual mountains. You’d probably have to lead them yourself too, just to make sure everything goes “right.” Of course if you did this, you’re not only potentially causing problem between you and Talia if she ever found out, but also you’d be engaging in double dealing on a level equivalent to selling out those villages to Flog and you just learned the hard way on how wrong that was. > You engage the plan Given that you were supposed to be loyal to the Empire and then backstabbed them in probably one of the most traitorous acts in history. What’s one more betrayal? Your situation with Flog, is much different than your situation with the new eternals. With him, you originally caused more problems by keeping him alive. With the new eternals you’ll actually be solving problems by killing them off. It’s going to be tricky, but you’re pretty sure you can do it. You decide to call a meeting that you have received a message from Dendrin himself and how he has warned you of an impending invasion of giants. Dendrin has told you that you need to march into the mountains and thin out the population as much as possible in a pre-emptive strike since they’d never expect it. Since this would be a “mission” for the best warriors, several of the new eternals are perfect for it, doesn’t even take much convincing since they’re all practically begging to go. You don’t take them all however, since that might be a bit suspicious. Instead you take all of the ones that you know have been showing the most signs of disruptive behavior. (Which is still most of them). As far as you can tell all of the shadows, human or eternal take you at your word and suspect nothing. The only two you’re concerned about is Talia and Cyrus. Talia, is a little concerned, that you’re embarking on this dangerous undertaking with several of her “children”, but using the excuse that it is “Dendrin’s will” stirs up no suspicion from her. Cyrus volunteers to go, indeed he assumed he was, but you tell him that he’s needed at Evergloom in case something major happens while you’re away. Cyrus is probably so honored that you’d put him in charge of something so important that he doesn’t get suspicious either. You set off with around thirty of the eternals and head straight for the Raskian Mountains. You don’t really have plan at this point, other than to wander the mountains long enough killing giants that attrition will take its toll. When the survivor number gets low enough, you’ll take care of the rest personally, and make the trek back to Evergloom alone claiming how you eventually fought a giant king and that everyone died gloriously in Dendrin’s honor. Before you even reach the mountains you get into combat with ogre tribes, then mixed tribes with a couple giants and ogres. No problems so far, but you’re noticing that a few of the eternals are starting to get a little tired because the fools have been over using their shadow magic. This is going to be over sooner than you think if they continue to not pace themselves. Tracking giant lairs in the mountains really isn’t all that difficult, just like for the large footprints in the snow and the really big caves. The first few battles go well, but after that, people start getting wounded. A few days go by and exhaustion starts setting in along with hunger. It’s not just tough on the eternal shadows, it’s a challenge for you as well since you’re right there along with all of them. Things start to get interesting when you start facing something more than giants, namely lizard like creatures that breathe gouts of ice at you. These ice drakes are the cause of your first casualties. A couple more days pass, and you’ve lost a little more than half of your people. Most of them in battle, but a couple of them have died due to the treacherous terrain of the mountains like falling off the side of it. You sort of expected them to whine or at least grumble by this point. They haven’t done any of that, and they’ve followed your orders without question. You’re a little impressed. The fact that so many of them have died on this mission is probably a humbling experience for them; perhaps it has even changed them a bit. You decide that maybe you don’t need to kill them all and just an experience like this is enough. When you wake up the next day, you call the remaining eternals to order and tell them that Dendrin has visited you and has said that your mission is finished and that the invasion will no longer take place. (You actually feel pretty safe saying that considering how many giant you really did kill!) You then also tell them that Dendrin has looked favorably on all of them for carrying out his orders and obeying their Shadow Master without argument. They seem to like the idea that their god has given them some praise. As you make your way back to Evergloom, you begin to think about this plan you came up with and while you don’t feel bad about it, you do wonder if there was another way that might not have involved so much death. Still, what’s done is done now, and it seems to have had a desired effect. Probably for the best that you did cut the plan short though since even you are feeling very tired after this ordeal and would like to get some rest in a proper bed. Also reminds you of how you aren’t as young as you used to be either. The rest of the trip is fairly uneventful until you step into Kragen Pass and then you start to get an uneasy feeling half way through… A rumbling is heard on both sides of the pass and then several large snow covered boulders are flying over your heads. “GIANTS! RUN!” you shout. During your bloody march through the mountains, some of the giants figured you were trying to kill all of their kind. It would appear that when facing potential genocide, the big brutes are able to employ a little strategy in their usually dim noggins, like retreating from the mountains and ambushing you in this pass by throwing big ass rocks at you. Crude, simple, but effective. Before anyone can speed their way through the pass, the giants block it off by causing a minor avalanche on both ends while continuing to hurl boulders at you. In everyone’s current state of exhaustion, it isn’t long before some of the eternals are crushed. You try your best to find a potential hiding spot or even a small cave, but there are none. Eventually the barrage of boulders being thrown crushes you too. The irony in all this is your actions actually cause a massive giant attack on Evergloom in the next few weeks as they seek to preserve themselves from being killed, by destroying Evergloom and the remaining shadows.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3B1: Shadow Master Year 41 “We had to kill another group of ogres sniffing around the fort today.” Cyrus remarks. “Yeah, I know the battle woke me up, by the time I got ready, all of them had been killed.” You reply. “I’m going to have to speak with Flog, because I thought we had an understanding that he was to keep the giant and ogre population down or at least manageable.” “I say we just kill him and be done with it.” “Hmm, yeah I know he’s not your favorite person, but he’s proven himself useful, vital even in the past. Besides he’s the only thing keeping that’s keeping that rabble in line.” “He’s also the only thing keeping them organized. Maybe he’s planning on making an army to march upon us.” “Yes, I have considered that too, I’m just wondering what’s worse. A completely hostile unchecked horde of giantkin or a semi organized army of the same which may or may not be reasoned with.” “Perhaps you may need to ask Dendrin for guidance on this matter.” Cyrus says. “Perhaps…” If Dendrin actually did have any advice on the matter, it probably wouldn’t do you much good anyway considering how whimsical he is, not to mention he’s chosen not to speak to you for quite some time, as he is prone to do. Being Shadow Master has been a bit of odd since you’ve taken the position mainly because you don’t feel like you have a specific purpose. The first two years were easy enough as you were still mostly concerning yourself with rebuilding Evergloom for defense, additional training for the shadows and making sure Rask kept its independence, but that was never truly ever an issue since the Empire never did make a come back and reports of their continual descent into chaos was assured. The next two years consisted of a halfhearted attempt at spreading “the faith” mainly to build up numbers. From what you could piece together of shadow history from the few books that Cyrus still had, the shadows never had an aggressive policy on such things, pre or post Empire days, they mostly relied on people either coming to them of their own free will or being “born” into it. There have been a few shadow births, but you’d rather have a more traditional way of gaining recruits because “breeding” a new order isn’t really going to be a big option seeing as your current ratio of men and women isn’t great and those with Eternal heritage can’t reproduce at all. While you could’ve easily told everyone to start putting the remaining Raskian towns to the blade and do the whole “convert or die” thing, you decided it wouldn’t be that great of an idea for several reasons. So you relied on a more missionary way of doing things like sending certain shadows to towns and stressing the benefits of being a shadow. It got a few people interested, but nothing major. The Raskians in general have become less trustful of the shadows over the years now that the war with the Empire is over, almost as if they are expecting you to start launching a religious crusade. You soon got the impression that the Raskians would prefer if the lot of you would just leave them alone now. Somewhat ungrateful considering all you’ve done in securing the country’s freedom, but hardly surprising. Last year was the official fall of the Empire, from what you heard the Emperor’s palace was in flames and the few remaining generals or strong military men have taken it upon themselves to carve out various fiefdoms for themselves while other places have gone the way of total anarchy. There was even a little bit of celebrating in Rask and among the shadows when it occurred. However, you couldn’t help but be a little disappointed that the great enemy you struggled so hard against was now gone forever. Like you craved the chance to fight them again if only for the opportunity to be in battle once again which has sorely been lacking. Now with the giantkin starting to become a problem once again, you’re half tempted to take Cyrus’ advice. You’re certain that it would be a sure victory for you and to an extent, Flog has been getting less and less reasonable as the years have gone on. Perhaps it is time to get rid of him and take your chances with more problems with giantkin in the future. Instead of talking with Dendrin about it, you choose to discuss this situation with someone that will have a better opinion on the situation. “It sounds like you’ve sort of made your mind up about Flog already.” Talia remarks. “You might be right, but I was wondering what your opinion was on the matter.” “Better you should ask Dendrin for guidance on that, rather than me. Though I suppose if he has become more militant maybe it’s for the best, but…” “But you think I should try to renegotiate with him?” “No, I wasn’t going to suggest that, I was going to say maybe we should leave Rask altogether.” “What? Why?” “The people here obviously don’t want us around, food isn’t the easiest thing to come by and we’re basically the first target whenever a group of ogres or giants come lumbering down south.” “We faced the Empire and survived against all odds, I think we can handle being disliked by the plebs and the occasional giant attack.” “You’re probably right, but I just feel like we’re stagnating here. Like we aren’t rebuilding the order the way that we should. We’ve also lost a lot of history, even certain rituals. I mean I’ve remembered as much as we were taught and tried to pass these lessons on to the new eternals when I first trained them and continue to do so. The tomes we still have here help a bit, but ultimately when we lost Gloom, we lost a lot more than just a home.” “Well, where would we go? “That I don’t know. Delerg perhaps?” “That’s quite the distance, not to mention the area isn’t all that much more hospitable in terms of environment given that it’s mostly swamp.” “Yes, but it is the birthplace of the shadows and we do have an old temple there.” “Yeah and it hasn’t been used in centuries and is probably a crumbling ruin that’s half sunk into the swamp by now! Has anyone here actually ever been there, because I’ve only ever heard about it.” “Yes, I believe a few of the older brothers and sisters have. They would know the best way to get there. I want to just say though, that this is merely my opinion. I do not know if moving all of us somewhere else is the best solution or if it will even help, but I just feel like the longer we stay here, the further away we’re going to get from our roots and in another couple of generations, the shadows won’t be anything like the ones of old. But perhaps that is Dendrin’s will, as I said I don’t know. Only you would know being the Shadow Master and able to speak to him directly for guidance.” You give an acknowledging nod, but in reality you’re just left with another decision to make all by yourself. What Talia is suggesting sounds crazy and quite frankly you don’t even care about shadow history, but what does make this idea appealing is the journey and the challenge. You were just thinking about a change of some sort and while killing Flog and his little band would break up the monotony, perhaps a whole change of scenery is really in order. > You make the journey to Delerg While you aren’t convinced that going to Delerg is necessarily the best idea, maybe you do need a change of scenery. With the population being unhelpful and the troubles with Flog, it might very well be best to leave before this gets worse. Besides, while it isn’t common knowledge that you made a deal with Flog to enslave the northern most towns in exchange for his help, there have always been “rumors” amongst some of the Raskians and eventually those rumors are going to become an even bigger problem. Part of you feels like you’re “running away” from conflict and that somewhat bothers you. However, you spent your life running away from the Empire and striking at the right time to strengthen your own position while weakening their own. Why shouldn’t you employ a similar outlook on life in general? Retreat from an unfavorable position to hopefully a better one, it couldn’t hurt at this point. The next day you call all the shadows to gather in the main hall and announce that you’ve conversed with Dendrin and that he’s told you that the shadows need to go back to reclaim the shadow homeland in Delerg and that your future is there not in Rask. Many of the human shadows seem to be enthusiastic about this idea. The Eternal shadows less so, but that might be for several reasons. In any event, you tell everyone that all of you will be packing up everything and moving on as soon as possible. Since it is looking a snowstorm is coming you’ll have plenty of time to prepare and you’ll leave Evergloom when it subsides. You also ask some of the older shadows if they know where the original temple is exactly located in Delerg. Brother Theo says that he knows and that he remembers visiting it once back in his youth when he was escorting some rebels to the shadow safe houses in Delerg. “Despite it being in ruins and covered in overgrowth, I still felt it to be a place of power. Not power in the traditional sense, but more like a feeling. A feeling that the cause of the Shadows was the correct one and that by trusting in Dendrin, we would eventually return to the temple of our forefathers one day. It looks like that day has finally come and I couldn’t be happier.” Brother Theo says. “Well brother, we aren’t there yet. We’ve still got to get there. The Empire might be gone, but who knows what might’ve taken its place. The journey still might be dangerous.” You reply. “I know Shadow Master, but Dendrin guided us successfully through the Empire War. I know he will guide us to our home just as easily.” “Yes, I suppose he will.” A month passes before you can actually get going due to the snowstorm. Everyone’s glad to leave too being stuck in the fort for so long. You wish you hadn’t had to eat up a lot of your food supply though, but you figure you’ll worry about food along the way either by hunting for it or trading for it when possible. As you and the shadows begin your exodus from Evergloom, you look back at the old Empire fort that was your home for so long. You wonder how long it’ll be before someone else takes residence there. If you had to guess, Flog will probably figure out it isn’t occupied anymore, take it over and start using it as a staging ground to assault the southern towns of Rask. You’ll bet the Raskians will wish you were still around when that eventually happens. The journey through Rask is slow going. You can’t just speed yourselves up considering all the equipment and belongings you’ve got packed on wagons, carts and horses. Still, you aren’t in any danger as you pass through Raskian towns. While it alarms the people to see so many shadows nobody dares attack you. You find trade easy, as they are eager to help see you on your way. You didn’t really think you’d have trouble traveling through Rask though, it’s after Rask that you’re more concerned about. From what news has reached you, ever since the Empire fell the Quala province has fragmented into several bickering warlords, each fighting for control of what’s left. In some ways the people of the land are in a worse situation than when the Empire existed, but that isn’t something you can really dwell on now. Your goal is to get through the land and you’re sure to run into someone’s territory as you travel through and they’ll no doubt be hostile about it. Not much can be done except hope for the best because much like speeding yourselves up isn’t an option, neither is cloaking yourselves. Well you could, but those horses and wagons are still going to be visible. “How are we going to play this?” Talia asks as you stand at the Rask border. “I know our information structure started falling into disuse when we drove the Empire from Rask, but does anyone have any information on what the exact situation is in Quala?” you ask. “Last I heard, an ex-Empire general declared himself the local warlord of the northern most portion of Quala. A General Ackerson I believe.” Cyrus remarks. “Never heard of him.” “I don’t think most did, even before the rebellion he wasn’t a very prominent general and the Empire tended to have more than a few useless high ranking officers that never did much. I only knew about him due to all the years working in the shadow cells and keeping abreast of all the Empire military commanders. He got his rank mostly due to family connections and was never put in charge of anything important. I don’t even think he was even in charge of anything during the rebellion days, at least not that know of when I was still situated in Quala. Still, I assume he must have some skill in combat and have some charisma if he’s made himself a warlord now. Well that or very rich which might be more of the case.” Brother Theo adds. “Okay, any other information on warlords in the area?” you ask. Nobody knows anything else other than he seems to be the top one. Funny how the most obscure people can rise to power when the opportunity presents itself. Stepping off the road, you could probably just trespass through General Ackerson’s territory to reach Delerg and you’d only have him to deal with him if need be, of course it’s going to be even slower going due to all your baggage. The terrain that way is known to be somewhat hilly and if gets too rough, you might even have to leave some of your stuff behind. Rough terrain aside, there’s also the open fields you’d have to cross too. Not much cover if a large patrol of archers happened upon you. Of course sticking to the road will be quicker and unobtrusive to your baggage carts, but you’d still have to trespass through Ackerson’s territory and assuming you got through that, you’d probably have to go through some other warlord’s territory as well before you reached Delerg. On top of all this, you have no idea how you’ll be treated by any towns you pass through. > You travel off road The Empire might be dead, but chances are shadows probably still aren’t welcomed in these parts. You’re not afraid of a fight, but you aren’t sure just how much manpower and support this warlord has and there is no need to take unnecessary chances. Besides, some of the shadows traveling with you have actual families; if there is going to be growth in this organization then you can’t risk them. “Okay everyone, we’re heading off road. I’m warning you now, we may have to drop baggage if need be, but until then, we’re continuing our journey to Delerg. I also want all of you Eternal shadows to cloak yourself and walk on our perimeter. If you see anything or anyone that might be hostile, don’t reveal yourself, but instead report to either me, Cyrus or Talia directly and take a position that will allow you to ambush any interlopers when the time comes.” “Won’t we look like an easier target with less people visible? Shouldn’t we have a show of force instead?” Cyrus asks. “We could, but we’d likely be attacked anyway since we’re probably going to be outnumbered here. This way at least we’ll have the drop on anyone who decides to attack. There’s no easy way to do this, better that we play to our strengths and use stealth. That’s why I want to avoid the roads altogether.” “Very well Shadow Master.” Cyrus remarks. As you continue your journey across the long stretch of uneven fields, Talia comes up to speak to you. “I think you’ve made the right decision in traveling off road like this.” “Hope so, we’re pretty open out here. I’d hate for some platoon of patrolling archers to start firing at us.” “Well the cloaked scouts around us should give us a little warning at least. That was a good idea too. In fact I’m pretty excited about this whole journey. It’s a new chance to start over and I think it will do everyone some good…though I hope we will find a book or writings of the old ritual to open up the portal to Dendrin again.” “Well, it’s a pretty old ruin and in swamp. I don’t think we can get our hopes up too much that anything like that survived, but that doesn’t matter right? I mean if people are going to follow Dendrin, then he’ll find a way to reach them surely.” “I suppose you’re right, I just…well it’s silly I guess, but the new batch of eternal brothers and sisters never got properly indoctrinated by Dendrin and I think it would do them well to hear his words from his own voice.” “I don’t think we need to worry about their loyalty or dedication at this point, you’ve probably trained and taught them better than anyone could’ve about the ways of the shadow save for Dendrin himself.” “Yeah…maybe that’s what’s needed...” Talia at this point gets very quiet. Her face shows a combination of fear and guilt. It’s obvious she wants to tell you more, but now she’s afraid to. “Talia, let’s ride over there from the rest of the group for a moment.” You say. Talia nods and rides off and you tell Cyrus to take oversee everything while you talk to Talia privately. When you ride over next to her she’s in the middle of crying. “Talia, I don’t know what this is all about, but you know you can tell me and not be afraid about it.” “I’m not afraid of you… (sob) I mean I know your feelings for me are so strong that you’d probably be willing to overlook almost any transgression and that’s partly what I’m afraid of, because (sob) I don’t want you to get in trouble because of my decisions.” “Wha…? How am I going to get into trouble? What IS this all about and start from the beginning.” After calming herself, Talia begins to tell you what exactly is troubling her and she starts from the beginning which apparently was three years ago. She tells you that she caught two of the male eternals raping one of the female ones in a storeroom and that she did nothing about it, because she wanted to see if they suffered from infertility like the old eternals did. Instead she let the two males off with a warning and convinced the victim that something like this would never happen again. She also tells you that of course the female never got pregnant so it would seem the infertility also exists in the new eternals as well. “And you never thought to tell me this before?” “You had other concerns on your mind and I had it under control, or at least I thought I did…” “What? What happened?” “While we were waiting out the snowstorm, remember how Brother Seminai broke his neck while coming back from look out duty? He slipped on some ice and fell down the stairs?” “(Sigh) Let me guess, he was pushed?” “Sister Grace did. It was apparently in retaliation when he had raped her two night before. She told me and begged me not to tell you since she didn’t want to be punished for harming another shadow…it isn’t her fault. Its mine, I should’ve taught them all better, I am their mother and they are my children and I’ve failed them.” You shake your head at this point. You know Talia’s always had a maternal instinct towards the eternals, but you didn’t think it would go this far. You also have always known the newer eternals to be a bit more “wilder” but that only seemed to be in battle and you could easily rein them in. You never realized there was a deeper darkness within them and who knows how many harbor these undesirable traits. “Okay, first question. This Brother Seminai and Sister Grace were they also the ones involved three years ago? I mean is this a repeat action?” “No, those were three different eternals.” “Wonderful, I was hoping to limit my worry. Anyway, I know we’re low on the women folk in our order, but I think you know we can’t tolerate wanton raping just because their horny and undisciplined.” “I know and it was wrong of me to keep this from you in the first place…I just wanted our order to flourish with the blood of eternals…I mean yes I have hope that the shadows will at least grow, but we’re also eternals and we will eventually die out.” “Well, if these new ones are displaying these types of traits, maybe it’s better that we do. I mean I don’t pretend to be a devout clergy man that does nothing but good deeds and I will always have a desire for battle, I think most Eternals do having it bred into them, but I’ve never committed cruelty for the sake of it.” “What are you going to do?” “I’m not sure yet, but my other question is why did you think I would get into trouble?” “Because while you knew nothing about this, you would still be innocent in Dendrin’s eyes and because I know your love for me is such that no matter what you decide punishment won’t befall me even though it should. Dendrin I fear would not look favorably on you if you decide to do nothing to all those guilty after hearing what I’ve told you.” It’s funny, but you’ve been keeping a bigger secret than Talia for decades. You almost feel like telling her that Dendrin isn’t going to give a shit what you decide especially since he hasn’t seen fit to even speak to you in years. In any case, you probably need to do something, though you just aren’t sure it needs to be now. You’re in the middle of potentially hostile territory and settling an internal dispute might not be the best thing right now. Still the new eternals are going to have to be dealt with on some level and the sooner the better. As for Talia, she’s right in that you wouldn’t do anything to her, but it is somewhat surprising that she allowed this to happen. She might be a bit delusional, but you still love her. You give her an answer that should seem impartial though. “Talia, I need to know the names of the brothers involved in the rape three years ago and I need to know of any other eternal who has displayed potential disruptive behavior within the shadow order. I will have to consult Dendrin on this and decide what should be done with them…and you.” “I…I understand. I know you must be fair on this matter and I will accept any judgment that Dendrin sees fit to give.” “Well, I will have to as well and despite you only just now telling me, I may still be in trouble as well. After all as Shadow Master I really should’ve been more aware of my own people, but don’t worry about me. I will beg Dendrin for his forgiveness and that of all involved in this. Perhaps he will show mercy.” “We can only hope.” Talia replies and tells you the names as the two of you ride back to the group. Later that night you continue to ponder whether or not to dispose of your more troublesome followers. Granted the two in question haven’t done anything in three years, but that potential is always there, and so are the ones that haven’t done anything yet, but show signs of it. You can only guess this is more due to their breeding not anything they’ve been taught since they still uphold the tenets of being a shadow without question and that’s a bigger problem. If you kill them, is it going to stop there? All of them came out of those Derro tanks and who knows what the hell kind of magical concoction is coursing through their veins to make them behave in such an unstable manner and why is it becoming more of a problem lately? It’s times like this you almost wish that you actually COULD call upon Dendrin for his help… And why can’t you? What could it hurt? If you actually pray to him for help and he doesn’t listen, then nothing was lost and you’re back to what your plan was originally, which is dealing with the situation yourself in a violent manner. Of course if he actually does listen, he might very well help, but with a “catch.” You’ve known Dendrin for too long to know that when he does help, he doesn’t often do it in anyway that could be considered generous. > You help yourself You’ve gotten this far without begging for Dendrin’s help before, you’re not going to start now. Given that he hasn’t spoken to you in years maybe he’s finally lost interest. If that’s the case you’d hate to tempt disrupting that by calling on him directly. Before you go to sleep, you decide that it’ll be better off to kill the problem eternals that look like they’re going to continue being as such. You’ll make up some sort of story that Dendrin told you or some such nonsense. Everyone will believe it. You have it done soon after you get to your destination though, no sense in wasting potential manpower in hostile territory. Having made your decision you drift off into a deep sleep. You’re really tired, the stress of the day and the move in general has gotten to you more than you thought! In fact you’re so tired you don’t even wake up when you’re attacked in the middle of the night. It isn’t until Talia slaps you across the face that you awaken. “Ow! What the hell’s going on?” you ask rubbing your cheek. “We’re being attacked! Get up and move!” she shouts. A bright light is illuminating the nighttime sky along with several fire arrows. You’ roll under a wagon to avoid immediate danger. It would appear General Ackerson’s men have discovered you and have attacked in force. They’re being smart about it too, attacking at night with archers and unfortunately also a couple of battle mages who are making the darkness disappear with their spells. “How the hell did they sneak up on us? I had scouts around the perimeter to avoid this sort of thing!” you mutter to yourself. Doesn’t matter now you suppose, what you have to do is get the hell out of here as fast as possible. You don’t like running, but you’ll end up losing more people if you stick around and fight. Besides, there are probably more troops behind the archers or at least on their way. However you do see this as an opportunity, in fact it saves you the trouble of even weeding out various eternals. You deliberately give orders that all the eternals need to engage Ackerson’s army while the rest of the shadows make the escape attempt. “Everyone else, grab what you can, head for those hills, speed up and cloak!” you shout. “You can’t send them to engage the army, they’ll all be killed!” Talia says. “If it is Dendrin’s will, then that’s what’s going to happen, better that they should die in his service than all of be destroyed, now let’s move!” you shout back. Talia isn’t happy with the decision, but follows your lead. The soldiers are still shooting at you of course, but they’re doing it blind. Some of the mages get a few people though by blindly throwing fireballs in the general direction. It isn’t long before the ranged attacks become lessened when the eternals close in for combat. As you get closer and closer to the hills, the arrows and fireballs have seemed to have stopped altogether. The next few days also involve some fighting with more soldiers in the hills, and while it’s mostly swordsmen you still don’t have a major advantage as you’re short several good warriors since losing all of the eternals. You curse the fact that you behaved so rashly. Though nobody is cursing more than Cyrus when Dravin gets cut down by a lucky soldier, he nearly kills all the skirmishers himself after that happens. After the battle he still hasn’t calmed down. “Cyrus I know you’re upset about Dravin, but we’ve got to keep moving.” “Fuck you! This is YOUR fault!” Cyrus shouts as he morns over Dravin’s body. “If you hadn’t sent all the eternals to sacrifice themselves we might’ve had more people with us to close the gaps in our defenses! What the hell were you thinking?” “I was thinking that I was trying to save most of the shadows instead of all of getting killed instead!” “Well you’ve sure done a great job of that oh great Shadow Master!” “Cyrus, you honestly have a problem with me being Shadow Master after you practically begged like a pathetic worm for me to spare your life?” “And that was the biggest mistake of my entire life! I see now that you were never the chosen one of Dendrin, either that or he’s abandoned you and as a result us completely! Did you ever really talk to him at all or did you just make it all up?” “I knew I should’ve killed you…” “What’s stopping you now?” Talia attempts to separate the pair of you, but both of you are ready to draw weapons on each other. Meanwhile Theo is attempting to keep the rest of the shadows in order who are not only demoralized by the attacks and loss of people, but also the fact that their leadership is fighting on top of it. Things go from bad to worse when Talia is accidentally stabbed in the chest by Cyrus when he tries to stab you instead. You see her fall to ground with a look of shock on her face. Cyrus stands with a bloody dagger in his hand with a similar look of surprise on his face. “I…didn’t…I meant to…I…” Cyrus stutters as your eyes look right through him. You waste no time and tackle him to the ground. Theo shouts for you to stop, but you don’t hear anything until you hear the last sounds of Cyrus’ breath as you choke the life out of him before breaking his neck. By the time you’re done, no body knows what to think or do. They just stand around watching the self destruction of their order. You go back over to Talia’s body and find her still alive, but breathing weakly. “I’m sorry Talia, I…should’ve be able to stop…” “Stop what? It was Dendrin’s will that…I die obviously…at least I’ll see my eternals again…my children…” Talia says and lapses into unconsciousness and then death. You shed a few tears over her death, then Theo tries to get you to move. “Shadow Master we have to keep moving as you said.” “You want to keep moving go ahead Theo. I’ll be staying here.” Looking off in the distance. “But you’re the Shadow Master, you have to…” “I don’t have to do shit! You want the job? Go ahead, I make you Shadow Master. Lots of luck! Now begone!” you shout. Theo stands there for a while and starts to say something, but stops. Instead he just tells the remaining shadows to keep moving and eventually they’re all out of the area leaving you alone with several dead bodies surrounding you. When the rest of General Ackerson’s men reach you, you’re still sitting on the ground cradling Talia’s body. They shout some predictable threats and such at you, but you ignore them. You don’t care anymore. You’re numb all the way until you feel a sword blow to your head. And then you feel nothing ever again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Empire might be dead, but chances are shadows probably still aren’t welcomed in these parts. You’re not afraid of a fight, but you aren’t sure just how much manpower and support this warlord has and there is no need to take unnecessary chances. Besides, some of the shadows traveling with you have actual families; if there is going to be growth in this organization then you can’t risk them. “Okay everyone, we’re heading off road. I’m warning you now, we may have to drop baggage if need be, but until then, we’re continuing our journey to Delerg. I also want all of you Eternal shadows to cloak yourself and walk on our perimeter. If you see anything or anyone that might be hostile, don’t reveal yourself, but instead report to either me, Cyrus or Talia directly and take a position that will allow you to ambush any interlopers when the time comes.” “Won’t we look like an easier target with less people visible? Shouldn’t we have a show of force instead?” Cyrus asks. “We could, but we’d likely be attacked anyway since we’re probably going to be outnumbered here. This way at least we’ll have the drop on anyone who decides to attack. There’s no easy way to do this, better that we play to our strengths and use stealth. That’s why I want to avoid the roads altogether.” “Very well Shadow Master.” Cyrus remarks. As you continue your journey across the long stretch of uneven fields, Talia comes up to speak to you. “I think you’ve made the right decision in traveling off road like this.” “Hope so, we’re pretty open out here. I’d hate for some platoon of patrolling archers to start firing at us.” “Well the cloaked scouts around us should give us a little warning at least. That was a good idea too. In fact I’m pretty excited about this whole journey. It’s a new chance to start over and I think it will do everyone some good…though I hope we will find a book or writings of the old ritual to open up the portal to Dendrin again.” “Well, it’s a pretty old ruin and in swamp. I don’t think we can get our hopes up too much that anything like that survived, but that doesn’t matter right? I mean if people are going to follow Dendrin, then he’ll find a way to reach them surely.” “I suppose you’re right, I just…well it’s silly I guess, but the new batch of eternal brothers and sisters never got properly indoctrinated by Dendrin and I think it would do them well to hear his words from his own voice.” “I don’t think we need to worry about their loyalty or dedication at this point, you’ve probably trained and taught them better than anyone could’ve about the ways of the shadow save for Dendrin himself.” “Yeah…maybe that’s what’s needed...” Talia at this point gets very quiet. Her face shows a combination of fear and guilt. It’s obvious she wants to tell you more, but now she’s afraid to. “Talia, let’s ride over there from the rest of the group for a moment.” You say. Talia nods and rides off and you tell Cyrus to take oversee everything while you talk to Talia privately. When you ride over next to her she’s in the middle of crying. “Talia, I don’t know what this is all about, but you know you can tell me and not be afraid about it.” “I’m not afraid of you… (sob) I mean I know your feelings for me are so strong that you’d probably be willing to overlook almost any transgression and that’s partly what I’m afraid of, because (sob) I don’t want you to get in trouble because of my decisions.” “Wha…? How am I going to get into trouble? What IS this all about and start from the beginning.” After calming herself, Talia begins to tell you what exactly is troubling her and she starts from the beginning which apparently was three years ago. She tells you that she caught two of the male eternals raping one of the female ones in a storeroom and that she did nothing about it, because she wanted to see if they suffered from infertility like the old eternals did. Instead she let the two males off with a warning and convinced the victim that something like this would never happen again. She also tells you that of course the female never got pregnant so it would seem the infertility also exists in the new eternals as well. “And you never thought to tell me this before?” “You had other concerns on your mind and I had it under control, or at least I thought I did…” “What? What happened?” “While we were waiting out the snowstorm, remember how Brother Seminai broke his neck while coming back from look out duty? He slipped on some ice and fell down the stairs?” “(Sigh) Let me guess, he was pushed?” “Sister Grace did. It was apparently in retaliation when he had raped her two night before. She told me and begged me not to tell you since she didn’t want to be punished for harming another shadow…it isn’t her fault. Its mine, I should’ve taught them all better, I am their mother and they are my children and I’ve failed them.” You shake your head at this point. You know Talia’s always had a maternal instinct towards the eternals, but you didn’t think it would go this far. You also have always known the newer eternals to be a bit more “wilder” but that only seemed to be in battle and you could easily rein them in. You never realized there was a deeper darkness within them and who knows how many harbor these undesirable traits. “Okay, first question. This Brother Seminai and Sister Grace were they also the ones involved three years ago? I mean is this a repeat action?” “No, those were three different eternals.” “Wonderful, I was hoping to limit my worry. Anyway, I know we’re low on the women folk in our order, but I think you know we can’t tolerate wanton raping just because their horny and undisciplined.” “I know and it was wrong of me to keep this from you in the first place…I just wanted our order to flourish with the blood of eternals…I mean yes I have hope that the shadows will at least grow, but we’re also eternals and we will eventually die out.” “Well, if these new ones are displaying these types of traits, maybe it’s better that we do. I mean I don’t pretend to be a devout clergy man that does nothing but good deeds and I will always have a desire for battle, I think most Eternals do having it bred into them, but I’ve never committed cruelty for the sake of it.” “What are you going to do?” “I’m not sure yet, but my other question is why did you think I would get into trouble?” “Because while you knew nothing about this, you would still be innocent in Dendrin’s eyes and because I know your love for me is such that no matter what you decide punishment won’t befall me even though it should. Dendrin I fear would not look favorably on you if you decide to do nothing to all those guilty after hearing what I’ve told you.” It’s funny, but you’ve been keeping a bigger secret than Talia for decades. You almost feel like telling her that Dendrin isn’t going to give a shit what you decide especially since he hasn’t seen fit to even speak to you in years. In any case, you probably need to do something, though you just aren’t sure it needs to be now. You’re in the middle of potentially hostile territory and settling an internal dispute might not be the best thing right now. Still the new eternals are going to have to be dealt with on some level and the sooner the better. As for Talia, she’s right in that you wouldn’t do anything to her, but it is somewhat surprising that she allowed this to happen. She might be a bit delusional, but you still love her. You give her an answer that should seem impartial though. “Talia, I need to know the names of the brothers involved in the rape three years ago and I need to know of any other eternal who has displayed potential disruptive behavior within the shadow order. I will have to consult Dendrin on this and decide what should be done with them…and you.” “I…I understand. I know you must be fair on this matter and I will accept any judgment that Dendrin sees fit to give.” “Well, I will have to as well and despite you only just now telling me, I may still be in trouble as well. After all as Shadow Master I really should’ve been more aware of my own people, but don’t worry about me. I will beg Dendrin for his forgiveness and that of all involved in this. Perhaps he will show mercy.” “We can only hope.” Talia replies and tells you the names as the two of you ride back to the group. Later that night you continue to ponder whether or not to dispose of your more troublesome followers. Granted the two in question haven’t done anything in three years, but that potential is always there, and so are the ones that haven’t done anything yet, but show signs of it. You can only guess this is more due to their breeding not anything they’ve been taught since they still uphold the tenets of being a shadow without question and that’s a bigger problem. If you kill them, is it going to stop there? All of them came out of those Derro tanks and who knows what the hell kind of magical concoction is coursing through their veins to make them behave in such an unstable manner and why is it becoming more of a problem lately? It’s times like this you almost wish that you actually COULD call upon Dendrin for his help… And why can’t you? What could it hurt? If you actually pray to him for help and he doesn’t listen, then nothing was lost and you’re back to what your plan was originally, which is dealing with the situation yourself in a violent manner. Of course if he actually does listen, he might very well help, but with a “catch.” You’ve known Dendrin for too long to know that when he does help, he doesn’t often do it in anyway that could be considered generous. > You pray to Dendrin You never thought you’d ever be doing this willingly… “Dendrin, if you’re still watching me, we need to have a talk and you probably know what it is about already. So have your giggles if you must about all this, but I’m asking you for your help and I mean real help, not cryptic answers or hollow words. And if you don’t listen to me, then I suppose I’ll figure it out myself as usual.” About ten minutes later after your “prayer” you drift off to sleep and find yourself in a place you haven’t been in a long time. “Been a long time Eternal. While I’m glad to see it is you who initiated the dialogue for a change, I am a little hurt though that you’ve only called on me because you need help. But I suppose any progress with a cynical soul like you is better than nothing. Why its almost like you’re taking a leap of faith…” Great he’s going to milk this for all its worth. “Anyway enough of that, what can I do for you exactly today?” “Well I figure you being all knowing and all, you’re already familiar with the dilemma, so I was hoping that…in your benevolent wisdom, you’d see fit to help me.” A loud chortle echos throughout your mind. “All knowing and benevolent wisdom is it? A word of advice Eternal, don’t attempt to grovel, it doesn’t suit you. Though I do appreciate the attempt as it shows there is hope for you after all, which I always believed would be the case. The answer is yes, I will help you.” “That’s it?” “Yes. What? Is there more you required from me?” “No, but…well what are you going to do exactly?” “Get rid of your problems of course.” “That’s what I’m talking about. You’re not being specific, I mean for all I know your version of getting rid of my problems means killing me.” “My dear Eternal have you gained faith in me only to lose it so quickly? (Sigh) I suppose this is a bit too much for you. Very well I shall explain MY end of the bargain. When you reach Delerg, I want you to go to my temple and in a very hidden location on one of the walls near a pillar you will find a button. Press it and you shall recover most of the lost shadow history in an area below the temple. One of the books includes the ritual to open up the portal to my realm. Send your remaining Eternals into it and I shall do the rest.” “That…that’s almost exactly what Talia had hoped for when she suggested this journey.” “Yes, I know. That’s because she’s a believer. So if you’re still wondering what my price is, it’s just gaining more loyal followers that will no longer cause potential strife within the order… and the assurance on your part that you will be doing your best to restoring my temple to its former glory.” “Of course…wait you said remaining Eternals. What did you mean?” “Oh you’ll find out soon.” Suddenly you are pulled out your state of numbness and into the real world. “Get up! We’re being attacked!” Talia yells and picks you up by the arm. A bright light is illuminating the nighttime sky along with several fire arrows. You roll under a wagon to avoid immediate danger. It would appear General Ackerson’s men have discovered you and have attacked in force. They’re being smart about it too, attacking at night with archers and unfortunately also a couple of battle mages who are making the darkness disappear with their spells. “How the hell did they sneak up on us? I had scouts around the perimeter to avoid this sort of thing!” you mutter to yourself. Doesn’t matter now you suppose, what you have to do is get the hell out of here as fast as possible. You don’t like running, but you’ll end up losing more people if you stick around and fight. Besides, there are probably more troops behind the archers or at least on their way. “Everyone, grab what you can, head for those hills, speed up and cloak!” you shout. Talia and Cyrus both repeat this order so everyone can hear it. You sort of figured you’d end up dropping most of baggage, but probably not exactly like this! The soldiers are still shooting at you of course, but they’re doing it blind. Some of the mages get a few people though by blindly throwing fireballs in the general direction. Of course not every shadow has listened to you, some of them decided to run in the direction of the soldiers instead. These are some of the eternals of course. As you get closer and closer to the hills, the arrows and fireballs have seemed to have stopped altogether, it seems as if some of the eternals have managed to tie up the troops by engaging in close combat with some of them. The next few days also involve some fighting with more soldiers in the hills, but since it’s mostly swordsmen you’re got more of an advantage on your side and you lose no more people. Eventually the attacks stop altogether. You’ve either gotten far enough away, or General Ackerson has decided it’s not worth losing any more men over. You take a head count to see who is still alive and you now understand what Dendrin meant by the “remaining eternals” as most of the ones who did die were eternals. (Specifically the same ones Talia gave you the names of) Talia also asks you if you consulted Dendrin’s advice on what is to be done about what was discussed before. “I believe our recent attack has solved some of it, and Dendrin told me that when we reach the temple, he will solve the rest. He also said that you were right all along, we were meant to take this journey. I think we had to suffer a few losses before the shadow order can truly move forward.” You tell Talia, she seems relieved that you or her aren’t in trouble with Dendrin. When the hills begin to flatten and ground starts to become soft, you know that you’ve reached the Delerg border. Brother Theo takes the lead from here and compared to your journey through Quala its downright uneventful other than annoying groups of Sul-monkeys that throw things from the low trees every once in awhile. Eventually you arrive at the temple and everyone is filled with a great joy. You figure you should make some sort of uplifting speech about triumph and such, so you do. Then you tell everyone to start exploring the temple and get settled in where they can, you’ll worry about fixing the place up later. The inside of the temple is in surprisingly good condition. You waste no time in seeking out the stone “button” that will open up a secret place in the temple. Eventually you find it (which you doubt you would’ve been able to do if Dendrin hadn’t told you) and descend down. What you find is better than you could’ve hoped for when you first arrived and that’s living quarters for what you presume would be for the old shadow high priests or whatever. It isn’t fancy, but it’s fairly clean. You imagine that this place hasn’t been accessed in centuries. The walls are very solidly made so it doesn’t even look like signs of any natural intrusion have occurred either. Just as Dendrin said, there is a fully stocked library which no doubt contain most of the shadow’s history and wisdom, and more importantly the ritual that you can use on the eternals. Talia, immediately starts looking through the books while you and Cyrus explore the rest of the place. There is one “room” that sticks out which isn’t man made and that’s a small natural cavern, which seems to be an underground garden of some sort with a shallow stream of fresh water flowing through it. Blue glowing fungus lights up the place and there are no exits other than the small openings the water is flowing through. Cyrus takes some purple berries off one of the bushes and pops them in his mouth and remarks how good they taste. “Looks like we won’t have to worry about clean water immediately, even our food can be supplemented here. Dendrin provides as usual.” He says. “Indeed and while I know we all serve Dendrin, rank also has its privileges. I’ll be sleeping down here in one of those bedrooms with Talia.” You remark. “Heh, well there are three of them from what I’ve seen, surely the Shadow Master doesn’t need ALL of them.” Cyrus replies. “Well I might’ve needed them to store belongings, but since we dropped most of them, I suppose I don’t have any problem with you and Draven taking one of the rooms. How is Draven anyway, if it wasn’t for you, I’d probably forget he’s even with us.” “Oh he’s fine. He’s always been a bit more on the quiet side as you know.” “Mm, well since I’m in a generous mood, I guess Brother Theo and Sister Yvette can take the third room. The pair of them have helped the shadows in more ways than I can count. Besides I know they got something going on with each other, have no idea why they haven’t bonded properly yet though.” “Maybe they don’t want to be tied down to one person?” “If that was the case, I wouldn’t see them together almost all the time. I swear since we first kicked the Empire out of Rask, those two have been practically joined at the hip.” Before Cyrus can agree with your observation Talia steps in and interrupts. “I found it! I found the book! We can perform the ritual!” she exclaims. “Already? That was quick. Okay, well you study it and we’ll get to it as soon as possible.” “But you are Shadow Master my love, only YOU can do it properly.” Talia says and thrusts the book upon you. “Oh…well I suppose my magical abilities have come a long way from what they used to be. Very well then, I shall study this tome and we can give the new eternals a proper induction into the shadows like we all were right?” Talia and Cyrus both nod at your remark. You excuse yourself and retire to your bedroom to begin a long night of studying. > You time passes... Year 46 Took long enough, and sometimes it never seemed like it was going to happen, but you’ve finally restored Dendrin’s temple. Restoring it wasn’t easy either, especially not one as big and in such disrepair like Dendrin’s. The surprising thing is you’ve not only restored it in appearance, but in use as well. The one of the first difficult things was getting the stone. Delerg isn’t exactly flush with rock quarries. The second difficult thing was getting help to restore it in the first place. The shadows might be great warriors and have more knowledge than the average peasant, but nobody in your ranks is a laborer or into masonry. Obviously outside help was necessary. Fortunately since the fall of the Empire, Delerg had once again become a quiet place with no “leader.” Most of the inhabitants were content to go about their simple lives like they once did before the Empire. When you arrived in Sinkhole, to ask around for workers to try to restore the temple, some couldn’t volunteer fast enough to help. This need to help you, was a combination of a few things. The most important one being that Delerg was always shadow friendly. The Empire may have ruled it for a while, but the respect that its people had for the shadows was always greater. The shadows after all were once the main protectors of the area before the Empire. Combining this with the fact that the shadows were the main ones who helped influence so much rebellion and caused the destruction of the Empire, it was only natural that you were as warmly embraced like you were. Good thing too, because you certainly didn’t have the coin to pay the workers in the first place! As the temple was slowly being restored, more people started flocking to your aid. Some of these were old rebels that the shadows lost contact with when you started consolidating your forces in Rask. They remember you though and offer help in any way their skills allow. While you were always a little surprised by how much free help you were always willing to get, what surprised you more is how little you really needed to do to get it. These people had no one telling them what to do or how to live anymore, and yet a lot of them seemed to be in a big hurry for that to change by becoming Dendrin worshippers! You understand gratitude, but to willingly surrender a portion of your earnings and time to serve an invisible being that you had no proof existed, while some guy claiming to be his “representative” tell you how you should live seemed like a step backwards for them at least. For you though, it was all beneficial as eventually some of these devoted souls wanted to become full-fledged shadows. Naturally you accepted them into your ranks provided they could pass through the testing. Right now things have been better for you than they have ever been. You’ve got a nice restored temple, a fair sized congregation, the ranks of the shadows are slowly starting to grow again and most importantly you haven’t had to deal with any problems with the new eternals (Now known as the Shadow Blades) ever since they all went through the ritual. Dendrin was true to his word on that, just like you were true to yours by restoring his temple. Still, even after directly helping you, you still can’t bring yourself to “worship” Dendrin. Not really. Part of you feels like it was the least he could’ve done after all the stuff in the past he’s put you through. Another of part of you feels as if you’ve “repaid the debt” by restoring the temple. He’s probably granted you more power as you’ve noticed your magical abilities becoming superior to everyone else’s and it taking much less effort, but again you still feel no sense of “awe” in Dendrin that would cause you to willingly worship him as a god. To you, he’s a very powerful being that is a whimsical ally at best. You’ve come to realize that he is probably deserving of your respect in regard to his power and you always keep that in mind when up keeping the charade of his religion. Perhaps it is enough, or at least it’ll have to be since you don’t see yourself changing your mind on the matter anytime soon, especially when you’ve been trying to figure out what your next big course of action should be. The problem with a lack of conflict is that you find yourself very bored. Even in Rask, the monotony was broken up with the occasional giant or ogre attack. Here in Delerg there are no such great dangers surprisingly enough. Most dangerous swamp beasts prefer to stick to their own stomping grounds which all seem to be away from your part of the swamp and Sul-monkeys aren’t a threat so much as they’re an occasional annoyance when large groups of them decide to use the temple roof as a mating area! The last time you had any true conflict was when General Ackerson’s men ambushed you and part of you hasn’t forgotten that incident. From what you know, he’s still in power and sometimes you’d like to change that just on principle. Quala is still an area in a power struggle between competing warlords, but so far there have been no attempt by any of them to expand into Delerg, probably because there isn’t much here in the first place save for swamp. Not to mention there are most likely trickles of news coming in about the return of the shadows to Delerg. Most of the warlords being ex-Empire probably would like to get some sort of revenge, but know that their losses would be considerable if they even attempted such a thing, so you are left alone. Talia and Cyrus seem to be content with how things are now, why can’t you be? Funny that you were concerned about the new eternals being restless and getting themselves into trouble, while here you are considering starting a fight because your bored with peace! The only real reason you can think of is petty revenge on General Ackerson and that’s not a very good one even if you could easily tell everyone that Dendrin told you all to go kill him. In your moment of introspection, you take another look at what you’ve accomplished. You went from being a lone unbeliever practically trapped in an organization that was determined to overthrow an enemy several times larger than itself to the victorious leader of said organization, which is now thriving under your watch. You probably could defeat Ackerson, but at what cost? Last you heard he has thousands of men at his command still and that includes a few battle mages. The shadows may be growing slowly, but that’s just it, slowly. You don’t have anywhere near the numbers to start raising armies. Sure, you have the entire support of probably all of Delerg, but that doesn’t mean much in the scheme of things if most of the people aren’t warriors. You kill Ackerson and take his territory then what? You hold it? How long can that last with the numbers you’d have left? You doubt if the people of Quala would be as supportive, if anything they probably blame the shadows for the miserable warring state they live in now. This doesn’t even factor in the OTHER warlords in the area. They may all decide to gang up on you and if you’re in any sort of weakened condition they may even press their attack into Delerg itself. No, the risk doesn’t seem worth it compared to the petty gain. The shadows have never been about conquest and they probably shouldn’t start now. However, that doesn’t mean you should stay idle. Peace is fine, but perhaps there is a way of initiating conflict without actually doing it. It occurs to you that the warlords of Quala won’t always be fighting. Eventually one of them is going to win or manage to unite the area in some way. When that happens then Delerg might be in potential danger, so it would be in your best interest to make sure that doesn’t happen. Keep Quala weak and disorganized while keeping Delerg the opposite. You start sending in shadows into Quala to get a good idea of what the situation is there, but not to actually do anything yet. Theo is mostly in charge of this due to his previous experience of working extensively in the region during the Empire war. Eventually after a couple months you have all the information you really need and ready to put the second part of your plan into action, which is to keep the region destabilized. This is going to include sabotage, misdirection, more spying, and assassinations, all those things that play on the strengths of the shadows. “I like it. So when do we start assassinating people?” Cyrus remarks causing Draven to chuckle. “Well, we probably should decide who needs it first. Some of the leaders sound so incompetent that it might be better if we left them in charge.” Talia adds. “Shouldn’t we have some sort of plan before doing this?” Yvette asks. “We do have a plan, I just explained it.” You say not understanding why she would ask such a question. “I…think what my wife means is should we not have a greater plan other than sewing chaos. I do not presume to disagree with your reasons Shadow Master, but I do believe that causing discord for the sake of doing it might seem a bit…well…short term.” Theo says. “So you believe that we should actually take territory? I explained why I believe that would be a problem.” “No, no, I agree that we shouldn’t be marching armies into Quala, I guess what I mean is perhaps this would also be a good time to launch an aggressive campaign of converting unbelievers. You know send our better speakers to some of the smaller villages that are unhappy with life under the warlords and telling them how Dendrin can release them from such misery. Given enough time, we would have so many converted that we wouldn’t have to worry about raising an army or Quala ever being a threat because most of the population would all be believers in Dendrin.” An interesting suggestion from Theo and one you weren’t really expecting from him. He also mentions he could get back in contact with some of the old rebels he knows are still living in Quala to help more directly as well. > You go with Theo's plan It might be a bit a more complex than what you first envisioned, but it probably would be well worth it to try. You agree to Theo’s plan and put it in motion. Theo says that the first thing he should do is to directly contact Sam Jowin, one of the major warlords in the area. He’s fairly sure that Sam will agree to help out the shadows especially if it means stomping out the remaining pathetic remnants of the Empire. Plus it’ll be one less warlord to worry about if he’s on the side of the shadows. “Just like the old days eh?” you say. “Yes, I suppose so.” Theo answers. “I don’t see why we can’t still send our Blades in to cause some problems yet. I mean we know they can do it without being detected.” Cyrus remarks. “We’ll get a chance, don’t worry. Just have to wait a bit longer for the right time.” You remark. “Hm, I suppose so.” Cyrus answers. You get the impression that Theo is more than a little excited about doing this and Cyrus is a little disappointed that he doesn’t get to do more at this time. Looks like it wasn’t just you getting bored with peace either after bringing this plan up. Though Yvette is looking a bit concerned mainly for her husband most likely, she really shouldn’t though given how skilled he is, let alone the fact that it’s part of his duty as a shadow anyway. While you aren’t actually getting into any action, it still feels good to be planning something more than the daily prayers to Dendrin. Year 50 “Ackerson’s men were seen at the edges of the Delerg borders again. Pretty sure they’re preparing for an attack this time.” Brother Gannon remarks. “(Sigh) Call for the Blades to do double patrols.” You say rubbing your head. “I told you we should’ve just assassinated him when we had the chance, now that bastard’s not only really entrenched, but he’s also gained ground in Quala! What the fuck is Theo DOING over there, we haven’t heard from him in months!” Cyrus exclaims. “He’s serving Dendrin and the shadows as he always has! Thanks to him, we’ve gotten converts and making our ranks grow! And don’t you think I’m just as concerned about him not having reported in for a long time?!” Yvette snaps. “Yes, I’m sure you are Yvette, but the converts we’ve gained haven’t really strengthened us to any great degree and in fact they may have been a hindrance as it just brought more attention to ourselves.” Talia remarks. “And how would’ve Cyrus’ plan of assassinating everyone not called attention to us? You don’t think if leaders just started dropping dead people wouldn’t have suspected us? Everyone knew were located here in Delerg and could’ve attacked us eventually anyway. At least now we not only have a few extra human converts, but also one of the warlords on our side.” Yvette says. Yevette’s “human” remark gets your attention, despite everyone else missing it. What is she getting at? “For now. How the hell do we know this Sam nutter isn’t going to turn on us when he gets strong enough? Ever since he decimated Anu’s forces, he’s gotten into a position where he could attack us in force just as easily as Ackerson could, probably more so. Which brings me to the question of why the hell hasn’t he been pushing Ackerson a lot harder? I mean, he’s supposed to be our ally, move in man! Attack!” Cyrus shouts. “Well from last reports months ago, Theo says Sam was having problems with the western front and to the south from Brenda.” Talia interjects, in an attempt to keep Cyrus calm, it doesn’t work. “Oh that’s bullshit Talia and you know it! Those assholes in western Quala are so disorganized they’re barely a threat to each other, let alone Sam. And as for Brenda, I don’t think so. I’ve got some of my OWN people spying down in Nalin and they say the place is pretty damn peaceful apart from the raids that Sam sends down there. Even the kobolds are mostly contributing members of society now. Shit, if Brenda wasn’t on the wrong side I’d say she’d make a better ally than Sam would. Now Cyrus’ remark gets your attention, in fact it gets EVERYONE’S attention. “Cyrus who and WHEN did you send people to the Nalin province? I didn’t order such a thing!” you remark. “I sent a few Blades last year and you’re right you didn’t tell me and if I’m in violation of the shadow code, then you by all means you’re well in your rights to have me executed…but I felt like we needed to know what the hell Brenda is up to! I mean she’s potentially the biggest threat to us military wise, not to mention she IS the last true remnant of the Empire.” You shake your head not so much at what Cyrus did, but the fact that you didn’t catch it. You think back to when you first came up with this plan and now you wonder why you just didn’t leave well enough alone. You wanted to be free of boredom and now you’ve got it in abundance. “What’s done is done now, but I’d like to know why the hell you didn’t at least report what you found immediately considering that you said you send them a year ago!” you remark. “They were still gathering intel and I wanted to make sure if this was going to cost me my life, it was going to be worth it at least!” “Cyrus, stop being so damn dramatic, nobody’s killing anyone here.” Talia says. “Maybe they should though…” Yvette says. Another statement that causes a pause in the arguing. “What was that Yvette?” Cyrus says in a challenging way, Dravin who has been quiet the whole time now gets up and attempts to hold Cyrus back. Yvette is obviously upset about more than a few things, her husband’s disappearance being one of them, but she doesn’t back down from Cyrus despite she’d be no match for him. “I said maybe you should be killed! You directly defied the Shadow Master AND Dendrin’s will! You know according to the ancient ways of the shadows, you would’ve been subjected to having your hands and feet cut off followed by your eyes ears and nose before your mouth was fused shut and you were dragged out to the swamp where the Sul Monkeys could feast on what was left!” “In case you haven’t noticed sister, these aren’t the old days anymore.” Cyrus says almost daring her to attack. “Yeah, don’t I know it.” Yvette says, looking at him, Talia, then you before storming off. “Well if you’re going to have me killed, I’ll be in my room waiting for your decision seeing as I can’t break any rules there.” Cyrus remarks dryly and walks off as well. Draven follows in an attempt to calm him, giving you a few worried glances as he leaves. You and Talia are left in the room by yourselves. Sometimes you wish it was always like that. “You can’t seriously be considering executing Cyrus for this.” Talia says. “Probably not, but it’s really not a good sign of what he did. We’re supposed to be sneaking around against other people, not each other.” “His intentions were for the good of the shadows.” “Yeah and you know what they say about good intentions. Ugh, how the hell did I let that slip by me in the first place?” “It slipped by all of us, Cyrus is skilled.” “Yeah and that’s the problem. Call me paranoid, but in an order where everyone can cloak at will, dropping your guard for one moment could lead to a quick death if someone wanted to do it.” “Now, you can’t start thinking like that! We’re all Dendrin’s faithful, we don’t hurt one another.” “Forgotten about Brother Seminai and Sister Grace huh? Yes, I know that was a different situation, but the problem still stands. In fact it’s the same original problem with just a few minor differences.” “What do you mean?” “Didn’t you notice Yvette? It’s obvious that she doesn’t like our kind, meaning Eternals. I dunno if this is a new thing or if she’s always harbored these feelings. Besides getting the new ones under control, I was also hoping it would prevent any possible conflict we might have had between the pure human shadows and Eternal shadows, but apparently not.” “Well what are we going to do about that?” “Good question, I’m going to have to think on that and Cyrus’ recent behavior, because while he might not be deserving of execution, I can’t just have him going off and doing his own thing like that. Especially since it was only due to me showing him mercy and a hell of a lot of trust that I allowed him to live in the first place. Pulling a stunt like this is making me regret that decision.” Talia leaves you alone at this point, she just gives you the usual if you find yourself lost, to seek Dendrin’s guidance. The funny thing is maybe you should’ve considering Dendrin warned you that Cyrus would still be a potential problem years ago. You sit by yourself thinking and going back and forth on what to do about Cyrus and after an hour you’re still no closer to a solution. At this point you don’t even want to bother thinking about what to do about Yvette, though getting someone to seek out her husband would be a good start. As you’re about to leave the council chamber, Draven appears in the doorway. He looks like he’s even more worried than when he left. He’s even shaking a bit. “Uh…um Shadow Master. I…” “What is it Draven? And why are you shaking?” He doesn’t answer and just starts sniffling and trying not to cry. He looks like he’s going to have a complete breakdown and then suddenly he breathes deeply and exhales. “Draven what happened? Where’s Cyrus and what’s he done?” you ask sensing that this is the cause of his behavior. “Nothing. And I’m sorry.” Draven says and he suddenly speeds himself up and attempts to shoot you with his armbow! Being more powerful in the ways of shadow magic now, you easily speed yourself up and dodge this attempt on your life. You react with a shadowfire bolt to his head, Draven falls back and drops dead instantly. You briefly wonder why Draven would attempt such a thing, knowing that he couldn’t have won, but you don’t dwell on it too much since you figure that Cyrus was behind it in the first place. “ASSASSIN! SHADOWS BLOCK THE ENTRANCES! LET NO ONE LEAVE!” you yell as loud hoping the whole temple heard it as you can and run out of the council room looking for Cyrus. In the chaos, you continue bellowing orders to everyone while still looking for Cyrus and telling others to find him as well. Talia rushes to you asking what’s going on and you explain that Draven just tried to kill you. “WHAT?!” “Obviously Cyrus put him up to it. If this isn’t proof that he is not only disobedient to Dendrin’s laws, but also willing to betray them, I don’t know what is!” Yvette says overhearing the conversation. Just as you’re about to tell some of the shadows to go scouring the swamp for Cyrus, he suddenly pops up running into the gathering hall directly towards you. Thinking that he’s trying to finish the job himself you immediately order him to be stopped and then create a small barrier around yourself. Several of the Blades, along with Talia gather around you as well. You’re glad that the Blades’ loyalty seems to be on your side, even if a couple of them did obey Cyrus’ orders to go into Nalin. Cyrus is practically tackled to the floor though he’s confused to as why it’s happening. “What the…why is everyone holding me down?! What is this? Where’s Draven?” he says. “You know damn well where he is, you sent him to kill me not a few minutes ago!” you answer. “WHAT?! I did no such thing! He was upset about went down in the council chambers and…wait where is he?” “Where do you think? I’m still alive to confront you on your treachery aren’t I? I mean you had to have known that I’d easily dispatch Draven.” This remark causes silence in Cyrus. He looks down, as you demand to know who else is involved in his little conspiracy. When he looks up again to address you, his face shows a mixture of anger and anguish. “There is no conspiracy you paranoid fuck! Don’t you think if I had planned one some of these people would’ve been trying to kill you right now? I would’ve thought that you would’ve at least thought higher of me that I could’ve come up with a better plan, which I wasn’t doing in the first place! I mean if I had, I certainly wouldn’t have allowed myself to be caught like an idiot like this. I thought we settled all this years ago when you first became Shadow Master. I pledged my loyalty and I meant that! I see my words mean nothing after all though, so do what you want. I submit myself to Dendrin and your final judgement as I always have.” Such in-fighting of the shadow leaders in a public display hasn’t probably been seen since Brother Shade tried to kill Master Ebon. Cyrus seems resigned to whatever fate you have in store for him, but you’re wondering if he’s trying to stall for time somehow. He claims that he doesn’t have others working for him, but for all you know they’re just staying quiet so that they can’t get into trouble and their courage to go through with your assassination has failed them completely. Or perhaps they just want Cyrus himself out of the way so that they can take power at a later time. > You kill Cyrus Cyrus has proven time and time again to be a thorn in your side. You tried to give him a chance, but there is just too much ambition in him. Even if he wasn’t behind Dravin’s actions, his behavior has proven time and time again that he isn’t going to let Dravin’s death go if you spare him. How long will it be before deep-seated resentment and anger get to him and he really seeks out revenge? You can’t take that chance. Without another word you perform the same spell that Master Ebon once did to stop Brother Shade from killing him. Cyrus’ silence is now broken by his grunts and gasps of pain as he clutches his head. He begins bleeding from the ears and eventually the eyes. “I…join…you…Drav…” he manages to utter before her brain explodes inside his head. Cyrus’ body lies motionless on the floor and you address the crowd. “This was unfortunate, but necessary. Let this be an example to those that would seek to harm or conspire against their brothers and sisters. Dendrin will not tolerate traitors and neither will I. Someone get this out of my sight.” You say waving to Cyrus’ body. The next few days are a little tense, but eventually things relax a little. You’re still trying to find Brother Theo. When you manage to contact Sam directly he says he thought Theo was going back to report to you weeks ago since he hasn’t seen him since that time. He goes on to say that Theo tended to move about a lot since he was also spreading a bit of the shadow faith in his spare time. He also apologizes for not keeping a better eye on General Ackerson and his latest patrols on your borders, but he’s been having difficulties with Brenda and even some of the other eastern warlords lately. Sam isn’t the only one apologizing. Yvette also says she’s sorry to you and how she’s just been so upset about her husband that she didn’t meant to speak out of line before. She says she knows that you’ve been leading well as Shadow Master. You tell her that you appreciate her support and tell her to just keep faith in Dendrin that you’ll eventually find Theo even if he’s dead, he’ll be given a proper burial. Unfortunately when he does pop up again he’s not dead and you find out what he’s been up to isn’t good for the shadows even though he believes it to be. All the new shadows Brother Theo has been converting in Quala have been following a much different doctrine than the regular one. Namely one that doesn’t see Eternals in the order at all. He claims that the Eternals have created a caste system where you’re on top and humans are at the bottom. It doesn’t help that he’s also been manipulating Sam into helping him so he not only has a loyal group of heretics to his cause, but also an entire regular army. This in itself is bad, but Yvette has been secretly helping him the whole time and spreading dissention to the other human followers in Delerg as well. Twisting your own words by claiming that the Eternals are not true brothers and sisters of Dendrin because they aren’t human so it’s perfectly fine to harm them. Going on about how the Blades were abominations that you and Talia saw as an opportunity to use as leverage over the human members. How she was forced to see the first hand horrors of where they were “born.” It is a testament to Yvette’s speech skills that she managed to convince so many under your nose and fooled you as well despite your initial concern about her. You never knew she was so talented in that way, part of you always still remembered her as the girl who obediently followed your orders during the rebellion. When it all comes out, you curse yourself for not being more observant and suspicious of her. Perhaps if you’d not worried so much about Cyrus being a major problem, you wouldn’t have overlooked another possible coup from someone else. Yvette’s treachery is taken care of soon after the first Blade is suddenly attacked. It’s at a great cost though, not so much due to the casualties on the loyal side, but more due to the fact that she convinced so many that you had to kill. Yvette herself attempts to escape when she sees the battle isn’t going well, but she is brought down by the eternals she sought to destroy. Of course this isn’t the end. Theo and his army is still out there and they won’t be as easy to put down. Year 55 The Temple of Dendrin is in ruins and you’re putting down the last of the culprits. “You can’t beat me Theo, despite all your treachery you cannot match my power.” You say slamming him into the wall. “It doesn’t matter! You’re finished! The shadows are finished!” “Then you defeated your own purpose! Weren’t you trying to save them?” “YES! But I soon realized that if Dendrin continued to support you then what was the point of serving him at all?” “Was this before or after you killed your own friend Sam and took complete control?” “I have no regrets! Anything to ensure your downfall! Look at you now, you rule NOTHING!” Theo starts to laugh. You imagine he’s gone slightly mad from this little civil war. This latest suicidal onslaught of his pretty much proves it. You aren’t wasting anymore time with him and you unleash a blast of shadow flame straight to his face. You watch as Theo alternates from laughing to screaming while his flesh burns away until nothing is left except a charred skull. He’s right though, the shadows really are no more. What tattered remains exist cannot possibly rebuild the order even if you still had any desire to do so. One of your loyal shadows Brother Gannon comes up to you asking what should be done next and you tell them you don’t know, only that you’re going to rest and you don’t want to be disturbed. You collapse on the bed in your chambers, which feels lonelier ever since Talia died in battle a year ago, but you’re used to it. You drift off… “Quite the battle Eternal, but I knew you’d win.” Dendrin remarks. “Leave me alone, this whole thing is your fault.” “Back to blaming me for things I see. Some things never change.” “Well I’ll tell you one thing that’s changing…I’m done.” “Done with what?” “You know damn well what. I’m done with the shadows. I tried to lead them, but ultimately they were just as self destructive as the Empire. If anything they were doing better under it. Makes me wonder why the hell I bothered opposing it in the first place.” “You’re just feeling discouraged, maybe you should…” “Maybe I should what? Pick up the pieces and start all over again? What for? There’s nothing left and I don’t even believe in this fucking religion myself. Not to mention you did nothing to stop its destruction since I’ve known you, so why should I keep knocking my brains out doing it for you? What has it got me, except a lot of grief and a dead wife. So fuck this. I’m quitting this game and as far as I’m concerned this entertainment of yours is over!” Dendrin is silent for a moment and then of course comes back with a retort as usual. “Very well, you lot were getting boring anyway. Goodbye Eternal, it was interesting while it lasted.” You later wake up in the middle of the night hoping that’s the last time Dendrin ever talks to you again. You then pack up some of your belongings and decide to leave the temple for good. You don’t make a clean getaway though as Brother Gannon sees you exiting the front doors as he’s wandering the halls. “Shadow Master where are you going?” “Anywhere, nowhere, I don’t really know yet, but I can’t stay here any longer. I don’t think I ever was supposed to…maybe Yvette and Theo were right in a way. Maybe Eternals shouldn’t be shadows.” You say. “You shouldn’t say things like that! We need you to lead what remains of us, to interpret the will of Dendrin clearly.” You laugh. “You want to see the will of Dendrin clearly? Take a look at the destruction around you. That’s his will. THAT’S what he represents. Do yourself a favor Gannon, get out of this place and live the rest of your life doing what you want. There are already enough people in the earthly realm ready to tell you what to do, no need to add other worldly ones to that list. Goodbye.” And with that you leave the crumbling remnants of the shadows forever and travel to places unknown. What ultimately happens to you is lost to time, but safe to say you never hear from Dendrin ever again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It might be a bit a more complex than what you first envisioned, but it probably would be well worth it to try. You agree to Theo’s plan and put it in motion. Theo says that the first thing he should do is to directly contact Sam Jowin, one of the major warlords in the area. He’s fairly sure that Sam will agree to help out the shadows especially if it means stomping out the remaining pathetic remnants of the Empire. Plus it’ll be one less warlord to worry about if he’s on the side of the shadows. “Just like the old days eh?” you say. “Yes, I suppose so.” Theo answers. “I don’t see why we can’t still send our Blades in to cause some problems yet. I mean we know they can do it without being detected.” Cyrus remarks. “We’ll get a chance, don’t worry. Just have to wait a bit longer for the right time.” You remark. “Hm, I suppose so.” Cyrus answers. You get the impression that Theo is more than a little excited about doing this and Cyrus is a little disappointed that he doesn’t get to do more at this time. Looks like it wasn’t just you getting bored with peace either after bringing this plan up. Though Yvette is looking a bit concerned mainly for her husband most likely, she really shouldn’t though given how skilled he is, let alone the fact that it’s part of his duty as a shadow anyway. While you aren’t actually getting into any action, it still feels good to be planning something more than the daily prayers to Dendrin. Year 50 “Ackerson’s men were seen at the edges of the Delerg borders again. Pretty sure they’re preparing for an attack this time.” Brother Gannon remarks. “(Sigh) Call for the Blades to do double patrols.” You say rubbing your head. “I told you we should’ve just assassinated him when we had the chance, now that bastard’s not only really entrenched, but he’s also gained ground in Quala! What the fuck is Theo DOING over there, we haven’t heard from him in months!” Cyrus exclaims. “He’s serving Dendrin and the shadows as he always has! Thanks to him, we’ve gotten converts and making our ranks grow! And don’t you think I’m just as concerned about him not having reported in for a long time?!” Yvette snaps. “Yes, I’m sure you are Yvette, but the converts we’ve gained haven’t really strengthened us to any great degree and in fact they may have been a hindrance as it just brought more attention to ourselves.” Talia remarks. “And how would’ve Cyrus’ plan of assassinating everyone not called attention to us? You don’t think if leaders just started dropping dead people wouldn’t have suspected us? Everyone knew were located here in Delerg and could’ve attacked us eventually anyway. At least now we not only have a few extra human converts, but also one of the warlords on our side.” Yvette says. Yevette’s “human” remark gets your attention, despite everyone else missing it. What is she getting at? “For now. How the hell do we know this Sam nutter isn’t going to turn on us when he gets strong enough? Ever since he decimated Anu’s forces, he’s gotten into a position where he could attack us in force just as easily as Ackerson could, probably more so. Which brings me to the question of why the hell hasn’t he been pushing Ackerson a lot harder? I mean, he’s supposed to be our ally, move in man! Attack!” Cyrus shouts. “Well from last reports months ago, Theo says Sam was having problems with the western front and to the south from Brenda.” Talia interjects, in an attempt to keep Cyrus calm, it doesn’t work. “Oh that’s bullshit Talia and you know it! Those assholes in western Quala are so disorganized they’re barely a threat to each other, let alone Sam. And as for Brenda, I don’t think so. I’ve got some of my OWN people spying down in Nalin and they say the place is pretty damn peaceful apart from the raids that Sam sends down there. Even the kobolds are mostly contributing members of society now. Shit, if Brenda wasn’t on the wrong side I’d say she’d make a better ally than Sam would. Now Cyrus’ remark gets your attention, in fact it gets EVERYONE’S attention. “Cyrus who and WHEN did you send people to the Nalin province? I didn’t order such a thing!” you remark. “I sent a few Blades last year and you’re right you didn’t tell me and if I’m in violation of the shadow code, then you by all means you’re well in your rights to have me executed…but I felt like we needed to know what the hell Brenda is up to! I mean she’s potentially the biggest threat to us military wise, not to mention she IS the last true remnant of the Empire.” You shake your head not so much at what Cyrus did, but the fact that you didn’t catch it. You think back to when you first came up with this plan and now you wonder why you just didn’t leave well enough alone. You wanted to be free of boredom and now you’ve got it in abundance. “What’s done is done now, but I’d like to know why the hell you didn’t at least report what you found immediately considering that you said you send them a year ago!” you remark. “They were still gathering intel and I wanted to make sure if this was going to cost me my life, it was going to be worth it at least!” “Cyrus, stop being so damn dramatic, nobody’s killing anyone here.” Talia says. “Maybe they should though…” Yvette says. Another statement that causes a pause in the arguing. “What was that Yvette?” Cyrus says in a challenging way, Dravin who has been quiet the whole time now gets up and attempts to hold Cyrus back. Yvette is obviously upset about more than a few things, her husband’s disappearance being one of them, but she doesn’t back down from Cyrus despite she’d be no match for him. “I said maybe you should be killed! You directly defied the Shadow Master AND Dendrin’s will! You know according to the ancient ways of the shadows, you would’ve been subjected to having your hands and feet cut off followed by your eyes ears and nose before your mouth was fused shut and you were dragged out to the swamp where the Sul Monkeys could feast on what was left!” “In case you haven’t noticed sister, these aren’t the old days anymore.” Cyrus says almost daring her to attack. “Yeah, don’t I know it.” Yvette says, looking at him, Talia, then you before storming off. “Well if you’re going to have me killed, I’ll be in my room waiting for your decision seeing as I can’t break any rules there.” Cyrus remarks dryly and walks off as well. Draven follows in an attempt to calm him, giving you a few worried glances as he leaves. You and Talia are left in the room by yourselves. Sometimes you wish it was always like that. “You can’t seriously be considering executing Cyrus for this.” Talia says. “Probably not, but it’s really not a good sign of what he did. We’re supposed to be sneaking around against other people, not each other.” “His intentions were for the good of the shadows.” “Yeah and you know what they say about good intentions. Ugh, how the hell did I let that slip by me in the first place?” “It slipped by all of us, Cyrus is skilled.” “Yeah and that’s the problem. Call me paranoid, but in an order where everyone can cloak at will, dropping your guard for one moment could lead to a quick death if someone wanted to do it.” “Now, you can’t start thinking like that! We’re all Dendrin’s faithful, we don’t hurt one another.” “Forgotten about Brother Seminai and Sister Grace huh? Yes, I know that was a different situation, but the problem still stands. In fact it’s the same original problem with just a few minor differences.” “What do you mean?” “Didn’t you notice Yvette? It’s obvious that she doesn’t like our kind, meaning Eternals. I dunno if this is a new thing or if she’s always harbored these feelings. Besides getting the new ones under control, I was also hoping it would prevent any possible conflict we might have had between the pure human shadows and Eternal shadows, but apparently not.” “Well what are we going to do about that?” “Good question, I’m going to have to think on that and Cyrus’ recent behavior, because while he might not be deserving of execution, I can’t just have him going off and doing his own thing like that. Especially since it was only due to me showing him mercy and a hell of a lot of trust that I allowed him to live in the first place. Pulling a stunt like this is making me regret that decision.” Talia leaves you alone at this point, she just gives you the usual if you find yourself lost, to seek Dendrin’s guidance. The funny thing is maybe you should’ve considering Dendrin warned you that Cyrus would still be a potential problem years ago. You sit by yourself thinking and going back and forth on what to do about Cyrus and after an hour you’re still no closer to a solution. At this point you don’t even want to bother thinking about what to do about Yvette, though getting someone to seek out her husband would be a good start. As you’re about to leave the council chamber, Draven appears in the doorway. He looks like he’s even more worried than when he left. He’s even shaking a bit. “Uh…um Shadow Master. I…” “What is it Draven? And why are you shaking?” He doesn’t answer and just starts sniffling and trying not to cry. He looks like he’s going to have a complete breakdown and then suddenly he breathes deeply and exhales. “Draven what happened? Where’s Cyrus and what’s he done?” you ask sensing that this is the cause of his behavior. “Nothing. And I’m sorry.” Draven says and he suddenly speeds himself up and attempts to shoot you with his armbow! Being more powerful in the ways of shadow magic now, you easily speed yourself up and dodge this attempt on your life. You react with a shadowfire bolt to his head, Draven falls back and drops dead instantly. You briefly wonder why Draven would attempt such a thing, knowing that he couldn’t have won, but you don’t dwell on it too much since you figure that Cyrus was behind it in the first place. “ASSASSIN! SHADOWS BLOCK THE ENTRANCES! LET NO ONE LEAVE!” you yell as loud hoping the whole temple heard it as you can and run out of the council room looking for Cyrus. In the chaos, you continue bellowing orders to everyone while still looking for Cyrus and telling others to find him as well. Talia rushes to you asking what’s going on and you explain that Draven just tried to kill you. “WHAT?!” “Obviously Cyrus put him up to it. If this isn’t proof that he is not only disobedient to Dendrin’s laws, but also willing to betray them, I don’t know what is!” Yvette says overhearing the conversation. Just as you’re about to tell some of the shadows to go scouring the swamp for Cyrus, he suddenly pops up running into the gathering hall directly towards you. Thinking that he’s trying to finish the job himself you immediately order him to be stopped and then create a small barrier around yourself. Several of the Blades, along with Talia gather around you as well. You’re glad that the Blades’ loyalty seems to be on your side, even if a couple of them did obey Cyrus’ orders to go into Nalin. Cyrus is practically tackled to the floor though he’s confused to as why it’s happening. “What the…why is everyone holding me down?! What is this? Where’s Draven?” he says. “You know damn well where he is, you sent him to kill me not a few minutes ago!” you answer. “WHAT?! I did no such thing! He was upset about went down in the council chambers and…wait where is he?” “Where do you think? I’m still alive to confront you on your treachery aren’t I? I mean you had to have known that I’d easily dispatch Draven.” This remark causes silence in Cyrus. He looks down, as you demand to know who else is involved in his little conspiracy. When he looks up again to address you, his face shows a mixture of anger and anguish. “There is no conspiracy you paranoid fuck! Don’t you think if I had planned one some of these people would’ve been trying to kill you right now? I would’ve thought that you would’ve at least thought higher of me that I could’ve come up with a better plan, which I wasn’t doing in the first place! I mean if I had, I certainly wouldn’t have allowed myself to be caught like an idiot like this. I thought we settled all this years ago when you first became Shadow Master. I pledged my loyalty and I meant that! I see my words mean nothing after all though, so do what you want. I submit myself to Dendrin and your final judgement as I always have.” Such in-fighting of the shadow leaders in a public display hasn’t probably been seen since Brother Shade tried to kill Master Ebon. Cyrus seems resigned to whatever fate you have in store for him, but you’re wondering if he’s trying to stall for time somehow. He claims that he doesn’t have others working for him, but for all you know they’re just staying quiet so that they can’t get into trouble and their courage to go through with your assassination has failed them completely. Or perhaps they just want Cyrus himself out of the way so that they can take power at a later time. > You question him further Something doesn’t quite add up about all this. Cyrus’ position isn’t looking too good right now, but he’s right in that he certainly would’ve come up with a better plan than something like this. You’re willing to at least hear him out. “Cyrus, you convinced me once before that I should trust you. Convince me again.” You say. “I can’t, you’ll have to make that decision yourself. All I can do is explain what I think might’ve caused Draven to behave in the manner that he did. (Sniffle) Okay first of all I didn’t send any of the Blades to Nalin secretly…Dravin did. I didn’t even know until a couple months after he did and he confessed everything to me. Naturally I got mad about it, but what was done was done and I just told him to keep his mouth shut about it to anyone else. This didn’t come out again until our earlier council meeting where I claimed I sent them because I didn’t want Draven to get into trouble for it.” “Right Cyrus, you expect any of us to believe that? Draven’s dead so you’re just using him as a scapegoat right now in a miserable excuse to escape Dendrin’s justice!” Yvette exclaims, but Cyrus just ignores her and continues with her story. “After the meeting, Draven got very upset and was worried that you were going to have me executed. I told him that, that wasn’t likely, but he just kept claiming it was all his fault. I tried to calm him down, we argued and he eventually left the room. That was the last I saw of him…I knew he was distressed, but I just never thought that he’d…(sob).” At this point Cyrus breaks down into tears. There is an awkward silence followed by some whispering and then your own decision. “Let him go. He’s innocent. Well innocent of attempting to kill me anyway.” This judgment comes to a bit of a surprise to everyone, even Cyrus. A few shadows obviously don’t agree and Yvette makes her voice the loudest. “Have you left all your senses? This…traitor just tried to kill you and you’re letting him off the hook?” “You would be wise to watch and remember who you are speaking to!” you snap. “I believe Cyrus. You know why? Because he was so damn in love with Draven that’s why. I believe that he would’ve covered up for his mistakes and I also believe he wouldn’t have willingly set up Draven on a suicidal assassination mission. His grief is proof of that.” “It’s all an act! He’s faking those tears!” Yvette exclaims. “So I should believe that your tears for your lost husband Theo are also fake then?” “That’s different! My husband Theo is a loyal shadow! Draven AND Cyrus are obviously both traitors and have no loyalty to anyone save themselves! I cannot believe that you would show this much leniency, but I suppose even a treacherous one of your kind is better to have around to keep us humans in line huh?” “Yvette, we’re all shadows, whether we’re human or eternal. Nobody here has been shown preferential treatment.” Talia says. And now it all comes out. “SHUT UP! I won’t listen to your lies any longer! I had to listen to your rationales for YEARS when I helped you in that freak lab where they grew those eternal monsters you misguidedly call your children. You don’t think I knew about all the messed up shit you allowed to happen within your own kind? Theo knew it and I know and I can’t stay silent anymore! You Eternals have twisted this order into your own caste system! The Empire may be dead, but its obvious its creations are still around to carry out its will!” Yvette turns to the crowd around and makes the rest of her point. “A true shadow is human and all are equal in the eyes of Dendrin, but these Eternals can’t see that, so they always seek to be tyrants no matter how benevolent! We must not let this go on! We must appeal to Dendrin’s sense of justice and change the way things are!” Yvette has gone beyond the usual disagreements now and is basically declaring open rebellion you can’t help but notice the pattern. Also makes you realize that Theo most likely isn’t dead, but rather attempting to get reinforcements in Quala to bring back to attack you. Didn’t see that one either, but even at this point it isn’t too late to curb the damage. It’s not going to be easy though. In the meantime you’ll have to do damage control right here at home. You just hope that it doesn’t involve killing your entire human population. You don’t bother arguing with Yvette, instead you just perform the same spell that Master Ebon once did to stop Brother Shade from killing him. Her ranting turns into groans of pain as she clutches her head. She begins bleeding from the ears and gasps. “You…will…not…w…win…” she manages to utter before her brain explodes inside her head. Yvette’s body lies motionless on the floor and you address the crowd. “I’m going to make this quick. I am Shadow Master, the chosen one of Dendrin, for good or ill, you ALL will follow my orders. This is how it has always been for centuries. Now I’m giving a moment of leniency as of right now…anyone who has problems with that for whatever reason, should leave this temple now and never return. I cannot stop you from continuing to worship Dendrin, but you will no longer be a member of this order. At this point a few shadows do indeed start to leave. “Very well, for those that are leaving, you will have until dawn to gather your belongings and take whatever families you may have out of this temple. Any attempt to approach us in the future will result in death.” As the disgruntled shadows leave, you continue your speech. “As for the rest of you, I expect NO disloyalty from any of you lest you suffer the same fate at Sister Yvette AND Brother Draven. Which brings me to you Cyrus, what am I supposed to do with you? While I do believe you didn’t have anything to do with what Draven did, you basically covered for someone who disobeyed orders regardless of their intentions and then later attempted to assassinate me.” “I have no words Shadow Master…the last few moments have been…interesting. All I can do is put my life in your hands and hope Dendrin will find mercy on me.” Cyrus looks even more defeated than the last time you spared his life. Besides being a shadow, Draven was one of his main reasons for living. He’d probably consider it a mercy if you did kill him at this point. You do consider it, but ultimately you decide living is a more fitting punishment. “Cyrus, you are also banished from this temple. You have until dawn to gather your belongings. Never return or the punishment will be death.” You say. “Very well. I shall obey your decision and I will take my leave now as I will have no use of anything where I’m going.” He says. You almost ask him where he intends to go, but given his grim remark you can take a guess that he seek out death via combat. Just as Cyrus gets up off the floor to leave, Talia speaks out. “Cyrus! Don’t you want to see Draven’s body before you leave?” “No. The man I loved is long gone; it’s just an empty shell now. Dispose of it as such.” He says and leaves. And that’s that. Draven dead, Yvette dead, Cyrus exiled and Theo is still hiding in Quala somewhere. It’s just you and Talia now…just like you wanted, though perhaps not quite like this. You spend the rest of the night with Talia talking about how to go about finding Theo and also tracking down any and all other shadows currently stationed out in Quala. You’re going to have to determine just how many people he’s turned against you and anyone “new” is going to be under the most suspicion. Even the people in this temple who stayed aren’t completely out of clear, but you can easily perform a ritual that will allow you to root out any potential traitors still in hiding here. About the only ones you can trust completely are…well the eternal members. After the last of the disgruntled shadows leaves the temple, you contact one of the Blades that Cyrus or rather Dravin sent to Nalin. Glen is his name. He probably wonders if he’s in trouble, but you dispel those concerns immediately when you say that you know he was just following orders of a superior and meant no subterfuge. “Shadow Master, how may I serve?” he asks. “I want you to take some of the Blades and follow the exiled shadows for a while. See where they go and what they’re doing. Now if you see any of them making contact with other shadows in Quala, I want you to find out all you can, then I want you to kill anyone and everyone there that is plotting against us.” “Yes Master, it will be done.” “Good. Oh and for this mission pick your ranks from other eternals. Let’s just say that after all that has gone on today, some of our human members might be slightly uncomfortable about killing other human shadows even if they are exiles.” “Very well, but what if the exiles do not contact other potential traitors?” “Continue to have them followed for a few more miles, then find a quiet spot to kill them as well. Can’t have them potentially starting a new sect of Dendrin worship after all. We have to remain united if we’re going to continue to survive this set back.” “Understood Master.” It is at this moment you appreciate having these new eternals with you now. Their dedication to you (and Dendrin) is so certain now that you could tell them to massacre the entire town of Sinkhole and they’d do it without any arguing. You never concerned yourself about it before but you’re beginning to sympathize a bit with Talia on the fact that they can’t breed, because you sure could use a few more of them. Glen asks one more question before carrying out the order. “Shadow Master, are we to follow the exile Cyrus as well?” “No, he’s probably long gone by now and despite his crime, he was still ultimately loyal. Don’t bother.” You’re fully aware that with these last couple of orders, you’ve probably just supported Yvette’s argument. The irony is though; you weren’t trying to create any sort of caste system initially, and it’s only due to current events that you’re having to resort to a bit more preferential treatment because you don’t know who to trust right now. Eternals are naturally better warriors so you made them all part of the elite fighting group and let the less skilled human shadows tend to their families. Theo, Yvette and Dravin were all human and made up half the council, they all had a voice that could be heard. Yes, it’s true that an Eternal is in charge, but that’s hardly your fault when at nearly every turn you’ve been the one to rescue the shadows from destruction whether it’s from external or internal forces. “And Dendrin chose me to lead, so it must be right.” you laugh to yourself, though you imagine Dendrin’s probably having the biggest laugh of all as usual. > Year 55 “Theo I know you’re here I can sense your presence, you might as well come on out and take your punishment with some dignity.” You say looking down the dimly lit stairway. You can’t believe after all these years; it’s come down to you personally tracking Theo hiding in the cellar of a simple abandoned farmhouse. Several of the Blades stand behind you asking if they should go in and get him, but you decline. You can handle this yourself, in fact you’d rather do it yourself. “Just stand guard, I’ll be back soon.” You say to Glen who nods and has the Blades guard the perimeter. You walk down the stairs without any worry about your safety. Even if Theo does attack you, and you’re fairly certain he isn’t going to be in any condition to do, you’ll easily be able to defend yourself. The cellar isn’t large and add the fact that there are several stacks of boxes and barrels here make the cellar seem even smaller than it is. “Supplies. Supplies still here from the Empire rebellion. Never did get around to using them.” Theo’s voice says from the corner of the room. You see him in his torn and tattered robe and sitting against the wall. Between his missing hand and half burned face, he’s a mess. “Didn’t get around to using them for this one either.” You say. “Honestly, I’d forgotten about this place until recently. Had so many old safehouses, I was bound to forget some of them. Don’t know why I forgot about this one though…it’s rather peaceful. Serene even. I guess its remoteness helps. Yeah, this would’ve been a good place to settle down…maybe another life. Right?” “I don’t think Dendrin does reincarnation. Least of all for traitors.” “Yeah, I suppose so I guess. Good thing I stopped believing in him years ago.” Theo laughs weakly. “You know, if you stopped believing in him, you could’ve just left rather than cause a whole lot of unnecessary fighting. It’s not like I would’ve stopped you.” “And tell me Eternal, would you leave if your own wife still believed in Dendrin?” Theo asks accusingly. You don’t know if he’s just asking hypothetically or if he is actually implying something. “No, I suppose I wouldn’t.” “Of course not. Besides…I did still believe up until I found out you killed her. From that point I knew that Dendrin truly didn’t support my cause, so why bother worshipping a god that doesn’t? Of course had to still keep up the charade since I had managed to hold sway over some of the new converts in Quala.” “And that’s when you decided to just kill Sam, declare yourself in charge of his forces and repeatedly tried to invade the temple?” “Well seemed like a good idea at the time. Honestly if that bastard Ackerson had just allied with me, I believe I would’ve had a good chance at winning. Didn’t expect him to make a separate peace with you though.” “The fool has still got his sights set on Rask and doesn’t want to expend any military effort that isn’t focused on that endeavor. You might’ve done better trying to get help from Brenda in Nalin, heard she’s not too fond of shadows having caused the death of her husband and all.” “Believe me I tried, she sent my messengers back without heads and a note saying she wasn’t helping even if I wasn’t really a shadow anymore and as far as she was concerned she hoped that we all killed one another.” “Well thanks to you, this was certainly another set back for the shadows. Sort of makes the whole original rebellion rather pointless.” “No…not for me. I think those were the happiest days of my life. I had a purpose, my enemy was clear and I knew I would win because Dendrin was on my side. Then I won, and that’s when it all started to slowly fall apart.” “Hah. I can certainly understand where you’re coming from on that perspective. Part of your behavior in all this probably stemmed from being a rebel for so long that you never knew quite how to adjust and when the opportunity presented itself, you immersed yourself in the role again because it was comfortable. Really, any of your other reasons were all secondary and just an excuse.” Theo doesn’t answer he just looks down and nods a few times in a rocking motion as he clutches where his left hand used to be. Eventually he staggers upward sliding his back against the wall in an effort to stand up. You’re guessing he’s ready to die now. “Just one question Eternal, does Dendrin really speak to you?” “When he feels like it, but if it makes you feel any better he hasn’t cared about the shadows for a very long time and the only reason why he takes an interest in them at all is due to me.” “…well I guess I was doomed from the very beginning then.” “So was I Theo…so was I.” you say and hit Theo with a powerful shadowfire bolt which burns directly through his chest leaving a big hole and a black mark against the wall. Theo slumps down and the leader of the “new rebellion” is dead. The damage he’s caused isn’t so readily repairable. In addition to losing many shadows he’s also created a separate faction of them (Something you were trying to avoid), which are still located in pockets across Quala. The beliefs are basically the same (and without the indoctrination ritual obviously), with the exception that YOU or any other non-pure human for that matter shouldn’t be a shadow, let alone in charge of the order. Your first thought is that you should probably hunt them all down and wipe them out before they become a problem, but then again this little conflict has been taking a toll on the shadows you have left. Some of the children don’t even have mothers and fathers anymore. It might be time to pack up the gear and attempt to rebuild again. As you think on this, you make your way up the stairs and wince at a couple of the aches in your joints in doing so. You might be an Eternal, but you sure as hell aren’t starting to feel like one in the past few years as old age is becoming a little more apparent to you. Makes you sort of glad that you don’t have to rely solely on regular combat anymore thanks to your increased magic abilities gifted to you by your “dedication” to Dendrin no doubt. In any case you’re tired and you tell Glen that Theo is dead, but you’re going to stay here for the night before heading home again. Glen as usual nods and says he’ll keep everyone on watch. You find an old bed that probably has been slept in years, but it doesn’t look infested with bed bugs so you use it. Doesn’t take long for you to slowly drift off to sleep, but you get the impression that you’re not going to get a peaceful rest. “So another enemy falls before you, keep this up and you’ll outlive everyone.” Dendrin remarks. “Figured you’d show up eventually. Any words of advice on what to do next?” you ask. “Not really, you seem to have it under control. So…still bored?” “No, but I hate set backs.” “Come now you should be used to such things by now.” “I am, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them. Especially when I feel like packing it all in because there’s little point in going on.” “So you don’t intend on destroying the heretic shadows?” “I almost don’t intend on going back to the temple. I feel like just leaving altogether.” “You’ve said that before, many times. You won’t though.” “Of course I won’t, but I feel like no matter what I do something severely sets back the shadows. Against all odds I’ve taken it upon myself to be their leader and protect them better than you ever do and I’m still lying about being a true believer.” “Oh you’re a believer, a cynical one, but you’re a believer. If you weren’t you would’ve left a long time ago because it’s a little bit more than just Talia keeping you here.” “I don’t see what else there is, because it sure isn’t to bask in the glory of your voice.” “It’s power pure and simple. It’s being in charge. It’s telling others what to do and ruling them like a king or emperor if you prefer.” “I might agree with you if I actually thought I was in charge of anything so grand. Besides, it’s really you they’re all worshipping not me.” “And is that what your problem is? That you’re doing all the work and not getting any of the perks? And here I thought all that nice magical power I’ve been granting to you was a fine way of rewarding you.” “Well it hasn’t hurt. You’re right though, I don’t mind being in charge and I do thrive on a bit of conflict, but sometimes it just gets a bit tiring that’s all.” “Ah, and now you see why I stopped directly leading the shadows altogether!” “Yeah, well I don’t have that luxury unless you can elevate me to godhood.” “Ha ha, even if I could, obviously I wouldn’t want the competition.” “Too bad, maybe if you could you wouldn’t suffer from boredom either.” “Hmm, interesting insight as always Eternal. Well, I’ll let you get back to it. Oh and just in case you did want my advice, I’d rather you not destroy the so-called heretic shadows. They might not be following you, but they do still worship me.” And once again you wake up, with more dubious advice from your “god.” You sometimes wonder whenever he does give you any of his wisdom if he wants you to do the exact opposite of what he says, because you practically do every time. In any case, you can’t dwell on the nature of the divine at this moment. You’re still left with the decision about how to fix the mess you have to clean up. > You go back to the temple and focus on rebuilding What few heretical shadows still remain isn’t many and they don’t exactly have any type of leadership anymore. Hunting them all down seems like a waste of your time and possibly manpower, especially since Quala is more hostile and destabilized than ever now. Chances are the heretics will eventually resort to the typical banditry that goes on here and they’ll get wiped out by one of the warlord factions. Even if they manage to join up with any of the factions, they’ll likely abandon their newfound religion in the process. Rebuilding what you have left seems like a better idea at this point, so you send a message out to all your people to leave this war torn land and head back to Delerg. When you arrive in Delerg, your temple seems so much emptier now. Well certainly empty of more adults. You don’t have many Blades left either anymore, only about a dozen from what remains of the original amount you had. Not counting all the ones that never made it out of their tanks or failed Talia’s training when she was trying to bring them into the fold of course. Orphaned children that are fairly young have so far been taken care of in more communal way as needed, though you ask if Talia wants to take charge of all them in the same way she did the eternals and eventually train them to be Blades. She declines though and says the children should probably start being assigned to a more permanent family arrangement starting with volunteers first. You’re confident that the numbers will build back up since there are always people in Delerg that are drawn to join the order. Assuming you have no further major conflict, things should go back to their previous “boring” ways of simple temple routine in no time. This time though you’re looking forward to a bit of boredom. This last major clash has somewhat made you realize that maybe you should be taking it easier in your later years. Not that you’re ready for the grave, but you just aren’t young like you used to be and you can’t single handedly fight entire wars for the shadows anymore even with your increased magical powers. It’s a strain and you’ve got so much on your plate in general. Maybe Dendrin knew this too and that’s why he suggested that you not hunt down the heretics in that cryptic way that he tends to do. You think back to how you said to him that you couldn’t afford to not be directly involved and relax in the way that he does, and while that is true, there really isn’t any reason why you couldn’t start following his lead just a little. It also makes you start to wonder if he’s been right about a few things. Weeks and months pass as you go through the motions of temple routine, though it’s been a little different for you somehow. Like you’ve actually started to attempt to find a deeper reason behind the words of all the texts you read from. You don’t know if it’s because you’re trying to embrace this new moment of peace within the shadows (as opposed to the fidgeting boredom you usually suffer from) or if it’s because you’re becoming genuinely interested in the stuff. Are you finally becoming a “believer?” Dendrin claims you already are and it seems impossible, but you have noticed yourself having slightly more civilized conversations with Dendrin as the years have gone on, even agreeing with him at times. You remember practically ranting at him when you were young, in retrospect it’s amazing that he didn’t kill you given his power. He pretty much put up with you and he didn’t have to. He hasn’t helped you in probably the most direct way most of the time, but really would you have wanted him to? Your insistence on always forging your own way was always paramount to you and he probably saw that and acted accordingly by letting you make your own choices. You’ve only really prayed genuinely once to Dendrin and that was back when you wanted help with getting the new eternals under control. Even then it was a last ditch reason and you did it more out of selfish desperation rather than any genuine belief. You begin to wonder if it couldn’t hurt to just sincerely pray to him once in a while. Not in the hopes of getting anything out of him, but just…well to show a little bit of gratitude. It is probably due to your new found attempt at piety that attracts more people to the temple and restores some of the hope that the shadows will overcome this set back like they have so many before in the past. Year 60 “One of the heretics was caught near the temple. He claims that another group stand at the border of Delerg. We confirmed this and most of them haggard and tired looking. This speaker claims that he wishes to speak with you about making peace and an urgent matter.” Brother Gannon says. “Hmm, have to say I didn’t think they’d last as long as they did. They didn’t mention what this so called urgent matter was about?” you reply. “No, just that it was of great importance to anyone who reveres Dendrin.” “Probably a trick of some sort, you should just have all of them killed.” Glen remarks. “Yes, that would be the safe bet, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to listen seeing as I’m not particularly worried about them. Drag him in, but keep a tight hold on him.” “Very well Shadow Master.” Glen says. The heretic is brought in and he certainly is a miserable looking wretch. It isn’t due to any roughing up by your own shadows either, as he was confirmed to be in the same state as the rest of his fellows waiting for him. He’s very nervous and looking around as much as he can while two of the Blades grasp his arms and several other shadows look on at the proceedings. “Well? We don’t have all day. Out with it heretic scum!” Talia demands before you can say anything. “Oh! Right…uh…Shadow Master I beg you in Dendrin’s name to call off your assassins! We have seen that Theo’s teachings were the improper doctrine! We submit to your rule as the rightful chosen one of Dendrin himself and ask for mercy by allowing us to merge with the true and only temple dedicated to him!” the heretic whines. You certainly weren’t expecting this, and you’re also wondering about these assassins. “Assassins? We haven’t sent anyone to seek out your destruction. If that were the case we would’ve done it years ago.” “You…haven’t? But that seems impossible.” “Why? It isn’t like shadows are well accepted anywhere else except Delerg as you surely know. What makes you think it isn’t General Ackerson or any of the many other warlords in the area?” “No, he is too busy fighting Mog, Son of Flog’s orc and ogre horde in Rask. Rumors are he’s sick as well and his underlings are already squabbling over who is going to take power when he’s gone. As for other warlords, they aren’t a threat to us, at least not in any meaningful way, and most of them are too direct and unsophisticated to engage in the terror tactics that your assassins have. Your assassins tell us that they are the hand of justice in Dendrin’s name.” “As I said we have sent no assassins. I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but I’m not falling for it.” “No please wait! Maybe you didn’t send the assassins, but if that’s true then this is more alarming news! Because they’re using shadow magic to accomplish their tasks! If it isn’t you or anyone in your order as you say, who are they? And will they attack you as well?” This does give you a bit of pause though it’s hard to tell with someone that’s supposed to be your enemy. He does look quite sincere in his words and his fear. If it wasn’t any of your people, then who would it be? It’s quite possible that it’s just another rogue group that split off from the original heretics and formed yet a third faction of shadows. Of course if that was the case, they should know about it instead of jumping to the conclusion that it is you. Of course this could all still be just an elaborate trick. Perhaps an attempt to make you suspicious of people in your own group carrying out tasks that you didn’t order. There’s also the other urgent matter that they said they had to tell you, which you question the heretic on. “So what is this other urgent matter you had to tell us?” you ask. “Oh, yes that, well there are rumors that Warden Matron Brenda of Nalin is planning on invading Delerg.” “What? I know she hates the shadows, but reports have always established that she has never set sights on anything north of the Nalin province. She doesn’t even have an established presence in Quala.” Talia remarks. “Well, I didn’t say she planned on holding the territory, just that she was planning on invading it. I don’t know. It is what we have heard in our travels to get here.” “Could be Brenda that’s sending the assassins then and using something similar to shadow magic that these blasphemous fools are taking as the real thing. Maybe we should prepare ourselves, after killing these heretics of course.” Glen remarks. “But we’re sincere! I’M sincere! How…how about we prove ourselves by being judged directly by Dendrin himself? You could perform the initiation ritual to open the portal to his realm. If he accepts our forgiveness then surely that would be proof that our hearts and souls are truthful, right? If he doesn’t then we won’t survive the process anyway.” The heretic exclaims. “Well, that would be one way of ensuring their dedication I suppose.” Talia says to you. > You perform the initiation ritual “Very well, you and what remains of your people may come back to the true temple of Dendrin if he sees fit to forgive you for your transgressions. Glen, get the rest of this miserable lot back here and I’ll prepare the ritual.” “It will be done.” Glen says and gathers some of the Blades to help him. “As for you, what is your name?” you ask the heretic. “Remi, Shadow Master.” “Remi, you’re going to be held outside, I don’t want your heretic ass befouling the temple until it’s time to throw you into the portal.” The two Blades holding him take him away and you head off to go get yourself prepared. “So what do you think about the potential invasion business?” Talia asks. “I’m going to deal with this first and worry about that afterwards, but I don’t think there’s anything to it. Just rumors.” “I agree. I’m surprised that you’re giving the heretics a second chance though.” “I’m not. Dendrin is. Well maybe he is, for all I know he’ll still see them as potential troublemakers and do away with them. I’m wondering who is killing them though, because while I don’t think its Brenda behind this, I’m not convinced that we’re necessarily safe. For all we know after they’re done targeting these heretics they could be coming after us.” “Wait, so do you think it was good idea to allow them to join?” “As I said I’m putting this in Dendrin’s hands. Whoever has been targeting the heretics will most likely show themselves to us a lot sooner. Besides I’d rather they did, since they’re also performing acts that weren’t sanctioned by this temple or masquerading as shadows.” As you gather up the components needed to perform the ritual from your room, you hear a lot of noise coming from the ground floor. An alarm has been raised. It would seem that the assassins have decided to show themselves right now. You quickly run up stairs and find mass chaos and “We’re being attacked! I was standing outside watching the Blades guards the heretic and then all of a sudden five shadows materialized right beside the three of them and killed them! I didn’t even sense them! None of us did!” Gannon remarks. “I was inside, but he’s right I didn’t sense anyone cloaked. You have the best abilities in such matter, did you sense an intruding presence of any kind?” Talia says. “No…but how many did you say there were?” you ask. “At least five! Maybe more!” Gannon answers. “Odd, I’m only sensing one hostile presence in the area. Where are the rest of the Blades?” “Most of them are still out with the heretics, I’ve had the temple doors locked tight so whoever they are can’t get in, but we’re going to have to fight this one out. We’ll all go out there together in a show of force and…” You raise your hand up and shake your head. “No Talia, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I know who the attacker is.” You say and head towards the main temple doors. “Wait where are you going?” “I’m facing the attacker myself. They deserve that much.” “Wait! You can’t go out there alone! We don’t know how many there are and…” “As I have said. There is only one, they’re just really quick and probably using some sort of mirror image. Trust me. Better yet, trust in Dendrin.” You tell Talia with a smile. Talia says nothing else; her mouth opens to do so, but realizes that you won’t be swayed by anything. Instead she just looks a bit upset. “Talia, whatever happens, know that I love you.” you say before exiting the temple and closing the temple doors again. You walk down the steps and on to the soft ground and look around at your surroundings. To the left you see the bloody bodies of your two Blades and Remi. One clean cut to each of their throats. “Cyrus, you might as well come out. I know its you.” you say. Within a few moments a figure materializes in front of you and it is ideed Cyrus. He’s much older looking now of course, but it’s him. He’s also much paler, unnaturally so. You notice his right hand is also sporting a couple missing fingers. Whatever he’s been up to has taken a toll on his body. “Remember the days when you couldn’t cast a simple cloak spell without tiring yourself out.” Cyrus asks. “Now look at you with your superior extra sensory abilities. You even knew who it was.” “Well, given the heretic’s story and the fact that I could only sense a single attacker, I sort of figured it would be you. Why have you come back Cyrus?” “It was not my intention I assure you. I merely wanted to punish the rest of the heretics. I had thought that their plan to come here was going to finish the job for me, but I was surprised to learn that you have decided to show them mercy. When did this happen? When did the great Shadow Master become so lenient against those that have defied him?” “It was decided that the heretics are going to be judged by Dendrin himself. If he sees them as a threat or unforgivable then they will presumably die for their crimes. If not then they will be accepted back. I see no leniency.” “Oh no? That was more of a choice than I got.” “Well perhaps you are right…perhaps you should also get a chance to come back. Did you want…” “What I want is for YOU to hand over the rest of the heretics or kill them yourself! They are traitors and deserve to die!” “Cyrus, you’ve dispensed enough of your brand of justice on them. So much so that they’ve run to back to us pleading for help and willing to submit to Dendrin’s judgment, is that not justice?” “They need to die! THAT is Dendrin’s justice! Justice that wasn’t being pursued until I took matters into my own hands. You know. I accepted a lot. I accepted the fact that you were a better warrior than me. I accepted that you were the chosen one of Dendrin. I even accepted it when you killed my Dravin. I accepted exile and a life of wandering. But never once did I think you weren’t up to the task of being a good Shadow Master, until you failed to finish off the heretics. And now, you’re accepting them back into the fold? This is a bigger blasphemy than what Brother Theo pulled! If you continue to protect them I will see to it that you suffer the same punishment!” “So now you know better then Dendrin?” Cyrus is exasperated by your remark and takes a moment to form his new arguments inbetween his huffing and puffing. “Do not twist my words! And you stand there as if YOU know Dendrin? Hah! You don’t even fucking believe in him! Yes, I know you. I know that you’re just playing a role that you don’t even believe yourself! Even back when we were just fresh out of training I always sensed that your heart and soul was never truly dedicated to the cause! Your whole life has been a fraud!” Your calm demeanor begins to crack at this remark. “Not dedicated? After all the countless battles I’ve engaged in personally and the leadership roles I’ve taken to keep the shadows alive and you question my dedication? Cyrus, I’m not going to deny that you are right in that I wasn’t always the strongest of faith. I’ll stand here and shout it in front of the fucking temple and throughout this forsaken swamp that I was practically a heathen most of the time. But people change. I changed. Perhaps I have been a fraud for most of my life, but are you just so damn jealous and bitter that it wasn’t you?” Cyrus gets in your face, but you make no defensive move. You don’t even flinch. Though several of the shadows and Talia are watching from the temple. You sense they want to move in, but you wave them back without looking in their direction. “YES! YES I AM SO DAMN JEALOUS! WHY WAS IT YOU?! WHY WASN’T IT ME!? I WAS THE LOYAL ONE! I WAS THE ONE WHO ALWAYS BELIEVED! I (Sob) WAS THE…(Sob) Why, why, why didn’t he ever speak to me again?” Cyrus crumples down to the ground and breaks down in tears. You crouch beside him. “Cyrus, I don’t have an answer. Dendrin does what he wants because he’s more powerful than the rest of us. That’s the cynical answer and that’s the answer I’ve believed for years. I probably still do a little bit, but in recent years I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe there is a plan of some sort even if I don’t understand all of it. If there wasn’t Dendrin wouldn’t have chosen me at all and guided me in the unique way that he does right from the start. Cyrus, you can come back to us too. It isn’t too late. You don’t even need to submit to the ritual, I know that you’re more dedicated to Dendrin’s true teachings than anyone.” You smile and extend your hand to help Cyrus up. He wipes his face and looks at you for a moment. He attempts to smile back, but it turns into a pained expression. “Sorry Shadow Master, but I can’t play second fiddle anymore. At least I’ll be remembered for this!” he says grabbing your hand to pull you forward and with lightning speed he plunges a dagger into your heart. The last thing you hear as your body collapses to the ground are several screams followed by a lot of yelling. Then everything goes black and you feel numb. “Am I dead?” you ask floating in the void. “Well it’s not good.” You hear Dendrin say. “I don’t imagine it is. I suppose you’re going to say I should’ve listened from the beginning and that Cyrus was going to be trouble again.” “No, it worked out better this way.” “What, you wanted him to kill me and take over?” “Not at all, in fact Cyrus didn’t live long enough to enjoy killing you. He was riddled with bolts by the Blades who were just returning when this happened. Though I think he could’ve easily avoided the attack and he actually let them kill him…just like you allow him to kill you. Why? Were you finally tired of life?” “No…I just…I dunno I was really attempting to get through to him. I knew it would probably fail, but I had to try. When his eyes gave away his intentions, I knew that he wouldn’t be happy unless he killed me. He was either going to succeed or fail, but I decided to put it in your hands. Seems hard to believe that I’d do anything like this.” “Well as you said in your speech to Cyrus, you changed. Unfortunately Cyrus never did, though I say unfortunately for him. You’ll be fine. Off you go and thanks for believing in me.” With those last words from Dendrin you suddenly wake up exactly where you fell. You find yourself surrounded by shadows and Talia weeping over your body, though she stops when you appear to be alive again. “He’s alive!” Glen shouts and tells some of the others to back off. “Look! His chest wound is gone as well! Truly this must be Dendrin’s work, to bring our Shadow Master back from the dead like this!” While several of the other shadows begin to cheer, fawn and act generally awe stricken, Talia merely holds you tightly happy that you’re still alive. As you hug her back, you’re glad to be alive as well. > Year 75 “Seems hard to believe that we haven’t had any major conflict in over a decade.” Talia says. “What is harder to believe is that I stopped missing it. But I imagine the major powers are too busy fighting over the Quala region to worry about us as usual. I mean you’ve got the Empire of Nalin, Drog Son of Mog’s Horde and even the Felkan Kingdom all annexing portions of it.” “Who do you think will win it?” “The Nalin Empire will probably take most of it. Their new ruler Tarna is very ambitious as she started laying groundwork to invade Quala soon after Brenda’s suicide…which was pretty suspicious anyway. I’m sure Drog is ambitious too, but predictably his son Og will soon challenge him for leadership and they’ll resort to infighting as usual. As for the Felkan Kingdom, I believe the only reason why they started eating up land from Arat to Quala is to initially stop the on going anarchy that was starting to cross over into their borders. I think when they finally reach borders with Nalin, the expansion for them will halt and then it’ll be a long stand off…history repeats itself again.” “You sound a bit concerned.” “Well, I’m fairly confident that we won’t be attacked anytime soon, but as I said, history repeats itself and you’re always going to get that one leader that’s determined to prove themselves no matter how foolish the odds.” “Even against a chosen one of a god?” Talia chuckles. “Especially against a chosen one of a god, even if only to claim they defied the divine.” “Is that what you would’ve done?” “Of course.” You laugh. “But as I said, I do not believe an attack will come in our time. It’s going to come after us, I don’t know how long, but the shadows are going to have to be prepared.” “Dendrin, will look over them as he always has.” “I sure hope so, because I can’t do it forever. I may be an Eternal, but I’m not eternal. I’ve been studying some of our members as a potential successor, but I’m still not sure if any of them are up to the task.” “You have? I didn’t know.” “Well unless Dendrin tells me himself who he wants as his chosen, it’s sort of up to me and nobody has told me they’ve been speaking to him on a regular basis either.” “Actually you never told anyone either until years later.” “Yeah, but that was a little different…besides I’m also pondering a more permanent solution to our potential safety issues.” “Oh? What’s that?” “The Ritual of Ascension” Talia is a little taken back by your statement. The Ritual of Ascension was supposedly passed down from Dendrin himself to the first Shadow Master, telling him that it was only to be used if he felt the shadows were ready for it. The results are not entirely clear on what it does, but what Dendrin explained is that it would unify the shadows to his own realm forever. Not just in a spiritual sense, but in a very real physical sense. The shadows essentially would become REAL shadows. Incorporeal and no longer susceptible to the weaknesses that most beings suffer. At least that’s what you think happens. Obviously no Shadow Master ever felt this way for any reason. Even during the time under the Empire, it was never seriously considered as a solution to the problem, which gives an indication to how this ritual is viewed with more awe and fear than anything else. Still, the procedures of the ritual do exist and they have been written down. Dendrin passed them to the shadows obviously believing that one day it would be used so you don’t see why you shouldn’t consider it as an option. In the meantime Talia has gotten over her surprise. “Well, if you believe that we are worthy and ready, then I will certainly follow you in performing this ritual. I believe everyone will, there is no question about that. You have lead the shadows through some of the toughest conflicts in our long history. You’ve even returned from death itself because Dendrin believed your work here was not done. Perhaps this is why.” “Heh, I never thought about that before. Still, perhaps I should consult Dendrin about this before making a final decision.” You say. “Of course. Obtaining his guidance in this very important matter would be essential.” Later that night you pray to Dendrin and go to sleep fully expecting him to see him soon… But nothing happens. You do this night after night until four months go by, and still you get no sign. Dendrin not speaking to you for month or even years on end is nothing new to you, but in every instance where you’ve directly requested his guidance he has always appeared. Not this time. You start to wonder if him not appearing is a sign that maybe you shouldn’t go through with this ritual. Of course maybe this is one of those decisions that’s so important that you need to make it for yourself. Are you ready? Do you consider the rest of the shadows ready? You know everyone now is a loyal worshipper of Dendrin and have an equal amount of faith in you as well. You really don’t see how they could be any more ready than they are now. They won’t fear the unknown no matter what it is, as long as they trust in Dendrin. Becoming one with Dendrin seems like it would be ideal to most in the order, though perhaps you have a few reservations about it for a few reasons, but then maybe that’s why the ritual has never seriously been considered in the past by other Shadow Masters. Maybe it hasn’t been just you. Maybe they all had their doubts about Dendrin’s plan. Maybe it’s just a natural thing when it comes to being “a leader.” You don’t fear death. You’ve always accepted it from the first time Mistress put the boot to your chest and demanded that you beg for your life to the time when you stood your ground against Cyrus without fighting back. You always believed you were going to die (well permanently anyway) either in combat or through some sort of violence, but it’s starting to look like you’ll end up dying as an old man in your sleep. Nothing wrong with that. Your concern is what exactly happens to you after you perform this ritual? Are you dead? Are you alive? Are you something else? Will you still be on this world? There are so many questions and one of them is will you be better off in this form, or is death better? You already assume that when you die, you’ll be in Dendrin’s realm. That being your understanding of how death in the service of a god works. What makes this different? Would you just be speeding up the process in some sort of mass suicide? The fact is, you won’t know unless you go through with it. > You perform the ritual There were a lot of things you didn’t have full knowledge on and you risked going through with your ideas anyway. Seems to have worked so far, and since you’ve never been one to play it too safe, you’ll go through with the Ascension Ritual. After another couple days of being completely sure of your dedication, you make the announcement to everyone. Many of the shadows immediately cheer at the news, others aren’t entirely sure what you’re talking about which isn’t surprising since the Ascension Ritual isn’t common knowledge to the newer shadows. Still when you explain it, they all seem excited about the plan. The ritual takes a bit of planning on your part, but eventually you’ve got everything in place. When the time comes you stand outside the temple in front of the several hundred shadows with their heads down in prayer. From the ones nearly as old as you to the ones that are barely out of the crib, all shadows are lending their own energy and faith to your own in the effort of pulling off this historical moment. Talia stands by your side as always. You look at her and wonder if you would’ve even come this far if you hadn’t fallen in love with her. Of course maybe that was part of Dendrin’s plan too. “Dendrin, we are your shadows! We have served your will for centuries no matter what the struggles. From before the Empire and through it, and after it’s inevitable demise. We will always be your faithful servants in the years to come. These forms however are limited and we would wish to continue serving you in a less restrictive one. We feel we are ready. I feel we are ready. This is the destiny of the shadows! We will become one with you forever at last!” you say and then begin the incantations. Most of your people recite what you say in unison while others stand at the far ends and chant supporting verses, which are essential to the ritual. Talia is also chanting yet another portion of it while making gestures with her hands to begin the first part of opening up the portal to Dendrin’s realm. This part is is almost like the initiation ritual, but of course much more complex and involved. A large portal opens up above all of you and darkness spreads across the sky, even beyond your own area. There is no wind or lightning or anything that most would connect with such a grand attempt altering reality. Instead, it remains true to Dendrin, and it just gets very dark and you start to feel a tingling numbness. You begin to see some of the shadows fall to the ground. You don’t know if they’ve died or just fainted. None of them are deterred though; they all continue to perform their parts for as long as they are able. This is like one of your personal encounters with Dendrin when you’ve slept, but instead everyone is experiencing it in the real world. You begin to feel all five of your senses becoming non-existent and the numbness is close to complete at this point. Eventually you can’t even see most of the shadows in front of you and you can hardly hear them anymore. Still you know you’re on the right path, the blackness is engulfing everything. You briefly look over at Talia who is barely visible now. She continues to chant like a true believer that she’s always been. A few minutes pass and you soon can’t hear anything except your own voice now and even that is very faint, though you can’t be sure it’s due to losing your hearing or your voice. Probably both. You look over one more time at Talia who you see start to teeter from exhaustion. You see her look over at you as well before you lose sight of her completely to the blackness. You continue to silently chant while your mind fights the fatigue you’re experiencing. It feels like you’ve been doing this forever, but you have to finish. You wonder what’s happening to everyone else. You wonder if they’re still alive. You wonder if Talia is still alive. “Eternal, do you know what you do?” you hear inside your head. It’s Dendrin, he’s made his presence known at last. You can’t talk to him though, you need to focus. “Eternal, once you complete this ritual there will be no going back. Things will never be the same and I do not believe the results will be what you envisioned.” He’s testing you. He is always testing you. Of course the results won’t be what you envisioned! For one thing you went into this not knowing what was going to happen exactly. Second of all when it comes to Dendrin you know that nothing ever happens the exact way it should. That doesn’t matter though, because things always work out in the end. “Eternal, are you sure this is what you want?” Of course it is. You want the shadows to be free of anymore harm. You’ve been their shepherd for over decades now. They would’ve ultimately been destroyed without you. When you’re gone the shadows will fall prey to something else, whether it be from external forces or internal ones. Dendrin still cares very little for them despite his fondness for you. Dendrin knows this as well, that’s why he had the plan to make YOU care. You see that now. You see it all so clearly no. By directly uniting the shadows with Dendrin, the problems of the past will no longer apply. The shadows will be an extension of Dendrin himself and he’ll have no choice but to care. You begin the finishing lines of the ritual. “Very well, I can see you have made your decision…an interesting one and you’ll get your wish. Farewell Eternal, I shall always remember you as you were and your deeds, even if nobody else will.” With those last words you succumb to absolute numbness. Your mind however is being bombarded with the voices of hundreds of voices. Many of them confused and scared, you can’t help but feel similar, you don’t know where you are. Are you still at the temple? Are you dead? Are you in Dendrin’s realm? Your mind calls out to the rest of the voices to cease, but it’s of little help. You keep trying until you hear one familiar voice in the crowd. “You’ve done it my love. We have joined with Dendrin! Join with the rest of us!” “Talia? Where are you?” “Am I everywhere! We are everywhere! Do you not sense it?” “I can’t sense anything. All I hear is the noise of voices.” “Ignore them, eventually all of them will be silenced and it will soon just be one voice. I was singled out by Dendrin to help guide you though.” “I don’t understand, are we dead? Where are we?” “You will understand everything when you let go. You once told me to trust you, now I’m asking you to trust me…better yet trust in Dendrin.” Talia was your link to the shadows for the longest time and now she’s your link one last time. You let go and eventually the voices become quieter and quieter and then silent. Then nothingness… In the days following the Shadow Rift of Delerg, several of the super powers fighting over the Quala region actually stopped fighting for a moment out fear that something much worse potentially threatened them all. A united group of explorers eventually traveled into the shadow covered Delerg province to see what was going on. They returned unscathed, but said the swamps were now completely devoid of life. The largest settlement Sinkhole was now a ghost town and the Shadow Temple was completely gone. As if it had never existed. Nobody knew what to make of this so for awhile there was an uneasy peace. ed and eventually the same lusts for power started cropping up again and eventually it was business as usual. Delerg was still off limits to most people, but not considered particularly dangerous. Every once in awhile a group of adventurers would explore it, in some attempt to find hidden treasures of the mysterious shadow order, but these always ended in failure. Within a century the shadows that once blanketed Delerg began to disappear and once again life started to flourish there. People even started moving there to live again and as with all things, another government eventually placed its flag in the area declaring the land as its own. As for the shadows, they lived on as a memory and in time that memory faded into legend and then forgotten completely. Except by one being, who had long moved on from this world to seek out a new one to with which to entertain itself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 75 “Seems hard to believe that we haven’t had any major conflict in over a decade.” Talia says. “What is harder to believe is that I stopped missing it. But I imagine the major powers are too busy fighting over the Quala region to worry about us as usual. I mean you’ve got the Empire of Nalin, Drog Son of Mog’s Horde and even the Felkan Kingdom all annexing portions of it.” “Who do you think will win it?” “The Nalin Empire will probably take most of it. Their new ruler Tarna is very ambitious as she started laying groundwork to invade Quala soon after Brenda’s suicide…which was pretty suspicious anyway. I’m sure Drog is ambitious too, but predictably his son Og will soon challenge him for leadership and they’ll resort to infighting as usual. As for the Felkan Kingdom, I believe the only reason why they started eating up land from Arat to Quala is to initially stop the on going anarchy that was starting to cross over into their borders. I think when they finally reach borders with Nalin, the expansion for them will halt and then it’ll be a long stand off…history repeats itself again.” “You sound a bit concerned.” “Well, I’m fairly confident that we won’t be attacked anytime soon, but as I said, history repeats itself and you’re always going to get that one leader that’s determined to prove themselves no matter how foolish the odds.” “Even against a chosen one of a god?” Talia chuckles. “Especially against a chosen one of a god, even if only to claim they defied the divine.” “Is that what you would’ve done?” “Of course.” You laugh. “But as I said, I do not believe an attack will come in our time. It’s going to come after us, I don’t know how long, but the shadows are going to have to be prepared.” “Dendrin, will look over them as he always has.” “I sure hope so, because I can’t do it forever. I may be an Eternal, but I’m not eternal. I’ve been studying some of our members as a potential successor, but I’m still not sure if any of them are up to the task.” “You have? I didn’t know.” “Well unless Dendrin tells me himself who he wants as his chosen, it’s sort of up to me and nobody has told me they’ve been speaking to him on a regular basis either.” “Actually you never told anyone either until years later.” “Yeah, but that was a little different…besides I’m also pondering a more permanent solution to our potential safety issues.” “Oh? What’s that?” “The Ritual of Ascension” Talia is a little taken back by your statement. The Ritual of Ascension was supposedly passed down from Dendrin himself to the first Shadow Master, telling him that it was only to be used if he felt the shadows were ready for it. The results are not entirely clear on what it does, but what Dendrin explained is that it would unify the shadows to his own realm forever. Not just in a spiritual sense, but in a very real physical sense. The shadows essentially would become REAL shadows. Incorporeal and no longer susceptible to the weaknesses that most beings suffer. At least that’s what you think happens. Obviously no Shadow Master ever felt this way for any reason. Even during the time under the Empire, it was never seriously considered as a solution to the problem, which gives an indication to how this ritual is viewed with more awe and fear than anything else. Still, the procedures of the ritual do exist and they have been written down. Dendrin passed them to the shadows obviously believing that one day it would be used so you don’t see why you shouldn’t consider it as an option. In the meantime Talia has gotten over her surprise. “Well, if you believe that we are worthy and ready, then I will certainly follow you in performing this ritual. I believe everyone will, there is no question about that. You have lead the shadows through some of the toughest conflicts in our long history. You’ve even returned from death itself because Dendrin believed your work here was not done. Perhaps this is why.” “Heh, I never thought about that before. Still, perhaps I should consult Dendrin about this before making a final decision.” You say. “Of course. Obtaining his guidance in this very important matter would be essential.” Later that night you pray to Dendrin and go to sleep fully expecting him to see him soon… But nothing happens. You do this night after night until four months go by, and still you get no sign. Dendrin not speaking to you for month or even years on end is nothing new to you, but in every instance where you’ve directly requested his guidance he has always appeared. Not this time. You start to wonder if him not appearing is a sign that maybe you shouldn’t go through with this ritual. Of course maybe this is one of those decisions that’s so important that you need to make it for yourself. Are you ready? Do you consider the rest of the shadows ready? You know everyone now is a loyal worshipper of Dendrin and have an equal amount of faith in you as well. You really don’t see how they could be any more ready than they are now. They won’t fear the unknown no matter what it is, as long as they trust in Dendrin. Becoming one with Dendrin seems like it would be ideal to most in the order, though perhaps you have a few reservations about it for a few reasons, but then maybe that’s why the ritual has never seriously been considered in the past by other Shadow Masters. Maybe it hasn’t been just you. Maybe they all had their doubts about Dendrin’s plan. Maybe it’s just a natural thing when it comes to being “a leader.” You don’t fear death. You’ve always accepted it from the first time Mistress put the boot to your chest and demanded that you beg for your life to the time when you stood your ground against Cyrus without fighting back. You always believed you were going to die (well permanently anyway) either in combat or through some sort of violence, but it’s starting to look like you’ll end up dying as an old man in your sleep. Nothing wrong with that. Your concern is what exactly happens to you after you perform this ritual? Are you dead? Are you alive? Are you something else? Will you still be on this world? There are so many questions and one of them is will you be better off in this form, or is death better? You already assume that when you die, you’ll be in Dendrin’s realm. That being your understanding of how death in the service of a god works. What makes this different? Would you just be speeding up the process in some sort of mass suicide? The fact is, you won’t know unless you go through with it. > You train a successor There is too much that is unknown to you about the Ascension Ritual that you don’t want to risk it. Maybe it would result in better protection, but at what cost? The problem is you don’t know what the cost is and Dendrin isn’t forth coming about the information anytime soon. There is also placing faith in others to think about. You mainly considered the Ascension Ritual because you had concerns about any successor doing your job as well as you could, but really the shadows have had many Shadow Masters in the past and the order never suffered complete destruction. They endured centuries under the Empire, and they’ll easily endure centuries now that they aren’t under it. If anything the shadows are in the best position than they ever have been. You tell Talia that you’ve decided to train a successor and that you’d like her help on the matter. She of course agrees, but asks you about the Ascension Ritual. “There’s no need for it. The shadows will be alright without me.” You say with a smile. “But we should still pick the best candidate for the position just to be sure.” The follow days are busy ones after you announce that you’re choosing a successor. This news is somewhat surprising since you’re so well respected that it is almost inconceivable that you’ll die one day (Especially since you’ve come back to life once already). Still, those that are chosen are very honored that they have been considered for the position. “How come you chose all younger shadows? I would’ve thought you would’ve chosen those more experienced.” Talia asks. “If I was going to do that, I would’ve just made you my successor and been done with it. But since I don’t plan on dying just yet, I figure it would be better for when the inevitable does happen the successor won’t be ready for the grave themselves. Besides, it’s easier to train young people they aren’t set in their ways of doing things yet.” “I suppose that’s true. I just realized that most of these candidates were born after the Empire fell. That almost seems surreal that most of them only know about the Empire through stories now. The youngest one here…Sister Celia is only twenty years old. She was just coming into this world as you were putting an end to Theo’s rebellion.” “Yet she’s one of the main candidates I’m leaning towards. She has shown a lot of promise both magically and combat wise. I believe Glen saw her as a potential future Blade, but I think she’d make a fine successor if she passes the tests. She has proven to be wise for her age as well.” “You seem to be quite fond of her.” Talia remarks. “You aren’t jealous are you?” you chuckle. “Pfft, hardly. I’m still an Eternal and there’s no way any mere human girl could compete with me for your affections. If I believed that to be the case, then I’d just call for you to step down as Shadow Master right now because obviously you’d gone feeble minded with age.” This last remark causes you to laugh out loud in agreement before kissing her in a loving manner. It is true though, probably more than Talia even realizes. If you hadn’t fallen in love with her, you question if you would’ve ever stuck with the shadows in those early years. Cyrus’ last rant that somewhat “outted” you as unbeliever back in the day never was questioned since Dendrin brought you back from the dead. It was more than enough proof that you were his chosen and believer now. Still, you’ve gotten the impression that Talia has almost wanted to ask you for a little more detail on that matter, but she never has. Of course, maybe she always had her suspicions and didn’t care since she knew you were still doing what she saw as the right thing. On that matter you’ve almost wanted to ask her, but you never have. Some things are better left unsaid especially if they aren’t true anymore. After the first day of testing the candidates, you finally get a visit from Dendrin that night. “So, you’ve finally decided to train a successor. Gone are the plans for the Ascension Ritual?” “Is that what you wanted? Because I tried to ask you, but I got no answer.” “And you’ll continue to get no answer. That’s something only you can decide, besides I think our relationship has worked best when I let you make your own decisions. Are you confident in your decision?” “Yes, I am.” “Then that’s all that matters. I’m sure it will work out fine.” “Will you still be watching over the shadows after I’m gone?” “That, I will answer, but I can’t give a solid one because I haven’t made up my mind yet. I hate to tell you this, because you’ve been so very interesting, but you’ve started to become dull to watch lately. This isn’t your fault though; you are mortal and getting old. It was bound to happen that you would start slowing down eventually. This latest dilemma that you were having about the Ascension Ritual was the most interesting you’ve been in years.” You don’t know quite how to respond. You’re not angry. You’ve passed that stage long ago. You are somewhat insulted though, since despite it all, Dendrin has always been fascinated by your actions. Takes a bit of wind out of your sails to hear he’s getting bored even by you. Disheartening even, especially since you’ve taken the steps to best ensure the survival of the shadows as well as making your own leap of faith. “Yeah, well we can’t all be deities.” You answer, as you do not wish to argue. “No, but perhaps…” “What?” you ask, but all you hear is Dendrin speaking to himself. “…hmmm…maybe that would work…but…no…I suppose I could try that…yes that will take time…but then…oh well if it doesn’t work it’s no loss of mine anyway.” “What are you talking about?” you ask again. “Can’t talk right now. I need to work on some things. As I said you’ve got the situation well in hand it looks like, so I’ll speak to you again when you die.” “Wait!” you say and then you wake up. You spend the next few days wondering what Dendrin has planned, but of course you can’t really know. All you do know is he promised to speak with you when you die, whenever that is, hopefully not too soon. Realizing that you can’t worry or actually do anything about it, you focus your attention back to testing the potential candidates. By the end Celia does indeed prove to be the best one and you make it official. “Sister Celia, I hope you realize that by being chosen, a great amount of responsibility will be placed upon you. I also hope you will be prepared to endure whatever it is that I will ask of you.” you start to say. “Of course Shadow Master I…” “The Shadow Master was not finished speaking! Speak when you are allowed to do so!” Talia snaps causing Celia to shut up immediately. “As I was saying, you will be working closely with me directly or Talia in most cases, but who knows where you may need to be sent in the future. Perhaps we will need to send someone to speak with the Warden Matron of the Nalin Empire. Perhaps you will have to patrol the Delerg border with your fellow shadows. Any and all of these tasks from the complex to the mundane may be asked of you, because if you are to perform the duties of the Shadow Master you will need to be skilled in everything. Dendrin may watch over us, but that does not mean you can rely on him to pull you out of every situation. He favors the strong and the intelligent that can be self-reliant first and foremost. Remember this.” After a bit of silence Celia realizes that she can now speak when you nod to her. “I will Shadow Master. I will.” “Good. That will be all for today. I suggest you get some rest, for tomorrow you will begin your TRUE training.” You say and dismiss her. After she leaves you turn back to Talia. “Nice job in putting a little fear into the girl, though I can’t help but think you enjoyed that a bit.” “Of course I did, but I bet she’ll remember not to do it again.” “Oh of that, I have no doubt. Really as long as she remembers everything we plan to teach her she’ll be fine I think.” “Hah. No small task.” Talia’s right about that, it won’t be a small task, not for Celia and not for you either. Still, nothing is worth doing without hard work and that’s basically been your whole life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>What few heretical shadows still remain isn’t many and they don’t exactly have any type of leadership anymore. Hunting them all down seems like a waste of your time and possibly manpower, especially since Quala is more hostile and destabilized than ever now. Chances are the heretics will eventually resort to the typical banditry that goes on here and they’ll get wiped out by one of the warlord factions. Even if they manage to join up with any of the factions, they’ll likely abandon their newfound religion in the process. Rebuilding what you have left seems like a better idea at this point, so you send a message out to all your people to leave this war torn land and head back to Delerg. When you arrive in Delerg, your temple seems so much emptier now. Well certainly empty of more adults. You don’t have many Blades left either anymore, only about a dozen from what remains of the original amount you had. Not counting all the ones that never made it out of their tanks or failed Talia’s training when she was trying to bring them into the fold of course. Orphaned children that are fairly young have so far been taken care of in more communal way as needed, though you ask if Talia wants to take charge of all them in the same way she did the eternals and eventually train them to be Blades. She declines though and says the children should probably start being assigned to a more permanent family arrangement starting with volunteers first. You’re confident that the numbers will build back up since there are always people in Delerg that are drawn to join the order. Assuming you have no further major conflict, things should go back to their previous “boring” ways of simple temple routine in no time. This time though you’re looking forward to a bit of boredom. This last major clash has somewhat made you realize that maybe you should be taking it easier in your later years. Not that you’re ready for the grave, but you just aren’t young like you used to be and you can’t single handedly fight entire wars for the shadows anymore even with your increased magical powers. It’s a strain and you’ve got so much on your plate in general. Maybe Dendrin knew this too and that’s why he suggested that you not hunt down the heretics in that cryptic way that he tends to do. You think back to how you said to him that you couldn’t afford to not be directly involved and relax in the way that he does, and while that is true, there really isn’t any reason why you couldn’t start following his lead just a little. It also makes you start to wonder if he’s been right about a few things. Weeks and months pass as you go through the motions of temple routine, though it’s been a little different for you somehow. Like you’ve actually started to attempt to find a deeper reason behind the words of all the texts you read from. You don’t know if it’s because you’re trying to embrace this new moment of peace within the shadows (as opposed to the fidgeting boredom you usually suffer from) or if it’s because you’re becoming genuinely interested in the stuff. Are you finally becoming a “believer?” Dendrin claims you already are and it seems impossible, but you have noticed yourself having slightly more civilized conversations with Dendrin as the years have gone on, even agreeing with him at times. You remember practically ranting at him when you were young, in retrospect it’s amazing that he didn’t kill you given his power. He pretty much put up with you and he didn’t have to. He hasn’t helped you in probably the most direct way most of the time, but really would you have wanted him to? Your insistence on always forging your own way was always paramount to you and he probably saw that and acted accordingly by letting you make your own choices. You’ve only really prayed genuinely once to Dendrin and that was back when you wanted help with getting the new eternals under control. Even then it was a last ditch reason and you did it more out of selfish desperation rather than any genuine belief. You begin to wonder if it couldn’t hurt to just sincerely pray to him once in a while. Not in the hopes of getting anything out of him, but just…well to show a little bit of gratitude. It is probably due to your new found attempt at piety that attracts more people to the temple and restores some of the hope that the shadows will overcome this set back like they have so many before in the past. Year 60 “One of the heretics was caught near the temple. He claims that another group stand at the border of Delerg. We confirmed this and most of them haggard and tired looking. This speaker claims that he wishes to speak with you about making peace and an urgent matter.” Brother Gannon says. “Hmm, have to say I didn’t think they’d last as long as they did. They didn’t mention what this so called urgent matter was about?” you reply. “No, just that it was of great importance to anyone who reveres Dendrin.” “Probably a trick of some sort, you should just have all of them killed.” Glen remarks. “Yes, that would be the safe bet, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to listen seeing as I’m not particularly worried about them. Drag him in, but keep a tight hold on him.” “Very well Shadow Master.” Glen says. The heretic is brought in and he certainly is a miserable looking wretch. It isn’t due to any roughing up by your own shadows either, as he was confirmed to be in the same state as the rest of his fellows waiting for him. He’s very nervous and looking around as much as he can while two of the Blades grasp his arms and several other shadows look on at the proceedings. “Well? We don’t have all day. Out with it heretic scum!” Talia demands before you can say anything. “Oh! Right…uh…Shadow Master I beg you in Dendrin’s name to call off your assassins! We have seen that Theo’s teachings were the improper doctrine! We submit to your rule as the rightful chosen one of Dendrin himself and ask for mercy by allowing us to merge with the true and only temple dedicated to him!” the heretic whines. You certainly weren’t expecting this, and you’re also wondering about these assassins. “Assassins? We haven’t sent anyone to seek out your destruction. If that were the case we would’ve done it years ago.” “You…haven’t? But that seems impossible.” “Why? It isn’t like shadows are well accepted anywhere else except Delerg as you surely know. What makes you think it isn’t General Ackerson or any of the many other warlords in the area?” “No, he is too busy fighting Mog, Son of Flog’s orc and ogre horde in Rask. Rumors are he’s sick as well and his underlings are already squabbling over who is going to take power when he’s gone. As for other warlords, they aren’t a threat to us, at least not in any meaningful way, and most of them are too direct and unsophisticated to engage in the terror tactics that your assassins have. Your assassins tell us that they are the hand of justice in Dendrin’s name.” “As I said we have sent no assassins. I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but I’m not falling for it.” “No please wait! Maybe you didn’t send the assassins, but if that’s true then this is more alarming news! Because they’re using shadow magic to accomplish their tasks! If it isn’t you or anyone in your order as you say, who are they? And will they attack you as well?” This does give you a bit of pause though it’s hard to tell with someone that’s supposed to be your enemy. He does look quite sincere in his words and his fear. If it wasn’t any of your people, then who would it be? It’s quite possible that it’s just another rogue group that split off from the original heretics and formed yet a third faction of shadows. Of course if that was the case, they should know about it instead of jumping to the conclusion that it is you. Of course this could all still be just an elaborate trick. Perhaps an attempt to make you suspicious of people in your own group carrying out tasks that you didn’t order. There’s also the other urgent matter that they said they had to tell you, which you question the heretic on. “So what is this other urgent matter you had to tell us?” you ask. “Oh, yes that, well there are rumors that Warden Matron Brenda of Nalin is planning on invading Delerg.” “What? I know she hates the shadows, but reports have always established that she has never set sights on anything north of the Nalin province. She doesn’t even have an established presence in Quala.” Talia remarks. “Well, I didn’t say she planned on holding the territory, just that she was planning on invading it. I don’t know. It is what we have heard in our travels to get here.” “Could be Brenda that’s sending the assassins then and using something similar to shadow magic that these blasphemous fools are taking as the real thing. Maybe we should prepare ourselves, after killing these heretics of course.” Glen remarks. “But we’re sincere! I’M sincere! How…how about we prove ourselves by being judged directly by Dendrin himself? You could perform the initiation ritual to open the portal to his realm. If he accepts our forgiveness then surely that would be proof that our hearts and souls are truthful, right? If he doesn’t then we won’t survive the process anyway.” The heretic exclaims. “Well, that would be one way of ensuring their dedication I suppose.” Talia says to you. > You have them killed You’ve spent a lot of time and effort trying to rebuild what these heretics destroyed and now they want your help? You’re in no mood. “I’ll spare Dendrin’s time and judge you all myself. And that judgment is death, kill this traitor and go wipe out the rest hanging out near our borders.” You say. “No! No wait! Please, you’ve….” The heretic pleads before one of the Blades cuts his throat. After disposing of him, Glen takes a small group of them to finish off the rest, from what you hear it was easy, but brutal business as usual. Of course that still leaves a few questions to as who was killing them in the first place. Your guess is if General Ackerson is as sick as the heretic claimed, then perhaps the current power struggle going on involves getting rid of potential wild cards in the nearby region like say groups of fanatical cultists. They are the only nearby major power with battle mages that could reliably emulate the sort of magic the heretics claimed to see. The only other power that you know of that has a few magic users is the Nalin Empire, but you can’t see Brenda bothering with such elaborate tactics. She’d be more likely to just send a traditional group of assassins or even a small platoon of well trained warriors and even then only to get rid of the shadows closest to her borders. The rumor that she’s planning to invade Delerg seem like just that, rumors. Still you tell everyone to keep alert and double your own patrols on the Delerg borders just in case. Not much more you can do except wait. Weeks and months pass and nobody has invaded or even come close to wandering near the Delerg borders. General Ackerson dies of his illness, the government collapses and Mog takes advantage of the situation, but other than that major change nothing else notable happens in Quala. As for the Nalin Empire, not a peep from them either. You stick to your usual heightened alert status for a little while longer, and then eventually relent a bit by the year is over. Year 63 “I KNEW I should’ve killed that bastard! I KNEW it!” you yell. “You couldn’t have known he’d do something like this.” Talia says in an attempt to calm you. “I should’ve known that he’d do SOMETHING though! Fuck! If he wasn’t dead already, I’d personally find him and kill him myself!” You’re speaking about Cyrus of course. Years after exiling him you have finally heard from him again in a second hand manner which will plunge you into a war with the Nalin Empire. If the rumors weren’t true before, they’re going to be true soon. You aren’t exactly sure what Cyrus was up to during his years in exile, but if you had to guess it was planning some sort of revenge or looking for a way to redeem himself (In retrospect, it wouldn’t surprise you if he had been behind the heretic killings as well)…maybe it was both. Either way the day he assassinated Warden Matron Brenda during a speech to her people the whole time shouting “Down with Empires! Dendrin Forever! Shadows Forever!” is the day he fucked all of you over. He apparently didn’t survive too long after that, but you’re guessing he knew it was a suicide mission anyway. Didn’t take long before Brenda’s successor Tarna declared war on you. Makes perfect sense, seeing as their well-respected leader was killed by a shadow. Doesn’t matter if he was a nutter that was acting alone, someone has to pay. Someone also has to be a good scapegoat while Tarna consolidates her own power and gains enough popularity by destroying her predecessor’s old enemies. That someone is you naturally. While the Nalin Empire has to actually march an army over Quala before reaching you, the situation isn’t good. Unlike the first time you fought an Empire, you had a lot more support, even after the Gloom incident, you still had the help of the normal people pissed at the Empire everywhere. The old Empire was also already greatly weakened, corrupt and fighting multiple front battles. Now? You have no such advantage. The Nalin Empire is a strong power on the rise that is now unified by a very ambitious and focused leader who very much wants to add the destruction of the shadows to the first of her great achievements. There’s also the fact that you’re no longer a young man anymore. You’re old, tired even. And while you’ll fight harder than someone half your age, the fact remains you’re not as energetic as you once were. You bury your hands in your face for a moment just thinking about the shitstorm that is to come. Talia rubs your shoulders. “We’ll get through this. Dendrin saw us see victory over one Empire, he’ll let us see victory over another.” She says optimistically. You look up at her to see her smiling back. After all these years you still can’t resist her cheerful faith in Dendrin. Quite frankly, you really wish you had listened to Dendrin decades ago when he suggested that you kill Cyrus. You might’ve avoided a lot of unnecessary conflict throughout your time as Shadow Master. Too late now and no looking back. You’ll deal with this problem as you have with all others that have ever been thrust upon you, which is with a weapon in hand. Not really like you have a choice anyway. You tried to open a dialogue with Tarna, but she isn’t interested in speaking to you. Year 65 You look over at the remainder of your shadows. You know that they will fight to the last and for every one of them that falls, they will take ten enemies with them, but this is your last stand. By your side stands Talia, even now she holds faith that Dendrin will magically turn the tide of this battle, but you don’t see it happening. In fact you haven’t spoken to him for quite a while. He probably knows when something is coming to an end. He must be still watching since you all have your shadow magic so he hasn’t abandoned you completely. Seems like he could’ve at least gave you a “Good luck” speech before battle, but who knows? Maybe he doesn’t like goodbyes. Still, you see no reason you can’t give your own. “Shadows! The enemy is pounding down the door as I speak so I’ll make it brief. Whether we live or die here today is irrelevant. What matters is that fight so furiously that we will always be remembered. If we live, then they will remember to never attack us again.” You pause for the next part; because this is what you know will happen. “If we die…well they will remember the day they almost lost to a force much smaller than themselves. Perhaps a lesson will be learned that those faithful to Dendrin were a force to be reckoned with during their time on this world. And perhaps from there a seed of intrigue will be planted causing some to seek out his wisdom. For while we may die here, we will still live on forever with Dendrin in the afterlife! And there can be no greater reward than that.” It is an inspiring speech and morale is raised. Talia gives you one last hug and kiss afterwards. “I love you.” she says. “And I love you.” you reply back. The temple doors crack at last and the stone crumbles before the might of the battering ram. Hordes of Nalin troops pour in. You embrace your final battle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 55 “Theo I know you’re here I can sense your presence, you might as well come on out and take your punishment with some dignity.” You say looking down the dimly lit stairway. You can’t believe after all these years; it’s come down to you personally tracking Theo hiding in the cellar of a simple abandoned farmhouse. Several of the Blades stand behind you asking if they should go in and get him, but you decline. You can handle this yourself, in fact you’d rather do it yourself. “Just stand guard, I’ll be back soon.” You say to Glen who nods and has the Blades guard the perimeter. You walk down the stairs without any worry about your safety. Even if Theo does attack you, and you’re fairly certain he isn’t going to be in any condition to do, you’ll easily be able to defend yourself. The cellar isn’t large and add the fact that there are several stacks of boxes and barrels here make the cellar seem even smaller than it is. “Supplies. Supplies still here from the Empire rebellion. Never did get around to using them.” Theo’s voice says from the corner of the room. You see him in his torn and tattered robe and sitting against the wall. Between his missing hand and half burned face, he’s a mess. “Didn’t get around to using them for this one either.” You say. “Honestly, I’d forgotten about this place until recently. Had so many old safehouses, I was bound to forget some of them. Don’t know why I forgot about this one though…it’s rather peaceful. Serene even. I guess its remoteness helps. Yeah, this would’ve been a good place to settle down…maybe another life. Right?” “I don’t think Dendrin does reincarnation. Least of all for traitors.” “Yeah, I suppose so I guess. Good thing I stopped believing in him years ago.” Theo laughs weakly. “You know, if you stopped believing in him, you could’ve just left rather than cause a whole lot of unnecessary fighting. It’s not like I would’ve stopped you.” “And tell me Eternal, would you leave if your own wife still believed in Dendrin?” Theo asks accusingly. You don’t know if he’s just asking hypothetically or if he is actually implying something. “No, I suppose I wouldn’t.” “Of course not. Besides…I did still believe up until I found out you killed her. From that point I knew that Dendrin truly didn’t support my cause, so why bother worshipping a god that doesn’t? Of course had to still keep up the charade since I had managed to hold sway over some of the new converts in Quala.” “And that’s when you decided to just kill Sam, declare yourself in charge of his forces and repeatedly tried to invade the temple?” “Well seemed like a good idea at the time. Honestly if that bastard Ackerson had just allied with me, I believe I would’ve had a good chance at winning. Didn’t expect him to make a separate peace with you though.” “The fool has still got his sights set on Rask and doesn’t want to expend any military effort that isn’t focused on that endeavor. You might’ve done better trying to get help from Brenda in Nalin, heard she’s not too fond of shadows having caused the death of her husband and all.” “Believe me I tried, she sent my messengers back without heads and a note saying she wasn’t helping even if I wasn’t really a shadow anymore and as far as she was concerned she hoped that we all killed one another.” “Well thanks to you, this was certainly another set back for the shadows. Sort of makes the whole original rebellion rather pointless.” “No…not for me. I think those were the happiest days of my life. I had a purpose, my enemy was clear and I knew I would win because Dendrin was on my side. Then I won, and that’s when it all started to slowly fall apart.” “Hah. I can certainly understand where you’re coming from on that perspective. Part of your behavior in all this probably stemmed from being a rebel for so long that you never knew quite how to adjust and when the opportunity presented itself, you immersed yourself in the role again because it was comfortable. Really, any of your other reasons were all secondary and just an excuse.” Theo doesn’t answer he just looks down and nods a few times in a rocking motion as he clutches where his left hand used to be. Eventually he staggers upward sliding his back against the wall in an effort to stand up. You’re guessing he’s ready to die now. “Just one question Eternal, does Dendrin really speak to you?” “When he feels like it, but if it makes you feel any better he hasn’t cared about the shadows for a very long time and the only reason why he takes an interest in them at all is due to me.” “…well I guess I was doomed from the very beginning then.” “So was I Theo…so was I.” you say and hit Theo with a powerful shadowfire bolt which burns directly through his chest leaving a big hole and a black mark against the wall. Theo slumps down and the leader of the “new rebellion” is dead. The damage he’s caused isn’t so readily repairable. In addition to losing many shadows he’s also created a separate faction of them (Something you were trying to avoid), which are still located in pockets across Quala. The beliefs are basically the same (and without the indoctrination ritual obviously), with the exception that YOU or any other non-pure human for that matter shouldn’t be a shadow, let alone in charge of the order. Your first thought is that you should probably hunt them all down and wipe them out before they become a problem, but then again this little conflict has been taking a toll on the shadows you have left. Some of the children don’t even have mothers and fathers anymore. It might be time to pack up the gear and attempt to rebuild again. As you think on this, you make your way up the stairs and wince at a couple of the aches in your joints in doing so. You might be an Eternal, but you sure as hell aren’t starting to feel like one in the past few years as old age is becoming a little more apparent to you. Makes you sort of glad that you don’t have to rely solely on regular combat anymore thanks to your increased magic abilities gifted to you by your “dedication” to Dendrin no doubt. In any case you’re tired and you tell Glen that Theo is dead, but you’re going to stay here for the night before heading home again. Glen as usual nods and says he’ll keep everyone on watch. You find an old bed that probably has been slept in years, but it doesn’t look infested with bed bugs so you use it. Doesn’t take long for you to slowly drift off to sleep, but you get the impression that you’re not going to get a peaceful rest. “So another enemy falls before you, keep this up and you’ll outlive everyone.” Dendrin remarks. “Figured you’d show up eventually. Any words of advice on what to do next?” you ask. “Not really, you seem to have it under control. So…still bored?” “No, but I hate set backs.” “Come now you should be used to such things by now.” “I am, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them. Especially when I feel like packing it all in because there’s little point in going on.” “So you don’t intend on destroying the heretic shadows?” “I almost don’t intend on going back to the temple. I feel like just leaving altogether.” “You’ve said that before, many times. You won’t though.” “Of course I won’t, but I feel like no matter what I do something severely sets back the shadows. Against all odds I’ve taken it upon myself to be their leader and protect them better than you ever do and I’m still lying about being a true believer.” “Oh you’re a believer, a cynical one, but you’re a believer. If you weren’t you would’ve left a long time ago because it’s a little bit more than just Talia keeping you here.” “I don’t see what else there is, because it sure isn’t to bask in the glory of your voice.” “It’s power pure and simple. It’s being in charge. It’s telling others what to do and ruling them like a king or emperor if you prefer.” “I might agree with you if I actually thought I was in charge of anything so grand. Besides, it’s really you they’re all worshipping not me.” “And is that what your problem is? That you’re doing all the work and not getting any of the perks? And here I thought all that nice magical power I’ve been granting to you was a fine way of rewarding you.” “Well it hasn’t hurt. You’re right though, I don’t mind being in charge and I do thrive on a bit of conflict, but sometimes it just gets a bit tiring that’s all.” “Ah, and now you see why I stopped directly leading the shadows altogether!” “Yeah, well I don’t have that luxury unless you can elevate me to godhood.” “Ha ha, even if I could, obviously I wouldn’t want the competition.” “Too bad, maybe if you could you wouldn’t suffer from boredom either.” “Hmm, interesting insight as always Eternal. Well, I’ll let you get back to it. Oh and just in case you did want my advice, I’d rather you not destroy the so-called heretic shadows. They might not be following you, but they do still worship me.” And once again you wake up, with more dubious advice from your “god.” You sometimes wonder whenever he does give you any of his wisdom if he wants you to do the exact opposite of what he says, because you practically do every time. In any case, you can’t dwell on the nature of the divine at this moment. You’re still left with the decision about how to fix the mess you have to clean up. > You wipe out the rest of the heretics If all your years of knowing him has taught you anything, its what’s best for Dendrin hasn’t always been what’s best for you. While rebuilding is certainly going to be a priority, you still need to wipe out the rest of the heretics as well. It’s the only way you’re going to prevent problems in the future. You call Glen and the rest of the Blades and tell them that you’ll be heading back to the temple for a break and get some things in order and then you’ll be helping them again soon. In the meantime they can use this place as a base of sorts while attempting to hunt down the rest of the heretics. Glen nods, but has noticed your physical pain increase over the course of this conflict. He suggests that perhaps you shouldn’t worry yourself about it directly as you have more important duties to the shadows and they’re confident that they can handle it. “Glen, I’m not some crippled old man. I still got fight left in me. I was killing men by the dozens long before you were even thought about. Do not assume just because I have a few extra aches and pains that I’m not fully capable of combat!” you say getting angry at his innocent suggestion. “My apologies Shadow Master. Didn’t mean to offend.” He replies with a nod. “No…no…of course you didn’t. Sorry, this is been a long ordeal and it’s not over yet. Just gets tiring sometimes. Okay, I’m off, I can make it back to the temple by myself, don’t worry about escorting me back.” Glen is about to ask if you’re sure, but he stops himself from doing so lest he be reprimanded again. The journey back to the temple is uneventful. You let everyone know that Theo has been killed, but heretics still remain. You then go on to say that the Blades and yourself will seek the rest out, but everyone else should focus on rebuilding. Talia questions if you should be going. “I think the Blades can handle whatever pathetic remnants are left of the heretics. You’d probably be better serving here where you can help in the rebuilding process. You know how the shadows like you around as an inspiration.” Talia says. “They should be getting their inspiration from Dendrin and if people liked me so much we wouldn’t have had a civil war. Besides, the shadows will like me more if I’m actively doing something about potential threats in the future. Part of the reason these heretics got out of control in the first place is because I wasn’t paying enough attention. It’s my responsibility to see this through to the end.” You answer. “Are you sure that’s what this is about? And not about say…getting old and trying to prove that you’ve still got it?” “You too? I just had to hear this before from Glen. Granted he didn’t say it like you did, but I know damn well he thought it. Let me tell you something, I could still take out every one of those Blades AND the heretics on top of it all by myself!” Talia smiles a bit and rubs your shoulder. “Yes, I know you could my love. Nobody is truly suggesting that you still aren’t a great warrior, but you don’t have to prove anything to anyone, least of all to me. You don’t need to go wading into battle anymore, those days are past, Dendrin made you Shadow Master not just for your combat skills. You’re a leader and you can allow yourself to rest.” “I’ll rest when I’m dead. Besides, the last time I got complacent, Theo and Yvette conspired against us, but I’ve said this before.” “Yes, you have. (Sigh) I suppose you want me to take charge of things here while you go off to prove your alpha maleness. Very well, have fun and be careful.” Talia says and kisses you goodbye. Talia is right of course. You are doing this mainly to prove you still “got it.” That you can still travel across the countryside getting into fights. It’s silly and pointless, but its what you want to do and another part of you has missed it. The next few weeks you travel with the remaining Blades hunting down heretic hideouts all across Quala. It’s actually amazing how fast some of them have spread out, and they’ve probably spread out even more since the news of their leaders death and how you’re actively hunting them. The heretics aren’t the only problem however. You also have to deal with the chaos that’s currently going on in Quala. With Sam and now Theo gone, the region has destabilized again, with several would be leaders all rising up with their own little factions ready to attack anyone who is trespassing on their turf. This doesn’t even include the already established warlords that are eyeing the new leaderless territory that’s ripe for the taking. Even General Ackerson’s troops have been seen patrolling further south than they normally do. Doesn’t help that shadows aren’t really popular for several reasons, but fortunately you can avoid most unnecessary battles due to cloaking. However, you probably don’t do that as much as you should thanks to your mindset of trying to prove something. As a result you lose the remainder of your Blades in a skirmish with a very large group of General Ackerson’s men lead by a battle mage who despite the non aggression pact, decided that you were just too tempting of a target in the “new land” they recently claimed. You manage to drag yourself back to Theo’s old hideout, which you were using as a base, cursing the whole time. You’re wounded and angry that once again you weren’t strong enough to stop something bad from happening, yet not really realizing that it was your arrogance that was the cause of it this time. “Fuck! Shit! I’m not old! I’m not useless! I’m still a warrior!” you say to yourself as you nurse your wounds sitting in the dark farmhouse. “No, I’m afraid your time has passed.” You hear a whispery voice say. At first you think its Dendrin since he’s always been one to kick you while you’re down, but then you’re wide awake and he’s never contacted you in that state. Your focus has been so preoccupied with your own pride that you didn’t sense another presence in the farmhouse when you dragged yourself here… You turn around just in time to utter “Cy…” before you feel a blade slash across your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 46 Took long enough, and sometimes it never seemed like it was going to happen, but you’ve finally restored Dendrin’s temple. Restoring it wasn’t easy either, especially not one as big and in such disrepair like Dendrin’s. The surprising thing is you’ve not only restored it in appearance, but in use as well. The one of the first difficult things was getting the stone. Delerg isn’t exactly flush with rock quarries. The second difficult thing was getting help to restore it in the first place. The shadows might be great warriors and have more knowledge than the average peasant, but nobody in your ranks is a laborer or into masonry. Obviously outside help was necessary. Fortunately since the fall of the Empire, Delerg had once again become a quiet place with no “leader.” Most of the inhabitants were content to go about their simple lives like they once did before the Empire. When you arrived in Sinkhole, to ask around for workers to try to restore the temple, some couldn’t volunteer fast enough to help. This need to help you, was a combination of a few things. The most important one being that Delerg was always shadow friendly. The Empire may have ruled it for a while, but the respect that its people had for the shadows was always greater. The shadows after all were once the main protectors of the area before the Empire. Combining this with the fact that the shadows were the main ones who helped influence so much rebellion and caused the destruction of the Empire, it was only natural that you were as warmly embraced like you were. Good thing too, because you certainly didn’t have the coin to pay the workers in the first place! As the temple was slowly being restored, more people started flocking to your aid. Some of these were old rebels that the shadows lost contact with when you started consolidating your forces in Rask. They remember you though and offer help in any way their skills allow. While you were always a little surprised by how much free help you were always willing to get, what surprised you more is how little you really needed to do to get it. These people had no one telling them what to do or how to live anymore, and yet a lot of them seemed to be in a big hurry for that to change by becoming Dendrin worshippers! You understand gratitude, but to willingly surrender a portion of your earnings and time to serve an invisible being that you had no proof existed, while some guy claiming to be his “representative” tell you how you should live seemed like a step backwards for them at least. For you though, it was all beneficial as eventually some of these devoted souls wanted to become full-fledged shadows. Naturally you accepted them into your ranks provided they could pass through the testing. Right now things have been better for you than they have ever been. You’ve got a nice restored temple, a fair sized congregation, the ranks of the shadows are slowly starting to grow again and most importantly you haven’t had to deal with any problems with the new eternals (Now known as the Shadow Blades) ever since they all went through the ritual. Dendrin was true to his word on that, just like you were true to yours by restoring his temple. Still, even after directly helping you, you still can’t bring yourself to “worship” Dendrin. Not really. Part of you feels like it was the least he could’ve done after all the stuff in the past he’s put you through. Another of part of you feels as if you’ve “repaid the debt” by restoring the temple. He’s probably granted you more power as you’ve noticed your magical abilities becoming superior to everyone else’s and it taking much less effort, but again you still feel no sense of “awe” in Dendrin that would cause you to willingly worship him as a god. To you, he’s a very powerful being that is a whimsical ally at best. You’ve come to realize that he is probably deserving of your respect in regard to his power and you always keep that in mind when up keeping the charade of his religion. Perhaps it is enough, or at least it’ll have to be since you don’t see yourself changing your mind on the matter anytime soon, especially when you’ve been trying to figure out what your next big course of action should be. The problem with a lack of conflict is that you find yourself very bored. Even in Rask, the monotony was broken up with the occasional giant or ogre attack. Here in Delerg there are no such great dangers surprisingly enough. Most dangerous swamp beasts prefer to stick to their own stomping grounds which all seem to be away from your part of the swamp and Sul-monkeys aren’t a threat so much as they’re an occasional annoyance when large groups of them decide to use the temple roof as a mating area! The last time you had any true conflict was when General Ackerson’s men ambushed you and part of you hasn’t forgotten that incident. From what you know, he’s still in power and sometimes you’d like to change that just on principle. Quala is still an area in a power struggle between competing warlords, but so far there have been no attempt by any of them to expand into Delerg, probably because there isn’t much here in the first place save for swamp. Not to mention there are most likely trickles of news coming in about the return of the shadows to Delerg. Most of the warlords being ex-Empire probably would like to get some sort of revenge, but know that their losses would be considerable if they even attempted such a thing, so you are left alone. Talia and Cyrus seem to be content with how things are now, why can’t you be? Funny that you were concerned about the new eternals being restless and getting themselves into trouble, while here you are considering starting a fight because your bored with peace! The only real reason you can think of is petty revenge on General Ackerson and that’s not a very good one even if you could easily tell everyone that Dendrin told you all to go kill him. In your moment of introspection, you take another look at what you’ve accomplished. You went from being a lone unbeliever practically trapped in an organization that was determined to overthrow an enemy several times larger than itself to the victorious leader of said organization, which is now thriving under your watch. You probably could defeat Ackerson, but at what cost? Last you heard he has thousands of men at his command still and that includes a few battle mages. The shadows may be growing slowly, but that’s just it, slowly. You don’t have anywhere near the numbers to start raising armies. Sure, you have the entire support of probably all of Delerg, but that doesn’t mean much in the scheme of things if most of the people aren’t warriors. You kill Ackerson and take his territory then what? You hold it? How long can that last with the numbers you’d have left? You doubt if the people of Quala would be as supportive, if anything they probably blame the shadows for the miserable warring state they live in now. This doesn’t even factor in the OTHER warlords in the area. They may all decide to gang up on you and if you’re in any sort of weakened condition they may even press their attack into Delerg itself. No, the risk doesn’t seem worth it compared to the petty gain. The shadows have never been about conquest and they probably shouldn’t start now. However, that doesn’t mean you should stay idle. Peace is fine, but perhaps there is a way of initiating conflict without actually doing it. It occurs to you that the warlords of Quala won’t always be fighting. Eventually one of them is going to win or manage to unite the area in some way. When that happens then Delerg might be in potential danger, so it would be in your best interest to make sure that doesn’t happen. Keep Quala weak and disorganized while keeping Delerg the opposite. You start sending in shadows into Quala to get a good idea of what the situation is there, but not to actually do anything yet. Theo is mostly in charge of this due to his previous experience of working extensively in the region during the Empire war. Eventually after a couple months you have all the information you really need and ready to put the second part of your plan into action, which is to keep the region destabilized. This is going to include sabotage, misdirection, more spying, and assassinations, all those things that play on the strengths of the shadows. “I like it. So when do we start assassinating people?” Cyrus remarks causing Draven to chuckle. “Well, we probably should decide who needs it first. Some of the leaders sound so incompetent that it might be better if we left them in charge.” Talia adds. “Shouldn’t we have some sort of plan before doing this?” Yvette asks. “We do have a plan, I just explained it.” You say not understanding why she would ask such a question. “I…think what my wife means is should we not have a greater plan other than sewing chaos. I do not presume to disagree with your reasons Shadow Master, but I do believe that causing discord for the sake of doing it might seem a bit…well…short term.” Theo says. “So you believe that we should actually take territory? I explained why I believe that would be a problem.” “No, no, I agree that we shouldn’t be marching armies into Quala, I guess what I mean is perhaps this would also be a good time to launch an aggressive campaign of converting unbelievers. You know send our better speakers to some of the smaller villages that are unhappy with life under the warlords and telling them how Dendrin can release them from such misery. Given enough time, we would have so many converted that we wouldn’t have to worry about raising an army or Quala ever being a threat because most of the population would all be believers in Dendrin.” An interesting suggestion from Theo and one you weren’t really expecting from him. He also mentions he could get back in contact with some of the old rebels he knows are still living in Quala to help more directly as well. > You stick with your own plan Theo might mean well, but you’re a firm believer that simple plans often work best and since you’ve got the last word, you’re sticking with your original plan. “It’s a good idea Theo, but I believe it may stir up more attention towards us, if we start attempting to convert people outside Delerg. It may even cause certain warlords to unite against us if they believe us to be threatening enough. Better that we keep our presence to a minimum and especially not try to contact any of them directly. What I want you to do instead is to just keep an eye on Anu and Sam since they’re close by, but since they seem to be content on bashing each other in the head just send some Blades to perform sabotage on both sides just to keep them mired down.” “As you wish Shadow Master.” Theo remarks. “The western Quala warlords seem pretty occupied as well so we don’t need to deal with them either. General Ackerson though I want assassinated. I know he’s attempting to expand into Rask, but the man is the biggest threat as far as powers in Quala and I don’t want him to improve that position in the future. Cyrus, since you’re really eager about doing this, I’m going to leave it up to you who to send, but I imagine you’ll want to oversee things personally.” “It will be done Shadow Master, and thank you.” “I believe that’s about it, we can go over more details one on one later.” After the meeting Talia speaks to you directly. “You sure you want to leave it to Cyrus? I would’ve thought you would’ve wanted to handle something so important yourself.” “I’m confident that Cyrus can do the job efficiently. If nothing else he’s enthusiastic for things like this. I thought about going too, but I’m slowly begining to realize I’ll be needing to delegate and remaining at this temple more. Besides I’m sure there will be other opportunities to go kill someone. Never seems to be a shortage in fact.” “Well that’s true.” “I’m thinking I’ll spend more time looking after the security within the Delerg province. I mean yes we have potential enemies outside the province, but it doesn’t hurt to keep alert in our homestead.” “I suppose not, but we’re pretty well liked here.” “Perhaps, but if I’ve learned anything, its that enemies can exist anywhere of you look hard enough.” Over the next few days your initial plans go off quite well. General Ackerson is assassinated successfully and there wasn’t even any indication there was shadow involvement. As of now his group is fighting amongst itself and no longer united. Captain Anu and Sam Jowin have each been suffering set backs and of course blaming each other for them. You then relent a bit to let the chaos do its work in Quala until it looks like the place is going to stabilize once again and that’s when you send in shadows to create strife again. It becomes routine just like any of the prayer sessions for Dendrin. Of course as good as the shadows are, you can’t go undetected forever and eventually someone catches on to what’s really been going happening… “There’s a huddled mass of people outside the temple, Shadow Master. We’re keeping them out obviously, but their speaker really wants to see you.” Brother Gannon says to you. “Who are these people?” “Mostly peasants I believe, but they aren’t from Delerg, they’re from Quala. Under Sam’s dominion I think. They say they want our help.” “Our help? What’s bringing this on and what makes them think we’re going to help a bunch of unbelievers?” Cyrus asks. In fact you all are wondering what this is all about. “Well I guess the best way to find out is to ask them. Send in their speaker and keep the rest outside. If anything looks suspicious kill them all.” You say. Brother Gannon nods and waves in the Qualans’ speaker. While you expect a grubby peasant with dirty clothing to come shuffling in, you instead get a young man dressed in leather armor. Despite his warrior garb he’s nervous. He’s trying his best to be brave, but you sense the fear in him. “Well? Out with it, you traveled a long way just to waste our time.” Talia remarks. “Yes, my apologies, um Shadowlord is it?” “Shadow Master actually, but let’s just get on with why you saw fit to lead a bunch of peasants here and why you think we can even help you.” you say. “Oh yes that. My name is Flynn and we all live in the Quala Freelands, which as you know is run by Sam Jowin. I myself am a soldier of relatively low rank…and uh…look there’s no easy way of saying this so I guess I’ll get right to it. We want you to kill Sam.” You have to admit this wasn’t exactly the sort of help you thought they were going to ask for. You and the rest of your council look at each other before you speak again. “And why do you think we would do that?” “Because you routinely sabotage our side and Captain Anu’s? Because you were most likely involved in the assassination of General Ackerson? It wasn’t apparent at first, but…” “Now stop right there for a moment Flynn, and think very carefully on your next words.” “I…I’m sorry Shadow Master, but I do not know any other way to put this.” “Very well then, let me help you. Even if we were involved in such activities and that’s not an admission, what still makes you think that we would be willing to assassinate your beloved leader?” “He’s NOT a beloved leader! Sam is no better than the tyrannical Emperor that ruled over us before! I will admit during his freedom fighter days he was an inspiration, but now? He’s just another petty warlord that doesn’t give a shit about anything other than his own power!” “That’s a pretty bold statement. I knew Sam during the Empire War years and even fought along side him a couple times. He was always a fair man from what I knew of him and cared for those under his command.” Theo remarks. “Yeah, well he’s changed drastically since then, the things he’s done... the things I’ve had to do in his service…I do not even wish to think about let alone discuss. So do you need payment? We weren’t sure what we’d need to get your help. We have scraped together valuables and gold for you. I don’t know if its enough, I mean I think we could scrape a bit more, but…here’s what we got.” At this point Flynn reaches for a small pouch on his side and extends his hand towards all of you with it. Cyrus snatches it from him and reveals a few gold coins and a couple of gems of low quality. Probably a paltry amount, but then you don’t really know what the going rate is for assassination is these days never having done it for money before. “And you think we’re mere thugs for hire?” Cyrus asks throwing the pouch back at Flynn who barely catches it. “No! I mean well…we uh…are also prepared to give you a virgin girl in exchange for your help if you aren’t motivated by profit.” “A virgin girl?” Yvette asks. “Yeah, for your sacrifices to Dendrin. Isn’t that what you guys do?” At this point Cyrus gets so pissed at Flynn he punches him in the face. Theo isn’t too happy with him either and begins calling Flynn names. You on the other hand, chuckle to yourself thinking that human sacrifice might actually break up the monotony around the temple sometimes. And while you’re not seriously considering such a thing, you are seeing an opportunity here to change things up a bit. “Alright Cyrus that will do for now. This man obviously came to us for help and kicking the hell out of this poor bastard isn’t going to help matters.” “But he insulted Dendrin! And he insults the shadows by coming to us like we’re some lowly criminals!” “No this man came to us looking for skilled assassins who can get the job done right. And that’s what we are, aren’t we? I mean that’s partly how we won the war against the Empire isn’t it? If there are already rumors going around by ignorant peasants that we killed General Ackerson and have been involved in sabotage in Quala then our cover has already been blown at this point. We may as well embrace it.” “What are you saying?” Talia asks. “I’m saying that we should take this man up on his offer. However, our payment will be that he owes us a favor. In fact ALL of those that are with him today will owe us a favor. Be sure to get all their names before they leave here. It may be big, it may be small, it may never come at all, but when we call it in, they better deliver…are we agreed to this Flynn?” you say extending your hand to help him up. He’s unsure at first, but eventually he takes it and gets up. Sam must really be some sort of bastard if Flynn is agreeing to this arrangement. “I…I accept your terms Shadow Master.” “Good, it’ll be taken care of as soon as possible.” “Thank you! Thank you!” he says and starts to bow a lot while he steps backwards towards the door. “Excuse me, but where do you think you’re going?” “I was taking my leave Shadow Master.” “Not with that pouch of valuables you aren’t. They were a gift to us were they not?” “Oh…yes…of course. Here you go. My apologies Shadow Master.” Flynn says and tosses the bag to you. “Good. NOW you may go.” After Flynn leaves the temple you remind some of the Blades to get all their names down. Meanwhile your council is a little confused by your latest decision “Are you serious about this?” Theo asks. “Of course I am, if I wasn’t I wouldn’t have made the offer.” You answer. “But we’re helping unbelievers!” Cyrus says. “So? We helped them during the Empire War too, what makes now so different? I’ll tell you what makes it different, we’re actually going to be profiting from it for a change. Look if we’re going to stay safe, and I mean truly safe from external threats we need to get back on to the world stage. Staying isolated in this swamp is only going to work for so long and eventually someone is going to come here with an army and attempt to overwhelm us. Last time I checked our numbers are still low.” “Okay, but weren’t we ensuring our safety by destabilizing Quala?” Theo asks. “We were, but as I said our presence has obviously become known now. It’s nobody’s fault, it was bound to happen eventually, but that means we’ve got two options. Either we stop completely and risk Quala being united under one person who decides they want to emulate the Empire which means war in the far future. Or we continue doing what we’re doing and risk pissing everyone off to such a degree that they stop fighting each other and unite against us, which means war in the near future. Neither of those sound attractive so I’m choosing the third option.” “Which is?” Yvette asks. “We offer our services to the highest bidder. We become the go to organization for assassination. We spread so much fear and terror that nobody will ever want to attack us, they will instead wish to curry our favor in exchange for our help. And Cyrus I already see you’re about to protest and I don’t know why because you’re the first one who usually wants to go practice your killing skills on someone. I’d think you of all people would be happy with this arrangement.” “You may be right.” Cyrus says. “But what about Dendrin?” Yvette asks. “Yes! What about the integrity of this order?” Theo adds “Dendrin is the god of shadows. Why else would he give us such powers if not to use them in such a manner? But if it will calm everyone down I will certainly consult him on this matter. At this time though I have made my decision on what is best for the shadows.” None of them may see it now, but you really are taking steps to ensure the survival of the shadows. The shadows were feared during their lackey days under the Empire and during the rebellion the Empire itself learned to fear the shadows. Now? The fear still exists, but not to the extent that it needs to be. Not to the extent that it SHOULD be. You’re going to get that fear back and that reputation is what going to keep you all alive and thrive. Surely Dendrin would certainly approve of that. In fact you know that sadistic bastard would. > Year 50 With all business taken care of, you tell Talia to let you know if anything important comes up since you’re going to catch a few moments of sleep. Seems like you don’t do much of that anymore. As you settle down for some much needed rest, you drift off thinking about all what you’ve managed to accomplish. Quala is essentially under your thumb and you haven’t even resorted to an army to do it. You’ve got people from there paying you left and right to assassinate their enemies whether it is in tangible goods or simple favors that you intend on calling in some day. It doesn’t stop there either; you’ve even had a few people travel all the way from the Arat province and even Rask to use your services. It of course helps that you’ve never failed to assassinate a chosen target. As a result, you’ve accomplished much of what you first envisioned. You’ve managed to put enough dread into those in power to not want to invade Delerg for fear of their own deaths or on the more pragmatic side of things they’d prefer to have you around in case they want to get rid of someone. “You’re enjoying all this aren’t you Eternal? I know you’re playing the emotionless cold hearted assassin guild leader and all, but deep down you’re enjoying every moment of it. It’s okay to admit it, not like I’m going to tell anyone.” “Of course I am, but not for the reasons you believe. I’m enjoying this because things are going well for the shadows for once AND I’m not terminally bored while leading them. For the longest time I could achieve one or the other but not both.” “Going well? Haven’t you had to execute ten shadows, including two of your own council? Theo and Yvette I believe?” “It was necessary. They were conspiring and disagreeing with the new direction the shadows needed to go in order to thrive. Besides, I didn’t say we were without problems. I just meant things were good in general and you don’t seem to have a problem with what I’m doing. You even encouraged me when I made the effort to consult you about it.” “Of course I don’t. In fact you’ve actually made the shadows more interesting than they have been in a long time. So…now that you’re on top of the world so to speak, what’s your next move?” “Nothing major though I imagine it won’t stay like that for long. I don’t delude myself that the calmer times last forever, just that I should enjoy them while I can.” Those words prove to be true considering that Delerg sudden gets a large influx of svelk mercenaries in the town of Sinkhole one day. What’s more disturbing is they weren’t detected until they were in the town. This could be the precursor to an invasion for all you know and you personally go with Cyrus and several other Blades to sort this out. When you arrive, a few shadows that were in the town report that the svelk haven’t been doing anything except carousing at the tavern. He says they’ve been obnoxious, but nothing serious yet. Besides Mistress, the only dark elves you’ve had to deal with were those that were hired by the Empire to kill you during your time in Rask, so your opinion of them isn’t exactly high to begin with, but that probably makes you the same as everyone else in that aspect. You know damn well they have to be here for a reason other than spending money on booze though. You enter the tavern and it gets suddenly much quieter from the revelry you heard before entering. The staff looks miserable, particularly the waitresses and only a few other customers remain trying to hide in a dark corner, probably too scared to pass the dark elves to leave. “Ah! The great Shadow Master graces us with his presence! I was wondering if we could be expecting you. I told my soldiers here that if we showed up unannounced that we’d get your attention. It is truly a testament to your patrols that we found ourselves hard pressed to evade them undetected until we arrived in this dismal town.” One dark elf says while sitting at a table with his fellows. You presume he’s probably their leader. “What do you svelk want and make it quick.” You say. “Straight to the point eh? Very well then. My name is Tyren and what I want is to hire your services.” You don’t believe it. “You? You want to hire the shadows to kill someone? Since when did svelk rely on assassins? Doesn’t your race learn such a trade from birth and gleefully kill as a matter of course?” Suddenly Tyren stands up as if he’s offended by your remark. “And what do you know of us, shadow? What do you know that you haven’t heard second hand from the grubby ignorant peasants?” “Trust me, I know your kind well enough that your senseless posturing and fake attempt at being offended are not going to intimidate or second guess myself. You’re a race of sadistic murderous mercenaries that go from battlefield to battlefield profiting from conflict which I don’t have a problem with. What I do have a problem with is when a bunch of them suddenly show up in my backyard where there is no conflict. You come here saying you need our help, yet show up unannounced and without coming to us directly. That shows a severe lack of disrespect, and there is no reason why I shouldn’t just kill the lot of you now and throw your worthless carcasses to the Sul-Monkeys.” You and your shadows take a step forward and Tyren’s demeanor changes immediately though he tries to play it off like he was joking. “Sheesh, calm down. I didn’t realize you shadows were so fucking serious all the time. Fine I’ll explain in greater detail. I want you to kill the leader of another Svelk mercenary company. She goes by the name of Edolith. Currently she’s located in the eastern part of the Quala province fighting for one of the half assed warlords there. I want her dead because she’s been taking all the good paying jobs for years and also with her dead I may even be able to gain her warband which has no other viable leaders to take her place.” Tyren takes a drink before continuing. “Now I know what you’re thinking why don’t I do this myself or even join an opposing side and kill her on the battlefield that way. Well it is with great risk in front of ALL my soldiers that I admit that I am neither clever or strong enough to take her on, though I would remind my soldiers that I could easily kick all of their asses.” And with those words he quickly draws a dagger and stabs one of his men in the throat. The dark elf spits out a glob of blood and falls backwards gasping for life until Tyren finishes him off with a crushing stomp to his head. Naturally all the rest of the svelk look upon this as a normal thing, Tyren then turns to you. “So I call upon you, the shadows for help, the greatest assassins ever known in recent history. I believe that your order has the skill to pull off her assassination. So do we have a deal?” “Not really considering you haven’t even described payment yet. What could you possibly offer? Svelk mercenaries aren’t known for their wealth and trust me you’d need a considerable amount for me to even consider this.” “Hmmm, well what about we owe you a favor?” Now you laugh. “A favor from you lot? Not likely. We have no need of mercenaries and I doubt if you’d come through with it anyway. We’d probably have to slaughter you all and while that would be doing the world a favor and maybe even sort of fun, I’d like to at least have something tangible if I’m going to help you.” “You’re incredibly suspicious of us. You sure you don’t have svelk blood? No probably not, you’re pretty ugly even for a human, but what can you do seeing as you all evolved from those Sul-Monkeys out there right? Ha ha ha ha! Okay but seriously… Zarren! Get over here with that big bag!” Tyren shouts at one of his underlings. Zarren comes to Tyren’s table with a big bag and dumps the contents out on it. What is revealed is more than just regular valuables. There are also some books and other objects as well. So much that part of loot falls to the floor. “Hey, I recognize that book…its one I read during my days at Gloom! I thought it was lost forever.” Dravin suddenly exclaims. “In fact a lot of these objects are from Gloom! These ceremony rings, these cups…where the hell did you get this stuff?” “Oh we svelk do a lot of trading with all kinds of people in our travels, those rock eating dwarves just being one of many. We sort of thought you all might be interested in lost objects from your old stomping grounds. Along with the gems and gold, I’d say this should be more than enough payment shouldn’t it?” While you aren’t overly attached to any “lost objects” from Gloom, you can see Dravin is pretty fond of some of them. You imagine the older human shadows that are still around would be happy to see such things again. Even Cyrus is looking at a couple things, and you know Talia would be interested in them. The actual valuables are probably a fair payment for a job such as this. Still part of you doesn’t trust the svelk. Something about all this seems a bit sketchy. You don’t know what exactly, but it just doesn’t feel quite right to you. > You accept the contract You don’t trust the svelk, but if they have some sort of ambush planned, you’re fairly confident that you can handle anything they’re going to throw at you. In any event you’ll be taking the payment in advance. “Very well svelk. We’ll take the job. Pack up the loot and put it in the bag.” “Hey wait, we didn’t say we were paying you all of it now. We need some assurance you’ll complete the job! Half up front, half later!” “Yeah, not going to happen. I don’t trust you as it is; you really think I’m not taking all the payment now? You’re delusional.” You say. Tyren is perturbed by your insistence, but then he realizes he’s not exactly in friendly territory and severely outnumbered. “Fine, just as long as that bitch is dead.” He replies and he proceeds to give the specifics of where Edolith is located before he takes his leave. You tell Cyrus and Dravin to take the best Blades and carry out the job. “And be very careful. Don’t take anything for granted. I still don’t trust them.” You say. “Don’t worry about us, we’ll be able to sense a trap.” Cyrus remarks. When you make it back to the temple with the lost items from Gloom, all the older shadows are eager to look through them, hoping to find something personal of theirs. Talia is especially glad to see the return of them and reassures you that you made a good decision to take the contract. The next day Cyrus, Dravin and several other Blades have set off on their mission and its business as usual at the temple. About afternoon, several shadows report that they suddenly aren’t feeling well. Given that you’re in a swamp, you could chalk this up to the environment, the problem with that is the shadows tend use their magic to fend off such ailments. Plus some of the eternals are sick as well and they’re naturally resilient to disease and sickness. By night time, you and Talia aren’t feeling well either and a couple of the shadows have already died of this mysterious illness. Prayers to Dendrin have been made, but he’s not listening as usual. “It’s the fucking svelk. I know it. They caused this somehow.” You say in between feeling sick. You’re so dizzy you can barely think, but it suddenly occurs to you what’s going on. It’s what they paid you, or rather the objects from Gloom. They must’ve done something to them. Maybe a curse of some sort. “Get all of the objects out of this temple and we need to cast a purification ritual right now!” you say. As several shadows attempt to carry out this order, you try your best to get prepared for the ritual. Other shadows are deathly ill by this point and you’re not going to save them in time. “Shadow Master, the svelk are attacking just outside the temple!” Brother Gannon wheezes. You attempt to order the temple doors locked, but the svelk have already managed to barge in by this point. Under normal circumstances, you’d be more than a match for them, but whatever this curse is, it’s affected the shadows quite severely and they’ve taken full advantage of your weakness. Most are so sick they can’t concentrate to cast any spells, and that includes you. You put up a good fight, but ultimately the effects of the curse and Tyren’s sneak attack prove to be too much. You eventually fall to one of their repeating crossbows. With several bolts lodged in your vital organs your last thoughts are of the hope that Cyrus will survive whatever the svelk had planned for him.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 50 With all business taken care of, you tell Talia to let you know if anything important comes up since you’re going to catch a few moments of sleep. Seems like you don’t do much of that anymore. As you settle down for some much needed rest, you drift off thinking about all what you’ve managed to accomplish. Quala is essentially under your thumb and you haven’t even resorted to an army to do it. You’ve got people from there paying you left and right to assassinate their enemies whether it is in tangible goods or simple favors that you intend on calling in some day. It doesn’t stop there either; you’ve even had a few people travel all the way from the Arat province and even Rask to use your services. It of course helps that you’ve never failed to assassinate a chosen target. As a result, you’ve accomplished much of what you first envisioned. You’ve managed to put enough dread into those in power to not want to invade Delerg for fear of their own deaths or on the more pragmatic side of things they’d prefer to have you around in case they want to get rid of someone. “You’re enjoying all this aren’t you Eternal? I know you’re playing the emotionless cold hearted assassin guild leader and all, but deep down you’re enjoying every moment of it. It’s okay to admit it, not like I’m going to tell anyone.” “Of course I am, but not for the reasons you believe. I’m enjoying this because things are going well for the shadows for once AND I’m not terminally bored while leading them. For the longest time I could achieve one or the other but not both.” “Going well? Haven’t you had to execute ten shadows, including two of your own council? Theo and Yvette I believe?” “It was necessary. They were conspiring and disagreeing with the new direction the shadows needed to go in order to thrive. Besides, I didn’t say we were without problems. I just meant things were good in general and you don’t seem to have a problem with what I’m doing. You even encouraged me when I made the effort to consult you about it.” “Of course I don’t. In fact you’ve actually made the shadows more interesting than they have been in a long time. So…now that you’re on top of the world so to speak, what’s your next move?” “Nothing major though I imagine it won’t stay like that for long. I don’t delude myself that the calmer times last forever, just that I should enjoy them while I can.” Those words prove to be true considering that Delerg sudden gets a large influx of svelk mercenaries in the town of Sinkhole one day. What’s more disturbing is they weren’t detected until they were in the town. This could be the precursor to an invasion for all you know and you personally go with Cyrus and several other Blades to sort this out. When you arrive, a few shadows that were in the town report that the svelk haven’t been doing anything except carousing at the tavern. He says they’ve been obnoxious, but nothing serious yet. Besides Mistress, the only dark elves you’ve had to deal with were those that were hired by the Empire to kill you during your time in Rask, so your opinion of them isn’t exactly high to begin with, but that probably makes you the same as everyone else in that aspect. You know damn well they have to be here for a reason other than spending money on booze though. You enter the tavern and it gets suddenly much quieter from the revelry you heard before entering. The staff looks miserable, particularly the waitresses and only a few other customers remain trying to hide in a dark corner, probably too scared to pass the dark elves to leave. “Ah! The great Shadow Master graces us with his presence! I was wondering if we could be expecting you. I told my soldiers here that if we showed up unannounced that we’d get your attention. It is truly a testament to your patrols that we found ourselves hard pressed to evade them undetected until we arrived in this dismal town.” One dark elf says while sitting at a table with his fellows. You presume he’s probably their leader. “What do you svelk want and make it quick.” You say. “Straight to the point eh? Very well then. My name is Tyren and what I want is to hire your services.” You don’t believe it. “You? You want to hire the shadows to kill someone? Since when did svelk rely on assassins? Doesn’t your race learn such a trade from birth and gleefully kill as a matter of course?” Suddenly Tyren stands up as if he’s offended by your remark. “And what do you know of us, shadow? What do you know that you haven’t heard second hand from the grubby ignorant peasants?” “Trust me, I know your kind well enough that your senseless posturing and fake attempt at being offended are not going to intimidate or second guess myself. You’re a race of sadistic murderous mercenaries that go from battlefield to battlefield profiting from conflict which I don’t have a problem with. What I do have a problem with is when a bunch of them suddenly show up in my backyard where there is no conflict. You come here saying you need our help, yet show up unannounced and without coming to us directly. That shows a severe lack of disrespect, and there is no reason why I shouldn’t just kill the lot of you now and throw your worthless carcasses to the Sul-Monkeys.” You and your shadows take a step forward and Tyren’s demeanor changes immediately though he tries to play it off like he was joking. “Sheesh, calm down. I didn’t realize you shadows were so fucking serious all the time. Fine I’ll explain in greater detail. I want you to kill the leader of another Svelk mercenary company. She goes by the name of Edolith. Currently she’s located in the eastern part of the Quala province fighting for one of the half assed warlords there. I want her dead because she’s been taking all the good paying jobs for years and also with her dead I may even be able to gain her warband which has no other viable leaders to take her place.” Tyren takes a drink before continuing. “Now I know what you’re thinking why don’t I do this myself or even join an opposing side and kill her on the battlefield that way. Well it is with great risk in front of ALL my soldiers that I admit that I am neither clever or strong enough to take her on, though I would remind my soldiers that I could easily kick all of their asses.” And with those words he quickly draws a dagger and stabs one of his men in the throat. The dark elf spits out a glob of blood and falls backwards gasping for life until Tyren finishes him off with a crushing stomp to his head. Naturally all the rest of the svelk look upon this as a normal thing, Tyren then turns to you. “So I call upon you, the shadows for help, the greatest assassins ever known in recent history. I believe that your order has the skill to pull off her assassination. So do we have a deal?” “Not really considering you haven’t even described payment yet. What could you possibly offer? Svelk mercenaries aren’t known for their wealth and trust me you’d need a considerable amount for me to even consider this.” “Hmmm, well what about we owe you a favor?” Now you laugh. “A favor from you lot? Not likely. We have no need of mercenaries and I doubt if you’d come through with it anyway. We’d probably have to slaughter you all and while that would be doing the world a favor and maybe even sort of fun, I’d like to at least have something tangible if I’m going to help you.” “You’re incredibly suspicious of us. You sure you don’t have svelk blood? No probably not, you’re pretty ugly even for a human, but what can you do seeing as you all evolved from those Sul-Monkeys out there right? Ha ha ha ha! Okay but seriously… Zarren! Get over here with that big bag!” Tyren shouts at one of his underlings. Zarren comes to Tyren’s table with a big bag and dumps the contents out on it. What is revealed is more than just regular valuables. There are also some books and other objects as well. So much that part of loot falls to the floor. “Hey, I recognize that book…its one I read during my days at Gloom! I thought it was lost forever.” Dravin suddenly exclaims. “In fact a lot of these objects are from Gloom! These ceremony rings, these cups…where the hell did you get this stuff?” “Oh we svelk do a lot of trading with all kinds of people in our travels, those rock eating dwarves just being one of many. We sort of thought you all might be interested in lost objects from your old stomping grounds. Along with the gems and gold, I’d say this should be more than enough payment shouldn’t it?” While you aren’t overly attached to any “lost objects” from Gloom, you can see Dravin is pretty fond of some of them. You imagine the older human shadows that are still around would be happy to see such things again. Even Cyrus is looking at a couple things, and you know Talia would be interested in them. The actual valuables are probably a fair payment for a job such as this. Still part of you doesn’t trust the svelk. Something about all this seems a bit sketchy. You don’t know what exactly, but it just doesn’t feel quite right to you. > You decline the contract While it probably would make some of your shadows happy, you just don’t trust Tyren at all. This all seems too straight forward and with these objects from Gloom he’s offering…well its almost as if he’s over eager for you to take the job. “Tyren, I’m sorry you traveled all this way from wherever you previously were and dragged a bag of treasure with you along the way, but I’m going to have to say, this contract is not in the best interest of the shadows at this time.” “What?!” Dravin asks. “Are you serious?” Cyrus exclaims. “Since when do the shadows turn down a contract?” Tyren asks. “It’s been known to happen. Now if you please, leave these premises and don’t return.” You say ignoring Dravin and Cyrus’ outbursts. “But this part of our history he’s got here! How can we not take the contract?” Dravin says. “I realize that, but it’s the past, not the future and I believe taking this contract is not the best for our future.” “But…” “Dravin! I am Shadow Master here, do NOT question me further on this!” “Hey, he’s asking a valid question. You don’t need to pull rank like that.” Cyrus adds. “Cyrus, don’t you start too. This is not the time or place.” While you bicker with Cyrus and Dravin, Tyren and his men begin to snicker which causes you to snap at them. “Didn’t I tell you merc scum to get the fuck out of here?” “Okay, okay, we’re leaving.” Tyren chuckles though they’re taking their time gathering up the valuables that they spilled on the table. Meanwhile Dravin insists on arguing with Cyrus backing him up naturally. “Look, I don’t mean to question you Shadow Master, but I just think Dendrin would want us to have our history back, if only part of it.” “I agree. Besides I’m sure Talia would like some of these things as well.” You can hardly believe the insubordination going on here. “The both of you are unbelievable right now. Questioning me and arguing in front of fucking dark elves? Did we turn into a pack of orcs overnight? Attempting to use my wife as some sort of support for your disobedience? You want the past? Fine, let’s just take it!” you shout and you draw your weapon. Before anyone can do anything else you grab the nearest dark elf and run him through. “Treachery! Defend yourselves!” Tyren shouts and drops some gems to pull his crossbow. The skirmish in the tavern is quick and bloody affair. The dark elves fight the best they can, but the advantage is to you in every way. You allow none to escape and the tavern is littered with their dead and a couple of your own by the end of it. The bar staff peep out from behind their hiding places. While the rest of the shadows gather up the valuables that are now all over the floor and place them into the bag, you search Tyren’s body on a hunch you had long before you engaged in this bloodbath and fortunately you find something in the form of a letter. Tyren, Make sure to wait a day before triggering the curse we put on those objects the rock eaters sold us. That should be more than enough time for the shadows to have placed them somewhere in their temple. The magic words are at the bottom of this letter and they should be simple enough even for you to memorize. As for the shadow assassin squad they’ll send after me, don’t worry about that, I’ve got that covered and have the ambush ready. You just stay near the Delerg province and monitor the situation with the after effects of the wasting curse. If it looks like they’re severely weakened by it then by all means attack the temple yourself before I get there. Also remember to destroy this letter, the last thing I need is for the shadows to kill you and find this on your corpse because you were an incompetent fool. Assuming you don’t mess this up on your end. We should at least be able to cripple the shadows to a degree that they’ll no longer be a threat to our livelihood. Edolith You figured it was something like this. Makes sense the svelk would see the shadows as major competition. “Next time just listen to my orders instead of bitching like a couple of housewives at the market!” you say shoving the letter in Cyrus’ hand. Cyrus looks it over. “Okay, so you were right, but we outsmarted them, got their stuff and we can perform a sanctify ritual on these objects. This situation turned out better than if we had just let them go.” You’re already angry at this whole situation and this is just the final straw for you. “Cyrus that’s not the damn point. My point is you AND Dravin undermined my authority in front of not only the rest of the shadows but outsiders as well as if you knew better. When I told you to desist you continued to piss and moan…in fact you’re STILL doing it!” Before Cyrus can come up with another snappy come back, you speed yourself up and punch him in the face. He reels backwards and you follow up with a kick sending him to the floor. He attempts to get up, but you kick him again in the face and then with a power stomp you smash his shin, breaking the bone through the skin. He bellows in pain and Dravin dares to try to stop you. “Shadow Master plea…” is all he utters before you give him a chop to his throat and then twist his arm behind his back before slamming his face into the table. “You! Stretch out his other arm across the table and take out your dagger.” You say to closest Blade, while continuing to hover behind Dravin. The Blade obeys without hesitation and Dravin is begging for mercy when he hears the unsheathing of a dagger. You can also hear Cyrus pleading for you not to harm Dravin. Still holding on to Dravin’s other arm, you half turn around to face him. “YOU shut the fuck up, before I break your other shin! I’m not killing him, but a lesson must be taught to both of you! Now you, what’s your name?” you ask the Blade since you never can keep track of these new eternals’ names, you swear they must’ve altered them all in those tanks to look similar or something. “Glen, Shadow Master.” “Glen, take Dravin’s pinky finger.” “NO!” Dravin screams. “Okay take his ring finger too!” you say and twist Dravin’s arm further. “You wanna go for the whole hand? Then keep fighting me! You’re lucky I’m not taking them from your dominant hand! Glen proceed.” Glen cuts off Dravin’s pinky first which causes him to let out a stifled yelp. Glen moves on to the ring finger, and you’re not sure if it’s the combination of the shock and fear, but whatever the reason Dravin ends up passing out completely. “Wrap up his hand and carry him back to the temple.” You tell Glen. Cyrus is still on the floor sitting up with his shinbone sticking out of his leg. He’s still in great pain, but you believe he’s more upset about Dravin. You crouch down beside him. “I’m sorry it had to be this way brother, but I spared your life once for a reason Cyrus. You agreed to obey my commands as Shadow Master and today you repeatedly defied my will. Am I going to regret that decision?” “…no…no…” Cyrus says trying not cry out. “No what?” you ask again forcing him to look directly into your eyes. “No…Shadow Master…” “Good. Good. Something like this can never happen again.” You say and stand back up. You tell the other Blades to carry Cyrus and grab the ill gotten bag of loot back to the temple since you’re going on ahead of everyone else. You then turn your attention to the frightened tavern staff. “Apologies for the mess. Leave them some gold to help clean up this filth off their floor and tables.” You say while stepping over a dark elf corpse and then heading out the door. When you get back the temple Talia asks you what happened and where everyone else is. “Had to put down some treacherous svelk, as far as I’m concerned all of their kind now has a permanent target on their backs if any us see one of them again. But we got some things off of them I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with, you’ll have to perform a sanctify ritual over them first though before bringing them into the temple. As for the rest of the Blades, they’ll be along shortly with said loot I imagine, oh and I’m dissolving the Council. Really no point in it anymore.” “Wha…well you are Shadow Master, but did you mention this Dravin and Cyrus?” “Oh trust me, they know.” > Year 55 You wake up with yet another permanent ache in your body. Getting old really sucks and it probably doesn’t help that you’ve spent decades fighting all your life. Who knows how many broken bones, deep cuts, head blows and other bodily trauma you’ve had. However, you’re probably more fit than most people your age and your magic ability is certainly a great equalizer. You go over some of the newest contract requests and one catches your eye due to it suffering from multiple misspellings and the murdering of language in general. When you see that it’s from Flog you’re a little impressed that he was able to write as well as he did. From what you can make out in the horribly written letter, he wants to meet with some of your people because he’s got a major problem on his hands and he hopes that seeing as he once helped you fight the Empire, you’d help him out in return. You shake your head at that remark considering that as you recall you basically spared his life in exchange for his support. He doesn’t go into specifics about who he wants killed, but he goes on to say that he’s acquired a lot of wealth in his “conquest” of Rask. A bit of stretching the truth since while its true he owns the biggest stretch on territory there, the area is far from conquered. Amusingly he wants you to meet him at Blood Tooth, which is apparently what he renamed Evergloom after he moved in years after you left. He states he’ll go into more specifics then, mainly because he doesn’t want the letter possibly falling into the wrong hands and also because all this writing makes his brain hurt. He also mentions that while it isn’t necessary, he’d prefer to meet with you personally since he’s confident in your abilities to get the job done. You can’t help but smile a little at that last statement. “You’re not going are you?” Talia asks. "Why not? I’ve been running the shadows for this long and I haven’t even taken a contract myself. Seems a bit hypocritical don’t you think?” “You’re the Shadow Master, you don’t need to concern yourself with such things.” “Maybe, but I’ve always believed that a leader really should lead by example and I’ve done that for the most part.” “What about that incident with the dark elves?” “Eh, I actually didn’t even plan that and it really doesn’t count. I just think I need to go on this one.” “You just want to prove that you aren’t getting old. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you been mentioning it lately.” “Yeah…well maybe. But still…hey why don’t you come with me?” “Me?” “Well why not? Flog’s always liked you and it’ll probably make the meeting go over better. Besides, you should be keeping your abilities up as well.” “Excuse me, but I continue to spar with the Blades every day.” “And so do I, but it isn’t enough unless their real danger involved. Come on, you mean to say you don’t miss the old days just a little bit?” “Not particularly, but I see that this is important to you, so I shall accompany you, but aren’t you concerned about this being a trap?” “Not really, no. While Flog has always been a little more cunning than the average orc and an opportunistic fool, he’s never been suicidal. I’m pretty sure he knows if he tried to ambush me, it wouldn’t end well for him. Even if he managed to succeed, he also knows that the full force of the shadows would hunt him down personally and with as many enemies as he probably has I doubt if he needs to add more. Besides if it is an ambush, that’ll just make things more interesting and Dendrin’s always looking out for us anyway.” Your flip remark about Dendrin gets a nod in agreement by Talia who doesn’t take it as a flip remark, but rather that you’re being genuine. “Well I suppose there is that and as the chosen of Dendrin you’d be even better protected, but who is going to be running things while we’re gone?” “I don’t think we’re going to be gone for that long, but Cyrus can do it. Not like he goes on many missions anymore either.” This is true. Ever since the incident with the dark elves, Cyrus and Dravin started becoming more withdrawn. Granted Dravin was never an extrovert, but with Cyrus it’s a little sad. It’s like you completely crushed his spirit that day. He lost his unofficial position as leader of the Blades due to the permanent limp you gave him and resigned himself to keeping up on internal security. Sometimes you feel a little bad about it, but you believe that in the long run it was a good thing. Cyrus, even though he’d pledged himself to you still harbored a bit of willfulness that was starting to come back. If allowed to flourish longer, he may have become more of a problem and would have had to been killed. Though perhaps his current fate is worse than death. When you approach Cyrus about the situation with Flog, he’s surprised that you’re going, let alone putting him in charge of the temple until you get back. He of course agrees and wishes you luck. Given how Flog was never his favorite person, you wonder why he didn’t at least express the same concerns about meeting with him like Talia did, and then it occurs to you that perhaps he’s hoping you do get killed. In any event, you’re not going to worry about it. You instead hand pick some of the best Blades to come with you to Blood Tooth and set off on your journey as soon as possible. The journey to Rask is fairly uneventful. While you mostly keep to the off beaten trails, you know most in Quala are wise enough to not attack a group of shadows even if they did see you. The “stable” leader of northern Quala, First Mage Galen has practically bent over backwards to stay on your good side. You sort of wonder if that is who Flog wants you to assassinate considering all the back and forth attempts at conquest into each other’s realms by the pair of them. If it is, then he better have a hell of a lot of money. When you reach the Rask it mostly looks very much how it did when you left it. Much of it untouched wilderness though the occasional battlefield markings are apparent. Some are even fairly recent. “Hey Flog didn’t say anything about safe passage did he in his letter?” Talia asks. “No, but I don’t think he’d be able to enforce it very well anyway. You know how tribal orcs are, even under a strong leader they tend towards chaotic acts.” “Well as you said, I suppose that’ll make things more interesting. Actually a battle would probably warm me up right about now. I think I got too used to the heat, though I wasn’t exactly fond of the freezing cold back in the old days either.” “Really? I kind of preferred it, but we’re going to be making camp soon, we can warm up a little then.” Later that night at your campsite you take first watch. You can’t really rest anyway since your body aches a bit. As the night goes on, you remember back to the time when you doing this as a regular thing, seems like a lifetime ago. As you lose yourself in the past a bit you suddenly hear a noise. Like howling, but it isn’t from any sort of wolf that you’ve ever heard. Doesn’t even sound like a natural one and it sounds pretty close by. “Everyone get up!” you shout with your weapon drawn. As everyone starts to get up ready for battle, more of those howls can be heard. They’re nearly painful at this point and several of you are clutching at least one of your ears. “What the hell is that?” Talia shouts. “Not sure, but we’re about to find out.” You say as all of you form a back-to-back circle for defense. Several glowing red eyes appear in the dark forest around you, when your assailants finally show themselves, they are in the form of orcs, but more feral and savage looking (even for orcs). “You think Flog set this up?” Talia asks you while eyeing her closest possible attacker. “Let’s worry about it afterwards.” You say and the orcs attack. You’ve had to fight a few unruly orcs in the past and though its been awhile, you know their tactics wouldn’t have switched up that much. They almost lope at you and circle around you like an animal would, in fact animalistic is the best way to describe them since at this range you can see they aren’t even wearing much clothing beyond a loin cloth and a few grisly trophies in the form of bloody body parts. Their hands resemble claws and some of them aren’t even attacking with weapons at all and are just using their nails, which are unnaturally long for orcs. You cross swords with one of them and even while speeding yourself up, it’s still nearly matching you blow for blow. Its face is close enough for you to get the good look and it’s contorted looking with an extra wide mouth filled with teeth. Whatever the hell this thing is, it isn’t any kind of orc you’ve ever seen or encountered. You muster up all your strength and land a powerful strike against the orc’s head nearly severing the top part of it completely. It attempts to still attack you, flailing its arms wildly and still making that horrible howling sound. Then you hear a whispery voice in your mind. At first you think its Dendrin, but then you’re not asleep and you don’t feel the same numbness, but rather the exact opposite. A sharp pain in your head. “The battle is lost mortal. You cannot kill us. You must submit to us, it is the only way to save yourself.” You look around to see Talia and most of the other shadows still fighting, but you also see a couple of them clutching their heads and falling to the ground in pain. These definitely aren’t orcs you’re fighting considering they’re using some sort of psychic attack. You could either try to finish off the rest of the orcs to stop the attacks or cast a shield over the minds of you and your shadows, though its very difficult to concentrate right now. > You cast the spell You attempt to block everything out in your mind a concentrate on your spell. More voices invade your mind and you begin shouting out Dendrin’s name loudly during your chanting in an effort to drown out the supernatural voice in your head. You also shout to everyone to try to shut out the voices you know they have to be hearing as well. “NO! You cannot escape us! You are MEAT!” you hear and the voices begin to fade a bit. You notice that your shadows aren’t struggling with their mental assaults anymore either and regular combat goes a lot better. Soon, all attackers are killed and Talia comes over to you rubbing her head a bit after dispatching her orc. “What the hell are these things?” “Well I’m not exactly sure, but if I had to guess, they’re wendigos. Evil spirits that take over the bodies of the living and try to consume anyone they can. Found notes written about them after we took Kane’s fort. He apparently fought them all the way back to their home territory and trapped them there. Looks like these idiots let them loose again or something. We should be safe now and I’ve got everyone shielded, but everyone else should keep up their own shield just as added protection. We can link that mental power to each other if we just focus.” “Just like back in shadow training when we all fought that brain lurker huh?” Talia asks. “I believe it was a thought lurker, but yeah something like that. Odd that we never encountered another one of those creatures.” “I think I remember Brother Gray said they typically only lived underground or something.” Probably some sort of “gift” from the Derro no doubt, but you stop dwelling on the past and pack up you camp so you can continue your journey. You’ll have to get some sleep later. The rest of the journey is more of an endurance test against the elements rather than any more fighting. Even while sticking to the forests you feel the full strength of the cold winds and snowfall that has decided to grace you with its presence. You see a village in the distance, and briefly ponder if you should head to it and sleep at an inn, but the fact remains you don’t know what you can expect there. You’re guessing Flog might’ve enslaved most of the towns in Rask, but who knows what they’ve been turned into. Chances are they’re probably the equivalent of slave camps now patrolled by a bunch of over eager orcs or ogres ready to attack anyone they don’t know. “I certainly hope Flog told his people to expect us when we finally get to Blood Tooth!” Talia says wrapping herself up and walking on as you decide to avoid the village. When you finally arrive at Blood Tooth, you see that Flog hasn’t changed your old home too much, other than the typical orc totems that their kind seem to favor. A group of orcs stand outside looking off in several direction as if they’re expecting someone, but that might not necessarily be you though. They still haven’t noticed you though. “Well, this is it. We might as well just approach. Be ready for anything though.” You tell everyone. You reveal yourself from your cloak and begin to walk towards the group. They finally see you and begin waving you down. “Shadows! Come quickly! Not safe out here!” one shouts. “Well I’m guessing we’re being welcomed at least.” Talia says. “For now. Like I said be ready for anything.” The orcs waste no time in calling for their fort doors to be opened and you’re lead in. Now the place looks less like how you remember. It’s definitely got that orcish touch now, not to mention smell. Eventually you meet Flog on his throne. The years have taken their toll on him to the point where you don’t feel so old any more. Flog stands up slowly and limps over to you, refusing the use of any sort of cane. His face bear the scars of multiple battles and he’s only got one hand, though the stump naturally has some sort of crude weapon grafted to it. His reign is most likely in danger being the age he is, let alone some of his obvious injuries. Still he’s hanging in there somehow, you’ve got to give him credit. “Shadow Master, its been a long time. And your mate Talia…wait you did not bring the strange lover did you?” “Strange…oh!” you realize. “No, Cyrus is back in Delerg.” “Good. Good. Never liked him. You two. Like. Treat Flog fairly and with honor. Um, let us go to my meeting room. Much to discuss. Very important. Your shadows can stay here, drink and partake of our females!” You look over and see several female orcs AND ogres attempting to look seductive towards some of your shadows. You think this is the first time you’ve seen any of them look genuinely scared during this mission. “Ah no, I don’t think that’ll be necessary Flog.” You say. “All strange lovers too huh? Just as well, couldn’t survive being with an orc woman anyway. Let us go.” Flog takes you and Talia to the very place where you used to hold small meetings and you all sit down before he speaks. “Flog is old and will die soon. Flog know this and accepts it. Flog can only hope that Flog die in combat, but that time is not yet now. Flog cannot let it be so, so Flog call on those who may help.” “Well that’s the whole reason for this, but I don’t understand the need for secrecy and why the hell we had to drag ourselves all the way up here. You know there are wendigo prowling about in Rask now?” “Yes, Flog well aware of it because Flog’s son Mog foolishly attempted to harness them in his grab for power. Now Rask have evil spirits wandering about and Mog is making his move against Flog. Mog need to die.” There’s your contract, but you still don’t get all of this. “Okay, but…well normally I don’t ask why, however my curiosity about all this is still there. I mean in orc culture is it not the tradition of the strong to kill the current chief, most preferably one of his sons?” “Indeed that would be the case, but Flog not feel that Mog deserve it. Mog’s reckless behavior with the wendigo is just one example. Mog also prove to be wasteful with slave towns. If Mog take charge, all of this will collapse. Flog not want it to collapse. Flog want orcs to continue to expand kingdom. Crush puny Galen one day and then beyond.” “Beyond huh? That include the shadows Flog?” Talia asks. “Heh. Perhaps one day the shadows and orcs will do battle and on that glorious day orcs will stand on top of the burning ruins of your god’s temple…but not today or even in Flog’s lifetime. All Flog ask now is for help, willing to pay large fee. You shadows also left things here when you abandoned this place. Stuffed things in a storeroom, perhaps you might want them back?” That sounds very familiar. “So if you don’t want Mog to take charge who did you have in mind?” Talia asks. “Next son in line of course. Skog. Skog smart like Flog but not strong enough to beat Mog. Skog from proper orc woman. Mog from terrible drunken night with an ogress. Glad cannot remember much, but Flog do remember a lot of hair and…” “Okay didn’t quite need those details. So where is Mog?” you say. “Mog at Mogtown further north plotting my death and preparing to invade Bloodtooth. Be here soon, that’s why he needs to die soon. Mog prefer the company of ogres and giants mostly. Mog also have slave witch with him. Human. She one who released the wendigo and try to tame. Foolish. Cannot tame spirits. Bad idea.” “I see…well Talia and I need to talk privately first. Just to discuss the exact details.” Flog nods and lets you and Talia go off in a corner to speak quietly to each other. “What’s wrong?” Talia asks. “I dunno that part about giving us old shadow items as payment got me suspicious.” “We can always sanctify them first, but I doubt if Flog put any sort of curse on them. If he’s honest enough to say the orcs will wage war on us one day he’s not going to bother with the same trickery the dark elves did.” “Well there’s that too. I’m wondering why the hell should we help a potential enemy in the future.” “Really anyone we perform jobs for could be our enemies in the future.” “True, but they’re all human and they generally have a healthier fear of us and death in general than orcs. Flog only has some sense because he’s a little smarter and he’s known us longer.” “Exactly, these are orcs we’re talking about, do you really think it’s going to matter who takes charge? While that idea in Flog’s head is a nice dream for him, I think we both know it’s just that. There is no way orcs are going to stay unified long enough to form some major kingdom of any kind, not for long anyway. Even with Rask more or less under their rule, its still very tribal here and prone to infighting. Besides, with Dendrin on our side, how would then even stand a chance?” “Heh, yes I suppose so. Though I’m just wondering if rather than dragging our asses further up north and facing giants, ogres, witches and who knows what else out in the open and by ourselves, if we shouldn’t just make a different offer to Flog.” “Like what?” “Well like staying here and helping him in a more direct way. Flog claimed that Mog would probably be coming to invade soon. There will be so much chaos going on, we could probably slip out the fort and move around behind the army to assassinate Mog that way. Might even be easier.” “Yeah, but who knows how long it’ll take him to invade or if he’ll even come personally and I don’t think Flog is going to go for that idea. Besides don’t you think being involved in a siege would be even more dangerous than trying to sneak into a town when they aren’t expecting trouble?” > You go ahead with the original plan Flog probably won’t go for it and being here during a siege probably will be just as if not more dangerous. “Okay, we’ll stay here for a moment to get some rest and then get going. I hate to admit it but with the recent wendigo encounter and traipsing across the countryside I’m eager to get this over with since I’m starting to feel my age.” You quietly say to Talia. “Are you going to be okay?” “Yes, I’ll be fine, just need to get this mission over with.” You stay at Blood Tooth for a few hours to rest, but soon set off on your mission since the company of orcs isn’t something you or any of the shadows want to endure for very long. The journey to Mogtown is a miserable one, since the snow begins to fall heavier the further north you go. The snow is so deep that you can’t really speed yourself up since your legs are buried in the snow to the point where you can’t even run. Cloaking is useless since you’re leaving tracks everywhere. By the time you reach your destination, you’ve half frozen and exhausted. When you see Mogtown in the distance, you’re in for a slight surprise. The front of the town is crawling with troops. Giants, orcs, and ogres are all standing around preparing to invade Blood Tooth no doubt. You expected some guards outside, but nothing like this. “We’ll sneak around the back and scale the wall from there. Mog’s probably still inside the town in one of the more important looking buildings.” You tell everyone. Your plan is about the best you can do under the circumstances and while you manage to avoid detection from the patrols, unfortunately there are more wendigos lurking on the outskirts ready to pick anyone off that comes near. They waste no time attacking you and while you’re better prepared for such creatures now, the noise ends up attracting the town garrison. “Quick, scale the walls and let’s find this half breed bastard!” you shout. After scaling the walls you find yourself surrounded by more enemies waiting for you. You have to butcher your way through several orcs and ogres before you can catch a breather. You run down an alleyway to avoid more troops descending on your position. The alley way seems to have been converted into a slave pen filled with humans. You briefly consider freeing them in order to cause a little chaos, but the humans in the cages look so pathetic, you doubt if they’d have the power to even move. Suddenly large shadows loom over you in the form of a couple giants who are standing on the outside of the nearby town walls throwing great clots of snow at you.. They succeed in destroying some buildings, killing some slaves as well as slowing you down when you feel a great force slam you to the ground from above. You struggle to maintain consciousness as you try to dig your way out of an icy grave. You don’t have time to morn when you notice Talia’s lifeless body as you dig by it. When your head reaches air you take a deep breath, but this small comfort is cut short when you catch an arrow in the skull.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You attempt to block everything out in your mind a concentrate on your spell. More voices invade your mind and you begin shouting out Dendrin’s name loudly during your chanting in an effort to drown out the supernatural voice in your head. You also shout to everyone to try to shut out the voices you know they have to be hearing as well. “NO! You cannot escape us! You are MEAT!” you hear and the voices begin to fade a bit. You notice that your shadows aren’t struggling with their mental assaults anymore either and regular combat goes a lot better. Soon, all attackers are killed and Talia comes over to you rubbing her head a bit after dispatching her orc. “What the hell are these things?” “Well I’m not exactly sure, but if I had to guess, they’re wendigos. Evil spirits that take over the bodies of the living and try to consume anyone they can. Found notes written about them after we took Kane’s fort. He apparently fought them all the way back to their home territory and trapped them there. Looks like these idiots let them loose again or something. We should be safe now and I’ve got everyone shielded, but everyone else should keep up their own shield just as added protection. We can link that mental power to each other if we just focus.” “Just like back in shadow training when we all fought that brain lurker huh?” Talia asks. “I believe it was a thought lurker, but yeah something like that. Odd that we never encountered another one of those creatures.” “I think I remember Brother Gray said they typically only lived underground or something.” Probably some sort of “gift” from the Derro no doubt, but you stop dwelling on the past and pack up you camp so you can continue your journey. You’ll have to get some sleep later. The rest of the journey is more of an endurance test against the elements rather than any more fighting. Even while sticking to the forests you feel the full strength of the cold winds and snowfall that has decided to grace you with its presence. You see a village in the distance, and briefly ponder if you should head to it and sleep at an inn, but the fact remains you don’t know what you can expect there. You’re guessing Flog might’ve enslaved most of the towns in Rask, but who knows what they’ve been turned into. Chances are they’re probably the equivalent of slave camps now patrolled by a bunch of over eager orcs or ogres ready to attack anyone they don’t know. “I certainly hope Flog told his people to expect us when we finally get to Blood Tooth!” Talia says wrapping herself up and walking on as you decide to avoid the village. When you finally arrive at Blood Tooth, you see that Flog hasn’t changed your old home too much, other than the typical orc totems that their kind seem to favor. A group of orcs stand outside looking off in several direction as if they’re expecting someone, but that might not necessarily be you though. They still haven’t noticed you though. “Well, this is it. We might as well just approach. Be ready for anything though.” You tell everyone. You reveal yourself from your cloak and begin to walk towards the group. They finally see you and begin waving you down. “Shadows! Come quickly! Not safe out here!” one shouts. “Well I’m guessing we’re being welcomed at least.” Talia says. “For now. Like I said be ready for anything.” The orcs waste no time in calling for their fort doors to be opened and you’re lead in. Now the place looks less like how you remember. It’s definitely got that orcish touch now, not to mention smell. Eventually you meet Flog on his throne. The years have taken their toll on him to the point where you don’t feel so old any more. Flog stands up slowly and limps over to you, refusing the use of any sort of cane. His face bear the scars of multiple battles and he’s only got one hand, though the stump naturally has some sort of crude weapon grafted to it. His reign is most likely in danger being the age he is, let alone some of his obvious injuries. Still he’s hanging in there somehow, you’ve got to give him credit. “Shadow Master, its been a long time. And your mate Talia…wait you did not bring the strange lover did you?” “Strange…oh!” you realize. “No, Cyrus is back in Delerg.” “Good. Good. Never liked him. You two. Like. Treat Flog fairly and with honor. Um, let us go to my meeting room. Much to discuss. Very important. Your shadows can stay here, drink and partake of our females!” You look over and see several female orcs AND ogres attempting to look seductive towards some of your shadows. You think this is the first time you’ve seen any of them look genuinely scared during this mission. “Ah no, I don’t think that’ll be necessary Flog.” You say. “All strange lovers too huh? Just as well, couldn’t survive being with an orc woman anyway. Let us go.” Flog takes you and Talia to the very place where you used to hold small meetings and you all sit down before he speaks. “Flog is old and will die soon. Flog know this and accepts it. Flog can only hope that Flog die in combat, but that time is not yet now. Flog cannot let it be so, so Flog call on those who may help.” “Well that’s the whole reason for this, but I don’t understand the need for secrecy and why the hell we had to drag ourselves all the way up here. You know there are wendigo prowling about in Rask now?” “Yes, Flog well aware of it because Flog’s son Mog foolishly attempted to harness them in his grab for power. Now Rask have evil spirits wandering about and Mog is making his move against Flog. Mog need to die.” There’s your contract, but you still don’t get all of this. “Okay, but…well normally I don’t ask why, however my curiosity about all this is still there. I mean in orc culture is it not the tradition of the strong to kill the current chief, most preferably one of his sons?” “Indeed that would be the case, but Flog not feel that Mog deserve it. Mog’s reckless behavior with the wendigo is just one example. Mog also prove to be wasteful with slave towns. If Mog take charge, all of this will collapse. Flog not want it to collapse. Flog want orcs to continue to expand kingdom. Crush puny Galen one day and then beyond.” “Beyond huh? That include the shadows Flog?” Talia asks. “Heh. Perhaps one day the shadows and orcs will do battle and on that glorious day orcs will stand on top of the burning ruins of your god’s temple…but not today or even in Flog’s lifetime. All Flog ask now is for help, willing to pay large fee. You shadows also left things here when you abandoned this place. Stuffed things in a storeroom, perhaps you might want them back?” That sounds very familiar. “So if you don’t want Mog to take charge who did you have in mind?” Talia asks. “Next son in line of course. Skog. Skog smart like Flog but not strong enough to beat Mog. Skog from proper orc woman. Mog from terrible drunken night with an ogress. Glad cannot remember much, but Flog do remember a lot of hair and…” “Okay didn’t quite need those details. So where is Mog?” you say. “Mog at Mogtown further north plotting my death and preparing to invade Bloodtooth. Be here soon, that’s why he needs to die soon. Mog prefer the company of ogres and giants mostly. Mog also have slave witch with him. Human. She one who released the wendigo and try to tame. Foolish. Cannot tame spirits. Bad idea.” “I see…well Talia and I need to talk privately first. Just to discuss the exact details.” Flog nods and lets you and Talia go off in a corner to speak quietly to each other. “What’s wrong?” Talia asks. “I dunno that part about giving us old shadow items as payment got me suspicious.” “We can always sanctify them first, but I doubt if Flog put any sort of curse on them. If he’s honest enough to say the orcs will wage war on us one day he’s not going to bother with the same trickery the dark elves did.” “Well there’s that too. I’m wondering why the hell should we help a potential enemy in the future.” “Really anyone we perform jobs for could be our enemies in the future.” “True, but they’re all human and they generally have a healthier fear of us and death in general than orcs. Flog only has some sense because he’s a little smarter and he’s known us longer.” “Exactly, these are orcs we’re talking about, do you really think it’s going to matter who takes charge? While that idea in Flog’s head is a nice dream for him, I think we both know it’s just that. There is no way orcs are going to stay unified long enough to form some major kingdom of any kind, not for long anyway. Even with Rask more or less under their rule, its still very tribal here and prone to infighting. Besides, with Dendrin on our side, how would then even stand a chance?” “Heh, yes I suppose so. Though I’m just wondering if rather than dragging our asses further up north and facing giants, ogres, witches and who knows what else out in the open and by ourselves, if we shouldn’t just make a different offer to Flog.” “Like what?” “Well like staying here and helping him in a more direct way. Flog claimed that Mog would probably be coming to invade soon. There will be so much chaos going on, we could probably slip out the fort and move around behind the army to assassinate Mog that way. Might even be easier.” “Yeah, but who knows how long it’ll take him to invade or if he’ll even come personally and I don’t think Flog is going to go for that idea. Besides don’t you think being involved in a siege would be even more dangerous than trying to sneak into a town when they aren’t expecting trouble?” > You propose to help Flog against the siege “It can’t hurt to ask, if he declines we can just go through with the regular plan.” You say. “I guess so, but I still don’t see Flog going for this idea.” You approach Flog about your idea and just as Talia said he isn’t keen on it. “The whole point of having you kill Mog is so Flog doesn’t get siege!” “But you have the advantage now of us helping you. Think about it Flog, if you send us to assassinate Mog you get rid of your rival, but you still need to bring his followers under control who will all break up into petty warbands that you’ll have to chase down. That’s time wasted. On the other hand, if Mog were to die in battle against you, that would be different. You’d not only be killing him, but also killing most of his troops on top of it. You might even get some to switch sides and pledge new allegiance to you. You’ll also have the added bonus of still looking like a powerful chief who can defeat would be rivals. You could be ruling a lot longer than you think.” You just said all the right things because it doesn’t take long for Flog to think about your words and agree. “Hmm, you shadows might be right. Okay you help with siege instead, but must prepare quickly!” Flog says and leaves to go bark orders at his people. “Well you convinced him, but I’m curious why this change in tactic? You don’t really think we couldn’t have succeeded the other way?” “I’m sure we could have, but let’s just say I think we would’ve suffered greater losses. I suppose the recent battle with the wendigo and this very trip up here has made me realize that I AM getting old and trying to prove that I can wade into battle either by myself or with only a small group isn’t necessarily the best option for me anymore, especially not when your life is in danger too. Here, we can keep low and not be the main targets. Mog is going to be focused on tearing down the defenses and killing Flog first and foremost. He’s not going to expect us sneaking up on him and neither are his troops. I’d prefer if we had as many orc grunts taking the brunt of the fighting.” “Just like the old days huh?” “Just like.” You make your plans to stay; you just hope you don’t have to wait too long for an attack. A couple days pass and you get a visit. “Slumming nowadays are we?” Dendrin asks. “Trust me I’m regretting that I ever came here now.” You answer. “Oh, I think we both know you had to do this, if only to see if you still could do it. After this is all over, this’ll be out of your system and you’ll content setting up assassinations from the safety of your desk again.” “Thanks for your confidence in me, and while you’re probably right, I can’t help but think I’ve just given up and accepted mediocrity and the eventual limitations brought on by old age now.” “What limitations? You’ve made the shadows a force of fear to entire nations. You’ve got some of the leaders of those nations to even show deference to you in the form of gifts just so you might not take a contract out on their miserable lives. So what if you aren’t as effective with a sword anymore? You’ve got magic to compensate! And what is any of that compared to the influence you’ve spread?” You have to admit, Dendrin is right. “When that half breed moron comes marching down with his army over grown brutes, you needn’t go skulking around his camp like a common thief. You don’t even need to rely on ducking and weaving while casting shadowfire from behind some boulder. Stand on top of the world and tap into your full potential and most of all trust in me.” “What do you mean exactly?” you ask. “You’ll have to figure that out for yourself, but it’s pretty easy. You don’t much time though.” Just as you’re about to ask Dedrin what he means, you’re sudden awakened by a general alarm. “Mog’s coming! Everyone to arms!” you hear shouted several times throughout the fort. Talia is already preparing for battle, she sees you’ve awakened. “Good, you’re awake we’ve got to get moving.” She says approaching you. You slowly get up and take your time as you shake away your grogginess. “No we really don’t. You go gather all the rest of the shadows and meet me on the battlements as soon as you can.” “What are you going to do?” “Not sure yet, but I’m going to do something.” You don’t even get fully dressed in your armor. You just head to the highest battlements, which you know to be at the roof of the tower portion of the fort. When you reach the top, the cold wind whips around you and there are no orcs here. You imagine they’re all on the lower battlements or reinforcing the doors. From the top of the tower you can see Mog’s army in the not so far distance. Besides the orcs and ogres, he’s also got several giants with him along with hordes of human slaves dragging the baggage carts and pushing war machines. You continue to watch Mog’s army get into position to attack the fort. You look up into the sky and see that more snow is starting to fall. Funny, but you don’t feel the cold at all now. You close your eyes and concentrate. You mentally chant in your head and try to draw on the power of Dendrin and of the shadow realm. Talia and the other shadows eventually arrive during your chanting and while you hear a couple of them call out to you, you ignore them and then you can’t hear them at all. It’s like your whole body has shifted into the shadow realm and nothing around you exists save for that numbness. The attack on Blood Tooth begins and a boulder goes crashing into the side of a wall and you don’t even know about it. Talia and some of the shadows try to pull you back in since they fear a boulder could hit the tower next. But its silly, you have nothing to fear because you’re about to bring it… The sky begins to darken unnaturally and you suddenly find yourself outside in between Blood Tooth and Mog’s army except it isn’t “you” its some sort of shadowy avatar of yourself. You see hundreds of Mog’s orcs and ogres before you. They looked confused at first, but they should be scared and they soon will be. You move in for the attack. You cut down the first row of attackers in front of you with ease and then the next, and then the next and so forth. The hundreds of weapon blows you experience are nothing to you as they pass through your avatar. Eventually they wise up and start panicking, crying out about dark magic and running in the other direction. A couple of giants try to stop you, but they don’t have any more luck than anyone else. Their large bodies eventually just become large corpses that only manage to crush a few unlucky souls that don’t get out of the way in time. Eventually you make your way through to Mog’s encampment where you see a very large orc with light green skin and a great fat belly. You’re guessing that would be Mog. Mog still isn’t fully aware of why his men are breaking and running. All he knows is his battle plans are falling into disarray. One of his lieutenants sees your shadowy form and points at you shouting several things in orcish. Mog shouts something as well, motioning a haggard looking human woman to help; you’re guessing that this is his witch. She begins to cast some sort of spell, but she blinks once and you’re suddenly before her eyes. This breaks her concentration, but not as much as your blade through her abdomen. Seeing his only source of magic power killed and most of his troops running away he attempts to do likewise. He may as well be running in slow motion though due to your speed. He doesn’t even feel it when you thrust your blade through his back and pierce his heart. He just looks down long enough to see the tip of the blade disappearing from the newly made hole in his chest as it is being pulled back out. He doesn’t have time to ponder anything else except his own death within that split second and then fall down dead. Your goal here in Rask is done and you slowly fade from the battlefield. You suddenly find yourself back in your own body, which is still standing on top of the tower. Talia and your Blades are standing by. “It is done. Mog is dead.” You say. “What happened exactly? I mean we tried to approach you, but a force of some sort suddenly protected your body so we didn’t wish to proceed any further. We just observed, but we could hear the fighting still going on from below.” Talia says. “I tapped into my full potential like Dendrin suggested. Though I might not be doing that all the time in the near future, I actually feel a little drained from it. Still, it felt good to be on the battlefield just one more time. We better go find Flog, I’m sure he’ll be wondering what the hell is going on.” Your actions were seen by most of Flog’s soldiers and they were in awe. Flog himself is pretty humble when talking with you again. You do not gloat over any of it though because you believe you’ve made a lasting impression here. Even if the orcs do manage to keep some sort of kingdom together, your actions today are going to remembered well enough for them to tell stories about to their offspring and those offspring will fear the shadows properly just as their parents do today. Eventually you take your payment and begin your journey back to Delerg. While you appreciate Dendrin’s suggestion and it helped you out immensely, but if his goal was to make you more into a “believer” it didn’t entirely work. One act of channeling divine power doesn’t make you believe in him as your “god” so much as it makes you desire that power on a more stable basis. > Year 65 Delerg has been completely transformed. No longer is it known as just that dismal swamp where the shadows make their home. It’s literally been transformed into the land of shadows. You called upon powers of Dendrin in one great ritual to forever cast a cloud of darkness over the area. Delerg is now a land of perpetual twilight. Most in Quala would not ever dare raise an army to invade it now even if they wanted to, for fear of the unnatural shadow magic that now pervades the place. Indeed the High Council of the Quala Freelands pay you tribute due their border touching Delerg. Since nobody even wants to visit Delerg anymore, you’ve established a smaller settlement in the Freelands for a few reasons. One being for potential recruits of which there are always a few that wish to join and another for those that have need of the shadows’ services, which are still in demand. Skog’s tribes of Rask may very well overrun the magiocracy of northern Quala one day, but they definitely will never set one green foot into Delerg, but then ever since your actions in Rask you didn’t have much concern about that happening anyway. The svelk have all been run out of the immediate area. You’ve either hunted them all down, or they moved further east towards the Felkan Kingdom, which has begun to spread to the west in an attempt to establish order in the still chaotic Arat province. Still despite Delerg’s fearsome appearance and reputation now, there are still those that would prefer to address you directly… “An emissary from the Nalin Empire on the Delerg border wants to see you. Says she has an offer that you’ll find most enticing.” Gannon tells you. “Don’t they all? Very well give her passage to approach the temple.” You say wondering what this could be about. The Nalin Empire is still the only major power nearby that you have not had a major effect on. It continues to be run by Warden Matron Brenda whose hatred for the shadows is quite well known. As your influence has steadily grown beyond Delerg relations between that government and your organization have grown in intensity. The Nalin Empire has made it quite clear that any shadow found within its borders or anyone enlisting the aid of shadows will be executed. Still it doesn’t keep you from having a few agents still there though information is still hard to come by. At least any meaningful information. Brenda is a private person and her citizens are all fairly loyal. You’ve only ever gotten a few people from there actually trying to hire you and that was only in the early years. You’ve had no contracts from there for maybe ten years or more and never any meeting from a formal member of the government there. So to get an emissary from there now? This is an odd day indeed. When you find out this emissary is Tarna, your preoccupation dwindles a bit and focuses more on this meeting. Tarna is known to be Brenda’s second in command and the one who enforces most of the laws of the land. When she arrives she looks like all the reports you’ve heard. Long brunette hair, swarthy skin, warrior type with a haughty air about her, etc. She travels only with a couple servant types who look scared shitless to even be in Delerg let alone the actual temple of Dendrin. Tarna though looks genuinely unimpressed and you don’t even sense any fear in her. A state of combat readiness perhaps, but she’d be a damn fool not to feel that way…actually she’s a damn fool as far as you’re concerned seeing as she isn’t afraid. She should be. Normally Talia would be with you to meet her, but Talia’s currently meeting with Cyrus and Dravin in Quala to see if any of the potential shadow recruits are worthy. So you meet with Tarna privately. “So what brings such a high ranking member of the Nalin Empire to Delerg? Has the Nalin Empire finally decided to lift its ban on shadows traveling through its domain?” you ask. “Hardly, and I’m fairly certain the illegality of it doesn’t stop you from doing so anyway. But I’m not here to make small talk with you fanatics, I’m here on a matter that I think you’ll want to take.” “Do tell.” “It’s about Warden Matron Brenda. She needs to be…removed.” A little surprising perhaps, but not really. You’ve heard that Tarna has shown signs of great ambition. “Just like that eh? You wish for the death of your master so easily?” “That old bitch is NOT my master…” she begins to say, but you interrupt. “Yes she is. We ALL have a master in some way. I am master for example of all the shadows, but then Dendrin is master over all of us. Sometimes it is even natural to want to overthrow our masters…” you say with a very real double meaning, though Tarna isn’t concerned with your own thoughts. “Whatever, I didn’t come here for your loony shadow philosophies. I came here to hire your people. I can promise you more than payment in the form of money, I can also promise you legality. Make it so it isn’t an offense for shadows to enter Nalin or to hire them.” “Well, I suppose that would make things easier, and that’s quite generous. However, I question why you would do such a thing. I mean what do you gain by letting us freely in your newly acquired country?” “Safety and a powerful ally.” “Heh, don’t think either of those terms have been ever used to describe the shadows, but I’m intrigued.” “You shadows are the most powerful organization in this part of the world. More powerful than some so called governments. Far more power than you should have actually, if I had been Brenda I would’ve sent an army to crush you long ago before you got too entrenched. I never understood how she could hate you so much yet never act directly towards you. She claims her actions are tempered with caution, but I say they are riddled with cowardice.” “Strong words…so how would putting you in charge benefit us? You just said you’d attempt to destroy us.” “Because I’m pragmatic and I see such a war would bring ruin to Nalin and I wish only to bring glory to it. For far too long the Nalin Empire has remained stagnant, still clutching on to the skeletal remains of the old Empire that Brenda served. It needs to grow and I intend to make it do just that. The shadows can help in this task. I believe I should want to call upon your services many times when usual tactics aren’t enough in the future. And then there are those that may want to call upon you to stop me from achieving my goals. If we have an understanding, it can be profitable for you.” Sounds like Tarna really wants to be in charge. She gives you the price she’s willing to pay and it certainly is reasonable, doesn’t make you immediately agree to it though. “So, you desire the shadows to serve as your government’s personal assassins? We had an arrangement like that once before…I believe you know how that ended.” “No! This would be different! The shadows would remain completely independent. You could still worship your silly god and not answer to any government. I do not even wish to conquer Delerg, you can have this swampland. I just want the rest! Quala, Arat, Rask, even the Felkan Kingdom! And as I said the shadows would still have free reign to ply their trade anywhere in the glorious Empire of Nalin.” She’s certainly confident and upfront about things, of course perhaps not too much since she is here attempting to hire you after all. You can certainly see an upside to such an arrangement. It also sounds like a lot of promises that might not be kept, however it isn’t necessarily because Tarna’s a liar. Her big plans may just fall flat due to arrogance. If so, it’ll probably be better than her being successful and you’ll have your foot already in the door to start gaining more of a presence in the Nalin Empire. There is always the fact you could just kill her if she attempts to betray you, the problem though is the Nalin Empire isn’t like the many mini-states of Quala, or even the orc tribal alliance in Rask, it’s a much larger unified entity. A war with them could get very costly though you’ve certainly faced bigger and you’ve got the resources. A bigger concern for you is getting distracted with a war. Your growing obsession over the past few years is with wanting to somehow harness Dendrin’s power independent of him. He’s vaguely hinted at several times in the past that he isn’t a real “god” just very powerful. What if you could do the same and somehow take his place? You’ve been trying to study all the old tomes you have in your possession over and over again in the hopes of finding something and you believe that you’ll probably have to mix several complex incantations and rituals in order to even attempt such a thing. Most likely you’ll have to study some non-shadow magic as well. You received some of those books back that Brenda snagged from the Derro lab when Flog gave those that were left behind at Evergloom to you, but you still haven’t found quite what you’re looking for in them. Still, you’re fairly certain the magiocracy of northern Quala probably has more books that you lost years ago when you had to flee General Ackerson’s attack. Flog’s already at war with them, it might be time to give him a little extra help again and forget about helping Tarna achieve her petty dreams entirely. > You help Tarna You’ve done some questionable things, but you’ve always honored a deal and never pursued a war of aggression. As much as you might want to loot the Quala magiocracy for their magic treasures in an effort to pursue your own plans, you do have an agreement of non-aggression with them. That just leaves Tarna’s offer which you could still decline, but you see an opportunity here. “Okay we might have an agreement, but do you have any old magical tomes laying around or treasures of a magical nature? Because that’s what we’re going to need to get this job done.” Tarna is understandably hesitant. “You want me to deliver potential weapons that be used against us in the future?” “Well if you want to put it that way, yes. However, if you really want the throne as bad as I think you do, you’ll find it to be a fair offer. Besides, I’m risking giving you the throne and taking it on your word alone that you won’t ever attack us, though I’m fairly certain whatever we have now is more than enough to defeat you anyway. You really wouldn’t be giving us an advantage.” “Shadow arrogance…(sigh) well I mean we have a few gathering dust in our treasury. Powerful mages aren’t exactly common in our realm, but I don’t want to risk stealing them away and then you tell me that you don’t want them for whatever reason.” “Just bring what you have along with the payment you mentioned, but we’re not doing the deed until we get paid first.” “What?! That means I have to have an excuse to make another trip up here, which might take me a few months from now!” “Not my problem, but like I said you’re the one who wants the throne, surely if you’ve waited this long, you can probably wait a little longer. There’s always the option of sending someone else to deliver the payment though.” Tarna is getting more and more frustrated, but she can’t help but capitulate to your demands. “Fine you’ll see me in a few months from now because quite frankly I don’t trust anyone else enough to handle what I’ll turn over to you.” “So be it. See you then.” Tarna leaves and its back to business as usual, when Talia returns she has a lot of reservations about the deal with Tarna for several reasons, but after a bit of debating she stops since you being the chosen of Dendrin means you presumably know what you’re doing. After a few months pass, Tarna comes back with the payment as promised. The spell books she’s hands over to you aren’t quite what you hoped, but a deal’s a deal and you send the best Blades to assassinate Brenda. Within the week the job is successful…though unfortunately not without a hitch since some of the shadows were killed during the job and it becomes well known who did the deed. Naturally Tarna attempts to save her own ass by accusing the shadows of aggressive behavior and proof that you all need to be invaded. This doesn’t entirely work in her favor though as it was long suspected that Tarna’s ambition was what caused this in the first place. The Nalin Empire ends up going through a minor power struggle and by the time the dust settles Tarna has been executed for treason and one of Brenda’s loyalists takes power. Unfortunately this loyalist faction now in power decides that Tarna’s suggestion that the shadows be invaded is the only good idea she ever came up with and steps are made to do just that in revenge for the death of their beloved leader. The initial phases of the Nalin Shadow conflict begin in the Quala Freelands where the shadows have an outpost. It not only serves as a way of hurting you, but also expanding their own territory. Tarna might not have gotten throne, but her dreams of a new expansionist Nalin Empire are coming true. Year 67 The shadows have been pushed back to the Delerg province entirely now. The Nalin Empire in the meantime has managed to completely annex the Quala Freelands into its territory and has even managed to “tame” a few of the eastern Quala warlords. On the shadow front, you’ve been doing all you can to keep the Nalinites out of Delerg to the point that it’s distracted you from your original goal of attempting to figure out a way to free the shadows from Dendrin’s whims and harness his power independently. Year 69 Nalin’s attempts to repeatedly conquer Delerg continue to fail, but the attrition on the shadows is starting to take its toll. You just can’t replace your numbers like the Nalinites can. Worse is the fact that they’ve been using kobold “commandos” which continue to dig underground tunnels in an effort to launch sneak attacks. The only reason why that tactic hasn’t been more successful is due to the soft swampland that collapses very easily or just starts filling tunnels with water. Still there have been a few times it has worked. The shadows have had to go completely on the defensive and all involvement in assassination for hire has been stopped. The shadows are also starting to lose their aura of “fear” they once had due to the Nalinite’s determination to destroy you as a result you no longer have what you could consider “allies” anymore. Year 73 It took nearly all your energy but you’ve just turned back an entire Nalin battalion along with their svelk mercenaries. Damned dark elves would have to come back like opportunistic scavengers. You look around at the blasted area. Your last spell probably destroyed several miles of swampland, trees, wildlife and most likely Sinkhole. The temple is still intact more or less, though you can’t say too much for the shadows themselves. Cyrus, Dravin, Glen, Gannon are all dead from this war. Even your beloved Talia died in this latest attack. You’ve won this day, but you question the next time. There are only a few shadows left and while you probably could continue to fight you wonder why bother, the Nalin Empire has practically won at this point even if you have made it very costly for them. Your only consolation is that you’ve probably depleted much of their coffers in this war. Dendrin himself has been suspiciously quiet during this time and hasn’t spoken to you at all. You almost wonder if he some how set up events due to his knowledge of what you were originally planning concerning him. Hardly matters you guess since that isn’t a possibility anymore. You bury Talia and order the rest of your remaining shadows to prepare for the next attack. It takes a while, but eventually another attack does come. Not quite as big as last time, but it doesn’t need to be. You’re so tired at this point that you don’t even fight as hard as you could. When the finale comes in the form of several swords and spears pointing at you, you welcome it just to put an end to it all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 65 Delerg has been completely transformed. No longer is it known as just that dismal swamp where the shadows make their home. It’s literally been transformed into the land of shadows. You called upon powers of Dendrin in one great ritual to forever cast a cloud of darkness over the area. Delerg is now a land of perpetual twilight. Most in Quala would not ever dare raise an army to invade it now even if they wanted to, for fear of the unnatural shadow magic that now pervades the place. Indeed the High Council of the Quala Freelands pay you tribute due their border touching Delerg. Since nobody even wants to visit Delerg anymore, you’ve established a smaller settlement in the Freelands for a few reasons. One being for potential recruits of which there are always a few that wish to join and another for those that have need of the shadows’ services, which are still in demand. Skog’s tribes of Rask may very well overrun the magiocracy of northern Quala one day, but they definitely will never set one green foot into Delerg, but then ever since your actions in Rask you didn’t have much concern about that happening anyway. The svelk have all been run out of the immediate area. You’ve either hunted them all down, or they moved further east towards the Felkan Kingdom, which has begun to spread to the west in an attempt to establish order in the still chaotic Arat province. Still despite Delerg’s fearsome appearance and reputation now, there are still those that would prefer to address you directly… “An emissary from the Nalin Empire on the Delerg border wants to see you. Says she has an offer that you’ll find most enticing.” Gannon tells you. “Don’t they all? Very well give her passage to approach the temple.” You say wondering what this could be about. The Nalin Empire is still the only major power nearby that you have not had a major effect on. It continues to be run by Warden Matron Brenda whose hatred for the shadows is quite well known. As your influence has steadily grown beyond Delerg relations between that government and your organization have grown in intensity. The Nalin Empire has made it quite clear that any shadow found within its borders or anyone enlisting the aid of shadows will be executed. Still it doesn’t keep you from having a few agents still there though information is still hard to come by. At least any meaningful information. Brenda is a private person and her citizens are all fairly loyal. You’ve only ever gotten a few people from there actually trying to hire you and that was only in the early years. You’ve had no contracts from there for maybe ten years or more and never any meeting from a formal member of the government there. So to get an emissary from there now? This is an odd day indeed. When you find out this emissary is Tarna, your preoccupation dwindles a bit and focuses more on this meeting. Tarna is known to be Brenda’s second in command and the one who enforces most of the laws of the land. When she arrives she looks like all the reports you’ve heard. Long brunette hair, swarthy skin, warrior type with a haughty air about her, etc. She travels only with a couple servant types who look scared shitless to even be in Delerg let alone the actual temple of Dendrin. Tarna though looks genuinely unimpressed and you don’t even sense any fear in her. A state of combat readiness perhaps, but she’d be a damn fool not to feel that way…actually she’s a damn fool as far as you’re concerned seeing as she isn’t afraid. She should be. Normally Talia would be with you to meet her, but Talia’s currently meeting with Cyrus and Dravin in Quala to see if any of the potential shadow recruits are worthy. So you meet with Tarna privately. “So what brings such a high ranking member of the Nalin Empire to Delerg? Has the Nalin Empire finally decided to lift its ban on shadows traveling through its domain?” you ask. “Hardly, and I’m fairly certain the illegality of it doesn’t stop you from doing so anyway. But I’m not here to make small talk with you fanatics, I’m here on a matter that I think you’ll want to take.” “Do tell.” “It’s about Warden Matron Brenda. She needs to be…removed.” A little surprising perhaps, but not really. You’ve heard that Tarna has shown signs of great ambition. “Just like that eh? You wish for the death of your master so easily?” “That old bitch is NOT my master…” she begins to say, but you interrupt. “Yes she is. We ALL have a master in some way. I am master for example of all the shadows, but then Dendrin is master over all of us. Sometimes it is even natural to want to overthrow our masters…” you say with a very real double meaning, though Tarna isn’t concerned with your own thoughts. “Whatever, I didn’t come here for your loony shadow philosophies. I came here to hire your people. I can promise you more than payment in the form of money, I can also promise you legality. Make it so it isn’t an offense for shadows to enter Nalin or to hire them.” “Well, I suppose that would make things easier, and that’s quite generous. However, I question why you would do such a thing. I mean what do you gain by letting us freely in your newly acquired country?” “Safety and a powerful ally.” “Heh, don’t think either of those terms have been ever used to describe the shadows, but I’m intrigued.” “You shadows are the most powerful organization in this part of the world. More powerful than some so called governments. Far more power than you should have actually, if I had been Brenda I would’ve sent an army to crush you long ago before you got too entrenched. I never understood how she could hate you so much yet never act directly towards you. She claims her actions are tempered with caution, but I say they are riddled with cowardice.” “Strong words…so how would putting you in charge benefit us? You just said you’d attempt to destroy us.” “Because I’m pragmatic and I see such a war would bring ruin to Nalin and I wish only to bring glory to it. For far too long the Nalin Empire has remained stagnant, still clutching on to the skeletal remains of the old Empire that Brenda served. It needs to grow and I intend to make it do just that. The shadows can help in this task. I believe I should want to call upon your services many times when usual tactics aren’t enough in the future. And then there are those that may want to call upon you to stop me from achieving my goals. If we have an understanding, it can be profitable for you.” Sounds like Tarna really wants to be in charge. She gives you the price she’s willing to pay and it certainly is reasonable, doesn’t make you immediately agree to it though. “So, you desire the shadows to serve as your government’s personal assassins? We had an arrangement like that once before…I believe you know how that ended.” “No! This would be different! The shadows would remain completely independent. You could still worship your silly god and not answer to any government. I do not even wish to conquer Delerg, you can have this swampland. I just want the rest! Quala, Arat, Rask, even the Felkan Kingdom! And as I said the shadows would still have free reign to ply their trade anywhere in the glorious Empire of Nalin.” She’s certainly confident and upfront about things, of course perhaps not too much since she is here attempting to hire you after all. You can certainly see an upside to such an arrangement. It also sounds like a lot of promises that might not be kept, however it isn’t necessarily because Tarna’s a liar. Her big plans may just fall flat due to arrogance. If so, it’ll probably be better than her being successful and you’ll have your foot already in the door to start gaining more of a presence in the Nalin Empire. There is always the fact you could just kill her if she attempts to betray you, the problem though is the Nalin Empire isn’t like the many mini-states of Quala, or even the orc tribal alliance in Rask, it’s a much larger unified entity. A war with them could get very costly though you’ve certainly faced bigger and you’ve got the resources. A bigger concern for you is getting distracted with a war. Your growing obsession over the past few years is with wanting to somehow harness Dendrin’s power independent of him. He’s vaguely hinted at several times in the past that he isn’t a real “god” just very powerful. What if you could do the same and somehow take his place? You’ve been trying to study all the old tomes you have in your possession over and over again in the hopes of finding something and you believe that you’ll probably have to mix several complex incantations and rituals in order to even attempt such a thing. Most likely you’ll have to study some non-shadow magic as well. You received some of those books back that Brenda snagged from the Derro lab when Flog gave those that were left behind at Evergloom to you, but you still haven’t found quite what you’re looking for in them. Still, you’re fairly certain the magiocracy of northern Quala probably has more books that you lost years ago when you had to flee General Ackerson’s attack. Flog’s already at war with them, it might be time to give him a little extra help again and forget about helping Tarna achieve her petty dreams entirely. > You decline her request You’ve got other important things to concern yourself with; you don’t have time to risk backing a potential wild card. When you decline to help her, she’s surprised. “What?! Are you serious? Since when do the shadows decline a contract?” “Why does everyone assume we take everything? We only accept deals that would be in our favor and quite frankly dealing with you seems like it would be a losing game at best, so if that’s all our business here…” “But you would be destroying an enemy!” “An enemy who as you just said is too cowardly to make a move against us. I think the status quo is working just fine right now. Now I suggest you leave before you make me angry.” Tarna stares at you for a moment and looks exasperated, but realizes there will be no convincing you. “Fine! But remember this shadow. Brenda isn’t going to be in charge forever and I will be taking power one day. You may find that declining to help me now was not a good idea. I will remember this shadow.” She says and walks out of the room. You sit there for a moment thinking, and then you get up to follow her. Just as she is storming out the front temple doors with her servants you hit her in the back with a small bolt of shadowfire, not enough to kill her, because you’re not done with her yet. Her servants attempt to run, but you tell the nearby shadows to dispose of them which they do so with ease and then drag Tarna’s body towards you. She tries to pull her sword out, but her hand is stepped on by a shadow and then her sword taken away completely. Despite all this, she remains defiant. “Fool! You kill me and you’ll have the entire might of Nalin on your head! You really think I won’t be missed?” “Not really. I know for a fact, you were on a mission to meet with the High Council of the Freelands before you came on this little detour. I mean come on; you came here to hire us to assassinate your master. You weren’t going to report your sidetrip here. Even if you have co-conspirators back home, I doubt if any of them have the balls you do and they’ll most likely keep quiet about your disappearance. Oh they may very well try to blame the shadows for your death, but I believe at worst, Brenda will assume you were killed by bandits in the wilderness of the Freelands.” “You assume much, shadow.” “Perhaps, but just to be safe, I’ll keep you around for maybe a few months. Just in case a Nalin army does come sniffing around, then I can drag your ragged ass out in chains where you can fully admit you were plotting treachery to them first hand and prove that not only did we not act against the Nalin Empire, but in fact helped it…heh heh. Who knows? Maybe it’ll even be a brand new era of peace between our two people.” Tarna is starting to break at this point, she’s starting to realize that she has vastly overstepped her bounds. “You…you really think they’ll believe that? You really think I would admit it?” “Oh yes, because IF they do arrive, you’ll tell them everything and practically be begging them to execute you if only to end the nightmares you’ll soon experience.” you say and then move your face closer to hers. “I can sense your fear…funny how you should feel it only now when its too late. Take her away.” Nobody will come for her, you’re sure of it. Now with that out of the way you can get back to your own plans. Aggressively pursuing conflict with the magiocracy is probably going to be a violation of your agreement with them, but with Skog’s help you don’t see any need to worry. As for Skog, he’s very much like his father in that he knows a good deal when it presents itself. The shadows will follow as long as you tell them that Dendrin commands it. You’ll get no dissent, that hasn’t been a problem in quite some time. You begin to make the preparations. Year 66 “We’ve completely looted the magiocracy’s treasury of their most prized magic items and tomes. Some of them are items we lost long ago, but most of it is stuff we’ve never seen before. Possibly old Empire.” Glen tells you as he hands you a few books. “Makes sense. Most of those mages running that place were ex-Empire after all. Well good, our mission was a success then. I trust the magiocracy is probably on its death knell?” “It is Shadow Master. While it hasn’t collapsed completely yet, I believe Skog’s rabble is doing its best to make sure it stomps out.” “Good. Just bring in the rest of the stuff and we’ll sort through it. That’ll be all for now.” Glen nods and takes his leave. As you leaf through the pages of one of the books, Talia addresses you. “When are we going to hold the ceremony for all those shadows lost in the service of Dendrin?” “Huh? Oh, I dunno, soon I suppose. You can take care of those details.” You say without looking up. “…I will…but…” “What?” you say starting to get annoyed. “Well you could show a little more sympathy. I mean these brave shadows died. Our brothers and sisters died. They should at least be given the honor and respect they deserve.” “Talia, they died serving Dendrin. That’s what they’re SUPPOSED to do. By all means have the ceremony honoring the dead, but I have other living concerns that require immediate attention.” “And that’s the other thing I’ve been wanting to speak to you about. I’ve noticed over the years, you have become obsessed with magic of all kinds. You pour over the old shadow tomes even more than I do. In fact I practically have to snatch them out of your hands if I need to look up something at times. You’ve also become much colder and distant. It’s almost like you don’t even care about any of us anymore and see us all as minions and henchmen. You talk about spreading fear to our enemies and how it is Dendrin’s will, but is it absolutely necessary to treat your fellow shadows in the same manner?” “Talia, I never treat you with anything other than respect and honor. You know that.” “For now, but I’m not talking about just me. I’m talking about everyone else. Look I know you’re the chosen of Dendrin and you know his plan better than anyone, but have you become so far removed that you don’t even feel a shred of empathy anymore? I mean remember Master Ebon? He cared for all of us…” “He’s also dead, so I don’t see how following his example is going to get us anywhere the shadows need to be which is what I’m trying to accomplish. You say that I’m far removed from the rest, when in actuality I’ve been trying to keep my knowledge of my surroundings to damn near omnipotent level. I’ve kept the shadows thriving by implementing changes. Changes that Dendrin obviously agrees with, but what you don’t realize, what none of you realize is that I’m trying to accomplish something that will establish shadow survival long after I’ve shuffled off this mortal realm.” “And what is that exactly? You mind at least telling me?” “I’m talking about transcending.” Talia pauses and thinks she knows what you’re talking about. “Are…are you talking about performing the ritual of ascension?” She’s only partially right. You’ve read through the ritual and while you don’t exactly understand all of it, you believe that you should only implement a large part of it. You do not believe it is the direction the shadows need to go and you are still seeking out a way to alter it to suit what you want to accomplish. “I cannot give you an answer yet as I’m still working on the specifics, but rest assured you will be the first to know when I figure everything out. Just trust me as you would trust in Dendrin. Have I ever lead the shadows wrong? And if I was doing something wrong, would Dendrin not smite me?” Once again invoking Dendrin’s lack of action towards you manages to convince Talia that whatever you’re planning it must be for the greater good of the shadows. And you are, just not for Dendrin’s sake. > Year 75 “Do you really believe you can separate yourself from me? You think that you can actually steal my power without consequence?” Dendrin asks. “Yes, I have figured out a way and you will do nothing about it. You know why? Because you are a being of much power sure, but you and I know that you are no god and. More importantly we would not even be stealing any power from you, because I also know you are not even native to the shadow realm; you are merely using it as a source to act as a god. In my years of study, I have come to learn what you truly are and that is a Yequk, a whimsical being of the planes that loves to leech of the energy of a plane. Your kind also has a tendency to masquerade as gods or demons for amusement purposes and will bestow magic powers to those who believe in you or in my case, for the hell of it.” You reply. There is silence for a while, but eventually Dendrin speaks. “Well done Eternal, I always thought I would manage to make you a believer though. I always thought that eventually you would come around, and for a while it looked it like you might, but ultimately you resisted. I suppose it’s my own fault for not killing you immediately, but your potential for amusement value was too great to resist. However even with this knowledge do you really believe the shadows will survive without me granting them powers?” “The shadows could directly draw upon the source of the shadow realm under the right circumstances. Circumstances that I have finally unlocked, all I need to do is perform the ritual.” “Well, it looks like you’ve got it all figured out Eternal. I just hope there aren’t any unforeseen consequences to your plan…” “Is that supposed to be a threat?” “Perhaps, but not necessarily one from me because let’s face it what would be the point? No, I believe your problem is of more mortal matters.” “The shadows will follow me in performing the ritual.” “Oh of that I have no doubt, you know why? Because you’ll tell them what you’ve always told them, that it’s my will that must be carried out! But tell me this Eternal, what is the point of this endeavor if I am most likely going to be worshipped anyway? Do you really believe that you can just expose the truth so easily? If you could, you would’ve done so long ago.” “No! Now is different, because I can actually do something about it. I can show the shadows that they don’t need you to sustain their powers. That’s the whole point of this.” “No, the whole point of this is I’m the only enemy that you’ve never been fully able to beat. You’ve denied me, you’ve ignored me, you’ve blatantly insulted me and you’ve even changed the religion to something that you prefer better…though I always agreed with what you did in that aspect. This whole thing is nothing more than an attempt to defeat me before you die of old age and it’s a pointless endeavor based on your pride if you ask me.” “Well nobody asked you.” you say starting to get angry. “I genuinely don’t understand what your problem is, because we’ve ALL benefited from this arrangement. You’ve even called on me for help in the past.” “Moments of weakness, I assure you.” “Yes, I’m sure seeing as you’ve been hung up on the whole instilling fear into everyone and no room for the weak type of thing for the past couple of decades. Your problem started when you started believing in your own rhetoric. YOU want to be the one that the shadows worship. YOU want to be the god of fear and shadows. You don’t want to share any of the credit with me.” “And why should I? I’m the one whose really been guiding them all these years! You’ve done absolutely nothing! They’d all be fucking dead if you had your way! You even admitted as much. You’ve claimed on several occasions that you’ve been bored of the shadows for years and you’ve only taken a more direct interest in them recently because I came along.” “While all of that may be true, what you’re forgetting is I’ve been guiding them a lot longer than you have. I gave them purpose for centuries! And what did you think other shadow masters were doing all those years? Twiddling their thumbs? No they were also guiding the shadows! You think you’re not the only shadow master to have these sorts of feelings? You already know by Master Ebon’s own dying admission that he never spoke to me and lied the whole time. You really think other shadow masters didn’t have their own doubts of whether I was a god, or even existed? You’re just the first one to figure out the entire truth and let the bitterness get to you. So by all means perform your little magic ritual and tap directly into the power of this shadow realm. I’m sure it’ll be a success, but you will never be free of the religion tied to it. My name will always be attached to the shadows. Perhaps now more than ever, for a day may have soon come that I would’ve abandoned the shadows entirely and moved on to other things. On that day, they would’ve lost all their powers and undoubtedly the organization would’ve soon collapsed afterwards. Now? You’re going to give them access to the power directly whether I’m here or not. Who do you think is going to still be worshipped? That’s right.” “So I’ll risk exposing the truth.” You say in an attempt to continue to be defiant. “Before or after the ritual? If its before, you’re not even going to get a chance to complete it because you’ll be strung up as a heretic or you’ll be forced to kill them all. I doubt even your own mate would side with you even if she and possibly a few others might suspect you’re right. Faith is a powerful thing and you know this. If it’s after the ritual, you might have better success, but I doubt it. At best you’ll end up getting utter chaos because you’ll get rogue shadows that will see no reason to be part of the group anymore. Just think about those in the past that dared to oppose the status quo like Theo, Yvette or even Shade. Don’t you think there will be MORE dissident types when they know there is absolutely no chance of them losing their powers now? The shadows will eventually splinter apart through selfishness. Of course perhaps you don’t care, but I think you do care about the shadows more than you let on sometimes. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be making such a grand effort of trying to free them from me.” You hate it when Dendrin makes good points and this time he’s made several. “I’m…not going to win this one am I?” you say. “My advice? You’d be better off letting this one go. You’re a mortal and have limitations. Enjoy what little time you have left. But it’s your choice, and I’ve always believed that you work better without guidance, so do what you will.” You wake up from your mental ordeal and sit up placing your head within your hands trying to come to grips with your own short sightedness. It’s almost enough to make you cry. “What’s wrong? You seem upset. Bad dream?” Talia asks when she sees you after rousing from her own sleep. “No…I…no. I’m fine. Just still tired I guess.” You lay back down and Talia soon goes back to sleep. You’re left wondering what you’re going to do, but it all seems so pointless now no matter what you decide. If you go ahead with the ritual anyway and expose the truth, you’re going to face all the potential problems Dendrin mentioned. Of course you could just keep up the lie about Dendrin, but that seems to be defeating your original purpose. > You perform the ritual and tell the truth The whole point of this is to free the shadows from the lie. They’ll be pissed at first and there will probably be violence, but you see this will be for the best in the long run. You get up and gather the books you’ve been studying and go over one more time this ritual you have planned. You don’t even know if it’ll even work, but you’re fairly certain you haven’t gotten any of the magic words or signs wrong. You send a general announcement out that after all assassination missions have been completed, no more are to be given and that all shadows are to remain at the temple until the Ritual of Ascension is to be completed. (Which is what you’ve called it, because you’re practically performing the same thing just with some of your own alterations) Many of the shadows immediately cheer at the news, others aren’t entirely sure what you’re talking about which isn’t surprising since the Ascension Ritual isn’t common knowledge to the newer shadows. Still when you explain it, they all seem excited about the plan. When the time comes you stand outside the temple in front of the several hundred shadows with their heads down in prayer. From the ones nearly as old as you to the ones that are barely out of the crib, all shadows are lending their own energy to your own in the effort of pulling off this historical moment. Talia stands by your side as always. You look at her and wonder if you would’ve even come this far if you hadn’t fallen in love with her. Lately you’ve been a bit distant with her, but you promise that’ll change when this is all over. “We are shadows! We have endured for centuries no matter what the struggles. From before the Empire and through it, and after it’s inevitable demise. We will continue to thrive in the years to come. We feel we are ready for this power. I feel we are ready. This is the destiny of the shadows!” you say and then begin the incantations. Most of your people recite what you say in unison while others stand at the far ends and chant supporting verses, which are essential to the ritual. Talia is also chanting yet another portion of it while making gestures with her hands to begin the first part of opening up the portal to Dendrin’s realm. This part is almost like the initiation ritual, but of course much more complex and involved. A large portal opens up above all of you and even with the sky already in perpetual darkness; it seems to get even darker. There is no wind or lightning or anything that most would connect with such a grand attempt altering reality. Instead, it just gets very dark and you start to feel a tingling numbness. You begin to see some of the shadows fall to the ground. You don’t know if they’ve died or just fainted. None of them are deterred though; they all continue to perform their parts for as long as they are able. This is like one of your personal encounters with Dendrin when you’ve slept, but instead everyone is experiencing it in the real world. You begin to feel all five of your senses becoming non-existent and the numbness is close to complete at this point. Eventually you can’t even see most of the shadows in front of you and you can hardly hear them anymore. Still you know you’re on the right path, the blackness is engulfing everything. You briefly look over at Talia who is barely visible now. She continues to chant like a true believer that she’s always been. A few minutes pass and you soon can’t hear anything except your own voice now and even that is very faint, though you can’t be sure it’s due to losing your hearing or your voice. Probably both. You look over one more time at Talia who you see start to teeter from exhaustion. You see her look over at you as well before you lose sight of her completely to the blackness. You continue to silently chant while your mind fights the fatigue you’re experiencing. It feels like you’ve been doing this forever, but you have to finish. You wonder what’s happening to everyone else. You wonder if they’re still alive. You wonder if Talia is still alive. “Decided to go through with it after all eh? I thought you might.” you hear inside your head. It’s Dendrin, you can’t talk to him though, you need to focus since you’re going into the part of the ritual that you’ve created yourself with other non-shadow incantations. “Eternal, are you sure this is even going to work? Perhaps you should stop before you continue any further.” And now you know that you’ve made the right decision. He’s trying to talk you out it. “Eternal, are you sure this is what you want?” Of course it is. This is what will be for the best for the shadows. You’ve been their true master for over decades now. They would’ve ultimately been destroyed without you. When you’re gone the shadows will fall prey to something else, whether it be from external forces or internal ones. Dendrin doesn’t give a shit about them despite his fondness for you. By doing this, they’ll always be strong and independent of him whether they know it or not. You begin the finishing lines of the ritual. “Very well, I can see you have made your decision.” With those last words you succumb to absolute numbness and pass out. Hours later you awaken to Talia’s face staring at you along with several other shadows. “Thank Dendrin, he’s still alive.” You hear Gannon say. “My love are you all right?” Talia asks. Yes. Yes I’m fine, just a little disorientated. How is everything else? Did it work?” “Well I suppose so. I mean we all feel a little different now. Some have expressed an increase in magical abilities. What exactly was the ritual supposed to do?” Talia asks. “It was to make us more powerful and our shadow magic stronger.” You say. “You mean like make our link stronger to Dendrin?” “More like the opposite.” “What do you mean?” As you attempt to explain what you did and why you did it the reactions are varied but most are not positive. Some of them are in such a state of shock they don’t know what to think. Others are angry to the point of saying you have damned them all in the eyes of Dendrin. Others are angrier that you were lying to them this whole time. Faith is a powerful thing and when you directly challenge it like you’ve just done, it tends to result in bad things. Talia herself can’t even look at you, she leaves your side as an angry mob of shadows begins to close in on you. You tell them all to back off before you’re forced to destroy them, then you call them a bunch of ingrates that should be thankful for what you’ve done. This goes over about as well as can be expected. You end up vaporizing several shadows to ash and wounding many severely before you’re eventually mobbed and restrained. They don’t even give you the dignity of stabbing you to death, one of the shadows smashes your head with a rock and you crumple to the ground feeling the countless kicks and punches to your body. Eventually you’re beaten to a bloody pulp, but the shadows continue to torment your body in death by ripping it apart and throwing it to the Sul Monkeys. The order of the shadows doesn’t survive too much longer after your gruesome death. Most shadows are unable to come to grips with reality and commit suicide. The more cynical ones simply walk away and pursue new lives as independent “shadow wizards.” Some of the more fanatical ones descend into outright insanity and continue to worship Dendrin and commit increasingly bizarre and bloody acts in order to “regain his favor”. Talia ends up leading a group like this for a while before she finally loses it completely and kills herself. As for Dendrin he sticks around to watch the final death throes of the religion he once posed as a god for, and when it’s finally over he moves on to new and more entertaining things.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 75 “Do you really believe you can separate yourself from me? You think that you can actually steal my power without consequence?” Dendrin asks. “Yes, I have figured out a way and you will do nothing about it. You know why? Because you are a being of much power sure, but you and I know that you are no god and. More importantly we would not even be stealing any power from you, because I also know you are not even native to the shadow realm; you are merely using it as a source to act as a god. In my years of study, I have come to learn what you truly are and that is a Yequk, a whimsical being of the planes that loves to leech of the energy of a plane. Your kind also has a tendency to masquerade as gods or demons for amusement purposes and will bestow magic powers to those who believe in you or in my case, for the hell of it.” You reply. There is silence for a while, but eventually Dendrin speaks. “Well done Eternal, I always thought I would manage to make you a believer though. I always thought that eventually you would come around, and for a while it looked it like you might, but ultimately you resisted. I suppose it’s my own fault for not killing you immediately, but your potential for amusement value was too great to resist. However even with this knowledge do you really believe the shadows will survive without me granting them powers?” “The shadows could directly draw upon the source of the shadow realm under the right circumstances. Circumstances that I have finally unlocked, all I need to do is perform the ritual.” “Well, it looks like you’ve got it all figured out Eternal. I just hope there aren’t any unforeseen consequences to your plan…” “Is that supposed to be a threat?” “Perhaps, but not necessarily one from me because let’s face it what would be the point? No, I believe your problem is of more mortal matters.” “The shadows will follow me in performing the ritual.” “Oh of that I have no doubt, you know why? Because you’ll tell them what you’ve always told them, that it’s my will that must be carried out! But tell me this Eternal, what is the point of this endeavor if I am most likely going to be worshipped anyway? Do you really believe that you can just expose the truth so easily? If you could, you would’ve done so long ago.” “No! Now is different, because I can actually do something about it. I can show the shadows that they don’t need you to sustain their powers. That’s the whole point of this.” “No, the whole point of this is I’m the only enemy that you’ve never been fully able to beat. You’ve denied me, you’ve ignored me, you’ve blatantly insulted me and you’ve even changed the religion to something that you prefer better…though I always agreed with what you did in that aspect. This whole thing is nothing more than an attempt to defeat me before you die of old age and it’s a pointless endeavor based on your pride if you ask me.” “Well nobody asked you.” you say starting to get angry. “I genuinely don’t understand what your problem is, because we’ve ALL benefited from this arrangement. You’ve even called on me for help in the past.” “Moments of weakness, I assure you.” “Yes, I’m sure seeing as you’ve been hung up on the whole instilling fear into everyone and no room for the weak type of thing for the past couple of decades. Your problem started when you started believing in your own rhetoric. YOU want to be the one that the shadows worship. YOU want to be the god of fear and shadows. You don’t want to share any of the credit with me.” “And why should I? I’m the one whose really been guiding them all these years! You’ve done absolutely nothing! They’d all be fucking dead if you had your way! You even admitted as much. You’ve claimed on several occasions that you’ve been bored of the shadows for years and you’ve only taken a more direct interest in them recently because I came along.” “While all of that may be true, what you’re forgetting is I’ve been guiding them a lot longer than you have. I gave them purpose for centuries! And what did you think other shadow masters were doing all those years? Twiddling their thumbs? No they were also guiding the shadows! You think you’re not the only shadow master to have these sorts of feelings? You already know by Master Ebon’s own dying admission that he never spoke to me and lied the whole time. You really think other shadow masters didn’t have their own doubts of whether I was a god, or even existed? You’re just the first one to figure out the entire truth and let the bitterness get to you. So by all means perform your little magic ritual and tap directly into the power of this shadow realm. I’m sure it’ll be a success, but you will never be free of the religion tied to it. My name will always be attached to the shadows. Perhaps now more than ever, for a day may have soon come that I would’ve abandoned the shadows entirely and moved on to other things. On that day, they would’ve lost all their powers and undoubtedly the organization would’ve soon collapsed afterwards. Now? You’re going to give them access to the power directly whether I’m here or not. Who do you think is going to still be worshipped? That’s right.” “So I’ll risk exposing the truth.” You say in an attempt to continue to be defiant. “Before or after the ritual? If its before, you’re not even going to get a chance to complete it because you’ll be strung up as a heretic or you’ll be forced to kill them all. I doubt even your own mate would side with you even if she and possibly a few others might suspect you’re right. Faith is a powerful thing and you know this. If it’s after the ritual, you might have better success, but I doubt it. At best you’ll end up getting utter chaos because you’ll get rogue shadows that will see no reason to be part of the group anymore. Just think about those in the past that dared to oppose the status quo like Theo, Yvette or even Shade. Don’t you think there will be MORE dissident types when they know there is absolutely no chance of them losing their powers now? The shadows will eventually splinter apart through selfishness. Of course perhaps you don’t care, but I think you do care about the shadows more than you let on sometimes. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be making such a grand effort of trying to free them from me.” You hate it when Dendrin makes good points and this time he’s made several. “I’m…not going to win this one am I?” you say. “My advice? You’d be better off letting this one go. You’re a mortal and have limitations. Enjoy what little time you have left. But it’s your choice, and I’ve always believed that you work better without guidance, so do what you will.” You wake up from your mental ordeal and sit up placing your head within your hands trying to come to grips with your own short sightedness. It’s almost enough to make you cry. “What’s wrong? You seem upset. Bad dream?” Talia asks when she sees you after rousing from her own sleep. “No…I…no. I’m fine. Just still tired I guess.” You lay back down and Talia soon goes back to sleep. You’re left wondering what you’re going to do, but it all seems so pointless now no matter what you decide. If you go ahead with the ritual anyway and expose the truth, you’re going to face all the potential problems Dendrin mentioned. Of course you could just keep up the lie about Dendrin, but that seems to be defeating your original purpose. > You perform the ritual and keep up the lie It’s not the most ideal plan that you had, but at least if you perform the ritual, the shadows won’t be left in the lurch whenever Dendrin decides to cut out on them. Sure they’ll still be paying tribute to an uncaring and possibly empty god, but then again haven’t they always? You get up and gather the books you’ve been studying and go over one more time this ritual you have planned. You don’t even know if it’ll even work, but you’re fairly certain you haven’t gotten any of the magic words or signs wrong. It suddenly occurs to you that maybe you should also create a new initiation ritual too. It won’t be necessary for new recruits to be brainwashed into meeting with Dendrin anymore, in fact it would probably be a hindrance. And that’s when you suddenly realize a bunch of things you can’t believe you overlooked! You’re not going to “beat” Dendrin in your lifetime. He probably won’t even be beaten decades after your death, but you still have time to set the plans to do it now. First things first though. You send a general announcement out that after all assassination missions have been completed, no more are to be given and that all shadows are to remain at the temple until the Ritual of Ascension is to be completed. (Which is what you’ve called it, because you’re practically performing the same thing just with some of your own alterations) Many of the shadows immediately cheer at the news, others aren’t entirely sure what you’re talking about which isn’t surprising since the Ascension Ritual isn’t common knowledge to the newer shadows. Still when you explain it, they all seem excited about the plan. When the time comes you stand outside the temple in front of the several hundred shadows with their heads down in prayer. From the ones nearly as old as you to the ones that are barely out of the crib, all shadows are lending their own energy to your own in the effort of pulling off this historical moment. Talia stands by your side as always. You look at her and wonder if you would’ve even come this far if you hadn’t fallen in love with her. Lately you’ve been a bit distant with her, but you promise that’ll change when this is all over. “Dendrin, we are your shadows! We have served your will for centuries no matter what the struggles. From before the Empire and through it, and after it’s inevitable demise. We will always be your faithful servants in the years to come. We feel we are ready for this power. I feel we are ready. This is the destiny of the shadows!” you say and then begin the incantations. Most of your people recite what you say in unison while others stand at the far ends and chant supporting verses, which are essential to the ritual. Talia is also chanting yet another portion of it while making gestures with her hands to begin the first part of opening up the portal to Dendrin’s realm. This part is almost like the initiation ritual, but of course much more complex and involved. A large portal opens up above all of you and even with the sky already in perpetual darkness; it seems to get even darker. There is no wind or lightning or anything that most would connect with such a grand attempt altering reality. Instead, it just gets very dark and you start to feel a tingling numbness. You begin to see some of the shadows fall to the ground. You don’t know if they’ve died or just fainted. None of them are deterred though; they all continue to perform their parts for as long as they are able. This is like one of your personal encounters with Dendrin when you’ve slept, but instead everyone is experiencing it in the real world. You begin to feel all five of your senses becoming non-existent and the numbness is close to complete at this point. Eventually you can’t even see most of the shadows in front of you and you can hardly hear them anymore. Still you know you’re on the right path, the blackness is engulfing everything. You briefly look over at Talia who is barely visible now. She continues to chant like a true believer that she’s always been. A few minutes pass and you soon can’t hear anything except your own voice now and even that is very faint, though you can’t be sure it’s due to losing your hearing or your voice. Probably both. You look over one more time at Talia who you see start to teeter from exhaustion. You see her look over at you as well before you lose sight of her completely to the blackness. You continue to silently chant while your mind fights the fatigue you’re experiencing. It feels like you’ve been doing this forever, but you have to finish. You wonder what’s happening to everyone else. You wonder if they’re still alive. You wonder if Talia is still alive. “Decided to go through with it after all eh? I thought you might.” you hear inside your head. It’s Dendrin, you can’t talk to him though, you need to focus since you’re going into the part of the ritual that you’ve created yourself with other non-shadow incantations. “Eternal, are you sure this is even going to work? Perhaps you should stop before you continue any further.” And now you know that you’ve made the right decision. He’s trying to talk you out it. “Eternal, are you sure this is what you want?” Of course it is. This is what will be for the best for the shadows. You’ve been their true master for over decades now. They would’ve ultimately been destroyed without you. When you’re gone the shadows will fall prey to something else, whether it be from external forces or internal ones. Dendrin doesn’t give a shit about them despite his fondness for you. By doing this, they’ll always be strong and independent of him whether they know it or not. You begin the finishing lines of the ritual. “Very well, I can see you have made your decision.” With those last words you succumb to absolute numbness and pass out. Hours later you awaken to Talia’s face staring at you along with several other shadows. “Thank Dendrin, he’s still alive.” You hear Gannon say. “My love are you all right?” Talia asks. “Yes. Yes I’m fine, just a little disorientated. How is everything else? Did it work?” “Well I suppose so. I mean we all feel a little different now. Some have expressed an increase in magical abilities. What exactly was the ritual supposed to do?” Talia asks. “I believe that’s what it was supposed to do, increase our abilities. The ritual was vague. Maybe it just brought us a little closer to Dendrin’s power source…allow us to tap directly into his divine energy as it were.” You say. “You mean like make our link stronger with him?” “Yes, I suppose so.” You say in a non-committal way. As you are helped up and give a squeezing hug to Talia, you realize you need to get several things in order now. You aren’t exactly young anymore and you have much to accomplish. After things have calmed down a bit and it’s back to business as usual, you announce that you will be choosing a successor. This comes somewhat of a surprise, but not entirely as you are of advanced years. You and Talia go through a list of the potential candidates and eventually you settle on a young twenty year old girl by the name of Celia. She shows much promise in her combat and magic abilities and Glen had been considering her as a Blade before you picked her. Mentoring her begins immediately, but that isn’t your only plan. The shadows are still going to believe in Dendrin for quite some time, you don’t have years left in you to make such a large change in that system, but you have set up the foundation as best you can. So you begin to write a journal, a journal containing the truth. You intend on passing this on to Celia when you die. Hopefully you can mold her a bit in such a way that when she does read this, she’ll be strong enough to accept the truth about the shadows, about Dendrin, about all of it. It’s all a bit of a gamble, but then most of your actions have been your entire life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve got other important things to concern yourself with; you don’t have time to risk backing a potential wild card. When you decline to help her, she’s surprised. “What?! Are you serious? Since when do the shadows decline a contract?” “Why does everyone assume we take everything? We only accept deals that would be in our favor and quite frankly dealing with you seems like it would be a losing game at best, so if that’s all our business here…” “But you would be destroying an enemy!” “An enemy who as you just said is too cowardly to make a move against us. I think the status quo is working just fine right now. Now I suggest you leave before you make me angry.” Tarna stares at you for a moment and looks exasperated, but realizes there will be no convincing you. “Fine! But remember this shadow. Brenda isn’t going to be in charge forever and I will be taking power one day. You may find that declining to help me now was not a good idea. I will remember this shadow.” She says and walks out of the room. You sit there for a moment thinking, and then you get up to follow her. Just as she is storming out the front temple doors with her servants you hit her in the back with a small bolt of shadowfire, not enough to kill her, because you’re not done with her yet. Her servants attempt to run, but you tell the nearby shadows to dispose of them which they do so with ease and then drag Tarna’s body towards you. She tries to pull her sword out, but her hand is stepped on by a shadow and then her sword taken away completely. Despite all this, she remains defiant. “Fool! You kill me and you’ll have the entire might of Nalin on your head! You really think I won’t be missed?” “Not really. I know for a fact, you were on a mission to meet with the High Council of the Freelands before you came on this little detour. I mean come on; you came here to hire us to assassinate your master. You weren’t going to report your sidetrip here. Even if you have co-conspirators back home, I doubt if any of them have the balls you do and they’ll most likely keep quiet about your disappearance. Oh they may very well try to blame the shadows for your death, but I believe at worst, Brenda will assume you were killed by bandits in the wilderness of the Freelands.” “You assume much, shadow.” “Perhaps, but just to be safe, I’ll keep you around for maybe a few months. Just in case a Nalin army does come sniffing around, then I can drag your ragged ass out in chains where you can fully admit you were plotting treachery to them first hand and prove that not only did we not act against the Nalin Empire, but in fact helped it…heh heh. Who knows? Maybe it’ll even be a brand new era of peace between our two people.” Tarna is starting to break at this point, she’s starting to realize that she has vastly overstepped her bounds. “You…you really think they’ll believe that? You really think I would admit it?” “Oh yes, because IF they do arrive, you’ll tell them everything and practically be begging them to execute you if only to end the nightmares you’ll soon experience.” you say and then move your face closer to hers. “I can sense your fear…funny how you should feel it only now when its too late. Take her away.” Nobody will come for her, you’re sure of it. Now with that out of the way you can get back to your own plans. Aggressively pursuing conflict with the magiocracy is probably going to be a violation of your agreement with them, but with Skog’s help you don’t see any need to worry. As for Skog, he’s very much like his father in that he knows a good deal when it presents itself. The shadows will follow as long as you tell them that Dendrin commands it. You’ll get no dissent, that hasn’t been a problem in quite some time. You begin to make the preparations. Year 66 “We’ve completely looted the magiocracy’s treasury of their most prized magic items and tomes. Some of them are items we lost long ago, but most of it is stuff we’ve never seen before. Possibly old Empire.” Glen tells you as he hands you a few books. “Makes sense. Most of those mages running that place were ex-Empire after all. Well good, our mission was a success then. I trust the magiocracy is probably on its death knell?” “It is Shadow Master. While it hasn’t collapsed completely yet, I believe Skog’s rabble is doing its best to make sure it stomps out.” “Good. Just bring in the rest of the stuff and we’ll sort through it. That’ll be all for now.” Glen nods and takes his leave. As you leaf through the pages of one of the books, Talia addresses you. “When are we going to hold the ceremony for all those shadows lost in the service of Dendrin?” “Huh? Oh, I dunno, soon I suppose. You can take care of those details.” You say without looking up. “…I will…but…” “What?” you say starting to get annoyed. “Well you could show a little more sympathy. I mean these brave shadows died. Our brothers and sisters died. They should at least be given the honor and respect they deserve.” “Talia, they died serving Dendrin. That’s what they’re SUPPOSED to do. By all means have the ceremony honoring the dead, but I have other living concerns that require immediate attention.” “And that’s the other thing I’ve been wanting to speak to you about. I’ve noticed over the years, you have become obsessed with magic of all kinds. You pour over the old shadow tomes even more than I do. In fact I practically have to snatch them out of your hands if I need to look up something at times. You’ve also become much colder and distant. It’s almost like you don’t even care about any of us anymore and see us all as minions and henchmen. You talk about spreading fear to our enemies and how it is Dendrin’s will, but is it absolutely necessary to treat your fellow shadows in the same manner?” “Talia, I never treat you with anything other than respect and honor. You know that.” “For now, but I’m not talking about just me. I’m talking about everyone else. Look I know you’re the chosen of Dendrin and you know his plan better than anyone, but have you become so far removed that you don’t even feel a shred of empathy anymore? I mean remember Master Ebon? He cared for all of us…” “He’s also dead, so I don’t see how following his example is going to get us anywhere the shadows need to be which is what I’m trying to accomplish. You say that I’m far removed from the rest, when in actuality I’ve been trying to keep my knowledge of my surroundings to damn near omnipotent level. I’ve kept the shadows thriving by implementing changes. Changes that Dendrin obviously agrees with, but what you don’t realize, what none of you realize is that I’m trying to accomplish something that will establish shadow survival long after I’ve shuffled off this mortal realm.” “And what is that exactly? You mind at least telling me?” “I’m talking about transcending.” Talia pauses and thinks she knows what you’re talking about. “Are…are you talking about performing the ritual of ascension?” She’s only partially right. You’ve read through the ritual and while you don’t exactly understand all of it, you believe that you should only implement a large part of it. You do not believe it is the direction the shadows need to go and you are still seeking out a way to alter it to suit what you want to accomplish. “I cannot give you an answer yet as I’m still working on the specifics, but rest assured you will be the first to know when I figure everything out. Just trust me as you would trust in Dendrin. Have I ever lead the shadows wrong? And if I was doing something wrong, would Dendrin not smite me?” Once again invoking Dendrin’s lack of action towards you manages to convince Talia that whatever you’re planning it must be for the greater good of the shadows. And you are, just not for Dendrin’s sake. > You twilight of the Eternals (Year 73) It’s been a strange year. You’ve outlived two more of the original Eternals. In both cases it was suicide and oddly enough, for similar reasons. The ruler of the Nalin Empire, Warden Matron Brenda was found dead by her own hand earlier this year. It was quite the big event, but it doesn’t look like it’ll fall into chaos though, as there was already another successor established soon after Tarna went “missing.” You always knew nobody was going to come looking for her, hell perhaps Brenda knew of her treachery and just gave her the rope to hang herself with. Brenda apparently left no explanation other than how she had wanted to join her beloved Roldan at last and had grown weary of life without him. Right now you’re in the attendance of the burial ceremony for Cyrus who did the same thing. Dravin died last year of natural causes and you know it was a major loss for Cyrus who had been with him so long. Still you thought he’d get over it eventually, but then again what else did he really have? After you established your undisputed dominance as well as crippling him, the only thing that he had to keep him going was Dravin and his faith in Dendrin. And his faith was probably a lot less than it once was given all that had happened to him. Really Dravin was his only constant and the only one who had stuck by him. Perhaps it was an eternal thing? Something within that causes eternals pre-disposed to suicide after losing their mate? Still not likely since Brenda went on for decades and none of the new eternals display such behavior, though granted they were created in a much different manner than the originals. Also while you love Talia, you can’t imagine killing yourself if she died. You’d morn certainly, but you’d have to carry on. Especially with what you’re attempting to accomplish. You briefly wonder if that means you love her less, but you dismiss such thoughts, after all if every person committed suicide after the death of their own mates there would be a hell of a lot less people in the world. You wonder if you died if Talia would end her life. You certainly hope she wouldn’t and would go on with living life. There are enough things trying to kill you without doing it yourself. Now you and Talia are the last of the originals and it’s a bit of a sobering thought. You were bred to serve the Empire and neither of you ever did. You’ve outlived the Empire, you’ve outlived all the other original eternals and you’ve outlived several shadows you once considered friends and peers. People like Murk. Like Bianca. Like Brother Gray. It all seems so long ago. You can’t even remember their faces anymore. You’ve even managed to outlive most of the second-generation eternals. A handful of them still live, but it seems funny that barely any of them have survived up to this point when there were so many more than the first generation. The age old “They don’t make them like they used to” statement you suppose could apply here. As you stand and stare at Cyrus’ body you don’t even know you’re here. He’s dead and that’s that. You’ve got much more important things to do. You very nearly didn’t bother to come, but Talia’s insistence was a large part of your attendance. “Well Cyrus, I always thought it would come to one of us killing the other, and I suppose it nearly did a couple times, but it would seem fate had other ideas.” You quietly say to Cyrus’ body. Okay perhaps the other part of your attendance was out of the genuine respect you once had for him. “(Sigh) You’re an idiot. You didn’t need to kill yourself. What did it accomplish? I could’ve still used your help on certain things. You weren’t useless you know, you were always loyal despite everything.” Perhaps your attendance was out the genuine respect you STILL have for him. “Now you’re useless of course. Now I have to have someone else look after the temple security. Heh. You probably killed yourself just to inconvenience me. Bastard. Good one though.” You chuckle. You take one last look at Cyrus. He does look peaceful. Free of worry, concerns, and all of that other shit. He probably thought he was going to meet Dravin in the shadow realm where Dendrin holds a party for all loyal shadows. Of course that’s a fool’s idea. You know the truth about Dendrin and you need to get back to that particular problem right now. “So long Cyrus…my brother.” You say and take your leave.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 55 You wake up with yet another permanent ache in your body. Getting old really sucks and it probably doesn’t help that you’ve spent decades fighting all your life. Who knows how many broken bones, deep cuts, head blows and other bodily trauma you’ve had. However, you’re probably more fit than most people your age and your magic ability is certainly a great equalizer. You go over some of the newest contract requests and one catches your eye due to it suffering from multiple misspellings and the murdering of language in general. When you see that it’s from Flog you’re a little impressed that he was able to write as well as he did. From what you can make out in the horribly written letter, he wants to meet with some of your people because he’s got a major problem on his hands and he hopes that seeing as he once helped you fight the Empire, you’d help him out in return. You shake your head at that remark considering that as you recall you basically spared his life in exchange for his support. He doesn’t go into specifics about who he wants killed, but he goes on to say that he’s acquired a lot of wealth in his “conquest” of Rask. A bit of stretching the truth since while its true he owns the biggest stretch on territory there, the area is far from conquered. Amusingly he wants you to meet him at Blood Tooth, which is apparently what he renamed Evergloom after he moved in years after you left. He states he’ll go into more specifics then, mainly because he doesn’t want the letter possibly falling into the wrong hands and also because all this writing makes his brain hurt. He also mentions that while it isn’t necessary, he’d prefer to meet with you personally since he’s confident in your abilities to get the job done. You can’t help but smile a little at that last statement. “You’re not going are you?” Talia asks. "Why not? I’ve been running the shadows for this long and I haven’t even taken a contract myself. Seems a bit hypocritical don’t you think?” “You’re the Shadow Master, you don’t need to concern yourself with such things.” “Maybe, but I’ve always believed that a leader really should lead by example and I’ve done that for the most part.” “What about that incident with the dark elves?” “Eh, I actually didn’t even plan that and it really doesn’t count. I just think I need to go on this one.” “You just want to prove that you aren’t getting old. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you been mentioning it lately.” “Yeah…well maybe. But still…hey why don’t you come with me?” “Me?” “Well why not? Flog’s always liked you and it’ll probably make the meeting go over better. Besides, you should be keeping your abilities up as well.” “Excuse me, but I continue to spar with the Blades every day.” “And so do I, but it isn’t enough unless their real danger involved. Come on, you mean to say you don’t miss the old days just a little bit?” “Not particularly, but I see that this is important to you, so I shall accompany you, but aren’t you concerned about this being a trap?” “Not really, no. While Flog has always been a little more cunning than the average orc and an opportunistic fool, he’s never been suicidal. I’m pretty sure he knows if he tried to ambush me, it wouldn’t end well for him. Even if he managed to succeed, he also knows that the full force of the shadows would hunt him down personally and with as many enemies as he probably has I doubt if he needs to add more. Besides if it is an ambush, that’ll just make things more interesting and Dendrin’s always looking out for us anyway.” Your flip remark about Dendrin gets a nod in agreement by Talia who doesn’t take it as a flip remark, but rather that you’re being genuine. “Well I suppose there is that and as the chosen of Dendrin you’d be even better protected, but who is going to be running things while we’re gone?” “I don’t think we’re going to be gone for that long, but Cyrus can do it. Not like he goes on many missions anymore either.” This is true. Ever since the incident with the dark elves, Cyrus and Dravin started becoming more withdrawn. Granted Dravin was never an extrovert, but with Cyrus it’s a little sad. It’s like you completely crushed his spirit that day. He lost his unofficial position as leader of the Blades due to the permanent limp you gave him and resigned himself to keeping up on internal security. Sometimes you feel a little bad about it, but you believe that in the long run it was a good thing. Cyrus, even though he’d pledged himself to you still harbored a bit of willfulness that was starting to come back. If allowed to flourish longer, he may have become more of a problem and would have had to been killed. Though perhaps his current fate is worse than death. When you approach Cyrus about the situation with Flog, he’s surprised that you’re going, let alone putting him in charge of the temple until you get back. He of course agrees and wishes you luck. Given how Flog was never his favorite person, you wonder why he didn’t at least express the same concerns about meeting with him like Talia did, and then it occurs to you that perhaps he’s hoping you do get killed. In any event, you’re not going to worry about it. You instead hand pick some of the best Blades to come with you to Blood Tooth and set off on your journey as soon as possible. The journey to Rask is fairly uneventful. While you mostly keep to the off beaten trails, you know most in Quala are wise enough to not attack a group of shadows even if they did see you. The “stable” leader of northern Quala, First Mage Galen has practically bent over backwards to stay on your good side. You sort of wonder if that is who Flog wants you to assassinate considering all the back and forth attempts at conquest into each other’s realms by the pair of them. If it is, then he better have a hell of a lot of money. When you reach the Rask it mostly looks very much how it did when you left it. Much of it untouched wilderness though the occasional battlefield markings are apparent. Some are even fairly recent. “Hey Flog didn’t say anything about safe passage did he in his letter?” Talia asks. “No, but I don’t think he’d be able to enforce it very well anyway. You know how tribal orcs are, even under a strong leader they tend towards chaotic acts.” “Well as you said, I suppose that’ll make things more interesting. Actually a battle would probably warm me up right about now. I think I got too used to the heat, though I wasn’t exactly fond of the freezing cold back in the old days either.” “Really? I kind of preferred it, but we’re going to be making camp soon, we can warm up a little then.” Later that night at your campsite you take first watch. You can’t really rest anyway since your body aches a bit. As the night goes on, you remember back to the time when you doing this as a regular thing, seems like a lifetime ago. As you lose yourself in the past a bit you suddenly hear a noise. Like howling, but it isn’t from any sort of wolf that you’ve ever heard. Doesn’t even sound like a natural one and it sounds pretty close by. “Everyone get up!” you shout with your weapon drawn. As everyone starts to get up ready for battle, more of those howls can be heard. They’re nearly painful at this point and several of you are clutching at least one of your ears. “What the hell is that?” Talia shouts. “Not sure, but we’re about to find out.” You say as all of you form a back-to-back circle for defense. Several glowing red eyes appear in the dark forest around you, when your assailants finally show themselves, they are in the form of orcs, but more feral and savage looking (even for orcs). “You think Flog set this up?” Talia asks you while eyeing her closest possible attacker. “Let’s worry about it afterwards.” You say and the orcs attack. You’ve had to fight a few unruly orcs in the past and though its been awhile, you know their tactics wouldn’t have switched up that much. They almost lope at you and circle around you like an animal would, in fact animalistic is the best way to describe them since at this range you can see they aren’t even wearing much clothing beyond a loin cloth and a few grisly trophies in the form of bloody body parts. Their hands resemble claws and some of them aren’t even attacking with weapons at all and are just using their nails, which are unnaturally long for orcs. You cross swords with one of them and even while speeding yourself up, it’s still nearly matching you blow for blow. Its face is close enough for you to get the good look and it’s contorted looking with an extra wide mouth filled with teeth. Whatever the hell this thing is, it isn’t any kind of orc you’ve ever seen or encountered. You muster up all your strength and land a powerful strike against the orc’s head nearly severing the top part of it completely. It attempts to still attack you, flailing its arms wildly and still making that horrible howling sound. Then you hear a whispery voice in your mind. At first you think its Dendrin, but then you’re not asleep and you don’t feel the same numbness, but rather the exact opposite. A sharp pain in your head. “The battle is lost mortal. You cannot kill us. You must submit to us, it is the only way to save yourself.” You look around to see Talia and most of the other shadows still fighting, but you also see a couple of them clutching their heads and falling to the ground in pain. These definitely aren’t orcs you’re fighting considering they’re using some sort of psychic attack. You could either try to finish off the rest of the orcs to stop the attacks or cast a shield over the minds of you and your shadows, though its very difficult to concentrate right now. > You finish them off You’re having a hard enough time concentrating as it is, you aren’t going to waste time trying to cast a spell. Besides you got by just fine without magic in the past and if you kill them all quick enough the danger will be over. You quickly kill the orc that Talia is fighting and just in time too since she is visibly exhausted from the battle. “Are you all right?” “Yeah…I just…my head…” “Stay out of the way and just keep fighting it, this’ll be over soon.” You say and Talia staggers over to a nearby tree out of the way of the major fighting. You dispatch another orc and then another and then another, but the voices seem to be growing more numerous and more powerful. “You cannot win! Cease your struggle! You are…” “SHUT UP!” you yell out as you run your sword through the neck of another orc. You barely avoid another attack, but not from an orc, but rather from one of your own shadows. When you see his face up close it has that same unnaturally wide mouth filled with sharp teeth. Its at that point you realize what you’re dealing with, wendigos. You briefly read about them in Kane’s journal after you took Fort Destiny. They’re evil spirits that constantly crave flesh and possess bodies of the living, which explains why the voices have been getting stronger as you’ve been depriving them of bodies. Now they’ve hopped into the bodies of your shadows. You go on the defensive and put up a good fight despite being outnumbered and assaulted physically and mentally, but it all comes to an end when you suddenly feel a strong force hit your back and then through your body and out your chest. You look down to see a clawed hand drenched in blood and what looks to be part of your heart. The claw is pulled back out and you fall to the snow dead. Talia gobbles up your heart before joining the rest of the shadows devouring your body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Theo might mean well, but you’re a firm believer that simple plans often work best and since you’ve got the last word, you’re sticking with your original plan. “It’s a good idea Theo, but I believe it may stir up more attention towards us, if we start attempting to convert people outside Delerg. It may even cause certain warlords to unite against us if they believe us to be threatening enough. Better that we keep our presence to a minimum and especially not try to contact any of them directly. What I want you to do instead is to just keep an eye on Anu and Sam since they’re close by, but since they seem to be content on bashing each other in the head just send some Blades to perform sabotage on both sides just to keep them mired down.” “As you wish Shadow Master.” Theo remarks. “The western Quala warlords seem pretty occupied as well so we don’t need to deal with them either. General Ackerson though I want assassinated. I know he’s attempting to expand into Rask, but the man is the biggest threat as far as powers in Quala and I don’t want him to improve that position in the future. Cyrus, since you’re really eager about doing this, I’m going to leave it up to you who to send, but I imagine you’ll want to oversee things personally.” “It will be done Shadow Master, and thank you.” “I believe that’s about it, we can go over more details one on one later.” After the meeting Talia speaks to you directly. “You sure you want to leave it to Cyrus? I would’ve thought you would’ve wanted to handle something so important yourself.” “I’m confident that Cyrus can do the job efficiently. If nothing else he’s enthusiastic for things like this. I thought about going too, but I’m slowly begining to realize I’ll be needing to delegate and remaining at this temple more. Besides I’m sure there will be other opportunities to go kill someone. Never seems to be a shortage in fact.” “Well that’s true.” “I’m thinking I’ll spend more time looking after the security within the Delerg province. I mean yes we have potential enemies outside the province, but it doesn’t hurt to keep alert in our homestead.” “I suppose not, but we’re pretty well liked here.” “Perhaps, but if I’ve learned anything, its that enemies can exist anywhere of you look hard enough.” Over the next few days your initial plans go off quite well. General Ackerson is assassinated successfully and there wasn’t even any indication there was shadow involvement. As of now his group is fighting amongst itself and no longer united. Captain Anu and Sam Jowin have each been suffering set backs and of course blaming each other for them. You then relent a bit to let the chaos do its work in Quala until it looks like the place is going to stabilize once again and that’s when you send in shadows to create strife again. It becomes routine just like any of the prayer sessions for Dendrin. Of course as good as the shadows are, you can’t go undetected forever and eventually someone catches on to what’s really been going happening… “There’s a huddled mass of people outside the temple, Shadow Master. We’re keeping them out obviously, but their speaker really wants to see you.” Brother Gannon says to you. “Who are these people?” “Mostly peasants I believe, but they aren’t from Delerg, they’re from Quala. Under Sam’s dominion I think. They say they want our help.” “Our help? What’s bringing this on and what makes them think we’re going to help a bunch of unbelievers?” Cyrus asks. In fact you all are wondering what this is all about. “Well I guess the best way to find out is to ask them. Send in their speaker and keep the rest outside. If anything looks suspicious kill them all.” You say. Brother Gannon nods and waves in the Qualans’ speaker. While you expect a grubby peasant with dirty clothing to come shuffling in, you instead get a young man dressed in leather armor. Despite his warrior garb he’s nervous. He’s trying his best to be brave, but you sense the fear in him. “Well? Out with it, you traveled a long way just to waste our time.” Talia remarks. “Yes, my apologies, um Shadowlord is it?” “Shadow Master actually, but let’s just get on with why you saw fit to lead a bunch of peasants here and why you think we can even help you.” you say. “Oh yes that. My name is Flynn and we all live in the Quala Freelands, which as you know is run by Sam Jowin. I myself am a soldier of relatively low rank…and uh…look there’s no easy way of saying this so I guess I’ll get right to it. We want you to kill Sam.” You have to admit this wasn’t exactly the sort of help you thought they were going to ask for. You and the rest of your council look at each other before you speak again. “And why do you think we would do that?” “Because you routinely sabotage our side and Captain Anu’s? Because you were most likely involved in the assassination of General Ackerson? It wasn’t apparent at first, but…” “Now stop right there for a moment Flynn, and think very carefully on your next words.” “I…I’m sorry Shadow Master, but I do not know any other way to put this.” “Very well then, let me help you. Even if we were involved in such activities and that’s not an admission, what still makes you think that we would be willing to assassinate your beloved leader?” “He’s NOT a beloved leader! Sam is no better than the tyrannical Emperor that ruled over us before! I will admit during his freedom fighter days he was an inspiration, but now? He’s just another petty warlord that doesn’t give a shit about anything other than his own power!” “That’s a pretty bold statement. I knew Sam during the Empire War years and even fought along side him a couple times. He was always a fair man from what I knew of him and cared for those under his command.” Theo remarks. “Yeah, well he’s changed drastically since then, the things he’s done... the things I’ve had to do in his service…I do not even wish to think about let alone discuss. So do you need payment? We weren’t sure what we’d need to get your help. We have scraped together valuables and gold for you. I don’t know if its enough, I mean I think we could scrape a bit more, but…here’s what we got.” At this point Flynn reaches for a small pouch on his side and extends his hand towards all of you with it. Cyrus snatches it from him and reveals a few gold coins and a couple of gems of low quality. Probably a paltry amount, but then you don’t really know what the going rate is for assassination is these days never having done it for money before. “And you think we’re mere thugs for hire?” Cyrus asks throwing the pouch back at Flynn who barely catches it. “No! I mean well…we uh…are also prepared to give you a virgin girl in exchange for your help if you aren’t motivated by profit.” “A virgin girl?” Yvette asks. “Yeah, for your sacrifices to Dendrin. Isn’t that what you guys do?” At this point Cyrus gets so pissed at Flynn he punches him in the face. Theo isn’t too happy with him either and begins calling Flynn names. You on the other hand, chuckle to yourself thinking that human sacrifice might actually break up the monotony around the temple sometimes. And while you’re not seriously considering such a thing, you are seeing an opportunity here to change things up a bit. “Alright Cyrus that will do for now. This man obviously came to us for help and kicking the hell out of this poor bastard isn’t going to help matters.” “But he insulted Dendrin! And he insults the shadows by coming to us like we’re some lowly criminals!” “No this man came to us looking for skilled assassins who can get the job done right. And that’s what we are, aren’t we? I mean that’s partly how we won the war against the Empire isn’t it? If there are already rumors going around by ignorant peasants that we killed General Ackerson and have been involved in sabotage in Quala then our cover has already been blown at this point. We may as well embrace it.” “What are you saying?” Talia asks. “I’m saying that we should take this man up on his offer. However, our payment will be that he owes us a favor. In fact ALL of those that are with him today will owe us a favor. Be sure to get all their names before they leave here. It may be big, it may be small, it may never come at all, but when we call it in, they better deliver…are we agreed to this Flynn?” you say extending your hand to help him up. He’s unsure at first, but eventually he takes it and gets up. Sam must really be some sort of bastard if Flynn is agreeing to this arrangement. “I…I accept your terms Shadow Master.” “Good, it’ll be taken care of as soon as possible.” “Thank you! Thank you!” he says and starts to bow a lot while he steps backwards towards the door. “Excuse me, but where do you think you’re going?” “I was taking my leave Shadow Master.” “Not with that pouch of valuables you aren’t. They were a gift to us were they not?” “Oh…yes…of course. Here you go. My apologies Shadow Master.” Flynn says and tosses the bag to you. “Good. NOW you may go.” After Flynn leaves the temple you remind some of the Blades to get all their names down. Meanwhile your council is a little confused by your latest decision “Are you serious about this?” Theo asks. “Of course I am, if I wasn’t I wouldn’t have made the offer.” You answer. “But we’re helping unbelievers!” Cyrus says. “So? We helped them during the Empire War too, what makes now so different? I’ll tell you what makes it different, we’re actually going to be profiting from it for a change. Look if we’re going to stay safe, and I mean truly safe from external threats we need to get back on to the world stage. Staying isolated in this swamp is only going to work for so long and eventually someone is going to come here with an army and attempt to overwhelm us. Last time I checked our numbers are still low.” “Okay, but weren’t we ensuring our safety by destabilizing Quala?” Theo asks. “We were, but as I said our presence has obviously become known now. It’s nobody’s fault, it was bound to happen eventually, but that means we’ve got two options. Either we stop completely and risk Quala being united under one person who decides they want to emulate the Empire which means war in the far future. Or we continue doing what we’re doing and risk pissing everyone off to such a degree that they stop fighting each other and unite against us, which means war in the near future. Neither of those sound attractive so I’m choosing the third option.” “Which is?” Yvette asks. “We offer our services to the highest bidder. We become the go to organization for assassination. We spread so much fear and terror that nobody will ever want to attack us, they will instead wish to curry our favor in exchange for our help. And Cyrus I already see you’re about to protest and I don’t know why because you’re the first one who usually wants to go practice your killing skills on someone. I’d think you of all people would be happy with this arrangement.” “You may be right.” Cyrus says. “But what about Dendrin?” Yvette asks. “Yes! What about the integrity of this order?” Theo adds “Dendrin is the god of shadows. Why else would he give us such powers if not to use them in such a manner? But if it will calm everyone down I will certainly consult him on this matter. At this time though I have made my decision on what is best for the shadows.” None of them may see it now, but you really are taking steps to ensure the survival of the shadows. The shadows were feared during their lackey days under the Empire and during the rebellion the Empire itself learned to fear the shadows. Now? The fear still exists, but not to the extent that it needs to be. Not to the extent that it SHOULD be. You’re going to get that fear back and that reputation is what going to keep you all alive and thrive. Surely Dendrin would certainly approve of that. In fact you know that sadistic bastard would. > You adapt or die (Year 49) Theo and Yvette are brought before you restrained by two Blades each. They are heavily beaten, but still display a look of defiance on their faces. The rest of the shadows look on in anticipation of what you intend to do. Indeed some may still be in the dark about what exactly is going on. “Here they are Shadow Master, brought to you alive as you wanted.” You approach the both of them, starting with Theo first. “What’s wrong? Have you grown so drunk with power that you’ve become too lazy to do your own dirty work anymore?” Theo asks. “What’s wrong? Have you grown so cowardly that you had to conspire with other shadows rather than attempt to sink the blade in my back yourself? If I was as lazy as you claimed, I wouldn’t have been keeping track of your increasing insubordinate activity and your attempts of poisoning the minds of other shadows. Doesn’t matter though, you were useful in that regard by saving me the trouble of determining for certain those that can’t adapt with the times.” “Adapt with the times? Is that what all this is called? I call it turning away from Dendrin’s will! How can any of you follow this…mad man masquerading as a Shadow Master? We’ve become nothing more than assassins for hire and selling out our very beliefs for petty profit and corrupt favors!” “And what would YOU have us do? Continue to remain isolated in our dreary temple going through the motions of prayers all day and night until we die? The old shadows did that and look what happened, they…WE were practically enslaved by the Empire! WE were their lackies and servants for centuries! And now that we’ve finally cast off those shackles you want us to be put in a position again where that could happen again? I say never again.” Theo naturally isn’t convinced, but his fate was sealed a long time ago anyway. Yvette decides it’s her turn to speak out. “You keep saying WE as if you’re actually as shadow, but you aren’t! You’re a corruption! An abomination! You’re something the Empire grew in a lab! ALL of your kind are! You treat this order like your own private caste system, with all the Eternals at the top and us pure humans at the bottom! The Empire may be dead, but from where I’m standing its legacy still lives on to continue its tyranny over us in the form of YOU!” “That’s bullshit and you know it. Any human or Eternal can perform the same duties, I show no preferences. You and Theo were on my council. Trusted and well respected advisors that I thought were loyal. Dravin is on the council and he is human as well.” You say “Yeah, because he’s Cyrus’ bitch…” Theo mutters. This causes Cyrus to lunge at Theo so quickly that you barely manage to keep him from killing him right there. “Let us kill this traitor and be done with it!” Cyrus shouts. “Yeah, let’s get on with it, why draw it out, we all know what’s going to happen.” Theo replies. “Yes we do, but that’s not nearly as important as the journey itself.” You say. “What journey?” “This one. The one we’re on right now. Let me ask you this so that I may show a glaring flaw in your reasoning. IF I was as bad as you claim and I’ve turned the shadows from the will of Dendrin why was I not stopped? Why was I even picked to be Shadow Master? Why weren’t you able to succeed with your plan to kill me?” Theo is silent. He has no good answer, though you get the impression he wants to give you his own thoughts on the matter, but you interrupt before he can. “I’ll tell you why. Because what I’m doing here, the direction I’ve taken the shadow IS Dendrin’s will! He WANTED someone like me in charge, because face it; I’ve been a major reason why this fucking order even continues to exist! I have on more than one occasion made the hard decisions that have ensured the survival of the shadows! I fought against the very Empire, which as your wife says created me in a lab somewhere. My loyalty to the shadows and to Dendrin has ALWAYS been there if it hadn’t he wouldn’t have chosen me. You dare stand there and judge me after I’ve either directly or indirectly saved everyone here at one time or another? Nobody can judge me except Dendrin, I think you forgot that lesson.” At last you’ve pushed the buttons that cause Theo to utter the words in front of everyone that you were waiting for. “Then maybe Dendrin doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing! And maybe I’ve wasted my life following a so-called deity that doesn’t give a shit whether we live or die! Fuck you and fuck Dendrin!” Theo snarls and you give a hidden smile while the rest of the shadows either jeer at him in disgust or show a less verbal way of disapproval such as shaking their heads. “Well there you have it brothers and sisters, an unrepentant verbal admission of disloyalty, I think we can all see who has really turned from Dendrin’s will here.” You say. You say nothing else and focus on Theo’s mind as he stares at you with burning hatred. You begin to perform the same spell that Master Ebon did on Brother Shade when he tried to kill him. Theo dies in very much the same way, with his ears and nose bleeding first, followed by gasps. He never screams though. Eventually his brain explodes inside his head and he slumps down dead. You then turn to Yvette, she looks thoroughly beaten at this point and doesn’t even look at you. You were going to ask if she wishes to say anything else, but it would be pointless and besides you’ve gotten what you wanted out of this. You focus on her mind and within a few agonizing moments it’s all over for her. Afterwards you give a small speech about how this is a reminder of how traitors like Theo will always be brought to justice because Dendrin sees all and knows all. You also reassure them all of how good things have been going for the shadows since you’ve engaged in the current activities you’ve been doing and how loyalty to Dendrin will ultimately be rewarded in the afterlife. As you go back to your own duties, you can’t help but think about Theo’s few last words and how you briefly wanted to agree with him, if only to see the amusing confusion on the shadows faces.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 46 Took long enough, and sometimes it never seemed like it was going to happen, but you’ve finally restored Dendrin’s temple. Restoring it wasn’t easy either, especially not one as big and in such disrepair like Dendrin’s. The surprising thing is you’ve not only restored it in appearance, but in use as well. The one of the first difficult things was getting the stone. Delerg isn’t exactly flush with rock quarries. The second difficult thing was getting help to restore it in the first place. The shadows might be great warriors and have more knowledge than the average peasant, but nobody in your ranks is a laborer or into masonry. Obviously outside help was necessary. Fortunately since the fall of the Empire, Delerg had once again become a quiet place with no “leader.” Most of the inhabitants were content to go about their simple lives like they once did before the Empire. When you arrived in Sinkhole, to ask around for workers to try to restore the temple, some couldn’t volunteer fast enough to help. This need to help you, was a combination of a few things. The most important one being that Delerg was always shadow friendly. The Empire may have ruled it for a while, but the respect that its people had for the shadows was always greater. The shadows after all were once the main protectors of the area before the Empire. Combining this with the fact that the shadows were the main ones who helped influence so much rebellion and caused the destruction of the Empire, it was only natural that you were as warmly embraced like you were. Good thing too, because you certainly didn’t have the coin to pay the workers in the first place! As the temple was slowly being restored, more people started flocking to your aid. Some of these were old rebels that the shadows lost contact with when you started consolidating your forces in Rask. They remember you though and offer help in any way their skills allow. While you were always a little surprised by how much free help you were always willing to get, what surprised you more is how little you really needed to do to get it. These people had no one telling them what to do or how to live anymore, and yet a lot of them seemed to be in a big hurry for that to change by becoming Dendrin worshippers! You understand gratitude, but to willingly surrender a portion of your earnings and time to serve an invisible being that you had no proof existed, while some guy claiming to be his “representative” tell you how you should live seemed like a step backwards for them at least. For you though, it was all beneficial as eventually some of these devoted souls wanted to become full-fledged shadows. Naturally you accepted them into your ranks provided they could pass through the testing. Right now things have been better for you than they have ever been. You’ve got a nice restored temple, a fair sized congregation, the ranks of the shadows are slowly starting to grow again and most importantly you haven’t had to deal with any problems with the new eternals (Now known as the Shadow Blades) ever since they all went through the ritual. Dendrin was true to his word on that, just like you were true to yours by restoring his temple. Still, even after directly helping you, you still can’t bring yourself to “worship” Dendrin. Not really. Part of you feels like it was the least he could’ve done after all the stuff in the past he’s put you through. Another of part of you feels as if you’ve “repaid the debt” by restoring the temple. He’s probably granted you more power as you’ve noticed your magical abilities becoming superior to everyone else’s and it taking much less effort, but again you still feel no sense of “awe” in Dendrin that would cause you to willingly worship him as a god. To you, he’s a very powerful being that is a whimsical ally at best. You’ve come to realize that he is probably deserving of your respect in regard to his power and you always keep that in mind when up keeping the charade of his religion. Perhaps it is enough, or at least it’ll have to be since you don’t see yourself changing your mind on the matter anytime soon, especially when you’ve been trying to figure out what your next big course of action should be. The problem with a lack of conflict is that you find yourself very bored. Even in Rask, the monotony was broken up with the occasional giant or ogre attack. Here in Delerg there are no such great dangers surprisingly enough. Most dangerous swamp beasts prefer to stick to their own stomping grounds which all seem to be away from your part of the swamp and Sul-monkeys aren’t a threat so much as they’re an occasional annoyance when large groups of them decide to use the temple roof as a mating area! The last time you had any true conflict was when General Ackerson’s men ambushed you and part of you hasn’t forgotten that incident. From what you know, he’s still in power and sometimes you’d like to change that just on principle. Quala is still an area in a power struggle between competing warlords, but so far there have been no attempt by any of them to expand into Delerg, probably because there isn’t much here in the first place save for swamp. Not to mention there are most likely trickles of news coming in about the return of the shadows to Delerg. Most of the warlords being ex-Empire probably would like to get some sort of revenge, but know that their losses would be considerable if they even attempted such a thing, so you are left alone. Talia and Cyrus seem to be content with how things are now, why can’t you be? Funny that you were concerned about the new eternals being restless and getting themselves into trouble, while here you are considering starting a fight because your bored with peace! The only real reason you can think of is petty revenge on General Ackerson and that’s not a very good one even if you could easily tell everyone that Dendrin told you all to go kill him. In your moment of introspection, you take another look at what you’ve accomplished. You went from being a lone unbeliever practically trapped in an organization that was determined to overthrow an enemy several times larger than itself to the victorious leader of said organization, which is now thriving under your watch. You probably could defeat Ackerson, but at what cost? Last you heard he has thousands of men at his command still and that includes a few battle mages. The shadows may be growing slowly, but that’s just it, slowly. You don’t have anywhere near the numbers to start raising armies. Sure, you have the entire support of probably all of Delerg, but that doesn’t mean much in the scheme of things if most of the people aren’t warriors. You kill Ackerson and take his territory then what? You hold it? How long can that last with the numbers you’d have left? You doubt if the people of Quala would be as supportive, if anything they probably blame the shadows for the miserable warring state they live in now. This doesn’t even factor in the OTHER warlords in the area. They may all decide to gang up on you and if you’re in any sort of weakened condition they may even press their attack into Delerg itself. No, the risk doesn’t seem worth it compared to the petty gain. The shadows have never been about conquest and they probably shouldn’t start now. However, that doesn’t mean you should stay idle. Peace is fine, but perhaps there is a way of initiating conflict without actually doing it. It occurs to you that the warlords of Quala won’t always be fighting. Eventually one of them is going to win or manage to unite the area in some way. When that happens then Delerg might be in potential danger, so it would be in your best interest to make sure that doesn’t happen. Keep Quala weak and disorganized while keeping Delerg the opposite. You start sending in shadows into Quala to get a good idea of what the situation is there, but not to actually do anything yet. Theo is mostly in charge of this due to his previous experience of working extensively in the region during the Empire war. Eventually after a couple months you have all the information you really need and ready to put the second part of your plan into action, which is to keep the region destabilized. This is going to include sabotage, misdirection, more spying, and assassinations, all those things that play on the strengths of the shadows. “I like it. So when do we start assassinating people?” Cyrus remarks causing Draven to chuckle. “Well, we probably should decide who needs it first. Some of the leaders sound so incompetent that it might be better if we left them in charge.” Talia adds. “Shouldn’t we have some sort of plan before doing this?” Yvette asks. “We do have a plan, I just explained it.” You say not understanding why she would ask such a question. “I…think what my wife means is should we not have a greater plan other than sewing chaos. I do not presume to disagree with your reasons Shadow Master, but I do believe that causing discord for the sake of doing it might seem a bit…well…short term.” Theo says. “So you believe that we should actually take territory? I explained why I believe that would be a problem.” “No, no, I agree that we shouldn’t be marching armies into Quala, I guess what I mean is perhaps this would also be a good time to launch an aggressive campaign of converting unbelievers. You know send our better speakers to some of the smaller villages that are unhappy with life under the warlords and telling them how Dendrin can release them from such misery. Given enough time, we would have so many converted that we wouldn’t have to worry about raising an army or Quala ever being a threat because most of the population would all be believers in Dendrin.” An interesting suggestion from Theo and one you weren’t really expecting from him. He also mentions he could get back in contact with some of the old rebels he knows are still living in Quala to help more directly as well. > You council and Blades (New Shadow Structure) Since the new eternals all went through “proper” shadow indoctrination, they’ve all been a lot calmer. Still killers of course, but at least now you haven’t seen any signs of them acting unstable. Besides you, Cyrus and Talia, they are probably still the best warriors you have though, so you decided to still keep them a bit separate from the rest of the “rank and file” by naming them the Shadow Blades. They seem to like the designation. There are a few “normal” shadows in the Blades as well since anyone can be one if they’re skilled enough. While the Eternals still tend to see Talia as their “mother” Cyrus and Draven are the ones who mostly send them out on patrols or missions nowadays. Talia’s learned to let go of her “children” a bit. The other main reason for the creation of the Blades is due to the fact that a lot of the shadows have families now or are attempting to start on such. Seeing as you don’t do a lot of warring nowadays, you figure it would be all right to relax the need for everyone to be on constant alert all the time. All shadows are still required to upkeep their martial and magic skills though. The other change you decided on was to create a council of sorts. As Shadow Master your word goes (Or Dendrin’s “Word” as they all sometimes believe) but you’ve been trying to become more inclusive in some of the decision making mainly because some of the more menial tasks or administrative duties are a bore to you and it helps if you don’t have to do it all by yourself. (Bad enough you’ve got to keep up on all the shadow lore, fortunately you let Talia handle some of that) So far the Shadow Council is made up of you, Talia, Cyrus, Draven, Yvette and Theo. Three Eternals, three humans and one of those pairings is one of each. You believe it’s pretty equal all things considered.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 46 Took long enough, and sometimes it never seemed like it was going to happen, but you’ve finally restored Dendrin’s temple. Restoring it wasn’t easy either, especially not one as big and in such disrepair like Dendrin’s. The surprising thing is you’ve not only restored it in appearance, but in use as well. The one of the first difficult things was getting the stone. Delerg isn’t exactly flush with rock quarries. The second difficult thing was getting help to restore it in the first place. The shadows might be great warriors and have more knowledge than the average peasant, but nobody in your ranks is a laborer or into masonry. Obviously outside help was necessary. Fortunately since the fall of the Empire, Delerg had once again become a quiet place with no “leader.” Most of the inhabitants were content to go about their simple lives like they once did before the Empire. When you arrived in Sinkhole, to ask around for workers to try to restore the temple, some couldn’t volunteer fast enough to help. This need to help you, was a combination of a few things. The most important one being that Delerg was always shadow friendly. The Empire may have ruled it for a while, but the respect that its people had for the shadows was always greater. The shadows after all were once the main protectors of the area before the Empire. Combining this with the fact that the shadows were the main ones who helped influence so much rebellion and caused the destruction of the Empire, it was only natural that you were as warmly embraced like you were. Good thing too, because you certainly didn’t have the coin to pay the workers in the first place! As the temple was slowly being restored, more people started flocking to your aid. Some of these were old rebels that the shadows lost contact with when you started consolidating your forces in Rask. They remember you though and offer help in any way their skills allow. While you were always a little surprised by how much free help you were always willing to get, what surprised you more is how little you really needed to do to get it. These people had no one telling them what to do or how to live anymore, and yet a lot of them seemed to be in a big hurry for that to change by becoming Dendrin worshippers! You understand gratitude, but to willingly surrender a portion of your earnings and time to serve an invisible being that you had no proof existed, while some guy claiming to be his “representative” tell you how you should live seemed like a step backwards for them at least. For you though, it was all beneficial as eventually some of these devoted souls wanted to become full-fledged shadows. Naturally you accepted them into your ranks provided they could pass through the testing. Right now things have been better for you than they have ever been. You’ve got a nice restored temple, a fair sized congregation, the ranks of the shadows are slowly starting to grow again and most importantly you haven’t had to deal with any problems with the new eternals (Now known as the Shadow Blades) ever since they all went through the ritual. Dendrin was true to his word on that, just like you were true to yours by restoring his temple. Still, even after directly helping you, you still can’t bring yourself to “worship” Dendrin. Not really. Part of you feels like it was the least he could’ve done after all the stuff in the past he’s put you through. Another of part of you feels as if you’ve “repaid the debt” by restoring the temple. He’s probably granted you more power as you’ve noticed your magical abilities becoming superior to everyone else’s and it taking much less effort, but again you still feel no sense of “awe” in Dendrin that would cause you to willingly worship him as a god. To you, he’s a very powerful being that is a whimsical ally at best. You’ve come to realize that he is probably deserving of your respect in regard to his power and you always keep that in mind when up keeping the charade of his religion. Perhaps it is enough, or at least it’ll have to be since you don’t see yourself changing your mind on the matter anytime soon, especially when you’ve been trying to figure out what your next big course of action should be. The problem with a lack of conflict is that you find yourself very bored. Even in Rask, the monotony was broken up with the occasional giant or ogre attack. Here in Delerg there are no such great dangers surprisingly enough. Most dangerous swamp beasts prefer to stick to their own stomping grounds which all seem to be away from your part of the swamp and Sul-monkeys aren’t a threat so much as they’re an occasional annoyance when large groups of them decide to use the temple roof as a mating area! The last time you had any true conflict was when General Ackerson’s men ambushed you and part of you hasn’t forgotten that incident. From what you know, he’s still in power and sometimes you’d like to change that just on principle. Quala is still an area in a power struggle between competing warlords, but so far there have been no attempt by any of them to expand into Delerg, probably because there isn’t much here in the first place save for swamp. Not to mention there are most likely trickles of news coming in about the return of the shadows to Delerg. Most of the warlords being ex-Empire probably would like to get some sort of revenge, but know that their losses would be considerable if they even attempted such a thing, so you are left alone. Talia and Cyrus seem to be content with how things are now, why can’t you be? Funny that you were concerned about the new eternals being restless and getting themselves into trouble, while here you are considering starting a fight because your bored with peace! The only real reason you can think of is petty revenge on General Ackerson and that’s not a very good one even if you could easily tell everyone that Dendrin told you all to go kill him. In your moment of introspection, you take another look at what you’ve accomplished. You went from being a lone unbeliever practically trapped in an organization that was determined to overthrow an enemy several times larger than itself to the victorious leader of said organization, which is now thriving under your watch. You probably could defeat Ackerson, but at what cost? Last you heard he has thousands of men at his command still and that includes a few battle mages. The shadows may be growing slowly, but that’s just it, slowly. You don’t have anywhere near the numbers to start raising armies. Sure, you have the entire support of probably all of Delerg, but that doesn’t mean much in the scheme of things if most of the people aren’t warriors. You kill Ackerson and take his territory then what? You hold it? How long can that last with the numbers you’d have left? You doubt if the people of Quala would be as supportive, if anything they probably blame the shadows for the miserable warring state they live in now. This doesn’t even factor in the OTHER warlords in the area. They may all decide to gang up on you and if you’re in any sort of weakened condition they may even press their attack into Delerg itself. No, the risk doesn’t seem worth it compared to the petty gain. The shadows have never been about conquest and they probably shouldn’t start now. However, that doesn’t mean you should stay idle. Peace is fine, but perhaps there is a way of initiating conflict without actually doing it. It occurs to you that the warlords of Quala won’t always be fighting. Eventually one of them is going to win or manage to unite the area in some way. When that happens then Delerg might be in potential danger, so it would be in your best interest to make sure that doesn’t happen. Keep Quala weak and disorganized while keeping Delerg the opposite. You start sending in shadows into Quala to get a good idea of what the situation is there, but not to actually do anything yet. Theo is mostly in charge of this due to his previous experience of working extensively in the region during the Empire war. Eventually after a couple months you have all the information you really need and ready to put the second part of your plan into action, which is to keep the region destabilized. This is going to include sabotage, misdirection, more spying, and assassinations, all those things that play on the strengths of the shadows. “I like it. So when do we start assassinating people?” Cyrus remarks causing Draven to chuckle. “Well, we probably should decide who needs it first. Some of the leaders sound so incompetent that it might be better if we left them in charge.” Talia adds. “Shouldn’t we have some sort of plan before doing this?” Yvette asks. “We do have a plan, I just explained it.” You say not understanding why she would ask such a question. “I…think what my wife means is should we not have a greater plan other than sewing chaos. I do not presume to disagree with your reasons Shadow Master, but I do believe that causing discord for the sake of doing it might seem a bit…well…short term.” Theo says. “So you believe that we should actually take territory? I explained why I believe that would be a problem.” “No, no, I agree that we shouldn’t be marching armies into Quala, I guess what I mean is perhaps this would also be a good time to launch an aggressive campaign of converting unbelievers. You know send our better speakers to some of the smaller villages that are unhappy with life under the warlords and telling them how Dendrin can release them from such misery. Given enough time, we would have so many converted that we wouldn’t have to worry about raising an army or Quala ever being a threat because most of the population would all be believers in Dendrin.” An interesting suggestion from Theo and one you weren’t really expecting from him. He also mentions he could get back in contact with some of the old rebels he knows are still living in Quala to help more directly as well. > You warlord Warzone (Full report on Quala) You finally get a full report on the situation in Quala, and even a little bit beyond. Theo tells you that there are three major warlords in the area still struggling for power in Quala. General Ackerson you know about and most of his forces are concentrated in the northern most region. While he still insists on going by general he’s mostly shed all his old Empire trappings. Even the soldiers have different uniforms now. So far he’s still the best organized and the most secure in his position. Lately he’s come to a bit of a stop though since he’s apparently been attempting to get a foothold into Rask probably for its resources, but with little success. The two closest to Delerg have been slugging it out nearly since the Empire fell. One of those is an ex-Empire Captain Anu and the other is apparently an old rebel leader that Theo knew by the name of Sam Jowin. Anu seems to maintain the delusion that by holding on to the completely ruined territory of the old empire that it somehow still exists. The soldiers still wear their increasingly dirty and worn out armor. His territory is mostly poor with little value anymore seeing as the capital was practically burned to the ground in the Empire’s final days. The good captain took the fall pretty hard and is reportedly not the most stable man, but he’s managed to stay in power due to fanaticism and determination alone. The same could be said for Sam. From what Theo remembers of his old dealings with him, was that his whole family was ripped from their homes and killed in front of him for not paying their taxes on time. When they were about to get to him, he managed to kill two of the soldiers and escape into the wilderness. Didn’t take long before the shadows found him and brought him into the rebellion that was still in planning at the time. He didn’t like the waiting, but fortunately for him he didn’t need to wait long since all out war broke out in the next year. Theo mentions that Sam was a naturally charismatic leader type that had an absolute hatred for anything Empire. He isn’t surprised that he’s still fighting and determined to stomp out anything that might resemble the old Empire. Of course this is coming at a price since Sam is somewhat emulating it by declaring himself “leader of the free people of Quala” whether they want him to be or not. Theo goes on to say that the southern most region of Quala seems to be “no man’s land” between Sam and one of your old classmates, an Eternal by the name of Brenda. (Probably the “last loyal” one to the Empire and widow of the Eternal Roldan) He also says that her territory extends all the way south of that to include practically the entire Nalin province. She’s basically been running it all by herself and it hasn’t really suffered much since the Empire fell. In fact if there were any place of the Empire that still “exists” it would be here rather than whatever Anu thinks he’s defending. However, Brenda has never pressed further into Quala and only defends her borders whenever Sam gets the urge to launch a raid for whatever reason. As for the western region of Quala, it’s mostly an ongoing warzone between several petty warlords. Nobody really of any note and at this point all of them are little more than bandit thugs with delusions of grandeur. The Arat province is apparently even worse in this respect and has descended into complete anarchy to the point that the overflow of banditry and lawlessness has even been giving the Felkan Kingdom minor border headaches. All of this is rather fascinating to you, and a little…well the word isn’t disheartening, but you don’t know…you always did slightly believe (Despite your overwhelming cynicism) that you were actually a force of “good” by toppling the Empire. Maybe the methods weren’t the most pure, but the ends justified the means. Now you see that it didn’t really change all that much, and made it worse in some places. And now here you are plotting to change the landscape even further and probably going to make things even worse. Still, if this all works in favor of the shadows maybe it’s all worth it, after all it did the first time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You never thought you’d ever be doing this willingly… “Dendrin, if you’re still watching me, we need to have a talk and you probably know what it is about already. So have your giggles if you must about all this, but I’m asking you for your help and I mean real help, not cryptic answers or hollow words. And if you don’t listen to me, then I suppose I’ll figure it out myself as usual.” About ten minutes later after your “prayer” you drift off to sleep and find yourself in a place you haven’t been in a long time. “Been a long time Eternal. While I’m glad to see it is you who initiated the dialogue for a change, I am a little hurt though that you’ve only called on me because you need help. But I suppose any progress with a cynical soul like you is better than nothing. Why its almost like you’re taking a leap of faith…” Great he’s going to milk this for all its worth. “Anyway enough of that, what can I do for you exactly today?” “Well I figure you being all knowing and all, you’re already familiar with the dilemma, so I was hoping that…in your benevolent wisdom, you’d see fit to help me.” A loud chortle echos throughout your mind. “All knowing and benevolent wisdom is it? A word of advice Eternal, don’t attempt to grovel, it doesn’t suit you. Though I do appreciate the attempt as it shows there is hope for you after all, which I always believed would be the case. The answer is yes, I will help you.” “That’s it?” “Yes. What? Is there more you required from me?” “No, but…well what are you going to do exactly?” “Get rid of your problems of course.” “That’s what I’m talking about. You’re not being specific, I mean for all I know your version of getting rid of my problems means killing me.” “My dear Eternal have you gained faith in me only to lose it so quickly? (Sigh) I suppose this is a bit too much for you. Very well I shall explain MY end of the bargain. When you reach Delerg, I want you to go to my temple and in a very hidden location on one of the walls near a pillar you will find a button. Press it and you shall recover most of the lost shadow history in an area below the temple. One of the books includes the ritual to open up the portal to my realm. Send your remaining Eternals into it and I shall do the rest.” “That…that’s almost exactly what Talia had hoped for when she suggested this journey.” “Yes, I know. That’s because she’s a believer. So if you’re still wondering what my price is, it’s just gaining more loyal followers that will no longer cause potential strife within the order… and the assurance on your part that you will be doing your best to restoring my temple to its former glory.” “Of course…wait you said remaining Eternals. What did you mean?” “Oh you’ll find out soon.” Suddenly you are pulled out your state of numbness and into the real world. “Get up! We’re being attacked!” Talia yells and picks you up by the arm. A bright light is illuminating the nighttime sky along with several fire arrows. You roll under a wagon to avoid immediate danger. It would appear General Ackerson’s men have discovered you and have attacked in force. They’re being smart about it too, attacking at night with archers and unfortunately also a couple of battle mages who are making the darkness disappear with their spells. “How the hell did they sneak up on us? I had scouts around the perimeter to avoid this sort of thing!” you mutter to yourself. Doesn’t matter now you suppose, what you have to do is get the hell out of here as fast as possible. You don’t like running, but you’ll end up losing more people if you stick around and fight. Besides, there are probably more troops behind the archers or at least on their way. “Everyone, grab what you can, head for those hills, speed up and cloak!” you shout. Talia and Cyrus both repeat this order so everyone can hear it. You sort of figured you’d end up dropping most of baggage, but probably not exactly like this! The soldiers are still shooting at you of course, but they’re doing it blind. Some of the mages get a few people though by blindly throwing fireballs in the general direction. Of course not every shadow has listened to you, some of them decided to run in the direction of the soldiers instead. These are some of the eternals of course. As you get closer and closer to the hills, the arrows and fireballs have seemed to have stopped altogether, it seems as if some of the eternals have managed to tie up the troops by engaging in close combat with some of them. The next few days also involve some fighting with more soldiers in the hills, but since it’s mostly swordsmen you’re got more of an advantage on your side and you lose no more people. Eventually the attacks stop altogether. You’ve either gotten far enough away, or General Ackerson has decided it’s not worth losing any more men over. You take a head count to see who is still alive and you now understand what Dendrin meant by the “remaining eternals” as most of the ones who did die were eternals. (Specifically the same ones Talia gave you the names of) Talia also asks you if you consulted Dendrin’s advice on what is to be done about what was discussed before. “I believe our recent attack has solved some of it, and Dendrin told me that when we reach the temple, he will solve the rest. He also said that you were right all along, we were meant to take this journey. I think we had to suffer a few losses before the shadow order can truly move forward.” You tell Talia, she seems relieved that you or her aren’t in trouble with Dendrin. When the hills begin to flatten and ground starts to become soft, you know that you’ve reached the Delerg border. Brother Theo takes the lead from here and compared to your journey through Quala its downright uneventful other than annoying groups of Sul-monkeys that throw things from the low trees every once in awhile. Eventually you arrive at the temple and everyone is filled with a great joy. You figure you should make some sort of uplifting speech about triumph and such, so you do. Then you tell everyone to start exploring the temple and get settled in where they can, you’ll worry about fixing the place up later. The inside of the temple is in surprisingly good condition. You waste no time in seeking out the stone “button” that will open up a secret place in the temple. Eventually you find it (which you doubt you would’ve been able to do if Dendrin hadn’t told you) and descend down. What you find is better than you could’ve hoped for when you first arrived and that’s living quarters for what you presume would be for the old shadow high priests or whatever. It isn’t fancy, but it’s fairly clean. You imagine that this place hasn’t been accessed in centuries. The walls are very solidly made so it doesn’t even look like signs of any natural intrusion have occurred either. Just as Dendrin said, there is a fully stocked library which no doubt contain most of the shadow’s history and wisdom, and more importantly the ritual that you can use on the eternals. Talia, immediately starts looking through the books while you and Cyrus explore the rest of the place. There is one “room” that sticks out which isn’t man made and that’s a small natural cavern, which seems to be an underground garden of some sort with a shallow stream of fresh water flowing through it. Blue glowing fungus lights up the place and there are no exits other than the small openings the water is flowing through. Cyrus takes some purple berries off one of the bushes and pops them in his mouth and remarks how good they taste. “Looks like we won’t have to worry about clean water immediately, even our food can be supplemented here. Dendrin provides as usual.” He says. “Indeed and while I know we all serve Dendrin, rank also has its privileges. I’ll be sleeping down here in one of those bedrooms with Talia.” You remark. “Heh, well there are three of them from what I’ve seen, surely the Shadow Master doesn’t need ALL of them.” Cyrus replies. “Well I might’ve needed them to store belongings, but since we dropped most of them, I suppose I don’t have any problem with you and Draven taking one of the rooms. How is Draven anyway, if it wasn’t for you, I’d probably forget he’s even with us.” “Oh he’s fine. He’s always been a bit more on the quiet side as you know.” “Mm, well since I’m in a generous mood, I guess Brother Theo and Sister Yvette can take the third room. The pair of them have helped the shadows in more ways than I can count. Besides I know they got something going on with each other, have no idea why they haven’t bonded properly yet though.” “Maybe they don’t want to be tied down to one person?” “If that was the case, I wouldn’t see them together almost all the time. I swear since we first kicked the Empire out of Rask, those two have been practically joined at the hip.” Before Cyrus can agree with your observation Talia steps in and interrupts. “I found it! I found the book! We can perform the ritual!” she exclaims. “Already? That was quick. Okay, well you study it and we’ll get to it as soon as possible.” “But you are Shadow Master my love, only YOU can do it properly.” Talia says and thrusts the book upon you. “Oh…well I suppose my magical abilities have come a long way from what they used to be. Very well then, I shall study this tome and we can give the new eternals a proper induction into the shadows like we all were right?” Talia and Cyrus both nod at your remark. You excuse yourself and retire to your bedroom to begin a long night of studying. > You old Tomes (The Ritual of Ascension) While studying the book that contains the initiation ritual in the library, Talia comes over to see how you’re doing. “Still at it? I didn’t realize the ritual was that complex.” She says. “It isn’t actually. From what I can tell it just requires a lot of focus and belief. I’m fairly certain I can handle that. I actually got sidetracked by some of these other tomes here.” You answer and point out a bunch of other books nearby. “Heh, sort of funny to see you like this. I remember a time when you weren’t the most eager to perform any sort of magic mainly because you weren’t very good at it.” “Trust me, it’s still not my favorite area, but I feel I have been growing in power and gotten better. So I figured I should learn some of the other major rituals and such.” Talia nods as she looks through the books. Eventually she picks up a heavy black one and begins glancing through it. “The ritual of ascension? What’s that?” “Good question. I actually wasted quite a bit of time reading through that one, before starting on reading the stuff I was supposed to be reading about. Basically I don’t know what it does exactly. In fact some of it is in a language I don’t even recognize.” “Yeah, I see that.” “The rest of the wording I have read is almost deliberately cryptic. Terribly annoying and not very helpful. You’d think whoever wrote it down, would’ve made it a lot clearer. Well anyway, I’ll study it in length some other time. Right now I’m just going to go over the initiation ritual once more and then get some sleep.” “Very well. I’ll see you then.” Talia says and kisses you before leaving. After she leaves, you take another glance though the book containing the ritual of ascension. Still not understanding it any better, you toss it aside and return to more immediate studies.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While you aren’t convinced that going to Delerg is necessarily the best idea, maybe you do need a change of scenery. With the population being unhelpful and the troubles with Flog, it might very well be best to leave before this gets worse. Besides, while it isn’t common knowledge that you made a deal with Flog to enslave the northern most towns in exchange for his help, there have always been “rumors” amongst some of the Raskians and eventually those rumors are going to become an even bigger problem. Part of you feels like you’re “running away” from conflict and that somewhat bothers you. However, you spent your life running away from the Empire and striking at the right time to strengthen your own position while weakening their own. Why shouldn’t you employ a similar outlook on life in general? Retreat from an unfavorable position to hopefully a better one, it couldn’t hurt at this point. The next day you call all the shadows to gather in the main hall and announce that you’ve conversed with Dendrin and that he’s told you that the shadows need to go back to reclaim the shadow homeland in Delerg and that your future is there not in Rask. Many of the human shadows seem to be enthusiastic about this idea. The Eternal shadows less so, but that might be for several reasons. In any event, you tell everyone that all of you will be packing up everything and moving on as soon as possible. Since it is looking a snowstorm is coming you’ll have plenty of time to prepare and you’ll leave Evergloom when it subsides. You also ask some of the older shadows if they know where the original temple is exactly located in Delerg. Brother Theo says that he knows and that he remembers visiting it once back in his youth when he was escorting some rebels to the shadow safe houses in Delerg. “Despite it being in ruins and covered in overgrowth, I still felt it to be a place of power. Not power in the traditional sense, but more like a feeling. A feeling that the cause of the Shadows was the correct one and that by trusting in Dendrin, we would eventually return to the temple of our forefathers one day. It looks like that day has finally come and I couldn’t be happier.” Brother Theo says. “Well brother, we aren’t there yet. We’ve still got to get there. The Empire might be gone, but who knows what might’ve taken its place. The journey still might be dangerous.” You reply. “I know Shadow Master, but Dendrin guided us successfully through the Empire War. I know he will guide us to our home just as easily.” “Yes, I suppose he will.” A month passes before you can actually get going due to the snowstorm. Everyone’s glad to leave too being stuck in the fort for so long. You wish you hadn’t had to eat up a lot of your food supply though, but you figure you’ll worry about food along the way either by hunting for it or trading for it when possible. As you and the shadows begin your exodus from Evergloom, you look back at the old Empire fort that was your home for so long. You wonder how long it’ll be before someone else takes residence there. If you had to guess, Flog will probably figure out it isn’t occupied anymore, take it over and start using it as a staging ground to assault the southern towns of Rask. You’ll bet the Raskians will wish you were still around when that eventually happens. The journey through Rask is slow going. You can’t just speed yourselves up considering all the equipment and belongings you’ve got packed on wagons, carts and horses. Still, you aren’t in any danger as you pass through Raskian towns. While it alarms the people to see so many shadows nobody dares attack you. You find trade easy, as they are eager to help see you on your way. You didn’t really think you’d have trouble traveling through Rask though, it’s after Rask that you’re more concerned about. From what news has reached you, ever since the Empire fell the Quala province has fragmented into several bickering warlords, each fighting for control of what’s left. In some ways the people of the land are in a worse situation than when the Empire existed, but that isn’t something you can really dwell on now. Your goal is to get through the land and you’re sure to run into someone’s territory as you travel through and they’ll no doubt be hostile about it. Not much can be done except hope for the best because much like speeding yourselves up isn’t an option, neither is cloaking yourselves. Well you could, but those horses and wagons are still going to be visible. “How are we going to play this?” Talia asks as you stand at the Rask border. “I know our information structure started falling into disuse when we drove the Empire from Rask, but does anyone have any information on what the exact situation is in Quala?” you ask. “Last I heard, an ex-Empire general declared himself the local warlord of the northern most portion of Quala. A General Ackerson I believe.” Cyrus remarks. “Never heard of him.” “I don’t think most did, even before the rebellion he wasn’t a very prominent general and the Empire tended to have more than a few useless high ranking officers that never did much. I only knew about him due to all the years working in the shadow cells and keeping abreast of all the Empire military commanders. He got his rank mostly due to family connections and was never put in charge of anything important. I don’t even think he was even in charge of anything during the rebellion days, at least not that know of when I was still situated in Quala. Still, I assume he must have some skill in combat and have some charisma if he’s made himself a warlord now. Well that or very rich which might be more of the case.” Brother Theo adds. “Okay, any other information on warlords in the area?” you ask. Nobody knows anything else other than he seems to be the top one. Funny how the most obscure people can rise to power when the opportunity presents itself. Stepping off the road, you could probably just trespass through General Ackerson’s territory to reach Delerg and you’d only have him to deal with him if need be, of course it’s going to be even slower going due to all your baggage. The terrain that way is known to be somewhat hilly and if gets too rough, you might even have to leave some of your stuff behind. Rough terrain aside, there’s also the open fields you’d have to cross too. Not much cover if a large patrol of archers happened upon you. Of course sticking to the road will be quicker and unobtrusive to your baggage carts, but you’d still have to trespass through Ackerson’s territory and assuming you got through that, you’d probably have to go through some other warlord’s territory as well before you reached Delerg. On top of all this, you have no idea how you’ll be treated by any towns you pass through. > You travel on road You’ve got a lot of baggage to travel with and the longer you can do it on road, the quicker you’ll get to your destination. Whatever tolls or other harassment that any wannabe emperors have in store can be dealt with. Certainly can’t be worse than what you’ve already faced. “Okay we’re taking the roads brothers and sisters. Remember that we are potentially entering hostile territory, so keep alert and be prepared.” You tell everyone before continuing on the journey. Half a day passes without incident; of course it doesn’t stay that way when several people patrolling the road up ahead and immediately head your way. They aren’t dressed in proper Empire armor, but the way they swagger with self-importance; you’re guessing they’re probably some sort of militia recruits under the command of this General Ackerson. Several of the Eternals are itching for a fight and while you don’t doubt you’d win, you’d rather try to get through without doing it. Last thing you need is to fight a running battle through the Quala province. “Shadow scum! This area belongs to General Ackerson, don’t you know your kind aren’t wanted here? It was your kind that caused this once great nation to fall, but fortunately we have people like the general to pick up the pieces to make it stronger than ever.” The leader of the soldiers says. “Uh huh, we’re just passing through and have no desire to start a fight.” You reply, but of course this idiot doesn’t have a sense of self-preservation. “Oh no? What’s all this then? A baggage train of supplies to support your war effort? I don’t believe you shadow! Why should any of us trust you after the great betrayal?” “Because if we wanted to destroy you we would’ve done it already, empire dog!” one of the Eternals snaps. This isn’t going well and several of the soldiers begin to ready their weapons. “As I said, we are merely passing through and have no desire to start a war. We already have our freedom, we don’t care if you’re trying to rebuild the Empire or something else to take its place. We just want to be left in peace. However if you really wish to pursue this course of action, let me remind you that you are currently outmatched and outnumbered. We whittled away the Empire with forces smaller than what you see here. It would not take more than ten of us to destroy whatever government you’re trying to re-establish now. Are you such fools that you would willingly throw your lives away so easily? You say to the soldiers. The leader realizes that he’ll have to swallow his overflowing pride and capitulate to your accurate assessment of the situation. “…very well…let the shadows pass.” He meekly remarks and he and his men step aside. You and the shadows pass through, but you know that’s just he beginning of what you’ll probably have to face. Cyrus mentions that perhaps they should be killed so they don’t warn anyone, but really whether they do or not isn’t going to make much of a difference. You’re a big enough target that anyone can see you if they just open their eyes. You soon pass through a town in the process of being rebuilt, your reception there isn’t much better. The citizens all give you an evil eye and the soldiers stand ready to attack at anytime. Nobody does anything, but the second town you pass through makes up for that… “BOOOOOOO! Go home shadow shit!” “Zealots! Sheep! Go suck your god’s cock!” “Get out of our town you fucking fanatics!” These citizens are obviously very upset about the shadows. So much so that not only do they call you names, they also start throwing rotten fruit at some of you. This is too much for the eternals who are were barely holding their homicidal urges in check to begin with. Before you can react, several eternals respond to the rotten fruit by shooting bolts at the peasants. Naturally none of them miss either. The town’s militia steps in and before you know it, you’ve killed half of the town and the rest of the citizens are running for their lives. The eternals aren’t contents with letting anyone live though, so they make that extra effort to chase most of them down. They seem to get a sadistic pleasure out of it and you have to rein them in. Naturally you’re pretty mad, but mostly at yourself for trying to cross Quala by road in the first place. You can see now this was a really bad idea, but now you’ll just have to make the best of it. The next day one of your people says they’ve scouted ahead and that a large army is heading your way. Worse, more troops are heading from other directions as well. Cyrus advises that you all should dump all non-essentials, cloak, and make a speed run towards the wilderness. Yvette point out that several of the shadow children or even babies in some cases don’t have such abilities and their parents aren’t likely to leave them. Theo says he knows of an old hide out and you could lay low there for a while and it is defensible. Talia is strangely silent on the whole matter, in fact she’s been silent during most of the trip, like she’s preoccupied with something else. You can’t imagine what given the shit you’re waist deep in right now, you’ll have to ask her about it later. Eventually you take Theo’s advice since running isn’t a real option right now and you need a good defensible place. You do take Cyrus’ advice though and have everyone dump all non-essential equipment. The trip to the old hideout is uneventful, unfortunately Theo forgot to take into consideration that some of his old hideouts might’ve actually been discovered since the last time he used them. This one in particular has been turned into a battle mage enclave. You didn’t even know Ackerson had any under his command, but he does and they took great measures in protecting their private base with magical security. They were alerted as soon as you entered the area and took steps to ambush you. The fight with the battle mages takes a heavy toll. Along with many shadows, you also lose Yvette as well as Dravin. Cyrus launched himself into a rage cutting down several of the mages before being heavily wounded. He’s still alive and being carried on a stretcher, but you doubt if he’ll make it, if you ever get to the temple. Which at this point is looking less likely since you’re now effectively stuck inside the hideout and surrounded by General Ackerson’s troops. Many of the shadows are praying to Dendrin which you encourage if only to keep their morale up, but of course you’re holding no such faith. The only ones seemingly having a good time are the new eternals who are enjoying the carnage way too much. You don’t care though given the circumstances as they’re about the only worthwhile fighters you’ve got left. While the shadows are used to fighting near impossible odds, not all of those were victories and this will unfortunately be one of those times. You think up the only possible plan that might work and that’s if you take all the eternals and try to distract the majority of the army while some of the other shadows get away. When you explain your plan, everyone is content to listen and obey since there really isn’t a choice in the matter. “Theo, I want you to lead the escape since you still know the area best. Talia, you’re going to be in charge and possibly the new…” “I’m staying.” Talia says cutting you off. “Talia, I don’t know if I’m coming back from this battle.” “Exactly. Why would I leave you now of all times? Besides, you’re taking my…children with you. If we are to die today, then I would do it as a family.” Talia says and grabs your hand. You look down at her hand and then her face. You can see that there will be no changing her mind. “Very well, then Theo, you will be the new Shadow Master. Good luck and I hope you understand Dendrin better than I did.” Theo thanks you for the honor and prepares everyone to get ready to move. You, Talia and the rest of the eternals prepare for the attack. It’s funny; you realize that the shadows will no longer be split anymore between human and eternal. Assuming they make it, the surviving shadows will all be human. Perhaps it’s better this way, eternals were not meant to be holy men and worshipping fickle gods. They were meant to die in battle. That was what you were originally bred for after all. “You two, carry Cyrus into battle. He’s one of us and he’ll die like one of us.” You say to two of the new eternals. Cyrus, while struggling to maintain consciousness manages a weak smile in your direction. “You ready my love?” Talia asks. “I was born for this.” You answer. And with that you, Talia, Cyrus and the last of the eternals go forth and face your destiny. Your names are forgotten, but the surviving solders of that battle always remembered the day they didn’t win a battle against shadows, but instead remember the day that they almost lost a battle against eternals.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 35 Finally after years of set backs, Rask is at last free of the Empire and the other provinces are sure to follow. Kane is dead and most of the last Empire fanatics in Rask are dead. The Empire can’t send any more troops because it’s barely holding on to what it has. It’s the beginning of the end for it, but for the shadows it’s just the beginning. For the past couple years during the mopping up process, the shadows have slowly been withdrawing from other parts of the Empire and heading to Rask. This consolidation of forces is something that Cyrus has been wanting for years, but of course you never felt it was the right time. Now with the Empire on the decline you can agree that it is something that can be done. Fort Defiance has become the new shadow home and has officially been renamed as Evergloom, not the most original name, but everyone seems to like it. Ironically Evergloom is about one of the only major beacons of “light” in Rask nowadays. The sheer destruction that Kane caused to most of the towns in Rask before he died has left little in the way of civilization. The rebuilding process is in swing, but it’ll be awhile before it gets back to the way it was, perhaps it’ll never be the same again and nature will reclaim the land. It hardly matters though; the shadows have their own rebuilding process to go through, one of which is how leadership is going to be settled once and for all. As it stands, you still haven’t officially taken full control of the shadows yet and it’s still more or less run by a “council” of sorts made up of you, Talia and Cyrus. Cyrus has been somewhat less antagonistic towards you since the Empire was driven from Rask, but that might be because he’s running out of supporters. Your decisions and victories have earned the respect of most shadows and they see you as leader. There are also the new eternal shadows that have been coming along in their training very well and the well-known fact that you’ve spoken directly to Dendrin, though you haven’t lately, not for a long time in fact. Doesn’t stop the fact that you say you have though when you want to get things done. Part of you feels like the biggest hypocrite in the world for it, but then the other part of you feels like your ends have justified the means at this point so why care about it? You’ve kept the shadows together with lies, but really the whole organization has been kept together through lies for centuries, you’re not really doing anything different. Perhaps though it isn’t so much the lying that gets to you, but rather the idea of being a shadow when you’ve never really “felt” like one. You stayed motivated by fighting the Empire because that was something you could get behind, but now what are you supposed to do? Revere Dendrin and worship him? Not something you’re really interested in doing full time especially considering your knowledge of him. Of course then there’s always Talia, who is practically the only reason at this point why you’d want to stay leader for the shadows, well that and the budding desire to be in charge thanks to your Eternal heritage. There’s also the fact that given how much effort you went through to hold the shadows together it would almost seem a waste to toss it all away. Yes, a decision is going to have to be made soon, but not today. You fall asleep later that night and after all this time you finally get some “divine” advice. “It’s been awhile.” You say. “Don’t tell me you actually missed me.” Dendrin remarks. “Hardly, though I was wondering if you’d lost interest at last.” “In you? Not at all, I’ve just been quietly observing. I’ve found that you seem to work best with minimal influence. Keep doing what you’re doing and I’m unlikely to ever lose interest in you.” “Keep doing what I’m doing eh? So you want me to officially take full leadership of the shadows.” “I didn’t say that. Not then and not now. Do what you want. I told you that before. If you’re asking me what I think, yes I would prefer you to take up as leader and quite honestly I’m surprised you haven’t done it already.” “I was planning to, but now that the Empire is on its way out, I’m not sure if I want to be bothered.” “Nonsense, you’re an Eternal. Aren’t you lot sort of born to lead?” “I suppose, but I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life living a priestly existence in our new monastery where all I do is tell people to kiss your ass all night and day, let alone do it myself.” This remark causes a booming laugh echo throughout your mind. “So don’t do that.” Dendrin remarks. “Well wouldn’t I sort of have to?” “You haven’t for this long, why would you start now?” “I mean I know I’d be faking it, but I still see it as a dreary existence.” “And like I said, don’t do that. You’re the leader, what you say goes. If you want to abandon the old shadow ways there isn’t anything keeping you from doing it. I don’t usually point out the obvious, but what you have right now is potentially very powerful. You have in your hands is the ability to guide a religion, an ideology. You shouldn’t waste that. Take advantage before someone else does.” “I’m not blind, I see that, but I question where do you come in? Surely if I some how lessened the shadows’ reliance on prayer, they’d also lose their abilities.” “Not entirely unless you made them stop worshipping me altogether.” “But I don’t worship you, I mean not really and I still have my powers.” “Well that’s because you’re special, but if you did have a little more faith in me, your powers would increase too. You could be as strong as your old Master Ebon for example. That’s just how it works and you have take the good with the bad, but I’m sure you knew that already.” “So it would seem.” You answer. Shortly after this exchange you wake up. “Something wrong?” Talia asks when she sees you waking up so suddenly. “Huh? Oh, nothing. Dendrin just spoke to me again.” “He did? What were his divine words this time?” “Oh…uh he said that now is the right time to officially become the Shadow Master. “That’s wonderful! Though I thought he would’ve told you a lot sooner…no matter though as I’m sure he had his reasons.” Good old trusting Talia. You love her, but you’ll never understand how naïve she can be when it comes to this. As you start to get ready to call a shadow gathering there’s a knock on your room door. “Who’s there?” you ask. “It’s me brother. Brother Gannon. Brother Cyrus wants to see you immediately in the meeting room. He says it’s extremely important.” “What’s it about?” “I dunno, he just said it’s really important and he needs to see you immediately.” “Okay then, thank you brother.” You reply. As you continue to get dressed, Talia speaks to you again. “What do you think he wants?” “With Cyrus, who knows?” “Do you want me to come with you?” “What for? You might as well get all the shadows together while I’m talking to Cyrus.” “But…I don’t know…I’m just a little concerned.” “Aren’t you always telling me I should try to get along with Cyrus? Besides, he’s actually been tolerable lately. Maybe with the Empire gone, he’s lightened up a bit.” “Maybe…well if you think it’ll be okay, I’ll go round up the brothers and sisters.” As you and Talia part company you make your way to the meeting room. On your way it occurs to you that Cyrus may very be planning to kill you rather than talk. You aren’t sensing anyone cloaked yet, but then maybe they’ll all be in the room with him. If this is an ambush, the only one he’s going to be able to count on to help him is probably Draven. Cyrus just doesn’t have the clout he once did in fact you believe if he tried, he wouldn’t be accepted as leader anyway. Of course you don’t have any intention of getting killed if this is what he’s planning. You open up the door and see Cyrus standing near the table by himself. You can’t sense anyone else; maybe he wants this to be a one on one matter. “There you are, I wasn’t sure you were coming. I want to speak to you on something very important and this has to be settled right now.” No doubt he’s talking about the leadership position. You know he still desperately wants it and he’s just going through the motions of being civilized about it right now. You aren’t waiting around… Before Cyrus even knows what’s going on, you fire your armbow at him. He reacts in time to move, but not before a bolt goes into his arm. “Agh! What the fuck are you doing?!” he says clutching his arm and backing away from you. “I’m settling this right now, we both know what this is all about. You’re going to kill me because you want to be in charge and that’s not happening.” You rush forward to attack and Cyrus once again dodges and backs away from you. He hasn’t even drawn his weapon yet. “What? No! Look! I just called you in to talk! I was going to tell you that I’ve come to the realization that you’re the worthy one to lead the shadows! I know it’s taken me a long time, but I see that you’re the chosen one of Dendrin.” “Bullshit, you’ve desired to be shadow master since Master Ebon died.” “And probably even a little bit before, but I see that I was wrong to think such things even if I never spoke them out loud. Perhaps Dendrin punished me for it by never speaking to me. He speaks to you and your actions have lead us to finally be free of the Empire. Why should I keep questioning your ability? It’s obvious that you have a greater destiny and I realize that I should just graciously step aside. Who am I to question the will of Dendrin? I yield to you shadow master.” Cyrus seems pretty sincere in his words and despite everything he has always been a dedicated disciple of Dendrin for good or ill. If he really believes that Dendrin has a plan for you, he wouldn’t stand in the way of it. Now that you really think about it, he’s never really done anything that would indicate that he was ever actively trying to kill you. It’s possible you’ve just been paranoid about this whole thing. > You kill Cyrus anyway Your paranoia is justified. Cyrus might even believe his own words right now, but he still wants to be shadow master and he’ll kill you to do it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but he’ll try it when you least expect it. He’s probably just biding his time; you aren’t fooled by this act. Cyrus may claim to be a dedicated shadow, but he’s an Eternal first and he’ll always have that desire to lead within him. “I’m glad you yielded to me Cyrus, because there’s no point in putting off the inevitable!” you shout and lunge forward to attack. Cyrus doesn’t move fast enough to dodge your attack and your sword sinks deep into his abdomen. However he also manages to unleash two smaller daggers he had hidden and swings both arms around you to plunge them into your back. The pair of you fall to the floor with each others weapons lodged in vital organs. “Why brother? I was going to join you…” he gasps. “No… you weren’t. You just…stabbed me…” “You attacked…now we’re both done for and along with us, the shadows…” Cyrus says and starts to fall unconscious. You attempt to grab at Cyrus’ daggers in your back, but your own lifeforce starts to fade as well. “Talia still lives…she’ll fix everything…she’ll lead…” you mumble and then join Cyrus in death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I think we should take this opportunity to make them see the way of the shadows.” You say. “What?!” Yvette exclaims. “Are you serious?” Talia asks. “Well okay maybe not all of them, but I’d think that with the right teaching they could become valuable assets.” “NO! These are the enemy and must be destroyed! You said so yourself when we first began this mission!” Yvette says. “And perhaps I was a bit hasty. I can’t be entitled to speak out of turn and make a mistake once in awhile?” “No brother, but I think leaving these…abominations alive for whatever reason is a bigger mistake.” “Abominations…and I suppose you believe me and Talia are abominations too eh sister?” “Wha…no! I mean…(sputter) you’re different! You…” “How? Me, Talia, and Cyrus for that matter were all brought up from birth and indoctrinated to serve the Empire, but what happened? We saw the truth of Dendrin’s wisdom instead! Is it not possible that these…children who aren’t even as old as we were be re-educated to do the same?” “Well…I suppose, but…” “Think about it sister, some of the greatest enemies of the Empire were brought up within the very heart of it! Let’s continue to turn the Empire’s obsessive need for control against itself! And better yet, bring more servants into the fold of Dendrin.” Sister Yvette looks a bit hesitant, it’s obvious she has some real problems with this plan, but she isn’t really sure how to argue against you. Part of it stems from you making a bit of a point, and the other stems from the fact that despite her own confidence being better than it was, she still feels inferior to you…perhaps that’s just the aura you have as an Eternal though. “Yes…I suppose I see the wisdom in attempting to educate these children in the ways of Dendrin.” Sister Yvette says. She might not believe it now, but in time she’ll either convince herself or get used to it. Either way you just need her obedience. As for the remainder of the shadows if they have anything meaningful to say on the subject they keep it to themselves. That just leaves Talia, who is going to require a little bit more convincing since you sense her look of disagreement. “Um…sister Yvette, could you and the rest leave me and sister Talia alone for a moment.” As the rest of them leave, you move over to Talia who looks out over the hundreds of eternal containers. “I sense some disapproval from this plan?” “Not so much disapproval, but rather apprehension.” “What about the training? I know it won’t be easy, but I figure we can open up that ritual portal to Dendrin and let him decide if they’re worthy or not, you know, like he did with us.” “And you know how to do that? Because I sure don’t! It’s not like Master Ebon or Brother Gray imparted that knowledge on to me before they died!” “Well your magic is strong, and hey I know Cyrus has some old shadow tomes back at Fort Defiance, we can probably find something in there about it.” “Well I’m glad you seem to have this all figured out then, just wish you would’ve let me on this sooner.” “I would have, but this honestly just came to mind. I mean how was I to know that these kids were going to be safely locked up in oversized glass tubes? I thought we were going to be waist deep in their blood by now.” “So who is going to train them? I know it’s not going to be you. Me I suppose right?” “Well…you would be the best qualified…but hey Sister Yvette could help you and other shadows too! In fact I could have some transferred here just in case of an Empire attack when…” “Damn it I’m not worried about all that, I’m wondering WHY you came up with this plan at all! I know there’s another reason than just turning them against the Empire or even bringing new shadows into Dendrin’s fold and don’t say that there isn’t! We’re the same and we’ve bonded as lovers. I know there’s more going on in your head because I know YOU. Now tell me. Talia never was one to mince words and perhaps it is time you didn’t either. “Very well my love. You should know everything.” And from there you tell Talia everything…except you don’t. You tell her that Dendrin did not only speak to you on the day Gloom was attacked, you tell her he’s spoken to you in the past on several occasions. You just never said anything about it before Gloom because you didn’t want to be thought a liar and be labeled a heretic. You also tell her that Dendrin has urged you to follow your own path and to seize leadership of the shadows. You didn’t want to initially because you wanted to try to hold things together because things seemed so fractured, but given that Dendrin has recently warned you about Cyrus’ potential treachery you thought it might be best to have another group of allies in case the worst occurs. “So…we’re keeping this a secret from Cyrus?” “Yes, I think that would be for the best. If he knew about this, you know he’d be against it. Cyrus is clinging to the old shadow ways and still has clout, but that will be coming to an end soon.” “I dunno…I mean I agree that Cyrus shouldn’t be leader and that you would make an excellent shadow master especially since Dendrin talks to you, but hiding things from Cyrus and possibly planning for his death? I mean is there no other way? He’s not just a shadow, he’s one of us.” “So are a few other eternals from our class if you remember. These little bastards here were going to be against us until we intervened…which bring me to my other reason and this one is harder for me to tell because it involves you and me.” “All of this involves the both of us, what else could it possibly be that would trouble me more than conspiracy against one of our brothers?” You bring up the very real and unaltered truth that Dendrin told you about eternals. The fact that none of you are able to have children due how you were created. Talia gets quiet and sits down for a moment. She tries very hard not to cry, but her voice is obviously quivering when she speaks again. “…I…guess (sniff) that explains a lot…but um…I mean Dendrin could do something…I mean he…” “Dendrin… (Sigh) …how do I put this? Dendrin is…complex. It’s true that he helps us directly by granting our magical abilities and perhaps in ways of major importance when he warned me about Gloom, but he’s not here to collectively hold the hands of the shadows. (You can’t believe you just repeated Dendrin’s own words) He would prefer that the shadows made their own destiny as it were. I mean, I’m sure if he wanted to, he could’ve just laid waste to the Empire a long time ago, but he didn’t. He wanted the shadows to endure and in enduring grow stronger from the situation they were placed in. Just like you…we will have to endure in not being able to have children. But getting back to the heart of the matter, that’s part of why I decided that we should try to save these young eternals. I mean you’ll get to train them first hand in the ways of Dendrin. It would almost be like you were the mother of several hundred eternal shadows.” “But then they can never produce offspring either.” “Well we don’t know that. I mean it looks like they’ve been altered in a significantly different way. But even if they can’t so what? If we had had children there would be no guarantee that they’d all survive to reproduce either. You mustn’t worry about this, because after all is said and done, you will still be doing Dendrin’s work and serving him faithfully and really isn’t that what it’s all about?” You look into her eyes and touch her on the shoulder. She grabs your hand on her shoulder and looks down for a moment and breathes deeply. After a couple of seconds she looks back up at you. “Very well, this does seem to be a suitable course of action. But quite frankly I don’t think we can save all of these children. Some of them are going to be lost causes and if the Empire ever attacks this place in force, we’re going to have to collapse this place anyway, we can’t properly defend it, at least not at this time.” “Of course, I agree. I trust you will do what you can.” “I always do my love.” With this new plan settled, you and Talia kiss each other before parting company. You tell Sister Yvette that she is to report to Talia directly now and that you’ll be contacting Brother Theo about the new changes. Fortunately he’s still alive, when you check to see how those other shadow cell attack turned out. No reports have even come in about the attack on the camp, which isn’t too surprising given all the chaos going on elsewhere that brother Theo caused and the fact you didn’t leave any survivors or let anyone escape. Eventually you make your way back to Rask which you’re happy to find out Cyrus was smart enough to not risk attacking Fort Destiny. Unfortunately he caused a different set back entirely. Talia was about the only one keeping the Flog and the rest of his orcs on good terms. You rarely interacted with him and he never got along with Cyrus who was usually condescending to him. While you were gone apparently a small skirmish ensued between the orcs and shadows. Amazingly nobody was actually killed, but several were wounded and ultimately Flog left with the remainder of the orcs. “What?! They’re gone? Where?!” you ask. “How should I know, further north I think where the rest of those overgrown idiots dwell. I don’t care, we don’t need them anyway!” Cyrus says. “And where is Sister Talia? Did you get her killed in your foolish mission?” “No our mission was a success, and she’ll be taking care of some of the business we have in the south from now on because it’s apparent my attention should start being more focused here.” “Oh so now you’ve decided that, after all those times I’ve suggested that since you first arrived here? You know what, I’ve been putting in work here for nearly a decade now, what makes you even think you know what the best plan of action is here?” “Well I wouldn’t have pissed off our orc allies if I had the desire to attack Fort Destiny for one. (Sigh) Cyrus I’m on your side for Dendrin’s sake! I mean we’re supposed to be fighting the Empire, not each other. Can’t you see that brother?” Cyrus looks you up and down with distain in his face. “All I see is someone that talks a good game about serving Dendrin, but ultimately his words ring hollow to my ears. Always have. Time will tell though, brother and there will be a reckoning. Dendrin will not suffer false prophets and pretenders. I hope for your sake you aren’t one because his wrath will be terrible. Do what you want.” Cyrus says and leaves the room. Funny how Cyrus is probably the only one who can see through your bullshit, yet still be painfully wrong. More amusement for Dendrin you suppose. > You diplomacy (Year 31) This is really annoying. You cut down the orc you wounded from before. You knew he wasn’t getting far in this blizzard. Unfortunately you’ve lost sight of Flog again. You’ll pick up the trail again to be sure, but this whole thing is a complete waste of time. If Cyrus hadn’t pissed off the orcs, they could’ve been sent to prevent Kane from destroying another town. Instead the Flog and his merry little band have been raiding the little villages north of Fort Defiance, villages that were supporting the shadows. This can’t continue and will not continue. A cave lies up ahead, knowing Flog he’s probably set up some sort of crude ambush, but that’s where he’s going to be. You need to get out of this blizzard anyway before you freeze. Shadows don’t have any magic that keeps you warm after all. You’d like to where Cyrus is since he’s supposed to be helping you in this task. (This is fault after all) You told him to not to bother chasing those other orcs as they were obviously just a distraction. The cave provides welcoming warmth from the cold outside. It also provides a welcoming committee in the form of three ogres. This would be Flog’s crude ambush. You dodge the first ogre trying to cave your head in with a club and make a deep slash across his great fat belly. Innards are emptied out onto the cave floor along with a foul odor. The other two ogres knock over their mortally wounded companion in his own blood and shit to reach you. As powerful as they are, ogres in your experience have never been particular good fighters. It’s over reliance on brute strength and no match for your own abilities. A lot easier than trolls that’s for sure. You never want to have to fight one of those things again. You easily avoid the ogres’ attacks and hamstring the pair of them before they even know what’s going on. You jump on the back of one of them and put a dagger through the back of his neck. He throws you off as he gags on his own blood. The last ogre crawls at you while you shake off the cobwebs of being thrown into the cave wall. A familiar “shhh thunk!” sound is heard and you see a bolt going through the eye of the ogre. He continues to crawl at you for a moment before succumbing to brain death. You look to your left and see Cyrus loading up another bolt in his armbow. “These creatures were always unworthy of being in the presence of Dendrin’s faithful to begin with.” Cyrus says calmly “Where have you been?” “I got lost in the blizzard temporarily when I was chasing those orcs. I’m here now so let’s finish this brother.” You shake you head sometimes wondering why you don’t just kill him and declare yourself shadow master, but he’s still got enough followers to make that problematic and thanks to this orc distraction, you need his help. There’s also the fact that Talia would still prefer you to somehow find a way to work it out with him. There have been times where you think you have, but then there is some sort of disagreement and the both of you are back where you started. You figure all of the same reasons are why Cyrus hasn’t attempted to kill you and declare himself shadow master. He certainly could get away with it up here in the hinterlands and you sort of wondered if that’s why he agreed to come with you on this mission. He could kill you and then claim you fell in battle. Who’d really know? But again, he needs you, probably even more than he’d like to admit. You also know that perhaps somewhere within him, he’d prefer that you’d be on better terms as well. The pair of you travel further into the cave and eventually you come across a single figure standing by a small fire. It’s Flog. “Shadows, Flog sees that you have finally tracked him.” “Wasn’t exactly difficult considering all the raiding you were doing. You really brought this upon yourself Flog.” You answer. “How else are we supposed to sustain ourselves? Can’t farm in this land and orcs not farmers anyway. Hunting is scarce lately. Too much competition with giants and unfriendly ogre tribes. Humie villages have lots of supplies. They have more than enough. Stupid for having a settlement in hostile territory anyway.” “It wasn’t excessively hostile until you started raiding them and two, those supplies are to help the rebellion against the Empire, you do remember that war remember?” “Flog remembers. Flog remembers all too well since shadows just used orcs as sword fodder to hide behind. Shadows no better than the Empire.” At this point Cyrus speaks up. “Why are we wasting words on this savage, let us kill the beast the be done with it.” “Huh, you seemed to hide the most. If not for pretty female shadow, Flog would’ve killed you a long time ago.” “Enough! Flog, your alliance with the shadows while probably not ideal, it was to your benefit. Since our split, the Empire has managed to make a small come back here in Rask. If the Empire gets strong enough to defeat us, you know you’ll be next.” “Bah! Flog not care anymore! Empire is weak enough now. Empire will never be able to tame the upper reaches of Rask. Flog will make his home there and be free. Empire YOU shadows problem now.” “Very well Flog, but there’s one problem with that plan. Namely you’re not getting out of this cave to be able to live free. You won’t be living at all in fact.” “Oh…right…Flog see…” At this point you fully expect Flog to make a last moment attack, but he doesn’t, instead he takes his hand away from his weapon. “Anyway Flog can convince shadows?” he asks. “Wait, are you seriously trying to negotiate?” you ask “Yeah, if it gets Flog to live.” You can’t help but chuckle a little. Talia always told you Flog was intelligent for an orc. You can only imagine how intelligent Captain Gruz was considering he was the originator of this orc rebellion. Cyrus of course isn’t finding this amusing at all. “Why are you laughing? This orc scum insults Dendrin and us! I’m putting an end to this…” Cyrus attempts to shoot Flog with his armbow, but you stop him from doing so and the bolt flies harmlessly into the wall. This would be a perfect time for Flog to try to escape, but he doesn’t. Either he’s smart enough to know you’d just find him again, or he’s serious about coming to some sort of agreement. This situation isn’t totally unsalvageable with Flog, but it certainly makes your current situation with Cyrus worse. “Brother, you deal with this orc barbarian if you wish, but I’ll not have any part of it! And if whatever deal you make with it bites all of us, I will be the first one to make sure you pay for your poor decisions! I make this vow to Dendrin himself!” Cyrus exclaims and storms off. After a brief moment of silence, you speak to Flog. “Alright Flog, this is a negotiation, but you won’t be changing anything about them because everything is going to be on MY terms. Okay first off, you can’t raid the villages north of Fort Defiance anymore. The people are expecting the shadows to protect them and we can’t do that AND fight the Empire. I think you know what takes precedence, however if we can’t protect them, they won’t give us any supplies because they’re either losing them to you or they lose faith in us and won’t help.” “But if Flog don’t do that, what remains of my tribe will see me as weak and kill me anyway.” “Yes I know. And we’d just be left with the same problem. So this is what I want you to do. I don’t want you to raid the villages.I want you to enslave them.” “You want Flog to enslave the villages?” “Yes, I assume you still have enough orcs to do it, and if you don’t I’m sure you can also engage in your favorite past time of beating up ogres into submission to join you. In fact I’d prefer you to do that, just so we don’t have to deal with those big lugs sniffing around the fort. They waste our time. So enslave the villagers and you’ll never have to raid them again and you can take what you want when you want…and when the shadows want.” “Hur hur…Flog see now. Won’t that make shadows look bad?” “Who is going to know? It isn’t like many people travel back and forth past Fort Defiance, let alone to those remote villages. Just keep anyone from escaping and we should be fine. I trust you’ll be able to handle all this.” “Sure, sure. Flog can do all that. Giants might still be a problem, but Flog will find a way.” “Glad to hear it. I’m counting on you to keep that savage north tamed up there, while we can focus on the Empire.” “Hrmmm, lotta faith in Flog. Though you shadow only place faith in your god.” “I place faith in your desire to live. Talia’s told me about how smart you are before. I know you can see this to be a good deal for you. You get to be practically independent and a leader and all you have to do is supply us every once in awhile. Better than dying by my hand I’d imagine.” “Huh yes good deal. Liked pretty shadow female, always dealt straight with Flog. Still not as pretty as orc female. Too skinny and not green enough. Good mate for you though.” “Heh, yes well I certainly think so.” “Alright shadow. Flog agree…but one question. How you know that Flog not eventually raise army to attack you in the future?” “Because…” you smile. “I also have faith that you dislike Cyrus so much that you’d rather prove him wrong by NOT attacking me.” With this statement Flog lets out a hearty laugh and you leave him to his mirth. He may become a problem in the future, but for now you’ve got him back on your side and eliminated the source of trouble to the north of you. On your way out of the cave Cyrus stands waiting and asks you if you killed Flog, you tell him you took care of the problem. Cyrus just gives one of his trademark dirty looks and walks ahead of you. One thing’s for sure; if your relationship with Cyrus doesn’t get better you’ll be dealing with that problem before one with Flog.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I think we should take this opportunity to make them see the way of the shadows.” You say. “What?!” Yvette exclaims. “Are you serious?” Talia asks. “Well okay maybe not all of them, but I’d think that with the right teaching they could become valuable assets.” “NO! These are the enemy and must be destroyed! You said so yourself when we first began this mission!” Yvette says. “And perhaps I was a bit hasty. I can’t be entitled to speak out of turn and make a mistake once in awhile?” “No brother, but I think leaving these…abominations alive for whatever reason is a bigger mistake.” “Abominations…and I suppose you believe me and Talia are abominations too eh sister?” “Wha…no! I mean…(sputter) you’re different! You…” “How? Me, Talia, and Cyrus for that matter were all brought up from birth and indoctrinated to serve the Empire, but what happened? We saw the truth of Dendrin’s wisdom instead! Is it not possible that these…children who aren’t even as old as we were be re-educated to do the same?” “Well…I suppose, but…” “Think about it sister, some of the greatest enemies of the Empire were brought up within the very heart of it! Let’s continue to turn the Empire’s obsessive need for control against itself! And better yet, bring more servants into the fold of Dendrin.” Sister Yvette looks a bit hesitant, it’s obvious she has some real problems with this plan, but she isn’t really sure how to argue against you. Part of it stems from you making a bit of a point, and the other stems from the fact that despite her own confidence being better than it was, she still feels inferior to you…perhaps that’s just the aura you have as an Eternal though. “Yes…I suppose I see the wisdom in attempting to educate these children in the ways of Dendrin.” Sister Yvette says. She might not believe it now, but in time she’ll either convince herself or get used to it. Either way you just need her obedience. As for the remainder of the shadows if they have anything meaningful to say on the subject they keep it to themselves. That just leaves Talia, who is going to require a little bit more convincing since you sense her look of disagreement. “Um…sister Yvette, could you and the rest leave me and sister Talia alone for a moment.” As the rest of them leave, you move over to Talia who looks out over the hundreds of eternal containers. “I sense some disapproval from this plan?” “Not so much disapproval, but rather apprehension.” “What about the training? I know it won’t be easy, but I figure we can open up that ritual portal to Dendrin and let him decide if they’re worthy or not, you know, like he did with us.” “And you know how to do that? Because I sure don’t! It’s not like Master Ebon or Brother Gray imparted that knowledge on to me before they died!” “Well your magic is strong, and hey I know Cyrus has some old shadow tomes back at Fort Defiance, we can probably find something in there about it.” “Well I’m glad you seem to have this all figured out then, just wish you would’ve let me on this sooner.” “I would have, but this honestly just came to mind. I mean how was I to know that these kids were going to be safely locked up in oversized glass tubes? I thought we were going to be waist deep in their blood by now.” “So who is going to train them? I know it’s not going to be you. Me I suppose right?” “Well…you would be the best qualified…but hey Sister Yvette could help you and other shadows too! In fact I could have some transferred here just in case of an Empire attack when…” “Damn it I’m not worried about all that, I’m wondering WHY you came up with this plan at all! I know there’s another reason than just turning them against the Empire or even bringing new shadows into Dendrin’s fold and don’t say that there isn’t! We’re the same and we’ve bonded as lovers. I know there’s more going on in your head because I know YOU. Now tell me. Talia never was one to mince words and perhaps it is time you didn’t either. “Very well my love. You should know everything.” And from there you tell Talia everything…except you don’t. You tell her that Dendrin did not only speak to you on the day Gloom was attacked, you tell her he’s spoken to you in the past on several occasions. You just never said anything about it before Gloom because you didn’t want to be thought a liar and be labeled a heretic. You also tell her that Dendrin has urged you to follow your own path and to seize leadership of the shadows. You didn’t want to initially because you wanted to try to hold things together because things seemed so fractured, but given that Dendrin has recently warned you about Cyrus’ potential treachery you thought it might be best to have another group of allies in case the worst occurs. “So…we’re keeping this a secret from Cyrus?” “Yes, I think that would be for the best. If he knew about this, you know he’d be against it. Cyrus is clinging to the old shadow ways and still has clout, but that will be coming to an end soon.” “I dunno…I mean I agree that Cyrus shouldn’t be leader and that you would make an excellent shadow master especially since Dendrin talks to you, but hiding things from Cyrus and possibly planning for his death? I mean is there no other way? He’s not just a shadow, he’s one of us.” “So are a few other eternals from our class if you remember. These little bastards here were going to be against us until we intervened…which bring me to my other reason and this one is harder for me to tell because it involves you and me.” “All of this involves the both of us, what else could it possibly be that would trouble me more than conspiracy against one of our brothers?” You bring up the very real and unaltered truth that Dendrin told you about eternals. The fact that none of you are able to have children due how you were created. Talia gets quiet and sits down for a moment. She tries very hard not to cry, but her voice is obviously quivering when she speaks again. “…I…guess (sniff) that explains a lot…but um…I mean Dendrin could do something…I mean he…” “Dendrin… (Sigh) …how do I put this? Dendrin is…complex. It’s true that he helps us directly by granting our magical abilities and perhaps in ways of major importance when he warned me about Gloom, but he’s not here to collectively hold the hands of the shadows. (You can’t believe you just repeated Dendrin’s own words) He would prefer that the shadows made their own destiny as it were. I mean, I’m sure if he wanted to, he could’ve just laid waste to the Empire a long time ago, but he didn’t. He wanted the shadows to endure and in enduring grow stronger from the situation they were placed in. Just like you…we will have to endure in not being able to have children. But getting back to the heart of the matter, that’s part of why I decided that we should try to save these young eternals. I mean you’ll get to train them first hand in the ways of Dendrin. It would almost be like you were the mother of several hundred eternal shadows.” “But then they can never produce offspring either.” “Well we don’t know that. I mean it looks like they’ve been altered in a significantly different way. But even if they can’t so what? If we had had children there would be no guarantee that they’d all survive to reproduce either. You mustn’t worry about this, because after all is said and done, you will still be doing Dendrin’s work and serving him faithfully and really isn’t that what it’s all about?” You look into her eyes and touch her on the shoulder. She grabs your hand on her shoulder and looks down for a moment and breathes deeply. After a couple of seconds she looks back up at you. “Very well, this does seem to be a suitable course of action. But quite frankly I don’t think we can save all of these children. Some of them are going to be lost causes and if the Empire ever attacks this place in force, we’re going to have to collapse this place anyway, we can’t properly defend it, at least not at this time.” “Of course, I agree. I trust you will do what you can.” “I always do my love.” With this new plan settled, you and Talia kiss each other before parting company. You tell Sister Yvette that she is to report to Talia directly now and that you’ll be contacting Brother Theo about the new changes. Fortunately he’s still alive, when you check to see how those other shadow cell attack turned out. No reports have even come in about the attack on the camp, which isn’t too surprising given all the chaos going on elsewhere that brother Theo caused and the fact you didn’t leave any survivors or let anyone escape. Eventually you make your way back to Rask which you’re happy to find out Cyrus was smart enough to not risk attacking Fort Destiny. Unfortunately he caused a different set back entirely. Talia was about the only one keeping the Flog and the rest of his orcs on good terms. You rarely interacted with him and he never got along with Cyrus who was usually condescending to him. While you were gone apparently a small skirmish ensued between the orcs and shadows. Amazingly nobody was actually killed, but several were wounded and ultimately Flog left with the remainder of the orcs. “What?! They’re gone? Where?!” you ask. “How should I know, further north I think where the rest of those overgrown idiots dwell. I don’t care, we don’t need them anyway!” Cyrus says. “And where is Sister Talia? Did you get her killed in your foolish mission?” “No our mission was a success, and she’ll be taking care of some of the business we have in the south from now on because it’s apparent my attention should start being more focused here.” “Oh so now you’ve decided that, after all those times I’ve suggested that since you first arrived here? You know what, I’ve been putting in work here for nearly a decade now, what makes you even think you know what the best plan of action is here?” “Well I wouldn’t have pissed off our orc allies if I had the desire to attack Fort Destiny for one. (Sigh) Cyrus I’m on your side for Dendrin’s sake! I mean we’re supposed to be fighting the Empire, not each other. Can’t you see that brother?” Cyrus looks you up and down with distain in his face. “All I see is someone that talks a good game about serving Dendrin, but ultimately his words ring hollow to my ears. Always have. Time will tell though, brother and there will be a reckoning. Dendrin will not suffer false prophets and pretenders. I hope for your sake you aren’t one because his wrath will be terrible. Do what you want.” Cyrus says and leaves the room. Funny how Cyrus is probably the only one who can see through your bullshit, yet still be painfully wrong. More amusement for Dendrin you suppose. > You treachery (Year 32) “We’re going to have to clear out of here soon, the Empire is finally getting their ass in gear to retake this camp. Captain Roldan himself is supposed to be on his way and he’s been pretty efficient in squashing shadow cells as of late.” Talia remarks. “Yeah I know. He’s proven as hard to kill as ol’ butcher Kane. Both have survived several assassination attempts. Heh, this war would’ve been a lot easier had they been put into the Shadow Guard too.” “Well, what are we going to do about him? Because while we can clear out the camp and collapse the rest, it doesn’t stop the fact that Roldan is our biggest potential threat. He’s proving to be the most competent Empire commander they have.” “Yeah I know…I’ll have to think on it. So how many of the new eternals can we save?” “Well there are still hundreds in those tanks and quite frankly I dunno if half of those are even functioning properly anymore. Some were empty to begin with too. I know we’ve open up at least a hundred or so of those tanks and some of the children had to be…dealt with immediately. I’d say we got around sixty or seventy that are still undergoing re-education. And of those? I’d say only about nine that have taken to it completely.” You exhale deeply; you knew it was going to be tough, but only nine? That really puts a crimp in your plans for a potential army of loyal eternal shadows on your side. “Those tomes I gave you didn’t help open a portal to Dendrin so you could do the indoctrination ceremony?” “I couldn’t find anything in them about it. The best thing I found was in one of the Empire mage’s spellbooks. A mind control spell which has helped in the conditioning process. Not shadow magic, but whatever works right?” “You’ll get no argument from me. Might as well take those with you, what about derro equipment?” “Mostly hand weapons that we don’t need or machinery that we can’t use. However there were schematics for stuff laying about. Mostly on those explosive weapons they were using during the troll fight. Sister Yvette has mostly been studying those since I believe it troubles her less than indoctrinating these new eternals. There’s a lot of that explosive stuff unused too. We’ll use that to destroy this complex.” “Maybe we could use it to set up a trap as well.” You say forming a plan. “How so exactly? I mean I sort of get where you’re going with your thought process; when Roldan arrives we could blow up his army, but there’s no guarantee we’d get all of them or even him and we’d have to stick around which would most likely be suicide as his army is reportedly the best around and we severely lack in numbers. Hell, I’m not even sure some of those kids we’re educating wouldn’t help the Empire.” “Except those nine right?” “Well yes, except them. What are you suggesting?” You explain to Talia that you all will evacuate this camp as planned, taking with you spellbooks, derro tech schematics and those children that are in the process of being re-educated. What’s staying are the explosives and those nine children… “Wait, wait, you seriously want these children to sacrifice their lives?” “It’s not like they’re doing it for no reason. They’ll be striking a blow against the Empire, and dying in the service of Dendrin. You told me they were loyal didn’t you?” “Well yes, but…” “Well when the army comes through Roldan will have it searched from top to bottom. He’ll probably even do a little wandering himself when everything appears to be in order. Then when he’s got his guard down, these nine you’ve told me about will come from their hiding spots light the fuses in the strategically located areas. Just to make sure they accomplish their missions, they will also be carrying explosives on their person. They probably aren’t expecting the new eternals are indoctrinated and some aren’t going to expect finding so called helpless children at all. In fact maybe we should tell one to play up the victim role about the terrible shadows and when Roldan wants to hear their story…BOOM! He’s no more.” While this seems like a solid plan to you, Talia once again is showing reservations about your ideas. “But these children have worked so hard to devote themselves to Dendrin. The odds were so against them, yet their trust and faith helped them overcome their Empire brainwashing. It doesn’t seem right for them to die when they have only just awakened. There are other shadows here. Adult ones who would also gladly sacrifice themselves, could we not use one of them instead?” “Normally I’d say yes, but an adult shadow is of much more worth in case of a major battle in the near future. Now I’m aware these children are eternals, but they are still children. They are not even the same age that we were when were first exposed to the shadow way. I can’t wait for them to grow and I can’t use any of ones you’re still in the process of educating because I can’t risk any of them not following through with the plan. Talia, I know this is grim business and I know you may have even gotten attached to them…like any mother would. But there comes a time where even a mother has to let go, and really, you knew that something like this might be a possibility. Take comfort in the fact that their actions will save other shadows and their siblings.” “I know the reasons. I know the stakes, but I won’t take comfort in it. And I can’t be the one to send them to their deaths. You’ll have to do it.” Talia says and looks away from you, obviously trying to hide her eyes, which are tearing up. “Very well. I suppose I owe them that much.” You say and ask where they are. When you go to the room where they’re located, they are all in prayer to Dendrin. They don’t even stop to notice you until they’re finished. Well they’re definitely loyal to Dendrin that’s for sure. They recognize you as a shadow and ask who you are. When you tell them your name, their eyes get wide and they suddenly start to get very excited. “You’re Mother Talia’s husband!” “You’re the one who speaks to Dendrin!” “You’re the scourge of the Empire!” Looks like Talia’s been speaking about you in high regard to these children as well. “Are you here to send us on a mission to kill Empire soldiers?” one of them asks. “Oh yes. I am here to send you all on a mission. Possibly one of the most important in the war against the Empire. We haven’t much time though and I will have to explain quickly, are you all ready to serve in Dendrin’s name?” “Yes! For Dendrin!” they all shout in unison. While everyone else starts evacuating the camp, you start taking the children through the plan. Sister Yvette briefly shows you and the children where she’s placing the explosives to collapse the underground complex. She also shows the children how to use the explosives. She’s noticeably unnerved by the fact that these children are going to sacrifice themselves. She never agreed with saving the eternals to begin with, but apparently she has now grown a little more used to the children and isn’t happy about seeing them going to their deaths. You haven’t been around these children long enough to get so attached to them, but you can understand it. Even within the short time you’ve spent with these nine you can appreciate their enthusiastic potential. It is sort of a shame since who knows what they would accomplish if they were to grow up, but there are still several dozen more that will be saved and hopefully they will eventually become just like these nine. Towards the end of the evacuation, you wave good-bye to the nine and remind them of their duty and how Dendrin will accept them when their work is done. Talia also sticks around to say her farewells. “Children, remember all that I have taught you and remember that Dendrin loves you…and that…(sniffle) I love you…(sniffle) and will always do so.” “We love you too Mother Talia.” They all say in unison and go up to hug her. After a couple seconds of this, Talia tells them good-bye and leaves with you. The pair of you travel behind the rest mostly in silence. No sooner have you traveled out of sight of the camp, Talia breaks down and cries. A few shadows turn around wondering what’s going on, but you tell them all to go on ahead and that you’ll both be along shortly. You stand beside her during her sorrow, but you offer no words of comfort since there are none. In fact chances are you’ll make her feel worse as it was your decision after all. Eventually after she lets it all out, she pulls herself together. Still sad of course, but ready to put it behind her. You continue your journey to Brother Theo’s hideout that he’s prepared for the evacuation. A few days later you get word from contacts of an Empire army being nearly wiped out by a series of large explosions. For a brief moment the Empire first thought it might even be a Felkan attack due to their use of gunpower weaponry, however it was confirmed by the few survivors that it was another shadow ambush. Naturally you are painted to be the lowliest of villains due to children being used, but Empire propaganda has always been so over the top that you doubt if people will even believe it, and those that do…well they were probably never going to be on your side anyway. The best news is when you hear that a funeral will be held in Captain Roldan’s honor as he died during one of the blasts. You have won a great victory and confirms that your decision to save the eternals was a good one. Even if all the others prove to be untrainable, those nine were more than worth it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I think we should take this opportunity to make them see the way of the shadows.” You say. “What?!” Yvette exclaims. “Are you serious?” Talia asks. “Well okay maybe not all of them, but I’d think that with the right teaching they could become valuable assets.” “NO! These are the enemy and must be destroyed! You said so yourself when we first began this mission!” Yvette says. “And perhaps I was a bit hasty. I can’t be entitled to speak out of turn and make a mistake once in awhile?” “No brother, but I think leaving these…abominations alive for whatever reason is a bigger mistake.” “Abominations…and I suppose you believe me and Talia are abominations too eh sister?” “Wha…no! I mean…(sputter) you’re different! You…” “How? Me, Talia, and Cyrus for that matter were all brought up from birth and indoctrinated to serve the Empire, but what happened? We saw the truth of Dendrin’s wisdom instead! Is it not possible that these…children who aren’t even as old as we were be re-educated to do the same?” “Well…I suppose, but…” “Think about it sister, some of the greatest enemies of the Empire were brought up within the very heart of it! Let’s continue to turn the Empire’s obsessive need for control against itself! And better yet, bring more servants into the fold of Dendrin.” Sister Yvette looks a bit hesitant, it’s obvious she has some real problems with this plan, but she isn’t really sure how to argue against you. Part of it stems from you making a bit of a point, and the other stems from the fact that despite her own confidence being better than it was, she still feels inferior to you…perhaps that’s just the aura you have as an Eternal though. “Yes…I suppose I see the wisdom in attempting to educate these children in the ways of Dendrin.” Sister Yvette says. She might not believe it now, but in time she’ll either convince herself or get used to it. Either way you just need her obedience. As for the remainder of the shadows if they have anything meaningful to say on the subject they keep it to themselves. That just leaves Talia, who is going to require a little bit more convincing since you sense her look of disagreement. “Um…sister Yvette, could you and the rest leave me and sister Talia alone for a moment.” As the rest of them leave, you move over to Talia who looks out over the hundreds of eternal containers. “I sense some disapproval from this plan?” “Not so much disapproval, but rather apprehension.” “What about the training? I know it won’t be easy, but I figure we can open up that ritual portal to Dendrin and let him decide if they’re worthy or not, you know, like he did with us.” “And you know how to do that? Because I sure don’t! It’s not like Master Ebon or Brother Gray imparted that knowledge on to me before they died!” “Well your magic is strong, and hey I know Cyrus has some old shadow tomes back at Fort Defiance, we can probably find something in there about it.” “Well I’m glad you seem to have this all figured out then, just wish you would’ve let me on this sooner.” “I would have, but this honestly just came to mind. I mean how was I to know that these kids were going to be safely locked up in oversized glass tubes? I thought we were going to be waist deep in their blood by now.” “So who is going to train them? I know it’s not going to be you. Me I suppose right?” “Well…you would be the best qualified…but hey Sister Yvette could help you and other shadows too! In fact I could have some transferred here just in case of an Empire attack when…” “Damn it I’m not worried about all that, I’m wondering WHY you came up with this plan at all! I know there’s another reason than just turning them against the Empire or even bringing new shadows into Dendrin’s fold and don’t say that there isn’t! We’re the same and we’ve bonded as lovers. I know there’s more going on in your head because I know YOU. Now tell me. Talia never was one to mince words and perhaps it is time you didn’t either. “Very well my love. You should know everything.” And from there you tell Talia everything…except you don’t. You tell her that Dendrin did not only speak to you on the day Gloom was attacked, you tell her he’s spoken to you in the past on several occasions. You just never said anything about it before Gloom because you didn’t want to be thought a liar and be labeled a heretic. You also tell her that Dendrin has urged you to follow your own path and to seize leadership of the shadows. You didn’t want to initially because you wanted to try to hold things together because things seemed so fractured, but given that Dendrin has recently warned you about Cyrus’ potential treachery you thought it might be best to have another group of allies in case the worst occurs. “So…we’re keeping this a secret from Cyrus?” “Yes, I think that would be for the best. If he knew about this, you know he’d be against it. Cyrus is clinging to the old shadow ways and still has clout, but that will be coming to an end soon.” “I dunno…I mean I agree that Cyrus shouldn’t be leader and that you would make an excellent shadow master especially since Dendrin talks to you, but hiding things from Cyrus and possibly planning for his death? I mean is there no other way? He’s not just a shadow, he’s one of us.” “So are a few other eternals from our class if you remember. These little bastards here were going to be against us until we intervened…which bring me to my other reason and this one is harder for me to tell because it involves you and me.” “All of this involves the both of us, what else could it possibly be that would trouble me more than conspiracy against one of our brothers?” You bring up the very real and unaltered truth that Dendrin told you about eternals. The fact that none of you are able to have children due how you were created. Talia gets quiet and sits down for a moment. She tries very hard not to cry, but her voice is obviously quivering when she speaks again. “…I…guess (sniff) that explains a lot…but um…I mean Dendrin could do something…I mean he…” “Dendrin… (Sigh) …how do I put this? Dendrin is…complex. It’s true that he helps us directly by granting our magical abilities and perhaps in ways of major importance when he warned me about Gloom, but he’s not here to collectively hold the hands of the shadows. (You can’t believe you just repeated Dendrin’s own words) He would prefer that the shadows made their own destiny as it were. I mean, I’m sure if he wanted to, he could’ve just laid waste to the Empire a long time ago, but he didn’t. He wanted the shadows to endure and in enduring grow stronger from the situation they were placed in. Just like you…we will have to endure in not being able to have children. But getting back to the heart of the matter, that’s part of why I decided that we should try to save these young eternals. I mean you’ll get to train them first hand in the ways of Dendrin. It would almost be like you were the mother of several hundred eternal shadows.” “But then they can never produce offspring either.” “Well we don’t know that. I mean it looks like they’ve been altered in a significantly different way. But even if they can’t so what? If we had had children there would be no guarantee that they’d all survive to reproduce either. You mustn’t worry about this, because after all is said and done, you will still be doing Dendrin’s work and serving him faithfully and really isn’t that what it’s all about?” You look into her eyes and touch her on the shoulder. She grabs your hand on her shoulder and looks down for a moment and breathes deeply. After a couple of seconds she looks back up at you. “Very well, this does seem to be a suitable course of action. But quite frankly I don’t think we can save all of these children. Some of them are going to be lost causes and if the Empire ever attacks this place in force, we’re going to have to collapse this place anyway, we can’t properly defend it, at least not at this time.” “Of course, I agree. I trust you will do what you can.” “I always do my love.” With this new plan settled, you and Talia kiss each other before parting company. You tell Sister Yvette that she is to report to Talia directly now and that you’ll be contacting Brother Theo about the new changes. Fortunately he’s still alive, when you check to see how those other shadow cell attack turned out. No reports have even come in about the attack on the camp, which isn’t too surprising given all the chaos going on elsewhere that brother Theo caused and the fact you didn’t leave any survivors or let anyone escape. Eventually you make your way back to Rask which you’re happy to find out Cyrus was smart enough to not risk attacking Fort Destiny. Unfortunately he caused a different set back entirely. Talia was about the only one keeping the Flog and the rest of his orcs on good terms. You rarely interacted with him and he never got along with Cyrus who was usually condescending to him. While you were gone apparently a small skirmish ensued between the orcs and shadows. Amazingly nobody was actually killed, but several were wounded and ultimately Flog left with the remainder of the orcs. “What?! They’re gone? Where?!” you ask. “How should I know, further north I think where the rest of those overgrown idiots dwell. I don’t care, we don’t need them anyway!” Cyrus says. “And where is Sister Talia? Did you get her killed in your foolish mission?” “No our mission was a success, and she’ll be taking care of some of the business we have in the south from now on because it’s apparent my attention should start being more focused here.” “Oh so now you’ve decided that, after all those times I’ve suggested that since you first arrived here? You know what, I’ve been putting in work here for nearly a decade now, what makes you even think you know what the best plan of action is here?” “Well I wouldn’t have pissed off our orc allies if I had the desire to attack Fort Destiny for one. (Sigh) Cyrus I’m on your side for Dendrin’s sake! I mean we’re supposed to be fighting the Empire, not each other. Can’t you see that brother?” Cyrus looks you up and down with distain in his face. “All I see is someone that talks a good game about serving Dendrin, but ultimately his words ring hollow to my ears. Always have. Time will tell though, brother and there will be a reckoning. Dendrin will not suffer false prophets and pretenders. I hope for your sake you aren’t one because his wrath will be terrible. Do what you want.” Cyrus says and leaves the room. Funny how Cyrus is probably the only one who can see through your bullshit, yet still be painfully wrong. More amusement for Dendrin you suppose. > You brutality (Year 33) The day has finally come to pass, an all out assault on Fort Destiny. Just what Cyrus always wanted. What he probably didn’t want though is you organizing most of it, but really without you this wouldn’t even be going through. The provinces south of Rask don’t need shadow support quite as much anymore as there is now a sufficient about of chaos going on throughout. So much so that Empire troops have been getting pulled out of Rask just to keep order down south. No more support is coming to Rask, not even dark elven mercenaries and up until last year only the most desperate of them were even taking the jobs. Which is why you decided that now is the best time to pull all your strength from the south to combine with supporters in Rask drive out the Empire once and for all. The Empire’s sole beacon of existence in Rask now is Fort Destiny and Captain Kane himself. Without either the Empire will have officially lost Rask. The Empire has been having a shortage in competent military leadership and losing Captain Roldan was certainly a great blow. The assault is taking place nearly the same way it was first envisioned, and attack from the north and the south. The difference is that now you’ve brought along derro explosives to help in your cause along with about fifty loyal eternal shadows who may be young, but are already proving their worth. Cyrus needless to say wasn’t pleased to hear about that secret you’d kept from him. Cyrus also wasn’t pleased when you managed to have Flog lend some of his orc and ogre subjects to help out, but what really helped was his inclusion of a couple of giants to provide “rock thrower” support. The initial attack goes about as expected. Great rocks thrown and crashing into the sides of the fort on the north side, while firebombs blow up the walls on the south side. It isn’t all one sided though as catapults are fired back at your people. By day three Fort Destiny stands half in ruins with several holes in its walls and dead soldiers in the courtyard. Both giants are dead, one even lying slumped over a collapsed wall with a ballista bolt through his head. Most of the ogres have died as well. The Raskian people who have lent their support have taken a lot of casualties, but you think that thanks to Kane’s past cruelty and the desire to drive out the Empire they see the losses as acceptable. Fortunately there haven’t been many casualties on the shadows’ side of your army. As you, Cyrus and Talia stand alongside your occupying forces; the only real structure left is the battered citadel in the center. The front door to it has been strongly barricaded from the inside, but there are enough holes in the upper parts of it that it would be a simple matter of scaling the thing and entering through one of them. “Anyone seen Kane’s body in this bloody mess?” Talia asks. “He’s probably in his citadel, but I’m not going to bother going through some sort of drawn out process of getting him.” You reply. “So are you sending in your fancy new eternal babies to scale the walls?” Cyrus asks. “Probably could, but they’d probably get slaughtered by the likes of Kane. And Kane’s most likely still got a bunch of solders locked up with him in there to help him. No, we’re not sending in ANY shadows. It’s just a waste of their lives at this point. Got a much better idea.” You say looking up at the citadel. “Kane! Butcher of Rask! The battle is at an end, let us not draw this out any further than it needs to, come on out and face death with the honor I know you to have!” you shout. For a long moment there is silence. “If you insist on hiding in there like a eunuch I’m going to simply line this citadel’s base with explosives and bring it crashing down with you in it! Is that what sort of death you want for you and your men hiding with you?” This statement causes some laughter from the upper reaches of the citadel. “My men in here are all dead! I killed them all myself when they talked about surrendering to you shadow scum! Traitors! Weaklings! All of them! This entire country is filled with the disease that infects the Empire! I have done my duty in cleansing it to the best of my abilities.” Kane answers. Given Kane’s reputation there’s no real reason to doubt this, but something about the way he’s saying it makes it apparent that he may have very well lost it. “So are you coming out to cleanse us as well?” you ask. “Any other day I would have, but no shadow parasite, my days of cleansing are indeed at an end. After having to slay my own soldiers, I have spent the remaining time thinking about the future and come to an unfortunate conclusion.” “And what might that be?” “The disease that has infected the Empire is incurable. Even if I lived my days in perpetual glorious battle I still would not be able to save it. Indeed, I believe I may have already…” As Kane trails off and goes silent, Cyrus begins to get impatient. “Are we really going to listen to this twaddle? Let’s get on with killing this mad bastard and be done with it!” “Yeah, I don’t think this is going anywhere, it sounds like Kane has snapped or something.” Talia adds. “Alright, alright, start getting the explosives ready.” You answer, though you can’t help but be a little curious about what Kane has to say. He’s been a thorn in your side for so long, it just seems so odd for things to end this way. You honestly thought he would’ve been the first to rush head long into battle as soon as your forces started rushing into the fort. No sooner have your plans been put into action, Kane begins speaking again and this time he stands upon a windowsill completely naked. “What the fuck…” you say to yourself. “I don’t envy you shadows. You serve a cause that is inherently corrupt and lacking in purity. My cause was pure and just, but I made a mistake…and I also feel the corruption taking place within me. As hard as I try to suppress it…it’s there and I cannot allow that. I must die before I allow it to infect me completely! Though I may die here today, I will live forever! FOR THE EMPIRE AND THE EMPEROR!” he shouts and then jumps. The rest of you on the ground move out of the way to avoid his falling body which splats spectacularly when it eventually hits. “Didn’t expect that to happen.” Talia remarks. “I have to admit this was a bit bizarre.” “Feh, obviously a coward when faced against a real opponent. I told you all for years we should’ve attacked him sooner, but I suppose it was easier for the both of you to follow your own agendas and hide things behind my back.” Cyrus says and then turns away from the both of you. You aren’t going to argue with Cyrus today, you’ll have plenty of time to do that later. He may even have a point, but you really believe that it was better to wait. Kane didn’t nearly have the same number of soldiers or support as he had three years ago. Still, you wonder about his odd behavior at the end. You tell some of your people to blow up the citadel door and to help you search it. When you get inside, you confirm that Kane was not lying when he said he killed his own men. Butchered would be a completely accurate one here since he didn’t just kill them, he chopped most of them into pieces. As bloody as the sight is, the smell is much worse. The whole place reeks of death and some of the Raskans who enter the citadel walk right back out gagging. You dare say the inside of this citadel is as bloody as the battlefield outside. Upon a closer inspection of some of the bodies, you notice a few teeth marks, like he might’ve even eaten a portion of them. When you finally get to Kane’s quarters you see several journals strewn about the floor, Some of the journals are shredded and others have pages ripped out, but you skim through a few of them out of curiosity. Kane’s journals provide a fascinating look into his descent into madness. From what you can tell, his personality didn’t start changing severely until after a mission that involved the wendigo tribe. Apparently they weren’t a barbarian tribe so much as they were evil spirits that masqueraded in the bodies of them. They subsisted on eating flesh of any living beings and were always hungry. Apparently they could also possess people at will, and needed to in order to be able to leave their “home”. Kane ended up finding all this out the hard way and lost an entire company. Though ultimately victorious the wendigo mental assaults on his mind took their toll it seems. He wasn’t possessed, but it definitely unhinged him. From there on his behavior started getting more bloodthirsty. His faith in the Empire seemed to be a bit of a solid rock for him that allowed him to maintain a degree of normalcy, but when the Empire started loosing ground in Rask, and elsewhere, it was a cascading effect into full-blown insanity. A lot of his writing towards the end seems to be random and disjointed. His last entry mentions nearly matches what his final words were to you. You look around the room some more and find a military map of Rask. You make a note the location of where Kane said he faced the wendigo so that you know to avoid it in the future.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 30 “No, I say we take all of our resources and make a forward push on Fort Destiny. We can hit Captain Kane from the north and from the south.” Cyrus says. “And I’m telling you that we can’t do that. Our people aren’t grouped together on the southern Rask border ready to strike, they’re scattered all over the place and that’s how they should remain! I keep telling you this, besides I’ve got a better plan for the shadow cells in the Quala province.” You remark. “Brothers, this yelling isn’t helping.” Talia sighs. Another typical day on the “Shadow Council”, you and Cyrus arguing, with Talia stuck in the middle. You really wish that wasn’t the case, but it is just inevitable that you and Cyrus are going to always disagree on something. You don’t even know why you bother meeting to discuss battle plans nowadays, what usually happens is a bunch of arguing like this and then you both go off and do your own thing. This hasn’t really been a problem in the past mainly because your plans are all outside of Rask, while Cyrus’ plans are always within Rask so they never conflict for the most part. Also, the Empire’s attention was divided due to their war with the Felkan Kingdom. However things have changed. The Empire recently signed a non-agression pact with the Felkan Kingdom meaning they’ve been able to focus a hell of a lot better on the rebellion. You need to do something to swing the tide in your favor before they begin to gather enough momentum to roll right over you. Cyrus’ plan is the one he’s been endorsing for years. Consolidate Rask and drive out the Empire from it completely. As the war has raged on over the years this has been done for the most part. The only thing that really stands in the way are a few of the loyalist border towns and Captain Kane in Fort Destiny. The problem is that’s still a big obstacle to get over and a major assault would result in considerable losses. Cyrus has in the past sent groups of shadows to assassinate Captain Kane, but so far all attempts have failed. Kane’s reputation as the “Butcher of Rask” isn’t just for show and him being a battle hardened Eternal means he’s more than a match even for the average shadow. Cyrus probably would’ve sent more, but Talia convinced him that it was just pointlessly sending shadows to their deaths. You didn’t necessarily think the idea was without promise, but you suggested that an assassination attempt might work if you, Talia and Cyrus actually did it since you feel that you’d have the skill to pull it off, but Cyrus dismissed that idea, claiming that Talia is right and that assassination should be taken off the table. So a major assault it is, of course this is why Cyrus wants you to gather all of your shadow cells outside of Rask and have them attack from the south in a classic pincer maneuver. It would probably work, but you’d still have heavy losses especially those attacking from the south since the Empire could redeploy reinforcements early enough that your forces could be caught in the middle too. You imagine this idea would appeal to Cyrus since then options would be limited to just focusing on Rask and you wouldn’t have any forces at all anymore. You get the impression that when the Empire is finally defeated Cyrus has major plans for Rask given how badly he wants to focus on it. Perhaps he has some long-range goal of starting his own “empire.” However, he’s still short sighted as far as your concerned because even if you went along with his plan, it would just hold off the Empire a few extra years and wouldn’t stop them from taking back Rask given the new information you’ve received from your contacts. The Empire has been breeding new Eternals, the number is unknown, but it’s apparently enough to create an army of them. They’re not “ready” yet, but in a few more years they soon will be and if that happens you might not be able to stop them if the Empire unleashed them on Rask. However, you’ve received the information of where this new Eternal training camp is which is a remote location in the Quala province close to the Arat border. The only other information you have on the place is that the main complex appears to be underground since children. The place doesn’t appear to be heavily guarded up top, but who knows what security is like down below. Considering magic is involved in creating Eternals, it’s a sure bet that there are going to be wizard types about. Your plan is to destroy this place by leading a small group of the most skilled shadows you have. While this is going on, your other cells will strike out at vital areas in the Empire at the same time to keep them from immediately sending out reinforcements to the camp. You actually wouldn’t mind Cyrus to come with you since he is a skilled fighter, but you aren’t even going to ask since you know what his answer will be. Cyrus doesn’t even believe that it’s a top priority and claims that if Rask is liberated then you can attack the camp later since these new Eternals still won’t be battle ready for a while. If you go off and do your own thing, your concern is that Cyrus is going to do the same thing and get everyone under his command killed in his attempt to take Fort Destiny. Of course if you help him you’re left with the same problem that it’s very probable that your shadow cells are going to get hit pretty hard during the assault on Fort Destiny and Cyrus won’t actually lend any help when you want to destroy the new Eternal camp. There’s also the issue that you’re trying to maintain the unity as always. Cyrus is really pushing for this assault on Fort Destiny and doing your own thing this time might be the “last straw” and the last thing you need is to do is start a shadow civil war. After a lot more arguing, everyone decides to call it a day and make a decision tomorrow. Talia as always says she’ll side with whatever you decide, but would prefer if you and Cyrus actually worked together for once. That doesn’t exactly help you and you have a hard time sleeping. When you finally do get to sleep you still don’t get any rest… “So what are you going to do Eternal? You and Cyrus continue to clash and it’s only a matter of time before things between you are going to end badly.” Dendrin remarks. “Doesn’t take a god to figure that one out.” You say. “Yes, but it takes a fool to blatantly ignore the obvious. By continuing to not support Cyrus’ you’re just driving a wedge deeper in the shadow organization that will eventually split you in two. Something I thought you were trying to avoid given that you made such an effort to keep it together.” “Well someone had to, because you certainly weren’t doing it.” “I’m not here to hold the collective hands of the shadows. As I’ve said, I’ve done that already and it was a boring experience. Besides you seem to be enjoying your new leadership role, who am I to take it away from you?” “I’m not leader of the shadows, I’m….” “Nonsense! You ARE leader of the shadows. Perhaps you’re currently sharing that duty with your Eternal peers, but you’re clearly the strongest of that group. Talia certainly has potential, but her blind devotion to certain things is her weakness. It clouds her judgement.” “So she’s not worthy because she’s so loyal to you?” “Not just me, but to you as well. It doesn’t occur to her in the slightest that you’re keeping secrets or lying to her about your real feelings on the shadows. She just believes you, just like she misguidedly believes that one day she’ll have eternal shadow babies with you.” “Wait, she can’t have kids?” “No and neither can you. Neither can Cyrus for that matter, though I doubt it that’s ever going to come up with him. Don’t ask me why you can’t, I don’t know. I can only imagine it has something to do with how they magically altered you Eternals back in the labs. I’m not a fertility god either, so her constant praying to me isn’t going to help.” This sudden news does explain a few things. You’re going to have to inform Talia of this at some point, you just don’t know when would be the best time. Yet another thing for you worry about. Dendrin continues his speech “And for all of Cyrus’ bluster of being a shadow he obviously lacks as a good leader. I dare say if you weren’t around, the Empire would be on the verge of driving the shadows to extinction right now. He may be better liked than you, but even that’s starting to change and it certainly doesn’t hold true for any shadow not stationed in your little fort. You’ve got allies and support in places other than Rask, Cyrus doesn’t and it worries him. After all it’s well known now that you were the one that heard my warning about Gloom and attempted to save who you could.” “You didn’t warn me, you gave a cryptic comment and it wasn’t even one that urged me to return to Gloom. I just told everyone you did.” “See, lying to the rest of the shadows about something I didn’t actually say. You’re already doing a great job of following the traditions of shadow leaders!” Dendrin laughs. Is Dendrin mocking you, is he encouraging you, is it both? You can never quite tell. “So what are you saying? Are you officially appointing me as the new leader of the shadows?” “Official? Since when have you known me to be so formal? And I’m not appointing you as anything; you don’t even have faith in me anyway, but if you really want to be in charge just do it already. I’d be careful though, that Cyrus fellow might get the same idea someday soon and I suppose you’ll need to decide if the expense of your own ambition is worth keeping the shadows together.” Once again after Dendrin’s little mind games you wake up. Whether Dendrin’s encouraging you or not, you’re going through with you plan and if that hurts Cyrus’ fragile ego then you’ll deal with it later, because the Empire is still a bigger threat right now. The next day you tell Talia that you’re going through with your plan. “I figured you would, but you know Brother Cyrus isn’t going to be happy about this.” “Brother Cyrus needs to realize that Rask isn’t only front we’re fighting the Empire on and get over it.” “Yes, I know. (Sigh) Well I’ll try to keep things stable here while you’re gone. Hopefully I can convince him that now is not a good time to assault Fort Destiny.” “No, I’d rather you join me on this mission. I could use all the powerful shadows I can get, because I’m certainly not going to be able to get any other shadows to join me from here.” “You want me to go? I mean of course I’ll go with you, but aren’t you worried about what might happen here if I don’t stay to help look after things?” While Talia would certainly be a great asset to your mission, but she also serves as a bit of a counter balance to Cyrus when you’re not around. > You have her stay “Perhaps you’re right. Cyrus is probably going to be fuming about me going ahead with this mission instead of gathering for an assault on the Fort Destiny. Best if you stay here and make sure he doesn’t go off and get everyone killed trying to do it with insufficient forces.” You reply. After kissing Talia goodbye, you set off on your journey immediately figuring Talia can explain everything to Cyrus instead. You travel a couple of days to the Quala province and eventually reach the meeting spot at night. There await around twenty shadows you picked which also includes Sister Yvette. You would’ve picked Brother Theo as well, but you needed someone to coordinate the other shadow cells in Quala. “As soon as I got the message that you were coming, our other shadow cells got into position to strike out at the other targets across Quala. I assume you’re ready to assault the camp brother?” Sister Yvette asks nearly as soon as you arrive. “Yes, let’s get this over with, because this is going to be pretty grim business. Now I know some of you have already done a few necessary things, but probably not on this scale. These new eternals are only going to be children, and if the rumors are true, hundreds of them. Despite this they will still be dangerous, as they have no doubt gone through some of the Empire’s brainwashing techniques and training. You are not to hesitate just because they are young. Slay all of them…for Dendrin.” You add at the end. “For Dendrin!” the rest of the shadows say in unison. “Also be aware that there will no doubt be battle mages around and who knows what else. Let’s try to do this as silently as possible until it’s no longer an option. Everybody cloak.” Sister Yvette and couple of the other shadows take the lead due to their basic knowledge of the outside of the camp and even some of the interior. When you have to go below ground though, it’s going to be anything goes. You know going in that you’ll be severely outnumbered, but the whole point of doing it this way is to utilize your strengths which is stealth and terror on a grand scale. As you go about your business, you can’t help but start thinking about Talia, and briefly worrying about if Cyrus has given her any problems. You really should keep your mind occupied at a time like this, but you’re having a hard time. Neck snaps, bolts to the head and blades to the back dispatch the patrolling soldiers quietly and quickly… Due to your distraction, you fail to get a clean hit on one of the guards and he screams out loudly alerting some of the camp. Cursing your luck you signal to the nearest shadows to start moving from bunkhouse to bunkhouse to kill any soldiers still sleeping inside them. Doesn’t take long before a general alarm is raised. It isn’t quite that bad as you’re still easily taking them down from the cover of night and invisibility. The problem comes when one of the soldiers has gone to get extra help from below in the form of battle mages. Working together, the mages form an invisible shield to protect themselves and then dispel your cloak ability. Another one starts casting fireballs from behind the safety of the shield. Your speeding ability helps you and your shadows finish off the rest of the soldiers and once you manage to pass through the shield, you eliminate two of the mages and break their concentration. The remaining ones begin to run back to the underground portion of the camp. “Come on, we can’t let them get away!” you yell to the remainder of your shadows and chase after the mages. You hack down a couple more fleeing mages as you chase them into the complex. The last few remaining are screaming for help and it comes, but not in the form that you thought. Several heavily armored figures with axes begin to fill the corridor ahead of you. Derro. You briefly look behind you and see that your own forces are insufficient to tackle such foes. You’re also wondering if the new eternals are even here, as you haven’t seen a single one since you arrived. “Go back! Go back!” you exclaim. “What? Why?” Yvette asks not really understanding the reality of the situation. The rest of the shadows are unsure of how to proceed. “Those are the derro! We have to go back!” you exclaim. Meanwhile during this short exchange, one of the derro has thrown one of their firebombs near your feet. You see it just in time to grab Yvette and try to speed out of the way, but the explosion just catches you in its radius. Everything seems like a blur for a few moments and the next thing you know you’re face first on the floor with no feeling in one of your legs and your clothing on fire. You attempt to roll in an effort to extinguish the flames, and that’s when you see Yvette’s lifeless burning body nearby staring at you with dead eyes. This is soon followed by a crushing smash to your head and everything goes black. Unfortunately your life doesn’t end there. When you wake up you find yourself strapped to a table in a large lab. You see a lot of alchemy equipment, other tables with mutilated bodies on them and in a far corner of the room you see several large containers with loud growling noises emanating from them. Derro stand near them with weapons drawn. “No need for you to worry about that. Those trolls can’t get out of there I assure you. Good thing too, they’d rip us all apart in minutes! Heh heh heh heh!” a voice says to you. When you look over to your left, you see a short figure nearly eye level with you even though you’re strapped to a table. He’s bald with a gray skin color and dressed in a white robe of some sort, which is covered in blood, and several other unidentifiable fluids. You’re guessing that he’s an unarmored derro. “While you have caused quite a bit of a mess, I’m honestly very glad one of your kind has showed up. The Emperor sort of frowned on my suggestion to take one of their loyal Eternals for experimentation, shame about your leg getting blown off, but beggars can’t be choosers right?” the derro says. He then approaches closer with a mad gleam in his eye and a bloody knife in his hand. You say a few defiant words to the derro, but he’s unmoved by your futile protests. He goes on to say how your vivisection will come in handy in helping with the new eternal project. Mentally you try to prepare yourself for the pain, but nothing can prepare you for what will be your last days on this mortal plane. By day three you’re begging for them to just kill you. The derro of course ignores your pleas claiming that he has to keep you alive to finish his research. By day five, you’re actually screaming for Dendrin to help you. This naturally amuses the sadistic derro who says that he has to remember to strengthen the mind resistance of the new eternals so they aren’t as weak willed to fall prey to such superstitions. By day nine, you feel nothing any longer and the derro tells his fellows to toss you to the trolls.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your main purpose of coming here in the first place was to make sure Talia was safe. You can't leave now without trying to find her or at least her body if she's dead. You leave the storage room and decide your best bet would be to keep yourself cloaked the entire time while you search the fortress. You also decide to use spider crawl just to make sure you're really out of sight. As you stick to the ceilings of corridors and rooms you survey the carnage of what the Derro have wrought on the shadows. It's almost like they didn't have a chance. You now have to believe that this was why the Empire wasn't attacking Gloom, they had some sort of deal with the Derro to do it for them and since this used to be a Derro home at one time, they probably knew every ancient secret passage and entire layout of it. You progressively get more and more discouraged in your search and that's when you hear a voice in your head. Not Dendrin's though, it's distinctly a human one. "To…the left and down the hall…hurry…not much time…" you hear Master Ebon say. Lacking any other ideas, you follow his instructions and make your make to his location from where you are. As you do so, you notice there aren't any Derro in this direction, though there are a few dead ones. You're guessing that the rest of their fellows haven't searched this area as much. "The door…at the end…hurry…" Sensing that there are no Derro in the immediate area, you climb down from the ceiling and prepare to enter the door at the end of the corridor. When you arrive in front of it, you hear a loud click as it opens. "Quick, inside!" a brother says pulling you in by the arm roughly. A quick glance and you see a couple more shadows both in wounded condition. You then see Master Ebon in some sort of spell trance. He's also wounded, but his status looks a lot worse. He probably shouldn't even be alive with the deep bleeding gashes he displays across his body. A female shadow stands near him also wounded. When you see her face more clearly and recognize her as Talia, your worries are at least divided by half. "What are you doing here?" she exclaims. "I heard the voice of Dendrin and…" in that moment you realize you've just admitted you've heard his voice for the first time. You then realize this isn't the time to keep it a secret and you continue. "…he…uh gave me a warning… are you alright?" "Just a light wound…wait, you said Dendrin spoke to you? He warned you about the attack?" "Well, not in so many words. Look we need get out of here, I can explain everything later." You then hear Master Ebon's voice again. He still isn't speaking verbally though and is using his mind. "Dendrin spoke to you? Lucky lad. He hasn't spoken to me since I first became a shadow. I always thought he would eventually, but he never did. I assumed he was testing me, to make my own decisions. Perhaps I offended him by claiming those decisions came from him directly, but I didn't know what else to do…" "Master Ebon, we can discuss this later, right now we really need to leave!" "Is Master Ebon speaking to you through his mind?" Talia asks. "Yes, and what's he doing anyway? He's just sitting there with gashes in his chest deep enough for me to see his heart beating and bleeding out. As I said we need to leave before the Derro kill us all." Master Ebon interrupts you. "They've already succeeded in killing me I fear, but I still have powerful magic…enough to save the remainder of you…to carry on the fight…" Master Ebon's eyes begin to turn completely black, this is followed by his entire body. A shimmering portal then opens up nearby. "This…was to take us to strike at the very heart of the Empire…but now just an escape…to friends. Continue the fight there. The Empire will fall as long as you continue to fight. Dendrin I hope you can forgive my failures as I have served to the best of my abilities…I am ready to enter your realm of shadow if you will allow it…" "Master Ebon!" Talia shouts when she sees his body undergo his transformation. "He can't be helped and he's giving us a chance to escape. We need to take it now!" "But where is it going?" the shadow that grabbed you by the arm asks. "He said to friends, but quite frankly it could lead into the middle of an Empire battalion and I think we'd still have better chances! Now come on!" Without another word you all enter the portal. Within seconds your eyes are nearly blinded by the whiteness of snow and you feel a blast of cold air whipping around you. "DIE! Shadow bastard!" you suddenly hear and turn around just in time to avoid a sword strike to the head. Realizing that this is an Empire soldier and not a Derro, you quickly dispatch your assailant who falls turning the snow red. When you said being transported into the middle of an Empire battalion would be a better situation, you didn't actually mean it! Fortunately it isn't quite as bad as all that. Getting your bearings you notice you're on a battlefield. The bodies of several Empire troops lay on the ground and are mixed in with those of orcs and shadows. A great fortress looms in the distance. "Fort Defiance…" you say to yourself. "Brother, we're over here!" one of the shadows calls out to you and you run over to the group. (Apparently, all the others teleported to a place out of immediate danger!) "Are we in Rask?" the shadow who grabbed you asks. You still don't know his name, you can only guess he was one of the newer recruits after you joined. "Well it doesn't look like Delurg that's for sure. I'm guessing that group ahead of us fighting the Empire troops are our brothers and sisters from Fort Defiance." Talia says. "Looks like it, well no time like the present, we need to go help them." "But what about those two? They're badly wounded and can't fight properly." The new shadow asks. "(Sigh) Very well, you, what's your name anyway?" "I'm Brother Gannon. I just joined recently…" "Yes brother, we can get all that getting to know you stuff out of the way later. I want you to take those two and head over to that fort in the distance. I'm sure they can get help there. What about you Talia, I know you're wounded too, do you need any first aid?" Talia draws her weapon. "I'll worry about my minor cuts after we take care of this Empire scum." She answers in a harsh tone. "Okay then let's go down there and drive back the Empire!" you answer back. You and Talia sprint as fast as you can to where all the action is taking place. Swords are clashed, halberds are swung, skulls are smashed and heads are severed. Mostly all in your favor and the Empire troops were actually losing even before you got here. Still, it's good to be on a winning side of a fight today and you feel energized by the battle. A short reunion occurs as you finish off the last of the stubborn Empire soldiers. "What the…? What are you doing here?! I thought you were supposed to be in the Quala province!"Cyrus exclaims running his sword through an enemy. "Things change brother and how have you been doing?" you answer doing the same. "We've been getting wave after wave of Empire skirmishers recently, but nothing serious yet. Honestly I would've thought we would've had a full on assault by now. I think they're trying to whittle us down, it won't work though. We're entrenched and have people all over the area slowly turning the population of Rask against them…is that Talia over there? What's SHE doing here? Last I heard she was supposed to be back in Gloom helping with the ritual that Master Ebon and Brother Gray were doing." "Like I said, things change Cyrus." At this moment there is a lull in the fighting that allows Cyrus to actually stop fighting. He looks at you his expression is one you've never seen before. One of genuine worry. "Oh no…what happened?" You don't even know where to begin. "Cyrus let's just get through this battle and celebrate THIS victory over the Empire. We can dwell on the troubled times to come later." The pair of you say nothing more for the rest of the battle which soon ends with your victory. You just wish it was a better one, because it cannot possibly counteract the incredible loss you have suffered this dark day. You think back on how you told Murk in his dying breaths that the Empire would fall, you also think back to how Master Ebon believed it would fall in his on dying breaths. If you had to guess, you think Talia probably still believes it and you know Cyrus will even when you tell him all that has happened. The righteousness in the shadows' cause and its unwavering faith in Dendrin has always been its strength that it cannot lose no matter how bad the odds. Of course it would help if you actually believed all that nonsense. Which brings you to your next dilemma: You already let it slip to Talia that you spoke to Dendrin and Brother Gannon was also there to hear it (and maybe even the other two wounded shadows heard it as well) , so it'll probably be brought up after everyone is caught up to speed on the war front and what happened at Gloom. The fact that Dendrin spoke to you is actually why you're here in the first place. The question is should you even mention what Dendrin said to you or just lie about what he said? Your own feelings on the situation are that Dendrin, god or not, is not worth following let alone creating a fanatical religion around. He obviously doesn't give a shit about any of you and sees you all as amusing toys at best. However, given the grim situation, the misguided slavish devotion to Dendrin might be the only thing that'll keep their spirits up. Not to mention you wonder if you'd even be believed. Cyrus himself is a very dedicated believer, he may even turn violent and you aren't even sure if Talia would believe you. > You war Report (Allies & The Butcher of Rask) After the battle, Cyrus tells you more about the situation in Rask on the way back to Fort Defiance. It's mostly positive compared to what you'll have to him about Gloom and possibly Dendrin. He says that the orcs have been holding up their end and even managed to ally with some of the ogre tribes nearby (Though it's usually only after killing most of the tribes to establish dominance first) Not much luck with the giants yet, but at least they aren't attacking like they used to in the old days. He mentions that the current orc commander here, Flog has been in contact with Captain Gruz on strategies and tactics, though the letters are getting rarer. One wonders if Gruz hasn't already been discovered or if he's just having to lay low for a while. You get the impression Cyrus seems to see your orc allies as useful, but ultimately expendable tools to take the hits that the shadows don't need to. "I think after this is all over, the orcs are going their separate ways and that's fine. This has always been an alliance of convenience, but like I said, we've also been turning the population of Rask against the Empire. Though it's not exactly hard when they've got someone like Kane in charge of the area. The man has probably done more to alienate the citizens of Rask more than anyone." "Oh yes, the infamous Captain Kane, Butcher of Rask. Heard about his ruthlessness even way down in the Quala province. Didn't he earn his nickname by wiping out several barbarian tribes here? "Yeah, he was stationed at Fort Destiny, years before I got here. Showed absolutely no mercy when it came to cutting down the various barb tribes from what I heard. Same thing for the renegade elven population here too." "Didn't he recently wipe out a small hamlet because the people were complaining about food rationing?" Talia asks. "One hamlet? Try three and it was only a handful of people complaining. I don't even think they were openly criticizing the Empire's overall tyranny so much as they were just hungry. Captain Kane however took it as a threat to his authority and had the entire hamlet wiped out to the last man, woman and child. Then he did the same thing to two of the neighboring hamlets as a warning for other places to not complain anymore. That sort of thing might be effective on barbs or monsters, but it isn't effective in the long run on citizens you're supposed to be protecting. The fear eventually disappears and only instills great hatred and that's why we've been able to get help from the local population as far as hidden supplies and intelligence when they're able." You remember Kane in class and him being a very capable fighter who actually killed two of your other classmates during sparing lessons. You don't even think he did it intentionally though, he just thought that's what he was supposed to do because Mistress encouraged such behavior. Given his unassuming and quiet nature back then though, you're a little surprised he wasn't picked to be a shadow guard, though perhaps they realized his dedicated to orders would be more useful as a soldier. "Well, I can't say I'm too surprised. I mean he is one of…" you stop yourself from saying "us" since you know Cyrus would probably be insulted by it. He identifies more with being a shadow than an Eternal now. "…the Empire's lap dogs after all. They say jump and he asks how high." You finish. "True…but…" Cyrus says and stops. Now this is interesting. You didn't expect this sort of hesitation from Cyrus. "But what Cyrus?" Talia asks. "I dunno. I sometimes wonder if we all could've turned out like that, if we hadn't been picked to be shadows." "Heh, well I have to admit, I have wondered the same thing sometimes." You reply. "I know I really shouldn't, but I sometimes feel sorry for our unenlightened classmates. I mean so many of them didn't have a chance to hear the truth of Dendrin's call. "Seriously?" you ask in genuine surprise. "Yes. The worst part is I really believe I could get through to someone like Kane under the right circumstances and could turn him to our side. Show him that the Empire is a corrupt entity that needs to be destroyed. I'll never get that chance, but such is the will of Dendrin, just as it was his will that we were picked to hear his words instead of them." "I suppose…" you answer. Your private feelings on Dendrin aside, you have to admit this is a side of Cyrus you've never seen before. He has always been so dedicated to Dendrin, that to hear him express any sort of sympathy towards an unbeliever let alone an Empire enemy is unheard of. You doubt if you could have such sympathy towards people trying to kill you and you aren't even a religious fanatic like he is. In any case it doesn't make your decision on whether or not to tell the truth about what Dendrin said to you any easier.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 25 You settle into the bed of the dead Empire captain for the night. Normally you'd be a lot more alert, but you've got an entire group of shadows here at the conquered Empire outpost, not to mention several elven freedom fighters. You're fairly confident that they'll wake you if a counter attack comes. For now though you really need to get a good night's rest. You've been fighting non-stop for the past couple of weeks and you need a quick recharge at least. It doesn't help that the use of shadow magic drains you as well and probably why you don't use it much. Not that you really need to anyway, your natural skills work well enough. While the rebellion has only just gotten started, a lot of progress has been made. All the provinces from what you know of are suffering revolts on some scale. The worst of the lot being Rask where Cyrus has taken control of Fort Defiance. The shadow/orc alliance seems to be working well up there and the rest of the towns aren't exactly in line to help the Empire. Apparently the strongest resistance is from the second Empire fort called Destiny and another Eternal called Captain Kane is in charge. You barely remember him from class, though you heard he made a name for himself wiping out various barbarian tribes. Speaking of Eternals, one has been personally put in charge of attempting to eliminate the shadow striker cells like yours. A Captain Roldan. You do vaguely remember him from class. Tended to follow orders to the letter during training. Sort of like you in a way, but different. He was more extroverted you think, you guess that's why he was chosen to be a soldier rather than a shadow. You still don't know the reasoning was for making you a Shadow Guard candidate anyway, if you had to guess it was to try to spy on them. Of course this all makes you wonder what if you hadn't been chosen? What if you'd been a regular soldier? Would you have been content on just following Empire orders and never knowing any better? You'll never know of course. You've chosen your path and it's best to make most of it. Not that you regret your decision as the rebellion goes well. And with that positive thought you fall asleep. As you drift off you find yourself back in the numbness of the void… "It's finally happened. Rebellion across the Empire. Are you finally satisfied?" "I'm satisfied in that I'm glad we've finally stopped sitting on our hands. Why ask me anyway? You're the one that's been guiding the shadows all this time for centuries to rebel. Shouldn't you be the one that's excessively happy about it?" you ask "Oh I suppose…" "You suppose? I don't get you. You act like you don't care one way or another about it!" "Perhaps the time has passed." "What?!" "Oh don't get me wrong, I once wanted to see the Empire fall because it infringed on my own control over the mortals that were worshipping me at the time. And it's been interesting how over the decades and centuries that my little followers have been building up their strength to defeat them, but quite frankly I figured they would've done it long before then. Now? Well its okay, but I've lost a bit of interest since that time." If you weren't floating in a void of sensory deprivation you'd yell and scream at Dendrin so loudly that the rage would be felt throughout your body right now. "But that's your fucking fault. YOU were the one guiding them! If you wanted them to strike before now, you should've made some sort of sign to Master Ebon, or whoever was in charge at the time!" "Quite frankly I stopped giving them any advice centuries ago. I found it was much more interesting to see them figure out things on their own. The only time I speak to any of them is during the ceremony process." "If that's the case, why all the indoctrination, if you're such a fan of free will?" "How long do you think that actually lasts? It's only temporary! Just long enough to get them to have faith in me. Whether they continue to follow me or not is all them and on a related note, whatever so called signs the shadow leaders have been talking about are either ones they made up or made up in their heads. Glad to see Ebon finally decided to get off his ass and do something and be interesting for a change though." "So I was right! I've been right all along! You're nothing but a fucking fraud. You're not a god at all." "No, Eternal YOU got it wrong. It isn't I who is a fraud. It's the religion itself! I didn't originally call ANYONE to worship me. They did that naturally when one of those big hairless monkeys stumbled into a cave and messed around with some lost magical Derro object that opened up a portal where I dwelled. I was perfectly content spending infinity in my own realm until that time, but things change and I took an interest in these new creatures and their world. Wasn't my fault that they saw me as some deity just because they couldn't comprehend me in any other way." "You didn't exactly deter that thinking though." "Well you have me there Eternal. And I say so what? I gave these creatures purpose, meaning and even magical power! In return they worship me and serve. If you really think about it, is that not the definition of a god? And so what if I have lost interest in my subjects? True, they have proven loyal, but I grow bored with their antics. I seek other stimulus now." As strange as it may seem you sort of understand Dendrin's point of view. He views humans and mortals in general as you would watch insects. They're interesting to watch for awhile, but after some time has passed you're ready to move on. And really who's to say that if you weren't some powerful being you wouldn't do the same? Still, you have more questions. "Okay, but why not move on then if you're so bored?" "Because I'm not quite THAT bored yet. Besides when you arrived things started to get interesting again. Never had anyone resist my indoctrination so strongly before. I probably could've increased it, but that might've killed you besides I thought it would be more interesting to see if you followed me even without the indoctrination. It's interesting to see that while you have decided to follow the shadow's cause, you have been nothing but indifferent to outright hostile towards the religion even before you found all this out. That displays a grain of imagination and it's mainly why I've been in contact with you. In fact you're about the only mortal I've spoken to on a regular basis in centuries." "I guess I'm the lucky one then." You remark. "Your sarcasm aside, you actually are lucky, because I'm about to give you some friendly advice. Namely, don't go back to Gloom." "What? What are you talking about?" "That's all you get Eternal. Heed my advice or don't, it makes no difference to me. Talk to you again later perhaps." Once again you wake up though this time Dendrin gave you some direct information. Quite a bit of it really. You aren't even sure of what to make of all of it. You mean you always knew something was off with the whole shadow religion, but you didn't think he'd actually admit it all to you. Makes you wonder why he did, when he's been so cryptic in the past. Then against perhaps he knows you can't actually tell anyone, or rather you could, but wouldn't be believed and most likely attacked as a heretic. Perhaps that's his little joke on you. Yeah sounds like him. Still he's also given you a warning of not going back to Gloom. Why? Is something terrible going to happen there? Does he mean forever or just in the near future or is he just trying to play head games with you as usual? In reality, you aren't even scheduled to go back to Gloom anytime soon. Your job has been to sew as much chaos as you can across the Quala province. Still, if something bad IS going to happen there, maybe you should try to prevent it or warn somebody or something because right now Brother Gray and Master Ebon are supposed to be preparing a proper army of shadows to march directly on the capital, though not in the traditional way. Apparently they're going to try to use a magical gate to travel through the shadow world and pop up right in the heart of the Emperor's Palace. Such magic is very powerful to use, but also very time consuming and fatiguing. You know they have been going through some sort of long involved ritual which is involving several of the more powerful shadows to link their energy and even draw upon some of the weaker ones. You know Murk and Bianca are there rather than working in a shadow guerilla detachment. (They never quite looked at you the same way again after the incident with Shade.) Talia is also there, though she's one of those lending her powerful shadow magic skills to the ritual. And despite one of the most important events occurring at Gloom right now, the ONLY reason why you'd return there to possibly risk your own life is for Talia. You've grown closer to her in a way that you never thought possible. The relationship you've experienced with her is just one more reason why fighting against the Empire is the best idea you ever had. Still all of this might be for naught if something happens to Gloom. You still don't know WHAT that could be and for all you know it could just be something that will affect your life not anyone else's. (And from Dendrin's tone, not for the better) > You send another shadow back instead Knowing Dendrin, he’s probably warned you after something bad has already happened at Gloom and is toying with you just to see what you’ll do. You’re just hoping Talia is all right, but you can’t go back just for one woman and your actions here are more important to the cause right now. If some major tragedy already has happened, then you probably won’t be able to do anything about it. While you’re a necessity here, that doesn’t mean you can’t send another in your place to check on Gloom. You call to speak to one of your fellow shadows that you believe to be the most skilled. “Sister Yvette, I need you to go back to Gloom and check on things there.” “What? But brother, we are to assault a supply caravan to Roldan’s camp soon. You know it’ll be heavily guarded and it would be best to utilize all the strength we have on it.” “I know. That’s why I will have these people here and the cell we have in the Guf Hills to help. Don’t worry about it.” “Brother, my place is here to fight along side you against the Empire. We are not due to check in at Gloom anytime soon and Master Ebon is performing the important ceremony there. I don’t understand why you would want me to disturb that for no reason.” You didn’t really want to get into this because it’s likely to bring forth more questions, but Yvette is proving to be unmoving on this request. “Sister Yvette I have reason to believe Gloom may be in danger. Call it instinct, call it a premonition or call it the will of Dendrin, I don’t care, but I REALLY feel someone needs to check in on Gloom. I’d do it myself, but seeing as my mission here takes priority it would be irresponsible for me to leave my command. So I’m sending you. Now I hope you will obey my orders and if everything is in fact okay there you can make a complaint to Master Ebon at his earliest convenience. If not, well I believe we’ll have bigger problems.” Your explanation still doesn’t tell her much and you can sense that she’s very hesistant about just following through on your order based on a hunch, but given that it’s Gloom then it’s still worth checking out even if nothing is going on there. It also helps that you’ve been a very effective cell leader. Sister Yvette has certainly been a shadow longer than you, but your skills and leadership have established your dominance. Despite how everyone is supposed to be equal in the shadows there will always be those who are leaders and those who are followers. “Very well…I will go. What should I do if there is trouble?” she asks. “Help in any way you can then return to me as soon as possible unless you bump into Master Ebon and he has different order for you. As I said I will be meeting with the cell in the Guf Hills and we will probably be making that a temporary base of operations.” “Okay, I’ll take my leave as soon as possible. My Dendrin watch over you and guide you to success on the next mission…and I hope you’re wrong about Gloom, brother.” “Me too.” The next day you make your way to the Guf Hills, thinking not only about Gloom, but Dendrin as well. You briefly wonder if there might be a way of telling the shadows about Dendrin, but you quickly dismiss the idea. None of them would believe you and it wouldn’t do much good right now any way. The Empire is still the major threat and until that enemy is defeated only then will you even have the time to worry about the shadows’s sham of a religion. When you try to make contact with Brother Theo in the Guf Hills, it isn’t a straightforward process. Naturally there is always a little caution, but those under his command are a suspicious violent lot even before the rebellion broke out. The rebels he’s been directing primarily consist of criminals or ignorant peasants that have always made their homes in these hills and most of them are both. Many of them make racial slurs at the elves in your own company and if you had to guess there’s evidence of some inbreeding going on with some of these hill peasants. After a short stand off, Brother Theo comes out and admonishes all of them for their behavior towards you. Most of them grumble and go back to doing what they were doing. You tell your own people to find a spot and keep away from the others while you and Brother Theo talk to each other. “Glad you’re here brother and with a couple of fellow shadows I see. That’s good, because we could use more disciplined types here!” “Brother Theo, what is going on here? I mean I know we’re using anyone who has a grudge against the Empire, but these people have to be some of the lowest dregs of humanity.” “You’ll get no argument from me brother. It is truly Dendrin testing my patience with these people, but I will pass that test and besides after this is all said and done, the Empire will fall and that’s the major goal right now.” “True, but are these people actually any good in a fight?” “Hah! That’s all these people practically know. These folks might be unruly, but they know these hills better than anyone else, so we manage to stay hidden from Empire search teams for long periods of time. And if we can’t, then we stay one step ahead of them before we’re discovered. Having had to listen to their stories over and over, the families around this region have chaffed living under the Empire rule for almost as long as the shadows. Apparently they’ve been planning and building up supplies for a very long time. Pity we didn’t know about them sooner, but as you can tell they aren’t very trusting of anyone who isn’t family.” “I’m sort of surprised the Empire didn’t stomp them out of the hills given their problem with authority figures.” “Eh, they might seem like idiots, but they’re smarter than they look and can obviously play the waiting game. Also I guess when the Empire discovered there weren’t even any minerals worth mining in these hills, they took less notice of the place and basically just left the Guf people to their own devices as long as they paid their taxes on time. Most were wise enough to at least obey that one law and even those that didn’t pay knew the hills so well it simply wasn’t worth the Empire’s time to track down an evader. Oh sure every once in awhile the Empire would sometimes send a few dark elven mercs to track down the more serious criminals, but that had mixed success and at the time the Empire was always more concerned with either conquest or territory that was actually worth something. Probably never believed that these hill folk could ever be a legitimate threat to them either. A bit short sighted of them, but then that’s the Empire for you.” You nod and agree. As fascinating as all this is, your mind is still on Gloom. Of course you’re not going to mention any of that to Brother Theo, so you ask him what the plan is to assault Captain Roldan’s supply caravan. He tells you it’s a simple plan, the caravan is going to be passing through a nearby area that leads into a valley in a couple of days and in that time you’ll be setting an ambush from both sides as well. “Actually I’m glad you’ve brought some elves with you, we could use more archers.” Theo remarks. “Yeah, well don’t believe all the myths. They aren’t all expert marksmen, but the ones with me are still good enough for this ambush.” You reply. “Still, something about this seems a bit too easy. The Empire has to know that running a supply line through that valley is an all too tempting target especially with a known enemy making their home nearby.” “That supply caravan is going straight to Captain Roldan, it’s going to be very heavily guarded. Chances are they’re just arrogant enough to believe that any possible attack isn’t going to succeed. This is the Empire after all.” “Hmm, maybe…” After Brother Theo reassures you of the success of the plan you head back to your own people who thankfully haven’t gotten into any fights with the hill folk. Fortunately the next two days of preparation also pass without too much incident. Some the elves get a few more slurs thrown their way, but nothing that they haven’t been called before. One the hill folk actually speaks to you at great length asking you questions and such. You get the impression he was trying to get a feel of not only who you are, but the shadows in general. He wasn’t hostile towards you though, they apparently know better than to anger shadows too much. In the back of your mind during all this is still Gloom. Yvette wouldn’t be back yet even if she hadn’t found anything, but you still fear the worst. Makes you wonder if you shouldn’t have gone yourself. It’s too late now though and you need to focus on the task at hand. The day finally comes and the supply caravan enters the valley. You on one side with your group and Brother Theo with his group on the other. He also has people ready to cut the supply caravan off from the front and from retreat as well. The large group of wagons and carriages are heavily guarded as expected. Several soldiers of the elite variety and you see an Empire battle mage as well. You wait for Brother Theo’s signal… But before that can happen, the supply wagons suddenly stop and the battle mage suddenly casts a faint blue barrier over the entire supply caravan. Brother Theo orders his people to fire arrows at them, but they bounce harmlessly off the barrier. You shake your head cursing because you knew this was going to be too easy. “Rebellious fools, did you really think you were smart enough to ambush the Empire so easily? Flee now and enjoy your worthless lives for a little while longer or face your death with a smidgeon of honor by coming down into this valley!” the soldier in charge of the caravan shouts. “Looks like we’re going to have to do this the hard way.” You say to yourself. You’ve still got them outnumbered and surrounded even if you can’t rain a bunch of arrows on them, not to mention your own combat skills are more than a match for most Empire soldiers. Still there’s no reason to be foolish, you don’t tell your people to charge down the valley, you let the Gufians do that, since they seem eager to do that sort of thing. Even the ones directly under Brother Theo’s command are rushing past him. As for the empire troops, they seem content on waiting for you inside the safety of their barrier. Unfortunately some of them have bows too and theirs work perfectly well from inside the barrier. You, Theo and the other shadows easily dodge such attacks thanks to your shadow magic ability to speed yourself up to quickly close the gap. Most of the non-shadows aren’t as lucky. The numbers are evened up a bit more by the time the major close combat occurs. The Empire battle mage releases the barrier and then casts some sort of speed spell on his own people. Again, this merely matches the shadows, but it’s a severe advantage against the non-shadows. You need to eliminate that mage quick. > You fire a bolt at the mage You try to get a clear shot at the mage with your armbow. Despite the chaos your aim is true and the bolt flies directly at the mage’s head…only for an Empire soldier to step in the way and get killed instead. Another shadow tries to follow your lead by firing at the mage as well, but at this point he’s put up his own personal barrier. Realizing he’s in danger, he raises his hand up and a large arc of electricity emanates from it hitting several of your allies as well as Empire soldiers. Fortunately you were far enough away and quickly cloak yourself to avoid being targeted more directly. You run around one of the wagons and see the mage is still focused on frying his victims. You quickly load up another bolt and fire again, this time you don’t miss this time as the bolt enters his temple killing him instantly. With the mage dispatched the Empire soldiers suddenly slow down to their normal speed and the battle swings in your favor once again. Still after it’s all said and done, this was more costly than it should’ve been. Brother Theo’s lost more than half of his “hill folk” and you’ve suffered some losses as well and you’ve still got Gloom to worry about. You can’t take the waiting anymore and you decide after a short rest period, you’re heading back to Gloom with the remaining shadows under your command. You get some questions, but you simply tell them that Dendrin himself told you go back and much like Yvette they back down and fall in line. You half expect an encampment of Empire troops surrounding the entrance of Gloom, but instead what you find is worse. The rock that acted as the concealed entrance to Gloom is gone, or rather reduced to rubble. You and the rest of the shadows with you dig in the rubble for quite a while, but you don’t even reach where the stairs would be, its just more debris. It’s apparent that the entire entryway has been collapsed from beneath; possibly even all of Gloom has been buried. There’s no sign of Yvette either, but you can assume since she never reported back to you, she must’ve entered Gloom before whatever happened here. While the rest of shadows start lamenting what might’ve become of Master Ebon and the rest, you on the other hand mourn quietly for Talia. You also silently curse yourself for not going back to Gloom immediately, if you had maybe you could’ve done something. With this destruction of Gloom, the shadows have been dealt a crippling blow. Possibly one they can’t come back from. You’re going to have to try to regroup what cells you can and try to alter a strategy plan. The main problem with that plan isn’t so much the sheer impossibility of it, so much as with Talia gone you don’t know if your heart going to be completely in the “cause” anymore. Really she was one of your main motivations, and now that Dendrin has flat out told you how he doesn’t give a damn about the shadows, you sort of have inside information on how this rebellion is likely to turn out. Only time will tell you suppose… Year 30 “Has nobody been able to contact Cyrus up in Rask?” you ask. “Minimal contact brother. As I said, last time we did it was two years ago and he said he couldn’t spare anyone. Reports also said he lost his orc allies up there.” Brother Theo remarks. “Wonderful, the Empire is closing in on us and we can’t even count on the bare minimum support.” “We shouldn’t give up hope brother. Dendrin has preserved us this long.” You ignore Theo’s remarks since you don’t feel like spending what will probably your last moments in life, on a religious debate. Suffice to say, the few shadows that remain with you know full well of your feelings on Dendrin. If you weren’t such a desperate situation, you’d be correct in believing that they’d kill you as a heretic. However, when someone has kept you alive for five years in a grim situation, people tend to overlook certain things they find spiritually offensive. And that’s what you’ve been trying your best to do on sheer determination and revenge, but in the end the numbers have always been against you, and the Empire has finally managed to focus on eliminating the shadows. Stopping their war with the Felkan Kingdom helped, but the efforts of Captain Roldan have probably been the most damaging to the shadows in recent years (Along with Captain Kane in Rask). You briefly wonder why you stayed to fight seeing as you had no faith in Dendrin and Talia was gone, but ultimately it was always your desire for battle that kept you around. Maybe it always was leading you to do the things you did. And now here you are hold up in a cave in the Guf Hills where you were five years ago. The Empire has soldiers and dark elven mercs sweeping the hills looking for you. It’ll only be a matter of time. You just hope Captain Roldan himself will be the one to find you. You’d like to at least face the man who’s been hunting you for years in combat before you die. When the cave is swarmed with enemies, you don’t get your wish. Still, you give a fight that satisfies you when sheer numbers finally bring you down. The best thing is, you never have to worry Dendrin ever speaking to you again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Knowing Dendrin, he’s probably warned you after something bad has already happened at Gloom and is toying with you just to see what you’ll do. You’re just hoping Talia is all right, but you can’t go back just for one woman and your actions here are more important to the cause right now. If some major tragedy already has happened, then you probably won’t be able to do anything about it. While you’re a necessity here, that doesn’t mean you can’t send another in your place to check on Gloom. You call to speak to one of your fellow shadows that you believe to be the most skilled. “Sister Yvette, I need you to go back to Gloom and check on things there.” “What? But brother, we are to assault a supply caravan to Roldan’s camp soon. You know it’ll be heavily guarded and it would be best to utilize all the strength we have on it.” “I know. That’s why I will have these people here and the cell we have in the Guf Hills to help. Don’t worry about it.” “Brother, my place is here to fight along side you against the Empire. We are not due to check in at Gloom anytime soon and Master Ebon is performing the important ceremony there. I don’t understand why you would want me to disturb that for no reason.” You didn’t really want to get into this because it’s likely to bring forth more questions, but Yvette is proving to be unmoving on this request. “Sister Yvette I have reason to believe Gloom may be in danger. Call it instinct, call it a premonition or call it the will of Dendrin, I don’t care, but I REALLY feel someone needs to check in on Gloom. I’d do it myself, but seeing as my mission here takes priority it would be irresponsible for me to leave my command. So I’m sending you. Now I hope you will obey my orders and if everything is in fact okay there you can make a complaint to Master Ebon at his earliest convenience. If not, well I believe we’ll have bigger problems.” Your explanation still doesn’t tell her much and you can sense that she’s very hesistant about just following through on your order based on a hunch, but given that it’s Gloom then it’s still worth checking out even if nothing is going on there. It also helps that you’ve been a very effective cell leader. Sister Yvette has certainly been a shadow longer than you, but your skills and leadership have established your dominance. Despite how everyone is supposed to be equal in the shadows there will always be those who are leaders and those who are followers. “Very well…I will go. What should I do if there is trouble?” she asks. “Help in any way you can then return to me as soon as possible unless you bump into Master Ebon and he has different order for you. As I said I will be meeting with the cell in the Guf Hills and we will probably be making that a temporary base of operations.” “Okay, I’ll take my leave as soon as possible. My Dendrin watch over you and guide you to success on the next mission…and I hope you’re wrong about Gloom, brother.” “Me too.” The next day you make your way to the Guf Hills, thinking not only about Gloom, but Dendrin as well. You briefly wonder if there might be a way of telling the shadows about Dendrin, but you quickly dismiss the idea. None of them would believe you and it wouldn’t do much good right now any way. The Empire is still the major threat and until that enemy is defeated only then will you even have the time to worry about the shadows’s sham of a religion. When you try to make contact with Brother Theo in the Guf Hills, it isn’t a straightforward process. Naturally there is always a little caution, but those under his command are a suspicious violent lot even before the rebellion broke out. The rebels he’s been directing primarily consist of criminals or ignorant peasants that have always made their homes in these hills and most of them are both. Many of them make racial slurs at the elves in your own company and if you had to guess there’s evidence of some inbreeding going on with some of these hill peasants. After a short stand off, Brother Theo comes out and admonishes all of them for their behavior towards you. Most of them grumble and go back to doing what they were doing. You tell your own people to find a spot and keep away from the others while you and Brother Theo talk to each other. “Glad you’re here brother and with a couple of fellow shadows I see. That’s good, because we could use more disciplined types here!” “Brother Theo, what is going on here? I mean I know we’re using anyone who has a grudge against the Empire, but these people have to be some of the lowest dregs of humanity.” “You’ll get no argument from me brother. It is truly Dendrin testing my patience with these people, but I will pass that test and besides after this is all said and done, the Empire will fall and that’s the major goal right now.” “True, but are these people actually any good in a fight?” “Hah! That’s all these people practically know. These folks might be unruly, but they know these hills better than anyone else, so we manage to stay hidden from Empire search teams for long periods of time. And if we can’t, then we stay one step ahead of them before we’re discovered. Having had to listen to their stories over and over, the families around this region have chaffed living under the Empire rule for almost as long as the shadows. Apparently they’ve been planning and building up supplies for a very long time. Pity we didn’t know about them sooner, but as you can tell they aren’t very trusting of anyone who isn’t family.” “I’m sort of surprised the Empire didn’t stomp them out of the hills given their problem with authority figures.” “Eh, they might seem like idiots, but they’re smarter than they look and can obviously play the waiting game. Also I guess when the Empire discovered there weren’t even any minerals worth mining in these hills, they took less notice of the place and basically just left the Guf people to their own devices as long as they paid their taxes on time. Most were wise enough to at least obey that one law and even those that didn’t pay knew the hills so well it simply wasn’t worth the Empire’s time to track down an evader. Oh sure every once in awhile the Empire would sometimes send a few dark elven mercs to track down the more serious criminals, but that had mixed success and at the time the Empire was always more concerned with either conquest or territory that was actually worth something. Probably never believed that these hill folk could ever be a legitimate threat to them either. A bit short sighted of them, but then that’s the Empire for you.” You nod and agree. As fascinating as all this is, your mind is still on Gloom. Of course you’re not going to mention any of that to Brother Theo, so you ask him what the plan is to assault Captain Roldan’s supply caravan. He tells you it’s a simple plan, the caravan is going to be passing through a nearby area that leads into a valley in a couple of days and in that time you’ll be setting an ambush from both sides as well. “Actually I’m glad you’ve brought some elves with you, we could use more archers.” Theo remarks. “Yeah, well don’t believe all the myths. They aren’t all expert marksmen, but the ones with me are still good enough for this ambush.” You reply. “Still, something about this seems a bit too easy. The Empire has to know that running a supply line through that valley is an all too tempting target especially with a known enemy making their home nearby.” “That supply caravan is going straight to Captain Roldan, it’s going to be very heavily guarded. Chances are they’re just arrogant enough to believe that any possible attack isn’t going to succeed. This is the Empire after all.” “Hmm, maybe…” After Brother Theo reassures you of the success of the plan you head back to your own people who thankfully haven’t gotten into any fights with the hill folk. Fortunately the next two days of preparation also pass without too much incident. Some the elves get a few more slurs thrown their way, but nothing that they haven’t been called before. One the hill folk actually speaks to you at great length asking you questions and such. You get the impression he was trying to get a feel of not only who you are, but the shadows in general. He wasn’t hostile towards you though, they apparently know better than to anger shadows too much. In the back of your mind during all this is still Gloom. Yvette wouldn’t be back yet even if she hadn’t found anything, but you still fear the worst. Makes you wonder if you shouldn’t have gone yourself. It’s too late now though and you need to focus on the task at hand. The day finally comes and the supply caravan enters the valley. You on one side with your group and Brother Theo with his group on the other. He also has people ready to cut the supply caravan off from the front and from retreat as well. The large group of wagons and carriages are heavily guarded as expected. Several soldiers of the elite variety and you see an Empire battle mage as well. You wait for Brother Theo’s signal… But before that can happen, the supply wagons suddenly stop and the battle mage suddenly casts a faint blue barrier over the entire supply caravan. Brother Theo orders his people to fire arrows at them, but they bounce harmlessly off the barrier. You shake your head cursing because you knew this was going to be too easy. “Rebellious fools, did you really think you were smart enough to ambush the Empire so easily? Flee now and enjoy your worthless lives for a little while longer or face your death with a smidgeon of honor by coming down into this valley!” the soldier in charge of the caravan shouts. “Looks like we’re going to have to do this the hard way.” You say to yourself. You’ve still got them outnumbered and surrounded even if you can’t rain a bunch of arrows on them, not to mention your own combat skills are more than a match for most Empire soldiers. Still there’s no reason to be foolish, you don’t tell your people to charge down the valley, you let the Gufians do that, since they seem eager to do that sort of thing. Even the ones directly under Brother Theo’s command are rushing past him. As for the empire troops, they seem content on waiting for you inside the safety of their barrier. Unfortunately some of them have bows too and theirs work perfectly well from inside the barrier. You, Theo and the other shadows easily dodge such attacks thanks to your shadow magic ability to speed yourself up to quickly close the gap. Most of the non-shadows aren’t as lucky. The numbers are evened up a bit more by the time the major close combat occurs. The Empire battle mage releases the barrier and then casts some sort of speed spell on his own people. Again, this merely matches the shadows, but it’s a severe advantage against the non-shadows. You need to eliminate that mage quick. > You close in for the kill You cut down a nearby soldier and try to close the gap between you and the mage. Despite the chaos the mage notices you and then raise his hand up and a large arc of lightning is unleashed from it. Not only are you hit, but several of your allies and even Empire troops are hit as well. Unfortunately for you, the Empire has always considered any of their own people expendable, so the mage doesn’t stop with his chain lightning spell. You feel the electricity course through your body and burn you from the inside out. By the time the mage finally releases his spell, you’re one of the many smoking black corpses created by his handiwork. Ultimately you’re just another forgotten body in a long line of victorious battles for the Empire.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 18 “And so I said to the blacksmith, well if you’re intending on killing the Emperor, you better damn well have a better plan than those group of thugs you’ve been supplying with weapons in the sewers. At least supply them to some thugs who the Emperor wouldn’t be able to smell six miles away!” you say, and this is followed by a few laughs from some of your fellow shadows. “Hah, good one brother! Tell me, what did you do to the blacksmith?” Brother Murk asks. “Oh we relocated him to our safehouse in Derlerg along with his buddies, reported that we eliminated him as a dissident…you know the usual. I must say, their surprise that we aren’t going to kill them is always amusing though.” You reply. “Yes, given our reputation, I imagine it is. Still, it’s all for a good cause eh, brother?” “Yes brother, it certainly is.” You say to Murk with a nod and take another drink of black tea. “Well I have to say I’m very glad you’ve finally managed to settle in brother, I have to admit, for awhile I was getting a little worried about you. You just didn’t seem like yourself after our ceremony initiation.” Talia says. “Yeah, well I guess I was just a late bloomer or something.” “Don’t worry about it brother, it’s all in the past. What matters now is that we’re all on the same page now.” Murk replies. On the same page…the problem is you really aren’t on the same page. You haven’t been since you got here. The other problem? You’re starting to feel like you might be getting there though. During the time you were forced to socialize you just swallowed your fear and self-doubt and proceeded like it was any mission. And you were successful. Perhaps a little too successful. Once you actually got sent out on a mission, you were paired up with Brother Murk. A fellow you had become semi-friendly with during your months of socializing. Your original plan was as soon as you left Gloom, you were going to run to the nearest Empire fort and make your report. Though for this plan to succeed in any meaningful way you would’ve had to kill Murk and despite your better judgment, you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You later cursed yourself for this temporary weakness and the next time you were sent out, you vowed to yourself that you’d do it again, the problem was you had only become friendlier with Murk within that time. You failed again. By the time they rotated your partnership and you were paired you with someone else, you still couldn’t do it, because now you actually started to feel like the Shadow Guard really was like a family to you. And you liked that feeling. In fact it was the best you’ve felt in a long time. Yet, now you are in a difficult position. You are still loyal to the Empire and the Emperor first, but you haven’t been able to find the fortitude to expose the Shadow Guard for what they are. You attempt to rationalize it in your mind, by claiming the longer you stay the more you learn about their exact plans, and while that’s certainly true, it really isn’t the TRUTH. The real truth is you’re starting to believe in the Shadow Guard’s cause slightly. You don’t know if it’s because you’ve spent so much time here that you’ve developed some sort of emotional attachment or some odd sort of subtle indoctrination. Is this what Dendrin really had in store for you? Did he know you could be turned even without his intervention? Before you had that experience everything was so certain, your feelings weren’t a constant source of ups and downs. Even under Mistress, you don’t remember ever feeling this. It was either success or death. It was very simple and you preferred it. Now you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Are you a traitor? Are you still loyal? Are you both? Are you neither? You excuse yourself from the rest of your brothers and sister and say you have to get some rest, though in reality you have to take a long look at your priorities. Once again you spend a few more months going through your usual routines and quietly suffering in silence. That comes to a halt when Murk comes into the barracks one day… “Hey, where are brother Cyrus and sister Talia?” he immediately asks you. “Uh, sister Talia I think is in the library and brother Cyrus is probably with brother Draven somewhere.” You reply. “Oh, well I’ll go get Talia, someone else can look for Cyrus, but you need to report to Master Ebon right away.” “What’s this all about?” “I don’t know, just that he wants you, Talia and Cyrus to see him. Something about someone from the Empire wanting to meet with all three of you. Sounds important.” You get up and walk to Master Ebon’s office which remains closed, so you wait. A few moments later, Talia joins you. “Hello, brother. Isn’t master Ebon here?” “If he is, he isn’t answering his door, so I’ve been waiting outside.” “Do you know what this is about?” “Dunno, just that someone from the Empire wants to see us.” Talia nods and remains silent. Soon Cyrus joins you and asks a similar question, to which you answer in a similar manner. He grunts at you and stands as far from you as possible, though he says something polite to Talia. Same old Cyrus. No sooner has Cyrus got there, when Ebon’s door opens. You hear a voice that tells you to come in. You didn’t even think he was inside, but you guess he was really waiting to see you all together. When you all enter, he tell Cyrus to close the door and gets right to the point. “You three have been summoned by Mr. Mol. Apparently he wants to ask you a few questions and is insisting on doing it somewhere in the capital I believe. In any case, he claims he wants to check on your progress as an Eternal, but I suspect he’s fishing for information about us.” “You don’t think he suspects anything do you?” Talia asks. “I do not believe he knows anything about our true goals, if he or anyone did, I have no doubt we would’ve been moved upon by now. No, I think this is just another Empire ploy to try to get more inside intel on our organization, which for the reasons I just mentioned they cannot know about.” “I won’t say a word to this running dog of the Empire! My eyes have been open a long time and my loyalty is and will always be to Dendrin.” Cyrus says. Master Ebon nods. “Yes, I know it will be. I have no doubt, but I still would like you all to just be on your guard when answering questions none the less. It probably won’t come to this, but kill yourselves if you have to. It won’t be ideal, since it’ll arouse suspicion, but it’ll still give us time to go ahead with our plan anyway, even if it would be a few years early. Anyway, the three of you are to make your way to the town of Lenet and from there you’ll take an Empire carriage to the capital. Return immediately if you are able. May Dendrin and the shadows hide your true intentions.” With those last words, Ebon sends you away and the three of you set off on your journey. You begin to feel nervous as soon as you leave Gloom, you weren’t expecting this happening, but deep down you did know that something like it was going to happen eventually. You remain mostly quiet during the journey as you try to get in a certain frame of mind of what you’re going to do or say. Cyrus is mostly silent as well, though you’re guessing that’s because he’s so firmly entrenched in his belief in Dendrin, that he knows what he’s going to say and do. Talia is the only talkative one and that’s mainly questions about what you both think Mr. Mol will ask you. You know she’s dedicated herself to Dendrin, but you sense that perhaps she’s a little nervous too, though you don’t know if it’s due to her new loyalty to Dendrin or because she’s been harboring secret loyalty to the Empire like you have. You decide to imagine it’s the latter, mainly because you want to make yourself feel better. Eventually the carriage from Lenet reaches Qale, the Empire’s capital and several soldiers immediately step forward to say they are here to escort you to Mr. Mol. The three of you are taken from the opulence of one of the main streets and quickly through a system of back alleys until you eventually reach a non-descript building. You enter and there you see Mr. Mol. It’s the well dressed man you saw speaking to Brother Gray six years ago. He’s also wearing the same formal black suit he was back then. “Ah, the Shadow Eternals. I’ve so wanted to catch up with your progress, but my attention was on your less subtle peers for a while. I think we’ve sorted them out though, so now it’s time to sort you out as well. Just a formality really, we just want to see if you’re achieving your full potential in the Shadow Guard. After all you’re Eternals first, and we wouldn’t want your talents to not be used to their fullest potential in the service of the Emperor, right?” Cyrus and Talia say nothing, but you feel obligated to acknowledge that question if only to not look suspicious. “Correct. All that we are, we owe to the Emperor’s will.” you say. “Glad to hear it! Now then we’re just going to be asking you some questions, these soldiers will take you to a place to wait. Off you go.” At this point the three of are marched out of the room and down a long hallway. The cold broken stone walls and desolation of this place almost makes Gloom look cheery by comparison. Eventually you reach a door on your left and Cyrus is told to wait inside the room. He enters without a word, but gives you and Talia a look like “Say nothing!” A few moments later you reach another door on the left, this time Talia is told to wait inside. She hesitates for a moment, but enters. She gives you a look as well, though this one is more of concern. Finally you reach the last door on the left and you are told to enter and wait. You do so without looking at anyone. The door shuts behind you and the ominous sound of a lock is heard. There isn’t much you can do, so you sit down at one of the chairs in the middle of the room and wait. And wait…and wait…and wait…and wait… You don’t know how much time has passed, but you get up and move about several times before sitting down again. You don’t quite panic as much as you think you would, but being alone with your thoughts is definitely not the best thing for you. Right now you’re already thinking they’ve managed to break Talia into talking and probably killed Cyrus. Maybe if you cooperate right now, there will be leniency? Why shouldn’t you cooperate? The Shadow Guard ARE traitors after all, and this is just the kick in the ass you needed to remind you of that. But then there’s the other part of you that feels loyal to the shadows and how you shouldn’t betray them. You go back and forth what you’re going to do several times, and then you hear the lock on the door. Mr. Mol enters… > You shadowy Agenda (More history and goals) In the years you’ve been here, you’ve learned much more about the Shadow Guard’s plans along with their history, which of course has a much positive spin than the usual things the Empire puts out about them or the common perception. Before the Empire, the worshippers of Dendrin made their home in the Derlerg province. However, only a special few became “shadows” and they became more like protectors and holy people of the territory. Whole villages were dedicated to the worship of Dendrin, but there was no crusade or oppression of those who did not. Dendrin was not a deity that encouraged conversion by the sword, which is more than can be said for the Empire when they eventually arrived. When the Empire (Still known as the Qualan Empire at the time) came to Derlerg, the people were unsure of what to do. Most wanted to fight off this potential aggressor, but instead they asked for the guidance of their Dendrin priests. The shadows then consulted each other, and finally Dendrin. The answer to all surprised his faithful. Dendrin told them to surrender without a fight. He told them to not only surrender, but to swear loyalty to this “so called Emperor” and offer to be part of his armies. He said he knew where their true loyalties lay and that all would be revealed in time. He told them to ask for only one stipulation of the Empire and that was that they are allowed to continue their worship and to never mention his name except among each other. (Hence why you’ve never heard the name of Dendrin, until you joined the Shadow Guard) Trusting in Dendrin, the shadows obeyed. When they asked for an audience with the emperor they did exactly what Dendrin told them to. The Emperor was amazed and even overjoyed at such an offer. When he saw the powers that the shadows offered, he accepted their loyalty without many other questions. He was still hesitant about their insistence on their religion, but this was during a time when the Empire was less restrictive about such things and after proving themselves several times in the following years, the Emperor dismissed their worship as silly superstition, but ultimately not a threat to his power. ed to decades and the Derlerg province eventually assimilated completely to the Empire. Most of the people who once worshipped Dendrin, didn’t anymore and the new generation born were completely ignorant of him. However his shadows still kept the faith like they were suppose to, but there were still so few, and that’s when Dendrin came to them again. He told them that they must start actively looking for worthy candidates to join or preferably, to breed with each other to produce more shadows. This was a new order by Dendrin to actively recruit as opposed to people seeking out Dendrin themselves, but once again, the shadows obeyed. The Empire certainly didn’t mind having more shadows to serve it either. It was around this time that the decree came that the Shadow Guard proper was formed to serve as a type of internal security since the Empire was growing larger and needed to weed out dissidents. Some most likely objected to this trust in the shadows, but the Emperor was convinced of their loyalty so they were elevated to the status they are today. Unfortunately for him, the Emperor would’ve done well to be more paranoid and to have listened to his advisors at the time. The Shadow Guard have been planning, and scheming and waiting since the very beginning to overthrow the Empire. Dendrin foresaw that if they resisted in the beginning they would’ve been crushed. True the Empire would’ve suffered losses, but his followers would’ve been wiped out completely, and without followers what use is a god? Now centuries have passed. The Shadow Guard is so entrenched in the Empire that if it were to rebel now, as it surely will, the Empire would surely be vastly damaged and most likely fall. Right now the shadow guard’s duty is to root out dissidents and that’s true up to a point. Some are immediately passed over to the Empire to keep up appearances, others are killed if they prove unhelpful, but for those that are too useful to turn over and are willing to help, then they join the “normal” resistance that the Shadow Guard has been building up over the years. When the revolution comes, it won’t just be the shadows rebelling. Strangely, there doesn’t seem to be any grand plans to “take over” though. The main goal seems to be overthrowing the Empire and gaining “freedom”. This seems very odd to you. You could understand better if there was a system in place for the shadows to take power afterwards, but why would they want to overthrow something, only to leave anarchy behind? It would seem the shadows are intending to do just that, and then a mass exodus back to the Delerg province to rebuild their old temple and continue to worship Dendrin. Nothing more, nothing less. While you should find everything about this agenda repugnant, you can’t help but respect and admire the patience and planning of such a cunning plan. You doubt if you could maintain such a facade for so long. Then again you’ve been blending in as one of them for two years now and your own loyalty isn’t necessarily to them. Perhaps you’ve come to respect the Shadow Guard so much because you’ve started to think like them…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 18 “And so I said to the blacksmith, well if you’re intending on killing the Emperor, you better damn well have a better plan than those group of thugs you’ve been supplying with weapons in the sewers. At least supply them to some thugs who the Emperor wouldn’t be able to smell six miles away!” you say, and this is followed by a few laughs from some of your fellow shadows. “Hah, good one brother! Tell me, what did you do to the blacksmith?” Brother Murk asks. “Oh we relocated him to our safehouse in Derlerg along with his buddies, reported that we eliminated him as a dissident…you know the usual. I must say, their surprise that we aren’t going to kill them is always amusing though.” You reply. “Yes, given our reputation, I imagine it is. Still, it’s all for a good cause eh, brother?” “Yes brother, it certainly is.” You say to Murk with a nod and take another drink of black tea. “Well I have to say I’m very glad you’ve finally managed to settle in brother, I have to admit, for awhile I was getting a little worried about you. You just didn’t seem like yourself after our ceremony initiation.” Talia says. “Yeah, well I guess I was just a late bloomer or something.” “Don’t worry about it brother, it’s all in the past. What matters now is that we’re all on the same page now.” Murk replies. On the same page…the problem is you really aren’t on the same page. You haven’t been since you got here. The other problem? You’re starting to feel like you might be getting there though. During the time you were forced to socialize you just swallowed your fear and self-doubt and proceeded like it was any mission. And you were successful. Perhaps a little too successful. Once you actually got sent out on a mission, you were paired up with Brother Murk. A fellow you had become semi-friendly with during your months of socializing. Your original plan was as soon as you left Gloom, you were going to run to the nearest Empire fort and make your report. Though for this plan to succeed in any meaningful way you would’ve had to kill Murk and despite your better judgment, you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You later cursed yourself for this temporary weakness and the next time you were sent out, you vowed to yourself that you’d do it again, the problem was you had only become friendlier with Murk within that time. You failed again. By the time they rotated your partnership and you were paired you with someone else, you still couldn’t do it, because now you actually started to feel like the Shadow Guard really was like a family to you. And you liked that feeling. In fact it was the best you’ve felt in a long time. Yet, now you are in a difficult position. You are still loyal to the Empire and the Emperor first, but you haven’t been able to find the fortitude to expose the Shadow Guard for what they are. You attempt to rationalize it in your mind, by claiming the longer you stay the more you learn about their exact plans, and while that’s certainly true, it really isn’t the TRUTH. The real truth is you’re starting to believe in the Shadow Guard’s cause slightly. You don’t know if it’s because you’ve spent so much time here that you’ve developed some sort of emotional attachment or some odd sort of subtle indoctrination. Is this what Dendrin really had in store for you? Did he know you could be turned even without his intervention? Before you had that experience everything was so certain, your feelings weren’t a constant source of ups and downs. Even under Mistress, you don’t remember ever feeling this. It was either success or death. It was very simple and you preferred it. Now you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Are you a traitor? Are you still loyal? Are you both? Are you neither? You excuse yourself from the rest of your brothers and sister and say you have to get some rest, though in reality you have to take a long look at your priorities. Once again you spend a few more months going through your usual routines and quietly suffering in silence. That comes to a halt when Murk comes into the barracks one day… “Hey, where are brother Cyrus and sister Talia?” he immediately asks you. “Uh, sister Talia I think is in the library and brother Cyrus is probably with brother Draven somewhere.” You reply. “Oh, well I’ll go get Talia, someone else can look for Cyrus, but you need to report to Master Ebon right away.” “What’s this all about?” “I don’t know, just that he wants you, Talia and Cyrus to see him. Something about someone from the Empire wanting to meet with all three of you. Sounds important.” You get up and walk to Master Ebon’s office which remains closed, so you wait. A few moments later, Talia joins you. “Hello, brother. Isn’t master Ebon here?” “If he is, he isn’t answering his door, so I’ve been waiting outside.” “Do you know what this is about?” “Dunno, just that someone from the Empire wants to see us.” Talia nods and remains silent. Soon Cyrus joins you and asks a similar question, to which you answer in a similar manner. He grunts at you and stands as far from you as possible, though he says something polite to Talia. Same old Cyrus. No sooner has Cyrus got there, when Ebon’s door opens. You hear a voice that tells you to come in. You didn’t even think he was inside, but you guess he was really waiting to see you all together. When you all enter, he tell Cyrus to close the door and gets right to the point. “You three have been summoned by Mr. Mol. Apparently he wants to ask you a few questions and is insisting on doing it somewhere in the capital I believe. In any case, he claims he wants to check on your progress as an Eternal, but I suspect he’s fishing for information about us.” “You don’t think he suspects anything do you?” Talia asks. “I do not believe he knows anything about our true goals, if he or anyone did, I have no doubt we would’ve been moved upon by now. No, I think this is just another Empire ploy to try to get more inside intel on our organization, which for the reasons I just mentioned they cannot know about.” “I won’t say a word to this running dog of the Empire! My eyes have been open a long time and my loyalty is and will always be to Dendrin.” Cyrus says. Master Ebon nods. “Yes, I know it will be. I have no doubt, but I still would like you all to just be on your guard when answering questions none the less. It probably won’t come to this, but kill yourselves if you have to. It won’t be ideal, since it’ll arouse suspicion, but it’ll still give us time to go ahead with our plan anyway, even if it would be a few years early. Anyway, the three of you are to make your way to the town of Lenet and from there you’ll take an Empire carriage to the capital. Return immediately if you are able. May Dendrin and the shadows hide your true intentions.” With those last words, Ebon sends you away and the three of you set off on your journey. You begin to feel nervous as soon as you leave Gloom, you weren’t expecting this happening, but deep down you did know that something like it was going to happen eventually. You remain mostly quiet during the journey as you try to get in a certain frame of mind of what you’re going to do or say. Cyrus is mostly silent as well, though you’re guessing that’s because he’s so firmly entrenched in his belief in Dendrin, that he knows what he’s going to say and do. Talia is the only talkative one and that’s mainly questions about what you both think Mr. Mol will ask you. You know she’s dedicated herself to Dendrin, but you sense that perhaps she’s a little nervous too, though you don’t know if it’s due to her new loyalty to Dendrin or because she’s been harboring secret loyalty to the Empire like you have. You decide to imagine it’s the latter, mainly because you want to make yourself feel better. Eventually the carriage from Lenet reaches Qale, the Empire’s capital and several soldiers immediately step forward to say they are here to escort you to Mr. Mol. The three of you are taken from the opulence of one of the main streets and quickly through a system of back alleys until you eventually reach a non-descript building. You enter and there you see Mr. Mol. It’s the well dressed man you saw speaking to Brother Gray six years ago. He’s also wearing the same formal black suit he was back then. “Ah, the Shadow Eternals. I’ve so wanted to catch up with your progress, but my attention was on your less subtle peers for a while. I think we’ve sorted them out though, so now it’s time to sort you out as well. Just a formality really, we just want to see if you’re achieving your full potential in the Shadow Guard. After all you’re Eternals first, and we wouldn’t want your talents to not be used to their fullest potential in the service of the Emperor, right?” Cyrus and Talia say nothing, but you feel obligated to acknowledge that question if only to not look suspicious. “Correct. All that we are, we owe to the Emperor’s will.” you say. “Glad to hear it! Now then we’re just going to be asking you some questions, these soldiers will take you to a place to wait. Off you go.” At this point the three of are marched out of the room and down a long hallway. The cold broken stone walls and desolation of this place almost makes Gloom look cheery by comparison. Eventually you reach a door on your left and Cyrus is told to wait inside the room. He enters without a word, but gives you and Talia a look like “Say nothing!” A few moments later you reach another door on the left, this time Talia is told to wait inside. She hesitates for a moment, but enters. She gives you a look as well, though this one is more of concern. Finally you reach the last door on the left and you are told to enter and wait. You do so without looking at anyone. The door shuts behind you and the ominous sound of a lock is heard. There isn’t much you can do, so you sit down at one of the chairs in the middle of the room and wait. And wait…and wait…and wait…and wait… You don’t know how much time has passed, but you get up and move about several times before sitting down again. You don’t quite panic as much as you think you would, but being alone with your thoughts is definitely not the best thing for you. Right now you’re already thinking they’ve managed to break Talia into talking and probably killed Cyrus. Maybe if you cooperate right now, there will be leniency? Why shouldn’t you cooperate? The Shadow Guard ARE traitors after all, and this is just the kick in the ass you needed to remind you of that. But then there’s the other part of you that feels loyal to the shadows and how you shouldn’t betray them. You go back and forth what you’re going to do several times, and then you hear the lock on the door. Mr. Mol enters… > You dendrin's Disciples (Your "siblings") In the few years you’ve been with the Shadow Guard, you still haven’t gotten used to the idea their strange hierarchy system. The part you understand is the initiate level, which are the prospects who have not yet gone through the ceremony. They are lowest and understand why as far as the shadow hierarchy goes. It’s after the ceremony where it gets confusing to you. Everyone that passes through the ceremony is either a brother or sister according to gender and nobody is technically above anyone, though there is obviously still a hierarchy system in place based on experience. For example Brother Gray and Brother Murk are supposed to be equals, but Brother Gray is really his superior (along with most others) since he’s been a shadow for much longer and has more knowledge than Murk. From what you know, this “equality” is part of the idea that Dendrin wanted the shadows to not fight amongst themselves and to concentrate on their true enemy the Empire. While this is a strange concept for you, it must have worked since the shadows do treat each other more like a family and you haven’t observed any real power conflicts with any of them. The one exception is Master Ebon. Apparently even in a family of “siblings”, there still needs to be a parental figure and Master Ebon would be that “father”. It is he who supposedly speaks to Dendrin directly about his greatest visions, ideas and prophecies on how to best proceed. Though this seems questionable to you, considering if Dendrin spoke to him directly about the most important matters, why wouldn’t he mention you and your doubting loyalties? In any event, you’ve come to know quite a few shadows since your time here and against your better judgment, even become friendly with them. You have to admit; they aren’t all like what the common perception of them is. Master Ebon, as mentioned is the overall leader, and other than that you don’t know too much about him personally except that he has been a meticulous planner much like his predecessors. Brother Gray would probably be the closest thing to a second in command. Brother Gray has always seemed to try to help you though perhaps not in any way you’d like. But his words of encouragement on survival during your training and his concern that you should feel welcome here like a family member display that he genuinely is trying to look out for you since he has on several occasions praised your combat skills. If there were a proper hierarchy, Brother Shade would probably be your commanding officer or sergeant since he’s been here longer than the rest of you and relays a lot of orders to the rest of you. He still goes on missions as well, unlike Brother Gray. He seems a little more militant than the rest of his fellows, and you don’t mean in his worship of Dendrin, but rather his desire to see the Empire fall. You get the impression he’s tired of waiting. Sister Talia, or just Talia as you still think of her. During your years with her in Mistress’ class she was much like you in that she kept to the background and mostly just followed instruction. She was a good fighter; you recall her shutting up one of your louder classmates (Edgar you think his name was) with one punch when they were paired up together to fight for the first time. Other than that, you didn’t really talk to her and that continued even during your shadow guard training. After the ceremony however, she interacted with you more, mostly taunting your shadow magic abilities initially, but in time she began to speak to you on a friendlier level, she even apologized and claimed that she should not have mocked you so, and should have tried to help you instead. Since that time, she’s been cordial with you. In different circumstances, you’d probably appreciate her friendliness in your situation; the problem is she’s part of which you consider the enemy. It’s even worse, since she’s an Eternal like you and her brainwashed mindset is much more distressing to you. Brother Cyrus or just Cyrus as you still think of him. Much like you and Talia, he kept to the background in Mistress’ class. Also like Talia he was a good fighter, though you remember having to go up against him once, and you beat him. It wasn’t an easy victory, but you sometimes wonder if he continued to hold a grudge because he still remains stand offish to you. He even still says something snide about your shadow magic aptitude once in awhile. Especially since Cyrus himself has proven to be quite apt at using shadow magic Cyrus seems to have embraced the worship of Dendrin wholeheartedly, even more than Talia, though again you wonder if his new relationship with Draven has something to do with enforcing that, rather than anything Dendrin did to brainwash him. Lately though he’s been away a lot and given more assignments. Apparently he’s moving “up” as far as shadow responsibilities go. Brother Draven is Cyrus’ special friend, or in other words his lover. You aren’t exactly sure when it started, since you were concerned with your own crisis of loyalties at the time, but you really don’t care anyway. Draven has never really spoken too much to you, but when he has he’s at least been friendlier than Cyrus. He’s mentioned he was born into the shadows, but that his own parents died when he was young though he doesn’t say how exactly. From what you’ve seen his combat abilities are nowhere near that of you or any of the other Eternals (Then again few shadows are) but his shadow magic is much better. He’s a little older than Cyrus, probably by a few years, but despite that, Cyrus is still obviously the dominant one of the relationship, but then given that Cyrus is still an Eternal at heart, which seems logical to you. Brother Murk is probably the closest thing you have to a “friend” in here. Though he probably wouldn’t be, if he knew your true thoughts. He’s about Draven’s age, but unlike Draven he was born in the Derlerg province and actively sought out to be part of the shadows, since his family was one of the few that still quietly worshipped Dendrin even after centuries of others forgot him. Apparently it was always a dream of someone in his family to become a shadow, so Murk pestered the shadows until they finally gave him a chance. He passed and it was the happiest day of his life. Murk was one of the few that tried to reach out to you even when he saw you struggling with shadow magic (among other things). During the times when you were paired up and had to fight actual dissidents who didn’t want to listen to you (Not all are willing to trust let alone join the shadow guard agenda, and some are little more than violent criminals) he’s always had your back. In between missions, he likes to tell you of his latest attempts to woo Sister Bianca. It is a shame that such a worthy comrade has dedicated his life to the wrong side and it will be regrettable when the day comes that you may have to kill him yourself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Test or not, you’re not going to stand here and accept the judgment that Master Ebon has passed on you. You’re more than strong enough to pass through the ceremony, you know you are and to prove it, you immediately make a run for the portal. “Master Ebon, the Eternal is running towards the portal!” you hear Brother Gray shout just as you make a leap into the shimmering portal. If Ebon said anything you didn’t hear it, in fact as soon as you pass through the portal you don’t hear anything. You also don’t see anything or even feel anything. It’s like you’ve stepped into a place that has sucked out all your senses. You even attempt to speak out loud, but nothing comes out, of course you wouldn’t really know since you can’t hear anything. You don’t believe you’re standing on anything and feels like you’re “floating” in some sort of void. As for your mental state of mind, your feelings have become muted. You still have them, but they aren’t as strong as they once were. Even before when you suppressed your feelings yourself, you never managed it to this degree. Everything has become deadened. All of this is so strange and you briefly wonder if you’ve made a mistake, but then you hear a voice, but it’s inside your head. It isn’t some sort of subconscious either. It’s a very real external force speaking to you in your mind. The voice is a whisper, but loud at the same time, almost overpowering. “You were not given permission to be here. Why have you disobeyed your superior?” the voice asks. “I…I wanted to prove I was worthy.” You answer. It is a strange sensation to speak with just your brain. “I see…so do you think you are worthy?” “Yes.” “Your confidence is admirable. Yet, you do not even where you are, let alone WHO you are.” “I am an Eternal.” “Are you? Tell me, how can one be an Eternal, when one has not even experienced life outside what your superiors have told you? How can one be eternal when one is a mere baby in terms of existence? How can one be eternal when you are before a being that has existed longer than you mortals first came up with the idea of your primitive methods of measuring time? No, you are not eternal. You are confused.” The voice is absolutely oppressive. Any feelings that were dead before are replaced with an extreme feeling of hopelessness and as the voice stated confusion. Within that moment you start to question everything you were taught. Not the skills, but the ideology. Still, you try to maintain your mind, by asking questions. “Are…are you the god of the Shadow Guards?” “That designation I suppose is accurate in a sense, but one should not get stuck with just one description, lest it confine you. I am many things as are you, even if you do not realize it yet, despite what your superior believes. Not to say he is wrong, just that he does not have the…insight I possess. Now your fellows that entered before you did are limited in their thought processes. Some have already failed due to their lack of complex thought. Tell me, are you loyal to your Emperor and your Empire?” “…of course!” you say, though due to your experience in this place, you feel a lot less certain of that, for the first time. This whole event is troubling to you. You almost feel suicidal for not answering with absolute certainty. “One cannot serve two masters, or at least not for long. The ones your Empire has designated the Shadow Guard are my loyal servants. They are loyal to ME, first. You cannot be a true member of this order if you place your Emperor above me. My followers have survived by hiding in plain sight and making themselves indispensable to the Empire. They have done this for centuries, but there will be a reckoning some day soon and the question is, who’s side are you going to be on?” You cannot answer. The concept of not placing the Emperor about all is so abhorrent to you that you can’t even comprehend it. Yet here you are being asked this question by a god no less. He’s even suggested a reckoning of some sort that indicates the Shadow Guard will betray the Empire in the future! How can you argue with such a being though? If you disagree it is likely to destroy you, but in this place you almost can’t help but to swear subservience to this god. You feel so helpless that it’s almost like the choice Mistress gave you except even worse. > You defy the god with all your strength You aren’t going to compromise your beliefs. Not even to a god. “I will never serve you! My loyalty will always be to the Emperor!” you communicate with your mind. You feel absolutely drained even having this thought. For a long time there is a silence and you’re just floating in the void, with only a sense of impending doom ever growing within your head. “So be it. I respect your dedication Eternal. May you serve your Emperor in whatever afterlife finds you, because you won’t be doing it in this life.” The voice whispers and then you feel the numbness that has invaded your body, now invading your mind. It isn’t painful. It isn’t anything really. Your brain shuts down along with the rest of your body, which is then enveloped by the void. You completely cease to be and are explained to have died during the Shadow Guard ceremony to Mr. Mol when he asks for an update on your progress.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The pain is great and you want it to be over with as quickly as possible, but you know to beg for mercy would be shameful, so you gasp say you’d rather die than beg. This response surprises her to a point that she actually takes her boot off your chest giving you relief. “Truly, little one? You accept death so quickly? Have you no instinct for survival, or are you merely a fool? Still, your refusal to beg at least shows promise. It also shows that you know your place and that your life is ultimately not your own. It is nothing. ALL of your lives are nothing! Your lives will never be anything more than warm bodies to serve the Emperor! Remember this.” At this point much like your other classmate hit by her magic bolt, you slowly get up and back in your seat, clutching your chest. It hurts, but you compose yourself the best you can. Time passes by under the harsh guidance of Mistress. She teaches you all that she promised she would and then some. Your lessons are not only that of a combat nature, but of an academic one as well. You wouldn’t be aware of it, but you and your classmates are probably much better educated than other children your age. As for you, Mistress doesn’t treat you any worse or better than any of the other children, but your first experience with her did have an effect on your behavior. You take her lesson that your life ultimately not being important to heart and you become more and more withdrawn. So withdrawn in fact that you almost become invisible to your fellow classmates and even Mistress sometimes forgets that you’re there at all. If it was not for group projects and sparring lessons you probably would be forgotten. You obey commands and do your training and that is all. Why bother worrying about anything else when your life is not your own? You must follow orders even if it means your death, it’s the only way you’ll be able to please the Emperor. Despite your low key nature, your personality doesn’t completely go unnoticed by your instructor and watchers, they make note of it and decide how you should be handled in the next step of your training. Year 12 You are in a room with a few of your fellow classmates standing in a row. Most of your class has been separated for reasons unknown to you. All you know right now is there is a man in a dark robe speaking with a well dressed man. They are speaking about you, but not actually speaking TO you… “Far be it from me to question orders, but I thought the whole point of this program was to create a separate elite fighting unit. Why are they now being split up and more importantly why are some being placed with us?” “Things have changed since the program’s inception. Besides I would’ve thought the Shadow Guard would’ve appreciated such an honor of receiving such worthy candidates.” the man dressed in black formal wear calmly retorts. “That remains to be seen. I’m sure you’re fully aware of our strict guidelines on who is accepted. There are tests and rituals to go through.” “So, put ‘em through whatever it is you do. Look, I’d say you could benefit by having a few Eternals in your ranks, if nothing else than to keep you from getting lax.” “Lax? Our group has been the eyes and ears of the Empire for centuries, and our vigilance is beyond reproach. We haven’t even seen one of these so-called Eternals can do. It’s all been just speculation, and if I may be so bold, a misguided appropriation of time and funds. The Empire should be providing the regular military better equipment and more of it, so that we don’t have to be sent in to help them on the frontlines when we could be doing better things with our time such as keeping the Empire safe from subversives and other internal parasites.” “Your concerns are irrelevant. This is the Emperor’s project and he has his reasons. If I were you I’d watch your tone. For someone who doesn’t question orders, one wonders if you have to be reminded that you are a servant of the Emperor and you will obey or you will be replaced.” The robed individual steps towards the well dressed man before speaking. “Fortunately for you, I do serve the Emperor, for that is the only thing keeping me from ripping out your throat. Never question my loyalty again…very well I shall take these so called Eternals, but if they fail to live up to Shadow Guard standard, then they shall die like anyone else.” “As you wish brother, I leave it in your capable hands. You will keep me apprised of their progress on a weekly basis. Good day.” The well dressed man says and leaves the room, leaving you all alone with the robed man. You’ve never seen a Shadow Guard before, but while he doesn’t look quite as menacing from what you’ve heard about them you know that he is a force to be reckoned with by reputation alone. He walks up and down the row sizing you all up before speaking. “I am Brother Gray, and I will be in charge of the rest of your training until the Emperor deems otherwise. I imagine that your former instructor was that svelk woman, so I trust you all know by now that failure and weakness have no place here. Correct?” “Yes Brother!” you all shout in unison. “Hmm, well glad to see her skills in teaching discipline are still as effective as ever. Good. Now let’s see how good your combat skills are…” At this point you and your fellow classmates instinctively start to pair up to spar with each other, but Gray stops you and immediately knows what’s going on. “Oh no, you won’t be fighting each other. The svelk’s cultivation of mistrust and loathing in all of you has its place, but not for our purposes. As a Shadow Guard you will learn that the reliance on such emotions to be a hindrance, as all emotions are. I can see I will have to undo some of the foolishness she has instilled in you all.” Time goes by and Brother Gray begins to train you in various forms of combat. It’s actually similar to some of the stuff Mistress was starting to teach you as he goes on about unconventional warfare such as poisoning water supplies and assassinations. However he also teaches you and your classmates to work better as a team. One test involves fighting a strange beast called a Thought Lurker. It is one of the most grueling battles you’ve ever had and it doesn’t require weapons at all. It takes place all in your mind and it utterly destroys a few of your classmates. It is only when you and your classmates concentrate together as one you are ultimately successful in defeating it. Academically speaking, you are still given a well-rounded education. A strong mind and knowledge wins more battles than any blade did as Brother Gray says. Brother Gray is just as uncompromising as Mistress in his training, but he is not gleeful about it at all. His verbal abuse is a cold disappointment rather than gloating about your failures. He still reminds you all regularly about how it is your sworn duty to serve the Emperor, but you hardly need him to tell you that, to believe otherwise is unthinkable. As for you, you find yourself fitting in better here. It might be due to the conditioning that emotions are a hindrance and the emphasis on duty since you already had a slightly stoic personality coming in. There is a calming peace of knowing exactly what you need to be placing importance on. Despite your nature of blending into the background, you have not gone unnoticed by Brother Gray who approaches you to give you direct advice one day. “You are a little different from your fellows. I have noticed that you adapted much better to training than they did. You may even survive the ritual when the time comes, however I will give you a little advice. I can see that you do not believe your life is truly important. You believe that you feel it is merely your duty to serve and if you die in the process, then you will die. I imagine this might be the result of something that the Svelk woman did to you…in any event, this approach will not do. There is no weakness in maintaining a survival instinct while serving. Yes, you will be called upon to perform dangerous duties or even suicidal ones in the service of the Emperor, but you should always try to survive even if the odds are against you. The Shadow Guard has been doing it for centuries. Remember, the longer you survive, the longer you can continue serving the and there is no greater honor. Think on this on your next training assignment.” Brother Gray’s words carry much weight with you and in the years during your training you begin to discard your overly fatalistic approach to life well as becoming an accomplished warrior. Your instructor and watchers once again note your growth and skills, and as usual they make decisions on how you will best serve the Emperor. > The Shadow Guard (History Lesson) The Shadow Guard are an elite branch of the Empire’s security force. Technically they aren’t military, but they do help out the rank and file soldiers when assigned to. Their main task is internal security of the Empire’s core regions however. Much like anything concerning the history with the Empire, the shadow’s history is also a little murky, but for as long as anyone can remember, the Shadow Guard have been serving since the early days of the Empire. While the shadows are feared and respected by most across the normal population, the higher ranking military officials tend to be suspicious of them for various reasons. One of the major reasons being their religious nature as they are practically a religious order of “warrior monks”. While the shadows do serve the Empire and dedicate their loyalty to the Emperor, they also worship a deity of some sort and have always done so, indeed it is supposedly how they all maintain their more magical abilities. Something like this might normally be considered a threat and the religion stamped out, but given their order’s utter dedication to the Emperor for centuries they have been given some allowances that most would not receive. Not to mention that they are absolutely vital at keeping the population in check nowadays. The Shadow Guard’s procedures for choosing new recruits are almost as strict as the Eternal process. Besides the usual demanding combat training, they also have to go through some sort of ritual, which the shadows keep very private. It has something to do with their religion though, and not everyone survives the process. If the initiate survives then he or she becomes a fully-fledged shadow and all the abilities and powers that come with it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 5 You are sitting in a gray room at a desk with several other children your age. All of you glance at each other a lot and it is obvious that there is much curiosity, but nobody speaks. This is very unusual for you, up until now, you have only had minimal contact with others. Most of them are male like you, but a few of them are female. Soon the silence comes to an end when a dark skinned woman walks into the room. She has long hair and sharp features. One thing you notice is that despite her long hair covering her ears you can still see that the tips of them are pointed. She must be elven, but in the pictures you’ve seen in books, you’ve never seen one with dark skin before. “Hello children, and congratulations on maintaining dignified silence during your time by yourselves. It’s nice to see that your previous human minders aren’t totally incompetent. Still, if you were Svelk children you would’ve been much better trained by now. Ah, but it is not my place to dwell on the limitations of the lesser born. I am merely here to oversee your training into proper Eternals so that you may serve the Emperor to your fullest capabilities. Now before we begin, I suggest you all ask questions now, because this will probably be the only time I will be in the mood for your ignorance.” For a moment nobody speaks, but when the elven lady insists, one brave soul raises their hand. “Yes, you.” “Are you an elf?” “Yes, I am. While the ignorant would use the vulgar term dark elf to describe me, my kind are more properly known as the Svelk. In fact WE are the purest of the elven race. All others you may have the misfortune of meeting are merely diluted members of our bloodline. They are truly pitiful creatures really only fit for extermination. Remember this.” “Yes, you.” “What is your name?” “My name is unimportant, but you and the rest will always address me as Mistress. Failure to do so will earn my wrath, and more importantly the wrath of the Emperor. Remember this.” “Yes, you.” “What will you teach us?” A second passes after the question, when a small bolt of light from the Svelk’s finger tips and hits the child in the chest asking the question. He falls backwards out of his chair and on to the floor. The rest of you jump in your own chairs and look back at him. He is breathing very erratically. “I will teach you to OBEY my commands when I give them!” Mistress shouts, she then warns the rest of you. “Don’t you dare touch him, let alone help him! (Sigh) And here I thought you lot had been trained better! It occurs to me that I will have to be extra strict in my discipline. As to the question about what I will teach you… I will teach you to be warriors. I will teach you to be wizards if you display the talent. I will teach you to shed yourselves of weakness. I will teach you to serve the Emperor without question and kill without mercy and you will always obey for you will find strength in obedience. You will find joy in order. You will find love in murder. You shall be instruments of terror and genocide if he so wishes it. You will be Eternals…or you will die. Remember this.” After Mistress’ speech, the child she struck down eventually struggles back up and gets back in his seat, clutching his chest and still wheezing. “I trust you have learned your lesson?” “Y…yes…Mistress…” he gasps. “Good, now one more question before we begin…you there. What is your question? Speak up!” Mistress demands while pointing at you, though you have not raised your hand. You don’t wish to disagree with Mistress, so you stumble and try to think up a question. “Uh…er…I was just wondering when will you teach us to fight Mistress?” Mistress raises an eyebrow and gives a smirk as she approaches you. “Fight? And what makes you think that YOU are even ready to learn yet? Do you have even the slightest knowledge of combat tactics?” “No, Mis…” before you can even complete the sentence Mistress knocks you out of your chair with a quick jab with her hand, the pain from your face spreads to your chest when Mistress steps on it with her boot. She digs it into you and presses all her weight on it, while the rest of your class looks on. “Damn right, no you don’t. You weren’t even alert enough to anticipate my attack. You let me get in close and now look at you, you’re completely at my mercy. I am in a position to do whatever I like with you, while you are only in a position to beg or die. So what will it be worm? Are you going to beg for your miserable life, or should I save the Empire’s time and money by killing you now?” > You struggle The pain is great and you want it to be over with as quickly as possible, but you know to beg for mercy would be shameful and you don’t want to die so you desperately try to push her boot off of you. Naturally you are unsuccessful and this response only enrages her further. “Insolent fool! I said beg or die! Those were your choices and you dare defy my orders?” Mistress exclaims and takes her boot off of your chest, only to begin kicking and stomping on you. You try to escape, but she bends down and roughly picks up by the collar. “Don’t you dare try to run while I discipline you! YOU… WILL… O… BEY!” Mistress says while slapping your face at intervals of her verbal abuse. Finally she throws you to back to the floor. “Now get back in your seat and never defy me again! Your life is nothing! ALL of your lives are nothing! Your lives will never be anything more than warm bodies to serve the Emperor! And you will not even be able to live up to that honored status, if you do not learn obedience. Remember this.” At this point you stagger back in your seat, aching all over. It hurts a lot, but despite the beating, you don’t feel fear, instead you feel anger. Anger at Mistress certainly, but more at yourself for being so powerless. Time passes by under the harsh guidance of Mistress. She teaches you all that she promised she would and then some. Your lessons are not only that of a combat nature, but of an academic one as well. You wouldn’t be aware of it, but you and your classmates are probably much better educated than other children your age. As for you, Mistress rides you the hardest for defying her. There are more than several times where she basically pits the rest of the class against you during the combat training sessions. You suffer horrible beatings most of the time, but eventually you adapt and manage to hold your own until Mistress finds yet another way to make the fight unfair. You are obedient and follow the orders of Mistress, but internally you are harboring thoughts of resentment, hatred and defiance towards her. And so what if you are? She isn’t the Emperor. That’s the only person you really have to revere. Your personality doesn’t go unnoticed by your instructor and watchers, they make note of it and decide how you should be handled in the next step of your training. Year 12 You are in a room by yourself sitting in a chair. Everyone else in your class has been separated for reasons unknown to you. All you know right now is Mistress is speaking with a well dressed man. They are speaking about you, but not actually speaking TO you… “So just this one? Are you sure?” the well dressed man asks. “Should be thankful you have even that. The last pathetic batch of humans you had me train didn’t even survive, let alone get this far. However this one is the closest for your purposes. Though by Svelk standards he would be put in the slave pits and the rest of your so called Eternals would be killed for their poor performance.” Mistress mocks. “Hmm, yes and that’s why your own society is doing so well now. No, we will still find uses for the others. Perhaps as military officers, or even members of the Shadow Guard and they will still be of great service to the Emperor. Still, I wish we had more than just one, oh well he will have to do. We will improve the results of the Eternal Program with the next group.” At this point Mistress begins laughing. “Is something amusing?” “Yes, yes it is. Extremely. You humans and your grand schemes to hold on to power, do you really believe that this Eternal program of yours is going to make a difference? Potential external threats are the least of your concerns. Your Empire is rotting from within and your territory is succumbing to chaos every day.” “And I suppose you would be an expert on such things, seeing as your own people experienced this millennia ago and still haven’t even managed to rebuild a cohesive unified government again, while your so called lesser cousins have thrived.” “My people were conquering this world and more, while yours were still bumbling around trying to figure out how to make fire like the pack of monkeys you evolved from! And our rulers were the gods themselves, not petty dictators who think they are!” “Yes and again I ask, what are your people doing now? They’re a race of scattered mercenaries selling their services to the highest bidders with no sense of loyalty to anyone, but to themselves. Speaking of which, you are merely a guest within the Empire. While your services are valuable to us, if you speak ill of the Emperor again you can always be replaced by another money whore of your kind.” Mistress’ eyes narrow and she quickly grabs the man holding a dagger to his throat before speaking. “Fortunately for you, this job is paying very well. For that is the only thing keeping me from slitting your throat. Never speak to me that way again human…now leave so that I may train this so called Eternal.” She says and releases him. The well dress man looks a bit shaken up, but he composes himself. “You will keep me apprised of his progress on a weekly basis, and this incident will not be forgotten!” He says and walks quickly out of the room. At this point Mistress turns to you, and you fully expect to receive a beating, but instead she questions you. “So, what did you think of that little exchange?” “It is not my place to give an opinion on the debates of my superiors. I am merely here to be trained by you so that I may better serve the Emperor.” You say. “Yes, yes, yes, very nice safe and boring answer, but what do you REALLY think…I order you to tell me.” You pause to gather your thoughts and then speak. “I think it is odd that you are not an Empire citizen and hold no loyalty to him, yet you are training me Mistress.” “Ha ha ha, yes well it is an odd situation, but not an uncommon one. You will find that many make compromises in life.” “But Mistress, how can you tell me to believe in something, that you yourself do not believe in?” “It’s easy. I’m just saying what they would have me say. What do I care, I’m profiting greatly from this and at the end of the day I’m the one coming out ahead. But I think you need a better example than me, a more personal one…namely yourself.” You look confused, before Mistress continues. “You hate me. I know you do, do not deny it. You don’t want to put up with me, yet you obey my commands without question. Why?” “Because you are my superior Mistress, and you have been ordered…paid to train me, by the Emperor.” “Ah, so if I was training you, and the Emperor was not involved, you would still obey my commands?” “Perhaps I would Mistress, since I would most likely be killed by you if I didn’t obey, as you are far more skilled than I am. I would obey until there was a way to somehow kill you or even escape. “Interesting…so you would compromise you beliefs.” You didn’t think about it like that, but you quickly think up a retort. “No Mistress, I do not believe it would be a compromise, I would be ensuring my survival so that I may serve the Emperor longer.” “Ha ha, if you say so. But tell me, does the revelation that not everyone praises your Emperor discourage or shake your own loyalty to him?” “No Mistress.” “Why not? You surely know that all of this is propaganda. You’ve never even met your Emperor. He could be an idiotic cripple for all you know.” “It doesn’t matter Mistress, I wouldn’t even be here if not for him. I am being trained to be an Eternal, something he himself ordered. Because of that, I already know I have been given the highest honor and a better chance than most. I owe this training, this loyalty, and this life to him regardless of what others might think.” Mistress just nods at your answer, there is no sneer or smirk in her face this time. She has perhaps a look of semi-respect for you. “Very well, let us begin your training Eternal…” > Year 16 You stand alone before Mistress face to face in the room you’ve been trained in by her for the past four years. You’re training has been grueling to say the least, you’ve been forced to fight various beasts and people using traditional weapons as well as battle magic. You’ve been subjected to harsh environment conditions not to mention the psychological torture that Mistress seems to enjoy. You can’t imagine that your classmates had training this tough. “Today is the big day Eternal. Today is the day you get to kill me with your own bare hands.” Mistress says with her usual wry smile. “Think you can handle that?” “If that’s what my training entails today, I shall certainly do my best, Mistress.” “Your best won’t be good enough I assure you. Better you should just accept your death now or beg for mercy…but I believe we know you won’t do either of those things mainly because you’re too stupid to know your place.” “If you say so Mistress.” Mistress’ smile becomes a disappointed frown. She would prefer you to fear her, but that’s no longer going to happen so she’d at least like you to get angry which does happen from time to time. It isn’t always easy maintaining a detached demeanor given how much abuse you’ve put up with, but if you’ve learned anything, it annoys the hell out of her. “Your attempt at remaining emotionless just continues to prove what a mindless fool you are. Attempting to show bravery when today is the day you know you’re…” And before she can even complete her sentence you throw a punch at her face. She dodges, but doesn’t quite make it and part of your fist hits the side of her cheek, which staggers her backwards. You press your attack with another punch, but are blocked when she throws up her hand creating a force shield. “Too bad, that was the only chance you’re going to get.” She says and knocks you to the ground with sweeping kick to your feet. You barely have to time to roll out of the way before Mistress conjures some sort of magical sword in her hand and tries to impale you with it. You get enough distance to cast firebolts at her, but again she blocks them with her barrier. She counters with some sort of ice cone, which covers you in frost and chills you to the bone before you can counter it with your own barrier. Mistress is relentless with casting spell after spell and you’re getting weaker with each passing moment just trying to keep up your defenses. Mistress’ magic is not only stronger than yours, but she’s also had a lot more experience in maintaining her stamina while using it. If you keep this up, she’ll kill you for sure. “I’ve seen better magic cast by half blind hedge wizards!” Mistress mocks and casts a poison cloud that suddenly envelops you within your own protective barrier. You instantly feel sick and stagger out of the cloud, dropping your barrier in the process. Taking advantage of your distraction she throws her magic sword which probably would’ve decapitated you had you not had your head down and vomiting up a bit of blood at the time. As it stands you merely feel the blade graze the top of your head. You look up just in time for her to conjure a new weapon, which materializes in her hand. You waste no time in conjuring one of your own to deflect the second attack she attempts to bring down on your head. “Quit struggling monkey. You’re no match for me in martial combat either!” She might be right, but just like when you were five, you’re not going to just accept death. With all your might you push her back with your weapon and then drop it only to grab her by the wrist with both hands and break it. Mistress makes a yelp and drops her weapon. She kicks you in the crotch and punches you in the side of the head with her one good hand. You feel pain, but try to ignore it as you trade another couple of punches and kicks with her before pulling her to the floor while crushing all your weight on her left arm which you were still holding by her broken wrist. The pair of you rolls on the floor for a moment and at this point you’re severely bleeding from scratches on your face and head. She must’ve had a hidden blade on her as well because you definitely feel one go into your back and being twisted around. She attempts to bite your throat out, but you headbutt her in the nose and rotate her around with her left arm. You break it to the point where the bone has snapped out from the skin. She stifles her urge to cry out and instead tries to break free, but you’re doing the best you can to prevent her from going anywhere by pressing all your weight on her and using your free hand to reach around to choke her. The pair of you are a mess, but that’s not the weird part, the weird part is you’re starting to get…excited. “(Gasp) I can feel your enthusiasm…pressing into me. Well…(gasp) is it everything you expected Eternal?” Mistress asks, which catches you so off guard you release your grip from her neck. Heavily panting and trying to push herself up off the floor with her good arm. Mistress turns her head enough so she can see your face. Her eyes still display that coldness you’re used to, but there’s something else there. Something…seductive. “I bet right now, you don’t know whether to kill me… or fuck me.” “Wha…what?” you exclaim. “Don’t deny it…you’ve always wanted me in this way. I know how you’ve looked at my body lustfully during our training sessions. I know your violent primal urges. All the hatred you’ve built up over the years for me could only be unleashed in this way. The need to conquer and defile your enemy in every way imaginable. And who am I, but your enemy? Finish it Eternal or am I mistaken and you’re lacking in that simple task as well?” She says and begins to laugh. Her taunts, her laughter, everything about her are enough to put you over the edge. The twisted thing is she’s right. You do feel some sort of…the word isn’t attraction…you don’t know what the correct word for it would be, but you feel it. You release her arm and painfully pull the bloody dagger out of your back to slice the back of her form fitting clothing and rip most of it off of her. While she continues to taunt you, you toss the dagger aside, proceed to pull down your own breeches and thrust into her roughly from behind. From there it gets surreal as she goes from continuing to taunt you and what are presumably sounds of ecstasy. She even demands that you to continue choking her. All of this puts you in such a state of confusion that you have a hard time even finishing. This whole experience is quite unknown to you as you’ve only read about such activities, but certainly never engaged in them. Surely, it isn’t always like this? When you’ve finished you briefly collapse backwards which is all the time Mistress needs to gain her advantage. She grabs the bloody dagger you pulled out your back and stabs you in the leg with it. You think she was aiming higher, but you managed to drag yourself out of the way in time to avoid such a grievous injury. Unfortunately she still manages to cast some sort of force spell and slam you against the wall with it. You can’t move no matter how hard you try. Mistress, naked and bloodied from your battle approaches you with one useless broken arm and her other hand up keeping the spell with the cruel smile on her face you’re used to seeing. “Look at you, you’re already spent.” she remarks getting closer to you as you feel her spell continuing to crush you into the wall. “All right. That will do. I don’t know what the point of all this was, but I’m putting an end to it right now.” Mr. Mol suddenly says. You didn’t even see him enter the room, though you were sort of pre-occupied. “Mmm, interesting that you waited until after the floor show before putting an end to it Jacob. Did our actions excite you as well? Maybe you could’ve joined in or perhaps you just like to watch. Yes, I imagine watching is something a eunuch like yourself is only capable of.” Mistress releases her spell as Mr. Mol comes closer to the pair of you. You slump to the floor exhausted. “The Emperor says he’s ready now and there is no more need to test him.” Mr. Mol says. “Maybe not for your precious Emperor, but I needed to test him for myself.” Mistress replies. “For what purpose?” “Just to see if he was up to the challenge, but he was severely lacking in every way just as I suspected. Take your creation Jacob, I am done with him.” Still in discussion with Mr. Mol, Mistress isn’t paying attention to you at all. You are beneath her notice now and you aren’t sure if that makes you madder than the fact that she just defeated you in battle when you thought for sure you had her beat. You stare at the dagger in your leg and think how easy it would be to use it on that bitch while she isn’t paying attention. > You stab Mistress with the dagger Mistress has been playing sadistic sick games with you for years and now she’s just “done” with you? There is no way you’re going to let her continue to walk this world. You pull the dagger out of your leg and as quietly as you can you stand up. Unfortunately Mr. Mol spoils your surprise attack by noticing you and speaking. “You. Report to the medical…hey what are you doing?” he says realizing that you’re now rushing as fast as you can with dagger in hand. Mistress turns around just in time to stop you plunging the dagger into her. She casts some sort of lightning bolt into your chest with her hand good hand, which throws you back into the wall. Your whole body goes into a convulsion from the shock. “Insolent worm! You dare to continue with your foolish attempt to kill your betters? Since you obviously failed to learn this lesson, I’m going to have to teach it to you again!” Mistress shouts before unleashing another lighting blast and this time she hits you with a continual charge. Your body begins to sizzle from the inside out and the last thing you hear is Mr. Mol screaming at her to stop as the Emperor wants you alive. “The Emperor’s just going to have to make a new Eternal then, because this one’s done.” She replies and kicks your blackened burned body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 16 You stand alone before Mistress face to face in the room you’ve been trained in by her for the past four years. You’re training has been grueling to say the least, you’ve been forced to fight various beasts and people using traditional weapons as well as battle magic. You’ve been subjected to harsh environment conditions not to mention the psychological torture that Mistress seems to enjoy. You can’t imagine that your classmates had training this tough. “Today is the big day Eternal. Today is the day you get to kill me with your own bare hands.” Mistress says with her usual wry smile. “Think you can handle that?” “If that’s what my training entails today, I shall certainly do my best, Mistress.” “Your best won’t be good enough I assure you. Better you should just accept your death now or beg for mercy…but I believe we know you won’t do either of those things mainly because you’re too stupid to know your place.” “If you say so Mistress.” Mistress’ smile becomes a disappointed frown. She would prefer you to fear her, but that’s no longer going to happen so she’d at least like you to get angry which does happen from time to time. It isn’t always easy maintaining a detached demeanor given how much abuse you’ve put up with, but if you’ve learned anything, it annoys the hell out of her. “Your attempt at remaining emotionless just continues to prove what a mindless fool you are. Attempting to show bravery when today is the day you know you’re…” And before she can even complete her sentence you throw a punch at her face. She dodges, but doesn’t quite make it and part of your fist hits the side of her cheek, which staggers her backwards. You press your attack with another punch, but are blocked when she throws up her hand creating a force shield. “Too bad, that was the only chance you’re going to get.” She says and knocks you to the ground with sweeping kick to your feet. You barely have to time to roll out of the way before Mistress conjures some sort of magical sword in her hand and tries to impale you with it. You get enough distance to cast firebolts at her, but again she blocks them with her barrier. She counters with some sort of ice cone, which covers you in frost and chills you to the bone before you can counter it with your own barrier. Mistress is relentless with casting spell after spell and you’re getting weaker with each passing moment just trying to keep up your defenses. Mistress’ magic is not only stronger than yours, but she’s also had a lot more experience in maintaining her stamina while using it. If you keep this up, she’ll kill you for sure. “I’ve seen better magic cast by half blind hedge wizards!” Mistress mocks and casts a poison cloud that suddenly envelops you within your own protective barrier. You instantly feel sick and stagger out of the cloud, dropping your barrier in the process. Taking advantage of your distraction she throws her magic sword which probably would’ve decapitated you had you not had your head down and vomiting up a bit of blood at the time. As it stands you merely feel the blade graze the top of your head. You look up just in time for her to conjure a new weapon, which materializes in her hand. You waste no time in conjuring one of your own to deflect the second attack she attempts to bring down on your head. “Quit struggling monkey. You’re no match for me in martial combat either!” She might be right, but just like when you were five, you’re not going to just accept death. With all your might you push her back with your weapon and then drop it only to grab her by the wrist with both hands and break it. Mistress makes a yelp and drops her weapon. She kicks you in the crotch and punches you in the side of the head with her one good hand. You feel pain, but try to ignore it as you trade another couple of punches and kicks with her before pulling her to the floor while crushing all your weight on her left arm which you were still holding by her broken wrist. The pair of you rolls on the floor for a moment and at this point you’re severely bleeding from scratches on your face and head. She must’ve had a hidden blade on her as well because you definitely feel one go into your back and being twisted around. She attempts to bite your throat out, but you headbutt her in the nose and rotate her around with her left arm. You break it to the point where the bone has snapped out from the skin. She stifles her urge to cry out and instead tries to break free, but you’re doing the best you can to prevent her from going anywhere by pressing all your weight on her and using your free hand to reach around to choke her. The pair of you are a mess, but that’s not the weird part, the weird part is you’re starting to get…excited. “(Gasp) I can feel your enthusiasm…pressing into me. Well…(gasp) is it everything you expected Eternal?” Mistress asks, which catches you so off guard you release your grip from her neck. Heavily panting and trying to push herself up off the floor with her good arm. Mistress turns her head enough so she can see your face. Her eyes still display that coldness you’re used to, but there’s something else there. Something…seductive. “I bet right now, you don’t know whether to kill me… or fuck me.” “Wha…what?” you exclaim. “Don’t deny it…you’ve always wanted me in this way. I know how you’ve looked at my body lustfully during our training sessions. I know your violent primal urges. All the hatred you’ve built up over the years for me could only be unleashed in this way. The need to conquer and defile your enemy in every way imaginable. And who am I, but your enemy? Finish it Eternal or am I mistaken and you’re lacking in that simple task as well?” She says and begins to laugh. Her taunts, her laughter, everything about her are enough to put you over the edge. The twisted thing is she’s right. You do feel some sort of…the word isn’t attraction…you don’t know what the correct word for it would be, but you feel it. You release her arm and painfully pull the bloody dagger out of your back to slice the back of her form fitting clothing and rip most of it off of her. While she continues to taunt you, you toss the dagger aside, proceed to pull down your own breeches and thrust into her roughly from behind. From there it gets surreal as she goes from continuing to taunt you and what are presumably sounds of ecstasy. She even demands that you to continue choking her. All of this puts you in such a state of confusion that you have a hard time even finishing. This whole experience is quite unknown to you as you’ve only read about such activities, but certainly never engaged in them. Surely, it isn’t always like this? When you’ve finished you briefly collapse backwards which is all the time Mistress needs to gain her advantage. She grabs the bloody dagger you pulled out your back and stabs you in the leg with it. You think she was aiming higher, but you managed to drag yourself out of the way in time to avoid such a grievous injury. Unfortunately she still manages to cast some sort of force spell and slam you against the wall with it. You can’t move no matter how hard you try. Mistress, naked and bloodied from your battle approaches you with one useless broken arm and her other hand up keeping the spell with the cruel smile on her face you’re used to seeing. “Look at you, you’re already spent.” she remarks getting closer to you as you feel her spell continuing to crush you into the wall. “All right. That will do. I don’t know what the point of all this was, but I’m putting an end to it right now.” Mr. Mol suddenly says. You didn’t even see him enter the room, though you were sort of pre-occupied. “Mmm, interesting that you waited until after the floor show before putting an end to it Jacob. Did our actions excite you as well? Maybe you could’ve joined in or perhaps you just like to watch. Yes, I imagine watching is something a eunuch like yourself is only capable of.” Mistress releases her spell as Mr. Mol comes closer to the pair of you. You slump to the floor exhausted. “The Emperor says he’s ready now and there is no more need to test him.” Mr. Mol says. “Maybe not for your precious Emperor, but I needed to test him for myself.” Mistress replies. “For what purpose?” “Just to see if he was up to the challenge, but he was severely lacking in every way just as I suspected. Take your creation Jacob, I am done with him.” Still in discussion with Mr. Mol, Mistress isn’t paying attention to you at all. You are beneath her notice now and you aren’t sure if that makes you madder than the fact that she just defeated you in battle when you thought for sure you had her beat. You stare at the dagger in your leg and think how easy it would be to use it on that bitch while she isn’t paying attention. > You resist the urge As much as you would like to, you know it would be folly. You’re in no condition to attack again and you’ve already underestimated her enough today. Besides, she’s probably expecting you to attack her, perhaps even hoping you will just so she has the excuse to kill you. In the meantime, Mr. Mol has stopped speaking with her and points over at you. “You. Report to the medical ward and get yourself healed up as quickly as you can. You’ve got an important meeting soon and the appropriate clothing for it will be provided for while you’re there. And for the Emperor’s sake, put your damn pants back on before you leave this room.” “Uh, yes sir.” You say sheepishly. Mr. Mol gives a disapproving look and shakes his head before walking out the door. You pull the knife out of your leg and stagger up to retrieve your pants. While putting them back on, you see Mistress near the door casting some sort of spell over her broken arm. She appears to be healing it all on her own and within the moment it takes you to get over to the exit, she has healed it completely. Once again she turns her attention back to you. “Too bad you can’t heal yourself so easily, but I couldn’t teach you all of my tricks now could I? Mind if I have my dagger back? No wait, why don’t you keep it as a reminder of our quality time together…and your complete and utter defeat.” Mistress says with a big grin. She sees your hand tightening around the handle of the dagger. “Do it. I know you wanted to earlier when my back was turned to you.” She grabs your hand with the knife and presses it in her stomach and then moves it upward between her breasts. She presses deep enough that the point is cutting her skin a bit. “Thrust that blade deep into me. This is your best chance Eternal.” You want to, you REALLY want to…but this is just another head game she’s playing. There’s some sort of trick, you know it. “No, I am to report to the medical ward immediately.” You say trying not to look into her eyes or focus on her naked body. “Ah yes, duty calls. Very well. Another day perhaps.” She says and then lets go of your hand only to rub up against the side of you and press her lips near your ear. “You were right not to do it. I would’ve killed you. And this…my dear Eternal, is why you will never beat mommy. Remember this.” She says and licks the side of your face followed by a sensual kiss to your lips as her hand rubs your chest. Once again your hormones impede your better judgment and the temporary distraction is just another tactic for her to hurt you in some way. She suddenly bites your lip hard enough to draw blood and then spits the blood back in your face laughing the whole time. It is at this moment that even within your short amount of years on this world, you can’t ever imagine encountering a more cruel and twisted creature. If there are other such people, beings, or whatever, Mistress has managed to completely desensitize you to the point that you aren’t going to be surprised by them. But then maybe that was one of the things she was trying to teach you. With Mistress’ laughter still ringing in your ears, you exit the room holding your bleeding lip and head to the medical ward. While you’re waiting you examine your last “gift” from Mistress. It is a very fine weapon and probably svelk made given that its blade is made of an uncommon material. You want to say its mithril, but you can’t exactly be sure since studying various types of metal wasn’t really in your schedule. It certainly isn’t common steel that’s for sure. As for the hilt you can’t even guess, except that it’s some sort of dark metal, sturdy and has a simple design. You eventually put it away when the medical mages are ready to help you. You’re healed relatively quickly by the medical mages. Apparently you are not to waste time lying around in a bed, as this meeting of yours is very important. When you put on the new clothes that have been provided, they are of a higher quality cloth and definitely fancier than what you’re used to. You don’t have wait long before Mr. Mol arrives. “There you are, hmmm well you look presentable enough I suppose. I trust you’re all healed up and feeling better?” Mr. Mol says looking you up and down. “Yes, much better sir.” “Good, because you’re going to meet the Emperor himself. This is a great honor for you Eternal, I hope you realize this.” This revelation that you’re going to meet the Emperor in person is more than enough to put you in better spirits. “Of course sir. I know that the Emperor is all-powerful and all seeing and I should be grateful for my existence to him. And I am.” “Well, don’t tell me, tell him when you meet him. Let us be on our way.” You follow Mr. Mol outside, something you rarely do. You’re usually cooped up inside the training facility all the time. A carriage waits for you and you enter it with Mr. Mol. Along the way to the capital Mr. Mol tells you how you should act and various other things to expect. The one thing he doesn’t tell you is what the Emperor looks like, but you suppose you’ll find out soon enough. When you reach the capital Qale, it’s just as big as you’ve heard. Though you sort of thought that everyone would be dressed similar to you and the place would be practically paved in gold. Not that you’re disappointed, but it’s just much…different than you expected. The palace on the other hand is as impressive as you thought it would be. The inside and out. Royal guards are everywhere and you see more than a few people in the fancy clothes similar to your own and Mol’s. You expect to enter a grand throne room, but Mr. Mol tells you that the Emperor hasn’t used the throne room in all the time he has known him. In fact, from what he’s heard, the Emperor hasn’t used it in centuries since he rarely meets with anyone directly anymore except with a few trusted associates. With this sort of information, you truly realize what a really rare opportunity this is and how proud you are that you’re getting to experience it. After going down a long stairway and through several corridors, you eventually come big empty room with a giant sturdy silver door with two equally large black statues on either side, which are made of some sort of crystal. They appear to be warrior figures of some sort, but when you look at the face, they have none; or rather their face is that of a skull. Each one carries a battle-axe in their hands, which arc over the top of the door. Mr. Mol approaches the door and whispers something and in a few moments, the door creeks open just enough for the pair of you to enter. The room opens up and all you see are shelves and row after row of books. You’d almost think you’d stepped into a library of some sort. After the rows of books the room opens up to a more spacious area, which consists of luxurious furnishings from the carpet to the tapestries on the walls. And there in a fancy leather chair sits an old man in a robe reading a book. You draw his attention when you and Mol approach and stands up. Is this the Emperor? If it is, your perceptions have been challenged again. He doesn’t look anything like the figure you imagined. “Ah, Jacob. Good of you to be on time as usual. And this…this must be the one I’ve heard so much about! So am I everything you expected me to be? Well? Speak up son!” “Uh…yes my Emperor?” “You’re a bad liar son. I thought your previous teacher would’ve taught you better in that regard. Oh well, you’re still young and I can probably teach you better than anyone.” “Teach me my Emperor?” “Of course teach you, you’ll be learning everything you need to know from me from now on.” “I…I’m honored my Emperor!” “And you can stop with that my emperor nonsense every time you address me. I’m not Mistress, or whatever the hell that svelk bitch is calling herself these days. I don’t demand some sort of power trip formality.” “Of course my…of course.” “Ha ha! They told me you learned quick! Now let’s get to…eh? Jacob you still here? Don’t you have something important to do?” “Yes, but I needed your input sir, it’s about the shadows, something needs to be done with them.” “Don’t you have those other two eternals to use as spies? Wasn’t that your idea?” “Yes, but…” “Well don’t bother me with it again until you find out more. Now leave us.” The Emperor says and waves Jacob away. Jacob looks like he wants to say more, but he stops and instead just nods and makes his exit, leaving you alone with the Emperor who turns his attention back to you. “So, back to you son. Where do you see yourself in say…oh five years?” “Well, I suppose on the battlefield destroying your enemies and serving you of course.” “Of course you would, if you were some grunt destined for sword fodder. No you’re destined for much greater things. That, I promise you. But we can talk about that all in good time for right now I’ll bet you have some questions of your own. Go ahead, ask me anything and I assure you there is no question that will be too personal. If you ask something I feel you do not need to know then I shall not tell you. Simple enough right?” “Yes, sounds reasonable.” “Good, so why don’t you start?” The first problem is that you don’t even know WHERE to start. You eventually do ask some things you’re curious about and the Emperor is very forth coming with information. You do not want to take advantage his kindness though so you stop after you feel most of your curiosity has been sated. Besides, there will be opportunity to learn more later. And so the Emperor begins his process of mentoring you… > Year 19 The day of reckoning is coming soon for all traitors; particularly the shadows and you’re just itching to play your part. It was you after all that influenced the Emperor on such an important decision. You just wonder what that role will be since the Emperor is currently explaining part of the plan to you and you’re still not entirely sure of how this is going to play out. “But isn’t the military already going to wipe out the shadows?” you ask. “I told you son, I had a contingency plan for the shadows a long time ago. Our military isn’t even going to be involved for the most part. Maybe a few soldiers to mop up a few escapees, but their subterranean fort called Gloom is also serving as their handy underground tomb…heh that rhymed. Anyway what I’m saying is I have an old alliance with the derro and the fort the shadows are currently using as their headquarters was originally created by the derro who abandoned it because there wasn’t any worthwhile mining prospects in the area any longer. The derro still know every secret passage and inch of that place and can launch a surprise attack at anytime. And before you even ask, yes they’ll be MORE than enough to finish off the shadows. Personally I wish I could use them against the Felkans, but that’s not meant to be since they don’t do favors like this on a regular basis.” “Can we be sure to get all of the shadows though? Won’t a lot of them be on topside?” “Well we’re trying to coordinate the attack so there won’t be a lot of shadows on the surface at the time. However we do keep track of their patrol routes and schedules, we even try to keep track of their unofficial patrol routes that they seem to prefer. Basically the derro will get most of them underground, the more tedious thing isn’t getting rid of the shadows, it’ll be wiping out any of non-shadow sympathizers they’ve recruited to their cause. I might use specialized teams to take care of that…in fact I think I’ll put you in that group. It’ll give you an opportunity to put those combat skills of yours to good use! And it’ll also give you a good opportunity to be in demonstrating your ability to lead since I’m also putting you in charge of it.” You don’t know what to say. Not that you’re displeased with such an opportunity, its just you really weren’t expecting it. “I won’t fail you Emperor.” You remark. “Of course you won’t since it’s not an option, but as I said I have complete faith in you. Now I’m going to tell you right now all of them have got more battlefield experience and in some cases several decades, but don’t let that intimidate you. YOU are in charge. Never forget that.” The Emperor goes on to explain that while you’ll be working with a specific group, you naturally won’t be working without the full support of the Empire. He states that there will be other groups like yours scouring the countryside for shadows and any other potential rebel types. “Most of those scum are probably going to be hiding out in that backwards swamp province of Delerg, so that’s where you’ll be heading. It’ll probably be a good idea to do a purge anyway, so you’ve got full permission to use whatever means to stomp out anyone who even remotely is showing signs of rebellious behavior. The derro are still getting prepared, so you’ll have a little time to get to know your team before we stop this misguided revolution before it starts. You’ll head to Delerg in a couple days and await further orders there.” Your trip to Delerg is an uneventful carriage ride, though it does give you time to see a little more of the Empire countryside. Along the way you read up a little more about the Delerg area and how it used to be the original home of the shadows. It was there where the Emperor first made his alliance with them. You also refresh yourself on the shadows themselves and how they typically go about fighting. Their favored tactic is to remain cloaked invisibly and then launch a sneak attack followed by hasting themselves to finish off anyone else. When you reach Delerg you stop in a rundown town appropriately called Sinkhole. From there you are told the rest of your team is meeting you there. No sooner have you gotten off the carriage when you’re approached by a large scarred orc in battle armor. “You the Emperor’s boy?” he asks in a gruff tone, though much more coherent than you were lead to expect from his kind. “I am in his service and was sent here, if that’s what you mean. Who are you?” “All business, I guess you’re him. I’m Captain Gruz at your command I suppose since I’ve been informed that you’re in charge of this thing. The most of your command is in the local barracks. The svelk mercs have been busy scouting though, better that they stay out our way until its time anyway.” “Wait, svelk mercs?” “Yeah, they’re trying to find any hidden safe houses and such that the shadows might have scattered about in the deeper reaches of the swamp. Figured you knew seeing as you’re buddies with the Emperor and all.” “I’m not his buddy, I’m his dedicated agent who is honored to serve him to the best of my ability!” you say starting to get annoyed by the orc’s choice of words. “Okay, I meant no disrespect…I will say though you need to lighten up a bit lad. Even the other Eternals I trained weren’t quite as serious as you seem to be.” While this is news to you that he was a trainer to some of your other classmates, you don’t see as that having any bearing on how he should tell you how to behave. “Well YOU didn’t train me, because I surpassed my classmates! I survived ordeals that would’ve most likely killed them! So do not presume to tell me how I should act!” Captain Gruz’s stoic expression cracks a bit, you at first think his face is going to turn into an expression of anger, but instead he smirks a bit. “Mistress trained you didn’t she?” he asks. “Yes, and what of it?” you snap. “Nothing, just explains some things. Come then, I’m sure you’ll want to talk to the troops and enlighten them how you’re going to be running things. Now I know this is your first command, but don’t worry, I’ll be here to give advice and make sure the rest of the troops take you seriously.” “If I want your advice, I’ll ask for it captain. And the troops should be taking me seriously regardless of your presence. I am here by the orders of the Emperor himself! That should be more than enough motivation for them to obey my commands!” “…I suppose so sir.” Gruz answers though you get the impression he’d like to say more. When you and Gruz enter the barracks, you’re welcomed to a surprising sight. It’s filled with orcs! First svelk mercenaries and now orc troops! You didn’t know you were going to be leading two distinctly different races! When Gruz notices your expression, his own is one of amusement. The other orcs stop their loud discussions and begin to study you. They appear unimpressed. “Ey cappin’ ooo dis humie in da fancy leather armor? You get ‘im from the local ‘orehouse fer me? Har har har har!” one orc says which is followed by loud laughter from the rest. “Alright everyone calm down this is…” Gruz tries to interject, but you stop him. “I can speak for myself!” you say realizing that you must take an aggressive stance. It is clear that the Emperor put you in this situation to force you to deal with surprises and how well you can handle commanding unruly troops. “All you need to know about me is that I am your superior for the duration of this operation and you will cease behaving like the near mindless beasts you are and start earning your keep for the Empire by following my orders!” This works on a few of the orcs, but the outspoken one has decided to keep pressing the issue of challenging your authority. “Beast iz it? I’ll have you know ima fookin’ lady!” the orc says standing up. To be quite honest you thought the orc was male, but between the battle armor and ugliness of all of them they all look alike to you. “I don’t care what gender you are, you WILL follow my orders or…” “Or whut? Whachu gonna do?” the female orc says getting closer and staring down at you ready for a fight. You look over at Gruz who just gives you a look that expresses “Hey, you said you didn’t need my help.” and you’re right you don’t need his help. You know how to handle this. You scan another orc who is egging on the loud female. The orc looks fairly formidable and is on the larger side (though they’re all bigger than you). “HEY YOU!” you shout out to the orc. “Huh? Whut?” “You male?” “Yeah.” “Good.” You say and immediately attack him after pushing past the female orc. While this battle could be over within seconds if you used magic, you can’t do that here. The orcs need to respect your natural battle skills if they’re going to properly respect you. Of course you need to beat said orc first and one you’ve decided to make an example of isn’t about to just let that happen and readies his morning star. > You go for his eyes and face You attempt to slam the pommel of your sword into the orc’s face, but he anticipates that move and blocks it with ease. Using his strength he manages to push you away so hard that you end up tripping backwards over a small stool on the floor. Now that he has a bit of distance he swings his morning star at you and you just barely manage to get out of the way before it crushes the stool you just tripped over. You grab the chain of the morning star in an attempt to take it away from him, but he jerks back so hard that you end up being pulled with it and land right in front of his feet. Then you get a hefty steel boot to the face, specifically the nose…which unfortunately due to the angle of the kick, the bone inside goes inside you brain. You convulse on the floor, gurgling and bleeding from the nose and mouth for a few seconds before dying. Captain Gruz is naturally furious at his subordinate who insists that he didn’t mean to kill you and can’t help that humans are so weak and squishy. Ever the wily one, Gruz tells some of the other orcs to get rid of your body and ultimately blames your disappearance on the svelk scouts. The svelk being who they are, are not believed when they protest their innocence and those that don’t immediately flee are rounded up and executed by the Empire. The Emperor laments your death for a few days, but soon comes to the conclusion that if you were dispatched so easily then you must not have been worthy anyway.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 19 The day of reckoning is coming soon for all traitors; particularly the shadows and you’re just itching to play your part. It was you after all that influenced the Emperor on such an important decision. You just wonder what that role will be since the Emperor is currently explaining part of the plan to you and you’re still not entirely sure of how this is going to play out. “But isn’t the military already going to wipe out the shadows?” you ask. “I told you son, I had a contingency plan for the shadows a long time ago. Our military isn’t even going to be involved for the most part. Maybe a few soldiers to mop up a few escapees, but their subterranean fort called Gloom is also serving as their handy underground tomb…heh that rhymed. Anyway what I’m saying is I have an old alliance with the derro and the fort the shadows are currently using as their headquarters was originally created by the derro who abandoned it because there wasn’t any worthwhile mining prospects in the area any longer. The derro still know every secret passage and inch of that place and can launch a surprise attack at anytime. And before you even ask, yes they’ll be MORE than enough to finish off the shadows. Personally I wish I could use them against the Felkans, but that’s not meant to be since they don’t do favors like this on a regular basis.” “Can we be sure to get all of the shadows though? Won’t a lot of them be on topside?” “Well we’re trying to coordinate the attack so there won’t be a lot of shadows on the surface at the time. However we do keep track of their patrol routes and schedules, we even try to keep track of their unofficial patrol routes that they seem to prefer. Basically the derro will get most of them underground, the more tedious thing isn’t getting rid of the shadows, it’ll be wiping out any of non-shadow sympathizers they’ve recruited to their cause. I might use specialized teams to take care of that…in fact I think I’ll put you in that group. It’ll give you an opportunity to put those combat skills of yours to good use! And it’ll also give you a good opportunity to be in demonstrating your ability to lead since I’m also putting you in charge of it.” You don’t know what to say. Not that you’re displeased with such an opportunity, its just you really weren’t expecting it. “I won’t fail you Emperor.” You remark. “Of course you won’t since it’s not an option, but as I said I have complete faith in you. Now I’m going to tell you right now all of them have got more battlefield experience and in some cases several decades, but don’t let that intimidate you. YOU are in charge. Never forget that.” The Emperor goes on to explain that while you’ll be working with a specific group, you naturally won’t be working without the full support of the Empire. He states that there will be other groups like yours scouring the countryside for shadows and any other potential rebel types. “Most of those scum are probably going to be hiding out in that backwards swamp province of Delerg, so that’s where you’ll be heading. It’ll probably be a good idea to do a purge anyway, so you’ve got full permission to use whatever means to stomp out anyone who even remotely is showing signs of rebellious behavior. The derro are still getting prepared, so you’ll have a little time to get to know your team before we stop this misguided revolution before it starts. You’ll head to Delerg in a couple days and await further orders there.” Your trip to Delerg is an uneventful carriage ride, though it does give you time to see a little more of the Empire countryside. Along the way you read up a little more about the Delerg area and how it used to be the original home of the shadows. It was there where the Emperor first made his alliance with them. You also refresh yourself on the shadows themselves and how they typically go about fighting. Their favored tactic is to remain cloaked invisibly and then launch a sneak attack followed by hasting themselves to finish off anyone else. When you reach Delerg you stop in a rundown town appropriately called Sinkhole. From there you are told the rest of your team is meeting you there. No sooner have you gotten off the carriage when you’re approached by a large scarred orc in battle armor. “You the Emperor’s boy?” he asks in a gruff tone, though much more coherent than you were lead to expect from his kind. “I am in his service and was sent here, if that’s what you mean. Who are you?” “All business, I guess you’re him. I’m Captain Gruz at your command I suppose since I’ve been informed that you’re in charge of this thing. The most of your command is in the local barracks. The svelk mercs have been busy scouting though, better that they stay out our way until its time anyway.” “Wait, svelk mercs?” “Yeah, they’re trying to find any hidden safe houses and such that the shadows might have scattered about in the deeper reaches of the swamp. Figured you knew seeing as you’re buddies with the Emperor and all.” “I’m not his buddy, I’m his dedicated agent who is honored to serve him to the best of my ability!” you say starting to get annoyed by the orc’s choice of words. “Okay, I meant no disrespect…I will say though you need to lighten up a bit lad. Even the other Eternals I trained weren’t quite as serious as you seem to be.” While this is news to you that he was a trainer to some of your other classmates, you don’t see as that having any bearing on how he should tell you how to behave. “Well YOU didn’t train me, because I surpassed my classmates! I survived ordeals that would’ve most likely killed them! So do not presume to tell me how I should act!” Captain Gruz’s stoic expression cracks a bit, you at first think his face is going to turn into an expression of anger, but instead he smirks a bit. “Mistress trained you didn’t she?” he asks. “Yes, and what of it?” you snap. “Nothing, just explains some things. Come then, I’m sure you’ll want to talk to the troops and enlighten them how you’re going to be running things. Now I know this is your first command, but don’t worry, I’ll be here to give advice and make sure the rest of the troops take you seriously.” “If I want your advice, I’ll ask for it captain. And the troops should be taking me seriously regardless of your presence. I am here by the orders of the Emperor himself! That should be more than enough motivation for them to obey my commands!” “…I suppose so sir.” Gruz answers though you get the impression he’d like to say more. When you and Gruz enter the barracks, you’re welcomed to a surprising sight. It’s filled with orcs! First svelk mercenaries and now orc troops! You didn’t know you were going to be leading two distinctly different races! When Gruz notices your expression, his own is one of amusement. The other orcs stop their loud discussions and begin to study you. They appear unimpressed. “Ey cappin’ ooo dis humie in da fancy leather armor? You get ‘im from the local ‘orehouse fer me? Har har har har!” one orc says which is followed by loud laughter from the rest. “Alright everyone calm down this is…” Gruz tries to interject, but you stop him. “I can speak for myself!” you say realizing that you must take an aggressive stance. It is clear that the Emperor put you in this situation to force you to deal with surprises and how well you can handle commanding unruly troops. “All you need to know about me is that I am your superior for the duration of this operation and you will cease behaving like the near mindless beasts you are and start earning your keep for the Empire by following my orders!” This works on a few of the orcs, but the outspoken one has decided to keep pressing the issue of challenging your authority. “Beast iz it? I’ll have you know ima fookin’ lady!” the orc says standing up. To be quite honest you thought the orc was male, but between the battle armor and ugliness of all of them they all look alike to you. “I don’t care what gender you are, you WILL follow my orders or…” “Or whut? Whachu gonna do?” the female orc says getting closer and staring down at you ready for a fight. You look over at Gruz who just gives you a look that expresses “Hey, you said you didn’t need my help.” and you’re right you don’t need his help. You know how to handle this. You scan another orc who is egging on the loud female. The orc looks fairly formidable and is on the larger side (though they’re all bigger than you). “HEY YOU!” you shout out to the orc. “Huh? Whut?” “You male?” “Yeah.” “Good.” You say and immediately attack him after pushing past the female orc. While this battle could be over within seconds if you used magic, you can’t do that here. The orcs need to respect your natural battle skills if they’re going to properly respect you. Of course you need to beat said orc first and one you’ve decided to make an example of isn’t about to just let that happen and readies his morning star. > You go for his legs The orc assumes you’re going to go for his head, but unless you’re trying to kill them, merely smashing an orc in the face with anything less than an iron maul is likely to just piss them off, so while he guards up, you strike at his legs. Naturally he’s still armored down there, but he’s taken a bit off guard when you duck down start chopping your sword at his shin protectors. Since your own face is now closer to his feet the orc attempts to kick you in the face and that’s what you were hoping for. You drop your sword and catch his foot so he’s at your complete mercy. The orc is already so off balance that you barely even need to shove him so he crashes to the floor. As he tries to get up, now you smash a heavy-duty wooden chair over his head. It doesn’t break the first time, but when you do it again three more times the legs you were holding loosen enough that the rest of the chair flies from your grasp. While his helmet is protecting him somewhat, the repeated impact of the chair to his head is still enough to keep him dazed. In fact he ends up spitting out a couple of teeth. Despite this, he still seems as if he’s going to continue to oppose you, but you see him briefly look at Gruz who seems to give him a certain look back. The orc then puts up a hand as if to say he yields. You accept his capitulation. Victorious, you’ve made it quite clear you are not to be questioned. The rest of the orcs stop their jeering at you and a few go over to help their companion. Gruz walks over to you and his expression is now one of being impressed. “Well I guess you definitely walk the walk. You recognized that by beating the head in of one of the bigger males that you’d earn more respect than beating the female that was openly mocking you. You also weren’t trying to kill him, which shows that you were just trying to establish dominance rather than punishment. I’m guessing the Emperor must’ve told you about orc culture?” “Not really, I just sort of guessed.” “Ha ha ha ha! Well I suppose we usually aren’t that hard to figure out. Though you might have more problems on your hands now. Looks like you impressed the lady over there.” You look over where Gruz is pointing and it’s the same female orc that was mocking you earlier. Again its difficult for you to tell exactly, but from Gruz’s suggestion and the way the orc is blinking (fluttering?) her eyes you can only make one conclusion. “She’s…she’s not flirting with me is she?” you ask in hesitation. “She was flirting with you the moment you came in the door!” Gruz laughs. Not wishing to think about that any further, you call everyone to attention and explain how things are going to be done in an organized manner and how you don’t want to leave anything to chance when it comes to this mission given that it is of vital importance to the Empire. They seem to understand, though Gruz sometimes reinforces the point to them in a more direct manner. You ask Gruz when the svelk are due to arrive back with their report and he says they should be back within a day or two. Seeing as you haven’t much else to do, you just wait for the svelk and your orders to proceed with your mission for the next couple days. You don’t interact too much with the orcs though you do converse with Gruz about minor things concerning the mission as well as your increasing annoyance that the svelk still haven’t reported in yet. “We’re paying these fools good money to do a job, is it too much for them to act like professionals?” you exclaim. “With the svelk? It’s too much to ask them to do anything. Though it is rather odd they haven’t reported yet. Even they tend to obey the rule of money unless someone else has offered them more.” “Wait, what are you saying? You think the svelk are in league with the shadows and were bribed?” “Probably not. The shadows aren’t known for hording wealth and anything valuable they might own is probably sacred to their god or something. I’d be more inclined to believe they got themselves discovered and perhaps even ambushed. For all we know they’re all dead and we’ve just tipped our hand.” “Well, we’ll continue to wait for the official word, besides the svelk have been the ones doing the scouting correct? We can’t very well attack anything if we don’t have a target.” Gruz nods at your decision and goes back to what he was doing. Another couple days pass and at last the svelk do show up. “Ugh. Tyren, did we really have to come back to this place? The stench of these green beasts is offensive.” One of them says as he enters. “I know, but apparently the person we’re supposed to report our findings to should be here now…hey any of you foul smelling gentlemen seen our fearless leader yet?” this Tyren shouts. You guess he’s the svelk captain. As irritated as the orcs are by the svelk’s words, you’re more irritated by them for everything else. “I’m in charge of this operation, and where the hell have you been, you were supposed to report in days ago!” You exclaim. Tyren looks at you as if he’s unimpressed by you barking orders at him and continues to remain dismissive. “So we’re here now, is it time to attack or something?” he replies. “No, but as I said, you should’ve reported in days ago.” “So what’s the big deal? Maybe you’re not aware of this, but scouting this swamp isn’t exactly the quickest thing to do.” “I don’t want to hear your lame excuses! You could’ve easily sent back a single messenger to give me an update!” “Couldn’t do that, I needed all my men in case we ran into trouble. Dangerous business out there, I’m sure you know.” The svelk has an answer for everything and him giving an arrogant smirk the whole time isn’t helping matters. It reminds you of HER and you begin to get angrier. Captain Gruz starts to notice and even interjects trying to smooth things over. “Tyren I know it’s difficult, but you might want to rein in the whole smug svelk act that your people are so proud of. This man isn’t just your superior, he’s a direct rep from the Emperor himself.” “Maybe he’s YOUR superior orc, but he’s not mine. Nobody fucking tells me how to do my fucking job. And I have a very hard time believing that this young whelp is a representation of anything other than a sign of how desperate the Empire is getting for officers!” Something within you snaps and all you can see is a svelk you want to kill for all the shit Mistress put you through. “Fucking bitch!” you utter and unleash a small ball of flame into the face of Tyren. He screams in agony as the flesh on his face burns. The rest of the svelk are taken by surprise by this move, though they don’t do anything to stop you. You kick Tyren to the floor while he desperately tries to put the flames on his face out. You help him put the flames out by smashing his face in with your fist repeatedly. Unlike the tougher orc bone structure, the bones of a svelk aren’t as resilient and you can hear the crunching sound of his nose, jaw and skull cracking as you continue to do major mayhem on his face. Tyren’s face is a mass of burnt gory meat at this point yet you still aren’t done. That’s when you take your dagger and scoop his eyes out with it. As you carve out the two bloody orbs, the shrieking is enough that the residents of Sinkhole who happen to be walking outside the barracks quickly run home in fear. Your actions while excessive are probably made slightly more disturbing due to the fact that you’re muttering incoherently and making small giggling noises the whole time you’re doing them. It’s enough to establish to everyone that they’re obviously in the presence of someone who isn’t just in charge, but also may well be a madman. One things for sure, after Tyren’s makes his last gurgling pleas while you’re slitting his throat and you’re up to your forearms in his blood, nobody is thinking about pissing you off now. You stand up from your bloody work feeling surprisingly much better. Happy even. “Remember this.” Is all you say to the group of svelk, before you turn to go to your own private quarters. The next day Captain Gruz gives you the scout report from the svelk. You thank him and go over some strategies since you’re feeling in a better mood now. Gruz is all too willing to give his opinions on how certain places should be approached and handled. He really does have some good ideas. Makes you wonder if you weren’t being a little too hard on him when you first met him. “Captain, when the orders come in, I want you to be in charge of a second team. We’ll cover more ground that way and they’ll be less of a chance for potential rebels to escape.” You say. “Are you sure sir, you don’t think we’d be better off keeping a larger force together? I’ve always found that it’s always preferable to have more numbers than you potentially need. But you’re in charge of course.” Just as you’re about to discuss and ponder the pros and cons of each plan, a messenger walks in. It’s the official orders. Looks like the time for planning is over. > You go with your plan While you’re sure Gruz probably means well, you were put in charge of this mission and you’re not going to second guess your own judgment, which has been sound so far in dealing with the situation. “We’ll proceed with my plan and split the team up into two strike forces with you commanding one of them.” You say. “As you say sir.” “Did the svelk report say they saw any actual shadows at any of these places?” “Not at most of the locations as they seem to be just safe houses for normal rebels, but there was one in particular which seems to be more of an actual armed camp that they saw more than a few of shadows hanging around.” “Okay then, I’ll take the svelk and attack that place first and your group can concentrate on the regular rebel locations.” “Are you sure you want to do that sir? I mean being alone with all the svelk?” “I’m well aware of their treacherous nature, but as you just saw I am not intimidated by them. They just saw that as well. Besides, they’re being paid well for this job and I trust that their greed along with my example of their leader is not going to incur any more disobedience or grand standing.” “Probably not sir, but just be careful.” “Noted. Anyway, let’s get going we’ve got traitors to purge and I’m anxious to see it through.” You and Gruz get the troops ready. You give a quick briefing of the plan the pair of you take your respective groups and part ways. After a march through the swamp you reach your first target and it does indeed resemble a small military compound. It’s really just a walled village though. You’d guess that this particular place is so far from normal civilization that this just went unnoticed and the shadows eventually just subverted the entire place or at least started placing sympathizers there. You order the attack and all goes well. The svelk and yourself easily scale the walls though given how pathetic the opposition is though, you almost wonder if you couldn’t have taken this place all by yourself. You still haven’t seen any of the rumored shadows in this place though and that slightly concerns you. Did they already flee, or did they just cloak? “Keep alert! There may be shadows still lurking about!” you shout as you cut down one of the rebels. No sooner have you said that, when you sense something amidst the chaos. A feeling like you’re being targeted… Unfortunately you still don’t know where the attacker is located until its too late. A female shadow decloaks and fires a bolt that sinks into your chest before you can move out of the way. Shadow bolts tend to be dipped in a poison and this one is no different as you begin to feel the affects. Fortunately being an Eternal you’re immune to it killing you, unfortunately it still is enough to start making you feel dizzy. The female shadow is moving faster than anything you’ve ever seen and she’s moving right towards you. You order the svelk in a slurring tone to fire their crossbows, but nobody answers your call. You can’t be sure if it’s due to the fact that in the chaos nobody could hear or understand what you said or if the svelk have conveniently decided to not follow your orders. In any event you’re on your own. You block the shadow’s attack with a force shield and follow up with a stream of fire from your other hand though the shadow easily dodges your attack. You feel two sharp pains in both of your sides and at first you think the shadow has moved so quick that she’s gotten behind you to stab you, but it turns out it’s a second shadow that has snuck up on you. In the end it doesn’t really matter as the result is the same and you collapse face first into the ground. A final blade through your back finishes you off for good.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The orc assumes you’re going to go for his head, but unless you’re trying to kill them, merely smashing an orc in the face with anything less than an iron maul is likely to just piss them off, so while he guards up, you strike at his legs. Naturally he’s still armored down there, but he’s taken a bit off guard when you duck down start chopping your sword at his shin protectors. Since your own face is now closer to his feet the orc attempts to kick you in the face and that’s what you were hoping for. You drop your sword and catch his foot so he’s at your complete mercy. The orc is already so off balance that you barely even need to shove him so he crashes to the floor. As he tries to get up, now you smash a heavy-duty wooden chair over his head. It doesn’t break the first time, but when you do it again three more times the legs you were holding loosen enough that the rest of the chair flies from your grasp. While his helmet is protecting him somewhat, the repeated impact of the chair to his head is still enough to keep him dazed. In fact he ends up spitting out a couple of teeth. Despite this, he still seems as if he’s going to continue to oppose you, but you see him briefly look at Gruz who seems to give him a certain look back. The orc then puts up a hand as if to say he yields. You accept his capitulation. Victorious, you’ve made it quite clear you are not to be questioned. The rest of the orcs stop their jeering at you and a few go over to help their companion. Gruz walks over to you and his expression is now one of being impressed. “Well I guess you definitely walk the walk. You recognized that by beating the head in of one of the bigger males that you’d earn more respect than beating the female that was openly mocking you. You also weren’t trying to kill him, which shows that you were just trying to establish dominance rather than punishment. I’m guessing the Emperor must’ve told you about orc culture?” “Not really, I just sort of guessed.” “Ha ha ha ha! Well I suppose we usually aren’t that hard to figure out. Though you might have more problems on your hands now. Looks like you impressed the lady over there.” You look over where Gruz is pointing and it’s the same female orc that was mocking you earlier. Again its difficult for you to tell exactly, but from Gruz’s suggestion and the way the orc is blinking (fluttering?) her eyes you can only make one conclusion. “She’s…she’s not flirting with me is she?” you ask in hesitation. “She was flirting with you the moment you came in the door!” Gruz laughs. Not wishing to think about that any further, you call everyone to attention and explain how things are going to be done in an organized manner and how you don’t want to leave anything to chance when it comes to this mission given that it is of vital importance to the Empire. They seem to understand, though Gruz sometimes reinforces the point to them in a more direct manner. You ask Gruz when the svelk are due to arrive back with their report and he says they should be back within a day or two. Seeing as you haven’t much else to do, you just wait for the svelk and your orders to proceed with your mission for the next couple days. You don’t interact too much with the orcs though you do converse with Gruz about minor things concerning the mission as well as your increasing annoyance that the svelk still haven’t reported in yet. “We’re paying these fools good money to do a job, is it too much for them to act like professionals?” you exclaim. “With the svelk? It’s too much to ask them to do anything. Though it is rather odd they haven’t reported yet. Even they tend to obey the rule of money unless someone else has offered them more.” “Wait, what are you saying? You think the svelk are in league with the shadows and were bribed?” “Probably not. The shadows aren’t known for hording wealth and anything valuable they might own is probably sacred to their god or something. I’d be more inclined to believe they got themselves discovered and perhaps even ambushed. For all we know they’re all dead and we’ve just tipped our hand.” “Well, we’ll continue to wait for the official word, besides the svelk have been the ones doing the scouting correct? We can’t very well attack anything if we don’t have a target.” Gruz nods at your decision and goes back to what he was doing. Another couple days pass and at last the svelk do show up. “Ugh. Tyren, did we really have to come back to this place? The stench of these green beasts is offensive.” One of them says as he enters. “I know, but apparently the person we’re supposed to report our findings to should be here now…hey any of you foul smelling gentlemen seen our fearless leader yet?” this Tyren shouts. You guess he’s the svelk captain. As irritated as the orcs are by the svelk’s words, you’re more irritated by them for everything else. “I’m in charge of this operation, and where the hell have you been, you were supposed to report in days ago!” You exclaim. Tyren looks at you as if he’s unimpressed by you barking orders at him and continues to remain dismissive. “So we’re here now, is it time to attack or something?” he replies. “No, but as I said, you should’ve reported in days ago.” “So what’s the big deal? Maybe you’re not aware of this, but scouting this swamp isn’t exactly the quickest thing to do.” “I don’t want to hear your lame excuses! You could’ve easily sent back a single messenger to give me an update!” “Couldn’t do that, I needed all my men in case we ran into trouble. Dangerous business out there, I’m sure you know.” The svelk has an answer for everything and him giving an arrogant smirk the whole time isn’t helping matters. It reminds you of HER and you begin to get angrier. Captain Gruz starts to notice and even interjects trying to smooth things over. “Tyren I know it’s difficult, but you might want to rein in the whole smug svelk act that your people are so proud of. This man isn’t just your superior, he’s a direct rep from the Emperor himself.” “Maybe he’s YOUR superior orc, but he’s not mine. Nobody fucking tells me how to do my fucking job. And I have a very hard time believing that this young whelp is a representation of anything other than a sign of how desperate the Empire is getting for officers!” Something within you snaps and all you can see is a svelk you want to kill for all the shit Mistress put you through. “Fucking bitch!” you utter and unleash a small ball of flame into the face of Tyren. He screams in agony as the flesh on his face burns. The rest of the svelk are taken by surprise by this move, though they don’t do anything to stop you. You kick Tyren to the floor while he desperately tries to put the flames on his face out. You help him put the flames out by smashing his face in with your fist repeatedly. Unlike the tougher orc bone structure, the bones of a svelk aren’t as resilient and you can hear the crunching sound of his nose, jaw and skull cracking as you continue to do major mayhem on his face. Tyren’s face is a mass of burnt gory meat at this point yet you still aren’t done. That’s when you take your dagger and scoop his eyes out with it. As you carve out the two bloody orbs, the shrieking is enough that the residents of Sinkhole who happen to be walking outside the barracks quickly run home in fear. Your actions while excessive are probably made slightly more disturbing due to the fact that you’re muttering incoherently and making small giggling noises the whole time you’re doing them. It’s enough to establish to everyone that they’re obviously in the presence of someone who isn’t just in charge, but also may well be a madman. One things for sure, after Tyren’s makes his last gurgling pleas while you’re slitting his throat and you’re up to your forearms in his blood, nobody is thinking about pissing you off now. You stand up from your bloody work feeling surprisingly much better. Happy even. “Remember this.” Is all you say to the group of svelk, before you turn to go to your own private quarters. The next day Captain Gruz gives you the scout report from the svelk. You thank him and go over some strategies since you’re feeling in a better mood now. Gruz is all too willing to give his opinions on how certain places should be approached and handled. He really does have some good ideas. Makes you wonder if you weren’t being a little too hard on him when you first met him. “Captain, when the orders come in, I want you to be in charge of a second team. We’ll cover more ground that way and they’ll be less of a chance for potential rebels to escape.” You say. “Are you sure sir, you don’t think we’d be better off keeping a larger force together? I’ve always found that it’s always preferable to have more numbers than you potentially need. But you’re in charge of course.” Just as you’re about to discuss and ponder the pros and cons of each plan, a messenger walks in. It’s the official orders. Looks like the time for planning is over. > You go with Gruz's plan As good as you believe you are in combat, you have to admit to yourself that you don’t really have too much experience in leading a large group. Perhaps it would be wiser to defer to someone who does have such experience. “Very well, you may be right. I suppose we really shouldn’t worry about anyone escaping since if they do, they’ll eventually be found anyway. Did the svelk report say they saw any actual shadows at any of these places?” “Not at most of the locations as they seem to be just safe houses for normal rebels, but there was one in particular which seems to be more of an actual armed camp that they saw more than a few of shadows hanging around.” “We’re going to hit that place first then. I just hope the svelk were as silent about their scouting as you said they claimed to be. Anyway, let’s get going we’ve got traitors to purge and I’m anxious to see it through.” You and Gruz get the troops ready. The general idea is to first have the svelk to sneak up on the target locations and then after they initiate the attack the orcs come charging in from all sides. It seems simple, but perhaps simple plans work the best due to less chance of things going wrong. At least you hope they do. After a march through the swamp you reach your first target and it does indeed resemble a small military compound. It’s really just a walled village though. You’d guess that this particular place is so far from normal civilization that this just went unnoticed and the shadows eventually just subverted the entire place or at least started placing sympathizers there. You order the attack and all goes well. The svelk and yourself easily scale the walls while Gruz and the orcs bash down the pitiful gates. Given how pathetic the opposition is though, you almost wonder if you couldn’t have taken this place all by yourself. You still haven’t seen any of the rumored shadows in this place though and that slightly concerns you. Did they already flee, or did they just cloak? “Keep alert! There may be shadows still lurking about!” you shout as you cut down one of the rebels. No sooner have you said that, when you sense something amidst the chaos. A feeling like you’re being targeted… “GET DOWN!” Gruz shouts as a female shadow decloaks and fires a bolt at you. You’re just quick enough to duck down and avoid being hit. An orc attempts to strike her down, but she easily fends off the attack and eliminates him instead. She’s moving faster than anything you’ve ever seen. “Crossbows now!” you order and the svelk mercenaries closest to you unleash their own bolts at the shadow. She may be quick, but she can’t avoid all of the bolts from the repeating crossbows. She catches more than few bolts and collapses in a heap. As she attempts to crawl away you go over to her to finish her off and that’s when you get that feeling again only this time you know where its coming from and instinctively pull up your sword to deflect the hit. When the shadow decloaks you’re close enough to see the hatred in his eyes, you’re also close enough to hear him muttering about revenge for Bianca. You’re guessing that was the female shadow that’s now a pincushion. He attempts to pull the same speed trick, but you prevent him from doing so by interrupting his spell with a dagger to his side. “Not such a good day to be a shadow is it traitor?” you ask as you twist the blade around. Shocked by the metal piercing his insides, he reels backwards when you pull out the blade and his death follows when Gruz smashes his axe in the side of the shadow’s head. You go over to finish off the female shadow who is still desperately trying to crawl away. “There will be no escape. The Emperor’s eye sees all and justice will be delivered to all who oppose him!” you exclaim before running your sword through her back. You keep alert for the possibility of more shadows lurking, but either those two were the only ones, or the rest have fled. If they have, no matter, they will be found. The rest of the battle is more of a simple matter. The non-shadow rebels are no match for your superior force and a few try to surrender, pleading for you to at least spare their families. You spare no one as traitors cannot be tolerated. Your ruthless orders to cut down every man, woman and child are not questioned, though the svelk take a bit more pleasure in it. The village is put to the torch and you’re eager to move on to the next target. You want to stomp out ALL of these traitors before they even get the possibility of regrouping. Day after day you wipe out several small encampments and hideouts of the rebels. It’s sickening to you that there is as many as there are. How could any citizen defy the Empire or the Emperor? Don’t they know it is a losing proposition? Don’t they realize and appreciate how much he has done for all of their miserable lives? As for the shadows, their treachery is even more sickening. The Emperor gave them all a grand honor of serving him in a most important way and they’ve been nurturing rebellion in their black hearts for centuries and enticing the weak willed into helping them. Fitting that they call themselves shadows, as they are cowards who obviously rely on tricks and subversion to gain any sort of advantage. Well that stops very soon. “This one was an easy one. They gave up almost immediately.” Captain Gruz says cleaning off his axe after a short skirmish. “Yes, a pity they should only realize until it’s too late the folly of their treason.” You reply. “Yes, I imagine many have felt that way.” Gruz answers. “And all of them are fools for doing so. And fools deserve no mercy. The loyal and dedicated on the other hand are to be rewarded. Captain, we are nearing the end of our mission and I imagine I will soon return to the Emperor to give my report. I want to tell you that I will be speaking highly of you to him and suggesting that you receive some sort of higher position.” Gruz isn’t sure how to respond though he thanks you. “I was just doing my duty sir, but I thank you. However if you’re serious about your wanting to do something for me and it isn’t too bold of me to ask, I do have specific request.” “Speak freely then.” Gruz looks around as if he’s being watched and then moves closer toward you and speaks almost whispering. “I know I’m sort of the Empire’s token intelligent orc and that’s fine. However it’s my people sir. I really do try to keep them in line and for the most part it works, but I’m still just one man and despite common perception, orcs do have minds of their own and think about deeper things than just looting and pillaging sometimes.” “What are you getting at?” “What I’m saying sir, is all I would request is you ask the Emperor if he could give his loyal and dedicated orc soldiers a pay raise. It doesn’t even have to be that large. I mean the extra fighting and danger they are always assigned to do is fun and all, but just a little something extra so they know they’re being appreciated for their hard work would be welcome.” Well that was bold of Gruz, but you did tell him to speak freely. However, you’re suspicious of his request, since it almost sounds a bit like blackmail. > You let it pass You’d call him out on it, but you decide you’ll leave this one to the Emperor to ultimately decide. Besides, you figure you owe him that much for possibly saving your life. “I don’t know if I have that much pull with the Emperor, but I will mention it to him.” “That’s all I ask.” In a few more days your task in Delerg is completed and all known targets have been eliminated. Delerg has also been effectively cowed into submission given what you did there. Stories of the ruthless young Eternal that destroyed entire villages to purge traitors are already being spread. Not exactly true since technically you only destroyed a couple and the rest were just rebel made hideouts, but if it teaches the people to fear the repercussions of treasonous behavior in the future you don’t care. You tell the Emperor as much during your report, he seems pleased with your report and feelings on the matter. “The destruction of the shadows went better than I had hoped. There are probably a few shadows that fled while they were on the surface, but the derro took out all of them that were in Gloom. I think to be on the safe side I’m going to have that old ruined temple of theirs in Delerg destroyed. No need for it to become some sort of symbol or some such nonsense. Speaking of Delerg, you did an excellent job. It must’ve been a shock to find out you weren’t just going to lead svelk, but orcs as well. Hated to surprise you like that, but I figured if you could successfully lead an operation with those two types under duress, you were definitely fit to lead anyone.” “I am glad I met your expectations.” “I never had any doubt…so what are your thoughts on good Captain Gruz and his request? I’m sure you had some on the subject.” “Personally sir, I believe he has overstepped his bounds with this veiled threat, which is regrettable since I was beginning to respect him as a capable leader.” The Emperor nods a bit. “Hm, he must’ve made a bit of an impression on you to acknowledge his skills. So what do you believe should be done? Should he be killed or ignored? Obviously I’ve already made up my mind on the subject, but as always, I’m interested in your thoughts.” In the past you sometimes hesitated to give an answer, but now you know that the Emperor always wants to hear what you really think and you’re more than willing to tell him. “Well…I do believe he is genuine. I do believe he only wants his people to receive a little extra recognition for their duty. Some lesser beings cannot be merely satisfied with just serving greatness and they must be rewarded in a more tangible way. If it is possible, I would grant Gruz’s request. It will keep him and the rest of green skins happy for quite awhile and you’ll have no problems from them in the near future. Having the orcs calm and obedient right now is also important also because we have just eliminated our internal security force as it were. We will need to rely on raw force to maintain order as well as to stomp out the remaining shadows and rebels. After the Empire has been better stabilized, we can always purge Gruz and some of the orcs later if necessary.” The Emperor displays a big grin on his face and puts his hand on your shoulder. “I swear son, if I didn’t know better I’d think you had the ability to read minds. Sometimes its like I’m talking to a mirror that’s several centuries younger than me. Yes, I fully intend on granting his request. Time will tell if he requires purging though he’s getting on in years for an orc and who knows what dangerous battlefields he may be sent to in the future? Anyway Jacob and I are already rebuilding a new internal security force. I might get Marik’s help on this too, though I know he really wants to work on his current project, but there really isn’t any need for it now…anyway you don’t need to worry about any of this, I’m sending you to help with more shadow hunting and rebel clean up in the core province area. Don’t want to let up on them yet and you seem to be good at setting an example. Putting the fear into the populace to discourage any further thoughts of treason and all of that. I’ll be so glad when we’ve got things back to normal again, so I can focus my attention to the Felkan Kingdom again. Still, it doesn’t need to be work all the time now does it? Maybe you should go out and celebrate, you have my full permission to take a week off. Go get yourself one of those high priced elven whores I’m always hearing about, its on me son!” The Emperor laughs. Sometimes you still can’t get over just how relaxed the Emperor can suddenly get about everything. The funny thing is, it makes you feel relaxed too, to a certain extent anyway. Maybe it’s due to this that you sometimes wonder about something he’s always calling you a lot… Son. You don’t know if he’s using it as a term of endearment or it’s his “nickname” for you, or what. The funny thing is you do find him to be a “fatherly” figure. You’ve resisted addressing it before, but now something is urging you to do so. “I have a question and I don’t know how to ask this of you.” “Well speak son, you know you can always tell or ask me anything, doesn’t mean you’ll get it though.” The Emperor says with another chuckle. “Are you my father?” you ask and there is a short pause of silence. The Emperor doesn’t look too surprised that you asked the question though. “Do you want me to be your father?” he asks back which naturally just confuses you even more and you feel a little silly for asking in the first place. “I…I just…I dunno, you’re always calling me son and…just forget it. I allowed my feelings of respect and admiration of you to exceed their boundaries. Forgive me, Emperor.” “You’re too tightly wound sometimes. Don’t worry about it; I wasn’t offended by your question. But my question still stands, do you WANT me to be your father?” “I’d like to think you are, but I imagine I’m just wishing you are.” “If you think I am. Then I am. If that’s what pleases you then what difference does it make?” “None, I suppose.” You answer, but the Emperor can see that it does make a difference to you even if you don’t want it to. “Tell me, have you ever wondered about your parents? I mean you obviously know that they didn’t raise you.” “No. I’ve never really thought of them at all.” You answer. Its true too, you have genuinely never wondered about who your parents were. You were far too busy with torturous training to ever really ponder such things. It’s only been recently that this subject has recently popped into your head. “I didn’t think so. They were never in your life and you were an orphan in the care of the Empire. And who runs the Empire?” You smile and see what the Emperor is trying to do. “You. The Empire took care of me and since you are the Empire, then really you’ve been responsible for raising me my whole life.” “Correct! Now, do you feel better?” “A little, though how come you call me frequently call me son anyway?” “Well because of all the reasons you would think of me as your father. I’ve been providing for you as well as teaching you how to survive in this world. And hell, I’m even fond of you. Those factors alone already qualify me more as a father more than some of those peasants out their that just keep breeding children and never take any responsibility for them, so why not call you son?” You know it seems silly, but the fact that the Emperor practically considers you his son gives you a good feeling. Possibly the best you’ve ever felt. Somewhere within the hardened exterior that was beat into you, there still exists a child who would like nothing more than to just hug the Emperor right now. You resist this faint urge of course. As close as you’re feeling to the Emperor at this moment, you still have this sense of duty and protocol stuck in your head even if the Emperor himself isn’t quite as hung up on such things. I thank you for explaining all this and putting this all into perspective, but I think I still feel more comfortable addressing you as Emperor.” “As you wish, but again if you ever let the occasional paternal label slip out every now and then, it wouldn’t be something that would offend me. I’m sure more than a few of my subjects have called me much worse things.” The Emperor snickers. Later that night as you preparing to go to sleep you think on the Emperor’s words and just as you’re basking in the comfort of them, your mind briefly wanders into something much more unpleasant. If the Emperor is your “father” does that make Mistress your “mother?” She even referred to herself as that once. While she was just being sick when she said it, the twisted thing is now you can’t help but think of her as a semi-maternal figure. She was in your life longer than any other adult during your growing years and for good or ill is responsible for most of your combat skills. In fact, so far she’s been in your life longer and probably more influential on your development than ANYONE. You suddenly don’t feel very well pondering that and don’t sleep well that night. > Chapter 2C: Fortunate Son Year 21 The time for all out war is getting closer and the Emperor is getting more impatient with delaying it any further. He probably feels he’s wasted enough time with putting out the pitiful rebellious fires and the restructuring of the Empire in the past couple of years. You’ve been looking forward to a little action as well. You haven’t had much to do in a while ever since your purges in Delerg and Quala. Ever since the official forming of the Eyes they’re supposed to be the primary ones looking after the internal peace of the Empire and rebellious activity has been practically nil. Still, it was practically non-existent just as the Eyes were coming into service. One wonders if it wasn’t due to the threat of a new “secret police” but rather the fact that you had already been overly efficient in purging dissension by depopulating entire areas. Indeed it was probably for the best that you were replaced before you deprived the Empire of potential soldiers for the upcoming war with the Felkans. Still, there are always those that refuse to give up. The prime one being the so-called “Last Shadow”, Cyrus. Cyrus was an Eternal though you don’t remember too much about him other than he always was one of the stealthier classmates that seemed to never fail in getting a cheap shot on you when Mistress was having you spar against him. You say “was” an Eternal because as far you’re concerned he ceased being one the moment he betrayed the Empire. Now he is nothing more than a traitor who needs to be exterminated. Cyrus was one of those few shadows that happened to be on the surface at the time of the destruction of Gloom. He also avoided your purges due to initially being in Quala and then eventually fleeing to the rural areas in Arat. He constantly moves around a lot, making hit and run attacks on patrols or caravans. He does travel with a group, but they aren’t so much rebels as they’re just ambitious bandits and thugs. They probably don’t give a damn about whatever Cyrus religious and philosophical views are for opposing the Empire. They’re just in it for the killing and the loot. Nevertheless, they are a nuisance and given that the Arat province is the staging ground to attack the Felkan Kingdom, the Emperor is more than annoyed that the Eyes haven’t succeeded in tracking him yet and he doesn’t want to waste any proper military on Cyrus mainly because he sees it as Jacob’s fault for various reasons… “Well he’s your failure Jacob, fix it!” The Emperor exclaims. “The Eyes have been attempting to apprehend him my Emperor, but he has proven quite elusive. They just need more time to…” “Jacob when I told you to put together an efficient internal security force I expected you to succeed in this endeavor.” “My Emperor the Eyes are efficient! I mean rebellious attitudes are the lowest they’ve been in…well probably more than I’ve ever seen!” “Well they aren’t good enough, if they can’t capture the so-called Last Shadow. I’d send in svelk mercs if I hadn’t put our funding into Marik’s factory to produce new weapons to combat the Felkans. You do realize we have a war with the Felkans to pursue and your bumbling is delaying that task!” “I understand that, but we shouldn’t go to war until we have everything absolutely settled all internal matters in the Empire first! Cyrus is likely to start ambushing supply wagons and then where would we be?” You watch as the Emperor continues to verbally abuse Jacob. It’s a scene you’ve seen many times in the past and will probably see many more times in the future. Jacob really does try to serve the best he can and from what you can tell he’s fairly good at his job, but for whatever reason its just never good enough for the Emperor no matter what. While you normally don’t interrupt such sessions, you do feel the need to interject. “I would have to agree that if we are to crush the Felkans we should just go ahead and start the process now. As much of a nuisance this last shadow has been, his impact has been minimal and certainly not enough to warrant a paralysis in our military matters. We are a large nation and we are always going to have a few internal matters to resolve.” The Emperor naturally is pleased that you’ve backed him up in this matter, though Jacob looks less than enthused given that he’s already fighting a losing argument. “Thank you son. See this Jacob? This is a TRUE Eternal! Not like the rest of those losers, traitors and ne’er do wells you oversee!” Jacob has no more words, he might continue but knows it would be a futile endeavor and he’s walking on thin ice as it is given how the Emperor is really letting him have it today. Again you feel the need to interject. “If I may, I would be happy to assist in this matter with the shadow terrorist.” You say. “That’s not necessary, I wouldn’t presume to take you away from whatever duties the Emperor has seen fit to bestow upon you.” Jacob replies. “Considering how inept you’ve been in taking care of this, maybe I should send him to help.” The Emperor says before turning to address you directly. “I did have plans for you to take a command position when we start our assault on the Felkans, but the position will still be there when you’re done with bailing out Jacob if you so desire. I’ll leave it up to you. In the meantime I’m going to finish up my preparations to make the first attack on the Felkans. Now go with Jacob if you wish to help him, or stay here, but in any event I don’t want to hear anymore about this shadow matter from anyone until it’s been resolved.” Jacob makes his way slowly out the door, though while he hasn’t said it you see a look in his eye that he’s hoping you’ll provide assistance despite his previous words of it not being necessary. > You help Jacob Maybe its because you feel slightly sorry for Jacob or maybe its because you do see Cyrus as a potential liability if left unchecked and his traitorous ways are an insult to the name Eternal, but whatever the reason you decide to help Jacob. “I believe I shall help Jacob in this matter. I started out crushing shadows and rebels, I might as well finish the job.” You say the Emperor. “Very well, but I trust you won’t take as long as Jacob has. Remember I need you for important tasks for the war!” You and Jacob both leave the Emperor’s presence. As soon as you’re out the door, Jacob addresses you. “I thank you for your assistance.” “I haven’t done anything yet.” “I’m not talking about the situation with the shadow, I mean intervening before the Emperor found a reason to have me executed.” “Oh I doubt if that would’ve happened.” “I don’t know. Lately I can’t seem to do anything right by him, I really try to serve to the best of my abilities. I always have.” “I know you do.” Jacob and you don’t speak too much too each other normally, but your relationship has always been a cordial one. “I guess I should be glad the Emperor is so fond of you, it might be the only thing that’s keeping me alive. You are the Eternal that wasn’t a failure of course and for that I am very thankful.” Because you were directly trained by Mistress you sometimes forget that Jacob (or Mr. Mol as you once knew him) was the one that was primarily in charge of your development at least in a behind the scenes way. You’ve never really thought about your other classmates since you always had more pressing matters, but now you’re a little curious. “Just how many of my other classmates survived?” “Not many. Besides you? Eight and three of them are already dead and one of those became a traitorous shadow.” “And another one is the last shadow still giving the Empire grief.” You say. “Yes. (Sigh) I had such high hopes for Cyrus, he showed so much potential. Damned shadow indoctrination. Anyway that just leaves four who I assure you are not losers or failures and are in fact very accomplished soldiers of the Empire. They finished out their training with Captain Gruz, who I’m sure you’re familiar with.” “Yes, I am.” You say somewhat wishing that you could’ve been so lucky. “I still keep apprised of their activity since they are all still technically under my watch. I’m just glad the Emperor didn’t take the project out of my hands and proceed with Marik’s crazed ideas.” “Could you tell me a little more about them?” “Certainly!” Jacob remarks perking up a bit. He’s genuinely glad someone is showing an interest. He tells you that Kane has been instrumental in taming the Rask frontier. Says that he’s even developing a bit of a reputation of his own given his merciless slaughter of the barbarian and ogre tribes up there. He’s being considered for a fort commander position. Brenda and Roldan have been doing similar things in the Nalin province with the kobolds and usksha desert raiders that sometimes plague the area. Either one could also become a fort commander as well, though he believes Brenda might be the better candidate as he believes Roldan can go on to greater things. He goes on to say that the both of them have become unusually close though and Roldan has even requested that they be allowed to marry! Jacob sees nothing particularly unreasonable about this request and is considering allowing it. “You’ll actually be working with the last one, Warrick. I assigned him to the Eyes and so far he’s been the closest to catching Cyrus. Excellent tracker. I nearly considered Warrick to become an infiltrator for the shadows initially, but it’s a good thing I didn’t considering how things worked out with Cyrus.” This is all somewhat fascinating to you as you do remember all of them, but mainly as your opponents in the fighting arena when Mistress was sending the entire class to try to kill you on regular basis. In fact Jacob realizes this and suddenly asks you if it’ll be a problem working with Warrick. “No, why would it?” “Well I know that due to Mistress’ training you had a less friendly relationship with your classmates than everyone else.” “It’s all in the past, for me it is at least. I survived and grew stronger from the experience. And it certainly wasn’t his fault. He was just doing what he was told. Everyone was. Besides, might be interesting working with someone from the old class on more cooperative terms this time.” “Good. I’m glad to hear you say that.” Jacob says with a smile. Eventually you reach Jacob’s office where you see not one but three desks piled in paperwork. Jacob grumbles about how his underlings were supposed to there to take care of some of it today, but as usual he’ll probably have to do it all himself. After rummaging through a stack, he pulls out a few pieces of parchment and some scrolls and then says you’re taking a carriage ride to an Eye staging ground near Bucklesburg in the Arat province. Jacob says he’ll explain more about the situation along the way (as well as doing some of his paperwork. A carriage ride later, you’re all caught up on the area as well as the specifics of Cyrus’ most recent attacks. When you arrive in Bucklesberg you’re met by who you presume are Eyes and one face that while a little older now you recognize as Warrick. He stares at you at a bit and obviously recognizes you as well, but says nothing since it isn’t his time to speak. “Eyes, you may have heard of this man you see before you. He is the main reason why we managed to stop this potential full scale rebellion and keep it to a few crazed traitors that are desperately trying to hang on to their lives a little while longer.” Jacob starts off telling all of them. A little bit of an exaggeration of course, but then only a few know about the derro involvement in the destruction of shadows, and most of them are currently the same rotting bodies in Gloom. Your involvement on the other hand is infamous. “Now I leave you to it.” Jacob says and leaves. Since you are already up to speed on everything due to Jacob’s briefing, you basically tell the Eyes that how they’re planning to catch Cyrus is all wrong and how they need to do things differently. “Waiting around for Cyrus to attack patrols and caravans and then attempting to stop him in the act isn’t working because Cyrus is quicker and a better warrior than all of you. You know how I know this? Because you haven’t killed him yet. Even if he hasn’t managed to recruit his lackies into following that silly religion of his, he’s obviously trained them into an efficient hardened fighting force. Taking rebel captives and torturing them for information isn’t working because Cyrus is smart enough to change his plans completely when he knows his people have been captured. Besides, I guarantee you could catch and kill all of his people and he’d just disappear for a few years and pop up again with a new group. Which brings me to the point of why trying to search the wilderness for him isn’t working either, you don’t have the numbers to do it.” You say before turning to Warrick. “And as good as you are at tracking, Cyrus is still a shadow and he’s got the magic to mask himself. If he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.” Before you can continue, one of the Eyes is brave enough to question you. Unsurprisingly it’s the one in charge, Sightmaster Davison. “So what’s your solution?” Davison asks. At this point Warrick’s own face displays a grimace with a small shake of his head knowing that his immediate superior is going to be punished for the disruption. You walk up to the Eye and backhand him in the face. “Do not interrupt.” You say calmly. Davison nods quickly while holding on to the side of his face. Then you slap him a couple more times followed by a punch to his face. He falls to the floor and you launch into a speech. “MY solution is to bring down this shadow which all of you have failed to do! The Emperor is tired of your failures! We are to conquer the Felkan Kingdom soon and yet you cannot eliminate a few measly traitors! It is only because I decided to intervene that the lot of you haven’t been executed for your incompetence on this matter! While you may all be the Eyes of the Emperor, I am his terrible weapon that carries out his righteous justice. Pray that justice is never to be carried out on you.” Now that you’ve given a proper “inspirational” speech all you have to do is come up with a solution. The thing is one of their attempted tactics of trying to ambush Cyrus while he’s attacking caravans could still work if YOU get a hold of him. Of course you could come up with your own plan. > You set up your own plan Cyrus obviously isn’t going to be caught by something so mundane; you’ll have to do something more elaborate. Like if he thought there were shadow sympathizers on the rise again. “We’re going to turn this town into a hub of sedition, traitors and shadow sympathizers.” You remark. Several Eyes including Warrick look at each other and WANT to question why you’d want to do such a thing, but nobody dares say anything though. “Good, Glad everyone waited for me to continue this time. Cyrus will be more likely to let his guard down if he thinks he has a solid base of operations rather than running like an animal in the wilderness. We need this town to become that base. Now here’s how we’re going to do it…” First thing you tell everyone is that you’re going to be harassing the people of Bucklesberg to an unreasonable degree. You get to this fairly quickly and perhaps a little too zealously. You begin an inquisition of sorts to “root out” any potential shadow sympathies. Naturally all the folks of Bucklesburg protest their innocence and swear they’ve never even thought such a thing. Of course you don’t listen and have people executed publically anyway. Wives, children, doesn’t matter, the point is to become hated. When you feel you’ve done enough damage you call for the Eyes to pull out of the town. The next phase of your plan is to have someone disseminate subversive ideas in Bucklesberg. You have an Eye sneak back in and start by writing graffiti against the Empire on walls and placing simple pamphlets encouraging people to join Cyrus. You have to wait a couple of weeks before this starts bearing any fruit, but eventually one of the Eyes reports that the town is starting to show signs of rebelliousness. Meanwhile caravans are still being attacked and you get a message from the Emperor saying that he expected you to have settled this problem a lot quicker as he really wants to get on with attacking the Felkan Kingdom. You begin to get a little nervous. A couple more weeks pass and nothing major has happened. You had hoped that Cyrus or perhaps one of his followers had gotten the rumors about the town of Bucklesberg becoming unfriendly towards the Empire, but Warrick tells you that he hasn’t seen any sign of Cyrus or his group anywhere near the town. They’re still keeping to the wilderness and making their lightning raids on caravans. As for Bucklesberg itself, there have been a few meetings but not much else. Your plan is failing to produce results and you get another message from the Emperor which is noticeably more hostile in tone. All it says is you better do something about Cyrus by the end of the week or you are to report back to him immediately. Feeling the pressure you can’t wait out this plan any longer, you’re going to have to attempt to catch him in the act of attacking one of the caravans. Your only advantage is nobody has been defending them for several weeks so Cyrus may have been lulled into a false sense of security. You and the Eyes travel towards where the supply caravan is and maintain a respectable distance from it and keep out of sight. You travel along side it for miles and there are a couple of Eyes who start wondering if Cyrus is even going to attack it. You know he will though and of course you turn out to be right. The caravan guard hold their own against the rebel bandits, but as soon as Cyrus decloaks he begins making short work of them. It is at this point Sightmaster Davison orders the Eyes to attack. As the skirmish between the Eyes and Cyrus unfolds, you begin to concentrate. You visualize water and then that water slowly solidifying into ice. The temperature around you begins to get very cold and soon so does the entire area. It is at this point Cyrus notices you in the distance and realizes that he is outclassed this time. He panics like a true coward and calls for a retreat, but its too late, you utter the incantation and cover the surrounding area in ice. The caravan, the guards, the rebels and the Eyes are all covered in frost that causes most of them to be frozen on the spot. You run over to the site and see several of the still living shivering profusely and moaning from the pain of frost burn. A few of the hardy have managed to endure the effects of the spell, though they are busily trying to free their feet from ice before frostbite sets in. Others lie dead and frozen, Cyrus is not among them though and you catch sight of him slowly attempting to get away and heading towards a forest. His attempts to speed himself up make him only moderately faster due to the frost covering his body. You begin to concentrate in the direction Cyrus was heading. Instead of visualizing water, you now visualize fire and much like the small ice storm you created, you now create one of flame. While you’re casting the spell however, Cyrus manages to turn invisible and you don’t see what direction he fled in before your firestorm hits the area. The forest that Cyrus was headed towards is suddenly set ablaze along with the fielded area near it. However Cyrus must’ve escaped because if he had been caught in the firestorm he would’ve instantly decloaked. You begin to swear and curse of how you nearly had him while you’re surveying the carnage you caused to your own people. Sightmaster Davison is fully encased in ice, Warrick is only just managing to free himself from his own icy restraints. You were in such a hurry to capture Cyrus that you didn’t think to at least hold Warrick back so he might be able to track Cyrus in case he managed to get away again. That opportunity has been lost now. You and the remaining Eyes head back to the closest settlement which is Bucklesberg where you try to figure out what your next move is going to be. Its most likely because you’re tired as well as concerned with having to possibly face the Emperor that you don’t appreciate the aura of hostility in Bucklesberg. You and the Eyes are suddenly pelted with several rocks. Peasants aren’t usually known for their combat abilities, but forming angry mobs and throwing rocks is certainly something they’re good at. Not that you don’t put up a fight and massacre several of the peasants, but the fact is they’re in a nearly fanatical state and throw themselves upon you like suicidal lemmings thanks to your own actions that made them that way in the first place. Several of them are actually shouting that the shadows will rise again and that Cyrus will lead them. Your fate is ultimately an ignoble one of being beaten to death in the streets, drawn and quartered and finally your head stuck on a pole along with the remaining Eyes as a symbol of renewed defiance against the Empire. Later Bucklesberg is razed to the ground and all within are purged for treason. The Emperor doesn’t morn your loss, but rather is angry with himself for wasting his time on someone who he comes to believe was an idiot.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe its because you feel slightly sorry for Jacob or maybe its because you do see Cyrus as a potential liability if left unchecked and his traitorous ways are an insult to the name Eternal, but whatever the reason you decide to help Jacob. “I believe I shall help Jacob in this matter. I started out crushing shadows and rebels, I might as well finish the job.” You say the Emperor. “Very well, but I trust you won’t take as long as Jacob has. Remember I need you for important tasks for the war!” You and Jacob both leave the Emperor’s presence. As soon as you’re out the door, Jacob addresses you. “I thank you for your assistance.” “I haven’t done anything yet.” “I’m not talking about the situation with the shadow, I mean intervening before the Emperor found a reason to have me executed.” “Oh I doubt if that would’ve happened.” “I don’t know. Lately I can’t seem to do anything right by him, I really try to serve to the best of my abilities. I always have.” “I know you do.” Jacob and you don’t speak too much too each other normally, but your relationship has always been a cordial one. “I guess I should be glad the Emperor is so fond of you, it might be the only thing that’s keeping me alive. You are the Eternal that wasn’t a failure of course and for that I am very thankful.” Because you were directly trained by Mistress you sometimes forget that Jacob (or Mr. Mol as you once knew him) was the one that was primarily in charge of your development at least in a behind the scenes way. You’ve never really thought about your other classmates since you always had more pressing matters, but now you’re a little curious. “Just how many of my other classmates survived?” “Not many. Besides you? Eight and three of them are already dead and one of those became a traitorous shadow.” “And another one is the last shadow still giving the Empire grief.” You say. “Yes. (Sigh) I had such high hopes for Cyrus, he showed so much potential. Damned shadow indoctrination. Anyway that just leaves four who I assure you are not losers or failures and are in fact very accomplished soldiers of the Empire. They finished out their training with Captain Gruz, who I’m sure you’re familiar with.” “Yes, I am.” You say somewhat wishing that you could’ve been so lucky. “I still keep apprised of their activity since they are all still technically under my watch. I’m just glad the Emperor didn’t take the project out of my hands and proceed with Marik’s crazed ideas.” “Could you tell me a little more about them?” “Certainly!” Jacob remarks perking up a bit. He’s genuinely glad someone is showing an interest. He tells you that Kane has been instrumental in taming the Rask frontier. Says that he’s even developing a bit of a reputation of his own given his merciless slaughter of the barbarian and ogre tribes up there. He’s being considered for a fort commander position. Brenda and Roldan have been doing similar things in the Nalin province with the kobolds and usksha desert raiders that sometimes plague the area. Either one could also become a fort commander as well, though he believes Brenda might be the better candidate as he believes Roldan can go on to greater things. He goes on to say that the both of them have become unusually close though and Roldan has even requested that they be allowed to marry! Jacob sees nothing particularly unreasonable about this request and is considering allowing it. “You’ll actually be working with the last one, Warrick. I assigned him to the Eyes and so far he’s been the closest to catching Cyrus. Excellent tracker. I nearly considered Warrick to become an infiltrator for the shadows initially, but it’s a good thing I didn’t considering how things worked out with Cyrus.” This is all somewhat fascinating to you as you do remember all of them, but mainly as your opponents in the fighting arena when Mistress was sending the entire class to try to kill you on regular basis. In fact Jacob realizes this and suddenly asks you if it’ll be a problem working with Warrick. “No, why would it?” “Well I know that due to Mistress’ training you had a less friendly relationship with your classmates than everyone else.” “It’s all in the past, for me it is at least. I survived and grew stronger from the experience. And it certainly wasn’t his fault. He was just doing what he was told. Everyone was. Besides, might be interesting working with someone from the old class on more cooperative terms this time.” “Good. I’m glad to hear you say that.” Jacob says with a smile. Eventually you reach Jacob’s office where you see not one but three desks piled in paperwork. Jacob grumbles about how his underlings were supposed to there to take care of some of it today, but as usual he’ll probably have to do it all himself. After rummaging through a stack, he pulls out a few pieces of parchment and some scrolls and then says you’re taking a carriage ride to an Eye staging ground near Bucklesburg in the Arat province. Jacob says he’ll explain more about the situation along the way (as well as doing some of his paperwork. A carriage ride later, you’re all caught up on the area as well as the specifics of Cyrus’ most recent attacks. When you arrive in Bucklesberg you’re met by who you presume are Eyes and one face that while a little older now you recognize as Warrick. He stares at you at a bit and obviously recognizes you as well, but says nothing since it isn’t his time to speak. “Eyes, you may have heard of this man you see before you. He is the main reason why we managed to stop this potential full scale rebellion and keep it to a few crazed traitors that are desperately trying to hang on to their lives a little while longer.” Jacob starts off telling all of them. A little bit of an exaggeration of course, but then only a few know about the derro involvement in the destruction of shadows, and most of them are currently the same rotting bodies in Gloom. Your involvement on the other hand is infamous. “Now I leave you to it.” Jacob says and leaves. Since you are already up to speed on everything due to Jacob’s briefing, you basically tell the Eyes that how they’re planning to catch Cyrus is all wrong and how they need to do things differently. “Waiting around for Cyrus to attack patrols and caravans and then attempting to stop him in the act isn’t working because Cyrus is quicker and a better warrior than all of you. You know how I know this? Because you haven’t killed him yet. Even if he hasn’t managed to recruit his lackies into following that silly religion of his, he’s obviously trained them into an efficient hardened fighting force. Taking rebel captives and torturing them for information isn’t working because Cyrus is smart enough to change his plans completely when he knows his people have been captured. Besides, I guarantee you could catch and kill all of his people and he’d just disappear for a few years and pop up again with a new group. Which brings me to the point of why trying to search the wilderness for him isn’t working either, you don’t have the numbers to do it.” You say before turning to Warrick. “And as good as you are at tracking, Cyrus is still a shadow and he’s got the magic to mask himself. If he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.” Before you can continue, one of the Eyes is brave enough to question you. Unsurprisingly it’s the one in charge, Sightmaster Davison. “So what’s your solution?” Davison asks. At this point Warrick’s own face displays a grimace with a small shake of his head knowing that his immediate superior is going to be punished for the disruption. You walk up to the Eye and backhand him in the face. “Do not interrupt.” You say calmly. Davison nods quickly while holding on to the side of his face. Then you slap him a couple more times followed by a punch to his face. He falls to the floor and you launch into a speech. “MY solution is to bring down this shadow which all of you have failed to do! The Emperor is tired of your failures! We are to conquer the Felkan Kingdom soon and yet you cannot eliminate a few measly traitors! It is only because I decided to intervene that the lot of you haven’t been executed for your incompetence on this matter! While you may all be the Eyes of the Emperor, I am his terrible weapon that carries out his righteous justice. Pray that justice is never to be carried out on you.” Now that you’ve given a proper “inspirational” speech all you have to do is come up with a solution. The thing is one of their attempted tactics of trying to ambush Cyrus while he’s attacking caravans could still work if YOU get a hold of him. Of course you could come up with your own plan. > You catch him in the act of one of his attacks The next thing you say surprises all of the Eyes. “Now there’s a caravan coming through the area north of here in the next few days that is carrying a lot of supplies for the military. Cyrus isn’t going to be able to resist attacking it even if he thinks it’s a set up. We’re going to intercept him when he attacks it and put an end to him once and for all.” Several Eyes including Warrick look at each other and WANT to question why you’d scold them about a particular idea they’ve used and then you want to continue using it. Nobody dares say anything though. “Good. Glad everyone waited for me to continue this time. You’re probably wondering why we’re going to continue to use a strategy after I just pointed out that it has failed so many times. Well, the strategy was a simple one and sometimes simple ones are best. The advantage you have now is that I am with you and I will be able to handle Cyrus and will not let him get away. Besides, you’ve failed so many times at stopping him that he’s bound to be a little cocky now and won’t be expecting any major surprises. Even if he does, he probably also thinks he’s the chosen one of his god and invincible. Time to show Cyrus that his false god cannot protect him.” You finish by telling them all to get themselves prepared, as you will be moving out soon. “Warrick you come over here. I want to talk with you.” Warrick complies with your request probably with some concern to his well being. “I want you to stick with me during this attack. I need you alive and your chances of survival will increase if you’re with me. While I don’t think there will be any problems, it will still be good to have a second just in case we need to chase after Cyrus. Any questions, now is the time to ask.” “I have no questions sir.” “Very well.” You and the Eyes travel towards where the supply caravan is and maintain a respectable distance from it and keep out of sight. You travel along side it for miles and there are a couple of Eyes who start wondering if Cyrus is even going to attack it. You know he will though and of course you turn out to be right. The caravan guard hold their own against the rebel bandits, but as soon as Cyrus decloaks he begins making short work of them. It is at this point Sightmaster Davison orders the Eyes to attack. “Not you. As I said, you’re sticking with me.” You say to Warrick while grabbing his shoulder to hold him back. As the skirmish between the Eyes and Cyrus unfolds, you begin to concentrate. You visualize water and then that water slowly solidifying into ice. The temperature around you begins to get very cold and soon so does the entire area. It is at this point Cyrus notices you in the distance and realizes that he is outclassed this time. He panics like a true coward and calls for a retreat, but its too late, you utter the incantation and cover the surrounding area in ice. The caravan, the guards, the rebels and the Eyes are all covered in frost that causes most of them to be frozen on the spot. “Now we get our traitor.” You say to Warrick and the pair of you run over to the caravan battle site. You see several of the still living shivering profusely and moaning from the pain of frost burn. A few of the hardy have managed to endure the effects of the spell, though they are busily trying to free their feet from ice before frostbite sets in. Others lie dead and frozen, Cyrus is not among them though and Warrick catches sight of him slowly attempting to get away and heading towards a forest. His attempts to speed himself up make him only moderately faster due to the frost covering his body. Wasting no time, Warrick grabs his bow and fires several arrows at Cyrus, a couple hit their mark. Cyrus stumbles and staggers, but doesn’t fall. He instead manages to turn invisible. “Shit! But he’s wounded, I can track him if we hurry!” Warrick exclaims, but once again you stop him from proceeding. “You’ve proven your worth Warrick, but your tracking skills won’t be necessary today.” You say and begin to concentrate in the direction Cyrus was heading. Instead of visualizing water, you now visualize fire and much like the small ice storm you created, you now create one of flame. The forest that Cyrus was limping towards is suddenly set ablaze along with the fielded area near it. A burning figure once again decloaks and you hear the screams all the way from the caravan site which is starting to thaw due to the proximity of the heat. Desperately Cyrus tries to make his way out of the inferno and back towards the caravan site, you calmly walk to him with Warrick following. By the time you reach him, Cyrus is crawling towards you half frozen, half burned, and death closely following him. “You see what this path has brought you traitor. No so called freedom, no glory for your god, not even a heroic death. You’re an embarrassment to the name Eternal and you will not be remembered save as an example of what happens to all that would oppose the Emperor.” Cyrus struggles to look up at you and it’s probably the first time you’ve been this close to each other since Mistress’ class. His face is nearly unrecognizable due to the severe burns. He attempts to speak, but only the utterance of distorted grunts from a scorched throat occurs. Doesn’t matter, he has nothing of value to say. Traitors never do. You kneel down and with your dagger you end his life for good. “What next?” Warrick suddenly asks. “I report the death of this traitor to Jacob and I return to my place by the Emperor’s side where I wait for his further orders. As for you, I suggest you help what’s left of your group. I believe I saw your Sightmaster encased in ice, meaning he will no longer be able to carry out his duty. I can’t think of a more worthy replacement than you so I will make mention of it to Jacob.” Warrick is surprised by your words. He looks back at the caravan site, which is still a mess from your previous ice spell, he then looks ahead and watches the flames consume the nearby forest. “Better to kill a thousand innocent men than to let one traitor sew chaos. Better to lay waste to paradise than to let it continue to house enemies of the Empire.” You say, though Warrick certainly understands even if he has never truly been in such a situation until now where it was necessary. Jacob’s response when you meet him again is a little less understanding when he finds out how you handled things… “Of course its good that Cyrus is dead, but… was it absolutely necessary to burn down an entire forest and sacrifice nearly an entire platoon of Eyes along with the entire compliment of caravan guards?” Jacob asks. “I saw it as the best way to be sure to put an end to Cyrus. And I would think you of all people would be happy for the matter to be handled given how worried you were about it before. The Emperor will also be happy and isn’t that what’s most important, that he can proceed with his war on the Felkans without further delay?” Jacob pauses before addressing your statement. “Yes and I really wish we weren’t doing that.” “Doing what?” “Going to war with the Felkan Kingdom.” “You don’t believe the Empire should crush its enemies?” you ask. “I don’t believe we should waste the resources on a pointless war on a powerful nation that has never shown any signs of aggression.” “Just because they don’t openly display it doesn’t mean they aren’t planning something.” You say. “Yes, I’ve heard the speech about the duplicitous gnome masters several times. You can’t know how glad I was when I first found out that you managed to convince the Emperor to even postpone the war to take care of the shadows first. Can you imagine what might’ve happened had you not done that? I…look you know I serve the Empire and my loyalty will never be in question to it, but on this point I really don’t think this war is a good idea in the long run. Do you not believe that it wouldn’t be better if we conserved our resources and pursued other ways to enrich the Empire that don’t involve war? You convinced the Emperor once to postpone a potentially damaging war, could you not sway his thoughts on this matter any further?” “Jacob, it is the Emperor’s will that the Felkan Kingdom must be destroyed. The plan has already been set in motion. No words of mine would ever convince him otherwise, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t because as I see it, the gnomes and by extension the Felkan Kingdom must pay for their continued insults towards the Emperor. And that insult is their mere existence. Their punishment will be death.” Jacob realizes that he will have no luck in attempting to incorporate you into his desire to convince the Emperor to not go to war, so he drops the issue. “I hope so for the sake of the Empire. Well, I suppose my next task will be to find a few more recruits to fill in the gaps for the latest fallen Eyes. Warrick will certainly make a good Sightmaster. Glad to hear that the pair of you worked so well together and he survived at least. I…nevermind.” Jacob once again is starting act like he wants to address something more, but stops himself again, you urge him to continue. “What is it Jacob?” “Nothing. Just... I mean your actions in Delerg and also what you just recently did to put down one traitor…well I’m just saying that it’s good that you are so dedicated. Remember that Empire must survive no matter what the cost.” “Of course. You don’t need to remind me of such a thing.” “No. Of course I don’t.” Jacob says and bids you goodbye. You don’t understand Jacob’s odd behavior, especially since it seemed a little contradictory. One moment he was nearly scolding you for your methods, the next he was praising you for them. When you tell the Emperor about you conversation with Jacob he doesn’t seem to be concerned, he’s too excited about finally going to war with the Felkans. “Jacob is like an old woman sometimes. He worries too much, that’s what he does. The only thing we need to worry about is how to make sure none of those little gnome bastards escape this time! Ha ha!” the Emperor says. “They won’t.” you reply with certainty. > Year 23 With another town taken, you put your sword through the chest of a Felkan soldier begging for his life, one of many from your experience. The average Felkan soldier to you does not seem to match up to Empire ones in any capacity. They are certainly not better in the ways of martial combat or endurance. The only real advantage you can see them having is their gunpowder weaponry and better proficiency with it and even that isn’t much of an advantage anymore given that the Emperor’s derro friend has been evening up the odds in that way. You walk around surveying the carnage of burning buildings and Empire soldiers busily searching homes to make sure there aren’t any more of the enemy hiding out. A small explosion grabs your attention and you see a single Empire soldier stagger out of a home with one of his arms blown off. He stumbles for a bit and then collapses before others rush to his aid. Traps have probably done more damage to the battalion you were assigned to rather than actual combat. This was an easy battle. In fact your whole time being assigned to Major Krozer’s battalion has been a bit of a breeze for you. The southwestern front of the Felkan Kingdom isn’t as heavily defended or at least from your experience it isn’t defended well. Perhaps all of the better Felkan soldiers are on the other fronts. You sort of wish the Emperor had seen fit to have you aid Captain Roldan whose battalion has been seeing a lot of major fighting. However, the Emperor firmly stated that your skills would be of better use here and so you shall carry out your duty. Your main goal is to keep the Felkans from attempting to pull any sort of major flanking maneuver and keeping them boxed in. While conquest isn’t the main goal, it is a secondary objective to make a slow push northward towards the Felkan heartland though you imagine you’ll soon face Felkan reinforcements from the west before then. That is if they don’t still have their hands full with the gnoll tribes that are currently assaulting them their eastern front. “Another victory for the Empire, eh Mr. Sunshine?” you hear a voice from behind say. It’s Major Krozer. She’s a competent leader and has obviously earned her position, but much like your experience with Gruz, she seems a little “relaxed” on rules of protocol at times such as her periodic insistence on being too playful with you. “I’ve told you before to stop calling me by that ridiculous name.” you snap. “Hey, I didn’t invent it. That’s what the troops call you behind your back due to your…unique personality.” You begin to get angry. “Are you telling me I don’t have the respect of the troops and they use this name to mock me?!” “No! They’re scared shitless of you, hence why they don’t call it to your face. The sunshine reference is due to the fact that you’re so damn grim and merciless all the time. Its supposed to be ironic I guess. If you’d like, I could tell them to start calling you Mr. Harbinger of Destruction instead. Pretty sure the Felkans already call you that.” Major Krozer replies. “I’m not interested in having any sort of witty nickname and if anyone continues to refer to me other than by my name or my rank, I’ll have them flogged for their impertinence and that’s just for the first offence.” “Hm, well I guess I better relay that to the troops. Fun and humor are cancelled until further notice.” “Fun? We’re at war major! This is not a time to be having fun! It is not a time for jokes! It is a time to be crushing our enemies and ensuring their extinction!” “And you’re claiming that YOU don’t find those two bloody past times fun for you? Let’s talk seriously for a moment, I’ve seen you in battle and you are truly a sight to behold. It’s almost like watching a work of art with how you move from enemy to enemy slaying all those that oppose you. And that’s just close combat, I’m not even referring to when you’re throwing flaming hunks of rocks at the enemy and then following it up with a few lightning bolts. My point is, I’ve seen you lay waste to our opponents and I believe it’s more than just a job to you. Yes, you’re serving the Empire and the Emperor, but you’re having fun doing it. This war is FUN for you and that good, but some of us need to find fun in perhaps less extreme ways and sometimes that might involve the cheap joke here and there. Surely that doesn’t warrant a death sentence? I mean all of our lives could be snuffed out anytime, what’s the harm in a little humor as long as everyone is still doing their job?” The major’s words hit a mark with you. You can’t deny that you are having what might be considered “fun” when you’re in battle. You enjoy it because its what you were meant to do. You also think back to what the Emperor said to you one time “Sometimes, you’re too tightly wound son.” This might be one of those times. “Alright, alright, you’ve made your point. Fine nobody will be flogged, but I better not hear the name Mr. Sunshine or any other cute nickname within earshot.” “Of course sir.” “Good. So…the troops say my battle techniques look like a work of art?” “No. I believe they just see you as a whirlwind of violence that they need to stay out of the way lest they get caught in the path. I’m the one who believes your battle techniques look like a work of art, but then I’m a daughter of the army, so I don’t know much about real art. I just know what I like.” The major says with a smile. “Oh. Uh, well thanks.” You answer and not feeling quite sure of what else to say. With the debate about acceptable protocol out of the way Major Krozer goes on to tell you that despite significant damage most of the town’s population is still alive. While you’re usually known for razing entire settlements to the ground, the major is slightly less bloodthirsty than you are. “While I know you like to eliminate enemies of the Empire and stomp them into a red spot on the ground. I’d suggest that we not do that this time and use this town as a stopping spot for our supplies and reinforcements.” “Hmm. Perhaps, but we’ll have to leave a detachment here to oversee this place.” “Well how big is that going to have to be? Not that big I should think since I really don’t believe the population is going to give us any more trouble. I’ve seen most of them and they look thoroughly defeated.” “True, but I believe an example should still be made just to get the point across of who is in charge. I’d say about twenty peasants should do it. A mixture of different ages and genders too just to show them that we’re being serious.” “I’d ask you if that is really necessary, but I know what your answer is going to be. Very well, I’ll get some of our soldiers on it. I sometimes have concerns that we’ll go too far and their hate will override their fear and cause a revolt.” “And that’s why I prefer to raze entire settlements. Nobody can revolt when they’re all dead.” “But then what’s left to rule?” Krozer asks before taking her leave. She has a point, but it isn’t one you’ve concerned yourself with during this war mainly because the Emperor has made it quite clear to you that he’s actually more interested in destroying the Felkan Kingdom rather than conquering it. This is more of a war of annihilation rather than one of subjugation. Just as you’re about to oversee the execution of peasants, a messenger arrives. “For your eyes only sir. Important message from the Emperor.” The messenger says and hands you a sealed scroll. You take the scroll and quickly open it. It has been too long since you’ve last heard anything directly from the Emperor. Upon reading it, it states that you are to report directly to the location where Marik has been making all of the new weapons. Doesn’t state why, just says you need to be there. You’ve never been to Marik’s factory before, actually you’ve never even met Marik before despite having heard of him several times. Guess this will be your introduction. It is a little odd to be taken out of the fighting like this and also not explaining why, but the Emperor must have his reasons. You immediately tell the major. “You’re leaving? Why?” she asks. “Can’t reveal why, but I assure you that it is on the Emperor’s orders.” You reply. “Oh. Well I suppose you have to go then. This’ll be a huge blow to the might of our forces with you gone.” “You shouldn’t think such things. You’re soldiers of the Empire. You are more than a match for any enemy, let alone the Felkans. You’re also a skilled leader and tactician that has kept our losses to a minimum. You’ll do fine without me.” “I suppose we can get by without your battle skills, but how will we ever cope without your cheerful personality around here?” she says with a serious face which then slowly turns into a smile. Normally this is the kind of thing that perturbs you, but maybe you’re getting used to it. “Well I’m sure my sunny disposition has made such a lasting impression that its now within all of your hearts so that you may experience it wherever you go.” You reply in a deadpan manner, surprising the major. “Was that a joke you just made?” “How the hell would I know, its not like I’ve ever made one before.” “Well you’re on a roll now. Hopefully you will come back so we can actually experience this less self-controlled version of yourself.” “Anything’s possible I suppose.” You say and take your leave. Your only major decision now is whether or not to take the long way around back within all the pacified territory you’ve been pushing through during your time with Krozer’s battalion or risk taking a short cut north through disputed territory that you know is still being battled over by both sides. > You take the long way around While it’s not usually like you to play it too safe and you aren’t one to avoid conflict, your present duty is to reach your destination in a timely manner. A short cut might seem quicker, but given that you know how hot the conflict is going on right now, its likely that you might very well get caught in the middle of it thus delaying your orders. Your trip is predictably uneventful save for running into a few small regiments of reinforcements that you redirect towards the town you just conquered. When you make it back to Arat you only make short stops in villages to water your horse. Eventually you see the factory within sight rather than just the permanent black cloud that hoovers over it. The factory has somewhat been a source of concern by the local population as the pollution from the place has contaminated the nearby rivers as well as the land surrounding it. However it has provided a new source of employment though its not the safest place to work, but in this world what is safe? When you get there you are met by a small contingent of Eyes standing outside the factory’s gates, which are locked up. “I don’t know if I should be happy or worried that the Emperor has sent his terrible weapon of righteous justice.” One of the Eyes says. The Eye doesn’t look familiar to you, but he obviously was with you during the capture of Cyrus. Good to know your words are remembered at least. “What’s going on?” “Apparently a few days ago a giant green monster punched through one of the doors to the basement of the factory and killed several workers and guards before we got here. Someone claimed it was a troll. If it was a troll I can only imagine it dug itself up from the underground since that’s where they live right?” “So I’ve heard, but what are you doing standing out here?” “Sightmaster Ansolom’s orders. The troll hasn’t left the factory for whatever reason and he wants to make sure its at least contained while he and some others try to kill the thing. Though they’ve been in there since yesterday, I fear the worst.” “Ansolom? What happened to Warrick?” “Sightmaster Warrick is stationed elsewhere with another group of Eyes. I don’t know where. So are you going in?” “Of course.” “You…uh don’t need us to come in with you do you?” the Eye asks while unlocking the gate. “No. Continue your little guard duty, I believe you would only get in my way anyway.” You say and open up the gate. No sooner have you entered when the Eyes close the gate and lock it back up. You shake your head and cautiously walk through the factory’s outer yard. You see all manner of strange machines along with hundreds of boxes of various weapons large and small set for shipping, but the place is dead silent. You’re not even finding any dead bodies; you’re guessing they must be inside the factory itself and probably the troll as well. You’re wondering where Marik is in all this. From what you know he and a small group of derro work deep underneath this factory unknown to most, even the regular workers. There is supposed to be a battle mage that acts as the factory supervisor too. On top of everything else now you have to look for a sightmaster who is supposed to be here taking care of this problem and you still don’t understand why you were dragged off the frontline just to handle a troll, or what you still assume is a troll. When you enter the factory itself, that’s when you see all the damage to the place. It’s a mess with broken equipment and dead bodies everywhere. While you’ve heard the stories about how terrible trolls are you nearly have a hard time believing it was just one of them that caused all this damage. Besides looking like a tomb the factory is about as silent as one as well. You would’ve thought the troll would at least be feasting on its kills or at least walking about the factory, but you’ve heard nothing. This of course puts you more on guard since now you’re wondering if the thing is aware of your presence and silently stalking you. You climb up to one of the upper walkways to get a better view. You still can’t see the creature from your position, but apparently it was up here at some point since you’re finding the odd limb along the walkway. The supervisor’s office is up here so you decide to head towards it hoping that maybe you’ll find some answers. As you get closer you see that a battle must’ve taken place near there because you see a body just outside the doorway of the office. There are a couple other bloody bodies lying near it as well. Upon closer inspection the body just outside the doorway is headless but wearing a robe. This was probably the battle mage supervisor. The other bodies are a little fresher but still in mauled condition. They wear the uniform of an Eye, but you suddenly have more pressing concerns when not one, but two trolls appear on the far end of the walkways. They look every bit as vicious as you’ve heard. Big, green, long gangly limbs and seem to lope in a jerky manner towards you snarling and howling the whole time. You have no idea how such large creatures were able to hide from you, but they’ve made their presence known now and you’re trapped with no easy retreat. They’re quick, but you manage to unleash a single bolt of flame at one of the trolls, which causes it to immediately leap over the railing and take a long drop down to the floor below busily trying to beat the flames out of its hide. It is so focused on doing this that it fails to realize that it is in a factory with several explosive elements. All it takes is for the troll to crash its body into one of the small barrels of the volatile powder and the troll is blown to pieces though the force of the explosion is even enough to rock you to the floor of the walkway. You get up just in time for the second troll to smash its fist into your chest and you go flying into the office hitting the wall. You feel like you’ve been hit by a giant club and struggle to catch your breath. You scan the room and to your left you see another dead body of an Eye. This one is the sightmaster and he looks as if all his limbs have been broken. The troll advances and you manage to kick the door shut, which slows it down long enough to buy you some time. When it slams the door back open you cast a bolt of flame in its face. It reels back bellowing with pain and clutching its eyes, but unlike his friend he isn’t running away. Ignoring the pain, you stand back up and with sword in hand you slash the troll across one of its knees causing it to stumble. It manages to swipe its claws across your stomach, but fortunately you dodge most of attack and only suffer ripped armor and a surface wound. The troll tries to continue its success, but even as quick as it is, you are able to get the advantage and bring your blade across its think neck. Unfortunately you fail to sever the troll’s head completely and your sword gets stuck half way through it. Black blood is spraying everywhere and the troll grabs your sword arm digging its claws into the skin and muscle. It will very likely rip it off if you don’t do something immediately. > You pull your dagger and stab it in the arm You pull out your dagger and begin repeatedly stabbing the troll in the arm to the point where you nearly sever it. Its grip loosens as it hisses in pain. You nearly get your head punched in by the troll’s other fist, but you fall backwards on the walkway in time for it to miss. The troll fails to follow up with another attack since it attempts to remove the sword from its neck presumably to regenerate properly. Taking advantage of this breather you cast a lightning blast right at the sword, which acts as a great conductor to fry the troll inside and out. You have to back up just so the troll’s flailing body doesn’t hit you. Eventually when the troll’s body is burned to a crisp and you’re fairly certain you’ve fried its vital organs enough that it can’t possibly regenerate you stop and the troll crashes to the floor still smoking and twitching. Then you retrieve your sword and finish decapitating the troll just to be sure. You take a small rest after your battle, though you keep alert for another troll. Thankfully no more show up, but there’s still the question about Marik and where the hell the trolls came from in the first place. Both potential answers are going to lie in the basement you imagine so that’s where you continue your exploration. The factory basement is in just about as much disarray as the ground floor and there are a few dead bodies, but no trolls or derro for that matter. You search until you come across a large metal door which has been partially ripped off its hinges, a long set of stairs go down. It would appear there is an even deeper part of the factory. You go down the stairway, which seems almost like forever and when you finally get to the bottom, you hear a lot of shouting in an unfamiliar language. You walk down a corridor and find a large open area with presumably more factory equipment, but some of it looks very strange. You see machines, which are emanating a lightning arc similar to the spell you can cast or what nature does during a storm. Other things look like giant tubes with something inside, though from this distance you can’t tell what. Among the machinery you also see short heavily armored figures busily trying to clean up the area. You can’t even see their faces, but you’re guessing these are the infamous derro. “You there! Who are you surfacer? Are you one of the factory workers?” a deep voice suddenly calls to you from the right. You look and see a very pale figure wearing white coat covered in blood and a bunch of other things you can’t identify. This bald wild-eyed fellow is about the same size as the armored figure so you come to one conclusion. “The Emperor sent me. Are you Marik?” “I am Marik…you must be the one he refers to as his son. But why would the Emperor send you here?” “I was only given orders to come here, but within such time I faced two trolls that apparently slaughtered not only many factory workers, but its supervisor AND several of the Emperor’s Eyes! I had thought they might’ve killed you as well, but since that is not the case, I am hoping that you can shed some light on the situation.” “Shit, I had a feeling one of them escaped up there, but not two. And I assumed that the fucking poncy wizard would at least be able to handle it. Figures that fop wouldn’t have the stones when faced with such a beast, let alone two of them.” “Escaped? Excuse me, but what the hell were trolls doing here in the first place? And why did you not send men to help kill the beasts?” “If you have not noticed by the mess already, but my men and I have been dealing with trolls down here as well.” “It looks as if you were not fighting them when I arrived and you still have not answered why there were trolls down here in the first place?” “I know you’re held in high regard by the Emperor and obviously your skills are impressive if a scrawny thing like you can handle two adult trolls, but you will cease questioning me in such a manner now surfacer!” “I will question your competence if you are the reason for this disaster! These trolls have just caused a stop in production which is vital to the Emperor’s war on the Felkan Kingdom!” Marik’s expression begins to show more aggression though he’s smiling at the same time. He almost looks as if he’s going to break into laughter. “Surfacer, I have known the Emperor much longer than YOU have even been alive! Maybe you’re unfamiliar with the complexities of our relationship, so I will let your words pass as ones of a concerned child for his parent’s wishes. But NEVER question my competence ever again! I am the very reason the Emperor is able to pursue a successful war on the Felkans in the first place! My work here is to find even better ways to crush his enemies! The trolls? Part of my experiments as new weapons for the war! Sometimes experiments fail! Science is not always exact! Do you think YOU were the first Eternal?” “Yes, I’m well aware I was among the first successful ones, but that still doesn’t excuse why you sent no men to at least scout the factory if you believed trolls had escaped.” “The Emperor should’ve told you more about our people then. We derro do not step foot on the surface if we can help it. My people may have an alliance with the Emperor, but that alliance does not extend to such madness.” “I was lead to believe madness was a common derro trait.” “It is, but even then there are limits! Indeed I may very well be among the most mad and even I will not soil myself by setting foot on your surface world.” “But the factory is enclosed, you’d still be shielded from the sun if that is death to your kind.” Marik begins laughing in a tone that is much different from his deep voice. It’s an annoying ear piercing laugh. “Your ignorance of the derro is embarrassing as is usual for a surfacer. I suggest you learn more in your pitifully short lifespan. Ask your Emperor for guidance, perhaps he will have the patience to tell you more about us, I do not. I have work to do for the Emperor.” Marik says and turns away from you. His fellow derro have been standing by watching the pair of you the entire time as if ready to act if violence should break out. Violence may still occur if Marik continues to act dismissively towards you. “Do not walk away from me derro! You still have much to answer for! What exactly is it that you are doing here? What is so important that you so carelessly endanger the war effort? You will give me answers of substance that I can give to the Emperor!” Your words cause Marik to stop. “Your loyalty to the Emperor is admirable. Tell me though, what gives you cause to believe that you’d make it out of here to able to report to him?” “Trust me derro, I may indeed not be able to take all of you, but YOU I would make an example of.” Marik once again makes that annoying laugh again. “Your knowledge of the derro continues to lack. If you truly knew anything, you’d know that death is not something the derro fear.” “And now it is you who do not listen. I said nothing of killing you, I said make an example of. After I beat you within an inch of your life, I’d drag your bloody body to the surface which you obviously loathe so much. I thank you for exposing your flaws within our short meeting.” Marik turns to face you once again. He studies you as if to assess if you’re being serious. He realizes you are. “Well, I’ll be. A surfacer nearly as mad as a derro, for it is the only explanation for your threats that you speak out of your ass and ignorance. Heh. Very well then perhaps we do have something in common. Come with me then Eternal, I will satisfy your questions and then you can go tell the Emperor that we’re not just playing with our dicks down here.” Marik waves away the other derro and tells them to get back to work while he goes on to explain what’s going on down here. He tells you that while he has provided the Emperor with the gift of gunpowder weapons to combat the Felkans he states that he is bored with creating such things. He wants to move on to other, more interesting things. You don’t exactly understand everything he’s saying, but apparently this includes altering trolls in such a way to use them as living weapons. Obviously success has eluded him, but Marik claims it will work eventually he just needs more time. He then goes on to say that the schematics of the weapons he’s already made should be somewhat known to surfacers now and that perhaps those weapons could be built in another factory run purely by surfacers. Allowing him of course to work more unencumbered by the possibility of his experiments causing problems in the future. “I will report this to the Emperor and allow him to decide, but personally I can’t say as this is a good use of time and resources. Better to perfect the weapons you’ve already created than to play around with uncertain ones.” “Funny you should say that Eternal, because one could say the same of your kind.” “There is a difference. Obviously when I was born I was still not a mindless untrainable animal like a troll.” “No, but obviously an effort was made to make you better than the average human and then some. No effort was spared in perfecting you and your kind until some of you actually survived the entire process.” Marik’s words about the creation of the Eternals peaks your interest. “Tell me Marik, how much were you involved in the creation of the Eternals?” “Sadly very little. Most of my ideas for the…project were considered a bit too extreme, then that fool Jacob somehow managed to gain complete control of the project. The advantage of being a surfacer I suppose. If I had control, you and your fellow classmates would’ve been even better. In fact you wouldn’t have had to endure much training at all, you would’ve instantly been BORN with natural skill and talent. (Sigh) If only the Emperor saw the wisdom in continuing the project with me at the helm…I could truly create some living weapons.” “What are you talking about exactly?” “For someone so close to the Emperor, I see he keeps you out of the loop on things and if he is then there must be a reason for it. I have probably said too much…I suggest if you want more answers then speak with him. Go now, I have work to do. Much work to do.” When Marik says this he begins making nervous twitches and see him eye a nearby metal door, which makes you suspicious. > You confront Marik Whatever Marik is hiding behind that door has peaked your interest. For all you know he’s hiding something that could possibly threaten the Empire. You make your way towards the door and Marik comes just shy of physically stopping you. “Hey, where are you going?” he asks. “I wanna see what’s behind that door now step aside Marik.” “You can’t! There’s dangerous material in there. Chemicals and stuff like that. Safe for us derro, but completely toxic to a human like you.” “Well as you pointed out not a few minutes ago, I’m better than the average human, now stand aside.” “You can’t!” Marik shrieks and begins giggling. “Marik, last chance to get outta my way…” Marik suddenly stops his annoying giggling and begins snorting and hyperventilating while giving you a hostile stare. It would almost be amusing if you could see the humorous side of it. “Alright fine! But you’re going to spoil the surprise!” he shrieks and gets out of your way. You step to the metal door and open it up to a platformed level, which overlooks a huge room. It’s nearly the size of a small hamlet you think. There are several ladders that descend down to the lower level which contain translucent containers all hooked up with tubing and connected with each other and large strange machines. Even from this distance you can make out small figures floating in liquid within the containers. You’re about to ask Marik what all this is when suddenly you hear him scream… “SURPRISE!” And then the back of your head is blown off by Marik’s personal pistol. Your lifeless body slumps to the floor soon after part of your brains do. Marik and his fellow derro cover up your death by explaining to the Emperor that the escaped trolls killed you. The Emperor temporarily mourns your death, but ultimately decides that if something like a troll killed you, then perhaps you weren’t worthy of your status after all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You pull out your dagger and begin repeatedly stabbing the troll in the arm to the point where you nearly sever it. Its grip loosens as it hisses in pain. You nearly get your head punched in by the troll’s other fist, but you fall backwards on the walkway in time for it to miss. The troll fails to follow up with another attack since it attempts to remove the sword from its neck presumably to regenerate properly. Taking advantage of this breather you cast a lightning blast right at the sword, which acts as a great conductor to fry the troll inside and out. You have to back up just so the troll’s flailing body doesn’t hit you. Eventually when the troll’s body is burned to a crisp and you’re fairly certain you’ve fried its vital organs enough that it can’t possibly regenerate you stop and the troll crashes to the floor still smoking and twitching. Then you retrieve your sword and finish decapitating the troll just to be sure. You take a small rest after your battle, though you keep alert for another troll. Thankfully no more show up, but there’s still the question about Marik and where the hell the trolls came from in the first place. Both potential answers are going to lie in the basement you imagine so that’s where you continue your exploration. The factory basement is in just about as much disarray as the ground floor and there are a few dead bodies, but no trolls or derro for that matter. You search until you come across a large metal door which has been partially ripped off its hinges, a long set of stairs go down. It would appear there is an even deeper part of the factory. You go down the stairway, which seems almost like forever and when you finally get to the bottom, you hear a lot of shouting in an unfamiliar language. You walk down a corridor and find a large open area with presumably more factory equipment, but some of it looks very strange. You see machines, which are emanating a lightning arc similar to the spell you can cast or what nature does during a storm. Other things look like giant tubes with something inside, though from this distance you can’t tell what. Among the machinery you also see short heavily armored figures busily trying to clean up the area. You can’t even see their faces, but you’re guessing these are the infamous derro. “You there! Who are you surfacer? Are you one of the factory workers?” a deep voice suddenly calls to you from the right. You look and see a very pale figure wearing white coat covered in blood and a bunch of other things you can’t identify. This bald wild-eyed fellow is about the same size as the armored figure so you come to one conclusion. “The Emperor sent me. Are you Marik?” “I am Marik…you must be the one he refers to as his son. But why would the Emperor send you here?” “I was only given orders to come here, but within such time I faced two trolls that apparently slaughtered not only many factory workers, but its supervisor AND several of the Emperor’s Eyes! I had thought they might’ve killed you as well, but since that is not the case, I am hoping that you can shed some light on the situation.” “Shit, I had a feeling one of them escaped up there, but not two. And I assumed that the fucking poncy wizard would at least be able to handle it. Figures that fop wouldn’t have the stones when faced with such a beast, let alone two of them.” “Escaped? Excuse me, but what the hell were trolls doing here in the first place? And why did you not send men to help kill the beasts?” “If you have not noticed by the mess already, but my men and I have been dealing with trolls down here as well.” “It looks as if you were not fighting them when I arrived and you still have not answered why there were trolls down here in the first place?” “I know you’re held in high regard by the Emperor and obviously your skills are impressive if a scrawny thing like you can handle two adult trolls, but you will cease questioning me in such a manner now surfacer!” “I will question your competence if you are the reason for this disaster! These trolls have just caused a stop in production which is vital to the Emperor’s war on the Felkan Kingdom!” Marik’s expression begins to show more aggression though he’s smiling at the same time. He almost looks as if he’s going to break into laughter. “Surfacer, I have known the Emperor much longer than YOU have even been alive! Maybe you’re unfamiliar with the complexities of our relationship, so I will let your words pass as ones of a concerned child for his parent’s wishes. But NEVER question my competence ever again! I am the very reason the Emperor is able to pursue a successful war on the Felkans in the first place! My work here is to find even better ways to crush his enemies! The trolls? Part of my experiments as new weapons for the war! Sometimes experiments fail! Science is not always exact! Do you think YOU were the first Eternal?” “Yes, I’m well aware I was among the first successful ones, but that still doesn’t excuse why you sent no men to at least scout the factory if you believed trolls had escaped.” “The Emperor should’ve told you more about our people then. We derro do not step foot on the surface if we can help it. My people may have an alliance with the Emperor, but that alliance does not extend to such madness.” “I was lead to believe madness was a common derro trait.” “It is, but even then there are limits! Indeed I may very well be among the most mad and even I will not soil myself by setting foot on your surface world.” “But the factory is enclosed, you’d still be shielded from the sun if that is death to your kind.” Marik begins laughing in a tone that is much different from his deep voice. It’s an annoying ear piercing laugh. “Your ignorance of the derro is embarrassing as is usual for a surfacer. I suggest you learn more in your pitifully short lifespan. Ask your Emperor for guidance, perhaps he will have the patience to tell you more about us, I do not. I have work to do for the Emperor.” Marik says and turns away from you. His fellow derro have been standing by watching the pair of you the entire time as if ready to act if violence should break out. Violence may still occur if Marik continues to act dismissively towards you. “Do not walk away from me derro! You still have much to answer for! What exactly is it that you are doing here? What is so important that you so carelessly endanger the war effort? You will give me answers of substance that I can give to the Emperor!” Your words cause Marik to stop. “Your loyalty to the Emperor is admirable. Tell me though, what gives you cause to believe that you’d make it out of here to able to report to him?” “Trust me derro, I may indeed not be able to take all of you, but YOU I would make an example of.” Marik once again makes that annoying laugh again. “Your knowledge of the derro continues to lack. If you truly knew anything, you’d know that death is not something the derro fear.” “And now it is you who do not listen. I said nothing of killing you, I said make an example of. After I beat you within an inch of your life, I’d drag your bloody body to the surface which you obviously loathe so much. I thank you for exposing your flaws within our short meeting.” Marik turns to face you once again. He studies you as if to assess if you’re being serious. He realizes you are. “Well, I’ll be. A surfacer nearly as mad as a derro, for it is the only explanation for your threats that you speak out of your ass and ignorance. Heh. Very well then perhaps we do have something in common. Come with me then Eternal, I will satisfy your questions and then you can go tell the Emperor that we’re not just playing with our dicks down here.” Marik waves away the other derro and tells them to get back to work while he goes on to explain what’s going on down here. He tells you that while he has provided the Emperor with the gift of gunpowder weapons to combat the Felkans he states that he is bored with creating such things. He wants to move on to other, more interesting things. You don’t exactly understand everything he’s saying, but apparently this includes altering trolls in such a way to use them as living weapons. Obviously success has eluded him, but Marik claims it will work eventually he just needs more time. He then goes on to say that the schematics of the weapons he’s already made should be somewhat known to surfacers now and that perhaps those weapons could be built in another factory run purely by surfacers. Allowing him of course to work more unencumbered by the possibility of his experiments causing problems in the future. “I will report this to the Emperor and allow him to decide, but personally I can’t say as this is a good use of time and resources. Better to perfect the weapons you’ve already created than to play around with uncertain ones.” “Funny you should say that Eternal, because one could say the same of your kind.” “There is a difference. Obviously when I was born I was still not a mindless untrainable animal like a troll.” “No, but obviously an effort was made to make you better than the average human and then some. No effort was spared in perfecting you and your kind until some of you actually survived the entire process.” Marik’s words about the creation of the Eternals peaks your interest. “Tell me Marik, how much were you involved in the creation of the Eternals?” “Sadly very little. Most of my ideas for the…project were considered a bit too extreme, then that fool Jacob somehow managed to gain complete control of the project. The advantage of being a surfacer I suppose. If I had control, you and your fellow classmates would’ve been even better. In fact you wouldn’t have had to endure much training at all, you would’ve instantly been BORN with natural skill and talent. (Sigh) If only the Emperor saw the wisdom in continuing the project with me at the helm…I could truly create some living weapons.” “What are you talking about exactly?” “For someone so close to the Emperor, I see he keeps you out of the loop on things and if he is then there must be a reason for it. I have probably said too much…I suggest if you want more answers then speak with him. Go now, I have work to do. Much work to do.” When Marik says this he begins making nervous twitches and see him eye a nearby metal door, which makes you suspicious. > You report to the Emperor While part of you wants to confront Marik on your suspicions that he’s not telling you everything you get the impression that you’ve pushed your luck enough with taking an aggressive stance. There are some unknown factors going on here and you’d probably be better off just reporting back to the Emperor about all this, he knows Marik and the derro better than you do. “I’ll leave you to it then and I shall tell the Emperor that the situation here has been dealt with along with your suggestions for a second factory.” Marik seemingly ignores your statement and goes back to ordering his fellow derro. You make your way to the exit and Marik suddenly calls out to you. “Yes on your way Eternal, back to your accursed surface. Its days are numbered you know and that will be the day that…hehehehehe…what was I…talking about? Back to work you lot!” On your way out you tell the Eyes to continue guarding the factory until further notice and make your journey back to the capital. When you get to the Emperor’s room, he’s hunched over a large map and placing small metal figures in certain locations. “There you are m’boy. Did you hear? We just took Fort Soot. A great victory this day, though we’ll need to shore up our own defenses there. I trust by your presence you’ve taken care of whatever problem happened at the factory and it is now up and running again.” “I regret to tell you that the problem has only been partially solved.” “Oh? I trust you have a good reason for this oversight.” You explain everything to the Emperor hoping that he isn’t mad, fortunately he isn’t or at least he isn’t mad at you. “Bah, damn that crazy derro and his experiments! I told him I just need the practical, not fancy super weapons! Trolls, what the hell is he thinking? You know his race was once on the losing end of a war with those beasts? Marik himself would’ve been eaten by one had I not stepped in and saved his ass. (Sigh) Okay I’ll have a levy of peasants build another factory then, I probably should have several anyway, I just didn’t want to waste time and resources on building them right now.” “So…you’re just going to give Marik what he wants?” “Why not? We gave Gruz what he wanted didn’t we and he’s certainly less deserving. Besides Marik’s right, he’s already provided the schematics for most of the cannons, muskets, pistols and other types of weapons. I’m fairly certain that we can have purely run human factory now. The common folk aren’t entirely dim. Marik can have his little so called secret workshop, maybe he’ll even come up with something useful.” “I’m still concerned about Marik. He seemed like he was hiding something more than just experimenting on trolls though.” “Of course he was. He probably has something really twisted going on behind closed doors, but for all his madness, secrets and genuine derro isolationist xenophobia, he’s loyal. He’ll do nothing that will harm the Empire especially since he has no desire to rule it. Derro pacts are for life and to break one would be as offensive to them as walking on the surface.” The Emperor says this with a lot of certainty though you’re still a little apprehensive, however the Emperor has had more dealings with the derro and known Marik much longer than you have so he’s more knowledgeable on this than you. “Very well, if you are not concerned, I shall cease my own.” “Good, but I’m glad you’re suspicious. Being paranoid keeps your wits sharp and alert. Besides you might be partially right. While I know Marik doesn’t have any intentional desires to harm the Empire his work may unintentionally harm it as shown with this incident with his troll experiment. I will have a personal talk with him just to keep him on a tighter leash so to speak.” “I’m still confused one thing though, why send me?” “Because you get things done of course. What was I going to do, have Jacob send in more Eyes? You see how well that worked and given that the problem was trolls it’s a good thing I sent you in rather than lose even more of them. I knew what ever it was that was the problem, you’d be able to handle it.” “I see, its just I thought my role in the Felkan war was more important.” “It is, it is my son and this was still related to said war and trust me it was far more important than winning some small battle somewhere.” The Emperor steps forward towards you and gives you that familiar hand on your shoulder bit when he’s about to tell you something he feels you should take to heart. “Listen, I know you probably would like to be fighting in the thick of the war, slaying Felkans left and right and I know you’d be successful and good at it. However you are MORE than just some glorified soldier to be sent in to fight and die. Hell, I may have even told you to take a back up of Eyes had I known about the trolls with this recent incident.” “Wait, are you trying to protect me?” “Of course I am. Yes, I’m well aware that your life is built on danger and that you’ve never been a stranger to life and death situations, but I’d like to keep your chances of staying alive at least out of the impossible zone. You have been indispensible to me and I am not going to risk sending you into a meat grinder just because you fight well. You are much more important. I need you as not only a commander of troops, but also as my personal agent. Now is there anything else?” You take the opportunity to tell the Emperor about what exactly is going on your side of the warfront. He seems pleased with the information and tells you that you can go back to assist Krozer’s battalion now that your assignment is over. The Emperor goes on to say how he continues to be proud of your accomplishments and that he means it when he says just how important you are to him. You leave the palace with a great feeling of pride and accomplishment. Not just that though, you feel like you’re genuinely appreciated and coming from the Emperor… well there can be nothing better. Since you haven’t been gone long, you make your way back to the ex-Felkan town you just conquered and find that Krozer’s army hasn’t moved yet. “You’re back already? That was quick, we hardly had time to miss you.” Major Krozer says. “Well I knew you’d all be lost without me, so I figured I’d better hurry back as soon as possible.” “Another joke? Before you left you were attempting some of those.” “So what’s been going on here?” “Nothing really, after we executed the twenty you suggested, the inhabitants here are truly submissive. I was just about to pick some troops to stay here and head out with the rest. I believe the next target is a small village called Gelim. Not much of one, but then this is further away from the Felkan heartland of course.” You think for a moment and say something that shocks the major. “The troops could probably due with a small rest. Let’s stay here another three days, it’s not going to make that much of a difference. I doubt that little village is going to provide much of a resistance, let alone be able to shore up any sort of strong defense within that time. We’ve got the Felkans pinned in from here and last reports say they’re focusing most of their troops on the frontlines or against those gnolls to the east. ” “Alright, the attempts at humor are one thing, but NOW I’m starting to worry a shape shifter has taken your place.” “No worries, let’s just say I’m in a less grim mood.” “You are? Then the gods must truly do exist because I never thought I’d see the day. I guess whatever it is that the Emperor had you doing went well then.” “It did, but this has nothing to do with that. I just want to make sure the soldiers are well rested and not run ragged. Make sure you have them gather here in the town square in a few moments, I’d like to give them a speech about how their efforts have been appreciated.” “By the Emperor?” “I’m sure he does too, but I figured the troops might wants to know that someone a little closer to them appreciates their hard work even if he doesn’t always say it.” “I’ll get them together, but I imagine they’ll enjoy the fact that you’re allowing them three days rest more. Still, some encouraging words do help the morale for some.” “I hope you know that this appreciation includes everyone here and that especially means you. This battalion is under your command and you’ve done a fine job running it.” “I think officially out outrank me, given that you report directly to the Emperor.” “Perhaps, but while I have given my own input with strategies and battle, I have always allowed you to make the final decisions because this is still your command and I respect that and you. The Empire is stronger with you leading some of its armies.” “Wow, I’m nearly speechless right now. Keep complimenting me like that and I’ll start to think you’ve developed intimate feelings for me.” “What?” “Oh you know. Saying to me I’d look prettier out of my uniform and how we should talk in private. Then the next thing I know you’re telling me to drop down and give you head.” “I…I wouldn’t! I mean, I wouldn’t abuse my position of authority like that!” you exclaim. The major laughs a bit. “Relax, I know you wouldn’t. The whole time on this assignment I haven’t seen you take an interest in anyone.” “Why would I? I’m supposed to be focusing on the task of destroying the Felkans, not indulging in baser pleasures.” “Mm, perhaps, but not everyone is so single minded in their duties or get their fun from the battlefield like you seem to do. Why do you think we have a group of whores follow our army around? Do you not think some of the soldiers sneak off with each other sometimes? I won’t even get into some of the stuff we probably aren’t seeing after we crush one of the Felkan population zones. And as for the abuse of power from a superior, you’re probably one of the first that I know that hasn’t even tried to use it as some sort of threat to have sex with someone of a lower rank.” “Yes well I suppose that’s the ugly side of war.” You reply. Now the major starts laughing out loud even more. “You’re hilarious! Brutality and carnage on a grand scale, death and destruction everywhere, and you think whores, a few random rapes and some sexual harassment is the ugly bit. That’s why I like you, because you don’t know any better. Anyway thanks for the compliments and know that I have also found that despite your usual overly serious demeanor it’s been a pleasure serving with you as well and I look forward to our continued positive relationship.” “As do I.” With you and Major Krozer at a friendlier understanding of one another as well as the Emperor’s earlier words to you, you feel a lot happier about your current assignment. > Year 25 While the war with the Felkans seemed to be going smoothly, the situation has changed somewhat. The Empire still has the upper hand, but unfortunately this has become a three-way entanglement. The gnolls tribes harassing the Felkans on the western borders apparently weren’t just separate chaotic bands of raiders, but rather a full-fledged conquering horde. After smashing most of the Felkan defenses they have proceeded further into the heartland and that’s where they finally came to blows with the Empire. So far the gnolls been more of an annoyance to the Empire, but its been distracting enough that it’s given the Felkans enough time to retreat and regroup further north. The Felkans are much reduced in strength now, but they are still definitely not a defeated nation yet. If anything their resolve has gotten stronger and their defenses have too. Last reports tell of how the orcs attempted to break through the defenses of the city of Yaquan only to be nearly wiped out by large weapons mounted to the city’s towers that apparently harness the power of lightning. One blast ripped through the ranks of the heavily armored orcs and spread like a chain of death killing most of them instantly. These new “lightning guns” are no doubt the inventions of the gnomes. You heard Captain Gruz was amongst the casualties which would put orc leadership in jeopardy, but since there are so few of them left, the remainder of their now decimated number have regrouped under Roldan’s command who is busily trying to figure out a way to proceed without losing half of his troops in the process. So far though the gnolls have been making that task difficult with their own ongoing attacks. The only upside to all this is the Felkans seem to be playing up to their typical siege mentality and not making any sort of counter attacks probably hoping that the Empire and the gnolls will continue to kill each other to the point where nobody is in any position to attack them anymore. Of course that just means they’re getting further entrenched. If enough time passes it may very well make most assaults on what’s left of them extremely costly. Meanwhile you and Alison have been mostly fighting off the gnoll hordes on a regular basis. You’d like to press further west to take the fight to them, but you know you need to stay in occupied Felkan territory to either help defend the main army or to support it when the time finally comes to make the final push on the Felkans. Lately most of your days are dull waiting or slightly less dull combat since the gnolls themselves rely mostly on numbers and terror rather than skill. The terror factor isn’t much of one when going against the hardened troops of the Empire and numbers account for nothing when faced with Empire discipline. Still, its frustrating not being allowed to do more and tensions are starting to run hot by everyone in the high command… “But if we continue to attack as we have, we will risk losing it all! I urge you my Emperor for the good of the Empire we should withdraw now! What can it hurt? We have proven our point and even acquired some territory in the process. Why not just let those barbaric gnolls fight over the scraps what’s left of the ruins.” Jacob says to the Emperor. “Jacob, I said it before I don’t give a damn what the costs are, I won’t let those fucking gnomes continue to mock from behind their smug little walled cities! And I didn’t come this far to be turned back by the incursions of some mongrel dog men or guns that shoot a little light! I don’t care what it takes we aren’t going to rest until the Felkan Kingdom ceases to exist along with those fucking gnomes!” the Emperor shouts and flips a nearby table. “Why are you yelling at me? I’m just giving my honest opinion on the situation, I’m not even in charge of the military matters!” Jacob whimpers. “But you ARE in charge of the other Eternals, and guess who is leading the majority of our forces in Felkan territory? That’s right, Roldan. Now I’ll grant you that he’s been fairly successful up until this point, but the fact that he hasn’t made any progress for the past few months is severely starting to decrease my faith that he can get the job done.” “He’s doing the best he can under the circumstances and he’s the best qualified general we have, I don’t think he should be replaced.” “I’m beginning to think I should start replacing SOMEONE.” The Emperor unsubtly threatens. You’ve seen the Emperor mad before and it’s never a good thing. Poor Jacob is trying to stand his ground on this matter, but its obvious the man is incredibly scared for his life. To be fair you actually can see his concerns on the situation, but this thing with the gnomes…well it’s an ongoing source of irritation for the Emperor. Jacob is also taking a verbal lashing for something that really isn’t his fault. True, he monitors the progress of the other Eternals, but in reality it’s not anything meaningful. Not to mention it actually was you who originally convinced the Emperor that Roldan should lead on the main assault force, yet the Emperor has either forgotten this fact, or perhaps still insists on seeing it all as Jacob’s fault. Since you still feel partly responsible you decide to interject to try to calm things down. “Emperor, I could take over Roldan’s command if you prefer, though I would still like to keep him on as part of the command staff.” “While I’m sure you would no doubt do a much better job, I’d rather have you’re where you currently are.” The Emperor says which somewhat disappoints you. “Of course, of course. Wouldn’t want to risk your precious loyal dog.” Mistress suddenly remarks, this draws an angry glance of both you and the Emperor. “What? I’m just saying what Jacob’s thinking, personally I don’t really give a shit what drone you decide to sacrifice in your futile war.” Mistress says causing Jacob’s eyes to widen, shake his head and raise his hands assuring that he thought no such thing. “Ever with the clever remarks. Too bad the rest of your race isn’t half as clever, or you might not be a bunch of mercenaries.” “I’m not sure why we’re even relying on svelk scum anyway. Alison and I have been doing just fine fighting off the gnolls by ourselves for example.” You remark. “Alison? Oh, is that the name of the dirty blonde shield maiden that I’ve heard you’ve been getting close to? Tell me, when you’re sticking it to her do you try to visualize that its me?” A vulgar comment as usual from Mistress. Not unexpected either. While you’d be lying if it weren’t a little annoying, you certainly aren’t going to give her the satisfaction of a retort. “No answer? Are you not even going to stand up for the honor of your female plaything? Then again I suppose she isn’t worthy of it. I mean given that you experienced the best, why would you bother defending something so inferior?” Mistress continues to taunt. “Emperor, we are here to discuss the important business of crushing the Felkans, do we really have to listen to the boring and predictable slurs of this…dubious ally?” you ask. “No, of course we don’t. Hold your vile svelk tongue unless you’ve actually got something more worthwhile to contribute.” “I have contributed more than my fair share to your foolish crusade. I have come to the conclusion that this war is a losing proposition for my people. I won’t even go into the meat grinder you’ve got our mercenary bands dealing with on the Felkan front. And while I’m sure that may cause you much joy, we svelk are not mindless orc slaves and will NOT fall into your clumsy manipulative plans of convenient genocide through attrition. Yeah, we’re pulling out and moving on to greener pastures.” “Since when are you or any other svelk so concerned about the future of your people? You’re also acting like you’re in harms way and unless you’ve been sneaking off to fight alongside your kin, you’ve personally risked nothing. You’re also still being paid well so what the hell do you care?” the Emperor remarks. “You humans think you always have everything figured out about everything when you really don’t know shit. As I said, the price is too high, and we will be moving on to better opportunities.” “(Sigh) Stop being so damn dramatic, and what the hell do you really want?” the Emperor asks in an exasperated tone. Mistress proceeds to tell the Emperor that she’s quite serious about pulling out svelk aid unless she gets more support in return. “If you want our continued help, we do not believe that this General Roldan is able to accomplish his assault on the city of Yaquan in an efficient manner. So I would request that you either change the leadership or transfer us to the gnoll front at Major Krozer’s war camp.” Mistress says and glances at you. “No! We’ve been doing just fine without you! We don’t need morale falling low because svelk are infesting the camp.” You protest. “And here I thought you were a professional first and foremost. Open your eyes. Even you can see the benefit of our superior troops being directly added to your fighting force. Besides, I heard how you handled the first time you worked with svelk warriors before, surely if one of them gets out of line, you’ll just go on a bloodthirsty rampage to make a point of who is really in charge.” You look to the Emperor expecting him to say something about this matter, but he waves you over to speak with you privately. Mistress rolls her eyes and wanders over to one of the bookshelves while Jacob fumbles about with some papers. “Son, I’m going to include you in this decision, because this is something I think you feel strongly about and I’d rather have you in a positive state of mind. I don’t want to lose svelk support as they have been helpful despite their…well you know. I also have doubts about Roldan getting the job done as well, so the suggestion to replace him isn’t out of the question as far as I’m concerned. In any case I’m either going to have to replace him or send all the svelk to the gnoll front, but I know that won’t exactly make you happy.” > You suggest that Roldan be replaced While you don’t agree with the idea that Roldan won’t be able to get the job done, you’d rather have him replaced than get an influx of svelk troops. You’d try to suggest yourself again, but you know the Emperor has made his mind up on the matter. “If you believe General Roldan cannot get the job done, then I suppose it might be better if he’s replaced.” You remark which gets Jacob’s disapproval. “But he can do it! Replacing Roldan at this point would be folly!” “Enough Jacob! The decision has been made! General Roldan will be replaced and demoted!” the Emperor remarks. “Demoted?” “Yes demoted! Be happy he isn’t being executed for incompetence on the battlefield!” “But I thought he was just going to be replaced! My Emperor I beg you not to do this! Roldan has worked so hard for his position!” “Jacob, is there some sort of reason why you keep arguing this point with me? Delusions? Stupidity? A death wish perhaps?” the Emperor asks and Jacob shuts up immediately. Mistress stretches and yawns before commenting on the situation. “If you all are done in this pointless exercise male ineptitude, is there anything else I need to waste my time with here?” “Yes, we’re done. Get the hell out of my chambers and take Jacob with you. And while I wish I could chat with you my son, I still have to speak with Marik. I sometimes wonder if he just uses his madness as an excuse to be absent minded and claim he didn’t know there was a meeting. I just hope he’s actually made progress on his project he convinced me to proceed with.” The Emperor remarks and the rest of you leave his chambers. You expect Mistress to make some sort of remark as you’re all walking out of the palace, but she ends up quickly walking ahead of you instead. Jacob doesn’t speak with you either, he glances at you a couple times, but he’s obviously a little upset that you supported the Emperor’s decision to have Roldan replaced. Really though, you can’t worry about it. As far as you’re concerned hanging on to your sanity is a lot more vital. You can only imagine how the svelk would’ve grated on your nerves if they had been transferred, especially since you’re not actively advancing any more, but rather just defending against gnoll attack. Idle svelk mercs in between the down time isn’t something you want to deal with. Alison is certainly happy to hear about the close call of playing host to a bunch of svelk. “Well I’m certainly glad you supported the Emperor’s first decision, I don’t think morale would’ve been great around here with dark elves in the camp.” She says. “No, but I can’t say they’re that great now.” You reply. “What do you mean? There hasn’t been any major complaining that I know of, and I tend to keep apprised of the situation with my troops.” “Well, maybe it’s just me then. I’d like to be actively DOING something other than sitting around waiting to be attacked.” “Welcome to the army. You do know that boring waiting around in between battles is what we do right?” “I’m well aware that’s part of it, but its not like we need to sit here. We could at least be attacking the gnolls so as to make them no longer a threat. I mean we should be doing that anyway. After all, we’re going to have to deal with them eventually, better to do it now when we have the strength rather than later. I’ve heard other soldiers commenting about feeling something similar. And I would think that you probably would like to take the fight to the gnolls as well.” Alison nods. “Well, I can’t argue with you on that point. The troops are a little restless in that respect I suppose. I admit it would be good to get some of this pent up violence out of everyone’s system, but as you’ve said, the Emperor’s orders are to stay here.” “I don’t know, but I’m starting to think that maybe we should just NOT stay here.” “Seriously? You’d go against a direct order from the Emperor?” At this point you don’t know. You want to be loyal and follow orders, but your desire for battle is still there. Not to mention you know you could win if it came down to it. Surely the Emperor would approve if you were victorious. You decide you’re going to do it, you’re going to make a full attack on the gnolls. “It’s about time we took the fight to those mongrel dogs.” Alison says with a little enthusiasm, but then her cautious side comes out. “But what about the Emperor?” “You don’t need to worry about that. I will take full responsibility if he gets angry about it. I’ll just say I took command of your battalion.” “Hah, I always knew you were going to do that some day, anyway.” “Sorry, but I can’t think of any other way.” “Don’t apologize to me, I won’t have to face the Emperor’s wrath, well I hope I won’t at least.” “Like I said, don’t worry about that. And don’t worry about me either. I don’t want to sound prideful, but I’m fairly confident the Emperor won’t even get too angry with me, especially since I intend on wiping out the immediate gnoll threat.” A month goes by and you’re initially successful on your promise. The gnolls are no match for you in straight up combat. You even manage to save a few of the occupied Felkan communities from complete destruction and are welcomed as liberators. Just when you think you can drive the gnolls out entirely you’re dealt two big blows. One, the siege of Yaquan has not gone well since Roldan was replaced. It seems that General Ackerson has not only managed to fail in taking the city, but he’s also managed to lose so many soldiers that there has been a call for your battalion to support his losses. This couldn’t have come at a worse time mainly because now the gnolls who you thought you had on the run were craftier than it seemed. The gnolls have been breeding and training a large group of wyverns within a small mountain in the area. They’ve also been bringing reinforcements from beyond the Felkan borders. You’re taken off guard enough that you actually have to fall back before you’re completely overrun. If you leave to go to help General Ackerson, the gnolls are going to not only take back everything you gained, but will take your territory as well. However, if you stay to fight back the gnolls, you’d really be defying orders, not to mention possibly costing the Empire a needed victory against the Felkans. There isn’t much for it, you’ll have to split the battalion with Alison and decide which front you want to fight on. > You stay on the gnoll front As much as you wanted to be on the front lines of this war before, now you feel like you’ve got a score to settle with the gnolls. Not to mention you feel like you need to finish up what you started. “Are you going to be okay here?” Alison asks. “I’ll be fine, you just be concerned with your assignment because it sounds like General Ackerson isn’t exactly the best replacement and I’m now cursing myself for having Roldan removed at all.” “You couldn’t have known. Besides, do you really think having the svelk transferred here would’ve made things better for us?” “I dunno. Maybe we could’ve used the extra troops to combat the gnolls and at the same time Roldan would’ve still been in charge of the siege. Doesn’t matter now I suppose, let’s just make the best of it.” Within the next few days Alison and you say your final goodbyes before she leaves. Afterwards, you try to make the best of your defenses, but you’re stretched thin. You send a messenger to request reinforcements, but naturally most soldiers are being sent to the Felkan front. The gnoll hordes aren’t even being considered a credible threat, which couldn’t be further from the truth considering that you’ve been losing more territory to them and the fact is you just can’t protect it all due to lack of manpower. A couple more months go by and news on the Felkan front gets worse. The siege of Yaquan has been completely abandoned and General Ackerson’s forces are now in retreat. Word is he’s lost more than half of those under his command, and whatever remaining svelk mercs that were helping have left. You have no idea if Alison is one of those, but you have more pressing concerns of your own. You haven’t had much rest.You’ve had to use your magic with such regularity to combat the gnolls that its exhausting just to cast the simplest of destructive spells. Little by little your remaining soldiers have been getting whittled down. The ones still alive are drained and suffering from low morale. Within the week, there is another gnoll attack, a massive push to finally finish off the only viable defenders in the area. You make the gnolls earn every inch they take. The first two wyverns that appear in the distance, you strike down with a powerful lightning spell. Several of the initial attackers have their heads blown to gooey pieces by your troops’ muskets, and then you resort to tried and true methods of slaughter. You hack down several of their number before suffering any major wounds. Even then, you continue to fight with the determination of ten men. The bodies of gnolls pile up, the blood is everywhere and you’ve just suffered an injury that should’ve rightfully killed you, but you continue to fight. All the anger you feel at this situation is being directed utterly towards the gnolls until it finally burns itself out and your body pushes itself past its limitations of physical exertion. An axe cleaves into your skull, followed by another into your arm, severing it just enough to hang from a bit of tendon. You fall to your knees, then to the floor and that’s when you feel another axe to your back destroying your spine. A finally kick by a hefty boot to the face and the gibbering laughing howls of the gnolls is the last thing you hear.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While you don’t agree with the idea that Roldan won’t be able to get the job done, you’d rather have him replaced than get an influx of svelk troops. You’d try to suggest yourself again, but you know the Emperor has made his mind up on the matter. “If you believe General Roldan cannot get the job done, then I suppose it might be better if he’s replaced.” You remark which gets Jacob’s disapproval. “But he can do it! Replacing Roldan at this point would be folly!” “Enough Jacob! The decision has been made! General Roldan will be replaced and demoted!” the Emperor remarks. “Demoted?” “Yes demoted! Be happy he isn’t being executed for incompetence on the battlefield!” “But I thought he was just going to be replaced! My Emperor I beg you not to do this! Roldan has worked so hard for his position!” “Jacob, is there some sort of reason why you keep arguing this point with me? Delusions? Stupidity? A death wish perhaps?” the Emperor asks and Jacob shuts up immediately. Mistress stretches and yawns before commenting on the situation. “If you all are done in this pointless exercise male ineptitude, is there anything else I need to waste my time with here?” “Yes, we’re done. Get the hell out of my chambers and take Jacob with you. And while I wish I could chat with you my son, I still have to speak with Marik. I sometimes wonder if he just uses his madness as an excuse to be absent minded and claim he didn’t know there was a meeting. I just hope he’s actually made progress on his project he convinced me to proceed with.” The Emperor remarks and the rest of you leave his chambers. You expect Mistress to make some sort of remark as you’re all walking out of the palace, but she ends up quickly walking ahead of you instead. Jacob doesn’t speak with you either, he glances at you a couple times, but he’s obviously a little upset that you supported the Emperor’s decision to have Roldan replaced. Really though, you can’t worry about it. As far as you’re concerned hanging on to your sanity is a lot more vital. You can only imagine how the svelk would’ve grated on your nerves if they had been transferred, especially since you’re not actively advancing any more, but rather just defending against gnoll attack. Idle svelk mercs in between the down time isn’t something you want to deal with. Alison is certainly happy to hear about the close call of playing host to a bunch of svelk. “Well I’m certainly glad you supported the Emperor’s first decision, I don’t think morale would’ve been great around here with dark elves in the camp.” She says. “No, but I can’t say they’re that great now.” You reply. “What do you mean? There hasn’t been any major complaining that I know of, and I tend to keep apprised of the situation with my troops.” “Well, maybe it’s just me then. I’d like to be actively DOING something other than sitting around waiting to be attacked.” “Welcome to the army. You do know that boring waiting around in between battles is what we do right?” “I’m well aware that’s part of it, but its not like we need to sit here. We could at least be attacking the gnolls so as to make them no longer a threat. I mean we should be doing that anyway. After all, we’re going to have to deal with them eventually, better to do it now when we have the strength rather than later. I’ve heard other soldiers commenting about feeling something similar. And I would think that you probably would like to take the fight to the gnolls as well.” Alison nods. “Well, I can’t argue with you on that point. The troops are a little restless in that respect I suppose. I admit it would be good to get some of this pent up violence out of everyone’s system, but as you’ve said, the Emperor’s orders are to stay here.” “I don’t know, but I’m starting to think that maybe we should just NOT stay here.” “Seriously? You’d go against a direct order from the Emperor?” At this point you don’t know. You want to be loyal and follow orders, but your desire for battle is still there. Not to mention you know you could win if it came down to it. Surely the Emperor would approve if you were victorious. You decide you’re going to do it, you’re going to make a full attack on the gnolls. “It’s about time we took the fight to those mongrel dogs.” Alison says with a little enthusiasm, but then her cautious side comes out. “But what about the Emperor?” “You don’t need to worry about that. I will take full responsibility if he gets angry about it. I’ll just say I took command of your battalion.” “Hah, I always knew you were going to do that some day, anyway.” “Sorry, but I can’t think of any other way.” “Don’t apologize to me, I won’t have to face the Emperor’s wrath, well I hope I won’t at least.” “Like I said, don’t worry about that. And don’t worry about me either. I don’t want to sound prideful, but I’m fairly confident the Emperor won’t even get too angry with me, especially since I intend on wiping out the immediate gnoll threat.” A month goes by and you’re initially successful on your promise. The gnolls are no match for you in straight up combat. You even manage to save a few of the occupied Felkan communities from complete destruction and are welcomed as liberators. Just when you think you can drive the gnolls out entirely you’re dealt two big blows. One, the siege of Yaquan has not gone well since Roldan was replaced. It seems that General Ackerson has not only managed to fail in taking the city, but he’s also managed to lose so many soldiers that there has been a call for your battalion to support his losses. This couldn’t have come at a worse time mainly because now the gnolls who you thought you had on the run were craftier than it seemed. The gnolls have been breeding and training a large group of wyverns within a small mountain in the area. They’ve also been bringing reinforcements from beyond the Felkan borders. You’re taken off guard enough that you actually have to fall back before you’re completely overrun. If you leave to go to help General Ackerson, the gnolls are going to not only take back everything you gained, but will take your territory as well. However, if you stay to fight back the gnolls, you’d really be defying orders, not to mention possibly costing the Empire a needed victory against the Felkans. There isn’t much for it, you’ll have to split the battalion with Alison and decide which front you want to fight on. > You go to the Felkan front Given that you feel responsible for the problems going on at Yaquan you think you need to go if only to try to fix things. “I had a feeling you’d want to go to the Felkan front.” Alison remarks. “Someone is going to have to fix this mess. I’m just hoping I can do something about it.” Within the next few days Alison and you say your final goodbyes before you leave. You hope Alison will be able to deal with the gnolls with less troops, but she tells you to not worry about her problems and just focus on the task you’ll have to accomplish. Your march to Yaquan is an uneventful one, but when you arrive you’ve got more than enough to deal with. General Ackerson’s war camp is one of the most unorganized camps you’ve ever seen. He obviously isn’t that well respected either as he is arguing with a couple of his lieutenants and a mage of some sort. “Galen, I’m sick of hearing your excuses, just get it done!” Ackerson exclaims to the mage. “Oh yes, its so easy for you isn’t it? Just sitting in the back giving orders and not being in the line of immediate fire. Magic isn’t an unlimited art that we wizards can just keep on doing for days on end with no rest! It’s bad enough you wasted all of our golems and we’re reduced to salvaging the remnants. By the Emperor, at least Roldan tried to think things out, I wonder if you even passed the academy or if you just had a relative that promoted you…” At this point Ackerson lunges at Galen and the pair have to be broken up. You help keep a little order and when they see who you are everyone straightens up a little more. “Is this what’s been going on here? Petty bickering and incompetence on a scale that could be classified as treason? Everyone needs to shut the fuck up right now, because I’m not going to say this again…” Doesn’t take long for you to establish a new order of things. Technically General Ackerson is supposed to still be in charge of this operation, but given your close ties to the Emperor you aren’t debated. While you manage to reorganize the army and take new approach of attack, you can still see why Roldan was having so much trouble with this city. The gnome lightning guns are still ripping through most of the troops and its taking all the magic of the remaining mages left just to upkeep a simple barrier so the war camp can’t be targeted. In fact you wish Roldan was still here just so you could promote him back up to help you, but unfortunately he was killed in battle shortly after his demotion. (Another one of Ackerson’s bright ideas to make a frontal assault on the city again) The svelk mercenaries at this point have left claiming that no amount of money is worth this meat grinder. All of this makes you really wish you hadn’t supported the Emperor’s idea to replace Roldan. You decide to have tunnels dug under the city and bring it down that way. It takes longer than you’d like, but you can’t rely on mage support to help with it due to their main concern to upkeep the barriers. Eventually your men break through to the sewer system where you believe it should be an easy victory from there, but unfortunately the gnomes trapped the hell out the sewers and you lose several troops in the process. One of the Felkans even manages to sneak about the sewers and collapse the invasion tunnels setting your victory back. Meanwhile your troops on the surface are faring no better, though they fear you more than they did Ackerson or even Roldan and that fear is enough for them to make that push to finally break down the gates. Sensing true victory at last, you decide that you’re going to join the fight personally. You enter the streets of the city with your troops, mopping up whatever pitiful resistance remains. There isn’t much though and soon the city is yours and you can’t wait to write to Alison about your great victory. Unfortunately she will only hear of it from someone else. War being what it is, is always a messy endeavor. Just when one thinks a battle is over, there is always that last hold out or trap and that’s what gets you. The city’s mayor reportedly stayed in the city hall the entire time of the siege and is supposedly still alive. You, Ackerson and a couple of other officers enter the city hall for the purpose of dictating the Empire’s acquisition of this city, the changes that will come AND seeing if the mayor is willing to comply. Hopefully he does since it saves time on replacing him with your own bureaucrats which might take a while. No sooner have you entered and you see the place is completely empty. At first you think its just because people went elsewhere, but it doesn’t take long for you to not feel right about the place. “We need to get out of here…” is the last thing you utter before the entire place explodes. One final trap set by the Felkans. You are eventually found half burned, blown up and crushed by the rubble. You’re barely breathing by the time they dig you out, and by the time they carry you out, you’ve already expired. Your victory and death at Yaquan is remembered and used as a propaganda point for the Empire for the remainder of their war with the Felkan Kingdom.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 25 While the war with the Felkans seemed to be going smoothly, the situation has changed somewhat. The Empire still has the upper hand, but unfortunately this has become a three-way entanglement. The gnolls tribes harassing the Felkans on the western borders apparently weren’t just separate chaotic bands of raiders, but rather a full-fledged conquering horde. After smashing most of the Felkan defenses they have proceeded further into the heartland and that’s where they finally came to blows with the Empire. So far the gnolls been more of an annoyance to the Empire, but its been distracting enough that it’s given the Felkans enough time to retreat and regroup further north. The Felkans are much reduced in strength now, but they are still definitely not a defeated nation yet. If anything their resolve has gotten stronger and their defenses have too. Last reports tell of how the orcs attempted to break through the defenses of the city of Yaquan only to be nearly wiped out by large weapons mounted to the city’s towers that apparently harness the power of lightning. One blast ripped through the ranks of the heavily armored orcs and spread like a chain of death killing most of them instantly. These new “lightning guns” are no doubt the inventions of the gnomes. You heard Captain Gruz was amongst the casualties which would put orc leadership in jeopardy, but since there are so few of them left, the remainder of their now decimated number have regrouped under Roldan’s command who is busily trying to figure out a way to proceed without losing half of his troops in the process. So far though the gnolls have been making that task difficult with their own ongoing attacks. The only upside to all this is the Felkans seem to be playing up to their typical siege mentality and not making any sort of counter attacks probably hoping that the Empire and the gnolls will continue to kill each other to the point where nobody is in any position to attack them anymore. Of course that just means they’re getting further entrenched. If enough time passes it may very well make most assaults on what’s left of them extremely costly. Meanwhile you and Alison have been mostly fighting off the gnoll hordes on a regular basis. You’d like to press further west to take the fight to them, but you know you need to stay in occupied Felkan territory to either help defend the main army or to support it when the time finally comes to make the final push on the Felkans. Lately most of your days are dull waiting or slightly less dull combat since the gnolls themselves rely mostly on numbers and terror rather than skill. The terror factor isn’t much of one when going against the hardened troops of the Empire and numbers account for nothing when faced with Empire discipline. Still, its frustrating not being allowed to do more and tensions are starting to run hot by everyone in the high command… “But if we continue to attack as we have, we will risk losing it all! I urge you my Emperor for the good of the Empire we should withdraw now! What can it hurt? We have proven our point and even acquired some territory in the process. Why not just let those barbaric gnolls fight over the scraps what’s left of the ruins.” Jacob says to the Emperor. “Jacob, I said it before I don’t give a damn what the costs are, I won’t let those fucking gnomes continue to mock from behind their smug little walled cities! And I didn’t come this far to be turned back by the incursions of some mongrel dog men or guns that shoot a little light! I don’t care what it takes we aren’t going to rest until the Felkan Kingdom ceases to exist along with those fucking gnomes!” the Emperor shouts and flips a nearby table. “Why are you yelling at me? I’m just giving my honest opinion on the situation, I’m not even in charge of the military matters!” Jacob whimpers. “But you ARE in charge of the other Eternals, and guess who is leading the majority of our forces in Felkan territory? That’s right, Roldan. Now I’ll grant you that he’s been fairly successful up until this point, but the fact that he hasn’t made any progress for the past few months is severely starting to decrease my faith that he can get the job done.” “He’s doing the best he can under the circumstances and he’s the best qualified general we have, I don’t think he should be replaced.” “I’m beginning to think I should start replacing SOMEONE.” The Emperor unsubtly threatens. You’ve seen the Emperor mad before and it’s never a good thing. Poor Jacob is trying to stand his ground on this matter, but its obvious the man is incredibly scared for his life. To be fair you actually can see his concerns on the situation, but this thing with the gnomes…well it’s an ongoing source of irritation for the Emperor. Jacob is also taking a verbal lashing for something that really isn’t his fault. True, he monitors the progress of the other Eternals, but in reality it’s not anything meaningful. Not to mention it actually was you who originally convinced the Emperor that Roldan should lead on the main assault force, yet the Emperor has either forgotten this fact, or perhaps still insists on seeing it all as Jacob’s fault. Since you still feel partly responsible you decide to interject to try to calm things down. “Emperor, I could take over Roldan’s command if you prefer, though I would still like to keep him on as part of the command staff.” “While I’m sure you would no doubt do a much better job, I’d rather have you’re where you currently are.” The Emperor says which somewhat disappoints you. “Of course, of course. Wouldn’t want to risk your precious loyal dog.” Mistress suddenly remarks, this draws an angry glance of both you and the Emperor. “What? I’m just saying what Jacob’s thinking, personally I don’t really give a shit what drone you decide to sacrifice in your futile war.” Mistress says causing Jacob’s eyes to widen, shake his head and raise his hands assuring that he thought no such thing. “Ever with the clever remarks. Too bad the rest of your race isn’t half as clever, or you might not be a bunch of mercenaries.” “I’m not sure why we’re even relying on svelk scum anyway. Alison and I have been doing just fine fighting off the gnolls by ourselves for example.” You remark. “Alison? Oh, is that the name of the dirty blonde shield maiden that I’ve heard you’ve been getting close to? Tell me, when you’re sticking it to her do you try to visualize that its me?” A vulgar comment as usual from Mistress. Not unexpected either. While you’d be lying if it weren’t a little annoying, you certainly aren’t going to give her the satisfaction of a retort. “No answer? Are you not even going to stand up for the honor of your female plaything? Then again I suppose she isn’t worthy of it. I mean given that you experienced the best, why would you bother defending something so inferior?” Mistress continues to taunt. “Emperor, we are here to discuss the important business of crushing the Felkans, do we really have to listen to the boring and predictable slurs of this…dubious ally?” you ask. “No, of course we don’t. Hold your vile svelk tongue unless you’ve actually got something more worthwhile to contribute.” “I have contributed more than my fair share to your foolish crusade. I have come to the conclusion that this war is a losing proposition for my people. I won’t even go into the meat grinder you’ve got our mercenary bands dealing with on the Felkan front. And while I’m sure that may cause you much joy, we svelk are not mindless orc slaves and will NOT fall into your clumsy manipulative plans of convenient genocide through attrition. Yeah, we’re pulling out and moving on to greener pastures.” “Since when are you or any other svelk so concerned about the future of your people? You’re also acting like you’re in harms way and unless you’ve been sneaking off to fight alongside your kin, you’ve personally risked nothing. You’re also still being paid well so what the hell do you care?” the Emperor remarks. “You humans think you always have everything figured out about everything when you really don’t know shit. As I said, the price is too high, and we will be moving on to better opportunities.” “(Sigh) Stop being so damn dramatic, and what the hell do you really want?” the Emperor asks in an exasperated tone. Mistress proceeds to tell the Emperor that she’s quite serious about pulling out svelk aid unless she gets more support in return. “If you want our continued help, we do not believe that this General Roldan is able to accomplish his assault on the city of Yaquan in an efficient manner. So I would request that you either change the leadership or transfer us to the gnoll front at Major Krozer’s war camp.” Mistress says and glances at you. “No! We’ve been doing just fine without you! We don’t need morale falling low because svelk are infesting the camp.” You protest. “And here I thought you were a professional first and foremost. Open your eyes. Even you can see the benefit of our superior troops being directly added to your fighting force. Besides, I heard how you handled the first time you worked with svelk warriors before, surely if one of them gets out of line, you’ll just go on a bloodthirsty rampage to make a point of who is really in charge.” You look to the Emperor expecting him to say something about this matter, but he waves you over to speak with you privately. Mistress rolls her eyes and wanders over to one of the bookshelves while Jacob fumbles about with some papers. “Son, I’m going to include you in this decision, because this is something I think you feel strongly about and I’d rather have you in a positive state of mind. I don’t want to lose svelk support as they have been helpful despite their…well you know. I also have doubts about Roldan getting the job done as well, so the suggestion to replace him isn’t out of the question as far as I’m concerned. In any case I’m either going to have to replace him or send all the svelk to the gnoll front, but I know that won’t exactly make you happy.” > You accept svelk transfer You don’t like disagreeing with the Emperor’s strategic decisions and you certainly don’t want to deal with svelk in your camp, but from what you know of Roldan replacing him now wouldn’t be a good move as he is the best-qualified general. The only person you can think of that would be better is yourself, but the Emperor has made it quite clear he wants you to stay put, so you aren’t going to argue the issue. “If you believe the svelk can be useful as support on the gnoll front, then I shall figure out a way to make it work.” You remark, which seems to surprise the Emperor. “Mm, very well. You sure it won’t be a problem?” “No, no problem. However at the slightest sign of some sort of treachery or them not pulling their weight then I’ll suggest the next decree you pass be one that executes all svelk in Empire territory.” Hah, trust me, I’ve nearly had that one on the list for centuries. I know you’ll be able to handle this though. Just wish everyone was as competent as you.” The Emperor says and gives a glare at Jacob who is still briskly going through some papers. “I really do think Jacob is trying his best. He only wants what’s good for the Empire.” “Then he better start doing a better job. Anyway let’s get on with it.” The Emperor proceeds to tell Mistress that the svelk mercenary bands will be assigned to the gnoll front, but that they will ultimately answer to you and that any problems from them will result in mass executions. Mistress doesn’t seem at all bothered by this; in fact she simply chuckles and says that’s fine. The Emperor then goes on to tell Jacob that General Roldan better start making more progress soon or he will have another general take his place. Then he says he has to meet with Marik. “I sometimes wonder if he just uses his madness as an excuse to be absent minded and claim he didn’t know there was a meeting. I just hope he’s actually made progress on his project he convinced me to proceed with. Okay all of you are dismissed.” The Emperor remarks and the rest of you leave his chambers. You expect Mistress to make some sort of remark as you’re all walking out of the palace, but she ends up quickly walking ahead of you instead. Jacob on the other hand takes the opportunity. “I just wanted to thank you for once again trying to shield me from the Emperor’s wrath, though I fear that it won’t be long before my services are no longer needed. That day is coming soon. I know it.” “You’re worrying too much as usual. The Emperor knows you’re indispensible.” “No YOU’RE indispensible. That crazy derro Marik is indispensible. Even that svelk bitch is considered indispensible, though I really don’t know why. Me? I’m just another bureaucratic bean counting pencil-pushing advisor that’s getting old. There are several just waiting to take my place. You know I had twelve attempts to poison me in the last year?” “By who?” “By other bean counting pencil-pushing bureaucrats obviously. I’m sure you know that’s how I got my job. Eliminated the previous advisor. Of course with the way things are going, the Emperor himself is likely to do it personally. I just wish I could get him to see that this war is a drain on the Empire. Even if we win, the victory still won’t outweigh the amount of cost in resources, gold, population we spent to pursue it. I mean sure we have the land, but a lot of it has been rendered unusable due to the slash and burn policy that’s been favored. We haven’t even left a lot of people alive to tax! Now this thing with Roldan, I really don’t know what he expects me to do.” “How is internal security lately?” you ask. “Its fine. Good all things considered. The Eyes have successfully replaced the shadows it seems as far as that is concerned. Reputation is everything.” “Do you think you could re-assign some of them and it not affect domestic safety?” “What do you mean?” You explain that perhaps using some Eyes as assassins and spies might work better than the usual military scouts. Perhaps their expertise of blending in, stealth and other such tactics can get them to sneak in the city and bring it down from within. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. In fact, why didn’t the Emperor think of that? It’s certainly an idea worthy of consideration and Warrick would be an excellent candidate to lead such an operation. If the Emperor believes I have more input in this matter than I actually do, I might as well make such accusations true and hopefully successful for my sake.” Jacob remarks. “I’m sure this plan will hasten the fall of the Felkan Kingdom. You’ll have not one but two Eternals in vital positions on the front lines now.” “Don’t you mean three? You didn’t include yourself.” “Oh, well I’m doing my part sure, but…nevermind.” “But you want to be where Roldan is.” “I don’t even necessarily want to lead the main attack force at this point, I just feel like I should at least be part of it. I know the Emperor explained to me he doesn’t want to throw me into the meat grinder of war because he sees greater potential in me, but I feel like sometimes I’m not being able to live up to that potential.” Jacob pats you on the side of your arm. “Now you’re the one worrying too much. You are more vital to this war than you believe. This advice you just gave me proves that. The Emperor is just well…a little protective of you because he’s so proud of you. Can you blame him? Don’t worry; your day to really shine will come some day. Maybe even sooner than you think.” After Jacob’s minor pep talk you feel a little better about your own position, of course then you remember you now have a bunch of svelk assigned to your camp. Alison is probably slightly less happy about it than you are. “Was there nothing that could be done?” Alison asks. “I told you, it was either this or replace General Roldan and that would’ve been a major strategic mistake.” “Well are you going to be okay with this?” “Me? Sure. Guidelines have already been established, I’m ultimately in charge of them and believe me I’ve every intention to not letting them get away with shit. I’ll tell them as soon as they start arriving. In the meantime, let’s make arrangements for our new allied support. Better that we do it now before they think they can just make themselves at home here.” No sooner do the svelk mercenaries start arriving, you begin laying down the rules of how things are going to be to all the respective captains in private. They are of course unenthused about such things, but given that you didn’t dress them down in front of everyone most grudgingly comply with your decrees. There is one captain by the name of Eldolith, however who just manages to rub you the wrong way… “Yes, yes, I’ve already been briefed on the situation. We all have, so you can stop wasting your time by asserting your pitiable need for dominance.” Eldolith remarks. You look at the haughty svelk captain and you already know who you see before you. You’re feeling a mixture of things right now, but you told the Emperor that you were going to make this work, so you’re going to at least get a certain amount of enjoyment out of it. “But if I don’t keep reinforcing it, then you’ll never truly grasp the idea that you are subservient to me. And as we all know it’s important to keep the lesser born in their place. That is the svelk way is it not?” you say. Eldolith nearly makes a retort, but stops. You aren’t letting her off that easy. “Oh? You wish to say something else? Maybe that I am not a svelk and that I am the lesser born? Perhaps something about how humans are nothing more than hairless Sul Monkeys? Come on, say what you want. I’ve heard it all before by your kind and it’s the same old shit. Come on, just give me an excuse.” you say and then grab her by the throat and begin to squeeze while your hot breath invades her nostrils. Eldolith says nothing, she doesn’t even try to resist she just continues to stare at you defiantly, accepting of death if necessary or whatever else you have in mind. “You don’t fool me svelk bitch, deep down you’re scared…or maybe…maybe you’re getting excited? Yeah, I bet that’s it…I know what YOU like…” you say and your other hand begins to wander touching Eldolith’s body. Then you realize what you’re doing and you immediately stop and make haste back to the Empire side of the camp. Alison asks you if everything went all right, and you sharply dismiss her by exclaiming that of course everything is fine. Alison doesn’t take too much offense since she figures having the svelk in camp is probably going to put you in a bad mood. You wonder now if you didn’t want the svelk transferred here so you could have the opportunity to unleash some of your lingering desires. To get a gleeful sadistic pleasure of verbally abusing them or sending them on dangerous missions, or even killing one of them yourself if they step out of line. You don’t even want to dwell on what you felt like doing to Eldolith. Did Mistress plan this somehow? She couldn’t have. It was your choice. “By the Emperor, get a hold of yourself! This is all on you. You need to fight this. This temptation will be great, but you WILL overcome it. You will act like a professional. You need to act like a disciplined agent of the Empire. You will not lower yourself. The Emperor will give me strength of mind and body.” You mutter to yourself. While you’re struggling with your inner demons you also need to focus on the real problem at hand which are the gnolls. Alison, like you, would prefer to do something more proactive to them rather than constantly waiting around for their attacks. Given that you’re now stuck with them, here’s where the svelk will come in handy. You could send them in to regularly launch guerilla raids against the gnolls in their own territory, of course this might be seen as using them as “disposable warriors” which is something that they were complaining about while on the Felkan front. About the only other purpose would be to use them as scouts in order to prepare for a large counter attack against the gnolls. Of course you really aren’t supposed to be doing that, as the orders are clear that you are to remain in occupied Felkans lands just in case your support is needed elsewhere. > You use the svelk as skirmishers While you aren’t going to defy direct orders you figure you can at least lessen the gnoll attacks and keep the svelk out of your hair at the same time. Alison is certainly supportive of the idea. You tell the svelk leaders what you want done and how you want it done. You get no dissension or even any grumbles. They either realize you mean business or they’re all silently conspiring against you to strike at a later time. Probably both, but for right now its enough that they just obey your orders. The next few weeks are relatively calm ones. The svelk are doing a good job of keeping the gnolls so off balanced that they haven’t been attacking. The troops have enjoyed the respite from battle, though you’re a bit bored by the continued lack of it. Still, you’re getting a bit of enjoyment out the svelk having to do all the grunt work and follow your orders. Eventually the svelk start losing some of their number and that’s when the complaints begin to start. Naturally they choose the one captain that is most likely to get under your skin… “What?” you ask when Eldolith enters your tent. “My comrades and I wish to discuss the terms of our current assignment.” Eldolith says. “Terms? There are no terms. You are to continue harassing the gnolls. What don’t you understand? It’s a simple enough task even for you.” Eldolith pauses. She wants to say something insulting. Something derogatory, but she can’t and she knows it. “Are we really so loathsome to you?” she asks. “Hah! Is this a trick question? I mean you are joking right?” you reply. “No, I’m being quite serious. I mean I know what you’re doing, we all do. You’re sending us out to fight the gnolls day after day with barely any rest. You’re hoping that we’ll either all get killed off, or we’ll all just end up leaving.” “You don’t miss a thing do you, guess that’s why you’re part of the higher born eh? Hey, you’re mercs, if you don’t like the job you can always quit right?” “Right, and we already protested about our less than stellar position on the Felkan Front. If we leave this job under the same circumstances, well it isn’t very good for our mercenary reputation now is it? Even if there is it the truth that the Empire is just using us as cannon fodder because they ran out of orcs!” “You’re breaking my heart and the hearts of everyone else that has great love for your kind, oh wait nobody likes your kind. Get out of my tent, I’ve got nothing more to say on this matter…” you say and wave your hand dismissively. Eldolith is beginning to get angry. She can’t even form a sentence. Instead she looks behind her and goes back to the entryway of your tent and makes sure it’s closed. Then she turns around with a hostile stare. “Seriously? You really think you have a chance? Alright then, make your move.” You remark expecting Eldolith to attack you. Instead she takes off her sword sheath and begins unstrapping some of her armor. “What the hell are you doing?” “I’ll be doing you in a few moments. That is what you want isn’t it?” she says. It takes you a moment to collect your thoughts before you can answer. “While I won’t deny your beauty, if you think you can fuck your way out of this situation, you’re sorely mistaken.” “No, I don’t. But we have to come to some sort of compromise.” Eldolith says and finishes removing most of her clothing. She gets on all fours and begins crawling towards you in a seductive motion. You might not want it to, but this situation is definitely arousing you. Its not really Eldolith physical attractiveness though, it’s the opportunity to see this svelk so humbled that she has no choice but to debase herself before you like a common whore. “Okay…so what did you have in mind?” you ask as you look down on Eldolith who is now kneeling before you and starting to unbuckle your own belt. “Oh perhaps maybe you could rotate the attacks on the gnolls? Like every few days perhaps your troops could launch raids on the gnolls instead? It isn’t like…(mmmm) you can’t spare a few. It would break up their monotony of not doing anything and we can get a chance to… (mmmm) rest.” “Ahhh, alright alright, just shut up and keep doing what you’re doing.” You say and just let yourself enjoy being serviced and imagining that it’s really Mistress. The next day you approach Alison about the new plan. While she isn’t opposed to the idea, since she thinks the troops shouldn’t get complacent anyway, she’s a little puzzled by your sudden change. “I thought your plan was to force the svelk to leave or have them all slowly get killed off by the gnolls.” “Eh, like you said. We probably shouldn’t let the troops get too complacent. Besides, the occasional foray into the gnoll occupied land isn’t really breaking orders.” “Uh huh.” Alison says with a minor smirk. “What?” “Nothing.” “No, you’ve got something to say, so say it.” You say with accusation. “Sheesh, kind of defensive aren’t you? I don’t care if you’re sticking it to that svelk captain. I told you long ago when we started having our own intimate encounters that we didn’t have any hold on each other. So enjoy your little svelk piece of ass, I know you have…a preference for that.” Alison’s remark makes you angry. “It’s not even like that Alison! Its not about sex, its about her utter humiliation and…” “Hold on there, I don’t need details! Look, I’m just going to tell you this. Whatever arrangement you have with her, just make sure you keep on top of it. Because I know you think you have everything under control, but in my eyes she’s just doing what women have been doing since the beginning of time.” “And what’s that?” “Manipulating a man with her pussy. And she’s a svelk on top of everything else, so that makes her fives times as tricky. I’d watch it if I were you.” “Alison, I think I have more experience with svelk females than you do, unless you aren’t telling me something.” “Ha ha, you wish. And keeping within that subject, do NOT even think about trying to orchestrate some sort of bizarre three way with us. I’m not into women and I’m definitely not into svelk.” Alison remarks. “Wasn’t planning to.” “Good, now I guess we better decide which platoon is going to go out there to raid the gnolls.” The plan is set into motion and there are no major complaints from Empire soldiers, it would appear that some of them indeed were getting itchy for combat. The svelk mercs are also satisfied or at least not complaining as much. As for you, you’ve been able to sate your desire for battle, by taking it out on Eldolith. You enjoy bedding her whenever you can and you are in no way gentle about it. You’re fairly abusive verbally and physically, but Eldolith just takes it in silence, or when you want her to, you make her beg or even thank you for the things you do to her. And the whole time you’re still fantasizing that it’s Mistress. You even call Eldolith that sometimes. It gets to a point where you don’t even let Eldolith go out on missions, you basically make her your personal “pleasure girl.” A month goes by and the siege on Yaquan is finally successful. A few Eyes managed to infiltrate and bring the walls down from within and from there, Roldan’s army did the rest. While you’re pleased to hear about a victory for the Empire, your own orders remain the same. You’re so busy enjoying degrading Eldolith that you’ve lost a little sight of what you were born to do. You don’t notice it, but Alison certainly does. “Is this a good time to speak with you?” Alison asks looking cautiously into your tent. “Sure. What’s up?” you say as you sharpen your sword. “I just wanted to tell you that apparently we’ve been making so many successful raids on the gnolls that they’ve been pulling back. We could advance and take their territory if we wanted to. I wouldn’t be surprised if the surviving Felkans even welcomed us as liberators.” “That would certainly be a change from how they usually welcome us, which is not at all.” “Indeed. So…?” Alison asks as if you have something more to say. “So what?” “Well, I just thought that maybe you had heard something from the Emperor. A messenger from him perhaps. I mean the Yaquan siege was successful and there are no signs that we are needed to support General Roldan’s army anytime soon. I mean it’s starting to get a bit frustrating just sitting here not really advancing especially when we’re beginning to beat back the enemy.” “Haven’t heard anything, so our orders to hold this position still stand. Sorry.” You say continuing to sharpen your sword. Alison stares at you with dismay. “Yeah.” Alison says and starts to leave, but you stop her. “Is there a problem?” “Just getting restless because I don’t feel like I’ve been actively doing anything lately. You know something YOU used to feel before you became so enamored with your svelk slave girl.” “So…what? You want me to visit your tent sometime? Because I can do that, but you told me …” Alison interrupts you with more exasperation. “No, contrary to your belief, my world does not revolve around your dick. What I AM getting concerned about is my battalion. I had hoped this command would involve a lot more active combat and less waiting around. If I wanted to do that, I could’ve stayed in Rask. You used to feel the same way as I remember.” “Alison, orders are orders, you should know that better than anyone. What do you want me to do? We’re supposed to stay put and that’s that. All I can tell you is make the best of the situation.” “Like you have? Look I’m just saying, we’ve already bent orders by launching raids gnoll occupied land anyway. Surely we can do something similar now.” Alison has a bit of a point. > You take the land Orders or not, it would be foolish to not take advantage of the situation. You’re going to support Alison’s decision to advance and if there are repercussions then you’ll take the responsibility. Alison seems relieved that you’ve listened to her and goes to make preparations. “Alison, before you leave, you were also right about me getting distracted. I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping my mind on what’s really important lately.” You say. “Well, I’m just glad you’re starting to come to your senses. However, I suppose in the scheme of things, there was no major harm done. You’re not the first guy to think with his dick and abuse his power. Congratulations, you’re true Empire officer after all!” Alison laughs and leaves. You don’t laugh because you were supposed to be better than that. When you think about it, you weren’t even the aggressor when you started your involvement. Hell, Alison was probably right about that too. Eldolith was manipulating you from the start. For all you know she was planted here by Mistress for that reason. For what exact purpose you’re not sure, but the best thing you can do is to put a stop to it right now. When Eldolith arrives in your tent, you’re packing up some supplies. “Good, right on time. We’re going to move out soon. You can go join your merc band and stay there, its over.” “What?” “You heard me. Figured you’d be happy about it.” Eldolith isn’t. “Are you fucking kidding me? After all the nasty vile degrading shit I did, you’re just tossing me aside like a common whore?!” “Well you did behave like one. And please don’t act like there wasn’t some sort of motive of your own. I rotated the raids. You got what you wanted as well, hope it was worth it.” Eldolith doesn’t answer she’s too mad to speak. Instead she just storms out of the tent, which gives you a little chuckle. “Sheesh, if I’d known that would piss her off so severely I would’ve done that a week ago.” You remark to yourself The battalion soon moves into the previously occupied gnoll territory and indeed it is as the scouts have been saying. The gnolls have completely pulled out or at least that have from the immediate area. There are probably still some attempting to hold the border territory and they are definitely still going to be beyond the border so defense is still a top priority. As for the Felkan communities, there isn’t too much left. The gnolls didn’t leave too many people alive. Your army makes the best of what settlements you do find in adequate condition. The Felkans offer no resistance; in fact they don’t show much emotion at all. Its like most are numb from whatever terror the gnolls caused. After a couple weeks go by scouts begin sighting gnolls lurking about on the outskirts of your perimeters. Not wishing to linger about like you have before, you and Alison agree to just move in and eliminate the rest of them. The initial assault is fairly successful, but then you are caught off guard and you curse yourself for not being more careful. The gnolls have been luring you into a false sense of superiority. The gnolls have been breeding and training a large group of wyverns within a small mountain in the area. They’ve also been bringing reinforcements from beyond the Felkan borders. You’re taken off guard enough that you actually have to fall back before you’re completely overrun. It is during the chaos of one of these retreats that revenge is finally enacted. After doing battle with a small band of gnolls, you get separated from the main Empire battalion. You never do get a chance to meet up with them again, you do however bump into a group of svelk. You don’t even have time to react before you’re riddled with svelk crossbow bolts. You collapse to the ground, bloodied and dying. In typical svelk fashion Eldolith shows up now that you’re in no condition to do anything to her. “My mother isn’t going to like this, but I don’t give a shit. Besides, you were starting to get cozy with that blonde monkey again, which made this whole stupid idea of hers pointless.” Mother? Could Eldolith’s mother be Mistress? Eldolith crouches near your body and whispers in your ear. “My only regret is that you’re not going to experience the pain you fucking deserve. Don’t worry though, you will be quite a sight when they find your body though.” With this final threat in your mind, you die of your wounds. The svelk carry your body all the way back to Empire occupied territory where Eldolith does work to it personally. Then she orders it left so that Empire soldiers can find it before leaving the area with her group completely. Members of Alison’s battalion find it and assume that perhaps the gnolls got a hold of you, but when Alison sees that your body has been practically flayed, your genitals have been cut off and stuffed in your mouth along with your own dagger shoved up your rectum, she knows it was most likely Eldolith. Alison decides the blame the gnolls anyway. Mainly because it rallies the troops to fight harder and partly because while she had no love for Eldolith, she understands why she did it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While you aren’t going to defy direct orders you figure you can at least lessen the gnoll attacks and keep the svelk out of your hair at the same time. Alison is certainly supportive of the idea. You tell the svelk leaders what you want done and how you want it done. You get no dissension or even any grumbles. They either realize you mean business or they’re all silently conspiring against you to strike at a later time. Probably both, but for right now its enough that they just obey your orders. The next few weeks are relatively calm ones. The svelk are doing a good job of keeping the gnolls so off balanced that they haven’t been attacking. The troops have enjoyed the respite from battle, though you’re a bit bored by the continued lack of it. Still, you’re getting a bit of enjoyment out the svelk having to do all the grunt work and follow your orders. Eventually the svelk start losing some of their number and that’s when the complaints begin to start. Naturally they choose the one captain that is most likely to get under your skin… “What?” you ask when Eldolith enters your tent. “My comrades and I wish to discuss the terms of our current assignment.” Eldolith says. “Terms? There are no terms. You are to continue harassing the gnolls. What don’t you understand? It’s a simple enough task even for you.” Eldolith pauses. She wants to say something insulting. Something derogatory, but she can’t and she knows it. “Are we really so loathsome to you?” she asks. “Hah! Is this a trick question? I mean you are joking right?” you reply. “No, I’m being quite serious. I mean I know what you’re doing, we all do. You’re sending us out to fight the gnolls day after day with barely any rest. You’re hoping that we’ll either all get killed off, or we’ll all just end up leaving.” “You don’t miss a thing do you, guess that’s why you’re part of the higher born eh? Hey, you’re mercs, if you don’t like the job you can always quit right?” “Right, and we already protested about our less than stellar position on the Felkan Front. If we leave this job under the same circumstances, well it isn’t very good for our mercenary reputation now is it? Even if there is it the truth that the Empire is just using us as cannon fodder because they ran out of orcs!” “You’re breaking my heart and the hearts of everyone else that has great love for your kind, oh wait nobody likes your kind. Get out of my tent, I’ve got nothing more to say on this matter…” you say and wave your hand dismissively. Eldolith is beginning to get angry. She can’t even form a sentence. Instead she looks behind her and goes back to the entryway of your tent and makes sure it’s closed. Then she turns around with a hostile stare. “Seriously? You really think you have a chance? Alright then, make your move.” You remark expecting Eldolith to attack you. Instead she takes off her sword sheath and begins unstrapping some of her armor. “What the hell are you doing?” “I’ll be doing you in a few moments. That is what you want isn’t it?” she says. It takes you a moment to collect your thoughts before you can answer. “While I won’t deny your beauty, if you think you can fuck your way out of this situation, you’re sorely mistaken.” “No, I don’t. But we have to come to some sort of compromise.” Eldolith says and finishes removing most of her clothing. She gets on all fours and begins crawling towards you in a seductive motion. You might not want it to, but this situation is definitely arousing you. Its not really Eldolith physical attractiveness though, it’s the opportunity to see this svelk so humbled that she has no choice but to debase herself before you like a common whore. “Okay…so what did you have in mind?” you ask as you look down on Eldolith who is now kneeling before you and starting to unbuckle your own belt. “Oh perhaps maybe you could rotate the attacks on the gnolls? Like every few days perhaps your troops could launch raids on the gnolls instead? It isn’t like…(mmmm) you can’t spare a few. It would break up their monotony of not doing anything and we can get a chance to… (mmmm) rest.” “Ahhh, alright alright, just shut up and keep doing what you’re doing.” You say and just let yourself enjoy being serviced and imagining that it’s really Mistress. The next day you approach Alison about the new plan. While she isn’t opposed to the idea, since she thinks the troops shouldn’t get complacent anyway, she’s a little puzzled by your sudden change. “I thought your plan was to force the svelk to leave or have them all slowly get killed off by the gnolls.” “Eh, like you said. We probably shouldn’t let the troops get too complacent. Besides, the occasional foray into the gnoll occupied land isn’t really breaking orders.” “Uh huh.” Alison says with a minor smirk. “What?” “Nothing.” “No, you’ve got something to say, so say it.” You say with accusation. “Sheesh, kind of defensive aren’t you? I don’t care if you’re sticking it to that svelk captain. I told you long ago when we started having our own intimate encounters that we didn’t have any hold on each other. So enjoy your little svelk piece of ass, I know you have…a preference for that.” Alison’s remark makes you angry. “It’s not even like that Alison! Its not about sex, its about her utter humiliation and…” “Hold on there, I don’t need details! Look, I’m just going to tell you this. Whatever arrangement you have with her, just make sure you keep on top of it. Because I know you think you have everything under control, but in my eyes she’s just doing what women have been doing since the beginning of time.” “And what’s that?” “Manipulating a man with her pussy. And she’s a svelk on top of everything else, so that makes her fives times as tricky. I’d watch it if I were you.” “Alison, I think I have more experience with svelk females than you do, unless you aren’t telling me something.” “Ha ha, you wish. And keeping within that subject, do NOT even think about trying to orchestrate some sort of bizarre three way with us. I’m not into women and I’m definitely not into svelk.” Alison remarks. “Wasn’t planning to.” “Good, now I guess we better decide which platoon is going to go out there to raid the gnolls.” The plan is set into motion and there are no major complaints from Empire soldiers, it would appear that some of them indeed were getting itchy for combat. The svelk mercs are also satisfied or at least not complaining as much. As for you, you’ve been able to sate your desire for battle, by taking it out on Eldolith. You enjoy bedding her whenever you can and you are in no way gentle about it. You’re fairly abusive verbally and physically, but Eldolith just takes it in silence, or when you want her to, you make her beg or even thank you for the things you do to her. And the whole time you’re still fantasizing that it’s Mistress. You even call Eldolith that sometimes. It gets to a point where you don’t even let Eldolith go out on missions, you basically make her your personal “pleasure girl.” A month goes by and the siege on Yaquan is finally successful. A few Eyes managed to infiltrate and bring the walls down from within and from there, Roldan’s army did the rest. While you’re pleased to hear about a victory for the Empire, your own orders remain the same. You’re so busy enjoying degrading Eldolith that you’ve lost a little sight of what you were born to do. You don’t notice it, but Alison certainly does. “Is this a good time to speak with you?” Alison asks looking cautiously into your tent. “Sure. What’s up?” you say as you sharpen your sword. “I just wanted to tell you that apparently we’ve been making so many successful raids on the gnolls that they’ve been pulling back. We could advance and take their territory if we wanted to. I wouldn’t be surprised if the surviving Felkans even welcomed us as liberators.” “That would certainly be a change from how they usually welcome us, which is not at all.” “Indeed. So…?” Alison asks as if you have something more to say. “So what?” “Well, I just thought that maybe you had heard something from the Emperor. A messenger from him perhaps. I mean the Yaquan siege was successful and there are no signs that we are needed to support General Roldan’s army anytime soon. I mean it’s starting to get a bit frustrating just sitting here not really advancing especially when we’re beginning to beat back the enemy.” “Haven’t heard anything, so our orders to hold this position still stand. Sorry.” You say continuing to sharpen your sword. Alison stares at you with dismay. “Yeah.” Alison says and starts to leave, but you stop her. “Is there a problem?” “Just getting restless because I don’t feel like I’ve been actively doing anything lately. You know something YOU used to feel before you became so enamored with your svelk slave girl.” “So…what? You want me to visit your tent sometime? Because I can do that, but you told me …” Alison interrupts you with more exasperation. “No, contrary to your belief, my world does not revolve around your dick. What I AM getting concerned about is my battalion. I had hoped this command would involve a lot more active combat and less waiting around. If I wanted to do that, I could’ve stayed in Rask. You used to feel the same way as I remember.” “Alison, orders are orders, you should know that better than anyone. What do you want me to do? We’re supposed to stay put and that’s that. All I can tell you is make the best of the situation.” “Like you have? Look I’m just saying, we’ve already bent orders by launching raids gnoll occupied land anyway. Surely we can do something similar now.” Alison has a bit of a point. > You stay put Alison might have a point, but you’re not willing to defy the Emperor so directly. “Nothing can be done, we’re just going to have to stay here.” You remark. Alison throws her hands up in the air and rolls her eyes. “That’s not going to change a thing you know.” You say. “Oh believe me, if I thought it would, I would’ve done it a long time ago. I’m just going to say one more thing, and I don’t give a shit if this is stepping out of my boundaries. This little arrangement you have with Eldolith is getting out of hand. I can’t believe I’d actually start feeling sorry for a svelk, but a couple nights ago when I was making my own perusal of our perimeter I caught her sitting by herself actually crying. I didn’t even think that was possible for a svelk. Of course she tried to play it off and told me to mind my business and called me a blonde monkey, but she wasn’t fooling anyone.” “Really? She was crying? Bitch doesn’t cry when we’re together, glad to hear she at least does though.” You chuckle. Alison is shocked by your gleeful sociopathic behavior. “By the Emperor, even when I served with fucking Kane, I never heard him speak in such a manner. Look I know most of what we do for the Empire is pretty ruthless and merciless. I also know you’re probably among the most cold hearted when it comes to such things. But what you’re doing is…” “What am I doing Alison? What am I doing that is oh so terrible? Didn’t you tell me years ago that you’ve run into Empire officers that take advantage of underlings via sexual favors?” “Yeah, and I never said that was right either. Also I said sexual favors. The key word being sex. Whatever it is you’re doing to Eldolith is going beyond sex and you know it.” “So what? She’s a svelk anyway. She’s not even a proper Empire citizen, let alone soldier. Hey I’ll tell you this, the svelk would treat ALL of us like I treat Eldolith if they could get away with it. I know that from experience.” “So that’s your excuse? Because a svelk woman was cruel to you, you’re going to act like her? You’re going to act like a svelk?” Alison says which causes you to grab her by her throat and slam her to the ground. Alison’s eyes widen in fear when she sees this person that she thought she knew stare at her with a murderous rage and squeeze tightly around her throat. “Don’t you EVER fucking accuse me of that. EVER. You do that again, and you’ll be in this tent right along side that svelk cunt. We’ll have that three way you said you didn’t want. And you know what? NOBODY is going to do a damn thing about it, because I’M in fucking charge here. Got it?” Alison continues to stare as you slowly release your grip to she can talk. “Got it.” She answers. You get off of Alison who can’t leave your tent quick enough. Later you begin to feel like you went a little too far with Alison. You really didn’t mean to, but her words just set you off. She should’ve known not to compare you to a svelk. The next day you try to speak with Alison, but she’s very distant. She doesn’t want to talk about what happened and as far as she’s concerned the pair of you should just keep things professional now. “Alison, I didn’t mean…” “If you really do have any sort of respect for me at all, you’ll just leave me be unless its concerning military matters.” Alison remarks. You back away from Alison, you realize you’ve destroyed your relationship with her forever. You go back to your tent and begin pacing back and forth thinking about your mistake. The more you think about it, the angrier you get. You’re angry with yourself mainly, but then you realize something. Eldolith was the initial aggressor in your arrangement. Not you. This might’ve been a set up right for something else right from the start. It was Mistress! She did this! She was jealous of your relationship with Alison, so Eldolith was sent to fuck it up. Even worse, you fell for it all and you hit the final nail in the coffin yourself. Now seething with fury, you storm out of your tent and head over to the svelk encampment. The svelk barely have time to realize who is attacking them before you cut down several of them. You start shouting for Eldolith to come out along with how you intend to The Empire encampment at first thinks gnolls are attacking, but when some of the troops arrive and see you massacring svelk, they aren’t entirely sure what to do. “Sir, calm down! I know you don’t…Ack!” a soldier says, trying to restrain you, but only gets a sword in the stomach for his trouble instead. Another soldier tries to reason with you, and you cut him down too. You’re completely unreasonable at this point and the only thing that’s going to stop you is either your death or Eldolith’s. As you set fire to three more svelk with a fireball you begin laughing at the carnage you’re causing. Still you aren’t going to be truly happy until you find Eldolith. And then you see her running in the distance. You cast a lightning bolt at her, which drops her instantly. You know it isn’t enough to kill her though, but that wasn’t your intent anyway. You pull out your dagger and walk towards her. “It’s time to learn another lesson Mistress. And its gonna hurt you a lot more than it will me.” You say. “I’m…not Mistress…you crazy monkey…” Eldolith manages to utter. At this point you don’t even hear her. Indeed it’s probably not only irrelevant at this point, but most likely unclear if you’re even mentally in the present because all you can see is Mistress’ face. You saw her face on all the svelk you killed. You enjoyed killing her over and over. And now you’re going to enjoy killing her again. Or at least you would have if a arrow through your neck didn’t stop you first. You gasp and clutch at your throat before you slump down to the ground a few inches away from Eldolith. “Shit! He’s dead!” one of the Empire soldiers remarks. “Hm. I’m surprised myself. It’s been awhile since I used a bow.” Alison answers. “You killed him! You really killed him!” another remarks. “Yes, but he needed to be put down. You saw him kill Empire soldiers.” Alison says. “But wasn’t he the Emperor’s right hand man or something?” “Yes. Are there any svelk left alive?” “No, I think he killed them all.” “Not all of them.” Alison says. Alison takes aim with her bow again and aims for Eldolith who is just starting to shake off the effects of the lightning bolt. She slumps down dead as well. “Okay this is what we’re going to do…” Alison says when turning towards her soldiers. Alison neatly explains away everything with a gnoll attack. It also helps that the gnolls did attack soon after this incident in greater force than before. Fortunately for Alison she’s well respected and liked by the soldiers so nobody ever contradicts her story. Not to mention they’re glad to be rid of the svelk and to a small degree you as well given how fearful they all were of you. Still, part of Alison always regretted that it had to be done at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t like disagreeing with the Emperor’s strategic decisions and you certainly don’t want to deal with svelk in your camp, but from what you know of Roldan replacing him now wouldn’t be a good move as he is the best-qualified general. The only person you can think of that would be better is yourself, but the Emperor has made it quite clear he wants you to stay put, so you aren’t going to argue the issue. “If you believe the svelk can be useful as support on the gnoll front, then I shall figure out a way to make it work.” You remark, which seems to surprise the Emperor. “Mm, very well. You sure it won’t be a problem?” “No, no problem. However at the slightest sign of some sort of treachery or them not pulling their weight then I’ll suggest the next decree you pass be one that executes all svelk in Empire territory.” Hah, trust me, I’ve nearly had that one on the list for centuries. I know you’ll be able to handle this though. Just wish everyone was as competent as you.” The Emperor says and gives a glare at Jacob who is still briskly going through some papers. “I really do think Jacob is trying his best. He only wants what’s good for the Empire.” “Then he better start doing a better job. Anyway let’s get on with it.” The Emperor proceeds to tell Mistress that the svelk mercenary bands will be assigned to the gnoll front, but that they will ultimately answer to you and that any problems from them will result in mass executions. Mistress doesn’t seem at all bothered by this; in fact she simply chuckles and says that’s fine. The Emperor then goes on to tell Jacob that General Roldan better start making more progress soon or he will have another general take his place. Then he says he has to meet with Marik. “I sometimes wonder if he just uses his madness as an excuse to be absent minded and claim he didn’t know there was a meeting. I just hope he’s actually made progress on his project he convinced me to proceed with. Okay all of you are dismissed.” The Emperor remarks and the rest of you leave his chambers. You expect Mistress to make some sort of remark as you’re all walking out of the palace, but she ends up quickly walking ahead of you instead. Jacob on the other hand takes the opportunity. “I just wanted to thank you for once again trying to shield me from the Emperor’s wrath, though I fear that it won’t be long before my services are no longer needed. That day is coming soon. I know it.” “You’re worrying too much as usual. The Emperor knows you’re indispensible.” “No YOU’RE indispensible. That crazy derro Marik is indispensible. Even that svelk bitch is considered indispensible, though I really don’t know why. Me? I’m just another bureaucratic bean counting pencil-pushing advisor that’s getting old. There are several just waiting to take my place. You know I had twelve attempts to poison me in the last year?” “By who?” “By other bean counting pencil-pushing bureaucrats obviously. I’m sure you know that’s how I got my job. Eliminated the previous advisor. Of course with the way things are going, the Emperor himself is likely to do it personally. I just wish I could get him to see that this war is a drain on the Empire. Even if we win, the victory still won’t outweigh the amount of cost in resources, gold, population we spent to pursue it. I mean sure we have the land, but a lot of it has been rendered unusable due to the slash and burn policy that’s been favored. We haven’t even left a lot of people alive to tax! Now this thing with Roldan, I really don’t know what he expects me to do.” “How is internal security lately?” you ask. “Its fine. Good all things considered. The Eyes have successfully replaced the shadows it seems as far as that is concerned. Reputation is everything.” “Do you think you could re-assign some of them and it not affect domestic safety?” “What do you mean?” You explain that perhaps using some Eyes as assassins and spies might work better than the usual military scouts. Perhaps their expertise of blending in, stealth and other such tactics can get them to sneak in the city and bring it down from within. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. In fact, why didn’t the Emperor think of that? It’s certainly an idea worthy of consideration and Warrick would be an excellent candidate to lead such an operation. If the Emperor believes I have more input in this matter than I actually do, I might as well make such accusations true and hopefully successful for my sake.” Jacob remarks. “I’m sure this plan will hasten the fall of the Felkan Kingdom. You’ll have not one but two Eternals in vital positions on the front lines now.” “Don’t you mean three? You didn’t include yourself.” “Oh, well I’m doing my part sure, but…nevermind.” “But you want to be where Roldan is.” “I don’t even necessarily want to lead the main attack force at this point, I just feel like I should at least be part of it. I know the Emperor explained to me he doesn’t want to throw me into the meat grinder of war because he sees greater potential in me, but I feel like sometimes I’m not being able to live up to that potential.” Jacob pats you on the side of your arm. “Now you’re the one worrying too much. You are more vital to this war than you believe. This advice you just gave me proves that. The Emperor is just well…a little protective of you because he’s so proud of you. Can you blame him? Don’t worry; your day to really shine will come some day. Maybe even sooner than you think.” After Jacob’s minor pep talk you feel a little better about your own position, of course then you remember you now have a bunch of svelk assigned to your camp. Alison is probably slightly less happy about it than you are. “Was there nothing that could be done?” Alison asks. “I told you, it was either this or replace General Roldan and that would’ve been a major strategic mistake.” “Well are you going to be okay with this?” “Me? Sure. Guidelines have already been established, I’m ultimately in charge of them and believe me I’ve every intention to not letting them get away with shit. I’ll tell them as soon as they start arriving. In the meantime, let’s make arrangements for our new allied support. Better that we do it now before they think they can just make themselves at home here.” No sooner do the svelk mercenaries start arriving, you begin laying down the rules of how things are going to be to all the respective captains in private. They are of course unenthused about such things, but given that you didn’t dress them down in front of everyone most grudgingly comply with your decrees. There is one captain by the name of Eldolith, however who just manages to rub you the wrong way… “Yes, yes, I’ve already been briefed on the situation. We all have, so you can stop wasting your time by asserting your pitiable need for dominance.” Eldolith remarks. You look at the haughty svelk captain and you already know who you see before you. You’re feeling a mixture of things right now, but you told the Emperor that you were going to make this work, so you’re going to at least get a certain amount of enjoyment out of it. “But if I don’t keep reinforcing it, then you’ll never truly grasp the idea that you are subservient to me. And as we all know it’s important to keep the lesser born in their place. That is the svelk way is it not?” you say. Eldolith nearly makes a retort, but stops. You aren’t letting her off that easy. “Oh? You wish to say something else? Maybe that I am not a svelk and that I am the lesser born? Perhaps something about how humans are nothing more than hairless Sul Monkeys? Come on, say what you want. I’ve heard it all before by your kind and it’s the same old shit. Come on, just give me an excuse.” you say and then grab her by the throat and begin to squeeze while your hot breath invades her nostrils. Eldolith says nothing, she doesn’t even try to resist she just continues to stare at you defiantly, accepting of death if necessary or whatever else you have in mind. “You don’t fool me svelk bitch, deep down you’re scared…or maybe…maybe you’re getting excited? Yeah, I bet that’s it…I know what YOU like…” you say and your other hand begins to wander touching Eldolith’s body. Then you realize what you’re doing and you immediately stop and make haste back to the Empire side of the camp. Alison asks you if everything went all right, and you sharply dismiss her by exclaiming that of course everything is fine. Alison doesn’t take too much offense since she figures having the svelk in camp is probably going to put you in a bad mood. You wonder now if you didn’t want the svelk transferred here so you could have the opportunity to unleash some of your lingering desires. To get a gleeful sadistic pleasure of verbally abusing them or sending them on dangerous missions, or even killing one of them yourself if they step out of line. You don’t even want to dwell on what you felt like doing to Eldolith. Did Mistress plan this somehow? She couldn’t have. It was your choice. “By the Emperor, get a hold of yourself! This is all on you. You need to fight this. This temptation will be great, but you WILL overcome it. You will act like a professional. You need to act like a disciplined agent of the Empire. You will not lower yourself. The Emperor will give me strength of mind and body.” You mutter to yourself. While you’re struggling with your inner demons you also need to focus on the real problem at hand which are the gnolls. Alison, like you, would prefer to do something more proactive to them rather than constantly waiting around for their attacks. Given that you’re now stuck with them, here’s where the svelk will come in handy. You could send them in to regularly launch guerilla raids against the gnolls in their own territory, of course this might be seen as using them as “disposable warriors” which is something that they were complaining about while on the Felkan front. About the only other purpose would be to use them as scouts in order to prepare for a large counter attack against the gnolls. Of course you really aren’t supposed to be doing that, as the orders are clear that you are to remain in occupied Felkans lands just in case your support is needed elsewhere. > You use the svelk as scouts This may be the most “rebellious” idea you’ve had, but you can’t just sit here like a Felkan waiting to get attacked. You need the battle, you were born for it. Not to mention if you’re actively fighting someone it should keep your mind off of other things. Now all you have to do is to convince Alison. True she is technically in charge of the battalion and you have always respected that, but if push came to shove you could easily pull rank on her and you’d rather not do such a thing. Fortunately, it doesn’t come to that. “It’s about time we took the fight to those mongrel dogs.” she says with a little enthusiasm, but then her cautious side comes out. “But this plan, is this approved by the Emperor?” “No, but you don’t need to worry about that. I will take full responsibility if he gets angry about it. I’ll just say I took command of your battalion.” “Hah, I always knew you were going to do that some day, anyway.” “Sorry, but I can’t think of any other way.” “Don’t apologize to me, I won’t have to face the Emperor’s wrath, well I hope I won’t at least.” “Like I said, don’t worry about that. And don’t worry about me either. I don’t want to sound prideful, but I’m fairly confident the Emperor won’t even get too angry with me, especially since I intend on wiping out the immediate gnoll threat.” “What happens if we get called to aid Roldan?” “If it’s before we launch our major attack on gnoll lands then we’ll comply. If it’s during, well we’ll give what aid we can. The main thing is to get this finished as quickly as possible hence why I’m sending svelk scouts first to give us info on key locations of where to strike.” “You think we can trust them to do their job properly?” “Who knows, but they’re still getting paid well and this is a much easier assignment than where they previously were, so they will most likely do their jobs. Besides I’ll make sure to send some of our stealthier troops with them and make a point of how their safety is also a priority if they don’t want me to think that they’re up to some sort of treachery. They won’t like it, but who gives a shit, they’re svelk.” Alison laughs at your comment and then says she’ll start getting her end of things prepared. You tell the svelk leaders what you want done and how you want it done. You get no dissension or even any grumbles. They either realize you mean business or they’re all silently conspiring against you to strike at a later time. Probably both, but for right now its enough that they just obey your orders. The next few weeks are semi-anxious ones while you’re still waiting for svelk intelligence reports. You really hope you can take down the gnoll horde or at least cripple it before anything on Felkan front pops up. You experience a few gnoll raids during this time, but they aren’t anything out of the ordinary. If the gnolls are on to any spying going on they haven’t changed their usual attacks. Eventually the svelk bands start trickling back in and while most of the information is just standard intelligence that will come in useful during the main attack, one of the reports is more alarming. “The gnolls have a large group of wyverns in that small mountain in the distance. From what I can tell they’ve been keeping them fed just enough that they’re still strong, but not enough that they’re fat and happy. They’re quite vicious. It’s a wonder the flying beasts don’t just eat the gnolls, but it would appear the mongrel dog men have a way with the creatures. Probably been training them since they hatched.” Eldolith remarks. “How many wyverns exactly?” you ask. “Not exactly sure, we couldn’t get that far into the caves without being detected since the place is extremely heavily guarded, but a good number of them. Enough to make things problematic if they attacked. I might hazard a guess that maybe they’ve been trying to lull you all into a false sense of complacency, but that almost seems a bit too cunning for gnolls. Still, its amazing what the…lesser born can accomplish when they aren’t taken seriously.” Eldolith says and gives you a look as if that comment was directed towards you specifically. Other svelk in the tent move a bit nervously since they know she’s possibly endangering them as well. Why is she testing you like this? Ignoring her comment you get back to the business at hand. “Okay, well this changes things a bit, but we’ll make arrangements. Glad you all found this out. Your actions have helped the Empire immensely. I’ll make sure you all get a little extra gold for this service, dismissed.” As everyone leaves your tent, Eldolith stays behind. “Is their something else you needed captain?” you ask as you mentally prepare yourself. “Funny I was going to ask the same of you. I thought that perhaps you’d like to discipline me for my earlier words.” “That won’t be necessary in light of your latest report on the gnolls. I’m willing to let it pass.” “Oh? Well perhaps maybe I’d like my reward then for my work.” Eldolith remarks and then moves over to you which causes you to move back. “What the hell do you think your doing?” “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to kill you. I know I’d be no match for a great warrior like you. I just thought that maybe you’d like to take this opportunity to get to know me better. I see you still staring at me sometimes, probably wishing that you’d done what you wanted to do when we first met. Your hand clenched around my throat, your loins pulsating and wanting to violate me. Well here I am.” At this point Eldolith takes your hand and wraps her lips around your index finger making “mmm” noises. While you can’t deny the desires, you also can’t help but find humor in this since you now know the clumsy intentions for certain. You pull your finger out of her mouth and laugh. “Why are you laughing?” Eldolith asks in annoyed tone. “You! This! This is a joke. I had my doubts at first when the svelk all got transferred here, but now I know for certain. Mistress put you up specifically to this to fuck with me. Well it won’t work.” “Are you sure? You seem pretty distracted.” Eldolith says attempting to be seductive again. “Ha ha, I won’t deny your beauty and my own fucked up cravings, but sorry your techniques in mindfuckery are sorely lacking and I’ve had the master, or Mistress if you prefer. You’re not even worth me worrying about anymore now that I know your game, which is that you’re just a pawn in Mistress’ own twisted game, whatever that is.” Your condescension and dismissal is bad enough, but what seems to set off Eldolith the most is… “Stop calling my mother by that ridiculous name! I don’t know why she insists on adopting your lesser born titles and nicknames!” “Mother?” you ask genuinely surprised. “Yes, and I told her this was a stupid idea in the first place! She should be taking steps to return our people back to their rightful place, not playing mind games with some monkey grunt. Ugh! I can’t believe I sucked on your finger.” “I’m sure it was everything you dreamed about. So you’re her daughter. I have to admit I thought there was a resemblance and it wasn’t just that haughty strut or those cold eyes that are so common to your race… wait so what is her real name?” “Ask her yourself! I’m done here. From now on I’m just doing my duty as a merc until I’m transferred out of this human hellhole.” Eldolith shouts and storms off. Well this little incident has been bizarre to say the least. Mistress basically sent her own daughter to have sex with you. You don’t pretend to understand the mind of the svelk, but what kind of fucked up family dynamic do they have and for what purpose? Is this some sort of ploy to keep you unfocused so you’ll make a critical mistake somewhere? Eldolith did mention about taking steps to return her people to their rightful place and how she’s obviously pissed that Mistress isn’t doing it. Of course knowing Mistress, maybe messing with you is part of the greater plan? But how? In any case you can’t worry about it now since you do have to get back to accomplishing your immediate task. You meet back up with Alison to tell her of the new plan due to the wyverns. “So, I saw your svelk girlfriend stomp out of your tent pretty mad. Trouble in paradise?” Alison asks. “Hardly. Just more svelk bullshit. And she isn’t my girlfriend.” “Hey, I said we weren’t betrothed to each other when we started our own little intimate encounters so you don’t need to hide anything. I hear enough things around the camp about you two.” NOW it hits you. “Oh shit, THAT’S what this is all about! I can’t believe it!” you start laughing again. “What?” Alison asks. “She’s jealous of you!” “Eldolith?” “No! Her mother, Mistress!” “Mistress is Eldolith’s mother? “Yeah, and she sent her daughter to have sex with me hoping it would fuck up OUR relationship!” You tell Alison everything that happened between you and Eldolith, you even confess everything that happened the first time you met her which is probably why the rumors were going around about the two of you. Alison believes you since you’ve never been one to lie let alone to her. “So wait… your former instructor is jealous of me so she sent her daughter to have sex with you?” Alison says. “It’s the only explanation.” “I dunno, I mean…wow…that seems pretty hard to believe.” “Believe it. The svelk mind is capable of some truly twisted petty shit.” “Well I can believe that, but I’m just having a hard time believing that a svelk female would be jealous of the appearance of…as they would say a monkey.” “Don’t say that, you’re beautiful.” You say. “Okay I know I’m not ugly, but beautiful is pushing it.” “Not at all. You’re a soldier, a warrior of the Empire, a maiden of battle striking fear and terror into the hearts of our enemies. I’ve seen you slay many in battle with a skill that many could only hope to achieve. I’ve seen your sword and armor drenched in the blood of our enemies and the dirt of the battlefield. With each battle you win, with each enemy you kill you carry out the will of the Empire and the Emperor. Your cause is so pure and righteous… how could I not find that beautiful? Alison smiles at your unique attempt at compliments. “Well when you make it sound like that, how can I disagree?” You and Alison spend some intimate time that night and in the next few days you begin your risky attack on gnoll territory. It goes well at first, and you aren’t suddenly taken by surprise when flocks of wyvern riders try to swoop in on the battlefield. Some of the peasants from the Felkan towns that were occupied by the gnolls actually welcome you as saviors and immediately pledge themselves to the Empire, mostly because the Felkan Kingdom failed to defend them in the first place and that any ruler is better than the gnolls. This comes somewhat as an unexpected benefit to your decision. After a month of slaughtering gnolls, two things major things happen, one of them good and one of them possibly bad. The siege on Yaquan is finally successful. A few Eyes managed to infiltrate and bring the walls down from within and from there, Roldan’s army did the rest. While you’re pleased to hear about a victory for the Empire, you’ve also just received a message telling you to return to the capital immediately. It would appear that your proactive approach to the gnolls has finally caught the Emperor’s attention. You don’t know if he’ll be angry or pleased, or what. The second part of this dilemma is that you are still trying to make that one big push to wipe out the majority of the gnoll forces. Alison naturally says that if you have to leave she can handle it without you and you have no doubt about that, but that’s not the issue. It’s more that you’d like to finish what you started and that if you are going to return to the Emperor to answer for your disobedience, you’d like to at least have a complete victory under your belt. Surely when the Emperor sees that you’ve crushed another enemy in his name and even added more subjects and territory he couldn’t be too mad could he? > You return immediately As much as it would be in your favor to return with a massive victory, you’re going to have to settle on what you believe to be an assured one instead. Putting off a direct order from the Emperor would only make matters worse for you and you believe you’re in enough trouble as it is. “You shouldn’t worry so much, didn’t you say that the Emperor probably wouldn’t get mad at you?” Alison asks. “Yeah I said that to convince myself that what I wanted to do was a good idea at the time. Doesn’t matter, what’s done is done and I will face whatever the Emperor has in store for me and as I said before, I’ll take full responsibility.” “You don’t need to do that. You know full well I was itching to get into it with the gnolls as too.” “Well, I want to anyway because I…um…uh” Alison raises an eyebrow when you start to stumble over your words; you quickly recover and change the subject. “Look, just proceed with the plan as normal. I think we’ve wiped out most of their wyvern forces and even their dire wolf cavalry. We need to at least push them off of all the territory they took from the Felkans. If I return…” “WHEN you return.” Alison interrupts. “Heh, okay. When I return we can figure it out from there. Oh and this goes without saying but keep an eye on the svelk. They’ve all been fairly professional since we started this aggressive campaign on the gnolls, but well you know, they’re svelk and who knows what they might be up to.” “Of course.” “Okay I guess that’s about it.” You linger a moment longer just sort of staring at Alison wondering if this will be the last time you ever see her again. It seems silly given how the pair of you have risked your lives in battle so many times that death could’ve just been a sword cleave or stray arrow away. This is different though and its not because you’re afraid of any execution that Emperor might inflict on you, its more because you’d hate to not have the chance to spend any more time with Alison. Is this what is known as “romantic” love? You’re familiar with the concept, it just has always seemed bizarre to you or at least not a priority. Love of the Emperor, love of the Empire, love of duty and battle are concepts you understand, but your feelings towards Alison are a little different even when you attempt to make the comparisons in your head. Sensing you’re more overcome with emotions than you’d admit, Alison once again takes your relationship that extra step further. “You don’t need to say it. I know.” She says and kisses you. With that pleasant feeling still persisting, you take your leave and make your long trip back to the capital. It’s a miserable trip since it practically rains the entire way, almost like the storm is following you. You cast your shield spell to give yourself some relief from the elements though it still doesn’t help when your horse has to trudge through some of the muddier back roads. Eventually you arrive at your destination. You enter the Emperor’s chambers and while lately when you’ve met with him he’s either hovering over his war table with maps and small figures on them or he’s speaking with Jacob and the others, but this time he’s alone and sitting in his chair. He isn’t reading either, he’s staring down at the floor as if deep in thought. “Why?” He asks without looking up. His voice doesn’t sound angry so much as it sounds distant. This simple question could only be asking you why you disobeyed his orders. You have several elaborate answers you could give. You’ve practiced them all, but now that you’re actually in front of the Emperor you know that no answer is going to help so you cut to chase. “I have no suitable excuse because there is none. There is no reason good enough to explain why I disobeyed your orders. I have returned merely to accept whatever punishment you have deemed suitable for my betrayal.” There is a pause of silence after your words. The Emperor slowly looks up at you and you feel his eyes staring right through you. The room even starts to feel more oppressive. Its as if you aren’t even alone with the Emperor, its like there are a thousand eyes upon you. Judging you. “I see. But you will not evade my question so easily. Now tell me why, I just need to know. Tell me. I will believe you my son.” The Emperor says in an almost soothing voice. So you tell him your reasons; that you were merely tired of sitting on the sidelines waiting around for the gnolls to continue attacking you. That you wanted to do something of more substance for the Empire. The Emperor listens to your explanation, but you get the impression he’s also studying you. “So…your reasons for disobeying my orders were entirely your idea? You were not influenced in any way?” “Of course.” “There wasn’t perhaps another person of the female persuasion who whispered in your ear late in the night about glory and power?” “No my Emperor. I mean unless you’re speaking of a petty a svelk ploy that I recently experienced. Mistress sent her daughter to…” “No, not her and not her spawn, though I’m well aware of that weirdness going on as well. Don’t worry I fully intend on having a chat with her as well since that sort of thing needs to stop. But that is somewhat related to what I’m getting at and who I KNOW you’re attempting to protect. That young major you’ve been having a relationship with.” “Alison? While our relationship is sometimes a physical one, it is always professional. It was my idea to launch the attack on the gnolls and I already gave the reasons. She had no choice but to follow my orders when I took command of her battalion. She is a good solider and was only following orders.” “And I suppose right now she’s still following your orders. Attacking the gnolls despite the fact that I wanted that battalion purely for defense of our current holdings or for reinforcements to our main attack force…” the Emperor at this point trails off and shakes his head with a sigh. He then gets up off his chair and walks over to you. The Emperor soon stands before you and he doesn’t look angry, but he does seem disappointed. In some ways that’s almost as bad and you hang your head down a little in shame. The Emperor then suddenly grabs your head with both hands and stares intently into your eyes for a few seconds, which feels like eternity as you stand completely still staring back. “Very well. I believe we are done here.” He says with a smile and lets you go. “That…that’s it?” “For now. Yes. You may go back to your battalion and finish your little campaign against the gnolls since I hear you are winning against them, however just kick them out of former Felkan lands and secure the borders. Do not push further into their original territory. We still can’t spread ourselves too thin, remember we still have the Felkan Kingdom to destroy.” “Understood.” “It better be, because I’m very serious about that order. Our recent victory at Yaquan is getting the ball rolling again and I don’t want to have to be worrying about you going rogue. Especially since I’m going to have need of you for the final push again the Felkans. It is obvious to me now that you do need to be on the frontlines of this war as a general even if your real position is technically higher than that.” “I…I don’t know what to say.” “Well, don’t thank me. This is probably something I should’ve done a long time ago. The fault is mine for wanting to protect you. I don’t know why, since I know you’re more than capable of handling yourself. I guess we’ll just chalk it up to parental protectiveness. In any case, finish up with those mongrel half dogs quickly because you’ll be called upon soon. That is all.” You leave the Emperor’s chambers unsure of how to feel exactly. You were expecting the worst, even death, but instead you’ve practically been rewarded for your actions. When you explain things to Alison she’s very happy for you. “See? Nothing but good news and I told you that you’d be coming back.” “Yeah…” you acknowledge. “Now what? I would think you’d be happy not only to be alive, but also be promoted to the Felkan frontlines where you always wanted to be.” “I…don’t know. I mean I am and it is a great honor and everything I wanted…but now…well I’m used to having you by my side.” “Well that’s sweet, but I’m sure you knew we’d eventually be separated at some point. I mean we are military and military gets moved around.” “I know. Still, I’m going to miss all our time together.” “You’re not going yet are you? I thought you were here until the gnolls were booted out.” “I am.” “Well let’s not get gloomy about things just yet, we’ve still got quite a few of those bastards running about. Let us spend our remaining quality time together kicking their asses and celebrating our victory afterwards.” You smile and agree. Perhaps it is best that you enjoy the time you do have together now rather than mope about such things. You do wonder if you’ll be able to stay in much contact with Alison when you’re reassigned. You’re skeptical that you’ll have much time to write letters to her and have no doubt that you’ll have to focus more on the Felkans. However, you can’t help but think she’ll still be in the back of your mind. And if it is only a memory then it’s a much better replacement for who was usually in the back of your mind. Maybe you and Alison aren’t exactly in love as most would see it, but as far as you’re concerned you’ll always love her for at least displacing the twisted memories of Mistress out of your head. > Year 28 You hate these baby-sitting missions, but when the Emperor wants something done right he always requests you personally to do it, so here you are marching hundreds of gnomes to their new home. As the army has been getting closer to the Felkan capital and conquering its other important cities, the gnome population has been larger. While The Emperor has relented slightly on a complete slash and burn policy of Felkan cities, he’s still made it quite clear that ALL gnomes are to be taken as prisoners to a special place he’s had built in the recently conquered Felkan territory. Its called Gnome’s Home and you believe Marik had a hand in designing some of it, but it isn’t something you’ve really kept up on since you’ve been focused the business of proper warfare. However you’re on your way there now so you’ll guess you’ll see it soon. The whole reason you’re overseeing this prisoner train in the first place is because too many gnomes have been escaping their chains though it’s hardly surprising. Gnomes are very adept at picking locks, combine that with their fear of what’s to come and one gets a lot of escapes. Of course most of them get killed shortly after their escapes, but the Emperor has made it quite clear that he wants no more of that and that he really wants them to be taken to Gnome’s Home. You don’t really understand why since you assume they’re just going to be killed there anyway, but you’re just here to follow orders. He is the Emperor and this is what he wants. Still, sometimes you have to admit that you agree with Jacob on this; The Emperor’s hatred of gnomes is a bit…irrational at times. As you get closer to the location of Gnome’s Home, you hear a lot of cries and whispered prayers to gods from the prisoners. Some of the guards attempt to quiet them all down, but it’s a losing proposition, you just tell your troops to keep a close eye for escape attempts as usual. From a distance it looks like one of Marik’s factories, as you get closer though there’s something slightly more sinister about it. Granted it’s a place of execution, but you get the impression something more is going on here and its not just torture. The feeling here is oppressive the closer you get to it, even for you. Eventually you get to the black iron gates and make an announcement of your arrival and you’re let in almost immediately. Now you couldn’t smell it before, but when those gates up, you’re nearly overwhelmed by a strong smell of death and that’s saying something given the battlefields you’ve been on and the carnage you’ve engaged in. “Sorry about the smell General, but we’ve been having some problems with our furnaces lately, among other things, so the dead bodies have been piling up. Good thing they’re so small eh?” one of the guards that lets you in remarks with a laugh. As the gnomes are herded in you take a look around the “yard” and indeed you do see the largest pile of rotting gnome bodies you’ve ever seen. Nearby you see other guards busily attempting to load the bodies into carts to take them somewhere for proper disposal. Meanwhile you also see what you assume to be small dwellings for the prisoner gnomes since you see pitiful versions of them peeking out at times. All in all, it’s not a pretty sight, but the smell is still the worst of it. Shit, piss, vomit, blood, rot, and putrification are all in full force, but none of this horror is bothering you. There is something else going on here that feels severely unnatural that’s causing you to feel off. Maybe its magic, you don’t know, but something about the place tells you it’s more than just an oversized execution center. Just as you’re about to leave, you’re approached by dirty, unkept looking man with wild facial hair and even wilder hair on his head. He’s dressed in medium chainmail armor and large battle axe is on his back. With him are a couple of larger ugly brutish looking creatures. They aren’t green, so you know they aren’t orcs. Ogres perhaps, but you weren’t aware there were any that lived in this region let alone “tamed”. Then it suddenly occurs to you who this is… “Its you! The Harbinger of Death! The Emperor’s right hand and weapon of righteous justice! It’s been a long time! Oh we heard stories about you even all the way up in Rask! What brings you here? Are you assigned here now?” he asks excitedly. This is Kane, the Butcher of Rask. He’s nearly unrecognizable from when you last remember him. You’ve heard the stories about him as well and from his unhinged looking appearance they might be true. Though he seems to be quite friendly with you, which you wouldn’t expect given the tales you’ve heard. “Hello Kane, it has been a long time. I have not been assigned here; I’m just dropping off these prisoners because the Emperor considers it of vital importance that I do it. But I thought you were assigned in Rask.” “Oh no need for me there any longer, we pretty much tamed everything there, well as much could be, but rest assured the Empire isn’t suffering from routine ogre and giant attacks there anymore. These two big lugs here are proof of that. And the barbarian tribes have been completely wiped out along with those pitiful attempts at secessionist movements! Not that those were ever a serious threat.” “Well that’s good. I’m glad to hear you were so instrumental in making positive changes for the Empire.” You say. “Me? I was just doing what I was supposed to right? I mean killing the enemies of the Empire and slaughtering those that oppose it is what we’re here for! But I don’t need to tell you that, you know duty to the Emperor better than anyone! Anyway with Rask tamed they said my talents would be better spent elsewhere so I assumed I would be sent to the Felkan front to fight or even lead, but I didn’t expect to be sent here. Still I’m just happy to be doing my part!” “That’s a good attitude to have Kane. So…what exactly do you do here?” “Nothing much, just make sure the gnomes don’t escape. None of them have either. We’ve got lots of things in place to make sure of that. Other than that I oversee the day to day operations. Not quite as exciting as my days in Rask, but I dunno…” At this point Kane looks at the large pile of dead gnome bodies on the other side of the yard and sort of zones out for a moment. He then begins to smile a bit before continuing. “It has its benefits.” “I see.” “Would you like a small tour? You know, just so you can maybe let the Emperor know or whoever that everything is running smoothly here?” “I don’t think that will be necessary. It looks like you’re doing a fine job here, besides I…” Before you can finish that old familiar voice that you’ve come to dread speaks. “Hey lover, it’s about time you got here. Your services are needed for something most important.” Mistress says. Normally you’re on your guard, but somehow she snuck up behind you and startles you even though you attempt not to show it. Naturally this amuses her. “Aww did I scare you? Glad to see some things never change.” Mistress says as she attempts to stroke your face. “What do you want and why are you here?” you ask slapping her hand away. “Sent here by the Emperor for something oh so important to him. You didn’t think you were just brought here to escort these pathetic gnomes to their deaths did you? You’re needed here for something else.” “I was simply told to escort the prisoners, nothing more nothing less. I don’t have time for whatever fucked up games you want to play with me.” “I assure you this is no game this…” Mistress stops speaking and looks at Kane as if wondering why he’s still around. “Don’t you have something better to do like counting up the new prisoners or something? Why don’t you and your two equally dimwitted friends go eat some gnomes or whatever it is you do, the superior beings are speaking now.” While you’re a little surprised that Mistress referred to you as a “superior being” you’re more surprised by Kane’s reaction. Given what you know about Kane’s reputation you’d expect him to at least show a little anger towards Mistress even if he didn’t display any disobedience. Kane shows nothing but subservience though. “Apologies Mistress, I will leave you two alone.” Kane remarks and gives a nod to you and quickly turns away motioning to his ogre guards to follow while bellowing an order to another nearby guard. Mistress shakes her head at all this. “I don’t know how Jacob convinced the Emperor to let that miserable creature oversee this place rather than putting him down like a mad dog like he deserves.” “Why would he be put to death? From what I’ve heard and seen he’s a completely loyal soldier who has done much for the Empire. His deeds in Rask alone prove that.” “Not feeling sympathetic towards your old classmate are you? Yes he was useful, but he’s a loose cannon and such factors shouldn’t be allowed to thrive. Given your own suggestions on using the orcs as sword fodder to keep them from being a problem in the future I would think you’d see the wisdom in such things.” “The orcs were numerous and a genuine threat because of their chaotic nature. Kane is a loyal Eternal even if he does have a reputation for being overly bloodthirsty and even cruelty. And I would think that last one would be a mark in his favor given that you have that in common.” Mistress chuckles at your remark. “You comment asides, Kane is still not like either of us. He’s…well perhaps we can discuss such things at another time and in any case its not my concern, what is my concern is this ritual I need your help with.” “You? You need MY help? You’re actually saying that?” “(Sigh) Yes, is it so hard to believe? The Emperor needs us to perform a soul banishment ritual. I’ve practically been doing all the prep work myself for a while now, since all of the mages sent to help have been unsurprisingly not up to the task. When you start using magic involving souls it can get taxing even for the most skilled. It’s also been ages since I’ve performed one of these and its obvious that you were the best candidate to help me.” You can’t believe what you’re hearing and at this point you’re wondering if the Emperor really does want you here for what Mistress claims. He never gave such an order to you and it seems like that would be something he’d tell you. Then again you were never given the full report on the troll factory either and he did say he was going to speak with Mistress about her on going attempts at making your life miserable. This might also be another test by the Emperor. Maybe to see if you can put aside personal differences to work together? “Very well, if it is the Emperor’s wish that we work together then so be it. However, do not mistake my compliance for submissiveness. I am only willing to engage in this task because it is of importance to the Emperor and I am trusting that even you would not lie about something like that for you know that any sort of underhanded trick to kill or harm me in anyway would stir his wrath that I believe even YOU do not want to stir up. Now I suggest we get on with it so we can keep our time together at a minimum.” “As you wish, but there is no need for hostility or suspicion. As you’ve said the Emperor would be quite angry indeed if I caused you harm in anyway, not that it’s ever been my intension contrary to popular belief.” “Is this some sort of new tactic of yours? Acting civil in some vain attempt to get on my good side? Don’t bother, you’ll never be on it.” “I’m getting that impression, but perhaps we can still talk about this later, for now let’s get on with this as you suggested. Follow me, I’ll take you to where we need to be.” You follow Mistress to one of the larger buildings where a lot of smoke is coming from and guards are periodically wheeling gnome bodies into. Large furnaces burn the countless bodies. As you walk through the crematorium, you notice that there are a few gnomes that aren’t quite dead yet, but are being thrown into the furnaces anyway. Eventually you come to a set of stairs going down. “Down here unfortunately.” Mistress remarks and you follow her down a long flight of stairs to a great open room lit by several candles Along two of the wall you see hundreds of jars with what looks to be wisps inside. They all give off a faint blue glow making the need for candles somewhat unnecessary. “I hate these designs by Marik, he can’t think past his derro mindset and create something that doesn’t have an underground portion to it.” Mistress remarks. “Personally I would’ve rather had something like this right in the center of the yard so that all those little gnomes could see just exactly what is going to happen to them every day. I mean its one thing to know they’re going to die, but it’s truly a thing of beauty when you completely obliterate something wouldn’t you agree?” “What exactly are you talking about?” “Why those souls that you see on the walls of course! Can’t very well perform a soul banishment ritual without souls obviously.” “Those wispy things are souls?” “Yes, hundreds of little souls. Souls that I’ve had to drag out of hundreds of little gnomes. No little feat though, as I said magic involving souls gets draining very fast. Ranks up there with healing magic and other branches of necromancy…I need you to stand over there on the line of that circle across from that wall.” Mistress says pointing over to a large circle on the floor. You slowly step over to where Mistress has told you to be. Given how much you’ve been following her orders you half feel like you’re back in her class. Though her attitude is much different and that’s been bothering you since this encounter. Surely she’s up to something and there has to be angle in it for her. If she isn’t up to something you can only believe that the Emperor’s talk really put the fear into her. Mistress stands to the left of you on the line of the circle across from the other wall of souls and tells you that she’s going to begin the ritual all she says she needs from you is to provide support and make sure none of the souls get away. “Get away?” “You don’t think they’re going to just let themselves get banished to oblivion do you? They’re probably already pissed about being trapped in magic jars. Now concentrate!” Mistress begins to chant something in a language you’re not familiar with and you’ve heard the svelk language before. The wisps in the jars begin to get even more agitated and the faint glow they give off begins to get brighter. You begin to get images of torment invading your head all at once. You see exactly everything that’s been happening to the gnomes here, the torture, the humiliation, the executions and now ultimate annihilation. Even from what little you’ve seen from being in this place, your years on the battlefield and even your own brutal childhood training, its still pretty gruesome and sadistic, but it isn’t the images that are currently affecting you. It’s the voices… “Help us! Free us! It’s her, she did this! Stole our souls to destroy! Hate her! Kill her! You could kill her. You hate her too. Do it! If not for us or any sort of moral conscience then for yourself. We can see what she did to you. She will always torment you and you will never know rest from her until she is dead. She could die right now. Nobody would know and no one would care.” you hear several voices saying to you all at once and right now you don’t have much reason to not follow their suggestions. If Mistress was to die, it could easily be explained away after all accidents happen all the time when performing dangerous magic. And it is true she’s not likely to be missed by anyone save perhaps the Emperor, and you doubt he would for very long. > You sabotage the ritual You’re doing it. You’re getting her out of your life forever. No longer will you have to put up with whatever mind games she has planned whenever you’re forced to meet with her. You step from the circle and break your magic link with Mistress. She’s immediately taken off guard. “Agh! You fool! What are you doing?! Step back to the circle before you doom the both of us!” she exclaims as she is presumably psychically assaulted by the gnome souls. You know Mistress is strong and can probably fend off the attack if really pushed, but you intend on giving her another distraction by drawing your sword. She’s either going to have to stop you which will expose her mind to the vengeful souls or not stop you and get stabbed which will have the same effect. Suddenly your own mind is completely shattered and multiple souls assault your mind. The pain is excruciating and you collapse on the floor and begin convulsing. You aren’t innocent in all this as far as they’re concerned. Your involvement in the Felkan campaign has probably resulted in most of the gnomes being rounded up and sent to Gnome’s Home in the first place. For the first time you not only see the horror that has been this place, but you also experience all of it. Your mind can’t take it and neither can your body, which begins to lose all control of its functions. You’re leaking all manner of bodily fluids out every possible place you could be leaking from. Eventually you’re nothing more than an empty shell, but not quite dead. The souls have stopped attacking and Mistress is lying on the floor not too far from you own, her own mind destroyed as well. The pair of you continue to stare upward and slack jaw in a comatose state for quite some time, until Kane eventually wanders down to investigate. Kane isn’t quite sure of what to make of all of it, but sensing that he can’t leave the pair of you like this he comes up with his own solution. Unknown to you, Kane was possessed by a wendigo during his tour in Rask, though his hunger is well sated here. Kane never liked Mistress’ threats of exposure or taunts and proceeds to eat her alive. Of course being a vegetable she is unable to scream as his teeth sink into her flesh. You on the other hand, Kane ends your life with a blade to your throat out of respect for you before feasting on your corpse.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 28 You hate these baby-sitting missions, but when the Emperor wants something done right he always requests you personally to do it, so here you are marching hundreds of gnomes to their new home. As the army has been getting closer to the Felkan capital and conquering its other important cities, the gnome population has been larger. While The Emperor has relented slightly on a complete slash and burn policy of Felkan cities, he’s still made it quite clear that ALL gnomes are to be taken as prisoners to a special place he’s had built in the recently conquered Felkan territory. Its called Gnome’s Home and you believe Marik had a hand in designing some of it, but it isn’t something you’ve really kept up on since you’ve been focused the business of proper warfare. However you’re on your way there now so you’ll guess you’ll see it soon. The whole reason you’re overseeing this prisoner train in the first place is because too many gnomes have been escaping their chains though it’s hardly surprising. Gnomes are very adept at picking locks, combine that with their fear of what’s to come and one gets a lot of escapes. Of course most of them get killed shortly after their escapes, but the Emperor has made it quite clear that he wants no more of that and that he really wants them to be taken to Gnome’s Home. You don’t really understand why since you assume they’re just going to be killed there anyway, but you’re just here to follow orders. He is the Emperor and this is what he wants. Still, sometimes you have to admit that you agree with Jacob on this; The Emperor’s hatred of gnomes is a bit…irrational at times. As you get closer to the location of Gnome’s Home, you hear a lot of cries and whispered prayers to gods from the prisoners. Some of the guards attempt to quiet them all down, but it’s a losing proposition, you just tell your troops to keep a close eye for escape attempts as usual. From a distance it looks like one of Marik’s factories, as you get closer though there’s something slightly more sinister about it. Granted it’s a place of execution, but you get the impression something more is going on here and its not just torture. The feeling here is oppressive the closer you get to it, even for you. Eventually you get to the black iron gates and make an announcement of your arrival and you’re let in almost immediately. Now you couldn’t smell it before, but when those gates up, you’re nearly overwhelmed by a strong smell of death and that’s saying something given the battlefields you’ve been on and the carnage you’ve engaged in. “Sorry about the smell General, but we’ve been having some problems with our furnaces lately, among other things, so the dead bodies have been piling up. Good thing they’re so small eh?” one of the guards that lets you in remarks with a laugh. As the gnomes are herded in you take a look around the “yard” and indeed you do see the largest pile of rotting gnome bodies you’ve ever seen. Nearby you see other guards busily attempting to load the bodies into carts to take them somewhere for proper disposal. Meanwhile you also see what you assume to be small dwellings for the prisoner gnomes since you see pitiful versions of them peeking out at times. All in all, it’s not a pretty sight, but the smell is still the worst of it. Shit, piss, vomit, blood, rot, and putrification are all in full force, but none of this horror is bothering you. There is something else going on here that feels severely unnatural that’s causing you to feel off. Maybe its magic, you don’t know, but something about the place tells you it’s more than just an oversized execution center. Just as you’re about to leave, you’re approached by dirty, unkept looking man with wild facial hair and even wilder hair on his head. He’s dressed in medium chainmail armor and large battle axe is on his back. With him are a couple of larger ugly brutish looking creatures. They aren’t green, so you know they aren’t orcs. Ogres perhaps, but you weren’t aware there were any that lived in this region let alone “tamed”. Then it suddenly occurs to you who this is… “Its you! The Harbinger of Death! The Emperor’s right hand and weapon of righteous justice! It’s been a long time! Oh we heard stories about you even all the way up in Rask! What brings you here? Are you assigned here now?” he asks excitedly. This is Kane, the Butcher of Rask. He’s nearly unrecognizable from when you last remember him. You’ve heard the stories about him as well and from his unhinged looking appearance they might be true. Though he seems to be quite friendly with you, which you wouldn’t expect given the tales you’ve heard. “Hello Kane, it has been a long time. I have not been assigned here; I’m just dropping off these prisoners because the Emperor considers it of vital importance that I do it. But I thought you were assigned in Rask.” “Oh no need for me there any longer, we pretty much tamed everything there, well as much could be, but rest assured the Empire isn’t suffering from routine ogre and giant attacks there anymore. These two big lugs here are proof of that. And the barbarian tribes have been completely wiped out along with those pitiful attempts at secessionist movements! Not that those were ever a serious threat.” “Well that’s good. I’m glad to hear you were so instrumental in making positive changes for the Empire.” You say. “Me? I was just doing what I was supposed to right? I mean killing the enemies of the Empire and slaughtering those that oppose it is what we’re here for! But I don’t need to tell you that, you know duty to the Emperor better than anyone! Anyway with Rask tamed they said my talents would be better spent elsewhere so I assumed I would be sent to the Felkan front to fight or even lead, but I didn’t expect to be sent here. Still I’m just happy to be doing my part!” “That’s a good attitude to have Kane. So…what exactly do you do here?” “Nothing much, just make sure the gnomes don’t escape. None of them have either. We’ve got lots of things in place to make sure of that. Other than that I oversee the day to day operations. Not quite as exciting as my days in Rask, but I dunno…” At this point Kane looks at the large pile of dead gnome bodies on the other side of the yard and sort of zones out for a moment. He then begins to smile a bit before continuing. “It has its benefits.” “I see.” “Would you like a small tour? You know, just so you can maybe let the Emperor know or whoever that everything is running smoothly here?” “I don’t think that will be necessary. It looks like you’re doing a fine job here, besides I…” Before you can finish that old familiar voice that you’ve come to dread speaks. “Hey lover, it’s about time you got here. Your services are needed for something most important.” Mistress says. Normally you’re on your guard, but somehow she snuck up behind you and startles you even though you attempt not to show it. Naturally this amuses her. “Aww did I scare you? Glad to see some things never change.” Mistress says as she attempts to stroke your face. “What do you want and why are you here?” you ask slapping her hand away. “Sent here by the Emperor for something oh so important to him. You didn’t think you were just brought here to escort these pathetic gnomes to their deaths did you? You’re needed here for something else.” “I was simply told to escort the prisoners, nothing more nothing less. I don’t have time for whatever fucked up games you want to play with me.” “I assure you this is no game this…” Mistress stops speaking and looks at Kane as if wondering why he’s still around. “Don’t you have something better to do like counting up the new prisoners or something? Why don’t you and your two equally dimwitted friends go eat some gnomes or whatever it is you do, the superior beings are speaking now.” While you’re a little surprised that Mistress referred to you as a “superior being” you’re more surprised by Kane’s reaction. Given what you know about Kane’s reputation you’d expect him to at least show a little anger towards Mistress even if he didn’t display any disobedience. Kane shows nothing but subservience though. “Apologies Mistress, I will leave you two alone.” Kane remarks and gives a nod to you and quickly turns away motioning to his ogre guards to follow while bellowing an order to another nearby guard. Mistress shakes her head at all this. “I don’t know how Jacob convinced the Emperor to let that miserable creature oversee this place rather than putting him down like a mad dog like he deserves.” “Why would he be put to death? From what I’ve heard and seen he’s a completely loyal soldier who has done much for the Empire. His deeds in Rask alone prove that.” “Not feeling sympathetic towards your old classmate are you? Yes he was useful, but he’s a loose cannon and such factors shouldn’t be allowed to thrive. Given your own suggestions on using the orcs as sword fodder to keep them from being a problem in the future I would think you’d see the wisdom in such things.” “The orcs were numerous and a genuine threat because of their chaotic nature. Kane is a loyal Eternal even if he does have a reputation for being overly bloodthirsty and even cruelty. And I would think that last one would be a mark in his favor given that you have that in common.” Mistress chuckles at your remark. “You comment asides, Kane is still not like either of us. He’s…well perhaps we can discuss such things at another time and in any case its not my concern, what is my concern is this ritual I need your help with.” “You? You need MY help? You’re actually saying that?” “(Sigh) Yes, is it so hard to believe? The Emperor needs us to perform a soul banishment ritual. I’ve practically been doing all the prep work myself for a while now, since all of the mages sent to help have been unsurprisingly not up to the task. When you start using magic involving souls it can get taxing even for the most skilled. It’s also been ages since I’ve performed one of these and its obvious that you were the best candidate to help me.” You can’t believe what you’re hearing and at this point you’re wondering if the Emperor really does want you here for what Mistress claims. He never gave such an order to you and it seems like that would be something he’d tell you. Then again you were never given the full report on the troll factory either and he did say he was going to speak with Mistress about her on going attempts at making your life miserable. This might also be another test by the Emperor. Maybe to see if you can put aside personal differences to work together? “Very well, if it is the Emperor’s wish that we work together then so be it. However, do not mistake my compliance for submissiveness. I am only willing to engage in this task because it is of importance to the Emperor and I am trusting that even you would not lie about something like that for you know that any sort of underhanded trick to kill or harm me in anyway would stir his wrath that I believe even YOU do not want to stir up. Now I suggest we get on with it so we can keep our time together at a minimum.” “As you wish, but there is no need for hostility or suspicion. As you’ve said the Emperor would be quite angry indeed if I caused you harm in anyway, not that it’s ever been my intension contrary to popular belief.” “Is this some sort of new tactic of yours? Acting civil in some vain attempt to get on my good side? Don’t bother, you’ll never be on it.” “I’m getting that impression, but perhaps we can still talk about this later, for now let’s get on with this as you suggested. Follow me, I’ll take you to where we need to be.” You follow Mistress to one of the larger buildings where a lot of smoke is coming from and guards are periodically wheeling gnome bodies into. Large furnaces burn the countless bodies. As you walk through the crematorium, you notice that there are a few gnomes that aren’t quite dead yet, but are being thrown into the furnaces anyway. Eventually you come to a set of stairs going down. “Down here unfortunately.” Mistress remarks and you follow her down a long flight of stairs to a great open room lit by several candles Along two of the wall you see hundreds of jars with what looks to be wisps inside. They all give off a faint blue glow making the need for candles somewhat unnecessary. “I hate these designs by Marik, he can’t think past his derro mindset and create something that doesn’t have an underground portion to it.” Mistress remarks. “Personally I would’ve rather had something like this right in the center of the yard so that all those little gnomes could see just exactly what is going to happen to them every day. I mean its one thing to know they’re going to die, but it’s truly a thing of beauty when you completely obliterate something wouldn’t you agree?” “What exactly are you talking about?” “Why those souls that you see on the walls of course! Can’t very well perform a soul banishment ritual without souls obviously.” “Those wispy things are souls?” “Yes, hundreds of little souls. Souls that I’ve had to drag out of hundreds of little gnomes. No little feat though, as I said magic involving souls gets draining very fast. Ranks up there with healing magic and other branches of necromancy…I need you to stand over there on the line of that circle across from that wall.” Mistress says pointing over to a large circle on the floor. You slowly step over to where Mistress has told you to be. Given how much you’ve been following her orders you half feel like you’re back in her class. Though her attitude is much different and that’s been bothering you since this encounter. Surely she’s up to something and there has to be angle in it for her. If she isn’t up to something you can only believe that the Emperor’s talk really put the fear into her. Mistress stands to the left of you on the line of the circle across from the other wall of souls and tells you that she’s going to begin the ritual all she says she needs from you is to provide support and make sure none of the souls get away. “Get away?” “You don’t think they’re going to just let themselves get banished to oblivion do you? They’re probably already pissed about being trapped in magic jars. Now concentrate!” Mistress begins to chant something in a language you’re not familiar with and you’ve heard the svelk language before. The wisps in the jars begin to get even more agitated and the faint glow they give off begins to get brighter. You begin to get images of torment invading your head all at once. You see exactly everything that’s been happening to the gnomes here, the torture, the humiliation, the executions and now ultimate annihilation. Even from what little you’ve seen from being in this place, your years on the battlefield and even your own brutal childhood training, its still pretty gruesome and sadistic, but it isn’t the images that are currently affecting you. It’s the voices… “Help us! Free us! It’s her, she did this! Stole our souls to destroy! Hate her! Kill her! You could kill her. You hate her too. Do it! If not for us or any sort of moral conscience then for yourself. We can see what she did to you. She will always torment you and you will never know rest from her until she is dead. She could die right now. Nobody would know and no one would care.” you hear several voices saying to you all at once and right now you don’t have much reason to not follow their suggestions. If Mistress was to die, it could easily be explained away after all accidents happen all the time when performing dangerous magic. And it is true she’s not likely to be missed by anyone save perhaps the Emperor, and you doubt he would for very long. > You proceed as normal You are sorely tempted. You are really sorely tempted. However, there are a couple factors at play that are preventing you from doing so. One, you’re dubious about trusting a bunch of gnome souls. It isn’t like they still aren’t your enemy no matter what form they take or the situation at hand. The enemy of your enemy is still YOUR enemy as far as you’re concerned. This could be a trick to get the upper hand on their part. Second and most importantly, this is still a mission for the Emperor. If he wanted you to work with Mistress to send a bunch of gnome souls to oblivion then that’s what you’re going to do regardless of your personal feelings towards her. You begin to concentrate and try to mentally shut out the voices. Its extremely difficult, in fact you don’t actually succeed in doing so, but you do stay focused enough to keep up Mistress’ energy. An unearthly howl invades your head as a jet-black orb appears in the center of the room. You feel like its sucking the life out of you and you instinctively start to back away. “NO! Don’t move! You’ll ruin the spell! It won’t be much longer, look its already working!” Mistress shouts and points to the jars, which are now growing dimmer again. You then see one of the wisps completely disappear; followed by another and another, until they all begin fading away. As the souls vanish, the voices begin to get quieter and more desperate sounding as they beg you to stop. Eventually you hear nothing at all and the orb in the room disappears as well. “There, that should do it for a while, until the next batch.” Mistress remarks as she wipes her forehead and fixes her hair. “Whew, that was a little more strenuous than I thought it would be, it was very helpful for you to be here. We make a pretty good team…” “Stop. Just stop.” You say interrupting. “Stop what?” Mistress asks as if she doesn’t know what you’re talking about. “You know damn well what. I told you that this attempt to be pleasant isn’t going to work and its totally transparent.” Mistress smiles, but it isn’t that cruel smirk that you’re used to, its one more of admiration. “I guess I deserve this hostility. However, I’d rather you hate me than be weak, though I suppose in some ways you still have a few flaws common to your race…but I can overlook those because I know that they will disappear in time. I just wish you’d recognize and shed those flaws soon, because you may need to do so. As I have said before, I have always tried to help you and I won’t stop just because you can’t see that or harbor thoughts of ill intent on me. Like you briefly considering listening to those desperate gnome souls. You don’t think I don’t know how tempted you were to sabotage the ritual just to get a chance to kill me? I could hear everything they said to you.” “And I didn’t because my main duty was to see this mission done for the Emperor, do you have a point?” “My point is you have so much more potential than you realize. You just fended off a psychic assault by hundreds of souls. Hundreds of vengeful souls feeding off your already strong desires to do me harm and you still resisted. Not many can boast such will power even if they’ve had superior training by the best teachers. Now your former classmate Kane? He struggles right now with just one miserable wendigo spirit within him and it’s half taken him over already.” “What are you talking about?” “He’s a wendigo now or rather possessed by one. It’s a spirit that possesses a living host and usually turns them into a slavering beast that is constantly looking for meat and flesh to quell its everlasting hunger.” Well this is a new twist on whatever angle Mistress is attempting to pull. “If that’s the case, why hasn’t he been going around eating everyone then?” you ask. “Who’s saying he hasn’t? Wendigo’s may have poor impulse control, but they can be cunning when necessary. I imagine he’s only managed to hide it so well because he’s been associating with the savages and unsophisticated trash in Rask and turned his bloody deeds into the reputation of a ruthless warrior that could be feared and respected. Here? He’s overseeing a death factory with a steady supply of meat. Who’s going to miss a few dead gnome bodies or living gnomes for that matter? The wendigo probably hasn’t completely taken Kane over because it’s gotten lazy and happy with its current arrangement.” “And of course you’re the only one who knows all this.” “Perhaps Jacob suspects something amiss, but I guarantee I’m the only one who knows that doesn’t fear the thing that wears Kane’s skin. The beast knows I can destroy it within a blink and it would rather continue to enjoy its current arrangement.” “Hmm, excuse me if I’m having a difficult time believing you. In any case, it doesn’t change my own opinions on you, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to gain by telling me all this.” “Look, believe me, or don’t, but I assure you there is no gain in this for me by telling you. I merely used him as an example of how you continue to be superior to your former classmates. (Sigh) Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve showed you just a little more intimacy during our sessions together. Perhaps then you would’ve at least known to trust me.” Mistress says and tries to touch your hand. Once again you recoil at her advances and step backward. “Do that again and you’ll pull back a stump. And the next time you need to banish gnome souls or whatever else you can do it yourself.” “Well that’s ultimately not really your call now is it? If the Emperor wants you to help me, then you’ll have to right? Isn’t it a shame that you can’t just do what you want, when you want?” Mistress says with one of her more familiar smirks. “There it is. I was waiting for one of your sneering comments.” “Sneering comments? But isn’t obeying the Emperor what you WANT to do? Aren’t you glad to follow his every command because he is as you say infallible? How is my comment a sneering one? It just points out the facts, that’s all. Your problem is you think I’m your enemy when I’ve done nothing but try to help you despite yourself.” “Sure, whatever, I’m tired of your fat musings.” you say and begin to leave, but Mistress gets in your way. “I see you’ve still got my dagger. Still can’t completely get me out of your mind even though you have your little shield maiden fluff on the side?” “The memories I associate with this dagger are something you should be wary of, lest I share them with you.” “Oh? Well why don’t you use it right now, if you hate me so much? I gave you a chance to kill me once before and you didn’t take it…but it wasn’t because you were a coward. It wasn’t even because you knew you weren’t strong enough to do it. It’s because deep down YOU know that you love me and I will ALWAYS be the only woman for you. ALWAYS.” Mistress says and with a sudden quickness she grabs your head with both hands and kisses you hard on the lips. And for a split second that twisted part of you enjoys it. Without thinking you nearly begin to put both of your arms around her, then you come back to your senses and push her off of you and draw out the dagger. She backs off. “Ohh, you know how I like foreplay! Come on, stick it in mommy!” Mistress says with excitement. “You…you…you’re one fucked up bitch and I’m not playing your game!” You sharply remark and make your way quickly back upstairs. “Remember Eternal, always AND forever! The sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be!” Mistress shouts and begins laughing. As you’re storming out of the furnace building everything is a bit of a blur. You know you knock aside a couple of guards pushing big wheeled containers full of bodies, but you don’t really notice anything else until you see Kane again outside in the yard bellowing orders. He looks different though, like more bestial. You look again he doesn’t even look human anymore. His mouth has become enlarged with several rows of razor teeth and his hands more like claws. The strange thing is nobody else seems to notice this. You walk over closer to him and now he looks more like he did. You feel like you’re having a hard time focusing. What the hell is going on? As you begin rubbing your eyes you don’t notice Kane walking over to you. “Hey you’re still here. I trust your business with Mistress went well?” Kane asks you as you open your eyes and there you see it again. That THING instead of Kane. Between what Mistress told you and this, you justifiably feel threatened. “Get the hell back! I know what you are!” you say and point your dagger at Kane, which was still in your hand. Kane’s ogre guards look unsure of what to do, as do other nearby guards, but Kane raises his hands up. “Its okay! Its okay! Nothing to see here, get back to work!” Kane says and then gives a nervous smile, but it isn’t a nervous smile to you, it seems more like he’s barring his fangs. In fact to you he looks like he might even attack. You don’t know what to do exactly. Obviously you’re seeing something odd with Kane, why you weren’t before is the strange part though. You don’t know if you’re really in danger here or if Mistress did something to you to make you see this and possibly do something rash. > You kill Kane You don’t hesitate. You see and know what needs to be done. Without another word you lunge at Kane who makes no attempt to defend himself and plunge your dagger directly in the center of his chest. “Thank…the Emperor…” he utters and falls to the ground, though when he finally hits, his body twitches, makes snarling sounds and then stops. And that’s when the wendigo attacks you. “You are a much stronger vessel anyway. Let me inside and I can make you even stronger.” The wendigo voice hisses. “Get out of my fucking head!” you shout and start clutching your head. Under normal circumstances, you probably wouldn’t have had as much trouble fending off the possession attack by the wendigo, but not only are you severely drained from your previous ordeal, but you weren’t feeling right after it either. To make matters worse a few of the livelier gnomes watching decide to take advantage of the situation and make an escape attempt. “This is our only chance! Get his keys!” one of them shouts and you are suddenly knocked over and half trampled on by several gnome feet when they make their way towards Kane’s body. In the middle of the chaos of guards chasing down gnomes and gnomes attempting to flee, you’re having a seizure and losing the battle for your mind. Things get worse when Mistress arrives. “(Sigh) Why’d you go and do that for? You got yourself all riled up for no good reason, went and did something foolish and now look at you. Maybe your mind isn’t as strong as I thought it was. Well, as much as you deserve it I can’t let you masquerade as one of those things.” Mistress casts a banishment spell and while that’s a great thing to cast on them while they’re still hovering about, but when they’ve managed to already get their hooks in their desired host it tends to have a negative effect on said host and whatever pain you were going through with the wendigo’s possession is now five times worse as you now begin to experience the pain the wendigo feels as it is slowly obliterated. After it’s all said and done the wendigo is gone along with your mind. While its possible you might be able to live some sort of existence if someone assisted you with things like eating, but you don’t live in such a world and you certainly aren’t around any such people that would be willing to do that, hell if you could express anything anymore you’d say yourself that you wouldn’t want to live any more in this near vegetative state. Fortunately Mistress knows this and puts an end to your life. It’s probably the kindest thing she’s ever done for you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are sorely tempted. You are really sorely tempted. However, there are a couple factors at play that are preventing you from doing so. One, you’re dubious about trusting a bunch of gnome souls. It isn’t like they still aren’t your enemy no matter what form they take or the situation at hand. The enemy of your enemy is still YOUR enemy as far as you’re concerned. This could be a trick to get the upper hand on their part. Second and most importantly, this is still a mission for the Emperor. If he wanted you to work with Mistress to send a bunch of gnome souls to oblivion then that’s what you’re going to do regardless of your personal feelings towards her. You begin to concentrate and try to mentally shut out the voices. Its extremely difficult, in fact you don’t actually succeed in doing so, but you do stay focused enough to keep up Mistress’ energy. An unearthly howl invades your head as a jet-black orb appears in the center of the room. You feel like its sucking the life out of you and you instinctively start to back away. “NO! Don’t move! You’ll ruin the spell! It won’t be much longer, look its already working!” Mistress shouts and points to the jars, which are now growing dimmer again. You then see one of the wisps completely disappear; followed by another and another, until they all begin fading away. As the souls vanish, the voices begin to get quieter and more desperate sounding as they beg you to stop. Eventually you hear nothing at all and the orb in the room disappears as well. “There, that should do it for a while, until the next batch.” Mistress remarks as she wipes her forehead and fixes her hair. “Whew, that was a little more strenuous than I thought it would be, it was very helpful for you to be here. We make a pretty good team…” “Stop. Just stop.” You say interrupting. “Stop what?” Mistress asks as if she doesn’t know what you’re talking about. “You know damn well what. I told you that this attempt to be pleasant isn’t going to work and its totally transparent.” Mistress smiles, but it isn’t that cruel smirk that you’re used to, its one more of admiration. “I guess I deserve this hostility. However, I’d rather you hate me than be weak, though I suppose in some ways you still have a few flaws common to your race…but I can overlook those because I know that they will disappear in time. I just wish you’d recognize and shed those flaws soon, because you may need to do so. As I have said before, I have always tried to help you and I won’t stop just because you can’t see that or harbor thoughts of ill intent on me. Like you briefly considering listening to those desperate gnome souls. You don’t think I don’t know how tempted you were to sabotage the ritual just to get a chance to kill me? I could hear everything they said to you.” “And I didn’t because my main duty was to see this mission done for the Emperor, do you have a point?” “My point is you have so much more potential than you realize. You just fended off a psychic assault by hundreds of souls. Hundreds of vengeful souls feeding off your already strong desires to do me harm and you still resisted. Not many can boast such will power even if they’ve had superior training by the best teachers. Now your former classmate Kane? He struggles right now with just one miserable wendigo spirit within him and it’s half taken him over already.” “What are you talking about?” “He’s a wendigo now or rather possessed by one. It’s a spirit that possesses a living host and usually turns them into a slavering beast that is constantly looking for meat and flesh to quell its everlasting hunger.” Well this is a new twist on whatever angle Mistress is attempting to pull. “If that’s the case, why hasn’t he been going around eating everyone then?” you ask. “Who’s saying he hasn’t? Wendigo’s may have poor impulse control, but they can be cunning when necessary. I imagine he’s only managed to hide it so well because he’s been associating with the savages and unsophisticated trash in Rask and turned his bloody deeds into the reputation of a ruthless warrior that could be feared and respected. Here? He’s overseeing a death factory with a steady supply of meat. Who’s going to miss a few dead gnome bodies or living gnomes for that matter? The wendigo probably hasn’t completely taken Kane over because it’s gotten lazy and happy with its current arrangement.” “And of course you’re the only one who knows all this.” “Perhaps Jacob suspects something amiss, but I guarantee I’m the only one who knows that doesn’t fear the thing that wears Kane’s skin. The beast knows I can destroy it within a blink and it would rather continue to enjoy its current arrangement.” “Hmm, excuse me if I’m having a difficult time believing you. In any case, it doesn’t change my own opinions on you, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to gain by telling me all this.” “Look, believe me, or don’t, but I assure you there is no gain in this for me by telling you. I merely used him as an example of how you continue to be superior to your former classmates. (Sigh) Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve showed you just a little more intimacy during our sessions together. Perhaps then you would’ve at least known to trust me.” Mistress says and tries to touch your hand. Once again you recoil at her advances and step backward. “Do that again and you’ll pull back a stump. And the next time you need to banish gnome souls or whatever else you can do it yourself.” “Well that’s ultimately not really your call now is it? If the Emperor wants you to help me, then you’ll have to right? Isn’t it a shame that you can’t just do what you want, when you want?” Mistress says with one of her more familiar smirks. “There it is. I was waiting for one of your sneering comments.” “Sneering comments? But isn’t obeying the Emperor what you WANT to do? Aren’t you glad to follow his every command because he is as you say infallible? How is my comment a sneering one? It just points out the facts, that’s all. Your problem is you think I’m your enemy when I’ve done nothing but try to help you despite yourself.” “Sure, whatever, I’m tired of your fat musings.” you say and begin to leave, but Mistress gets in your way. “I see you’ve still got my dagger. Still can’t completely get me out of your mind even though you have your little shield maiden fluff on the side?” “The memories I associate with this dagger are something you should be wary of, lest I share them with you.” “Oh? Well why don’t you use it right now, if you hate me so much? I gave you a chance to kill me once before and you didn’t take it…but it wasn’t because you were a coward. It wasn’t even because you knew you weren’t strong enough to do it. It’s because deep down YOU know that you love me and I will ALWAYS be the only woman for you. ALWAYS.” Mistress says and with a sudden quickness she grabs your head with both hands and kisses you hard on the lips. And for a split second that twisted part of you enjoys it. Without thinking you nearly begin to put both of your arms around her, then you come back to your senses and push her off of you and draw out the dagger. She backs off. “Ohh, you know how I like foreplay! Come on, stick it in mommy!” Mistress says with excitement. “You…you…you’re one fucked up bitch and I’m not playing your game!” You sharply remark and make your way quickly back upstairs. “Remember Eternal, always AND forever! The sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be!” Mistress shouts and begins laughing. As you’re storming out of the furnace building everything is a bit of a blur. You know you knock aside a couple of guards pushing big wheeled containers full of bodies, but you don’t really notice anything else until you see Kane again outside in the yard bellowing orders. He looks different though, like more bestial. You look again he doesn’t even look human anymore. His mouth has become enlarged with several rows of razor teeth and his hands more like claws. The strange thing is nobody else seems to notice this. You walk over closer to him and now he looks more like he did. You feel like you’re having a hard time focusing. What the hell is going on? As you begin rubbing your eyes you don’t notice Kane walking over to you. “Hey you’re still here. I trust your business with Mistress went well?” Kane asks you as you open your eyes and there you see it again. That THING instead of Kane. Between what Mistress told you and this, you justifiably feel threatened. “Get the hell back! I know what you are!” you say and point your dagger at Kane, which was still in your hand. Kane’s ogre guards look unsure of what to do, as do other nearby guards, but Kane raises his hands up. “Its okay! Its okay! Nothing to see here, get back to work!” Kane says and then gives a nervous smile, but it isn’t a nervous smile to you, it seems more like he’s barring his fangs. In fact to you he looks like he might even attack. You don’t know what to do exactly. Obviously you’re seeing something odd with Kane, why you weren’t before is the strange part though. You don’t know if you’re really in danger here or if Mistress did something to you to make you see this and possibly do something rash. > You leave Kane isn’t making any move against you and you aren’t going to kill him based on suspicion especially with all the weirdness going on here in general. The best thing you feel you can do is just get the hell out of here. As you order the gates to be opened you continue to keep an eye on Kane and he does the same to you. You aren’t seeing the monstrous traits like you were anymore which makes you believe that Mistress did do something to you. Possibly when she kissed you. Then as you begin to leave, Kane calls out to you. “Are you going to tell the Emperor?” You turn around and face Kane who now isn’t even looking you in the eye. In fact you’d say he even looks ashamed. The funny thing is Kane just gave himself away, though maybe he wanted to. Since you aren’t exactly sure what the situation is except what Mistress has told you, you ask Kane a simple question. “Are you still loyal to the Emperor?” “Yes.” Kane says looking up, straightening himself a little and making a major effort to look you in the eye. “Then he already knows, otherwise I would’ve been sent here to kill you.” Kane nods and begins to form disjointed sentences. You imagine he’s probably going to try to explain his side of things, but quite frankly after the day you’ve had here, you don’t care. “I don’t need to know how it happened. I don’t need to know why it happened. I am not your judge. Just continue to serve the Empire and the Emperor with distinction and loyally as you have been. However the moment that thing inside you takes over completely, the moment you stop doing your duty, the moment you are considered a dangerous liability to the Empire… I will be your executioner. Remember this.” “I will.” Kane says. Kane steps forward and raises his hand in a salute. You return the salute, which seems to make Kane happy. You get back on your horse and ride away eager to put as much distance between you and Gnome’s Home as fast as possible. When you arrive back at your own war camp, your two main commanders Captain Ackerson and Battlemage Galen are arguing over the battle plans as usual. They’re competent men its just too bad that they can’t get along if you aren’t around to bang their heads together. You learned very quickly why Roldan was quick to shove them on to you. “Sir, I’m glad you’re back, I have tried to reason with this hedge wizard, but the man is being an unreasonable asshole. He doesn’t see that sending in our remaining golems on a suicidal run on Fort Tinker will result in a much quicker collapse of its walls and allow the rest of the troops to just pour in and overrun the place. The quicker we take this fort the quicker we can march on the capital.” Captain Ackerson says. “And do you realize the waste you’re suggesting? What if we need those golems for our assault on the capital? You think golems are easy to make? No of course you don’t because you’re a muscle bound moron who just thinks brute strength and numbers are going to win the day!” Galen remarks. You’re in no mood. “Will both of you idiots shut the fuck up, I’m sick of your petty arguing! Look, use half of the golems to bring down one of the walls and back them up with a couple cannon units. The golems will probably be destroyed and those cannon crews are probably going to get hammered by whatever new gnome invention the Felkans have, but it should be enough. Or come up with something else, I don’t give a shit right now, just get it the fuck done and don’t bother me again until you’ve made more progress!” you yell and leave the war tent to make your way to your own private tent. As soon as you open your tent, you have another unexpected encounter in your long line of unexpected encounters lately, however this one is much more pleasant. “Alison? What’re you doing here?” “I figured I’d surprise you. The eastern front has been pretty quiet ever since we destroyed the majority of the gnoll horde you know. It’s not like I can’t sneak away every once in a while. I was actually surprised when I got here that you weren’t around, so where did you sneak off to?” “Orders from the Emperor. Special mission. It was…ugh…it’s done and I really don’t want to talk about it right now, I’m just glad to see you. You’re a welcome sight right now.” “Aren’t I always?” Alison remarks with a smile. You and Alison speak a bit, but you both know not to waste an opportunity like this and the pair of you get to doing what lovers normally do. It’s a good feeling, but its not just the sex (though that’s certainly good too) its just the fact that you still can’t believe someone can make you feel this way. You wouldn’t admit to this openly, but sometimes when you’re with Alison you feel a bond there that might even rival your bond with the Emperor. There have even been times you’ve briefly worried if there will come a day where you’d have to outright choose between the Emperor or Alison. The concern though isn’t that you’d have to do it, your concern is that there is the possibility that if it came down to it, you might choose Alison. You try to dismiss such thoughts however, after all when is a situation like that ever going to occur? Better to focus on the pleasant present rather than the possible grim future. As the pair of you lies together, Alison starts to drift off in your arms and says something a little strange. “Thank you.” “Thank you? For what exactly? The orgasm?” “For this night. I just feel so loved right now. And I love you too. You do know that don’t you?” Alison asks looking into your eyes. “Of course I know that, I love you too.” “Just laying here with you makes me feel so safe.” Alison remarks and cuddles into you even more. “I suppose, but I’d hardly think you’d need me to protect you when you’re more than capable of doing it yourself. Is there something wrong? You don’t normally talk like this.” “Nothing’s wrong. I guess I just felt a little girly there for a moment. Still, it’s nice to hear you say it to me and it’s nice to know this side of you.” Alison says and begins to drift off. You briefly wonder if you lived a “normal” married life, most of your nights would be like this. Lying in bed holding your significant other. Getting up in the morning to do your mundane peasant job. Would you also have children? That’s something you’ve never even considered, though given your several intimate encounters with Alison you’re a little surprised you haven’t gotten into possible baby complications. Perhaps you’ve just been lucky, or maybe she’s been taking Stillness potions bought from Empire alchemists. Of course she might just be barren, or maybe you’re sterile. abort Whatever the case she’s never brought up the subject and you certainly don’t intend to since it isn’t a priority and as far as you’re concerned, never will be. With these final thoughts you join Alison in sleep. Hours pass and you are awakened by the sounds of cannons and warfare in the distance. “Ugh, I guess they’ve started…(Yawn) I suppose I better get up and see what’s going on before Galen and Ackerson start arguing over how to best execute the survivors. Hey did you need to…” you say and then realize that Alison is no longer laying anywhere next to you. She’s not even in the tent. What you do see is a piece of parchment nearby. You pick it up and you feel something is wrong as soon as you do. Your first thoughts are perhaps it is some sort of “break up” letter. You have heard of such things occurring with soldiers that have been far away from their wives or husbands sometimes. Perhaps Alison sees the futility in your current arrangement since you have such a significant duty to the Emperor and doesn’t want you to have to “choose”. However, after you read the words on it you WISH it were a break up letter. The words merely say: Always and forever. Remember this. Your heart sinks. You just slept with Mistress. She must’ve magically disguised herself as Alison. You don’t even know how to react. Your normally reserved emotions are all over the place. You feel a little sick, you definitely feel rage, but more at yourself for not being observant and falling for Mistress’ tricks once again. You end up nearly destroying everything in your tent in rage screaming incoherent obscenities not giving a damn about what the soldiers or officers walking by might be wondering what’s going on. In fact it’s a good thing none of them pop their head to investigate since you’re so angry you might’ve killed them. After you’re spent, you fall to your knees feeling defeated. “I’m sorry Alison…I’m sorry…” you say over and over again in between catching your breath and looking at your portrait of her. And worst part of all this, is you still enjoyed your night with Mistress. Even if it really wasn’t your fault, you briefly wish you hadn’t allowed yourself to grow so attached to Alison so this wasn’t even an issue. You should’ve just been concentrating on your duty to the Emperor and now you’re paying the price for not staying focused. You’re focused now though. With the battle of Fort Tinker already in full swing, you make your way into the war torn fort and unleash the rest of your renewed energy there. Your enemies suffer greatly that day. By the time its all over you feel slightly better even though you know you’ll probably still have to deal with Mistress’ shit later. Until then though there are important tasks still at hand and the major one being that the Felkan Kingdom needs to be destroyed and you intend to see that through. > Year 30 The day has come at last, the Felkan capital; Dessel has been broken wide open. Its defenses have been shattered and all that’s left now is to scoop out the soft underbelly within. “How long do you think they’ll hold out?” Roldan asks. “A few more hours, perhaps even a day. No more I suspect. I have to admit that I thought the remaining Felkan ruling class would’ve surrendered long before now, let alone fight to the bitter end. I suppose they were still carrying out the will of their gnomish masters even though most of them are dead or soon will be.” You remark. “I know they had a lot of influence and were responsible for the technological inventions along with running the merchant guilds, but do you really believe the Felkan Kingdom was run by gnomes?” “Of course. Its what the Emperor believed and ultimately that’s been the purpose of this whole war, to eliminate the gnome threat. Happily with this final nail in the coffin, that’s been accomplished.” “You know some of them probably escaped long before the war started going badly for the Felkans.” “Perhaps, but I’m sure in time they will be found. The Emperor’s domain has already been extended much within the past few years alone, I’m sure eventually it will cover the entire world and in the long run all those that oppose the Emperor will be brought to justice. Either by me, or by someone else loyal to his service.” “Well, until such time I’m just wondering where I’ll be assigned after all this. Personally I’m hoping to get a little free time so I can see my wife Brenda again. It’s been so long and I miss her. I’m sure you feel something similar about Alison.” You pause for a moment before speaking. “I will go where my duty takes me after this assignment. Alison understands that, she is a military woman after all.” You remark. “Well of course, but I was just stating that it would be nice to take a break from duty for a moment to enjoy the company of someone you care about.” “We’re Eternals Roldan. So is Brenda for that matter. Our existence is duty. You would do well to remember that.” “I am aware of it! I was just…oh forget it.” Says and walks away from you. You and Roldan have been a little less cordial to each other lately, then again the two of you never have quite “clicked” with each other for some reason. Actually there are probably several reasons on your side as well as his, but you aren’t going to waste your time pondering them since you are both able to work together in a professional manner and never engaged in anything other than the low level disagreements. As long as the respect is still there between you two, why bother analyzing it? Besides this mission is nearly over now anyway. You’re fairly certain you’ll be reassigned somewhere else. You do wonder if you’ll get some down time as Roldan mentioned though. If you do, you’re more than likely going to try to spend some of it with Alison, though you’ve still been going back and forth on how well that’s going to go when you tell her what happened two years ago. You certainly couldn’t tell her something like that in a letter and from what letters you’ve received from her she still doesn’t know. Mistress probably wouldn’t tell her to stir up chaos because it would be more fun letting you worry about it for all this time. You’re just glad you never had to help assist Mistress at Gnome’s Home again, though now you’re even wondering if that was ever a real order from the Emperor when it did occur. You haven’t spoken to the Emperor directly or even indirectly in quite some time either. That’s actually been a little concerning to you as well. Still, you figure you soon will be when this is all over and the Felkans have finally been crushed once and for all. You watch the capital smoke and burn in the distance. Occasionally a small explosion causes pieces of the already breached wall fly into several directions. “Well I’m not going to miss out on all the fun, before it’s over.” You say to yourself and head towards the city. As it turns out you don’t miss much. The city’s defenders consist of mostly children and elders at this point. They don’t provide too much resistance now that they have no walls to hide behind. The royal guard is still around but quick work is made of them. As for the royals themselves most of them took the coward’s way out. You find several of them lying dead at their lavish dinner table with several knocked over empty wine cups. Upon further searching you find what you guess to be the royal bedroom and who you guess to be the Felkan king and queen lying dead in the bed. They must’ve taken the same poison since you see the same cups near the bodies. As you study the pair of them and how they are holding hands in death, you notice a crib in the corner of the room. While you’re inspecting this, Warrick walks in. “Oh there you are. We’ve found that some of these rooms lead to a system of secret passages. We’ve already started to explore them, but we haven’t found anyone yet. I don’t even think they lead outside the city, just to other portions of the palace. Looks like we won.” Warrick remarks. “Looks that way. Sort of a disappointing climax given how the Felkans insisted on dragging this out. Continue your search though; someone still might be hiding in them. You find any gnomes?” “No and I don’t believe there are any in city either. At least no reports have popped up about any.” “Guess we got all of them then. The Emperor will be pleased to hear that. Carry on.” For the next few days you observe the destruction of Dessel. Roldan remarks that the city shouldn’t be destroyed, but rather appropriated by the Empire as it wouldn’t take much to rebuild the damage and would be easier than building a brand new city here. Orders are orders though. While the Emperor might’ve relaxed his zeal on burning every Felkan city to the ground, he was still pretty clear about the capital. You imagine he sees it as the last symbol of gnomish defiance. In the middle of this process Jacob unexpectedly visits you. “Didn’t expect to see you here.” You remark while sharpening your weapon. “Well the Emperor wants to see you, plus I also have to speak with Roldan and Warrick about their next assignments, so I figured I might as well come here in person.” Jacob says looking around at the destruction. “So, it’s finally done. The Felkan Kingdom is no more. I have to admit, I was worried about this war on more than one occasion.” “You don’t need to tell me, you told me on more than one occasion. You should’ve had more faith in the Emperor, he knew its destruction was inevitable.” “Well, thanks in part to your actions no doubt.” Jacob says with a brief smile. “I am merely the weapon which does the job. If you’re looking for Roldan, he’s in the large tent on that small hill over to the east. Warrick’s probably with him. I need to get going if the Emperor wishes to see me…is Mistress going to be there?” “I don’t believe so.” “Good, don’t really need the negativity ruining this moment.” You remark and begin to leave. “Um…there’s something else I need to talk to you about before you leave.” Jacob says hesitantly. “What?” “It’s about the Emperor, he’s uh…well…” “He’s what?! What is he?! Jacob, just spit it out.” “He’s sick.” “What? Sick? That’s ridiculous! I’ve never known him to ever show illness.” “I know it may seem hard to believe, but I’m telling you last time I spoke with him, he didn’t look well. He seemed very tired and just really pale.” “He runs the Empire! Of course there’s going to be times he’s going to be tired! It has to be taxing keeping track of everything. As for being pale, he doesn’t exactly go skipping about in the sunlight you know.” “I know all that. Look, just when you see him you’ll know what I’m talking about. I mean I’m sure the Emperor will live a very long time, but we should prepare…um…just in case…” “Just in case what Jacob?” you ask beginning to get angry at the insinuation that the Emperor may die. Jacob sensing he’s overstepped a boundary quickly shuts up. “Erm…nevermind. Forget I said anything. I’m worrying too much as usual…but still…(sigh) forget it. I’ll let you get on your way.” You shake your head and begin to leave again, when Jacob once again stops you. “Oh one more thing. Before you go see the Emperor, you’re supposed to make a visit to Gnome’s Home first.” “Are you fucking kidding me? Aren’t all the gnomes there dead by now?” “Maybe, I dunno. Something to do with souls I think. I never did know exactly what went on there, and I don’t really think I want to know. All I do know is you’re supposed to assist.” “Assist who? Mistress? I already assisted her once there and let’s just say what transpired wasn’t pleasant. She hasn’t needed my assistance for the past two years since that time, why does she need it now all of a sudden? Fuck that, I’m not helping her anytime soon. In fact if I saw her again, I’d probably kill the bitch after what happened last time!” Jacob begins to step back from you. “Easy now, I’m just the messenger here. I don’t even know if she’s there. It’s what the Emperor told me to tell you. I mean if you don’t want to do it, I suggest you take it up with him personally.” At this point you might just do that. Nobody can question your loyalty or your dedication to the Emperor, but this request…its just asking too much. You thought he spoke with her about leaving you alone and she’s already ignored that. How long must you put up with this svelk bitch? > You head to Gnome's Home An order from the Emperor is an order from the Emperor no matter what. If you have to go to Gnome’s Home, then you have to go. If you have to assist Mistress then that’s what you’ll have to do. Doesn’t mean you have to like it though. You get on your horse and make your way to Gnome’s Home. On your way you think about how you’re going to handle the situation if you have to assist Mistress. Then you realize that the time has come. You’re going to kill the bitch. This has been a long time coming anyway. You aren’t sure if you’re just going to attack her if you see her or if you’ll do something a little more subtle, but one thing is certain, she’s going to be dead by the time you leave that gnome murder factory. When you arrive at Gnome’s Home the outside looks about the same the last time you were here and when you’re let inside the gates, it smells about the same as well. Probably even a little bit worse. You step inside and see a lot less living gnomes and lot more dead ones. A few pathetic examples lay half dead outside their dwellings covered in their own filth. Whatever attempts at keeping this place slightly clean have long since stopped. The entire place is disgusting and you feel like you’re going to catch something just standing here. “Hey, I heard you were coming, welcome back!” you hear a voice shout. It’s Kane. He’s a bit unkept and wild looking, but still friendly. You notice he doesn’t have his ogre friends with him any more. “Hello Kane. You’re looking…well.” “Thanks. I’ve been feeling well. Been keeping very busy what with all the gnome killing and all. As you can see, we’re almost finished. Figured we’d speed up the process by cutting back on the clean up portion, I mean this whole place is going to be shut down after we kill ‘em all anyway. I’ll be sort of sad to see it go, but nothing lasts forever right?” “Right, so my assignment was to assist in something?” “Oh yes, sorry. I don’t get to talk to many people nowadays. Anyway Mistress is waiting for you down in the soul obliteration chamber. I’m not actually sure if that’s what it’s called, but given what happens there, seems as good a name as any.” You thank Kane and make your way to where Mistress is located. Along the way you see the usual piles of bodies being tossed into the large furnaces by bored guards. When you get down to the chamber you see that Mistress is already in the process of preparation. You see more jars containing souls than you did last time and that gives you the idea of how to kill her. “Hey lover, you’re here right on time.” She remarks. “Yeah, let’s just get this over with.” You say. “Well, I’m certainly glad you didn’t feel that way during our last encounter.” “You tricked me during that last encounter!” “True, but didn’t it feel so good? Besides its not like anyone knows so what’s the harm?” “You know what? I’m tired of fighting it, maybe you’re right.” You answer. Mistress is a bit surprised to hear you say that. “Er…of course I am! I’ve always had your best interest in mind. That’s what I’ve always been telling you.” “And I think I finally realize it after all these years. I mean you were the one who practically taught me everything I know. Who would know better for me than you?” you say and walk over to Mistress. You grab Mistress around the waist and give her a passionate kiss. All part of the act of course and part of you hates it, but the other part is definitely getting excited. Afterwards Mistress looks at you with a glee that you’ve only really seen when she’s torturing someone. (Which was usually you). “Okay, down boy, we’ve still got business to take care of here. Glad to see you’re finally seeing things how they really are though. After this bit of business perhaps we can talk more about the future. Our future.” “Looking forward to it.” You say and slap her on her ass before taking your position on the circle line. Mistress goes on to tell you that the process will be just like before, but will require even more focus than last time. She says one of the reasons why she wanted your help this time (Other than wanting to see you again) was because she wants to dispose of more gnome souls than usual. She says that while she enjoyed the torture, suffering and extermination of an entire race she absolutely hates the smell and general dirtiness of the place and the sooner she’s out of here the better. Your plan is simple. You’re going to sabotage the ritual. You’re fairly certain the gnome souls will try to convince you to do it like they did last time anyway. Mistress begins chanting and soon the spell begins to take effect. You begin to hear the whispers of gnome souls in your head. More than last time and saying the exact same thing. “Break the circle! Save us! Kill the svelk! Save us from oblivion!” you hear and you begin to do just that and stop focusing your energy towards Mistress. She of course realizes what you’re doing, but doesn’t say anything, instead she just shuts her eyes as if to concentrate harder. You decide a blade through her body should really take her off her game plan, since she’s either going to have to stop you which will expose her mind to the vengeful souls or not stop you and get stabbed which will have the same effect. You draw your sword and then suddenly your own mind shield is completely shattered and multiple souls assault your mind. The pain is excruciating and you collapse on the floor and begin convulsing. “Did you really think I couldn’t see through your charade?” Mistress shouts as your mind continues to be destroyed by the gnome souls. You don’t know why they’re not attacking Mistress, but you see why they’re attacking you. You aren’t innocent in all this as far as they’re concerned. Your involvement in the Felkan campaign has probably resulted in most of the gnomes being rounded up and sent to Gnome’s Home in the first place. For the first time you not only see the horror that has been this place, but you also experience all of it. Your mind can’t take it and neither can your body which begins to lose all control of its functions. You’re leaking all manner of bodily fluids out every possible place you could be leaking from. Eventually you’re nothing more than an empty shell, but not quite dead. The souls have stopped attacking and Mistress stands over you. “I really had hoped you were serious, but I just couldn’t take that chance. I reinforced my own mental shield and cast a repulsion spell. Of course the souls have now completely escaped annihilation, but what the hell, that’s the Emperor’s obsession not mine.” You continue to stare upward and slack jaw in a comatose state. “(Sigh) I suppose the malicious svelk thing to do, would be to continue to keep you alive in this state for a little while longer, but I think you’re probably too far gone for me to even get any enjoyment out of that. Besides, even I couldn’t do that to you. I’m just a fool for love I guess.” Mistress kneels down and takes her dagger that she gave you a long time ago and holds it to your throat. “Well at least I got to kiss you one last time.” She says and ends what remains of your life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 30 The day has come at last, the Felkan capital; Dessel has been broken wide open. Its defenses have been shattered and all that’s left now is to scoop out the soft underbelly within. “How long do you think they’ll hold out?” Roldan asks. “A few more hours, perhaps even a day. No more I suspect. I have to admit that I thought the remaining Felkan ruling class would’ve surrendered long before now, let alone fight to the bitter end. I suppose they were still carrying out the will of their gnomish masters even though most of them are dead or soon will be.” You remark. “I know they had a lot of influence and were responsible for the technological inventions along with running the merchant guilds, but do you really believe the Felkan Kingdom was run by gnomes?” “Of course. Its what the Emperor believed and ultimately that’s been the purpose of this whole war, to eliminate the gnome threat. Happily with this final nail in the coffin, that’s been accomplished.” “You know some of them probably escaped long before the war started going badly for the Felkans.” “Perhaps, but I’m sure in time they will be found. The Emperor’s domain has already been extended much within the past few years alone, I’m sure eventually it will cover the entire world and in the long run all those that oppose the Emperor will be brought to justice. Either by me, or by someone else loyal to his service.” “Well, until such time I’m just wondering where I’ll be assigned after all this. Personally I’m hoping to get a little free time so I can see my wife Brenda again. It’s been so long and I miss her. I’m sure you feel something similar about Alison.” You pause for a moment before speaking. “I will go where my duty takes me after this assignment. Alison understands that, she is a military woman after all.” You remark. “Well of course, but I was just stating that it would be nice to take a break from duty for a moment to enjoy the company of someone you care about.” “We’re Eternals Roldan. So is Brenda for that matter. Our existence is duty. You would do well to remember that.” “I am aware of it! I was just…oh forget it.” Says and walks away from you. You and Roldan have been a little less cordial to each other lately, then again the two of you never have quite “clicked” with each other for some reason. Actually there are probably several reasons on your side as well as his, but you aren’t going to waste your time pondering them since you are both able to work together in a professional manner and never engaged in anything other than the low level disagreements. As long as the respect is still there between you two, why bother analyzing it? Besides this mission is nearly over now anyway. You’re fairly certain you’ll be reassigned somewhere else. You do wonder if you’ll get some down time as Roldan mentioned though. If you do, you’re more than likely going to try to spend some of it with Alison, though you’ve still been going back and forth on how well that’s going to go when you tell her what happened two years ago. You certainly couldn’t tell her something like that in a letter and from what letters you’ve received from her she still doesn’t know. Mistress probably wouldn’t tell her to stir up chaos because it would be more fun letting you worry about it for all this time. You’re just glad you never had to help assist Mistress at Gnome’s Home again, though now you’re even wondering if that was ever a real order from the Emperor when it did occur. You haven’t spoken to the Emperor directly or even indirectly in quite some time either. That’s actually been a little concerning to you as well. Still, you figure you soon will be when this is all over and the Felkans have finally been crushed once and for all. You watch the capital smoke and burn in the distance. Occasionally a small explosion causes pieces of the already breached wall fly into several directions. “Well I’m not going to miss out on all the fun, before it’s over.” You say to yourself and head towards the city. As it turns out you don’t miss much. The city’s defenders consist of mostly children and elders at this point. They don’t provide too much resistance now that they have no walls to hide behind. The royal guard is still around but quick work is made of them. As for the royals themselves most of them took the coward’s way out. You find several of them lying dead at their lavish dinner table with several knocked over empty wine cups. Upon further searching you find what you guess to be the royal bedroom and who you guess to be the Felkan king and queen lying dead in the bed. They must’ve taken the same poison since you see the same cups near the bodies. As you study the pair of them and how they are holding hands in death, you notice a crib in the corner of the room. While you’re inspecting this, Warrick walks in. “Oh there you are. We’ve found that some of these rooms lead to a system of secret passages. We’ve already started to explore them, but we haven’t found anyone yet. I don’t even think they lead outside the city, just to other portions of the palace. Looks like we won.” Warrick remarks. “Looks that way. Sort of a disappointing climax given how the Felkans insisted on dragging this out. Continue your search though; someone still might be hiding in them. You find any gnomes?” “No and I don’t believe there are any in city either. At least no reports have popped up about any.” “Guess we got all of them then. The Emperor will be pleased to hear that. Carry on.” For the next few days you observe the destruction of Dessel. Roldan remarks that the city shouldn’t be destroyed, but rather appropriated by the Empire as it wouldn’t take much to rebuild the damage and would be easier than building a brand new city here. Orders are orders though. While the Emperor might’ve relaxed his zeal on burning every Felkan city to the ground, he was still pretty clear about the capital. You imagine he sees it as the last symbol of gnomish defiance. In the middle of this process Jacob unexpectedly visits you. “Didn’t expect to see you here.” You remark while sharpening your weapon. “Well the Emperor wants to see you, plus I also have to speak with Roldan and Warrick about their next assignments, so I figured I might as well come here in person.” Jacob says looking around at the destruction. “So, it’s finally done. The Felkan Kingdom is no more. I have to admit, I was worried about this war on more than one occasion.” “You don’t need to tell me, you told me on more than one occasion. You should’ve had more faith in the Emperor, he knew its destruction was inevitable.” “Well, thanks in part to your actions no doubt.” Jacob says with a brief smile. “I am merely the weapon which does the job. If you’re looking for Roldan, he’s in the large tent on that small hill over to the east. Warrick’s probably with him. I need to get going if the Emperor wishes to see me…is Mistress going to be there?” “I don’t believe so.” “Good, don’t really need the negativity ruining this moment.” You remark and begin to leave. “Um…there’s something else I need to talk to you about before you leave.” Jacob says hesitantly. “What?” “It’s about the Emperor, he’s uh…well…” “He’s what?! What is he?! Jacob, just spit it out.” “He’s sick.” “What? Sick? That’s ridiculous! I’ve never known him to ever show illness.” “I know it may seem hard to believe, but I’m telling you last time I spoke with him, he didn’t look well. He seemed very tired and just really pale.” “He runs the Empire! Of course there’s going to be times he’s going to be tired! It has to be taxing keeping track of everything. As for being pale, he doesn’t exactly go skipping about in the sunlight you know.” “I know all that. Look, just when you see him you’ll know what I’m talking about. I mean I’m sure the Emperor will live a very long time, but we should prepare…um…just in case…” “Just in case what Jacob?” you ask beginning to get angry at the insinuation that the Emperor may die. Jacob sensing he’s overstepped a boundary quickly shuts up. “Erm…nevermind. Forget I said anything. I’m worrying too much as usual…but still…(sigh) forget it. I’ll let you get on your way.” You shake your head and begin to leave again, when Jacob once again stops you. “Oh one more thing. Before you go see the Emperor, you’re supposed to make a visit to Gnome’s Home first.” “Are you fucking kidding me? Aren’t all the gnomes there dead by now?” “Maybe, I dunno. Something to do with souls I think. I never did know exactly what went on there, and I don’t really think I want to know. All I do know is you’re supposed to assist.” “Assist who? Mistress? I already assisted her once there and let’s just say what transpired wasn’t pleasant. She hasn’t needed my assistance for the past two years since that time, why does she need it now all of a sudden? Fuck that, I’m not helping her anytime soon. In fact if I saw her again, I’d probably kill the bitch after what happened last time!” Jacob begins to step back from you. “Easy now, I’m just the messenger here. I don’t even know if she’s there. It’s what the Emperor told me to tell you. I mean if you don’t want to do it, I suggest you take it up with him personally.” At this point you might just do that. Nobody can question your loyalty or your dedication to the Emperor, but this request…its just asking too much. You thought he spoke with her about leaving you alone and she’s already ignored that. How long must you put up with this svelk bitch? > You go directly to the Emperor You get on your horse and make your way to the Empire capital. You’re not doing it, plain and simple. The Emperor can deal with you as he sees fit, but you are not going to help Mistress for any reason. You made the attempt and it resulted in trickery again. Besides, why the hell should you follow every little menial task? You’ve been instrumental in keeping the damn Empire together; you shouldn’t be subjugated to such indignities! Jacob just told you the Emperor is sick, well he better watch it if he wants to stick around long enough to get better. You can’t believe you just thought such a thing. What the hell is wrong with you? The thoughts and acts of disobedience are bad enough, but to actually consider… You can’t even think it again. Something must be seriously wrong with your mind. Maybe Mistress did something more to you. Maybe she did some sort of magic spell to your head to make you harbor thoughts of dissension. At least you hope that’s case, because if she didn’t then you’d have to come to grips that you thought about killing the Emperor all on your own. Whatever the reason, you’ll be keeping that one to yourself. When you get to the Emperor’s chambers you hear him call for you immediately. Some coughing immediately follows his voice. You’ve definitely never heard him do that before “There you are my son, I’m glad to see you. It’s been so long since we’ve talked face to face.” He says as he sits hunched over a desk. He almost looks like he’s struggling to prop himself up. Maybe he is as sick as Jacob says. He’s as pale as Jacob said and his eyes are starting to have a sunken in looking appearance. What used to look like a man in his fifties now looks more like a man in his seventies. In fact he almost looks a bit more like how you thought he was going to when you first met him. You know he’s powerful. Certainly more powerful than you, but he looks so much frailer now. It makes you ashamed that you had thoughts about killing him; especially after all he’s done for you. “Emperor! I was told you were sick, but I didn’t believe it! How?” “Sick? (Cough cough) Well I suppose that’s one way of putting it. I’m guessing Jacob told you I was practically on my death bed or something. He still worries too much and you shouldn’t either. I’m not sick, I’m…well its complicated, but suffice to say, I’m not dying anytime soon. Trust me on that one. Now I’d (Cough cough) like a report on the Felkans. Have we finally destroyed them once and for all?” “Yes, the capital has been taken and is in the process of being destroyed. The battle mages will be casting defilement spells to make sure nothing ever grows there again. The ruling royals from what we can tell all committed mass suicide.” “Figures. But as long as everyone’s dead, it’s still good. So what about gnomes? Any in the capital?” “None. I can only guess we got all of them at Gnome’s Home.” “One can (cough cough) only hope. So have they all been sentenced to oblivion yet?” “I don’t know, I haven’t been Gnome’s Home.” “You haven’t? I thought you got here pretty quickly. Surely Jacob told you that I wanted you to go there.” “Yes, he told me I was to go there to assist and I know that could only mean assisting Mistress with the destruction of gnome souls. It was with great regret that I disobeyed this order, but I simply cannot help that woman again, if ever. The last time I made the attempt was two years ago when I was assisting her at Gnome’s Home and there was some…unpleasantness.” “Was there now? I hadn’t heard about this and I spoke to her about leaving you alone, as you well know. So what exactly happened? She try to kill you?” “No, she (sigh) made unwanted advances on me. I turned her down, and later when I went back to my camp she magically disguised herself as Alison and slept with me that way. I of course didn’t now until afterwards.” “”Is that all? Here I was thinking it was something serious.” the Emperor replies in a bored tone followed by more coughing. “However, I can see that this is something that was very serious to you so I will of course dismiss your transgression of not following orders…again. In the future I will also make sure that you and her are never to work together under any circumstances. I guess my attempt at being peacemaker didn’t work out. (cough cough) Doesn’t matter anyway, but tell me what are you exactly mad concerning that situation that occurred? I get the impression it’s more than just Mistress fucking with you as usual.” He’s right. The fact that Mistress tricked you isn’t what bothered you the most; it’s the fact that you unwittingly betrayed Alison. The fact that Mistress cloaked herself as someone you have feelings for…no someone you LOVE to trick you just made it all the worse. You tell the Emperor as much, he nods in between another coughing fit. “So, you do love this Alison girl then? It’s not just lust or perhaps a fleeting fancy. You actually love her?” the Emperor asks. “I do.” “And this girl, she feels the same way?” “I believe she does.” “Hmm, you better be sure son.” “Yes, I know she does.” “I see… well do you want some advice?” “From you, of course.” “ (cough cough) Shit. (cough) Okay, here it is then, you’ll save yourself some pain if you end this relationship altogether. Now just listen. I know you’re an intelligent person and an excellent strategist in the matters of war, but on the matters of love you’re…and I don’t mean this as an insult…but you’re a little inexperienced. It’s okay though, even after several centuries I still haven’t figured it all out yet. But I still know more than you and I’m telling you that you’ll be better off not getting deeply involved with such things. Why do you think I’ve never had an Empress by my side? It complicates things to a whole new level and that’s complications YOU don’t need.” You’re speechless for a moment. You can’t think of anything to say except… “Is this an order?” “An order? No, I’d never give such an order concerning matters of the heart; it is merely advice. You may do as you wish. In fact you may do as you wish for quite some time. I’m giving you some down time in light of our glorious victory over the Felkans. We’ll of course be having some celebrations going on here in the capital so if you get the chance you should probably (cough cough) join in the (cough cough) festivities. When you’re needed to return to duty, I’ll send for you as usual. I also want you to know, I’m proud of you son and for all you’ve done for the Empire and know you’ll continue to serve the Empire loyally (cough cough) and with dedication in the future.” The Emperor at this point slowly gets up and heads off towards his bedroom area coughing the whole time. You almost ask him if he needs help, but you’d rather not insult him. Besides you’re too busy pondering his advice to you about Alison. Even you thought about how being in a relationship with Alison put you in a position to fall for Mistress’ trickery. You think about Roldan and how he’s married and it doesn’t seem to affect his judgment, but it’s different for him. He’s married to another Eternal and he doesn’t have the responsibilities you have. But as they say, the heart wants what the heart wants and you’ve wanted to spend time with Alison ever since you were split up from her. And now that this war is finally over you have the time to do it. Should you break up with her just because of some potential problems in the future with Mistress or anything else? > You end things with Alison As much as this is going to pain you to do, you need to end your relationship with Alison, if only to save her life. The more you think about it, who knows what the hell Mistress could do next and she’s already proven to ignore the Emperor’s warnings before. Then there’s the Emperor himself. It’s obvious he doesn’t approve of the relationship, and continuing it could potentially be problematic. You certainly wouldn’t want to fall out of favor with the Emperor even if you do love Alison. You’re going to keep this as short as possible and hopefully Alison will too. What’s going to make this worse is the fact that this will be the first time you’ve seen each other in years. You leave the palace and the capital to make your way to where Alison is currently stationed, which means a long ride back to the new eastern frontier of the Empire. You eventually arrive at Fort Stalwart, which is actually just a renamed and rebuilt fort once held by the ex-Felkan Kingdom. Given your reputation, the gates are immediately opened for you. A few of the older soldiers are also probably aware of your relationship with their commanding officer so orders are already given to alert Alison of your sudden arrival. She meets you even before you make it to her office. She flashes a smile when she sees you and goes to put her arms around you presumably to kiss you. While you’d love for her to do so, you stop Alison, which confuses the hell out her. “What’s this? Oh. The other soldiers around. You and your insistence on keeping protocol. Very well let’s get to my quarters so we can get you back into your comfort zone, because its been too damn long.” “It has and we should get back to your quarters, but I’m fairly sure you’re not going to be in the mood for what you probably had in mind after I tell you what I have to tell you.” Alison steps back and gives you a tilted look. “Hmm, sounds serious. You look even more grim than usual. Well let’s get this over with.” Alison says and the pair of you head towards her quarters. Her private quarters are neat and clean, as you’d expect, on the right wall you see your portrait, which is right across from her bed. Placed in such a way so the first thing she sees when she wakes up is you. “Alright. Out with it and let’s see exactly how mad you think I’m going to be at you.” Alison remarks closing her door. You sit on the bed and take a deep breath then exhale giving her a look on your face, which contains a hint of regret. “Geez…this must be bad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this. Its almost like you’re afraid to tell me. Shit, maybe I better sit down too.” Alison says taking a seat in one her chairs. “Alison…I love you. I want you to know that before I say anything else. I never thought I could ever feel this way at all about anyone. It just wasn’t something I was taught or even learned. (whew) Okay enough stalling. Here it is…” You tell her that you want to end this relationship. You don’t offer too much of an explanation though, just some vague reason that your duties to the Emperor are always going to take precedence and its not fair to her to have a steady relationship with you because who knows where you’re going to be sent to next and for how long. You expect Alison to show some sign of emotion at this point. For the most part she remains stoically silent just listening to everything, but you can tell she is a little surprised by this news. “I see…well if that’s what you want I won’t try to argue with you about it. Everyone is an adult here and has the freedom of choice. I must admit this has taken me a bit off guard. I sort of thought our relationship was a bit more than just the occasional tumble, but apparently I was wrong. Wish I’d known before though, I could’ve…never mind. “I knew you were going to be angry.” “I’m not exactly angry, I’m not sure how I feel. Look just tell me one thing because I have to know. Are you still having a sexual relationship with Mistress?” Now this statement catches you off guard. “What? No! I don’t love Mistress! You know that!” “I didn’t ask you that. I asked you if you were still having some sort of sexual relationship with her. You don’t need to be in love with her. Hell, you don’t even need to like her. But you’ve told me enough of your past with her to know that you both have some sort of twisted attachment to one another. Now I’m going to just ask you one more time. Have you had any sort of intimate contact with her since we parted company?” You muster up all your confidence and put on a straight face. “No. I swear to you. I haven’t.” Alison stares at you for a long time. Looking into your eyes and trying to ascertain if you’re lying or not. You get the impression she doesn’t believe you, however since you’ve never been known to be a liar (especially not to her) and your facial expression exhibits a look of truthfulness she can’t completely jump to that conclusion. “I want to believe you. I suppose if I really wanted to know, I’d tell you to swear on the life of the Emperor, but I won’t do that. It wouldn’t make any difference anyway, because in the scheme of things what does it matter if you’re lying or not. You still came to tell me that our relationship isn’t going to work even if we do have strong feelings for each other, and you’re probably right. The funny thing is before I met you; I was pretty much a free spirited type when it came to relationships. I suppose I’ll return to that mindset, but I’ll always wonder what if?” “Alison…” “Goodbye Eternal, I don’t want you to see what is going to come next.” Alison remarks as her voice starts to crack. And with those words she turns her back on you. You leave her to her sadness and feel awful about it, but you know it’ll be better for her this way. As for you, you’ll just keep serving the Emperor as you always have. > Year 32 You look for a seat on the palace balcony to watch Roldan’s big parade celebration. Well actually it’s supposed an anniversary of the Felkan Kingdom’s demise, but due to Roldan’s important role in the war and his popularity with the people he’s certainly the major focus. Yes, Roldan’s certainly made advances since the Felkan War ended. He got assigned to wipe out the rest of the gnoll tribes in the west. Something you figured you’d get assigned to do considering you did have something to do with beating back those mongrel men in the first place. Instead, the Emperor has been keeping you closer to home. With the recently acquired Felkan territory and the westward expansion, the Eyes are a little stretched so you’ve mostly been trying to eliminate the new bandit havens popping up in the old Felkan territory along with helping to fend off any desperate gnoll raids that attempt to sneak through. You’re also supposed to be making sure the new “citizens” aren’t planning to rebel, but given how badly they were beaten down, they’re just glad that you’re allowing them to live. So far no seditious activity has been detected. You’re not jealous of Roldan, it’s just that you figured you’d be something a lot more important after the Felkan War. You’d rather be out there conquering new lands for the Emperor and getting into the heat of battles rather than playing super sentinel. At least if you were in active battle it would keep your mind from wandering to thoughts of Alison. It seems like not a day goes by where you don’t think about her. Even right now as you sit waiting for the parade she dwells in your thoughts, until you hear that old familiar and unwelcome voice… “Hey lover, figured you’d be here. Jacob’s been looking for you. He won’t shut up about how proud he is of Roldan and how he’s so happy about this farce of a celebration.” You ignore Mistress, but she keeps talking. “He also has Roldan’s wife Brenda with him. One of your old classmates as you know. She’s aged horribly. I mean this is a celebration; the least she could do is attempt to fix herself up rather than stomping around in combat boots and inadequately polished armor like a common soldier. I mean just because you have a lowly status doesn’t mean you always have to look the part. Oh well, I suppose if one doesn’t know, one never will. But enough about her, how have you been?” Mistress sits down next to you and puts her arm around your shoulder. You continue to try to ignore her. “Oh come on, you can’t still be mad at me. You enjoyed our time together. If you hadn’t you wouldn’t have wisely made your decision to split with that little shield maiden of yours. I mean I’ll grant you that she had a certain rustic charm that you sometimes find in lesser creatures, but you knew deep down that she wasn’t for you. Hey, I’ve got an idea why don’t you and I go back to your private quarters and relive some old times? Has to be more appealing than watching this pointless exercise in patriotism. I’ll even let you ejaculate in my mouth and swallow your sweet essence. Come on, I KNOW you’d enjoy that. Seeing me on my knees and debasing myself for you in such a manner. You’d be totally in control. Or maybe you could just bend me over raw and brutally penetrate my…” At this point you can’t ignore her anymore and you brush her arm off of you and stand up. “Stay away from me. I’m only going to tell you once.” You say, but Mistress just sits there and smiles. “And what if I don’t? Will you promise to punish me long and hard?” Mistress says a few more vulgar things causing a bit of a scene for the other spectators. You don’t know if you’ll even be able to stick around for this celebration. You weren’t in the best of moods before and Mistress’ presence is making it worse. > You leave the celebration You aren’t sticking around to put up with Mistress’ usual obscene suggestions; you’re getting out of here. Mistress of course calls out to you as you leave, but doesn’t follow you. On your way out you bump into Jacob and who you presume is probably Brenda, but you don’t even acknowledge either of them you just want out of this place. You don’t start feeling better until you leave the palace and even then you feel like your whole day has been ruined. You make your way through the hectic streets not paying too much attention to the fact that the parade has started. You’re too pre-occupied with your self loathing on entertaining the idea of going back and taking Mistress up on her offer. Then you hear a lot of screaming and yelling. This is followed by a lot of people running in all different directions. “General Roldan’s dead!” “Shadows! The shadows are back!” “They’ll kill us all!” You snap out of your thoughts and process this new sudden information. You see one the Eyes nearby and question him. “Hey you! Where the hell is the rest of your unit? More importantly where the hell is Warrick?” you ask the Eye. “My unit is trying to keep this area under control while searching the nearby buildings here. As far as I know, Sightmaster Warrick was last seen near the city gates.” “Well the palace needs some extra protection, I want you to get the rest of your unit over there now. Your primary concern is supposed to be defending the Emperor anyway!” You make your way towards the city gates, which is a chore, but when you finally get a clear view of the gates, you find Warrick and Brenda arguing with each in the middle of the chaos. “I’ve got Eyes scouring the city and mages casting detection spells to back them up, I’m doing all I can Brenda!” Warrick exclaims. “Well you’re sure doing a bang up job of that eyeboy, considering you weren’t even able to prevent my husband from getting fucking decapitated in front of everyone! That was a fucking shadow Warrick! It probably already left the city already!” Brenda retorts. “I’m well aware of what it was Brenda, I had to track down and fight them a lot more than you ever did!” “And given that your group was supposed to have wiped them out, you fucked up on that job too!” “Brenda if you want to go on your own personal manhunt, fine, you don’t need my permission to do it. Go find and grab the nearest mage and have at it! I don’t have time to argue with you, I’m having a hard enough time trying to coordinate everything in this chaos right now.” Warrick looks semi-relieved when he sees you arrive. “I’m glad you’re here, you’ve got magic abilities. Can you take Brenda with you?” Brenda turns to you though she isn’t as happy to see you either. “Great, the other fuck up who was supposed to have been responsible for the extermination of the shadows.” Brenda remarks. “Brenda I know you’re angry right now and understandably upset, but I’m not going to tolerate the same sort of verbal abuse you’ve been heaping on Warrick. Now I’ll certainly help you, but we’re going to do this without the arguing.” Your calm yet firm demeanor doesn’t quell the high emotions going through Brenda right now, but they do at least establish a behavior guideline. “Alright fine.” She remarks. “Good, now let’s start checking the sewers.” “The sewers? Are you sure?” Brenda asks. “No, but I’m making a good guess that it being a shadow, it probably hasn’t gone far and is enjoying the whole idea of hiding right under our noses and possibly even planning the next step to cause further chaos. Besides, shit is often found in the sewers.” “I’ve got people already searching the sewers.” Warrick pipes up. “Yeah well, maybe if you had some stationed there and had a thorough search of the sewers before the parade none of this would be necessary now.” “That’s not fair, Jacob said…” “I don’t want to hear it Warrick. As far as I’m concerned Brenda’s got a right to be pissed at you considering you were supposed to be in charge of security for this thing.” Leaving Warrick behind, you and Brenda find the nearest manhole and descend into the smelly darkness. And it does smell pretty awful. Still not as bad as Gnome’s Home though, you don’t think anything will ever smell worse than that place. You keep a detection spell constantly on hoping it will catch something worthwhile, but you know this is a long shot and the equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack. Still, you couldn’t just sit around doing nothing. Brenda might’ve been out of line speaking to you in such a manner, but in some ways you do feel a little responsible since you thought you’d wiped out all the shadows. Brenda and you are more or less silent the whole time you search the sewers. You never do run into any of Warrick’s people, but then the sewers are just as large as the city itself. It’s not surprising you aren’t having much luck finding a shadow, if one is even hiding down here in the first place. “Damn it. I’m sorry Brenda.” “What?” “I don’t know where to even look, the sewers were just a blind guess. I have no real idea where to look. You probably were right; the shadow probably already left the city and if that’s the case, who know where the hell it fled to.” Brenda doesn’t say anything at first and you fully expect her to go off on you, but she doesn’t, instead she starts crying. Or rather she fails in trying not to cry. It would appear that the fact that her husband is dead is finally hitting her hard. “Brenda I…” you start to say and then a faint whistling sound is heard and you feel a sharp pain going through your back. You look down long enough to see the head of a crossbow bolt. Blood spreads across your chest and you stagger around and stare at a grinning decaying face. You then feel two blades separate your head from your body. The good news is your hunch was correct. The bad news is your detection spell couldn’t work on something that was already dead and as a result so are you. You can only hope that Brenda gets her revenge and figures it all out, because you won’t.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 32 You look for a seat on the palace balcony to watch Roldan’s big parade celebration. Well actually it’s supposed an anniversary of the Felkan Kingdom’s demise, but due to Roldan’s important role in the war and his popularity with the people he’s certainly the major focus. Yes, Roldan’s certainly made advances since the Felkan War ended. He got assigned to wipe out the rest of the gnoll tribes in the west. Something you figured you’d get assigned to do considering you did have something to do with beating back those mongrel men in the first place. Instead, the Emperor has been keeping you closer to home. With the recently acquired Felkan territory and the westward expansion, the Eyes are a little stretched so you’ve mostly been trying to eliminate the new bandit havens popping up in the old Felkan territory along with helping to fend off any desperate gnoll raids that attempt to sneak through. You’re also supposed to be making sure the new “citizens” aren’t planning to rebel, but given how badly they were beaten down, they’re just glad that you’re allowing them to live. So far no seditious activity has been detected. You’re not jealous of Roldan, it’s just that you figured you’d be something a lot more important after the Felkan War. You’d rather be out there conquering new lands for the Emperor and getting into the heat of battles rather than playing super sentinel. At least if you were in active battle it would keep your mind from wandering to thoughts of Alison. It seems like not a day goes by where you don’t think about her. Even right now as you sit waiting for the parade she dwells in your thoughts, until you hear that old familiar and unwelcome voice… “Hey lover, figured you’d be here. Jacob’s been looking for you. He won’t shut up about how proud he is of Roldan and how he’s so happy about this farce of a celebration.” You ignore Mistress, but she keeps talking. “He also has Roldan’s wife Brenda with him. One of your old classmates as you know. She’s aged horribly. I mean this is a celebration; the least she could do is attempt to fix herself up rather than stomping around in combat boots and inadequately polished armor like a common soldier. I mean just because you have a lowly status doesn’t mean you always have to look the part. Oh well, I suppose if one doesn’t know, one never will. But enough about her, how have you been?” Mistress sits down next to you and puts her arm around your shoulder. You continue to try to ignore her. “Oh come on, you can’t still be mad at me. You enjoyed our time together. If you hadn’t you wouldn’t have wisely made your decision to split with that little shield maiden of yours. I mean I’ll grant you that she had a certain rustic charm that you sometimes find in lesser creatures, but you knew deep down that she wasn’t for you. Hey, I’ve got an idea why don’t you and I go back to your private quarters and relive some old times? Has to be more appealing than watching this pointless exercise in patriotism. I’ll even let you ejaculate in my mouth and swallow your sweet essence. Come on, I KNOW you’d enjoy that. Seeing me on my knees and debasing myself for you in such a manner. You’d be totally in control. Or maybe you could just bend me over raw and brutally penetrate my…” At this point you can’t ignore her anymore and you brush her arm off of you and stand up. “Stay away from me. I’m only going to tell you once.” You say, but Mistress just sits there and smiles. “And what if I don’t? Will you promise to punish me long and hard?” Mistress says a few more vulgar things causing a bit of a scene for the other spectators. You don’t know if you’ll even be able to stick around for this celebration. You weren’t in the best of moods before and Mistress’ presence is making it worse. > You stay for the celebration You aren’t going to let her run you off, but you aren’t going to put up with her either. You see a seat on the other side of the balcony and head to it. Mistress says a few more things, but eventually stops when you aren’t responding to her anymore. You sit there in silence, attempting not to look in her direction, you almost feel glad when Jacob shows up with who you presume is Brenda, but he begins going on about how proud he is a of Roldan and other things you don’t really care about right now. “Jacob, I’m in no mood to speak about anything, I’m only here out of formalities. No offense to you, Roldan or anyone. I just really don’t want to be here right now and would like this over with as soon as possible.” Jacob isn’t sure how to react at first and then he looks over to his left and sees Mistress sitting over at the far end of the balcony. He gets it. “Apologies.” He says and whispers to Brenda about something before turning his attention to the parade, which is just beginning to get underway. As you sit there watching you try to lose yourself in the moment, but it’s difficult when you’re fighting the urge to take Mistress up on her offer. Every once in a while you glance over at her and catch a glimpse of her legs. You think about how you’d love to have them wrapped around you while your hands are wrapped around her throat. While you successfully lose yourself in this violent fantasy you are suddenly snapped out of it when everyone starts cheering very loudly. General Roldan arrives on a giant extravagant platform carried by a dozen or so elven slaves. He stands there in very shiny ornamental armor with an equally ornamental weapon by his side. He waves to the crowds on both sides and accepts their cheers. Brenda and Jacob are both smiling and Jacob is shouting louder than anyone else on the balcony. Then something unexpected happens. A cloaked figure suddenly materializes right behind Roldan. From this distance you can’t be sure, but it doesn’t look entirely human. As the crowd’s cheers become sounds of horror, you see this figure draw two curved blades and in one quick move decapitates Roldan before he even knows there is an attacker behind him. His body and head don’t even hit the surface of the platform before the cloaked figure disappears again. The elven slaves at this point panic and drop the platform, this is soon followed by the rest of the citizens generally running all over the place and soldiers swarming the streets trying to maintain order. The city is in chaos. Jacob is just sitting there in shock. Alison has immediately ordered everyone on the balcony to get inside the palace. Brenda on the other hand has already left; you imagine she’s taken to the streets to go find her husband’s assassin herself. “That was a fucking shadow.” You say to yourself and then you look over to Mistress and see her still sitting in her chair as well, but she’s not in shock. You see a small smirk across her face. That same cruel smirk you’ve seen many times before. You KNOW she’s behind this and she’s gone too far this time. You push aside the panicking spectators and rush towards Mistress. She turns to your direction just in time for you to tackle her to the ground and begin punching her in the face. Nobody tries to stop you. “You fucking treacherous bitch! You did this! I’m putting an end to you once and for all!” you shout. Mistress’ face is bloody and her nose is broken, but she isn’t without fight left in her. She rakes her nails across your eyes, which is enough for her to wiggle out from under you. “I didn’t have anything to do with this you crazy bastard!” she shouts, but you aren’t listening to her lies. You don’t even care that you’re half blind, you continue to grab at her so she can’t get away. “You’re not talking your way out of this, you svelk cunt!” you say and stab her in the stomach with the dagger she gave you. She attempts to cast a spell at you, but you grab her hand and break it before she even gets a word out. You pick her up off the floor like a rag doll and slam her back against the balcony railing. Her upper half hangs vulnerably over the railing and your intention is to see that the other half soon follows. “And now I’m going to punish you. It might not take you LONG to fall, but when you hit the ground it will certainly be HARD.” You remark as you hands grab both her legs to finish pushing her over, but Mistress still isn’t done yet. “There you go, sweet talking me again.” She says and with one last burst of energy and surprising strength she grabs your collar and pulls you forward and the pair of you go tumbling over the balcony. Your last thoughts before you hit the cold stone courtyard below are of the happier times with Alison followed by the happy thoughts that at least you got to see Mistress hit the ground a split second before you do.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You get on your horse and make your way to the Empire capital. You’re not doing it, plain and simple. The Emperor can deal with you as he sees fit, but you are not going to help Mistress for any reason. You made the attempt and it resulted in trickery again. Besides, why the hell should you follow every little menial task? You’ve been instrumental in keeping the damn Empire together; you shouldn’t be subjugated to such indignities! Jacob just told you the Emperor is sick, well he better watch it if he wants to stick around long enough to get better. You can’t believe you just thought such a thing. What the hell is wrong with you? The thoughts and acts of disobedience are bad enough, but to actually consider… You can’t even think it again. Something must be seriously wrong with your mind. Maybe Mistress did something more to you. Maybe she did some sort of magic spell to your head to make you harbor thoughts of dissension. At least you hope that’s case, because if she didn’t then you’d have to come to grips that you thought about killing the Emperor all on your own. Whatever the reason, you’ll be keeping that one to yourself. When you get to the Emperor’s chambers you hear him call for you immediately. Some coughing immediately follows his voice. You’ve definitely never heard him do that before “There you are my son, I’m glad to see you. It’s been so long since we’ve talked face to face.” He says as he sits hunched over a desk. He almost looks like he’s struggling to prop himself up. Maybe he is as sick as Jacob says. He’s as pale as Jacob said and his eyes are starting to have a sunken in looking appearance. What used to look like a man in his fifties now looks more like a man in his seventies. In fact he almost looks a bit more like how you thought he was going to when you first met him. You know he’s powerful. Certainly more powerful than you, but he looks so much frailer now. It makes you ashamed that you had thoughts about killing him; especially after all he’s done for you. “Emperor! I was told you were sick, but I didn’t believe it! How?” “Sick? (Cough cough) Well I suppose that’s one way of putting it. I’m guessing Jacob told you I was practically on my death bed or something. He still worries too much and you shouldn’t either. I’m not sick, I’m…well its complicated, but suffice to say, I’m not dying anytime soon. Trust me on that one. Now I’d (Cough cough) like a report on the Felkans. Have we finally destroyed them once and for all?” “Yes, the capital has been taken and is in the process of being destroyed. The battle mages will be casting defilement spells to make sure nothing ever grows there again. The ruling royals from what we can tell all committed mass suicide.” “Figures. But as long as everyone’s dead, it’s still good. So what about gnomes? Any in the capital?” “None. I can only guess we got all of them at Gnome’s Home.” “One can (cough cough) only hope. So have they all been sentenced to oblivion yet?” “I don’t know, I haven’t been Gnome’s Home.” “You haven’t? I thought you got here pretty quickly. Surely Jacob told you that I wanted you to go there.” “Yes, he told me I was to go there to assist and I know that could only mean assisting Mistress with the destruction of gnome souls. It was with great regret that I disobeyed this order, but I simply cannot help that woman again, if ever. The last time I made the attempt was two years ago when I was assisting her at Gnome’s Home and there was some…unpleasantness.” “Was there now? I hadn’t heard about this and I spoke to her about leaving you alone, as you well know. So what exactly happened? She try to kill you?” “No, she (sigh) made unwanted advances on me. I turned her down, and later when I went back to my camp she magically disguised herself as Alison and slept with me that way. I of course didn’t now until afterwards.” “”Is that all? Here I was thinking it was something serious.” the Emperor replies in a bored tone followed by more coughing. “However, I can see that this is something that was very serious to you so I will of course dismiss your transgression of not following orders…again. In the future I will also make sure that you and her are never to work together under any circumstances. I guess my attempt at being peacemaker didn’t work out. (cough cough) Doesn’t matter anyway, but tell me what are you exactly mad concerning that situation that occurred? I get the impression it’s more than just Mistress fucking with you as usual.” He’s right. The fact that Mistress tricked you isn’t what bothered you the most; it’s the fact that you unwittingly betrayed Alison. The fact that Mistress cloaked herself as someone you have feelings for…no someone you LOVE to trick you just made it all the worse. You tell the Emperor as much, he nods in between another coughing fit. “So, you do love this Alison girl then? It’s not just lust or perhaps a fleeting fancy. You actually love her?” the Emperor asks. “I do.” “And this girl, she feels the same way?” “I believe she does.” “Hmm, you better be sure son.” “Yes, I know she does.” “I see… well do you want some advice?” “From you, of course.” “ (cough cough) Shit. (cough) Okay, here it is then, you’ll save yourself some pain if you end this relationship altogether. Now just listen. I know you’re an intelligent person and an excellent strategist in the matters of war, but on the matters of love you’re…and I don’t mean this as an insult…but you’re a little inexperienced. It’s okay though, even after several centuries I still haven’t figured it all out yet. But I still know more than you and I’m telling you that you’ll be better off not getting deeply involved with such things. Why do you think I’ve never had an Empress by my side? It complicates things to a whole new level and that’s complications YOU don’t need.” You’re speechless for a moment. You can’t think of anything to say except… “Is this an order?” “An order? No, I’d never give such an order concerning matters of the heart; it is merely advice. You may do as you wish. In fact you may do as you wish for quite some time. I’m giving you some down time in light of our glorious victory over the Felkans. We’ll of course be having some celebrations going on here in the capital so if you get the chance you should probably (cough cough) join in the (cough cough) festivities. When you’re needed to return to duty, I’ll send for you as usual. I also want you to know, I’m proud of you son and for all you’ve done for the Empire and know you’ll continue to serve the Empire loyally (cough cough) and with dedication in the future.” The Emperor at this point slowly gets up and heads off towards his bedroom area coughing the whole time. You almost ask him if he needs help, but you’d rather not insult him. Besides you’re too busy pondering his advice to you about Alison. Even you thought about how being in a relationship with Alison put you in a position to fall for Mistress’ trickery. You think about Roldan and how he’s married and it doesn’t seem to affect his judgment, but it’s different for him. He’s married to another Eternal and he doesn’t have the responsibilities you have. But as they say, the heart wants what the heart wants and you’ve wanted to spend time with Alison ever since you were split up from her. And now that this war is finally over you have the time to do it. Should you break up with her just because of some potential problems in the future with Mistress or anything else? > You continue your relationship You’re sure the Emperor means well and he probably does have more knowledge on these things. But he doesn’t know Alison the way you know her. You also can’t and won’t spend your life in fear that something might occur that will cause strife between you and Alison. That’s why you’re going to tell her what happened two years ago and face whatever the consequences may be. You leave the palace and the capital to make your way to where Alison is currently stationed, which means a long ride back to the new eastern frontier of the Empire. You eventually arrive at Fort Stalwart, which is actually just a renamed and rebuilt fort once held by the ex-Felkan Kingdom. Given your reputation, the gates are immediately opened for you. A few of the older soldiers are also probably aware of your relationship with their commanding officer so orders are already given to alert Alison of your sudden arrival. She meets you even before you make it to her office. She flashes a smile when she sees you and goes to put her arms around you presumably to kiss you. While you’d love for her to do so, you stop Alison, which confuses the hell out her. “What’s this? Oh. The other soldiers around. You and your insistence on keeping protocol. Very well let’s get to my quarters so we can get you back into your comfort zone, because its been too damn long.” “It has and we should get back to your quarters, but I’m not sure if you’re going to be in the mood for what you probably had in mind after I tell you what I have to tell you.” Alison steps back and gives you a tilted look. “Hmm, sounds serious. You look even more grim than usual. Well let’s get this over with.” Alison says and the pair of you head towards her quarters. Her private quarters are neat and clean, as you’d expect, on the right wall you see your portrait, which is right across from her bed. Placed in such a way so the first thing she sees when she wakes up is you. “Alright. Out with it and let’s see exactly how mad you think I’m going to be at you.” Alison remarks closing her door. You sit on the bed and take a deep breath then exhale giving her a look on your face which contains a mixture of shame and guilt. “Geez…this must be bad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this. Its almost like you’re afraid to tell me. Shit, maybe I better sit down too.” Alison says taking a seat in one her chairs. “Alison…I love you. I want you to know that before I say anything else. I never thought I could ever feel this way at all about anyone. It just wasn’t something I was taught or even learned. (whew) Okay enough stalling. Here it is…” You tell Alison everything that happened two years ago at Gnome’s Home and afterwards. You also explain that you didn’t want to tell her in a letter because you felt something like this should be face to face. You expect Alison to show some sign of anger at this point, but she remains stoically silent just listening to everything. Lastly, and you weren’t planning on telling her this either, but you mention that the Emperor suggested that you break up with her and how you obviously ignored this advice because your feelings are just that strong for her. This one causes her eyes to widen a little. “Wow, obsessed svelk, rape through magic trickery, warnings from the Emperor, defying orders…sheesh. Bet you never thought you’d have to deal with things like this.” “Rape?” you say. “Well, yes. Its not like you willingly had sex with her, you willingly had sex with what you THOUGHT was me. It might’ve been a civilized form of it, but it still was rape since you wouldn’t have had sex with who it really was. What else would you call what that svelk bitch did to you? The act doesn’t always include a bunch of men holding down a hapless young girl and ramming their dicks into her you know.” Hell, you never even thought about that. For a brief moment you feel slightly…violated. “And here I thought she was just making up shit and posturing.” Alison continues. “Wait a minute. You…knew? When?” you ask. “For about two years now. Though as you might expect she told things a little differently. Never mentioned about disguising herself as me.” “So she visited you? You never mentioned it in your letters.” “Well hey guess what, neither did you. Though in your case I can understand why. In my case it was more I thought she was just so full of shit that I didn’t believe her in the first place and in the second place I knew you were so busy with the Felkans that I didn’t want to distract you with unpleasant thoughts of her in my letters. Figured it would be best to keep her out of them.” “What did she tell you exactly?” “She appeared in my office one night claiming that she would always be the main woman in your life. And how I didn’t stand chance against her and that I should just give up now. She said this along with the predictable insults of monkey and my general appearance. Then she mentioned how she easily seduced you into having sex with her and that you would always be hers. Like I said she was so overly dramatic about everything I thought she had to be lying.” “So what did you do?” “Nothing, I mostly just shrugged my shoulders and told her I thought she was lying. I also mentioned that I found it pretty sad that for all her superior svelk talent and beauty she was still jealous of a mere monkey like myself and obsessed with a man who obviously did not share the strong feelings she obviously has for you. Then to finish up my retort I also told her that even if what she said was true, that even if you did have sex with her it would only make you appreciate me all the more.” “Yikes. I can imagine she didn’t like that.” “Oh no, she did not like it at all. Her face turned from a smug sneer to one of frothing anger. I thought she was going to attack me, some flames started emanating from her fingers and for a moment it felt like a force was keeping me from drawing my own weapon. I couldn’t even call out for other soldiers to help. I guess she thought better of it though because she just stood there for a moment staring at me and then made her way out the window. Wasn’t long after that incident the svelk merc support was transferred out of here, which was fine by me and everyone else of course. Not like we needed them against gnoll attacks anymore anyway.” “I can’t believe all this happened and you aren’t mad.” You say. “Oh trust me I’m mad, but if you think its with you, you’re mistaken. I can’t do much about it though I suppose. I’m not really concerned with your little svelk stalker. I’m a little more troubled with what you just told me about the Emperor. I get the impression he doesn’t care for my influence, not that I think I really have any over you.” “Oh that? I wouldn’t worry about him. I believe he’s just overly concerned with my well-being again. He’s always been a little over protective at times, like a father with an only son I suppose. Right now though I’m just wondering how you feel about me after all is said and done.” “I don’t feel anything. Ha ha ha …wait that came out wrong. What I mean is I still feel the same way I always have about you. I love you. Nothing has changed.” “Good, then let’s get married. Let’s take our relationship to its next logical step.” “Married? You serious?” “Well sure. I mean don’t people who feel the way we do get married?” “Usually I guess…but I dunno…seems like there some forces against us, and that’s not even including one of us dying violently in battle. I mean in some ways the Emperor might be right. You might save yourself some pain if you ended our relationship now.” “Perhaps, but I won’t get to experience the good stuff if I did that.” “Good stuff eh? Is that what you’re calling it now?” Alison jokes. “Well, you sure you’re ready for the pain of possibly losing me on some forsaken battlefield somewhere?” “How do you know you’ll die first? You could outlive me.” “Pfft, please. You’ll outlive everyone. You’d outlast this entire world, if you had the time.” Alison laughs. “So will you marry me?” “Yes, of course I will.” As fitting for two soldiers, you and Alison don’t have a fancy wedding; in fact you get married the next day in some small town in the Arat province by a local bureaucrat. Alison is still on duty for the next week so you return to her post and spend your wedding night in her quarters at Fort Stalwart. She tells you though as soon as she has time off, the pair of you are going to spend quality time doing something fun which doesn’t involve the bedroom. You don’t see the need since the bedroom is just fine with you, but you agree. While waiting for Alison’s time off, you take it upon yourself to have a pair of proper rings made for you and Alison. You also have what possessions you actually own sent to Fort Stalwart since you don’t know where you’ll be stationed next and there is as good of place as any. After you’ve taken care of all that, you still have a day left to wait for Alison, so you go back to see the Emperor, you figure he should know what you’ve done and he’ll know eventually anyway. When you see him again, he’s still coughing a lot and moving slowly when he walks. He seems happy to see you though. “My (cough cough) son. This is an unexpected (cough) visit. I would’ve thought you would’ve been off enjoying your down time.” He says. “I am, but I have also come to tell you something. I have married Alison.” “Oh. I see. Well (cough cough) whatever makes you happy son. I trust she makes you happy.” “Yes.” “Then I’m happy for you. (cough cough) Heh, that was quick. Have to admit I didn’t expect you to marry her. You should’ve told me though (cough cough) I could’ve ordered a big city celebration like what (cough cough) we’re doing for the victory over the Felkans. You two could’ve walked down the streets with fancy guard and everything.” “That would’ve been very generous, but I don’t think that would’ve been either of our style.” “I suppose not. Well as I (cough cough) have said, I’m happy for you, enjoy your time together and cherish it. So was there anything else?” “No, nothing of any note.” “Very well…(cough cough) ugh…I’m still afflicted as you can tell. I need to just rest, so if you’ll excuse me.” Again, you feel like asking if he needs help, but you resist. Instead you just quietly start to leave. The Emperor speaks to you as he makes his way back to his bedroom. “Oh. Don’t (cough cough) worry about Semra. I spoke with her earlier a couple days ago about bothering you again.” “Semra?” “Yeah, you know (cough cough) Mistress. I made it quite clear to her if she did do it again that she’d be executed, along with every other svelk in the Empire. (cough cough) Funny thing is, she went into a complete breakdown exclaiming that I didn’t need to worry about that ever again, because as far she was concerned she never wanted to see you ever again. Then she (cough) proceeded to swear in common tongue as well as her own language. Mostly about you. Then she stormed off. If I didn’t know better I thought she was going to cry. I actually wondered what it was that caused all that. Now I know. I guess you had a hidden witness (cough cough) to your wedding.” “Shit.” You say quietly to yourself in amazement. Then you address the Emperor. “Thank you, sir.” “No problem. (cough cough) Think of it as my wedding gift to you.” Well you couldn’t have asked for a better one, assuming she really does stay away. > Year 32 “It’s not just a celebration for Roldan, it’s the celebration of the victory over the Felkans.” You remark. “I know that, but why is he getting a special parade? Roldan wasn’t the only one who brought down the Felkan Kingdom! He wasn’t even the only general!” Alison exclaims. “He was involved in the brunt of the major conflicts, including most of the vital forts and cities and most importantly the last siege on the Felkan capital.” You reply. “As I recall YOU played a major role along with several others!” “Well Roldan’s also been making great progress in eliminating the gnolls tribes on our western borders too. We probably won’t be having any trouble with them anymore at the rate he’s going.” “And as I recall YOU also played a major role in that during the Felkan War! Hell, so did I and continued to do so long after you got transferred to the frontlines! Shit, if it hadn’t been for us keeping those mongrel barbarians back who knows how the war would’ve turned out?” “Alison why are you so angry about this?” “I just don’t understand why you aren’t getting a big parade or accolades either.” Alison says as she finishes getting dressed. “I dunno, I’m not really concerned about it though.” You reply apathetically. “Besides you know I don’t care for all this kind of pomp and flash that comes with these sorts of celebrations anyway. If I didn’t have to be here out of formality I wouldn’t even be attending.” “Maybe, but it doesn’t seem fair that you’ve been getting punished just because you married me.” “Here we go, this concept again…” Alison goes into her usual rant about how since you got married to her, you’ve been getting less important assignments. She feels that the Emperor has been punishing you by keeping you in the background while allowing Roldan to take more of a prominent role such as sending him to conquer the gnoll tribes of the west. You can see this argument, and you have even entertained it a bit from time to time, but ultimately you’ve dismissed it, mainly because despite everything you’re still reporting directly to the Emperor. You’re still his most trusted of all his advisors. You’re still his son. Besides its not like you’re sitting around doing nothing. The Emperor has just been keeping you closer to home because this is where you’re currently needed. With the recently acquired Felkan territory and the westward expansion, the Eyes are a little stretched so you’ve mostly been trying to eliminate the new bandit havens popping up in the old Felkan territory along with helping to fend off any desperate gnoll raids that attempt to sneak through. You’re also supposed to be making sure the new “citizens” aren’t planning to rebel, but given how badly they were beaten down, they’re just glad that you’re allowing them to live. So far no seditious activity has been detected. True, you’d rather be out there conquering new lands in his name and getting into the heat of battles rather than playing super sentinel, but at least you get to see Alison more often. It’s a good trade off as far as you’re concerned. As far as Roldan is concerned you aren’t worried about him being “favored.” This large celebration for Roldan is more Jacob’s idea mainly because Roldan has largely become well known along with being well liked throughout the Empire. Not just by the military, but by the normal citizens as well. He’s generally regarded as a hero of sorts. Jacob practically begged the Emperor for this special celebration because he felt it would be good for overall morale throughout the Empire. Well that, and the fact Jacob feels “vindicated” that his own influence on the Eternals has proved successful. Though you sort of had a major role in Jacob’s fortune in that endeavor as well, something else Alison mentions in her rant. “You know, I might be getting sent to the unexplored land east of Nalin. There’s been discussion about expansion in that direction.” You say to Alison in the hopes that it will calm her down a bit. “Yeah? Well I certainly hope you’ll get your own special celebration when you conquer whoever lives there. I’m sorry. I don’t know why this is getting to me. This doesn’t bother you, so it shouldn’t bother me. You’re right anyway, I guess if you’d really fallen out of favor you would’ve been sent to go tame the inhospitable usksha desert south of Nalin alone in a loin cloth welding just a wooden sword.” You chuckle at Alison’s scenario. “Okay how do I look? Do I look presentable for the Emperor’s palace?” Alison stands before you in a black dress. It isn’t excessively fancy, but it’s certainly not something peasant would wear. While you’ve seen Alison in civilian clothing before, you’ve not seen her in something so elegant. “Really you didn’t need to dress up for this thing, I certainly didn’t. I just made sure I didn’t have a tear in my trousers and polished my armor.” “Maybe that’s because visiting the Emperor’s palace isn’t that big of a deal to you. For me however this is a new experience. Just glad my mother’s old dress fit me, since it’s practically the only fancy thing I own.” Well, you look lovely and dangerous as usual. The rapier on your hip is a nice touch. Didn’t realize that’s what all the upper class ladies were accessorizing with nowadays.” “Ha ha, I said I wanted to look presentable, I didn’t say I was going for high society. I’m still a soldier by nature, I’m not going anywhere without a weapon. “ “That’s my girl, let’s be on our way.” You remark and the pair of you set off for the capital in a carriage. Alison’s mood is much better the closer you get to your destination. When you arrive, the capital is already pretty busy along with the surrounding countryside. The city guard and a few soldiers are busily trying to keep order and keep the path clear for the parade later. The palace is certainly less chaotic and you take the opportunity to show Alison some of it. She mostly enjoys the ancient armor and weapon displays along with some of the statues. You have to admit, before you came here with Alison, you never really admired them before. Doesn’t take long before someone who knows you approaches. It’s Jacob and a brunette woman who looks about your age. She must be a soldier of some sort because she’s dressed in armor. “There you are, I was wondering when you’d arrive! When did you get here?” “I don’t know, a half hour ago I guess. I was showing Alison some of the palace since she’s never been here before.” “Ah yes, Alison! It’s a pleasure to finally meet you face to face! Better known as Major Krozer for those of us that have only known her through her military deeds. I heard how you were instrumental during the Felkan War on the gnoll front! That was great work! Between you and your husband here you really paved the way to the destruction of those barbarians.” “Thank you for the recognition.” Alison remarks politely. Ever the professional, she knows not to bring her personal feelings into a setting like this. “Everyone should remember that even though a special parade is being held for General Roldan, all soldiers who did their duty during that terrible war are to be honored and respected. Actually scratch that, ALL soldiers of the Empire should be.” Jacob says as he looks over to the warrior woman. “Oh I’m sure I didn’t do anything nearly as impressive as my husband or even the major and her husband here. But I suppose can be glad that the kobold and usksha population is a lot lower due to me.” the woman says. “Brenda, don’t sell yourself short! You know you’ve done great things as well.” Jacob says. “Brenda?” you ask. You didn’t even recognize her, but then it has been quite a while. “Yep, it’s me. Been a long time. I figured you wouldn’t recognize me right away. Oh, sorry about all that y’know…back in class.” “As I’ve told everyone else Brenda, all in the past. All in the past.” You say. The four of you speak for a moment exchanging general pleasantries. Jacob seems even happier than Brenda about Roldan’s celebration. In fact in the whole time you’ve known him, this has to be the happiest you’ve ever seen him. Eventually the four of you head to one of the palace’s large balconies where you can view the entire parade. Three of the five known Eternals are here, and it makes you wonder where your other classmates are since it seems like they would be important enough to be here. When you ask Jacob this question, Jacob says Warrick is indeed here, but is currently working as head of security for this celebration being Sightmaster of the Eyes and all. As for Kane, Jacob stumbles a bit over his words. “Well, erm…Kane is having personal problems…he’s been reassigned to Rask while he uh…works things out. They’re always having problems with the occasional giant lumbering down from the mountains and the stray feral ogre bands there anyway.” “Jacob, I’m well aware of Kane’s condition, you know.” “You are? Yes…I suppose you would, considering you’ve visited Gnome’s Home in the past. (Sigh) Well then you know its best that he’s not around other normal people, even other soldiers. He’s still loyal to the Empire, he just has to be isolated. So he’s at a very remote outpost at the edge of the northern Rask Mountains. He keeps a look out for potential attacks and if he…gets hungry he’s away from civilization and has the beasts from the mountains to prey upon.” You shake your head. “Jacob, I can appreciate that you’re trying to help Kane, but I wonder if his reassignment is really a good idea. What’s stopping Kane from losing complete control and wandering to a nearby village and slaughtering it?” “He won’t. He’s extremely far away from the nearest civilized center and even Fort Defiance. The only victims of his will be giants and the like. And they’re enemies of the Empire anyway. Look, can we discuss this later? The celebration is starting.” Jacob says. You nod and return to Alison to watch the parade. It is indeed a lavish sight. You see soldiers in impression armor marching in complete unison performing drill techniques with perfect timing. You see wizards creating small extraordinary feats of magic to entertain. As you sit there watching you do sort of lose yourself in the moment and actually enjoy just being a “spectator”. Being there with Alison certainly helps make you feel normal for a while. Then comes the big moment. General Roldan arrives on a giant extravagant platform carried by a dozen or so elven slaves. He stands there in very shiny ornamental armor with an equally ornamental weapon by his side. He waves to the crowds on both sides and accepts their cheers. Brenda and Jacob are both smiling and Jacob is shouting louder than anyone else on the balcony. “Sheesh, you’d think he was the one married to Roldan.” Alison remarks. You snicker at her comment and then suddenly as you’re watching Roldan wave on the platform, you get a very bed feeling. You don’t know why or how, but all your instincts scream out at you that something very bad is going to happen… And then it does. A cloaked figure suddenly materializes right behind Roldan. From this distance you can’t be sure, but it doesn’t look entirely human. As the crowd’s cheers become sounds of horror, you see this figure draw two curved blades and in one quick move decapitates Roldan before he even knows there is an attacker behind him. His body and head don’t even hit the surface of the platform before the cloaked figure disappears again. The elven slaves at this point panic and drop the platform, this is soon followed by the rest of the citizens generally running all over the place and soldiers swarming the streets trying to maintain order. The city is in chaos. Jacob is just sitting there in shock. Alison has immediately ordered everyone on the balcony to get inside the palace. Brenda on the other hand has already left; you imagine she’s taken to the streets to go find her husband’s assassin herself. “That was a fucking shadow.” You say to yourself. > You seek the assassin The Emperor is probably the most secure person in the area and even though he’s not been well lately, you know that he’s still more than capable of defending himself against some shadows. Your best bet is to some how track down the assassin before he gets away, so you tell Alison that you’re going to follow Brenda’s lead and chase after the assassin. “Wait, how do you even know where to look?” Alison asks. “I don’t, but I have to try. Just get Jacob inside, he’s still out on the balcony in shock.” You answer before leaving. As frantic as the palace is, the streets of the city are much worse. You have to literally fight your way through in order to get anywhere. After pushing several citizens out of the way, you stumble upon one of the Eyes. “Hey you! Where the hell is the rest of your unit? More importantly where the hell is Warrick?” you ask the Eye. “My unit is trying to keep this area under control while searching the nearby buildings here. As far as I know, Sightmaster Warrick was last seen near the city gates.” “Well the palace needs some extra protection, I want you to get the rest of your unit over there now. Your primary concern is supposed to be defending the Emperor anyway!” You make your way towards the city gates, which is a chore. You still wonder where Brenda went, but when you finally get a clear view of the gates, you find her and Warrick arguing with each in the middle of the chaos. “I’ve got Eyes scouring the city and mages casting detection spells to back them up, I’m doing all I can Brenda!” Warrick exclaims. “Well you’re sure doing a bang up job of that eyeboy, considering you weren’t even able to prevent my husband from getting fucking decapitated in front of everyone! That was a fucking shadow Warrick! It probably already left the city already!” Brenda retorts. “I’m well aware of what it was Brenda, I had to track down and fight them a lot more than you ever did!” “And given that your group was supposed to have wiped them out, you fucked up on that job too!” “Brenda if you want to go on your own personal manhunt, fine, you don’t need my permission to do it. Go find and grab the nearest mage and have at it! I don’t have time to argue with you, I’m having a hard enough time trying to coordinate everything in this chaos right now.” Warrick looks semi-relieved when he sees you arrive. “I’m glad you’re here, you’ve got magic abilities. Can you take Brenda with you?” Brenda turns to you though she isn’t as happy to see you either. “Great, the other fuck up who was supposed to have been responsible for the extermination of the shadows.” Brenda remarks. “Brenda I know you’re angry right now and understandably upset, but I’m not going to tolerate the same sort of verbal abuse you’ve been heaping on Warrick. Now I’ll certainly help you, because I want this sonofabitch almost as bad as you do, but we’re going to do this without the arguing.” Your calm yet firm demeanor doesn’t quell the high emotions going through Brenda right now, but they do at least establish a behavior guideline. “Alright fine.” She remarks. “Good, now let’s start checking the sewers.” “The sewers? Are you sure?” Brenda asks. “No, but I’m making a good guess that it being a shadow, it probably hasn’t gone far and is enjoying the whole idea of hiding right under our noses and possibly even planning the next step to cause further chaos. Besides, shit is often found in the sewers.” “I’ve got people already searching the sewers.” Warrick pipes up. “Yeah well, maybe if you had some stationed there and had a thorough search of the sewers before the parade none of this would be necessary now.” “That’s not fair, Jacob said…” “I don’t want to hear it Warrick. As far as I’m concerned Brenda’s got a right to be pissed at you considering you were supposed to be in charge of security for this thing.” Leaving Warrick behind, you and Brenda find the nearest manhole and descend into the smelly darkness. And it does smell pretty awful. Still not as bad as Gnome’s Home though, you don’t think anything will ever smell worse than that place. You keep a detection spell constantly on hoping it will catch something worthwhile, but you know this is a long shot and the equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack. Still, you couldn’t just sit around doing nothing. Brenda might’ve been out of line speaking to you in such a manner, but in some ways you do feel a little responsible since you thought you’d wiped out all the shadows. Brenda and you are more or less silent the whole time you search the sewers. You never do run into any of Warrick’s people, but then the sewers are just as large as the city itself. It’s not surprising you aren’t having much luck finding a shadow, if one is even hiding down here in the first place. “Damn it. I’m sorry Brenda.” “What?” “I don’t know where to even look, the sewers were just a blind guess. I have no real idea where to look. You probably were right; the shadow probably already left the city and if that’s the case, who know where the hell it fled to.” Brenda doesn’t say anything at first and you fully expect her to go off on you, but she doesn’t, instead she starts crying. Or rather she fails in trying not to cry. It would appear that the fact that her husband is dead is finally hitting her hard. “Brenda I…” you start to say and then a faint whistling sound is heard and you feel a sharp pain going through your back. You look down long enough to see the head of a crossbow bolt. Blood spreads across your chest and you stagger around and stare at a grinning decaying face. You then feel two blades separate your head from your body. The good news is your hunch was correct. The bad news is your detection spell couldn’t work on something that was already dead and as a result so are you. You can only hope that Brenda gets her revenge and figures it all out, because you won’t.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 32 “It’s not just a celebration for Roldan, it’s the celebration of the victory over the Felkans.” You remark. “I know that, but why is he getting a special parade? Roldan wasn’t the only one who brought down the Felkan Kingdom! He wasn’t even the only general!” Alison exclaims. “He was involved in the brunt of the major conflicts, including most of the vital forts and cities and most importantly the last siege on the Felkan capital.” You reply. “As I recall YOU played a major role along with several others!” “Well Roldan’s also been making great progress in eliminating the gnolls tribes on our western borders too. We probably won’t be having any trouble with them anymore at the rate he’s going.” “And as I recall YOU also played a major role in that during the Felkan War! Hell, so did I and continued to do so long after you got transferred to the frontlines! Shit, if it hadn’t been for us keeping those mongrel barbarians back who knows how the war would’ve turned out?” “Alison why are you so angry about this?” “I just don’t understand why you aren’t getting a big parade or accolades either.” Alison says as she finishes getting dressed. “I dunno, I’m not really concerned about it though.” You reply apathetically. “Besides you know I don’t care for all this kind of pomp and flash that comes with these sorts of celebrations anyway. If I didn’t have to be here out of formality I wouldn’t even be attending.” “Maybe, but it doesn’t seem fair that you’ve been getting punished just because you married me.” “Here we go, this concept again…” Alison goes into her usual rant about how since you got married to her, you’ve been getting less important assignments. She feels that the Emperor has been punishing you by keeping you in the background while allowing Roldan to take more of a prominent role such as sending him to conquer the gnoll tribes of the west. You can see this argument, and you have even entertained it a bit from time to time, but ultimately you’ve dismissed it, mainly because despite everything you’re still reporting directly to the Emperor. You’re still his most trusted of all his advisors. You’re still his son. Besides its not like you’re sitting around doing nothing. The Emperor has just been keeping you closer to home because this is where you’re currently needed. With the recently acquired Felkan territory and the westward expansion, the Eyes are a little stretched so you’ve mostly been trying to eliminate the new bandit havens popping up in the old Felkan territory along with helping to fend off any desperate gnoll raids that attempt to sneak through. You’re also supposed to be making sure the new “citizens” aren’t planning to rebel, but given how badly they were beaten down, they’re just glad that you’re allowing them to live. So far no seditious activity has been detected. True, you’d rather be out there conquering new lands in his name and getting into the heat of battles rather than playing super sentinel, but at least you get to see Alison more often. It’s a good trade off as far as you’re concerned. As far as Roldan is concerned you aren’t worried about him being “favored.” This large celebration for Roldan is more Jacob’s idea mainly because Roldan has largely become well known along with being well liked throughout the Empire. Not just by the military, but by the normal citizens as well. He’s generally regarded as a hero of sorts. Jacob practically begged the Emperor for this special celebration because he felt it would be good for overall morale throughout the Empire. Well that, and the fact Jacob feels “vindicated” that his own influence on the Eternals has proved successful. Though you sort of had a major role in Jacob’s fortune in that endeavor as well, something else Alison mentions in her rant. “You know, I might be getting sent to the unexplored land east of Nalin. There’s been discussion about expansion in that direction.” You say to Alison in the hopes that it will calm her down a bit. “Yeah? Well I certainly hope you’ll get your own special celebration when you conquer whoever lives there. I’m sorry. I don’t know why this is getting to me. This doesn’t bother you, so it shouldn’t bother me. You’re right anyway, I guess if you’d really fallen out of favor you would’ve been sent to go tame the inhospitable usksha desert south of Nalin alone in a loin cloth welding just a wooden sword.” You chuckle at Alison’s scenario. “Okay how do I look? Do I look presentable for the Emperor’s palace?” Alison stands before you in a black dress. It isn’t excessively fancy, but it’s certainly not something peasant would wear. While you’ve seen Alison in civilian clothing before, you’ve not seen her in something so elegant. “Really you didn’t need to dress up for this thing, I certainly didn’t. I just made sure I didn’t have a tear in my trousers and polished my armor.” “Maybe that’s because visiting the Emperor’s palace isn’t that big of a deal to you. For me however this is a new experience. Just glad my mother’s old dress fit me, since it’s practically the only fancy thing I own.” Well, you look lovely and dangerous as usual. The rapier on your hip is a nice touch. Didn’t realize that’s what all the upper class ladies were accessorizing with nowadays.” “Ha ha, I said I wanted to look presentable, I didn’t say I was going for high society. I’m still a soldier by nature, I’m not going anywhere without a weapon. “ “That’s my girl, let’s be on our way.” You remark and the pair of you set off for the capital in a carriage. Alison’s mood is much better the closer you get to your destination. When you arrive, the capital is already pretty busy along with the surrounding countryside. The city guard and a few soldiers are busily trying to keep order and keep the path clear for the parade later. The palace is certainly less chaotic and you take the opportunity to show Alison some of it. She mostly enjoys the ancient armor and weapon displays along with some of the statues. You have to admit, before you came here with Alison, you never really admired them before. Doesn’t take long before someone who knows you approaches. It’s Jacob and a brunette woman who looks about your age. She must be a soldier of some sort because she’s dressed in armor. “There you are, I was wondering when you’d arrive! When did you get here?” “I don’t know, a half hour ago I guess. I was showing Alison some of the palace since she’s never been here before.” “Ah yes, Alison! It’s a pleasure to finally meet you face to face! Better known as Major Krozer for those of us that have only known her through her military deeds. I heard how you were instrumental during the Felkan War on the gnoll front! That was great work! Between you and your husband here you really paved the way to the destruction of those barbarians.” “Thank you for the recognition.” Alison remarks politely. Ever the professional, she knows not to bring her personal feelings into a setting like this. “Everyone should remember that even though a special parade is being held for General Roldan, all soldiers who did their duty during that terrible war are to be honored and respected. Actually scratch that, ALL soldiers of the Empire should be.” Jacob says as he looks over to the warrior woman. “Oh I’m sure I didn’t do anything nearly as impressive as my husband or even the major and her husband here. But I suppose can be glad that the kobold and usksha population is a lot lower due to me.” the woman says. “Brenda, don’t sell yourself short! You know you’ve done great things as well.” Jacob says. “Brenda?” you ask. You didn’t even recognize her, but then it has been quite a while. “Yep, it’s me. Been a long time. I figured you wouldn’t recognize me right away. Oh, sorry about all that y’know…back in class.” “As I’ve told everyone else Brenda, all in the past. All in the past.” You say. The four of you speak for a moment exchanging general pleasantries. Jacob seems even happier than Brenda about Roldan’s celebration. In fact in the whole time you’ve known him, this has to be the happiest you’ve ever seen him. Eventually the four of you head to one of the palace’s large balconies where you can view the entire parade. Three of the five known Eternals are here, and it makes you wonder where your other classmates are since it seems like they would be important enough to be here. When you ask Jacob this question, Jacob says Warrick is indeed here, but is currently working as head of security for this celebration being Sightmaster of the Eyes and all. As for Kane, Jacob stumbles a bit over his words. “Well, erm…Kane is having personal problems…he’s been reassigned to Rask while he uh…works things out. They’re always having problems with the occasional giant lumbering down from the mountains and the stray feral ogre bands there anyway.” “Jacob, I’m well aware of Kane’s condition, you know.” “You are? Yes…I suppose you would, considering you’ve visited Gnome’s Home in the past. (Sigh) Well then you know its best that he’s not around other normal people, even other soldiers. He’s still loyal to the Empire, he just has to be isolated. So he’s at a very remote outpost at the edge of the northern Rask Mountains. He keeps a look out for potential attacks and if he…gets hungry he’s away from civilization and has the beasts from the mountains to prey upon.” You shake your head. “Jacob, I can appreciate that you’re trying to help Kane, but I wonder if his reassignment is really a good idea. What’s stopping Kane from losing complete control and wandering to a nearby village and slaughtering it?” “He won’t. He’s extremely far away from the nearest civilized center and even Fort Defiance. The only victims of his will be giants and the like. And they’re enemies of the Empire anyway. Look, can we discuss this later? The celebration is starting.” Jacob says. You nod and return to Alison to watch the parade. It is indeed a lavish sight. You see soldiers in impression armor marching in complete unison performing drill techniques with perfect timing. You see wizards creating small extraordinary feats of magic to entertain. As you sit there watching you do sort of lose yourself in the moment and actually enjoy just being a “spectator”. Being there with Alison certainly helps make you feel normal for a while. Then comes the big moment. General Roldan arrives on a giant extravagant platform carried by a dozen or so elven slaves. He stands there in very shiny ornamental armor with an equally ornamental weapon by his side. He waves to the crowds on both sides and accepts their cheers. Brenda and Jacob are both smiling and Jacob is shouting louder than anyone else on the balcony. “Sheesh, you’d think he was the one married to Roldan.” Alison remarks. You snicker at her comment and then suddenly as you’re watching Roldan wave on the platform, you get a very bed feeling. You don’t know why or how, but all your instincts scream out at you that something very bad is going to happen… And then it does. A cloaked figure suddenly materializes right behind Roldan. From this distance you can’t be sure, but it doesn’t look entirely human. As the crowd’s cheers become sounds of horror, you see this figure draw two curved blades and in one quick move decapitates Roldan before he even knows there is an attacker behind him. His body and head don’t even hit the surface of the platform before the cloaked figure disappears again. The elven slaves at this point panic and drop the platform, this is soon followed by the rest of the citizens generally running all over the place and soldiers swarming the streets trying to maintain order. The city is in chaos. Jacob is just sitting there in shock. Alison has immediately ordered everyone on the balcony to get inside the palace. Brenda on the other hand has already left; you imagine she’s taken to the streets to go find her husband’s assassin herself. “That was a fucking shadow.” You say to yourself. > You secure the palace If this is some sort of shadow attack then the first thing you need to do is keep the palace secure, in particular the Emperor. Besides the city streets are going to be mayhem, you doubt if you’ll be able to track down the assassin that killed Roldan. Hopefully others will get him though. Despite Alison getting most of the people back into the palace, Jacob is still sitting on the balcony in shock. “He…he…he’s not…he can’t…” Jacob stutters. “Jacob get your ass inside now!” you shout and drag him inside. You and Alison both start taking control of the situation telling the guards to lock up every opening they can and the mages on duty to magically seal up the rest. Alison tells the guests to find some place safe to gather, but you don’t really care about any of them. Your number one concern is the safety of the Emperor. “Alison, I need to…” “I know, the Emperor. Go. I can help with keeping shit together here.” You rush down to the Emperor’s den constantly looking around the whole time. You keep thinking that a shadow, or whatever that was that killed Roldan is going to suddenly materialize at anytime. When you get inside the Emperor’s chambers, he’s in bed asleep. You don’t want to wake him, but he needs to know the situation. “Huh? Mmmh? Oh hey…(cough cough) what’re you doing here? Are the festivities already over?” he asks. “Emperor, there’s been an assassination. General Roldan was killed during the parade by what I think was a shadow. We’re currently trying to secure the palace just in case this is part of a greater attack.” “Sounds like a lot happened while I was taking a nap. Shadow huh? Thought we killed all of them. Guess they were just playing a waiting game as usual. Always a few loose ends aren’t there? (cough) I imagine Jacob isn’t taking Roldan’s death too well.” “Not at all, he’s pretty much in shock and was babbling the last time I saw him.” “Hmm, well it is a shame. Roldan did turn out to be one of our best generals. I’ll have to make sure he gets a nice funeral. If we can’t celebrate his successes in life, at least we can honor him in death. (cough cough)…what’s wrong my son?” the Emperor asks when he notices that you’re looking slightly troubled. “I was one of the ones chiefly in charge of hunting down the shadows. The fact that I missed one or possibly several so that something like this could happen…I feel like I failed.” You explain. “Nonsense, you did what you could to the best of your ability. I’ve always known that. Don’t even start playing what if for this situation, because it’s not worth it. While this event has certainly been tragic in that it ruined what was supposed to be a happy day, this really isn’t excessively serious in the scheme of things. (cough cough) If you were worried about me, don’t be. Even in my less than magnificent state, I’m more than able to handle a shadow or even a dozen of them. Assuming they could even get in here in the first place. Its probably just one crazed shadow that somehow hid under a rock all these years from our purges and thinks this one act is going to bring us down. Foolish of course, but what can you expect from such fanatics?” “You don’t think this sort of thing could cause instability in the Empire?” “Hardly. (cough cough) The citizens might panic about things for awhile, they’ll be fearful of the big bad shadows’ return for revenge or whatever stories they’ll make up, but ultimately it all works in our benefit I’m sure you know. (cough cough) We get to continue to display how without us they would be at the mercy of dangerous forces that would have destroyed them long ago.” “So…what did you want me to do now?” you ask. The Emperor begins to sit up a bit more before answering you. “Nothing. In fact (cough cough) after things calm down a bit, you can return to your regular duties in the newly acquired Gan and Ibim provinces. I can handle things here in the palace and the city, just get Jacob down here and I’ll start hammering out the plans.” “You really don’t need me to do anything?” “No, your talents are far more useful doing what you’re doing right now. Besides, with Roldan dead you might be needed more than ever on that side of the Empire. Last I heard there were still gnolls running about. (cough cough) I of course appreciate your concern as always my son.” The Emperor begins to slowly get out of bed and you take your leave. When you get back upstairs everything is more or less peaceful. Alison and some of the other officers have been making sure the palace is secure. Alison tells you there have been no signs of any potential attackers. Reports from outside the palace are about the same, other than Roldan’s assassination the only other causalities have been from soldiers trying to maintain order or from people getting trampled in the initial chaos. No shadows or anything else like that. “So what’s the next move? What did the Emperor tell you?” Alison asks. “He told me not to worry and when things calm down outside to just return to my normal duties.” You respond “That’s it?!” “That’s it. He wants to see Jacob though, is he in a more coherent mindset now?” “Compared to before? Yeah, but he’s still pretty shaken up. I know he’s been crying.” You walk over to Jacob who is sitting quietly in a chair with his head in his hands. He’s still very upset. You have to repeat yourself twice when telling him that the Emperor wants to see him. You and Alison stay at the palace for a few more minutes, but when you get news that a carriage is able to take you back to Fort Stalwart you decide to leave immediately. Its hectic trying to leave at first since there is still a bit of turmoil in the streets as well as the surrounding countryside, but once you’re a few miles from the capital the ride becomes more relaxed. Alison asks you if you’re certain about leaving. “The Emperor told me to just return to more normal duties and not to worry, so that’s what I’m going to do. If he says he can handle this incident himself then I have no reason to doubt that. Besides, he also said with Roldan dead I might be needed more on the western borders anyway.” You say. “Hmm. I guess all those times I worried about you being punished seem sort of silly now…sheesh…today was surreal. I mean I’ve seen a lot of stuff in my years of service, but nothing like this. The general consensus seems to be that it was a shadow that killed Roldan. Certainly looked like one from where I was sitting.” Alison replies. “I don’t see what else it could’ve been. Similar style of clothing, invisibility, incredibly quick, sneak attack, the elements were all there. (Sigh) Damn.” “You alright?” “I just…well I dunno. I just can’t believe we…I missed a shadow. Really thought we got them all when I killed Cyrus. The Emperor said it wasn’t my fault and I know it really isn’t but I still feel like this is a major loss.” “Yeah, I can imagine you’d feel that way having worked together with Roldan during the Felkan War.” “Heh, well to be honest Roldan and I were never close. I mean we were professional and civil, but we never really did become what you’d call friends. Still though he didn’t deserve to die like that. He wasn’t just an excellent solder and general, he was an Eternal and I guess that bond was there to an extent even if it was faint. Now there’s one less of us.” “I guess given that you all grew up together and were subjected more or less to the same training, the other Eternals are sort of like, your siblings?” “Yeah, I suppose in some ways they are. Funny that I never thought of that before.” You remark. As you reflect on all that’s happened, Alison reaches out to touch your hand, you look over at her and return her smile with one of your own. Happy that you have her. Then your smile disappears when a bolt grazes your ear and hits Alison right in the eye. Her blood splatters on your face and her body slowly goes limp in your arms. You turn your head around just in time to see the assassin hanging outside the carriage window with one hand and his other arm reeling back from having launched his bolt from his armbow. It’s definitely a shadow, but from this range you can also see it’s also not human. The face is either severely burned or rotten. It grins at you with blacken teeth and before you can react, it rapidly climbs up which is followed by brief scream from the carriage driver and then the ride gets a lot bumpier really quick. The shadow has probably killed the driver and is probably in the process of detaching the horses. Meanwhile you’re still holding the body of you beloved Alison. > You chase the assassin With revenge filling every inch of your body you immediately open the carriage door with the intent of climbing up to meet your attacker. No sooner have you opened the door when a rotting hand from above attempts to stab you in the face with a dagger. The blade superficially wounds you as it slices across your cheek. Unfazed you immediately grab the hand and pull down as hard as you can. The moment you do so you suddenly feel an unnatural drain of energy. Magic is definitely at work here and it’s sapping your strength. Despite this, the shadow tumbles off of the roof, but on its way down it grabs your own arm with its other hand and the pair of you fall from the carriage. Unfortunately, when you’re pulled out of the carriage you don’t clear it completely and your ankle is run over by one of the back wheels of the carriage that is still in motion. The bone snaps and you know it’s broken along with your nose when you fell flat on your face on the hard road. The shadow has recovered from his own fall much better having landed on his feet. You push yourself up just in time for his foot to kick you in the ribs. You roll away struggling to put some distance between yourself and the attacker. “Y’know when I was brought back I was given very specific instructions not to kill you…but I believe I will ignore them. After all I’m already dead, what else can be done to me?” you hear the shadow hiss in a raspy tone. You attempt to raise your hand to cast a flame blast, but the shadow grabs your wrist and you feel an even greater drain on your strength than you did before. At this close range you can smell the rot more strongly. “Oh no, you burned me once before, not again.” The shadow hisses as it drains your energy. With its recent comments, you realize this isn’t just a shadow or even some undead horror possibly masquerading as one. It’s Cyrus. Your whole body feels like its been beaten with a stone pillar yet you manage to muster the strength to pull your dagger and stab Cyrus repeatedly. You aren’t even aware of where you’re aiming, you stab it in the arm, in the shoulder, in the chest, in the face and wherever else you can reach until it lets you go and staggers back with your dagger still in its body. You’re dizzy, weak, and have only one good foot, but try to stand up anyway. Cyrus pulls the dagger from his body and does his typical shadow speed tactic in an attempt to rush into you with the dagger. You barely manage to put up a small force shield to block the blade from going into your stomach. Still the impact of the hit knocks you back down to the ground breaking your concentration on the spell. Cyrus kneels down to grab your neck, he’s not even squeezing and you feel the life leaving your body. You start to fade in and out of consciousness. “Now I’m going to show you something truly eternal. Death. They say the dead feel nothing, but that’s not true. It’s a lie just like the lie I believed about Dendrin meeting me for the afterlife. You know what I experienced instead? A very dark place filled with pain until I was ripped out of it and put back here on this mortal realm. That’s where you’re going brother. You’re going to a very dark place filled with pain and I’m going enjoy every moment putting you there.” At this point you have no idea what the hell Cyrus is speaking about, all you know is he’s more talkative in death than he ever was in life and that if he’s going to kill you, you wish he’d just shut up and do it already. Things get fuzzy again just as Cyrus’ fingers release your neck. What happens next is a blur. You do hear familiar female voice though. “This one is not yours to take, revenant.” This is followed by an inhuman scream and a bright light which is piercing even with your eyes nearly closed. Between the screaming, the bright light and your weakened state it’s all too much for you and start to pass out. You see a female shape with long hair standing over you, but you can’t make out the face. “…Alison?” you struggle to whisper. “(Sigh) Blind to your true allies and lovers as always.” The figure says and then lays your dagger on your body. “Here, I know how much you treasure this gift to you.” “Oh…fuck…” you say as you pass out. You don’t know how long you’re out for, but when you come to you’re in a spare bed in the Emperor’s quarters. Your ankle and nose feel tender but they don’t feel broken anymore. You look to your left and see the Emperor standing nearby with a walking stick in hand. “Ah, you’re awake and looking much better too. You looked about as bad as I do when Jacob first dragged you in here.” The Emperor remarks, sitting in a chair near you. “Jacob found me?” “No, actually Warrick and some of the Eyes picked you up off the road when a travelling patrol reported coming across your body and an overturned carriage crashed into a tree a few feet away. I requested that you be brought to me personally when I heard the news. You were severely injured, and I was damned if I was going to let anyone else bumble in the attempt to help you get better.” “Alison?” you ask. “I’m sorry son, but she’s dead. If that bolt to the eye didn’t do it, her neck was broken in the crash.” The Emperor remarks. You want to cry out, but you just don’t have the energy right now. You still feel woozy for one thing, the other is you had little hope that she was still alive anyway. The moment you saw that bolt in her eye, the moment you felt her blood on your face, the moment you felt her body go completely limp in your arms…you knew then she was dead. “Did you need some time alone?” the Emperor asks. “No…I suppose I already knew.” You respond. “I’m sort of overwhelmed by everything that happened. I imagine I will grieve later for her.” “I know how much she meant to you. I know she was also a loyal soldier and officer. She will be missed not just by you, but also by the Empire as a whole. Whatever type of funeral you wish for her, you know you’ve got it. I mean if you want a holiday to…” “That…isn’t necessary. I believe I will just have a simple funeral for her. She was like me, she didn’t seek out a lot of attention.” “As you wish. Remember though, whatever you need. You got it.” “Can you manage an execution for a certain svelk bitch?” The Emperor starts one of his coughing fits before answering. “I assume you’re talking about Mistress. Yes, I fear I did uncover some evidence that it was she that was behind all this chaos. How did you know about her involvement though? Is she the one that attacked your carriage?” You explain to the Emperor what happened. He seems surprised to hear that the shadow wasn’t alive and was in fact undead. He concludes that Mistress must’ve raised Cyrus from the dead since she certainly has the skill to do it. “Necromancy eh? Raising the dead is dangerous stuff to dabble in, especially when summoning something as powerful as a revenant. (cough cough) Very difficult to command something that’s dead, yet still control of most of the skills they possessed in their old life. Too willful. Still I didn’t think that even she would be insane enough to try something like this. Her obsession (cough) with you must be great indeed. I’m not even sure what she hoped to accomplish, other than more chaos and strife I suppose. Hmm, well I guess that does sound like a svelk.” “All I know is she deliberately set this up. Her standing over me as if she was my savior. I’m not fucking fooled! Next time I see her, she’s dead!” “Well unfortunately Miss Semra D’vessa has fled the Empire and who knows where she’s gone. There aren’t even many svelk mercs within borders of the Empire anymore. There still might be a few in Rask, (cough cough) if you’d like I could make that law to have all svelk executed on sight. Hell, I think I’ll do that anyway. Someone needs to take the blame for this and it’ll certainly make the citizens happy to have mass hangings of dark elves. I know the elves will love it.” While the Emperor’s attempts to cheer you up with small acts of genocide are kind, you begin to feel the need to be by yourself. Your silence and your eyes looking downward are all the signs that the Emperor needs to take his leave. “Don’t worry son. We’ll get her.” He says and then leaves you to your solitude. You sit in bed for a long time trying to take everything in. Alison is gone. You’ll never see her smile, you’ll never feel her touch, you’ll never hear her voice, you’ll never enjoy anything involving her ever again. You almost feel like you don’t want to go on living and you never thought you’d ever feel something like that especially since survival has been beat and ingrained into your very being. That isn’t the worst of it though. You didn’t even get revenge on the one that killed her. In fact her assassin would’ve killed you as well if you hadn’t been saved, but that’s still not the worst of it. Semra…Mistress…svelk bitch…whatever you call her. She saved your life. As far as you’re concerned that’s the worst of it. However you’ll get over it and grow stronger from this experience. You always do. All it takes is time. > Year 35 While you’ve never been excessively fond of these important meetings because they take you away from the battlefield, you like them even less nowadays due to having to see the Emperor in such a weakened state. You remember when he first started displaying the signs of being unwell; you dismissed it and thought that he’d eventually get better. Five years have passed since you found out and he’s only gotten worse. He barely gets out of bed anymore. Most of these important meetings take place while he remains horizontal under his blankets. He’s still mobile, but he tries to conserve his strength for when it’s necessary. He’s never even told you what it is that’s causing his decline, though you’ve never thought to ask. (And Jacob certainly hasn’t) It may just be old age finally catching up with him which means there is nothing that can be done hence why he doesn’t bother bringing it up. Its funny how when you first met him that he looked so healthy. You thought he was immortal despite him telling you that he really wasn’t. Now you know he wasn’t just being humble. You and Jacob have been doing your best as usual in carrying out his most important orders. Though today the order is given specifically to you. You have to go meet with Marik. Marik’s been running a secret experiment for the last sixteen years and says that its finally ready. The Emperor knew about it and actually told him to abandon it on more than one occasion, but Marik insisted that it would be a good idea, so the Emperor relented as long as it didn’t interfere with project that would be of a more direct benefit for the Empire. When you arrive at Marik’s underground lab, he takes you through a metal door that opens up to a platformed level, which overlooks a huge room. It’s nearly the size of a small hamlet you think. There are several ladders that descend down to the lower level which contain translucent containers all hooked up with tubing and connected with each other and large strange machines. Even from this distance you can make out figures floating in liquid within the containers. This experiment: Breeding a new army of Eternals. The derro has been growing them in these tanks. Literally hundreds, possibly even a thousand. “So…this is what you were hiding behind this metal door when I came here over ten years ago. Knew something else was going on.” You say as you stand on a balcony overlooking all the rows of tanks. Unlike you and your siblings these Eternals were practically “made.” From your understanding they went from some woman’s womb to the tank immediately. (You can only hazard a guess what might’ve become of the mothers, but nothing good no doubt) From there they’ve been getting “grown” into the perfect soldiers. Marik has explained to you the “science” of what he’s done, but some of it is going over your head. Personally you don’t even think Marik understands all of it himself, he just believes it all works. While Marik did use human babies for this second generation of Eternals most would probably tell you that there isn’t anything human about them. Given what’s been said about you as well you can’t really disagree. You are better than the average or even above average human in every way. You watch as two of them are released from their tanks, already teenagers and able to understand everything that is told to them. They’re given weapons and display great skill with them when ordered to fight each other. Probably just as good as most Empire soldiers. Still, there’s something about these Eternals that doesn’t sit right with you. Maybe its because Marik was involved and that his experiments can be hit or miss. Maybe its because you feel that without the experiences of training they don’t truly know what its like to struggle and earn their place. Whatever the reason, you don’t feel like they are Eternals. As little in common as you have with your own siblings you still feel a small bond there. You have nothing in common with these tank babies. They’re something else as far as you’re concerned. However, none of this matters. What does matter is if these so called new Eternals are going to actually be an asset to the Empire. From what you’ve seen they aren’t without skill, but they’re going to need to be field tested along with drilling the concepts of loyalty and duty into them. “Sure, they look pretty, but can they fight?” you say after seeing the demonstration. This annoys Marik. He starts sputtering and stammering to the point where you think he’s going to go into a seizure. “You just SAW what they’re capable of! How can you even say such a thing?” “Yes, they were okay for children. I suppose we can find a place for them somewhere. Perhaps we can…” “Bah! You’re just jealous!” Marik interrupts. “Excuse me? Jealous?” you ask. “Yes! They’re already the perfect warriors and didn’t need any training at all! They didn’t need all the hand holding nonsense that you had to go through to become a killing machine. Face it, these Eternals are the future!” You stare at Marik in disbelief that he dares to say such a thing to you. To his credit, Marik doesn’t back down, he stares back at you, ignoring your eyes burning through him. “You can give me that stare of death all you want Eternal.” Marik remarks. “Alright…open up ten of the tanks. Let’s put them to a real test.” “What? So you can incinerate them with your magic?” “If they’re truly as good as you claim then my advantages shouldn’t matter, but since you seem to be unsure of your creations now. I’ll make it easy for you. Open up twenty of the tanks and I won’t use one damn cantrip.” Marik starts making that annoying high pitched laugh you hate so much then he suddenly gets very serious. “Were you planning on fighting them right now?” Marik asks. “While I’m sure watching me slaughtering twenty naked teenagers would prove my point, I said I was going to make this easy. No, you go equip your twenty creations with whatever armor and weapons you wish. I’ll wait.” You wait as Marik orders twenty tanks opened up and has a few of his derro friends herd these children into another room presumably to get outfitted. Marik soon follows behind to oversee personally. While you wait, you reflect on the fact that they’re all the same age as you were when you first got to meet the Emperor. It was one of the greatest days of your life when that happened. This happy moment passes very quickly when you have to dwell on the fact that the Emperor is now on his deathbed. You have no idea what’s going to happen when the inevitable happens. Sometimes you look at the Emperor now and you wonder if that is what you have to look forward to when you get old. Is that the fate of everyone? No matter how powerful? What’s the point of it all? Will the Empire even survive when the Emperor dies? He doesn’t have a successor. You have often wondered if you would be it, but he’s never mentioned it. Even if you were, you can’t imagine ever doing the job better or even as well than he could. Leading armies is one thing, but an entire nation? You don’t know if you’d have the patience for it. You’re a soldier not a ruler and yet you couldn’t dream of serving any other ruler except the one you think of as father. Your mood starts getting worse because you also start dwelling on less pleasant aspects of your sixteenth year before you met the Emperor. It always comes back to her. Why the hell can’t you get her out of your head? Even now the woman hasn’t been seen in three years and yet she still comes back to fucking torment you. Alison’s dead, the Emperor’s dying, these new “eternals” are obviously meant to replace you, your own future is uncertain, Semra still haunts your thoughts… At this point you wonder if it wouldn’t just be best if you let these damn tank babies kill you. It would at least be a warrior’s death and you’d die when the Empire was going through a second golden age of sorts. You had some good times and saw several major threats to the Empire destroyed. Why stick around to see a man you have nothing but respect for continue to whither and die? Why see the potential slow decline of a nation you spent all your life trying to keep from the brink of chaos? Maybe it is time to step aside gracefully and be replaced… > You continue your duty Sometimes the most dangerous enemy you can have is the one in the mirror. You quickly snap out of your defeatism. All this self doubt and self-pity is for weaklings. What would the Emperor say if he knew? What would Alison say? You were trained better than that. You don’t have time to worry about a potential future; you have a duty to serve the Empire. And right now part of that job is to test these tank babies. The only death you should be focusing on right now is theirs. Doesn’t take long before twenty tank babies along with the other two that were involved in the first demonstration come out fully decked out in armor and weapons. Surprisingly the derro didn’t deck them all out in the heaviest body encasing armor they could give them, though there are at least half of them dressed in such a manner. You can’t help notice that the derro didn’t limit their weapons to close combat, you see some with firearms. “Well here they are. The future of the Empire. I imagine you’ll want to…” Marik says and then he realizes what you’re doing… “Lying bastard! Get out of the way NOW!” he shouts and runs back into the room they just came out of and slams the door. The tank babies don’t entirely understand, but they soon do when you cast a bolt of chain lightning at the lot of them. The lightning arc easily fries the tank babies in the metal armor, even the ones dressed less conductive material are standing so close they suffer the shock as well. Combine this with the gunpowder weapons and you even get a couple of small explosions which take out a few of them. After you’re done with the spell a couple of them are crawling away desperately trying to find cover or escape. Bodies lie on the floor still sizzling and charred from your attack. You walk over to the carnage and put your sword through the chest of one still struggling to breathe. You stomp on the neck of another who is cursing you. Another one actually begs you for mercy; you show none when you hack the top of his head off. As you continue to check the twenty two bodies for signs of life, Marik finally emerges from behind the door along with some of the other derro. “Thought the derro didn’t fear death.” You remark. “We don’t, but we’re not supposed to be the fucking targets today! You lied Eternal! You told me you weren’t going to use magic!” ‘Actually I think my exact words were I wasn’t going to use a single cantrip, and I didn’t use a cantrip.” “Bah! Trickery!” “I prefer to think of it as outmaneuvering your opponents assumptions. This was not a battle of honor. I have nothing to prove to these children and even less to you. I went into battle against superior numbers, I’d be a damned fool to not use all of the tools of killing that I have at my disposal. Whenever you go into a combat situation, you ALWAYS use whatever means to destroy your enemy. Fair play, rules and honor have nothing to do with any of it.” “Hm, well you don’t need to tell me about it.” Marik responds. “I wasn’t telling you, I was teaching this important lesson to this young girl here, trying to play dead.” You say suddenly grabbing the collar of one of the female tank babies. You lift her up by the collar and can smell the singed flesh and leather wafting from her body. She can barely keep her eyes open, but she’s definitely still alive. She’s the only one that is. “Now heed this lesson tank baby. You are NOT an Eternal. Nor are any of your siblings. You will NEVER be Eternals as long as I live. You only exist to serve the Empire and if you die in the process you will be grateful to do so. Remember this.” You say as you grab her face to look into her eyes. You see the fear. She understands. Good. You let the tank baby go and she falls back to the floor while you address Marik. “I believe I’m going to have trainer come in to teach these children properly. I’d do it myself, but I don’t have the time. Perhaps another Eternal like Brenda or Warrick can do it. Oh and make that one on the floor a squad or platoon leader of some sort. She obviously was strong enough to survive. She at least shows potential. Finally give them a different name as well. I don’t care what, but I meant what I said, they are not Eternals.” “And you think you can presume to give me orders surfacer?” Marik says. “I don’t presume nothing, I’m doing it right now! I was given orders by the Emperor himself to handle this the way I saw fit! And I’m telling you WHAT I want done! You don’t like it? Well, I can always go report to the Emperor about your unwillingness to follow the chain of command, unless you’d actually like to go see him yourself that is. Tell me when was the last time you actually took time out of your schedule to do that? While you sit around down here playing with your toys and walking experiments, I’m actually out there making a damn difference and serving the Emperor with ever fiber of my being!” “Now listen here you fucking sun lover, I knew the man BEFORE he was the Emperor! We fought side by side together during the Troll Wars! I saved his life and he saved mine! You have no damn idea the bond WE share. You can’t tell me shit about how I should or shouldn’t act and you damn sure can’t tell me that I’m not helping the Empire! I’M HIS FUCKING FRIEND!” “Friend? So what have you done for him lately?” “Done? DONE? I just made a legion of soldiers for him, you little kobold shit!” You look over the tank baby bodies lying dead all over the place. You look at the female one unconscious on the floor and shake your head. “Yeah, as I said, what have you done for him lately? Maybe he’s your friend, but he’s my father. I’m not debating this anymore Marik.” You say and take your leave. Marik begins yelling at you in his deep guttural derro language. A slew of curses and other insults fly out of his mouth. While you’re semi-familiar with the derro language you can’t make out all of them. They’re probably pretty vicious though. Either way you’re hardly concerned, Marik will follow orders because he respects the chain of command and as he said he is the Emperor’s friend. The other reason is because he probably won’t even be angry in another ten minutes. He’ll probably be cackling about some joke he made up in his head. You’ve had a lot to ponder this day. You were once concerned about the future of the Empire and your own, but you see now that both will continue on even after the Emperor dies. You still have that zest of life within you and you are not ready or willing to just stand aside yet. You’ve come to the decision that when the Emperor dies you will be the one to take his place. While he’s never said it, he doesn’t have to, it’s just a situation that’s understood between a father and son. Still, you think you need to discuss this matter at some point with your father so that he knows that his legacy will live on after him and you will continue to make him proud. In the meantime you make your way back to the capital and the palace to report to him. What comes next is a bit of a shock. “F…father?” you ask. “Yes, its me son. I believe that’s the first time you’ve called me that.” The Emperor says standing before you. He looks exactly like he did when you first met him; in fact he even looks a little younger. A fit fortyish man dressed in fine clothing. You just continue to stare in disbelief. “Ah, yes this. I suppose this would be a bit puzzling. As you well know I haven’t been feeling one hundred percent for oh…about five years now. Had to conserve my strength and power quite a bit to reinvigorate myself. This state I’m in right now isn’t going to last very long, but it’ll be enough for where I’m going.” “What? Where are you going?” “Home. And you’ll be coming with me.” “I will?” “Of course! This will be a momentous occasion when I return home and your presence will be necessary just as it has been here in the Empire!” “Forgive me father, but I’m a little lost right now. What is going to happen to the Empire and where is home?” “Nothing will happen to the Empire son, it can survive a couple days or so without us around I should think. We’ll let Jacob worry about it! Hah! As for my home? Well it’s very very far away. It’s an island to be exact. You can’t get there by any ship though…at least not any more. But you don’t need to worry about that, I know how to get us there. All you need to do is take a day to relax and prepare yourself for the journey.” This is all so overwhelming you don’t even know where to start or what to say so you just ask the first question that comes to mind and something you thought was inevitable. “Father, are you going home to die?” “Die?” the Emperor says and then walks over to you. “No son, I’m going home to be reborn!” he says and then laughs slapping you on the shoulder. “I’m sorry son if I worried you, what with me coughing all the damn time and dragging my ass around like a dead man. (Sigh) We probably should’ve taken this trip sooner, but we still had to finish off those damn gnomes now didn’t we? Plus I wasn’t sure if it was going to be necessary yet and then you got married, then Semra’s bullshit, it just seemed like stuff kept cropping up. Well now is the perfect time for us to take this trip. I bet you’re glad though now that you know I won’t be dying anytime soon.” “Yeah…” you answer The Emperor goes on to say that your report on Marik’s experiment can wait since this trip is much more important. He then tells you that should go rest up and to meet him here tomorrow. You agree and take your leave. As you make your way to your private quarters in the palace, you don’t know what to think now. You were so certain that the Emperor was dying. After years of denying it you at last came to accept it. You were ready to take his place. Part of you feels relieved that the Emperor is going to live. Part of you feels confused about this whole situation. And then there’s that part of you that feels cheated. That part of you that wishes the Emperor was still lying on his deathbed. You think back to what you said to Marik, YOU’VE been the one out there doing things for the Empire. YOU’VE been the one destroying its enemies and keeping it stable. What the hell has the Emperor been doing? Giving orders from his easy chair? Ranting about gnomes? Lying in his bed hacking up a lung? You should be running the Empire not him. “I can’t believe I’m thinking this. What is wrong with me? This man is my father!” You whisper to yourself. You didn’t want to “step aside” for those tank babies because your time wasn’t up. Why should the Emperor step aside for you? You begin to feel deeply ashamed of your thoughts While you’re having your moral quandary, Jacob is standing outside your quarters. “We need to talk.” He says. > The reveal... Jacob and you enter your room. Jacob looks almost as bad as the Emperor once did. He hasn’t been the same since Roldan died, but he’s also been overworked since the Emperor has been sick. The man is in his late sixties, but nowadays he looks more like he’s in his late eighties. The stress has been taking a toll. “Jacob, I really hope this is important because I’ve got a lot going through my mind right now.” You say. “I’m sure you do, but you’ll have a lot more after you hear what I have to say. Though after you hear it you might just decide to kill me instead, but that’s a risk I’ll just have to take.” “Can’t be anything worse than anything I haven’t thought myself today.” You say. “I highly doubt that, but I just want you to at least hear me out before you make a decision.” You sit down and nod telling Jacob to go ahead. “Okay. I know you just came from a meeting with the Emperor and his revitalized condition. I’m also guessing he told you to that he wants you to go back home with him.” “Yes.” You reply. “Do you know where his original home is?” “He said it was a very far away island that couldn’t even be reached by a boat. That was about it.” “Figures he’d be cryptic. His home is Mortos, an island of necromancers. It’s not a well-known place to the average person. Most that have heard of it just believe it’s a myth, but it exists.” “What?” “The Emperor is a necromancer. I mean it makes sense doesn’t it? How else would he have the knowledge to extend his life for so long?” “Okay, so what?” “You are aware of what necromancers do don’t you?” “I’m aware of the branch of magic. Most just believe it’s about raising the dead, but it deals with life force in general. Healing mages use it all time at a cost of course. Only the strongest of wizards can use the art, let alone master it. Hence why there aren’t many around and why stories about necromancers creeping about graveyards raising armies of undead horrors are mostly reserved for parents trying to scare their children.” You say. Jacob gets a little frustrated at your apathy at this revelation. “Perhaps I’m not making myself clear enough…the Emperor is a necromancer. Roldan was KILLED by a revenant. YOUR WIFE was KILLED by a revenant.” That got your attention. You stand up and Jacob can’t help but step back even though he knows you’d easily catch him if he tried to run. “You’re treading on very thin ice Jacob.” “Believe me I’m well aware.” “Then you must also be aware that you sound crazier than Marik right now. What you’re implying doesn’t even make sense.” “Why not? It does if you really think about it.” “Semra was responsible for my wife’s death and Roldan’s death! She is also a powerful sorceress that is more than capable of raising the dead!” “Yes, and she’s also a perfect patsy for your wrath. The Emperor wanted you to think it was her, but it wasn’t. Think man, even if she did have your wife killed why would she bother having Roldan killed? She had no grudge. There was no profit in it. Chaos for the sake of chaos? Not Semra’s style and you know it. That woman didn’t do anything without purpose even if she was chaotic about it at times. Besides if she REALLY wanted to kill your wife, she would’ve just done it herself.” You think back to when Alison told you she met Semra face to face and entertain Jacob’s theory. “Even if Semra wasn’t responsible, why would the Emperor have Roldan and Alison killed?” “Because of you. It’s all because of you.” “Me? How? Why?” “(Sigh) It’s a very long and complex plot. I’ve only been piecing some of it together myself. I’ll try to tell you what I know.” Jacob starts off by explaining that it all goes back to your birth and the Eternal Project. You and all of your “siblings” were picked for it for a reason. You weren’t just to become super soldiers for the Empire. One of you was going to be chosen to be the new vessel for the Emperor, but only if that Eternal showed promise. Apparently you did. Jacob explains that while the chosen needed to be a great warrior with magical skill and be put to the test, the Emperor didn’t want to risk your life excessively, hence why he initially wanted to keep you out of very heavy fighting. Also he didn’t want any of the potential vessels to complicate things by potentially producing offspring so sterility was something that ensured during your “enhancement” period as a baby. You were a perfect soldier that was utterly loyal, so much so that you saw the Emperor as your father. Then Alison came along. Alison was the only other person that you had a close relationship with and that distracted you from your duty. Or more precisely, it made your loyalties potentially divided. The Emperor couldn’t take a chance with another person turning your devotion elsewhere or corrupting his influence over you so she had to die. The assassination of Roldan was just a simple matter of taking out a potential future rival. Roldan’s fame was at least as much as your own, and he was probably better liked. Even if Roldan was loyal, the Emperor couldn’t take a chance of another potential domestic rebellion with a charismatic leader. Jacob also believes that the Emperor also just did it out of mean spiritedness since he knew how proud Jacob was of Roldan. On top of everything else he could lay all the blame on Semra. Jacob isn’t sure exactly how the Emperor plans to transfer himself into your body, but given that it involves a trip to the island of Mortos, he’s sure it can’t be good and that you as a person will cease to be so that the Emperor can continue his immortal reign. While this is all very interesting from a conspiracy point of view, you aren’t convinced. “So are you seriously telling me the Emperor has been molding me into some container that is to be filled? You’re telling me that this man who I see as my father and treats me as his son has been lying to me from the beginning about everything? Even if this were the case and I highly doubt it is, HOW do you know all this? What evidence do you have?” Jacob at this point is extremely nervous. “I…I have no hard evidence. I mean I’ve seen a few private writings, but I dared not to take them.” “So what you’re telling me is that you’ve been snooping into the Emperor’s privacy and can’t even back up your accusations.” “No! I also have another person who can back up these facts! She…” You stop Jacob. “She? Jacob, I really hope you aren’t talking about who I think you’re talking about.” Jacob ignores your warning and blurts out what he has to say as quickly as he can. “Look, I pieced together some of the assassination myself, but Semra told me about the true purpose of the Eternal Project. But this isn’t about just you. This is about a potential danger of world proportions! The Emperor isn’t just a ruler seeking everlasting life; Semra says he has a more sinister agenda that he’s been planning for centuries and given that I’ve recently learned his original homeland is Mortos I’m inclined to believe her.” “Believe Semra? Really? Then you’re a damn fool along with being a traitor! Just how long have you been in contact with Semra? WHERE IS SHE?!” you ask and slam Jacob against the wall. “Please…I’m telling you the truth! I’m no traitor! I’m loyal to the Empire first and foremost and I see the Emperor’s actions as something that will harm it in the long run! The Emperor needs to be stopped, whatever it is he has planned. You can’t go to Mortos with him! You have to kill him!” “I’ll kill YOU for speaking such treason!” and begin squeezing Jacob’s neck. “(Sigh) I told you this wasn’t going to work Jacob. He’s too hopelessly brainwashed to listen. Not even the death of his beloved Alison will cause him to believe that the Emperor means him ill. I guess I should’ve just killed him long ago, but as they say love makes you do stupid things.” You turn around and see Semra. You don’t think, you just lunge, only to pass through Semra and crash into some furniture. Its not really Semra, its just a magic projection of some sort. “I suppose I should be flattered that you still want to get your hands on me.” Semra remarks. “After I’m done killing Jacob, I’m going to find and kill you, bitch.” You say getting back up. “I’m sure, but I don’t have much time so I’m going to make this brief. Unlike our sniveling associate over there, I’m not going to appeal to your logic or reason, because its always been hampered by your warped sense of mindless duty. I’m going to appeal to your sense of desire and survival, because despite your warped sense of mindless duty, you can’t suppress those.” You draw your weapon and walk past Semra’s image to butcher Jacob who pleads with you to spare his life. “Okay here it is, you WANT to kill the Emperor. You WANT to rule the Empire. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. I know your desires better than anyone else. Even if the Emperor isn’t planning on taking your body as his own and is going to just rejuvenate himself in some other way, why would you still want that? Isn’t it time for him to accept his demise and step aside for someone else? Who better than you? Are you truly happy just surviving and serving like a drone or are you going to finally step up and take what is rightfully yours? You’ve already had a major hand in expanding the Empire and holding it together, why not take the next natural step?” You stop yourself from killing Jacob and turn back to Semra. “You don’t have to like me, you don’t have to believe me, just listen to me lover. I’ve always known what’s best for you. Kill the Emperor now while he’s at his weakest, there has never been a better time. You were born to rule. Its in your blood, its in your heart, its in your soul. Seize your potential and do what’s meant to be.” Semra says. With Jacob’s damning accusations and Semra’s words appealing to your ambitious aspirations, you now don’t know what to do. Should you dismiss everything they say as lies and stay loyal or should you not take any chances with your own survival and kill the Emperor regardless of reasons? > You serve There’s no way you’d ever murder your father least of all over allegations from Semra and Jacob. None of this makes any damn sense anyway. Semra’s lying and trying to manipulate you as usual. She’s taken her treachery to its next logical level, attempting to overthrow the Emperor. As for Jacob, the man is just a weak willed traitor that’s easily fooled by her lies. He’s also probably harboring a petty grudge for the countless times the Emperor scolded him for his incompetence. Without another word you turn back to Jacob and quickly run him through. He looks at you with a mixture of pain and surprise as if he really though Semra’s words would reach you. He makes a slow groaning sound as the life drains from him. Meanwhile Semra’s image continues to look on at you shaking her head. “And now your subservience is complete. I believe I really am truly done with you now. I’ve tried to always make you see the truth, but you continue to insist on remaining ignorant. Even when you betrayed me with your little monkey shield maiden by marrying her I at least knew you weren’t completely a tool for the Emperor. I knew you at least had a modicum of free will and your own mind even if it was lost on some crude human trollop. Now? I can see I was just wasting my time and at your core, you’ll always be a mindless drone longing only to serve” “Enjoy your taunts now Semra, because you won’t have time to run off at the mouth when I’m cutting out your tongue.” “Chances are this will be the last time we ever see each other. Enjoy your trip to Mortos, perhaps there you will finally see the truth. Of course by that time it’ll be too late, but at last you will see it. Goodbye Eternal.” Semra’s magical projection disappears and you’re left alone in your quarters with Jacob’s dead body. After a bit of clean up, you go back to see the Emperor. “Hello son, is something wrong? You’re a bit early for our trip.” He remarks. You explain everything that just happened about Jacob and Semra. “Can’t trust anyone these days can you? I mean Semra, I knew she’d pop up again trying to cause trouble, but Jacob? The man could be so timid at times, though sometimes those are the ones you have to watch right? Still, I can’t believe he’d be foolish enough to actually try to talk you into siding against me. Guess Semra’s lies were good enough to convince even him, not you though it seems.” The Emperor replies. You don’t respond. Despite the fact that you’ve dismissed what was told you as lies, you can’t help but wonder. “I see… I guess maybe their words did convince you more than you’re letting on. So what is it that’s troubling you exactly?” “Everything I suppose. I don’t even know where to begin and I know I shouldn’t even be entertaining anything that Semra says, but…(Sigh) Semra said something that I DO know to be true. She said that I harbored a desire to kill you and take over the Empire.” “And is that what you want to do?” “No! You’re my father. Other than Alison, you’re the only person in this world that’s always been there for me. I owe you a debt that can never be repaid other than my everlasting loyalty and servitude. However, I can’t deny there have been moments where I’ve felt negative feelings towards you. Granted they’ve been very fleeting, but they’ve become more frequent lately. As much as I don’t like it, Semra does know me and if she told the truth about that, then I can’t help but wonder if she has told the truth about other things as well.” “Well the best liars do mix the truth with their lies. Svelk do it better than most and Semra is definitely a master. First of all with Mortos, I do intend on rejuvenating myself, but I need your help because you’re the only other person with magical aptitude that I trust and I’ll need your sword arm as well. Let’s just say when I left, it wasn’t on good terms and my return may be met with hostility.” “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” “I’ll admit I probably should’ve told you about my former homeland a long time ago. Honestly, I didn’t because its partly because I have my own feelings of shame tied to that place. Yes, there are things in my past I do regret. Not many, but what happened there is definitely one. Which bring me to one of your other concerns and believe me son; I had nothing to do with the murder of your wife. It is true I didn’t approve, but that was just because I’ve had my own experiences with love and loss and didn’t want you potentially going through the same pain. Pain that is greater than any wound that could come from a battlefield as I’m sure you know.” You nod silently in agreement and the Emperor continues. “That lost love of mine you might even say is one of my other regrets. You are special. Unique even. Its what makes someone like you or me powerful. But it’s also something that makes us doomed to follow a lonely solitary path. I knew that long ago, but I also knew you had to experience it first hand, so I let you do your own thing. Who knows though, if it hadn’t been for Semra, you may very well have had a long happy marriage or you may have grown out of love due to unforeseen differences. I know this is of very little consolation, but at least your Alison died knowing you loved her and she loved you. A lot better than what I experienced…but that’s a tale for another time.” The Emperor’s words make you feel a little better now that he’s explained himself and defended his position a bit. Still, he didn’t address your last concern. “And what of my other fear?” “Oh, yes that. Your hidden desire to kill and replace me. Heh heh. Well I’m not too worried, not because I don’t think you couldn’t do it, but rather because that feeling is probably no different to what all children have felt towards their parents since the beginning of time. You’re not always going to think positive things about me, nor would I expect you to. As you said, Semra does know you and she just played upon your emotions. She forgot though, I also know you and I know you would never willingly harm me in any way. If you did hold that desire, you would’ve never killed Jacob and told me all this. You would’ve came busting down the door and challenging me instead. And you certainly wouldn’t have been troubled about your feelings over it.” Funny how the Emperor can make everything seem okay with just a few words. Maybe that’s why he’s right about you and that’s why he knows you’d never kill him. With this last concern put somewhat at ease, you feel much more at ease. You have to ask though… “Are Eternals really unable to have children?” “Yes. An unfortunate side effect of your enhancement I’m afraid. Another regret I suppose. I do not know if you ever desired to have offspring with Alison, but if you did, you have my everlasting apologies.” With this last piece of information the matter is now at rest or at least you feel less apprehensive about going to Mortos now. The Emperor says that with Jacob’s death he’s going to have to promote another bean counter, but that it can wait until you get back. “The Empire isn’t going to suddenly collapse just because its ruler and second are gone for a day or so.” “But who’s technically in charge then?” you ask “Good question. I suppose Marik!” The Emperor laughs. The next morning you meet the Emperor in one of his preparation rooms where you used to practice the magic that he taught you. It is there you see a large glowing blue portal and the Emperor standing right next to it. He looks tired. “Glad you’re here, I’m anxious to make this trip. Whew. I really should’ve had you help me open up this portal; I underestimated how taxing it would be. No matter. Are you ready?” “I suppose so, but is there anything I should really expect? I mean will there be a horde of undead horrors? Will there be ghosts trying to attack my mind? Will there be creatures as powerful like the one I faced during my wife’s murder?” “I wish I could give you better information, but I don’t have any since I myself haven’t been there in centuries. I can only suggest to be prepared for all of the above. Though I will say there probably won’t be something like a revenant there. Unlike Semra, the necromancers of Mortos have enough sense to not go around creating powerful free willed undead. Well, usually anyway. You probably should just stick close to me the whole time; Mortos can be pretty unfriendly to the living.” “Well I would imagine so.” “No, I don’t just mean the undead roaming about, I’m talking about the very land itself. The entire island feeds on life energy, you step in the wrong area and you could suddenly find yourself transformed into a thousand year old skeleton. As you might expect the population’s life expectancy isn’t exactly a long one save for the necromancers.” “Wait, there are living people that exist on the island?” “Sure. Quite a lot of them. Mostly in magically protected enclaves thanks to the necromancers. Mostly humans, but eh…I’d hesitate to call a lot of them that anymore. Let’s just say living in an area filled with undead tends to make people either very pragmatic or bat shit insane or both.” “So they’re basically tall derro that live on the surface?” “Ha ha ha! Yes, I suppose is some ways they might be.” With this little joke to lighten a potentially very grim trip, you and the Emperor enter the portal. Before you know it your surroundings are very different. All around you land is dead. Dead trees, rocks, barren soil, cracked ground. Everything has a gray looking appearance mostly due to the unnatural sky. Its not night, its not day, its just a dull gray and you get the impression its always this way. On top of all this you have no idea where the Emperor is. He isn’t by your side and you’d start to worry, if you suddenly didn’t hear his voice in your head. “Son? Are you there?” “Yes. I’m here. Where are you?” “I’m at the location. I’m communicating to you psychically since my powers are enhanced here. Blasted portal still didn’t work properly though. I’m sorry son, but you’re going to have to walk over here. Your destination is a small isolated temple; you won’t miss it if you keep walking west from your location. You aren’t too far, but you’re going to have to walk through one of those inhabited settlements I was talking about earlier. Be on your guard. I’d tell you to go around it, but there’s a lot of harmful energy in the area. I wouldn’t want you to step into a negative zone. I’d also keep in contact with you, but I believe I’m about to be attacked by the guardians of this temple. Seems they upgraded the defenses since I was here last time. I can handle it, but do try to hurry.” Acknowledging the Emperor’s directions, you begin heading to the west You haven’t been here a few minutes and you start to understand what the Emperor was talking about as far as it being unfriendly to the living. You can feel a slight loss not just of endurance, or even mental fatigue, but almost like hope and zest. Like the place is slowly telling you lay down and die. While it’s certainly not a pleasant feeling, after years of mind fuckery from Semra, you’re more than capable of shrugging off the effects. Eventually you stand on the outskirts of a small deteriorating village. You don’t see anyone about at first, but then you do notice a few figures peeking out from the windows of nearby houses. Since your presence is most likely already known; you figure the best bet is to just run through as quickly as you can. You pass by several houses and begin to hear a combination of hisses, snarls and howls. Eventually the figures that you’ve glimpsed start to make their appearance and pour out of their homes. They look worse than you imagined. All of them have a sickly appearance with either grayish or yellowish skin and wearing either tattered rags or in some cases nothing at all. Deformities plague most of them; some have missing limbs or extra ones in the wrong places. Unsurprisingly they begin screaming at you in whatever bizarre language they speak and give chase. You don’t get unnerved too often about dangerous situations, but the combination of their disfigurements, their numbers, the unnatural sounds they make and how they lope after you is a bit unsettling. You need to stop or at least slow them down quickly. > You cast a lightning blast You attempt to stop the horde chasing you by casting a lightning strike at it. It fries a couple outright, but the chain lightning effect isn’t as effective as you’d like since none are wearing anything conductive and they aren’t even slowed down, let alone stopped. If anything they now seem to be more charged up (literally!) and excited. Not having any more time to cast something else, you turn and run. As you run through the village more of them are coming out their homes ahead of you. Several of the inhabitants attempt to grab you and while you manage to chop them up, they slow you down enough that the bulk of them chasing you catch up. Dozens of the damn things gibbering, slobbering, laughing and howling in your ear as you try to get free of their clutches. Several misshaped hands attempt to pull you down and deprive you of your weapon. Teeth sink into your armor and some even manage to find exposed bits of flesh. You fight the best you can and slay several of the creature, but for every one you kill it seems like two more take its place. Things don’t get any batter when another large group of the creatures come from the direction you were originally running towards show up as reinforcements. The sheer numbers are bad enough, but what’s really making things worse is the slight drain of your energy from the very air of this accursed place. Several of you fingers are bitten off, your armor is stripped off and eventually the creatures manage pile on you so much that you fall to the ground. In your last moments you scream out for the Emperor to help you, but nobody arrives and the creatures finish eating you alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There’s no way you’d ever murder your father least of all over allegations from Semra and Jacob. None of this makes any damn sense anyway. Semra’s lying and trying to manipulate you as usual. She’s taken her treachery to its next logical level, attempting to overthrow the Emperor. As for Jacob, the man is just a weak willed traitor that’s easily fooled by her lies. He’s also probably harboring a petty grudge for the countless times the Emperor scolded him for his incompetence. Without another word you turn back to Jacob and quickly run him through. He looks at you with a mixture of pain and surprise as if he really though Semra’s words would reach you. He makes a slow groaning sound as the life drains from him. Meanwhile Semra’s image continues to look on at you shaking her head. “And now your subservience is complete. I believe I really am truly done with you now. I’ve tried to always make you see the truth, but you continue to insist on remaining ignorant. Even when you betrayed me with your little monkey shield maiden by marrying her I at least knew you weren’t completely a tool for the Emperor. I knew you at least had a modicum of free will and your own mind even if it was lost on some crude human trollop. Now? I can see I was just wasting my time and at your core, you’ll always be a mindless drone longing only to serve” “Enjoy your taunts now Semra, because you won’t have time to run off at the mouth when I’m cutting out your tongue.” “Chances are this will be the last time we ever see each other. Enjoy your trip to Mortos, perhaps there you will finally see the truth. Of course by that time it’ll be too late, but at last you will see it. Goodbye Eternal.” Semra’s magical projection disappears and you’re left alone in your quarters with Jacob’s dead body. After a bit of clean up, you go back to see the Emperor. “Hello son, is something wrong? You’re a bit early for our trip.” He remarks. You explain everything that just happened about Jacob and Semra. “Can’t trust anyone these days can you? I mean Semra, I knew she’d pop up again trying to cause trouble, but Jacob? The man could be so timid at times, though sometimes those are the ones you have to watch right? Still, I can’t believe he’d be foolish enough to actually try to talk you into siding against me. Guess Semra’s lies were good enough to convince even him, not you though it seems.” The Emperor replies. You don’t respond. Despite the fact that you’ve dismissed what was told you as lies, you can’t help but wonder. “I see… I guess maybe their words did convince you more than you’re letting on. So what is it that’s troubling you exactly?” “Everything I suppose. I don’t even know where to begin and I know I shouldn’t even be entertaining anything that Semra says, but…(Sigh) Semra said something that I DO know to be true. She said that I harbored a desire to kill you and take over the Empire.” “And is that what you want to do?” “No! You’re my father. Other than Alison, you’re the only person in this world that’s always been there for me. I owe you a debt that can never be repaid other than my everlasting loyalty and servitude. However, I can’t deny there have been moments where I’ve felt negative feelings towards you. Granted they’ve been very fleeting, but they’ve become more frequent lately. As much as I don’t like it, Semra does know me and if she told the truth about that, then I can’t help but wonder if she has told the truth about other things as well.” “Well the best liars do mix the truth with their lies. Svelk do it better than most and Semra is definitely a master. First of all with Mortos, I do intend on rejuvenating myself, but I need your help because you’re the only other person with magical aptitude that I trust and I’ll need your sword arm as well. Let’s just say when I left, it wasn’t on good terms and my return may be met with hostility.” “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” “I’ll admit I probably should’ve told you about my former homeland a long time ago. Honestly, I didn’t because its partly because I have my own feelings of shame tied to that place. Yes, there are things in my past I do regret. Not many, but what happened there is definitely one. Which bring me to one of your other concerns and believe me son; I had nothing to do with the murder of your wife. It is true I didn’t approve, but that was just because I’ve had my own experiences with love and loss and didn’t want you potentially going through the same pain. Pain that is greater than any wound that could come from a battlefield as I’m sure you know.” You nod silently in agreement and the Emperor continues. “That lost love of mine you might even say is one of my other regrets. You are special. Unique even. Its what makes someone like you or me powerful. But it’s also something that makes us doomed to follow a lonely solitary path. I knew that long ago, but I also knew you had to experience it first hand, so I let you do your own thing. Who knows though, if it hadn’t been for Semra, you may very well have had a long happy marriage or you may have grown out of love due to unforeseen differences. I know this is of very little consolation, but at least your Alison died knowing you loved her and she loved you. A lot better than what I experienced…but that’s a tale for another time.” The Emperor’s words make you feel a little better now that he’s explained himself and defended his position a bit. Still, he didn’t address your last concern. “And what of my other fear?” “Oh, yes that. Your hidden desire to kill and replace me. Heh heh. Well I’m not too worried, not because I don’t think you couldn’t do it, but rather because that feeling is probably no different to what all children have felt towards their parents since the beginning of time. You’re not always going to think positive things about me, nor would I expect you to. As you said, Semra does know you and she just played upon your emotions. She forgot though, I also know you and I know you would never willingly harm me in any way. If you did hold that desire, you would’ve never killed Jacob and told me all this. You would’ve came busting down the door and challenging me instead. And you certainly wouldn’t have been troubled about your feelings over it.” Funny how the Emperor can make everything seem okay with just a few words. Maybe that’s why he’s right about you and that’s why he knows you’d never kill him. With this last concern put somewhat at ease, you feel much more at ease. You have to ask though… “Are Eternals really unable to have children?” “Yes. An unfortunate side effect of your enhancement I’m afraid. Another regret I suppose. I do not know if you ever desired to have offspring with Alison, but if you did, you have my everlasting apologies.” With this last piece of information the matter is now at rest or at least you feel less apprehensive about going to Mortos now. The Emperor says that with Jacob’s death he’s going to have to promote another bean counter, but that it can wait until you get back. “The Empire isn’t going to suddenly collapse just because its ruler and second are gone for a day or so.” “But who’s technically in charge then?” you ask “Good question. I suppose Marik!” The Emperor laughs. The next morning you meet the Emperor in one of his preparation rooms where you used to practice the magic that he taught you. It is there you see a large glowing blue portal and the Emperor standing right next to it. He looks tired. “Glad you’re here, I’m anxious to make this trip. Whew. I really should’ve had you help me open up this portal; I underestimated how taxing it would be. No matter. Are you ready?” “I suppose so, but is there anything I should really expect? I mean will there be a horde of undead horrors? Will there be ghosts trying to attack my mind? Will there be creatures as powerful like the one I faced during my wife’s murder?” “I wish I could give you better information, but I don’t have any since I myself haven’t been there in centuries. I can only suggest to be prepared for all of the above. Though I will say there probably won’t be something like a revenant there. Unlike Semra, the necromancers of Mortos have enough sense to not go around creating powerful free willed undead. Well, usually anyway. You probably should just stick close to me the whole time; Mortos can be pretty unfriendly to the living.” “Well I would imagine so.” “No, I don’t just mean the undead roaming about, I’m talking about the very land itself. The entire island feeds on life energy, you step in the wrong area and you could suddenly find yourself transformed into a thousand year old skeleton. As you might expect the population’s life expectancy isn’t exactly a long one save for the necromancers.” “Wait, there are living people that exist on the island?” “Sure. Quite a lot of them. Mostly in magically protected enclaves thanks to the necromancers. Mostly humans, but eh…I’d hesitate to call a lot of them that anymore. Let’s just say living in an area filled with undead tends to make people either very pragmatic or bat shit insane or both.” “So they’re basically tall derro that live on the surface?” “Ha ha ha! Yes, I suppose is some ways they might be.” With this little joke to lighten a potentially very grim trip, you and the Emperor enter the portal. Before you know it your surroundings are very different. All around you land is dead. Dead trees, rocks, barren soil, cracked ground. Everything has a gray looking appearance mostly due to the unnatural sky. Its not night, its not day, its just a dull gray and you get the impression its always this way. On top of all this you have no idea where the Emperor is. He isn’t by your side and you’d start to worry, if you suddenly didn’t hear his voice in your head. “Son? Are you there?” “Yes. I’m here. Where are you?” “I’m at the location. I’m communicating to you psychically since my powers are enhanced here. Blasted portal still didn’t work properly though. I’m sorry son, but you’re going to have to walk over here. Your destination is a small isolated temple; you won’t miss it if you keep walking west from your location. You aren’t too far, but you’re going to have to walk through one of those inhabited settlements I was talking about earlier. Be on your guard. I’d tell you to go around it, but there’s a lot of harmful energy in the area. I wouldn’t want you to step into a negative zone. I’d also keep in contact with you, but I believe I’m about to be attacked by the guardians of this temple. Seems they upgraded the defenses since I was here last time. I can handle it, but do try to hurry.” Acknowledging the Emperor’s directions, you begin heading to the west You haven’t been here a few minutes and you start to understand what the Emperor was talking about as far as it being unfriendly to the living. You can feel a slight loss not just of endurance, or even mental fatigue, but almost like hope and zest. Like the place is slowly telling you lay down and die. While it’s certainly not a pleasant feeling, after years of mind fuckery from Semra, you’re more than capable of shrugging off the effects. Eventually you stand on the outskirts of a small deteriorating village. You don’t see anyone about at first, but then you do notice a few figures peeking out from the windows of nearby houses. Since your presence is most likely already known; you figure the best bet is to just run through as quickly as you can. You pass by several houses and begin to hear a combination of hisses, snarls and howls. Eventually the figures that you’ve glimpsed start to make their appearance and pour out of their homes. They look worse than you imagined. All of them have a sickly appearance with either grayish or yellowish skin and wearing either tattered rags or in some cases nothing at all. Deformities plague most of them; some have missing limbs or extra ones in the wrong places. Unsurprisingly they begin screaming at you in whatever bizarre language they speak and give chase. You don’t get unnerved too often about dangerous situations, but the combination of their disfigurements, their numbers, the unnatural sounds they make and how they lope after you is a bit unsettling. You need to stop or at least slow them down quickly. > You cast a flame blast You take the logical approach that most things don’t like fire and cast a few quick flame bolts at the horde. This works to a small degree in that it sets a few on fire and causes them to fall to the ground trying to put the flames out, which stops the momentum a bit as the non flaming “villagers” trip over the burning ones. As you run through the village more of them are coming out their homes ahead of you. Several of the inhabitants attempt to grab you, but you cut them down instead. They’re tougher and stronger than they look and seemingly very resistant to the concept of pain. You sliced into the neck of one and the hideous thing actually began laughing. The end of the village is in sight and a little further in the distance you can see another structure, which you guess is the temple. Naturally your line of sight is quickly blocked by another horde of the villagers get in your way. With one group ahead and the other group still behind you, you’d actually be in danger of being trapped if you weren’t the quick thinking one. You quickly climb up the side of one of the houses up to its roof. It isn’t the climb that’s difficult, but rather the fact that the house is in such terrible condition that part of it starts crumbling. You nearly fall through the rotting roof when you get to the top. The villagers howl and moan at you as you stand out of their reach, but they begin to correct that by trying to climb up as well. You lob a couple of fireballs into the horde, but that soon turns out to be a bit of a mistake as the blast back (along with burning villagers running around on fire) end up setting the house on fire along with others nearby it. The only way you’re getting away from this madness is by rooftop jumping and hoping you don’t fall through them. You make your escape across the rooftops while a raging inferno starts to slowly envelop other houses and will most likely burn down the whole cursed village. The villagers don’t give up on you that easily, some of them actually make it up to the roofs as well and continue their pursuit, while the non burning ones start trying to pelt you with nearby stones. You get to the last house roof before you need to jump down and one of the bastards manages to grab you at the same time another hits you in the head with a rock. “Shit!” you utter as you fall off the roof taking the villager who grabbed your arm with you. With some quick moving you pull the villager so he lands on the ground first and all your weight lands on top of him. With your elbow in his neck when you both hit the ground you hear a satisfying snap. When you scramble to get up, you see that you’re out of the village, but not out of danger. You cut down a few more of the villagers that have caught up with you and distance yourself from the damned place by running towards the temple which is looking much closer now. You expect the villagers to chase you all the way there, but they don’t go much past the outskirts of their village, which continues to burn. Your journey to the temple isn’t far, but it certainly starts to feel like it is. The closer you get to the temple the more you start feel the effects of the island’s toxic environment. Soon each step is an effort and you can hardly concentrate on even walking towards the temple. “Give in…join ussssss…lay down…diiiiiiiiiiiiie…” you suddenly hear in your head. You hate these psychic spirit attacks. “NO! The Emperor will give me strength to carry out my mission!” you yell out and redouble your efforts to shake off the mind assault. Eventually you reach the temple and the signs of battle are very obvious here. You see one of the silver doors blown off the hinges. Several large bones lie strewn about and from the looks of it; these weren’t from any ordinary skeleton. You also notice two ruined black statues on either side of the temple. While they have great large chunks missing from them, you notice that these statues resemble the ones the Emperor has just outside his chambers; they’re just on a smaller scale. “Son? Is that you outside?” you hear the Emperor ask from within. “Yes, it’s me. Are you okay?” you answer. “Yes! Just get in hear quickly, we don’t have much time!” You enter the temple which actually isn’t all that large inside. In fact it looks more like a shrine rather than a temple since the only thing inside is a small pedestal against the far wall. You see the Emperor who is holding an old looking book and he seems very excited. More excited than you’ve ever seen, even when all the gnomes were reportedly exterminated he wasn’t this excited. You notice he’s drawn several circles and symbols on the floor. “Good, good, you’re here! We have to begin immediately! Step into that circle…no I mean that one!” he exclaims. “Erm, okay. You know I got attacked by a whole village of freaks?” “I’m sure you did. Probably ghouls. Generations of inbreeding and cannibalism tends to make folks insane and unfriendly to outsiders. Please, now we have to begin, they’ll be here soon!” You step inside one of the circles and the Emperor steps into another one and obsessively fondles the book he has in his hand. “Who’ll be here? The ghouls?” “No! The…nevermind, look I’ll explain everything to you afterwards, but right now I have to concentrate and you will have to as well. Now begin this chant with me.” The Emperor starts chanting and you try to follow along as best you can. The circles and symbols on the floor begin to glow. As much as you don’t want to interrupt, you’re a little lost on what exactly is going on. “Father, what is…” “Silence!” the Emperor screams and then you hear a second voice, but this one is from no spirit. “Casimir, is that you? I see you’ve finally returned. Always knew you would. Have you come back because you’ve seen the error of your ways or is this just a visit for a mad dash of power? Judging by the mess, I’d say the latter.” You hear the voice shout from outside the temple. The Emperor suddenly looks very nervous. Worried even. You’ve never seen such an expression from him before. “Yes! It’s me, Nicodemus! And you’ll not be stopping me this time!” the Emperor shouts and then a red barrier materializes in the temple entryway. You see a robed figure walk up to it, but can’t make out much more than that. “Casimir, you have to know this cheap trick isn’t going to stop me. If you just let down the barrier we might be able to talk about this. “ “Never! I wasn’t deterred then, and I won’t be deterred now! I have the book and after this rejuvenation ritual, you and the entire council won’t be able to stop me from my destiny!” The Emperor shouts and starts making elaborate hand gestures. “Don’t you think over six hundred centuries of this nonsense is long enough? You’ve had your fun and now its time to realize you need to act your damn age. Casimir I’m coming in and I assure you if you attack me, you will be destroyed this time.” The Emperor ignores this threat and continues his spell. He begins to eminate a purple glow and you soon follow. “Am I supposed to have this purple glow?” you ask. “Shhh! It’ll all be over soon. Just have to cast one last spell.” The Emperor quickly says before beginning another spell. About this time the barrier disappears and an ancient looking man in a black robe steps in. He doesn’t look very imposing, but it’s pretty apparent he exudes great power. He completely ignores you and looks directly at the Emperor. Its one of disapproval, but there’s no anger at all behind it. “Casimir, you have to know this isn’t even necessary. If you desire immortality so much, you could’ve just stayed here to begin with, you could still stay here if you’d just recognize the error of your ways.” The Emperor looks out the corner of his eye at Nicodemus, but doesn’t stop his spell. Meanwhile Nicodemus now looks over at you and begins studying you. He then closes his eyes and lifts up his own hand while mumbling something. You have no idea what he’s doing, but at this point you’re starting to feel like you’re genuinely threatened. The circle you’re in will probably protect you, but he broke through the other barrier with ease. Who’s to say he won’t do the same with the circle? There’s also the matter of risking ruining the elaborate ritual the Emperor is currently casting…which you’re also starting to have separate concerns about. Semra’s words: “You will learn the truth too late.” begin to ring in your mind. > You defend yourself While the Emperor may or may not being lying to you, your immediate concern is Nicodemus. He’s right in the room and casting a spell, if that isn’t an indication of dire threat, you don’t know what is. Summoning all your energy you unleash a double spray of frost at him in the hopes of freezing him into a block of ice. Its enough to interrupt him, but not for long. He merely turns his gaze towards you and you feel a sudden drain of your energy. Like when Cyrus was clutching your throat, but this is even faster. You fall to the floor instantly meanwhile the Emperor has to stop his own spell casting. “DAMN IT! You’ve ruined everything!” he shouts and casts some sort of green ray at Nicodemus. You crawl out of the way of the ensuing magic battle. You can’t even see who is winning; you’re just trying to get the hell out of the temple so you can gather your strength. The next few moments are a blur, though you manage to stand yourself up and make it to the doorway. You stagger outside and hear the final outcome of the battle. “Casimir, you’ve brought this fate upon yourself.” Nicodemus remarks and this followed by a long scream. The sound of it gives you the shivers as it’s an obvious sign the Emperor has lost his battle with Nicodemus and most certainly his life. You push past your lingering weakness and start running in a random direction, you don’t get far when you suddenly feel that all encompassing drain again. At first you think its Nicodemus, but its something less personal. Its one of those negative zones that the Emperor mentioned, you just ran into one. His comment that stepping into one could instantly turn you into a thousand year skeleton isn’t quite accurate. It takes you at least five minutes before something similar happens. The strange thing is you end up feeling every agonizing second of decomposition before you are no more.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You take the logical approach that most things don’t like fire and cast a few quick flame bolts at the horde. This works to a small degree in that it sets a few on fire and causes them to fall to the ground trying to put the flames out, which stops the momentum a bit as the non flaming “villagers” trip over the burning ones. As you run through the village more of them are coming out their homes ahead of you. Several of the inhabitants attempt to grab you, but you cut them down instead. They’re tougher and stronger than they look and seemingly very resistant to the concept of pain. You sliced into the neck of one and the hideous thing actually began laughing. The end of the village is in sight and a little further in the distance you can see another structure, which you guess is the temple. Naturally your line of sight is quickly blocked by another horde of the villagers get in your way. With one group ahead and the other group still behind you, you’d actually be in danger of being trapped if you weren’t the quick thinking one. You quickly climb up the side of one of the houses up to its roof. It isn’t the climb that’s difficult, but rather the fact that the house is in such terrible condition that part of it starts crumbling. You nearly fall through the rotting roof when you get to the top. The villagers howl and moan at you as you stand out of their reach, but they begin to correct that by trying to climb up as well. You lob a couple of fireballs into the horde, but that soon turns out to be a bit of a mistake as the blast back (along with burning villagers running around on fire) end up setting the house on fire along with others nearby it. The only way you’re getting away from this madness is by rooftop jumping and hoping you don’t fall through them. You make your escape across the rooftops while a raging inferno starts to slowly envelop other houses and will most likely burn down the whole cursed village. The villagers don’t give up on you that easily, some of them actually make it up to the roofs as well and continue their pursuit, while the non burning ones start trying to pelt you with nearby stones. You get to the last house roof before you need to jump down and one of the bastards manages to grab you at the same time another hits you in the head with a rock. “Shit!” you utter as you fall off the roof taking the villager who grabbed your arm with you. With some quick moving you pull the villager so he lands on the ground first and all your weight lands on top of him. With your elbow in his neck when you both hit the ground you hear a satisfying snap. When you scramble to get up, you see that you’re out of the village, but not out of danger. You cut down a few more of the villagers that have caught up with you and distance yourself from the damned place by running towards the temple which is looking much closer now. You expect the villagers to chase you all the way there, but they don’t go much past the outskirts of their village, which continues to burn. Your journey to the temple isn’t far, but it certainly starts to feel like it is. The closer you get to the temple the more you start feel the effects of the island’s toxic environment. Soon each step is an effort and you can hardly concentrate on even walking towards the temple. “Give in…join ussssss…lay down…diiiiiiiiiiiiie…” you suddenly hear in your head. You hate these psychic spirit attacks. “NO! The Emperor will give me strength to carry out my mission!” you yell out and redouble your efforts to shake off the mind assault. Eventually you reach the temple and the signs of battle are very obvious here. You see one of the silver doors blown off the hinges. Several large bones lie strewn about and from the looks of it; these weren’t from any ordinary skeleton. You also notice two ruined black statues on either side of the temple. While they have great large chunks missing from them, you notice that these statues resemble the ones the Emperor has just outside his chambers; they’re just on a smaller scale. “Son? Is that you outside?” you hear the Emperor ask from within. “Yes, it’s me. Are you okay?” you answer. “Yes! Just get in hear quickly, we don’t have much time!” You enter the temple which actually isn’t all that large inside. In fact it looks more like a shrine rather than a temple since the only thing inside is a small pedestal against the far wall. You see the Emperor who is holding an old looking book and he seems very excited. More excited than you’ve ever seen, even when all the gnomes were reportedly exterminated he wasn’t this excited. You notice he’s drawn several circles and symbols on the floor. “Good, good, you’re here! We have to begin immediately! Step into that circle…no I mean that one!” he exclaims. “Erm, okay. You know I got attacked by a whole village of freaks?” “I’m sure you did. Probably ghouls. Generations of inbreeding and cannibalism tends to make folks insane and unfriendly to outsiders. Please, now we have to begin, they’ll be here soon!” You step inside one of the circles and the Emperor steps into another one and obsessively fondles the book he has in his hand. “Who’ll be here? The ghouls?” “No! The…nevermind, look I’ll explain everything to you afterwards, but right now I have to concentrate and you will have to as well. Now begin this chant with me.” The Emperor starts chanting and you try to follow along as best you can. The circles and symbols on the floor begin to glow. As much as you don’t want to interrupt, you’re a little lost on what exactly is going on. “Father, what is…” “Silence!” the Emperor screams and then you hear a second voice, but this one is from no spirit. “Casimir, is that you? I see you’ve finally returned. Always knew you would. Have you come back because you’ve seen the error of your ways or is this just a visit for a mad dash of power? Judging by the mess, I’d say the latter.” You hear the voice shout from outside the temple. The Emperor suddenly looks very nervous. Worried even. You’ve never seen such an expression from him before. “Yes! It’s me, Nicodemus! And you’ll not be stopping me this time!” the Emperor shouts and then a red barrier materializes in the temple entryway. You see a robed figure walk up to it, but can’t make out much more than that. “Casimir, you have to know this cheap trick isn’t going to stop me. If you just let down the barrier we might be able to talk about this. “ “Never! I wasn’t deterred then, and I won’t be deterred now! I have the book and after this rejuvenation ritual, you and the entire council won’t be able to stop me from my destiny!” The Emperor shouts and starts making elaborate hand gestures. “Don’t you think over six hundred centuries of this nonsense is long enough? You’ve had your fun and now its time to realize you need to act your damn age. Casimir I’m coming in and I assure you if you attack me, you will be destroyed this time.” The Emperor ignores this threat and continues his spell. He begins to eminate a purple glow and you soon follow. “Am I supposed to have this purple glow?” you ask. “Shhh! It’ll all be over soon. Just have to cast one last spell.” The Emperor quickly says before beginning another spell. About this time the barrier disappears and an ancient looking man in a black robe steps in. He doesn’t look very imposing, but it’s pretty apparent he exudes great power. He completely ignores you and looks directly at the Emperor. Its one of disapproval, but there’s no anger at all behind it. “Casimir, you have to know this isn’t even necessary. If you desire immortality so much, you could’ve just stayed here to begin with, you could still stay here if you’d just recognize the error of your ways.” The Emperor looks out the corner of his eye at Nicodemus, but doesn’t stop his spell. Meanwhile Nicodemus now looks over at you and begins studying you. He then closes his eyes and lifts up his own hand while mumbling something. You have no idea what he’s doing, but at this point you’re starting to feel like you’re genuinely threatened. The circle you’re in will probably protect you, but he broke through the other barrier with ease. Who’s to say he won’t do the same with the circle? There’s also the matter of risking ruining the elaborate ritual the Emperor is currently casting…which you’re also starting to have separate concerns about. Semra’s words: “You will learn the truth too late.” begin to ring in your mind. > You trust in your current defenses You’ve believed in the Emperor this long and this far. You and he have overcome all obstacles and enemies together. This Nicodemus is just another in a long line of them. You don’t know all the history that he and the Emperor have, but all you know is he will fall like all others. If the Emperor’s next conquest is to be this island then that is what will be done. If it is you that will be needed to help in this mission, then you will gladly serve and die if necessary. And if… And if the Emperor has lied to you about everything, it doesn’t matter because you have been loyal to the end and have played your role perfectly. The Emperor gave you purpose so if you are to be his new vessel of destruction to accomplish his destiny then there can be no greater honor. You are ready to make that sacrifice. You were created for it. Nicodemus lowers his hand and stops mumbling. If he’s cast a spell it either hasn’t worked or it has no obvious effects. “Casimir, I know what you’re trying to do and this isn’t going to work. I urge you to stop before it’s too late.” “Yes, it is too late FOR YOU!” the Emperor shouts and finishes his spell with a laugh. He then turns to you. “Goodbye my son, I’m sorry I lied to you, but know that your last sacrifice will help me achieve my destiny at last.” The Emperor suddenly looks unwell again. Like he did when he was sick except now it’s happening at an accelerated rate. You see him rapidly age before your eyes. “NO! WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?! THE SPELL! THE RITUAL! THE PREPARATION! I HAD THE PERFECT VESSEL! I WAS GOING TO RULE THE WORLD! I WAS GOING TO LIVE FOREVER!” At this point the Emperor collapses to the floor as his body continues to decay. Meanwhile nothing is happening to you though you’re in a state of shock watching the Emperor die in front of you. “Son…help….meeeee…” the Emperor says in a dying raspy tone. “I don’t know how. I’m sorry father…I have failed you…” you reply sadly. “I…want…to live…foreverrrrrrrrr…” the Emperor says with his last dying breath before he completely decays into a skeletal corpse, then bones, then dust. And with that The Emperor, Casimir, your father is dead. You just continue to stare at the dust in disbelief; meanwhile Nicodemus walks over to the pile and picks up the book your father seemed to be so happy to have before he died. “(Sigh) I warned him it wouldn’t work. When I scanned you with my identify spell I learned all I ever had to about you. You were not a suitable vessel for a transference spell.” “Impossible, I am an Eternal! I was born and bred for this purpose!” “I’m well aware of what you believe, but that isn’t what is. Perhaps your breeding was incorrect or perhaps a mistake was made.” ‘No. My father doesn’t make mistakes.” “Really? Recent events would dictate otherwise.” You have no response you just continue to stare at the dust. “Eternal, I can tell you are feeling a great sense of loss right now and you have my sympathies. Your life seems to be filled with nothing but pain, war and loss. And tragically one of your only stable foundations was Casimir and even he lied to you. Yet you’re so broken that you believe you’re the one that failed him. You must’ve been the perfect son.” You begin to gather your strength and thoughts as you are starting to become annoyed with this Nicodemus. “I still am.” You reply seriously. "Hmm, I see even with Casimir dead, your indoctrination still holds. (Sigh) I hope for your sake that will fade in time lest you end up like he did or the power hungry ancestors of this place. This island was once lush and full of life you know. Makas as it once was called had a thriving civilization with a strong navy. Even the mighty Svelk Empire at the time didn’t dare attack us. Then this accursed book was created and changed everything. This is why Casimir was exiled.” Nicodemus says and lifts up the non-descript book while still clutching it his arm. “Did he create it?” you ask. “Hah. Casimir could’ve only hoped to create something so powerful. No he was just another of our kind that thought he could achieve the impossible, to become a god. This book is just an ancient mistake of our predecessors and a reminder of why we were not meant to live forever.” “So what is it, a powerful book of necromantic spells?” “If it were only that, it might be less dangerous. The more dangerous part is the fact that it's not just a spellbook. It’s a gateway to another dimension. Of course we didn’t really realize that or what we were doing until it was nearly too late.” "I don't understand." “Our civilization couldn’t leave well enough alone. We had everything, but we still couldn’t stop the ravages of time and ultimately death. So we did the logical thing of exploring the necromantic arts. It was an exciting time to be sure; I was actually a young and eager researcher myself back then. It took decades, but eventually we managed to unlock everything we could about the art of necromancy. We could’ve very well taken over the world I believe with our power, but our goals were bigger. We wanted immortality. To be as gods. Nothing less would do. In this book lies the combined knowledge of every forbidden, obscure and even common necromantic arts. We planned on using it to cast off these fragile mortal shells and ascend to a new plane of existence.” “So…what happened?” “This. The ritual that was to give us immortality destroyed our civilization as we knew it and created what you see today. I was actually not involved in the ritual as at the time I was not as skilled of a wizard, but I saw the devastation that occurred. A black void opened up above the entire island and its very presence killed many weaker individuals instantly. It didn’t take long for the arch mages performing this ritual to realize that they weren’t being imbued with eternal life, they were opening a portal to death itself. Fortunately some of the mages weren’t quite so obsessed with immortality and realized that this was a bad idea and so managed to close the gate before it engulfed the entire island…possibly even the world.” “That can’t be the end of it.” “Oh no, it most certainly was not. The entire island had been infused with negative energy and necromantic magic to a point where it was oddly keeping those that lived a much increased life span. However it also made many mad with power. Some of the more obsessed mages were furious about the gate being closed. They desired that the gate remain open, still believing it would lead to immortality. Others settled for the lesser immortality, but desired more power. Thus began the war of the necromancers who marched armies of the dead to wage endless battles with each other and destroying the rest of the island in the process.” “It was only when every inch of this place was cursed and forever tainted that the survivors finally stopped to recognize the folly of their ways. The folly that someone can have total control over death, let alone cheat it forever." “My father obviously disagreed.” You say. “Yes, though he wasn't the first and sadly he probably won't be the last. Every once in awhile one of our number gets a little power hungry. Usually it’s a phase and we exile them as we did with Casimir. Most soon learn that their powers gradually weaken and beg to come back, others vainly try to make it on their own and usually die expending all their energy as soon as they try to raise an army of the dead to conquer whatever it is they've set their eyes on. I have to admit though, Casimir proved to be a little more determined than most. He was smart to stop using his necromancy and rely on more traditional means to run a nation. Even his way of attempting to cheat death was rather clever. A shame he didn't focus his energy on something more worthwhile." "He did." You answer defiantly. Nicodemus seems slightly exasperated now. "And again you defend a man who cared nothing for you and would've devoured your life force just to extend his life span a little longer. What did he do that was so worthwhile? Create his Empire? Lesser men than him have done similar things and with a lot less resources, he wasn't really special in that regard. Live for centuries? He could've stayed here and lived for a lot longer than that if he'd just abandoned his mad plans. Power is fleeting Eternal. LIFE is fleeting. No one lives forever and no one rules forever. Not on this world anyway. Even necromancers die. Just takes us a little longer than most and trust me, we aren't ruling anything so much as we’re doomed to act as guardians to this world’s life. Most of us know or learn that lesson, because after it's all said and done, this book teaches that important message." "Message? You’ve been going on about how dangerous the book is. And if the book is so dangerous, why not just destroy or get rid of it?" you say. "You don’t believe that’s been tried? Trust me, it has by every known ability to us and then some. Getting rid of it would be unwise for it could just fall into the hands of someone who does not know its true power and they may unleash its awfulness. Better we should remain its guardians and make sure nobody else ever has to suffer the same fate we do. So if one good thing comes from the book, then it is that lesson. A reminder of what hubris does. Sadly some just fail to learn the lesson. Not everything is black and white, contrary to your worldview of things Eternal. I hope that will fade in time as well. Speaking of time, I believe yours here should be coming to an end. Your master is dead and you have no further business here." Nicodemus mutters a small incantation and a portal opens up near you. "This will take you back to your Empire. Goodbye Eternal, and I hope for your sake you find your own way, you'll find yourself a lot better off." The Emperor is dead and while this man may not have caused it directly, you still feel he is somehow responsible. Part of you wants to attack Nicodemus, but you also know that may not be wise as it is obvious the man wields great power. Then there is the book he holds. You almost feel drawn to it… > You attack Nicodemus While the Emperor might’ve been afraid of this man, you have no such fear. You’re going to succeed where your father failed. You draw your weapon with one hand and cast a spray of ice at Nicodemus with the other. He’s not even fazed; he’s not even all that surprised. Ignoring the frost on his body he merely stares at you and suddenly you feel severe drain of your energy. Like when Cyrus was clutching your throat, but this is even faster. You drop like a rock in water, unable to stop Nicodemus from approaching you. “(Sigh) If I didn’t know better I’d think that Casimir had succeeded in transferring himself into you, but you are not Casimir. You’re not even half as powerful as he was. You are a confused child that’s desperately and misguidedly still trying to prove yourself to an uncaring father figure. Under different circumstances, you’d be a figure of pity and mercy. However you do have the potential to be very dangerous and I can see that you’ve not listened to a single thing I’ve tried to tell you today. You probably never will either. May you find some sort of peace in death that you obviously couldn’t find in life.” Nicodemus remarks. You can’t even respond back, your whole body is becoming lethargic and numb. Your heartbeat starts slowing down, and your vision begins to darken. Soon you can’t see anything at all and surrender to eternal sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve believed in the Emperor this long and this far. You and he have overcome all obstacles and enemies together. This Nicodemus is just another in a long line of them. You don’t know all the history that he and the Emperor have, but all you know is he will fall like all others. If the Emperor’s next conquest is to be this island then that is what will be done. If it is you that will be needed to help in this mission, then you will gladly serve and die if necessary. And if… And if the Emperor has lied to you about everything, it doesn’t matter because you have been loyal to the end and have played your role perfectly. The Emperor gave you purpose so if you are to be his new vessel of destruction to accomplish his destiny then there can be no greater honor. You are ready to make that sacrifice. You were created for it. Nicodemus lowers his hand and stops mumbling. If he’s cast a spell it either hasn’t worked or it has no obvious effects. “Casimir, I know what you’re trying to do and this isn’t going to work. I urge you to stop before it’s too late.” “Yes, it is too late FOR YOU!” the Emperor shouts and finishes his spell with a laugh. He then turns to you. “Goodbye my son, I’m sorry I lied to you, but know that your last sacrifice will help me achieve my destiny at last.” The Emperor suddenly looks unwell again. Like he did when he was sick except now it’s happening at an accelerated rate. You see him rapidly age before your eyes. “NO! WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?! THE SPELL! THE RITUAL! THE PREPARATION! I HAD THE PERFECT VESSEL! I WAS GOING TO RULE THE WORLD! I WAS GOING TO LIVE FOREVER!” At this point the Emperor collapses to the floor as his body continues to decay. Meanwhile nothing is happening to you though you’re in a state of shock watching the Emperor die in front of you. “Son…help….meeeee…” the Emperor says in a dying raspy tone. “I don’t know how. I’m sorry father…I have failed you…” you reply sadly. “I…want…to live…foreverrrrrrrrr…” the Emperor says with his last dying breath before he completely decays into a skeletal corpse, then bones, then dust. And with that The Emperor, Casimir, your father is dead. You just continue to stare at the dust in disbelief; meanwhile Nicodemus walks over to the pile and picks up the book your father seemed to be so happy to have before he died. “(Sigh) I warned him it wouldn’t work. When I scanned you with my identify spell I learned all I ever had to about you. You were not a suitable vessel for a transference spell.” “Impossible, I am an Eternal! I was born and bred for this purpose!” “I’m well aware of what you believe, but that isn’t what is. Perhaps your breeding was incorrect or perhaps a mistake was made.” ‘No. My father doesn’t make mistakes.” “Really? Recent events would dictate otherwise.” You have no response you just continue to stare at the dust. “Eternal, I can tell you are feeling a great sense of loss right now and you have my sympathies. Your life seems to be filled with nothing but pain, war and loss. And tragically one of your only stable foundations was Casimir and even he lied to you. Yet you’re so broken that you believe you’re the one that failed him. You must’ve been the perfect son.” You begin to gather your strength and thoughts as you are starting to become annoyed with this Nicodemus. “I still am.” You reply seriously. "Hmm, I see even with Casimir dead, your indoctrination still holds. (Sigh) I hope for your sake that will fade in time lest you end up like he did or the power hungry ancestors of this place. This island was once lush and full of life you know. Makas as it once was called had a thriving civilization with a strong navy. Even the mighty Svelk Empire at the time didn’t dare attack us. Then this accursed book was created and changed everything. This is why Casimir was exiled.” Nicodemus says and lifts up the non-descript book while still clutching it his arm. “Did he create it?” you ask. “Hah. Casimir could’ve only hoped to create something so powerful. No he was just another of our kind that thought he could achieve the impossible, to become a god. This book is just an ancient mistake of our predecessors and a reminder of why we were not meant to live forever.” “So what is it, a powerful book of necromantic spells?” “If it were only that, it might be less dangerous. The more dangerous part is the fact that it's not just a spellbook. It’s a gateway to another dimension. Of course we didn’t really realize that or what we were doing until it was nearly too late.” "I don't understand." “Our civilization couldn’t leave well enough alone. We had everything, but we still couldn’t stop the ravages of time and ultimately death. So we did the logical thing of exploring the necromantic arts. It was an exciting time to be sure; I was actually a young and eager researcher myself back then. It took decades, but eventually we managed to unlock everything we could about the art of necromancy. We could’ve very well taken over the world I believe with our power, but our goals were bigger. We wanted immortality. To be as gods. Nothing less would do. In this book lies the combined knowledge of every forbidden, obscure and even common necromantic arts. We planned on using it to cast off these fragile mortal shells and ascend to a new plane of existence.” “So…what happened?” “This. The ritual that was to give us immortality destroyed our civilization as we knew it and created what you see today. I was actually not involved in the ritual as at the time I was not as skilled of a wizard, but I saw the devastation that occurred. A black void opened up above the entire island and its very presence killed many weaker individuals instantly. It didn’t take long for the arch mages performing this ritual to realize that they weren’t being imbued with eternal life, they were opening a portal to death itself. Fortunately some of the mages weren’t quite so obsessed with immortality and realized that this was a bad idea and so managed to close the gate before it engulfed the entire island…possibly even the world.” “That can’t be the end of it.” “Oh no, it most certainly was not. The entire island had been infused with negative energy and necromantic magic to a point where it was oddly keeping those that lived a much increased life span. However it also made many mad with power. Some of the more obsessed mages were furious about the gate being closed. They desired that the gate remain open, still believing it would lead to immortality. Others settled for the lesser immortality, but desired more power. Thus began the war of the necromancers who marched armies of the dead to wage endless battles with each other and destroying the rest of the island in the process.” “It was only when every inch of this place was cursed and forever tainted that the survivors finally stopped to recognize the folly of their ways. The folly that someone can have total control over death, let alone cheat it forever." “My father obviously disagreed.” You say. “Yes, though he wasn't the first and sadly he probably won't be the last. Every once in awhile one of our number gets a little power hungry. Usually it’s a phase and we exile them as we did with Casimir. Most soon learn that their powers gradually weaken and beg to come back, others vainly try to make it on their own and usually die expending all their energy as soon as they try to raise an army of the dead to conquer whatever it is they've set their eyes on. I have to admit though, Casimir proved to be a little more determined than most. He was smart to stop using his necromancy and rely on more traditional means to run a nation. Even his way of attempting to cheat death was rather clever. A shame he didn't focus his energy on something more worthwhile." "He did." You answer defiantly. Nicodemus seems slightly exasperated now. "And again you defend a man who cared nothing for you and would've devoured your life force just to extend his life span a little longer. What did he do that was so worthwhile? Create his Empire? Lesser men than him have done similar things and with a lot less resources, he wasn't really special in that regard. Live for centuries? He could've stayed here and lived for a lot longer than that if he'd just abandoned his mad plans. Power is fleeting Eternal. LIFE is fleeting. No one lives forever and no one rules forever. Not on this world anyway. Even necromancers die. Just takes us a little longer than most and trust me, we aren't ruling anything so much as we’re doomed to act as guardians to this world’s life. Most of us know or learn that lesson, because after it's all said and done, this book teaches that important message." "Message? You’ve been going on about how dangerous the book is. And if the book is so dangerous, why not just destroy or get rid of it?" you say. "You don’t believe that’s been tried? Trust me, it has by every known ability to us and then some. Getting rid of it would be unwise for it could just fall into the hands of someone who does not know its true power and they may unleash its awfulness. Better we should remain its guardians and make sure nobody else ever has to suffer the same fate we do. So if one good thing comes from the book, then it is that lesson. A reminder of what hubris does. Sadly some just fail to learn the lesson. Not everything is black and white, contrary to your worldview of things Eternal. I hope that will fade in time as well. Speaking of time, I believe yours here should be coming to an end. Your master is dead and you have no further business here." Nicodemus mutters a small incantation and a portal opens up near you. "This will take you back to your Empire. Goodbye Eternal, and I hope for your sake you find your own way, you'll find yourself a lot better off." The Emperor is dead and while this man may not have caused it directly, you still feel he is somehow responsible. Part of you wants to attack Nicodemus, but you also know that may not be wise as it is obvious the man wields great power. Then there is the book he holds. You almost feel drawn to it… > You enter the portal This adventure has drained you physically, mentally and even emotionally. Attacking a powerful necromancer in his homeland might not be the best idea right now. Another day perhaps… You approach the portal and give one last look at Nicodemus who stands by watching you. You can't figure him out. A lot of what he said was very condescending yet he seemed to pity you rather than be angry. He was also very nihilistic in his views on how achievements don't matter, not even life, though at the same he seemed to be trying to give you advice and help you in some strange way. You step into the portal and find yourself transported back to the Emperor’s chambers. Chambers that seem so empty now. Empty as you feel. Something is bothering you and it’s a strange thing to worry about considering it would’ve lead to your death, but you can’t shake it. Why did the Emperor’s ritual fail? Nicodemus said you were not a suitable vessel for the transference spell, but if you weren’t, what does that mean? Would one of the other Eternals been a better choice, or was the plan always destined to fail? You believe there have to be some notes on the subject of your alterations somewhere. Jacob probably has several papers about the Eternal Project in his office, but you search the Emperor’s rooms first. After hours of searching you manage to find several bits of private writings about various subjects. You don’t have time to read all of them now, but you focus on anything to the Eternal Project. One of the major things you discover is that the pregnant mothers had a specific ritual cast over them while the Eternals to be were still in the womb. This ritual, while elaborate and probably quite frightening to the woman in question didn’t harm her in any way; it was more of a “prep” spell. (You also read that it took several attempts to get this ritual “right” too. The number of dead pregnant women is quite sizable) Apparently this initial ritual was a big key in whether or not the final ritual was going to be successful. You can’t find any other information besides how the Emperor was REALLY betting everything on this plan as he’d run out of ideas on to extend his life any further short of going back to Mortos and apologizing to Nicodemus for his behavior. Still wanting more information you go search through Jacob’s office. It is actually easy to find everything since he kept everything in immaculate order. Naturally he had everything locked, but you easily remove such annoyances. Nothing is going to stop you from seeking out your origins. And after hours more searching you find more than you ever wanted to know in Jacob’s journal… I can’t believe those idiots! Trent and Stravid grabbed the wrong fucking infant! We only found out just yesterday when I found their list on the floor of the privy room covered in piss! I went back to check the Empire nursery numbers hoping that MAYBE they grabbed the correct child anyway, but no such luck. The infant that was supposed to be selected was already disposed of as a rejected candidate. Meanwhile the wrong infant is already going through his magical alterations. I’m not exactly on the Emperor’s good side at the best of times, and I’m not getting into fucking trouble for this. Those two morons are going to be executed. As for the baby I’m going to have to grovel to get that svelk bitch to help me with this. She can probably perform the same ritual over this new brat so the Emperor won’t be able to detect anything is amiss with it. I don’t understand why the Emperor doesn’t just perform this ritual in person rather than relying on the svelk to do it anyway. And HOPEFULLY that will work. It has to work. Maybe I’m worrying about this too much, what are the chances that this kid will live through training and meet the Emperor anyway? And there it is, your “origins.” You weren’t even meant to be an Eternal. You were a clerical mistake, a bureaucratic mishap, and the Emperor’s death was caused by it. Hell, it’s almost like you went through with Jacob and Semra’s plan to assassinate the Emperor anyway. One might think something like this would cause you to doubt the meaning of your entire existence and drive you into depression. Possibly even suicide. An end to this life of misplaced duty, obedience and blind devotion to ultimately an ungrateful master. Just like Nicodemus said. But you don’t really think about any of that. Instead you start to laugh. You laugh for a very long time. “He…he didn’t even know I wasn’t originally chosen! What a fool! Why the hell did I ever follow this man? Because I’m an even bigger fool!” you say to yourself in between the guffaws. Perhaps you’re still being a fool. Casimir lied to you and deep down never really cared save for what he thought you were, but none of that nor his death invalidate your beliefs in the Empire. His idea that the world needs order, that the masses need to be kept in line, that some elements are better off exterminated for the overall good. Maybe part of you still can’t quite shake being the “dutiful” son, but you fully intend on continuing in your “father’s footsteps.” Of course the difference now being that your life is truly your own now. Since destiny has conspired to thrust you into the position of a ruler, you will play the role that it would have you play. Now you just have to convince everyone else. Within the week you call for a meeting of the most important leaders of the Empire. Ranging from generals to economists to advisors and other infrastructure types you’ve had little to no contact with before. Everyone is told to gather in the throne room, which is a room that hasn’t been used in centuries; or rather Casmir stopped using it after he decided to become a recluse. You won’t be doing that. You’ll be leading from the front rather than hiding in the shadows causing people to wonder if you exist at all. This is your time now. When everyone finally arrives they naturally all wonder what’s going on, you get right to the point. "The Emperor as most of us knew him has moved on from this world. As his only logical successor I will be taking his place. If anyone has a problem with this we can have a civilized discussion about it on the battlefield which I have no doubt I will be seeing a lot of when several pretenders, dissidents and outright anarchists attempt to dethrone me. They will fail. The Empire will not fall today or anytime soon. This is just a new era for it and one I fully intend on making successful. The Empire currently is doing well, but I'm confident that with your loyalty and obedience we can make it even stronger." You take a pause in your speech and scan your audience. None of them are interrupting. They all seem to be captivated, of course maybe some are just planning on trying to assassinate you later, but for now you’ll take their attention as a positive sign. "Join me and the Empire will live forever. YOU will live forever! Who's with me?" No sooner have you finished your statement, several of the advisors bend their knee and bow towards you. The soldiers draw their weapons and raise them in air pledging their loyalty. "Hail to the new Emperor!" "Long live the Empire!" Well that went better than you expected. The only “important” person that didn’t attend your meeting was Marik though you didn’t really expect him to being a derro and all. Not to mention you didn’t invite him anyway and had planned on meeting with him personally. You have no idea how he’s going to react to the news and he’s erratic at the best of times. You and he weren’t exactly getting along the last time you saw him, so for all you know he may just attack you. Part of you hopes he does, just so you never have to deal with him anymore. Besides Semra, Marik was the next one you never liked dealing with just because his demeanor irritated you. When you get to his personal factory, it’s as silent and as empty as it was when you had to clean out those escaped trolls. You hope that isn’t the damn problem again. On your guard, you cautiously walk through the factory and make your way down to the underground portion and continue to find nobody around. “Marik! If this is an ambush, let’s just get this over with now because I don’t have time for it!” you shout. You see the door to the tank baby room open up, but it isn’t Marik, it’s a young girl. In fact it’s the tank baby that you spared before your trip to Mortos. She looks like she’s been healing well. “He…he’s not here sir. I mean my Emperor. I apologize for not addressing you properly.” She remarks nervously. “That’s fine…so word of my ascension has reached down here eh? Wasn’t sure if it did, so where’s Marik? In fact where is everyone? I know there’s still usually a skeleton crew that works in the factory above and there are usually derro guards wandering around down here. In fact shouldn’t there be more of you tank babies running around training?” you ask. “Marik killed them all. He shut down the machine that was keeping the rest alive inside the tanks. Said if the Emperor was gone then his debt was paid and he wasn’t going to spend the remainder of his years toiling for the likes of you and called you a…uh…um…” “Oh just say it, I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to surprise me.” “He called you a svelk fucker.” “Is that all?” “Well then he sort of ranted. He said that you had a svelk lover that would strap on a…uh…sexual device and made you bend over like a woman when you would have relations.” “Sheesh. Can’t say Marik didn’t have a colorful imagination.” You remark shaking your head. “Then he said the pair of you fellated kobolds and ate the dung of…” “Okay, I think I got the idea.” You say holding up your hand. “He was very angry at you my Emperor.” “Mmh, sounds like. So why did he kill all you tankies?” “Oh, well he also said he wasn’t going to waste any more of his genius for you to use, so he decided to kill all of us in the tanks. He tried to kill me as well by having his men shoot at me and lob several firebombs at me.” She says and points over to a partially collapsed bit of the room where blacked equipment and fallen rock now lays. “Guessing it didn’t work.” “I managed to duck under one of the desks and made a blood curdling scream as the explosions went off and the rocks fell down around me. After they let up, I heard Marik laugh at how I feared death in my final moments and after a few minutes I heard them leave at which point I started digging myself out of the rubble.” “Hrm, I see faking your own death actually worked for you this time, good. You shouldn’t disregard a tactic just because it fails in one instance.” You say as you glance over a pile of papers lying on another table in the room. “Marik was brilliant in some ways, but he was an idiot in others. The fool left all his notes behind. I can easily restart all the work he did.” You add. “You’re going to restart the Eternal Project? But I thought you didn’t like…tankies as you call us.” “Well, I was in a different state of mind at the time. Now that I’m Emperor, I’m thinking that I’m going to need dedicated loyal soldiers to help in the expansion of the Empire in the future. Just need to rebuild the factory, get some babies, throw them into the tanks and grow my new army. Of course I’ll be overseeing it and making my own alterations to whatever Marik’s original design was.” “What about me, my Emperor?” The tank baby asks. “Yes, what about you? Well considering you managed to survive not one, but two major attempts on your life within weeks of being out of your little tank, I suppose you deserve a place somewhere. To be honest, I did spare you in the first place because you showed more promise and strength than your siblings by merely surviving my assault. You know I was singled out too, on several occasions. I grew stronger from the challenges. You will have the same opportunity I did and I’m going to personally train you. Then depending on how well you do, I’ll decide where you’re best needed.” You tell her. “You’re…you’re too kind my Emperor.” She says with a gratuitous expression on her face. You start laughing. “You won’t be thinking that when we actually start training. Let’s go. By the way it’ll be useful to have something to call you other than tank baby, so what’s your name?” “Name? I don’t have one, my Emperor. Marik never saw fit to give me one. I do have a number though. Ten.” “No, I’m not going to call you ten. That’s silly, especially since there’s only one of you now. Let’s see…I’ll call you… Decena. You like that name?” “I don’t have any objections to it, my Emperor.” “Good. Let us be on our way.” With this last bit of business out of the way, you feel you’re getting off on a good start as the Empire’s new Emperor. You just wish Alison were here to share it with you. > Chapter 3C2: Successor Year 37 Ruling the Empire, it’s a thankless job, but somebody’s got to do it. With all the restructuring and consolidation of what holdings you do have, you haven’t gotten around to actually expanding the Empire yet. You have sent quite a few scouts out though. There were a few groups sent south of Nalin and into the Usksha Desert, but if there is anything past it, it must be a very long ways off. Every scout team has reported practically nothing but endless sands and hostile usksha nomads. To say nothing of giant sand worms and creatures that can turn people to stone with a mere gaze. Further east of Delerg leads to heavy jungle to the point of it being practically impassible. Scouts that survived have told you that it almost feels like the jungle is actively trying to prevent further exploration. Apparently it’s also inhabited by dark skinned Halfling like beings, but a lot more savage. (Though from what Casimir told you, Halflings could get rather savage themselves) They made no attempt to parlay and always attacked on sight. Someone mentioned that there was evidence of a few ancient ruins, but these weren’t explored much due the relentless pygmy attacks. Probably just remnants of a long dead civilization that the pygmies degenerated from anyway. You didn’t bother with sending scouts further north of Rask, it’s well known that it’s just more mountains and even if there is land past them, it would be so cold that nobody would want to live there, well not the average Empire citizen anyway. While the Empire has never really had a navy to speak of, you’ve been trying to make steps in correcting that problem. So far a few ships have been sent east, but there hasn’t been much news yet of any other major landmasses, just few remote islands that contain nothing of worth. (And none of them are Mortos either.) Only the Empire’s western borders hold any immediate promise for future expansion. Some of the scout reports have been interesting, as there seems to be a wide range of societies further west. The major one you’re already having minor skirmishes with are a group of beast like people similar to the now extinct gnolls, but more “multi-racial” in nature. They refer to themselves as the “Children of Tor.” (Who you assume is probably some god or ancestor figure to them.) They also call their territory “The Land” and are largely nomadic just like the usksha. As you might expect, they see the Empire as an affront to nature and the land and have been hostile at every turn. The Torites seem to consist of four major races. The most physically imposing being the great bull beings (The minotaurs). They’re reportedly as strong as an ogre and twice as vicious. They probably aren’t the greatest of thinkers, but to write them off as stupid would be a mistake. The second group is no less imposing. These are the ones that seem to be half human half horse (The centaurs). The horse beasts must train constantly with their bows considering how accurate they are with them. They are fairly deadly in open plains due to this and their maneuverability. The third group seems to be the most common and smaller than the other two, but no less dangerous. These are the “goat people” (The satyrs) They make up the majority of the population, but they also boast a number of wild mages, shaman and other types that tap into a natural elemental magic. The last group has only been rumored, but you can’t dismiss the possibility. Apparently there is also a group of these beast people that have wings like birds that lives in the western most mountain range. Other rumors abound about less sentient beast creatures ranging from large cat like creatures with spiked tails to abominations that are mixed with a multitude of animals. This is just one current enemy however. They are other more “civilized” groups too who may or may not be enemies in the future. Some of these range from hamlets that are fairly isolated from immediate dangers to small petty backwards kingdoms, which aren’t even as great as the one the Felkans had. There are other probably others as well, but it hardly matters since eventually ALL will be submitting to the Empire if you have anything to say about it. Of course you can’t do it all alone even if you do attempt to have a more hands on approach than your predecessor. This is why you have your own inner circle to help. Jacob’s replacement, Kivan pretty much takes care of all the things he did. Though to be honest, most of that stuff is dull administration duty that tends to bore you anyway. The funny thing is Kivan almost reminds you of a younger version of Jacob in some ways. You guess it must be the typical “bean counter” mindset those administrative types share. In retrospect it’s kind of a shame you killed Jacob as he ultimately was just looking out for the best interest of the Empire, but these things happen. Warrick is still head of the Eyes, who are more in control of internal security than ever. You didn’t even get a single uprising within the few months you took the throne, though there was a bit of civil unrest that had to be quelled when newborns were taken from families for the Eternal Project. Warrick is good at his job, though you get the impression that he’d like to be out there in the field sometimes. Something you can identify with since you’ve been growing bored due to the lack of battle due to the whole concentration on “ruling” thing. Brenda doesn’t seem to have this problem. She’s actually satisfied with more administrative duties, but then she’s never been at the forefront of war like the rest of the Eternals have. Still, she’s been instrumental in implementing some worthwhile domestic issues such as fully incorporating kobolds into the Empire (The little scalies are now some of the most loyal citizens and always willing to serve its armies!) and giving the remaining orcs their own land in Rask. Brenda reasoned that while their numbers were decimated in the Felkan War, they can probably build them back up within a couple of decades and the Empire will have a new generation of orc soldiers that can be relied upon. Not to mention the orcs are still serving in a good capacity by currently slaying the odd ogre tribe or giant that comes lumbering down from the Rask Mountains. Brenda still doesn’t really get along with Warrick however. She still holds him partially responsible for Roldan’s death. There really isn’t anything you can do about that though, despite your best efforts. You just give a reminder to the both of them to keep it professional and they do for the most part. Which is more than can be said for General Ackerson and Grand Mage Galen, who you try to keep far away from each other since they’d kill one another if they could help it. Fortunately they aren’t called to the meetings very often. Ackerson is mainly kept on the western borders (currently dealing with the Torites as of late) while Galen has been put on day-to-day duty of overseeing the magic side of things for the Eternal Project. (Though he was a great help last year in helping you banish the wendigo problem for good) He hates the job and would no doubt rather be serving as the dean at the mage academy, but you need someone there with competent magic skills when you aren’t available. You’ve actually made cut backs to the academy anyway, There just aren’t that many mages left and there haven’t been many new people to show the aptitude for it, especially after the Felkan War. With the rise of technology within the Empire you wonder if eventually magic will be displaced altogether, but in the scheme of things, its of little concern to you, since you still have all your powers after all. The other one in charge of the day-to-day duties of the Eternal Project is an odd fellow by the name of Elam. He takes care of the more technical matters. He’s basically the “new Marik” except that he’s human, which makes him a whole lot saner, but not by much. He was once training to be a physician, but was kicked out of the guild for…unnecessary experimentation. He then drifted and somehow his interests turned to technology. He was a human supervisor at Marik’s factory, but more than that, he actually was allowed into the derro portion of the factory on a regular basis. After Marik left, he became a recluse and lived in one of the more remote parts of Arat where he tinkered on things and tries to create new inventions. Kivan was the one that actually tracked him down when you stated that you needed someone who had a better grasp of all this “derro techie shit.” So far he’s worked out well, though Galen whines about having to keep an eye on him so he doesn’t do unnecessary tinkering on the Eternal tanks. Finally there is Decena. In between running the Empire and overseeing the new Eternal Project, you’ve been training her. So far she’s been showing steady improvement due to your harsh training lessons. Lately she has desired the need to go out on the battlefield to use what she has learned and bring glory to the Empire, which was part of your plan when you started training her. As you finish up, Decena moans in ecstasy when she climaxes. Bedding her on a regular basis really wasn’t part of the original plan however. “What the fuck am I doing?” you’ve often asked yourself. You certainly did when you first pushed your lips against hers and groped her body during a sparring lesson. She initially thought you were attempting some sort of new attack on her, which in a way you were. One that ended up being entirely successful. You sometimes think what you did (and why you continue doing it) was due to quelling a sort of loneliness that exists within you, which is partially true. The other reason is far darker. In some strange way you were re-enacting your own training lesson with Semra. Except now YOU were taking on the role of “Mistress.” (You really don’t like dwelling on what possible psychological ramifications that all means, you just buried deeper in your ever growing brain box of suppressed thoughts) Of course it isn’t exactly like the fucked up relationship you had with Semra, and Decena didn’t exactly resist you and seemed to give in fairly quickly. Of course you can never know if it was because she genuinely felt attraction or she knew that it would’ve been futile to resist. She claims she did feel something, but wasn’t quite sure what it was, which may or may not be true given that she spent most of her life in a fucking tank and isn’t exactly an expert on the whole feelings situation herself. As it stands Decena doesn’t ask questions such as if the pair of you are “husband and wife” or even a “couple.” From what you can tell she just sees your sexual encounters as a form of “approval” from her Emperor. Perhaps even as some sort of “reward” for all her duty and obedience. Still, given how much time you do spend with her, she might as well be your young bride at this point. You get up off the bed and take a long look at Decena as she starts to fall asleep from your round of passion. Do you have any sort of feelings for the girl? Perhaps some, but not in the way that you had for Alison. There probably isn’t a day that goes by that you don’t take a good long look at Alison’s portrait and mentally apologize to it. What you really need around here is a change. “Decena, get up.” You say and pull at one of her arms. “Wha? Again?” she asks sleepily. “No, not that. You’re not sleeping here tonight, I’m sending you away.” “Did…did I do something wrong? I can do better, I…” she hastily begins to say, worrying about your reasons. “No, you’ve done everything right. It’s just that it’s time. You’re not gaining anything more by staying here and the Empire needs to expand. I’m sending you to the western borders to oversee settling some military outposts out that way. Maybe start making major strides against those beast savages that have been giving us problems lately.” Decena’s eyes light up. “Wait, you mean you’re giving me my own command?” she asks. “Yep, I’ll have everything set up in a day or so. You need to be out their gaining real experience, not stuck here training.” Decena at this point proceeds to leap out of bed and embrace you planting several kisses on your face. “Oh thank you Emperor! I’m so happy you’ve finally placed this much faith in me and believe I’m ready for this!” “Hrm. Yes, well can’t let talent go to waste. I suggest you go get ready.” Decena excitedly gets dressed and leaves the room. Well that’s a temporary solution at least and it gets the ball rolling on expanding the Empire. Eventually though, you’re going to have to make a more personal decision about her. As for you, you need something else to do with yourself as well. You’d like to go back on the battlefield yourself, but there is still so much that requires your immediate attention, the most important still being the Eternal Project. There are also still a few plans and notes that Marik left behind that show some promise. His concept of an “airship” for example is very intriguing to you. You’d like to try to get one built and the only one that’s going to remotely know how to get them started is most likely Elam, so it’s a trip to the Eternal Factory… When you arrive Galen immediately walks over to you. “Emperor! I’m glad you’re here, I can’t put up with Elam’s eccentricities any longer! At this point I’d rather be working along side that idiot Ackerson! I humbly request that I MUST be transferred! One of the other mages here can easily take over for…” You grab Galen by the collar and then throw him to the floor. “Shut the hell up! Do you ever stop whining? I’ve known elven slaves that whimper far less.” You say while Galen continues to stare at you from his new vantage point. “I…I’m not whining for just my sake. Elam has been trying to make improvements to the tanks again and he damn near blew one up if I hadn’t managed to freeze the flames caused by whatever the hell he was doing.” Galen remarks. “Keeps saying he’s bored just monitoring the tanks, though I can’t say I disagree in that regard.” “Well, looks like I better give him something else to do then since he’s so bored.” You leave Galen and go find Elam who is excitedly explaining something to a nervous looking man though you don’t know if he’s nervous because you’re here or because Elam’s talking to him waving some sort of tool that has flame emitting from it. “Elam we need to have a talk.” You say. “Huh? Oh! Yes, yes, yes, Emperor! Indeed we do! I have figured out a way to improve…” You hold up your hand as a signal that Elam should stop talking. “Stop. Not another word or I’ll have your tongue removed. Just listen for a change. The tanks are fine; they don’t need any more improvements. They just need daily monitoring and maintenance if needed. However since you seem to need something more stimulating, here’s something you can do.” You say and hand Elam a bunch of diagrams and notes which causes his eyes to widen. “That is your new project. I want you to start building one of these things. If it proves successful, you can do all the improvements you like to future ones to make them deadlier and more efficient. Does that sound good to you? You may speak now.” “Yes, definitely yes! Thank you my Emperor! I will not disappoint you in this endeavor!” “I don’t expect you will. Of course while you will need a crew to help you, I still need some of your engineers here.” “Oh, of course. In fact how about Gregory take over here for me?” Elam says and points over to the nervous man he was just speaking to. You wave Gregory over who walks over like he thinks he’s in trouble. “You, can you just do your damn job without the urge to fuck with the tanks unnecessarily?” you ask. “Yes…yes sir. I mean yes my Emperor.” “Good. That’s all I need from you. Now get back to work. And as for you Elam, you’ll be transferred over to another factory, preferably one with a lot of space and far away from populated areas. Oh and I’ll still be coming by to check on your progress. Both of you.” You say and leave the pair of engineers. You don’t leave the factory though as you want to make sure your future Eternals are still doing okay despite Elam’s over enthusiasm to improve their current dwellings. Of course while you’re doing this, once again Galen walks over to you. You swear he must have a death wish today or something. “So I overheard that you’re transferring Elam out of here.” Galen says. “Your hearing is as sharp as ever Galen.” You answer. “While it would be a blessing to continue to work here without having to deal with him again, I still believe that my own talents are going to waste here. I mean you hardly need a wizard of my stature to oversee these tanks. Another lesser mage could easily do this job.” “(Sigh) After all your bitching about Elam, you’re really no better. You know what though, you’re right. Your talents are going to waste here. I’ll have you transferred to western borders.” You say. Not exactly what Galen had in mind by the look on his face. “What? We’ve got enemies that need taken care of so that the Empire may expand. Goat people with magic abilities of their own if the reports are correct. You said you wanted something that was suited to your talents; well you’ve got it. And don’t worry, I’m not sending you to Ackerson’s command. You’ll be assisting Decena.” “Decena? You mean the young Eternal girl? When did she get a command?” “Just recently. Now I expect you that you won’t have the same issues with her that you did with Ackerson AND Elam. Because if I hear about shit not running smoothly due to personality conflicts again, I’m going to be very displeased with you. Understand?” “Yes, my Emperor.” Galen responds dejectedly. In the weeks to come, happily everyone seems to be doing well in their new assignments. Elam is already working hard to a degree where it’s actually not detrimental. The future Eternals are now under a more cautious, but still vigilant caretaker. And from her letters it appears that Decena and Galen are working well together or at least not to any degree where there are problems. Decena’s letters are always full of excitement. You get the impression she wishes she could tell you about her battles in person. It’s obvious she wants you to be proud of her victories. And you are or at least you’re happy to see that she’s effectively using the skills that you taught her. The most concerning thing about her reports though is that so far these beast people never engage in traditional battle. She mentions how they prefer to ambush or only attack when they have vast numerical superiority. The most difficult thing about combating them is their extensive knowledge of the land, which they live off of, as they have no towns or cities to conquer. Because of their nomadic nature you anticipate that they’re going to be a problem for quite awhile. Still, at least Decena seems to be handling the situation. You have a message sent back that you will send reinforcements soon. In the meantime, General Ackerson has also made strides in annexing several of the smaller isolated independent towns and villages. These places will become some of the staging areas of what will most likely be an extended conflict with the Torites. You’ll eventually win though and claim the land for the Empire; you have no doubt about that. > Year 40 “I thought the plan was to keep them in the tanks until the sixteenth year.” Brenda says. “No, those were Marik’s original plans for the last Eternals he worked on. We’re doing things differently. From Elam’s earlier calculations, and my own magic theories on this project we both came to the conclusion long ago that keeping them in the tanks for as long as Marik did is asking for trouble in the long term. While it certainly accelerates their skills and abilities there’s a risk for it to have a terrible affect on the mind. In fact it’s probably just as well that Marik killed them all, otherwise we might’ve had hundreds of mental cases.” You reply. “But Decena seems okay. I mean from what I know of the girl.” Brenda says. “Decena’s an exception, but I’m not going to tempt fate with this group. Five years seems like a good stopping point.” “So are you going to be training the rest of them?” “No, you are.” You say to Brenda who is speechless for a second. “What?” Brenda says. “You’re going to be responsible for these new Eternals Brenda. I know you’re going to need assistants, but it’s going to be chiefly your responsibility to train them and to make sure they become the best of the best. What Eternals should be. What WE are.” “But, why me? I mean I’ve never been on the frontlines like the rest of us were.” “True, but I know you’re no stranger to battle and you’re the only one I can trust with this task. Warrick’s job is to be the head of internal security and to directly oversee the Eyes, so he can’t do it. And I feel it would be best if another Eternal should be fully in charge of training these new ones. That leaves you and I know you to be an honorable woman who upholds the ideals of the Empire. Who could possibly be better?” “You?” Brenda says. “Heh, well it was a rhetorical question. But besides being too busy myself, I actually don’t believe I’d be the best trainer. I think due to our own experiences of how we were trained as well as our personalities, you will make a better teacher.” “But we both had the same training up to our twelfth year.” “Yes, and then our next four I guarantee was vastly different. And even during our twelve years together in Semra’s class, MY training experience was very different from yours. I think you’d agree.” Brenda nods, probably remembering that Semra took every opportunity to single you out in the class and subjecting you to the harshest punishments when it struck her fancy. “You had Captain Gruz as a teacher and from what I heard, he taught you all to fight as a team and to have a shared respect for each other and he did it without resorting to excessive measures. I know the common belief is that I’m cruel by nature, but I’m actually not. Ruthless perhaps, but not needlessly cruel. And because I’m not cruel, that’s why I’d rather have a more even-tempered person with at least a less hellish childhood experience than I train these children. They may be Eternals, but they’re still children that will have to be molded into good productive soldiers for the Empire with minimal problems to their mental state. I know you’ll be tough, but fair.” “Well, I don’t know what to say, except I appreciate your confidence in me in all this and I’ll do my best to carry out this task successfully. However, while I do understand that you don’t really have the time to train the new Eternals I’m still slightly puzzled to as why you believe you’d be a rotten teacher. I mean you trained Decena and from what I’ve heard she’s fanatically loyal as well as a great warrior bringing glory to the Empire.” “That’s right, I did. And she is.” You answer and don’t give any more elaboration, which prompts Brenda to just leave it alone. “Okay.” She responds. There’s a brief pause before Brenda decides to break up the silence by changing the subject. “So, what’s next on your agenda?” “Me? Well after I go inspect the new airship that Elam is supposed to be finished with, I’m going back on the battlefield. I think its time; most of the internal reorganization and major projects have been dealt with and don’t require my immediate watchful eye anymore. I’m sure if any problems crop up, someone won’t hesitate to inform me. Besides, the Torites are causing all sorts of problem on Ackerson’s front. And I think he may even be having issues with that petty kingdom he recently made contact with. I don’t even remember what its name is, and if I have anything to say about it, neither will anyone else.” “Well I’d tell you to be careful or wish you luck, but I know you’ll be fine. You always are. Are you going to stay for the grand opening though?” Brenda asks and points at the rows and rows of tanks. “No. Probably best if they don’t see me immediately. Keep me a semi-mysterious unapproachable figure for awhile.” You reply. “Oh like what they told us?” Brenda says. “Worked didn’t it? Still, when you’ve sufficiently got that idea into their heads, then I suppose I’ll make my appearance to them, most likely unannounced. I’ll want them to actually believe that I may very well pop up at any time. It’ll keep them on their toes.” “Ha ha, that’s probably even more frightening than never seeing such a figure as I have to admit even at times I wondered if the Emperor was actually watching me all the time, though Roldan certainly thought so.” Brenda at this point temporarily spins off into a pleasant memory she has of Roldan. You’ve never told her it was actually Casimir that had Roldan assassinated for his own reasons. You’ve pondered if you should tell her the truth, but ultimately decided it wouldn’t do any good save for perhaps destroying her faith in the Empire, which you don’t want. You know Brenda is prone to bouts of depression ever since Roldan’s died, telling her that the government and its ruler that she served was directly involved in her husband’s death might push her into hopelessness. Maybe even suicide. As it stands, you’ve been working to try to keep her spirits up. Which is another reason why you picked her to train these new Eternals. Perhaps it will give her a better sense of purpose. “Sorry, I rambled a bit there. I guess I just still miss Roldan.” Brenda says. “No need to apologize, I completely understand. Roldan was a dedicated soldier of the Empire and if he were here today he’d be proud of your accomplishments. Anyway, I have to go; if I’m lucky Elam hasn’t blown up this new machine he just built yet. I trust you have this?” “Yes I do.” You leave Brenda to her task and make your way to your next stop, which should be very different… You look at the brand new airship you’ve poured money into. It certainly is as large as you thought it might be, though it is still strange to see such a machine that was only picture on a piece of parchment a few years ago. Elam is visibly anxious about what you’ll think about it. He’s surprisingly quiet though, which might be a good sign that he’s learned to not run off at the mouth all the time. “Hrm, its impressive looking, but does it actually work?” you ask Elam. “Oh yes! We have tested its flight capabilities and it certainly works according to all the notes and plans Marik left. Had to make some adjustments of course, but I believe now that we’ve made one, we can easily improve upon it and make more.” Elam says. “Good, glad to hear it. What about weapons?” “We’ve equipped it with the latest cannons and the prototype repeater. There are also firebombs that can be dropped from the sky.” Elam answers. “Excellent work as always Elam.” “Thank you, my Emperor. Will you be boarding it?” “Boarding it? Hmm, hadn’t actually given it much thought. I mean is this final product? You don’t need to do anymore testing on it?” “Well we were just going to do some weapons testing while it flying it, but the airship itself is fully operational. It won’t go crashing into the ground or anything like that.” While you prefer keeping your feet firmly on the ground, you have to admit you do like the idea of potentially floating through the sky towering over your enemies and all those that might oppose you. “Very well, but I still want you to go through a weapons test like you planned, before I get on it. Do another safety check as well.” “As you wish, so about a week?” Elam asks. “Fine, but no more than that.” You reply and leave. Seeing as you have a few more days to kick around before the airship is ready, you return to the mundane duties of rulership. A couple days later you decide to check up on Warrick to see if there is anything he’s uncovered that needs your attention. The Eye Headquarters is probably the safest place in the Empire other than the palace itself. The Eyes may not be Eternals, but they’re the next best thing and Warrick being both is certainly one of the best warriors at your command. That’s probably why he looks so bored behind his desk when you meet him. In fact your visit is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened in his life lately. “Emperor! Didn’t realize you were coming, I was just busy going through all these population lists. You know like who is a potential trouble maker, who is a loyal citizen, that sort of thing.” Warrick says getting up when you enter his office. “Anything interesting I should know about?” you ask. “Not really. I mean there are still some grumbles from citizens about when we took babies from some families for the Eternal Project and the free elven population is always unsatisfied with the way things are, but I’m not seeing any uprising material. Unless you want to have some dissenters whisked away in the night just to be safe.” Warrick says. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. They can’t all be kobolds.” You reply. “Heh, got that right. Still can’t get over how Brenda was so successful in assimilating them the way she did. I still remember during our first major assignment in Nalin we had to wipe out caves of those vicious little bastards.” “I just saw her a few days ago actually, she’s going to be in charge of the new Eternals, training and such.” “Is that right? Well she’s probably the best candidate. I mean with you busy ruling and me busy being in charge of the Eyes and all. Um, is she still pissed at me?” “She didn’t really say anything about you, but I imagine you’re still not her favorite person.” “(Sigh) That’s a shame. You know I don’t harbor any ill will against her and if I could’ve I would’ve had even tighter security that fateful day. I mean I just…” You stop Warrick “Warrick, you don’t need to explain. You did everything you could that day. We all did. I mean hell even I didn’t see a shadow assassination coming. A dead one that I killed no less. Just don’t worry about it. Brenda will probably get over it one day, and if she doesn’t, well it’s still not your fault.” This reassuring statement seems to make Warrick calmer. You’ve obviously never told him the real truth about the assassination either and again you see no reason to stir up trouble by doing so. You and Warrick talk for a while, some it about the present, some of it about the future, and some of it about the past. During your conversation, it suddenly occurs to you that maybe you could hand a small honor over to Warrick for all his hard work. He certainly could use a break in the mundane paper work that he primarily does nowadays. You wonder if you should let him take command of the new airship and see some frontline combat. > You let Warrick command the airship You figure Warrick deserves something for all his hard work and loyalty, besides you’re still a little hesitant to go flying off into the sky. “Warrick, I also saw Elam a few days ago too. He told me that by the end of this week, it should be ready for flight as well as combat. Originally I was going to take the first official flight on it, but would you like to do the honors?” you ask. Warrick looks like he can’t believe his ears. “Are you serious?” “Completely. I know you’re probably bored at times doing this job, trust me I sympathize. The day-to-day task of ruling isn’t exactly as exciting as being hip deep in the corpses of your enemies. So I’m giving you this chance to be on the frontlines for a while. I mean I assume you’ve got someone here that can take over for you while you’re gone for a little while right?” “Sure! I’m got more than few very qualified Eyes that can do the job.” Warrick says. “Okay, well it’s settled, you’ll report to Elam’s factory in Arat in about four days. Just tell him I sent you, I’m sure there won’t be any problems.” “Thank you for this opportunity and this position Emperor. I won’t let it go to waste. Oh, what’s the name of this new vessel?” “Name? Actually I don’t think it has been named yet. Or at least Elam didn’t give it one. Hrm…call it the Storm. I mean you’ll be floating through the sky raining death down upon your enemies in a spectacular fashion. Plus you’re an Eye. I mean Eye of the Storm. Play on words, I dunno, sounds clever to me.” “Heh, sounds good to me too.” Warrick agrees. With Warrick obviously in better spirits, you leave the Eye headquarter and make your own preparations for heading out to the western front. You might not be riding on an airship to do it, but you’ll still be engaging in battle in some capacity. In a couple days you meet up with Ackerson’s company in one of the small towns that has recently been converted into army encampment. The new Empire “citizens” don’t look very happy about their recent occupation and change to their way of life, but they don’t have much choice in the matter and in time they’ll either get used to it, or they won’t and will have to be put down. No matter to you either way. General Ackerson himself looks very tired. Like he hasn’t been sleeping for days. In fact many of the soldiers have a weary looking appearance. While this is somewhat expected with long drawn out conflicts, you can’t imagine that they’ve had so much trouble that would cause them this much stress. Decena’s command has had more conflict activity, but she hasn’t given any reports of problems. (Though it’s possible that she’s not reporting such things, but given her idolization, you doubt if she’d lie, and even if she wasn’t telling, you’re pretty sure Galen would send you a complaining letter of sub standard conditions.) “What the hell is wrong with this camp Ackerson? Every man and woman here looks like they’re hung over due to partying for weeks on end, or they’ve been under going months of a siege. I don’t see any castles around here, so it better not be the former.” you demand. “I…I don’t know my Emperor. Everything was fine until recently. I mean as fine as it could be with groups of sneaking beast people attempting to bushwhack our patrols every so often. Now it’s like most of us can’t get a restful sleep and a lot of us are just never fully awake anymore. Just a tired feeling even if we haven’t been doing much during a particular day. Some have even reported odd or bad dreams.” While you can’t be certain of what would cause such a thing, you feel you’re pretty safe in assuming one possibility. “Sounds like magic. Or some form of it. Why haven’t you had your mages check it out?” you ask. “I would have, but they’re all dead my Emperor. If it isn’t the blasted centaurs with their deadly accuracy, it’s the damn satyrs with their own wild magic. It’s like they target our mages even if they lose more than half of their own numbers in the process.” “That can’t be a coincidence. Seems like it’s the goat wizards doing this to your command. Better double your efforts and hunt them all down within the vicinity.” “Well, I have since I thought that might be the case, but I don’t think it’s the Torites doing this. Their mages seem to focus on earth based or elemental magic, nothing to do with the mind or similar witchery. I think they’d be more likely to summon a tornado at us, which thankfully they haven’t done yet.” Ackerson explains. “Perhaps, this is just a taste of their what their mages can also do, still if you don’t believe its them, who else? The people here don’t look happy about the Empire taking charge of this place. You sure there isn’t a hidden mage here?” “No, don’t think so. The people of this town have also complained about feeling tired also. In fact that’s probably why they’re pissed at us. To them, we brought this curse as they call it to their town.” “Okay, what about that new kingdom you said you made contact with? What’s the name of it?” “Oh them. The Broki Kingdom. I’m not even sure they have any mages. The whole place is backwards. Its chaotic nature reminds me of Rask before the Empire enforced order to it. It’s barely even a kingdom and certainly not like the one the Felkans had. A single king runs the kingdom this is true, but he’s not a strong one. The only reason why he hasn’t been overthrown is because the rest of the barons are all too busy scheming against each other.” “That sounds like a rather inefficient way to run a government.” You say. “From what I can tell it is. Practically nothing gets accomplished other than minor civil wars over land by the barons. Some of the barons have seen our arrival as an opportunity to make a mighty friend for their own power grab. The king on the other hand has apparently been making speeches warning his subjects that they all need to put up a united front lest they all be swallowed up by the Empire.” “Hmm. Sounds like this king isn’t an unintelligent fellow despite the fact that it’ll be a futile task to stop us even if he does manage to keep his kingdom united.” “We haven’t made any major moves against the Broki yet since we’ve been still focusing on the Torites, then this wave of fatigue that’s been plaguing my command and that’s made things more difficult as well.” Just as you’re about to answer what the next move should be, a messenger who is panting heavily and ragged looking interrupts you. “(Gasp) Message…(pant) for the Emperor! Very (pant) important…” he says handing you a letter. “Why are you out of so much breath, boy? Surely you rode a horse here?” Ackerson asks. “Half way, (pant) horse died. Rode too hard (gasp) Ran rest of the way. Message from Sightmaster Warrick. (pant) Very important.” “Shit, well I guess I better open it then. And someone get this boy some water before he collapses.” You say opening the letter. Emperor, As always I hate to be the bearer of troubling news, but it is best you know. While boarding the Storm, I took a little tour of the ship before it took flight. It is quite impressive and I’m sure it will be a mighty weapon in the service of the Empire when it has been inspected again. I say again, because unfortunately I found one of the crew was a saboteur. It was fairly subtle. He didn’t place a bomb on the ship, but instead had rigged the prototype repeater so that it would explode when used. The explosion would’ve caused much damage and most likely would’ve resulted in setting part of the ship aflame, which then would’ve caused an even bigger explosion by proxy and ultimately caused it to crash to the ground. I had a list of every member who was working under Elam and all of them save for this saboteur had been an Empire citizen from birth. This one apparently just showed up one day and proved he had engineering skills, so Elam hired him. I would’ve interrogated him, but he committed suicide by slitting his own throat with his dagger as soon as I had discovered the sabotage. Curious that he did not just simply try to quietly sneak off, but I can only assume he did not believe that he was going to get away with it since he was the main one who had last fired the prototype repeater during the weapon testing. Either that or he is working for an unforgiving master who would’ve killed him anyway for his failure. I’ve already questioned Elam and the rest of his staff, but I believe they genuinely didn’t know, though I wonder about Elam’s judgment skills. I highly recommend that he not screen any further employees he requires, at least not without an Eye present. I will return to my post as I now have wonder if there is some sort of conspiracy or possibly leaks in our security system. As much as I would’ve liked to have taken that ride to the western front and kill some Torites, the internal safety of the Empire comes first. I’m sure you would agree. Long Live the Empire, Sightmaster Warrick “Problems, Emperor?” Ackerson asks. “As always, but Warrick’s got it under control for now. In the meantime we still need to solve your problem. I want your most skilled soldiers reporting to me tomorrow. Have you done a thorough check of that large nearby forest area? Don’t the goats prefer them over other terrain.” “Somewhat, but its very vast my Emperor.” “Well, I’m going to go over it again. Something is being missed. Maybe I should call in those new kobold commando units too. It’s possible the goats are hiding somewhere right underneath us and if there are, the kobolds can tunnel underground faster than any of us can and find out immediately.” While you’re taking charge of things, you tell Ackerson to go get some rest. You aren’t normally used to casting magic for beneficial reasons, quite frankly other than healing magic it wasn’t ever really part of your training. Still, you know enough to block out the affects of the Torite spell at least temporarily and it’s a welcome relief to your troops who manage to get well rested for once. You don’t waste time and begin your search of forest area immediately. It’s not an easy task and you’re attacked multiple times by satyrs along with their minotaur muscle. Your first encounter with them is exhilarating. It’s probably the first proper bit of personal combat you’ve had in years. The goats don’t put up that much of challenge for you, but the bulls, now there’s a suitable challenge. During your first encounter with Torite forces, a pair of the bovine monsters attack you with huge axes that a human would now doubt have to hold in one two hands, but for them the weapons are swung around easily with one. As you’re dodging their attacks and landing hits when you can, you can’t help but think the whole time that you hope you can at least tame some of these beasts somehow as they would make an excellent addition to your forces. Whether you eventually will or not doesn’t matter though, since these two in particular eventually fall to your blade after an extended battle. “Are you okay my Emperor?” one of your soldiers asks. “Okay? Are you joking? I missed this shit. This is the best I’ve felt in a long time!” you exclaim. You spend another few days searching the forests and have a few more encounters with Torites, some of the groups even contain the goat wizards, but even with their elimination you don’t sense that the magic is gone. In fact the whole time you’re in the forest you get the feeling of being continually watched the entire time and you get the impression it isn’t just the average Torite lurking about. You aren’t the only one who feels that way. “There’s something out there…and it ain’t no man.” One of your soldiers says to you while you’re staring up at the trees. “Of course it isn’t, it’s probably something fairly inhuman.” You respond. “Well that too, but I meant literally that it’s female.” “Oh, not this elven fairy tale shit again.” Another soldier remarks rolling his eyes. You probably didn’t notice due to the helmet and armor and the fact that you didn’t inspect every single soldier Ackerson sent with you, but the first soldier who addressed you isn’t actually human. He’s an elf. This is certainly a rarity since as far as you knew there weren’t any elves in the army or at least it isn’t a profession most of them choose. Assuming that they’re free of course. “Quiet. I want to hear this. What’s your name corporal?” you ask. “Flevas, Emperor.” The elf answers. “Surprised Ackerson didn’t point you out immediately, might’ve been nice to know I had someone with an affinity to forests and shit in my command.” “The general…let’s just say doesn’t care for my kind very much and prefers to ignore my potential talents. I suppose even he couldn’t ignore my battle prowess though. So I was quietly slipped in. ” “Okay, so what do you know?” “Honestly? Probably nothing. I don’t even know why I spoke. After years of being in an army that barely tolerates my presence I don’t normally bother to speak at all.” “Alright, alright, cut the oppressed elven routine, if you’ve got something important to say then just say it.” “Very well Emperor.” Flevas remarks. “I can’t be certain and contrary to popular belief we sveld don’t have some magical all encompassing knowledge to nature. If we did, we most likely wouldn’t be in the current situation we are now. However, I suppose we do tend to have instinct and we do have lots of old stories. One of these stories is of dryads. They’re being that make their homes among the trees or within the trees. The stories aren’t really clear if they’re flesh and blood beings that tend to remain invisible or they’re some sort of spirit. Though from the stories they always appear in female form when they actually appear at all. They also never directly attack and rely on manipulating denizens of the forest and their magic. As I said I think there’s one in this forest, maybe even several. I don’t really know. What I do know is they do have access to magic that can affect the mind.” Flevas explains. “And you didn’t think this was important enough to tell anyone until now?” “As I said, my opinions are not highly regarded by the general or anyone else for that matter. I did mention it to him long before you arrived and it was dismissed as old elven nonsense.” “Then the general is an idiot for dismissing the possibility given all the wonders in this world that have been seen and yet to be seen. But I’ll deal with that later, so in these stories how does one go about killing one of these dryads?” “Killing? Heh, well in the sveld stories, dryads aren’t killed, they’re revered as protectors of nature. The only ones actively trying to kill them in stories are the svelk and as you might imagine they always fail in the stories.” “Okay so how did the svelk try to kill them?” “Oh usually by futilely attempting to destroy an entire forest. This can range from the predictable firestorm magic attempts to hilarious efforts of trying to cut down every tree.” “Fire doesn’t work?” “It works, but not fast enough. I mean even a fire takes time to destroy an entire normal forest assuming it doesn’t burn itself out. Dryads as you can imagine are a little more pro-active on saving their homes. Along with their magic, it would seem that the Torites are willing allies which would mean they’d probably help put out any fire we set. Assuming there are more in the forest.” “Hrm, maybe the svelk in those stories just weren’t persistent enough.” You say. “I dunno, svelk are pretty tenacious when it comes to killing.” Flevas has given you something to think about and it all involves destroying the forest. The fastest way would be to start building a few more catapults to fling flaming debris, and send for a few more mages to assist you in creating a larger firestorm. You have to believe that it would be more than enough to incinerate the forest within a matter of days. Of course the better way to ignite that forest is a way the svelk didn’t have, namely an airship that can drop firebombs from the sky. Of course given recent events, the Storm is going through yet another safety inspection then it has to get here, all of which is going to take time. Time which might cause the Torites to increase their defenses and who knows what else. > You attack without the Storm While Flevas has provided some useful intel, he’s still working off of stories. These dryads if they even are behind this, probably aren’t as powerful as the tales claim. And if they are, then it would be best to attack them as soon as possible without too much waiting around. “We’re going back to camp. We need to start constructing more catapults and I also need to send a message for more mage reinforcements, shouldn’t take more than a few days and then we can start burning out the Torites no matter what magic they hide behind. Still, you were very helpful Flevas, Ackerson shall be hearing of his idiocy of not seeing your full potential on this matter.” You say. “Um, thank you Emperor.” Flevas says unsure of how to react. When you return, you give Ackerson an earful of his failure to use his resources wisely and not even informing you of the potential of certain soldiers who could come in useful. You also explain that the only reason why he isn’t being demoted is that he had the intelligence to at least see Flevas’ combat abilities and send him with you in the first place. You have the army start chopping down trees and constructing catapults while you await the arrival of the mage reinforcements. You attempt to shield the minds of the army as you did when you arrived, but it would seem you’ve definitely caught the attention of the dryads or satyr mages because it’s a little more taxing than it was last time. In a couple days the mages arrive and the bombarding of the forest with flaming rocks begins. You along with the help of the newly arrived mages begin casting a firestorm of the largest size. It takes a lot of energy and you can definitely feel resistance, but you break through it and soon a majority of the forest is in flames. You also order the army to wait around the outskirts of the forest as much as possible since there will no doubt be enemies running out of it in an effort to escape. So far the plan is going well, you just wish you weren’t so tired. As predicted forest creatures, but more importantly Torites eventually come running out of the forests, some manage to get away, others attempt to fight your army in an attempt to kill you and the other mages, but they naturally fail. However what isn’t predicted is the fact that the forest hasn’t completely burned down yet and it’s been more than a few days, in fact the flames have been extinguished completely in areas and somehow a few trees have completely regrown. Eventually some of the weaker mages collapse from exhaustion and even die completely drained of life. You attempt to redouble your efforts, but at this point the army is starting to feel the effects of unrest again and you are as well despite the mind shield. “Emperor, I don’t think the men can’t take much more of this. I think maybe we should…” Ackerson remarks. “Don’t even make that suggestion Ackerson. We are NOT going to be beaten by some fairy magic. (Sigh) Just need to rethink this a moment…damn it my head…” you say to yourself while rubbing your temples. It’s getting harder to concentrate with all the energy you’ve expended and the short naps you’ve taken don’t seem to do any good at all. You see Flevas nearby, though he’s wise enough not to say anything. He’d probably like to say, “I told you so.” but values his life more. To be honest you might not blame him if he had the courage to do so since you basically ignored him just like Ackerson did. A mistake on your part and one you’re going to correct. “Alright fine. I didn’t want to use it so soon after the sabotage attempt, but I’m guessing Elam’s probably got the Storm straightened out by now. Have a message sent to his factory to have it sent with as many firebombs as it can carry. Fix these fucking forest fairies for good.” You know its going to take some time for the Storm to arrive so in the meantime you tell your people to just keep up the bombarding. You know everyone’s tired, but its necessary that this attack keeps going, you can’t afford to let up. Can’t afford to let up… “Shit…I’m going to my tent. I need to try to get some rest before attempting another firestorm again.” You say and stagger to your tent and lie down. It’s odd, but you actually feel sleepy. Before you felt tired but not actually sleepy (much like most of the troops here) maybe your attack is weakening the dryad’s magic. In any case you’re taking advantage of the situation and getting some much needed sleep. You drift off… “My love, wake up it’s time.” You hear a voice say. You wake up and find yourself in a lush green field. Nearby you see Alison though she’s dressed in civilian clothing. In fact so are you. “What the hell’s going on? I feel weird.” You say. “You fell asleep shortly after our picnic, you looked so peaceful I didn’t want to wake you up, but it’s time, we have to go.” “Go? Go where?” “We have to attend the Emperor’s celebration silly! Everyone’s going remember?” “Oh right. Yeah, I suppose he’d certainly want us to be there to provide security.” “Security? Oh you must be having one of those dreams again! You certainly have a vivid imagination! While I’m sure the Emperor would be honored to have you as a bodyguard, I’m sure he’s just as glad to have you tilling the fields, now come on we have to go before the festivities begin!” Alison at this point takes your hand and you get up. You still don’t understand exactly what is going on, but something about Alison’s smile and the warmth of her hand makes you feel so at ease. “I…I thought you were dead…” you say and suddenly hug her. She hugs you back. “That was a dream and it’s okay now I assure you. I’m here and you’re here and we’re both very much alive and living safely in the glory of the Empire. Could anything be better?” Alison says. “No, of course not….I still feel weird though.” “Well sounds like you had a nightmare. I’m not surprised you’re still disoriented. Come on, you can tell me all about it on our way to the celebration.” Something about this entire situation seems off to you, but it feels right somehow. You don’t question what’s going on any further and happily kiss Alison before walking off to the Emperor’s celebration with her hand in hand. Then the vision fades and everything goes dark… You never wake up from your slumber. Finding you dead with a faint smile on your face, Ackerson comes to the correct conclusion that the dryads must’ve somehow killed you in your sleep. Considering you aren’t the only one in the army to die in such a manner within the last twenty-four hours he orders a full retreat from the area.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You figure Warrick deserves something for all his hard work and loyalty, besides you’re still a little hesitant to go flying off into the sky. “Warrick, I also saw Elam a few days ago too. He told me that by the end of this week, it should be ready for flight as well as combat. Originally I was going to take the first official flight on it, but would you like to do the honors?” you ask. Warrick looks like he can’t believe his ears. “Are you serious?” “Completely. I know you’re probably bored at times doing this job, trust me I sympathize. The day-to-day task of ruling isn’t exactly as exciting as being hip deep in the corpses of your enemies. So I’m giving you this chance to be on the frontlines for a while. I mean I assume you’ve got someone here that can take over for you while you’re gone for a little while right?” “Sure! I’m got more than few very qualified Eyes that can do the job.” Warrick says. “Okay, well it’s settled, you’ll report to Elam’s factory in Arat in about four days. Just tell him I sent you, I’m sure there won’t be any problems.” “Thank you for this opportunity and this position Emperor. I won’t let it go to waste. Oh, what’s the name of this new vessel?” “Name? Actually I don’t think it has been named yet. Or at least Elam didn’t give it one. Hrm…call it the Storm. I mean you’ll be floating through the sky raining death down upon your enemies in a spectacular fashion. Plus you’re an Eye. I mean Eye of the Storm. Play on words, I dunno, sounds clever to me.” “Heh, sounds good to me too.” Warrick agrees. With Warrick obviously in better spirits, you leave the Eye headquarter and make your own preparations for heading out to the western front. You might not be riding on an airship to do it, but you’ll still be engaging in battle in some capacity. In a couple days you meet up with Ackerson’s company in one of the small towns that has recently been converted into army encampment. The new Empire “citizens” don’t look very happy about their recent occupation and change to their way of life, but they don’t have much choice in the matter and in time they’ll either get used to it, or they won’t and will have to be put down. No matter to you either way. General Ackerson himself looks very tired. Like he hasn’t been sleeping for days. In fact many of the soldiers have a weary looking appearance. While this is somewhat expected with long drawn out conflicts, you can’t imagine that they’ve had so much trouble that would cause them this much stress. Decena’s command has had more conflict activity, but she hasn’t given any reports of problems. (Though it’s possible that she’s not reporting such things, but given her idolization, you doubt if she’d lie, and even if she wasn’t telling, you’re pretty sure Galen would send you a complaining letter of sub standard conditions.) “What the hell is wrong with this camp Ackerson? Every man and woman here looks like they’re hung over due to partying for weeks on end, or they’ve been under going months of a siege. I don’t see any castles around here, so it better not be the former.” you demand. “I…I don’t know my Emperor. Everything was fine until recently. I mean as fine as it could be with groups of sneaking beast people attempting to bushwhack our patrols every so often. Now it’s like most of us can’t get a restful sleep and a lot of us are just never fully awake anymore. Just a tired feeling even if we haven’t been doing much during a particular day. Some have even reported odd or bad dreams.” While you can’t be certain of what would cause such a thing, you feel you’re pretty safe in assuming one possibility. “Sounds like magic. Or some form of it. Why haven’t you had your mages check it out?” you ask. “I would have, but they’re all dead my Emperor. If it isn’t the blasted centaurs with their deadly accuracy, it’s the damn satyrs with their own wild magic. It’s like they target our mages even if they lose more than half of their own numbers in the process.” “That can’t be a coincidence. Seems like it’s the goat wizards doing this to your command. Better double your efforts and hunt them all down within the vicinity.” “Well, I have since I thought that might be the case, but I don’t think it’s the Torites doing this. Their mages seem to focus on earth based or elemental magic, nothing to do with the mind or similar witchery. I think they’d be more likely to summon a tornado at us, which thankfully they haven’t done yet.” Ackerson explains. “Perhaps, this is just a taste of their what their mages can also do, still if you don’t believe its them, who else? The people here don’t look happy about the Empire taking charge of this place. You sure there isn’t a hidden mage here?” “No, don’t think so. The people of this town have also complained about feeling tired also. In fact that’s probably why they’re pissed at us. To them, we brought this curse as they call it to their town.” “Okay, what about that new kingdom you said you made contact with? What’s the name of it?” “Oh them. The Broki Kingdom. I’m not even sure they have any mages. The whole place is backwards. Its chaotic nature reminds me of Rask before the Empire enforced order to it. It’s barely even a kingdom and certainly not like the one the Felkans had. A single king runs the kingdom this is true, but he’s not a strong one. The only reason why he hasn’t been overthrown is because the rest of the barons are all too busy scheming against each other.” “That sounds like a rather inefficient way to run a government.” You say. “From what I can tell it is. Practically nothing gets accomplished other than minor civil wars over land by the barons. Some of the barons have seen our arrival as an opportunity to make a mighty friend for their own power grab. The king on the other hand has apparently been making speeches warning his subjects that they all need to put up a united front lest they all be swallowed up by the Empire.” “Hmm. Sounds like this king isn’t an unintelligent fellow despite the fact that it’ll be a futile task to stop us even if he does manage to keep his kingdom united.” “We haven’t made any major moves against the Broki yet since we’ve been still focusing on the Torites, then this wave of fatigue that’s been plaguing my command and that’s made things more difficult as well.” Just as you’re about to answer what the next move should be, a messenger who is panting heavily and ragged looking interrupts you. “(Gasp) Message…(pant) for the Emperor! Very (pant) important…” he says handing you a letter. “Why are you out of so much breath, boy? Surely you rode a horse here?” Ackerson asks. “Half way, (pant) horse died. Rode too hard (gasp) Ran rest of the way. Message from Sightmaster Warrick. (pant) Very important.” “Shit, well I guess I better open it then. And someone get this boy some water before he collapses.” You say opening the letter. Emperor, As always I hate to be the bearer of troubling news, but it is best you know. While boarding the Storm, I took a little tour of the ship before it took flight. It is quite impressive and I’m sure it will be a mighty weapon in the service of the Empire when it has been inspected again. I say again, because unfortunately I found one of the crew was a saboteur. It was fairly subtle. He didn’t place a bomb on the ship, but instead had rigged the prototype repeater so that it would explode when used. The explosion would’ve caused much damage and most likely would’ve resulted in setting part of the ship aflame, which then would’ve caused an even bigger explosion by proxy and ultimately caused it to crash to the ground. I had a list of every member who was working under Elam and all of them save for this saboteur had been an Empire citizen from birth. This one apparently just showed up one day and proved he had engineering skills, so Elam hired him. I would’ve interrogated him, but he committed suicide by slitting his own throat with his dagger as soon as I had discovered the sabotage. Curious that he did not just simply try to quietly sneak off, but I can only assume he did not believe that he was going to get away with it since he was the main one who had last fired the prototype repeater during the weapon testing. Either that or he is working for an unforgiving master who would’ve killed him anyway for his failure. I’ve already questioned Elam and the rest of his staff, but I believe they genuinely didn’t know, though I wonder about Elam’s judgment skills. I highly recommend that he not screen any further employees he requires, at least not without an Eye present. I will return to my post as I now have wonder if there is some sort of conspiracy or possibly leaks in our security system. As much as I would’ve liked to have taken that ride to the western front and kill some Torites, the internal safety of the Empire comes first. I’m sure you would agree. Long Live the Empire, Sightmaster Warrick “Problems, Emperor?” Ackerson asks. “As always, but Warrick’s got it under control for now. In the meantime we still need to solve your problem. I want your most skilled soldiers reporting to me tomorrow. Have you done a thorough check of that large nearby forest area? Don’t the goats prefer them over other terrain.” “Somewhat, but its very vast my Emperor.” “Well, I’m going to go over it again. Something is being missed. Maybe I should call in those new kobold commando units too. It’s possible the goats are hiding somewhere right underneath us and if there are, the kobolds can tunnel underground faster than any of us can and find out immediately.” While you’re taking charge of things, you tell Ackerson to go get some rest. You aren’t normally used to casting magic for beneficial reasons, quite frankly other than healing magic it wasn’t ever really part of your training. Still, you know enough to block out the affects of the Torite spell at least temporarily and it’s a welcome relief to your troops who manage to get well rested for once. You don’t waste time and begin your search of forest area immediately. It’s not an easy task and you’re attacked multiple times by satyrs along with their minotaur muscle. Your first encounter with them is exhilarating. It’s probably the first proper bit of personal combat you’ve had in years. The goats don’t put up that much of challenge for you, but the bulls, now there’s a suitable challenge. During your first encounter with Torite forces, a pair of the bovine monsters attack you with huge axes that a human would now doubt have to hold in one two hands, but for them the weapons are swung around easily with one. As you’re dodging their attacks and landing hits when you can, you can’t help but think the whole time that you hope you can at least tame some of these beasts somehow as they would make an excellent addition to your forces. Whether you eventually will or not doesn’t matter though, since these two in particular eventually fall to your blade after an extended battle. “Are you okay my Emperor?” one of your soldiers asks. “Okay? Are you joking? I missed this shit. This is the best I’ve felt in a long time!” you exclaim. You spend another few days searching the forests and have a few more encounters with Torites, some of the groups even contain the goat wizards, but even with their elimination you don’t sense that the magic is gone. In fact the whole time you’re in the forest you get the feeling of being continually watched the entire time and you get the impression it isn’t just the average Torite lurking about. You aren’t the only one who feels that way. “There’s something out there…and it ain’t no man.” One of your soldiers says to you while you’re staring up at the trees. “Of course it isn’t, it’s probably something fairly inhuman.” You respond. “Well that too, but I meant literally that it’s female.” “Oh, not this elven fairy tale shit again.” Another soldier remarks rolling his eyes. You probably didn’t notice due to the helmet and armor and the fact that you didn’t inspect every single soldier Ackerson sent with you, but the first soldier who addressed you isn’t actually human. He’s an elf. This is certainly a rarity since as far as you knew there weren’t any elves in the army or at least it isn’t a profession most of them choose. Assuming that they’re free of course. “Quiet. I want to hear this. What’s your name corporal?” you ask. “Flevas, Emperor.” The elf answers. “Surprised Ackerson didn’t point you out immediately, might’ve been nice to know I had someone with an affinity to forests and shit in my command.” “The general…let’s just say doesn’t care for my kind very much and prefers to ignore my potential talents. I suppose even he couldn’t ignore my battle prowess though. So I was quietly slipped in. ” “Okay, so what do you know?” “Honestly? Probably nothing. I don’t even know why I spoke. After years of being in an army that barely tolerates my presence I don’t normally bother to speak at all.” “Alright, alright, cut the oppressed elven routine, if you’ve got something important to say then just say it.” “Very well Emperor.” Flevas remarks. “I can’t be certain and contrary to popular belief we sveld don’t have some magical all encompassing knowledge to nature. If we did, we most likely wouldn’t be in the current situation we are now. However, I suppose we do tend to have instinct and we do have lots of old stories. One of these stories is of dryads. They’re being that make their homes among the trees or within the trees. The stories aren’t really clear if they’re flesh and blood beings that tend to remain invisible or they’re some sort of spirit. Though from the stories they always appear in female form when they actually appear at all. They also never directly attack and rely on manipulating denizens of the forest and their magic. As I said I think there’s one in this forest, maybe even several. I don’t really know. What I do know is they do have access to magic that can affect the mind.” Flevas explains. “And you didn’t think this was important enough to tell anyone until now?” “As I said, my opinions are not highly regarded by the general or anyone else for that matter. I did mention it to him long before you arrived and it was dismissed as old elven nonsense.” “Then the general is an idiot for dismissing the possibility given all the wonders in this world that have been seen and yet to be seen. But I’ll deal with that later, so in these stories how does one go about killing one of these dryads?” “Killing? Heh, well in the sveld stories, dryads aren’t killed, they’re revered as protectors of nature. The only ones actively trying to kill them in stories are the svelk and as you might imagine they always fail in the stories.” “Okay so how did the svelk try to kill them?” “Oh usually by futilely attempting to destroy an entire forest. This can range from the predictable firestorm magic attempts to hilarious efforts of trying to cut down every tree.” “Fire doesn’t work?” “It works, but not fast enough. I mean even a fire takes time to destroy an entire normal forest assuming it doesn’t burn itself out. Dryads as you can imagine are a little more pro-active on saving their homes. Along with their magic, it would seem that the Torites are willing allies which would mean they’d probably help put out any fire we set. Assuming there are more in the forest.” “Hrm, maybe the svelk in those stories just weren’t persistent enough.” You say. “I dunno, svelk are pretty tenacious when it comes to killing.” Flevas has given you something to think about and it all involves destroying the forest. The fastest way would be to start building a few more catapults to fling flaming debris, and send for a few more mages to assist you in creating a larger firestorm. You have to believe that it would be more than enough to incinerate the forest within a matter of days. Of course the better way to ignite that forest is a way the svelk didn’t have, namely an airship that can drop firebombs from the sky. Of course given recent events, the Storm is going through yet another safety inspection then it has to get here, all of which is going to take time. Time which might cause the Torites to increase their defenses and who knows what else. > You attack with the Storm Whatever defenses the Torites are going to muster within the time you come back with the Storm as far as you’re concerned aren’t going to be enough to save them. Better you should come back prepared and your soliders better rested as well. “I think it’s time to leave. In fact I think it’ll be best if the entire army moves away from this area.” You say. “We’re retreating?” Flevas asks. “Call it a tactical withdraw. I’m not done with this place though. Not done with you either, your input on this was very useful.” “Um, thank you Emperor.” Flevas says unsure of how to take the fact that he’s called attention to himself to the ruler of the Empire. When you return, you give Ackerson an earful of his failure to use his resources wisely and not even informing you of the potential of certain soldiers who could come in useful. You also explain that the only reason why he isn’t being demoted is that he had the intelligence to at least see Flevas’ combat abilities and send him with you in the first place. You have the army relocate to one of the towns closer to the Empire for resupplying and reinforcements. There is a bit of downtime, but there is also some routine patrolling which allows you to engage in battle against a group of those centaur creatures. Tedious foes. Constantly galloping away while firing their arrows. You appreciated the bull creatures’ attempts at caving your skull in with their axes a lot more. Eventually you get the message you’ve been waiting for and that’s when you make your way back to the vicinity of the forest. When you arrive, you and the back up mages begin to prepare for your assault on the entire forest. You call Flevas over, who you see nearby. “So what do you think to this plan? Be honest.” “Well Emperor, as I said the svelk in the stories attempted something like this as well and while I know that you certainly have powerful magic at your command, I’m not certain that the rest of your mages having your same abilities.” “I see. So you don’t believe Empire mages are up to the challenge of setting one measly forest on fire and completely burning it to the ground.” “I didn’t say that…” “Oh, well you must’ve also implied that even if our mages fail that I would not have the capacity to pick up their slack.” “I definitely did not mean…” You start laughing. “Relax elf, I’m fucking with you. Beside this isn’t the entire plan, the rest of it is over there in the near distance.” You say and point over at the airship slowing making its way towards your position. Most of the army is looking in that direction too. “I heard the rumors, but is that the ship that can fly?” Flevas asks. “That is indeed the Empire’s new pride in the skies. The Storm. And that’s exactly what it’s going to do over that forest. Those dryads might be expecting us to attempt a magic firestorm, but I guarantee they’re not going to be expecting one that involves a lot of explosions.” The Storm is indeed an impressive sight and you can imagine how it will terrify your future enemies. For right now though, you’re content on it just killing them. Along with the airship and your magic, you also have a row of catapults continually barrage the forest with flaming material. You and the army periodically move and keep on the outskirts of forest while the Storm works its assault within the center of the forest. Between the two, the decimation of the forest is certain even if it does take a few days. Forest creatures, but more importantly Torites eventually come running out of the forests, some manage to get away, others attempt to fight your army in an attempt to kill you and the other mages, but they naturally fail. You actually do lose a few of the weaker mages who can’t keep up their energy and collapse completely drained of life. Hardly matters since you accomplish your task with vicious efficiency. Eventually the forest goes from being an inferno to a blacked wasteland with only burnt tree husks and stumps left. Whatever is still alive, is going to be easy to find. You order a search and participate in it yourself, as you are eager to see if there might be some sort of evidence of this mysterious dryad or dryads. It might be that you just burned down an entire forest for no reason, but then it is one less area for the Torites to hide in. You do sense a faint bit of magic though. Very weak, but there none the less. You immediately follow the trail until it leads you to your goal. And there you see a naked, heavily burned female creature. Its limbs are slightly longer and thinner than even the average elf. It has a very delicate appearance and might even be considered pretty looking if it wasn’t covered in burns and struggling for life. It pathetically lays on the ground semi-curled up near a stump that is nearly completely burnt. It looks at you with its big eyes and then over nearby at some other bodies you didn’t even notice. They look like more dryads though, all dead. The dryad shakes and clutches tighter to the stump as you approach. It even begins making a few sounds, which causes you to immediately raise a force shield, expecting some sort of last attack. “She isn’t casting a spell Emperor. She’s whispering some sort of prayer. I think.” Flevas remarks. “About what and how do you know what she’s saying?” “I…don’t know! It’s like she’s in my head all of a sudden and I can understand some of her language. Something about…back to earth…child of nature…unnatural force of death…she’s very sad.” “I would imagine so.” You reply. “Yeah, but it’s not for herself, it’s for me.” Flevas says. Flevas at this point walks past you and over to the dying dryad. She looks up at him sorrowfully and stops whatever it was that she speaking about. He kneels down beside her and for a brief moment he looks at her sadly as well, but then his face then turns to one of anger and he ends her suffering with a knife to her neck. She gurgles a bit and then dies. “Another victory for the Empire.” Flevas says and walks past you. You stare at the dead dryad for a moment and survey the surrounding desolation. “Well, I guess we know they’re flesh and blood creatures now.” You remark and tell the rest of nearby soldiers to start heading back to the camp. When you get back, General Ackerson tells you that they’re holding a courier from the Broki Kingdom. The courier works for one of the opportunistic barons. Baron Divilak Apparently this Baron Divilak has heard much about the Empire and sees no reason to resist your inevitable annexation. He claims that he can make things simpler for you by giving out information of major strong points, security secrets, that sort of thing as well as providing his own military support. Of course he wants to meet in person before all this so that you may hammer out any other stipulations and agreements, but basically what he asks in return is to govern over the new Empire province and that he get to execute King Tiklov himself. It certainly would be easier with inside help and you were originally toying with the idea of taking advantage of the disorganized nature of the Broki Kingdom by having one or two of the barons side with you in the first place. Of course you never know with those scheming types after all if they’re willing to sell out everything for their own personal gain now, what’s stopping them from doing something similar to the Empire in the future? At the very least, the amount of corruption might tend to be higher than what is acceptable. With the recent display of power by the Storm, you’re wondering if you shouldn’t just make a gross display of force and cow them all into submission and dispense with any pretense of a “friendly” take over. Of course the problem with this plan, is you might actually unite the kingdom due to your brutality and it might take longer to conquer the place. > You deal with the baron The whole point of conquest is to not completely destroy the land you’re attempting to take over. Why decimate perfectly good territory when a better way presents itself? Besides its probably best to use a weapon like the Storm sparingly. The threat of it should be enough. “Tell your baron that I’ll meet him, but it’s going to have be at some sort of neutral ground and I’m not coming by myself. If he thinks I’m going to go walking into his land by myself he better just forget this meeting entirely and prepare his armies.” You tell the courier. “Ah, yes I believe the Baron did expect that you’d say something like that, so he is fully prepared to make arrangements to meet you halfway at an abandoned inn by a crossroads a few miles south from here rather than having to go to him.” The courier replies. “Hrm. Sounds like he really wants my help. Fine, but if I see an army marching with him, well you can guess what’s going to happen.” “Oh no, that won’t happen mighty Emperor. He might arrive with some personal servants, but nothing more than that I assure you.” “He better not. Alright then, off with you.” You say and wave away the courier who bows and takes his leave. With the courier gone you turn back to Ackerson. “I want you and the rest of the army to stay here until I get back. The troops could probably use the rest after this whole ordeal with the dryads. Obviously if I don’t get back within a day then I want you to annihilate the Broki Kingdom.” You say. “My Emperor, aren’t you going to take some people with you? Surely you’ll want back up just in case.” “Well of course, that’s why Flevas is going with me.” “While I now see the error of not recognizing his potential sooner, I must insist that you take a few more. Not all the troops are so tired that they can’t help their Emperor!” “Well I can honestly say I’m not particularly worried about anything this baron can throw at me even if it is a trap, I suppose it never hurts to have more people. Fine then, pick out ten for me and I’ll get going.” After the ten are picked, you all make your way south. Really you’re sort of wondering where the hell a road is even located, because all you’ve seen is mostly wilderness and long untamed grassy fields. Eventually though Flevas’ tracking skills come in handy and he locates the very faint remnants of one. The “road” hasn’t been upkept in years, probably decades. Only portions of stone in a semi straight line are evidence that one even existed. Still, it at least proves you’re going in the right direction and eventually a dilapidated building stands before you in the distance. “Must be the inn. Don’t see any signs of the baron or an army yet.” You say. “Maybe they’re inside.” Flevas says. “Well maybe the baron is, but I doubt if even he could fit an army in there.” “Maybe not an army, but it only takes a few assassins to kill a man.” “Glad to see you’re so suspicious Flevas, were you volunteering to scout out the place first?” “If that is what you wish Emperor.” “If you’re going to scout it out then don’t go alone, take some people with you….sheesh I sound like Ackerson.” Flevas and three of your other troops ride away towards the inn and you wait. Twenty minutes pass and you see one of your soldiers riding back towards you. “Well?” “He’s dead my Emperor.” “What?! Who?!” “The baron. I mean at least we think its him, never having seen him before and all. He’s dressed pretty fancy. Doesn’t look like anyone else is around, but whether it’s the baron or not there’s still a dead man in there. Flevas is still doing some checking, he said he’d prefer it if you were there to see this for yourself.” “(Sigh) Why can’t anything be simple? I knew I should’ve just used the Storm…” you say exasperated as you all ride off towards the inn. When you arrive you enter the inn and see your other two soldiers and on the floor you don’t see the baron or an unknown dead man, what you see is Flevas and before you can react, you feel a couple crossbow bolts hit you in the face. One just below one of your eyes and another into your cheek. A couple more hit you in your right arm and leg. You crumple to the floor on one knee groaning in pain. “SHIT, I missed his brain! Somebody get him quick before he starts casting magic!” you hear a voice say and several people tackle you forward to the ground. You attempt to get up, but several people are putting their entire weight on your back making it impossible. You attempt to cast a spell, but someone quickly gets the bright idea to repeatedly stomp on one of your hands with their foot while someone else just chops off the other one with an axe blow. “Hey asshole! You nearly hit me!” a soldier shouts. “Fuck…ing traitors, I’ll kill all…” you start to utter and then a boot kicks you in the face sinking the bolt under your eye deeper. You begin to feel disoriented and unable to see properly. “Stop playing with the fool, just kill him! Like this!” you hear a familiar voice shout. Is that Eldolith? You’ll never know for sure as a well-placed bolt pierces your skull.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Whatever defenses the Torites are going to muster within the time you come back with the Storm as far as you’re concerned aren’t going to be enough to save them. Better you should come back prepared and your soliders better rested as well. “I think it’s time to leave. In fact I think it’ll be best if the entire army moves away from this area.” You say. “We’re retreating?” Flevas asks. “Call it a tactical withdraw. I’m not done with this place though. Not done with you either, your input on this was very useful.” “Um, thank you Emperor.” Flevas says unsure of how to take the fact that he’s called attention to himself to the ruler of the Empire. When you return, you give Ackerson an earful of his failure to use his resources wisely and not even informing you of the potential of certain soldiers who could come in useful. You also explain that the only reason why he isn’t being demoted is that he had the intelligence to at least see Flevas’ combat abilities and send him with you in the first place. You have the army relocate to one of the towns closer to the Empire for resupplying and reinforcements. There is a bit of downtime, but there is also some routine patrolling which allows you to engage in battle against a group of those centaur creatures. Tedious foes. Constantly galloping away while firing their arrows. You appreciated the bull creatures’ attempts at caving your skull in with their axes a lot more. Eventually you get the message you’ve been waiting for and that’s when you make your way back to the vicinity of the forest. When you arrive, you and the back up mages begin to prepare for your assault on the entire forest. You call Flevas over, who you see nearby. “So what do you think to this plan? Be honest.” “Well Emperor, as I said the svelk in the stories attempted something like this as well and while I know that you certainly have powerful magic at your command, I’m not certain that the rest of your mages having your same abilities.” “I see. So you don’t believe Empire mages are up to the challenge of setting one measly forest on fire and completely burning it to the ground.” “I didn’t say that…” “Oh, well you must’ve also implied that even if our mages fail that I would not have the capacity to pick up their slack.” “I definitely did not mean…” You start laughing. “Relax elf, I’m fucking with you. Beside this isn’t the entire plan, the rest of it is over there in the near distance.” You say and point over at the airship slowing making its way towards your position. Most of the army is looking in that direction too. “I heard the rumors, but is that the ship that can fly?” Flevas asks. “That is indeed the Empire’s new pride in the skies. The Storm. And that’s exactly what it’s going to do over that forest. Those dryads might be expecting us to attempt a magic firestorm, but I guarantee they’re not going to be expecting one that involves a lot of explosions.” The Storm is indeed an impressive sight and you can imagine how it will terrify your future enemies. For right now though, you’re content on it just killing them. Along with the airship and your magic, you also have a row of catapults continually barrage the forest with flaming material. You and the army periodically move and keep on the outskirts of forest while the Storm works its assault within the center of the forest. Between the two, the decimation of the forest is certain even if it does take a few days. Forest creatures, but more importantly Torites eventually come running out of the forests, some manage to get away, others attempt to fight your army in an attempt to kill you and the other mages, but they naturally fail. You actually do lose a few of the weaker mages who can’t keep up their energy and collapse completely drained of life. Hardly matters since you accomplish your task with vicious efficiency. Eventually the forest goes from being an inferno to a blacked wasteland with only burnt tree husks and stumps left. Whatever is still alive, is going to be easy to find. You order a search and participate in it yourself, as you are eager to see if there might be some sort of evidence of this mysterious dryad or dryads. It might be that you just burned down an entire forest for no reason, but then it is one less area for the Torites to hide in. You do sense a faint bit of magic though. Very weak, but there none the less. You immediately follow the trail until it leads you to your goal. And there you see a naked, heavily burned female creature. Its limbs are slightly longer and thinner than even the average elf. It has a very delicate appearance and might even be considered pretty looking if it wasn’t covered in burns and struggling for life. It pathetically lays on the ground semi-curled up near a stump that is nearly completely burnt. It looks at you with its big eyes and then over nearby at some other bodies you didn’t even notice. They look like more dryads though, all dead. The dryad shakes and clutches tighter to the stump as you approach. It even begins making a few sounds, which causes you to immediately raise a force shield, expecting some sort of last attack. “She isn’t casting a spell Emperor. She’s whispering some sort of prayer. I think.” Flevas remarks. “About what and how do you know what she’s saying?” “I…don’t know! It’s like she’s in my head all of a sudden and I can understand some of her language. Something about…back to earth…child of nature…unnatural force of death…she’s very sad.” “I would imagine so.” You reply. “Yeah, but it’s not for herself, it’s for me.” Flevas says. Flevas at this point walks past you and over to the dying dryad. She looks up at him sorrowfully and stops whatever it was that she speaking about. He kneels down beside her and for a brief moment he looks at her sadly as well, but then his face then turns to one of anger and he ends her suffering with a knife to her neck. She gurgles a bit and then dies. “Another victory for the Empire.” Flevas says and walks past you. You stare at the dead dryad for a moment and survey the surrounding desolation. “Well, I guess we know they’re flesh and blood creatures now.” You remark and tell the rest of nearby soldiers to start heading back to the camp. When you get back, General Ackerson tells you that they’re holding a courier from the Broki Kingdom. The courier works for one of the opportunistic barons. Baron Divilak Apparently this Baron Divilak has heard much about the Empire and sees no reason to resist your inevitable annexation. He claims that he can make things simpler for you by giving out information of major strong points, security secrets, that sort of thing as well as providing his own military support. Of course he wants to meet in person before all this so that you may hammer out any other stipulations and agreements, but basically what he asks in return is to govern over the new Empire province and that he get to execute King Tiklov himself. It certainly would be easier with inside help and you were originally toying with the idea of taking advantage of the disorganized nature of the Broki Kingdom by having one or two of the barons side with you in the first place. Of course you never know with those scheming types after all if they’re willing to sell out everything for their own personal gain now, what’s stopping them from doing something similar to the Empire in the future? At the very least, the amount of corruption might tend to be higher than what is acceptable. With the recent display of power by the Storm, you’re wondering if you shouldn’t just make a gross display of force and cow them all into submission and dispense with any pretense of a “friendly” take over. Of course the problem with this plan, is you might actually unite the kingdom due to your brutality and it might take longer to conquer the place. > You use the Storm Negotiating has never been what the Empire has been about. You go in; you crush your enemies under heel and then sort out the details later. Without another word, you draw your sword and sever the head of the hapless courier. Blood splatters on the onlookers nearby as the head bounces once on the ground near your feet. You give it a small kick towards one of the soldiers. “Have that courier’s head sent back to the baron in a bag. That will be our answer to his proposals. Well actually the Storm will be the real answer, but for now his courier’s head will do.” You remark. “Oh. The flying machine? Won’t that need time to resupply from bombing the dryad forest?” Ackerson asks. “Yes, but it’ll be fine. Let them wait and sweat it out. When he receives his messenger’s head I’m sure he’ll mobilize all his little soldiers, ready for an attack. Won’t do him any good though when the Storm is laying waste to his castle. Then the rest of us will come in and clean up. After we’ve annihilated nearly everything within the baron’s territory, THEN we will give our own demands to the remainder of the Broki Kingdom. In the meantime, tell everyone to keep alert as usual and enjoy this little respite in what is going to be the shortest conflict of this western campaign.” You retire to your tent where you go through a couple of more traditional letters you’ve received since you were away destroying the dryads. Two of them are from Decena. One talks about how she’s confirmed the rumors of the winged Torites or harpies as they’re known. She explains that they’re even more tedious foe than the centaurs due to their flight ability. The standard practice is to fill the skies with arrows and bullets whenever possible. Galen has been pulling his weight, but as you’ve come to expect the Torites have been systematically targeting mages, he’s barely escaped death several times and is one of the few wizards Decena has left. Fortunately she doesn’t report anything close to the dryad activity Ackerson experienced, but you’ll have to send her a message back warning her about them. Her second letter is something you’re hesitant to open, since you know it’s going to be of a more personal nature. You sort of thought that maybe her time away from you and her apparent enjoyment of battle would slowly erode her feelings for you, but that hasn’t happened. In any case, you put aside the letter for later and turn your attention to another letter which is from Warrick giving you an update on his findings. He mentions that he’s uncovered nothing that would suggest an internal conspiracy yet, but just says that the elven population has been complaining more than usual as of late. So far there is no evidence that they’re planning anything from the ones he’s brought in, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t. This gets you wondering about something that occurred earlier and you have Felvas brought to you. “So…that was quite the show back there with the dryads.” You say. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand sir.” Flevas answers. “Oh come on. You don’t need to hide it. You were upset to see dryads get killed. Hell, you probably were upset to see the forest burn to the ground.” “It was necessary.” “Of course it was necessary, but the point is you REALLY didn’t like it. Not only did you not like it, you were personally offended. Why something like could cause a man to habor ill feelings that fester underneath the skin and come out in ill advised ways.” Flevas is silent as you study his reaction to what you’re implying. “Emperor, I am not a traitor to Empire. I would never…” “Yes, yes, yes, I know. You would never betray an Empire that oppresses your people…well if your people’s complaints are anything to go by.” “But I finished off the dryad without your orders!” “So? You’ve probably done a lot of things you don’t like doing. Hell, it was a mercy kill anyway. One might even think that you did it just for my benefit. Believing that you were the good loyal elf. Tell me, is that what your people are doing? Are they emulating the shadows and just biding their time?” “What?! I don’t know! I mean no! Emperor, I…” “Silence!” you shout and backhand Flevas to the face causing him to stagger. “Now then, you’ve got two options. One is bad, and one is to start telling me the truth.” Flevas rubs his face and then composes himself. He doesn’t display anger like he did with the dryad, but he does do that elf thing with his eyes, like they’re looking right through you and that you’re nothing at all. Semra was really good at it. “So what do you want me to say? Yes! I HATE the fucking Empire! Yes! I HATE every fucking human I have to work with and put up with their shit! I HATE the fact that my people are the lowest rung of society even though that includes fucking kobolds now! FUCKING KOBOLDS!” “Kobolds are very loyal and eager to serve.” You respond. “And they’re damn idiots! So are the brainless orcs and look at what you did to them! They’re nearly extinct because you have them soak up all the major fighting during the Felkan War!” “They enjoyed the fighting. Besides, they’re building up their numbers now.” “Yeah, so you can use them in the next big ass war! Well I’m fucking sorry we sveld don’t feel that way! We don’t enjoy conflict and bloodshed! We cherish freedom! Freedom we haven’t had for centuries! If it wasn’t the orcs hunting us down it was the accursed svelk massacring and torturing us!” “Exactly, and you’d think that you’d be grateful for the Empire for saving you from such things like the orcs and svelk.” “Right. Because humans are so much better? Humans fucking enslaved us.” “Actually there are probably just as many human slaves than there are elven ones right now.” “Yeah and all the human ones are criminals! And even if when the sveld aren’t outright slaves, they’re so destitute or desperate that they’re worked like slaves. It’s a fucking sorry existence, yet as much as we bitch and bitch and BITCH about our plight, we’ve got nobody to blame but ourselves.” “You believe that?” you ask a little surprised at his claim “Honestly? Yeah, I do. I believe the sveld have been kicked around so long by everyone and cowed into submission that we love playing the fucking victim. It’s actually gotten to the point where it’s more enjoyable than actually trying to DO something.” “I dunno about that. There have been sveld rebellions in the past and a lot of them border on being dissidents to this day.” You say. “The full blown rebellions consisting of nothing but sveld are a rarity and considering how badly we’ve been treated why there haven’t been more just confirms my belief that sveld prefer playing the victim. In fact the Empire has had more problems keeping humans in line. As for dissidents, I know the Empire frowns upon anyone who dares to look at it wrong, but I guarantee the main ones bitching probably aren’t doing anything other than just that, bitching.” “Sort of like you are now?” “Yes, damn it. Exactly like how I am right now! You asked me to tell you the truth, well that’s what I’m doing as ordered! Why? Because I’m that good loyal sveld! You stay silent and continue to listen to Flevas rant, other soldiers have entered your tent believing something amiss, but you wave them away signifying that everything is fine. “You know why I ultimately killed that dryad? It wasn’t out of mercy. It was out of anger that such a creature that attempted to know my thoughts and feelings and dared to feel sorry for me. Fuck that, we have enough of that shit going on in the sveld community. Even some of the so-called kind humans will occasionally do the same and it’s sickening every time. In the scheme of things, I’m not an old sveld, but I feel like I know a hell of a lot more how to deal with this shitty life I’ve been handed. Don’t complain and try to just do your job. The best way to do this is in the military. You never have a choice here; it’s kill or be killed. It’s follow orders and don’t think.” “So is that why you joined the military?” you ask. “I joined because I wasn’t going to have my wife blowing disgusting humans for coin or have my children begging on the street like paupers. I wasn’t going to clean privy holes for some human piece of shit who probably can’t even read, yet thinks that they’re somehow better just because they’re not sveld. I wasn’t going to fucking whine about my position in life and get my ass whisked away in the middle of the night by the Eyes or just killed on the spot. I was going to at least TRY to make the best of things even if I hate every damn moment of it.” Flevas’ at this point isn’t doing that elf eye thing anymore; he’s long since lost his calm demeanor and looking far more emotional. You get the impression that he’s probably wanted to say this to SOMEBODY for a very long time. And now he has the advantage of telling it directly to the Emperor. You know that has to feel good for him somewhere. “And with any luck… I’d get to kill some humans in the process. That’s why I joined. ” Flevas says ending his rant which causes a nod from you. “Well you’ll get your chance soon in the Broki Kingdom.” “I thought you were using that flying ship.” “I am, but it can’t do all the work can it? Besides, it’s just going to be there for added terror for the most part. As usual the regular army is going to do the clean up work. It’ll be grim business. Despite the civilian population, we aren’t going to be leaving much alive in this particular battle, but as you probably can guess, it’s necessary.” Flevas nods and continues to stand at attention unsure of what to expect next. “You’re dimissed.” You say. “That’s it?” Flevas asks. “For now at least. If anything else comes up that I think I need to talk to you about, you’ll be the first to know. Oh actually there is one more question. Is there anything that you do like about the Empire?” Flevas doesn’t think about it too long. “There was a law instituted to have svelk killed on sight.” “Heh, yeah that is a good one.” You say and Flevas takes his leave. You make a mental note, that Flevas should be promoted in the future. His attitude and views are clear, but he’s no traitor. As you’ve always believed, you don’t need people to like you, you just need them to be loyal. In a couple of days the assault is in full force on the Broki Kingdom, or at least Baron Divilak’s land. You specifically tell your troops that only Divilak’s land and people are to be attacked. Of course if he gets any help from neighboring barons or the king himself then the order is to show them no mercy. Divilak doesn’t receive any help though, or if he was, his allies lost courage when they saw the Storm raining fire down upon Divilak’s castle. You can imagine that the Broki have never seen such a thing before and probably hope to never see something like that hovering above them. To their credit, Divilak’s soldiers hold their ground initially, but in the end your army scatters them. You imagine that Divilak probably had one of the stronger militaries in this dysfunctional kingdom given that they didn’t run immediately when they saw the Storm. Of course now, that has been reduced to nothing. While your first plan was going to be to utterly wipe out everyone within Divilak’s territory as a message of sorts to the rest of the Broki population to fall in line lest they suffer the same fate, you decide to hold back and the civilian population slaughter and come up with another plan. “Flevas, there you are. Got an important job for you.” You say stepping over several bodies on the battlefield. “Emperor.” He reports. “You’re going to get to do something very important for your people. Hell, you may even go down in history as a hero to them. Would certainly be a more worthwhile story than about some tree hugging dryads. I want you to round up the remainder of the civilian population with this territory. For every one you bring in, you free one elf from his slave chains. We’ll work out the details later, but for now take whoever you think would be best to help you for this mission and if you get any trouble say this is a direct order from the Emperor. I’d also advise you to limit the casualties, but I imagine you already know that.” “Yes, my Emperor.” Flevas says and instantly runs off to perform the task. With any luck, this is the sort of thing that MIGHT cause the elves to stop complaining so much. Maybe they’ll all start following Flevas’ example and not only accept their lot in life, but to stop complaining about it. In time maybe they won’t even be your “problem citizens” anymore. Of course the Divilak’s people aren’t going to enjoy their new designation, but then they’re not suppose to. You’re still sending a message to the rest of the Broki. Submit or this is what will happen. Your armies scattered, your buildings destroyed, and your citizens enslaved. Soon after the razing of the barony, you are visited by a very frightened Broki courier. He is escorted by your soldiers and nervously gives a message to you. It’s from the king and apparently he’s sending you this message even though his advisors have told him not to. He says for the good of his people and he hopes in your mercy that you will cease your attack as he is formally surrendering the Broki Kingdom to the Empire. A few days later you meet with King Tiklov who makes a formal showing in front of his people that the Broki Kingdom is now no more and that it now will be the Broki province of the Empire. Tiklov will still remain in power, but only as a figurehead and to be involved in the day to day governing, assisted by some of your own administrators of course. The annexation goes more or less smoothly, but you come to find out a disturbing discovery. You come to find out that some of the barons had secret dealings with svelk advisors. In fact Divilak was one of them. Certainly explains why the kingdom was involved in civil wars before you arrived. Hell, Divilak’s offer to meet with you might’ve been an attempt on your life. These svelk advisors of course have all fled to who knows where by now, but you definitely think you know who tried to have you killed aboard the Storm. You also know that it has to be Semra masterminding all this, wherever she is. You’ll have to keep alert, but then you always are. You have the barons that had such dealings with svelk executed. It wasn’t like they were necessary any longer anyway. > Year 42 While you doubt this is going to be your last battle with the Torites, you’re at least hoping it’s going to be the one to break their spirit to the point where they become less of a problem. Still, the fact that they’ve finally unified their forces into armies shows you that they realize you aren’t going to just go away and their hit and run tactics and attempts to win through attrition aren’t going to succeed. It shows you that this is a concentrated effort to get rid of you once and for all. It won’t work either and really works to your benefit. It allows you the opportunity to kill a bunch of them in one large grouping now. Maybe there will always be pockets of Torites lurking in the untamed wilderness but one thing is certain. The territory WILL be the Empire’s and the Torites can either submit and see the light like the kobolds eventually did or slowly be driven into extinction like the gnolls. But that’s in the future, right now you’re drawing up the plans for this impeding battle. Considering how large the Torite horde is, you’ve combined your available forces with Decena’s army. It was quite the happy day for her seeing as she hasn’t seen you for five years. You still aren’t quite sure how you exactly feel about her, but she’s definitely been winning you over as far as her victories have been concerned. She remains professional always in front of everyone, but the first time she got you alone, she literally jumped on you and wrapped her legs around your waist, planting a kiss on you. But again, you can sort out your possible complications with Decena later. Now is the time to make sure the both of you come out of this alive. “We should have the second airship here before we begin our assault. Hopefully that will take some of the pressure off of the Storm to deal with the harpies.” You remark. “Its isn’t just the bird bitches that flap about though. Don’t forget, there are still those manticores and those chimeras.” General Ackerson remarks. “Yes, I’m well aware of both, Ackerson. Thank you for pointing out the obvious. However, I’m more inclined to believe the Torites will be relying on those beasts to attack our people on the ground. The beasts aren’t the most graceful of fliers and would most likely just be big target, which they will be for us anyway, but they’ll still do more damage to a group of soldiers on foot and horseback rather than a flying fortress before going down.” You remark. “Those chimera things don’t even fly very high. The wings are almost so small that they’re just for show. Never had one swoop down on us.” Decena adds. “Wouldn’t be best to have us mages together so that we can join our energy and create a shield for the majority of the army?” Galen remarks. He isn’t complaining, but he’s definitely trying to find a loop hole to possibly make himself safer and not have to do as much work.” “Galen, you know that the Torites attempt to target spell slingers as soon as possible. If they actually get you in a group and strike lucky, well there goes a powerful chunk of our fighting force. It’ll make things harder for them if you’re all spread out. Besides, you’re personally going to be hiding behind a small contingent of golems and backed up by Captain Flevas’ men. You couldn’t be any safer.” “Huh. So my backup lies in the hands of an elf? Might as well kill me now and get it over with.” Galen remarks. You just shake your head and ignore his last comment; he’s too valuable to punish right now. After hammering out the plan, you and the rest start setting things in motion and preparing everyone. You know the Torite horde is on the move not too far from your location. But they aren’t here yet and won’t be for at least a half-day’s time. It gives you a bit of time to at least get some rest since you’ve been running around attempting to take care of everything and haven’t slept. You didn’t even realize how tired you were until you lie down on your sleeping bag. Just as you lie down and close your eyes, someone enters your tent and you instinctively grab your sword. “No point in that, I’m not really here you know.” You hear a familiar voice whisper. You sit up and see Semra standing before you, or rather the image of her. She’s no doubt using the same kind of magic she did when she tried to convince you to kill Casimir. She’s probably nearby somewhere though. “I thought you said we weren’t going to see each other again.” You say. “I didn’t think we would. I truly believed you would die on Mortos. I suppose I underestimated your ability to survive even there. Quite impressive and it’s no surprise that you assumed Casimir’s throne soon after. Everything worked out for you, but tell me how did you accomplish such a feat?” “Just luck I guess. Look, if you came here to kill me, you’ll need to get behind the long line of Torites marching towards this place.” You say while lying back down and shutting your eyes. “My, you’re quite confident to stay in such a vulnerable position if you really believe I’m here to kill you.” Semra says. “No, I know this is just grand standing. If you were really going to kill me you’d have your underlings conspiring with little plots in the shadows.” “Yes, I’m aware of the troubles you’ve been having lately and while I’m flattered you believe it to me, I’m actually here to clear my good name.” “Hah!” you snort. “Okay so just my name. In any event. I’m here to tell you that it isn’t me, though you do have enemies of the svelk persuasion.” “I’ve got enemies of every persuasion and that’s not a very convincing argument that you’re somehow innocent.” “Okay how about this then? It’s not me because I’ve been keeping an eye on you and so far you haven’t warranted anything that needs me to stop you yet. My daughter on the other hand disagrees. She claims that my…past with you is clouding my judgment.” “We never had a past Semra. I don’t know what YOU think it is, but WE were and never will be an item.” “Oh yes, that’s right. You’ve got that vicious little young thing on your dick now. Decena is her name? She is quite the warrior. Lot of those moves are familiar, they’re all the ones I taught you. Hey have you taught her any of my other moves when you’re bedding her?” At this point you sit back up, annoyed with Semra’s remark. “Is this going anywhere because I have a shitload of beast men to slaughter tomorrow and you’re keeping me awake!” You snap. “Oooh! Struck a nerve did I? Haven’t been able to do that for quite awhile, I really missed it. Tell me though; is it very serious with this one like it was with Alison? Didn’t think you’d get over her so quickly. Really though I don’t know why you pick any of these females. This new one is just likely to wind up dead, if not by the sword then by age. Her youthful appearance with eventually wither and fade like it does with all of those lesser born.” At this point you lie back down and close your eyes again. You’re not playing this game. “You done already? Disappointed, you used to be so much more fun. Very well, just listen then Eternal. I know you have a hard time with that, but maybe you’ll actually heed what I have to say for once. I am not your enemy. As I have said, my daughter is your enemy and she makes her base of operations in a city-state called Ryglik and lies south of the former Broki Kingdom. Of course that whole area consists of several city-states and she may very well move around, but that’s the main one she’s operating from. You remain silent while Semra continues to talk. “Well I’ll take your silence that you’re at least taking it under consideration. Oh and while you’re at it, you still might want to consider giving up all this foolish nonsense. Perhaps you’re a better Emperor than Casimir ever was, but you’re still mindlessly following a path that you think has been laid out for you. It’s almost like Casimir is still barking orders at you.” “I guarantee Casimir’s not saying much of anything anymore.” You answer. “Be that as it may, I’d hate to see you follow in his horribly misguided footsteps and make the same mistakes he did.” “Well, I don’t have you as an advisor, I’d say that already puts me ahead of the game.” “Pfft, you’d be lucky to have me by your side. Not my fault you can’t see and accept the truth. Anyway, I’ll take my leave now. Perhaps we’ll see each other, perhaps we won’t. Perhaps we’ll even see each other in the flesh again, wouldn’t that be fun?” “Sure would, I could give you your dagger back.” You remark. “Mmmm, I bet you would. Well if that day ever comes, you make sure you give me a long hard kiss as you’re sticking it in me. Oh one last thing, your General Ackerson is planning to betray you at some point during tomorrow’s battle. Not sure when and how, but he’s got quite a few soldiers willing to work with him on it. More of my daughter’s work no doubt.” With those final words, you cease hearing Semra’s voice. You briefly open your eyes and find that her image is gone as well. “Fucking bitch.” You mutter, as now you’re never going to be able to sleep with this last bit of information she just gave you. The big problem is she may very well be telling the truth, because for the most part Semra has never really lied to you. You didn’t believe her at the time, but she told you the complete truth about Casimir and his intentions. She didn’t have Alison killed either. As usual in her own fucked up way that you still don’t understand she has attempted to help you. Of course that was in the past, she could be lying about everything right now. While she has confirmed your own beliefs that it’s been the svelk working against you, she’s also trying to put the blame all on her daughter. Granted you know they probably don’t get along, but still. There also has never been any evidence that Ackerson has shown signs of being a potential traitor. Doesn’t even make sense, but then again you can’t trust anyone nowadays. Now you have to play a guessing game to as whether or not someone on your own side is going to kill you in the middle of battle. You miss the days when all you ever concerned yourself with were the people on the other side trying to kill you. > You deal with Ackerson “Shit.” You grumble and get up. After getting dressed, you march out of your tent with sword in hand. Multiple soldiers on duty ask if you’re okay, but you just ignore them and head directly to where Ackerson’s camp located. When you arrive, you tell the soldiers on duty that you want to see Ackerson immediately. The general is of course still asleep and when he gets out of his tent he’s still slightly groggy. “Apologies my Emperor, but what can…” he begins to say and then you cleave his head in with your sword. His face displays a mixture of shock and confusion as the blood trickles down from his head. You pull the sword out with a sickly sound following it and strike again, this time practically chopping the general’s head in two. At this point the weight of Ackerson’s now lifeless body pulls downward off of your sword and you wipe your sword off in front of the astonished onlookers. “Alright, listen up because I’m only going to say this once. This man was a fucking traitor. He was planning to betray me at some point during tomorrow’s battle. Don’t ask me how I know, the important thing is I know because I’m the fucking Emperor and I know ALL.” You continue. “That being said, I also know he had some of you in on this plan because he was too damn cowardly to face me like a man. I KNOW who you all are and consider this your reprieve from your benevolent Emperor. Help bring us victory tomorrow against the beast folk scum and I’ll forget all about this. However, if I ever get the slightest hint that ANY of you are planning to assassinate me, betray me or be involved in any other type of treason, I WILL make sure that you do not suffer the quick death like I so graciously handed out to the late general here. Do I make myself clear?” “YES EMPEROR!” everyone shouts. “Good. Colonel Sini, you’re in charge of Ackerson’s command now. Have someone remove this traitor’s corpse from this camp. I don’t want the aura of his failure and cowardice to rub off on anyone else longer than necessary.” You take your leave and head back to your tent. You know what you did might not have been necessary since Semra very well might’ve been lying, however you’re fairly confident that you handled it in such a way that it doesn’t matter. You put so much fear into the rest of them that if they didn’t think you were all knowing before they certainly do now. If it is true though, it is sort of disturbing to you that Eldolith managed to somehow convince some of your own military to try to kill you. That’s the group you rely on the most and feel you have the most identification with, though perhaps you’re taking it for granted that most of them LIKE the military and battles like you do. A lot of them probably joined just to feed their families. Some of them were even conscripted. You can only imagine that she offered a shitload of gold as it doesn’t seem likely that she’d have anything else worthwhile to offer. You’ll be glad when the orcs have finally raised their numbers back up and the new Eternals are of age to fight. Despite everything that went on last night, you miraculously actually manage to get a little sleep before the arrival of the Torites. You’re still a little tired, but you think when you get into the thick of battle the thrill of it will kick in and you’ll be invigorated. You usually are. It seems word of what happened spread fairly quickly to the rest of the camps, even to Decena’s army. You imagine that will at least have to put Galen in a good mood, maybe he’ll whine less now. When the Torites arrive they certainly look like a chaotic rabble, but it’s no mistake that they mean business. The number of harpies fills the sky to the point where you hope that the Storm can take care of such a flock. The second airship is in far distance behind you. Hopefully by the time it gets to engage in battle it won’t be replacing the Storm so much that it’ll be supporting the Storm. The cannons and rifles fire as soon as the Torites are within range. Their centaurs return fire with their accurate arrows. The saytr wizards up the ante by casting their elemental magic which rips solid chunks of rock and earth out of the ground and goes flying at your army. It can’t be said that the Torites are any less dangerous just because they’re less technologically advanced. High above you the Storm takes on the harpy warriors. Even from here, it looks like a swarm of locusts descending on a single blade of wheat. Looks pretty damn grim for the Storm, you just hope if the crew does get overwhelmed they can keep the ship from crashing near your location. The bull creatures lead the charge along side their horse beast brethren. Another volley of shots takes out some, but they remain relentless in their charge. The satyr rank and file advance steadily behind. They WILL arrive and there will certainly be enough of them left to give your army a good fight. Your own cavalry meets them and while they have the best training, they can’t overcome the sheer savagery of the minotaurs and as for the centaurs, their very bodies are half horse. They already have the advantage over your own cavalry as far as maneuverability. Breaks in the Torite army form as they allow their war beasts participate in the charge. Several manticores and chimera of the largest size make their way straight towards you. At their pace, they’re going to be the first ones your people will have to fight. A cannon blast rips through one of the chimera and fireball from one of your mages brings down another, but before you know it, a manticore is shredding apart your front line with its talons and impaling others with its spike tail. What comes next is utter mayhem. Swords and axes cutting and stabbing. Fangs and claws tearing and biting. Magic on both sides destroying several lives in the blink of an eye. It’s all very glorious. Decena’s army is holding its own on her front, but then you never had any doubt about that. The only problem they do have is the blasted satyr magic manages to turn the golems against them. Hopefully, Flevas managed to get Galen’s ass out of there before they crushed him. The newly appointed General Sini seems to be doing well on his end. You’re glad to see that the reinforced fear in their ruler has motivated them. Still, the battle is far from over yet. The fact that you’re simultaneously facing down three bullheads by yourself and a chimera closing in is a great reminder. You cast a lightning blast at the bulls, which fells two of them, but the third fights through the pain of having his body fried from the inside out. You dodge his axe and follow up with your own sword swing to his meaty leg. The beast roars, but is still undeterred. Two nearby soldiers attempt to help, but are mauled by the chimera which has finally arrived. The minotaur swings again, but this time you cast a force shield to block the blow. This one has to be some sort of leader or hero or some great warrior to his people because when you swing your sword again to strike, the creature catches its blade and snaps it off leaving you with a broken sword. “Okay. I get it. A challenge.” You say and step backwards from the minotaur who ignores his deeply cut hand to solidly grip his axe once more. The bull will have to wait though since the chimera has finally gotten around to attack you. The clumsy beast attempts to pounce, but you leap out of its way and blast one of the its misshaped animal heads with a bolt of fire. Roaring in pain and anger, the creature desperately tries to put out the flames by rubbing the flaming head into the dirt. It hardly stops it from continuing to attack with its scorpion tail. While it misses with its tail, one of its other goat like heads spits a cloud of gas at you. You didn’t even know they could do such a thing, but then these chimeras are rather random beasts. The gas is certainly poisonous enough to kill the average person, but then you aren’t average. Unfortunately it’s still potent enough to make you feel sick and you gag and wheeze when you inhale a good bit of the stuff. A paw smashes into your side and you go crashing to the ground. You barely get out of the way of the stinger tail again. Then your old bull friend is there to help with his axe as usual, fortunately someone distracts the bull by attacking him from behind causing him to drop his axe. Unfortunately they fail to kill him and he turns around and breaks their neck with his bare hands, still it’s given you a temporary respite on what to do next. > You pick up the axe and strike back Despite being woozy from the gas attack, you grab the minotaur’s axe. The weapon is incredibly heavy, in fact a little heavier than you were expecting. The minotaur advances on you and you clumsily swing at it, but miss completely and you feel the smashing fist of the minotaur across your face which has quite likely broken your jaw. Sprawled to the ground, you attempt to cast a cone of frost, but the minotaur has already followed up its attack and picked you up off the ground with both hands. Then with one quick move he slams your back over his knee breaking it and throws you in front of the chimera, which has successfully put out the flames you bestowed upon its face earlier. Your last moments are the chimera’s lion head sinking its fangs into your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Shit.” You grumble and get up. After getting dressed, you march out of your tent with sword in hand. Multiple soldiers on duty ask if you’re okay, but you just ignore them and head directly to where Ackerson’s camp located. When you arrive, you tell the soldiers on duty that you want to see Ackerson immediately. The general is of course still asleep and when he gets out of his tent he’s still slightly groggy. “Apologies my Emperor, but what can…” he begins to say and then you cleave his head in with your sword. His face displays a mixture of shock and confusion as the blood trickles down from his head. You pull the sword out with a sickly sound following it and strike again, this time practically chopping the general’s head in two. At this point the weight of Ackerson’s now lifeless body pulls downward off of your sword and you wipe your sword off in front of the astonished onlookers. “Alright, listen up because I’m only going to say this once. This man was a fucking traitor. He was planning to betray me at some point during tomorrow’s battle. Don’t ask me how I know, the important thing is I know because I’m the fucking Emperor and I know ALL.” You continue. “That being said, I also know he had some of you in on this plan because he was too damn cowardly to face me like a man. I KNOW who you all are and consider this your reprieve from your benevolent Emperor. Help bring us victory tomorrow against the beast folk scum and I’ll forget all about this. However, if I ever get the slightest hint that ANY of you are planning to assassinate me, betray me or be involved in any other type of treason, I WILL make sure that you do not suffer the quick death like I so graciously handed out to the late general here. Do I make myself clear?” “YES EMPEROR!” everyone shouts. “Good. Colonel Sini, you’re in charge of Ackerson’s command now. Have someone remove this traitor’s corpse from this camp. I don’t want the aura of his failure and cowardice to rub off on anyone else longer than necessary.” You take your leave and head back to your tent. You know what you did might not have been necessary since Semra very well might’ve been lying, however you’re fairly confident that you handled it in such a way that it doesn’t matter. You put so much fear into the rest of them that if they didn’t think you were all knowing before they certainly do now. If it is true though, it is sort of disturbing to you that Eldolith managed to somehow convince some of your own military to try to kill you. That’s the group you rely on the most and feel you have the most identification with, though perhaps you’re taking it for granted that most of them LIKE the military and battles like you do. A lot of them probably joined just to feed their families. Some of them were even conscripted. You can only imagine that she offered a shitload of gold as it doesn’t seem likely that she’d have anything else worthwhile to offer. You’ll be glad when the orcs have finally raised their numbers back up and the new Eternals are of age to fight. Despite everything that went on last night, you miraculously actually manage to get a little sleep before the arrival of the Torites. You’re still a little tired, but you think when you get into the thick of battle the thrill of it will kick in and you’ll be invigorated. You usually are. It seems word of what happened spread fairly quickly to the rest of the camps, even to Decena’s army. You imagine that will at least have to put Galen in a good mood, maybe he’ll whine less now. When the Torites arrive they certainly look like a chaotic rabble, but it’s no mistake that they mean business. The number of harpies fills the sky to the point where you hope that the Storm can take care of such a flock. The second airship is in far distance behind you. Hopefully by the time it gets to engage in battle it won’t be replacing the Storm so much that it’ll be supporting the Storm. The cannons and rifles fire as soon as the Torites are within range. Their centaurs return fire with their accurate arrows. The saytr wizards up the ante by casting their elemental magic which rips solid chunks of rock and earth out of the ground and goes flying at your army. It can’t be said that the Torites are any less dangerous just because they’re less technologically advanced. High above you the Storm takes on the harpy warriors. Even from here, it looks like a swarm of locusts descending on a single blade of wheat. Looks pretty damn grim for the Storm, you just hope if the crew does get overwhelmed they can keep the ship from crashing near your location. The bull creatures lead the charge along side their horse beast brethren. Another volley of shots takes out some, but they remain relentless in their charge. The satyr rank and file advance steadily behind. They WILL arrive and there will certainly be enough of them left to give your army a good fight. Your own cavalry meets them and while they have the best training, they can’t overcome the sheer savagery of the minotaurs and as for the centaurs, their very bodies are half horse. They already have the advantage over your own cavalry as far as maneuverability. Breaks in the Torite army form as they allow their war beasts participate in the charge. Several manticores and chimera of the largest size make their way straight towards you. At their pace, they’re going to be the first ones your people will have to fight. A cannon blast rips through one of the chimera and fireball from one of your mages brings down another, but before you know it, a manticore is shredding apart your front line with its talons and impaling others with its spike tail. What comes next is utter mayhem. Swords and axes cutting and stabbing. Fangs and claws tearing and biting. Magic on both sides destroying several lives in the blink of an eye. It’s all very glorious. Decena’s army is holding its own on her front, but then you never had any doubt about that. The only problem they do have is the blasted satyr magic manages to turn the golems against them. Hopefully, Flevas managed to get Galen’s ass out of there before they crushed him. The newly appointed General Sini seems to be doing well on his end. You’re glad to see that the reinforced fear in their ruler has motivated them. Still, the battle is far from over yet. The fact that you’re simultaneously facing down three bullheads by yourself and a chimera closing in is a great reminder. You cast a lightning blast at the bulls, which fells two of them, but the third fights through the pain of having his body fried from the inside out. You dodge his axe and follow up with your own sword swing to his meaty leg. The beast roars, but is still undeterred. Two nearby soldiers attempt to help, but are mauled by the chimera which has finally arrived. The minotaur swings again, but this time you cast a force shield to block the blow. This one has to be some sort of leader or hero or some great warrior to his people because when you swing your sword again to strike, the creature catches its blade and snaps it off leaving you with a broken sword. “Okay. I get it. A challenge.” You say and step backwards from the minotaur who ignores his deeply cut hand to solidly grip his axe once more. The bull will have to wait though since the chimera has finally gotten around to attack you. The clumsy beast attempts to pounce, but you leap out of its way and blast one of the its misshaped animal heads with a bolt of fire. Roaring in pain and anger, the creature desperately tries to put out the flames by rubbing the flaming head into the dirt. It hardly stops it from continuing to attack with its scorpion tail. While it misses with its tail, one of its other goat like heads spits a cloud of gas at you. You didn’t even know they could do such a thing, but then these chimeras are rather random beasts. The gas is certainly poisonous enough to kill the average person, but then you aren’t average. Unfortunately it’s still potent enough to make you feel sick and you gag and wheeze when you inhale a good bit of the stuff. A paw smashes into your side and you go crashing to the ground. You barely get out of the way of the stinger tail again. Then your old bull friend is there to help with his axe as usual, fortunately someone distracts the bull by attacking him from behind causing him to drop his axe. Unfortunately they fail to kill him and he turns around and breaks their neck with his bare hands, still it’s given you a temporary respite on what to do next. > You crawl away from the immediate area You’re in the middle of a danger zone right now and you’re still feeling woozy from that gas, you need to get out as quick as you can. You crawl away just in time for the chimera to try to sting you again, though now that one of its faces isn’t on fire anymore the creature is advancing along with the bull. Summoning all your energy you cast a cone of frost at the pair of them. You actually get a few other enemies and several allies in the blast as well, but whatever gets the job done. The chimera and bull try to advance despite being slowly frozen solid and they actually make a few more steps, but you keep up the spell ignoring the drain its taking on you. You soon have several ice “statues” in front of your area. Grabbing the mace of a dead soilder nearby you take several swings at the frozen chimera smashing its body parts into frozen bloody chunks. You then turn your attention to the bull. “A shame this couldn’t have been a fair fight. You were certainly worthy of one.” You say and with one mighty swing you smash the bull’s head in and kick the rest of the body over. It’s going to be a mess when it all finally thaws out. A quick glance up displays several winged bodies falling out of the sky, some of them on fire. The Storm is holding so far, but you can tell by the thick black smoke emanating from it that it isn’t without damage. The second airship however is coming along and already engaging the enemy. In the distance ahead of you, you see that your kobold teams have successfully dug underneath the battlefield and started to flank the Torites. Even with the element of surprise most of them are probably going to end up getting stomped on by the minotaurs and centaurs, but they’ll at least be in a position to disrupt the satyr mages. The confrontation rages on for the remainder of the day and you find yourself all over the battlefield, either giving commands or doing battle. At one point you even find yourself fighting side by side with Decena. While it is no doubt a big thrill for her to actually fight along with you, you actually enjoy it as well. It reminds you of when you fought along side Alison as Decena also has that instinctive knowledge of complimenting your fighting style, but then again she should considering you trained her. Day becomes dusk and finally to night though the sky lights up spectacularly when the Storm gives out its final service when part of it explodes turning the entire ship into a blazing wreck dropping to the ground fast. Both sides run for cover and out of the area while attempting to avoid the burning shards already hitting the surface. Still even with this loss, your side is definitely winning. Most of the centaurs are dead, the one who aren’t, have long since galloped away. Most of the satyr troops are dead as well with the few remaining starting to retreat. All their large beasts such as the manticores and chimera have all been slain. The harpies still alive from their assault on the Storm have flapped away. The only ones still putting up any resistance are the minotaurs and that’s because they’re too stubborn to retreat, but eventually they’ll be overwhelmed. By the time the clash is finally over the moon is hanging high above the battlefield causing a minor luminescence over the numerous dead on the battlefield. This is definitely going to be one that the scholars and historians are going to write about. While you stepping over the dead and passing by soldiers taking well earned victory celebrations (or just taking well earned rests) Decena comes running up to you. “Hey, I’ve been looking for you. We got split up after those manticores attacked. I mean I knew you weren’t dead, but I just wanted to know you were okay.” Decena says. “A few minor wounds, probably some new scars to look forward to, aching muscles and joints, extremely tired, but other than that I’m fine. How many in your army left?” you ask. “Quite few. I don’t think my side recieved the brunt of the Torite attack though turning our golems against us was certainly a surprise. Galen managed to rectify that though, even if it did cost us the use of them.” “Oh, survived did he?” “Yeah, thanks to Captain Flevas. I know a lot of people don’t like elves, but he was invaluable on the battlefield.” “I wouldn’t have promoted him and transferred him to your command if he wasn’t. So besides Galen did any of your other wizards survive?” “Unfortunately none.” “Same here. The Torites were successful in that regard. (Sigh) Successful in that endeavor as well.” You say pointing to the still flaming wreckage of the Storm in the distance. “Well at least we still have the second airship.” Decena says. “Oh we’ll have more of those, no doubt. Wizards, not so sure about. I’m thinking the age of using battle mages on any large scale might be coming to an end. Better keep what talent we still have left at home in case of an emergency.” You reply. “I wanted to ask you about something else, did you ever find out more about the traitors in our ranks? Only a few hours before the conflict with the Torites and it was all over my own camp about how you executed General Ackerson in front of his command and warned everyone that you know others were involved in a conspiracy against you.” “Oh that. No, but given that the only ones trying to kill me today were the Torites I’d say I squashed it, but I still will have Warrick do a full investigation to anyone close to Ackerson though I can guess a few of them now. I have to believe that Sini who I replaced Ackerson with was involved, being his second in command and all, however Sini has redeemed himself by dying in battle loyally. Saves his family the embarrassment and saves me the need for another execution later.” “I’m just glad you’re okay, but then I shouldn’t have worried I suppose, you’re the Emperor and nothing can ever destroy you.” At this point the pair of you have entered your tent and Decena grabs your hand. Decena looks at you with a mixture of concern and adoration. The same adoration she’s had since you took her as your student. While it’s definitely true your actions and position have probably molded her into these feelings, she’s also not a naive babe in the woods. “Emperor, I need to ask. Now that we have this time together are we ever going to pick up where we left off or are those days over?” she asks. “Did you want to continue that sort of relationship? I don’t want you to feel obligated that you have to because of a loss of self control on my part in the past.” You say. “Do you regret it then?” “I regret that I have made things unnecessarily complicated for you. I probably just should’ve had you enrolled into the Eye training camp or even the regular army. Would’ve made things a lot easier for the both of us.” “But then I wouldn’t be as good as I am. I wouldn’t be able to serve to my fullest capabilities. You managed to bring out my full potential. I doubt if I would’ve survived this very battle without your personal training. You are my Emperor and I will loyally continue to serve the Empire no matter what. But I need to know how things are going to be in the future so that I may conduct myself accordingly towards you.” A reasonable request. “Decena, it would be a lie to say I don’t feel something for you, but those feelings are tainted with a lot of negative past experiences of my own. Most of which I don’t even want to get into right now, but rest assured my reasons for initiating the more intimate nature of our relationship was more than just simple loneliness and weren’t exactly positive motives. In fact they were downright twisted at times and I don’t think you’re quite aware of some of the things I thought about doing to you. This isn’t even counting the fact that you’re in competition with a ghost to a certain degree and that’s hardly fair to you.” Decena of course knows you’re referring to Alison. She’s probably always known that you still have never completely gotten over her. Not with the way she’s seen you stare at her portrait for long periods of time back when she was at the palace. Decena has her answer. “I…see. Very well my Emperor. I understand that it is time for me to grow up and put aside the silly emotions of a young girl. I shall no longer trouble you with my immature displays of affection or letters but… know I shall continue to… (sniffle) love you in the way that a…” Decena can’t even complete her sentence. She might’ve even known this was a long time coming, but it still doesn’t make things any easier. She reaches out to hug you and you embrace her. She tries to stop herself from completely crying, but she’s struggling with this a lot. “You’ll grow stronger from this and move past it Decena. I know you have it within you to do so.” You say in an attempt to be reassuring, she looks up at you with tears in her eyes. “Can I just make one request, (sniff) my Emperor?” she asks. “What is it?” “Can…for just tonight. I lie with you one last time? We…don’t even have to do anything…I just…if this is going to be it…I want to experience your body next to mine one last time.” While you’re not exactly sure if this is going to make things harder or easier for her, you don’t have it in you to say no at this point. “Of course Decena.” With those words the pair of you lie together one last time. The next day when you wake up Decena is already gone. Not gone from the area, just from your tent and back at her camp probably giving her soldiers orders to move out and head back to the nearest settlement for supplies. “She’ll be fine.” You say to yourself though you don’t know if you’re exactly convinced of it. You suppose you’ll see in the future. And while you know it probably was the “healthiest” thing to do, you’d also be lying to yourself if you aren’t going to miss that part of your relationship with her completely. Who knew that between an army of rampaging beastmen, traitors in your ranks, and a visit from Semra, breaking up with a young woman would be the most emotionally draining? > Year 45 “…and even with your natural gifts and after your training is over in six years, your true service to the Empire will have only just begun. You will all be expected to perform to your fullest capabilities because as Eternals you are to be the very best that the Empire has to offer. And out there you will need to show that to our many enemies so that they never forget it. Duty, loyalty, valor and the will to survive, these are traits I expect to see in all of you for I am always watching. Remember this.” You say as your parting words to the new Eternals. “YES EMPEROR! LONG LIVE THE EMPIRE!” they all say in unison. Brenda tells them to take a brief break while she follows you out of the training center. “You’ve done a very good job with them Brenda.” You say. “Thank you.” Brenda remarks. “No, really. I know I sort of dropped this in your lap, but you’ve really taken the reins on this. I mean I couldn’t have done it better. From what I’ve seen they’re well on their way of becoming an effective fighting force AND you’ve managed to keep most of them alive in the process. Had it been me two thirds of that class probably would’ve been dead by now under my harsh training.” “Ah, but those left alive would probably be more lethal than the ones I’ve trained.” Brenda points out. “Perhaps, but they don’t need to be put through similar rigors that I faced, I just need them to be better than our enemies and loyal to the Empire. From what I’ve seen, I have no doubt that will be the case when they finally come of age.” “Well despite my less unforgiving and more cooperative training methods, I can’t take all the credit for keeping most of them alive, their increased regeneration rates help in that regard. There was many times where I even thought a few of them had suffered fatal injuries only for them to get better given enough time. I believe whatever magic you infused during their tank time increased their regenerative abilities greater than our own.” “Their reflexes are definitely better too. Even at this age, I could see that during the training demonstration. At the very least, they should be on par with Decena in that aspect when they grow up.” “How is your one time pupil doing anyway?” Brenda asks. You hesitate a moment, since you’ve sort of wondered that yourself. You no longer get the letters you once did from Decena which were more expressive. Now she only sends you official battle reports. Obviously she’s dealing with the termination of your intimate relationship in a professional manner and is keeping your current relationship that way. That being the case, you give Brenda the safe answer because that’s genuinely all you know. “Oh, she’s still mostly combating the Torites. While the Battle of the Beasts three years ago pretty much broke their strength in the area, they still aren’t out of it yet. I’d push forward to eradicate them, but with the need for consolidation of our winnings as well as last years purges, we’ve had to halt expansion for the time being. That’s not even counting that the next place I want to turn my attention to are the city states south of the Broki province. I’ve had Eyes infiltrate most of them and they’re infested with svelk.” You say. “Really? Like entire cities of them? I thought they were nomadic.” Brenda says. “Not anymore apparently, but it isn’t actually entire cities, more like key positions of importance in the cities, but even one svelk is an infestation as far as I’m concerned.” You answer. “Surprised you’re not just sending airships to bombard them.” “I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t get them all if I did that. Airships while powerful are slow enough that any svelk would probably get the hell out of there before they even arrived. Besides, I’m not really looking to level the cities. Bombing one perhaps as an example, to get the rest to fall in line, but not all of them.” “Assassination?” “Assassinations would probably work better since the svelk direct such actions against each other on a semi-regular basis, would take a bit of time though since if a lot of them start dying suddenly, they’re going to know something is up and they’ll relocate from the cities. Still, I suppose if we timed it right…hmmm, maybe I’ll talk to Warrick about setting something up; in any case we still need to track down Eldolith. We know she is making her home in the cities, but she is proving to be completely elusive as far as pinning her down. Probably using a system of secret tunnels. Might be time to send in the kobold commandos to start digging around.” You and Brenda finish up your conversation with a couple of off topic subjects, but before you leave she says one last thing. “I know you already thanked me for my work with the new Eternals, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you. Thank you for giving me a new sense of purpose. I know these Eternals’ purpose is to loyally serve the Empire, but I feel like…I dunno…it’s silly.” “No, what?” “I sometimes feel like I’m their mother. I mean I’m not developing attachments to them or anything, but I feel like I’m doing all I can to make sure they survive in this world, because I really DO want most of them to survive. They represent the future of the Empire, and it will fall to them eventually to defend it.” You nod at Brenda’s remark and touch her arm. “And that, is why you were the best one for this job.” You say. “I suppose another reason I’ve been feeling a little more positive lately is the fact that there are now more of us. Eternals, I mean. Our numbers were always so few, but now with these new ones, I don’t feel so alone I guess.” Brenda’s feelings on this are probably related to the loss of her husband as usual, but you can’t fault her for it. If this is something that helps her through the pain, then more power to her. Really you never gave it too much thought that there would be more of “you” around because as far as you’re concerned, “you” were always unique to begin with. You weren’t even supposed to be an Eternal, but here you are. The next bit surprises you though. “Oh and one more thing, the next time you see Warrick tell him, I’m sorry for being angry at him.” Brenda says. You smile. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear it.” You answer and leave. The next few days are actually spent working alongside Warrick to see if some sort of mass assassination attempt of the svelk would actually work. (You also relay Brenda’s message and just as you figured, he’s glad to hear it) “Wait, so some of the inhabitants in these cities are actually former Felkan citizens?” you ask Warrick. “Yes and it looks like some of them have been willingly working with the svelk out of revenge. In fact I now believe that the saboteur that tried to destroy the old Storm was from one of these cities. A couple of the other tight-lipped dissidents we’ve had killed during the last purge I believe were from there too originally.” You shake your head. “Maybe I should just have the cities bombed out of existence after all.” You say with a sigh. “What I don’t understand, is why we’re bumping into them only now. I mean these cities are so far away and the refugee Felkans would’ve not only had to travel through gnoll AND Torite territory at the time, but also the Broki Kingdom. Surely it would’ve been easier to put down roots there.” Warrick says. “Well, who is to say some of them didn’t? You’re only coming across the more radical ones obviously. There may have very well been Felkans that just wanted to get away from the Empire and live a normal life. Granted if those individuals had just accepted Empire rule in the first, they could’ve done so anyway with little change, but that’s a different topic.” You continue. “Also the Broki Kingdom was fairly backwards and having strife of its own, I get the impression that the Felkans just wanted to get as far a way as possible from such things. This journey probably wasn’t without its hazards. Combine that with losing your homeland and anything else that might’ve been personal, it’s not hard to see where their hate would’ve festered to the point where the svelk took advantage of it. The ex Felkans are the tool that the svelk are manipulating. Maybe they don’t have a nation proper anymore, but it’s obvious that the svelk are definitely building the skeleton of one out of these cities states and they see us as the biggest threat to their new endeavors.” “It isn’t just the svelk and these militant ex-Felkans we’ve discovered though, we recently came across something new. Something I know you’re going to want to hear before proceeding with any plan.” Warrick says. Warrick tell you that there is another community but far enough away to be fairly isolated from the rest of the city-states in the area, in fact the community makes its home in a lone mountain. “So…what they live in a cave?” “Well not exactly. The Eyes have not been there, but apparently there is a whole city built into the mountain. Basically similar to what the derro do underground I guess, but they aren’t derro. They’re gnomes.” “Gnomes?” “Yes, and from what information we have gathered, they’re also from the former Felkan Kingdom. The funny thing is, they don’t seem to have much contact with the rest of the city states. We know that the gnomes trade with the various cities from time to time and we know that there must be humans living in this mountain since those are the ones that do the trading. The place is called New Dessle.” “Hrm. Name of the former Felkan capital. So do you think they’re working with the svelk in this conspiracy?” you ask. “We don’t know. Like I said, all we know is that they trade sometimes, it seems to be mostly minerals and it’s fairly infrequent. If they are in league, they’re keeping it fairly secret from anyone.” Gnomes. That puts a slightly different spin on everything. Between the svelk and the gnomes, you’ve got two of the most manipulative and smartest races working together to possibly destroy you. Regardless of whether or not the gnomes are actually involved, it still would be best to gather more information, perhaps even more so. “Until we’ve got more information, we’re going to assume the gnomes are just the occasional trading partners. While MAYBE they’re indirectly helping by trading material to these svelk influenced cities, I’d rather we deal with the immediate suspects first. Besides attacking a damn mountain isn’t exactly in the budget right now.” You say. So you proceed with your plan. You keep the Eyes spying and gathering information and keep your own internal security tight. You also start having kobolds digging tunnels under the cities. A few weeks pass and you receive a message. A human rider dropped off a box in a village in the Broki province. Before riding off he stated to the nearby peasants that they needed to deliver that to their Emperor. The box was obviously leaking blood and when one of the braver soldiers opened it, there were several eyes inside. A bloody note attached stated a warning from “Domina” Eldolith that all spies from the Empire will be killed and any further unwanted aggression on the “Confederacy of Free Cities” would be an act of war. Never mind the fact that Eldolith started this by trying to assassinate you in the first place. “She can’t possibly be serious in taking us on. She may have discovered some of our spies, but we already know full well what her strength is and even with our reduced manpower right now we could take on the entire force of this so called Confederacy of Free Cities.” Warrick remarks. “Oh I’m sure she know that. She’s backed into a corner and is doing typical svelk grand standing hoping it will work. To be quite honest I figured she’d eventually discover some of our spies eventually. The svelk aren’t stupid, but they served their purpose in information gathering and they probably distracted the svelk from possibly discovering our kobolds running around underground. You can start pulling out the rest of your Eyes, we’ll be attacking the cities soon. With any luck we won’t let a single svelk escape and we can wipe out the remainder of the ex-Felkans as well.” You say. Kivan is nearby probably waiting to get your attention for some domestic issue. Normally he just waits patiently, but this time he speaks. “Forgive my presumption my Emperor as I know war is your area of expertise, but what about the gnomes?” he asks. “What about them? Our spies still have not uncovered anything that would suggest that they’re helping. Even the material that they’re trading couldn’t be considered dangerous for the most part.” Warrick answers. “The gnomes will be dealt with later, Kivan. No need to worry.” You say. Kivan puts aside his scrolls and addresses you directly. “I have no doubt that will be the case my Emperor, however it is my concern that the Empire not take any more potential unnecessary losses. The Felkan War took a heavy toll on the Empire. A toll that was not necessary had our former Emperor acted more quickly on the matter. The same could be said for the Shadow uprising.” “Watch your tone! YOUR current Emperor AND I both served to quell those incidents! Where were you? Counting beans? I suggest you stick to what you know advisor!” Warrick says raising his voice. “You are correct Sightmaster, I AM an advisor. And as I said it is true, I am more of an expert in the mundane domestic affairs that keep the Empire running, I also have to deal with the effects these wars have on such things. If you attack now there will be hardship on the people, BUT our people are used to such things. What is a little more troubling is when unexpected problems pop up or long drawn out affairs.” “So what are you exactly saying Kivan?” you ask. “I’m saying that the gnomes can’t be trusted to live. When they rebelled against the Empire and ran away they managed to manipulate a collection of simple villages and towns and turn it into the Felkan Kingdom. Not only that, but they managed to build it up to the point where it actually surpassed the Empire technology wise and all of this was done in a fairly short period of time.” You continue to listen while Kivan expresses his point of view on this matter. “Perhaps the gnomes aren’t working with the svelk, but that’s not to say they aren’t still working against us. I can’t believe that they wouldn’t harbor some sort of revenge. I mean the ex-Felkans obviously do and all they lost were their homeland. The gnomes were systematically exterminated. I just believe that leaving the gnomes for later is going to give them more time to build up their defenses and just make it harder for the Empire to wipe them out in the future. Why take the chance?” Kivan does actually make a pragmatic point. While taking the city-states isn’t going to be too much of a problem, it’s still going to take time and manpower. Your main concern with them is making sure you get all the svelk (especially Eldolith) inside. Consolidating, settling, and rooting out problem people will all take time as well. And while you’re doing all that, the gnomes could be sitting in their mountain building some weapon (or weapons) of imaginable power. They already built an entire city in a mountain, who knows what the escaped gnomes have been working on since their exodus? > You attack the mountain The gnomes do need to be dealt with, the sooner the better. You agree with Kivan. “Well Kivan, if this turns out successfully you may get promoted to be a war advisor.” You say. “I’d certainly be honored, but I believe my talents are still better served on the domestic issues. This was just an extension of those concerns.” He says. “Okay, so how do you want to handle this? Because if we are going to attack that mountain, we’re going to have to still deal with those city states.” Warrick asks you. “Those are still going to be no problem, we’re going to overrun those and then move on to New Dessle. We probably won’t need the airships at all for the city-states; we’ll just handle it conventionally. And while we’re taking care of those, I’ll send the airships to attack New Dessle. Attacking a mountain is going to be no easy feat, but with the airships we could at least blow enough holes in it to cause not only external damage but more importantly internal structural damage that could hopefully cause portions of it to come crashing down on their heads. Soften them up at least until our armies to arrive.” Warrick goes on to ask which offensive you’re going to be personally overseeing and if you want Decena’s army called in to help. You tell Warrick that Decena still need to concentrate on mopping up Torite resistance lest they somehow regroup. And as you said, you don’t anticipate many problems from the city-states anyway. As for which offensive you’re going to oversee, you’re not sure. Before this gnome business came up you were going to just oversee the fall of the city-states, but with the gnomes now being attacked, you wonder if you shouldn’t be there to oversee that instead. You then remember Warrick wanting to be involved in some of the frontline stuff recently. “Well Warrick how would you like to over see the destruction of the city states? You’ve always said you wanted more work outside that office and get back in the middle of things, well here’s a big thing to get right in the middle of Warrick.” ” Warrick is surprised and honored by your decision. “I…I thank you my Emperor and it will be my honor to command such a task. Does this mean you’ll be travelling to New Dessel?” “Yes, I mean as much as I’d like to personally see the destruction of the svelk and ex-Felkans I believe the gnomes are a bigger threat and as such my attendance in our first attack against them is in order. I do request however that if at all possible, bring that bitch Eldolith to me in chains if possible. If not, dead is just as good.” “I think that can certainly be arranged, my Emperor.” Invasion of the Confederacy of the Free Cities. (Which you didn’t even know that’s what this little group of city-states was even called until Eldolith’s message) is prepared. You know Warrick has the skill to lead an army and will not falter at this task; you just hope that he will indeed be able to capture Eldolith alive. As for you, this will be your first time boarding one of these airships. Since you had that purge of traitors (and potential traitors) you’re not so apprehensive about boarding one of them now. The Storm II is a grand ship and equipped with the best and latest weapons. The other five ships coming with you are equipped in a similar manner. You figure while the gnomes will certainly have cannons of their own, you’ll at least be able to protect the Storm II with your magic somewhat. Eventually you are on your way and the first thing you fly over is your army on the march toward the Confederacy’s territory. The next thing you fly over is the Confederacy’s territory itself where you see small groups of troops desperately preparing for the invasion. When you fly overhead you can only imagine the excessive fear they must feel followed by the confusion when you by pass them entirely. The fact that you didn’t attack might even worry them more, since now they’ll wonder if you’ll be coming back. Your air fleet continues to fly towards New Dessel which looms in the distance. Part of you wonders just how much of a fight the gnomes will put up and how much damage you’ll actually be able to do. You have it set up though for the airships to signal each other on where to fire so coordination will not be a problem. When you arrive before the mountain, all the airships stop and prepare for your next command. To be quite honest, while the mountain is big enough that peak still looms above your fleet’s current height the mountain is far from being something as impressive as the ones you’ve seen in Rask. Concentrated fire in a few locations should probably have the desired effect you want, and if all goes well, you might get closer to drop a few bombs. “Well we didn’t come here to sight see this marvel of nature, let’s get on with it blowing it up.” You remark and tell your crew to start signaling the other ships. Within moments, all the airships are concentrating their fire on particular place on the mountain. Take a while, but you definitely start causing damage as boulders, dirt, rocks and debris all begin to rumble and fall causing the start of a rockslide in one area of the mountain. You manage to do this on two more sections of the mountain before you actually start encountering any kind of resistance. Several “windows” in the mountain open up revealing cannons, which fire upon your ships. It really isn’t too bad though. “Start telling the other ships to fire at the cannons. Even if their mountain city seems to be holding up from the inside, we can still deprive them of their defenses.” You command. A few minutes after you give this command you sense a change in the air. Almost like that of lightning storm. You even begin to feel a little static… Suddenly a flash of light eminates from the top of the peak and huge bolt of lightning hits one of your airships to the left causing it to explode spectacularly. It didn’t get hit and slowly make a fiery descent towards the ground, it actually exploded. “SHIT!” you suddenly shout, probably along with several of your crew. You then turn your attention to the shining piece of metal on top of the mountain peak where the lightning blast came from. “EVERYONE TURN AROUND! RETREAT!” you shout and tell your crew to signal the remaining airships to do likewise. You’re a sitting duck and you know it right now. You can’t put up a barrier large enough to cover the entire airship, so as your airship begins to turn you attempt to directly aim your own magic bolts in the direction of the gnome’s apparent “lightning rod” weapon. Your magic hits around and even directly on target, but it just isn’t enough to destroy it. You then have that feeling of electricity in the air again. Your hair begins to stand up and this time thanks to your attempt to destroy the rod, the gnomes direct their next blast towards the Storm II. You see a bright flash and feel a brief sizzle throughout your entire body and then nothing at all. And you never do get the pleasure of executing Eldolith yourself when Warrick captures her alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 45 “…and even with your natural gifts and after your training is over in six years, your true service to the Empire will have only just begun. You will all be expected to perform to your fullest capabilities because as Eternals you are to be the very best that the Empire has to offer. And out there you will need to show that to our many enemies so that they never forget it. Duty, loyalty, valor and the will to survive, these are traits I expect to see in all of you for I am always watching. Remember this.” You say as your parting words to the new Eternals. “YES EMPEROR! LONG LIVE THE EMPIRE!” they all say in unison. Brenda tells them to take a brief break while she follows you out of the training center. “You’ve done a very good job with them Brenda.” You say. “Thank you.” Brenda remarks. “No, really. I know I sort of dropped this in your lap, but you’ve really taken the reins on this. I mean I couldn’t have done it better. From what I’ve seen they’re well on their way of becoming an effective fighting force AND you’ve managed to keep most of them alive in the process. Had it been me two thirds of that class probably would’ve been dead by now under my harsh training.” “Ah, but those left alive would probably be more lethal than the ones I’ve trained.” Brenda points out. “Perhaps, but they don’t need to be put through similar rigors that I faced, I just need them to be better than our enemies and loyal to the Empire. From what I’ve seen, I have no doubt that will be the case when they finally come of age.” “Well despite my less unforgiving and more cooperative training methods, I can’t take all the credit for keeping most of them alive, their increased regeneration rates help in that regard. There was many times where I even thought a few of them had suffered fatal injuries only for them to get better given enough time. I believe whatever magic you infused during their tank time increased their regenerative abilities greater than our own.” “Their reflexes are definitely better too. Even at this age, I could see that during the training demonstration. At the very least, they should be on par with Decena in that aspect when they grow up.” “How is your one time pupil doing anyway?” Brenda asks. You hesitate a moment, since you’ve sort of wondered that yourself. You no longer get the letters you once did from Decena which were more expressive. Now she only sends you official battle reports. Obviously she’s dealing with the termination of your intimate relationship in a professional manner and is keeping your current relationship that way. That being the case, you give Brenda the safe answer because that’s genuinely all you know. “Oh, she’s still mostly combating the Torites. While the Battle of the Beasts three years ago pretty much broke their strength in the area, they still aren’t out of it yet. I’d push forward to eradicate them, but with the need for consolidation of our winnings as well as last years purges, we’ve had to halt expansion for the time being. That’s not even counting that the next place I want to turn my attention to are the city states south of the Broki province. I’ve had Eyes infiltrate most of them and they’re infested with svelk.” You say. “Really? Like entire cities of them? I thought they were nomadic.” Brenda says. “Not anymore apparently, but it isn’t actually entire cities, more like key positions of importance in the cities, but even one svelk is an infestation as far as I’m concerned.” You answer. “Surprised you’re not just sending airships to bombard them.” “I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t get them all if I did that. Airships while powerful are slow enough that any svelk would probably get the hell out of there before they even arrived. Besides, I’m not really looking to level the cities. Bombing one perhaps as an example, to get the rest to fall in line, but not all of them.” “Assassination?” “Assassinations would probably work better since the svelk direct such actions against each other on a semi-regular basis, would take a bit of time though since if a lot of them start dying suddenly, they’re going to know something is up and they’ll relocate from the cities. Still, I suppose if we timed it right…hmmm, maybe I’ll talk to Warrick about setting something up; in any case we still need to track down Eldolith. We know she is making her home in the cities, but she is proving to be completely elusive as far as pinning her down. Probably using a system of secret tunnels. Might be time to send in the kobold commandos to start digging around.” You and Brenda finish up your conversation with a couple of off topic subjects, but before you leave she says one last thing. “I know you already thanked me for my work with the new Eternals, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you. Thank you for giving me a new sense of purpose. I know these Eternals’ purpose is to loyally serve the Empire, but I feel like…I dunno…it’s silly.” “No, what?” “I sometimes feel like I’m their mother. I mean I’m not developing attachments to them or anything, but I feel like I’m doing all I can to make sure they survive in this world, because I really DO want most of them to survive. They represent the future of the Empire, and it will fall to them eventually to defend it.” You nod at Brenda’s remark and touch her arm. “And that, is why you were the best one for this job.” You say. “I suppose another reason I’ve been feeling a little more positive lately is the fact that there are now more of us. Eternals, I mean. Our numbers were always so few, but now with these new ones, I don’t feel so alone I guess.” Brenda’s feelings on this are probably related to the loss of her husband as usual, but you can’t fault her for it. If this is something that helps her through the pain, then more power to her. Really you never gave it too much thought that there would be more of “you” around because as far as you’re concerned, “you” were always unique to begin with. You weren’t even supposed to be an Eternal, but here you are. The next bit surprises you though. “Oh and one more thing, the next time you see Warrick tell him, I’m sorry for being angry at him.” Brenda says. You smile. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear it.” You answer and leave. The next few days are actually spent working alongside Warrick to see if some sort of mass assassination attempt of the svelk would actually work. (You also relay Brenda’s message and just as you figured, he’s glad to hear it) “Wait, so some of the inhabitants in these cities are actually former Felkan citizens?” you ask Warrick. “Yes and it looks like some of them have been willingly working with the svelk out of revenge. In fact I now believe that the saboteur that tried to destroy the old Storm was from one of these cities. A couple of the other tight-lipped dissidents we’ve had killed during the last purge I believe were from there too originally.” You shake your head. “Maybe I should just have the cities bombed out of existence after all.” You say with a sigh. “What I don’t understand, is why we’re bumping into them only now. I mean these cities are so far away and the refugee Felkans would’ve not only had to travel through gnoll AND Torite territory at the time, but also the Broki Kingdom. Surely it would’ve been easier to put down roots there.” Warrick says. “Well, who is to say some of them didn’t? You’re only coming across the more radical ones obviously. There may have very well been Felkans that just wanted to get away from the Empire and live a normal life. Granted if those individuals had just accepted Empire rule in the first, they could’ve done so anyway with little change, but that’s a different topic.” You continue. “Also the Broki Kingdom was fairly backwards and having strife of its own, I get the impression that the Felkans just wanted to get as far a way as possible from such things. This journey probably wasn’t without its hazards. Combine that with losing your homeland and anything else that might’ve been personal, it’s not hard to see where their hate would’ve festered to the point where the svelk took advantage of it. The ex Felkans are the tool that the svelk are manipulating. Maybe they don’t have a nation proper anymore, but it’s obvious that the svelk are definitely building the skeleton of one out of these cities states and they see us as the biggest threat to their new endeavors.” “It isn’t just the svelk and these militant ex-Felkans we’ve discovered though, we recently came across something new. Something I know you’re going to want to hear before proceeding with any plan.” Warrick says. Warrick tell you that there is another community but far enough away to be fairly isolated from the rest of the city-states in the area, in fact the community makes its home in a lone mountain. “So…what they live in a cave?” “Well not exactly. The Eyes have not been there, but apparently there is a whole city built into the mountain. Basically similar to what the derro do underground I guess, but they aren’t derro. They’re gnomes.” “Gnomes?” “Yes, and from what information we have gathered, they’re also from the former Felkan Kingdom. The funny thing is, they don’t seem to have much contact with the rest of the city states. We know that the gnomes trade with the various cities from time to time and we know that there must be humans living in this mountain since those are the ones that do the trading. The place is called New Dessle.” “Hrm. Name of the former Felkan capital. So do you think they’re working with the svelk in this conspiracy?” you ask. “We don’t know. Like I said, all we know is that they trade sometimes, it seems to be mostly minerals and it’s fairly infrequent. If they are in league, they’re keeping it fairly secret from anyone.” Gnomes. That puts a slightly different spin on everything. Between the svelk and the gnomes, you’ve got two of the most manipulative and smartest races working together to possibly destroy you. Regardless of whether or not the gnomes are actually involved, it still would be best to gather more information, perhaps even more so. “Until we’ve got more information, we’re going to assume the gnomes are just the occasional trading partners. While MAYBE they’re indirectly helping by trading material to these svelk influenced cities, I’d rather we deal with the immediate suspects first. Besides attacking a damn mountain isn’t exactly in the budget right now.” You say. So you proceed with your plan. You keep the Eyes spying and gathering information and keep your own internal security tight. You also start having kobolds digging tunnels under the cities. A few weeks pass and you receive a message. A human rider dropped off a box in a village in the Broki province. Before riding off he stated to the nearby peasants that they needed to deliver that to their Emperor. The box was obviously leaking blood and when one of the braver soldiers opened it, there were several eyes inside. A bloody note attached stated a warning from “Domina” Eldolith that all spies from the Empire will be killed and any further unwanted aggression on the “Confederacy of Free Cities” would be an act of war. Never mind the fact that Eldolith started this by trying to assassinate you in the first place. “She can’t possibly be serious in taking us on. She may have discovered some of our spies, but we already know full well what her strength is and even with our reduced manpower right now we could take on the entire force of this so called Confederacy of Free Cities.” Warrick remarks. “Oh I’m sure she know that. She’s backed into a corner and is doing typical svelk grand standing hoping it will work. To be quite honest I figured she’d eventually discover some of our spies eventually. The svelk aren’t stupid, but they served their purpose in information gathering and they probably distracted the svelk from possibly discovering our kobolds running around underground. You can start pulling out the rest of your Eyes, we’ll be attacking the cities soon. With any luck we won’t let a single svelk escape and we can wipe out the remainder of the ex-Felkans as well.” You say. Kivan is nearby probably waiting to get your attention for some domestic issue. Normally he just waits patiently, but this time he speaks. “Forgive my presumption my Emperor as I know war is your area of expertise, but what about the gnomes?” he asks. “What about them? Our spies still have not uncovered anything that would suggest that they’re helping. Even the material that they’re trading couldn’t be considered dangerous for the most part.” Warrick answers. “The gnomes will be dealt with later, Kivan. No need to worry.” You say. Kivan puts aside his scrolls and addresses you directly. “I have no doubt that will be the case my Emperor, however it is my concern that the Empire not take any more potential unnecessary losses. The Felkan War took a heavy toll on the Empire. A toll that was not necessary had our former Emperor acted more quickly on the matter. The same could be said for the Shadow uprising.” “Watch your tone! YOUR current Emperor AND I both served to quell those incidents! Where were you? Counting beans? I suggest you stick to what you know advisor!” Warrick says raising his voice. “You are correct Sightmaster, I AM an advisor. And as I said it is true, I am more of an expert in the mundane domestic affairs that keep the Empire running, I also have to deal with the effects these wars have on such things. If you attack now there will be hardship on the people, BUT our people are used to such things. What is a little more troubling is when unexpected problems pop up or long drawn out affairs.” “So what are you exactly saying Kivan?” you ask. “I’m saying that the gnomes can’t be trusted to live. When they rebelled against the Empire and ran away they managed to manipulate a collection of simple villages and towns and turn it into the Felkan Kingdom. Not only that, but they managed to build it up to the point where it actually surpassed the Empire technology wise and all of this was done in a fairly short period of time.” You continue to listen while Kivan expresses his point of view on this matter. “Perhaps the gnomes aren’t working with the svelk, but that’s not to say they aren’t still working against us. I can’t believe that they wouldn’t harbor some sort of revenge. I mean the ex-Felkans obviously do and all they lost were their homeland. The gnomes were systematically exterminated. I just believe that leaving the gnomes for later is going to give them more time to build up their defenses and just make it harder for the Empire to wipe them out in the future. Why take the chance?” Kivan does actually make a pragmatic point. While taking the city-states isn’t going to be too much of a problem, it’s still going to take time and manpower. Your main concern with them is making sure you get all the svelk (especially Eldolith) inside. Consolidating, settling, and rooting out problem people will all take time as well. And while you’re doing all that, the gnomes could be sitting in their mountain building some weapon (or weapons) of imaginable power. They already built an entire city in a mountain, who knows what the escaped gnomes have been working on since their exodus? > You just focus on the city-states Kivan may mean well, but you’ve got more experience in this matter. In fact you’re going to just find out what’s going on right now. “Warrick, we know where New Dessle is correct?” you ask. “Yes, it’s the only large mountain south of the city states. I imagine the entrance is probably hidden, but I’m sure the kobolds could tunnel through with enough time.” “That won’t be necessary. I’m sure the gnomes have several lookout points and will open up when they see me. I’m going to New Dessle.” At this point Kivan and Warrick are apprehensive about that idea. “Emperor, you can’t seriously mean going there by yourself!” Kivan exclaims. “I agree, I mean if this is some sort of diplomatic mission you should at least take a retinue with you and even then I’d be against such a thing.” Warrick adds. “I never said I was going alone, you’re coming with me, Warrick. I figure the two of us should be more than adequate to take on a mountain of gnomes if need be.” This remark is met with silence. “What? You’ve always said you wanted more work outside that office and get back in the middle of things, well here’s a big thing to get right in the middle of Warrick.” You say which causes Warrick to bow his head and put his fist to his chest. “Apologies my Emperor. This offer was just very sudden and I was taken by surprise. Of course I shall accompany you and whatever we face shall be together. It will be an honor as always.” “It is your choice my Emperor, but I still cannot encourage this idea.” Kivan remarks. “Well your concern for my well being is noted. Come on Warrick we need to get underway as soon as possible.” You say. While you and Warrick prepare for your journey you also take the opportunity to start setting the stage for the attack on the Confederacy of the Free Cities. (Which you didn’t even know that’s what this little group of city-states was even called until Eldolith’s message). The only potential danger of the journey is the fact you’re going to have to ride through the Confederacy “territory” and while you’re fairly certain you’d be able to handle whatever they send at you, you don’t want to give them anymore reason to run off before you’re ready to attack, because you know that’s going to be the first thing the svelk do. They did with the Broki Kingdom after all. You and Warrick have a more or less uneventful journey however since you stick to the off beaten track and away from the cities patrol areas. The pair of you mostly pass the time speaking about matters of the Empire and this situation with the svelk and what to possibly expect with the gnomes. You do get the idea that Warrick is pretty happy about going on this trip. Eventually you get closer to the mountain, which no longer looms in the distance, but instead stands towering above you. It’s not the size of the ones in Rask, but it’s big enough that if the gnomes have built a city inside the thing, it would have to be quite large indeed. “Well, we’re here, any idea how to get inside?” Warrick asks. “I figure I’d start shouting at the gnomes until they let me in.” you say. “And if they don’t?” “I guess I’ll start smashing holes into the side of the mountain with magic and let myself in.” “And maybe you better not, Eternal Emperor. Powerful you may be, I guarantee that even you would not take this mountain all by yourself, but I get the impression you’re not here for that.” A voice says coming from above you. You look up and see that several holes in the mountain have opened up with the barrels of rifles all pointing at you. And that’s just the ones you’re seeing, you imagine they probably got more. “Right you are gnome. I’m here to discuss the possible future of our relationship. So how about you open this mountain up and let us talk.” You shout. “I have a better idea, how about you get the hell out of here before we blow your fucking head off!” a different voice shouts. “We should just do it now! Why didn’t you let me shoot him as he approached!?” another voice says. “Glenmore! Valen! Shut the hell up! Apologies Emperor, but as you might expect we’re not exactly trusting of the Empire given our history with it. In fact we’re not very trusting of anyone nowadays.” “Well I can certainly understand that.” You remark. “I thought you might. Hold on let me come to you.” The voice says which is followed by a lot of mumbling and whispering. “This isn’t exactly a good position we’re in.” Warrick says. “Nonsense, we already got one to come out and talk. Probably a leader. We’re already making progress.” You say. You wait for about ten minutes still noticing that the rifles are still fixed on you. “Okay here I am, now we can talk.” A voice says and you turn around to see a gnome with a full face of gray facial hair. Typical of older examples of his race. He is dressed in fine (if dirty) clothing. “Hmmm, it would appear you must also have a system of tunnels and secret doors in the ground surrounding this mountain too.” You say. “Indeed. Hate living like a derro at times, but with all the kobolds running around north lately…well best to be safe right?” “Looks like you’ve thought of everything…” you say not knowing the gnome’s name. “Oh, the name’s Klemto. Klemto Zookwinkle. But let’s get to it, I assume you’re here to see if we’re willing to surrender without a fight?” “Not exactly, though that is a good subject to discuss later. What I was really here to ask is if you were in league with the svelk.” “Oh goodness no! We trade with them at times, but only rarely and never anything they could use as a weapon! I believe we’d all sooner trust the Empire before we’d trust the dark elves. At least the Empire is up front about wanting to exterminate us.” You stop Klemto right there. “Okay, first of all there is no plan to exterminate the gnomes.” “Could’ve fooled me given the information we’ve heard. Waging a genocidal war on the Torites. Even bombing other human nations into submission. Now you’re planning on annihilating the svelk, though I can’t say they’re the most sympathetic of beings. I know who you are Eternal. You were a general in the Felkan War. The old emperor’s right hand. In fact you even led captured gnomes and them to that infamous death camp called Gnome’s Home.” “I did that once.” “Oh, he did it once! And that makes everything better? Was that a bad attempt at an apology?” “Of course not since I have nothing to apologize for. I was merely following orders. You want to know what I really think of your people? Nothing. You’re clever and you invent useful things. That’s it. I think your manipulation of the Felkans to protect yourselves was a useful survival strategy and one to be admired in some ways. Just like your mountain city here. I don’t have some burning great hatred for any of your kind. Personally I thought it was a waste of resources to ship you all off to Gnome’s Home just to go through the unnecessary process of banishing your souls to oblivion. But that’s what the Emperor wanted so that’s what happened.” Klemto lights up some sort of pipe as you talk and takes a puff before speaking. “So just following orders eh? Sounds about right. From what we know of you, you were and apparently still are an emotionless individual. That’s probably what makes you scarier than your former Emperor. At least he had an emotion. An irrational one, but it was something.” “Oh he had a reason. And it wasn’t just the gnomes rebelling. Your last name, Zookwinkle isn’t unknown to me gnome.” You say. You stare at Klemto and he stares back. He instinctively knows that you know something concerning a female member of his family being involved with the Emperor in some way. Warrick just stands by looking a bit confused, but mostly more concerned about the guns overhead. “Heh, well grandma always did do what she thought was best for survival.” Klemto remarks. “Well I suggest you follow in her footsteps then and do the same.” “Don’t think you’re my type.” Klemto jokes nervously. “Amusing, but you know what I mean.” You say seriously. Klemto wipes his forehead and begins puffing away again. “Look, we just want to be left alone. I mean do you really need us under your thumb too even with the countless slaves and subjects you already have?” “Well since you bring it up, yes. If you’re under my rule, I can keep a closer eye on you. Not to mention your skills would be of great use to the Empire once again.” You answer. “We were once under the old emperor’s rule too. You see how well that worked out.” Klemto remarks. “He also was blinded by love at the time and as you pointed out, I am the emotionless one. His hatred of your people also caused him to make many mistakes. If you betray me in some way, rest assured I won’t bother going through some elaborate process of torturing you and destroying your souls. I’ll just have you run down and slaughtered wherever you may run to. Where you go in the afterlife is your own affair, but here in the land of the living, that’s my domain.” You say with a cold tone. Klemto is now contemplating the consequences of what may happen if he and his people try to resist when you eventually do come to stake claim on New Dessel. He’s pondering if they can kill you now before it even comes to that. It’s obviously that he doesn’t think they can or else they would’ve done it long before now. Klemto and the gnomes aren’t stupid, they know that the stories of what abilities you really possess are probably exaggerated, however that old fear that still lingers from their treatment by Casimir mixed with what they DO know what you’re capable of is still enough to stay their hand. And it is this fear that is making this all work in your favor. Just like you knew it would. Had the roles been reversed, you wouldn’t have hesitated. You would’ve killed yourself with a volley of rifle blasts and more as soon as you were in range. After pacing a bit, Klemto finally speaks again. “I’m going to have to talk this over with the rest of the council and while that’s more of a formality, most of them aren’t going to be happy... (Sigh) Okay, here it goes. We will capitulate to Empire rule and we’ll pay tribute. But we must remain in this mountain. Whatever it is that you need from us to serve the Empire, it will have to be here or at least within the area. Now if some individual wants to leave and help elsewhere in the Empire, then that’s his decision. But at no point will our people be forced to leave if they don’t want to. Also no other Empire citizens may enter this mountain either unless we allow it. This includes the army.” Klemto says. “Hah! You must be joking.” You interrupt. “I’m serious. Now I know you’ll need to keep an eye on us as you say, well your Eyes will be allowed in. As many as you want, but I assure you that it won’t be necessary since there will not be any attempts at betrayal.” While it would appear that Klemto is willing to capitulate, there are a lot of stipulations he’s making. Stipulations that imply he thinks he’s in the position to make. > You walk away now Without another word you cast a protective barrier around you and Warrick, which startles Klemto and definitely causes shouting from the other gnomes until Klemto waves them down. “Don’t worry gnome. My intention is not to attack you now as you are indeed correct that it would be stupid to attack a mountain all by myself. However your stipulations are presumptuous and foolish. I made this trip for YOUR benefit, not mine and you have squandered it with unreasonable demands.” Klemto stands silent. “I shall return to finish off the Confederacy of the Free Cities and then at some point we’ll pick this up again except I will not be so reasonable next time. Let us leave Warrick.” As Warrick and you leave, Warrick asks you a question. “I thought they’d be shooting at us by now.” “They know it’s futile. Besides, even if they did, my barrier is more than enough to deflect bullets. Used it quite a bit during the Felkan War as you…” Before you can finish your sentence suddenly a huge blast of lightning from above hits the ground right near you. You’re protected of course by the barrier, but it’s so unexpected and startling that it actually causes you and Warrick to lose balance and unfortunately you to lose your concentration for a brief moment and your barrier goes down. “NOW!” you hear Klemto shout, while you’re still clearing the cobwebs. Several gnomes armed with repeating rifles pop up out of the ground and fire upon you. Warrick is struck in the head and killed instantly. You are hit in the body enough times to feel the pain of each bit of hot lead going in ripping up your insides and coming out the other end. Then much like your now dead brother in arms, you are hit in the head and killed leaving nothing behind but a bloody bullet ridden body with brains leaking out uselessly into the soil.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Kivan may mean well, but you’ve got more experience in this matter. In fact you’re going to just find out what’s going on right now. “Warrick, we know where New Dessle is correct?” you ask. “Yes, it’s the only large mountain south of the city states. I imagine the entrance is probably hidden, but I’m sure the kobolds could tunnel through with enough time.” “That won’t be necessary. I’m sure the gnomes have several lookout points and will open up when they see me. I’m going to New Dessle.” At this point Kivan and Warrick are apprehensive about that idea. “Emperor, you can’t seriously mean going there by yourself!” Kivan exclaims. “I agree, I mean if this is some sort of diplomatic mission you should at least take a retinue with you and even then I’d be against such a thing.” Warrick adds. “I never said I was going alone, you’re coming with me, Warrick. I figure the two of us should be more than adequate to take on a mountain of gnomes if need be.” This remark is met with silence. “What? You’ve always said you wanted more work outside that office and get back in the middle of things, well here’s a big thing to get right in the middle of Warrick.” You say which causes Warrick to bow his head and put his fist to his chest. “Apologies my Emperor. This offer was just very sudden and I was taken by surprise. Of course I shall accompany you and whatever we face shall be together. It will be an honor as always.” “It is your choice my Emperor, but I still cannot encourage this idea.” Kivan remarks. “Well your concern for my well being is noted. Come on Warrick we need to get underway as soon as possible.” You say. While you and Warrick prepare for your journey you also take the opportunity to start setting the stage for the attack on the Confederacy of the Free Cities. (Which you didn’t even know that’s what this little group of city-states was even called until Eldolith’s message). The only potential danger of the journey is the fact you’re going to have to ride through the Confederacy “territory” and while you’re fairly certain you’d be able to handle whatever they send at you, you don’t want to give them anymore reason to run off before you’re ready to attack, because you know that’s going to be the first thing the svelk do. They did with the Broki Kingdom after all. You and Warrick have a more or less uneventful journey however since you stick to the off beaten track and away from the cities patrol areas. The pair of you mostly pass the time speaking about matters of the Empire and this situation with the svelk and what to possibly expect with the gnomes. You do get the idea that Warrick is pretty happy about going on this trip. Eventually you get closer to the mountain, which no longer looms in the distance, but instead stands towering above you. It’s not the size of the ones in Rask, but it’s big enough that if the gnomes have built a city inside the thing, it would have to be quite large indeed. “Well, we’re here, any idea how to get inside?” Warrick asks. “I figure I’d start shouting at the gnomes until they let me in.” you say. “And if they don’t?” “I guess I’ll start smashing holes into the side of the mountain with magic and let myself in.” “And maybe you better not, Eternal Emperor. Powerful you may be, I guarantee that even you would not take this mountain all by yourself, but I get the impression you’re not here for that.” A voice says coming from above you. You look up and see that several holes in the mountain have opened up with the barrels of rifles all pointing at you. And that’s just the ones you’re seeing, you imagine they probably got more. “Right you are gnome. I’m here to discuss the possible future of our relationship. So how about you open this mountain up and let us talk.” You shout. “I have a better idea, how about you get the hell out of here before we blow your fucking head off!” a different voice shouts. “We should just do it now! Why didn’t you let me shoot him as he approached!?” another voice says. “Glenmore! Valen! Shut the hell up! Apologies Emperor, but as you might expect we’re not exactly trusting of the Empire given our history with it. In fact we’re not very trusting of anyone nowadays.” “Well I can certainly understand that.” You remark. “I thought you might. Hold on let me come to you.” The voice says which is followed by a lot of mumbling and whispering. “This isn’t exactly a good position we’re in.” Warrick says. “Nonsense, we already got one to come out and talk. Probably a leader. We’re already making progress.” You say. You wait for about ten minutes still noticing that the rifles are still fixed on you. “Okay here I am, now we can talk.” A voice says and you turn around to see a gnome with a full face of gray facial hair. Typical of older examples of his race. He is dressed in fine (if dirty) clothing. “Hmmm, it would appear you must also have a system of tunnels and secret doors in the ground surrounding this mountain too.” You say. “Indeed. Hate living like a derro at times, but with all the kobolds running around north lately…well best to be safe right?” “Looks like you’ve thought of everything…” you say not knowing the gnome’s name. “Oh, the name’s Klemto. Klemto Zookwinkle. But let’s get to it, I assume you’re here to see if we’re willing to surrender without a fight?” “Not exactly, though that is a good subject to discuss later. What I was really here to ask is if you were in league with the svelk.” “Oh goodness no! We trade with them at times, but only rarely and never anything they could use as a weapon! I believe we’d all sooner trust the Empire before we’d trust the dark elves. At least the Empire is up front about wanting to exterminate us.” You stop Klemto right there. “Okay, first of all there is no plan to exterminate the gnomes.” “Could’ve fooled me given the information we’ve heard. Waging a genocidal war on the Torites. Even bombing other human nations into submission. Now you’re planning on annihilating the svelk, though I can’t say they’re the most sympathetic of beings. I know who you are Eternal. You were a general in the Felkan War. The old emperor’s right hand. In fact you even led captured gnomes and them to that infamous death camp called Gnome’s Home.” “I did that once.” “Oh, he did it once! And that makes everything better? Was that a bad attempt at an apology?” “Of course not since I have nothing to apologize for. I was merely following orders. You want to know what I really think of your people? Nothing. You’re clever and you invent useful things. That’s it. I think your manipulation of the Felkans to protect yourselves was a useful survival strategy and one to be admired in some ways. Just like your mountain city here. I don’t have some burning great hatred for any of your kind. Personally I thought it was a waste of resources to ship you all off to Gnome’s Home just to go through the unnecessary process of banishing your souls to oblivion. But that’s what the Emperor wanted so that’s what happened.” Klemto lights up some sort of pipe as you talk and takes a puff before speaking. “So just following orders eh? Sounds about right. From what we know of you, you were and apparently still are an emotionless individual. That’s probably what makes you scarier than your former Emperor. At least he had an emotion. An irrational one, but it was something.” “Oh he had a reason. And it wasn’t just the gnomes rebelling. Your last name, Zookwinkle isn’t unknown to me gnome.” You say. You stare at Klemto and he stares back. He instinctively knows that you know something concerning a female member of his family being involved with the Emperor in some way. Warrick just stands by looking a bit confused, but mostly more concerned about the guns overhead. “Heh, well grandma always did do what she thought was best for survival.” Klemto remarks. “Well I suggest you follow in her footsteps then and do the same.” “Don’t think you’re my type.” Klemto jokes nervously. “Amusing, but you know what I mean.” You say seriously. Klemto wipes his forehead and begins puffing away again. “Look, we just want to be left alone. I mean do you really need us under your thumb too even with the countless slaves and subjects you already have?” “Well since you bring it up, yes. If you’re under my rule, I can keep a closer eye on you. Not to mention your skills would be of great use to the Empire once again.” You answer. “We were once under the old emperor’s rule too. You see how well that worked out.” Klemto remarks. “He also was blinded by love at the time and as you pointed out, I am the emotionless one. His hatred of your people also caused him to make many mistakes. If you betray me in some way, rest assured I won’t bother going through some elaborate process of torturing you and destroying your souls. I’ll just have you run down and slaughtered wherever you may run to. Where you go in the afterlife is your own affair, but here in the land of the living, that’s my domain.” You say with a cold tone. Klemto is now contemplating the consequences of what may happen if he and his people try to resist when you eventually do come to stake claim on New Dessel. He’s pondering if they can kill you now before it even comes to that. It’s obviously that he doesn’t think they can or else they would’ve done it long before now. Klemto and the gnomes aren’t stupid, they know that the stories of what abilities you really possess are probably exaggerated, however that old fear that still lingers from their treatment by Casimir mixed with what they DO know what you’re capable of is still enough to stay their hand. And it is this fear that is making this all work in your favor. Just like you knew it would. Had the roles been reversed, you wouldn’t have hesitated. You would’ve killed yourself with a volley of rifle blasts and more as soon as you were in range. After pacing a bit, Klemto finally speaks again. “I’m going to have to talk this over with the rest of the council and while that’s more of a formality, most of them aren’t going to be happy... (Sigh) Okay, here it goes. We will capitulate to Empire rule and we’ll pay tribute. But we must remain in this mountain. Whatever it is that you need from us to serve the Empire, it will have to be here or at least within the area. Now if some individual wants to leave and help elsewhere in the Empire, then that’s his decision. But at no point will our people be forced to leave if they don’t want to. Also no other Empire citizens may enter this mountain either unless we allow it. This includes the army.” Klemto says. “Hah! You must be joking.” You interrupt. “I’m serious. Now I know you’ll need to keep an eye on us as you say, well your Eyes will be allowed in. As many as you want, but I assure you that it won’t be necessary since there will not be any attempts at betrayal.” While it would appear that Klemto is willing to capitulate, there are a lot of stipulations he’s making. Stipulations that imply he thinks he’s in the position to make. > You continue to negotiate The fact remains; the full capabilities of New Dessle are still unknown and taking this mountain city would be extremely costly for the Empire, so you’re not going to dismiss Klemto’s stipulations yet, but you are going to come back with one of your own. “Very well, your terms are somewhat reasonable though we’re still going to have to hammer out some details, however I do want one thing from you right now.” You say. “Oh? What’s that?” “You will assist in attacking the Confederacy of the Free Cities.” “...so you would call on our service already eh? Fine. We will assist, just let us know what exactly you want from us.” “Nothing elaborate, I just want another army south of the cities in case some of the svelk try to escape that way. I don’t want a single one of them to get away. They’re a threat to the Empire and their constant manipulations need to cease being a thorn in my side. Too long they’ve gone unpunished for their treachery. Maybe I won’t be getting all of them on the world. But rest assured I WILL be getting ALL of them in this area.” “I see. While you may not have any hatred for my race, you obviously do for the dark elves. It would seem the more things change, the more they stay same…(Sigh) Well better the svelk than us I suppose.” Klemto says. “Glad you see the pragmatic side of this.” “Oh I suspect I’ll be seeing the pragmatic side a lot in the future. Not how I wanted to spend the remainder of my years, but then this is really the only way. I’ve long since learned that opposing the Empire is futile. While it may eventually fall to internal or external forces, it probably isn’t going to be in my lifetime and I’m going to do everything within that time to make sure the gnomes stay out of harm’s way. If that means swallowing what little pride we might have left and willingly becoming the subjects of a nation that once enslaved us and then tried to systematically exterminate us, then that is what we will do.” Klemto finishes his little speech with another puff of his pipe. He looks defeated even though he’s come out fairly okay on this deal. Well at least you think so, obviously he feels differently. “You’ll be remembered as a savior to your people Klemto.” You say before you leave. “I’ll probably be remembered as a collaborator, but I’m fine with it as long as they live to keep telling the tale of Klemto the traitor long after I’m dead.” At this point you and Warrick take your leave, the next time you look back, Klemto is gone and the mountain “windows” have all closed up as if everything was normal again. “You really think you can trust the gnomes?” Warrick asks. “I trust them more now that we have a way in. I want as many Eyes as you can spare in that mountain. Perhaps over time we can pull some out if the gnomes do prove to be loyal and don’t complain too much, but we definitely want to at least gather every single bit of information we can on that place just in case the gnomes DO try to betray us in the future.” “I’ll get on that, as soon as we return to the Empire. I shouldn’t have had the doubt, but I really thought this plan was going to go bad.” “Don’t worry, I had the same feeling, but sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind and attempt new strategies.” “Well maybe I didn’t see any battle, but I was still glad to get out behind that desk. I thank you for that.” Warrick says. “If you’d like we could always go try to take out one of the city states by ourselves. Has to be easier than an entire mountain.” You and Warrick laugh at this idea and head back to the Empire. A month passes and the war against the Confederacy of Free Cities is well underway. The odds are severely in your favor especially with the help of the gnomes who show up and you get a small indication of what exactly they have been working on. Some sort of powerful battle machine they call automatons. The best way to describe them is they’re golems except work under the power of steam, gears and technology rather than magic. A single automaton is an incredibly destructive force blowing holes in walls with their mounted cannons or just smashing them down with a hammer fist. The gnomes also bring out their lightning cannons that you remember during the Felkan War. It was a relatively new invention towards the end of that conflict, but it looks like the gnomes have perfected it their power. Your own inventors never could figure out how to create them though. (Even Elam was at a loss on how they did it without the use of magic) You’re sort of surprised they never created their own airships, but apparently they were in the process of doing so. In any case, whatever they’ve created and will create are yours to use now. The Confederacy of Free Cities doesn’t stand a chance and half of them are in ruins after it’s all said and done. That wasn’t the original intent, but at this point you’re not really concerned with conquering a few measly cities. You can always have new ones built now that you own the territory. What matters more is the eradication of the svelk menace. “We got her Emperor!” a soldier says running up to you in the middle of the burning ruins of Ryglik. “Are you sure its her?” you ask “Yes, Emperor. It’s Domina Eldolith. She was captured by the kobolds attempting to escape through a system of tunnels, she killed quite a few of them, but the little scalies managed to subdue her. She’s been yelling about being the grand domina of the free cities and a bunch of other stuff. Mostly demanding to be treated with the respect that a captured enemy of her stature deserves.” “Unbelievable. Defiant and arrogant to the end. Wouldn’t be the svelk way otherwise. Well take me to her.” You say. You are lead to the former city hall and down into the basement where several kobolds are proding a bound Eldolith with sharp objects and laughing while she swears and curses at them. They see you and bow in reverence while excitedly looking for approval of their deed. “Capturr blak elf! For Emp! For Emp!” one of them says. “Yes, and I will make sure you are awarded appropriately for your deeds. All of you, now leave I want to speak with this one alone. And do not interrupt me, no matter what you may hear. I will leave here when I’m ready.” The kobolds leave via the trapdoor in the floor, your human soldiers nearby head back upstairs. Eldolith looks at you as you approach her. It’s been a while since you’ve seen her, but she’s not looking her best right now. Her clothes are torn and wet, she’s covered in dirt and grime. She smells like she’s been running through a sewer. Superficial wounds are on her face and body. Her eyes are burning through you with an absolute hatred. And you love every moment of it. “If you think I’m going to beg for my life you’re sadly mistaken. I will NEVER give you that satisfaction. I am a svelk! My people…” You backhand Eldolith shutting her up. “Are dead. And if they aren’t, the ones we captured soon will be. You can stop playing the arrogant svelk Eldy. You’re scared of what is going to happen next. And you should be, because I’m going to revisit some old techniques your mother showed me once.” At this point Eldolith’s eyes widen and she tries to edge away when your hands start to touch her body. Suddenly you grip her throat. “Don’t move away from me bitch.” You say and look into her eyes. Gone is the hatred. Now you see the fear. “Now then, if you’re concerned that I meant a physical violation, I hate the break your dreams, but that won’t be happening. For one thing, your current stench is enough to give an orc pause. However after I’m done today, you will be wishing that I was displaying such a kindness to you. Begging. In fact I believe your earlier boast about not begging for your life was correct. You won’t be. You’ll be begging for your death. Now let us begin…” You pull out a small set of tools you brought for this occasion. To be honest you weren’t sure if you’d be lucky enough to capture Eldolith alive, but fortune smiled on you this day. You begin a brutal session of torture on Eldolith. You occasionally ask her for more information on where other svelk may be, but these are met with pathetic moans of denial of knowledge. “I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!” Eldolith screams as another finger is cut off. “At this point I actually believe you, but I don’t really care because this is amusing to me. Torturing a svelk. Not just any svelk though. One that tried to have me fucking assassinated on several occasions. Come on Eldy, you really can’t be surprised by my actions here. You svelk pride yourself on showing no mercy and revel in cruelty, I’d think you’d understand all this.” “Who told you this? My mother?! And you believed her? What makes you think she wasn’t responsible and just put the blame on me?!” “Well for one thing, your mother is a lot smarter than you and if she was planning to have me killed, I have to admit, she might’ve been successful. Fortunately that crazy bitch is obsessed with me, for some unknown reason…” At this point Eldolith starts coughing up blood while trying to laugh. “Something amusing? Have you finally gone mad from the pain?” you ask. “Ha ha, (cough) you wish I was her right now. (cough) You’ll never get that satisfaction, she’s played you like a cheap lute since you’ve been born Eternal. Even now you’re doing her bidding. She just…” At this point Eldolith vomits a mixture of blood and bile on the floor. Some of it getting on your boots. “You were saying?” you ask, but Eldolith just breathes heavily not answering. “Well, you don’t really need this eye to tell me the rest of your thoughts.” You say and approach her again with a knife… By the time dawn comes, Eldolith is barely alive. She’s blind, missing an entire hand, her skin partially flayed, missing most of her teeth, she’s a bloody mess and her face doesn’t even resemble that of a svelk anymore. She’s long since proven your prediction correct and begged for death, which you’ve denied her. But even you have to move on some time. “I have to admit Eldy, I thought you would’ve been long dead by now. For someone begging for death, your body’s will to survive is strong. The funny thing is, I could easily heal most of you up and do this all over again, but honestly I think I’ve made my point. Besides I’d hate to shorten my own lifespan just for a little bit of amusement, which is getting boring now. Any last words?” Eldolith makes no sound, just shallow breathing. “Right then.” You say and put your mithral dagger to her throat. “You brought this on yourself.” You whisper in Eldolith’s hacked off ear and slash her throat at last putting her out of her living hell. When you exit the building, several officers say they’ve been wanting to speak with you about important matters of the aftermath of the war and similar matters concerning the newly acquired cities. Also the gnomes are wondering what your next orders are now since the enemy has been thoroughly eliminated. While you certainly feel good about your victory and your recent indulgence, you can’t help but wonder now if Eldolith was just a convenient scapegoat. Eldolith and her sect of svelk obviously still had to die and you’re more than certain that she was involved in trying to have you killed, but who is to say that it wasn’t Semra pulling the strings all along? In any event, looks like playtime is over. Back to business as usual. > Year 50 As you look at a large map of the known continent of Evigrus you realize that while its been fifteen years since you took the throne as Emperor you’ve already more than doubled the size of the original nation. You’ve also successfully managed to have your ships navigate most of its coastline as well. Even northern most Rask was mapped by your airships. Quite frankly that’s the main problem you have right now in general you’ve conquered most of what is worthwhile already on this continent. Anything remaining isn’t exactly inhabitable or worth the time to spend on conquest and even in some of those cases, kobold citizens have slowly been making small underground communities in places where nobody above ground would want to live such as the Delerg jungle. However there are always new lands to conquer. To the farthest part west lies the only nation on Evigrus left besides the Empire, the Kingdom of Nakol. Nakol has had the benefit of being relatively isolated from the rest of the continent due to the great mountain range that blocked it from the Children of Tor. Your people have only recently had formal contact with it shortly after the defeat of the Torites, though even that was by ship, though now that the Torites are no longer a true threat, small passes through the mountains have been found (Though they’re not exactly safe and Nakol certainly keeps their side very well guarded). The nation isn’t quite as large as the Empire, but its still bigger than the old Felkan Kingdom and certainly big enough to defend itself to make aggression very costly, so far however the limited contact you’ve had with said nation hasn’t been hostile. Oddly enough he’s wanted to meet you as he has heard so much about the “Great Emperor of the East” and very much wants to visit the Empire. Normally you probably wouldn’t consider such diplomatic meetings as it has never been your style, however this ruler is also known as the “Immortal Sorcerer King” and that is something that has gotten your attention. In any event, there are other matters that require your attention and this is where the “other land” to conquer comes in… Last year your ships finally found a large landmass to the east. Up until then, only a few islands of little worth had been discovered. This new territory from what you’ve been told is similar to Delerg in some ways as there are large portions of jungle. However there are several primitive civilizations living on this land mass. While they are similar to humans in some ways, they have features that certainly aren’t such as having four arms and multiple sets of eyes like an insect. Even their language is a bit insect like as you’ve been told it’s more a “chittering” sound. The most prominent of these groups are known as the Iznac. The Iznac like most that seem to inhabit this world before the Empire enlightens them are a superstitious lot that worship their backwards gods by sacrificing others to them. Sometimes this is their own people, but most of the time its captives of the weaker tribes that live on the same continent. Barbarians they may be, they have built cities where their temples seem to be the biggest and most important buildings in them. It would appear they are a theocracy. The Iznac so far have been actively hostile towards your people though perhaps wise enough not to attack them outright. Your own people have not made much progress towards the inner part of the new continent due to this fact and they don’t have enough manpower to do so anyway. The only thing they can do is hold up in the newly built outpost and hope they aren’t attacked by an overwhelming number of Iznac (or any other tribe since it isn’t as if the frog like people called the Glip that also inhabit the continent are any friendlier) You might be inclined to leave this new continent and its inhabitants alone until you can focus more attention on them, however it’s also been reported that the continent has a seriously unexploited resource potential of valuable minerals and that’s something you could always use more of especially if you’re going to have to fund another war with Nakol in the near future. There is also the matter of the orc and kobold population to think about. Both are becoming a problem. The orcs have finally increased their numbers to a point where they can become a viable fighting unit like they were in old days. In fact you planned for that to happen anyway. What you didn’t plan for is that you’d have a period of peace with no major wars to fight! Reports of increased orc criminals or just general chaotic misconduct in Rask are becoming more common. You need to start giving them something to go fight. The kobolds aren’t so much of a problem as they tend to live underground and generally stay out of the way due to that fact. But with no war to whittle down their numbers they’re breeding at a rate that’s starting to worry your human subjects. You admit that with as many as the little bastards around they could become a serious threat if they ever became rebellious. Fortunately they’re actually less of a problem than any of your other subjects so you’re actually not worried about them yet. Still, it seems like a logical solution to start sending large portions of both populations to tame this new continent. Of course if events dictate that you need to war with Nakol soon, then that leaves you with less soldiers on the home front and you’re also fighting a two front war. There’s also another factor to consider that the new Eternals will be ready next year. Brenda’s training has ensured that most of them survived and they are already displaying the eagerness to serve the Empire. Elam’s also been working with the gnomes to perfect the automatons. You make your decision that with these other factors in play that you’re relatively safe in sending your orcs and kobolds to this new continent. However, you’re going to need disciplined leaders though for this task. For the orcs you look for the highest ranked and most respected by his people. The only name that catches your attention when looking through the records is Flog. Flog apparently served most of his military career in Rask fighting ogres, giants and the old barbarian tribes even during the Felkan War. He also served under Kane and was spoken highly of in a few old reports. Kane mentioned that besides Captain Gruz he never encountered an orc almost as intelligent. Apparently he’s been doing a lot of breeding after the Felkan War. He has many children. As for kobolds, the records are much sketchier. Kobolds may be loyal and contributing members of Empire society, but none of them really seem to stand out much and if they do, they all died in battle. Plus due to their numbers they probably have many of their kind that could be considered “leaders” within various circles. Eventually you settle on one that distinguished herself during the Tor War. Snilkez’ka managed to take out a manticore all by herself and lead a successful underground sneak attack against a band of minotaurs with only a few casualties. Given the size difference in both cases not to mention that even human officers had problems accomplishing such things, its safe to say that she comes the closest to being a hero among her people. In fact you’re wondering why she was never brought to your attention before. Of course you can’t just send these two races out on ships to a new continent, which you barely have any control over so you’re going to need at least one company of “normal” humans to keep a semblance of order or rather someone better than a human. The only choice would be Decena. She’s a well-respected leader by all and more than proven herself. While not having Decena immediately available here will be something you’ll have to compensate for, you’ll at least have confidence that she’ll keep things orderly on this new continent. Having made your decision you meet up with the three to explain the situation, their reactions are varied. “Flog will serve all powerful Emperor, but not fooled by intentions. You trying to get rid of orcs again, just like in Felkan War.” Flog says. “Flog if I was trying to get rid of the orcs, I’d just have you all strung up and be done with it. I’m sure you’re aware that’s within my power to do so. I’m not even sending all of the orcs anyway, just most of them. I need tough soldiers that can withstand this harsher continent and its equally harsh inhabitants. I already sent humans and you see how well that worked out. Quite frankly I think your people would be best suited for this type of thing. You get to prove just how orcly you actually are. You are an orc aren’t you? Are you not looking forward to the possibility of killing several enemies or dying in a glorious battle?” you say. “Killing enemies yes, dying not so much. It is a misconception that orcs deliberately seek death in battle. Flog however is getting old, so death is close anyway. Either death in battle, death by children who will inevitably challenge Flog, or death by old age. The last is the least preferable, so perhaps this will be an opportunity. Not sure about the little scaly runts you’re sending. Never fought along side them before, but Flog has heard of their great viciousness in battle. Also heard many glorious things of General Decena and her many victories. Will be an honor to fight along side her.” At this point the kobold leader, Snilkez’ka makes a small hissing growl like sound at Flog, probably due to his runt comment. “Don’t worry about us orc. Small we may be, but we’ll be here long after the enemy has already butchered your old greenskin ass.” Snilkez’ka remarks, which causes a chuckle from Flog who merely states that perhaps he’ll enjoy fighting alongside her people after all. Snilkez’ka doesn’t look as amused, but says nothing else other than to directly address you and say that she will make sure that she will bring the fear of the Empire into the hearts of the enemy. You nod and say you know that she will. Always nice to have loyalty and enthusiasm. She’s very well spoken for a kobold. The latter one of those traits seems to be lost on your last leader, Decena who isn’t saying anything and only succeeds in looking slightly troubled by her new assignment. “Decena, is there anything you’d like to say? You’re going to be in charge of this campaign.” You ask. “No. Nothing except I look forward to leading the Empire into victory and claiming this new continent in your name, my Emperor.” That sounded very… formal. Granted that’s a good thing, especially in front of the other two leaders to keep it professional. Still, you know something is wrong and you know it has something to do with your past relationship. If you were the cautious sort you’d just leave it be, but if something is going to be a major problem you need to know now. “Good, you’ll all be shipping out in about a week. Everyone is dismissed, though I want to speak to you Decena about something.” You say calmly and wait for the other two leave. Now it’s just you and Decena alone in the room. This hasn’t occurred in years, and this situation is very different. Decena however maintains a very formal stance and does not falter from it. “I sense something is wrong.” You say. “There is nothing wrong my Emperor.” Decena remarks. “Okay stop with the stiff soldier act, it’s just us here.” This remark breaks Decena’s facade of being “okay.” “I don’t understand what you want from me my Emperor. You told me we were to remain just subordinate and master. I am carrying out this order to the best of my abilities.” “Oh no, do not attempt to play word games, you know what I mean. You’re obviously upset about this assignment.” “…I’m obeying orders aren’t I? Isn’t that all that is required of me?” Decena says with an exasperated tone. “For you? No. I need you to do more than just obey, I need you to be thrilled with this assignment. Like you USED to be. Remember?” “Apologies, but I don’t think I can given the situation.” “What situation? Us? Look Decena I know you’re still upset about that, but you’re going to have to be an Eternal and get over it.” “Oh yes, I’m an Eternal alright, at least until next year. Might as well sweep me away to a far off land now and be done with it.” Decena remarks. “What are you talking about?” “I’m talking about the new Eternals that are scheduled to be ready next year! They’ll be the new thing and I’ll just be old news off in some forsaken land surrounded by scalies and green skinned idiots. In the meantime perhaps you’ll even find another young girl like I was and take her under your guidance too…” “Decena…” “Well I suppose at least she’ll be happy for a few years even if she’ll be a naïve fool the entire time.” “Decena STOP! Just stop right now!” you say. Decena does so, but her eyes say it all. You knew she was probably going to be upset for a while, but it’s turned into bitterness. You pace a bit and exhale rubbing your hand over your face. “Decena, your beliefs that you’re going to be somehow replaced next year are far from the truth. First of all, I’m not giving any of them any extra training because obviously I’m a lousy teacher given what happened between us.” Decena stays silent. “Second of all I picked you for this mission because you’re the only one I trust to carry it out. Just like I trusted you to continue your battles against the Torites and you saw to their practical extinction. I know you can get this job done and you’re not going to be over there forever you know. I anticipate war with the Nakol Kingdom at some point and when that happens who do you think is going to have to lead all the baby eternals into battle? You of course. For now though I need you where you’re going to be the most invaluable and that’s in this new land.” You reach out to Decena and lift her face up to look into her eyes. “I need you for this just like I’m always going to need you. You will never be replaced.” Decena’s expression turns back to one of sorrow. Her eyes water, but she does not cry out. “I…I’m sorry my Emperor…I shouldn’t…have…” “Forget it Decena you don’t need to apologize. (Sigh) If anything I should be apologizing to you. As I said, I still feel you’re the best person for this mission, but if you wish, you may decline this mission and I will find someone else. And there is no need to worry, this will not be a bad reflection on you in any way. If it’s going to make you happier to stay here, then I’d rather you be happy since it’ll make you a better leader. Won’t do anyone any good if you don’t have the best mindset.” Decena shakes her head. “No, I’ll go. For the good of the Empire I’ll go. Staying here would serve no purpose for what I really want is not to be no matter what the situation. I suppose I just overreacted. And you weren’t a lousy teacher. Anyone would be lucky to learn under you. I was.” Decena says. “Yes, well as I said, nobody ever will again. You were my first and last pupil. You’ll always be special in that regard. Now are you absolutely sure, you’re going to be okay with this assignment?” you ask. “I will my Emperor. And I will bring glory to the Empire.” Decena remarks. “Good. I knew you were strong enough to see this through and I know you’ll do the Empire and me proud.” You end you comment with a small kiss to her cheek. It’s only a shadow of what she really desires, but it’ll be enough to get her through this. After Decena leaves, you think about how you’ve permanently damaged that girl due to your poor judgment and lack of willpower all those years ago. You then think about how easy it is to convince her into anything due to that same lack of willpower years ago. She still worships and loves you and probably always will no matter what. Despite everything, your conditioning was successful. By the end of the week your fleet to the new continent (you’re calling it Nyttrus) is on its way to properly claim it for the Empire. You don’t know how long the Iznac are going to be able to stand up against your forces, but hopefully if your people break them, the other tribes will fall in line. > Year 52 “The Sorcerer King still wants to meet with you my Emperor, he says he really wants to visit Empire lands and wishes to reassure you that there doesn’t need to be any increasing animosity between the two nations.” Kivan says. “(Sigh) Again? That’s what like the sixth letter he’s sent? Never have I known a leader whose country isn’t on the verge of destruction so eager to be friends. And even when said countries have been on that verge of destruction some have preferred death over surrender. Makes me suspicious of him on general principle.” You say. “Yes, I can see where you would be apprehensive my Emperor. Nevertheless I believe you should at least give a response this time rather than ignoring him. Uh, just a suggestion though. You may of course do what you wish as is your will.” Kivan’s right in that you probably should respond; it’s been long enough. You just wonder if its time to respond with force. The time is starting to feel right. The new Eternals are finally done with their training and are eager to be given their purpose. Elam and the gnomes have just finished working on their new inventions. It would seem now would be as good as time as any to strike. It’s just unfortunate that Decena is still in Nyttrus since you could use her here. However you’re still somewhat intrigued by this Sorcerer King who also claims “immortality” in his official title. You wonder if he is like Casimir in some way. Perhaps another necromancer from Mortos? You haven’t thought about it for a while, but age is starting to catch up to you. While you’re still fit and stronger than the average person your age, you’re starting to feel the aches at times. The idea of “immortality” is starting to appeal to you especially considering you’ve accomplished so much. Are you to just lose it all due to the ravages of old age? You don’t even have the benefit of a long life span, you might be a powerful wizard in your own right and you might be more than human, but when it comes down to it, you’re going to have much limited life span than Casimir did. Of course he most certainly won’t be forth coming with any such secret to extending one’s life span, but maybe you can at the very least get a good idea of who you’re dealing with. (And it may just be a “boastful” title anyway and he’s not actually immortal which would be good to know as well) “Kivan, let the sorcerer king know that I’ll be making arrangements to meet with him and allowing him safe passage to visit, but there are going to be some stipulations…” Basically you tell the sorcerer king that he can bring some of his personal guard, as well as whatever belongings he feels is necessary. The sorcerer king returns your message with a gleeful acceptance and states that he wishes to come by ship within the week and dock at your biggest port in Nalin, from there he will meet you and you can travel to the capital together. You return that message and state that will be fine. With this meeting underway you get things prepared for extra defense. Naturally Warrick and the Eyes work hard to make sure everything vital is extra secured, but you also have Galen and what few mages remain posted in various areas to act as magic monitors since your visitor is supposed to be a powerful wizard and all. To be quite honest you aren’t sure what to expect yourself, as you have no real knowledge of the man or what he’s capable of save for rumors. You spend some time honing your own spell abilities just in case. On the day of the arrival, you have Brenda and Warrick (And several soldiers) accompany you near the docks in the Nalin city of Pivod. It’s probably the first time all three of you have been together since the new eternals completed their training. “I’m surprised you’re agreeing to this meeting. When the new Eternals were done with their training last year I thought for sure we’d be going to war with Nakol soon.” Brenda remarks. “I probably would have, but Nakol isn’t going to be an easy conquest. It’s going to be costly. I wanted to make sure we had that extra resource influx and gold income coming from Nyttrus. Plus the gnomes were working on their new inventions, which would contribute greatly to an upcoming war effort. Thought it might be best to wait until we had all our forces brought to the table. This meeting though, well might as well get a good idea of who we’ll be dealing with.” “But won’t he be doing the same thing?” “True, but it hardly matters. He’s not going to have access to anything sensitive. All that stuff is in New Dessel. He already knows he’s potentially facing a losing situation. The fact remains that even if the war was costly for us, we’d still win. He may be a wizard of great power. Perhaps even as great as the old Emperor, but there is nothing implying that the rest of his nation is anything else than average at best. As I’ve heard, he’s the only wizard he even allows in his nation. Smart in some ways I suppose as it prevents anyone else from becoming as powerful as him, but it cripples his resources in the long run and displays to me a man who is very fearful of losing his advantage. They’ve only just recently created their own gunpowder weapons. They have no airships, they have nothing like any of our technological wonders.” “Hrm, what about their fleet?” Warrick says and points to a large ship approaching which can only be the Sorcerer King. It is much bigger than the sea going ships you have. Even the ones you sent to Nyttrus weren’t as large. This “King’s Ship” is ridiculous. You don’t think it’s going to fit in the damn harbor. As it gets closer, the ship is also well armed with cannons, but also lavishly decorated. You don’t really see the point in decorating a ship, which is obviously designed with war in mind. Then again you’ve also heard of how Nakol tends to place visual aesthetics over practical ones most of the time. Truly a sign of frivolousness and decadence. Fortunately the giant ship manages to dock without destroying them and the gangplank lowers. You can’t even see who is aboard the ship due to its great height, but a fancy dressed individual walks down with two trumpeters behind him. “And now it is your privledge and honor to receive the Immortal Sorcerer King of the Great Nation of Nakol and all his glory!” the man shouts and the trumpeters begin to play. A line of people begins to march down the plank. First it’s the guards who are dressed in some sort of ceremonial armor that is obviously for show. Then some other people come down. They don’t look like soldiers or even advisors, they’re barely dressed and they consist of young males and females. They even down a little dance in front of the lot of you. “What the hell? Who are all these people?” Warrick asks. “If I had to guess, probably some sort of pleasure girls and boys.” You say. “I thought you told him to keep his entourage light?” Brenda asks. “I did, but as you can see, the fool has got to have his fun. The man himself better come out soon, because I’m not waiting around here for my health.” Sure enough right after you make that statement a figure appears at the edge of the ship. He’s a swarthy man wearing a very luxurious looking robe and a crown encrusted with jewels. A pair of servants hold his robe as he makes his way down the plank. He certainly carries an air of self-importance and royalty about him. When he approaches, you get a closer look at him. You imagine that he has to be at least as old or maybe even older than you, but his face does not display any signs of age. The only outwardly strange thing about him is that his eyes are an odd purple color. He may or may not be immortal, but he’s certainly using some sort of magic to make himself look young. And here you are looking almost the exact opposite. You’re wearing practical armor, have a sword hanging by your side and absolutely no frills. When you and the Sorcerer King finally come face to face, he looks you up and down in a way that almost implies he’s attracted to you. “Well, Emperor of the East at last we meet. So stoic and rugged! I heard that about you. I like it. Not my taste, but I believe it works for you. And my, look at all your little soldiers set out just for my arrival. I also detect a few…yes three mages in the nearby area. Guess you want to make sure I don’t secretly cast any aggressive spells eh? Smart. I’m flattered that you believe me so dangerous, but all of this was hardly necessary, as I said I only wish for peace between our two nations.” The Sorcerer King says while using a lot of flamboyant hand gestures. He hasn’t been here a few seconds and already he’s starting to irritate you. “Yes, well we’ll speak on that later, right now you’re going to have all your little concubines and some of your soldiers to get right back aboard that ship. I told you that you could have a personal guard not a small company and a few personal belongings.” You say. “But these lovelies ARE my personal belongings. Was I wrong in believing that the Empire does not engage in such institutions?” the sorcerer king asks holding on to one of his young male “belongings.” “If you’re referring to slavery, we’ve reserved it to criminal scum and prisoners of war nowadays as punishment for defying or insulting the Empire with their dissention or outright hostility. In any case I’m not having extra people running around and having to worry about them being a security risk, they stay on board your ship.” The Sorcerer King frowns a bit. “(Sigh) Very well I understand your concerns for security, but I must say you’re being a terribly dull and inflexible host right now. What about my two closest servants? Surely you would not deny me them?” “You are seriously testing my already uncharacteristic hospitality. (Sigh) Fine, you can have your two robe carriers, or whatever they are to you.” “Well I thank you for your permissiveness in this regard.” At this point the Sorcerer King tells most of his people to get back on the ship and reassuring them that he’ll make it up to all of them later. You on the other hand tell Warrick that you want that ship closely watched and if anyone is seen trying to exit it, they’re to be shot immediately. Both Warrick and Brenda leave your company to attend to their other duties. No reason for all of you to suffer this fop. What transpires for the rest of the day is putting up with the Sorcerer King’s annoying demeanor. He speaks and acts in a way that you dislike intensely. The man only seems to primarily discuss his sexual habits and you have to keep the conversation back on topic many times. Despite his evasiveness (or rather his obsession with his sex life) you do manage to get something out of him. He says that he’s never been to the “mythical” Island of Mortos having lived in Nakol all his life. (After you mention a bit about it, he says it sounds like an awful place that he hopes to never set foot on) He also admits that he knows the Empire is much stronger than his own nation, but still hopes that it doesn’t come to war as he claims he’s a lover not a fighter. He even says he’s willing to work out some sort of agreement as long as he can stay in power of Nakol. “Perhaps, if we paid some sort of tribute? I heard that you worked out a similar agreement with what are those adorable little mustached men that build all sorts of strange gadgets? Oh yes, the gnomes.” The sorcerer king says. “Hrmm. Well one thing you need to take into consideration. New Dessel is a single city. Granted it’s a mountain, but its still a single location that we keep a very close eye on. There is also the fact that there aren’t many of them. However the most important thing in their favor is that they have a useful trade that contributes to the Empire greatly. Great enough that I’m willing to let them have a little extra autonomy.” The Sorcerer King listens with apprehension, as he knows you’re going to now explain why you’re less willing to make the same deal with Nakol. “Nakol on the other hand is a very large nation with a very large population. Call me paranoid, but I’m far from comfortable from giving something that much freedom. And your nation despite being large offers nothing really save for your resources, territory and obviously fat treasury. And I’d rather have those without having to ask at all. Face it, this is beginning of the end for Nakol independence. However there is one thing that stands out that would at least save your own skin and let you keep your position in this upcoming new order.” “Oh? And what is that?” “Your immortality, well at least your supposed immortality. I have my doubts. I imagine the only way to truly test such a thing would be to well…kill you.” With a few eye glances to your own soldiers and a couple of swift punches and kicks, you get the sorcerer king to the floor and hold your dagger to his throat. His personal guard are slaughtered and two Eyes hold the sorcerer king’s arms just in case he tries to cast a spell. “Utter anything that remotely sounds like an incantation and your tongue is the first thing I cut off.” You say. “Stop! Stop! Please don’t kill me!” the sorcerer king exclaims. “The fear on you is overwhelming. You’re not immortal. Guess I have just been wasting my time…” you say. “No! Wait! (gasp) Maybe (wheeze) I’m not immortal, but I do have knowledge of obscure arts that can keep you young! I mean surely that must be worth something?” You relax your blade a bit. “Speak quickly sorcerer.” “Thank you. (Whew) Yes, it’s true that I do not have proper immortality, but I do have eternal youth and what commoners really know the difference right? It’s a very complex ritual though. The type of magic involved hasn’t been practiced in who knows when. When I was genuinely a younger man a century ago, and first found the scrolls in some forgotten cave I only half believed of the power they would bring. I nearly died in the process and I paid a price, but it was worth it as you can see the results.” You’re still a little leery… “Please! I’m telling the truth! Look, we can perform the ritual right here if you want! I can tell you what to do and get, but we’re still going to have to wait until tomorrow at least since the ritual must be done at a certain time of night and that time has currently past unfortunately.” “All right, you’ve bought yourself a little time, but I’m not going into this blind. Tomorrow you are going to tell me EVERYTHING about this ritual and the price you had to pay, because let’s just say I’m not a stranger to complex rituals and the repercussions involved.” You have the sorcerer king shown to his room. You also have him bound, gagged AND watched by several Eyes and a couple of mages. You are not taking any chances. You don’t get to sleep that night in your own room; you’re still pondering what this eternal youth ritual might entail. Casimir knew something similar to it, but that was due to necromantic magic and that obviously still had its limits. This apparently is different, you wonder how though. “Mmm, there he is, my ambitious little Eternal desperately trying to unlock the secret to immortality so that he may truly live up to his name. If you wanted to know so bad, you should’ve just asked mommy.” You hear a voice say behind you, which causes you to freeze. It’s Semra, and she’s in your room. This isn’t an “illusion” either. You know it isn’t because you just felt her hot breath in your ear followed by a gentle lick. How she managed to actually sneak in here is irrelevant. You’re in an unsafe position and you can only imagine that this has something to do with the sorcerer king. This whole visit might finally be showing its true colors… > You attack quickly You’ve got one chance… You move your slam the back of your head into Semra’s face. You’re fairly certain you at least hurt the side of her face even if you didn’t manage to break her nose. You pull out your dagger and attempt to follow up your attack, but Semra has already jumped back out of your reach. “Foreplay is it? Okay then!” Semra says and pulls out her own weapon. The pair of you clash which results in several light scratches and superficial wounds for both of you all within the course of a few minutes. Semra is playing with you, but you’re not playing anymore, and the next time you’re able, you cast a lightning bolt at her, though she blocks it with her own magic field. “Enough! I’m not here to kill you, you id…” Semra starts to say, but you’re done listening to her and press forward with another attack. Semra casts a holding spell at you in attempt to stop your advance, but you’re not a sixteen-year-old apprentice anymore. You feel the affects and it slows you down, but with your own magic you shake off the affects and tackle Semra to the floor. “Nice to see you’ve learned, but you still don’t know shit compared to me!” Semra exclaims and she drops her guard completely which results in you stabbing her in the stomach, however she puts her hands to her mouth and with a blowing motion some sort of gas emanates and you are hit directly in the face with it.” Poisonous gas always has been something you’ve been a little susceptible to, even if the poison itself isn’t enough to kill you, it’s still enough to cause you discomfort and gag. This is no exception, but it’s a little worse this time. You roll off of Semra gagging. You start coughing up blood, though you can’t see that you are, because the gas has completely blinded you. In between the coughing you go back to trying to grab at Semra who is having her own problems with a dagger in her stomach. “Let me go you fucking crazy…” Semra starts to say, but your wild swings and grabs connect with her mouth, unfortunately this also results in a bite from her. You manage to avoid losing a couple of fingers completely by blindly (and luckily) connecting your other fist with her face. You’re blind and still having breathing difficulties but you manage to wrap your hands around Semra’s neck. “Get OFF of me!” Semra says and you feel a burning heat engulf your head. You scream and futilely try to beat the flames out that are now destroying your face. “And I’m sure that will have alerted the guards.” You hear Semra say as she manages to crawl away from you at last. “I came here to fucking help you! As I ALWAYS do! (Sigh) Fuck…my stom…(groan) y’know what? I’m done with trying to help you, you’ve never been grateful and I can see you never will be. You’ll always be short sighted and never learn from your mistakes. I can do this without your help and you wouldn’t be much good in your current condition anyway. Might as well carry out Mortimer’s original assignment. Hope that effeminate little fop has gotten away by now.” You are still howling in pain and making incoherent groans, but you try to focus on healing yourself. It isn’t to be however. Healing such grievous wounds would take time and that isn’t time you have right now. Semra finishes you off by giving her dagger back to you, which results in it going through your neck.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 52 “The Sorcerer King still wants to meet with you my Emperor, he says he really wants to visit Empire lands and wishes to reassure you that there doesn’t need to be any increasing animosity between the two nations.” Kivan says. “(Sigh) Again? That’s what like the sixth letter he’s sent? Never have I known a leader whose country isn’t on the verge of destruction so eager to be friends. And even when said countries have been on that verge of destruction some have preferred death over surrender. Makes me suspicious of him on general principle.” You say. “Yes, I can see where you would be apprehensive my Emperor. Nevertheless I believe you should at least give a response this time rather than ignoring him. Uh, just a suggestion though. You may of course do what you wish as is your will.” Kivan’s right in that you probably should respond; it’s been long enough. You just wonder if its time to respond with force. The time is starting to feel right. The new Eternals are finally done with their training and are eager to be given their purpose. Elam and the gnomes have just finished working on their new inventions. It would seem now would be as good as time as any to strike. It’s just unfortunate that Decena is still in Nyttrus since you could use her here. However you’re still somewhat intrigued by this Sorcerer King who also claims “immortality” in his official title. You wonder if he is like Casimir in some way. Perhaps another necromancer from Mortos? You haven’t thought about it for a while, but age is starting to catch up to you. While you’re still fit and stronger than the average person your age, you’re starting to feel the aches at times. The idea of “immortality” is starting to appeal to you especially considering you’ve accomplished so much. Are you to just lose it all due to the ravages of old age? You don’t even have the benefit of a long life span, you might be a powerful wizard in your own right and you might be more than human, but when it comes down to it, you’re going to have much limited life span than Casimir did. Of course he most certainly won’t be forth coming with any such secret to extending one’s life span, but maybe you can at the very least get a good idea of who you’re dealing with. (And it may just be a “boastful” title anyway and he’s not actually immortal which would be good to know as well) “Kivan, let the sorcerer king know that I’ll be making arrangements to meet with him and allowing him safe passage to visit, but there are going to be some stipulations…” Basically you tell the sorcerer king that he can bring some of his personal guard, as well as whatever belongings he feels is necessary. The sorcerer king returns your message with a gleeful acceptance and states that he wishes to come by ship within the week and dock at your biggest port in Nalin, from there he will meet you and you can travel to the capital together. You return that message and state that will be fine. With this meeting underway you get things prepared for extra defense. Naturally Warrick and the Eyes work hard to make sure everything vital is extra secured, but you also have Galen and what few mages remain posted in various areas to act as magic monitors since your visitor is supposed to be a powerful wizard and all. To be quite honest you aren’t sure what to expect yourself, as you have no real knowledge of the man or what he’s capable of save for rumors. You spend some time honing your own spell abilities just in case. On the day of the arrival, you have Brenda and Warrick (And several soldiers) accompany you near the docks in the Nalin city of Pivod. It’s probably the first time all three of you have been together since the new eternals completed their training. “I’m surprised you’re agreeing to this meeting. When the new Eternals were done with their training last year I thought for sure we’d be going to war with Nakol soon.” Brenda remarks. “I probably would have, but Nakol isn’t going to be an easy conquest. It’s going to be costly. I wanted to make sure we had that extra resource influx and gold income coming from Nyttrus. Plus the gnomes were working on their new inventions, which would contribute greatly to an upcoming war effort. Thought it might be best to wait until we had all our forces brought to the table. This meeting though, well might as well get a good idea of who we’ll be dealing with.” “But won’t he be doing the same thing?” “True, but it hardly matters. He’s not going to have access to anything sensitive. All that stuff is in New Dessel. He already knows he’s potentially facing a losing situation. The fact remains that even if the war was costly for us, we’d still win. He may be a wizard of great power. Perhaps even as great as the old Emperor, but there is nothing implying that the rest of his nation is anything else than average at best. As I’ve heard, he’s the only wizard he even allows in his nation. Smart in some ways I suppose as it prevents anyone else from becoming as powerful as him, but it cripples his resources in the long run and displays to me a man who is very fearful of losing his advantage. They’ve only just recently created their own gunpowder weapons. They have no airships, they have nothing like any of our technological wonders.” “Hrm, what about their fleet?” Warrick says and points to a large ship approaching which can only be the Sorcerer King. It is much bigger than the sea going ships you have. Even the ones you sent to Nyttrus weren’t as large. This “King’s Ship” is ridiculous. You don’t think it’s going to fit in the damn harbor. As it gets closer, the ship is also well armed with cannons, but also lavishly decorated. You don’t really see the point in decorating a ship, which is obviously designed with war in mind. Then again you’ve also heard of how Nakol tends to place visual aesthetics over practical ones most of the time. Truly a sign of frivolousness and decadence. Fortunately the giant ship manages to dock without destroying them and the gangplank lowers. You can’t even see who is aboard the ship due to its great height, but a fancy dressed individual walks down with two trumpeters behind him. “And now it is your privledge and honor to receive the Immortal Sorcerer King of the Great Nation of Nakol and all his glory!” the man shouts and the trumpeters begin to play. A line of people begins to march down the plank. First it’s the guards who are dressed in some sort of ceremonial armor that is obviously for show. Then some other people come down. They don’t look like soldiers or even advisors, they’re barely dressed and they consist of young males and females. They even down a little dance in front of the lot of you. “What the hell? Who are all these people?” Warrick asks. “If I had to guess, probably some sort of pleasure girls and boys.” You say. “I thought you told him to keep his entourage light?” Brenda asks. “I did, but as you can see, the fool has got to have his fun. The man himself better come out soon, because I’m not waiting around here for my health.” Sure enough right after you make that statement a figure appears at the edge of the ship. He’s a swarthy man wearing a very luxurious looking robe and a crown encrusted with jewels. A pair of servants hold his robe as he makes his way down the plank. He certainly carries an air of self-importance and royalty about him. When he approaches, you get a closer look at him. You imagine that he has to be at least as old or maybe even older than you, but his face does not display any signs of age. The only outwardly strange thing about him is that his eyes are an odd purple color. He may or may not be immortal, but he’s certainly using some sort of magic to make himself look young. And here you are looking almost the exact opposite. You’re wearing practical armor, have a sword hanging by your side and absolutely no frills. When you and the Sorcerer King finally come face to face, he looks you up and down in a way that almost implies he’s attracted to you. “Well, Emperor of the East at last we meet. So stoic and rugged! I heard that about you. I like it. Not my taste, but I believe it works for you. And my, look at all your little soldiers set out just for my arrival. I also detect a few…yes three mages in the nearby area. Guess you want to make sure I don’t secretly cast any aggressive spells eh? Smart. I’m flattered that you believe me so dangerous, but all of this was hardly necessary, as I said I only wish for peace between our two nations.” The Sorcerer King says while using a lot of flamboyant hand gestures. He hasn’t been here a few seconds and already he’s starting to irritate you. “Yes, well we’ll speak on that later, right now you’re going to have all your little concubines and some of your soldiers to get right back aboard that ship. I told you that you could have a personal guard not a small company and a few personal belongings.” You say. “But these lovelies ARE my personal belongings. Was I wrong in believing that the Empire does not engage in such institutions?” the sorcerer king asks holding on to one of his young male “belongings.” “If you’re referring to slavery, we’ve reserved it to criminal scum and prisoners of war nowadays as punishment for defying or insulting the Empire with their dissention or outright hostility. In any case I’m not having extra people running around and having to worry about them being a security risk, they stay on board your ship.” The Sorcerer King frowns a bit. “(Sigh) Very well I understand your concerns for security, but I must say you’re being a terribly dull and inflexible host right now. What about my two closest servants? Surely you would not deny me them?” “You are seriously testing my already uncharacteristic hospitality. (Sigh) Fine, you can have your two robe carriers, or whatever they are to you.” “Well I thank you for your permissiveness in this regard.” At this point the Sorcerer King tells most of his people to get back on the ship and reassuring them that he’ll make it up to all of them later. You on the other hand tell Warrick that you want that ship closely watched and if anyone is seen trying to exit it, they’re to be shot immediately. Both Warrick and Brenda leave your company to attend to their other duties. No reason for all of you to suffer this fop. What transpires for the rest of the day is putting up with the Sorcerer King’s annoying demeanor. He speaks and acts in a way that you dislike intensely. The man only seems to primarily discuss his sexual habits and you have to keep the conversation back on topic many times. Despite his evasiveness (or rather his obsession with his sex life) you do manage to get something out of him. He says that he’s never been to the “mythical” Island of Mortos having lived in Nakol all his life. (After you mention a bit about it, he says it sounds like an awful place that he hopes to never set foot on) He also admits that he knows the Empire is much stronger than his own nation, but still hopes that it doesn’t come to war as he claims he’s a lover not a fighter. He even says he’s willing to work out some sort of agreement as long as he can stay in power of Nakol. “Perhaps, if we paid some sort of tribute? I heard that you worked out a similar agreement with what are those adorable little mustached men that build all sorts of strange gadgets? Oh yes, the gnomes.” The sorcerer king says. “Hrmm. Well one thing you need to take into consideration. New Dessel is a single city. Granted it’s a mountain, but its still a single location that we keep a very close eye on. There is also the fact that there aren’t many of them. However the most important thing in their favor is that they have a useful trade that contributes to the Empire greatly. Great enough that I’m willing to let them have a little extra autonomy.” The Sorcerer King listens with apprehension, as he knows you’re going to now explain why you’re less willing to make the same deal with Nakol. “Nakol on the other hand is a very large nation with a very large population. Call me paranoid, but I’m far from comfortable from giving something that much freedom. And your nation despite being large offers nothing really save for your resources, territory and obviously fat treasury. And I’d rather have those without having to ask at all. Face it, this is beginning of the end for Nakol independence. However there is one thing that stands out that would at least save your own skin and let you keep your position in this upcoming new order.” “Oh? And what is that?” “Your immortality, well at least your supposed immortality. I have my doubts. I imagine the only way to truly test such a thing would be to well…kill you.” With a few eye glances to your own soldiers and a couple of swift punches and kicks, you get the sorcerer king to the floor and hold your dagger to his throat. His personal guard are slaughtered and two Eyes hold the sorcerer king’s arms just in case he tries to cast a spell. “Utter anything that remotely sounds like an incantation and your tongue is the first thing I cut off.” You say. “Stop! Stop! Please don’t kill me!” the sorcerer king exclaims. “The fear on you is overwhelming. You’re not immortal. Guess I have just been wasting my time…” you say. “No! Wait! (gasp) Maybe (wheeze) I’m not immortal, but I do have knowledge of obscure arts that can keep you young! I mean surely that must be worth something?” You relax your blade a bit. “Speak quickly sorcerer.” “Thank you. (Whew) Yes, it’s true that I do not have proper immortality, but I do have eternal youth and what commoners really know the difference right? It’s a very complex ritual though. The type of magic involved hasn’t been practiced in who knows when. When I was genuinely a younger man a century ago, and first found the scrolls in some forgotten cave I only half believed of the power they would bring. I nearly died in the process and I paid a price, but it was worth it as you can see the results.” You’re still a little leery… “Please! I’m telling the truth! Look, we can perform the ritual right here if you want! I can tell you what to do and get, but we’re still going to have to wait until tomorrow at least since the ritual must be done at a certain time of night and that time has currently past unfortunately.” “All right, you’ve bought yourself a little time, but I’m not going into this blind. Tomorrow you are going to tell me EVERYTHING about this ritual and the price you had to pay, because let’s just say I’m not a stranger to complex rituals and the repercussions involved.” You have the sorcerer king shown to his room. You also have him bound, gagged AND watched by several Eyes and a couple of mages. You are not taking any chances. You don’t get to sleep that night in your own room; you’re still pondering what this eternal youth ritual might entail. Casimir knew something similar to it, but that was due to necromantic magic and that obviously still had its limits. This apparently is different, you wonder how though. “Mmm, there he is, my ambitious little Eternal desperately trying to unlock the secret to immortality so that he may truly live up to his name. If you wanted to know so bad, you should’ve just asked mommy.” You hear a voice say behind you, which causes you to freeze. It’s Semra, and she’s in your room. This isn’t an “illusion” either. You know it isn’t because you just felt her hot breath in your ear followed by a gentle lick. How she managed to actually sneak in here is irrelevant. You’re in an unsafe position and you can only imagine that this has something to do with the sorcerer king. This whole visit might finally be showing its true colors… > You slowly talk your way out As crazy as it is to believe, if Semra’s actually here then it might not be an entirely bad thing. So far she’s always attempted to help you, and you imagine if she really wanted to kill you, you wouldn’t have heard a thing. “Semra. why am I not entirely surprised to find out you’re somehow mixed up in this?” you say not turning your head. “Because while you may be a fool obsessed conquest and order, you’re not an idiot.” “Obsessed eh? And what would you call your being here?” “A mother’s concern…mmmm” Semra says as both of her hands rub your chest. Her face is now side by side yours and you feel a small kiss on your cheek. “Do you know how fucked up you sound whenever you address us as mother and son?” “Oh you know you like it. I trust by the fact that you have not immediately attacked and that you’re actually enjoying my company that you’re willing to hear me out?” “I wouldn’t say I’m actually enjoying your company, but you did come all this way…you might as well speak your piece while I’m in a diplomatic mood.” You respond and slowly turn around at which point Semra backs away. “So was your clumsy plan always to invite Mortimer and kill him thus chopping off the head of the Nakol Kingdom immediately, or were you actually trying to learn how he became infamously immortal?” Semra asks. “Mortimer?” “Yes, you know the lurid little king that you have captive right now? His real name is Mortimer Fudwick. Sounds almost like one of those silly gnome names doesn’t it? If you thought he was annoying within the short time you spent with him, just think if you had to listen to the shit on a regular basis as his advisor.” Advisor. Well this is starting to make some more sense. “So is that where you’ve been all this time? Hiding out in the Nakol Kingdom as the sorc…as Mortimer’s advisor?” you ask. “I wouldn’t say I’ve been hiding. I’ve merely been securing my future. I’ll admit it’s not been easy and Mortimer’s ongoing sexual talk has long since gotten past the point of being boring. He’s not nearly as good as he thinks he is…” This last implication shouldn’t surprise you but that twisted part of you that apparently still hasn’t disappeared completely nearly causes you to say something. You manage to stop yourself, however Semra smiles at your momentary lapse in stoicism. “Why…you’re jealous!” Semra says nearly laughing. “No I’m not. You’re being delusional again.” You say trying to maintain your calm demeanor. “Deny it all you want, I know the truth. See, I KNEW I would ALWAYS be the only real woman for you. You never forget your first eh? Don’t worry, no matter how many times I lay with that effeminate fop he’ll never be anything the man you are.” Semra says totally enjoying this situation. “I don’t need your reassurance to tell me that, what I was going to say is that I’m a little surprised that a proud svelk woman like yourself has resorted to thinly veiled whoredom for survival. To a monkey no less.” “Look, if this is really bothering you, we can always go discuss this on your bed over there. Doesn’t look like it’s been used in years and I’m sure despite your age you could still give it to me in a way that only you can…” “Semra, will you get to the fucking point of your visit, before I stop entertaining the idea that you aren’t a complete fucking selfish backstabbing bitch who ultimately only looks out for her own best interests?” you say in a raised tone of voice. Semra chuckles a bit at your outburst. “Oh I did miss that anger of yours. Sexy. That passion. That hate that bubbles underneath. Mortimer has none of that. His demon does, but he’s rather useless in the physical aspect due to being trapped in a crystal and all. “Okay I heard the word demon. Let’s focus on that.” “(Sigh) Very well, to business…” Semra goes on to explain that Mortimer’s reign over the Nakol Kingdom solely hinges on a deal he made with a demon named Zelvix over a century ago. He got youth, power, magic abilities and all the sex he could ever want in exchange for his soul. However Morty wasn’t a complete fool, he managed to trap the demon in a crystal prison of some sort which has made the deal unable to be completed properly which now has made Mortimer “semi-immortal”. Now the demon just sits biding its time, waiting for the day it’s released or when Mortimer actually dies so it can claim what it was owed. “So basically what you’re telling me is that Mortimer doesn’t know shit about eternal youth let alone immortality other than what this demon gave him.” You say. “Basically.” “Knew it was too good to be true.” You say and get your sword. “What’re you doing?” “Well there’s no point in keeping him alive no is there? Might as well go ahead and be done with it…” “Wait! That’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about! You can’t just kill him, I mean you could, but it would be extremely…bad. Killing Mortimer is also going to release Zelvix and trust me, you don’t want to do that, he’s a demon lord of great power.” “If he’s so great how the hell did he get tricked by some hedge wizard?” “Probably due to typical arrogance like all of his kind. Look I’m just telling you that it’s not going to be a simple matter of just cutting his head off. If it was, I would’ve done it years ago on general principle of being a bad lay. You go in and kill him now and it’s going to be bad in the long term not just for you, but for the entire world.” “The world? Aren’t you being just a little overly dramatic? And since when are you so altruistic?” “Since unleashing a demon army would not be in my best interest that’s why. Contrary to popular belief, we svelk aren’t all looking to see the world burn, but that’s definitely what will happen if you kill Mortimer. Personally I was trying to find a way to banish the demon, I think I might be on the right path, but it’s going to take a few decades still I think.” “A few decades? Fuck that, I’m not waiting that long and I know you’re not telling me the entire truth anyway; you’ve got another angle in this. Now get the hell out of my way before I forget that you’re actually an enemy of mine.” “(Sigh) Fine. You know, usually as people get older they learn to become more patient. I can see though your growing fixation on living long enough to conquer the world is becoming a major flaw. Of course what else do you really have right? You have no master any longer. You have no significant other. You can’t have children. You have nothing except your Empire, which will undoubtedly fall soon after you die and you KNOW it. So you’re now starting to seek out a way to conquer death. You’re getting more like Casimir everyday. Congratulations, you are your father’s son.” “I don’t fear death Semra, never have.” “Never said you did, I taught you not to. I believe though…bah nevermind. Further discussion on this subject would be wasted on you. Go then, kill little pathetic Mortimer. Perhaps if you’re lucky when the demon army is unleashed by Zelvix and eventually overruns the world, you will get that warrior’s death rather than the old man in bed death where you are decrepit lying in your own filth and too weak to even lift yourself up.” “You done?” you ask as you advance towards the door and Semra with sword in hand. “Just one more thing. I hope you remember this day as one of the many that I could’ve killed you and didn’t. Mortimer wanted me to assassinate you, you know. Now I’ll take my leave. Until next time lover.” Semra says and disappears. You still hear the faint patter of footsteps so you figure she’s only turned invisible rather than some sort of teleportation. You call for soldiers, Eyes, mages and whoever else who will listen, since you have a feeling Mortimer’s escaped. When you enter the cell he was being held in, you find the Eyes and mages that were watching him burned from the inside out. You’re not sure how he did it without other soldiers and such being alerted and him being bound and gagged, but Mortimer’s obviously escaped and Semra was running interference for him while he did so. Several of your soldiers and others begin apologizing for not knowing what had occurred, but you wave them all away saying that you’re not angry at anyone. When they ask if you want a general search and alarm sounded you decline. “No. There would be no point, however I’m fairly certain that he’ll be leaving his ship behind. Sightmaster Warrick is probably still in the area having it watched. Someone go inform him to have everyone killed aboard and start having it refitted according to Empire standards.” Just as you’re finished giving that order, your advisor Kivan has arrived in a hurried fashion. “Emperor, I just heard! Are you okay? Has the Sorcerer King really escaped?” “Escaped, is a relative term, Kivan. Let’s just say he’s temporarily eluded my immediate clutches. If his situation is anything like I was just told, he’s got bigger problems than the likes of me. In any case, we’re officially at war with the Kingdom of Nakol now.” “I see…is there anything you need right now?” You briefly think for a moment. The only thing that comes to mind is getting your best general back to Evigrus. Decena from what you know has more or less pushed back the Iznac and at least established a good foothold on the continent where your people aren’t on the verge of being annihilated. Flog and Snilkez’ka will still be there along with whoever is Decena’s second. Of course you’ve been regularly receiving much needed resources and riches from Nyttrus thanks to Decena’s presence there. You don’t necessarily worry that the Iznac are going to suddenly be a problem due to her not being around, you’re just a little concerned that without a strong leadership presence, the orcs are going to run wild and fuck up the regular shipments or disregard them altogether. And you can’t afford for that to happen if you’re going to be going to war with Nakol. > You keep Decena in Nyttrus Decena might be a good general, but without the extra resources from Nyttrus, your war machine efforts are not going to run as smoothly. You need her to keep on top of things there. Which means you’ll be leading the new Eternals into battle and that’s fine by you. You don’t waste any time getting the rest of your plans underway. You figure a four-pronged attack will work suitably for the initial assault. You have your fleet attack south Nakol from the sea and land troops there. You have the rest of your airships fly over the mountain range and bombard northern Nakol. Your kobold forces can dig under the large mountain range as usual. Finally you have the majority of your forces march through the mountain passes. You’ll hold back your Eternals until the passes are completely under your control and no longer contested. It would probably be best to “test” the Nakol defenses located in the pass choke points anyway. This is going to be a bit different from the conflicts in the past, your armies aren’t going to be relying on any magic support at all. What few mages you have left are either overseeing the next Eternal tanks or are part of the Eyes now (Aside from the ones that Mortimer killed recently). You don’t know just exactly how powerful Mortimer’s own magic is, but you do know he’s the only wizard in his kingdom so you’re not anticipating any problems, if technology has proven anything its that the lowliest unskilled peasant can figure it out and use it with great efficiency. A sign of the times you suppose. In any case you have no doubt that when the time comes, it’ll probably be up to you personally to take down Mortimer in a magic showdown and if Semra is in your way then you’ll deal with her as well. A few months pass and just as you figured, Mortimer does have other tricks up his sleeve to make the invasion go a lot more difficult. You don’t know if he always had an agreement with them or perhaps they’re just siding with him out of spite, but the satyr and harpy clan survivors that fled to the Nakol mountains after the Tor War rear their ugly head again. This mainly involves their usual ambush tactics in the various mountain passes, but apparently there are still enough of the harpies to mount full assaults on your airships. Apparently Mortimer doesn’t have a problem with their mages either since they still have a few left and they’re using their elemental magic to a great degree causing rockslides in the mountain passes, strong damaging winds against your airships and even violent tidal waves against your fleet. You don’t remember them having quite that much magical strength before so you imagine Mortimer must be enhancing their abilities with his own. There are also reports of svelk mercenaries among the normal Nakol army. You knew that not ALL of them threw in their lot with Eldolith. These must be the ones that followed Semra. Well you can finish that job too. All of this might not be a problem if you weren’t suddenly experiencing a problem that you thought you wouldn’t be experiencing. There’s been a slow down in the shipments of resources from Nyttrus, meaning they’ve stopped completely. You also haven’t received any letters from Decena either. No ships have come back from Nyttrus at all and you don’t know why. The only answer you can come to the conclusion to though is that the Iznac have completely overrun your forces on Nyttrus, or have at least destroyed all your ships sent there. It’s a worrying enough thought that you think that maybe you’ll need to go there yourself to handle it, but that’s problematic due to your conflict with the Nakol Kingdom and you feel like victory will be close at hand. The alternative of course is to send someone else to Nyttrus who you really feel will get the job done. The only who comes to mind is Warrick and he’ll have to take his own contingent of Eyes with him. That of course means less of them overseeing the Empire, but that might be what has to be done because you’re in the middle of putting an end to a potentially dangerous foe on your own continent and you can’t drop that to go do something else. You do however; take a temporary leave from the field to speak with Warrick who is more than happy to help. “I was wondering when we were going to look into that. Do you think Decena has been killed?” “It’s a very real possibility and it would indeed be a loss, but I can’t imagine that the Iznac could’ve just wiped out all of our forces there. I mean the last letter I got from Decena was a fairly positive one. Said we had just destroyed another Iznac town and the kobolds were already in the process of digging their way into another one. I mean its possible the Iznac had their own tricks we didn’t know about, it seems very strange and concerning that we’ve heard nothing at all and even the couple of ships that were sent a few months ago have not returned. Somebody is deliberately making sure nobody leaves Nyttrus.” “Can’t we send an airship?” Warrick asks. “Still don’t have the long range capabilities to travel to Nyttrus, though the gnomes and Elam are still working on that. So we’re still using boats for now. What I want from you though is to find out what exactly the hell is going on over there. Solve the problem if necessary, but if it really looks bad, then don’t risk it and return home as soon as possible. No good in losing you as well.” “Understood, I’ll take mage support and I’ll have my second, Kristopher, fully prepared to take care of things while I’m gone. And once again I’m honored you’ve chosen me for this task.” Warrick says. In a few days Warrick is on his way to Nyttrus and you’re already anxious to hear what is going on over there. Lacking anything else to do, you return to your war with the Nakol Kingdom. A few more months pass and you finally receive news and it’s definitely not the good kind. Warrick manages to return in a small rowboat, half dead from dehydration and malnutrition, but also from whatever his experience on Nyttrus was, fortunately he’s not so far gone that he isn’t able to tell you after he’s taken care of a bit. Later you speak with Warrick privately and in a relaxed setting. He tells you that the situation is worse than you thought. It isn’t the Iznac that are the problem, or at least they aren’t the major problem anymore. It’s Decena. She’s gone rogue. Warrick says he doesn’t know all the details of how this came to be, but he believes that the Iznac had something to do with it, possibly with magic, but it sort of backfired on them. Decena’s turned herself into a “queen” over there and has not only the remaining orc and kobold forces still under her command, but even has some of the Glip and Iznac following her as well. She’s actually still fighting the “loyalist” Iznac hold outs that aren’t accepting her leadership. In any case, she’s not acting under the orders of the Empire any more and has declared herself independent. He then goes on to say how they were attacked nearly immediately after they disembarked from the ship. He says that probably should’ve turned back when it was realized that the Empire had lost complete control of Nyttrus to the point that it no longer even had a friendly harbor, but he wanted to do some more investigating. He mentions he only managed to escape after weeks of ongoing torture. The scars (and a couple of missing fingers) prove that. “Looks like I didn’t get to solve the problem, Emperor.” Warrick says. “I’m just glad you made it back to explain what the problem was exactly. We can take of it later…(Sigh) Shit… I guess I shouldn’t have sent Decena there after all. She didn’t really want to go in the first place, she only wanted to be close to home. Honestly she probably would’ve been a lot more useful here as well. I just didn’t think that…tell me Warrick, you have seen here correct? Is she truly gone?” “I have seen her. But I do not think this entirely due to magic. I mean perhaps the Iznac magic caused a change in her, but whenever I was in her presence, it felt like…well more was in play.” “What do you mean?” “Her attitude was all her own. Her actions were all here own. Her curses about you and the Empire were all her own. I mean keeping the orcs under her command after splitting from the Empire? That doesn’t surprise me, the greenskins will take any opportunity to split away. Keeping the kobolds under her command? Now that probably took some doing. We both know how loyal the little scalies are when they respect a strong leader greatly. It’s just unfortunate for the Empire that she managed to convince them somehow that she was greater than you. I can only guess the fact that they fought side by side with her for so long helped. Well that and the fact that I didn’t see Snilkez’ka around. She probably killed her long ago to prove a point.” Warrick continues. “The orcs and even the kobolds are not surprising, but the Glip and especially some of the Iznac themselves? Now that is what surprised me. Neither group were even willing to work with us before, yet Decena managed to recruit entire villages into helping her. I doubt if whatever Iznac magic was cast on her was supposed to make her into a ruler of their own people. This is all her. She has a confidence now that exceeds what she had before.” “She has an arrogance now you mean, if she believes she can take me on. After I’m done with putting the Nakol Kingdom out its misery, I’ll be paying a visit to Decena and she’ll regret her decision to become a traitor.” You say. “I don’t think she will. Despite her curses at you, I believe deep down she still can’t face you.” “Well she isn’t going to have a choice if I personally get a hold of her, but what do you mean?” you ask. “Well isn’t it obvious?” Warrick asks. At first you don’t understand his question, but then comes the split moment you understand all too well… But you don’t react in time since your guard was entirely down in the company of an old comrade in arms who has shown nothing but loyalty up until this point. Perhaps the same Iznac magic is in play here, but it hardly matters. Warrick suddenly pulls his pistol and shoots you in the chest twice, before you can react. You aren’t dead yet, but you’re down and struggling to breath. You try to hit Warrick with a flame bolt, but he’s still quick enough to dodge as he runs over to you. “She still loves you…that’s why she sent me! Long live the new regime!” Warrick yells and shoots you again in the head. You’re already dead when the rest of your soldiers come running and find Warrick cackling about Decena will be coming soon to wipe away the rest of the corrupt Empire.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As crazy as it is to believe, if Semra’s actually here then it might not be an entirely bad thing. So far she’s always attempted to help you, and you imagine if she really wanted to kill you, you wouldn’t have heard a thing. “Semra. why am I not entirely surprised to find out you’re somehow mixed up in this?” you say not turning your head. “Because while you may be a fool obsessed conquest and order, you’re not an idiot.” “Obsessed eh? And what would you call your being here?” “A mother’s concern…mmmm” Semra says as both of her hands rub your chest. Her face is now side by side yours and you feel a small kiss on your cheek. “Do you know how fucked up you sound whenever you address us as mother and son?” “Oh you know you like it. I trust by the fact that you have not immediately attacked and that you’re actually enjoying my company that you’re willing to hear me out?” “I wouldn’t say I’m actually enjoying your company, but you did come all this way…you might as well speak your piece while I’m in a diplomatic mood.” You respond and slowly turn around at which point Semra backs away. “So was your clumsy plan always to invite Mortimer and kill him thus chopping off the head of the Nakol Kingdom immediately, or were you actually trying to learn how he became infamously immortal?” Semra asks. “Mortimer?” “Yes, you know the lurid little king that you have captive right now? His real name is Mortimer Fudwick. Sounds almost like one of those silly gnome names doesn’t it? If you thought he was annoying within the short time you spent with him, just think if you had to listen to the shit on a regular basis as his advisor.” Advisor. Well this is starting to make some more sense. “So is that where you’ve been all this time? Hiding out in the Nakol Kingdom as the sorc…as Mortimer’s advisor?” you ask. “I wouldn’t say I’ve been hiding. I’ve merely been securing my future. I’ll admit it’s not been easy and Mortimer’s ongoing sexual talk has long since gotten past the point of being boring. He’s not nearly as good as he thinks he is…” This last implication shouldn’t surprise you but that twisted part of you that apparently still hasn’t disappeared completely nearly causes you to say something. You manage to stop yourself, however Semra smiles at your momentary lapse in stoicism. “Why…you’re jealous!” Semra says nearly laughing. “No I’m not. You’re being delusional again.” You say trying to maintain your calm demeanor. “Deny it all you want, I know the truth. See, I KNEW I would ALWAYS be the only real woman for you. You never forget your first eh? Don’t worry, no matter how many times I lay with that effeminate fop he’ll never be anything the man you are.” Semra says totally enjoying this situation. “I don’t need your reassurance to tell me that, what I was going to say is that I’m a little surprised that a proud svelk woman like yourself has resorted to thinly veiled whoredom for survival. To a monkey no less.” “Look, if this is really bothering you, we can always go discuss this on your bed over there. Doesn’t look like it’s been used in years and I’m sure despite your age you could still give it to me in a way that only you can…” “Semra, will you get to the fucking point of your visit, before I stop entertaining the idea that you aren’t a complete fucking selfish backstabbing bitch who ultimately only looks out for her own best interests?” you say in a raised tone of voice. Semra chuckles a bit at your outburst. “Oh I did miss that anger of yours. Sexy. That passion. That hate that bubbles underneath. Mortimer has none of that. His demon does, but he’s rather useless in the physical aspect due to being trapped in a crystal and all. “Okay I heard the word demon. Let’s focus on that.” “(Sigh) Very well, to business…” Semra goes on to explain that Mortimer’s reign over the Nakol Kingdom solely hinges on a deal he made with a demon named Zelvix over a century ago. He got youth, power, magic abilities and all the sex he could ever want in exchange for his soul. However Morty wasn’t a complete fool, he managed to trap the demon in a crystal prison of some sort which has made the deal unable to be completed properly which now has made Mortimer “semi-immortal”. Now the demon just sits biding its time, waiting for the day it’s released or when Mortimer actually dies so it can claim what it was owed. “So basically what you’re telling me is that Mortimer doesn’t know shit about eternal youth let alone immortality other than what this demon gave him.” You say. “Basically.” “Knew it was too good to be true.” You say and get your sword. “What’re you doing?” “Well there’s no point in keeping him alive no is there? Might as well go ahead and be done with it…” “Wait! That’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about! You can’t just kill him, I mean you could, but it would be extremely…bad. Killing Mortimer is also going to release Zelvix and trust me, you don’t want to do that, he’s a demon lord of great power.” “If he’s so great how the hell did he get tricked by some hedge wizard?” “Probably due to typical arrogance like all of his kind. Look I’m just telling you that it’s not going to be a simple matter of just cutting his head off. If it was, I would’ve done it years ago on general principle of being a bad lay. You go in and kill him now and it’s going to be bad in the long term not just for you, but for the entire world.” “The world? Aren’t you being just a little overly dramatic? And since when are you so altruistic?” “Since unleashing a demon army would not be in my best interest that’s why. Contrary to popular belief, we svelk aren’t all looking to see the world burn, but that’s definitely what will happen if you kill Mortimer. Personally I was trying to find a way to banish the demon, I think I might be on the right path, but it’s going to take a few decades still I think.” “A few decades? Fuck that, I’m not waiting that long and I know you’re not telling me the entire truth anyway; you’ve got another angle in this. Now get the hell out of my way before I forget that you’re actually an enemy of mine.” “(Sigh) Fine. You know, usually as people get older they learn to become more patient. I can see though your growing fixation on living long enough to conquer the world is becoming a major flaw. Of course what else do you really have right? You have no master any longer. You have no significant other. You can’t have children. You have nothing except your Empire, which will undoubtedly fall soon after you die and you KNOW it. So you’re now starting to seek out a way to conquer death. You’re getting more like Casimir everyday. Congratulations, you are your father’s son.” “I don’t fear death Semra, never have.” “Never said you did, I taught you not to. I believe though…bah nevermind. Further discussion on this subject would be wasted on you. Go then, kill little pathetic Mortimer. Perhaps if you’re lucky when the demon army is unleashed by Zelvix and eventually overruns the world, you will get that warrior’s death rather than the old man in bed death where you are decrepit lying in your own filth and too weak to even lift yourself up.” “You done?” you ask as you advance towards the door and Semra with sword in hand. “Just one more thing. I hope you remember this day as one of the many that I could’ve killed you and didn’t. Mortimer wanted me to assassinate you, you know. Now I’ll take my leave. Until next time lover.” Semra says and disappears. You still hear the faint patter of footsteps so you figure she’s only turned invisible rather than some sort of teleportation. You call for soldiers, Eyes, mages and whoever else who will listen, since you have a feeling Mortimer’s escaped. When you enter the cell he was being held in, you find the Eyes and mages that were watching him burned from the inside out. You’re not sure how he did it without other soldiers and such being alerted and him being bound and gagged, but Mortimer’s obviously escaped and Semra was running interference for him while he did so. Several of your soldiers and others begin apologizing for not knowing what had occurred, but you wave them all away saying that you’re not angry at anyone. When they ask if you want a general search and alarm sounded you decline. “No. There would be no point, however I’m fairly certain that he’ll be leaving his ship behind. Sightmaster Warrick is probably still in the area having it watched. Someone go inform him to have everyone killed aboard and start having it refitted according to Empire standards.” Just as you’re finished giving that order, your advisor Kivan has arrived in a hurried fashion. “Emperor, I just heard! Are you okay? Has the Sorcerer King really escaped?” “Escaped, is a relative term, Kivan. Let’s just say he’s temporarily eluded my immediate clutches. If his situation is anything like I was just told, he’s got bigger problems than the likes of me. In any case, we’re officially at war with the Kingdom of Nakol now.” “I see…is there anything you need right now?” You briefly think for a moment. The only thing that comes to mind is getting your best general back to Evigrus. Decena from what you know has more or less pushed back the Iznac and at least established a good foothold on the continent where your people aren’t on the verge of being annihilated. Flog and Snilkez’ka will still be there along with whoever is Decena’s second. Of course you’ve been regularly receiving much needed resources and riches from Nyttrus thanks to Decena’s presence there. You don’t necessarily worry that the Iznac are going to suddenly be a problem due to her not being around, you’re just a little concerned that without a strong leadership presence, the orcs are going to run wild and fuck up the regular shipments or disregard them altogether. And you can’t afford for that to happen if you’re going to be going to war with Nakol. > You call Decena back You made a promise that you wouldn’t keep her any longer than necessary and that if war broke out here, you’d want her to lead the new eternals into battle. Your word is still your bond as far as those close to you go. Seeing as you want her to get back as quickly as possible, you tell Kivan to have one of the new longer range airships that can travel a lot further than their predecessors sent. (Another recent improvement courtesy of Elam’s work with the gnomes) Maybe it’ll even instill a little fear into the natives of Nyytrus if they happen to catch sight of it. While you’re waiting for her arrival back, you aren’t wasting any time getting the rest of your plans underway. You figure a four-pronged attack will work suitably for the initial assault. You’ll have your fleet attack south Nakol from the sea and land troops there. You’ll have the rest of your airships fly over the mountain range and bombard northern Nakol. Your kobold forces can dig under the large mountain range as usual. Finally you’ll have the majority of your forces march through the mountain passes. You’ll hold back your Eternals until Decena arrives, besides it would probably be best to “test” the Nakol defenses located in the pass choke points anyway. This is going to be a bit different from the conflicts in the past, your armies aren’t going to be relying on any magic support at all. What few mages you have left are either overseeing the next Eternal tanks or are part of the Eyes now (Aside from the ones that Mortimer killed recently). You don’t know just exactly how powerful Mortimer’s own magic is, but you do know he’s the only wizard in his kingdom so you’re not anticipating any problems, if technology has proven anything its that the lowliest unskilled peasant can figure it out and use it with great efficiency. A sign of the times you suppose. In any case you have no doubt that when the time comes, it’ll probably be up to you personally to take down Mortimer in a magic showdown and if Semra is in your way then you’ll deal with her as well. By the time Decena arrives your invasion of Nakol is well on its way and going more or less as planned though there have been a few hiccups here and there. You meet Decena when she gets off the Storm II. She’s much more “weathered” looking from when you sent her to Nyytrus. Granted as a warrior she will collect battle scars and such, but she almost is unrecognizable. She has a “stare” that you’ve seen in more than a few soldiers that have broke under the strain of battle, but this seems impossible for someone of Decena’s training and experience. Still, she manages a smile when she sees you. “General Decena reporting for duty my Emperor.” She says. “No need for the formalities, I’m just glad to have you back.” You reply. “It’s good to be back. Just show me to my next assignment.” “Well we do have a little time before that…are you okay? I mean how is everything Nyttrus?” “When I left everything was fine. If I seem a bit off, I’m just a little tired I suppose. Apologies Emperor.” “Hrm, maybe you should rest first before running off into battle again. This war doesn’t need you right this minute.” “If that is what you wish…um can I talk to you in private?” “Erm, of course.” You answer unsure of what to expect. You and Decena find some place secluded and no sooner have you asked her what’s on her mind; she’s wrapped her arms around you and buried her head in your chest. “Please never send me away for that long again.” She says. “Decena…what…” you sputter unsure of what this is about exactly, but she’s obviously upset. “What the hell happened over there?” “I dunno…I just…I dunno. I was fine for the first year. I missed you, but I was fine. After that though I started feeling a crushing emptiness. I think it was some sort of Iznac magic. I got hit by a black cloud of some sort by a priest. Haven’t felt right until I got the news I was coming back here.” “You never said anything in the letters.” “I didn’t want to worry you, I wanted to stay strong for you…I guess I’m failing again though…” “You’re fine Decena, just come with me, maybe I can figure out what the hell these Iznac did to you.” When you get Decena back to the palace you check to see if she’s under some sort of curse or something similar. Decena insists that you don’t make a fuss and definitely not use any sort of healing magic on her since it will shorten your own lifespan. You reassure her that whatever you need to do probably isn’t going to do anything major to you. “It’s more important that you’re in the best physical condition and the right frame of mind before I send you back into another major conflict. Besides, if I lose a few days, weeks or even months, what’s the difference? It’s not like I’m going to live forever anyway.” You say. “Don’t say that.” Decena says. “Why not? It’s true.” “But I don’t want to believe that it’s true. I want to believe that you’ll somehow live forever and ever. In fact I know you will!” You flash a quick smile and shake your head a bit. Decena still retains an image of you being “invincible.” To be fair, probably most people do (Even the cynical probably just believe you’re too “tough” or “magical” to die), but then they don’t really know you as closely as Decena does. And the way she believes it is more of a childlike hope that she never really grew out of. Funny considering that she never really had a proper childhood. After a few magical incantations, you discover that Iznac magic is indeed still affecting her, but its rather easy to get rid of, in fact it seemed to prey upon the fears in her mind. Not surprisingly that involved being away from you and that started to gradually mess with her head. It’s a testament to her willpower that she managed to fight it off for as long as she did. Being actually around you probably weakened the magic. It’s actually a good thing you called her back when you did, who knows what might’ve happened had you not done so. It is a bit alarming though since you weren’t aware of what powers the Iznac had other than the letters Decena sent. “You should be fine now, but you said that everything is okay in Nyttrus? I mean did anyone else get hit with this type of Iznac magic?” you ask. “Yes it has happened, but Iznac priests aren’t that common. I mean I saw orcs and kobolds get hit with the same spell, but it didn’t seem to affect them. I mean at least nothing I noticed. They seemed to continue to act like…well orcs and kobolds. There were a few instances of my human soldiers committing suicide though.” “Well, I guess I won’t concern myself too much about it then since orcs and kobolds are the main ones over there. Guess their more simplistic minds are a good defense against the magic. Orcs don’t really fear anything except perhaps looking weak, and kobolds only fear failing the Empire and myself. I imagine if the magic affects them at all it might only entice them to fight harder. Bad for the Iznac, good for us. In any case as soon as this Nakol business is over with, I might just have to take a personal trip over to Nyttrus.” “How long do you anticipate that this conflict might last?” Decena asks. “Hard to say, I assumed that it might be a costly war and that the sorcerer king would have powerful opposition, but so far nothing of major consequence. I wonder if there will actually be anything left by the time you lead the new eternals into the thick of it. Hell, I’m starting to wonder if it won’t be overkill, but I’d rather it be overkill than underestimation. Besides I’m sure he’s going to pull out a few tricks that we haven’t seen yet.” With a few more brief bits banter, words of encouragement and some rest, Decena seems back to her old self and is eager to lead the new eternals (who are just as eager to get into battle seeing as they’ve been training their whole lives for a moment like this. Just as you figured, Mortimer does have other tricks up his sleeve to make the invasion go a lot more difficult. You don’t know if he always had an agreement with them or perhaps they’re just siding with him out of spite, but the satyr and harpy clan survivors that fled to the Nakol mountains after the Tor War rear their ugly head again. This mainly involves their usual ambush tactics in the various mountain passes, but apparently there are still enough of the harpies to mount full assaults on your airships. Apparently Mortimer doesn’t have a problem with their mages either since they still have a few left and they’re using their elemental magic to a great degree causing rockslides in the mountain passes, strong damaging winds against your airships and even violent tidal waves against your fleet. You don’t remember them having quite that much magical strength before so you imagine Mortimer must be enhancing their abilities with his own. There are also reports of svelk mercenaries among the normal Nakol army. You knew that not ALL of them threw in their lot with Eldolith. These must be the ones that followed Semra. Well you can finish that job too. It doesn’t matter what the sorcerer king does though, nothing is going to save him as far as you’re concerned. When Decena breaks through into Nakol lands with all your new eternals under her commands they prove that point by completely razing several major settlements. Between her leadership and their skill, his soldiers aren’t standing a chance against them. This war might be far from over, but its not going to take as long as you thought it might. > Year 54 Nakol’s existence as a nation is coming to an end. You’ve seized most of its territory. Its armies have practically been wiped out, and you’ve even eliminated most of Mortimer’s allies. The only major objective that’s left is Dequilet, the capital and currently the only thing saving it is a large magical barrier completely surrounding the city. So far it’s proven impenetrable to conventional means, which means you’re going to have to resort to magical ones, which unfortunately despite your own best efforts you’ve failed to bring it down, though you feel as if you’ve gotten close. You doubt if Mortimer is doing it himself, you imagine that Semra is probably helping him upkeep the barrier. He might even have a couple of satyr mages still left, though you doubt it. In any case, he’s got help and you’re probably going to have to resort to a bit of help as well if you want to bring the barrier down. “Galen’s a given, as are the Eye mages, but I’m going to have to take mages off overseeing the Eternal tanks for this project as well. Don’t want to, but it’ll be necessary.” You say while explaining the next course of action in your command tent to Decena. “We’re going to have to wait for those mages to come here, that’s at least a few days. I hate this sitting around, is it truly the only way?” Decena asks. “Unfortunately. Last time I tried to bring it down, I nearly fell unconscious. With enough magic energy though I’m certain it can be brought down, as soon as it is, I want you and rest to blow apart those walls and rush in as quick as you can. Don’t worry I won’t be far behind no matter how woozy I feel afterwards.” Just as Decena is about to acknowledge your plan, that old familiar voice is heard. “You know none of that is necessary if you listen to my plan.” Semra remarks. The instant Decena sees Semra she raises her voice and attempts to attack her, though you hold her back from doing so. “Don’t bother Decena, she’s not really there. It’s an illusionary image. Right on time too. You’re starting to get predictable Semra.” You say. “Semra? Is this that svelk bitch you’ve told me about?” Decena asks. “Oh so he did talk about me to you. I’m not surprised. Never could get me completely out of his mind…” “Fuck you svelk! He told me about all the hell you put him through!” Semra does her usual gleeful smile at Decena’s anger. “My, she IS the aggressively territorial one. Isn’t she? Almost sad that her feelings for you are so strong when your own for her are…limited. Trust me dear, he can’t ever love you back. How could he? You’re not even young looking anymore…” At this point you have to restrain Decena again. “Decena, don’t pay attention to her. She’s just enjoying making you miserable. It’s what she does. Semra, what the hell do you want? Shouldn’t you be making plans to escape or something?” “Who said I wasn’t? But right now I’m actually here for you. Need your help in killing Mortimer, well what’s left of him anyway. It’s getting harder to figure out when he’s completely all there or not. Zelvix is starting to gain mental control over him due to his shattered confidence and willpower. This war has been very stressful on him as you might expect.” Decena asks what she’s talking about and you quickly mention about the supposed demon army that will be unleashed when Mortimer dies, though with the way Semra’s telling it, it sounds like this Zelvix is already getting loose…assuming she’s telling the truth. “Semra, didn’t YOU claim that it would take you about a decade to properly banish this demon?” you ask. “Well with you rushing head long into attacking Nakol, I had to step up my research now didn’t I? Don’t worry though, as I said, I’ve got it figured out, just need your help in doing so. Remember how we linked our energy together when we were extinguishing all those little gnome souls? Well we need to do something like that again, but this is going to require a slightly deeper connection. Namely we’d have to link our very minds together so as to make the magical connection strong enough to face the demon.” “Here we go…” You think. “You can’t seriously trust this woman!” Decena shouts. “He most certainly should trust me considering how many times I’ve warned him about shit and indirectly AND directly saved his life. After all if he’d trusted me all those years ago, he might’ve saved himself a lot of bother on a certain island. Y’know you still have never told me how you exactly came out of Mortos relatively unscathed. Perhaps you can after we take care of this mess?” Semra remarks. You don’t answer immediately. You’ve been put in this position several times before and it’s the same old thing. Semra tells you something, you distrust her, you usually follow her advice against your better judgment and while things don’t necessarily go entirely your way, you can never deny that had you not acted things would be much worse. But on the other hand… it’s the same old thing. You know she’s not telling you the whole truth and something about this demon situation seems even more suspicious especially since she’s actually encouraging a linking of your minds. Even if she’s telling the entire truth about the demon and this being the only way she feels is the way to defeat it, would it really be a victory if Semra had magical access to your mind? Who the hell knows what she might be able to do. “All of this is pointless anyway, we can’t get in unless that barrier goes down.” You say. “Oh that thing? I can make a small opening in it for a small period of time. Of course when I do so, Mortimer will probably instantly know I’m working against him and it’s possible he’ll completely lose himself to Zelvix, but we should have enough time to do what we have to do.” Semra remarks. “Or I could just wait for my mages to help me bring the barrier down. Then when I do get that barrier down, I assault the city with so much firepower that nothing of this world or another is going to survive it. I don’t care how powerful this demon is.” You say. “Optimistic that you believe that, but I tell you sincerely that won’t be enough to stop Zelvix. He’s in a weakened state now due to his long imprisonment, but as soon as Mortimer’s dead, it won’t take him long to regain his full strength and when that happens, count on several magical gates opening up. Now MAYBE you’ll be able to even repel the demons that will undoubtedly come screaming out of said gates, but quite frankly, YOU are not the young Eternal you used to be and your odds will not be good. And your Empire’s odds if you should fall in battle? Even worse. You already survived one trip that you very well shouldn’t have…actually you’ve survived many things you probably shouldn’t have, but those days are becoming more unlikely as you approach your twilight years. I understand that you’d rather die a warrior’s death, however I doubt very seriously that you wish to die a fool’s death. It is one thing to die in a battle that has been properly planned. It’s entirely another when you die because you purposely ignore all your information and don’t take advantage of the tools and resources that allow you to win efficiently. I’M giving you this chance to win this war now in the most efficient way possible.” You continue to listen. “We’ve been in this all too familiar position before Eternal. Why take the chance of making the same mistake twice?” Semra asks. Decena looks at you as you seriously begin to consider Semra’s offer. “Emperor?” she asks. > You join with Semra “Fuck it, let’s do it.” You say. “That’s my boy.” Semra remarks. “What?! Emperor you…you can’t…” Decena reacts. “Are you still here? Hush tank child, the adults are speaking.” Semra snidely comments, this time though Decena ignores her and focuses all her attention on you. “Emperor…I don’t understand why you would trust this woman after all the terrible things you’ve told me about her, but maybe it isn’t my place to understand. Maybe I am unable to understand the ways of a living god. And that IS what you are. At least to me. I will always love you no matter what. I will always serve you faithfully no matter what. Now if YOU believe that this svelk’s plan is what is necessary to win, then I will trust your judgment. However I still cannot trust her and if you’re entering this city, you aren’t going alone. I insist that I go with you.” Decena has dropped her formal stance at this point and is looking into your eyes while holding one of your hands with both of hers. She still believes so much in you… You nod which causes Semra to roll her eyes. “(Sigh) Very well if you want to bring your former tank baby fuck toy fine. Maybe she’ll come in handy as demon fodder, but that’s it. I don’t have the power to keep an opening in the barrier for very long, now hurry up and meet me at the city gates.” Semra remarks and her image disappears. “Well I guess I better make a general announcement before we leave.” You say and exit your command tent. Your announcement to your soldiers is brief though their response is one of encouragement of course. They’re probably inspired by the fact that you’re willing to do a “one on one” confrontation with the leader of the enemy. Whatever their own private thoughts on your policies and rulership, nobody can ever claim that you’ve never been willing to put yourself in the same amount of danger. Of course with you and Decena entering the barrier, thee is the question of who is going to be in charge of the main attack force just in case something should go wrong. “Colonel Flevas, you’re in charge of the army.” “I am?” he asks surprised. “Sure, you’ve more than proven yourself time and time again. You’ve earned the respect of the troops just as much as anyone else. You have the rank. If anything does happen, get Galen and the rest of the mages here to take down the barrier and then hit the city with everything you got. Though if that barrier comes down and we aren’t out of there within a twenty minutes, bombard the place, and if you start seeing anything that doesn’t look like it belongs from this world coming out of the city, start hitting it with everything anyway.” With that last command you and Decena approach Dequilet. As soon as you get to the barrier a small opening appears and the pair of you enter. The city gates then open and once again you and Decena enter. Two things are immediately noticeable. One is how very ornate and elaborate the buildings are, even compared to other Nakol cities you’ve been to (Granted those were mostly half in ruins at the time) You’ve never been one for pointless decoration, but you have to admit the city is quite a sight. The second thing you notice. There are no people at all. Nothing. It’s like the entire city was evacuated, but you’re fairly certain that didn’t happen. Considering how desperate Mortimer has been to save his own skin, you can’t imagine that he did something so selfless. Besides nobody reported an exodus of people leaving the city and there were no such sightings. “Beautiful isn’t it? Nothing compared to svelk architecture to be sure, but fairly good for the lesser-born monkeys. Especially without any of them around anymore dirtying up the place.” Semra shouts as she walks towards you. Decena grips her weapon, but makes no other move. “So where is everyone?” “Oh most of them are inside the big palace just up ahead. In these last few weeks ol’ Morty’s had himself a non-stop orgy. Takes the edge off. I have to admit such things are an amusing distraction, but when it comes to you monkeys even I can only stand one at a time. Anyway, shall we prepare for our…merging?” At this point Decena grabs your arm. “Emperor are you sure abut this? I mean we could still just chop this bitch’s head off then go in and finish off the sorcerer king and whatever demons we may face. Just me and you.” “Its okay Decena. This svelk bitch has always been inside my head in one way or another, what’s one more? Besides, my life has always been an open book. I have no hidden secrets of any worth. She’s already know all my combat techniques considering she taught me most of them. As much as I might hate to admit it, she’s a far more skilled magic user than I will most likely ever be so there is nothing to learn there. Anything she might use against me psychologically she’s already tried and failed.” You turn to Semra, who stands silently listening. You walk towards her still talking. “So she can access my mind because I KNOW I’m strong enough to resist whatever the hell she might attempt. Because ultimately it isn’t me who needs to be worried about this joining, it’s her. This will work both ways, and who knows what secrets might she hold in that svelk brain of hers. Secrets that she doesn’t want ME to know and I’m sure there are quite a lot. Now are YOU prepared for this?” you ask Semra face to face and you notice that there is a brief show of concern, then she answers. “I can handle it if you can, lover.” She answers confidently. “Well let’s get on with it then.” You say. “Stare into my eyes and focus.” she says and begins the process. Suddenly your mind goes to another place. You see what’s in Semra’s mind or at least a glimpse of it. Images are coming at you so fast you can’t make out all of it, but you see a mixture of the horrifying and impressive at the same time. You see what must’ve been during the time of when the svelk ruled. Everything is very regal and elegant looking, though much like the svelk themselves, it radiates a certain coldness. You also see the svelk treating their subjects (Most of which are of races you’ve never even seen before) worse than the Empire ever could. They also have greater control too thanks to their magic. What you aren’t seeing is any images of Semra herself and you’re even sensing that she’s experiencing pain during this process. Semra is obviously blocking some of her more private thoughts. She’s showing you a general history of her life, yet somehow only telling you half the story. Meanwhile she’s probably trying to scour through your mind of everything. However, while you may not have the magic skills she does, your powers have grown considerably over the years. Her attempts to keep portions of her own mind shielded fail and you see even more… You see the image of a young svelk girl. You aren’t sure how old, but by human standards she would definitely be considered a child. It’s Semra and she is holding the hand of an adult male svelk. They are both in a city where a large crowd of svelk are gathered having a good time throwing what looks to be sveld babies against a nearby wall which has a big target on it. Semra looks very happy and cheers whenever one splats into a bloody mess in the center. It would seem that Semra’s entertainment preferences didn’t change much for her. Several images of her enjoying similar activities with the same adult male flood your mind. The adult male is her father. In any case, the idea that she was once a child is bizarre, but then everyone starts as one at some point right? You see many images of her father. He was obviously a warrior mage of great skill that enjoyed violent battle and crushing the enemies of his empire though you also get a sense of “honor” about him. In that regard he must’ve been unusual for a svelk. He also was much different around Semra who apparently brought out the “lighter side” of him. You then see more…intimate moments with her father. Namely sexual in nature. You can’t say you’re surprised to see this given her own personality. This relationship apparently went on for years. You’re loathed to think it, but her father seems very much like…well you. His face even vaguely resembles your own if you had the dark skin and pointy ears. This must just be another piece of the sick puzzle of why Semra has a bit of an obsession for you. It’s obvious that Semra is really trying to do her best in blocking all of this from you, but she continues to fail. Then you see a black spot. Like a pit of endless despair. The next images are brutal and violent. You see war, specifically a civil war. The svelk are warring with their own kind, or rather the “impure offshoot” of their own kind, the sveld. Dark elf against elf in a war to the death. Then you see images of svelk cities burning to the ground and falling into ruin followed by hordes of svelk scattering and becoming the nomadic mercenary society you’ve always known them to be. You see Semra’s father in battle with a mob of demonic beings. They also have a much older Semra on the ground. This must all be during the fall of the svelk Empire. The demons are doing their best in trying to rape Semra, but she manages to get the upper hand and fight them off. Then you see Semra’s father being brutally ripped apart by the demons before Semra can do anything to help him. One demon even runs off with his head. A great sense of sorrow floods your mind. And then you suddenly feel yourself being pushed away. The contact is broken and Semra immediately turns away from you and some sniffling sounds can be heard. “(Sniffle) There. It’s done. Let’s go.” She remarks while rubbing her eyes and walking briskly towards the palace. You stand silent for a moment somewhat in shock by what has just happened. Never thought you’d see AND actually believe Semra having feelings of loss and genuine sadness. “What…what the hell happened?” Decena asks. “I think I saw something she thought she could hide from me and failed spectacularly.” You answer. “What did you see?” “A lot, but probably not everything. All I’ll say right now is the woman has serious daddy issues.” You say. Decena pauses for a moment before speaking again. “Don’t we all?” she says looking directly at you and walks towards the palace leaving you standing alone. “Alison didn’t.” you mumble to yourself and follow. As soon as you set foot in the palace a horrible stench fills your lungs. It smells like all manner of bodily fluids, waste and then some. Vermin of all kind run about what looked to be a picturesque palace at one time, but now is home to well, filth. “Ugh! That’s really awful! I actually feel sick! Not even sections of the jungles in Nyytrus smelled this bad!” Decena remarks. “I can honestly say I’ve only encountered a stench this bad once before and it wasn’t an orgy that caused it.” you say remembering Gnome’s Home. You point up ahead into the large chamber that Semra is waiting for the pair of you. And there lies what is causing the majority of the smell. The dead. Hundreds of filthy naked bloody bodies must be piled up in the center of the chamber like some grisly pillar. Other bodies lie about on the floor. Really you can’t really walk into the place without stepping over one. “It would appear that the orgy has been cancelled.” Semra remarks. “I take it that this is a sign that Morty’s gotten worse?” you ask. “It’s a safe bet. I don’t know if you can feel it, but I’m definitely feeling more of an infernal presence. Zelvix may have very well completely taken over Mortimer’s body by now.” “Sadly the little fucker is still making squeaking pleading sounds for his freedom, though his voice is starting to dim. His torment while delicious now, will be even more so in hell when he finally shuffles off his mortal coil. But I ramble, please come in with your friends Semra. I’m sure all of us can come to some sort of deal…” a dark booming voice says behind the doors up ahead. Probably the throne room. Semra turns to you. “Whatever you do, don’t listen to Zelvix. Demons have a way of persuading you into doing things you’d never consider.” “What like linking your mind with them?” you say. “I’m serious! If you think that I’M a manipulative untrustworthy bitch, think of me five times worse and you still haven’t even begun to understand just how bad demons can be. Now as soon as we go in, he’s not going to attack us directly at least not immediately. He’ll try to get us into a deal first. What we need to do is perform my banishment ritual on him. You actually don’t need to do anything; I’ll do the work. I just need your extra magical energy as well as your inner willpower. Together we can do this.” Maybe its because your minds are linked now, you get the sense that Semra is telling the entire truth about this. Usually you always have suspicion or doubt about her words, but not this time. “Hey what about me?” Decena asks. “Both of you are wizards with all kinds of mind protection, what the hell am I going to do when the demon starts attacking mine?” “Don’t worry Decena, I’ll cast a powerful mind shield spell on you, but I’m more than confident that you’ve got the inner strength to resist any demon lies.” You say. “I’d highly advise against that! You need to stay focused! Upkeeping a spell on her is just going to divide your energy. She probably should just wait outside.” Semra snaps. “Semra, she’s here to help me just like I’m here to help YOU. I’m not going to deprive her of something she wants to do. You say its going to divide my energy, I say let me worry about that and you worry about your role in this. We’re all in this together remember?” Semra throws up a hand in exasperation. “Fine.” She remarks. You tell Decena that she just needs to deal with any threats other than Mortimer since you know at some point he’s probably going to have minions running in to help him. You also remind Decena to NOT kill Mortimer since the whole point is to keep the demon in weakened form while Semra banishes it. Each one of you knowing your roles, you all enter the throne room… > The confrontation Upon entering the throne room, Mortimer paces near his throne, looking up when you arrive. He certainly doesn’t look like the fop you remember, his clothes are now partly torn and dirty. He doesn’t look like he’s bathed in days making his hair to stand up in a way that would almost be laughable if he wasn’t currently possessed by a demon. His eyes give off an unearthly red glow. The throne room itself is in shambles and pieces of dead bodies, entrails and blood are practically everywhere. A large broken crystal lies nearby, you can only guess that’s Zelvix’s former prison. Semra says nothing. She just looks at you nodding, and reaches out for your hand. You give it to her and she grabs it. She then begins chanting. You take the opportunity to cast your mind shield spell on Decena who stands nearby watching every direction. “So, THIS is what you’ve brought to beat me with Semra? I would’ve expected better from the likes of you. I don’t know why you’re even chanting that nonsense, it isn’t going to work on me you know.” Zelvix says. (It certainly isn’t Mortimer anymore just on how deep the voice is alone) While the three of you stay silent, Zelvix continues to talk. “I have no idea why you continue to blame me for your father’s death. Even I can’t control my underlings all the time. Your people made a deal with me and I collected, what’s so wrong about that?” Semra continues to chant. “You believe this woman? She holds a grudge longer than some hell lords do and at least they do for something reasonable like a stolen soul or something. She’s just whining. Bah, I’m done with her anyway, I offered another deal when she first arrived here for old time’s sake, but she refused.” Zelvix’s banter is still met by silence. “Anyway, how about you two? Oh no. No, I don’t think you’ll do. You’re too much in love with this one. While I think under different circumstances twisting your mind would probably be child’s play, I believe your master’s presence makes it a bit too much of an effort to even try. You want his approval so much that you’d probably strip naked, get down on all fours and open your ass, pussy and mouth at the same time to an entire company of orcs if you thought it would please him. Blind loyalty is such a beautiful thing at times. Shit, I should be so lucky to instill such devotion. Oh well, guess that’s why there’s torture.” Zelvix says to Decena. Everyone continues to remain silent, but Zelvix now turns his attention to you. You didn’t feel it before, but you start to feel an oppressive presence within your mind. “Now you I can work with. Can’t work with bitches anyway, too fucking emotional am I right? I’m sure you know what I’m talking about considering the company you’re keeping. You think a svelk female is bad? Heh, try a demon girl. Your dark elves don’t have shit on them. Lots of fun at parties though!” You redouble your efforts to block out Zelvix’s words… “I have to say, you’re quite skilled for a mortal. I’ll even admit, I like your style, showing no mercy to your enemies, ruling your territory with an iron fist, I can appreciate a mortal that rises above his slug like station. And you were quite low weren’t you? You were practically an abortion waiting to happen then through a minor mistake you got kicked upstairs. Good thing bureaucracy sucks doesn’t it? It’s okay though, you made the most of it and that’s what really counts. I mean here you are talking to me, one of the greatest demon lords in the infernal realms…” At this point you’d almost make a deal with him just so he’d shut the fuck up. He continues to pace, but you notice he holds his head for a brief moment. “Hrmm, starting to feel something…no it’s gone now. Nice try Semra, but you’re not getting anywhere. Now who was I talking to? Oh yes, the Eternal.” You suddenly feel an even greater oppressive feeling on your mind. Between trying to support Semra, protecting Decena and fighting off Zelvix, you’re starting to feel the burden. “Not easy is it? Protecting everyone? (Sigh) I don’t even know why you’re helping Semra anyway. You know she’d backstab you if it ultimately served her purpose. You’re not a stupid man, you have to know that she’s just using you right now and it’s not even for petty revenge. Well some of it is I suppose, but there’s something greater here at stake and she’s trying to achieve it. Let me tell you…” Zelvix’s deep voice fills your mind despite your best efforts to block it out. “She’s trying to revive the svelk Empire. Y’see she actually thinks by somehow killing me that the so called curse I put on the svelk will disappear. It’s complete shit of course. The reason for the svelk downfall is their own doing and none of my own. I didn’t cause their civilization to suddenly descend into civil war and rebellion, that had been coming for centuries long before I arrived. All I did was provide a service. A world saving one in fact. Why in certain circles one might even consider me a hero!” You feel a greater drain on your energy as Zelvix continues. “I bet she even told you that I’m planning on unleashing an army of demons on this world didn’t she? Pfft. Please as if I need to worry about such things, I have my own kingdom in the infernal realm with millions of subjects and even more souls to torment! If its one thing I’ve learned as a demon lord, it’s that you should only conquer what you can actually hold. I had a brother once who learned that lesson the hard way. Got his head chopped off by a mortal for his troubles. Hahahahaha! My brother was a fucking idiot!” Zelvix laughs at his last statement, which is then followed by a roar of pain. Mortimer’s body falls to the ground and he begins twitching and convulsing. “FUCKING BITCH! I’LL RIP YOUR SOUL APART! RAAAAARGH!” Zelvix shouts while Semra keeps chanting. If anything it’s given you a bit of temporary relief, but only for a little while. “Well, it seems our little dark skinned whore has been doing her research. I may have underestimated her. The flaw of arrogance comes with being a demon lord I suppose…(Sigh) Very well then, as much as I’ve enjoyed chatting with you, I can see I’ll have to cut to the chase….” You try to think of pleasant thoughts to block out Zelvix, such as ones with your time with Alison, but Zelvix won’t be ignored. “Look, here’s the deal and it’s not even going to cost you your soul because I know you’re too smart for that. What it is going to cost is a little bloodshed and that shouldn’t be a problem for the likes of you, especially considering you never liked ol’ Morty anyway. Just kill Morty, I’ll take care of Semra and then I’ll be heading back to the infernal plane because honestly I’ve had enough of this world.” You give no response, but you can feel your willpower getting to the point where you almost want to give in… “Hey wait a minute. Maybe YOU want to kill Semra? She’s in the middle of her spell right now and you’re so close, there’s never been a more perfect time! You’d catch her completely off guard. You could easily take that dagger that she once stabbed you with and at last do what you’ve always wanted to do with it. Remember just like the time when you two were exterminating gnomes? Don’t you wish you could’ve taken that opportunity instead of following your orders? Well you have no one giving you orders right now. What is stopping you? You know you want to and all I want is to be free from this world. Kill Semra and I’ll happily open up a gate and return home.” Zelvix deep melodic tone begins to make your mind succumb to his persuasion attempts. Never before have you experienced such a powerful force of raw will. Even in a few other instances where you faced a psychic assault it’s never been quite like this. Granted it’s in his favor that what he’s proposing isn’t anything you’d object to doing either. The ONLY thing that’s giving you pause is the fact that it’s a demon lord telling you to do this. “Ah…I see you don’t trust me…smart. Tell you what, I’ll sweeten the deal. You seek to conquer and bring order to this miserable world do you not? You have the skill and ability, what you lack is time. So you seek immortality do you not? An immortality that even eluded your old master, and wouldn’t you like to succeed where he failed? Your answer lies where you’ve always known it to be. The Isle of Mortos. I know you’ve made a halfhearted attempt at trying to locate it again. Would you like to know where it is exactly located? I can tell you right now if you just kill that…ARRGH!” Zelvix once again feel the effects of Semra’s ritual. At this point Morty’s body is desperately crawling over to Semra in an attempt to reach her. Also just as you suspected Zelvix uses some sort of magic to bring the bodies from the room behind you back to life, except these aren’t singular walking corpses. The pile of bodies have melded into each other creating a giant mass of flesh slowly rolling towards all of you howling and moaning while arms, legs and heads twitch about from it. It might be too big to get through the doorway, but you imagine that its sheer weight and girth will just break through the sides of the walls. You’re still staggering from your recent mind assault, but now that you’re no longer being mentally attacked, you take a quick assessment of the situation. Decena prepares to hold off the abomination by herself, Semra is still in her semi-trance and Zelvix continues to drag himself over to Semra. > You help Decena Maybe you’re not going to help Zelvix, but you’re not going leave Decena to fight off that monstrosity by herself. Semra will just have to hope Zelvix doesn’t have the strength to reach her before you can get back over there. You let go of Semra’s hand though you still feel a link with her allowing the transfer of energy. You can tell she’s somewhat angry though that you’re being distracted. Decena is busily trying to hack away the flailing limbs of the massive blob of flesh trying to squeeze through the doorway. You see the sides of the walls begin to crack. “Decena, get out of the way that thing is going to grab you!” you say and shove her aside. You follow up by casting a cone of ice at the thing in an attempt to slow it down. “Why not fire?” Decena shouts. “If I set this blob on fire, it’s going to still come at us except it’ll be burning as well. Better that we should freeze it in place. I’ll take care of this thing, you go over to Morty or Zelvix, or whoever the fuck he is and prevent him from reaching Semra, remember don’t kill him!” Decena nods and runs over to Morty’s body which has nearly reached Semra, that is until Decena pulls his leg, drags him away and kicks him in the face. Zelvix bellows in anger and emanates unnatural hissing noises. Meanwhile you’re still attempting to freeze his “pet” in place. You periodically smash chunks of it off, but it’s a losing battle. It continues to roll its bulk into the doorway and the sides of the walls now successfully begin to give way. You jump back to avoid being crushed. “Semra, you better hurry the fuck up before this thing crushes us all!” you say smashing another bloody frozen chunk off of the mass. Another unearthly wail from Zelvix and it’s a sign that the end of this conflict is near. “SSSSSSSSS NO! IT CANNOT END LIKE THIS! I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED BY MORTAL SHIT! I CURSE YOU ALL! NONE OF YOU SHALL AAAARRRRGH!” Morimer’s body twitches and convulses one last time and you manage to turn your head just in time from your own battle to see a red spirit like mist rise from his body. An angry demonic face can be seen briefly followed by the red mist completely dissipating. In front of you, the mass of flesh you’ve been fighting goes completely lifeless. Mortimer’s body is also lifeless. Whatever spark that was keeping him alive was only due to Zelvix’s magic and he’s truly gone now. You walk over to Decena who is near Mortimer’s body. She looks okay, but she’s rubbing her head. “You all right?” you ask. “Yeah, I just…damn. Towards the end there, the demon was trying to get into my mind. It wasn’t even that long, but shit was it intense. I’m glad you had that spell protecting me.” “I’d never abandon you.” You say and embrace her. “Well isn’t that just sickeningly sweet? I do all the damn work and you hug her? Not even a thank you to me, but then you’ve never been grateful for anything I’ve done for you.” Semra remarks who is looking a little exhausted herself. “Semra, if I were you, I’d be thankful that I’m letting you live.” You remark. “Oh you just say such things. We both know that you could never kill me. We’re mentally linked now you know. I KNOW you still desire me! Even now that you’re turning into a feeble old man I STILL dwell within your thoughts. I will ALWAYS be within your thoughts somewhere.” Semra snaps. “Then you also know what you just said isn’t entirely true. While before you could at least lie to yourself and make the assumption that in your twisted mind that somehow we were a couple. You now have complete access to my own thoughts and you know what you’ve seen? You’ve seen that my mind has been always honest with you. Would I like to fuck you? Yeah, and then I’d like to slit your fucking throat. I’m not going to pretend to be a completely well adjusted person, in fact I never have. Honestly given everything I’ve gone through, it’s amazing that I’m not completely fucking insane.” Semra remains silent as you continue your rant. “In fact given that we’re so linked now there is less that YOU can actually hide from me now. I’d think you’d like to remember that fact. You know what you are deep down inside Semra? You’re a scared little girl who misses her daddy. I’m not even going to get into your completely fucked up relationship with him, because honestly I’m not in a position to judge. But the fact remains you saw the man you loved and possibly only held any sort of true feelings for get ripped apart by demons before your eyes and you couldn’t do anything to stop it. Just like you saw your entire civilization and way of life get torn apart and couldn’t do anything to stop it.” Semra’s eyes narrow at your attack on her tragic childhood. “Y’know. You’d be a rotting infant corpse right now if it wasn’t for me. You weren’t even meant to be an Eternal.” She says coldly. “And? What the hell does all that matter, I’ve made the most of my mistaken life now. And yes, Semra I’m well aware of ALL the times you’ve saved my life or trained me, or graced me with your magical svelk vaginia. It doesn’t matter, I’ve put up with your shit and then some. Your whole weird obsessive relationship with me is some sort of twisted attempt to re-create what you lost. Well as I’ve told you time and time again, I’m not the one and I’ll never be the one. Time to grow up and face that fact. You’re always telling me that I need to stop worrying about keeping the Empire alive and how I should just move on with my life. Well take your own damn advice.” Semra says nothing and the two of you just stare at one another for a moment. Even though you’re mentally fatigued you begin to prove your point by attempting to access deeper reaches of her mind. She easily stops you, but your point is made. “Very well Eternal. You’ve made your feelings and your mind quite clear to me. Possibly the clearest they’ve ever been. And as for moving on with my life? After what has happened to today, I’ll certainly be able to do that with better purpose. Unfortunately for you, there are svelk elsewhere in the world and that is where I shall go and unite the svelk properly once again. Oh don’t worry though lover. That won’t likely happen in your pitifully short lifetime. Heh. It probably won’t even happen in my lifetime, but I will plant the seeds and build the foundation. And KNOW that once again WE will be the rulers of this world. I will be remembered long after you’ve been forgotten like the lesser born you are.” Well the love is gone, if she’s calling you lesser born again. Semra begins to walk over towards you once again causing Decena to grip her weapon, but you know that she doesn’t intend to attack. “And now I shall take my leave which I’m sure you’ll be most thankful of. I know we’ve said goodbye many times before, but I believe this shall be the real one. I can see that your path is ultimately one of predictability and eventually obscurity. Perhaps good enough for you, but not for me. Never for me. I will say this though, I’m proud of you. You saw my weakness and you pounced. I taught you well. Goodbye Eternal.” Semra nearly moves closer as if to kiss you, but she takes a look at Decena instead. “He’s all yours tank baby.” She says and begins to walk away. You watch her walk past the mass of bloody flesh and through the doorway hoping that this will indeed be the last time you have to put up with her. She can’t help but say one last thing though. “Better get a good look while you can, because it’ll be the last time you get to stare at my ass again.” Semra laughs and in a few more seconds she’s walked out the palace completely. There is a silence for a moment and then Decena begins to speak. “So what now?” she asks. “Well let’s start with this for one thing.” You say and swing your sword downward severing Mortimer’s head from his dead body. Never hurts to be sure. “Come on, we should leave the city too before Flevas starts having it blown to pieces with us inside it.” You remark. Decena nods and you make your way out of the palace and towards the city gates. The barrier is completely down now and there is no sign of Semra. She’s probably long gone and on her way to who knows where now. Though you do wonder about this location she mentioned where there are still svelk. Can’t be anywhere on this continent and from what you know there aren’t any on Nyytrus. Another undiscovered land mass perhaps? To be quite honest you’re not sure if you’d even want to bother finding it if it’s full of svelk. But if the day ever came where they appear on your shores, you’ll be sure to make certain that none leave to go back to it. Decena and you are quiet as you leave the city, but just as you see your army banners in sight she has to ask. “Why didn’t you try to kill her?” “Heh. Good question. I was sort of wondering why myself. (Sigh) The reasons are a bit complicated I guess.” “You…you didn’t really love her…did you?” “Hah! No, of course not. Everything I said was true and she knew it, that’s why she left and I could tell she meant it this time. Mind connection and all. Hell, if I knew it was going to be advantage to get her to leave me alone, I might’ve agreed to it a lot sooner.” “So what were your reasons for not killing her?” “Well for one thing it wouldn’t have ended that way had I initiated hostilities. First of all we were all fatigued and in no position to effectively fight one another. Even with you helping me, she would’ve just escaped and probably bothered me in the future. At least this way I won’t have to deal with her again. Not as good as her death I suppose, but I’ll take it. Second? I made a promise that I’d help her and I was going to keep my word. Call it foolish honor or a foolish sense of gratitude that she did save my life many times in the past. Whatever. I made the choice and it’s done now.” Decena seems to accept your response even if she doesn’t entirely understand it, but then you give a third reason. “One reason I suppose…and I never EVER expected to feel this way…but I actually felt a twinge of pity for her. What I saw in her mind…shit…it’s no wonder why she’s so fucked up even for a svelk. Almost seemed more like a punishment to keep her alive so she can still live with all that emotional burden she tries so desperately to keep locked up tight. I dunno. Maybe I’m just growing soft and weak in my old age. I mean every step I’m taking right now is painful. There was a time when I could’ve taken on two of those abominations and not even have been tired. Guess Semra was right about that. I will grow old like everyone else and eventually I’ll be forgotten.” “Not to me you won’t. Not to me.” Decena says touching your arm, you touch her hand with your own. “I know Decena. I know…and I’m sorry for what I did to you.” You reply. Decena of course doesn’t exactly know why you’d be apologizing to her. In her mind she doesn’t ever think you did anything excessively negative to her. And even the times you did, she’s ultimately written it off as something that was “for the good of the Empire” in the long term or probably made her own mental excuses for you. And of course that’s the lasting damage you’re apologizing for. Smiling again at Decena and giving a few words of praise for her deeds during the fight, the pair of you meet up with the rest of your army where Flevas says he’s glad to see you both since he was planning on carrying out an airship bombardment just in case. “Fuck it. Let’s bombard the city anyway and let the wilderness reclaim it.” You say. “You sure? It’s practically intact.” Flevas asks. “Yeah. I don’t like the architecture. Too…pretty.” You answer. > Year 56 You enter Brenda’s office where upon the pair of your smile at each other. “So, how’s the new bride?” you ask. “Wonderful, of course. I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time. Thank you for performing the wedding personally.” Brenda remarks. “No problem. Glad to do it, but I said it before and I’ll say it again. Never did I EVER believe that you’d remarry. Let alone to Warrick of all people! I remember when you hated his guts!” “Ha ha, yeah…that seems so long ago now. I was too full of misplaced anger and hate. Glad I moved past it and reconnected with Warrick again.” “Sure, but I just never knew how well you two were reconnecting. When you both told me, I was completely taken by surprise.” You chuckle. “Well of course you were unaware. You were too busy fighting demons, monsters and sorcerer kings. Yeah, I know it still seems strange, but Warrick and I have a lot more in common than not, you know? I mean we grew up together, we trained together, and we served together. We’re both Eternals. We’re just always going to have that special connection. I mean I will always love Roldan, but why spend the remainder of my life alone if it feels right with another? We both came to that conclusion.” “Hey, you don’t need to explain to me. I understand and I’m happy for the pair of you. Anyway I just came here to let you know that the new Eternals have been released from their tanks.” “So did they meet with your standards?” Brenda asks. “Yes, most of them seem to be very much like the third generation though perhaps with signs of displaying higher intelligence overall. I’d definitely say they’re ready for your training.” You reply. “So you do still want me to train them?” “Sure, you did well enough with the third generation didn’t you? I’m just wondering where the hell we’re going to send them when they’re all grown up. It’s likely that Nyttrus will be completely under our control by that time.” “Maybe we’ll discover a new continent?” “Maybe, I’m certain they’re out there, though I’ve cut down on spending for exploration for awhile. I’m trying to focus on rebuilding the destruction that was caused to the Nakol and getting Nyttrus under our control as well “How is it going over there anyway?” “Better than I expected, worse than I hoped. We’ve got more than a few strongholds there now, but the Iznac are far from being beaten, unfortunately most of the humans there are sick or dead due to disease and Iznac magic. Flog’s also dead and the orcs have become slightly less disciplined as of late without his calmer leadership. There have been a few reports of deserters running off into the jungles and forming their own communities. (Sigh) Going to have to do something about them of course.” “What about the kobolds?” “Heh, Dedicated as always. The original leader I sent, Snilkez’ka is still alive and kickin’. She and the rest of them are the main ones holding down the forts. Never thought I’d be so glad of their high birth rates. The third generation Eternals are getting shipped over there soon, so hopefully things will get better.” “Will you be going over there?” “I dunno. I might, if only to keep myself busy. There are no more major challenges here on Evigrus anymore and I’d rather not send Decena there. Wasn’t a pleasant experience for her and its not necessary for her to go through that again.” Brenda nods and you suddenly go into a brief speech about Decena and how proud you are of her and engage in general praising of Decena’s accomplishments. “You know…and I’ve never addressed this because I didn’t think it was my place to do so, but I still don’t understand why the two of you split up…I mean granted the age difference might normally cause difficulties in being able to relate to one another, but considering that you’re both warriors, you both have an unwavering dedication to preserving the Empire and more importantly you are both Eternals, you have a lot more in common than most people. I mean she is your protégée is she not? It only seems natural that the pair of you would be an item.” Brenda’s bluntness takes you a bit off guard. She normally isn’t so confrontational. “It’s complicated.” You answer. “No, it really isn’t. Look I don’t know the whole story, but I DO know at one time you and Decena were together even if you didn’t make it public knowledge. I also know that you DO care for her and its not just in an average friendly way or a master-subordinate way. You love her and for some reason you’re denying yourself of it.” “I’m not denying myself of anything.” “Well what then? I know it wasn’t Decena’s idea, that girl still worships the ground you walk on. Probably more than anyone in the entire Empire.” “Look Brenda, I understand you’re still on a positivity trip due to your own newfound marital bliss, but my situation is different. It will ALWAYS be different all right? “It’s not that much different…” At this point you slam your hands down on Brenda’s desk and get in her face, knocking over a few things on her desk. “IT IS DIFFERENT. You can’t understand and be glad that you don’t.” you remark. Brenda is silent at your aggressive stance. You stare at her for a few seconds and then back away. “Now then, the new eternals will be transported here in a few days, I suggest you prepare yourself.” You say and turn to leave. Brenda though is in rare form and can’t help but continue. “Emperor?” she says. “What?” you answer. “You didn’t do to Decena, what that svelk bitch did to you and I don’t think Alison would want you spending the rest of your life mourning her.” You stand in the doorway for a moment with your back to Brenda. “I know I didn’t do what Semra did. I was hideously more successful…and as for Alison…she doesn’t want anything. She’s dead.” You reply and leave the office. Well you’re in a shitty mood now. You spend the rest of the day doing a lot of introspection, weighing pros and cons, taking into consideration every side and all your personal feelings on the matter. Every once in awhile you speak to Alison’s portrait as if she’s going to answer. All of which ends up pissing you off even more because you find it to be a pointless endeavor when you should be focusing on more important matters. You’ve got a damn Empire to run and here you are struggling on what to do about a girl (Or actually a full grown woman now, that has a bit of an arrested development) that likes you. What the hell are you an idiotic hormonal teenager? You thought you settled this a long time ago. You begin to mentally blame everything and everyone. You blame Brenda and Warrick for their new happy marriage. You especially blame Brenda for bringing this up to you. You blame Decena for becoming so attached to you. You blame Semra for…well everything. You blame Alison for dying on you. You blame Cyrus for killing her. You blame Casimir for setting up the assassination. You even blame Marik for having a hand in creating Decena and then not successfully killing her. Ultimately though you’ve got nobody to blame, but yourself and you know it and you need to just make a final decision on what to do about Decena. > You go to her now You’ve played the brooding tortured loner for too long. You’re the damned Emperor, why the hell are you putting yourself through this unnecessary restriction and misguided attempt at “morality?” The “damage” was done a long time ago and it isn’t like Decena is special in this regard. You routinely have propaganda pumped out to keep thousands of people brainwashed throughout the Empire. Decena just had the luxury of a personal lesson. So you took advantage of her youth and your position of power. So what? You still trained her to be the best. Would she have grown to love you if you hadn’t done what you did? Doesn’t matter. It’s done. She loves you and you do love her. The years that have passed between the pair of you not being together have proven that your own feelings for her are genuine. They always were even if your approach wasn’t quite conventional. You’ve done far worse things than the “corruption” of one young girl who has done nothing but thrive because of your guidance. No, it is a far crueler thing to deprive her of what she wants the most. And it’s a far more intelligent thing for you to accept her fully into your life as an equal. And as for the long shadow of Alison…well… even Brenda moved on with her life. It’s been long enough. You take look at Alison’s portrait. “It’s true that I’ll always love you in some way. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have known about how good such a crippling emotion can feel.” You chuckle. “Thank you.” You say and leave your room. Decena is currently still stationed in Nakol mostly keeping the potential chaos down while you rebuild and continue to establish order there. You have a message sent to her to return to the palace at once. When she returns she’s in for quite the surprise when you immediately go to embrace her. “Erm…not that I’m complaining, but what’s all this about my Emperor?” she remarks. “It’s about us. Once and for all I see what was meant to be. We were meant to be together.” You answer. Decena’s reaction is one of silent shock rather than the overwhelming happiness you believed. “Are you serious?” Decena asks calmly. “Yes, why wouldn’t I be?” you reply. “…I…just…” Decena stumbles over her words. “What? What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy with this news?” “Well…yes…but…” “Did you find someone else?” you ask believing that could be the only reason for her hesitation. “No! There could never be anyone else! It’s just…I have to know…” “What?! What is it?! Spit it out!” you exclaim. “I have to know if this is real. I mean REALLY real. You’ll always be my Emperor, but I have known you in a more intimate way once before and you dismissed me, and I accepted it. In time I have even become used to that fact. But if we are to become intimate once more… I can’t go through losing you in that way again. I just can’t…so if this is just a flight of fancy or something I’d rather not…” At this point Decena is getting upset, and you have to reassure her. “Decena, this is real. No bullshit. I’m serious. I’ve searched my mind, body and what might be a soul about this and I know there’s nobody else I would rather become my wife.” Now Decena is struck again with surprise. She probably figured you two were just going to start bedding each other again. “Wife? You’re serious? But wouldn’t that make me…” “Empress. Yes, it would. You would have an equal say in the Empire. Possibly more than anyone else besides myself.” You answer. “Oh…I don’t know…I mean…I’m a soldier. I don’t understand all the intricacies of running a country like you do.” Brenda says. “Pfft. You think I agonize over all of it? I let Kivan and other bean counters handle most of the boring stuff anyway. I’m just saying you would no longer have to feel subordinate or subservient. We would be equal. We would rule together. You understand?” Decena nods and a smile forms across her face. “I do.” And she leans in to kiss you. In the weeks that follow, “I do.” is said by the both of you again at the ceremony when you finally make your joining official. There is celebration and merriment, though the wedding itself is not an excessively fancy one. It certainly has more security than normal however and is held in the palace. Later as the night goes on, Warrick and Brenda sit at the table with you Decena. The pair of them have been in rare form the entire event with their intake of alcohol. While they aren’t drunk, they’re certainly less formal than usual, but then this isn’t exactly a time for formalities. “See? Didn’t I tell you Brenda? I told you he’d marry her.” Warrick says. “Warrick you said no such thing! In fact you kept telling me that I shouldn’t have opened up my mouth about it!” Brenda remarks. “Bah, you must’ve misunderstood me. I always knew it was inevitable.” Warrick says refusing to acknowledge his mistake. “Glad to know you had faith in me Warrick.” You say causing Warrick to raise his glass before taking a drink. “Heh, well I’m certainly glad you said something Brenda.” Decena says. Brenda leans in on the table speaking directly to Decena. You can smell the alcohol; she’s definitely been drinking more than Warrick tonight. I just want to say, you’re fucking beautiful in that dress. Seriously I mean it. I dunno how you still look so young. Must be all those years you spent in that fucking tank.” “Erm…I guess…” Decena answers. “I’m telling you right now. HE’S the lucky one.” Brenda says pointing to you. Without you he’d just be moping about this palace all lonely and still pining over that human girl…” This remark causes a bit of silence from everyone, and Warrick starts to tell Brenda to be quiet while Decena just looks at you. “Erm, Brenda I think you’ve really had too much to drink now…” Warrick says. “Now no disrespect to Alison…I mean she was a warrior. Certainly someone to be respected…but…” “Brenda! Shut. Up!” You wave your hand in downward fashion to Warrick. “No, it’s fine. Brenda spoke her mind once to me before and this all turned out fairly well, so I’m sort of interested in where this is heading.” You say. “Apologies. I’m a little intoxicated…” Brenda says. “Brenda. Seriously. You obviously got something to say. So say it.” “All right…Emp…I will.” Brenda takes another drink. “I’m just saying that you and Decena belong together for several reasons, but most of which is because you’re both Eternals! Doesn’t matter if you’re not from the same generation or not, you’ve got more in common than anyone could possibly know. All of us do. We NEED to stick together. I mean it’s not like we can breed…” Well this is an unexpected twist and now a few bystanders are trying their best not to look like they’re listening. “Why can’t we breed anyway? Have you figured that out yet, mighty emp? I mean we’re fucking superior to…like everyone! So why the hell can’t we breed?” At this point Brenda’s voice is getting louder and Warrick keeps apologizing and begins to motion Brenda towards an exit. You reassure Warrick that he needn’t worry about himself or Brenda and to just get her to sleep it off somewhere. Kivan runs over to ask if everything is okay and you tell him yes, but that you and Decena are going to retire and the rest of the guests can continue enjoying themselves if they wish. When you and Decena get back to your room, she addresses the situation that just transpired. “What exactly was THAT all about? What was all that about us Eternals having to stick together, asking why we can’t breed and such?” Decena asks. “I have no idea. Really. Brenda’s usually always been calm minded about things. I’d say it was the drink, but that was only the spark. It’s obvious she’s had these feelings for a while though. Maybe, I dunno. Maybe she wishes she could’ve had her own children. I know she’s thought of the third generation and now the fourth generation of Eternals as her children sometimes. She’s seen them all grown up and directly trained most of them. I guess a maternal instinct has kicked in.” you reply. “You know…I do wonder too though sometimes. Why is it that we’re sterile?” “Well the process isn’t exactly the safest. There’s bound to be a sacrifice somewhere. When the original emperor had us created, he probably did it on purpose or wasn’t concerned about such a sacrifice. When Marik created your group, he probably didn’t care about the sacrifice as well. And to be honest, I’ve never looked into the problem too closely either. I was more focused on potential combat ability rather than fertility.” “Hm, perhaps you should.” “You saying you would’ve wanted children? Barefoot and pregnant? Taking care of little monsters instead of out there on the battlefield brining glory to the Empire?” you ask. Decena laughs. “Well maybe not, but I dunno…I mean if you and I were able to have children, I might not mind it. I mean we would be bringing in another Eternal into this world. Certainly a worthwhile endeavor and still serving the Empire. I mean Brenda might’ve been drunk, but she was correct that we ARE superior to the other races. I mean I know we look human, but you know, and I’ll bet every other Eternal out there knows that we are ultimately better than humans. I know you’ve HAD to think it on several occasions. I mean you’re the best of all of us! If we could actually breed, we’d eventually replace humanity as the dominant race. You’d also be able to have heirs.” “You’re my heir.” “Well obviously, but I’m going to die too someday. The Empire needs a strong ruler to hold it together.” “Wait a minute! I thought you always said I was going to live forever.” You say with some amusement. “I said I WANT to believe you will, not that it’s actually going to happen. I guess even though I’ve never said it out loud, I am sometimes concerned about the Empire’s potential future.” Never before have you heard Decena speak in such a manner. Oh you’ve heard her talking like a soldier or a general about ruthless battlefield tactics and strategy. But this…is a little bit different. She’s speaking with a prospective plan for the future of the nation. She’s speaking like a ruler. Like an Empress. Brenda was correct, she is right for you. “Well, that is all certainly something to think about, but who knows maybe we’ll defy nature tonight.” You say and start moving Decena towards the bed. The pair of you proceed to enjoy your wedding night. The next day you’re informed of the latest problems on Nyttrus by Kivan who received a message about it in the middle of the night. The Iznac have apparently unleashed a powerful “secret weapon” in the form of three very large flying lizards. And these aren’t wyverns either. They are creatures that Casimir once told you were rare even back in his day. They’re dragons and apparently they’ve already destroyed one of your forts on the continent. Looks like you and Decena will be taking your honeymoon on Nyttrus. > Year 60 Eighteen years ago the Children of Tor launched an all out assault on you and while it was a fierce battle, it was the beginning of the end for them as an effective fighting force. You hope that the Iznac are going to suffer a similar situation here today, because if not, it’s going to be the beginning of the end for the Empire. Only one civilization is going to come out of this alive from this conflict. You’re currently holding the line at Fort Canopy, but it isn’t the only major battle going on right now. You know only a few miles away Decena is undoubtedly doing his best to defend Fort Tangle and General Flevas is taking the fight to the Iznac in the jungles. High in the air through the rain and in the near distance you see a multi-colored dragon unleash a gout of flame from its mouth, which engulfs the Tornado. Already heavily damaged the flying fortress can’t take anymore and begins to explode. Minor ones at first, then one large one. Flaming pieces of the machine fall from the sky. The Storm II fires another volley of cannon fire at the dragon wounding the great beast, but it isn’t enough to kill it. The dragon bellows and turns its great body around to focus its attack on the Storm II. It isn’t going to die easy like its two siblings did over the past few years. It’s going to fight with everything it has. You look over the battlements and see several Iznacs climbing the walls of the fort like an army of ants. They aren’t even using ladders, they’re just scaling the fort with their bare hands. It’s actually rather impressive, until you unleash a chain of lightning to zap all of them. The shock is enough to at least cause most of them to fall off if not outright kill them immediately. “Slaughter the four armed spider eyed bastards! Make them realize that their domination of this continent has passed! This is the time of the Empire!” you shout to the Eternals defending the fort. Your people are doing their best though they can’t stop every Iznac from scaling the fort. Soon the gunfire is replaced by sounds of close combat weaponry. No matter how far the advances in technology, it always eventually comes down to looking your opponent in the eye and feeling their blood splatter as you end their life. While you’re busy hacking off the limbs of an Iznac warrior, another loud explosion in the distance is heard followed by a bright flash in the sky. It’s not lightning from the storm, but rather the demise of your Storm. The Storm II joins the Tornado in crashing to the ground after losing its skirmish with the dragon. Hopefully the rain is making the jungle wet enough or else the flames from the wreckage of these downed airships are going to cause an inferno throughout the jungle. Several small frog like beings eventually make their way in by scaling the walls with their masters. They’re generally just referred to as “frogs” but their formal name is the Glip. The Glip almost remind you of the kobolds. Despite being under the harsh dominion of the Iznac for who knows how long, none of the villages ever joined the Empire when the war broke out. Didn’t matter that the Iznac used to (and probably still do) sacrifice and eat the Glip, they ultimately still remained loyal to them. While they’ve certainly had their moments, mostly due to ambushes with blowguns and poisonous darts and their camouflage abilities. The Glip are not close combat warriors by any means. It isn’t surprising that you’ve not had to fight many of them. Even the Iznac know their skills are better suited elsewhere. The fact that you’ve started to face a lot of them does give you an indication of how desperate the Iznac have become. A group of orcs smash through the barricades of the fort. You sometimes shake your head at the stupidity of that situation. You have no idea how the Iznac managed to come to accept the rebellious orcs as allies, but you guarantee it wasn’t for any reasons other than convenience. Did the greenskins actually believe that Iznac saw them as anything than handy fodder for this conflict? If they broke away from the Empire because they didn’t like being used in such a way, then they completely missed the point. Then again being orcs they probably didn’t think that far ahead or perhaps they just wanted to fight the Empire and didn’t care about the reasons. In any case, no matter who wins this conflict, the orcs lose. The Iznac have a habit of ritually sacrificing their “neighbors and allies” to their gods. It doesn’t matter in the scheme of things because even with overwhelming odds, your Eternals are still holding their own against all attackers. The only thing that concerns you slightly is… You hear a roaring sound getting closer to your position and the sounds of great wings flapping. It would appear your concerns will be arriving soon. You just hope that the Storm II and the Tornado did enough damage to it before they both went down. You don’t have the advantage of Decena helping you take it down like you did with the last two dragons. You shout a general command for the still working cannons to be pointed towards the dragon and to prepare to fire when the beast is in range. In the meantime you try to keep that side of the fort relatively free of invading forces. The dragon gets closer and you give the order to fire and unleash your own magic bolts at the creature. It’s definitely wounded from its ordeal with the two airships, but given your experience with the other two dragons, you know it’s far from being out the fight. In fact it’s so determined that it doesn’t distinguish friend from foe when it blasts its flame breath on the fort. You manage to protect most of your people with a magic barrier, but for those outside its protection, most are set on fire if not incinerated immediately. On the positive side, it reduces your enemies, on the negative it ignites the gunpowder barrels for the cannons causing a massive explosion and completely destroying one side of the fort. While the barrier still protects you and everyone within initially, its still a lot of strain on your energy and you begin to feel the fatigue setting in. “No! Damnit! Fight through it!” you mutter to yourself hating your weakness. When the dragon passes you temporarily put down the barrier to take a small breather seeing as you aren’t immediately being attacked by Iznac ground forces anymore (Which have mostly been killed or broke and run by this point) Several soldiers point up and announce that the dragon is slowly turning around for a second pass. “Everyone spread out and find your own cover! Shoot the overgrown lizard when in range!” you shout and make your way back up to the battlements (Those that are still intact that is). You stand on top of the battlements and see the dragon coming straight at you. Almost as if it was personal and who knows maybe it is. This creature may very well want you dead for killing its only two companions. Or perhaps it’s just intelligent enough to recognize you as a genuine threat. You summon up all your energy and unleash a stream of lightning at the dragon just as it’s beginning to open its mouth to breath fire. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t even slow down despite the fact that you’ve undoubtedly just shocked the hell of its brain. A gout of flame comes directly at you. “Shit!” you shout and put up your own personal barrier to block the flames. Which succeeds, but it does nothing to stop the dragon’s approach. It’s fully intent on ramming you at this point. You no idea what would happen if you just stood there with your barrier up. It’s possible the dragon would severely smash its own face in from the force, maybe even breaking its neck, however its also possible that it would hit with enough force that it could actually move you. In this case, right off the battlements on to the ground several feet behind you. Your Eternals unleash gunfire as the dragon gets closer and you’re left to wonder if this high-risk plan could potentially end this dragon threat once and for all. > You keep the barrier up Probably one of the crazier things you’ve done and its entirely possible you’re either trying to prove something to yourself or you just want this battle to be over with win or lose because you’re getting very tired. Probably a little bit of both. “Okay, you fucking overgrown flying lizard, it’s either going to be me or you today.” You say and expend more energy to reinforce your barrier. For a brief moment you see the dragon’s face get closer and closer and then… There’s a great smashing force that causes you to fly off the battlements. You don’t actually fall straight to the ground, but instead you actually sail backwards in the air for a moment and into one of the many decimated tree trunks of the nearby jungle. You feel a cracking sound as your back and head slams hard into the solid wood of the tree and then you begin to fall straight down. Even if you weren’t completely knocked senseless by this terrific force you don’t have anything that could slow your decent. The best you can do is shield your face with your forearms as you crash to the ground. Another cracking sound is heard when you hit the ground and you’re in more physical pain than you’ve been in awhile. You’re not dead, but when you try to move, you find that you’re unable. At least not your legs, which are completely numb. You’ve broken your back and the bones in your arms are probably broken too, though you’re definitely feeling the pain from that injury. While you’re lying half paralyzed away from the fort, you can hear the audible sounds of battle coming from it. You aren’t sure what happened to the dragon, but apparently it didn’t manage to ram straight through you and keep going. It’s in the fort thrashing about and roaring in pain. Pieces of stone from the fort go flying in different directions; you just hope one of those stone blocks doesn’t hit you since you’re in no position to move right now. There’s nothing you can do save for one thing. Heal yourself with magic. You focus all the magic you got on mending your spine first and then your other wounds next. The dragon, gunfire, clanging of weapons and shouting can all be heard while you do this. By the time you’re finished, you can barely stand up. You don’t know if it’s due to your drained state or if the magic still needs time to take affect completely. In any case you start to limp back to the fort, which has started to become much quieter. When you enter, the fort is practically destroyed, several Eternals lie dead (or in pieces) and right in the center lays the dragon with severe wounds all over its body, exposed bones, torn wings and bleeding profusely. “Emperor! You’re alive!” one of the eternals shouts when he sees you. “Glory to the Empire! We feared the worst when we saw you fall from the battlements. It was a great show of bravery on your part to face down the dragon in the way you did! Never before have I seen something so inspiring! It also caused the creature to crash to the ground where upon all of us took advantage of the situation. As you can see we have brought honor in your name by finishing off the beast!” another boasts. “Oh really? Is that why it’s still breathing?” you point out causing the eternals standing around to back off suddenly. The dragon is indeed still breathing, but it’s very weak. It’s dying. Your eternals go to strike, but you tell them to hold and shake your head at them not being observant enough to see that the dragon is still alive in the first place. You walk towards the dragon’s head and grab a nearby axe on the ground. The beast manages to look at you with one eye and does nothing. You wonder if it still actually has some strength left in it, but is just too tired and old to continue fighting. Maybe it’s ready for it all to end. To join its fellows. You have no idea what dragon’s think or even if they do think in such complex terms, but when you take a look at this creature you can’t help but think how old it probably is. What has it seen? Did it once have its own civilization of sorts? What was it like at its peak? What caused it to ally with the Iznac? Was the arrangement some sort of compromise to avoid possible extinction? Extinction that has come anyway at your hands. You get closer to the dragon and ready your axe. The dragon still makes no move. It just closes its one good eye. “Y’know… sometimes I feel like you. Old and broken down, just wanting to lie down and let the sleep take me. Perhaps, I’ll even find myself in the same position one day…(sigh) anyway, on your way dragon. Looks like it was you today.” You say and swing the axe at the dragon’s neck. You have to hack away several times before you manage to sever its head. A cheer goes up from the eternals who survived the battle. “No cheering yet. This was barely a victory given all of our casualties and the condition of this fort. We also still have no word on Flevas’ company or how my wife is doing at Fort Tangle. Now let’s get organized and find out.” You say. The next few days still see a lot of combat. Decena was a lot more successful at Fort Tangle, but then she didn’t have a dragon attacking it. She congratulates you on your victory though and is glad to see you’re still alive from your ordeal. Eventually her and Snilkez’ka’s troops push forward and attack Iznac cities. Without their dragons anymore, it’s a lot easier to go faster on the attack. Unfortunately Flevas’ suffered an ignoble fate. He was killed fighting off a mixture of Glip and Iznac troops in the jungles and he was unlucky to be felled by several poisonous darts that the Glip love to use. His company fought on and won, but you’ve lost a good commander. Such are the ways of war. You and those who served under him will at least remember Flevas’ deeds. He certainly proved that elves could be an asset to the Empire rather than just whine all the time. It is truly the beginning of the end for the Iznac civilization and it is now in sight. You predict perhaps at least one more year of heavy fighting maximum, then maybe three more years of random raiding from the hold outs and survivors. After that? The Iznac will either be hiding in the farthest reaches of wilderness, will have completely submitted to your rule (Unlikely) or completely exterminated. You’re betting on that last one, as it seems to be the way of things. In any case you’ll soon be ruler of two continents. What comes next is unknown, but you know that you’re going to have some downtime to think about it. In fact you have somewhat of an idea of what to pursue next. Its something Brenda and Decena mentioned the day you got married. The Eternals and their inability to reproduce. You’re thinking that will be your next goal. You nearly died in your battle with the dragon and by healing yourself in the way you did, you probably just shortened your life span anyway. It’s time to start thinking about your potential legacy and future of the Empire. The current eternals have proven their worth and then some, but they could still be better. The next generation that Brenda is training will undoubtedly be better still, but the fifth…that’s the group you want to break the mold with. There’s got to be a way. Maybe you, Elam and possibly Galen can figure it out if you put your heads together. Hell, maybe even the gnomes might have some insight on the science side of things. The time for simple conquest of territory is coming to an end at least perhaps for now. > Year 67 Peace is a good thing for most people and in your elderly years you can even sort of appreciate it a little more, but the problem is, you’ve got hundreds of new Eternals who have been bred and trained for war and nobody to send them up against. To be honest you thought maybe that Semra would make good on her claim of resurrecting the “Svelk Empire” again and perhaps invade with an armada filled with svelk warriors, but haven’t heard or seen a svelk since you last spoke to her. Then again she did say it wouldn’t happen in your lifetime. While you haven’t put as much time and money into exploration any more, there are still efforts being made by private expeditions, but nobody has had much luck in finding any new lands worthwhile. In any event you’re going to have to have them do something with them soon, just maybe not today. You also have to meet with Elam, since apparently he’s come up with a possible solution to the sterility problem of the eternals. “Well, I’m sure we’ll find something for them to do, but let me just say you’ve done a fine job with them as usual.” You say to Brenda. “Thank you, but I don’t think I’ll be able to effectively train the next batch. At least not full time. Getting sort of…” “You don’t need to say it. Trust me, we’re all getting that way, don’t worry I’m going to have Decena training the fifth gen. Training’s definitely going to go a little differently, but then if my meeting with Elam is going to be a positive one then these next Eternals are going to be different anyway.” “So the rumors are true? Elam’s figured out a way?” “So he says. Trust me, I’m just as surprised as you are. In any case, I’m off to meet him.” You bid Brenda goodbye and head to the location where new eternals are “born.” When you arrive a couple of workers and ask if the children will be arriving today to which you reply no and ask if Elam has arrived yet. They tell you that Elam has indeed arrived and is waiting in Chief Supervisor Gregory’s office. They also mention that a woman came with him. You have no idea who that could be. Girlfriend perhaps? If so, you honestly didn’t know Elam even paid any attention to anything that wasn’t scientifically related. You enter the office just in time to see Elam criticizing Gregory’s lack of adventure in his chosen profession. “Bah! You’ve always been too cautious Gregory! Even the gnomes with all their needless safety pre-cautions aren’t as timid! That’s why you’re still here watching tanks and I’m creating new and better things for the Empire!” Elam boasts. “Really…I’m fine…I like it here…” Gregory says quietly and then looks in your direction and straightens up in his chair. “See? What did I tell you Zana? Same ol’ Gregory! Hah! Oh Emperor! Didn’t see you there! Apologies.” You tell everyone to dismiss the formalities and tell Gregory to leave as you have important business with Elam. He nods, and leaves. The woman though does not. You have no idea who she except she looks to be in her thirties, wears spectacles, has long curly red hair and is dressed in technician’s clothing similar to Elam. “I trust this woman is somehow important to what we have to discuss, otherwise you would not have her here?” you say sitting down. “Oh! Yes, apologies once again. This is Zana, and she’s been invaluable in helping me on not just this project, but on several others in the past.” Elam says. “Zana? Why have I not heard of her before? I know the gnomes let Elam into their city on my insistence, but I didn’t realize we had another human inventor there.” You say. “Oh, she was born there, Emperor.” “What?” At this point Zana speaks for herself. “Actually Elam as I’ve told you once before, I wasn’t born in New Dessle I was just raised there. Sometimes I wonder how you invent so well with your memory as foggy as it is. At least our Emperor has a good reason for not remembering me. He has an entire Empire to rule.” Zana says playfully pushing his shoulder. “Wait. We’ve met?” you ask. “Oh yes. We briefly met when you first incorporated New Dessle into the Empire. I’m Klemto’s adopted daughter.” That was so long ago, you barely remember, though you’re starting to now. Yes, she was only a teenager then. “Ah yes…starting to remember. I remember you ran up to Klemto telling him that you wanted to help fix your lighting system. Klemto gave you permission, but was slightly embarrassed that you interrupted his meeting with me and then only briefly greeted me before running off.” “Good memory. I know it’s late, but I apologize for my impetuous youthful ways.” “None necessary. Wasn’t offended then either, in fact I remember applauding Klemto for raising such a child that wished to serve their community in a meaningful way.” “I thank you my Emperor. And I have continued to serve the Empire in the same way.” “I believe it, otherwise Elam wouldn’t have you here, so I’m guessing you both must have come up with a solution to our problem. So let’s discuss that, shall we?” Elam begins to excitedly tell you about all the tests they did and a lot of scientific talk without actually getting to the point. He particularly enjoys talking about how some of the fourth generation eternals you granted him permission to take for testing years ago, managed to reproduce under the right conditions. He mentions it was only the one girl and she died in the process, but the child she gave birth too managed to actually survive for a few minutes. When this doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence, Zana speaks up again. “What Elam means to say, that despite the limited success, we have definitely found a way to make the next set of Eternals fertile. The magical process is what is causing the problem. At first we thought it was too much magic, but in actuality it’s too little.” Zana explains. “Really?” “Yes, despite enhancing many of the traits of the eternals with each generation, the magical energy has been too specific in its task. The Eternal’s body should be completely immersed in the energy while in the tank and then the appropriate chemical mixtures can be added, and then…well I won’t bore you again with technical talk. Rest assured though we both believe very strongly that it will work. “So…what? Do we need to sacrifice an entire mage for a single fertile Eternal?” you ask. “Well…that would work, if you had the numbers, but from what I do know, magic has been on the decline for some time now. There are…what? Like twenty mages in the whole Empire now? Most of which are old men and women and none of them particularly very powerful. Not powerful enough for our purposes even if we did completely drain them. Honestly we would need someone with at least the power that Galen had, but unfortunately as you know we used him as a test subject, which ended up helping us come to this conclusion in the first place. Not all is lost and we can still accomplish this, but…” Zana hesitates to even speak it and even Elam who is usually in an excited state is very somber looking. You get the impression you already know where they’re going to go with this… “Let me guess. I have to sacrifice myself.” You say. Elam and Zana don’t answer. “Well?” “Yes, but we still aren’t sure about the results, I mean this isn’t an exact science… I mean…” “Not an exact science? Then what the fuck are we talking about Elam? Zana just said she was certain it would work! Now you’re telling me it might not and I’m supposed to kill myself in the process?” “No! That’s not what I mean! (Exhale) Look what I mean is I believe we can set it up so you’ll be able to survive the process. I mean you’re so powerful and your magical abilities are vast. I mean even for a man your age you’re in good physical condition and you can withstand more pain than most. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…I THINK if we take the necessary safety precautions, you’ll be able to survive this process, but the downside is we’re not going to be able to do this with a thousand or even half that number of potential eternal candidates. We can do it with a hundred maximum and you will definitely lose all your magical abilities in the process.” Elam says and is beginning to sweat. “And what do you say about this Zana? Do you believe this could be done?” “I won’t lie. I don’t know. I mean yes it is possible if we were very careful and severely lowered the amount of Eternal candidates, you might survive, but I just don’t know. I do know that the process will still result in the desired outcome for the Eternals though.” “However, there is another process that Zana and I have discussed that may be more desirable to you.” Elam suddenly exclaims. Elam takes a deep breath and asks you. “How would you like to be immortal?” “This is a joke right?” “No joke my Emperor. I’m very serious.” Elam says and you have no doubt that he is, though Zana looks skeptical. “Elam, the Emperor wants to hear real solutions, not theories.” “It’s no theory! I’m starting to get results! In fact I dare say I’m even more certain about this approach than the one with the Eternals! Emperor, if you give me a little more time to perfect the…” “Elam, will you explain from the beginning for once?!” you shout. “Yes. Apologies my Emperor. Okay. It’s going to sound crazy, but then I’m sure the concept of a ship that flies in the air did once too right? I believe I’ve found a way to keep a person alive long after their body has died.” Already you’re joining Zana in your skepticism. “Sounds like magic to me. Specifically necromancy. Last I remember you weren’t a necromancer Elam and I have no intention on being some mindless walking corpse.” “No it’s not raising the dead, it’s science! No magic involved at all! In fact YOU wouldn’t have to do much of anything. Y’see, all I need is your brain.” Elam says with a creepy grin. Well this conversation has taken an interesting turn. “Elam I don’t know if you’re aware, but I sort of need that to live in the first place.” “(Sigh) What my over zealous colleague is trying to say is he’s been doing experiments in his spare time on various human subjects. Well, not ALL human subjects, but specifically the brain. He’s managed to remove entire brains and keep the subject alive.” Zana interjects. “WHAT?! I just said I have no intention on walking around like a mindless corpse!” you exclaim. “No, he’s not keeping the subject’s bodies alive. He’s been able to keep the brains alive. At least for a little while…” “I’ll be able to keep them alive indefinitely with a little more time!” Elam exclaims. Now this conversation has just gotten weird. You rub your face and head with your hands and try to assess the situation. “Okay wait. Let me get this straight. You’re saying you can remove my brain and keep me alive? How? Where the hell would I be? How would I do anything?” “Well that’s why I need a little more time. However, YOU would be floating in a tank filled with certain chemicals.” “Floating in a tank?” “Yes, well at least temporarily. I mean I believe we could in time hook you up to a machine system so that perhaps your brain waves could control something like the automatons that we create in New Dessel. I believe with your innate magic powers you could probably tap into some sort of telepathic ability with the right jolts of electricity to the tank. You’d be able to give orders to people through their minds so communication might not be a problem…” Elam says and continues speaking, but you’re starting to get overwhelmed. This is absolutely insane what you’re hearing. And not just the brain part, you mean all of it. Even the way to make the Eternals fertile sounds crazy. Especially given some of the experiments that were performed in order to explore the possibility in the first place. Now Elam’s telling you he’s been cutting brains out of people and keeping them alive and he’s suggesting on putting YOU in a tank. You can’t help but see the irony of being in a tank for the rest of your life. And the strangest part about all this? You’re more than willing to entertain both ideas. If you sacrifice yourself so that the new eternals can breed then it won’t be one in vain. Quite frankly how many more worthwhile years do you have left anyway? Maybe it would be better to die so that a legacy of sorts can live forever. Besides, there is always the possibility that you could survive the process. Of course there’s always the chance it could all fail horribly. Elam and Zana may seem very certain that it will work, but you still have your reservations. As crazy as Elam’s idea sounds, part of it intrigues you. Immortality would give you that time you always wanted in past. Time enough to conquer the world. With immortality, you wouldn’t need to worry about some sort of legacy, you would always be. He says he needs more time to work on it though which is a concern, then there’s the fact that you’d be floating in a tank. Would you grow bored? Would you go mad? Would you even be “you?” Elam said there would be the possibility of setting something up so you could interact with the outside world, but again who knows if that will even work? You’ve got a decision and you need to make one or the other. > You children Elam’s always had wild ideas, but this “immortality” plan just sounds too far-fetched and quite frankly more than a little risky. You’d be sacrificing the original plan entirely just to what? Live forever as a brain in a tank? What kind of life is that? Even if something were set up so you could interact with the outside world, you’d still be very limited. Never again could you lift a weapon or cast a spell and face your enemies in battle. Never again could you enjoy the company of Decena in a meaningful way. And what of other potential mates when you eventually outlive her? You can’t imagine how you could be satisfied with the existence even if you did manage to conquer the rest of the world. Who knows what the long-term effects would be. You still think you’d probably go mad eventually. If the immortality involved your current body, you’re not even sure you’d accept it. Not with how much you ache on a regular basis. No, immortality was never in the cards for you. This “life” wasn’t even supposed to happen, so why entertain an impossible dream? You’ve achieved much in this life and if the end is coming soon then so be it. “I’m not spending the rest of my life as a disembodied brain for any reason. We’re sticking with the original plan regardless of the consequences. However, I’m also not quite eager to shuffle off this mortal coil just yet, so we’re going to take the safety precautions and try to keep me alive. So when are we to start?” “Uh...well, whenever you are of course my Emperor. I mean you’ll have to collect the babies for this project first, then after that’s done, we can get started.” Elam says. “Okay then, I’ll have the Eyes gather candidates right away. In fact, given the nature of this project, I’m going to tell them to get an equal amount of males and females. As for you two I want you to gather whatever staff and equipment you need.” Elam and Zana both acknowledge your command and leave when you dismiss them. Elam makes one last attempt at asking if you’re sure you don’t want to be immortal to which you tell him you’ve made your decision. Now all you have to do is tell Decena which you do so later that night. “…so that’s the process. If it succeeds spectacularly I’ll still be alive and we’ll have fertile new eternals. If it fails spectacularly then none of that will be true.” You finish explaining to her. “And you’re sure this is what you want to do?” Decena asks. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” “Well I wasn’t aware that Elam had found a potential way to keep you alive forever.” “As a brain in a jar or tank or whatever? You really think I’d want to live like that? He needs more time to perfect the process anyway and who know how long that would be if ever?” “No, I suppose you’re right. I wouldn’t like to live like that either. Who wants to live forever right? But about this other process, you’ll be putting your life in danger, are you certain it will work?” “Elam and this Zana are both confident that it will. While Elam’s always been a bit on the eccentric side and prone to take risks, he’s always come through on his projects and Zana’s likely to err on the cautious side anyway due to being raised by gnomes. In any case I’m more than willing to take this risk if it’s going to bring about what we’ve been talking about for the last few years.” Decena smiles at your response. “I think that’s one of many the things that I’ve always loved about you. Your willingness to put yourself at risk for the good of the Empire. You’ve never been one of those rulers that has shied away from potential danger. There is one thing I ask though. I mean regardless of whether or not the process is successful, if you don’t survive it. I mean if this indeed it, I want to be with you during this moment.” Decena says holding your hand. “Of course. You’ll always be by my side.” You answer and kiss her. After a bit more discussion, it’s also agreed upon that Brenda and Warrick should probably be there as well. Over the next few days, the Eyes acquire the Eternal candidates and soon everything is ready. You arrive at the Eternal factory with Decena, Brenda and Warrick. Elam, Zana, and several technician and physician types run around hooking up strange machinery and placing the babies in the tanks. Gregory is also here and goes up to you nervously telling you that he’s very concerned, as none of this extra equipment looks very safe. Eventually Elam and Zana approach. “Everything is ready my Emperor! One hundred candidates all hooked up in the tanks, all we need is to strap you in to that chair over there and we can get started.” Elam points to a chair that looks more like a torture device you’ve had used on enemies before…in fact you think it IS and Elam’s just modified it! “I have to say you’re a braver man than I.” Warrick says clapping you on the shoulder. “Yeah, I mean I’m just looking at that thing and it looks painful.” Brenda says. “Well I have faith that you’ll laugh off any pain and come out of this alive.” Decena exclaims. “Glad to hear someone that’s optimistic about this. Well no point in drawing this out, let’s do this.” You say and walk towards the chair. Sit in the chair and get strapped in. This is followed by several painful needles being stuck in your arms, legs and chest with rubber tubes hooked up to a large machine, which in turn is hooked up to the tanks. Decena stands close by the entire time. “Don’t worry my Emperor. I’ll make sure Elam doesn’t push the controls too hard. Unlike him, I actually was born with a sense of safety.” Zana says checking on your lines. “Well glad to have you working on this then.” You respond. “I’m glad just to have this chance to work on this my Emperor. You don’t know how long I’ve waited for the opportunity to work so closely on something directly involving you. It is a very great honor. One that I shall never forget for as long as I live.” Zana says and leaves smiling at you and Decena to check on what Elam is doing. As you’re mentally attempting to prepare yourself, suddenly Decena whispers in your ear. “I don’t trust her.” Decena says. “What?” you answer. “Zana. I don’t trust her. Something doesn’t feel right about her.” “Like what? Did she say or do something? Because I rechecked her file that the Eyes had on her and she’s nothing but clean. Well maybe except a lack of judgment in sexing up Elam on occasion, but I can’t imagine there are a lot of choices in human males in New Dessel.” “I dunno. It’s her tone. The way she’s being so eager to please. It’s almost as if she’s trying too hard and has a hidden agenda.” “So what are you saying?” “I don’t want her on this project. I feel you’re in direct danger with her at the helm of those controls.” Decena is quite serious in this accusation and you have no idea how to respond. “Decena, Zana worked on this right along side Elam.” “Well I don’t know, maybe they’re in it together! Or just have Elam perform this procedure, I don’t care, but I DON’T want that woman involved in this procedure any longer!” At this point Decena has made enough noise to call the attention of several people, including Zana and Elam who come over. “What seems to be the problem my Emperor? Are you having last minute concerns? If so, we can call a halt to this…” Elam asks. “No, Elam. I’m fine. Decena is just having I believe some last minute concerns.” “My Empress, as I said, I will make sure that your beloved…” Zana starts to say before being interrupted. “Silence bitch!” Decena snaps and everyone is silent. “I don’t know what you have planned exactly, but let me make this clear. I DON’T TRUST YOU. And I don’t want YOU working on this project any longer!” Decena says. “My Emperor, with all due respect, I need Zana to help me with this!” Elam exclaims. At this point Zana begins to protest her innocence in a polite way, trying very hard not to sound out of line, but Decena isn’t hearing any of it and even draws her pistol. “Decena, are you sure you’re not just scared that I’m going to die and deep down you don’t want me to go through with this because you want me around a little longer?” you ask. Decena grabs your hand and looks straight at you. “My love, there are many times you could’ve died and while it was always a concern, I always accepted it as a possibility. If you died in battle, then it would have purpose at least. You would have been serving the Empire. Even if you died of old age or some other natural cause I could accept it because you would have still died serving the Empire. And IF you die in this process then I can accept it, because you will be dying to secure the future of the Empire.” Decena pauses and takes a deep breath and turns to everyone else while pointing at Zana. “But I cannot accept you going helplessly into danger like this. THIS woman has ill intent. I FEEL it in my heart. I FEEL it in what I guess would be my soul. EVERY warning, EVERY instinct about her is telling me that she is wishing you unwell. All of us perhaps. I can’t even prove it, but I don’t need to when I FEEL it.” Decena then turns back to you. “My love, if you genuinely believe this woman has no ill intent then I will as always defer to your judgment, however if you trust my judgment on this matter even a little bit, then I beg of you to let me kill her where she stands.” At this point both Zana and Elam’s eyes widen. The nearby technicians almost shuffle back as if not wishing to get caught in the fallout. Even Brenda and Warrick are a little surprised by this. Elam at this point once again begs you not to kill Zana as he needs her for this project to work. Zana stays silent, though she probably believes that anything she’d say at this point might cause Decena to shoot her anyway. And here you thought the only thing you were going to have to worry about today was trying to stay alive long enough to create some fertile Eternals… > You believe Decena She might be completely wrong, but if she really feels this strongly on this matter you’ll honor her judgment. “Warrick. Brenda.” You say and with a glance they know and walk towards Zana who continues to remain in shock. “No…no!” she shouts and before she can run, Warrick and Brenda both restrain her. She struggles a bit, but then stops. “Elam, can you do this yourself? Honestly answer the question!” you demand and stare at him. Elam begins to stammer and stutter, but with your eyes piercing him, he looks sadly over at Zana, who looks on helplessly and can’t believe that even he would turn against her. “ELAM! NO!” she shouts. “Yes…I can my Emperor, but I do need someone to watch the gauges, and levels…” Elam says in defeat. You think this is the first time you’ve ever seen him in such a mood. He must’ve had deeper feelings for the girl and she wasn’t just the occasional fling. “Good. Gregory! You’re doing that now.” “Um, I am my Emperor?” While Gregory is pondering his new position, you turn back to Zana. “My apologies Zana, but this is your ruler’s final judgment on the matter. Take solace in the fact that you’ve served the Empire well and that any family you may have will be…” “FUCK YOU TYRANT!” Zana shouts, nearly causing Decena to shoot her, but you tell her to hold fire. “Decena, stop. Zana has at least earned herself a proper execution rather than being shot like a rabid dog. I’ll look past her current outburst since I understand that she…” “I said FUCK YOU. You don’t know SHIT about me! And if it wasn’t for your bitch queen here, this would’ve went smoothly. Oh how sweet that would’ve been to have seen the look of shock on your face as you and all your dreams of fertile Eternals was destroyed before your eyes.” Zana exclaims with her face turning into an angry sneer. Now everyone is looking at Zana and Decena’s gut instinct has been vindicated. “Who are you? I mean who are you really? Did Semra put you up to this?” you demand. “I’m nobody. Nobody of importance at least not until YOU came around and killed my entire family!” Zana says. “Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?” you ask. “I was going to be a princess! I would’ve ruled a kingdom one day! YOU and YOUR EMPIRE destroyed all that before I even had a chance to enjoy a taste of such a life! Klemto didn’t just save a random Felkan baby, he saved an HEIR TO THE FELKAN FUCKING KINGDOM!” Zana shouts. It was a very long time ago. Almost a different life even, but you vaguely remember seeing a crib in the Felkan royal palace, yet no baby or even signs of a dead one. You never thought too much of it at the time, but apparently even though Zana was just an infant, Klemto must’ve told her about her real heritage. He probably lied to you thinking that you would’ve had her killed. “Because of YOU, I’ve had to live a miserable existence working on machinery surrounded by fucking GNOMES! You know what that’s like? Being the only human in community of damn gnomes? It SUCKS! Then when some humans do fucking arrive, they’re from the same nation that destroyed my birthright! It almost sickened me to even sleep with this crazy fool!” This news causes Elam to collapse on the floor. He can’t believe the woman he’s worked with so closely and shared a bed with is admitting to trying to assassinate you. (As well as having a low opinion of him) “You really think I was going to let you breed a set of new Empire abominations that could possibly keep it going even longer? Possibly even forever? Never! How long must she have been waiting for the right time to strike? Was it always this way or did it slowly gnaw at her? A life that was stolen from her. Did Klemto or the gnomes put her up to this? Was this their plan in some weird way? “Okay, since you’re in a talkative mood, did Klemto or any gnome put you up to this?” you ask. “What? So you’ll have an excuse to round them all up and destroy their souls again? I heard about what you did to them. And maybe I might find them to be timid, tiresome unattractive little know it alls, I find it deplorable what the Empire did to them. I can’t believe they allowed themselves to be dominated by a nation that systematically exterminated them from not just this life, but the next as well!” “So did they help or not?” you ask again. “No! No they did not! My father would’ve probably had me jailed if he knew what I was planning. Those cowards wouldn’t dare stand against the Empire, but I fucking would! And did! Not that this will save them. After you’re done killing me, you’ll probably have them all killed as well for any excuse will serve a tyrant!” “It’s amusing that you keep calling me that. What did you think your parents were? They were a KING and QUEEN. You think they ruled by popular decision? Do you think YOU would have if you became queen? My actions that day weren’t even personal. I was just following orders like a soldier. Your actions however today are misguided and fatal. Such a waste. Even had I known your origins, I would not have had you killed if you had remained true to serving the Empire. Your quest for vengeance was as pointless as your entire life. Take her away.” As Brenda and Warrick begin to drag Zana off, she struggles once again and this time manages to get free of Brenda’s grip. Then she presses some sort of device underneath her sleeve and an electric shock zaps Warrick causing him to also lose his grip and fall backwards. “Not how I wanted to do it, but just as good!” Zana says grinning and reveals a bomb strapped under her clothes. She takes one step towards you and Decena shoots her in the head. She falls backwards and before the bomb explodes, you raise your hands up (ripping the straps and ripping out some of your attachments in the process) and create a barrier protecting Decena, Elam and yourself. The bomb explodes and you look on sadly as you see Brenda and Warrick caught in the immediate blast. A few of the other technicians are killed too. (Gregory fled and hid as soon as things started looking hostile!) After its all said and done, many of the tanks have been destroyed, though not completely a problem since you had a thousand of them. Some of the hundred you were using were unfortunately damaged, but new babies can be acquired. Some of the equipment was damaged, but again not too much of a problem since it can be fixed, rebuilt or replaced and the main piece was protected by the barrier. While Decena unhooks your from all your attachments, Elam is silent the whole time. He’s utterly in shock by everything that’s happened. “I had no idea…I mean…” he utters and then turns to you. “I swear my Emperor I didn’t know!” “Calm yourself Elam, nobody’s executing you, especially when you’ve still got a job to do. Besides, nobody apparently knew, well except my lovely wife here.” You say and look at Decena. “I’m just glad you’re all right, but this sets our goals back! And Brenda and Warrick! (sniff)” Decena remarks getting a little upset over their deaths and hugs you. “I know…I know. It was no way for them to die. There almost isn’t anything left to…well give a funeral. (sigh) I’ll sort out what’s left of them put them in the same coffin and burn it. They can least be sent on their way together. We can have a formal memorial for them both later. As for our plans, they may be set back, but not by much. You turn to Elam. “Elam I want all the damaged equipment fixed as soon as possible. Gregory and the rest can help with that. Also catch Gregory up to speed on what his role will be on this project, because we WILL be doing it as soon as possible. In the meantime, I’ll have to appoint a new Sightmaster and have the Eyes get all new candidates again, but before they do that, going to have to purge New Dessel.” “You are?” Decena asks. “Do you really see any choice? You didn’t trust Zana on pure instinct and you were correct. How can I trust that she was telling the truth that the gnomes didn’t have anything to do with this? Maybe not even all of them knew. Maybe Klemto anticipated she’d eventually seek revenge and just took a hands off approach so that he couldn’t be directly implemented. Maybe they’re all genuinely innocent. Doesn’t matter. We’re trying to secure the future of the Empire and its obvious the gnomes are a potential threat.” You chuckle at that last remark. “I can’t believe it. I sounded just like Casimir. Guess dad would be proud.” You say. “Okay, so how do you want to handle that? As you know that mountain city is a fairly well defended fortress.” Decena asks “Yes, and things have changed severely since then. We’ve already got a large number of Eyes positioned in that city. All we have to do is send in another large group, telling the gnomes that it’s a routine changing of the guard and when they’re in, they unleash the death. Make no mistake this isn’t going to be an honorable action and it will be ugly, but it will be the easiest way to do it and the fact that it will get done is the important thing.” “Agreed. Long live the Empire.” Decena says. The project is set back at least a couple of months. The purging of New Dessel takes awhile due to the gnomes locking themselves in hard to reach sections of the city, but eventually the entire city is purged. You at last finished what Casimir started though really you wish it hadn’t been necessary. You never hated them. Klemto just saved the wrong baby and brought death on them all because of it. In any event, mostly technicians, inventors and other human families with members that have similar mechanical or scientific skills will resettle New Dessel. A giant memorial is held for Brenda and Warrick. Heroes of the Empire that shall never be forgotten, right along side Roldan and Kane. Even though Decena is by your side, you can’t help but feel a great sense of loss. They were the last of your “siblings” and now you are alone. In fact you may even be joining them soon. You weep privately for them both. Eventually Elam and Gregory have all the equipment fixed and ready again and the Eyes have the suitable candidates ready. You return with Decena to complete the task you originally set out to do. Once again you’re strapped and hooked up to the modified torture chair. Elam is remarkably subdued. You’re guessing he’s still taking Zana’s betrayal hard. Still, perhaps its good, it will give him more focus on what is important, serving the Empire. As you prepare you and Decena exchange one kiss for what might be the last time. Elam pulls the lever and the process begins. Lights, buzzing, rumbling, and all manner of machinery noises can be heard throughout the room. The oddest thing is you’re not feeling as much pain as you thought you would. There is definitely a tingling sensation and it feels as if all your hair is standing on end, but you’ve felt things a lot more painful. You are however feeling very tired and it is all very draining. Eventually you can’t fight it anymore and you fall unconscious… Hours later you wake up on a bed still hooked up to a machine. You feel very weak, but apparently you’ve survived the process. Decena, Elam and several physicians stand around you. “I’m…I’m…alive?” you say. “Shhh. Don’t speak too much. You really need to conserve your strength.” Decena remarks. “Did…did it work?” you ask. “Well I suppose we won’t really know until several years from now, but Elam says he feels the results are very positive. He says there’s been a side effect he didn’t anticipate.” Decena says. “Side effect?” “Yes, my Emperor. Your magical energy actually gave all the candidates an innate magic ability. I mean again, obviously we can’t see exactly what that means now, but I fully anticipate that these Eternals are also going to have magic abilities. Possibly on par with your own. It’s almost as if your own DNA rewrote their genetic code.” Elam just said something that no one except he understood. “Erm. It’s something I’ve been theorizing about. It’s uh…technical talk, don’t worry about it. Basically though what it means is its almost as if you personally created all these children the old fashioned way. You’re the father of a hundred children. I… uh guess congratulations are in order.” Elam says and shakes your hand which is still weak. “Sheesh. Thanks I guess.” You say. “There is one thing I really should tell you though, Emperor. It’s your condition. While you’ve survived the process, I fear it has taken a toll on your body. Your life span has probably shortened quite a bit. I mean I dunno how much, but…” “Elam, I didn’t even anticipate living through this process so whatever I got left will be just a bonus. Really I didn’t even expect to live this long and if events had gone a certain way, I wouldn’t have even made it out of the crib. I’ll tell you this though, I’m going to TRY to live long enough to make sure this process worked. And if it didn’t well you can strap me to the chair and try again!” Elam smiles and says that he’ll try to do everything he can to extend your lifespan a little longer and reassures you that you won’t be dying tomorrow. At this point Elam excuses himself saying he and Gregory should make a routine check on the tanks again. The others follow his lead. As the others leave Decena stays by your side. She says nothing and just looks lovingly at you though you feel a bit sad. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to take care of a feeble old man now.” You say. “Shh, that doesn’t matter. I love you.” “I’m also sorry that…well…I just had one hundred children and you weren’t directly involved.” “Ha ha! You think I care about that? I’m THRILLED that you did! It means that you’ll live forever after all! I knew you’d find a way somehow.” “But what about you?” “I always expected to die someday and I’m fine with that. What matters is that YOU live forever. Because as long as you live forever, then the Empire lives forever and if the Empire lives forever then I live forever. As do all those that have served it loyally. As will all Eternals. This is just the beginning my love. You have created a new race. One superior to all those before it.” Decena proceeds to give you a kiss and hug you. You enjoy her warmth and realize even if you did die right now, it would be a perfect death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Elam’s always had wild ideas, but this “immortality” plan just sounds too far-fetched and quite frankly more than a little risky. You’d be sacrificing the original plan entirely just to what? Live forever as a brain in a tank? What kind of life is that? Even if something were set up so you could interact with the outside world, you’d still be very limited. Never again could you lift a weapon or cast a spell and face your enemies in battle. Never again could you enjoy the company of Decena in a meaningful way. And what of other potential mates when you eventually outlive her? You can’t imagine how you could be satisfied with the existence even if you did manage to conquer the rest of the world. Who knows what the long-term effects would be. You still think you’d probably go mad eventually. If the immortality involved your current body, you’re not even sure you’d accept it. Not with how much you ache on a regular basis. No, immortality was never in the cards for you. This “life” wasn’t even supposed to happen, so why entertain an impossible dream? You’ve achieved much in this life and if the end is coming soon then so be it. “I’m not spending the rest of my life as a disembodied brain for any reason. We’re sticking with the original plan regardless of the consequences. However, I’m also not quite eager to shuffle off this mortal coil just yet, so we’re going to take the safety precautions and try to keep me alive. So when are we to start?” “Uh...well, whenever you are of course my Emperor. I mean you’ll have to collect the babies for this project first, then after that’s done, we can get started.” Elam says. “Okay then, I’ll have the Eyes gather candidates right away. In fact, given the nature of this project, I’m going to tell them to get an equal amount of males and females. As for you two I want you to gather whatever staff and equipment you need.” Elam and Zana both acknowledge your command and leave when you dismiss them. Elam makes one last attempt at asking if you’re sure you don’t want to be immortal to which you tell him you’ve made your decision. Now all you have to do is tell Decena which you do so later that night. “…so that’s the process. If it succeeds spectacularly I’ll still be alive and we’ll have fertile new eternals. If it fails spectacularly then none of that will be true.” You finish explaining to her. “And you’re sure this is what you want to do?” Decena asks. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” “Well I wasn’t aware that Elam had found a potential way to keep you alive forever.” “As a brain in a jar or tank or whatever? You really think I’d want to live like that? He needs more time to perfect the process anyway and who know how long that would be if ever?” “No, I suppose you’re right. I wouldn’t like to live like that either. Who wants to live forever right? But about this other process, you’ll be putting your life in danger, are you certain it will work?” “Elam and this Zana are both confident that it will. While Elam’s always been a bit on the eccentric side and prone to take risks, he’s always come through on his projects and Zana’s likely to err on the cautious side anyway due to being raised by gnomes. In any case I’m more than willing to take this risk if it’s going to bring about what we’ve been talking about for the last few years.” Decena smiles at your response. “I think that’s one of many the things that I’ve always loved about you. Your willingness to put yourself at risk for the good of the Empire. You’ve never been one of those rulers that has shied away from potential danger. There is one thing I ask though. I mean regardless of whether or not the process is successful, if you don’t survive it. I mean if this indeed it, I want to be with you during this moment.” Decena says holding your hand. “Of course. You’ll always be by my side.” You answer and kiss her. After a bit more discussion, it’s also agreed upon that Brenda and Warrick should probably be there as well. Over the next few days, the Eyes acquire the Eternal candidates and soon everything is ready. You arrive at the Eternal factory with Decena, Brenda and Warrick. Elam, Zana, and several technician and physician types run around hooking up strange machinery and placing the babies in the tanks. Gregory is also here and goes up to you nervously telling you that he’s very concerned, as none of this extra equipment looks very safe. Eventually Elam and Zana approach. “Everything is ready my Emperor! One hundred candidates all hooked up in the tanks, all we need is to strap you in to that chair over there and we can get started.” Elam points to a chair that looks more like a torture device you’ve had used on enemies before…in fact you think it IS and Elam’s just modified it! “I have to say you’re a braver man than I.” Warrick says clapping you on the shoulder. “Yeah, I mean I’m just looking at that thing and it looks painful.” Brenda says. “Well I have faith that you’ll laugh off any pain and come out of this alive.” Decena exclaims. “Glad to hear someone that’s optimistic about this. Well no point in drawing this out, let’s do this.” You say and walk towards the chair. Sit in the chair and get strapped in. This is followed by several painful needles being stuck in your arms, legs and chest with rubber tubes hooked up to a large machine, which in turn is hooked up to the tanks. Decena stands close by the entire time. “Don’t worry my Emperor. I’ll make sure Elam doesn’t push the controls too hard. Unlike him, I actually was born with a sense of safety.” Zana says checking on your lines. “Well glad to have you working on this then.” You respond. “I’m glad just to have this chance to work on this my Emperor. You don’t know how long I’ve waited for the opportunity to work so closely on something directly involving you. It is a very great honor. One that I shall never forget for as long as I live.” Zana says and leaves smiling at you and Decena to check on what Elam is doing. As you’re mentally attempting to prepare yourself, suddenly Decena whispers in your ear. “I don’t trust her.” Decena says. “What?” you answer. “Zana. I don’t trust her. Something doesn’t feel right about her.” “Like what? Did she say or do something? Because I rechecked her file that the Eyes had on her and she’s nothing but clean. Well maybe except a lack of judgment in sexing up Elam on occasion, but I can’t imagine there are a lot of choices in human males in New Dessel.” “I dunno. It’s her tone. The way she’s being so eager to please. It’s almost as if she’s trying too hard and has a hidden agenda.” “So what are you saying?” “I don’t want her on this project. I feel you’re in direct danger with her at the helm of those controls.” Decena is quite serious in this accusation and you have no idea how to respond. “Decena, Zana worked on this right along side Elam.” “Well I don’t know, maybe they’re in it together! Or just have Elam perform this procedure, I don’t care, but I DON’T want that woman involved in this procedure any longer!” At this point Decena has made enough noise to call the attention of several people, including Zana and Elam who come over. “What seems to be the problem my Emperor? Are you having last minute concerns? If so, we can call a halt to this…” Elam asks. “No, Elam. I’m fine. Decena is just having I believe some last minute concerns.” “My Empress, as I said, I will make sure that your beloved…” Zana starts to say before being interrupted. “Silence bitch!” Decena snaps and everyone is silent. “I don’t know what you have planned exactly, but let me make this clear. I DON’T TRUST YOU. And I don’t want YOU working on this project any longer!” Decena says. “My Emperor, with all due respect, I need Zana to help me with this!” Elam exclaims. At this point Zana begins to protest her innocence in a polite way, trying very hard not to sound out of line, but Decena isn’t hearing any of it and even draws her pistol. “Decena, are you sure you’re not just scared that I’m going to die and deep down you don’t want me to go through with this because you want me around a little longer?” you ask. Decena grabs your hand and looks straight at you. “My love, there are many times you could’ve died and while it was always a concern, I always accepted it as a possibility. If you died in battle, then it would have purpose at least. You would have been serving the Empire. Even if you died of old age or some other natural cause I could accept it because you would have still died serving the Empire. And IF you die in this process then I can accept it, because you will be dying to secure the future of the Empire.” Decena pauses and takes a deep breath and turns to everyone else while pointing at Zana. “But I cannot accept you going helplessly into danger like this. THIS woman has ill intent. I FEEL it in my heart. I FEEL it in what I guess would be my soul. EVERY warning, EVERY instinct about her is telling me that she is wishing you unwell. All of us perhaps. I can’t even prove it, but I don’t need to when I FEEL it.” Decena then turns back to you. “My love, if you genuinely believe this woman has no ill intent then I will as always defer to your judgment, however if you trust my judgment on this matter even a little bit, then I beg of you to let me kill her where she stands.” At this point both Zana and Elam’s eyes widen. The nearby technicians almost shuffle back as if not wishing to get caught in the fallout. Even Brenda and Warrick are a little surprised by this. Elam at this point once again begs you not to kill Zana as he needs her for this project to work. Zana stays silent, though she probably believes that anything she’d say at this point might cause Decena to shoot her anyway. And here you thought the only thing you were going to have to worry about today was trying to stay alive long enough to create some fertile Eternals… > You let Zana live As much as Decena is just trying to look out for you, you can’t imagine that if Zana was up to something you wouldn’t have caught it by now. Actually you’d be more worried if she wasn’t on this project considering that she’s been assisting Elam from day one. She’s pretty much vital. “Decena, I tell you with absolute certainty that I trust this woman and do not believe she means any ill intent. I understand that you’re concerned about my safety, but Zana is needed for this project and has proven her dedication to it from the beginning. Honestly, I’d rather have her around if only to keep Elam’s tendency towards…overenthusiasm in check.” “Emperor, I assure you, I will be…” Elam starts to say, but you interrupt him. “Yes, yes, I know. But as I said, I’d still feel comfortable with Zana assisting you. In any case, that is my decision Decena.” Decena looks very apprehensive; she probably didn’t think you’d side against her. She nearly starts to say “but…” however she stops herself and just gives you a nod. “Very well, as I said, I will defer to your judgement on this matter, but if anything starts going wrong, you know who’s head is going to roll first.” She says looking at Zana. “Well, I guess nothing better go wrong Zana.” You say. “Nothing will go wrong, my Emperor. Everything will go according as planned, that I promise.” Zana remarks. With that out of the way the procedure continues and you and Decena exchange one kiss for what might be the last time. Elam pulls the lever and the process begins. Lights, buzzing, rumbling, and all manner of machinery noises can be heard throughout the room. The oddest thing is you’re not feeling as much pain as you thought you would. There is definitely a tingling sensation and it feels as if all your hair is standing on end, but you’ve felt things a lot more painful. You are however feeling very tired and it is all very draining. Eventually you can’t fight it anymore and you start to fall unconscious… Then all of a sudden you feel a surge running all through your body, which wakes you back up. Your body begins to go into convulsions and you start to foam from the mouth. Basically you’re being electrocuted. “Zana! There’s something wrong! Turn down those dials!” Elam shouts, but Zana does nothing of the sort, instead she uses some sort of device that fries the controls and runs off pushing a technician out of the way. “SHIT! I KNEW IT! GET HER!” Decena shouts and attempts to untie your straps, but the electric pulse running through your body is so strong that the charge knocks her down and even stuns her. Elam runs attempt to turn off the machine from another source. Zana doesn’t get far, as Warrick and Brenda easily catch her, but it’s for naught as she reveals a bomb hidden on her person, blowing herself and them up as well. The blast also manages to destroy several tanks, machinery and kill several staff along with Elam. On the plus side, it stops the electrical current frying your body inside out, unfortunately its too late and you’re well on your way to death. Your mind isn’t even functioning anymore save for a faint sense that you’re still alive. The secondary explosions from other machinery on fire finishes you off, along with Decena who doesn’t recover fast enough to get out of the blast, though perhaps when she saw your own condition in those moments, she didn’t want to go on. With the death of you and all the other top Eternals, the Empire soon descends into factions of the newer third and fourth generation Eternals fighting over who is the rightful “heir.” The other races either get caught in the middle or break off into their own factions. This massive civil war would be the final days of the Empire.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 67 Peace is a good thing for most people and in your elderly years you can even sort of appreciate it a little more, but the problem is, you’ve got hundreds of new Eternals who have been bred and trained for war and nobody to send them up against. To be honest you thought maybe that Semra would make good on her claim of resurrecting the “Svelk Empire” again and perhaps invade with an armada filled with svelk warriors, but haven’t heard or seen a svelk since you last spoke to her. Then again she did say it wouldn’t happen in your lifetime. While you haven’t put as much time and money into exploration any more, there are still efforts being made by private expeditions, but nobody has had much luck in finding any new lands worthwhile. In any event you’re going to have to have them do something with them soon, just maybe not today. You also have to meet with Elam, since apparently he’s come up with a possible solution to the sterility problem of the eternals. “Well, I’m sure we’ll find something for them to do, but let me just say you’ve done a fine job with them as usual.” You say to Brenda. “Thank you, but I don’t think I’ll be able to effectively train the next batch. At least not full time. Getting sort of…” “You don’t need to say it. Trust me, we’re all getting that way, don’t worry I’m going to have Decena training the fifth gen. Training’s definitely going to go a little differently, but then if my meeting with Elam is going to be a positive one then these next Eternals are going to be different anyway.” “So the rumors are true? Elam’s figured out a way?” “So he says. Trust me, I’m just as surprised as you are. In any case, I’m off to meet him.” You bid Brenda goodbye and head to the location where new eternals are “born.” When you arrive a couple of workers and ask if the children will be arriving today to which you reply no and ask if Elam has arrived yet. They tell you that Elam has indeed arrived and is waiting in Chief Supervisor Gregory’s office. They also mention that a woman came with him. You have no idea who that could be. Girlfriend perhaps? If so, you honestly didn’t know Elam even paid any attention to anything that wasn’t scientifically related. You enter the office just in time to see Elam criticizing Gregory’s lack of adventure in his chosen profession. “Bah! You’ve always been too cautious Gregory! Even the gnomes with all their needless safety pre-cautions aren’t as timid! That’s why you’re still here watching tanks and I’m creating new and better things for the Empire!” Elam boasts. “Really…I’m fine…I like it here…” Gregory says quietly and then looks in your direction and straightens up in his chair. “See? What did I tell you Zana? Same ol’ Gregory! Hah! Oh Emperor! Didn’t see you there! Apologies.” You tell everyone to dismiss the formalities and tell Gregory to leave as you have important business with Elam. He nods, and leaves. The woman though does not. You have no idea who she except she looks to be in her thirties, wears spectacles, has long curly red hair and is dressed in technician’s clothing similar to Elam. “I trust this woman is somehow important to what we have to discuss, otherwise you would not have her here?” you say sitting down. “Oh! Yes, apologies once again. This is Zana, and she’s been invaluable in helping me on not just this project, but on several others in the past.” Elam says. “Zana? Why have I not heard of her before? I know the gnomes let Elam into their city on my insistence, but I didn’t realize we had another human inventor there.” You say. “Oh, she was born there, Emperor.” “What?” At this point Zana speaks for herself. “Actually Elam as I’ve told you once before, I wasn’t born in New Dessle I was just raised there. Sometimes I wonder how you invent so well with your memory as foggy as it is. At least our Emperor has a good reason for not remembering me. He has an entire Empire to rule.” Zana says playfully pushing his shoulder. “Wait. We’ve met?” you ask. “Oh yes. We briefly met when you first incorporated New Dessle into the Empire. I’m Klemto’s adopted daughter.” That was so long ago, you barely remember, though you’re starting to now. Yes, she was only a teenager then. “Ah yes…starting to remember. I remember you ran up to Klemto telling him that you wanted to help fix your lighting system. Klemto gave you permission, but was slightly embarrassed that you interrupted his meeting with me and then only briefly greeted me before running off.” “Good memory. I know it’s late, but I apologize for my impetuous youthful ways.” “None necessary. Wasn’t offended then either, in fact I remember applauding Klemto for raising such a child that wished to serve their community in a meaningful way.” “I thank you my Emperor. And I have continued to serve the Empire in the same way.” “I believe it, otherwise Elam wouldn’t have you here, so I’m guessing you both must have come up with a solution to our problem. So let’s discuss that, shall we?” Elam begins to excitedly tell you about all the tests they did and a lot of scientific talk without actually getting to the point. He particularly enjoys talking about how some of the fourth generation eternals you granted him permission to take for testing years ago, managed to reproduce under the right conditions. He mentions it was only the one girl and she died in the process, but the child she gave birth too managed to actually survive for a few minutes. When this doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence, Zana speaks up again. “What Elam means to say, that despite the limited success, we have definitely found a way to make the next set of Eternals fertile. The magical process is what is causing the problem. At first we thought it was too much magic, but in actuality it’s too little.” Zana explains. “Really?” “Yes, despite enhancing many of the traits of the eternals with each generation, the magical energy has been too specific in its task. The Eternal’s body should be completely immersed in the energy while in the tank and then the appropriate chemical mixtures can be added, and then…well I won’t bore you again with technical talk. Rest assured though we both believe very strongly that it will work. “So…what? Do we need to sacrifice an entire mage for a single fertile Eternal?” you ask. “Well…that would work, if you had the numbers, but from what I do know, magic has been on the decline for some time now. There are…what? Like twenty mages in the whole Empire now? Most of which are old men and women and none of them particularly very powerful. Not powerful enough for our purposes even if we did completely drain them. Honestly we would need someone with at least the power that Galen had, but unfortunately as you know we used him as a test subject, which ended up helping us come to this conclusion in the first place. Not all is lost and we can still accomplish this, but…” Zana hesitates to even speak it and even Elam who is usually in an excited state is very somber looking. You get the impression you already know where they’re going to go with this… “Let me guess. I have to sacrifice myself.” You say. Elam and Zana don’t answer. “Well?” “Yes, but we still aren’t sure about the results, I mean this isn’t an exact science… I mean…” “Not an exact science? Then what the fuck are we talking about Elam? Zana just said she was certain it would work! Now you’re telling me it might not and I’m supposed to kill myself in the process?” “No! That’s not what I mean! (Exhale) Look what I mean is I believe we can set it up so you’ll be able to survive the process. I mean you’re so powerful and your magical abilities are vast. I mean even for a man your age you’re in good physical condition and you can withstand more pain than most. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…I THINK if we take the necessary safety precautions, you’ll be able to survive this process, but the downside is we’re not going to be able to do this with a thousand or even half that number of potential eternal candidates. We can do it with a hundred maximum and you will definitely lose all your magical abilities in the process.” Elam says and is beginning to sweat. “And what do you say about this Zana? Do you believe this could be done?” “I won’t lie. I don’t know. I mean yes it is possible if we were very careful and severely lowered the amount of Eternal candidates, you might survive, but I just don’t know. I do know that the process will still result in the desired outcome for the Eternals though.” “However, there is another process that Zana and I have discussed that may be more desirable to you.” Elam suddenly exclaims. Elam takes a deep breath and asks you. “How would you like to be immortal?” “This is a joke right?” “No joke my Emperor. I’m very serious.” Elam says and you have no doubt that he is, though Zana looks skeptical. “Elam, the Emperor wants to hear real solutions, not theories.” “It’s no theory! I’m starting to get results! In fact I dare say I’m even more certain about this approach than the one with the Eternals! Emperor, if you give me a little more time to perfect the…” “Elam, will you explain from the beginning for once?!” you shout. “Yes. Apologies my Emperor. Okay. It’s going to sound crazy, but then I’m sure the concept of a ship that flies in the air did once too right? I believe I’ve found a way to keep a person alive long after their body has died.” Already you’re joining Zana in your skepticism. “Sounds like magic to me. Specifically necromancy. Last I remember you weren’t a necromancer Elam and I have no intention on being some mindless walking corpse.” “No it’s not raising the dead, it’s science! No magic involved at all! In fact YOU wouldn’t have to do much of anything. Y’see, all I need is your brain.” Elam says with a creepy grin. Well this conversation has taken an interesting turn. “Elam I don’t know if you’re aware, but I sort of need that to live in the first place.” “(Sigh) What my over zealous colleague is trying to say is he’s been doing experiments in his spare time on various human subjects. Well, not ALL human subjects, but specifically the brain. He’s managed to remove entire brains and keep the subject alive.” Zana interjects. “WHAT?! I just said I have no intention on walking around like a mindless corpse!” you exclaim. “No, he’s not keeping the subject’s bodies alive. He’s been able to keep the brains alive. At least for a little while…” “I’ll be able to keep them alive indefinitely with a little more time!” Elam exclaims. Now this conversation has just gotten weird. You rub your face and head with your hands and try to assess the situation. “Okay wait. Let me get this straight. You’re saying you can remove my brain and keep me alive? How? Where the hell would I be? How would I do anything?” “Well that’s why I need a little more time. However, YOU would be floating in a tank filled with certain chemicals.” “Floating in a tank?” “Yes, well at least temporarily. I mean I believe we could in time hook you up to a machine system so that perhaps your brain waves could control something like the automatons that we create in New Dessel. I believe with your innate magic powers you could probably tap into some sort of telepathic ability with the right jolts of electricity to the tank. You’d be able to give orders to people through their minds so communication might not be a problem…” Elam says and continues speaking, but you’re starting to get overwhelmed. This is absolutely insane what you’re hearing. And not just the brain part, you mean all of it. Even the way to make the Eternals fertile sounds crazy. Especially given some of the experiments that were performed in order to explore the possibility in the first place. Now Elam’s telling you he’s been cutting brains out of people and keeping them alive and he’s suggesting on putting YOU in a tank. You can’t help but see the irony of being in a tank for the rest of your life. And the strangest part about all this? You’re more than willing to entertain both ideas. If you sacrifice yourself so that the new eternals can breed then it won’t be one in vain. Quite frankly how many more worthwhile years do you have left anyway? Maybe it would be better to die so that a legacy of sorts can live forever. Besides, there is always the possibility that you could survive the process. Of course there’s always the chance it could all fail horribly. Elam and Zana may seem very certain that it will work, but you still have your reservations. As crazy as Elam’s idea sounds, part of it intrigues you. Immortality would give you that time you always wanted in past. Time enough to conquer the world. With immortality, you wouldn’t need to worry about some sort of legacy, you would always be. He says he needs more time to work on it though which is a concern, then there’s the fact that you’d be floating in a tank. Would you grow bored? Would you go mad? Would you even be “you?” Elam said there would be the possibility of setting something up so you could interact with the outside world, but again who knows if that will even work? You’ve got a decision and you need to make one or the other. > You immortality It’s surely a mad plan that sounds impossible, but yet the appeal is there. Even you can’t believe you’re actually going for it, but deep down this is something you feel you need to do. This idea of having fertile Eternals to “carry on” your legacy is a nice idea, but ultimately it isn’t “you.” Only you can lead the Empire to world order. Not to mention there is a risk of you dying in the process of creating said Eternals and then you’d have wait at least twelve or thirteen years just to see if the process literally produced positive results. If you’re going to have to risk your life and wait around, you’d rather do it for the chance at immortality. And given all the other wonders and feats you’ve seen or even done in this world who is to say this isn’t possible? Like Elam said, the concept of a machine like an airship was impossible at one time as well. “How long would I have to wait for you to perfect this process you’re proposing?” you ask Elam, who gives a big grin at your willingness to choose his new plan. “Not long a assure you my Emperor! As I said, I’ve already had limited success on a few test subjects already! In your case though, I will need to build a suitable containment for when…well you ascend to a higher state of being.” Zana is shaking her head at this idea. “My Emperor, while I know the desire for immortality is tempting, I really have to advise against this. Elam’s enthusiasm is far exceeding what is reality! While it is true he’s managed to keep a few animal brains alive for a few minutes, I’m fairly sure that that will be the extent of it. This isn’t even taking all the other risks and unforeseen problems that there will surely be. There is only so much science can do, it can’t conquer death.” Zana says. “Your concerns are dully noted Zana. Elam, you will have any and all resources available to you for this project.” You say. “I won’t fail you my Emperor. This will work I guarantee it!” “Hrm. Well let’s sure hope so, because I’m putting my trust behind it and throwing away a plan that will not get the chance to be implemented again. In any event, I want to keep very close eye on this project. You said you’re going to have to build a container for me, well if I am going to spend the rest of my life in a tank, then it needs to be at my home. So I’m going to have the entire under palace cleared and open for this project to go down there. There should be more than enough room and if not, we’ll make additions. But you’ll be becoming a permanent fixture at the palace.” You say. “I understand. Again, I thank you for this opportunity my Emperor.” Elam responds. You tell Elam for him to get all of his equipment, staff and whatever else he currently needs together and arrangements will be made to have it hauled to the palace. Zana says she’s still skeptical of this plan, but if this is what you wish and if Elam still wants her help, then she will of course serve. Naturally Elam wants her working with him on this project. Having settled on a new plan, all you have to do now is inform Decena… “You’re going to have your what put in a what?” she exclaims. “My brain would be placed in a tank of special chemicals. Elam says that due to my magic powers I could still communicate mentally with people with the proper electrical charges attached…” you don’t even get to finish, Decena is too overwhelmed by this information. “This…this…can’t work? Can it? I mean…it sounds so impossible!” “I know. Trust me, when Elam explained it, I thought the same thing, but…I have to try. I mean the other plan was nice and all, but really the risks were just as great and still involved an uncertain success as far as I was concerned.” “Yeah I know you explained that plan, but…it sounded at least like they were ready to enact it. This one is going to involve more testing and who know how much more time? You’ll still have to risk your life and…” You stop Decena. “Decena, weren’t you the one that always believed I could find a way to be immortal?” “Well yes, but I dunno…a brain in a tank? Is that really living?” “Well Elam said that perhaps arrangements and improvements could be made in the future and that perhaps I could actually leave the tank via one of those automatons that we used in the Nakol and Iznac Wars. Look, the idea of being a disembodied brain isn’t exactly ideal, but at this point I’m starting to feel so much pain in my body on a daily basis that I’d almost be relieved to shed this old shell at this point. And what’s the alternative? Hope that a generation of Eternals can follow in my, or even your footsteps just because they can reproduce? Can’t do it. I have to shoulder the majority of the burden of keeping the Empire running. Nobody else. I have to attempt this plan and this is a worthwhile risk in my mind that I can take.” “But…what about us? I mean…if this is all successful and everything goes well. How will our relationship remain as it is now?” Decena touches your hand and then your face as if it’ll be the last time she’ll get to do it. You return her closeness, as you understand her concern. “Decena, I know it will be difficult. Honestly if this process goes through successfully, you’re right our relationship will be very different, and perhaps you will be unable to love me in such a form, but… Now Decena stops you. “My glorious Emperor, don’t you know by now that I will always love you no matter what your form? That will never change. It’s just that I would miss the warmth of your body next to mine, our lips touching when we embrace. I can’t say that I am entirely sure of this plan, but I will as always defer and respect your judgment on this matter. If you believe this is possible, then I can think of nothing greater than your everlasting ruler ship over this world.” And with this validation, you feel slightly better about your decision. Even though you never doubted that Decena wouldn’t be behind you, it’s still good to hear. Your “siblings” on the other hand are a lot less supportive on the matter however. “What?! I thought you were going through with the plan to create fertile Eternals!” Brenda exclaims. “Yeah, I mean granted that plan sounded a little far fetched, but it seemed like it might be plausible. This just sounds well…insane.” Warrick adds. The conversation doesn’t get any better from there. Brenda is probably more upset because of your plans to abandon the Eternal project entirely and place all resources into this immortality plan. You explain that for right now there isn’t any need for more Eternals due to having nowhere to really send the current fourth gens a place to fight anyway. No point in creating more super soldiers when you’ve already got more than enough right now and no war to which to send them. Naturally Brenda sees this a sort of betrayal. She has grown attached to the younger Eternals and does see them as successors or in her case her surrogate children. You remind her though that they are neither. They are tools to the Empire just as you all were when you all were created. This doesn’t go over well with Brenda. “So what, are we ALL just your tools too then?” Brenda asks. “Brenda, I didn’t say you…” you start to say, but are interrupted. “No, you said we’re all just tools for the Empire. That includes all of us. Look, maybe YOU got the chance to be the right hand of our old Emperor, and you have become his successor, but YOU also started out just like Warrick and I did!” “Brenda, I think you need to calm down, I’m sure he didn’t…” Warrick says, but she won’t hear him. “No Warrick, this needs to be said.” She says and turns back to you. You don’t say anything you’re content on listening to her rant. “This plan of yours is vanity, pure and simple. Is your ego such that you cannot even accept your own WIFE taking over after you die? Would you really throw away a good chance of creating fertile Eternals who will carry on the Empire for a remote chance of living forever? You may rule the Empire, but do you really consider yourself bigger than it?” You’ve heard enough and put up your hand. “Brenda. I’ve allowed your outburst because you’re right, we three did start out together. I even see you as siblings of a sort and of course as friends. We all trained under that sadistic svelk bitch until the two of you were lucky enough to be separated. And yes you two were the lucky ones, because quite frankly sometimes I envy your ignorance on everything you’re STILL in the dark about. But shall I tell you? Seems like a perfect time.” You start off by telling Brenda that Roldan wasn’t killed by a simple undead shadow assassin and in fact Semra had nothing to do with it like the Emperor’s propaganda said. You explain that the Emperor had Roldan killed just like he had your wife Alison killed AND was planning to kill you. The reveal is definitely a shock to both Brenda and Warrick. You continue by admitting that you weren’t even meant to be an Eternal in the first place. That you were a candidate by a red tape mistake and it was that same mistake that ultimately resulted in Casimir’s death. “So Brenda, as you can see, perhaps I’m not entirely attached to the Eternals, because I wasn’t meant to be one in the first place. Yet here I am. Perhaps I seek immortality because I took it from Casimir. Casimir ruled the Empire for centuries and what did he do with it? Nothing much. I’ve ruled it for significantly less time and look at what it’s become. THINK what I could do if I had more time. I’ve built this nation to be better than it was. I’ve expanded its glory. I’ve defended its honor. I’ve sacrificed for it. I’ve done everything short of DIE for it and if I thought it would secure its continual future, then yes I would do that too.” You move closer to Brenda and Warrick who sit in silence listening to your speech. “You ask if I think I’m bigger than the Empire. No, I don’t…I AM the fucking Empire.” You stare at them both very intensely. “And only I can live forever.” You end your speech telling them both that this is the way things are going to be and that they are welcome to be part of it as always. And if they aren’t willing, then they had best stay out of the way. > Year 72 You have to admit as the years passed by on this project, you’d wondered if you were just chasing a dream, but it looks like that dream will soon be a reality. Research has been tested, advancements have been made, test subjects have been used and hypotheses have been confirmed. Everything is coming together; the only thing that will be needed soon is you. Still, despite you always stating how much your body aches and how much weaker and slower you are now, there is a part of you that is a little afraid of what this procedure will entail, namely an end to your life as you know it, but still living. It’s funny but how this is a little scary to you, even if simple death is not. In fact Elam is probably more excited to see this through than even you are. “My Emperor, we may begin the procedure any time you wish. Just let me know when we can get started.” Elam says. “Does it have to be right now?” you ask. “No, of course not my Emperor. I just thought you were eager to see this through.” “You don’t need to push our Emperor, Elam. I’m sure he’d like to take care of some affairs before going through with this.” Zana remarks. “Is all the machinery and equipment in working order? Has everything been inspected?” you ask. “Of course my Emperor, I inspected everything myself. I figured you’d want someone that has a background with safety procedures doing that rather than Elam here.” Zana remarks with a teasing smile at Elam. “Bah. YOU didn’t even think this was going to be possible!” Elam exclaims. “Well I have to admit, it did sound very unlikely, but I suppose I never should’ve doubted your genius Elam.” Zana says and gives him a quick peck on the cheek. While Zana and Elam are engaging in playfulness, you’re involved in making a life changing choice. “Okay. We’ll do this in three days. That will give me time to take care of a few things I need to take care of, just in case the worst should happen. No point in drawing this out any longer than that. Everyone is dismissed until that time.” you say. Elam and Zana both acknowledge your command and soon they and their staff all begin to leave. You however continue to stick around. When you’re finally all alone, you begin to walk closer to the giant tank in the room, which is hooked up to a system of machines. As you lean against your walking stick you can’t help marvel at the work that went into all this. Gears, cogs, wires, levers, buttons, mechanical arms …you wonder how the hell some of this works. You’ve actually tried to keep up on the research since this project started, and while you understand a lot of the basic concepts, some of it just goes over your head. Though you aren’t sure if its because you’ve got so much on your mind that you can’t retain the information or if you just don’t have a knack for the technical stuff, or maybe you just find it all well…boring. A speaker of sorts is attached to the tank and there are three specialized automatons standing nearby. You imagine that these are intended for you to be able to interact with the outside world in some fashion. Elam has admitted though that despite the very technical nature of this project he believes that this wouldn’t be as easy without your own magical abilities that will be able to tap the power of your mind. He’s gone on to say that this will be the ultimate successful blending of science and magic as far as he’s concerned. He better be right considering that all the testing took away most of your remaining mages. In any event, this is where you’re going to spend the rest of your life. “So, are you ready for immortality?” a voice says behind you. It’s Decena. It’s surprising to see her down here considering she’s only made one or two visits down here before since the project got underway. She’s told you that the less she knows about the project the less likely she’s libel to get worried about your safety and try to talk you out of it hence the lack of visits. “I guess so.” You answer. “You guess so? That doesn’t sound like the usual certainty you’ve always had about this plan.” Decena remarks. “Oh, I’m certain. Just trying to take all of this in and get myself used to this room I suppose. Not sure why I’m even concerned about it really, I mean Casimir spent several centuries in a room practically by himself. This very room in fact or at least part of it before I had all the remodeling and expansion done to accommodate all the machinery. Its really surreal sometimes how I’m actually starting to follow in his footsteps. I sometimes wonder if he’d be proud of what I’ve managed to accomplish or if he’d just be very jealous.” Decena walks over and puts her arm around you while you both stare at the giant tank. “Well, I’m proud of everything you’ve accomplished and everything you will accomplish after this procedure. So when will it be?” “In three days, then Elam and Zana will be back here to perform it.” “Hrm, I don’t care for that woman.” Decena remarks. “So you’ve said during the times you wandered down here.” “I dunno. Something about her just doesn’t sit right with me in the short moments I’ve spoken with her. She seems phony at times. Even the fact that she’s been concerned with this plan from the beginning and worried about your well being doesn’t seem genuine to me. If it hadn’t already been in the middle of the project when I first met her, I probably would’ve told you to have her removed from it.” “Didn’t realize she had gotten under your skin so much. As you know though I rechecked her file that the Eyes had on her long before she started working on this project. She’s nothing but clean except maybe for a lack of judgment in sexing up Elam on occasion, but I can’t imagine there were a lot of choices in human males when they worked together in New Dessel.” “As I said, I can’t place my finger on it, but there is something about her that doesn’t seem right with her. Does she need to be there for this procedure?” “Well I don’t know. I mean she’s the main one that’s been working with Elam so I imagine so to some degree. She already did an inspection on the machinery without me even needing to tell her to do so.” Decena doesn’t immediately respond to your answer instead she just walks forward towards the tank and touches it. “Nothing can go wrong with this plan…” she says softly then she turns around. “Can you have someone else inspect everything again?” she asks. “What?!” you respond. “I just want everything to go well, don’t you? I just think it would be best if everything was given a second look.” “But…you realize that might very well take more than three days? You realize how complex all this stuff is? I told Zana and Elam that…” “No, I don’t want either of them to do it. Pick someone else that worked on the project.” “Pick someone…Decena what is this all about?” “Look I would just feel more comfortable if someone else did an inspection of the machine that’s going to be your new home okay? I already said how I feel about Zana, so I don’t want her doing it again. And as for Elam we all know he has a tendency to overlook safety protocol even under the strictest supervision. Can’t you get someone else?” “Not really, I mean those are the main two who worked on this thing! Decena, I’m as concerned about the success of this procedure more than anyone, but I’d rather not extend my waiting period any longer than necessary. I mean I don’t think I will and I’d only admit this to you, but I don’t want to lose my nerve.” “You won’t lose your nerve my love, but don’t you see this is why another inspection should be done? I mean I guess if you don’t think it’s necessary then I’ll of course respect your wishes and we can spend the next three days not worrying about this until the time comes.” On one hand you suppose Decena’s just looking out for you as usual, but on the other you really don’t want to risk losing your nerve on this situation. The longer you think about it, and how it could all go wrong, or even how it can all go right, is enough to possibly change your mind on the whole situation. Then there’s the fact that Zana and Elam were the main ones involved on building the machine, they’d know it the best and if you got someone else to look at it, who is to say they won’t screw something up? > You have a second inspection done If Decena feels this strongly about your safety then you’re not going to deny it. Besides another way of looking at it isn’t more time to rethink the situation, but instead more time to spend with Decena. “Very well, if you feel a second inspection should be done, then that’s what will be done. (Sigh) I’m just wondering who had as much experience as Zana and Elam did with the machine that they could inspect it without wondering what certain parts did or accidently make things worse.” You respond “What about that nervous fellow I saw sometimes in the palace? Didn’t he work on the Eternal Project?” Decena asks. “Oh…you mean Gregory? Yeah, he did. I transferred him over here as a general supervisor when that project got shut down. Sometimes I even forget he’s here, since he’s such a wallflower sometimes. Still you’re probably on to something, because if anyone is a stickler for safety and thoroughness its him and while he wasn’t involved in the building process, he has familiarized himself with the machine probably just as much due to being a safety supervisor for the rst of the technical staff. He’s probably annoyed the hell out of Elam on several occasions because of it.” “Good, he’s sounds perfect.” The next day you summon Gregory to the palace, when he arrives he’s nervous as usual. The man must think you’re going to have him executed, but then he thinks that any time you look at him. You tell him that you just need another inspection done on the tank and the machine (It’s really going to have to be given a better name at some point). He of course complies. While he gets started you plan on informing Elam and Zana that there may be a slight delay in the project, but you figure it can wait until tomorrow and you spend some quality time with Decena for the rest of the day. On the second day, Kivan tells you that Gregory really needs to speak with you and says it’s incredibly important. When you go to speak with him, he’s very apologetic, but explains that he’s already found some possible problems with the machine. “Apologies my Emperor as I know you want to get this procedure underway as soons as possible, but well I just think I found some possible problems. I mean they seem very minor, but they aren’t. In time some vital parts could break down. In fact I’m very surprised that Zana did not catch the worn tubing and slightly frayed wires on the inside. Besides myself, she’s the only one that has a good eye for that detail.” Decena who happens to be with you, immediately exclaims about this being proof that she knew that something wasn’t on the up and up with Zana. “She tried to make her assassination attempt look like an accident! I KNEW there wasn’t something right about her!” You tell Gregory to keep doing his inspection to see if there are any more flaws he can find. While it’s very possible Zana didn’t see these potential dangers, you’re still not pleased with her right now and plan on having the Eyes bring her in. Elam will have to be brought in too. When you arrive at the Eye headquarters, Warrick tells you that they haven’t interrogated to any great length yet, but the pair of them don’t know why they’ve been brought in by the Eyes. Your main concern is Zana at first so you personally go to see her with the Eye interrogators. What is surprising is that when you see her she’s completely calm. Most people (including Elam) when brought in by the Eyes are scared shitless. And that’s what starts to make you suspicious. You’ve found that the people who are the most calm under pressure are probably the most capable of ruthlessness and plots… Zana explains her inspection step by step and steadily asserts her dedication to the Empire and her loyalty. It probably would’ve been better had she just not spoken at all, because the more you hear the more your own suspicion rises. If Decena was here, she probably would’ve just shot her for lying, and while her fate is definitely sealed as far as you’re concerned, you still want to know the reason. “Zana, I’ll admit, you had even me fooled, but the problem is the more you talk the worse it gets for you. Gregory has already found more flaws in the machine since you were brought in. He’s even said that even he doesn’t think that they could be anything other than sabotage. Even if I assume you’re telling the truth, it displays a gross amount of incompetence on your part. So either you were trying to kill me on purpose or you’re a lot less competent than I believed. And quite honestly I do not believe that from your past experience that YOU are capable of that level of incompetence.” Zana’s calm demeanor begins to change to one of uncertainty. It’s hitting her that she might not make it out of here. “So tell me why Zana. Was this something you just came up with, had you been planning this for years? Who else is involved? Did someone put you up to this…did a svelk woman by the name of Semra put you up to this?” you ask. Zana’s face now has dropped to one of fear. She looks like she’s about to cry. “Zana, you know how this is going to end for you. If you ever had any loyalty toward the Empire then at least tell me everything. If you do, I can at least promise you a quick execution.” You say. Zana’s expression now changes to one of absolute rage. “Like the same quick death you’ve given so many others? The fact is I’ve NEVER had ANY loyalty to the Empire let alone you, murderer. Tyrant. But I’ll tell you everything anyway, because you don’t know shit about me. You think I’m upset because I’m about to die? I’m upset because I won’t get to kill you and spare the world of your future domination and cruelty!” This outburst causes the Eyes nearby to move closer towards Zana and grab her wrists just in case she attempts something, though at this point there isn’t much she could do to you now. “Who are you? I mean who are you really?” “I’m nobody. Nobody of importance at least not until YOU came around and killed my entire family!” Zana says. “Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?” you ask. “I was going to be a princess! I would’ve ruled a kingdom one day! YOU and YOUR EMPIRE destroyed all that before I even had a chance to enjoy a taste of such a life! Klemto didn’t just save a random Felkan baby, he saved an HEIR TO THE FELKAN FUCKING KINGDOM!” Zana shouts. It was a very long time ago. Almost a different life even, but you vaguely remember seeing a crib in the Felkan royal palace, yet no baby or even signs of a dead one. You never thought too much of it at the time, but apparently even though Zana was just an infant, Klemto must’ve told her about her real heritage. He probably lied to you thinking that you would’ve had her killed. “Because of YOU, I’ve had to live a miserable existence working on machinery surrounded by fucking GNOMES! You know what that’s like? Being the only human in community of damn gnomes? It SUCKS! Then when some humans do fucking arrive, they’re from the same nation that destroyed my birthright! It almost sickened me to even sleep with that crazy fool Elam!” You continue to listen to Zana’s rant. “When I heard of your plan to create a fertile version of those abominations called Eternals I already saw my opportunity to get my revenge. Imagine my surprise when you actually took Elam up on his insane plan. To be quite honest I thought it would be a failure and I wouldn’t need to do anything except watch you eventually die of old age having missed your opportunity to carry on some monstrous legacy in the quest for immortality instead.” “So why didn’t you attempt to sabotage the attempt long before now? Hell, why not even go the direct route and try to kill me? Not like you didn’t have plenty of opportunity.” You ask. “Hah, kill you? The Eternal Emperor? I wouldn’t have stood a chance. No matter how quick, clever or young I might be, even I know that you have more lives than a cat. No, I would’ve never been able to kill you myself. As for sabotage, that might’ve been an option had you not been lingering around as much or Gregory not constantly doing inspections after every new part had been added. I knew I should’ve had him killed. I nearly thought about killing Elam when he started making progress with the project…but what can I say, I’d grown to like the old fool too much. Weakness on my part and a fatal one obviously.” Zana’s confession now has a tone of regret, not because of what she did, but more of what she failed to do. Right now you can see her thinking about the methods she could’ve went through with this plan a better way. So close, yet so far. “Okay, since you’re in a talkative mood, did Klemto or any gnome put you up to this?” you ask. “What? So you’ll have an excuse to round them all up and destroy their souls again? I heard about what you did to them. And maybe I might find them to be timid, tiresome unattractive little know it alls, I find it deplorable what the Empire did to them. I can’t believe they allowed themselves to be dominated by a nation that systematically exterminated them from not just this life, but the next as well!” “So did they help or not?” you ask again. “No! No they did not! My father would’ve probably had me jailed if he knew what I was planning. Those cowards wouldn’t dare stand against the Empire, but I fucking would! And did! Not that this will save them. After you’re done killing me, you’ll probably have them all killed as well for any excuse will serve a tyrant!” “It’s amusing that you keep calling me that. What did you think your parents were? They were a KING and QUEEN. You think they ruled by popular decision? Do you think YOU would have if you became queen? My actions that day weren’t even personal. I was just following orders like a soldier. Your actions however today are misguided and as you already admitted, fatal. Such a waste. Even had I known your origins, I would not have had you killed if you had remained true to serving the Empire. Your quest for vengeance was as pointless as your entire life. But I am a man of my word and I believe everything you’ve told me.” Without another word, you nod at the Eyes restraining her who back off. You then raise your hand and flash of lightning emanates from your fingers blasting Zana directly in the heart. She shakes for a few seconds and then slumps forward dead on the table. “Funny. She’ll probably be the last person I’ll ever kill directly. Well in this body anyway. Who’s to say what the future will bring? Anyway, I’ll need to speak with Warrick again.” You tell Warrick that you want the Eyes to purge New Dessel. Despite the fact that Zana most likely worked alone, you can’t take that chance. Maybe Klemto anticipated she’d eventually seek revenge and just took a hands off approach so that he couldn’t be directly implemented. Maybe they’re all genuinely innocent. Doesn’t matter. You’re trying to secure the future of the Empire and its obvious the gnomes are a potential threat. You chuckle to yourself realizing that you’re even more like Casimir than you ever thought. You have to believe even if he would be jealous of all your other accomplishments, he’d definitely be proud of this one. “Very well, we’ve already got a large number of Eyes positioned in that city. All we have to do is send in another large group, telling the gnomes that it’s a routine changing of the guard and when they’re in, they’ll purge the city. What about Elam?” Warrick asks. “Oh, him I need. Besides I’m fairly certain the only thing he’s guilty of is thinking with his dick. Catch him up to speed on the situation and release him. Also let him know that the project will have to be set back until I’m satisfied with the machine’s replacement parts and Gregory’s inspection of every little detail.” “Understood. Long live the Empire.” Warrick says. The project is set back at least a couple of months. The purging of New Dessel takes awhile due to the gnomes locking themselves in hard to reach sections of the city, but eventually the entire city is purged. You at last finished what Casimir started though really you wish it hadn’t been necessary. You never hated them. Klemto just saved the wrong baby and brought death on them all because of it. In any event, mostly technicians, inventors and other human families with members that have similar mechanical or scientific skills will resettle New Dessel. Eventually Elam and Gregory have all the equipment fixed and ready again and you return with Decena to complete the task you originally set out to do. You’re strapped to a table. Elam is remarkably subdued. You’re guessing he’s still taking Zana’s betrayal hard. Still, perhaps its good, it will give him more focus on what is important, serving the Empire. As you are prepared, you and Decena exchange one kiss for what will be the last time. “Know that whatever happens, I’ll always love you.” She says. “And I will always love you.” You respond. Elam injects you with a powerful reagent that knocks you out and the process begins. The blackness takes you experience absolute nothingness… Hours later you wake up or at least you believe you’re “awake.” All around you, you feel as if you’re floating and every so often a tingling electrical charge can be felt. Your mind…or rather “you” are in the tank. The procedure worked. It’s a very strange sensation, you can “see” though you don’t have eyes. It’s almost as if the images you see outside the tank are being displayed directly into your brain. Though it isn’t like proper vision. You can only “see” them as blurs in your mind, however you can fill in those gaps due to your real memories of said people. Elam was right, the magic energy within you has allowed you vision, and it has also allowed you to speak. You focus on the female image…on Decena who still stands near your now empty shell of a body on a table. “Decena…do not cry…it worked…I am…alive.” You say with a bit of effort. This statement is followed by some shouts of joy from Decena who starts speaking out loud asking if its really you. When Elam sees what’s going on, he begins to jump up and down exclaiming that the process worked. “Decena, speak to me with your mind. It is the best way to directly communicate with me now.” You say to which she does so. “My love, I’m so happy to see that this has worked! I was about to have Elam killed if it didn’t! So how is it? How do you feel?” “It is an odd sensation, though not an unpleasant one. Indeed I do not feel the pain I once did any more. Perhaps, I shall get used to this form after all.” At this point you hear Elam’s mind and he’s asking you five hundred questions, all of which you will get to in time, but you tell him for now you just want to rest and converse with Decena alone. He gets it and says he’ll be back in an hour to check on you since there are still many tests that need to be done, such as the ability to move the automaton bodies and such. After Elam and his staff leave, Decena sits next to the tank touching the glass and looking in on you. It’s the closest she’ll ever be with you ever again, and she begins to sniffle and sob a bit. At first you think its out of sadness, but then you sense her thoughts and its due to happiness. “You’ll live forever and so will the Empire now. You did it, my love I always knew you would.” You are filled with a sense of bliss that seems stronger than you’ve ever felt before. You wonder if it’s due to your new form. Perhaps without a body, emotions and senses are stronger in some way? In any case you know now that this is just the beginning. You’ll have to make special arrangements due to your new form, but that’s all part of running an Empire. Now with your immortality secured, you can get back to expansion and possibly even get the Eternal project back up and running with alterations. Your plans to unite the entire world under Empire world has not changed and you know there are still places out there left to conquer. Still, when you look on at Decena’s hand on the glass you wish you could just touch her again. If only for a moment.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 72 You have to admit as the years passed by on this project, you’d wondered if you were just chasing a dream, but it looks like that dream will soon be a reality. Research has been tested, advancements have been made, test subjects have been used and hypotheses have been confirmed. Everything is coming together; the only thing that will be needed soon is you. Still, despite you always stating how much your body aches and how much weaker and slower you are now, there is a part of you that is a little afraid of what this procedure will entail, namely an end to your life as you know it, but still living. It’s funny but how this is a little scary to you, even if simple death is not. In fact Elam is probably more excited to see this through than even you are. “My Emperor, we may begin the procedure any time you wish. Just let me know when we can get started.” Elam says. “Does it have to be right now?” you ask. “No, of course not my Emperor. I just thought you were eager to see this through.” “You don’t need to push our Emperor, Elam. I’m sure he’d like to take care of some affairs before going through with this.” Zana remarks. “Is all the machinery and equipment in working order? Has everything been inspected?” you ask. “Of course my Emperor, I inspected everything myself. I figured you’d want someone that has a background with safety procedures doing that rather than Elam here.” Zana remarks with a teasing smile at Elam. “Bah. YOU didn’t even think this was going to be possible!” Elam exclaims. “Well I have to admit, it did sound very unlikely, but I suppose I never should’ve doubted your genius Elam.” Zana says and gives him a quick peck on the cheek. While Zana and Elam are engaging in playfulness, you’re involved in making a life changing choice. “Okay. We’ll do this in three days. That will give me time to take care of a few things I need to take care of, just in case the worst should happen. No point in drawing this out any longer than that. Everyone is dismissed until that time.” you say. Elam and Zana both acknowledge your command and soon they and their staff all begin to leave. You however continue to stick around. When you’re finally all alone, you begin to walk closer to the giant tank in the room, which is hooked up to a system of machines. As you lean against your walking stick you can’t help marvel at the work that went into all this. Gears, cogs, wires, levers, buttons, mechanical arms …you wonder how the hell some of this works. You’ve actually tried to keep up on the research since this project started, and while you understand a lot of the basic concepts, some of it just goes over your head. Though you aren’t sure if its because you’ve got so much on your mind that you can’t retain the information or if you just don’t have a knack for the technical stuff, or maybe you just find it all well…boring. A speaker of sorts is attached to the tank and there are three specialized automatons standing nearby. You imagine that these are intended for you to be able to interact with the outside world in some fashion. Elam has admitted though that despite the very technical nature of this project he believes that this wouldn’t be as easy without your own magical abilities that will be able to tap the power of your mind. He’s gone on to say that this will be the ultimate successful blending of science and magic as far as he’s concerned. He better be right considering that all the testing took away most of your remaining mages. In any event, this is where you’re going to spend the rest of your life. “So, are you ready for immortality?” a voice says behind you. It’s Decena. It’s surprising to see her down here considering she’s only made one or two visits down here before since the project got underway. She’s told you that the less she knows about the project the less likely she’s libel to get worried about your safety and try to talk you out of it hence the lack of visits. “I guess so.” You answer. “You guess so? That doesn’t sound like the usual certainty you’ve always had about this plan.” Decena remarks. “Oh, I’m certain. Just trying to take all of this in and get myself used to this room I suppose. Not sure why I’m even concerned about it really, I mean Casimir spent several centuries in a room practically by himself. This very room in fact or at least part of it before I had all the remodeling and expansion done to accommodate all the machinery. Its really surreal sometimes how I’m actually starting to follow in his footsteps. I sometimes wonder if he’d be proud of what I’ve managed to accomplish or if he’d just be very jealous.” Decena walks over and puts her arm around you while you both stare at the giant tank. “Well, I’m proud of everything you’ve accomplished and everything you will accomplish after this procedure. So when will it be?” “In three days, then Elam and Zana will be back here to perform it.” “Hrm, I don’t care for that woman.” Decena remarks. “So you’ve said during the times you wandered down here.” “I dunno. Something about her just doesn’t sit right with me in the short moments I’ve spoken with her. She seems phony at times. Even the fact that she’s been concerned with this plan from the beginning and worried about your well being doesn’t seem genuine to me. If it hadn’t already been in the middle of the project when I first met her, I probably would’ve told you to have her removed from it.” “Didn’t realize she had gotten under your skin so much. As you know though I rechecked her file that the Eyes had on her long before she started working on this project. She’s nothing but clean except maybe for a lack of judgment in sexing up Elam on occasion, but I can’t imagine there were a lot of choices in human males when they worked together in New Dessel.” “As I said, I can’t place my finger on it, but there is something about her that doesn’t seem right with her. Does she need to be there for this procedure?” “Well I don’t know. I mean she’s the main one that’s been working with Elam so I imagine so to some degree. She already did an inspection on the machinery without me even needing to tell her to do so.” Decena doesn’t immediately respond to your answer instead she just walks forward towards the tank and touches it. “Nothing can go wrong with this plan…” she says softly then she turns around. “Can you have someone else inspect everything again?” she asks. “What?!” you respond. “I just want everything to go well, don’t you? I just think it would be best if everything was given a second look.” “But…you realize that might very well take more than three days? You realize how complex all this stuff is? I told Zana and Elam that…” “No, I don’t want either of them to do it. Pick someone else that worked on the project.” “Pick someone…Decena what is this all about?” “Look I would just feel more comfortable if someone else did an inspection of the machine that’s going to be your new home okay? I already said how I feel about Zana, so I don’t want her doing it again. And as for Elam we all know he has a tendency to overlook safety protocol even under the strictest supervision. Can’t you get someone else?” “Not really, I mean those are the main two who worked on this thing! Decena, I’m as concerned about the success of this procedure more than anyone, but I’d rather not extend my waiting period any longer than necessary. I mean I don’t think I will and I’d only admit this to you, but I don’t want to lose my nerve.” “You won’t lose your nerve my love, but don’t you see this is why another inspection should be done? I mean I guess if you don’t think it’s necessary then I’ll of course respect your wishes and we can spend the next three days not worrying about this until the time comes.” On one hand you suppose Decena’s just looking out for you as usual, but on the other you really don’t want to risk losing your nerve on this situation. The longer you think about it, and how it could all go wrong, or even how it can all go right, is enough to possibly change your mind on the whole situation. Then there’s the fact that Zana and Elam were the main ones involved on building the machine, they’d know it the best and if you got someone else to look at it, who is to say they won’t screw something up? > You leave it alone Decena’s heart is in the right place, but you’d rather not waste anymore time. You can’t imagine that if Zana was up to something sinister that you wouldn’t have caught it by now, let alone that she wouldn’t have acted by now. There are countless times she probably could’ve made an attempt on your life since she’s been here. However you do agree to Decena’s insistence that she at least not be involved in the final process. If it’ll make her a little less worried about the situation then you don’t see the harm. While Elam tells you up and down that he can’t perform the procedure without Zana’s assistance, Zana is actually fine with not being there and tells you that she understands that the Empress is just concerned for her husband’s well being. Zana also says that despite Elam’s insistence, she isn’t excessively needed for the procedure. She says that for the final procedure; her main job was going to be reading gauges, monitoring dials and such. She says that the other safety supervisor Gregory can take over for her since he should be familiar with everything as well. With everything settled, you spend your remaining two days enjoying your time with Decena who seems a little more at ease with the upcoming procedure due to your compromise about Zana. The time you spend with Decena, puts you in a more relaxed mood as well and you’re definitely feeling more positive about it. You almost don’t even know why you were concerned to begin with. Eventually the day comes and Elam has everything ready (With Gregory standing by to monitor the machine and you return with Decena to complete the task you originally set out to do. You’re strapped to a table. Elam still says he’d feel more comfortable with Zana helping him, but reassures you that everything will go smoothly. As you are prepared, you and Decena exchange one kiss for what will be the last time. “Know that whatever happens, I’ll always love you.” She says. “And I will always love you.” You respond. Elam injects you with a powerful reagent that knocks you out and the process begins. The blackness takes you experience absolute nothingness… And that is the last thing you ever experience for you never wake up from the procedure, which was successful at least for a moment. When your brain was transferred everything was going well at first and steps were being taken to gradually wake you back up, but unfortunately it was during this process that the machine began to fail, break down and eventually explode. The initial explosion killed Gregory who was already freaking out when the machine started acting outside the safety parameters. It also killed most of the supporting staff; including Elam who was desperately attempting to fix what he thought was wrong. Decena survived the initial explosion, but only at a great cost. She ended up losing a part of her arm, a foot and most of her body and face heavily injured. She managed to hang on long enough to declare that Warrick and Brenda were officially in charge of the Empire when Kivan and others found her dying. With her last breath to Kivan she told him: “Have that…(cough wheeze) bitch Zana executed…I know…(wheeze) she did this…” Warrick and Brenda’s first course of action was to indeed track down Zana, who by this time had long escaped. Klemto and all the other gnomes insisted they knew nothing of this plan, but someone had to pay and unfortunately it was them. The gnomes of New Dessel didn’t go without a fight however and it took months before the mountain city was finally taken and even then groups of gnomes had managed to escape or even lock themselves in secret passages within the mountain to conduct guerilla attacks. Eventually Warrick had the airship fleet continually blast the mountain until it collapsed on itself making it useless to all and killing anyone still hiding inside. As for Zana, she never was caught, but that was the least of the Empire’s problems. Her success of killing you (and Decena) along with New Dessel’s extended siege inspired another rebellion. Warrick and Brenda might’ve been up to the task had they been a little younger, but when Warrick died of natural causes suddenly a few years later, it was a great blow to both the Empire and Brenda who took the death of a second husband hard. She eventually joined him a year later via suicide. From there the downward spiral of the Empire was inevitable and in time records of the old regime were erased from history.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Probably one of the crazier things you’ve done and its entirely possible you’re either trying to prove something to yourself or you just want this battle to be over with win or lose because you’re getting very tired. Probably a little bit of both. “Okay, you fucking overgrown flying lizard, it’s either going to be me or you today.” You say and expend more energy to reinforce your barrier. For a brief moment you see the dragon’s face get closer and closer and then… There’s a great smashing force that causes you to fly off the battlements. You don’t actually fall straight to the ground, but instead you actually sail backwards in the air for a moment and into one of the many decimated tree trunks of the nearby jungle. You feel a cracking sound as your back and head slams hard into the solid wood of the tree and then you begin to fall straight down. Even if you weren’t completely knocked senseless by this terrific force you don’t have anything that could slow your decent. The best you can do is shield your face with your forearms as you crash to the ground. Another cracking sound is heard when you hit the ground and you’re in more physical pain than you’ve been in awhile. You’re not dead, but when you try to move, you find that you’re unable. At least not your legs, which are completely numb. You’ve broken your back and the bones in your arms are probably broken too, though you’re definitely feeling the pain from that injury. While you’re lying half paralyzed away from the fort, you can hear the audible sounds of battle coming from it. You aren’t sure what happened to the dragon, but apparently it didn’t manage to ram straight through you and keep going. It’s in the fort thrashing about and roaring in pain. Pieces of stone from the fort go flying in different directions; you just hope one of those stone blocks doesn’t hit you since you’re in no position to move right now. There’s nothing you can do save for one thing. Heal yourself with magic. You focus all the magic you got on mending your spine first and then your other wounds next. The dragon, gunfire, clanging of weapons and shouting can all be heard while you do this. By the time you’re finished, you can barely stand up. You don’t know if it’s due to your drained state or if the magic still needs time to take affect completely. In any case you start to limp back to the fort, which has started to become much quieter. When you enter, the fort is practically destroyed, several Eternals lie dead (or in pieces) and right in the center lays the dragon with severe wounds all over its body, exposed bones, torn wings and bleeding profusely. “Emperor! You’re alive!” one of the eternals shouts when he sees you. “Glory to the Empire! We feared the worst when we saw you fall from the battlements. It was a great show of bravery on your part to face down the dragon in the way you did! Never before have I seen something so inspiring! It also caused the creature to crash to the ground where upon all of us took advantage of the situation. As you can see we have brought honor in your name by finishing off the beast!” another boasts. “Oh really? Is that why it’s still breathing?” you point out causing the eternals standing around to back off suddenly. The dragon is indeed still breathing, but it’s very weak. It’s dying. Your eternals go to strike, but you tell them to hold and shake your head at them not being observant enough to see that the dragon is still alive in the first place. You walk towards the dragon’s head and grab a nearby axe on the ground. The beast manages to look at you with one eye and does nothing. You wonder if it still actually has some strength left in it, but is just too tired and old to continue fighting. Maybe it’s ready for it all to end. To join its fellows. You have no idea what dragon’s think or even if they do think in such complex terms, but when you take a look at this creature you can’t help but think how old it probably is. What has it seen? Did it once have its own civilization of sorts? What was it like at its peak? What caused it to ally with the Iznac? Was the arrangement some sort of compromise to avoid possible extinction? Extinction that has come anyway at your hands. You get closer to the dragon and ready your axe. The dragon still makes no move. It just closes its one good eye. “Y’know… sometimes I feel like you. Old and broken down, just wanting to lie down and let the sleep take me. Perhaps, I’ll even find myself in the same position one day…(sigh) anyway, on your way dragon. Looks like it was you today.” You say and swing the axe at the dragon’s neck. You have to hack away several times before you manage to sever its head. A cheer goes up from the eternals who survived the battle. “No cheering yet. This was barely a victory given all of our casualties and the condition of this fort. We also still have no word on Flevas’ company or how my wife is doing at Fort Tangle. Now let’s get organized and find out.” You say. The next few days still see a lot of combat. Decena was a lot more successful at Fort Tangle, but then she didn’t have a dragon attacking it. She congratulates you on your victory though and is glad to see you’re still alive from your ordeal. Eventually her and Snilkez’ka’s troops push forward and attack Iznac cities. Without their dragons anymore, it’s a lot easier to go faster on the attack. Unfortunately Flevas’ suffered an ignoble fate. He was killed fighting off a mixture of Glip and Iznac troops in the jungles and he was unlucky to be felled by several poisonous darts that the Glip love to use. His company fought on and won, but you’ve lost a good commander. Such are the ways of war. You and those who served under him will at least remember Flevas’ deeds. He certainly proved that elves could be an asset to the Empire rather than just whine all the time. It is truly the beginning of the end for the Iznac civilization and it is now in sight. You predict perhaps at least one more year of heavy fighting maximum, then maybe three more years of random raiding from the hold outs and survivors. After that? The Iznac will either be hiding in the farthest reaches of wilderness, will have completely submitted to your rule (Unlikely) or completely exterminated. You’re betting on that last one, as it seems to be the way of things. In any case you’ll soon be ruler of two continents. What comes next is unknown, but you know that you’re going to have some downtime to think about it. In fact you have somewhat of an idea of what to pursue next. Its something Brenda and Decena mentioned the day you got married. The Eternals and their inability to reproduce. You’re thinking that will be your next goal. You nearly died in your battle with the dragon and by healing yourself in the way you did, you probably just shortened your life span anyway. It’s time to start thinking about your potential legacy and future of the Empire. The current eternals have proven their worth and then some, but they could still be better. The next generation that Brenda is training will undoubtedly be better still, but the fifth…that’s the group you want to break the mold with. There’s got to be a way. Maybe you, Elam and possibly Galen can figure it out if you put your heads together. Hell, maybe even the gnomes might have some insight on the science side of things. The time for simple conquest of territory is coming to an end at least perhaps for now. > You test Subjects (Year 63) Year 63 “And you’re sure this is the only way?” you ask. “My Emperor if I thought there was another, I wouldn’t even be bothering you with this. I’m going to need these test subjects if I am going to pursue these theories.” Elam remarks. Elam’s request really isn’t unreasonable and it is for a good cause, its just one part of it isn’t exactly going to be nice for Brenda to hear. “Alright, I’ll talk to Brenda and I’ll get some of the Eternals that she’s been training. She’s probably not going to be happy about it though.” You say. “I do not understand my Emperor, does she not see some of them die in training?” “Surprisingly not as many as you think. It’s not like the old days back when I was an Eternal and only a few us survived the process. These kids today have several natural advantages along with accelerated healing abilities. They’re hard to kill even when they’re shooting each other in vital organs.” You say. “I didn’t realize this new group was so resilient. That’s good to hear though. I need them to survive this process, at least until they reach the age of puberty when I can see if they can reproduce.” “Hrm. Well in any case, Brenda’s also gotten a bit too attached to our younger Eternal generations in her years of training. Sort of sees them as her children in a way. It won’t be a problem of course because ultimately she doesn’t have a choice in the matter and she’ll see that this is best for the Empire anyway.” Just before you leave to break the news to Brenda, Elam asks another question. “Before you leave my Emperor. What about the other test subject?” “Oh, right. The magic source you need. Well despite Galen’s whining, he’s been a valuable asset to the Empire many times. This time shall be no different. So if you need him incapacitated, I’ll see to that business as well.” “I thank you my Emperor.” “Don’t thank me, just get me positive results.” You remark before leaving.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 60 Eighteen years ago the Children of Tor launched an all out assault on you and while it was a fierce battle, it was the beginning of the end for them as an effective fighting force. You hope that the Iznac are going to suffer a similar situation here today, because if not, it’s going to be the beginning of the end for the Empire. Only one civilization is going to come out of this alive from this conflict. You’re currently holding the line at Fort Canopy, but it isn’t the only major battle going on right now. You know only a few miles away Decena is undoubtedly doing his best to defend Fort Tangle and General Flevas is taking the fight to the Iznac in the jungles. High in the air through the rain and in the near distance you see a multi-colored dragon unleash a gout of flame from its mouth, which engulfs the Tornado. Already heavily damaged the flying fortress can’t take anymore and begins to explode. Minor ones at first, then one large one. Flaming pieces of the machine fall from the sky. The Storm II fires another volley of cannon fire at the dragon wounding the great beast, but it isn’t enough to kill it. The dragon bellows and turns its great body around to focus its attack on the Storm II. It isn’t going to die easy like its two siblings did over the past few years. It’s going to fight with everything it has. You look over the battlements and see several Iznacs climbing the walls of the fort like an army of ants. They aren’t even using ladders, they’re just scaling the fort with their bare hands. It’s actually rather impressive, until you unleash a chain of lightning to zap all of them. The shock is enough to at least cause most of them to fall off if not outright kill them immediately. “Slaughter the four armed spider eyed bastards! Make them realize that their domination of this continent has passed! This is the time of the Empire!” you shout to the Eternals defending the fort. Your people are doing their best though they can’t stop every Iznac from scaling the fort. Soon the gunfire is replaced by sounds of close combat weaponry. No matter how far the advances in technology, it always eventually comes down to looking your opponent in the eye and feeling their blood splatter as you end their life. While you’re busy hacking off the limbs of an Iznac warrior, another loud explosion in the distance is heard followed by a bright flash in the sky. It’s not lightning from the storm, but rather the demise of your Storm. The Storm II joins the Tornado in crashing to the ground after losing its skirmish with the dragon. Hopefully the rain is making the jungle wet enough or else the flames from the wreckage of these downed airships are going to cause an inferno throughout the jungle. Several small frog like beings eventually make their way in by scaling the walls with their masters. They’re generally just referred to as “frogs” but their formal name is the Glip. The Glip almost remind you of the kobolds. Despite being under the harsh dominion of the Iznac for who knows how long, none of the villages ever joined the Empire when the war broke out. Didn’t matter that the Iznac used to (and probably still do) sacrifice and eat the Glip, they ultimately still remained loyal to them. While they’ve certainly had their moments, mostly due to ambushes with blowguns and poisonous darts and their camouflage abilities. The Glip are not close combat warriors by any means. It isn’t surprising that you’ve not had to fight many of them. Even the Iznac know their skills are better suited elsewhere. The fact that you’ve started to face a lot of them does give you an indication of how desperate the Iznac have become. A group of orcs smash through the barricades of the fort. You sometimes shake your head at the stupidity of that situation. You have no idea how the Iznac managed to come to accept the rebellious orcs as allies, but you guarantee it wasn’t for any reasons other than convenience. Did the greenskins actually believe that Iznac saw them as anything than handy fodder for this conflict? If they broke away from the Empire because they didn’t like being used in such a way, then they completely missed the point. Then again being orcs they probably didn’t think that far ahead or perhaps they just wanted to fight the Empire and didn’t care about the reasons. In any case, no matter who wins this conflict, the orcs lose. The Iznac have a habit of ritually sacrificing their “neighbors and allies” to their gods. It doesn’t matter in the scheme of things because even with overwhelming odds, your Eternals are still holding their own against all attackers. The only thing that concerns you slightly is… You hear a roaring sound getting closer to your position and the sounds of great wings flapping. It would appear your concerns will be arriving soon. You just hope that the Storm II and the Tornado did enough damage to it before they both went down. You don’t have the advantage of Decena helping you take it down like you did with the last two dragons. You shout a general command for the still working cannons to be pointed towards the dragon and to prepare to fire when the beast is in range. In the meantime you try to keep that side of the fort relatively free of invading forces. The dragon gets closer and you give the order to fire and unleash your own magic bolts at the creature. It’s definitely wounded from its ordeal with the two airships, but given your experience with the other two dragons, you know it’s far from being out the fight. In fact it’s so determined that it doesn’t distinguish friend from foe when it blasts its flame breath on the fort. You manage to protect most of your people with a magic barrier, but for those outside its protection, most are set on fire if not incinerated immediately. On the positive side, it reduces your enemies, on the negative it ignites the gunpowder barrels for the cannons causing a massive explosion and completely destroying one side of the fort. While the barrier still protects you and everyone within initially, its still a lot of strain on your energy and you begin to feel the fatigue setting in. “No! Damnit! Fight through it!” you mutter to yourself hating your weakness. When the dragon passes you temporarily put down the barrier to take a small breather seeing as you aren’t immediately being attacked by Iznac ground forces anymore (Which have mostly been killed or broke and run by this point) Several soldiers point up and announce that the dragon is slowly turning around for a second pass. “Everyone spread out and find your own cover! Shoot the overgrown lizard when in range!” you shout and make your way back up to the battlements (Those that are still intact that is). You stand on top of the battlements and see the dragon coming straight at you. Almost as if it was personal and who knows maybe it is. This creature may very well want you dead for killing its only two companions. Or perhaps it’s just intelligent enough to recognize you as a genuine threat. You summon up all your energy and unleash a stream of lightning at the dragon just as it’s beginning to open its mouth to breath fire. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t even slow down despite the fact that you’ve undoubtedly just shocked the hell of its brain. A gout of flame comes directly at you. “Shit!” you shout and put up your own personal barrier to block the flames. Which succeeds, but it does nothing to stop the dragon’s approach. It’s fully intent on ramming you at this point. You no idea what would happen if you just stood there with your barrier up. It’s possible the dragon would severely smash its own face in from the force, maybe even breaking its neck, however its also possible that it would hit with enough force that it could actually move you. In this case, right off the battlements on to the ground several feet behind you. Your Eternals unleash gunfire as the dragon gets closer and you’re left to wonder if this high-risk plan could potentially end this dragon threat once and for all. > You get out of the way Even behind a barrier there is no way you’re going to withstand the full force of a dragon flying directly at you, you need to get the hell out of the way. As the dragon approaches you run to one of the battlement towers, unfortunately in your haste, you temporarily drop your barrier and that’s all the time the dragon needs to sense your vulnerability, even worse your expended fatigue doesn’t allow you to react quick enough to get to the shelter you need. The dragon unleashes another great blast of fire, which completely envelops the top of the battlements and you along with it. The fire causes your flesh to burn, bubble and literally melt off your bones. You’re already dead by the time the dragon’s open maw swallows you whole as it continue to glide in your direction.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 56 You enter Brenda’s office where upon the pair of your smile at each other. “So, how’s the new bride?” you ask. “Wonderful, of course. I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time. Thank you for performing the wedding personally.” Brenda remarks. “No problem. Glad to do it, but I said it before and I’ll say it again. Never did I EVER believe that you’d remarry. Let alone to Warrick of all people! I remember when you hated his guts!” “Ha ha, yeah…that seems so long ago now. I was too full of misplaced anger and hate. Glad I moved past it and reconnected with Warrick again.” “Sure, but I just never knew how well you two were reconnecting. When you both told me, I was completely taken by surprise.” You chuckle. “Well of course you were unaware. You were too busy fighting demons, monsters and sorcerer kings. Yeah, I know it still seems strange, but Warrick and I have a lot more in common than not, you know? I mean we grew up together, we trained together, and we served together. We’re both Eternals. We’re just always going to have that special connection. I mean I will always love Roldan, but why spend the remainder of my life alone if it feels right with another? We both came to that conclusion.” “Hey, you don’t need to explain to me. I understand and I’m happy for the pair of you. Anyway I just came here to let you know that the new Eternals have been released from their tanks.” “So did they meet with your standards?” Brenda asks. “Yes, most of them seem to be very much like the third generation though perhaps with signs of displaying higher intelligence overall. I’d definitely say they’re ready for your training.” You reply. “So you do still want me to train them?” “Sure, you did well enough with the third generation didn’t you? I’m just wondering where the hell we’re going to send them when they’re all grown up. It’s likely that Nyttrus will be completely under our control by that time.” “Maybe we’ll discover a new continent?” “Maybe, I’m certain they’re out there, though I’ve cut down on spending for exploration for awhile. I’m trying to focus on rebuilding the destruction that was caused to the Nakol and getting Nyttrus under our control as well “How is it going over there anyway?” “Better than I expected, worse than I hoped. We’ve got more than a few strongholds there now, but the Iznac are far from being beaten, unfortunately most of the humans there are sick or dead due to disease and Iznac magic. Flog’s also dead and the orcs have become slightly less disciplined as of late without his calmer leadership. There have been a few reports of deserters running off into the jungles and forming their own communities. (Sigh) Going to have to do something about them of course.” “What about the kobolds?” “Heh, Dedicated as always. The original leader I sent, Snilkez’ka is still alive and kickin’. She and the rest of them are the main ones holding down the forts. Never thought I’d be so glad of their high birth rates. The third generation Eternals are getting shipped over there soon, so hopefully things will get better.” “Will you be going over there?” “I dunno. I might, if only to keep myself busy. There are no more major challenges here on Evigrus anymore and I’d rather not send Decena there. Wasn’t a pleasant experience for her and its not necessary for her to go through that again.” Brenda nods and you suddenly go into a brief speech about Decena and how proud you are of her and engage in general praising of Decena’s accomplishments. “You know…and I’ve never addressed this because I didn’t think it was my place to do so, but I still don’t understand why the two of you split up…I mean granted the age difference might normally cause difficulties in being able to relate to one another, but considering that you’re both warriors, you both have an unwavering dedication to preserving the Empire and more importantly you are both Eternals, you have a lot more in common than most people. I mean she is your protégée is she not? It only seems natural that the pair of you would be an item.” Brenda’s bluntness takes you a bit off guard. She normally isn’t so confrontational. “It’s complicated.” You answer. “No, it really isn’t. Look I don’t know the whole story, but I DO know at one time you and Decena were together even if you didn’t make it public knowledge. I also know that you DO care for her and its not just in an average friendly way or a master-subordinate way. You love her and for some reason you’re denying yourself of it.” “I’m not denying myself of anything.” “Well what then? I know it wasn’t Decena’s idea, that girl still worships the ground you walk on. Probably more than anyone in the entire Empire.” “Look Brenda, I understand you’re still on a positivity trip due to your own newfound marital bliss, but my situation is different. It will ALWAYS be different all right? “It’s not that much different…” At this point you slam your hands down on Brenda’s desk and get in her face, knocking over a few things on her desk. “IT IS DIFFERENT. You can’t understand and be glad that you don’t.” you remark. Brenda is silent at your aggressive stance. You stare at her for a few seconds and then back away. “Now then, the new eternals will be transported here in a few days, I suggest you prepare yourself.” You say and turn to leave. Brenda though is in rare form and can’t help but continue. “Emperor?” she says. “What?” you answer. “You didn’t do to Decena, what that svelk bitch did to you and I don’t think Alison would want you spending the rest of your life mourning her.” You stand in the doorway for a moment with your back to Brenda. “I know I didn’t do what Semra did. I was hideously more successful…and as for Alison…she doesn’t want anything. She’s dead.” You reply and leave the office. Well you’re in a shitty mood now. You spend the rest of the day doing a lot of introspection, weighing pros and cons, taking into consideration every side and all your personal feelings on the matter. Every once in awhile you speak to Alison’s portrait as if she’s going to answer. All of which ends up pissing you off even more because you find it to be a pointless endeavor when you should be focusing on more important matters. You’ve got a damn Empire to run and here you are struggling on what to do about a girl (Or actually a full grown woman now, that has a bit of an arrested development) that likes you. What the hell are you an idiotic hormonal teenager? You thought you settled this a long time ago. You begin to mentally blame everything and everyone. You blame Brenda and Warrick for their new happy marriage. You especially blame Brenda for bringing this up to you. You blame Decena for becoming so attached to you. You blame Semra for…well everything. You blame Alison for dying on you. You blame Cyrus for killing her. You blame Casimir for setting up the assassination. You even blame Marik for having a hand in creating Decena and then not successfully killing her. Ultimately though you’ve got nobody to blame, but yourself and you know it and you need to just make a final decision on what to do about Decena. > You forget about her You’re not going down that route again, you broke it off for a reason and while there have been relapses of that reason; you’re not just going to give up completely on it. In fact the best way to put all this behind you is to involve yourself in the Nyttrus campaign. You figure immersing yourself in what you excel at is a good way to get your mind off this. Namely killing lots of things. You prepare for your journey to Nyttrus and leave orders to Decena that she has full authority to act in your stead while you’re in Nytrrus. “I don’t anticipate anything going severely wrong while I’m gone, but you never know of course. In any event, I’m sure everyone will accept your authority and if you have any problems Warrick and Kivan are probably your best people to ask advice if you need it. I don’t expect you’ll need to though.” You say. “I thank you my Emperor and as always I am honored that you would place this much faith in my ability to oversee an entire continent.” “You are the best suited and this is what you were ultimately trained for in case the worst should happen.” “That won’t happen.” Decena says. “Well, let’s hope that is indeed the case.” You reply. Leaving Decena in charge you finish preparing for your trip to Nyttrus and soon leave with several hundred third generation Eternals. When you eventually do arrive in Nyttrus the place does indeed remind you a bit of Delerg though even hotter. The kobold leader Snilkez’ka is the first one to greet you and exclaim that now that you’re here, the war will go much quicker and victory should come swiftly. The first few weeks are indeed very successful ones, and it does appear that victory will come quickly if the Iznac are falling as quickly as they do, but as always not everything is so clear cut… The Iznac realizing that they are facing a power that they’ve never encountered before resort to unleashing a powerful “secret weapon” in the form of three very large flying lizards. And these aren’t wyverns either. They are creatures that Casimir once told you were rare even back in his day. They’re dragons and the first thing they do is completely obliterate one of your forts. To make matters even more complicated the orcs that abandoned their duty have somehow come to an agreement with the Iznac and are now allied with them. The Iznac have also rallied the other major race inhabiting the island, the Glip against you, though some of their villages were already hostile anyway. You fall back a bit on the advance and regroup realizing that the conquest of this continent is going to take a lot longer than anticipated. Year 60 “We’ll hold the line at Fort Canopy and Fort Tangle, then after they’ve expended all their energy on this massive assault of theirs, we can make our own advance and wipe them out for good.” You say and then promptly stagger a bit away from the table in pain. General Flevas and Captain Snilkez’ka move towards you and ask if you need help, but you of course decline. Though the truth is, you could use some help, just not in the way they are offering. Ever since the dragons reared their ugly heads this campaign has been one struggle after another and taken a great toll on your body. While you’ve managed to kill two of the giant lizards already, it’s almost been at the cost of your own life. Your last battle with one of the creatures practically cost you half of the left side of your face given that you’re missing an eye and an ear now. You’re even missing part of your non-dominant hand. While healing magic is powerful, even you can’t regenerate completely lost limbs or other organs and you’ve been pushing it to the limit as it is. You might be holding off death in the in the short term, but you’ve probably been shortening your life span just by using it as much as you have. You’ve been in contact with Decena who has been giving updates via letters on what’s been going on in Evigrus since your absence and the general reports are always fairly boring. No major problems or anything, in fact Decena on several occasions has requested that she come help you on the Nyttrus campaign and while she would’ve been of great help you still want to keep yourself separate from her. Not really because of any possible feelings between the pair of you anymore, but more because you want to keep her safe. Quite honestly, you don’t think you’re going to survive this campaign and even if you do win, how many years do you really have left anymore? Or years WORTH living? Decena is your successor. While you sometimes briefly thought that you might find a way to live forever, deep down you always knew that it was always going to be Decena to take your place when you died. It’s probably why you’ve wanted to be away from her. She’ll be able to take your death with less pain when it does inevitably occur. She also needs to be alive and while you have no doubt in her abilities, there is no point in playing with her life. Perhaps your own, but not hers. You dismiss Flevas and Snikez’ka and tell them you’ll be fine defending Fort Canopy by yourself and that they should focus on Fort Tangle’s defenses and with any luck the airships will take out the dragon. Days pass and you and your troops prepare for the inevitable assault, which comes in excessive force just as predicted. Perhaps even a little more. You look over the battlements and see several Iznacs climbing the walls of the fort like an army of ants. They aren’t even using ladders, they’re just scaling the fort with their bare hands. It’s actually rather impressive, until you unleash a chain of lightning to zap all of them. The shock is enough to at least cause most of them to fall off if not outright kill them immediately. Your people are doing their best though they can’t stop every Iznac from scaling the fort. Soon the gunfire is replaced by sounds of close combat weaponry. No matter how far the advances in technology, it always eventually comes down to looking your opponent in the eye and feeling their blood splatter as you end their life. While you’re busy hacking off the limbs of an Iznac warrior, another loud explosion in the distance is heard followed by a bright flash in the sky. It’s the destruction of your last airship from the dragon. Flaming wreckage crashes down in the distance. Won’t be long before the dragon turns its attention towards one of the forts. Iznac, glip and orcs all attack the fort and while it’s a brutal affair, your Eternals are holding their own in the face of overwhelming odds. You then hear a roaring sound getting closer and the sounds of great wings approaching. You shout a general command for the still working cannons to be pointed towards the dragon and to prepare to fire when the beast is in range. In the meantime you try to keep that side of the fort relatively free of invading forces. The dragon gets closer and you give the order to fire and unleash your own magic bolts at the creature. It’s definitely wounded from its ordeal with the airships, but given your experience with the other two dragons, you know it’s far from being out the fight. In fact it’s so determined that it doesn’t distinguish friend from foe when it blasts its flame breath on the fort. You manage to protect most of your people with a magic barrier, but for those outside its protection, most are set on fire if not incinerated immediately. On the positive side, it reduces your enemies, on the negative it ignites the gunpowder barrels for the cannons causing a massive explosion and completely destroying one side of the fort. While the barrier still protects you and everyone within initially, it’s still a lot of strain on your energy and you begin to feel the fatigue setting in. and you can’t hold out any longer… Your strength falters and the barrier goes down and the flames envelop you and several of your troops. In the last moments of your flesh melting off your bones you only regret that this fort will fall.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Upon entering the throne room, Mortimer paces near his throne, looking up when you arrive. He certainly doesn’t look like the fop you remember, his clothes are now partly torn and dirty. He doesn’t look like he’s bathed in days making his hair to stand up in a way that would almost be laughable if he wasn’t currently possessed by a demon. His eyes give off an unearthly red glow. The throne room itself is in shambles and pieces of dead bodies, entrails and blood are practically everywhere. A large broken crystal lies nearby, you can only guess that’s Zelvix’s former prison. Semra says nothing. She just looks at you nodding, and reaches out for your hand. You give it to her and she grabs it. She then begins chanting. You take the opportunity to cast your mind shield spell on Decena who stands nearby watching every direction. “So, THIS is what you’ve brought to beat me with Semra? I would’ve expected better from the likes of you. I don’t know why you’re even chanting that nonsense, it isn’t going to work on me you know.” Zelvix says. (It certainly isn’t Mortimer anymore just on how deep the voice is alone) While the three of you stay silent, Zelvix continues to talk. “I have no idea why you continue to blame me for your father’s death. Even I can’t control my underlings all the time. Your people made a deal with me and I collected, what’s so wrong about that?” Semra continues to chant. “You believe this woman? She holds a grudge longer than some hell lords do and at least they do for something reasonable like a stolen soul or something. She’s just whining. Bah, I’m done with her anyway, I offered another deal when she first arrived here for old time’s sake, but she refused.” Zelvix’s banter is still met by silence. “Anyway, how about you two? Oh no. No, I don’t think you’ll do. You’re too much in love with this one. While I think under different circumstances twisting your mind would probably be child’s play, I believe your master’s presence makes it a bit too much of an effort to even try. You want his approval so much that you’d probably strip naked, get down on all fours and open your ass, pussy and mouth at the same time to an entire company of orcs if you thought it would please him. Blind loyalty is such a beautiful thing at times. Shit, I should be so lucky to instill such devotion. Oh well, guess that’s why there’s torture.” Zelvix says to Decena. Everyone continues to remain silent, but Zelvix now turns his attention to you. You didn’t feel it before, but you start to feel an oppressive presence within your mind. “Now you I can work with. Can’t work with bitches anyway, too fucking emotional am I right? I’m sure you know what I’m talking about considering the company you’re keeping. You think a svelk female is bad? Heh, try a demon girl. Your dark elves don’t have shit on them. Lots of fun at parties though!” You redouble your efforts to block out Zelvix’s words… “I have to say, you’re quite skilled for a mortal. I’ll even admit, I like your style, showing no mercy to your enemies, ruling your territory with an iron fist, I can appreciate a mortal that rises above his slug like station. And you were quite low weren’t you? You were practically an abortion waiting to happen then through a minor mistake you got kicked upstairs. Good thing bureaucracy sucks doesn’t it? It’s okay though, you made the most of it and that’s what really counts. I mean here you are talking to me, one of the greatest demon lords in the infernal realms…” At this point you’d almost make a deal with him just so he’d shut the fuck up. He continues to pace, but you notice he holds his head for a brief moment. “Hrmm, starting to feel something…no it’s gone now. Nice try Semra, but you’re not getting anywhere. Now who was I talking to? Oh yes, the Eternal.” You suddenly feel an even greater oppressive feeling on your mind. Between trying to support Semra, protecting Decena and fighting off Zelvix, you’re starting to feel the burden. “Not easy is it? Protecting everyone? (Sigh) I don’t even know why you’re helping Semra anyway. You know she’d backstab you if it ultimately served her purpose. You’re not a stupid man, you have to know that she’s just using you right now and it’s not even for petty revenge. Well some of it is I suppose, but there’s something greater here at stake and she’s trying to achieve it. Let me tell you…” Zelvix’s deep voice fills your mind despite your best efforts to block it out. “She’s trying to revive the svelk Empire. Y’see she actually thinks by somehow killing me that the so called curse I put on the svelk will disappear. It’s complete shit of course. The reason for the svelk downfall is their own doing and none of my own. I didn’t cause their civilization to suddenly descend into civil war and rebellion, that had been coming for centuries long before I arrived. All I did was provide a service. A world saving one in fact. Why in certain circles one might even consider me a hero!” You feel a greater drain on your energy as Zelvix continues. “I bet she even told you that I’m planning on unleashing an army of demons on this world didn’t she? Pfft. Please as if I need to worry about such things, I have my own kingdom in the infernal realm with millions of subjects and even more souls to torment! If its one thing I’ve learned as a demon lord, it’s that you should only conquer what you can actually hold. I had a brother once who learned that lesson the hard way. Got his head chopped off by a mortal for his troubles. Hahahahaha! My brother was a fucking idiot!” Zelvix laughs at his last statement, which is then followed by a roar of pain. Mortimer’s body falls to the ground and he begins twitching and convulsing. “FUCKING BITCH! I’LL RIP YOUR SOUL APART! RAAAAARGH!” Zelvix shouts while Semra keeps chanting. If anything it’s given you a bit of temporary relief, but only for a little while. “Well, it seems our little dark skinned whore has been doing her research. I may have underestimated her. The flaw of arrogance comes with being a demon lord I suppose…(Sigh) Very well then, as much as I’ve enjoyed chatting with you, I can see I’ll have to cut to the chase….” You try to think of pleasant thoughts to block out Zelvix, such as ones with your time with Alison, but Zelvix won’t be ignored. “Look, here’s the deal and it’s not even going to cost you your soul because I know you’re too smart for that. What it is going to cost is a little bloodshed and that shouldn’t be a problem for the likes of you, especially considering you never liked ol’ Morty anyway. Just kill Morty, I’ll take care of Semra and then I’ll be heading back to the infernal plane because honestly I’ve had enough of this world.” You give no response, but you can feel your willpower getting to the point where you almost want to give in… “Hey wait a minute. Maybe YOU want to kill Semra? She’s in the middle of her spell right now and you’re so close, there’s never been a more perfect time! You’d catch her completely off guard. You could easily take that dagger that she once stabbed you with and at last do what you’ve always wanted to do with it. Remember just like the time when you two were exterminating gnomes? Don’t you wish you could’ve taken that opportunity instead of following your orders? Well you have no one giving you orders right now. What is stopping you? You know you want to and all I want is to be free from this world. Kill Semra and I’ll happily open up a gate and return home.” Zelvix deep melodic tone begins to make your mind succumb to his persuasion attempts. Never before have you experienced such a powerful force of raw will. Even in a few other instances where you faced a psychic assault it’s never been quite like this. Granted it’s in his favor that what he’s proposing isn’t anything you’d object to doing either. The ONLY thing that’s giving you pause is the fact that it’s a demon lord telling you to do this. “Ah…I see you don’t trust me…smart. Tell you what, I’ll sweeten the deal. You seek to conquer and bring order to this miserable world do you not? You have the skill and ability, what you lack is time. So you seek immortality do you not? An immortality that even eluded your old master, and wouldn’t you like to succeed where he failed? Your answer lies where you’ve always known it to be. The Isle of Mortos. I know you’ve made a halfhearted attempt at trying to locate it again. Would you like to know where it is exactly located? I can tell you right now if you just kill that…ARRGH!” Zelvix once again feel the effects of Semra’s ritual. At this point Morty’s body is desperately crawling over to Semra in an attempt to reach her. Also just as you suspected Zelvix uses some sort of magic to bring the bodies from the room behind you back to life, except these aren’t singular walking corpses. The pile of bodies have melded into each other creating a giant mass of flesh slowly rolling towards all of you howling and moaning while arms, legs and heads twitch about from it. It might be too big to get through the doorway, but you imagine that its sheer weight and girth will just break through the sides of the walls. You’re still staggering from your recent mind assault, but now that you’re no longer being mentally attacked, you take a quick assessment of the situation. Decena prepares to hold off the abomination by herself, Semra is still in her semi-trance and Zelvix continues to drag himself over to Semra. > You help Semra Decena’s a good warrior, you’re sure she’ll be able to handle the abomination trying squeeze through the doorway. Plus the quicker Zelvix gets banished, the quicker this all stops. Now that you’ve been given a temporary relief from the mental attacks, you run over to Morty’s body and drag it away from Semra. You also hold him down and begin repeatedly punching him in the face. Morty’s possessed body struggles against you and while it’s certainly stronger than it should be, it can’t break free of your grip and won’t be reaching Semra anytime soon. Zelvix’s power is fading, but he’s not out of it yet and in between trying to break free he establishes contact with you mentally again. “Ragh! Argh! Fool! You would deny your destiny of immortality? I told you I would tell you how to find the Isle of Mortos! Is that not what you want? You think…ARRRGH!” Zelvix’s bargaining is interrupted by the agony of his impending banishment. Soon Zelvix will be gone and this will all be over, yet isn’t there a way to get what you want as well. You think so and respond back to Zelvix. “Zelvix, you’ve got little time left, so I’m proposing a deal to YOU. Tell me the location of the island now and I’ll kill the svelk bitch myself. You don’t have any options here.” You hear a deep chortle inside your head. “Mortal, we ALL have choices. I know you and I know this game. You phrased your proposal in such a way that you didn’t specify WHEN you were going to kill Semra…actually you didn’t even say Semra. You just said svelk bitch. That could be any of them. No deal, I’m not telling you shit. A good attempt, but I’d rather die than have my last moments be one of being outwitted by a pathetic mortal!” Zelvix says “Considering you’re still stuck in Morty’s body and going to be BANISHED in it, I’d say that’s already happened.” Zelvix doesn’t respond, instead you just hear a great bellowing inside your head, this is also followed by a scream nearby, you turn your head and see half of Decena underneath the mass of murderous flesh that has finally managed to break through some of the wall in an effort to reach you all. Decena still struggles to fight, but she’s overwhelmed by the writhing mass of limbs striking her and the horrible rows of sharp teeth biting into her flesh. “NO!” you shout and run over to help her by hacking away at the disgusting flesh blob. It has little effect other depriving it of a few less flailing limbs. You only succeed in chopping off a few chunks even when you attempt to freeze it in place (Which only slows it down rather than properly freezing it completely) You try to pull Decena away, but she’s stuck and her lower half being devoured, shredded and crushed all at the same time. The strength in her is already leaving. “I’m sorry my…Emper…” She manages to utter during the chaos of this situation. “Don’t talk! You’ll get out of this, I’ll think of something! I’ll…FUCK!” you shout in frustration and still hacking away at the mass. The whole time you’ve been distracted, you haven’t paid any attention to the main conflict which is that of Zelvix who fortunately was still too weak to reach Semra. A final unearthly wail from Zelvix and it’s a sign that the end of this conflict is near. “SSSSSSSSS NO! IT CANNOT END LIKE THIS! I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED BY MORTAL SHIT! I CURSE YOU ALL! NONE OF YOU SHALL AAAARRRRGH!” Morimer’s body twitches and convulses one last time and you manage to turn your head just in time from your own battle to see a red spirit like mist rise from his body. An angry demonic face can be seen briefly followed by the red mist completely dissipating. In front of you, the mass of flesh you’ve been fighting goes completely lifeless. Mortimer’s body is also lifeless. Whatever spark that was keeping him alive was only due to Zelvix’s magic and he’s truly gone now. And then the blob of flesh you were fighting becomes lifeless as well and you are able to pull Decena away with some effort. It’s too bad though, she’s missing parts of her legs and even some of her innards, you can’t even imagine how much blood she’s lost. “Oh shit, I’m sorry. I should’ve been there for you, I’ll make this better, I’ll make this better…” you start to say and begin to cast your healing magic, though surprisingly Decena manages to interrupt you by weakly grabbing at your hand. “No…don’t…let me die a warrior’s death. Don’t shorten your life span for me…the Empire needs you…” You hold Decena closer to you, it won’t be long now. “Emperor…I love you…” she says looking up at you. “I…love you Decena.” You respond back. These words causes a brief smile in Decena’s final moments. It’s all she ever wanted, your love. The funny thing is, it’s at this very moment that you realize that you could’ve probably had a real relationship with her. She was more than just a lovesick student that you thought you were re-enacting your experiences with Semra with. She was a worthy mate and potentially your successor. And now that’s all gone. You wipe your eyes and get up off the floor, pondering your great loss today. In fact you’ve completely forgotten about Semra, though she hasn’t forgotten about you, and she’s been watching you the entire time. “While I hate to disturb your moment of introspection, we need to get the hell out of here before your army starts bombarding this place now that the barrier is down. I imagine that you probably gave that order or something similar to your army correct?” You ignore Semra. “Hey are you listening to me? Look, I know you’re upset about losing your little warrior girl and I’m sure she was a lot of fun in bed, but you need to get over that now. I mean utter devotion is a beautiful thing, but really at least Alison was her own woman and not someone looking for constant approval.” Semra says as she walks over to you. “Well I guess that’s why you’ll always be the true woman for me, right Semra?” you answer and grab her hand. “What?” Semra says. “That’s what you’re always telling me isn’t it? I mean any woman I have any sort of feelings for seems to die. You on the other hand survive everything…heh…just like I survive everything…it would seem you’re right we ARE meant to be together…” At this point you put both of your arms around Semra’s waist. You can sense that she’s genuinely surprised by this sudden show of affection for her. You can also feel her attempting to read your mind, but she’ll see nothing there but a strong desire to take her right there on the floor. “Hmmm, while I don’t mind this sudden enthusiasm lover, we really should…” Semra starts to say before you shut her up with a kiss. She tastes exactly like you remember and it’s intoxicating. You waste no time in stripping off your bloody sweat drenched clothing, and Semra despite her concern that your army will start bombarding the city, loses that worry as well as losing herself in the moment. Then soon the pair of you are naked on blood stained floor and as you thrust into Semra, you try to ignore your aches and pains from your earlier battle. It’s almost like your first time… Well other than the fact that a rotting mound of dead bodies lies nearby, along with Decena’s corpse which probably hasn’t even gone completely cold yet. This is wrong in so many ways, but after your great loss today, you’re going to get something out of it. And that something ISN’T Semra’s magical svelk vagina even though you’ve convinced her that it is. Semra has to know something about the Isle of Mortos or at least how to get back there. She’s been around long enough and given her relationship with Casimir who was a former “citizen” there, the chances that she knows something is very likely. “Mmmm yes! Yes! Ravish me! Ravage me you fucking abomination of nature!” Semra exclaims and slaps you hard in the face. Semra’s having so much fun that she doesn’t seem to realize you’re getting to know her in an intimate way that you’re sure she didn’t want you to. It’s difficult trying to hide your true intentions to Semra, but you manage to do so by filling you own thoughts with a mixture of lust and hatred. You also think about how much you want to slit her throat. It’s certainly enough to be convincing since it isn’t exactly untrue. In her state of arousal Semra’s mind is much less guarded, as her focus is no longer one of defense, but one mostly of pleasure. While part of her is expecting you to try to kill her and she’s certainly prepared for it, that’s not your goal at least not today. It’s the perfect cover as far as you’re concerned. You see many things about Semra’s life, some very interesting, some rather mundane, and some even sort of surprising to you. For example, just before Semra pushed you away during your first mental joining, there was another she was upset about losing, though you didn’t see it the first time, namely an infant son. Apparently demons had killed and consumed part of it before Semra and her father could save it (Which then soon lead to her father’s death). You can only imagine it was their baby together. This loss explains a few other things you see which must take place later on in her life, such as a bored one night casual sexual encounter with some svelk warrior that also resulted in pregnancy. This must’ve been Eldolith’s father since she was born soon after. Her relationship with her daughter was never a good one and it’s apparent she saw her daughter as something barely better than…well “the lesser born” as most svelk would say. Perhaps Eldy was a constant reminder that she was NOT Semra father’s offspring and never would be. But you’re not here to delve into the tragic past of a very broken woman, you’re here to find out vital information that you know she must have. And you think you’ve just found it. You see a continent that you’ve never seen before. It isn’t Evigrus and while you’ve never been there, it’s not Nyttrus either as there is no trace of jungle. The place has large tracks of forests and several ruined cities. Inside such ruined areas you see groups of svelk fighting each other. Other groups wander the countryside in the usual nomadic manner that you’ve traditionally known them to do. Oddly there doesn’t seem to be any other race living on the continent, or at least no other sentient creature. (Strange beasts you’ve never seen still seem to exist though) Another thing that stands out though are these large circular structure made out of mithral. They seem to be all over the continent though it looks like most are damaged in some way. This has to be the svelk “home.” It is. You gain all this information from Semra’s mind which is like an open book at this point. And these circular structures are portals, or they used to be. They probably lead all over to different parts of the world and that includes… “DECIEVER!” Semra suddenly shouts and tries to punch you, but you hold her down her arms. She’s on to your plan now. “Don’t fight it Semra, just lay back and enjoy it.” You mockingly say and try to probe her mind again, but she’s already taken steps to block you out more effectively. You’ve learned all you can, but it might be enough. Finished with Semra mentally, you “finish up” with her physically as well before letting her go. Predictably she punches you in the face and crawls backwards from underneath you. “So was it good for you?” you say, holding your face. Your continued mocking is met with a blast of fire that you just barely block with a magic field. “I know where you’re going Semra. You’re going back home to Dokkrus to ironically try to do something you were criticizing me for. You’re going to try to resurrect the Svelk Empire again. Try to unite the tribes as it were. That’s good. We all should have a goal. I know what mine is.” “You think yourself so clever, but if you try to pursue what we both know what you’re trying to pursue, be prepared to suffer considerable losses.” Semra warns. “What could I possibly lose Semra? Tell me, because I’d truly love to know. I have no more loved ones for you to kill. The Empire? You told me I’ll lose that when I die anyway. My life? You think I fear death? You know I don’t. I only seek to MASTER it.” You pick up your pants and start to dress as you continue your monologue to Semra. “In the past you’ve mentioned about how my efforts of world domination and expanding the Empire are all in vain because I’ll eventually grow old and die anyway just like Casimir. Well congratulations Semra, you motivated me to avoid his fate because unlike him, I will succeed. I WILL become truly immortal and NOTHING is going to stop me.” “Well, then its good we had one last tryst because I can see now you’re leaving me no choice!” Semra shouts and resumes her magical attack. You block the magical bolts and try to run for some sort of cover. Semra casts a poisonous cloud, you remember that one, but this time you’re able to get out of its range, though in doing so you are hit by her follow up attack, which involves throwing a dead body into you. You fall to the floor face first as the body slams into you a fairly fast speed. “Shit!” you groan and turn around with the body still on top of you, and that’s when you see that it’s Decena’s. Her dead eyes stare into your own and then you feel a kick to your face that probably would’ve taken out your eye had Semra been wearing her sharp toed boots rather than her current state of undress. “It’s been fun lover, but you need to learn the last lesson and that’s no one lives forever.” Semra says…and then the roof of the palace starts collapsing on the pair of you. It would seem the bombarding of the city has begun. Seizing the opportunity, you push Decena’s body off of you and try to stab Semra with your dagger. Unfortunately between your exhaustion, the crumbling ceiling and Semra’s alertness you miss, but instead of trying to attack back, she takes the survival approach instead. “Next time Eternal.” She says and runs out the entryway “Next time Semra.” You mutter and pick up Decena’s body before making haste for the exit yourself. It’s difficult carrying Decena’s body while tired and trying to avoid being blown up by the bombarding. Doesn’t help that you start seeing airships approaching. “Sheesh, Flevas. Glad to see you’re not fucking around, but this isn’t helping me!” you mutter and quicken your pace. Fortunately, you manage to get out of Dequilet before it’s completely decimated and fortunately there is a pause in the bombarding when someone with a telescope spots you just outside the destroyed city walls. You make it back to camp in one piece. “Emperor! My apologies, but I thought…” Flevas starts to say, but you’re not in the mood to hear anything. “Forget it Flevas, you were doing your job…just (sigh) here…” you say and lay Decena down. “Have her body shipped back to the capital, she will receive a war heroes’ funeral.” “Certainly my Emperor.” Flevas says and snaps his fingers to have some other troops move her body. “I’ll be in my tent. Don’t disturb me.” You say and retire to your bedroll. As you allow your body to at last embrace the rest it needs, you think about Decena’s last words to you. “Don’t worry Decena, your sacrifice wasn’t in vain. The Empire will always have me because it IS me and I will live forever. I promise.” You say as you close your eyes. > … Year 56 You enter Brenda’s office where upon she smiles briefly at you, though with everything you have on your mind, you don’t return the gesture instead you just nod. “Hello Brenda, I trust you and Warrick are still enjoying your new marital status.” You say guessing that what’s put her in better spirits as of late. “Yes, Emperor. I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time. Thank you for performing the wedding personally.” “Think nothing of it. Though I didn’t think you’d ever remarry, let alone Warrick. But if you two are happy then that’s good. You should hold on to that as long as possible for one never knows when it will suddenly be taken away from you.” “Um…of course my Emperor. We certainly do cherish our time together.” Brenda responds at your rather grim comment. “Anyway, I came here to let you know that the new Eternals have been released from their tanks. You’ll be training them soon.” You say. “I’ll be looking forward to it. I trust they met with your standards?” “Yes, most of them seem to be very much like the third generation though perhaps with signs of displaying higher intelligence overall. Under your guidance, I have no doubt that they’ll be just as effective as the third gens.” You reply with a sigh. “Is there something wrong my Emperor?” Brenda asks. “Yes, it’s Nyttrus. The place is becoming a pain in my side that I don’t want to be bothered with, but I find that it might become necessary to step in personally soon. We’ve got more than a few strongholds there now, but the Iznac are far from being beaten, unfortunately most of the humans there are sick or dead due to disease and Iznac magic. Flog’s also dead and the orcs have become slightly less disciplined as of late without his calmer leadership. There have been a few reports of deserters running off into the jungles and forming their own communities. Just glad Snilkez’ka is still alive and the kobolds are holding down the forts there until the third gens arrive.” “Couldn’t you send airships to bomb Nyttrus to speed things up? “They don’t really have the range to travel across the vast oceans yet though Elam’s working on fixing that with the gnomes. In any event if they did have that sort of range I might be inclined to have them try to find Dokkrus first since that’s my real goal.” Brenda tries to give you some words of encouragement, but they don’t improve your mood. Instead you just leave Brenda, once again wishing her well on her new happy marriage. You spend a few days wondering whether or not you should head to Nyttrus with the third gens. Ultimately you decide not to as you’re still hoping to hear something soon about Dokkrus. As soon as you get word about that, you want to be on the next ship going there. You don’t want to be in the middle of a conflict that you know you’ll be compelled to complete if you directly get involved. In the meantime you go back to more mundane matters such as ensuring that the rebuilding of the new Nakol province remains on schedule. You also take time to hone your magic abilities; in fact since your “intimate” mind connection with Semra, you actually feel a little more powerful or rather you gained a brief insight into spells she never taught you during training. A few weeks pass and still no word about Dokkrus, however you do get bothersome news about Nyttrus again. You’re informed of the latest problems on Nyttrus by Kivan who received a message about it in the middle of the night. The Iznac have apparently unleashed a powerful “secret weapon” in the form of three very large flying lizards. And these aren’t wyverns either. They are creatures that Casimir once told you were rare even back in his day. They’re dragons and apparently they’ve already destroyed one of your forts on the continent. This isn’t news you wanted to hear. Now you’re going to have no choice, but to go over there. You still can’t do all this alone though, you still want to wrap this war up as quick as you can and you’ll need some competent tacticians and strategists to do that. Snilkez’ka has her way of doing things you’re sure, but they probably work best with other kobolds she commands. The third gens are good warriors, and a select few of them are indeed leaders, but most of them are rather…well unimaginative sometimes. You don’t think that’s the fault of Brenda’s training, but perhaps just a tendency towards conformity due to their creation. In fact you can’t even think of a single one that has stood out to you during the war with Nakol. Hopefully the fourth won’t have that problem when they’re ready. So you make up your mind that General Flevas should accompany you. The elf is pretty much the best one you have right now and you believe his vast scouting skills should come in handy. Given that all the orcs ran off and rebelled, you also won’t have to worry about Flevas not being respected as a leader. The third gens and kobolds seem fairly neutral towards him. You go back and forth on whether or not to bring Galen. His magic would most certainly help against the dragons, but you’re wondering if you want to put up with his tendency to complain. True he’s much better at not doing it, but he always manages to find a way. Who you really wish you had is Decena. She would’ve been perfect for this mission since she already worked well with the third gens. Just another reminder of your loss. Maybe though you just need another Eternal. An Eternal who always likes “vacations” away from his usual duties, namely Warrick. He certainly commands respect amongst the Eyes and besides you he’s probably the next most feared name in the Empire. As Sightmaster he’s also skilled in less traditional forms of warfare, which will come in handy in the jungle filled continent. Of course the only concern with bringing him is that leaves the “mainland” of the Empire, relatively… well the word isn’t undefended, but without a major figure to oversee any possible problems that may crop up. You suppose Brenda and Kivan can handle things if something really gets out of hand. Which brings you to another problem and that’s taking Warrick into a war in the first place. Warrick’s job at one time was probably a bit more dangerous, but as you’ve established order over the continent, stomped out dissension and all of those other necessary things, it’s become even more like a “desk job.” Warrick still keeps up on his training and such, and you know if you called for him to assist he’d jump at the chance not just out of loyalty, but because he always has a bit of desire to get in the middle of things again. He could very well get killed and a better head of internal security, as far as you’re concerned there is none. His loss would be even greater than Decena’s you believe. Though it’s the more “moral” problem that surprisingly has you rethinking this. Warrick just married Brenda, the pair of them don’t see each other every day, but they’re able to do so when they can. It’s the happiest Brenda’s been since she was married to Roldan. If Warrick was to die, well you can only imagine what that might do to her. So if you lost Warrick, you might be “losing” Brenda as well. Of course that’s all speculation. You don’t intend on losing Warrick at all, but you have to prepare for that possibility and the repercussions of such things. > You take Warrick with you You need to take care of this situation on Nyttrus and the only way you’re going to do that is with people you know that are going to be vital for the task. (Which also why you decide to leave Galen here.) You go to see Warrick at the Eye Headquarters, he’s a little surprised at your sudden visit, but happy to see you as always. He’s even more excited when you tell him you want him to come with you to Nyttrus. “Of course Emperor! I have to say I’m glad for this opportunity again. The last time was when we went to New Dessel together and while I’m glad it worked out anyway, I was always a bit disappointed we never got to fight along side each other.” Warrick says. “Well I’m fairly certain that will definitely happen in Nyttrus. Anyway, I’ll be leaving in a few days, will that be enough time to get your affairs in order and delegate various responsibilities here?” you ask. “Should be, I’ll get started on that right now.” “Good, then I’ll see you in three days.” Thinking nothing more of this, you return to get your own affairs in order, explaining to Kivan that you want regular reports on the Empire sent to you in Nyttrus. The second day comes around and it is you who gets a sudden visitor although perhaps not totally unexpected. “Emperor, I told her you were busy, but…argh!” Kivan says as Brenda pushes him aside and into the wall. She looks very upset, but apparently she knows better than to come in armed while in such a state of agitation. (Not that doesn’t mean she still isn’t potentially dangerous) “Kivan, I’d suggest you leave us alone.” You say, to which he nods wincing at his aches and closes your door. Brenda continues to stare at you. “Well? I know you didn’t come all this way to wish me well in Nyttrus, say what you need to say.” “You know that my loyalty to the Empire is absolute. You also know that Warrick’s loyalty to the Empire is absolute as well. We were trained to do everything in our power to ensure its survival and success. I TRAIN all those new Eternals so that they learn that lesson as well. To know that the good of the Empire is above ALL, no matter what.” “And I know this Brenda. Your actions everyday are proof of your dedication. Yours and Warrick’s.” Brenda begins nodding her head in agreement in a rapid motion while breathing hard. “Yeah…SO WHY THE HELL ARE WE BEING FUCKING PUNISHED?” she shouts. “I wasn’t aware I was punishing Warrick, has he said he doesn’t like the new assignment he’ll be accompanying me on?” “Hah oh…oh of course not! Not good old loyal Warrick! He of course feels honored by this assignment. He doesn’t even know I’m here, because if he did, he’d try and stop me from getting himself killed!” “You seem to lack faith in your husband, I know him to be a skilled warrior.” “Of course he’s a fucking skilled warrior! He’s also not a young man anymore! He’s not as fast as he used to be, he’s not as strong as he used to be and you want him to fight fucking dragons? And unlike you he doesn’t have the advantage of powerful magic abilities to help keep him alive!” “Brenda if you haven’t noticed I’m not exactly young myself, why the hell do you think I want his help? Because I greatly increase my chances of survival against three flying lizards and an army of savages! And contrary to popular belief magic is just another tool for battle, it’s not some wonder solution to win wars. If it was and I actually had that power, I’d certainly be using it.” Brenda now starts shaking her head and sighing. “You don’t get it. You don’t understand.” “Yeah, I think I do Brenda. I get it better than you think. I lost Alison the same day you lost Roldan remember? You just found happiness with Warrick, happiness that you never thought that you’d ever experience again since Roldan died. Now that happiness is in jeopardy because there is the possibility that Warrick may fall in battle. Well you know what? Death is a possibility anywhere.” “Except by going to Nyttrus you’re increasing his chances tenfold! And you’re right you do know about loss, so why the hell would you want to put ME of all people through it again.” “Brenda if there was another way, don’t you think I would? You believe I actually WANT to potentially cause you distress? No, I don’t. You and Warrick are pretty much the only ones now that I can identify with on any level anymore and quite frankly losing either one of you would deeply wound me as well. I don’t pretend to say it would be as strong as you feel for each other, but I would feel the sorrow.” “(Sob) but why…must he…we just got married…we…(sob).” Brenda at this point can’t quite keep it together. You have no real comforting words for her. Just cold facts of duty. “(Sigh) He’s needed Brenda. His Emperor has called him. He has to do his duty and serve his role as we all must for the good of the Empire. It was not my intention to upset you Brenda, but you know that as unfair as this all seems Warrick has a job to do. You worry that your happiness and time with him will be cut too short like it was with Roldan, well even if that does happen, count yourself lucky that you managed to enjoy the moments you DID have with him.” You pause for a moment, reflecting on Decena. “At least you managed to realize a good thing before it was too late.” Brenda stops sniffling and manages to compose herself. Still upset, but resigned to fate. “Very well, I’ve had my say, and I accept your decision my Emperor. Apologies for my momentary lapse in judgment and falling victim to emotions.” Brenda says and starts to turn away. “Brenda wait.” You say before she leaves. Brenda turns back around and you exhale deeply. “I still need Warrick’s help in Nyttrus, however I believe I can get by without him for awhile. Nyttrus is a large continent and I’m going to try to fortify our current holdings and retake our recent losses. So while I’m doing that, you’ve got Warrick for another year. Make the most of it.” Brenda’s sad expression turns to one of a smile. “Thank you my Emperor.” “Hm, well just remember you both STILL have your duties here that you need to perform. I expect Warrick to still take care of Eye business just like I expect you to continue training the fourth gens.” “Of course. Again I thank you.” “Okay then, inform your husband that his trip to Nyttrus is postponed for a year.” Brenda again thanks you and leaves. You finish packing what personal belongings you feel you’ll need for Nyttrus and the next day you get ready to leave for the docks and board the ship to take you to Nyttrus. The next day you take a long look at Alison’s portrait before your journey. “I’ll be back Alison… I always come back to you.” You say and leave. Year 57 Within the short time Warrick has arrived, your spirits have picked up a little. It’s been a frustrating time here especially since the dragons have so far still eluded death. Though with Warrick now here you hope to correct that problem, but more importantly Warrick has brought with him very good news. “So Dokkrus has been found at last?” you ask. “Yes, my Emperor. Received word just as I was preparing to leave for here and since I was already on my way I figured I’d deliver this news to you in person.” “Ha ha! This is great! I’ll have to send another message of how I want to proceed. I don’t want any engagement on there yet, just some spying and exploration.” You say. “Did you want a message sent to the Eyes to handle this? My second is more than capable of carrying out these tasks. Wouldn’t have picked the person otherwise.” “Yes, good idea. I want a ship with Eyes sent to Dokkrus, we’ll send that message to the homeland later, right now though you and I have business with killing one of these flying lizards. I believe we’ve finally managed to track one to where it makes its home in between its attacks.” You say. “You mean you haven’t slain all three yourself yet?” Warrick asks. “I wish. But now that you’re here I’m confident that their continued existence will no longer be a problem, so you ready?” “Sure am, Emperor. It’ll be just like the old days!” Warrick exclaims. In high spirits and a positive outlook for the future, you, Warrick and a company of Eternals set out to kill one of the dragons. > Year 60 “Well, looks like we’ve lost the Tornado.” Warrick says as the pair of you see through in the near distance a multi-colored dragon unleash a gout of flame from its mouth, which engulfs the airship. Already heavily damaged the flying fortress can’t take anymore and begins to explode. Minor ones at first, then one large one. Flaming pieces of the machine fall from the sky. “It’s all right. It’s all right. The Storm II is still there and hopefully it’ll kill that damn thing or at least wound it enough for us to do so. Either way that flying lizard dies today. This war will be all but won with its death. It’s the last one and I’m glad it’s finally decided to come to us this time, because I’m sick of chasing it all over this damn continent. I want to get the invasion of Dokkrus underway properly and I can’t very well do that if I’m stuck in this damn jungle continent.” You say preparing for the large group of Iznac approaching Fort Canopy. “Hrm. Certainly is a lot of them. Better get on with this.” Warrick says and orders the cannons to fire upon the multitude, which puts a dent in their numbers, but doesn’t stop their advancing. You look over the battlements and see several Iznacs climbing the walls of the fort like an army of ants. They aren’t even using ladders, they’re just scaling the fort with their bare hands. It’s actually rather impressive, until you unleash a chain of lightning to zap all of them. The shock is enough to at least cause most of them to fall off if not outright kill them immediately. “Slaughter the four armed spider eyed bastards! Make them realize that their domination of this continent has passed! This is the time of the Empire!” you shout to the Eternals defending the fort. Your people are doing their best though they can’t stop every Iznac from scaling the fort. Soon the gunfire is replaced by sounds of close combat weaponry. No matter how far the advances in technology, it always eventually comes down to looking your opponent in the eye and feeling their blood splatter as you end their life. While you’re busy hacking off the limbs of an Iznac warrior, another loud explosion in the distance is heard followed by a bright flash in the sky. It’s not lightning from the storm, but rather the demise of your Storm. The Storm II joins the Tornado in crashing to the ground after losing its skirmish with the dragon. Hopefully the rain is making the jungle wet enough or else the flames from the wreckage of these downed airships are going to cause an inferno throughout the jungle. “Damn! The Iznac brought their little frog slaves and the remainder of those orc traitors!” Warrick says and cuts down several Glip before helping the rest of the soldiers fend off the orcs smashing through the fortress’ gates. It doesn’t matter in the scheme of things because even with overwhelming odds, your Eternals are still holding their own against all attackers. You then hear a roaring sound getting closer to your position and the sounds of great wings flapping. You shout a general command for the still working cannons to be pointed towards the dragon and to prepare to fire when the beast is in range. In the meantime you and Warrick try to keep that side of the fort relatively free of invading forces. “Hey, you think maybe I can get the chance to kill the dragon this time? I know you’re the Emperor and all, but you don’t need to prove your superiority all the damn time.” Warrick jokes. “Yeah? Well maybe you’ll get your chance if you aren’t as slow like you were the last two times.” You retort. “Slow? Well excuse me Mr. lightning fingers, but we all don’t have the ability to blast something out of the sky with a thought.” “Well that’s why I’m the Emperor.” You snicker. The dragon gets closer and you give the order to fire and unleash your own magic bolts at the creature. It’s definitely wounded from its ordeal with the two airships, but given your experience with the other two dragons, you know it’s far from being out the fight. In fact it’s so determined that it doesn’t distinguish friend from foe when it blasts its flame breath on the fort. You manage to protect most of your people with a magic barrier, but for those outside its protection, most are set on fire if not incinerated immediately. On the positive side, it reduces your enemies, on the negative it ignites the gunpowder barrels for the cannons causing a massive explosion and completely destroying one side of the fort. While the barrier still protects you and everyone within initially, its still a lot of strain on your energy and you begin to feel the fatigue setting in. “No! Damnit! Fight through it!” you mutter to yourself hating your weakness. While you’re busily trying to fight through your fatigue, you don’t notice where Warrick went and that was to the highest point he could get to on the fort and some how JUMPING on the damn dragon when it made its pass! You almost can’t believe your eyes as you see the dragon flying away from the fort with Warrick desperately trying to hold on to one of its legs. You can see him hacking at the dragon’s underbelly. The dragon bellows in pain and begins to turn to make a second pass, but Warrick’s assault makes another attack on the fort a non-priority for it. You see the beast twist and squirm in an effort to shake Warrick free and then eventually the beast makes another loud screech and the both of them go crashing into the jungle no doubt destroying several trees in the process. You can still hear the dragon in the distance, so you know it isn’t dead yet (Though probably badly wounded), but who knows about Warrick’s fate. In the meantime Fort Canopy isn’t immediately being attacked anymore as most of the Iznac have fled or been killed at this point. You quickly order your remaining troops to secure the fort and take a small group with you to head towards the dragon’s roaring noises. Fortunately the jungle isn’t thick here and the noises make tracking pretty easy, though by the time you reach your target, you see the severely wounded dragon with Warrick in its mouth and shaking its head from side to side. Then with one more shake, Warrick goes flying out of the dragon’s mouth and slams into a nearby tree. You can’t quite make out all the damage, but it looks like he’s missing an arm at this point. Who knows what other grievous wounds he’s suffered. In any case the dragon has now turned its attention towards your direction, but its not exactly in the best condition itself. It makes a coughing noise and a pitifully short burst of flame and a large amount of blood emanates from its mouth. It even tries to flap its wings perhaps in an attempt to escape, but one wing is so torn up that it can’t lift off even if it had the strength to do so. > You focus a full attack on the dragon As regrettable as it is, Warrick’s condition is secondary; killing this beast is top priority. Despite the dragon’s weakened state, you don’t take any chances and unleash a blast of cold on the creature, which slows it down even more. Eventually its skin starts to frost over until parts become as ice. “Fire at its head!” you shout and the troops with you do so immediately with chunks of the dragon’s frozen head breaking off as bullets go into it. You finish up with a couple of magic bolts to shatter it completely. The headless dragon flails slowly about for a moment though you don’t really stand around to be mesmerized by its death twitches as you suddenly find yourself attacked by Iznac warriors who had fled from the fort, but apparently were still lurking in the jungle. They down a couple of your people, but they’re really no match for you and are quickly dispatched. With all enemies beaten, you finally go over to where Warrick’s body lies. As you predicted, he’s already dead. “Shit. How the hell am I going to explain this to Brenda?” Is about the only thing you can utter at this point. Warrick isn’t the only loss as you soon to come find out. Flevas also died during his own battle in the jungles with the Iznac (Though the battle was successful). Fortunately Captain Snilkez’ka lived and was also successful in defending Fort Tangle against the Iznac hordes. With the dragons dead and this large Iznac offensive repelled, its safe to say that Nyttrus is yours. The Iznac will probably linger with petty raids for awhile, but eventually much like the Torites they will become only a memory. After assigning new orders and giving out a few field promotions, you return to Evigrus with Warrick’s body. When you arrive, you waste little time to give the sad news to Brenda though as soon as she sees you enter the training room by yourself, her face already displays the look of someone who already knows what you’re going to tell her. “Brenda, I think you can stop training the eternals for the day, I’ve got…” “He’s dead isn’t he?” Brenda interrupts. “Yes.” You answers. Brenda is silent and pauses a moment before telling the fourth gens to stop training for the day and to return to their barracks. They comply though most of them take a moment to stare at you and whisper, presumably in awe that their Emperor has paid another visit. With the two of you remaining in the room, Brenda addresses you again. “It was a death fitting for an Eternal I trust?” Brenda asks. “Oh yes. Yes it was. He died in battle with a dragon. I cannot think of a more glorious death.” Brenda inhales and exhales, rubbing a hand over her face, trying to hold back tears. “Good. That’s good. (Sniffle) That’s more than Roldan got at least. Was there enough of his body left for a proper funeral?” “Yes, I’ve brought his body back from Nyttrus. The arrangements for a heroes’ funeral will be made as soon as you’re ready.” “Okay. Well I’ll see you tomorrow to make the arrangements, now I believe I should get my students back in here, don’t want them to get lazy and make any reckless mistakes when the time comes.” “Brenda you can take as much time as you need, you…” “No. I have a duty to train these Eternals and I will see to that task. Warrick did his duty for the Empire and so I will continue to do mine for the Empire. These Eternals are going to help ensure the Empire’s continued survival one day and the Empire must survive for as long as the Empire lives on, Warrick will live on as his sacrifices will not have been in vain.” You nod at Brenda’s decision. “Okay, well I shall take my leave now.” You say not having much more to add. “Thank you my Emperor.” Brenda says before you leave. “What for?” “Giving me that extra year. I’ll cherish it for as long as I live.” You leave Brenda to morn in her own way, which apparently is immersing herself in her work despite feeling horrible. To be honest, you’re not exactly feeling great yourself. Warrick wasn’t just a vital member of your command, he was one of your “siblings” and now it’s just you and Brenda. Warrick’s funeral isn’t a spectacle. Brenda’s requests a quieter and much more private one. He of course is still placed in a grave next to other honored Empire heroes, but for the most part only you, Brenda and a few of his closest subordinates attend. It is here you get to meet the one Warrick appointed to be in charge when he left for Nyttrus, Cassandra. Warrick mentioned her a couple times during your time in Nyttrus, though he neglected to mention she was an elf. Actually you didn’t even realize there had been any elves recruited into the Eyes and you’re sort of curious of when this happened and how she rose through the ranks, so its just as well that she makes a point of wanting to speak with you after the funeral. Later the pair of you go to talk in your meeting room. “So…Cassandra is it. You’re my new Sightmaster eh? Warrick never mentioned you being an elf.” you say. “I didn’t think that was a problem, my Emperor.” “No. No problem. Warrick just never mentioned recruiting any elves into the Eyes actually. He did mention you to me a few times during our time in Nyttrus though. Assured me you were very competent at your job and had complete trust in you. Considering I’ve come back to a serene Empire, I’d say his judgment was correct.” “Thank you my Emperor.” “Hrm. So seeing as that was about all Warrick mentioned about you and I’ve only just come back from Nyttrus and have not yet had time to look up your paperwork, tell me a little about yourself and why you wanted to see me immediately.” Cassandra mentions that she grew up in Rask where her family endured a lot of suspicion due to their being a group of separatist elves that were giving the Empire a bit of grief there before Captain Kane’s effort’s solved that problem. Though some humans that lived in her village at the time still murdered her brother one night. Of course nobody said they saw who did it, but it was known. Of course her family being elven, nothing much was done about it. Cassandra said she was angry about it for a while, but then realized that that sort of thinking wouldn’t get her anywhere in the long term, so made a vow to try to work within the system. Her first step was to join up with an Empire militia, which was used more back then in Rask due to most of the regular troops fighting in the Felkan War and the fact that ogres and giants were still a nuisance. These militia groups were also made up of some of the lower class rabble that were either poor, patriotic, looking to fight or a combination of all three. As such there weren’t any restrictions for the most part. Of course she had to struggle to be accepted the entire time and was practically disowned by her parents who while law abiding citizens, couldn’t believe she’d willingly join an “injust” system. She held her own though and learned a lot during that time though it wasn’t really until Warrick became Sightmaster for the Eyes, that she came into her own. He was looking for new recruits in Rask and she signed up for Eye training. She nearly didn’t even get in, but fortunately Warrick intervened and allowed her to prove herself, which she did. She goes on to say she kept a relatively low profile since it made life easier in general among her peers. “Not so low profile now, you’re the Sightmaster.” You say. “Yes, and believe me I wasn’t even expecting it when Warrick assigned me to take the position. Though as an Eye, I still prefer to keep a low profile.” “Understandable. I trust you are not having problems with any of your subordinates?” “Oh, you mean being an elf that’s in charge? Oh no. Actually I haven’t had any of those sorts of problems for quite some time. Really after you had all elves still in slavery freed and promoting a man like Flevas to eventually be a general, I’ve encountered less hostility overall…though I imagine being an Eye might make the average person pause before insulting me.” Cassandra says with a slight smile. Sounds like Cassandra enjoys the little power trip she has over most humans, sort of like Flevas in that regard actually. No matter, as long as she does her job, you don’t care. Warrick was confident in her abilities and you have no reason to distrust his judgment and after your little discussion about her past, she addresses the original point of wanting to see you. “I wanted to talk to you about Dokkrus. It is my understanding that you plan on invading it?” “That is a major agenda in the near future, yes.” “I see. Well since its discovery I have kept apprised of its situation via Eye agents as you requested. Granted this intel is limited due to the distance, but here is what we’ve learned.” Cassandra as this point hands you a large folder filled with reports of what has been discovered about Dokkrus. She then gives you a brief run down on her own thoughts of it. “Now, I’ve never been to Nyttrus, but from what I’ve heard of the place the situation you’d encounter at Dokkrus would be much the same. Heavy resistance mixed with non-traditional tactics. Perhaps worse given that these are svelk we’re talking about.” “I didn’t expect it to be a walk in flower fields. Besides aren’t the svelk fighting each other most of the time?” “Well, most of them are, but last reports state that one group is starting to show more signs of unity. Its not a stable thing mind you, but its there nonetheless. There has also been a lot of sudden efforts in mining and metal working. Oddly though, the group of svelk don’t seem to be focusing on building weapons though, it seems to involve these giant metal structures that are in locations all over Dokkrus.” Semra. This has to be her doing. She’s already preparing and if you had to hazard a guess, she’s trying to repair some of those portals. Is she planning to use them to teleport directly somewhere in the Empire? Cassandra says that this unified groups isn’t very large. It’s not even an army, but then maybe Semra’s just planning a precise strike against you, like say a sudden assassination attempt so she might not need a lot of people. With those portals working, she might be able to just drop in anywhere. Something has to be done now. Cassandra has already said she believes an all out invasion is going to encounter problems, but doesn’t everything involving dark elves? > You try a different approach While the temptation to just send your forces and invade the place is the logical choice, you have a feeling Semra is probably expecting you to do just that. While your current military situation isn’t the worst, you’ve still got most your Eternals locked up in Nyttrus right now and you definitely want them to be sent in if you’re going to invade Dokkrus. “Okay, I’m thinking no invasion for now, however the svelk need to be stopped on what they’re planning to do, or rather at least what this group is planning to do.” You say. “You’ll hear no argument from me on messing up svelk plans, but given your tone you sound like you already know what they’re planning which is something I was no able to gain knowledge of unfortunately.” Cassandra says. “Those metal structures that have been mentioned in reports? Those are portals. You’re aware of the svelk named Semra aren’t you?” “Yes, I am familiar with that name as Warrick mentioned her a few times. Former advisor to the former Emperor, former trainer to the first Eternals and all around treacherous bitch?” “Yeah, basically. Well without going into a long story about it, I know that she’s trying to unify the numerous bands of nomadic svelk into another svelk empire. From what you’ve told me, she’s already busy doing that and as I said those metal structures are portals leading to who knows where. Probably all over the world. It’s probably how the svelk used to run their empire in fact. Obviously Semra’s trying to get the things working again as another step in rebuilding her overall goal.” “If that’s the case then maybe you should invade.” “No, I imagine Semra already is expecting that and you’re right in that it’ll be a nightmare to hold territory there. We just need to sabotage what she’s doing, and I’m thinking this is going to be more of a job for the Eyes since they’ve already been doing a good job there and I want you to lead this operation in Dokkrus personally.” Cassandra wasn’t expecting that order. “Of course I will obey my Emperor, but I’m going to need more details on this plan of yours and I’m concerned about the internal security here if I’m gone along with…well however many Eyes you intend to send.” “Don’t worry about the security here, I mean its important as always, but the days of civil unrest seem to be behind us a bit. As for how many of your Eyes you want to take, well that’s up to you. I’d suggest that you take only the best and get by with as few as possible. You’re going to be relying on a lot of stealth and hit and run. Basically I want you to multiply the chaos there. Cause these little nomadic bands to remain at each others’ throats. Shouldn’t be too hard, but try to make sure it seems like Semra’s group is the one doing it. It’ll definitely make them pause before joining her.” “So use their own nature against them. Got it. What about the portals?” “Since Semra is the only one trying to get them to work, focus on stopping those efforts as well. Obviously that means sabotaging the mine, mines, or wherever the hell she’s getting the material to rebuild them. Killing the miners works too obviously. The best thing to do is to destroy whatever portal Semra is trying to fix completely. I imagine magic is going to be involved so it would probably be best if you took your Eye mages with you.” “We don’t have too many of those left you know.” Cassandra says. “Hrm, well if you need to, take non-Eye mages with you. There aren’t many of them left either, but it should be enough…in fact take Galen with you. Lazy whiner needs to be useful for a change. And he WILL whine, but other than myself, he’s the most powerful mage the Empire has, so don’t get him killed unless it’s absolutely necessary to the overall mission.” “Is the overall mission to kill this Semra?” You chuckle a bit. “Heh, well if you have a good opportunity to do so, I certainly won’t condemn you for it. In fact if you DO manage to kill her and bring me her head I’ll grant you whatever you want within my means and that’s quite a large list I assure you. However I’d advise you NOT to even attempt to engage her if possible. She’s extremely dangerous and quite frankly will probably know as soon as we start hampering her mining operations that the Empire is involved and will make adjustments to her plans. Even with Galen, you most likely are not going to match an encounter with her so my advice is don’t fight her unless you have no choice.” “So our main mission is just to sabotage her portal fixing attempts?” “That’s only part of it yes. However the other part is just as important, if not more so. I WANT one of those portal structures.” Now Cassandra looks at you as if you’ve given her the impossible. “Emperor, from what I’ve heard those structures are…huge! I don’t see how we’re going to be able to move such things.” “That’s because you won’t be, at least not initially. I’ll be travelling to Dokkrus at some point to oversee that part of the plan but I need to discuss with the engineers for a way to extend the airships’ distance so they can reach Dokkrus as well as carry one of those structures back here. Hmmm, I suppose it probably would be best to send a few engineers with you so they can report back and give an idea of exactly how best to move this thing without damaging it. I’d send Elam, but I’d rather keep him here to work on improving the airships. Maybe I’ll just send some gnomish engineers…of course the gnomes won’t like that, but fuck ‘em they get more than enough special treatment.” You finish up telling what else you require of Cassandra and then make your next stop to speak with Klemto about getting some gnome engineers to go on this trip… “But…can’t you just use Empire engineers?” Klemto asks. “Last time I remember New Dessel was incorporated into the Empire decades ago. Your engineers ARE Empire engineers. If you’re asking why I don’t use human engineers, well let’s just say other than Elam, I still have more faith in gnomish ones. A testament to your peoples’ fine works. You really should be flattered.” Klemto doesn’t know how to respond to such a remark so he continue to try to plead with you. “But Emperor, please be reasonable! Most of my people ever really leave this city anymore and most have no desire to, and you’re asking them to go to a far away land with where sadistic svelk roam all over the place? We’re not fighters, I think our history shows that.” Klemto remarks. “Heh, I dunno if that’s entirely true of a race that makes the deadliest weapons outside of the most powerful of magic. Not to mention you’re the only group that ever rebelled from the Empire at one time AND lived. I assure you though your peoples’ safety will be top concern. I need them the most for this part of the mission to succeed. They will have the best protection. As soon as it’s over, they’re coming back immediately. You have my word on that.” “I…just don’t know.” “Klemto, this is more of a courtesy visit as well as giving you the option of sending those who are…less resistant to the idea. You know the deal Klemto, you’re part of the Empire and you have to obey its leader regardless of how much freedom and leniency he gives this place.” Klemto looks at you knowing that those words are more than just a polite threat. He sighs heavily and gives no more struggle. “(Sigh) Very well, let me…” Klemto starts to say before he’s interrupted by a red haired woman dressed in a slightly dirty work outfit. She’s human to your surprise and doesn’t look like one of your Eyes (Let alone Elam). “Hey uncle I’m just, oh!” the woman says when she sees you. “Zana! I thought someone told you not to disturb me! I’m in a very important meeting with the Emperor!” “Apologies uncle Klemto, but I left my lucky hammer over here when I visited yesterday and I don’t like being without it.” Zana says while smiling and nodding at you. “Apologies to you as well Emperor.” You aren’t terribly offended of course, but you’re wondering why a non-Eye human is running around New Dessel until you suddenly remember meeting Zana a long time ago, she was just a teenager then. “Emperor, uh you remember my adopted daughter don’t you?” Klemto asks. “Yes, first time I made my visit to New Dessel. As I recall she interrupted that meeting to ask if she could fix some lighting problem you had at the time.” You say. “Good memory! I’m surprised you remembered someone as unimportant as me!” Zana beams. “Mm, well when you’re the Emperor, you have to try to remember everyone no matter what their status because under certain circumstances a peasant can rise to become a general. Besides, I also remember commending Klemto on raising a young lady with respect for dedication and hard work. Glad to see that you’re still at it.” “Oh yes my Emperor. I work primarily with Elam, do you know him?” “Elam? Oh yes, I definitely know him.” You answer. At this point Klemto begins to get nervous and tries to push his niece out the door. “Okay, Zana you’ve found your hammer, now the Emperor and I still have important business to discuss.” “What kind?” Zana asks. “Oh just something concerning engineers and a rather adventurous mission.” You say. Klemto’s fears have just come true. “Emperor…please I beg you…not Zana! I mean I’LL even go if you need me to! I’ll send ALL of New Dessel!” “Relax Klemto, if Zana here is skilled enough to work next to Elam, I’d hate to break up the team. She won’t be going to Dokkrus.” You say. “You mean the dark elf continent? Yikes. As much I want to serve the Empire, I do believe I’d be a liability at such a hostile place! I’m no fighter!” Zana remarks. “Well you and your uncle don’t have to worry, your skills will be better served here working on the new airships I want Elam to build.” You say before Zana leaves. After getting over his initial worry, Klemto says he’ll get that list of engineers to you immediately. You leave Klemto’s office and head to where Elam’s workshop is located. When you enter he doesn’t appear to be working on anything important, he just seems to be watching some rodents run around in a container, though they look like they have a small piece of metal on their heads with wires connected to them. “What the hell are you doing Elam?” you ask completely startling him. “Emperor! Apologies, but I get very engrossed in my experiments sometimes. I’ve been coming up with some theories on brains and how they work. Figured I should test animals first and then work my way up to more sentient subjects.” Elam answers. “For what purpose? I thought you were building new weapons in here.” “I am…but…forgive me my Emperor, I’m getting bored with just engineering technological devices and weapons. Lately I’ve been feeling a pull towards my old love of biology. I mean yes we can create machines and other wondrous devices to make life easier, but what about making a LIFE? Y’know when I was young and before I worked under Marik, I was kicked out of the physician’s guild by short sighted fools who couldn’t appreciate my ideas.” Elam says. “Yes, I believe Kivan mentioned that to me when you were promoted to the Eternal Project.” You says. “Sometimes I miss working on the Eternal Project. I think we could really make advances there.” Elam says. “Hm, didn’t know you felt that way Elam. Did you have any particular ideas in mind for the next new batch of Eternals?” “Oh several. For one, I was thinking of how to go about curing that sterility problem you all seem to suffer from…no offense my Emperor.” “None taken. Your idea is certainly a worthy one, but I believe the magical process that’s necessary to create Eternals is the cause of that one flaw.” “Yes, but I’m wondering if there isn’t a way to eliminate the magical process altogether.” “I don’t see how.” You say. “Well I didn’t say I had all the answers yet, but I really believe if I could focus my studies, maybe I could find a way we could create Eternals just using the technology and medical aspect.” “Okay, sounds intriguing. Might be good given how few mages there are around nowadays. If you do come up with anything important feel free to let me know, but ONLY if you come up with something solid AND you don’t let it get in the way of your other work here.” “Of course my Emperor. So what was it that you wanted to see me about?” “Oh, I need you to make the airships travel a longer distance. Namely to Dokkrus.” “I guess we’re bombing the hell out of that place next eh? Okay, I’m sure its possible; we’ll just have to go through our routine tests and that is still going to take time. Hope you don’t need them anytime soon though.” “I’d prefer if this was done as soon as possible, but given the vital importance of the mission these airships are going to be going on I DO want it done right. Namely they’re going to be lifting up a large metal portal and carrying it back to Evigrus.” “How big are these metal portals and what are they made out of?” “Mithril I believe. At least those were the latest reports. As far as size, well they’re about as big as the front gates to the capital. Maybe bigger.” “That large huh? You sure you can’t just put them on a ship?” Elam asks. “That would require digging up their base and dragging the damn things across hostile territory and THEN loading them on to a mostly wooden ship which is at the whims of the ocean and the occasional large denizens that lurk within it. The only ship we’ve got that might be able to carry it without danger of sinking or capsizing is that giant vessel we captured from Mortimer before the Nakol War. And even then I’d still have my doubts.” Elam glances at his rats again before continuing. “Well you don’t actually think we’d be able to load one on an airship do you?” Elam asks. “No, of course not, but the airships could carry the portal underneath it with strong chains and hooks. Also saves the problem of dragging it across hostile territory since it could just be pulled straight up off the ground. I’m thinking maybe even TWO airships could carry it while flying abreast each other.” You say. “Well, that would definitely stabilize and help distribute the weight, it also means the airships are going to have to be smaller so they can even share airspace so close together…” Elam exhales. “But…it’s certainly doable. Like I said, I just hope you don’t need these immediately. I’ll need specific schematics of the portal as well, I mean exact size, dimensions and weight if possible.” “I’m sending gnome engineers to Dokkrus, I’m sure after a suitable portal is found they will report such findings.” “Okay. Good. Well I suppose my side experiments will have to wait a little longer. I’ll get to work immediately on this my Emperor.” Elam says. After a few more words with Elam, you leave New Dessel trying to feel positive about the plan you’ve set in motion. You know there is going to be something that will inevitably try to hamper your plans, but you just try to keep in mind that this is one more step closer to immortality. > Year 62 “The transport airships have made their test run to the outskirts of Dokkrus and returned. They’re ready for the real mission now, my Emperor.” Elam remarks. “Good, because we’re sending them and a couple of the upgraded regular airships.” You say. This is a major step closer to your goals. Cassandra, Galen and the rest have managed to locate and hold a fairly intact portal for you. The base around it has already been dug out for easier lifting and they haven’t suffered many svelk attacks, well not many concentrated svelk attack at least. The svelk that are attacking are just the regular xenophobic type that doesn’t want outsiders on their territory. They have no real grasp of the greater plans that are going on. Semra’s actions have been surprisingly minimal though apparently she’s been too busy defending her own territory (and portal and mines) from not just your sabotage attempts (Which unfortunately haven’t been too successful), but from other svelk warbands. It would seem that Cassandra and your Eyes have at least successfully managed to keep up the ongoing chaos there. Won’t be long now. “Emperor, may I accompany you on this mission?” Zana asks. “Huh?” you say being interrupted by your private thoughts. “May I accompany you on this mission, my Emperor? I know I sounded a little afraid the last time Dokkrus was mentioned, but I admit part of me still wanted to go. I’d like to join you on this mission. Besides, I did have a hand in building these airships, it might be best if someone with that knowledge came along.” “I imagine Klemto might have some objections to that.” You say. “I love him, but he’s too over protective. Besides, you’re the Emperor if you want me to come with you then he has no choice but to comply right?” Zana says almost in a flirtatious way. You’re not exactly sure how to take that, but Elam definitely looks surprised. Maybe even a little jealous. “Well, that is correct…okay fine you can come with me.” “This will be a great honor my Emperor! I’m looking forward to this!” Zana says. “You will be accompanying me aboard the Storm III.” You say. “You’re going to be on the Storm III?” “That was the plan given that it’s the flagship, why where did you think I was going to be?” you ask. “Well I assumed that you’d want to be aboard one of the transport airships to better oversee the process as well as to better defend it from attack in case the svelk try something.” “That’s sort of why I have the Storm III and company going with them. They will be defending against possible svelk attacks, though barring Semra’s meddling; I don’t see any major threat to any of the airships themselves. The svelk are remarkably still stuck in the dark ages when it comes to weaponry.” “True, but I know you have the ability to cast those large barriers for defense. I dunno I just don’t see your own extra protection on a transport airship as such a bad idea. It would allow the escorts to focus a little more on protecting the other.” “Hrm. Never hurts to be sure I guess. Duly noted, I’ll think about it.” With Zana’s brief suggestion she excuses herself to get her things prepared for the mission, leaving you alone with Elam who realizes his glances of faint jealousy have caught your attention and he is now trying to not make eye contact. “Elam you’re acting like a teenager. I’m not remotely interested in your woman so you can stop worrying that I’m going to start fucking her on the airship.” You blurt out. “Uh…um…thank you my Emperor…I uh…” Elam stutters a bit at a lost for how to respond. “How long have you two been an item anyway? It doesn’t really show much when you two are together.” “We try to keep it professional my Emperor. Human women here aren’t in big supply here in New Dessel and I can’t identify with any of the Eyes, but Zana…she’s something special…never have I encountered a woman with such a magnificent intellect for science!” “Mm, I’m sure that the only thing…” you smirk. “Well her physical attributes are nice as well.’ Elam says. Elam goes on to ask if he can discuss his desire to work more in the medical and biology field when you return. You tell him that he may continue his experiments as usual, but you’re going to need his help with the portal when it’s brought back most likely. Your don’t bother talking with Klemto about Zana. You figure she can tell him herself, assuming she even bothers and decides to just make it a surprise for him. You do take the opportunity to look at the new airships. It’s odd, but as many times as you’ve seen them up close this will be the first time you’ll actually be on one of these things. Even on your return trip from Nyttrus you went by boat rather than waiting for another airship. When the day arrives Klemto approaches you. You’re guessing he must’ve heard the news by now. He comes to you hat in hand looking pitiful. “Emperor…I understand my daughter is going with you…I just beg of one thing and that’s that you see that she’s safe.” “You make a lot of demands of your Emperor…(sigh) She’ll be fine Klemto, you worry too much. I doubt if the svelk are even going to be able hit us if they even attack. Besides, she’s going to be aboard the Storm III and given that it’s the heaviest armed airship we have right now, she’ll be one of the safest people there.” “Well that’s good to hear. At least she’ll be close to you.” “Not necessarily. I might be flying on one of the transports. Zana suggested that it might be best if I was aboard one to better defend it in case the unexpected should happen.” As Klemto’s mind fills with worry again, you wonder if you should take Zana’s advice or not. > You board the Storm III The transports are going to have enough protection with the escorts. Besides you’d rather be on the biggest, most well armed thing in the sky. Zana seems a little surprised to see you aboard the Storm III when you’re about to lift off, but says that it’ll be an honor to be so close to you on this mission. She then says she’s going to be walking around the Storm III making sure everything is running smoothly. You see this as reasonable so you think nothing more of it and tell her to carry on. After about a half hour you finally get used to the idea of being so high in the air and less paranoid. You didn’t think it possible for you to be, but somewhere in the back of your mind, you had the concern of this thing falling out of the sky which is probably why you haven’t stayed in one place on the ship for very long and have felt the need to pace about it. You also have been bumping into Zana every so often. Not on purpose, but you seem to just be appearing in the same places she happens to be. This wouldn’t be a problem, but each time you do, Zana seems increasingly agitated whenever she sees you and it’s obvious that she attempts to leave the area as soon as possible. The next time you see her she’s coming out of a door on the top deck of the ship wearing a heavy jacket with some sort of backpack on her back. Once again you completely surprise her. “Hey Zana, once again we meet again.” you say. “Heh! Um yeah, my Emperor. Still following me I see.” Zana replies. “Not on purpose, but should I be following you?” “No. I mean, there’s no reason to of course, it’s just what I’ve been doing is so boring and not very interesting.” “Probably, but there isn’t much to do on here anyway…so what’s that on your back?” “Oh this? Uh, just a back pack full of stuff…” “Zana, why the hell are you so nervous? Every time we’ve bumped into each other you’ve run off like your ass is on fire.” “Have I? My apologies then my Emperor. I suppose your presence is just a little unnerving at times. We all want to do our best in front of you, you know.” You give a sideways glance at Zana. You’ve NEVER known Zana to ever be nervous around you. In fact she’s always been very casual to the point that most rulers would probably find it disrespectful. “Okay…I understand…so what’s in the backpack?” “Um…as I said nothing of important my Emperor, just tools…” “Okay so let me see inside.” And it’s at this point Zana goes silent for a moment and her nervous facial expression turns into one of complete desperation before she turns around to run from you. “STOP ZANA! STOP HER!” you shout and go after her. You have no idea where she thinks she can run to until you see her attempting to climb the railing of the Storm III in an attempt to jump off it. Fortunately you and another crew member grab her before she’s able to. She then tries to fumble with something inside her jacket, but you wrestle it away from her. It’s some sort of black rectangular device with a button on it. “What the hell is this Zana?” you say while your crewmembers keep her from getting up. “Why don’t you press it and find out TYRANT!” Zana shouts and now her expression has changed again, but to one of complete hatred. You’ve never been the most technologically inclined, but if you had to guess, Zana has planted a bomb aboard this ship and this thing is going to detonate it. You immediately tell crewmembers in your vicinity to spread the word and to look for it while you hang on to the detonation device for safekeeping. You then tell your crew to take off Zana’s backpack. It’s odd as it really isn’t a bkacpack at all so much as it’s a large sheet of canvas with reinforced rope attached. You’ve never seen anything like it before, but you again if you had to guess, it was supposed to decrease the speed of Zana’s fall. “Interesting invention. I’m guessing one of your own design? I’m just wondering though we’re quite far from any land mass. Even had this invention worked, were you really planning on swimming all the way back to Evigrus?” you say. “I calculated the distance, maybe I would’ve made it, maybe not, but either way it would’ve been better than allowing your continued existence! Murderer! Tyrant!” “So who put you up to this? Semra?” “Nobody put me up to this tyrant! I have my OWN reasons as I’m sure countless people would have for wanting you dead! The only difference is that I had the guts to actually try to kill you. YOU MURDERED MY FAMILY! YOU STOLE MY LIFE!” Zana screams with her mouth spitting saliva in anger. “Zana you’ve lost me. You claim I murdered your family, but from what I know I wasn’t even in the vicinity of the destroyed village of where Klemto found you.” “I didn’t grow up in a village! I was going to be a princess! I would’ve ruled a kingdom one day! YOU and YOUR I EMPIRE destroyed all that before I even had a chance to enjoy a taste of such a life! Klemto didn’t just save a random Felkan baby, he saved a HEIR TO THE FELKAN FUCKING KINGDOM!” Zana shouts. It was a very long time ago. Almost a different life even, but you vaguely remember seeing a crib in the Felkan royal palace, yet no baby or even signs of a dead one. You never thought too much of it at the time, but apparently even though Zana was just an infant, Klemto must’ve told her about her real heritage. He probably lied to you thinking that you would’ve had her killed. “Because of YOU, I’ve had to live a miserable existence working on machinery surrounded by fucking GNOMES! You know what that’s like? Being the only human in community of damn gnomes? It SUCKS! Then when some humans do fucking arrive, they’re from the same nation that destroyed my birthright! It almost sickened me to even sleep with that crazy fool Elam!” How long must she have been waiting for the right time to strike? Was it always this way or did it slowly gnaw at her? A life that was stolen from her. Did Klemto or the gnomes put her up to this? Was this their plan in some weird way? “Okay, since you’re in a talkative mood, did Klemto or any gnome put you up to this?” you ask. “What? So you’ll have an excuse to round them all up and destroy their souls again? I heard about what you did to them. And maybe I might find them to be timid, tiresome unattractive little know it alls, I find it deplorable what the Empire did to them. I can’t believe they allowed themselves to be dominated by a nation that systematically exterminated them from not just this life, but the next as well!” “So did they help or not?” you ask again. “No! No they did not! My father would’ve probably had me jailed if he knew what I was planning. Those cowards wouldn’t dare stand against the Empire, but I fucking would! And did! Not that this will save them. After you’re done killing me, you’ll probably have them all killed as well for any excuse will serve a tyrant!” “It’s amusing that you keep calling me that. What did you think your parents were? They were a KING and QUEEN. You think they ruled by popular decision? Do you think YOU would have if you became queen? My actions that day weren’t even personal. I was just following orders like a soldier. Your actions however today are misguided and fatal. Such a waste. Even had I known your origins, I would not have had you killed if you had remained true to serving the Empire. You probably would’ve even replaced Elam as top engineer when such a time came. Your quest for vengeance was as pointless as your entire life.” Zana says nothing else, she just continues to look at you with hatred in her eyes. At this point a few of your crew has come back saying that they found a bomb near the spare gunpowder barrels and another one near some vital machinery. They were disarmed and disposed of by dropping them over the side of the Storm. “Well, I guess there’s only one more thing to dispose of.” You say and then nod to your crew still restraining Zana. To her credit she doesn’t beg for her life and continues to curse you even as she’s falling over the side of the Storm to her death. Considering some of crew from the other nearby ships may be wondering what’s going on if they’ve seen someone being thrown overboard, you make an announcement that you want the crew to signal the other ships to let them know everything is fine and that the mission is going to continue as expected. As for the mission, that goes off relatively quietly without much trouble. The portal is hooked and lifted up without any problems. There doesn’t even to be any weight concerns, though given that you had two transport ships just in case it isn’t too surprising. There aren’t any svelk attacks either. When you bring Galen, Cassandra and the remaining Eyes aboard the Storm via rope ladder, Cassandra says if you’d arrived a few days before it might’ve been a different matter since they suffered a very large attack accompanied by mages. In fact Cassandra mentions that they were encountering a lot more mage types among the ranks of the svelk. She goes on to say that Semra’s group has disappeared completely meaning they stopped working on the portal and abandoned all their mining operations. “Knowing Semra she’s probably changed her plans slightly again.” You say. “Did you want us to stay then? I mean we might need some reinforcements, but I think the remainder of us can survive on our own a little longer out here.” Cassandra asks. “No. You’re all needed back home. Dokkrus will be invaded properly at some point in the future, but for now I’ve got more important things on my mind and I need all the security that I can get on the homefront right now. If the svelk suddenly start teleporting an invasion force then so be it. We’ll be prepared, I’m going to start calling the third gen Eternals back from Nyttrus anyway. Besides, we’ve got one of these portals now and if we get it working like how I want to get it working, then we’ll be fine.” You say and then turn to Galen. “I want to talk to you about your findings, I assume you studied this one and several others while on your vacation.” “Vacation? Dokkrus was the worst assignment that…” Galen starts to say until you glare at him. “Uh, nevermind my Emperor. Yes, I’ll speak with you about what I found. Of course.” With your mission accomplished and all your people aboard, you return to Evigrus where the airships land in the fields near New Dessel. The portal itself is moved into the mountain city. From there you bump into Elam AND Klemto together. Good, this will save you time. “Where is my daughter?” Klemto asks. “Yeah, where is Zana my Emperor?” Elam says. You snort and shake your head at this question. “Well there’s no easy way to tell either of you this, so here it is. Zana was a traitor that tried to kill me while she was aboard the Storm. So I had her thrown overboard where I assume she died.” Klemto and Elam’s jaws just about drop. “WHAT?!” the pair of them exclaim. “You heard me. She’s dead and that’s it.” Klemto’s face displays the first signs of tears, but also of anger. He’s about to speak, but you stop him before he can do so. “Klemto. I’d advise you to think VERY carefully the next words you say to me, because there are only a few reasons why I’m not going to have New Dessel purged of every gnome in here. Number one, I still believe I’ll need the help of gnomish engineers for this next project and two Zana made it very clear that her plans were all her own and not the result of some gnomish conspiracy. Given how passionate her hatred of me was, I have no reason to disbelieve her.” Klemto says nothing. “That being said, I’m ALSO going to forget the fact that YOU lied to me and that she was the daughter of the ex-Felkan royalty. I understand the lie, but this might’ve been avoided had you not lied to me in the first place…or failing that you needed to lie to her about her true heritage. Either way, I’ll let the knowledge of your OWN poor judgment be your punishment.” Klemto continues to say nothing, the man is overcome with grief and can’t even be in your prescence, he just leaves holding his head in hands. Elam is still a bit in shock. “Was…was there no other way?” he asks. “Are you kidding me Elam? (Sigh) No. There was no other way. If it’s any consolation, she never loved or had any real affection for you. She even called you a fool that she only slept with due to the lack of other available humans that didn’t completely disgust her. Well that and I imagine she probably saw a possible opportunity to get closer to assassinate me by being closer to you.” Elam just listens on in silence. “And you, like Klemto, should count yourself lucky that I need you to work on this project because this incident wasn’t the first time you mistakenly placed your trust in an assassin. Or have we forgotten the OTHER bomb attempt on the first Storm that Warrick managed to stop?” “Um, no your Emperor. Apologies. I…have no excuses and thank you for your mercy.” “Hrm. Get that portal working and it will be a start.” Elam leaves your presence and you’re left to rethink the “independence” policies on New Dessel. That time has now passed. A few hours later during a discussion with Elam and Galen about how to get the portal working again, an emergency goes up throughout New Dessel. At first you think its some sort of sudden gnome uprising that Klemto has stirred up, but the event is much less urgent though perhaps a little tragic. Klemto apparently went home, drank a lot of ale and then calmly shot himself in the head. He wasn’t always well liked by his people due to his decisions, but enough of them thought highly enough of him to immediately go into mourning due to his death. There is probably a fear of what will come next too since he was their leader for so long; in fact none of the gnomes of their little council even steps up to replace him. Hardly matter though, since as far as you’re concerned this is as good as time as any to completely do away with the “era” of New Dessel “independence.” It was a long time coming anyway. Maybe Klemto even realized that and with the death of his daughter he saw no more point in seeing the “bad times” again. In any event, things are starting to look up for you and you’re one step closer to your ultimate goals. > Year 65 “It…it was horrible, my Emperor! The place was so dead. Like I could feel it everywhere…my…my hands…my skin…wrinkled with age! How could I have aged so quickly? It’s an evil place! Don’t send me back! I beg of you!” the test subject pleads while groveling at your boots, but all you do smile. “WE FOUND IT! WE’VE FINALLY FOUND IT!” you shout in glee. After Elam’s tinkering with machinery to repair the portal, sacrificing several lesser mages to fuel the portal with magical energy again, you and Galen trying to channel the energy to get the right location and after sending in several “test subjects” with ropes tied around them, you’ve at last discovered the way to reach the Isle of Mortos. The Island of Mortos seems to be so heavily disguised by magic that it’s impossible to actually find through normal means. Basically the necromancers only allow access if they want it to or in your case, meddling with a magic portal for so long that you eventually found it through trial and error. Now that you’ve found it, the current problem is that it’s a one-way trip. Hence the ropes you tied to the test subjects so you could pull them back through. (Though that still didn’t always ensure their return) There’s also the fact that “dialing” the way to get to Mortos in the first place has been fairly taxing on you and Galen who isn’t looking so great nowadays. “A testament to your persistence, my Emperor…can I go lay down? I feel sort of weak.” Galen remarks. “Galen you’re a wizard, you of all people besides myself should be happy to discover a new mystery of the arcane! I mean with magic apparently dying out, I’d think this would be fairly interesting to you.” “Emperor, in all honesty I’d rather just be back home using charm spells on young girls.” “That’s your problem Galen, you have no true ambition!” you say. “Yes, you’re right my Emperor. I’m a lowly worm before your greatness.” Galen says. “I’ll let that remark pass since I KNOW you’re intelligent enough to NOT use sarcasm on me. And I’m not going to let your whining and depression annoy me today as this is a great break through.” At this point Galen says nothing and just shuffles off to find some place to lie down. You also ignore the test subject who has already been taken away by nearby Eyes to who knows where. You continue to stare at the portal, which will now lead you to Mortos. You almost want to enter right now, but you know that it will still have to wait. You call Elam over who normally isn’t a nervous sort, but is when he gets near the portal. “So…this is it then?” Elam asks. “This is it Elam. Have you finished building that other smaller portal for me?” you say. “It’s almost finished, though it took a lot of mithril to build it. Good thing Nyttrus had several deposits, because it’s not like we had much of it. Also it’s going to need magical energy of course for it to be fully powered. I imagine you’ve still got mages left?” “Maybe a few still locked up, but I question if it’ll be enough…well there’s always Galen. Should work.” “You’re going to sacrifice Galen?” “He’s served his purpose and he’ll serve it one last time for the greater good of the Empire. He’s getting old and weak anyway, how many years does he really have left? Wasn’t aware that you held any fondness for him.” “No, I don’t really. Still though…what about your Eternal Project?” “What about it?” “Well without any more mages you won’t be able to continue it correct?” “If this plan goes the way I hope it does, it won’t matter, besides I thought you were coming up with an idea to take the Eternal Project in a new direction without the use of magic.” You say. “I was, but then I had to focus my efforts on this project and as I know it was of great importance to you, I didn’t want to divert my attention.” Elam responds. “Probably was wise of you. Well, after we get the second portal up and running, you’ll be able to pursue your desire for more biological experiments and find a new way of creating Eternals.” Elam nods and excuses himself to go back to work on finishing the other portal. The smaller one is going to be the “return” portal back here after its power up, “calibrated” and dragged through the Mortos portal. The test subject didn’t say anything about any ghoul creatures or other undead around, just a dead feeling everywhere so it looks like you go lucky as far as the location is concerned. Though you still have no idea where you’ll be located on Mortos. After all you only visited the place once and that was thirty years ago. You were so different back then. The trusting, loyal, good soldier that never questioned anything. You’ve been thinking more about those last few days with Casimir recently, your trip to Mortos and the days immediately afterwards. The big lie that Casimir perpetrated just to secure his own immortality was still nothing compared to the one that nobody except Jacob and Semra knew about. It’s still odd to think about how you were never truly meant to be an Eternal. Still, it’s often been said the bigger the lie; the more people are willing to believe it. Maybe its because your entire life is a “lie” that you managed to achieve so much within it. Maybe that’s why you managed to become a successful Emperor and maybe that’s why you intend to succeed where your “father” failed. Nicodemus, the necromancer that you encountered during your last trip to Mortos, tried to convince you to not pursue the same path as Casimir. Semra has tried to do the same on several occasions. As far as you know, they’re still the only two that are going to be your major obstacles between you and your goals. You aren’t sure what Semra’s been up to as there has been no sign of her or any indication of an attack from Dokkrus, but rest assured when she does pop up again, you have no doubt its going to be at the most inopportune time. As for Nicodemus, you imagine you’ll have quite a fight on your hands with him and that’s not even counting other necromancers that must live on the island and their undead. You haven’t been idle though. You’ve been practicing and strengthening your own magic abilities. Eventually you stop your reminiscing and decide you need to get on with your plans, you aren’t getting any younger. In another few weeks, Elam tells you that the second portal is ready, so you gather up Galen and the remaining mages to go about its activation. Galen repeatedly tells you that he doesn’t think there’s going to be enough energy within the captive mages power up the second portal, but you assure him that there will be. The fool doesn’t even consider the possibility that HE is going to be joining them. Well not until the last moment when he’s grabbed by Eyes and strapped down to the draining chair hooked up to the portal. “Emperor?! What is this?! No! I was loyal! You can’t! You…” Galen shouts before you punch him in the face and have him gagged. “Stop whining Galen.” You say motioning Elam to hit the switch and watch the last of your mages being drained of their energy and life. When the portal is powered and you finish your calibrations, you have the smaller portal ready to be dragged through the larger one. Several Eyes, several third gen Eternals and some very nervous engineers all prepare to enter, plus one. “Emperor, you’re going with them?” Elam asks. “I’m confident that this is going to work and if not, well then I don’t deserve to be Emperor any longer. Let’s get going.” You say. You enter the portal and you have that old familiar feeling… A deadness all around you. The land is still dead, everything is still drab and gray. Same way it was when you last were here. The others with you all begin to complain about not feelings quite right. “It’ll pass if you keep your mind focused, the key is to not let this place cause you to spiral into a depression. Come on we need to get this portal into a good place…that large rock structure in the ground over there looks as good as any. I want the engineers to embed this portal in it, don’t want it just standing out here in the open wasteland. Follow me and DON’T stray too far. There are magic areas or what are called negative zones. You step into one and you could be an old man or even a corpse before you knew what was going on. I’ll be able to detect them, just follow me.” Your small march to the rock destination is uneventful other than some of your people still saying how this all feels so hopeless. Unfortunately most of it is from the engineers who are less accustomed to this sort of thing. As you wait for the portal to be embedded in the rock, you begin to ponder if you still shouldn’t wait awhile before marching an army into Mortos. It might be this place sapping your “enthusiasm” but the grim reality of how difficult this is really going to be is starting to set in the closer you get to your goals. It does occur to you that Nicodemus was powerful enough to destroy Casimir with barely any effort. > You do some scouting now You decide that the best way to keep your mind off things is to keep yourself occupied. So you tell some of the Eyes to accompany you and tell the Eternals to keep a good watch over the engineers. You remind the Eyes to follow you, as the danger of stepping into a negative zone is great. They all acknowledge your order apathetically and follow. A few moments after the portals are both out of sight, you start to hear more complaining, bitching and overall whining. You’d swear you were travelling with Galen or several copies of him. “Damn it, what the hell is wrong with you all? You’re supposed to be Eyes! Start acting like it before I have to make an example out of one you!” “Oh what’s the point? We’re all dead men anyway!” one of the Eyes exclaims. You travel a little longer and eventually you encounter a ruined structure. Probably not where the book is located, but no point in not checking it out since you’re already here. You all approach the structure slowly. You because you’re cautious, the rest well because they’re all still suffering from the effects of the oppressive aura of Mortos. When you get close enough an ugly head pops out from around the corner of the ruins. When it sees you it makes an inhuman scream and comes loping at you. “Shit, ghoul. Quick, there will be a multitude of them!” you exclaim backing off and blasting the ghoul with a fireball. As more ghouls come pouring out of the ruin, you motion the Eyes to prepare themselves for combat, which they do so but only reluctantly. “COME ON! These fuckers are going to eat you!” you shout. There aren’t as many ghouls like when you walked into that town of them last time, but there’s enough to be dangerous. You fight the ghouls with blade and spell, but your Eyes are barely putting up a fight despite you yelling at them and the very real threat of death the ghouls pose. Pretty soon the ghouls begin to get the upper hand over your Eyes, some of whom have given up completely and practically laid down to die. Frustrated by this place altogether you begin flinging fireballs at the ghouls regardless if the Eyes are in the vicinity or not. If the weak willed fools wish to die then so be it. Eventually the only thing left is you and many charred bodies. You sit and rest for a moment from the battle. You realize that you’re going to have to train your people to endure this place. It’s obvious that this place is going to affect your people more than you realized… Then suddenly a panic wells up inside you and you make haste back to the portal. At first your major concern is that you’ll find everyone not doing their job or at worst dead by their own hand, the reality is much worse however. The portal lies on the ground and partially broken, magic still powers it, but its highly unstable now and its changing different colors quickly. All the engineers are dead and some of your Eternals are too, but it doesn’t look like everyone took their own life. It looks more like a slaughter. Two of the Eternals still live and have a deranged look in their eye; in fact they’re eating one of the engineers. It would appear that the negative aura of Mortos may have another side effect other than severe depression. Upon seeing you, they both attack like a pair of ghouls. You easily put them down with a couple of magic bolts, but the damage is done. You look at the portal and you ponder if you should risk going through it or possibly continue searching Mortos for the book and hope that maybe you could find a way out of here that way. You also ponder if you just stayed put that maybe someone from Evigrus would try to send someone else with a rope tied to them through the portal and you could get home that way. You ultimately do decide to wait for what you think is a few days but nobody shows up. You’re actually a little surprised, but then they might think that if going through killed you that what chance would any of them have? This doesn’t have a good effect on your own morale which has been diminishing by the day due to the oppressive aura of Mortos and your current hopeless situation. You also haven’t eaten or drank anything for quite some time, you’re starting to feel those effects as well. Lacking any other options, you decide that you’ll have to take a chance on the portal because you don’t think you’ll have the strength to find the book in your current condition, even if you had any idea where it might be located. You stare into the portal, which still changes different colors rapidly. You don’t have a good feeling about this. You’re fairly certain in fact that you’ll wind up on the other side in pieces, but there is little choice in this matter. “Well better an unknown risk than a certain death.” you say and you jump in… The good news is you do make it out of Mortos in one piece. The bad news is you reappear several miles under water in the middle of one of the oceans. Taken completely by surprise by this you gasp for air and your body cannot handle such crushing pressure. Your dead body falls to the bottom ocean where it provides nourishment for the creatures that live there.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 65 “It…it was horrible, my Emperor! The place was so dead. Like I could feel it everywhere…my…my hands…my skin…wrinkled with age! How could I have aged so quickly? It’s an evil place! Don’t send me back! I beg of you!” the test subject pleads while groveling at your boots, but all you do smile. “WE FOUND IT! WE’VE FINALLY FOUND IT!” you shout in glee. After Elam’s tinkering with machinery to repair the portal, sacrificing several lesser mages to fuel the portal with magical energy again, you and Galen trying to channel the energy to get the right location and after sending in several “test subjects” with ropes tied around them, you’ve at last discovered the way to reach the Isle of Mortos. The Island of Mortos seems to be so heavily disguised by magic that it’s impossible to actually find through normal means. Basically the necromancers only allow access if they want it to or in your case, meddling with a magic portal for so long that you eventually found it through trial and error. Now that you’ve found it, the current problem is that it’s a one-way trip. Hence the ropes you tied to the test subjects so you could pull them back through. (Though that still didn’t always ensure their return) There’s also the fact that “dialing” the way to get to Mortos in the first place has been fairly taxing on you and Galen who isn’t looking so great nowadays. “A testament to your persistence, my Emperor…can I go lay down? I feel sort of weak.” Galen remarks. “Galen you’re a wizard, you of all people besides myself should be happy to discover a new mystery of the arcane! I mean with magic apparently dying out, I’d think this would be fairly interesting to you.” “Emperor, in all honesty I’d rather just be back home using charm spells on young girls.” “That’s your problem Galen, you have no true ambition!” you say. “Yes, you’re right my Emperor. I’m a lowly worm before your greatness.” Galen says. “I’ll let that remark pass since I KNOW you’re intelligent enough to NOT use sarcasm on me. And I’m not going to let your whining and depression annoy me today as this is a great break through.” At this point Galen says nothing and just shuffles off to find some place to lie down. You also ignore the test subject who has already been taken away by nearby Eyes to who knows where. You continue to stare at the portal, which will now lead you to Mortos. You almost want to enter right now, but you know that it will still have to wait. You call Elam over who normally isn’t a nervous sort, but is when he gets near the portal. “So…this is it then?” Elam asks. “This is it Elam. Have you finished building that other smaller portal for me?” you say. “It’s almost finished, though it took a lot of mithril to build it. Good thing Nyttrus had several deposits, because it’s not like we had much of it. Also it’s going to need magical energy of course for it to be fully powered. I imagine you’ve still got mages left?” “Maybe a few still locked up, but I question if it’ll be enough…well there’s always Galen. Should work.” “You’re going to sacrifice Galen?” “He’s served his purpose and he’ll serve it one last time for the greater good of the Empire. He’s getting old and weak anyway, how many years does he really have left? Wasn’t aware that you held any fondness for him.” “No, I don’t really. Still though…what about your Eternal Project?” “What about it?” “Well without any more mages you won’t be able to continue it correct?” “If this plan goes the way I hope it does, it won’t matter, besides I thought you were coming up with an idea to take the Eternal Project in a new direction without the use of magic.” You say. “I was, but then I had to focus my efforts on this project and as I know it was of great importance to you, I didn’t want to divert my attention.” Elam responds. “Probably was wise of you. Well, after we get the second portal up and running, you’ll be able to pursue your desire for more biological experiments and find a new way of creating Eternals.” Elam nods and excuses himself to go back to work on finishing the other portal. The smaller one is going to be the “return” portal back here after its power up, “calibrated” and dragged through the Mortos portal. The test subject didn’t say anything about any ghoul creatures or other undead around, just a dead feeling everywhere so it looks like you go lucky as far as the location is concerned. Though you still have no idea where you’ll be located on Mortos. After all you only visited the place once and that was thirty years ago. You were so different back then. The trusting, loyal, good soldier that never questioned anything. You’ve been thinking more about those last few days with Casimir recently, your trip to Mortos and the days immediately afterwards. The big lie that Casimir perpetrated just to secure his own immortality was still nothing compared to the one that nobody except Jacob and Semra knew about. It’s still odd to think about how you were never truly meant to be an Eternal. Still, it’s often been said the bigger the lie; the more people are willing to believe it. Maybe its because your entire life is a “lie” that you managed to achieve so much within it. Maybe that’s why you managed to become a successful Emperor and maybe that’s why you intend to succeed where your “father” failed. Nicodemus, the necromancer that you encountered during your last trip to Mortos, tried to convince you to not pursue the same path as Casimir. Semra has tried to do the same on several occasions. As far as you know, they’re still the only two that are going to be your major obstacles between you and your goals. You aren’t sure what Semra’s been up to as there has been no sign of her or any indication of an attack from Dokkrus, but rest assured when she does pop up again, you have no doubt its going to be at the most inopportune time. As for Nicodemus, you imagine you’ll have quite a fight on your hands with him and that’s not even counting other necromancers that must live on the island and their undead. You haven’t been idle though. You’ve been practicing and strengthening your own magic abilities. Eventually you stop your reminiscing and decide you need to get on with your plans, you aren’t getting any younger. In another few weeks, Elam tells you that the second portal is ready, so you gather up Galen and the remaining mages to go about its activation. Galen repeatedly tells you that he doesn’t think there’s going to be enough energy within the captive mages power up the second portal, but you assure him that there will be. The fool doesn’t even consider the possibility that HE is going to be joining them. Well not until the last moment when he’s grabbed by Eyes and strapped down to the draining chair hooked up to the portal. “Emperor?! What is this?! No! I was loyal! You can’t! You…” Galen shouts before you punch him in the face and have him gagged. “Stop whining Galen.” You say motioning Elam to hit the switch and watch the last of your mages being drained of their energy and life. When the portal is powered and you finish your calibrations, you have the smaller portal ready to be dragged through the larger one. Several Eyes, several third gen Eternals and some very nervous engineers all prepare to enter, plus one. “Emperor, you’re going with them?” Elam asks. “I’m confident that this is going to work and if not, well then I don’t deserve to be Emperor any longer. Let’s get going.” You say. You enter the portal and you have that old familiar feeling… A deadness all around you. The land is still dead, everything is still drab and gray. Same way it was when you last were here. The others with you all begin to complain about not feelings quite right. “It’ll pass if you keep your mind focused, the key is to not let this place cause you to spiral into a depression. Come on we need to get this portal into a good place…that large rock structure in the ground over there looks as good as any. I want the engineers to embed this portal in it, don’t want it just standing out here in the open wasteland. Follow me and DON’T stray too far. There are magic areas or what are called negative zones. You step into one and you could be an old man or even a corpse before you knew what was going on. I’ll be able to detect them, just follow me.” Your small march to the rock destination is uneventful other than some of your people still saying how this all feels so hopeless. Unfortunately most of it is from the engineers who are less accustomed to this sort of thing. As you wait for the portal to be embedded in the rock, you begin to ponder if you still shouldn’t wait awhile before marching an army into Mortos. It might be this place sapping your “enthusiasm” but the grim reality of how difficult this is really going to be is starting to set in the closer you get to your goals. It does occur to you that Nicodemus was powerful enough to destroy Casimir with barely any effort. > You wait Whether this place is a cause of disillusionment or not, the fact does remain that you still need to take this goal step by step. While it’s true that you want to get this on with quickly, you can’t afford to rush headlong into things. Speaking of which, you also can’t allow hopelessness to take over the mindset of your people so you begin to yell words of encouragement to everyone. You talk about tales of former glories. Not just your own, but those also containing people resembling your current crew. Meaning you remind the third gens of their glorious deeds during the war against Nakol and the hated Iznac of Nyttrus. You remind the Eyes of their important work of maintain order throughout the Empire and how they’ve often they’ve played vital roles in undermining the enemy. And while the engineers have never usually directly participated in battle, you remind them of their contributions to building the weapons and machines of war that have repeatedly brought the Empire’s enemies low. Even now the skill of the engineers may possibly be one of the most important roles in achieving this mission. Sometimes words really can go a long way to motivation even when in an accursed place like this. Everyone more or less snaps out of their low spirits and gets on with their tasks. When the job is done, several people are still eager to leave this place and are more than willing to enter the portal regardless of whether its going to work or not. You still go first however, and taking a deep breath you enter the portal, which should go back to your previous location in Evigrus… And suddenly you do indeed find yourself back at Elam workshop in New Dessel. “You’re back!” Elam exclaims as the rest of your people suddenly appear beside you as well. Everyone is certainly happier to be back too. “The next time I get the chance to go in, I think I need to re-adjust the location of where its going to send returning people. The last thing I want is a bunch of undead wandering into New Dessel.” You say. “Sounds like a plan. So…when are you invading?” Elam asks. “I’m holding off, or rather re-thinking the approach just like I did with Dokkrus. Honestly this recent visit has put a few things in perspective. Tell me, have we made any advancement in those gnome automatons?” “Automatons? Uh, not much since the end of the Nakol War. Nyttrus wasn’t the best environment for them and you wanted to keep a low profile in Dokkrus.” “Yeah, well as much as I’d like to keep a low profile in Mortos, I don’t think its going to be possible for long and more importantly automatons don’t suffer morale problems. I know I said you were going to be able to work on your biological experiments, but you might need to hold off still and start making not only improvements on the automatons, but making A LOT of them.” Elam seems a little disappointed that once again his own ideas are going to be placed on hold again, but he doesn’t argue since it would be pointless anyway. You decide that you’re going to have to condition your people to steel their minds against the oppressive atmosphere of Mortos by having regular scouting missions and guard duty for the “return portal” on Mortos. You’re fairly certain that most, if not all the third gen Eternals are going to be able to achieve this without too many problems. The Eyes are mostly made up of “normal” humans (and a few elves) though they’re certainly trained for difficult conditions. As for anyone else you need to send in, you’re going to have to limit their time in Mortos and have them supervised by someone that has already proven themselves to be resistant to the debilitating effects. All the while, the new automatons will act as good support troops in case conflict should arise and you have no doubt that it will. You need to find that book that Casimir desired so badly and that’s going to require tracking it down first. This all may take a while, which brings you to the idea that the fourth gen Eternals are going to be ready in a couple years. Assuming you haven’t achieved your goals by then, you’ll be able to start sending them in as well, but then why wait? They’re going to have to get resilient to Mortos sometime. You’re next visit is to Brenda who has been looking more than a little worn and tired nowadays. She still does her job like the loyal Empire soldier she’s always been, but underneath is a lot of heartache from another lost love. You imagine the only thing that keeps her going nowadays is her love of training the Eternals. She’s always seen them as her “children” of sorts. Though today she’d going to lose them a few years early… “Now? They’re still two years away from proper training.” Brenda remarks. “Well, there is a new war coming and they’re not only going to have to be prepared for it physically, but mentally as well. They’re going to start their first assignment in Mortos and they need to start getting accustomed to the horrors of the place because trust me, as good as you think you’ve prepared them, there is nothing that is going to prepare them for this experience short of going their personally.” You say. “But…(sigh) nevermind. Take who you need.” “Something wrong Brenda?” “Of course something is wrong, you’ve come to me yet again asking me to hand over something I hold dear.” Brenda says starting to get upset. “Brenda, I really don’t understand why the hell you’re getting upset with me, whether they go now or in two years either way, they’re going to leave here and you know this. I know you see them as your children, but as any parent knows, you’ve got to let them go eventually.” You say, but Brenda’s not really listening. “Everytime you see me, it’s just to ask me for something, not even to exchange pleasantries. Years ago it was Warrick, now it’s the fourth gens, I’m fully expecting you to come in here one day and ask me to go sacrifice myself for the greater good of the Empire. I mean why not right? I already heard how you’ve recently sacrificed all the remaining mages in the Empire, which means no more Eternal Project. Won’t be much need for me anymore.” “Now you’re being overly dramatic. I think you know that isn’t true.” You say. Brenda puts her head in her hands and then makes a rubbing motion at her temples. “Apologies. I’m just…tired. Tired of all this. I continual question why I’m even doing this anymore. I’m losing my passion for it and just counting down the days for death it seems. I know you’ll say that I should be doing this for the greater good of the Empire and all of that, but I just don’t believe it anymore. I mean obviously I’d never be a traitor and I’m too old to do anything else with my life, but quite honestly I’m not seeing much to look forward to in the future.” Given Brenda’s state of mind, you’d almost think she’d taken a trip to Mortos. You probably could come up with something inspiring, but this is Brenda and she’d see right through it, or even if she didn’t she wouldn’t be in the mood to here it, so you take a gamble and try a different approach. “Brenda, I’m going to tell you something that I’ve NEVER told anyone. I wasn’t even supposed to BE an Eternal. I’m a fucking mistake. A bureaucratic mistake that was covered up so the Emperor wouldn’t get pissed off. Oh and here’s another kicker. The Emperor? He died because of me.” This information certainly gets Brenda’s attention. “That’s right, I’m partially responsible for killing our old Emperor Casimir, but if its any consolation, he fucking deserved it because not only was he responsible for Alison’s death, but he was ALSO the one that had your husband assassinated.” Brenda’s face now turns to shock as you reveal secrets that you’ve kept hidden for so long. “I wasn’t even supposed to be here and I saw everything I believed in nearly destroyed with a single action and one of the people I grew up completely trusting to be the worst liar of all. Even that fucking svelk bitch didn’t lie to me like Casimir did. And yet like an idiot I still blindly trusted him all the way up until his spell failed and resulted in his death.” You pause for a moment to allow Brenda to ask any questions, but she has none. She still continues to remain in silent shock. “So if you think that the institution you were bred, raised and trained to loyally serve all your life has somehow resulted in you feeling underappreciated, well…that’s partially true. The Empire is unforgiving. It demands everything and YOU as an Eternal are one of its top servants, which means the most is expected of you. As Emperor everything is expected of me. Quite honestly, I get tired too. Even when I’m winning, there’s some sort of catch, or problem, or something that makes it less fun than it could be. Getting old doesn’t help. In fact if I wasn’t Emperor, I might be questioning my future as well. I’d probably march into Dokkrus or Mortos by myself and just fight and fight until I was eventually overwhelmed and killed, but that isn’t an option for me. I AM the Empire and if its going to survive, I can’t fucking die. It’s that simple. If there was any other way, I’d probably take it, because the journey that has lead me up to this point hasn’t been easy and it’s resulted in considerable losses.” You touch Brenda’s hand. “So all that being said, if I as a mistake who should’ve been killed at birth can shoulder the weight of the entire Empire, I believe YOU as a TRUE Eternal, can handle the sacrifices that are asked of you. Look, I won’t need all of the fourth gens right now…just give me your best leaders. They’ll be going in with the third gens anyway, so they won’t get too overwhelmed.” You say. “I’ll get a list and get back to you as soon as possible my Emperor.” Brenda answers. “Okay…and thank you Brenda for all your hard work for the Empire. I appreciate it.” “I live to serve. Long live the Empire.” With those last few words, you leave Brenda’s presence feeling more exhausted than you did when you visited Mortos. In fact you think you’d rather be back there. > Year 67 “Svelk? And you’re sure about this?” you ask. “Absolutely sure my Emperor. We fought off a band of them just the other day. There have also been other sightings of them roaming about the wastes of Mortos.” General Damon responds. You silently curse to yourself about this news. You knew the svelk were going to show up at the most inopportune time and sure enough they have. You didn’t expect them on Mortos though. Is this what Semra was planning? Is she trying to get the book herself? General Damon goes on to report that the fourth gens have been proving themselves very well in battle and showing good resistance against the negative effects of Mortos. “They’re a true credit to the name Eternal, my Emperor.” Damon remarks. “Hrm. Well I’d expect nothing less, especially after having the best trainer.” You say. “Mentor Brenda was indeed a very good teacher, I will always be grateful for her lessons when she taught me the rest of the third gens.” Damon says with a bit of pride. Cassandra speaks up next and tells you that the Eyes have still not yet located the temple you last remember the book being at, but they have located more than a few ghouls towns and mapped out where some negative zones are located. “Just glad we’ve got a relatively large population of Sul Monkeys to use as testing for such zones. It certainly cuts down on our own casualties.” Cassandra says and then starts to say something else before stopping. “What is it?” you ask. “Oh nothing my Emperor, it’s just a silly thought, nevermind.” “You were going to ask me if humans are related to Sul Monkeys somehow, weren’t you?” “How did you know?” Cassandra asks. “Given that I had to hear Semra and several other svelk refer to humans as monkeys on more than one occasion, I’ve heard the theories before.” “Oh. So is it true? I mean my parents said it was and most others of my kind believe it, but I always wondered and I figured you being the Emperor and all might know for certain…” You nearly laugh. “As much as I might like the idea of being all knowing, I have no idea nor do I really care. You’d probably be better off asking Elam, he knows more about all that stuff. Speaking of which I need to go talk with him about increasing automaton production.” As you’re about to make your way to do just that, you receive an urgent message. “Message from Kivan, Emperor. Very urgent.” The courier says. “Everything is urgent according to Kivan, let’s see…” you say and then begin to read. Then you feel a small sinking feeling when you see the news. It’s a short message, but one of great impact. “I have to go.” You say and leave New Dessel. Brenda has killed herself. Her body was found by an Eye who was going to pick her up for her re-assignment as a trainer for them. She was in her bathtub with slashed wrists. Her body has already been taken for preparation; Kivan decided it would be best to keep this incident relatively quiet and contact you immediately. When you arrive at the capital, Kivan is already outside waiting for you and trying to apologize for disturbing you. “Nevermind all that, where is she?” “The mortuary, of course. She’ll be ready for the hero’s funeral that…” “No. No, we aren’t going to have all that. She wouldn’t want it. We’ll do what we did with Warrick. A simple private funeral.” You say still trying to wrap your head around the fact that Brenda’s dead. “As you wish Emperor. Uh…this was also found on the site of her death. It hasn’t been opened and it was addressed to you.” Kivan hands you an envelope, which you take and read alone. My Emperor By the time you read this, you no doubt will know I have decided to move on from this world. I just can’t go on any longer. I’ve given all that I have and anymore that I do have left isn’t worth much anyway. I thank you for not taking all the fourth gen Eternals immediately and giving me those last two years with most of them, just as you gave me that one last year with Warrick. I did try to heed your words that you spoke to me a couple years ago and I almost even convinced myself, but ultimately they just weren’t enough. I hope that I haven’t disappointed you too much. I always tried not to; all of us did and still do. You told me that you were a “mistake” that wasn’t supposed to be an Eternal. I don’t believe that’s true. Whatever the nature of events that occurred; there is no denying that you aren’t a TRUE Eternal. You are the best of all of us and I have no doubt that you won’t accomplish your goals in achieving immortality to keep the Empire alive. I always had a feeling you’d outlive all of us, even when that svelk bitch tried to break your spirit on the first day of training. Personally I believe you’d outlive the Empire itself if you and it weren’t so intrinsically linked. I die knowing that not just the Empire will live on, but that the name Eternal also lives on. It was an honor to serve under you. I go now to join our fallen siblings. Brenda Not much moves you emotionally nowadays, but this has certainly done it. You aren’t disappointed by Brenda’s actions. You understand them from her point of view, you just wish you could’ve convinced her that her life did still have purpose. Brenda may not have been the traditional Eternal bringing glory on the battlefield, but her role was nevertheless an important one and like the loss of Warrick, Roldan, Kane and Decena, the Empire is just a little worse off because she’s no longer part of it. Brenda is eventually placed where the other great heroes of the Empire are entombed. Her deeds will forever be remembered and when the news of her death is made public to the Eternals she trained you remind them all that she would want them to not falter in their assignments nor spend time lingering over her passing. Life goes on and so do your goals. Getting back to the current problem at hand, the recent incursions of svelk are growing to become more frequent, still no real confirmation on what they’re doing there exactly. It hardly matters you suppose since whatever they’re there for it’s only to hinder you. Knowing Semra, part of her plan is to try to divide your attention. She wants you to attack Dokkrus so you’ll get tied up in a land war there and lose your edge in Mortos. Better that you should keep to your plan. If Semra wants to open up another front, she’s going to have to come to you and you’re more than ready for that. In fact you probably can do more to damage her if you start capturing some of her people. Granted svelk aren’t necessarily the most talkative captives, but if you can capture some of her mages to power up a second portal or even more, well that would at least allow you have more entryways in and out of Mortos. You also could hamper the svelk by destroying or capturing their own portals. Either way, your best decision is to keep your efforts focused on Mortos. You’ve still got a book to track down and you haven’t even begun to face the full power of the necromancers yet. In fact you’re starting to wonder when that shoe is going to drop. Year 70 Ignoring the stench and claws of your nearby zombie attackers, your Eternals make quick work of them while you put down the necromancer with a lightning bolt to his baldhead. He’s not coming back and the last of his minions fall uselessly into piles of putrid mush. If there’s one thing that’s sure to stop an undead army, it’s taking out the necromancer. The undead in general are vastly outclassed, not just in the face of your highly skilled soldiers, but also due your superior weaponry. Guns have advanced drastically since they were introduced to the battlefield and such power easily rips through the relatively weak and slow moving undead. Your automatons are the perfect foil against them. Really the only advantage the dead have over your own people is numbers and their annoying tendency to not stay down. But eliminate the necromancer and a shambling rotting horde goes down quicker than a house of cards. True, there is still enough negative energy here to keep some of the corpses still standing, but not enough to be a threat and certainly not as organized. Still, fighting the necromancers on their own home isn’t completely easy. If it were, you wouldn’t still be at war with them. The insane Mortos ghoul “citizens” actually give you more trouble besides the necromancers themselves. Something about the fact that they’re actually “living” makes them somehow worse than the undead. Their gibbering, howling and just general unpleasantness is still enough to make you shudder at the fact that you nearly once got caught by a pack of them on your first visit here. Of course the group that has been the biggest thorn in your side are the svelk, which as you’ve come to learn through captives is that they are actually allied with the necromancers. You have no idea how this ever came to be, something about a very old “agreement” which you never knew the svelk as a collective group could be so honorable about. Of course maybe its just Semra’s doing, but either way it doesn’t change the fact that they’ve been making things difficult for you. So far you’ve found none of their portals back to Dokkrus, so it appears that the svelk are sending their people on a one way trip. Of course if they’re allies, they might have an easier time of heading back through the necromancers’ magic. You haven’t found the book yet either despite actually locating the temple where it was last time. Figures it would be moved and you have an idea that it’s probably with Nicodemus who still hasn’t made an appearance or tried to contact you at all like you almost expected he would. A few “cities” have been scouted out on Mortos, but none of them seem like places of major importance. Given the utter ruin of every population center its hard to know exactly where it might be kept, so you’re going to just go through the tedious process of search every corner of this dismal island if you have to. “Emperor, Sightmaster Cassandra has just sent word that they’ve managed to capture another svelk mage.” A fourth gen comes up to report to you while you’re making double sure that the necromancer is dead. “Not surprised, Cass loves capturing svelk more than she loved intimidating humans.” You respond. You imagine Flevas would’ve enjoyed the chance as well if he were still alive. You sometimes wish the elf were still around, as he’d definitely be an asset right now, but then you wish a lot of people were still around. Even your top advisor Kivan died a few years ago of natural causes. That’s a rarity nowadays, at least for people that know you on a personal basis. His replacement is capable, but honestly you barely remember what his replacement’s name is since you’ve been spending most of your time in Mortos. Some probably believe you shouldn’t push yourself so hard, and they may very well have a point since you’re not in your twenties anymore and you’re in pain most of the time due to a combination of age, old wounds, and just general exertion. You can’t afford to stop though, not when you’re so close to your goal. The funny thing is, your time here in Mortos somewhat envigorates you. It’s probably just a mindset as it certainly can’t be physically. Still, you haven’t been involved in a real war since Nyttrus and getting back into battle again, even to your limited degree (mostly relying on magic) almost makes you feel “young” again. But then, you always were one to embrace the call of war and the personal glories of direct combat. Something about killing your enemies directly has always been a lot more satisfying. If you weren’t weakened and slowed by your age, you’d be tempted to go wading in with a sword in hand again. Only you could find a zest for “life” in a literal land of the dead. “Should I tell the messenger any new orders you may have for her?” the fourth gen asks. “No, just tell him the message has been received and approved of. Cassandra knows what to do with the dark elven bastard. She’s probably already hauling him away back to Evigrus. We should have enough of them soon.” You say. You’ve already been going through with your plan of using the svelk mages that you’ve managed to capture to “power up” new portals…bigger portals. Portals large enough that will allow a large new weapon of destruction to enter Mortos. These weapons are called the juggernauts; large heavily armored wheeled machines mounted with a cannon and repeater rifles on their sides. A crew apparently operates them from the inside. You have no idea how Elam came up with the concept, but you’re glad he did. He must be channeling his creative energy back into technological advances since he hasn’t had the time to work on his desire to his biological experiments. (Every once in awhile he still tells you that he’d like to restart a new Eternal Project) They might not be airships, but if you can get them rolling into Mortos, it would definitely give an advantage or at least even the playing field, because deep down you know you still haven’t seen the worst this place has to offer. At some point when the necromancers start getting desperate and realize that you aren’t going to just go away, they’re going to start bringing out their own “big guns” and you’re going to have to be ready for whatever those may be. > Year 75 The longer you spend in this place, the more you’re starting to like it and that is somewhat of a worrying thought to you, because it certainly isn’t a thought shared by anyone under your command. The last five years have probably been a nightmare to most. You’ve had to rotate your “normal” military personnel fairly regularly. Most of them can only handle the psychological impact of the powerful undead horrors the necromancers have unleashed a limited amount of times before they become more of a liability rather than an asset. You can only imagine how full the asylums are getting back home. For the most part you’ve regulated most of your military to defend Evigrus since the svelk in last two years have tried to open up a new front by transporting groups of elite via portals. They’ve been relatively unsuccessful and even less so when they attempted to do the same thing on Nyttrus where your kobolds easily overwhelmed them and used the land to their advantage. The svelk for the most part have seemingly pulled out of Mortos though altogether. You’ve had to pull back your Eyes as well. Well trained they may be, most of them are still human and with that they suffer the same failings of the mind. It’s just as well, since things are starting to get a little unstable back home. It’s probably a combination of several things (Some of which might be all the new asylum patients) so Cassandra and the Eyes are back to their primary job of maintaining order. Even the Eternals are starting to get weary of this war and most of them have aged several years than normal. Still, they are Eternals, and whether they are third or fourth generation, they stand by your side…even in death. Since your time here, you’ve learned how to use the necromancer’s magic against them. You’ve managed to unlock the secrets of necromancy. You’re no master at it, and it takes great concentration on your part, but its come in handy at times. The odd thing is you seem to only be able to maintain control over fallen Eternals. Attempting to raise others has only resulted in them eventually turning against you. You wonder if its because of the way Eternals are “made” or their conditioned loyaty from birth, or maybe a combination of both that seems to result in their dedication to you and resist the overpowering will of the necromancers. As far as your own concerns about your state of mind you’ve been trying to hold it together. You sometimes think you’re living on borrowed time and that if you don’t achieve your goal soon, this place will eventually consume you. Maybe that’s why you’re starting to like it here, because you feel so close to death and this place is basically a home to the dead. But you’re not dying here if you can help it; in fact the whole point to this is so you don’t die at all. You’ve already begun to unlock the talents of the necromantic arts by yourself. As soon as you get that book, you KNOW you’ll be able to master them completely and become immortal. And that goal is now closer than ever because you’ve finally tracked it down. You stand on a slightly elevated bit of land with what remains of your army of Eternals (both living and dead) and a few juggernauts filled with crews of half mad engineers. In the distance a ruined fortress lies before you. It is a non-descript thing and has no real defenses since its walls are mostly broken or gone completely, but THAT is where your goal lies. Inside it somewhere. And that is also where Nicodemus must be. You need to attack now, because you know it’ll be only a matter of time before reinforcements to help him show up. There are ALWAYS undead, no matter how many you put down in this place. “General Damon, today the Empire assures its mastery over death itself.” You say. “We are all prepared my Emperor, we just await your word.” You nod and for a moment there is complete silence. “ATTACK!” you shout and then in unison, you and your Eternals advance towards the target. You lead from the front, just like the old days… Your juggernauts rumble past the sides of your army and then that’s when you finally hear him in your head… “This will not end well for you, Eternal. Turn back from this path now, or suffer the same fate as your father Casimir.” Naturally you ignore this pitiful attempt at stopping you, so Nicodemus finally unleashes his defenses. Several undead rise up out of the ground. Not just the normal type either, these are the remains of some sort of long dead gigantic beasts that must’ve once roamed this island. They are accompanied by the appearance of several ghostly forms. Wraiths and spectres with their ability to drain life with a mere touch. To your far left and far right, hordes of skeletons and zombies come popping up out of the ground. Nicodemus probably believes that you’ve foolishly walked into an obvious trap, but honestly you knew something like this would happen. Your goal here is to get the book at all costs. “Death will not stop us today! But then some of you personally already know that! Destroy these abominations and take the fortress!” you shout. One of your juggernauts is already moving far ahead of your army and firing off its canon, blowing away bits of the gigantic bone horrors. Under the right circumstances you believe it would easily finish up the task, but it isn’t those undead giants that are the problem, the problem lies with the wraiths and spectres who easily glide through the machine and turning it into a steel coffin by killing the crew within. Your other juggernaut decides not to engage such ghostly creatures and instead turns off to fend off the approaching undead horde to your left. Hopefully it can destroy a good chunk of them. The undead giants still intact begin to lumber forward to meet your army while throwing large pieces of stone lying nearby. You cast a barrier in front of your army to protect against the projectiles and then throw your own projectiles in the form of fire at the giants while your army opens fire at their legs until the bone and rotting flesh that are allowing them to still stand is finally severed to a degree that the rest of their bulk goes crashing to the ground. Most of them splinter into pieces from the fall, but other continue to come at you, dragging themselves toward you with their arms. These are dispatched with a few well places magic bolts and more gunfire. With the giants mostly taken care of, you notice the spectres and wraiths steadily approaching. You immediately drop the barrier and redirect your energy to cast an enchantment over your soldiers’ hand weapons. Guns are useless against things like spectres and wraiths, but with some skill they can still be overcome by an enchanted melee weapon. “Prepare for melee and don’t let them touch you!” you shout. The unearthly howls and shrieks by the ghostly assaliants fill your ears as you blast them with your magic bolts. Your dead Eternals come in very handy here as they directly engage the spectres and wraiths and try to shield their living brethren (and you) from being touched. It isn’t without some casualties though and the problems increase when the horde on your right finally reaches you. Fortunately the left side seems to be preoccupied with overwhelming the juggernaut, which has now resorted to its inside mounted repeater rifles, and just trying to run them over though its wheels are starting to get jammed with body parts. “FIGHT THROUGH THESE ROTTING BAGS, WE’RE NEARLY THERE!” you shout just in time to see several necromancers appear on the battlements and begin doing some sort of chant. Suddenly there’s an aura of death around you, and it isn’t just becase you’re surrounded by zombies. You feel like you just walked into one of those negative zones, except this one is being forced on you. You’re old enough as it is, you can’t afford to age anymore. You have to do something now because you won’t even make it to the broken fortress gates at this point. You call your Eternals to surround you and you begin to cast a spell of your own. Your living Eternals are suffering the affects of the necromancers’ spell, but trying to cancel their spell through your willpower isn’t going to help because they’re too strong collectively. So you rely on your traditional blast everything in the nearby area and hope it kills everything. You bring down an inferno on not just your enemies, but you and your people as well. Though you attempt to protect some with a surrounding barrier, but you just don’t have the strength to protect everyone. Most of the horde to your right are incinerated as are most of your people. There isn’t even much left to “raise.” To your left, there is a similar sight with a pile of burned undead no longer in any condition to pose a threat, though the juggernaut sits still and completely blackened by the rain of fire. The crew inside has no doubt cooked to death. Most importantly are the effects you see in front of you. You no longer see the row of necromancers and no longer feel the effects of their spell. The ruined fortess is also partially on fire, but it being made of stone it isn’t doing much more than cracking the already damaged structure. You’re incredibly drained however. This battle has really taken it out of you and you’ve still got Nicodemus and who knows what else to deal with. General Damon still by your side helps you from falling down. The Eternals that are still alive are finishing up putting down the undead that managed to survive by being within your protective barrier when you cast it. “Come on, my Emperor. As you said, we’re almost there.” He says. There are other necromantic arts that you’ve learned besides raising your Eternals, though you haven’t really pondered using them since there wasn’t any need or you still didn’t really have mastery over them. One of these was emulating the life drain of some of the undead here. And suddenly you’re actually pondering draining your own Eternals of their lifeforce to sustain your own. The thought does not give you any pleasure to do so, but you just aren’t sure if you’re going to make it otherwise. > You drain the living If there were any other way, you’d do it, but there isn’t. You set out on this task with the mindset of achieving it at all costs. And if this task involves the death of ALL your troops, then so be it. They will have died in honor of the Empire and their Emperor. The irony isn’t lost on you that you’ll be essentially doing something similar to what Casimir was planning on doing with you. “Damon, your service to me will always be remembered.” You say and then tighten your grip on him as he continues to prop you up. Before he can reply, you begin the process. It happens so quick that he doesn’t even have time to struggle or cry out. His body falls to the ground a drained husk. You feel a little better, but far from full strength. Your remaining Eternals stand nearby in utter shock. You know several of them were always a little uncomfortable with the fact that you could raise the dead, all of them accept the idea that they are to die in battle for you…but this a little different. They aren’t sure what to think. “Eternals! My children! An Eternal’s life is dedicated utterly to the Empire and by proxy it’s Emperor! Do not hesitate before your Emperor! Your FATHER. In order for me to defeat my enemies, I need you! I need you all as I always have! I cannot do this alone and I willingly admit it for there is no shame in a father needing the help of his children! It is true your bodies will die today, but all of you will LIVE on through me. Are YOU not willing to fulfill your oaths to make the ultimate sacrifice for me? Are you not deserving of the name ETERNAL?” you shout. There is a slight silence after your speech and for a moment you believe you’re going to have to take what you need by force, but just as you foolishly did when Casimir asked it of you, all your remaining Eternals willing step forward and bow to you on one knee accepting their fate. “If it is your will my Emperor that we die to today so that you may achieve victory, then we accept our fates with dignity.” Blind loyalty, it’s a beautiful thing… Without another word you proceed to drain the life force of your Eternals. To their credit, most of them make a minimum of sound as they die. One by one they fall to the ground as husks. You on the other hand begin to feel a lot better in fact you believe you’ve actually turned back the clock a bit! You don’t have a mirror to look at your face, but your hands aren’t as wrinkled anymore and when you go to touch your face, you feel less wrinkles there as well. You don’t even feel all normal aches and pains you’ve gained through old age. (They’re still there though) While you’re marveling at this magic feat, you hear that voice in your head again… “You didn’t heed anything I tried to tell you, did you Eternal? If Casimir were still here, I’m sure he’d be proud that he molded a near perfect copy of himself. Enter then…let us get this over with so that you may learn how futile all your plans have been. It will be the black trap door to the far left once your enter the fortress. I think the fire from your little inferno rain has died down around it by now. Down the ladder and straight ahead to the large room. Can’t miss it.” Nicodemus says. The tone in Nicodemus’ voice is almost one of boredom. He either doesn’t believe you’ll be any serious threat against him or either that he’s just as eager to put an end to this conflict once and for all. You’re not going down there completely alone though. With a little effort, you raise a few of your recently drained Eternals back from the dead. As usual, they no longer retain any “personality” they just exist to follow your commands. Sort of how they were trained to do in life actually. While you’re doing all this, you can’t help but feel like you’re still being watched or there is another presence here and you don’t mean Nicodemus. You enter the ruined fortress, which still has a few minor fires burning, but nothing dangerous. You see the trapdoor where Nicodemus mentioned it and go a few more steps before stopping. “Semra…I know you’re here thanks to our little mind link.” You say looking up and around for her. Semra materializes between you and the trapdoor and your dead Eternals stand ready. “So let me guess, you’re here to distract me or waste my time while Nicodemus sneaks away to take the book elsewhere?” you ask. “Actually I’m here to stop you from taking it period since I’m the only one who seems to actually care about this world anymore.” “You care about the world? Since when?” “My dear Eternal, I care about the world when it’s about to be destroyed by a short sighted mistake that has delusions of grandeur and a serious case of megalomania.” “When you say mistake, do you mean me specifically or your actions that allowed me to live in the first place?” “Both I suppose. I know I should just try to kill you, but somehow the maternal instinct in me just makes it difficult sometimes…” Semra steps forward, but when she sees that you (and your Eternals) are not about to let her get any closer she backs away again. “Oh right, that’s why you’ve been sending svelk warbands to continually try to kill me.” You say. “Pfft. You know as well as I do, you were never in any real danger…well no danger you couldn’t handle anyway. If I really wanted to kill you, I would’ve made a better effort don’t you think?” “Not really. I know you Semra, and you like playing games. Perhaps you didn’t so call try hard enough because it would be more amusing to you to watch me struggle. So you did just enough to make things difficult, and figured I’d either give up or if your people got lucky, then great. If not, well there was always the entire island of Mortos doing a good enough job of trying to kill me.” Semra smiles a bit at your theory. “Well, I suppose you do know me a little better now that our minds are so closely linked. To be fair though, I never thought you’d give up. I knew you’d die first if it came down to it.” “Whatever, I’m tired of talking…” you say raising your hands to cast a spell. “Wait!” Semra says backing up towards the trapdoor and getting into a defensive position. “WHAT!?” “Just... Just hear me out okay?” “Hear you…Are you drunk or something?” you say in exasperation. “Look you can see into my mind that I have no trickery planned. This is just me here. I don’t even have any reinforcements.” Semra at this point relaxes her stance by opening her arms wide. She has completely let her guard down, physically and mentally. She’s telling the truth. There is no trickery and this isn’t a delaying tactic, Nicodemus is still waiting for you. You also sense a little concern within her. You have to admit that’s somewhat surprising. “You’ve got a few seconds. Better make them good.” You say. “Okay. Look, don’t do this. That book nearly destroyed the world before, it may or may not hold the secrets to immortality, but it also opens up a gate to the realm of the dead! You think Mortos is bad? Think about when that gate is opened up!” “Yes, yes, I’ve heard this horror story before. Nicodemus told me about it right after he killed Casimir. If I’d had any sense, I would’ve tried to take the book then and saved me all this trouble in the first place.” you answer. Semra shakes her head. “If you had any sense, you’d turn back right now.” “Hm. I’ll be sure to have that written on your tombstone, unless you’re planning on running off and letting Nicodemus shoulder the responsibility of trying to kill me.” “Nicodemus doesn’t even give a shit anymore what you do. I’m sure he’s contacted you. Haven’t you detected a tone of apathy in his voice?” You chuckle. “Are you serious? You’re saying Nicodemus has no intention of stopping me?” “No, he doesn’t. At least not anymore. He claims he’s tired of life, so he’s effectively given up.” “I don’t believe it.” “Believe that or don’t, but one thing you better believe is that book is bad for you, me, and everyone on this fucking world. It already turned Mortos into a permanent graveyard and it eventually resulted in the destruction of my own Empire because we svelk had to make a pact with the infernal realm just to combat the utter annihilation that would’ve consumed everyone. We even made a deal with the necromancers that should this problem ever get this bad again, we would assist to prevent it if possible. Never thought we’d have to actually honor it though just because we didn’t think anyone get close enough and be foolish enough to try again.” Semra says. “Yeah…the destruction of your Empire doesn’t sound like a bad thing. And it wasn’t the book that caused that; it was your own government’s idiocy with dealing with demons in the first place. So once again, you lot were your own worst enemy.” You say. Semra rubs her head in an attempt to continue to try to “get through” to you. “Look, you won. I mean think about it, you’ve unlocked some of the secrets of necromancy and even mastered some of its spells. I just saw you drain the lives of these now dead Eternals standing near you. You drained their lives and made yourself even a little younger. Think about that for a moment. You’ve already ACHIEVED immortality. I mean yes, it isn’t perfect and you’re going to need an ongoing supply of people to sustain you, but you’re the ruler of the Empire. How hard is it going to be to just shuffle in a bunch of worthless peasants, criminals, sveld, or whoever every so often to be feasted on like cattle?” “I’m not a wendigo or ghoul you know.” You say establishing the fact that you are a lot of things, but cannibal isn’t one of them. “I don’t mean literally of course, but the premise is the same.” You continue to listen while also continuing to read Semra’s mind. You still sense no lying and nothing but sincerity. Unless she’s found a way to lie so convincingly that she herself believes everything…which you wouldn’t put past her. She does have somewhat of a point about draining the life force of people being able to sustain you theoretically indefinitely. “We of course are never going to have a relationship in the way I’d desire us to. We aren’t even going to be friends. And one day you and I are going to finally meet on the battlefield and one of us is going to die, but I tell you…no I BEG you…DO NOT do this thing. This path will lead to all of our ruin and nobody will win save for death itself.” Semra looks on at you expecting your response. > You turn back Maybe it’s due to sensing no deception and hearing Semra actually beg you for something that does it, but she actually manages to convince you. “Okay.” You reply. “…Really?” Semra says with a little shock. “You’ve never lied to me Semra. You’ve always had an ulterior motive, but you’ve never lied. I can’t even sense a hidden motive either and given your genuine concern I have to believe that there must be something to what you’re saying.” “Okay…so where does that leave us?” “Same as always. However since I know if I engage you in combat right now you’ll just run away as soon as you start losing, so I suggest we leave this place and just chalk this up as a sign of things to come on Dokkrus.” “I’ll be waiting.” Semra says. The pair of you linger a few seconds looking at each other before you back away releasing control of your dead Eternals and allowing them to fall to the ground. As you leave the fortress, you half expect a comment from Nicodemus in your head again, but you hear nothing though perhaps he knows you’re planning on leaving because you aren’t attacked by anything on your long trek back to safe territory. When you arrive at “Home camp” you’re immediately seen to by the Eternal detachment that constantly guard the portals back home. “Emperor are you all right?” one of the Eternals asks. “I’m fine. Start telling people to pull out of here, I got what I came for.” You say and return to Evigrus where the aura is a lot livelier and a lot less oppressive. You have a kind of immortality now. It isn’t perfect, but you believe that it should work for your purposes. Having solved the problem of dying via old age, you decide to set up your next major plan. Invading Dokkrus. Year 80 “So you’re sure Semra is in this fortress you speak of?” you ask Cassandra. “Yes Emperor. We’ve seen her going into and out of the place several times now.” “Good, hopefully we can get her before this time before she runs off again. Let’s try to capture more svelk this time as well, I think I’ll need a bit of a recharge after this is over. The life force of the svelk is so… invigorating.” “If you say so my Emperor.” Cassandra answers shuffling a bit nervously. Since you’ve been here on Dokkrus you’ve been killing two harpies with one stone by draining svelk to sustain yourself. They’re a great target for your purposes. They’re your enemy for one, but due to their long life spans they sustain you a lot longer than a shorter lived race like humans for example. Still even with this advantage, as the years have gone on you’ve noticed a need to drain more svelk with more frequency just to sustain yourself. It is probably this past time that has Cassandra a bit nervous given that she’s an elf herself. It is a bit of a slight concern for yourself as well because you didn’t think this was going to be quite the problem it currently is becoming. In any event, you’re fine for now and even after you go kill Semra there are more than enough svelk to round up, a whole continent full of them. Maybe you could even do something similar to them like what Casimir did with the gnomes. Wasting no more time, you order an assault upon the fortress where Semra was last located. The siege goes fairly quickly, Semra must be running out of powerful svelk mages to give you a challenge anymore. When you get inside the fortress, you attempt to follow your inherent sense of where she might be, eventually you get to her private chambers where you’re beginning to sense her very strongly. Meanwhile a few of your Eternals catch up to you saying that they and the rest have been tearing the place up looking for Semra but say she’s nowhere to be found. “No…she’s here. I can sense her. In fact she’s so close I can almost touch her. Go search again, I’ll stay here and have a look around.” You say to your Eternals who immediately follow your commands and leave. Closing the door behind you make your next move. “Okay Semra, you can show yourself now. Come on now I know you’re here. No need to be shy, it’s just me and you. We won’t be disturbed and it won’t take long.” You say. At that moment Semra does indeed show herself and she materializes in front of you sitting on her bed. “I’m guessing you don’t mean sex.” She says. “Oh no, the only penetration you’re going to feel today is this.” You say and brandish the mithril dagger. “My gift to you. I’m still surprised you have it.” Semra remarks. “I made a promise I was going to one day stick this inside you and I aim to keep it.” You say and start approaching her. Semra still makes no attempt at aggression you can’t even detect any such thoughts in her head. In fact from what you can tell from her body language and her mind she’s resigned herself into giving herself up to you. “I thought you’d put up more of a fight than this.” You remark now in front of her. “What for? At this point your power has grown to be greater than mine. I can’t beat you. You’ve already destroyed a portion of Dokkrus and made it hard enough for me to ever build up another force to oppose you again. And as you might have been able to tell I’m tired of running. You’ll just hunt me down again and since our minds have been linked its much easier for you now.” At this point Semra stands up from the bed. “So kill me now and fulfill all your desires since the day I first tormented you in class. Carry out all the revenge you’ve ever wanted due to my action…I only have one request.” “Oh?” “You told me that you’d give me one last kiss as you stuck the knife in. That’s my last wish.” Same old Semra. “Very well, as you wish then…Mistress.” You and Semra look at each for a moment in silence perhaps even wondering if things had been different…just maybe you two would have been an item in some strange way. Your lips press against Semra’s own and your dagger plunges into her stomach. As she stifles calling out in pain, you begin draining her life force. She manages to put both arms around you at this point. With the pair of you still embraced in a death kiss and your knife still being twisted inside her, you begin to feel her life force reinvigorating you. And then you don’t and then you begin to feel the exact opposite… Semra is starting to drain you! You attempt to pull away, but Semra squeezes on to you tighter and jumps up to wrap her legs around your waist as well. You don’t know how this is possible, you detected no malicious intent and Semra never had this sort of ability, she didn’t having any necromantic powers. Or at least she didn’t when you last met her. “Oh my dear sweet trusting Eternal, there were a few tricks that Nicodemus taught me before I took my own leave of Mortos. I have to admit though neither one of us expected you to listen to me back then. Even with extensively training myself to block you out of my deepest thoughts despite our link, I still didn’t think you’d listen to me having always been mistrustful of me in the past. Funny that the one time that you believed me to be completely truthful is the one time you should’ve trusted your suspicious nature.” You attempt to slam Semra into a wall and furniture, but it doesn’t get her off of you. You try to twist the dagger deeper inside her, but she bears the pain. You even try to punch her in the head, but by that time your punches aren’t enough to stop her. Eventually you lose enough energy that you fall to the floor with Semra still on top of you. Feeling very dizzy you see Semra pull the dagger out of her stomach. “Ah shit, (pant) that’s going to require some healing…glad I just recharged. Still could use a bit more though…shhhhh just let this happen lover.” You weakly try to get her off of you, but Semra easily pins both of your hands down on the floor. Semra then moves her body downward on to yours. Face to face, you lay helplessly before her. “Remember this.” She says and kisses you one last time and soon you are utterly drained to a husk and Semra has once again escaped long before anyone arrives to help you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If there were any other way, you’d do it, but there isn’t. You set out on this task with the mindset of achieving it at all costs. And if this task involves the death of ALL your troops, then so be it. They will have died in honor of the Empire and their Emperor. The irony isn’t lost on you that you’ll be essentially doing something similar to what Casimir was planning on doing with you. “Damon, your service to me will always be remembered.” You say and then tighten your grip on him as he continues to prop you up. Before he can reply, you begin the process. It happens so quick that he doesn’t even have time to struggle or cry out. His body falls to the ground a drained husk. You feel a little better, but far from full strength. Your remaining Eternals stand nearby in utter shock. You know several of them were always a little uncomfortable with the fact that you could raise the dead, all of them accept the idea that they are to die in battle for you…but this a little different. They aren’t sure what to think. “Eternals! My children! An Eternal’s life is dedicated utterly to the Empire and by proxy it’s Emperor! Do not hesitate before your Emperor! Your FATHER. In order for me to defeat my enemies, I need you! I need you all as I always have! I cannot do this alone and I willingly admit it for there is no shame in a father needing the help of his children! It is true your bodies will die today, but all of you will LIVE on through me. Are YOU not willing to fulfill your oaths to make the ultimate sacrifice for me? Are you not deserving of the name ETERNAL?” you shout. There is a slight silence after your speech and for a moment you believe you’re going to have to take what you need by force, but just as you foolishly did when Casimir asked it of you, all your remaining Eternals willing step forward and bow to you on one knee accepting their fate. “If it is your will my Emperor that we die to today so that you may achieve victory, then we accept our fates with dignity.” Blind loyalty, it’s a beautiful thing… Without another word you proceed to drain the life force of your Eternals. To their credit, most of them make a minimum of sound as they die. One by one they fall to the ground as husks. You on the other hand begin to feel a lot better in fact you believe you’ve actually turned back the clock a bit! You don’t have a mirror to look at your face, but your hands aren’t as wrinkled anymore and when you go to touch your face, you feel less wrinkles there as well. You don’t even feel all normal aches and pains you’ve gained through old age. (They’re still there though) While you’re marveling at this magic feat, you hear that voice in your head again… “You didn’t heed anything I tried to tell you, did you Eternal? If Casimir were still here, I’m sure he’d be proud that he molded a near perfect copy of himself. Enter then…let us get this over with so that you may learn how futile all your plans have been. It will be the black trap door to the far left once your enter the fortress. I think the fire from your little inferno rain has died down around it by now. Down the ladder and straight ahead to the large room. Can’t miss it.” Nicodemus says. The tone in Nicodemus’ voice is almost one of boredom. He either doesn’t believe you’ll be any serious threat against him or either that he’s just as eager to put an end to this conflict once and for all. You’re not going down there completely alone though. With a little effort, you raise a few of your recently drained Eternals back from the dead. As usual, they no longer retain any “personality” they just exist to follow your commands. Sort of how they were trained to do in life actually. While you’re doing all this, you can’t help but feel like you’re still being watched or there is another presence here and you don’t mean Nicodemus. You enter the ruined fortress, which still has a few minor fires burning, but nothing dangerous. You see the trapdoor where Nicodemus mentioned it and go a few more steps before stopping. “Semra…I know you’re here thanks to our little mind link.” You say looking up and around for her. Semra materializes between you and the trapdoor and your dead Eternals stand ready. “So let me guess, you’re here to distract me or waste my time while Nicodemus sneaks away to take the book elsewhere?” you ask. “Actually I’m here to stop you from taking it period since I’m the only one who seems to actually care about this world anymore.” “You care about the world? Since when?” “My dear Eternal, I care about the world when it’s about to be destroyed by a short sighted mistake that has delusions of grandeur and a serious case of megalomania.” “When you say mistake, do you mean me specifically or your actions that allowed me to live in the first place?” “Both I suppose. I know I should just try to kill you, but somehow the maternal instinct in me just makes it difficult sometimes…” Semra steps forward, but when she sees that you (and your Eternals) are not about to let her get any closer she backs away again. “Oh right, that’s why you’ve been sending svelk warbands to continually try to kill me.” You say. “Pfft. You know as well as I do, you were never in any real danger…well no danger you couldn’t handle anyway. If I really wanted to kill you, I would’ve made a better effort don’t you think?” “Not really. I know you Semra, and you like playing games. Perhaps you didn’t so call try hard enough because it would be more amusing to you to watch me struggle. So you did just enough to make things difficult, and figured I’d either give up or if your people got lucky, then great. If not, well there was always the entire island of Mortos doing a good enough job of trying to kill me.” Semra smiles a bit at your theory. “Well, I suppose you do know me a little better now that our minds are so closely linked. To be fair though, I never thought you’d give up. I knew you’d die first if it came down to it.” “Whatever, I’m tired of talking…” you say raising your hands to cast a spell. “Wait!” Semra says backing up towards the trapdoor and getting into a defensive position. “WHAT!?” “Just... Just hear me out okay?” “Hear you…Are you drunk or something?” you say in exasperation. “Look you can see into my mind that I have no trickery planned. This is just me here. I don’t even have any reinforcements.” Semra at this point relaxes her stance by opening her arms wide. She has completely let her guard down, physically and mentally. She’s telling the truth. There is no trickery and this isn’t a delaying tactic, Nicodemus is still waiting for you. You also sense a little concern within her. You have to admit that’s somewhat surprising. “You’ve got a few seconds. Better make them good.” You say. “Okay. Look, don’t do this. That book nearly destroyed the world before, it may or may not hold the secrets to immortality, but it also opens up a gate to the realm of the dead! You think Mortos is bad? Think about when that gate is opened up!” “Yes, yes, I’ve heard this horror story before. Nicodemus told me about it right after he killed Casimir. If I’d had any sense, I would’ve tried to take the book then and saved me all this trouble in the first place.” you answer. Semra shakes her head. “If you had any sense, you’d turn back right now.” “Hm. I’ll be sure to have that written on your tombstone, unless you’re planning on running off and letting Nicodemus shoulder the responsibility of trying to kill me.” “Nicodemus doesn’t even give a shit anymore what you do. I’m sure he’s contacted you. Haven’t you detected a tone of apathy in his voice?” You chuckle. “Are you serious? You’re saying Nicodemus has no intention of stopping me?” “No, he doesn’t. At least not anymore. He claims he’s tired of life, so he’s effectively given up.” “I don’t believe it.” “Believe that or don’t, but one thing you better believe is that book is bad for you, me, and everyone on this fucking world. It already turned Mortos into a permanent graveyard and it eventually resulted in the destruction of my own Empire because we svelk had to make a pact with the infernal realm just to combat the utter annihilation that would’ve consumed everyone. We even made a deal with the necromancers that should this problem ever get this bad again, we would assist to prevent it if possible. Never thought we’d have to actually honor it though just because we didn’t think anyone get close enough and be foolish enough to try again.” Semra says. “Yeah…the destruction of your Empire doesn’t sound like a bad thing. And it wasn’t the book that caused that; it was your own government’s idiocy with dealing with demons in the first place. So once again, you lot were your own worst enemy.” You say. Semra rubs her head in an attempt to continue to try to “get through” to you. “Look, you won. I mean think about it, you’ve unlocked some of the secrets of necromancy and even mastered some of its spells. I just saw you drain the lives of these now dead Eternals standing near you. You drained their lives and made yourself even a little younger. Think about that for a moment. You’ve already ACHIEVED immortality. I mean yes, it isn’t perfect and you’re going to need an ongoing supply of people to sustain you, but you’re the ruler of the Empire. How hard is it going to be to just shuffle in a bunch of worthless peasants, criminals, sveld, or whoever every so often to be feasted on like cattle?” “I’m not a wendigo or ghoul you know.” You say establishing the fact that you are a lot of things, but cannibal isn’t one of them. “I don’t mean literally of course, but the premise is the same.” You continue to listen while also continuing to read Semra’s mind. You still sense no lying and nothing but sincerity. Unless she’s found a way to lie so convincingly that she herself believes everything…which you wouldn’t put past her. She does have somewhat of a point about draining the life force of people being able to sustain you theoretically indefinitely. “We of course are never going to have a relationship in the way I’d desire us to. We aren’t even going to be friends. And one day you and I are going to finally meet on the battlefield and one of us is going to die, but I tell you…no I BEG you…DO NOT do this thing. This path will lead to all of our ruin and nobody will win save for death itself.” Semra looks on at you expecting your response. > You press forward Semra’s words aren’t entirely lost on you. However, she either has overlooked one thing or again, managed to lie so convincingly that she’s allowed her mind to believe it to be the truth. “Nice idea Semra, very nice idea. I think perhaps even you believe it. There’s just one problem with it. I lose most of my necromantic powers as soon as I leave Mortos. The whole reason for Casimir’s return here was because the necromantic energy weakened the longer he stayed away from Mortos. He was a resident here and master necromancer and he only used his own powers sparingly in order to keep himself alive for so long.” You say. Semra’s expression changes to one of disappointed as you continue to speak. “I on the other hand have only just begun to dabble in the necromantic arts and I’m no native to this land. Currently the necromantic energy is sustaining me, but I know I’m going to start aging again perhaps even more rapidly now that I’ve abused its power to keep myself alive. Even if I DO manage to sustain myself through necromancy, it’s a habit of diminishing returns. Nicodemus told me that and Casimir certainly knew it. That’s why he wanted that book. It was the answer to everything.” Realizing how this is going to end, Semra prepares to defend herself. “If I turn back now, I’ll live maybe a few decades longer perhaps? Maybe even a hundred after draining a few thousand people maybe? And while I have no qualms about such a thing, it’s not really going to solve my problem now is it? If anything it might cause rebellions and eventually I’ll still weaken and die to the ravages of time. So why turn back now? What have I got to lose?” You begin to cast a spell and Semra does likewise. Your undead Eternals move forward towards her. “I’ve already got one foot in the grave.” You unleash a blast of frost towards Semra, who blocks with a magical barrier. Your undead eternals are undeterred by the frost and move within range to attack. She has to temporary drop the barrier in order to defend herself effectively as they attempt to surround her. Somehow despite suffering a semi-hit from your frost spell, she dodges and weaves enough to avoid your Eternal’s attacks. She cuts down one of your Eternals and tries to lob a piece of heavy stone at you via telekinesis, but to her surprise you manage to stop it in mid air where upon it falls uselessly to the ground. “There are so many things I’ve learned since our minds have grown closer…” you say and then produce a poisonous cloud at her. It catches her just enough to make her gag and cough before jumping and climbing to the top of the broken wall behind her. “Open that trapdoor!” you command one of your Eternals to do while you try to blast Semra with fireballs as she jumps from crumbling piece of block to crumbling piece of block. She returns fire with a lightning bolt, but you quickly put up a barrier and focus your energy to that the barrier actually repells the bolt back. It misses her, but in her effort to dodge, she loses her balance and falls backwards off the piece of wall she was standing on. She’s most likely still alive, but you’re not wasting any more time with her. Seeing that the gas cloud has disapated, you rush down into the now open trapdoor and order your Eternals to follow. When you get to the bottom, you tell them to shut it and to wait and kill anything that tries to enter. You run down the long dark corridor, ignoring the several alcoves to your left and right. You half expect something to attack you like a ghoul, but nothing does and eventually you reach the large room that Nicodemus told you about. The room is dimly lit and furnished in a similar style that Casimir had his room furnished. You even see smaller versions of the two large skeleton warrior statues that still exist outside his old chambers. It’s actually fairly nice looking compared to well…almost anything in Mortos. To your left you see Nicodemus sitting in a very luxurious looking chair. The man looks older, though he was old looking when you first met him, but this “old” definitely looks like tired accompanies the status. In fact he almost looks like he’s asleep, he stirs awake when you walk acouple more steps in the room. “Oh, it’s you. Apologies. I was just resting my eyes. Hrm. Took you long enough to get here, I imagine Semra tried to stop you. I told her not to bother and just let the inevitable happen. I mean she’s a svelk, she’s lived and enjoyed more lifetimes than most beings have anyway. Sometimes you just have to know when to let go.” Nicodemus says. “From what she told me, that’s what you’ve decided to do.” You reply. “Yes, I imagine I have. It surprised me as well having kept such a close protection of this book for centuries. Granted most of those were from other necromancers similar to Casimir. You’re the first outsider to attempt it. You’re also the only one who is about to succeed as well. I guess congratulations is in order.” “And I’m expected to believe you just changed your mind? That you’re just going to let me take the book? You just had a small army try to stop me.” “Eh, not really my idea. I mean I wasn’t opposed to it, but my fellow necromancers thought that they’d make the effort to stop you. They all were a little younger than me, so I can’t blame their dedication to protecting the book. As for me, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m tired and no longer care. I’d lecture you again, but I did that the first time you visited and given your determination, there is nothing I can say now that would change your mind. I could kill you with little effort, but I’m done with trying to stop you and your type from taking it. I think by the time you started rolling in those large steel machines of yours that was the point where I began to think what’s the use? This man isn’t going to stop short of his own personal death and even then someone like him will try again eventually. If this is the type of world where nobody can ever learn the simplest of lessons then maybe its better off dead.” Nicodemus shifts a bit in his chair and relaxes a bit more. Nearby you see the infamous book on a table near him. You approach cautiously forward. “Yes, there it is. Take it. Kill me first if it makes you feel any safer, I won’t put up any resistance.” You hesistate at Nicodemus’ willingness to let you have the book. It has to be a trick. “Well what are you waiting for Eternal? Why do you hesitate? Kill me, take the book and leave! That’s the goal right? Well do it!” Nicodemus demands with a raised voice. Seeing not much else to do, you oblige him. You blast Nicodemus with a lightning bolt to his head exploding it like a ripe melon. His headless body remains slumped in its seat motionless. You briskly walk over to the table and grab the book. You half expect something horrible to befall you, but nothing happens. You glance through the book and it appears to be the same one that Casimir had. You definitely feel a faint surge of power just by handling it. With nothing else to do, you leave this room and head back the way you came. You find that your Eternals still waiting for you, you’re somewhat surprised that Semra didn’t make another attempt to stop you. Though that thought soon goes away when one of your Eternals pops up from the trapdoor and from the bottom of the ladder you see him blasted to pieces by a magic bolt. Shielding yourself from the falling pieces of your undead soldier you rapidly ascend the ladder where you cast a barrier to block Semra’s attempts at sniping you. Blocking her magic, you scramble to a better location so you can allow the rest of you Eternals to climb up to help you. “You were right Semra, Nicodemus didn’t try to stop me. This seems like destiny to me. Like I was meant to have this book! Why do you hate destiny?” you shout in a taunting fashion. Semra makes no response back; she just continues to try to kill you. Looks like she’s gotten over her whole “maternal” feeling towards you. You return the favor and the pair of you must combat each other for several minutes running and dodging and flinging spells at one another. Honestly you’d try to end your feud with her right then and there, but during the battle you notice another army approaching in the distance. Not one of your own either, it’s another undead horde and you can’t fight Semra AND an entire undead army practically all by yourself. So you decide that escape is the order of the day and Semra’s death will have to be another. After all you have your prize, better you should leave with it now. You collapse a small tower within the fortress with a well placed lightning bolt. Semra happens to be standing nearby it fortunately causing her to focus on saving her own life. In the meantime you order your Eternals to stay behind and find her to finish her off. You know that they will fail, but it will give you time to make a hasty retreat from the advancing undead horde. It is a long journey back to “safe” territory. You try to keep a low profile most of the way, though no matter how well you try to avoid attention, inevitably a pack of hungry gibbering ghouls always seems to find you. Fortunately they’re in manageable numbers and you manage to make it back without major problems. When you arrive at “Home camp” you’re immediately seen to by the Eternal detachment that constantly guard the portals back home. They make a fuss, but you assure them that you’re fine and that you just need to get back home right now. Without too many more words, you enter the portal back home and you’re suddenly back in Evigrus where the aura is much more lively and a lot less oppressive. And with you now is the book that Casimir wanted so badly and several others tried to prevent you from having. The same book that you have clutched under your arm. The key to immortality. You begin to glance through it and while you don’t understand all of it, you feel the power contained within. It’s almost as if the book wants you to master it. A challenge you will gladly undertake. > Year 80 “So you’re really going to do it?” Cassandra asks while lying in bed next to you. “That was sort of the point of going to Mortos in the first place.” You answer. “True I suppose. I really hated it there. I mean killing and capturing svelk was about the only thing that was remotely enjoyable. I was pretty glad you eventually sent all the Eyes back home.” You get up out of bed to get your day started. “Ah, shit.” You say feeling an ache in your back. “Are you alright? I thought you…um…replenished yourself recently.” “If by replenished you mean drained the lives of twenty of my citizens last month then yes I did, but as I’ve told you before, it doesn’t last long and it wears out quicker as the years have gone on. Not to mention humans don’t exactly have the most sustaining life forces to begin with so it takes more of them just to turn back the clock a few decades.” As you look in the mirror at yourself trying to determine if you need to “recharge” today, Cassandra doesn’t pursue that line of questioning anymore. She knows that elves being long-lived creatures would probably require less effort on your part and sustain you longer. In fact that’s probably why she started to show “attraction” towards you a few years ago. She’d never admit it, but she fears that you’ll suddenly start rounding up elves and draining them instead. While it definitely had occurred to you to do so, you tended to limit it to just a few since they still don’t have the largest of populations and you had no idea how long you’d have to “ration out” the lives of your citizens before you could unlock all the secrets of the book. Cassandra probably believes she’s “swaying” you through sex though. Gnomes probably REALLY feared being rounded up, but fortunately for them you still respect their engineering skills and you don’t have a gnome fetish like Casimir did. Besides, ever since your human engineer losses in Mortos and Elam dying last year (Another rarity via natural causes), you need all the skilled engineers you can get. As for your “relationship” with Cassandra you have no love for her, a mild fondness, a respect for her abilities and her usefulness, but nothing more. You’re fairly certain Cassandra has no true love for you either. Respect and loyalty sure, a desire to place herself in a higher and “safer” position, most definitely, but she does not love you. Part of you has wondered if you reciprocated her advances in the first place was because she was an elf. Besides the natural attractiveness common to their race, she very faintly reminds you of Semra. Not in personality or even looks, but she’s an elf and it’s close enough. “I am seriously fucked up.” You mumble to yourself as you think about that again. “What did you say?” Cassandra asks. “Nothing, just thinking about something. You better get dressed, I’m going to need you and the Eyes on full alert for this thing.” You say which stirs Cassandra to get up and follow your lead in getting dressed. “Emperor, the…subjects are currently all being held at the ritual pyramid in the Usksha Desert, all ten thousand of them are still alive and restrained. I know I’ve told you this before, but Empire citizens’ have not been calm about this. Most don’t even know exactly what you’re planning, but they’re already coming up with stories and most of which are not too far off from the truth. The Eyes have been working overtime in keeping the peace, but I fear that a rebellion of some sort will be inevitable. Most likely in Rask and Nakol province, perhaps even in the Tral province.” “The citizens’ would like it even less if I continued to just drain random people at a greater rate eventually exceeding ten thousand. This ritual is going to prevent having to do that anymore. After it’s done, we can deal with the civil unrest and in time Dokkrus as well.” Cassandra smiles a bit when she hears that, you know she’s probably been eager to go kill more svelk again. “I always meant to ask, but why is this to be performed in Usksha?” Cassandra says. “No major settlements nearby and it isn’t like the usksha nomads are a problem anymore. Haven’t even had a sandworm pop up in decades. I thought about the plains of Tor, since there was nice flat land there to build the pyramid, but the Usksha desert works just as well. Besides, this is only going to be necessary once. No need to have the pyramid any more afterwards and it’ll be cheaper to just let the sands consume everything rather than having to tear it down and having crews to dispose of all the bodies.” “Couldn’t you just animate them to walk into the ocean or something?” “Hah, I’m sure a dead march to the ocean is just what the already agitated citizens’ would want to see.” You chuckle. “No, this is a better way. To be honest raising the dead takes a great deal of willpower and I find it to be a waste of the time and energy. I mean I did it to a limited degree in Mortos with the fallen Eternals because it bolstered the ranks and using the dead negated some of the advantages the necromancers had. Personally though I’d rather just cast a rain of fire down or chain lightning to directly harm my enemies. I don’t need unreliable rotting corpses to do my work.” You say. Cassandra nods at your answer and the pair of you are off to the Usksha Desert. Even before your carriage reaches the desert the black pyramid is visible from the Nalin border. The closer you get the more it looms ominously. There are grim deeds going to be performed this day and night and well…until the ritual is complete. The necromancers of Mortos didn’t need as many sacrifices when they attempted this ritual since there were a lot more of them to perform it and support each other’s magical energy. They were also more skilled. You are just one man that has tried to shove as much necromantic knowledge into your head in just a few years. You sometimes wonder if this is indeed a fool’s errand. But you’ve gone over the rites, you’ve gone over the symbols, the steps, made allowances for your unique situation, and of course had a big ass pyramid built just to accomplish all this. You don’t think you could be any more ready. When you arrive at the ritual pyramid, several Eternals stand ready for your commands. There are so few of them left now and they’re all fourth gens. It wasn’t but a decade ago that together with the third gens, Eternals were nearly two thousand strong. When this is all over, you really need to get that project back on track again. Too bad Elam isn’t still around to carry out some of his theories, but maybe he left some notes in that now abandoned workshop of his. “The sacrifices are inside the pyramid, my Emperor. All we await is you to take your place and begin.” An Eternal says when you exit the carriage. “Very good, we will begin soon.” You reply as you shield your eyes to look up at the pyramid which does look pretty impressive this close up.” Cassandra begins to leave the carriage, but you stop her from doing so. “Cassandra, why don’t you head back. I don’t think you’re going to want to be here for this. Not because I don’t think you can’t handle it, but because it’s going to take awhile and I’d rather have you keeping a check on the potential civil unrest situation you’ve been concerned about. I mean other than my Eternals here, you’re about the only person I can truly trust and rely on anymore.” “Very well, and thank you my Emperor.” Cassandra says and kisses you before getting back inside the carriage. With Cassandra on her way back, you begin to make the long climb up the pyramid feeling the aches the entire time. You’ll be glad to put an end to that soon. When you finally get to the top, you take a short breather and accept the water that a nearby Eternal hands you. “Shit, that sun is a killer. Maybe I should’ve had this built on the Tor plains after all. (Whew) All right then let’s get on with this. Bring out the first sacrifice.” You say and a couple of your Eternals nod and go through the entryway to carry out your orders. While you wait you place the ritual book on a nearby stone podium and examine the sacrificial altar and the symbols you had etched into it. The altar itself was designed to be sturdy, but also has a slight elegance to it. The craftsman really put some artistic touches to it. You aren’t normally one to admire something like that, but in this case you do. As the screams of your first sacrifice get closer you draw out your mithril dagger. Ah this dagger has certainly been with you a long time. Saved your life more than a few times too. Still, you only keep it for one reason. As a reminder to end Semra’s life with it one day. (Yet another thing on the to do list after achieving immortality) Your Eternals bring out your first sacrifice. A young elven girl. She’s terrified, crying and begging for her life. “Well, it’s a good thing I sent Cassandra home. Pretty sure she wouldn’t have wanted to see this. How many elves are there in there anyway?” you ask one of the Eternals ignoring the girl’s screams. “Apologies, but I’m not exactly sure my Emperor. I know we brought in a lot, but we’re not sure how many the Eyes brought in.” “They most likely didn’t bring in any. Probably primarily stuck to humans. So…who do we have in there anyway?” “Mostly humans as you might expect. They’re from all over the Empire. Some elves, some kobolds, some orcs, some usksha, I know we even dragged a few ogres down here. All of them are of varying ages, colors, occupations and gender. You said the more variety from walks of life the better.” “That’s true. For some reason this will work better with more variety of life. Not exactly sure why, but I’m following the instructions. Just out curiosity, any gnomes?” “We did get a few. Tried to limit them to criminals though.” “As long as we got a few, okay throw her on the altar and let’s get started.” You say. As the girl continues to scream for her life, your Eternals place her on the altar. “Did you want us to gag these people in the future?” one of your Eternals asks. “No, apparently the terror and fear they outwardly display helps this ritual too, again don’t ask me why, I’m just following what was in this book…shhhh…I’ll make this quick.” You say and then chant as you bring the dagger down. When the deed is done and the girl’s life has indeed been exstinguished, her body is thrown down the steps on the left side of the pyramid. That pile is going to get very big before this over. Time passes from day and night as one by one people are dragged for you to kill. You have to take breaks every so often and after a few days of this you even resort to draining the life of some of your Eternals just to keep your strength up. You know its working though, you can feel it. By the time you’ve passed the five thousand mark the daytime sky no has a sun beating down on you and a constant overcast hangs in the air. A sandstorm whips up and at one point it even begins to rain, which it practically never does in this desert. You preserve through the sand and the rain as you did with the sun. The closer you get, the more you can feel your success. Eventually you don’t even begin feeling tired after killing a few hundred people, you’re starting to feel energized by it. Eventually you stop taking breaks and start dragging victims out yourself since your Eternals are certainly tired. By the time you hit over nine thousand your surrounding area is in a permanent state of unnatural darkness. A blackness has covered a wide area of the desert and you’re not even seeing the stars at this point, its just black like a void. And then finally the last victim is brought out. A miserable looking malnourished kobold who looks like he’s on his last legs anyway. He’s so weak that one of your Eternals picks him up by one hand and places him on the altar. You speak the last parts of the spell and bring down the knife ending the kobold’s life instantly and that’s when it happens. You feel a surge of energy like you’ve never felt before. It’s like when you drain the life of someone, but this is different, like a feeling of completeness. You believe its working. You don’t have a mirror handy, but your hands are certainly deprived of wrinkles now and you don’t have any aches or pains from age anymore. “I feel it! It’s working! It’s…” you shout and then suddenly you fall to the ground and a large rumbling sound from above is heard almost to the point to it being deafening. You are helped up by your Eternals, who begin to ask you what to do next. You look up and see several ghostly forms screaming out of the black void above. They don’t attack, they just seem to hang there and float around, but that doesn’t mean they won’t soon. “Emperor! Watch out!” an Eternal shouts and hacks down the kobold you just killed. Just as Nicodemus told you what the necromancers did, just as Semra warned you, you’ve opened up a gate to the Realm of the Dead. > You run over to the ritual book “I can close it! I need to get over to the book!” you shout and quickly run over to it and flick through the pages. You find the page and begin to speak the words only for several of those ghostly forms to suddenly swoop down and take it. Before your eyes they rip it to pieces laughing the entire time. Pieces of the book either fly off never to be seen again or fall before you completely useless. “NO!” you shout helplessly and try to blast them with magic bolts. You hit some of them causing those to dissipate, but the damage is done. “The end will come soon…this world has been marked on the list for a long time…you have welcomed death back to it because of your hubrissssssss….” One of the ghosts mocks. The ghosts continue to taunt you as you desperately try to pick up some of the pieces that actually landed near you in the meantime your Eternals are urging that you all need to get away from the pyramid as more of these ghostly forms are starting to appear and one of them has noticed that the large pile of bodies on the left side of the pyramid is starting to animate. “Emperor! We must go!” “NO! I won’t be beaten! Not when I have achieved my goal, I…Aaaagh!” you start to say when all of a sudden you begin to feel very weak. It’s not just you either; it’s your Eternals too. The feeling is similar to the draining effect by undead creatures or the negative zones of Mortos. You might not be aging, but you definitely don’t feel well, in fact you feel like you’re going to die and given how close to death you’ve been on several occasions, you’re very familiar with what that feels like. In fact, you’re reminded of the time when Cyrus nearly killed you. Feels like that. Realizing that standing to fight isn’t going to work, you listen to your Eternals and begin down the pyramid steps to your right. Though you make sure to be careful since you’re dizzy and feel like you’re going to tumble at any time. When you get to the bottom, you see more spirits and the like pour out of the black void above the pyramid and the pile of bodies that were one dead have now begun to shuffle around their original area to the other side where you are currently at. You attempt to control the slowly advancing horde in perhaps an effort to turn some against each other, but your spell has absolutely no effect and it’s like some greater force is controlling them. It’s Mortos all over again. After dispatching the closest ones by the more traditional sword, gunYou and your remaining Eternals make haste through the desert towards the Nalin border. The more distance you put between you and the pyramid makes you feel a little better, but you’re also concerned. You’re supposed to be immortal now, and while you know that doesn’t mean you can’t feel pain, you wonder if the spell actually even worked at all because you had the very real feeling that you were going to die back there. You may have very well doomed the word for nothing. You try not to not to think about it for now, you’ll have plenty of time to dwell on it when you get back to civilization. When you do reach the closest village in Nalin, the peasants there are so far unaware of the impending danger, but many of them have begun feeling scared since even from this distance they can see the large blackness that has unnaturally gathered above the pyramid in the distance. You make a short announcement in the middle of the village. “People of this village, listen to your Emperor. There is a darkness coming in this direction and it will consume you and everything within if you stay here. I’d advise you all to move on to one of the larger cities for safety if you can. Do not give into fear and stay strong and you will survive this. The Empire WILL survive this.” Having little else to say, you move on leaving the villagers to heed your advice. You proceed to do this with every settlement you move through on your way back to the capital and urge the bigger ones to start sending out messengers to other settlements to warn people as well. When you get to the capital, you’re immediately giving orders to make this situation news throughout the Empire. If there was civil unrest before there probably will be more of it, but keeping people in the dark until the dead are beating down their door is likely to result in unreadiness and lead to more causalities which will in turn…result in more undead. Steps are taken to completely eradicate the dangers of the dead rising up when you have the graveyards ordered to be dug up in all major cities and the bodies burned immediately (The kobolds are the main ones that take care of this task) It is a grim day indeed though when you have the cemetery of Empire heroes cleansed. The final resting place of some of your closest former companions is broken open and their bodies destroyed. In those cases you do the job yourself, because well they deserve that much. But better it should be this way than for them to rise up as some undead monster that will no longer the person you knew any more. Despite these steps, the Empire is a large place and not every small village or hamlet can be accounted for and that’s not even counting Nyttrus which only gets the news weeks later when the first reports of the dead rising up from their graves starts. Worse is the fact that another large void similar to the one in the Usksha Desert has opened up near New Dessel. When it did, the effect was sudden and instant. Several airships were destroyed in the area. This so far hasn’t happened anywhere else (yet) but you wonder if its due to the portals to Mortos being located there. Perhaps some sort of thinner barrier between the dead and living there or something. Whatever the reason New Dessel itself has gone silent. It can be assumed everyone there has decided to lock themselves up in the mountain, but all attempts to send people to investigate have failed. Either the hostile spirits screaming out of the void are too overwhelming or the investigators don’t come back at all. The ones have managed to come back also report of a life draining effect they feel as soon as they enter the area. Their description is similar to what you felt back at the pyramid. It’s a major loss considering the importance of New Dessel. You were considering making a trip to Mortos to ask the necromancers for help since only they might know how to stop this, but with the portals either destroyed or inaccessible now that’s no longer an option. (And given your last visit it’s probably unlikely they would’ve helped anyway) While you initially believed that more civil unrest would follow this catastrophe, you’ve surprisingly found that hasn’t been the case, if anything this event has caused people to band together. While you don’t doubt that a lot blame you for this there remains a greater fear of this undead plague and a slight hope that you MIGHT be the only one to save from it. In short, they don’t really have many other options, because going it alone without the help of the Empire would surely be suicide. With few options of your own, you rally a general state of emergency and the war against the dead begins in full swing. You can’t be everywhere at once, but you try your best and fend off major attacks personally when you can. Year 90 You stare at the portrait of your beloved Alison. As much as you’ve always missed her, a part of you is glad that she perhaps isn’t still around to see what you’ve done. Would she have still stood by your side? Would she have tried to stop you? Would you have even bothered with any of this had she still been alive? Like many questions that rely on “what if” the answers are irrelevant because what they are is not reality. You tear yourself away from Alison’s portrait for a moment to glance into the mirror to your left. A young face stares back at you. An Eternal in his prime ready to conquer the world. The problem is you’re no longer in any position to do so, for something else is doing it better than you ever could. You think about all you’ve lost within the short time you’ve achieved “immortality.” You lost contact with Nyttrus years ago, and you don’t know what’s going on there now. Who knows if anything still lives on that jungle continent. Several more voids in the sky began appearing, releasing more undead into your realm and draining the life energy of the living. Entire provinces at this point have now been depopulated leaving only the dead behind, some provinces like Nakol have been cut off from you. Rask and Delerg are the only places left of the Empire and you imagine even that won’t be true for very long. Even now a void hangs over part of Quala and everyday it grows bigger. It’s only a matter of time before the entire world is completely enveloped by death. All your Eternals are dead, along with most your Eyes and military. Cassandra herself was killed last year in the last desperate struggle to hang on to the Arat province, but it was a futile task when the enemy is literally without end. As for you, you’ve never given up the fight even though you know you’re going to lose. It’s inevitable, but you can’t just lie down and die. You have to fight, you have to survive…but you’re also so tired. And it’s not just from the effects of death slowly creeping up on you. There’s a part of you that just wants to put away your instincts and training for a moment and do what Nicodemus did. Let nature take its inevitable course. Your introspection is cut short when one of your advisors knocks on your door rapidly. “EMPEROR! EMPEROR! THE UNDEAD ARE HERE! THEY’RE AT THE GATES! THEY’RE ACK!” a voice says being suddenly cut short and several grinning specters come through the closed door. “Hm, looks like they’re already past the gates.” You say and then unleash magic bolts at the specters sending them back to wherever they came from. This is somewhat unexpected. While it is true there is a large amount of undead currently in Quala, there wasn’t any sign of an army anywhere near the capital yet, let alone the palace. You heard no signs of battle outside or even any yelling that would denote an alarm or call to arms. And you certainly would’ve been alerted long before an army was at the gates. In fact other than this interruption, its dead quiet. And then a feeling of oppressive dread swarms over you followed by that draining experience. This isn’t good. You open your chamber door and see a desiccated husk in front of it. It’s not animating so that’s the good thing. The bad thing is when you start exploring the rest of the palace; you’re finding everyone like that. Several of those specters float about the palace, which you dispatch as quick as you can, but you’re still feeling weaker by the second. You don’t know what is causing this sudden drain, but it’s not the specters and the void isn’t near enough yet. It’s something else. And by the time you drag yourself outside your palace you see it with your own eyes. You see a black-cloaked figure standing in your courtyard with several bodies lying all over the place. The trees and the other plant life are completely dead as well. This thing is giving off a negative energy that is sapping you at an alarming rate. You struggle to keep standing. When it glides over to you, you try to cast a spell, but it fails. You draw your sword only to end up using it as a crutch to prop yourself up on. This is it. This is death itself and you’re now right in front of it. “Do your worst.” you say trying to prepare yourself for it to attack. To your surprise, you get a response. “Oh trust me, you wouldn’t like that. My worst makes your worst look like a kindness.” The being says in a slightly deep voice. You have no answer, but once again to your surprise the being speaks again. “But this is no time for threats or boasts, I have come to talk mortal.” “Talk? Are you…fucking with me?” you ask. “Not at all, however I feel it would be in your best interest to listen. It would seem you have a slight difficulty in doing that at times, but then again it’s never too late to change. Even in your final hour.” “I guess…I don’t have much of a choice…” you wheeze. “Good. I understand your current condition, so I’ll try to be brief. Don’t worry though I’ll keep you alive until we’re finished.” > You last choice “Before we begin, if you have any major questions, now is the time.” The being says. You have to admit, this situation is so unique that you can’t help but be curious so you do decide to ask questions. (As well and somehow holding out the futile hope that you might find an advantage) “Are you a god?” you ask. “I suppose I am, but in the scheme of things I am more of a collector and caretaker. Gods typically get to do fun irresponsible things like torment mortals and encouraging holy wars. Strange though, this world wasn’t really high on any deity influences, the only record I can find of major divine influence here is a powerful yet non-divine being masquerading as a so called god of shadows and going by the name Dendrin and that thing left this world when you eradicated the shadows long ago.” It answers. “Isn’t killing the world considered tormenting mortals?” you ask. “To you and most others I suppose it would be, but this is really more of a necessary service. A reminder that death can’t be cheated. In reality, the divine don’t really want immortal types running about since it tends to threaten the status quo. If someone achieves immortality on a world then potentially someone else can do it too. Before you know it, you’ve got a whole new set of beings achieving godhood and believe me; we’ve got more than enough of them now. Too many really.” “How the hell is that fair? I mean as you said these gods haven’t even been paying attention to this world and yet now they do?” “Well as I said, you’re a potential threat. And of course you’re right. It isn’t fair, but there are strict laws on this matter. Certain conditions have to apply, has to be an opening, and a bunch of boring diety debating. I didn’t make them up either, they were long in place before I got this job so don’t blame me. Really though your world was marked a long time ago when the Mortos necromancers attempted the same thing several centuries ago. I was so busy though with other things at the time that wasn’t paying attention to just how close they were at closing the gate back up. Needless to say nobody was pleased about it and I got bitched at, but considering there wasn’t any danger of someone becoming truly immortal anymore on your world I just had it marked and kept a closer eye on it.” You helplessly listen to the death god’s words as the life continues to ebb from your body. “Knew it wouldn’t be long before someone here tried it again and then I’d get this world. Figured it would be one of those Mortos necromancers, but I have to admit I didn’t see someone like you doing the deed. Then again given your background maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised. For a mortal you’re somewhat interesting and I don’t say that lightly.” “Thanks…I guess. Is that why you wanted to speak to me?” you ask starting to feel very frail and tired. “For the most part yes, but more than that. You see despite my assigned duty, I genuinely respect mortals who have a desire to endure at all costs. I always have had an admiration for those that have a strong survival instinct and you Eternal, definitely have one of the strongest. So…I am going to make a few offers to you. Unique offers that I have never given any living being before. And trust me, I’ve been through this process quite a few times.” You struggle to keep standing and use your sword as a crutch to prop yourself up. “Wha…what…are…my choices…” you weakly ask. “Well, your first choice is obvious. You pathetically continue to oppose me. You’ll inevitably lose of course. I highly recommend that you do not take this option. While I may respect a strong survival instinct, I do not respect foolishness and if you continue to fight me, that’s what you’ll be, a complete and utter fool. I do not think you are, but then again you just might prove me wrong. Besides dying in a fairly inglorious way your assigned afterlife will not be a pleasant one.” “I…I…suppose I haven’t really been a good guy.” You say. “That’s a severe understatement. In fact you alone have contributed to the deaths of so many either directly or indirectly on this world that I almost wondered if I even needed to bother showing up. But honestly your brutal politics and such aside, that isn’t really what got you into trouble. Indeed there are many deities that admire and reward such behavior. Your complete and total obliteration of gnome souls however was severely frowned upon by certain deities. Those gnomes were supposed to go to a happy friendly afterlife, not get completely annihilated. Personally I don’t really give a shit since I know at the time you were just following your own orders, but I like to keep the rest of the deities off my back so if you continue to piss me off by opposing me, well I’ll be throwing you into that very dark painful place of which there is no hope, myself.” The death god pauses before announcing your next choice. “Your second choice is a very simple one, but probably not as obvious to the likes of you. Your second choice is to simply die. Lay your burdens down and rest. I realize that something like this would be hard for a warrior such as yourself, but I can assure you that if you do, I will guarantee you a place with your long lost love Alison.” You feel a slight surge of energy within you when you hear that name. “Al…Alison?” you utter. “Yes, Alison. Granted, you probably don’t belong where she currently is, but fortunately for you I can pull a few strings to get you there. You and her will re-united at last. You will get to exist for the rest of eternity with her in perfect happiness.” The chance to be reunited with Alison does sound like a good deal, but you can’t help but wonder if it’s a lie or maybe there’s a catch just to lay down and die without struggle. Is this a trick? And if it is a trick, does that mean the death god believes you’re more powerful than he’s letting on and you could potentially defeat it? In any case you still haven’t heard your third choice, which the death god begins speaking on. “But perhaps your long lost love isn’t the true love that died. Perhaps your true love has always been with you in your heart. Perhaps you could potentially wish for that love affair to continue forever.” “I…certainly hope you…aren’t talking about…a certain svelk…” you remark. Surprisingly this causes a dark chortle from the death god. “Oh no…not that one, Eternal. I am referring to a mistress of a more abstract nature. Your love of battle, war and bloodshed in general. That has always been a constant for you. As I have already mentioned your actions alone have either directly or indirectly caused multitudes of souls pour into my realm. I can also admire and respect a mortal that dedicated to death whether they realize it or not. Such a being could be of great use to me.” “Use?” “Yes. As you may have somewhat gathered from our pleasant chat here I am an incredibly busy deity. Mortals die all the time and I have a duty to collect souls, assign them and even completely obliterate a few sometimes. This is in addition to the periods where I have a whole world to purge and when the appointed time comes, I have to personally oversee its harvest. It breaks up the monotony to be sure, but it also takes time especially when I’ve got stubborn little mortals like yourself opposing me to the bitter end. Also people on other worlds don’t stop dying just because I’m purging another one. Souls stack up and then I get complaints from other deities saying they’re missing this and that soul. The complaints don’t really matter of course in the grand scheme of things, but it’s not something I need to hear when I’m already doing the thankless job that nobody else wants.” You never realized being a deity was so bureaucratic. You still don’t quite grasp how this is your problem though. Your only problem right now is struggling to live. “Tell me Eternal, how would you like to be truly eternal?” “What…do you mean?” “You have a gift. A gift that I wouldn’t mind putting to good use and this is your third choice. Beg me to make you my avatar on these world purging assignments.” “What?!” “I said beg me to make you my herald of death. Instead of me having to slog through a marked world, I’d send you in my place. Naturally I’d give you a little of my power to help you along, but I trust command over literally legions of the dead is more than enough for you to get the job done. Just think, you’d get to enjoy what you truly love over and over again. Battle, war, death, and everything else that goes along with it. Best of all, you never have to worry about silly things like troop morale or morality in general, because the goal will always be the same and you will never run out of willing soldiers.” Now this offer sounds really too good to be true. You can’t even believe that the death god is practically offering you a place by his side. “So, wait…you’re saying I can join…” “No. I didn’t say join…I said beg. There’s a difference.” The death god interrupts. “I… don’t understand.” You answer. “It’s a test. A simple one really, but a test nevertheless. You are a proud being. Even when you served your Emperor with utter devotion, you were still a proud being. Again I can respect your pride. However, I can’t have you believing that you’re equal to me, because you aren’t. Not by a long shot. I also can’t have you thinking that somehow you’re going to try to turn this opportunity into a way to destroy me and take over, because you can’t. If this association is going to happen, I need you to humble yourself before me. Only then can I fully trust you because an oath will have been made. Such things are impossible to break when the gods are watching.” “But…if I don’t stand a chance anyway then why do I need to…humble myself?” “Let’s just say it’s a formality and the principle of it. Plus I’m suspicious by nature especially with a resourceful one such as yourself. Still, it is entirely up to you. I won’t force you to do something you may find repulsive to your nature. But I don’t think pride is in your nature. I believe war and battle is. And I believe the desire for those is a lot stronger than any pride you may have. Again though, you may prove me wrong.” And there you have it, you’ve been given your three choices, such as they are. You’ve been through a lot in your life and you never could’ve imagined it would end like this. You’re going to die no matter what you do that fact is certain. And yet this death god respects you enough to give you choices. Choices that you could’ve never dreamed of, but at the same time are somewhat familiar. You remember the very first time you had to make this choice… > You struggle All you life the odds have been against you and you’ve always struggled against them. As weak as you are right now, you’re not going to give in or lay down for the whims of some so-called “god.” The fact that he’s giving you a “choice” indicates that perhaps he isn’t as all-powerful as he claims. You’re going to take your chance while you can. Mustering up all your strength you attempt to cast another spell at the death god. This time you actually manage to get a flicker of flame appear in your hand before it goes out. Between the combination of attempting such a feat and your life energy already draining at a rapid rate, you collapse face first to the ground. “Shit…” you say feeling like you’re going to lose consciousness. As you lie helpless on the ground, the death god floats over to you. You can’t stop him. “That was a very silly thing to do mortal, looks like I severely misjudged your character and you are indeed a fool. Ah well can’t be right all the time.” Continuing to be defiant you struggle to reach into your side sheath where you keep your dagger. You manage to pull it out half way before your strength completely fails you and you can’t even move any longer. “See now you’re just embarrassing yourself.” The death god replies. “Fuck…y…” You don’t even get to finish that last comment when suddenly your body experiences unimaginable pain. Whatever injuries or tortures you may have experienced pale in comparison to this. You are experiencing death, but not just your own. You are experiencing the death of everyone you ever killed all at the same time. As you go through this agony the death god speaks. “You know under normal circumstances a person like you goes to the Infernal Realm. Land of demons and such. Can’t stand ‘em myself, most sensible beings don’t, but if there’s one thing they do well that’s torture the shit out of people for all eternity. Well…normally that happens anyway…” You aren’t even paying attention to what the death god is saying to you, the image of every single death is filling your mind and you can’t shut out the physical, emotional or spiritual anguish you’re experiencing. You can’t even cry out and you’re bordering on madness. “However that’s not what is going to happen to you. Oh no. I know you. You’d thrive in such a place of adversity. You’d probably find a way to break free and even give those demons a run for their money. You were already involved in killing one demon lord after all. I have to admit, that was a nice one, but I ramble…” At this point the words “pain” and “agony” are no longer adequate words to describe what you’re feeling. “Living Hell MIGHT come close, but the death god continues to speak. “No Eternal, you are going to a place where your suffering will be legendary even compared to the infernal realm. Where the laws of the universe don’t even apply. It is a rarity that is usually saved for immortals, gods and other such beings of power when they really fuck up. I suppose it is impressive that as a mere mortal you’ve managed to achieve such a thing. However this is no reward, this is your own doing Eternal.” At last scream out and suddenly everything goes black for a split moment and your surroundings change severely. Everything around you is wrong. Your mind cannot comprehend the utterly bizarre things about you. In fact you’re not even standing on the ground, you’re floating throughout some sort of fluid space. You see grisly parodies of various people you’ve known. They all taunt and hurt you in ways that you never thought possible. These mimics then will melt into disgusting things like hordes of oversized worms and maggots which will proceed to crawl all over you. As you float helplessly you can feel vileness, enter every orifice of your body. All of your senses are assaulted at the same time and the smell, the taste, the feeling, the sight and the sounds are all indescribably awful. Every once in a while strange tentacle creatures float nearby and assault your body and your mind even worse than the mimics. Other times the very plane seems to do the same thing. Sometimes you are completely ripped apart only to be reformed again and not always in the correct way. You go completely insane, but never to a point where you no longer care or are bothered by the horrific experiences you are enduring. There is no defense, no hope, and no escape from this living nightmare. Your mind shattered, your body broken, and your spirit crushed, you continue screaming having no other choice but to suffer your eternal torment.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Before we begin, if you have any major questions, now is the time.” The being says. You have to admit, this situation is so unique that you can’t help but be curious so you do decide to ask questions. (As well and somehow holding out the futile hope that you might find an advantage) “Are you a god?” you ask. “I suppose I am, but in the scheme of things I am more of a collector and caretaker. Gods typically get to do fun irresponsible things like torment mortals and encouraging holy wars. Strange though, this world wasn’t really high on any deity influences, the only record I can find of major divine influence here is a powerful yet non-divine being masquerading as a so called god of shadows and going by the name Dendrin and that thing left this world when you eradicated the shadows long ago.” It answers. “Isn’t killing the world considered tormenting mortals?” you ask. “To you and most others I suppose it would be, but this is really more of a necessary service. A reminder that death can’t be cheated. In reality, the divine don’t really want immortal types running about since it tends to threaten the status quo. If someone achieves immortality on a world then potentially someone else can do it too. Before you know it, you’ve got a whole new set of beings achieving godhood and believe me; we’ve got more than enough of them now. Too many really.” “How the hell is that fair? I mean as you said these gods haven’t even been paying attention to this world and yet now they do?” “Well as I said, you’re a potential threat. And of course you’re right. It isn’t fair, but there are strict laws on this matter. Certain conditions have to apply, has to be an opening, and a bunch of boring diety debating. I didn’t make them up either, they were long in place before I got this job so don’t blame me. Really though your world was marked a long time ago when the Mortos necromancers attempted the same thing several centuries ago. I was so busy though with other things at the time that wasn’t paying attention to just how close they were at closing the gate back up. Needless to say nobody was pleased about it and I got bitched at, but considering there wasn’t any danger of someone becoming truly immortal anymore on your world I just had it marked and kept a closer eye on it.” You helplessly listen to the death god’s words as the life continues to ebb from your body. “Knew it wouldn’t be long before someone here tried it again and then I’d get this world. Figured it would be one of those Mortos necromancers, but I have to admit I didn’t see someone like you doing the deed. Then again given your background maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised. For a mortal you’re somewhat interesting and I don’t say that lightly.” “Thanks…I guess. Is that why you wanted to speak to me?” you ask starting to feel very frail and tired. “For the most part yes, but more than that. You see despite my assigned duty, I genuinely respect mortals who have a desire to endure at all costs. I always have had an admiration for those that have a strong survival instinct and you Eternal, definitely have one of the strongest. So…I am going to make a few offers to you. Unique offers that I have never given any living being before. And trust me, I’ve been through this process quite a few times.” You struggle to keep standing and use your sword as a crutch to prop yourself up. “Wha…what…are…my choices…” you weakly ask. “Well, your first choice is obvious. You pathetically continue to oppose me. You’ll inevitably lose of course. I highly recommend that you do not take this option. While I may respect a strong survival instinct, I do not respect foolishness and if you continue to fight me, that’s what you’ll be, a complete and utter fool. I do not think you are, but then again you just might prove me wrong. Besides dying in a fairly inglorious way your assigned afterlife will not be a pleasant one.” “I…I…suppose I haven’t really been a good guy.” You say. “That’s a severe understatement. In fact you alone have contributed to the deaths of so many either directly or indirectly on this world that I almost wondered if I even needed to bother showing up. But honestly your brutal politics and such aside, that isn’t really what got you into trouble. Indeed there are many deities that admire and reward such behavior. Your complete and total obliteration of gnome souls however was severely frowned upon by certain deities. Those gnomes were supposed to go to a happy friendly afterlife, not get completely annihilated. Personally I don’t really give a shit since I know at the time you were just following your own orders, but I like to keep the rest of the deities off my back so if you continue to piss me off by opposing me, well I’ll be throwing you into that very dark painful place of which there is no hope, myself.” The death god pauses before announcing your next choice. “Your second choice is a very simple one, but probably not as obvious to the likes of you. Your second choice is to simply die. Lay your burdens down and rest. I realize that something like this would be hard for a warrior such as yourself, but I can assure you that if you do, I will guarantee you a place with your long lost love Alison.” You feel a slight surge of energy within you when you hear that name. “Al…Alison?” you utter. “Yes, Alison. Granted, you probably don’t belong where she currently is, but fortunately for you I can pull a few strings to get you there. You and her will re-united at last. You will get to exist for the rest of eternity with her in perfect happiness.” The chance to be reunited with Alison does sound like a good deal, but you can’t help but wonder if it’s a lie or maybe there’s a catch just to lay down and die without struggle. Is this a trick? And if it is a trick, does that mean the death god believes you’re more powerful than he’s letting on and you could potentially defeat it? In any case you still haven’t heard your third choice, which the death god begins speaking on. “But perhaps your long lost love isn’t the true love that died. Perhaps your true love has always been with you in your heart. Perhaps you could potentially wish for that love affair to continue forever.” “I…certainly hope you…aren’t talking about…a certain svelk…” you remark. Surprisingly this causes a dark chortle from the death god. “Oh no…not that one, Eternal. I am referring to a mistress of a more abstract nature. Your love of battle, war and bloodshed in general. That has always been a constant for you. As I have already mentioned your actions alone have either directly or indirectly caused multitudes of souls pour into my realm. I can also admire and respect a mortal that dedicated to death whether they realize it or not. Such a being could be of great use to me.” “Use?” “Yes. As you may have somewhat gathered from our pleasant chat here I am an incredibly busy deity. Mortals die all the time and I have a duty to collect souls, assign them and even completely obliterate a few sometimes. This is in addition to the periods where I have a whole world to purge and when the appointed time comes, I have to personally oversee its harvest. It breaks up the monotony to be sure, but it also takes time especially when I’ve got stubborn little mortals like yourself opposing me to the bitter end. Also people on other worlds don’t stop dying just because I’m purging another one. Souls stack up and then I get complaints from other deities saying they’re missing this and that soul. The complaints don’t really matter of course in the grand scheme of things, but it’s not something I need to hear when I’m already doing the thankless job that nobody else wants.” You never realized being a deity was so bureaucratic. You still don’t quite grasp how this is your problem though. Your only problem right now is struggling to live. “Tell me Eternal, how would you like to be truly eternal?” “What…do you mean?” “You have a gift. A gift that I wouldn’t mind putting to good use and this is your third choice. Beg me to make you my avatar on these world purging assignments.” “What?!” “I said beg me to make you my herald of death. Instead of me having to slog through a marked world, I’d send you in my place. Naturally I’d give you a little of my power to help you along, but I trust command over literally legions of the dead is more than enough for you to get the job done. Just think, you’d get to enjoy what you truly love over and over again. Battle, war, death, and everything else that goes along with it. Best of all, you never have to worry about silly things like troop morale or morality in general, because the goal will always be the same and you will never run out of willing soldiers.” Now this offer sounds really too good to be true. You can’t even believe that the death god is practically offering you a place by his side. “So, wait…you’re saying I can join…” “No. I didn’t say join…I said beg. There’s a difference.” The death god interrupts. “I… don’t understand.” You answer. “It’s a test. A simple one really, but a test nevertheless. You are a proud being. Even when you served your Emperor with utter devotion, you were still a proud being. Again I can respect your pride. However, I can’t have you believing that you’re equal to me, because you aren’t. Not by a long shot. I also can’t have you thinking that somehow you’re going to try to turn this opportunity into a way to destroy me and take over, because you can’t. If this association is going to happen, I need you to humble yourself before me. Only then can I fully trust you because an oath will have been made. Such things are impossible to break when the gods are watching.” “But…if I don’t stand a chance anyway then why do I need to…humble myself?” “Let’s just say it’s a formality and the principle of it. Plus I’m suspicious by nature especially with a resourceful one such as yourself. Still, it is entirely up to you. I won’t force you to do something you may find repulsive to your nature. But I don’t think pride is in your nature. I believe war and battle is. And I believe the desire for those is a lot stronger than any pride you may have. Again though, you may prove me wrong.” And there you have it, you’ve been given your three choices, such as they are. You’ve been through a lot in your life and you never could’ve imagined it would end like this. You’re going to die no matter what you do that fact is certain. And yet this death god respects you enough to give you choices. Choices that you could’ve never dreamed of, but at the same time are somewhat familiar. You remember the very first time you had to make this choice… > You die It takes you a few seconds, but you soon yield to the inevitable. You’re tired of conflict. While it is true that war, bloodshed and the like are the very core of your essence and you do enjoy such things, you have to wonder is that what you really want? Do you wish to be nothing but destruction personified forever? (Or at least until the Death God has no further use for you?) You don’t know. Part of it has its appeal to you and if things were different maybe you’d choose such a role. However the Death God has offered you a chance to be with your first and only true love, Alison. Your time with her was STILL the happiest you ever were during your life. How can you possibly pass up such a chance? A chance to be with her forever. You smile at this prospect and with this idea in mind you collapse to the floor before the Death God. “I…am done…take…me…back to my…Alison…” you struggle to say as you feel all life leaving your body. The Death God hovers above you. “As you wish Eternal. I admit I did not expect you to make this choice. It is a difficult thing for most to deny their nature and pursue another path…but then I also understand the desire to be reunited with that one true love. Many should be so lucky to experience such a thing one day.” With the Death God’s last words to you, your life force ends and everything goes black. When you wake up you find yourself in a much different place. You’re lying in a bed first of all. Upon sitting up and looking about the room, it appears that you’re in some sort of house. A single closed door leads out, but before you even get out of the bed, you hear footsteps coming towards you. Instinctively you reach for a weapon, but you have none, instead you ready yourself to cast a spell. The door opens and a blonde woman in casual clothing with a sword in hand appears. It’s Alison. “Who are…wait…I feel like I should know you…do I know you?” she asks. “It’s me! Alison, surely you know who I am?” you remark. “I’m not sure.” You begin to slightly panic and get up off the bed to approach her, she doesn’t sheath her weapon, but she’s no longer holding it up in a threatening manner. “Alison, I’m your husband. We met while serving the Empire.” “Empire? Husband? I’m sorry, but I’m just not quite placing you…what are you doing in my house and how do you know my name?” “I came here to be with you! We fought in the Felkan War together! We loved one another and were married! You died while on a carriage ride back home from an assassin! Please! Listen to me, you have to remember!” You begin to wonder if this was the Death God’s elaborate joke on you. Putting you with your true love only for her to not remember you. You’re just about to curse the god, you hear hope. “Wait…I vaguely remember. Yes, we do know each other...” “Yes! We were together! We were married!” “I’m still not sure, but you seem very sincere and I can’t deny that you aren’t familiar to me. I’m not sure about all the other stuff you’re talking about though. It sounds very interesting though, why don’t you tell me all about it, I don’t get many visitors out here so I’m happy for the company. Try not to talk so fast this time; I didn’t even catch most of what you said before. I could’ve sworn you told me I died and that’s just ridiculous of course!” Alison chuckles, puts away her sword and tells you to follow her to the kitchen. What was supposed to be a happy occasion is turning out to be a frustrating one, but at least Alison is being friendly with you. You’re wondering what exactly is going on here. Why can’t she remember anything? In the brief time between walking from the bedroom to the kitchen you try to come up with some sort of explanation. She doesn’t even know she’s dead or you’re dead for that matter. Is this some sort of “new life” for her? Seems sort of an odd one; you never pictured Alison living in a place like this, which while a nice home it’s seemingly too peaceful. And that’s far from the type of military background that she came from, though she still has a sword for protection you guess, so some things must not have changed. While she’s pouring some water from a pitcher into a mug, you decide that maybe you should ask some questions. “Alison, how long have you lived here?” “Oh, I dunno. I feel like I’ve lived here all my life, it’s a nice place though so no point in moving.” “Where does the food come from? Do you farm or something?” “Me? No, I wouldn’t know how. Sometimes I do a little hunting in the woods nearby, plenty of wildlife to provide meat. Got a garden outback too and sometimes I tend it, but the funny thing is it doesn’t seem to need it. Always has fresh vegetables and fruit available. Guess I just got strong healthy plants.” “I see. So what about people? Have you ever seen anyone else?” “Not really. There has been the occasional traveller passing through, usually they just smile and wave. Most are very friendly. In fact I believe you’re the first person besides myself that’s ever set foot inside my home. Here’s some water, you look a bit thirsty.” “Uh, thanks…” you say and take the water. Upon drinking it, it’s some of the best water you’ve tasted in…well you don’t know whenever you’ve appreciated water or food for that matter. You just ate and drank because you had to usually. Never got any sort of enjoyment out of it. “Where does this water come from? No, wait let me guess a sparkling stream.” You say. “Ha ha! No, it comes from a well out front, but there is a river that runs through the woods nearby. Doesn’t sparkle though.” Alison says smiling at what she believes is a small joke on your part. “Well, I guess not everything is perfect.” You say. “Well of course not everything is perfect, sometimes I even have problems with gnolls.” “Gnolls?” “Yeah sometimes a few of them pop up and harass me. Nothing major though, I usually just chop some of their heads off and the rest go running off. I’m pretty good with my sword, so they’re more comical and annoying than actually dangerous. You touch Alison’s hand from across the table. She gives you a look of confusion, but doesn’t pull away. “Alison listen to me. You used to fight gnolls while serving in the Empire army. We even fought many together. Don’t you remember any of that?” “No…no can’t say that I do. Don’t remember ever being in any sort of army either, but sounds pretty exciting. You say we fought together? Tell me all about it. In fact why don’t you tell me all that stuff you were talking about before? It isn’t like I have anything better to do and I’m enjoying your company.” Seeing no better option you do just that. You focus on when you first met and everything involving her. You try to stick to major events hoping that those will spur her memory the most, but mostly because you’re having trouble remembering all the details yourself. Alison hangs on your every word and is enjoying your story. You have to admit even though you’re not entirely sure you’re getting through to her, you’re appreciating the time you’re spending with her. After you’re done you’re almost feeling a bit dizzy. “Wow, that’s some tale. And you say that was us huh? Wish I could remember it. Hey, wait didn’t you say I died earlier? What was that all about?” Alison asks. You look at Alison as she waits for your answer. You are about to explain again, but then realize that it won’t do any good. “…nothing. I was just saying something outlandish to get your attention because I really wanted you to remember me.” “Well I suppose it did get my attention. Hmm seems to be getting dark outside, guess you better stay here for the night. Let me…” Alison suddenly gets up from her chair and stops speaking and stares off into the distance. “Alison?” Her head turns toward you. “I…I think I remember…” “You do?” you say standing up hopefully. “Yes…I…mean not all of it. But I DO remember YOU. I remember that we were married! I loved you! Why were we apart? What…what…happened?” Alison asks. “We were separated for many years due to forces beyond our control, but none of that matters, what matters now is that I’ve found you and we can be together again. I have come home and we will be together for all eternity now!” you remark. You open up your arms to hug her and within that moment tears well up in her eyes and she embraces you. Once again you feel the warmth of her body and the taste of her lips. A feeling you missed so much, but now that has changed forever. Alison and you hold each other for a long time as if the pair of you are going to be split from each other again even though that will never be the case again. The pair of you then retire to the bedroom and reunite in the way that lovers do. The next morning you wake up beside Alison who smiles sweetly to you and kisses you on the cheek. You enjoy her affection, but you feel a bit strange. “Good morning my love. Did you sleep well?” Alison asks. “Yeah, but I feel a little weird.” You say. “How do you mean? Like sick?” “No, I feel fine. I dunno, I can’t explain it. I do know I’m happy to be with you though.” This comment earns you another kiss and the pair of you get up to start the day, though to be honest you aren’t sure what you’ll do with yourself. Everything seems to be taken care of already; maybe you could hunt you suppose. (Or kill gnolls if they show up) A little later when you’re still pondering on what to do with your day, Alison asks you some more about the stories you told her. She says that maybe she’ll remember more stuff if you tell them again. She also asks what you’ve been doing since you lost contact with her. And the strangest thing is you don’t know. Your mind is completely blank. In fact you barely remember the stories you did tell Alison. “That’s odd. I can’t remember.” You say. “Really? You seemed to tell them in great detail yesterday considering you spent the whole day telling me the stories. Oh well I’m sure if they are really important you’ll remember again. Just like I remembered you!” Alison says. You smile at her comment and tell Alison that you’re taking her bow to hunt and will be back later. Another day and night passes and when you wake up this time you remember nothing of your old life at all. Alison doesn’t remember anything you told her either and the pair of you are unaware of the last two days even occurring. The only constant is that the pair of you know that you’re married and you love one another and that this has always been the case for as long as you both can remember. And so you and Alison live together in eternal bliss.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Before we begin, if you have any major questions, now is the time.” The being says. You have to admit, this situation is so unique that you can’t help but be curious so you do decide to ask questions. (As well and somehow holding out the futile hope that you might find an advantage) “Are you a god?” you ask. “I suppose I am, but in the scheme of things I am more of a collector and caretaker. Gods typically get to do fun irresponsible things like torment mortals and encouraging holy wars. Strange though, this world wasn’t really high on any deity influences, the only record I can find of major divine influence here is a powerful yet non-divine being masquerading as a so called god of shadows and going by the name Dendrin and that thing left this world when you eradicated the shadows long ago.” It answers. “Isn’t killing the world considered tormenting mortals?” you ask. “To you and most others I suppose it would be, but this is really more of a necessary service. A reminder that death can’t be cheated. In reality, the divine don’t really want immortal types running about since it tends to threaten the status quo. If someone achieves immortality on a world then potentially someone else can do it too. Before you know it, you’ve got a whole new set of beings achieving godhood and believe me; we’ve got more than enough of them now. Too many really.” “How the hell is that fair? I mean as you said these gods haven’t even been paying attention to this world and yet now they do?” “Well as I said, you’re a potential threat. And of course you’re right. It isn’t fair, but there are strict laws on this matter. Certain conditions have to apply, has to be an opening, and a bunch of boring diety debating. I didn’t make them up either, they were long in place before I got this job so don’t blame me. Really though your world was marked a long time ago when the Mortos necromancers attempted the same thing several centuries ago. I was so busy though with other things at the time that wasn’t paying attention to just how close they were at closing the gate back up. Needless to say nobody was pleased about it and I got bitched at, but considering there wasn’t any danger of someone becoming truly immortal anymore on your world I just had it marked and kept a closer eye on it.” You helplessly listen to the death god’s words as the life continues to ebb from your body. “Knew it wouldn’t be long before someone here tried it again and then I’d get this world. Figured it would be one of those Mortos necromancers, but I have to admit I didn’t see someone like you doing the deed. Then again given your background maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised. For a mortal you’re somewhat interesting and I don’t say that lightly.” “Thanks…I guess. Is that why you wanted to speak to me?” you ask starting to feel very frail and tired. “For the most part yes, but more than that. You see despite my assigned duty, I genuinely respect mortals who have a desire to endure at all costs. I always have had an admiration for those that have a strong survival instinct and you Eternal, definitely have one of the strongest. So…I am going to make a few offers to you. Unique offers that I have never given any living being before. And trust me, I’ve been through this process quite a few times.” You struggle to keep standing and use your sword as a crutch to prop yourself up. “Wha…what…are…my choices…” you weakly ask. “Well, your first choice is obvious. You pathetically continue to oppose me. You’ll inevitably lose of course. I highly recommend that you do not take this option. While I may respect a strong survival instinct, I do not respect foolishness and if you continue to fight me, that’s what you’ll be, a complete and utter fool. I do not think you are, but then again you just might prove me wrong. Besides dying in a fairly inglorious way your assigned afterlife will not be a pleasant one.” “I…I…suppose I haven’t really been a good guy.” You say. “That’s a severe understatement. In fact you alone have contributed to the deaths of so many either directly or indirectly on this world that I almost wondered if I even needed to bother showing up. But honestly your brutal politics and such aside, that isn’t really what got you into trouble. Indeed there are many deities that admire and reward such behavior. Your complete and total obliteration of gnome souls however was severely frowned upon by certain deities. Those gnomes were supposed to go to a happy friendly afterlife, not get completely annihilated. Personally I don’t really give a shit since I know at the time you were just following your own orders, but I like to keep the rest of the deities off my back so if you continue to piss me off by opposing me, well I’ll be throwing you into that very dark painful place of which there is no hope, myself.” The death god pauses before announcing your next choice. “Your second choice is a very simple one, but probably not as obvious to the likes of you. Your second choice is to simply die. Lay your burdens down and rest. I realize that something like this would be hard for a warrior such as yourself, but I can assure you that if you do, I will guarantee you a place with your long lost love Alison.” You feel a slight surge of energy within you when you hear that name. “Al…Alison?” you utter. “Yes, Alison. Granted, you probably don’t belong where she currently is, but fortunately for you I can pull a few strings to get you there. You and her will re-united at last. You will get to exist for the rest of eternity with her in perfect happiness.” The chance to be reunited with Alison does sound like a good deal, but you can’t help but wonder if it’s a lie or maybe there’s a catch just to lay down and die without struggle. Is this a trick? And if it is a trick, does that mean the death god believes you’re more powerful than he’s letting on and you could potentially defeat it? In any case you still haven’t heard your third choice, which the death god begins speaking on. “But perhaps your long lost love isn’t the true love that died. Perhaps your true love has always been with you in your heart. Perhaps you could potentially wish for that love affair to continue forever.” “I…certainly hope you…aren’t talking about…a certain svelk…” you remark. Surprisingly this causes a dark chortle from the death god. “Oh no…not that one, Eternal. I am referring to a mistress of a more abstract nature. Your love of battle, war and bloodshed in general. That has always been a constant for you. As I have already mentioned your actions alone have either directly or indirectly caused multitudes of souls pour into my realm. I can also admire and respect a mortal that dedicated to death whether they realize it or not. Such a being could be of great use to me.” “Use?” “Yes. As you may have somewhat gathered from our pleasant chat here I am an incredibly busy deity. Mortals die all the time and I have a duty to collect souls, assign them and even completely obliterate a few sometimes. This is in addition to the periods where I have a whole world to purge and when the appointed time comes, I have to personally oversee its harvest. It breaks up the monotony to be sure, but it also takes time especially when I’ve got stubborn little mortals like yourself opposing me to the bitter end. Also people on other worlds don’t stop dying just because I’m purging another one. Souls stack up and then I get complaints from other deities saying they’re missing this and that soul. The complaints don’t really matter of course in the grand scheme of things, but it’s not something I need to hear when I’m already doing the thankless job that nobody else wants.” You never realized being a deity was so bureaucratic. You still don’t quite grasp how this is your problem though. Your only problem right now is struggling to live. “Tell me Eternal, how would you like to be truly eternal?” “What…do you mean?” “You have a gift. A gift that I wouldn’t mind putting to good use and this is your third choice. Beg me to make you my avatar on these world purging assignments.” “What?!” “I said beg me to make you my herald of death. Instead of me having to slog through a marked world, I’d send you in my place. Naturally I’d give you a little of my power to help you along, but I trust command over literally legions of the dead is more than enough for you to get the job done. Just think, you’d get to enjoy what you truly love over and over again. Battle, war, death, and everything else that goes along with it. Best of all, you never have to worry about silly things like troop morale or morality in general, because the goal will always be the same and you will never run out of willing soldiers.” Now this offer sounds really too good to be true. You can’t even believe that the death god is practically offering you a place by his side. “So, wait…you’re saying I can join…” “No. I didn’t say join…I said beg. There’s a difference.” The death god interrupts. “I… don’t understand.” You answer. “It’s a test. A simple one really, but a test nevertheless. You are a proud being. Even when you served your Emperor with utter devotion, you were still a proud being. Again I can respect your pride. However, I can’t have you believing that you’re equal to me, because you aren’t. Not by a long shot. I also can’t have you thinking that somehow you’re going to try to turn this opportunity into a way to destroy me and take over, because you can’t. If this association is going to happen, I need you to humble yourself before me. Only then can I fully trust you because an oath will have been made. Such things are impossible to break when the gods are watching.” “But…if I don’t stand a chance anyway then why do I need to…humble myself?” “Let’s just say it’s a formality and the principle of it. Plus I’m suspicious by nature especially with a resourceful one such as yourself. Still, it is entirely up to you. I won’t force you to do something you may find repulsive to your nature. But I don’t think pride is in your nature. I believe war and battle is. And I believe the desire for those is a lot stronger than any pride you may have. Again though, you may prove me wrong.” And there you have it, you’ve been given your three choices, such as they are. You’ve been through a lot in your life and you never could’ve imagined it would end like this. You’re going to die no matter what you do that fact is certain. And yet this death god respects you enough to give you choices. Choices that you could’ve never dreamed of, but at the same time are somewhat familiar. You remember the very first time you had to make this choice… > You beg It takes you a few seconds, but you soon yield to the truth. The death god is right. War is in your nature. It always has been. Whether it was bred into you or you grew into it is irreverent. It’s yours now and you’re going to embrace it. You fall to your knees and bow before the death god. Humbling yourself and disregarding whatever foolish pride you may have had. “I beg you oh great god of death, make me your herald of destruction. Let me be the bringer of doom to a thousand worlds. Let me unleash the endless war on the heavens.” You say with all your remaining strength. “Take it easy there, we aren’t going to be doing all that. Just the worlds appointed for death. However, I do appreciate the enthusiasm.” The death god remarks. The death god hovers before you and a skeletal hand reaches out towards your head. “Hold still, this may hurt…a lot.” The death god clutches your head with its fingers and suddenly your body experiences unimaginable pain. Whatever injuries or tortures you may have experienced pale in comparison to this. You are experiencing death, but not just your own. You are experiencing the death of everyone you ever killed all at the same time. The image of every single death fills your mind and you can’t shut out the physical, emotional or spiritual anguish you’re experiencing. You can’t even cry out. For a brief moment you think you’ve made a horrible mistake before you go utterly insane as your mind is completely destroyed by the dreadful experience. And then you feel nothing at all and everything goes black. You don’t know how long time passes, but suddenly you are awakened by the death god’s voice: “Arise, harbinger. Your glorious work and new purpose begins now on this very world.” You stand up and notice that you are no longer breathing. You do not feel the essence of life flowing through your system. You walk outside the city gates and before you stand legions of undead awaiting your command to purge the rest of this world of life. You stare at them and they stare at you with the same dead eyes. And something about it is beautiful to you. You didn’t know that the dead could experience anything like feelings, but you can feel a thrill of anticipation of the death and destruction you’re going unleash on this world. Nothing in your old mortal life can compare to this moment. “And to think, I hesitated.” You whisper.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 80 “So you’re really going to do it?” Cassandra asks while lying in bed next to you. “That was sort of the point of going to Mortos in the first place.” You answer. “True I suppose. I really hated it there. I mean killing and capturing svelk was about the only thing that was remotely enjoyable. I was pretty glad you eventually sent all the Eyes back home.” You get up out of bed to get your day started. “Ah, shit.” You say feeling an ache in your back. “Are you alright? I thought you…um…replenished yourself recently.” “If by replenished you mean drained the lives of twenty of my citizens last month then yes I did, but as I’ve told you before, it doesn’t last long and it wears out quicker as the years have gone on. Not to mention humans don’t exactly have the most sustaining life forces to begin with so it takes more of them just to turn back the clock a few decades.” As you look in the mirror at yourself trying to determine if you need to “recharge” today, Cassandra doesn’t pursue that line of questioning anymore. She knows that elves being long-lived creatures would probably require less effort on your part and sustain you longer. In fact that’s probably why she started to show “attraction” towards you a few years ago. She’d never admit it, but she fears that you’ll suddenly start rounding up elves and draining them instead. While it definitely had occurred to you to do so, you tended to limit it to just a few since they still don’t have the largest of populations and you had no idea how long you’d have to “ration out” the lives of your citizens before you could unlock all the secrets of the book. Cassandra probably believes she’s “swaying” you through sex though. Gnomes probably REALLY feared being rounded up, but fortunately for them you still respect their engineering skills and you don’t have a gnome fetish like Casimir did. Besides, ever since your human engineer losses in Mortos and Elam dying last year (Another rarity via natural causes), you need all the skilled engineers you can get. As for your “relationship” with Cassandra you have no love for her, a mild fondness, a respect for her abilities and her usefulness, but nothing more. You’re fairly certain Cassandra has no true love for you either. Respect and loyalty sure, a desire to place herself in a higher and “safer” position, most definitely, but she does not love you. Part of you has wondered if you reciprocated her advances in the first place was because she was an elf. Besides the natural attractiveness common to their race, she very faintly reminds you of Semra. Not in personality or even looks, but she’s an elf and it’s close enough. “I am seriously fucked up.” You mumble to yourself as you think about that again. “What did you say?” Cassandra asks. “Nothing, just thinking about something. You better get dressed, I’m going to need you and the Eyes on full alert for this thing.” You say which stirs Cassandra to get up and follow your lead in getting dressed. “Emperor, the…subjects are currently all being held at the ritual pyramid in the Usksha Desert, all ten thousand of them are still alive and restrained. I know I’ve told you this before, but Empire citizens’ have not been calm about this. Most don’t even know exactly what you’re planning, but they’re already coming up with stories and most of which are not too far off from the truth. The Eyes have been working overtime in keeping the peace, but I fear that a rebellion of some sort will be inevitable. Most likely in Rask and Nakol province, perhaps even in the Tral province.” “The citizens’ would like it even less if I continued to just drain random people at a greater rate eventually exceeding ten thousand. This ritual is going to prevent having to do that anymore. After it’s done, we can deal with the civil unrest and in time Dokkrus as well.” Cassandra smiles a bit when she hears that, you know she’s probably been eager to go kill more svelk again. “I always meant to ask, but why is this to be performed in Usksha?” Cassandra says. “No major settlements nearby and it isn’t like the usksha nomads are a problem anymore. Haven’t even had a sandworm pop up in decades. I thought about the plains of Tor, since there was nice flat land there to build the pyramid, but the Usksha desert works just as well. Besides, this is only going to be necessary once. No need to have the pyramid any more afterwards and it’ll be cheaper to just let the sands consume everything rather than having to tear it down and having crews to dispose of all the bodies.” “Couldn’t you just animate them to walk into the ocean or something?” “Hah, I’m sure a dead march to the ocean is just what the already agitated citizens’ would want to see.” You chuckle. “No, this is a better way. To be honest raising the dead takes a great deal of willpower and I find it to be a waste of the time and energy. I mean I did it to a limited degree in Mortos with the fallen Eternals because it bolstered the ranks and using the dead negated some of the advantages the necromancers had. Personally though I’d rather just cast a rain of fire down or chain lightning to directly harm my enemies. I don’t need unreliable rotting corpses to do my work.” You say. Cassandra nods at your answer and the pair of you are off to the Usksha Desert. Even before your carriage reaches the desert the black pyramid is visible from the Nalin border. The closer you get the more it looms ominously. There are grim deeds going to be performed this day and night and well…until the ritual is complete. The necromancers of Mortos didn’t need as many sacrifices when they attempted this ritual since there were a lot more of them to perform it and support each other’s magical energy. They were also more skilled. You are just one man that has tried to shove as much necromantic knowledge into your head in just a few years. You sometimes wonder if this is indeed a fool’s errand. But you’ve gone over the rites, you’ve gone over the symbols, the steps, made allowances for your unique situation, and of course had a big ass pyramid built just to accomplish all this. You don’t think you could be any more ready. When you arrive at the ritual pyramid, several Eternals stand ready for your commands. There are so few of them left now and they’re all fourth gens. It wasn’t but a decade ago that together with the third gens, Eternals were nearly two thousand strong. When this is all over, you really need to get that project back on track again. Too bad Elam isn’t still around to carry out some of his theories, but maybe he left some notes in that now abandoned workshop of his. “The sacrifices are inside the pyramid, my Emperor. All we await is you to take your place and begin.” An Eternal says when you exit the carriage. “Very good, we will begin soon.” You reply as you shield your eyes to look up at the pyramid which does look pretty impressive this close up.” Cassandra begins to leave the carriage, but you stop her from doing so. “Cassandra, why don’t you head back. I don’t think you’re going to want to be here for this. Not because I don’t think you can’t handle it, but because it’s going to take awhile and I’d rather have you keeping a check on the potential civil unrest situation you’ve been concerned about. I mean other than my Eternals here, you’re about the only person I can truly trust and rely on anymore.” “Very well, and thank you my Emperor.” Cassandra says and kisses you before getting back inside the carriage. With Cassandra on her way back, you begin to make the long climb up the pyramid feeling the aches the entire time. You’ll be glad to put an end to that soon. When you finally get to the top, you take a short breather and accept the water that a nearby Eternal hands you. “Shit, that sun is a killer. Maybe I should’ve had this built on the Tor plains after all. (Whew) All right then let’s get on with this. Bring out the first sacrifice.” You say and a couple of your Eternals nod and go through the entryway to carry out your orders. While you wait you place the ritual book on a nearby stone podium and examine the sacrificial altar and the symbols you had etched into it. The altar itself was designed to be sturdy, but also has a slight elegance to it. The craftsman really put some artistic touches to it. You aren’t normally one to admire something like that, but in this case you do. As the screams of your first sacrifice get closer you draw out your mithril dagger. Ah this dagger has certainly been with you a long time. Saved your life more than a few times too. Still, you only keep it for one reason. As a reminder to end Semra’s life with it one day. (Yet another thing on the to do list after achieving immortality) Your Eternals bring out your first sacrifice. A young elven girl. She’s terrified, crying and begging for her life. “Well, it’s a good thing I sent Cassandra home. Pretty sure she wouldn’t have wanted to see this. How many elves are there in there anyway?” you ask one of the Eternals ignoring the girl’s screams. “Apologies, but I’m not exactly sure my Emperor. I know we brought in a lot, but we’re not sure how many the Eyes brought in.” “They most likely didn’t bring in any. Probably primarily stuck to humans. So…who do we have in there anyway?” “Mostly humans as you might expect. They’re from all over the Empire. Some elves, some kobolds, some orcs, some usksha, I know we even dragged a few ogres down here. All of them are of varying ages, colors, occupations and gender. You said the more variety from walks of life the better.” “That’s true. For some reason this will work better with more variety of life. Not exactly sure why, but I’m following the instructions. Just out curiosity, any gnomes?” “We did get a few. Tried to limit them to criminals though.” “As long as we got a few, okay throw her on the altar and let’s get started.” You say. As the girl continues to scream for her life, your Eternals place her on the altar. “Did you want us to gag these people in the future?” one of your Eternals asks. “No, apparently the terror and fear they outwardly display helps this ritual too, again don’t ask me why, I’m just following what was in this book…shhhh…I’ll make this quick.” You say and then chant as you bring the dagger down. When the deed is done and the girl’s life has indeed been exstinguished, her body is thrown down the steps on the left side of the pyramid. That pile is going to get very big before this over. Time passes from day and night as one by one people are dragged for you to kill. You have to take breaks every so often and after a few days of this you even resort to draining the life of some of your Eternals just to keep your strength up. You know its working though, you can feel it. By the time you’ve passed the five thousand mark the daytime sky no has a sun beating down on you and a constant overcast hangs in the air. A sandstorm whips up and at one point it even begins to rain, which it practically never does in this desert. You preserve through the sand and the rain as you did with the sun. The closer you get, the more you can feel your success. Eventually you don’t even begin feeling tired after killing a few hundred people, you’re starting to feel energized by it. Eventually you stop taking breaks and start dragging victims out yourself since your Eternals are certainly tired. By the time you hit over nine thousand your surrounding area is in a permanent state of unnatural darkness. A blackness has covered a wide area of the desert and you’re not even seeing the stars at this point, its just black like a void. And then finally the last victim is brought out. A miserable looking malnourished kobold who looks like he’s on his last legs anyway. He’s so weak that one of your Eternals picks him up by one hand and places him on the altar. You speak the last parts of the spell and bring down the knife ending the kobold’s life instantly and that’s when it happens. You feel a surge of energy like you’ve never felt before. It’s like when you drain the life of someone, but this is different, like a feeling of completeness. You believe its working. You don’t have a mirror handy, but your hands are certainly deprived of wrinkles now and you don’t have any aches or pains from age anymore. “I feel it! It’s working! It’s…” you shout and then suddenly you fall to the ground and a large rumbling sound from above is heard almost to the point to it being deafening. You are helped up by your Eternals, who begin to ask you what to do next. You look up and see several ghostly forms screaming out of the black void above. They don’t attack, they just seem to hang there and float around, but that doesn’t mean they won’t soon. “Emperor! Watch out!” an Eternal shouts and hacks down the kobold you just killed. Just as Nicodemus told you what the necromancers did, just as Semra warned you, you’ve opened up a gate to the Realm of the Dead. > You run down the pyramid steps Realizing the immediate danger you’re in, you waste no time in running down the steps of the pyramid. The ghostly forms begin to mock you. “Why do you fear death mortal? Did you not ssssummon it here?” one of the ghosts says nearly causing you to lose your footing on the steps when it suddenly floats in front of you. You blast the ghost with a magic bolt and then proceed to do the same thing to others that fly near you. Several of them dissipate instantly. “Undead bastards! You won’t….AGH!” you start to say when all of a sudden you begin to feel very weak. It’s not just you either; it’s your Eternals too. The feeling is similar to the draining effect by undead creatures or the negative zones of Mortos. You might not be aging, but you definitely don’t feel well, in fact you feel like you’re going to die and given how close to death you’ve been on several occasions, you’re very familiar with what that feels like. In fact, you’re reminded of the time when Cyrus nearly killed you. Feels like that. And unfortunately due to this sudden weakness you do lose your footing on the pyramid steps, as do a couple of your Eternals. You end up tumbling down the rest of the steps smacking your head against the hard stone several times. By the time you hit the bottom you have most certainly broken your neck. You aren’t dead, but you’re definitely not in a good position. Having little option you attempt to mend your broken neck through healing magic. It’s requiring all your focus which is already weak due to the negative energy in the area. The spell is working, but it’s going much slower than normal. In the meantime more spirits and the like pour out of the black void above the pyramid and the pile of bodies that were one dead have now begun to shuffle around their original area to the other side where you are currently at. Your Eternals that didn’t manage to kill themselves falling down the pyramid try to slow down the horde, but ultimately they fall before the sheer numbers and the unnatural magic affecting them. Soon it is only you who are left and your broken neck still isn’t quite mended, you only manage to sit up just in time for the newly risen bodies of your sacrificial victims to eat you alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 75 The longer you spend in this place, the more you’re starting to like it and that is somewhat of a worrying thought to you, because it certainly isn’t a thought shared by anyone under your command. The last five years have probably been a nightmare to most. You’ve had to rotate your “normal” military personnel fairly regularly. Most of them can only handle the psychological impact of the powerful undead horrors the necromancers have unleashed a limited amount of times before they become more of a liability rather than an asset. You can only imagine how full the asylums are getting back home. For the most part you’ve regulated most of your military to defend Evigrus since the svelk in last two years have tried to open up a new front by transporting groups of elite via portals. They’ve been relatively unsuccessful and even less so when they attempted to do the same thing on Nyttrus where your kobolds easily overwhelmed them and used the land to their advantage. The svelk for the most part have seemingly pulled out of Mortos though altogether. You’ve had to pull back your Eyes as well. Well trained they may be, most of them are still human and with that they suffer the same failings of the mind. It’s just as well, since things are starting to get a little unstable back home. It’s probably a combination of several things (Some of which might be all the new asylum patients) so Cassandra and the Eyes are back to their primary job of maintaining order. Even the Eternals are starting to get weary of this war and most of them have aged several years than normal. Still, they are Eternals, and whether they are third or fourth generation, they stand by your side…even in death. Since your time here, you’ve learned how to use the necromancer’s magic against them. You’ve managed to unlock the secrets of necromancy. You’re no master at it, and it takes great concentration on your part, but its come in handy at times. The odd thing is you seem to only be able to maintain control over fallen Eternals. Attempting to raise others has only resulted in them eventually turning against you. You wonder if its because of the way Eternals are “made” or their conditioned loyaty from birth, or maybe a combination of both that seems to result in their dedication to you and resist the overpowering will of the necromancers. As far as your own concerns about your state of mind you’ve been trying to hold it together. You sometimes think you’re living on borrowed time and that if you don’t achieve your goal soon, this place will eventually consume you. Maybe that’s why you’re starting to like it here, because you feel so close to death and this place is basically a home to the dead. But you’re not dying here if you can help it; in fact the whole point to this is so you don’t die at all. You’ve already begun to unlock the talents of the necromantic arts by yourself. As soon as you get that book, you KNOW you’ll be able to master them completely and become immortal. And that goal is now closer than ever because you’ve finally tracked it down. You stand on a slightly elevated bit of land with what remains of your army of Eternals (both living and dead) and a few juggernauts filled with crews of half mad engineers. In the distance a ruined fortress lies before you. It is a non-descript thing and has no real defenses since its walls are mostly broken or gone completely, but THAT is where your goal lies. Inside it somewhere. And that is also where Nicodemus must be. You need to attack now, because you know it’ll be only a matter of time before reinforcements to help him show up. There are ALWAYS undead, no matter how many you put down in this place. “General Damon, today the Empire assures its mastery over death itself.” You say. “We are all prepared my Emperor, we just await your word.” You nod and for a moment there is complete silence. “ATTACK!” you shout and then in unison, you and your Eternals advance towards the target. You lead from the front, just like the old days… Your juggernauts rumble past the sides of your army and then that’s when you finally hear him in your head… “This will not end well for you, Eternal. Turn back from this path now, or suffer the same fate as your father Casimir.” Naturally you ignore this pitiful attempt at stopping you, so Nicodemus finally unleashes his defenses. Several undead rise up out of the ground. Not just the normal type either, these are the remains of some sort of long dead gigantic beasts that must’ve once roamed this island. They are accompanied by the appearance of several ghostly forms. Wraiths and spectres with their ability to drain life with a mere touch. To your far left and far right, hordes of skeletons and zombies come popping up out of the ground. Nicodemus probably believes that you’ve foolishly walked into an obvious trap, but honestly you knew something like this would happen. Your goal here is to get the book at all costs. “Death will not stop us today! But then some of you personally already know that! Destroy these abominations and take the fortress!” you shout. One of your juggernauts is already moving far ahead of your army and firing off its canon, blowing away bits of the gigantic bone horrors. Under the right circumstances you believe it would easily finish up the task, but it isn’t those undead giants that are the problem, the problem lies with the wraiths and spectres who easily glide through the machine and turning it into a steel coffin by killing the crew within. Your other juggernaut decides not to engage such ghostly creatures and instead turns off to fend off the approaching undead horde to your left. Hopefully it can destroy a good chunk of them. The undead giants still intact begin to lumber forward to meet your army while throwing large pieces of stone lying nearby. You cast a barrier in front of your army to protect against the projectiles and then throw your own projectiles in the form of fire at the giants while your army opens fire at their legs until the bone and rotting flesh that are allowing them to still stand is finally severed to a degree that the rest of their bulk goes crashing to the ground. Most of them splinter into pieces from the fall, but other continue to come at you, dragging themselves toward you with their arms. These are dispatched with a few well places magic bolts and more gunfire. With the giants mostly taken care of, you notice the spectres and wraiths steadily approaching. You immediately drop the barrier and redirect your energy to cast an enchantment over your soldiers’ hand weapons. Guns are useless against things like spectres and wraiths, but with some skill they can still be overcome by an enchanted melee weapon. “Prepare for melee and don’t let them touch you!” you shout. The unearthly howls and shrieks by the ghostly assaliants fill your ears as you blast them with your magic bolts. Your dead Eternals come in very handy here as they directly engage the spectres and wraiths and try to shield their living brethren (and you) from being touched. It isn’t without some casualties though and the problems increase when the horde on your right finally reaches you. Fortunately the left side seems to be preoccupied with overwhelming the juggernaut, which has now resorted to its inside mounted repeater rifles, and just trying to run them over though its wheels are starting to get jammed with body parts. “FIGHT THROUGH THESE ROTTING BAGS, WE’RE NEARLY THERE!” you shout just in time to see several necromancers appear on the battlements and begin doing some sort of chant. Suddenly there’s an aura of death around you, and it isn’t just becase you’re surrounded by zombies. You feel like you just walked into one of those negative zones, except this one is being forced on you. You’re old enough as it is, you can’t afford to age anymore. You have to do something now because you won’t even make it to the broken fortress gates at this point. You call your Eternals to surround you and you begin to cast a spell of your own. Your living Eternals are suffering the affects of the necromancers’ spell, but trying to cancel their spell through your willpower isn’t going to help because they’re too strong collectively. So you rely on your traditional blast everything in the nearby area and hope it kills everything. You bring down an inferno on not just your enemies, but you and your people as well. Though you attempt to protect some with a surrounding barrier, but you just don’t have the strength to protect everyone. Most of the horde to your right are incinerated as are most of your people. There isn’t even much left to “raise.” To your left, there is a similar sight with a pile of burned undead no longer in any condition to pose a threat, though the juggernaut sits still and completely blackened by the rain of fire. The crew inside has no doubt cooked to death. Most importantly are the effects you see in front of you. You no longer see the row of necromancers and no longer feel the effects of their spell. The ruined fortess is also partially on fire, but it being made of stone it isn’t doing much more than cracking the already damaged structure. You’re incredibly drained however. This battle has really taken it out of you and you’ve still got Nicodemus and who knows what else to deal with. General Damon still by your side helps you from falling down. The Eternals that are still alive are finishing up putting down the undead that managed to survive by being within your protective barrier when you cast it. “Come on, my Emperor. As you said, we’re almost there.” He says. There are other necromantic arts that you’ve learned besides raising your Eternals, though you haven’t really pondered using them since there wasn’t any need or you still didn’t really have mastery over them. One of these was emulating the life drain of some of the undead here. And suddenly you’re actually pondering draining your own Eternals of their lifeforce to sustain your own. The thought does not give you any pleasure to do so, but you just aren’t sure if you’re going to make it otherwise. > You continue onward You can’t do it. While you’ve sacrificed many in several different ways, you’re not going to start draining the life force of your own Eternals like some undead horror. You’ve crossed many lines and all its done is brought you to this ruined state. You struggle towards the fortress, but even with Damon helping you, you don’t think you’re going to make it, let alone have the strength to face Nicodemus. “Take…take me back home…” you order Damon. You don’t even need to tell him twice, he sees how pale and weak you are and all of you are making a hasty retreat. Unfortunately between your age, your wounds, your exhaustion and the general negative energy in Mortos, you don’t make back home alive and you unceremoniously pass away just before you get to the home portal.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 62 “The transport airships have made their test run to the outskirts of Dokkrus and returned. They’re ready for the real mission now, my Emperor.” Elam remarks. “Good, because we’re sending them and a couple of the upgraded regular airships.” You say. This is a major step closer to your goals. Cassandra, Galen and the rest have managed to locate and hold a fairly intact portal for you. The base around it has already been dug out for easier lifting and they haven’t suffered many svelk attacks, well not many concentrated svelk attack at least. The svelk that are attacking are just the regular xenophobic type that doesn’t want outsiders on their territory. They have no real grasp of the greater plans that are going on. Semra’s actions have been surprisingly minimal though apparently she’s been too busy defending her own territory (and portal and mines) from not just your sabotage attempts (Which unfortunately haven’t been too successful), but from other svelk warbands. It would seem that Cassandra and your Eyes have at least successfully managed to keep up the ongoing chaos there. Won’t be long now. “Emperor, may I accompany you on this mission?” Zana asks. “Huh?” you say being interrupted by your private thoughts. “May I accompany you on this mission, my Emperor? I know I sounded a little afraid the last time Dokkrus was mentioned, but I admit part of me still wanted to go. I’d like to join you on this mission. Besides, I did have a hand in building these airships, it might be best if someone with that knowledge came along.” “I imagine Klemto might have some objections to that.” You say. “I love him, but he’s too over protective. Besides, you’re the Emperor if you want me to come with you then he has no choice but to comply right?” Zana says almost in a flirtatious way. You’re not exactly sure how to take that, but Elam definitely looks surprised. Maybe even a little jealous. “Well, that is correct…okay fine you can come with me.” “This will be a great honor my Emperor! I’m looking forward to this!” Zana says. “You will be accompanying me aboard the Storm III.” You say. “You’re going to be on the Storm III?” “That was the plan given that it’s the flagship, why where did you think I was going to be?” you ask. “Well I assumed that you’d want to be aboard one of the transport airships to better oversee the process as well as to better defend it from attack in case the svelk try something.” “That’s sort of why I have the Storm III and company going with them. They will be defending against possible svelk attacks, though barring Semra’s meddling; I don’t see any major threat to any of the airships themselves. The svelk are remarkably still stuck in the dark ages when it comes to weaponry.” “True, but I know you have the ability to cast those large barriers for defense. I dunno I just don’t see your own extra protection on a transport airship as such a bad idea. It would allow the escorts to focus a little more on protecting the other.” “Hrm. Never hurts to be sure I guess. Duly noted, I’ll think about it.” With Zana’s brief suggestion she excuses herself to get her things prepared for the mission, leaving you alone with Elam who realizes his glances of faint jealousy have caught your attention and he is now trying to not make eye contact. “Elam you’re acting like a teenager. I’m not remotely interested in your woman so you can stop worrying that I’m going to start fucking her on the airship.” You blurt out. “Uh…um…thank you my Emperor…I uh…” Elam stutters a bit at a lost for how to respond. “How long have you two been an item anyway? It doesn’t really show much when you two are together.” “We try to keep it professional my Emperor. Human women here aren’t in big supply here in New Dessel and I can’t identify with any of the Eyes, but Zana…she’s something special…never have I encountered a woman with such a magnificent intellect for science!” “Mm, I’m sure that the only thing…” you smirk. “Well her physical attributes are nice as well.’ Elam says. Elam goes on to ask if he can discuss his desire to work more in the medical and biology field when you return. You tell him that he may continue his experiments as usual, but you’re going to need his help with the portal when it’s brought back most likely. Your don’t bother talking with Klemto about Zana. You figure she can tell him herself, assuming she even bothers and decides to just make it a surprise for him. You do take the opportunity to look at the new airships. It’s odd, but as many times as you’ve seen them up close this will be the first time you’ll actually be on one of these things. Even on your return trip from Nyttrus you went by boat rather than waiting for another airship. When the day arrives Klemto approaches you. You’re guessing he must’ve heard the news by now. He comes to you hat in hand looking pitiful. “Emperor…I understand my daughter is going with you…I just beg of one thing and that’s that you see that she’s safe.” “You make a lot of demands of your Emperor…(sigh) She’ll be fine Klemto, you worry too much. I doubt if the svelk are even going to be able hit us if they even attack. Besides, she’s going to be aboard the Storm III and given that it’s the heaviest armed airship we have right now, she’ll be one of the safest people there.” “Well that’s good to hear. At least she’ll be close to you.” “Not necessarily. I might be flying on one of the transports. Zana suggested that it might be best if I was aboard one to better defend it in case the unexpected should happen.” As Klemto’s mind fills with worry again, you wonder if you should take Zana’s advice or not. > You board one of the transports Zana had a good idea; the transports could use a little extra protection so you decide to get on one of them. After about a half hour you finally get used to the idea of being so high in the air and less paranoid. You didn’t think it possible for you to be, but somewhere in the back of your mind, you had the concern of this thing falling out of the sky which is probably why you haven’t stayed in one place on the ship for very long and have felt the need to pace about it. Just as you’re getting used to the long flight over the ocean, you are suddenly in for something extremely unexpected. The a few of the Storm III’s cannons suddenly fire upon your transport ship! The transport you’re on is hit severely and is set ablaze along with several of the crew killed. More than that though is from this distance you can also see the Storm III suffering its own explosions in several places. You have no idea what is going on, but it’s obvious some sort of treachery has occurred. The only other thing you see is a figure jumping off the Storm and then a large odd piece of what you guess is white fabric comes out of the figure that jumped, slowing the descent. Meanwhile your ship slowly starts veering towards the other transport while continuing to burn around you. Between the collision, the fire and the other explosions going on aboard the ship you are caught in this disaster and even your magic can’t save you. One explosion knocks you unconscious and you aren’t awake when the wreckage finally hits the ocean.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 60 “Well, looks like we’ve lost the Tornado.” Warrick says as the pair of you see through in the near distance a multi-colored dragon unleash a gout of flame from its mouth, which engulfs the airship. Already heavily damaged the flying fortress can’t take anymore and begins to explode. Minor ones at first, then one large one. Flaming pieces of the machine fall from the sky. “It’s all right. It’s all right. The Storm II is still there and hopefully it’ll kill that damn thing or at least wound it enough for us to do so. Either way that flying lizard dies today. This war will be all but won with its death. It’s the last one and I’m glad it’s finally decided to come to us this time, because I’m sick of chasing it all over this damn continent. I want to get the invasion of Dokkrus underway properly and I can’t very well do that if I’m stuck in this damn jungle continent.” You say preparing for the large group of Iznac approaching Fort Canopy. “Hrm. Certainly is a lot of them. Better get on with this.” Warrick says and orders the cannons to fire upon the multitude, which puts a dent in their numbers, but doesn’t stop their advancing. You look over the battlements and see several Iznacs climbing the walls of the fort like an army of ants. They aren’t even using ladders, they’re just scaling the fort with their bare hands. It’s actually rather impressive, until you unleash a chain of lightning to zap all of them. The shock is enough to at least cause most of them to fall off if not outright kill them immediately. “Slaughter the four armed spider eyed bastards! Make them realize that their domination of this continent has passed! This is the time of the Empire!” you shout to the Eternals defending the fort. Your people are doing their best though they can’t stop every Iznac from scaling the fort. Soon the gunfire is replaced by sounds of close combat weaponry. No matter how far the advances in technology, it always eventually comes down to looking your opponent in the eye and feeling their blood splatter as you end their life. While you’re busy hacking off the limbs of an Iznac warrior, another loud explosion in the distance is heard followed by a bright flash in the sky. It’s not lightning from the storm, but rather the demise of your Storm. The Storm II joins the Tornado in crashing to the ground after losing its skirmish with the dragon. Hopefully the rain is making the jungle wet enough or else the flames from the wreckage of these downed airships are going to cause an inferno throughout the jungle. “Damn! The Iznac brought their little frog slaves and the remainder of those orc traitors!” Warrick says and cuts down several Glip before helping the rest of the soldiers fend off the orcs smashing through the fortress’ gates. It doesn’t matter in the scheme of things because even with overwhelming odds, your Eternals are still holding their own against all attackers. You then hear a roaring sound getting closer to your position and the sounds of great wings flapping. You shout a general command for the still working cannons to be pointed towards the dragon and to prepare to fire when the beast is in range. In the meantime you and Warrick try to keep that side of the fort relatively free of invading forces. “Hey, you think maybe I can get the chance to kill the dragon this time? I know you’re the Emperor and all, but you don’t need to prove your superiority all the damn time.” Warrick jokes. “Yeah? Well maybe you’ll get your chance if you aren’t as slow like you were the last two times.” You retort. “Slow? Well excuse me Mr. lightning fingers, but we all don’t have the ability to blast something out of the sky with a thought.” “Well that’s why I’m the Emperor.” You snicker. The dragon gets closer and you give the order to fire and unleash your own magic bolts at the creature. It’s definitely wounded from its ordeal with the two airships, but given your experience with the other two dragons, you know it’s far from being out the fight. In fact it’s so determined that it doesn’t distinguish friend from foe when it blasts its flame breath on the fort. You manage to protect most of your people with a magic barrier, but for those outside its protection, most are set on fire if not incinerated immediately. On the positive side, it reduces your enemies, on the negative it ignites the gunpowder barrels for the cannons causing a massive explosion and completely destroying one side of the fort. While the barrier still protects you and everyone within initially, its still a lot of strain on your energy and you begin to feel the fatigue setting in. “No! Damnit! Fight through it!” you mutter to yourself hating your weakness. While you’re busily trying to fight through your fatigue, you don’t notice where Warrick went and that was to the highest point he could get to on the fort and some how JUMPING on the damn dragon when it made its pass! You almost can’t believe your eyes as you see the dragon flying away from the fort with Warrick desperately trying to hold on to one of its legs. You can see him hacking at the dragon’s underbelly. The dragon bellows in pain and begins to turn to make a second pass, but Warrick’s assault makes another attack on the fort a non-priority for it. You see the beast twist and squirm in an effort to shake Warrick free and then eventually the beast makes another loud screech and the both of them go crashing into the jungle no doubt destroying several trees in the process. You can still hear the dragon in the distance, so you know it isn’t dead yet (Though probably badly wounded), but who knows about Warrick’s fate. In the meantime Fort Canopy isn’t immediately being attacked anymore as most of the Iznac have fled or been killed at this point. You quickly order your remaining troops to secure the fort and take a small group with you to head towards the dragon’s roaring noises. Fortunately the jungle isn’t thick here and the noises make tracking pretty easy, though by the time you reach your target, you see the severely wounded dragon with Warrick in its mouth and shaking its head from side to side. Then with one more shake, Warrick goes flying out of the dragon’s mouth and slams into a nearby tree. You can’t quite make out all the damage, but it looks like he’s missing an arm at this point. Who knows what other grievous wounds he’s suffered. In any case the dragon has now turned its attention towards your direction, but its not exactly in the best condition itself. It makes a coughing noise and a pitifully short burst of flame and a large amount of blood emanates from its mouth. It even tries to flap its wings perhaps in an attempt to escape, but one wing is so torn up that it can’t lift off even if it had the strength to do so. > You order your troops to do it and help Warrick You can’t let Warrick die, not with how much he’s helped you. You’d almost be at a loss on how to tell Brenda if it happened. “Kill the dragon!” you shout at your troops and run over Warrick’s bloody body. Ignoring everything else, you quickly turn Warrick over who isn’t even conscious. He’s still alive, because you can see his heart still beating from the open wound in his chest. “Hang on, you’re not dying today!” you say and begin to focus on healing Warrick’s fatla wounds. In the meantime your soldiers are doing a fairly good job at combating the dragon, which is distracted with them. Had this been the only obstacle, you probably would’ve been able to save Warrick’s life. Unfortunately there are enemies in this jungle other than wounded dragons. Several Iznac who retreated from the fort earlier were lurking nearby and taking advantage of your soldier’s preoccupation with the dragon and your preoccupation with healing Warrick one of them throws a spear right into your back. The force is such that the head of it actually protrudes a bit from your abdomen. Losing complete concentration you yell out in pain and your own body slumps over Warrick’s. You struggle to crawl to a safer location and attempt to heal yourself, but the ambushing Iznac manage to cut you down before you are able.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 56 You enter Brenda’s office where upon she smiles briefly at you, though with everything you have on your mind, you don’t return the gesture instead you just nod. “Hello Brenda, I trust you and Warrick are still enjoying your new marital status.” You say guessing that what’s put her in better spirits as of late. “Yes, Emperor. I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time. Thank you for performing the wedding personally.” “Think nothing of it. Though I didn’t think you’d ever remarry, let alone Warrick. But if you two are happy then that’s good. You should hold on to that as long as possible for one never knows when it will suddenly be taken away from you.” “Um…of course my Emperor. We certainly do cherish our time together.” Brenda responds at your rather grim comment. “Anyway, I came here to let you know that the new Eternals have been released from their tanks. You’ll be training them soon.” You say. “I’ll be looking forward to it. I trust they met with your standards?” “Yes, most of them seem to be very much like the third generation though perhaps with signs of displaying higher intelligence overall. Under your guidance, I have no doubt that they’ll be just as effective as the third gens.” You reply with a sigh. “Is there something wrong my Emperor?” Brenda asks. “Yes, it’s Nyttrus. The place is becoming a pain in my side that I don’t want to be bothered with, but I find that it might become necessary to step in personally soon. We’ve got more than a few strongholds there now, but the Iznac are far from being beaten, unfortunately most of the humans there are sick or dead due to disease and Iznac magic. Flog’s also dead and the orcs have become slightly less disciplined as of late without his calmer leadership. There have been a few reports of deserters running off into the jungles and forming their own communities. Just glad Snilkez’ka is still alive and the kobolds are holding down the forts there until the third gens arrive.” “Couldn’t you send airships to bomb Nyttrus to speed things up? “They don’t really have the range to travel across the vast oceans yet though Elam’s working on fixing that with the gnomes. In any event if they did have that sort of range I might be inclined to have them try to find Dokkrus first since that’s my real goal.” Brenda tries to give you some words of encouragement, but they don’t improve your mood. Instead you just leave Brenda, once again wishing her well on her new happy marriage. You spend a few days wondering whether or not you should head to Nyttrus with the third gens. Ultimately you decide not to as you’re still hoping to hear something soon about Dokkrus. As soon as you get word about that, you want to be on the next ship going there. You don’t want to be in the middle of a conflict that you know you’ll be compelled to complete if you directly get involved. In the meantime you go back to more mundane matters such as ensuring that the rebuilding of the new Nakol province remains on schedule. You also take time to hone your magic abilities; in fact since your “intimate” mind connection with Semra, you actually feel a little more powerful or rather you gained a brief insight into spells she never taught you during training. A few weeks pass and still no word about Dokkrus, however you do get bothersome news about Nyttrus again. You’re informed of the latest problems on Nyttrus by Kivan who received a message about it in the middle of the night. The Iznac have apparently unleashed a powerful “secret weapon” in the form of three very large flying lizards. And these aren’t wyverns either. They are creatures that Casimir once told you were rare even back in his day. They’re dragons and apparently they’ve already destroyed one of your forts on the continent. This isn’t news you wanted to hear. Now you’re going to have no choice, but to go over there. You still can’t do all this alone though, you still want to wrap this war up as quick as you can and you’ll need some competent tacticians and strategists to do that. Snilkez’ka has her way of doing things you’re sure, but they probably work best with other kobolds she commands. The third gens are good warriors, and a select few of them are indeed leaders, but most of them are rather…well unimaginative sometimes. You don’t think that’s the fault of Brenda’s training, but perhaps just a tendency towards conformity due to their creation. In fact you can’t even think of a single one that has stood out to you during the war with Nakol. Hopefully the fourth won’t have that problem when they’re ready. So you make up your mind that General Flevas should accompany you. The elf is pretty much the best one you have right now and you believe his vast scouting skills should come in handy. Given that all the orcs ran off and rebelled, you also won’t have to worry about Flevas not being respected as a leader. The third gens and kobolds seem fairly neutral towards him. You go back and forth on whether or not to bring Galen. His magic would most certainly help against the dragons, but you’re wondering if you want to put up with his tendency to complain. True he’s much better at not doing it, but he always manages to find a way. Who you really wish you had is Decena. She would’ve been perfect for this mission since she already worked well with the third gens. Just another reminder of your loss. Maybe though you just need another Eternal. An Eternal who always likes “vacations” away from his usual duties, namely Warrick. He certainly commands respect amongst the Eyes and besides you he’s probably the next most feared name in the Empire. As Sightmaster he’s also skilled in less traditional forms of warfare, which will come in handy in the jungle filled continent. Of course the only concern with bringing him is that leaves the “mainland” of the Empire, relatively… well the word isn’t undefended, but without a major figure to oversee any possible problems that may crop up. You suppose Brenda and Kivan can handle things if something really gets out of hand. Which brings you to another problem and that’s taking Warrick into a war in the first place. Warrick’s job at one time was probably a bit more dangerous, but as you’ve established order over the continent, stomped out dissension and all of those other necessary things, it’s become even more like a “desk job.” Warrick still keeps up on his training and such, and you know if you called for him to assist he’d jump at the chance not just out of loyalty, but because he always has a bit of desire to get in the middle of things again. He could very well get killed and a better head of internal security, as far as you’re concerned there is none. His loss would be even greater than Decena’s you believe. Though it’s the more “moral” problem that surprisingly has you rethinking this. Warrick just married Brenda, the pair of them don’t see each other every day, but they’re able to do so when they can. It’s the happiest Brenda’s been since she was married to Roldan. If Warrick was to die, well you can only imagine what that might do to her. So if you lost Warrick, you might be “losing” Brenda as well. Of course that’s all speculation. You don’t intend on losing Warrick at all, but you have to prepare for that possibility and the repercussions of such things. > You leave Warrick behind Warrick is possibly the closest thing now you have to a “right hand” anymore. True there is still Brenda, but if Warrick died, what were her state of mind be? It took her a long time to get over Roldan’s death. You don’t think she’d be able to handle another great loss, which is another reason why you’ll leave Warrick here. Besides, with him overseeing things here you won’t have to be concerned about the homeland getting out of hand while you’re away. Leaving Warrick in charge you finish preparing for your trip to Nyttrus and soon leave with several hundred third generation Eternals and Flevas. (But not Galen since you don’t feel he’ll be necessary) When you eventually do arrive in Nyttrus the place does indeed remind you a bit of Delerg though even hotter. The kobold leader Snilkez’ka is the first one to greet you and exclaim that now that you’re here, the war will go much quicker and victory should come swiftly. The first few weeks are indeed very successful ones, and it does appear that victory will come quickly if the Iznac are falling as quickly as they do, but as always not everything is so clear cut when you have dragons involved. You first encounter with one of the great beasts results in you losing half your company at the time and the dragon flying away. After this experience you fall back a bit on the advance and regroup realizing that the conquest of this continent is going to take a lot longer than anticipated. Year 60 “We’ll hold the line at Fort Canopy and Fort Tangle, then after they’ve expended all their energy on this massive assault of theirs, we can make our own advance and wipe them out for good.” You say and then promptly stagger a bit away from the table in pain. General Flevas and Captain Snilkez’ka move towards you and ask if you need help, but you of course decline. Though the truth is, you could use some help, just not in the way they are offering. Ever since the dragons reared their ugly heads this campaign has been one struggle after another and taken a great toll on your body. While you’ve managed to kill two of the giant lizards already, it’s almost been at the cost of your own life. Your last battle with one of the creatures practically cost you half of the left side of your face given that you’re missing an eye and an ear now. You’re even missing part of your non-dominant hand. While healing magic is powerful, even you can’t regenerate completely lost limbs or other organs and you’ve been pushing it to the limit as it is. You might be holding off death in the in the short term, but you’ve probably been shortening your life span just by using it as much as you have. You’ve been in contact with Warrick who has been giving the occasional updates via letters on what’s been going on in Evigrus since your absence and the general reports are always fairly boring. The only thing that has been of major importance is the discovery of Dokkrus. Warrick says he’s already sent Eyes there to spy on things as you requested, but not to engage yet. Quite honestly, sometimes you question if you’re even going to survive this campaign and even if you do win, how many years do you really have left anymore? You need to speed this up if you intend on invading Dokkrus and reaching Mortos. You dismiss Flevas and Snikez’ka and tell them you’ll be fine defending Fort Canopy by yourself and that they should focus on Fort Tangle’s defenses and with any luck the airships will take out the dragon. Days pass and you and your troops prepare for the inevitable assault, which comes in excessive force just as predicted. Perhaps even a little more. You look over the battlements and see several Iznacs climbing the walls of the fort like an army of ants. They aren’t even using ladders, they’re just scaling the fort with their bare hands. It’s actually rather impressive, until you unleash a chain of lightning to zap all of them. The shock is enough to at least cause most of them to fall off if not outright kill them immediately. Your people are doing their best though they can’t stop every Iznac from scaling the fort. Soon the gunfire is replaced by sounds of close combat weaponry. No matter how far the advances in technology, it always eventually comes down to looking your opponent in the eye and feeling their blood splatter as you end their life. While you’re busy hacking off the limbs of an Iznac warrior, another loud explosion in the distance is heard followed by a bright flash in the sky. It’s the destruction of your last airship from the dragon. Flaming wreckage crashes down in the distance. Won’t be long before the dragon turns its attention towards one of the forts. Iznac, glip and orcs all attack the fort and while it’s a brutal affair, your Eternals are holding their own in the face of overwhelming odds. You then hear a roaring sound getting closer and the sounds of great wings approaching. You shout a general command for the still working cannons to be pointed towards the dragon and to prepare to fire when the beast is in range. In the meantime you try to keep that side of the fort relatively free of invading forces. The dragon gets closer and you give the order to fire and unleash your own magic bolts at the creature. It’s definitely wounded from its ordeal with the airships, but given your experience with the other two dragons, you know it’s far from being out the fight. In fact it’s so determined that it doesn’t distinguish friend from foe when it blasts its flame breath on the fort. You manage to protect most of your people with a magic barrier, but for those outside its protection, most are set on fire if not incinerated immediately. On the positive side, it reduces your enemies, on the negative it ignites the gunpowder barrels for the cannons causing a massive explosion and completely destroying one side of the fort. While the barrier still protects you and everyone within initially, it’s still a lot of strain on your energy and you begin to feel the fatigue setting in. and you can’t hold out any longer… Your strength falters and the barrier goes down and the flames envelop you and several of your troops. In the last moments of your flesh melting off your bones you only regret that this fort will fall.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 54 Nakol’s existence as a nation is coming to an end. You’ve seized most of its territory. Its armies have practically been wiped out, and you’ve even eliminated most of Mortimer’s allies. The only major objective that’s left is Dequilet, the capital and currently the only thing saving it is a large magical barrier completely surrounding the city. So far it’s proven impenetrable to conventional means, which means you’re going to have to resort to magical ones, which unfortunately despite your own best efforts you’ve failed to bring it down, though you feel as if you’ve gotten close. You doubt if Mortimer is doing it himself, you imagine that Semra is probably helping him upkeep the barrier. He might even have a couple of satyr mages still left, though you doubt it. In any case, he’s got help and you’re probably going to have to resort to a bit of help as well if you want to bring the barrier down. “Galen’s a given, as are the Eye mages, but I’m going to have to take mages off overseeing the Eternal tanks for this project as well. Don’t want to, but it’ll be necessary.” You say while explaining the next course of action in your command tent to Decena. “We’re going to have to wait for those mages to come here, that’s at least a few days. I hate this sitting around, is it truly the only way?” Decena asks. “Unfortunately. Last time I tried to bring it down, I nearly fell unconscious. With enough magic energy though I’m certain it can be brought down, as soon as it is, I want you and rest to blow apart those walls and rush in as quick as you can. Don’t worry I won’t be far behind no matter how woozy I feel afterwards.” Just as Decena is about to acknowledge your plan, that old familiar voice is heard. “You know none of that is necessary if you listen to my plan.” Semra remarks. The instant Decena sees Semra she raises her voice and attempts to attack her, though you hold her back from doing so. “Don’t bother Decena, she’s not really there. It’s an illusionary image. Right on time too. You’re starting to get predictable Semra.” You say. “Semra? Is this that svelk bitch you’ve told me about?” Decena asks. “Oh so he did talk about me to you. I’m not surprised. Never could get me completely out of his mind…” “Fuck you svelk! He told me about all the hell you put him through!” Semra does her usual gleeful smile at Decena’s anger. “My, she IS the aggressively territorial one. Isn’t she? Almost sad that her feelings for you are so strong when your own for her are…limited. Trust me dear, he can’t ever love you back. How could he? You’re not even young looking anymore…” At this point you have to restrain Decena again. “Decena, don’t pay attention to her. She’s just enjoying making you miserable. It’s what she does. Semra, what the hell do you want? Shouldn’t you be making plans to escape or something?” “Who said I wasn’t? But right now I’m actually here for you. Need your help in killing Mortimer, well what’s left of him anyway. It’s getting harder to figure out when he’s completely all there or not. Zelvix is starting to gain mental control over him due to his shattered confidence and willpower. This war has been very stressful on him as you might expect.” Decena asks what she’s talking about and you quickly mention about the supposed demon army that will be unleashed when Mortimer dies, though with the way Semra’s telling it, it sounds like this Zelvix is already getting loose…assuming she’s telling the truth. “Semra, didn’t YOU claim that it would take you about a decade to properly banish this demon?” you ask. “Well with you rushing head long into attacking Nakol, I had to step up my research now didn’t I? Don’t worry though, as I said, I’ve got it figured out, just need your help in doing so. Remember how we linked our energy together when we were extinguishing all those little gnome souls? Well we need to do something like that again, but this is going to require a slightly deeper connection. Namely we’d have to link our very minds together so as to make the magical connection strong enough to face the demon.” “Here we go…” You think. “You can’t seriously trust this woman!” Decena shouts. “He most certainly should trust me considering how many times I’ve warned him about shit and indirectly AND directly saved his life. After all if he’d trusted me all those years ago, he might’ve saved himself a lot of bother on a certain island. Y’know you still have never told me how you exactly came out of Mortos relatively unscathed. Perhaps you can after we take care of this mess?” Semra remarks. You don’t answer immediately. You’ve been put in this position several times before and it’s the same old thing. Semra tells you something, you distrust her, you usually follow her advice against your better judgment and while things don’t necessarily go entirely your way, you can never deny that had you not acted things would be much worse. But on the other hand… it’s the same old thing. You know she’s not telling you the whole truth and something about this demon situation seems even more suspicious especially since she’s actually encouraging a linking of your minds. Even if she’s telling the entire truth about the demon and this being the only way she feels is the way to defeat it, would it really be a victory if Semra had magical access to your mind? Who the hell knows what she might be able to do. “All of this is pointless anyway, we can’t get in unless that barrier goes down.” You say. “Oh that thing? I can make a small opening in it for a small period of time. Of course when I do so, Mortimer will probably instantly know I’m working against him and it’s possible he’ll completely lose himself to Zelvix, but we should have enough time to do what we have to do.” Semra remarks. “Or I could just wait for my mages to help me bring the barrier down. Then when I do get that barrier down, I assault the city with so much firepower that nothing of this world or another is going to survive it. I don’t care how powerful this demon is.” You say. “Optimistic that you believe that, but I tell you sincerely that won’t be enough to stop Zelvix. He’s in a weakened state now due to his long imprisonment, but as soon as Mortimer’s dead, it won’t take him long to regain his full strength and when that happens, count on several magical gates opening up. Now MAYBE you’ll be able to even repel the demons that will undoubtedly come screaming out of said gates, but quite frankly, YOU are not the young Eternal you used to be and your odds will not be good. And your Empire’s odds if you should fall in battle? Even worse. You already survived one trip that you very well shouldn’t have…actually you’ve survived many things you probably shouldn’t have, but those days are becoming more unlikely as you approach your twilight years. I understand that you’d rather die a warrior’s death, however I doubt very seriously that you wish to die a fool’s death. It is one thing to die in a battle that has been properly planned. It’s entirely another when you die because you purposely ignore all your information and don’t take advantage of the tools and resources that allow you to win efficiently. I’M giving you this chance to win this war now in the most efficient way possible.” You continue to listen. “We’ve been in this all too familiar position before Eternal. Why take the chance of making the same mistake twice?” Semra asks. Decena looks at you as you seriously begin to consider Semra’s offer. “Emperor?” she asks. > You carry out your original plan Semra’s agendas have never always been completely clear with you, but you’re sure that whenever it is that you do listen to her, it somehow advances them to an end that will ultimately be no good for you in the long run. This is one of those times where she’s going to have fall back to her plan “b” because you’re not helping her in this instance. “Sorry Semra, I’m going with my own agenda this time. And you’re seriously underestimating my abilities if this so called demon invasion does take place. True, I might not be young anymore, but I guarantee I’ll be able to handle whatever is going to come next after we destroy Dequilet which is probably nothing anyway.” “Then you’re a damn fool. A stubborn old fool who just doesn’t want to look weak in front of his devoted…” Semra starts to say, but Decena suddenly cuts her off. “Shut the fuck up, svelk cunt! You’ve spun enough of your bullshit lies today! You got your fucking answer from the Emperor, now scuttle back to whatever fucking hole you’ll hide in before I hunt you down and I slice that venomous tongue out and shove it up your ass!” Semra merely smirks at Decena’s threat. “And you used to kiss him with that mouth? Okay, I can see my efforts are going to wasted here. I hoped for a different way, but perhaps this will still work out. Goodbye Eternal, I don’t think we’ll meet again.” “You said that before.” You answer. “So I did…well perhaps you’ll surprise me again. You always did have that special way about you.” With those final words, Semra’s image disappears and you can get back to your original plan. Decena is certainly happier about the situation. You execute the order to have mages sent here to help bring down the barrier. You can imagine how upset Galen will be when he’s been taken away from whatever less dangerous task he’s doing at the moment. In a few days, your mages arrive and you all focus to bring the barrier down. You tell your army as soon as it’s down, to bombard with every catapult, cannon, lightning gun, ballista, and trebuchet they’ve got and the airships nearby have the same orders to open fire. When everyone is in place you begin the spell to break down the barrier. It’s similar to the time you were focusing on casting the continual firestorm on the dryad forest, but this is actually taking even more focus and energy. It’s apparent that Mortimer or possibly the demon inside him doesn’t want you getting in. At some point during the spell, Galen flips out and starts babbling about hearing a voice inside his head. It’s enough to cause a temporary break in focus and you try to calm him down, but he exclaims that bringing the barrier down is going to unleash something worse. You have no patience for this and he begins to worry the other mages. You blast him with a lightning bolt while he’s in mid-babble and have his body removed from your sight. “Now then, I want the rest of you to FOCUS! That so-called sorcerer in there is just playing mind tricks in order to save his worthless hide! Whatever voice any of you may hear is just a mere parlor trick and the only voice you should be concerned about is mine and what command it is giving!” you say to the remaining mages. Going back to the spell there are no more interruptions, but as to be expected a couple of your weaker mages also collapse from the strain of the spell. The barrier however is definitely gone and the bombardment of Dequilet starts immediately. The utter destruction of Dequilet is loud and full of explosions. You continue to have it bombarded until you’re satisfied that nothing is going to be left alive. Eventually though you do call a stop to it. “Alright, that will do for now. We’ll let the fires die down a bit and then send in some squads to rummage through the ruins of that place. I’m fairly certain we killed everything, but never hurts to be sure.” You say. “Hopefully that svelk bitch was in there too.” Decena remarks. “We could only hope, but my guess is she probably fled when she realized I wasn’t going to help her.” “I’m glad you didn’t. Are you okay though?” “Me? Yeah, just need to rest a bit. (Whew) Bringing that barrier took it out of me a little. More than I expected I guess. That needn’t have been the case had Galen not lost his shit. Bah, no matter. The man did nothing but complain anyway.” You remark. Just as Decena is about to respond, you suddenly feel a change in the air. One brimming with magical energy and a malevolent presence. A large portal opens up just above the ruins of Dequilet and a red flying creature comes out and then another, and another, and then… While seemingly hordes of demons are pouring out of this one portal, another portal opens up nearby and then another, and then another and then… While your army is shocked and scrambling to prepare for this unexpected attack, you just curse silently to yourself. “Damnit…she was fucking right…AGAIN…” you say. “Emperor! There are demons everywhere! What are your orders?!” Decena asks in between telling nearby officers to adopt a defensive position. Your orders are of course to fall back because right now you’re starting to become heavily outnumbered as more and more demons come pouring out of the portals. Unfortunately you’re also starting to become surrounded. It doesn’t help that most of your siege machine ammunition is gone due to your bombardment of Dequilet. The airships are still functioning fortunately, but a good number of flying demons are already making their way to try to solve that situation. “We’re going to have to fight our way of this mess and regroup at the nearest fortress! In the meantime kill anything red with hooves and horns!” you shout. You really wish you weren’t as tired as you are, but you’re going to have to just fight through it. A few minutes in and the retreat is definitely looking grim. You got separated from Decena and you have no idea if your other general Flevas is even still alive. Your Eternals are doing their best as always, but the rest of your troops are suffering from a severe drop in morale and mostly screaming in terror desperately trying to get away rather than an organized defensive retreat. You don’t know if it’s due to fighting otherworldly beings and a seemingly endless supply of them, or if its some sort of unnatural fear aura that the demons themselves are causing. Probably a bit of both. Your kobold troops however are ever resourceful and in the middle of slicing off the head of a demon, a single kobold tugs at your scabbard. You almost kill him thinking him another attacker before he holds up his arms in panic. “No! No! Emp! Emp! Help! Hole! Over here here! Scape scape!” the kobold says and points to a hole that one of his people have no doubt made. Escaping through the tunnel would probably be a good idea since its starting to look like the demons are attempting to cut off your path of retreat, but then you are also concerned about Decena’s whereabouts. If your next war is going to be against these otherworldly monsters, you’re going to need all the skilled leaders you can get. > You go with the kobolds Decena’s a big girl and can handle herself Chances are she’s already making a path towards the nearest fort. You’re sure she’s fine…well you hope she is. In any event, you aren’t going to be much good if you don’t survive this assault so you follow the kobold soldier down the hole. The tunnel as you expect is smaller than the average human size, but you’re able to walk even if you do have to crouch a bit and keep your head down. Several kobolds enter the tunnel after you in an effort to keep the back of you better protected just in case some demons come wandering down. The kobold who lead you here in the first place continues to runs just a bit ahead of you and repeat directions of where he’s heading next. You have to cast a dark vision spell just so you can see since its pitch black. You follow the tunnels for a bit and there aren’t even any demon attacks from behind (or ahead for that matter) and you begin to think that this was probably the best idea, but unfortunately events take an unexpected turn. With the battle still raging above ground, the tunnels do suffer from minor damage as bits of dirt periodically fall from the ceiling of them. It doesn’t get bad until one of your airships which had been destroyed by the demon onslaught comes crashing down right above the tunnels you’re in right now. You hear a loud crash from above and then a louder rumble as massive amounts of dirt fall around and upon you. The kobolds you’re travelling with yelp in panic and try to get away either by retreating back the way you came or forward to where you’re going. You however can’t move quite as fast in the cramped tunnels and you become buried alive under rock and dirt. Not even a glorious warriors death, just a convenient burial.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Semra’s agendas have never always been completely clear with you, but you’re sure that whenever it is that you do listen to her, it somehow advances them to an end that will ultimately be no good for you in the long run. This is one of those times where she’s going to have fall back to her plan “b” because you’re not helping her in this instance. “Sorry Semra, I’m going with my own agenda this time. And you’re seriously underestimating my abilities if this so called demon invasion does take place. True, I might not be young anymore, but I guarantee I’ll be able to handle whatever is going to come next after we destroy Dequilet which is probably nothing anyway.” “Then you’re a damn fool. A stubborn old fool who just doesn’t want to look weak in front of his devoted…” Semra starts to say, but Decena suddenly cuts her off. “Shut the fuck up, svelk cunt! You’ve spun enough of your bullshit lies today! You got your fucking answer from the Emperor, now scuttle back to whatever fucking hole you’ll hide in before I hunt you down and I slice that venomous tongue out and shove it up your ass!” Semra merely smirks at Decena’s threat. “And you used to kiss him with that mouth? Okay, I can see my efforts are going to wasted here. I hoped for a different way, but perhaps this will still work out. Goodbye Eternal, I don’t think we’ll meet again.” “You said that before.” You answer. “So I did…well perhaps you’ll surprise me again. You always did have that special way about you.” With those final words, Semra’s image disappears and you can get back to your original plan. Decena is certainly happier about the situation. You execute the order to have mages sent here to help bring down the barrier. You can imagine how upset Galen will be when he’s been taken away from whatever less dangerous task he’s doing at the moment. In a few days, your mages arrive and you all focus to bring the barrier down. You tell your army as soon as it’s down, to bombard with every catapult, cannon, lightning gun, ballista, and trebuchet they’ve got and the airships nearby have the same orders to open fire. When everyone is in place you begin the spell to break down the barrier. It’s similar to the time you were focusing on casting the continual firestorm on the dryad forest, but this is actually taking even more focus and energy. It’s apparent that Mortimer or possibly the demon inside him doesn’t want you getting in. At some point during the spell, Galen flips out and starts babbling about hearing a voice inside his head. It’s enough to cause a temporary break in focus and you try to calm him down, but he exclaims that bringing the barrier down is going to unleash something worse. You have no patience for this and he begins to worry the other mages. You blast him with a lightning bolt while he’s in mid-babble and have his body removed from your sight. “Now then, I want the rest of you to FOCUS! That so-called sorcerer in there is just playing mind tricks in order to save his worthless hide! Whatever voice any of you may hear is just a mere parlor trick and the only voice you should be concerned about is mine and what command it is giving!” you say to the remaining mages. Going back to the spell there are no more interruptions, but as to be expected a couple of your weaker mages also collapse from the strain of the spell. The barrier however is definitely gone and the bombardment of Dequilet starts immediately. The utter destruction of Dequilet is loud and full of explosions. You continue to have it bombarded until you’re satisfied that nothing is going to be left alive. Eventually though you do call a stop to it. “Alright, that will do for now. We’ll let the fires die down a bit and then send in some squads to rummage through the ruins of that place. I’m fairly certain we killed everything, but never hurts to be sure.” You say. “Hopefully that svelk bitch was in there too.” Decena remarks. “We could only hope, but my guess is she probably fled when she realized I wasn’t going to help her.” “I’m glad you didn’t. Are you okay though?” “Me? Yeah, just need to rest a bit. (Whew) Bringing that barrier took it out of me a little. More than I expected I guess. That needn’t have been the case had Galen not lost his shit. Bah, no matter. The man did nothing but complain anyway.” You remark. Just as Decena is about to respond, you suddenly feel a change in the air. One brimming with magical energy and a malevolent presence. A large portal opens up just above the ruins of Dequilet and a red flying creature comes out and then another, and another, and then… While seemingly hordes of demons are pouring out of this one portal, another portal opens up nearby and then another, and then another and then… While your army is shocked and scrambling to prepare for this unexpected attack, you just curse silently to yourself. “Damnit…she was fucking right…AGAIN…” you say. “Emperor! There are demons everywhere! What are your orders?!” Decena asks in between telling nearby officers to adopt a defensive position. Your orders are of course to fall back because right now you’re starting to become heavily outnumbered as more and more demons come pouring out of the portals. Unfortunately you’re also starting to become surrounded. It doesn’t help that most of your siege machine ammunition is gone due to your bombardment of Dequilet. The airships are still functioning fortunately, but a good number of flying demons are already making their way to try to solve that situation. “We’re going to have to fight our way of this mess and regroup at the nearest fortress! In the meantime kill anything red with hooves and horns!” you shout. You really wish you weren’t as tired as you are, but you’re going to have to just fight through it. A few minutes in and the retreat is definitely looking grim. You got separated from Decena and you have no idea if your other general Flevas is even still alive. Your Eternals are doing their best as always, but the rest of your troops are suffering from a severe drop in morale and mostly screaming in terror desperately trying to get away rather than an organized defensive retreat. You don’t know if it’s due to fighting otherworldly beings and a seemingly endless supply of them, or if its some sort of unnatural fear aura that the demons themselves are causing. Probably a bit of both. Your kobold troops however are ever resourceful and in the middle of slicing off the head of a demon, a single kobold tugs at your scabbard. You almost kill him thinking him another attacker before he holds up his arms in panic. “No! No! Emp! Emp! Help! Hole! Over here here! Scape scape!” the kobold says and points to a hole that one of his people have no doubt made. Escaping through the tunnel would probably be a good idea since its starting to look like the demons are attempting to cut off your path of retreat, but then you are also concerned about Decena’s whereabouts. If your next war is going to be against these otherworldly monsters, you’re going to need all the skilled leaders you can get. > You seek out Decena You’re not leaving Decena behind. In fact with the way things are looking, you’re not even sure you’re going to be able to escape anyway. The demons have already started cutting off your escape paths and getting stuck in a cramped tunnel is going to make you a perfect target if they wander down there. Hell they might just try to collapse the tunnel on you from above. If this is going to be the day you die, better that it be in battle than buried alive. You tell the kobolds to escape on their own if they wish, but you need to stay and at least see if Decena’s still alive. The kobold tries to convince you to leave again, but sees that you are unconvinced, so he wishes you luck and runs off. “Pfft. Scaly little bastard could’ve at least offered to stay.” You mumble, and start your search for Decena admist all this chaos. While you’re starting to search several explosions from above catch your attention. It’s your airships. They’ve finally been overrun and destroyed to the point where flaming wreckage will be hitting the ground at any moment. You hastily move to a point where you’ll at least be far enough away from the next explosion when they land. You cut and zap your way through more demons and then you hear the voice you were hoping for. “EMPEROR! Over here!” Decena shouts and you see her with several eternals and Flevas trying to hold their ground surrounded by a growing pile of demon bodies. You run over to help with a cone of cold freezing several demons in place. Decena and the rest follow up by smashing their frozen bodies and giving all of you a temporary breather in the middle of the battle. “I’m so glad to see you!” Decena exclaims. “But why haven’t you escaped?! These portals are just continually spitting out more demons! You were right, we have to fall back!” “Because I was thinking about it and I was wrong. What we need to do is go chop off that demon lord’s head Zelvix, or whatever the hell Semra called him. Because the sooner we end him, the sooner this invasion ends.” You say. “Demon lord? Wait? Is that what caused this? I didn’t know anything about a demon lord.” Flevas says. “Well you do now and if you’re lucky enough you’ll get to be involved in killing him as well.” You say. “I don’t think I have much of a choice at this point given that the demons have surrounded us from escape. So where is he?” Flevas asks. “My guess is somewhere within the ruins of the city, let’s get going now!” You, Decena, Flevas and only four of the new Eternals make your way towards the ruins of Dequilet. Surprisingly the demon count is a lot lower the closer you, but then that’s probably because most of them are focused on slaughtering your retreating army and rampaging across the countryside. Not much fun to be had in a city where everyone is already dead. The flames, rubble and wandering demons all make your search more lively, but eventually you find what you believe to be Zelvix. He looks like the typical demon from all the stories you’ve ever heard and indeed probably most have heard. Great big wings, cloven hooves, furry lower half, muscular upper body, redish skin tone and two large horns on his head. He’s the biggest thing in the city and he’s certainly bigger than any of those minotaurs or chimeras you fought during the Tor War. When you make your noisy arrival by killing his immediate underlings, he still doesn’t move from his position, which seems to be one of concentration. Only when you cast several ice bolts at him does he move. He raises his hand and absorbs the bolts and turns his attention to you. “And now you’ve gone and broke my concentration. Do you realize that keeping these portals open to my home isn’t as easy as I make it look? (Sigh) No matter, so I imagine you must be the Eternal that Semra has mentioned in the past…hrm I thought you’d be taller. I hardly see how she expected you to defeat me.” “I’m not here because of Semra and honestly I don’t give a shit what sort of dispute you and her had. I’m here on my own to kill you, because NOBODY threatens my Empire!” you say and advance upon Zelvix who doesn’t move from his spot, he doesn’t even react. “Ah how I love mortal arrogance. Really I could use someone like you on my side, why not join me? Why not all of you join me?” Zelvix’s deep voice exclaims which seems to penetrate your mind. The presence is strong. Stronger than you were expecting really. It’s even worse than the time you had to listen to hundreds of gnome souls all at once. And you aren’t the only one, a quick glance to your left and right shows that your companions have stopped in their tracks as well and are holding on to their heads trying to fight Zelvix’s mental attack. The deep voice of “Join me.” continues to echo throughout your own mind and despite your best efforts you can’t block it out. And that when you feel an arrow go into your side. You barely manage to block the second one with a force shield. Flevas is gone, he’s given in completely and he’s not the only one. Two of the Eternals have turned and already killed one of their siblings. The last one is one the ground screaming for Zelvix’s voice to get out of his head. Flevas attacks you again with his bow, but you manage to keep up your protection. You return fire with a blast of magical energy. Flevas stands no chance against it and falls dead. It’s enough to make you collapse though. The combination of your expended energy, your wounds and Zelvix’s mental assault is becoming overwhelming. “Why are you fighting me Eternal? If you just join me, you can expand your Empire to the entire world! All I require is a tribute. Why, we could even track down Semra together and have our way with her. Doesn’t that sound fun Eternal? Wouldn’t you like that? Just JOIN ME…” The tone, the voice is so convincing…part of you just wants to give in… You feel a blade go into the upper left side of your back. One of the Eternals has attacked you while you’re struggling to retain your mind. The second one would probably land the killing blow, but you’re saved by someone who loves you so much that turning against you is completely unthinkable to her. “NO!” Decena yells and cuts down both of the Eternals attacking you. The third Eternal who had finally succumbed to the mind control makes a half hearted attack, but Decena takes care of him as well. “Now this one shows promise!” Zelvix says and suddenly more demon reinforcements arrive to defend their master. Decena holds her own against the demons that attack her, though some of them attack you instead, believing that you’re an easier target. While it’s true you’re in a more weakened state, you’re far from being an easy target. “Tch. Tch. Can’t having you help her, wouldn’t be fair now would it?” you hear Zelvix say and see the big demon lord standing over you. You feel a smashing blow to your face by his fist, which sends you falling back to the ground. The inside of your face feels like every bone in it has been broken and the exterior feels like its on fire. Spitting out a few bloody teeth, you cast an enchantment on your weapon and try to strike at Zelvix’s leg, but he dodges and manages to step on your sword breaking it with his cloven hoof. “That was pathetic, did you really think…” Zelvix’s taunt is interrupted by the fact that he wasn’t paying attention to the attack that you were really planning. A stream of lightning hits Zelvix in the chest and you don’t let up even though you’re feeling the effects of such a strong spell at this close range. Zelvix roars in pain and the spell has definitely had an effect, but Zelvix is made of stronger stuff and bulls his way through and kicks you in the body breaking several ribs and causing you to fly into a nearby pile of rubble. You smack your head against several jagged rocks adding an open head wound to your list of injuries. Zelvix attempts to finish you off by breathing fire at you, but you still have enough energy to block it with a force shield. You don’t think you can keep it up, but fortunately you don’t have to when Decena steps in and runs one sword into Zelvix’s back and cuts through one of his wings with another one. Zelvix feels the damage but it still isn’t enough to stop this monster. He swings around and backhands Decena to the ground. He then picks her up and smashes her entire body several times to the ground again. Her body battered, she hangs limply as he picks her up by one arm. “Bitch! You think your pathetic love for this fool will save either one of you?! I’ve destroyed greater beings with less effort! You both should’ve joined me when you had the chance, but that time has passed. Time to die! Who wants to watch first?” Zelvix is definitely more powerful than either one of you, but his weakness is he talks way too much. While he’s pontificating on who to kill first, you summon all the energy you have and cast a concentrated frost ray at Zelvix’s feet. It’s enough to startle the demon and drop Decena. “Still wanting to play eh? Fine, you’re first then!” Zelvix says and throws a fireball at you. You’re hit full force and the flames engulf you, but you refuse to die. You flesh burns, but you’re expending so much energy into your frost beam, that your body is actually growing colder and forms frost, which is enough to keep you from burning to death. Meanwhile Zelvix realizes his own body isn’t just being encased in ice, its actually starting to become ice. “DECENA ATTACK HIS LEGS! NOW!” You didn’t even need to give the word though, Decena was already on it. Seizing the biggest rock she could grab and wield effectively. She smashes it into one of Zelvix’s legs causing it to shatter. An unearthly wail eminates from the demon lord as he falls to the ground, which in turn snaps off his other leg. With Zelvix on the ground, you continue your freezing assault on him, only this time his position allows you to aim straight for his face. You see your hands going blue and starting to age. You’re not going to survive this, but someone else needs to because someone else has to lead the Empire… Zelvix desperately tries to crawl in an attempt to reach you, but eventually he’s frozen to a point where he’s barely moving at all. “Decena…finish…it…” you say and you at last run out of energy of any and all kind. You collapse backwards and begin to drift in and out of consciousness. You don’t see it, but Decena does indeed manage to take advantage of the situation and smashes Zelvix’s frozen head into several pieces. The demon lord’s body convulses and tries to move (and even attack) but death is certain. With Zelvix dead, it seems like the portals have closed as well as there haven’t been anymore demons attacking you or Decena, though it can safely be guessed that the ones that are already scattered and causing havok will still need to be dealt with. Decena comes over to your dying body and holds you in her arms. You can imagine how cold you must feel to her, but it’s not going to deter Decena. “Did…did we win?” you ask. “Yes…we won my Emperor.” Decena says. “Good…good…(wheeze) but you’re the Emperor now…” “Emperor don’t…” “It’s done. I’m not making this one…(wheeze) just be a strong ruler. The ruler…I always knew you could be. I’m so proud…of you…” Decena at this point doesn’t answer. She’s desperately trying not to cry. Maybe it’s a little late, but in these final moments you realize that you could’ve probably had a real relationship with Decena. She proved that she was more than a worthy mate for you. She had long since grown from being just your student with a crush. She is a true warrior and will be a worthy successor. “Decena…I…love you...” you whisper to her as your final words. As your vision goes dark you sense a brief kiss on your lips, which is the last bit of warmth you ever feel. And then you feel nothing at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 50 As you look at a large map of the known continent of Evigrus you realize that while its been fifteen years since you took the throne as Emperor you’ve already more than doubled the size of the original nation. You’ve also successfully managed to have your ships navigate most of its coastline as well. Even northern most Rask was mapped by your airships. Quite frankly that’s the main problem you have right now in general you’ve conquered most of what is worthwhile already on this continent. Anything remaining isn’t exactly inhabitable or worth the time to spend on conquest and even in some of those cases, kobold citizens have slowly been making small underground communities in places where nobody above ground would want to live such as the Delerg jungle. However there are always new lands to conquer. To the farthest part west lies the only nation on Evigrus left besides the Empire, the Kingdom of Nakol. Nakol has had the benefit of being relatively isolated from the rest of the continent due to the great mountain range that blocked it from the Children of Tor. Your people have only recently had formal contact with it shortly after the defeat of the Torites, though even that was by ship, though now that the Torites are no longer a true threat, small passes through the mountains have been found (Though they’re not exactly safe and Nakol certainly keeps their side very well guarded). The nation isn’t quite as large as the Empire, but its still bigger than the old Felkan Kingdom and certainly big enough to defend itself to make aggression very costly, so far however the limited contact you’ve had with said nation hasn’t been hostile. Oddly enough he’s wanted to meet you as he has heard so much about the “Great Emperor of the East” and very much wants to visit the Empire. Normally you probably wouldn’t consider such diplomatic meetings as it has never been your style, however this ruler is also known as the “Immortal Sorcerer King” and that is something that has gotten your attention. In any event, there are other matters that require your attention and this is where the “other land” to conquer comes in… Last year your ships finally found a large landmass to the east. Up until then, only a few islands of little worth had been discovered. This new territory from what you’ve been told is similar to Delerg in some ways as there are large portions of jungle. However there are several primitive civilizations living on this land mass. While they are similar to humans in some ways, they have features that certainly aren’t such as having four arms and multiple sets of eyes like an insect. Even their language is a bit insect like as you’ve been told it’s more a “chittering” sound. The most prominent of these groups are known as the Iznac. The Iznac like most that seem to inhabit this world before the Empire enlightens them are a superstitious lot that worship their backwards gods by sacrificing others to them. Sometimes this is their own people, but most of the time its captives of the weaker tribes that live on the same continent. Barbarians they may be, they have built cities where their temples seem to be the biggest and most important buildings in them. It would appear they are a theocracy. The Iznac so far have been actively hostile towards your people though perhaps wise enough not to attack them outright. Your own people have not made much progress towards the inner part of the new continent due to this fact and they don’t have enough manpower to do so anyway. The only thing they can do is hold up in the newly built outpost and hope they aren’t attacked by an overwhelming number of Iznac (or any other tribe since it isn’t as if the frog like people called the Glip that also inhabit the continent are any friendlier) You might be inclined to leave this new continent and its inhabitants alone until you can focus more attention on them, however it’s also been reported that the continent has a seriously unexploited resource potential of valuable minerals and that’s something you could always use more of especially if you’re going to have to fund another war with Nakol in the near future. There is also the matter of the orc and kobold population to think about. Both are becoming a problem. The orcs have finally increased their numbers to a point where they can become a viable fighting unit like they were in old days. In fact you planned for that to happen anyway. What you didn’t plan for is that you’d have a period of peace with no major wars to fight! Reports of increased orc criminals or just general chaotic misconduct in Rask are becoming more common. You need to start giving them something to go fight. The kobolds aren’t so much of a problem as they tend to live underground and generally stay out of the way due to that fact. But with no war to whittle down their numbers they’re breeding at a rate that’s starting to worry your human subjects. You admit that with as many as the little bastards around they could become a serious threat if they ever became rebellious. Fortunately they’re actually less of a problem than any of your other subjects so you’re actually not worried about them yet. Still, it seems like a logical solution to start sending large portions of both populations to tame this new continent. Of course if events dictate that you need to war with Nakol soon, then that leaves you with less soldiers on the home front and you’re also fighting a two front war. There’s also another factor to consider that the new Eternals will be ready next year. Brenda’s training has ensured that most of them survived and they are already displaying the eagerness to serve the Empire. Elam’s also been working with the gnomes to perfect the automatons. You make your decision that with these other factors in play that you’re relatively safe in sending your orcs and kobolds to this new continent. However, you’re going to need disciplined leaders though for this task. For the orcs you look for the highest ranked and most respected by his people. The only name that catches your attention when looking through the records is Flog. Flog apparently served most of his military career in Rask fighting ogres, giants and the old barbarian tribes even during the Felkan War. He also served under Kane and was spoken highly of in a few old reports. Kane mentioned that besides Captain Gruz he never encountered an orc almost as intelligent. Apparently he’s been doing a lot of breeding after the Felkan War. He has many children. As for kobolds, the records are much sketchier. Kobolds may be loyal and contributing members of Empire society, but none of them really seem to stand out much and if they do, they all died in battle. Plus due to their numbers they probably have many of their kind that could be considered “leaders” within various circles. Eventually you settle on one that distinguished herself during the Tor War. Snilkez’ka managed to take out a manticore all by herself and lead a successful underground sneak attack against a band of minotaurs with only a few casualties. Given the size difference in both cases not to mention that even human officers had problems accomplishing such things, its safe to say that she comes the closest to being a hero among her people. In fact you’re wondering why she was never brought to your attention before. Of course you can’t just send these two races out on ships to a new continent, which you barely have any control over so you’re going to need at least one company of “normal” humans to keep a semblance of order or rather someone better than a human. The only choice would be Decena. She’s a well-respected leader by all and more than proven herself. While not having Decena immediately available here will be something you’ll have to compensate for, you’ll at least have confidence that she’ll keep things orderly on this new continent. Having made your decision you meet up with the three to explain the situation, their reactions are varied. “Flog will serve all powerful Emperor, but not fooled by intentions. You trying to get rid of orcs again, just like in Felkan War.” Flog says. “Flog if I was trying to get rid of the orcs, I’d just have you all strung up and be done with it. I’m sure you’re aware that’s within my power to do so. I’m not even sending all of the orcs anyway, just most of them. I need tough soldiers that can withstand this harsher continent and its equally harsh inhabitants. I already sent humans and you see how well that worked out. Quite frankly I think your people would be best suited for this type of thing. You get to prove just how orcly you actually are. You are an orc aren’t you? Are you not looking forward to the possibility of killing several enemies or dying in a glorious battle?” you say. “Killing enemies yes, dying not so much. It is a misconception that orcs deliberately seek death in battle. Flog however is getting old, so death is close anyway. Either death in battle, death by children who will inevitably challenge Flog, or death by old age. The last is the least preferable, so perhaps this will be an opportunity. Not sure about the little scaly runts you’re sending. Never fought along side them before, but Flog has heard of their great viciousness in battle. Also heard many glorious things of General Decena and her many victories. Will be an honor to fight along side her.” At this point the kobold leader, Snilkez’ka makes a small hissing growl like sound at Flog, probably due to his runt comment. “Don’t worry about us orc. Small we may be, but we’ll be here long after the enemy has already butchered your old greenskin ass.” Snilkez’ka remarks, which causes a chuckle from Flog who merely states that perhaps he’ll enjoy fighting alongside her people after all. Snilkez’ka doesn’t look as amused, but says nothing else other than to directly address you and say that she will make sure that she will bring the fear of the Empire into the hearts of the enemy. You nod and say you know that she will. Always nice to have loyalty and enthusiasm. She’s very well spoken for a kobold. The latter one of those traits seems to be lost on your last leader, Decena who isn’t saying anything and only succeeds in looking slightly troubled by her new assignment. “Decena, is there anything you’d like to say? You’re going to be in charge of this campaign.” You ask. “No. Nothing except I look forward to leading the Empire into victory and claiming this new continent in your name, my Emperor.” That sounded very… formal. Granted that’s a good thing, especially in front of the other two leaders to keep it professional. Still, you know something is wrong and you know it has something to do with your past relationship. If you were the cautious sort you’d just leave it be, but if something is going to be a major problem you need to know now. “Good, you’ll all be shipping out in about a week. Everyone is dismissed, though I want to speak to you Decena about something.” You say calmly and wait for the other two leave. Now it’s just you and Decena alone in the room. This hasn’t occurred in years, and this situation is very different. Decena however maintains a very formal stance and does not falter from it. “I sense something is wrong.” You say. “There is nothing wrong my Emperor.” Decena remarks. “Okay stop with the stiff soldier act, it’s just us here.” This remark breaks Decena’s facade of being “okay.” “I don’t understand what you want from me my Emperor. You told me we were to remain just subordinate and master. I am carrying out this order to the best of my abilities.” “Oh no, do not attempt to play word games, you know what I mean. You’re obviously upset about this assignment.” “…I’m obeying orders aren’t I? Isn’t that all that is required of me?” Decena says with an exasperated tone. “For you? No. I need you to do more than just obey, I need you to be thrilled with this assignment. Like you USED to be. Remember?” “Apologies, but I don’t think I can given the situation.” “What situation? Us? Look Decena I know you’re still upset about that, but you’re going to have to be an Eternal and get over it.” “Oh yes, I’m an Eternal alright, at least until next year. Might as well sweep me away to a far off land now and be done with it.” Decena remarks. “What are you talking about?” “I’m talking about the new Eternals that are scheduled to be ready next year! They’ll be the new thing and I’ll just be old news off in some forsaken land surrounded by scalies and green skinned idiots. In the meantime perhaps you’ll even find another young girl like I was and take her under your guidance too…” “Decena…” “Well I suppose at least she’ll be happy for a few years even if she’ll be a naïve fool the entire time.” “Decena STOP! Just stop right now!” you say. Decena does so, but her eyes say it all. You knew she was probably going to be upset for a while, but it’s turned into bitterness. You pace a bit and exhale rubbing your hand over your face. “Decena, your beliefs that you’re going to be somehow replaced next year are far from the truth. First of all, I’m not giving any of them any extra training because obviously I’m a lousy teacher given what happened between us.” Decena stays silent. “Second of all I picked you for this mission because you’re the only one I trust to carry it out. Just like I trusted you to continue your battles against the Torites and you saw to their practical extinction. I know you can get this job done and you’re not going to be over there forever you know. I anticipate war with the Nakol Kingdom at some point and when that happens who do you think is going to have to lead all the baby eternals into battle? You of course. For now though I need you where you’re going to be the most invaluable and that’s in this new land.” You reach out to Decena and lift her face up to look into her eyes. “I need you for this just like I’m always going to need you. You will never be replaced.” Decena’s expression turns back to one of sorrow. Her eyes water, but she does not cry out. “I…I’m sorry my Emperor…I shouldn’t…have…” “Forget it Decena you don’t need to apologize. (Sigh) If anything I should be apologizing to you. As I said, I still feel you’re the best person for this mission, but if you wish, you may decline this mission and I will find someone else. And there is no need to worry, this will not be a bad reflection on you in any way. If it’s going to make you happier to stay here, then I’d rather you be happy since it’ll make you a better leader. Won’t do anyone any good if you don’t have the best mindset.” Decena shakes her head. “No, I’ll go. For the good of the Empire I’ll go. Staying here would serve no purpose for what I really want is not to be no matter what the situation. I suppose I just overreacted. And you weren’t a lousy teacher. Anyone would be lucky to learn under you. I was.” Decena says. “Yes, well as I said, nobody ever will again. You were my first and last pupil. You’ll always be special in that regard. Now are you absolutely sure, you’re going to be okay with this assignment?” you ask. “I will my Emperor. And I will bring glory to the Empire.” Decena remarks. “Good. I knew you were strong enough to see this through and I know you’ll do the Empire and me proud.” You end you comment with a small kiss to her cheek. It’s only a shadow of what she really desires, but it’ll be enough to get her through this. After Decena leaves, you think about how you’ve permanently damaged that girl due to your poor judgment and lack of willpower all those years ago. You then think about how easy it is to convince her into anything due to that same lack of willpower years ago. She still worships and loves you and probably always will no matter what. Despite everything, your conditioning was successful. By the end of the week your fleet to the new continent (you’re calling it Nyttrus) is on its way to properly claim it for the Empire. You don’t know how long the Iznac are going to be able to stand up against your forces, but hopefully if your people break them, the other tribes will fall in line. > You eternals United (Year 51) Year 51 You stand with Brenda and Warrick in front of hundreds of third generation Eternals. The day has finally come. They’re trained and ready for war. Whether that means they’ll get sent to Nyttrus or sent to attack the Nakol Kingdom that still remains to be seen, but wherever it is, you’re sure they’ll be a formidable force. You give a rousing speech that encourages and reinforces the sort of loyalty that has already been drummed into their heads since they were born. They probably don’t need it, but words directly from their Emperor are never a bad thing. “This is way things should be.” Brenda says. “What’s that, Brenda?” Warrick asks. “This. You, me, the Emperor and all these new Eternals standing together united as a single force. I can’t wait to train the next generation.” Brenda says. “Well you’ll definitely get that chance Brenda. As I’ve said before, you did an excellent job with these.” You say. “We Eternals are the true rulers and defenders of this great Empire. And while I hold nothing but repsect to our former Emperor, I have to say that I feel that YOU have already proven that Eternals are the future. (Sigh) If there were only more of us…” “There will be eventually.” Warrick says. “Oh I know. I just wish Roldan was here to see this.” Brenda says. “Mm, he would’ve certainly approved. I think Kane would have too.” Warrick remarks. “Yes, to fallen siblings and to reunited ones who spent too long angry at one another.” Brenda says and looks at Warrick. The pair of them hug for a moment. You remain silent at their display of affection. Seemed almost unbelievable at one time, you’re just glad they get along now. With the new Eternals dispersing and on their way to their assignments, you just sort of start off into the distance until Warrick and Brenda cease their hugging to ask you what’s going on with you. “Is there something wrong my Emperor?” “Oh, nothing really wrong. I was just thinking, not every Eternal is here in this grand unification. Decena’s still over in Nyttrus.” You say. “Oh yes, that’s correct. I can’t believe I forgot about her.” Warrick says. “Yeah well, Decena’s always felt like a bit of an outsider in some ways I think.” “What? That’s silly.” Brenda says. “Is it? Think about it, there never were a bunch of us to begin with, but there are still three of us first ones. Then there are these third gens. Hundreds. And the fourth gens and beyond will probably be in the hundreds as well. But Decena? She’s the only second gen left. All her siblings were killed. Most by a mad derro and a few of them even by me when I got tested against them.” Warrick and Brenda continue to listen. “I dunno, I was just thinking of something she was worried about before I sent her to Nyttrus. Her concerns that she was somehow obsolete. Of course I explained that she wasn’t, but still sometimes in her letters I detect a bit of lonesomeness in tone.” “Emperor, Decena was trained by you. I think she’s probably the luckiest Eternal since…well since you got the chance to be trained by the former Emperor.” Brenda remarks. “Hrm. Yes, lucky.” You say nearly snorting at both of those conclusions. Brenda and Warrick still don’t know the whole story and you hope for their sake they never have to learn the truth. “Well I have to go attend to a rather mundane matter that I can’t just assign to Kivan. I trust you both can handle the rest of the matters here?” “Of course, my Emperor.” Warrick says. You nod at Brenda and Warrick and return to your private quarters in the palace. You sit down at your desk and spend the rest of the night writing an encouraging letter to have sent to Decena in Nyttrus. Maybe she couldn’t be here for the “Eternal unification” but you still want her to know that in your eyes she is the most cherished of all of them.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The fact remains; the full capabilities of New Dessle are still unknown and taking this mountain city would be extremely costly for the Empire, so you’re not going to dismiss Klemto’s stipulations yet, but you are going to come back with one of your own. “Very well, your terms are somewhat reasonable though we’re still going to have to hammer out some details, however I do want one thing from you right now.” You say. “Oh? What’s that?” “You will assist in attacking the Confederacy of the Free Cities.” “...so you would call on our service already eh? Fine. We will assist, just let us know what exactly you want from us.” “Nothing elaborate, I just want another army south of the cities in case some of the svelk try to escape that way. I don’t want a single one of them to get away. They’re a threat to the Empire and their constant manipulations need to cease being a thorn in my side. Too long they’ve gone unpunished for their treachery. Maybe I won’t be getting all of them on the world. But rest assured I WILL be getting ALL of them in this area.” “I see. While you may not have any hatred for my race, you obviously do for the dark elves. It would seem the more things change, the more they stay same…(Sigh) Well better the svelk than us I suppose.” Klemto says. “Glad you see the pragmatic side of this.” “Oh I suspect I’ll be seeing the pragmatic side a lot in the future. Not how I wanted to spend the remainder of my years, but then this is really the only way. I’ve long since learned that opposing the Empire is futile. While it may eventually fall to internal or external forces, it probably isn’t going to be in my lifetime and I’m going to do everything within that time to make sure the gnomes stay out of harm’s way. If that means swallowing what little pride we might have left and willingly becoming the subjects of a nation that once enslaved us and then tried to systematically exterminate us, then that is what we will do.” Klemto finishes his little speech with another puff of his pipe. He looks defeated even though he’s come out fairly okay on this deal. Well at least you think so, obviously he feels differently. “You’ll be remembered as a savior to your people Klemto.” You say before you leave. “I’ll probably be remembered as a collaborator, but I’m fine with it as long as they live to keep telling the tale of Klemto the traitor long after I’m dead.” At this point you and Warrick take your leave, the next time you look back, Klemto is gone and the mountain “windows” have all closed up as if everything was normal again. “You really think you can trust the gnomes?” Warrick asks. “I trust them more now that we have a way in. I want as many Eyes as you can spare in that mountain. Perhaps over time we can pull some out if the gnomes do prove to be loyal and don’t complain too much, but we definitely want to at least gather every single bit of information we can on that place just in case the gnomes DO try to betray us in the future.” “I’ll get on that, as soon as we return to the Empire. I shouldn’t have had the doubt, but I really thought this plan was going to go bad.” “Don’t worry, I had the same feeling, but sometimes you just have to throw caution to the wind and attempt new strategies.” “Well maybe I didn’t see any battle, but I was still glad to get out behind that desk. I thank you for that.” Warrick says. “If you’d like we could always go try to take out one of the city states by ourselves. Has to be easier than an entire mountain.” You and Warrick laugh at this idea and head back to the Empire. A month passes and the war against the Confederacy of Free Cities is well underway. The odds are severely in your favor especially with the help of the gnomes who show up and you get a small indication of what exactly they have been working on. Some sort of powerful battle machine they call automatons. The best way to describe them is they’re golems except work under the power of steam, gears and technology rather than magic. A single automaton is an incredibly destructive force blowing holes in walls with their mounted cannons or just smashing them down with a hammer fist. The gnomes also bring out their lightning cannons that you remember during the Felkan War. It was a relatively new invention towards the end of that conflict, but it looks like the gnomes have perfected it their power. Your own inventors never could figure out how to create them though. (Even Elam was at a loss on how they did it without the use of magic) You’re sort of surprised they never created their own airships, but apparently they were in the process of doing so. In any case, whatever they’ve created and will create are yours to use now. The Confederacy of Free Cities doesn’t stand a chance and half of them are in ruins after it’s all said and done. That wasn’t the original intent, but at this point you’re not really concerned with conquering a few measly cities. You can always have new ones built now that you own the territory. What matters more is the eradication of the svelk menace. “We got her Emperor!” a soldier says running up to you in the middle of the burning ruins of Ryglik. “Are you sure its her?” you ask “Yes, Emperor. It’s Domina Eldolith. She was captured by the kobolds attempting to escape through a system of tunnels, she killed quite a few of them, but the little scalies managed to subdue her. She’s been yelling about being the grand domina of the free cities and a bunch of other stuff. Mostly demanding to be treated with the respect that a captured enemy of her stature deserves.” “Unbelievable. Defiant and arrogant to the end. Wouldn’t be the svelk way otherwise. Well take me to her.” You say. You are lead to the former city hall and down into the basement where several kobolds are proding a bound Eldolith with sharp objects and laughing while she swears and curses at them. They see you and bow in reverence while excitedly looking for approval of their deed. “Capturr blak elf! For Emp! For Emp!” one of them says. “Yes, and I will make sure you are awarded appropriately for your deeds. All of you, now leave I want to speak with this one alone. And do not interrupt me, no matter what you may hear. I will leave here when I’m ready.” The kobolds leave via the trapdoor in the floor, your human soldiers nearby head back upstairs. Eldolith looks at you as you approach her. It’s been a while since you’ve seen her, but she’s not looking her best right now. Her clothes are torn and wet, she’s covered in dirt and grime. She smells like she’s been running through a sewer. Superficial wounds are on her face and body. Her eyes are burning through you with an absolute hatred. And you love every moment of it. “If you think I’m going to beg for my life you’re sadly mistaken. I will NEVER give you that satisfaction. I am a svelk! My people…” You backhand Eldolith shutting her up. “Are dead. And if they aren’t, the ones we captured soon will be. You can stop playing the arrogant svelk Eldy. You’re scared of what is going to happen next. And you should be, because I’m going to revisit some old techniques your mother showed me once.” At this point Eldolith’s eyes widen and she tries to edge away when your hands start to touch her body. Suddenly you grip her throat. “Don’t move away from me bitch.” You say and look into her eyes. Gone is the hatred. Now you see the fear. “Now then, if you’re concerned that I meant a physical violation, I hate the break your dreams, but that won’t be happening. For one thing, your current stench is enough to give an orc pause. However after I’m done today, you will be wishing that I was displaying such a kindness to you. Begging. In fact I believe your earlier boast about not begging for your life was correct. You won’t be. You’ll be begging for your death. Now let us begin…” You pull out a small set of tools you brought for this occasion. To be honest you weren’t sure if you’d be lucky enough to capture Eldolith alive, but fortune smiled on you this day. You begin a brutal session of torture on Eldolith. You occasionally ask her for more information on where other svelk may be, but these are met with pathetic moans of denial of knowledge. “I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!” Eldolith screams as another finger is cut off. “At this point I actually believe you, but I don’t really care because this is amusing to me. Torturing a svelk. Not just any svelk though. One that tried to have me fucking assassinated on several occasions. Come on Eldy, you really can’t be surprised by my actions here. You svelk pride yourself on showing no mercy and revel in cruelty, I’d think you’d understand all this.” “Who told you this? My mother?! And you believed her? What makes you think she wasn’t responsible and just put the blame on me?!” “Well for one thing, your mother is a lot smarter than you and if she was planning to have me killed, I have to admit, she might’ve been successful. Fortunately that crazy bitch is obsessed with me, for some unknown reason…” At this point Eldolith starts coughing up blood while trying to laugh. “Something amusing? Have you finally gone mad from the pain?” you ask. “Ha ha, (cough) you wish I was her right now. (cough) You’ll never get that satisfaction, she’s played you like a cheap lute since you’ve been born Eternal. Even now you’re doing her bidding. She just…” At this point Eldolith vomits a mixture of blood and bile on the floor. Some of it getting on your boots. “You were saying?” you ask, but Eldolith just breathes heavily not answering. “Well, you don’t really need this eye to tell me the rest of your thoughts.” You say and approach her again with a knife… By the time dawn comes, Eldolith is barely alive. She’s blind, missing an entire hand, her skin partially flayed, missing most of her teeth, she’s a bloody mess and her face doesn’t even resemble that of a svelk anymore. She’s long since proven your prediction correct and begged for death, which you’ve denied her. But even you have to move on some time. “I have to admit Eldy, I thought you would’ve been long dead by now. For someone begging for death, your body’s will to survive is strong. The funny thing is, I could easily heal most of you up and do this all over again, but honestly I think I’ve made my point. Besides I’d hate to shorten my own lifespan just for a little bit of amusement, which is getting boring now. Any last words?” Eldolith makes no sound, just shallow breathing. “Right then.” You say and put your mithral dagger to her throat. “You brought this on yourself.” You whisper in Eldolith’s hacked off ear and slash her throat at last putting her out of her living hell. When you exit the building, several officers say they’ve been wanting to speak with you about important matters of the aftermath of the war and similar matters concerning the newly acquired cities. Also the gnomes are wondering what your next orders are now since the enemy has been thoroughly eliminated. While you certainly feel good about your victory and your recent indulgence, you can’t help but wonder now if Eldolith was just a convenient scapegoat. Eldolith and her sect of svelk obviously still had to die and you’re more than certain that she was involved in trying to have you killed, but who is to say that it wasn’t Semra pulling the strings all along? In any event, looks like playtime is over. Back to business as usual. > The Grand Tour (Inside New Dessel) As you walk through the halls of New Dessel with Klemto, you have to admit to being impressed with the place. The gnomes have once again succeeded in the face of adversity. This city inside a mountain not only has comfortable living arrangements and external defense measures, but is also self sufficient in food and other resources. It helps that the mountain had a large system of natural caverns already inside which allowed the gnomes to take advantage of the layout. Edible fungus and an underground water source were definitely bonuses. Klemto remarks that they probably would not have put that much effort into making the mountain into a “city” had none of these things been available. Now that you’ve gotten a good look at the inside of the place, it’s a very good thing you didn’t attack this place like Kivan suggested. You might’ve very well gotten fried on the spot. Besides their numerous cannons mounted in the rock to defend New Dessel, the gnomes have what can only be described as a giant metal lightning rod except they can shoot lightning from it AND direct its attack. It runs from the bottom of a water source, which has some sort of strange machine in it (It generates “electricity” as Klemto calls it) and the pole goes all the way up to the top of mountain peak where it can direct a blast of lightning powerful enough to probably destroy one of your airships. Definitely very useful though Klemto says its really only good for nearby defense as they can’t hit something, as far away as say where the former City State Confederacy was located. This puts you at ease since you did wonder if such a weapon could hit your capital! The gnomes have also managed to create something else you lack in the Empire. Lighting without any sort of fire. “How do you produce light like that with no fire? It seems similar to the lightning that comes from the sky or from magic spells.” You ask. “Oh yes. Electricity again. We were trying to harness that into something less destructive even during the last days of the Felkan War when we were using our lightning guns. In fact had the war not come about the Felkans might’ve had electrical lighting by now. Well, at least we solved the mystery I guess.” Klemto says. “Hrm.” You answer. “Erm, I suppose you probably would like your own engineers to implement such things in the Empire. We can certainly give the method on how to do it.” “Eh. Perhaps in time. To be quite honest it isn’t a pressing concern, I’d rather they learn the methods on how to create those lightning guns of yours, and those things.” You say pointing at an automaton being fixed by a group of gnomes. “Oh yes, I imagine your interests do place military matters first. Well of course we’ll be willing to oblige. As I said great Emperor, New Dessel is at your service.” “Indeed.” You respond. Just as you are about to bring up the subject of stationing Eyes in New Dessel to Klemto a young girl with red hair comes running up to him. She looks to be a teenager and is dressed in a slightly dirty work uniform. “Uncle Klemto! Uncle Klemto! The lightning has gone out in section eight again! Can I go assist this time?” she says which causes Klemto to look very embarrassed. “Zana! I told you not to disturb me today! This is the Emperor I’m speaking with right now and his time is very precious!” “Oh. Well can I go help fix the lighting then? I’ll be out of your hair!” She says thinking nothing more of Klemto’s words causing him even more concern that you’re getting angry. You aren’t really angry so much as you’re intrigued. To your knowledge only gnomes live in New Dessel, so you’re wondering how this human got here. And calling Klemto uncle no less. “Zana! If you’re going to interrupt my important meeting the least you can do is show the proper respect for the Emperor. OUR Emperor. We’re part of the Empire now as I mentioned to you, remember?” Klemto says. “Oh. Okay.” Zana turns to you and raises a dirty hand for you to shake. “Hello Mr. Emperor.” Klemto is cringing the entire time, but you return her attempt at being friendly by shaking her hand. “Zana, you can go help with fixing the lighting in section eight, just get out of here!” Klemto orders. “Alright! Thank you uncle!” Zana beams and gives the old gnome a little peck on the cheek before running off. At this point Klemto is as red as a tomato which is actually making you chuckle a bit at this point. “Klemto, relax. I’m not the unreasonable head-chopping tyrant everyone thinks I am. I do have to ask though, how is it that a human came to be here and calls you uncle no less?” Klemto does relax a little, but only a little. “Heh, oh that. Well during our…evacuation of the Felkan Kingdom, a group of us travelled through one of the many ruined Felkan towns. As we travelled through, I heard the mewling of a baby. I investigated and sure enough I found one. The house was in shambles and I had already passed the body of a man and woman in the room before I found the baby. I can only guess it was the baby’s mother and father. Several of my fellow gnomes told me I should just leave it as we had enough to worry about, without a baby possibly giving away our position, but I just didn’t feel right doing such a thing. So I took her, named her Zana and over the years I raised as if she was my own.” “Hrm, that’s unusual.” “What do you mean?” “Well the Empire was fairly thorough about going through towns. Seems odd that a crying baby would’ve been missed. Oh and contrary to popular belief we didn’t always kill everything in sight if we razed a town. Sometimes children and infants were taken to be wards of the Empire. Still, if you were on the run, I imagine you had to at least be going through the area where General Alison Krozer was stationed with her army. One of the best I have ever known, as were those under her command. I mean I suppose its possible something like that was missed but…” Klemto quickly interrupts you. “Well uh, the gnolls were a problem on that side of the Felkan Kingdom too remember? Probably was gnolls.” “Well that seems even less likely then.” You answer. “Why?” “Well for one thing Alison had pretty much taken care of the separate gnoll invaders by the time you lot start seeing that the Felkan Kingdom was dying and start abandoning it. I mean sure there were still some here and there, but they weren’t really focusing their attacks on Felkans anymore, they were focusing on Empire forts and our patrols. Besides, these are gnolls we’re talking about. Those savages used to steal everything they thought valuable and destroy the rest. A crying baby? They probably would’ve eaten such a thing while it was still in its crib! They’re worse than svelk when it comes to stuff like that.” You say. “Yeah…uh well whoever it was I guess she was just…lucky?” “I guess so. Well in any event you’re certainly to be commended on raising a child that learned the importance of serving the good of her community.” You answer though you feel like something about Klemto’s story doesn’t add up. “Yes, well I thank you for your kind words my Emperor. Shall we get back to your proposal on your Eyes? As I said before, you can station as many as you feel are needed here!” Klemto says almost eager to stop discussing his adopted daughter. “Sure, let’s get back to that.” You respond.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 42 While you doubt this is going to be your last battle with the Torites, you’re at least hoping it’s going to be the one to break their spirit to the point where they become less of a problem. Still, the fact that they’ve finally unified their forces into armies shows you that they realize you aren’t going to just go away and their hit and run tactics and attempts to win through attrition aren’t going to succeed. It shows you that this is a concentrated effort to get rid of you once and for all. It won’t work either and really works to your benefit. It allows you the opportunity to kill a bunch of them in one large grouping now. Maybe there will always be pockets of Torites lurking in the untamed wilderness but one thing is certain. The territory WILL be the Empire’s and the Torites can either submit and see the light like the kobolds eventually did or slowly be driven into extinction like the gnolls. But that’s in the future, right now you’re drawing up the plans for this impeding battle. Considering how large the Torite horde is, you’ve combined your available forces with Decena’s army. It was quite the happy day for her seeing as she hasn’t seen you for five years. You still aren’t quite sure how you exactly feel about her, but she’s definitely been winning you over as far as her victories have been concerned. She remains professional always in front of everyone, but the first time she got you alone, she literally jumped on you and wrapped her legs around your waist, planting a kiss on you. But again, you can sort out your possible complications with Decena later. Now is the time to make sure the both of you come out of this alive. “We should have the second airship here before we begin our assault. Hopefully that will take some of the pressure off of the Storm to deal with the harpies.” You remark. “Its isn’t just the bird bitches that flap about though. Don’t forget, there are still those manticores and those chimeras.” General Ackerson remarks. “Yes, I’m well aware of both, Ackerson. Thank you for pointing out the obvious. However, I’m more inclined to believe the Torites will be relying on those beasts to attack our people on the ground. The beasts aren’t the most graceful of fliers and would most likely just be big target, which they will be for us anyway, but they’ll still do more damage to a group of soldiers on foot and horseback rather than a flying fortress before going down.” You remark. “Those chimera things don’t even fly very high. The wings are almost so small that they’re just for show. Never had one swoop down on us.” Decena adds. “Wouldn’t be best to have us mages together so that we can join our energy and create a shield for the majority of the army?” Galen remarks. He isn’t complaining, but he’s definitely trying to find a loop hole to possibly make himself safer and not have to do as much work.” “Galen, you know that the Torites attempt to target spell slingers as soon as possible. If they actually get you in a group and strike lucky, well there goes a powerful chunk of our fighting force. It’ll make things harder for them if you’re all spread out. Besides, you’re personally going to be hiding behind a small contingent of golems and backed up by Captain Flevas’ men. You couldn’t be any safer.” “Huh. So my backup lies in the hands of an elf? Might as well kill me now and get it over with.” Galen remarks. You just shake your head and ignore his last comment; he’s too valuable to punish right now. After hammering out the plan, you and the rest start setting things in motion and preparing everyone. You know the Torite horde is on the move not too far from your location. But they aren’t here yet and won’t be for at least a half-day’s time. It gives you a bit of time to at least get some rest since you’ve been running around attempting to take care of everything and haven’t slept. You didn’t even realize how tired you were until you lie down on your sleeping bag. Just as you lie down and close your eyes, someone enters your tent and you instinctively grab your sword. “No point in that, I’m not really here you know.” You hear a familiar voice whisper. You sit up and see Semra standing before you, or rather the image of her. She’s no doubt using the same kind of magic she did when she tried to convince you to kill Casimir. She’s probably nearby somewhere though. “I thought you said we weren’t going to see each other again.” You say. “I didn’t think we would. I truly believed you would die on Mortos. I suppose I underestimated your ability to survive even there. Quite impressive and it’s no surprise that you assumed Casimir’s throne soon after. Everything worked out for you, but tell me how did you accomplish such a feat?” “Just luck I guess. Look, if you came here to kill me, you’ll need to get behind the long line of Torites marching towards this place.” You say while lying back down and shutting your eyes. “My, you’re quite confident to stay in such a vulnerable position if you really believe I’m here to kill you.” Semra says. “No, I know this is just grand standing. If you were really going to kill me you’d have your underlings conspiring with little plots in the shadows.” “Yes, I’m aware of the troubles you’ve been having lately and while I’m flattered you believe it to me, I’m actually here to clear my good name.” “Hah!” you snort. “Okay so just my name. In any event. I’m here to tell you that it isn’t me, though you do have enemies of the svelk persuasion.” “I’ve got enemies of every persuasion and that’s not a very convincing argument that you’re somehow innocent.” “Okay how about this then? It’s not me because I’ve been keeping an eye on you and so far you haven’t warranted anything that needs me to stop you yet. My daughter on the other hand disagrees. She claims that my…past with you is clouding my judgment.” “We never had a past Semra. I don’t know what YOU think it is, but WE were and never will be an item.” “Oh yes, that’s right. You’ve got that vicious little young thing on your dick now. Decena is her name? She is quite the warrior. Lot of those moves are familiar, they’re all the ones I taught you. Hey have you taught her any of my other moves when you’re bedding her?” At this point you sit back up, annoyed with Semra’s remark. “Is this going anywhere because I have a shitload of beast men to slaughter tomorrow and you’re keeping me awake!” You snap. “Oooh! Struck a nerve did I? Haven’t been able to do that for quite awhile, I really missed it. Tell me though; is it very serious with this one like it was with Alison? Didn’t think you’d get over her so quickly. Really though I don’t know why you pick any of these females. This new one is just likely to wind up dead, if not by the sword then by age. Her youthful appearance with eventually wither and fade like it does with all of those lesser born.” At this point you lie back down and close your eyes again. You’re not playing this game. “You done already? Disappointed, you used to be so much more fun. Very well, just listen then Eternal. I know you have a hard time with that, but maybe you’ll actually heed what I have to say for once. I am not your enemy. As I have said, my daughter is your enemy and she makes her base of operations in a city-state called Ryglik and lies south of the former Broki Kingdom. Of course that whole area consists of several city-states and she may very well move around, but that’s the main one she’s operating from. You remain silent while Semra continues to talk. “Well I’ll take your silence that you’re at least taking it under consideration. Oh and while you’re at it, you still might want to consider giving up all this foolish nonsense. Perhaps you’re a better Emperor than Casimir ever was, but you’re still mindlessly following a path that you think has been laid out for you. It’s almost like Casimir is still barking orders at you.” “I guarantee Casimir’s not saying much of anything anymore.” You answer. “Be that as it may, I’d hate to see you follow in his horribly misguided footsteps and make the same mistakes he did.” “Well, I don’t have you as an advisor, I’d say that already puts me ahead of the game.” “Pfft, you’d be lucky to have me by your side. Not my fault you can’t see and accept the truth. Anyway, I’ll take my leave now. Perhaps we’ll see each other, perhaps we won’t. Perhaps we’ll even see each other in the flesh again, wouldn’t that be fun?” “Sure would, I could give you your dagger back.” You remark. “Mmmm, I bet you would. Well if that day ever comes, you make sure you give me a long hard kiss as you’re sticking it in me. Oh one last thing, your General Ackerson is planning to betray you at some point during tomorrow’s battle. Not sure when and how, but he’s got quite a few soldiers willing to work with him on it. More of my daughter’s work no doubt.” With those final words, you cease hearing Semra’s voice. You briefly open your eyes and find that her image is gone as well. “Fucking bitch.” You mutter, as now you’re never going to be able to sleep with this last bit of information she just gave you. The big problem is she may very well be telling the truth, because for the most part Semra has never really lied to you. You didn’t believe her at the time, but she told you the complete truth about Casimir and his intentions. She didn’t have Alison killed either. As usual in her own fucked up way that you still don’t understand she has attempted to help you. Of course that was in the past, she could be lying about everything right now. While she has confirmed your own beliefs that it’s been the svelk working against you, she’s also trying to put the blame all on her daughter. Granted you know they probably don’t get along, but still. There also has never been any evidence that Ackerson has shown signs of being a potential traitor. Doesn’t even make sense, but then again you can’t trust anyone nowadays. Now you have to play a guessing game to as whether or not someone on your own side is going to kill you in the middle of battle. You miss the days when all you ever concerned yourself with were the people on the other side trying to kill you. > You dismiss the accusation There is no proof and indeed it would be incredibly stupid even for a traitor to attempt to kill you while there’s a rampaging army of beastmen that could very well kill everyone if you weren’t around. You roll over and salvage some sleep. Despite everything that went on last night, you miraculously actually manage to get a little sleep before the arrival of the Torites. You’re still a little tired, but you think when you get into the thick of battle the thrill of it will kick in and you’ll be invigorated. You usually are. It seems word of what happened spread fairly quickly to the rest of the camps, even to Decena’s army. You imagine that will at least have to put Galen in a good mood, maybe he’ll whine less now. When the Torites arrive they certainly look like a chaotic rabble, but it’s no mistake that they mean business. The number of harpies fills the sky to the point where you hope that the Storm can take care of such a flock. The second airship is in far distance behind you. Hopefully by the time it gets to engage in battle it won’t be replacing the Storm so much that it’ll be supporting the Storm. The cannons and rifles fire as soon as the Torites are within range. Their centaurs return fire with their accurate arrows. The saytr wizards up the ante by casting their elemental magic which rips solid chunks of rock and earth out of the ground and goes flying at your army. It can’t be said that the Torites are any less dangerous just because they’re less technologically advanced. High above you the Storm takes on the harpy warriors. Even from here, it looks like a swarm of locusts descending on a single blade of wheat. Looks pretty damn grim for the Storm, you just hope if the crew does get overwhelmed they can keep the ship from crashing near your location. The bull creatures lead the charge along side their horse beast brethren. Another volley of shots takes out some, but they remain relentless in their charge. The satyr rank and file advance steadily behind. They WILL arrive and there will certainly be enough of them left to give your army a good fight. Your own cavalry meets them and while they have the best training, they can’t overcome the sheer savagery of the minotaurs and as for the centaurs, their very bodies are half horse. They already have the advantage over your own cavalry as far as maneuverability. Breaks in the Torite army form as they allow their war beasts participate in the charge. Several manticores and chimera of the largest size make their way straight towards you. At their pace, they’re going to be the first ones your people will have to fight. A cannon blast rips through one of the chimera and fireball from one of your mages brings down another, but before you know it, a manticore is shredding apart your front line with its talons and impaling others with its spike tail. What comes next is utter mayhem. Swords and axes cutting and stabbing. Fangs and claws tearing and biting. Magic on both sides destroying several lives in the blink of an eye. It’s all very glorious. Decena’s army is holding its own on her front, but then you never had any doubt about that. The only problem they do have is the blasted satyr magic manages to turn the golems against them. Hopefully, Flevas managed to get Galen’s ass out of there before they crushed him. General Ackerson seems to be struggling a bit, but is hanging in there. Still, the battle is far from over yet. The fact that you’re simultaneously facing down three bullheads by yourself and a chimera closing in is a great reminder. You cast a lightning blast at the bulls, which fells two of them, but the third fights through the pain of having his body fried from the inside out. You dodge his axe and follow up with your own sword swing to his meaty leg. The beast roars, but is still undeterred. Two nearby soldiers from General Ackerson’s army see you and they both pull out their pistols. At first you think they’re just trying to shoot the chimera, but then you realize they’re going to shoot you. You mutter a curse about Semra being right. While you manage to block the shots with a quick force shield, you are also being attacked by a very vicious chimera, which takes advantage of your distraction. You feel a large singer impaling you through the leg followed up by the chimera’s goat head breathing poisonous gas in your face. Disoriented, hobbled and half blind, you don’t even see the minotaur that you temporarily fried with your lightning blast come at you with a great axe, cleaving half of head off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 40 “I thought the plan was to keep them in the tanks until the sixteenth year.” Brenda says. “No, those were Marik’s original plans for the last Eternals he worked on. We’re doing things differently. From Elam’s earlier calculations, and my own magic theories on this project we both came to the conclusion long ago that keeping them in the tanks for as long as Marik did is asking for trouble in the long term. While it certainly accelerates their skills and abilities there’s a risk for it to have a terrible affect on the mind. In fact it’s probably just as well that Marik killed them all, otherwise we might’ve had hundreds of mental cases.” You reply. “But Decena seems okay. I mean from what I know of the girl.” Brenda says. “Decena’s an exception, but I’m not going to tempt fate with this group. Five years seems like a good stopping point.” “So are you going to be training the rest of them?” “No, you are.” You say to Brenda who is speechless for a second. “What?” Brenda says. “You’re going to be responsible for these new Eternals Brenda. I know you’re going to need assistants, but it’s going to be chiefly your responsibility to train them and to make sure they become the best of the best. What Eternals should be. What WE are.” “But, why me? I mean I’ve never been on the frontlines like the rest of us were.” “True, but I know you’re no stranger to battle and you’re the only one I can trust with this task. Warrick’s job is to be the head of internal security and to directly oversee the Eyes, so he can’t do it. And I feel it would be best if another Eternal should be fully in charge of training these new ones. That leaves you and I know you to be an honorable woman who upholds the ideals of the Empire. Who could possibly be better?” “You?” Brenda says. “Heh, well it was a rhetorical question. But besides being too busy myself, I actually don’t believe I’d be the best trainer. I think due to our own experiences of how we were trained as well as our personalities, you will make a better teacher.” “But we both had the same training up to our twelfth year.” “Yes, and then our next four I guarantee was vastly different. And even during our twelve years together in Semra’s class, MY training experience was very different from yours. I think you’d agree.” Brenda nods, probably remembering that Semra took every opportunity to single you out in the class and subjecting you to the harshest punishments when it struck her fancy. “You had Captain Gruz as a teacher and from what I heard, he taught you all to fight as a team and to have a shared respect for each other and he did it without resorting to excessive measures. I know the common belief is that I’m cruel by nature, but I’m actually not. Ruthless perhaps, but not needlessly cruel. And because I’m not cruel, that’s why I’d rather have a more even-tempered person with at least a less hellish childhood experience than I train these children. They may be Eternals, but they’re still children that will have to be molded into good productive soldiers for the Empire with minimal problems to their mental state. I know you’ll be tough, but fair.” “Well, I don’t know what to say, except I appreciate your confidence in me in all this and I’ll do my best to carry out this task successfully. However, while I do understand that you don’t really have the time to train the new Eternals I’m still slightly puzzled to as why you believe you’d be a rotten teacher. I mean you trained Decena and from what I’ve heard she’s fanatically loyal as well as a great warrior bringing glory to the Empire.” “That’s right, I did. And she is.” You answer and don’t give any more elaboration, which prompts Brenda to just leave it alone. “Okay.” She responds. There’s a brief pause before Brenda decides to break up the silence by changing the subject. “So, what’s next on your agenda?” “Me? Well after I go inspect the new airship that Elam is supposed to be finished with, I’m going back on the battlefield. I think its time; most of the internal reorganization and major projects have been dealt with and don’t require my immediate watchful eye anymore. I’m sure if any problems crop up, someone won’t hesitate to inform me. Besides, the Torites are causing all sorts of problem on Ackerson’s front. And I think he may even be having issues with that petty kingdom he recently made contact with. I don’t even remember what its name is, and if I have anything to say about it, neither will anyone else.” “Well I’d tell you to be careful or wish you luck, but I know you’ll be fine. You always are. Are you going to stay for the grand opening though?” Brenda asks and points at the rows and rows of tanks. “No. Probably best if they don’t see me immediately. Keep me a semi-mysterious unapproachable figure for awhile.” You reply. “Oh like what they told us?” Brenda says. “Worked didn’t it? Still, when you’ve sufficiently got that idea into their heads, then I suppose I’ll make my appearance to them, most likely unannounced. I’ll want them to actually believe that I may very well pop up at any time. It’ll keep them on their toes.” “Ha ha, that’s probably even more frightening than never seeing such a figure as I have to admit even at times I wondered if the Emperor was actually watching me all the time, though Roldan certainly thought so.” Brenda at this point temporarily spins off into a pleasant memory she has of Roldan. You’ve never told her it was actually Casimir that had Roldan assassinated for his own reasons. You’ve pondered if you should tell her the truth, but ultimately decided it wouldn’t do any good save for perhaps destroying her faith in the Empire, which you don’t want. You know Brenda is prone to bouts of depression ever since Roldan’s died, telling her that the government and its ruler that she served was directly involved in her husband’s death might push her into hopelessness. Maybe even suicide. As it stands, you’ve been working to try to keep her spirits up. Which is another reason why you picked her to train these new Eternals. Perhaps it will give her a better sense of purpose. “Sorry, I rambled a bit there. I guess I just still miss Roldan.” Brenda says. “No need to apologize, I completely understand. Roldan was a dedicated soldier of the Empire and if he were here today he’d be proud of your accomplishments. Anyway, I have to go; if I’m lucky Elam hasn’t blown up this new machine he just built yet. I trust you have this?” “Yes I do.” You leave Brenda to her task and make your way to your next stop, which should be very different… You look at the brand new airship you’ve poured money into. It certainly is as large as you thought it might be, though it is still strange to see such a machine that was only picture on a piece of parchment a few years ago. Elam is visibly anxious about what you’ll think about it. He’s surprisingly quiet though, which might be a good sign that he’s learned to not run off at the mouth all the time. “Hrm, its impressive looking, but does it actually work?” you ask Elam. “Oh yes! We have tested its flight capabilities and it certainly works according to all the notes and plans Marik left. Had to make some adjustments of course, but I believe now that we’ve made one, we can easily improve upon it and make more.” Elam says. “Good, glad to hear it. What about weapons?” “We’ve equipped it with the latest cannons and the prototype repeater. There are also firebombs that can be dropped from the sky.” Elam answers. “Excellent work as always Elam.” “Thank you, my Emperor. Will you be boarding it?” “Boarding it? Hmm, hadn’t actually given it much thought. I mean is this final product? You don’t need to do anymore testing on it?” “Well we were just going to do some weapons testing while it flying it, but the airship itself is fully operational. It won’t go crashing into the ground or anything like that.” While you prefer keeping your feet firmly on the ground, you have to admit you do like the idea of potentially floating through the sky towering over your enemies and all those that might oppose you. “Very well, but I still want you to go through a weapons test like you planned, before I get on it. Do another safety check as well.” “As you wish, so about a week?” Elam asks. “Fine, but no more than that.” You reply and leave. Seeing as you have a few more days to kick around before the airship is ready, you return to the mundane duties of rulership. A couple days later you decide to check up on Warrick to see if there is anything he’s uncovered that needs your attention. The Eye Headquarters is probably the safest place in the Empire other than the palace itself. The Eyes may not be Eternals, but they’re the next best thing and Warrick being both is certainly one of the best warriors at your command. That’s probably why he looks so bored behind his desk when you meet him. In fact your visit is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened in his life lately. “Emperor! Didn’t realize you were coming, I was just busy going through all these population lists. You know like who is a potential trouble maker, who is a loyal citizen, that sort of thing.” Warrick says getting up when you enter his office. “Anything interesting I should know about?” you ask. “Not really. I mean there are still some grumbles from citizens about when we took babies from some families for the Eternal Project and the free elven population is always unsatisfied with the way things are, but I’m not seeing any uprising material. Unless you want to have some dissenters whisked away in the night just to be safe.” Warrick says. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. They can’t all be kobolds.” You reply. “Heh, got that right. Still can’t get over how Brenda was so successful in assimilating them the way she did. I still remember during our first major assignment in Nalin we had to wipe out caves of those vicious little bastards.” “I just saw her a few days ago actually, she’s going to be in charge of the new Eternals, training and such.” “Is that right? Well she’s probably the best candidate. I mean with you busy ruling and me busy being in charge of the Eyes and all. Um, is she still pissed at me?” “She didn’t really say anything about you, but I imagine you’re still not her favorite person.” “(Sigh) That’s a shame. You know I don’t harbor any ill will against her and if I could’ve I would’ve had even tighter security that fateful day. I mean I just…” You stop Warrick “Warrick, you don’t need to explain. You did everything you could that day. We all did. I mean hell even I didn’t see a shadow assassination coming. A dead one that I killed no less. Just don’t worry about it. Brenda will probably get over it one day, and if she doesn’t, well it’s still not your fault.” This reassuring statement seems to make Warrick calmer. You’ve obviously never told him the real truth about the assassination either and again you see no reason to stir up trouble by doing so. You and Warrick talk for a while, some it about the present, some of it about the future, and some of it about the past. During your conversation, it suddenly occurs to you that maybe you could hand a small honor over to Warrick for all his hard work. He certainly could use a break in the mundane paper work that he primarily does nowadays. You wonder if you should let him take command of the new airship and see some frontline combat. > You take command of the airship yourself Everyone’s got his or her place and Warrick is needed where he is. Perhaps another time. You bid Warrick goodbye and in a week you make your way over to Elam’s factory where you can board the new airship. It does look rather impressive. Just looking at all the cannons stick out of the sides, makes you wonder how the hell it lifts off the ground with all that weight, but then someone probably also wondered how the hell a regular ship can float with the same amount of weight on it at one time too. “This is a minor thing my Emperor, but I was wondering what did you want to name this ship? I figured you’d want the honor of doing that.” Elam asks. “Name? Oh yes, I suppose a name would come in handy. Let’s see…call it the Storm I guess. Raining down destruction on our enemies and all that. Sounds good to me.” You reply to which Elam agrees. You board the Storm with Elam and meet the crew who will be flying this thing. All of them stand at attention when you arrive. a man dressed in a standard Empire engineer uniform walks up to you and salutes. It looks like his uniform has been crudely altered. “Emperor on deck! It is an honor to meet you in person! My name is Tavis…” he starts to say before you interrupt. “Why the hell do you have small metal cogs on your shoulders?” you ask. “Oh…yeah that well when we started this project nobody knew anything about flying so Elam picked me for a lot of first tests. It was dangerous, but exhilarating at the same time! In time I became the most proficient at commandeering this technological marvel, so Elam made me captain.” “Glad to see Elam’s taken it upon himself to completely ignore all military protocol and just arbitrarily assign ranks and such. So I’m guessing those little cogs you put on yourself are supposed to represent your new status?” “Erm...uh…yes my Emperor. I meant no offense!” “Calm down, I don’t care that much. In the future though, assuming this turns out well. We really need to get you proper uniforms for airship crew rather than this poor attempt of altering old ones. Anyway, take me on the grand tour before we lift off.” Elam and Tavis both take you to various parts of the airship and explain various things mostly involving technical talk, eventually you grow bored and decide you just want to get on with getting this thing to the battlefield where you can see its destructive capabilities. “Alright I get the picture, let’s get this thing to the front lines and blow up some Torites.” You say. “As you wish my Emperor, I’ll leave you in the hands of Captain Tavis here, uh he’s still a captain isn’t he?” “Yes, since it’s as good as a designation as any for now. If he proves competent, he may very well keep the rank.” You respond. Elam and some of the other engineers that were testing the safety of the airship soon leave it so that the rest of you can get on your way. The airship takes a moment to warm up, but soon you’re lifting off and high in the air. The experience isn’t that bad and a fairly smooth ride. You honestly half thought you’d go crashing down to the ground, but it really looks like your engineers came through. You give some praising comments which seems to put the crew and Tavis in good spirits. You explain you’ll be head towards the south where General Ackerson’s command is located. You figure you can meet up and see what the situation is and have the Storm assist accordingly. Along the way one of the lookouts see a group of the centaur Torites galloping across the plains. There are actually quite a few of them. Enough to be a raiding party probably. When asked if the Storm should try to take them out, you say of course. “We’re too far away to use bombs and the cannons aren’t angled in a position to fire at them yet. We could use the repeater prototype though. It’s located over there and it has terrific range! Would you like to do the honors my Emperor?” Tavis asks. “Well I don’t usually use firearms and I could probably hit some of those horse beasts from here with a few fireballs, but what the hell.” You say and walk over to the repeater prototype. You turn the mounted gun towards the centaurs who are now quite away that the “big machine” in the sky is heading toward them and means to do them harm. They begin to scatter and you press the trigger… And the gun promptly explodes spectacularly. Enough so that it sets a large part of the ship on fire which then in turn causes more minor explosions. As the surviving crew runs around attempting to put out fires and move away gunpowder, you find that you are several feet away from your original location and your arms have become bloody stumps. Your body is in bad condition as well considering you can see out of your one remaining eye that your organs are exposed to the air now. Healing magic wouldn’t be of too much help even if you could concentrate to use it. The explosions aboard the airship are deafening and you’re barely conscious as it is. Someone goes over to help you and then you pass out. You are not awake to experience the Storm’s fiery crash to the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This adventure has drained you physically, mentally and even emotionally. Attacking a powerful necromancer in his homeland might not be the best idea right now. Another day perhaps… You approach the portal and give one last look at Nicodemus who stands by watching you. You can't figure him out. A lot of what he said was very condescending yet he seemed to pity you rather than be angry. He was also very nihilistic in his views on how achievements don't matter, not even life, though at the same he seemed to be trying to give you advice and help you in some strange way. You step into the portal and find yourself transported back to the Emperor’s chambers. Chambers that seem so empty now. Empty as you feel. Something is bothering you and it’s a strange thing to worry about considering it would’ve lead to your death, but you can’t shake it. Why did the Emperor’s ritual fail? Nicodemus said you were not a suitable vessel for the transference spell, but if you weren’t, what does that mean? Would one of the other Eternals been a better choice, or was the plan always destined to fail? You believe there have to be some notes on the subject of your alterations somewhere. Jacob probably has several papers about the Eternal Project in his office, but you search the Emperor’s rooms first. After hours of searching you manage to find several bits of private writings about various subjects. You don’t have time to read all of them now, but you focus on anything to the Eternal Project. One of the major things you discover is that the pregnant mothers had a specific ritual cast over them while the Eternals to be were still in the womb. This ritual, while elaborate and probably quite frightening to the woman in question didn’t harm her in any way; it was more of a “prep” spell. (You also read that it took several attempts to get this ritual “right” too. The number of dead pregnant women is quite sizable) Apparently this initial ritual was a big key in whether or not the final ritual was going to be successful. You can’t find any other information besides how the Emperor was REALLY betting everything on this plan as he’d run out of ideas on to extend his life any further short of going back to Mortos and apologizing to Nicodemus for his behavior. Still wanting more information you go search through Jacob’s office. It is actually easy to find everything since he kept everything in immaculate order. Naturally he had everything locked, but you easily remove such annoyances. Nothing is going to stop you from seeking out your origins. And after hours more searching you find more than you ever wanted to know in Jacob’s journal… I can’t believe those idiots! Trent and Stravid grabbed the wrong fucking infant! We only found out just yesterday when I found their list on the floor of the privy room covered in piss! I went back to check the Empire nursery numbers hoping that MAYBE they grabbed the correct child anyway, but no such luck. The infant that was supposed to be selected was already disposed of as a rejected candidate. Meanwhile the wrong infant is already going through his magical alterations. I’m not exactly on the Emperor’s good side at the best of times, and I’m not getting into fucking trouble for this. Those two morons are going to be executed. As for the baby I’m going to have to grovel to get that svelk bitch to help me with this. She can probably perform the same ritual over this new brat so the Emperor won’t be able to detect anything is amiss with it. I don’t understand why the Emperor doesn’t just perform this ritual in person rather than relying on the svelk to do it anyway. And HOPEFULLY that will work. It has to work. Maybe I’m worrying about this too much, what are the chances that this kid will live through training and meet the Emperor anyway? And there it is, your “origins.” You weren’t even meant to be an Eternal. You were a clerical mistake, a bureaucratic mishap, and the Emperor’s death was caused by it. Hell, it’s almost like you went through with Jacob and Semra’s plan to assassinate the Emperor anyway. One might think something like this would cause you to doubt the meaning of your entire existence and drive you into depression. Possibly even suicide. An end to this life of misplaced duty, obedience and blind devotion to ultimately an ungrateful master. Just like Nicodemus said. But you don’t really think about any of that. Instead you start to laugh. You laugh for a very long time. “He…he didn’t even know I wasn’t originally chosen! What a fool! Why the hell did I ever follow this man? Because I’m an even bigger fool!” you say to yourself in between the guffaws. Perhaps you’re still being a fool. Casimir lied to you and deep down never really cared save for what he thought you were, but none of that nor his death invalidate your beliefs in the Empire. His idea that the world needs order, that the masses need to be kept in line, that some elements are better off exterminated for the overall good. Maybe part of you still can’t quite shake being the “dutiful” son, but you fully intend on continuing in your “father’s footsteps.” Of course the difference now being that your life is truly your own now. Since destiny has conspired to thrust you into the position of a ruler, you will play the role that it would have you play. Now you just have to convince everyone else. Within the week you call for a meeting of the most important leaders of the Empire. Ranging from generals to economists to advisors and other infrastructure types you’ve had little to no contact with before. Everyone is told to gather in the throne room, which is a room that hasn’t been used in centuries; or rather Casmir stopped using it after he decided to become a recluse. You won’t be doing that. You’ll be leading from the front rather than hiding in the shadows causing people to wonder if you exist at all. This is your time now. When everyone finally arrives they naturally all wonder what’s going on, you get right to the point. "The Emperor as most of us knew him has moved on from this world. As his only logical successor I will be taking his place. If anyone has a problem with this we can have a civilized discussion about it on the battlefield which I have no doubt I will be seeing a lot of when several pretenders, dissidents and outright anarchists attempt to dethrone me. They will fail. The Empire will not fall today or anytime soon. This is just a new era for it and one I fully intend on making successful. The Empire currently is doing well, but I'm confident that with your loyalty and obedience we can make it even stronger." You take a pause in your speech and scan your audience. None of them are interrupting. They all seem to be captivated, of course maybe some are just planning on trying to assassinate you later, but for now you’ll take their attention as a positive sign. "Join me and the Empire will live forever. YOU will live forever! Who's with me?" No sooner have you finished your statement, several of the advisors bend their knee and bow towards you. The soldiers draw their weapons and raise them in air pledging their loyalty. "Hail to the new Emperor!" "Long live the Empire!" Well that went better than you expected. The only “important” person that didn’t attend your meeting was Marik though you didn’t really expect him to being a derro and all. Not to mention you didn’t invite him anyway and had planned on meeting with him personally. You have no idea how he’s going to react to the news and he’s erratic at the best of times. You and he weren’t exactly getting along the last time you saw him, so for all you know he may just attack you. Part of you hopes he does, just so you never have to deal with him anymore. Besides Semra, Marik was the next one you never liked dealing with just because his demeanor irritated you. When you get to his personal factory, it’s as silent and as empty as it was when you had to clean out those escaped trolls. You hope that isn’t the damn problem again. On your guard, you cautiously walk through the factory and make your way down to the underground portion and continue to find nobody around. “Marik! If this is an ambush, let’s just get this over with now because I don’t have time for it!” you shout. You see the door to the tank baby room open up, but it isn’t Marik, it’s a young girl. In fact it’s the tank baby that you spared before your trip to Mortos. She looks like she’s been healing well. “He…he’s not here sir. I mean my Emperor. I apologize for not addressing you properly.” She remarks nervously. “That’s fine…so word of my ascension has reached down here eh? Wasn’t sure if it did, so where’s Marik? In fact where is everyone? I know there’s still usually a skeleton crew that works in the factory above and there are usually derro guards wandering around down here. In fact shouldn’t there be more of you tank babies running around training?” you ask. “Marik killed them all. He shut down the machine that was keeping the rest alive inside the tanks. Said if the Emperor was gone then his debt was paid and he wasn’t going to spend the remainder of his years toiling for the likes of you and called you a…uh…um…” “Oh just say it, I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to surprise me.” “He called you a svelk fucker.” “Is that all?” “Well then he sort of ranted. He said that you had a svelk lover that would strap on a…uh…sexual device and made you bend over like a woman when you would have relations.” “Sheesh. Can’t say Marik didn’t have a colorful imagination.” You remark shaking your head. “Then he said the pair of you fellated kobolds and ate the dung of…” “Okay, I think I got the idea.” You say holding up your hand. “He was very angry at you my Emperor.” “Mmh, sounds like. So why did he kill all you tankies?” “Oh, well he also said he wasn’t going to waste any more of his genius for you to use, so he decided to kill all of us in the tanks. He tried to kill me as well by having his men shoot at me and lob several firebombs at me.” She says and points over to a partially collapsed bit of the room where blacked equipment and fallen rock now lays. “Guessing it didn’t work.” “I managed to duck under one of the desks and made a blood curdling scream as the explosions went off and the rocks fell down around me. After they let up, I heard Marik laugh at how I feared death in my final moments and after a few minutes I heard them leave at which point I started digging myself out of the rubble.” “Hrm, I see faking your own death actually worked for you this time, good. You shouldn’t disregard a tactic just because it fails in one instance.” You say as you glance over a pile of papers lying on another table in the room. “Marik was brilliant in some ways, but he was an idiot in others. The fool left all his notes behind. I can easily restart all the work he did.” You add. “You’re going to restart the Eternal Project? But I thought you didn’t like…tankies as you call us.” “Well, I was in a different state of mind at the time. Now that I’m Emperor, I’m thinking that I’m going to need dedicated loyal soldiers to help in the expansion of the Empire in the future. Just need to rebuild the factory, get some babies, throw them into the tanks and grow my new army. Of course I’ll be overseeing it and making my own alterations to whatever Marik’s original design was.” “What about me, my Emperor?” The tank baby asks. “Yes, what about you? Well considering you managed to survive not one, but two major attempts on your life within weeks of being out of your little tank, I suppose you deserve a place somewhere. To be honest, I did spare you in the first place because you showed more promise and strength than your siblings by merely surviving my assault. You know I was singled out too, on several occasions. I grew stronger from the challenges. You will have the same opportunity I did and I’m going to personally train you. Then depending on how well you do, I’ll decide where you’re best needed.” You tell her. “You’re…you’re too kind my Emperor.” She says with a gratuitous expression on her face. You start laughing. “You won’t be thinking that when we actually start training. Let’s go. By the way it’ll be useful to have something to call you other than tank baby, so what’s your name?” “Name? I don’t have one, my Emperor. Marik never saw fit to give me one. I do have a number though. Ten.” “No, I’m not going to call you ten. That’s silly, especially since there’s only one of you now. Let’s see…I’ll call you… Decena. You like that name?” “I don’t have any objections to it, my Emperor.” “Good. Let us be on our way.” With this last bit of business out of the way, you feel you’re getting off on a good start as the Empire’s new Emperor. You just wish Alison were here to share it with you. > You tilda Zookwinkle (Casimir's dark secret) You must have spent a lot of your down time searching through Casimir’s libraries and personal items in an attempt to possibly find some sort of magic or treasure or secret that could increase your own power, but you haven’t had much luck in that regard. Most of Casimir’s power came from his own magic strength along with his mind and had little reason to have such trinkets lying around. Surprisingly most of his notes and journals are of the more mundane sort. You don’t find the discovery of some powerful spell he didn’t teach you or anything. Again, such things would’ve probably been locked up in his own mind, which of course is inaccessible now. Still, one thing that you found stands out and it’s something that completely surprised you. Dearest Tilda, In all my years, I have never met a woman that makes me feel the way you do and I’ve met many in my travels. Never did I think that I would find paradise in the arms of a gnome woman. It’s like you’ve known me all my life, I don’t need to explain myself to you. You just know and understand. If I didn’t know better I’d swear you were some sort of trickster demon. Of course I know that cannot be the case, because you have such a kind and gentle spirit despite also being grounded in realism. I am not ashamed to tell you that I love you. I never thought I could experience such a wonderful emotion. I know your people are not magical by nature, but I cannot help think that you must’ve cast a powerful spell over me! I vow from here on out, that you will always be major factor in my future goals. I want to share everything with you. You find several, no a multitude of these sorts of love letters. Apparently Casimir once loved a gnome woman by the name of Tilda. Many of these letters were obviously sent and read, but you wonder how he got them back. After scanning through a few more of them, you find one letter that answers more questions to this mystery. It’s not Casimir’s writing, its Tilda’s. Casimir, When you find this letter, it will be on my dead body and hopefully most of my people will have escaped your bloody purge. You are a man of unspeakable evil, I always knew this, but within these last few months you proved it tenfold when you committed genocide on our Halfling cousins. Why? They wanted nothing more than equality, yet you would rather kill them all rather than grant that tiny bit of dignity. There will be a day of reckoning for all your evil, mark my words and when that day comes, I shall be watching and laughing at your downfall in the afterlife. You claimed that you loved me with all your heart, but you proved time and time again that you have no heart. You did not truly love me. You wished to possess me as a favored toy. Someone to pat you on the head whenever you whined about how the people just “don’t understand” why you have to do the terrible things you do. You’re pathetic, and I curse the day your eyes set their sights on me. Do you know how much I rolled my eyes at your sorry attempts of writing me love letters? Do you know how it made my skin crawl every time I had to lay with you? Do you know how much I utterly hated you from the moment you enslaved my people? Yes, ENSLAVED. No matter how “favored” our position we were still SLAVES. And you made me your personal one. I go to my grave happily knowing that I did everything I could to distract you from realizing the truth of our exodus before you could act in time. Know how a simple gnome woman fooled the mighty Emperor. And if by some bizarre twist that you actually did have genuine feelings of love for me in that black heart of yours, then my revenge is even sweeter. Live with a broken heart, and may it hurt as much as all the pain you’ve ever inflicted onto others. You will also find all the worthless letters you wrote to me. Take them back, and keep them as a reminder of your utter failure. Tilda Zookwinkle: Proud gnome woman Wow. This letter isn’t even addressed to you and you can feel the viciousness dripping from it. Good enough to rival the cruel ruthlessness of a svelk you think. It’s very apparent now why Casimir hated gnomes so much. You always knew it had to be more than what he told you. She obviously was still having an effect on him for centuries as he kept his grudge and the letters rather than destroying them. Makes you think back to when he was trying to tell you that he knew about love and loss and how he was trying to guide you away from such things. Of course you know the main reason was due to his own agenda, but now upon reading these letters, you can’t help but think a small portion was truthful and him speaking from this experience. Casimir certainly kept his promise in one of his letters though; he did say Tilda would always be a major factor in his future goals. While Tilda may have gotten a little revenge, she didn’t exactly do her people any favors given what happened. You wonder if she knew what lengths Casimir would ultimately go to utterly destroy her people, would she have done it anyway?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Jacob and you enter your room. Jacob looks almost as bad as the Emperor once did. He hasn’t been the same since Roldan died, but he’s also been overworked since the Emperor has been sick. The man is in his late sixties, but nowadays he looks more like he’s in his late eighties. The stress has been taking a toll. “Jacob, I really hope this is important because I’ve got a lot going through my mind right now.” You say. “I’m sure you do, but you’ll have a lot more after you hear what I have to say. Though after you hear it you might just decide to kill me instead, but that’s a risk I’ll just have to take.” “Can’t be anything worse than anything I haven’t thought myself today.” You say. “I highly doubt that, but I just want you to at least hear me out before you make a decision.” You sit down and nod telling Jacob to go ahead. “Okay. I know you just came from a meeting with the Emperor and his revitalized condition. I’m also guessing he told you to that he wants you to go back home with him.” “Yes.” You reply. “Do you know where his original home is?” “He said it was a very far away island that couldn’t even be reached by a boat. That was about it.” “Figures he’d be cryptic. His home is Mortos, an island of necromancers. It’s not a well-known place to the average person. Most that have heard of it just believe it’s a myth, but it exists.” “What?” “The Emperor is a necromancer. I mean it makes sense doesn’t it? How else would he have the knowledge to extend his life for so long?” “Okay, so what?” “You are aware of what necromancers do don’t you?” “I’m aware of the branch of magic. Most just believe it’s about raising the dead, but it deals with life force in general. Healing mages use it all time at a cost of course. Only the strongest of wizards can use the art, let alone master it. Hence why there aren’t many around and why stories about necromancers creeping about graveyards raising armies of undead horrors are mostly reserved for parents trying to scare their children.” You say. Jacob gets a little frustrated at your apathy at this revelation. “Perhaps I’m not making myself clear enough…the Emperor is a necromancer. Roldan was KILLED by a revenant. YOUR WIFE was KILLED by a revenant.” That got your attention. You stand up and Jacob can’t help but step back even though he knows you’d easily catch him if he tried to run. “You’re treading on very thin ice Jacob.” “Believe me I’m well aware.” “Then you must also be aware that you sound crazier than Marik right now. What you’re implying doesn’t even make sense.” “Why not? It does if you really think about it.” “Semra was responsible for my wife’s death and Roldan’s death! She is also a powerful sorceress that is more than capable of raising the dead!” “Yes, and she’s also a perfect patsy for your wrath. The Emperor wanted you to think it was her, but it wasn’t. Think man, even if she did have your wife killed why would she bother having Roldan killed? She had no grudge. There was no profit in it. Chaos for the sake of chaos? Not Semra’s style and you know it. That woman didn’t do anything without purpose even if she was chaotic about it at times. Besides if she REALLY wanted to kill your wife, she would’ve just done it herself.” You think back to when Alison told you she met Semra face to face and entertain Jacob’s theory. “Even if Semra wasn’t responsible, why would the Emperor have Roldan and Alison killed?” “Because of you. It’s all because of you.” “Me? How? Why?” “(Sigh) It’s a very long and complex plot. I’ve only been piecing some of it together myself. I’ll try to tell you what I know.” Jacob starts off by explaining that it all goes back to your birth and the Eternal Project. You and all of your “siblings” were picked for it for a reason. You weren’t just to become super soldiers for the Empire. One of you was going to be chosen to be the new vessel for the Emperor, but only if that Eternal showed promise. Apparently you did. Jacob explains that while the chosen needed to be a great warrior with magical skill and be put to the test, the Emperor didn’t want to risk your life excessively, hence why he initially wanted to keep you out of very heavy fighting. Also he didn’t want any of the potential vessels to complicate things by potentially producing offspring so sterility was something that ensured during your “enhancement” period as a baby. You were a perfect soldier that was utterly loyal, so much so that you saw the Emperor as your father. Then Alison came along. Alison was the only other person that you had a close relationship with and that distracted you from your duty. Or more precisely, it made your loyalties potentially divided. The Emperor couldn’t take a chance with another person turning your devotion elsewhere or corrupting his influence over you so she had to die. The assassination of Roldan was just a simple matter of taking out a potential future rival. Roldan’s fame was at least as much as your own, and he was probably better liked. Even if Roldan was loyal, the Emperor couldn’t take a chance of another potential domestic rebellion with a charismatic leader. Jacob also believes that the Emperor also just did it out of mean spiritedness since he knew how proud Jacob was of Roldan. On top of everything else he could lay all the blame on Semra. Jacob isn’t sure exactly how the Emperor plans to transfer himself into your body, but given that it involves a trip to the island of Mortos, he’s sure it can’t be good and that you as a person will cease to be so that the Emperor can continue his immortal reign. While this is all very interesting from a conspiracy point of view, you aren’t convinced. “So are you seriously telling me the Emperor has been molding me into some container that is to be filled? You’re telling me that this man who I see as my father and treats me as his son has been lying to me from the beginning about everything? Even if this were the case and I highly doubt it is, HOW do you know all this? What evidence do you have?” Jacob at this point is extremely nervous. “I…I have no hard evidence. I mean I’ve seen a few private writings, but I dared not to take them.” “So what you’re telling me is that you’ve been snooping into the Emperor’s privacy and can’t even back up your accusations.” “No! I also have another person who can back up these facts! She…” You stop Jacob. “She? Jacob, I really hope you aren’t talking about who I think you’re talking about.” Jacob ignores your warning and blurts out what he has to say as quickly as he can. “Look, I pieced together some of the assassination myself, but Semra told me about the true purpose of the Eternal Project. But this isn’t about just you. This is about a potential danger of world proportions! The Emperor isn’t just a ruler seeking everlasting life; Semra says he has a more sinister agenda that he’s been planning for centuries and given that I’ve recently learned his original homeland is Mortos I’m inclined to believe her.” “Believe Semra? Really? Then you’re a damn fool along with being a traitor! Just how long have you been in contact with Semra? WHERE IS SHE?!” you ask and slam Jacob against the wall. “Please…I’m telling you the truth! I’m no traitor! I’m loyal to the Empire first and foremost and I see the Emperor’s actions as something that will harm it in the long run! The Emperor needs to be stopped, whatever it is he has planned. You can’t go to Mortos with him! You have to kill him!” “I’ll kill YOU for speaking such treason!” and begin squeezing Jacob’s neck. “(Sigh) I told you this wasn’t going to work Jacob. He’s too hopelessly brainwashed to listen. Not even the death of his beloved Alison will cause him to believe that the Emperor means him ill. I guess I should’ve just killed him long ago, but as they say love makes you do stupid things.” You turn around and see Semra. You don’t think, you just lunge, only to pass through Semra and crash into some furniture. Its not really Semra, its just a magic projection of some sort. “I suppose I should be flattered that you still want to get your hands on me.” Semra remarks. “After I’m done killing Jacob, I’m going to find and kill you, bitch.” You say getting back up. “I’m sure, but I don’t have much time so I’m going to make this brief. Unlike our sniveling associate over there, I’m not going to appeal to your logic or reason, because its always been hampered by your warped sense of mindless duty. I’m going to appeal to your sense of desire and survival, because despite your warped sense of mindless duty, you can’t suppress those.” You draw your weapon and walk past Semra’s image to butcher Jacob who pleads with you to spare his life. “Okay here it is, you WANT to kill the Emperor. You WANT to rule the Empire. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. I know your desires better than anyone else. Even if the Emperor isn’t planning on taking your body as his own and is going to just rejuvenate himself in some other way, why would you still want that? Isn’t it time for him to accept his demise and step aside for someone else? Who better than you? Are you truly happy just surviving and serving like a drone or are you going to finally step up and take what is rightfully yours? You’ve already had a major hand in expanding the Empire and holding it together, why not take the next natural step?” You stop yourself from killing Jacob and turn back to Semra. “You don’t have to like me, you don’t have to believe me, just listen to me lover. I’ve always known what’s best for you. Kill the Emperor now while he’s at his weakest, there has never been a better time. You were born to rule. Its in your blood, its in your heart, its in your soul. Seize your potential and do what’s meant to be.” Semra says. With Jacob’s damning accusations and Semra’s words appealing to your ambitious aspirations, you now don’t know what to do. Should you dismiss everything they say as lies and stay loyal or should you not take any chances with your own survival and kill the Emperor regardless of reasons? > You rule Click. That’s the sound of everything in your head finally coming together. Jacob’s right. Semra’s right. YOU’RE right. The Emperor needs to die and at this point the reasons are overwhelming and you can’t deny it any longer. You lower your sword causing Jacob to breathe a sigh of relief. “Okay…so the Emperor needs to die. Any advice on how I should accomplish this task, because I’m fairly certain it’s not going to just be a matter of storming in and chopping his head off.” You ask Semra who is surprised by your response. “Semra? You listening?” you repeat. “Yeah…I just…I didn’t actually think you’d listen to me…I’m glad you finally have though. Yes, you’re right of course it won’t be just a matter of chopping his head off, he’ll most likely detect your intent as soon as you enter his chambers. At which point he’d melt your brain with just a thought and your mind shield spells wouldn’t even help you. Fortunately you will have me along to help you in this task. He can’t do that little trick on me, svelk brains work differently.” “Don’t I know it.” You mumble. “I still don’t see how that is going to help me though.” “Easy, I’m going to shield you by joining our minds together. It’ll come in handy during the fight as well since we’ll be more in sync with our attacks…” You immediately interrupt. “Wait a minute, I don’t know about this plan. Linking our minds and you having access to mine? That sounds like I’d be at your complete mercy.” “(Sigh) You’ve trusted me this far, why not a little further? You already know I’ve been trying to help you from the start. Besides, we’ve done this to a minor degree already when we were destroying gnome souls in Gnome’s Home. Also it works both ways you know. You’d have access to my mind as well.” “You make that sound like that’s a good thing.” “Oh trust me lover, it’ll be a very good thing. Just think our minds in harmony and knowing each other greater than we could ever express in words. We’d have a level of intimacy that most beings can’t even comprehend. Doesn’t that sound just so… invigorating?” “It sounds like something all right. Look, I don’t know if I’m going for this. Maybe I’ll just take my chances with getting my brain melted.” “I highly suggest you don’t. I know you think you are strong of mind, but this is something you are not going to have any defense for without my help. I’m going to meet you down in the hall just before you enter the Emperor’s chambers. I suggest you reconsider my generous offer by the time you get there.” At this point Semra’s image disappears and its just you and Jacob left in the room. He’s still very nervous. “Jacob, you can stop shaking I’m not going to kill you. In fact since you’re partly responsible for this power grab in process, what are you going to be doing?” “Me? I don’t know. I wouldn’t be much good in a fight as you well know. I guess I’ll be packing a few bags just in case I need to make a hasty getaway, not that it’ll probably do me much good.” “Way to have confidence in me, Jacob.” “I do have confidence, but I have to maintain a pragmatic attitude too. You understand.” “Yeah, I get it…so what about Semra? You think I should let her invade my head?” “You’re asking me?” “Sure, why not? You and her have been plotting this whole thing. You obviously trusted her enough to work up the courage to try to bring me into this. So what’s your opinion?” “I don’t know. And I’m not saying that to be evasive or frustrating, I really don’t know. I mean if you were anyone else I’d say go for it because you wouldn’t have anything to lose because quite frankly I don’t think anyone BUT you would have a chance of coming out of this alive.” “But…?” “But since you DO have a chance of surviving this, who knows what Semra might pull after the Emperor is dead? And if she can get in your head…well…I just don’t know.” “Great.” “But didn’t she say you’d be in hers as well? Maybe she wouldn’t try anything, because she’d be just as vulnerable.” “So she says…shit, just wish this was clear cut. You know? This isn’t where I envisioned where my life was heading. In fact I never envisioned this.” “I don’t think any of us did, but here we are never the less. The only other thing I can tell you is given how obsessed she is with you, she probably won’t kill you.” “There are things worse than death, Jacob. (Sigh) I guess I’ll figure it out soon.” You reply and turn to leave before you do though, Jacob calls out to you. “Just in case we don’t get to speak again…I just want to say thank you for the times you helped me out.” “Just doing my part in serving the Empire.” You say and leave. “Serving the Empire.” You chuckle at that dark joke. You’re about to try to kill the man who created it. You might be inclined to rationalize such an act by thinking you’re serving the Empire by killing a leader that is no longer good at ruling it. Of course that would be complete bullshit. You’re killing the Emperor for your own personal reasons first and foremost. Some of that is your own desire for power, but a lot of it is for revenge of Alison’s murder. In fact the more you think about it, the angrier you get and that’s good, because it’s keeping out the fear you do have about facing the Emperor. Eventually you reach the large hall before the Emperor’s chambers and just as she promised, Semra is there waiting. “What took you so long lover? The Emperor is probably aware I’m here by now and possibly even suspecting something is amiss with you as well.” “What’s the difference? You said he’d know I was going to kill him as soon as I enter the chambers.” “I suppose so, but I was at least hoping that maybe we’d have a slight chance at a surprise attack. Those are always the most efficient. Killing your enemy before they even get a chance to strike. Less messy, don’t you agree?” “Maybe, but personally I don’t mind getting messy.” “Mmmm, yes I imagine you don’t. Anyway come to me so we can merge our minds and get this task underway.” You cautiously step towards Semra who gives a faint smile as you do so. Her attempts at being friendly and inviting are probably more disturbing to you than when she used to beat and verbally abuse you. When you get within range, her arms reach out and around you. “Hey, what are you doing?!” you ask backing up. “Will you relax? This is part of the spell. We need to be looking at each other and focusing. Now here, just put your hands around me like this…” Semra says and starts to position your hands though you can’t help but notice she initially positioned your hands so they were temporarily on her ass before she slowly moved them up around her waist. Her hands find their way on your shoulders and at this point you feel like you’re in a compromising embrace rather than preparing for some spell. “Now stare into my eyes and focus.” Semra remarks as her own face is only a few inches away from your own. Your eyes don’t immediately focus on her eyes though, you stare at her full blood red lips. You think about how you want to press your own lips against hers. And then she suddenly does and your mind goes to another place. You see what’s in Semra’s mind or at least a glimpse of it. Images are coming at you so fast you can’t make out all of it, but you see a mixture of the horrifying and impressive at the same time. You see what must’ve been during the time of when the svelk ruled. Everything is very regal and elegant looking, though much like the svelk themselves, it radiates a certain coldness. You also see the svelk treating their subjects (Most of which are of races you’ve never even seen before) worse than the Empire ever could. They also have greater control too thanks to their magic. What you aren’t seeing is any images of Semra herself and you’re even sensing that she’s experiencing pain during this process. Semra is obviously blocking some of her more private thoughts. She’s showing you a general history of her life, yet somehow only telling you half the story. Meanwhile she’s probably trying to scour through your mind of everything. With this moment of clarity during the spell, you wonder if you shouldn’t break off this link given that she’s intending this to be a one-way affair. She might have ill intent for you once this is over after all. > You break the link Something about this is suspicious and you aren’t risking it. You push yourself away from Semra. “What are you doing?! I’m not done yet!” Semra exclaims. “Well I am. I’m not going to be put in a position where you can access my brain.” “You damn well better, because when the Emperor has access to it, he’s not going to be nice about it like me.” “Look, let’s just get this over with.” You say. Semra wants to argue more, but she sees she isn’t going to convince you. “Fine.” She replies. After speaking the password, the door opens and you both enter the Emperor’s chambers. You cast your magical shield spells and distance yourself from Semra. Almost immediately you hear the voice of the Emperor, though he hasn’t made an appearance yet. “So it’s come to this has it? After all I’ve done for you. After all I’ve given you. You turn traitor for a piece of svelk tail?” The Emperor steps out from his bedroom. “Son, I am disappointed.” He says and then just stares immediately in your direction. You feel a slight pain in your head, which then gets much worse nearly immediately. Semra casts a spray of acid, and while it sizzles and melts objects within the designated direction, the Emperor’s own defenses absorb it. Meanwhile you’re collapsing on the floor clutching your head in extreme pain. You bleed from your nose, from your ears and finally your eyes. Your death screams are ignored as Semra attempts to defend herself against the Emperor’s overwhelming lightning blasts. Your brain liquefies inside your skull and you are no longer a factor in this attempted grab for the throne.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Click. That’s the sound of everything in your head finally coming together. Jacob’s right. Semra’s right. YOU’RE right. The Emperor needs to die and at this point the reasons are overwhelming and you can’t deny it any longer. You lower your sword causing Jacob to breathe a sigh of relief. “Okay…so the Emperor needs to die. Any advice on how I should accomplish this task, because I’m fairly certain it’s not going to just be a matter of storming in and chopping his head off.” You ask Semra who is surprised by your response. “Semra? You listening?” you repeat. “Yeah…I just…I didn’t actually think you’d listen to me…I’m glad you finally have though. Yes, you’re right of course it won’t be just a matter of chopping his head off, he’ll most likely detect your intent as soon as you enter his chambers. At which point he’d melt your brain with just a thought and your mind shield spells wouldn’t even help you. Fortunately you will have me along to help you in this task. He can’t do that little trick on me, svelk brains work differently.” “Don’t I know it.” You mumble. “I still don’t see how that is going to help me though.” “Easy, I’m going to shield you by joining our minds together. It’ll come in handy during the fight as well since we’ll be more in sync with our attacks…” You immediately interrupt. “Wait a minute, I don’t know about this plan. Linking our minds and you having access to mine? That sounds like I’d be at your complete mercy.” “(Sigh) You’ve trusted me this far, why not a little further? You already know I’ve been trying to help you from the start. Besides, we’ve done this to a minor degree already when we were destroying gnome souls in Gnome’s Home. Also it works both ways you know. You’d have access to my mind as well.” “You make that sound like that’s a good thing.” “Oh trust me lover, it’ll be a very good thing. Just think our minds in harmony and knowing each other greater than we could ever express in words. We’d have a level of intimacy that most beings can’t even comprehend. Doesn’t that sound just so… invigorating?” “It sounds like something all right. Look, I don’t know if I’m going for this. Maybe I’ll just take my chances with getting my brain melted.” “I highly suggest you don’t. I know you think you are strong of mind, but this is something you are not going to have any defense for without my help. I’m going to meet you down in the hall just before you enter the Emperor’s chambers. I suggest you reconsider my generous offer by the time you get there.” At this point Semra’s image disappears and its just you and Jacob left in the room. He’s still very nervous. “Jacob, you can stop shaking I’m not going to kill you. In fact since you’re partly responsible for this power grab in process, what are you going to be doing?” “Me? I don’t know. I wouldn’t be much good in a fight as you well know. I guess I’ll be packing a few bags just in case I need to make a hasty getaway, not that it’ll probably do me much good.” “Way to have confidence in me, Jacob.” “I do have confidence, but I have to maintain a pragmatic attitude too. You understand.” “Yeah, I get it…so what about Semra? You think I should let her invade my head?” “You’re asking me?” “Sure, why not? You and her have been plotting this whole thing. You obviously trusted her enough to work up the courage to try to bring me into this. So what’s your opinion?” “I don’t know. And I’m not saying that to be evasive or frustrating, I really don’t know. I mean if you were anyone else I’d say go for it because you wouldn’t have anything to lose because quite frankly I don’t think anyone BUT you would have a chance of coming out of this alive.” “But…?” “But since you DO have a chance of surviving this, who knows what Semra might pull after the Emperor is dead? And if she can get in your head…well…I just don’t know.” “Great.” “But didn’t she say you’d be in hers as well? Maybe she wouldn’t try anything, because she’d be just as vulnerable.” “So she says…shit, just wish this was clear cut. You know? This isn’t where I envisioned where my life was heading. In fact I never envisioned this.” “I don’t think any of us did, but here we are never the less. The only other thing I can tell you is given how obsessed she is with you, she probably won’t kill you.” “There are things worse than death, Jacob. (Sigh) I guess I’ll figure it out soon.” You reply and turn to leave before you do though, Jacob calls out to you. “Just in case we don’t get to speak again…I just want to say thank you for the times you helped me out.” “Just doing my part in serving the Empire.” You say and leave. “Serving the Empire.” You chuckle at that dark joke. You’re about to try to kill the man who created it. You might be inclined to rationalize such an act by thinking you’re serving the Empire by killing a leader that is no longer good at ruling it. Of course that would be complete bullshit. You’re killing the Emperor for your own personal reasons first and foremost. Some of that is your own desire for power, but a lot of it is for revenge of Alison’s murder. In fact the more you think about it, the angrier you get and that’s good, because it’s keeping out the fear you do have about facing the Emperor. Eventually you reach the large hall before the Emperor’s chambers and just as she promised, Semra is there waiting. “What took you so long lover? The Emperor is probably aware I’m here by now and possibly even suspecting something is amiss with you as well.” “What’s the difference? You said he’d know I was going to kill him as soon as I enter the chambers.” “I suppose so, but I was at least hoping that maybe we’d have a slight chance at a surprise attack. Those are always the most efficient. Killing your enemy before they even get a chance to strike. Less messy, don’t you agree?” “Maybe, but personally I don’t mind getting messy.” “Mmmm, yes I imagine you don’t. Anyway come to me so we can merge our minds and get this task underway.” You cautiously step towards Semra who gives a faint smile as you do so. Her attempts at being friendly and inviting are probably more disturbing to you than when she used to beat and verbally abuse you. When you get within range, her arms reach out and around you. “Hey, what are you doing?!” you ask backing up. “Will you relax? This is part of the spell. We need to be looking at each other and focusing. Now here, just put your hands around me like this…” Semra says and starts to position your hands though you can’t help but notice she initially positioned your hands so they were temporarily on her ass before she slowly moved them up around her waist. Her hands find their way on your shoulders and at this point you feel like you’re in a compromising embrace rather than preparing for some spell. “Now stare into my eyes and focus.” Semra remarks as her own face is only a few inches away from your own. Your eyes don’t immediately focus on her eyes though, you stare at her full blood red lips. You think about how you want to press your own lips against hers. And then she suddenly does and your mind goes to another place. You see what’s in Semra’s mind or at least a glimpse of it. Images are coming at you so fast you can’t make out all of it, but you see a mixture of the horrifying and impressive at the same time. You see what must’ve been during the time of when the svelk ruled. Everything is very regal and elegant looking, though much like the svelk themselves, it radiates a certain coldness. You also see the svelk treating their subjects (Most of which are of races you’ve never even seen before) worse than the Empire ever could. They also have greater control too thanks to their magic. What you aren’t seeing is any images of Semra herself and you’re even sensing that she’s experiencing pain during this process. Semra is obviously blocking some of her more private thoughts. She’s showing you a general history of her life, yet somehow only telling you half the story. Meanwhile she’s probably trying to scour through your mind of everything. With this moment of clarity during the spell, you wonder if you shouldn’t break off this link given that she’s intending this to be a one-way affair. She might have ill intent for you once this is over after all. > You keep focused In for a silver, in for a sack as they say. If this spell is going to protect you from the Emperor, you’d best stick with it and worry about Semra’s intentions later. Though at this point you don’t even feel any pain on your side of things, but maybe that’s because you aren’t trying to hide anything from her. Your life has more or less always been an open book. You’ve never really hidden anything because you’ve usually come clean eventually anyway. You’re not even going to be hiding your desires to kill the Emperor pretty soon. If Semra’s hoping to learn something to use against you, she’s in for disappointment. She already knows most of your combat techniques having taught most of them to you. She already knows your mindset well enough that she has more influence over you than you’d like. She already is well aware of your feelings towards her. There is quite literally nothing she is going to find out that won’t give her any advantage that she doesn’t already have. Yet you can sense she STILL wants more, its almost as if she’s insecure about not having total control over you. You sense a lot of that actually. She can’t comprehend why you can have a sexual desire for her, yet not desire her in the way you did with Alison. She’s at a loss on what to do about it. And that confusion is a big ball of anger, frustration and pain. Suddenly you see the image of a young svelk girl. You aren’t sure how old, but by human standards she would definitely be considered a child. It’s Semra and she is holding the hand of an adult male svelk though you can never quite make out his face. They are both in a city where a large crowd of svelk are gathered having a good time throwing what looks to be sveld babies against a nearby wall which has a big target on it. Semra looks very happy and cheers whenever one splats into a bloody mess in the center. It would seem that Semra’s entertainment preferences didn’t change much for her. Several images of her enjoying similar activities with the same adult male flood your mind. You can only guess that the adult male might be her father, but Semra must be blocking you from confirming that. In any case, the idea that she was once a child is bizarre, but then everyone starts as one at some point right? She had a twisted childhood to be sure, but she had more of a childhood than you ever did. Just as think you’re starting to see more images of a personal nature, the contact is broken off and Semra pushes you away. “There. It’s done. Let’s get this over with.” She remarks while rubbing the sides of her head. She also starts rubbing her eyes and is sniffling a bit. You’re silent for a moment, just staring at her. You know that she must be hiding loads of whatever unhappy memories she does have. And she certainly can’t have you seeing them, she can’t trust you enough to believe you wouldn’t mock her in some way or exploit a weakness. “WHAT?!” she shouts when she notices you staring. “Nothing. Keep your secrets. Like you said, let’s get this over with.” As you make your way to the door to the Emperor’s chamber, you do feel the connection of your mind to Semra’s. Its not like you can read her thoughts, but its rather a sixth sense kind of feeling. You’re curious how this will play out during battle. After speaking the password, the door opens and you both enter the Emperor’s chambers. You look at each other, simultaneously cast your magical shield spells and spread out. Almost immediately you hear the voice of the Emperor, though he hasn’t made an appearance yet. “So it’s come to this has it? After all I’ve done for you. After all I’ve given you. You turn traitor for a piece of svelk tail?” The Emperor steps out from his bedroom. “Son, I am disappointed.” He says and then just stares immediately in your direction. You feel a slight pain in your head, but its muted. Semra’s shielding spell must be working. The Emperor looks genuinely shocked. Its an expression you don’t think you’ve ever seen before on him. “You…you let this…creature into your mind?! Have you gone mad?!” “Probably.” You remark and cast a lightning blast at the Emperor, but he easily deflects it back at you causing it to hit your force shield and knocking you to the floor. Semra casts a spray of acid, and while it sizzles and melts objects within the designated direction, the Emperor’s own defenses absorb it. Realizing he can’t just explode your brain, he casts a spell, which starts to turn the room very cold. You’re reminded of the time you cast this spell on Cyrus’ crew and you immediately cast a ring of fire around yourself in the hopes the heat will be enough to keep you from freezing. You follow up with a volley of small fireballs, which set the many bookshelves in the room ablaze. “You’ve made a dire mistake son, trusting this svelk whore. Even if you could defeat me, do you really think she’d allow you to live? She’s lying to you son. She always has and I thought you were stronger than that.” The Emperor remarks as sheets of ice cover the room extinguishing some of the flames. “And you weren’t lying to me?! You had Alison murdered and you planned to kill me as well!” you shout back as you release your feet from the ice that has managed to encase around them. The Emperor sends a flash of light that blinds you and Semra. You stumble around to the left since you remember there being a solid stone table you can take cover behind. “(Sigh) Even if any of that was true my son, what of it? I was your father! Your master! Your life was mine to do with as I saw fit! Of course none it matters now. You’ve decided to stand against me and now your life is most certainly mine to take.” You hear the Emperor say and then suddenly hear loud lighting blast followed by a yelp sound to your far right. Must be Semra, but you’re still half blind from that flash of light. “Ha ha! Not as strong as we thought eh Semra? You always were an overconfident bitch. Won’t be long before I break through your pathetic force shield.” Your eyes clear up enough and see Semra across the room struggling to maintain her shield from a steady blast of lightning unleashed by the Emperor. Seeing that trading magic isn’t going to work, you put up your own shield and try to make your way over to the Emperor to just butcher him, but the combination of your hampered eyesight and icy floor are enough to slow you down. “Ever the warrior aren’t we son? Here, play with these!” the Emperor shouts and stops his attack on Semra, waves his hands and suddenly five hovering undead figures appear. You cast an enchantment spell on your sword and press forward to battle. Meanwhile Semra has taken advantage of her second wind and cast a telekinesis spell throwing a table directly into the Emperor. She follows this up with smacking him with several other smaller objects. He falls to the floor and re-establishes his own magic shield. “Keep up the pressure!” Semra shouts. You’d love to, but right now you’re trying to destroy the undead creatures in from of you. While you’ve never faced such things before, you keep your cool and successfully cut down three of them. “You fools know nothing of the power you face! Now face the true supremacy of a necromancer!” the Emperor shouts and the entire room gets even colder, but this isn’t even like the cold of ice or snow, this is something unnatural. You start to feel the tips of your fingers go numb and feel your energy starting to be drained. It’s like when Cyrus touched you, but this is all around you. You nearly get your head cleaved in by one of the wraiths as you start feel dizzy. You dodge the attack and slash the thing in two. The last one is taken down with a blast of fire from Semra who you sense is feeling the affects of the Emperor’s magic too. You stagger and prop yourself up on a burned lab desk. The Emperor stands only a few feet away, but he seems so far for you to do anything. You look over and see Semra staggers towards him, but collapses and begins screaming. You aren’t sure what the Emperor’s doing, but his eyes are glowing red. “A scared little girl still crying about her lost birthright. That’s all you are and all you ever will be. You svelk think you know about pain and death, but you know nothing! I’ll show you true pain and soon I’ll show you death and the endless torture that can come after it!” Semra’s confidence that the Emperor couldn’t do anything to her mind because of her race has proven false. While he’s not exploding her brain you do sense he’s creating some sort of waking nightmare in her mind. She’s literally crying and begging for him to stop, she even looks over to you reaching out with both hands telling you she’s sorry. She pleads with you to help her and that she needs your strength. You never thought you’d ever feel a slight twinge of sympathy for her. In any event, you’re not exactly doing so well yourself. You aren’t even sure if you could help Semra even if you wanted to given how weak you feel. Though your chances of making a lunging attack to kill the Emperor are equally as slim. > You help Semra Under any other circumstances you’d probably be rejoicing in Semra’s misery, but on this she is your ally and as your ally you’re not going to leave her in the lurch. With your remaining strength you stumble over to Semra and then promptly collapse near her and grab her hand. This act causes the Emperor to laugh. “Ha ha ha ha! What would your beloved Alison say if she saw you rolling on the floor with your svelk harlot? Let’s ask her!” the Emperor says and then another ghost appears. It’s Alison. “I see that you’ve already forgotten me and found comfort in the arms of Semra. Now you and her make your grab for power. Why was I not worthy enough for your plan to kill the Emperor? Did you always feel that I was so weak and you ultimately held no respect for my skills?” the undead parody of Alison remarks. “No. No. No. I’m not seeing this and even if I am, this isn’t Alison. She wouldn’t say such things. Away spirit, I will not play your games!” you shout. “Now you dismiss me in death? I have returned and you have no loving words? You do not even make the attempt? It’s the least you could do for your failure to SAVE MY LIFE!” Alison says and she begins to utter an unearthly wail. It’s horrible and despite your best efforts, it’s starting to demoralize you. A depression begins to set in, followed by guilt, but you can’t let it get to you, because you’re too busy trying to shake Semra out of her own hell. “Semra! Concentrate! You are Semra D’vessa! Mistress of torture and pain! You are the scourge of the lesser born and one of the greatest examples of your superior race! You don’t fear anything! You have no frailties for such things are the attributes of the weak! You have my hand! You have my strength, you…” You breathe in and exhale hard. You never thought you’d say this, but if it’ll help… “…have my love. Always and forever.” You say. This last declaration causes her to snap out of her nightmare and look over at you. She breaks free of her nightmare. Meanwhile the ghostly abomination of Alison shrieks even louder at your statement before completely dissipating. Apparently your complete disregard of your true feelings for your late wife was enough to destroy it. You and Semra begin to recover from your ordeal and get up, but this is followed by the pair of you being hit by some sort of black ray. Semra tries to cast a spell, but she’s still too weak. You look up at the Emperor who is now standing over both of you still hitting you with the black ray. He doesn’t look young at all anymore. He doesn’t even look like how did when he was sick. He’s nearly skeletal looking. It’s obvious this battle has taken its toll on him, but it doesn’t matter because he’s still got more fight in him than either of you. “Now look at the pair of you. On the floor writhing like the maggots you truly are. You’ve both set my plans back severely, but you’ll not stop me. The pair of you will supply me with enough energy to do what I need to do! Argh!” You stab the Emperor in the foot with your dagger; unfortunately it doesn’t distract or give you any breathing space and instead kicks your hand away. He increases the intensity of the ray on you and Semra. “BASTARD! YOU THINK YOUR PATHETIC WEAPONS CAN STOP ME? I AM CASIMIR OF MORTOS! EMPEROR! NECROMANCER! RULER OF THE…” “You’re an asshole, Casimir.” Jacob remarks who stands in the entry way of the chamber and the shot from his flintlock breaches the chest of the Emperor who watches it explode in a gout of blood before his eyes. He falls backwards to the floor struggling to breathe. “No…not…(wheeze) like this…taken down…by a (cough) fucking bean counter…(wheeze)…” the Emperor gasps and coughing up blood. You get up as fast you’re able, retrieve your dagger from the floor and draw your sword to finish off the Emperor. Semra is still trying to gather her own strength. You stare down at the Emperor who is already on his way to death, but intend to quicken that journey. You hold the sword to his throat and stare him in the eyes. “Do it then… (cough) finish me off…but know this son…your will not get to enjoy your victory. (wheeze) You’ve won…nothing.” You don’t even reply you just press the sword through his throat causing him to gurgle one last time and twitch slightly before he dies. It’s over at last. Or at least you thought it was. No sooner have you turned around to check on your allies, when Jacob and Semra shout at you to watch out. You turn around just into time to see the corpse of the Emperor lift up off the ground glowing a dark red color. His eyes are rolled up into his head and his mouth drops open and a deep voice emanates from it even though it isn’t moving. “THIS EMPIRE WILL DIE WITH ME AS WILL ALL WHO DWELL WITHIN IT. THIS IS MY FINAL CURSE FOR YOUR TREACHERY.” The corpse says and then it disintegrates before your eyes. A great rumbling starts and parts of the ceiling start collapsing along with the floor starting to crack and break. “You gotta be kidding me…” you remark. “Come on we need to get the hell out of here!” Jacob exclaims. Jacob, Semra, and you immediately run out of the Emperor’s chambers trying to avoid falling debris and big holes in the floor at the same time. Jacob manages to reach the stairs just in time for them to start crumbling. “Come on, quickly before…” “JACOB ABOVE YOU!” you shout, but it’s too late. Jacob is struck by a large piece of concrete followed by an even bigger piece, which crushes him completely. It also blocks off your only escape. “Shit! Fuck! Damn it!” you curse. “Semra you can move those large slabs of stone if I join my magic with yours can’t you?” “Not in my current drained state and not fast enough even with your help.” Semra remarks. “Shields! We still got enough to do that!” you say. “We’re going to have an entire palace and possibly even a whole city collapsing in on our heads. Even if our magic was strong enough to deflect such massive weight, we still have the problem of being buried alive. We’d just suffocate instead of being crushed.” The rumbles and shakes continue to get worse and knock you and Semra to the floor. You both try to find a spot where the falling debris isn’t life threatening. Things are looking mighty bleak. “I don’t believe it. Here I was worrying about you betraying me, but instead I’m going to die from a stupid final curse!” “Don’t be so sure, there’s still time for me to betray you.” Normally you wouldn’t laugh, but in this hopeless situation you can’t help but to do so. “Heh, well hurry it up then because the rocks are going to get us both soon. This is a hell of way to die, I almost would’ve rather had the Emperor kill me. At least there would’ve been a certain honor in that.” “What honor? You were a traitor. He probably would’ve had your name stricken from all records.” Semra says. “Yeah…well at least it would’ve been better than being buried and crushed.” Semra doesn’t reply to that, but what she does instead is ask you a question. “Since we don’t have much time left, I have to ask you…did you mean it?” Thanks your mind merge, you already know what she’s asking with that question. You also know you can’t lie to her because she’ll sense that immediately. However, you also sense it doesn’t matter if you do. “Sure. Why not?” you say with a smile. Semra returns the smile and gives you a kiss on the cheek. “No, you didn’t, but maybe you will for this.” She whispers in your ear. You give her strange look when she says this as she stands up. She pulls a ring out of a small bag from around her waist and puts it on. “Hey wait, what are you doing…” you ask and then you’re suddenly struck with a paralysis from the ring and then a strange purple field envelops you. You see everything going on, but are unable to do anything about it. A sizable rock even hits you, but you feel nothing. The field is protecting you. “Mommy loves you…always and forever. Remember this.” You hear Semra say before sound becomes muted completely and your vision goes completely black. You are able to breathe normally, but you don’t see how you can survive. You’d probably panic a lot more if a strong wave of sleep didn’t suddenly take you. As the continuous falling rubble buries you, you sleep. You sleep for a very long time. > Chapter 3C1: Relic Year ??? “What the hell is that thing?” “I dunno, it’s about time we found something worthwhile in this old rubble though, because this whole expedition has been pretty pointless. Looks like some sort of weird magic shell. It also looks like something is inside, guess we’ll finally get to use this old dispel staff after all.” “Hey wait! We don’t know what’s in there!” … “Shit! It’s a body!” “Yeah. Damn, I was hoping it was treasure.” “You think he’s dead?” “Well he ain’t moving is he? Probably been here for who know how long, but I assume the shell preserved the corpse. Hey, check out that neat dagger he’s got. Is that mithral? Shit, that IS mithral! “Hey you shouldn’t be doing that! You know what Calvin said!” “Fuck Calvin, I’m taking this for myself. Not like he’s going to know, and don’t act like you’ve never done it before. I saw you pilfering some old ring in the debris back there.” “It’s not that, I just don’t have a good feeling about this.” “What you think he’s gonna just wake up or something?” “Maybe…I mean like a zombie.” “(Sigh) You and your zombies. I swear you think we’re going to unearth a tomb of undead horrors on every expedition and in all our years have we ever even encountered something remotely like that? You read too many damn bad copper dreadfuls about necromancers.” “I dunno, I still say you should be careful. We’ve never found a body so intact before, let alone preserved in some magic shell. Maybe there was a reason for that.” “Maybe, but that’s Calvin’s job to figure out. Right now I’m just getting my hands on this dagger…ULK!” You sit up immediately and thrust your dagger in the throat of your assailant. Blood gushes from the fatal wound and you throw him to the side. “Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh fuck!” you hear another attacker shout and see him fumble with some sort of pistol only to drop the weapon entirely before attempting to make his escape. He doesn’t get far. You stand up and blast him in the back with a lightning bolt. He screams and falls making a few death twitches when his sizzling body hits the ground. You have no idea who these people were, but that scream was loud enough to attract more enemies if they’re in the area and judging by the large sound of foot steps coming in your direction there are. You quickly scan your surroundings and see quite a few shovels, picks and lanterns nearby, but no way out other than the one entryway that the fried fellow on the ground was trying to run to. What happened? Last thing you remember is Semra casting a spell on you and you fell asleep as the palace was collapsing in on your heads. You don’t even know how much time has passed. The two men that were hovering around you aren’t dressed in the typical Empire style. They carry no weapons other than pistols and those are different from the ones you’ve ever seen. The pistols are more complex looking. How much time has passed? Has the Empire fallen? What happened to everyone? Hell, at this point you’re even wondering what happened to Semra. As the sound of footsteps get even closer you draw your sword out of its scabbard and prepare for a fight. A group of men and women appear in the entryway. A some of them carry gunpowder weapons, but most of them are completely unarmed. Again, their style of dress isn’t familiar. “Stop! You point those weapons at me and I can easily incinerate the lot of you! Don’t believe me? Watch!” you remark and throw a small fireball on the ground nearby. It’s enough to cause them all to back off and even cause a couple of them to run away. One of them demands to be let through so he can see exactly what’s going on. The man that shoves his way through looks about in his fifties with thinning hair and is dressed in a fancy suit. You’ve never seen this man before, but something about him looks vaguely familiar. When he sees you, he’s more in awe than he is scared. In fact he doesn’t seem to care at all about the two dead men on the ground. “I can’t believe it! It’s you! I mean it’s gotta be! The way you’re dressed, the magic abilities, the location...I just can’t…” Suddenly a higher female voice shouts from behind the crowd. “Dad! What’s going on?! I heard all this…by the...gods…is that…” “Yes, Jennifer it is! We’ve made the find of a lifetime! Quintus will be so pleased!” The woman is on the younger side with raven black hair. Probably early twenties. Unlike her father her clothes are covered in dirt and more practical in nature. You also notice she’s carrying a pistol as well. “Who the hell are all you people?! Were you sent to dig me up?! What’s happened to the Empire? Someone better explain what’s been going on!” you demand. “Forgive us. I’m sure this must all be very confusing for you, but we don’t go on these digs to find living people, let alone someone like you. I just…wow…I can’t believe it’s you. I mean you’re the Eternal right?” “I’m an Eternal. Yes. But you still haven’t answered and I’m starting to get impatient!” you exclaim. “Okay, okay! My name is Calvin Mol. I am head of this archeological dig for the Nalin Republic and Senator Quintus Arillicus in particular. This is my daughter Jennifer…” Calvin begins to say before you interrupt him. “Wait. Mol? Are you related to Jacob?” you ask because it would explain the very vague likeness. When you ask this question both he and his daughter’s eyes light up. “Yes! He was one of my ancestors! Did you know him?! I have so many questions!” “And your fucking questions are going to have to wait! You said Nalin Republic, what’s that? The only Nalin I know of is a province of the Empire! You also said Jacob was your ancestor, how much time has passed?!” At this point Calvin and his daughter look a bit nervous at each other. Everyone else behind them who hasn’t already backed away entirely, does so now. “Well…taking into the consideration of the age of these ruins and what we already know about when the cataclysm occurred…um…I’d say about five hundred…give or take a few years.” Calvin remarks. Your heart almost skips a beat and now you’re the one in shock. Year 535 “Five…hundred years…” you slowly utter. You almost hesitate to ask. “And… the Empire?” Calvin and Jennifer look a bit nervous again. “It’s…um…gone. Been gone for centuries. It never recovered from the unknown cataclysm that struck the land. Most of it was outright destroyed. By the time most of the pieces were picked up, those areas that weren’t hit as hard had become their own nations.” Calvin explains. This news causes you to sit down on a nearby stone. “I caused this…” you whisper to yourself. Jennifer and Calvin don’t quite hear what you say, but Jennifer sensing that you’re more than a little troubled by this news attempts to cheer you up. “What my father should’ve said, is while the Empire as you know it is gone, its spirit lives on in the Nalin Republic! Seriously, Nalin was probably the only portion of the Empire that managed to hold on to a few of its traditions and culture during those dark ages. Even the language didn’t change too much. That’s probably why you can understand us so well, even if our accents and a few of our words are slightly different to yours.” This has no effect on your mood. You are at a complete loss of what to do. You were supposed to rule the Empire, but instead your actions were part of its destruction. You never wanted that to happen. Maybe you should’ve believed the Emperor or at least just followed his orders. Who knows what might’ve happened? Maybe he would’ve killed you or maybe he wouldn’t have, but at least you wouldn’t be in the situation you’re in now. A man out of time. A relic of the past. You have no nation to rule or serve. You don’t even have a home or a master any more. What are you going to do with yourself? You have no idea. The only good thing about any of this is you have a minor support base here. Jacob’s descendants are obviously very taken with you. You’ve only been half listening to what they’ve been babbling about, but they keep mentioning that they want you to return to the Nalin Republic with them so you can meet this Quintus character that apparently is going to be glad to see you as well. It would seem that you are somewhat known in the few old writings they’ve found about the old Empire. Jennifer’s brief description of this Nalin Republic sounds at least like a good place to familiarize yourself with this new world and you could go with them if only to get some bearings before you decide what to do next. > You go to the Nalin Republic You don’t have much else to do at this point. You might as well go to Nalin. If you decide you don’t like it there, you can always leave. “Okay, okay, I’ll go with you. Just both of you stop going on about it!” “You will? That’s wonderful! Hey would you…” “Calvin, I told you to shut up already!” you snap. Calvin shuts up and backs away. He starts telling his daughter that he has to stay here with most of the crew because there is still a lot of digging that needs to be done, but that he wants her to take you to Quintus right away. She nods and tells a few of the expedition crew to start loading up a few wagons to leave soon. Jennifer herself on the other hand starts walking along side you and staring a lot. “Shouldn’t you be helping load up the wagons?” you say implying that you’d like her to leave you be. “No, they got it. Hey, so how well did you know my ancestor?” she asks ignoring or oblivious to your wishes. “Not as well as I thought, considering he never mentioned having a family to me.” “Oh I do not believe he had one of his own. But from what I’ve seen of my father’s family tree diagrams, Jacob had a couple of brothers that were just normal civil servants. Record keepers, that sort of thing. Obviously they had families though, otherwise my father and I wouldn’t be here. He never mentioned siblings?” “Nope. Perhaps he wasn’t on good terms with them. I dunno. I only interacted with him on things concerning important Empire business. He was pretty immersed in his work most the time. I suppose I can say, he was a dedicated servant of the Empire.” This remark makes Jennifer display a big grin. “Hah, I knew it. We Mols have always been patriots to our nations!” “Hm, well he definitely would do anything to save his nation. Unfortunately that seems to have been for naught given that it no longer exists.” “So…um, why were you in that magic shell?” Jennifer asks changing her line of questioning. “Why do you ask so many questions?” “Because we could’ve never believed that we’d discover a living person from the old Empire, yet here you are! I mean we know about the Empire only from a few tattered incomplete writings or mostly oral stories. Now we’ve finally got someone who lived during those glorious times! Someone who can give us the truth about what happened. I mean the cataclysm for example. All anyone knows is it was a great disaster of a magical nature that occurred five centuries ago. Nobody really knows how or why it happened. You had to have been there for that. Do you know what happened?” “Oh…I have an idea…” You say. “And?!” Jennifer asks. “And I’m not going to tell you.” You remark. “What?!” Jennifer exclaims in total disbelief. She actually is at a loss for words, but unfortunately not for long. “But why aren’t you going to tell me?!” “Don’t take it personal. I’m not planning to tell anyone. It’s very apparent that you folks want something from me, which I can provide. History, information, and the truth. If I just give all that shit away, who’s to say you won’t just toss me aside and try to have me killed after you’ve milked me for all of it?” “That…that wouldn’t happen! How could you even think we’d do such a thing?” “How could I NOT think such a thing? Besides, I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t want the real truth anyway.” “Of course we want the truth!” “No, I don’t believe you do. Not really, I think you just want to hear what you want to hear. You want the truth? Here’s one for you. The Empire existed, and then it didn’t. End of history lesson.” This cynical comment causes Jennifer to again briefly shut up which you hope will send her away, but she’s not going to be deterred so easily. “Look, I realize you’re probably a little upset about your situation. I get that, but you don’t need to take it out on me. I’m just saying you’re living history. And more specifically you’re a very important part of my nation’s past. You could fill in so many blanks. You’re more than just some old magical weapon that we found in the dirt.” You snort at that last statement. “No. That’s exactly what you found, an old magical weapon that was buried in the dirt. Not even buried, but sealed away. And like most old magical weapons found sealed away and buried for centuries, sometimes the smartest thing you can do is leave them alone. I would think the dead bodies of two of your crew would be a good example of that.” Jennifer perceives your comment as a threat, as well she should. She makes no smart comment back; she just shuts up like her father and continues walks along side of you. Glad to see these Mols have as much sense as their ancestor did. Eventually you make it out of this dig site and into the open air. And what you see before you is severely different from what you remember. Where you once knew a great city once stood is gone. These explorers have uncovered a few pieces of it, but by and large it’s gone. Even the surrounding area where you once knew farmland and even lush fields would’ve been is gone. Everything has been replaced by sickly undergrowth. A wasteland. Jennifer remarks to everyone needing to keep an extra eye out for orc raiders. Jennifer looks over at you briefly again, but casts her eyes down and tries to get on with packing up the front wagon. You shake your head and walk over to Jennifer. “Look, Jennifer is it? I apologize for my remarks earlier, but as you said all of this IS a shock to me. I’ve seen a lot during my time, but I don’t think anything could’ve prepared me for this.” “I can only imagine. I guess overwhelming you with questions was inconsiderate of us.” “Well I suppose your curiosity is natural, but let’s just say I’m not quite ready to discuss everything. At least not yet.” “I understand. Your last memories of the Empire were during the cataclysm and you’re only just now seeing the results. It must’ve been a terrible time!” “Yes, you could say that it was.” Jennifer nods and you help her with loading the last bags on the head wagon. When you step aboard it, you’re on your way. For a while there’s silence between the pair of you as you ride through the wasteland, but you decide to be social and break the silence. “So orcs huh? They’re a threat? I would’ve thought they’d all be extinct by now. There weren’t even many left in the Empire during my time.” you say. “Sadly, that is no longer the case. I imagine without the Empire around, they reverted back to their chaotic natures and they bred unchecked. Now they’re all over the Qualan Badlands and elsewhere too. They probably were one of the few races to thrive during the dark ages. I’m not too worried about that happening today though now that we’ve got powerful Eternal travelling with us!” “You shouldn’t be too overconfident of that. Under the right circumstances, anyone, no matter how powerful they appear to be can be brought down sometime by the humblest of things. Still, I see the reputation of the Eternals has still survived. So are there any in Nalin?” “Ha ha ha ha! No, of course not! Before we found you, the last one died over four hundred years ago. First Matriarch Brenda of the Nalin Dominion. She was probably the main one responsible for keeping the fledging remnants of the Empire together during the cataclysm.” “Glad to know someone was trying to uphold order. Good for her.” “Did you know her well?” ‘Not excessively, but we did have dealings on a few matters, like during the taming of the lands east of Nalin for example. There was another major event too, but I’d care not to discuss that at this time.” “Understood…well anyway that was back then. Things have changed a lot since her time, our government being just one of those things, but for all intents and purposes she sort of laid the foundations for the Nalin Republic by keeping the country safe in the first place.” “You’re going to have to explain what the hell a republic is. Never heard of it before.” You say causing Jennifer to smile a bit. “Well, nowadays a single leader doesn’t rule our government. It’s run by a senate, which consists of a group of politicians that are chosen by the people. They ultimately decide on the laws and such by discussing and debating them.” You are completely baffled by this concept. “That sounds like an inefficient way of running things. How does anything get accomplished?” “Well, sometimes things do take time, but the citizens are a lot freer and happier by choosing their leaders.” Now you’re really lost. “Why the hell would people want to be free and happy? They should just be grateful for the protection and order that the government provides for their miserable lives! One strong leader to rule over them with an iron fist is only thing the citizens really need. And if they grumble too much they get executed, problem solved. Hell, it’s not like slaves cost that much if they need an extra hand in the fields.” Jennifer chuckles at your totalitarian views. “Yes, I imagine that it would be a bit strange to you. I’m sure it might also surprise you that we don’t have slavery anymore either; it actually became less cost effective. Still, you’ll see that it isn’t all bad. In fact you’ll probably get along with Quintus, he’s a very big admirer of old Empire history and culture. He’s the one been privately funding all these expeditions.” Just as you’re about to ask Jennifer who this Quintus is, you hear war cries and howling in the distance. It might have been five hundred years, but you know the sounds of orcs when you hear them. Not long after the general warning, you soon see them coming from the far left and the far right. They look every bit as big, mean and green as you remember them. No heavy armor, but the giant boar creatures they’re riding and the willingness to use bows are new. Jennifer orders everyone to ride faster and ready their firearms. While readying the firearms is always a good idea, there is no way you’re going to outpace the orcs at the speed you’re going, the wagons are just not fast enough and are weighed down by equipment. There are also enough orcs that some of them are going reach you before they get shot off their pigs and that’s assuming everyone in this caravan is a crack shot that can hit them in the head. Meanwhile you feel like you’re a sitting kobold on your own wagon. Part of you would rather just get on one of the horses and unhook the wagon, so you’ve got a little more maneuverability. Of course you could just start flinging magic spells at the orcs. > You cast spells No need to endanger yourself unnecessarily you think, so you start focusing on flinging fireballs at the orcs. Maybe it’s the unstableness of the wagon as it runs over uneven land, maybe the orcs are much better pig riders than you thought, maybe you’re just out of practice or maybe it’s a combination of all three factors, but whatever the reason you don’t actually hit many of them. Doesn’t take long before the orcs return fire with their bows. You immediately cast a personal shield to prevent being shot to death. Jennifer on the other hand isn’t quite as lucky as she is caught by several arrows. Her face is one of shock as she stares at the arrow shafts now inside her body puncturing vital organs. She begins to fall, but in doing so she grabs on to your arm, perhaps in some sort of last attempt of begging for someone to help her. This catches you off guard and your arm is pulled away from your next spell gesture. Before you can pull away from her death grip, orcs on the other side of the wagon have unleashed their own volley of arrows and since you’re distracted you don’t manage to put up your shield spell in time. You’re relatively “lucky” in that you only catch three arrows in the back. A grievous wound that would probably kill most, but under the right circumstances you’d pull through. Unfortunately after getting with three arrows in the back, and already slightly off by your footing when Jennifer grabbed you, you lose complete balance due to the wagon going over bumpy land. Doesn’t help that arrows also hit the horses and collapse from their wounds which all results in you getting thrown to the ground and smacking your head on a rock when the wagon abruptly stops. Again though, even with something as bad as this, you’d probably pull through if you had time to heal yourself through magic. The problem is you don’t have that luxury and after you finally manage to shake off the cobwebs of your head wound, you look up just in time to see one of the orc boars galloping towards you and then OVER you. A hoof crushes your skull and the rest break your bones. Your body broken and bloody is eventually stripped clean by the orcs and left to rot in the wasteland. Your “return” was a short and ignoble one.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t have much else to do at this point. You might as well go to Nalin. If you decide you don’t like it there, you can always leave. “Okay, okay, I’ll go with you. Just both of you stop going on about it!” “You will? That’s wonderful! Hey would you…” “Calvin, I told you to shut up already!” you snap. Calvin shuts up and backs away. He starts telling his daughter that he has to stay here with most of the crew because there is still a lot of digging that needs to be done, but that he wants her to take you to Quintus right away. She nods and tells a few of the expedition crew to start loading up a few wagons to leave soon. Jennifer herself on the other hand starts walking along side you and staring a lot. “Shouldn’t you be helping load up the wagons?” you say implying that you’d like her to leave you be. “No, they got it. Hey, so how well did you know my ancestor?” she asks ignoring or oblivious to your wishes. “Not as well as I thought, considering he never mentioned having a family to me.” “Oh I do not believe he had one of his own. But from what I’ve seen of my father’s family tree diagrams, Jacob had a couple of brothers that were just normal civil servants. Record keepers, that sort of thing. Obviously they had families though, otherwise my father and I wouldn’t be here. He never mentioned siblings?” “Nope. Perhaps he wasn’t on good terms with them. I dunno. I only interacted with him on things concerning important Empire business. He was pretty immersed in his work most the time. I suppose I can say, he was a dedicated servant of the Empire.” This remark makes Jennifer display a big grin. “Hah, I knew it. We Mols have always been patriots to our nations!” “Hm, well he definitely would do anything to save his nation. Unfortunately that seems to have been for naught given that it no longer exists.” “So…um, why were you in that magic shell?” Jennifer asks changing her line of questioning. “Why do you ask so many questions?” “Because we could’ve never believed that we’d discover a living person from the old Empire, yet here you are! I mean we know about the Empire only from a few tattered incomplete writings or mostly oral stories. Now we’ve finally got someone who lived during those glorious times! Someone who can give us the truth about what happened. I mean the cataclysm for example. All anyone knows is it was a great disaster of a magical nature that occurred five centuries ago. Nobody really knows how or why it happened. You had to have been there for that. Do you know what happened?” “Oh…I have an idea…” You say. “And?!” Jennifer asks. “And I’m not going to tell you.” You remark. “What?!” Jennifer exclaims in total disbelief. She actually is at a loss for words, but unfortunately not for long. “But why aren’t you going to tell me?!” “Don’t take it personal. I’m not planning to tell anyone. It’s very apparent that you folks want something from me, which I can provide. History, information, and the truth. If I just give all that shit away, who’s to say you won’t just toss me aside and try to have me killed after you’ve milked me for all of it?” “That…that wouldn’t happen! How could you even think we’d do such a thing?” “How could I NOT think such a thing? Besides, I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t want the real truth anyway.” “Of course we want the truth!” “No, I don’t believe you do. Not really, I think you just want to hear what you want to hear. You want the truth? Here’s one for you. The Empire existed, and then it didn’t. End of history lesson.” This cynical comment causes Jennifer to again briefly shut up which you hope will send her away, but she’s not going to be deterred so easily. “Look, I realize you’re probably a little upset about your situation. I get that, but you don’t need to take it out on me. I’m just saying you’re living history. And more specifically you’re a very important part of my nation’s past. You could fill in so many blanks. You’re more than just some old magical weapon that we found in the dirt.” You snort at that last statement. “No. That’s exactly what you found, an old magical weapon that was buried in the dirt. Not even buried, but sealed away. And like most old magical weapons found sealed away and buried for centuries, sometimes the smartest thing you can do is leave them alone. I would think the dead bodies of two of your crew would be a good example of that.” Jennifer perceives your comment as a threat, as well she should. She makes no smart comment back; she just shuts up like her father and continues walks along side of you. Glad to see these Mols have as much sense as their ancestor did. Eventually you make it out of this dig site and into the open air. And what you see before you is severely different from what you remember. Where you once knew a great city once stood is gone. These explorers have uncovered a few pieces of it, but by and large it’s gone. Even the surrounding area where you once knew farmland and even lush fields would’ve been is gone. Everything has been replaced by sickly undergrowth. A wasteland. Jennifer remarks to everyone needing to keep an extra eye out for orc raiders. Jennifer looks over at you briefly again, but casts her eyes down and tries to get on with packing up the front wagon. You shake your head and walk over to Jennifer. “Look, Jennifer is it? I apologize for my remarks earlier, but as you said all of this IS a shock to me. I’ve seen a lot during my time, but I don’t think anything could’ve prepared me for this.” “I can only imagine. I guess overwhelming you with questions was inconsiderate of us.” “Well I suppose your curiosity is natural, but let’s just say I’m not quite ready to discuss everything. At least not yet.” “I understand. Your last memories of the Empire were during the cataclysm and you’re only just now seeing the results. It must’ve been a terrible time!” “Yes, you could say that it was.” Jennifer nods and you help her with loading the last bags on the head wagon. When you step aboard it, you’re on your way. For a while there’s silence between the pair of you as you ride through the wasteland, but you decide to be social and break the silence. “So orcs huh? They’re a threat? I would’ve thought they’d all be extinct by now. There weren’t even many left in the Empire during my time.” you say. “Sadly, that is no longer the case. I imagine without the Empire around, they reverted back to their chaotic natures and they bred unchecked. Now they’re all over the Qualan Badlands and elsewhere too. They probably were one of the few races to thrive during the dark ages. I’m not too worried about that happening today though now that we’ve got powerful Eternal travelling with us!” “You shouldn’t be too overconfident of that. Under the right circumstances, anyone, no matter how powerful they appear to be can be brought down sometime by the humblest of things. Still, I see the reputation of the Eternals has still survived. So are there any in Nalin?” “Ha ha ha ha! No, of course not! Before we found you, the last one died over four hundred years ago. First Matriarch Brenda of the Nalin Dominion. She was probably the main one responsible for keeping the fledging remnants of the Empire together during the cataclysm.” “Glad to know someone was trying to uphold order. Good for her.” “Did you know her well?” ‘Not excessively, but we did have dealings on a few matters, like during the taming of the lands east of Nalin for example. There was another major event too, but I’d care not to discuss that at this time.” “Understood…well anyway that was back then. Things have changed a lot since her time, our government being just one of those things, but for all intents and purposes she sort of laid the foundations for the Nalin Republic by keeping the country safe in the first place.” “You’re going to have to explain what the hell a republic is. Never heard of it before.” You say causing Jennifer to smile a bit. “Well, nowadays a single leader doesn’t rule our government. It’s run by a senate, which consists of a group of politicians that are chosen by the people. They ultimately decide on the laws and such by discussing and debating them.” You are completely baffled by this concept. “That sounds like an inefficient way of running things. How does anything get accomplished?” “Well, sometimes things do take time, but the citizens are a lot freer and happier by choosing their leaders.” Now you’re really lost. “Why the hell would people want to be free and happy? They should just be grateful for the protection and order that the government provides for their miserable lives! One strong leader to rule over them with an iron fist is only thing the citizens really need. And if they grumble too much they get executed, problem solved. Hell, it’s not like slaves cost that much if they need an extra hand in the fields.” Jennifer chuckles at your totalitarian views. “Yes, I imagine that it would be a bit strange to you. I’m sure it might also surprise you that we don’t have slavery anymore either; it actually became less cost effective. Still, you’ll see that it isn’t all bad. In fact you’ll probably get along with Quintus, he’s a very big admirer of old Empire history and culture. He’s the one been privately funding all these expeditions.” Just as you’re about to ask Jennifer who this Quintus is, you hear war cries and howling in the distance. It might have been five hundred years, but you know the sounds of orcs when you hear them. Not long after the general warning, you soon see them coming from the far left and the far right. They look every bit as big, mean and green as you remember them. No heavy armor, but the giant boar creatures they’re riding and the willingness to use bows are new. Jennifer orders everyone to ride faster and ready their firearms. While readying the firearms is always a good idea, there is no way you’re going to outpace the orcs at the speed you’re going, the wagons are just not fast enough and are weighed down by equipment. There are also enough orcs that some of them are going reach you before they get shot off their pigs and that’s assuming everyone in this caravan is a crack shot that can hit them in the head. Meanwhile you feel like you’re a sitting kobold on your own wagon. Part of you would rather just get on one of the horses and unhook the wagon, so you’ve got a little more maneuverability. Of course you could just start flinging magic spells at the orcs. > You get on one of the horses While it’s entirely possibly that you’d come out of this thing alive, (You’ve certainly been through worse) there’s little guarantee that anyone else will. If you’re going to keep your “rescuers” alive, you’ll need to be unhindered. “What’re you doing?!” Jennifer asks as you leap on a horse. “I’m getting off this thing, and I suggest if you don’t want to be a big target you will too, there’s another horse here, jump on it and we’ll unhitch the wagon!” Sensing that you’re going to do this whether she likes it or not, she realizes that she doesn’t really have a choice. She jumps on a horse and you take your sword and cut the harness. You tell Jennifer that she should order everyone else to concentrate their gunfire to the left. “Where are you going now?!” “I’m going to take care of the ones on the right!” you shout and ride in their direction. The orcs are so agitated about you heading directly towards them, they practically stop focusing on the caravan and begin firing arrows at you. Of course you anticipated such a thing and cast a shield to protect you and your horse. With your other hand you spray a cone of cold on the orcs closest to you, freezing them quite literally in their tracks. This feat of magic is enough to cause the orcs to attempt to rear up their boars and change direction back towards attacking the caravan. Others are undeterred and continue to head toward you with large weapons in hand. You aim your next spell at their boars, which consists of a couple fire blasts. The pigs go up in a blaze and soon so do their riders who end up dropping their weapons in an attempt to beat out the flames. You turn your attention at the orcs who decided to attack the caravan instead. At first glance the expedition crew have held their own fairly well considering none of them seem to be warriors and they seem to have fended off most of the orcs on the left side. However you see orcs getting the best of a couple of them when they close the gap and begin jumping onto the wagons. You ride back to the caravan and put your own combat skills good use. Orcs may be fierce and unrelenting fighters sometimes, but without the heavy armor that you remember they used to wear for the Empire, they get killed as easily as anyone else if you’re skilled enough, and you’re more than skilled enough. As you battle the orcs, the remaining expedition crew tries to help, though you’re nearly shot a couple of times in the process. You end up yelling at them to stop “helping” you before you start firing at them with something a lot more accurate. Soon after you’ve killed your last orc after hopping from wagon to wagon, you hear Jennifer shouts to everyone that you’ve won and the rest have rode off. The caravan stops for a moment to take some time to clean up dead bodies on the wagons, and gather up any equipment that fell off during the fight. Jennifer comes up to you as you’re cleaning off your own sword. “Well that was exciting to see a real Eternal in action! I knew we were going to be safe with you!” “Hmm, yeah well I almost wasn’t safe with your people, because I nearly got shot a couple times!” “Yeah, sorry about that. Fear of the orcs actually on the wagons was probably causing higher nervousness than usual.” “You should get some soldiers on these trips. Then at least you’d have some people who actually know how to fight when things get a little close.” “We do have soldiers, can’t you tell by the uniforms?” Honestly you hadn’t really paid much attention to the fact that several of the people on this expedition crew do have similar outfits. It’s just regular clothing though, none of it is proper armor, light or heavy. You also now notice that the firearms are much different too, namely they can fire multiple shots before being reloaded. A very handy improvement indeed. You realize that time has definitely marched on, it would seem that shooting someone with a rifle or pistol is the order of the day. Not much use for the old armor if that’s indeed the case. Still, you’re also reminded of the Felkans and their over reliance of such weapons. It would seem the Nalin Republic has the same technological disease. And these people are the supposed “successors” of the Empire. “Guns.” You say shaking your head. “What’s wrong with guns? You don’t think they’re honorable or something?” Jennifer asks. “No, I believe they are very useful and it would be foolish to not employ such weapons of fantastic destruction during battle and war. I just have a problem with the reliance of them in place of natural combat skill, because one day you’re going to run out of bullets and then you see who the real soldier is.” “How is using a gun any different from casting down lightning from your fingers or throwing fireballs around?” “It isn’t in the scheme of things. I just said I don’t have a problem with gunpowder weapons. However you also noticed I didn’t just toss around magic like I had unlimited energy either. I used it when it was needed and engaged in close combat for the rest of them. I could’ve easily just rained down a firestorm and wiped out all of the orcs, but that would’ve taken out the caravan too. Something I’m sure nobody wanted. The Empire used firearms AND magic during the Felkan War, but individually the soldiers were still some of the toughest warriors you’d ever want to face. The Felkans soon learned that fatal fact. Perhaps if their soldiers still had the formidable close combat skills of an Empire soldier, they might not have lost so many battle when physical prowess was needed.” Jennifer doesn’t debate your views or experience, she just thanks you again for your help and you’re soon underway. The rest of the journey is relatively silent. Eventually you arrive in the Nalin Republic. The landscape here is more like you remember, though it isn’t until you get towards the capital of Dalt that you start seeing a resemblance to civilization, but even that’s different when it comes to the architecture and such. You get a few stares from passing citizens. Jennifer and you disembark from the wagons when you arrive at Quintus’ house, or rather his very large mansion, which has guards posted at the gates. Honestly it’s the closest thing resembling the Empire you’ve seen since you got here. “You wait here, I’ll have to speak with Quintus about all this first. While I’m sure he’ll really want to see you, there is protocol to follow.” “Sure, do whatever it is you have to do, I’m not going anywhere, but who is this Quintus anyway?” “Quintus Arillicus is one of the most influential leaders in the senate and as I’ve already mentioned an admirer of old Empire history, but he’ll tell you more when you meet him.” As Jennifer walks through the gates, you’re left standing around with a few guards who give you the stares that you’ve come to expect from everyone. You wait for about ten minutes before you begin to wonder why you’re even entertaining this again. Then you remember, it’s because you don’t have much else to do right now. Though you’re wondering what place you’re going to have in this new world. You imagine that maybe you could be a soldier again though it doesn’t look like there’s a war going on. Doesn’t even look like this place is suffering from any discontent from the citizens, but then looks can be deceiving. Jennifer eventually comes back to the front gate and waves to come with her. “You can come in now. Quintus is very excited to see you!” At this point this Quintus better be just as impressive, because from what little you know of this guy, you’re not nearly as excited to see him. You and Jennifer walk into the mansion and while it’s certainly fancy and has a design style similar to Empire architecture, it isn’t nearly as extraordinary as the first time you saw the Emperor’s palace. Of course you’re a harder sell from those old days. Jennifer and you enter what is apparently a conference room. She says that he shouldn’t be long and you both take a seat at the table. Soon a middle-aged man walks into the room with some guards, but he dismisses them at the door so that you three can be alone. He’s dressed in an older style suit that looks more like those you remember Empire bureaucrats wearing and carries a staff of some sort with him. He also wears several rings. You sense that they all might be magical. Either way you fail to be impressed, just as you suspected you would be. Quintus on the other hand, now that he sees you in person, he’s very impressed. “I never believed in all these years…all the digging…all the research…everything. And none of what I’ve found compares to this! Yes! This is indeed a glorious day! A real live Eternal! Not just any Eternal either, but the one who served the Emperor himself!” Quintus exclaims as he sits down across from you. “Now let me stop you right there. I know you’re all excited and shit, but for me this is going into unknown territory. Possibly even enemy territory. I have no idea WHAT exactly you want with me. I’m going to tell you right now though if you’re thinking of putting me in some sort of museum or some weird aristocratic version of a sideshow like they have at the fairs peasants go to you better get that idea out of your head right now.” Jennifer tries to temper your words, but Quintus raises his hands as if no offense was taken. “It’s alright. Our Eternal friend is quite right to be suspicious of me, but I can honestly tell him there is no reason for him to be because I think my goals will fit his honorable ideals. I’m still sure there is much he wants to know and questions that he has, but I will say that it is my hope that he and I will change history together!” Quintus and Jennifer try to get you fully up to speed on everything first… > You time passes... After sitting here for about an hour or so listening to the sorry state the republic is in, let alone the rest of the area that used to be part of the old Empire, you’ve had enough of it all. “Stop. I’ve heard enough about your wretched country. I can already tell what YOU want. You want the Empire back.” “Yes! I want to resurrect the Empire!” Quintus exclaims. “And that’s a lovely thought, but sorry to tell you this, it’s dead. Long buried and resigned to the trash heap of history.” You remark. This comment is definitely not what Quintus expected. Jennifer on the other hand isn’t quite surprised you’d say such a thing given your own cynical remarks to her. “But…you’re here now…a symbol! A symbol of the old ways! Proof of honor! Proof of strength! Proof of power! You’re an Eternal!” “And? I obviously couldn’t prevent the destruction of the Empire. Am I supposed to just resurrect it with my mere presence? Am I to just kill the entire senate and establish perhaps you as an emperor? Do you think the people would accept that?” “Well maybe not so direct…” Quintus remarks. “No? Because that might be the only way to get things done around here. And what makes YOU think you’d even be a good emperor? You do not even have the support of the people.” “I do have the support of my constituents! I even have a few allies in the senate!” Quintus protests. “Well you still don’t have enough for what you desire. I’d say that I’d have a better chance of being accepted as an emperor before you would just due to the fear factor and raw power, and I’d still have to be looking over my shoulder constantly before I finally got run out by a complete rebellion or I destroyed so much of Nalin in the process of maintaining order. Given what you’ve told me of the average citizen it sounds like they’re perfectly happy with the way things are. Happy with their hedonistic freedom. Do you really think they’re going to listen to a relic of a time when the strong just ruled over the weak and the weak not only accepted it as a way of life, but some were even happy about it? The sheep have been let out of their pens and do not wish to return. Do you believe your people, even those that apparently keep voting for you to represent them are ready to accept a more restrictive and harsher culture? Do you believe you can foster such an environment?” Quintus remains silent and you throw up your hands at his inability to answer. “Well you see my problem with your plan. You probably thought when you dug me up; you’d have a powerful tool that would be your key to reforming a parody of the old Empire. And it would be a parody, because even if you were successful, it would NEVER be like the old Empire. You can read all the lore and books you want about the old days and nothing is stopping you from holding fantasies about such days. But make no mistake those good old days aren’t EVER coming back. You’re about five hundred years too late. I haven’t been awake one complete day yet, and even I’ve come to accept that hard truth…but then I’ve had to accept so many hard truths. This is just another one to me.” Quintus nods solemnly. The spark that was in him is gone, but you can tell he isn’t completely defeated. Jennifer just tries to look away from both of you and shuffles some papers she has with her. “You…you aren’t how I expected you to be…” Quintus says. “Nobody ever is. Another hard truth I learned a long time ago.” You answer. “Mm…well I seem to be at a loss of what to say. Which is rare considering they often complain that I never shut up in the senate.” “Look, Quintus. I won’t deny that your ideals and goals aren’t admirable ones. However, I had to drag you back to reality. You still have a long way to go before even bringing something resembling the Empire back. As much as it might be fun to send me to just kill the senate with a firestorm and then establish martial law across the land, it’s not going to be that simple. At least not yet.” “Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s just I’ve read about some of your deeds, scraps of parchments really and I guess when I found out you were alive and in my house I just figured all of my country’s problem were solved.” “Well, they may still be eventually. Now despite what I’ve said, I will help you. Because personally, I’d like to see you succeed if only so I could live in a place that didn’t seem so damn strange and it’s not like I have anywhere else to go.” “So you are going to help bring back the Empire?” “Well, something like it anyway. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try. Now then, with me on your side, you shouldn’t worry about the military side of things. I can take care of those matters when they arise, and they most certainly will. You’re going to have to take the lead on the political matters obviously, but I can still advise you in this capacity. All my years of working side by side with the Emperor contributed to such skills despite being on the battlefield most of the time.” Quintus seems to have that spark of life again when you agree to help him after all. He happily asks where you should get started. Jennifer at this point is glad to also see things have worked out and says she should leave you two alone to talk more and get back to the dig site. Before she leaves Quintus calls out to thank her. “And tell your father he has my thanks as well! If it weren’t for you two, we would not be in the better position we are now. Expect a bonus in pay this week.” Quintus says. “Thank you senator. I was wondering though and I hate to ask, but it just came to me. Do you think our new friend here could come back up to the dig site when he has the time? It’s just that he was buried there and it might be of great help if he could at least perhaps give us a good indication on where it might be beneficial to dig.” “Well we’ve got a lot to go over first, but afterwards if he wants to, I have no objections.” Doesn’t take you long to agree. You briefly remark that where they were digging was near the Emperor’s main chambers and you’d like to see if anything survived yourself. This new revelation causes a bit of excitement from Jennifer and Quintus wondering what other magical treasures that might be of use in the coming days of change or even some scraps of history that can enlighten them more about such glorious days. You just wonder if you can find the remains of Semra. Call it curiosity; call it a sense of closure. The first thing you and Quintus talk about is the military. You explain that it is of vital importance to get them to support him the most, but it’s also of great importance to get them be more vicious warriors. You say you understand that battles are probably fought a little differently nowadays, but the intense training isn’t necessarily just to make them expert fighters. It’s also to instill discipline and hopefully a warrior’s mindset. Make it so that they want to go to war, that they long for it. Quintus says that he does already have some pull with the military. A little more than most find comfortable, but of course it’s nowhere near absolute. You’re glad since that cuts down on a little extra work. You tell him to track down the most spirited and skilled warriors that are in the military and have them gather somewhere secluded just outside the northern borders of Nalin. You say you need to get started on training as soon as possible, you just hope you don’t have too many wash outs (or casualties). You then say you also need to get started on an outside threat. “What do you mean?” “I mean you need an outside threat that genuinely scares people. Makes it so people are more supportive of a strong military. Makes it so eventually people prioritize their safety so much that they’re willing to give up their freedom just to be safe. I mean I know you’ve been warning the senate and the people about all the scary things out there and you’re right, but people don’t believe it until its beating down their door with a battle axe.” “Yes, but how exactly are we going to do that?” “Well YOU aren’t going to do anything except going about your usual business. I on the other hand am going to incite one of those threats you’ve told me about. Obviously one of the closest ones.” “The usksha immigrants?” Quintus asks. “Heh, well maybe in due time, but that’s bit more on the…political side. Plus its not a large enough threat and the follow through of invading the desert is a logistics nightmare that we are nowhere near in a position to carry out at this time. No, I was thinking something much simpler. Something much easier to incite violence in and a lot easier to get people to fear, namely orcs.” “Oh, do you think you can do it?” “Encouraging an orc to attack isn’t a challenge at all. Herding them to all attack in a specific direction takes a little more skill, but I can do it. It’ll just take a little time and we have to make a balancing act of it. Going to have to let the orcs win a few major battles in the beginning at least. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll also serve to purge some of the less than skilled soldiers you have around here. Some villages on the borders are going to have to burn as well.” “Villages? Are you sure?” “The problem with the Nalinites is they’ve never really been under a true threat for a very long time. When the people experience the loss of a couple border villages and see the bloody aftermath, trust me they’ll be begging for more protection. When they see the brutality of what an orc horde can do they’ll be screaming for justice and for us to march into the Quala Badlands to wipe out every last green skin. The first steps to expansion and the first steps to resurrecting the Empire.” Quintus understands and says it sounds like a good plan. You and he talk a little more about some of the specifics before he eventually says he has a big day tomorrow of arguing against some silly law that one of his opponents is trying to have passed and needs to get some sleep. He says that you may have a bed in one of his spare rooms, as it isn’t like the rest of his family is going to complain about you being here. You agree but say that you intend on heading back to the dig site like you promised Jennifer tomorrow and also to get started on that orc situation you spoke on. Quintus remarks that you can take one of his horses and says he hopes to see you within a weeks time. The next day you ride off to your destination and you feel somewhat calmer than you did when you first woke up. You also feel like you have a worthy purpose now. You know you’re going to have a big task ahead of you trying to reform the Empire, but at least it gives you something to do. Who knows, you might even be successful. Or you might be instrumental in the downfall of yet another nation… > Year 537 “Ah, there’s nothing better than when a plan comes together! Your actions of stirring up the orcs have been paying off and I’ve finally managed to get the public to become in favor of a strong army and your training has been producing much tougher and disciplined soldiers to create that stronger army.” Quintus remarks to you while he sips his wine. “I’m certainly glad someone you finally found someone more competent than yourself. Makes all your years of failure totally worth it.” Quintus’ wife Nalia remarks in a bored tone lying on a couch. She’s already on her second bottle of wine and it’s not even the afternoon yet. While Quintus dismisses his wife’s usual emasculating remarks, you’re wondering why you’re here when you could be doing something more important to keep this plan in motion because its nowhere near coming together like Quintus seems to think it is. The orcs haven’t even made a major attack yet. They’ve just been harassing a few patrols, but it’s just as well since you’re still trying to whip the paltry number of spirited soldiers you do have into shape so that they the orcs do attack they’ll be ready for them. You can’t really complain, because you are doing something you’re familiar with and good at, but the main thing that’s been nagging at you is Quintus himself. You don’t respect him and it’s starting to become a problem sometimes. It’s not anything he’s done to you either. He’s practically bent over backwards to accommodate you in anyway he can. You wondered at first if it’s his overly smarmy demeanor with you which at times seems fake, but that isn’t it. Part of that is that he’s a politician and he probably can’t help but be that way as part of his personality, not to mention you’ve become quite a good judge of character and you believe his admiration for you is genuine. Regardless of what his wife claims, Quintus is extremely ambitious and a hard worker which you can appreciate. He’s just been hampered by the social and political climate. If he’d been born during the time of the Empire, he would’ve fit right in. Might’ve even been one of the Emperor’s advisors. Despite all this, you’ve been developing an increasing lack of respect for the man. Not to the point that you’re ready to kill him or anything, but taking orders from him has got you questioning why? Of course you know the reasons why, because the republic is still a pussy whipped place that has long since abandoned the ideals of people like yourself and trying to take power like a strong man would ultimately only result in chaos and collapse. Ironically, you’d probably be more at home in one of the city-states in Arat where they still favor a single ruler. What it all comes down to you think is Quintus’ family. Something about Quintus’ lack of admiration from his own family bothers you. If he can’t reach the people that are supposed to be closest to him, how the hell can you respect him? Gets harder to when you have to be subjected to these meetings and see his family walk over him first hand. They all either criticize him or belittle him even though he’s been trying to make life better for them. His wife is a slothful alcoholic that has never a word of encouragement for him. She looks much older than she actually is mainly due to hitting the bottle so much. She’s never truly addressed you directly, but her attitude seems apathetic at best. His teenage daughter Yollanda is a red headed trollop that routinely sleeps with the sons of his senate rivals and in some cases the rivals themselves. And those are the “classier” encounters. Quintus once complained that if there was a good purpose for her bed hopping like say for gathering important information on his enemies it could be acceptable, but she has no higher purpose other than the pleasure of her girl parts. You try to stay away from her as her outright sexual advances that’s she’s made towards you in the past is a complication you don’t desire or need. Makes Jennifer’s obvious minor crush on you downright subtle by comparison. Then there’s his younger son Gelo who is an idiot. Not in the traditional sense that he does stupid things without thinking them through, no he’s a dyed in the wool, born and bred moron. You imagine that his mother might’ve drank while she was carrying him, but who knows? By and large he’s harmless, but extremely annoying. He yells a lot, breaks things and is generally obnoxious mainly because he doesn’t even have a stable structure to mold him into something at least somewhat useful. You don’t understand why he wasn’t killed at birth. Such defective babies were usually either put to death by the family or at least sold into slavery so that they could be productive to the Empire on a minor level. It was a good policy. The only positive thing is he seems to be afraid of you and thus stays away (Often screaming his head off and runs away if you’re ever in the same room.) And that’s just Quintus’ immediate family, it’s not even counting the other in laws and extended family that basically mooch off of him. For a man that has ruthless ideals he’s a doormat when it comes to his family. Fortunately for Quintus, he seems to have a lot more luck with the general population and has been getting more support just like he’s been bragging about lately. If you were Quintus, you might crave the respect of strangers as well. “Quintus, why am I here? I’d like to get back to my job.” You remark. “But that’s precisely why you’re here my Eternal friend! Your job! Since the army problem is well on its way to being taken care of, I think its time to move on to our navy.” “Navy?” “Yes, you do remember we have one such as it is. I’d like you to have a hand in making it stronger as well.” “And just how the hell am I supposed to do that?” “I dunno, you told me you were the military expert. Just do it the same way you did with our army I suppose. Stir up the pirates of the Delerg islands so they start attacking our costal towns en masse and the people demand a stronger navy.” “Quintus, I’m glad you’re excited about the plan, but the first part of it isn’t even ready yet. I don’t feel the soldiers are even ready yet. They’ve been in a few skirmishes, but nothing that is really going to test them. And there’s still the matter of the orcs. They’re riled and I have noticed large tribal gatherings as if they’re preparing for a large attack against a bigger foe, but by and large they’re still disorganized and in some cases still attacking one another.” “But surely you’ve trained some of the soldiers enough that they can perform these duties in your stead? Delegate responsibility to the more talented ones?” “I have, but its a slow process from them to train their fellows as well as I trained them and I still wouldn’t trust any of them to do what I’m doing with the orcs, or at least not do it and live. Quite frankly I need more time with them and diverting my attention to your navy is just a distraction.” “But the senate is going to dismantle it!” Quintus exclaims. “Oh please will you stop whining in front of the help Quintus. It is soooo undignified. You don’t have to try to impress me anyway; I always knew you weren’t man enough to help my brother out with his shipyard. If the senate does dismantle the navy and his shipyard goes under because of less business, well he can always live here. No big deal.” Nalia remarks taking another long swig out of her wine bottle. Quintus has no words he just throws his hands up and looks to you for help, but what can you do short of killing his wife? And you’re fairly certain he doesn’t want that no matter how much she gives him grief. You suppose you could see what you could do with the naval situation, but the main problem is you have practically no experience in such seafaring things. You dare say the average sailor has much more experience than you do about such matters. Sure you’ll be assisted, but without the actual experience you’ll still have a disadvantage that you don’t feel comfortable with. On the other hand what exactly does the republic need with a powerful navy anyway? As far as you know they don’t have an enemy trying to invade them from sea and they don’t have contact with a big nautical trading partner. They just send merchant ships to travel along the southern coast to the Usksha Emirates. If the pirates got too out of control, they could just send large shipments through the desert. > You focus on the land military You’re not going to change the plan just because Quintus is trying to please his drunken bitch of a wife. If he really wants this to happen he’s going to have to follow your lead. “Quintus the navy isn’t important at this time, we need land strength if we’re going to get anywhere. We’ll need it to fight the orcs, we’ll need it to keep the unhappy citizens in line when we finally get rid of this damn republic and we’re going to really need it when we have to expand and annex more territory. Now I understand you’ve got a pirate problem, but really other than trade with the usksha we don’t even need to send many ships out anyway other than small fishing boats for food. Start sending trade caravans directly through the desert. The usksha do it all the time.” “Yeah because the sand savages are used to it! The merchant’s guild is going to pitch a fit.” “Well fuck, I dunno what to tell you. The merchants are either going to have to tough it out in the desert or risk getting attacked by pirates. Shit’s tough all over. Come to think of it, you don’t even like the damn usksha and want them out of the country anyway. Seems to me you could start working on that policy now that you’ve been getting a little more of the public on your side. If all goes well, Nalin won’t have to trade with the usksha at all in the future. No trade with the usksha, no need for merchant ships. No merchant ships, no pirates, unless they get crazy desperate and start attacking the coastal towns, but that’s why we’ve going to protect against such invasions.” Quintus thinks about your proposal for a moment and of course he sees the wisdom in it. “Yes, and the funds that are being spent on the navy can be used for other things. Hm, I suppose if I support the senate majority to dismantle the navy anyway I’ll look a little more agreeable, I imagine that’ll be good too. The question is where all the displaced sailors are going to do and go. I suppose some will just become fishers.” “Yes, and if not, well there’s always more room in the army. I’ll let you worry about that, I need to get back to it.” Quintus bids you goodbye and you’re glad to leave his mansion before you run into his slutty daughter. You’re in no mood for her tiresome attempts at seduction right now. Over the next few months you continue getting Nalin’s “best” into shape and start launching your own raids into known orc territory. You always make sure not to do too much damage of course, but you’re not yielding the results you want. You’re not getting orc counter raids or attacks. In fact you think they’ve lessened! This is somewhat discouraging, because while you’re succeeding in creating a stronger army, you’re failing in the second half of your plan. You think you might have to do something else. On you way back from a raid, you and your men stop off at Calvin’s excavation site to rest. Two years have passed since you got dug up and they’re still digging through the ruins of the old capital. It’s actually impressive how much they have managed to find. Calvin even found a few of the flattened broken bones of his ancestor Jacob. (Never did find Semra’s though) Calvin and his crew are always glad to have more soldiers around so you’re naturally awarded all the hospitality they have to offer. While you sit by yourself pondering your next move with this situation, Jennifer suddenly pops up to speak with you. “I see you’re your usual brooding self.” Jennifer says coming up to you. “Hm, that took awhile. Usually when I make stops here, you’re here a lot sooner. I was beginning to worry.” You remark. “Well you did looked worried, but I doubt if it was about me hovering around you. So what’s wrong this time?” Over the years Jennifer has probably become the closest thing you have to a friend. Granted you never had many before in your old life, but you at least had a few people to speak with about your own troubles. So far Jennifer is about the only one you feel comfortable with speaking about your own private concerns. “It’s just the orcs. I thought for sure they’d be attacking en mass by now.” “And an orc horde would be a good thing?” “If we want Quintus’ dreams of reviving the Empire it would be. Guess I’m going to have to redouble my efforts on antagonizing the orcs.” “Have you ever considered that you’re scaring them more than you’re angering them?” “That seems unlikely. Orcs are nearly immune to fear. Most of them are too stupid and the rest are too bold.” “Maybe that was true during your time, but I’m sure you’ve noticed things have changed.” “They’re orcs Jennifer, how much could they have changed? Well besides the war paint I mean.” “Surely you’ve noticed on your raids and travels that these orcs are still very different than the ones you knew. They’re tribal for one, but not just that, they’re also superstitious. Tends to come with tribal societies.” “So?” “So, over the centuries they’ve probably built their own tales, taboos and lore based on the ruins of the old Empire alone. That’s a lot of symbols and icons that they’ve probably incorporated into their society. Then you pop up and you’re still dressed in your old Empire armor and who know what stories that might cause because of the similar symbols and insignia on them. Think about it, for about two years now you’ve been mostly acting alone in attacking them. You’re shooting lightning and fire from your fingers as if it was nothing and you’ve probably slain more of them with your sword than the whole Nalin army ever has with bullets. They probably think you’re some immortal warrior spirit of old.” Jennifer explains. “Well, I was dug up from a kind of grave.” “Exactly, so in the scheme of things orcs have every reason in the world to fear you just like most people with a lick of sense do.” “Heh, you don’t fear me.” “Of course I don’t. I’m your friend.” Jennifer says and grabs your hand. You clasp your other hand on top of hers. “Yes. Yes you are. Well I guess I need to find out if I am indeed something special to these orcs or not.” “What’re you going to do?” “Well I know the biggest tribe in the Quala Badlands is the Floggers. Maybe if I can bring them under heel, I can just make them DO what I want. I probably should go alone.” “Hold on, the Floggers are pretty damn big and are positioned near Rask which is monster haven, you sure you shouldn’t have some sort of back up? I know you’re a big tough Eternal and all, but maybe you should take some of the soldiers you’ve been training.” “Nah, I’d be better off doing this by myself.” You say. “Ever the loner eh? Well I figured as much. I know it’s silly to worry after all you’ve survived, but just be careful okay?” Jennifer says and she briefly moves her face closer to yours, but then stops and then awkwardly excuses herself. You tell your soldiers that they can either stay here or return to their posts and say you have your own business to take care of. Since they’re used to you going off by yourself, they acknowledge your orders and you think no more of it. Just as you’re about to leave you get a surprising visit from Calvin. “Hey, I’m glad I caught you before you left.” He says. “Calvin? You don’t normally want to speak with me.” “Well, as my daughter has probably no doubt told you I’m a little afraid of you, but I’m having one of those infamous brave Mol moments. It’s actually about my daughter.” “What about her?” “You are aware that she’s fond of you right?” “Yeeeah…I think she just tried to kiss me but stopped herself from doing so. It was sort of uncomfortable.” “I see…so I trust you do not feel the same way.” “Well…(Sigh) it’s not that, its just…look it’s not my area of expertise and I’ve got a lot else on my mind right now.” “Hm, understandable.” Calvin remarks. “There are also some other feelings that involve the past that I don’t wish to discuss right now. That being said, I can honestly say I enjoy her company. She’s the only real friend I have.” “That’s good. That’s good. I only bring this up because I know that great change is ever looming and most likely that change is going to be violent no matter how you and Quintus are going to go about it. I’d just like to make sure my daughter’s safe and I figure if she was with you then that safety is guaranteed, along with her happiness of course.” “Hm, don’t be so sure of that. I imagine I’ll be drawing a lot of fire no matter what happens.” “Better that she be with a strong shield that draws a lot of fire than with no shield at all.” “Ha ha ha! So I’m a shield am I?” you chuckle. “Aren’t we all before the chaos?” Calvin remarks and tells you to just think about your own feelings towards his daughter. You’ve never had someone trying to pair you up with their daughter before. Something about it makes you feel a little strange. You decide to get on with your task to intimidate some orcs into submission, at least that’s more familiar to you. You make your way north. You haven’t had too many run ins with the Flogger tribe, due to their far away location, but you did ambush a few of their kind a couple times. You don’t know how the survivors have described you, hopefully it is as Jennifer suggested, and it’s with awe. Along the way you don’t encounter much trouble, you get attacked by a few half mad bandits, but that’s about it. Eventually you know you’re coming to the Flogger territory since you see the dead bodies of other orcs, humans, and even a few elves and ogres stretched across various wooden frames with their backs completely flayed of all skin. Down to the bone actually. Crows and other scavenger types gnaw at the rotting carcasses. The gruesome sight stretches from east to west as far as your eyes can see. You notice two orcs standing look out on a crude watchtower just behind the wall of bodies. When you get closer they call out to you and raise their bows. “Oi! What you doin’ ‘ere ‘uman?” one of them asks. You didn’t expect such civility, let alone coherence. “I’m here to see your chieftain!” you answer. “Wez gots no chieftain! Wez stronger than dat! Wez got shaman! Other tribes jealous! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!” “Great, so let me see your shaman. I have something to discuss with him.” The two orcs look at you and then whisper to each other a bit. This is all a bit strange, you fully expected to get attacked when you arrived or failing that the orcs running away in fear. They haven’t done either yet. “Mm, yeah youz look like him, but need to be sure…um Bilge what waz we spose to ask again?” one orc asks the other. “Youz forgot? Youz an idjit Fatbelly! You said youz remember! Me dunno either!” Bilge says. “Okay, okay, shaddup! Me member now. Are youz dah ‘ternal man?” Fatbelly asks you. “Yes.” You answer assuming he means eternal. “Okay, youz can go troo, Shaman Trog been ‘spectin you. Just keep goin straight ahead an’ he should meet youz.” “Wait, expecting me? How?” you ask. “Dreams. Vishuns. Sumthin. Dunno, he magik. Ugh, brain hurt thinkin’ bout it. Go away now.” There doesn’t seem to be much else to do, so you proceed to follow Fatbelly’s instructions. You pass through the line of flayed corpses and the watchtower. In the distance you see what looks to be enough simple huts to be considered a village. However you aren’t going to have to walk that far because a single orc dressed in tribal garb stands between you and it. He holds a decorated staff in hand and looks old for an orc. This must be Shaman Trog. You aren’t sure what to expect, but you draw your weapon just in case. “Ah, you here finally. Trog saw that you come and Trog’s visions always right…well most of time.” “You can see into the future eh? Well then I suppose you know why I’m here then.” You remark. “No Trog not know. Cannot predict future. Just see that Eternal man come. The last true remnant of the long dead Empire that enslaved all within its shadow. So why you here? You here to finally kill us all?” “Well, that’s up to you Trog. I have a proposal.” “Huh, can’t be good if you here. Very well, Trog shall hear your proposal.” You explain to Trog what the situation is though at first you wonder if he’s going to understand all of it, but it would seem he’s one of the smart ones, then again he is a shaman so he can’t be entirely dim in the first place. “Trog see…so it’s worse than Trog feared, you seek to make slaves of all of us again.” “No, I just need you to attack the Nalin Republic.” “Yes, you seek to manipulate us into doing your dirty work. How is that not slavery? Worse, your plan seeks to bring back the power that nearly lead us all into extinction. Only after centuries we are strong and free again.” “You know, orcs didn’t fare so badly under the Empire. They were some of the best soldiers.” “They were used as expendable shields for the weaker human troops.” “And how do you know all this?” “Ha ha! Writings! You think orcs not write, but we do! Maybe just pictures, but we do! We also tell stories! After Empire fall to big bang, orcs of old pass down tales. Tribe’s founder and my great ancestor, Flog pass down first stories. We never forget. That’s why we orcs know you. You wear the mark of the old days. Not know how you still alive. Maybe you really eternal, but if we are to die, then we die free, not die slow as slaves.” You can’t believe it. You’re arguing with an orc about civil liberties! Still, if he is up on the history as he says then there is surely mention of one orc in particular and it might just convince him to change his mind. “Captain Gruz did not consider himself to be a slave.” You remark, which causes Trog’s eyes to widen. “You…you knew the Warmaster?” Trog asks. “Oh yes, I met him and he even gave me a little insight to be a better soldier during my first assignment. I only regret I didn’t get to serve with him during the Felkan War. I heard of his many magnificent deeds though.” “He slew many enemies on the day of his death. The entire story of that day is a glorious tale.” “Yes, and he was hailed as one of the greatest heroes of the Empire. He did his duty as a soldier of the Empire and had no shame about it. He was no slave, let me tell you. He was a proud soldier who loved that he served the Empire. His only wish was to die a glorious death in its service and he did. Because he served the Empire with distinction even now the knowledge of his deeds are still known. Help me bring it back and your deeds may become as well known as his own, possibly even more so.” Trog studies you as if to determine if you’re just trying to sweet talk him. He looks tired though, as if he doesn’t really want to fight you even if you are lying to him. “Trog…cannot completely determine your ultimate intentions Eternal, however Trog sense your words about the Warmaster to be respectful and truthful. Trog suppose if great Warmaster Gruz taught you to be a better warrior then you would not speak lies about him. (Sigh) Very well, Trog shall do what Trog can to help you, but Trog can’t promise that Trog will be able to unite all of the tribes in the Quala Badlands.” “Don’t need them all, just enough to cause a lot of damage.” “Hm, well if there’s anything we’re good at, it’s that. Trog suppose a lot of my people are going to die in the process of this scheme, Trog only hope that in the long run we will be in a better position.” “I promise you that your people will always remember what you have done today.” “Trog not sure if that good yet.” Trog remarks and shuffles off towards the village in the distance. You guess your work is done here. Now only time will tell if this is going to be successful or not. > Year 540 It’s not there yet, but the political and social climate in the republic is finally getting to a point that’s a little more recognizable to you. Thanks to Trog’s actions the orcs have been attacking the Nalin just like you wanted. After a couple of burned down massacred villages, the Nalinites are a lot more supportive of military endeavors (Kobold citizens especially, but that’s hardly surprising given their nature). The citizens are also becoming more fearful and suspicious of other “foreign threats” like the usksha. Highlighting the sandman drug epidemic and the crime due to it, Quintus has managed to get restrictions on the southern borders of Nalin. The usksha that used to live within Nalin are starting to go back to their desert due to the increasingly hostile population. Trade hasn’t completely stopped, but the relationship between the republic and the emirates is very strained now. Of course some of this still wouldn’t be possible without senate support, however that’s become more in Quintus’ favor due to a combination of several factors. Some are just like the peasants, they’re getting scared because their comfortable lifestyle are at risk and want to protect themselves. Some were weak from the start and vote depending on which way the majority is heading. There are still holdouts that don’t agree with the more militant policies however. Even the “will of the people” does not sway them to fall in line. The most vocal of these is Senator Batalimus Ventis who has been a long time rival of Quintus. He’s stated that this trend towards militarism is going lead back to the dark days of when Matriarch Tarna ruled the land. He has also stated quite openly that Quintus is a warmongering fool that is only a puppet for his “mysterious Eternal” advisor. Quintus hates the man more than he hates the usksha and feels he’s the main cause of all his woes. Apparently he’s also decided that even if it isn’t quite time to dismantle the senate, it is time to get rid of Batalimus and has tried to have the man assassinated on a few occasions. All attempts have failed so far though and all it’s done is served to make Batalimus more cautious and legitimize his accusations about Quintus (Even if he can’t quite connect Quintus to the actual assassins). You’re going to have to speak with Trog soon about the attacks having served their purpose and that he needs to ease up. Trog is under the impression that after all this is over; he or at least his people will have a place within the new order when it finally comes about. In truth, you’d like to have a few orc legions if only for the intimidation factor of keeping the citizenry in line. However, you aren’t exactly sure how likely that’s going to be since orcs are increasingly becoming hated by the average citizen and are unlikely to want them to be incorporated into the new order no matter what. Let alone as soldiers. Another problem for another day you suppose. Right now though you’re on your way back from another visit with Quintus (who basically did nothing but bitch about Bartalimus) and on your way back to Quala. You’re a lot better known now and as you pass through you mostly get a lot of respectful nods from the military and worried glances from citizens. Your reputation within the republic has grown and it’s much like it was back in the old Empire days. There’s a certain familiar comfort in that. Before you leave Dalt you decide to pay a visit to Calvin’s museum to see Jennifer. Since the orc war, expeditions to the Quala Badland have been put on hold so Calvin and Jennifer have returned to work at their museum to study what they have found in more detail and ultimately put it on display. When you enter, you see a sign that tells people to be sure to visit their brand new Empire exhibits. Naturally you wander over to where these displays are, so you can see how much they actually got right. When you get to the exhibit its currently empty of visitors. You’re impressed with what you see though. They’ve managed to recreate a small portion of the Emperor’s palace and fill it with the old stuff they found. Some of the things are just replicas, but they’re very good replicas and in the correct locations. They even managed to restore one of the Emperor’s big black statues. Just looking at all this stuff makes you feel like you’re back where you should be. When you close your eyes you can almost imagine that you are where you WANT to be. If only things had been different, you wouldn’t have to be starting all over again… “We tried to make it look like what we thought it looked like in the past and based on writings we found.” You hear Jennifer’s voice say and you open your eyes to see her stand to the right of you. “You did a good job, almost feels like home. That big ass black statue wasn’t in the throne room though. In fact the Emperor never even used the throne room when I knew him.” You say. “Yeah, but we did have any place else to put it. I think its impressive looking where we did put it though. Should draw in a lot of people. So did you come here to revisit old memories?” “Not at first, but this is was a nice distraction.” “Glad to hear it, well I’ll leave you to your thoughts.” Jennifer says and begins to leave. “No, stay here with me, I came here to see you in first place. Besides, no point in reliving past glories when I don’t have anyone to share said glories with.” You say and grab her hand. Jennifer’s reaction is a positive one in that she doesn’t let go and moves closer to you. “So since you’ve got the time, how about you tell me about some of those old glories?” Jennifer asks. You gladly do so. You talk with Jennifer for hours until it starts getting late at which point you say you have to get back to your mission in Quala. Jennifer understands and wishes you luck on it. “If you’re going wish me luck, how about you do it with a kiss?” you ask which takes Jennifer by surprise. “That’s certainly new. What brought this on?” “I thought you liked me. You do don’t you?” “Of course, I’m sure I was pretty obvious about it.” “Well why ask why? I’m fond of you as well. I like your company and you’re the only person I’ve ever considered my friend since I got dug up. You’re independent, you’re physically attractive and you listen to all my stories. What’s not to like?” You say which causes a small chuckle from Jennifer. “Okay…we’ll talk more about this later, but for right now, here’s that kiss.” Jennifer moves in to kiss you and the pair of you embrace. After your minor amorous interlude, you take your leave of the museum. You briefly wonder if pursuing a relationship with Jennifer is a good idea, but what’s done is done and you’ll just have to figure it out. Once again, another problem for another day you suppose. Just as you get out of the gates of Dalt, two guards approach you. They’re not military or domestic security, they look like private guards, probably those of a senator. “You the Eternal?” one of them asks. “Yes.” You answer. “Senator Batalimus wants to see you. If you would accompany us to his home please, it’s just a few miles west of this city.” Well this is an interesting turn of events, though perhaps not entirely unexpected. If you had to guess, Batalimus either plans to have you killed when you arrive to meet him or he’s going to try to convince you to be on his side. You doubt he has the means to do either. You don’t know if you should even bother entertaining him at all, but then you think if he does try to kill you, then you’ll have eliminated the need to kill him later. Hell, even if he doesn’t try to kill you, maybe you should just do it anyway. You agree to follow the guards and eventually you reach Batalimus’ estate. His home isn’t much bigger than Quintus’ home, though there are a lot more trees and gardens on his grounds. As you expect there are a lot of guards patrolling about. When you step through the front door you feel like you’ve stepped into a barracks rather than a senator’s mansion due to all the guards standing around. Soon an older balding man dressed in a purple robe comes down the grandiose staircase. It’s Batalimus. “Ah the Eternal, at last we meet face to face.” Batalimus says. “Yes, I’m surprised that you didn’t confiscate my weapons though.” You answer. “Whatever for? We all know you can just incinerate or fry everyone in the room with the snap of your fingers. It’s not like you actually need a sword or even a pistol. You’re a walking weapon without such things.” “So? Why risk bringing me here then?” “Because I have nothing to lose. Your associate, Quintus seems quite determined to have me killed. Granted he always has harbored ill feelings, but now that the little reprobate has the advantage his confidence has reached an all time high. I suppose the fool has to have his fun though given the family he has. In any case I figure its only a matter of time before he sends you to do the deed and while I could increase my security even further, I quite frankly doubt if it would stop the likes of you. At best you might get mad.” You have to appreciate someone who knows exactly where they stand. “So…you brought me here to kill you?” “Hah, I hope not, but I suppose that is a strong possibility. No, what I’d like to do is try to convince you to perhaps not kill the republic because that is what you and Quintus are striving to do, though I believe I actually have a shot with getting through to you. You aren’t saddled with any emotions of hatred towards me. To you, I’m just another potential obstacle in your goals. If I have to be killed then you will, but if it isn’t necessary you won’t.” Well it looks like Batalimus has opted to try to get you on his side, just like you thought he might. He is over estimating your willingness to kill him though. True you don’t have any hatred for the man and quite honestly you probably already respect him more than Quintus within the short time you’ve met him, but you’ve been known to kill folks even if you believe that they will be potential obstacles in the future. Still, killing Batalimus right now isn’t exactly part of the plan, so you’ll most likely just leave unless he tries to stop you. Then again you did come all this way so there is no harm in hearing him out. > You stay “Okay, I’ll listen to your pleas, but I doubt that you will be able to convince me of anything.” You remark. “You seem so certain.” Batalimus says. “Of course I am. For one I am not some scared citizen or greedy senator that can be bribed or frightened into submission. I am not an ignorant peasant either that can be merely swayed by lies.” “Never thought you were.” “Second and more importantly, I was not impressed with your republic when I was first dug up and I continue to be unimpressed with it now. It is an inefficient form of government that allows too much power to the people and it doesn’t even do that right, considering all the corruption.” “Oh I wouldn’t say that. Within the last few years the people have been making demands for more security and defense and Quintus has been delivering appeasement to them. It would seem that you’ve managed make the system work for you.” Batalimus says. “And don’t you think that’s proof that your system is broken? If YOU were the ruler of this country you wouldn’t be in the situation you are now. You’d be able to have Quintus executed along with everyone that didn’t fall in line.” “You may be right.” “Of course I’m right, because the masses are by and large weak-willed fools that actually desire a strong hand to rule them and do the thinking for them. Honestly I don’t know how your system lasted as long as it did.” “Because it worked or at least it did before you came around.” “So…you’re going to blame me for your system’s weaknesses? Seems to me it should’ve been strong enough to weather the presence of one man.” Batalimus begins laughing. “One man? Yes. It’s done that for quite some time. Do you think Quintus is the ONLY one who has ever wanted to bring back the so called good old days? His kind has always existed in some form or another since the infancy of the republic. Sometimes there were even whole groups of his type. The difference is, there was never any incentive for the rest of the population to actually listen to them before. There was never a living god on their side defending everyone from vicious foreign attacks like those of the orcs, let alone scaring the hell out of everyone by his mere presence.” “I’m not a god.” “For all intents and purposes you might as well be. The rumors alone are enough to cause most to think you are, but even without such rumors, the facts are still enough to impress what you would call the masses. Quintus isn’t the only one who has access to old Empire history at the Mol Museum. You were the right hand man of a supposedly near omnipotent emperor, you survived the cataclysm that destroyed the old empire, you’re certainly the most skilled warrior that anyone has ever seen and you command the use of magic, which is an incredibly rare thing nowadays. Other than the few exceptional svelk in Lenay, wizards just don’t exist anymore let alone any of your power. I doubt with even all the magic trinkets Quintus has dug up, he’ll be able to protect himself when you finally decide to kill him.” Granted you haven’t given that possibility much serious thought, Batalimus is probably right about that outcome. “While all this is very interesting, you’ve still failed to make your case and you’re beginning to waste my time.” You say. “Yes, forgive me. I’m used to droning on in the senate, I forget that someone like you would rather get right to the point. Right then, here it is, the Republic is better in the long term for the people than your Empire.” You’re silent. “I certainly hope that isn’t your only argument Batalimus.” “No, but it should be the only one that matters. Even if you succeed in all your endeavors, you have to know that this revived Empire isn’t going to last. At best it’ll last a century after your own death and given that you’re constantly walking in its shadow who knows how quick that might come.” “Choose your next words carefully, one could perceive that as a threat.” “A threat? No. Poorly worded, I’ll agree. Mainly because I doubt you’ll actually die violently despite your particular lifestyle. I’d almost be willing to wager that you’ll die an old man in your sleep. A great irony I suppose. Anyway, the point still remains, you have to know that your Empire will not last long after your death, it didn’t even last long during your life.” “It only fell because of…” you nearly say because of your actions, but you stop yourself. “Because of what?” Batalimus asks. “Because of the cataclysm. It would’ve still been standing today if that hadn’t been the case.” “You’re guessing. Even if the cataclysm hadn’t occurred it would’ve been something else. Despite the fact that you belonged to a repressive system, I do know that in your way you served the concept of the greater good. You believe that you’re actually helping the people by keeping them in line. And maybe you even are to a certain extent, but it’s at the cost of liberty and freedom and that is an anathema to me. I’m watching all of what was built being slowly destroyed before my eyes. We as a people came out from the chaos of cataclysm and eventually found a better way to live. One that didn’t submit to the whims of a single ruler or is at the mercy of a tyrant. No, it wasn’t a perfect system, but we were always working to fix the problems for the people and they were happy. I don’t see any joy when I look at people nowadays; all I see is fear, paranoia and suspicion. Can’t you see that all you’re doing is throwing the people to a backwards age and ultimately it will do nobody any good?” “Good thing I’m not trying to please you then and I’d argue that I’ve already fixed a few of the major problems with the recent changes. For one, crime is down and you’re no longer a potential doormat if anyone stronger should suddenly appear. Even the pirate attacks are much lower now.” You answer. “Yes, military strength the backbone of all proper dictators. Let me guess, after this place is completely under your thumb your next step will be to send it forth and conquer land right? How are you going to do that for the Qualan Badlands? You going to force thousands of people to settle on inhospitable land where it’s near impossible to farm? And how do your orc friends figure into all this? I know that you probably have some sort of conspiracy going on with them, because they never attacked us like they have been recently. You going to somehow force the Nalin citizens with their newfound xenophobia to live with them or are you going to just commit genocide on the orcs and chalk them up to expendable losses? Then what after? You going to waste countless lives conquering the six cities of Arat? The Usksha Emirates? The Redcap Kingdom? Where is it going to end? Tell me, what do you personally hope to gain by re-establishing an empire? A need for familiarity? A simple power grab? Is it all because of an outdated sense of duty? Whatever the reason, none of them are really good ones for what you’re doing. Your time was the PAST and you can’t recapture what you lost. Your Empire as you knew it is long dead because all things eventually end. All of this, what you’re doing is proof that you just can’t accept that fact.” You’ve heard enough. “Funny that you said that Bata, because I’d say that it’s the opposite.” “What?” “You. Your republic is dying and this desperate attempt to try to convince me to not continue my actions is proof that YOU can’t accept that all things eventually end.” “I know somewhere within you that you can see my side of this! I mean I won’t deny that your presence hasn’t been positive for the country in some ways. You could still have a place here in the Republic. You have so much power. Power that could be used to help people in a positive way! Wouldn’t you rather be known as a loved hero rather than a figure of fear?” Batalimus exclaims. “I’ve known several heroes in the past. Some of them fellow Eternals and all of them were figures of fear. Look, I’ve already pointed out the weakness of your inferior system and you’ve failed to convince me otherwise. Doesn’t matter if I do or don’t see your side of things. Whatever motivations you think I’m doing this for don’t matter. I’m fairly certain whatever other arguments you may have aren’t going to convince me either, so this has just been a waste of both of our time.” It takes a moment for Batalimus to gather his thoughts. “I had hoped and perhaps naively thought that you were a reasonable man, but I was wrong. Apparently I did bring you here to kill me. Maybe not in the physical sense, but I see now that there will be no stopping what is to come. It’s a bitter thing seeing what you love the most die before your eyes.” “Join the club Bata. And I’m not talking about the Empire.” You answer and take that as your cue to leave. You half expect Batalimus to have his guards attack you in some last attempt to save his republic, but he just sits there impotently in defeat. And that’s exactly why his republic is dying. Nobody cares enough about it to fight for it. This man is probably the only one left who does care and he used words as his weapons. Better that he should’ve tried to have you assassinated as soon as you walked in the door. But this isn’t your problem, your problems are elsewhere and after you leave Batalimus’ home, you head back to the Qualan Badlands. A few days later while at your patrol camp, you receive a letter from a messenger. At first you think it’s from Quintus with another request to help him with some task that is too difficult for him, but you’re surprised when you find out it’s from Batalimus. Eternal, By the time you read this, I will be dead. I want to thank you for I believe our little talk finally gave me the courage to just end it all. The funny thing is I had the idea to have Quintus assassinated before I spoke with you thinking that even if I couldn’t kill you, I would at least have taken away your partner on the public relations side of things, making the transition from republic to empire a little more difficult for you. Perhaps you would’ve even gotten so frustrated that you would’ve left. Then I realized I can’t save the republic by destroying it or my ideals. And it wouldn’t have stopped you anyway. The days of the republic are indeed numbered and I’d rather remember it as it was rather than continuing to see its own death throes. It is my time that has passed. Your time is now. Still, I can’t help being an idealist. Perhaps if your Empire can live again, then perhaps one day so will my republic. I can have faith in that as I pass on to the other world. Good luck Eternal in your pursuit of war and conquest, though I should like to think that maybe my words still got through to you a little bit. That maybe you will realize that the people are important and not just resources to be used on a battlefield or wherever else. That a government can exist that doesn’t require repressive domestic methods or the subjugation of foreign lands. But then as I said, I am an idealist. Batalimus Ventis After reading the letter you toss it in the fire. One of the soldiers asks you if it’s another order from Quintus. “No, just news that another obstacle is no longer an issue.” You remark. A few days pass and you have been thinking about Batalimus’ words a lot more since there isn’t much going on in the way of action in camp. While he ended up agreeing with you that the republic is coming to an end no matter what, you’re still struggling with the idea that what is going to replace it, since it won’t truly be the Empire as you knew it. Ol’ Batty was right even you did change his mind. Your time is STILL the past. You’ve had five years to get “used” to the changes and while you have and are even thriving, you’re never going to feel comfortable. Even if you kill Quintus and seize power and everything goes well with that, you still have to go through the process of reconquering everything again. Something you really shouldn’t have to do. You should’ve had a your “birthright” over five hundred years ago. Now you feel like you’re having to play catch up for a much lesser prize. Most of the old lands are indeed ruined to a degree that you can’t imagine anyone wanting to live there even if you did conquer it. Pushing people into doing so is libel to cause a revolt at worst or just flat out attrition at best…ugh…shit you don’t want to even ponder yet. And what’s the alternative? Not killing Quintus and serving as his loyal right hand goon? Continuing to watch that fool take ALL the credit for stuff you will no doubt have a hand in? No, you did that already and at least with the Emperor you didn’t have to put up with any sort of dysfunctional family every time you visited him. You think back to when you spent time in the museum with Jennifer talking about that past. That’s still the happiest you’ve been since you woke up. You even wonder if you shouldn’t just abandon all these desires and ambitions. What has it really gotten you in the scheme of things? You made the big gamble the first time and it didn’t work out maybe that was a sign. You wonder if you shouldn’t just settle down with Jennifer and try to live a normal life. > You dismiss such thoughts This is silly, here you are with the Empire so close to resurrection and you’re sitting here wondering if it’s all worth it. Of course it’s worth it! It’s what your whole life has been about and it doesn’t matter what time period it is. Whether you’re ruling it, or someone else is, it doesn’t matter. The Empire must live on. If you just give up now, then what was the point of any of it? And as for Jennifer, you probably should just put an end to that disaster waiting to happen as soon as you can. She’s a nice girl and everything, but she’s not Alison and she never will be. Not to mention with you by her side she’s likely to wind up dead just like Alison. You have no doubt that you’ll eventually acquire some powerful enemies looking to take advantage of any possible weakness you might have. You return to your duties without another thought. After about a couple of weeks of your regular rounds in Quala, you decide its time to go visit Trog about your arrangement and how it needs to be altered. With Batalimus’ suicide, Quintus’ larger influence and the army now stronger than it ever has been, you don’t really need orcs as a terror distraction anymore, especially if you want to incorporate them into this new Empire one day. Of course that plan may still fail, but your current deal is a deal and you and Trog have dealt straight with each other so far. You travel the Flogger tribe’s territory and just like last time, Trog was already expecting your visit. “So once again the Eternal visits Trog. Is our arrangement going as planned?” “Yes, but that’s why I’m here. We’ve gotten what we need from the war. You no longer have to play any role in it, that is stirring up the other orc tribes.” “Trog see. Very well we did have an agreement and the Floggers have benefitted greatly from this arrangement, so it is done for now. However, Trog cannot promise that other minor tribes will not still attack. Can only promise that Floggers will no longer play any part in such attacks.” “That’s fine, probably for the best that we still get a few attacks. Well that was all I had to say, I’ll see you around…” You’re about to leave, but Trog speaks up. “Are you not also here about your people that went up to explore Rask?” Trog asks. “No. What people?” “Trog surprised that you did not know. Two weeks ago a group came here attempting to seek passage through Flogger territory. They were lead by a woman with black hair. Trog assumed you knew about this because the woman certainly knew enough about our arrangement to attempt such a thing in the first place.” “Wait, was this woman’s name Jennifer Mol?” “Trog believe that it was. Said she was trying to explore Rask for some warrior’s guild or something. Even Trog not sure if it exists, just heard the rumors at times.” “So did you let her through?” “No. She refused to pay the toll which was to leave a couple of her people here for good will.” “So she went back home then.” “No. She said she’d go around, but then she attempted to sneak through our territory at a weakly guarded area during the night instead.” You almost don’t want to hear what is going to come next. “Trog see that this woman is someone important to you? If it helps, Floggers did not kill her. She managed to hide and escape before we could. Floggers did however capture and kill some of her crew though. Floggers cannot just have people coming through territory without permission. Cannot show weakness. Trog hopes you understand this. Trog even had guards that were supposed to be watching that area killed for their lack of attention.” Strangely enough you do understand. You can’t really be angry at Trog and the rest of his tribe for being territorial. It was actually pretty civilized of them to offer a toll option in the first place. Really you can’t believe Jennifer would be so foolhardy to attempt something like this, but then she has been braving the dangers of Quala long before you even showed up, so maybe this isn’t too out of character for her, especially when she’s got her mind set on an expedition. “So…do you know where she went?” “North, past Flogger territory. That was two weeks ago though, Trog doubts that she still alive. Rask is very harsh, even more than Quala, also the dreaded wendigo live there. She has not tried to sneak back through Flogger territory and Flogger’s would know because we’ve increased the guards since her break through.” Part of you almost wants to go try to find her; despite the fact you just recently believed that the two of you shouldn’t attempts any sort of relationship. Now you start to wonder if you could’ve prevented all this if you HAD gone to see her two weeks ago. You resist the urge though. For one thing, it’s been two weeks. Any way of tracking her is going to be poor at best given all the snowstorms Rask endures. Second, her group isn’t the most battle ready. They’re going to mostly consist of scholar types that can’t fight worth shit. While she probably took a few soldiers with her, even they’re going to be fucked when they encounter something like a wendigo or even a giant. She’s dead and that’s it. Just eliminates the need for you to worry about one more decision. It doesn’t put you in the best of moods though. It’s that mood that has you return to Nalin and the capital where you see Quintus. “Good, I’m glad you’re back, we need to…” Quintus begins to say when you come through the front door of his house and then he notices the fresh blood on your sword and his guards nowhere to be seen. His eyes widen when you raise your hand up to cast a lightning bolt to his face. You find however that the spell fails to work on him and one of his rings glows brightly. “I figured one of those rings protected you from magic. Pity, I was trying to give you a quick and less painful death.” You say and advance upon him with your sword in hand. “No! What’re you doing?! We’re on the same side! We were going to revive the Empire!” Quintus exclaims backing up on the stairway and attempts to rub one of his rings. You aren’t exactly sure what he’s attempting to do, but you’re not going to let him do it. You making a lunging rush at him and he nearly disappears before you, but you’ve already stuck him like a pig. His brief attempt at invisibility fades as his dying face stares at you. “Wh…why? I…helped…I…was going…to be…emperor…” “Plans change.” you say and throw Quintus over the stair railing where his body falls to the floor in a bloody heap. Afterwards you take care of Quintus’ family. As dysfunctional as they all are, the last thing you need is for any of them to attempt revenge for whatever reason. The day after, you gather as many soldiers as you can, march into the senate and officially dissolve it in a very violent way. Every senator is killed and the floors of the senate hall run red with blood that day. Most beg for mercy, but you’re not in a mercy-giving mood. A few days later and it’s official. You make your announcement that the Republic is dead and that the Empire now lives again. The general public doesn’t know quite what to make of everything. You’re sure that there will be some sort of misguided rebellion, but with the military behind you’re confident that you won’t have too much trouble. Year 542 You’re so damn tired you don’t even know when the last time you had any proper sleep. It’s just been one rebellion after another and ongoing strife. You haven’t even had thoughts of expansion mainly because you’ve been attempting to maintain order on what you do have. You have attempted to recreate a secret police in a similar style of the Emperor’s Eyes, but efforts haven’t proved too successful mainly because you’re too busy using the military to keep direct order. It isn’t that the people don’t fear you, it’s that they hate you more than they fear. Even after you’ve destroyed entire towns that have dared defy you, you still get pockets of resistance running off into the wilderness to cause ongoing problems. Your methods in the beginning months were probably too harsh in retrospect, but your mind wasn’t in the best place then due to Jennifer’s death, which you took a little harder than you imagined you would. Killing everyone in the senate certainly didn’t help as perhaps some of those experienced fools might’ve still been useful in swaying public opinion and dealing with the more mundane issues of running the government. Combine this with the fact that the idea of things like “liberty” still lingered within the people, your brutal actions only proved to them what happens when a single tyrant takes power. Instead of cowing them into submission, you ended up lighting a fire of freedom that you still haven’t put out yet and at this point you wonder if you ever will. Even portions of your military have turned against you, if not outright treason then desertion. Some have fled to find work within the six cities of Arat or even joined up with the pirate groups in Delerg. Between the steady attrition of loyal soldiers, the ongoing defiance of the people, external threats like the Flogger tribe hearing of your struggles and taking advantage of your lightly defended outposts in Quala (And certainly have no intention of joining your Empire now) you are pushed to the brink and beyond. You decide if the fools won’t submit to your rule, you’ll burn the whole damn thing down. You unleash a terrible force of magic the likes most have never seen. You begin destroying entire cities and farmland. It gets to the point where even the most loyal won’t even follow you into destroying their homeland. Your reign of terror eventually comes to an end through a combined effort of the citizens of Nalin. Even your powerful magic can’t stop an entire nation out for your blood and near the end you’re exhausted and half crazed from bloodlust anyway. “Bah, I don’t need magic to do my work!” are your last words before you slaughter a few dozen men and women and are shot with several bullets and stabbed repeatedly by a mob. You might’ve still went down in history as reminder to the people of Nalin of why they should value freedom and never submit to a totalitarian state… But then the Flogger tribe rampaged through the decimated nation, which had practically depleted all of its resources in its war against you. The orcs leave no evidence of an Empire or a Republic ever having existed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Okay, I’ll listen to your pleas, but I doubt that you will be able to convince me of anything.” You remark. “You seem so certain.” Batalimus says. “Of course I am. For one I am not some scared citizen or greedy senator that can be bribed or frightened into submission. I am not an ignorant peasant either that can be merely swayed by lies.” “Never thought you were.” “Second and more importantly, I was not impressed with your republic when I was first dug up and I continue to be unimpressed with it now. It is an inefficient form of government that allows too much power to the people and it doesn’t even do that right, considering all the corruption.” “Oh I wouldn’t say that. Within the last few years the people have been making demands for more security and defense and Quintus has been delivering appeasement to them. It would seem that you’ve managed make the system work for you.” Batalimus says. “And don’t you think that’s proof that your system is broken? If YOU were the ruler of this country you wouldn’t be in the situation you are now. You’d be able to have Quintus executed along with everyone that didn’t fall in line.” “You may be right.” “Of course I’m right, because the masses are by and large weak-willed fools that actually desire a strong hand to rule them and do the thinking for them. Honestly I don’t know how your system lasted as long as it did.” “Because it worked or at least it did before you came around.” “So…you’re going to blame me for your system’s weaknesses? Seems to me it should’ve been strong enough to weather the presence of one man.” Batalimus begins laughing. “One man? Yes. It’s done that for quite some time. Do you think Quintus is the ONLY one who has ever wanted to bring back the so called good old days? His kind has always existed in some form or another since the infancy of the republic. Sometimes there were even whole groups of his type. The difference is, there was never any incentive for the rest of the population to actually listen to them before. There was never a living god on their side defending everyone from vicious foreign attacks like those of the orcs, let alone scaring the hell out of everyone by his mere presence.” “I’m not a god.” “For all intents and purposes you might as well be. The rumors alone are enough to cause most to think you are, but even without such rumors, the facts are still enough to impress what you would call the masses. Quintus isn’t the only one who has access to old Empire history at the Mol Museum. You were the right hand man of a supposedly near omnipotent emperor, you survived the cataclysm that destroyed the old empire, you’re certainly the most skilled warrior that anyone has ever seen and you command the use of magic, which is an incredibly rare thing nowadays. Other than the few exceptional svelk in Lenay, wizards just don’t exist anymore let alone any of your power. I doubt with even all the magic trinkets Quintus has dug up, he’ll be able to protect himself when you finally decide to kill him.” Granted you haven’t given that possibility much serious thought, Batalimus is probably right about that outcome. “While all this is very interesting, you’ve still failed to make your case and you’re beginning to waste my time.” You say. “Yes, forgive me. I’m used to droning on in the senate, I forget that someone like you would rather get right to the point. Right then, here it is, the Republic is better in the long term for the people than your Empire.” You’re silent. “I certainly hope that isn’t your only argument Batalimus.” “No, but it should be the only one that matters. Even if you succeed in all your endeavors, you have to know that this revived Empire isn’t going to last. At best it’ll last a century after your own death and given that you’re constantly walking in its shadow who knows how quick that might come.” “Choose your next words carefully, one could perceive that as a threat.” “A threat? No. Poorly worded, I’ll agree. Mainly because I doubt you’ll actually die violently despite your particular lifestyle. I’d almost be willing to wager that you’ll die an old man in your sleep. A great irony I suppose. Anyway, the point still remains, you have to know that your Empire will not last long after your death, it didn’t even last long during your life.” “It only fell because of…” you nearly say because of your actions, but you stop yourself. “Because of what?” Batalimus asks. “Because of the cataclysm. It would’ve still been standing today if that hadn’t been the case.” “You’re guessing. Even if the cataclysm hadn’t occurred it would’ve been something else. Despite the fact that you belonged to a repressive system, I do know that in your way you served the concept of the greater good. You believe that you’re actually helping the people by keeping them in line. And maybe you even are to a certain extent, but it’s at the cost of liberty and freedom and that is an anathema to me. I’m watching all of what was built being slowly destroyed before my eyes. We as a people came out from the chaos of cataclysm and eventually found a better way to live. One that didn’t submit to the whims of a single ruler or is at the mercy of a tyrant. No, it wasn’t a perfect system, but we were always working to fix the problems for the people and they were happy. I don’t see any joy when I look at people nowadays; all I see is fear, paranoia and suspicion. Can’t you see that all you’re doing is throwing the people to a backwards age and ultimately it will do nobody any good?” “Good thing I’m not trying to please you then and I’d argue that I’ve already fixed a few of the major problems with the recent changes. For one, crime is down and you’re no longer a potential doormat if anyone stronger should suddenly appear. Even the pirate attacks are much lower now.” You answer. “Yes, military strength the backbone of all proper dictators. Let me guess, after this place is completely under your thumb your next step will be to send it forth and conquer land right? How are you going to do that for the Qualan Badlands? You going to force thousands of people to settle on inhospitable land where it’s near impossible to farm? And how do your orc friends figure into all this? I know that you probably have some sort of conspiracy going on with them, because they never attacked us like they have been recently. You going to somehow force the Nalin citizens with their newfound xenophobia to live with them or are you going to just commit genocide on the orcs and chalk them up to expendable losses? Then what after? You going to waste countless lives conquering the six cities of Arat? The Usksha Emirates? The Redcap Kingdom? Where is it going to end? Tell me, what do you personally hope to gain by re-establishing an empire? A need for familiarity? A simple power grab? Is it all because of an outdated sense of duty? Whatever the reason, none of them are really good ones for what you’re doing. Your time was the PAST and you can’t recapture what you lost. Your Empire as you knew it is long dead because all things eventually end. All of this, what you’re doing is proof that you just can’t accept that fact.” You’ve heard enough. “Funny that you said that Bata, because I’d say that it’s the opposite.” “What?” “You. Your republic is dying and this desperate attempt to try to convince me to not continue my actions is proof that YOU can’t accept that all things eventually end.” “I know somewhere within you that you can see my side of this! I mean I won’t deny that your presence hasn’t been positive for the country in some ways. You could still have a place here in the Republic. You have so much power. Power that could be used to help people in a positive way! Wouldn’t you rather be known as a loved hero rather than a figure of fear?” Batalimus exclaims. “I’ve known several heroes in the past. Some of them fellow Eternals and all of them were figures of fear. Look, I’ve already pointed out the weakness of your inferior system and you’ve failed to convince me otherwise. Doesn’t matter if I do or don’t see your side of things. Whatever motivations you think I’m doing this for don’t matter. I’m fairly certain whatever other arguments you may have aren’t going to convince me either, so this has just been a waste of both of our time.” It takes a moment for Batalimus to gather his thoughts. “I had hoped and perhaps naively thought that you were a reasonable man, but I was wrong. Apparently I did bring you here to kill me. Maybe not in the physical sense, but I see now that there will be no stopping what is to come. It’s a bitter thing seeing what you love the most die before your eyes.” “Join the club Bata. And I’m not talking about the Empire.” You answer and take that as your cue to leave. You half expect Batalimus to have his guards attack you in some last attempt to save his republic, but he just sits there impotently in defeat. And that’s exactly why his republic is dying. Nobody cares enough about it to fight for it. This man is probably the only one left who does care and he used words as his weapons. Better that he should’ve tried to have you assassinated as soon as you walked in the door. But this isn’t your problem, your problems are elsewhere and after you leave Batalimus’ home, you head back to the Qualan Badlands. A few days later while at your patrol camp, you receive a letter from a messenger. At first you think it’s from Quintus with another request to help him with some task that is too difficult for him, but you’re surprised when you find out it’s from Batalimus. Eternal, By the time you read this, I will be dead. I want to thank you for I believe our little talk finally gave me the courage to just end it all. The funny thing is I had the idea to have Quintus assassinated before I spoke with you thinking that even if I couldn’t kill you, I would at least have taken away your partner on the public relations side of things, making the transition from republic to empire a little more difficult for you. Perhaps you would’ve even gotten so frustrated that you would’ve left. Then I realized I can’t save the republic by destroying it or my ideals. And it wouldn’t have stopped you anyway. The days of the republic are indeed numbered and I’d rather remember it as it was rather than continuing to see its own death throes. It is my time that has passed. Your time is now. Still, I can’t help being an idealist. Perhaps if your Empire can live again, then perhaps one day so will my republic. I can have faith in that as I pass on to the other world. Good luck Eternal in your pursuit of war and conquest, though I should like to think that maybe my words still got through to you a little bit. That maybe you will realize that the people are important and not just resources to be used on a battlefield or wherever else. That a government can exist that doesn’t require repressive domestic methods or the subjugation of foreign lands. But then as I said, I am an idealist. Batalimus Ventis After reading the letter you toss it in the fire. One of the soldiers asks you if it’s another order from Quintus. “No, just news that another obstacle is no longer an issue.” You remark. A few days pass and you have been thinking about Batalimus’ words a lot more since there isn’t much going on in the way of action in camp. While he ended up agreeing with you that the republic is coming to an end no matter what, you’re still struggling with the idea that what is going to replace it, since it won’t truly be the Empire as you knew it. Ol’ Batty was right even you did change his mind. Your time is STILL the past. You’ve had five years to get “used” to the changes and while you have and are even thriving, you’re never going to feel comfortable. Even if you kill Quintus and seize power and everything goes well with that, you still have to go through the process of reconquering everything again. Something you really shouldn’t have to do. You should’ve had a your “birthright” over five hundred years ago. Now you feel like you’re having to play catch up for a much lesser prize. Most of the old lands are indeed ruined to a degree that you can’t imagine anyone wanting to live there even if you did conquer it. Pushing people into doing so is libel to cause a revolt at worst or just flat out attrition at best…ugh…shit you don’t want to even ponder yet. And what’s the alternative? Not killing Quintus and serving as his loyal right hand goon? Continuing to watch that fool take ALL the credit for stuff you will no doubt have a hand in? No, you did that already and at least with the Emperor you didn’t have to put up with any sort of dysfunctional family every time you visited him. You think back to when you spent time in the museum with Jennifer talking about that past. That’s still the happiest you’ve been since you woke up. You even wonder if you shouldn’t just abandon all these desires and ambitions. What has it really gotten you in the scheme of things? You made the big gamble the first time and it didn’t work out maybe that was a sign. You wonder if you shouldn’t just settle down with Jennifer and try to live a normal life. > You go to Jennifer You may have lost your mind thinking that you can even attempt living a normal life, but then you’re the same guy who actually listened to a twisted abusive svelk bitch that convinced you it was a good idea to attack the Emperor too. And what’s this decision compare to something like that? You tell your second to take command of the camp, when he asks for how long, you just tell him until further notice. He’s at a loss of how to respond as you leave. When you arrive back at the museum, you find that Calvin, Jennifer and several others are packing up a lot of equipment. “Hey, what’re you doing here?” Jennifer asks. “I had to talk to you…what’s all this?” “Another expedition! After all these years, Quintus is funding another one.” “What? He’s sending you to dig around in Quala again?” “No, we’re going to Rask!” Jennifer says excitedly. “Rask!?” “Yes! Remember when I mentioned there were rumors of a warrior’s guild up there? Well over the years I’ve been studying old maps and the newer charts created by the few adventurers that came back alive from there and I think I’ve managed to pin point the location. See?” Jennifer suddenly unfolds a map and points to a circled spot on it. You know a lot of time has passed, but if your knowledge of Rask geography is still remotely relevant at all, that looks like where Fort Defiance would’ve been located. “That looks like where Fort Defiance was located.” You remark. “There was a fort there?” Jennifer says. “Yeah, it was the furthest military outpost in the north of the Empire, well save for one other, but that was more like a small watchtower.” You answer. “I didn’t know you served in Rask.” “I didn’t actually, but I did carry out one personal favor there for a fellow Eternal, the one manning that watch tower I just mentioned actually.” “Oh. Well still, this would be one of those times I wish you could come with us. Your knowledge of the area even if it is out of date would probably be useful.” “Believe me, I’m tempted to. I can’t believe Quintus is just sending you out there like this. The dangerous journey TO Rask is bad enough, but the weather in Rask is just as treacherous as the inhabitants and I can only imagine after centuries without any order there its probably only gotten worse since.” “Well he probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t went to him about the information I found. Plus he was in a good mood about senator’s Batalimus’ recent suicide. Did you hear about that?” “Uh, yeah another lucky break for our side, look I better go with you.” You say. “But don’t you have orcs to slay or defending our borders or…” “All of that can be done without me, I think the army is competent enough now that I don’t need to hold their hands and if they still do then you’re REALLY going to need me to come with you because that means the soldiers you are taking won’t be worth shit in a fight. In fact if you even want to get to Rask, you’re going to need me to negotiate with the Flogger tribe. Not to mention there’s much worse things in Rask than ogres and giants.” “What about Quintus? Don’t you have to report this to him?” “Fuck Quintus, he’s not my master. He could stand without me holding his hand every five minutes too. Nobody tells me what to do.” Jennifer takes a pause from your remark, before continuing. “Well, alright then, as long as you don’t think it’s going to cause any problems I’d be very happy for you to join us. So what was it that you wanted to talk to me about?” “Huh? Oh…that. Uh, nevermind now.” “Oh come on, you obviously had something pretty important if you left your post in Quala to tell me. This expedition to Rask business sort of distracted you from your original intent of coming here in the first place, but nevertheless you haven’t really abandoned your previous thoughts of settling down with Jennifer so you take her to one side and tell her. Her reaction is mixed though not one of any negativity. “Sounds like you’ve given this some thought and this decision couldn’t have just been on a whim for you.” Jennifer says. “It wasn’t, that’s why I had to see you. I mean I know there’s something between us and why shouldn’t I focus on that?” you reply. “What about reviving the Empire?” “Yeah, originally after I woke up and got a bit more of my bearings, the concept of doing that did sound appealing and move me into the direction I’ve been currently going in, but that’s been my whole life! I mean my original purpose is gone. MY Empire is gone. Why shouldn’t I try something else? What could it hurt?” “Nothing I suppose, but have you thought about what else you would do with your time? I mean no offense, but battle and war are pretty much your best skills.” “Yes, I know. I wasn’t talking about abandoning such things completely though, I mean I could go with you on expeditions and guard your museum.” “Guard the museum?!” Jennifer says followed by laughter. “What’s so funny?” “The idea that we’d need a warrior mage to guard my father’s museum is hilarious to me. I think the word overkill comes to mind. While the expedition protection would no doubt be of help, it isn’t like that’s what we do all the time as you well know. We’re in the museum most of the time and you’d get bored. Very bored. Besides, it isn’t like we get people trying to steal anything on a regular basis. The last time was ten years ago and the thief in question only managed to grab the tooth of an old Usksha sand worm before he was apprehended.” “Well I could talk about the old Empire when people come through or something…” “So you want to be part of the tour? Yeah, I don’t see that working in the long term either. Look I think you’re just feeling home sick or time sick or something again. Why don’t you think about this decision more after our trip to Rask, and if you still feel the same way when we come back, we can make arrangements for your future plans I suppose.” You agree to Jennifer’s proposal since she does have some good points and now you’re a little less worried about your future so much as you’re more concerned with this expedition. When Calvin hears that you’re accompanying the expedition he looks relieved. He mentions that he actually tried to talk his daughter out of going on this thing, but she wouldn’t be swayed so he was going to go with her knowing that he’d probably die in the process. Since you’re going now, he’s going to stay at the museum stating that he’s completely confident that she’ll come back alive now. Along the way to Rask you warn everyone about the wendigo. Other than Jennifer nobody else seems to know anything about them and she’s only heard stories. Apparently they’re just “myths” nowadays, but you assure everyone that they’re very real and if anyone begins to feel like an unnatural force trying to gain control over their mind, they need to see you immediately and fight the mental attack as if they’re life depended on it because it does. This information probably makes everyone a bit more paranoid and on edge, but quite frankly they should be. Eventually you get to the Flogger tribe territory, which seems to have moved further south from when you last remember. Apparently Trog has indeed been taking advantage of uniting the other tribes under his banner. The decor hasn’t changed though; they’re still favoring the hundreds of dead bodies stretched across various wooden frames with their backs completely flayed of all skin to mark their turf. Naturally everyone (especially the soldiers) are expecting a fight given that you’re technically at war with the orcs in general, but you tell them you can handle this and tell them to stay put. “Oy! Youz that Ternal man!” an orc shouts from the crude watchtower. Not that you’re an expert, but this orc is familiar, if only because of his great fat belly. “Fatbelly wasn’t it? Where’s your comrade?” It takes awhile for Fatbelly to process this question at first, but he eventually he knows who you’re talking about. “Oh, youz must mean Bilge. He dead. Idjit got ‘imself killed by gettin’ into scrap wit an ogre. ‘Ead got popped off an lived for awhile. Won bet on how long! Hah! Anywayz Trog spectin’ you again. ‘Ead on in.” “He knew I was coming?” “Geez, maybe youz powerful, but yooz stooped as Bilge. Trog Shaman! He haz vishuns member?” “Hmm, how could I forget.” You say ignoring the rest of Fatbelly’s insult and heading past the dead bodies. Trog isn’t far ahead.” “So once again the Eternal visits Trog. And once again Trog see that you come, but not know the reason. Is our arrangement going as planned?” “Yes, in fact while I’m here I might as well address that too. We’ve gotten what we need from the war. You no longer have to play any role in it, that is stirring up the other orc tribes.” “Trog see. Very well we did have an agreement and the Floggers have benefitted greatly from this arrangement, so it is done for now. However, Trog cannot promise that other minor tribes will not still attack. Can only promise that Floggers will no longer play any part in such attacks.” “That’s fine, probably for the best that we still get a few attacks. The other reason that brings me here, is that I and my group need to get through to Rask.” “Trog see. Can you not just go around us?” “From what I can tell Trog, that isn’t even possible anymore. Your territory was probably blocking the easiest route to Rask to begin with, now it looks like you’re blocking it entirely. We have to go through your territory.” Trog doesn’t look enthused by your suggestion, but ponders it a bit. “Very well, but you cannot just pass for free. Need to extract some sort of payment or security of goodwill.” “We aren’t really carrying any valuables Trog.” “Do not want things. Want people. Give us two. One for your passage through and one for the return trip.” “Okay…so what are you going to do with them?” “Nothing. Just keep here so you do not pull any tricks.” “What tricks would I play, I’ve always dealt straight with you. And you do realize that if I was going to play any sort of trick, I’d be more than willing sacrifice whoever I did leave behind and do it anyway?” “Hmm, true. But still, cannot just let you pass for free. Tribe would perceive as weakness. Those are the terms. More than fair.” Trog IS being more than fair. He’s downright civilized compared to most humans you’ve known. Under normal circumstances you’d do it without a blink, but you’re fairly certain the group is going to be VERY resistant to this idea and you can’t say you’d blame them. It’s this or just pushing your way through. > You make the deal “Alright, you’ll have your two Trog, I need to go back and speak with my people about which two though.” Trog nods and you return to the group to explain the situation, it goes about as well as you expected. “You can’t expect us to stay with these savages! They’ll kill us!” one of the workers exclaims. “We’re at war with these monsters!” a soldier remarks. “I’d have to agree that leaving anyone here is tantamount to leaving them to die.” Jennifer adds. “Look, this is the ONLY way we’re getting into Rask without a fight. And I guarantee we’re in no position to be fighting hundreds of orcs.” You remark and then point at the soldiers in the group. “Now you lot are soldiers which technically puts you under my command and if I order any of you to stay you better damn well do it or else you’re going to have me to deal with and I assure you if that happens you’d rather have orcs.” “That being said, I’d rather NOT leave any soldiers behind, because we’re going to need every competent fighter we can get when we do get in Rask.” You say and then point to the civvies in the group. “You lot on the other hand, I can afford to leave any one of you behind.” This remark is met with more protest and exclamations of how which one of them is a valuable member of the group. You’re unimpressed and simply say if there’s any digging or carrying to be done, anyone can do that and if its for some intellectual purpose, Jennifer is still going to be the most knowledgeable one on whatever it is you do find in Rask, so again the rest are superfluous. This statement is met with more protests until Jennifer suddenly tells them all to shut up. “I don’t like this, but he’s right. I’ll take volunteers first.” Jennifer remarks. Predictably more begging, protests and threats follow, which Jennifer addresses that it’s either stay with the orcs or try to head back to Nalin without any escort protection. Eventually one brave soul volunteers, muttering that if he’s lucky maybe they won’t eat him and he can learn more about their culture. The second one loses a lot draw. She’s not happy about her bad luck and the situation, but resigns herself to her fate. “I’m glad you backed me up.” You say. “I didn’t really want to and I’m sure I’m going to get a lot of backlash from my workers, but the potential for this discovery is too important and I trust you. I just hope you trust this orc as much.” Jennifer remarks. “I don’t, but he’s been reliable on matters much greater than this one. The worst that could happen is that he plans on killing us on the return trip when we’re exhausted from the dangers of Rask, but we’ll deal with that when the time comes.” You answer. “Well I guess this is all worth it then.” After the two “sacrificial lambs” are presented to Trog, he promises once again that no harm will come to them and the rest of you cautiously pass through Flogger territory, which actually overlaps partially into Rask. In fact you pass by an area where you believe Fort Destiny once stood. There’s no evidence of it anymore though, it’s just wilderness now. You wonder if was destroyed during the cataclysm or if it was time that ultimately took it over. Eventually you clear Flogger territory and you’re in the true wilderness of Rask. You, Jennifer and a couple of others go over the maps deciding which way would be the best. Using your memory, you point out that despite the long passage of time, there are still evidence of old Empire roads and that you should use those as a basic guide to head north. If you’re lucky, it may very well take you all the way to Fort Defiance, or at least where the fort used to stand. The journey north is as miserable as you remember when you first came to this unforgiving land. If anything it seems worse now that it’s no longer tamed by the Empire. Still, you travel quite a distance before you catch sight of figures moving about in the surrounding forests. “Stop. We’re being watched and we’re going to be attacked soon. In fact, we’re probably surrounded, I suggest everyone prepare themselves.” You say. The group forms a protective circle as best they can while you try to keep an eye on all the possible directions of attack. Eventually a few orcs and ogres emerge from the trees. However, something doesn’t look quite right about them. They’re savage looking like you’d expect, but even for their kind they’re moving a fashion that isn’t typical. It’s more like how an animal would move. They don’t make any usual taunts or threats either, but you do hear some loud guttural growling sounds. It probably isn’t surprising that some of the soldiers decide they aren’t going to wait around to be attacked and go ahead and fire. Two or three of the attackers are wounded, but then the rest make a horrible wailing sound which causes everyone to clutch their ears in pain. Then they move in for the attack, but it’s more like a loping gait rather than running. Ogres don’t typically run either… “Oh shit, WENDIGOS!” you shout and start casting your mind shield spell, but before you can complete it a possessed orc is already upon you. “Meat!” the orc hisses with its fang filled mouth right in front of your face. You feel a claw dig through your armor and puncture your skin just before you stab the monster through the neck with your dagger. Blood spurts all over you before manage to get the thing off of you and stomp it repeatedly in the throat, crushing it completely. You then hear a voice in your mind. “Sssssss! I sense power…great power…you’re an Eye! Hated Eye! Eyes! Away! Away my fellows! Before this they destroy us all!” the voice exclaims. Before you know it, the possessed orcs and ogres cease their attack and begin backing away. Everyone is a bit confused and quite frankly you are too. “Why’d they stop attacking?” Jennifer asks. “Because we were kicking their asses! Hah! So much for the dreaded wendigos!” a soldier remarks, several of the other soldiers cheer in agreement and press forward to attack the retreating wendigos. You aren’t exactly sure what’s going on, but apparently this wendigo knows you have the capability to destroy it. However, nobody else here can and if the wendigos figure that out, you’re going to be in trouble when the spirits are released from their dead hosts. You’re not about to give away the fact that everyone else is defenseless by shouting verbal commands to stop attacking, so the best thing you can do is cast your spell. Which is going to be a brand new experience for you since you’ve never actually cast a mind shield spell over other people before. Ignoring the sounds of gunshots and shouting around you, you concentrate on your spell and try to focus it on the group. It takes a lot more energy than you anticipated. Meanwhile you’re getting questions on what you’re doing. “Shut up! All of you! I’m trying to protect our lives and it’s taking all my concentration! Now does anyone hear any voices? And I’m not taking about my own right now. I’m taking about raspy sounding voices going on about giving up or something similar.” This question is followed by the group all-stating that they don’t hear anything like that. You breathe a sigh of relief and while you still can’t sense any wendigo spirits lurking about, you’re not going to take your guard down yet. “Okay, good. Like I said before we got here, if anyone does hear voices let me know immediately. I heard one of them in my head and it thought we were eyes, or they thought I was. It got scared and told the rest to retreat before I destroyed them all.” “An eye? What does that mean?” someone asks. “If I had to guess? They thought I was part of an elite military branch force of the old Empire.” You say. “We’ve only found a bit of information on the Eyes, but I didn’t know they actively hunted wendigos.” Jennifer says. “They didn’t. In fact other than some stealth operations during the Felkan War their primary function was internal security after the shadows were disposed of. They didn’t have any magic abilities to destroy creatures like wendigos.” “Something must’ve changed then.” “I’ll say. The only time I’ve ever heard fear in a wendigo’s voice is just before I banished it. I’m guessing it sensed I had that ability and figured I was an eye, which leads me to believe that this mythical warrior’s guild we’re trying to find must be run by the eyes or decendents of them. Heh. Glad you held something together ol’ friend.” You say with a smile. “What’s that?” Jennifer asks not knowing what you’re thinking about. “Warrick. He was head of the Eyes. A Sightmaster. I can only imagine that if the Eyes did survive to this day, he must’ve had a hand in it somehow. Come on, I’m actually just as anxious as you to find this place now.” After patching up some of the wounded you’re soon on your way again. You hate dispelling the protection, but if you keep it going constantly, you’ll be running out of stamina when you might need it for more physical foes. You just hope that the wendigos continue to believe that you’re all Eyes. As it turns out, the rest of your journey is plagued by horrible weather conditions instead. There’s also debate on which way to go when the remnants of the Empire roads disappear to wilderness and can no longer provide a base guideline of where to travel. Jennifer and most of her workers want to follow the maps, but you’re convinced that you should continue in the direction of where you last remember Fort Defiance to stand. > You follow the maps As much as you hate to go against your instincts, you were only here once and it was over five hundred years ago. Your memory of things isn’t going to be correct due to the changes in the landscape alone. Even if the maps aren’t giving the exact location, they’re at least a more reliable guideline brought back by people who managed to survive this land. “Okay, we’ll use the maps. We’re going to have to endure this weather either way I suppose and we’ll be less likely to get lost.” You remark. You continue your journey using the maps. It turns out to be a good idea, but nothing is stopping the cold and freezing ice storm that hits hard within a couple hours. What remaining horses and other pack animals you had left end up either panicking or outright collapse from the exhaustion. Your group ends up having to dig out a shelter and hunker down for the storm to pass. Food isn’t much of a problem since you just butcher the animals that are dying any way. Fire isn’t either since you can conjure it up. Still, it’s not an ideal situation and others in the group are starting to experience minor frostbite and argue with one another. You tell everyone to shut up and listen when you hear a rumbling sound approaching close by. Some think it’s just the sounds of the storm, but you point out that it must be something else since the ground is vibrating a bit. “Giant! Get the hell up and move!” you exclaim and the group scrambles to run out of the make shift shelter. Some of you even make it out before a large foot crushes it. Now the term giant has never been used lightly, they’re called that for a reason. However, this one is certainly larger than average. In fact, you don’t even think it noticed you when it squashed some of your group. Well it didn’t at first at least, when it feel the gushiness of flattened humans on its foot along with seeing several scattering about the snow, it comes to the conclusion that a giant could only logically come to, namely flatten the rest of you as well. “Spread out! Spread out! He’s going to swing that damn club!” you shout. Meanwhile, the giant successfully crushes a couple of the soldiers with his club and at this point you don’t know where the hell anyone else is because their fear has caused them to run out of your line of sight which is small enough with the ice storm hindering long range viewing. You roll out of the way of a club slam and run up to the giant’s foot and begin hacking at the back tendon. It isn’t easy since the giant’s skin is calloused to the point where it acts like armor. You only manage to cause a superficial wound before He nearly crushes you again. Realizing you aren’t getting anywhere with that approach, you resort to magic and literally give the giant a hot foot, burning the skin enough to cause a roar of pain. The giant starts moving his foot to sooth the injury in the cold snow. You look up and can barely make out the top half of this monster through the storm. You aren’t sure if it’s going to work with the storm being as bad as it is, but you’re going to try anyway. You cast more fire at the giant, not at his foot though, but at his loincloth which is undoubtedly made of some sort of fur. You don’t stop flinging fire until you’re confident that the flames aren’t going out any time soon. Predictably the giant starts beating its own flaming crotch in an effort to stop the burning sensation, bellowing so loudly that you image all of Rask can hear. The giant runs away from the combat area grabbing snow and ice around it and throwing it on the still burning fur loincloth. “Sheesh, that brings a whole new meaning to the term fireballs.” A voice shouts behind you. You turn around and see a figure completely bundled up in snow gear standing with others dressed in a similar manner. Naturally you’re ready for a fight, but the one who spoke holds up his hands. “Hold on there! Are you part of the expedition group? We just bumped into a few of them running from the giant. Said one of you was actually insane enough to fight the damn thing.” “Yes, what have you done with them?!” “Nothing! We were on patrol, got caught in the storm and then we heard all the screaming and came to investigate. Your people are right over this small hill here with some more of us. Normally, we’d just send you all on your way and tell you that you were fools to come to Rask in the first place, but now that we’ve seen you in action, I can’t help but think the Vision Lord would want to meet you.” Vision Lord? “Are you the Eyes?” you ask. “We are from the Order of the Eye and I’m Sightmaster Crowley but if we’re going to talk, I’d prefer it if we’d do it at Fort Everwatch. You and the others can rest up there.” “And if we don’t want to go with you?” “Then you don’t go and you all can return to wherever it is you came from. We’re not holding anyone prisoner, though the lady of your group, a Miss Mol I believe, says you’ve been looking for us. As I said normally we try to keep to ourselves and turn away most visitors, but given that we’re inviting you in with open arms I should think you wouldn’t turn down this opportunity. Besides, I’m fairly certain that none of us here wants to tangle with the guy that just chased away ol’ Snowtop single handedly.” “What, that giant?” “If you hadn’t noticed, he’s not just any giant, if he was, he’d be dead by now. He’s probably the oldest living frost giant that we know of and he’s tougher than a troll steak and almost taller than some of the smaller mountains in this area. Fortunately he seems to only wander about during these bad ice storms that usually no idiot would be caught in, but then here we are.” And here you are. You insist that you want to see Jennifer before going anywhere. Crowley takes you to see her and the few survivors. She’s glad to see you’re alive and hugs you. Her enthusiasm for this trip hasn’t diminished and she definitely wants to go see the Eyes’ home, despite the fact that you all were nearly crushed to death by a giant, though that can’t be said for some of her employees. You’re just glad she’s all right and you’re within reach of your destination. It doesn’t take too long to get to Fort Everwatch. It wasn’t anywhere near Fort Defiance once stood though so its just as well that you didn’t go that way. Everwatch isn’t particularly large or fancy, but it does look like it was built to stand the test of time. The interior is just as utilitarian Other than symbols of an eye adorning various parts of the fort, it actually reminds you of an old Empire fort. You can’t help but feel at home here despite only just entering the place. You are brought to a great hall area and Crowley says he’s going to fetch the Vision Lord. In the meantime he’s tells you all to stay here, but feel free to look around. “This is pretty exciting, I hope they’ll let us take something back from this place.” Jennifer says while looking at the various plaques. “Anything’s possible I suppose, but they don’t look like they’re much into luxuries. The only decorations here seem to be dedicated to their fallen like these plaques or those eye symbols…oh wait, they seem to have battle trophies as well, check out that giant’s skull hanging high on the left wall.” You remark still feeling a little wary of things. Eventually Crowley comes back with who you guess to be the Vision Lord. The Vision Lord doesn’t look particularly impressive despite his name though it is certain by the scars on his face he is no stranger to battle. You were expecting him to be a lot older though as it stands he looks about your age…well not counting your five-century nap of course. He stares at you, Jennifer and the rest for a moment and then he points to Jennifer. “I’m guessing you and this lot come from the Nalin Republic.” “How did you know?” Jennifer asks. “Where else would you come from? You’re certainly not from one of the six cities of Arat. They’re too busy with their petty squabbles. Besides, we’ve come across some of your type before wandering up here. A few of them even joined our group rather than head back down.” “You recruited our explorers?!” Jennifer says. “Yes, if they showed promise and desired to join. I’m sure you might even bump into a couple of them in this place assuming you haven’t already. Now you on the other hand…you are very interesting. Your armor looks as if it comes from another time, you can cast magic with ease and I heard you fended off Snowtop all by yourself. That’s a feat so impressive I can’t imagine you are native to the Republic.” the Vision Lord remarks and points to you. “What I find interesting is this place and from what I can tell by your commemorations of the your fallen, you feel keeping history is important. So tell me, did Warrick have this fort built or was it sometime after his death?” you say causing some eyebrows to raise. “You know of Vision Lord Warrick then? Not many outside our order know our founder. How did you come across this information?” “Easy. We were practically siblings. He was an Eternal, just like I am. He wasn’t a Vision Lord back then, just a Sightmaster, though I guess he felt the need to assign himself a higher title. Doesn’t matter. I’m just glad to see another piece of the old Empire still alive, even if it has taken a very different form.” With this response the Vision Lord steps back and the other Eyes now begin whispering amongst themselves. “So, the rumors are true. An Eternal does walk the earth again and it is indeed the one Vision Lord Warrick mentions in his writings. As you might expect we don’t get much news this way and we don’t venture too far from here, let alone Rask. In fact the few recruits we manage to get are probably our biggest source of new information. Tell me, how is it that you live?” You explain the exact situation as vaguely as you did to Jennifer and Quintus. The cataclysm struck suddenly, you were encased in a magic shell, etc. etc. and eventually Jennifer’s crew dug you up. “I see. How unfortunate that you came in contact with the Republic first, but then I suppose it’s better than being stuck in a magic coffin. Still, you’re here now and I believe you will find a better home here.” The Vision Lord remarks. “What?” “I’m inviting you to stay with us. Come now. This Order was founded by an Eternal I’m somewhat familiar with their mindset based on the writings of Vision Lord Warrick. I can only imagine the dull tedium you’ve endured in the Republic. How have you managed to occupy your time?” “Do not presume you know me based on the writings of Warrick. Truth be told, he didn’t exactly create the Eyes, at least not in their original form. The Eyes were originally created by this woman’s great ancestor Jacob Mol.” You say pointing to Jennifer. The Vision Lord nods his head a bit. “Apologies. I did not mean to offend. And if as you say this lady’s ancestor had a hand in creating the Eyes then we’ve been doubly blessed by the presence of her as well. However, I do believe that you were and still are a man of battle and war. And again I can’t imagine those things being in great supply in the Republic. Surely you would enjoy living here instead. You would be great asset in our own war of extermination of the wendigo. We could certainly use the help.” This is a sudden offer and certainly one you weren’t expecting. The strange thing is it isn’t out of the question either. A few days ago you were just going on about to Jennifer about how you were restless in the Republic even with your efforts to help restructure it into a new empire. A glorious undertaking to be sure, but one you’ve had doubts about recently. Now this opportunity is certainly less impressive, but there’s something alluring about its simplicity. All you would have to concern yourself with is the battle. The war. The victories over your enemies in melee combat. You’d even live in a place that’s much comfortable to you. Of course there’s also Jennifer to think about, but while your relationship with her is blooming into something more romantic what future do you have with her really? She’s not even like Alison in that she’s a warrior and can truly connect with you on some level even if she does make the attempts. There’s also the fact that you’ve been worried about her the whole trip. Will you continue to worry about her and allow that to be a weakness to be exploited? If she’s killed will you go through the same emotional ruin you did when Alison was murdered? Do you even want to deal with any of that again? You tell the Vision Lord that you and he are going to have to discuss this all in more detailed before you make a decision. Jennifer looks concerned when you say this, but doesn’t say anything. The Vision Lord says that while you and he talk, the rest of your group can rest up or feel free to explore as there is nothing of major value and he trusts nobody would be foolish enough to steal anything. You speak with the Vision Lord (who reveals his name is Kells) for quite awhile on the current situation of his order as well as the history of this place and Rask in general. He also remarks about how the Eyes are so hated and feared by the wendigo. As you might’ve guessed magic is in play, but only to a minor degree. Over the centuries the Eyes have managed to focus their minds to create shields against wendigo mental attacks along with being able to banish them to oblivion. (Still vulnerable to normal death through wendigo hosts obviously though) After your discussion he tells you that he’ll leave you to your decision, but that he hopes you’ll stay. You then speak with Jennifer about your situation; naturally she wants you to return with her and explains all reasons why. You end up sleeping on the offer and pondering everything some more, but ultimately the decision is up to you. > You stay at Fort Everwatch Since you’ve been dug up, you’ve been trying to make a go of your new life and while it hasn’t been all bad, you feel like ultimately you’re just living a shell of your old life that’s been gone a long time. You don’t belong to this time, even the new “empire” you’re trying to help re-establish isn’t going to be the one you knew. Maybe some things should just stay in the past. If you stayed here at least you’d be doing something you actually felt somewhat connected to. Really the only thing you’re going to possibly miss is Jennifer, but she’s not enough for you to stay and she’ll be better off without you in her life anyway. No point in second guessing your decision. You’re going to stay. You go tell Vision Lord Kells immediately. He’s very happy. “Excellent! Your presence here will be a great asset to the Eyes! Together we’ll wipe out the wendigo completely from this land!” Kells exclaims. “I’m sure. However, I’ve got one more thing to do before I join. I have to explain all this to my companion Jennifer and escort her back to Quala.” “Of course, I understand. Your official ceremony will begin when you return.” You approach Jennifer who is already packed and ready to go, but when she sees your face she already knows what you’ve chosen to do. “No…no, you’re not really staying are you?” she asks. “I’m sorry Jennifer, but I just can’t deal with your time anymore. I don’t know maybe it’s all the complicated politics or the new technology or I just feel constantly out of place, or a combination of several things, but I feel more at home here than I ever did at Nalin.” “But what about the Empire?! You’re helping it live again! How can you leave now?” “It’s not my Empire and it never will be. I believe I have helped Quintus enough in getting the foundations in place if he really wants to go forth with the plan he has. If anything I’m doing him a favor by bowing out now. I probably would’ve only ended up killing him anyway.” “But…but…what about…” “Us? (Sigh) I think you’d be better off with someone…well more your age for one thing, but also someone with similar interests as you. I believe you’re more enamored by the idea of me.” “I’m not some idiot with a school girl crush you know! I have genuine feelings for you!” Jennifer exclaims. “Look, I know and I have feelings for you as well, but it’s just not enough and you’ll be better off in the long run anyway.” Jennifer looks at you with a mixture of sadness, frustration and anger. “…fine. You’ve obviously made up your mind about this. And I know how stubborn your Eternal mind works, so let’s not argue about this any longer. You might be right anyway, but I think this decision of yours sucks and is ultimately selling yourself out of a good future. And I’m not talking about just us. I’m talking about all the work you put into trying to resurrect the Empire and now just walking away from it all. I thought you were a man of greatness, but I see now that you are just a man…just like the rest.” You try to tell Jennifer that you’ll escort her out of Rask, but she tells you she’ll be fine. Seeing that you aren’t going to take no for an answer she reluctantly agrees. Your journey out of Rask is a quiet and uneventful one. If you weren’t already feeling the cold from the weather, you’d most certainly be feeling it from Jennifer who says nothing to you the whole time. When you eventually get to the Flogger tribe borders, you part company with Jennifer and the rest. You tell your soldiers to let command know that you won’t be returning and not to bother to come find you. You try to say goodbye to Jennifer one last time, but she’s already walking towards Quala with her crew. Having nothing else to do, you return to Everwatch to begin your new life. The Eyes have a big ceremony for you and you’re appointed as a Sightmaster immediately due to your vast years of experience and magic. Kells catches you up on all the procedures and a little more history, but for the most part you’re still wondering if you have made the right decision. After a month of slaying creatures and banishing wendigos you get in the swing of things and your thoughts about anything connected to Nalin start to lessen. Within the year, you feel completely at home with only the occasional fleeting thoughts of concerns outside of Rask. Sometimes you half expect someone from Nalin to come, but nobody does. You imagine Quintus is glad to have you conveniently out of his life now (assuming he succeeded with his Empire idea without you) and Jennifer has gotten over you. Just proves that you weren’t really missed or wanted after all and you did make the right decision. At least here you feel genuinely respected and wanted. Years go by and you settle into your routine. It’s a very simple one and in time when Vision Lord Kells dies of natural causes, it’s very evident that you are the one to take up the mantle. Years become decades and Rask continues to remain fairly isolated. You sometimes wonder if Quintus was ever successful and if he’s still emperor or if he failed and Nalin is still a republic. You sometimes also wonder what Jennifer is doing. One time you walked all the way to the Rask borders only to turn back, resisting the sudden urge to revisit that life. This is your life now and you’re going to stick with this one. You do begin to have some concerns about the potential future of the Eyes. You’re essentially an isolated “monk” order dedicated to wiping out dangerous monsters. Attrition through combat is not only taking its toll, but age is as well. A discussion about a potential remedy like say actively trying to go outside Rask to recruit new members is held, but ultimately nothing is done. So ultimately you continue until eventually all that’s left of the order is a few old men and yourself, also of old age by that time. You all go out one day and never come back.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as you hate to go against your instincts, you were only here once and it was over five hundred years ago. Your memory of things isn’t going to be correct due to the changes in the landscape alone. Even if the maps aren’t giving the exact location, they’re at least a more reliable guideline brought back by people who managed to survive this land. “Okay, we’ll use the maps. We’re going to have to endure this weather either way I suppose and we’ll be less likely to get lost.” You remark. You continue your journey using the maps. It turns out to be a good idea, but nothing is stopping the cold and freezing ice storm that hits hard within a couple hours. What remaining horses and other pack animals you had left end up either panicking or outright collapse from the exhaustion. Your group ends up having to dig out a shelter and hunker down for the storm to pass. Food isn’t much of a problem since you just butcher the animals that are dying any way. Fire isn’t either since you can conjure it up. Still, it’s not an ideal situation and others in the group are starting to experience minor frostbite and argue with one another. You tell everyone to shut up and listen when you hear a rumbling sound approaching close by. Some think it’s just the sounds of the storm, but you point out that it must be something else since the ground is vibrating a bit. “Giant! Get the hell up and move!” you exclaim and the group scrambles to run out of the make shift shelter. Some of you even make it out before a large foot crushes it. Now the term giant has never been used lightly, they’re called that for a reason. However, this one is certainly larger than average. In fact, you don’t even think it noticed you when it squashed some of your group. Well it didn’t at first at least, when it feel the gushiness of flattened humans on its foot along with seeing several scattering about the snow, it comes to the conclusion that a giant could only logically come to, namely flatten the rest of you as well. “Spread out! Spread out! He’s going to swing that damn club!” you shout. Meanwhile, the giant successfully crushes a couple of the soldiers with his club and at this point you don’t know where the hell anyone else is because their fear has caused them to run out of your line of sight which is small enough with the ice storm hindering long range viewing. You roll out of the way of a club slam and run up to the giant’s foot and begin hacking at the back tendon. It isn’t easy since the giant’s skin is calloused to the point where it acts like armor. You only manage to cause a superficial wound before He nearly crushes you again. Realizing you aren’t getting anywhere with that approach, you resort to magic and literally give the giant a hot foot, burning the skin enough to cause a roar of pain. The giant starts moving his foot to sooth the injury in the cold snow. You look up and can barely make out the top half of this monster through the storm. You aren’t sure if it’s going to work with the storm being as bad as it is, but you’re going to try anyway. You cast more fire at the giant, not at his foot though, but at his loincloth which is undoubtedly made of some sort of fur. You don’t stop flinging fire until you’re confident that the flames aren’t going out any time soon. Predictably the giant starts beating its own flaming crotch in an effort to stop the burning sensation, bellowing so loudly that you image all of Rask can hear. The giant runs away from the combat area grabbing snow and ice around it and throwing it on the still burning fur loincloth. “Sheesh, that brings a whole new meaning to the term fireballs.” A voice shouts behind you. You turn around and see a figure completely bundled up in snow gear standing with others dressed in a similar manner. Naturally you’re ready for a fight, but the one who spoke holds up his hands. “Hold on there! Are you part of the expedition group? We just bumped into a few of them running from the giant. Said one of you was actually insane enough to fight the damn thing.” “Yes, what have you done with them?!” “Nothing! We were on patrol, got caught in the storm and then we heard all the screaming and came to investigate. Your people are right over this small hill here with some more of us. Normally, we’d just send you all on your way and tell you that you were fools to come to Rask in the first place, but now that we’ve seen you in action, I can’t help but think the Vision Lord would want to meet you.” Vision Lord? “Are you the Eyes?” you ask. “We are from the Order of the Eye and I’m Sightmaster Crowley but if we’re going to talk, I’d prefer it if we’d do it at Fort Everwatch. You and the others can rest up there.” “And if we don’t want to go with you?” “Then you don’t go and you all can return to wherever it is you came from. We’re not holding anyone prisoner, though the lady of your group, a Miss Mol I believe, says you’ve been looking for us. As I said normally we try to keep to ourselves and turn away most visitors, but given that we’re inviting you in with open arms I should think you wouldn’t turn down this opportunity. Besides, I’m fairly certain that none of us here wants to tangle with the guy that just chased away ol’ Snowtop single handedly.” “What, that giant?” “If you hadn’t noticed, he’s not just any giant, if he was, he’d be dead by now. He’s probably the oldest living frost giant that we know of and he’s tougher than a troll steak and almost taller than some of the smaller mountains in this area. Fortunately he seems to only wander about during these bad ice storms that usually no idiot would be caught in, but then here we are.” And here you are. You insist that you want to see Jennifer before going anywhere. Crowley takes you to see her and the few survivors. She’s glad to see you’re alive and hugs you. Her enthusiasm for this trip hasn’t diminished and she definitely wants to go see the Eyes’ home, despite the fact that you all were nearly crushed to death by a giant, though that can’t be said for some of her employees. You’re just glad she’s all right and you’re within reach of your destination. It doesn’t take too long to get to Fort Everwatch. It wasn’t anywhere near Fort Defiance once stood though so its just as well that you didn’t go that way. Everwatch isn’t particularly large or fancy, but it does look like it was built to stand the test of time. The interior is just as utilitarian Other than symbols of an eye adorning various parts of the fort, it actually reminds you of an old Empire fort. You can’t help but feel at home here despite only just entering the place. You are brought to a great hall area and Crowley says he’s going to fetch the Vision Lord. In the meantime he’s tells you all to stay here, but feel free to look around. “This is pretty exciting, I hope they’ll let us take something back from this place.” Jennifer says while looking at the various plaques. “Anything’s possible I suppose, but they don’t look like they’re much into luxuries. The only decorations here seem to be dedicated to their fallen like these plaques or those eye symbols…oh wait, they seem to have battle trophies as well, check out that giant’s skull hanging high on the left wall.” You remark still feeling a little wary of things. Eventually Crowley comes back with who you guess to be the Vision Lord. The Vision Lord doesn’t look particularly impressive despite his name though it is certain by the scars on his face he is no stranger to battle. You were expecting him to be a lot older though as it stands he looks about your age…well not counting your five-century nap of course. He stares at you, Jennifer and the rest for a moment and then he points to Jennifer. “I’m guessing you and this lot come from the Nalin Republic.” “How did you know?” Jennifer asks. “Where else would you come from? You’re certainly not from one of the six cities of Arat. They’re too busy with their petty squabbles. Besides, we’ve come across some of your type before wandering up here. A few of them even joined our group rather than head back down.” “You recruited our explorers?!” Jennifer says. “Yes, if they showed promise and desired to join. I’m sure you might even bump into a couple of them in this place assuming you haven’t already. Now you on the other hand…you are very interesting. Your armor looks as if it comes from another time, you can cast magic with ease and I heard you fended off Snowtop all by yourself. That’s a feat so impressive I can’t imagine you are native to the Republic.” the Vision Lord remarks and points to you. “What I find interesting is this place and from what I can tell by your commemorations of the your fallen, you feel keeping history is important. So tell me, did Warrick have this fort built or was it sometime after his death?” you say causing some eyebrows to raise. “You know of Vision Lord Warrick then? Not many outside our order know our founder. How did you come across this information?” “Easy. We were practically siblings. He was an Eternal, just like I am. He wasn’t a Vision Lord back then, just a Sightmaster, though I guess he felt the need to assign himself a higher title. Doesn’t matter. I’m just glad to see another piece of the old Empire still alive, even if it has taken a very different form.” With this response the Vision Lord steps back and the other Eyes now begin whispering amongst themselves. “So, the rumors are true. An Eternal does walk the earth again and it is indeed the one Vision Lord Warrick mentions in his writings. As you might expect we don’t get much news this way and we don’t venture too far from here, let alone Rask. In fact the few recruits we manage to get are probably our biggest source of new information. Tell me, how is it that you live?” You explain the exact situation as vaguely as you did to Jennifer and Quintus. The cataclysm struck suddenly, you were encased in a magic shell, etc. etc. and eventually Jennifer’s crew dug you up. “I see. How unfortunate that you came in contact with the Republic first, but then I suppose it’s better than being stuck in a magic coffin. Still, you’re here now and I believe you will find a better home here.” The Vision Lord remarks. “What?” “I’m inviting you to stay with us. Come now. This Order was founded by an Eternal I’m somewhat familiar with their mindset based on the writings of Vision Lord Warrick. I can only imagine the dull tedium you’ve endured in the Republic. How have you managed to occupy your time?” “Do not presume you know me based on the writings of Warrick. Truth be told, he didn’t exactly create the Eyes, at least not in their original form. The Eyes were originally created by this woman’s great ancestor Jacob Mol.” You say pointing to Jennifer. The Vision Lord nods his head a bit. “Apologies. I did not mean to offend. And if as you say this lady’s ancestor had a hand in creating the Eyes then we’ve been doubly blessed by the presence of her as well. However, I do believe that you were and still are a man of battle and war. And again I can’t imagine those things being in great supply in the Republic. Surely you would enjoy living here instead. You would be great asset in our own war of extermination of the wendigo. We could certainly use the help.” This is a sudden offer and certainly one you weren’t expecting. The strange thing is it isn’t out of the question either. A few days ago you were just going on about to Jennifer about how you were restless in the Republic even with your efforts to help restructure it into a new empire. A glorious undertaking to be sure, but one you’ve had doubts about recently. Now this opportunity is certainly less impressive, but there’s something alluring about its simplicity. All you would have to concern yourself with is the battle. The war. The victories over your enemies in melee combat. You’d even live in a place that’s much comfortable to you. Of course there’s also Jennifer to think about, but while your relationship with her is blooming into something more romantic what future do you have with her really? She’s not even like Alison in that she’s a warrior and can truly connect with you on some level even if she does make the attempts. There’s also the fact that you’ve been worried about her the whole trip. Will you continue to worry about her and allow that to be a weakness to be exploited? If she’s killed will you go through the same emotional ruin you did when Alison was murdered? Do you even want to deal with any of that again? You tell the Vision Lord that you and he are going to have to discuss this all in more detailed before you make a decision. Jennifer looks concerned when you say this, but doesn’t say anything. The Vision Lord says that while you and he talk, the rest of your group can rest up or feel free to explore as there is nothing of major value and he trusts nobody would be foolish enough to steal anything. You speak with the Vision Lord (who reveals his name is Kells) for quite awhile on the current situation of his order as well as the history of this place and Rask in general. He also remarks about how the Eyes are so hated and feared by the wendigo. As you might’ve guessed magic is in play, but only to a minor degree. Over the centuries the Eyes have managed to focus their minds to create shields against wendigo mental attacks along with being able to banish them to oblivion. (Still vulnerable to normal death through wendigo hosts obviously though) After your discussion he tells you that he’ll leave you to your decision, but that he hopes you’ll stay. You then speak with Jennifer about your situation; naturally she wants you to return with her and explains all reasons why. You end up sleeping on the offer and pondering everything some more, but ultimately the decision is up to you. > You return to the Republic Retreating from the world and living a simple life dedicated to battle would be a kind of escape from any major responsibilities or headaches. You’d just engage in one battle to the next until you finally fell. At worst, you might become the “Vision Lord” (Which would probably be very likely) but even then you wouldn’t have much responsibility or cares. Basically staying here would be like your form of “retirement” for all your years to ungrateful master and an unforgiving system that demanded everything from you and gave next to nothing in return. Yeah, you’re too young to retire and you’ve always been the type to do things the hard way even at your own expense. You’re going back to the Republic, you’ll be damned if Quintus is going to take credit for all your hard work. Even now he’s probably making preparations for doing just that, assuming he hasn’t made a complete mess of things. Still, if you have it your way you aren’t going back alone. No point in coming all this way for nothing. First thing you do is go to Jennifer. “It may please you to know that I’ll be coming back with you to Nalin…” you say. “I sense a but in there somewhere.” Jennifer remarks. “It’s actually a however. Anyway I’m going to try to convince the Eyes to come back with us.” “What? I know I wanted to bring something back, but I don’t think the entire order is what I had in mind.” “I doubt if I’ll convince everyone, in fact I’ll consider it a victory if they don’t try to lynch me when I suggest it, but I have to try. If only to rebuild the Empire properly.” “So are we in any danger?” “Always. Don’t worry it probably won’t be that bad.” Jennifer gives you an apprehensive look, but says she’ll trust you in this matter. You tell her that everyone should pack up and get ready to run just in case though. Breaking whatever rules the Eyes have in place for decorum you begin to call whoever is nearby to listen to you. “I’m only going to say this once because if I can’t convince you the first time, I’m not going to waste my time doing it again. Now I know you’re all very proud warriors. That’s good, you should be, but your talents are going to waste rotting in this dreary little fort. This isn’t what Warrick would’ve wanted for the lot of you.” “And how do YOU know that?! What do you know of the first Vision Lord?!” an Eye angrily shouts. You’re guessing he hasn’t heard the news on you yet. “I knew Warrick a hell of a lot better than any of you for one thing seeing as I actually interacted with the man! He was a dedicated soldier of the Empire first and foremost! I’ve read some of his writings and that was true up until the day he died! He never wanted the Eyes to devolve into some strange monastery. He intended for the Eyes to hold what little of the Empire was left together and eventually rebuild if possible. Now I don’t know what exactly changed after he died, but it’s obvious that the Eyes or whoever took charge of them changed that mission. Well I’m here to tell you all that your original mission can be restored…” your speech is sudden interrupted by Kells who comes storming into the room. “What is the meaning of this?! We have shown you courtesy and respect and THIS is how you repay us? You attempt to use us as puppets…” Kells speech is interrupted with a lightning blast to his face. No mental shield in the world is going to protect against that. Kells falls backwards with his blackened head still sizzling and making popping sounds. Most of the Eyes are unsure of what to do, though four of them immediately make their good attempt to kill you. You dodge and weave the attacks of the first two and successfully run the pair of them through. The third you freeze to the spot and grab the fourth one’s arm, breaking it before snapping his neck. Seeing that nobody else is willing to attack, you kick the frozen third attack so that he falls over and shatters into multiple pieces. “Now as I was saying your mission can be restored. What you just witnessed here, I took no pleasure in doing, but I would hate for any of you to pass up an opportunity because of an old system that is leading this great order into extinction. Besides the random worthy adventurer that decides the join, how do you replenish your numbers at a reasonable rate? I don’t see many women in your ranks. I don’t even see any children. You may be putting dread fear into the wendigo and other denizens of Rask, but your order is slowly dying. Within another fifty years, I’d say the Eyes will at best consist of a few old men. The Empire is going to live again and you can be part of it. You were meant to be part of it. Come with me, and the Eyes will NEVER die.” Your speech is met with silence. “Or stay here and die a slow lingering death. The choice is yours, I hope you make the right decision.” You say and walk past the crowd. You head towards the exit of the fort and see Jennifer standing there alone. “Where’s everyone else?” you ask. “They started running when they heard the sounds of battle even the two remaining soldiers. I assume they’re already on their way to Nalin by now.” “And you didn’t run?” “No, I figured you’d either win, and I’d be safer travelling with you anyway, or you’d die and I’d get killed trying run back to Nalin because if the Eyes didn’t get me, the wendigo or giants probably would. So did it work?” “I don’t know. I mean I made my point, but there’s a lot of indoctrination there. Centuries worth, it was a long shot I guess.” “Even after you killed some of them?” “A show of force isn’t always as effective as we want it to be, but like I told them, if I wasn’t going to convince them this first time, I’ll never be able to. Oh well, let’s get going.” You and Jennifer exit the fort and make your way back to Nalin, fortunately the ice storm has let up. For a while you try to track where the others of your group ran, but unfortunately it looks like they ran in the wrong direction or at least not the way you came. Jennifer wonders if you should make the attempt to look for them, but you say that you’ll just be in danger of getting lost yourself and say they’re on their own. As you and Jennifer trudge through the snow you get a sense that you’re being followed. You turn around and your stalkers make no attempt to hide. They’re Eyes. One of them walks towards you alone. It’s Crowley. “I can’t say you convinced everyone, but if it’s any consolation you convinced the smart ones. We’re ready for something new and I was getting tired of this weather anyway.” He says. With a new group to travel with and better supplies, you continue on your way. The Eyes also know of several short cuts so it decreases your travelling time. Eventually you make it back to Quala and Flogger territory. To be honest, you’re glad to have some people that can actually fight now. Your more formidable force is met by Trog and just as he promised Jennifer’s two people are still alive and unharmed. In fact one of them excitedly tells Jennifer everything he’s learned about orc culture since he’s been here. “Trog see that you return with an army from the north. Always heard there were humans living in Rask, never knew for sure though. Your two people have not been harmed as you can see and I trust after you leave our arrangement of non-hostilities will continue in the future.” “Well that’ll be up to you.” “Indeed.” “Who is this orc?” Crowley asks in a semi-hostile tone. “He’s a great leader to his people and more worthy to be called a vision lord than Kells was given that he can actually see the future sometimes. Let’s go.” You continue your journey with no more major stops, other than a couple of times to rest. “So what happens when we reach Nalin?” Jennifer asks coming into your tent. “I’ll assess the situation of course, but I can’t imagine much has changed. I mean there’s possibility Quintus has dissolved the senate and declared himself Emperor already in my absence, but it’s hard to tell if he hasn’t just freaked out without me around.” “You’re going to kill Quintus aren’t you?” Jennifer says. “Well it is looking that way. I doubt if he’s going to just step aside and even if he did I don’t think I could trust him to stay out of the picture. I take it, you’d rather I didn’t?” “(Sigh) At one time I might’ve said that would be true, but now things are so different. Still, he is the only one that funded and supported my father’s expeditions and museum. He’s also the main reason why the Empire is a possibility. I mean it is true he couldn’t have done this without you, but you might not have been dug up at all had it not been for him. I don’t know, it just seems fairly ruthless to do to someone that’s been alright with you.” “It is and I won’t argue that it isn’t, but unfortunately I’ve found that when it comes to power, ruthlessness is what keeps you from getting killed and getting shit done. I mean that was pretty apparent with getting the Eyes to join us.” “I mean if you’re going to I can’t stop you and it won’t change my feelings for you, but I also wonder about that as well. I mean call it keeping my head in the sand, but I’m not sure if I’d be able to walk that same path as you even if I’m not actively involved in the darker side of things. I mean I’m can you really see me as an Empress or something similar?” By the look on your face Jennifer sees that you hadn’t even pondered it. “Look, let’s forget about this tonight. Right now let’s just consummate our relationship, whatever that might be in the future. If this trip has taught me anything it’s that life is too damn short to worry about the future. You’d think I would’ve learned that lesson a long time ago, but better late than never.” When you embrace Jennifer, you notice a big difference in the act. Namely you don’t engage in the forceful roughness that you have in the past. Even though you learned to control during your time with Alison you still always had that urge of aggressiveness. You can only imagine that centuries of being encased in a magic coffin and with Mistress long dead, you don’t have that fucked up hang up any more. You certainly have larger concerns nowadays. One of which is what you’re going to do exactly when you go marching into Dalt with a bunch of Eyes… One day later “Where have you been? When I heard you weren’t at your usual post and…” Quintus begins to ask when you come through the front door of his house and then he notices the fresh blood on your sword and his guards nowhere to be seen. His eyes widen when you raise your hand up to cast a lightning bolt to his face. You find however that the spell fails to work on him and one of his rings glows brightly. “I figured one of those rings protected you from magic. Pity, I was trying to give you a quick and less painful death.” You say and advance upon him with your sword in hand. “No! What’re you doing?! We’re on the same side! We were going to revive the Empire!” Quintus exclaims backing up on the stairway and attempts to rub one of his rings. You aren’t exactly sure what he’s attempting to do, but you’re not going to let him do it. You making a lunging rush at him and he nearly disappears before you, but you’ve already stuck him like a pig. His brief attempt at invisibility fades as his dying face stares at you. “Wh…why? I…helped…I…was going…to be…emperor…” “Yeah, well I never told you something Quintus. I was involved in killing the last Emperor and NOW I’m finally going to take MY rightful place!” you say and throw Quintus over the stair railing where his body falls to the floor in a bloody heap. Afterwards you take care of Quintus’ family. As dysfunctional as they all are, the last thing you need is for any of them to attempt revenge for whatever reason. The day after, you and the Eyes march into the senate and officially dissolve it. This actually involves much less bloodshed as none of them want to oppose you. Indeed some of them offer to be “advisors.” You’re sure some of the fools will be useful so you stay your hand. A few days later and it’s official. You make your announcement that the Republic is dead and that the Empire now lives again. The general public doesn’t know quite what to make of everything. You’re sure that there will be some sort of misguided rebellion, but with the military behind you and with the support of the Eyes you’re confident that you won’t have too much trouble. This is it. You’ve finally achieved what was always meant to be. Now all you have to do is hold it. > Year 545 It isn’t what you would’ve inherited had things been different, but you achieved what many said couldn’t be done. You tamed Quala badlands and have successfully incorporated it into the Empire. It certainly helped that you and Trog already had an understanding long before hand, but encouraging more kobolds citizens to settle the area worked out a lot better than you hoped. The eager little scalies seem to like the wilder and more untamed lands and it also got them out of the more “civilized” Nalin too, making more than a few rural human populations happier that their homes weren’t suddenly collapsing from over dug kobold tunnels. The Eyes have been doing a good job of being the imposing internal security you wanted them to be and you’ve already attempted to re-establish a training center for the magic arts. Besides you, the Eyes are the only source of magic in the Empire, if they can strengthen their abilities and train others in such things, you’ll have magic might on your side which can only help in the long run. Of course all this expansion has made your neighbors nervous mostly the six cities of Arat, but the Usksha Emirates as well (Though they’ve been wary about you even before the republic fell thanks to Quintus kicking them all out) There’s also the Island League of Delerg to contend with now. The pirates and other ne’er-do-wells had to give up their first profession and actually start putting down roots on their dreary little island hideouts, thanks to the fact that Nalin started cutting back on its naval and seafaring endeavors. None of this really matters though, because you know none of them are strong enough to actually do anything to you. Your neighbors form petty alliances with each other in the hopes that if you did decide to strike that somehow they could stand against you. Though in some cases they’d rather join you, Regnik being one of the city states that sees the writing on the wall. Governor Daniel Tivas has requested several meetings with you and surprisingly you’ve also gotten a message from an emissary of Lenay. Seems that Domina Eldolith D’vessa wants to also speak with you, though you can’t imagine that it has anything to do with joining forces. One of your newer advisors David (former senator) has suggested that it wouldn’t hurt to speak with them. Of course most of your military is in favor of just crushing the cities and not talking at all. General Ingrid being the most vocal about it. (Ah the joys of having an enthusiastic military once again under your command.) Sightmaster Crowley has suggested in shutting the doors to any talks and instead retaking Rask since it still contains lots of valuable resources that could be used in the future. While not completely out of the question you imagine that’s his former life influencing that advice. He probably hopes that there might be reconciliation between the ones that stayed as well as wiping out the rest of the wendigo. Finally there’s Jennifer. She’s not an empress, she’s not even formal advisor, but you still have a close enough relationship with her that you still speak with her from time to time. The two of you realized that your “paths” were indeed different and parted ways amicably. While certainly a supporter of the Empire, she decided that her place was still archeology, exploration and looking after the museum (Even more so after her father Calvin died of natural causes four years ago). Still, as was mentioned, you do correspond with her and lately she’s been expressing an interest in the islands of Delerg and even the great ocean past them. Of course with the Island League there, that makes her desire to mount any kind of expedition non-existent. Then again if you were more active there that wouldn’t be the case. You could rebuild the navy again to do more exploration properly and possibly claim those islands for yourself along with eliminating a potential danger in the future (and a pain in Nalin’s side even before you were dug up). One direction you’re not looking is south though. The Usksha desert is still a formidable environment and sending an army that way you believe would be a waste as there is literally nothing to hold. Nothing of worth anyway since the usksha are still largely nomadic and have no real cities. As long as the Usksha keep to themselves, you have no problem leaving it alone. Whatever you decide, you know you’re going to take a prominent role in it. It’s time to lead from the front again to keep everyone remembering that you’re no throne bound ruler. In the meantime you decide to listen to David’s advice and set up a meeting with two of the rulers from Arat. At first you think neither ruler will agree to meet you in Nalin, but surprisingly both do rather than insisting on neutral or even their own territory. In a few days both rulers arrive in Dalt with their respective entourage. Neither one is happy about the other one being here, and the presence of svelk probably puts everyone in Dalt on edge. The Eyes are on extra alert. Daniel obviously isn’t a warrior by any means. He’s a skinny man with a goatee and a few lines on his face due to the stress of ruling. As for Eldolith, she looks about the same as you last remember, though perhaps slightly older looking. Well as “old looking” as svelk get anyway. “When I first heard that an Eternal appeared in Nalin, I had hoped it wasn’t you.” Eldolith says when she sees you again. “Mm, I’m sure you’ll have to explain yourself to all the other svelk now about how you attempted to seduce me by sucking on my finger.” You retort which causes her entire entourage to react with shock and a particular female svelk gives Eldolith a dirty look. Daniel and his people on the other hand are just as surprised, but find it more amusing. “Watch yourself and your slander! I am no longer a lowly merc following the whims of my delusional bitch mother. I am the ruler of my people and we are not about to be conquered by your so called renewed empire!” Eldolith exclaims. “We’ll see.” You remark with a smile and tell everyone to sit down at the meeting table. “First, I’m glad you both felt the need to come see me in person. This makes what we will discuss here so much more personal, though I know there are six cities. Do you know why none of the other rulers have desired to see me?” you ask. “I can answer that.” Daniel says. “The rulers of Atinil and Valizza are already under the influence of Eldolith so by her being here they already have their master to speak for them.” “Daniel, you’re just frustrated that YOU could not sway them into becoming whores for the Empire like you seem to desire.” Eldolith remarks. “Okay, so what of the other two?” “Well since you decided to incorporate those stinking greenskins into your society, the people of Zo want nothing to do with you and I can’t say as I blame them. As for Telis, who the hell knows? There hasn’t been word from them for almost a decade. The entire city could be dead for all anyone knows.” Eldolith says in a bored tone. After hearing this, you ask why both of them wanted to see you in the first place. Daniel tells you that he is basically seeking protection for his city-state. He says that he realizes that Regnik can no longer afford to be independent and that he is willing to become a vassal of the Empire. He doesn’t care if half the citizens are against it; he says it’s the best thing for the survival of Regnik. He does make it clear though that he is not asking to be annexed completely. He still wants Regnik to be independent on a day-to-day basis, just that it will be paying you money in exchange for protection. Eldolith sneers at Daniel and begins to call him a weakling raising the hostilities of both sides of the table until you demand that everyone calm down. “Alright Eldy, what the hell is it that you want to say, because I know damn well it isn’t an alliance let alone vassalhood.” “You’re right. It isn’t being subserviant, but rather a setting of boundaries right now. The svelk people are independent AND strong. We will NOT bend to your will and if you doubt this then send your armies to invade and see them slaughtered by the thousands!” “So, I’m supposed to just sit back and watch you get stronger until you attack us eh? And I’d watch your next words Eldolith, in case you’ve forgotten you’re not exactly in friendly company right now.” “You think I care about your threats? Attempt to kill me if you wish, but I will not grovel like this weak human here.” Eldolith is certainly going all out to be confrontational, though you wonder how much of it is an act for her people because you embarrassed her with the finger comment. Still, you know svelk and they aren’t all bluff. She’s probably being very serious with her grandstanding which makes you also wonder what power is it that she holds that could potentially stand against you. You’re aware that the svelk do have mages, which does put them above most people, but even you can match that now. If Daniel is correct then she does have the support of two other city-states and will probably have Zo as well seeing as they hate orcs. Still even with the extra military help it still wouldn’t be enough. Might take awhile, but you’d conquer eventually. Either Eldolith is got something else up her sleeve or she’s being overconfident. Could go either way. The temptation to indulge her threats is great, but maybe some caution might be in order. You decide to take Daniel up on his offer and use his city as a launching zone for spies and other possible intelligence gathering plans before you make a final decision on Eldolith. That would also give you time to bring your attention to other potential areas of conquest like Rask or Delerg. > You make Regnik a vassal and retake Rask Having extra resources to fund a potential war in the future isn’t a bad idea so Rask is probably the better choice in that you don’t have to worry about building a bunch of ships to take it. Not to mention you’ve already got a presence of sorts there with Trog’s Flogger tribe that makes up most of the population in Quala and spilling over into Rask. The only main concern you have is that you’re going to have to transfer more Eyes to that front due to the wendigo danger there which will take away from internal security as well as magic training, but there’s nothing else for it. As for Daniel and Eldolith you’ll indulge both of their requests for now. You tell Daniel that he can consider his city now under the protection of the Empire and that any foreign invasion attempts in any form with be met with force. “Why are you looking at me when you say that?” Eldolith asks. “Because I know your kind and Daniel’s already mentioned you have your influence in two other cities. Now you can have your little territory for now, but make no mistake, you’re going to be watched from here on in and if I sense ANYTHING that could be a potential danger to the Empire you’re going to wish that you never managed to unite the svelk to begin with.” “We’ll do as we please and nobody is going to stop us!” “Okay then, as you said just send an invasion force in my direction and see if I’m not being serious.” At this point Eldolith just rolls her eyes, but shuts up. Obviously she knows anymore antagonism might result in war which its apparent now that she doesn’t truly want if she can help it. Daniel profusely thanks you for heeding his request and will make sure to accommodate your people in anyway he can. You almost shake your head at the man’s naivety if he actually believes his city is going to remain autonomous in the way he believes it will. He’s going to allow your military there, it won’t be long before you’ve got complete control and any “independence” the city thinks it has is only because you’re allowing it. Of course maybe he knows what is probably going to happen and he’s just trying to convince himself otherwise. In any event you’re glad when the svelk leave (everyone is no doubt), it was a reminder of less happy times in your life. You tell Crowley that you are planning to retake Rask and steps will have to be made to steadily start transferring Eyes up there to combat the wendigo threat. Since there isn’t any real centralized government to conquer in Rask, the bigger concern is getting folks to settle up there though you’re sure more than a few enterprising sort or people desperate for work will eventually pour into the area when establishing the first towns. If nothing else you’ve always got orcs who are probably going to be doing most of the fighting anyway since with less Eyes around in Nalin, you’re going to have to rely on normal military to keep the plebs in line. (Or rather keep them from getting ideas about getting out of line) Within the first few months you have the basics of a town up and running along with a fort. As you predicted orcs are making up most of your fighting force up here and are being lead by Eyes. As for the regular work force surprisingly most of it consists of elves who have been finding Nalin less friendly to their kind in recent years and prefer the “less human/more wilderness” much more to their liking. You take part in the “retaming” of Rask. For the most part the campaign is successful though not without its struggles. With less Eyes around in Rask, it seems the wendigo took advantage of the situation and made a concentrated attack on Fort Everwatch and they managed to massacre the remaining Eyes or in some unfortunate cases possess them. The fort itself is found in a destroyed state. Crowley naturally is furious by this, as even though he disagreed with his fellow Eyes that stayed, he didn’t wish this on them. He becomes so zealous in his vow to wipe out every single wendigo in Rask, you actually have to rein him in a bit so he doesn’t go get himself killed by going off by alone on some revenge mission. Within six months you’ve got the wendigos on the run again more and other dangerous denizens of Rask are becoming even less of a problem or at least retreating away from the slow encroachment of civilization. Fort Sentinel is finally finished along with the new town Tiblik. During this “taming” of Rask you get a message from David telling you in a letter that so far things are going smoothly in Arat, at least on your end of things. The governor is reportedly having some problems with protestors taking umbrage with your troops being in the city. The commanding officer of your soldiers has offered to deal with the problem, but Daniel has said that will only confirm their fears and insists on having his own people deal with the protests. David also tells you that things are also going well in Nalin though there has been a slight increase in crime due to there being less Eyes around. Nothing major, but he felt he should let you know. You throw away the letter and grumble a bit at the realization that you’ll have to return to Nalin soon. Even though these concerns aren’t big ones, you can’t help but believe that if you stay away too long, more problems will crop up and existing ones will get worse. You look at the snowy scenery from the battlements of Fort Sentinel and take a moment to bask in your accomplishment before making that trudge back to Nalin. The cold air actually feels good to you right now. You hear Crowley coming up to find you. “There you are, I was wondering if you knew about the messenger that was looking for you.” “Yeah, I got the message. You know people probably thought Rask would never be tamed again, but the first steps are being taken and eventually it’ll be part of the Empire again proper, just like Quala.” You remark. “I’m certainly glad to see it my Emperor. Just wish all of my brothers had joined me when I first left Everwatch.” “A tragic loss for you I’m sure, but do not dwell on them too much, for you are here and they are not. You saw a chance for the Eyes to live forever and took it. And because you did, the Eyes are destined to live as long as the Empire exists. Those that fell in Everwatch will live on in a way.” “I suppose you’re right. I’m a little surprised to hear you say so though. I might’ve thought you considered them traitors.” “At the time I asked you to join me, the Empire was not even yet reborn. They couldn’t be traitors to something that didn’t exist. I thought them shortsighted fools perhaps, but not traitors and certainly not cowards. To be honest I was sort of hoping when we did come back here that maybe some of them might’ve changed their minds.” “As did I. I swear I’m going to make sure the wendigo are exterminated from Rask.” “Hm, well that would be a blessing, but as I said before don’t get too caught up in revenge. Especially since you’re going to have to be in charge of this place.” Crowley gives you a quizzical look. “What do you mean?” “I mean as much fun as I’ve had slaughtering the wendigo, ogres, uncivilized orcs and those...(sigh) shit I forgot the name of those little vicious furry things with big teeth…” “Auravraxes, my Emperor.” “Yeah those things. Anyway as much fun as I’ve had doing that and overseeing the first flags being replanted here, I know I have to get back to Nalin. The boring duty of being in charge calls. So I need someone competent to look after stuff here in Rask and since you already know the landscape, probably better than I do, you might as well do the job.” Crowley gives a faint smile and a nod. “I won’t fail you in this task, my Emperor.” “I should hope not, but I’m sure you’ll have a handle on things. Really it’s not going to get really tough until more citizens start settling up here. I imagine you probably won’t have too much problem with the orcs since strength of arms is always respected. The elves on the other hand, well they tend to bitch about anything. You’d think the pointy ears would be grateful that I didn’t bring back slavery. Anyway, just don’t kill too many unruly citizens if it comes to it, we’re trying to keep people up here.” “Don’t worry, remember I’m a sightmaster, part of my job is keeping the citizenry in line.” “Okay, well then I’ll leave you to it. You’ll find all the latest reports and such in your office.” With this final command, you take your leave of Rask and return to Nalin. > Year 550 More and more each year your nation is starting to resemble the Empire of old. More and more each year you’re also starting to feel old too. The aches and pains of battles long past (and not too long past) are starting to catch up with you. You never tried to think about getting “old” too much, except during the years of when the Emperor was “sick.” Recently you’ve begun thinking about what his plans were again. How he was going to defeat death by transferring his essence or spirit or mind or whatever into your own body. Well at least that’s what Semra and Jacob told you and what ultimately lead to the situation you’re in now. Unfortunately, you haven’t really the means to go about such a thing. Your knowledge of magic is better than most, but the Emperor never showed you that trick let alone how to get to the Isle of Mortos. You wouldn’t even know about how to go about “creating” another one of your kind either which was also required…again so Semra and Jacob told you. Makes you wonder what happened to the “eternals” Marik created. You wonder if they survived the initial cataclysm and if so, what became of them? Did they plan any major role during or after it? It’s apparent that the technique to create an eternal like you or Marik’s tank babies was lost too. Well it doesn’t matter much now anyway, you can assume they’re all certainly dead now, along with crazy ol’ Marik. Still, you wonder about his factory, as it was located in Arat. In fact there have been a lot of events going on in Arat lately according to your spies. The major thing being that there have been sightings of the Xi Hive in Arat, not many and certainly no major attacks, but the insectoid creatures have been attacking anyone they see as usual. It won’t be long before they become a major threat in this area. Right now it isn’t your problem at all, but you imagine they will be eventually. From what you’ve heard the Xi have been really putting the Redcap Kingdom on the defensive, but the gnomes are still holding out and not even losing any ground. You certainly can admire that, and you’d even try to send an emissary to go speak with them if only to get a better feel of the Xi threat, but you’ve also heard the gnomes have also ordered a kill on sight to well…anyone. Your best shot at learning more about the Xi would probably be Eldolith, but she’s also been her usual antagonistic self, especially ever since you officially annexed Regnik into the Empire. Pointing to you and the Xi as a threat she managed to unify the other city-states of Zo, Valizza and Atnil into something called the Arat Confederacy. In reality it’s a new nation with four cities rather than a true alliance where everyone is supposedly still autonomous. The only other city-state that doesn’t belong to Eldy’s little alliance is Telis, which as usual, nobody seems to know anything about. Still, it seems like it’s probably in the most danger of the Xi considering its proximity to where Xi territory is starting to expand. You never really gave it much thought until now, but according to the maps and if your memory isn’t completely off, Telis isn’t too far away from where Marik’s factory was located. Now you’re starting to wonder if its “mysterious” nature isn’t due to that factor. In a perfect world Arat would be your next and only priority, but there have been concerns about the Delerg islands as well. There has nearly been no reports about the Island League’s activities for years, it’s almost as if they all just disappeared, but more concerning is the fact that strange humanoid creatures have been sighted off the coasts of Quala at night. While Quala is still mostly home to your orc population and the place is still the poorest of your territories, you still don’t want a potential invasion to occur. It might be time to start exploring and possibly conquering the islands at last. Seeing as the orcs will have the most familiarity with this potential coastal threat, you decide to go speak with Trog about it. You might as well anyway if only to see who his potential successor is going to be seeing as you know Trog is supposed to be dying. When you arrive to meet with him, you see just how true that is. The old orc is lying prone on fur skin bedding with two younger female orcs attending to him. It’s very strange to see orcs behave in this manner. Orcs don’t tend to have a long life span to begin with due to all their fighting, but to see one being actually cared for rather than taken to the wilderness and left to die (at best) is unusual. Then again Trog was a very respected leader. He’s obviously weak, but when he notices you he tries to sit up and waves away his attendants. “Ah…the Eternal… dreams told Trog that we would see each other one last time before the end. Now that you’re here Trog now know death coming soon for me. Sad that Trog could not die as a warrior, but still a good life with many children to carry on name.” Trog says. “And who would be that successor Trog?” you ask. “Trog believe that Sprog take over next. Already killed several of his siblings, others too scared to oppose. Was a great contest, only well enough to see some of it, but very good. Very bloody.” “Sorry I missed it.” “Trog warn you though, Sprog not quite as accepting of our current situation as Trog. Believes orcs should be independent. Might be right, might be wrong, not care. Trog too tired to care anymore.” “Am I going to have to kill him?” “Do not know. Perhaps, perhaps not. Do as you wish. You always have. As Trog has said, too tired to care anymore.” “So I take it that I probably should ask this Sprog about the reports of the humanoid interlopers off Quala’s coast?” “Hrm. That. Trog can still help a little… Yes, there have been sightings, but nothing human about them. Fellow orcs tell me they look more like fish than anything else. Appear on land sometimes, but never for very long. Not sure if they are able or if they are just scouting. Orcs ready for a fight as always if they do decide to invade. Kobolds too. Was not sure about the little scalies living here at first, but enjoy their antics. Respect our strength too…” Trog begins to drift off to sleep, but you aren’t done with him yet. “While I hate to interrupt your journey to the afterlife, you have any last visions for me?” “Hrm…yes…Trog did actually. War is coming.” “That’s a given Trog, war is always coming.” “True, but this one will be against an enemy that you’ve never faced the likes of before. They will be relentless, they will not stop and even as strong as the Empire is, I fear that it will not be enough. Worse is the fact that you are approaching your own twilight years as this terrible threat comes. You will no longer be able to just march in like the great warrior you once were…” “Trog, I might be getting old, but I’m not ready for the damn grave yet.” “True, but you acknowledge that you ARE getting old. Still…perhaps that is a good sign. Knowing your limitations. Trog knew his…” At this point Trog falls unconscious and despite your prodding and nudging him, he isn’t waking from it. From his breathing patterns, you know he’ll be dead soon. “Damn it Trog, you could’ve at least told me who this relentless enemy was going to be. Guess that was your last little joke on me. Good one Trog.” You remark and exit Trog’s tent. You tell the group standing outside that he’ll be soon passing on, if anyone wants to see the final moments. Several female orcs go in, but the male orcs just give a solemn look downward save for the very large one standing nearby with an equally huge battle axe. When he approaches you, your entourage of guards stands ready to defend you, but judging by his appearance he’d give them a good fight all by himself. “So is the old man dead?” the orc asks gruffly. “Well if he isn’t yet, he soon will be…I’m guessing you’re Sprog.” “Right. Guess you da Emp. Huh. Thought you’d be bigger. Old man say you powerful though. Guess cause of magic abilities like old man. Feh.” “I take it, you don’t like magic?” “Magic give unfair advantage even more than shooty weapons. Orcs have no more magic types now. Least none Sprog know of. No chance to rebel now.” “You’re telling me you’d rebel?” “Yes, I’d lead a rebellion if we had magic to even up odds. Told old man that he should challenge you long time ago, but said you were too powerful for him. Scared to die like proper warrior, now he die like old man that he is and we still have to serve the Empire.” “Who says? You could still rebel. You’re standing right here in front of me surrounded by your fellow orcs, I’ve only got five men with me. I’d say right now is the best chance you got of killing me and making your people free again.” Sprog grips his axe a bit and gives you a suspicious look pondering if you’re being serious or not. You are of course, but even though Sprog eventually senses that, he’s not taking you up on that offer. “Bah, want to be free, but still stand no chance of killing you. At best might get lucky and wound you before you set Sprog on fire or somethin’. Dying in battle one thing, but Sprog not suicidal. Most orcs too comfortable now with livin’ under the Empire anyway. Half would probably attack me, the idjits.” “Always did appreciate you orcs and your honesty. Now that I know I don’t need to kill you anytime soon, what can you tell me about these sightings off the coasts of Quala?” Sprog tells you much of the same things you’ve already heard. Fishmen sighted skulking around the coasts and then disappearing. He says he’s already got patrols marching up and down the coasts, but no sign of them again. For all you know these fish people are this relentless force that’s going to be coming at you, of course it also could be the Xi Hive which is the only other force you could think of, at worst it could be both. Could even be the usksha or someone you haven’t even met yet. In any case, you still need to do something about this potential aquatic threat. This has really been a long time coming. Whatever the hell is living out on those islands, be they human or otherwise is going to feel the full might of the Empire. Thanks to having all the extra resources in Rask now your task of getting a proper fleet up and running isn’t a drain on the Empire and gets done a lot quicker. Training sailors takes a little longer, but fortunately your people aren’t completely ignorant of seafaring ways. Within months you have a sizable armada that should do the job. The only thing you’re unsure of is whether or not you should go along on this conquest. Maybe because you’re older and beginning to realize you aren’t as fast or as strong as you once were, or maybe because you have uneasiness about being on the open water and possibly even an slight fear of it (A fear you weren’t even aware of), or maybe it’s a combination of the two, you don’t know. What was it that Trog said before he died? Knowing your limitations? > You lead from the front There might be a day where you’re going to have to command all your armies from bed as a sick old man, but today is not that day. As long as you can wield a weapon and move reasonably well, nobody is stopping you from fighting. As far as being on open water, well this is the perfect chance to get over that possible phobia. Since your own intelligence reports on Delerg have always been hazy at best, you gather your information from less reputable places, namely some of the prisons. Nalin sailors as a rule stayed away from Delerg waters due to the Island League, Still there were always the occasional forays into it for illegal smuggling purposes and you specifically have these types give you any and all information as well as a chance to earn their freedom by enlisting in the navy. While getting the information on island details isn’t too much of a problem due to the threat of violence, you don’t get a lot of takers to enlist even with the promise of freedom (or implied threats of conscription); at first you believe it’s just a criminal attitude of not wishing to be part of the government, but one fellow by the name of Len tells you it’s a little more than that. Len is about your age, probably a little older and is the embodiment of an “old sea dog” with his untidy white hair and beard. Len says he stopped smuggling years ago when he started to feel uneasy sailing in the waters, let alone dealing with some of the people who had become enamored with a weird religion. “Religion? What kind of religion?” you ask. “Not exactly sure, but I’m pretty sure it involved the worship of some water god. I remember finding it strange since it wasn’t like any of the inhabitants of Delerg were particularly religious before. When one of my friends came into the docks one night babbling a mad tale about how he barely escaped from an ambush of screaming cultists that was around the time I decided to stop making smuggling runs and go into something less dangerous like burglary, obviously I wasn’t as good at that since I got caught.” Len replies. “So where is this friend of yours and what did he see?” “Not in a jail cell if that’s what you’re wondering. Last I heard he was committed into an asylum. I think he may have very well killed himself. He never did quite get over it and had a hard time talking about the details, but I do remember him saying that the cultists weren’t quite human looking and fully intent on sacrificing him, like they did with the others who weren’t so lucky to escape I guess.” “What, like the recent fishmen descriptions?” “Perhaps not quite that far, but he did say they had unnatural eyes and their skin was slimy looking. The reason why you’re not getting many enlistees is probably either due to these stories or from personal experience and I imagine the personal experience is rare given that my own friend went completely mad from his own experience. To be quite honest, I’m sort of surprised the Empire never knew any of this before.” “Wasn’t an issue before. A few rumors and tales from mad sailors and criminals isn’t going to catch serious attention. In fact before people starting seeing fishmen on the coasts I didn’t even know about any of this. Delerg was considered low priority, though that may have been a mistake, then again we’re probably in a better position to handle this now. So what is your answer on enlistment?” Len pauses for a moment. “Well, I’ve been a criminal nearly all my life and never had much use for following orders. But as much as I like living, I like freedom a lot more. So if enlistment means possibly getting killed by a bunch of fish monsters but the chance of getting out of those hellholes you call prisons, then I’ll take the risk. Besides, I’d say my odds are a lot better now seeing as I’ll be travelling with the Empire’s navy. I figure I can’t get any safer than that.” “Sure you can, you’re going to be aboard my own personal ship.” “I am?” “You were a captain weren’t you? According to your record you’re probably one of the more experienced ones in the damn Empire. Criminal or otherwise. You’re going to be navigator of my personal ship, because I sure as hell don’t know anything about steering a ship. Plus you have better knowledge of the area, so you’re coming with me directly.” Len isn’t sure how to respond except with a hesitant thank you. He probably thought he was going to be able to sneak away at some point, but that will be next to impossible now with him being aboard your ship. When the time comes, you board your personal ship, which is decked out in the best gear available. Actually it’s much slower than the rest of the ships due to its size, but then its meant to fight and take punishment, not outmaneuver a possible enemy. Honestly, you aren’t even sure what you’ll encounter. If the Island League is indeed completely gone, then you may face no opposition at all as far as other ships are concerned. Maybe you’ll have strange fishmen scaling your ships in an attempt to kill you. Whatever you face, you’ll be ready. Since the occupation of the islands is the main priority, you’re taking a strong force of orcs with you. Sprog himself has volunteered to come, possibly to prove to the rest of his people of how much of a warrior he is. Crowley sent a letter asking if you needed his assistance or the assistance of any of the Eyes as things are much calmer in Rask nowadays, but you tell him the Eyes are needed at home as they always are. Within a few days you’re in Delerg waters, but you’ve come across no islands yet. Len remarks about how strange this is since according to his memory you should’ve come across a couple by now. Even the information you received from others with knowledge of the area would dictate that you would’ve encountered some sort of landmass by now. When you sail further out to sea, you still don’t find any major landmass. There are small patches of land, but nothing that would support a town or other settlement. At best you might be able to build a small guard tower on them and that would be only if the land was relatively flat and solid, which it doesn’t appear to be. “This is damn odd, that small patch of land right there where the Island League’s biggest island was! It even had their largest settlement, Barnacle! It’s like the waters just swallowed everything up!” Len remarks. “I’m getting a vague impression I know what happened to this place. All of Delerg in fact. There’s nothing here worth conquering now, we might as well…” Before you can complete your sentence there is a sudden rumble in the water. “EVERYONE BRACE THEMSELVES!” you shout and then you see several of your ships fly up off of the waters when a large sea monster spectacularly arises from below. Your own ship is rocked severely with water crashing everywhere. For a moment you think night has fallen, but it’s just the sea creature blotting out the sun. The creature is bigger than anything you’ve ever faced. Even “Snowtop” would be the size of a gnome compared to this thing. Doesn’t help that the creature has two heads and several tentacles already crushing some of your ships that weren’t destroyed when it ascended in the first place. “FIRE EVERYTHING AND DON’T STOP UNTIL THAT THING IS DEAD!” you shout and the cannons roar desperately trying to harm the creature. Fortunately the ships that you have left don’t seem to be losing their courage and presumably their captains have the same idea of attacking since you can see cannon fire coming from them. Though given their proximity to the creature, they wouldn’t be able to retreat in time for it to crush them anyway. The beast isn’t as invulnerable as it would seem as the cannon fire does its work and delivers wounds but the main problem is, it’s just too damn big. You cast frost bolts at its tentacles that are attempting to wrap around the ship, you then order your troops to shatter them while they’re still frozen. This works well enough that it keeps your ship afloat, but there’s more than just the sea monster to worry about and you fully expected something like this to happen even before you met the leviathan. Several of the fishmen begin scaling your ship. While your ship is well defended and has the skilled manpower it needs to repel the attack, you get the impression that some of the aquatic attackers are probably trying to put holes in it from underneath. “Sprog take some of your people, get in the water and kill everything!” you shout. Sprog doesn’t argue, he just nods at your command. Assuming if the both of you manage to get out of this alive, you at least know you’ve got his complete loyalty now. Nothing like fighting side by side against impossible odds to gain respect. Stripping off what little armor he was wearing in the first place, Sprog goes into full bezerker orc battle frenzy while ordering some of his best to follow him down into the water. You know orcs are tough, but you hope they’ll be able to fight these fishmen in their own environment. It is a severe disadvantage after all. Meanwhile the beast is continuing to destroy the rest of your fleet. You can see people in the water desperately attempting to cling to floating wreckage, only to be pulled underneath the waves by the fishmen who are picking them off. Your own ship has slowly changed direction thanks to Len taking command of the steering wheel. “We can’t fight this monster! We have to retreat!” he shouts pulling the wheel of the ship as hard as he can. He’s probably right and who knows, if you tried right now, you might actually manage to get away while the beast is still primarily occupied. That certainly would be the most sensible thing to do; of course something about this whole experience is making you feel well…good. Your heart is pumping, you’re full of energy and you’re determined to show this undersea abomination that you’re not ready to lie down and accept the fact that you’re getting older. “NO! I can’t let this beast beat me! I never lose!” you shout and knock Len off of the wheel who looks at you like you’re insane and scurries off to find a hiding spot. With battle and bloodshed all around you, with the sounds of cannons and swords filling your eardrums, you make your way to the crow’s nest to gain the highest vantage point you can. From there you get your best look at the sea monster. The large holes in its body where cannons have blown off chunks of it convince you that it can be defeated. It’s just going to take a little magic that’s all… or rather a lot of it. You begin to focus… > You create an ice storm Frost has been doing a good job at freezing the beast’s tentacles, so you decide to try to freeze the entire thing. You concentrate and as you do you begin to feel little the air grow colder and colder. The wind begins to pick up and soon ice pellets begin to rain down on the area. You directly unleash a blast of frost right at one of the creature’s heads and while ice does indeed start to form around it and movement begins to get sluggish. It isn’t quite enough to stop it completely from moving. Instead the creature bashes its own head against a nearby ship in an attempt to break the ice shell now around its frozen head, destroying it and cracking the ice in the process. The beast’s other head completely submerges under water, followed by the rest of its body. In the meantime the fishmen that are scaling your ship are having a bit of difficulty with the cold which is slowing them down, unfortunately it isn’t the best thing for your own crew either, but they’re doing better than the fish at least. You help your crew by continuing to cast ice bolts from the crow’s nest, but this is soon cut short when a large tentacle whips out of the water and heads directly towards your position. You attempt to freeze the tentacle and you succeed, but you fail to stop its momentum. The frozen tentacle smashes into the crow’s nest and the mast, destroying both along with part of the tentacle shattering in several pieces in the process. As for you, you’re hit with such a great force that all the wind is knocked out of you and you go flying into the ocean and hit the water quite hard. You barely manage to swim back up to the water’s surface and you’re still feeling quite woozy and having trouble breathing normally. You’re fairly certain you’ve got cracked or broken ribs. Floating in the middle of the ocean with pieces of your once great fleet drifting nearby, you struggle to swin to some nearby debris before you pass out. You don’t get far however, when all of a sudden you feel several claws grabbing your legs, this is soon followed by the feeling of teeth sinking into your legs. You attempt to kick away, but you can’t shake them. A fish person rises up from the water to grab your upper body in an attempt to drag you under for good. The smell of saltwater fills your nostril along with the foul smell of sea life in general. Already struggling to catch your breath, you soon succumb to watery death by the hands of the fish people.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There might be a day where you’re going to have to command all your armies from bed as a sick old man, but today is not that day. As long as you can wield a weapon and move reasonably well, nobody is stopping you from fighting. As far as being on open water, well this is the perfect chance to get over that possible phobia. Since your own intelligence reports on Delerg have always been hazy at best, you gather your information from less reputable places, namely some of the prisons. Nalin sailors as a rule stayed away from Delerg waters due to the Island League, Still there were always the occasional forays into it for illegal smuggling purposes and you specifically have these types give you any and all information as well as a chance to earn their freedom by enlisting in the navy. While getting the information on island details isn’t too much of a problem due to the threat of violence, you don’t get a lot of takers to enlist even with the promise of freedom (or implied threats of conscription); at first you believe it’s just a criminal attitude of not wishing to be part of the government, but one fellow by the name of Len tells you it’s a little more than that. Len is about your age, probably a little older and is the embodiment of an “old sea dog” with his untidy white hair and beard. Len says he stopped smuggling years ago when he started to feel uneasy sailing in the waters, let alone dealing with some of the people who had become enamored with a weird religion. “Religion? What kind of religion?” you ask. “Not exactly sure, but I’m pretty sure it involved the worship of some water god. I remember finding it strange since it wasn’t like any of the inhabitants of Delerg were particularly religious before. When one of my friends came into the docks one night babbling a mad tale about how he barely escaped from an ambush of screaming cultists that was around the time I decided to stop making smuggling runs and go into something less dangerous like burglary, obviously I wasn’t as good at that since I got caught.” Len replies. “So where is this friend of yours and what did he see?” “Not in a jail cell if that’s what you’re wondering. Last I heard he was committed into an asylum. I think he may have very well killed himself. He never did quite get over it and had a hard time talking about the details, but I do remember him saying that the cultists weren’t quite human looking and fully intent on sacrificing him, like they did with the others who weren’t so lucky to escape I guess.” “What, like the recent fishmen descriptions?” “Perhaps not quite that far, but he did say they had unnatural eyes and their skin was slimy looking. The reason why you’re not getting many enlistees is probably either due to these stories or from personal experience and I imagine the personal experience is rare given that my own friend went completely mad from his own experience. To be quite honest, I’m sort of surprised the Empire never knew any of this before.” “Wasn’t an issue before. A few rumors and tales from mad sailors and criminals isn’t going to catch serious attention. In fact before people starting seeing fishmen on the coasts I didn’t even know about any of this. Delerg was considered low priority, though that may have been a mistake, then again we’re probably in a better position to handle this now. So what is your answer on enlistment?” Len pauses for a moment. “Well, I’ve been a criminal nearly all my life and never had much use for following orders. But as much as I like living, I like freedom a lot more. So if enlistment means possibly getting killed by a bunch of fish monsters but the chance of getting out of those hellholes you call prisons, then I’ll take the risk. Besides, I’d say my odds are a lot better now seeing as I’ll be travelling with the Empire’s navy. I figure I can’t get any safer than that.” “Sure you can, you’re going to be aboard my own personal ship.” “I am?” “You were a captain weren’t you? According to your record you’re probably one of the more experienced ones in the damn Empire. Criminal or otherwise. You’re going to be navigator of my personal ship, because I sure as hell don’t know anything about steering a ship. Plus you have better knowledge of the area, so you’re coming with me directly.” Len isn’t sure how to respond except with a hesitant thank you. He probably thought he was going to be able to sneak away at some point, but that will be next to impossible now with him being aboard your ship. When the time comes, you board your personal ship, which is decked out in the best gear available. Actually it’s much slower than the rest of the ships due to its size, but then its meant to fight and take punishment, not outmaneuver a possible enemy. Honestly, you aren’t even sure what you’ll encounter. If the Island League is indeed completely gone, then you may face no opposition at all as far as other ships are concerned. Maybe you’ll have strange fishmen scaling your ships in an attempt to kill you. Whatever you face, you’ll be ready. Since the occupation of the islands is the main priority, you’re taking a strong force of orcs with you. Sprog himself has volunteered to come, possibly to prove to the rest of his people of how much of a warrior he is. Crowley sent a letter asking if you needed his assistance or the assistance of any of the Eyes as things are much calmer in Rask nowadays, but you tell him the Eyes are needed at home as they always are. Within a few days you’re in Delerg waters, but you’ve come across no islands yet. Len remarks about how strange this is since according to his memory you should’ve come across a couple by now. Even the information you received from others with knowledge of the area would dictate that you would’ve encountered some sort of landmass by now. When you sail further out to sea, you still don’t find any major landmass. There are small patches of land, but nothing that would support a town or other settlement. At best you might be able to build a small guard tower on them and that would be only if the land was relatively flat and solid, which it doesn’t appear to be. “This is damn odd, that small patch of land right there where the Island League’s biggest island was! It even had their largest settlement, Barnacle! It’s like the waters just swallowed everything up!” Len remarks. “I’m getting a vague impression I know what happened to this place. All of Delerg in fact. There’s nothing here worth conquering now, we might as well…” Before you can complete your sentence there is a sudden rumble in the water. “EVERYONE BRACE THEMSELVES!” you shout and then you see several of your ships fly up off of the waters when a large sea monster spectacularly arises from below. Your own ship is rocked severely with water crashing everywhere. For a moment you think night has fallen, but it’s just the sea creature blotting out the sun. The creature is bigger than anything you’ve ever faced. Even “Snowtop” would be the size of a gnome compared to this thing. Doesn’t help that the creature has two heads and several tentacles already crushing some of your ships that weren’t destroyed when it ascended in the first place. “FIRE EVERYTHING AND DON’T STOP UNTIL THAT THING IS DEAD!” you shout and the cannons roar desperately trying to harm the creature. Fortunately the ships that you have left don’t seem to be losing their courage and presumably their captains have the same idea of attacking since you can see cannon fire coming from them. Though given their proximity to the creature, they wouldn’t be able to retreat in time for it to crush them anyway. The beast isn’t as invulnerable as it would seem as the cannon fire does its work and delivers wounds but the main problem is, it’s just too damn big. You cast frost bolts at its tentacles that are attempting to wrap around the ship, you then order your troops to shatter them while they’re still frozen. This works well enough that it keeps your ship afloat, but there’s more than just the sea monster to worry about and you fully expected something like this to happen even before you met the leviathan. Several of the fishmen begin scaling your ship. While your ship is well defended and has the skilled manpower it needs to repel the attack, you get the impression that some of the aquatic attackers are probably trying to put holes in it from underneath. “Sprog take some of your people, get in the water and kill everything!” you shout. Sprog doesn’t argue, he just nods at your command. Assuming if the both of you manage to get out of this alive, you at least know you’ve got his complete loyalty now. Nothing like fighting side by side against impossible odds to gain respect. Stripping off what little armor he was wearing in the first place, Sprog goes into full bezerker orc battle frenzy while ordering some of his best to follow him down into the water. You know orcs are tough, but you hope they’ll be able to fight these fishmen in their own environment. It is a severe disadvantage after all. Meanwhile the beast is continuing to destroy the rest of your fleet. You can see people in the water desperately attempting to cling to floating wreckage, only to be pulled underneath the waves by the fishmen who are picking them off. Your own ship has slowly changed direction thanks to Len taking command of the steering wheel. “We can’t fight this monster! We have to retreat!” he shouts pulling the wheel of the ship as hard as he can. He’s probably right and who knows, if you tried right now, you might actually manage to get away while the beast is still primarily occupied. That certainly would be the most sensible thing to do; of course something about this whole experience is making you feel well…good. Your heart is pumping, you’re full of energy and you’re determined to show this undersea abomination that you’re not ready to lie down and accept the fact that you’re getting older. “NO! I can’t let this beast beat me! I never lose!” you shout and knock Len off of the wheel who looks at you like you’re insane and scurries off to find a hiding spot. With battle and bloodshed all around you, with the sounds of cannons and swords filling your eardrums, you make your way to the crow’s nest to gain the highest vantage point you can. From there you get your best look at the sea monster. The large holes in its body where cannons have blown off chunks of it convince you that it can be defeated. It’s just going to take a little magic that’s all… or rather a lot of it. You begin to focus… > You create a lightning storm As high as you currently are, the beast is still several times higher and should easily be a perfect target. You concentrate and as you do you begin to feel little charges and sparks around you and the air begins to have a faint smell of electricity. As dark as the sky is with the beast blocking the sun with its size, the sky gets even darker when storm cloud gather. You directly unleash a blast of lightning right at one of the creature’s heads. It must be enough to addle what passes for brains in the creature, because the serpentine head begins to flail back and forth making an incredibly loud bellow and knocking into the other head and taking it off its concentrated effort to destroy your fleet. Then a rumbling comes from the sky and you’re nearly blinded by the light show that occurs next. With the storm clouds, the creature takes several lightning strikes to both of its heads. If the creature wasn’t in pain or addled before, it certainly is now. Its roaring of pain is so great that it’s practically deafening. You don’t let up though, you continue to summon the lightning and that’s when you learn that you only have so much control over nature. The lightning strikes begin going all over the place. Some hit your ships, so hit the water and some continue to hit the beast. You struggle to direct the lightning, but your energy ebbs quickly as you fail to do so and you take a direct bolt yourself. It’s a quick and odd feeling. You feel a great deal of pain, followed by a warm sensation and then you briefly realize you’ve fallen from the crow’s nest, which was completely destroyed by the blast. You then feel extreme agony when you not only crash onto the deck of the ship, but also through it. You land on some barrels though all you know is when you land you heard a snap and a numbness wash over your body. And that’s when you know; you’re paralyzed from the neck down. You hear the sounds of battle continue all around you, some of the crew that were manning the cannons on the lower deck call for help when they see you, but there’s nothing anyone can do to help you. Everything’s blurry, you’ve probably got a concussion, and death has never been so close to you since you fought the Emperor. You’re going to fall asleep and your body will sink under the water when the ship is inevitably destroyed. There the fish will eat you or possibly the creatures you’re fighting will eat you. Its possible Crowley might step up and take command of the Empire, but after him? You don’t see it lasting very long. Your own legacy will eventually be forgotten and that will be the story of you. That is if you had any intention on dying today. “Get away from me and get back to fighting, you’re not done yet!” You weakly command the crewmembers that are standing around gawking at you. You remember the lessons the Emperor taught you about healing yourself. At this point you’re in dire need of A LOT of healing and you imagine you’ll easily be shortening your life span quite a bit in the process, but then you aren’t supposed to be alive right now anyway. You focus again. You will your body to mend itself together. In your weakened state you’re drifting in and out of consciousness already, but somehow you manage to push through it and feel the magic doing its work. You start to feel your body again. You’re wracked with pain, but you can feel again. You try to get up, but you’re still just too weak and drained. You see a fishman coming down the ship’s stairway and alert your crew with a shout. The last thing you see is the thing coming at you before you pass out. “Lover? Have you finally come to join me?” you hear a voice ask. “Huh? Who is that?” “It’s me, of course.” You open your eyes and see Semra hovering over you. She looks exactly like you remember well except she happens to be completely naked right now. (Though you remember that too) “Shit, I’m dead after all.” You say. “And given that you’re here I must be in some sort of hell.” “Ah, I missed that dry sense of humor. I also missed this.” Semra remarks and you feel a hand on your crotch. Normally you’d probably push her away, but given everything you just went through you figure that if this is your personal hell, you could certainly do worse. Just as you’re about to give in completely, Semra’s head is cleaved in with a single sword blow. Blood splatters all over you and her body slumps lifelessly onto your own. “Is this what you fucking want? I thought you were stronger than that! The man I married never gave up!” another familiar voice says. After pushing Semra’s dead body off of you, you look up and see Alison in all her warrior maiden glory. You never thought you’d ever see her again though you wish she were in a happier mood. “Alison I…” “Nope, don’t even try to make an excuse! I caught you and you’re not getting off that easy. I’m doing this for your own good!” You see Alison’s sword coming straight at your head, but you don’t attempt to dodge, instead you sit up to meet the sword half way… And you wake up with a splitting headache and your body still hurting all over. “Hah, told you he was going to wake up. He’s not called an Eternal for no reason you know. You owe me two gold pieces Sprog!” Len exclaims. “Sprog owes you what?” “Erm, nevermind. Welcome back to the living Emperor. Everyone wasn’t sure if you were going to make it or not, but I had a feeling you might.” “Bah, should’ve died. Was a glorious battle. Be great honor to die in such a battle.” Sprog remarks. “Oh really? Then why didn’t you make more of an effort to die then?” Len asks. “Sprog still need to produce more children first, now more than ever since three sons died on other ships. Must ensure legacy!” Sprog says and walks away. You look around and find yourself still on the lower deck of your personal ship. You guess that nobody wanted to move you for fear of doing more damage to you body. It’s a mess on the lower deck and there’s still a hole from where you crashed through, but obviously the ship survived the battle. As you sit up, you nearly lay back down due to the pain. A volley of expletives soon follows. “Easy there! While I know you just survived something no man should have, I’m pretty sure taking a direct hit from a lightning bolt and crashing through the deck of a ship from a great height still has to be painful. In fact its odd, but you even look a little older because of the experience.” “You have no idea…” you remark. “Insisting on fighting that beast had to be the single most insane things I’ve ever seen, but while I was personally afraid I can’t help but admire it. Despite him believing you were going to die, I know Sprog certainly admired it.” Len says. “He probably hoped I was going to die. Still glad to see he’s honorable enough that he didn’t try to take advantage and kill me while I was unconscious though. Glad to see you didn’t either.” “I was a smuggler, not a murderer. Besides I don’t think anything I could do would actually kill you anyway after seeing what you just survived.” “So did we win? I can only assume us still being afloat means we won…unless we’ve retreated…” Len gives an apprehensive look before answering. “Well…yes and no. Technically we won, though I’m not sure if we actually killed that sea monster. After you crashed through the deck of the ship, the fishmen continued to scale the ship, but the sea monster continued to be hit by lightning. It eventually sank back beneath the waters, but like I said, I dunno if we killed it or it just swam away. Soon after that happened the fishmen stopped attacking too.” “But?” “But, other than this ship and a couple of others straggling along side us your fleet is gone, along with all of your people aboard them. We had patch up several holes they managed to put in this ship and we’re only sailing at half speed due to all the broken masts, but we’ll make it back to Nalin okay barring any other attacks of course.” You curse again, but this time it’s more at yourself rather than the pain you’re in. You wasted a lot of troops and resources on this endeavor for no real prize. You didn’t even acquire any new territory. You think back to Trog’s words again about getting old and knowing your limitations, well you certainly learned that lesson today hard. “Well I suppose it isn’t all bad, you did teach those fish creatures that you’re not to be trifled with. It was like a battle between gods when you unleashed lightning on that beast’s heads. They might think twice about popping up on your shores now.” Len says in an attempt to cheer you up. “We can only hope I suppose.” You answer. The first thing you do when you get back home is try to rest. You do so for as much as you’re able for weeks and while you do eventually recover, you’re never quite the same again. You’ve visibly gotten older due to the healing magic and it only did so much, you’re still experiencing dull aches and pains on a daily basis. Worse than you did before you went on the mission. You’ll never be like you were. Those days are long gone. On the bright side, there have been no more sightings of fish people on the coasts, so perhaps your venture was fruitful after all, unless they’re biding their time and trying to regroup which is exactly what you’d do, so naturally you’ve ordered the building of a new fleet along with proper naval training for potential sailors. Of course if the fishy people are no longer a threat that still means Trog’s vision of a relentless enemy still looms. Which means it’s either the Xi Hive or an as of yet unknown enemy. More things to look forward to as you approach your twilight years. > Year 555 “Reports as usual say that the Xi have been becoming more frequent in the Arat region and that they have been sighted close to Empire borders, specifically near the city of Regnik.” David remarks. “Well that would be the most logical place for them to attack first seeing as it’s the closest. Seeing as the Xi like to attack from underground, have all of our kobold units on alert and have the seventh scaly brigade stationed in Arat. I know they’re the best of those little vicious bastards and I’m confident that they can slow down or repel such a Xi attack before the rest of the armies get mobilized. Probably can do some tunnel scouting and digging as well.” You remark. “Very well, but I also have a report stating that the Xi have mostly been focusing on the Arat Confederacy. All four cities have been attacked and apparently Eldolith wants to speak with us about coordinating forces to destroy the threat. Apparently she’s also been sending people to speak with the Redcap Kingdom too. No idea if that was successful.” “So Eldy’s having a bug problem and now she’s begging for help. I’m a little surprised that she swallowed her pride enough that she’s willing to talk at all. So when is she due to arrive?” “She isn’t, she claims that if you want to talk that you should meet her on neutral ground between Lenay and Regnik.” “Typical svelk arrogance. Call for help and then insist that it be on their terms. (Sigh)” “You’re aren’t thinking about going are you?! Surely it will be some sort of trap.” “Of course it will be a trap. But if I did go I could probably learn more about what she’s been up to if I go and in the off chance that this isn’t a trap and completely on the up and up then I can still better assess what her situation is and the Xi Hive threat.” “But Emperor, your condition…I mean not to say your aren’t a fit man for your um…age…but that battle with the sea beast five years ago…well I just mean I don’t want to see you walk into something a tad overwhelming for you again. The Empire needs you.” These are some pretty bold words, though David was as diplomatic as he could’ve possibly been. Really brave on his part, though he didn’t need to fear anything from you. He’s right, you’re still feeling that battle to this day and will continue to until the day you die. David’s actually been a bit of a surprise to you. When he first groveled for the job of being your top advisor you assumed that like most of the senators of the old Nalin republic he was just looking to save his skin while also looking for the best possible position he could get in the new order of things. He got it because he seemed to be competent and the least annoying at the time. Since then though he’s proven himself to be good at his job and genuinely care about his work and the good of the Empire. “While your concern is noted, I’m not going anywhere. Send a message to her stating that if she really wants to discuss terms of an alliance or something similar she’s going to have to drag her svelk ass here.” David nods and leaves your presence. Seeing as all your major business is concluded today you head back to your personal chambers. You spend a little time reading a new book that Jennifer has written with her new husband. It’s all about the old Empire and called “The Glory Before the Fall” Fairly accurate, but then again she did have your input on the thing. Still never told her (or anyone for that matter) about you her ancestor being involved in killing the Emperor which indirectly caused the Cataclysm. You suppose that’ll just be one of those secrets lost to history when you die. As you’re reading you begin reflecting on your old relationship with Jennifer. It sometimes seems strange that the two of you have remained friends despite not being romantically involved anymore. Of course the two of you just see one another as much anymore either so that might help. Really your relationship with her was more due to a young crush on her part and perhaps a bit of loneliness on your own. She saw you as a “pillar of strength” and the pinnacle of a “warrior.” Basically someone who got things done which was somewhat lacking with most of the leaders and citizens of the republic. You were different and it was attractive, then she slowly grew out of it. Now she’s happily married to someone more similar to her. A scholar interested in history. She even had a son a couple years ago. And that’s all okay with you. You’re happy for her. You’ve got so many more concerns nowadays that you can’t be bothered to feel pangs of regret of “what could’ve been.” Besides, Jennifer was and will always be nice and one of the few people you could consider a friend, but she was no Alison. Nobody ever will be. All this self-reflection and thoughts about Jennifer’s family makes you ponder your own lack of one though. Not so much due to an overwhelming desire to have one, but more of what’s going to happen to the Empire after you die? You’ve been thinking about that on and off ever since your last brush with death actually. To be quite honest you never really thought about a successor mainly because for a long time you were focused on actually being the Emperor rather than passing the title on. It would be easier of course if you could have children, and then just pass it on that way, but then even if you could, that wouldn’t be a guarantee they’d be worthy or show the desire or interest. You were unnaturally molded into the way you were, who is to say how your imaginary children would’ve turned out even if you attempted to mold them into mirror images of yourself. That of course just leaves passing the Empire on to someone worthy. You’ve briefly entertained the idea before and believed that Crowley would potentially be the best candidate. Of course given that he’s around your age, he’s not likely to live any longer than you are, assuming you die of natural causes which isn’t necessarily a given even if you are taking less risks nowadays. You begin thinking that perhaps you should get some sort of list of the Empire’s best and brightest and subject them to a series of tests to see if they’re worthy enough to be an apprentice of sorts. Basically what the Emperor did with you except without all the magical alteration and the sadistic svelk taskmasters. You spend the next few days going over records of various soldiers, Eyes, administrators, technicians, politicians and others, though being a warrior yourself you can’t help but be biased toward the military types, but you don’t want to overlook anything. During this time David reports to you that Eldolith is actually in Dalt and demanding an audience. That didn’t take long though you’re a little surprised she actually showed up in person, you figured she’d send a flunky of some sort. When you go to meet her she’s standing with her personal guard and looking around as if just being in a room full of humans is tainting her svelk “purity.” “Hello Eldy, I’m sure you’re anxious to get this over with…” “Don’t address me by a shortened version of my name in an attempt to be condescending, I am Domina Eldolith D’vessa of the Arat Confederacy!” “Hrm, and I’m sure that sounds very impressive when you tell your subjects in that little nation of yours.” “Yes, a little nation that stood strong against the Xi for years and managed to survive your expansion efforts. A testament that it’s the QUALITY of the nation rather than the size.” You chuckle. “Eldy, the only reason your nation is still around is because I’ve allowed it and I suggest that YOU do not come here grand standing when you are in no position to do so. We all know you’re here to beg for my help with the Xi because they’re kicking your ass. Now we can make this as easy OR as humbling as possible. Your choice.” Eldolith gives you a look of absolute burning hatred and is silent. Her personal guards shift uncomfortably and your own soldiers are fondling their rifles looking for an excuse to open fire. “You’re enjoying this aren’t you?” Eldolith remarks. “Actually not as much as you’d think, mainly because I don’t want you here anymore than you want to be here, so how about we get to the point like I originally suggested?” “Fine, here it is. The Xi are beating on the Confederacy’s doors. We’ve been your buffer zone between them and you. If we fall then you’re going to have to face them in full force.” “And? You seem to believe that we aren’t going to be able to handle that. Not a very compelling argument Eldy.” “Because you’re a short sighted f…” Eldolith stops herself. “What I mean is you haven’t let me finish. We have an ancient magic weapon at our disposal that could end this threat completely, but the problem is…(sigh) none of our own mages are powerful enough to tap its full potential. As much as I hate to inflate your ego any more than it is, I believe you magical abilities would be able to. So as you can see, you don’t need to marshal armies to our defense or waste any resources. All that is required of you is to get up off your throne for one moment and take a trip to Lenay and we can get started…” You burst out laughing. “Oh yes, let me just go walking into a city filled with svelk! That won’t be a death sentence at all! You expect me to just trust you at your word? Even if you do have this so called powerful weapon, I still have a hard time believing that there isn’t some sort of trick or catch or angle that doesn’t involve me dead in some way.” “I thought you were the Emperor? Mr. invincible and fearless? Have you gotten so cow…cautious in your old age that you can’t handle being alone?” “Eldy, if you think this pathetic attempt of character assassination is going to suddenly cause me to behave in some erratic manner and go to Lenay you’re sadly mistaken. You never were any good in the art of persuasion. The only way you’re going to see me in Lenay is if I’m leading a conquering army through it which given your continued insolence is starting to look more appealing, so who knows maybe you will see me there soon. Now get out of my sight before I put an end to your miserable life before the Xi do!” “Fuck this, I told her this was futile!” Eldolith exclaims and her personal guards surround her with a magic shield. Bullets from your soldiers are absorbed into the barrier. “Congratulations, you just made this easier.” You say and focus on bringing down the shield, while your soldiers advance with their weapons. “I think not, a lot of time has passed since I was a mercenary captain and you were an Empire puppet who had not yet cut his master’s strings!” Eldolith says and suddenly she floats above her own personal guards followed by a red glow of light from her. Her personal guards at this point all begin screaming in pain. Whatever it is she’s doing she’s sacrificing her own people to do it. Then a super blast of telekinetic energy repels all of your troops back. You even have a hard time not falling over. Eldolith casts some sort of spell that literally starts melting your soldiers’ weapons. Some manage to drop them before the hot metal scalds them too much. Your own Eye mages lob offensive spells at her, but they aren’t penetrating the shield. Some aim for her soldiers, but they aren’t moved despite some of them even being on fire. They’re already in a living death state anyway. Eldolith never had any magic abilities, and while its possible she studied and trained herself, but something seems off about all this, not to mention her odd comments. Just as you bring her shield down, a portal opens up behind you. You have no idea where it’s going, but you can feel it pulling you in slightly. “Time to be reunited!” Eldolith shouts and a red beam of magical energy is thrown in your direction. > You dodge the beam If you were twenty years younger and not saddled with countless old wounds that cause your body to react much slower nowadays, you’d probably easily dodge the beam, hell if you were just ten or five years younger even. However, you aren’t and your agility isn’t what it used to be. When you attempt to duck and roll out of the way, you just succeed in spraining your back with your sudden move, but that’s the least of your concerns when Eldolith’s red beam hits you directly in the head. You feel a crushing pressure all around your skull for a moment and then a “pop” sound is heard inside our head before your brain is completely scrambled by an overload of…well whatever the hell Eldolith hit you with. All you know is it hurts a lot in the few moments you’re actually conscious to experience the pain. With your brain fried and blood leaking out of your ears you collapse to the floor. If Eldolith’s goal was to get you into that portal, she’s going to have to drag your corpse in there now.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 555 “Reports as usual say that the Xi have been becoming more frequent in the Arat region and that they have been sighted close to Empire borders, specifically near the city of Regnik.” David remarks. “Well that would be the most logical place for them to attack first seeing as it’s the closest. Seeing as the Xi like to attack from underground, have all of our kobold units on alert and have the seventh scaly brigade stationed in Arat. I know they’re the best of those little vicious bastards and I’m confident that they can slow down or repel such a Xi attack before the rest of the armies get mobilized. Probably can do some tunnel scouting and digging as well.” You remark. “Very well, but I also have a report stating that the Xi have mostly been focusing on the Arat Confederacy. All four cities have been attacked and apparently Eldolith wants to speak with us about coordinating forces to destroy the threat. Apparently she’s also been sending people to speak with the Redcap Kingdom too. No idea if that was successful.” “So Eldy’s having a bug problem and now she’s begging for help. I’m a little surprised that she swallowed her pride enough that she’s willing to talk at all. So when is she due to arrive?” “She isn’t, she claims that if you want to talk that you should meet her on neutral ground between Lenay and Regnik.” “Typical svelk arrogance. Call for help and then insist that it be on their terms. (Sigh)” “You’re aren’t thinking about going are you?! Surely it will be some sort of trap.” “Of course it will be a trap. But if I did go I could probably learn more about what she’s been up to if I go and in the off chance that this isn’t a trap and completely on the up and up then I can still better assess what her situation is and the Xi Hive threat.” “But Emperor, your condition…I mean not to say your aren’t a fit man for your um…age…but that battle with the sea beast five years ago…well I just mean I don’t want to see you walk into something a tad overwhelming for you again. The Empire needs you.” These are some pretty bold words, though David was as diplomatic as he could’ve possibly been. Really brave on his part, though he didn’t need to fear anything from you. He’s right, you’re still feeling that battle to this day and will continue to until the day you die. David’s actually been a bit of a surprise to you. When he first groveled for the job of being your top advisor you assumed that like most of the senators of the old Nalin republic he was just looking to save his skin while also looking for the best possible position he could get in the new order of things. He got it because he seemed to be competent and the least annoying at the time. Since then though he’s proven himself to be good at his job and genuinely care about his work and the good of the Empire. “While your concern is noted, I’m not going anywhere. Send a message to her stating that if she really wants to discuss terms of an alliance or something similar she’s going to have to drag her svelk ass here.” David nods and leaves your presence. Seeing as all your major business is concluded today you head back to your personal chambers. You spend a little time reading a new book that Jennifer has written with her new husband. It’s all about the old Empire and called “The Glory Before the Fall” Fairly accurate, but then again she did have your input on the thing. Still never told her (or anyone for that matter) about you her ancestor being involved in killing the Emperor which indirectly caused the Cataclysm. You suppose that’ll just be one of those secrets lost to history when you die. As you’re reading you begin reflecting on your old relationship with Jennifer. It sometimes seems strange that the two of you have remained friends despite not being romantically involved anymore. Of course the two of you just see one another as much anymore either so that might help. Really your relationship with her was more due to a young crush on her part and perhaps a bit of loneliness on your own. She saw you as a “pillar of strength” and the pinnacle of a “warrior.” Basically someone who got things done which was somewhat lacking with most of the leaders and citizens of the republic. You were different and it was attractive, then she slowly grew out of it. Now she’s happily married to someone more similar to her. A scholar interested in history. She even had a son a couple years ago. And that’s all okay with you. You’re happy for her. You’ve got so many more concerns nowadays that you can’t be bothered to feel pangs of regret of “what could’ve been.” Besides, Jennifer was and will always be nice and one of the few people you could consider a friend, but she was no Alison. Nobody ever will be. All this self-reflection and thoughts about Jennifer’s family makes you ponder your own lack of one though. Not so much due to an overwhelming desire to have one, but more of what’s going to happen to the Empire after you die? You’ve been thinking about that on and off ever since your last brush with death actually. To be quite honest you never really thought about a successor mainly because for a long time you were focused on actually being the Emperor rather than passing the title on. It would be easier of course if you could have children, and then just pass it on that way, but then even if you could, that wouldn’t be a guarantee they’d be worthy or show the desire or interest. You were unnaturally molded into the way you were, who is to say how your imaginary children would’ve turned out even if you attempted to mold them into mirror images of yourself. That of course just leaves passing the Empire on to someone worthy. You’ve briefly entertained the idea before and believed that Crowley would potentially be the best candidate. Of course given that he’s around your age, he’s not likely to live any longer than you are, assuming you die of natural causes which isn’t necessarily a given even if you are taking less risks nowadays. You begin thinking that perhaps you should get some sort of list of the Empire’s best and brightest and subject them to a series of tests to see if they’re worthy enough to be an apprentice of sorts. Basically what the Emperor did with you except without all the magical alteration and the sadistic svelk taskmasters. You spend the next few days going over records of various soldiers, Eyes, administrators, technicians, politicians and others, though being a warrior yourself you can’t help but be biased toward the military types, but you don’t want to overlook anything. During this time David reports to you that Eldolith is actually in Dalt and demanding an audience. That didn’t take long though you’re a little surprised she actually showed up in person, you figured she’d send a flunky of some sort. When you go to meet her she’s standing with her personal guard and looking around as if just being in a room full of humans is tainting her svelk “purity.” “Hello Eldy, I’m sure you’re anxious to get this over with…” “Don’t address me by a shortened version of my name in an attempt to be condescending, I am Domina Eldolith D’vessa of the Arat Confederacy!” “Hrm, and I’m sure that sounds very impressive when you tell your subjects in that little nation of yours.” “Yes, a little nation that stood strong against the Xi for years and managed to survive your expansion efforts. A testament that it’s the QUALITY of the nation rather than the size.” You chuckle. “Eldy, the only reason your nation is still around is because I’ve allowed it and I suggest that YOU do not come here grand standing when you are in no position to do so. We all know you’re here to beg for my help with the Xi because they’re kicking your ass. Now we can make this as easy OR as humbling as possible. Your choice.” Eldolith gives you a look of absolute burning hatred and is silent. Her personal guards shift uncomfortably and your own soldiers are fondling their rifles looking for an excuse to open fire. “You’re enjoying this aren’t you?” Eldolith remarks. “Actually not as much as you’d think, mainly because I don’t want you here anymore than you want to be here, so how about we get to the point like I originally suggested?” “Fine, here it is. The Xi are beating on the Confederacy’s doors. We’ve been your buffer zone between them and you. If we fall then you’re going to have to face them in full force.” “And? You seem to believe that we aren’t going to be able to handle that. Not a very compelling argument Eldy.” “Because you’re a short sighted f…” Eldolith stops herself. “What I mean is you haven’t let me finish. We have an ancient magic weapon at our disposal that could end this threat completely, but the problem is…(sigh) none of our own mages are powerful enough to tap its full potential. As much as I hate to inflate your ego any more than it is, I believe you magical abilities would be able to. So as you can see, you don’t need to marshal armies to our defense or waste any resources. All that is required of you is to get up off your throne for one moment and take a trip to Lenay and we can get started…” You burst out laughing. “Oh yes, let me just go walking into a city filled with svelk! That won’t be a death sentence at all! You expect me to just trust you at your word? Even if you do have this so called powerful weapon, I still have a hard time believing that there isn’t some sort of trick or catch or angle that doesn’t involve me dead in some way.” “I thought you were the Emperor? Mr. invincible and fearless? Have you gotten so cow…cautious in your old age that you can’t handle being alone?” “Eldy, if you think this pathetic attempt of character assassination is going to suddenly cause me to behave in some erratic manner and go to Lenay you’re sadly mistaken. You never were any good in the art of persuasion. The only way you’re going to see me in Lenay is if I’m leading a conquering army through it which given your continued insolence is starting to look more appealing, so who knows maybe you will see me there soon. Now get out of my sight before I put an end to your miserable life before the Xi do!” “Fuck this, I told her this was futile!” Eldolith exclaims and her personal guards surround her with a magic shield. Bullets from your soldiers are absorbed into the barrier. “Congratulations, you just made this easier.” You say and focus on bringing down the shield, while your soldiers advance with their weapons. “I think not, a lot of time has passed since I was a mercenary captain and you were an Empire puppet who had not yet cut his master’s strings!” Eldolith says and suddenly she floats above her own personal guards followed by a red glow of light from her. Her personal guards at this point all begin screaming in pain. Whatever it is she’s doing she’s sacrificing her own people to do it. Then a super blast of telekinetic energy repels all of your troops back. You even have a hard time not falling over. Eldolith casts some sort of spell that literally starts melting your soldiers’ weapons. Some manage to drop them before the hot metal scalds them too much. Your own Eye mages lob offensive spells at her, but they aren’t penetrating the shield. Some aim for her soldiers, but they aren’t moved despite some of them even being on fire. They’re already in a living death state anyway. Eldolith never had any magic abilities, and while its possible she studied and trained herself, but something seems off about all this, not to mention her odd comments. Just as you bring her shield down, a portal opens up behind you. You have no idea where it’s going, but you can feel it pulling you in slightly. “Time to be reunited!” Eldolith shouts and a red beam of magical energy is thrown in your direction. > You put up your own shield Given that your reflexes aren’t what they used to be, you don’t risk physical avoidance and instead put up your hands to create a shield for the oncoming beam of magic. At first you assume that the beam will either absorb into the shield or deflect completely, instead the force of it knocks you back much more than you were expecting. And right into the portal. You don’t feel any pain or anything really other than a minor fall on your back, which hits a stone floor. You’re not in your palace anymore, but what catches your attention immediately is what is in the room with you. A fancy chair with an old withered looking body in it. You can tell its svelk, but you’ve never seen an “old” svelk before, or at least not one that displayed this great deal of age. At this distance you can’t even be sure if its alive or not. Surrounding the chair are several tall rods, which emanate a magical field. The rods are embedded in the floor, they look like they’re made of adamantium. Very strong material usually used by the derro. Nearby there are several orbs mounted on similar shorter rods, they aren’t glowing or anything, but you assume that they’re also magical. Other than this sight, there isn’t anything else in the room, which is made of solid looking stone. The other notable feature is the fact there aren’t any doors or any other apparent way out… “I knew one day, you would return to me.” You hear a voice utter in your head. The voice is familiar and for a brief moment you think you’re dreaming, but a closer look at the withered body in the room and you know this is all too real. “So you survived after all. Explains why there was no svelk body nearby when I got dug up.” You say. “Not without a price as you can see.” Semra says. Apparently she can only communicate through your mind. The magical field prevents you from getting too close, but Semra’s face looks like it’s in a permanent slack jaw state. It would also appear that some magic never dies as you can sense Semra’s “emotions” right now thanks in part to that little spell she cast on you before you faced the Emperor. Right now Semra’s probably gathering all the information of what you’ve been more or less up to since you were freed. As always, your own ability is limited and you can’t read what she’s been up to, however given her current state you don’t imagine it’s involved much physical activity. You can sense a faint sign of…happiness(?) from her because you’re here, but then you never did quite understand her unnatural obsession for you. You also sense a slight feeling of shame for appearing the way she does (Though she’s trying really hard to block it from you). Vanity of course. Really though you’re more concerned with how you’re going to escape from here. You doubt that you can destroy the field surrounding Semra, if you could, you wouldn’t have been brought here in the first place. It’s obvious that Semra really wants to talk with you. “Do you have no desire at all for a brief discussion with me after all we’ve been through?” Semra asks. “Not particularly, though since I can see no apparent way out at this time, I suppose I’ll indulge you for now.” “Don’t worry, unlike me, you are not a prisoner here. (Sigh) You don’t know how good it is to see you again, even if you are a little older…ha ha like I’m in a position to judge.” Semra remarks. “ Yeaah, about that…so…what is this? Are you dead? Are you alive?” “Oh I’m alive, but thanks to my daughter’s treachery I have been reduced to this pathetic shell.” “When did that happen and how?” “How, why and when it happened isn’t important. The fault is mine for not being more observant and allowing myself to still hold a torch for you which contributed to my weakness. I cannot blame Eldolith for her actions that lead me to this fate. She only did what a true svelk daughter would do.” “So I take it you’re proud of her for turning you into a wizened invalid?” “I was for a time, however despite a few shining moments she has ultimately proven to be a failure in her ambitions. She could’ve expanded the svelk so that we had our own Empire once again, but she was too busy bedding and torturing her slave girl lovers or indulging in other petty pleasures. She ultimately has no real confidence in her own abilities, if she did she wouldn’t keep me around.” “I figured she kept you around as some sort of torture for you.” You remark. “While you’re partially correct, the other reason is she still needs me around to hold her hand and tell her what to do next. She claims that she keeps me around because she enjoys mocking my decrepit impotent form while occasionally tapping my powers, but without me advising her, she wouldn’t have even held on to THIS city for as long as she did. If she’s trying to torture me by continuing to display her idiocy and making foolish decisions, while I can’t actively do anything about them, then it’s working. I urged her that she should’ve sought you out as soon as I sensed your active presence, but she just ignored me, claiming I was just being a sentimental fool. She never saw the big picture until it was too late, but I did. I still do. Which is why I wanted to see you.” “What, the Xi threat?” “That is indeed a threat, but it is perhaps just the catalyst for what is going to come.” “And I suppose you can see into the future? I don’t remember you ever having that ability.” “I didn’t, but after Casimir’s death, or the Cataclysm as most call it, many things were unleashed. Large waves of wild magic being one. Wish I had developed the ability BEFORE I was reduced to this husk, but then I suppose my current state allows for such dormant powers to manifest themselves due to being unable to do anything else except sit and think. Another thing that was unleashed was the Xi. Did you know they’ve lived far underground for millennia? Even further than the Derro or any other known subterranean race. Practically unknown to the surface world. It was only due to the massive upheaval of the earth due to the Cataclysm that they slowly started to make their way up to the surface. I believe they thought it was an attack, and now they’ve finally amassed their numbers to a point where they can overrun the surface world. Took them a few centuries, but here they are and they will be very difficult to stop.” “But you said they weren’t the only danger.” “They aren’t. The old Empire may have died, but its actions are going to be the destruction of the new one you have forged one way or another. The Xi are just one way, the other way is much more personal and the wound still runs deep. Wounds that we were also both were responsible for.” You think back and you can only think of one thing… “The gnomes?” you ask. “Correct. My daughter has clumsily acquired info on the Redcap Kingdom over the years, but I trust my visions more. And if any of this is remotely accurate, they plan on committing mass genocide to everything in the area. This apparently will be done with a combination of weapons only their expertise in technology could’ve brought forth, it will also be done far above the ground.” “What from the air? What did they figure out how to fly or something?” You hear a small chuckle in your head from Semra. “I see that you have not been very observant of the gnomes. You probably just heard that they had become less peaceable creatures, but the reality is much much more than that. In their war of survival against the Xi, they have been developing technology that can kill as quickly if not as elegantly as battle magic. Their most recent inventions have been strange flying machines. Airships for the lack of a better word, from these they rain down explosive death on the Xi.” This is a lot of information to assess, but thanks to your link to Semra, you can sense no trickery from her. She has indeed been having visions similar to how Trog had them, except perhaps stronger. “Okay, so basically I should just let the Xi and gnomes continue fighting until they wipe each other out to a point where neither one is a threat.” “You can’t afford to do that, lover. Letting them battle it out hasn’t worked. That’s what my fool daughter thought and it’s proven to be a failure. The Xi AND the gnomes have managed to avoid extinction despite being at each other’s throats for decades now. The Xi has just expanded towards our direction and the gnomes have just developed more powerful weapons. If it keeps going, the war is going to ultimately engulf the entire area and chaos will ensue. The line needs to be held here in Arat if only to prevent the spread and that’s why you’re needed here.” “So I’ve heard. Your daughter mentioned an ancient magical weapon that would only work if I helped charge it or something.” Semra’s voice chuckles again. “Yes, that was her way of insolently describing me, though I suppose it isn’t too far off as a description. Really though it isn’t a true solution. Basically you and I would join our energy together and form a protective barrier over this city. Something great enough that I doubt if even gnome weapons could penetrate it and I know the Xi wouldn’t be able to dig through it.” You can’t believe that would be an option. “This sounds pretty sketchy that some how I would be the convenient answer to the problem. I mean you’ve got other mages here and your daughter…” “My daughter is a fucking charlatan. She has learned no real magic herself. As I’ve said she only taps my own powers which is why she can cast magic in the first place. As for other svelk, most of them are pretenders as well. The few that do actually have magical talent they wouldn’t be able to handle the full might of my magic either. But you. You are different. YOU actually have the ability. The power. I know because I trained you myself and what I didn’t teach you, Casimir certainly did. YOU and I could join together and survive the coming destruction like we did before.” “Yeah because that turned out so well right? I was in stasis for five hundred years and you…well just look at yourself. You’d be better off dead. Am I to join your fate when I join with you in this magic spell that is supposedly going to save this city? And why would I want to save a city full of svelk?” “Because you could be their ruler? What difference does it make when in the scheme of things you do not really care about your subjects so much as you care about the power you wield over them? I have seen your thoughts. Lately you have been dwelling on your own death and who will be worthy to take your place. Let me answer both questions. Nobody will EVER be worthy to take your place. Your Empire, what you have built will fall even if you do manage to save it from the Xi invasion or the inevitable revenge of the gnomes. You WILL be forgotten in time. But I’m offering you a chance at avoiding that fate. I’m offering you a kind of immortality and the chance to be in power FOREVER. Yes it is true, you would be confined to a state similar to mine, but you do not know the true power of the mind. Your body might be in a prison, but your mind would never be. I could teach you if you just join with me.” As strange as it may seem, Semra’s words do hold a little weight. Immortality is appealing and lording it over the svelk would probably be amusing, but at what cost? Semra claims that her mind allows her freedom in a way that her physical body never could, but you just can’t see living like that voluntarily. You might be facing your own mortality soon, but if that is going to happen then that’s how it shall be. The future hasn’t been written yet as far as you’re concerned. Plus there’s also the fact that Semra just wants someone to join in her living death misery, who better than you? “Semra, I’ve listened to your offer and indulged you long enough. I decline and will deal with the threats to my Empire on my own terms. Now then, I trust you have the ability to let me go?” Semra says nothing, for a moment you think you’re going to have to make a threat. While you aren’t sure if you’d actually be able to take down the magical field around her, you’d give it a good try. It doesn’t come to that though and soon another portal open up. “Go then. You will see that I’m right though and you will come back to me. You know we were meant to be together.” Semra remarks. “Well thanks to your daughter, your nation has officially declared war. So perhaps you’re right, maybe I will be back with an entire army.” You answer. “I will be looking forward to that day, lover.” You step through the portal and find yourself back in your palace where things are in turmoil. Your return quells things down though. Unfortunately Eldolith got away. Apparently she escaped through another portal. You aren’t worried though; she’ll pay for what she did. The svelk won’t have to wait for the Xi to overrun them; you’ll get there first. > Year 557 Arat is nearly yours...well what’s left of it anyway and even after you take it completely there is still the matter of holding it. And that will certainly be a great task, one you even wonder if you’ll live to see. The aches and pains in your body continue to get worse with age, you tire a lot easier and you get short of breath at times. Everyone tells you that you shouldn’t be anywhere close to the battlefield, but you can’t help it. It’s the only place you feel you truly belong and gives you a thrill even if you’re not doing a lot of active fighting nowadays. To be quite honest this war has been a blessing for you as there is no end in sight. It allows you to focus on something other than mundane things like the economy or civics. It’s also allowed you to put off the task of finding your “successor” and you don’t even care anymore. You’ve come to the conclusion that when your days are done in this world whoever gets the Empire is whoever is strong enough to hold it. If that means it disintegrates and falls into the abyss then so be it. The Empire fell once before and you revived it. It can do it again. Only four major cities to conquer and the Arat Confederacy would be resigned to the history books, but they proved to be much harder to crack mainly because of Xi AND Redcap interference. Arat is a massive warzone and now all the major players are involved. Zo was the toughest nut to crack in terms of fighting, but perhaps the easiest in some ways as there were no other elements to make things complicated. It was a straight up battle and it only defied you mainly due to its hatred of orcs, which make up a large part of your armies. It is almost unfortunate that the entire city population had to be practically eradicated because its citizens were certainly the bravest and had the best soldiers in this war. Valizza was next. The crimelords there practically opened the gates for you. If it was a choice between suffering Zo’s fate or being ruled by the Empire, there was no choice at all. After all crime always exists somewhere in societies no matter how hard a government tries to stomp it out. The crimelords there no doubt assumed that they could just switch sides and slither into the underworld that exists in the Empire. Most of them were wrong. You couldn’t be worrying about petty gang violence between warring factions you needed another city on the frontlines contributing to the war effort. You immediately had all the “leaders” sized up, determined which one was the most efficient and made him “governor” while the rest were executed. “Hand Cannon” Harry was grateful and now knows that the city is ultimately run for Empire purposes FIRST. And whatever criminal activity he has going on comes second. You’re the “Boss.” Atinil, ever the bootlicking city to Lenay of course fought back, though not very well. The only reason why it posed any problems is due to Lenay’s forces attempting to bail them out and Xi incursions which had started to become more of a problem by this point. It was during this battle that your armies had begun facing any sort of heavy Xi opposition. Semra was right, there are an awful lot of them and they attack in waves with no regard for their own lives. They also make their first strikes mainly from below; in fact that’s what ultimately ended the siege of Atinil. Towards the end, its citizens threw open the gates begging you to destroy the Xi who had managed to enter the city before you did. By the time it was all said and done the Xi had destroyed half of the city before you managed to beat back the infiltration. Your kobold commando units have been doing a good job at blocking off tunnels or creating new ones to form counter attacks, but again there are just so many of them that for every ten you kill it seems like a hundred take their place. To make matters worse, the Redcaps have been making excursions into Arat via their airships. You’ve only manages to catch sight of a few from a distance, but others have described them to you in greater detail. Great big oval shaped contraptions that seem to move by propellers and some sort of gas that keeps them aloft. (At least that’s how someone tried to explain it to you, really you still never got all that “science” stuff) And just as Semra had mentioned in your visit with her, they’ve been bombing indiscriminately on the Xi AND your own troops. You’ve yet to take one of these airships down mainly because they never stay around long enough in a battle (and certainly not in any battle that you’ve personally participated in. They float in to cause destruction and then leave, though you have noticed that they’ve all been going in a particular direction. Namely towards the city-state that has always remained a mystery, Telis. Now Lenay is all that remains of the Arat Confederacy and it’s making sure that all attackers will not stomp out its presence with ease. A magic barrier has formed around the city, and probably extends far below the earth as well otherwise the Xi would’ve gone under it. The barrier has proven impenetrable to all known weapons and magic or at least anything your soldiers can throw at it. Given how strong it is you can only guess that Semra is having a direct hand in the matter. So much for her claims that “you” were needed to create the barrier in the first place, then again she did imply that she merely needed your help to keep her from using up all her power. Usually a “siege” mentality isn’t very successful (certainly didn’t work for the Felkans) but the svelk seem to be content on “waiting” everything out while you and the Xi slaughter each other, they may even be building up something that will change the tide of the war. (And probably are) So once again it’s all falling onto you. You’re the only one that has magic remotely powerful enough to bring down that barrier and even then you might need help. You half wonder if taking the barrier down is going to kill you, but if it comes to that then so be it, but there might be a more pressing concern. The recent appearances of the gnomes and their travels towards Telis make you wonder if you shouldn’t direct your attention toward them. Semra did warn you about them and their recent actions of bombing your own troops haven’t exactly proven her wrong. It’s just a question of what you want to spend your time and resources on. Making a long trip to Telis probably through Xi occupied territory and then face whatever the gnomes have there (which you have no sort of intel on) or bring down the barrier (And continuing to fend off the Xi in the meantime). Both of those are probably going to result in considerable losses. > You bring down the barrier You aren’t going to wait around and marching your troops off to Telis seems like a waste of time when you’re so close to finishing off the Arat Confederacy. Most of all you want to get your revenge on Eldolith for her attack on you in your own palace years ago. You gather all the mages that are currently within your war camp and explain that you’re going to bring down that barrier. It’s going to require a great deal of energy and that it’s completely possible that some won’t even survive the process, but once that barrier is down, Lenay will be ripe for the taking. In the meantime, the regular army is going to have to deal without magic back up for awhile when repelling Xi incursions. You and your mages focus on the massive barrier protecting Lenay. You envision it coming down and staying that way. Doesn’t take long before you begin to feel a force combating your efforts. With a personalized touch that only Semra can do. “What do you think you’re doing my eager eternal? If you wanted me to let you in, you could’ve just asked you know.” You hear her voice inside your head. You try to block it out, but that’s a losing task. You and Semra are locked in more than just a battle of the wills right now. Your minds are still linked. “This is a useless endeavor eternal. Even with your little followers you aren’t going to bring down this barrier. I can keep this up forever.” One good thing about having a linked mind, is you can sometimes tell an outright lie, though in Semra’s case it’s always better to assume that she’s lying anyway. However, you know she can’t keep this up forever, her power is nowhere near how it used to be, otherwise she wouldn’t have wanted you to “join her” years ago. “Very well, continue if you must…” Semra’s voice says and thankfully you’re just left with silence. Five days pass and your army is fending off the Xi well enough, but the barrier still stands strong. You have not eaten, slept or drank anything and are really starting to feel those effects even if you are in a trance like state right now. The only thing that’s managed to sustain you is…well leeching off the energy of your other mages of which you’ve lost seven at this point. Still, you really feel that you’re making progress. You can sense that the barrier is weakening, perhaps only a little, but it’s still something. Unfortunately you may never know if you would’ve succeeded eventually because something occurs that interrupts everything. Something big and something you and probably nobody else could’ve ever envisioned… An incredibly large object hovers high above the earth and moves slowly towards the city of Lenay. It’s high enough that it’s fairly safe from conventional weapons. It isn’t an airship either; it’s something much more. It’s Telis. The gnomes have somehow managed to uproot an entire city and have it floating in the fucking air. While your army is certainly panicking about this, you’re nearly completely oblivious due to your continued spell focus on bringing down the barrier. You hear some of your officers shout at you about a flying city or something similar, but you’re more or less out of the loop. Even when Telis begins to unleash a volley of mortar rockets in your area you still aren’t completely entirely cognizant of the situation. Loud explosions strike all around you and it’s amazing you aren’t killed in the blast, you do finally lose focus though and fall to the ground. It is then when you realize how much danger you’re in. The gnomes are continuing their vicious bombardment of the area, probably hoping to wipe everyone out and they’re doing a fairly good job all things considering. You look around and see your army completely panicked and running away. They are some of the bravest men and women from all walks of races, but they’ve never had to face something so large and massively destructive before. In fact you don’t even know if you’re going to be able to make it, you feel so weak and the most recent blast just killed or severely maimed the soldiers that were trying to carry you away from danger. Dizzy, tired and very drained, you struggle to retreat from the area as your legs feel very wobbly. “Can’t let it end like this. Argh! Hate this fucking weakness!” you exclaim as pain shoots all through your body and you collapse. It shames you, but you almost feel like just giving up and letting the gnome weapons finish you off. “You see what happened my darling eternal? You were so focused on revenge on my idiot daughter that you completely neglected keeping up on what those red cap miscreants were up to. Now look at you, you’re all spent, just like when we first made love. Remember that?” you hear Semra’s voice say in your head. Apparently she’s still in contact with you. You make an audible groan when you believe that mocking voice of Semra is going to be the last thing you hear in your final moments. However, as usual her mysterious and still baffling obsession with you might be your salvation…again. “Fear not, lover. Mommy can save you. It will have to involve me lowering the barrier for just the briefest moment, but I can open a portal to your safety. Enter it and you’ll be back with me, right where you should’ve been all this time.” No sooner do you hear these words uttered when you see a portal open up not far in front of you. “Come to me, let us embrace again. You know it was always meant to be. We are the survivors. We did it once and we can do it again.” Semra’s creepy attempt at temptation aside, you don’t have much time to react to your situation. The gnomes are undoubtedly going to unleash another volley of explosives and who knows if you’re going to be lucky enough to avoid a direct hit this time. Then again, if you enter that portal who knows what the hell is in store for you. > You enter the portal You know this probably isn’t going to end well, but if you jump into the portal you at least know you’ll buy yourself a little time and a chance at survival. Staying out here is probably going to result in your getting blown to pieces. You don’t think anymore about it and you take a crawling tumble into the portal. When you go through you’re instantly transported before Semra again. Same withered body, same chair, same plain room without any doors and the portal behind you is gone. You then hear an incredibly loud noise coming from above. It’s enough to even shake your surroundings a little. “Glad you finally decided to listen to me again. Those little redcap assholes nearly managed to hit Lenay with their crude explosive weapons. If I had held that portal open any longer for you, they might’ve even destroyed this city. I hope you appreciate the sacrifices I make for you.” Semra says. “Right…so what now? What’s your plan?” you ask getting up off the floor. “Plan? I assumed you knew that by now. I mean you did come through my portal.” “Yeah, I only took your escape route because I would’ve been a dead man had I not. That doesn’t mean I’m siding with you and I’m still not done with your daughter or this city.” “I see…well perhaps we can arrange something to appease you better.” “I doubt it.” “Your faith in my capacity to see what you desire wounds me, especially since you have stated it so plainly here. Now if you give me a few moments, I can give you what you want, but I suggest you prepare yourself.” At first you’re about to ask what she means, but even if you couldn’t get a glimmer of her mind, you believe you’d guess correctly fairly quickly. And within a few moments another portal opens up and soon after that Eldolith steps through. “Mother, the barrier went down for a few seconds and those gnomes nearly killed us all! You’ve got one job to do and you failed to do it! What the fuck are you doing down here? It’s bad enough that we had to stop the annual sveld infant hurling competition because…” Eldolith suddenly stops her complaining when she notices you in the room. Her eyes grow wide and she says nothing, but instead tries to re-enter the portal, but Semra has closed it. Having chosen to unsuccessfully run rather than attempt to defend herself properly, you easily give her a large shock with lightning. She falls to the floor, her body convulsing from the jolt, but not dead yet. You sort of expected that when you finally faced her, she’d put up more of a fight and inevitably you’d either kill her with a powerful magic strike or perhaps a quick sword thrust if you managed to get that close. But now that she’s more or less at your mercy, something comes over you. A desire for cruelty. It’s strange, but you haven’t felt that way towards…well anyone for quite sometime. In fact the last time you felt this way was when you stopped yourself from giving in to such feelings when Eldolith was smarting off to you in Alison’s war camp. You remember some of the things you wanted to do to her. Maybe this is some sort of repressed emotion that’s been coming for a very long time… “We’re not finished Eldy. We’re not finished by a long shot. This has been a long time coming.” You say and kick her in the stomach and chest several times as hard as you can. You then get on top of her and begin to just punching her in the face. Her svelk “beauty” quickly starts to diminish as teeth become broken and her nose follows suit. “Moth…ARGH!” Eldolith cries out as she desperately attempts to call for a maternal figure that just looks on in sadistic pleasure. Eldolith weakly tries to claw at your eyes with her hands, but you easily grab them both and break her wrists. Eldolith screams at this point, begging you to stop and just kill her already. “Apologies, but this is too much fun, in fact don’t you feel my…excitement?” you whisper in her bloodied ear and then slam the back of her head on the stone floor. Aches and pains shoot through your joints, your hands, arms, your legs and your feet, but such things are overridden by the enjoyment you’re getting by beating the shit out the Eldolith. Eventually Eldolith’s breathing becoming very “automatic.” It’s getting near the end where her body is just “functioning” and higher brainpower is quickly fading. Even through the blood all over her face, you notice the tears coming from Eldolith’s eyes. “Oh no, not yet. I’m going to take you up on that offer you once gave me so long ago.” You say and roll Eldolith’s body over… “Yes! YES! Do it! Do it my lovely eternal! Do it for mommy! Teach her that you are the master and that she is to be utterly destroyed!” you hear Semra’s voice in your head exclaim. These calls of encouragement are followed by Semra’s real sounds of excitement made by her own withered body. The wheezing sickly noises are only drowned out by your half crazy rants of pure hate and grunting sounds. After a short but brutal process later you end it by shoving your dagger through Eldolith’s skull, cracking through bone and brain. You even enjoy the sound it makes as you slowly pull it back out. Painting heavily and covered in blood, you don’t feel nearly as bad as you usually do from such energetic activity. You almost feel…invigorated. “There now. Don’t you feel better? Don’t you see this is how it should’ve always been? And just think you can enjoy this sort of thing all the time if you stay here with me. You think what you just experienced was revitalizing? When you fully embrace the power of your mind, you will truly know freedom.” You just stare at Semra’s disgusting wizened body in a semi-trance as you listen to her alluring voice. “You will have an entire city to rule and defile! To torture and humiliate! Let the gnomes burn the outside world to a crisp! Let the Xi overrun the land with their hives! WE will be still here LONG after their time in the sun has gone! We will be like the GODS of old here FOREVER.” Semra’s personal barrier that surrounds her body goes down and another chair materializes next to her own. “Join me my love and we can have everything…” Semra’s voice is so entrancing. She’s making a lot of sense. You don’t detect any lying and you can even see into her mind more clearly. She’s letting you in. You still don’t quite understand a lot of it or see all of it, but you catch a glimpse of perhaps why Semra harbors “romantic” feelings for you. You see the image of another svelk. A male, obviously a soldier, but a mage as well. You also see images of him battling creatures and conquering foes all in the name of his Empire. He obviously enjoys the violence and takes great pleasure in battle, but there’s a certain “honorable” trait about him though too. It’s odd and you’re loathed to admit such a thing, but despite being a svelk he seems very similar to…well you. He even looks vaguely like you in your younger years if you had black skin and the pointy ears. You think you’re about to see more, but Semra finally shuts you out. You guess she’s decided you’ve seen enough. Whether that means she’s trying to hide something or just merely unwilling to because the memories are too painful, you cannot be sure. Is this why Semra’s been so obsessed with you? Was it really that simple? You reminded her of a long dead lover? She could’ve just said something, but then of course that wouldn’t be the svelk way, let alone Semra’s. Maybe this is all a trick. Maybe she’s making you see something that isn’t real to make you more sympathetic towards her despite all the rotten things she’s done. Maybe she intends on killing you. Maybe the spell she cast on you over five hundred years ago was all part of some incomprehensible long range plan that only she understands and you’re finally falling under her complete influence. Or maybe she’s just scared of dying alone. You don’t know. What you do know that you’re probably never getting out of here. (Wherever “here” actually is, though you assume its somewhere under Lenay) Even if you kill Semra, you don’t have the ability to create magical portals or anything like that so you’ll essentially be in a living tomb waiting to die. Of course you probably won’t be waiting too long. Considering she’s currently the only thing up keeping the protective barrier over Lenay as soon as you kill her, you’d wager that the gnomes are going to bomb the shit out of this place and you’ll die in a cave in and that’s assuming the Xi don’t come digging through and overwhelming you first. > You kill Semra Maybe you aren’t going to defeat the gnomes and maybe you aren’t going to defeat the Xi. Maybe either one or both of those races will eventually destroy the Empire you resurrected. Maybe you’ll be completely forgotten. And that’s all okay, because what you’re about to do is going to be completely worth it. You walk slowly towards the chair that Semra has provided for you. You keep your mind completely clear of any murderous thoughts. “You’re right. This is destiny…” you say with a smile. You are soon in front of Semra’s husk of a body. It’s even worse looking up close, not to mention the smell, but you continue to smile as you put your face in front of hers. “But before I take my place by your side my lover, let me give you one last thing…” You see Semra’s face, as slack jawed as it is, manages to make a disturbing grin. “Yes, my eternal, kiss me...” you hear her voice say in your head. And at that moment you grab your dagger…the very dagger you just killed her daughter with while you fucked her. The very dagger Semra stabbed you with and gave to you as a gift when you were just sixteen years. It has at last been returned to its owner when you stab Semra in the chest with it. “HHHAAAAGGGHHHH…” Semra’s desiccated vocal cords gasp. The foul odor of her breath invades your nostrils and the scent of death has never smelled so sweet to you. “Smmaahhh! Lovely.” You remark and step back to watch Semra soon expire from her mortal wound. When her body slumps downward in her chair you know she won’t be healing her way out of this one. And soon you’re alone and feeling very tired. You take a rest in the chair Semra created for you and dwell on your life in general. You think back mostly on your old life before you were dug up five centuries later. The good old days when you knew exactly who was always by your side. Alison. You think back to your wedding day and how happy you were then and how you thought the glory days would never end. But everything ends eventually, just a question of when. If anything, your life has been running on borrowed time for the last twenty some odd years. When you think about it, you did pretty good all things considering. Your introspection is put to an end when you hear several large explosions above you and this time, its not just shaking, the ceiling to the room is beginning to crack and stone begins to fall. Looks like it will be the gnomes that get you even if they’re unaware of it. In fact nobody is going to be aware of what happened to you. You just disappeared off the battlefield. You imagine you’ll be presumed dead though. It doesn’t matter really, but perhaps it is fitting that you die the same way you were originally meant to, buried and crushed by dirt and rubble. In your last moments as the ceiling comes crashing down on your head, you surprisingly grab on to Semra’s cold dead hand. Perhaps in some strange way you were meant to be together after all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know this probably isn’t going to end well, but if you jump into the portal you at least know you’ll buy yourself a little time and a chance at survival. Staying out here is probably going to result in your getting blown to pieces. You don’t think anymore about it and you take a crawling tumble into the portal. When you go through you’re instantly transported before Semra again. Same withered body, same chair, same plain room without any doors and the portal behind you is gone. You then hear an incredibly loud noise coming from above. It’s enough to even shake your surroundings a little. “Glad you finally decided to listen to me again. Those little redcap assholes nearly managed to hit Lenay with their crude explosive weapons. If I had held that portal open any longer for you, they might’ve even destroyed this city. I hope you appreciate the sacrifices I make for you.” Semra says. “Right…so what now? What’s your plan?” you ask getting up off the floor. “Plan? I assumed you knew that by now. I mean you did come through my portal.” “Yeah, I only took your escape route because I would’ve been a dead man had I not. That doesn’t mean I’m siding with you and I’m still not done with your daughter or this city.” “I see…well perhaps we can arrange something to appease you better.” “I doubt it.” “Your faith in my capacity to see what you desire wounds me, especially since you have stated it so plainly here. Now if you give me a few moments, I can give you what you want, but I suggest you prepare yourself.” At first you’re about to ask what she means, but even if you couldn’t get a glimmer of her mind, you believe you’d guess correctly fairly quickly. And within a few moments another portal opens up and soon after that Eldolith steps through. “Mother, the barrier went down for a few seconds and those gnomes nearly killed us all! You’ve got one job to do and you failed to do it! What the fuck are you doing down here? It’s bad enough that we had to stop the annual sveld infant hurling competition because…” Eldolith suddenly stops her complaining when she notices you in the room. Her eyes grow wide and she says nothing, but instead tries to re-enter the portal, but Semra has closed it. Having chosen to unsuccessfully run rather than attempt to defend herself properly, you easily give her a large shock with lightning. She falls to the floor, her body convulsing from the jolt, but not dead yet. You sort of expected that when you finally faced her, she’d put up more of a fight and inevitably you’d either kill her with a powerful magic strike or perhaps a quick sword thrust if you managed to get that close. But now that she’s more or less at your mercy, something comes over you. A desire for cruelty. It’s strange, but you haven’t felt that way towards…well anyone for quite sometime. In fact the last time you felt this way was when you stopped yourself from giving in to such feelings when Eldolith was smarting off to you in Alison’s war camp. You remember some of the things you wanted to do to her. Maybe this is some sort of repressed emotion that’s been coming for a very long time… “We’re not finished Eldy. We’re not finished by a long shot. This has been a long time coming.” You say and kick her in the stomach and chest several times as hard as you can. You then get on top of her and begin to just punching her in the face. Her svelk “beauty” quickly starts to diminish as teeth become broken and her nose follows suit. “Moth…ARGH!” Eldolith cries out as she desperately attempts to call for a maternal figure that just looks on in sadistic pleasure. Eldolith weakly tries to claw at your eyes with her hands, but you easily grab them both and break her wrists. Eldolith screams at this point, begging you to stop and just kill her already. “Apologies, but this is too much fun, in fact don’t you feel my…excitement?” you whisper in her bloodied ear and then slam the back of her head on the stone floor. Aches and pains shoot through your joints, your hands, arms, your legs and your feet, but such things are overridden by the enjoyment you’re getting by beating the shit out the Eldolith. Eventually Eldolith’s breathing becoming very “automatic.” It’s getting near the end where her body is just “functioning” and higher brainpower is quickly fading. Even through the blood all over her face, you notice the tears coming from Eldolith’s eyes. “Oh no, not yet. I’m going to take you up on that offer you once gave me so long ago.” You say and roll Eldolith’s body over… “Yes! YES! Do it! Do it my lovely eternal! Do it for mommy! Teach her that you are the master and that she is to be utterly destroyed!” you hear Semra’s voice in your head exclaim. These calls of encouragement are followed by Semra’s real sounds of excitement made by her own withered body. The wheezing sickly noises are only drowned out by your half crazy rants of pure hate and grunting sounds. After a short but brutal process later you end it by shoving your dagger through Eldolith’s skull, cracking through bone and brain. You even enjoy the sound it makes as you slowly pull it back out. Painting heavily and covered in blood, you don’t feel nearly as bad as you usually do from such energetic activity. You almost feel…invigorated. “There now. Don’t you feel better? Don’t you see this is how it should’ve always been? And just think you can enjoy this sort of thing all the time if you stay here with me. You think what you just experienced was revitalizing? When you fully embrace the power of your mind, you will truly know freedom.” You just stare at Semra’s disgusting wizened body in a semi-trance as you listen to her alluring voice. “You will have an entire city to rule and defile! To torture and humiliate! Let the gnomes burn the outside world to a crisp! Let the Xi overrun the land with their hives! WE will be still here LONG after their time in the sun has gone! We will be like the GODS of old here FOREVER.” Semra’s personal barrier that surrounds her body goes down and another chair materializes next to her own. “Join me my love and we can have everything…” Semra’s voice is so entrancing. She’s making a lot of sense. You don’t detect any lying and you can even see into her mind more clearly. She’s letting you in. You still don’t quite understand a lot of it or see all of it, but you catch a glimpse of perhaps why Semra harbors “romantic” feelings for you. You see the image of another svelk. A male, obviously a soldier, but a mage as well. You also see images of him battling creatures and conquering foes all in the name of his Empire. He obviously enjoys the violence and takes great pleasure in battle, but there’s a certain “honorable” trait about him though too. It’s odd and you’re loathed to admit such a thing, but despite being a svelk he seems very similar to…well you. He even looks vaguely like you in your younger years if you had black skin and the pointy ears. You think you’re about to see more, but Semra finally shuts you out. You guess she’s decided you’ve seen enough. Whether that means she’s trying to hide something or just merely unwilling to because the memories are too painful, you cannot be sure. Is this why Semra’s been so obsessed with you? Was it really that simple? You reminded her of a long dead lover? She could’ve just said something, but then of course that wouldn’t be the svelk way, let alone Semra’s. Maybe this is all a trick. Maybe she’s making you see something that isn’t real to make you more sympathetic towards her despite all the rotten things she’s done. Maybe she intends on killing you. Maybe the spell she cast on you over five hundred years ago was all part of some incomprehensible long range plan that only she understands and you’re finally falling under her complete influence. Or maybe she’s just scared of dying alone. You don’t know. What you do know that you’re probably never getting out of here. (Wherever “here” actually is, though you assume its somewhere under Lenay) Even if you kill Semra, you don’t have the ability to create magical portals or anything like that so you’ll essentially be in a living tomb waiting to die. Of course you probably won’t be waiting too long. Considering she’s currently the only thing up keeping the protective barrier over Lenay as soon as you kill her, you’d wager that the gnomes are going to bomb the shit out of this place and you’ll die in a cave in and that’s assuming the Xi don’t come digging through and overwhelming you first. > You join Semra You realize you don’t want to die yet. You also realize that events have conspired against you to lead up to this moment, so perhaps maybe you should just give in to fate. You hate Semra. You’ve always hated her. And whenever she’s helped you’ve resented it even more. And when she’s right that’s when you hate her the most. But you can’t deny her appeal. Even after all these centuries, that part of you, that sick twisted part of you that thought was gone forever is still there and as strong as it ever was. So you give in. You take your place by Semra’s side and sit in the chair that Semra has provided for you. You can sense the delight in her mind. “So…now what?” you ask. “Now the fun begins, lover! Just close your eyes and relax. As always mommy will take care of everything…” You feel your magical essence join with Semra’s own and together you both feel stronger. Most of the energy goes towards the barrier protecting Lenay, but the rest goes towards your own whims, which are now endless at least within your mind, and the city is concerned. You and Semra take a more direct control over Lenay now without Eldolith in charge. You both instill fear into the populace and give commands via your mind to the next highest in rank. (Who just happens to be Eldolith’s latest ambitious girlfriend who gladly accepts the position of Domina). For the most part you just let the city run itself and enjoy watching the excess the city has to offer. Semra herself says things like gladiator matches, the torturing of sveld slaves and the baby throwing competitions are much more enjoyable now that she has someone close to share them with. And when you aren’t doing that, you engage in an activity that’s more common. Of course seeing that your bodies are in no longer suitable for that activity, you engage intimately on a whole mental level. Semra was right about this too, it is somehow more intense than you imagined that could be. Your mind is not limited like the body and you and Semra indulge in many twisted fantasies. You have to admit though, you don’t ever really see baby throwing as a “sport”, but more like an activity. You and Semra constantly have debates over this issue… “But there’s a target and points and everything! How the hell is it not a sport?!” Semra asks. “Just doesn’t seem like one to me. Gladiator matches I can see. There’s clearly skill and training involved.” “You think there isn’t any training or skill with baby throwing? Do you realize how much sveld babies squirm about before your throw them? It’s not like just lobbing a nice round rock you know. They don’t tend to fly straight, you have to practice and adjust for wind and all kinds of other little factors. Like whether or not the baby has eaten within the last couple of hours or so.” “What? If you’re going to kill them anyway why the hell would you even feed them so close before throwing them?” “It shouldn’t surprise you, but baby throwing is taken VERY seriously in svelk society. So much so that some like to cheat by secretly feeding their opponent’s babies before hand. Nothing worse than a baby-spraying diarrhea all over you while you’re swinging it around to throw. Even the smell could distract you from your throw and cause you to lose valuable points.” “I dunno, still just seems like a celebrated svelk activity to me. I mean why don’t you consider torturing elves a sport? Surely the torturers have practiced their trade enough to keep victims alive long enough to give a good show.” you ask. “Because that’s not a sport, that’s a fucking art! (Sigh) You humans are such uncultured barbarians.” While you and Semra remain safely inside the barrier of Lenay, the world outside goes on, but not in a good way. The Empire suffers greatly without your leadership. The Xi begin overrunning the borders and the gnomes continue to bomb the hell out of both. Doesn’t take long before holdings in Arat fall completely and Quala is well on its way. Sightmaster Crowley does his best to fill your shoes, but it just isn’t enough when the gnomes come out with an even deadlier weapon than their airships. They develop a plague of some sort to kill the Xi and it works spectacularly. The Xi die off by the thousands. Then the citizens of the Empire start to die off as well. Whether it’s from the same disease or a different one the gnomes created, it doesn’t matter. Elves, humans and even orcs begin to sicken and die. The only ones with somewhat of a resistance are the kobolds and they quickly abandon their duties and scurry back to the safety of their underground dwellings when the gnomes start fire bombing the dying husk of the Empire. The gnomes don’t give up on Lenay either. They attempt to use different weapons to breach the barrier and continue to use the old ones in the hopes that eventually the magic on the barrier will weaken, after all you had the same idea that even Semra couldn’t keep it up forever. And it’s true she can’t by herself. With your help though it isn’t quite as much of a problem. Unfortunately even with the two of you, you can’t keep it up forever either, especially you when you realize that Semra’s been slowly draining all your energy little bit by little bit. You were so wrapped up in enjoying decadence that you didn’t think about how Semra was ultimately using you and eventually killing you. You try to free yourself, but her spell that melded your minds keeps you in place and too weak to resist her. You try to reason with Semra by stating that if you die, it’ll only buy her a bit more time and the gnomes will eventually break through anyway. “Perhaps, my sweet eternal, but not today…I will miss you…” Semra says sounding genuinely sad. You curse yourself for being so weak as you have nobody to blame but yourself. Semra was just being true to herself, something you should’ve done. You were so afraid of death that you ran from it only to die a slave rather than a warrior or even as a free man. You lament your poor judgment as your mind begins to fade into the ever-lasting darkness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t going to wait around and marching your troops off to Telis seems like a waste of time when you’re so close to finishing off the Arat Confederacy. Most of all you want to get your revenge on Eldolith for her attack on you in your own palace years ago. You gather all the mages that are currently within your war camp and explain that you’re going to bring down that barrier. It’s going to require a great deal of energy and that it’s completely possible that some won’t even survive the process, but once that barrier is down, Lenay will be ripe for the taking. In the meantime, the regular army is going to have to deal without magic back up for awhile when repelling Xi incursions. You and your mages focus on the massive barrier protecting Lenay. You envision it coming down and staying that way. Doesn’t take long before you begin to feel a force combating your efforts. With a personalized touch that only Semra can do. “What do you think you’re doing my eager eternal? If you wanted me to let you in, you could’ve just asked you know.” You hear her voice inside your head. You try to block it out, but that’s a losing task. You and Semra are locked in more than just a battle of the wills right now. Your minds are still linked. “This is a useless endeavor eternal. Even with your little followers you aren’t going to bring down this barrier. I can keep this up forever.” One good thing about having a linked mind, is you can sometimes tell an outright lie, though in Semra’s case it’s always better to assume that she’s lying anyway. However, you know she can’t keep this up forever, her power is nowhere near how it used to be, otherwise she wouldn’t have wanted you to “join her” years ago. “Very well, continue if you must…” Semra’s voice says and thankfully you’re just left with silence. Five days pass and your army is fending off the Xi well enough, but the barrier still stands strong. You have not eaten, slept or drank anything and are really starting to feel those effects even if you are in a trance like state right now. The only thing that’s managed to sustain you is…well leeching off the energy of your other mages of which you’ve lost seven at this point. Still, you really feel that you’re making progress. You can sense that the barrier is weakening, perhaps only a little, but it’s still something. Unfortunately you may never know if you would’ve succeeded eventually because something occurs that interrupts everything. Something big and something you and probably nobody else could’ve ever envisioned… An incredibly large object hovers high above the earth and moves slowly towards the city of Lenay. It’s high enough that it’s fairly safe from conventional weapons. It isn’t an airship either; it’s something much more. It’s Telis. The gnomes have somehow managed to uproot an entire city and have it floating in the fucking air. While your army is certainly panicking about this, you’re nearly completely oblivious due to your continued spell focus on bringing down the barrier. You hear some of your officers shout at you about a flying city or something similar, but you’re more or less out of the loop. Even when Telis begins to unleash a volley of mortar rockets in your area you still aren’t completely entirely cognizant of the situation. Loud explosions strike all around you and it’s amazing you aren’t killed in the blast, you do finally lose focus though and fall to the ground. It is then when you realize how much danger you’re in. The gnomes are continuing their vicious bombardment of the area, probably hoping to wipe everyone out and they’re doing a fairly good job all things considering. You look around and see your army completely panicked and running away. They are some of the bravest men and women from all walks of races, but they’ve never had to face something so large and massively destructive before. In fact you don’t even know if you’re going to be able to make it, you feel so weak and the most recent blast just killed or severely maimed the soldiers that were trying to carry you away from danger. Dizzy, tired and very drained, you struggle to retreat from the area as your legs feel very wobbly. “Can’t let it end like this. Argh! Hate this fucking weakness!” you exclaim as pain shoots all through your body and you collapse. It shames you, but you almost feel like just giving up and letting the gnome weapons finish you off. “You see what happened my darling eternal? You were so focused on revenge on my idiot daughter that you completely neglected keeping up on what those red cap miscreants were up to. Now look at you, you’re all spent, just like when we first made love. Remember that?” you hear Semra’s voice say in your head. Apparently she’s still in contact with you. You make an audible groan when you believe that mocking voice of Semra is going to be the last thing you hear in your final moments. However, as usual her mysterious and still baffling obsession with you might be your salvation…again. “Fear not, lover. Mommy can save you. It will have to involve me lowering the barrier for just the briefest moment, but I can open a portal to your safety. Enter it and you’ll be back with me, right where you should’ve been all this time.” No sooner do you hear these words uttered when you see a portal open up not far in front of you. “Come to me, let us embrace again. You know it was always meant to be. We are the survivors. We did it once and we can do it again.” Semra’s creepy attempt at temptation aside, you don’t have much time to react to your situation. The gnomes are undoubtedly going to unleash another volley of explosives and who knows if you’re going to be lucky enough to avoid a direct hit this time. Then again, if you enter that portal who knows what the hell is in store for you. > You run for it Mustering up all the strength you can, you pull yourself up off the ground and run around the portal rather than through it. “Stop! What’re you doing!? I’m your only chance! Don’t you remember last time?!” you hear Semra’s voice exclaim in your head. You answer back in your head, hoping Semra hears the message. “Semra, I was an idiot to listen to you five hundred years ago, not repeating that mistake again.” Whether or not she heard you, you’ll never know because several large explosions occur behind you and the force of the blast even from this distance causes you to fall again. With the barrier temporarily taken down, the gnome rockets were able to hit Lenay quite hard, you turn over to see the portal disappear and Lenay in flames. What you don’t see is the barrier going up again. While you temporarily sit there looking at the destruction, some of your troops see you and rush to your aid. You’re carried away and you survive this day, but you know it’s definitely no victory. Year 560 The Empire that you resurrected from the ashes is now returning to that state. Maybe not quite yet, but it will be soon. It wasn’t the increased overwhelming Xi attacks on your borders. You were managing them. It wasn’t the superior technological machines of the gnomes. Even the mass fire bombings of Arat and Quala from their airships weren’t enough. In time you would’ve caught up and crushed them. It was however another gnomish “invention” that has lead to your ruin. Biological warfare of the likes nobody had even seen. They created a disease to wipe out the Xi and it worked spectacularly. The Xi began dying off almost immediately when it took affect. Unfortunately this plague also affected your people as well. Or perhaps maybe they engineered another one for other races, you don’t know, it doesn’t matter because people started getting sick and dying. Elves, humans, even orcs. The only ones with somewhat of a resilience were the kobolds of all races. Well them and yourself. Despite your physical frailties and age, it would seem your Eternal roots have protected you from the disease. Everyone you knew who was close to you has died of the plague. Your top advisor David, Sightmaster Crowley, even Jennifer. Your citizens are dead or sick. Your workforce is non-existent and all you’ve got left for a military force are fucking kobolds and quite frankly they aren’t going to be enough to stop the gnomes from finishing everyone off. And you know they’ll be coming soon. You’re tired though and you don’t have the fight left in you to oppose the red-capped bastards anymore. Indeed there isn’t much left to fight for. Your own life doesn’t even mean much to you any more, you doubt if you’d live much longer anyway given how much your body is in pain and much weaker than you used to be. It’s no kind of life. Not for an Eternal. That’s why you aren’t going to run. When the gnomes come in their flying machines to bomb Nalin to cinders, you’ll be right here to go along with it. And in a few months, you meet your fate.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 557 Arat is nearly yours...well what’s left of it anyway and even after you take it completely there is still the matter of holding it. And that will certainly be a great task, one you even wonder if you’ll live to see. The aches and pains in your body continue to get worse with age, you tire a lot easier and you get short of breath at times. Everyone tells you that you shouldn’t be anywhere close to the battlefield, but you can’t help it. It’s the only place you feel you truly belong and gives you a thrill even if you’re not doing a lot of active fighting nowadays. To be quite honest this war has been a blessing for you as there is no end in sight. It allows you to focus on something other than mundane things like the economy or civics. It’s also allowed you to put off the task of finding your “successor” and you don’t even care anymore. You’ve come to the conclusion that when your days are done in this world whoever gets the Empire is whoever is strong enough to hold it. If that means it disintegrates and falls into the abyss then so be it. The Empire fell once before and you revived it. It can do it again. Only four major cities to conquer and the Arat Confederacy would be resigned to the history books, but they proved to be much harder to crack mainly because of Xi AND Redcap interference. Arat is a massive warzone and now all the major players are involved. Zo was the toughest nut to crack in terms of fighting, but perhaps the easiest in some ways as there were no other elements to make things complicated. It was a straight up battle and it only defied you mainly due to its hatred of orcs, which make up a large part of your armies. It is almost unfortunate that the entire city population had to be practically eradicated because its citizens were certainly the bravest and had the best soldiers in this war. Valizza was next. The crimelords there practically opened the gates for you. If it was a choice between suffering Zo’s fate or being ruled by the Empire, there was no choice at all. After all crime always exists somewhere in societies no matter how hard a government tries to stomp it out. The crimelords there no doubt assumed that they could just switch sides and slither into the underworld that exists in the Empire. Most of them were wrong. You couldn’t be worrying about petty gang violence between warring factions you needed another city on the frontlines contributing to the war effort. You immediately had all the “leaders” sized up, determined which one was the most efficient and made him “governor” while the rest were executed. “Hand Cannon” Harry was grateful and now knows that the city is ultimately run for Empire purposes FIRST. And whatever criminal activity he has going on comes second. You’re the “Boss.” Atinil, ever the bootlicking city to Lenay of course fought back, though not very well. The only reason why it posed any problems is due to Lenay’s forces attempting to bail them out and Xi incursions which had started to become more of a problem by this point. It was during this battle that your armies had begun facing any sort of heavy Xi opposition. Semra was right, there are an awful lot of them and they attack in waves with no regard for their own lives. They also make their first strikes mainly from below; in fact that’s what ultimately ended the siege of Atinil. Towards the end, its citizens threw open the gates begging you to destroy the Xi who had managed to enter the city before you did. By the time it was all said and done the Xi had destroyed half of the city before you managed to beat back the infiltration. Your kobold commando units have been doing a good job at blocking off tunnels or creating new ones to form counter attacks, but again there are just so many of them that for every ten you kill it seems like a hundred take their place. To make matters worse, the Redcaps have been making excursions into Arat via their airships. You’ve only manages to catch sight of a few from a distance, but others have described them to you in greater detail. Great big oval shaped contraptions that seem to move by propellers and some sort of gas that keeps them aloft. (At least that’s how someone tried to explain it to you, really you still never got all that “science” stuff) And just as Semra had mentioned in your visit with her, they’ve been bombing indiscriminately on the Xi AND your own troops. You’ve yet to take one of these airships down mainly because they never stay around long enough in a battle (and certainly not in any battle that you’ve personally participated in. They float in to cause destruction and then leave, though you have noticed that they’ve all been going in a particular direction. Namely towards the city-state that has always remained a mystery, Telis. Now Lenay is all that remains of the Arat Confederacy and it’s making sure that all attackers will not stomp out its presence with ease. A magic barrier has formed around the city, and probably extends far below the earth as well otherwise the Xi would’ve gone under it. The barrier has proven impenetrable to all known weapons and magic or at least anything your soldiers can throw at it. Given how strong it is you can only guess that Semra is having a direct hand in the matter. So much for her claims that “you” were needed to create the barrier in the first place, then again she did imply that she merely needed your help to keep her from using up all her power. Usually a “siege” mentality isn’t very successful (certainly didn’t work for the Felkans) but the svelk seem to be content on “waiting” everything out while you and the Xi slaughter each other, they may even be building up something that will change the tide of the war. (And probably are) So once again it’s all falling onto you. You’re the only one that has magic remotely powerful enough to bring down that barrier and even then you might need help. You half wonder if taking the barrier down is going to kill you, but if it comes to that then so be it, but there might be a more pressing concern. The recent appearances of the gnomes and their travels towards Telis make you wonder if you shouldn’t direct your attention toward them. Semra did warn you about them and their recent actions of bombing your own troops haven’t exactly proven her wrong. It’s just a question of what you want to spend your time and resources on. Making a long trip to Telis probably through Xi occupied territory and then face whatever the gnomes have there (which you have no sort of intel on) or bring down the barrier (And continuing to fend off the Xi in the meantime). Both of those are probably going to result in considerable losses. > You divert your forces towards Telis You’re not wasting any more time on Lenay and as much as you’d love to put a blade into Eldolith from your last encounter, she’s not worth the time either. The Arat Confederacy is no longer a concern. Let the Xi have Lenay if they want to continue throwing bodies at it. The gnomes are the greater threat; they’ve already got ships that fly in the air and who knows what the hell they have planned. Maybe if you take Telis, you can also gain the knowledge of how to build such machines because so far the experiments by your inventors haven’t had much success. The first thing you have to do is order a withdraw from the Lenay area. This confuses your officers, but other than General Ingrid who insists that the city can be taken, they all just follow your commands. (As does Ingrid after a bit of arguing) The next thing you do is have the major wounded transferred back to Velizza or Atnil. The Xi are still a major concern in the area and hopefully the wounded will get well before the Xi start advancing on those cities because they’re going to need all the extra protection they can get. You also send a message to Sightmaster Crowley to send a full battalion of Eyes. You tell him to even take them away from security positions if he has to, because you anticipate that you’re going to need the extra magic power. You also tell Crowley that if you fall in battle that he’s officially the successor of the Empire. A bit of an abrupt way of passing this decision on, but there it is at last. If he decides to use this as an excuse to stage a coup later, you’ll have to deal with it later, but again, you doubt if you’ve really got much time anymore for “later.” The next step is making the long march to Telis. You know where it is, but even if you didn’t you could just follow the occasional airship in the far distance. Unfortunately you have a feeling that if you’re close enough to see them at all, the crews aboard such things can probably see your massive forces heading their way as well. There’s nothing for it though, Arat has always been pretty open and there’s no real way to hide a force as large as yours. You half hope some of those airships make a detour towards you, so you can call down a lightning storm on them the same way you did on that sea monstrosity years ago, but none of them do. The Xi however give you more than enough trouble on your journey. You continued to be impressed by the Xi’s tenacity to completely abandon any sense of self-preservation. They exceed orcs even in that regard and that’s something you thought you’d never see. If only there was a way you could’ve had them fighting for you instead, you wouldn’t have had to waste so many years rebuilding the Empire in the first place. You could’ve just had it immediately. You watch in the distance as some of the kobolds take down a single Xi warrior. That’s something you never thought you’d see either. Fighting along side kobolds of all creatures and them actually being some of your best soldiers within their limited capabilities. Funny that you should respect or find a certain affinity to such non-human races like orcs, kobolds or even the Xi than you do with humans. Then again maybe it’s because you’ve never really truly been human. You’re just masquerading as one. After a week of marching through Xi infested territory Telis is finally in sight. And from where you’re standing, you see it being besieged by the Xi. Unlike Lenay however, Telis doesn’t have the benefit of an impenetrable magic barrier defending it. It does however have several airships launching all manner of explosions and gunfire to the area around the city. It would seem the gnomes are reluctant to damage Telis itself (though some of that is probably unavoidable), but the reason isn’t clear. Are the gnomes Telis’ allies? From what you’ve heard Telis did have a human population, so it seems unusual that the gnomes would be helping them given their new outlook on life. Unless they’re invaders as well and just don’t want their potential prize destroyed. In any event you’re somewhat glad that the Xi are involved. Gives the gnomes another target and divides the attention from you. Seeing as the gnomes are less willing to blow up Telis itself, you figure your best course of action is to get your army into the city right away. Actually getting in doesn’t look like it will be a large problem thanks to the efforts of the Xi, the problem lies more with fighting your way through the Xi while avoid potential bombings from the gnomes. All available mages are ordered to put up shields and all soldiers are ordered to protect them while making the long march towards Telis or else nobody is going to make it to the city at all. It’s not a long distance, but it feels like one. Explosion after explosion crashes down on the magical shields. Since your shields are simple ones the Xi simply dig under them and attack that way, but the soldiers do a good enough job of keeping them from killing your mages. You do your part by supporting the magical energy required for this feat. It’s a great strain on you, but you try to block out the pain. You can see the Telis gate wide open and it reminds you of the day when the Felkan capital fell to your forces. What a glorious victory that was. “Advance! Kill everything! They can’t stop us! Not the Xi and not the gnomes and their machines! We will be the last ones standing and remembered long after worms have eaten all their corpses! Long live the Empire! Long live the Emperor!” you shout. While it’s a simple speech meant to encourage the surrounding troops, your last line was probably a little strange since you’re the Emperor and it sounds odd. Of course you realize this soon after you said it because you temporary forgot what the hell time period you were in. “Shit, get focused…” you mumble. Memory lapses aside, your army continues to battle its way into the city. Some of your people have already reached the entryway and that’s when a large rumbling noise is heard from the city and then the ground begins to shake. The shaking soon becomes more violent tremors to the point that the ground starts to crack and that’s not from Xi digging… Many of your people have a hard time keeping their footing and during this time some of the mages lose their concentration. This is a fatal mistake, which soon results in entire companies being blown to bloody pieces by the airships continuing to dump bombs from above. The airships aren’t the only things that are flying now though. The loud rumbling continues along with the earth shaking and you soon see what is going on. It’s Telis. The city is rising off the ground. Whatever the hell the gnomes have been doing, this has to be part of it. They’ve created a flying city! The gnomes have already displayed a significant amount of power with their airships. With this city they could very well be unstoppable. Questions about how and when they did this will have to wait, what matters now is that you have to stop them. The city has only just started to rise and its taking a long enough time that you see several Xi and your own troops grabbing on to what they can before its completely out of reach. You’re either going to have to destroy it or capture it. If you were younger you’d just unleash a firestorm or something similar without another thought, but that’s a risky endeavor in your condition for several reasons. Capturing it is probably going to be even harder, especially since you’re going to have to board the damn thing. You MIGHT reach it in time if you make a full dash towards it now, but that would mean no longer supporting the mages to defend the rest of your army. > You destroy the city You’re not going to reach it in time, but you can’t allow the gnomes to wield such power. If this spell kills you then so be it, still maybe you won’t need to summon a firestorm so large. The airships are close enough to the city that if you could damage them, they’ll probably crash into the city themselves and bring it down. You concentrate on flames, fire, and the entire sky burning. Doesn’t take long before the sky around you goes red. Your soldiers aren’t quite sure what’s going on, but when it’s obvious that you’re casting something, multiple officers shout to their subordinates to find shelter within mage barriers if they aren’t there already. Then it comes. Fire from the sky. Airships are hit with a rain of fire. There is no shelter or escape for the machines and the gnome crews are equally helpless. Attempts to fly out of the area of danger fail as they catch fire and soon turn into a crashing inferno of metal, wood and the incinerated crew and sure enough some of those go crashing into the city which has also been catching fireballs. On the ground, it looks like a vision of hell. Large sections of torn up fields and plains are burning, and the only thing protecting your soldiers are your mage barriers and a general retreat has been sounded now that airships are falling out of the sky and it soon looks like the city will too. Even the Xi have chosen to retreat at this point, making their escapes by burrowing back under the earth. “Emperor, we have to go!” you hear a voice shout. You aren’t quite sure who it is though because you’re woozy after casting your spell. In fact you’d be completely exposed by the rain of fire, if you weren’t being dragged away by your loyal soldiers within the cover of Eye mages. Eventually you regain your bearings and tell your soldiers to let you go and that you can make it yourself. They’re hesitant to do so at first, but comply. You’re drained, but you’ve still got the energy to move clear of the inevitable spectacular explosion that occurs when Telis finally come crashing down from the sky. The amount of destruction is actually quite impressive, but as you look at the burning wreckage from the distance you curse the fact that you could not utilize such a powerful weapon for yourself. After a few days pass the fires finally die down enough that you order a full search of the wreckage of anything that might be useful, but there isn’t much left. At best you have some of the debris carried away so that your inventors might figure out how to re-create at least the airships, but that doesn’t seem very likely to occur anytime soon. In the meantime, the Xi slowly begins to re-invade the area and continue to press forward towards your territory. They’ve also managed to completely cover the area surrounding Lenay despite still not being able to get into the city. Having no more wish to waste anymore manpower on capturing the city yourself, you decide to have your forces to hold the line at your own territory in Arat. Lenay is just going to be one target that you won’t get to eliminate any time soon, if at all. Year 559 “Arat has completely fallen, Quala is starting to suffering an influx of Xi troops and reports say that there have even been sighting of Xi in Rask.” David remarks. “(Sigh) What kind of fools…(sigh) have three more armies reinforce the forces in Quala. Send another one up to Rask and have Sightmaster Crowley mobilize everything he has there to combat the threat. Have him recruit ogre if he can!” “Very well my Emperor, I uh…should let you know that our people have still made no progress on re-creating an airship.” “Didn’t think they would. The little gnome bastards took that secret to their little graves when the Xi finally wiped out the Redcap Kingdom a year ago. Even they couldn’t hold out against them forever, just like Semra couldn’t keep her barrier up forever to protect Lenay and also got resigned to the box of now extinct cultures. Which is something we’ll eventually be at this rate. (Sigh) Cancel the project; have them go back to working on perfecting our existing weapons or something.” David leaves without saying another word and you’re left to ponder this increasingly grim scenario. A scenario that you’re not entirely sure you’re going to win, in fact you’re almost certain you won’t. The odd thing is you’re okay with it, mainly because you’re also fairly certain you don’t have long to live anyway. You tire a lot easier and your body hurts all the time now, you might have five or six years left tops and that’s assuming the Xi don’t overrun Nalin first. The only question that remains for you is how you want to handle this. You’re going to continue to fight to the bitter end no matter what, but you wonder if that fate shouldn’t necessarily include your people. You wonder if maybe you should have an “escape” plan for your people. Unfortunately there aren’t too many places to run to, a mass exodus through the Usksha desert is likely to result in death for several reasons and you imagine the Xi would easily just invade there as well. Heading further north through the mountains of Rask has similar problems. That only leaves one major “safe” option, the ocean. There haven’t really been any major efforts to explore the open seas to see if new land does indeed exist, but you figure if there is an “Isle of Mortos” there must be other lands. (Hopefully) Still this is going to be very short notice and a massive undertaking of building ships big enough to carry not just people, but supplies as well for this uncertain journey. However, if it worked and there was land, then the survivors would definitely be free of the Xi threat, even the Xi can’t cross the ocean. If you’re going to enact this escape plan though, you’re going to have to do it soon because time is not on your side. Of course the other side of you still believes that maybe, just maybe if you concentrate your efforts you could still win this war. > You prepare for the exodus You already made the mistake of believing you were more important than the Empire before and it lead to its destruction, you’re not making it again. The Empire must live on in some form even if you do not and that means your subjects must live. You make the preparations; you call your advisors who are all very surprised by this plan as it involves the mindset that you have already been defeated. When you quickly remind them that most of the ones that are going to have first dibs on having a seat on one of those ships are most likely those in the upper part of the hierarchy, they don’t argue too much about it. They suggest that you don’t announce the plan as it’ll cause a great lowering of morale, but you see no reason to hide it and rumors are going to abound anyway which may cause some trouble anyway, so you make a grand speech about your plan to the people. You explain that despite the dark days ahead, the Empire is not going to die as long as some of them live. You tell them that you won’t lie about the escape possibly being just as dangerous as staying and fighting, but for those that want to leave there will be a merit system. Those that work the hardest towards making this plan feasible will get first consideration for getting aboard a ship. This doesn’t mean just building a ship, it could mean being a soldier and defending said workers of the ships and other helpful positions. Ship builders and all other manner of laborers are assigned right away to work on building the arks. You realize that considering the time its going to take to build these things, you’ll need to hold off the Xi for as long as possible, so you consolidate the majority of your forces back to the borders of Nalin. This leaves Quala and Rask to fend for themselves and while you urge citizens that if they want protection they need to make their way back to Nalin. However, some people are stubborn and the orcs that live in Quala are the most stubborn. In fact most of them outright say you’re abandoning them and see now that the late Warlord Sprog was right and that orcs don’t need the Empire. You wash your hands of such insubordination. You figure the Xi will sort them out. Kobolds on the other hand are a bit more compliant and since most of them used to live in Nalin before, they return. Sightmaster Crowley doesn’t agree with this decision, but thankfully he pulls most of his forces out of Rask (The ones that didn’t insist on staying) and returns to Nalin. Admiral Len is overwhelmed by the fact that you’ll be saddling him with so much responsibility of commanding this exodus plan. He states that he doesn’t even know if land exists past the vast eastern ocean. Your response is “Find some.” Len says he’ll send out scout ships while the arks are being made, but he isn’t hopeful. Finally you contact Jennifer. You reassure her that her family will definitely have a seat on one of the ships. She of course is grateful, but asks if there is nothing that can be done to defeat the Xi. You say you wish you had a more combative solution, but you still feel this is the best chance of the Empire continuing to exist. She understands, but is upset by it and hugs you one last time, before you never see her again. After it’s all said and done, Nalin is slightly more crowded than before, but is very well protected now with its entire military in one area. The Empire has shrunk, but it isn’t dead yet. Year 564 “Have all the arks left?” you ask. “Reports are sketchy at this point, but I believe yes, the last of them have departed. Our forces were successful in holding off the Xi in that regard.” David remarks. “Well that’s something at least. So I’m guessing the rest of the struggle for Nalin isn’t going well?” “I’m uh…afraid not Emperor.” “Figured as much.” You reply. You and David are both silent for a while. In fact your palace has been fairly silent in general now that many either died or left on the arks. “David, tell me. Why did you stay?” you ask. “Me? Well, I’m so old now I don’t think I’d survive the journey on the open seas anyway.” David says. “Hmm, you too huh?” you say. “Besides, my place is here and you need at least one of your staff still here seeing as you sent Sightmaster Crowley away on an ark.” David continues. “Heh, yeah I thought we were going to have to knock him out and have him dragged aboard one those things. Still when I explained that the new Empire is going to need the Eyes and their leader to defend it he got the point.” “He always was a duty bound soldier.” “Yes, yes he was.” Another moment of silence passes and then you get your aching body off of your throne. “Well, I guess I might as well get this over with.” You say. “Get what over with?” “I’m not going to wait around for the Xi to come get me. I’m going to go out there and kill the first ones I see and repeat that process until they finally bring me down. I’m thinking I might be able to last a few days at least.” “Oh. Well, erm you might increase your chances if you meet up with one of our units. There are still many out there and…” “No, I’m going to meet death alone. That’s how we all die in the end anyway.” You reply. “Very well…it was an honor serving you my Emperor.” David says and you nod silently before making your way out of the palace. In your last days of fighting the Xi (and through your own physical pain) you wonder if those ships will find a new place to settle. You did your best and really given the circumstances, that was all you could’ve done. Eventually you are struck down by the Xi and your last thoughts are wondering if you’ll be reunited with Alison.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re not going to reach it in time, but you can’t allow the gnomes to wield such power. If this spell kills you then so be it, still maybe you won’t need to summon a firestorm so large. The airships are close enough to the city that if you could damage them, they’ll probably crash into the city themselves and bring it down. You concentrate on flames, fire, and the entire sky burning. Doesn’t take long before the sky around you goes red. Your soldiers aren’t quite sure what’s going on, but when it’s obvious that you’re casting something, multiple officers shout to their subordinates to find shelter within mage barriers if they aren’t there already. Then it comes. Fire from the sky. Airships are hit with a rain of fire. There is no shelter or escape for the machines and the gnome crews are equally helpless. Attempts to fly out of the area of danger fail as they catch fire and soon turn into a crashing inferno of metal, wood and the incinerated crew and sure enough some of those go crashing into the city which has also been catching fireballs. On the ground, it looks like a vision of hell. Large sections of torn up fields and plains are burning, and the only thing protecting your soldiers are your mage barriers and a general retreat has been sounded now that airships are falling out of the sky and it soon looks like the city will too. Even the Xi have chosen to retreat at this point, making their escapes by burrowing back under the earth. “Emperor, we have to go!” you hear a voice shout. You aren’t quite sure who it is though because you’re woozy after casting your spell. In fact you’d be completely exposed by the rain of fire, if you weren’t being dragged away by your loyal soldiers within the cover of Eye mages. Eventually you regain your bearings and tell your soldiers to let you go and that you can make it yourself. They’re hesitant to do so at first, but comply. You’re drained, but you’ve still got the energy to move clear of the inevitable spectacular explosion that occurs when Telis finally come crashing down from the sky. The amount of destruction is actually quite impressive, but as you look at the burning wreckage from the distance you curse the fact that you could not utilize such a powerful weapon for yourself. After a few days pass the fires finally die down enough that you order a full search of the wreckage of anything that might be useful, but there isn’t much left. At best you have some of the debris carried away so that your inventors might figure out how to re-create at least the airships, but that doesn’t seem very likely to occur anytime soon. In the meantime, the Xi slowly begins to re-invade the area and continue to press forward towards your territory. They’ve also managed to completely cover the area surrounding Lenay despite still not being able to get into the city. Having no more wish to waste anymore manpower on capturing the city yourself, you decide to have your forces to hold the line at your own territory in Arat. Lenay is just going to be one target that you won’t get to eliminate any time soon, if at all. Year 559 “Arat has completely fallen, Quala is starting to suffering an influx of Xi troops and reports say that there have even been sighting of Xi in Rask.” David remarks. “(Sigh) What kind of fools…(sigh) have three more armies reinforce the forces in Quala. Send another one up to Rask and have Sightmaster Crowley mobilize everything he has there to combat the threat. Have him recruit ogre if he can!” “Very well my Emperor, I uh…should let you know that our people have still made no progress on re-creating an airship.” “Didn’t think they would. The little gnome bastards took that secret to their little graves when the Xi finally wiped out the Redcap Kingdom a year ago. Even they couldn’t hold out against them forever, just like Semra couldn’t keep her barrier up forever to protect Lenay and also got resigned to the box of now extinct cultures. Which is something we’ll eventually be at this rate. (Sigh) Cancel the project; have them go back to working on perfecting our existing weapons or something.” David leaves without saying another word and you’re left to ponder this increasingly grim scenario. A scenario that you’re not entirely sure you’re going to win, in fact you’re almost certain you won’t. The odd thing is you’re okay with it, mainly because you’re also fairly certain you don’t have long to live anyway. You tire a lot easier and your body hurts all the time now, you might have five or six years left tops and that’s assuming the Xi don’t overrun Nalin first. The only question that remains for you is how you want to handle this. You’re going to continue to fight to the bitter end no matter what, but you wonder if that fate shouldn’t necessarily include your people. You wonder if maybe you should have an “escape” plan for your people. Unfortunately there aren’t too many places to run to, a mass exodus through the Usksha desert is likely to result in death for several reasons and you imagine the Xi would easily just invade there as well. Heading further north through the mountains of Rask has similar problems. That only leaves one major “safe” option, the ocean. There haven’t really been any major efforts to explore the open seas to see if new land does indeed exist, but you figure if there is an “Isle of Mortos” there must be other lands. (Hopefully) Still this is going to be very short notice and a massive undertaking of building ships big enough to carry not just people, but supplies as well for this uncertain journey. However, if it worked and there was land, then the survivors would definitely be free of the Xi threat, even the Xi can’t cross the ocean. If you’re going to enact this escape plan though, you’re going to have to do it soon because time is not on your side. Of course the other side of you still believes that maybe, just maybe if you concentrate your efforts you could still win this war. > You prepare for the final war You’re not going to waste time on a possibility that doesn’t even have any proof behind it. There is no knowledge of land west of the ocean and there just isn’t time to mobilize a half cocked plan to evacuate people who might die a slower death on the open sea anyway. Better to stay and fight. You continue organizing your forces and mobilizing them in the best way that you’ll think that they will be the most effective. Year 566 As you lie on your deathbed weakened by your own physical frailties the war with the Xi still carries on and not in the Empire’s favor. You struggled as best you could, but it just wasn’t enough. The Xi are indeed a relentless force that even you cannot stop. Quala has completely fallen. Rask has been cut off, you have no idea if it’s been overrun as well, but it hardly matters by this point. Your last report states that possibly within a year or even six months the Xi will completely overrun Nalin. Anyone who was remotely close to you is gone. David was taken by natural causes, Sightmaster Crowley in battle, even Jennifer was killed along with her entire family by a surprise Xi attack on Dalt. You believe there were some last ditch efforts of escape via ships. Some have successfully done so, but it’s hard to imagine where they will go. Makes you wonder if setting up an escape plan might’ve been a better idea to at least save some people to possibly keep the Empire alive, but you dismiss such thoughts. No, you are the last of a dying Empire. The old one and now this one. When you die, it will die with you. Your only regret is that you didn’t decide to face death in battle when you at least still had the strength to do so. Your body hurts so much right now that you almost wish the Xi were here just to put you out of your misery. Eventually your pain comes to a quiet end when you manage to drift into unconsciousness and finally death. And just as you believed, the Empire follows you in death soon after, though perhaps not quite as quietly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re not wasting any more time on Lenay and as much as you’d love to put a blade into Eldolith from your last encounter, she’s not worth the time either. The Arat Confederacy is no longer a concern. Let the Xi have Lenay if they want to continue throwing bodies at it. The gnomes are the greater threat; they’ve already got ships that fly in the air and who knows what the hell they have planned. Maybe if you take Telis, you can also gain the knowledge of how to build such machines because so far the experiments by your inventors haven’t had much success. The first thing you have to do is order a withdraw from the Lenay area. This confuses your officers, but other than General Ingrid who insists that the city can be taken, they all just follow your commands. (As does Ingrid after a bit of arguing) The next thing you do is have the major wounded transferred back to Velizza or Atnil. The Xi are still a major concern in the area and hopefully the wounded will get well before the Xi start advancing on those cities because they’re going to need all the extra protection they can get. You also send a message to Sightmaster Crowley to send a full battalion of Eyes. You tell him to even take them away from security positions if he has to, because you anticipate that you’re going to need the extra magic power. You also tell Crowley that if you fall in battle that he’s officially the successor of the Empire. A bit of an abrupt way of passing this decision on, but there it is at last. If he decides to use this as an excuse to stage a coup later, you’ll have to deal with it later, but again, you doubt if you’ve really got much time anymore for “later.” The next step is making the long march to Telis. You know where it is, but even if you didn’t you could just follow the occasional airship in the far distance. Unfortunately you have a feeling that if you’re close enough to see them at all, the crews aboard such things can probably see your massive forces heading their way as well. There’s nothing for it though, Arat has always been pretty open and there’s no real way to hide a force as large as yours. You half hope some of those airships make a detour towards you, so you can call down a lightning storm on them the same way you did on that sea monstrosity years ago, but none of them do. The Xi however give you more than enough trouble on your journey. You continued to be impressed by the Xi’s tenacity to completely abandon any sense of self-preservation. They exceed orcs even in that regard and that’s something you thought you’d never see. If only there was a way you could’ve had them fighting for you instead, you wouldn’t have had to waste so many years rebuilding the Empire in the first place. You could’ve just had it immediately. You watch in the distance as some of the kobolds take down a single Xi warrior. That’s something you never thought you’d see either. Fighting along side kobolds of all creatures and them actually being some of your best soldiers within their limited capabilities. Funny that you should respect or find a certain affinity to such non-human races like orcs, kobolds or even the Xi than you do with humans. Then again maybe it’s because you’ve never really truly been human. You’re just masquerading as one. After a week of marching through Xi infested territory Telis is finally in sight. And from where you’re standing, you see it being besieged by the Xi. Unlike Lenay however, Telis doesn’t have the benefit of an impenetrable magic barrier defending it. It does however have several airships launching all manner of explosions and gunfire to the area around the city. It would seem the gnomes are reluctant to damage Telis itself (though some of that is probably unavoidable), but the reason isn’t clear. Are the gnomes Telis’ allies? From what you’ve heard Telis did have a human population, so it seems unusual that the gnomes would be helping them given their new outlook on life. Unless they’re invaders as well and just don’t want their potential prize destroyed. In any event you’re somewhat glad that the Xi are involved. Gives the gnomes another target and divides the attention from you. Seeing as the gnomes are less willing to blow up Telis itself, you figure your best course of action is to get your army into the city right away. Actually getting in doesn’t look like it will be a large problem thanks to the efforts of the Xi, the problem lies more with fighting your way through the Xi while avoid potential bombings from the gnomes. All available mages are ordered to put up shields and all soldiers are ordered to protect them while making the long march towards Telis or else nobody is going to make it to the city at all. It’s not a long distance, but it feels like one. Explosion after explosion crashes down on the magical shields. Since your shields are simple ones the Xi simply dig under them and attack that way, but the soldiers do a good enough job of keeping them from killing your mages. You do your part by supporting the magical energy required for this feat. It’s a great strain on you, but you try to block out the pain. You can see the Telis gate wide open and it reminds you of the day when the Felkan capital fell to your forces. What a glorious victory that was. “Advance! Kill everything! They can’t stop us! Not the Xi and not the gnomes and their machines! We will be the last ones standing and remembered long after worms have eaten all their corpses! Long live the Empire! Long live the Emperor!” you shout. While it’s a simple speech meant to encourage the surrounding troops, your last line was probably a little strange since you’re the Emperor and it sounds odd. Of course you realize this soon after you said it because you temporary forgot what the hell time period you were in. “Shit, get focused…” you mumble. Memory lapses aside, your army continues to battle its way into the city. Some of your people have already reached the entryway and that’s when a large rumbling noise is heard from the city and then the ground begins to shake. The shaking soon becomes more violent tremors to the point that the ground starts to crack and that’s not from Xi digging… Many of your people have a hard time keeping their footing and during this time some of the mages lose their concentration. This is a fatal mistake, which soon results in entire companies being blown to bloody pieces by the airships continuing to dump bombs from above. The airships aren’t the only things that are flying now though. The loud rumbling continues along with the earth shaking and you soon see what is going on. It’s Telis. The city is rising off the ground. Whatever the hell the gnomes have been doing, this has to be part of it. They’ve created a flying city! The gnomes have already displayed a significant amount of power with their airships. With this city they could very well be unstoppable. Questions about how and when they did this will have to wait, what matters now is that you have to stop them. The city has only just started to rise and its taking a long enough time that you see several Xi and your own troops grabbing on to what they can before its completely out of reach. You’re either going to have to destroy it or capture it. If you were younger you’d just unleash a firestorm or something similar without another thought, but that’s a risky endeavor in your condition for several reasons. Capturing it is probably going to be even harder, especially since you’re going to have to board the damn thing. You MIGHT reach it in time if you make a full dash towards it now, but that would mean no longer supporting the mages to defend the rest of your army. > You capture the city Probably a fool’s task, but if you survive this you’re going to have to still deal with the Xi. A flying fortress would give a significant advantage. You stop using your own energy to support your mages and refocus on a creating a personal shield around yourself. You give the order for everyone to get out of your way or grab on to Telis if they can. It isn’t too bad, most of your mages hold their own, and continue to protect a majority of the army, but its yourself that you’re concerned about as you attempt to reach Telis which is slowly becoming completely airborn. You ride your horse as hard to the point where it probably isn’t going to survive after you intend to make a leap forward off of it. You pass your soldiers, you pass the Xi fighting them, you pass over the torn up ground from the battle and bombs and you look up and see Telis escaping your reach. “No, I’ve come too far!” you say and you stand on top of your horse, nearly falling off in the process while still attempt to upkeep your shield… You make the jump towards the city and manage to grab ahold of one half of Telis’ front gate doors which is currently hanging off its hinges. Your shield is down, your body hurts and you’re practically deaf from all the explosions going on around you. You hang on for dear life as the ground gets further away and attempt to climb up, but your strength is failing you and even if it wasn’t the door is slowly loosing its weak attachment to the rest of the city. “Shit! Shit! No! No! No! Not like this! Fuck! Hate this weakness!” you exclaim as you prepare to either lose your grip or for the door comes loose. And you doubt you’ll be in any condition to “repair” yourself when you take this long fall. Fortunately it doesn’t come to that. “Emperor! Take my hand!” a human soldier shouts and reaches over the side. You waste no time in accepting his help and soon a couple of other soldiers help him lift you up just in time for the door to fall to the ground. After catching your breath and assuring the soldiers that helped you that you’re fine, you get a better assessment of your surroundings. “Okay first things first, what’s your name so I know what to call you.” “Lieutenant Renly, my Emperor and this what’s left of my platoon.” Renly says and waves his arm to six other soldiers. “We’re not the only ones here, I believe there’s a couple of orc platoons further in the city. They’re probably fighting the Xi that managed to get in or combating the gnome clockwork golems. Hell even the teams of gnomes with their rapid repeaters isn’t something you want to deal with and that’s not even counting the ones probably trying to spot us from the nearby airships.” “So wait, are there no humans or regular citizens in this place?” you ask. “Not from what anyone can tell. It’s like the whole place is empty other than the Xi, the gnomes and us. Unless the Telis citizens are all hiding somewhere.” “Or maybe the gnomes did something to them all. Well it doesn’t matter we need to figure out where the hell the controls are for this thing. We get control and we can get rid of those airships with a lot more ease.” “Not sure where something like that would be located Emperor.” “That’s easy, we keep moving towards the areas that have most of the little bastards and their damned contraptions. It’s going to be the most heavily defended place because it’s the most important thing in the world to them.” “Well then I believe we should take a left down that street over here. Saw a gnome patrol accompanied by two clockworks not long ago.” “Okay, but when possible we should probably stick to the back alleys. Don’t need one of those airships floating by and spotting us. In fact our best chance is to do this as stealthily as possible. A rare tactic for us I know, but our main task is getting control of this thing.” You, Renly and the rest of his platoon make your way towards where you hope some sort of master control is located. Along the way, you see the remnants of where small skirmishes have already taken place. Bodies riddled with bullets or in some cases chopped up. They’re mostly bodies of the Xi, but some of your soldiers as well. You don’t see any gnome casualties other than pieces of their golems. The sounds of battle can still be heard throughout the city, but it gets concerning when the sounds get less infrequent, since that means the gnomes are probably mopping up invaders to their city, which means less distraction for them. Your attempts at sneaking around are fairly successful. As you stealthily avoid these patrols, you finally see the gnomes and you can’t get over how radically they’ve changed. With their dark red caps, goggles and stylish leather uniforms, they couldn’t look anymore different than their pathetic ancestors that you helped round up centuries ago to have their souls utterly obliterated. Really though, after an event like that and who knows what else during the Cataclysm you suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that the gnomes decided they wouldn’t be victims and became hostile towards other races. Let alone rely on other societies to defend them any longer. They shaped their own destiny and you can certainly respect and even admire that; after all you never hated them. That was the Emperor. You were just following orders at the time. Eventually the gnome patrols are getting too thick and you can’t really properly proceed without engaging the enemy. Just as well, you were getting sick of acting like a shadow. “Alright, everyone get ready, because it’s going to be killing time from here on in. I’ll take the lead on this.” You say. “Emperor, shouldn’t you stay behind us so we can better protect you?” Renly replies. “While I appreciate the sentiment, I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have, if anything you all should try to stay behind me and in cover until I clear out most of the rabble. Don’t worry, I may be old, but I’m not out of this yet. And if you all survive this, you’ll all be getting promotions and whatever else I think might be an appropriate reward, so it behooves you all to listen to me if you want to reap the benefits of this situation.” With this understanding, Renly and his platoon follow your lead. Still unseen, you take advantage of a group of gnomes tanding around with their clockwork creations. You unleash a flurry of fireballs, which not only has the desired effect of killing some of the gnomes outright, but also causing an explosion due to their hand thrown bombs they carry on them The explosion takes care of the golems. “That’s one group down, but the rest aren’t going to be as easy!” you say and advance with a shield up. Not easy is correct because the little bastards start coming out in full force. You just try not to get surrounded. The unrelenting repeater weapons are bad enough, but the gnomes also come out with weapons that emulate some of your spells! A single gnome who managed to sneak up on two of Renly’s men blasts them with some sort of weapon that emits flames. Renly shoots the gnome in the head before turning his attention to grab one of the repeaters from a nearby dead gnome. “They’re all coming out of that big red building, that’s probably where we need to go! Come on!” you shout and take out another golem.” During the carnage you think back to how you used to mainly use your sword during battles. During this one, you haven’t even used it yet. In fact you haven’t done so for so long, you wonder if you’d even be able to use it effectively anymore. Granted in this situation like this you’ve practically got no choice but to rely on your magic, still though you miss the good old days. The closer you get to the building, the waves of gnomes lessens, until you see one of them close the door just as the last few golems are shot to pieces. The sky above you grows darker and you notice an airship looming overhead. They don’t throw bombs at you, but they certainly unleash a volley of gunfire, which manages to kill another one of Renley’s platoon before he and the rest can get into cover. As for you, your shield is working just fine, but you need to get into that building which is probably locked and barricaded. You aren’t going to be able to blast it open with that airship firing at you. > You refocus the shield to repel the bullets back Normally you don’t do this, because repelling projectiles actually takes more focus than flinging fireballs or putting up a shield in the first place, but if you can take out all the guns firing on you with their own bullets then you’ll get the breather you need. You refocus the shield and sure enough the bullets are repelled back towards the guns that are firing on you. It isn’t an exact hit, but enough of them hit their own guns (or in some cases the gunner) enough that it puts them out of commission, other bullets either go flying off wildly into the air or into other parts of the airship. In any case you hit something that causes problem since you see and hear minor explosions, which the gnomes are probably busily trying to contain. The airship shudders in the sky a bit, but it isn’t falling out of sky, which it probably would have done if you’d lobbed hunks of fire at it. Taking advantage of the respite, your soldiers take what explosives they’ve found on the bodies of the gnomes, pile them up against the building’s door and you hurl a ball of fire at it. Naturally it not only explodes spectacularly, but it also succeeds in destroying a couple of golems that were waiting to ambush you. You and the other run inside, before the airship above you manages to get its guns working again. When you get inside you see that the building consists of a lot of desks and generally laid out like a bureaucratic office. You briefly think that maybe this was all for nothing and your hunch was wrong, but sure enough when an automated repeated pops up out of the floor and puts several holes into one of Renly’s platoon and more golems appear from other trapdoors in the floor you’re fairly certain you’re still on the right track. You and Renly’s ever dwindling platoon take care of your assailants though at this point they’re probably hoping there aren’t too many more. “Glad this building doesn’t have multiple floors.” One soldier remarks. “It still might, those golems came out of the floor. There might be several basement levels.” Renly points out. “It can’t go too far down, the city is flying in the air now. It’s not going to be a Derro complex.” You say peering door one of the trapdoors. “Derro?” Renly asks. “Oh. Before your time I suppose. They were a subterranean race that were primarily hostile isolationists and had a knack for technology. Sort of like the current gnomes I suppose. I always wondered if they were related in some way to be honest.” You answer. “And they were enemies?” “Allies actually. Well… such as they were. Anyway I imagine whatever is causing this city to fly would be located right under it, so we might as well start searching there especially since the rest of this building looks more like an oversized office rather than any example of engineering. You all descend down one of the trap doors and find yourself in some small narrow corridors. Not so small that you can’t move around, but certainly small enough that you all have to crouch down. Even at the best of times your body aches, this bending and stooping routine just makes it worse for you. The corridors are also filled with a light steam with gears, pumps and other manner of machinery that you assume are keeping this city afloat. A noisy hum and the occasional jarring metal on metal screeches also surround you and you briefly wonder just how much solid stone floor is between you and the sky right now. “Guess the gnomes designed this part of the city.” Renly says. “Never thought I’d say this, but I wish we were kobolds right about now.” Another soldier remarks. “Alright let’s focus. The good thing about this corridor is I can easily shield us from any attack from the front or the back but you’re all going to have to fire upon on any enemy that attacks us. If I start throwing magic bolts or whatever around here I’m libel to damage something severely and send this thing crashing to the ground with us in it. You travel the corridors for what you believe to be an hour at least. It twists and turns, but you remain convinced that SOMEWHERE down here is a control room. In the meantime more gnomes attempt to stop you and while they have better maneuverability your shield continues to protect everyone and you fend off attacks. “At least they’re just sticking with guns now.” One of the soldiers says. “They don’t really have choice, explosives or those flame weapons would damage all these gears that are involved in holding up the place.” Renly remarks. While your followers make minor comments about the situation, you begin to notice a slight change in surroundings. The mist that fills the corridors is dissipating, the floors have become steel and now there are actual walls coving the previously exposed engineering. It suddenly occurs to you that the gnomes hadn’t actually finished this place up yet and you are now seeing the areas that took priority. “We’re near the control room.” You say. “We are?” Renly says. “I’m sure of it.” “Wouldn’t there be more defenses?” “I said I think we’re near it, we’re not actually there yet. For all we know the actual control room has shit we’ve never seen before.” You answer. “Oh it does, Eternal. It does. Come on in and see.” You hear a voice say nearby. You and the others look around and at each other. “Just continue a little bit forward and turn the corner. Don’t worry, you’ve killed all of my people, but then you always were an expert at such things weren’t you?” the voice says. When you follow the voice you enter a room filled with a bunch of technical equipment and machines. You no idea what any of it does, but its certainly a technological feat that you’ve only seen matched by Marik when he was growing tank babies. Also in the room a single gnome sitting in a chair dressed in the traditional leather uniform you’ve seen others of his kind wearing. He also sports the same bushy facial hair and red cap they all seem to favor. The only main thing that causes him to stand out is that he’s obviously older than the ones you’ve been fighting and he’s wearing explosives around his waist with a wire attached to another device he’s gripping tightly in his hand. The other thing that stands out is that he is completely unconcerned about you or your soldiers pointing their weapons at him. “You know, this really was one of our greatest works. (Sigh) It’s going to be a shame to destroy it, but anything is better than letting it fall into your hands. Can’t let a gnome killer like you have it can we?” the gnome remarks. “You speak as if you know me and I don’t mean by my present reputation. You speak as if you know me from the past.” You say. “Oh not personally, but my family’s ancestors told me stories about you. Yeah, great ancestor Klemto made sure the story got passed down so that something like Gnome’s Home could never happen again. One of the few gnomes you didn’t manage to round up and have systematically slaughtered.” “Well I see your mind is made up, no point in debating the issue.” You answer. “Oh no, please I’d LOVE to hear your defense on the matter. I could use a good laugh before I blow us all up.” At this point having one of your soldiers shoot him would be counter productive, he’d just release the switch when he died. Rushing the gnome would likely have the same result Your only option is to cast a freeze spell and encase his hand in a solid block of ice. The problem with that right now is you’re exhausted. You’d have to stall for a little time so you could muster up the energy to do it right now. So you stall for time and engage the gnome in conversation. “I was just following orders.” You say. “Really now? That’s your defense?” the gnome asks. “It’s not a defense because I don’t think I have anything to defend against. The Emperor…Casimir hated your kind. Not I. Why he hated your people so intensely I cannot say because I never fully understood the depths of it. He gave reasons, but as I said I believe there was more to it. It doesn’t matter though, since I merely acted on his orders.” “So you were just a blindly loyal soldier just doing your duty eh?” “At the time yes. Look, if you want me to beg for my life, you’ll not get it here. I didn’t begin my life as an Eternal begging so I’m certainly not going to end my life begging.” “I see…I suppose I should’ve known your arrogance and lack of emotions would prevent you from such actions…” the gnome remarks, but you cut him off. “Funny you should say that. Since I would think someone with the same arrogance and lack of emotions would understand.” You say. “What?!” “THIS! This flying fortress! And all your airships! You really expect me to believe you designed them for peaceful purposes?” “We had to protect ourselves!” “Against the Xi, yes I can see that, but you’ve been bombing us as well and we didn’t even declare war on you!” “Bah! You would have eventually! And your pathetic attempt at comparing us bombing your soldiers and you rounding up gnome civilians for slaughter is laughable.” “I wasn’t actually, I’d say that would be closer to what you did to the original citizens of this city. So what did you do with Telis’ original citizens?” The gnome begins to get annoyed. “Nothing. This city was always ours!” “Bullshit. Maybe this place was wrapped in mystery, but not to such a degree that it wasn’t known that humans lived here. Or at least they USED to live here. Just looking at the buildings and one can tell that this place was originally designed for humans rather than the smaller architecture that make up these corridors. So how did you go about it? I’m actually curious how you managed to wipe out an entire city without anyone getting a hint of what was going on. I know from your reputation that you don’t associate with other races any longer so I can only assume that you had the citizens of this city done away with long before you actually moved in and started making this place into a flying city. Perhaps maybe like something similar that was done to the gnomes?” The gnome now actually gets off his chair and both of his hands are balled up in anger, which is good since you want him to grip that kill switch as tight as possible. “It was a completely different situation!” the gnome exclaims. “Was it? Your ancestor said we rounded gnomes up to be slaughtered, what he probably didn’t know since he avoided capture is HOW we did it. We didn’t just kill them. We completely obliterated their souls. It’s what the Emperor wanted. Then again, you lot probably didn’t go that far…no magical skill to speak of, I guess that’s why you like your mechanical toys so much…” “You’re going to pay for your crimes you evil bastard. When I release this switch my only regret is going to be that you won’t suffer!” “No doubt. But it’s a shame that the real culprit won’t taste your justice after you blow us all up.” “What’re you talking about?” “I’m talking about the main executioner. Maybe I rounded some up and killed a few and the Emperor gave the orders, but there was one in particular who was enjoying the job around the clock. She’s still alive too you know, or maybe you didn’t. She isn’t very mobile or social these days. All I’ll say is she’s a svelk and she’s the mother of that bitch that currently runs Lenay, well assuming Lenay hasn’t been overrun by the Xi…” “ENOUGH! This ends now!” the gnome yells getting ready to release the switch. “Truer words have never been spoken.” You say and cast a blast of frost at the gnome’s left hand and fortunately you encase his whole arm in ice before he can release his hand from the switch. You collapse on the floor just from that small feat of magic. You really need to rest. The gnome desperately tries to break the ice, but the remaining two soldiers from the platoon restrain and knock him out. “Take this little shit topside and throw him off the city. Renly and I will try to figure out the controls to this thing. And do it quickly, that arm won’t stay frozen and there still might be some gnomes running around.” You say and drag yourself to sit up against a nearby wall. “Emperor are you okay?!” Renly asks. “I’m fine. Just very very tired. And unfortunately my work isn’t even done yet…” you answer. “But just maybe this thing will make it easier at least.” > Year 560 “Emperor, the Xi have made their first incursions into Quala.” David remarks. “(Sigh) It was only a matter of time I suppose. The damn bugs just can’t seem to be wiped out. Even with this floating fortress and the new airships we created. Have we lost Arat completely?” “No, but the only city left is Regnik and its slowly in danger of becoming overrun. It probably won’t last another week despite the carpet-bombing we’ve done around the area. Quala is having problems as well and last reports stated that Warlord Sprog fell in battle.” You sometimes wonder if the Xi are some sort force of nature taking everything back from the others races that have caused so much turmoil and strife. Like the other races had their day in the sun at some point and now it is the time of the Xi to rise to power. Of course you’ve never been one for giving into fate or “destiny”, so your main concern is how to deal with this seemingly unstoppable foe. Fortunately after you took Telis (Now called Apex) from the gnomes, you found some rather interesting notes on how it might be possible and your brightest and best have been attempting to decipher them. Technology wasn’t the only thing the gnomes were working on; they were also working on a bunch of stuff to do with biology. Apparently they had plans to design and release some sort of germ that would kill all the Xi. Sounds like a blessing, but the problem is you have no idea how long that’s going to take. You have your inventors and doctors and wise people, but honestly they’re only going by a few found pieces of scraps and half thought out plans from a race of people now no longer around. Nobody has even had this sort of idea before; using unseen organism as weapons. But then nobody had the idea to create weapons that could destroy entire buildings or allow one unskilled peasant to murder an entire squad of swordsmen at one time either. In the meantime, you’re still left with the same problem. You have to fend off the Xi from destroying the Empire. You’re doing your best, but you have to admit, the outlook is grim. Just as you’re about to give David your list of commands for the day and retire to your private abode, David tells you that you have an audience today. “Audience? With who? I’m the only ruler left in the land and I doubt very seriously the Xi are wanting to speak with me about peace negotiations.” You say. “No, it’s a regular citizen Emperor and know normally you don’t hold such audiences, but I thought in her case you might. It’s Jennifer.” David replies. “Really? Well what does she want?” “She didn’t say, other than wanting to see you. Should I tell her to reschedule?” “No, I suppose I can spare the time to see what she wants and I could use a diversion from this Xi situation anyway.” David nods and fetches Jennifer from the next room. You haven’t seen her in a while, but she still looks about the same, just a few extra gray hairs. You have to admit you’re mildly glad to see her after dealing with the Xi day in day out. After a few pleasant greetings you both go back to your private chambers to speak. “So…it’s been a long time.” You say. “It’s been about ten years since we were in the same room together.” Jennifer answers. “Has it? Time really flies. As you probably know I’ve been a little busy. Apologies for not keeping in better contact.” “No, it’s fine. Seriously, you’re the Emperor and keeping us all safe from hostile forces is a full time job. I always knew better than to expect that you’d be able to stay on constant contact.” “Glad you understand. So where’s your family?” “They are on the surface, my son really wanted to see the flying city, but his father…well let’s just say he wasn’t fond of the idea.” Jennifer says with a bit of hesitancy. It’s apparent that not everything is well with her marriage, but you don’t want to pry. “I see…well tell your son that the Emperor has said he can see it any time its convenient. It isn’t like the place is off limits, just difficult to get to I suppose.” “Indeed. Tickets for an airship here are expensive and not many have that sort of money to throw around anymore. Anyway about why I’m here, I’ve been working on another book.” “Another one? So what is this one about?” “About you actually. I need your input with it obviously considering you’re the main subject.” “A book about me huh? Any reason why you wanted to write such a book?” “Why wouldn’t I? You’re only one of the most important people in history. I mean there needs to be records of this for when…I mean so people don’t forget your deeds. I mean sometimes I have to argue with idiots at the museum who don’t know how good you’ve made things for them! At one time people used to view the Old Empire exhibit with wonder and questions. Now it seems all some of them want to do is criticize it and claim it’s nothing more than a pile of falsehoods and lies! Some of these dissidents have even been claiming this flying city is just an example of how you believe you’re so much better than they are!” “Hmm, haven’t heard about too much dissident activity for quiet some time, but then the Eyes are stretched pretty thin these days.” “Well some of these morons that enter the museum need to be rounded up! You’re not better than them because of a flying city; you’re better than them for a whole bunch of other reasons! Being a strong leader and making the tough decisions that in the long run are best for all of us! I intend for my book to reinforce the needed understanding of why the things you do are completely necessary. I’ve already managed to interview some people that have seen your greatness in action like Captain Renly and Admiral Len. Their testimony and others will make great additions, but the words from your own lips will be what’s most important!” You’ve seen Jennifer get excited and fired up about things in the past, but you sort of figured such excitement would never be reserved for anything related to you ever again. You had thought that Jennifer had long since outgrown her “worship” of you when she got married and had a family, but either it never left and had been dormant or something has changed to cause it to revive such feelings again. And if you had to guess you imagine it might have something to do with her marriage. “Jennifer, while I’ve always appreciated your support, I doubt if any book is going to change a lot of minds. You even said not many people have disposable income these days to buy luxury items. You can’t let every loudmouth with an opinion get you so upset. I mean I’m glad you told me, and I’ll even get Crowley to have some Eyes look into matter and see if it’s a potential larger problem, but I think you’re really upset about something else.” “Of course I am! I’m upset because I made the wrong choice! I followed some silly notion of wanting a normal life! I’m married to a man who has successfully sickened me with his criticism of the government and you to the point where I cannot even stand his touch anymore! I should’ve tried harder to serve you! I should’ve stayed with you! By your side! That’s where I belonged! I was a Mol and a Mol has always served their ruler loyally in whatever capacity they can!” Jennifer exclaims You have no words. Even if you the whole story you probably still wouldn’t have the words. How can you condemn someone who obviously thinks so highly of you? If you had more of an ego you’d just take advantage of the situation and let Jennifer write her book and fill it with propaganda and have the book be distributed for free, but you can’t help being a little grounded in reality even if it means shooting yourself in the foot. While you don’t scold Jennifer for her slightly misguided loyalty, you do feel she has the right to know the whole truth so you start by telling the thing you never told anyone before. “You know, Jacob Mol was loyal to the Empire, but not to the Emperor. Well at least not towards the end.” You say. “What?” Jennifer asks. “He personally killed the Emperor Casimir. Shot him in the back actually.” Jennifer is speechless. “Oh don’t judge your ancestor too harshly, he was only helping me at the time since I was doing a miserable job of attempting to kill the Emperor. Me and the true late svelk ruler of Lenay, Semra. It was a group effort I suppose and to be fair, Casimir was planning to have me killed despite my lifetime of loyalty.” Jennifer continues to remain speechless. “When we killed the Emperor, he unleashed a magic curse when he died which fucked up the rest of the land in various ways, regular folks know that event best as the Cataclysm.” Jennifer is finally about to speak, but you put up your hand to let her know one more thing. “The kicker of all this? A few years before Semra died she even told me the Xi were living undisturbed deep underground and it was only because of all the violent earthquakes that they turned their attention to the surface. ALL of what’s going on right now is my fault. Hell, even the fact that the gnomes were also planning to bomb us into oblivion is my fault. I can tell you more about that gruesomeness though and you could even get Renly to confirm it since he was there when one of those red capped bastards confronted me about it. I’m an usurper. A tyrant. A killer. And worse. And you know what? I’m perfectly fine with that.” You move closer to Jennifer. “Now then…how do you THINK the citizens would REALLY feel about their strong leader if they knew the truth from my own lips?” Jennifer moves her own face closer to yours. “It doesn’t matter, because I’m writing the damn thing how I want to.” Jennifer remarks. “So true history doesn’t matter to you despite being dedicated to it?” “History is written by those in power and the winners. Perhaps some of what you told me was a surprise, but do you think I didn’t have my suspicions that you probably had something to do with the death of the old Emperor? Your continued vagueness of the topic even years later was a give away. I’m not stupid. I know what you think of me. You probably believe me to be a mindless fanatic at worst or a misguided loyalist at best, but you couldn’t be more wrong. I am a true patriot. My family always has been. You even said it yourself my ancestor Jacob was loyal to the Empire, but he obviously saw its ruler as lacking to its greatness. He saw that greatness in YOU, otherwise he wouldn’t have helped you overthrow the Republic or even warn Quintus that you were going to kill him.” Jennifer grabs your hand. “I still see that greatness in you. I always have. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. Let me be by your side again. Like I should’ve been. Don’t send me back down to the surface. Let me stay and help.” Jennifer looks at you hopefully and preying upon that small part of you that actually does have feelings. It’s just too bad; you don’t feel the same strong feelings as she does for you. > You let Jennifer stay Again you think: How can you really punish such dedication? Casimir tried to kill you for similar loyalty and while you wouldn’t kill Jennifer, sending her away would most certainly be the same thing to her. While you are lucky to have someone so dedicated and even though she explained herself somewhat, you don’t really understand why. Then again, you never fully understood Semra’s obsession for you either. Some motives only make sense to the mind that creates them. “Very well. I will find a place for you, but what of your son? Surely you want your son don’t you?” you ask. “Yes! Yes of course I do. It’s just if I left him he probably wouldn’t care at this point, but he’d make things difficult and probably try to stop me if I tried to take our son Marcus with me. Then there’s Marcus to think about, I can’t reasonably whisk him away from his father. He still loves him. So um, can you arrange for something to happen to my husband? “Wait…you want me to kill him?” You ask. “Well…I mean…(Sigh) I dunno…” “You better make up your mind Jennifer, because once its done, its permanent you know.” “I know! I know! Alright…” Jennifer says and starts mumbling to herself and staring upward as if she’s weighing all the pros and cons. After a few seconds, she gives you her answer. “Okay, do it. Kill him.” “Very well. He must’ve really pissed you off.” “It’s for the best in the long run. He poisons my son’s mind with anti-Empire ideology at times. He’s practically a dissident, he might as well die.” Jennifer says with absolute certainty. Though you can tell in her eyes that while she’s successfully convinced herself of that, there’s still some tiny part of her that is sad her marriage has come to this. Strangely, you feel a little odd doing this too. You can’t even begin to count how many deaths you’ve inflicted or ordered and yet this one feels weird to you. You’ve never even met the guy, but you’re essentially you’re going to be murdering him and “taking” his wife and son. On the scale of things its a far cry from orchestrated genocide of an entire race, and granted you aren’t struggling with it like before you decided to kill Casimir, but its just something that makes you feel a little off. You have an Eye take care of the situation and to make it look like an accident for the boy’s sake. It naturally all goes off fairly quickly and successfully. It’s barely even noticed, after all what’s one “accidental” death of an average citizen compared to the thousands dying on the front lines with the Xi every day? After a funeral (again, to keep up appearances for the boy) and a trip back to the surface, Jennifer returns to Apex with Marcus who is taking his father’s death pretty well, though you imagine Jennifer has probably been trying to mold the boy to her liking. As for your other promise to Jennifer, you aren’t really sure how to proceed, mainly because you don’t really have much for her to do. You already have your official advisors and generals and the like. To be honest Jennifer was probably serving you well enough as a propaganda outlet with her museum constantly promoting Empire values, history and such. So you leave her to continue such work. She still owns the museum of course, but has someone else run it now. In the meantime she works on the thing that originally brought her back to you in the first place, her new book. Of course this involves several sessions of her asking you some questions and going over the book’s content. And sure enough, you and Jennifer do experience a bit of rekindled closeness during such time. It’s not the same as it was, and you’ll never feel as strongly for her as you did for Alison, but you’ve learned to enjoy the moments again if only because the Xi problem dominates the most of your thoughts and blocking out the constant pain your body is in makes up the rest. In a couple weeks you receive word from one of your scientists that in order to work on the disease to kill the Xi, experiments are going to have to be done on captured Xi. Naturally you agree that a few forces can be set-aside for capture missions and think nothing more of it. When you briefly mention this to Jennifer she has another perspective on the situation. “Experiments on the Xi huh? Sure that’s a good idea?” Jennifer asks. “Well I’d rather that our armies just focused on killing them, but if capturing a few of them is going to lead to something that will eventually kill all of them, then I’m all for it. Don’t worry, every precaution is going to be in place for our scientists.” “That’s not what I mean. I mean are you sure they should just be experimenting on the Xi?” “Who else would they be experimenting on?” “Well, our own people for one. How do we know this germ or whatever is going to just affect the Xi? I’ve had an opportunity to read copies of some of those notes that the gnomes left while I’ve been up here in Apex and maybe your other people missed something, but I got the impression that the gnomes were planning to design something that wasn’t going to just wipe out the Xi.” It’s odd, but that had completely slipped your mind. You figured the gnomes were just going to bomb you out of existence or something similar. Makes sense that if they planned biological warfare on a grand scale for the Xi, they’d do it to the Empire as well. “That’s good thinking…so you believe we should what? Round up some folks for experimentation?” you ask. “Well it couldn’t hurt. I mean we don’t want to release something that’s going to kill us all.” Jennifer replies. “Okay, well I’ll let them know immediately to start emptying out the prisons for this project. Pretty sure there’s more than enough for a good diverse mix of our population.” “You think?” “Well mostly humans, but thanks to their violent personalities, there’s more than enough kobold and orc criminals in the prison system.” “What about elves?” “Dunno. They don’t tend to last long in prison from what I’ve heard. I guess we’ll take our chances if we don’t have a lot. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” You thank Jennifer who is very happy that you’re pleased with her and begins discussing some parts of her book again. Year 564 You look over your balcony and stare at the grand view of the surface below. The Xi have been starting to establish great hills of earth where a central hive is located. This is a good thing since it makes targeting key locations a lot easier. Small porcelain bombs of infection meant for the Xi are going to be dropped from Airships anywhere the Xi are greatly located. There are even kobold commandos that will be doing their best to deliver the disease more directly. (Turned out the little scalies were the most resistant to the disease in the first place) It all rides on this plan and you certainly hope it will work. Jennifer comes to see you and holds your hand. As gentle as she is you still feels a sharp ache going up your arm causing slight recoil of it. “Damn it. I used to be so young and strong once. Now I’m just this…old bag of broken bones.” You remark. “You’re the Emperor.” Jennifer says. “Well for now anyway. Won’t be long before that won’t be the case. Just hope this plan works so I’ll be remembered if only for a little while longer.” “Of course it will work.” You flash a smile at Jennifer who smiles back. In silence, the pair of you watches an airship in the distance drop its plague bombs onto a Xi hill before returning back inside. Weeks pass and you continue to receive steady reports of large numbers of dead Xi bodies being found and Xi attacks dropping off completely in places. The plague has worked. Better yet, you’re not getting reports of mass sickness from your own people. Well there have been reports of your elven citizens suddenly getting sick, but you can’t save everyone. It’s still a long road ahead to rebuild the massive damage the Xi did, but this is a positive step in the right direction. Jennifer’s book “Eternal Leader”, which had been released shortly before the bug bombing suddenly sees an increase in popularity and sales. Celebrating good fortune all around, you officially make Jennifer your consort making her very happy. Which technically makes her son your heir. You don’t have much time to teach him the ins and outs of rulership. In fact in your condition you can’t even teach him the art of combat or magic, but Jennifer had him enrolled in a military school shortly after she made her home in Apex (You’ve barely even seen the boy), so you’re guessing he’ll be okay in that department. After all, it isn’t like the old days now. Combat is becoming an increasingly non-personal affair. How you’ve defeated the Xi is proof of that. Plus Jennifer will probably do her best to guide him. She’s already proven adept in the advisory role. You don’t know how long you have left in this world, but you think you’ll be taking it easy for a while. And why the hell not? You’re the Emperor.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 560 “Emperor, the Xi have made their first incursions into Quala.” David remarks. “(Sigh) It was only a matter of time I suppose. The damn bugs just can’t seem to be wiped out. Even with this floating fortress and the new airships we created. Have we lost Arat completely?” “No, but the only city left is Regnik and its slowly in danger of becoming overrun. It probably won’t last another week despite the carpet-bombing we’ve done around the area. Quala is having problems as well and last reports stated that Warlord Sprog fell in battle.” You sometimes wonder if the Xi are some sort force of nature taking everything back from the others races that have caused so much turmoil and strife. Like the other races had their day in the sun at some point and now it is the time of the Xi to rise to power. Of course you’ve never been one for giving into fate or “destiny”, so your main concern is how to deal with this seemingly unstoppable foe. Fortunately after you took Telis (Now called Apex) from the gnomes, you found some rather interesting notes on how it might be possible and your brightest and best have been attempting to decipher them. Technology wasn’t the only thing the gnomes were working on; they were also working on a bunch of stuff to do with biology. Apparently they had plans to design and release some sort of germ that would kill all the Xi. Sounds like a blessing, but the problem is you have no idea how long that’s going to take. You have your inventors and doctors and wise people, but honestly they’re only going by a few found pieces of scraps and half thought out plans from a race of people now no longer around. Nobody has even had this sort of idea before; using unseen organism as weapons. But then nobody had the idea to create weapons that could destroy entire buildings or allow one unskilled peasant to murder an entire squad of swordsmen at one time either. In the meantime, you’re still left with the same problem. You have to fend off the Xi from destroying the Empire. You’re doing your best, but you have to admit, the outlook is grim. Just as you’re about to give David your list of commands for the day and retire to your private abode, David tells you that you have an audience today. “Audience? With who? I’m the only ruler left in the land and I doubt very seriously the Xi are wanting to speak with me about peace negotiations.” You say. “No, it’s a regular citizen Emperor and know normally you don’t hold such audiences, but I thought in her case you might. It’s Jennifer.” David replies. “Really? Well what does she want?” “She didn’t say, other than wanting to see you. Should I tell her to reschedule?” “No, I suppose I can spare the time to see what she wants and I could use a diversion from this Xi situation anyway.” David nods and fetches Jennifer from the next room. You haven’t seen her in a while, but she still looks about the same, just a few extra gray hairs. You have to admit you’re mildly glad to see her after dealing with the Xi day in day out. After a few pleasant greetings you both go back to your private chambers to speak. “So…it’s been a long time.” You say. “It’s been about ten years since we were in the same room together.” Jennifer answers. “Has it? Time really flies. As you probably know I’ve been a little busy. Apologies for not keeping in better contact.” “No, it’s fine. Seriously, you’re the Emperor and keeping us all safe from hostile forces is a full time job. I always knew better than to expect that you’d be able to stay on constant contact.” “Glad you understand. So where’s your family?” “They are on the surface, my son really wanted to see the flying city, but his father…well let’s just say he wasn’t fond of the idea.” Jennifer says with a bit of hesitancy. It’s apparent that not everything is well with her marriage, but you don’t want to pry. “I see…well tell your son that the Emperor has said he can see it any time its convenient. It isn’t like the place is off limits, just difficult to get to I suppose.” “Indeed. Tickets for an airship here are expensive and not many have that sort of money to throw around anymore. Anyway about why I’m here, I’ve been working on another book.” “Another one? So what is this one about?” “About you actually. I need your input with it obviously considering you’re the main subject.” “A book about me huh? Any reason why you wanted to write such a book?” “Why wouldn’t I? You’re only one of the most important people in history. I mean there needs to be records of this for when…I mean so people don’t forget your deeds. I mean sometimes I have to argue with idiots at the museum who don’t know how good you’ve made things for them! At one time people used to view the Old Empire exhibit with wonder and questions. Now it seems all some of them want to do is criticize it and claim it’s nothing more than a pile of falsehoods and lies! Some of these dissidents have even been claiming this flying city is just an example of how you believe you’re so much better than they are!” “Hmm, haven’t heard about too much dissident activity for quiet some time, but then the Eyes are stretched pretty thin these days.” “Well some of these morons that enter the museum need to be rounded up! You’re not better than them because of a flying city; you’re better than them for a whole bunch of other reasons! Being a strong leader and making the tough decisions that in the long run are best for all of us! I intend for my book to reinforce the needed understanding of why the things you do are completely necessary. I’ve already managed to interview some people that have seen your greatness in action like Captain Renly and Admiral Len. Their testimony and others will make great additions, but the words from your own lips will be what’s most important!” You’ve seen Jennifer get excited and fired up about things in the past, but you sort of figured such excitement would never be reserved for anything related to you ever again. You had thought that Jennifer had long since outgrown her “worship” of you when she got married and had a family, but either it never left and had been dormant or something has changed to cause it to revive such feelings again. And if you had to guess you imagine it might have something to do with her marriage. “Jennifer, while I’ve always appreciated your support, I doubt if any book is going to change a lot of minds. You even said not many people have disposable income these days to buy luxury items. You can’t let every loudmouth with an opinion get you so upset. I mean I’m glad you told me, and I’ll even get Crowley to have some Eyes look into matter and see if it’s a potential larger problem, but I think you’re really upset about something else.” “Of course I am! I’m upset because I made the wrong choice! I followed some silly notion of wanting a normal life! I’m married to a man who has successfully sickened me with his criticism of the government and you to the point where I cannot even stand his touch anymore! I should’ve tried harder to serve you! I should’ve stayed with you! By your side! That’s where I belonged! I was a Mol and a Mol has always served their ruler loyally in whatever capacity they can!” Jennifer exclaims You have no words. Even if you the whole story you probably still wouldn’t have the words. How can you condemn someone who obviously thinks so highly of you? If you had more of an ego you’d just take advantage of the situation and let Jennifer write her book and fill it with propaganda and have the book be distributed for free, but you can’t help being a little grounded in reality even if it means shooting yourself in the foot. While you don’t scold Jennifer for her slightly misguided loyalty, you do feel she has the right to know the whole truth so you start by telling the thing you never told anyone before. “You know, Jacob Mol was loyal to the Empire, but not to the Emperor. Well at least not towards the end.” You say. “What?” Jennifer asks. “He personally killed the Emperor Casimir. Shot him in the back actually.” Jennifer is speechless. “Oh don’t judge your ancestor too harshly, he was only helping me at the time since I was doing a miserable job of attempting to kill the Emperor. Me and the true late svelk ruler of Lenay, Semra. It was a group effort I suppose and to be fair, Casimir was planning to have me killed despite my lifetime of loyalty.” Jennifer continues to remain speechless. “When we killed the Emperor, he unleashed a magic curse when he died which fucked up the rest of the land in various ways, regular folks know that event best as the Cataclysm.” Jennifer is finally about to speak, but you put up your hand to let her know one more thing. “The kicker of all this? A few years before Semra died she even told me the Xi were living undisturbed deep underground and it was only because of all the violent earthquakes that they turned their attention to the surface. ALL of what’s going on right now is my fault. Hell, even the fact that the gnomes were also planning to bomb us into oblivion is my fault. I can tell you more about that gruesomeness though and you could even get Renly to confirm it since he was there when one of those red capped bastards confronted me about it. I’m an usurper. A tyrant. A killer. And worse. And you know what? I’m perfectly fine with that.” You move closer to Jennifer. “Now then…how do you THINK the citizens would REALLY feel about their strong leader if they knew the truth from my own lips?” Jennifer moves her own face closer to yours. “It doesn’t matter, because I’m writing the damn thing how I want to.” Jennifer remarks. “So true history doesn’t matter to you despite being dedicated to it?” “History is written by those in power and the winners. Perhaps some of what you told me was a surprise, but do you think I didn’t have my suspicions that you probably had something to do with the death of the old Emperor? Your continued vagueness of the topic even years later was a give away. I’m not stupid. I know what you think of me. You probably believe me to be a mindless fanatic at worst or a misguided loyalist at best, but you couldn’t be more wrong. I am a true patriot. My family always has been. You even said it yourself my ancestor Jacob was loyal to the Empire, but he obviously saw its ruler as lacking to its greatness. He saw that greatness in YOU, otherwise he wouldn’t have helped you overthrow the Republic or even warn Quintus that you were going to kill him.” Jennifer grabs your hand. “I still see that greatness in you. I always have. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. Let me be by your side again. Like I should’ve been. Don’t send me back down to the surface. Let me stay and help.” Jennifer looks at you hopefully and preying upon that small part of you that actually does have feelings. It’s just too bad; you don’t feel the same strong feelings as she does for you. > You turn her away While you might have some sympathy for Jennifer, honestly you don’t see any benefit of her being by your side. Are you supposed to just kill her husband and marry her or something? If Jennifer is having marital problems or going through a mid life crisis of some sort she’s going to have to work it out herself because you really haven’t the time or the patience for any of this sort of drama, you’ve got so much more on your mind right now. You don’t have a place for her in your cabinet and you don’t feel the same way that she feels about you and you’re not going to pretend otherwise. “Jennifer, I appreciate your loyalty and your honesty. You will always be someone I have a certain fondness for, but you’re already serving the Empire and me well enough with your museum. I have no place for you here. Go home. Go back to your family and work it out with your husband or divorce him, whatever you wish.” Jennifer is shocked by your response. She probably was so sure that you wouldn’t turn her away due to your history together. “You…you’re turning me away?” Jennifer asks. “I’m turning your proposal away. Look, we had our time together, but that time has passed and there is no point in going back to that. Nowadays, my mind is preoccupied with the Xi, my body is in constant pain, and to be honest I’m probably not going to live too much longer. You still have a long life ahead of you, enjoy it while you can. Don’t squander it with some delusional concept of loyalty and duty. I know you’re probably surprised to hear someone like me say that, but I’m speaking from personal experience. I spent a good chunk of my life serving a man and a system that ultimately cared nothing for me. Then I was locked in a fucking magical coffin for five centuries. Now towards the end of my life, I’ve got all the freedom and choice in the world as Emperor, yet I can’t really enjoy any of it because I’m an ancient pile of broken bones. Can’t even hold a sword for very long anymore, let alone practice with one.” “I could…” Jennifer starts to say, but you interrupt. “No. You CAN’T help. Not with this. What I want isn’t obtainable. I want my youth back. I want MY Empire back. I want my Alison back. You can’t provide any of these. Everything I know is dead and has been for quite some time and the only thing keeping me going is my stubborn innate will to survive and to win. I can’t let the Xi beat me, so I will see this through for as long as I can. But you can’t help me with that either. So as I have said, go back Jennifer. Live your own life. You did it before I came into your life and you were doing it after we parted ways years ago. You can easily do it again. I know you’re strong enough to do so.” Jennifer’s eyes are watered up with tears, she’s trying very hard not to cry, but she’s failing. You touch her shoulder. “Even Jacob knew when to stop serving his ruler.” You say. Jennifer wipes away her tears and sniffles a bit. It takes her a moment to compose herself, but eventually she does and gives you a serious look. You expect her to either start cussing you out or telling you that she understands. She surprises you again. “I will go my Emperor. (sniffle) If you say I have no place here, then I shall redouble my efforts to prove myself.” Jennifer says. “Jennifer, that’s not what I meant…” “No, I understand. My place is at the museum and educating the ignorant masses and making them see the light of your greatness. I will continue to work on my book and I will distribute it throughout the Empire so that everyone will know of your hardships and the sacrifices you made and continue to make to keep us all safe.” You don’t really have a response. You can see she isn’t going to be swayed despite your best efforts to get through to her. “Thank you, my Emperor. I see what must be done now.” Jennifer says, grabs your hand one last time and kisses it before leaving. And you are alone again. For a while you ponder what Jennifer will do or what she has planned. You wonder if maybe you should’ve just indulged the girl and allowed her to stay. Would it really have been an inconvenience? Maybe, maybe not, in any case it’s done and after a short rest you return to the business of combating the Xi. A few weeks later you receive word from one of your scientists that in order to work on the disease to kill the Xi, experiments are going to have to be done on captured Xi. Naturally you agree that a few forces can be set-aside for capture missions and think nothing more of it. Life continues much as it always has for you. Year 563 You look over your balcony and stare at the grand view of the surface below. Complete and utter desolation of what remains of your Empire. You had the plague released to kill the Xi a year ago and its affects are still being felt. Small porcelain bombs of infection meant for the Xi dropped from airships ended up doing their job well enough, but unfortunately your scientists failed to take extra precautions. The plague mutated or evolved, or whatever it did, it spread and infected your people as well. It wasn’t noticeable at first, but eventually hundreds followed by thousands of Empire citizens were sick and eventually dying. Rask, Quala, Nalin, nowhere was safe even a small case hit Apex. Your closest advisor David died of it just recently. Oddly you haven’t got sick despite suffering from your increasing frailties of old age. Not even a symptom. Perhaps you have your Eternal roots to thank for such immunities. Elves were hit the hardest by the disease whenever they caught it. There almost aren’t even many left now. Even as resilient as orcs normally are, they’ve been suffering from the plague as well. The only ones who seem to be doing okay are the kobolds of all beings. If the plague continues to be as effective as it has been, that’s all your Empire will consist of. If the plague wasn’t enough, a lot of those that haven’t fallen ill have decided to blame you personally for all this. You’ve got mass riots all across the Empire, despite the Eyes valiantly attempting to maintain control of the situation. You’re just glad Sightmaster Crowley didn’t succumb to the plague (yet). And to top it all a small group of your citizens have taken it upon themselves to enact their own brand of vigilante justice on dissidents. This group is lead by Jennifer of all people. She finished her book called “Eternal Defender” and distributed it for free throughout the Empire, well as much as it could be under the circumstances. It doesn’t really matter though since the group actively goes around like religious missionaries preaching about your “virtues” and even that the plague is evidence of how the unworthy are being culled from the true believers. From what you’ve heard, the museum she once ran is now practically a temple and her husband is dead. (You have no idea how) You do nothing to stop her delusions or her group. It wouldn’t matter and on a practical level she’s helping contain the chaos. That’s all she ever wanted, to help. You can imagine that she’s out there night and day preaching fanaticism in your name and hoping that it will somehow please you and invite her back to Apex and “ascend to the heavens.” That won’t happen though. Nowadays you just want to live out the rest of your years in solitude. You did everything you could to resurrect the Empire, and just as you did over five centuries ago, you’ve practically destroyed it again. Makes you wonder what the hell the point was. You look forward to the day when you’re free of this damn broken down old body and this world. You’re tired of being Emperor. It hasn’t been any fun, but then maybe it wasn’t supposed to be. Maybe your “quest” to be Emperor was a lot more desirable than the actual goal. Which makes your decision to help assassinate Casimir an example of complete foolishness on your part. Perhaps it would’ve been better for the Empire if you had just let Casimir kill you…if that is indeed what he had in store for you. You’ve allowed yourself believe that was the case and it probably was, but still…there’s that one part of you that has always wondered if Semra wasn’t just lying and you fell for it. If she was lying, then she got the last laugh on you. “Wait a minute…no she didn’t. She’s fucking dead and I’m still here. She got eaten by the damn Xi.” You say to yourself then you think about that a little longer. You think about how they must’ve easily eviscerated her withered old helpless body. Probably dissolving her insides, sucking them up and then taking the bloody slop back to their Xi maggot babies to feed on via regurgitation. Leaving nothing more than a husk behind. Everything she was just gone, and in such an undignified manner and how she must’ve suffered the entire time. Then you start to laugh. You laugh for a long time…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Normally you don’t do this, because repelling projectiles actually takes more focus than flinging fireballs or putting up a shield in the first place, but if you can take out all the guns firing on you with their own bullets then you’ll get the breather you need. You refocus the shield and sure enough the bullets are repelled back towards the guns that are firing on you. It isn’t an exact hit, but enough of them hit their own guns (or in some cases the gunner) enough that it puts them out of commission, other bullets either go flying off wildly into the air or into other parts of the airship. In any case you hit something that causes problem since you see and hear minor explosions, which the gnomes are probably busily trying to contain. The airship shudders in the sky a bit, but it isn’t falling out of sky, which it probably would have done if you’d lobbed hunks of fire at it. Taking advantage of the respite, your soldiers take what explosives they’ve found on the bodies of the gnomes, pile them up against the building’s door and you hurl a ball of fire at it. Naturally it not only explodes spectacularly, but it also succeeds in destroying a couple of golems that were waiting to ambush you. You and the other run inside, before the airship above you manages to get its guns working again. When you get inside you see that the building consists of a lot of desks and generally laid out like a bureaucratic office. You briefly think that maybe this was all for nothing and your hunch was wrong, but sure enough when an automated repeated pops up out of the floor and puts several holes into one of Renly’s platoon and more golems appear from other trapdoors in the floor you’re fairly certain you’re still on the right track. You and Renly’s ever dwindling platoon take care of your assailants though at this point they’re probably hoping there aren’t too many more. “Glad this building doesn’t have multiple floors.” One soldier remarks. “It still might, those golems came out of the floor. There might be several basement levels.” Renly points out. “It can’t go too far down, the city is flying in the air now. It’s not going to be a Derro complex.” You say peering door one of the trapdoors. “Derro?” Renly asks. “Oh. Before your time I suppose. They were a subterranean race that were primarily hostile isolationists and had a knack for technology. Sort of like the current gnomes I suppose. I always wondered if they were related in some way to be honest.” You answer. “And they were enemies?” “Allies actually. Well… such as they were. Anyway I imagine whatever is causing this city to fly would be located right under it, so we might as well start searching there especially since the rest of this building looks more like an oversized office rather than any example of engineering. You all descend down one of the trap doors and find yourself in some small narrow corridors. Not so small that you can’t move around, but certainly small enough that you all have to crouch down. Even at the best of times your body aches, this bending and stooping routine just makes it worse for you. The corridors are also filled with a light steam with gears, pumps and other manner of machinery that you assume are keeping this city afloat. A noisy hum and the occasional jarring metal on metal screeches also surround you and you briefly wonder just how much solid stone floor is between you and the sky right now. “Guess the gnomes designed this part of the city.” Renly says. “Never thought I’d say this, but I wish we were kobolds right about now.” Another soldier remarks. “Alright let’s focus. The good thing about this corridor is I can easily shield us from any attack from the front or the back but you’re all going to have to fire upon on any enemy that attacks us. If I start throwing magic bolts or whatever around here I’m libel to damage something severely and send this thing crashing to the ground with us in it. You travel the corridors for what you believe to be an hour at least. It twists and turns, but you remain convinced that SOMEWHERE down here is a control room. In the meantime more gnomes attempt to stop you and while they have better maneuverability your shield continues to protect everyone and you fend off attacks. “At least they’re just sticking with guns now.” One of the soldiers says. “They don’t really have choice, explosives or those flame weapons would damage all these gears that are involved in holding up the place.” Renly remarks. While your followers make minor comments about the situation, you begin to notice a slight change in surroundings. The mist that fills the corridors is dissipating, the floors have become steel and now there are actual walls coving the previously exposed engineering. It suddenly occurs to you that the gnomes hadn’t actually finished this place up yet and you are now seeing the areas that took priority. “We’re near the control room.” You say. “We are?” Renly says. “I’m sure of it.” “Wouldn’t there be more defenses?” “I said I think we’re near it, we’re not actually there yet. For all we know the actual control room has shit we’ve never seen before.” You answer. “Oh it does, Eternal. It does. Come on in and see.” You hear a voice say nearby. You and the others look around and at each other. “Just continue a little bit forward and turn the corner. Don’t worry, you’ve killed all of my people, but then you always were an expert at such things weren’t you?” the voice says. When you follow the voice you enter a room filled with a bunch of technical equipment and machines. You no idea what any of it does, but its certainly a technological feat that you’ve only seen matched by Marik when he was growing tank babies. Also in the room a single gnome sitting in a chair dressed in the traditional leather uniform you’ve seen others of his kind wearing. He also sports the same bushy facial hair and red cap they all seem to favor. The only main thing that causes him to stand out is that he’s obviously older than the ones you’ve been fighting and he’s wearing explosives around his waist with a wire attached to another device he’s gripping tightly in his hand. The other thing that stands out is that he is completely unconcerned about you or your soldiers pointing their weapons at him. “You know, this really was one of our greatest works. (Sigh) It’s going to be a shame to destroy it, but anything is better than letting it fall into your hands. Can’t let a gnome killer like you have it can we?” the gnome remarks. “You speak as if you know me and I don’t mean by my present reputation. You speak as if you know me from the past.” You say. “Oh not personally, but my family’s ancestors told me stories about you. Yeah, great ancestor Klemto made sure the story got passed down so that something like Gnome’s Home could never happen again. One of the few gnomes you didn’t manage to round up and have systematically slaughtered.” “Well I see your mind is made up, no point in debating the issue.” You answer. “Oh no, please I’d LOVE to hear your defense on the matter. I could use a good laugh before I blow us all up.” At this point having one of your soldiers shoot him would be counter productive, he’d just release the switch when he died. Rushing the gnome would likely have the same result Your only option is to cast a freeze spell and encase his hand in a solid block of ice. The problem with that right now is you’re exhausted. You’d have to stall for a little time so you could muster up the energy to do it right now. So you stall for time and engage the gnome in conversation. “I was just following orders.” You say. “Really now? That’s your defense?” the gnome asks. “It’s not a defense because I don’t think I have anything to defend against. The Emperor…Casimir hated your kind. Not I. Why he hated your people so intensely I cannot say because I never fully understood the depths of it. He gave reasons, but as I said I believe there was more to it. It doesn’t matter though, since I merely acted on his orders.” “So you were just a blindly loyal soldier just doing your duty eh?” “At the time yes. Look, if you want me to beg for my life, you’ll not get it here. I didn’t begin my life as an Eternal begging so I’m certainly not going to end my life begging.” “I see…I suppose I should’ve known your arrogance and lack of emotions would prevent you from such actions…” the gnome remarks, but you cut him off. “Funny you should say that. Since I would think someone with the same arrogance and lack of emotions would understand.” You say. “What?!” “THIS! This flying fortress! And all your airships! You really expect me to believe you designed them for peaceful purposes?” “We had to protect ourselves!” “Against the Xi, yes I can see that, but you’ve been bombing us as well and we didn’t even declare war on you!” “Bah! You would have eventually! And your pathetic attempt at comparing us bombing your soldiers and you rounding up gnome civilians for slaughter is laughable.” “I wasn’t actually, I’d say that would be closer to what you did to the original citizens of this city. So what did you do with Telis’ original citizens?” The gnome begins to get annoyed. “Nothing. This city was always ours!” “Bullshit. Maybe this place was wrapped in mystery, but not to such a degree that it wasn’t known that humans lived here. Or at least they USED to live here. Just looking at the buildings and one can tell that this place was originally designed for humans rather than the smaller architecture that make up these corridors. So how did you go about it? I’m actually curious how you managed to wipe out an entire city without anyone getting a hint of what was going on. I know from your reputation that you don’t associate with other races any longer so I can only assume that you had the citizens of this city done away with long before you actually moved in and started making this place into a flying city. Perhaps maybe like something similar that was done to the gnomes?” The gnome now actually gets off his chair and both of his hands are balled up in anger, which is good since you want him to grip that kill switch as tight as possible. “It was a completely different situation!” the gnome exclaims. “Was it? Your ancestor said we rounded gnomes up to be slaughtered, what he probably didn’t know since he avoided capture is HOW we did it. We didn’t just kill them. We completely obliterated their souls. It’s what the Emperor wanted. Then again, you lot probably didn’t go that far…no magical skill to speak of, I guess that’s why you like your mechanical toys so much…” “You’re going to pay for your crimes you evil bastard. When I release this switch my only regret is going to be that you won’t suffer!” “No doubt. But it’s a shame that the real culprit won’t taste your justice after you blow us all up.” “What’re you talking about?” “I’m talking about the main executioner. Maybe I rounded some up and killed a few and the Emperor gave the orders, but there was one in particular who was enjoying the job around the clock. She’s still alive too you know, or maybe you didn’t. She isn’t very mobile or social these days. All I’ll say is she’s a svelk and she’s the mother of that bitch that currently runs Lenay, well assuming Lenay hasn’t been overrun by the Xi…” “ENOUGH! This ends now!” the gnome yells getting ready to release the switch. “Truer words have never been spoken.” You say and cast a blast of frost at the gnome’s left hand and fortunately you encase his whole arm in ice before he can release his hand from the switch. You collapse on the floor just from that small feat of magic. You really need to rest. The gnome desperately tries to break the ice, but the remaining two soldiers from the platoon restrain and knock him out. “Take this little shit topside and throw him off the city. Renly and I will try to figure out the controls to this thing. And do it quickly, that arm won’t stay frozen and there still might be some gnomes running around.” You say and drag yourself to sit up against a nearby wall. “Emperor are you okay?!” Renly asks. “I’m fine. Just very very tired. And unfortunately my work isn’t even done yet…” you answer. “But just maybe this thing will make it easier at least.” > You mysteries revealed (Notes on Telis and Gnome Plans) After successfully bringing Telis under control and eliminating the gnomes still in the city and either driving off or destroying the nearby airships, several notes, books and journals are found and it’s a veritable treasure trove of information solving more than a few mysteries and indeed confirming some of your own suspicions. Telis was mostly inhabited by humans (and perhaps a few elves) and it’s technological bent was due to its proximity to Marik’s old factory. Apparently during the initial days of the Cataclysm, many managed to take refuge in the place and the survivors in time founded Telis. One of the journals is extremely old, nearly destroyed and barely legible, but you manage to make out that the writing is derro on the few pages it has left. And to your surprise its must be Marik’s. There’s no name, but the type of language used and some of the references signify that it could only be him. One of the more… coherent entries catches your attention. Entry 101 Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I do everything around here and those ignorant fucking surfacers appreciate nothing! I don’t need this shit! I’m a fucking shit king! I mean I’m king of shit! I don’t have to play third fiddle to some fucking eternal and his svelk bitch! I’M the damn fucker! The KING OF THE FUCKERS! I need to remember to eat today. Who the fuck does he think he is telling me my creations are no match for him? Fuck him! Fuck him with a fucking horse dick! Dick! Dick! DICK! I know what I’ll do! I’ll slaughter them all! Drown ‘em in their tanks! That’ll teach them for failing me! And then I’m leaving this shithole and then the Emperor will see his lack of vision for listening to his idiotic so called son! FUCK THAT SVELK FUCKER! Perhaps I should work on dirt golems. Why not? There are stone ones and iron ones. Why not dirt? There’s a bunch of dirt! I could create a fuckload of them! And then I could be a FUCKING MASTER! Must remember to take this journal with me. This is good stuff. The remaining pages contain a lot of drawings of schematics and similar things that you guess went through Marik’s insane mind, but nothing more about the “tank babies” who you assume Marik had killed like he mentions he would. You can only assume Marik himself must’ve died during the initial chaos of the Cataclysm due to the fact that his journal was found by the survivors hiding out there. Probably killed during the violent earthquakes and shockwaves that caused cave-ins and tunnel collapses. Getting back to Telis, the place managed to maintain a better standing due to not falling into the dark ages so easily and by staying closely guarded. When the svelk founded Lenay, Telis became even more unwelcoming to strangers and effectively closed its doors too all. Or at least it did until the gnomes founded the Redcap Kingdom. Despite the gnome’s new outlook on life they noticed that due to Telis being the only other closed society that embraced technology they secretly made contact with them. Telis was suspicious at first, but due to similarities, in time the rulers of the city became more open to the idea of trade and even visits. It would be a grave mistake on their part. The population of Telis was indeed annihilated by the gnomes, though apparently it was an insidious process. Worthy of a svelk actually. They slowly and gradually poisoned the water supply. Not to a degree that people were dying instantly either. Just to a point where apparently they couldn’t reproduce anymore and in many cases a lowering of intelligence as well. Over the decades, eventually when the population was low enough, the gnomes offered “help” and then proceeded to exterminate the rest in a more traditional fashion. From there, they worked on turning the entire city into a flying fortress. You wonder why they just didn’t do this with one of their own cities, but if you had to guess, their own cities were under constant attack by the Xi (especially underground) making ongoing work problematic (Hence their hasty attempt to get this one up and running when the Xi started becoming more of a problem in Arat) From what you can tell this all started before you were even dug up. At least according to Flemto Zookwinkle’s journal here. (What a silly name) You’re guessing he’s the one that confronted you and is now nothing more than a bloody red spot on the ground. You’ve found some other plans and scraps of info about what the gnomes were up to recently as well, but a lot of it is pretty technical and some of it looks biological. Specifically Xi. Maybe they were looking to poison the Xi somehow too. In any event, you decide to let your inventors and doctors take a closer look at the mess and maybe they can figure out how to apply it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Normally you don’t do this, because repelling projectiles actually takes more focus than flinging fireballs or putting up a shield in the first place, but if you can take out all the guns firing on you with their own bullets then you’ll get the breather you need. You refocus the shield and sure enough the bullets are repelled back towards the guns that are firing on you. It isn’t an exact hit, but enough of them hit their own guns (or in some cases the gunner) enough that it puts them out of commission, other bullets either go flying off wildly into the air or into other parts of the airship. In any case you hit something that causes problem since you see and hear minor explosions, which the gnomes are probably busily trying to contain. The airship shudders in the sky a bit, but it isn’t falling out of sky, which it probably would have done if you’d lobbed hunks of fire at it. Taking advantage of the respite, your soldiers take what explosives they’ve found on the bodies of the gnomes, pile them up against the building’s door and you hurl a ball of fire at it. Naturally it not only explodes spectacularly, but it also succeeds in destroying a couple of golems that were waiting to ambush you. You and the other run inside, before the airship above you manages to get its guns working again. When you get inside you see that the building consists of a lot of desks and generally laid out like a bureaucratic office. You briefly think that maybe this was all for nothing and your hunch was wrong, but sure enough when an automated repeated pops up out of the floor and puts several holes into one of Renly’s platoon and more golems appear from other trapdoors in the floor you’re fairly certain you’re still on the right track. You and Renly’s ever dwindling platoon take care of your assailants though at this point they’re probably hoping there aren’t too many more. “Glad this building doesn’t have multiple floors.” One soldier remarks. “It still might, those golems came out of the floor. There might be several basement levels.” Renly points out. “It can’t go too far down, the city is flying in the air now. It’s not going to be a Derro complex.” You say peering door one of the trapdoors. “Derro?” Renly asks. “Oh. Before your time I suppose. They were a subterranean race that were primarily hostile isolationists and had a knack for technology. Sort of like the current gnomes I suppose. I always wondered if they were related in some way to be honest.” You answer. “And they were enemies?” “Allies actually. Well… such as they were. Anyway I imagine whatever is causing this city to fly would be located right under it, so we might as well start searching there especially since the rest of this building looks more like an oversized office rather than any example of engineering. You all descend down one of the trap doors and find yourself in some small narrow corridors. Not so small that you can’t move around, but certainly small enough that you all have to crouch down. Even at the best of times your body aches, this bending and stooping routine just makes it worse for you. The corridors are also filled with a light steam with gears, pumps and other manner of machinery that you assume are keeping this city afloat. A noisy hum and the occasional jarring metal on metal screeches also surround you and you briefly wonder just how much solid stone floor is between you and the sky right now. “Guess the gnomes designed this part of the city.” Renly says. “Never thought I’d say this, but I wish we were kobolds right about now.” Another soldier remarks. “Alright let’s focus. The good thing about this corridor is I can easily shield us from any attack from the front or the back but you’re all going to have to fire upon on any enemy that attacks us. If I start throwing magic bolts or whatever around here I’m libel to damage something severely and send this thing crashing to the ground with us in it. You travel the corridors for what you believe to be an hour at least. It twists and turns, but you remain convinced that SOMEWHERE down here is a control room. In the meantime more gnomes attempt to stop you and while they have better maneuverability your shield continues to protect everyone and you fend off attacks. “At least they’re just sticking with guns now.” One of the soldiers says. “They don’t really have choice, explosives or those flame weapons would damage all these gears that are involved in holding up the place.” Renly remarks. While your followers make minor comments about the situation, you begin to notice a slight change in surroundings. The mist that fills the corridors is dissipating, the floors have become steel and now there are actual walls coving the previously exposed engineering. It suddenly occurs to you that the gnomes hadn’t actually finished this place up yet and you are now seeing the areas that took priority. “We’re near the control room.” You say. “We are?” Renly says. “I’m sure of it.” “Wouldn’t there be more defenses?” “I said I think we’re near it, we’re not actually there yet. For all we know the actual control room has shit we’ve never seen before.” You answer. “Oh it does, Eternal. It does. Come on in and see.” You hear a voice say nearby. You and the others look around and at each other. “Just continue a little bit forward and turn the corner. Don’t worry, you’ve killed all of my people, but then you always were an expert at such things weren’t you?” the voice says. When you follow the voice you enter a room filled with a bunch of technical equipment and machines. You no idea what any of it does, but its certainly a technological feat that you’ve only seen matched by Marik when he was growing tank babies. Also in the room a single gnome sitting in a chair dressed in the traditional leather uniform you’ve seen others of his kind wearing. He also sports the same bushy facial hair and red cap they all seem to favor. The only main thing that causes him to stand out is that he’s obviously older than the ones you’ve been fighting and he’s wearing explosives around his waist with a wire attached to another device he’s gripping tightly in his hand. The other thing that stands out is that he is completely unconcerned about you or your soldiers pointing their weapons at him. “You know, this really was one of our greatest works. (Sigh) It’s going to be a shame to destroy it, but anything is better than letting it fall into your hands. Can’t let a gnome killer like you have it can we?” the gnome remarks. “You speak as if you know me and I don’t mean by my present reputation. You speak as if you know me from the past.” You say. “Oh not personally, but my family’s ancestors told me stories about you. Yeah, great ancestor Klemto made sure the story got passed down so that something like Gnome’s Home could never happen again. One of the few gnomes you didn’t manage to round up and have systematically slaughtered.” “Well I see your mind is made up, no point in debating the issue.” You answer. “Oh no, please I’d LOVE to hear your defense on the matter. I could use a good laugh before I blow us all up.” At this point having one of your soldiers shoot him would be counter productive, he’d just release the switch when he died. Rushing the gnome would likely have the same result Your only option is to cast a freeze spell and encase his hand in a solid block of ice. The problem with that right now is you’re exhausted. You’d have to stall for a little time so you could muster up the energy to do it right now. So you stall for time and engage the gnome in conversation. “I was just following orders.” You say. “Really now? That’s your defense?” the gnome asks. “It’s not a defense because I don’t think I have anything to defend against. The Emperor…Casimir hated your kind. Not I. Why he hated your people so intensely I cannot say because I never fully understood the depths of it. He gave reasons, but as I said I believe there was more to it. It doesn’t matter though, since I merely acted on his orders.” “So you were just a blindly loyal soldier just doing your duty eh?” “At the time yes. Look, if you want me to beg for my life, you’ll not get it here. I didn’t begin my life as an Eternal begging so I’m certainly not going to end my life begging.” “I see…I suppose I should’ve known your arrogance and lack of emotions would prevent you from such actions…” the gnome remarks, but you cut him off. “Funny you should say that. Since I would think someone with the same arrogance and lack of emotions would understand.” You say. “What?!” “THIS! This flying fortress! And all your airships! You really expect me to believe you designed them for peaceful purposes?” “We had to protect ourselves!” “Against the Xi, yes I can see that, but you’ve been bombing us as well and we didn’t even declare war on you!” “Bah! You would have eventually! And your pathetic attempt at comparing us bombing your soldiers and you rounding up gnome civilians for slaughter is laughable.” “I wasn’t actually, I’d say that would be closer to what you did to the original citizens of this city. So what did you do with Telis’ original citizens?” The gnome begins to get annoyed. “Nothing. This city was always ours!” “Bullshit. Maybe this place was wrapped in mystery, but not to such a degree that it wasn’t known that humans lived here. Or at least they USED to live here. Just looking at the buildings and one can tell that this place was originally designed for humans rather than the smaller architecture that make up these corridors. So how did you go about it? I’m actually curious how you managed to wipe out an entire city without anyone getting a hint of what was going on. I know from your reputation that you don’t associate with other races any longer so I can only assume that you had the citizens of this city done away with long before you actually moved in and started making this place into a flying city. Perhaps maybe like something similar that was done to the gnomes?” The gnome now actually gets off his chair and both of his hands are balled up in anger, which is good since you want him to grip that kill switch as tight as possible. “It was a completely different situation!” the gnome exclaims. “Was it? Your ancestor said we rounded gnomes up to be slaughtered, what he probably didn’t know since he avoided capture is HOW we did it. We didn’t just kill them. We completely obliterated their souls. It’s what the Emperor wanted. Then again, you lot probably didn’t go that far…no magical skill to speak of, I guess that’s why you like your mechanical toys so much…” “You’re going to pay for your crimes you evil bastard. When I release this switch my only regret is going to be that you won’t suffer!” “No doubt. But it’s a shame that the real culprit won’t taste your justice after you blow us all up.” “What’re you talking about?” “I’m talking about the main executioner. Maybe I rounded some up and killed a few and the Emperor gave the orders, but there was one in particular who was enjoying the job around the clock. She’s still alive too you know, or maybe you didn’t. She isn’t very mobile or social these days. All I’ll say is she’s a svelk and she’s the mother of that bitch that currently runs Lenay, well assuming Lenay hasn’t been overrun by the Xi…” “ENOUGH! This ends now!” the gnome yells getting ready to release the switch. “Truer words have never been spoken.” You say and cast a blast of frost at the gnome’s left hand and fortunately you encase his whole arm in ice before he can release his hand from the switch. You collapse on the floor just from that small feat of magic. You really need to rest. The gnome desperately tries to break the ice, but the remaining two soldiers from the platoon restrain and knock him out. “Take this little shit topside and throw him off the city. Renly and I will try to figure out the controls to this thing. And do it quickly, that arm won’t stay frozen and there still might be some gnomes running around.” You say and drag yourself to sit up against a nearby wall. “Emperor are you okay?!” Renly asks. “I’m fine. Just very very tired. And unfortunately my work isn’t even done yet…” you answer. “But just maybe this thing will make it easier at least.” > The Fall of Lenay and the Redcap Kingdom (Year 558) Year 558 “No sign of any survivors?” you ask. “Well scouts say that Lenay is crawling with Xi. If anyone has escaped, they’d have to be incredibly lucky. There aren’t any svelk suddenly running to our borders either which would be the closest safe haven. None of their elven slaves either.” David remarks. And so Lenay has finally fallen. You knew as soon as that magic barrier went down; it would be the end for the city. Even Semra couldn’t keep it up forever. And so ends the last living link to your past. The funny thing is, you didn’t even know she was still alive until a few years ago. You look at the mithril dagger she nearly killed you with when you were in your sixteenth year. At the time Semra mockingly gave it to you as some sort of twisted gift. Perhaps as a reminder of your failure to kill her. You kept it of course as a reminder of your failure as well, but also with every intension of killing her with it one day. Of course that personal goal was given up long ago and even if you did still harbor the motive for revenge, the Xi have deprived you of that. You’re more disappointed that you didn’t get to kill Eldolith, but you guess she got hers as well. As you study the dagger and fondle it, you ask David if there has been an activity by the gnomes. “Well, after we destroyed all their airships, I don’t believe any of them managed to escape the Xi either. The Xi have finally completely overrun the Redcap Kingdom. If they aren’t all dead already, then they soon will be. We are the last hope against the Xi my Emperor.” “Hm.” You acknowledge. “Last hope” isn’t quite a term you’ve been successful with. You were supposed to be a “last hope” for the Empire too, and you ended up destroying it. So much has turned out differently from what you expected. You have another realization which is you just indirectly carried out the elimination of the gnomes due to your actions. Over five hundred years later, Casimir’s wish has finally been fulfilled. Feels odd that you managed to serve him in this last capacity. Casimir and Semra; the closest thing to “parents” that you’ve ever known and everything you are today is partly due to their influence in one way or another. Snapping out of your introspection, you address David more directly. “Begin moving our reserve armies toward Arat. Regnik will be our main hub of operations in the area and we’ll start sending out those new airships of ours to start bombing the Xi as soon as possible. Can’t just rely on this oversized flying fortress to do all the work.” You say. “Very well, it shall be done.” David replies and turns to leave. “Oh David, here take this.” You say hold out the mithril dagger for him to take. “What’s this for?” David asks taking the dagger. “To dispose of, I have no more need of it.” You answer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Probably a fool’s task, but if you survive this you’re going to have to still deal with the Xi. A flying fortress would give a significant advantage. You stop using your own energy to support your mages and refocus on a creating a personal shield around yourself. You give the order for everyone to get out of your way or grab on to Telis if they can. It isn’t too bad, most of your mages hold their own, and continue to protect a majority of the army, but its yourself that you’re concerned about as you attempt to reach Telis which is slowly becoming completely airborn. You ride your horse as hard to the point where it probably isn’t going to survive after you intend to make a leap forward off of it. You pass your soldiers, you pass the Xi fighting them, you pass over the torn up ground from the battle and bombs and you look up and see Telis escaping your reach. “No, I’ve come too far!” you say and you stand on top of your horse, nearly falling off in the process while still attempt to upkeep your shield… You make the jump towards the city and manage to grab ahold of one half of Telis’ front gate doors which is currently hanging off its hinges. Your shield is down, your body hurts and you’re practically deaf from all the explosions going on around you. You hang on for dear life as the ground gets further away and attempt to climb up, but your strength is failing you and even if it wasn’t the door is slowly loosing its weak attachment to the rest of the city. “Shit! Shit! No! No! No! Not like this! Fuck! Hate this weakness!” you exclaim as you prepare to either lose your grip or for the door comes loose. And you doubt you’ll be in any condition to “repair” yourself when you take this long fall. Fortunately it doesn’t come to that. “Emperor! Take my hand!” a human soldier shouts and reaches over the side. You waste no time in accepting his help and soon a couple of other soldiers help him lift you up just in time for the door to fall to the ground. After catching your breath and assuring the soldiers that helped you that you’re fine, you get a better assessment of your surroundings. “Okay first things first, what’s your name so I know what to call you.” “Lieutenant Renly, my Emperor and this what’s left of my platoon.” Renly says and waves his arm to six other soldiers. “We’re not the only ones here, I believe there’s a couple of orc platoons further in the city. They’re probably fighting the Xi that managed to get in or combating the gnome clockwork golems. Hell even the teams of gnomes with their rapid repeaters isn’t something you want to deal with and that’s not even counting the ones probably trying to spot us from the nearby airships.” “So wait, are there no humans or regular citizens in this place?” you ask. “Not from what anyone can tell. It’s like the whole place is empty other than the Xi, the gnomes and us. Unless the Telis citizens are all hiding somewhere.” “Or maybe the gnomes did something to them all. Well it doesn’t matter we need to figure out where the hell the controls are for this thing. We get control and we can get rid of those airships with a lot more ease.” “Not sure where something like that would be located Emperor.” “That’s easy, we keep moving towards the areas that have most of the little bastards and their damned contraptions. It’s going to be the most heavily defended place because it’s the most important thing in the world to them.” “Well then I believe we should take a left down that street over here. Saw a gnome patrol accompanied by two clockworks not long ago.” “Okay, but when possible we should probably stick to the back alleys. Don’t need one of those airships floating by and spotting us. In fact our best chance is to do this as stealthily as possible. A rare tactic for us I know, but our main task is getting control of this thing.” You, Renly and the rest of his platoon make your way towards where you hope some sort of master control is located. Along the way, you see the remnants of where small skirmishes have already taken place. Bodies riddled with bullets or in some cases chopped up. They’re mostly bodies of the Xi, but some of your soldiers as well. You don’t see any gnome casualties other than pieces of their golems. The sounds of battle can still be heard throughout the city, but it gets concerning when the sounds get less infrequent, since that means the gnomes are probably mopping up invaders to their city, which means less distraction for them. Your attempts at sneaking around are fairly successful. As you stealthily avoid these patrols, you finally see the gnomes and you can’t get over how radically they’ve changed. With their dark red caps, goggles and stylish leather uniforms, they couldn’t look anymore different than their pathetic ancestors that you helped round up centuries ago to have their souls utterly obliterated. Really though, after an event like that and who knows what else during the Cataclysm you suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that the gnomes decided they wouldn’t be victims and became hostile towards other races. Let alone rely on other societies to defend them any longer. They shaped their own destiny and you can certainly respect and even admire that; after all you never hated them. That was the Emperor. You were just following orders at the time. Eventually the gnome patrols are getting too thick and you can’t really properly proceed without engaging the enemy. Just as well, you were getting sick of acting like a shadow. “Alright, everyone get ready, because it’s going to be killing time from here on in. I’ll take the lead on this.” You say. “Emperor, shouldn’t you stay behind us so we can better protect you?” Renly replies. “While I appreciate the sentiment, I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have, if anything you all should try to stay behind me and in cover until I clear out most of the rabble. Don’t worry, I may be old, but I’m not out of this yet. And if you all survive this, you’ll all be getting promotions and whatever else I think might be an appropriate reward, so it behooves you all to listen to me if you want to reap the benefits of this situation.” With this understanding, Renly and his platoon follow your lead. Still unseen, you take advantage of a group of gnomes tanding around with their clockwork creations. You unleash a flurry of fireballs, which not only has the desired effect of killing some of the gnomes outright, but also causing an explosion due to their hand thrown bombs they carry on them The explosion takes care of the golems. “That’s one group down, but the rest aren’t going to be as easy!” you say and advance with a shield up. Not easy is correct because the little bastards start coming out in full force. You just try not to get surrounded. The unrelenting repeater weapons are bad enough, but the gnomes also come out with weapons that emulate some of your spells! A single gnome who managed to sneak up on two of Renly’s men blasts them with some sort of weapon that emits flames. Renly shoots the gnome in the head before turning his attention to grab one of the repeaters from a nearby dead gnome. “They’re all coming out of that big red building, that’s probably where we need to go! Come on!” you shout and take out another golem.” During the carnage you think back to how you used to mainly use your sword during battles. During this one, you haven’t even used it yet. In fact you haven’t done so for so long, you wonder if you’d even be able to use it effectively anymore. Granted in this situation like this you’ve practically got no choice but to rely on your magic, still though you miss the good old days. The closer you get to the building, the waves of gnomes lessens, until you see one of them close the door just as the last few golems are shot to pieces. The sky above you grows darker and you notice an airship looming overhead. They don’t throw bombs at you, but they certainly unleash a volley of gunfire, which manages to kill another one of Renley’s platoon before he and the rest can get into cover. As for you, your shield is working just fine, but you need to get into that building which is probably locked and barricaded. You aren’t going to be able to blast it open with that airship firing at you. > You launch a fireball at the airship Best way to get them to stop shooting at you is to return the favor with superior firepower literally. You unleash a torrent of fireballs at the airship, which land all over the place. Some hit the gun shooting at you, which causes it to explode. In fact other your hits cause several explosions and then one large one creating a blast that knocks you down on the ground even from you were standing. The airship is in flames and falling out of the sky, unfortunately since it was directly hovering over the city that means it’s crashing into it. You scramble off your feet and hope to find some sort of cover and maybe at least get away from where the major impact is going to be. You keep your barrier up to protect yourself from the falling debris, but Renly and the others have no chance at all especially when the airship begins hitting the larger buildings causing them to collapse and setting what looks to you like the whole sky ablaze. When the airship finally hits the city surface it is engulfed by fire and the impact strikes your barrier so hard that even you are pushed away by the force. Your entire body hits the ground and you lose concentration of your spell. Fire is all around you and you pass out. You never wake up to experience Telis falling out the sky and causing an even greater explosion on the surface.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As high as you currently are, the beast is still several times higher and should easily be a perfect target. You concentrate and as you do you begin to feel little charges and sparks around you and the air begins to have a faint smell of electricity. As dark as the sky is with the beast blocking the sun with its size, the sky gets even darker when storm cloud gather. You directly unleash a blast of lightning right at one of the creature’s heads. It must be enough to addle what passes for brains in the creature, because the serpentine head begins to flail back and forth making an incredibly loud bellow and knocking into the other head and taking it off its concentrated effort to destroy your fleet. Then a rumbling comes from the sky and you’re nearly blinded by the light show that occurs next. With the storm clouds, the creature takes several lightning strikes to both of its heads. If the creature wasn’t in pain or addled before, it certainly is now. Its roaring of pain is so great that it’s practically deafening. You don’t let up though, you continue to summon the lightning and that’s when you learn that you only have so much control over nature. The lightning strikes begin going all over the place. Some hit your ships, so hit the water and some continue to hit the beast. You struggle to direct the lightning, but your energy ebbs quickly as you fail to do so and you take a direct bolt yourself. It’s a quick and odd feeling. You feel a great deal of pain, followed by a warm sensation and then you briefly realize you’ve fallen from the crow’s nest, which was completely destroyed by the blast. You then feel extreme agony when you not only crash onto the deck of the ship, but also through it. You land on some barrels though all you know is when you land you heard a snap and a numbness wash over your body. And that’s when you know; you’re paralyzed from the neck down. You hear the sounds of battle continue all around you, some of the crew that were manning the cannons on the lower deck call for help when they see you, but there’s nothing anyone can do to help you. Everything’s blurry, you’ve probably got a concussion, and death has never been so close to you since you fought the Emperor. You’re going to fall asleep and your body will sink under the water when the ship is inevitably destroyed. There the fish will eat you or possibly the creatures you’re fighting will eat you. Its possible Crowley might step up and take command of the Empire, but after him? You don’t see it lasting very long. Your own legacy will eventually be forgotten and that will be the story of you. That is if you had any intention on dying today. “Get away from me and get back to fighting, you’re not done yet!” You weakly command the crewmembers that are standing around gawking at you. You remember the lessons the Emperor taught you about healing yourself. At this point you’re in dire need of A LOT of healing and you imagine you’ll easily be shortening your life span quite a bit in the process, but then you aren’t supposed to be alive right now anyway. You focus again. You will your body to mend itself together. In your weakened state you’re drifting in and out of consciousness already, but somehow you manage to push through it and feel the magic doing its work. You start to feel your body again. You’re wracked with pain, but you can feel again. You try to get up, but you’re still just too weak and drained. You see a fishman coming down the ship’s stairway and alert your crew with a shout. The last thing you see is the thing coming at you before you pass out. “Lover? Have you finally come to join me?” you hear a voice ask. “Huh? Who is that?” “It’s me, of course.” You open your eyes and see Semra hovering over you. She looks exactly like you remember well except she happens to be completely naked right now. (Though you remember that too) “Shit, I’m dead after all.” You say. “And given that you’re here I must be in some sort of hell.” “Ah, I missed that dry sense of humor. I also missed this.” Semra remarks and you feel a hand on your crotch. Normally you’d probably push her away, but given everything you just went through you figure that if this is your personal hell, you could certainly do worse. Just as you’re about to give in completely, Semra’s head is cleaved in with a single sword blow. Blood splatters all over you and her body slumps lifelessly onto your own. “Is this what you fucking want? I thought you were stronger than that! The man I married never gave up!” another familiar voice says. After pushing Semra’s dead body off of you, you look up and see Alison in all her warrior maiden glory. You never thought you’d ever see her again though you wish she were in a happier mood. “Alison I…” “Nope, don’t even try to make an excuse! I caught you and you’re not getting off that easy. I’m doing this for your own good!” You see Alison’s sword coming straight at your head, but you don’t attempt to dodge, instead you sit up to meet the sword half way… And you wake up with a splitting headache and your body still hurting all over. “Hah, told you he was going to wake up. He’s not called an Eternal for no reason you know. You owe me two gold pieces Sprog!” Len exclaims. “Sprog owes you what?” “Erm, nevermind. Welcome back to the living Emperor. Everyone wasn’t sure if you were going to make it or not, but I had a feeling you might.” “Bah, should’ve died. Was a glorious battle. Be great honor to die in such a battle.” Sprog remarks. “Oh really? Then why didn’t you make more of an effort to die then?” Len asks. “Sprog still need to produce more children first, now more than ever since three sons died on other ships. Must ensure legacy!” Sprog says and walks away. You look around and find yourself still on the lower deck of your personal ship. You guess that nobody wanted to move you for fear of doing more damage to you body. It’s a mess on the lower deck and there’s still a hole from where you crashed through, but obviously the ship survived the battle. As you sit up, you nearly lay back down due to the pain. A volley of expletives soon follows. “Easy there! While I know you just survived something no man should have, I’m pretty sure taking a direct hit from a lightning bolt and crashing through the deck of a ship from a great height still has to be painful. In fact its odd, but you even look a little older because of the experience.” “You have no idea…” you remark. “Insisting on fighting that beast had to be the single most insane things I’ve ever seen, but while I was personally afraid I can’t help but admire it. Despite him believing you were going to die, I know Sprog certainly admired it.” Len says. “He probably hoped I was going to die. Still glad to see he’s honorable enough that he didn’t try to take advantage and kill me while I was unconscious though. Glad to see you didn’t either.” “I was a smuggler, not a murderer. Besides I don’t think anything I could do would actually kill you anyway after seeing what you just survived.” “So did we win? I can only assume us still being afloat means we won…unless we’ve retreated…” Len gives an apprehensive look before answering. “Well…yes and no. Technically we won, though I’m not sure if we actually killed that sea monster. After you crashed through the deck of the ship, the fishmen continued to scale the ship, but the sea monster continued to be hit by lightning. It eventually sank back beneath the waters, but like I said, I dunno if we killed it or it just swam away. Soon after that happened the fishmen stopped attacking too.” “But?” “But, other than this ship and a couple of others straggling along side us your fleet is gone, along with all of your people aboard them. We had patch up several holes they managed to put in this ship and we’re only sailing at half speed due to all the broken masts, but we’ll make it back to Nalin okay barring any other attacks of course.” You curse again, but this time it’s more at yourself rather than the pain you’re in. You wasted a lot of troops and resources on this endeavor for no real prize. You didn’t even acquire any new territory. You think back to Trog’s words again about getting old and knowing your limitations, well you certainly learned that lesson today hard. “Well I suppose it isn’t all bad, you did teach those fish creatures that you’re not to be trifled with. It was like a battle between gods when you unleashed lightning on that beast’s heads. They might think twice about popping up on your shores now.” Len says in an attempt to cheer you up. “We can only hope I suppose.” You answer. The first thing you do when you get back home is try to rest. You do so for as much as you’re able for weeks and while you do eventually recover, you’re never quite the same again. You’ve visibly gotten older due to the healing magic and it only did so much, you’re still experiencing dull aches and pains on a daily basis. Worse than you did before you went on the mission. You’ll never be like you were. Those days are long gone. On the bright side, there have been no more sightings of fish people on the coasts, so perhaps your venture was fruitful after all, unless they’re biding their time and trying to regroup which is exactly what you’d do, so naturally you’ve ordered the building of a new fleet along with proper naval training for potential sailors. Of course if the fishy people are no longer a threat that still means Trog’s vision of a relentless enemy still looms. Which means it’s either the Xi Hive or an as of yet unknown enemy. More things to look forward to as you approach your twilight years. > You jennifer's visit (A friendly face for once) “I told you I don’t want any visitors and I’m not dealing with anything today, I’m resting!” you tell David as you wince from the aches all over your body. “I know, but under the circumstances, I thought you might make an exception for this person. It’s Jennifer Mol, my Emperor.” “Really? Well what does she want?” you ask. “I think she heard what happened and just wants to see you.” Despite your pain, you suppose you can spare the time for Jennifer. “Alright send her in.” You take a seat and mumble about the sharp pain in your back when Jennifer enters your room. She notices your discomfort immediately and walks briskly towards you. “Are you okay?” she asks. “Not really, but there’s nothing you can do. Don’t worry about it. Good to see you.” “I had to come to see if you were as wounded as I had heard. I also heard that you had a great battle with a sea monster?” “Well, I did have a battle with a sea monster and I also managed to paralyze myself in the process, fortunately magic has its advantages.” You say. “Paralyze?!” “Yes, but as I said magic has its benefits. Look, its all been taken care of. I’ll just have to put up with a few more aches and pains now, but I’m alive and still functional and that’s the important thing.” “I suppose so. I’m guessing you succeeded against those fish people then?” “Well there haven’t been any more sightings, so I certainly hope that’s the case. I regret to inform you that Delerg no longer exists in any form though, its nothing but water now. I remember you once expressed a desire to explore the islands at one time.” You say. “Oh yes, I did. I sort of gave up on that idea though when I realized it wasn’t possible. Sometimes you just realize those sorts of things you know?” Jennifer says that like she’s talking about something more than just Delerg. Like your former relationship. “Heh, but then of course in your case I suppose everything is possible for you.” Jennifer adds. “Not getting severely injured seems to still elude me as well as getting old…bah I don’t want to dwell on this shit anymore. Tell me about what you’ve been up to.” “Oh! Well nothing important, I mean certainly nothing as exciting as protecting the Empire from external threats.” Jennifer remarks. “Doesn’t matter. It’s important to me, I’m genuinely interested.” You say. This comment garners a smile from Jennifer who begins to tell you what has been going on in her life. The big thing she mentions is the book she’s working on. She hasn’t thought of a title for it yet, but it’s going to be all about the old Empire or at least from what she’s pieced together from what she’s found and from what you’ve told her. While she’s explaining the process, you notice a male name keeps popping up when she discusses having another person helping her put it together. You can’t help but wonder… “So your partner, is this the one?” you ask. “One?” “Your new boyfriend of course. I might not be an expert on these matters, but I do notice a bit of extra excitement when you speak his name and how much he’s supported and helped in putting together the book.” Jennifer doesn’t know how to react; you reassure her that she’s done nothing wrong. “Jennifer, what we had ended amicably and years ago, I certainly didn’t expect you to continue your life alone. I’m certainly not uncomfortable or going to be angry about it.” “Okay.” Jennifer says as if a weight has lifted off of her. “So anyone I know? Tell me about him.” you ask. Jennifer says, that he isn’t anyone you would know. He’s a historian that started working at the museum about a year ago, but that they got along almost immediately. She says that they are already talking about getting married and maybe starting a family. You are a little surprised by that news, but not displeased. You’re glad she found someone that’s probably a little more “stable.” Still, when she explains all this, you can sense almost an apologetic tone at times. Like she feels in some way that she’s betrayed you even though logic dictates otherwise and you’ve even said as much. “Well that sounds very good, I’m glad life is working out for you and you’re doing well. And if you need more information for your book you’re free to ask me at anytime…well assuming I’m not fighting any more sea monsters or whatever else the world decides to throw at me.” “Ha ha, If I need more information I will certainly ask you. Well…I guess I better leave you to your rest. I know you’ve got an Empire to run and you need all your strength for that.” Jennifer starts to leave, but turns around. “I just want to say I will always be a loyal citizen to you and the Empire. I have always believed in you and appreciate how you ascended this nation to greatness. Maybe people tell you these things all the time, but I want to reinforce the fact that I respect and appreciate the sacrifices you make to protect us all.” You certainly weren’t expecting all that. “Well I thank you very much Jennifer. I never doubted your loyalty for a second, you didn’t need to tell me.” You reply. Jennifer smiles again, but her eyes look slightly watery like she’s going to cry. “I…know. I just wanted to say it to you.” She remarks and then nods silently and walks out of your room, leaving you alone. You get out of the chair you were sitting in slowly and make your way to the bed ignoring all the pains the whole time. When you finally get horizontal you actually feel a little relief. “Ah…better.” You say as the pain in your back lessens. “She’ll get over those lingering feelings eventually. Everything fades in time.” You say that, knowing that isn’t necessarily true when you begin thinking about Alison as you drift off to sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 550 More and more each year your nation is starting to resemble the Empire of old. More and more each year you’re also starting to feel old too. The aches and pains of battles long past (and not too long past) are starting to catch up with you. You never tried to think about getting “old” too much, except during the years of when the Emperor was “sick.” Recently you’ve begun thinking about what his plans were again. How he was going to defeat death by transferring his essence or spirit or mind or whatever into your own body. Well at least that’s what Semra and Jacob told you and what ultimately lead to the situation you’re in now. Unfortunately, you haven’t really the means to go about such a thing. Your knowledge of magic is better than most, but the Emperor never showed you that trick let alone how to get to the Isle of Mortos. You wouldn’t even know about how to go about “creating” another one of your kind either which was also required…again so Semra and Jacob told you. Makes you wonder what happened to the “eternals” Marik created. You wonder if they survived the initial cataclysm and if so, what became of them? Did they plan any major role during or after it? It’s apparent that the technique to create an eternal like you or Marik’s tank babies was lost too. Well it doesn’t matter much now anyway, you can assume they’re all certainly dead now, along with crazy ol’ Marik. Still, you wonder about his factory, as it was located in Arat. In fact there have been a lot of events going on in Arat lately according to your spies. The major thing being that there have been sightings of the Xi Hive in Arat, not many and certainly no major attacks, but the insectoid creatures have been attacking anyone they see as usual. It won’t be long before they become a major threat in this area. Right now it isn’t your problem at all, but you imagine they will be eventually. From what you’ve heard the Xi have been really putting the Redcap Kingdom on the defensive, but the gnomes are still holding out and not even losing any ground. You certainly can admire that, and you’d even try to send an emissary to go speak with them if only to get a better feel of the Xi threat, but you’ve also heard the gnomes have also ordered a kill on sight to well…anyone. Your best shot at learning more about the Xi would probably be Eldolith, but she’s also been her usual antagonistic self, especially ever since you officially annexed Regnik into the Empire. Pointing to you and the Xi as a threat she managed to unify the other city-states of Zo, Valizza and Atnil into something called the Arat Confederacy. In reality it’s a new nation with four cities rather than a true alliance where everyone is supposedly still autonomous. The only other city-state that doesn’t belong to Eldy’s little alliance is Telis, which as usual, nobody seems to know anything about. Still, it seems like it’s probably in the most danger of the Xi considering its proximity to where Xi territory is starting to expand. You never really gave it much thought until now, but according to the maps and if your memory isn’t completely off, Telis isn’t too far away from where Marik’s factory was located. Now you’re starting to wonder if its “mysterious” nature isn’t due to that factor. In a perfect world Arat would be your next and only priority, but there have been concerns about the Delerg islands as well. There has nearly been no reports about the Island League’s activities for years, it’s almost as if they all just disappeared, but more concerning is the fact that strange humanoid creatures have been sighted off the coasts of Quala at night. While Quala is still mostly home to your orc population and the place is still the poorest of your territories, you still don’t want a potential invasion to occur. It might be time to start exploring and possibly conquering the islands at last. Seeing as the orcs will have the most familiarity with this potential coastal threat, you decide to go speak with Trog about it. You might as well anyway if only to see who his potential successor is going to be seeing as you know Trog is supposed to be dying. When you arrive to meet with him, you see just how true that is. The old orc is lying prone on fur skin bedding with two younger female orcs attending to him. It’s very strange to see orcs behave in this manner. Orcs don’t tend to have a long life span to begin with due to all their fighting, but to see one being actually cared for rather than taken to the wilderness and left to die (at best) is unusual. Then again Trog was a very respected leader. He’s obviously weak, but when he notices you he tries to sit up and waves away his attendants. “Ah…the Eternal… dreams told Trog that we would see each other one last time before the end. Now that you’re here Trog now know death coming soon for me. Sad that Trog could not die as a warrior, but still a good life with many children to carry on name.” Trog says. “And who would be that successor Trog?” you ask. “Trog believe that Sprog take over next. Already killed several of his siblings, others too scared to oppose. Was a great contest, only well enough to see some of it, but very good. Very bloody.” “Sorry I missed it.” “Trog warn you though, Sprog not quite as accepting of our current situation as Trog. Believes orcs should be independent. Might be right, might be wrong, not care. Trog too tired to care anymore.” “Am I going to have to kill him?” “Do not know. Perhaps, perhaps not. Do as you wish. You always have. As Trog has said, too tired to care anymore.” “So I take it that I probably should ask this Sprog about the reports of the humanoid interlopers off Quala’s coast?” “Hrm. That. Trog can still help a little… Yes, there have been sightings, but nothing human about them. Fellow orcs tell me they look more like fish than anything else. Appear on land sometimes, but never for very long. Not sure if they are able or if they are just scouting. Orcs ready for a fight as always if they do decide to invade. Kobolds too. Was not sure about the little scalies living here at first, but enjoy their antics. Respect our strength too…” Trog begins to drift off to sleep, but you aren’t done with him yet. “While I hate to interrupt your journey to the afterlife, you have any last visions for me?” “Hrm…yes…Trog did actually. War is coming.” “That’s a given Trog, war is always coming.” “True, but this one will be against an enemy that you’ve never faced the likes of before. They will be relentless, they will not stop and even as strong as the Empire is, I fear that it will not be enough. Worse is the fact that you are approaching your own twilight years as this terrible threat comes. You will no longer be able to just march in like the great warrior you once were…” “Trog, I might be getting old, but I’m not ready for the damn grave yet.” “True, but you acknowledge that you ARE getting old. Still…perhaps that is a good sign. Knowing your limitations. Trog knew his…” At this point Trog falls unconscious and despite your prodding and nudging him, he isn’t waking from it. From his breathing patterns, you know he’ll be dead soon. “Damn it Trog, you could’ve at least told me who this relentless enemy was going to be. Guess that was your last little joke on me. Good one Trog.” You remark and exit Trog’s tent. You tell the group standing outside that he’ll be soon passing on, if anyone wants to see the final moments. Several female orcs go in, but the male orcs just give a solemn look downward save for the very large one standing nearby with an equally huge battle axe. When he approaches you, your entourage of guards stands ready to defend you, but judging by his appearance he’d give them a good fight all by himself. “So is the old man dead?” the orc asks gruffly. “Well if he isn’t yet, he soon will be…I’m guessing you’re Sprog.” “Right. Guess you da Emp. Huh. Thought you’d be bigger. Old man say you powerful though. Guess cause of magic abilities like old man. Feh.” “I take it, you don’t like magic?” “Magic give unfair advantage even more than shooty weapons. Orcs have no more magic types now. Least none Sprog know of. No chance to rebel now.” “You’re telling me you’d rebel?” “Yes, I’d lead a rebellion if we had magic to even up odds. Told old man that he should challenge you long time ago, but said you were too powerful for him. Scared to die like proper warrior, now he die like old man that he is and we still have to serve the Empire.” “Who says? You could still rebel. You’re standing right here in front of me surrounded by your fellow orcs, I’ve only got five men with me. I’d say right now is the best chance you got of killing me and making your people free again.” Sprog grips his axe a bit and gives you a suspicious look pondering if you’re being serious or not. You are of course, but even though Sprog eventually senses that, he’s not taking you up on that offer. “Bah, want to be free, but still stand no chance of killing you. At best might get lucky and wound you before you set Sprog on fire or somethin’. Dying in battle one thing, but Sprog not suicidal. Most orcs too comfortable now with livin’ under the Empire anyway. Half would probably attack me, the idjits.” “Always did appreciate you orcs and your honesty. Now that I know I don’t need to kill you anytime soon, what can you tell me about these sightings off the coasts of Quala?” Sprog tells you much of the same things you’ve already heard. Fishmen sighted skulking around the coasts and then disappearing. He says he’s already got patrols marching up and down the coasts, but no sign of them again. For all you know these fish people are this relentless force that’s going to be coming at you, of course it also could be the Xi Hive which is the only other force you could think of, at worst it could be both. Could even be the usksha or someone you haven’t even met yet. In any case, you still need to do something about this potential aquatic threat. This has really been a long time coming. Whatever the hell is living out on those islands, be they human or otherwise is going to feel the full might of the Empire. Thanks to having all the extra resources in Rask now your task of getting a proper fleet up and running isn’t a drain on the Empire and gets done a lot quicker. Training sailors takes a little longer, but fortunately your people aren’t completely ignorant of seafaring ways. Within months you have a sizable armada that should do the job. The only thing you’re unsure of is whether or not you should go along on this conquest. Maybe because you’re older and beginning to realize you aren’t as fast or as strong as you once were, or maybe because you have uneasiness about being on the open water and possibly even an slight fear of it (A fear you weren’t even aware of), or maybe it’s a combination of the two, you don’t know. What was it that Trog said before he died? Knowing your limitations? > You lead from the back While you may still have many years ahead of you, the days of your prime are starting to fade. Perhaps you need to start accepting the fact that your days of charging first into battle are gone and probably should be. Your mind is more important for running the Empire than your sword arm or even your battle magic at this point. There’s also the fact that it’s true, you don’t relish the idea of being on a boat. You decide to that you’re going to sit this one out. A week goes by and business in the Empire continues as usual, but you hear nothing from the large fleet that you sent out. One of the faster messenger ships should’ve at least come back to give a report by now. Another week goes by and you know something is terribly wrong. There has been no word back from your fleet. Naturally the families of the soldiers and sailors that left on this mission are very upset. True, that their lives are always in potential danger, but everyone labored under the impression that it would be a quick mix up with the Island League and then heading back home. Even if there were losses it would be acceptable, but as it stands nobody knows exactly what happened. They’re just gone, all of them. Like the waters just swallowed them all up, and for all anyone knows, maybe it has. Such mystery is frightening especially when you’re getting more sightings of fish people now off the coasts of Nalin. These fish people have also started outright attacking orcish settlements near the shores in Quala. It’ll only be a matter of time before they start attacking Nalin as well. Doesn’t take long before you’ve not only got on going raids from the coast, but also rabble rousing from the orcs. Warlord Sprog has been actively condemning you for failing to eliminate this threat like you were supposed to and begins claiming that the orcs have been taking the brunt of the attacks. He also openly says to any and all who will listen that they would be better off on their own. Naturally when you hear about this treason talk you have several Eyes sent to go bring him in. He succeeds in slaying five of them before escaping into the Arat wilderness with several followers. With your inability to fend off the fish people properly, the loss of your entire fleet, a panicked population and now an orc rebellion in the making, you know you have dark days ahead. Year 552 Being a tyrant is one thing, but being one who can’t protect his territory and is inefficient is even worse so when the troubles started piling up, you decided you couldn’t afford to just sit back and command anymore. You had to take direct action and lead from the front like you did before. Getting the population back in line took a bit of doing from the Eyes, but it was done. The orcs were a bigger problem and a costly one. Warlord Sprog continued to incite your orc population to the point where Quala and parts of Rask were hostile territory. It about a year before you personally slew Sprog in combat. The damage was done however, they razed several towns, even Regnik in Arat was destroyed. Though you suspect that Eldolith might’ve had something to do with that. Probably secretly funding or helping Sprog somehow or got spies into the city to lower the gates. You also had no more orc population to use as soldiers anymore and those that lived took to the wilderness and continue to be a nuisance. It was a waste of resources and manpower that quite frankly you couldn’t afford to lose. During the whole time this was happening you couldn’t really effectively combat the fish people threat who continued to raid the coasts and in much greater force. Some have been so bold to even create camps along the shores of Quala. Most of Nalin’s port towns were still fairly well defended in the beginning, but then the sea beast arrived and completely destroyed most of them. The leviathan has two heads and countless tentacles. You believe it is the “god” of the fish people, or at least leading them. Unfortunately the beast never stays near the coast and retreats back to the deeper water when it’s done rampaging. There’s nothing for it except to go out there and kill it. You have another fleet built in the southern most port town in Nalin since the fish people haven’t attacked that far yet. Building the fleet take awhile though due to the decreased labor force and having to practically restart from scratch again. The whole time you’re building the fleet you’re anticipating an attack from the fish people, you half expect the usksha to attack you with claims that you’re planning to invade them. Thankfully that doesn’t happen. When it’s all said and done, you’ve got a new fleet, though much smaller than before, but you can’t afford to wait too much longer. The quick you kill the monster the better. You have to win back your considerable losses. You’ve been made to look foolish and sometimes weak these past couple of years. Time to put an end to that once and for all. And after you kill this thing, your next order of business will be to invade Arat. No more than a day has passed and your fleet is already attacked by fish people. They were never the best fighters, but they aren’t worst either and being on their territory as well as being outnumbered certainly gives them an advantage as some don’t even bother to scale your ships and just bore holes in the ships with whatever tools they’re using for such a task. You’ve lost half of your fleet by the time the sea monster makes its presence known and now having seen it first hand with your own eyes, you feel incredibly small in comparison. Stories about how it “blotted out the sun” weren’t exaggerations. It is just that huge and you’re surrounded by water with no where to run. You try to cast a lightning storm, but the ship is being so overrun with the aquatic invaders that you can’t possibly concentrate on such a spell. Your crew fights bravely, but they’re just so outnumbered that they can’t defeat the numbers or keep from completely panicking that they’re going to die on the water this day. A large tentacle smashes the deck of the ship and also succeeds in smashing three of your increasingly dwindling crew. You run your sword through another fishman and dodge the other tentacle coming from the other side. Even if you do survive this, you’re not sure if you’ll even be able to get back to land within a reasonable amount of time. You’ve lost every ship and your own is now in danger of becoming driftwood if it takes any more punishment, which it most certainly will. You blast a group of the fishmen with lightning which gives you a breather, but only so you’re just in time to see another tentacle come sweeping towards you. Unfortunately you don’t quite get out of the way in time and the hefty blow shatters your legs. This also has enough force to knock you off the boat and into the water. You struggle a bit in the water desperately trying to keep above it, but soon the claws of several fish men grab at your broken legs and torso. Your struggling is put to a complete end when one of them rises up out the water to sink his teeth into your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 545 It isn’t what you would’ve inherited had things been different, but you achieved what many said couldn’t be done. You tamed Quala badlands and have successfully incorporated it into the Empire. It certainly helped that you and Trog already had an understanding long before hand, but encouraging more kobolds citizens to settle the area worked out a lot better than you hoped. The eager little scalies seem to like the wilder and more untamed lands and it also got them out of the more “civilized” Nalin too, making more than a few rural human populations happier that their homes weren’t suddenly collapsing from over dug kobold tunnels. The Eyes have been doing a good job of being the imposing internal security you wanted them to be and you’ve already attempted to re-establish a training center for the magic arts. Besides you, the Eyes are the only source of magic in the Empire, if they can strengthen their abilities and train others in such things, you’ll have magic might on your side which can only help in the long run. Of course all this expansion has made your neighbors nervous mostly the six cities of Arat, but the Usksha Emirates as well (Though they’ve been wary about you even before the republic fell thanks to Quintus kicking them all out) There’s also the Island League of Delerg to contend with now. The pirates and other ne’er-do-wells had to give up their first profession and actually start putting down roots on their dreary little island hideouts, thanks to the fact that Nalin started cutting back on its naval and seafaring endeavors. None of this really matters though, because you know none of them are strong enough to actually do anything to you. Your neighbors form petty alliances with each other in the hopes that if you did decide to strike that somehow they could stand against you. Though in some cases they’d rather join you, Regnik being one of the city states that sees the writing on the wall. Governor Daniel Tivas has requested several meetings with you and surprisingly you’ve also gotten a message from an emissary of Lenay. Seems that Domina Eldolith D’vessa wants to also speak with you, though you can’t imagine that it has anything to do with joining forces. One of your newer advisors David (former senator) has suggested that it wouldn’t hurt to speak with them. Of course most of your military is in favor of just crushing the cities and not talking at all. General Ingrid being the most vocal about it. (Ah the joys of having an enthusiastic military once again under your command.) Sightmaster Crowley has suggested in shutting the doors to any talks and instead retaking Rask since it still contains lots of valuable resources that could be used in the future. While not completely out of the question you imagine that’s his former life influencing that advice. He probably hopes that there might be reconciliation between the ones that stayed as well as wiping out the rest of the wendigo. Finally there’s Jennifer. She’s not an empress, she’s not even formal advisor, but you still have a close enough relationship with her that you still speak with her from time to time. The two of you realized that your “paths” were indeed different and parted ways amicably. While certainly a supporter of the Empire, she decided that her place was still archeology, exploration and looking after the museum (Even more so after her father Calvin died of natural causes four years ago). Still, as was mentioned, you do correspond with her and lately she’s been expressing an interest in the islands of Delerg and even the great ocean past them. Of course with the Island League there, that makes her desire to mount any kind of expedition non-existent. Then again if you were more active there that wouldn’t be the case. You could rebuild the navy again to do more exploration properly and possibly claim those islands for yourself along with eliminating a potential danger in the future (and a pain in Nalin’s side even before you were dug up). One direction you’re not looking is south though. The Usksha desert is still a formidable environment and sending an army that way you believe would be a waste as there is literally nothing to hold. Nothing of worth anyway since the usksha are still largely nomadic and have no real cities. As long as the Usksha keep to themselves, you have no problem leaving it alone. Whatever you decide, you know you’re going to take a prominent role in it. It’s time to lead from the front again to keep everyone remembering that you’re no throne bound ruler. In the meantime you decide to listen to David’s advice and set up a meeting with two of the rulers from Arat. At first you think neither ruler will agree to meet you in Nalin, but surprisingly both do rather than insisting on neutral or even their own territory. In a few days both rulers arrive in Dalt with their respective entourage. Neither one is happy about the other one being here, and the presence of svelk probably puts everyone in Dalt on edge. The Eyes are on extra alert. Daniel obviously isn’t a warrior by any means. He’s a skinny man with a goatee and a few lines on his face due to the stress of ruling. As for Eldolith, she looks about the same as you last remember, though perhaps slightly older looking. Well as “old looking” as svelk get anyway. “When I first heard that an Eternal appeared in Nalin, I had hoped it wasn’t you.” Eldolith says when she sees you again. “Mm, I’m sure you’ll have to explain yourself to all the other svelk now about how you attempted to seduce me by sucking on my finger.” You retort which causes her entire entourage to react with shock and a particular female svelk gives Eldolith a dirty look. Daniel and his people on the other hand are just as surprised, but find it more amusing. “Watch yourself and your slander! I am no longer a lowly merc following the whims of my delusional bitch mother. I am the ruler of my people and we are not about to be conquered by your so called renewed empire!” Eldolith exclaims. “We’ll see.” You remark with a smile and tell everyone to sit down at the meeting table. “First, I’m glad you both felt the need to come see me in person. This makes what we will discuss here so much more personal, though I know there are six cities. Do you know why none of the other rulers have desired to see me?” you ask. “I can answer that.” Daniel says. “The rulers of Atinil and Valizza are already under the influence of Eldolith so by her being here they already have their master to speak for them.” “Daniel, you’re just frustrated that YOU could not sway them into becoming whores for the Empire like you seem to desire.” Eldolith remarks. “Okay, so what of the other two?” “Well since you decided to incorporate those stinking greenskins into your society, the people of Zo want nothing to do with you and I can’t say as I blame them. As for Telis, who the hell knows? There hasn’t been word from them for almost a decade. The entire city could be dead for all anyone knows.” Eldolith says in a bored tone. After hearing this, you ask why both of them wanted to see you in the first place. Daniel tells you that he is basically seeking protection for his city-state. He says that he realizes that Regnik can no longer afford to be independent and that he is willing to become a vassal of the Empire. He doesn’t care if half the citizens are against it; he says it’s the best thing for the survival of Regnik. He does make it clear though that he is not asking to be annexed completely. He still wants Regnik to be independent on a day-to-day basis, just that it will be paying you money in exchange for protection. Eldolith sneers at Daniel and begins to call him a weakling raising the hostilities of both sides of the table until you demand that everyone calm down. “Alright Eldy, what the hell is it that you want to say, because I know damn well it isn’t an alliance let alone vassalhood.” “You’re right. It isn’t being subserviant, but rather a setting of boundaries right now. The svelk people are independent AND strong. We will NOT bend to your will and if you doubt this then send your armies to invade and see them slaughtered by the thousands!” “So, I’m supposed to just sit back and watch you get stronger until you attack us eh? And I’d watch your next words Eldolith, in case you’ve forgotten you’re not exactly in friendly company right now.” “You think I care about your threats? Attempt to kill me if you wish, but I will not grovel like this weak human here.” Eldolith is certainly going all out to be confrontational, though you wonder how much of it is an act for her people because you embarrassed her with the finger comment. Still, you know svelk and they aren’t all bluff. She’s probably being very serious with her grandstanding which makes you also wonder what power is it that she holds that could potentially stand against you. You’re aware that the svelk do have mages, which does put them above most people, but even you can match that now. If Daniel is correct then she does have the support of two other city-states and will probably have Zo as well seeing as they hate orcs. Still even with the extra military help it still wouldn’t be enough. Might take awhile, but you’d conquer eventually. Either Eldolith is got something else up her sleeve or she’s being overconfident. Could go either way. The temptation to indulge her threats is great, but maybe some caution might be in order. You decide to take Daniel up on his offer and use his city as a launching zone for spies and other possible intelligence gathering plans before you make a final decision on Eldolith. That would also give you time to bring your attention to other potential areas of conquest like Rask or Delerg. > You make Regnik a vassal and retake Delerg While not a true threat in the scheme of things, the Island League of Delerg is still a hostile “power” on your borders. If you have to go to war with the Arat Confederacy in the near future, you don’t want to be worrying about getting possibly attacked from another side. Rask can wait for now. As for Daniel and Eldolith you’ll indulge both of their requests for now. You tell Daniel that he can consider his city now under the protection of the Empire and that any foreign invasion attempts in any form with be met with force. “Why are you looking at me when you say that?” Eldolith asks. “Because I know your kind and Daniel’s already mentioned you have your influence in two other cities. Now you can have your little territory for now, but make no mistake, you’re going to be watched from here on in and if I sense ANYTHING that could be a potential danger to the Empire you’re going to wish that you never managed to unite the svelk to begin with.” “We’ll do as we please and nobody is going to stop us!” “Okay then, as you said just send an invasion force in my direction and see if I’m not being serious.” At this point Eldolith just rolls her eyes, but shuts up. Obviously she knows anymore antagonism might result in war which its apparent now that she doesn’t truly want if she can help it. Daniel profusely thanks you for heeding his request and will make sure to accommodate your people in anyway he can. You almost shake your head at the man’s naivety if he actually believes his city is going to remain autonomous in the way he believes it will. He’s going to allow your military there, it won’t be long before you’ve got complete control and any “independence” the city thinks it has is only because you’re allowing it. Of course maybe he knows what is probably going to happen and he’s just trying to convince himself otherwise. In any event you’re glad when the svelk leave (everyone is no doubt), it was a reminder of less happy times in your life. You tell everyone that your next move is taking the islands of Delerg which means you have to rebuild the navy. Crowley is a little disappointed that you aren’t retaking Rask, but he understands your desire to eliminate the Island League first. Since building the fleet and having more sailors trained is going to take awhile, you spend the next few months trying to gather more intelligence on the League since your information on them has been spotty at best. Nalin sailors as a general rule have avoided the islands for obvious reasons, but there’s always illegal smuggling so you get some of the information from the prisons. Most of the information you get is fairly basic though perhaps more than you had. You find out that the League in general has started to become more introverted over the years, which might also explain why you don’t have much conflict with them anymore. Their capital Barnacle is on the largest island and still more or less a pirate haven, but the other islands have no major settlements and those that do tend to just be small groups of people not wanting to share anything with the ruler who lives in Barnacle. When the time comes you have what you hope to be a sizable fleet assembled. You doubt if your ships are going to be more maneuverable, but you’re hoping that their size and firepower will be enough to out power any resistance you may have. You also decide to accompany the fleet. Part of you has always been a little uneasy about being on the water, but you figure this would be the perfect time to get over that possible phobia. Within a few days you’re in Delerg waters, but you encounter no other ships. You pass by a few small islands, but you decide to make your way to where Barnacle is located. You figure if that’s the largest settlement, you need to take that one first and possible launch more attacks from that point. When you sail further towards your destination, you at last encounter a flotilla of ships surrounding a large island. You have an order issued to all of your ships to prepare for battle, but as you get closer a single smaller sailboat with a raised white flag approaches your fleet. The crew of the sailboat is taken aboard your own ship when it is confirmed that the boat isn’t containing a bomb or some other trick. The sailboat crew only consists of two people and neither one is armed. They are disheveled and unkempt looking, but apparently one of them is the ruler of Barnacle. “Um…hello great Emperor of the…uh Empire. My name is Jon, mayor of Barnacle and this is my first mate Corino.” Jon remarks. “I’m surprised you were brave enough to parley, or perhaps just foolish. You may speak your mind, but know that we aren’t not leaving until these islands are under my rule.” You say. “Yes, I already assumed such a thing. That’s why I’m graciously opening up his town to you without conflict.” You weren’t expecting much of a fight, but you weren’t expecting this. “Truly? You’re surrendering?” “Well, I’d prefer to think of it as negotiating a better deal, but if you prefer to think of it as a surrender, then we are in no position to argue. I know that in the long run he will not be able to defeat you. Even if we fought today and won, you would only come with more ships later. We only have limited resources, while you have much much more.” “So…that’s it? The Island League is officially capitulating to the Empire?” Jon laughs a bit at your question. “Well, let’s just say that I’m capitulating. I’m not sure if the Island League as a whole is, and that’s assuming you even considering a semi-cohesive unit nowadays. Barnacle is yours, and whatever that entails. I just hope that I can continue on as mayor. I believe my experience can…” “Yeah, yeah, you’re looking to save your own ass. Got it.” You interrupt. “We’ll see, but what’s all this about the rest of the Island League?” Jon goes on to tell you that much like the Arat Confederacy, the Island League is not a single entity, but rather an alliance of several groups. Barnacle just happens to be the biggest and most powerful. Jon says that despite the size of the other groups, they may not wish to join and will have to be eliminated completely. He also states that some of the groups have disappeared completely, he says he doesn’t even know what happened to them. “Perhaps the environment just swallowed them up. Strange things have been found on the less explored islands after all.” Jon says. “Hmm, well I suppose if you want to keep your current job, you’ll be providing me of good maps of what you have.” “Of course. Anything you need! So, shall you be coming to Barnacle now to claim it?” “Well it is one of the goals of this journey.” You reply. When you get to Barnacle, the place is fairly well kept despite being a haven for disreputable criminals. The funny thing is, you don’t really get a sense of resentment as you pass through with platoons of soldiers. It’s early yet though. Jon himself is very accommodating, providing you and your people whatever they want or need. You don’t know though if this is because he really wants to please you so he can keep his job, or he’s planning on tricking you some how. While deceit is always a possibility you sense it’s almost more like…relief? Maybe he was having problems with the rest of the Island League leaders and now with you here he sees it as a way for him to eliminate them while still keeping his position. In any case you tell everyone to keep alert and be prepared as usual. After a few days, you think you’ve seen everything you need to and gotten all the information you need from Jon and Barnacle in general. After a bit of thinking about it, you decide that you’ll just go to all the inhabited locations that Jon has provided for you and either wipe out the groups or incorporate them into the Empire if they prove to be cooperative. Rather simple plan really. You decide that Jon can go ahead and stay mayor of Barnacle, but you’ll be keeping troops here of course as well as your own ships. Now you’re just wondering if you need to stick around for this rather mundane search and destroy mission, or go back to the Empire. > You stay in Barnacle Considering that you’re not really going to launch any other major operation until these islands have been tamed, you might as well oversee the process. Jon warns you that you’ll probably be doing more fighting than diplomacy. He mentions that some of the other groups living on the islands have become very odd and more isolated, some of them to the point where they attack anyone on sight. In the next few days you see what Jon was talking about when you come in contact with your first group of islanders. They don’t even speak other than war cries and in some cases complete gibberish. Other groups, while not as wild they’re still just as hostile and need to be eliminated. It’s a fairly time consuming process sometimes due to their intimate knowledge of their own islands, but it doesn’t matter in the end, because well where are they going to run? There is the rare occasion you’re met by hostile ships, but these are much rarer. Jon apparently had the biggest fleet in the League so you easily outnumber and out power any such encounters. While you’ve got more than enough ships and troops to split up and search the numerous islands, it still takes months. You do start getting friendlier islander encounters however. Jon figures what you’ve been doing to everyone else is beginning to get around and people are finally waking up to the idea that you mean business and aren’t going away. Seems like a likely conclusion. Jon tells you that your search and destroy missions should probably be coming to an end soon as he’s dug around his office and found some of the older maps that haven’t been used in a long time. “Not sure if it’s necessary, but I know the Empire likes to be thorough. There’s an island cluster far out to the northwest that you probably haven’t searched yet.” Jon says handing you a dusty old map. “What, are these like so called lost islands or something?” you ask. “Heh, not really lost so much as not visited too much anymore. They used to be used more when piracy was more lucrative, but as time went on, they got used a lot less. Also they’ve actually drifted further out to open sea as well so those maps are more of a guide than a precise location. Just another reason why they became less visited or used. Still, who know who might be living out there.” With this in mind you set off on what will hopefully be the last mission on these islands. You’ve had enough of ships and water for a long time. The journey to the island cluster takes about a week, but the maps weren’t too inaccurate. Jon was right though they have drifted from what the locations were on the charts. You wonder what caused such a thing to these, but not the other islands. Then again you’re not an expert on geology or the ways of the sea, you’re just here to claim the damn islands and be done with it. There are no signs of ships, so these islands probably are empty, but you don’t need any possible surprises later. As usual you have some of your fleet split up to have their crews search the other islands. When you land on the island that you’ve chosen to search you find that the island’s ground is fairly soft and water seems to seep through it every step you take. You wonder if this place is in the beginning stages of sinking completely. The island shows no signs of any life, though upon a bit more exploration, you do come across something you thought was lost to time long ago. A ruined structure lies half above the ground, half submerged under water. Its worn and crumbling from age, water and other elements, but it’s the old shadow temple. You’re actually surprised to find it, considering it was leveled when the shadows were eliminated back during the old Empire days. Not exactly the most pleasant of memories for you considering they were your enemy and your experience with Cyrus, but you get the impression Jennifer would love to dig around this place for the history value. Just as you’re about to call it quits, you hear a loud explosion coming from the direction of where your ship was. You and the rest of your soldiers waste no time in running back it. When you arrive you see it on flames and slowly sinking into the sea. You also see some of the crew that stayed aboard dead on the ground nearby, but more disturbing, is that you see some of the same crew cheering at the fact the ship on fire and sinking. You don’t know what exactly the hell is going on here, but you know this is a very bad situation. The first thing you do is order the soldiers with you to open fire on the traitors. After that’s done you try to keep morale up. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to be stranded here. We’ve got a whole fleet out there and I’m sure several of our ships saw that explosion.” You say. Naturally no sooner do you calm everyone’s immediate fears when new ones crop up… all around you. Several humanoid creatures begin popping up from the water. They have fishlike qualities and weld weapons made out of coral or bone. It’s obvious what their intent is as they advance on your position. You order your troops to form a defensive circle. You lob a couple of fireballs at the fish people group in an effort to thin out their ranks. More of them emerge from the water and you realize out severely outnumbered you are. Your soldiers only have so many bullets and eventually they manage to start closing the ranks. You focus on casting an area effect spell in the hopes of eliminating more of them. You rain fire and ice down on the island and kill multitudes of the fish people, but it’s at a terrible cost. Most of your troops are wiped out as well. Those that aren’t are severely wounded and yet, you STILL haven’t stopped the fishman horde. “What the fuck, it’s like they knew I was…” you don’t even complete that sentence as you mumble it to yourself. You suddenly come to the realization that this whole thing, from Barnacle to this island has been one big trap. There’s an island league all right, but the only thing the humans around here are in league with are these aquatic monsters. The worst thing is somehow they got to some of your people and turned them against you. Probably managed to do it when groups split up and then came back to report that they didn’t encounter any hostiles, only “friendly islanders.” Who knows how many they managed to brainwash or mind control, or well you don’t know exactly how they got to your people, but it hardly matters right now. You spend the better part of the day personally slaying fish monsters. Eventually the rest retreat, but that doesn’t stop the fact that you’re stranded on here. You wait another couple days for the hope of rescue from one of your other ships, but you get none. Instead you see and hear several explosions in the distance, probably from battle or sabotage no doubt. You attempt to build a raft, but the wood on this island is scarce and in any case, you don’t have time to finish it as another horde of fishmen come back to attack you again. You manage to fend them off, but they actively destroy what bit of raft you did create. They continue this cycle every few days and you’re successful in driving them back despite the odds. You manage to survive on fish person meat to survive, but the problem is a lack of fresh water (And as for fishman blood, well you might as well be drinking sea water). You just can’t keep up your strength to survive the ongoing assault and again, there is no rescue in sight. Eventually after a week of holding out, you eventually succumb to a combination of dehydration and the fishman attacks. Soon after your bloody death, your body is mostly consumed and some of your bones used to make new weapons.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While not a true threat in the scheme of things, the Island League of Delerg is still a hostile “power” on your borders. If you have to go to war with the Arat Confederacy in the near future, you don’t want to be worrying about getting possibly attacked from another side. Rask can wait for now. As for Daniel and Eldolith you’ll indulge both of their requests for now. You tell Daniel that he can consider his city now under the protection of the Empire and that any foreign invasion attempts in any form with be met with force. “Why are you looking at me when you say that?” Eldolith asks. “Because I know your kind and Daniel’s already mentioned you have your influence in two other cities. Now you can have your little territory for now, but make no mistake, you’re going to be watched from here on in and if I sense ANYTHING that could be a potential danger to the Empire you’re going to wish that you never managed to unite the svelk to begin with.” “We’ll do as we please and nobody is going to stop us!” “Okay then, as you said just send an invasion force in my direction and see if I’m not being serious.” At this point Eldolith just rolls her eyes, but shuts up. Obviously she knows anymore antagonism might result in war which its apparent now that she doesn’t truly want if she can help it. Daniel profusely thanks you for heeding his request and will make sure to accommodate your people in anyway he can. You almost shake your head at the man’s naivety if he actually believes his city is going to remain autonomous in the way he believes it will. He’s going to allow your military there, it won’t be long before you’ve got complete control and any “independence” the city thinks it has is only because you’re allowing it. Of course maybe he knows what is probably going to happen and he’s just trying to convince himself otherwise. In any event you’re glad when the svelk leave (everyone is no doubt), it was a reminder of less happy times in your life. You tell everyone that your next move is taking the islands of Delerg which means you have to rebuild the navy. Crowley is a little disappointed that you aren’t retaking Rask, but he understands your desire to eliminate the Island League first. Since building the fleet and having more sailors trained is going to take awhile, you spend the next few months trying to gather more intelligence on the League since your information on them has been spotty at best. Nalin sailors as a general rule have avoided the islands for obvious reasons, but there’s always illegal smuggling so you get some of the information from the prisons. Most of the information you get is fairly basic though perhaps more than you had. You find out that the League in general has started to become more introverted over the years, which might also explain why you don’t have much conflict with them anymore. Their capital Barnacle is on the largest island and still more or less a pirate haven, but the other islands have no major settlements and those that do tend to just be small groups of people not wanting to share anything with the ruler who lives in Barnacle. When the time comes you have what you hope to be a sizable fleet assembled. You doubt if your ships are going to be more maneuverable, but you’re hoping that their size and firepower will be enough to out power any resistance you may have. You also decide to accompany the fleet. Part of you has always been a little uneasy about being on the water, but you figure this would be the perfect time to get over that possible phobia. Within a few days you’re in Delerg waters, but you encounter no other ships. You pass by a few small islands, but you decide to make your way to where Barnacle is located. You figure if that’s the largest settlement, you need to take that one first and possible launch more attacks from that point. When you sail further towards your destination, you at last encounter a flotilla of ships surrounding a large island. You have an order issued to all of your ships to prepare for battle, but as you get closer a single smaller sailboat with a raised white flag approaches your fleet. The crew of the sailboat is taken aboard your own ship when it is confirmed that the boat isn’t containing a bomb or some other trick. The sailboat crew only consists of two people and neither one is armed. They are disheveled and unkempt looking, but apparently one of them is the ruler of Barnacle. “Um…hello great Emperor of the…uh Empire. My name is Jon, mayor of Barnacle and this is my first mate Corino.” Jon remarks. “I’m surprised you were brave enough to parley, or perhaps just foolish. You may speak your mind, but know that we aren’t not leaving until these islands are under my rule.” You say. “Yes, I already assumed such a thing. That’s why I’m graciously opening up his town to you without conflict.” You weren’t expecting much of a fight, but you weren’t expecting this. “Truly? You’re surrendering?” “Well, I’d prefer to think of it as negotiating a better deal, but if you prefer to think of it as a surrender, then we are in no position to argue. I know that in the long run he will not be able to defeat you. Even if we fought today and won, you would only come with more ships later. We only have limited resources, while you have much much more.” “So…that’s it? The Island League is officially capitulating to the Empire?” Jon laughs a bit at your question. “Well, let’s just say that I’m capitulating. I’m not sure if the Island League as a whole is, and that’s assuming you even considering a semi-cohesive unit nowadays. Barnacle is yours, and whatever that entails. I just hope that I can continue on as mayor. I believe my experience can…” “Yeah, yeah, you’re looking to save your own ass. Got it.” You interrupt. “We’ll see, but what’s all this about the rest of the Island League?” Jon goes on to tell you that much like the Arat Confederacy, the Island League is not a single entity, but rather an alliance of several groups. Barnacle just happens to be the biggest and most powerful. Jon says that despite the size of the other groups, they may not wish to join and will have to be eliminated completely. He also states that some of the groups have disappeared completely, he says he doesn’t even know what happened to them. “Perhaps the environment just swallowed them up. Strange things have been found on the less explored islands after all.” Jon says. “Hmm, well I suppose if you want to keep your current job, you’ll be providing me of good maps of what you have.” “Of course. Anything you need! So, shall you be coming to Barnacle now to claim it?” “Well it is one of the goals of this journey.” You reply. When you get to Barnacle, the place is fairly well kept despite being a haven for disreputable criminals. The funny thing is, you don’t really get a sense of resentment as you pass through with platoons of soldiers. It’s early yet though. Jon himself is very accommodating, providing you and your people whatever they want or need. You don’t know though if this is because he really wants to please you so he can keep his job, or he’s planning on tricking you some how. While deceit is always a possibility you sense it’s almost more like…relief? Maybe he was having problems with the rest of the Island League leaders and now with you here he sees it as a way for him to eliminate them while still keeping his position. In any case you tell everyone to keep alert and be prepared as usual. After a few days, you think you’ve seen everything you need to and gotten all the information you need from Jon and Barnacle in general. After a bit of thinking about it, you decide that you’ll just go to all the inhabited locations that Jon has provided for you and either wipe out the groups or incorporate them into the Empire if they prove to be cooperative. Rather simple plan really. You decide that Jon can go ahead and stay mayor of Barnacle, but you’ll be keeping troops here of course as well as your own ships. Now you’re just wondering if you need to stick around for this rather mundane search and destroy mission, or go back to the Empire. > You return to the Empire Seeing as you’ve taken care of the major problem here, you don’t see any need to stick around for the mundane search destroy missions that will undoubtedly take months. You could be focusing on more important things. So you return to the Empire giving Jon a warning that while you’ve graciously allowed him to keep his position, any signs of possible betrayal or anything similar will be met with a complete cleansing of Barnacle and his painful drawn out demise. When you get back to the Empire, you make the announcement that the Delerg Islands are now currently being incorporated into the Empire and what remains of the so called Island League is being hunted down as you speak. Sightmaster Crowley seems to be happier than anyone as he suggests once again that retaking Rask should be the next priority. You tell Crowley that the retaking of Rask will definitely be next on the agenda, but you know it’s going to take a lot more manpower than Delerg. You’d rather wait until you’ve completely tamed those islands first before launching another major operation. Still you can make the preparations in the meantime. As the months pass you get a few reports about how things are going in Delerg and so far there have been no major troubles. While there have been a few skirmishes, for the most part your soldiers have found most Delerg inhabitants to willingly surrender to Empire law. It is also around this time that you get a letter from Jennifer. She asks you about your recent visit to the Delerg islands and if it might be safe to launch an expedition to the islands. You write back and tell her that its probably “safer” but considering there are still hostile League members and who knows what sort of dangerous wild life on those islands you tell her that she probably shouldn’t go. However, you follow up with if she does insist on going like you know she probably will, then to at least stop at Barnacle first and to take your seal that you’re sending with the letter you’re writing to the nearest officer or even the mayor and she’ll have an armed escort to protect the expedition. And just as you suspected, Jennifer goes off on her expedition. She never was one to play it too safe, but you’re pretty sure she’ll be fine. Year 547 “Trouble, my Emperor?” Crowley asks. “(Sigh) It looks like. David just sent a message saying that there’s some weird religion that’s been cropping up in Nalin. He says there hasn’t been any real trouble yet, but he felt I should know due to my stance on organized religion. Ugh, I’m going to have to return to the Empire and straighten all this shit out. You know when we brought most of the Eyes with us here to Rask so we could effectively fight the wendigo, I was concerned about perhaps an increase in crime or possibly even a bit of rabble rousing in Nalin. Not this shit. We’re finally making good progress and I don’t need religious fanatics to possibly fuck up my plans.” You explain to Crowley that you’ll be leaving him in charge of all operations in Rask. Seeing as he’s very familiar with the territory already you have confidence that he’ll be fine here. Of course he’s been slightly revenge driven on the wendigo when you found out Everwatch was overrun and destroyed by them. When you arrive at your palace in Dalt, you’re anxious to get down to this new religion business. David greets you immediately and states that Jennifer is also here and wanting to see you. “Jennifer? I thought she was still digging up shit in Delerg and trying find lost islands. She’s finally back?” you say. “Yes, I just sent her into your private chambers. I thought due to your history, you wouldn’t mind seeing her.” “Normally I wouldn’t mind, but I’d like to get down to this new religion you mentioned in your message. Can’t afford to waste any time with it.” “Apologies, Emperor.” “(Sigh) Very well, she’s already here, I might as well see her…what the hell is that on your arm?” you ask David, pointing at the skin on left forearm. It’s almost scaly looking. He reacts rather sheepishly and tries to pull his sleeve back down. “Oh that. Just a bad skin rash. I need to make a quick trip to the apothecary.” “I’ll say, its pretty nasty looking.” You remark and head on to see Jennifer. When you arrive to see Jennifer, she’s fiddling with a box of some sort. She closes it up when you walk in. “Hey if it isn’t the conquering Emperor of Rask! How is everything going up there?” Jennifer asks. “Better than expected I suppose, what’s that box?” “Oh this? Just something I found while digging around Delerg. Y’know you really should’ve stuck around that place longer. It has a lot of fascinating historical things relating to the old Empire.” “Hmm, well I’m more concerned with the new one myself, but I trust you haven’t had any problems during your time there.” “No, none at all. My expedition there went very well.” “Good, good. Look Jennifer, I’d like to play catch up and all that with you, but you’ve caught me at a bad time right now. David has told me there’s a new religion starting to take root in Nalin, and I want to stomp that out, before it becomes a problem.” “You mean like the shadows caused for the old Empire?” “Exactly like that.” “You know one of our discoveries was an old shadow temple located on one of more remote islands. Most of it was underwater, but it was still very interesting.” Jennifer says. “Hrm. They did have their original temple located in Delerg. Surprised its still around, we had it demolished even back when we finished off their seditious religion for good.” “I think the problem with the shadows is that they waited too long to strike.” “What?!” you exclaim. “Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the Empire defeated them. Its just that from what you’ve told me about the shadows and from what I’ve learned from my findings, its that the shadows waited too long to strike out against a powerful enemy.” You’re about to ask Jennifer what the hell is she getting at, when all of a sudden the doors to your private chambers are kicked open and four soldiers fire at you. You’re taken completely by surprise and most of their shots hit you. You fall to the floor wheezing and in pain, but you muster up enough strength to cast a fireball at your assailants who are all set ablaze due to their proximity to each other. While they scream and flail about in the hallway trying to put the flames out, you realize you need to heal yourself immediately before you succumb to your mortal wounds. You being to concentrate, but are suddenly kicked in the side of the head and shot again, this time in the neck. You still aren’t dead yet, but you most certainly will be soon. You stare up from the floor at Jennifer who holds a smoking pistol in her hand. Probably what she had in the box she was messing with earlier. “I wish things could’ve been different, but I knew you would’ve never accepted the glory that is to come when Hukleev rises from his underwater kingdom and submerges the Empire, transforming all into his subjects.” You can’t even reply or react to Jennifer’s words let alone her treachery. You just bleed out and start to lose consciousness. The last thing you see is Jennifer moving in closer to you where upon she gives you one last kiss, which tastes faintly of brine.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as you hate to go against your instincts, you were only here once and it was over five hundred years ago. Your memory of things isn’t going to be correct due to the changes in the landscape alone. Even if the maps aren’t giving the exact location, they’re at least a more reliable guideline brought back by people who managed to survive this land. “Okay, we’ll use the maps. We’re going to have to endure this weather either way I suppose and we’ll be less likely to get lost.” You remark. You continue your journey using the maps. It turns out to be a good idea, but nothing is stopping the cold and freezing ice storm that hits hard within a couple hours. What remaining horses and other pack animals you had left end up either panicking or outright collapse from the exhaustion. Your group ends up having to dig out a shelter and hunker down for the storm to pass. Food isn’t much of a problem since you just butcher the animals that are dying any way. Fire isn’t either since you can conjure it up. Still, it’s not an ideal situation and others in the group are starting to experience minor frostbite and argue with one another. You tell everyone to shut up and listen when you hear a rumbling sound approaching close by. Some think it’s just the sounds of the storm, but you point out that it must be something else since the ground is vibrating a bit. “Giant! Get the hell up and move!” you exclaim and the group scrambles to run out of the make shift shelter. Some of you even make it out before a large foot crushes it. Now the term giant has never been used lightly, they’re called that for a reason. However, this one is certainly larger than average. In fact, you don’t even think it noticed you when it squashed some of your group. Well it didn’t at first at least, when it feel the gushiness of flattened humans on its foot along with seeing several scattering about the snow, it comes to the conclusion that a giant could only logically come to, namely flatten the rest of you as well. “Spread out! Spread out! He’s going to swing that damn club!” you shout. Meanwhile, the giant successfully crushes a couple of the soldiers with his club and at this point you don’t know where the hell anyone else is because their fear has caused them to run out of your line of sight which is small enough with the ice storm hindering long range viewing. You roll out of the way of a club slam and run up to the giant’s foot and begin hacking at the back tendon. It isn’t easy since the giant’s skin is calloused to the point where it acts like armor. You only manage to cause a superficial wound before He nearly crushes you again. Realizing you aren’t getting anywhere with that approach, you resort to magic and literally give the giant a hot foot, burning the skin enough to cause a roar of pain. The giant starts moving his foot to sooth the injury in the cold snow. You look up and can barely make out the top half of this monster through the storm. You aren’t sure if it’s going to work with the storm being as bad as it is, but you’re going to try anyway. You cast more fire at the giant, not at his foot though, but at his loincloth which is undoubtedly made of some sort of fur. You don’t stop flinging fire until you’re confident that the flames aren’t going out any time soon. Predictably the giant starts beating its own flaming crotch in an effort to stop the burning sensation, bellowing so loudly that you image all of Rask can hear. The giant runs away from the combat area grabbing snow and ice around it and throwing it on the still burning fur loincloth. “Sheesh, that brings a whole new meaning to the term fireballs.” A voice shouts behind you. You turn around and see a figure completely bundled up in snow gear standing with others dressed in a similar manner. Naturally you’re ready for a fight, but the one who spoke holds up his hands. “Hold on there! Are you part of the expedition group? We just bumped into a few of them running from the giant. Said one of you was actually insane enough to fight the damn thing.” “Yes, what have you done with them?!” “Nothing! We were on patrol, got caught in the storm and then we heard all the screaming and came to investigate. Your people are right over this small hill here with some more of us. Normally, we’d just send you all on your way and tell you that you were fools to come to Rask in the first place, but now that we’ve seen you in action, I can’t help but think the Vision Lord would want to meet you.” Vision Lord? “Are you the Eyes?” you ask. “We are from the Order of the Eye and I’m Sightmaster Crowley but if we’re going to talk, I’d prefer it if we’d do it at Fort Everwatch. You and the others can rest up there.” “And if we don’t want to go with you?” “Then you don’t go and you all can return to wherever it is you came from. We’re not holding anyone prisoner, though the lady of your group, a Miss Mol I believe, says you’ve been looking for us. As I said normally we try to keep to ourselves and turn away most visitors, but given that we’re inviting you in with open arms I should think you wouldn’t turn down this opportunity. Besides, I’m fairly certain that none of us here wants to tangle with the guy that just chased away ol’ Snowtop single handedly.” “What, that giant?” “If you hadn’t noticed, he’s not just any giant, if he was, he’d be dead by now. He’s probably the oldest living frost giant that we know of and he’s tougher than a troll steak and almost taller than some of the smaller mountains in this area. Fortunately he seems to only wander about during these bad ice storms that usually no idiot would be caught in, but then here we are.” And here you are. You insist that you want to see Jennifer before going anywhere. Crowley takes you to see her and the few survivors. She’s glad to see you’re alive and hugs you. Her enthusiasm for this trip hasn’t diminished and she definitely wants to go see the Eyes’ home, despite the fact that you all were nearly crushed to death by a giant, though that can’t be said for some of her employees. You’re just glad she’s all right and you’re within reach of your destination. It doesn’t take too long to get to Fort Everwatch. It wasn’t anywhere near Fort Defiance once stood though so its just as well that you didn’t go that way. Everwatch isn’t particularly large or fancy, but it does look like it was built to stand the test of time. The interior is just as utilitarian Other than symbols of an eye adorning various parts of the fort, it actually reminds you of an old Empire fort. You can’t help but feel at home here despite only just entering the place. You are brought to a great hall area and Crowley says he’s going to fetch the Vision Lord. In the meantime he’s tells you all to stay here, but feel free to look around. “This is pretty exciting, I hope they’ll let us take something back from this place.” Jennifer says while looking at the various plaques. “Anything’s possible I suppose, but they don’t look like they’re much into luxuries. The only decorations here seem to be dedicated to their fallen like these plaques or those eye symbols…oh wait, they seem to have battle trophies as well, check out that giant’s skull hanging high on the left wall.” You remark still feeling a little wary of things. Eventually Crowley comes back with who you guess to be the Vision Lord. The Vision Lord doesn’t look particularly impressive despite his name though it is certain by the scars on his face he is no stranger to battle. You were expecting him to be a lot older though as it stands he looks about your age…well not counting your five-century nap of course. He stares at you, Jennifer and the rest for a moment and then he points to Jennifer. “I’m guessing you and this lot come from the Nalin Republic.” “How did you know?” Jennifer asks. “Where else would you come from? You’re certainly not from one of the six cities of Arat. They’re too busy with their petty squabbles. Besides, we’ve come across some of your type before wandering up here. A few of them even joined our group rather than head back down.” “You recruited our explorers?!” Jennifer says. “Yes, if they showed promise and desired to join. I’m sure you might even bump into a couple of them in this place assuming you haven’t already. Now you on the other hand…you are very interesting. Your armor looks as if it comes from another time, you can cast magic with ease and I heard you fended off Snowtop all by yourself. That’s a feat so impressive I can’t imagine you are native to the Republic.” the Vision Lord remarks and points to you. “What I find interesting is this place and from what I can tell by your commemorations of the your fallen, you feel keeping history is important. So tell me, did Warrick have this fort built or was it sometime after his death?” you say causing some eyebrows to raise. “You know of Vision Lord Warrick then? Not many outside our order know our founder. How did you come across this information?” “Easy. We were practically siblings. He was an Eternal, just like I am. He wasn’t a Vision Lord back then, just a Sightmaster, though I guess he felt the need to assign himself a higher title. Doesn’t matter. I’m just glad to see another piece of the old Empire still alive, even if it has taken a very different form.” With this response the Vision Lord steps back and the other Eyes now begin whispering amongst themselves. “So, the rumors are true. An Eternal does walk the earth again and it is indeed the one Vision Lord Warrick mentions in his writings. As you might expect we don’t get much news this way and we don’t venture too far from here, let alone Rask. In fact the few recruits we manage to get are probably our biggest source of new information. Tell me, how is it that you live?” You explain the exact situation as vaguely as you did to Jennifer and Quintus. The cataclysm struck suddenly, you were encased in a magic shell, etc. etc. and eventually Jennifer’s crew dug you up. “I see. How unfortunate that you came in contact with the Republic first, but then I suppose it’s better than being stuck in a magic coffin. Still, you’re here now and I believe you will find a better home here.” The Vision Lord remarks. “What?” “I’m inviting you to stay with us. Come now. This Order was founded by an Eternal I’m somewhat familiar with their mindset based on the writings of Vision Lord Warrick. I can only imagine the dull tedium you’ve endured in the Republic. How have you managed to occupy your time?” “Do not presume you know me based on the writings of Warrick. Truth be told, he didn’t exactly create the Eyes, at least not in their original form. The Eyes were originally created by this woman’s great ancestor Jacob Mol.” You say pointing to Jennifer. The Vision Lord nods his head a bit. “Apologies. I did not mean to offend. And if as you say this lady’s ancestor had a hand in creating the Eyes then we’ve been doubly blessed by the presence of her as well. However, I do believe that you were and still are a man of battle and war. And again I can’t imagine those things being in great supply in the Republic. Surely you would enjoy living here instead. You would be great asset in our own war of extermination of the wendigo. We could certainly use the help.” This is a sudden offer and certainly one you weren’t expecting. The strange thing is it isn’t out of the question either. A few days ago you were just going on about to Jennifer about how you were restless in the Republic even with your efforts to help restructure it into a new empire. A glorious undertaking to be sure, but one you’ve had doubts about recently. Now this opportunity is certainly less impressive, but there’s something alluring about its simplicity. All you would have to concern yourself with is the battle. The war. The victories over your enemies in melee combat. You’d even live in a place that’s much comfortable to you. Of course there’s also Jennifer to think about, but while your relationship with her is blooming into something more romantic what future do you have with her really? She’s not even like Alison in that she’s a warrior and can truly connect with you on some level even if she does make the attempts. There’s also the fact that you’ve been worried about her the whole trip. Will you continue to worry about her and allow that to be a weakness to be exploited? If she’s killed will you go through the same emotional ruin you did when Alison was murdered? Do you even want to deal with any of that again? You tell the Vision Lord that you and he are going to have to discuss this all in more detailed before you make a decision. Jennifer looks concerned when you say this, but doesn’t say anything. The Vision Lord says that while you and he talk, the rest of your group can rest up or feel free to explore as there is nothing of major value and he trusts nobody would be foolish enough to steal anything. You speak with the Vision Lord (who reveals his name is Kells) for quite awhile on the current situation of his order as well as the history of this place and Rask in general. He also remarks about how the Eyes are so hated and feared by the wendigo. As you might’ve guessed magic is in play, but only to a minor degree. Over the centuries the Eyes have managed to focus their minds to create shields against wendigo mental attacks along with being able to banish them to oblivion. (Still vulnerable to normal death through wendigo hosts obviously though) After your discussion he tells you that he’ll leave you to your decision, but that he hopes you’ll stay. You then speak with Jennifer about your situation; naturally she wants you to return with her and explains all reasons why. You end up sleeping on the offer and pondering everything some more, but ultimately the decision is up to you. > You voices of the past (Writings of Vision Lord Warrick) While you’re trying to make up your decision on whether or not to stay here or not, you end up walking around fort and bumping into Kells again. He holds a small old worn book in his hand and holds it out to you. “What’s this?” you ask. “This is the journal of the first Vision Lord Warrick and your fellow Eternal.” Kells says. You have a sudden feeling that you’ve done this before… You take the book and it would seem that at least the Eyes took better care of Warrick’s private journal than the numerous collectors (including Quintus) did with Brenda’s since the pages aren’t falling out. “Normally only the Vision Lord is allowed to read through it, but under the circumstances, I believe you have just as much right seeing as you knew the man. You’re probably thinking that I’m trying to influence you with nostalgia and you’d be right, but I think if you read through the book, you’d see how the Eyes have kept the spirit of the Empire alive and that ultimately you belong here with us. I’ll leave you to your decision.” Kells remarks and leaves you alone. Seeing as you could take your mind off of your current dilemma you figure you might as well scan through the journal. You don’t quite have the feeling of “snooping” through Warrick’s privacy like you did with Brenda. Perhaps because you’ve gotten used to the fact that they’ve been dead for centuries and they aren’t going to care what you do. While Warrick’s journal is in much better condition than Brenda’s, it still displays a lot of wear and tear probably from too much handling. Honestly if these people really honored their predecessors so much you’d think they’d take better care of these things! Apparently Warrick was “lucky” enough to be near the Rask border when the cataclysm hit. He mentions that he barely survived the magic acid storms that engulfed the northern part of Quala. Rask wasn’t doing too much better, but at least severe ice storms were better than acid falling out of the sky. He goes on to mention that during the cataclysm the magic barrier that contained the wendigo was destroyed and the evil spirits ran amok throughout Rask. Entire towns were cannibalizing each other before Warrick could scrap together what remained of the military and the Eyes. He mentions being fortunate that several Empire mages escaped to Rask and they were able to combat the wendigo menace. Still, it was never enough, even driving the hungry spirits away was only a temporary solution, there were only a few mages to outright banish them and that always took a lot of energy. And wendigos weren’t the only threat. Ogres and giants also took advantage of the chaos. Still Warrick wasn’t going to be deterred in his mission to hold together Rask since for all he knew it was all that remained of the Empire. Quala was still too dangerous to travel through and he had heard no news. One passage gets your attention. Entry 34 Another wendigo attack and lost another good soldier today. Still the fact that I only lost one makes it a good day. The fact that the mages actually managed to banish the bastard makes it even better. I have still heard no news from any higher command. I was hoping that my Eternal brother who serves by the Emperor’s side would have contacted me by now, but sadly I fear that he along with the Emperor may not have survived this terrible disaster. I can hardly believe it. I always thought he’d outlive all of us. At this point I’d even tolerate Brenda’s hostile condemnations towards me, at least then I’d know she was still alive. I may very well be the last Eternal, but I will not be the last Eye and if I can help it, Rask will not be the last bastion of the Empire. We’ve lost too much already. Even now several towns have fallen here and only a handful of huddled masses remain in the more secured ones. The Eyes have always been the ones to keep the Empire together and if they’re going to continue doing that they are going to have to change to combat the wendigo threat more effectively. They are going to have to learn magic and fortunately we have mages to teach them. It isn’t going to be easy, and most are probably not going to be able to learn at all, but I do know if one has the potential, then it can be done. This task, this great work, this VISION is going to take years, possibly even more than I have, but someone will take over for me and that person after that and so forth. We will live on for as long as the Eyes survive, the Empire will survive. You close the book and reflect upon the words within.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Alright, you’ll have your two Trog, I need to go back and speak with my people about which two though.” Trog nods and you return to the group to explain the situation, it goes about as well as you expected. “You can’t expect us to stay with these savages! They’ll kill us!” one of the workers exclaims. “We’re at war with these monsters!” a soldier remarks. “I’d have to agree that leaving anyone here is tantamount to leaving them to die.” Jennifer adds. “Look, this is the ONLY way we’re getting into Rask without a fight. And I guarantee we’re in no position to be fighting hundreds of orcs.” You remark and then point at the soldiers in the group. “Now you lot are soldiers which technically puts you under my command and if I order any of you to stay you better damn well do it or else you’re going to have me to deal with and I assure you if that happens you’d rather have orcs.” “That being said, I’d rather NOT leave any soldiers behind, because we’re going to need every competent fighter we can get when we do get in Rask.” You say and then point to the civvies in the group. “You lot on the other hand, I can afford to leave any one of you behind.” This remark is met with more protest and exclamations of how which one of them is a valuable member of the group. You’re unimpressed and simply say if there’s any digging or carrying to be done, anyone can do that and if its for some intellectual purpose, Jennifer is still going to be the most knowledgeable one on whatever it is you do find in Rask, so again the rest are superfluous. This statement is met with more protests until Jennifer suddenly tells them all to shut up. “I don’t like this, but he’s right. I’ll take volunteers first.” Jennifer remarks. Predictably more begging, protests and threats follow, which Jennifer addresses that it’s either stay with the orcs or try to head back to Nalin without any escort protection. Eventually one brave soul volunteers, muttering that if he’s lucky maybe they won’t eat him and he can learn more about their culture. The second one loses a lot draw. She’s not happy about her bad luck and the situation, but resigns herself to her fate. “I’m glad you backed me up.” You say. “I didn’t really want to and I’m sure I’m going to get a lot of backlash from my workers, but the potential for this discovery is too important and I trust you. I just hope you trust this orc as much.” Jennifer remarks. “I don’t, but he’s been reliable on matters much greater than this one. The worst that could happen is that he plans on killing us on the return trip when we’re exhausted from the dangers of Rask, but we’ll deal with that when the time comes.” You answer. “Well I guess this is all worth it then.” After the two “sacrificial lambs” are presented to Trog, he promises once again that no harm will come to them and the rest of you cautiously pass through Flogger territory, which actually overlaps partially into Rask. In fact you pass by an area where you believe Fort Destiny once stood. There’s no evidence of it anymore though, it’s just wilderness now. You wonder if was destroyed during the cataclysm or if it was time that ultimately took it over. Eventually you clear Flogger territory and you’re in the true wilderness of Rask. You, Jennifer and a couple of others go over the maps deciding which way would be the best. Using your memory, you point out that despite the long passage of time, there are still evidence of old Empire roads and that you should use those as a basic guide to head north. If you’re lucky, it may very well take you all the way to Fort Defiance, or at least where the fort used to stand. The journey north is as miserable as you remember when you first came to this unforgiving land. If anything it seems worse now that it’s no longer tamed by the Empire. Still, you travel quite a distance before you catch sight of figures moving about in the surrounding forests. “Stop. We’re being watched and we’re going to be attacked soon. In fact, we’re probably surrounded, I suggest everyone prepare themselves.” You say. The group forms a protective circle as best they can while you try to keep an eye on all the possible directions of attack. Eventually a few orcs and ogres emerge from the trees. However, something doesn’t look quite right about them. They’re savage looking like you’d expect, but even for their kind they’re moving a fashion that isn’t typical. It’s more like how an animal would move. They don’t make any usual taunts or threats either, but you do hear some loud guttural growling sounds. It probably isn’t surprising that some of the soldiers decide they aren’t going to wait around to be attacked and go ahead and fire. Two or three of the attackers are wounded, but then the rest make a horrible wailing sound which causes everyone to clutch their ears in pain. Then they move in for the attack, but it’s more like a loping gait rather than running. Ogres don’t typically run either… “Oh shit, WENDIGOS!” you shout and start casting your mind shield spell, but before you can complete it a possessed orc is already upon you. “Meat!” the orc hisses with its fang filled mouth right in front of your face. You feel a claw dig through your armor and puncture your skin just before you stab the monster through the neck with your dagger. Blood spurts all over you before manage to get the thing off of you and stomp it repeatedly in the throat, crushing it completely. You then hear a voice in your mind. “Sssssss! I sense power…great power…you’re an Eye! Hated Eye! Eyes! Away! Away my fellows! Before this they destroy us all!” the voice exclaims. Before you know it, the possessed orcs and ogres cease their attack and begin backing away. Everyone is a bit confused and quite frankly you are too. “Why’d they stop attacking?” Jennifer asks. “Because we were kicking their asses! Hah! So much for the dreaded wendigos!” a soldier remarks, several of the other soldiers cheer in agreement and press forward to attack the retreating wendigos. You aren’t exactly sure what’s going on, but apparently this wendigo knows you have the capability to destroy it. However, nobody else here can and if the wendigos figure that out, you’re going to be in trouble when the spirits are released from their dead hosts. You’re not about to give away the fact that everyone else is defenseless by shouting verbal commands to stop attacking, so the best thing you can do is cast your spell. Which is going to be a brand new experience for you since you’ve never actually cast a mind shield spell over other people before. Ignoring the sounds of gunshots and shouting around you, you concentrate on your spell and try to focus it on the group. It takes a lot more energy than you anticipated. Meanwhile you’re getting questions on what you’re doing. “Shut up! All of you! I’m trying to protect our lives and it’s taking all my concentration! Now does anyone hear any voices? And I’m not taking about my own right now. I’m taking about raspy sounding voices going on about giving up or something similar.” This question is followed by the group all-stating that they don’t hear anything like that. You breathe a sigh of relief and while you still can’t sense any wendigo spirits lurking about, you’re not going to take your guard down yet. “Okay, good. Like I said before we got here, if anyone does hear voices let me know immediately. I heard one of them in my head and it thought we were eyes, or they thought I was. It got scared and told the rest to retreat before I destroyed them all.” “An eye? What does that mean?” someone asks. “If I had to guess? They thought I was part of an elite military branch force of the old Empire.” You say. “We’ve only found a bit of information on the Eyes, but I didn’t know they actively hunted wendigos.” Jennifer says. “They didn’t. In fact other than some stealth operations during the Felkan War their primary function was internal security after the shadows were disposed of. They didn’t have any magic abilities to destroy creatures like wendigos.” “Something must’ve changed then.” “I’ll say. The only time I’ve ever heard fear in a wendigo’s voice is just before I banished it. I’m guessing it sensed I had that ability and figured I was an eye, which leads me to believe that this mythical warrior’s guild we’re trying to find must be run by the eyes or decendents of them. Heh. Glad you held something together ol’ friend.” You say with a smile. “What’s that?” Jennifer asks not knowing what you’re thinking about. “Warrick. He was head of the Eyes. A Sightmaster. I can only imagine that if the Eyes did survive to this day, he must’ve had a hand in it somehow. Come on, I’m actually just as anxious as you to find this place now.” After patching up some of the wounded you’re soon on your way again. You hate dispelling the protection, but if you keep it going constantly, you’ll be running out of stamina when you might need it for more physical foes. You just hope that the wendigos continue to believe that you’re all Eyes. As it turns out, the rest of your journey is plagued by horrible weather conditions instead. There’s also debate on which way to go when the remnants of the Empire roads disappear to wilderness and can no longer provide a base guideline of where to travel. Jennifer and most of her workers want to follow the maps, but you’re convinced that you should continue in the direction of where you last remember Fort Defiance to stand. > You follow your instinct Maybe things have somewhat since you were here last time, but the fact remains, you were actually in Rask once, nobody else here has and who knows if those maps are accurate. You’re going to trust your gut and head towards where you remember Fort Defiance was located. Nobody in Jennifer’s expedition crew is exactly pleased with that decision, but Jennifer calms them down and says she trusts you. You continue your journey and it’s a miserable experience as a freezing ice storm hits hard within a couple of hours. What remaining horses and other pack animals you had left end up either panicking or outright collapse from the exhaustion. Your group ends up having to dig out a shelter and hunker down for the storm to pass. Food isn’t much of a problem since you just butcher the animals that are dying any way. Fire isn’t either since you can conjure it up. Still, it’s not an ideal situation and others in the group are starting to experience minor frostbite and argue with one another. A couple more days of this and you’re still not at your goal and the cold is even worse. Either you’ve gotten lost or Fort Defiance has long since fallen to the wilderness. More arguing occurs and blame is placed on you. “I told you we should’ve followed the maps!” one of Jennifer’s crew remarks. “Why the hell are we listening this guy for? He’s also the one that insisted on leaving two of our people with blood thirsty orcs!” “I’m also the guy that’s keeping you alive, but that situation can be changed…” you answer. Surprisingly the man doesn’t back down. “Oh sure, threaten me with violence, that’s your solution to everything isn’t it?” “It’s worker pretty well so far and suggest you back off if you don’t want a demonstration to see just how well.” “Go ahead Mr. badass eternal! We’re already fucking dead anyway now that you’ve gotten us lost! Of course you probably don’t give a shit because you’ll just survive by eating our bodies after we all…” You can’t hold back any longer, you punch the man in the face breaking his nose. He falls to the ground in a daze. You step forward to give him more of a thrashing, but Jennifer gets in your way. “Alright that’s enough! I think you’ve proven your point to Kevin. We’re already fighting the elements and the hostile creatures that live here, we don’t need to fight each other as well.” “(Sigh) Fine, but this asshole better not step out of line again, otherwise I might not be as reasonable!” you remark and then gesture to your soldiers to help Kevin up. As they do so, it would seem that Kevin isn’t quite through with you yet. He grabs a pistol from one of your soldiers and fires it right at you. He’s not accurate enough to get a kill shot, but he’s close enough that he doesn’t miss. You feel a hot burning sensation go right through your stomach and pass through your back. “Shit! Fuck…” you utter and fall to the ground. While you’re bleeding internally and externally, your soldiers make quick work of Kevin causing remainder of Jennifer’s people to either look on in horror or scream and yell. Jennifer rushes to your aid, but she isn’t quite sure what to do. “Damn it, should’ve…get off me!” you exclaim. Your body is partially in shock, but you manage to catch a breath long enough to gather your thoughts. You need to heal yourself quickly. With you attempting to concentrate, Jennifer’s crew screaming, your soldiers threatening to subdue them and Jennifer trying to reason with everyone, nobody is paying attention to their surroundings. at least not until an ogre comes loping out from the trees and rips off one of your soldier’s heads. More ogres come out of the trees as well and they aren’t normal kind… “Fucking wendigos!” you shout. The wendigos must have been watching you and finally figured out you aren’t Eyes at all and given that you’re somewhat incapacitated now, they also figured now would be good time to strike and they were correct. You can’t even get up, because the bullet ripped through your spine paralyzing you from the waist up, the bet you can do is wave your sword around in an attempt to slash at the wendigos nearby. It doesn’t take long for them to easily kill Jennifer and her crew, followed by your soldiers and by the time they get to you, you’re still weak from blood loss and having limited mobility. You manage to kill one of them before one puts its fist through your chest and rips off the top half of your torso for a feast.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You may have lost your mind thinking that you can even attempt living a normal life, but then you’re the same guy who actually listened to a twisted abusive svelk bitch that convinced you it was a good idea to attack the Emperor too. And what’s this decision compare to something like that? You tell your second to take command of the camp, when he asks for how long, you just tell him until further notice. He’s at a loss of how to respond as you leave. When you arrive back at the museum, you find that Calvin, Jennifer and several others are packing up a lot of equipment. “Hey, what’re you doing here?” Jennifer asks. “I had to talk to you…what’s all this?” “Another expedition! After all these years, Quintus is funding another one.” “What? He’s sending you to dig around in Quala again?” “No, we’re going to Rask!” Jennifer says excitedly. “Rask!?” “Yes! Remember when I mentioned there were rumors of a warrior’s guild up there? Well over the years I’ve been studying old maps and the newer charts created by the few adventurers that came back alive from there and I think I’ve managed to pin point the location. See?” Jennifer suddenly unfolds a map and points to a circled spot on it. You know a lot of time has passed, but if your knowledge of Rask geography is still remotely relevant at all, that looks like where Fort Defiance would’ve been located. “That looks like where Fort Defiance was located.” You remark. “There was a fort there?” Jennifer says. “Yeah, it was the furthest military outpost in the north of the Empire, well save for one other, but that was more like a small watchtower.” You answer. “I didn’t know you served in Rask.” “I didn’t actually, but I did carry out one personal favor there for a fellow Eternal, the one manning that watch tower I just mentioned actually.” “Oh. Well still, this would be one of those times I wish you could come with us. Your knowledge of the area even if it is out of date would probably be useful.” “Believe me, I’m tempted to. I can’t believe Quintus is just sending you out there like this. The dangerous journey TO Rask is bad enough, but the weather in Rask is just as treacherous as the inhabitants and I can only imagine after centuries without any order there its probably only gotten worse since.” “Well he probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t went to him about the information I found. Plus he was in a good mood about senator’s Batalimus’ recent suicide. Did you hear about that?” “Uh, yeah another lucky break for our side, look I better go with you.” You say. “But don’t you have orcs to slay or defending our borders or…” “All of that can be done without me, I think the army is competent enough now that I don’t need to hold their hands and if they still do then you’re REALLY going to need me to come with you because that means the soldiers you are taking won’t be worth shit in a fight. In fact if you even want to get to Rask, you’re going to need me to negotiate with the Flogger tribe. Not to mention there’s much worse things in Rask than ogres and giants.” “What about Quintus? Don’t you have to report this to him?” “Fuck Quintus, he’s not my master. He could stand without me holding his hand every five minutes too. Nobody tells me what to do.” Jennifer takes a pause from your remark, before continuing. “Well, alright then, as long as you don’t think it’s going to cause any problems I’d be very happy for you to join us. So what was it that you wanted to talk to me about?” “Huh? Oh…that. Uh, nevermind now.” “Oh come on, you obviously had something pretty important if you left your post in Quala to tell me. This expedition to Rask business sort of distracted you from your original intent of coming here in the first place, but nevertheless you haven’t really abandoned your previous thoughts of settling down with Jennifer so you take her to one side and tell her. Her reaction is mixed though not one of any negativity. “Sounds like you’ve given this some thought and this decision couldn’t have just been on a whim for you.” Jennifer says. “It wasn’t, that’s why I had to see you. I mean I know there’s something between us and why shouldn’t I focus on that?” you reply. “What about reviving the Empire?” “Yeah, originally after I woke up and got a bit more of my bearings, the concept of doing that did sound appealing and move me into the direction I’ve been currently going in, but that’s been my whole life! I mean my original purpose is gone. MY Empire is gone. Why shouldn’t I try something else? What could it hurt?” “Nothing I suppose, but have you thought about what else you would do with your time? I mean no offense, but battle and war are pretty much your best skills.” “Yes, I know. I wasn’t talking about abandoning such things completely though, I mean I could go with you on expeditions and guard your museum.” “Guard the museum?!” Jennifer says followed by laughter. “What’s so funny?” “The idea that we’d need a warrior mage to guard my father’s museum is hilarious to me. I think the word overkill comes to mind. While the expedition protection would no doubt be of help, it isn’t like that’s what we do all the time as you well know. We’re in the museum most of the time and you’d get bored. Very bored. Besides, it isn’t like we get people trying to steal anything on a regular basis. The last time was ten years ago and the thief in question only managed to grab the tooth of an old Usksha sand worm before he was apprehended.” “Well I could talk about the old Empire when people come through or something…” “So you want to be part of the tour? Yeah, I don’t see that working in the long term either. Look I think you’re just feeling home sick or time sick or something again. Why don’t you think about this decision more after our trip to Rask, and if you still feel the same way when we come back, we can make arrangements for your future plans I suppose.” You agree to Jennifer’s proposal since she does have some good points and now you’re a little less worried about your future so much as you’re more concerned with this expedition. When Calvin hears that you’re accompanying the expedition he looks relieved. He mentions that he actually tried to talk his daughter out of going on this thing, but she wouldn’t be swayed so he was going to go with her knowing that he’d probably die in the process. Since you’re going now, he’s going to stay at the museum stating that he’s completely confident that she’ll come back alive now. Along the way to Rask you warn everyone about the wendigo. Other than Jennifer nobody else seems to know anything about them and she’s only heard stories. Apparently they’re just “myths” nowadays, but you assure everyone that they’re very real and if anyone begins to feel like an unnatural force trying to gain control over their mind, they need to see you immediately and fight the mental attack as if they’re life depended on it because it does. This information probably makes everyone a bit more paranoid and on edge, but quite frankly they should be. Eventually you get to the Flogger tribe territory, which seems to have moved further south from when you last remember. Apparently Trog has indeed been taking advantage of uniting the other tribes under his banner. The decor hasn’t changed though; they’re still favoring the hundreds of dead bodies stretched across various wooden frames with their backs completely flayed of all skin to mark their turf. Naturally everyone (especially the soldiers) are expecting a fight given that you’re technically at war with the orcs in general, but you tell them you can handle this and tell them to stay put. “Oy! Youz that Ternal man!” an orc shouts from the crude watchtower. Not that you’re an expert, but this orc is familiar, if only because of his great fat belly. “Fatbelly wasn’t it? Where’s your comrade?” It takes awhile for Fatbelly to process this question at first, but he eventually he knows who you’re talking about. “Oh, youz must mean Bilge. He dead. Idjit got ‘imself killed by gettin’ into scrap wit an ogre. ‘Ead got popped off an lived for awhile. Won bet on how long! Hah! Anywayz Trog spectin’ you again. ‘Ead on in.” “He knew I was coming?” “Geez, maybe youz powerful, but yooz stooped as Bilge. Trog Shaman! He haz vishuns member?” “Hmm, how could I forget.” You say ignoring the rest of Fatbelly’s insult and heading past the dead bodies. Trog isn’t far ahead.” “So once again the Eternal visits Trog. And once again Trog see that you come, but not know the reason. Is our arrangement going as planned?” “Yes, in fact while I’m here I might as well address that too. We’ve gotten what we need from the war. You no longer have to play any role in it, that is stirring up the other orc tribes.” “Trog see. Very well we did have an agreement and the Floggers have benefitted greatly from this arrangement, so it is done for now. However, Trog cannot promise that other minor tribes will not still attack. Can only promise that Floggers will no longer play any part in such attacks.” “That’s fine, probably for the best that we still get a few attacks. The other reason that brings me here, is that I and my group need to get through to Rask.” “Trog see. Can you not just go around us?” “From what I can tell Trog, that isn’t even possible anymore. Your territory was probably blocking the easiest route to Rask to begin with, now it looks like you’re blocking it entirely. We have to go through your territory.” Trog doesn’t look enthused by your suggestion, but ponders it a bit. “Very well, but you cannot just pass for free. Need to extract some sort of payment or security of goodwill.” “We aren’t really carrying any valuables Trog.” “Do not want things. Want people. Give us two. One for your passage through and one for the return trip.” “Okay…so what are you going to do with them?” “Nothing. Just keep here so you do not pull any tricks.” “What tricks would I play, I’ve always dealt straight with you. And you do realize that if I was going to play any sort of trick, I’d be more than willing sacrifice whoever I did leave behind and do it anyway?” “Hmm, true. But still, cannot just let you pass for free. Tribe would perceive as weakness. Those are the terms. More than fair.” Trog IS being more than fair. He’s downright civilized compared to most humans you’ve known. Under normal circumstances you’d do it without a blink, but you’re fairly certain the group is going to be VERY resistant to this idea and you can’t say you’d blame them. It’s this or just pushing your way through. > You push your way through Trog is being fair, but there is always the chance that Trog is outright lying and he’ll have them for breakfast or something. It isn’t likely, but it’s still a possibility. Plus he needs to realize that he’s gained a lot with your alliance. “Trog, I understand your position, but I can’t just leave two people with you. Now our deal was pretty good for you, so I’d say letting us through is the least you can do.” You remark. Trog continues to remain stoic and unmoved by your remark. “This offer is not negotiable, Eternal. Perhaps you are mistaking Trog’s civility for weakness, but Trog urge you not to make such a mistake. You either pay price or you can find another to Rask.” Trog says. “Erm…maybe we should do that. Surely we could find another way around and…” Jennifer begins to say, but you’re only half paying attention. You’re too annoyed with Trog right now. “Look, we’re not going to waste time going around your shitty barren territory. It’s not like you’ve got anything worth while here that we’re going to disturb anyway. YOU seem to forget who the fuck I am Trog. I could slaughter you right now and you know it! We’re going through and that’s it!” “Eternal you kill Trog and you’ll bring down the entire wrath of the Floggers down on your head! And even if you get away, Floggers will turn their eyes towards your precious nation and never stop waging war until it has completely been burned to the ground.” “Given some recent events I’ve experienced, you seem to think I actually care about Nalin…but perhaps killing you isn’t the solution.” You say and then suddenly grab Trog. He attempts to struggle, but after a couple of hard punches to his face you knock him the ground and tell one someone to hand you a rope. “What…what the hell are you doing?! Isn’t this going to bring every orc here down on our head?!” Jennifer exclaims. “Nope. Trog here is going to be our safe passage. Now gimme some damn rope!” you order. One of the Jennifer’s crew nervously throws one to you, meanwhile everyone including your soldiers are looking around anticipating an attack. “You…you fool. Eternal, you believe Floggers will not attack just because you have Trog hostage? You think Trog cares about life?” “Nice try Trog, but it’s all bullshit. If you were a regular simple-minded orc, I’d agree, but you aren’t are you? You’re a fucking shaman, I’d wager that even most of the Floggers know how advantageous that is and they won’t risk your death. As for your life, well like I said, if you were the average orc I’d say no you don’t care, but you’re not average. You have a sense of self-preservation. If you didn’t you wouldn’t have made a deal with me in the first place. Now let’s go!” you say and pull Trog up from the ground after tying him up. “You will rue this day Eternal.” Trog says, but complies with your commands. “I’m really afraid, this seems really dangerous, maybe we should just go back.” Jennifer says. “What the fuck did you think this was going to be Jennifer? A walk through the flower fields? If you think this is dangerous, what the hell do you think Rask is going to be like? It’s a pitiless land filled with fucking monsters that will eat your fucking heart! Now this is YOUR expedition, I suggest you get comfortable with the fact that unexpected things like this might happen!” you yell. Jennifer is taken back by your response. Granted she’s been on the receiving end of your vitriol before, but not for quite some time and at the time you weren’t putting everyone in danger. “Come on, we’re getting the hell out of here.” Jennifer remarks to her crew. “This is just insanely dangerous.” Jennifer remarks and begins to walk in the opposite direction. Her crew slowly follows her. “Are you fucking kidding me?” you say. “After all I’ve done for you?!” “Done for me? You ruined this expedition by taking an orc shaman hostage! Even if we DO make it through, did you think about how we were going to make it back? I dunno what the hell happened with you recently, but you are not thinking shit through. You just told Trog that you didn’t even care if orcs burned down Nalin! I highly suggest you get your…” Jennifer’s speech is cut short with an arrow through her back and out her chest. She stares down briefly to see the head of the arrow still dripping blood and piece of her heart on it. She then falls to the ground dead. The weird thing is you don’t even see any orcs in the direction where the arrow came from. In fact there aren’t any around, yet another arrow hits one of your soldiers. You turn to Trog who just stands there silent and still tied up. “Call off your fucking greenskins Trog! You turned them invisible or whatever you did, I don’t care, call them off or your life ends here!” you command. “You were right Eternal, Trog do value life. That’s why Trog not even really here.” Trog says and before your eyes you see Trog’s image completely disappear. An illusion. All along you were talking to an illusion. Who knows where the real Trog is. You have little time to find out as more arrows from invisible orcs rain down on your position killing whoever is still left. Had you been paying more attention, you could’ve just cast a barrier around yourself and avoided them, but while you were threatening illusionary Trog, several arrows puncture your internal organs. You fall to the ground and begin coughing up blood. You desperately try to heal yourself before you succumb to your wounds, but there isn’t enough time. You start to lose consciousness before the orcs finally materialize and finish you off in a more up close and personal way. Your last moments are being beaten and chopped to a bloody unrecognizable pulp by several clubs and blunt axes.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 540 It’s not there yet, but the political and social climate in the republic is finally getting to a point that’s a little more recognizable to you. Thanks to Trog’s actions the orcs have been attacking the Nalin just like you wanted. After a couple of burned down massacred villages, the Nalinites are a lot more supportive of military endeavors (Kobold citizens especially, but that’s hardly surprising given their nature). The citizens are also becoming more fearful and suspicious of other “foreign threats” like the usksha. Highlighting the sandman drug epidemic and the crime due to it, Quintus has managed to get restrictions on the southern borders of Nalin. The usksha that used to live within Nalin are starting to go back to their desert due to the increasingly hostile population. Trade hasn’t completely stopped, but the relationship between the republic and the emirates is very strained now. Of course some of this still wouldn’t be possible without senate support, however that’s become more in Quintus’ favor due to a combination of several factors. Some are just like the peasants, they’re getting scared because their comfortable lifestyle are at risk and want to protect themselves. Some were weak from the start and vote depending on which way the majority is heading. There are still holdouts that don’t agree with the more militant policies however. Even the “will of the people” does not sway them to fall in line. The most vocal of these is Senator Batalimus Ventis who has been a long time rival of Quintus. He’s stated that this trend towards militarism is going lead back to the dark days of when Matriarch Tarna ruled the land. He has also stated quite openly that Quintus is a warmongering fool that is only a puppet for his “mysterious Eternal” advisor. Quintus hates the man more than he hates the usksha and feels he’s the main cause of all his woes. Apparently he’s also decided that even if it isn’t quite time to dismantle the senate, it is time to get rid of Batalimus and has tried to have the man assassinated on a few occasions. All attempts have failed so far though and all it’s done is served to make Batalimus more cautious and legitimize his accusations about Quintus (Even if he can’t quite connect Quintus to the actual assassins). You’re going to have to speak with Trog soon about the attacks having served their purpose and that he needs to ease up. Trog is under the impression that after all this is over; he or at least his people will have a place within the new order when it finally comes about. In truth, you’d like to have a few orc legions if only for the intimidation factor of keeping the citizenry in line. However, you aren’t exactly sure how likely that’s going to be since orcs are increasingly becoming hated by the average citizen and are unlikely to want them to be incorporated into the new order no matter what. Let alone as soldiers. Another problem for another day you suppose. Right now though you’re on your way back from another visit with Quintus (who basically did nothing but bitch about Bartalimus) and on your way back to Quala. You’re a lot better known now and as you pass through you mostly get a lot of respectful nods from the military and worried glances from citizens. Your reputation within the republic has grown and it’s much like it was back in the old Empire days. There’s a certain familiar comfort in that. Before you leave Dalt you decide to pay a visit to Calvin’s museum to see Jennifer. Since the orc war, expeditions to the Quala Badland have been put on hold so Calvin and Jennifer have returned to work at their museum to study what they have found in more detail and ultimately put it on display. When you enter, you see a sign that tells people to be sure to visit their brand new Empire exhibits. Naturally you wander over to where these displays are, so you can see how much they actually got right. When you get to the exhibit its currently empty of visitors. You’re impressed with what you see though. They’ve managed to recreate a small portion of the Emperor’s palace and fill it with the old stuff they found. Some of the things are just replicas, but they’re very good replicas and in the correct locations. They even managed to restore one of the Emperor’s big black statues. Just looking at all this stuff makes you feel like you’re back where you should be. When you close your eyes you can almost imagine that you are where you WANT to be. If only things had been different, you wouldn’t have to be starting all over again… “We tried to make it look like what we thought it looked like in the past and based on writings we found.” You hear Jennifer’s voice say and you open your eyes to see her stand to the right of you. “You did a good job, almost feels like home. That big ass black statue wasn’t in the throne room though. In fact the Emperor never even used the throne room when I knew him.” You say. “Yeah, but we did have any place else to put it. I think its impressive looking where we did put it though. Should draw in a lot of people. So did you come here to revisit old memories?” “Not at first, but this is was a nice distraction.” “Glad to hear it, well I’ll leave you to your thoughts.” Jennifer says and begins to leave. “No, stay here with me, I came here to see you in first place. Besides, no point in reliving past glories when I don’t have anyone to share said glories with.” You say and grab her hand. Jennifer’s reaction is a positive one in that she doesn’t let go and moves closer to you. “So since you’ve got the time, how about you tell me about some of those old glories?” Jennifer asks. You gladly do so. You talk with Jennifer for hours until it starts getting late at which point you say you have to get back to your mission in Quala. Jennifer understands and wishes you luck on it. “If you’re going wish me luck, how about you do it with a kiss?” you ask which takes Jennifer by surprise. “That’s certainly new. What brought this on?” “I thought you liked me. You do don’t you?” “Of course, I’m sure I was pretty obvious about it.” “Well why ask why? I’m fond of you as well. I like your company and you’re the only person I’ve ever considered my friend since I got dug up. You’re independent, you’re physically attractive and you listen to all my stories. What’s not to like?” You say which causes a small chuckle from Jennifer. “Okay…we’ll talk more about this later, but for right now, here’s that kiss.” Jennifer moves in to kiss you and the pair of you embrace. After your minor amorous interlude, you take your leave of the museum. You briefly wonder if pursuing a relationship with Jennifer is a good idea, but what’s done is done and you’ll just have to figure it out. Once again, another problem for another day you suppose. Just as you get out of the gates of Dalt, two guards approach you. They’re not military or domestic security, they look like private guards, probably those of a senator. “You the Eternal?” one of them asks. “Yes.” You answer. “Senator Batalimus wants to see you. If you would accompany us to his home please, it’s just a few miles west of this city.” Well this is an interesting turn of events, though perhaps not entirely unexpected. If you had to guess, Batalimus either plans to have you killed when you arrive to meet him or he’s going to try to convince you to be on his side. You doubt he has the means to do either. You don’t know if you should even bother entertaining him at all, but then you think if he does try to kill you, then you’ll have eliminated the need to kill him later. Hell, even if he doesn’t try to kill you, maybe you should just do it anyway. You agree to follow the guards and eventually you reach Batalimus’ estate. His home isn’t much bigger than Quintus’ home, though there are a lot more trees and gardens on his grounds. As you expect there are a lot of guards patrolling about. When you step through the front door you feel like you’ve stepped into a barracks rather than a senator’s mansion due to all the guards standing around. Soon an older balding man dressed in a purple robe comes down the grandiose staircase. It’s Batalimus. “Ah the Eternal, at last we meet face to face.” Batalimus says. “Yes, I’m surprised that you didn’t confiscate my weapons though.” You answer. “Whatever for? We all know you can just incinerate or fry everyone in the room with the snap of your fingers. It’s not like you actually need a sword or even a pistol. You’re a walking weapon without such things.” “So? Why risk bringing me here then?” “Because I have nothing to lose. Your associate, Quintus seems quite determined to have me killed. Granted he always has harbored ill feelings, but now that the little reprobate has the advantage his confidence has reached an all time high. I suppose the fool has to have his fun though given the family he has. In any case I figure its only a matter of time before he sends you to do the deed and while I could increase my security even further, I quite frankly doubt if it would stop the likes of you. At best you might get mad.” You have to appreciate someone who knows exactly where they stand. “So…you brought me here to kill you?” “Hah, I hope not, but I suppose that is a strong possibility. No, what I’d like to do is try to convince you to perhaps not kill the republic because that is what you and Quintus are striving to do, though I believe I actually have a shot with getting through to you. You aren’t saddled with any emotions of hatred towards me. To you, I’m just another potential obstacle in your goals. If I have to be killed then you will, but if it isn’t necessary you won’t.” Well it looks like Batalimus has opted to try to get you on his side, just like you thought he might. He is over estimating your willingness to kill him though. True you don’t have any hatred for the man and quite honestly you probably already respect him more than Quintus within the short time you’ve met him, but you’ve been known to kill folks even if you believe that they will be potential obstacles in the future. Still, killing Batalimus right now isn’t exactly part of the plan, so you’ll most likely just leave unless he tries to stop you. Then again you did come all this way so there is no harm in hearing him out. > You leave You know what this is going to be, his attempt to convince you of why you shouldn’t be helping Quintus. You’re not interested in anything he has to say, and it will be pointless to do so. “I’m going to just leave now and stop wasting both of our time, Batty. I suggest you don’t try to stop me.” You remark and begin walking towards the door. “But, you’re already here! You can’t just listen?” Batalimus says. “No. This was a lapse in judgement on my part I suppose. Still, I guess I got a good idea of the layout of this place when I eventually have to kill you.” “Very well then, but I had hoped you’d be reasonable about this Eternal.” With those last words you leave Batalimus’ house and return to your duties in Quala. Just as you’re thinking about how you need to go see Trog soon about your little arrangement you get an urgent message from a republic messenger. “He’s fucking dead?!” you exclaim. “Yes sir, as I said he was found dead in his home, poisoned. His assets are all being seized due to him owing various people, though his wife is contesting…” As the messenger drones on about this, you realize you’re in position that you really should’ve considered. Namely, you have no “patron” anymore. Sure, you’re somewhat popular with the military, but Quintus’ influence on the population and his fellow senators were a big deal. Batalimus must be behind this and even if he isn’t, he’s going to be the main one taking advantage of the situation. Without another word you ride off to Nalin and you don’t stop until you arrive at Batalimus’ place. Batalimus’ personal guards are surprised to see you and even more surprised when you start chopping them down with your sword. Despite killing everyone in his home, you don’t find Batalimus so you go to the next logical place to look, the senate building. You don’t have any more luck there, all you manage to do is interrupt some of the senators debating something or other. “Where is Batalimus?!” you demand. “I don’t know! We don’t know!” the senator that has the floor answers, but it really isn’t the answer you want to hear. “Lies!” you say and fry the senator with a lightning bolt. “You really think your republic is going to survive? Most of you were already supporting Quintus’ ideas, now I bet you’re ready to turn your back on those same ideas just because he’s dead. Well Batty killed the wrong man. I will see the Empire return even if the rest of you are too cowardly to do so!” you shout and begin throwing fireballs at the rest of the senators. You don’t stop until you leave the senate house in flames. By this time the military is on the scene, but they’re unsure of what to do for several reasons. So you give them the reasons. You take immediate control of the military and tell them to start hunting for Batalimus and to maintain order. A few days later and it’s official. You make your announcement that the Republic is dead and that the Empire now lives again. The general public doesn’t know quite what to make of everything. You’re sure that there will be some sort of misguided rebellion especially with Batalimus still on the run probably stirring up dissent, but with the military behind you’re confident that you won’t have too much trouble. Year 541 “You really think this is going to change anything? Look at the nation! Despite your attempts to crush its spirit with your outdated concepts of order it still resists you! Face it, you’ve already lost and my death will not save you!” Batalimus screams defiantly. You break a couple more of his ribs with a few stomps to his chest. The older man wheezes and gasps in pain. He won’t show fear though; he’s fully willing to die. “It may not change anything, but keep this in mind before I send you on your way. Your actions did NOT save the republic; it only increased the chaos and strife. You may have fucked up my plans, but you have completely destroyed and betrayed your own.” “(Wheeze) Perhaps…Eternal…(gasp) but better the people should live in anarchy than under your brutal order!” You shake your head at his answer and crush his windpipe with your boot. At last the thorn in your side has been removed, but the damage he’s done has not. In fact you’re not even certain that you can repair it. Even with Jennifer doing her best with the propaganda machine, it’s still not enough. You have attempted to recreate a secret police in a similar style of the Emperor’s Eyes, but efforts haven’t proved too successful mainly because you’re too busy using the military to keep direct order. Even portions of your military have turned against you, if not outright treason then desertion. Some have fled to find work within the six cities of Arat or even joined up with the pirate groups in Delerg. It isn’t that the people don’t fear you, it’s that they hate you more than they fear. Even after you’ve destroyed entire towns that have dared defy you, you still get pockets of resistance running off into the wilderness to cause ongoing problems. Your methods in the beginning months were probably too harsh in retrospect. Killing everyone in the senate certainly didn’t help as perhaps some of those experienced fools might’ve still been useful in swaying public opinion and dealing with the more mundane issues of running the government. Combine this with the fact that the idea of things like “liberty” still lingered within the people, your brutal actions only proved to them what happens when a single tyrant takes power. Instead of cowing them into submission, you ended up lighting a fire of freedom that you still haven’t put out yet and at this point you wonder if you ever will. Batalimus of course took advantage of that fact too. Between the steady attrition of loyal soldiers, the ongoing defiance of the people, external threats like the Flogger tribe hearing of your struggles and taking advantage of your lightly defended outposts in Quala (And certainly have no intention of joining your Empire now) you are pushed to the brink and beyond. You decide if the fools won’t submit to your rule, you’ll burn the whole damn thing down. Jennifer however talks you out of it saying that it won’t solve anything. She also tries to convince you that maybe you should consolidate what holdings you do have and build from there. It’s a nice thought and it’s certainly logical, but you’re so exasperated at the entire situation that you decide to just give up. You realize that your time has come and gone. The people don’t want you around and at this point you don’t even care to rule them anymore. In fact you don’t even care about ruling anything anymore. All you really ever wanted to do was serve the Emperor and the Empire and enjoy your time with Alison. Things were so much simpler back then. You shouldn’t have ever listened to Semra. Even if the Emperor had killed you, at least you wouldn’t exist in a time where the Empire doesn’t. You would’ve died at least knowing the Empire would still be around. Not being able to go on and unwilling to stick around, you suddenly leave Nalin forever. Where, nobody knows. Some say you found death in the Usksha Desert, others say you found it in the cold mountains of Rask, but ultimately what happened to you is lost to time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 537 “Ah, there’s nothing better than when a plan comes together! Your actions of stirring up the orcs have been paying off and I’ve finally managed to get the public to become in favor of a strong army and your training has been producing much tougher and disciplined soldiers to create that stronger army.” Quintus remarks to you while he sips his wine. “I’m certainly glad someone you finally found someone more competent than yourself. Makes all your years of failure totally worth it.” Quintus’ wife Nalia remarks in a bored tone lying on a couch. She’s already on her second bottle of wine and it’s not even the afternoon yet. While Quintus dismisses his wife’s usual emasculating remarks, you’re wondering why you’re here when you could be doing something more important to keep this plan in motion because its nowhere near coming together like Quintus seems to think it is. The orcs haven’t even made a major attack yet. They’ve just been harassing a few patrols, but it’s just as well since you’re still trying to whip the paltry number of spirited soldiers you do have into shape so that they the orcs do attack they’ll be ready for them. You can’t really complain, because you are doing something you’re familiar with and good at, but the main thing that’s been nagging at you is Quintus himself. You don’t respect him and it’s starting to become a problem sometimes. It’s not anything he’s done to you either. He’s practically bent over backwards to accommodate you in anyway he can. You wondered at first if it’s his overly smarmy demeanor with you which at times seems fake, but that isn’t it. Part of that is that he’s a politician and he probably can’t help but be that way as part of his personality, not to mention you’ve become quite a good judge of character and you believe his admiration for you is genuine. Regardless of what his wife claims, Quintus is extremely ambitious and a hard worker which you can appreciate. He’s just been hampered by the social and political climate. If he’d been born during the time of the Empire, he would’ve fit right in. Might’ve even been one of the Emperor’s advisors. Despite all this, you’ve been developing an increasing lack of respect for the man. Not to the point that you’re ready to kill him or anything, but taking orders from him has got you questioning why? Of course you know the reasons why, because the republic is still a pussy whipped place that has long since abandoned the ideals of people like yourself and trying to take power like a strong man would ultimately only result in chaos and collapse. Ironically, you’d probably be more at home in one of the city-states in Arat where they still favor a single ruler. What it all comes down to you think is Quintus’ family. Something about Quintus’ lack of admiration from his own family bothers you. If he can’t reach the people that are supposed to be closest to him, how the hell can you respect him? Gets harder to when you have to be subjected to these meetings and see his family walk over him first hand. They all either criticize him or belittle him even though he’s been trying to make life better for them. His wife is a slothful alcoholic that has never a word of encouragement for him. She looks much older than she actually is mainly due to hitting the bottle so much. She’s never truly addressed you directly, but her attitude seems apathetic at best. His teenage daughter Yollanda is a red headed trollop that routinely sleeps with the sons of his senate rivals and in some cases the rivals themselves. And those are the “classier” encounters. Quintus once complained that if there was a good purpose for her bed hopping like say for gathering important information on his enemies it could be acceptable, but she has no higher purpose other than the pleasure of her girl parts. You try to stay away from her as her outright sexual advances that’s she’s made towards you in the past is a complication you don’t desire or need. Makes Jennifer’s obvious minor crush on you downright subtle by comparison. Then there’s his younger son Gelo who is an idiot. Not in the traditional sense that he does stupid things without thinking them through, no he’s a dyed in the wool, born and bred moron. You imagine that his mother might’ve drank while she was carrying him, but who knows? By and large he’s harmless, but extremely annoying. He yells a lot, breaks things and is generally obnoxious mainly because he doesn’t even have a stable structure to mold him into something at least somewhat useful. You don’t understand why he wasn’t killed at birth. Such defective babies were usually either put to death by the family or at least sold into slavery so that they could be productive to the Empire on a minor level. It was a good policy. The only positive thing is he seems to be afraid of you and thus stays away (Often screaming his head off and runs away if you’re ever in the same room.) And that’s just Quintus’ immediate family, it’s not even counting the other in laws and extended family that basically mooch off of him. For a man that has ruthless ideals he’s a doormat when it comes to his family. Fortunately for Quintus, he seems to have a lot more luck with the general population and has been getting more support just like he’s been bragging about lately. If you were Quintus, you might crave the respect of strangers as well. “Quintus, why am I here? I’d like to get back to my job.” You remark. “But that’s precisely why you’re here my Eternal friend! Your job! Since the army problem is well on its way to being taken care of, I think its time to move on to our navy.” “Navy?” “Yes, you do remember we have one such as it is. I’d like you to have a hand in making it stronger as well.” “And just how the hell am I supposed to do that?” “I dunno, you told me you were the military expert. Just do it the same way you did with our army I suppose. Stir up the pirates of the Delerg islands so they start attacking our costal towns en masse and the people demand a stronger navy.” “Quintus, I’m glad you’re excited about the plan, but the first part of it isn’t even ready yet. I don’t feel the soldiers are even ready yet. They’ve been in a few skirmishes, but nothing that is really going to test them. And there’s still the matter of the orcs. They’re riled and I have noticed large tribal gatherings as if they’re preparing for a large attack against a bigger foe, but by and large they’re still disorganized and in some cases still attacking one another.” “But surely you’ve trained some of the soldiers enough that they can perform these duties in your stead? Delegate responsibility to the more talented ones?” “I have, but its a slow process from them to train their fellows as well as I trained them and I still wouldn’t trust any of them to do what I’m doing with the orcs, or at least not do it and live. Quite frankly I need more time with them and diverting my attention to your navy is just a distraction.” “But the senate is going to dismantle it!” Quintus exclaims. “Oh please will you stop whining in front of the help Quintus. It is soooo undignified. You don’t have to try to impress me anyway; I always knew you weren’t man enough to help my brother out with his shipyard. If the senate does dismantle the navy and his shipyard goes under because of less business, well he can always live here. No big deal.” Nalia remarks taking another long swig out of her wine bottle. Quintus has no words he just throws his hands up and looks to you for help, but what can you do short of killing his wife? And you’re fairly certain he doesn’t want that no matter how much she gives him grief. You suppose you could see what you could do with the naval situation, but the main problem is you have practically no experience in such seafaring things. You dare say the average sailor has much more experience than you do about such matters. Sure you’ll be assisted, but without the actual experience you’ll still have a disadvantage that you don’t feel comfortable with. On the other hand what exactly does the republic need with a powerful navy anyway? As far as you know they don’t have an enemy trying to invade them from sea and they don’t have contact with a big nautical trading partner. They just send merchant ships to travel along the southern coast to the Usksha Emirates. If the pirates got too out of control, they could just send large shipments through the desert. > You try to strengthen the navy While the military definitely still needs your attention, you’ve got the ball rolling on that aspect already. You can see that Quintus really wants this navy build up to happen for several reasons and there are still pirate troubles after all, so you might as well see what you can do on this front. “Alright, we’ll get the navy strong again, or whatever it was before I showed up.” You remark. “Good, good! I’m sure we’ll make improvements so quickly that I’ll be able to convince the senate that the navy shouldn’t be dismantled. So, I guess you’ll want to get started immediately, so you should make your way to Waveview, it’s the largest of our port towns where our most experienced sailors are and most of the shipbuilding takes place. In fact Admiral Jarred Plickus should be there right now.” Quintus says. “Wheeee! My incompetent husband finally managed to convince one of his goons to actually do what he wants for a change. This calls for a drink!” Nalia says and finishes off her bottle and grabs another one nearby. You leave before you insult Quintus’ wife, well actually you leave before you do something worse than just insult her. You make your way to Waveview and then to seek out this Admiral Plickus. After asking a few passing sailors and shipwrights they direct you towards one of the larger ships and say he’s aboard that one. The admiral apparently likes to spend all his time aboard his favorite ship. From afar the ship looks impressive, but when you’re up close it looks less so. You expected the pride of the Nalin fleet with the admiral aboard it would at least look more presentable. With as many noticeable “patches” they’ve nailed into the hull, they might as well have just built a new ship. The rest of the crew direct you to Admiral Plickus’ cabin when you finally board the ship where upon you find him fast asleep. He looks so damn old, you half wonder if he was alive during the time of the old Empire. (He’s human though so you know that isn’t the case) When you finally manage to wake him up to interact with him, he’s not exactly young of mind either. You honestly don’t know why this man is still commanding anything, let alone a fleet. Frustrated you leave the cabin call for the captain of the ship. “Yeah, I’m here.” A bearded man little older than you replies. “I’m here? What the hell kind of answer is that?” you answer back in a threatening manner. The captain suddenly realizes who you are exactly and makes more of an effort. “”Oh shit, you’re that Eternal. Apologies sir. We didn’t know you were coming. My name’s Len.” The captain says desperately attempting to straighten himself up. “By the status of the admiral it seems like he still doesn’t know I’m here, let alone who I am.” “Yes, well the admiral is getting on in years, but the senate doesn’t seem to care. I believe two of his sons are on the senate in fact.” “Figures. If he’s here, then they don’t have to take care of him at their own home. (Sigh) If this is supposed to be the best the fleet has to offer, I’d hate to see the other ships up close.” You say. “It’s um, well I dunno what to tell you sir, except the truth. It’s true, the fleet isn’t given much attention; in fact you’ll probably find our cargo ships kept in better condition because of our trade with the usksha.” “And that’s fucking stupid for the sole fact that you need to defend those same ships from pirates. That means warships that don’t look like they’re on the verge of sinking themselves!” “I agree sir, and I’ve tried to make due with what I can, but spending on the navy has been cut a lot over the years. In fact I heard a rumor that the senate was going to dismantle the navy altogether.” “Well not now they aren’t. I’ve been told to try to get something done with this sorry excuse for a fleet.” “Oh? Well I suppose that would be a blessing, sir.” “Glad you think so, because as of right now, you’re the new admiral of the fleet.” “I am?” “Well I assume you’re the next most competent and experienced sailor if you’re commanding this wreck. Is that not the case?” “Well I don’t like to boast sir, but I am indeed the best captain that the Nalin fleet has to offer…such as it is. But trust me sir, that I routinely make forays into the Delerg islands in the hopes of whittling down some of those pirate bastards.” “Good, shows you’re at least proactive.” After a bit of explanation of what you want done to shape up the navy, you tell Len that you’re going to go talk with the shipyards and have them to start concentrating on building new warships. “Didn’t you want a demonstration?” Len asks before you leave. “Demonstration of what?” “Of whether I’m really up to this task. I mean I think it’s a great honor that you’ve placed so much responsibility on me, but I’d still like to prove myself to you. Come with me on a patrol. I mean this might be my last time in a long time since I’ll have to be organizing stuff for a while.” You think about it for a while and you can appreciate the fact that Len wants to show you that he’s up to the tasks you’ve set before him. “Okay, but what about the ex-admiral?” you ask. “Him? Bah, we patrol with him on board all time, he never even wakes up despite the cannons. Let’s set sail.” Len says. Soon you’re on your way towards the islands of Delerg. That still seems odd to you. Wasn’t a place you visited a lot, but the idea that that swampy landmass is now just a cluster of islands is still a little weird. You find that being on the open water isn’t quite as bad as you thought either. You sort of had a minor concern about this whole navy thing at first, but going into battle on the water will certainly be a new thing you can experience and you’re sure this crew will appreciate the extra magical firepower you can bring. You do ask Len about going on patrol alone and wouldn’t it be better to bring more ships, but he mentions how half of them are being repaired and some are pulling shore defense duty elsewhere. He mentions that pirates usually try to run rather than fight anyway and that while this ship looks horrible, it’s a lot more durable than it looks and certainly more than anything the pirates have. “The major handicap is speed and maneuverability, usually they can outsail us if they really want to get away, but our firepower prevents most from escaping before they get that far.” Len laughs. A few days pass and you’re finally in Delerg waters. You see several islands nearby, but the fog is making it harder to make out anything in the far distance. “Is it always this foggy?” you ask looking out across the limited foggy view. “Not always, but this is actually a good thing. This will allow us to sneak up on the pirates.” “Or allow them to sneak up on us if we aren’t careful.” You say. “Funny you should say that…” Len says and then two gunshots are heard and a painful sensation in two parts of your back. You gasp and your upper half falls over the side of the ship. “Damnit, I told you idiots to aim for the fucking head!” Len says “Sorry sir, can’t see for this fucking fog.” A sailor answers. “Nevermind all that, help me throw him overboard!” Len replies. As you’re gasping for air and trying to move to do something to defend yourself, captain Len and his treacherous crew grab your limbs and throw you overboard. “Sorry Eternal, but the smuggling business is too profitable for me to start making enemies out of my business partners. And with you around breathing down my neck with this navy shit, I’d never get anything accomplished.” Len says as you plunge into the water below. Under normal circumstances, you might’ve been able to heal yourself of the two big bullet holes in your back that also caused severe internal damage, but floating in cold water, with limited mobility and a profuse loss of blood is a deadly combination. You eventually lose consciousness and the merciless sea does the rest.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After sitting here for about an hour or so listening to the sorry state the republic is in, let alone the rest of the area that used to be part of the old Empire, you’ve had enough of it all. “Stop. I’ve heard enough about your wretched country. I can already tell what YOU want. You want the Empire back.” “Yes! I want to resurrect the Empire!” Quintus exclaims. “And that’s a lovely thought, but sorry to tell you this, it’s dead. Long buried and resigned to the trash heap of history.” You remark. This comment is definitely not what Quintus expected. Jennifer on the other hand isn’t quite surprised you’d say such a thing given your own cynical remarks to her. “But…you’re here now…a symbol! A symbol of the old ways! Proof of honor! Proof of strength! Proof of power! You’re an Eternal!” “And? I obviously couldn’t prevent the destruction of the Empire. Am I supposed to just resurrect it with my mere presence? Am I to just kill the entire senate and establish perhaps you as an emperor? Do you think the people would accept that?” “Well maybe not so direct…” Quintus remarks. “No? Because that might be the only way to get things done around here. And what makes YOU think you’d even be a good emperor? You do not even have the support of the people.” “I do have the support of my constituents! I even have a few allies in the senate!” Quintus protests. “Well you still don’t have enough for what you desire. I’d say that I’d have a better chance of being accepted as an emperor before you would just due to the fear factor and raw power, and I’d still have to be looking over my shoulder constantly before I finally got run out by a complete rebellion or I destroyed so much of Nalin in the process of maintaining order. Given what you’ve told me of the average citizen it sounds like they’re perfectly happy with the way things are. Happy with their hedonistic freedom. Do you really think they’re going to listen to a relic of a time when the strong just ruled over the weak and the weak not only accepted it as a way of life, but some were even happy about it? The sheep have been let out of their pens and do not wish to return. Do you believe your people, even those that apparently keep voting for you to represent them are ready to accept a more restrictive and harsher culture? Do you believe you can foster such an environment?” Quintus remains silent and you throw up your hands at his inability to answer. “Well you see my problem with your plan. You probably thought when you dug me up; you’d have a powerful tool that would be your key to reforming a parody of the old Empire. And it would be a parody, because even if you were successful, it would NEVER be like the old Empire. You can read all the lore and books you want about the old days and nothing is stopping you from holding fantasies about such days. But make no mistake those good old days aren’t EVER coming back. You’re about five hundred years too late. I haven’t been awake one complete day yet, and even I’ve come to accept that hard truth…but then I’ve had to accept so many hard truths. This is just another one to me.” Quintus nods solemnly. The spark that was in him is gone, but you can tell he isn’t completely defeated. Jennifer just tries to look away from both of you and shuffles some papers she has with her. “You…you aren’t how I expected you to be…” Quintus says. “Nobody ever is. Another hard truth I learned a long time ago.” You answer. “Mm…well I seem to be at a loss of what to say. Which is rare considering they often complain that I never shut up in the senate.” “Look, Quintus. I won’t deny that your ideals and goals aren’t admirable ones. However, I had to drag you back to reality. You still have a long way to go before even bringing something resembling the Empire back. As much as it might be fun to send me to just kill the senate with a firestorm and then establish martial law across the land, it’s not going to be that simple. At least not yet.” “Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s just I’ve read about some of your deeds, scraps of parchments really and I guess when I found out you were alive and in my house I just figured all of my country’s problem were solved.” “Well, they may still be eventually. Now despite what I’ve said, I will help you. Because personally, I’d like to see you succeed if only so I could live in a place that didn’t seem so damn strange and it’s not like I have anywhere else to go.” “So you are going to help bring back the Empire?” “Well, something like it anyway. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try. Now then, with me on your side, you shouldn’t worry about the military side of things. I can take care of those matters when they arise, and they most certainly will. You’re going to have to take the lead on the political matters obviously, but I can still advise you in this capacity. All my years of working side by side with the Emperor contributed to such skills despite being on the battlefield most of the time.” Quintus seems to have that spark of life again when you agree to help him after all. He happily asks where you should get started. Jennifer at this point is glad to also see things have worked out and says she should leave you two alone to talk more and get back to the dig site. Before she leaves Quintus calls out to thank her. “And tell your father he has my thanks as well! If it weren’t for you two, we would not be in the better position we are now. Expect a bonus in pay this week.” Quintus says. “Thank you senator. I was wondering though and I hate to ask, but it just came to me. Do you think our new friend here could come back up to the dig site when he has the time? It’s just that he was buried there and it might be of great help if he could at least perhaps give us a good indication on where it might be beneficial to dig.” “Well we’ve got a lot to go over first, but afterwards if he wants to, I have no objections.” Doesn’t take you long to agree. You briefly remark that where they were digging was near the Emperor’s main chambers and you’d like to see if anything survived yourself. This new revelation causes a bit of excitement from Jennifer and Quintus wondering what other magical treasures that might be of use in the coming days of change or even some scraps of history that can enlighten them more about such glorious days. You just wonder if you can find the remains of Semra. Call it curiosity; call it a sense of closure. The first thing you and Quintus talk about is the military. You explain that it is of vital importance to get them to support him the most, but it’s also of great importance to get them be more vicious warriors. You say you understand that battles are probably fought a little differently nowadays, but the intense training isn’t necessarily just to make them expert fighters. It’s also to instill discipline and hopefully a warrior’s mindset. Make it so that they want to go to war, that they long for it. Quintus says that he does already have some pull with the military. A little more than most find comfortable, but of course it’s nowhere near absolute. You’re glad since that cuts down on a little extra work. You tell him to track down the most spirited and skilled warriors that are in the military and have them gather somewhere secluded just outside the northern borders of Nalin. You say you need to get started on training as soon as possible, you just hope you don’t have too many wash outs (or casualties). You then say you also need to get started on an outside threat. “What do you mean?” “I mean you need an outside threat that genuinely scares people. Makes it so people are more supportive of a strong military. Makes it so eventually people prioritize their safety so much that they’re willing to give up their freedom just to be safe. I mean I know you’ve been warning the senate and the people about all the scary things out there and you’re right, but people don’t believe it until its beating down their door with a battle axe.” “Yes, but how exactly are we going to do that?” “Well YOU aren’t going to do anything except going about your usual business. I on the other hand am going to incite one of those threats you’ve told me about. Obviously one of the closest ones.” “The usksha immigrants?” Quintus asks. “Heh, well maybe in due time, but that’s bit more on the…political side. Plus its not a large enough threat and the follow through of invading the desert is a logistics nightmare that we are nowhere near in a position to carry out at this time. No, I was thinking something much simpler. Something much easier to incite violence in and a lot easier to get people to fear, namely orcs.” “Oh, do you think you can do it?” “Encouraging an orc to attack isn’t a challenge at all. Herding them to all attack in a specific direction takes a little more skill, but I can do it. It’ll just take a little time and we have to make a balancing act of it. Going to have to let the orcs win a few major battles in the beginning at least. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll also serve to purge some of the less than skilled soldiers you have around here. Some villages on the borders are going to have to burn as well.” “Villages? Are you sure?” “The problem with the Nalinites is they’ve never really been under a true threat for a very long time. When the people experience the loss of a couple border villages and see the bloody aftermath, trust me they’ll be begging for more protection. When they see the brutality of what an orc horde can do they’ll be screaming for justice and for us to march into the Quala Badlands to wipe out every last green skin. The first steps to expansion and the first steps to resurrecting the Empire.” Quintus understands and says it sounds like a good plan. You and he talk a little more about some of the specifics before he eventually says he has a big day tomorrow of arguing against some silly law that one of his opponents is trying to have passed and needs to get some sleep. He says that you may have a bed in one of his spare rooms, as it isn’t like the rest of his family is going to complain about you being here. You agree but say that you intend on heading back to the dig site like you promised Jennifer tomorrow and also to get started on that orc situation you spoke on. Quintus remarks that you can take one of his horses and says he hopes to see you within a weeks time. The next day you ride off to your destination and you feel somewhat calmer than you did when you first woke up. You also feel like you have a worthy purpose now. You know you’re going to have a big task ahead of you trying to reform the Empire, but at least it gives you something to do. Who knows, you might even be successful. Or you might be instrumental in the downfall of yet another nation… > You voices of the past (Matriarch Brenda's writings) Before you prepare to get some rest for the night, Quintus hands you an old small worn book. “What’s this?” you ask. “Something I thought maybe you might find interesting. It’s the old journal of Matriarch Brenda, first ruler of Nalin and your fellow Eternal.” Quintus answers. When you handle the book, the spine cracks and some of the pages nearly come falling out. “Yeah, be careful, as you might imagine it’s very old and sadly missing quite a few pages already. For centuries nobody even knew she kept one, but this was found about three hundred years ago when the builders were tearing down her old home to make room for the new senate forum. Such a loss really, tearing down the home of a woman who did so much for this country. I can tell you one thing, had I been alive during those days, I would’ve made every effort to keep the house as an important historical site.” “So who had this before you?” “Oh several people. Mostly collectors that didn’t really do anything with it save not really keeping good care of it. For a while I do believe it was actually lost, but eventually it popped up again and found its way into that museum run by the Mols. Finally through a mutually beneficial deal I acquired the book from that family.” “I see, well I’m not sure if I feel comfortable reading something that was Brenda’s private thoughts.” “Oh. Well, you can just put it on that table over there if you feel that way. Just thought maybe you’d be interested in it. No harm done. Anyway goodnight.” Quintus says and leaves the room. You begin to settle down for sleep, but find you that you can’t. You are tired, but not sleepy, probably because you’ve been sleeping for the past five hundred years! You explore the room a bit, but there isn’t anything much of interest that’s going to keep you occupied, well except Brenda’s journal. It probably seems silly, but in your mind Brenda hasn’t been dead for centuries. In your mind, the last time you saw her was only a few years ago and reading her journal would be an invasion of her privacy. However Brenda has been dead for centuries and under the circumstances you can’t help, but be a little interested. “Apologies Brenda, but I fear my curiosity has gotten the better of me.” You say and start flipping through the journal trying to be a careful as you can since last time it nearly fell apart in your hands. Really it seems like the journal shouldn’t even be handled anymore, it’s missing more than a few pages and the writing has faded as well. For all Quintus’ claims of respecting historical items of the old Empire, he hasn’t even bothered to put the loose pages back in proper order. Still, you manage to make out some of it. One entry in particular stands out for you mainly because you get the best sense of Brenda’s frustration of her situation, but then realizing that she has to do something about it. Entry 51 Sometimes I wonder why I even keep this stupid thing. I think I had some weird idea that someone needed to keep a record of events after the cataclysm. Still don’t know what caused it, nobody does. In another two hundred years is anyone even going to care? Chaos hasn’t completely overtaken Nalin, but I need to keep some sort of order. I don’t want to use extreme measures, but it’s getting to the point where I’m going to have no choice. They aren’t bad people, they’re just panicking and scared more than anything else. It’s understandable, I am too. I know who wouldn’t be scared, that paragon of Eternalhood. The Emperor’s Weapon of Terrible Justice or whatever it is they used to call him. Can’t remember all the nics and titles he had. If he were here, he’d probably already be rebuilding the Empire. Alas, I have heard no word of him or much word of anything past Quala really and it’s been months. I can only believe he must be dead along with millions of others. Warrick too, though I shed no tears for his passing. It was his bumbling that resulted in my husband’s death. It would seem I am the last of the Eternals. It is a strange sad thing being the last of something. Everyone looks to me like I’m supposed to solve this problem with the snap of a finger, but I’m just one woman even if everyone somehow believes I’m this superior being just because I’m an Eternal. I honestly wish I wasn’t most of the time. I certainly don’t feel any more powerful or smarter because of it and nowadays I feel like I’m got a huge target on my back and I have to constantly look over my shoulder because some idiot thinks I’m being a repressive tyrant. People either hate me, fear me, worship me, or a combination of all three. What the hell do these people want? I’m doing the best I fucking can! Not only am I trying to maintain civilization and order in these dark days, I’m also trying to keep some semblance of the Empire alive. We can’t just abandon our way of life because of a terrible disaster. Or maybe I’m just holding on to something that I know because I’ve lost everything else. I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to make some major changes. I’m not even sure what exactly, but changes are going to be made if only so civilization and order can go on and damn what the people think. History can be the final judge. I just wish Roldan was here. “I wish you all were here.” You say to yourself and close the book.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After sitting here for about an hour or so listening to the sorry state the republic is in, let alone the rest of the area that used to be part of the old Empire, you’ve had enough of it all. “Stop. I’ve heard enough about your wretched country. I can already tell what YOU want. You want the Empire back.” “Yes! I want to resurrect the Empire!” Quintus exclaims. “And that’s a lovely thought, but sorry to tell you this, it’s dead. Long buried and resigned to the trash heap of history.” You remark. This comment is definitely not what Quintus expected. Jennifer on the other hand isn’t quite surprised you’d say such a thing given your own cynical remarks to her. “But…you’re here now…a symbol! A symbol of the old ways! Proof of honor! Proof of strength! Proof of power! You’re an Eternal!” “And? I obviously couldn’t prevent the destruction of the Empire. Am I supposed to just resurrect it with my mere presence? Am I to just kill the entire senate and establish perhaps you as an emperor? Do you think the people would accept that?” “Well maybe not so direct…” Quintus remarks. “No? Because that might be the only way to get things done around here. And what makes YOU think you’d even be a good emperor? You do not even have the support of the people.” “I do have the support of my constituents! I even have a few allies in the senate!” Quintus protests. “Well you still don’t have enough for what you desire. I’d say that I’d have a better chance of being accepted as an emperor before you would just due to the fear factor and raw power, and I’d still have to be looking over my shoulder constantly before I finally got run out by a complete rebellion or I destroyed so much of Nalin in the process of maintaining order. Given what you’ve told me of the average citizen it sounds like they’re perfectly happy with the way things are. Happy with their hedonistic freedom. Do you really think they’re going to listen to a relic of a time when the strong just ruled over the weak and the weak not only accepted it as a way of life, but some were even happy about it? The sheep have been let out of their pens and do not wish to return. Do you believe your people, even those that apparently keep voting for you to represent them are ready to accept a more restrictive and harsher culture? Do you believe you can foster such an environment?” Quintus remains silent and you throw up your hands at his inability to answer. “Well you see my problem with your plan. You probably thought when you dug me up; you’d have a powerful tool that would be your key to reforming a parody of the old Empire. And it would be a parody, because even if you were successful, it would NEVER be like the old Empire. You can read all the lore and books you want about the old days and nothing is stopping you from holding fantasies about such days. But make no mistake those good old days aren’t EVER coming back. You’re about five hundred years too late. I haven’t been awake one complete day yet, and even I’ve come to accept that hard truth…but then I’ve had to accept so many hard truths. This is just another one to me.” Quintus nods solemnly. The spark that was in him is gone, but you can tell he isn’t completely defeated. Jennifer just tries to look away from both of you and shuffles some papers she has with her. “You…you aren’t how I expected you to be…” Quintus says. “Nobody ever is. Another hard truth I learned a long time ago.” You answer. “Mm…well I seem to be at a loss of what to say. Which is rare considering they often complain that I never shut up in the senate.” “Look, Quintus. I won’t deny that your ideals and goals aren’t admirable ones. However, I had to drag you back to reality. You still have a long way to go before even bringing something resembling the Empire back. As much as it might be fun to send me to just kill the senate with a firestorm and then establish martial law across the land, it’s not going to be that simple. At least not yet.” “Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s just I’ve read about some of your deeds, scraps of parchments really and I guess when I found out you were alive and in my house I just figured all of my country’s problem were solved.” “Well, they may still be eventually. Now despite what I’ve said, I will help you. Because personally, I’d like to see you succeed if only so I could live in a place that didn’t seem so damn strange and it’s not like I have anywhere else to go.” “So you are going to help bring back the Empire?” “Well, something like it anyway. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try. Now then, with me on your side, you shouldn’t worry about the military side of things. I can take care of those matters when they arise, and they most certainly will. You’re going to have to take the lead on the political matters obviously, but I can still advise you in this capacity. All my years of working side by side with the Emperor contributed to such skills despite being on the battlefield most of the time.” Quintus seems to have that spark of life again when you agree to help him after all. He happily asks where you should get started. Jennifer at this point is glad to also see things have worked out and says she should leave you two alone to talk more and get back to the dig site. Before she leaves Quintus calls out to thank her. “And tell your father he has my thanks as well! If it weren’t for you two, we would not be in the better position we are now. Expect a bonus in pay this week.” Quintus says. “Thank you senator. I was wondering though and I hate to ask, but it just came to me. Do you think our new friend here could come back up to the dig site when he has the time? It’s just that he was buried there and it might be of great help if he could at least perhaps give us a good indication on where it might be beneficial to dig.” “Well we’ve got a lot to go over first, but afterwards if he wants to, I have no objections.” Doesn’t take you long to agree. You briefly remark that where they were digging was near the Emperor’s main chambers and you’d like to see if anything survived yourself. This new revelation causes a bit of excitement from Jennifer and Quintus wondering what other magical treasures that might be of use in the coming days of change or even some scraps of history that can enlighten them more about such glorious days. You just wonder if you can find the remains of Semra. Call it curiosity; call it a sense of closure. The first thing you and Quintus talk about is the military. You explain that it is of vital importance to get them to support him the most, but it’s also of great importance to get them be more vicious warriors. You say you understand that battles are probably fought a little differently nowadays, but the intense training isn’t necessarily just to make them expert fighters. It’s also to instill discipline and hopefully a warrior’s mindset. Make it so that they want to go to war, that they long for it. Quintus says that he does already have some pull with the military. A little more than most find comfortable, but of course it’s nowhere near absolute. You’re glad since that cuts down on a little extra work. You tell him to track down the most spirited and skilled warriors that are in the military and have them gather somewhere secluded just outside the northern borders of Nalin. You say you need to get started on training as soon as possible, you just hope you don’t have too many wash outs (or casualties). You then say you also need to get started on an outside threat. “What do you mean?” “I mean you need an outside threat that genuinely scares people. Makes it so people are more supportive of a strong military. Makes it so eventually people prioritize their safety so much that they’re willing to give up their freedom just to be safe. I mean I know you’ve been warning the senate and the people about all the scary things out there and you’re right, but people don’t believe it until its beating down their door with a battle axe.” “Yes, but how exactly are we going to do that?” “Well YOU aren’t going to do anything except going about your usual business. I on the other hand am going to incite one of those threats you’ve told me about. Obviously one of the closest ones.” “The usksha immigrants?” Quintus asks. “Heh, well maybe in due time, but that’s bit more on the…political side. Plus its not a large enough threat and the follow through of invading the desert is a logistics nightmare that we are nowhere near in a position to carry out at this time. No, I was thinking something much simpler. Something much easier to incite violence in and a lot easier to get people to fear, namely orcs.” “Oh, do you think you can do it?” “Encouraging an orc to attack isn’t a challenge at all. Herding them to all attack in a specific direction takes a little more skill, but I can do it. It’ll just take a little time and we have to make a balancing act of it. Going to have to let the orcs win a few major battles in the beginning at least. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll also serve to purge some of the less than skilled soldiers you have around here. Some villages on the borders are going to have to burn as well.” “Villages? Are you sure?” “The problem with the Nalinites is they’ve never really been under a true threat for a very long time. When the people experience the loss of a couple border villages and see the bloody aftermath, trust me they’ll be begging for more protection. When they see the brutality of what an orc horde can do they’ll be screaming for justice and for us to march into the Quala Badlands to wipe out every last green skin. The first steps to expansion and the first steps to resurrecting the Empire.” Quintus understands and says it sounds like a good plan. You and he talk a little more about some of the specifics before he eventually says he has a big day tomorrow of arguing against some silly law that one of his opponents is trying to have passed and needs to get some sleep. He says that you may have a bed in one of his spare rooms, as it isn’t like the rest of his family is going to complain about you being here. You agree but say that you intend on heading back to the dig site like you promised Jennifer tomorrow and also to get started on that orc situation you spoke on. Quintus remarks that you can take one of his horses and says he hopes to see you within a weeks time. The next day you ride off to your destination and you feel somewhat calmer than you did when you first woke up. You also feel like you have a worthy purpose now. You know you’re going to have a big task ahead of you trying to reform the Empire, but at least it gives you something to do. Who knows, you might even be successful. Or you might be instrumental in the downfall of yet another nation… > You picking through the past (The dig site) You’ve spent the past two days with Calvin’s crew, which has been fumbling about trying to dig up the rest of the Emperor’s chambers. So far they haven’t found much of consequence though, mostly just pieces of the Emperor’s belongings that were made of stone or metal, like a bed frame or one of his many work tables. The biggest things were broken pieces of the two large statues that stood outside the door and the half destroyed door itself. Any books that have been found have mostly been destroyed over the passage of time. Between insects, small subterranean rodents and centuries of gradual decay it would seem the earth has consumed most of the important stuff. While Calvin still appreciates what has been found, he was really hoping to find a treasure trove of magical items, but you told him he wouldn’t have had much luck anyway. The Emperor himself never really kept much of that around, probably because as a powerful wizard himself he didn’t need to rely on such things You on the other hand haven’t found what you were looking for and that’s the remains of a svelk. You and Semra were in the immediate area yet no bones have been found. But then Jacob wasn’t too far from the same location and his bones haven’t been found either. (You still haven’t mentioned to Calvin or Jennifer about knowing the specifics about their ancestor’s death.) At this point you can’t do too much more lingering you need to get on with your more important assignment. You decide to make one more quick look though so you grab a shovel and start digging. Of course you can’t be left alone while doing this, Jennifer decides to come up and bother you in her usual way. You swear the girl insists on trying to hang around you whenever possible. You certainly hope she doesn’t have a crush or something, because you don’t really have time for such things. “Hey, you shouldn’t just be digging haphazardly like that near the support beam! One wrong dig and you could fall into a sinkhole or cause part of this excavation to collapse! You don’t want to be buried alive again do you?” Jennifer says. “I dunno, I’m still wondering if I wouldn’t be better off.” You remark. “Oh you don’t mean that. I thought you said you and Quintus had big plans that gave you a sense of purpose now.” “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can’t ponder if it’s worth it or not. (Sigh) Damn it, what am I doing? I’ve never going to find anything. I need to just get started on that business I spoke about with Quintus.” “Wait, what ARE you looking for anyway? I’ve noticed you before looking through piles of dirt and overturning stones since you got here. If you told us, perhaps we could help you. I mean we do do this for a living and all.” “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” “Look if it’s personal, you don’t need to tell me or anyone else the significance, but if we know what to look for surely it could help couldn’t it? Maybe we already found it and it’s in our pile of ever-growing objects. Sensing that Jennifer isn’t going to let this go you give in and tell her. “(Sigh) I’m looking for bones.” “Bones? Well we found a bunch a few feet higher up…” “No, the bones I’m looking for would be at least approximately in the same area that you found me. They would be elven in nature, specifically svelk, if that makes a difference.” “Dark elven? What was a dark elf doing down here near the Emperor? You know, you still haven’t told us anything about how you came to be in your situation. I mean we’ve all been wondering if the Emperor was down here during the cataclysm, though we haven’t found any trace of his remains.” Now you wish you hadn’t told her. “Look! Let’s just focus on one thing at a time! Now I’m looking for svelk bones, unless you’ve found anything like that, then we have nothing more to discuss.” You snap and start to leave. “Okay, okay! No need to snap like that, but can you at least tell me who this svelk was? Obviously they must’ve been important to you or else you would not be trying to find the remains. I’m really just trying to help!” Well that’s true and you can’t necessarily fault her for it. “Alright, I’ll tell you a little bit. The svelk’s name was Semra and believe or not she was a top advisor to the Emperor. And since we’re on the topic, yes all of us were down here when the cataclysm hit. As the palace was collapsing in on our heads, Semra was the one who put me in that little magical box you all found me in. Basically she saved my life when certain doom was imminent.” This bit of information predictably gets a big reaction out of Jennifer. “Wow! I can’t believe it. The Emperor had a svelk advisor? She must’ve been an outcast from her people. I thought they were only nomadic mercenaries back in those days.” “They were, but Semra was a bit more ambitious than that. Make no mistake she was no outcast. She was every bit as ruthless and treacherous as any of her people. Probably more so. She always had an angle.” “Hm, surprised the Emperor trusted such a creature, but still she saved your life. A self sacrificing svelk; never thought such a thing existed. The two of you must’ve been close surely? Were you friends or um…” “No we weren’t friends, and don’t even suggest we had a romantic affiliation.” You say before she even completes that sentence. “Our relationship was…complex. Let’s just say she played a big role in who I am today and despite whatever differences I did have with her I do owe her my life.” “So, it’s kind of like a paying last respects thing?” “Something like that. I mean she was literally the last person I saw before I went into my big sleep. My last moment during the old days were with her. Guess I felt like seeing her bones would be a kind of closure, but I guess it doesn’t matter anyway right?” “No, I understand. Well, we’ll keep an eye out I guess for svelk bones. So… you said the Emperor was down here too?” “Yeah, but before you even ask. There’s no point in trying to look for his remains. He disintegrated before my eyes.” Jennifer is in shock. “He…he disintegrated?! How?!” “Well, it was the cataclysm. Hit pretty suddenly and hard. One moment he was there, then he wasn’t.” Your vague explanation isn’t exactly untrue. You’re just glad it seems to be sufficient for now. “Sheesh, no wonder you didn’t want to talk about it. Must’ve been stressful even for you. I have to tell my father about this. He’ll be very interested in learning more about this mystery.” Jennifer says. “I’m sure you will. You know I’m very surprised he doesn’t speak to me more often given that he’s the one in charge of this expedition and his extreme interest in the history aspect.” “I would imagine he would if your personality was different. You’re a bit intimidating and he still fears you a bit, so as it stands I think he believes it would be better if I spoke to you.” “Why? Does he think I am easily swayed by a pretty face?” “Er…no…what I was going to say is that I am a little more willing to take risks like interacting with you for example. You’re more likely to respect someone that’s brave and thus open up to them. I love my father, but he’s not exactly the bravest of men, though he has his moments.” “Hm, sounds like someone I used to know.” You say thinking about Jacob, which makes you add a bit more to your story. “Before I leave there are a few other bones you might want to look for while you’re down here.” You say. “Oh? I thought it was just you and Semra.” “It was in the end, but there was another top advisor to the Emperor here that died shortly before that.” “Wait, you don’t mean…” “Yes, your ancestor Jacob. Though his remains might be a bit…crushed. A large falling stone block fell on him.” Your news once again renders Jennifer silent for a moment. “We always did wonder what happened to him exactly. I mean it was always assumed he got killed during the cataclysm, but never knew the specifics. Well at he didn’t suffer long.” She remarks. “No it was pretty quick and sudden. Just like everything else when the cataclysm hit. Still, if it’s any consolation, Jacob had his own moment of bravery before his life ended. He actually saved Semra and I from getting immediately killed during that dark time.” “He did?” “Yes. Anyway, as I said, I’ve got other things to do, so I’ll leave you to it.” Before you leave, Jennifer thanks you for the information and hopes in time that you’ll open up more information about the past. You don’t make any promises, but you know you probably will eventually. You leave the dig site and think about what you originally went there for in first place. Closure. Since you didn’t really get that, you do it yourself. “Well Semra, I don’t really know why you saved me. Then again I didn’t understand your twisted obsession for me either. Whether it was genuine love, svelk psychological torture, your own personal fucked up mind or a combination of the three I’ll never know. And I guess now, I never will. But for what it’s worth. Thank you.” After your monologue to yourself, you ride off in search of orcs to antagonize.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While it’s entirely possibly that you’d come out of this thing alive, (You’ve certainly been through worse) there’s little guarantee that anyone else will. If you’re going to keep your “rescuers” alive, you’ll need to be unhindered. “What’re you doing?!” Jennifer asks as you leap on a horse. “I’m getting off this thing, and I suggest if you don’t want to be a big target you will too, there’s another horse here, jump on it and we’ll unhitch the wagon!” Sensing that you’re going to do this whether she likes it or not, she realizes that she doesn’t really have a choice. She jumps on a horse and you take your sword and cut the harness. You tell Jennifer that she should order everyone else to concentrate their gunfire to the left. “Where are you going now?!” “I’m going to take care of the ones on the right!” you shout and ride in their direction. The orcs are so agitated about you heading directly towards them, they practically stop focusing on the caravan and begin firing arrows at you. Of course you anticipated such a thing and cast a shield to protect you and your horse. With your other hand you spray a cone of cold on the orcs closest to you, freezing them quite literally in their tracks. This feat of magic is enough to cause the orcs to attempt to rear up their boars and change direction back towards attacking the caravan. Others are undeterred and continue to head toward you with large weapons in hand. You aim your next spell at their boars, which consists of a couple fire blasts. The pigs go up in a blaze and soon so do their riders who end up dropping their weapons in an attempt to beat out the flames. You turn your attention at the orcs who decided to attack the caravan instead. At first glance the expedition crew have held their own fairly well considering none of them seem to be warriors and they seem to have fended off most of the orcs on the left side. However you see orcs getting the best of a couple of them when they close the gap and begin jumping onto the wagons. You ride back to the caravan and put your own combat skills good use. Orcs may be fierce and unrelenting fighters sometimes, but without the heavy armor that you remember they used to wear for the Empire, they get killed as easily as anyone else if you’re skilled enough, and you’re more than skilled enough. As you battle the orcs, the remaining expedition crew tries to help, though you’re nearly shot a couple of times in the process. You end up yelling at them to stop “helping” you before you start firing at them with something a lot more accurate. Soon after you’ve killed your last orc after hopping from wagon to wagon, you hear Jennifer shouts to everyone that you’ve won and the rest have rode off. The caravan stops for a moment to take some time to clean up dead bodies on the wagons, and gather up any equipment that fell off during the fight. Jennifer comes up to you as you’re cleaning off your own sword. “Well that was exciting to see a real Eternal in action! I knew we were going to be safe with you!” “Hmm, yeah well I almost wasn’t safe with your people, because I nearly got shot a couple times!” “Yeah, sorry about that. Fear of the orcs actually on the wagons was probably causing higher nervousness than usual.” “You should get some soldiers on these trips. Then at least you’d have some people who actually know how to fight when things get a little close.” “We do have soldiers, can’t you tell by the uniforms?” Honestly you hadn’t really paid much attention to the fact that several of the people on this expedition crew do have similar outfits. It’s just regular clothing though, none of it is proper armor, light or heavy. You also now notice that the firearms are much different too, namely they can fire multiple shots before being reloaded. A very handy improvement indeed. You realize that time has definitely marched on, it would seem that shooting someone with a rifle or pistol is the order of the day. Not much use for the old armor if that’s indeed the case. Still, you’re also reminded of the Felkans and their over reliance of such weapons. It would seem the Nalin Republic has the same technological disease. And these people are the supposed “successors” of the Empire. “Guns.” You say shaking your head. “What’s wrong with guns? You don’t think they’re honorable or something?” Jennifer asks. “No, I believe they are very useful and it would be foolish to not employ such weapons of fantastic destruction during battle and war. I just have a problem with the reliance of them in place of natural combat skill, because one day you’re going to run out of bullets and then you see who the real soldier is.” “How is using a gun any different from casting down lightning from your fingers or throwing fireballs around?” “It isn’t in the scheme of things. I just said I don’t have a problem with gunpowder weapons. However you also noticed I didn’t just toss around magic like I had unlimited energy either. I used it when it was needed and engaged in close combat for the rest of them. I could’ve easily just rained down a firestorm and wiped out all of the orcs, but that would’ve taken out the caravan too. Something I’m sure nobody wanted. The Empire used firearms AND magic during the Felkan War, but individually the soldiers were still some of the toughest warriors you’d ever want to face. The Felkans soon learned that fatal fact. Perhaps if their soldiers still had the formidable close combat skills of an Empire soldier, they might not have lost so many battle when physical prowess was needed.” Jennifer doesn’t debate your views or experience, she just thanks you again for your help and you’re soon underway. The rest of the journey is relatively silent. Eventually you arrive in the Nalin Republic. The landscape here is more like you remember, though it isn’t until you get towards the capital of Dalt that you start seeing a resemblance to civilization, but even that’s different when it comes to the architecture and such. You get a few stares from passing citizens. Jennifer and you disembark from the wagons when you arrive at Quintus’ house, or rather his very large mansion, which has guards posted at the gates. Honestly it’s the closest thing resembling the Empire you’ve seen since you got here. “You wait here, I’ll have to speak with Quintus about all this first. While I’m sure he’ll really want to see you, there is protocol to follow.” “Sure, do whatever it is you have to do, I’m not going anywhere, but who is this Quintus anyway?” “Quintus Arillicus is one of the most influential leaders in the senate and as I’ve already mentioned an admirer of old Empire history, but he’ll tell you more when you meet him.” As Jennifer walks through the gates, you’re left standing around with a few guards who give you the stares that you’ve come to expect from everyone. You wait for about ten minutes before you begin to wonder why you’re even entertaining this again. Then you remember, it’s because you don’t have much else to do right now. Though you’re wondering what place you’re going to have in this new world. You imagine that maybe you could be a soldier again though it doesn’t look like there’s a war going on. Doesn’t even look like this place is suffering from any discontent from the citizens, but then looks can be deceiving. Jennifer eventually comes back to the front gate and waves to come with her. “You can come in now. Quintus is very excited to see you!” At this point this Quintus better be just as impressive, because from what little you know of this guy, you’re not nearly as excited to see him. You and Jennifer walk into the mansion and while it’s certainly fancy and has a design style similar to Empire architecture, it isn’t nearly as extraordinary as the first time you saw the Emperor’s palace. Of course you’re a harder sell from those old days. Jennifer and you enter what is apparently a conference room. She says that he shouldn’t be long and you both take a seat at the table. Soon a middle-aged man walks into the room with some guards, but he dismisses them at the door so that you three can be alone. He’s dressed in an older style suit that looks more like those you remember Empire bureaucrats wearing and carries a staff of some sort with him. He also wears several rings. You sense that they all might be magical. Either way you fail to be impressed, just as you suspected you would be. Quintus on the other hand, now that he sees you in person, he’s very impressed. “I never believed in all these years…all the digging…all the research…everything. And none of what I’ve found compares to this! Yes! This is indeed a glorious day! A real live Eternal! Not just any Eternal either, but the one who served the Emperor himself!” Quintus exclaims as he sits down across from you. “Now let me stop you right there. I know you’re all excited and shit, but for me this is going into unknown territory. Possibly even enemy territory. I have no idea WHAT exactly you want with me. I’m going to tell you right now though if you’re thinking of putting me in some sort of museum or some weird aristocratic version of a sideshow like they have at the fairs peasants go to you better get that idea out of your head right now.” Jennifer tries to temper your words, but Quintus raises his hands as if no offense was taken. “It’s alright. Our Eternal friend is quite right to be suspicious of me, but I can honestly tell him there is no reason for him to be because I think my goals will fit his honorable ideals. I’m still sure there is much he wants to know and questions that he has, but I will say that it is my hope that he and I will change history together!” Quintus and Jennifer try to get you fully up to speed on everything first… > The Cataclysm (Fall of Civilization) One of the first questions you ask is to be caught up to speed on what the current situation is on the land. Jennifer fills you in on most of this topic though Quintus interjects when it comes to more political matters on the subject. Jennifer starts off by stating that the cataclysm that destroyed the Empire not only led to a dark age, but as you might’ve been able to tell it changed the very landscape. Quala, which was once the heartland of the Empire, is now a wasteland. She mentions that besides the numerous orc tribes that live there, the place is also home for outlaw types. Quintus remarks that the Nalin Republic has made a bit of an attempt to tame the southern most portion of it along the borders and says that he would like it to do more, but then complains that his hands are tied due to pacifistic fools in the senate. Jennifer tells you Delerg got it even worse than Quala as most of the land just fell into the ocean! Delerg consists little more as an archipelago though a small portion of it is still attached to the mainland. She says there are rumors of horrors that were awakened and now dwell on several of the islands, but the main danger is that the place is now a haven for pirates. Quintus remarks that the Nalin navy has problems dealing with them on their eastern coast. Again, he’d like to do more about it, but once again most of the senate claims it isn’t in the budget and is thinking about dismantling the navy altogether. When you ask about Rask, Jennifer states that there isn’t too much to tell other than wilderness has reclaimed most of it. She says all that’s known is that it’s now infested with orcs, ogres, giants and worse. There are rumors of a warrior “guild” of some sort, but she can’t imagine that they’d be sane living in such a hostile environment. Quintus doesn’t have much to add other than he’s sent a few adventurer types up there to explore, but none of them have come back alive. He’d like to send a full expedition up there, but he barely gets approval from the senate about the one he sends to dig up the Quala Badlands. You’re sensing a pattern here… Jennifer next moves on to the more “civilized” areas of what once was the old Empire. She uses the term loosely though. Arat is fairly lawless though it currently consists of six city-states which supposedly have an agreement of mutual protection (The Arat Alliance, but in practice they’re all out for themselves or at the very least concerned with their own problems. In some cases that means attempting to gain control over the rest. Particularly Lenay, which is the most powerful of the cities and is run by svelk. You interrupt Jennifer. “Excuse me? Svelk? They finally managed to settle down?” “Oh yes, for quite a while now. Sovereign Eldolith has been running it for…” “Wait, Eldolith?!” you interrupt again. “Yes, do you know her?” “We were acquainted. She was only a mercenary captain when I knew her.” You answer. “Interesting…well she’s come a long way from a simple leader of mercenaries. She’s currently ruling Lenay unopposed and has influence over those weak willed idiots in Atinil and the criminal dominated Valizza.” Quintus interjects. “As you might expect the svelk treat the non-svelk little better than slaves, if they aren’t already.” Quintus goes on to tell you that he’s been warning the senate that having a strong unified svelk dominated power nearby would not be a good thing, but as usual his warnings are mostly going unheard. He says that at the very least there should be steps to support more independence amongst the cities if only to keep Eldolith from gaining more power. He says one of the cities, Regnik is fairly friendly towards the republic and basically the most reliable source of information of what’s going on in the region. Telis is the most isolationist of the bunch, but at least it isn’t under the influence of Eldolith. Not much is known about it save that it seems to be very well defended. The last city is Zo. Though Zo is currently in such dire straits that the six cities may soon become known as the five cities. Zo constantly suffers attacks from orcs. How it remains standing is certainly a testament to its citizens’ resolve, but if the frequency of the attacks keep going the way they are, it won’t matter how stalwart the citizens are. Jennifer finally comes to what was the newest edition to the Empire during your time, the territory consisting of the Felkan Kingdom. Jennifer says that it mostly consists of small hamlets and even a few towns, but none of them are united like a nation or even as big as one of the six cities of Arat. There is one small nation though that calls itself the Red Cap Kingdom. The Red Cap Kingdom is a small nation of militant gnomes. Only gnomes live within its borders and they are fiercely independent and hostile to anyone who isn’t a gnome. They are extremely well defended too and probably the most technologically advanced. They call themselves the Red Caps due to being so merciless in battle that they supposedly dip their hats into the blood of their fallen enemies. “Bloodthirsty gnomes…now I’ve heard everything…” you say nearly laughing. “Well considering all that happened to them, I can’t say I’d blame them for abandoning their pacifism. Always knew we didn’t get all of them. Surprised they came back to the area though.” Jennifer is a bit confused by your statement, obviously not really knowing the whole story, though Quintus seems a little more up on the topic. “My dear Miss Mol, during the time of the Empire, the Felkan Kingdom was secretly run by gnomes who did everything in their power to destroy the Empire. Gnomes as you might imagine were specifically targeted to ensure the safety of the Empire.” Quintus explains to Jennifer. “Yeah…something like that. Though to be quite honest I believe the Emperor just really hated gnomes. He explained his reasons, but I always thought there might be another deeper personal motive. In any case never did learn it, and I didn’t need to. His will was mine and I followed orders.” You remark. This causes an outburst by Quintus who bangs his fist on the table startling Jennifer. “You see that Miss Mol!? Utter dedication! A ruler gave orders and his soldiers carried them out! This why I wish the old Empire still existed! Shit got done back in those days!” Considering how much Quintus bitches about the senate he’s certainly right about the Empire getting shit done. Jennifer continues. “Well the gnomes may have re-entered the area due to being on the run from the other new nation that has reportedly arrived in the area, the Xi Hive.” “Now who the hell are they?!” you ask. “A great danger if the sources are even only half correct.” Quintus interjects. “And a perfect reason for the senate to get their shit together, but will they listen? No of course not! I just get accusations of being a warmongering troublemaker when in fact I’m trying to save all of their ungrateful asses!” Quintus shouts causing you and Jennifer and you to stare at him. Quintus hasn’t really told you what his goals are yet and what role you might play in them, but you can already make a good guess at what one of them might be. “Sorry. Please continue explaining the Xi Hive to our guest, Miss Mol.” Quintus says. “So, the Xi Hive is apparently ruled by a race of insectoid creatures. Almost ant like in nature, they’re probably even directed by a queen. They don’t really have any proper settlements. We think they might be primarily subterranean, but that doesn’t stop them from attacking the humble villages that are on the surface. They don’t leave anyone alive and take survivors as captives; presumably underground where I can only guess they might eat or enslave them. They haven’t attacked any of the major powers yet like the Red Cap Kingdom or one of the six cities, but they have been slowly moving east, so it’s only a matter of time.” You sit there taking all of this in. Orcs running amok, a new gnome nation, united svelk, ant people…and you haven’t even heard the whole sad story on the Nalin Republic yet. “Tell me something is there ANYTHING that didn’t go to fucking hell when the Empire fell?” you ask. Quintus and Jennifer aren’t sure how to respond. They think for a moment and then Quintus thinks of something. “Um…before the cataclysm, Empire was in the process with wiping up gnoll rabble on its western borders wasn’t it?” “Yes.” “Well, they must’ve never recovered from it, because there hasn’t been a gnoll seen in nearly five centuries!” “Gee…well thank the Empire for small victories.” You say shaking your head with your hand on your forehead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While it’s entirely possibly that you’d come out of this thing alive, (You’ve certainly been through worse) there’s little guarantee that anyone else will. If you’re going to keep your “rescuers” alive, you’ll need to be unhindered. “What’re you doing?!” Jennifer asks as you leap on a horse. “I’m getting off this thing, and I suggest if you don’t want to be a big target you will too, there’s another horse here, jump on it and we’ll unhitch the wagon!” Sensing that you’re going to do this whether she likes it or not, she realizes that she doesn’t really have a choice. She jumps on a horse and you take your sword and cut the harness. You tell Jennifer that she should order everyone else to concentrate their gunfire to the left. “Where are you going now?!” “I’m going to take care of the ones on the right!” you shout and ride in their direction. The orcs are so agitated about you heading directly towards them, they practically stop focusing on the caravan and begin firing arrows at you. Of course you anticipated such a thing and cast a shield to protect you and your horse. With your other hand you spray a cone of cold on the orcs closest to you, freezing them quite literally in their tracks. This feat of magic is enough to cause the orcs to attempt to rear up their boars and change direction back towards attacking the caravan. Others are undeterred and continue to head toward you with large weapons in hand. You aim your next spell at their boars, which consists of a couple fire blasts. The pigs go up in a blaze and soon so do their riders who end up dropping their weapons in an attempt to beat out the flames. You turn your attention at the orcs who decided to attack the caravan instead. At first glance the expedition crew have held their own fairly well considering none of them seem to be warriors and they seem to have fended off most of the orcs on the left side. However you see orcs getting the best of a couple of them when they close the gap and begin jumping onto the wagons. You ride back to the caravan and put your own combat skills good use. Orcs may be fierce and unrelenting fighters sometimes, but without the heavy armor that you remember they used to wear for the Empire, they get killed as easily as anyone else if you’re skilled enough, and you’re more than skilled enough. As you battle the orcs, the remaining expedition crew tries to help, though you’re nearly shot a couple of times in the process. You end up yelling at them to stop “helping” you before you start firing at them with something a lot more accurate. Soon after you’ve killed your last orc after hopping from wagon to wagon, you hear Jennifer shouts to everyone that you’ve won and the rest have rode off. The caravan stops for a moment to take some time to clean up dead bodies on the wagons, and gather up any equipment that fell off during the fight. Jennifer comes up to you as you’re cleaning off your own sword. “Well that was exciting to see a real Eternal in action! I knew we were going to be safe with you!” “Hmm, yeah well I almost wasn’t safe with your people, because I nearly got shot a couple times!” “Yeah, sorry about that. Fear of the orcs actually on the wagons was probably causing higher nervousness than usual.” “You should get some soldiers on these trips. Then at least you’d have some people who actually know how to fight when things get a little close.” “We do have soldiers, can’t you tell by the uniforms?” Honestly you hadn’t really paid much attention to the fact that several of the people on this expedition crew do have similar outfits. It’s just regular clothing though, none of it is proper armor, light or heavy. You also now notice that the firearms are much different too, namely they can fire multiple shots before being reloaded. A very handy improvement indeed. You realize that time has definitely marched on, it would seem that shooting someone with a rifle or pistol is the order of the day. Not much use for the old armor if that’s indeed the case. Still, you’re also reminded of the Felkans and their over reliance of such weapons. It would seem the Nalin Republic has the same technological disease. And these people are the supposed “successors” of the Empire. “Guns.” You say shaking your head. “What’s wrong with guns? You don’t think they’re honorable or something?” Jennifer asks. “No, I believe they are very useful and it would be foolish to not employ such weapons of fantastic destruction during battle and war. I just have a problem with the reliance of them in place of natural combat skill, because one day you’re going to run out of bullets and then you see who the real soldier is.” “How is using a gun any different from casting down lightning from your fingers or throwing fireballs around?” “It isn’t in the scheme of things. I just said I don’t have a problem with gunpowder weapons. However you also noticed I didn’t just toss around magic like I had unlimited energy either. I used it when it was needed and engaged in close combat for the rest of them. I could’ve easily just rained down a firestorm and wiped out all of the orcs, but that would’ve taken out the caravan too. Something I’m sure nobody wanted. The Empire used firearms AND magic during the Felkan War, but individually the soldiers were still some of the toughest warriors you’d ever want to face. The Felkans soon learned that fatal fact. Perhaps if their soldiers still had the formidable close combat skills of an Empire soldier, they might not have lost so many battle when physical prowess was needed.” Jennifer doesn’t debate your views or experience, she just thanks you again for your help and you’re soon underway. The rest of the journey is relatively silent. Eventually you arrive in the Nalin Republic. The landscape here is more like you remember, though it isn’t until you get towards the capital of Dalt that you start seeing a resemblance to civilization, but even that’s different when it comes to the architecture and such. You get a few stares from passing citizens. Jennifer and you disembark from the wagons when you arrive at Quintus’ house, or rather his very large mansion, which has guards posted at the gates. Honestly it’s the closest thing resembling the Empire you’ve seen since you got here. “You wait here, I’ll have to speak with Quintus about all this first. While I’m sure he’ll really want to see you, there is protocol to follow.” “Sure, do whatever it is you have to do, I’m not going anywhere, but who is this Quintus anyway?” “Quintus Arillicus is one of the most influential leaders in the senate and as I’ve already mentioned an admirer of old Empire history, but he’ll tell you more when you meet him.” As Jennifer walks through the gates, you’re left standing around with a few guards who give you the stares that you’ve come to expect from everyone. You wait for about ten minutes before you begin to wonder why you’re even entertaining this again. Then you remember, it’s because you don’t have much else to do right now. Though you’re wondering what place you’re going to have in this new world. You imagine that maybe you could be a soldier again though it doesn’t look like there’s a war going on. Doesn’t even look like this place is suffering from any discontent from the citizens, but then looks can be deceiving. Jennifer eventually comes back to the front gate and waves to come with her. “You can come in now. Quintus is very excited to see you!” At this point this Quintus better be just as impressive, because from what little you know of this guy, you’re not nearly as excited to see him. You and Jennifer walk into the mansion and while it’s certainly fancy and has a design style similar to Empire architecture, it isn’t nearly as extraordinary as the first time you saw the Emperor’s palace. Of course you’re a harder sell from those old days. Jennifer and you enter what is apparently a conference room. She says that he shouldn’t be long and you both take a seat at the table. Soon a middle-aged man walks into the room with some guards, but he dismisses them at the door so that you three can be alone. He’s dressed in an older style suit that looks more like those you remember Empire bureaucrats wearing and carries a staff of some sort with him. He also wears several rings. You sense that they all might be magical. Either way you fail to be impressed, just as you suspected you would be. Quintus on the other hand, now that he sees you in person, he’s very impressed. “I never believed in all these years…all the digging…all the research…everything. And none of what I’ve found compares to this! Yes! This is indeed a glorious day! A real live Eternal! Not just any Eternal either, but the one who served the Emperor himself!” Quintus exclaims as he sits down across from you. “Now let me stop you right there. I know you’re all excited and shit, but for me this is going into unknown territory. Possibly even enemy territory. I have no idea WHAT exactly you want with me. I’m going to tell you right now though if you’re thinking of putting me in some sort of museum or some weird aristocratic version of a sideshow like they have at the fairs peasants go to you better get that idea out of your head right now.” Jennifer tries to temper your words, but Quintus raises his hands as if no offense was taken. “It’s alright. Our Eternal friend is quite right to be suspicious of me, but I can honestly tell him there is no reason for him to be because I think my goals will fit his honorable ideals. I’m still sure there is much he wants to know and questions that he has, but I will say that it is my hope that he and I will change history together!” Quintus and Jennifer try to get you fully up to speed on everything first… > The Nalin Republic (Successor to the Empire) After hearing about the terrible state the rest of the former Empire is in, you ask about the land that managed to somewhat keep it together thanks to Brenda. Jennifer says that the cataclysm did hit Nalin, but it didn’t change the landscape so much as it changed the weather patterns. For the longest time, Nalin was about as wet as Delerg was before most of that place just submerged under water. It got so rainy that the Usksha Desert actually started receding. After a hundred years of this, Nalin’s territory grew just due to weather as the usksha nomads retreated deeper into their desert and border raids became non-existent. Meanwhile Nalin continued to slowly evolve. After Brenda’s death, her second in command, Tarna, took power. She ruled much in the same way Brenda did, but not as wisely. She was considered far too authoritarian to an unreasonable degree and she did not have the charisma or respect to pull it off. There were even accusations that she had Brenda assassinated. Whatever the case, after a few decades of her rule, the general public had had enough her. There was a rebellion and she was violently disposed. At first an attempt to rule the Nalin Dominion by a small council of leaders, this worked for a while, but there were still problems with this. In time it was decided that the people wanted to be even better represented, it was around this time that the beginnings of the republic were truly born. The republic in its current form has lasted about two centuries, with alterations in certain procedures and laws here and there. During that time slavery has been completely done away with and there is trade with some of the more reasonable city-states in Arat. There is also trade with the recently re-emerged usksha nomads who apparently have formed their own new government of sorts called the Usksha Emirates. Population here is mostly human, though there are elves here as well. In fact it’s about the only area where they’re treated as full equals now. While kobolds were “assimilated” even during Brenda’s time, they’re still not entirely accepted by everyone despite most of them now being productive members of society. There are even a few usksha that have set up permanent shops and live within the republic. These oddities mostly live on the desert borders and are viewed with suspicion even if there is a peace with their people now. Quintus in particular believes they should go back to their desert and doesn’t like the idea of them not being proper members of the republic since they don’t adopt the language or customs. “Look, I don’t have any problem with the sand savages on a personal level. I’m just saying that if they want to live in the republic, they should learn the language and adopt OUR culture! Even the kobolds make the effort! Of course most of those fat bastards in the senate are just concerned about is maintaining a good relation with the Usksha Emirates so they can line their pockets with the coin made from trade kickbacks. Not to mention all the drugs they allow to go through.” Quintus “Drugs?” you ask. “Oh yes. You haven’t been here long enough to see it, but despite the republic’s veneer of peace there lies a very serious drug problem. The sand savages trade more than just their crystal trinkets and cloth. They deal in a drug known as sandman and make it out of a type of lizard creature that only exists in that desert of theirs. A basilisk I believe. It puts people in a sleep state to the point of near paralysis. I mean it’s almost impossible to wake them up while they’re under the influence. I guess it gives people really intense dreams that most really enjoy, because a lot of people get addicted. Of course a lot don’t wake up either. It’s a major problem yet it’s not the only instance of the senate turning a blind eye to illegal substances coming into the country.” “What else do the usksha bring in?” “Oh it isn’t just the sand savages. It’s also the pirates and smugglers from the Delerg islands. Besides attacking our pathetic excuse for a navy they sneak in that foul brew that makes people go blind. I have no idea why people even want the damn stuff when we have our own superior alcoholic beverages right here. It’s this kind of moral degeneracy and apathy that’s going to lead to our demise if we don’t start doing something about it!” “Can’t the military do something about this or maybe a police force? You ask. “Hah. Jennifer told me of your opinion on our military, and you’re absolutely right. Most of them are not up to the task. They’re not disciplined like they should be and they certainly don’t have the most intensive training. I’ve read about how the Empire used to train its average ground troops. Our soldiers wouldn’t last one day in that form of basic training. As for a police force, we do have the peacekeepers, but they’re even less effective than the military mainly because they have limits on what they’re allowed to do to citizens. Even if said citizen is behaving in a suspicious manner they can’t do anything unless they’ve already slit the throat of some old woman for coin so they can go buy more sandman.” You can certainly understand Quintus’ frustration. The Empire had its share of problems, but maintaining order over the plebs wasn’t one of them. “The senate is made up of a bunch of corrupt plutocrats who aren’t interested in making Nalin better. As I said most of them are only in it for money. Others are just weak willed and go along with the crowd. A few are genuinely dangerous idealistic fools who want to introduce even more liberty amongst the populace! Can you believe that? This place needs more order not less!” You knew this “republic” concept sounded terrible when Jennifer first explained it to you. Looks like you were right. “We’ve become lax and complacent! The orcs of the Quala Badlands are only going to grow in numbers. How long before their numbers become too unmanageable? How long before the Usksha decide to backstab us while we allow them to infiltrate our borders? How long before the svelk unite the six cities and become a power to be feared? How long before the Xi Hive consumes us all?” Quintus continues ranting, you get the impression he’s given a similar speech to the senate on many occasions. “We should be growing stronger by expanding! Instead we’re just rotting on the inside! Even our research in new technology has become stagnant! The gnomes are ahead of us in this way and if the rumors are true, so is the city state of Telis!”’ “What about magic power?” you ask. “Well, even since the cataclysm, magic isn’t very common anywhere anymore. In fact as far as I know the only place that does have it is the city state of Lenay and even then the svelk only have it to a limited degree. If it weren’t for me, we wouldn’t have anything at all. I’ve been funding all these expeditions in the hopes of unearthing powerful magic weapons of the old Empire, but other than the few personal rings you see me wearing, this staff and a few other things I have locked away, I haven’t had much luck. I’ve even tried getting a magic school started in the hopes that perhaps there are some latent mages or perhaps a hedge wizard out there, but the idea was dismissed as a waste of public funds.” Quintus goes on about the failings of the republic for quite some time, but it all is sort of boring you. The republic is a weak inefficient state that coddles its citizens and is run by corrupt fools. You got it the first time. Jennifer told you Quintus was influential, but so far all you’ve heard is a lot of his failures to get things accomplished. You certainly hope he’s got a better plan of action than just whining.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>In for a silver, in for a sack as they say. If this spell is going to protect you from the Emperor, you’d best stick with it and worry about Semra’s intentions later. Though at this point you don’t even feel any pain on your side of things, but maybe that’s because you aren’t trying to hide anything from her. Your life has more or less always been an open book. You’ve never really hidden anything because you’ve usually come clean eventually anyway. You’re not even going to be hiding your desires to kill the Emperor pretty soon. If Semra’s hoping to learn something to use against you, she’s in for disappointment. She already knows most of your combat techniques having taught most of them to you. She already knows your mindset well enough that she has more influence over you than you’d like. She already is well aware of your feelings towards her. There is quite literally nothing she is going to find out that won’t give her any advantage that she doesn’t already have. Yet you can sense she STILL wants more, its almost as if she’s insecure about not having total control over you. You sense a lot of that actually. She can’t comprehend why you can have a sexual desire for her, yet not desire her in the way you did with Alison. She’s at a loss on what to do about it. And that confusion is a big ball of anger, frustration and pain. Suddenly you see the image of a young svelk girl. You aren’t sure how old, but by human standards she would definitely be considered a child. It’s Semra and she is holding the hand of an adult male svelk though you can never quite make out his face. They are both in a city where a large crowd of svelk are gathered having a good time throwing what looks to be sveld babies against a nearby wall which has a big target on it. Semra looks very happy and cheers whenever one splats into a bloody mess in the center. It would seem that Semra’s entertainment preferences didn’t change much for her. Several images of her enjoying similar activities with the same adult male flood your mind. You can only guess that the adult male might be her father, but Semra must be blocking you from confirming that. In any case, the idea that she was once a child is bizarre, but then everyone starts as one at some point right? She had a twisted childhood to be sure, but she had more of a childhood than you ever did. Just as think you’re starting to see more images of a personal nature, the contact is broken off and Semra pushes you away. “There. It’s done. Let’s get this over with.” She remarks while rubbing the sides of her head. She also starts rubbing her eyes and is sniffling a bit. You’re silent for a moment, just staring at her. You know that she must be hiding loads of whatever unhappy memories she does have. And she certainly can’t have you seeing them, she can’t trust you enough to believe you wouldn’t mock her in some way or exploit a weakness. “WHAT?!” she shouts when she notices you staring. “Nothing. Keep your secrets. Like you said, let’s get this over with.” As you make your way to the door to the Emperor’s chamber, you do feel the connection of your mind to Semra’s. Its not like you can read her thoughts, but its rather a sixth sense kind of feeling. You’re curious how this will play out during battle. After speaking the password, the door opens and you both enter the Emperor’s chambers. You look at each other, simultaneously cast your magical shield spells and spread out. Almost immediately you hear the voice of the Emperor, though he hasn’t made an appearance yet. “So it’s come to this has it? After all I’ve done for you. After all I’ve given you. You turn traitor for a piece of svelk tail?” The Emperor steps out from his bedroom. “Son, I am disappointed.” He says and then just stares immediately in your direction. You feel a slight pain in your head, but its muted. Semra’s shielding spell must be working. The Emperor looks genuinely shocked. Its an expression you don’t think you’ve ever seen before on him. “You…you let this…creature into your mind?! Have you gone mad?!” “Probably.” You remark and cast a lightning blast at the Emperor, but he easily deflects it back at you causing it to hit your force shield and knocking you to the floor. Semra casts a spray of acid, and while it sizzles and melts objects within the designated direction, the Emperor’s own defenses absorb it. Realizing he can’t just explode your brain, he casts a spell, which starts to turn the room very cold. You’re reminded of the time you cast this spell on Cyrus’ crew and you immediately cast a ring of fire around yourself in the hopes the heat will be enough to keep you from freezing. You follow up with a volley of small fireballs, which set the many bookshelves in the room ablaze. “You’ve made a dire mistake son, trusting this svelk whore. Even if you could defeat me, do you really think she’d allow you to live? She’s lying to you son. She always has and I thought you were stronger than that.” The Emperor remarks as sheets of ice cover the room extinguishing some of the flames. “And you weren’t lying to me?! You had Alison murdered and you planned to kill me as well!” you shout back as you release your feet from the ice that has managed to encase around them. The Emperor sends a flash of light that blinds you and Semra. You stumble around to the left since you remember there being a solid stone table you can take cover behind. “(Sigh) Even if any of that was true my son, what of it? I was your father! Your master! Your life was mine to do with as I saw fit! Of course none it matters now. You’ve decided to stand against me and now your life is most certainly mine to take.” You hear the Emperor say and then suddenly hear loud lighting blast followed by a yelp sound to your far right. Must be Semra, but you’re still half blind from that flash of light. “Ha ha! Not as strong as we thought eh Semra? You always were an overconfident bitch. Won’t be long before I break through your pathetic force shield.” Your eyes clear up enough and see Semra across the room struggling to maintain her shield from a steady blast of lightning unleashed by the Emperor. Seeing that trading magic isn’t going to work, you put up your own shield and try to make your way over to the Emperor to just butcher him, but the combination of your hampered eyesight and icy floor are enough to slow you down. “Ever the warrior aren’t we son? Here, play with these!” the Emperor shouts and stops his attack on Semra, waves his hands and suddenly five hovering undead figures appear. You cast an enchantment spell on your sword and press forward to battle. Meanwhile Semra has taken advantage of her second wind and cast a telekinesis spell throwing a table directly into the Emperor. She follows this up with smacking him with several other smaller objects. He falls to the floor and re-establishes his own magic shield. “Keep up the pressure!” Semra shouts. You’d love to, but right now you’re trying to destroy the undead creatures in from of you. While you’ve never faced such things before, you keep your cool and successfully cut down three of them. “You fools know nothing of the power you face! Now face the true supremacy of a necromancer!” the Emperor shouts and the entire room gets even colder, but this isn’t even like the cold of ice or snow, this is something unnatural. You start to feel the tips of your fingers go numb and feel your energy starting to be drained. It’s like when Cyrus touched you, but this is all around you. You nearly get your head cleaved in by one of the wraiths as you start feel dizzy. You dodge the attack and slash the thing in two. The last one is taken down with a blast of fire from Semra who you sense is feeling the affects of the Emperor’s magic too. You stagger and prop yourself up on a burned lab desk. The Emperor stands only a few feet away, but he seems so far for you to do anything. You look over and see Semra staggers towards him, but collapses and begins screaming. You aren’t sure what the Emperor’s doing, but his eyes are glowing red. “A scared little girl still crying about her lost birthright. That’s all you are and all you ever will be. You svelk think you know about pain and death, but you know nothing! I’ll show you true pain and soon I’ll show you death and the endless torture that can come after it!” Semra’s confidence that the Emperor couldn’t do anything to her mind because of her race has proven false. While he’s not exploding her brain you do sense he’s creating some sort of waking nightmare in her mind. She’s literally crying and begging for him to stop, she even looks over to you reaching out with both hands telling you she’s sorry. She pleads with you to help her and that she needs your strength. You never thought you’d ever feel a slight twinge of sympathy for her. In any event, you’re not exactly doing so well yourself. You aren’t even sure if you could help Semra even if you wanted to given how weak you feel. Though your chances of making a lunging attack to kill the Emperor are equally as slim. > You attack the Emperor Semra’s just going to have to suffer a bit longer because you need to kill the Emperor. Besides, if you do kill him, you will have helped her anyway. You stagger towards the Emperor and raise your sword in an effort to strike him, but it’s a clumsy attack that he easily evades. He instead grabs your sword hand and you feel an even greater drain on your energy than you did before. “Tch. Tch. What were you thinking son? I guess you weren’t otherwise you wouldn’t have tried to kill me in the first place.” The Emperor continues to drain you of your life and it doesn’t take long before you see your hand shrivel and wizen before your eyes. Your entire body soon follows this sequence until your organs fail and death is instantaneous though definitely not painless.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 35 While you’ve never been excessively fond of these important meetings because they take you away from the battlefield, you like them even less nowadays due to having to see the Emperor in such a weakened state. You remember when he first started displaying the signs of being unwell; you dismissed it and thought that he’d eventually get better. Five years have passed since you found out and he’s only gotten worse. He barely gets out of bed anymore. Most of these important meetings take place while he remains horizontal under his blankets. He’s still mobile, but he tries to conserve his strength for when it’s necessary. He’s never even told you what it is that’s causing his decline, though you’ve never thought to ask. (And Jacob certainly hasn’t) It may just be old age finally catching up with him which means there is nothing that can be done hence why he doesn’t bother bringing it up. Its funny how when you first met him that he looked so healthy. You thought he was immortal despite him telling you that he really wasn’t. Now you know he wasn’t just being humble. You and Jacob have been doing your best as usual in carrying out his most important orders. Though today the order is given specifically to you. You have to go meet with Marik. Marik’s been running a secret experiment for the last sixteen years and says that its finally ready. The Emperor knew about it and actually told him to abandon it on more than one occasion, but Marik insisted that it would be a good idea, so the Emperor relented as long as it didn’t interfere with project that would be of a more direct benefit for the Empire. When you arrive at Marik’s underground lab, he takes you through a metal door that opens up to a platformed level, which overlooks a huge room. It’s nearly the size of a small hamlet you think. There are several ladders that descend down to the lower level which contain translucent containers all hooked up with tubing and connected with each other and large strange machines. Even from this distance you can make out figures floating in liquid within the containers. This experiment: Breeding a new army of Eternals. The derro has been growing them in these tanks. Literally hundreds, possibly even a thousand. “So…this is what you were hiding behind this metal door when I came here over ten years ago. Knew something else was going on.” You say as you stand on a balcony overlooking all the rows of tanks. Unlike you and your siblings these Eternals were practically “made.” From your understanding they went from some woman’s womb to the tank immediately. (You can only hazard a guess what might’ve become of the mothers, but nothing good no doubt) From there they’ve been getting “grown” into the perfect soldiers. Marik has explained to you the “science” of what he’s done, but some of it is going over your head. Personally you don’t even think Marik understands all of it himself, he just believes it all works. While Marik did use human babies for this second generation of Eternals most would probably tell you that there isn’t anything human about them. Given what’s been said about you as well you can’t really disagree. You are better than the average or even above average human in every way. You watch as two of them are released from their tanks, already teenagers and able to understand everything that is told to them. They’re given weapons and display great skill with them when ordered to fight each other. Probably just as good as most Empire soldiers. Still, there’s something about these Eternals that doesn’t sit right with you. Maybe its because Marik was involved and that his experiments can be hit or miss. Maybe its because you feel that without the experiences of training they don’t truly know what its like to struggle and earn their place. Whatever the reason, you don’t feel like they are Eternals. As little in common as you have with your own siblings you still feel a small bond there. You have nothing in common with these tank babies. They’re something else as far as you’re concerned. However, none of this matters. What does matter is if these so called new Eternals are going to actually be an asset to the Empire. From what you’ve seen they aren’t without skill, but they’re going to need to be field tested along with drilling the concepts of loyalty and duty into them. “Sure, they look pretty, but can they fight?” you say after seeing the demonstration. This annoys Marik. He starts sputtering and stammering to the point where you think he’s going to go into a seizure. “You just SAW what they’re capable of! How can you even say such a thing?” “Yes, they were okay for children. I suppose we can find a place for them somewhere. Perhaps we can…” “Bah! You’re just jealous!” Marik interrupts. “Excuse me? Jealous?” you ask. “Yes! They’re already the perfect warriors and didn’t need any training at all! They didn’t need all the hand holding nonsense that you had to go through to become a killing machine. Face it, these Eternals are the future!” You stare at Marik in disbelief that he dares to say such a thing to you. To his credit, Marik doesn’t back down, he stares back at you, ignoring your eyes burning through him. “You can give me that stare of death all you want Eternal.” Marik remarks. “Alright…open up ten of the tanks. Let’s put them to a real test.” “What? So you can incinerate them with your magic?” “If they’re truly as good as you claim then my advantages shouldn’t matter, but since you seem to be unsure of your creations now. I’ll make it easy for you. Open up twenty of the tanks and I won’t use one damn cantrip.” Marik starts making that annoying high pitched laugh you hate so much then he suddenly gets very serious. “Were you planning on fighting them right now?” Marik asks. “While I’m sure watching me slaughtering twenty naked teenagers would prove my point, I said I was going to make this easy. No, you go equip your twenty creations with whatever armor and weapons you wish. I’ll wait.” You wait as Marik orders twenty tanks opened up and has a few of his derro friends herd these children into another room presumably to get outfitted. Marik soon follows behind to oversee personally. While you wait, you reflect on the fact that they’re all the same age as you were when you first got to meet the Emperor. It was one of the greatest days of your life when that happened. This happy moment passes very quickly when you have to dwell on the fact that the Emperor is now on his deathbed. You have no idea what’s going to happen when the inevitable happens. Sometimes you look at the Emperor now and you wonder if that is what you have to look forward to when you get old. Is that the fate of everyone? No matter how powerful? What’s the point of it all? Will the Empire even survive when the Emperor dies? He doesn’t have a successor. You have often wondered if you would be it, but he’s never mentioned it. Even if you were, you can’t imagine ever doing the job better or even as well than he could. Leading armies is one thing, but an entire nation? You don’t know if you’d have the patience for it. You’re a soldier not a ruler and yet you couldn’t dream of serving any other ruler except the one you think of as father. Your mood starts getting worse because you also start dwelling on less pleasant aspects of your sixteenth year before you met the Emperor. It always comes back to her. Why the hell can’t you get her out of your head? Even now the woman hasn’t been seen in three years and yet she still comes back to fucking torment you. Alison’s dead, the Emperor’s dying, these new “eternals” are obviously meant to replace you, your own future is uncertain, Semra still haunts your thoughts… At this point you wonder if it wouldn’t just be best if you let these damn tank babies kill you. It would at least be a warrior’s death and you’d die when the Empire was going through a second golden age of sorts. You had some good times and saw several major threats to the Empire destroyed. Why stick around to see a man you have nothing but respect for continue to whither and die? Why see the potential slow decline of a nation you spent all your life trying to keep from the brink of chaos? Maybe it is time to step aside gracefully and be replaced… > You retire You think back to when you had to “retire” Kane. Different circumstances of course, but he knew when it was time. You know when its time too and the time is now. However, you aren’t going to accept death so easily. It’s going to have to be earned. Doesn’t take long before twenty tank babies along with the other two that were involved in the first demonstration come out fully decked out in armor and weapons. Surprisingly the derro didn’t deck them all out in the heaviest body encasing armor they could give them, though there are at least half of them dressed in such a manner. You can’t help notice that the derro didn’t limit their weapons to close combat, you see some with firearms. “Well here they are! Where the hell are you? Hehehehehehe! Did you lose your nerve and run away already?” Marik says calling out for you. Then you jump from the top of one of the tanks you climbed up on and bring your sword down on one of the tank babies, and quickly stab another in the throat with your dagger. You take advantage of their confusion by dispatching the ones with gunpowder weapons first. After snatching one of their flintlocks and blowing the head off of one, Marik tries to rally the tank babies with a simple instruction. “Don’t just stand there letting him massacre the lot of you, kill him!” You cut down another three and begin to get into battle mode. “Marik, release more of them!” you shout ducking a mace at your head. “What?!” “I said release more of these tank babies! If they’re going to replace me, they need to learn and these aren’t going to be enough to teach that lesson!” you shout back and dispatch the mace wielding tank baby. You’re too busy fighting to pay too much attention to what Marik is doing, but the sound of several tanks opening up followed by the sound several new footsteps are an indication that he listened to you. You slay more of them and demand that Marik keep throwing more at you. The tank babies aren’t without skill, but you’re proving to be a little too much for them to handle. Thoughts of “retirement” begin to leave your mind, and this thrill of battle is giving you that renewed incentive to live. Unfortunately you don’t anticipate your derro host to take matters into his own hands. Seems Marik isn’t pleased with you easily killing off his experiments. “Svelk loving bastard!” you hear Marik shout and then followed by a shot from a high platform above. The bullet hits you in the side and causes you to fall to the floor. The tank babies that you were currently fighting take advantage of the situation and gleefully stab at you or bludgeon you with maces and clubs. You try to get back up, but you’re overwhelmed and too badly wounded. Boots stomp and kick your body followed by several blades through your internal organs. You’re finally finished off by another gunshot to your head. Later on Marik explains to the Emperor that you insisted on fighting fifty of the new eternals to test them and that despite his warnings you were killed in the ensuing melee. If you were still alive you probably would be honored that the Emperor had Marik killed soon afterwards.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With revenge filling every inch of your body you immediately open the carriage door with the intent of climbing up to meet your attacker. No sooner have you opened the door when a rotting hand from above attempts to stab you in the face with a dagger. The blade superficially wounds you as it slices across your cheek. Unfazed you immediately grab the hand and pull down as hard as you can. The moment you do so you suddenly feel an unnatural drain of energy. Magic is definitely at work here and it’s sapping your strength. Despite this, the shadow tumbles off of the roof, but on its way down it grabs your own arm with its other hand and the pair of you fall from the carriage. Unfortunately, when you’re pulled out of the carriage you don’t clear it completely and your ankle is run over by one of the back wheels of the carriage that is still in motion. The bone snaps and you know it’s broken along with your nose when you fell flat on your face on the hard road. The shadow has recovered from his own fall much better having landed on his feet. You push yourself up just in time for his foot to kick you in the ribs. You roll away struggling to put some distance between yourself and the attacker. “Y’know when I was brought back I was given very specific instructions not to kill you…but I believe I will ignore them. After all I’m already dead, what else can be done to me?” you hear the shadow hiss in a raspy tone. You attempt to raise your hand to cast a flame blast, but the shadow grabs your wrist and you feel an even greater drain on your strength than you did before. At this close range you can smell the rot more strongly. “Oh no, you burned me once before, not again.” The shadow hisses as it drains your energy. With its recent comments, you realize this isn’t just a shadow or even some undead horror possibly masquerading as one. It’s Cyrus. Your whole body feels like its been beaten with a stone pillar yet you manage to muster the strength to pull your dagger and stab Cyrus repeatedly. You aren’t even aware of where you’re aiming, you stab it in the arm, in the shoulder, in the chest, in the face and wherever else you can reach until it lets you go and staggers back with your dagger still in its body. You’re dizzy, weak, and have only one good foot, but try to stand up anyway. Cyrus pulls the dagger from his body and does his typical shadow speed tactic in an attempt to rush into you with the dagger. You barely manage to put up a small force shield to block the blade from going into your stomach. Still the impact of the hit knocks you back down to the ground breaking your concentration on the spell. Cyrus kneels down to grab your neck, he’s not even squeezing and you feel the life leaving your body. You start to fade in and out of consciousness. “Now I’m going to show you something truly eternal. Death. They say the dead feel nothing, but that’s not true. It’s a lie just like the lie I believed about Dendrin meeting me for the afterlife. You know what I experienced instead? A very dark place filled with pain until I was ripped out of it and put back here on this mortal realm. That’s where you’re going brother. You’re going to a very dark place filled with pain and I’m going enjoy every moment putting you there.” At this point you have no idea what the hell Cyrus is speaking about, all you know is he’s more talkative in death than he ever was in life and that if he’s going to kill you, you wish he’d just shut up and do it already. Things get fuzzy again just as Cyrus’ fingers release your neck. What happens next is a blur. You do hear familiar female voice though. “This one is not yours to take, revenant.” This is followed by an inhuman scream and a bright light which is piercing even with your eyes nearly closed. Between the screaming, the bright light and your weakened state it’s all too much for you and start to pass out. You see a female shape with long hair standing over you, but you can’t make out the face. “…Alison?” you struggle to whisper. “(Sigh) Blind to your true allies and lovers as always.” The figure says and then lays your dagger on your body. “Here, I know how much you treasure this gift to you.” “Oh…fuck…” you say as you pass out. You don’t know how long you’re out for, but when you come to you’re in a spare bed in the Emperor’s quarters. Your ankle and nose feel tender but they don’t feel broken anymore. You look to your left and see the Emperor standing nearby with a walking stick in hand. “Ah, you’re awake and looking much better too. You looked about as bad as I do when Jacob first dragged you in here.” The Emperor remarks, sitting in a chair near you. “Jacob found me?” “No, actually Warrick and some of the Eyes picked you up off the road when a travelling patrol reported coming across your body and an overturned carriage crashed into a tree a few feet away. I requested that you be brought to me personally when I heard the news. You were severely injured, and I was damned if I was going to let anyone else bumble in the attempt to help you get better.” “Alison?” you ask. “I’m sorry son, but she’s dead. If that bolt to the eye didn’t do it, her neck was broken in the crash.” The Emperor remarks. You want to cry out, but you just don’t have the energy right now. You still feel woozy for one thing, the other is you had little hope that she was still alive anyway. The moment you saw that bolt in her eye, the moment you felt her blood on your face, the moment you felt her body go completely limp in your arms…you knew then she was dead. “Did you need some time alone?” the Emperor asks. “No…I suppose I already knew.” You respond. “I’m sort of overwhelmed by everything that happened. I imagine I will grieve later for her.” “I know how much she meant to you. I know she was also a loyal soldier and officer. She will be missed not just by you, but also by the Empire as a whole. Whatever type of funeral you wish for her, you know you’ve got it. I mean if you want a holiday to…” “That…isn’t necessary. I believe I will just have a simple funeral for her. She was like me, she didn’t seek out a lot of attention.” “As you wish. Remember though, whatever you need. You got it.” “Can you manage an execution for a certain svelk bitch?” The Emperor starts one of his coughing fits before answering. “I assume you’re talking about Mistress. Yes, I fear I did uncover some evidence that it was she that was behind all this chaos. How did you know about her involvement though? Is she the one that attacked your carriage?” You explain to the Emperor what happened. He seems surprised to hear that the shadow wasn’t alive and was in fact undead. He concludes that Mistress must’ve raised Cyrus from the dead since she certainly has the skill to do it. “Necromancy eh? Raising the dead is dangerous stuff to dabble in, especially when summoning something as powerful as a revenant. (cough cough) Very difficult to command something that’s dead, yet still control of most of the skills they possessed in their old life. Too willful. Still I didn’t think that even she would be insane enough to try something like this. Her obsession (cough) with you must be great indeed. I’m not even sure what she hoped to accomplish, other than more chaos and strife I suppose. Hmm, well I guess that does sound like a svelk.” “All I know is she deliberately set this up. Her standing over me as if she was my savior. I’m not fucking fooled! Next time I see her, she’s dead!” “Well unfortunately Miss Semra D’vessa has fled the Empire and who knows where she’s gone. There aren’t even many svelk mercs within borders of the Empire anymore. There still might be a few in Rask, (cough cough) if you’d like I could make that law to have all svelk executed on sight. Hell, I think I’ll do that anyway. Someone needs to take the blame for this and it’ll certainly make the citizens happy to have mass hangings of dark elves. I know the elves will love it.” While the Emperor’s attempts to cheer you up with small acts of genocide are kind, you begin to feel the need to be by yourself. Your silence and your eyes looking downward are all the signs that the Emperor needs to take his leave. “Don’t worry son. We’ll get her.” He says and then leaves you to your solitude. You sit in bed for a long time trying to take everything in. Alison is gone. You’ll never see her smile, you’ll never feel her touch, you’ll never hear her voice, you’ll never enjoy anything involving her ever again. You almost feel like you don’t want to go on living and you never thought you’d ever feel something like that especially since survival has been beat and ingrained into your very being. That isn’t the worst of it though. You didn’t even get revenge on the one that killed her. In fact her assassin would’ve killed you as well if you hadn’t been saved, but that’s still not the worst of it. Semra…Mistress…svelk bitch…whatever you call her. She saved your life. As far as you’re concerned that’s the worst of it. However you’ll get over it and grow stronger from this experience. You always do. All it takes is time. > You empire Expansion (Year 33) Year 33 While the Emperor may be physically sick, his ambition remains perfectly fine and the Empire continues to grow thanks to you leading its armies. Shortly after the death of Roldan, you were assigned to the eastern frontier of Nalin just as you thought you might. Though with Roldan dead, you also thought you might immediately get reassigned to take care of the gnolls, but expansion westward was put on hold since there was no longer an immediate danger. You worked with Brenda for some of the campaign. She was most familiar with the region east of Nalin and had scouts sent that way many times. You remember during Roldan’s funeral you wondered if she might be angry with you for your inability to kill the assassin that killed her husband, but apparently what really happened was made a secret. You got credit for killing Cyrus and then Semra ambushed you and left you for dead. As a result, Brenda has always treated you with a lot of respect and gratitude. She may even feel a certain kinship with you since you both experienced loss of a significant other. Brenda however has never forgiven Warrick who she felt was supposed to be in charge of security that day. Indeed he and several Eyes might’ve normally been executed for incompetence or even suspicion of treason, however he swore up and down that he believed everything to be secure. As upset as Jacob was, he said Warrick was not at fault and surprisingly neither did the Emperor. Besides you all know it was really the work of Semra anyway. In any case, Brenda’s scout information proved most useful. There was a small tribal war going on between four separate groups, though all of them are hostile save for one of the and that’s mainly because the other three have come in contact with the Empire before. Two of them are human barbarian tribes, one them is elven, but much wilder than what you know of them and the last one is a race you’re not familiar with called the Slin. They’re reptilian in nature though, similar to the kobolds, but much larger and meaner. The fools obviously thought they could escape the reach of the Empire by hiding, they soon learn that they cannot hide from the Emperor’s wrath. The Belkaz were one of the human barbarian tribes. Since they had no prior hostilities to the Empire, they were dealt with first diplomatically. Of course your version of diplomacy meant that their most argumentative and hostile members were executed as an example and the rest were given warning that if they do not submit then the rest of them will be put in chains at best or follow their executed brethren at worst. Doesn’t take long for them to submit and provide further intelligence on their rivals. The other human tribe, the Fleg were the next to fall. The Emperor told you that he vaguely remembered the Fleg. Said they were a very minor cult that cropped up and became disruptive in the Nalin province about a century ago. The Emperor doesn’t quite remember what the hell they worshipped, but that like most religions it was subversive to the proper order of things. The Empire stomped it out, but it can be assumed that some of the members fled here and these were their descendants. They didn’t provide much of a challenge despite their fanatical beliefs in whatever gods they worshipped. Ultimately their cult was finally wiped out for good when you got to their last village you found that they all committed ritual suicide. The wild elf tribe was next. They were fierce fighters at first, but after you wiped out the Fleg and started making great progress against the Slin, something in them must’ve changed. It’s as if all their courage left them. These elves were all former slaves that managed to run away from the Empire during the chaos of the Halfling rebelling long ago. The elder that lead them actually called for a white flag parley with you and spoke of how he should’ve known it was folly to run away and that the Empire would eventually find them again even if it took them hundreds of years. You told him that it was indeed foolish, but that his realization of this reality wouldn’t be enough to save the remainder of his people. You have all the elves slaughtered like the cowering dogs they are. Their begging and pleas fall on deaf ears and sicken you. Part of you briefly wonders if you should spare the children and take them back as slaves, but then you think, why run that risk again in another couple decades? They’re already tainted with the idea of “freedom” and will only repeat the mistakes of their parents and grandparents. Finally, the last to fall are the Slin. The Emperor told you that he remembered the Slin and thought he’d made a point of making them extinct centuries ago. They originally dwelled in the swamps of Delerg and were once at hostilities with the Shadows that lived there as well. Wasn’t long after the Shadows made their convenient alliance with the Empire that the Slin started taking heavy losses against them. It was thought to be the case that the shadows were successful in killing them all, but it seems they were not and the Slin ultimately had the last laugh of outliving their former foes. Though not for long. Still, they fought to the last, giving no quarter and showing none themselves, they were about the only worthy enemy you fought against in this region. In many ways to be admired. With the four major inhabitants subdued, the region was claimed and it will only be a matter of time before proper Empire citizens settle it. Further east leads to vast open sea. You predict that in time as the coast is settled the Empire will eventually have a navy to rival its army and who know, new lands may be conquered across the ocean. There are certainly tales of other such lands. After this victory, the next bit of business was finishing off the gnolls. You were put in charge of this as well and it didn’t really take too long. You and Alison had broken most of the might of the gnoll tribes long ago. Roldan was just mopping up the remnants and you complete the task at last. With the last major gnoll lair destroyed the Empire expanded its western borders even further. What lies beyond is a little bit of a mystery as there are no major reports of any organized societies, though there are certainly reports of other civilizations beyond the immediate western wilderness, they are very far away. Whatever they may be you’re confident that they will be no match for the Empire. Of course these thoughts of future victories are all you have now to keep yourself in a positive mood nowadays. Your recent success has basically ensured that further major expansion and conquest won’t be necessary for quite some time. Alison’s gone and the Emperor’s health is still poor and showing no signs of improving. It is no wonder that your mind drifts into possible better days ahead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With revenge filling every inch of your body you immediately open the carriage door with the intent of climbing up to meet your attacker. No sooner have you opened the door when a rotting hand from above attempts to stab you in the face with a dagger. The blade superficially wounds you as it slices across your cheek. Unfazed you immediately grab the hand and pull down as hard as you can. The moment you do so you suddenly feel an unnatural drain of energy. Magic is definitely at work here and it’s sapping your strength. Despite this, the shadow tumbles off of the roof, but on its way down it grabs your own arm with its other hand and the pair of you fall from the carriage. Unfortunately, when you’re pulled out of the carriage you don’t clear it completely and your ankle is run over by one of the back wheels of the carriage that is still in motion. The bone snaps and you know it’s broken along with your nose when you fell flat on your face on the hard road. The shadow has recovered from his own fall much better having landed on his feet. You push yourself up just in time for his foot to kick you in the ribs. You roll away struggling to put some distance between yourself and the attacker. “Y’know when I was brought back I was given very specific instructions not to kill you…but I believe I will ignore them. After all I’m already dead, what else can be done to me?” you hear the shadow hiss in a raspy tone. You attempt to raise your hand to cast a flame blast, but the shadow grabs your wrist and you feel an even greater drain on your strength than you did before. At this close range you can smell the rot more strongly. “Oh no, you burned me once before, not again.” The shadow hisses as it drains your energy. With its recent comments, you realize this isn’t just a shadow or even some undead horror possibly masquerading as one. It’s Cyrus. Your whole body feels like its been beaten with a stone pillar yet you manage to muster the strength to pull your dagger and stab Cyrus repeatedly. You aren’t even aware of where you’re aiming, you stab it in the arm, in the shoulder, in the chest, in the face and wherever else you can reach until it lets you go and staggers back with your dagger still in its body. You’re dizzy, weak, and have only one good foot, but try to stand up anyway. Cyrus pulls the dagger from his body and does his typical shadow speed tactic in an attempt to rush into you with the dagger. You barely manage to put up a small force shield to block the blade from going into your stomach. Still the impact of the hit knocks you back down to the ground breaking your concentration on the spell. Cyrus kneels down to grab your neck, he’s not even squeezing and you feel the life leaving your body. You start to fade in and out of consciousness. “Now I’m going to show you something truly eternal. Death. They say the dead feel nothing, but that’s not true. It’s a lie just like the lie I believed about Dendrin meeting me for the afterlife. You know what I experienced instead? A very dark place filled with pain until I was ripped out of it and put back here on this mortal realm. That’s where you’re going brother. You’re going to a very dark place filled with pain and I’m going enjoy every moment putting you there.” At this point you have no idea what the hell Cyrus is speaking about, all you know is he’s more talkative in death than he ever was in life and that if he’s going to kill you, you wish he’d just shut up and do it already. Things get fuzzy again just as Cyrus’ fingers release your neck. What happens next is a blur. You do hear familiar female voice though. “This one is not yours to take, revenant.” This is followed by an inhuman scream and a bright light which is piercing even with your eyes nearly closed. Between the screaming, the bright light and your weakened state it’s all too much for you and start to pass out. You see a female shape with long hair standing over you, but you can’t make out the face. “…Alison?” you struggle to whisper. “(Sigh) Blind to your true allies and lovers as always.” The figure says and then lays your dagger on your body. “Here, I know how much you treasure this gift to you.” “Oh…fuck…” you say as you pass out. You don’t know how long you’re out for, but when you come to you’re in a spare bed in the Emperor’s quarters. Your ankle and nose feel tender but they don’t feel broken anymore. You look to your left and see the Emperor standing nearby with a walking stick in hand. “Ah, you’re awake and looking much better too. You looked about as bad as I do when Jacob first dragged you in here.” The Emperor remarks, sitting in a chair near you. “Jacob found me?” “No, actually Warrick and some of the Eyes picked you up off the road when a travelling patrol reported coming across your body and an overturned carriage crashed into a tree a few feet away. I requested that you be brought to me personally when I heard the news. You were severely injured, and I was damned if I was going to let anyone else bumble in the attempt to help you get better.” “Alison?” you ask. “I’m sorry son, but she’s dead. If that bolt to the eye didn’t do it, her neck was broken in the crash.” The Emperor remarks. You want to cry out, but you just don’t have the energy right now. You still feel woozy for one thing, the other is you had little hope that she was still alive anyway. The moment you saw that bolt in her eye, the moment you felt her blood on your face, the moment you felt her body go completely limp in your arms…you knew then she was dead. “Did you need some time alone?” the Emperor asks. “No…I suppose I already knew.” You respond. “I’m sort of overwhelmed by everything that happened. I imagine I will grieve later for her.” “I know how much she meant to you. I know she was also a loyal soldier and officer. She will be missed not just by you, but also by the Empire as a whole. Whatever type of funeral you wish for her, you know you’ve got it. I mean if you want a holiday to…” “That…isn’t necessary. I believe I will just have a simple funeral for her. She was like me, she didn’t seek out a lot of attention.” “As you wish. Remember though, whatever you need. You got it.” “Can you manage an execution for a certain svelk bitch?” The Emperor starts one of his coughing fits before answering. “I assume you’re talking about Mistress. Yes, I fear I did uncover some evidence that it was she that was behind all this chaos. How did you know about her involvement though? Is she the one that attacked your carriage?” You explain to the Emperor what happened. He seems surprised to hear that the shadow wasn’t alive and was in fact undead. He concludes that Mistress must’ve raised Cyrus from the dead since she certainly has the skill to do it. “Necromancy eh? Raising the dead is dangerous stuff to dabble in, especially when summoning something as powerful as a revenant. (cough cough) Very difficult to command something that’s dead, yet still control of most of the skills they possessed in their old life. Too willful. Still I didn’t think that even she would be insane enough to try something like this. Her obsession (cough) with you must be great indeed. I’m not even sure what she hoped to accomplish, other than more chaos and strife I suppose. Hmm, well I guess that does sound like a svelk.” “All I know is she deliberately set this up. Her standing over me as if she was my savior. I’m not fucking fooled! Next time I see her, she’s dead!” “Well unfortunately Miss Semra D’vessa has fled the Empire and who knows where she’s gone. There aren’t even many svelk mercs within borders of the Empire anymore. There still might be a few in Rask, (cough cough) if you’d like I could make that law to have all svelk executed on sight. Hell, I think I’ll do that anyway. Someone needs to take the blame for this and it’ll certainly make the citizens happy to have mass hangings of dark elves. I know the elves will love it.” While the Emperor’s attempts to cheer you up with small acts of genocide are kind, you begin to feel the need to be by yourself. Your silence and your eyes looking downward are all the signs that the Emperor needs to take his leave. “Don’t worry son. We’ll get her.” He says and then leaves you to your solitude. You sit in bed for a long time trying to take everything in. Alison is gone. You’ll never see her smile, you’ll never feel her touch, you’ll never hear her voice, you’ll never enjoy anything involving her ever again. You almost feel like you don’t want to go on living and you never thought you’d ever feel something like that especially since survival has been beat and ingrained into your very being. That isn’t the worst of it though. You didn’t even get revenge on the one that killed her. In fact her assassin would’ve killed you as well if you hadn’t been saved, but that’s still not the worst of it. Semra…Mistress…svelk bitch…whatever you call her. She saved your life. As far as you’re concerned that’s the worst of it. However you’ll get over it and grow stronger from this experience. You always do. All it takes is time. > You kane's Retirement (Year 34) Year 34 Through the extreme cold, the wailing the winds and the relentless snow, you look up and finally see your destination in sight; A lonely outpost which consist of a small watch hut on a hill near the Rask Mountains. How the hell such a structure continues to exist is amazing. The rough weather around here is bad enough, but the fact that it exists on the very edge of ogre and giant territory and who knows what else living in those mountains is almost impossible to believe. Yet the very fact it continues to exist is a testament to the man who lives inside it. A man who has been doing his best to serve loyally despite his condition. A condition that has at last become too unbearable for him. You received the letter a week ago. As far as you know, you’re the only one who knows this. He apparently hasn’t even told this to Jacob. This has been a long time coming. You knew it was only a matter of time, you just hope it isn’t too late. You wake your way up the long winding path up to the hut. There are signs that a battle occurred here weeks ago. Fresh ogre skulls have been put on several sharpened wooden poles like a grisly totem pole. A frozen giant head lies nearby the poles, some of it looks like its been eaten. This is a good sign at least. Kane has probably still managed to contain his hunger to his enemies and hasn’t been thinking about other potential victims. The closer you get to the hut, the more cautious you become. You have no idea what Kane’s state of mind is right now. Has he completely lost it? Is he still relatively in control? Will he attack you as soon as you enter the hut? You’re about to find out when you open the door up with sword in hand. Kane sits by a kettle making some sort of stew; you can guess what it might be. He looks up and you can see in his face that he is much different than when you last saw him. The beast within is taking over. His mouth is wider and exposing his teeth which are now fangs. His hands have become more like claws. Just like you saw him temporarily during your visit at Gnome’s Home. Despite his appearance, he doesn’t seem hostile or out of control. “Got my letter I see. Glad you could make it. Wasn’t sure if you were busy, I don’t get much news this way.” He says testing his soup. “Actually I don’t have much to do nowadays. The Empire has stopped its period of expansion for now and all of its enemies are inconsequential.” “Huh, tell that to the giants that lumber down from the mountains around here. You know how hard it is to instill a fearsome reputation among creatures that are twice or three times your size? It isn’t easy.” “I would imagine it isn’t, but given that Rask doesn’t suffer as many giant or ogre raids anymore I’d say you’ve done a good job.” Kane gives you an unsettling toothy smile. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear, you know? However, I’m not entirely successful since there are still attacks I have to stop. I don’t think there’s much for it though, some are just too plain stupid to know the meaning of fear. When I’m gone make sure Fort Defiance gets extra troops. I know we’ve since invented all these great killing machines and new weapons that can kill a lot faster, but extra manpower can’t hurt.” “Is it really that bad now?” you ask. “What do you think?” Kane answers as if his appearance is enough to prove his condition is indeed getting to the point of no return. “I can’t take the hunger pains any longer. Each day I grow closer to giving in completely. The funny thing is, this… creature inside me is probably the closest thing I’ve ever had to a friend. It sometimes even speaks to me as if it is a comrade in arms. In some ways it is. I don’t believe I could keep up some of the things I do without its great strength helping me. It has allowed me to serve the Empire longer than I probably would have otherwise.” You almost want to say that the abomination that has possessed Kane’s body is not his friend and has only been using him to help feed its unending hunger, but Kane is probably struggling to find some measure of peace in his situation, so you do not lecture. “Perhaps it was meant to be.” You say. “I like to think so…but I also know it is time. As much as I would like to continue serving my duty forever, I know I cannot. So I called upon you. The only one I know that could take me down if need be. The only one worthy to. I know even though we never spoke much, those moments we did talk in Gnome’s Home I knew you to be a man of honor. You found out the truth about my situation, yet you saw that I was still an Eternal at heart. You will always have my thanks for that brother.” Kane continues to sit focusing on his stew. At this point you feel as if it would be best to get this over with quickly. You walk over to him with your weapon still drawn. He makes no effort to defend himself and even puts his head down so as to expose the back of his neck to you for a better cut. “I was sorry to hear about your wife. Major Krozer was an excellent warrior. It was also a loss to the Empire. So was the death of Roldan, as will the death me, but I know the Empire will survive. And because it will survive, I will survive along with all others who died within its duty. Just promise me two things brother.” “Yes?” you ask preparing to strike. “Tell them I died in battle with ogres and giants.” “And the second?” “Steel your mind. The demon will attempt to possess you, but I imagine you’ll be stronger to resist it than I. You always were the best of us. Perhaps the only true Eternal.” “You’re an Eternal Kane, you always will be.” You remark and bring your blade down on his neck. It isn’t a quick death mainly because Kane isn’t himself. The wendigo inside is finally unleashed and Kane begins howling and snarling as he writhes on the floor with his neck half severed. “You will torment this honorable man no longer, demon.” You say and finish the decapitation. Kane’s body still twitches on the floor even with his head now detached. It even manages to weakly kick at you. The deed is done, but now you do indeed feel the invading presence of the wendigo. “I remember you from that wonderful place where all those delicious gnomes and that obnoxious svelk woman were. You are strong and powerful, but just think how much more powerful you could be if you just let me in…” the wendigo remarks. “If you do remember me, then you also know that I’ve been psychically assaulted by hundreds of angry gnome souls at the same time. Do you really think you stand a chance?” “Ssssss! I am no weak gnome soul! I am wendigo! I am hunger everlasting and forever yearning! And soon YOU will share that desire!” the wendigo hisses. The wendigo’s threats are in vain however. You are more than equipped to take care of one now. You’ve long since strengthened your mind from psychic attacks and you also took the time to study wendigo lore before even coming here. You begin chanting. “What…what are you doing?” the wendigo asks, but you ignore it and concentrate on banishing it. In the middle of this process you sense that the wendigo halts its pathetic attempts to possess you and instead attempts to escape back to the land that it was originally bound to, but you aren’t letting it get away. “No! Not oblivion! Stop or I’ll make you suffer mortal!” More empty threats. Funny how even a demonic spirit like this one when faced with the possibility of ultimate death it still pleads for its “life” just like…well a mortal would. Eventually its voice disappears along with its very essence. The wendigo is gone and you’re left with another dead “sibling.” After a bit of clean up you report the incident to Jacob, who while not as upset when Roldan died, is still visibly saddened. “I didn’t know it had gotten that bad. He never said…” Jacob remarks. “I don’t think he wanted you to know. Probably thought you’d keep trying to protect him, especially since Roldan died two years ago. And he knew I’d take care of it. Not just killing him, but killing the demon within him too.” Jacob begins looking through his paperwork for a blank piece of paper and starts writing. It’s probably some decree to give Kane a proper military funeral along with the usual accolades about how he died gloriously in battle with several giants. “His duty to the Empire won’t be forgotten. I’m going to make sure of that.” Jacob says. “That’s all he ever wanted.” You reply and take your leave.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If this is some sort of shadow attack then the first thing you need to do is keep the palace secure, in particular the Emperor. Besides the city streets are going to be mayhem, you doubt if you’ll be able to track down the assassin that killed Roldan. Hopefully others will get him though. Despite Alison getting most of the people back into the palace, Jacob is still sitting on the balcony in shock. “He…he…he’s not…he can’t…” Jacob stutters. “Jacob get your ass inside now!” you shout and drag him inside. You and Alison both start taking control of the situation telling the guards to lock up every opening they can and the mages on duty to magically seal up the rest. Alison tells the guests to find some place safe to gather, but you don’t really care about any of them. Your number one concern is the safety of the Emperor. “Alison, I need to…” “I know, the Emperor. Go. I can help with keeping shit together here.” You rush down to the Emperor’s den constantly looking around the whole time. You keep thinking that a shadow, or whatever that was that killed Roldan is going to suddenly materialize at anytime. When you get inside the Emperor’s chambers, he’s in bed asleep. You don’t want to wake him, but he needs to know the situation. “Huh? Mmmh? Oh hey…(cough cough) what’re you doing here? Are the festivities already over?” he asks. “Emperor, there’s been an assassination. General Roldan was killed during the parade by what I think was a shadow. We’re currently trying to secure the palace just in case this is part of a greater attack.” “Sounds like a lot happened while I was taking a nap. Shadow huh? Thought we killed all of them. Guess they were just playing a waiting game as usual. Always a few loose ends aren’t there? (cough) I imagine Jacob isn’t taking Roldan’s death too well.” “Not at all, he’s pretty much in shock and was babbling the last time I saw him.” “Hmm, well it is a shame. Roldan did turn out to be one of our best generals. I’ll have to make sure he gets a nice funeral. If we can’t celebrate his successes in life, at least we can honor him in death. (cough cough)…what’s wrong my son?” the Emperor asks when he notices that you’re looking slightly troubled. “I was one of the ones chiefly in charge of hunting down the shadows. The fact that I missed one or possibly several so that something like this could happen…I feel like I failed.” You explain. “Nonsense, you did what you could to the best of your ability. I’ve always known that. Don’t even start playing what if for this situation, because it’s not worth it. While this event has certainly been tragic in that it ruined what was supposed to be a happy day, this really isn’t excessively serious in the scheme of things. (cough cough) If you were worried about me, don’t be. Even in my less than magnificent state, I’m more than able to handle a shadow or even a dozen of them. Assuming they could even get in here in the first place. Its probably just one crazed shadow that somehow hid under a rock all these years from our purges and thinks this one act is going to bring us down. Foolish of course, but what can you expect from such fanatics?” “You don’t think this sort of thing could cause instability in the Empire?” “Hardly. (cough cough) The citizens might panic about things for awhile, they’ll be fearful of the big bad shadows’ return for revenge or whatever stories they’ll make up, but ultimately it all works in our benefit I’m sure you know. (cough cough) We get to continue to display how without us they would be at the mercy of dangerous forces that would have destroyed them long ago.” “So…what did you want me to do now?” you ask. The Emperor begins to sit up a bit more before answering you. “Nothing. In fact (cough cough) after things calm down a bit, you can return to your regular duties in the newly acquired Gan and Ibim provinces. I can handle things here in the palace and the city, just get Jacob down here and I’ll start hammering out the plans.” “You really don’t need me to do anything?” “No, your talents are far more useful doing what you’re doing right now. Besides, with Roldan dead you might be needed more than ever on that side of the Empire. Last I heard there were still gnolls running about. (cough cough) I of course appreciate your concern as always my son.” The Emperor begins to slowly get out of bed and you take your leave. When you get back upstairs everything is more or less peaceful. Alison and some of the other officers have been making sure the palace is secure. Alison tells you there have been no signs of any potential attackers. Reports from outside the palace are about the same, other than Roldan’s assassination the only other causalities have been from soldiers trying to maintain order or from people getting trampled in the initial chaos. No shadows or anything else like that. “So what’s the next move? What did the Emperor tell you?” Alison asks. “He told me not to worry and when things calm down outside to just return to my normal duties.” You respond “That’s it?!” “That’s it. He wants to see Jacob though, is he in a more coherent mindset now?” “Compared to before? Yeah, but he’s still pretty shaken up. I know he’s been crying.” You walk over to Jacob who is sitting quietly in a chair with his head in his hands. He’s still very upset. You have to repeat yourself twice when telling him that the Emperor wants to see him. You and Alison stay at the palace for a few more minutes, but when you get news that a carriage is able to take you back to Fort Stalwart you decide to leave immediately. Its hectic trying to leave at first since there is still a bit of turmoil in the streets as well as the surrounding countryside, but once you’re a few miles from the capital the ride becomes more relaxed. Alison asks you if you’re certain about leaving. “The Emperor told me to just return to more normal duties and not to worry, so that’s what I’m going to do. If he says he can handle this incident himself then I have no reason to doubt that. Besides, he also said with Roldan dead I might be needed more on the western borders anyway.” You say. “Hmm. I guess all those times I worried about you being punished seem sort of silly now…sheesh…today was surreal. I mean I’ve seen a lot of stuff in my years of service, but nothing like this. The general consensus seems to be that it was a shadow that killed Roldan. Certainly looked like one from where I was sitting.” Alison replies. “I don’t see what else it could’ve been. Similar style of clothing, invisibility, incredibly quick, sneak attack, the elements were all there. (Sigh) Damn.” “You alright?” “I just…well I dunno. I just can’t believe we…I missed a shadow. Really thought we got them all when I killed Cyrus. The Emperor said it wasn’t my fault and I know it really isn’t but I still feel like this is a major loss.” “Yeah, I can imagine you’d feel that way having worked together with Roldan during the Felkan War.” “Heh, well to be honest Roldan and I were never close. I mean we were professional and civil, but we never really did become what you’d call friends. Still though he didn’t deserve to die like that. He wasn’t just an excellent solder and general, he was an Eternal and I guess that bond was there to an extent even if it was faint. Now there’s one less of us.” “I guess given that you all grew up together and were subjected more or less to the same training, the other Eternals are sort of like, your siblings?” “Yeah, I suppose in some ways they are. Funny that I never thought of that before.” You remark. As you reflect on all that’s happened, Alison reaches out to touch your hand, you look over at her and return her smile with one of your own. Happy that you have her. Then your smile disappears when a bolt grazes your ear and hits Alison right in the eye. Her blood splatters on your face and her body slowly goes limp in your arms. You turn your head around just in time to see the assassin hanging outside the carriage window with one hand and his other arm reeling back from having launched his bolt from his armbow. It’s definitely a shadow, but from this range you can also see it’s also not human. The face is either severely burned or rotten. It grins at you with blacken teeth and before you can react, it rapidly climbs up which is followed by brief scream from the carriage driver and then the ride gets a lot bumpier really quick. The shadow has probably killed the driver and is probably in the process of detaching the horses. Meanwhile you’re still holding the body of you beloved Alison. > You try to heal Alison Ignoring the increasingly bumpy ride and still holding Alison in your arms, you concentrate as hard as you can trying to heal her. “Hang on Alison. I can bring you back. I know I can. Just hold on…” you say. The carriage doesn’t hold on however and soon its bumpy ride comes to a sudden stop when it crashes into a tree and turns over. You and Alison are thrown about causing you to lose focus. “SHIT!” you shout followed by several other curses as you scramble back to Alison’s body which is now starting to grow cold. Once again you attempt to heal her, trying not to break down emotionally, but once again you are interrupted. This time by her killer who appears above you standing on the outside of the now ruined carriage. You don’t react in time to avoid the bolt he shoots at you which pierces your skull. Your body falls on top of Alison’s though you’re not quite dead yet. The brain is a funny thing when damaged in a very specific way. Instead of dying immediately, your body is twitching involuntarily and you’re helpless to defend yourself against any further attack. In your final moments the assassin jumps in the carriage with you and grabs you by your neck. You feel a great drain on your remaining strength. You can’t see very well at this point, but the assassin’s face even in this rotten form looks somewhat familiar. It almost looks like Cyrus. But it couldn’t be him…could it? The assassin’s grinning expression seems to say it all. But why or how he came to this state will remain a mystery to you along with whoever it was that raised him in the first place.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re sure the Emperor means well and he probably does have more knowledge on these things. But he doesn’t know Alison the way you know her. You also can’t and won’t spend your life in fear that something might occur that will cause strife between you and Alison. That’s why you’re going to tell her what happened two years ago and face whatever the consequences may be. You leave the palace and the capital to make your way to where Alison is currently stationed, which means a long ride back to the new eastern frontier of the Empire. You eventually arrive at Fort Stalwart, which is actually just a renamed and rebuilt fort once held by the ex-Felkan Kingdom. Given your reputation, the gates are immediately opened for you. A few of the older soldiers are also probably aware of your relationship with their commanding officer so orders are already given to alert Alison of your sudden arrival. She meets you even before you make it to her office. She flashes a smile when she sees you and goes to put her arms around you presumably to kiss you. While you’d love for her to do so, you stop Alison, which confuses the hell out her. “What’s this? Oh. The other soldiers around. You and your insistence on keeping protocol. Very well let’s get to my quarters so we can get you back into your comfort zone, because its been too damn long.” “It has and we should get back to your quarters, but I’m not sure if you’re going to be in the mood for what you probably had in mind after I tell you what I have to tell you.” Alison steps back and gives you a tilted look. “Hmm, sounds serious. You look even more grim than usual. Well let’s get this over with.” Alison says and the pair of you head towards her quarters. Her private quarters are neat and clean, as you’d expect, on the right wall you see your portrait, which is right across from her bed. Placed in such a way so the first thing she sees when she wakes up is you. “Alright. Out with it and let’s see exactly how mad you think I’m going to be at you.” Alison remarks closing her door. You sit on the bed and take a deep breath then exhale giving her a look on your face which contains a mixture of shame and guilt. “Geez…this must be bad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this. Its almost like you’re afraid to tell me. Shit, maybe I better sit down too.” Alison says taking a seat in one her chairs. “Alison…I love you. I want you to know that before I say anything else. I never thought I could ever feel this way at all about anyone. It just wasn’t something I was taught or even learned. (whew) Okay enough stalling. Here it is…” You tell Alison everything that happened two years ago at Gnome’s Home and afterwards. You also explain that you didn’t want to tell her in a letter because you felt something like this should be face to face. You expect Alison to show some sign of anger at this point, but she remains stoically silent just listening to everything. Lastly, and you weren’t planning on telling her this either, but you mention that the Emperor suggested that you break up with her and how you obviously ignored this advice because your feelings are just that strong for her. This one causes her eyes to widen a little. “Wow, obsessed svelk, rape through magic trickery, warnings from the Emperor, defying orders…sheesh. Bet you never thought you’d have to deal with things like this.” “Rape?” you say. “Well, yes. Its not like you willingly had sex with her, you willingly had sex with what you THOUGHT was me. It might’ve been a civilized form of it, but it still was rape since you wouldn’t have had sex with who it really was. What else would you call what that svelk bitch did to you? The act doesn’t always include a bunch of men holding down a hapless young girl and ramming their dicks into her you know.” Hell, you never even thought about that. For a brief moment you feel slightly…violated. “And here I thought she was just making up shit and posturing.” Alison continues. “Wait a minute. You…knew? When?” you ask. “For about two years now. Though as you might expect she told things a little differently. Never mentioned about disguising herself as me.” “So she visited you? You never mentioned it in your letters.” “Well hey guess what, neither did you. Though in your case I can understand why. In my case it was more I thought she was just so full of shit that I didn’t believe her in the first place and in the second place I knew you were so busy with the Felkans that I didn’t want to distract you with unpleasant thoughts of her in my letters. Figured it would be best to keep her out of them.” “What did she tell you exactly?” “She appeared in my office one night claiming that she would always be the main woman in your life. And how I didn’t stand chance against her and that I should just give up now. She said this along with the predictable insults of monkey and my general appearance. Then she mentioned how she easily seduced you into having sex with her and that you would always be hers. Like I said she was so overly dramatic about everything I thought she had to be lying.” “So what did you do?” “Nothing, I mostly just shrugged my shoulders and told her I thought she was lying. I also mentioned that I found it pretty sad that for all her superior svelk talent and beauty she was still jealous of a mere monkey like myself and obsessed with a man who obviously did not share the strong feelings she obviously has for you. Then to finish up my retort I also told her that even if what she said was true, that even if you did have sex with her it would only make you appreciate me all the more.” “Yikes. I can imagine she didn’t like that.” “Oh no, she did not like it at all. Her face turned from a smug sneer to one of frothing anger. I thought she was going to attack me, some flames started emanating from her fingers and for a moment it felt like a force was keeping me from drawing my own weapon. I couldn’t even call out for other soldiers to help. I guess she thought better of it though because she just stood there for a moment staring at me and then made her way out the window. Wasn’t long after that incident the svelk merc support was transferred out of here, which was fine by me and everyone else of course. Not like we needed them against gnoll attacks anymore anyway.” “I can’t believe all this happened and you aren’t mad.” You say. “Oh trust me I’m mad, but if you think its with you, you’re mistaken. I can’t do much about it though I suppose. I’m not really concerned with your little svelk stalker. I’m a little more troubled with what you just told me about the Emperor. I get the impression he doesn’t care for my influence, not that I think I really have any over you.” “Oh that? I wouldn’t worry about him. I believe he’s just overly concerned with my well-being again. He’s always been a little over protective at times, like a father with an only son I suppose. Right now though I’m just wondering how you feel about me after all is said and done.” “I don’t feel anything. Ha ha ha …wait that came out wrong. What I mean is I still feel the same way I always have about you. I love you. Nothing has changed.” “Good, then let’s get married. Let’s take our relationship to its next logical step.” “Married? You serious?” “Well sure. I mean don’t people who feel the way we do get married?” “Usually I guess…but I dunno…seems like there some forces against us, and that’s not even including one of us dying violently in battle. I mean in some ways the Emperor might be right. You might save yourself some pain if you ended our relationship now.” “Perhaps, but I won’t get to experience the good stuff if I did that.” “Good stuff eh? Is that what you’re calling it now?” Alison jokes. “Well, you sure you’re ready for the pain of possibly losing me on some forsaken battlefield somewhere?” “How do you know you’ll die first? You could outlive me.” “Pfft, please. You’ll outlive everyone. You’d outlast this entire world, if you had the time.” Alison laughs. “So will you marry me?” “Yes, of course I will.” As fitting for two soldiers, you and Alison don’t have a fancy wedding; in fact you get married the next day in some small town in the Arat province by a local bureaucrat. Alison is still on duty for the next week so you return to her post and spend your wedding night in her quarters at Fort Stalwart. She tells you though as soon as she has time off, the pair of you are going to spend quality time doing something fun which doesn’t involve the bedroom. You don’t see the need since the bedroom is just fine with you, but you agree. While waiting for Alison’s time off, you take it upon yourself to have a pair of proper rings made for you and Alison. You also have what possessions you actually own sent to Fort Stalwart since you don’t know where you’ll be stationed next and there is as good of place as any. After you’ve taken care of all that, you still have a day left to wait for Alison, so you go back to see the Emperor, you figure he should know what you’ve done and he’ll know eventually anyway. When you see him again, he’s still coughing a lot and moving slowly when he walks. He seems happy to see you though. “My (cough cough) son. This is an unexpected (cough) visit. I would’ve thought you would’ve been off enjoying your down time.” He says. “I am, but I have also come to tell you something. I have married Alison.” “Oh. I see. Well (cough cough) whatever makes you happy son. I trust she makes you happy.” “Yes.” “Then I’m happy for you. (cough cough) Heh, that was quick. Have to admit I didn’t expect you to marry her. You should’ve told me though (cough cough) I could’ve ordered a big city celebration like what (cough cough) we’re doing for the victory over the Felkans. You two could’ve walked down the streets with fancy guard and everything.” “That would’ve been very generous, but I don’t think that would’ve been either of our style.” “I suppose not. Well as I (cough cough) have said, I’m happy for you, enjoy your time together and cherish it. So was there anything else?” “No, nothing of any note.” “Very well…(cough cough) ugh…I’m still afflicted as you can tell. I need to just rest, so if you’ll excuse me.” Again, you feel like asking if he needs help, but you resist. Instead you just quietly start to leave. The Emperor speaks to you as he makes his way back to his bedroom. “Oh. Don’t (cough cough) worry about Semra. I spoke with her earlier a couple days ago about bothering you again.” “Semra?” “Yeah, you know (cough cough) Mistress. I made it quite clear to her if she did do it again that she’d be executed, along with every other svelk in the Empire. (cough cough) Funny thing is, she went into a complete breakdown exclaiming that I didn’t need to worry about that ever again, because as far she was concerned she never wanted to see you ever again. Then she (cough) proceeded to swear in common tongue as well as her own language. Mostly about you. Then she stormed off. If I didn’t know better I thought she was going to cry. I actually wondered what it was that caused all that. Now I know. I guess you had a hidden witness (cough cough) to your wedding.” “Shit.” You say quietly to yourself in amazement. Then you address the Emperor. “Thank you, sir.” “No problem. (cough cough) Think of it as my wedding gift to you.” Well you couldn’t have asked for a better one, assuming she really does stay away. > You married without children (Year 31) Year 31 You didn’t mean to get into a minor argument about this, but you like to be prepared for all eventualities, so you had to ask the question… “Alison, I actually don’t care if you’ve been drinking stillness potions to avoid unwanted burdens, because I’d understand. I just wanted to know if you were drinking them.” You explain. “No, I haven’t. I used to before I met you and I did even in the beginnings of our relationship, but I stopped taking them years ago.” “Really? I would’ve thought you would’ve waited until after marriage.” “What for? It wasn’t like I had any intimate encounters after you got transferred, well other than my hand.” You quickly start counting up the times in your head when you’ve had sex with Alison since you’ve been married. “Yes dear, it’s been MORE than enough times for an accidental burden as you put it to have occurred.” Alison remarks. “I’m not sure why you’re even concerned about this, I’ve never known you to want kids. Is this something you want?” “Well no…(Sigh) I just wanted to know if it was something you wanted because I think…and I don’t know this for certain, but I believe I am unable to provide you children. I probably should’ve told you this before, but honestly you’re right in that I’ve never gave children much consideration before. In fact, I’ve probably only been pondering this more because I’ve had more downtime than I ever had since we defeated the Felkans. Alison gets silent for a moment. “I see. But why do you think this? I mean do you have any proof? It can’t be an equipment problem because we both know that works. You might take into consideration that sex doesn’t always lead to a screaming infant. Just most of the time.” “Yeah, but as you pointed out, once is all it takes. I guess I’m just thinking about Roldan and his own marriage with Brenda. He once told me they’ve genuinely tried to have children on several occasions. Even to the point of both of them imbibing fertility potions. Nothing worked.” “So? Just because Roldan or Brenda sterile that means you are too?” “Quite possibly. You forget, we’re all Eternals. Roldan told me that he and Brenda came to that conclusion. He believes that it might have something to do with all the enhancements that are made on us when we were still babies. I mean its not like Warrick or Kane have any children either.” “I’d hate to think about Kane having any offspring given what I knew of him and what you’ve told me since you saw him again. Look, I think you might be worrying over nothing.” “I’m not worrying for me, so much as I’m worrying for you. I mean I don’t know if you’ve ever wanted children. You’ve never mentioned it much. But I don’t know if you’re going to change your mind one day and if that’s the case then you’re going to be mighty upset with me.” “Funny enough, I thought you bringing up the subject was going to result in you being upset with me.” “Why the hell would I be upset with you?” “Well, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but stillness potions aren’t exactly the best thing for your lady parts. I mean they don’t do any fatal damage to the drinker as far as I know, but given that they are designed to kill potential offspring, it can make it a bit hard for future pregnancies. I guess it’s the mixture that stays in your body or something. So for all we know, the problem might lie with me.” “Oh. Didn’t know that. Um…are you okay?” “Sure. I mean I knew the risks every time I drank the foul tasting potions. That’s why I don’t even think you should concern yourself with this. I mean if we create a future hell spawn then we do, if not well that’s fine too. I didn’t marry you for the idea of hanging up my sword so I could pop out kids. And as far as your potential sterility problem it’s not like you’ve got much to test that theory on. If you were some super stud that fucked multiple women and didn’t get any of them pregnant I could see your concern. You’ve had at exactly two women in your life and in my case we’ve already explored the possibility that it could be me. And as for the other…well she’s a svelk. It isn’t like elves and humans can produce offspring.” “Thank the Emperor for that.” You say. “Although as you’ve pointed out, you’re not quite the average human are you? So for all you know you’ve got some half svelk bastard running about that your obsessive stalker hasn’t told you about.” Alison jokes. “That’s not funny Alison.” “Hey it would explain why she’s still carrying a bit of a torch for you. Okay, I’ll stop I can see you’re getting grumpy. Let’s get off the subject entirely.” At this point you’re more than willing to do just that rather than dwell on very unlikely yet very depressing possibilities.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Dead Man Walking! (Zombie Survival) Can you survive the Zombie Apocalypse? While challenging, it's not as hard as the movies would have you believe - where they always make the worst possible decisions for the sake of drama. Here, at least, you will be offered logical choices amid the foolhardy and your character cares about survival even more than you do. A serious game with gory detail. Style There is a lot of reading in this story. Pages are filled with lengthy descriptions of who, what, when, where, why, & how. The story is quite long (over 2100 pages) and comes in three major sections (of varying length, depending on what you choose to do in them). Don’t forget your 'Save Game' option... Sections The first section is the shortest and involves escaping the subway tunnels. The second section involves moving around within the city and escaping. The third section involves moving through the suburbs to find and save your family. Objective Get the best ending (or) Get the highest score (or) Kill the most zombies (or) All of the above? Scoring Each choice is assigned a value from 10 - 50 points: Generally, 10 points are given for a bad decisions, 30 points for neutral decisions, and 50 points for the most logical choices. 20 & 40 points are also awarded, when certain choices fall between the other values. Your final Score at the end of the game is the total of all the decisions made, multiplied by a number of special factors (depending on what you accomplish during play). Note that the highest possible score will not be achieved by making all the right choices - as making the best choices often allow you to bypass certain other 'choice-filled' events, that will net you more points in the long run (if survived) than by simply skipping them altogether in the first place. Endings As this is a zombie game, the very best ending can only be achieved by not getting bit at all, but there are still a number of interesting endings available, even if you do get chomped on a time or two. In fact, you are not likely to get the Highest Score with the very best ending - but that's the trade-off. With each 'Death Page' and the 'Official Endings', you will have the chance to see how you did before quitting (or going back). A Rundown is included that shows how many zombies and/or people you killed, how many people you saved, how many zombies munched your brains, and of course your Total Score. If at the end of your game you have 10,000 or more points, you will also be able to see a write-up of the Zombie Virus and Zombie Types used during the game. The type of ending you achieve will also be reflected in the last digit of your Final Score: Death Pages will produce a score ending in '0'; Official Endings will show a '5'; and the Very Best Ending will show a '7'. Post a comment to show your high scores to the world! Troubleshooting Please PM me if you find bugs or breaks in logic (such as walking on foot in one scene, then riding a mountain bike in the next, without ever having found the mountain bike first). The most helpful thing you could do is tell me the name of the page with the bug (and) the name of the page you came into that page from, plus a description of what’s not working correctly. Good Luck! This game dedicated to my lovely LadyZerka (and Five Hundred Feet of Heavy Rope in a Barrel) =) > You begin... Dead Man Walking. You are drifting through darkness, floating weightless in an inky black void. Slowly you realize you are not quite awake, but coming out of unconsciousness; you must have passed out for some reason. You try to sit up, but some unseen force holds your body down. With a note of frustration you realize again that you are still not fully awake. Focusing your will you try to start yourself awake, and for a moment it seems to work – you sit up and look around and can see that you are in a dark tunnel with very little light. You notice a man stooped over some object to your right and try to call out to him, but your voice does not work. Regardless, the man turns to look at you and it is then that you see it is not a man at all, but a smoky silhouette of shadow in vaguely a man-like shape. The thing sets upon you in a flash and you feel a smothering presence overpowering you in the darkness, wrapping you up, holding you down; trying to invade you. In panic you jolt awake – this time for real. The first thing you notice is a sharp stabbing pain in your head. Reaching up, you feel your hair matted in blood and grimace as you run your fingers over the jagged edges of what must surely be a serious head wound. Part of your scalp has actually been torn free of your skull and hangs in a greasy mess over your ear. You’re not bleeding from the wound very much – it seems to have clotted – but you definitely should get it seen by a medical professional sooner than later… In addition, your left arm, shoulder, and side are numb. Moving them slightly, you wince at small twinges of pain here and there, but are relieved to see that they are not broken – though it does seem that you have been thrown down on that side recently and with significant force. Sitting yourself up against a wall of cool damp stone you take in your surroundings. The floor is of hard packed dirt with a thick layer of dust on top and (from what you can feel), quite a bit of shattered safety glass lays around you. In the air you smell a mix of smoke and ozone, like when an electrical outlet shorts out. That and the heavy stink of blood (your own maybe, you do seem to have lost quite a bit) and something reminiscent of burning hair… All in all, it’s somewhat hard to breathe, as if you’re not quite getting enough oxygen with each breath. It is very dark, but a dim greenish glow stemming from a huge mass of twisted metal before you gives enough illumination to at least make out your hand in front of your face, as well as what’s immediately around you. Looking at the mass in front of you, you can see that it is the wreckage of a subway train – or perhaps even two trains – as if one had run up into another on the same track. Now however, the subway cars choke the dark tunnel you are in, cast zigzag across the tracks in a crumpled and jagged pile of wreckage. The greenish glow comes from inside the smashed train cars themselves and you surmise that it would be illumination form the emergency exits. Looking to your right, you see a mangled body without a head. You shudder and wonder what it was you saw standing over that body in your half-conscious dream state. Thinking back, you try to remember how you could have arrived in such a predicament, but you can’t get past the pain in your head. Your memory is all cloudy. How much of it have you lost? All of it apparently; you can’t even recall your own name. Looking yourself over for a clue to your own identity, you note that you are wearing reasonably savvy business attire with a gold watch. Unfortunately, the watch is broken, its face smashed and the hands stopped at 7:40 am. Checking your back pocket you find your wallet and upon looking inside, you find your license. “Greg Bradley”, you say to yourself, reading the name off the ID. The address shows a street in the suburbs. There’s also a photo of the wife and kids (you guess). The woman is pretty enough and there are two cute girls – a ten year old and a younger one, maybe seven. A twinge of frustration creeps into your mind. Why can’t you remember anything? Isn’t seeing things like this supposed to jar a memory or something? You take the photo out of the wallet and tuck it into your breast pocket. Checking the rest of the contents, you find a number of low-end credit cards, $50 cash, and a half dozen of your own business cards; showing that you are an accountant for the Morgan Corporation, located on the 24th floor of the Summit Tower. Also in your possession is a crushed cell phone (totally dead) and a ring of keys including the key and fob to a Toyota, a house key, a PO Box key, a padlock key, and what you think is an elevator key marked ‘ST 24’. Incidentally, your key chain also includes a small LED penlight – which upon testing in the darkness of the tunnel, seems to offer miniscule comfort against the engulfing blackness. It occurs to you that you should probably find something to bandage your head with. You consider for a moment trying to use your shirt as a makeshift bandage. It seems to work in the movies. It is then that you hear the rattle of movement from within the pile of train wreckage before you, followed by a long mournful sounding groan. Instinctively, you quickly turn off your penlight and remain still; waiting to see what is making the noise without yet revealing your presence. You don’t hear the sound again and wonder if some injured person is trapped there in the twisted subway cars, waiting for you to make the first move… > You wait quietly for help to arrive You sit in the darkness waiting. Surely someone must know about this train wreck and will be coming to the rescue any minute. The minutes pass… The hour passes… And then hours pass… You have been sitting in the darkness for a long time and are starting to feel weak and dizzy in addition to being in pain. Maybe you should have tried to find help for yourself, rather than sit here, probably bleeding out this whole time. On a side note, whoever is there in the train wreckage still seems to be alive – moaning incoherently from time to time. > You bind your head with cloth from your shirt As you tear some strips from your shirt, the noise seems to attract the attention of the person trapped in the train wreckage. The low mournful groans suddenly turn into heavy desperate panting snarls and a flurry of rattling and shaking from that direction. Whoever is making those noises does not sound very well off or even sane at this point. You quickly bind your head and… > You wait to see what happens There is a disturbingly wet ‘tearing’ sound and you can hear the desperate panting snarls suddenly beginning to get closer. You wait nervously in the dark, straining to see, as it emerges from the wreckage. Crawling toward you over the caved-in side of an overturned subway car is a bloody corpse, its lower half fully torn away at the waist and trailing innards behind. The thing can’t possibly be alive, but there it is, frothing bloody foam at the mouth and snapping hungry jaws at you – like something right out of an old horror movie! > You find a large stone to smash its head in with Looking along the wall of the dark tunnel with your penlight, you spot a large chunk of cinderblock and quickly heft it up. The horrible thing is still clawing toward you when you bring the heavy piece of concrete down on the back of its head crushing it skull with a sickening splurch of blood, bone, and gray matter. You are still filled with adrenaline and somewhat dizzy from your exertion, when you look up to the sound of more moaning; and see two more subway passengers, shuffling towards you with outstretched arms from the front part of the train wreck. While they are not moving very quickly, they are on their feet and making a beeline straight for you. They are far enough away from you at the moment, that you are fairly sure you can easily avoid them if you so choose. > You wait and attack them with your cinder block Your cinderblock smashed one lunatic’s head in easy enough; it should work on two more just as well. You have time to maneuver to a higher position on the wreckage of the train cars and there wait for the two subway passengers to pass by. That’s when you’ll get the jump on them. Sure enough, the two moaning subway passengers stumble by, not immediately seeing you from your position of ambush. As you leap down at them, you notice that both already look pretty mangled by the train wreck itself – one even walking on a completely dislocated ankle. Your chunk of cinderblock comes down with you, striking squarely on the top of the first’s head. The monster crumples under the blow immediately as its head explodes in a messy display – along with your chunk of cinderblock – which shatters in a dusty rain of crumbling bits. You look with dismay at your now empty hands, trying to formulate a new plan of action through the mounting sense of panic. It is then that you realize the other one is already on you, having lunged with surprising agility for someone so broken up. Before you can do anything more, you are dragged to the ground as it lunges for your neck. Instinctively, you defend yourself with a raised arm, only to feel the monster bite deeply into it – tearing a chunk out and taking a moment to chomp on the meaty flesh. You ignore the pain and grit your teeth, taking advantage of the monster’s momentary distraction to reach blindly for anything on the ground around you to use as a weapon. Amazingly, your left hand brushes over something metallic and heavy enough to give you hope. You grab hold and slam the object into the lunatic’s temple, knocking it over and allowing you to scramble up. You no longer have whatever it was in your hand, but the thing isn’t getting up either. Not waiting to give it a moment’s quarter, you stomp on the back of its neck repeatedly, crunching up its vertebrae, until you are satisfied that it isn’t going to get up anytime soon. That is when you notice the railroad tie spike buried in the side of its head. Taking a moment to calm yourself and regain your wind you think about what to do next. > You climb through the wreckage to the front of the subway train You move quickly, ignoring the mess behind you and the throbbing pain of your injuries, making your way over and through the wreckage of the train cars that scatter the tunnel in the direction the train was headed before the wreck. Along the way you see dead bodies everywhere, smashed into the twisted metal of the wrecked train cars – each more gruesome than the last. Disturbingly, you also notice an unusually large amount of entrails scattered about. You somehow doubt that that many people could all have been disemboweled simultaneously by a simple train wreck – even one as serious as this one appears to be. You’re not sure (and you certainly don’t want to get close enough to find out firsthand), but some of the bodies even look as if they have recently been savaged, as if by some wild animals’ rending jaws. As you get further along, you also notice a large number of bloody footprints headed in the same direction you are going. They seem to be joined by more and more footprints as you pass through one mangled subway car after another. At length you get to the front of the train you must have been riding on. In walking, you surmise that you had been on the train and thrown out a window when it crashed. You must have struck your head when you landed, which knocked you out for who knows how long. On that thought, you risk approaching a random victim’s arm sticking out of the wreckage to take their watch. Unlike yours, this one still works and indicates the time to be 6:04 pm. If that is correct, and your watch indicates the time of the crash, that means you were out of it for roughly ten hours. Wow, you’d better not go back to sleep until you can get yourself to a hospital or you might not wake up again. You also find a working cell phone in the aisle as you go and see that it still works, but there’s no signal down here in the subway tunnel. Looking at the first car of your train, you see that it is completely flattened under the rear cars of another train. It looks as if the first train was stopped on the tracks and your train somehow ran into the back of it at a rather high rate of speed. Continuing on, you cautiously pass through the scattered cars of this train with much the same scene of carnage cast before your eyes, until you finally arrive at the head of the first train. Unlike your train the first car of this train is relatively intact. You know that at the very front of the train is a control room, which hopefully will have at least a first aid kit and if you’re lucky, a working radio. As you approach, you see that all the bloody footprints leave the train at this point and continue down the tunnel in the direction the train was headed. They are quickly lost however in the hard-packed dirt and darkness of the tunnel itself – though following them won’t be a problem – you only got one direction to go – unless you want to turn around and go back the way you just came. > You search the train's control room before deciding what to do The door to the train’s control room is locked, but you are able to go outside and pull the smashed remains of the train car’s windshield out, allowing you to climb inside. When the train was hit from behind, it caused the cars of both trains to accordion together, sending them sliding almost sideways down the tunnel into each other until this particular car got wedged in a narrow spot and caused the massive and jagged pileup behind it. As you enter the control room, you see that the driver of the train has been crushed to death by the front of the train as it smashed into the side of the tunnel and got wedged in. You try not to look too closely at his flattened and gore drained shell; or the pool of mess under what’s left of his seat. Checking the area, you see a map of the train lines on one wall and note that the train was headed into the city before it crashed. That makes sense to you, as you would have been traveling from your house in the suburbs to your office in the city during the morning rush. Looking around some more, you find a well-stocked first aid kit, a proper flashlight, a crowbar, some signal flares, a large fire extinguisher, and working CB radio. You also find the train operator’s book bag with his lunch in it and help yourself to the contents, seeing as he won’t miss it anytime soon. You’re actually surprised that it tastes so good, given that you’re eating it in a small room with a horribly mangled corpse just a few feet away. After eating, you wrap your wounds in proper bandages and down a couple of pain pills and a no doze. You’re pretty sure you don’t want to fall asleep in here regardless of the head injury. You definitely don’t feel safe down here in this tunnel of death. Packing the first aid kit, flashlight, and signal flares in the book bag, you heft the crowbar in your hand and check out the CB Radio – unfortunately, it’s not the portable kind, but definitely worth trying to call for help on. You consider trying to take the large fire extinguisher, but are not sure about the weight versus utility. It can wait till you’re ready to leave, so you decide to address it again after trying the radio. > You try the CB Radio After a while trying the current channel with no response, you try calling out on the other channels. Just when you are ready to give up, you dial channel 7 and hear a voice answer you on the other end. “Help, I’ve been in a subway train wreck!” you say over the com. “This is Officer Main of the 3rd Precinct, who is this, over.” “Uh, my name is Greg Bradley”, you identify yourself, “I’m on a wrecked subway car down in the tunnels, I don’t know where exactly. Everyone onboard is either dead or gone.” You hear an awkward pause on the other end of the com, and then Officer Main’s voice comes back on, slow and grim. “Listen Greg, there is no easy way to tell you this, but the whole world has gone to shit, just like that train down there. Some sort of terrorist bio-weapon released on the city this morning. A poison gas, or virus, or the like. It causes those exposed to suffer death-like symptoms, including a semi rigor mortis like state, and then they go crazy with cannibalistic rage. Just like the zombies in them movies. And like the movies, you got to hit them in the head and destroy their brain in order to put them down for good. Also, if you get bit by one you got roughly ten minutes before you’re one of them yourself – though I did heard this one guy actually lasted three hours before he changed. You haven’t been bitten now have you” he asks, pausing for a reply. “No”, you say quickly, looking at your arm but not wanting to lose contact with what could possibly be the last living soul in the city. “All right then,” Officer Main continues, “Here’s what you need to do. Follow the tracks to the first station and get to the streets above. The first thing you need to do is avoid contact with any zombies. Next, you need to get your bearings and know where you are in the city – get a street map if you can. Then find a pry bar or tire iron and drop yourself into the nearest ‘center of the street’ manhole cover. It has to be one in the center of a main street, not a side street or manhole cover near the curb. And unless you’re Lou Ferrigno, you’ll need the tire iron to lever up the hundred and seventy five pound manhole cover. Obviously a light is going to be handy down there too.” “You still with me?” he asks. “Uh, yeah, I understand,” you reply – more than a little apprehensive about some plan to go down into more dark tunnels with ravening cannibalistic zombies lurking about. “Good” he continues. “Once inside, set the manhole cover back behind you – this should keep the zombies from following you in, unless you really piss them off for some reason. There shouldn’t be any zombies in the sewer tunnels – or if there are, there’ll be a hell of a lot less in there than on the streets. Once in the main sewer line, follow it just like you would the streets above to our Precinct House here on 3rd and Spring Street. You’ll see street names marked at each intersection of the tunnels and they run directly under the center of most streets. When you get to 3rd and Spring Street, you’ll need to be careful. The zombies are thick in this area, but we’re nice and safe here in our Precinct House. Like a fortress here, and well-armed, so you don’t got to worry once you’re inside – you just have to make a dash from the street to the door is all – you are good at running right? Over.” “I’m injured; got a head wound”, you reply, “but I suppose I can run a short distance all right. What about the hospitals though? I think I really need medical attention rather quickly. Uh, over.” “No, don’t go to any hospital! They are all overrun with the dead and undead. We have medical supplies here and a triage unit with doctors and a surgeon. You get yourself here and we can help you. You hear?” “Yeah, thanks for the information. I’ll try to get to you,” you say, not really certain about it just yet. “Good Luck. Over” comes back the final reply. > You take a moment to give thought to the situation After giving it some thought you conclude that you now have a number of things to consider. If the city really is overrun with zombies, then you’ll need more than a crowbar to survive. You need real medical attention pretty soon too. The 3rd Precinct seems to offer both and is in the direction the train was going. Then there is your home and family. You don’t remember anything of them yet, but perhaps seeing one of them in person will trigger the return of your memories. You know they must love you and wonder if they are safe. Has the attack spread into the suburbs; or is it contained in the city? What if it spreads further? Is this the only city to be attacked; or are there more cities across the country facing the zombie threat? You’re not entirely sure how far your home is from the city, but you think you had just over a 40 minute commute – yeah, that sounds right. You try to work out in your head how far that would be in miles if you estimate the average speed of the train, when it occurs to you just to look at the line map on the wall of the control room. There you see that your suburb is twenty-six miles away from Summit Station (you presume under Summit Tower where you work), taking the green line from Summit Station to Fairmont Station and from there, the yellow line to Suburbia Station. Now all you need to know is where on the green line you are currently, which you won’t find out until you walk in one direction or the other to a station. Of course, what is the point if you’re just going to turn into one of those things in… You look at your watch, it says 9:05pm… You got about two hours left. Damn, that sucks. With this weighing on your mind, you… > You take the heavy fire extinguisher & continue heading further into the city in the direction the train was going You cautiously move through the silence of the tunnel, listening carefully as you go. You’d rather be anywhere else in the world than here right now, and the temptation just to give up, lie down, and die is almost overwhelming. You’ve never been prone to anxiety attacks, but this shit certainly has you on the edge. After traveling for what you thought was at least an hour, you look at your watch and see that it hasn’t even been a full thirty minutes. Time flies when you’re having fun, you think sarcastically. After another five or so minutes of plodding along, you begin to think you can see a dull light in the tunnel way up ahead. Turning your own light out momentarily confirms this, as you can definitely see a dull white glow in the tunnel – maybe a station you hope. Whatever it is, you’re still a ways off; perhaps a quarter mile or so… > You continue toward the station As you walk toward the light at the end of the tunnel, it seems to never get any closer – Damn; how far away is it?!? That is when you realize that you have been dragging your feet as you walk recently – more stumbling forward actually than what could truly be considered a walk. Your muscles all feel tight and you’re incredibly weak and tired – like your wounds and exhaustion are finally hitting you all at once. You stop and steady yourself on the wall of the tunnel a moment as your head swims and you nearly pass out. Nice. You can see the light at the end of the tunnel and now you’re going to pass out and get eaten by wandering zombies before you even can make it. Typical. You begin to wonder if this is the zombie contagion at work – you have been bit after all. Are you really going to die and rise up as a brain eating monster? Yuck. You never did like the thought of eating brains, or livers, or that other disgusting stuff people eat sometimes. Hell, you can’t even swallow sushi without gaging. Yeah, you’ll make a real classy zombie, you think sarcastically to yourself, gagging on other peoples’ brains. After another flash of near unconsciousness, you desperately look around the tunnel for some place of refuge to sit and weather out the storm – or at least a place to die in peace. You’d much rather be munched on by zombies when dead than to have them find and eat you alive. You find nothing significant, just an old sheet of heavy plywood leaned up against the side of the tunnel. With nothing more than that, and unconsciousness threatening to overtake you at any moment, you make due as best you can with what you have. You pull the bottom of the plywood sheet out a few feet from the wall of the tunnel, making a place behind that you can crawl into. You go inside and turn out your light, noting the ever faint light still visible down at the end of the tunnel. There you lie on the ground, hidden behind your makeshift shelter, feeling feverish while the pain of your head wound and the tightness of your muscles is lost in the burning sensation that has slowly spread out from where you were bit by zombies to fill your whole body. You lull in semi-consciousness; now almost sorry that you took that no doze. At least if you had fallen asleep and not woke up, you wouldn’t have to be going through this right now. Your mind reels, jumping chaotically between the horrifying scenes of slaughter witnessed this day and half memories of your family, that feign to come back but then evaporate just before your mind can latch onto them. You then realize that the burning tightness in all your muscles has progressed to complete paralysis – you can’t even move your fingers or close your eyes. You lay there completely rigid, unable to move, until even your vision blurs. You’re not sure how long you lay there, drifting in and out of awareness, until you suddenly notice you can see clearly again and blink. You also hear what you think is the beeping of a morning alarm coming from somewhere. Then, all at once, every muscle of your body suddenly releases, and you find yourself drenched in sweat. Your fever is gone and you no longer feel a burning throughout your body or even where you were bit by zombies. Now you’re just in good old fashion pain. You look at your watch and see that it’s 6:00am – the time you normally get up in the morning to get ready for work. You then realize the alarm on your watch is beeping and you quickly turn it off and grab your crowbar, hoping the sound hasn’t attracted any zombies to your position. You crawl out from behind your shelter to listen and then look yourself over. You appear normal – not the walking dead like you expected. You quickly do some math in your head. No problem. You’re pretty sure zombies don’t do math. Small blessing. Looking up the length of subway tunnel, you still see the light there at the end. Gathering your gear you: > You continue toward the station Eventually you approach the opening at the end of the tunnel, where it empties into a large underground subway station. Your heart sinks as you draw near and hear the echoing din of a large mass of zombies from within. You hover in the darkness of the tunnel, carefully venturing forward just enough to get a look inside. A hundred and some of the former subway passengers – all trapped in the rush hour mob and unable to escape the initial outbreak – pack the area, half on the landing platform itself and half down on the tracks. Those on the tracks look a lot worse for wear; most torn up from the subway crash you just came from – or even other crashes farther up ahead. They moan and snarl at each other, jostling and crowding toward the edge of the loading platform, trying most ineffectually at climbing up the four foot ledge. Occasionally one does manage to get up, but is quickly pulled back down by the rest trying to climb up over its back. You are reminded of a bucket of crabs. You remember once seeing one in Maine – there’s another memory – you don’t need to put a lid on a full bucket of crabs; they all try to climb up over each other. The moment one gets to the top, it is collectively grabbed by the rest and dragged back down to the bottom of the bucket. You snap out of your reflection and focus on the area itself. The zombies don’t see you yet and you doubt they’d hear you over the clamor, unless you did something to intentionally attract their attention. The station is large and tiled, with a high vaulted ceiling and a large placard reading: “Fox Park Station”. You see that the light is coming from a large number of battery powered emergency lights along the top of the walls. You also see, just beyond the crowded landing platform, two exits. The first is a turnstile gate at your end of the platform with an escalator and set of stairs going up on the other side. The second is an open set of stairs and an escalator at the far end of the platform beyond all the zombies. On the track level itself are two sets of rails, both empty of any trains. Apparently, the platform side is for stopping, while the outer track is for passing through. As the trains all go the same way through the tunnels, you know there must also be another tunnel and station nearby for the trains going in the opposite direction. Typically, it would be close enough that you could buy a ticket in the terminal above the tunnels and then simply come down the right set of escalators to your platform. You spot a dingy red metal door in the outer wall of the tunnel opposite the landing platform. While the light’s not great, there is enough that you can make out the words on its surface: "Railway Workers Only!" As you stand in the shadows of the tunnel looking over the scene, you also spot a four foot long piece of heavy planking, lying on the ground where you would exit the tunnel. You’ll have to be sure not to trip over it when you are ready to go. Man there are a lot of zombies in here! Given that, you think over your options – The open stairs and escalator at the far end of the landing platform is a no go – way too many zombies to get past even to think about it. Then there is the turnstile exit gate with the escalator and stairs on the other side. The problem with that is: to get to the stairs you’ll have to hop onto the landing platform with hundreds of zombies and make it to the turnstile exit gate and jam it before they swarm you. There is also the matter of the turnstiles being one-way. If there are zombies on the other side of it, you won’t be able to come back the way you came. The red door option on the other side of the tunnel would be much easier to get to, but if you’re detected, the zombies on the tracks will move after you and block your way back to the tunnels. You don’t even know if it’s locked or even goes anywhere – for all you know it may just be an access door to firefighting equipment – though you would think it would say so if that was the case… You could also try to sneak past the horde altogether, while they are distracted, in order to continue further down the tunnels towards the center of the city. If the rest of the stations are like this one though, then you’ll have to deal with getting out of the tunnels sooner or later… You could also just turn around and head back the way you came; trying instead to leave the city altogether rather than move any deeper into it. After weighing your odds, you: > You make a run for the turnstile gate through the zombie hoard Taking a deep breath, you rush out from the shadows of the tunnel and over to the nearest edge of the landing platform. As all the zombies on the tracks are looking in the direction of the zombies already on the platform, you are able to get right up to the edge of the zombie crowd and brush past two or three of them before vaulting up onto the upper level. There is an abrupt silence, as all attention is suddenly drawn to you, and then a roar of agitated groans and wails. As one, the entire zombie hoard starts toward you. Of course, you weren’t waiting to see what they’d do, so you’re already running full speed toward the turnstile gate at this point. Unfortunately, the zombie swarm had already partially blocked your path; and with them now actively moving toward you, you’ll need to bust past at least five of them before you can get to the gate. You slam your shoulder into the first with a yell and send it flying into another, toppling both. Three more you think, swinging your crowbar with both hands at the nearest of the three. Your weapon strikes true, shattering the thing’s jaw and knocking its head so far to the side that its neck snaps loudly. It falls to the ground twitching violently. That is when you feel grasping hands all over your back. It seems that your crash into the first two zombies has drastically slowed your charge. With horror you feel yourself suddenly being pulled backward into the crowd. The book bag you think! They have hold of your book bag! You drop one shoulder and spin out of the book bag freeing yourself of the hoard on the landing platform, but exposing your back to the two standing between you and the turnstile gate. Knowing that they are lunging at you even now, you do something radical and drop to the ground before rolling away to the side. The two zombies that were behind you attack the empty air where you were, while the zombie hoard still tears at your book bag. You can’t help but laugh at the clumsy things, but here your laugh is cut short as realize just how dire your situation has really become. The two zombies you had knocked down simply get back up and those of the hoard not occupied with your bag have pushed forward around the melee. You now have eight or more of them between you and the gate, while a few dozen more on the tracks have actually managed to claw their way onto the platform behind you. You jump back up and manage to bash in two more heads, but you’re working against the tide and are quickly overwhelmed. You are dragged down and torn to bits by hundreds of slavering jaws. A moment later and you’re standing on the tracks in some sort of surreal out-of-body experience, watching the zombies on the platform spread your entrails out amongst themselves. Looking back at the tunnel you had rashly decided to come in from, you see that strange black shadowy shape from your unconscious dreams lurking nearby. You wonder what it is and what it wants with you, but that is another story… END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Eventually you approach the opening at the end of the tunnel, where it empties into a large underground subway station. Your heart sinks as you draw near and hear the echoing din of a large mass of zombies from within. You hover in the darkness of the tunnel, carefully venturing forward just enough to get a look inside. A hundred and some of the former subway passengers – all trapped in the rush hour mob and unable to escape the initial outbreak – pack the area, half on the landing platform itself and half down on the tracks. Those on the tracks look a lot worse for wear; most torn up from the subway crash you just came from – or even other crashes farther up ahead. They moan and snarl at each other, jostling and crowding toward the edge of the loading platform, trying most ineffectually at climbing up the four foot ledge. Occasionally one does manage to get up, but is quickly pulled back down by the rest trying to climb up over its back. You are reminded of a bucket of crabs. You remember once seeing one in Maine – there’s another memory – you don’t need to put a lid on a full bucket of crabs; they all try to climb up over each other. The moment one gets to the top, it is collectively grabbed by the rest and dragged back down to the bottom of the bucket. You snap out of your reflection and focus on the area itself. The zombies don’t see you yet and you doubt they’d hear you over the clamor, unless you did something to intentionally attract their attention. The station is large and tiled, with a high vaulted ceiling and a large placard reading: “Fox Park Station”. You see that the light is coming from a large number of battery powered emergency lights along the top of the walls. You also see, just beyond the crowded landing platform, two exits. The first is a turnstile gate at your end of the platform with an escalator and set of stairs going up on the other side. The second is an open set of stairs and an escalator at the far end of the platform beyond all the zombies. On the track level itself are two sets of rails, both empty of any trains. Apparently, the platform side is for stopping, while the outer track is for passing through. As the trains all go the same way through the tunnels, you know there must also be another tunnel and station nearby for the trains going in the opposite direction. Typically, it would be close enough that you could buy a ticket in the terminal above the tunnels and then simply come down the right set of escalators to your platform. You spot a dingy red metal door in the outer wall of the tunnel opposite the landing platform. While the light’s not great, there is enough that you can make out the words on its surface: "Railway Workers Only!" As you stand in the shadows of the tunnel looking over the scene, you also spot a four foot long piece of heavy planking, lying on the ground where you would exit the tunnel. You’ll have to be sure not to trip over it when you are ready to go. Man there are a lot of zombies in here! Given that, you think over your options – The open stairs and escalator at the far end of the landing platform is a no go – way too many zombies to get past even to think about it. Then there is the turnstile exit gate with the escalator and stairs on the other side. The problem with that is: to get to the stairs you’ll have to hop onto the landing platform with hundreds of zombies and make it to the turnstile exit gate and jam it before they swarm you. There is also the matter of the turnstiles being one-way. If there are zombies on the other side of it, you won’t be able to come back the way you came. The red door option on the other side of the tunnel would be much easier to get to, but if you’re detected, the zombies on the tracks will move after you and block your way back to the tunnels. You don’t even know if it’s locked or even goes anywhere – for all you know it may just be an access door to firefighting equipment – though you would think it would say so if that was the case… You could also try to sneak past the horde altogether, while they are distracted, in order to continue further down the tunnels towards the center of the city. If the rest of the stations are like this one though, then you’ll have to deal with getting out of the tunnels sooner or later… You could also just turn around and head back the way you came; trying instead to leave the city altogether rather than move any deeper into it. After weighing your odds, you: > You use the heavy fire extinguisher to disorient and bull-rush your way through the zombie hoard to the turnstile gate Good thing you brought this heavy fire extinguisher, you think, as you pull the pin and ready it for the onslaught. You’re thinking that you can use it as a battering ram to bowl your way through and then blast the zombies in the face with the contents to hopefully confuse them long enough to dive through the turnstile. Taking a deep breath, you rush out from the shadows of the tunnel and over to the nearest edge of the landing platform. As all the zombies on the tracks are looking in the direction of the zombies already on the platform, you are able to get right up to the edge of the zombie crowd and brush past two or three of them before vaulting up onto the upper level – the fire extinguisher clanging loudly on the tiles as you do so. There is an abrupt silence, as all attention is suddenly drawn to you, and then a roar of agitated groans and wails. As one, the entire zombie hoard starts toward you. Of course, you weren’t waiting to see what they’d do, so you’re already running full speed toward the turnstile gate at this point. Unfortunately, the zombie swarm had already partially blocked your path; and with them now actively moving toward you, you’ll need to bust past at least five or six of them before you can get to the gate. You level the heavy fire extinguisher in front of you and ram at full speed into the first two zombies with a yell – sending them flying back into two more and toppling all four of them. Almost there you think, swinging the heavy fire extinguisher with both hands at the nearest of those left standing. The butt of the extinguisher slams into the creature’s head just below the ear – shattering the thing’s jaw and knocking its head so far to the side that its neck snaps loudly. It falls to the ground twitching violently. You still have one standing between you and your goal when you feel grasping hands all over your back. It seems that your initial crash into the zombies has drastically slowed your forward momentum. With horror you feel yourself suddenly being pulled backward into the crowd. The book bag you think! They have hold of your book bag! You drop one shoulder and spin out of the book bag freeing yourself of the hoard on the landing platform, but exposing your back to the one standing between you and the turnstile gate. Knowing that it must be lunging at you even now, you do something radical and drop to the ground before rolling away to the side and emptying the contents of the fire extinguisher at your attackers. A violent blast of white powder spews up into the faces of the zombies standing over you and fills the air with a cloud of the stuff. The zombies stop short for just a moment, apparently blinded, or at least confused by the sudden stimuli. Not wasting the advantage, you scramble the last few feet toward the turnstile gate – when something grabs your leg and threatens to drag you back into the hoard. It’s one of the prone zombies you knocked down in your charge – you had almost forgot about them in the mounting panic of your situation. Looking, you can see all four of them beginning to get back up, but the closest of them has grabbed a hold of your pant leg and is now sinking its teeth deep into your calf. You cry out in pain as the ugly thing rips free a wide strip of your flesh and grins – mouth dripping your own blood. Still having a hold of the fire extinguisher, you curse loudly and slam the butt of it down on the zombie’s head with all your might. A gruesome spray of wet gore splats across your legs as the thing’s head pops like a melon between the butt of the extinguisher and hard tile floor. You force yourself to ignore your own injury and the revulsion of such a gory sight – skittering through the turnstile before the rest of the zombies can get to you. Immediately, the zombie hoard tries to reach through the bars of the gate to get at you. Looking at the stairs and escalator, you see that there are no zombies on this side of the gate – Phew! Maybe you’ll get out of this yet. The problem is that you’re now bleeding from the burning bite on back of your leg and are currently stuck holding the gate yourself to keep the zombies from following you through it. You need something to jam it shut with. Looking for the heavy fire extinguisher, you see that you dropped it in order to make it to the gate in time. Damn; you could have used it! That just leaves two options – sacrifice your crowbar to lockup the turnstile – or simply make a run for the stairs (hoping your injured leg will carry you through), knowing that the zombies will follow, but only just a few at a time through the confined space of the turnstile gate… Also, you have lost your book bag and the med kit, signal flares, and proper flashlight within (though you still have the penlight on your keychain). > You let go and make a break for the stairs (keeping your crowbar) You deice that you need your crowbar too much to leave it behind and make a break for the stairs, letting go of the turnstile gate and running as fast as you can go with a limp. Two zombies immediately force themselves through the turnstile gate, but the press of those behind them completely jams up the works. One zombie even gets stuck between the turnstile and gate and is slowly being crushed. As long as the zombies all continue pushing forward at once, no more will be able to get through. Seeing this you: > You beat the crap out of the two zombies following you with your crowbar, before going up the stairs Normally, you could easily outrun the two staggering zombies, but the injury in your leg has slowed you down noticeably; and right now, you’re only just keeping ahead of them. You move a little ways up the stairs to gain the advantage of higher ground and wait with your crowbar to meet the two zombies climbing sluggishly up after you. The throng of angry zombies meanwhile, still tries to push through the gate after you, but is unable to pass. They glare at you with frustrated moans and snarls, flattening the trapped zombie in the process. When the first zombie gets head level with your waist you swing for the fences and clock it in the side of the head so hard, that its ear explodes under the blow, and it is sent flying over sideways off the steps. It crashes heavily to the hard tile floor below and remains still for a moment, but then slowly begins to right itself. The second zombie keeps coming and reaches to grab at your legs, but you anticipate such a move and backpedal up the stairs a bit more, giving you room to wind up a brutal overhead swing. Your crowbar lands on top of the nasty creature’s head so hard that its skull caves in with a cracking-splorch – and a bloody spray of teeth splatter your feet as they shoot out of what was once the awful thing’s mouth. By this time, the first zombie has staggered back up and is heading for the stairs again. You see a long red welt raised up on the side of its head, where its ear used to be. You again raise you crowbar over your head and wait. When it gets up to you on the stairs, you kick its chest hard, sending it once more tumbling back down to the tile floor below. This time however, you hurry after it and plunge the chisel-end of your crowbar into the back of its head before it can get up again. The thing convulses violently a moment and then goes still, before you pull your crowbar out of its skull with a wet sucking sound. You glance over at the turnstile gate, relieved to see that the agitated zombies are still jamming it up with their hapless compatriot. Limping up the stairs to the subway’s main corridor, you see the wide concrete and tile entryway into the subway itself; and you can actually see the exit to your left, beyond a bank of narrow token-operated turnstiles. Unfortunately, a huge mass of zombies crowd the area – both in front of the turnstiles and on the other side, where the tunnel itself simply opens without walls to the outside. You stifle a gag, as the smell of blood and death is overpowering here. Looking at the floor of the main corridor, you shudder to see hundreds of ripped open and dismembered bodies lying in sticky footprint-tracked pools of maggot and fly infested blood. You force yourself to ignore the nauseating massacre and take in the more pertinent details of the scene. Directly across from the stairway you just came up is another stairway headed back down. The sign over the stairs reads: “North Platform.” You know that this is the stairway that leads back down to the other end of the platform you just escaped. It’s a good thing zombies are stupid – or they could just turn from the turnstile gate you blocked and come right up those stairs unimpeded. To your right, the subway’s main corridor goes another hundred or so feet and ends at another set of opposing stairs, where a much smaller group of ten or twelve zombies mill about. The signs above these stairways read: “South Platform” and “Exit Only” respectively. You know they would take you down to the subway’s southbound platform – no doubt just as zombie infested as the north platform was. Between you and that far end of the corridor – about fifty feet away – are three sets of doors. The first door is on the opposite side of the tunnel from you and is a security door broken off the top hinges. It hangs open at an odd angle and looks bent out slightly, as if it had been forced open recently. It has a pushpin key lock in it, but doesn’t look like it can be closed anymore, and has the words: “Transit Authority: Subway Personnel Only” is written on its face. The second door is on your side of the tunnel, just a little further down from the first. It is also a security door, closed and locked with a pushpin key lock, and reads: “Security Office” on the front. Next to the door itself is a huge smashed out window – creating a six foot wide, four foot high, opening into the security area beyond. The bloody body of a security guard hangs out of the window frame, the back half of his head apparently blown out from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Below the window frame is a scattering of broken glass and a bloody pile of corpses – some you note with huge holes in their heads as well. You also think you can see the pistol the guard must have used to blow his brains out, lying in the gore. The final set of doors, about thirty feet further down the tunnel from the security office, are the doors to the men and women’s restrooms. Given the circumstances, you have to rule out the exit. There is no way you’re going to be able to get through all those zombies. They would tear you apart, like all the other unfortunates that now litter the floor. There is also no point in going back down to either subway platform. That would be suicide. You really don’t have to go to the bathroom all that bad; so there’s no point getting trapped in a restroom. Besides, you can think of a lot more pleasant places to be killed by zombies anyway. That leaves the broken transit authority door or the security office door (with the pistol). Given the distance between both groups of zombies and the doors, you estimate that you can get to either door before the zombies can get to you – even if they spot you. If you can sneak undetected however, that will help even more. > You run for the broken transit authority door You sprint across the main corridor for the broken transit authority door, hoping to get far enough ahead of the zombies that it won’t matter that they see you – which unfortunately, they all do. With a loud clamor of wails and wheezing snarls, the massive hoard of walking dead jammed up at the at the turnstiles, notices your movement and falls forward toward you in a sudden jerky run. Damn; these ones are moving much faster than you expected! Looking toward the smaller group of ten to twelve zombies at the other end of the corridor, you see that they too have all seen you and are now coming at you as well – lumbering forward with a clumsy gait. > You oh shit! You rush through the broken transit authority door and see that you are in a short hallway, leading from the broken door about thirty feet to a set of private restrooms (men and women’s) at the far end. Another corridor joins the hallway about halfway down its length on the left. With the horde of ravenous zombies just moments behind, you move quickly to the corridor leading off the hallway and look down it to see a long corridor lit by emergency lighting. A number of office doors, some open and some closed, line each side – while what’s left of two mangled corpses litter the hallway in a splattering of gore. As you look, you see a zombie stumble out of one of the office doors to wander aimlessly down the hall away from you. At the far end of the corridor, beyond the lone zombie with its back to you, you can also see another security door, this one intact, but also shut and secured with a pushpin key lock. Great; you’re about to be sandwiched between the zombie ahead and the coming horde from behind – you’d better decide what to do fast… > You take out the lone zombie with your crowbar, allowing a few moments access to the security door before the other two zombies show up behind you You sprint right up the corridor, toward the lone zombie near the closed security door. As you come up from behind, the zombie turns to see what the commotion is and catches your heavy crowbar right across the eyes. You hit it so hard – and with the momentum of your run – that the entire front of its face folds in and both eyeballs pop right out of its head. The thing topples over in a crimson spray – and does not get back up. Looking back down the corridor behind you, you don’t yet see the following zombies, but can hear them drawing closer. You might have ten seconds – if you’re lucky. Quickly looking at the pushpin key lock securing the door, you see that it has nine pins (zero through nine) and a turning knob. Having worked with these before, in some of the secured areas of the Summit Tower, you know that you punch in a four digit combination and then turn the knob to open the door. Examining the pushpins themselves, you note that the ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘9’ pins seem a bit more worn than the rest; and that the ‘9’ pin looks the most worn of all. If the wear indicates the pins used in the combination, then you’re looking at a combination using a ‘1’, ‘2’, and two ‘9’s. Being an accountant, you quickly do the math in your head – leaving you with only twelve combinations. You try: > You 1299 Not the right combination. You’d better hurry; time is running out! You try:<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 1: Minor Ambitions Once upon a time in a city called Klyton, there was a young man who wanted to be a doctor. He studied hard in school and his parents supported his dreams for he was intelligent and hard working and they knew he could succeed if given the chance. They also wanted him to have a more stable and comfortable life than they did. (Much like their parents before them) Despite the high costs of a formal education of a person growing up in his middle class background, his parents who ran an inn, scraped together enough money to send him to a university and for awhile the young man was able to pursue his dreams. Unfortunately life doesn’t always go as planned and one day the young man’s father died and to make matters worse it turned out his father who only had the best intentions for his son, had been borrowing from a dangerous loan shark. With his mother in danger of losing the inn, the young man had to put his dreams on hold and help his mother. It was a time of great stress for the young man, but in time he was able to not only keep the inn afloat and pay off the debt, but he was also able to turn enough profit to re-enroll at the university and eventually become the doctor he always wanted to be. During his time as an innkeeper however, he had become very close to a young barmaid by the name of Eliza. While their love didn’t blossom immediately, he soon realized his feelings before it was too late and the two became romantically involved and in time they married. For various reasons together they moved away from the city and to a quieter smaller town called Teckleville. There the young man opened a private practice and became a respected member of the community and had twins with Eliza. These twins, a boy and a girl, had possibly even more of a loving home than their father did and they certainly had even more comforts and advantages. Truly when they grew up, they could be anything they set their minds to. However, once again life is not always so simple. As they grew up, these twins became the scourge of Teckleville, always getting into mischief. Granted some misbehavior is expected from youth as they find their purpose in life, but it would seem no matter what, these two were bound and determined to pursue the life of crime. The pair of them rogues through and through and as they got older it was apparent they had no desire to change. And that’s where our tale begins… > You continue Year 16 As you sit counting your ill-gotten loot from the latest traveling merchant in town, your twin sister is watching you with a slightly distracted expression. She’s been looking like that a lot lately. You know she can’t be concerned about getting into trouble. The pair of you have been doing this since you were kids. You’ve got this routine down pretty well at this point. While most of your small town is fully aware of your roguish ways, you’re fortunate that you’re both still young and your father is a good doctor and has some measure of influence in keeping you out of the local jail. Plus, it helps that you long since stopped stealing from the town itself and focused on stealing from people passing through Teckleville instead. Still, it isn’t like either of your parents are pleased with your recreational criminal activities and have tried to steer you in a different direction with little success. While it tends to go in one ear and out the other with you, sometimes your sister listens occasionally. And you’re pretty sure that’s the cause of her distraction in-between your jobs. Something is on her mind and has been for a while now and today is the day she says as much. “We need to talk bro.” your sister says. “Uh oh. You sound like mom. Which means this doesn’t sound good.” You reply. “I really wish you wouldn’t set a negative tone to this already difficult situation. I’ve been going back and forth about this multiple times, making myself sick over it actually.” “Very well, let’s get this over with.” You sister exhales deeply and sits next to you. “There’s nothing here for me in this town.” “Gee thanks, sis.” “That’s not what I mean, I just…(Sigh) look I know you don’t listen to mom or dad, but I’ve been thinking they’ve got a point. I mean, what am I doing? What are WE doing? I mean when we were little kids, this was fun. Working together in near perfect harmony and avoiding trouble, but we’re both sixteen now. We really going to be doing this for another sixteen years?” “We weren’t doing this straight out of the womb, sis.” “You know what I mean! What does the future hold for us? How long before dad just gets fed up and tells the town guard to throw us in jail for our own good?” “Mom, wouldn’t allow that.” “Yeah, well I think even mom has her limits. Besides, neither one may have a choice in protecting us, if we really fuck up one day.” “We’re too good at this, we’re not going to fuck up.” “Yeah well, even if that is the case, I don’t see staying here in Teckleville robbing travelling merchants as a stable future.” “So what are you saying exactly?” “I’m saying I’m getting out. I’m leaving town.” You’re silent for a moment. You knew that’s where this was heading, but hearing it makes it real. “Where are you going to go?” you ask. “I dunno. Anywhere! Maybe Klyton, or Holgard or even the Delantium Kingdom. I’ll figure it out during my travels. Just anywhere, but here.” “Oh? And just how exactly are you going to support yourself?” “Half of that stuff we steal is mine you know.” Your sister points out. “Yeah, I know that, but that’s not going to last forever and it isn’t that much.” You say. “Well mom has always stressed how nice my voice is and how creative I am. And I think you know I’ve been practicing my lute a lot more lately. I figured I might be a bard…” “A bard?” “Yeah, you know. Singing tales, telling stories and getting into adventures…” “…okay…Yes, you’ve got many talents. I mean it’s why we work so well together. You distract folks with your charm and I do the rest. I’ve always known that and I get that you’ve always liked the attention you get from the marks more than the actual thievery. But I thought you said you were seeking a more stable future. Being a wandering bard doesn’t exactly qualify.” “Well okay, maybe stable wasn’t the right word, maybe DIFFERENT was more accurate. My point is, this is something I want to do and I can’t be a proper bard unless I travel and experience the world! I can’t stay here any longer.” Your sister is quite serious about this and you know that there is going to be no deterring her from this path. This is going to change everything, but you’re willing to roll with it. “Well…okay I suppose if this is something you want to do, I’ll have to support it. You’re probably right about sticking around here anyway, I know I get pretty bored in between waiting for the next mark. I assume you’re probably already getting ready to leave soon. Just let me get my things together and I’ll be ready…” “Not this time. I’m going by myself.” Now you’re really surprised. “What?! But you can’t! I mean…who’s going to look out for you? Don’t you know how dangerous it is out there?” you exclaim. “How would you know? You’ve never left this town either!” your sister points out. “Yeah, well I’ve heard things!” “And so have I. Look…I’m well aware that it isn’t a safe world out there, but that’s part of what I need to experience. I mean even here, with that overly aggressive asshole Klint hitting on me every other day, I know I’m safe from him because you, mom and dad are around.” Your sister continues. Look, I need to do this on my own. I need to fail or succeed on my own. I need to take care of myself, I mean don’t you think I’ve got the skills to do it?” “Yeah, but…I dunno…I guess it’ll just be sort of strange. We’ve been a team for so long.” “I know. It’ll be strange for me too since we’re so close, but maybe this will be for the best anyway. I mean have you heard some of more recent ugly rumors about us just because we’re twins?” “Yeah, sort of twisted where people’s minds go. (Sigh) I guess this is goodbye. Are you leaving tonight, are you telling mom and dad?” “Yes, as you correctly guessed I will be leaving tonight. As for telling mom and dad, I thought about it…but I can only imagine the chaos that might cause with mom getting weepy and dad forbidding me to go anywhere. Hell, he might actually have the town guard throw me in jail just so I’d have to stay! No, better just leave a note and take off in the middle of the night.” “Probably the safest bet for you. Though of course you realize I’m going to catch the fallout of this plan of yours. In fact I’ll probably somehow get blamed for it.” “Yeah, I suppose you will…apologies.” Your sister says. “Meh, don’t worry about it. I’ll muddle through like I always do.” “Y’know you could leave too. I mean not with me of course, but you’re a resourceful guy, I’m sure you could make it outside this one horse town too. You did say you get bored here.” Your sister says. “Yeah, but I dunno. I’m not exactly multi-talented as you are and I doubt if I’d be able to try my hand at a life not involving crime somehow. Plus, here I’m probably the best thief in town. Elsewhere? I’m probably an amateur that would get eaten alive by the bigger criminals. Besides, I still got a good thing going here. I admit though it’s not going to be the same without your help.” Your sister pats you on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Just remember what I said. You’ve got more talent than you think and you could definitely do well out there too.” Maybe there is some truth to that, but in any case, this is where you part ways with your blood partner in crime. You both hug knowing that you both are going to feel like part of you is gone, but perhaps your sister is right. Perhaps it will ultimately be better for you in the long term. At least for her since she does have talent other than petty thievery. Later that night, your sister takes off to parts unknown and you prepare yourself for the hell that your parents are no doubt going to raise. Truth be told, if you left, they probably wouldn’t cause as much fuss…okay well maybe that’s not entirely true, but still, your sister has always been the favorite so they’re going to take this hard. They won’t be the only one. > You time Passes... Six months later… As you sit counting your ill-gotten loot from the latest traveling merchant in town, your girlfriend is watching you with an exasperated expression. Of course she tends to look like that a lot. “Ugh. This part is soooo boring! I dunno why you didn’t steal the jewelry, I liked some of those necklaces.” Annah exclaims. “Because you know I prefer hard coin in my possession rather than anything else.” You reply trying not to lose count. “So? You’re not the only one involved in doing this you know! You couldn’t just think about ME for once and steal some pretty items?” “Annah, if you wanted one of those necklaces so bad, you could have just stolen it yourself. You were closer to the merchant and easily had him distracted.” “He was gross. Breathing heavy and touching my legs, it was all I could do not to vomit…y’know you could have defended my honor.” It’s going to be one of those days… “(Sigh) And how exactly was I going to do that while I was breaking into his lockbox in his tent? The whole point is for me not to attract any sort of attention and that’s getting more difficult to do what with a lot of the merchants hiring more guards nowadays.” Annah rolls her eyes. It’s no secret that Annah was certainly drawn to you because she’s a little on the wild side and doesn’t have the best of reputations herself. While she certainly lets you do things to her that are a lot of fun, she’s not the partner in crime that your sister was and she certainly complains a lot more. A LOT more. Annah’s got the looks and flirting down, but that’s about it. Your sister actually had the talent to get the attention of people even if they weren’t some weak willed slob that went nuts over the latest sweet young thing that batted their eyes at them. She could lure them with a tale or a song and keep a whole entourage captivated if need be. You suppose Annah’s lack of skill has had the benefit of increasing your own since you’ve definitely had to be quicker and sneakier. Still, it isn’t just her lack of skill and bitching that’s the problem since that you can deal with. It’s the fact that she’s way more maintenance than you thought she’d be and she’s been getting worse in that aspect. You know you’re probably going to have to give her a little bit more this time around just to keep her appeased. At this point you haven’t really been saving much at all and you were planning on moving out of your parents home by now because that situation hasn’t gotten any better since your sister left. Lately you’ve been starting to wonder if you shouldn’t just do what your sister did and leave. It’s just getting to be too much hassle to steal in this town and it definitely isn’t as much fun as it used to be. Where you would go though, you aren’t sure. You’re going to have to figure it out. In the meantime, you hand over Annah’s share. “Okay, here you go…so what do you want to do now?” you ask. “Well since you were unwilling to steal me one of those nice necklaces, I guess I’ll have to buy a cheap ass one from that hag that runs Sparkling Treasures.” Annah replies. “So, we’re going to Jasmine’s shop.” “Yeah, and she’s going to be giving me the evil eye the entire time. Thinking I’m going to steal something.” “Well to be fair, you can’t blame her. I’ll come with you, but as far as I know I’m still banned from the place ever since I stole a bracelet for my sister’s birthday. Of course that was before we decided that the town was completely off limits.” “Whatever, I don’t really want to hear about how you spoiled your other girlfriend right now. It’s bad enough that continually criticize me and say I’m not as good as sister.” “What the…first of all I’m sick of these rumors about me and her when it wasn’t even like that! Second of all, I just said ONCE that our capers might run smoother if you had a better array of talents rather than just relying on your looks.” “There you go again putting me down! I don’t see you complaining about my talents when you’re having your five minutes of fun…” “Now don’t even start with that! Look, I don’t want to fight! Let’s just go get your necklace.” “I need more money!” “What?!” “What you gave me isn’t enough for the one I want!” “Didn’t you just say Jasmine sells cheap quality shit?” “Yeah, but that old bitch charges an arm and leg for it, so I need more money!” You shake your head and reach into your pocket. “(Sigh) Fine. Here, take it! Take it all!” you exclaim and hand over most of your coins to Annah, who takes them without blinking an eye. At this point you’re wondering why if she thinks you’re such a bad bum to her that why is she with you at all. “Thanks baby!” Annah beams and kisses you. Well that answers your question. As Annah grabs your arm while you walk to Jasmine’s shop, you continue to think about leaving here. The only thing is, are you going to do it like your sister did and just leave in the middle of the night, or are you going to actually say goodbye first? You sort of think with as much grief as you give your parents, they might actually like to at least say goodbye to you seeing as they didn’t get that chance with your sister. Of course that might be just wishful thinking on your part. “Okay, since you said you’re not allowed in, just wait outside and I’ll be out soon.” Annah says as you get to Sparkling Treasures. “I’ll be here.” You remark. Annah hasn’t been gone long when you encounter more trouble. “Well if it isn’t the notorious thief of Teckville. Shouldn’t you be skulking around in the shadows stealing from little old ladies?” It’s Klint and ever since your sister left, he’s been even more of an asshole to you and you’re not really sure why. “Klint, seriously what the hell is your problem? I don’t understand this continued antagonism towards me. I don’t go over to your family’s chicken farm and steal the cocks out of your hand.” Klint as usual is slow on the uptake and doesn’t even get the double meaning insult you just said, but he’s mad at you anyway. “Because it’s all your fucking fault! I could have gotten with your sister if YOU hadn’t been around!” “Oh for fuck’s sake, if my sister had ANY attraction to you, she certainly would have showed it. She didn’t and now she’s GONE, okay? Get the hell over it already…” Klint at this point starts getting closer to you and raising his voice and you begin to take a more defensive stance. “FUCK YOU! It was ALL your fault! How could I have a chance with her when YOU corrupted her! Tell me…did she smell like flowers when you embraced her? Did she taste like honey when you kissed her? Did the very heavens move when you plunged into her?” he asks with a mixture of anger and resentment, but also with a glint of eagerness that you’ll tell him. While you knew Klint was always a bit obsessed with your sister, you never quite knew how bad it was until just now. He’s totally lost it. “Klint, contrary to what the rumors are, none of that happened you sick fuck. Look, just go home before something bad happens…” you say. “Oh something bad is gonna happen alright sister fucker!” He says and then brandishes a knife partially covered in blood and with a few feathers stuck to it. And of course nobody is around to see all this despite it being broad daylight. Or maybe they’re just watching from windows and don’t care. You’re not exactly popular after all. “Klint, put that knife back and just walk away now.” You say stepping back. “Everyone in this town hates you, y’know. Even that whore you hang around with now. She came on to me the other night saying how she wanted a proper fuck as opposed to your pathetic attempts. I didn’t fuck her though; I just let her suck my dick. Did she kiss you today? Ha ha ha ha!” You ignore Klint’s ramblings and continue to focus on his knife, which is now aiming towards your face, even if you are trying to widen the gap between you two. “Klint, last chance to get that knife out of my face.” “Or you’ll what?” Well it’s a good question, what are you going to do? > You draw your own dagger This asshole is trying to kill you! You’re not taking any chances. No sooner have you drawn your own dagger when Klint swings at you a couple times and you barely have time to dodge. Luckily for you, despite his size Klint isn’t all that skilled in combat. While you’ve never really been in more than a few scuffles as a kid yourself, you’ve taught yourself what you THINK is adequate fighting knowledge. Also the very real threat of Klint seemingly trying to kill you is causing a survival instinct to kick in. You don’t think, you just see an opportunity causing you to swing with your dagger. It’s a hit and Klint touches the side of his face and looks at the fresh blood from the medium slash you landed on his cheek. For a moment, Klint is in disbelief. He begins shaking and breathing hard. You think he’s going to start crying or even run away because he realizes that this is a real fight with real consequences. Klint instead screams with rage until his face is beet red. It’s sort of unnerving, but you stand your ground. Swinging his knife wildly, he charges at you still screaming the entire time. You dodge out of the way, but your leg doesn’t completely clear the charge and you fall to the ground face first. Fortunately you trip up Klint in the process, who instead of taking advantage, continues to stumble in the direction he was already running in. Unfortunately, Annah was just coming out of Jasmine’s shop at the time. “Hey what’s…AH!” Annah yelps as Klint’s knife goes straight into her stomach. You recover just in time to see Klint hovering near her body with his knife in it. She’s lying up against the door of Jasmine’s shop as blood seeps out and dyes her clothing red. “Annah?” you utter, but she doesn’t answer she just looks down at her wound, holding it and then looks at you with a mixture of shock, pain and sadness. Klint on the other hand turns to you with a face that’s now completely drained of all its rage and is a little shock himself. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean…” is all he stutters. ANNAH!” you shout and now you’re the one that’s going out of your mind. Klint tries to defend himself, but you’re relentless. Klint falls backwards as you attack and ignoring any sort of pain he’s caused with his fists or feet you begin stabbing him in the chest like a madman. Klint screams are now ones of pleading rather than anger. It doesn’t matter if it was an accident. It doesn’t matter that he just said she cheated on you with him (Which might’ve been a lie anyway). It doesn’t even matter that she’s bitching at you all the time and you were strongly considering leaving her soon anyway. The fact is, you did have a relationship with her and to some small degree you did care. He begs you to stop killing him, but you’ve snapped. He’s caused you nothing but trouble for your sister and yourself. You’re ending it today and with one more strike, you thrust your dagger in his throat and then pull it out. Klint’s screams become gurgles as he clutches his bloody throat. His body convulses a bit as you stand up drenched in blood. You don’t stand there and watch him die however, you instead run over to Annah who is still bleeding out with a knife in her belly. “Shit, shit, Annah, it’s gonna be okay. My dad’s a doctor remember? He…he…he’ll fix this. I’m gonna go get him. Just…just hang on baby…” you say before you’re suddenly pulled away by two strong hands. “GET AWAY FROM HER MURDERER!” a gruff voice shouts from behind. Still at a heightened state of alert, you stab at whoever it is behind you, and just manage to nick their arm before twisting away. You now see that your fight with Klint has drawn out a lot of the townsfolk. Bastards were probably watching the entire time. The man who tried to pull you away was the Wilfred the pub owner. It’s a good thing he’s not one of the appointed town watch, but it probably won’t be long. “You little bastard! You see that? He tried to kill me too! Someone get the town watch! Someone go get Klint’s family too, they need to know what this murderer did to their boy!” Wilfred shouts as he clutches his bleeding arm. Several other townsfolk go running off shouting about your deeds, and a few others look as if they’re going to take their chances apprehending you themselves and while Wilfred is a fat out of shape barkeep, you don’t know if you’d do as well against the blacksmith who is now approaching you with a hammer in hand. With a lynch mob starting to form, you do the only thing you can and that’s run. After a few moments of running and backtracking, you’ve managed to make it home and lose most of the ones that were half heartedly trying to nab you, but it won’t be long before what passes for real law enforcement around here is beating down your door. You only have a short time to gather what you can and get the hell out of here. Of course as soon as you come in, your mother sees you covered in blood and demands to know what is going on. “By the gods! What have you done!? What have you DONE?!” your mother shouts. “I didn’t do anything! Where’s dad?!” you ask. “I’m right here….oh shit. Fuck! What the hell did you do now?!” your dad says walking into the room. “I didn’t do anything! But Annah is severely wounded, you gotta help her. She’s got a knife in her stomach and she’s over by Jasmine’s shop! Please! You have to hurry!” you exclaim. “Are you the one who stabbed her?” your father asks. “What?! NO! Klint stabbed her, but everyone thinks….look… I gotta get outta here, just go help her!” you say and push both of your parents out of the way to go gather a few things from your room. Surprisingly your father doesn’t say much more, he just gathers up his emergency physician’s bag and mutters to himself. You think you hear him saying how you’re a fuck up before he leaves, but that’s about it. Your mom on the other hand as you’re hastily grabbing a few items, is tearfully going on about how you (And your sister) wasted your potential and she doesn’t know where she and your father went wrong. You have little time and it isn’t much, but you try to reassure her that it isn’t either of their faults. You’d like to calm her down some more, but there are a bunch of people soon banging at the door. “STOP HIDING BEHIND YER MAMA’S SKIRT AND GET OUT HERE MURDERER!” you hear a voice shout. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry for everything. I…I gotta go.” You say as you leave your mother crying and go to climb out your window. You manage to just get out of your backyard when you hear someone else shout that they see you and you’re soon off and running from a mob again. It takes a bit of stealth and hiding on your part (along with distancing yourself from Teckleville) but eventually as the sky goes dark, you’re fairly certain nobody from the town is still chasing you, or if they are, they might have made camp for the night. As for you, you’re in the middle of a wood, still wearing your bloody clothes (fortunately you managed to grab some spare in your pack though) unsure of where you’re going to go exactly. On top of it all you still don’t know if Annah’s dead. You’re so tired. You can’t even process all of it anymore. You have to rest. You find a tree that looks sturdy and high enough, so you climb it and prepare to sleep for the night. You just hope that anyone that might still be looking for you at this late hour doesn’t think to look up. As you drift off to sleep, your thoughts go to your sister. “Well sis, whether things are working out for you or not right now, at least your exit wasn’t like this.” > Next day You wake up fairly early, but then you didn’t really sleep much to begin with. This was more of a brief rest anyway. After a quick check to see if anyone is in the area, you get out of your bloody clothes and change into some new ones. You might not be properly clean, but it’s better than you were. You then check your supplies, which aren’t much. You’ve got a few coins, but you aren’t excessively worried about that since food and water are more important out here in the wilderness. You’ve got a little food and water, but it isn’t going to last long. The only weapon you have currently is your dagger. Part of you is only just now starting to feel the various negative emotions involving your parents and Annah. You can only imagine the shitstorm they’re facing because of your actions. You just hope that they don’t suffer the consequences of what you did. Then there’s Annah. You feel like you should be feeling a lot sadder about her, maybe even crying a bit, but maybe you got all those emotions out of your system when you killed Klint. Still seems a bit surreal that you killed someone. Not just anyone, but someone you knew since childhood, even if you didn’t like him. You definitely don’t feel bad about it and while that can be due to several understandable factors, you can’t help but wonder if you could do it again under different circumstances. You may have to, especially now, though your mind certainly went to a dark place during that time. Whatever the near future holds, you’ll have to deal with it when it happens. Right now you have to make a decision on where you’re going to go because you’re not exactly hot on the idea of staying out here in the wilderness. Your first thought is to head west to the city-state of Klyton. It’s certainly the closest city and it’s the direction you ran from Teckleville anyway. The problem is if anyone from Teckleville is still searching for you, that’s going to be the first place they look. Still, Klyton is the only place you really have any basic knowledge about thanks to your parents both being originally from there. Your father never really spoke too much about it, just saying that the only thing worthwhile that he got there was your mother and he was glad when they finally moved to Teckleville to be closer to your grandmother at the time. Your mother on the other hand didn’t speak so ill of the place, which is surprising since she grew up in a lower class area than your father did. She even said that sometimes she missed the times when she worked at the inn where she met your father in the first place. Of course her knowledge about the city is bound to be a bit out of date. Also, while Klyton has no jurisdiction over Teckleville, it has been known to apprehend wanted criminals from elsewhere trying to hide out there. Not to mention the place in general has a fairly good reputation (And they want to keep it that way) as far as its own security goes. The Delantium Kingdom to the east isn’t really high on your choice list. For one thing, you’d have to backtrack around Teckleville to go in that direction. From what you’ve overheard, the kingdom has been slowly trying to expand again which sounds a lot like more soldier types running around and that’s the last thing you need. Still, the kingdom is a big place and they can’t possibly be everywhere. Sivak is the closest major city there. The only other nearby bastion of major civilization you can think of that’s close is another city state by the name of Holgard. It’s to the south and in terms of existence, it’s only a little older than you are. It was founded by a noble from the Delantium Kingdom. Originally it was most likely supposed to be some sort of outpost or colony for the DK. But whatever the original intent, the noble soon set himself up as absolute ruler with no ties to the kingdom at all. For whatever reason, the DK hasn’t taken any action against him, whether that’s because the cost wouldn’t be worth it, they’ve got more important things to deal with or they’re simply glad to have him gone is unknown. The third possibility isn’t entirely out of the question either, since you’ve overheard travelling merchants say that Baron Varsakken is a very unlikable man and it’s amazing he hasn’t suffered any assassination attempts. His children are apparently little better. Still, you’ve also heard the place is filled with corruption so it would probably be a better place to do your work than Klyton. > You klyton You figure it might be best to head somewhere that you can at least get your bearings about what you’re going to do in the long term with your life. Still, it would be best to stay off the road and stick to the wilderness. With a new goal, you head in the direction of Klyton and hoping nobody from Teckleville is tracking you. You stick to the woods figuring that it will provide you with more cover. You keep alert for possible denizens that lurk in the woods themselves, but besides a lot of birds and a few normal animals, you don’t encounter anything out of the ordinary. You even manage to get a good night’s sleep, well as good as you can get with as paranoid as you are. Unfortunately the woods eventually begins to thin and if you continue walking the way you are going, you’re going to be in the open plains and if you’re going to march across the open fields, you might as well just walk on the road since you’ll be just as exposed. Since you’re not exactly in danger of starving or anything and the woods themselves seem fairly safe, you decide to play it cautiously by staying in the woods for the rest of the day and travel in the open at night. Hopefully it won’t be a much longer trek to Klyton. You take the opportunity to rest up some more and when the only light in the sky is that of the dim moon, that’s when you leave the edge of the woods. The trees around you soon disappear and all that’s left is you in the open countryside and the occasional sounds of nocturnal animals. You walk across the fields for a while, but as the grass starts getting knee high, you start hearing unfamiliar sounds. While you hope it is only a harmless nocturnal animal (or rather several of them judging by the noises) you get concerned that you might be at a disadvantage if it isn’t, so you quickly make your way back towards the road where you have better vision of any potential low to the ground threats. The road is just as empty as the plains you just left. You continue to keep aware of your surroundings by keeping an ear out for various sounds. You still have this idea that you’re suddenly going to hear Teckleville watchmen on horses galloping on your position. You continue down the road and once again you see something out of the ordinary. This time though it’s a hanging cage along side the road. You’ve heard of those before. Klyton apparently uses them when the jails are full and the criminal hasn’t done anything bad enough to deserve outright death. So they get put in these cages until they eventually die of starvation, exposure or someone grants the mercy of killing them. Either way they aren’t the city’s problem anymore. Seems like it would be kinder to kill them immediately. You walk a little further and you see a few more of them on both sides of the road. Well if there’s anyone inside them, they’re going to be safely locked in a cage. First couple cages you pass are empty. The next one has a decaying smell as you pass, but nobody is in it. You notice on the other side of the road a couple of the cages have bodies in them, but seeing as they aren’t moving, you can only guess you’re probably walking by corpses. At least you think you are. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have any extra water would you?” you suddenly hear one of the slumping figures in the cage say. Well you may have decided to travel at night, but it would seem you’re encountering more people than you thought. “Uh, no not really.” You answer. “That sounded really convincing there son. Come on, if you got any you could spare some. You always got the luxury of grabbing yourself a drink at the first tavern in Klyton…assuming you’re even old enough...I can’t quite see you, but you sound fairly young.” The figure in the cage says. “I’m not young, I’m a grown man!” you exclaim. “Oh. Well apologies then. So can you please spare any water, I’m dying of thirst over here.” “Why should I trust you? You’re in a cage meant for criminals.” “So? What, do you think I’m going to suddenly attack you or something? Even if I had the strength to grab you from between the bars and choked you out or something, that wouldn’t exactly help my situation now would it? If anything it would just be harder to beg for water from the next person that passed by given that your corpse would be near my cage.” Strangely that logic makes a bit of sense to you. “I’m not a violent criminal anyway. I’m just in here because I was a little down on my luck and stole some food. Unfortunately Klyton is pretty overzealous when it comes to their laws.” The man goes on to say. “So you’re a thief?” you ask. “Only out of survival.” “Explains why you got caught. You’re not a professional.” You say. “Oh? Well more apologies then, I didn’t realize I was speaking to a master fucking thief. Of course if you’re so good, why the hell are you wandering out here in the boonies? Shouldn’t you be stealing the King of Delantium’s jeweled chamber pot or something?” “Hey, if you’re still expecting me to give you any water you’re doing a piss poor job at convincing me.” You say getting a bit agitated and stepping closer to the cage. From this distance you get a better visual on the man in the cage. He looks about of average build, and he’s a lot older than you. In fact he looks like he might be around your dad’s age. Of course he gets a better look at you as well. “Heh. You barely have any stubble on your face! I knew you were just a kid! Something about you though…you look strangely familiar.” The man remarks. “I don’t think so, I’ve never been to Klyton.” You say. “No, you don’t look like you have. You look more like someone from a small town…say you wouldn’t be from Teckleville would you? That is the closest town around here.” “…um no why?” you say and then silently cursing yourself that your lie didn’t come out natural. “I’ll take that slight pause as a yes and you really need to work on your attempts at misdirection and lying. What sort of thief are you?” “Better one than you obviously, you can’t even pick the easy lock on your cage.” “Yeah, yeah, so Teckleville huh? Hmm….wait a minute!” The man suddenly asks if you know a doctor from Teckleville, and then goes into a description somewhat matching your dad, even mentions him by name. Does this man know your father? Since you seem to be messing up on your lies right now, you just go ahead and confirm his suspicions. “The gods are truly merciful this night! I knew your father! You look a lot like him when he was young. My name’s Tom and I used to go to school with your father!” “You mean in the university?” “No, I used to go to primary and high school with him. I was one of his friends during childhood. I mean sure we drifted apart obviously, even more so when I dropped out altogether, but me and him were always alright with each other! I heard he moved to Teckleville years ago and had a family. Didn’t know his son was a thief though…how the hell did that happen?” “Long story.” “Hm, I’ll bet…so you were saying this big ass lock on my cage looked easy?” “Yeah, I’ve picked more complex merchant lockboxes.” You say confidently. At this point Tom stops slouching and begins to move towards you as much as he can in his cage. “That’s good…that’s good….so hey instead of water, how about you set me free?” “What? Why should I do that?” “Oh come on! I was a friend of your father’s! Surely he’s mentioned all the fond memories of us playing smash sphere after school.” “Well, actually my father doesn’t speak much about Klyton or the past at all. He prefers to forget it. Says it was mostly stressful.” “Oh....well hey how about this deal then? You’ve never been to Klyton, so how about in exchange for my freedom I give you some basic information on some of the neighborhoods and potential places you could easily go burgle. I mean obviously I’m rubbish at it, but if you’re as good as you say you are, they should be easy for you. You might have less of a problem with releasing him if you could somehow confirm he is who he says he is. Tom certainly seems to know bits about your father that would be hard to know by some complete stranger. Your father never said anything about former childhood friends though, or if he did you weren’t paying attention. > You release Tom The promise of loot is always a helpful push in any direction. Even if he’s lying about being a friend of your father’s, dying a slow death in a cage is still a pretty horrible way to die just for stealing food. And while he could also be lying about that as well you’re confident in your abilities that if he tries anything, you’ll be able to defend yourself if necessary. At worst he’s probably going to just run off. “Okay, I’m going to take big risk here, but I’m going to release you, but if you try anything I’m more than capable of defending myself. I’ve killed before!” you exclaim. “Whoa there son, I’m not going to do anything! If anything I’m going to be your best friend for life if you set me free. Look I’ll even step as far back as I can in this cage and put my hands behind my back while you pick the lock!” You’re still a little wary, but you pull out your little lock pick set and begin to work on the big lock. “So…you’re a killer along with being a thief huh? That’s quite the combination kid. I’m sort of having a hard time believing it.” “Why? Because I don’t look like one? Because I’m young?” you say. “Heh, neither of those. Known a lot of killers that don’t look the part. Also known a lot of killers younger than yourself. Just having a hard time believing it because of who your father is. While your father certainly wasn’t some goody two shoes as a kid, he certainly didn’t go seeking out major trouble. Never did anything illegal as far as I know. I sort of figured if he ever had kids of his own, he’d teach them the same.” You continue working on the lock while only really half listening to Tom’s ramblings about your father. “He was always was focused on his goal of becoming a doctor. Heard even when he ran his dad’s inn temporarily he did nothing but work hard all the time while still attending his classes. Yep, your dad certainly had his shit together by thinking about his long term future.” “Guess so if you like boring.” You mutter. “Boring huh? I suppose stability would be a little dull to some, still there are benefits. So is that why you’re going around stealing and killing people? Running away from your boring small town and heading to the big city? Is this your form of rebellion?” Now you’re getting irritated. “Look, I’m trying to work on this fucking lock and I’m having a hard enough time doing this in near darkness without you trying analyze my home life.” “Okay, okay, I’ll shut up.” Tom remarks. After a bit of silence, you speak up again. “And for the record, I don’t go around killing people for fun. I’ve only killed one and that’s because the sonofbitch stabbed my girlfriend.” You say. “…well shit kid. That’s pretty damn horrible. Guess you did what you had to then, I can respect that. Did she…” “I dunno…hope not. Maybe my dad got to her in time. I had to sort of leave town in a hurry though.” “Ah. I see.” And with that, the big rusty lock makes a satisfying click and you back away from the cage. “There, it’s done.” Tom wastes no time he immediately opens the door and starts pacing and stretching. “Damn, you don’t know how good it is to be out of that fucking thing! I should have been out of there yesterday.” “Wait, what? You mean someone was already coming to get you?” “Well that was the pact I had set up with some friends of mine. If any of us ever got thrown in one of these cages, one of the others would help as soon as possible.” “So how long you been in there?” “Oh about a couple days.” “Couple days? You acted like you were in there for weeks!” “Yeah, well I was really thirsty, besides I still didn’t know some stranger was going to set me free. By the way, thanks a lot and nice work on that lock.” You shake your head at this situation. “Let me guess, you weren’t caught stealing food either.” “Stealing yes, food no. It was a job and well I’ll tell you on the way back to Klyton. Come on kid.” “Wait, you’re going back and you expect me to just follow?” “Well sure, didn’t you at least want to know the ins and outs of the city, best places to steal from, the neighborhoods and all that? Look, I know I lied a bit, but you helped me out and with your skill set I got a feeling you’d do really well in our organization.” “Organization?” “Yeah, I’m a very important member of the Crimson Talons!” Tom says with some pride, you on the other hand look blank. “The Crimson Talons. By the gods kid, surely you’ve heard of us. I know your dad didn’t exactly hang out with outlaws, but the Talons were pretty infamous in Klyton! Used to maintain control over all criminal activity in the city!” Tom remarks. “Used to?” you ask. “I mean they still do…it’s just um…well things are a bit different now…look you’re gonna wanna make good connections in this line of work and right now I’m giving you a perfect opportunity to make some fucking great ones at no cost! You come with me, meet a few people and if you feel like we’re not your style, well I promise you can just walk away. You really don’t have anything to lose.” As much as Tom as been telling half-truths and outright bullshit, he’s sort of right in that you don’t really have much to lose. You’re already an outlaw from your own home and everything you own is on your person and that isn’t much. Not to mention you probably would have lied to gain help in the same situation. You suppose there isn’t much harm in going to see what the Crimson Talons are all about. Still, you’re going to take whatever Tom is saying with a grain of salt, because on top of all the other lies he’s already told, you have a hard time believing that he’s really all that important in the organization. “Okay, I’m interested, but how are you sneaking past the city gates. I can’t imagine the city guards are going to just let someone in that just escaped from a hanging cage.” You say. “Oh, there’s better way to get in and out of the city. We’re going through a secret tunnel.” Tom remarks. “That would certainly solve that problem. Well let’s go, I guess.” “Great, I’m anxious to get back. They’re probably going to be surprised to see me, but believe me, I’m gonna have my own questions of why they didn’t come get me sooner! Now let me go over how to act and the boss’ personality just so you’re prepared…” And with that, you and Tom are on your way to see his Crimson Talon cohorts… > You later... “Ah, here we are, just up these stairs and through that door.” Tom says. “And here I was just getting used to walking through shitty water.” You say. “Hey, the sewers are the best way to get around the city. The guards don’t patrol as much down here and even when they do, they don’t patrol certain areas.” “Can’t say as I blame them, I’ve been on the verge of puking since we entered your secret tunnel which you neglected to mention was actually a foul forgotten sewer drain entrance.” “Hey, this is the business we’re in kid. It ain’t always convenient and comfortable. Besides you get used to the smell. Come on.” Tom and you walk up some stone stairs and Tom bangs on a sturdy looking wooden door. “Hey! It’s me! Open up!” Tom shouts, a few moments pass and a scruffy looking man rubbing his head opens the door. “What the fuck you banging on the door like the city watch for? Wait…Tom? What the fuck are you doing here? Weren’t you taken to cages?” “Yeah Vaughn, and where the hell were you guys? I thought you were supposed to come get me yesterday!” “The heat was still pretty bad, so we decided to lay low.” Tom barges past Vaughn who follows and then you follow both as they continue to talk. You must be above the sewers now though this looks like it might be an abandoned building of some sort so far. It barely looks better than the sewers you just left. You see a few people who you assume are Crimson Talons, but they’re either completely passed out or look like in various stages of being drunk or hung over. Bottles of spirits are all over the place and now you’re starting to wonder just how “powerful” the Crimson Talons are really supposed to be. “Decided to lay low huh? Looks more like you lot stayed down here, had a party, got liquored up and forgot about me!” Tom remarks. “Now that’s just not true! We didn’t even spend your cut of the loot! You can even check your room! Nothing’s been touched!” “I swear I’m not here for a few days and this place goes to shit. Where’s David?” “David? Um…he’s dead.” “What?! He wasn’t even on the job at the time. He was here!” “Yeah, well when the rest of us were coming back from the job, he apparently got into an argument with the boss. A really bad one about how he didn’t like the way Edmond was running things. It didn’t go well for either of them. Edmond might have been old, but he managed to overpower David and killed him. Unfortunately I guess it was all a bit too much exertion, because the boss died of a heart attack like almost immediately afterwards.” “Wait…you’re saying the boss is ALSO dead?!” “Yeah. We took both of their bodies to the usual spot if you wanted to say a few things to David…” “I’m sure the rats have stripped both corpses by now…(sigh) so who’s the new boss?” “Um, nobody. We haven’t really gotten around to figuring it out yet…but hey your name came up as a potential candidate! I don’t think anyone else wants the job.” At this point you start laughing. “I’m sorry I doubted you Tom. I obviously was way off about not believing that you weren’t one of the most important people in this organization.” “Who’s this asshole?” one of the nearby members asks stirring from his hang over. “Someone who actually helped me out, Jake.” Tom says shaking his head at all this new information and just tells you to come with him while he checks his room. Tom’s room in this dump isn’t quite as bad as the rest of the place. It even looks like he’s taken great pains to make it look “neat.” After looking through his drawers and small chest, he breathes a sigh of relief. “Well, as shocking as it is. All my stuff is actually still here, even my cut. Glad to see I’m somewhat respected around here.” “Yeah, they just forgot to spring you from a cage.” “Yeah well, I’m here now.” “And so am I. So now what? You brought me here to potentially join your little organization, but so far I’m not really impressed with the organization part. I thought you guys were supposed to be infamous or something.” Tom sits down and exhales deeply, rubbing his face. “Yeah, we once were. The truth is, even by the time I got involved with his organization, it was on the decline. Still had the vicious rep at least though, maybe a bit too vicious since it probably encouraged Klyton’s crackdowns and tightening up of security. Things just got worse over the years as more skilled members got arrested, killed or just quit for better pastures.” Tom explains. “People could just quit? I sort of though joining something like this was a for life type of thing.” “It typically is, which is why you can see how much trouble we’re in if people can just up and quit! It didn’t really help when the Ebony Claw Syndicate showed up here briefly.” “Who the hell are they?” “Another criminal outfit. Much larger than us by far. They’re based in the Delantium Kingdom, but I believe they have a strong presence in Holgard too. Edmond was an idiot when dealing with them, though I guess that was mainly pride.” “What did he do?” “Well the Ebony Claw had heard of the Talons and their problems with Klyton’s improved security. However, they also knew of our reputation even if it was a bit tattered at that point. Out of respect, they offered to help the Talons. The deal was we’d still have reign over Klyton, keep our identity and have to access to Ebony Claw resources, but we’d have to give a cut of all the profits we made to them. Not sure what the percentage was, but Edmond wasn’t pleased with it. Though like I said, it could have been free and he probably would have turned them down.” “So did they cause you a lot damage as well?” “If they did, it wasn’t directly. Their representative just left and we haven’t heard anything from them since. Despite never seeing any signs of the Claw again, Edmond got even more paranoid than he already was. Started organizing riskier jobs and accepting anyone who was desperate enough to join. He was convinced we were going to have to deal with the Claw again so we needed to be prepared. All that ultimately happened was with all the new unskilled people we got sloppier and caused even more heat to bear down on us and well, this is what we’re reduced to today.” Sheesh, this is pretty damn depressing. It’s almost enough to make you rethink your own career choice. Almost. At this point Tom stands up. “Shit, I have no idea what comes next. If I was smart I suppose I’d get out. Of course if I was smart, I wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.” Tom says. “Can’t you just start over elsewhere?” you ask. “I thought about heading to Hessla, but that place is overrun by pirates nowadays. Spending days at sea isn’t exactly my thing. Nah, Klyton’s my home and for better or worse I’m staying here.” “So are you taking over the Talons as boss?” “I dunno, I never really thought of myself as a leader since it seems like a lot of headache, but I suppose out of all of us that are left, I do have the most experience and years on my side. I suppose given that my face is more well known now due to being thrown in a cage by the city watch, being the boss has appeal since I won’t have to risk going out in public as much. I guarantee if I get nicked again, it’ll probably be the death penalty. Well anyway what’re your plans? You still interested in joining or is that a silly question?” Not too silly though since despite the deplorable state the Crimson Talons are in, you sort of wonder about the potential. Before you though maybe if you joined such an organization, you’d probably be considered just another low ranking flunky. However through barely any effort on your part, you may have just secured a high ranking position in the organization by helping out the new leader of it. You think if you joined and made a go of it, you’d at least have a lot of input. Who knows, maybe the organization will get back on its feet. If it did, you’d be even better off. Of course this is going to be a lot of work and you are still new. While Tom might like you, the other members may see you as an upstart. Getting a knife in the back from a bunch of folks who are supposed to be watching it is a real possibility. You might be better off going off on your own. > You join the Crimson Talons There is an opportunity here and you’re not passing it up. “Well, this isn’t exactly how I expected to start out here in this city, but I’d be a fool to dismiss the potential help. I could probably learn a few things while I’m here. In fact I’m used to working with a partner anyway.” You say. “Really? I figured you for a loner.” Tom says. “Well I sort of got forced into that situation. Before that, my twin sister and I used to steal from travelling merchants in Teckleville all the time before she left to pursue her dreams of being a bard. Worked with my girlfriend after that, but she wasn’t quite as good at it…you know the rest.” “Hm, well I can honestly say I’m glad you decided to join. Your skills are going to come in useful and as you can already tell I’m going to need all the help I can get. Guess since I’m the boss, I’ll take Edmond’s old room. You can have this one. It’s one of the better ones in this place so consider it part of your reward for rescuing the leader of Crimson Talons.” Tom chuckles. “Is the other part money?” “Yeah, you greedy little bastard. Here and I think I don’t have to tell you not to brag about getting this room or the coinage. Last thing I need is people getting jealous of others, especially when they haven’t been here as long.” Tom says and hands you some gold coins from a small pouch. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around all this. Hell, I can’t even believe David’s dead, let alone the boss. (Sigh) Damn idiot. Still…I’m gonna miss him.” “Was David your friend?” “Yeah, I suppose he was. He was an asshole most of the time towards me. Always thought it was funny to sat untrue things about my mother, but I knew him since childhood too and he was often there to help if I needed it. If he had still been alive, I would have been out of that cage on time. I’m guessing your father never mentioned him either.” “Not that I can recall.” “Well no matter, I guess we need to introduce you to the rest and I need to make my formal declaration that I’m going to be running things.” Tom says. “Okay, let’s go then.” And so begins your life with the Crimson Talons... > You time passes... Chapter 2A: Red Storm Rising Year 17 “Another good haul!” Jake laughs. “Yeah, that old man didn’t know what hit him.” Vaughn remarks. “Old bastard is lucky we didn’t kill him.” Zalmora says. Meanwhile you just shake your head at the lot you’ve hooked up with. While you knew this organization had some problems, you thought there was going to be an attempt at restructuring it by Tom. He seems content however on just taking a hands off approach, or at least an approach that doesn’t involve a lot of rules. Which you guess is good in some ways, but it’s not exactly doing this organization any favors, especially with this lot who barely plan anything out. If it wasn’t for you being so cautious, you think the militia would have apprehended most of this crew already. Most of them don’t seem to realize that this city is too damn secure to just go on the way they’ve been going on. A lot more subtlety and a lot less smash and grab is in order. Still, you feel like you’ve already invested a bit in this organization by sticking around this long so you’re not willing to bail out just yet, but something is going to have to change soon and you’re going to bring it up to Tom. “Hey lockboy, why’re you so quiet over there?” Vaughn remarks. “Just thinking about something.” You respond. “You do a lot of that don’t you?” Zalmora says. “He does a whole lot of nothing. Don’t know why Tom even sent you with us on this job, you were pretty useless.” Jake says. “Well, I agree my skills do go to waste when the plan isn’t followed. I was supposed to pick the lock to the door and then one of you was supposed to quietly subdue the old man if he woke up and the others cleaned out the place. Instead what YOU did, was break the window on the door and unlock it that way. When that inevitably woke up the old man, you lot spent a bunch of unnecessary time taunting and beating him unconscious.” You say. Jake stops walking back to the Talon hideout and walks over to you. “Yeah? And what of it? Listen you little shit; you’re just some small town snot nosed punk. You know exactly fuck all about what it means to be a Crimson Talon. If you don’t like the way we do things, you can just leave. Not like you’d be missed.” “Hold on, hold on. We had a good night. No need for all this, let’s just get back to Tom, okay?” Vaughn says getting a little bit in between the pair of you. Jake’s been on your case since day one. You just know you’re going to have to deal with him someday. Maybe today is that day. > You take a swing at Jake This guy reminds you of Klint, another bully who thinks he can just talk shit louder than everyone else to scare them into submission. Well, it ultimately didn’t work out for Klint and if Jake makes this difficult for you, it’s not going to work out for him as well. You punch at Jake, but due to Vaughn being in the way, your fist doesn’t quite connect and you just tap Jake in the face a bit to knock his head back briefly. “Too bad. That was your best chance.” He says and lunges. “Hold on! SHIT!” Vaughn shouts as he gets out of the way of Jake and yourself. Jake tackles you to the ground and you try to throw another punch, but this time Jake catches your fist. His grip is very strong. A lot stronger than you thought he’d be actually. “Not this time.” He says and then smashes his fist into your nose, breaking it and causing blood to flow from your nostrils. You have a hard time catching your breath, but that’s a secondary feeling when Jake proceeds to break your wrist and then punch you in the face again. “Jake! Stop! You made your point!” Zalmora shouts. “Come on Jake, get off…” Vaughn says attempting to move Jake off of you. You feebly throw a punch with your one good hand, but again you don’t connect very well and only manage to his Jake’s side. Meanwhile Jake punches your two more times in the face nearly knocking you out completely and certainly knocking out several teeth. Eventually Vaughn and Zalmora pull Jake off of you who is laughing. “Knew you weren’t shit. Good luck picking a lock with one good hand for awhile!” Jake says and begins walking away. Zalmora comes back to you and helps you up. It’s actually amazing that you’re able to stand though you’re having a hard time with the balance. Your vision is blurry and your face looks like its been through a meat grinder. “Hey, pit fighting champ! You okay? You see me? You know where you’re at?” Zalmora asks. You hear her just fine, you’re just trying to gather what strength you have and keep your focus on that laughing asshole Jake who is continuing to walk away from you. You draw your weapon. “No! Wait!” Zal says before you push her aside and sprint towards Jake fully intent on revenge. Unfortunately Vaughn and Zal shout at you to stop, which gives Jake enough warning to turn around. Jake falls to the ground and trips you with his legs. You fall face first and drop your weapon. You don’t get another chance to get up before Jake takes advantage of your position by jumping on your back and wraping his arms around your neck. “Stupid fucker, you brought all this on yourself. Jake says and then with a quick twisting motion he snaps your neck like a twig.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 2A: Red Storm Rising Year 17 “Another good haul!” Jake laughs. “Yeah, that old man didn’t know what hit him.” Vaughn remarks. “Old bastard is lucky we didn’t kill him.” Zalmora says. Meanwhile you just shake your head at the lot you’ve hooked up with. While you knew this organization had some problems, you thought there was going to be an attempt at restructuring it by Tom. He seems content however on just taking a hands off approach, or at least an approach that doesn’t involve a lot of rules. Which you guess is good in some ways, but it’s not exactly doing this organization any favors, especially with this lot who barely plan anything out. If it wasn’t for you being so cautious, you think the militia would have apprehended most of this crew already. Most of them don’t seem to realize that this city is too damn secure to just go on the way they’ve been going on. A lot more subtlety and a lot less smash and grab is in order. Still, you feel like you’ve already invested a bit in this organization by sticking around this long so you’re not willing to bail out just yet, but something is going to have to change soon and you’re going to bring it up to Tom. “Hey lockboy, why’re you so quiet over there?” Vaughn remarks. “Just thinking about something.” You respond. “You do a lot of that don’t you?” Zalmora says. “He does a whole lot of nothing. Don’t know why Tom even sent you with us on this job, you were pretty useless.” Jake says. “Well, I agree my skills do go to waste when the plan isn’t followed. I was supposed to pick the lock to the door and then one of you was supposed to quietly subdue the old man if he woke up and the others cleaned out the place. Instead what YOU did, was break the window on the door and unlock it that way. When that inevitably woke up the old man, you lot spent a bunch of unnecessary time taunting and beating him unconscious.” You say. Jake stops walking back to the Talon hideout and walks over to you. “Yeah? And what of it? Listen you little shit; you’re just some small town snot nosed punk. You know exactly fuck all about what it means to be a Crimson Talon. If you don’t like the way we do things, you can just leave. Not like you’d be missed.” “Hold on, hold on. We had a good night. No need for all this, let’s just get back to Tom, okay?” Vaughn says getting a little bit in between the pair of you. Jake’s been on your case since day one. You just know you’re going to have to deal with him someday. Maybe today is that day. > You let it go As much as you might feel the urge to do so, you resist starting a fistfight. With a guy like Jake, it’s likely to turn into something a little more fatal and this isn’t like the situation with Klint. Jake isn’t just some loudmouth bully with a chip on his shoulder. He’s a real violent criminal and has loads more skill than you in a street fight. “Yeah…” you say still looking at Jake before walking past. When you get back, you’re about to go straight to Tom who is in his office, but before you can Zalmora stops you. “Hey where are you going deep thinker? Aren’t you going to celebrate our successful job?” “You guys seem to have a handle on that, besides don’t really feel like celebrating with Jake.” You respond. “Well how about just a private celebration between us then?” Zalmora says and moves in closer to you. You weren’t aware Zalmora had any kind of attraction to you before, but it’s definitely apparent now. “What? Seriously? Weren’t aware you were interested in me.” You say. “Hah, don’t flatter yourself. I just want a quick tumble and I don’t feel like finding myself some rent boy or dealing with Jake’s usual asshole behavior right now. Plus, you’re young and a lot less repulsive…hey are you a virgin?” Zalmora says. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no.” “Pity, might have been fun to deflower you.” “I’m sure, but I’m not interested…” “What? You seriously can’t be saying there’s something wrong with the way I look! Oh shit, you’re not like Vaughn are you?” “No…wait, how is Vaughn like?” “He’s into guys. Thought that was obvious.” “Never noticed, but no, I just got something important business to talk to Tom about.” “Like what? More ideas about how to improve things around here? I know how you’re not satisfied with how things are around here, but then I suppose you aren’t the only one.” “Well if everyone here isn’t satisfied with how things are, why aren’t changes being made? I mean Tom even said he was going to start reorganizing the Crimson Talons.” “Hah. Tom’s no leader. He’s just leader because nobody else wants the hassle. Well except maybe Jake, but nobody really wants to follow him either.” “So why stick around?” “Why not? What else are we going to do, get real jobs? Besides, things are actually going a little bit better than they were with Edmond. Tom’s not likely to start executing folks over small mistakes at least. Plus in this line of work it’s a lot better to have a few people watching your back. Now how about we stop all this talking and go to your room where you can watch my back up close?” Zalmora now puts her hand directly on your cock, which is definitely interested even if you claimed that you weren’t. Well, you can think with one head or the other, but you can’t do both. And like most guys your age (Or guys in general) you make your most important decision with your dick. You figure you can always talk to Tom later, but Zalmora might not be in the mood later if you turn her down now. She’s actually attractive in a trashy sort of way (Sort of reminds you of Annah in that way), it’s just she seemed sort of inaccessible since she was several years older and never paid much attention to you before. You and Zalmora go back to your room and get into it pretty quickly. You also learn a few things, which is a fun process even if she’s a bit bossy about it. Eventually you’re entirely spent and satisfied. “That it? Figured we’d go around a third time.” Zalmora says. “Maybe in a few minutes. Um, you uh…good?” You ask. “More or less. You guys always fall a bit short, but at least I wasn’t dealing with Jake’s whiskey dick this time around. Thanks for asking though at least.” You don’t reply to that and instead just keep quiet, not wishing to dwell on any potential bedroom failings on your part, let alone Jake’s dick. Zal soon breaks up the silence though. “So, Mr. ideas, what exactly were you going to bring up to Tom as far as changes and such?” Zal asks. “Why do you want to know?” you ask. “Because I’m a Crimson Talon and if you’re going to be whispering ideas into Tom’s head and I’m going to be affected by those changes, in the unlikely event he even listens of course. Besides, I might have a few ideas of my own.” “If you have ideas, why not bring them to Tom’s attention?” “I have. I don’t think he likes me though. In fact I think he’s got a deep-seated dislike of women in general. I’m sure it has something to do with his mother being a lesbian or something.” “Wait, Tom’s mother was a lesbian?” “Yeah. You didn’t know that? His buddy David used to tell stories about her and make jokes all the time back when he was still alive. She used to work as a miner and had a girlfriend who Tom always insisted was just her roommate even though they slept in the same bed. Still in denial about it, though he might actually be that clueless. Y’know, I don’t think he ever knew who his father was. Now that I think about it, I’m sort of wondering how Tom was even conceived in the first place considering from what I heard his mother was firmly into pussy.” Well there’s another bit of information you can add to your mental notes. “But getting back to my point Tom doesn’t really want to be bothered to change things too much because as I said, he lacks the ambition to be a true leader. Still, he seems to like you since you rescued him from that cage and you generally don’t give him grief, so maybe there’s a chance. Come on, I let you into this temple I call a body, you can at least let me into that head of yours a bit.” “You got a way with words Zal. Well okay, I suppose this stuff isn’t really top secret or anything.” You begin to tell Zalmora about your concerns with how things are done regarding robberies. There is little finesse, nobody sticks to a plan and it’s more outright thuggery. You go on to mention that it might not be as much of a problem if you weren’t in a city fanatical about curbing crime, but since you are, this is kind of a big problem in the long term. “Yeah…I hear you there. I admit we’ve all sort of gotten lazy about that over the years. I remember when I first joined I was one of the best cat burglars here. As things slowly deteriorated, guess I just said fuck it. So what else you think needs changing around here?” Zalmora asks. “Well for a criminal organization we aren’t exactly diverse. Granted I don’t know much about running something like this, but I have heard the old Crimson Talon glory day stories. The Talons used to have fighting pits, used to sell Green Lotus and Yellow Devil, we had whores, I mean a whole bunch of shit that brought in a steady revenue of coinage.” Zalmora nods her head. “Yeah, you’re right about that as well. I wasn’t a member when they still had the fighting pits, but I do remember seeing a few when my dad bet on them. Even as a little girl I knew I liked seeing two big guys get all sweaty and bloody, beating the shit out of each other. I know there are the Klyton gladiators, but they wear so much damn armor that they barely get hurt and it’s very rare to see a fatality. Pretty sure it’s all fixed anyway. The Klyton Council probably makes a shitload of money off that racket. Too bad we aren’t politicians.” Zalmora says. “Well what about the other stuff?” “The drugs? Well Green Lotus or a milder form of it is legal here now, so that’s out. Yellow Devil as far as I know was never a big money maker due to it having a major chance of causing the user’s innards to melt and bleed from every orifice. Of course Blue Dream is the big one nowadays, but the Ebony Claw Syndicate mostly has a monopoly on its production and distribution. None of us knows how to make it or has connections. But then drugs have never been an interest of mine. The Talons actually did control a few whorehouses at one time, until government shut them all down and then built some nicer, fancier and Klyton run ones. Being a whore has never been more respectable. Okay, maybe not. But the point is, the Klyton Council effectively destroyed the Talons by legalizing shit and taking it over more than they ever did with just the militia.” Before you can go into some of your other ideas, Zalmora stops you with some of her own. “While I’m impressed that you’re thinking a lot more about this shit than most people here, I’m of the mind that for now, we should play more on our current strengths. We can diversify again later.” Zalmora says. “Our current strengths are basically smashing people in their face and taking their shit. I thought we established that isn’t exactly good in the long term.” You remark. “It isn’t in Klyton, but we could always start doing it outside of Klyton. Robbing caravans and such on the roads. It isn’t like Jake is going to care where he does it and those two half elf whores will probably be ecstatic about working outside the city. Also, the militia isn’t going to be as fanatical about tracking down shit that goes on outside the city.” “Hmm, well that style would favor road robberies a lot more. It’s still not really what I’m about though.” “Well, you could always gather the intelligence for us. Find out what caravans and wagons are leaving, which way they’re going, how well protected, all that stuff. Plus maybe you can start actively look for recruits.” “Me?” “Why not? You spend most of your time walking around the city anyway when you’re pilfering pocket in your free time. Not saying that you have to be the one to speak with them, but you could bring it to Tom’s attention and I’m sure he’ll be receptive. I’m sure when we build up our numbers AND wealth we can start branching out a bit more again. Like property and fronts.” “So…is this all what I should propose to Tom?” you ask. “The plans to move our activities to mainly outside Klyton, yes. The rest of it, I’d keep a lid on until later. It will be better to not overwhelm him with suggestions. So, you ready for another round stud, or do we have to waste more time talking?” “Huh? Oh yeah, sure!” you say and immediately move on to more important matters. After spending more fun time with Zalmora, you do eventually get around to speaking with Tom and just like Zal predicted, he’s actually receptive to your ideas. He says that it probably would be better to start reigning in the loot and pillage tactics in the city. “Really should have thought about doing it before. I was just so concerned about keeping everyone together and happy, I neglected to remember that I’m supposed to be improving our position as leader, not just being content on survival. Anyway, I’m sure this will be something everyone can get on board with, well the majority of them anyway. And yes, since you came up with all this, you can still keep your activities to Klyton while you seek out potential new members. I know you won’t make a damn mess of things and generally keep your head down.” Tom remarks. “Thanks. I’m really going to do my best to make this work.” “I know you will kid, you’ve always been a good earner. Looks like Yag really blessed me when you I met you in that cage that night. Good thing the rest of that lot out there were late after all.” “I guess so.” You answer. “Okay, well let me go address this new change to everyone.” Tom announces the changes and like with any change, everyone has an opinion. Mostly for the better thankfully. Jake complains the loudest, but when it’s pointed out that it doesn’t matter if he kills people as much, he grumbles slightly less. Zalmora is certainly pleased about all this and says she knew you’ d be able to convince Tom better than anyone else. Only time will tell if any of these changes mean shit though. > You time passes... Year 21 “The Bloody Smiles are lead by a vicious bandit calling himself the Grinning Man. Nobody has gotten a really good look at him as most don’t survive his attacks, but based on this crude sketch, I implore anyone seeing him to run and contact Klyton militia immediately! This man and his band of cutthroats have been plaguing the roads and the surrounding area for years and hopefully now that his identity is known…” You suddenly receive one of the many sketches a concerned citizen is handing out. You take one look at the sketch as you walk away from the crowd and shake your head. “Doesn’t even look like that asshole.” You say and toss it in a nearby bin. Jake’s job has really been doing the trick as far as distracting the Klyton militia, though maybe it’s been going a little too well. You suggested that Tom to pull him back from this two years ago, but predictably he never did. Zalmora and Vaughn returned pretty quickly after this plan went into action, though in Zal’s case it seemed to be more because she wanted to get back into regular burglary again. Vaughn said he couldn’t deal with Jake anymore and was getting too crazy. Now, he’s given himself a nickname, gone on to call his group the Bloody Smiles and doesn’t report back to Tom for months. When he does, he just sends one of the newer Talons with some goods and loot. While Tom as usual is taking a laid back approach to this figuring as long as he’s still sending shit back then everything is good, you question whether Jake is even thinking about the Talons anymore. Meanwhile, you’ve been more or less successful in building up the Talon’s numbers. Not as much as you’d like, but since you’re the only one doing it, it is what it is. Despite all this extra help however, it’s not being utilized properly. Most of it is being sent to help Jake as his numbers get whittled down every now and then and that’s really a waste you believe. The ones you insist on keeping around to train are fewer in number and you’re also the only one bothering to train them properly. You never thought you’d be in that sort of position. Occasionally Zal and Vaughn help out, but it’s mostly fallen on you. Basically, it’s a case where the opportunity to expand is there, but once again Tom is failing to pull the trigger on it. You should be setting up another underground fighting pit, setting up gambling dens or even running a protection racket. Something needs to be done about Jake because the Crimson Talons can’t proceed if half of the members aren’t even Talons anymore and have declared allegiance to another leader. “Something has to be done about Jake.” You remark. “Like what?” Vaughn asks. “I dunno, but Tom can’t just sit on his ass anymore about it. Jake hasn’t done it yet, but it’s only a matter of time before he splits off from the Crimson Talons altogether and takes half of our members that were assigned out there with him. Ideally we could just tell him to come home and his purpose out there is no longer necessary, but I doubt if he’ll listen.” “So…what? You just going to go in there and tell Tom what he needs to do?” Zalmora asks. “Someone needs to tell him something! As I remember it was me who told him to start changing shit up last time too.” “That’s true, but doesn’t that sort of mean you’re sort of responsible of what’s going on with Jake? Pretty sure that’s what Tom will point out as well.” Vaughn says. You’re about to tell Vaughn to shut the hell up when Zalmora interrupts. “While you have some good ideas as usual, honestly, I’m not sure why anything needs to be done about him. I say if Jake has split from the Crimson Talons, well that’s more for us.” Zalmora remarks. “Actually that’s LESS for us since he won’t even be sending his cut anymore.” You say. “Maybe in the short term, but you’re not thinking long term. The militia hasn’t been as much of a problem in the city for us because they’ve been focused mainly on catching Jake and the rest. That gives us a little more freedom to expand like you said. Hell, now that Jake has foolishly started to give his group their own name, they aren’t even directly connected to the Talons anymore.” “So? If he gets caught he could still blab his mouth about our secret hideout.” “Jake’s a lot of things, but he ain’t no rat. Chances are they won’t even take him in alive anyway.” “Okay, so maybe Jake’s no rat, but what about some of others with him? I mean sure, we’ve all stressed how important loyalty is to the new recruits, but if Jake’s gained their trust somehow, then they’re loyal to him not to the Talons and they aren’t going to think twice about ratting us out to save their own skin.” “Hmm, you might have a point there.” Vaughn says. “Look, all I’m saying is Jake not causing shit for us in the city and running around out there like a mad man is better for us. If he’s gone, then the militia is just going to refocus more of their attention on the city again. I mean maybe it might be best to make it an official break up. Let Jake know he can go his way and we go ours. Might diffuse any potential problems with Jake. Dunno if Tom will be into that though.” Zalmora says. “That’s true too.” Vaughn remarks. You rub your hands through your hair. “I dunno. Maybe. Something still needs to be brought up to Tom though.” You say. “Oh I agree with you on that. It is time to give him a little push again.” Zalmora remarks. “Well? Aren’t either of you coming in with me?” you ask. “Um…I hadn’t planned to. I mean it sounds like you’ve got this under control on what to discuss. I think me being there is just going to look like we’re ganging up on him.” Vaughn says. “Yeah. And as you know, Tom has never been fond of me. So I would be more of a detriment. Just go in and talk to him, you did fine last time remember?” Zalmora says nudging into you a bit. “(Sigh) Why do I feel like I’m the only one who cares about this organization?” “Hey! That’s not even true! I just gave you my fucking thoughts on the situation didn’t I? You bring up whatever you want to Tom. I’m sure everything will work out fine, he likes you after all.” And with that, Zal and Vaughn leave to let you go speak with Tom. You swear you never thought the day would come where you would be known as the “diplomat.” You guess your sister’s charm rubbed off on you just a little bit. You sometimes wonder how she’s doing. Probably better than you are at any rate. Mentally preparing yourself, you head to Tom’s office, though when you think more about it, you don’t know why you’re mentally preparing yourself. It isn’t like Tom’s going to even threaten to kill you if he doesn’t agree with what you have to say. At this point you’re practically his second in command anyway and you’re still baffled by this since you haven’t been here nearly as long, though you suppose with all these new folks coming in, you are starting to become a “vet” as it were. “Hey Tom.” You say entering his office. “Hey kid, any new blood you need me to check out and make a final decision on?” “Uh, no not today. I wanted to speak with you about another matter…it’s about Jake.” Tom’s head drops down briefly with a deep sigh and then he looks up. “Yeah…I figured it might be getting close to dealing with that situation. Trust me, I HAVE been giving some thought to it, even though I’d rather not.” Tom says. “Well I’m afraid something is going to have to be done about him. You can’t just have a divided organization with half of it’s members calling themselves something else and primarily pledging allegiance to another leader.” You say. “Maybe it isn’t that bad! I mean he’s still providing a share of the loot to us right?” Tom says hopefully. “Perhaps, but think how much longer the intervals are starting to get, not to mention how much is he actually holding back? How long before he just stops sending altogether? No, we have to do something.” “Are you suggesting an attack? Because while I know around where he’s currently located, I’m not entirely sure of the exact area. He may have even moved since he has to do that a lot anyway. Fairly certain not only would he have the advantage, but even if we win, we’re going to suffer heavy losses which sort of defeats the purpose.” “I was thinking more of a stealthy assassination.” “And you’re going to do that?” “I could try. Maybe I could take a few others with me to help.” “No offense kid, but even if he didn’t have half our numbers with him and you had help I don’t think you could take Jake. Jake is the best fighter we have and he’s probably only gotten better since being out there. I’m not risking anyone in a foolish assassination attempt, let alone an internal conflict. Although…no…that’s not an option…” Tom says trailing off. “What? What is it?” “Well…if we DID go this route, and I’m not saying we are. I know a few outside folks that might be able to do it without problems. Damn, I just wish there was a less messy way of handling this.” “(Sigh) Well I hate to bring this up, but I have thought of a diplomatic solution which might be possible.” You say. “Oh?” You explain to Tom about a potential split with Jake altogether and just letting him go his own way since he seems happier anyway. Tom isn’t too fond of the idea since it no longer means gaining a cut of Jake’s looting profits, but he’s not outright dismissing it. In fact out of all the options, Tom still seems to think the best plan is to do nothing. At this point, you’re wondering why you’re bothering. > You assassination Something has to be done and the best way to do it is to kill Jake. Not like you were ever friends with him. “Look, we can’t do nothing and if you aren’t fond of diplomacy, then we need to kill Jake. So who are these independent assassins you know?” you ask. “Really only know two and out of those two, only one is a proper assassin and I don’t know if it’s even possible with him.” Tom says. Frustration increases… “Okay, so tell me about the guy who isn’t a proper assassin.” you ask. “He goes by the name Olaf. He’s actually an ex-Talon associate but after the fight pits closed down he went back to working as a leg breaker for Mr. Reynolds full time. You familiar with that man?” Tom asks. “Vaguely. Some sort of moneylender with connections in high places so the militia doesn’t fuck with him. Actually, I think I remember my mother telling me my father’s family was in debt to him at one point.” “They did with the inn. Actually I even worked for the man briefly before I joined the Talons, but that’s ancient history. Olaf is a big ass ogre who pretty much retired undefeated during his fighting pit days. He’s older of course now, but I don’t doubt that he couldn’t take care of Jake and scare everyone else into submission. Hell, he probably could scare Jake into submission too. He’d probably even do it for free or at the least very cheap. He really likes hurting people.” “Sounds good, so what’s the catch?” “Well obviously Mr. Reynolds isn’t going to just let him go wandering off so we’d probably have to pay him and that’s what isn’t going to be cheap. Plus, knowing Mr. Reynolds he’ll have some other weird stipulation. You’ll probably find out when you talk with him. Could be anything.” This is sounding complicated already. You almost hesitate to ask about the other one. “Okay, so what about this other guy. The real assassin?” you ask. “You familiar with Sotakians?” Tom asks. “Just stories of them being lizard people that live in the swamps and fight with elves all the time.” “Well, the old boss, Edmond actually acquired an egg and raised a Sotakian from a hatchling. Trained him to be a very literal cold-blooded assassin bodyguard. We all just called him Scales, but he never really had a proper name. He was very loyal too until he had some unknown disagreement with Edmond and just took off. Ed never told anyone to go get him either. Just said to let it go.” “That doesn’t sound very useful if he disappeared to parts unknown.” “Oh he didn’t go far. He actually lives in the Klyton sewers. Abandoned part granted, but he’s actually part of the reason why the militia doesn’t patrol down there that much and only in certain areas. Ol’ Scales isn’t very welcoming to intruders to his home.” “Well how’s this lizard going to be of any help then?” “Most of the time when Scales got a little obstinate Edmond showed him the broken egg that he hatched from. Not sure why it worked. Maybe it was a reminder that Edmond was the one who helped hatch him or something. Still have the broken egg just in case, you know? Maybe if someone approached him with the broken egg, Scales might be willing to listen to that person. Dunno, who would have the balls to go risk it though.” “That vicious huh?” “Let’s just say, Olaf USED to have an equally bad ass barbarian buddy by the name of Silence. Silence didn’t like it when he lost a staring contest to Scales and things got violent. Olaf and Silence were best friends and Olaf didn’t even ATTEMPT to attack Scales when he ripped out Silence’s throat in five seconds. He just left the room and I can’t be certain, but I think he might have even cried. Of course nobody was going to ask. Olaf certainly brutalized folks more than average in the fighting pits over the next few days after that though.” So those are your choices and they both sound shitty. Honestly, you wish you could just take care of Jake yourself, but Tom is probably right about the fact that something like that isn’t really your specialty, but talking to others and trying to convince them to do what you want is apparently a newer one you’ve acquired or at least one you’ve been thrust into. > You hire Olaf If Scales is killing people just for trespassing, you don’t fancy your chances. At least with this ogre you’re not going to get killed just for showing up. (You hope) Along with giving you the location of where Jake is supposed to be currently camped out, Tom gives you the directions to Mr. Reynolds place, though you’ve passed it a few times before during your stretch here in Klyton so you know where it is. From what you’ve heard, Mr. Reynolds hasn’t changed his location in decades and he wasn’t young when your grandfather (And later father) owed him money. While you’ve also heard he looks human, there are rumors that he isn’t or he’s at least cheating the aging process somehow. You aren’t really interested in all that though; you just hope you won’t have to pay some outrageous price for Olaf’s services. You bid Tom goodbye and head on out to Mr. Reynolds' place which is a simple walk to one of the more rundown areas of Klyton. When you enter his simple place of business, you see a well dressed man with a goatee standing just inside the entrance flipping a knife into the air and catching it by the handle every time. He begins staring at you, but never stops flipping and catching his knife. You look to your right and see a large humanoid in an oversized chair, arms folded and snoring heavily. You wonder if this must be Olaf. He’s certainly big and ugly enough to be an ogre, though in this state he almost looks peaceful rather than the menacing brute you heard about. “Ah, a customer! Well don’t just stand there looking at my employees, come forward and let me see what I can do for you.” A voice calls out from across the room. You see who could only be Mr. Reynolds. He’s even better dressed than the employee flipping the knife. As you approach he doesn’t look any older than his mid forties. Who know though and that’s not why you’re here. He smiles when you get to his desk. “Somehow. Somehow I KNEW you were going to come in here one day. You look like your father around the same time we did business. How is he anyway?” he asks. You don’t even ask how he knows who you are. “He’s uh…good I guess. Doctor now.” You respond. “Good for him. Glad to hear things ultimately worked out after our business was concluded. And they say loans are a bad thing. So what can I do for you today? I assume it can’t be for money as I know you’re quite the skilled thief around town. I must say the Crimson Talons must be doing better nowadays. Pity you have that fool Tom in charge, but then these things are never permanent are they?” Mr. Reynolds says. “I guess not. Look I was told that you might be willing to let Olaf do some work for the Talons.” “Hmm, must be pretty serious if you’re looking for an ogre to take care of this work and not doing it yourself. What’s this all about exactly?” You didn’t really expect him to pry, but you feel like he’s probably not even going to entertain the idea unless you tell him everything about the plan. So you tell him and he listens intently. Meanwhile Olaf is still snoozing and the other man is continuing to watch you. “Well that’s certainly an interesting plan you got there and I can only assume the initial set up of it was equally as interesting. I just don’t think I can loan you Olaf though. Sorry.” Mr. Reynolds says. “What? We can pay your price. I mean as you said we’re doing a lot better now.” You say. “And I believe you, but I don’t feel comfortable putting one of my employees at risk like that. He could very well die.” “I was told Olaf was a champion pit fighter and this would be easy for him.” “Of course he was a champion. Decades ago. Look at him, that beautiful white mane and beard he has isn’t just for show, it denotes age! He’s old and not the young killing machine he used to be. Oh sure he’s good for intimidating a few deadbeats and even knocking them around a bit, but if I let him go do what you want him to do, he’s going to die even if he somehow manages to succeed. And while Olaf wouldn’t mind such a proud warrior’s death, I happen to be good friends with his wife and she’d be very upset and I can’t have that on my conscience.” “Didn’t know female ogres were so sensitive.” “He’s married to a Halfling, but my point is, Olaf isn’t going anywhere.” Well you certainly weren’t expecting this. “(Sigh) So there’s no way you can help me?” you ask. “Ah, now I didn’t say that. While I can’t loan you Olaf, I can allow you the services of my other employee Henry over there. Henry! Stop playing with your knife and get over here. Got work for you.” Henry slowly walks over to the desk still never taking his eyes off you the whole time. He then takes his knife and stabs it into the desk as hard as he can. This action causes you to step back a bit and you prepare to draw your own weapon until Mr. Reynolds calms everyone down. “Relax. Relax, nobody is stabbing anyone here. My son is a little excitable at times.” Mr. Reynolds says. “Your son? This man is your son?” you reply. “Sure. Can’t you see the resemblance? Meh, I guess he does look a lot more like his mother Wendy. Anyway, not important. What is important is that Henry here has what they call a natural talent. He’s been honing it since he was a child, I was so proud when he finally sought me out to join the family business. Now, he might not be as big and strong as ol’ Olaf over there, but I guarantee he’ll get the job done.” “I dunno…” “Trust me. You came here because I could help you solve your problem. Maybe not the way you thought, but the job WILL get done. I promise.” “Well since I know your name and reputation mean a lot to you, I’m going to go ahead and believe you, so how much is all this going to cost?” “Five hundred gold coins, but since I can tell you’re a bit apprehensive about all this, you can pay me after the job is done. If the results aren’t to satisfaction, well I’m sure Tom can pay what he feels is an appropriate amount. Now, why don’t you tell Henry about the job and what you want done exactly?” You give Henry the instructions and he listens without saying a word still giving you that icy stare the entire time. While a little unnerving, you can’t actually say you’re getting pants shitting intimidated. Henry could very well be the badass killer his dad claims, but right now he seems like he’s trying too damn hard. Mr. Reynolds tells you that the job will be done by the end of the week, and you and Tom can return to his office at that time. You leave the office a little concerned about all this, but it’s done now. When you get back you inform Tom, who doesn’t seem at all concerned, just a little surprised that it isn’t Olaf, but he has confidence in Mr. Reynold’s choice of assassin and is sure it will be worth it. Vaughn and Zalmora are the only other people that know about this plan and while Vaughn is a go with the flow type guy as well, Zalmora still thinks getting rid of Jake in this manner was a bad idea. Unfortunately, it turns out that she’s right. Instead of being discreet or even just killing Jake and scaring the others into returning to the fold, Henry turned the Bloody Smiles camp into a graveyard. He got the job done, but killing every fucking body wasn’t what was wanted. You complain quite loudly, which doesn’t frazzle Mr. Reynolds in the least. Tom attempts to calm you down. When that fails, he tells you to go wait outside and he’ll speak to Reynolds in private. Henry glares at you as you leave. As much as you’d like to punch the guy, you know that wouldn’t be a smart move considering what he just did. You wait outside for a long time and eventually Tom exits the building. He says to you that you’ll speak when you get back to headquarters. You walk back in silence. As soon as you enter though he starts scolding you for losing your temper in front of Mr. Reynolds and disrespecting him as head of the organization. You defend why you’re getting mad about the situation and don’t understand why he isn’t since it’s fucked up the plans that were supposed to be set in motion. When you find out he paid the five hundred coins anyway you get even angrier. Various Crimson Talon members stop what they’re doing to watch this spectacle. “You still PAID him?! You paid him for doing a half assed job?! What the fuck?!” you exclaim. “You don’t know shit kid. Staying on Reynolds’ good side is…” Tom starts to say before you’re interrupted. “No, stop fucking talking! You’re a terrible fucking leader and EVERYONE here knows it!” “Is that right? I don’t see anyone else stepping up to do this fucking job!” “Yeah, well maybe that needs to change.” “So what? You gonna be the one to do that? Pfft. Fuck you kid. You tried to pull that I’m a killer shit when you first met me in that hanging cage. Didn’t buy it then and I’m certainly not buying it now.” “Oh yes, the cage that I rescued your ass from, because nobody here gave a shit! And your leadership is a good example of why nobody does, because you’re ultimately a weak leader who is content on coasting and leeching off others.” Tom doesn’t say any more he just throws a punch at you. You dodge and follow up with a punch of your own. The fight isn’t stopped, because it’s obvious people either want to see a change in leadership or Tom prove that he’s still got what it takes to lead the Talons. Despite the ongoing past criticism of Tom of how he’s a weak leader, he’s not really a weak man because he dominates the fight for the most part. He’s certainly a better fighter than you. His problem is he still doesn’t want it as bad as you. Though Tom was pissed at you and knew he had to kick your ass, he never had any intention on killing you. All of his blows against you were normal kicks and punches. Never once does he say, pull out a dagger and stab you in the face with it. Because that’s exactly what you do to him. He screams, wails and flails around the room for a moment before you tackle him back down to the floor. As he begs for you to stop killing him all you can think of is Klint doing the same thing and you drive your short sword through his chest telling him to shut the fuck up and die the entire time. When Tom finally stops breathing, you get up and declare yourself the new leader of the Crimson Talons. “And we’re gonna start doing things differently around here.” > You time passes... Year 25 “Well, what the hell do these folks expect? If they want outlandish theatrics they can pay out the ass to watch a Klyton Gladiator match where the minimum bets are much higher. At least here we have fights where we’ll accept a five copper bet.” You say. “Yes, but at the arena, people don’t have the deal with the bums they’ve bet on to puke in the middle of the ring and pass out causing the other to win by default.” Zalmora says. “That happened ONE time.” You remark. “Well there’s also the ongoing smell of the sewers that puts people off.” “Yeah, well the Klyton council just increased the city’s militia numbers recently and stepped up patrols. So keeping business in the sewers is about the safest place to do all this if we want to avoid sudden raids.” “It might not have been necessary to wallow in the sewers if they had another distraction.” “So you’ve said many times in the past, but I think things still worked out with me in charge.” “We’re doing okay I suppose, but I’m still not sure if bum fight gambling and going back to selling Yellow Devil was the way to go about it.” “Hey we’ve got whores too.” “Ah yes, those mostly tie into the Yellow Devil trade. I shudder to think about the hopeless cases that actually pay to fuck YD junkies.” “Hey not everyone can afford the high priced Klyton brothels. Look, I saw that the only way we were going to survive is to have steady businesses. The Klyton Council are the biggest criminal overlords and nobody says shit because they effectively legalized everything and control the biggest gang to protect their interests. I mean there wasn’t really any way to feasibly compete except offer similar things at lower the prices and cater to the lower class.” Zalmora looks at nearby group betting and getting excited over a giant roach race. “Pretty sure some of these folks are under the lower class.” Zalmora replies. “Yeah, well a coin’s a coin, don’t you have a house to break into or something?” you say. “Always, but I don’t understand why you don’t come on these things like you used to.” “Because I gotta look after shit around here. I just can’t drop everything to go rip off a store. I’m not Tom, I don’t just sit on my ass doing nothing.” “I didn’t say you were, but you used to be a little more fun at least. Like those first few years when you got here. Remember?” Zalmora says with a bit of a smile. “Yeah, well I’m not a damn stupid teenager anymore that gets distracted by a pretty girl that wiggles her ass at me.” Zalmora steps back from you a bit giving a slightly perturbed look. “Okay Mr. bossman, if you hadn’t initially taken my advice in the first place you wouldn’t even be in this position.” Zal says. “OR if I hadn’t taken your advice, I might have been in this position a lot sooner. In fact despite you always bringing it up, I’d say not listening to you turned out to be a lot better ” you remark. “Right, because this is such a great position to be in.” “I’m in charge ain’t I? Y’know what your problem is? You thought you were going to manipulate me into doing whatever you wanted just because you threw a little pussy my way. And now you’re bitter that didn’t happen. If you really want control of the Talons, you could always challenge me Zal.” “Oh no, not me! Never would I challenge your insurmountable wisdom boss. Obviously you’ve got things under control more than little ol’ me could ever handle.” Zal says with obvious sarcasm in her voice. “If you don’t want to take over and you don’t like how I’m running things, why don’t you just leave then? Not like I’m going to try to kill you for leaving.” “Don’t think the thought hasn’t crossed my mind. You know why I’m even still in the Talons? Because deep down I’m actually hoping you know what you’re doing. So far you’re ahead, but I’m just wondering for how long. Edmond was pretty much running things like you are now. Granted you are less of a violent asshole than he was, but I’m seeing the same pattern.” “I’m not sure what to tell you Zal, I mean we’re fucking criminals doing illegal shit. This is sort of way things are done.” “(Sigh) Yeah, I know…guess I’m just starting to wonder why I ever thought this was fun. I’ll leave you to your drugs and whores.” Zalmora walks away. You sometimes forget that Zal is at least around fifteen years older than you now. She’s probably starting to worry about age catching up. Probably didn’t see herself mucking about through sewers at this age taking orders from someone a lot younger. Weird, because Vaughn doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, but then Vaughn’s never been one to make waves. As you walk back to the Crimson hideout thinking about the future, you have to admit, it isn’t as bright as you once thought. All things considered you are doing well right now, but there just doesn’t seem to be any let up on the laws being passed to turn this city into a huge prison camp. Part of that you imagine is due to the rebellion in Holgard. You’re certainly glad you didn’t decide to go there given what you heard. At one time, you did toy with the possibility of going “legit” somehow. Like maybe buying an inn and running it. Maybe even the one your family once owned. It would sure be a complete circle if you did that. Of course it wasn’t so much going “legit” as it was the idea of having a place to run your activities without it being in an abandoned building or recently the fucking sewers. Though that’s a riskier endeavor nowadays and would result in needing to re-organize things again. Might be better to stick with your current set up. It isn’t perfect, but it’s working. > You change up the business again Zal's got a bit of a point. This isn't exactly the most glamorous of a position and you could certainly do better than hiding out in these filthy sewers. You've got more than enough saved and have enough connections that you could easily open up a real business front. You'd just need to keep everything low key and change a few things. The more you think about it, the more you feel this is the right decision. The next day you gather Zal and Vaughn to discuss this new direction. "An inn certainly sounds better than the sewers." Vaughn says. "Well, we're still probably going to have some of our operations down there, but I figure we can at least start making an attempt to climb out of them. I'm thinking that we probably should stop dealing in Yellow Devil too." You say. Zamora nods her head. "I agree. The profits aren't worth the risks on that racket. A lot less sudden body meltdowns and diseased junkie whores lingering around as well." Zal remarks. "So what about the location? Are we buying out an existing inn or starting from scratch? We could probably buy back the old place, the Troll's Breath Tavern. Edmond used to run the Talons from there before the militia raided the place and shut it down." Vaughn remarks. "Wouldn't it be a little obvious, if the Talons set up there again?" You ask. "Nah, they'd never expect the same place twice! Besides, it's called the Clean Mug Tavern now. It's run by two siblings, one of them even comes here to bet on the races and fights sometimes. The place is barely scraping by, so I think they would be receptive to selling it to us for cheap." "Instead of buying it outright, I'd suggest just getting the owners to work with us. That way nothing really changes up front, but we don't spend money and we're the ones really running things." Zalmora says. "Definitely sounds like a better idea, but I know what place you're talking about, and it seems a little on the small side, I was thinking some place bigger like my old family's inn which is still abandoned. We wouldn't have to deal with anyone." You say. "Seems like more hassle. You'd still have to buy it from the city which could present some problems. Assuming they didn't ask many questions, you'd still have to fix the place up before we could start using it proper. Wouldn't we need to get an alcohol supplier and hire people as well?" Vaughn remarks. "Not really, we know more than enough folks that we could have cheap employees. Some of them are hopeless gamblers with debts in fact, so that's no problem. As for alcohol, we could easily make it ourselves and bypass a supplier. Most folks coming wouldn't be there for the booze anyway, so it isn't like we're going to need hundreds of barrels of the stuff every month. Of course your family's old inn is in a slightly better part of Klyton, so my concern would be the greater likelihood of militia just stumbling in for a drink now and then." Zal remarks. > You buy the old family inn It's a risk either way, but you figure owning the business outright at least makes you less concerned about somebody else fucking things up, plus you can fix things up the way you want a lot quicker. "Guess I got an appointment with city hall or something...is that where I go?" You ask. "Yes, I believe there is some sort of department that takes care of all that stuff. We should probably get married first though." Zal remarks. You and Vaughn both look at Zalmora. "What?" You ask. "If you're married, it might not be as suspicious if you're just handing over bags of money for this property." Zalmora says. "I don't understand why they would care. Wouldn't they just be glad to get their money?" you ask. "You been in Klyton long bossman?" Zalmora asks sarcastically. "Even before the council had militia crawling all over the city, this place was always a bit wary of non-citizens buying up property. Especially out of the blue. Surely you've already formed a story for all this." "Well somewhat, but this seems like extra complexity." "Marriage will be good idea, trust me. I've been a citizen of this city since birth. I even own a small place of residence." "You do?" "Yes, I have for quite sometime. While I know you've been busy playing crime lord, not everyone spends all their life here at the headquarters. What I'm saying though is, with me as your wife, you won't look quite like the suspicious outsider, since despite you living here for years, you still aren't even officially a citizen of this city." This is all taking you a bit by surprise. "Wait, so when would we get married?" You ask. "Oh we can do that right now, we can just go to a church dedicated to Joachim the Pure. They usually always have someone on duty to do a quick marriage. Though I suppose if you have another preferred faith, we could go there instead, but I've never known you to be particularly religious." Zal says. "No, I suppose that would be fine...but I dunno about this..." "Well if you got another girl in mind then marry her instead. I only suggested myself, because I can't say I've actually seen you with a steady one and certainly not one with the intelligence to go along with this plan or back up a reasonable story. If you're worried about this meaning something else, I can assure you that this is purely a business arrangement. We can always get divorced later." You're really at a loss of words. You look over at Vaughn who just shrugs and just says whoever you decide to marry, he'll attend the wedding in support. Trusting Zal's judgement on this and lacking any other ideas, you end up agreeing to this set up, at which point Zalmora says great and starts dragging you to a church while busily explaining what story you should come up with when you buy the property. The wedding itself is a whirlwind. You can honestly say you NEVER saw yourself ever getting married, let alone under these circumstances. Despite it being a "fake" wedding, Vaughn still gets a bit emotional saying he always saw you two ending up together. The next step is heading to the city property clerk, which you do the next day after rehearsing your story with Zalmora who also goes over the potential questions that might be asked. As the clerk asks you the first basic questions, you notice that he's studying you. At first you chalk this up to him being suspicious, but when you mention you wish to buy the inn because your family once owned it and you'd like to rebuild it again, he suddenly speaks out with a bit of a smile. "I knew it! I knew I knew you from somewhere...well not you per say, but I knew your father, we had a few classes together at the university! You look almost like him! How's he doing?" The clerk asks. "Oh he's doing well. He's a doctor with his own practice in a smaller town, but he's happy." You say. "That's good. I remember how he was always struggling to go to class and run that inn. Couldn't have been easy. Hell, I didn't even have all that responsibility and I still flunked out of medical school. Lucky I managed to land a city job. Still though, he did help me a few times during class, so he was always okay in my book." The rest of the conversation goes fairly well with the clerk (Or Quincy as you learn his name) and he doesn't ask too many more questions. He just suggests that you get yourself registered as a proper Klyton citizen as soon as you can so you can participate in elections and similar functions. You hand over a large sum of coins to him and he hands over the deed and keys to you. "Well it seems like you're a motivated young man with a plan ahead of you. Hope everything goes okay for you and your wife. We definitely need more upstanding citizens such as yourselves trying to build up this city rather than contributing to its decline. We don't want to end up like Hessla or Holgard!" Quincy remarks. "Definitely not." You say as you both exchange pleasant goodbyes. As you leave city hall, Zalmora speaks up. "Now I'm wondering if I should make a donation to Yag's temple, because his luck was definitely with us today. That went way better than I thought it would." Zal says. "Yeah, too bad I'm not on good terms with my dad. I'd actually send a letter home to thank him for being such a good guy. Have no idea how the hell we're related sometimes." You say. "Hmm, well luckily for you you've got his looks apparently." "So, I guess we need to get started on setting up the new business." "You're the boss, but I thought you'd want to go get divorced as quick as possible, given how reluctant you were to get married." "Oh yeah. Eh, I think maybe we should stay married for now, just in case something pops up. We can always do it later, right now there's other stuff that takes priority." "Okay fearless leader. I'm sure Vaughn will be happy to hear we're staying together for his sake." Zal chuckles. "Hah! Yeah, what the hell was that all about?" "Vaughn's actually always been a bit of a romantic. He's never been very lucky in that regard so he gets a bit weepy when he thinks he sees it in others at times." You and Zal walk to your newly acquired inn. You've seen it from the outside several times which is in fairly good shape despite it being abandoned for years. When you get inside, you find that it isn't in too bad of condition inside either though very dusty obviously. "Yeah, I think this place will do just fine." You say to yourself. "Shouldn't take long to get it up and running." Zal remarks. You and Zal wander around a bit looking at the inn. Eventually you go upstairs and find Zal looking through one of the rooms you believe is where your father and grandparents lived. There's even still a bed and some furniture still here. You look over at Zal who is currently bent over looking through a chest. You then look over at the bed. "So um...Zal..." You start to say. "Yes?" Zalmora responds turning around. "You want to celebrate our honeymoon?" Zal smirks at your offer. "Really? Aren't you concerned that I'll be manipulating you with my magical vagina?" Zal asks. "I'm willing to take that risk." You say. Zal looks at you for a moment in silence. "Meh, why not? Not like I got anything better to do." She says and starts taking her clothes off. > You time passes... Chapter 3A1: Red Storm Subsiding Year 30 "Are you sure?" You ask. "I'm positive. My boyfriend said the militia are going to do an intensive sweep of this district in a week. The Klyton Council wants to prove they're tough on crime again. Apparently there have been complaints that things have been getting too lax." Vaughn remarks. "See? This was useful info. And YOU got angry when you found out Vaughn was going out with a militia man." Zal says. "Never mind all that, we gotta start cleaning shit up around here. Vaughn, I want you to start dismantling the stills and moving the tubs from the basement and into the sewers. Just glad we have a lot of already filled barrels down there. We should be good on that front. Zal, you dismantle the gambling tables and wheels and move them into the sewers as well." "I'm not mucking about in the sewers. Those days are over." Zal huffs. "(Sigh) Fine then get someone else to do it! Why do you have to fight me on this right now? I'm going to go see the girls and tell them they got the week off or at least they got the week off here. Don't really care if they whore somewhere else." You immediately come out of your office and start running around telling your employees (Both legal and criminal) what to do. There predictably is a lot of yelling, grumbling and rushing back and forth. About ten minutes in, you've worked yourself up into a frenzy. "WATCH IT WITH THOSE! You break one of those wheels and I'm going to break your fucking arms! By the gods, I'm surrounded by fucking incompetents! And what the hell are you doing? Are you fucking retarded or something? Don't just stand around with a thumb up your ass, go fucking help Vaughn!" You shout in between hitting one poor employee desperately trying to get out of your way. "Oh dear husband! Can I speak with you for a moment?" You hear Zal shout in a sing song voice from upstairs. You hate it when she does that, because it usually means she's going to scold you or give you some unwanted advice and you really don't have time for that right now. Still, if you don't go see her now, you'll have to hear even more shit later. So you better see her now. Good thing she's still your wife, because you'd hate to take this sort of aggravation from someone you weren't fucking on a regular basis. You stomp upstairs and meet Zal in your bedroom. You then close the door. "WHAT?!" You exclaim. "While I'm sure you're having a good time running around abusing your underlings, I'm wondering if it's even necessary." Zal remarks. "Of course it is! You know how this lot is, I gotta kick a little ass sometimes!" "Yes, I'm aware, but have you really thought about WHY that is? Why you have to go on these rampages every few months or so?" "Yeah, so we all don't get fucking pinched by the law!" "Exactly. I'm saying maybe it's time for us to stop worrying about that." "So what're you getting at exactly?" "I'm saying maybe it's time to get out." "Get out? Now? You're joking." "Why is that so crazy?" "Because you don't walk away from this life." "Says who? You can walk away from ANYTHING as long as you aren't in prison or the grave and either of those places are exactly where you'll be heading if this keeps up." "If that's true, then you're going to be there right along side with me." "Not bloody likely. I've been thinking about this for a long time and ever since we got this inn together, I've been thinking about it even more. The time has come and I'm out." And there it is. You have to admit, you're only half surprised, but this is terrible timing. "Zal, do we really have to do this now?" You say. "Yes. Oh don't worry, I'm not going to interrupt anything, we're still moving all incriminating evidence out of here, but we're just doing it permanently." Zalmora responds. "What the...Zal I think you've forgotten who is not only head of this organization, but who is also owner of this fucking inn!" "And I think you've forgotten that as your wife, it's also partially mine." "My name is on the deed!" "Yeah, and you're still not a citizen of Klyton. And after the divorce, I guess we'll see who ends up with what, and if you think I won't drag you through the mud and make this hell for you, then you haven't learned very much during our time together." You can't believe this. You knew you should have gotten a divorce a long time ago. You just kept putting it off for other things you thought were more important at the time. You didn't think about the potential consequences. "You would really fucking do this to me wouldn't you? You probably planned this! Fucking bitch..." You mutter trying hard not to do something violent towards Zal. "Hey, I wasn't the one who initiated consummating the marriage multiple times. I really don't WANT to do this to you at all, but this is the ONLY way you're going to listen!" Zalmora exclaims. "Fine, so convince me. That is what you've always been good at isn't it?" You remark and sit down. Zalmora sits down next to you and exhales. "This inn that we run makes us a pretty good living and that's even before all the illegal shit like providing whores for the traveling merchants or running gambling games in the back. I mean aren't you getting tired of all this? Getting tired of looking over your shoulder thinking the Klyton militia is going to raid the place at any moment?" Zalmora asks. "It's the life we've chosen." "Yes, and I'm saying we don't have to live that way anymore. We could go completely legit and live comfortably rather than living in paranoia of going to jail or hanging in a cage." "I can't believe you're the same woman I met over a decade ago." "Yeah, I already know what you think. That I'm getting old and fearful and I've lost my will for this lifestyle. Well maybe all of that is true to some extent, but I don't see why that's such a bad thing. I mean I had the thrill of being a criminal and all that, well I'm done with that part of my life now. I don't find any joy in it anymore. I grew out of it. Happens to the best of us and I don't see why you don't see the logic in going legit either. You don't seem particularly all that happy and you're constantly going into these frenzies. Can you honestly say this life is as much fun as it was say ten years ago? I mean you'd at least have less worry if you weren't living this life." "So...what then? We just settle into life of married mediocrity and live the rest of our lives like average assholes?" "Yeah, I guess we do. Or we don't. Look, I've never been quite sure how deep your feelings have ever been towards me. To be honest I suppose I'm not quite sure of my own feelings are towards you. I like to think we do have a fondness for each other on some level. I mean we stayed married longer than some people I've know that we're head over heels in love with each other. Not exactly sure if what we have is love, but I guess in some way I think it's close, all things considered." Zalmora continues "That being said, if you don't want to stay together that's fine. I always thought this was going to be temporary anyway. I mean I think I could even work it out if you still wanted to manage this place. My point is though, this inn is going to be a legitimate business from now on and if you're not willing to at least go that route, well we need to say goodbye now." "You know on my end, this could be settled really easily." You say. "Mm, true. Could have also been settled easily on my end too, but as I already said, I like to think we have enough fondness for each other that murder isn't a serious option." Once again Zal is right on that part. You don't even know why you said such an empty threat. Perhaps a last minute act of a desperate man still not sure of what he wants in the future. Going "legit" isn't really going to be as easy as Zal is making out though. You would take a much severe loss in profit than perhaps she thinks. Maybe you could make it, but it wouldn't come easy. You'd have to work hard, but then you work just as hard now and have the constant paranoia added to it. Of course maybe that's the entire problem. You're working too hard period. It might not be the lifestyle, but more the location and job. You remember the more carefree years when you or you and a few others broke into a store and nicked a few items and coins, or picked the pockets of some rich merchant. You took just enough to live well for awhile and then you went out and did it all over again. None of the stress of dealing with day to day shit of running an entire criminal organization. Maybe you just need to get back to basics and walk away from it all. > You walk away Fuck this inn, fuck the Crimson Talons, fuck this city and fuck your fake marriage. You've had enough of all of it. You walk up to Zal and look into her eyes then you put your arms around her before kissing her deeply. She holds you tightly until you finish and slowly pull away. "It was fun, but I think it's time for a change of scenery. Goodbye Zal, and good luck." You say and walk away. Zalmora doesn't try to stop you, she probably knew this was a possibility. You gather a few belonging, some money and leave the inn. You figure Zal can fill everyone in on the changes she intends to make. You can't imagine how much she's going to have to deal with, but you know Zal's got a strong will and mind, so you're sure that she'll succeed or at least come out ahead. You make your way out of Klyton wondering where to travel. Holgard comes to mind, but there's always some sort of rebellion or power struggle going on there. You'd rather not have to deal with being in the middle of that mess. The Delantium Kingdom is at war with some other nation, so you'd rather avoid the possibility of suddenly getting press ganged or conscripted into military service. The only other place that comes to mind is Hessla which for one thing is a whole lot closer, but it also still has a reputation of being a haven for thieves, pirates, and other criminal types. Seems like you'd fit in real well. You first think about taking a carriage there to save yourself a walk, but then you figure you'd rather save the money. It'll be good to for you to get some regular exercise for a change as well. For several years you feel like you've just been slowly letting yourself go to pot while you were running the Crimson Talons from the inn. With a new goal in mind, a check on your rations, your flintlock pistol and a couple daggers along with your sword, you set off. The trip to Hessla is surprisingly uneventful. You half figured you'd at least run into a few idiots trying to rob you on the road, but other than travellers, and a few merchants, you don't encounter anyone else on it. When you finally get to Hessla, its actually a little nicer looking than you thought it was going to look. You expected it to be filled with run down homes with unsavory types located on every corner. If anything, the town has locations that are fancier looking than some of the better parts of Klyton. After spending a few days in Hessla you also learn that this place really isn't as disorderly as it's reputation would imply. Granted it's far from being as repressive as Klyton, but there actually is a "force" that makes sure it isn't a free for all. The Hessla Headsmen report directly to the governor who apparently is an ex-pirate that controls everything in town. If anything the crime is less than one might think mainly because most are pirates and pillaging other places rather than here. You are surprisingly finding the place a bit easy on the pick pocket and theft front, of course a lot of folks are either half drunk or plain drunk most of the time. Also most folks don't seem to own that many personal belongings. You guess with most making their living at sea, they keep essentials on their ships, spend it all on booze and whores or otherwise live a very basic life, so despite you finding the town a bit easy pickings, you aren't getting rich doing it. Shops however are very well protected by the Headsmen since you guess Governor Tolen has a slice of all the businesses here. Fights are pretty common, though they aren't necessarily always to the death like you'd expect. Just a lot of disagreement and drinking make for a rowdy town. So far you've avoided pissing anyone off and kept a low profile. You aren't sure if you're actually going to stay here long or not, but so far it's better than Klyton. Well at least you THINK you were maintaining a low profile... "Hey you with the hood." A voice says. You turn around a see a scruffy man wearing a rag on his head, shabby clothing and a few tattoos on his arms. A cutlass hangs by his side. He looks appropriately piratey. "What?" You ask. "Just wondering if you really think you're going to be getting away with pilfering things forever in this town." He says. "If I was doing such a thing, I'm not sure why it would matter to you." "It doesn't, but if someone like me noticed you were doing it, I'm sure others have too. Now I know this place has a certain reputation, but punishment for thievery in this town is pretty damn severe. We might mostly be cutthroats and vagabonds here, but we don't shit where we eat. We all have to live here with a certain measure of trust. If we don't, well the whole place goes to shit now doesn't it?" Interesting culture here. Almost reminds you of the set up you unofficially had back in your home town where they barely tolerated your thievery as long as you kept it to outsiders. "Hmm, you seem very helpful towards a stranger. Makes me wonder if you don't have an angle." You say. "Well, not much of one I suppose. I'm currently trying to find new recruits for my captain. Not much luck so far though. You wouldn't be interested would you?" "I'm afraid I've never been at sea, so I don't think I'd make much of a sailor." "Everyone's gotta start somewhere, besides we're not really being picky right now. Had a big loss recently and we need all the help we can get." "What would I be doing exactly?" "Helping around the ship obviously and the usual pillaging of coastal villages or ships. You do have some fighting skills and would have no problem with something like that I assume." "Well, I'm not a stranger to combat and I'm not going to say that I haven't done some pretty immoral things, but I'm not raping anyone." "Hey, that's your right. It's not a qualification for the job. More for someone else as they say." "Hmm, I dunno. I still think my background isn't going to mesh well. I'm not really a slash and burn type. I'm more of a pick a lock and sneak out in the middle of the night kind of guy." "Well, we could have use for that too. I remember once we raided a town that actually had a very tough safe that none of us knew how to crack. We couldn't even blow it open until we hauled one of the cannons off the ship and dragged it to the location. By the time we did get it open, the valuable contents inside were destroyed and the town had called for help from a more militaristic city that sent a strong force that chased us back to the ship. Could have all been avoided with someone like you aboard." "Maybe. Not sure if I like the idea of taking orders though. I was already part of an organization like that once. Eventually I even ran it, but ultimately I left it because I found I preferred working on my own without a bunch of people around." "Well, I suppose I can't convince you if your mind is already made up. Still, if for some reason you do change your mind, just head to a ship called the Steadfast. It's not the biggest ship in the harbor, but like it's name, it always gets to where it has to go and back." With those last words, the man takes his leave and you're pondering this new possibility. You have to admit part of you is curious what it would be like since you've never ever considered being a pirate. Might be an interesting change of pace. Still, along with all the other concerns you have. The guy trying to recruit you didn't exactly spin this in the best of light and most of the crew are apparently dead so what the hell is the captain like if he's getting everyone killed? > You stick to land You have enough problems on land, no need to add being surrounded by water as one of them. Hessla in general seems to be a bit of a bust. You figure you'll stick around for a few more days and then make your way elsewhere. You make a mental note that you'll need to be more careful if you pick anymore pockets though, apparently you're rusty enough in that endeavor that you're getting caught even if it isn't by the folks you're actually doing it to. Unfortunately for you your actions have already attracted attention and the day before you're about to leave, you are suddenly seized by the Hessla Headsmen who burst in the room you're staying at. Six of them in fact, though it only takes two of them to hold you down as they shackle you. "Well, well, well, you have been busy haven't you?" One of them says going through your pack. "Another idiot outsider thinking they can just rip us off. Honestly don't know what goes through their heads. I mean we're a pirate town! Would YOU steal from anyone in a town full of fucking pirates?" Another says. "I sure wouldn't be stupid enough to stick around as long as this one did." "So what's the damage with this one?" A Headsman with a couple extra decorations asks. "It's mostly coins, but there are a few personal items some reported stolen. Not to mention we've got more than a few people that said they saw this asshole stealing from folks when he thought nobody was watching." "Okay. Guess we can do this here then." The Headsman officer tells the others to place you into a kneeling position and put your head down. Of course you try to resist, but you just get some punches for your trouble. "If you keep resisting, I'm not going to make a clean cut and it's going to take more than one blow to take your head off." The officer says as he prepares his axe. You attempt to bargain, but it's no use. The Headsmen have heard shit like this all before and the officer eventually smashes you head with the bottom of his two handed axe. Dazed and brought low by this hit, the officer manages to nearly make a clean cut. "Shit." The officer says as the axe only goes half way through your neck, which kills you though in order to take your head completely off the officer just stomps hard on the back of your head while sawing through your neck with the axe.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fuck this inn, fuck the Crimson Talons, fuck this city and fuck your fake marriage. You've had enough of all of it. You walk up to Zal and look into her eyes then you put your arms around her before kissing her deeply. She holds you tightly until you finish and slowly pull away. "It was fun, but I think it's time for a change of scenery. Goodbye Zal, and good luck." You say and walk away. Zalmora doesn't try to stop you, she probably knew this was a possibility. You gather a few belonging, some money and leave the inn. You figure Zal can fill everyone in on the changes she intends to make. You can't imagine how much she's going to have to deal with, but you know Zal's got a strong will and mind, so you're sure that she'll succeed or at least come out ahead. You make your way out of Klyton wondering where to travel. Holgard comes to mind, but there's always some sort of rebellion or power struggle going on there. You'd rather not have to deal with being in the middle of that mess. The Delantium Kingdom is at war with some other nation, so you'd rather avoid the possibility of suddenly getting press ganged or conscripted into military service. The only other place that comes to mind is Hessla which for one thing is a whole lot closer, but it also still has a reputation of being a haven for thieves, pirates, and other criminal types. Seems like you'd fit in real well. You first think about taking a carriage there to save yourself a walk, but then you figure you'd rather save the money. It'll be good to for you to get some regular exercise for a change as well. For several years you feel like you've just been slowly letting yourself go to pot while you were running the Crimson Talons from the inn. With a new goal in mind, a check on your rations, your flintlock pistol and a couple daggers along with your sword, you set off. The trip to Hessla is surprisingly uneventful. You half figured you'd at least run into a few idiots trying to rob you on the road, but other than travellers, and a few merchants, you don't encounter anyone else on it. When you finally get to Hessla, its actually a little nicer looking than you thought it was going to look. You expected it to be filled with run down homes with unsavory types located on every corner. If anything, the town has locations that are fancier looking than some of the better parts of Klyton. After spending a few days in Hessla you also learn that this place really isn't as disorderly as it's reputation would imply. Granted it's far from being as repressive as Klyton, but there actually is a "force" that makes sure it isn't a free for all. The Hessla Headsmen report directly to the governor who apparently is an ex-pirate that controls everything in town. If anything the crime is less than one might think mainly because most are pirates and pillaging other places rather than here. You are surprisingly finding the place a bit easy on the pick pocket and theft front, of course a lot of folks are either half drunk or plain drunk most of the time. Also most folks don't seem to own that many personal belongings. You guess with most making their living at sea, they keep essentials on their ships, spend it all on booze and whores or otherwise live a very basic life, so despite you finding the town a bit easy pickings, you aren't getting rich doing it. Shops however are very well protected by the Headsmen since you guess Governor Tolen has a slice of all the businesses here. Fights are pretty common, though they aren't necessarily always to the death like you'd expect. Just a lot of disagreement and drinking make for a rowdy town. So far you've avoided pissing anyone off and kept a low profile. You aren't sure if you're actually going to stay here long or not, but so far it's better than Klyton. Well at least you THINK you were maintaining a low profile... "Hey you with the hood." A voice says. You turn around a see a scruffy man wearing a rag on his head, shabby clothing and a few tattoos on his arms. A cutlass hangs by his side. He looks appropriately piratey. "What?" You ask. "Just wondering if you really think you're going to be getting away with pilfering things forever in this town." He says. "If I was doing such a thing, I'm not sure why it would matter to you." "It doesn't, but if someone like me noticed you were doing it, I'm sure others have too. Now I know this place has a certain reputation, but punishment for thievery in this town is pretty damn severe. We might mostly be cutthroats and vagabonds here, but we don't shit where we eat. We all have to live here with a certain measure of trust. If we don't, well the whole place goes to shit now doesn't it?" Interesting culture here. Almost reminds you of the set up you unofficially had back in your home town where they barely tolerated your thievery as long as you kept it to outsiders. "Hmm, you seem very helpful towards a stranger. Makes me wonder if you don't have an angle." You say. "Well, not much of one I suppose. I'm currently trying to find new recruits for my captain. Not much luck so far though. You wouldn't be interested would you?" "I'm afraid I've never been at sea, so I don't think I'd make much of a sailor." "Everyone's gotta start somewhere, besides we're not really being picky right now. Had a big loss recently and we need all the help we can get." "What would I be doing exactly?" "Helping around the ship obviously and the usual pillaging of coastal villages or ships. You do have some fighting skills and would have no problem with something like that I assume." "Well, I'm not a stranger to combat and I'm not going to say that I haven't done some pretty immoral things, but I'm not raping anyone." "Hey, that's your right. It's not a qualification for the job. More for someone else as they say." "Hmm, I dunno. I still think my background isn't going to mesh well. I'm not really a slash and burn type. I'm more of a pick a lock and sneak out in the middle of the night kind of guy." "Well, we could have use for that too. I remember once we raided a town that actually had a very tough safe that none of us knew how to crack. We couldn't even blow it open until we hauled one of the cannons off the ship and dragged it to the location. By the time we did get it open, the valuable contents inside were destroyed and the town had called for help from a more militaristic city that sent a strong force that chased us back to the ship. Could have all been avoided with someone like you aboard." "Maybe. Not sure if I like the idea of taking orders though. I was already part of an organization like that once. Eventually I even ran it, but ultimately I left it because I found I preferred working on my own without a bunch of people around." "Well, I suppose I can't convince you if your mind is already made up. Still, if for some reason you do change your mind, just head to a ship called the Steadfast. It's not the biggest ship in the harbor, but like it's name, it always gets to where it has to go and back." With those last words, the man takes his leave and you're pondering this new possibility. You have to admit part of you is curious what it would be like since you've never ever considered being a pirate. Might be an interesting change of pace. Still, along with all the other concerns you have. The guy trying to recruit you didn't exactly spin this in the best of light and most of the crew are apparently dead so what the hell is the captain like if he's getting everyone killed? > You be a pirate Why not, it isn't like you got anything else important going on. The man who was recruiting is still visible, so you hurry your pace to catch up to him. You say you'll join and he is glad you changed your mind. He mentions his name is Scully and leads you to the Steadfast. When Scully said the Steadfast wasn't the biggest ship in the harbor, he wasn't kidding. Not that it's a rowboat and it definitely needs a crew to sail it, but compared to some of the others you've seen, you can tell you're not exactly going to be sailing with anyone of great infamy. You imagine that's why Scully said they mostly raid small coastal villages. Other than being a smaller ship, it doesn't look like it's falling apart so it's at least in good shape. Feels weird just being on it though you don't feel sick. Hopefully you won't when it's actually sailing. You meet a few other milling crew members, but they don't say much to you other than some grunts. One of them mentions where the sleeping quarters are and says don't worry about which hammock to take because most of them are no longer in use anyway. "Scully mentioned something about a lot of the crew getting killed, what happened exactly?" You ask. "Mermaids." He mutters, but doesn't elaborate and just tells you he's got work to do. You don't know anything about mermaids other than a few tales you've heard. You would ask one of the other crew members, but they don't seem all that talkative to the likes of you. A few hours pass as you wander the ship a bit and generally stand around doing nothing. You sort of thought someone would order you to do some work or earn your keep, but that hasn't happened yet. You almost feel like you're a passenger rather than a proper crew member. Not that you're complaining. You eventually see Scully again who says the Captain wants to meet you. So you head back above deck where you meet the captain who doesn't look like you thought. He's practically an old man who is having a hard time walking with a cane. He's dressed better than everyone else on the ship, but that isn't saying much since even his fancy overcoat has patches sewn on it. He introduces himself as Captain Rifiv and says he hopes you prove to be a better crewman than the lot that got themselves killed recently. Especially since you're apparently the ONLY person Scully was able to recruit! "What exactly happened anyway?" You ask. "Mermaids or sirens. I dunno, whatever those underwater singing fish bitches are called. We were far to the southwest and coming back from a relatively successful haul. Everything was going well, and then someone said their heard singing. I instantly knew what the hell it was and told everyone to start shoving wax in their ears and don't look over the sides of the ship because those scaly sluts got a way of hypnotizing most men and making them do their bidding." "Sounds like logical precautions." "You'd think so, except some of my genius crew thought they'd be heroes or something and they started looking over the side and firing their pistol into the water. Yeah, they saw one of those bitches, fell in love and before I know it, they're not only removing the wax from their ears, but they start attacking others and removing their wax or outright killing them. After it was all said and done, half of the crew was dead. Now I gotta recruit all over again and stick to places that have virtually no resistance until strength is built back up. You know what kind of places those are? Places that are poor as shit!" Captain Rifiv at this point starts ranting in general as he goes back to his quarters. Meanwhile a few of the crew roll their eyes and mutter to themselves. "You'll have to excuse the captain, he just really hates set backs. It's really not as bad as all that, we'll hit a few easy targets and in time things will start picking up again." Scully says in a positive tone. "Are we going to have to worry about mermaids?" You ask. "Oh no, we're going to be sticking to more familiar northern waters for awhile. Those lovely creatures won't be a problem where we're going." Scully seems to be a bit lost in thought when he mentions the mermaids. Looks like they really had an effect on him, but he doesn't seem shaken by the experience. The opposite actually, like he vaguely seems disappointed that you probably won't be encountering them on this trip. Well given what the captain said happened, you at least HOPE you won't be encountering them. > You time passes... Year 31 If you ever get back to Hessla, you swear to the gods that you're leaving and never setting foot on a ship again. When you left a year ago, you figured it would be a couple months maybe. You didn't know how far away all these places you're raiding were going to be. These raids are practically slaughters and you're not particularly getting any thrill out of doing them especially since there's barely been any loot to be had. Last raids you did go on we're more about scavenging the town's fruit supplies and medicine rather than valuables. Maybe you'd get more out of these raids if you were of the rapey nature, but curse your parents for raising you to at least adhere to some sort of moral standard. Though some of them seem content on buggering each other. (And no matter how long you've been at sea, you can honestly say there's nothing that would even make you THINK about sticking it to any of this loathsome lot you're with!) You also had problems with not just a major storm, but a few larger ships that apparently thought it would be fun to open fire on you for the shits and giggles. Doesn't help that the navigator got killed during that exchange and you got severely off course while attempting to outrun the superior ships. Not to mention repairs on the open sea with only half the crew also take a long damn time. On the plus side, you've learned your way around a ship a lot more, though you fully intend on never using this knowledge again if you can help it. And at least you haven't encountered any mermaids you guess. As you lean against the ship's railing look out at the setting sun, you try to keep your own sanity by thinking of happier times with your sister or Zalmora. You hope either of them are doing a hell of a lot better than you are right now because this is without a doubt the WORST idea you ever had. Right along the idea where you left the fucking inn because you didn't want to settle down and live like some regular jerk off. Would it really have been so terrible? It couldn't have been worse than THIS. "You're right, it couldn't be worse than this. Come back, I forgive you." You suddenly hear a voice say that sounds exactly like Zalmora. You look around and then hear it again. "Come back to me my love." The voice says in more melodic tone. Your head starts to feel odd and you begin to hear faint little song. You can't even make it out, it's just an ongoing tone seeping into your skull... Without thinking you look at the waters below and see a couple of splashes and a glimpse of a large fishtail. "Regina! I knew you'd come back to me! I'm coming darling!" You suddenly hear a voice shout which fortunately breaks your concentration. You look over to your left and see Scully jump over the side of the ship. This is soon followed by the Captain coming out of his quarters. "FISH BITCHES! WAX! WAX! WAX! DON'T LOOK AT THE WATER!" He shouts nearly falling over in the process. Fortunately, Captain Rifiv was so paranoid about them from last encounter that he made everyone carry some with them at all time. Scully was either wrong about mermaids not being in northern waters or you're more off course than you thought. Either way it doesn't matter because you're being assaulted by them and you're shoving wax in your ears. The wax doesn't quite drown out the song completely, but it's helping enough that you at least don't feel like you're falling under some sort of enchantment now. Captain Rifiv is using a telescope to look past the nearby mermaid infested waters in the hopes of finding some sort of land. Meanwhile most of the crew is busily filling their own ears with wax. Unfortunately most doesn't mean all... Even with wax in your ears you can still hear the nearby gunshot of an enchanted crew member shooting one of his fellows. "WEAK MINDED FOOLS!" You can hear Rifiv's muffled shouts. Doesn't take long before there is chaos on the ship and you're also fighting off your fellow enchanted crew mates. Well "fellow" might be too strong of a word since you didn't even like most of them. You then hear a loud explosion coming from below, the entire boat rocks and you fall to the deck. You aren't sure what happened, but it can't be good because the smell of smoke is very prominent and while you aren't entirely sure yet, but you think the boat might be starting to sink. As you attempt to get up, Captain Rifiv is doing his best to hobble over in your direction. "One of those charmed fools just lit a fucking powder keg below deck! This ship is going down! Come on, help me to the emergency rowboat! I saw a patch of land to the north!" Rifiv shouts before he stumbles to the floor of the ship. He's having a hard time getting up, and you see yet another charmed crewman walking over to finish him off. You look over to the emergency rowboat and you realize you could probably get to it a lot quicker by yourself. > You run to the lifeboat This is everyman for himself time, besides you didn't particularly like the old bastard anymore than you liked your other crewmates. You run over to the rowboat, get in and deploy it. It drops a lot faster than you intended and you land hard, but there is no damage and all you get is a little wet from the splash back. As you row away from the burning, sinking, and sometimes still exploding ship, you can still hear the mermaid song and it feels like it's getting through now. You can't think of anything else to do, so you start shouting nonsense at the top of your lungs. "CABBAGES, PANTIES, IT'S NOT GOT A NOSE, AND I'LL SMASH YOUR FACE!" This seems to work somewhat, but you start to run into trouble when you see a green hand grab the side of the boat. And then several more on both sides. You really begin to panic when you start to have a hard time moving the oars. The mermaids are determined to stop you. You close your eyes and draw your sword, shouting and hacking wildly. "Get away! Get away! Back!" You shout, but you're not really having an effect. The mermaids are easily avoiding your blind attacks and with all your wild swings you don't have the best balance. Doesn't take long before a few of the mermaids closest to your side of the boat grab you and pull. This action combined with the mermaids on the other side pushing the boat, you fall overboard into the water. Despite now losing your sword and being in the water, you still refuse to give up, you continue to keep your eyes closed and struggle against the mermaids pulling you down. It is at this point you begin to hear their laughing in your head. Somehow you actually manage to get your head above water and you open your eyes just long enough to see the faintest sign of land in the distance. The scent of brine and fish fill your nose as you feel a mermaid latch on to your back as you try to swim away. You can do nothing as you feel scaly fingers start to dig out the wax you stuffed in your ears. This is followed by a lick and a nibble on those same ears. Your arms are feeling like anchors, but you continue to swim with a fish bitch on your back. Your head is filled with a haunting chorus that you're desperately trying to drown out with nonsensical shouting. Quite frankly you're doing better than most men would be able to in your position, but unfortunately you're only human and the mermaids are relentless. "Join us...under the sea...everything's better with us under the sea..." The melodic voices continue to pierce your brain and then you feel the weirdest pleasurable sensation below. One of the mermaids has started to undo your trousers and taken the worm in her mouth as it were. How you're even getting turned on by this in this scenario is either a testament to the oral skills of mermaids or you had some unknown twisted desires. Whatever the reason, the mermaids are winning this one. You can't fight an underwater blowjob along with everything else. Even you know it's over when another mermaid appears right in front of you and you lock eyes directly with her. (Right after you stare at her green scaly tits for a split second of course) Her facial features are partially fishy in nature, but humanoid enough looking that you fall under the unnatural spell. Now instead of just smelling fish and brine, you taste it as well as she embraces you with a kiss. With one mermaid on your back nibbling your ear, another one swallowing your cock, and the third planting a kiss on your lips, you just let go and cease swimming. The mermaids do the rest by pulling you down. Water fills your lungs, you struggle to breathe, death soon comes and so do you as the "hooked" mermaid at least has the decency to finish you off before everything goes black. Your life was ended by mermaids.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 31 If you ever get back to Hessla, you swear to the gods that you're leaving and never setting foot on a ship again. When you left a year ago, you figured it would be a couple months maybe. You didn't know how far away all these places you're raiding were going to be. These raids are practically slaughters and you're not particularly getting any thrill out of doing them especially since there's barely been any loot to be had. Last raids you did go on we're more about scavenging the town's fruit supplies and medicine rather than valuables. Maybe you'd get more out of these raids if you were of the rapey nature, but curse your parents for raising you to at least adhere to some sort of moral standard. Though some of them seem content on buggering each other. (And no matter how long you've been at sea, you can honestly say there's nothing that would even make you THINK about sticking it to any of this loathsome lot you're with!) You also had problems with not just a major storm, but a few larger ships that apparently thought it would be fun to open fire on you for the shits and giggles. Doesn't help that the navigator got killed during that exchange and you got severely off course while attempting to outrun the superior ships. Not to mention repairs on the open sea with only half the crew also take a long damn time. On the plus side, you've learned your way around a ship a lot more, though you fully intend on never using this knowledge again if you can help it. And at least you haven't encountered any mermaids you guess. As you lean against the ship's railing look out at the setting sun, you try to keep your own sanity by thinking of happier times with your sister or Zalmora. You hope either of them are doing a hell of a lot better than you are right now because this is without a doubt the WORST idea you ever had. Right along the idea where you left the fucking inn because you didn't want to settle down and live like some regular jerk off. Would it really have been so terrible? It couldn't have been worse than THIS. "You're right, it couldn't be worse than this. Come back, I forgive you." You suddenly hear a voice say that sounds exactly like Zalmora. You look around and then hear it again. "Come back to me my love." The voice says in more melodic tone. Your head starts to feel odd and you begin to hear faint little song. You can't even make it out, it's just an ongoing tone seeping into your skull... Without thinking you look at the waters below and see a couple of splashes and a glimpse of a large fishtail. "Regina! I knew you'd come back to me! I'm coming darling!" You suddenly hear a voice shout which fortunately breaks your concentration. You look over to your left and see Scully jump over the side of the ship. This is soon followed by the Captain coming out of his quarters. "FISH BITCHES! WAX! WAX! WAX! DON'T LOOK AT THE WATER!" He shouts nearly falling over in the process. Fortunately, Captain Rifiv was so paranoid about them from last encounter that he made everyone carry some with them at all time. Scully was either wrong about mermaids not being in northern waters or you're more off course than you thought. Either way it doesn't matter because you're being assaulted by them and you're shoving wax in your ears. The wax doesn't quite drown out the song completely, but it's helping enough that you at least don't feel like you're falling under some sort of enchantment now. Captain Rifiv is using a telescope to look past the nearby mermaid infested waters in the hopes of finding some sort of land. Meanwhile most of the crew is busily filling their own ears with wax. Unfortunately most doesn't mean all... Even with wax in your ears you can still hear the nearby gunshot of an enchanted crew member shooting one of his fellows. "WEAK MINDED FOOLS!" You can hear Rifiv's muffled shouts. Doesn't take long before there is chaos on the ship and you're also fighting off your fellow enchanted crew mates. Well "fellow" might be too strong of a word since you didn't even like most of them. You then hear a loud explosion coming from below, the entire boat rocks and you fall to the deck. You aren't sure what happened, but it can't be good because the smell of smoke is very prominent and while you aren't entirely sure yet, but you think the boat might be starting to sink. As you attempt to get up, Captain Rifiv is doing his best to hobble over in your direction. "One of those charmed fools just lit a fucking powder keg below deck! This ship is going down! Come on, help me to the emergency rowboat! I saw a patch of land to the north!" Rifiv shouts before he stumbles to the floor of the ship. He's having a hard time getting up, and you see yet another charmed crewman walking over to finish him off. You look over to the emergency rowboat and you realize you could probably get to it a lot quicker by yourself. > You defend the captain Maybe you're having some "good deed" moment during this dark hour, but the old guy actually has been more or less alright with you. You run over to the captain and block the charmed crewman's sword with your own, then you follow up with a thrust with your dagger that's in your other hand. It sinks deep into the assailant's chest and as he slumps to the deck, you help the captain up. "Come on! Come on! You're too fucking slow! Move your ass!" He orders. You start to wonder if you should have just left him! With the captain in tow (And shouting in your wax filled ear) you make your way to the rowboat, get in and deploy it. It drops a lot faster than you intended and you land hard, but there is no damage and all you get is a little wet from the splash back. "Row! Row! Row northward and don't do anything else! Don't look at anything except down at the floor of this boat!" Rifiv shouts. Between the wax, the captain's shouting and some more explosions from the ship as it sinks, you're not hearing the mermaids anymore. It suddenly occurs to you, maybe that's why Rifiv is still doing all this shouting. Now you're glad you helped him. Still, blocking your hearing is only part of the solution. Now you're in a rowboat which is a lot lower to the water. You see a green hand reach out from the water and grab the side of the boat... "Damn it man, I told you not to look! Close your damn eyes! Just keep rowing, we're almost there! Get back sea sluts! Yargh! Yargh! Get back! You'll not get me with your wiles!" You do exactly what Rifiv says and try to focus on just rowing as you close your eyes. It isn't easy though since you can still hear the sounds of battle and the captain shouting the entire time. You also feel a bit of pulling at not just the oars, but your arms as well. You don't know how the old man is holding out so well. "Stop! No...YOU'RE NOT MY WIFE!" You hear the captain shout. And then nothing but a loud splash. You call out to the captain, but hear no answer. This causes you to row faster with all your strength while still keeping your eyes closed. "Come to us...let go..." You start to hear in those melodic voices again. You can't think of anything else to do so you start singing various bawdy songs you've heard over the years at the top of your lungs as you row for your life. "...AND HER ASS TASTES LIKE MOLASSES AND I THOUGHT THAT WAS MIGHTY FINE! SECOND VERSE! OHHHHHHHH..." As silly as it is for you to be singing loudly in the middle of the fucking ocean about a priest's daughter losing her anal virginity, it's keeping you alive. This must go on for at least an hour or so. Eventually you hit something, or rather something scrapes the bottom of your boat. At first you think it's the mermaids trying to tip it over or something, but you risk opening your eyes and find that you've hit land or at least the rocks near it. In fact you've damaged the boat and you once again find yourself aboard a sinking ship. Fortunately, the mermaids seem to have stopped harassing you and the water isn't too deep so you make it to shore. Even so, you run pretty far inland before you stop to take a better look at your surroundings. You cautiously remove the wax from your ears and you don't hear any mermaid songs trying to bewitch you any longer. You do hear the sounds of a few birds though. Wherever you are, you're in a wooded area with a large amount of trees and bushes. You aren't sure how big this patch of land is though; for all you know it could be a small island or a large continent. One thing is for sure though, it's cold and you're a long damn way from home. While this isn't the best situation, you're not giving in to despair. As soon as you figure out how to survive here, maybe you can somehow figure out a way to get back. Or maybe you'll just stay here. You'll see how it turns out. Either way your days of being a rogue are over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3A1: Red Storm Subsiding Year 30 "Are you sure?" You ask. "I'm positive. My boyfriend said the militia are going to do an intensive sweep of this district in a week. The Klyton Council wants to prove they're tough on crime again. Apparently there have been complaints that things have been getting too lax." Vaughn remarks. "See? This was useful info. And YOU got angry when you found out Vaughn was going out with a militia man." Zal says. "Never mind all that, we gotta start cleaning shit up around here. Vaughn, I want you to start dismantling the stills and moving the tubs from the basement and into the sewers. Just glad we have a lot of already filled barrels down there. We should be good on that front. Zal, you dismantle the gambling tables and wheels and move them into the sewers as well." "I'm not mucking about in the sewers. Those days are over." Zal huffs. "(Sigh) Fine then get someone else to do it! Why do you have to fight me on this right now? I'm going to go see the girls and tell them they got the week off or at least they got the week off here. Don't really care if they whore somewhere else." You immediately come out of your office and start running around telling your employees (Both legal and criminal) what to do. There predictably is a lot of yelling, grumbling and rushing back and forth. About ten minutes in, you've worked yourself up into a frenzy. "WATCH IT WITH THOSE! You break one of those wheels and I'm going to break your fucking arms! By the gods, I'm surrounded by fucking incompetents! And what the hell are you doing? Are you fucking retarded or something? Don't just stand around with a thumb up your ass, go fucking help Vaughn!" You shout in between hitting one poor employee desperately trying to get out of your way. "Oh dear husband! Can I speak with you for a moment?" You hear Zal shout in a sing song voice from upstairs. You hate it when she does that, because it usually means she's going to scold you or give you some unwanted advice and you really don't have time for that right now. Still, if you don't go see her now, you'll have to hear even more shit later. So you better see her now. Good thing she's still your wife, because you'd hate to take this sort of aggravation from someone you weren't fucking on a regular basis. You stomp upstairs and meet Zal in your bedroom. You then close the door. "WHAT?!" You exclaim. "While I'm sure you're having a good time running around abusing your underlings, I'm wondering if it's even necessary." Zal remarks. "Of course it is! You know how this lot is, I gotta kick a little ass sometimes!" "Yes, I'm aware, but have you really thought about WHY that is? Why you have to go on these rampages every few months or so?" "Yeah, so we all don't get fucking pinched by the law!" "Exactly. I'm saying maybe it's time for us to stop worrying about that." "So what're you getting at exactly?" "I'm saying maybe it's time to get out." "Get out? Now? You're joking." "Why is that so crazy?" "Because you don't walk away from this life." "Says who? You can walk away from ANYTHING as long as you aren't in prison or the grave and either of those places are exactly where you'll be heading if this keeps up." "If that's true, then you're going to be there right along side with me." "Not bloody likely. I've been thinking about this for a long time and ever since we got this inn together, I've been thinking about it even more. The time has come and I'm out." And there it is. You have to admit, you're only half surprised, but this is terrible timing. "Zal, do we really have to do this now?" You say. "Yes. Oh don't worry, I'm not going to interrupt anything, we're still moving all incriminating evidence out of here, but we're just doing it permanently." Zalmora responds. "What the...Zal I think you've forgotten who is not only head of this organization, but who is also owner of this fucking inn!" "And I think you've forgotten that as your wife, it's also partially mine." "My name is on the deed!" "Yeah, and you're still not a citizen of Klyton. And after the divorce, I guess we'll see who ends up with what, and if you think I won't drag you through the mud and make this hell for you, then you haven't learned very much during our time together." You can't believe this. You knew you should have gotten a divorce a long time ago. You just kept putting it off for other things you thought were more important at the time. You didn't think about the potential consequences. "You would really fucking do this to me wouldn't you? You probably planned this! Fucking bitch..." You mutter trying hard not to do something violent towards Zal. "Hey, I wasn't the one who initiated consummating the marriage multiple times. I really don't WANT to do this to you at all, but this is the ONLY way you're going to listen!" Zalmora exclaims. "Fine, so convince me. That is what you've always been good at isn't it?" You remark and sit down. Zalmora sits down next to you and exhales. "This inn that we run makes us a pretty good living and that's even before all the illegal shit like providing whores for the traveling merchants or running gambling games in the back. I mean aren't you getting tired of all this? Getting tired of looking over your shoulder thinking the Klyton militia is going to raid the place at any moment?" Zalmora asks. "It's the life we've chosen." "Yes, and I'm saying we don't have to live that way anymore. We could go completely legit and live comfortably rather than living in paranoia of going to jail or hanging in a cage." "I can't believe you're the same woman I met over a decade ago." "Yeah, I already know what you think. That I'm getting old and fearful and I've lost my will for this lifestyle. Well maybe all of that is true to some extent, but I don't see why that's such a bad thing. I mean I had the thrill of being a criminal and all that, well I'm done with that part of my life now. I don't find any joy in it anymore. I grew out of it. Happens to the best of us and I don't see why you don't see the logic in going legit either. You don't seem particularly all that happy and you're constantly going into these frenzies. Can you honestly say this life is as much fun as it was say ten years ago? I mean you'd at least have less worry if you weren't living this life." "So...what then? We just settle into life of married mediocrity and live the rest of our lives like average assholes?" "Yeah, I guess we do. Or we don't. Look, I've never been quite sure how deep your feelings have ever been towards me. To be honest I suppose I'm not quite sure of my own feelings are towards you. I like to think we do have a fondness for each other on some level. I mean we stayed married longer than some people I've know that we're head over heels in love with each other. Not exactly sure if what we have is love, but I guess in some way I think it's close, all things considered." Zalmora continues "That being said, if you don't want to stay together that's fine. I always thought this was going to be temporary anyway. I mean I think I could even work it out if you still wanted to manage this place. My point is though, this inn is going to be a legitimate business from now on and if you're not willing to at least go that route, well we need to say goodbye now." "You know on my end, this could be settled really easily." You say. "Mm, true. Could have also been settled easily on my end too, but as I already said, I like to think we have enough fondness for each other that murder isn't a serious option." Once again Zal is right on that part. You don't even know why you said such an empty threat. Perhaps a last minute act of a desperate man still not sure of what he wants in the future. Going "legit" isn't really going to be as easy as Zal is making out though. You would take a much severe loss in profit than perhaps she thinks. Maybe you could make it, but it wouldn't come easy. You'd have to work hard, but then you work just as hard now and have the constant paranoia added to it. Of course maybe that's the entire problem. You're working too hard period. It might not be the lifestyle, but more the location and job. You remember the more carefree years when you or you and a few others broke into a store and nicked a few items and coins, or picked the pockets of some rich merchant. You took just enough to live well for awhile and then you went out and did it all over again. None of the stress of dealing with day to day shit of running an entire criminal organization. Maybe you just need to get back to basics and walk away from it all. > You go legit You can't go back to those "good old days" even though you might wish to. Really, the good old days were long over the day you got chased out of Teckleville, and perhaps they were over even before that when your sister left. You hope she's doing well. Zal isn't the only one that's gotten older. True you're still relatively young in comparison and perhaps the roguish streak hasn't quite left you yet, but her transformation and everything else that's gone on...well quite frankly it is time to start thinking about a more stable future that doesn't involve criminal endeavors. As for being married...well you could do worse than being married to a woman who's been giving you sound advice for over a decade, even if she has been a bit manipulative at times. You'd be lying if you didn't like that quality slightly. She obviously cares about you on some level and the feeling is mutual. After all, if you didn't, you would have divorced long ago. You grab Zal's hand, squeezing it while nodding silently. It's all you have to do to give an answer. Zal seems pretty happy with your answer and hugs you which you return. "(Sigh) Considering I'm actually allowing myself to submit to this, I guess it's just as well I'm getting out too. I'm obviously too soft to be a crime lord anymore." You say as Zal smiles. "Oh you're not going soft, you're just playing the odds and the odds are in favor of a better life if you get out of this game now." Zal says in an attempt to reassure you. "I suppose. I do hope you know that this isn't going to be as easy as you believe though. Good thing we've got a lot saved up, because if we're going totally legit, we're probably going to be taking a major loss for awhile." "I know, but I truly think this is going to be for the best in the long run." "It's not just that though, we've got other people to think about. I mean the folks who aren't Talons aren't going to be a problem, like some of the waitresses. Even some of the Talons aren't going to be a problem. Hell, I can see someone like Vaughn being completely okay with this direction, but there are a few of the younger more ambitious members that aren't going to go along with this." "Well that's tough shit." "Perhaps, but they're going to be pretty mad about this and when they are, I can't say I'm going to entirely blame them. Still, we can deal with that later. Right now, priority is making this place respectable before the Klyton militia sweep." You and Zal get back to that task at hand. Later on in the week after the noise has died down from Klyton's most recent repressive tactics, you call a meeting to address everyone of the new changes that are going to be taking place. It goes well for the most part, but predictably there are complaints. "So wait, if this place is going legit, does that mean we can't fuck the merchants that come in here anymore?" A whore asks. "You ladies can fuck anyone you want, but if you're going to be doing it here, you better be doing it for fun rather than profit. There is to be no more whoring here. If you want to pursue that line of work, you do it elsewhere. Better yet, the Klyton Kitty is hiring right now. You ladies could go there and be completely legal prostitutes at that establishment." "What?! They wouldn't hire me and I can't compete with the bitches that hoity toity place! They're all twenty years younger, got all their teeth, magically enhanced tits, and don't have a rash on their..." "Hey look, that's not my fucking problem! The best I can do is if any of you want jobs as waitresses, I can accommodate in that respect, but you if you want to go whore, you do it on your own time and away from this place!" As the whores grumble, one of the more unkept employees raises their hands. "Um, does this mean those of us who owed gambling debts don't have to work here anymore?" One of the "indentured servants" asks. "No! You deadbeat fuckers still owe! I'm not absolving anyone of their debts and don't think I won't still enforce that! However, only part of it will be taken out of your pay. If and when you finish paying off your debt, you can either continue working here for your full pay or go on your way." You say. Finally, there is the group that you were expecting the most trouble from. "This a bunch of fucking bullshit." Camid exlaims. Camid is one of the younger Crimson Talons. He's always been a bit outspoken about how things should be run, but he's more or less always complied. A few other Talons with his mindset also express their dissatisfaction. "Which part?" You ask humoring this asshole. "All of it. How fuck are we just going to walk away from all the money we're making and become regular blue collar bums? The working man is a sucker and this is just fucking stupid." Camid says. "Yeah, I figured some of you would feel that way, so think of this as my retirement as head of the Crimson Talons. Camid, if you want the job you got it. If not, well I'm sure those of you who still want to go out and do illegal shit can decide who's going to run the organization. Good luck to you." "I gotta say, I never agreed with all your decisions, but I never thought I'd see the damn day when you'd go fucking limp dick soft. What, so the Klyton militia assholes come sweep the place and you lose your damn balls?" Camid remarks. "Pfft, he didn't lose them, he knows exactly where they are. In his old bitch of a wife's purse!" Another Talon remarks. At this point Zalmora, Vaughn and a couple of the ex-Talons on your side begin to yell, but you calm everyone down. "It's fine, it's fine. You done?" You ask. "No, I'm not fucking done. This inn is a fucking Crimson Talon business! Now if you want to step down and live like some regular jerk off fine. But YOU don't get to take this with you! This is OUR place." Camid remarks. "That's not what it says on the deed, and last time I remember I wasn't married to your ass. Look Camid, you got the damn sewers. You're gaining the bum fights, you can run whores and gambling there. Shit, you can even sell Yellow Devil again or whatever else you want, but YOU don't get this place. I was the one who scratched and worked for it. You want someplace that doesn't smell like shit and covered in slime, well you're going to have to work for it too." At this point Camid and you are face to face and it's half expected that someone is going to go for a weapon. Camid is obviously severely tempted, but he's not quite confident enough to believe he'll survive the exchange. "You're going to regret this." He says and then backs away slowly towards the door as likeminded folks follow. You wave your hand away dismissively and tell your remaining people to go on with their work. You head to your office, though Zalmora and Vaughn follow you. "I hate to say this, but I don't think Camid's going to just go away." Zalmora says. "Yeah, I got that impression. (Sigh) This is why I didn't think this was going to just go smoothly." You say. "Do you think we could just make a one time pay off for him to forget about us?" Vaughn asks. "Vaughn you know damn well that isn't going to work. That fucker will just see that as weakness and start demanding payment on a weekly basis. Besides, we're already going to be losing money in the near future, I'm not parting with any more than I have to." "Well, there's always the obvious solution." Zal suggests. "But I thought the whole point was to get away from doing shit like that. I mean I'm with you guys on going legit, but if we start making exceptions, we're not really changing are we?" Vaughn says. "So what are you suggesting?" You ask. "We get the law to work for us for a change. Look, we all know Camid isn't going to be inventive enough to pick a new location to do business. He's probably going to go right back to that old location in the sewers. All I have to do is tell Gregory about the large Crimson Talon hideout there and boom. The militia takes care of our problem. Plus you know Camid, he'll probably go down fighting." "Who's Gregory?" You ask. "Vaughn's militia man. Got to admit, that's not a bad plan. Just...I dunno. Seems weird ratting them out like that to solve the issue." Zal remarks. "What difference does it make as long as it gets the job done? Besides, as I said, I thought we weren't Talons anymore. There's no code of silence being broken." Vaughn remarks as Zal reluctantly agrees. Seems that Zal hasn't quite gotten all the "rogue" out of her system despite everything she's claimed. You can certainly relate, but not so much because you're against ratting them out, but more because killing them is a more final solution to a potential problem. > You snitch on the Crimson Talons It occurs to you that snitching them out to the militia is most likely the same thing as wiping them out. The Klyton militia isn't exactly known for showing restraint when it comes to things like this. And as Vaughn said, Camid will most likely be foolish enough to go down fighting and take everyone under his command with him. "Fuck it, we're law abiding citizens concerned with the criminal element in this city. There's no reason we should risk our lives, let the militia do their job. Go talk to your boyfriend." You say. Your response is a bit of a surprise to Vaughn and a bigger surprise to Zalmora who both figured you'd ultimately want to take care of the problem directly. Vaughn however seems happy that his life won't be at risk now. Zal doesn't argue with your decision, but seems a little distracted by it. Later that night you address it directly before you both go to bed. "Zal, this really is the less messy solution. If we're getting out like you wanted us to, we can't go around committing a mass murder that could potentially get one or more of us killed in the process. I mean how fucked up would it be if I died or worse, YOU died during the hit? Camid left with a little over half of the Talons, we would have been outnumbered. Let those militia assholes waste their lives. Better them than us, and as I said before, especially you." You say caressing the side of Zal's face. "I know. I know. And I'm glad you were concerned about me." Zal says embracing you. In the next few days, Vaughn lets you know that everything has been set in motion and the Klyton militia is going to launch a full scale assault on the location. They apparently want this to go so successfully they're doing their best keeping it secret. (Though Vaughn's boyfriend Gregory has a big mouth and told him everything anyway.) Within the week you get the news from the paper about how the Crimson Talons were absolutely crushed by the Klyton militia. A big announcement is made of how the Talons are no longer a threat in the Klyton and have at last been brought down after decades of terrorizing the city. All Talon members were killed in the raid along with several Yellow Devil junkies, whores, and gamblers who were there betting on a bum fight. But as usual nobody really cares about some dregs of society getting massacred in the process because justice has been served! You smile and point out to Zal this success. "See? Told you this was the best way to handle it." You say. "Actually it was Vaughn who suggested it in the first place." Zal remarks. "Being the boss means you always get to take the credit." You chuckle. "Boss? We're not Crimson Talons anymore remember?' "I'm still boss of this inn and I'm boss of your fine ass." You say slapping Zal on the ass. "Oh yeah? Well you better come closer and prove that because I'm not convinced." You and Zal proceed celebrate your victory and new lives as productive law abiding citizens in a physical way. Year 33 "Where the hell has Vaughn been? He hasn't come in for the past three days. Did he say he was sick or something?" You ask. "Last time I saw him he was fine. Never said anything about being sick." Zalmora remarks. "I'm gonna have to go over to his home or something because he can't just disappear like this. We're trying to run a business here." "It's odd for him to just disappear though. Maybe we should contact the militia on this." "His boyfriend is a militia guy. I'm sure if it was really serious, he would have already let us know. He's probably just got some minor cold and decided it would be a good excuse to take off from work. He's done that before you know." "So you going over to his home?" "Maybe later when things here at the inn die down a bit. Too much to do right now." You spend most of your work day tending to usual business. Still feels weird at times working a real job, but you're pretty much used to it now. Being with Zal certainly has made this transition easier for you. If only your parents could see you now, they probably wouldn't believe it. You don't think your sister would either. Your thoughts sometimes still wander towards them and wonder how they all are at times. By night fall the inn has gotten a little quieter. Normally that's not the case, but you know there's some major party going on at the Madcap Tavern tonight so most of the rowdier folks are there. You decide this will be a good time to go check on Vaughn. You say goodbye to Zal and leave the inn. As you walk to Vaughn's place you pass a couple of patrolling guards. You still remember when you first came to this city it still wasn't quite as restrictive as it is now. You guess it's good you got out of the life when you did. Along the way, a man with a full beard and mustache and raggedy clothing comes up to you. "Hey boss, can you spare a copper?" He asks. "Don't have any. Get a job." You say still walking. "I had a job boss, but the business got shut down by the government and in this environment, it's hard to get work." He says following you. "Yeah, well things are tough all over." "Well things look like they're going good for you boss. You got money, a nice business, a pretty wife even if she is a little on the older side." You suddenly stop walking and it occurs to you that he isn't just calling you "boss" as some term of deference of social status. "Never thought I'd get an easy chance to get you like this, you never leave that fucking inn." The man says in a nastier tone. Your instincts kick in, and you swing at the man, but you're a little rusty in the combat area. This man however isn't and dodges your swing and then smashes you in the face with some brass knuckles. You feel the crunch of your nose breaking as you fall to the ground. You then feel a boot to the side of your head nearly knocking you unconscious. In your dazed state you feel yourself being dragged into a nearby alley. You attempt to stop your assailant, but are only met with more stomps to your face. He only stops in order to take out his flintlock pistol. While you have no idea who this man's name is, you know he has to be an ex-Talon. Probably some young recruit that you never really paid attention to, which is probably why you never recognized him right away either, even if he does look like a vagrant now. Apparently the Klyton militia wasn't as thorough as they claimed in the papers all those years ago. "Been waiting a long time for this. Say hello to Vaughn in hell when you see him and don't worry your snitch bitch of a wife will be joining both of you soon too." He says and then puts a bullet in your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can't go back to those "good old days" even though you might wish to. Really, the good old days were long over the day you got chased out of Teckleville, and perhaps they were over even before that when your sister left. You hope she's doing well. Zal isn't the only one that's gotten older. True you're still relatively young in comparison and perhaps the roguish streak hasn't quite left you yet, but her transformation and everything else that's gone on...well quite frankly it is time to start thinking about a more stable future that doesn't involve criminal endeavors. As for being married...well you could do worse than being married to a woman who's been giving you sound advice for over a decade, even if she has been a bit manipulative at times. You'd be lying if you didn't like that quality slightly. She obviously cares about you on some level and the feeling is mutual. After all, if you didn't, you would have divorced long ago. You grab Zal's hand, squeezing it while nodding silently. It's all you have to do to give an answer. Zal seems pretty happy with your answer and hugs you which you return. "(Sigh) Considering I'm actually allowing myself to submit to this, I guess it's just as well I'm getting out too. I'm obviously too soft to be a crime lord anymore." You say as Zal smiles. "Oh you're not going soft, you're just playing the odds and the odds are in favor of a better life if you get out of this game now." Zal says in an attempt to reassure you. "I suppose. I do hope you know that this isn't going to be as easy as you believe though. Good thing we've got a lot saved up, because if we're going totally legit, we're probably going to be taking a major loss for awhile." "I know, but I truly think this is going to be for the best in the long run." "It's not just that though, we've got other people to think about. I mean the folks who aren't Talons aren't going to be a problem, like some of the waitresses. Even some of the Talons aren't going to be a problem. Hell, I can see someone like Vaughn being completely okay with this direction, but there are a few of the younger more ambitious members that aren't going to go along with this." "Well that's tough shit." "Perhaps, but they're going to be pretty mad about this and when they are, I can't say I'm going to entirely blame them. Still, we can deal with that later. Right now, priority is making this place respectable before the Klyton militia sweep." You and Zal get back to that task at hand. Later on in the week after the noise has died down from Klyton's most recent repressive tactics, you call a meeting to address everyone of the new changes that are going to be taking place. It goes well for the most part, but predictably there are complaints. "So wait, if this place is going legit, does that mean we can't fuck the merchants that come in here anymore?" A whore asks. "You ladies can fuck anyone you want, but if you're going to be doing it here, you better be doing it for fun rather than profit. There is to be no more whoring here. If you want to pursue that line of work, you do it elsewhere. Better yet, the Klyton Kitty is hiring right now. You ladies could go there and be completely legal prostitutes at that establishment." "What?! They wouldn't hire me and I can't compete with the bitches that hoity toity place! They're all twenty years younger, got all their teeth, magically enhanced tits, and don't have a rash on their..." "Hey look, that's not my fucking problem! The best I can do is if any of you want jobs as waitresses, I can accommodate in that respect, but you if you want to go whore, you do it on your own time and away from this place!" As the whores grumble, one of the more unkept employees raises their hands. "Um, does this mean those of us who owed gambling debts don't have to work here anymore?" One of the "indentured servants" asks. "No! You deadbeat fuckers still owe! I'm not absolving anyone of their debts and don't think I won't still enforce that! However, only part of it will be taken out of your pay. If and when you finish paying off your debt, you can either continue working here for your full pay or go on your way." You say. Finally, there is the group that you were expecting the most trouble from. "This a bunch of fucking bullshit." Camid exlaims. Camid is one of the younger Crimson Talons. He's always been a bit outspoken about how things should be run, but he's more or less always complied. A few other Talons with his mindset also express their dissatisfaction. "Which part?" You ask humoring this asshole. "All of it. How fuck are we just going to walk away from all the money we're making and become regular blue collar bums? The working man is a sucker and this is just fucking stupid." Camid says. "Yeah, I figured some of you would feel that way, so think of this as my retirement as head of the Crimson Talons. Camid, if you want the job you got it. If not, well I'm sure those of you who still want to go out and do illegal shit can decide who's going to run the organization. Good luck to you." "I gotta say, I never agreed with all your decisions, but I never thought I'd see the damn day when you'd go fucking limp dick soft. What, so the Klyton militia assholes come sweep the place and you lose your damn balls?" Camid remarks. "Pfft, he didn't lose them, he knows exactly where they are. In his old bitch of a wife's purse!" Another Talon remarks. At this point Zalmora, Vaughn and a couple of the ex-Talons on your side begin to yell, but you calm everyone down. "It's fine, it's fine. You done?" You ask. "No, I'm not fucking done. This inn is a fucking Crimson Talon business! Now if you want to step down and live like some regular jerk off fine. But YOU don't get to take this with you! This is OUR place." Camid remarks. "That's not what it says on the deed, and last time I remember I wasn't married to your ass. Look Camid, you got the damn sewers. You're gaining the bum fights, you can run whores and gambling there. Shit, you can even sell Yellow Devil again or whatever else you want, but YOU don't get this place. I was the one who scratched and worked for it. You want someplace that doesn't smell like shit and covered in slime, well you're going to have to work for it too." At this point Camid and you are face to face and it's half expected that someone is going to go for a weapon. Camid is obviously severely tempted, but he's not quite confident enough to believe he'll survive the exchange. "You're going to regret this." He says and then backs away slowly towards the door as likeminded folks follow. You wave your hand away dismissively and tell your remaining people to go on with their work. You head to your office, though Zalmora and Vaughn follow you. "I hate to say this, but I don't think Camid's going to just go away." Zalmora says. "Yeah, I got that impression. (Sigh) This is why I didn't think this was going to just go smoothly." You say. "Do you think we could just make a one time pay off for him to forget about us?" Vaughn asks. "Vaughn you know damn well that isn't going to work. That fucker will just see that as weakness and start demanding payment on a weekly basis. Besides, we're already going to be losing money in the near future, I'm not parting with any more than I have to." "Well, there's always the obvious solution." Zal suggests. "But I thought the whole point was to get away from doing shit like that. I mean I'm with you guys on going legit, but if we start making exceptions, we're not really changing are we?" Vaughn says. "So what are you suggesting?" You ask. "We get the law to work for us for a change. Look, we all know Camid isn't going to be inventive enough to pick a new location to do business. He's probably going to go right back to that old location in the sewers. All I have to do is tell Gregory about the large Crimson Talon hideout there and boom. The militia takes care of our problem. Plus you know Camid, he'll probably go down fighting." "Who's Gregory?" You ask. "Vaughn's militia man. Got to admit, that's not a bad plan. Just...I dunno. Seems weird ratting them out like that to solve the issue." Zal remarks. "What difference does it make as long as it gets the job done? Besides, as I said, I thought we weren't Talons anymore. There's no code of silence being broken." Vaughn remarks as Zal reluctantly agrees. Seems that Zal hasn't quite gotten all the "rogue" out of her system despite everything she's claimed. You can certainly relate, but not so much because you're against ratting them out, but more because killing them is a more final solution to a potential problem. > You wipe out the Crimson Talons No point in taking chances... "I appreciate the input Vaughn, but I believe a more permanent solution is needed here." You say. "Well okay, but how are we going to do it? Camid just left with a little more than half the old gang. Besides us three, we only got a couple guys left and honestly I don't really have confidence in them if it's going to be a knock down drag out fight." "There are more around guns nowadays you know. Don't need to be a good fighter to just shoot someone. I acquired one myself soon after I bought the inn." You say. "Yeah, but Camid and his group could have the same idea. Pretty sure Camid owns one and will probably acquire more for the rest of the Talons. Plus most of them are one shot weapons. If anyone misses, it's going to come down to a real fight and we're going to be out numbered." "Well, I guess we better make sure our aim is true shouldn't we then? Look, if this is going to be a concern, we could always go get some of those repeating crossbows. They cost a damn fortune, but..." Suddenly Zal speaks up. "Maybe we shouldn't risk our lives on this. It would be kind of tragic to get this far only to get brought down at the finish line." Zalmora says. "So what are you saying? You saying you want to go with Vaughn's plan now?" You ask. "No, I'm for getting rid of them, but I just don't think we should be the ones to do the deed if we don't have to." "Okay. So you're saying you want a hired assassin? Great. You know any? Because I sure don't." "Yes we do. In fact you hired him already once." You exhale deeply. "And in order to hire THAT guy again, I'm going to have to deal with Mr. Fucking Reynolds and who knows what damn price he's going to ask for." You say. "He was actually pretty reasonable last time." Zal remarks. "He also didn't tell me everything last time. There's always a catch with him. In fact weren't you against dealing with him last time?" "I was, but that was a different time under different circumstances. I mean can it hurt to even inquire?" "No, but I wish there was another alternative." "We could always look for Scales." Vaughn jokes in an attempt to lighten the mood. "I don't think Scales is even alive anymore, if he was even lurking down in the sewers to begin with. I think Tom was the only one who was ever convinced of it. I mean we were in the sewers for years and never ran afoul of a supposedly territorial lizard. (Sigh) Alright, I'll go see Mr. Reynolds tomorrow and see what the price is." The next day you walk into Mr. Reynolds' office. As soon as you walk in, you see a strange ogrish looking creature, but much shorter than one. In fact if it wasn't for the oversized teeth and general monstrous appearance, you might mistake it for a very muscular dwarf. You also see Henry, or at least you assume it's Henry. He hasn't changed much since the last time you saw him, though he's sporting a few scars across his face now. Finally you see Mr. Reynolds and he certainly hasn't changed. Once again he stands up smiling at his desk. "Well what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit from the head of the infamous Crimson Talons this fine day?" Mr. Reynolds says. "I need some people killed." You say. "Hm, straight to business I see. Okay then, I assume there is some reason why you aren't having your own people taking care of this?" "Let's just say, most of my so called people are the ones I want to have killed." "Ah, an internal struggle? Interesting. Well, I'm not sure what you want me to do about it." You haven't been here five minutes, and he's already playing mind games... "What the hell do you think..." You start to shout, but then you stop and then calm yourself before continuing. "Mr. Reynolds, with all due respect, I have come here asking for assistance on this matter as I once did in the past. Your son did a marvelous job last time even if... I didn't quite appreciate its thoroughness last time. I have now come to respect it much more and I would like to implement his magnificent skills again on others that would see harm to me and my business." Mr. Reynolds listens intently and smiles. "I'm glad to see that wisdom has come with your age. That's good. Last time our business together was less than cordial. That's okay though, I still got paid. As I said, I would love to help you again in this matter, but I'm afraid, this isn't my call this time. Last time when Henry worked for you, you insulted his work and I'm afraid, my son takes things a bit more personal than I do. He won't work for you again." "What?! But isn't he your employee? Can't you just order him?" "Yes, but he's also my son! Really now sir, would YOU force your son to do something he doesn't want to? Yes, business is always important, but sometimes, just sometimes family comes first. Now if Henry wants to work for you on this, I suppose we can start coming up with a price, but I don't think it's likely." You look over to Henry who just gives you a cold glance before walking away altogether. "I think there's your answer." Mr. Reynolds says. "Great. So I guess you can't help me." You say. "Well now, I wouldn't say that exactly, I still have one employee willing to cause mayhem on your behalf." Mr. Reynolds points over to the ogre looking creature. "And who is that?" You ask. "Who is that? Don't you see the family resemblance? This fine gentleman is the late great Olaf's son!" Mr. Reynolds exclaims. "The late Olaf?" "Yes, it was a sad day when Olaf passed a few years ago. Died right here in the office in his sleep in fact. He will be missed. But anyway his son Olaf Jr. has been following in his father's large footsteps and I don't mind saying he's been doing a fine job for me and his own mother is very proud of him." You remember that Mr. Reynolds once said Olaf was married to a halfling. You can't imagine how that birth was even possible let alone how she survived the process. It does however explain Junior's strange appearance by ogre standards. (Or any standards actually) Mr. Reynolds goes on to explain that while Junior doesn't have the same size as his father or quickness that Henry has, he assures you that he has more than enough skill to do the job you require. However, unlike last time Mr. Reynolds asks for a thousand gold coins in advance. It's a hell of a lot of money and you have no real certainty. You're starting to think you might have more piece of mind investing in some weapons and doing this yourself. > You hire Junior As crazy as this is, you know Mr. Reynolds values his word. If he says Junior will wipe out all the targets, then he'll do it. There's also the fact that you haven't completely dismissed what Zal said about failing at the finish line. You could be as prepared as possible and still get yourself killed in the battle or perhaps even Zal would get killed. You have to admit you'd be pretty upset if that occurred. Maybe you are in love after all. So it's with a slight reluctance that you once again take Mr. Reynolds up on his offer... "Okay, it's deal, but I'll have to come back later with the money. I also have to do a little reconnaissance so I know where exactly to have Junior go find his targets. I'll be giving you a list of names and physical descriptions as well." You say. "Sure. Sure. Take all the preparations you need, we'll be here. And as usual, it's been a pleasure doing business with you." Mr. Reynolds says. You return to the inn and explain the situation to Zal and Vaughn. Vaughn says it shouldn't be any problem to locate where Camid and the rest finally settle down at, though he says once again that it will most likely be the old sewer location. "Why couldn't you get the other guy?" Zal asks. "I told you, personal differences. I don't doubt that this ogre...or ogrfling isn't capable of doing the job. Mr. Reynolds prides himself too much on his word." You say. "Thousand gold pieces is a lot of money." "Yeah, well if it keeps you...I mean us safe, it's a good investment." You say. Zalmora smiles a bit. "Wait, were you more worried about me?" Zal asks. "Well you are my wife. I'm not going to live like a regular jack off alone. Especially since it was your idea in the first place." You respond. "I'll take that as a yes." Zal responds and kisses you. You return to Mr. Reynolds' office in the next few days with the money and all the necessary information. "Ah, quite a few of them I see. Henry really should have taken this job, he would have loved it, but there's no getting through to the boy at times. (Sigh) Anyway, yes Junior will have no problems with this. Probably can get it done tonight. Come back tomorrow and we'll have proof." Lacking anything else to do, you head back to the inn and get back to work, which still feels weird to you. Though more than anything else your mind is preoccupied with if that ogre freak is going to be successful. You have a little anxiety that he's not going to get the job done and one of those assholes gets away only to shoot you in the back a year later just when you think everything is going good. Zalmora senses your concern and later that night you try to find reassurance and comfort in her embrace. It helps. The next morning you wake up and you head over to Mr. Reynolds' place. You notice a lot of Klyton militia patrolling about. You also come across a young boy with a bunch of papers shouting about a vigilante. "Hey mister, you need to buy the paper today! It's special edition!" The boy shouts. "What's so special about it?" You ask. "It's a breaking story that happened just last night! Some vigilante wiped out the infamous Crimson Talons!" The boy exclaims. "Really?" "Yeah! My boss suddenly got the scoop in the middle of the night! Anonymous tip or something. Anyway, the details are inside!" "I don't have any money on me right now, but I might be back to get one later." "Okay mister, but you better hurry up, these are selling fast!" You leave the boy and continue on your destination. When you enter Mr. Reynolds' office, he's reading the paper. "There you are. You didn't happen to see this morning's paper did you?" Mr. Reynolds asks. "No, but I heard what the headline is." You respond. "Heh, yes. I thought it would be the best way to deal with this one. After Henry disposed of the Bloody Smiles, people thought there was a blood stalker lurking in the woods for years. It's amazing what people's imagination can come up with." "Mm, the imagination is a powerful thing. So where's Junior?" "Oh I gave him a much needed day off. He was up all night fighting crime I'm sure you're aware. He even took a bullet or two. Still, nothing serious for a strong young creature like himself. He did leave the proof of his deed, do you want to see?" "I can only imagine what he took as proof, but what the hell, I did pay for all this." "It's over in the chest over there." You look over to your left and see a medium sized chest. You cautiously open it and cough a bit when a smokey smell of charred flesh hits your nose. You then see a bunch of what looks to be blackened ears. Well some of them are a little more than just blackened ears and still have some of the side of the faces attached. "(Cough cough) Shit! What did Junior do exactly?" You ask. "Well according to the paper it says the vigilante used a hellfire thrower to wipe out the Talon enclave, but there is also evidence that firebombs were also used." Mr. Reynolds says. "Wait, he burned everyone?" "Yes, and blew them up with explosives. What? Did you think that he was just a simple brute that was going to bludgeon them all with a club?" "Well, sort of." "Oh no my dear boy. Junior isn't his father. He's very much into technology that causes the most amount of casualties in the quickest time possible. Though I believe he probably did bludgeon a few that didn't die right away." "Judging by the number of ears here, I'm going to guess he didn't just stop at the assigned targets." "Yes, I think there was one of those classless bum fights going on at the time when he arrived. Large crowd, but don't worry, he got them all." "Yeah, I believe it." You say closing the chest. You face Mr. Reynolds who stands up from his desk. "So I trust our business is concluded and you're satisfied with the results?" Mr. Reynolds asks. "You said he'd get the job done and as usual, you're a man of your word." You answer. "Well I certainly try to be and I guess this closes the chapter on the Crimson Talons?" "Guess so, or it does for me at any rate." "Hm, well I wish you well on your new endeavor of running your inn successfully like your family once did and being just an average Klyton citizen...but then you never did officially become a citizen of this great city did you?" "Nope, never got around to it." "Well you really should, there's a Klyton Council election coming up in a few years and I'm thinking about running. I'll need all the votes I can get." "You're running for the Klyton Council? Why now?" "Oh I've been doing this job for so long and I think it's time to move on to bigger things. Just time for a change. Maybe you even inspired me a bit. How about that eh? Anyway, my son will be taking over this old business. He's more than qualified. Don't worry, if you ever need a loan for your inn, I've already told him that he can't refuse to do proper business with someone just because he doesn't like them. If that was the case, I wouldn't have done business with anyone at all!" Mr. Reynolds laughs, and you make a mental note that you're NEVER going to take out any sort of loan from this place no matter what the circumstances. As you leave Mr. Reynolds calls to you one more time about how you should go register as a citizen of Klyton soon. You get the strong impression that it wasn't a suggestion so much as it was an order. Looks like you know who you'll be voting for in the future. You knew there was going to be a catch, still you suppose it's a small price in the scheme of things. Well at least you hope so. You'll worry about it later; right now you have more immediate if mundane concerns. Your days as a rogue are over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No point in taking chances... "I appreciate the input Vaughn, but I believe a more permanent solution is needed here." You say. "Well okay, but how are we going to do it? Camid just left with a little more than half the old gang. Besides us three, we only got a couple guys left and honestly I don't really have confidence in them if it's going to be a knock down drag out fight." "There are more around guns nowadays you know. Don't need to be a good fighter to just shoot someone. I acquired one myself soon after I bought the inn." You say. "Yeah, but Camid and his group could have the same idea. Pretty sure Camid owns one and will probably acquire more for the rest of the Talons. Plus most of them are one shot weapons. If anyone misses, it's going to come down to a real fight and we're going to be out numbered." "Well, I guess we better make sure our aim is true shouldn't we then? Look, if this is going to be a concern, we could always go get some of those repeating crossbows. They cost a damn fortune, but..." Suddenly Zal speaks up. "Maybe we shouldn't risk our lives on this. It would be kind of tragic to get this far only to get brought down at the finish line." Zalmora says. "So what are you saying? You saying you want to go with Vaughn's plan now?" You ask. "No, I'm for getting rid of them, but I just don't think we should be the ones to do the deed if we don't have to." "Okay. So you're saying you want a hired assassin? Great. You know any? Because I sure don't." "Yes we do. In fact you hired him already once." You exhale deeply. "And in order to hire THAT guy again, I'm going to have to deal with Mr. Fucking Reynolds and who knows what damn price he's going to ask for." You say. "He was actually pretty reasonable last time." Zal remarks. "He also didn't tell me everything last time. There's always a catch with him. In fact weren't you against dealing with him last time?" "I was, but that was a different time under different circumstances. I mean can it hurt to even inquire?" "No, but I wish there was another alternative." "We could always look for Scales." Vaughn jokes in an attempt to lighten the mood. "I don't think Scales is even alive anymore, if he was even lurking down in the sewers to begin with. I think Tom was the only one who was ever convinced of it. I mean we were in the sewers for years and never ran afoul of a supposedly territorial lizard. (Sigh) Alright, I'll go see Mr. Reynolds tomorrow and see what the price is." The next day you walk into Mr. Reynolds' office. As soon as you walk in, you see a strange ogrish looking creature, but much shorter than one. In fact if it wasn't for the oversized teeth and general monstrous appearance, you might mistake it for a very muscular dwarf. You also see Henry, or at least you assume it's Henry. He hasn't changed much since the last time you saw him, though he's sporting a few scars across his face now. Finally you see Mr. Reynolds and he certainly hasn't changed. Once again he stands up smiling at his desk. "Well what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit from the head of the infamous Crimson Talons this fine day?" Mr. Reynolds says. "I need some people killed." You say. "Hm, straight to business I see. Okay then, I assume there is some reason why you aren't having your own people taking care of this?" "Let's just say, most of my so called people are the ones I want to have killed." "Ah, an internal struggle? Interesting. Well, I'm not sure what you want me to do about it." You haven't been here five minutes, and he's already playing mind games... "What the hell do you think..." You start to shout, but then you stop and then calm yourself before continuing. "Mr. Reynolds, with all due respect, I have come here asking for assistance on this matter as I once did in the past. Your son did a marvelous job last time even if... I didn't quite appreciate its thoroughness last time. I have now come to respect it much more and I would like to implement his magnificent skills again on others that would see harm to me and my business." Mr. Reynolds listens intently and smiles. "I'm glad to see that wisdom has come with your age. That's good. Last time our business together was less than cordial. That's okay though, I still got paid. As I said, I would love to help you again in this matter, but I'm afraid, this isn't my call this time. Last time when Henry worked for you, you insulted his work and I'm afraid, my son takes things a bit more personal than I do. He won't work for you again." "What?! But isn't he your employee? Can't you just order him?" "Yes, but he's also my son! Really now sir, would YOU force your son to do something he doesn't want to? Yes, business is always important, but sometimes, just sometimes family comes first. Now if Henry wants to work for you on this, I suppose we can start coming up with a price, but I don't think it's likely." You look over to Henry who just gives you a cold glance before walking away altogether. "I think there's your answer." Mr. Reynolds says. "Great. So I guess you can't help me." You say. "Well now, I wouldn't say that exactly, I still have one employee willing to cause mayhem on your behalf." Mr. Reynolds points over to the ogre looking creature. "And who is that?" You ask. "Who is that? Don't you see the family resemblance? This fine gentleman is the late great Olaf's son!" Mr. Reynolds exclaims. "The late Olaf?" "Yes, it was a sad day when Olaf passed a few years ago. Died right here in the office in his sleep in fact. He will be missed. But anyway his son Olaf Jr. has been following in his father's large footsteps and I don't mind saying he's been doing a fine job for me and his own mother is very proud of him." You remember that Mr. Reynolds once said Olaf was married to a halfling. You can't imagine how that birth was even possible let alone how she survived the process. It does however explain Junior's strange appearance by ogre standards. (Or any standards actually) Mr. Reynolds goes on to explain that while Junior doesn't have the same size as his father or quickness that Henry has, he assures you that he has more than enough skill to do the job you require. However, unlike last time Mr. Reynolds asks for a thousand gold coins in advance. It's a hell of a lot of money and you have no real certainty. You're starting to think you might have more piece of mind investing in some weapons and doing this yourself. > You do it yourself Maybe Reynolds has confidence in this guy, but you're not so sure especially at the price that's being charged. If it was Henry, you'd be fine with it because at least you know what he can do. Too bad you hurt his feelings, who knew psychopaths had them? "I think I'm going to have to take a pass, Mr. Reynolds, but I thank you for your time." You say. "Oh. Okay then. Well if you change your mind, you know where to find me. If you don't , well good luck to you." Mr. Reynolds says. You walk out of Mr. Reynolds' office and head back home. There's nothing else for it. You're going to have to do this yourself. Good thing you've still got a few shady connections who can get you some proper weapons for this fight, because to be honest you don't want to have to be rolling around in the sewers with Camid as you try shoving daggers in each other's faces. It wasn't pleasant when you did it with Tom and you didn't particularly get any enjoyment when you had to do it to Klint. Being a killer isn't something you ever really desired doing, but it's something that you've found necessary in this line of work. Might be why you saw the wisdom of following Zal's advice and decided to get the hell out. Of course you're hoping you're going to get out. You just have to do this one last thing. When you return to the inn, you inform Zal and Vaughn of what happened. "So, I guess it's one last job then?" Vaughn remarks. "Looks like it, if we're going to all live happily ever after." You say. "Well, I guess it has to be done." Zal remarks. You look over at Zal and touch her hand. "Zal, you don't need to come when this goes down. I mean someone should be here to hold down the fort anyway." You say. "How the hell can you even say that? Look, it's sweet that you're obviously concerned about me, but I'm a big girl and this whole thing was something I talked you into in the first place. So I can't just let you risk your life for this by yourself. We're all in this together. Besides, you're going to need all the help you can get." Zal says. You know Zal is not going to budge on this, so you just accept it. She's right as usual anyway. "Okay. Well let's start talking strategy." You say. You tell Vaughn that you need to be certain where Camid and the rest are going to be setting up shop in the sewers. You all think that Camid is going to be predictable and set up in the old location, but you want to be sure, because you need to wipe them all out. The next step is to acquire some repeating crossbows and even some protective armor. Granted if Camid's crew end up packing flintlocks, it might not matter, but it's better to be safe in this instance. You spend a small fortune on gearing up for this hit. In fact by the time you get everything you think you'll need, it would have been cheaper to hire Junior, but then you know there would have been a catch. With Mr. Reynolds there is always a catch. You, Zal, Vaughn and the rest of the old guard that was loyal spend some time practicing for the big event. In the meantime, Camid has indeed set up in the old location. He's also been busy recruiting more folks too. You have no idea if he's planning to hit you soon or he's just trying to gather strength, but in any case, you can't waste too much more time. You need to strike soon. You make plans to hit Camid during one of the "slower business" days. Last thing you want is having to deal with crowds of bum fight bystanders and whores while you're trying to kill Camid and his crew. The night before the reckoning, you and Zal spend a good portion of time together as a husband and wife do, since neither of you knows if you're going to survive. Funny that up until now, both of you spent most your lives practically dismissive of the ongoing possibility of death. This is different though. As Zal said, this is the "finish line." Then the days comes. You know Camid’s folks are more active at night, so it'll be best to hit them during the day when some of them are probably still half hung over. You all get prepared, descend down into the sewers and make your way to your location. It's actually been a while since you've gone slinking around in the darkness, but you and your group try to remain as stealthy as you can. You manage to get well within the new Crimson Talon territory before one of the members suddenly stumbles upon you. "Hey, you're not...Urgh!" A Talon says before being interrupted by a bolt to the neck. You manage to dispatch a few more Talons in relative silence before one of the Yellow Devil junkie whores wandering around starts screaming her head off. It isn't even about you either. "GET OFF! GET OFF! NO! HALFLINGS! HALFLINGS ALL OVER ! THEY'RE COMING TO GET ME AGAIN! OUCH! HEHEHEHE!" The whore's insane ramblings are so loud it calls wanted attention, and by the time you put a bolt in her head to shut her up, your presence has been discovered and a major alarm has already been raised. "Shit! We're being attacked! Get your gear! Move! Move!" One of the Talons shouts. At this point stealth is discarded altogether and all out battle takes place. To their credit, Camid and what remains of the Talons don't try to run away. They're determined to fight it out, so at least you won't have to chase any of them down. Camid had the same idea as you did and invested in more weapons. You learn this first hand when a firebomb is lobbed at you and you have to dive out of the way and into foul waters. The noise is deafening as the explosion echoes throughout the sewers. You barely have time to find more suitable cover when you see several Talons running out from an archway firing flintlock pistols at you. Thankfully their aim isn't great. Still clutching your own weapon, you manage let loose several more bolts and catch a Talon in the process. You then trip over something and after scrambling to get back up you realize you've got blood all over you. It isn't yours however, it's part of one of your people you was blown apart by the bomb. You just tripped over his bloody torso. A slight panic comes over you not because of the obvious reasons, but more because you've lost track of where everyone else is, namely Zal. A Talon comes screaming at you with a sword raised above his head, and you shoot him twice in the chest, but he keeps coming. He gets close enough for you to see him foaming yellow shit from his mouth and blood coming from his eyes. The guy's on Devil. You dodge the wild sword swing, trip the drug addled fool to the stone floor and then stomp the back of his head with your boot. A life ending crunch is heard and he's finally stopped. You rush back to where you hear the rest of the fighting. Another firebomb goes off in the distance followed by someone screaming. Another one of your people, though you don't know who yet. You finally get back to the sewer cross way near where the bum fights are held and that's when you see Vaughn on the floor attempting to tie up his bloody leg. It's in pretty bad shape. "Camid ran into the old Talon barracks, I think Zal went after him." He says grimacing in pain. You immediately leave Vaughn and run to the Talon barracks. You see a dead body on the floor and then another slumped over the bed. You cautiously go through the room and then head into where you used to have your old office. Then your heart sinks. You see Zal on the floor with several wounds on her body. Some are from the dagger still in her stomach, another is a gunshot to the upper chest. The armor wasn't enough and despite her still struggling to stay alive you already know she's going to die soon. "(Cough) Good...you're a...live...I got that bast..ard..." She coughs and points over to another body in the corner which is Camid's. His brains are blown out through his eye socket and partially on the wall. You run over to her apologizing and on the verge of tears. You knew something like this was going to happen. If only you'd done something different. Zal however in her dying breaths tells you it's not your fault and at least she got to enjoy her time with you while she was here. "Just...go live your life...okay?" Zal says before finally closing her eyes forever. Right now, part of you doesn't feel like living your life is going to be worth it without her around. You know you'll eventually get over this and move on, but it's not going to be for a long time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Zal's got a bit of a point. This isn't exactly the most glamorous of a position and you could certainly do better than hiding out in these filthy sewers. You've got more than enough saved and have enough connections that you could easily open up a real business front. You'd just need to keep everything low key and change a few things. The more you think about it, the more you feel this is the right decision. The next day you gather Zal and Vaughn to discuss this new direction. "An inn certainly sounds better than the sewers." Vaughn says. "Well, we're still probably going to have some of our operations down there, but I figure we can at least start making an attempt to climb out of them. I'm thinking that we probably should stop dealing in Yellow Devil too." You say. Zamora nods her head. "I agree. The profits aren't worth the risks on that racket. A lot less sudden body meltdowns and diseased junkie whores lingering around as well." Zal remarks. "So what about the location? Are we buying out an existing inn or starting from scratch? We could probably buy back the old place, the Troll's Breath Tavern. Edmond used to run the Talons from there before the militia raided the place and shut it down." Vaughn remarks. "Wouldn't it be a little obvious, if the Talons set up there again?" You ask. "Nah, they'd never expect the same place twice! Besides, it's called the Clean Mug Tavern now. It's run by two siblings, one of them even comes here to bet on the races and fights sometimes. The place is barely scraping by, so I think they would be receptive to selling it to us for cheap." "Instead of buying it outright, I'd suggest just getting the owners to work with us. That way nothing really changes up front, but we don't spend money and we're the ones really running things." Zalmora says. "Definitely sounds like a better idea, but I know what place you're talking about, and it seems a little on the small side, I was thinking some place bigger like my old family's inn which is still abandoned. We wouldn't have to deal with anyone." You say. "Seems like more hassle. You'd still have to buy it from the city which could present some problems. Assuming they didn't ask many questions, you'd still have to fix the place up before we could start using it proper. Wouldn't we need to get an alcohol supplier and hire people as well?" Vaughn remarks. "Not really, we know more than enough folks that we could have cheap employees. Some of them are hopeless gamblers with debts in fact, so that's no problem. As for alcohol, we could easily make it ourselves and bypass a supplier. Most folks coming wouldn't be there for the booze anyway, so it isn't like we're going to need hundreds of barrels of the stuff every month. Of course your family's old inn is in a slightly better part of Klyton, so my concern would be the greater likelihood of militia just stumbling in for a drink now and then." Zal remarks. > You seize the old Talon tavern Now that you're rethinking this, the less paper work the better and you are probably going to be better off located in the poorer area of the city too. "So who is this hopeless gambling case who owns this property exactly?" You ask Vaughn. "His name's Carl and you probably have seen him, you just didn't know his name. He's a short grubby guy. His face almost looks a little orcish, but he smells worse than one half the time." Vaughn remarks. "Oh, him? That disgusting little grub owns a tavern? Thought he lived here in the sewers. In fact I was wondering why he wasn't in the ring fighting with the other bums." You say. "Disgusting is right, the little shit tried to grab my ass once and made a bunch of stupid sexual innuendo. He's lucky I didn't cut his dick off and only stabbed his hand." Zalmora says. "Hm, well I suppose if he gives us any shit, we know who he's already afraid of. You said he had a sibling, what's the story on that one?" "Um, dunno much. I think her name's Annie and I do know she swears more than the three of us put together. She came down here to retrieve her brother a couple times and every other word that came out of her mouth was some variation of fuck." Vaughn says. "Well that's very interesting, but I was wondering if she was likely to give us any shit if we try to muscle in on the tavern. I mean are we going to have to take care of this bitch or not?" "I dunno, I mean she's got a mouth on her, but she's just a skinny thing and I can't see her giving us any trouble if we seriously threaten her." "Well, it would seem the goal is clear. I'll go have a talk with these siblings about the facts of life." You say. "You don't want anyone to come with you?" Zal asks. "Nah, it'll be fine." "As you say." Zal says almost implying that you don't know what you're doing. The next day, you enter the Clean Mug Tavern which can't possible be true given that you feel like you need to jump in a river just by setting foot in the place. Which is saying a lot considering you do most of your business in the fucking sewers. The floors are sticky with filth and the walls in this dim light don't seem much better. A family of rats scurry past you as you walk further in making you wonder if you've left the sewers at all. The place is empty save for a few drunks face down on tables. A frowning thin girl with a pale complexion sit behind a bar. It's already apparent she isn't welcoming. "What the fuck do you want?" She asks. "Do you greet all your potential customers that way?" You ask. "Don't fucking like it, you can get the fuck out." "Yeah, you must be Annie. Where's your slug of a brother?" "Probably fucking a whore instead of taking care of fucking business as usual. And how do you know my fucking name? Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want?" "I'm your new business partner. Or in your words, I'm your new fucking business partner." Annie's frown somehow manages to turn even further downward as she just stares at you. "Alright, before you go on a fuck tirade, I'll try to explain it so simple that you'll understand." You explain that her and her brother's tavern is now going to be a front for Crimson Talon operations. In exchange you'll fix this place up and make it at least somewhat more appealing. The tavern will be making more money with the influx of people that are sure to come in, but you'll be taking most of the profits of course. "So wait, you're gonna just fucking come in and take over completely? You get the fucking tavern and all the fucking money? What the fuck do we get?" Annie asks. "You get your health for one thing. Which I assume would be the most important. However, if it isn't, I would still point out that YOU will most likely still be making more of a profit than you are now with this rat palace. Also, the tavern will still be legally yours. We'll just be using it and basically paying for the place. Now, that should make you feel a little bit better about this non-negotiable deal shouldn't it?" Annie is silent again for a moment and still frowning. Her eyes look down briefly, which implies she might be thinking about going for whatever weapon she has stashed under there. You still aren't worried, because even if she doesn't see the wisdom of the deal, you're confident that you'll be quick enough to reach over the bar and stab her first. Fortunately, it doesn't come to that. "Well, looks like I don't have much of a fucking choice. I imagine even if I killed you, some other fucking asshole would just take your place and probably wouldn't be as fucking understanding as you." Annie says. "Glad to see you're a woman of forethought. Anyway, I'll be back later and I'll inform you with more details as we get set up. I trust you can tell your brother about this business when he shows up?" You say. "Yeah, but I can I ask for ONE fucking request?" "I'll entertain the thought. What is it?" "Well since I figure I'm already getting fucked, the least you could do is do me proper." Now you're silent for a moment. "Um...what exactly are you saying?" You ask, sort of already knowing, but just wanting confirmation. "I'm fucking saying, if you're already bending me over and horse fucking me in this business endeavor, you could at least do it to me literally as well." Annie says. "...Are you being serious right now?" "Of course I'm being fucking serious! You're young, easy on the eyes and I don't get out much. Besides, I know I'm not that fucking ugly." This is just bizarre. You didn't expect this sort of request. Annie's correct in that she's not ugly, but her stringy greasy looking hair, plain looks, and emaciated appearance aren't exactly traits that come to mind when you're thinking of attractiveness. Though apparently she finds you attractive which is always a nice ego boost. "Well...um...shit..fuck it. Alright. Not like I got anything better to do." You say. "The sad thing, is that's the best offer I've had in years." Annie remarks a bit despondently. Hell, now you feel like you're doing a good deed. After giving Annie a thrill big enough to cause her to actually stop frowning for a moment, you head back to the sewers where you feel a lot less dirty. "So how did it go?" Zal asks. "It went well. We aren't going to get a bunch of problems." You say. "You talked to them both?" "Nah, just the sister. The brother was elsewhere. Pretty sure she was the one to deal with anyway though since she's the main one running that place. I satisfied her." "Satisfied?" "Erm, I mean dealt with her. She won't be a problem." "Okay...so are we moving everything there then?" "Well I imagine the bum fighting will still be held down here, but that tavern is big enough to have gambling games and whores set up. We're really going to have to fix that place up first though, because as it stands now, the place isn't much better than the sewers." "Damn shame. I remember Tom saying the place was fairly nice back when Edmond ran the Talons out of there." "It will be again and in time when we get a few more recruits and things are running smoothly we can do the same thing with another place." With the tavern secured, you take your next steps in this plan. > You time passes... Year 26 "What?!" You exclaim in disbelief. "Carl and Annie's mother showed up at the tavern last night and pitched a bitch. I mean she raised holy hell. Literally too. She had a book of Joachim in hand the entire time." Vaughn says. "So did she do any actual physical damage?" Zalmora asks. "Not really. She mostly beat the shit out of Carl and Annie, saying she didn't scrimp and save for the tavern just so they could turn it into a den of sin. She then left saying if they didn't take care of this, she would." Vaughn remarks. "Wait, so do the siblings actually even own this place?" Zalmora asks. "Apparently it's always been in their mother's name and she did run it briefly before she started having health problems and let her children run it instead. She mostly stayed out of the day to day operations, but every now and then she leaves her home to drop in on her children...and well you know the rest." "I don't get it. Why would a Joachim fearing woman buy a tavern, let alone let her children run it in the first place?" "Apparently that's sort of a newer development. The old lady has gotten a bit religious over the past few years. Probably brought on by failing health." You just put your face in the palms of your hands. "Why the hell didn't either of you fucking idiots know any of this? And more importantly why didn't you stop the old bitch?" You ask. "ME? This was all Vaughn's idea and YOU signed off on it! I've barely been involved in it! All you've had me do is seeking out other potential taverns to take over and monitor the bum fights from time to time. I haven't stepped foot in that damn tavern since we first set up shop there! Besides, aren't you regularly fucking that skeletal bitch that runs the place anyway? Figured you pumped her for information along with just pumping her." Zalmora exclaims. "(Sigh) No. I'm not fucking Annie. That's an ugly rumor that delusional bitch probably started in the first place. I can see I'm going to have to set her ass straight." "Hm, if you say so." Zal says giving you a look like she doesn't quite believe you. You knew it was a bad idea to pity fuck Annie a few more times. In any case, Zal's right in that it's not her fault at all, this is mostly Vaughn's fuck up, but really it's yours as well because you really should have learned all the facts first. You are the one running the Talons after all. You exhale deeply and get up from your desk. "What's the old woman's name and where's she live?" You ask. "Her name's Wendy and she lives in a small house over by the Greenwood park. I think it's like the only house still standing there since most of the others are abandoned." Vaughn says. "I'll find it." You say. "Wait, are you going to go over and kill her?" Vaughn asks. "Well I was going to see if I can find a diplomatic way of dealing with this, but if murdering the old lady is what it takes then so be it." "Hold on, maybe you should send someone else. I mean maybe I could go take care of this." Zal says. "No, because as you have already pointed out, this isn't your fault at all and I don't trust Vaughn to not fuck it up, so I'll do it myself." You head over to Wendy's home, wondering how you're going to handle this. You really don't want to murder an old lady if you can help it, but if that's what it takes then that's what's going to have to happen. Given that she's a follower of Joachim though, you don't hold out much hope that blood isn't going to be shed. Eventually you get over to Wendy's house and knock on the door. You hear a lot of grumbling as you wait. "Hold on, hold on, I'm...by Joachim, you haven't aged!" a short old woman exclaims when she opens her door. "Um, thanks?" You say a bit confused. "What are you doing here? Are you in the city just for a visit? Where is Eliza? Are you still married to her?" "Wait, who do you think I am?" You ask. Wendy mentions your father's name and squints a bit as she looks closer at you. You realize, this is one of the waitresses at your father's old inn! You remember your mother mentioning working with her in some of her old stories to you and your sister, but then you never did pay much attention to those. Maybe you can work this in your favor after all. "No, I'm afraid you've confused me with my father. But my mother and father are still married and well." You say. "Oh. That's good. They were a nice couple, if a bit slow on the uptake as far as how they really felt about each other. Still, I guess it all worked out, given that you're here. You look a lot like your father. Well come on in and tell me what brings you to my doorstep." Wendy says. Wendy invites you in and tells you to excuse the mess as she doesn't do much cleaning nowadays. You find a chair to sit in and she does likewise. "So. What would the son of my old employer want with me?" Wendy asks. "Well, after working for so many other people, I've sort of come to the conclusion that I'd like to try to work for myself for a change. I was sort of inspired by the old family business and I've done a lot of research on the matter along with asking my parents questions of course. I got quite a bit of money saved up from over the years and I was looking for a place to buy and get a business started. I thought your tavern would be a good place." You say. "My tavern? You've been there?" "Oh yes. When I was shopping around for potential places. Your children...Um...Carl and Anika..." "Annie." "Yes, Annie said that it was actually yours and if I wanted to buy it, that I should speak with you. They mentioned how you used to work for my father too, so I figured I'd at least make an offer to you first before anyone else." "...Mmm hmm...but why didn't you just buy your old family inn? I believe it's still abandoned and for sale surprisingly enough." "Heh, I tried, but apparently the city is planning to knock it down and build something else there. Would have been nice, but I got here a little too late it seems." "Uh huh...let's cut the bullshit." "Pardon?" "You think I was born yesterday? You may be the son of Eliza, but you sure ain't anything like her OR your father. They were decent people. While YOU are a lying criminal scumbag just like my worthless children. It seems a little too fucking convenient that you show up on my doorstep the day after I find out what's going on at my tavern. I'm not really surprised by my son Carl. He's a miserable gambler with a weakness for whores. Annie, however I thought at least had a little more sense. Guess you're really putting it good on her if she's gone along with this shit." "I assure you, I don't..." "Don't insult me with more lies. I already saw what was going on at my tavern. In all her hysterics yesterday, I heard Annie babble to me about how she has a handsome man that loves her more than I ever did. I have to imagine that's probably you since you stand out a bit from the rest of the unwashed rabble I saw in that den of inequity. Ungrateful little bitch. Well, whatever charms you think you have ain't gonna work on me, I'm a Joachim fearing woman! Tch. Gotta say I never thought your parents would raise someone so far from the path of righteousness." The jig is up. "Yeah, I'm a big disappointment to them, but as you said, let's cut the bullshit and come to some sort of arrangement. How much you want for the tavern?" You ask. "And why would I sell to a heathen like you?" Wendy retorts. "Because I already own the place in all but name already. Look, the place was barely making any money to before I showed up and now that you know the truth, you won't want to have any more connection to the place. So I'm making you a generous offer since you're an old family friend to buy it. Two thousand gold pieces. You know that this is the best offer you're going to get and let's be honest, you don't have a choice. What are you going to do? Report us to the militia? We'll be gone...or at least I won't be around and all that's going to happen is the city of Klyton is going to arrest your children and seize the place, leaving you with no steady income whatsoever." Much like her daughter, Wendy's wrinkled face frowns at you in silence. She doesn't like this, but her silence is a good sign. It means despite her belief in Joachim she's still pragmatic enough to consider your offer. You just hope she isn't TOO much like her daughter because... "Five thousand gold pieces for the tavern." Wendy says. "Five thousand?" You answer "That's my price. I might be old and not in the best of health, but two thousand isn't going to sustain me until I die. I know a big time crime lord such as yourself probably has that kind of money." "Five thousand...seems a bit greedy. Isn't that against the will of Joachim?" "First of all, you don't know shit about his glory, so don't think to say shit to me about it. Second of all, some of that is going to his church so at least some good can come out of this wickedness." "Ah, I see. Buying your way into the afterlife. Whatever. I don't care, but I'm afraid five thousand is fucking unreasonable." "And that's still my final offer. You don't like it, well you better go crawl in whatever hole you hide in from the militia because I am NOT going to let you use the place while it's still in my name. So it's five thousand or you're leaving my tavern either peacefully or by the militia. I got nothing to lose. You're in this position because YOU chose a life of wickedness. Deal with the consequences." "I don't think you realize the position YOU'RE in." You warn. Wendy starts to smile, followed by a laugh. "What? You're going to kill me? Pfft. I'm already dying with how my health is going and my three kids are fucking disappoinments. As I said I have nothing to lose and my soul is prepared for Joachim's eternal glory. You won't get away with it anyway, Joachim always finds a way to punish the wicked." > You pay the money The old bat drives a hard bargain and she's called your bluff. As much as you might try to be some ruthless crime lord, there's still some things you can't bring yourself to do. Murdering an old lady in cold blood is one of them. "(Sigh) Fine. You got me by the short and curlies. I'll pay your damn price out of respect for all the years of service you gave to my family." You say. "Yeah, see what that got me. Still, I'm glad to see that you have some sort of morality. Maybe there's still hope for you. Remember it's never too late to turn your soul over to Joachim." Wendy says. "I'll keep that in mind. I'll be back tomorrow, you just have the deed." You leave Wendy's house and return to your sewer headquarters. You're starting to wonder if you shouldn't have just bought your family's old inn in the first place. At least it would have been big enough for you to make your home in. "So how did it go?" Zal asks. "She's willing to sell, so no murder was necessary." You say. "Really? Wow, I'm actually impressed that you managed to talk a religious old lady into working with you...or did you just fuck this one into submission too?" Zalmora starts laughing immediately after her comment. Vaughn stays silent though. "Fuck you Zal, just fuck you." You say. "Interesting, that wasn't a denial." Zal remarks with a smirk. "Hey boss, I just want you to know I'm not judging you if you did. We all have our own carnal desires and I know you seem to like the older ladies. I mean between Annie and Zal..." Vaughn starts to say. "What the fuck Vaughn, don't put me in the same category as that weathered corpse!" Zal exclaims suddenly getting angry. "Both of you shut the fuck up, in fact don't the pair of you got some work to do? No wonder things are falling to shit here." Zal and Vaughn walk off, leaving you alone for the rest of the night. The next day you go over to Wendy's house and complete the transaction. "Here you go heathen." Wendy remarks handing you the deed. "Thanks hypocrite." You answer and start to leave. Wendy isn't quite finished yet though and she grabs your arm before you leave. "Hey, I wasn't joking yesterday when I said it isn't too late to seek Joachim's forgiveness. Maybe your wicked deeds are profiting you today, but there is going to come a reckoning someday and you'll have to answer for your evil ways. Out of respect for your parents, I urge YOU to turn from this path before it's too late." You pull your arm away. "Yeah, I'll get right on that." You say and walk off. Eventually you return back to your sewer headquarters and spend some time on inner contemplation. "(Sigh) I really need to get the hell out of these sewers. I'm the damn head of a budding criminal empire. One of those tavern gambling rooms is getting turned into a new office." You say to yourself. > You time passes... Year 28 "Yeah, so the Broken Glass owner says he'll comply." Vaughn remarks. "Excellent. We can add another tavern to our list." You say. "Did we really need another one?" Zal asks. "That's a silly question Zal. We can always use more income and taverns provide the best cover." "I dunno, I just think we're extorting too many businesses within a short period of time. I mean have you forgotten that the Klyton militia is still pretty active?" "So what're you saying? You want to go back and hide in the shit filled sewers like we were doing? I thought you'd be happy to get out of there completely since you were the main one bitching about it. Look, as long as we keep a low profile we're fine. We've been doing well so far right?" "Yeah, I'm sure Edmond thought the same thing once." "Here we go with that. Look Zal, we've been through all this before three years ago. I actually took your advice and you're still not happy, so let me make this easy for you. You're out." Zal's face is one of surprise. Vaughn is a little surprised as well. "What? Are you serious?" Zalmora says. "Yes, I'm fucking serious. I'm sick of your bitching, your sarcasm, your smart ass remarks that attempt to undermine my authority in general. You seem to think because we once shared a bed together that somehow allows you to say anything you want to me. Combine that with the obvious fact that you don't really have the stomach for this business anymore, well there isn't much use for you is there? So with all respect and no ill will, goodbye Zal. You were a valued member of the Crimson Talons while you were part of us, but your services are no longer required." Zalmora takes your words in silence. She looks at you with a mixture of feelings and you can't quite tell if it's betrayal, anger, sadness or even relief. She just walks over to you and touches your face before leaving. About a few minutes after she leaves, Vaughn speaks up. "Come on boss, aren't you going to go after her? You're just mad because you were feeling good about how things are going and in typical Zal fashion she was a bit of a downer. You know that's how she is. I also know Zal and she's just putting on a brave front. She really doesn't want to leave any more than you really want her to leave. It's pretty obvious you value her advice, even if she is difficult at times." You look over at Vaughn. You've never known him to be that insightful, but he's hitting all the points right now. You stand up. "Aw hell...you're right. She probably hasn't gone too far yet. Vaughn can you... What the hell is going on out there?!" You say suddenly hearing a bunch of noise outside the office. You open up the door and everyone is running around attempting to avoid the horde of Klyton militia piling through the front door. They aren't fucking around either because they're outright shooting or stabbing folks that are only barely resisting. Annie and Carl from what you see have already given up and are kneeling on the floor with their hands behind their heads. "Oh shit! Vaughn! Help me barricade the door! We gotta get the fuck outta here!" You shout and slam the door shut. As you and Vaughn push the desk up against the door, you already hear the crashing behind it. From the other side, you hear your name being called out telling you to surrender or face consequences. "What kind of logic is that? If I surrender, I'm going to face the consequences too. Vaughn, open up the trap door, I'm going to get as much as I can from the safe." You say. After Vaughn opens up the escape hatch to the sewers, you try to maintain your cool as you fiddle with your safe and unload its contents all the while axes, halberds and bullets are piercing the barricaded door. "Come on! Leave it! Let's just go!" Vaughn remarks. "Go on ahead, I'm almost done, I'll be right behind!" You say waving Vaughn away. You finish packing and are heading towards the escape hatch when the door is finally partially broken. A bullet whizzes by you and into the wall. You whirl around to fire your own flintlock at your assailants. You hit one, but then are shot yourself. It's only in the leg, but given how close you are to an open hatch, you fall back, slip and tumble down it. You probably would have broken your neck had Vaughn not been in the way to break your fall. Of course you probably surprised the hell out of him as he was climbing down the ladder. The pair of you land hard on the stone sewer floor with you being right on top of Vaughn. "Shit...my leg...my fucking leg...Vaughn I might need you to...Vaughn?" You say and slowly move yourself off of him. You check, and you see his head at an unnatural angle. He's broken his neck. "Damn it, Vaughn..." You say and then another bullet flies near your head and into the floor. One of the militia men is firing at you from the top of the hatch. Seeing that Vaughn still has his own pistol holstered, you grab it, point upward and fire. You somehow manage to hit the guy in the face and then you realize the folly of that as you desperately roll out of the way of his falling body. The militia man's body partially hits Vaughn's and the stone floor. At this point you're just trying to get away which is difficult with one good leg. With some effort you manage to stand yourself up and hobble away. You already hear several of the militia climbing down the ladder and shouting. "SHIT!" You shout as your wounded leg gives way due to lack of strength and a slimy stone floor. Falling on your face, you already know you aren't getting away at this rate. Best case scenario, you get taken in, tried and instead of executing you, they shove you in one of those cages where you first found Tom. MAYBE if you're lucky you might be able to pick the lock and escape, but you doubt if you'll just have access to your tools. Maybe you could do what Tom managed to do and convince a wanderer to release him...but then again you know how that situation ultimately ended for him. Actually, if you knew letting him out was going to lead to this end result, you would have left him there. Who knows, maybe he would have even been better off since the other Talons were supposed to get him out eventually. It's all a very long shot anyway and you've already come to the conclusion that you're not going quietly. The strange thing in all this is now you're glad you told Zalmora to leave when you did. You hope she managed to evade capture. You think she probably had enough time to run before the militia converged on the place. You're kneeling on your good leg and leaning up against a wall in an attempt to get back up, when the militia finally catch up to you. You feel a hard blow to your back and you crash to the floor. Several militia surround your prone body. "We'll get promotions for this!" You hear one exclaim. "Hope they also have an award for getting wounded in the line of duty." You remark and pull a dagger stabbing him in the foot. It's all the excuse the militia needs to start running you through repeatedly with their spears and swords and stomping your head into mush. You're a holey bloody mess by the time they're through. It isn't exactly the most pleasant death, but at least it eliminates all the waiting.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 26 "What?!" You exclaim in disbelief. "Carl and Annie's mother showed up at the tavern last night and pitched a bitch. I mean she raised holy hell. Literally too. She had a book of Joachim in hand the entire time." Vaughn says. "So did she do any actual physical damage?" Zalmora asks. "Not really. She mostly beat the shit out of Carl and Annie, saying she didn't scrimp and save for the tavern just so they could turn it into a den of sin. She then left saying if they didn't take care of this, she would." Vaughn remarks. "Wait, so do the siblings actually even own this place?" Zalmora asks. "Apparently it's always been in their mother's name and she did run it briefly before she started having health problems and let her children run it instead. She mostly stayed out of the day to day operations, but every now and then she leaves her home to drop in on her children...and well you know the rest." "I don't get it. Why would a Joachim fearing woman buy a tavern, let alone let her children run it in the first place?" "Apparently that's sort of a newer development. The old lady has gotten a bit religious over the past few years. Probably brought on by failing health." You just put your face in the palms of your hands. "Why the hell didn't either of you fucking idiots know any of this? And more importantly why didn't you stop the old bitch?" You ask. "ME? This was all Vaughn's idea and YOU signed off on it! I've barely been involved in it! All you've had me do is seeking out other potential taverns to take over and monitor the bum fights from time to time. I haven't stepped foot in that damn tavern since we first set up shop there! Besides, aren't you regularly fucking that skeletal bitch that runs the place anyway? Figured you pumped her for information along with just pumping her." Zalmora exclaims. "(Sigh) No. I'm not fucking Annie. That's an ugly rumor that delusional bitch probably started in the first place. I can see I'm going to have to set her ass straight." "Hm, if you say so." Zal says giving you a look like she doesn't quite believe you. You knew it was a bad idea to pity fuck Annie a few more times. In any case, Zal's right in that it's not her fault at all, this is mostly Vaughn's fuck up, but really it's yours as well because you really should have learned all the facts first. You are the one running the Talons after all. You exhale deeply and get up from your desk. "What's the old woman's name and where's she live?" You ask. "Her name's Wendy and she lives in a small house over by the Greenwood park. I think it's like the only house still standing there since most of the others are abandoned." Vaughn says. "I'll find it." You say. "Wait, are you going to go over and kill her?" Vaughn asks. "Well I was going to see if I can find a diplomatic way of dealing with this, but if murdering the old lady is what it takes then so be it." "Hold on, maybe you should send someone else. I mean maybe I could go take care of this." Zal says. "No, because as you have already pointed out, this isn't your fault at all and I don't trust Vaughn to not fuck it up, so I'll do it myself." You head over to Wendy's home, wondering how you're going to handle this. You really don't want to murder an old lady if you can help it, but if that's what it takes then that's what's going to have to happen. Given that she's a follower of Joachim though, you don't hold out much hope that blood isn't going to be shed. Eventually you get over to Wendy's house and knock on the door. You hear a lot of grumbling as you wait. "Hold on, hold on, I'm...by Joachim, you haven't aged!" a short old woman exclaims when she opens her door. "Um, thanks?" You say a bit confused. "What are you doing here? Are you in the city just for a visit? Where is Eliza? Are you still married to her?" "Wait, who do you think I am?" You ask. Wendy mentions your father's name and squints a bit as she looks closer at you. You realize, this is one of the waitresses at your father's old inn! You remember your mother mentioning working with her in some of her old stories to you and your sister, but then you never did pay much attention to those. Maybe you can work this in your favor after all. "No, I'm afraid you've confused me with my father. But my mother and father are still married and well." You say. "Oh. That's good. They were a nice couple, if a bit slow on the uptake as far as how they really felt about each other. Still, I guess it all worked out, given that you're here. You look a lot like your father. Well come on in and tell me what brings you to my doorstep." Wendy says. Wendy invites you in and tells you to excuse the mess as she doesn't do much cleaning nowadays. You find a chair to sit in and she does likewise. "So. What would the son of my old employer want with me?" Wendy asks. "Well, after working for so many other people, I've sort of come to the conclusion that I'd like to try to work for myself for a change. I was sort of inspired by the old family business and I've done a lot of research on the matter along with asking my parents questions of course. I got quite a bit of money saved up from over the years and I was looking for a place to buy and get a business started. I thought your tavern would be a good place." You say. "My tavern? You've been there?" "Oh yes. When I was shopping around for potential places. Your children...Um...Carl and Anika..." "Annie." "Yes, Annie said that it was actually yours and if I wanted to buy it, that I should speak with you. They mentioned how you used to work for my father too, so I figured I'd at least make an offer to you first before anyone else." "...Mmm hmm...but why didn't you just buy your old family inn? I believe it's still abandoned and for sale surprisingly enough." "Heh, I tried, but apparently the city is planning to knock it down and build something else there. Would have been nice, but I got here a little too late it seems." "Uh huh...let's cut the bullshit." "Pardon?" "You think I was born yesterday? You may be the son of Eliza, but you sure ain't anything like her OR your father. They were decent people. While YOU are a lying criminal scumbag just like my worthless children. It seems a little too fucking convenient that you show up on my doorstep the day after I find out what's going on at my tavern. I'm not really surprised by my son Carl. He's a miserable gambler with a weakness for whores. Annie, however I thought at least had a little more sense. Guess you're really putting it good on her if she's gone along with this shit." "I assure you, I don't..." "Don't insult me with more lies. I already saw what was going on at my tavern. In all her hysterics yesterday, I heard Annie babble to me about how she has a handsome man that loves her more than I ever did. I have to imagine that's probably you since you stand out a bit from the rest of the unwashed rabble I saw in that den of inequity. Ungrateful little bitch. Well, whatever charms you think you have ain't gonna work on me, I'm a Joachim fearing woman! Tch. Gotta say I never thought your parents would raise someone so far from the path of righteousness." The jig is up. "Yeah, I'm a big disappointment to them, but as you said, let's cut the bullshit and come to some sort of arrangement. How much you want for the tavern?" You ask. "And why would I sell to a heathen like you?" Wendy retorts. "Because I already own the place in all but name already. Look, the place was barely making any money to before I showed up and now that you know the truth, you won't want to have any more connection to the place. So I'm making you a generous offer since you're an old family friend to buy it. Two thousand gold pieces. You know that this is the best offer you're going to get and let's be honest, you don't have a choice. What are you going to do? Report us to the militia? We'll be gone...or at least I won't be around and all that's going to happen is the city of Klyton is going to arrest your children and seize the place, leaving you with no steady income whatsoever." Much like her daughter, Wendy's wrinkled face frowns at you in silence. She doesn't like this, but her silence is a good sign. It means despite her belief in Joachim she's still pragmatic enough to consider your offer. You just hope she isn't TOO much like her daughter because... "Five thousand gold pieces for the tavern." Wendy says. "Five thousand?" You answer "That's my price. I might be old and not in the best of health, but two thousand isn't going to sustain me until I die. I know a big time crime lord such as yourself probably has that kind of money." "Five thousand...seems a bit greedy. Isn't that against the will of Joachim?" "First of all, you don't know shit about his glory, so don't think to say shit to me about it. Second of all, some of that is going to his church so at least some good can come out of this wickedness." "Ah, I see. Buying your way into the afterlife. Whatever. I don't care, but I'm afraid five thousand is fucking unreasonable." "And that's still my final offer. You don't like it, well you better go crawl in whatever hole you hide in from the militia because I am NOT going to let you use the place while it's still in my name. So it's five thousand or you're leaving my tavern either peacefully or by the militia. I got nothing to lose. You're in this position because YOU chose a life of wickedness. Deal with the consequences." "I don't think you realize the position YOU'RE in." You warn. Wendy starts to smile, followed by a laugh. "What? You're going to kill me? Pfft. I'm already dying with how my health is going and my three kids are fucking disappoinments. As I said I have nothing to lose and my soul is prepared for Joachim's eternal glory. You won't get away with it anyway, Joachim always finds a way to punish the wicked." > You kill Wendy You're not going to be threatened or blackmailed by some superstitious old lady. If she's ready to die, then this makes it all the more easier. "Okay, well say hello to Joachim for me!" You say and you lunge at Wendy with a dagger. Wendy's survival instinct kicks in a bit and she tries to struggle, but it isn't much of one. "Not so eager to die now eh? Where's your Joachim now?" You sneer and easily end her life with a dagger to her throat. It's done and you quickly make your way out of the house and return to your sewer headquarters. "So how did it go?" Zal asks. "The old bitch is dead. Vaughn head over to the house with some people and search it for the tavern deed and anything else valuable. I would have done it myself, but I wanted to distance myself from a crime scene as soon as possible obviously." you say. "Oh. Okay, did you want the body disposed of too?" Vaughn asks. "If you want to be bothered I suppose you could, but I'm not really worried about the Klyton militia tracking me down for it. I mean if they ever did find me, it would be for a whole bunch of other shit first." Vaughn leaves and it's just Zalmora who keeps looking at you. "What?" You ask. "Nothing. Just still hoping you know what you're doing." Zal remarks. "(Sigh) Damnit, why do you ALWAYS do this? Something gets taken care of and YOU always say something that suggests different and completely undermines morale?" "Alright fine, I'll stop being a downer. I just want you to be more careful. I mean I didn't notice it immediately, but you've got some blood on your clothing and even your hands. I certainly hope you were careful about being seen." "Yes, yes, of course I was. Sheesh, you act like this I'm some damn neophyte at this. I'm not worried about the fucking militia." "Okay. Apologies. You got everything under control, I'm done with my caution." Zalmora takes her leave and you're free of her usual mother hen routine. You getting a little tired of that occurrence. You're also getting a little tired of these sewers. You're supposed to be the head of a budding criminal Empire. As soon as you can, you're clearing out one of those gambling game rooms at the tavern and making it into an office. One month later... "Where the hell are Carl and Annie? I haven't seen either of those losers for days. Did they still want jobs at this place? Because I can easily get any slob to replace what they do. And in Carl's case that ain't much to begin with." You say. "Well maybe their taking their mother's...um disappearance hard." Vaughn remarks. "I doubt it. There was no love between her or them. Wendy distinctly said they were disappointments to her when she tried to get more money out of me. Besides, it's been a couple weeks since they discovered she was missing and they didn't seem all that concerned before." "Maybe it's a delayed reaction. Like they figured she'd show up by now and because she hasn't, reality is setting in that she might not just be missing, but she might be dead." "Nah, Annie spoke to me about a few days before she stopped coming in. She didn't give that impression. The opposite actually." Zalmora remarks. "Oh? Never known you two to talk. What did she say exactly?" You ask. Zal smirks at your request. "She told me she hoped that her mother actually WAS dead, because then she would never get in the way of your love for her." Zal chuckles. "Fuck you Zal, just fuck you." You say. "I'm serious! She actually said that to me!" "I told her to stop spreading that fucking rumor! That's it, if she does show up again, she's out on her ass. If she gives me shit about that, she'll join her mother! I'm not having her telling delusional lies about me anymore!" "I know you keep denying and I'd really like to take your word. However, she's already told me about some very intimate things about your body and I think I'd know if she was lying or not." "The crazy bitch walked in on me changing once and she made up some twisted fantasy!" "Nice save. Okay, have it your way." Zal remarks and takes her leave before you start yelling at her. Vaughn not wishing to be your second choice for verbal abuse takes his leave as well. Two weeks later... "Camid, I want every able body we have to look for Vaughn AND Zalmora! They didn't just fucking disappear and if the militia pinched them we would have known about it! I dunno what the fuck's going on, but if we got some rival organization like the Ebony Claw Syndicate setting up shop here, we need to get on this quick!" You shout. "Yes sir!" Camid remarks before leaving. This has been stressful week. Both your best lieutenants have gone missing and in this line of work, that probably means they're dead. You'd probably feel a little worse about it, if you weren't so angry. Who the hell is doing this? You didn't think much about it when Carl and Annie disappeared. If anything you were somewhat happy you didn't have to deal with them anymore. This however is something different. You've taken to hiding in the sewers again, with guards constantly posted outside your office to make yourself less of a potential target. In fact, you've actually gotten very paranoid recently that maybe it isn't something of this world doing this, but maybe, just maybe Wendy's warning was right... Days pass and you still have no idea who is doing this. Soon Camid stops reporting in and you start losing Talons. With your loss of manpower, you aren't able to run much of anything. Eventually it's just you as the Talons still left alive have fled your side fearing that they'll be next on this list of mysterious disappearances. You have lost everything and the militia wasn't even involved. You end up spending most of your days in the sewers jumping at shadows and armed all the time. You barely sleep and when you do, you still wear heavy armor that you invested in after Vaughn and Zalmora first disappeared. However, the fateful day comes when you do finally have a sound sleep, when you open your eyes however, you are met with a grisly sight on the floor of your room. You see the bloody heads of the various people that have gone missing. Carl, Annie, Vaughn, Zalmora, Camid and others under your command. You reach for your weapon and then a figure loom over your head punching you in the face several times. He then proceeds to break your arms, before dragging you off your bed and then breaking your legs. Bones stick out of the skin, your screams are loud and the pain is great, but you're in the sewers and there will be no help. It isn't until all your limbs are broken that you finally get a good look at the person doing this to you. "...you..." Is all you can utter. "I've taken everything away from you. Now I'm sending you to a very dark place and I'm going to enjoy sending you there." Henry whispers as he starts stripping off your armor. You never thought about it at the time, but only now do you remember Wendy mentioned she had three children. You also remember Mr. Reynolds saying Henry's mother's name was Wendy. Odd that Carl or Annie never spoke of him at all, but perhaps they were too scared of him to even say his name and it's easy to see why. Perhaps Wendy never had any love for this ruthless monster of a son, but it's apparent he had love for her...or perhaps this was just the excuse to kill you. After all he never liked you after you criticized his work. Whether this is somehow the twisted divine work of Joachim or just a coincidence of a son seeking revenge on his mother's killer, it hardly matters. How he learned that it was you who did the deed doesn't matter either. What matters is Henry keeps his promise of enjoying sending you to a dark place because he keeps you alive a whole three days torturing the shit out of you before your body just gives out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 25 “Well, what the hell do these folks expect? If they want outlandish theatrics they can pay out the ass to watch a Klyton Gladiator match where the minimum bets are much higher. At least here we have fights where we’ll accept a five copper bet.” You say. “Yes, but at the arena, people don’t have the deal with the bums they’ve bet on to puke in the middle of the ring and pass out causing the other to win by default.” Zalmora says. “That happened ONE time.” You remark. “Well there’s also the ongoing smell of the sewers that puts people off.” “Yeah, well the Klyton council just increased the city’s militia numbers recently and stepped up patrols. So keeping business in the sewers is about the safest place to do all this if we want to avoid sudden raids.” “It might not have been necessary to wallow in the sewers if they had another distraction.” “So you’ve said many times in the past, but I think things still worked out with me in charge.” “We’re doing okay I suppose, but I’m still not sure if bum fight gambling and going back to selling Yellow Devil was the way to go about it.” “Hey we’ve got whores too.” “Ah yes, those mostly tie into the Yellow Devil trade. I shudder to think about the hopeless cases that actually pay to fuck YD junkies.” “Hey not everyone can afford the high priced Klyton brothels. Look, I saw that the only way we were going to survive is to have steady businesses. The Klyton Council are the biggest criminal overlords and nobody says shit because they effectively legalized everything and control the biggest gang to protect their interests. I mean there wasn’t really any way to feasibly compete except offer similar things at lower the prices and cater to the lower class.” Zalmora looks at nearby group betting and getting excited over a giant roach race. “Pretty sure some of these folks are under the lower class.” Zalmora replies. “Yeah, well a coin’s a coin, don’t you have a house to break into or something?” you say. “Always, but I don’t understand why you don’t come on these things like you used to.” “Because I gotta look after shit around here. I just can’t drop everything to go rip off a store. I’m not Tom, I don’t just sit on my ass doing nothing.” “I didn’t say you were, but you used to be a little more fun at least. Like those first few years when you got here. Remember?” Zalmora says with a bit of a smile. “Yeah, well I’m not a damn stupid teenager anymore that gets distracted by a pretty girl that wiggles her ass at me.” Zalmora steps back from you a bit giving a slightly perturbed look. “Okay Mr. bossman, if you hadn’t initially taken my advice in the first place you wouldn’t even be in this position.” Zal says. “OR if I hadn’t taken your advice, I might have been in this position a lot sooner. In fact despite you always bringing it up, I’d say not listening to you turned out to be a lot better ” you remark. “Right, because this is such a great position to be in.” “I’m in charge ain’t I? Y’know what your problem is? You thought you were going to manipulate me into doing whatever you wanted just because you threw a little pussy my way. And now you’re bitter that didn’t happen. If you really want control of the Talons, you could always challenge me Zal.” “Oh no, not me! Never would I challenge your insurmountable wisdom boss. Obviously you’ve got things under control more than little ol’ me could ever handle.” Zal says with obvious sarcasm in her voice. “If you don’t want to take over and you don’t like how I’m running things, why don’t you just leave then? Not like I’m going to try to kill you for leaving.” “Don’t think the thought hasn’t crossed my mind. You know why I’m even still in the Talons? Because deep down I’m actually hoping you know what you’re doing. So far you’re ahead, but I’m just wondering for how long. Edmond was pretty much running things like you are now. Granted you are less of a violent asshole than he was, but I’m seeing the same pattern.” “I’m not sure what to tell you Zal, I mean we’re fucking criminals doing illegal shit. This is sort of way things are done.” “(Sigh) Yeah, I know…guess I’m just starting to wonder why I ever thought this was fun. I’ll leave you to your drugs and whores.” Zalmora walks away. You sometimes forget that Zal is at least around fifteen years older than you now. She’s probably starting to worry about age catching up. Probably didn’t see herself mucking about through sewers at this age taking orders from someone a lot younger. Weird, because Vaughn doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, but then Vaughn’s never been one to make waves. As you walk back to the Crimson hideout thinking about the future, you have to admit, it isn’t as bright as you once thought. All things considered you are doing well right now, but there just doesn’t seem to be any let up on the laws being passed to turn this city into a huge prison camp. Part of that you imagine is due to the rebellion in Holgard. You’re certainly glad you didn’t decide to go there given what you heard. At one time, you did toy with the possibility of going “legit” somehow. Like maybe buying an inn and running it. Maybe even the one your family once owned. It would sure be a complete circle if you did that. Of course it wasn’t so much going “legit” as it was the idea of having a place to run your activities without it being in an abandoned building or recently the fucking sewers. Though that’s a riskier endeavor nowadays and would result in needing to re-organize things again. Might be better to stick with your current set up. It isn’t perfect, but it’s working. > You stick with what you are doing The sewers are good enough for you. If you start trying to set up shop up top, you're just going to bring down the heat eventually. You've got a good thing going on and nobody fucks with you down here. If worst comes to worst, you're confident that you could easily lose the militia if they actually ever made an effort to patrol down here. Still, maybe you could figure out a way to make this place somewhat less...well like a sewer. You already have made a base in the best abandoned area you can find though. You suppose you could start manually expanding underground further away from the sewers themselves of course that would be a pretty extensive and expensive undertaking and it isn't like you're familiar with the details of excavation. Although... This city used to have a fairly large active miner population once. In fact your family made money serving them at their inn. At some point long after your parents had left the city and the inn closed down, the mining trade dried up completely in Klyton for a variety of reasons resulting in a lot of unemployed miners. In fact some of the bums in your fights are ex-miners. You wouldn't want to rely on just them though, but surely you could scour the city for other ex-miners down on their luck or working jobs they hate. They probably would work cheap. You suppose if you really needed more you could shell out the money for some outside help, but you'd rather keep the costs as low as possible. Later when you approach Zal and Vaughn with this idea, they're caught off guard by this plan, but don't seem put off by it. Well Vaughn doesn't at least. Zal of course has her usual concerns. "Okay, I know that look. Out with it." You say. "It's just...well do you think this is even feasible?" Zal asks. "I'm not saying it's not going to take effort, but again this is a long term plan. I mean going up top, trying to set up false businesses and store fronts is just not going to work in Klyton. The place is just too damn repressive, but we all know people still WANT to do illegal shit like whoring, drugs, gambling..." "Erm, actually all those things are legal in Klyton." Vaughn interrupts. "(Sigh) You know what the fuck I mean! All that high priced shit is easily accessible for the rich folks, but WE cater to the poor and who needs affordable distraction more than they do?" "So...wait. Are we defenders of the down trodden now?" Zal asks. "I didn't say all that, but we ARE providing for them in a way. I mean we can start out by digging ourselves out a proper headquarters where we don't have to be constantly bombarded by the smells of the sewer and has a solid defense, but I'm thinking in time we could just build a whole underground town." Zalmora and Vaughn look at each other and then you. "A TOWN?!" They exclaim. "Well maybe not town in the traditional sense, but a place where we can do our business AND live without even worrying about the Klyton militia raiding the place because we would be so damn entrenched that they wouldn't be able to do shit even if they wanted to. We wouldn't just be the criminal organization that skulks around in the Klyton sewers, we would be a whole separate community...bah maybe I'm not explaining it well, but I envision it in my head!" You say. "No. No, I get what you mean. I have to say, this is really damn ambitious. I mean I can't say I'm not impressed by your plan...but again I just have my concerns if it's going to be possible...but fuck it, I'm in." Zal says. "Glad to hear it. So, we're going to need miners and equipment which is the easy part, but we're also going to need a genuine engineer so the whole damn thing doesn't fall on our heads. So anyone know of any?" You remark. "Yeah, Red Nose Rob." Vaughn remarks. "Who's that?" You ask. "One of the bums that participates in the fights." "There's a bum who used to be an engineer? What the hell happened?" "He was actually a miner, but he had a natural gift when it came to engineering. Which was good for the company since they just used his talents for creating very sound mine supports and they didn't have to pay for a real one. He probably could have been building new structures in Klyton, but he just didn't have the formal education." "Interesting. But how do you know so much about him?" You ask. "He has his lucid moments. Plus, um...we used to...meet up..." "Ew Vaughn. You fucked a disgusting bum?" Zalmora remarks. "No! I fucked him when he was strapping miner! Sheesh Zal!" "Never mind all that, would he be able to do the job?" You ask "I think so. Probably wouldn't have to pay him much more than we do to fight, but we’d definitely have to dry him out a bit though." Vaughn says. You start making notes of various ideas as you ask more questions. "Okay, so we got one potential overseer for this project. You got any more engineer ex-lovers?" You ask. "Not that I know of boss." Vaughn remarks. "I think I got a potential suggestion." Zal says. "Oh? You been fucking engineers too?" You ask. "Even better. Been fucking dwarves. Grahk Kazek is the one that comes to mind." "Well that's nice that you're so open minded with your choice of sex partners, but is this dwarf an actual engineer? Contrary to popular belief, I don't think all of them dig big holes in mountains for a living." "This one does. Or at least he did before he retired. He makes a monthly trip from the Cloudpeake Mountains to Klyton because he REALLY likes the pastries from Stovo's Bakery. Buys up a bunch then goes back home. That's where we met actually." "Didn't know you had ongoing long distance relationship, Zal." You say. "Lots you don't know about me, but I wouldn't exactly say Grahk and I are in a relationship, we just had a bit of fun together. In fact I haven't seen him in years. I just know he still goes to that bakery since Stovo has mentioned him a few times when I go in there." "So would he be interested?" "He's a dwarf and used to construct tunnel ways in the Cloudpeake Mountains. Fairly certain if we throw enough money at him, he'll be willing to oversee the construction of what we're doing. Besides, I can be pretty persuasive." "Hmm, don't I know it." You say. The dwarf sounds good, but he sounds like he's going to be really expensive. At lot more than the bum anyway. Of course the bum might be unreliable. You say you'll think about both as you go ask other Talons if they know anybody. You don't have much luck though. Your other Talons aren't quite as "worldly" as your top lieutenants. There is one who has a lead though. "Yeah, I think I might know someone boss. This chick called Madeline. She actually attends Klyton University and she's an engineering student." Camid remarks. "A student?" You ask. "Yeah, but she's really fucking smart. Top of her class or some shit. I don't even understand what she's talking about half the time. Of course I'm just staring at her tits most of the time anyway.” "How the hell do you even know her?" "Oh, she's a little rich girl that likes slumming. Likes to watch the bum fights and get high on Yellow Devil. The usual. Oh and we fuck sometimes." Of course they do. It would certainly be a strange break in the "theme" if they didn't. The drug bit concerns you though. "Wait, you say she takes Yellow Devil? How the hell is she not a near drooling idiot yet? I don't need someone melting into a pile of goo in the middle of an important project." You say. "Don't worry boss. That wouldn't happen." Camid says. "And how do you know?" "Because...um...I make sure she doesn't actually get Yellow Devil. I mean she does, but it's a VERY small amount. Almost nothing. The rest of it is cut severely with various common shit I get from the apothecary. She feels good for a little while and feels rebellious and she doesn't get really hurt." "...You like this girl don't you?" You ask causing Camid to look away a bit. "(Sigh) It didn't start out that way. First time I saw her, I thought she was so damn pretty that I just wanted a chance to fuck her before she turned into a Yellow Devil mess, so I didn't give her the real shit. But in time...well I dunno shit happened...and I'm probably an idiot..." Camid says trailing off a bit. "Probably, but fortunately your love sick idiocy has worked in your favor, so do you think she'd help?" "Oh definitely. She'd feel like she would be a real criminal working for a dangerous organization and all. She'd do it for free too, not like she needs the money." "Actually she would be a real criminal if she was helping us in this capacity. Good to know about the price. I'll keep her in mind." Well you got a big decision to make based on your underlings recommendations because unfortunately for you, you haven't been lucky enough to fuck someone with engineering skills. > You red Nose Rob While you have your concerns about Rob, he seems the most affordable, accessible and most importantly, at your mercy. The dwarf you just know is going to ask for a shitload of money and the girl is just a wild child university student. Who knows what kind of chaos that will invite? You return to Vaughn with your decision. "Okay Vaughn, we're going to try your guy, so go tell him what's going on, sober him up, clean him up and have him come see me about further details. I also want you to stress that while he doesn't really have a choice in this matter, he'll be making more money and won't have to be getting punched in the face for living." You say. "Got it boss." Vaughn remarks and leaves to carry out your orders. A couple days later Vaughn brings in a man with a lot of messy hair, raggedy clothing, a full beard and mustache and red nose. He also has a few bruises on his face. Must be Rob. "And at last Vaughn has brought you to me, I trust he's filled you in on the basics of what's going on." You say. "Yes sir." Rob replies without emotion. "Good. What happened to your face? Did Vaughn do that?" "Um, no sir. I was in a match three days ago and the other guy got in a few good punches." "Oh yes, you were doing that bum fight business. Well, you won't have to be doing that anymore. You'll get to use your other natural talent." "Yes sir." Rob once again replies without emotion. "Sort of thought you'd be a bit happier about this opportunity." "Apologies sir, but I'm still having a hard time being completely sober right now. It's been awhile and I feel sort of weird." "Hm, okay. I should tell you, I don't actually expect you to go completely off the stuff. I just wanted you sober for today while I speak to you. I also expect you to not drink on the job and generally be a functional human being. Now you're going to have some help in this matter since Vaughn here is going to be personally responsible for you. Making sure you stay focused and such." Rob just nods. "Okay I'm sensing something more is wrong than you just not being used to being sober." You say and then Vaughn breaks into the conversation. "Um, yeah. I think Rob is just a bit nervous being within your presence. You know how you have a reputation and all boss." Vaughn remarks. "I don't think I can do the job sir." Rob blurts out. "Ha ha ha ha! He's just joking...he..." "Vaughn, will you shut the hell up? Now Rob, what do you mean you can't do the job exactly?" You ask. "I mean Vaughn's told me what you want and I just don't think I can do it. I don't have the skill or knowledge." "Vaughn told me, you had natural talent and were well respected by the mining company because of it." "Yeah, well if that was the case they wouldn't have fired me along with everyone else. Look, I don't want to disobey you sir, but I don't want to pretend I'm something I'm not. I mean you'd be even more pissed if you found out I didn't know what the fuck I''m doing." "Heh, well you're right on that one. I actually appreciate the honesty. However, I've never really known Vaughn to step up and speak so favorably of someone. I mean I understand you guys had something once, but Vaughn's not one to stick his neck out and tends to play things safe. I have to believe he must be telling the truth to some degree. I mean you can't be a complete idiot." "No, maybe not a complete one, but I'm sure not that smart, otherwise I wouldn't be in this situation...(Sigh) I mean if you were asking me to build simple tunnels and rooms and making sure they don't collapse, then yeah I guess I could do that, but I don't know about building an underground city." "Okay. Let's stop right there. The underground city is probably a long damn way off. Don't even think about it. We're going to start simple and get more complex later. Tell you what we're going to do..." You proceed to tell Rob that you're just looking to hollow out an underground area to serve as the Crimson Talon headquarters right now and it doesn't have to be fancy. It just needs to be structurally sound. You tell him by that time, you'll probably have gotten a hold of some other engineers that can help Rob if he doesn't feel up to the more complex task of building that underground city. Rob seems a little more receptive to this and says he'll try to do his best. You say he's free to go and as he leaves you tell Vaughn to stay behind. "Vaughn, are you absolutely fucking sure he can do this job?!" You ask. "Yes! He's just been in the gutter for so long his self esteem is low! I mean once he gets back in action he'll be fine!" Vaughn exclaims. "For your sake, I hope so. Because I'm not here to hold someone's hand and build up their confidence. That's going to be YOUR job. So you better be giving him pep talks, motivational hugs, or inspirational blow jobs. Whatever it is YOU gotta do, you better be doing it, because I'm going to be keeping a close eye on progress of this project." With this new order Vaughn is of course totally compliant as usual and takes his leave. As you're making further preparations for your ambitious plan, Zalmora of course puts her two copper in. "I still don't know why you didn't go with my guy. Relying on Vaughn and his bum miner boyfriend just seems like a bad plan." Zalmora says. "Your guy would be very expensive and I'm trying to keep the costs down as much as I can. If it looks like things are going to shit, well then I'll consider your guy again." "Okay, but won't you have already wasted time and money with this Rob if he turns out to be a failure?" "(Sigh) Yes Zal, but it's my fucking call and my fucking risk alright? Stop fucking questioning me every other sentence! Here, that's a list of some of the equipment we're going to need. Take some of the boys and go acquire some." You say shoving a piece of paper at Zal who takes it. "...pick axes, lanterns, shovels, ropes, lumber? How the hell are we supposed to steal a shitload of heavy ass lumber?" "I dunno, just get it. Go raid a wood mill. Pay for it. Rip out support beams from abandon buildings. Seduce a lumber jack. Cut down fucking trees yourself and drag them back here. I don't give a shit HOW you do it, just fucking do it! You said you were on board with this, well start fucking contributing." You order. Zal doesn't say another word she just turns away in a huff. While you aren't deterred yet, you're seriously starting to wonder if this is all really worth it. > You time passes... Year 27 "Okay, Rob was the better choice in terms of costs. My guy would have still been better though." Zalmora remarks. "Half an admission of defeat, but probably the best I'm going to ever hear from you. I'll take it." You say smiling. You walk through the relatively smooth tunnels of the new Crimson Talon headquarters. Lanterns light your way as you look around at how far it's all come. The rooms that were created still need some more detailed work since they're very basic, but for a guy who started out not being sure if he could do any of this, he's done a good job so far. You guess Vaughn was right, once Rob got going he gained confidence. (Either that or Vaughn was giving a lot of inspirational blow jobs, but you'd rather not dwell on that) "Are we going to brick up the dirt walls of these rooms or something similar? Not that I don't appreciate the work that's gone into this, but right now the aesthetics are more underground goblin lair, rather than secret criminal headquarters." Zal says. "Yeah, we're doing that, adding doors, adding tiled floors and all that stuff, but that's going to get taken care of later when the basic layout is finished." You say. "I thought that was complete?" "It's almost complete. Rob's finishing up the last rooms which are a lot bigger. One of them is going to be the fighting arena." "Arena?" "Well okay, it isn't going to be the Klyton coliseum, but it'll be a proper fighting area where we can put a ring and have people watching and betting without them accidentally stepping in shit water." "Hm, well that would be an improvement. Speaking of which, now that this place is on the verge of being complete are we moving all our operations here?" "Well I'm thinking the gambling games and the fighting arena will be eventually, but the Yellow Devil lab can stay out in those sewer storage rooms along with the junkies. I'm not having melted junkies mess up the floor when we finally get around to putting proper ones down. Mostly though, it's going to be where we can rest and relax without the smell. See how all the potential sleeping areas were built very far away from the sewer wall that was knocked down for the entrance." You say. "Yes, the smell is much better in this place. More earthy, less shitty." As you and Zal are speaking about the Crimson Talon's future, Vaughn walks up to both of you. "Hey guys, I've been looking for you both. Rob just finished what will be the fighting arena location. You should see it!" Vaughn remarks. "Oh good a big dirt room instead of a small one." Zalmora remarks. "Aw come on Zal, he worked really hard on it! He even improved upon the original layout!" Vaughn exclaims. "Went above and beyond huh? Guess he really is getting sure of himself. Might as well see for ourselves." You say. You, Vaughn and Zal head to the arena. Along the way you notice that the rough tunnel is sloping downward. Vaughn says that Rob really wanted to impress you since you gave him a chance and in order to do that he needed to expand downward a bit to create the fighting arena. "Sheesh, did he have the miners dig all the way to Nichan? How deep is this going?" Zal remarks. "He said he wanted to make it like an underground version of the Klyton coliseum." Vaughn says. "He certainly went off script for this, but if it's as impressive as you said he's trying to make it, I'll certainly be pleased." You say. Eventually the tunnel stops sloping and evens out. You walk a little more and already in the dim light you can see the room ahead is going to be bigger than you thought. You enter the place and find yourself in a large oval room with several long wooden support beams stretching from the floor to the ceiling. The ceiling is actually a lot higher than you expected. If there were seats and stairs encircling the room, it actually might resemble the Klyton coliseum on a smaller scale. Rob stands on top of a high platform near one of the walls and waves. "Hey! So what do you think?" He shouts and starts climbing down a ladder to meet you. "Definitely bigger than I thought it would be. I'm just wondering how the hell did I not notice all the dirt being hauled out and dumped from this endeavor. Apparently I wasn't as observant as I thought I was. Just as well I guess, since this is a nice surprise." You remark walking around and looking upward. "Yeah, I was trying to keep this part of the project a bit under wraps to surprise you. Really glad you like it. As I mentioned to Vaughn, this part was my way of saying thank you for dragging me out of the fighting ring and giving my real life meaning again." Rob says. "And they say the Crimson Talons are nothing but a menace to society. We gave this man his life back. Hell, we gave several folks their lives back. How many miners work for us now?" You say with a chuckle. You continue looking around as Vaughn gives Rob a bit of praise about his work on the project. Meanwhile Zalmora finds something to analyze. "Um, these support beams. I just touched this one and it doesn't feel secure. Is this place even safe?" Zal asks. "Oh yes, this place is definitely safe. Most of these beams aren't even necessary anymore, but none of them are going to slip out of place anyway. Look!" Rob and then runs over to a beam and then putting all his weight behind his body, leans hard against it. You tense up slightly when you see him do this, but nothing happens. "See? Solid!" Rob says. "Natural talent, boss. All he needed was the confidence boost. I guarantee he'll be able to build that underground city better than any dwarf could or Klyton university egghead with an over priced edu..." Vaughn starts to say and then suddenly the beam that Rob is leaning against cracks. Before he can even get off of it, the beam breaks and he falls to the ground as the rest of the beam falls on him, followed by parts of the ceiling. "OH SHIT RUN!" Zal shouts and makes haste towards the room's exit as the ceiling begins to completely collapse. Vaughn follows suit, leaving Rob who has either been knocked unconscious or killed. You are unfortunately at the far end of the room and while you try to make it to the exit, you just aren't fast enough and you're crushed by large clumps of packed dirt and rocks. You actually manage to dig a few inches through the dirt before you suffocate.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The sewers are good enough for you. If you start trying to set up shop up top, you're just going to bring down the heat eventually. You've got a good thing going on and nobody fucks with you down here. If worst comes to worst, you're confident that you could easily lose the militia if they actually ever made an effort to patrol down here. Still, maybe you could figure out a way to make this place somewhat less...well like a sewer. You already have made a base in the best abandoned area you can find though. You suppose you could start manually expanding underground further away from the sewers themselves of course that would be a pretty extensive and expensive undertaking and it isn't like you're familiar with the details of excavation. Although... This city used to have a fairly large active miner population once. In fact your family made money serving them at their inn. At some point long after your parents had left the city and the inn closed down, the mining trade dried up completely in Klyton for a variety of reasons resulting in a lot of unemployed miners. In fact some of the bums in your fights are ex-miners. You wouldn't want to rely on just them though, but surely you could scour the city for other ex-miners down on their luck or working jobs they hate. They probably would work cheap. You suppose if you really needed more you could shell out the money for some outside help, but you'd rather keep the costs as low as possible. Later when you approach Zal and Vaughn with this idea, they're caught off guard by this plan, but don't seem put off by it. Well Vaughn doesn't at least. Zal of course has her usual concerns. "Okay, I know that look. Out with it." You say. "It's just...well do you think this is even feasible?" Zal asks. "I'm not saying it's not going to take effort, but again this is a long term plan. I mean going up top, trying to set up false businesses and store fronts is just not going to work in Klyton. The place is just too damn repressive, but we all know people still WANT to do illegal shit like whoring, drugs, gambling..." "Erm, actually all those things are legal in Klyton." Vaughn interrupts. "(Sigh) You know what the fuck I mean! All that high priced shit is easily accessible for the rich folks, but WE cater to the poor and who needs affordable distraction more than they do?" "So...wait. Are we defenders of the down trodden now?" Zal asks. "I didn't say all that, but we ARE providing for them in a way. I mean we can start out by digging ourselves out a proper headquarters where we don't have to be constantly bombarded by the smells of the sewer and has a solid defense, but I'm thinking in time we could just build a whole underground town." Zalmora and Vaughn look at each other and then you. "A TOWN?!" They exclaim. "Well maybe not town in the traditional sense, but a place where we can do our business AND live without even worrying about the Klyton militia raiding the place because we would be so damn entrenched that they wouldn't be able to do shit even if they wanted to. We wouldn't just be the criminal organization that skulks around in the Klyton sewers, we would be a whole separate community...bah maybe I'm not explaining it well, but I envision it in my head!" You say. "No. No, I get what you mean. I have to say, this is really damn ambitious. I mean I can't say I'm not impressed by your plan...but again I just have my concerns if it's going to be possible...but fuck it, I'm in." Zal says. "Glad to hear it. So, we're going to need miners and equipment which is the easy part, but we're also going to need a genuine engineer so the whole damn thing doesn't fall on our heads. So anyone know of any?" You remark. "Yeah, Red Nose Rob." Vaughn remarks. "Who's that?" You ask. "One of the bums that participates in the fights." "There's a bum who used to be an engineer? What the hell happened?" "He was actually a miner, but he had a natural gift when it came to engineering. Which was good for the company since they just used his talents for creating very sound mine supports and they didn't have to pay for a real one. He probably could have been building new structures in Klyton, but he just didn't have the formal education." "Interesting. But how do you know so much about him?" You ask. "He has his lucid moments. Plus, um...we used to...meet up..." "Ew Vaughn. You fucked a disgusting bum?" Zalmora remarks. "No! I fucked him when he was strapping miner! Sheesh Zal!" "Never mind all that, would he be able to do the job?" You ask "I think so. Probably wouldn't have to pay him much more than we do to fight, but we’d definitely have to dry him out a bit though." Vaughn says. You start making notes of various ideas as you ask more questions. "Okay, so we got one potential overseer for this project. You got any more engineer ex-lovers?" You ask. "Not that I know of boss." Vaughn remarks. "I think I got a potential suggestion." Zal says. "Oh? You been fucking engineers too?" You ask. "Even better. Been fucking dwarves. Grahk Kazek is the one that comes to mind." "Well that's nice that you're so open minded with your choice of sex partners, but is this dwarf an actual engineer? Contrary to popular belief, I don't think all of them dig big holes in mountains for a living." "This one does. Or at least he did before he retired. He makes a monthly trip from the Cloudpeake Mountains to Klyton because he REALLY likes the pastries from Stovo's Bakery. Buys up a bunch then goes back home. That's where we met actually." "Didn't know you had ongoing long distance relationship, Zal." You say. "Lots you don't know about me, but I wouldn't exactly say Grahk and I are in a relationship, we just had a bit of fun together. In fact I haven't seen him in years. I just know he still goes to that bakery since Stovo has mentioned him a few times when I go in there." "So would he be interested?" "He's a dwarf and used to construct tunnel ways in the Cloudpeake Mountains. Fairly certain if we throw enough money at him, he'll be willing to oversee the construction of what we're doing. Besides, I can be pretty persuasive." "Hmm, don't I know it." You say. The dwarf sounds good, but he sounds like he's going to be really expensive. At lot more than the bum anyway. Of course the bum might be unreliable. You say you'll think about both as you go ask other Talons if they know anybody. You don't have much luck though. Your other Talons aren't quite as "worldly" as your top lieutenants. There is one who has a lead though. "Yeah, I think I might know someone boss. This chick called Madeline. She actually attends Klyton University and she's an engineering student." Camid remarks. "A student?" You ask. "Yeah, but she's really fucking smart. Top of her class or some shit. I don't even understand what she's talking about half the time. Of course I'm just staring at her tits most of the time anyway.” "How the hell do you even know her?" "Oh, she's a little rich girl that likes slumming. Likes to watch the bum fights and get high on Yellow Devil. The usual. Oh and we fuck sometimes." Of course they do. It would certainly be a strange break in the "theme" if they didn't. The drug bit concerns you though. "Wait, you say she takes Yellow Devil? How the hell is she not a near drooling idiot yet? I don't need someone melting into a pile of goo in the middle of an important project." You say. "Don't worry boss. That wouldn't happen." Camid says. "And how do you know?" "Because...um...I make sure she doesn't actually get Yellow Devil. I mean she does, but it's a VERY small amount. Almost nothing. The rest of it is cut severely with various common shit I get from the apothecary. She feels good for a little while and feels rebellious and she doesn't get really hurt." "...You like this girl don't you?" You ask causing Camid to look away a bit. "(Sigh) It didn't start out that way. First time I saw her, I thought she was so damn pretty that I just wanted a chance to fuck her before she turned into a Yellow Devil mess, so I didn't give her the real shit. But in time...well I dunno shit happened...and I'm probably an idiot..." Camid says trailing off a bit. "Probably, but fortunately your love sick idiocy has worked in your favor, so do you think she'd help?" "Oh definitely. She'd feel like she would be a real criminal working for a dangerous organization and all. She'd do it for free too, not like she needs the money." "Actually she would be a real criminal if she was helping us in this capacity. Good to know about the price. I'll keep her in mind." Well you got a big decision to make based on your underlings recommendations because unfortunately for you, you haven't been lucky enough to fuck someone with engineering skills. > You grahk Kazek It’s going to be expensive, but if you want this done right, a dwarf would be the way to go with this. Plus Zalmora does tend to have the best suggestions. “Okay, let’s get your dwarf.” You say returning to Zalmora with your decision. “About time you listened to my advice again. You’re going to have to give me a month though.” Zalmora says. “Shit, did we just miss his last visit?” “Oh no, he actually should be making his visit here in a few days, but while I am the persuasive sort I’m going to need the time to do it. By then, he should be pliable enough to listen to you. Also, I should warn you in advance, the man is very professional about his work and a perfectionist so when he speaks to you on what he’s going to need, he’s not going to be submissive or even polite about it. He’s going to be very direct and probably less than respectful. I’m warning you in advance so you don’t go killing him because you think he’s challenging your authority or whatever.” “Wonderful. (Sigh) Look, this goes both ways. So you let him know this; I’ll tolerate some of his shit behind closed doors because he’s the expert, but he better not be doing it while I’m in the company of others. Otherwise I’ll have to kill him to set an example and I’ll draw it out too because I’ll be really pissed that I’ll have to hire Vaughn’s drunk bum to finish the job!” “I think he’ll understand that.” “He better. Well let’s go acquire the miners and equipment in the meantime.” You say dismissing Vaughn and Zalmora. Month later… “Can’t be done.” Grahk says as he finishes looking at the layout you made. “Excuse me?” you respond. “Your layout is shit, your equipment and materials are subpar and I’ve seen the lot you’ve acquired as miners. A bunch of drunks, bums, and other miscreants whose good days are behind them, assuming they ever had them to begin with. You’re going to have constant problems with potential tunnels collapses and that’s the best case scenario.” “Well isn’t that why you’re here? To make sure that doesn’t fucking happen?” “Yeah, but I’m used to working with superior dwarf equipment and dwarves who also know what the hell they’re doing. As far as I can tell I’m the only one here that’s competent in this field. You humans literally don’t know your asses from a hole in the ground when it comes to this shit. I’d feel safer working with goblins.” “Oh well I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was going to be in the presence of the king of the little beardy shits! Excuse me your highness!” “Zal, I thought you told me this guy was reasonable.” Grahk asks Zal in an unruffled voice. “He is, most of the time. Boss, will you just calm down for a moment?” Zal asks. “Calm down? What the fuck for? He just said this shit couldn’t be done! And I guess that’s it, considering he’s the expert and all!” you yell. “You didn’t let me finish my first sentence, you just interrupted and got everything off track. What I was going to say is it can’t be done by what you’ve got here. It CAN be done if I bring in my people and equipment.” “I thought you retired?” Zal asks. “Me? Nah I just stopped working for Cloudpeake government. I still have a small business on the side that keeps me busy. Can’t just lounge about for days on end.” “Great, so now I’m paying for more of you bearded runts and your high priced equipment. And how the hell are we supposed to sneak in hundreds of you lot into the fucking sewers? Even using the secret outside entrance is running a risk of someone noticing that there are a legion of dwarfs carrying digging equipment being seen marching towards the city. Klyton will probably think it’s a fucking invasion.” You say. “First of all, there are only twenty dwarves that work for me, but we might as well be a legion compared to a hundred humans. Second of all, I already had it figured out as soon as Zal told me all about your plan.” Grahk says. “Well you want to enlighten the rest of us?” “Gladly.” Grahk says the Klyton sewers are in terrible condition (Not surprising since they’re human made). He says he knows an old acquaintance on the Klyton Council and all he has to do is approach him about doing some work on the sewers for a low price. The Council will accept because they know dwarves do good work and they’ll be getting a hell of a deal. In reality, Grahk’s crew aren’t going to do much except do some cosmetic patchwork to make it look like they’re doing more than they actually are. (Which is what a human crew would do anyway, Grahk adds) This plan of course is a cover for what is really going to go on which is creating your little Crimson Talon hideout. “Won’t they check up on you?” you ask. “Who those fops on the council? Hardly. They aren’t going to give a shit about a bunch of dwarves mucking about in the sewers as long as the job gets done. In fact they’ll probably tell the militia to not even patrol the sewers as much because they’ll know we’re not going to want anyone in the way of our work and we’re bringing in our own security.” Grahk says. “You seem very sure of all this and it’s quite likely that this attempt to trick the Council and bringing them in is going to result in them sniffing around and it will all end in disaster and our heads on the fucking chopping block.” “(Sigh) I thought I was dealing with the boss of a criminal organization, not the timid rent boy in the brothel. Why the hell are you hooked up with these losers Zal?” Grahk asks Zalmora. You’ve had it with the insults; you unsheathe your flintlock pistol and point it at Grahk who doesn’t show fear. “What, so am I supposed to be scared of you now? I’ve fought trolls in hand to hand combat. I’m not going to be intimidated by the likes of you drawing a pistol on me.” Grahk remarks. “And I don’t give a shit if you’re scared or not, I’m warning YOU, one more insult. One. And you aren’t leaving this room alive.” You say. “You’re both pretty princesses, can we stop with the pissing contest?” Zal says. Grahk looks over at Zal, looks back at you, and puts up his hands and nods. “Fine. Apologies. Shouldn’t have insulted you in your own home, but it was my understanding that you’re a man that takes risks. I mean you had the vision for this project and your very career choice involves risk. Besides, you’re forgetting that you’re not the only one taking a chance here. You don’t think I won’t suffer consequences if the Klyton Council finds out what I’m really doing? Trust me, I’m going to be making sure things are going very smoothly. All you really have to worry about is coming up with the coins for all this.” Grahk says. “You’ll get paid. Don’t worry about that. Just do the job.” You respond putting away the pistol. “So we have an agreement?” “Yes.” And with that deal done, the work begins. > You time passes... Year 27 You have to admit, despite the close calls, the stress of changing the layout, and the several times you almost wanted to kill Grahk, he came through and this place is a lot better than you could have expected, if much smaller. This place is less of a “budding underground town” and more of an underground mini-fortress and really maybe that was a more realistic goal anyway. You have sturdy walls, rooms, and a hidden entrance within the sewer with a couple of durable security doors just in case the militia does the find the place. You also have an escape route dug out far enough that you’d be able to getaway long before they broke in. But that’s just your headquarters. There is another secret area where you hold the gambling games, races and fights. Besides it being a better idea to keep the actual activities (and the plebs) away from your main base, Grahk actually said it would be better structural wise to build two separate and smaller hidden locations rather than just one big one which be a lot more costly to maintain and keep from collapsing. So that’s what you did. Still, you decided to keep one business out of both of the new areas. Namely the Yellow Devil creation and distribution. You aren’t having any junkies going in either to get their fixes and YD stinks something awful that it would defeat the damn purpose of leaving the sewers if you were creating it in these nice new areas. Due to all the expenses you had to pay for with the dwarves, you had to go back to the old methods of pulling heists and burglary because the drugs, gambling games and fights weren’t enough. Of course that was mostly you, Zal and Vaughn doing those, because you wanted to make sure it was done right. On the plus side, it’s kept you in shape and your skills sharp. It also raises your respect among the rest of the Crimson Talons since they know you’re willing to get right in the thick of things and aren’t just delegating. The downside is you’re still not exactly rolling in coin and you don’t think you’ve had real rest since this project began and you’re always vaguely tired, but then as they say no rest for the wicked. The other side effect is you’ve created a minor “crime wave” throughout Klyton to the point where things are getting out of hand for the militia slightly. Besides the ongoing breaking into shops and homes, your increased production of Yellow Devil has created an epidemic of “meltbrains” as they are called. Didn’t help that you got the idea from Camid to start cutting the drug to make it less lethal, while still keeping most of it’s “positive” effects for the user. Still causes a lot of irreversible long-term damage that most aren’t coming back from, which now probably makes it even worse. Junkies are living long enough to cause real problems hence the crime wave. You’ve been extremely fortunate that the authorities have mostly been turning the city upside down and making mass arrests to every petty criminal they can get their hands on, but so far they haven’t done much with the sewers. There were a few close calls with some minor patrols, but Grahk’s crew has been pretty good in keeping their real activities (and you) secret. Grahk’s Council buddy must have an incredible amount of trust in him or maybe he’s just corrupt. You have no idea, you’ve never met him. Still, Klyton’s uncharacteristic lackadaisical alertness on this matter is going to be coming to an end. Grahk is done with the task and will be leaving soon, which means Klyton will probably be stepping up their patrols down here. Not even the rumors of a killer reptile man is going to scare them away. (You question if this Scales is even down here, surely you would have run afoul of him, with all this work the dwarves have been doing) But the only concern you have right at this moment is the information you’ve just heard. “What?! You’re leaving?!” you exclaim. “Figured I should let you know. Despite our differences at times, I respect you enough to not just disappear.” Zalmora says. “Hold on you’re going to have to re-explain this again. This is just out of nowhere.” You say and take a seat. “It really isn’t. Grahk and I have been seeing each other for quite some time since he got here for this project.” “Yes, I’ve seen you two speaking with one another every so often. Sometimes it looked a little more than that, but I didn’t take you for the running off and getting married sort!” “What can I say? Grahk made a very good offer.” “Given what comes out of his mouth half the time, he doesn’t even like humans.” “Well he likes me and I’m very fond of him. Also, I’ve realized that this life…well it isn’t the one I want any more.” Zal says waving her arms in the air and making motions about her surroundings. “So…what? You’re going to go pop out a bunch of bearded babies and be a nice little housewife in some dark underground cavern?” “I’m already practically living in an underground cavern now! And dwarves and humans can’t reproduce with each other…well as far as I know. Besides, he’s already got a couple of children from his deceased wife, so that isn’t going to be an issue anyway.” “But what are you going to DO with yourself? I mean I’m guessing you’re going to go back to the Cloudpeake Mountains. Dwarves aren’t known for being all that accepting of outsiders at the best of times. You’re not likely to have any friends.” “Yeah, well it isn’t like I really have any here either.” You’re a little taken aback. “Wha…? What? What about me and Vaughn? What about all the Talons that respect your abilities?” you say. “Those are subordinates, not my friends. You’re my boss, not my friend. And as for Vaughn…well okay, you’re right about him, but he’s hardly enough to keep me around here waiting for the inevitable.” Zalmora responds. “And what’s that exactly?” “This whole place is going to raided and all of you are either going to get pinched or killed. Best case scenario, you escape with nothing.” “That’s some severe lack of confidence in your soon to be dwarf husband’s abilities. Besides, you were originally enthusiastic about this whole project and the potential.” “I know I was at first, but the original goal has changed now hasn’t it? Look, maybe everything won’t be all doom and gloom and maybe everything does go smoothly, but the fact that I realize is that I’m getting old and I’m enjoying this type of life less and less. I soon learned that on the last heist we did and I nearly got my head blown off by the militia.” “You’re hardly old Zal, I mean you’re acting like you’re ready for the grave.” “If I keep on this way, I soon will be. Look, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought for quite some time.” “So again, I ask what are you going to do with your time? I mean I really can’t envision you as some housewife. You’re going to get bored and dissatisfied.” “And how do YOU know that? Maybe I’ll find it a great relief not worrying about which shop to rob or whether or not if I’m going to get arrested or killed. And who says I’m not going to find something to do while I’m up there? Grahk owns his own business you know. I’m sure I can help with that in some way.” A moment of silence comes over you and you cease looking at Zalmora. You can’t believe you might be losing your best “employee.” It would appear you took it for granted that she’d always be around. Though you did always consider the possibility that she might die in the service of the Crimson Talons just like anyone, but something about this is much different and you don’t like this form of parting of the ways. At least not without trying to do something about it. “What would it take for you to stay?” you ask. “Nothing. I told you, I’ve made up my mind about this.” Zal says. “Bullshit. You wouldn’t have told me at all, if you didn’t want me to make the attempt to at least come up with an offer.” “…I…I don’t know where you got that idea from, but I already told you that I came to you about this because I respected you enough to not sneak off in the middle of the night.” Zalmora sputters. “And I’m not buying it. I don’t buy that you’re ready to settle down and live a boring ordinary life. I mean I’ve SEEN you get the thrill even during that last heist where you almost got your head blown off. I mean maybe the safe life does have its advantages, and if you were marrying a Delantium prince who was going to shower you with jewels and a royal palace I’d say congrats and just let you go without a fight. Hell, if you said that you LOVED this dwarf I wouldn’t stand in the way, but you didn’t say that. You just claimed fondness. You’re not moving up, you’re just trading one life of compromise for another.” “You seem to be very interested in my well being…are you actually jealous? Is this some crush you’ve been harboring because if it is, I’m going to tell you right now that…” “No! It’s nothing like that. While you don’t consider me your friend, I consider you mine, because quite frankly I don’t have any either and it’s hard enough to have someone trustworthy and reliable in this business as it is. You were the one who gave me all the most important advice that resulted in rebuilding the Crimson Talons to be a viable organization again. And yeah, maybe I didn’t listen to all of it, but I do acknowledge that I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you and I can’t see me getting too much further without you by my side either. I need you.” Now Zalmora is speechless and looks away. You stare at her, but she makes sure to not look in your direction. You know she must be trying to hide obvious signs of being upset. “Are you alright?” you ask. “I…I…yes…I’m fine.” Zal says and then turns around and quickly wipes one of her eyes. Zalmora composes herself a bit and then speaks. “Very well. I do have one request if I’m going to consider staying. We have to stop selling Yellow Devil.” Zal says. “What? But that’s what kept us afloat! If we hadn’t been selling it, we wouldn’t have been able to afford the new headquarters!” you reply. “Yes, and now that project is over with. We can get by without dealing it. Yellow Devil is going to cause us nothing but trouble in the future. I’m already seeing that, don’t you?” “Well I’ll admit, its got its share of problems, but it’s the biggest money maker and a lot of the Talons aren’t going to be happy about no longer selling it. Specifically Camid.” “Look, this isn’t a negotiation. This is my stipulation. I’ll leave you to deal with the repercussions as you see fit. Grahk is leaving in a week. You’ve got three days to tell me your decision, because if you value my friendship as much as you claim and you do decide to stop selling, then I’m going to need the rest of the week to deal with Grahk before he leaves, because I’ll be breaking not just his heart but an agreement and you know how serious dwarves are about those.” > You stop selling Yellow Devil This might not be the best of business decisions, but if this is what it’s going to take then so be it. There will always be other opportunities, but reliable folks you can count on, not so much. “Alright, fine. You don’t need to wait three days. I’ll take care of it now.” You say. “Are you sure? Because don’t just make a rash decision in some misguided effort to play white knight. This is your organization, run it how you see fit, I don’t need saving.” “(Sigh) I’m not playing white knight. If anything I’m playing black guard by stealing the princess away from her husband to be if we’re going to use that comparison. You said to stop selling Yellow Devil is what will keep you around, well I’m willing to make the sacrifice because that’s just how much I value your presence here.” “So…I’m a princess eh?” Zal says with a smirk. “Yes, so go break the squat prince’s heart already so we can get back to business.” “Hey, that’s still not going to be easy. I do have feelings for Grahk and he feels strongly for me!” “Yeah, but you don’t love him. You still haven’t said that you did and I wouldn’t believe it at this point anyway, because if you did you wouldn’t be willing to drop him like this. You were seeking an easy way out of this life, but this wasn’t the way and you would have regretted it.” “Yeah, well…I guess we’ll never know now. (Sigh) You’re right though, I didn’t really love him I suppose. Still going to be difficult.” “Pfft. You want difficult, I’m going to have to convince everyone to be happy that we’re out of the drug trade now and taking a loss.” “We all have our burdens to bear. Good luck with yours.” Zalmora says and starts to leave, but then walks back over to hug you. You weren’t expecting it, but you return the hug. “Thank you for your words.” Zal says. “Okay, okay, I think we’ve done enough bonding and getting our feelings out for today.” You say not wishing to get too emotional. Zal kisses you on the cheek and leaves. Now you have to just go find Vaughn and discuss what changes are to come and who is going to be the most troublesome over it. Camid is the obvious one, but probably his closest “circle” as well. Later… “But we’ve got this impenetrable hidden headquarters now! Let the militia fumble around here in the sewers looking for us! Even if they do, they aren’t going to get in without severe losses!” Camid exclaims. “And they can take a lot more losses than we can too and if they do get determined enough they WILL get in here. Things are too hot up top right now and we need for them to cool down a bit. Hence why we need to stop selling Yellow Devil. It’s causing too many problems. We still got the rest, and we can possibly look into other opportunities or…” “This is fucking bullshit!” Camid exclaims which is echoed by a few others. “This isn’t up for debate.” You say. “But we are making coin hand over fist! If anything we should be abandoning everything else and just focusing on selling Yellow Devil! In fact I got an idea for a new drug! It’s…” “I don’t want to hear it! I made my decision and it’s fucking final! What don’t you understand?” “I don’t understand why we’re being stupid about this! Wasn’t the whole point of building this headquarters was to help usher in some new era of the Crimson Talons? Seems like you had us waste a shitload of coin that could have been better spent doing other things.” “Like what for example? You got any ideas Camid? What would have you liked to do instead? You want to run this organization?” Camid doesn’t say it out loud, but he mutters something. “What? What was that?!” you shout. “I said no.” Camid says. “That’s what I thought…” you start to say before you’re interrupted. “Because I wouldn’t want to make Zalmora cry when I it took from her.” Camid says which causes laughter by his fellows. You’re silent for a moment as Camid stares at you defiantly. He’s doubled down on challenging you and already he’s pulling out his sword. You could just shoot him or even tell your loyal Talons to kill him since a lot of them are close enough, but you know that isn’t going to solve the problem, if anything it’s going to make it worse. You’re going to have to beat him in a fair fight. You draw your own weapon and face Camid in combat. It isn’t much of a contest though. While Camid has some above average fighting skills, he hasn’t been keeping them sharp like you’ve been doing. That sort of happens when you have to fight off private night security and dodge militia bullets and arrows on a regular basis. It takes all of two minutes before you’ve given Camid a cut on his face, severed part of his sword hand and got your boot on his chest. “Stop! I yield! I surrender! I surrender! You’re the boss!” Camid shouts holding up his good arm begging you for mercy. “Damn right.” You reply. Then you pull out your flintlock and shoot him in the head. “Take every fool that was laughing at this asshole’s joke about Zal really running things around here and kill them. Think of this as a pay increase for the rest of you.” You say. Your loyalists don’t need anymore prodding than that and waste no time in grabbing Camid’s cohorts and dragging them off. You turn to Vaughn and tell him to go oversee the rest of this mess and make sure your orders are carried out and how you want all the Yellow Devil labs destroyed and if any junkies come sniffing around kill them too. Five days later… Zalmora steps into your office. “Ah, you’re here. Wasn’t expecting you back until tomorrow.” You say. “I had to make sure Grahk left with no hard feelings. It would have been very easy for him to cause trouble for us, but…well you know me.” Zalmora replies. “Yes, you’re very convincing. Guess he really took it hard huh?” “You don’t even know. Actually I was a little surprised myself, but I think in a way it helped him confirm that humans are the scum of the world though. Makes him a little less contradictory.” “Always nice to have your world views reinforced.” “Don’t think he’s ever coming back here though. Not even for Stovo’s pastries.” “Yeah, well I’m sure there are other Halfling bakers to buy from. It’s big world out there.” “Speaking of buying and selling. How did Camid take it about the Yellow Devil distribution?” “He took it in the head and the rest of the ones that agreed with him are also no longer with us. It’s done.” “Hm. I see. Well, I guess everything is settled.” “For now at least. Glad to have you back Zal.” “I’m glad to be back too.” The pair of you smile at each other and get back to Crimson Talon business. With the new changes and Zalmora still at your side, you’re fairly confident that the future will at least be productive. > You time passes... Chapter 3A2: Better Red than Dead Year 30 “We should expand.” You say. “Can we do that?” Vaughn remarks. “It’s probably not a bad idea. Now that shit here has calmed down to a manageable level in Klyton, we could probably spare a few people to open a new Crimson Talon chapter elsewhere. The problem is we don’t have many viable choices.” Zalmora says. “What’re you talking about, there’s Hessla, Holgard, the entire fucking Delantium Kingdom for starters.” You say. “The Delantium Kingdom is Ebony Claw Syndicate territory, have you forgotten?” “No, but the kingdom is a big fucking place. Surely they can’t control all of the damn underworld there.” “Probably not, but I doubt if potentially stepping on their toes is a great idea for us. Same situation in Holgard. They got a chapter there as well.” “Hasn’t that place undergone a couple of rebellions?” Vaughn asks. “Yeah, but as far as I know the Ebony Claw still has a presence.” Zalmora says. “Alright, alright, I get it. We’re not big enough to fuck with the ECS. (Sigh) I know our limitations unfortunately. Okay, so what about Hessla? The Claw doesn’t have a presence there.” You ask. “Sure, but the Headsmen control that place for Governor Tolen. I’m not sure if you know much about Hessla other than the typical misconceptions. But the place is just as orderly as Klyton. In some aspects maybe even more so. Yeah, it’s a haven for pirates and such, but as a general rule the major crimes take place outside the town. The Headsmen catch you stealing there for example and they chop off both your hands at best.” Zalmora says. “Well there’s always risk. I mean we risk the militia here.” “True, but Hessla also has the same problem Klyton does, namely everything is legal except again even more so. I’m not exactly sure what we could do there, in the scheme of things given that most of our profit comes from illegal gambling and stealing shit.” “We could go back to selling Yellow Devil. I mean we wouldn’t be selling it here. Just in Hessla.” Vaughn remarks. Zal just stares at Vaughn with mild disapproval. “What? I’m just contributing here!” Vaughn. “I’m still not convinced that the drug trade is the way to go, but I’ll admit it isn’t the worst idea. It wouldn’t be shitting where we eat at least. However, Governor Tolen would probably take a cut of anything we make just for operating there.” Zal says. “Sounds like if this Tolen asshole wasn’t around we’d be able actually do something in that town.” You say. “Why don’t we just kill him like we had Jake killed? I mean that guy you hired seemed pretty damn effective.” Vaughn suddenly says which causes a bit of surprise from you and Zal. Vaughn doesn’t often contribute this many serious ideas in these sessions, let alone the really aggressive ones. You can only imagine the Crimson Talon success (and relative safer location) has encouraged him a little bit assertive. “Not only would I have to deal with that creepy fuck, Mr. Reynolds again, I’m sure he’d want me to pay out the ass or some other price that will have a catch.” You say. “Well, if we are going to expand in Hessla, getting rid of Tolen would solve some major issues. Hessla is sort of a delicate system. Cut off the head and it’s going to descend into anarchy…at least for a while. I assume his second in command, but I dunno who that might be. Wouldn’t be too hard to find out with some investigation. Tell you what. Before we do anything, why don’t I go to Hessla and check out what the situation is like there first?” Zal says. “Couldn’t hurt I suppose. You gonna be okay going there by yourself?” “I’ll be fine. Better if I just go alone. I know how to blend in better and it’s been a long time since I was in Hessla. Wouldn’t mind updating my knowledge first hand anyway. Might take me about a month to gather what I need to know.” “Okay, but just remember you’re not there to sight see.” The three of you agree to this plan and while Zal goes off on her mission, you and Vaughn return to your usual tasks. A little more than a month passes and just as you start to get a little concerned Zal returns. You actually give her a hug when you see her. “You thought I wasn’t coming back, didn’t you?” she asks. “No, I’m glad to see you is all! Can’t one friend hug another? Look, so what did you learn?” you reply. “More than I expected to.” Zal goes into the situation at Hessla which as she predicted was indeed a delicate one. Governor Tolen does rule the town with an iron fist, but it’s barely a secret that his second in command Captain Illam would actually be worse. It’s just a good thing for the town that he’s at sea most of the time and isn’t in charge. The third person down the chain is a little more hopeful. Zal said she actually managed to speak with a Captain Yan who apparently was wooed by Zal’s charms when she tried to recruit her as part of her crew. After spending a few interesting nights with her, Captain Yan blabbed just about everything. Yan made it pretty clear that she would like Tolen out of the picture entirely and his shake down of anyone that comes through or docks there. She says that he’s basically getting rich just sitting on his ass, while all the hard working sailors are paying him for safe harbor. Captain Yan said if she could she’d make Hessla freer than it claims to be, but she doesn’t have the support to attempt a coup of any sort, plus she wouldn’t really want to be in charge of a town. Her love of the sea is too great to be stuck in some town. Zal didn’t bring it up that she belonged to the Crimson Talons, but she got the very real distinction that if the Talons came in to help Yan, she’d go through with her plan. Yan certainly has the inside knowledge of the Governor’s mansion and such. Plus Yan now seems to have a bit of a crush on Zal. “What the hell is it with you?” Vaughn asks. “Hey, I just know how to lay it down like that.” Zal remarks. “Well this is all certainly useful information. If what you’re saying is true. We could get rid of this Tolen AND possibly have free reign of the town if this Yan isn’t actually going to stick around to govern. What about this Illam guy though?” you ask. “Don’t know. I mean I assume we kill him too. Yan’s not an admirer of him either.” “That’s a lot of fucking people to kill. I mean this isn’t a simple assassination. We’re talking a full-scale assault and we can’t expect to not take losses ourselves.” “Well nobody said it was going to be easy.” “No…but I think we’re going to need help after all.” You say with a heavy sigh. “Wait, so you’re going to go to Mr. Reynolds?” “Hey, I don’t necessarily want to, but if I think it would help to have a highly skilled bloodthirsty assassin on our side, I’m not going to just dismiss the possibility.” “Well, it’s up to you boss man.” You figure at the very least you can pay him a visit. If you don’t like what he says, you can always leave. You’d rather have the extra help if possible. Zal and Vaughn defer to your decision and the next day you walk into Mr. Reynolds' office. As soon as you walk in, you see a strange ogrish looking creature, but much shorter than one. In fact if it wasn't for the oversized teeth and general monstrous appearance, you might mistake it for a very muscular dwarf. You also see Henry, or at least you assume it's Henry. He hasn't changed much since the last time you saw him, though he's sporting a few scars across his face now. Finally you see Mr. Reynolds and he certainly hasn't changed. Once again he stands up smiling at his desk. "Well what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit from the head of the infamous Crimson Talons this fine day?" Mr. Reynolds says. "I might need some people killed." You say. "Hm, straight to business I see. Okay then, I assume there is some reason why you aren't having your own people taking care of this?" "Let's just say, I think we might need some help on this one." "Hm, Sounds serious, you planning on taking out the Klyton Council?” he chortles. “No, just the Governor of Hessla…well and his second in command.” As you go into a little more you manage to get a genuine look of interest on Mr. Reynolds face. “Ambitious. Though I’m not sure I can help. You see I mostly deal in matters concerning Klyton. Although…well I’m not sure you’d be interested in that…” You haven't been here five minutes, and he's already playing mind games... "Just fucking spit it..." You start to shout, but then you stop and then calm yourself before continuing. "Mr. Reynolds, with all due respect, I have come here asking for assistance on this matter as I once did in the past. Your son did a marvelous job last time even if... I didn't quite appreciate its thoroughness last time. I am willing to pay your costs if they appear to be reasonable." You say. Mr. Reynolds listens intently and smiles. "I'm glad to see that wisdom has come with your age. That's good. Last time our business together was less than cordial. That's okay though, I still got paid. As I said, I would love to help you again in this matter, but I'm afraid due to this being an outside job as it were, the cost is going to be quite high. Not just because of that however, but also because my son Henry takes things a bit more personal than I do. Though I’m sure I can convince him for the right price.” Mr. Reynolds says. “Okay, but what is the price? How much?” you ask. “Oh no, there won’t be any money for this…well okay one thousand gold coins should do it on that front.” “A thousand? Is that all?” “No. Of course not. You have to leave Klyton.” “Me?” “Well you and all your little Talon buddies. Basically I want YOU out of this city and set up shop in Hessla which should be wide open after I help you.” “This is ridiculous! My goal is expansion not relocation! Why the hell should I move and why do you want me to anyway?” “My reasons are my own, but that’s my price. Besides, I’m also going to throw in that fine gentleman over there to help.” Mr. Reynolds points over to the ogre looking creature. "And who is that?" You ask. "Who is that? Don't you see the family resemblance? This fine gentleman is the late great Olaf's son!" Mr. Reynolds exclaims. "The late Olaf?" "Yes, it was a sad day when Olaf passed a few years ago. Died right here in the office in his sleep in fact. He will be missed. But anyway his son Olaf Jr. has been following in his father's large footsteps and I don't mind saying he's been doing a fine job for me and his own mother is very proud of him." You remember that Mr. Reynolds once said Olaf was married to a halfling. You can't imagine how that birth was even possible let alone how she survived the process. It does however explain Junior's strange appearance by ogre standards. (Or any standards actually) Mr. Reynolds goes on to assure you that he has more than enough skill to help do the job you require especially since the ogre is unlike his father and has embraced technology. He particularly has a great love of weapons that do damage on a massive scale. “Really, with both Henry AND Junior working with you, you probably won’t suffer any losses at all. Just think, you’ll have an entire town at your mercy. Really, what are you losing by leaving Klyton? Despite all your precautions, you still live hiding in the shadows and eking out a lesser existence than you could be. The milita and the Council will always be a problem for you, but at Hessla? YOU could be the law. You’re a natural leader obviously. In the right environment you could truly thrive to your full potential.” Flattering words to get you to do what he wants no doubt, but he isn’t entirely wrong. > You take the help “Alright fine, but this is a big thing. We’re replacing an entire regime. Your people better be all in on wiping out every fucker that stands against us.” You say. “Oh of that you can be assured.” Mr. Reynolds remarks. “Good, because if I think they’re doing anything less than that, I’m going to be less inclined to just pick up and leave here. Also, I need to run this by one of my people so she can go inform the other people that are against Tolen. It would at least help if we had a little coordination in this endeavor.” “Sure, sure. Just return with the payment and let me know when you’re ready. Don’t take too long though; I do need these fine gentlemen for other jobs. Look forward to working with you again.” You can’t say you feel the same, but you feel a little more confident in your chances with Mr. Reynolds’ psycho son and his pet ogre half-breed. Now you just have to run this over with Zalmora and try to coordinate. “We’re leaving Klyton?!” Zalmora exclaims. “Gee boss that seems a bit extreme.” Vaughn adds. “Yeah well that’s the decision. We’re going all in on this because if we pull it off, we’ve got an entire town to play around with rather than what we got here. Building an underground complex was a good attempt, but I realize now that in order to be a proper force in this world, we need to be unrestrained. Anyway, this isn’t up for debate and we’re doing this in a week so Zal, you need to get going back to Hessla and tell all your little pirate friends to get prepared.” You explain. “A week? We might need longer than that to properly plan!” “Well you’ve got seven days. Should be more than enough time and whether they’re ready or not, we’re hitting Hessla and hitting it hard. If they aren’t going to be with us, they can stay the fuck out of the way.” Zal and Vaughn are both a bit flabbergasted at your rather extreme approach to all this. You know Zal wants to argue and Vaughn probably even wants to say something, but they can both see how you’re not going to budge on this so they just comply. “Okay, fine. Whether I convince them or not I’ll meet you a few miles away from Hessla near the copse of trees off the side of the road. You’ll know it when you see it. And I also just want to say I still think this is a bad idea.” Zal says before leaving. Well you knew she’d get in the last word. You have Vaughn use up some of the treasury to acquire some more gunpowder weapons (and traditional ones as well), meanwhile you take your payment to Mr. Reynolds who tells you that his people will meet you at Hessla as they prefer to travel by themselves. “Don’t worry, they’ll be ready by the time you arrive at Hessla.” Mr. Reynolds says. You return to your headquarters and inform Vaughn to gather everyone tonight because you’re making your way to Hessla tomorrow. Later that night when you have all the Talons in your presence, you give a last minute speech about how this is a positive move and it will only be beneficial for the organization in the long run. While most members had already been informed about this new development the same day you accepted Mr. Reynolds’ help, most of them are still processing it and naturally some are still unsure of the whole leaving Klyton thing. “Do you mean we really can’t return here ever? Like not even to visit?” someone asks. “Well, we aren’t going to be able to take everything from here in one day and it wouldn’t make sense to anyway given that we’re going into a full scale battle. So what we’re probably going to do when we’ve settled everything in Hessla, is come back over the course of maybe a week and move all our remaining shit out of here through the escape tunnel. That’s it though.” You explain. “But, I mean me mum lives here and she needs me to take care of her.” Someone else says. “Yeah, and I got a wife and kid!” shouts another. “I don’t like Hessla, I’ve been to there once and all their whores got that weird sea smell. Feels like I’m fucking a mermaid or some shit.” replies another. “This seems like a bad idea boss, I mean I don’t want to step out of line, but…” “ENOUGH! This is what the fucking plan is and it’s not up for fucking debate! You got tonight to settle your shit, make arrangements and take whatever you need because tomorrow we’re leaving. If you don’t fucking like it, then you can get the fuck out right now! We can get along without you AND if I see any of you deserters in Hessla in the future, you’re fucking dead!” you shout. There isn’t too much more grumbling or debating after that. As for you, you don’t have much to take. About the only thing you wish you could take is all this shit that you had built. Seems like it was all a damn waste of money now, but what’s done it done. After packing what you need, you get some rest because it’s going to be the start of an eventful week tomorrow. The next day, you take a head count of who is around and see that some of them decided to abandon you which isn’t surprising considering you really expected some of them would. You just hope Zal comes through with her pirate friends and Reynolds’ psychos for hire are at the top of their game. You all start to exit through the escape tunnel fully armed and prepared. You almost feel like a military general leading an army. You just wish you inspired more loyalty and not just because some of your members deserted you, but because as soon as you exit the escape tunnel there’s a contingent of Klyton militia waiting for you. Looks like one of the deserters wasn’t taking any chances on you possibly having him killed so he snitched on you. Musket fire rings out and you and several of your people are shot. You take a hit to the upper part of your leg and you fall the ground shouting in agony. Not far from your body is Vaughn who was lucky enough to get killed immediately with a shot to his head. The Crimson Talons who weren’t killed or otherwise incapacitated desperately attempt to escape either through the wilderness or back through the tunnel. Hardly matters though since the militia is in full force and everywhere. You’re not getting taken in alive though. Even if they bother to heal your leg, you know you’re going to just get thrown in one of those hanging cages outside of Klyton at best. At worst they’re just going to publicly execute you anyway. You manage to get off a couple shots with your flintlocks, and even manage to stab one the militiamen in the leg from your prone position, but eventually you catch another musket ball in the chest and soon one of the militia finishes you off with a spear to your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3A2: Better Red than Dead Year 30 “We should expand.” You say. “Can we do that?” Vaughn remarks. “It’s probably not a bad idea. Now that shit here has calmed down to a manageable level in Klyton, we could probably spare a few people to open a new Crimson Talon chapter elsewhere. The problem is we don’t have many viable choices.” Zalmora says. “What’re you talking about, there’s Hessla, Holgard, the entire fucking Delantium Kingdom for starters.” You say. “The Delantium Kingdom is Ebony Claw Syndicate territory, have you forgotten?” “No, but the kingdom is a big fucking place. Surely they can’t control all of the damn underworld there.” “Probably not, but I doubt if potentially stepping on their toes is a great idea for us. Same situation in Holgard. They got a chapter there as well.” “Hasn’t that place undergone a couple of rebellions?” Vaughn asks. “Yeah, but as far as I know the Ebony Claw still has a presence.” Zalmora says. “Alright, alright, I get it. We’re not big enough to fuck with the ECS. (Sigh) I know our limitations unfortunately. Okay, so what about Hessla? The Claw doesn’t have a presence there.” You ask. “Sure, but the Headsmen control that place for Governor Tolen. I’m not sure if you know much about Hessla other than the typical misconceptions. But the place is just as orderly as Klyton. In some aspects maybe even more so. Yeah, it’s a haven for pirates and such, but as a general rule the major crimes take place outside the town. The Headsmen catch you stealing there for example and they chop off both your hands at best.” Zalmora says. “Well there’s always risk. I mean we risk the militia here.” “True, but Hessla also has the same problem Klyton does, namely everything is legal except again even more so. I’m not exactly sure what we could do there, in the scheme of things given that most of our profit comes from illegal gambling and stealing shit.” “We could go back to selling Yellow Devil. I mean we wouldn’t be selling it here. Just in Hessla.” Vaughn remarks. Zal just stares at Vaughn with mild disapproval. “What? I’m just contributing here!” Vaughn. “I’m still not convinced that the drug trade is the way to go, but I’ll admit it isn’t the worst idea. It wouldn’t be shitting where we eat at least. However, Governor Tolen would probably take a cut of anything we make just for operating there.” Zal says. “Sounds like if this Tolen asshole wasn’t around we’d be able actually do something in that town.” You say. “Why don’t we just kill him like we had Jake killed? I mean that guy you hired seemed pretty damn effective.” Vaughn suddenly says which causes a bit of surprise from you and Zal. Vaughn doesn’t often contribute this many serious ideas in these sessions, let alone the really aggressive ones. You can only imagine the Crimson Talon success (and relative safer location) has encouraged him a little bit assertive. “Not only would I have to deal with that creepy fuck, Mr. Reynolds again, I’m sure he’d want me to pay out the ass or some other price that will have a catch.” You say. “Well, if we are going to expand in Hessla, getting rid of Tolen would solve some major issues. Hessla is sort of a delicate system. Cut off the head and it’s going to descend into anarchy…at least for a while. I assume his second in command, but I dunno who that might be. Wouldn’t be too hard to find out with some investigation. Tell you what. Before we do anything, why don’t I go to Hessla and check out what the situation is like there first?” Zal says. “Couldn’t hurt I suppose. You gonna be okay going there by yourself?” “I’ll be fine. Better if I just go alone. I know how to blend in better and it’s been a long time since I was in Hessla. Wouldn’t mind updating my knowledge first hand anyway. Might take me about a month to gather what I need to know.” “Okay, but just remember you’re not there to sight see.” The three of you agree to this plan and while Zal goes off on her mission, you and Vaughn return to your usual tasks. A little more than a month passes and just as you start to get a little concerned Zal returns. You actually give her a hug when you see her. “You thought I wasn’t coming back, didn’t you?” she asks. “No, I’m glad to see you is all! Can’t one friend hug another? Look, so what did you learn?” you reply. “More than I expected to.” Zal goes into the situation at Hessla which as she predicted was indeed a delicate one. Governor Tolen does rule the town with an iron fist, but it’s barely a secret that his second in command Captain Illam would actually be worse. It’s just a good thing for the town that he’s at sea most of the time and isn’t in charge. The third person down the chain is a little more hopeful. Zal said she actually managed to speak with a Captain Yan who apparently was wooed by Zal’s charms when she tried to recruit her as part of her crew. After spending a few interesting nights with her, Captain Yan blabbed just about everything. Yan made it pretty clear that she would like Tolen out of the picture entirely and his shake down of anyone that comes through or docks there. She says that he’s basically getting rich just sitting on his ass, while all the hard working sailors are paying him for safe harbor. Captain Yan said if she could she’d make Hessla freer than it claims to be, but she doesn’t have the support to attempt a coup of any sort, plus she wouldn’t really want to be in charge of a town. Her love of the sea is too great to be stuck in some town. Zal didn’t bring it up that she belonged to the Crimson Talons, but she got the very real distinction that if the Talons came in to help Yan, she’d go through with her plan. Yan certainly has the inside knowledge of the Governor’s mansion and such. Plus Yan now seems to have a bit of a crush on Zal. “What the hell is it with you?” Vaughn asks. “Hey, I just know how to lay it down like that.” Zal remarks. “Well this is all certainly useful information. If what you’re saying is true. We could get rid of this Tolen AND possibly have free reign of the town if this Yan isn’t actually going to stick around to govern. What about this Illam guy though?” you ask. “Don’t know. I mean I assume we kill him too. Yan’s not an admirer of him either.” “That’s a lot of fucking people to kill. I mean this isn’t a simple assassination. We’re talking a full-scale assault and we can’t expect to not take losses ourselves.” “Well nobody said it was going to be easy.” “No…but I think we’re going to need help after all.” You say with a heavy sigh. “Wait, so you’re going to go to Mr. Reynolds?” “Hey, I don’t necessarily want to, but if I think it would help to have a highly skilled bloodthirsty assassin on our side, I’m not going to just dismiss the possibility.” “Well, it’s up to you boss man.” You figure at the very least you can pay him a visit. If you don’t like what he says, you can always leave. You’d rather have the extra help if possible. Zal and Vaughn defer to your decision and the next day you walk into Mr. Reynolds' office. As soon as you walk in, you see a strange ogrish looking creature, but much shorter than one. In fact if it wasn't for the oversized teeth and general monstrous appearance, you might mistake it for a very muscular dwarf. You also see Henry, or at least you assume it's Henry. He hasn't changed much since the last time you saw him, though he's sporting a few scars across his face now. Finally you see Mr. Reynolds and he certainly hasn't changed. Once again he stands up smiling at his desk. "Well what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit from the head of the infamous Crimson Talons this fine day?" Mr. Reynolds says. "I might need some people killed." You say. "Hm, straight to business I see. Okay then, I assume there is some reason why you aren't having your own people taking care of this?" "Let's just say, I think we might need some help on this one." "Hm, Sounds serious, you planning on taking out the Klyton Council?” he chortles. “No, just the Governor of Hessla…well and his second in command.” As you go into a little more you manage to get a genuine look of interest on Mr. Reynolds face. “Ambitious. Though I’m not sure I can help. You see I mostly deal in matters concerning Klyton. Although…well I’m not sure you’d be interested in that…” You haven't been here five minutes, and he's already playing mind games... "Just fucking spit it..." You start to shout, but then you stop and then calm yourself before continuing. "Mr. Reynolds, with all due respect, I have come here asking for assistance on this matter as I once did in the past. Your son did a marvelous job last time even if... I didn't quite appreciate its thoroughness last time. I am willing to pay your costs if they appear to be reasonable." You say. Mr. Reynolds listens intently and smiles. "I'm glad to see that wisdom has come with your age. That's good. Last time our business together was less than cordial. That's okay though, I still got paid. As I said, I would love to help you again in this matter, but I'm afraid due to this being an outside job as it were, the cost is going to be quite high. Not just because of that however, but also because my son Henry takes things a bit more personal than I do. Though I’m sure I can convince him for the right price.” Mr. Reynolds says. “Okay, but what is the price? How much?” you ask. “Oh no, there won’t be any money for this…well okay one thousand gold coins should do it on that front.” “A thousand? Is that all?” “No. Of course not. You have to leave Klyton.” “Me?” “Well you and all your little Talon buddies. Basically I want YOU out of this city and set up shop in Hessla which should be wide open after I help you.” “This is ridiculous! My goal is expansion not relocation! Why the hell should I move and why do you want me to anyway?” “My reasons are my own, but that’s my price. Besides, I’m also going to throw in that fine gentleman over there to help.” Mr. Reynolds points over to the ogre looking creature. "And who is that?" You ask. "Who is that? Don't you see the family resemblance? This fine gentleman is the late great Olaf's son!" Mr. Reynolds exclaims. "The late Olaf?" "Yes, it was a sad day when Olaf passed a few years ago. Died right here in the office in his sleep in fact. He will be missed. But anyway his son Olaf Jr. has been following in his father's large footsteps and I don't mind saying he's been doing a fine job for me and his own mother is very proud of him." You remember that Mr. Reynolds once said Olaf was married to a halfling. You can't imagine how that birth was even possible let alone how she survived the process. It does however explain Junior's strange appearance by ogre standards. (Or any standards actually) Mr. Reynolds goes on to assure you that he has more than enough skill to help do the job you require especially since the ogre is unlike his father and has embraced technology. He particularly has a great love of weapons that do damage on a massive scale. “Really, with both Henry AND Junior working with you, you probably won’t suffer any losses at all. Just think, you’ll have an entire town at your mercy. Really, what are you losing by leaving Klyton? Despite all your precautions, you still live hiding in the shadows and eking out a lesser existence than you could be. The milita and the Council will always be a problem for you, but at Hessla? YOU could be the law. You’re a natural leader obviously. In the right environment you could truly thrive to your full potential.” Flattering words to get you to do what he wants no doubt, but he isn’t entirely wrong. > You go it alone Whatever Reynolds reasons are you aren’t going to just abandon everything you built here. “Yeah, I don’t think so. We’ll get by.” You say. “As you say. Good luck on your little endeavors.” Mr. Reynolds replies with a little nod before going back to his work. You return to Zal and Vaughn and tell them you’ll be doing this on your own. Zal seems to be a lot more pleased with this idea. Zal tells you it would be best if you all met with Captain Yan so you can coordinate this coup. In the meantime, she says she’ll return to see Yan and hammer out when to meet so Yan doesn’t just suddenly go sailing off to sea. Another couple weeks pass before you hear from Zal again and now she’s telling a new tune… “What the fuck do you mean it’s off?!” you exclaim. “I’m sorry, but there have been some changes and Yan isn’t sure if…” Zal starts to say. “Oh fuck this is just perfect. This bitch gets cold feet and it’s our dicks just swinging in the freezing air. What the hell kind of pirate is she anyway? Shouldn’t she be jumping at the chance to slaughter her enemies?” You say. “We waited too long.” Vaughn says. “To hell with it, we can do this ourselves. Me, you, and you. We’re going to sneak into the Governor’s mansion or whatever the fuck he lives in and we’ll assassinate him.” You say and start getting ready by putting various objects into a pack. “Wait! I really don’t think that’s a good idea! The Governor has protection up the ass! We need Yan’s support if we’re going to do anything! Seriously I can fix this!” Zalmora says trying to calm you. “How Zal? What are you going to do? More of your persuasive talking skills? Lick this Yan bitch into submission? Fuck this, we need to act. I’m not going to be limited to just THIS little shitty piece of Klyton because some are too fucking afraid to grab their destiny!” “Will you listen to yourself? What’s all this about destiny? Did Reynolds get into your head or something? Going in half cocked is not the way and you KNOW this! Listen. I can fix this. I’m confident that I can get Yan to see it my way again. She’s just so used to the status quo she’s afraid to take that next step even if she wants to. She just needs a little push. Remember, sort of like the one I gave you years ago? That turned out alright it would seem.” You stare at Zal in silence for a moment and then stop hastily putting shit into a pack. You inhale and exhale to gain your composure. “Okay. I’m calm. Very well Zal, you usually know best. I’ll give you another chance to convince this wishy washy bitch, but if you don’t succeed, we’re going through with my plan.” You say. “I understand, but just don’t do anything until I come back with news. At the very least I can try to find a better way to assassinate Governor Tolen than just storming in his home and hoping we don’t get killed in the process.” You nod and dismiss Zal, confident that she’ll come through for you. A couple weeks pass and there isn’t any word. Vaughn begins to wonder if she didn’t get killed, like maybe Yan double-crossed her or something. You think though if something like that happened you would have gotten a warning of some sort. Like Zal’s head sent to you as a threat to not enter Hessla again. You decide to give it a little more time and if she doesn’t return soon, then you’ll go to Hessla yourself. Turns out the trip won’t be necessary and you’re hit with another unexpected bit of news. This time via messenger who approached Vaughn when he was going about business topside. “I dunno, the guy said it was from Zal. She told him to find me and give me the letter. Not sure how he knew where to find me though.” Vaughn says giving you a scroll. “Probably because Zal knows you’ve been taking your rent boys to the same location to fuck them for years and told him exactly where you’d be. Plus she knows better than to give away the location to our headquarters to some stranger and knows I barely ever leave this place. (Sigh) Well let’s see what this says…why do I feel it isn’t going to be good news?” you say opening the scroll. Your thoughts aren’t wrong, but you never expected…this… First off, I just want you and Vaughn to know that I’m okay. I’m better than okay actually. The pair of you have both been good friends in this unglamorous life we’ve chosen. I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but ultimately we’ve always been there for each other. I suppose that’s why I stayed with the Talons as long as I did. I didn’t have much, but I knew I at least had you guys. And this is what makes this all the harder. I have to leave. I’m going to leave with Yan. She’s been in a similar situation here in Hessla, though in her case Governor Tolen is an outright asshole so it’s an easy decision for her to just hoist the sails and leave Hessla and never return. We’ve found a lot in common with one another and we enjoy each other’s company. I mean I dunno if this is love or what, but I feel I need to at least take this chance. I need to move on with my life. If I don’t, I’ll get talked out of it again like I did with Grahk, though I still think you were right in that case. But this is different. I can’t explain it, and I don’t think you’d understand really. Right now I’m sure you’re already pissed. You’re probably already planning to come in full force to Hessla and raise fucking hell. Please don’t though, I’m already gone. Just take care of yourselves okay? And if you ever see an opportunity that can take you to a better life. Take it and don’t look back. Goodbye, and I love you both. Zalmora You trail off a bit as you finish reading the message out loud. You’re a bit dumbstruck. Vaughn is in the same boat. Eventually you just neatly roll the scroll back up and put the ribbon back on it, then you gently place it in your desk drawer and sit back down. You then start going over your profit gains for this year. “Boss?” Vaughn says. “Vaughn, you’ll be handling the shit that Zal was in charge of, if you need extra help I trust you’ll be able to promote the appropriate folks.” You respond calmly. “But…what are we going to do?” “What can we do? Zal took off on a fucking ship to parts unknown. I don’t exactly have a magical crystal ball to see where she went, and I wouldn’t bother anyway. She obviously wasn’t happy here, so it’s better off that she’s gone. Don’t need her anyway.” “Boss…now you don’t mean that. Look, I don’t wanna step outta line here and I know you didn’t want to show it for some reason, but I know you had stronger feelings for her than just being friends with her. I mean aren’t you pissed at this betrayal?! Aren’t you upset? Don’t you wanna go kill this Yan bitch for stealing away Zal? I mean I never saw this coming! Did you?” “No…at least not like this. But what’s done is done and that’s a funny notion you have about my feelings towards Zal there Vaughn. I’m fine. Best to just move on.” “Well what about Hessla? Are we still going through with the plan?” “Oh that. No. Obviously we don’t have the support now and Zal was probably right that we’d only just get ourselves killed if we tried ourselves. No, we’ll just seek further opportunities here in Klyton when they arise.” Vaughn can’t believe how you’re taking all this. Eventually he leaves you be and goes off to perform his duties. When he leaves you lock the door and read the scroll again. You sigh heavily and you wipe a few tears come from your eyes. “It’s okay Zal. Not mad. I get it. Good luck.” You say. > You time passes... Year 34 “Shit, that’s the fifth patrol down here this week!” you say. “I know, the militia has actually managed to round up a few of our guys too recently. Really hoping nobody is going to snitch us out at this point.” Vaughn remarks. While your members are generally pretty loyal, it’s always a bit of a concern and you’re not exactly filled with confidence. The last few years have just been getting worse with the militia patrols, you don’t understand why since you were keeping a low profile. That was the whole point of getting out the drug trade. Your gambling game room hasn’t gotten raided yet, but you’re getting the uneasy impression that it won’t be long if this keeps up. “Okay, we’re going to have to make some changes maybe. I dunno. Maybe we need to hire another…” Before you can complete this thought, one of your other members comes rushing into the room. “Boss! Someone is knocking at the wall and they keep saying in a taunting voice that they know we’re in here. They also say they want to speak to you directly. They said that he’s coming to YOU with a deal this time.” Dorian remarks. You don’t even need to know who that might be. “Shit, fucking Reynolds. Okay, we’re going to let him in…” “What?!” Vaughn exclaims. “He’s already here and knows. If we just ignore him he’ll just make things worse for us. I never like dealing with him either, but I usually at least hear him out. However, we’re not going in this unprepared. Everyone in this place get yourself armed and ready. Load up any crossbows and firearms and keep them close! Dorian, I want people by the front entrance AND I want them in the escape tunnel just in fucking case. I wouldn’t put it past Reynolds to know about that shit.” “Got it boss, anything else?” Dorian asks. “Yeah, ONLY let him in. If he’s got a creepy ass guy with a goatee or a weird looking ogre with him don’t let them in. Vaughn you better go with him.” “On it.” Vaughn says and the pair of them leave, while you’re rechecking your flintlock and grab your spare. You practice a few times pulling your pistols as quick as you can along with drawing your sword because you have no idea how this is going down. Eventually Vaughn enters with Mr. Reynolds who looks smug as usual. “Mmm, this isn’t a bad little place. Your dwarven friend did a nice job. I assume that’s what all those dwarves were really doing down here years back. Certainly couldn’t be fixing the sewers. I swear if you took the Council’s collective intelligence together you might have enough brains to put your shoes on the right feet assuming you didn’t drool all over yourself first. Well, things are going to change when I get elected.” Mr. Reynolds remarks. “Elected? Wait? YOU’RE running?” you say. “Oh yes, I feel it’s time someone started doing things right in this city for a change. I mean sure Klyton is better off than a place like Holgard or definitely Hessla, but we can always do better you know? I’ve lived here a long time and I think the only way things are going improve is if I can be in a better position. Of course I’ll have to give up my old business, but Henry is willing to take that over. He’s come along nicely in that regard.” “Okay, so what’s all this got to do with me?” you ask. “Quite a bit actually…you seem tense. Everyone here seems tense. Relax everyone, I came here alone and my presence here is a good thing.” Mr. Reynolds reassures you. “I find that hard to believe…but state your agenda.” “Always to the point. That’s why I think I’ve always enjoyed not just doing business with you, but your family in general. Anyway, the Crimson Talons are a black eye on this good city. Now granted I understand you aren’t really hurting anyone and you do keep a relatively low profile, but well…you guys need to go. Getting rid of you lot would really help show I’m dedicated to cleaning up scum. No offense of course.” “…I see…” “Now wait, before you start threatening violence, I have a proposal. Instead of just reporting your exact location to the militia and being active in your execution or incarceration, it would be even better for me, if I could…what’s the word…tame…no civilize…no… ah assimilate you lot instead. It would prove that this city doesn’t need to waste most of its money on security. I mean come on, they hardly need half the force they employ to even take you guys out to begin with.” Reynolds says with a chuckle. You’re hardly amused. “Yes, I can see you want me to get to the point. Fine. I’m not unsympathetic to the plight of the poor folks. I understand that there needs to be an entertainment place that caters to the lesser clientele. You and your Talons do provide that service a bit. So what I’m proposing is you guys do it legitimately. I’m opening up a new gambling hall as part of my Council election and I want all you lot to work there. And you m’boy get to run the place. Now how’s THAT sound to you?” Reynolds says. “Sounds too good to be true and that there has to be a catch.” You answer. “Well…you lot WOULD have to vote for me. And in your case you’d need to go register as a proper Klyton citizen. Don’t believe you were actually born here were you? Other than that? None at all. I mean I would get some of the profits obviously since I would own the place, but really what’s that compared to your freedom?” “Freedom” You’re sure that Mr. Reynolds finds the use of that word amusing considering you’re essentially at his mercy. He’s probably been planning this for a while. Makes sense now that he wanted you completely out of Klyton the last time you nearly dealt with him. Still it’s not a bad deal considering your time as a rogue is obviously coming to an end here in Klyton. You sometimes feel more like a manager than a crime boss nowadays anyway. What’s one more step to legitimacy? Though it also rubs you the wrong way of getting forced into this situation and part of you just wants to kill Mr. Reynolds for his presumption. You don’t doubt that he’s more than he appears, but he’s also over confident and he’s in here with not just you, but several others ready to do your bidding. > You kill Mr. Reynolds You had it with this asshole. You don’t say anything; you just pull out your flintlock. Mr. Reynolds’ eyes flinch a bit and he moves his hand up in front of him, but he doesn’t quiet do it quick enough before you manage to catch him in the shoulder. He falls backwards in his chair. Before you can follow up with your other pistol, Vaughn has no missed a beat and has taken it upon himself to shoot Reynolds with his own pistol. He gets a headshot, splattering part of Reynolds face and brain matter on your floor. At which point Reynolds begins making these horrible screeching sounds and twitching violently. They aren’t normal human sounds of pain either. Indeed if Mr. Reynolds was human he shouldn’t be making any more noise at all. Of course you always suspected there was something more to him. You and Vaughn both start chopping and stabbing him repeatedly to make sure he’s dead, until you start hearing noise, shouting and screams coming from outside your office. With Reynolds no longer moving, you and Vaughn rush out of your office and see several of your people running away from where the escape exit is located. “What the hell is going on?” you shout at the nearest Talon running by. “Someone broke in through the escape tunnel and is killing our people!” “The militia?” “No! It’s just one guy!” the Talon says and runs past you. “Fuck, it’s that asshole’s son. So much for Reynolds claiming he didn’t come alone.” You say. “Shit, that’s guy’s a fucking killer.” Vaughn remarks. “Yeah, well you can run if you want, but I’m not.” You say and head back to your office where you have a little something extra for Henry. Vaughn reluctantly follows and stands by the door. He’s got his faults, but he’s always loyal. You open up one of your safes and grab two firebombs. No sooner have you also grabbed a torch off the wall, you hear Vaughn shouting and the sounds of combat. You turn around and see Vaughn up against a wall struggling to not get a dagger pushed into his throat by Henry. You don’t think, you just act. “Sorry Vaughn.” You whisper, light the bomb with the torch and throw it in the direction of Vaughn and Henry. You then duck down behind your desk for cover. A loud deafening explosion soon follows. While your desk protects you from the immediate detonation, it is blasted enough that part of it is no longer covering you at all and you probably would have had large wood splinters and chunks embedded into your flesh had you not been wearing appropriate protection. You slowly get up despite your ears still ringing. There’s smoke everywhere though the small fires burning lumps of bloody flesh are allowing you to see through it. Mr. Reynold’s body which was a bloody mess to begin with, is now practically just a smeared blood stain on your floor. A little further where the door to your office once was lies Vaughn in several burning pieces. After coughing a bit from the smell and the smoke, you finally see your target, Henry who apparently still isn’t dead. He’s burnt, bloody, and attempting to crawl away with one arm intact, but some how still alive. He’s making the same horrible raspy sounds his dad was making when you killed him. You take your sword and walk over to the charred form that is Henry and drive it through the back of his neck. His sounds cease altogether. As you’re pulling your sword back out, your hearing is starting to return back to normal which allows you to receive the sounds of shouting. It sounds far away, but it’s coming from the front entrance. Upon a quick glance, you see that the fools who ran off didn’t bother shutting the wall properly and now combined with the noise of the explosion your headquarters is probably going to be crawling with any militia that was patrolling down here. Time to go. As you’re muttering about how much this situation sucks, you silently are just glad you’ve got an alternative way out of this place. You pass several bodies as you make your way towards the escape tunnel. Henry really did a damn job on your people. It’s just a good thing you had people near the escape tunnel otherwise Henry might have caught even you unawares. Still, while it doesn’t surprised you that Reynolds knew about it, you’re wondering HOW he found out. Part of you even wonders if maybe he had connections to that dwarven bastard Grahk. You guess it hardly matters at this point. You’ve worn out your welcome at this city and you’re going to have to find some place new. Perhaps Hessla? You get to the door to the tunnel and are surprised to find it closed. You would have thought with all the running and killing nobody would have bothered. You open it up. “Oh shit.” You see standing before you Junior holding some sort of weapon you’ve never seen before but flames flicker from the barrel. He’s wearing goggles, some sort of weird one piece suit covering his massive body and flashes a toothy smile. Before you can close the door, Junior pulls the trigger on his weapon and a gout of flame envelopes your entire body. You turn and scream as your skin and hair burn and sizzle. Your attempts to roll on the ground to put out the fire are useless since Junior just follows you from a safe distance and keeps immolating you. Eventually your burning body joins the other lifeless ones around you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 34 “Shit, that’s the fifth patrol down here this week!” you say. “I know, the militia has actually managed to round up a few of our guys too recently. Really hoping nobody is going to snitch us out at this point.” Vaughn remarks. While your members are generally pretty loyal, it’s always a bit of a concern and you’re not exactly filled with confidence. The last few years have just been getting worse with the militia patrols, you don’t understand why since you were keeping a low profile. That was the whole point of getting out the drug trade. Your gambling game room hasn’t gotten raided yet, but you’re getting the uneasy impression that it won’t be long if this keeps up. “Okay, we’re going to have to make some changes maybe. I dunno. Maybe we need to hire another…” Before you can complete this thought, one of your other members comes rushing into the room. “Boss! Someone is knocking at the wall and they keep saying in a taunting voice that they know we’re in here. They also say they want to speak to you directly. They said that he’s coming to YOU with a deal this time.” Dorian remarks. You don’t even need to know who that might be. “Shit, fucking Reynolds. Okay, we’re going to let him in…” “What?!” Vaughn exclaims. “He’s already here and knows. If we just ignore him he’ll just make things worse for us. I never like dealing with him either, but I usually at least hear him out. However, we’re not going in this unprepared. Everyone in this place get yourself armed and ready. Load up any crossbows and firearms and keep them close! Dorian, I want people by the front entrance AND I want them in the escape tunnel just in fucking case. I wouldn’t put it past Reynolds to know about that shit.” “Got it boss, anything else?” Dorian asks. “Yeah, ONLY let him in. If he’s got a creepy ass guy with a goatee or a weird looking ogre with him don’t let them in. Vaughn you better go with him.” “On it.” Vaughn says and the pair of them leave, while you’re rechecking your flintlock and grab your spare. You practice a few times pulling your pistols as quick as you can along with drawing your sword because you have no idea how this is going down. Eventually Vaughn enters with Mr. Reynolds who looks smug as usual. “Mmm, this isn’t a bad little place. Your dwarven friend did a nice job. I assume that’s what all those dwarves were really doing down here years back. Certainly couldn’t be fixing the sewers. I swear if you took the Council’s collective intelligence together you might have enough brains to put your shoes on the right feet assuming you didn’t drool all over yourself first. Well, things are going to change when I get elected.” Mr. Reynolds remarks. “Elected? Wait? YOU’RE running?” you say. “Oh yes, I feel it’s time someone started doing things right in this city for a change. I mean sure Klyton is better off than a place like Holgard or definitely Hessla, but we can always do better you know? I’ve lived here a long time and I think the only way things are going improve is if I can be in a better position. Of course I’ll have to give up my old business, but Henry is willing to take that over. He’s come along nicely in that regard.” “Okay, so what’s all this got to do with me?” you ask. “Quite a bit actually…you seem tense. Everyone here seems tense. Relax everyone, I came here alone and my presence here is a good thing.” Mr. Reynolds reassures you. “I find that hard to believe…but state your agenda.” “Always to the point. That’s why I think I’ve always enjoyed not just doing business with you, but your family in general. Anyway, the Crimson Talons are a black eye on this good city. Now granted I understand you aren’t really hurting anyone and you do keep a relatively low profile, but well…you guys need to go. Getting rid of you lot would really help show I’m dedicated to cleaning up scum. No offense of course.” “…I see…” “Now wait, before you start threatening violence, I have a proposal. Instead of just reporting your exact location to the militia and being active in your execution or incarceration, it would be even better for me, if I could…what’s the word…tame…no civilize…no… ah assimilate you lot instead. It would prove that this city doesn’t need to waste most of its money on security. I mean come on, they hardly need half the force they employ to even take you guys out to begin with.” Reynolds says with a chuckle. You’re hardly amused. “Yes, I can see you want me to get to the point. Fine. I’m not unsympathetic to the plight of the poor folks. I understand that there needs to be an entertainment place that caters to the lesser clientele. You and your Talons do provide that service a bit. So what I’m proposing is you guys do it legitimately. I’m opening up a new gambling hall as part of my Council election and I want all you lot to work there. And you m’boy get to run the place. Now how’s THAT sound to you?” Reynolds says. “Sounds too good to be true and that there has to be a catch.” You answer. “Well…you lot WOULD have to vote for me. And in your case you’d need to go register as a proper Klyton citizen. Don’t believe you were actually born here were you? Other than that? None at all. I mean I would get some of the profits obviously since I would own the place, but really what’s that compared to your freedom?” “Freedom” You’re sure that Mr. Reynolds finds the use of that word amusing considering you’re essentially at his mercy. He’s probably been planning this for a while. Makes sense now that he wanted you completely out of Klyton the last time you nearly dealt with him. Still it’s not a bad deal considering your time as a rogue is obviously coming to an end here in Klyton. You sometimes feel more like a manager than a crime boss nowadays anyway. What’s one more step to legitimacy? Though it also rubs you the wrong way of getting forced into this situation and part of you just wants to kill Mr. Reynolds for his presumption. You don’t doubt that he’s more than he appears, but he’s also over confident and he’s in here with not just you, but several others ready to do your bidding. > You work for Mr. Reynolds While it might be satisfying to kill Mr. Reynolds, it’s hardly the smart play and you’re just going to bring more trouble on yourself. Maybe you’ve gotten like Zal did, you’re starting to question whether to go on with this lifestyle. It was fun in the beginning and now its just work. And if you’re going to work, you might as well not worry about getting arrested or killed by the militia or slinking about underground where even if you aren’t walking around in shit as much, you still have to do it more than the average person. You’re done. You want something better and while you aren’t convinced that this is it. It will at least be better than what you have now. “Alright Reynolds, I’ll agree to all this, but under two conditions. I want to at least name this new place.” You say. “Hah. Fine. I was never the best with names anyway.” Mr. Reynolds says. “And I want to be able to walk away at any time.” “By the gods son. This isn’t some life binding contract I’m holding you under.” “Yeah, well I never know with you.” “Fine, if it will put your mind at ease, you’re personally free to leave if you like. Not sure why you’d want to, but as I said, you’re free to do so.” “Okay then, so where is this new place and when do we make the transition?” “Oh I think you’ll like it. It’s your family’s old inn. It’ll be converted a little of course, but that’s where it’s going to be.” You let out a little chuckle at that bit of information. Mr. Reynolds says you can continue your activities down here until the renovation on your family’s old inn is finished. He says you shouldn’t have to worry about militia patrols anymore though. After Mr. Reynolds explains a bit more information he bids you goodbye. Vaughn approaches you immediately. “Boss, are you sure about this? I mean are we really trusting him?” “Yes, I’m sure. It’s what’s best for the organization. Just because we’re going legit doesn’t mean we’ve suddenly disappeared. We’ll probably all be making a better living than we are now anyway. And as far as trusting him? Sure why not? We trusted Zal and you see what happened there. Reynolds is a fucking snake, but if he’s lying at least I won’t be disappointed. Fairly sure he’s been direct though, besides he’s very careful about making deals and not breaking them.” A few months pass and eventually you and your people move to your family’s old inn. You knew it had been abandoned ever since it shut down, so you never saw what it looked like originally. What it looks like now however is fairly nice though. Lot nicer than sewers or underground tunnels at any rate. As you and your people get set up, you find that the private rooms upstairs where your father and grandparents must have lived weren’t changed much. Some of the furniture is even still around. You might as well live here. You sit down on a nearby dusty chair and just think on how you got here. You can only imagine what your parents or sister would say if they could see you now. “Well, it took me a long time, but I’m finally a working man with a real job and I hope you’re all doing well right now.” You say to yourself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 27 You have to admit, despite the close calls, the stress of changing the layout, and the several times you almost wanted to kill Grahk, he came through and this place is a lot better than you could have expected, if much smaller. This place is less of a “budding underground town” and more of an underground mini-fortress and really maybe that was a more realistic goal anyway. You have sturdy walls, rooms, and a hidden entrance within the sewer with a couple of durable security doors just in case the militia does the find the place. You also have an escape route dug out far enough that you’d be able to getaway long before they broke in. But that’s just your headquarters. There is another secret area where you hold the gambling games, races and fights. Besides it being a better idea to keep the actual activities (and the plebs) away from your main base, Grahk actually said it would be better structural wise to build two separate and smaller hidden locations rather than just one big one which be a lot more costly to maintain and keep from collapsing. So that’s what you did. Still, you decided to keep one business out of both of the new areas. Namely the Yellow Devil creation and distribution. You aren’t having any junkies going in either to get their fixes and YD stinks something awful that it would defeat the damn purpose of leaving the sewers if you were creating it in these nice new areas. Due to all the expenses you had to pay for with the dwarves, you had to go back to the old methods of pulling heists and burglary because the drugs, gambling games and fights weren’t enough. Of course that was mostly you, Zal and Vaughn doing those, because you wanted to make sure it was done right. On the plus side, it’s kept you in shape and your skills sharp. It also raises your respect among the rest of the Crimson Talons since they know you’re willing to get right in the thick of things and aren’t just delegating. The downside is you’re still not exactly rolling in coin and you don’t think you’ve had real rest since this project began and you’re always vaguely tired, but then as they say no rest for the wicked. The other side effect is you’ve created a minor “crime wave” throughout Klyton to the point where things are getting out of hand for the militia slightly. Besides the ongoing breaking into shops and homes, your increased production of Yellow Devil has created an epidemic of “meltbrains” as they are called. Didn’t help that you got the idea from Camid to start cutting the drug to make it less lethal, while still keeping most of it’s “positive” effects for the user. Still causes a lot of irreversible long-term damage that most aren’t coming back from, which now probably makes it even worse. Junkies are living long enough to cause real problems hence the crime wave. You’ve been extremely fortunate that the authorities have mostly been turning the city upside down and making mass arrests to every petty criminal they can get their hands on, but so far they haven’t done much with the sewers. There were a few close calls with some minor patrols, but Grahk’s crew has been pretty good in keeping their real activities (and you) secret. Grahk’s Council buddy must have an incredible amount of trust in him or maybe he’s just corrupt. You have no idea, you’ve never met him. Still, Klyton’s uncharacteristic lackadaisical alertness on this matter is going to be coming to an end. Grahk is done with the task and will be leaving soon, which means Klyton will probably be stepping up their patrols down here. Not even the rumors of a killer reptile man is going to scare them away. (You question if this Scales is even down here, surely you would have run afoul of him, with all this work the dwarves have been doing) But the only concern you have right at this moment is the information you’ve just heard. “What?! You’re leaving?!” you exclaim. “Figured I should let you know. Despite our differences at times, I respect you enough to not just disappear.” Zalmora says. “Hold on you’re going to have to re-explain this again. This is just out of nowhere.” You say and take a seat. “It really isn’t. Grahk and I have been seeing each other for quite some time since he got here for this project.” “Yes, I’ve seen you two speaking with one another every so often. Sometimes it looked a little more than that, but I didn’t take you for the running off and getting married sort!” “What can I say? Grahk made a very good offer.” “Given what comes out of his mouth half the time, he doesn’t even like humans.” “Well he likes me and I’m very fond of him. Also, I’ve realized that this life…well it isn’t the one I want any more.” Zal says waving her arms in the air and making motions about her surroundings. “So…what? You’re going to go pop out a bunch of bearded babies and be a nice little housewife in some dark underground cavern?” “I’m already practically living in an underground cavern now! And dwarves and humans can’t reproduce with each other…well as far as I know. Besides, he’s already got a couple of children from his deceased wife, so that isn’t going to be an issue anyway.” “But what are you going to DO with yourself? I mean I’m guessing you’re going to go back to the Cloudpeake Mountains. Dwarves aren’t known for being all that accepting of outsiders at the best of times. You’re not likely to have any friends.” “Yeah, well it isn’t like I really have any here either.” You’re a little taken aback. “Wha…? What? What about me and Vaughn? What about all the Talons that respect your abilities?” you say. “Those are subordinates, not my friends. You’re my boss, not my friend. And as for Vaughn…well okay, you’re right about him, but he’s hardly enough to keep me around here waiting for the inevitable.” Zalmora responds. “And what’s that exactly?” “This whole place is going to raided and all of you are either going to get pinched or killed. Best case scenario, you escape with nothing.” “That’s some severe lack of confidence in your soon to be dwarf husband’s abilities. Besides, you were originally enthusiastic about this whole project and the potential.” “I know I was at first, but the original goal has changed now hasn’t it? Look, maybe everything won’t be all doom and gloom and maybe everything does go smoothly, but the fact that I realize is that I’m getting old and I’m enjoying this type of life less and less. I soon learned that on the last heist we did and I nearly got my head blown off by the militia.” “You’re hardly old Zal, I mean you’re acting like you’re ready for the grave.” “If I keep on this way, I soon will be. Look, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought for quite some time.” “So again, I ask what are you going to do with your time? I mean I really can’t envision you as some housewife. You’re going to get bored and dissatisfied.” “And how do YOU know that? Maybe I’ll find it a great relief not worrying about which shop to rob or whether or not if I’m going to get arrested or killed. And who says I’m not going to find something to do while I’m up there? Grahk owns his own business you know. I’m sure I can help with that in some way.” A moment of silence comes over you and you cease looking at Zalmora. You can’t believe you might be losing your best “employee.” It would appear you took it for granted that she’d always be around. Though you did always consider the possibility that she might die in the service of the Crimson Talons just like anyone, but something about this is much different and you don’t like this form of parting of the ways. At least not without trying to do something about it. “What would it take for you to stay?” you ask. “Nothing. I told you, I’ve made up my mind about this.” Zal says. “Bullshit. You wouldn’t have told me at all, if you didn’t want me to make the attempt to at least come up with an offer.” “…I…I don’t know where you got that idea from, but I already told you that I came to you about this because I respected you enough to not sneak off in the middle of the night.” Zalmora sputters. “And I’m not buying it. I don’t buy that you’re ready to settle down and live a boring ordinary life. I mean I’ve SEEN you get the thrill even during that last heist where you almost got your head blown off. I mean maybe the safe life does have its advantages, and if you were marrying a Delantium prince who was going to shower you with jewels and a royal palace I’d say congrats and just let you go without a fight. Hell, if you said that you LOVED this dwarf I wouldn’t stand in the way, but you didn’t say that. You just claimed fondness. You’re not moving up, you’re just trading one life of compromise for another.” “You seem to be very interested in my well being…are you actually jealous? Is this some crush you’ve been harboring because if it is, I’m going to tell you right now that…” “No! It’s nothing like that. While you don’t consider me your friend, I consider you mine, because quite frankly I don’t have any either and it’s hard enough to have someone trustworthy and reliable in this business as it is. You were the one who gave me all the most important advice that resulted in rebuilding the Crimson Talons to be a viable organization again. And yeah, maybe I didn’t listen to all of it, but I do acknowledge that I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you and I can’t see me getting too much further without you by my side either. I need you.” Now Zalmora is speechless and looks away. You stare at her, but she makes sure to not look in your direction. You know she must be trying to hide obvious signs of being upset. “Are you alright?” you ask. “I…I…yes…I’m fine.” Zal says and then turns around and quickly wipes one of her eyes. Zalmora composes herself a bit and then speaks. “Very well. I do have one request if I’m going to consider staying. We have to stop selling Yellow Devil.” Zal says. “What? But that’s what kept us afloat! If we hadn’t been selling it, we wouldn’t have been able to afford the new headquarters!” you reply. “Yes, and now that project is over with. We can get by without dealing it. Yellow Devil is going to cause us nothing but trouble in the future. I’m already seeing that, don’t you?” “Well I’ll admit, its got its share of problems, but it’s the biggest money maker and a lot of the Talons aren’t going to be happy about no longer selling it. Specifically Camid.” “Look, this isn’t a negotiation. This is my stipulation. I’ll leave you to deal with the repercussions as you see fit. Grahk is leaving in a week. You’ve got three days to tell me your decision, because if you value my friendship as much as you claim and you do decide to stop selling, then I’m going to need the rest of the week to deal with Grahk before he leaves, because I’ll be breaking not just his heart but an agreement and you know how serious dwarves are about those.” > You let Zalmora go This is the business you’ve chosen and sometimes that business takes priority over friendship. You appreciate Zalmora and all, but you’re not going to just give up your best moneymaker that is not only going to result in a loss, but also cause discord within the organization. Not to mention, you are sort of wondering what kind of postion you’ll be putting Zal in, if she has to break up with a dwarf. They aren’t fond of broken promises after all. He could not only make trouble for her, but you as well. The cons are outweighing the pros. “You know what, I’m being a selfish asshole. I want you here for my own purposes and I’m trying to talk you out of having a happy life. That’s not what a real friend does, and who the hell am I to question your feelings for the dwarf? Not like I’m an expert on relationships. So I think you should go and leave this life behind. You deserve good things Zal.” You say. Zal looks at you in silence for a moment. “Fuck you.” She says and starts to leave, which causes you to immediately try to stop her. “What?! What did I say? I just wished you well!” you exclaim. “Yeah, and did you really think I was going to fall for that shit right after your initial speech? I’m not a fucking idiot, thought you knew that by now. You were right about one thing though; you are being a selfish asshole. I ask you for one fucking thing. ONE. And one that will be beneficial in the long run, but do you give it up? No. Obviously you don’t give a fuck like you claim and then you tried that totally transparent it’s not you it’s me shit. Yeah, I’m done. Have a nice life running this place without me boss man.” Zal says and pushes you out of the way. You briefly think about trying to stop her again, but you think that’s going to result in real violence. You sort of fucked up. You laid it on a bit too heavy, and you probably should have just been straight with her. At least the goodbye wouldn’t have been as bad. Well there’s nothing for it now. You’ll just have to move on. Year 28 The militia’s increased activities have put a serious dent in your non-drug related endeavors. People would rather not get caught up in the middle of a war between a violent criminal organization and a violent government organization so the gambling games have dwindled to near nobody and that includes the bum fights too and to be honest most of your bum fighters are Yellow Devil addicts now. Realizing that now Yellow Devil is the only major money maker, you made your gambling games location into the new Yellow Devil lab since nobody is going to be using it for it’s intended purpose anymore. Your main lab is also be better protected and hidden in this way as well. Of course recently the name “Yellow Devil” has come into question… “Yellow Angel?” you ask. “Yes! I’ve been thinking, we’ve already been changing basic YD so much that it’s not really the same product anymore. It might as well have a new name. Also it sounds a lot nicer don’t you think? I mean what could be better than one of those friendly angels that the Joachim priests talk about? An angel that takes you and flies you up higher than you’ve ever been. Makes it sound a lot more enticing than a devil dragging you down to hell or melting you.” Camid says excitedly. You have to admit, it’s one of the better ideas he’s had. “Hmm, yeah. Actually I’ve been wondering if we should start expanding and I’m not talking about just here. I’m talking to other places like Hessla, Holgard or even the Delantium Kingdom. I might send you Vaughn to go get another Crimson Talon chapter started.” You say. “Me? I dunno boss. I mean I suppose Hessla would be okay, but Holgard and the Delantium Kingdom? Isn’t that Ebony Claw territory?” Vaughn remarks. “What if it is? The kingdom is a big fucking place. They don’t get to have all of it and who knows what’s going on in Holgard and who’s in charge there. The place keeps having rebellions and revolutions. Seems like the place is up for grabs for anyone.” “If you say so boss. I feel I should also inform you that the militia has been stepping up patrols in the sewers and starting to go into areas they previously were leaving alone.” “Yeah, we’re going to be directly dealing with that. I want us to start trapping the patrol locations first. No direct attacks yet, but those might be coming soon.” “By the gods, we’re actually taking on the militia?” Vaughn asks. “We are, because that’s the only way we’re going to get them off our backs at this point. We need to make it so bad for them that the costs are going to outweigh the benefits and they’ll be better off going back to busting meltbrains than trying to wipe us out.” “But taking on the militia is surely going to require all the resources we have. I mean if you send me and a few others to open up another Crimson Talon chapter elsewhere, won’t you be risking getting overwhelmed by the militia?” “Well that is certainly a risk, but if you’re successful where I send you, that’s extra revenue and support in the long run which will help in fighting off those militia bastards.” Vaughn looks a little unconvinced, but like the loyal member he’s always been, he just agrees with you. He doesn’t really have a choice anyway. Your choice is determining where to send him. The Delantium Kingdom might be a bit far for right now. You figure Hessla or Holgard will be good enough. You actually even think about Teckleville, though you aren’t sure if a small town like that would be that ideal. Also, despite the fact you got run out of there, you still consider it home and you’re a little hesitant to start flooding it with Yellow Angel and recruiting from there. So you immediately dismiss the idea. > You expand to Hessla Vaughn is going to be more comfortable going to Hessla and it’s closer so that’s probably the best place to expand. After supplying Vaughn with a good portion of Yellow Angel, you send him and a couple outright thugs and one of Camid’s “apprentices” on their way to Hessla. You tell him you want someone to send you a report on the situation by the end of the month. In the meantime you have everyone available to start trapping portions of the sewers and continue business as usual. One month later You finally get a report from Vaughn and he tells you that things aren’t going as well as hoped. Hessla apparently isn’t quite as lawless as imagined It actually does have it’s own security called the Headsmen. They’re fairly vigilant and they report directly to governor Tolen who has complete control over everything that goes on in the town. What this all means is selling your Yellow Angel there is perfectly fine, in fact it’s even getting popular, but Tolen is taking fifty percent of the profits! There isn’t much Vaughn can do though, for now he says you can’t expect much profit funneling in from Hessla at this time though he’s looking for potential opportunities. You don’t hold out much hope though given that this is Vaughn and has never excelled in that field. On the Klyton front things aren’t much better. The militia has suffered some set backs, but it’s clear they aren’t going to give up. Camid has made steps to set up smaller labs not just in the sewers, but even topside in the more run down areas of Klyton. The best way to keep them off balance is to not let them focus too much attention on any one location. You think your next investment is going to be in more gunpowder weapons. Year 29 “So what does Vaughn say?” Camid asks. “He says that he’s finally worked out a better deal with Governor Tolen, but it’s going to require me to be there to hammer out the details.” You say after reading the message scroll. “Oh. So when are you going?” “Not sure. As soon as possible given how important this is, but I almost hate to leave since I’ll be concerned about everything that’s going on here without me.” “Don’t worry about it boss! I can look after things while you’re gone.” “Hmmm, I’m sure.” While Camid might be genuinely trying to be helpful, ever since the complete transfer to selling Yellow Angel, he’s been getting puffed up with his own relative importance. A guy like him and ambition are a dangerous combo. He already seems eager for you to leave, is he planning something? Still, this is a pretty important meeting and honestly things are probably never going to completely be calm in Klyton. You’re just going to have to have a measure of confidence in Camid that he’ll be able to handle shit and isn’t smart enough to plot anything meaningful against you. “Alright Camid, you’re up, but we’re going to go over so fucking ground rules of how I expect shit to be run around here in my absence.” You reply. You spend a good portion of the day going over plans, routines and what to do in certain events. He’s up to speed on most of the stuff, and is at least making the effort to seem completely compliant to your orders. With some slight apprehension, you pack some of your stuff and leave for Hessla the next day. You wish you could take a carriage to get there quicker, but given the situation with the militia; you’d rather not risk being seen in public around Klyton at all. Your journey to Hessla doesn’t take too long however and it’s relatively uneventful. Vaughn told you in the message to meet him at the Sensual Siren tavern and he’d be there every day until you showed up. As you’re asking for directions and walking about the town, you see that Hessla is indeed much different than you imagined. It’s more orderly and many times you see groups of the infamous Headsmen that Governor Tolen employs to keep the peace. Eventually you reach the Sensual Siren and after looking about the dark tavern, a familiar voice calls over to you. “Hey Boss! Over here!” Vaughn shouts and waves you over. It’s been a year since you’ve seen him, but Vaughn look a lot different. He’s shaved his facial hair in a fancier style and is dressed more…”piratey.” You also notice several Headsmen in the tavern who are watching everything going on in the place. “Well looks like you’ve gone native.” You say sitting down. “Oh. Yeah all this. I figured I should look more the part around here. It doesn’t hurt.” Vaughn remarks. “Hey, I don’t care. Dress how you like. So are we going to go see Tolen now? I’m a little anxious to get this meeting over with because I’d rather not have Camid running things for too long while I’m gone.” “Yeah, I understand. How is everything in Klyton anyway?” “Same old shit. Trying to stay one step ahead of the militia and still keep everything running.” “Well I think this new deal I’ve struck with the governor will put an end to some of that hassle.” “Sounds good, so let’s go see the man.” “Okay, um these gentlemen will be accompanying us. The governor’s sort of a stickler about security.” Vaughn says pointing to the Headsmen in the tavern. You look around and see they’re starting gather near you. “Oh, yeah I figured the governor would have a shit load of his men around at all times. Whatever makes him feel safe I guess, let’s get going.” You say. You, Vaughn and a small group of Headsmen all leave the tavern. As you head towards the mansion where the governor, Vaughn talks about how well the Crimson Talon chapter here is doing and that there is possibility of extending to a city called Jicol which lies across the sea. He says the place sounds like it’s open territory. While you’re listening to Vaughn, you start to notice that you’re taking a lot of turns that don’t seem necessary to get to the mansion, which appeared to be a relatively straightforward walk from what you could tell. You look around and you start to feel uneasy as the streets start to get narrow. No sooner have you start to put your hand by your weapon when Vaughn suddenly shoves you aside and runs forward. It isn’t enough to knock you down, but it’s enough to catch you off balance and the Headsmen have taken advantage by nabbing you. You struggle to get free, but the Headsmen have firmly got you restrained. Followed by a few punches and kicks, along with taking away all your weapons and you have the distinct impression that you were paranoid about the wrong person betraying you. You look up and see Vaughn now standing before you with a dagger in hand. He doesn’t look happy, but he isn’t exactly upset about this either. “Gotta say, didn’t see this coming from you. Guess more than just your style changed.” You say. “Stand him up.” Vaughn remarks which causes the Headsmen to do just that. “Better deal huh Vaughn? Was this the governor’s idea, or yours? Probably the governor. You never would have had the balls to think of doing this without help.” You say. “Shut up.” Vaughn says and approaches you with the dagger. “What for? I’m going to shut up forever soon. I will say this, at least you’re doing this yourself and looking me in the eye.” When you say this, Vaughn drops his guard and looks away a bit. “Heh, I was right, this wasn’t your idea. Fucking pathetic.” You say. Vaughn then musters up his resolve and shoved the dagger into your stomach. He then pulls it out and stabs you several more times. You never cry out once and you never stop looking at him the whole time despite the fact he tries to advert his gaze downward most of the time. He never says anything else. Eventually several of your vital organs have been punctured enough and your blood is leaking out of several holes. The Headsmen that were restraining you drop your body and leave it for the street cleaners to dispose of properly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is the business you’ve chosen and sometimes that business takes priority over friendship. You appreciate Zalmora and all, but you’re not going to just give up your best moneymaker that is not only going to result in a loss, but also cause discord within the organization. Not to mention, you are sort of wondering what kind of postion you’ll be putting Zal in, if she has to break up with a dwarf. They aren’t fond of broken promises after all. He could not only make trouble for her, but you as well. The cons are outweighing the pros. “You know what, I’m being a selfish asshole. I want you here for my own purposes and I’m trying to talk you out of having a happy life. That’s not what a real friend does, and who the hell am I to question your feelings for the dwarf? Not like I’m an expert on relationships. So I think you should go and leave this life behind. You deserve good things Zal.” You say. Zal looks at you in silence for a moment. “Fuck you.” She says and starts to leave, which causes you to immediately try to stop her. “What?! What did I say? I just wished you well!” you exclaim. “Yeah, and did you really think I was going to fall for that shit right after your initial speech? I’m not a fucking idiot, thought you knew that by now. You were right about one thing though; you are being a selfish asshole. I ask you for one fucking thing. ONE. And one that will be beneficial in the long run, but do you give it up? No. Obviously you don’t give a fuck like you claim and then you tried that totally transparent it’s not you it’s me shit. Yeah, I’m done. Have a nice life running this place without me boss man.” Zal says and pushes you out of the way. You briefly think about trying to stop her again, but you think that’s going to result in real violence. You sort of fucked up. You laid it on a bit too heavy, and you probably should have just been straight with her. At least the goodbye wouldn’t have been as bad. Well there’s nothing for it now. You’ll just have to move on. Year 28 The militia’s increased activities have put a serious dent in your non-drug related endeavors. People would rather not get caught up in the middle of a war between a violent criminal organization and a violent government organization so the gambling games have dwindled to near nobody and that includes the bum fights too and to be honest most of your bum fighters are Yellow Devil addicts now. Realizing that now Yellow Devil is the only major money maker, you made your gambling games location into the new Yellow Devil lab since nobody is going to be using it for it’s intended purpose anymore. Your main lab is also be better protected and hidden in this way as well. Of course recently the name “Yellow Devil” has come into question… “Yellow Angel?” you ask. “Yes! I’ve been thinking, we’ve already been changing basic YD so much that it’s not really the same product anymore. It might as well have a new name. Also it sounds a lot nicer don’t you think? I mean what could be better than one of those friendly angels that the Joachim priests talk about? An angel that takes you and flies you up higher than you’ve ever been. Makes it sound a lot more enticing than a devil dragging you down to hell or melting you.” Camid says excitedly. You have to admit, it’s one of the better ideas he’s had. “Hmm, yeah. Actually I’ve been wondering if we should start expanding and I’m not talking about just here. I’m talking to other places like Hessla, Holgard or even the Delantium Kingdom. I might send you Vaughn to go get another Crimson Talon chapter started.” You say. “Me? I dunno boss. I mean I suppose Hessla would be okay, but Holgard and the Delantium Kingdom? Isn’t that Ebony Claw territory?” Vaughn remarks. “What if it is? The kingdom is a big fucking place. They don’t get to have all of it and who knows what’s going on in Holgard and who’s in charge there. The place keeps having rebellions and revolutions. Seems like the place is up for grabs for anyone.” “If you say so boss. I feel I should also inform you that the militia has been stepping up patrols in the sewers and starting to go into areas they previously were leaving alone.” “Yeah, we’re going to be directly dealing with that. I want us to start trapping the patrol locations first. No direct attacks yet, but those might be coming soon.” “By the gods, we’re actually taking on the militia?” Vaughn asks. “We are, because that’s the only way we’re going to get them off our backs at this point. We need to make it so bad for them that the costs are going to outweigh the benefits and they’ll be better off going back to busting meltbrains than trying to wipe us out.” “But taking on the militia is surely going to require all the resources we have. I mean if you send me and a few others to open up another Crimson Talon chapter elsewhere, won’t you be risking getting overwhelmed by the militia?” “Well that is certainly a risk, but if you’re successful where I send you, that’s extra revenue and support in the long run which will help in fighting off those militia bastards.” Vaughn looks a little unconvinced, but like the loyal member he’s always been, he just agrees with you. He doesn’t really have a choice anyway. Your choice is determining where to send him. The Delantium Kingdom might be a bit far for right now. You figure Hessla or Holgard will be good enough. You actually even think about Teckleville, though you aren’t sure if a small town like that would be that ideal. Also, despite the fact you got run out of there, you still consider it home and you’re a little hesitant to start flooding it with Yellow Angel and recruiting from there. So you immediately dismiss the idea. > You expand to Holgard If anything you’ve learned here in Klyton, it’s that it isn’t so much the law and order that makes being a criminal suck, it’s when everything is legalized that makes it suck. Despite the rebellion problems in Holgard, you know there is always some sort of iron fisted tyrant in charge that puts restrictions on shit. You’ll probably get a better price for Yellow Angel there rather than Hessla where every substance is acceptable and most likely cheap. While the Ebony Claw is a concern, you can’t quake in fear of them. In fact other than the story Tom told you a long time ago, they have never been a factor in Klyton. Maybe it’s time to see if they live up to their reputation. After supplying Vaughn with a good portion of Yellow Angel, you send him and a couple outright thugs and one of Camid’s “apprentices” on their way to Holgard. You tell him you want someone to send you a report on the situation by the end of the month. In the meantime you have everyone available to start trapping portions of the sewers and continue business as usual. One month later “Hey boss, news from Vaughn. One of our boys is here.” Dorian tells you. “Finally. I hope he’s got good news. Send him in.” you say. “Um, okay, but I should add, he doesn’t look so good. He says there’s some problems” “Wonderful. Well he can tell me himself, just send him in already.” As you wait for the messenger. You just ponder what the hell the problems could be. You’re guessing maybe with the ECS. If Vaughn is asking for more help, your answer is going to be you can’t spare it. You’re having a hard enough time with the militia who haven’t let up despite you making things difficult for them. When the messenger comes in, he’s carrying a box held closely to his chest. You notice he’s not only missing an eye, but he’s also missing a hand. You don’t remember this one’s name, but this was one of the bigger men you sent with Vaughn. This really doesn’t look good. “Boss…the Ebony Claws…we got our asses kicked! We’re undone! Everything is lost!” the big man shouts. “Calm yourself. What the fuck is going on?” “This! This is going on!” the man shouts and tosses the box on your desk. You already got a bad feeling about what’s in the box, but you open it anyway. It’s only half surprising that you find Vaughn’s bloody head in it. The ECS also went out of its way to carve its symbol into his forehead. “Shit!” you shout angrily. “Boss…” the big man starts to say. “Besides you is there anyone left?” “No! They only left me live to…to…” “Yeah, I know. Send the message. Fuck. I gotta deal with the militia here, but I can’t just let those EC fucks get away with this shit. Argh. Gotta think…” You start pacing a bit as you think, but the big man still lingers around “Boss, we gotta get out of here!” he exclaims. “What the hell are you on about?” you ask. “The Ebony Claws! They’re coming!” “Wait, you’re saying the Syndicate is coming here?” “Yes! We gotta go!” “While I get that you’ve probably suffered a bit of torture, but you need to find your strength or get the fuck out of my face. If the Claws are coming here, then I’m going to repay every one of the men they killed with ten of theirs. Them coming here is just going to make it easier. Let them fucking come! I’m going to be prepared!” “No! You don’t understand! They’re coming RIGHT NOW! We…we…told them everything! They know all about the hidden exit tunnel to this place! They only just released me a few moments ago to distract you.” Your expression drops to one of anger to one of unease, but it doesn’t stop you from pulling out your pistol and shooting the pathetic snitch that just sold you out. “EVERYONE GET READY, WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!” you shout and walk past the snitch’s body. Unfortunately it’s already too late. The Ebony Claw Syndicate has already infiltrated the escape tunnel and its members are already inside doing battle with your people, which aren’t many in comparison. The Syndicate apparently decided not to fuck around when considering you a potential threat. It might be flattering if your life wasn’t in grave danger. After dispatching a couple of the ebony claws, your goal is to leave through the “front door” and hopefully escape to the Yellow Angel lab where you can regroup with Camid, assuming that place hasn’t been invaded as well. You get to the front door as the last of your Talons struggle against the Claws. As soon as you do, you get a bolt in your forehead. It all happens so fast, you don’t think you even notice the one who shot you even though they had to be directly in front of you at the time. You just stand there, blink and then fall backwards to the floor as your followers die screaming around you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The sewers are good enough for you. If you start trying to set up shop up top, you're just going to bring down the heat eventually. You've got a good thing going on and nobody fucks with you down here. If worst comes to worst, you're confident that you could easily lose the militia if they actually ever made an effort to patrol down here. Still, maybe you could figure out a way to make this place somewhat less...well like a sewer. You already have made a base in the best abandoned area you can find though. You suppose you could start manually expanding underground further away from the sewers themselves of course that would be a pretty extensive and expensive undertaking and it isn't like you're familiar with the details of excavation. Although... This city used to have a fairly large active miner population once. In fact your family made money serving them at their inn. At some point long after your parents had left the city and the inn closed down, the mining trade dried up completely in Klyton for a variety of reasons resulting in a lot of unemployed miners. In fact some of the bums in your fights are ex-miners. You wouldn't want to rely on just them though, but surely you could scour the city for other ex-miners down on their luck or working jobs they hate. They probably would work cheap. You suppose if you really needed more you could shell out the money for some outside help, but you'd rather keep the costs as low as possible. Later when you approach Zal and Vaughn with this idea, they're caught off guard by this plan, but don't seem put off by it. Well Vaughn doesn't at least. Zal of course has her usual concerns. "Okay, I know that look. Out with it." You say. "It's just...well do you think this is even feasible?" Zal asks. "I'm not saying it's not going to take effort, but again this is a long term plan. I mean going up top, trying to set up false businesses and store fronts is just not going to work in Klyton. The place is just too damn repressive, but we all know people still WANT to do illegal shit like whoring, drugs, gambling..." "Erm, actually all those things are legal in Klyton." Vaughn interrupts. "(Sigh) You know what the fuck I mean! All that high priced shit is easily accessible for the rich folks, but WE cater to the poor and who needs affordable distraction more than they do?" "So...wait. Are we defenders of the down trodden now?" Zal asks. "I didn't say all that, but we ARE providing for them in a way. I mean we can start out by digging ourselves out a proper headquarters where we don't have to be constantly bombarded by the smells of the sewer and has a solid defense, but I'm thinking in time we could just build a whole underground town." Zalmora and Vaughn look at each other and then you. "A TOWN?!" They exclaim. "Well maybe not town in the traditional sense, but a place where we can do our business AND live without even worrying about the Klyton militia raiding the place because we would be so damn entrenched that they wouldn't be able to do shit even if they wanted to. We wouldn't just be the criminal organization that skulks around in the Klyton sewers, we would be a whole separate community...bah maybe I'm not explaining it well, but I envision it in my head!" You say. "No. No, I get what you mean. I have to say, this is really damn ambitious. I mean I can't say I'm not impressed by your plan...but again I just have my concerns if it's going to be possible...but fuck it, I'm in." Zal says. "Glad to hear it. So, we're going to need miners and equipment which is the easy part, but we're also going to need a genuine engineer so the whole damn thing doesn't fall on our heads. So anyone know of any?" You remark. "Yeah, Red Nose Rob." Vaughn remarks. "Who's that?" You ask. "One of the bums that participates in the fights." "There's a bum who used to be an engineer? What the hell happened?" "He was actually a miner, but he had a natural gift when it came to engineering. Which was good for the company since they just used his talents for creating very sound mine supports and they didn't have to pay for a real one. He probably could have been building new structures in Klyton, but he just didn't have the formal education." "Interesting. But how do you know so much about him?" You ask. "He has his lucid moments. Plus, um...we used to...meet up..." "Ew Vaughn. You fucked a disgusting bum?" Zalmora remarks. "No! I fucked him when he was strapping miner! Sheesh Zal!" "Never mind all that, would he be able to do the job?" You ask "I think so. Probably wouldn't have to pay him much more than we do to fight, but we’d definitely have to dry him out a bit though." Vaughn says. You start making notes of various ideas as you ask more questions. "Okay, so we got one potential overseer for this project. You got any more engineer ex-lovers?" You ask. "Not that I know of boss." Vaughn remarks. "I think I got a potential suggestion." Zal says. "Oh? You been fucking engineers too?" You ask. "Even better. Been fucking dwarves. Grahk Kazek is the one that comes to mind." "Well that's nice that you're so open minded with your choice of sex partners, but is this dwarf an actual engineer? Contrary to popular belief, I don't think all of them dig big holes in mountains for a living." "This one does. Or at least he did before he retired. He makes a monthly trip from the Cloudpeake Mountains to Klyton because he REALLY likes the pastries from Stovo's Bakery. Buys up a bunch then goes back home. That's where we met actually." "Didn't know you had ongoing long distance relationship, Zal." You say. "Lots you don't know about me, but I wouldn't exactly say Grahk and I are in a relationship, we just had a bit of fun together. In fact I haven't seen him in years. I just know he still goes to that bakery since Stovo has mentioned him a few times when I go in there." "So would he be interested?" "He's a dwarf and used to construct tunnel ways in the Cloudpeake Mountains. Fairly certain if we throw enough money at him, he'll be willing to oversee the construction of what we're doing. Besides, I can be pretty persuasive." "Hmm, don't I know it." You say. The dwarf sounds good, but he sounds like he's going to be really expensive. At lot more than the bum anyway. Of course the bum might be unreliable. You say you'll think about both as you go ask other Talons if they know anybody. You don't have much luck though. Your other Talons aren't quite as "worldly" as your top lieutenants. There is one who has a lead though. "Yeah, I think I might know someone boss. This chick called Madeline. She actually attends Klyton University and she's an engineering student." Camid remarks. "A student?" You ask. "Yeah, but she's really fucking smart. Top of her class or some shit. I don't even understand what she's talking about half the time. Of course I'm just staring at her tits most of the time anyway.” "How the hell do you even know her?" "Oh, she's a little rich girl that likes slumming. Likes to watch the bum fights and get high on Yellow Devil. The usual. Oh and we fuck sometimes." Of course they do. It would certainly be a strange break in the "theme" if they didn't. The drug bit concerns you though. "Wait, you say she takes Yellow Devil? How the hell is she not a near drooling idiot yet? I don't need someone melting into a pile of goo in the middle of an important project." You say. "Don't worry boss. That wouldn't happen." Camid says. "And how do you know?" "Because...um...I make sure she doesn't actually get Yellow Devil. I mean she does, but it's a VERY small amount. Almost nothing. The rest of it is cut severely with various common shit I get from the apothecary. She feels good for a little while and feels rebellious and she doesn't get really hurt." "...You like this girl don't you?" You ask causing Camid to look away a bit. "(Sigh) It didn't start out that way. First time I saw her, I thought she was so damn pretty that I just wanted a chance to fuck her before she turned into a Yellow Devil mess, so I didn't give her the real shit. But in time...well I dunno shit happened...and I'm probably an idiot..." Camid says trailing off a bit. "Probably, but fortunately your love sick idiocy has worked in your favor, so do you think she'd help?" "Oh definitely. She'd feel like she would be a real criminal working for a dangerous organization and all. She'd do it for free too, not like she needs the money." "Actually she would be a real criminal if she was helping us in this capacity. Good to know about the price. I'll keep her in mind." Well you got a big decision to make based on your underlings recommendations because unfortunately for you, you haven't been lucky enough to fuck someone with engineering skills. > You madeline It might seem to be the less traditional choice of the three, but not having to pay her is a big plus. You just hope she’s actually as intelligent as Camid claims. You return to Camid with your decision who is incredibly surprised that you listened to him. “Um…really? I mean great! That’s great boss! She should be coming by tonight.” Camid exclaims. “She better be as smart as you say. I don’t want to find out she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing.” You say. “No, I promise boss. She’s not just some idiotic rich girl with too much time on her hands.” “Given that she’s hanging out with the likes of you, I find that hard to believe, but when she comes here tonight, bring her by the office. I’ll make a final decision then.” Camid nods smiling and walks away with a bit of pep in his step, like you’ve just promoted him or something. Well, it doesn’t take much to make some folks happy. Also doesn’t take much to upset them either… “What?! You went with Camid’s rich bitch junkie whore? What the fuck are you thinking?!” Zalmora exclaims when she hears the news. “I have to agree with Zal on this. We don’t know much about her other than Camid’s praises.” Vaughn adds. “That’s why I’m going to meet her. If she’s everything Camid claims then we’ll proceed. If not, I can have Camid flogged for wasting my time and we’ll go back to picking one your people.” “Hm, well I’m certainly going to be asking her some questions.” Zal says. “No. YOU aren’t going to be doing anything. I’m going to see her alone, without anyone else’s input. The decision will be final and mine only. I know you like to think you’re the one who runs things around here Zal, but you aren’t and you don’t get a say this time. Deal with it.” Zal purses her lips and gives you an irritated look for a moment, but then she forces a smile and nods. “You’re the boss.” She says and leaves. Vaughn just wishes you good luck with your meeting with Madeline and follows Zal. Later, Camid arrives before you with a young red head with an ample chest. She’s dressed “down” presumably to look like she fits in, but its still obvious she is out of place here. Must be Madeline. “This is the girl I mentioned. Madeline.” Camid says. “I thought as much. I trust you’ve told her some of what this is all about right?” you say. “Yeah, boss.” “Good, less for me to explain then. Thank you Camid, you may leave now.” Camid looks a bit confused at first since he probably thought he was going to be involved in someway, but after waving him away he gets the message leaving you alone with Madeline. “So, Camid tells me you’re an engineering student at the top of your class.” You say. “Yeah…got anything to drink?” Madeline responds while walking and looking around. “No. I don’t partake. I need a clear head to run this place.” You say. “Really? Would have thought all you had to do is kick people around.” “I wish it was that simple. Unfortunately it isn’t. Though speaking of clear heads, I’m a little concerned with yours.” “Oh? This should be good.” Madeline says with a tone of snark that you decide to ignore for now. “Yes. My concern is if you’re as intelligent as Camid claims you are, one wonders why the hell you’re hanging around a bunch of criminals. For kicks? Well I can see that I suppose, but Yellow Devil? Come on, surely a girl like you knows the dangers of doing that vile drug.” “What are you my dad?” “No, just concerned about how reliable you’re going to be. If you’re genuinely interested in working for us or you’re just being a rebel against your real dad and mildly self-destructive.” You sit up a bit from your chair and lean in on your desk. “Convince me.” You say. “Is this where I have to suck your dick?” Madeline asks in a tone almost implying that she could care less if she actually has to or not. “By the gods…no girl. There’s no cock sucking involved. I just want to know more about why you’re even interested in doing this.” Madeline for the first time stops acting so casual about this situation and starts taking it seriously. She goes on to say she isn’t going to tell you her life story, but she wants to make it clear that while you’re probably right on some level about her finding a thrill in all this, she’s genuinely interested in his project from a scholastic point of view too. Namely helping you build an underground headquarters will give her some “life experience” and real chance to use what she’s learning and has already learned especially since she doesn’t hold out hope that she’s going to get a “real job” after she graduates. “Why would that be the case? You’re rich aren’t you? Surely you can get some strings pulled and you could work anywhere.” You ask. “Yeah, if I ask my dad for help and I get too much from him as it is…anyway I might very well get a job, but I’m not actually going to work. You’re probably not aware, but women don’t exactly populate the field and tends to be an old boy’s club. As a result it doesn’t matter how high my grades are, I’m never going to get a project where I’m actually going to be involved in any meaningful way. At best I’d just be kept around so guys stare at my tits all day. If I were a dwarf, it wouldn’t matter what gender I was. (Sigh) Humanity sucks sometimes.” “Hm. I think I understand your position now. You’re using this opportunity to ply your desired trade. That’s actually a reasonable mindset, if an unconventional way to go about it. I still have a few more concerns, but you can tell me more, just let me get my layout plans of what I’m envisioning.” Madeline talks a bit more about herself and how she first met Camid in the first place. It was basically a typical “wild night” with some of her other university associates and they came down to the sewers to “live dangerously.” She actually says she didn’t really want to take Yellow Devil in the first place and it was just a stupid dare the first time. She also says that she’s long since known that Camid isn’t giving her the real stuff. In fact she says she’s not even interested in taking it anymore. From what you can tell, you’re still somewhat correct about her being a little self-destructive. While her self esteem isn’t so low that she’s outright suicidal, there’s definitely enough dissatisfaction in her existence that it’s caused her to not enjoy her life of privilege and instead hang around a violent criminal organization. Probably daddy issues as well given that he’s brought up a couple times and she quickly doesn’t want to talk about him. (Mother is apparently dead) You even try to ask who he is, but she just assures you that he’s not on the Klyton Council if that’s what you were wondering about. However, she seems to perk up quite a bit when she goes through your lay out plans. She starts changing your original plan quite a bit, but she’s respectful the entire time and explains why for everything. One thing that she mentions that you didn’t expect is her recommendation for labor. “Goblins? Seriously?” you ask. “Yes. Next to dwarves, they’re the next best civilized race that has a natural affinity to digging tunnels and building lasting underground structures and not having them collapse. In fact I read when Klyton had vast amounts of miners, the human union made such a stink to the company about employing goblins because they would work cheaper and longer hours. So there were never any proper goblin miners, at least never for long. Most of them are usually in the poorer areas of Klyton as dung sweepers and such, though I know one on campus as a janitor and I’ve spoken with him several times. We’re almost friends in a weird way. I think if I convince him, he can easily gather up more of his buddies.” Madeline remarks. “Hm, interesting. Well, I suppose we’ll gather the rest of equipment.” “Sounds like you’ve got that under control. Um, can I stay here the night and look over these plans and this map of the sewers? I really want to get started on working on designing a new layout and where the best location would be for your headquarters.” “Um… sure. Don’t you have school though?” “Don’t have a class for a couple days. I’m good until then.” “Oh, well I can have a room for you. Can’t do anything about the lingering smell I’m afraid, but then that’s part of why we’re trying to design a place not actually in the damn sewer.” Madeline thanks you and you see her out the door. As strange as this arrangement is, you have a positive feeling about it, though you’re still going to remain cautiously optimistic until you actually see some work from her. In the meantime, you can imagine the comments you’re going to get from Zal about this, but then what else is new? > You time passes... Year 26 “Your school girl would go a lot faster if she was a REAL engineer and didn’t have to leave every once in awhile to go attend classes. And why are we building in two different locations again?” Zalmora asks. “Because Madeline pointed out that it might be better if we didn’t build everything in one place. Said it would be easier to keep the support structurally sound as well if we didn’t build too big. I think it’s coming along fine so far, though the ceilings are a little low. Guess goblins aren’t used to building them high though.” You respond. “Considering you’re spending as much money as you are for this shit, I certainly hope she’s at least a good lay.” Zal remarks. “What? I’m not fucking her.” You say. “Great. So you’re just wasting money for no gain whatsoever.” “We’re getting our new locations! By the fucking gods, what the hell is your problem today?” “My problem is we could have had a real professional do this and probably be done by now. This little school bitch doesn’t know what the fuck is doing and we got goblins running around being the obnoxious little green shits they always are.” “Actually I haven’t had any problem with any of them.” “Ugh, they’re fucking annoying.” “Zal, I’m not going to argue about this anymore. Things are going just fine, you’re just finding shit to nitpick about.” “Have it your way, but here’s one more for the road. If you REALLY aren’t fucking big tits McRed, you better have a little chat with her because I’ve seen how she acts when you speak with each other. Maybe you’re oblivious, but the girl has a serious crush on you.” “You’re talking nonsense.” You snort. “I’m serious. You don’t notice how chipper she is when she speaks to you? How she makes these girly giggles over shit you say which isn’t even funny half the time? How she makes every effort to be very close or even touch your arm or hand when you’re around? If the girl was anymore obvious, she’d have her legs wrapped around you.” Now that you think about it, Zal isn’t wrong on her observations. Madeline’s personality has been a lot more positive since the first time you met her. Though it makes you wonder… “Okay, so say maybe she does, what I find interesting is how you’ve been studying our relationship and interaction. Are you jealous?” you say with a chortle. “Hah! Typical male ego. You wish. But I’ll tell you who IS jealous, Camid.” Zalmora retorts. “Camid?” “Yeah, the repulsive guy in charge of Yellow Devil creation and distribution and stinks of Yellow Devil fumes most of the time? There are already rumors going on about you fucking schoolgirl, I can’t imagine Camid is happy about that, still being her boyfriend and all. I’ve seen this happen before and it never ends well. So if you don’t want a knife suddenly in your back, like I said, you better straighten out this misunderstanding…or at least tell a convincing lie.” “There’s nothing going on with Madeline!” “Hey, I’m not the one you have to convince. I’ll leave you to it boss man, I mean we all know you’re the one who runs everything here.” Zal says and leaves. You hate it when she makes sense. While you had better things to do today, you probably should talk to both of them and do it now just to get it out of the way. Since you’re not exactly in the mood to breath in Yellow Devil fumes right now, you decide to go see Madeline first who as far as you know is overseeing work on the other location. You might as well check on that while you’re at it. After an uneventful walk in the sewers, you get to the location. So far it doesn’t look much different than your future headquarters, though the rooms are bigger. In the biggest of these rooms, you find Madeline ordering about a few goblins in their native language. It’s weird how they don’t mind taking her orders. When they see you, they move even quicker. Madeline turns and sees you as well. She smiles and immediately walks quickly over to you. “You’re here! I didn’t expect to see you so soon after the last time you inspected this place. I would have doubled the work time on it!” Madeline beams. You get the impression that she nearly was going to hug you, but stopped herself. “No, that’s okay. I’d rather you take a little extra time to make sure everything is secure. So is this room going to be where we hold the fighting games?” you say. “Yes, that was my intention. I think it might need more expansion, and of course we’re going to make it look better than it currently does, but it’s well on its way!” “Well I can honestly say you are doing a fine job, and best of all, it isn’t costing me a lot. I gotta talk to you about something though.” “Me too! But first I have to show you this, come with me!” “Um, okay.” Madeline walks ahead of you first, but when you aren’t moving fast enough, she actually pulls your hand in an effort to get you to follow faster. You soon enter a small partially dug out room that has a single lantern lighting it. You don’t see anything out of the ordinary here. “Madeline, what…” you start to ask, and before you know it, she’s all over you. After about a couple of minutes of slobbering over each other, Madeline finally comes up for air. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this…” she says and then goes in to try to kiss you again before you stop her. “Madeline! Hold on! I…can’t…WE can’t do this. I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea!” you exclaim. “Didn’t seem like it when you had your tongue in my mouth and your hand on my ass a few moments ago.” Madeline says. “You…you caught me by surprise! I’m only human damn it! Look, you’re obviously a very attractive girl and maybe you’re into me because I’m being supportive in your dreams or something, but we can’t do this.” “Why not?” “Well for one thing, you’re Camid’s girlfriend and people are already whispering untrue rumors about us. I mean if you were just some whore, it probably wouldn’t be a big deal because…well whores are a whores and everyone is supposed to be fucking them. But you’re not a whore and you’re in a real relationship with another Crimson Talon. Stealing someone else’s girlfriend is just bad for business. It creates hard feelings and much worse.” “I don’t understand. You’re dealing drugs, running illegal fights, and other activities but being with someone who would rather be with you is where you draw the line?” “Well, there’s gotta be a line drawn somewhere. Otherwise this all falls apart. You know, like a support beam for the tunnels you’re building.” “But you’re the boss, can’t you just do what you want?” “Well it’s a little more complicated than that. The key to being in charge is also trying not to be hated. And what about Camid? I thought you and he were together.” “Eh, he was okay at first, but now....well I find him…limited. I’d rather be with you. I like the way I feel when you’re around encouraging me. Camid doesn’t understand anything that I talk about. He just stares at my tits and wants to fuck.” “How do you know that I’m not doing the same thing?” “Obviously you aren’t, because if you did, we’d be fucking right now. My point is, I feel like I can at least converse with you about a variety of things. I mean maybe you don’t understand all my technical university speak, but I know you’re at least on my intellectual level.” “…thanks? I think?” “Plus…this isn’t just some stupid crush like you probably think it is. You’ve been so nice to me. I think…I think I’m really starting to…” “Don’t finish that sentence!” you shout. “Well I can’t help my feelings towards you! Oh I don’t understand why you can’t just kill Camid so we can be together!” Madeline exclaims and then hugs you tightly and trying not to cry. And that intensified quickly. “Madeline. (Sigh) Look. You’re experiencing a phase. You don’t seriously want any sort of long term relationship with someone like me. I mean if you think I’m any better than Camid, you’re only thinking that because I find you useful in a capacity that doesn’t involve sex. I’m NOT a nice guy. Just ask anyone. Hell, talk with Zalmora. She’ll be the first one to tell you all my shortcomings.” You say. “It’s not a phase though…” Madeline says with a quiver in her voice. “Well if it isn’t, you’re just going to have to get over it anyway. Because WE are not happening. I’m not looking for anyone long term and I don’t want it. It’s not who I am. Apologies.” Madeline now starts to cry quietly. “Now if this is just too much for you, I’ll completely understand if you don’t want to work on this project anymore. I can find someone else.” You say. “(Sniff) No. No…I’ll continue the work. I promised to see this through. I…won’t say anything to Camid either (sniff) I’ll just get over it, like you (sob) said…” Madeline says before crying again. You haven’t felt nearly this bad since you left Annah back in Teckleville. Still, you feel this is for the best and hopefully Madeline can indeed “get over it” like she claims. As you leave Madeline to her sadness, you move on to your next unpleasant task and that’s speaking to Camid. You’re not entirely sure how you’re going to tell him though. After another uneventful walk through the sewers you get to the Yellow Devil Den. For obvious reasons you don’t come here that much, because the place stinks worse than the rest of the sewers and always has junkies hanging around, acting crazy or just slowly melting. Though the melting is a little less now that Camid’s made strides in cutting Yellow Devil with less lethal ingredients and still managed to maintain it’s feel good effects. Still doesn’t make you want to stick around though. Several Crimson Talons see you and let you in immediately while pushing away any junkies attempting to get in. Doesn’t take you long to find Camid. He’s surprised to see you. Camid and you head to his own little area where the stench of Yellow Devil fumes isn’t burning your nostrils to talk. You decide to go with a half truth and explain that you’ve been hearing the concerning rumors about you and Madeline and you’re here to dispel them, because it’s not healthy to the organization to have something like that spread around when it isn’t even true in the first place. You explain you have no interest in Madeline other than her work on the project. You even sort of imply you’re actually trying to get back with Zalmora. Camid seems to react positively to your explanation with no hint of any underlining hostility. He either means it, or he’s subtler than you gave him credit for. Either way, it would seem the matter is closed. You return to work and later you see Zalmora and Vaughn. “Well? Did you take care of that business?” Zalmora asks. “Not that it concerns you, but yes I did. Now let’s move on to other things.” You reply. The next few days are a little tense and you stay on your guard. You half expect Camid or Madeline to do something crazy, try to kill you, or something that causes problems. None of that happens though. Weeks pass and while Madeline occasionally gives you a longing glance she never initiates anything. You try to keep your contact short with her. Camid doesn’t act out of the ordinary either when you see him. Neither one mentions their relationship with each other so you assume they’re still together. Then just when you think everything is settled with this situation, disaster strikes. “He’s fucking dead?” you exclaim. “Afraid so boss. Camid was found dead with several large holes in him. Legs, back, chest, head, arms, everywhere.” Vaughn remarks. “Well what the hell happened?” “Dunno. Some of the Talons just found him in his room in the den like that. No signs of anyone breaking in or anything.” Zalmora just looks at you. “Do I even need to say it?” she asks. “(Sigh) No. But I’m wondering how she did it exactly. I just don’t see her as a natural killer and Camid wasn’t a push over…wait a minute. Sonofabitch. She used the little green bastards! They follow everything she says. They’re also small and sneaky enough to dig some little passage that only they could get in and then. You said Camid had large holes all over his body. Probably from pick axes.” You say. “I’m a little lost here, who killed Camid?” Vaughn asks. “The love of his life, school girl killed him.” Zal says. “Wait, why?” “Geez, Vaugh you’re really behind aren’t you? Our glorious leader here turned down her advances a few weeks ago. Surprised the hell out of me too, but messing with another man’s girlfriend isn’t one of the vices he has apparently. It appears though school girl figured out a loop hole and took matters into her own hands.” Zal explains. “Why couldn’t she have just broke up with Camid?” Vaughn asks. “Because that still would have caused conflict if the boss got with her. Camid isn’t likely to be the type to just accept seeing someone else with his ex especially so soon and so close. Nope, had to kill him. Only logical play.” Zal then turns to you. “Which now I guess means the next step is yours heartbreaker.” > You talk with Madeline Well, she did take the initiative and solve the main problem concerning you being together. That’s sort of an admirable trait. The fact that she got her little goblin friends to do it implies she’s actually a lot more dangerous than you could have imagined. You can’t help but find that a little alluring, if also a little concerning. You’re also concerned with Madeline’s possible mental stability if she was willing to go to this much trouble to be with you. You stand up and start to leave. “Where are you going?” Vaughn asks. “I’m going to go see Madeline.” You say. “Well don’t you want back up?” “Why would he need back up Vaughn? I’m sure he can fuck her perfectly well all by himself.” Zalmora says. “I’m just going to go talk with her.” You say. “Sure you are.” Not wishing to debate it any longer with Zal, you leave and head to where you remember Madeline was supposed to be overseeing today which is the new headquarters being built. When you arrive you find it strange you don’t see any goblins running around going about their digging and building. In fact it’s completely empty until you find Madeline sitting against the wall. She looks up when you enter the room. “Hi. I guess you figured it out already.” She says. “Well, it wasn’t incredibly hard to figure out. Where are all the goblins?” you ask. “Oh, I sent them to go work at the other location when they told me you were coming to talk. I figured we should be alone.” “Well that’s…wait. How did they know I was coming to talk? I didn’t even see any of them on the way here.” Madeline stands up and begins to walk over to you. “They didn’t just dig a tunnel into the Yellow Devil Den. They’ve dug tunnels all over the sewers. Mostly under them. Made it easier for them to get around without having to walk about in the actual sewers. They may have also dug some tunnels near your old head quarters…you know, you look very peaceful when you sleep…” Madeline says and goes to touch your face, but you stop her by grabbing her wrist. “You…you’ve been watching me sleep?” you ask. “Just a few times…are you going to kill me?” Madeline asks. “Honestly Madeline I don’t know at this point! I mean never mind the fact that you killed one of my more productive members, but your actions are pretty damn batshit insane. You got goblins doing your bidding, you’re stalking and spying on me, you showed no signs of being a killer before and yet you just killed a man who actually DID love you in his limited way. I mean you’re fucking dangerous, how the hell am I supposed to trust someone like that?” “Because I love you! I did this all for you! I’m doing this ALL for you! I would never hurt you!” At this point Madeline gloms on to you and unsuccessfully tries not to cry. She’s holding on you like you’re life itself, which is funny considering you just said you weren’t sure if you going to kill her or not. You honestly are at a bit of a loss. Instinct is screaming at you that this a bad idea, but along with the emotional shit Madeline is laying on you, it doesn’t help that she feels real good against you right now. She looks up at you with eyes mixed with hope and sadness. There’s probably a tinge of madness in those eyes as well. And from there your face moves in towards hers for the kiss and you shortly after that you finally consummate this relationship. Well you made your decision with your dick…again. Though to be honest when you first went to talk to her, your mind was mostly made up anyway, because despite her obvious mental problems, you really can’t resist a pretty girl who is willing to do all that for you. It’s a huge ego boost for one thing. As far as any actual deeper feelings for Madeline…well you can always try and it isn’t like you don’t have a base to work from. Afterwards Madeline attempts to cuddle with you and all that other stuff that goes along with having a “proper” girlfriend, but you tell her that while you’d love to spend all day just being naked with her, you both have important shit to do and you have to get back to it. Eventually you make your way back to headquarters and of course Zal is there. You already know what’s coming. “Oh you’re finally back, that must have been a very involved discussion.” Zal remarks. “I don’t even want to hear it.” You say. “You won’t hear it from me. You’re the boss, you can do what you want obviously. Camid wasn’t exactly popular so it isn’t like this is going to cause the eyebrows of other Talons to rise. Fairly certain most of them would have killed him to fuck schoolgirl as well, if they had the chance…but then SHE was the one that set that up isn’t she? You must be awfully special to her.” “Okay, Zal.” “Didn’t think you were the settling down type, but I imagine unconditional obsession wrapped in that package is a bit hard to turn down. Must be nice to be loved so unconditionally.” “I thought you said you weren’t going to say anything.” “You’ve been working with me this long and you believed that? Hah, no wonder she got you.” “I don’t have time for this, and don’t you got some work to do?” “Yes, yes, I’m going…but before I do…” “Here we go…” “This relationship is a really bad idea. And I’m not talking just for the survival of this organization, but your survival in general. This girl is not just obviously dangerous, but she’s manipulative as well. You may like the attention you’re getting from her now, but you might not like it when you realize you don’t want it anymore. And when that day comes, it isn’t going to be good.” “Well as usual, you can always leave Zalmora. You’re always bitching about what I do or don’t do. As a matter of fact, I’ll make the decision for you since you seem to be unable to. Get the hell out, you’re not a Talon anymore.” “Get out of here, you don’t mean that…” “The hell I don’t! Why does it matter if you stay here anyway? I mean you’ve hinted on occasion in the past that you don’t really find this life as appealing anymore. So why not get out? You should be thanking me! I’m giving you a rare opportunity to walk away from a criminal organization and not even asking for anything in return.” Zalmora at first is shocked that you would say this to her, but then she chuckles. “Sure, I get it. You’re right, there really isn’t much point in me sticking around now, and maybe it is time for me to move on with my life. Gods know I’ve wasted more of it than probably should have. Anyway, I’m sure school girl will be very helpful in your future endeavors. And I sincerely hope I’m wrong and you and her live happily ever after or how ever that goes.” Zal then looks down a bit, sighs and then finishes her goodbye. “Okay, well I’ll just go say goodbye to Vaughn and get the hell out of your way.” Zal then leaves without another word. You can’t help but wonder if feelings were running a little deeper than she let on. She probably took it for granted that you wouldn’t ever be involved seriously with someone else. She also took it for granted that you weren’t going to eventually get tired of her shit. Still, you’d be lying to yourself if you weren’t going to miss her. She kept an eye on details and things organized. Now you’re going to have to do all that shit yourself, because while Vaughn isn’t incompetent, he’s no Zal. In the meantime, you need to get the Yellow Devil Den running at full capacity again. > You time passes... Year 28 Life is good. Business is going well now thanks to your better locations. More people seem to prefer gambling in an area that smells tolerable for one thing. Madeline also had the goblins build a hidden entrance way topside so folks can now enter directly and not have to muck about through the sewers. Your new headquarters is also much better than the one you had in the sewers The only business you left in the sewers was the Yellow Devil Den. Seemed fairly pointless to befoul your new locations with it and it’s users. Better it should stay in the sewers. Though Madeline actually has told you she has an idea to make a special area for that too since she can easily get the goblin crew to help again. She says she plans to help you out a lot more when she isn’t in school any longer. And graduation for her is coming soon, today in fact. You never thought you’d ever be visiting where your father went to learn to be a doctor, but you aren’t going to miss Madeline accepting her diploma. You genuinely love her as your relationship has grown. You were a little concerned at first, but you found that while it isn’t perfect, you feel pretty comfortable with her. You even have vivid dreams about her. Almost so real that you aren’t even parted when you sleep. You’ve told her all about your life in Teckleville, and your family. She hopes one day that maybe she can meet them, especially your sister. (You still wonder about all of them from time to time) While Madeline has talked about her past, she still hasn’t mentioned too much about her family. Not even about her father who you know she isn’t fond of, but you don’t know why exactly. She just mentions she has no contact with her father other than him paying for her education. It’s never a topic she wishes to discuss; she just wants to focus on the future with you, which is fine as far as you’re concerned. “So how do I look?” you ask. “Well, you wouldn’t be my type, but you do look dapper in that suit.” Vaughn says. “I’m crushed. But good, I don’t want to look too out of place at Madeline’s graduation.” “They grow up so fast huh?” Vaughn snorts. “Okay, don’t even go there with the dad thing. I’m not even that much older than her. I trust you can look after things here for awhile?” “Sure boss, no problem.” You leave Vaughn and head to the surface. You’re not going to walk all the damn way to the university though, so you pay for a horse and buggy to take you there. As you ride, you realize you haven’t really travelled around the city as much since you took control of the Crimson Talons. You’ve mostly been stuck underground most of the time. When you arrive at the university you don’t have too difficult of a time finding where the ceremony is taking place. The university is very clean and orderly, you briefly imagine your father walking around this place back when he was going here. Eventually you get to a big open field area with several seats and a stage set up. Others are already seated so you find yourself a chair in the back. While nobody is staring at you, you still feel a little out of place. You just never thought you’d be at a place of higher learning and attending someone’s graduation ceremony. As you wait for things to get started, someone sits next to you, when you turn to see who it is, you can’t believe who it is. “Glad to see you made it to my daughter’s graduation.” Mr. Reynolds says with a smile. “…you… YOU?! You’re her father?!” you say. “Yes, and shhh. Don’t make a scene. I’m not here to cause problems.” “I can’t believe this.” “I guess she didn’t tell you about me. She never does. (Sigh) Even after all I’ve done for her. Though I suppose if she had talked about me, you would have thought twice about being with her and that would have been a shame…because I know how much you make her happy and she’s going to need that bit of happiness to hang on to where she’s going.” “What? Where’s she going?” Mr. Reynolds chuckles a bit. “She’s going back home of course. Her time here is done, well for now it is anyway.” Mr. Reynolds says. “What do you mean? Isn’t this city her home?” “Klyton is just her current place residence, but her real home is…well it’s very different. You might even say it’s a different realm altogether.” The way Mr. Reynolds smiles at this point makes you completely tense up. You don’t like whatever he’s about to say. “She’s not human m’boy. Well…not entirely human anyway. She’s a bit of a late bloomer though with her powers, but I love her all the same. Let me ask you something though, has she been appearing in your dreams recently?” “…yes.” You answer hesitantly. “Yeah, her mother will probably be coming for her soon.” “Her mother? I thought her mother was dead.” “Oh no. I just told her that her mother died in childbirth. Her mother is really a full-blooded succubus. They aren’t known to be maternal until their daughters have already grown up and shown that they’re worthy of their attention. Displayed powers and such. They never much bother with their male children at all though. I should know.” You have no words. “Of course most of them just eat their off spring as soon as they give birth to them, but I told that bitch, no daughter of mine was going to be a snack. I’ll admit, I wasn’t the best father probably, but I think between me or being breakfast, well I think I’ll be vindicated once Madeline finds out the truth about herself.” Mr. Reynolds says. “You don’t think she’ll be even more pissed at you for NOT telling her and it just suddenly being sprung on her like this?” you blurt out. “…hmmm…y’know I never considered that. Oh well. It isn’t like she’s my only child. My boy Henry starting to show a lot of promise. Can’t wait for him to take over the business someday.” You almost feel like standing up and shouting Klyton has been infiltrated by demon spawn at this point. However, you’ve got bigger concerns. “Does Madeline have to return? I mean can’t she resist?” you ask. “There’s no debate m’boy. She’s going to go. I mean there probably will be an urge to resist at first, but it doesn’t take long before that infernal blood pulls them in and they return to fully embrace their demon powers “ “Always?” “Well, a few sadly succeed. But I promised her mother long ago that if Madeline ever started to bloom that I would do everything possible to help that process along.” “But she’s nice! And good!” you say. “Nice? Good? Ha ha ha ha! That’s a cute. She’s with you, how good can she really be? Plus I know how she killed her old boyfriend with her little goblin influencing powers. Shit, that’s proof right there that’s she’s going to make a fine succubus. She’s already killing boyfriends. Speaking of which, you m’boy have to go.” “What?” “You. You have to go. I’m not having my daughter not achieve her rightful destiny by holding on to her misguided love for you. Now, you can stay to see her graduate, but then you need to leave. And I don’t mean just here. You need to leave the city and go some place far away. If you’re dreaming about her, that means she’s already starting to imprint on you. However, she’s probably not strong enough to find you if you the city. By then her mother and maybe even I will have convinced her to embrace her powers.” You start to say something, but Mr. Reynolds stops you and also grabs your wrist tightly. So tight that it almost feels like he’s going to crush your bones. “YOU are NOT going to stop this son. Take solace in the fact that you NEVER had a choice.” Mr. Reynolds says in a low firm voice. Mr. Reynolds is giving off an aura that puts you completely on the edge terror. This isn’t just a normal threat. You’re seeing something new. Something less human, less mortal even. A faint scent also hits your nose, it’s brimstone. Still despite all this, you do have real feelings for Madeline. Maybe it’s because you left Annah when she was in trouble that you don’t want to do the same thing to Madeline. At the very least, you want to be able to give HER the choice. “Mr. Reynolds…I love your daughter. I can’t just take off and leave without at least presenting my side to her.” You say, mustering all your courage, which causes a smile from Mr. Reynolds. “Fair enough, I can respect that, but let me ask you this…are you REALLY willing to go through hell for her son? Now I want you to think VERY carefully before answering. Because IF you are willing to go all in on proving how much you actually do love my daughter, then I need that answer now.” > Yes No soon have you said yes, when Mr. Reynolds closed smile becomes a disturbing toothy grin. “Thank you son. You just made convincing her much easier.” Mr. Reynolds says and then suddenly touches your chest and you feel like your heart has a hot knife going into it. It might as well have because you feel like death is approaching you quickly as your body begins to seize up. You can’t even cry out. Mr. Reynolds sits you up in your chair and draws attention away from any possible onlookers by sitting you up in your chair so your body just slouches on it without falling. He then makes some out loud comment about you being really tired today and to just rest your eyes a bit if you need to. As this is all happening you just stare the stage where some old guy is talking at a podium. struggling to keep your eyes open. As the graduates are called on stage, your mind begins to get foggy and your lids get even heavier. You manage to just barely see Madeline accept her diploma before everything goes black. You don’t know how long everything is black for, but it’s a long time. Eventually you wake up. First thing you notice is you’re stark naked, laying on a bed and it’s incredibly hot. The room you’re in is fairly nice, so you have to be someplace upscale. When you try to get up however, you find that you can’t move. You’re not being held down by anything either. It’s more of a force holding you down. This doesn’t fill you with confidence that your situation has improved. As you struggle, the door to the room is suddenly opened and there you see her. Madeline. But she’s different now. She’s naked as well for one thing and while you’ve seen her in that state many times, you’ve never seen her skin with a red hue before. One might even say crimson color. She also notice she has little horns protruding from her head. Barely noticeable, but there none the less. You have a sinking feeling that things just got even worse… “Hey, you’re finally awake I was hoping you would soon.” “Madeline…what’s going on?” “We’re in our new house! Do you like the room? If not, we can always change it up for you.” “House? Look, your father…” “Yes, he told me. He told me everything. I always knew you loved me! And now that you’re conscious again, we can have a bit of fun. And I need to have some fun right now.” Madeline says and rushes over to lie next to you in the bed and kisses you. You suddenly feel the force holding you down lifted. While this would be great any other time, you’re still concerned about you situation. “Madeline, I REALLY need to know what’s going on.” You say. “Oh, can we not talk about that right now? You don’t really want to know anyway.” Madeline responds. “Madeline…please. Tell me what’s going on.” Madeline almost looks a bit sad when you insist, but she tells you. “You’re dead baby.” Madeline remarks while stroking your face. “I’m dead?” you ask. “And you’re in the infernal realm.” “I’m in fucking hell?” “Yes, but it could be worse! I mean you’re with me!” Madeline realizes that she might need to give you a fuller explanation so she proceeds to do so. She tells you that her father killed and collected your soul. She says he doesn’t do that often because it requires a lot of energy for him to do so mainly because he’s not a full blood demon, but he felt this was an important occasion. She then says right after she graduated her mother approached her and how strange that event was. The funnier thing she said though is she didn’t completely disbelieve her mother’s story when she heard it as she always felt like there was something more to her life. Still, it wasn’t something she wanted to necessarily embrace, so for the next few days it was nothing but arguments with her and her new found demonic mother. Meanwhile her father was preparing your soul to present to her. Madeline still didn’t even know you were dead at this time. By the time her father showed up, she was ready to run off but then he presented your soul to her. He said he would only give it to her if she embraced her demonic heritage and return home. He then of course told her what you said to him and if it was a choice between disobeying and saving your soul from eternal torment, her choice was easy. “Shit, I’m sorry.” you say. “For what?” Madeline says. “If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have come here.” “Oh…I wouldn’t bet on all that. I may have eventually come here anyway…I mean I was wondering what I was going to do after graduation…hey did you know besides slowly embracing my heritage, they wanted me to help oversee the building of a new pain tower? I’m getting to use what I learned!” Madeline beams. “And me?” “Well…you’re here, you’re mine and you’re safe…as long as you stay in this room. But you get to be with me, isn’t that enough?” You look at Madeline and your eyes gaze all over her naked body, this followed by your hands wandering. Madeline giggles a bit and touches you as well. “Well, okay here and now. Yeah, that’s definitely enough. But…I’m just wondering what’s going to happen as time goes on. I mean you’re a demon so I assume you’re immortal on some level and I’m dead and here in soul form or whatever it is. I mean this is forever. How long before you get tired of me? Will you eventually discard the last remnants of your humanity and just throw me in a pain tower or something as soon as I anger you in some way? I mean how much time to we really have? Should I prepare myself for the inevitable?” Madeline’s face gets sad again, it’s obvious she doesn’t want to think about that. Despite the new horns she’s very much still hanging on to most of her human emotions for you. She sits up and starts to sniffle a bit. “What the hell are you doing? Are you trying to upset her and shorten your relative paradise? Just go with it, stupid!” you think to yourself. You sit up and caress Madeline’s shoulders and back. “You’re right. Let’s not worry about it. I said I’d go through hell for you…and well here I am and I love you for saving my soul.” You say and then lean in and turn Madeline’s head to kiss her on the lips. As Madeline and you embrace, you think about how your actions lead you to this fate. You might be running on borrowed time, but you might as well enjoy it, because not many are in your privileged position in the infernal realm. Whatever lies in store for you, your life as a rogue has definitely ended.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 28 Life is good. Business is going well now thanks to your better locations. More people seem to prefer gambling in an area that smells tolerable for one thing. Madeline also had the goblins build a hidden entrance way topside so folks can now enter directly and not have to muck about through the sewers. Your new headquarters is also much better than the one you had in the sewers The only business you left in the sewers was the Yellow Devil Den. Seemed fairly pointless to befoul your new locations with it and it’s users. Better it should stay in the sewers. Though Madeline actually has told you she has an idea to make a special area for that too since she can easily get the goblin crew to help again. She says she plans to help you out a lot more when she isn’t in school any longer. And graduation for her is coming soon, today in fact. You never thought you’d ever be visiting where your father went to learn to be a doctor, but you aren’t going to miss Madeline accepting her diploma. You genuinely love her as your relationship has grown. You were a little concerned at first, but you found that while it isn’t perfect, you feel pretty comfortable with her. You even have vivid dreams about her. Almost so real that you aren’t even parted when you sleep. You’ve told her all about your life in Teckleville, and your family. She hopes one day that maybe she can meet them, especially your sister. (You still wonder about all of them from time to time) While Madeline has talked about her past, she still hasn’t mentioned too much about her family. Not even about her father who you know she isn’t fond of, but you don’t know why exactly. She just mentions she has no contact with her father other than him paying for her education. It’s never a topic she wishes to discuss; she just wants to focus on the future with you, which is fine as far as you’re concerned. “So how do I look?” you ask. “Well, you wouldn’t be my type, but you do look dapper in that suit.” Vaughn says. “I’m crushed. But good, I don’t want to look too out of place at Madeline’s graduation.” “They grow up so fast huh?” Vaughn snorts. “Okay, don’t even go there with the dad thing. I’m not even that much older than her. I trust you can look after things here for awhile?” “Sure boss, no problem.” You leave Vaughn and head to the surface. You’re not going to walk all the damn way to the university though, so you pay for a horse and buggy to take you there. As you ride, you realize you haven’t really travelled around the city as much since you took control of the Crimson Talons. You’ve mostly been stuck underground most of the time. When you arrive at the university you don’t have too difficult of a time finding where the ceremony is taking place. The university is very clean and orderly, you briefly imagine your father walking around this place back when he was going here. Eventually you get to a big open field area with several seats and a stage set up. Others are already seated so you find yourself a chair in the back. While nobody is staring at you, you still feel a little out of place. You just never thought you’d be at a place of higher learning and attending someone’s graduation ceremony. As you wait for things to get started, someone sits next to you, when you turn to see who it is, you can’t believe who it is. “Glad to see you made it to my daughter’s graduation.” Mr. Reynolds says with a smile. “…you… YOU?! You’re her father?!” you say. “Yes, and shhh. Don’t make a scene. I’m not here to cause problems.” “I can’t believe this.” “I guess she didn’t tell you about me. She never does. (Sigh) Even after all I’ve done for her. Though I suppose if she had talked about me, you would have thought twice about being with her and that would have been a shame…because I know how much you make her happy and she’s going to need that bit of happiness to hang on to where she’s going.” “What? Where’s she going?” Mr. Reynolds chuckles a bit. “She’s going back home of course. Her time here is done, well for now it is anyway.” Mr. Reynolds says. “What do you mean? Isn’t this city her home?” “Klyton is just her current place residence, but her real home is…well it’s very different. You might even say it’s a different realm altogether.” The way Mr. Reynolds smiles at this point makes you completely tense up. You don’t like whatever he’s about to say. “She’s not human m’boy. Well…not entirely human anyway. She’s a bit of a late bloomer though with her powers, but I love her all the same. Let me ask you something though, has she been appearing in your dreams recently?” “…yes.” You answer hesitantly. “Yeah, her mother will probably be coming for her soon.” “Her mother? I thought her mother was dead.” “Oh no. I just told her that her mother died in childbirth. Her mother is really a full-blooded succubus. They aren’t known to be maternal until their daughters have already grown up and shown that they’re worthy of their attention. Displayed powers and such. They never much bother with their male children at all though. I should know.” You have no words. “Of course most of them just eat their off spring as soon as they give birth to them, but I told that bitch, no daughter of mine was going to be a snack. I’ll admit, I wasn’t the best father probably, but I think between me or being breakfast, well I think I’ll be vindicated once Madeline finds out the truth about herself.” Mr. Reynolds says. “You don’t think she’ll be even more pissed at you for NOT telling her and it just suddenly being sprung on her like this?” you blurt out. “…hmmm…y’know I never considered that. Oh well. It isn’t like she’s my only child. My boy Henry starting to show a lot of promise. Can’t wait for him to take over the business someday.” You almost feel like standing up and shouting Klyton has been infiltrated by demon spawn at this point. However, you’ve got bigger concerns. “Does Madeline have to return? I mean can’t she resist?” you ask. “There’s no debate m’boy. She’s going to go. I mean there probably will be an urge to resist at first, but it doesn’t take long before that infernal blood pulls them in and they return to fully embrace their demon powers “ “Always?” “Well, a few sadly succeed. But I promised her mother long ago that if Madeline ever started to bloom that I would do everything possible to help that process along.” “But she’s nice! And good!” you say. “Nice? Good? Ha ha ha ha! That’s a cute. She’s with you, how good can she really be? Plus I know how she killed her old boyfriend with her little goblin influencing powers. Shit, that’s proof right there that’s she’s going to make a fine succubus. She’s already killing boyfriends. Speaking of which, you m’boy have to go.” “What?” “You. You have to go. I’m not having my daughter not achieve her rightful destiny by holding on to her misguided love for you. Now, you can stay to see her graduate, but then you need to leave. And I don’t mean just here. You need to leave the city and go some place far away. If you’re dreaming about her, that means she’s already starting to imprint on you. However, she’s probably not strong enough to find you if you the city. By then her mother and maybe even I will have convinced her to embrace her powers.” You start to say something, but Mr. Reynolds stops you and also grabs your wrist tightly. So tight that it almost feels like he’s going to crush your bones. “YOU are NOT going to stop this son. Take solace in the fact that you NEVER had a choice.” Mr. Reynolds says in a low firm voice. Mr. Reynolds is giving off an aura that puts you completely on the edge terror. This isn’t just a normal threat. You’re seeing something new. Something less human, less mortal even. A faint scent also hits your nose, it’s brimstone. Still despite all this, you do have real feelings for Madeline. Maybe it’s because you left Annah when she was in trouble that you don’t want to do the same thing to Madeline. At the very least, you want to be able to give HER the choice. “Mr. Reynolds…I love your daughter. I can’t just take off and leave without at least presenting my side to her.” You say, mustering all your courage, which causes a smile from Mr. Reynolds. “Fair enough, I can respect that, but let me ask you this…are you REALLY willing to go through hell for her son? Now I want you to think VERY carefully before answering. Because IF you are willing to go all in on proving how much you actually do love my daughter, then I need that answer now.” > No You realize what Mr. Reynolds is trying to do. He’s trying to talk you into some “contract.” With some effort you manage to pull your hand free of Mr. Reynold’s grip. “No.” you say causing a bit of a frown from Mr. Reynolds. “Hmm, not as stupid as you appear. I can respect that too. But if your answer is no then you will be leaving after all and I don’t think I need to explain why. Madeline’s mother isn’t as nice as I am.” This is a shitty situation. You don’t want to leave Madeline, but you also don’t want to be on the wrong end of a bunch of violent demons. You aren’t equipped to handle it even with the resources you have at your disposal and you question if any of them would be of any real help if it came down to it anyway. (Besides Vaughn maybe) To top everything off, you now have to abandon what you got going on here! You wish you had listened to Zalmora. You don’t say any more and just get up to leave. As you’re doing this, you make one last glance back at the stage and there you see Madeline accepting her diploma with a big smile. She has no idea what is in store for her. You manage to catch a buggy back to the slums of Klyton and from there you make your way back to headquarters. The first thing you do is start opening your safes and hauling out the most precious valuables along with a good stack of gold coins. “Hey boss, I saw you come back. What’s going on?” Vaughn suddenly asks walking in you. “Vaughn, this is your lucky day. You’re inheriting everything and it required absolutely no effort on your part other than being more competent than every other Crimson Talon here.” You reply. “What?” “As of right now Vaughn, you’re head of the Crimson Talons. Good luck.” “I am? Wait. Where are you going?” “Me? I have no idea, but I’m going far away. I won’t be coming back either.” “Why? Is the militia on your ass? Should I be worried?” “Hah. The militia. If only it was that simple. No, it’s a little more complicated than that, but no you shouldn’t be worried. However, if Madeline comes by tell her…tell her that I didn’t have a choice and to move on. Okay?” “Um, okay. So this is goodbye then…(sigh) I have to say it’s starting to get pretty lonely here what with all of the old gang gone.” “Yeah well, I’m sure you’ll get by. Bye Vaughn.” Without any more fanfare you leave the Crimson Talon headquarters wondering where to go. Holgard comes to mind, but there's always some sort of rebellion or power struggle going on there. You'd rather not have to deal with being in the middle of that mess. The Delantium Kingdom is at war with some other nation, so you'd rather avoid the possibility of suddenly getting press ganged or conscripted into military service. The only other place that comes to mind is Hessla which for one thing is a whole lot closer, but it also still has a reputation of being a haven for thieves, pirates, and other criminal types. At least it’s something you’d be familiar with. Since you need to put as much distance between you and Klyton, you catch a carriage ride out to the infamous town. The trip to Hessla is surprisingly uneventful. You half figured you'd at least run into a few idiots trying to rob you on the road, but happily you don’t encounter any problems other than the overly talkative priest of Joachim who is traveling with you thinking that he’s going to bring the light of Joachim to Hessla all by himself. When you finally get to Hessla, its actually a little nicer looking than you thought it was going to look. You expected it to be filled with run down homes with unsavory types located on every corner. If anything, the town has locations that are fancier looking than some of the better parts of Klyton. After spending a few days in Hessla you also learn that this place really isn't as disorderly as it's reputation would imply. Granted it's far from being as repressive as Klyton, but there actually is a "force" that makes sure it isn't a free for all. The Hessla Headsmen report directly to the governor who apparently is an ex-pirate that controls everything in town. If anything the crime is less than one might think mainly because most are pirates and pillaging other places rather than here. You are surprisingly finding the place a bit easy on the pick pocket and theft front, of course a lot of folks are either half drunk or plain drunk most of the time. Also most folks don't seem to own that many personal belongings. You guess with most making their living at sea, they keep essentials on their ships, spend it all on booze and whores or otherwise live a very basic life, so despite you finding the town a bit easy pickings, you aren't getting rich doing it. Shops however are very well protected by the Headsmen since you guess Governor Tolen has a slice of all the businesses here. Fights are pretty common, though they aren't necessarily always to the death like you'd expect. Just a lot of disagreement and drinking make for a rowdy town. So far you've avoided pissing anyone off and kept a low profile. At first you aren't sure if you're actually going to stay here for long or not, but on your fifth night you have another dream of Madeline. In the dream she’s very sad and wandering the streets of Klyton calling out and looking for you. You don’t know if that’s what she’s actually doing in real life or you’re just dreaming up the scenario, but needless to say you don’t sleep very well. The next morning you decide you need to get even further away. Like completely off the mainland. The problem is you have no idea what really lies across the water. You know pirates are raiding something because you’ve heard the stories. Of course the problem with that is you’re not looking for some place to just stop and plunder. You’re looking for a place of relative civilization of where you can get your bearings before deciding what to do with the rest of your life as well as getting away from your demon spawn girlfriend. You ask around and after exchanging a bit of coin, a Hessla merchant ship (They do exist contrary to popular belief) agrees to take you to Jicol. Apparently it’s a city state on a fairly large island to the west. It’s about the only place that Hessla pirates never fuck with due to the well-trained navy and the fact that Jicol has made it quite clear that any attack on their ships or city will result in total war with Hessla and it isn’t one the pirate town would win. You spend about a week getting to this new city. The third night aboard the ship, you have faint glimpses of Madeline’s face in your dreams. At first you’re concerned that you’re never going to get far enough, but you have no more dreams for the rest of the trip. By the time you get settled your first night in Jicol, your dreams are back to normal and you hope they stay that way. Brand new city. Brand new life. You’ve done it before, now you’ll have to see if you can do it again. > You time passes... Year 30 “Okay your qweepa lost. Pay up.” You say. “Bah, I still think you drug him with Yellow Devil.” Gil says handing over the coin. “Pfft, I’ve seen what that shit does to people. No way I’d give it to Swifty here.” You say picking up your not so small rodent creature and petting him a couple times. “How come you don’t enter him in the fights? He’s big enough and his teeth are larger than the average qweepa.” Trent asks. “Because I’d rather he die of old age than him risk getting ripped to shreds. Besides I’m doing just fine racing him. Anyway, that’s it for me tonight, see you lot next week. Maybe we should play cards or dice next time, it’ll be a fairer fight.” “Ha ha. Fuck you. Next week.” Gil says waving bye to you. You leave the qweepa “race track” with your pet and head home. As you’re walking home you notice that the new owner of Saltwater Supplies are still routinely closing up shop at the same time to go make their prayers to Yag. You think next time you come this way; you’re going to have to pay the store a little visit. While they’ve gone to prayer of course. Life hasn’t been bad here in Jicol. You still participate in the occasional breaking and entering every now and then, but nowadays you mostly make a living racing your qweepa. Occasionally dice and cards too, but Swifty is a sure thing. Never thought you’d be a rodent racer, but here you are. Still, sometimes you wonder about your family. How your mother and father are doing and if their lives in Teckleville are better, worse or the same after events that occurred so long ago. You also wonder about your sister and if she’s still travelling or settled down. Probably not. She was always more of a wanderer at heart. Whatever she’s doing you hope she’s doing well. You get to your humble abode and suddenly Swifty jumps off your shoulder and scurries away into a nearby crack in a wall. “Swifty! Come here! Hey!” you shout and go to the crack, but he’s gone. You aren’t too worried since he’s run off like that before, but always comes back. He likes the Delantium cheese you give him too much to ever disappear for good. Not wishing to spend all night fumbling around in the dark outside looking for a rodent, you head inside your small home. No sooner have you shut the door when you smell the air. It’s like something is on fire. At first you think it’s your home, but then you realize this isn’t a normal fire smell. It’s brimstone. And then you see a pair of eyes in the darkness. “SHIT!” you shout and go to get the door open, but you’re suddenly pulled back by a clawed hand and slammed to the floor hard. You desperately go for your flintlock, but that is smacked out of your grip by a tail that whips your hand. Your next attempt is your cutlass, but a cloven hoof puts an end to that attempt by stomping on your hand and breaking it. You then feel a body drop on your chest and putting all the weight behind it. You cough and try to catch your breath and that’s when you finally see what is attacking you. A red skinned female demonic form complete with horns, wings, a tail and cloven hooves straddles your chest. Madeline. While the rest of her has changed drastically, you’d never forget her face. “Hello, lover.” She hisses. “Madeline…didn’t know you were coming…” you say struggling to breathe. “I thought about visiting you in your dreams, but then I thought the personal touch would be much more satisfying.” “I can see how you would, but I can’t say I do. Why the hell are you even here and obviously pissed at me?” “After what you did, you have the balls to ask me that? You fucking LEFT me. Left me with my asshole father and my long lost bitch of a mother! Left me with no explanation or even support!” “Now that’s not true. I told Vaughn to tell you to…” “Move on with my life and how you didn’t have a choice. Fuck you. You DID have a choice. You could have stayed! We could have supported each other!” “No! No we really couldn’t have Madeline. Your father made it quite clear that if he didn’t kill me, your mother sure as hell would have if I didn’t leave. I think it’s pretty obvious what the result would have been. I mean look at you, you’ve obviously embraced your demonic heritage within only two years and I’m NO fucking match for you.” Madeline briefly looks down at her own body. “Yes, look at me. I’m a daughter of hell, seducer and destroyer of men, yet I still have these pathetic feelings of love for you. I can’t move on like you suggested. I can’t deal with this separation.” You’d probably be more scared about what’s going to come next, but the pain in your body is making fear a secondary concern and honestly you knew as soon as you didn’t escape that it was probably all over. “Shit…do you really have to Madeline? I mean I know it would be difficult, but I’m willing to go back to the way things were with…” you start to say before you get a punch to your face. It feels like being hit by a piece of steel, but immediately after Madeline goes in to kiss you and even cries a bit. “I’m…sorry…but this is the way it has to be…I loved you and you abandoned me. We can’t go back to the way things were. (Sniffle) But I do know how to make things right.” Without another word, Madeline starts stripping off your clothing. You’re really not in any condition to stop her, though you do try to feebly get away once. (Which results in another punch) Madeline being a succubus easily manages to get you “ready” and then positions herself on top of your dick and begins to grind against you. There really isn’t anything pleasurable about any of this, especially how hard Madeline is riding you, tightly squeezing your arms and making unnatural noises the whole time. You also feel like your dick is on fire the entire time. The only thing you can do is hope it ends quickly, which fortunately it does and you soon release. Afterwards, Madeline then suddenly becomes “gentle” and for a brief moment lies on top of your body. “Our baby is going to be how I remember the good times with you and I’m going to be an attentive mother no matter what.” She whispers in your ear. “Mad…” you start to utter before she puts a talon to your lips. “Goodbye my love.” She says sadly and then with a quick strike of her finger she rips your throat open and licks your blood as you bleed out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 26 “Your school girl would go a lot faster if she was a REAL engineer and didn’t have to leave every once in awhile to go attend classes. And why are we building in two different locations again?” Zalmora asks. “Because Madeline pointed out that it might be better if we didn’t build everything in one place. Said it would be easier to keep the support structurally sound as well if we didn’t build too big. I think it’s coming along fine so far, though the ceilings are a little low. Guess goblins aren’t used to building them high though.” You respond. “Considering you’re spending as much money as you are for this shit, I certainly hope she’s at least a good lay.” Zal remarks. “What? I’m not fucking her.” You say. “Great. So you’re just wasting money for no gain whatsoever.” “We’re getting our new locations! By the fucking gods, what the hell is your problem today?” “My problem is we could have had a real professional do this and probably be done by now. This little school bitch doesn’t know what the fuck is doing and we got goblins running around being the obnoxious little green shits they always are.” “Actually I haven’t had any problem with any of them.” “Ugh, they’re fucking annoying.” “Zal, I’m not going to argue about this anymore. Things are going just fine, you’re just finding shit to nitpick about.” “Have it your way, but here’s one more for the road. If you REALLY aren’t fucking big tits McRed, you better have a little chat with her because I’ve seen how she acts when you speak with each other. Maybe you’re oblivious, but the girl has a serious crush on you.” “You’re talking nonsense.” You snort. “I’m serious. You don’t notice how chipper she is when she speaks to you? How she makes these girly giggles over shit you say which isn’t even funny half the time? How she makes every effort to be very close or even touch your arm or hand when you’re around? If the girl was anymore obvious, she’d have her legs wrapped around you.” Now that you think about it, Zal isn’t wrong on her observations. Madeline’s personality has been a lot more positive since the first time you met her. Though it makes you wonder… “Okay, so say maybe she does, what I find interesting is how you’ve been studying our relationship and interaction. Are you jealous?” you say with a chortle. “Hah! Typical male ego. You wish. But I’ll tell you who IS jealous, Camid.” Zalmora retorts. “Camid?” “Yeah, the repulsive guy in charge of Yellow Devil creation and distribution and stinks of Yellow Devil fumes most of the time? There are already rumors going on about you fucking schoolgirl, I can’t imagine Camid is happy about that, still being her boyfriend and all. I’ve seen this happen before and it never ends well. So if you don’t want a knife suddenly in your back, like I said, you better straighten out this misunderstanding…or at least tell a convincing lie.” “There’s nothing going on with Madeline!” “Hey, I’m not the one you have to convince. I’ll leave you to it boss man, I mean we all know you’re the one who runs everything here.” Zal says and leaves. You hate it when she makes sense. While you had better things to do today, you probably should talk to both of them and do it now just to get it out of the way. Since you’re not exactly in the mood to breath in Yellow Devil fumes right now, you decide to go see Madeline first who as far as you know is overseeing work on the other location. You might as well check on that while you’re at it. After an uneventful walk in the sewers, you get to the location. So far it doesn’t look much different than your future headquarters, though the rooms are bigger. In the biggest of these rooms, you find Madeline ordering about a few goblins in their native language. It’s weird how they don’t mind taking her orders. When they see you, they move even quicker. Madeline turns and sees you as well. She smiles and immediately walks quickly over to you. “You’re here! I didn’t expect to see you so soon after the last time you inspected this place. I would have doubled the work time on it!” Madeline beams. You get the impression that she nearly was going to hug you, but stopped herself. “No, that’s okay. I’d rather you take a little extra time to make sure everything is secure. So is this room going to be where we hold the fighting games?” you say. “Yes, that was my intention. I think it might need more expansion, and of course we’re going to make it look better than it currently does, but it’s well on its way!” “Well I can honestly say you are doing a fine job, and best of all, it isn’t costing me a lot. I gotta talk to you about something though.” “Me too! But first I have to show you this, come with me!” “Um, okay.” Madeline walks ahead of you first, but when you aren’t moving fast enough, she actually pulls your hand in an effort to get you to follow faster. You soon enter a small partially dug out room that has a single lantern lighting it. You don’t see anything out of the ordinary here. “Madeline, what…” you start to ask, and before you know it, she’s all over you. After about a couple of minutes of slobbering over each other, Madeline finally comes up for air. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this…” she says and then goes in to try to kiss you again before you stop her. “Madeline! Hold on! I…can’t…WE can’t do this. I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea!” you exclaim. “Didn’t seem like it when you had your tongue in my mouth and your hand on my ass a few moments ago.” Madeline says. “You…you caught me by surprise! I’m only human damn it! Look, you’re obviously a very attractive girl and maybe you’re into me because I’m being supportive in your dreams or something, but we can’t do this.” “Why not?” “Well for one thing, you’re Camid’s girlfriend and people are already whispering untrue rumors about us. I mean if you were just some whore, it probably wouldn’t be a big deal because…well whores are a whores and everyone is supposed to be fucking them. But you’re not a whore and you’re in a real relationship with another Crimson Talon. Stealing someone else’s girlfriend is just bad for business. It creates hard feelings and much worse.” “I don’t understand. You’re dealing drugs, running illegal fights, and other activities but being with someone who would rather be with you is where you draw the line?” “Well, there’s gotta be a line drawn somewhere. Otherwise this all falls apart. You know, like a support beam for the tunnels you’re building.” “But you’re the boss, can’t you just do what you want?” “Well it’s a little more complicated than that. The key to being in charge is also trying not to be hated. And what about Camid? I thought you and he were together.” “Eh, he was okay at first, but now....well I find him…limited. I’d rather be with you. I like the way I feel when you’re around encouraging me. Camid doesn’t understand anything that I talk about. He just stares at my tits and wants to fuck.” “How do you know that I’m not doing the same thing?” “Obviously you aren’t, because if you did, we’d be fucking right now. My point is, I feel like I can at least converse with you about a variety of things. I mean maybe you don’t understand all my technical university speak, but I know you’re at least on my intellectual level.” “…thanks? I think?” “Plus…this isn’t just some stupid crush like you probably think it is. You’ve been so nice to me. I think…I think I’m really starting to…” “Don’t finish that sentence!” you shout. “Well I can’t help my feelings towards you! Oh I don’t understand why you can’t just kill Camid so we can be together!” Madeline exclaims and then hugs you tightly and trying not to cry. And that intensified quickly. “Madeline. (Sigh) Look. You’re experiencing a phase. You don’t seriously want any sort of long term relationship with someone like me. I mean if you think I’m any better than Camid, you’re only thinking that because I find you useful in a capacity that doesn’t involve sex. I’m NOT a nice guy. Just ask anyone. Hell, talk with Zalmora. She’ll be the first one to tell you all my shortcomings.” You say. “It’s not a phase though…” Madeline says with a quiver in her voice. “Well if it isn’t, you’re just going to have to get over it anyway. Because WE are not happening. I’m not looking for anyone long term and I don’t want it. It’s not who I am. Apologies.” Madeline now starts to cry quietly. “Now if this is just too much for you, I’ll completely understand if you don’t want to work on this project anymore. I can find someone else.” You say. “(Sniff) No. No…I’ll continue the work. I promised to see this through. I…won’t say anything to Camid either (sniff) I’ll just get over it, like you (sob) said…” Madeline says before crying again. You haven’t felt nearly this bad since you left Annah back in Teckleville. Still, you feel this is for the best and hopefully Madeline can indeed “get over it” like she claims. As you leave Madeline to her sadness, you move on to your next unpleasant task and that’s speaking to Camid. You’re not entirely sure how you’re going to tell him though. After another uneventful walk through the sewers you get to the Yellow Devil Den. For obvious reasons you don’t come here that much, because the place stinks worse than the rest of the sewers and always has junkies hanging around, acting crazy or just slowly melting. Though the melting is a little less now that Camid’s made strides in cutting Yellow Devil with less lethal ingredients and still managed to maintain it’s feel good effects. Still doesn’t make you want to stick around though. Several Crimson Talons see you and let you in immediately while pushing away any junkies attempting to get in. Doesn’t take you long to find Camid. He’s surprised to see you. Camid and you head to his own little area where the stench of Yellow Devil fumes isn’t burning your nostrils to talk. You decide to go with a half truth and explain that you’ve been hearing the concerning rumors about you and Madeline and you’re here to dispel them, because it’s not healthy to the organization to have something like that spread around when it isn’t even true in the first place. You explain you have no interest in Madeline other than her work on the project. You even sort of imply you’re actually trying to get back with Zalmora. Camid seems to react positively to your explanation with no hint of any underlining hostility. He either means it, or he’s subtler than you gave him credit for. Either way, it would seem the matter is closed. You return to work and later you see Zalmora and Vaughn. “Well? Did you take care of that business?” Zalmora asks. “Not that it concerns you, but yes I did. Now let’s move on to other things.” You reply. The next few days are a little tense and you stay on your guard. You half expect Camid or Madeline to do something crazy, try to kill you, or something that causes problems. None of that happens though. Weeks pass and while Madeline occasionally gives you a longing glance she never initiates anything. You try to keep your contact short with her. Camid doesn’t act out of the ordinary either when you see him. Neither one mentions their relationship with each other so you assume they’re still together. Then just when you think everything is settled with this situation, disaster strikes. “He’s fucking dead?” you exclaim. “Afraid so boss. Camid was found dead with several large holes in him. Legs, back, chest, head, arms, everywhere.” Vaughn remarks. “Well what the hell happened?” “Dunno. Some of the Talons just found him in his room in the den like that. No signs of anyone breaking in or anything.” Zalmora just looks at you. “Do I even need to say it?” she asks. “(Sigh) No. But I’m wondering how she did it exactly. I just don’t see her as a natural killer and Camid wasn’t a push over…wait a minute. Sonofabitch. She used the little green bastards! They follow everything she says. They’re also small and sneaky enough to dig some little passage that only they could get in and then. You said Camid had large holes all over his body. Probably from pick axes.” You say. “I’m a little lost here, who killed Camid?” Vaughn asks. “The love of his life, school girl killed him.” Zal says. “Wait, why?” “Geez, Vaugh you’re really behind aren’t you? Our glorious leader here turned down her advances a few weeks ago. Surprised the hell out of me too, but messing with another man’s girlfriend isn’t one of the vices he has apparently. It appears though school girl figured out a loop hole and took matters into her own hands.” Zal explains. “Why couldn’t she have just broke up with Camid?” Vaughn asks. “Because that still would have caused conflict if the boss got with her. Camid isn’t likely to be the type to just accept seeing someone else with his ex especially so soon and so close. Nope, had to kill him. Only logical play.” Zal then turns to you. “Which now I guess means the next step is yours heartbreaker.” > You dispose of Madeline This isn’t the work of someone with just a crush. This is obviously an obsession and the fact she got the goblins to do it, means she’s not just crazy she’s dangerous and that’s a bad combination. You’re not going to be able to reason with her. She’s already proven she’s beyond that. Dismissing her isn’t going to work either. Not to mention she killed one of your productive members. Sure he was an idiot when it came to picking women obviously, but he still did his job and excelled in that area. She’s going to have to be dealt with in a more permanent manner. “Zal, Vaughn, come on. We’re going to deal with this crazy bitch and I want you both with me in case she gets ideas to sic her goblin buddies on me.” You say. “Wait, do we need to kill her? I mean isn’t she important?” Vaughn remarks. “She might come from money, but her daddy isn’t on the council. At best the militia might do an investigation, but they aren’t going to find her.” You say. “You sure we’re going to be enough? Should we bring some more guys? There are a lot more goblins than us.” Zal asks. “We’ll grab a couple more Talons on the way out, but we’re not going to be bushwacked like Camid and I know we’re much better fighters. As soon as we kill a few of those green buggers they’ll probably start running away. We’ll be fine. Now let’s get this shit done.” You say. You and your “hit squad” head over to the new headquarters dig site. You remember Madeline was doing her overseeing there today. After entering and walking through several empty rooms and corridors, you find Madeline by herself, just sitting on the ground. She doesn’t get up, she just looks down at the ground. There aren’t any goblins around though, which is strange. “Hey. I guess you figured out what happened.” Madeline says. “Damn right I did. Did you really think you were going to get away with it? Did you really think that was going to work?” “I guess I had hope and I had to try. Stupid I guess.” “You got that one right too, school girl.” Zal says. “Where’s your goblin friends?” you ask. “I sent them away as soon as they told me you were coming. I didn’t want them to get hurt. It wasn’t their fault after all.” “Wasn’t their fault? Some of them were the ones who killed Camid!” you exclaim and move towards Madeline, but Zal holds you back. “Wait a minute. What do you mean you sent them away when they told you were coming? How did they even know, we haven’t seen any of them.” Zal asks. Madeline looks up and stands. “They didn’t just dig a tunnel into the Yellow Devil Den. They’ve dug tunnels all over the sewers. Mostly under them. Made it easier for them to get around without having to walk about in the actual sewers. They may have also dug some tunnels near your old head quarters…you know, you look very peaceful when you sleep…” Madeline says looking directly at you. You and everyone else takes a step back. You’re actually a little creeped out now and a lot more concerned. “Everyone, prepare for an ambush!” you say and you all form a circle expecting goblins to pop up out of secret compartments in the floor and walls. “I told you I sent them away. They isn’t going to be some big fight. There isn’t going to be a fight at all. This is the end. I wish you could have loved me, the way I love you, but at least we’ll die together, and I guess that’s enough.” At this point you hear an explosion outside the new headquarter’s entrance. It isn’t a big one, but it’s enough to cause a rumbling and the ceiling of starts to fall to pieces. Vaughn, Zal and the other two Talons instantly run back to the entrance only to find that’s its collapsed and soon so will the rest of this place. “It’s interesting how with one well place bundle of explosive power can make an otherwise stable structure fall completely apart. I’ll certainly miss finishing my education.” Madeline says in almost a monotone way. As the rest of your cohorts run around desperately trying to get out of this death trap, you do the only thing you want to do and that’s plunge your sword into Madeline. She puts up no resistance and just touches your face before falling to the ground. As the clods of dirt and rocks begin to bury you and yours, all you can do is curse loudly to whatever gods may be listening before you are silenced forever.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Something has to be done and the best way to do it is to kill Jake. Not like you were ever friends with him. “Look, we can’t do nothing and if you aren’t fond of diplomacy, then we need to kill Jake. So who are these independent assassins you know?” you ask. “Really only know two and out of those two, only one is a proper assassin and I don’t know if it’s even possible with him.” Tom says. Frustration increases… “Okay, so tell me about the guy who isn’t a proper assassin.” you ask. “He goes by the name Olaf. He’s actually an ex-Talon associate but after the fight pits closed down he went back to working as a leg breaker for Mr. Reynolds full time. You familiar with that man?” Tom asks. “Vaguely. Some sort of moneylender with connections in high places so the militia doesn’t fuck with him. Actually, I think I remember my mother telling me my father’s family was in debt to him at one point.” “They did with the inn. Actually I even worked for the man briefly before I joined the Talons, but that’s ancient history. Olaf is a big ass ogre who pretty much retired undefeated during his fighting pit days. He’s older of course now, but I don’t doubt that he couldn’t take care of Jake and scare everyone else into submission. Hell, he probably could scare Jake into submission too. He’d probably even do it for free or at the least very cheap. He really likes hurting people.” “Sounds good, so what’s the catch?” “Well obviously Mr. Reynolds isn’t going to just let him go wandering off so we’d probably have to pay him and that’s what isn’t going to be cheap. Plus, knowing Mr. Reynolds he’ll have some other weird stipulation. You’ll probably find out when you talk with him. Could be anything.” This is sounding complicated already. You almost hesitate to ask about the other one. “Okay, so what about this other guy. The real assassin?” you ask. “You familiar with Sotakians?” Tom asks. “Just stories of them being lizard people that live in the swamps and fight with elves all the time.” “Well, the old boss, Edmond actually acquired an egg and raised a Sotakian from a hatchling. Trained him to be a very literal cold-blooded assassin bodyguard. We all just called him Scales, but he never really had a proper name. He was very loyal too until he had some unknown disagreement with Edmond and just took off. Ed never told anyone to go get him either. Just said to let it go.” “That doesn’t sound very useful if he disappeared to parts unknown.” “Oh he didn’t go far. He actually lives in the Klyton sewers. Abandoned part granted, but he’s actually part of the reason why the militia doesn’t patrol down there that much and only in certain areas. Ol’ Scales isn’t very welcoming to intruders to his home.” “Well how’s this lizard going to be of any help then?” “Most of the time when Scales got a little obstinate Edmond showed him the broken egg that he hatched from. Not sure why it worked. Maybe it was a reminder that Edmond was the one who helped hatch him or something. Still have the broken egg just in case, you know? Maybe if someone approached him with the broken egg, Scales might be willing to listen to that person. Dunno, who would have the balls to go risk it though.” “That vicious huh?” “Let’s just say, Olaf USED to have an equally bad ass barbarian buddy by the name of Silence. Silence didn’t like it when he lost a staring contest to Scales and things got violent. Olaf and Silence were best friends and Olaf didn’t even ATTEMPT to attack Scales when he ripped out Silence’s throat in five seconds. He just left the room and I can’t be certain, but I think he might have even cried. Of course nobody was going to ask. Olaf certainly brutalized folks more than average in the fighting pits over the next few days after that though.” So those are your choices and they both sound shitty. Honestly, you wish you could just take care of Jake yourself, but Tom is probably right about the fact that something like that isn’t really your specialty, but talking to others and trying to convince them to do what you want is apparently a newer one you’ve acquired or at least one you’ve been thrust into. > You hire Scales You must have lost your mind, because you can’t believe you’re actually considering this. “Fuck it, give me that egg.” You say. “Seriously?” Tom asks. “Yeah, I’m serious. I know enough about Mr. Reynolds through my dad that I don’t want to have deal with him. And as you said, he’s probably going to have some sort of weird catch as part of the agreement he isn’t going to reveal until afterwards. At least with the lizard I’ll know where I stand right away.” You say. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it. Okay kid, I’ll get that egg.” Tom heads over to one of his safes and after unlocking it, he takes out two green pieces of an oval shaped object, which he then puts together and hands to you. The broken egg is rough to the touch and more solid than you thought it would be. “While this isn’t as delicate as one might think, still be careful with it. You sure about this? I mean I still don’t think this thing with Jake is that serious.” “It’s gotta be taken care of and besides, maybe I’ll just be charming enough to convince Scales to join us again.” “You think big kid, just hope you’re right.” Tom proceeds to tell you where he thinks Scales makes his home. It actually isn’t too far from the forgotten sewer entrance. Tom goes on to say it might be dangerous just getting to Scales, since that part of the sewers has been non-functional and abandoned for as long as he can remember. Armed with this knowledge (And a broken egg) Tom wishes you luck before you leave. On your way out, you’re stopped by Zalmora and Vaughn. “What’s that? Wait, is that an egg?” Vaughn asks. “Yeah, I’m going to use it to try to convince Scales to assassinate Jake. Tom said Ed used to do it all the time.” You reply. Vaughn’s jaw almost drops and expresses obvious disbelief. “Have you gone completely barmy? I wasn’t here that long while Scales was still around, but even I know damn well that the only reason why Ed even had control over that lizard is because he raised him from that egg! And you can see that didn’t work forever. You go looking for Scales and you’re going to find death!” Vaughn exclaims. “Why do we need Scales to assassinate Jake anyway? I mean I told you that I think it’s a better idea to just let Jake continue rampaging through the woods to take the heat off of us.” Zal asks. “Yeah, and I don’t think that it’s a good idea to just let disobedience within the organization to go unpunished like that. Besides, I also thought that given this Scale’s reputation, maybe we could get him to join again.” You say. “Yep, completely barmy.” Vaughn remarks. “I agree…but the idea does have some merit. If we did get Scales back, we’d be in a lot better shape, muscle wise at least.” Zal remarks. Vaughn at this point just shakes his head. “Okay, I can see this craziness is catching. I’m leaving before I catch it too. See you later, assuming Scales doesn’t eat you, and Zal, I would think that you’d know better than to even entertain this idea.” Vaughn remarks and walks away. “So…are you coming with me?” you ask Zalmora. “I didn’t say that actually. I just said your idea has some merit. It’s at least thinking in the long term. Scales could certainly track down Jake and kill him. I would imagine he’d also scare everyone else into coming back or even better a return to following the original plan of sending the spoils of their activities to us on a regular schedule.” Zal says. “You still really think our organization split up on the outside and inside the city is the best solution?” “Yes. I really do believe that and I gave my reasons already.” While she hasn’t offered to go, you get the impression Zal might be more inclined to help you if support her idea, but if Zal wants to help she can come with you with you needing to ask her. You’re not going to barter with her or be some pawn just because you’re sleeping together every once in awhile. “Well I guess I better head out.” You say. “Oh. Right. Don’t let me keep you. Just remember, Scales has never been a friendly sort and probably the best way to handle him is to defer to him as the alpha. If he thinks you’re a threat, he’s going to react accordingly. Then again, if he thinks you’re too weak, he might just eat you, but I’m guessing not acting aggressively might help. Anyway, if you even think you’re in grave danger, just get the hell out of there. Be careful okay?” Zal says and starts to leave, but before she does she kisses you goodbye. That sort of makes you feel more worried than you were before. You leave the Crimson Talon headquarters and enter the sewers. You never cease hating stomping around down here, but possibly stepping in shit or worse is the least of your concerns right now. You follow the directions Tom gave you and finally get to the abandoned part of the sewers he mentioned. Actually it doesn’t even look like the rest of the sewers at this point. The tunnel is partially collapsed or has great gaping holes leading to who the hell knows where. Beyond this first tunnel, you can only imagine that it’s going to be in even worse repair. Using your lantern and your natural agility you continue to make your way, hopping that all this hoping and jumping around isn’t going to break the egg in your pack any more than it already is. You go through a couple more old collapsed sewer tunnels and then you notice the man made structure is starting to disappear into a crumbling abyss. You also notice how weak the ground (or rather what’s left of it) is in general. One wrong move and you’re probably falling to your death. You cautiously move across what’s left the stone flooring. You’re doing pretty well until you suddenly hear some noise behind you. At first you think it’s something sinister lurking down here or possibly even Scales himself, but when you hear the word “Shit!” you know the voice immediately and turn around thrusting your lantern ahead. “Zal?!” you call out. Your light illuminates enough that you can see a figure far behind you half hanging over the edge of the abyss. She doesn’t answer she’s just struggling to get back up. “Zal! What the fuck are you doing here?! Wait! I’ll come help you!” you shout. “No! You stay over there! This fucking floor is weak enough without both of us in the same area.” “Zal, you’re gonna fall!” “I’m almost back up, just keep going! I’ll catch up!” > You go help Zal She probably came back to help you, you can’t just leave her to struggle. As quick as you can, you try to make it over to Zal, who keeps telling you to go back. “Zal, I’m not gonna just…fuuuuuuuuu….” It’s not a glorious or noble death falling off a collapsing walkway and into a large hole, but that’s exactly what has happened to you. As you fall, you hear Zal’s voice echo your name in darkness until the sound dissipates leaving you only to fall in dark silence. You fall for quite a long time, much longer than you thought you would actually. For a brief moment you think maybe you’ve fallen down a bottomless pit. Such things are typically just heard about in myths and stories, but given the magical world you live in, who is to say they don’t exist somewhere? Of course that little theory soon comes to an end when you at last do hit the ground. Who knows where the hell you ended up, because you broke every bone and died on impact, but your splattered body didn’t go to waste to whatever was living so far below the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You must have lost your mind, because you can’t believe you’re actually considering this. “Fuck it, give me that egg.” You say. “Seriously?” Tom asks. “Yeah, I’m serious. I know enough about Mr. Reynolds through my dad that I don’t want to have deal with him. And as you said, he’s probably going to have some sort of weird catch as part of the agreement he isn’t going to reveal until afterwards. At least with the lizard I’ll know where I stand right away.” You say. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it. Okay kid, I’ll get that egg.” Tom heads over to one of his safes and after unlocking it, he takes out two green pieces of an oval shaped object, which he then puts together and hands to you. The broken egg is rough to the touch and more solid than you thought it would be. “While this isn’t as delicate as one might think, still be careful with it. You sure about this? I mean I still don’t think this thing with Jake is that serious.” “It’s gotta be taken care of and besides, maybe I’ll just be charming enough to convince Scales to join us again.” “You think big kid, just hope you’re right.” Tom proceeds to tell you where he thinks Scales makes his home. It actually isn’t too far from the forgotten sewer entrance. Tom goes on to say it might be dangerous just getting to Scales, since that part of the sewers has been non-functional and abandoned for as long as he can remember. Armed with this knowledge (And a broken egg) Tom wishes you luck before you leave. On your way out, you’re stopped by Zalmora and Vaughn. “What’s that? Wait, is that an egg?” Vaughn asks. “Yeah, I’m going to use it to try to convince Scales to assassinate Jake. Tom said Ed used to do it all the time.” You reply. Vaughn’s jaw almost drops and expresses obvious disbelief. “Have you gone completely barmy? I wasn’t here that long while Scales was still around, but even I know damn well that the only reason why Ed even had control over that lizard is because he raised him from that egg! And you can see that didn’t work forever. You go looking for Scales and you’re going to find death!” Vaughn exclaims. “Why do we need Scales to assassinate Jake anyway? I mean I told you that I think it’s a better idea to just let Jake continue rampaging through the woods to take the heat off of us.” Zal asks. “Yeah, and I don’t think that it’s a good idea to just let disobedience within the organization to go unpunished like that. Besides, I also thought that given this Scale’s reputation, maybe we could get him to join again.” You say. “Yep, completely barmy.” Vaughn remarks. “I agree…but the idea does have some merit. If we did get Scales back, we’d be in a lot better shape, muscle wise at least.” Zal remarks. Vaughn at this point just shakes his head. “Okay, I can see this craziness is catching. I’m leaving before I catch it too. See you later, assuming Scales doesn’t eat you, and Zal, I would think that you’d know better than to even entertain this idea.” Vaughn remarks and walks away. “So…are you coming with me?” you ask Zalmora. “I didn’t say that actually. I just said your idea has some merit. It’s at least thinking in the long term. Scales could certainly track down Jake and kill him. I would imagine he’d also scare everyone else into coming back or even better a return to following the original plan of sending the spoils of their activities to us on a regular schedule.” Zal says. “You still really think our organization split up on the outside and inside the city is the best solution?” “Yes. I really do believe that and I gave my reasons already.” While she hasn’t offered to go, you get the impression Zal might be more inclined to help you if support her idea, but if Zal wants to help she can come with you with you needing to ask her. You’re not going to barter with her or be some pawn just because you’re sleeping together every once in awhile. “Well I guess I better head out.” You say. “Oh. Right. Don’t let me keep you. Just remember, Scales has never been a friendly sort and probably the best way to handle him is to defer to him as the alpha. If he thinks you’re a threat, he’s going to react accordingly. Then again, if he thinks you’re too weak, he might just eat you, but I’m guessing not acting aggressively might help. Anyway, if you even think you’re in grave danger, just get the hell out of there. Be careful okay?” Zal says and starts to leave, but before she does she kisses you goodbye. That sort of makes you feel more worried than you were before. You leave the Crimson Talon headquarters and enter the sewers. You never cease hating stomping around down here, but possibly stepping in shit or worse is the least of your concerns right now. You follow the directions Tom gave you and finally get to the abandoned part of the sewers he mentioned. Actually it doesn’t even look like the rest of the sewers at this point. The tunnel is partially collapsed or has great gaping holes leading to who the hell knows where. Beyond this first tunnel, you can only imagine that it’s going to be in even worse repair. Using your lantern and your natural agility you continue to make your way, hopping that all this hoping and jumping around isn’t going to break the egg in your pack any more than it already is. You go through a couple more old collapsed sewer tunnels and then you notice the man made structure is starting to disappear into a crumbling abyss. You also notice how weak the ground (or rather what’s left of it) is in general. One wrong move and you’re probably falling to your death. You cautiously move across what’s left the stone flooring. You’re doing pretty well until you suddenly hear some noise behind you. At first you think it’s something sinister lurking down here or possibly even Scales himself, but when you hear the word “Shit!” you know the voice immediately and turn around thrusting your lantern ahead. “Zal?!” you call out. Your light illuminates enough that you can see a figure far behind you half hanging over the edge of the abyss. She doesn’t answer she’s just struggling to get back up. “Zal! What the fuck are you doing here?! Wait! I’ll come help you!” you shout. “No! You stay over there! This fucking floor is weak enough without both of us in the same area.” “Zal, you’re gonna fall!” “I’m almost back up, just keep going! I’ll catch up!” > You continue without her You didn’t tell her to follow you, and you’d rather not linger on this walkway any longer than you have to, so you continue to make your way which soon isn’t as bad for the man made structure of the sewer is gone completely and you’re now heading into what looks like a natural cavern (with solid ground underneath you). Still, you don’t want to get too far ahead. If Zal did come to help, the least you can do is wait for her. Eventually Zal solves her own struggle with climbing back up to the walkway and makes her way to your location. “You okay?” you ask. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Zalmora replies. “Now I ask again, what the hell are you doing here? “Obviously nearly getting myself killed in order to help you because you’re too proud to ask for it.” “I didn’t ask, because I didn’t need your help!” “Sure, you don’t. Honestly, I can’t believe Tom let you do this at all. I always thought he liked you.” “I risk my life every time I go out on a job.” “True, but this is a lot different. At least on the job you have the necessary skills to pull it off. This is more like a roll of the dice. Not to mention, YOU haven’t even met Scales. If he sees you, he’s likely to just assume you’re an interloper. At least he knows me. Though I’m not sure if he liked, disliked or was indifferent to me. Never could tell what that lizard was thinking in the short time I knew him.” “What about the egg?” “Yeah, well let’s hope that’s enough for him not to kill us.” You and Zal proceed into the natural cavern. After walking a bit, you make a remark that all of this might be pointless anyway and you might just head back because it wasn’t your intention on getting lost in a system of underground tunnels. Zal doesn’t really argue, but she does ask what you’re going to do about an assassin though. Just as you’re about to answer, you hear a faint noise, which is enough to put you on edge because it’s been eerily quiet down here. “You hear…ulp!” Zal says and then before your eyes a scaled green claw covers her mouth and another holds a dagger to her throat. You also notice a long tail wrapped around one of her legs and a pair of glinting reptilian eyes shine behind her. “NO! WAIT! SCALES! I have something for you! Don’t kill her!” you shout and take off your pack in haste while still trying to eye on Zal who looks like she’s trying to remain as calm as she can under the circumstances. You pull out the two large pieces of the egg and then hold them out. Scales’ moves forward a bit with Zal still in his clutches. His eyes briefly stare at the egg and then fixate on you again. You can’t tell if he’s angry or what, all you do know is his stare doesn’t put you at ease. Suddenly, Scales slashes Zal’s neck open and throws her body aside like a rag doll and before you can even shout out he’s grabbed your hands causing the egg pieces to fall to the ground. As you feel the claws dig into your flesh and Scales give you the predatory stare, all you can think about is how Zal is dead, but you also realize if you’re going to get out of this alive, you’re going to have to continue to talk because it’s very obvious that you’re not fighting your way out of this or running. “Scales! Please, all we wanted to do is return this egg to you. Edmond is dead. We weren’t following his orders or anything like that. We were going to ask for help, but it’s obvious that you want to be alone. I will go back and never bother you again. You have my word.” Scales briefly looks down at the egg pieces and then back to you. His head turns a bit as if he’s studying you, then his grip on your hands releases, allowing you to slowly pull them back towards your body. Scales then crouches down and starts inspecting the egg pieces. You take this as an opportunity to leave and you back away into the darkness, not even taking your lantern. You have no idea how the hell you’re going to safely cross back over that crumbling walkway, but that’s going to have to be another struggle for later. You turn around and as quick as you can in the darkness put some distance between you and Scales. You don’t look back, though you soon find that you don’t need to because you hear a noise followed by a great whipping force hitting one of your legs which takes you off your feet. You hit the ground, but you don’t stay there for long because clawed hands soon pick you up. You struggle for one of your daggers, but this is met by what you can only imagine are teeth sinking into your arm. You scream out as Scales sharp teeth not only rip your flesh, but also break bone. You are thrown to the ground again and then Scales pounces on top of you. You can only see his eyes in this darkness, but it’s the last thing you’re ever going to see. “Thank you warm blood, but can’t let you leave. Might bring othersss. If dead, people continue to ssstay away. Need peace.” You hear a reptilian voice hiss and then a set of jaws go to for your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 21 “The Bloody Smiles are lead by a vicious bandit calling himself the Grinning Man. Nobody has gotten a really good look at him as most don’t survive his attacks, but based on this crude sketch, I implore anyone seeing him to run and contact Klyton militia immediately! This man and his band of cutthroats have been plaguing the roads and the surrounding area for years and hopefully now that his identity is known…” You suddenly receive one of the many sketches a concerned citizen is handing out. You take one look at the sketch as you walk away from the crowd and shake your head. “Doesn’t even look like that asshole.” You say and toss it in a nearby bin. Jake’s job has really been doing the trick as far as distracting the Klyton militia, though maybe it’s been going a little too well. You suggested that Tom to pull him back from this two years ago, but predictably he never did. Zalmora and Vaughn returned pretty quickly after this plan went into action, though in Zal’s case it seemed to be more because she wanted to get back into regular burglary again. Vaughn said he couldn’t deal with Jake anymore and was getting too crazy. Now, he’s given himself a nickname, gone on to call his group the Bloody Smiles and doesn’t report back to Tom for months. When he does, he just sends one of the newer Talons with some goods and loot. While Tom as usual is taking a laid back approach to this figuring as long as he’s still sending shit back then everything is good, you question whether Jake is even thinking about the Talons anymore. Meanwhile, you’ve been more or less successful in building up the Talon’s numbers. Not as much as you’d like, but since you’re the only one doing it, it is what it is. Despite all this extra help however, it’s not being utilized properly. Most of it is being sent to help Jake as his numbers get whittled down every now and then and that’s really a waste you believe. The ones you insist on keeping around to train are fewer in number and you’re also the only one bothering to train them properly. You never thought you’d be in that sort of position. Occasionally Zal and Vaughn help out, but it’s mostly fallen on you. Basically, it’s a case where the opportunity to expand is there, but once again Tom is failing to pull the trigger on it. You should be setting up another underground fighting pit, setting up gambling dens or even running a protection racket. Something needs to be done about Jake because the Crimson Talons can’t proceed if half of the members aren’t even Talons anymore and have declared allegiance to another leader. “Something has to be done about Jake.” You remark. “Like what?” Vaughn asks. “I dunno, but Tom can’t just sit on his ass anymore about it. Jake hasn’t done it yet, but it’s only a matter of time before he splits off from the Crimson Talons altogether and takes half of our members that were assigned out there with him. Ideally we could just tell him to come home and his purpose out there is no longer necessary, but I doubt if he’ll listen.” “So…what? You just going to go in there and tell Tom what he needs to do?” Zalmora asks. “Someone needs to tell him something! As I remember it was me who told him to start changing shit up last time too.” “That’s true, but doesn’t that sort of mean you’re sort of responsible of what’s going on with Jake? Pretty sure that’s what Tom will point out as well.” Vaughn says. You’re about to tell Vaughn to shut the hell up when Zalmora interrupts. “While you have some good ideas as usual, honestly, I’m not sure why anything needs to be done about him. I say if Jake has split from the Crimson Talons, well that’s more for us.” Zalmora remarks. “Actually that’s LESS for us since he won’t even be sending his cut anymore.” You say. “Maybe in the short term, but you’re not thinking long term. The militia hasn’t been as much of a problem in the city for us because they’ve been focused mainly on catching Jake and the rest. That gives us a little more freedom to expand like you said. Hell, now that Jake has foolishly started to give his group their own name, they aren’t even directly connected to the Talons anymore.” “So? If he gets caught he could still blab his mouth about our secret hideout.” “Jake’s a lot of things, but he ain’t no rat. Chances are they won’t even take him in alive anyway.” “Okay, so maybe Jake’s no rat, but what about some of others with him? I mean sure, we’ve all stressed how important loyalty is to the new recruits, but if Jake’s gained their trust somehow, then they’re loyal to him not to the Talons and they aren’t going to think twice about ratting us out to save their own skin.” “Hmm, you might have a point there.” Vaughn says. “Look, all I’m saying is Jake not causing shit for us in the city and running around out there like a mad man is better for us. If he’s gone, then the militia is just going to refocus more of their attention on the city again. I mean maybe it might be best to make it an official break up. Let Jake know he can go his way and we go ours. Might diffuse any potential problems with Jake. Dunno if Tom will be into that though.” Zalmora says. “That’s true too.” Vaughn remarks. You rub your hands through your hair. “I dunno. Maybe. Something still needs to be brought up to Tom though.” You say. “Oh I agree with you on that. It is time to give him a little push again.” Zalmora remarks. “Well? Aren’t either of you coming in with me?” you ask. “Um…I hadn’t planned to. I mean it sounds like you’ve got this under control on what to discuss. I think me being there is just going to look like we’re ganging up on him.” Vaughn says. “Yeah. And as you know, Tom has never been fond of me. So I would be more of a detriment. Just go in and talk to him, you did fine last time remember?” Zalmora says nudging into you a bit. “(Sigh) Why do I feel like I’m the only one who cares about this organization?” “Hey! That’s not even true! I just gave you my fucking thoughts on the situation didn’t I? You bring up whatever you want to Tom. I’m sure everything will work out fine, he likes you after all.” And with that, Zal and Vaughn leave to let you go speak with Tom. You swear you never thought the day would come where you would be known as the “diplomat.” You guess your sister’s charm rubbed off on you just a little bit. You sometimes wonder how she’s doing. Probably better than you are at any rate. Mentally preparing yourself, you head to Tom’s office, though when you think more about it, you don’t know why you’re mentally preparing yourself. It isn’t like Tom’s going to even threaten to kill you if he doesn’t agree with what you have to say. At this point you’re practically his second in command anyway and you’re still baffled by this since you haven’t been here nearly as long, though you suppose with all these new folks coming in, you are starting to become a “vet” as it were. “Hey Tom.” You say entering his office. “Hey kid, any new blood you need me to check out and make a final decision on?” “Uh, no not today. I wanted to speak with you about another matter…it’s about Jake.” Tom’s head drops down briefly with a deep sigh and then he looks up. “Yeah…I figured it might be getting close to dealing with that situation. Trust me, I HAVE been giving some thought to it, even though I’d rather not.” Tom says. “Well I’m afraid something is going to have to be done about him. You can’t just have a divided organization with half of it’s members calling themselves something else and primarily pledging allegiance to another leader.” You say. “Maybe it isn’t that bad! I mean he’s still providing a share of the loot to us right?” Tom says hopefully. “Perhaps, but think how much longer the intervals are starting to get, not to mention how much is he actually holding back? How long before he just stops sending altogether? No, we have to do something.” “Are you suggesting an attack? Because while I know around where he’s currently located, I’m not entirely sure of the exact area. He may have even moved since he has to do that a lot anyway. Fairly certain not only would he have the advantage, but even if we win, we’re going to suffer heavy losses which sort of defeats the purpose.” “I was thinking more of a stealthy assassination.” “And you’re going to do that?” “I could try. Maybe I could take a few others with me to help.” “No offense kid, but even if he didn’t have half our numbers with him and you had help I don’t think you could take Jake. Jake is the best fighter we have and he’s probably only gotten better since being out there. I’m not risking anyone in a foolish assassination attempt, let alone an internal conflict. Although…no…that’s not an option…” Tom says trailing off. “What? What is it?” “Well…if we DID go this route, and I’m not saying we are. I know a few outside folks that might be able to do it without problems. Damn, I just wish there was a less messy way of handling this.” “(Sigh) Well I hate to bring this up, but I have thought of a diplomatic solution which might be possible.” You say. “Oh?” You explain to Tom about a potential split with Jake altogether and just letting him go his own way since he seems happier anyway. Tom isn’t too fond of the idea since it no longer means gaining a cut of Jake’s looting profits, but he’s not outright dismissing it. In fact out of all the options, Tom still seems to think the best plan is to do nothing. At this point, you’re wondering why you’re bothering. > You diplomacy Well Zalmora was correct last time with her advice, and you have been on a roll with the whole talking thing lately. Jake would probably jump at the chance to split off from the gang at this point and make his own way. You explain to Tom in greater detail about how this could be beneficial. Tom is still reluctant on this idea, but as Zal has mentioned several time before, Tom seems to like and trust you so he agrees to your plan. “So, are you going to be the one to speak with Jake? Because it sure isn’t going to be me. That asshole has gone completely barmy and I’m not risking my life if he’s feeling a little blood thirsty.” Tom says. “Yeah, but I think I should probably have Zal with me.” “While I guess he could be more willing to listen with his fuck buddy there, but aren’t YOU her fuck buddy now? Not really a secret, and far be it from me to question your taste in women, but I’m not sure if Jake is going to be exactly pleased to see you anyway, let alone if you’re with his former squeeze.” “I never got the impression it was serious.” “That shit doesn’t matter with Jake, you know that. He’ll just be looking for an excuse to cut your throat. In fact, I think you’ve got the right idea sending Zal to speak with him, but I don’t think you should be there at all.” Tom might have a point there. A really good point actually though he’s probably got the added idea that if shit goes wrong with Jake, then Zal will just be the one who suffers. “Yeah, I guess. What if Zal refuses though?” “She ain’t got a fucking choice. She’s going and you’re staying. Last time I remember, I was the boss around here and have the final say.” Tom says with a bit more authority than you’re used to. “Alright, fine. I’ll inform her…I have to ask though. How come you don’t like Zal?” “Because she’s an underhanded manipulator.” “Why not just get rid of her then?” “Because I don’t deny her skills as a thief and she’s very capable in that regard. The fact is, she wants more power, but for whatever reason she doesn’t want the actual position of being the boss. I assume it’s because then she’d actually have a target on her back. No, much safer to just stand in the shadows and criticize and play mini-puppeteer…sort of like what she’s doing with you.” “Zal is not manipulating me.” “Oh no? You don’t think that this little idea that you came up with isn’t some shit she whispered in your ear? Contrary to popular belief around here, I’m not the damn fool people seem to think I am. You don’t think she hasn’t tried her little feminine wiles on me long before you showed up and got me out that cage? So since this is probably all her idea, SHE can be the one to do it!” You don’t think you’ve ever seen Tom quite so angry before, or at least extremely annoyed. Not wishing for this to get worse, you back away and leave Tom’s office. You soon meet up with Zal. “So, how did it go with Tom?” Zalmora asks. “He says he wants you to go talk with Jake and making a formal split about there being no hard feelings and such.” You say. “Hm. I see. And you’re not going to be there at all?” “Tom says he wants me here. Says you’d be better for the job seeing as you have a past with Jake and how he hates me.” “Well…I suppose I can see the logic in that. (Sigh) Very well, I suppose I can do it. I guess it was sort of my idea in the first place. Guess I better get that old bottle of absinium. Jake’s gonna want a peace offering…and probably something else. Just hope he doesn’t pass out like he always does. Ugh.” “Zal, you shouldn’t have to go do this if you don’t want to. Why don’t I go instead or we can go together?” Zal smiles at you and pats you on the face a couple times. “That’s sweet dear, but if you show up there by yourself, Jake’s gonna kill you. If he see both of us there together, he’ll probably do worse than kill you. And more importantly he could even kill me, so no you’re not going. For once Tom made the right decision even if he’s hoping I probably get killed in the process.” Zal remarks. “Tom said some pretty interesting things about you.” You say. “I’m sure he did and I don’t care. I’m sure you can make up your own mind about me. I’m off.” “Wait, don’t you need to know where Jake even is?” “I know the general area of where he’s probably located and I know Jake. He’s not going to be hard to find for me. See you later maybe.” And with those last words, Zalmora takes her leave of you presumably to go gather a few more items before heading out to seek Jake. You have some mixed feelings about all this, but really this is probably the best way to handle all this. With that plan in motion, it’s business as usual in the organization. A week passes and there still isn’t any word from Zal. No word from Jake or anyone from the Bloody Smiles either. While it isn’t certain that Zal was successful and just stayed or she was killed, what is certain is that enough time has passed that it’s pretty clear that the Bloody Smiles are no longer sending anything back to the Crimson Talons. A “clean break” or not, Jake has gone his own way. Tom doesn’t seem to care about it anymore. He’s not exactly happy, but he seems to have an “oh well” approach and isn’t concerning himself with the situation any longer. Almost everyone else in the organization has some thoughts on the matter and most of them aren’t good. A lot of folks are just planning to go find Jake and follow him instead, a few have just mentioned going independent. Still others have mentioned maybe it’s time for new leadership within the Crimson Talons. You’re more in favor of ousting Tom. After all you’ve been putting most of the major effort into this organization, while Tom doesn’t seem to give a shit at all and you don’t see why he should be running things if that’s the case. Not to mention, he’s the one that sucks, why should you leave? It doesn’t take long before you, Vaughn and a few others confront Tom in his office. He’s pretty surprised. “Um, has something come up?” Tom asks. “Yeah, you’re stepping down as head of Crimson Talons. You’re no longer fit to lead.” You say. “Oh, is that right? And who is? You?” “This organization could do worse.” You answer. “Pfft, not much worse.” Tom says. “Why are we still talking, let’s just gut this old asshole and get on with it.” Camid, one of the younger members shouts. “Gut him? I thought we were just removing him from power.” Vaughn remarks. “Well how the hell did you think we were going to do that Vaughn? We can’t just let this asshole walk away! That’s what HE did with Jake and the rest! And that’s why he’s a pussy leader. We do the same thing and we’re pussies too!” Camid remarks. “Just because the man’s a pussy doesn’t mean we need to kill the guy.” “Oh big surprise coming from someone who takes dick like a pussy.” Camid shouts. Vaughn’s temper at this point starts to rise at Camid’s remark and now those two are nearly coming to blows. While you’re telling them to shut the hell up and focus, you notice that Tom is getting something out of his desk. It’s probably going to be a flintlock pistol. Wasting no time, you leap halfway across Tom’s desk in an effort to stop him from pulling out a pistol. You were correct as you manage to grab his hand in the drawer and indeed see it grabbing a pistol. “Let it fucking go!” you say. “Fuck you!” Tom shouts, but instead of struggling for the pistol he instead grabs a sharp quill off his desk and stabs you deep in the eye with it. You scream in agony and roll off the desk clutching you face. Despite the pain and the screaming, you manage to pull the quill out of your destroyed eyeball, which makes a sickening squishy sound. Blood leaks out on your face. By this time however, Tom has gained complete control over the situation and everyone else who was rebelling have stopped doing whatever they were doing and stepped back. “You fuckers think you can take over? You assholes can’t even get along with each other! And you, I actually liked you kid, but I can see that I was severely wrong on that front. Y’know if you weren’t happy here, you could have just left. I’ve never held anyone here against their will. But no you had to try this shit, well that ain’t happening and now you have to pay. I’m the fucking boss around here and you’re the example.” And with those last words, Tom makes you an example by shooting you in the other eye. This time the wound is fatal.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Ah, here we are, just up these stairs and through that door.” Tom says. “And here I was just getting used to walking through shitty water.” You say. “Hey, the sewers are the best way to get around the city. The guards don’t patrol as much down here and even when they do, they don’t patrol certain areas.” “Can’t say as I blame them, I’ve been on the verge of puking since we entered your secret tunnel which you neglected to mention was actually a foul forgotten sewer drain entrance.” “Hey, this is the business we’re in kid. It ain’t always convenient and comfortable. Besides you get used to the smell. Come on.” Tom and you walk up some stone stairs and Tom bangs on a sturdy looking wooden door. “Hey! It’s me! Open up!” Tom shouts, a few moments pass and a scruffy looking man rubbing his head opens the door. “What the fuck you banging on the door like the city watch for? Wait…Tom? What the fuck are you doing here? Weren’t you taken to cages?” “Yeah Vaughn, and where the hell were you guys? I thought you were supposed to come get me yesterday!” “The heat was still pretty bad, so we decided to lay low.” Tom barges past Vaughn who follows and then you follow both as they continue to talk. You must be above the sewers now though this looks like it might be an abandoned building of some sort so far. It barely looks better than the sewers you just left. You see a few people who you assume are Crimson Talons, but they’re either completely passed out or look like in various stages of being drunk or hung over. Bottles of spirits are all over the place and now you’re starting to wonder just how “powerful” the Crimson Talons are really supposed to be. “Decided to lay low huh? Looks more like you lot stayed down here, had a party, got liquored up and forgot about me!” Tom remarks. “Now that’s just not true! We didn’t even spend your cut of the loot! You can even check your room! Nothing’s been touched!” “I swear I’m not here for a few days and this place goes to shit. Where’s David?” “David? Um…he’s dead.” “What?! He wasn’t even on the job at the time. He was here!” “Yeah, well when the rest of us were coming back from the job, he apparently got into an argument with the boss. A really bad one about how he didn’t like the way Edmond was running things. It didn’t go well for either of them. Edmond might have been old, but he managed to overpower David and killed him. Unfortunately I guess it was all a bit too much exertion, because the boss died of a heart attack like almost immediately afterwards.” “Wait…you’re saying the boss is ALSO dead?!” “Yeah. We took both of their bodies to the usual spot if you wanted to say a few things to David…” “I’m sure the rats have stripped both corpses by now…(sigh) so who’s the new boss?” “Um, nobody. We haven’t really gotten around to figuring it out yet…but hey your name came up as a potential candidate! I don’t think anyone else wants the job.” At this point you start laughing. “I’m sorry I doubted you Tom. I obviously was way off about not believing that you weren’t one of the most important people in this organization.” “Who’s this asshole?” one of the nearby members asks stirring from his hang over. “Someone who actually helped me out, Jake.” Tom says shaking his head at all this new information and just tells you to come with him while he checks his room. Tom’s room in this dump isn’t quite as bad as the rest of the place. It even looks like he’s taken great pains to make it look “neat.” After looking through his drawers and small chest, he breathes a sigh of relief. “Well, as shocking as it is. All my stuff is actually still here, even my cut. Glad to see I’m somewhat respected around here.” “Yeah, they just forgot to spring you from a cage.” “Yeah well, I’m here now.” “And so am I. So now what? You brought me here to potentially join your little organization, but so far I’m not really impressed with the organization part. I thought you guys were supposed to be infamous or something.” Tom sits down and exhales deeply, rubbing his face. “Yeah, we once were. The truth is, even by the time I got involved with his organization, it was on the decline. Still had the vicious rep at least though, maybe a bit too vicious since it probably encouraged Klyton’s crackdowns and tightening up of security. Things just got worse over the years as more skilled members got arrested, killed or just quit for better pastures.” Tom explains. “People could just quit? I sort of though joining something like this was a for life type of thing.” “It typically is, which is why you can see how much trouble we’re in if people can just up and quit! It didn’t really help when the Ebony Claw Syndicate showed up here briefly.” “Who the hell are they?” “Another criminal outfit. Much larger than us by far. They’re based in the Delantium Kingdom, but I believe they have a strong presence in Holgard too. Edmond was an idiot when dealing with them, though I guess that was mainly pride.” “What did he do?” “Well the Ebony Claw had heard of the Talons and their problems with Klyton’s improved security. However, they also knew of our reputation even if it was a bit tattered at that point. Out of respect, they offered to help the Talons. The deal was we’d still have reign over Klyton, keep our identity and have to access to Ebony Claw resources, but we’d have to give a cut of all the profits we made to them. Not sure what the percentage was, but Edmond wasn’t pleased with it. Though like I said, it could have been free and he probably would have turned them down.” “So did they cause you a lot damage as well?” “If they did, it wasn’t directly. Their representative just left and we haven’t heard anything from them since. Despite never seeing any signs of the Claw again, Edmond got even more paranoid than he already was. Started organizing riskier jobs and accepting anyone who was desperate enough to join. He was convinced we were going to have to deal with the Claw again so we needed to be prepared. All that ultimately happened was with all the new unskilled people we got sloppier and caused even more heat to bear down on us and well, this is what we’re reduced to today.” Sheesh, this is pretty damn depressing. It’s almost enough to make you rethink your own career choice. Almost. At this point Tom stands up. “Shit, I have no idea what comes next. If I was smart I suppose I’d get out. Of course if I was smart, I wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.” Tom says. “Can’t you just start over elsewhere?” you ask. “I thought about heading to Hessla, but that place is overrun by pirates nowadays. Spending days at sea isn’t exactly my thing. Nah, Klyton’s my home and for better or worse I’m staying here.” “So are you taking over the Talons as boss?” “I dunno, I never really thought of myself as a leader since it seems like a lot of headache, but I suppose out of all of us that are left, I do have the most experience and years on my side. I suppose given that my face is more well known now due to being thrown in a cage by the city watch, being the boss has appeal since I won’t have to risk going out in public as much. I guarantee if I get nicked again, it’ll probably be the death penalty. Well anyway what’re your plans? You still interested in joining or is that a silly question?” Not too silly though since despite the deplorable state the Crimson Talons are in, you sort of wonder about the potential. Before you though maybe if you joined such an organization, you’d probably be considered just another low ranking flunky. However through barely any effort on your part, you may have just secured a high ranking position in the organization by helping out the new leader of it. You think if you joined and made a go of it, you’d at least have a lot of input. Who knows, maybe the organization will get back on its feet. If it did, you’d be even better off. Of course this is going to be a lot of work and you are still new. While Tom might like you, the other members may see you as an upstart. Getting a knife in the back from a bunch of folks who are supposed to be watching it is a real possibility. You might be better off going off on your own. > You stay independent Staying with the Crimson Talons, just seems like a bunch of trouble waiting to happen. They’re disorganized, their new leader is some guy that YOU had to rescue, they’re obviously on the hit list of the authorities here and you aren’t getting the impression that they’re going to be your style. “So… Tom I appreciate the offer, but I think I’m going to stay on my own.” You say. “I figured. Can’t really blame you, though I am disappointed since I think not only would you be an asset, but I think you might have learned a few things yourself. It might not seem like it, but some of the folks here are pretty good at their craft.” “Yeah, well maybe another time…so we’re good I trust?” “Yeah we’re good…actually here’s something for your rescue effort. It would be more, but well as you can see, a bit down on fortune at the moment.” Tom says handing you a few gold coins from a pouch. Tom at this point walks with you to entrance back to the sewer where he gives you directions to the next closest exit to the city streets from there. He then mentions a few cheap inns in the area you should end up in. “Now I don’t think I need to tell you, that I’d like to keep our hideout a secret.” Tom says. “Sure, secret’s safe with me. Not like I got anyone to tell anyway.” “Good, because I’m sure you realize that it would be bad for you if you did rat on us to anyone.” Tom says in a tone that’s slightly more hostile than he’s been towards you. “Hey, I ain’t no rat.” You proclaim. “Of course not. Well good luck kid, wherever your endeavors take you.” Tom says and with that you exit the hideout and the door slams behind you leaving you back in the sewers. “(Sigh) Back in the shit. Well at least I’m a little richer this time. Okay, I think he said this way…” And so begins your life in Klyton... > You time passes... Chapter 2B: The More Things Change Year 17 “Yeah, yeah, here’s the rent.” You say handing over a few silvers to Trobart. The innkeeper takes the silver and gives you a scornful look. “Bout fucking time! You’re always late! And don’t think I don’t know how you get this!” Trobart says. “Of course you know how I get this, but it doesn’t stop you from taking the money anyway, you mean old bastard.” You answer. “Watch yer, fuckin’ tongue! One word from me, and the militia would take your ass in quick!” “Pfft, yeah right. You call the militia and they’d probably shut this whole place down. You’re selling booze without a license in the basement and one of your rooms is being used by an unlicensed whore.” “Fuck you cunt face!” Trobart shouts and stomps off. You just shake your head at the old man’s misplaced anger. You head to your room with no more distractions, and then wearily sit on your shitty straw mattress and count what’s left of your ill-gotten loot. Enough to eat for a few days. Granted this hasn’t been the best month, but you swear you thought you’d be doing a lot better than this by now. This city unfortunately though is proving a lot more vigilant than you’d like. You certainly aren’t in Teckleville anymore. What’s really not helping is the Crimson Talons running around carelessly committing clumsy burglaries and heists and bringing the militia down even harder on everything. You’re sort of glad you didn’t join up with them now, because at this rate, the militia is probably going to track them down and execute the lot of them. Still, that doesn’t solve your current problem. Part of you wonders if maybe you should just move on from this city, but you really loathe the idea of travelling again and you aren’t sure where you’d go. Hessla maybe? While you’re pondering your possible future here, you get a knock on the door. “Heeeeey youngster! (hic!) You got any spare….coppers fer the faith?” Great, it’s that drunken priest that has a room across from you. You thought the men of Joachim were supposed to be into purity and restraint. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Joachim was the god of alcohol and hopeless drunks based on this guy’s behavior and actions. “No and I told you to stop bothering me Virgil! Don’t you have a collection box you can pilfer booze money from?” you shout. “Yeah…but no…but I got some (hic) news…” Virgil answers. “Yeah, I already know about Joachim’s blessed light. You tried to tell me about it the first time I came here and you nearly threw up on me in the process.” “I did? Geez, sorry son…but this is different! (hic) Some…somebody…” “Somebody what?” “Somebody was lookin’ fer ya.” Well that peaked your interest. “Oh?” you answer. “Yeah…(hic).” “Hold on.” You say and go answer the door. No sooner have you opened the door when the odor of Virgil hits you full force. You immediately cover your nose and mouth. “Shit, Virgil. When the hell was the last time you washed? You fucking smell worse than a troll’s ass. Granted I’ve never smelled a troll’s ass, but I think it’s a safe bet you smell worse than one.” You say. “Guess again. Hahahahahahaha! (hic) So can ya spare a copper?” “Maybe, so what’s all this about someone looking for me?” “Oh, that. Yeah, this big guy. I mean not like ogre big, but just human big ya know? Old guy too. (hic) I mean not as old as that asshole who own this place, but probably around my age.” “Well that’s still fucking old then, aren’t you like seventy?” “Fuck you. I’ll have you know I’m in my forties…I think…yeah…” “Okay, so big guy in his forties was looking for me. What did he want?” Of course NOW Virgil decides to be uncooperative. “No! No! Fuck you, I’m not tellin’ you shit now. (hic) Who…who…what do you think I am some kinda asshole fer you to abuse? Callin’ me seventy fuckin’ years old. I oughta kick yer ass in the name of Joachim! Yer lucky I’m a man of faith…(hic)” At this point Virgil mumbles and stumbles away, bumps into the door to his room and then after a few tries he finally gets it open and slams it behind him. You suppose you could always ask him again later when he’s feeling less feisty. He will have likely forgotten all about your so-called insult later, of course he probably will have forgotten about the guy looking for you too. You close the door and think on who he could have been talking about. Your dad? Dad’s not a big guy though and you honestly doubt if he would bother to come look for you. Maybe it was Tom from the Crimson Talons? You can’t imagine what he’d want to see you directly for though. You’d imagine if he were trying to recruit you again he’d send an underling to invite you to see him. Tom wasn’t a huge guy either; of course given that Virgil is on the short and scrawny side, he probably thinks you’re a big guy too. Other than those two, you’re drawing a blank. It’s a little concerning that some big guy is looking for you though. You hear another knock on the door. “Virgil?” you ask. “No, it’s Randi. I got some information that you might want to know.” A woman’s voice says Randi is the red headed whore that lives down the hall. Unusual that she’d seek you out, since she’s snotty with you at the best of times. You guess it’s because you turned down her overly aggressive offer the first time you stepped into this inn. You answer the door and she’s as scuzzy as ever. You feel like you’re catching something just by standing this close to her. “Okay, so what’s this information? Because if it’s some big guy that was looking for me, I already know because Virgil told me.” You say. “Oh? Well did he tell you what this big guy wanted too?” Randi asks. “No.” “You’ll want to know then.” “…Well?” “Well what?” “(Sigh) I know you’re not used to hearing this, but spit it out! Tell me what this guy wanted.” “I’m not your fucking secretary. You want to know, you need to pay, ten silvers.” “Ten fucking silvers? You don’t charge that much for a blowjob!” “Yeah well if you want a blowjob, then you can pay half that price, but if you want to know what that guy wanted, it’s ten silvers.” While you’re wondering who this guy is and why he’s looking for you, you’re not exactly keen on giving away most of your hard earned money to some whore who you’re not even fucking. “Yeah well go find two dicks to suck then, because you’re not getting ten silver from me.” You say and shut the door on Randi who shouts some obscenities at you from the hallway. You’ll just remain alert and keep an eye out this guy looking for you. Remain on your guard too, since you still don’t know if this man means you harm or not. Hopefully Virgil can tell you something later. You might have to offer a couple coppers, but it’s far cry from ten silvers. For now though you decide to get some sleep after your long night of thievery. As your lids get heavier, you think on where you could ply your trade with a little more ease and a lot more loot. The rich areas are well patrolled, the government district is well patrolled, the merchant district is well patrolled, and the poor areas are…still patrolled and the folks don’t have shit. It suddenly occurs to you that you’ve never really tried the university district of the city. Might be worth a look, after all it should be filled with stupid rich kids not aware of their surroundings and the Talons don’t seem to go running around there, so there might be less heat. Later… You wake up midday. After getting yourself ready for today’s endeavors, you knock on Virgil’s door, but there is no answer. He’s either still asleep or he’s out collecting donations for Joachim. Probably the latter considering you didn’t contribute to his booze fund. You leave the Welcome Mat Inn, though a little more cautiously than usual. Nobody seems to be approaching or giving you suspicious looks though. Still, wishing to keep a low profile, you stick to the back streets as much as possible and eventually when you get to the better part of town, you catch a coach for your remaining trip to the university. By the time you arrive, the day is beginning to end, but you soon find that the university is still fairly active. After a few hours of just scouting and walking around, it’s much like you figured. A lot of scholarly types with their noses in books and rich kids that do a lot of partying. The dorms have security, but oddly not as much as one might think. You find that despite being dressed in your lower class clothing, nobody is really giving you a second glance. It might be due to your youth though; you probably just look like a struggling student. Wasn’t like your dad was exactly rich when he attended this place either. It occurs to you how strange it is to be at the university at all. You never thought you’d ever “attend” your dad’s old place of higher learning. You’re sure at one time he had hopes you would, but it probably wasn’t under these circumstances. Out of curiosity you pay a visit to the section to where the medical school is located. Seems weird that your father spent so much money and time putting himself through the place while you’re here basically casing it. You’re not that well versed in the value of medical supplies and drugs, but you figure the Crimson Talons could be willing to fence whatever you bring. Hell, you probably could just sell the stuff yourself. You know more than enough folks in your area that bitch about not being able to afford shit from the local apothecary, let alone proper medicine. Of course since this is your first time here, you’re still getting used to all the twisting corridors that this university seems to favor. You end up stepping into a class in session a couple times, before stumbling upon an unattended supply room where you pilfer various bottles of pills and liquids. When you attempt to leave the facility, you go in the direction where you think you came from, but soon find that you made a wrong turn somewhere. Somehow you manage to find yourself in what you think must be an office area since you see various doors with names on them. (All of them with “Dr.” in front) As you’re passing one, the door opens and you find yourself face to face with an older woman with gray hair. “Hey. You here about the job?” the woman asks. “Huh? What?” you answer. “I put out several announcements around campus for an escort job. Hmmm….you don’t look like a warrior and you’re a little young. You one of those students over from the magic college?” “Um, no actually, I just got lost. I’m trying to find my way out of this place.” “Lost? What were you doing here in the first place?” “Well my father used to go here and I…” “Wait a minute…you do you look a little familiar. What’s your father’s name?” You tell this woman your father’s name and she instantly lights up. “Hah! I knew it. You look a lot like your father. He was in my microbiology class when I used to teach it. Did very well too. How he doing?” the woman asks. “Oh he’s doing fine uh Miss…umm…” you reply “Oh I go by Dr. Gossey and nowadays I focus purely on zoology and the biology of the creatures and animals that live in our fascinating world! So are you a student here too and trying to follow in your dad’s footsteps?” “Something like that I suppose. I’m actually just checking out my options right now. You know, to see what I might be interested in.” “Good. Good. Glad to see a young person thinking about their future. Hey, would you consider yourself to be an adventurous spirit?” “I suppose in some ways I am.” “Well I’ve got a job that needs doing and I don’t have time to do it myself and I’d rather not send my assistant there by herself. You familiar with qweepas?” “Aren’t they some really ugly oversized rats?” “In simple terms basically, but they’re much more than that. They’re actually much more intelligent than the average rat. They aren’t even native to the continent, but a lot of them over the years have undoubtedly snuck aboard Hessla pirate ships and now they’re slowly starting to gain a foothold as a pest on the coast. One can only imagine how far they will have spread in another ten years.” “So what is it that you need exactly?” “I need someone to go into Hessla or around that area with my assistant and get me some live specimens. About ten should do. Like I said, I’d send my assistant alone, but I know how dangerous Hessla is especially for a single female, so it would be better if someone went with her.” “So, am I just to be there as hired muscle?” “Yes, though as I noticed before, you don’t seem to be a physical type…not to say you aren’t well proportioned for a young man your age, it’s just I was hoping to get a taker from the gladiator team or someone of similar intimidating size. I only mentioned this at all to you because for one, I haven’t had anyone else come in as strange as that may be. And two I knew your father. I figured it wouldn’t be polite to not offer his son a chance to earn some money towards his education goals, whatever they may be. You could even get a jump start on potential class credits.” This is getting a little strange, but you might as well ask. “So what’s this job pay then?” you ask. “Thirty gold pieces upon completion.” Dr. Gossey replies. “And all I have to do is escort your assistant?” “Yes, and make sure the qweepa specimens get here alive. Those are very important to my research. My assistant will have everything else required for this job and the trip will essentially be completely paid for.” “Do you need a decision now?” “Well it would be nice, but I understand if you need to think on it. Hessla isn’t a safe place and knowing your father, I’m sure he wanted better for you and you grew up in a protected environment and are probably less familiar with handling folks with a more criminal mentality.” Dr. Gossey’s assessment of you nearly makes you laugh. While this is technically a “real” job, you can’t say you aren’t totally unopposed to performing it. Thirty gold is certainly better than what you’ve done in most weeks since your time here and it would give you a chance to go to Hessla for free. Maybe see if things are potentially more lucrative over there. > You take the job What the hell, it might make for an interesting change of pace. “I’ll take the job.” You say. “You will? Are you sure?” Dr. Gossey asks. “Yes, and you don’t need to worry about me. I’m not unfamiliar with the seedier elements of life.” “Hmm, yes I suppose there is no way of completely distancing yourself from such things. I’m glad you’re worldlier than you appear since I fear my assistant is a bit sheltered. Well, I suppose sheltered isn’t quite the right word, more like disconnected from reality on these matters. Elana’s a good student, but as I said, I fear if she went to Hessla by herself, she’d say something to the wrong person and soon find herself sold into sex slavery or something similar. Anyway, just make sure you get those Qweepas safe and sound here.” “Is there some sort of place that sells them or something in Hessla?” “I don’t know, I just know that they are common enough there to be a problem. Whether that means you buy them or catch them, makes no difference. As I said, that’s going to be Elana’s primary concern, but obviously if you can help in that matter too, it would be greatly appreciated." “Okay, so when does this job begin?” “Well since you agreed to it already, say in three days? You’ll meet Elana at the carriage station in the morning. You’ll recognize her by her tan skin, long curly brown hair, a large pack for the trip no doubt and she’ll probably be a bit too well dressed for the occasion.” “Okay, hope I don’t miss her.” “I’ll be sure to give her your description as well and insist that she not leave until she finds you.” “Sounds good to me. I’ll meet your assistant then.” Dr. Gossey goes on to thank you and exclaim that she’s glad you came along when you did and hopes you have a safe and productive trip. She also gives you directions of how to get out of the medical school, since you were lost in the first place. When you exit the medical school, you decide to call it a night and head home since you figure if you need to get up in the morning in three days, then you’re going to have “fix” your internal clock again so you don’t over sleep. When you finally get back to the neighborhood, you revert back your cautious ways until you finally enter the Welcome Mat and your room. You manage to make it without being accosted by any of its denizens this time. You spend tomorrow mostly “taking the day off.” You go get something to eat a few times, but that’s about it. You still don’t see Virgil, but you do have a vague feeling that someone is watching you every time you leave the damn inn. On the second day of one these food trips, one of the local food merchants who doesn’t normally make much small talk, breaks that habit when you’re looking over the fruit cart. “Hey, some big guy was looking for you yesterday.” The merchant remarks. “So I’ve heard. Got a better description than that?” you ask. “Uh, sort of a bushy beard, but the rest of his face was obviously pretty weathered. Shaved head. Probably in his forties or fifties, but still pretty fit. Carried a pack with him, but no weapons. Well at least none out in the open. Said to tell you that he’d carrying an important message for you from your family and that it’s very urgent that you meet him at the Raggedy Man Inn.” “Hmmm, and that’s it?” “As far as I know.” “Thanks. I’ll just be taking these today.” You say and pay the merchant for your food before leaving. Well that was way more productive than asking Virgil. It’s all a little sinister now that you have a little more information though. Why the hell wouldn’t a simple courier just meet you at the inn you’re staying at? You suppose it’s possible he doesn’t know, but if he’s already spoken to Randi or Virgil, one of them has no doubt blabbed already. At least Randi probably did. You don’t know much about the Raggedy Man inn except it’s in an even worse part of Klyton than you already stay at. Klyton might have militia patrols marching all over the place, but they’re still lax in certain areas. Makes you a bit wary that a large man wants to meet you there. You can’t imagine your father or mother would send someone like that, let alone want him to meet you under HIS conditions. Your sister maybe? Possible you suppose, but you’re skeptical. In any case, you’re not meeting this guy unless he comes directly to you and when that happens. You’re going to be… “Heeeeeeey! Youngster! You got some coppers fer the (hic!) faith?” Virgil suddenly says as you step into the Welcome Mat. He’s obviously forgotten his outrage at you. Fortunately he may have even remembered to take your advice about washing last time since he smells half way decent this time. “Actually I do Virgil, but I need a favor from you.” You say. “Sure…sure! I’ve always liked ya son! (hic!) You need Joachim’s blessin?” “No, no, nothing like that. I just need you to relay a message. Remember that big guy looking for me?” “….Oh YEAH! Yeah! I remember him! Hey he was lookin’ fer you…yesterday…said he wants you to…” Virgil starts to say before you interrupt. “Good, good, I want you to tell him, the next time he sees you that I left for Holgard.” “Huh? You’re movin?” “Something like that, but I want you to tell him okay? Don’t forget.” you say and hand Virgil a few coppers. “K…well Jochim’s blessin’ on ya if yer leaving then. You always were one of da (hic!) good ones.” Virgil pats you on the back and then stumbles off. You return to your room and as an added pre-caution, you put a chair against the door. You have no idea how you’re going to get a good night’s sleep for tomorrow, but you’re going to try… And you fail. You get a couple hours in before you wake up and can’t go back to sleep. Seeing as you aren’t going to get any more sleep, you pack your stuff and decide to leave your room in the middle of night and just head to the carriage station early. You don’t really know when Elana is going to show up there anyway, so you might not even have to wait that long. On your way there, you half think you’re being followed the entire time, so you do a lot of back tracking and take side streets until you reach your destination. You’ve never been to the carriage station before, but it’s mostly empty right now. Still, it’s well lit and there are a few militiamen stomping around. You never thought you’d be happy about that! You find a bench and wait. Soon, you start to get a little sleepy again despite your attempts at still trying to stay awake. You also start to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just stay in Hessla when you get there. “I oughta just go meet this guy and stab him in the face like I did with Klint…” you mutter to yourself. Later… “Hey! Wake up! We have to get a move on! (Sigh) I told Dr. Gossey I didn’t need an escort.” You hear a voice exclaim while some hands shove your shoulders a few times. You groggily open your eyes and realize you’re in a much more horizontal position from when you first closed your eyes. After getting the blurriness out, you see a finely dressed woman with tan skin and long curly hair before you. “Elana?” you ask. “Yes! And you’re the escort Dr. Gossey hired I presume. You ARE aren’t you? I’d hate to think I just woke up some random sleeping bum.” Elana answers. “Yes, the doctor hired me. How long have I been asleep?” “How should I know? All I do know is I had to load this carriage up myself. I thought YOU would be helping! Anyway, we have to get going, hurry up!” “Okay, okay, I’m ready, let’s get in the carriage.” “Wait. YOU are not going in the carriage.” “What? Then where the hell am I supposed to be?” “You ride up top with the driver. I have some studying to do on the way and I don’t want you disturbing me. Besides, if you’re supposed to keeping an eye out for danger, you’ll do it better from there anyway.” It’s too damn early in the morning to deal with this, so you decide not to and just go over to the carriage and climb up to where the driver is. He nods and greets you. “So are we ready to go?” the driver asks you. “Come on let’s go!” Elana shouts from inside the carriage. “Well you heard the lady.” You say. And with that, you’re on your way out of Klyton and on the road to Hessla. Right now though you’re just trying to adjust your eyes to all the damn sunlight. It’s been awhile since you’ve been up this early. You watch the countryside pass by as the horses travel at a good pace. So far no trouble yet. You look behind you and see the supplies on the roof of the carriage and something you didn’t notice right behind you and the driver. A blunderbuss. “Guess that’s for when bandits attack?” you ask the driver. “Huh? Oh that? I suppose so. Honestly though, haven’t had any problems in all the years I’ve driven this route. Still, I keep it loaded just in case.” The driver replies. “Never?” “Nope. Never even had any problems in Hessla, despite its reputation. A lot of people think its some anarchic pirate paradise, but the place is probably just as orderly as Klyton. The Governor of Hessla has his own personal security force called the Headsmen to patrol the place. They’re a lot more draconian than the militia too. Usually they just execute offenders on the spot without trial.” “Really?” “Sure. I mean yeah without them then the place might be a little more lawless like it was in the past, but nowadays? You’re just as safe from getting mugged there as you would in Klyton. Hell, maybe even more so given that Klyton has the Crimson Talons running around.” “Hmm, yeah.” Well this sucks. Already you’re finding out that Hessla isn’t the place you imagined it was. It’s kind of why you took most of your important belongings with you just in case you decided to ditch the job and just stay in Hessla. “Driver! Slow down! The ride is too bumpy and I can’t focus on my reading!” Elana shouts while banging inside the carriage. A few moments later… “Driver! Speed up! I’d like to get Hessla sometime this month! And YOU up there, I hope you’re doing your job and keeping a look out!” Then again, Hessla might not be that bad, if you already had a bit of coin to throw around while you assessed the opportunities there. You think that there is probably a good amount of supplies here on the carriage you could sell. Let alone the horses and carriage themselves. The driver doesn’t exactly look like a fighter and might even have a few coins to his name. And most importantly, Elana probably is carrying a purse full of coin for this trip. Wouldn’t take much to just grab the blunderbuss and hijack this whole carriage. > You hijack the carriage Yeah, you’re done with Klyton, and this whole job attempt… You reach for the blunderbuss and upon grasping it, the carriage hits a bump in the road, which temporarily causes you to teeter and sway. Unfortunately this is enough time to allow the driver to realize what you’re attempting to do. He doesn’t even say anything he just lets go of the horse reins and elbows you in the face though it isn’t enough to drop the firearm. He then attempts to take his blunderbuss back. You struggle with the driver until he realizes he isn’t strong enough to take it from you. Just as you’re about to yank it completely away, the driver lets go and you pull so hard you lose balance. The driver then takes advantage of this by pushing you off the carriage. You fall off the carriage with the blunderbuss still in hand, and land hard on your back, but luckily still out of the way of the carriage wheels. However, upon you impact with the ground, your hand was around the trigger of the blunderbuss, which you accidently pulled. The shrapnel hits back wheel of the carriage and shatters a portion of it. The carriage manages to continue for a second before the back wheel’s structure is completely destroyed and soon the carriage tips over on its side. The horses drag the carriage a bit longer, before the harness breaks and they’re free of the wreck. Meanwhile you’re partially watching from the distance and still wincing in pain from falling. You didn’t break anything, but your back hurts like hell. As quick as you can walk, you make your way over to the tipped over carriage. You’re fairly certain the driver had to have fallen off. If he didn’t die, you’re going to finish the job. You aren’t sure about Elana, chances are she’s alive and still in the carriage, but if she insists on getting mouthy like she’s been with you before, you’ll teach her a lesson too. When you finally get within the area of the carriage you see some of the supplies scattered all over the road and the body of the driver. He’s face down and not moving. You go over to check by prodding him with the blunderbuss and he’s still not moving. Looks like he probably broke his neck. While you’re inspecting the driver, you hear rustling in the carriage, along with some groans. Looks like Elana lived. If she wants to continue living, she better comply. You go over to the sideways carriage, climb on top it and open the door. Looking downward, you see that Elana is still in a semi-prone position opposite of you. Elana may have a bossy upper class way about her, but she wasn’t completely unwise in the ways of being in potential danger. Already dazed and scared from the crash, upon seeing you standing menacingly over her with a blunderbuss in hand she reacts without even thinking that you MIGHT potentially be helping her rather than robbing her. (Though that was a correct assumption on her part because you totally were going to rob her) “Okay, you…shit!” you say before you’re interrupted by Elana pulling a small ornate pistol and firing. The bullet isn’t even very big, but they don’t need to be when they hit something vital. You clutch at your throat and fall backwards off the carriage. You don’t even die right away, you gag, cough blood and convulse a bit. You even manage an attempt to get back up, but by the time Elana drags herself out of the carriage, you’re a corpse.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>What the hell, it might make for an interesting change of pace. “I’ll take the job.” You say. “You will? Are you sure?” Dr. Gossey asks. “Yes, and you don’t need to worry about me. I’m not unfamiliar with the seedier elements of life.” “Hmm, yes I suppose there is no way of completely distancing yourself from such things. I’m glad you’re worldlier than you appear since I fear my assistant is a bit sheltered. Well, I suppose sheltered isn’t quite the right word, more like disconnected from reality on these matters. Elana’s a good student, but as I said, I fear if she went to Hessla by herself, she’d say something to the wrong person and soon find herself sold into sex slavery or something similar. Anyway, just make sure you get those Qweepas safe and sound here.” “Is there some sort of place that sells them or something in Hessla?” “I don’t know, I just know that they are common enough there to be a problem. Whether that means you buy them or catch them, makes no difference. As I said, that’s going to be Elana’s primary concern, but obviously if you can help in that matter too, it would be greatly appreciated." “Okay, so when does this job begin?” “Well since you agreed to it already, say in three days? You’ll meet Elana at the carriage station in the morning. You’ll recognize her by her tan skin, long curly brown hair, a large pack for the trip no doubt and she’ll probably be a bit too well dressed for the occasion.” “Okay, hope I don’t miss her.” “I’ll be sure to give her your description as well and insist that she not leave until she finds you.” “Sounds good to me. I’ll meet your assistant then.” Dr. Gossey goes on to thank you and exclaim that she’s glad you came along when you did and hopes you have a safe and productive trip. She also gives you directions of how to get out of the medical school, since you were lost in the first place. When you exit the medical school, you decide to call it a night and head home since you figure if you need to get up in the morning in three days, then you’re going to have “fix” your internal clock again so you don’t over sleep. When you finally get back to the neighborhood, you revert back your cautious ways until you finally enter the Welcome Mat and your room. You manage to make it without being accosted by any of its denizens this time. You spend tomorrow mostly “taking the day off.” You go get something to eat a few times, but that’s about it. You still don’t see Virgil, but you do have a vague feeling that someone is watching you every time you leave the damn inn. On the second day of one these food trips, one of the local food merchants who doesn’t normally make much small talk, breaks that habit when you’re looking over the fruit cart. “Hey, some big guy was looking for you yesterday.” The merchant remarks. “So I’ve heard. Got a better description than that?” you ask. “Uh, sort of a bushy beard, but the rest of his face was obviously pretty weathered. Shaved head. Probably in his forties or fifties, but still pretty fit. Carried a pack with him, but no weapons. Well at least none out in the open. Said to tell you that he’d carrying an important message for you from your family and that it’s very urgent that you meet him at the Raggedy Man Inn.” “Hmmm, and that’s it?” “As far as I know.” “Thanks. I’ll just be taking these today.” You say and pay the merchant for your food before leaving. Well that was way more productive than asking Virgil. It’s all a little sinister now that you have a little more information though. Why the hell wouldn’t a simple courier just meet you at the inn you’re staying at? You suppose it’s possible he doesn’t know, but if he’s already spoken to Randi or Virgil, one of them has no doubt blabbed already. At least Randi probably did. You don’t know much about the Raggedy Man inn except it’s in an even worse part of Klyton than you already stay at. Klyton might have militia patrols marching all over the place, but they’re still lax in certain areas. Makes you a bit wary that a large man wants to meet you there. You can’t imagine your father or mother would send someone like that, let alone want him to meet you under HIS conditions. Your sister maybe? Possible you suppose, but you’re skeptical. In any case, you’re not meeting this guy unless he comes directly to you and when that happens. You’re going to be… “Heeeeeeey! Youngster! You got some coppers fer the (hic!) faith?” Virgil suddenly says as you step into the Welcome Mat. He’s obviously forgotten his outrage at you. Fortunately he may have even remembered to take your advice about washing last time since he smells half way decent this time. “Actually I do Virgil, but I need a favor from you.” You say. “Sure…sure! I’ve always liked ya son! (hic!) You need Joachim’s blessin?” “No, no, nothing like that. I just need you to relay a message. Remember that big guy looking for me?” “….Oh YEAH! Yeah! I remember him! Hey he was lookin’ fer you…yesterday…said he wants you to…” Virgil starts to say before you interrupt. “Good, good, I want you to tell him, the next time he sees you that I left for Holgard.” “Huh? You’re movin?” “Something like that, but I want you to tell him okay? Don’t forget.” you say and hand Virgil a few coppers. “K…well Jochim’s blessin’ on ya if yer leaving then. You always were one of da (hic!) good ones.” Virgil pats you on the back and then stumbles off. You return to your room and as an added pre-caution, you put a chair against the door. You have no idea how you’re going to get a good night’s sleep for tomorrow, but you’re going to try… And you fail. You get a couple hours in before you wake up and can’t go back to sleep. Seeing as you aren’t going to get any more sleep, you pack your stuff and decide to leave your room in the middle of night and just head to the carriage station early. You don’t really know when Elana is going to show up there anyway, so you might not even have to wait that long. On your way there, you half think you’re being followed the entire time, so you do a lot of back tracking and take side streets until you reach your destination. You’ve never been to the carriage station before, but it’s mostly empty right now. Still, it’s well lit and there are a few militiamen stomping around. You never thought you’d be happy about that! You find a bench and wait. Soon, you start to get a little sleepy again despite your attempts at still trying to stay awake. You also start to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just stay in Hessla when you get there. “I oughta just go meet this guy and stab him in the face like I did with Klint…” you mutter to yourself. Later… “Hey! Wake up! We have to get a move on! (Sigh) I told Dr. Gossey I didn’t need an escort.” You hear a voice exclaim while some hands shove your shoulders a few times. You groggily open your eyes and realize you’re in a much more horizontal position from when you first closed your eyes. After getting the blurriness out, you see a finely dressed woman with tan skin and long curly hair before you. “Elana?” you ask. “Yes! And you’re the escort Dr. Gossey hired I presume. You ARE aren’t you? I’d hate to think I just woke up some random sleeping bum.” Elana answers. “Yes, the doctor hired me. How long have I been asleep?” “How should I know? All I do know is I had to load this carriage up myself. I thought YOU would be helping! Anyway, we have to get going, hurry up!” “Okay, okay, I’m ready, let’s get in the carriage.” “Wait. YOU are not going in the carriage.” “What? Then where the hell am I supposed to be?” “You ride up top with the driver. I have some studying to do on the way and I don’t want you disturbing me. Besides, if you’re supposed to keeping an eye out for danger, you’ll do it better from there anyway.” It’s too damn early in the morning to deal with this, so you decide not to and just go over to the carriage and climb up to where the driver is. He nods and greets you. “So are we ready to go?” the driver asks you. “Come on let’s go!” Elana shouts from inside the carriage. “Well you heard the lady.” You say. And with that, you’re on your way out of Klyton and on the road to Hessla. Right now though you’re just trying to adjust your eyes to all the damn sunlight. It’s been awhile since you’ve been up this early. You watch the countryside pass by as the horses travel at a good pace. So far no trouble yet. You look behind you and see the supplies on the roof of the carriage and something you didn’t notice right behind you and the driver. A blunderbuss. “Guess that’s for when bandits attack?” you ask the driver. “Huh? Oh that? I suppose so. Honestly though, haven’t had any problems in all the years I’ve driven this route. Still, I keep it loaded just in case.” The driver replies. “Never?” “Nope. Never even had any problems in Hessla, despite its reputation. A lot of people think its some anarchic pirate paradise, but the place is probably just as orderly as Klyton. The Governor of Hessla has his own personal security force called the Headsmen to patrol the place. They’re a lot more draconian than the militia too. Usually they just execute offenders on the spot without trial.” “Really?” “Sure. I mean yeah without them then the place might be a little more lawless like it was in the past, but nowadays? You’re just as safe from getting mugged there as you would in Klyton. Hell, maybe even more so given that Klyton has the Crimson Talons running around.” “Hmm, yeah.” Well this sucks. Already you’re finding out that Hessla isn’t the place you imagined it was. It’s kind of why you took most of your important belongings with you just in case you decided to ditch the job and just stay in Hessla. “Driver! Slow down! The ride is too bumpy and I can’t focus on my reading!” Elana shouts while banging inside the carriage. A few moments later… “Driver! Speed up! I’d like to get Hessla sometime this month! And YOU up there, I hope you’re doing your job and keeping a look out!” Then again, Hessla might not be that bad, if you already had a bit of coin to throw around while you assessed the opportunities there. You think that there is probably a good amount of supplies here on the carriage you could sell. Let alone the horses and carriage themselves. The driver doesn’t exactly look like a fighter and might even have a few coins to his name. And most importantly, Elana probably is carrying a purse full of coin for this trip. Wouldn’t take much to just grab the blunderbuss and hijack this whole carriage. > You stick with the job at hand Tempting, but you might as well stick with it out a little while longer. Oddly part of you doesn’t want to dishonor the agreement with Dr. Gossey even if her assistant is a bitch. Elana doesn’t make many more complaints fortunately and when she does it’s mostly at the driver anyway, though you can imagine you’ll soon be on the receiving end completely. By the time you reach Hessla, night is starting to fall. Elana orders the carriage to stop and then asks the driver where is the best place to stay in the town. The driver suggests the Cozy Krak Inn. He mentions that it is fairly expensive though that usually means it’s never completely filled, but Elana tells him she isn’t worried about the price. The carriage makes its way through Hessla, which is definitely not how you expected it look. You imagined pirates and vagabonds of all types getting into fights and drinking in the streets, but just like the driver said, it isn’t actually all that bad. When you get to the Cozy Krak Inn, you see a large decorated building, which wouldn’t be out of place in the richer areas of Klyton. It’s actually a little more creative looking since it has a whole sea theme complete with some wall murals of sailors battling a giant squid and the inn sign also being in the shape of a squid. “Ugh, how gauche. I suppose it will have to do.” Elana remarks and gets out of the carriage. You step off from the top. “I’m going to go in and getting the room, you grab the supplies from the carriage.” “Wait a minute. I’m just supposed to be here for protection. I didn’t hear anything about being your porter. Besides, doesn’t a place like this usually have someone to do that?” “Maybe, but I’m telling YOU to do it. I’m not risking having the locals run off with valuable equipment and you’re getting paid to protect EVERYTHING, so do your job and look out for the stuff!” Elana remarks and doesn’t even give you a chance to retort before she’s entered the inn. You just stand there speechless for a moment. “Um…there’s a cart over there which should help you get it in all one trip.” The driver points out in an attempt to be sympathetic to your plight. “Thanks.” You grumble and begin to unload the carriage. You should have just hijacked it. After you’re done unloading everything, the driver mentions that if you’re looking for a place to unwind, the Sultry Siren is a good location. He then bids you good night and takes his leave. You enter the inn and find that it resembles more of a mansion than any inn you’ve ever seen. No creaky wooden floors, dim lighting or drunken louts sitting at a nearby bar. You see a desk where Elana is talking with someone and a couple of mean looking men holding poleaxes standing just inside the doorway. You arrive just in time for Elana to finish bitching at the desk clerk and start bitching at you instead. She first goes on to complain that there is no lift so she has to walk to her room on the top floor like a commoner. This is even worse news for you since now you have to lug everything up several flights of stairs. After getting to the room, she complains that it doesn’t match anything she’s used to in Klyton and goes on about how inferior it is. You almost feel like saying you live in a place run by a cranky old man and how your closest neighbors consist of a drunken priest and a whore. Trying to make the best of this, you remain upbeat. “Well, we aren’t going to be here long hopefully. Let’s just try to get some rest.” You say. “What are you doing?” Elana says. “I’m just laying down.” “Not on the bed you’re not!” “But there are TWO beds and I’m not going to try anything!” “Pfft. I’m not worried about that.” Elana says and then brandishes a small ornate pistol. Smaller than other ones you’ve seen actually, but you still don’t want to risk getting shot by it and move out of the way when she thoughtlessly points it at you. “Will you stop waving that thing around?” you say. “I told Dr. Gossey I didn’t need an escort and could take care of myself.” Elana remarks. “Yeah, okay you’re not a woman to be messed with, got it. But I don’t see why I have to sleep on the floor when there are two beds.” “The floor? You’re not sleeping on the floor either. This is MY room. You want a room here, you pay for it yourself!” “…What? Are you serious? Dr. Gossey said this trip was paid for!” “Maybe for me, never said anything about you. Your payment is AFTER the job is done. In fact, shouldn’t you just be standing guard outside my door?” You have no words. You just don’t. You thought dealing with the lowlifes that hang around the Welcome Mat was a chore, but it still pales in comparison to this. If this wasn’t a paying job, there is no way you’d deal with this. However, since it is, you don’t say anything and just grab a chair in the room and exit. Placing the chair nearby, you sit down and make a mental note about never working a real job ever again. The kicker is, you still have a bunch of over grown rats to acquire. Still, you agreed to this so you continue to make the effort and sit outside like a loser. Eventually enough time passes and you start feeling tired or at least bored enough that you’d rather be doing something else. You briefly think about finding another place to stay or even going to the Sultry Siren like the driver suggested, but you really don’t feel like dealing with the stairs again or spending your money. You then wonder if maybe you shouldn’t take this opportunity to break into some of the other rooms. As you’re pondering potential criminal activity, you spot a group of five rough looking men walking down the corridor. They don’t look the sort who would stay here. “Is this the room?” one of them says. “No, it’s further up the hall.” Another remarks. “What? Where that guy in the hood is sitting?” “Yeah, I believe so.” “What the fuck, Metzger. I thought you said this was an easy one.” “There’s just one guy there and he’s smaller than all of us. You really think he’s going to give us trouble? Metzger says. “What if he’s some highly skilled assassin? I mean he’s got a hooded cloak and all…” “By Dolak’s barnacle encrusted balls, if you were any dumber…(Sigh) Just because someone is wearing a hooded cloak don’t make them a highly skilled assassin. Besides, assassins kill people not sit outside hallways like guard dogs.” Metzger remarks. At this point these five men are nearby you, yet are still talking like you aren’t here. You feel like you should stand up at this point. “I can’t help but notice you lot seem to be talking about me.” You say. “Yeah, and what if we are?” Metzger asks. “Well, I suppose I might need to show off my assassin skills.” “Hah! You’re no assassin and even if you are, you’re too damn young to have been at it for very long, let alone skilled enough to take on five of us. My guess is, you’re that rich bitch’s escort or something. Not sure why she’d take a little thing like you though as a guard. Guess being rich doesn’t mean being smart which is evident by the very fact she’s staying here.” “What do you mean?” “Nobody stays at the Cozy Krak Inn, or rather no right thinking Hessla native does, unless they want to be taken as a fucking slave. Fucking clueless visitors.” Metzger laughs. Well this isn’t good. “So you guys are all slavers huh?” you ask. “Yeah, and since I’m in a generous mood I’m going to LET you walk away from this, because Yrid said you weren’t the target.” Metzger remarks. “Who’s Yrid?” “The guy who drove you here. Sheesh, didn’t you even bother to ask his name? In fact you weren’t even supposed to be here, he said you’d probably be at the Sultry Siren fucking a whore or getting drunk given how much your boss was bitching at you.” “Trust me, I’m starting to think that was a better idea right now.” “Hah, got that right. So, I trust you’re stepping aside then…” Metger says and starts advancing with his buddies. This is a really difficult situation. As much as Elana has been a complete bitch to you, you aren’t sure if her getting sold into slavery isn’t disproportionate retribution. > You step aside You don’t exactly feel good about this, but then you don’t see as you have much choice. “Alright…I’ll step aside.” you say. “Smart boy, now clear off!” Metzger says and pushes you aside before unlocking the door with a key. You don’t stick around as the five of them enter Elana’s room. Just as you’re about to head down the stairs, you hear a scream followed by something breaking and then some laughter. You don’t want to think about it and make haste out of this “inn.” Even when you killed Klint there was at least some justification, but you’re seriously wondering what the hell you just allowed to happen. You head to the Sultry Siren where you proceed to drink. You’ve never really drank too much before in the past, but given what you just let transpire, you feel like maybe the best thing you can do is block out your thoughts. “So…are you interested in just the ale or could I recommend one of the lovely sirens in the back?” the barkeep asks after you’ve had a few. “Um…I dunno…no. I’m having a bit of weird night and I’ve got a lot on my mind right now that I’m trying to forget.” you say taking another drink. “Hm, sounds like maybe one of our lovely sirens is exactly what you need.” You don’t even hear the barkeep’s pitch anymore; your mind is just sort of a hazy blur between your thoughts and the ale. What did you do? What could you do? What are you going to do? What are you going to do… “Do you know where I could get some qweepas?” you suddenly ask the barkeep. “What?” he replies. “Qweepas. They’re these…” “Yeah I know what they are. Overgrown ugly rats and general pests around town. If you want to know where to get some, you could try Gilo’s Gridiron. Well either that or just hang around the docks or leave some food around in a dark place. It isn’t like they’re that hard to find around here.” “What’s Gilo’s Gridiron?” “Oh it’s just an eatery run by a Halfling chef. He sells qweepa on a stick. Tastes pretty good from what I hear, but I’d never know because I’m reluctant to eat a damn rat. Still, halflings do have a reputation for making anything taste good, so maybe I should be adventurous some day.” “So is he open now?” “No, it’s too late now, he’ll be open in the morning though.” “Do you know of a cheap place to sleep for the night?” “Um, the Barnacle down the street is pretty cheap. In fact you can just go into their public flop room for free. Wouldn’t really advise that though unless you’re a light sleeper or completely destitute. The Headsmen might keep relative order around here, but they can’t stop every potential crime and you’re likely to get robbed there. It’s just common sense you know?” “Yeah, common sense. You really need it to survive in this world.” You say and take your last drink before leaving for the Barnacle. You end up paying a few coppers for one of their better rooms there and get some rest. The next day, you have a bit of a headache, but you try to ignore it. You’ve still got a job to do. First thing you do is head over to Gilo’s place. Gilo is pretty much a small one-man operation as far as the cooking goes though he’s got his son and daughter running around taking orders from customers. You were going to ask Gilo if he has any live qweepas, but the man seems to be too busy to do anything except cook and order his children around. You can sort of see into the kitchen, but there is no way you can enter it without someone seeing you. You take your leave and walk around to the back of Gilo’s to check out the back door and that’s when you see his little boy tossing out a bunch of bones in a box. It’s a pretty big box (for a Halfling child) and the boy is struggling to carry it. “Hey kid, you need help with that?” you ask. “Huh? No, not really. Just dumping out some qweepa bones. We usually keep them in these boxes until we kill ‘em.” The boy says. “You catch a lot of them huh?” “Yeah, but nowadays we sort of just breed them. It’s a lot easier than catching them.” “Really?” “Sure. They get so tame they hardly even bite. It’s a good thing people eat so many; otherwise we might get too many. They breed pretty fast.” “So you just got boxes of tame qweepas in there?” “Yep. Hey look I gotta get back to work or my dad will hide me.” The little boy says and goes back inside. And then you get the idea. Later in the middle of the night, you return to Gilo’s and break into the back door which has such a simple lock it’s child’s play to you, then again you don’t imagine most people would bother breaking into this place. You stumble about the kitchen for a moment before you hear the squeaking and go over to where you figure the qweepas are being kept. You grab a box of qweepas who are squeaking their heads off and get out as quickly as you can. You then head to the carriage station where you fortunately don’t have to wait long for a carriage to Klyton. You have to share it with some young couple who must have just got married or something because the two are so into each other you think they’re going to have sex right in there in the carriage. Still, at least it makes the trip not boring and they aren’t questioning why you’re carrying a box full of big rats. (Which you have to keep from escaping every now and then) By the time you arrive in Klyton, it’s midday again. The couple gets off and you pay for a ride to the university. You’re just hoping Dr. Gossey is the sort of woman you think she is and will accept the qweepas along with your tale of what happened to her assistant. Eventually you get to the university and the medical school. Thankfully Dr. Gossey is in her office when you arrive. “You’re back! And so quick! I hear lots of squeaking from that box you’re carrying. I trust you got them?” Dr. Gossey says. “Yep, but I ended up getting more than just ten.” You say. You show Dr. Gossey who looks into the box. “Ohh, I see. Looks like you got a lot of younger ones…how are they so tame?” Gossey asks putting her finger near one which just sniffs at it. “The Halfling cook I got them from breeds them for food. They apparently eat them all the time in Hessla.” You say. “Makes sense. Though I suppose a few wild ones would have been interesting to research as well, but tame ones will probably be easier for intelligence testing. I really didn’t expect so many. You want one as a pet or something?” “Um, nah. I’d just like my thirty gold pieces.” “Okay sure. Just put that box over there and I’ll get it for you.” While Dr. Gossey goes to get your money, you put the box over on a table and just stare at the qweepas squeaking and going about their trapped lives. You then see some of them biting at one with darker fur which is desperately trying to run away and climb out, but can’t due to the attacking qweepas pulling at her. “Hey! Stop that. I thought you guys were tame.” you say and brush away the bullying qweepas along with taking out the qweepa being attacked. The little creature runs up your arm and then perches on your shoulder and nuzzles up against you, almost as a sign that it thanks you for rescuing it. Dr. Gossey comes back with a pouch full of coins. “Here you are. Hey, I see one on your shoulder. Did you change your mind?” Gossey asks. “Yeah I think so.” You remark. “Okay, well I guess that concludes our business then. So, since you were so efficient on this job, could I count on you for others in the future?” “Maybe. I dunno. Yeah, sure I guess.” “Great! Just remember I post notices all around campus. Just keep an eye out and you can usually find me in my office or in the lab, but um…actually just meet me in the office. The lab is a bit off limits to anyone who isn’t facility right now. I feel like I’m forgetting something…oh wait! Where is Elana?” “Oh, she insisted on staying in Hessla.” “Why? For what purpose?” “She said she found some new species of crab when she was exploring the shores near Hessla. Said she wanted to do some extra research and get a few to bring back, but she wanted me to bring the qweepas back to you immediately. She wouldn’t hear anything else. I’m sure you know how she is.” “Ah, yes she is pretty firm when she wants her way. I can imagine you probably tried your best to talk to her. I suppose Hessla’s bad reputation is a bit exaggerated anyway and I’m sure she’ll be fine and I’ll see her in a few days. At least you brought back the qweepas and that was the most important thing.” “That’s what you told me.” With Dr. Gossey’s acceptance of your story she bids you goodbye and immediately goes over to look at her new qweepas. You take your leave with your own still on your shoulder. It’s been a long couple of days and right now all you want to do is head back to the Welcome Mat and your room. When you get there, you’re immediately accosted by Virgil who is surprisingly less drunk than usual. Must be a slow day. “Hey! I thought you moved to Holgard!” Virgil says. “No. Didn’t move there.” You reply. “You didn’t? But that’s what you told me to tell that big guy looking for you.” With all that’s gone on, you completely forgot about all that. “Oh right. Yeah I did. So what happened with that?” you ask. “What do ya think happened? I told ‘im you left for Holgard and he thanked me with some coin and took off. I suppose if you’re quick, you might be able to catch him on the road to Holgard.” Virgil says. “Nah, that’s okay. I’m sure whatever it was, it wasn’t that important and if it was, I’m not going to worry about it. Here you go Virgil.” You say and toss him a gold coin which he profusely thanks you for and says how Joachim’s blessing is upon you. You enter your room and collapse on your bed. Your qweepa scurries off your body and onto the bed to sniff around. You watch the creature for a little while and then pet it. “Well Elana. It might be shitty and run down, but at least you know you aren’t going to run into slavers here.” You say to your new pet. > You time passes... Year 21 “Yeah, yeah, here’s the rent.” You say handing over a few silvers to Trobart. As usual he grabs the silvers and gives you mean glance. “I’m getting real tired of your shit! I KNOW you got the money to pay me on fucking time! Telling you right now, you keep pushing me like this, and you’ll be out on your thieving ass!” “I’m sorry. Please don’t throw me out of this palace.” You say. Whether Trobart caught your sarcasm or not, he doesn’t acknowledge it with more verbal abuse, he just storms off. Sometimes it’s just too much fun to mess with him. Really, you could probably afford to live somewhere better now, but this place is cheap enough that you’re reluctant move. Besides if you lived some place more expensive, you wouldn’t be able to spend your money on fun things like wine, women and better equipment on occasion. You head back to your room where Elana comes up to greet you before scampering off again. One thing’s for sure. You haven’t had any problems with normal rats or other pests with Elana around. She’s aggressively territorial and more than willing to make a meal out of them. Even Virgil doesn’t knock on the door to bother you as much since she nearly bit his toe off. You then hear a knock at your door. Well, it doesn’t stop him completely. “Virgil, I think you should know Elana’s hungry right now.” You say. “That’s nice that your girlfriend is starving, but I’m not Virgil, whoever that is. I’m from you friends in Klyton’s most infamous club.” You hear a voice answer. Sounds female. “Crimson Talons?” “(Sigh) Tell the militia why don’t you? You going to let me in or not?” “That depends…why are you here? Nobody from the Talons has ever sought me out before.” “Yeah, well there’s a first time for everything. Look, I’m just here on Tom’s orders. I’m not shouting between a door like this. Either open the door, or I’ll let him know you aren’t interested…” “Alright, alright, hold on.” You say. You tell Elana to stay and not attack (at least not immediately) and you go to open the door cautiously. Upon opening it, you see a dark longhaired woman who while is certainly older than you is still in fit condition. She’s attractive in a trashy sort of way. (Sort of reminds you of an older version of Annah) While you’ve been to the Talon’s headquarters more than a few times, but other than Tom and a guy named Vaughn who is usually the fence for your stolen items, you can’t really say you’ve ever paid too much attention to most of them (let alone learned their names), so you don’t really recognize her. However, with her looks combined with her attire and she definitely looks like the sort that would belong to the Crimson Talons. The woman walks in without you even inviting her in and takes a look around. “Wow, some place you have here. I can see why you didn’t want to join the Talons when you’re obviously doing so well on your own.” She says. “Right, because that abandoned building you all squat in and have to sneak about by going in and out of the shit filled sewers is so much better.” You reply. “Actually, I was paying you a compliment asshole. This place IS better. I mean yeah it’s still a dump, but as you said, at least you’re not stepping over shit every five minutes on your way here and it’s all to yourself.” “…not counting the rats of course.” She adds when she sees Elana who is curled up in the corner where you told her to stay. “Elana’s not a rat, she’s a qweepa.” You say. “Oh, that’s Elana? I thought it was weird I didn’t see some strumpet on your bed when I walked in here. Well whatever it is, it’s ugly and its teeth are too big.” Zalmora says while taking a seat on your bed. “So are you just here to insult my home and my pet or are you actually going to tell me who you are and why Tom sent you?” “I told you I wasn’t insulting your home. Anyway, I’m Zalmora and Tom wants to see you.” “What for?” “Well, you’d have to talk with him about the details, but basically he wants you to reconsider joining us.” “Then you’ve wasted a trip, because as you pointed out I’m doing fine on my own. Besides, didn’t several of your members just get arrested by that botched bank job recently?” “Only two got caught and they weren’t arrested because the militia killed them with they were resisting.” “Oh, well that’s different then. At the rate you lot are going I don’t predict good things for you in the future. You can tell Tom thanks, but no thanks.” “Yeah, he thought you might say that, and honestly if I were in your position I’d probably feel the same way.” “Good, then we understand each other, goodbye…” you say and go to open the door again, but Zalmora doesn’t even move, she just stretches out on your bed and makes herself more comfortable. “Although, I also have to tell you that your cooperation on this matter is in your best interest.” She says. “So, what then? Did Tom send you over here to fuck me in an effort to convince me to join? You seem to be getting quite comfortable on my bed.” “Well I wouldn’t put it past him to have that in mind, but if he really wanted to get results in that way, he should have sent the half-elven whores in the gang instead. If I had to guess why he sent me, it’s because as much as he’s loathed to admit it, I have a decent history of convincing folks. In any case, if you don’t join, don’t bother coming around with your stolen shit anymore, we won’t be fencing it.” “So is that your argument? If I don’t join your little group, you aren’t going to fence for me anymore? Fine. I’ll just take my shit to Fookins the Fat.” You exclaim. “Fookins? You’re going to trust that goblin to fence your shit?” Zalmora chuckles. “Okay fine, I’ll just sell it myself.” “While I don’t doubt that you could, but I get a vibe from you that you’d rather not want to bother. If you were about that aspect of our game, you would have been doing it long before now.” “Well, you might be right, but obviously you lot aren’t giving me a choice.” “Sure we are. Join us and reap the benefits, or don’t and suffer the consequences. I guess this would also be a good time to add that if you don’t join us you might have a target on your back.” Didn’t take long to get to physical threats. You immediately draw your weapon and Elana who was previously at rest, is now alert and prepared to attack on your command. Zalmora doesn’t move though, she just continues to look up at the ceiling with her legs crossed. She either doesn’t realize the seriousness of her situation, or she’s so much of a skilled fighter that she isn’t worried. “You can put that away, I’m not going to kill or even attack you.” Zalmora says. “You just fucking threatened me in my own damn room!” you exclaim. “Actually I didn’t. Tom did and honestly I don’t think he’s got the balls to follow through on said threats. Other freelancers in the city? Maybe. You? Nah. You rescued him from a cage; he’s never going to forget that. He’s likely to be pissed and disappointed that you don’t join, but he’s not going to actively put a contract on your head. He’s not like our last boss Edmund.” At this point she sits up and gets off your bed. You’re still on your guard, but she keeps her distance. “Since I can see you’re a bit tense right now, I’ll leave to let you think it over.” Zal’s approach to this is confusing the hell out of you. It almost feels like she’s deliberately trying to convince you NOT to join. “There isn’t much to think about. Your words have not swayed me, quite the opposite really. Maybe Tom should have sent those two halfbreed whores to convince me instead.” You say. “Truly? Is a quick tumble all it would have really done to convince you? Well, let’s get to it then.” Zal says. “Wait, what, really?” you ask. “Pfft, no!” Zal laughs. “Look, it’s up to you if you want to join. I’m not going over the benefits of joining, because I think you know what those could possibly be AND I think you’re smart enough to know you’re only going to get out of it, what you put in to it. Like I said, you once rescued Tom from a cage, so you’re already in good standing with him. A lot better than most. I’m just giving you a heads up on the downsides of not joining. If you’re comfortable with those, then I guess the choice is easy. You know where to find us if you change your mind, but remember ONLY come to us, IF you change your mind.” Zal opens your door and begins to leave, but then stops. “Just on a personal note, I wouldn’t mind seeing you join us. It would be nice to have another skilled rogue around to work with. Your independent actions in the university district aren’t completely unknown to me. And who knows, we might just have that tumble after all.” Zal then nods at you with a smile and leaves. Well she didn’t sway you until that last bit. Not the tumble part, (though you certainly wouldn’t turn that down) but more of the idea of working with someone else. You don’t think about it too much, but you do sort of miss working with another person. You did it for years with your sister and then Annah for a short time. You’re convinced that if tragedy hadn’t struck with her, she probably would have gotten better. Working by yourself has its advantages and over the years you’ve gotten used to it, but there are more than a few times where it would have helped to have another person by your side. There’s also the convenience that you’d be able to have the Talons still fence shit for you and the possibility that you wouldn’t have a target on your back, even if Zal says the latter is unlikely. Still, you really aren’t sure about the whole joining the Crimson Talons thing. That’s more people than you’d care to work with and you’d have to ultimately answer to someone. Let alone the other concerns you have. > You join the Crimson Talons If Tom is coming to you, then it’s obvious that he needs the help and that means you can go in and negotiate preferential treatment and benefits in exchange for your presence. What the hell, this might work out in your favor if you know how to play the game. You immediately leave your room and catch up with Zalmora who hasn’t walked too far from the Welcome Mat yet. You tell her you accept the offer and she seems to take satisfaction in that she managed to sway you. Doesn’t take long before you’re stomping through the sewers and embracing that unique aroma that only the sewers can provide. When you get to the Talon hideout, you’re noticing a lot more rowdy types. Most of which look more like common thugs that would just mug you in an alley. Looks like the Talons aren’t just recruiting the best, they’re also recruiting the dregs. Guess they need to recoup their losses somehow. “Okay, I imagine you want to go speak with Tom by yourself, so here you are.” Zalmora remarks leaving you outside his office door. You finish making your mental notes of what you’re going to say and then enter. When you do so, Tom looks up from his desk and stands up to greet you. “By the gods, you actually showed up.” Tom remarks. “Good thing you sent someone so convincing, otherwise I might not have.” You say. “Yeah, I might actually have to start rethinking my general dislike for her. Especially since she’s proving to be one of the better members here nowadays.” “Hm, yes well I still haven’t joined yet. I’m just here to stake out my options.” “I imagine you would, but that’s perectly reasonable. I certainly didn’t expect you to join without a few personal requests. So, take a seat, and let us talk about your future here!” When the pair of you sit down, Tom goes into his speech. You didn’t notice it before, but the man looks a lot wearier from the last time you met with him. “So, it’s no secret that you’ve been doing okay for yourself by keeping your activities mainly to the university in Klyton.” Tom says. “Well I didn’t have much choice given you lot have run over most places and the militia excessively patrols the rest. Between the pair of you, I find that the university is the best place an independent like myself can make a fair living plying my trade.” You remark. “You know I never actually meant to be territorial with you. Other independents sure, but you were different and I have tried to tell my people in the past to leave you be and that there was plenty of room, but I can’t keep up on everything they do when they leave my sight.” “No matter. It all worked out.” “Indeed. In fact I briefly thought about expanding some of our activity out there. Never did mainly because we had things pretty good elsewhere and well let’s just say professional respect for you.” “Well I appreciate it.” “Of course since you’ll be joining us, this changes things a bit. Now I understand if you want that area mostly to yourself, but times are getting a bit lean what with us losing several members and the militia seemingly cracking down everywhere.” You don’t like where this is heading. “Tom, if you start sending that mostly unsubtle rabble up at the university, they’re going to be so fucking obvious that the militia WILL become more of an issue there! And if the militia start showing up there in force, that defeats the whole reason why I picked the place to begin with.” You say. “I know. I know. And I completely understand. That’s why I want YOU to become, I dunno. A mentor of sorts.” Tom says. “Mentor?” “Yeah, you could take those you think are the most promising and teach them not to draw attention and rob someone without just smashing them in the face and taking their shit by force.” “What? I’m not teaching a bunch of idiots something they should already know how to do when they joined up! I mean this is YOUR organization, you should be weeding out those who got what it takes and who doesn’t.” “Believe me I’d like to, but natural talent is a little lean right now and we need to make up the numbers in eagerness.” Tom rubs his eyes and exhales a bit before continuing. “Kid, as you might have guessed, the Crimson Talons are in fucking trouble and I need all the help I can get in keeping it together. I dunno if you know him, but one of my brasher members Jake is constantly chomping at the bit to do as much fucking violence as possible whenever he goes out on a job. Honestly his behavior is infectious to the other members at this point.” “If he’s that much of a problem, why not just kill him?” “Because for one thing, he’s really good at what he does and is a good earner. Second, he actually keeps the rest of them in line. With him around at least all I have to do is give an order to him and he can make sure everyone else follows it.” “That’s pretty dangerous that he has that much power.” “Well I might be more worried if he actually displayed any signs of wanting to be in charge. As far as I can tell, all he ever wants to do is go out and commit crimes and fuck Zalmora. He’s not a long term planner and definitely doesn’t seem to want the hassle of being in charge and I can’t say I blame him with how I feel about it right now.” “If you say so, but I’m still not keen on playing mentor and this definitely isn’t what I planned on when Zal talked me into coming here. “I know. I know. (Sigh) Look, here’s the deal. You get to keep everything you steal. You don’t have to contribute anything to the general Talon funds. All I want you to contribute is your knowledge and your influence.” “My influence? Not sure if I’m exactly a leader myself.” “Maybe you just haven’t been given the proper chance. As I said, I’m getting too fucking old to manage all of this myself. And I don’t have anyone really reliable to help. I mean Jake is a guard dog at best. And I’d rather not give any more power to Zalmora than I have to. I know you though. You’ve got an honor that the others lack and we need some of that around here otherwise this whole organization is going to either fall apart in a few years or we’re all going to get nabbed by the militia. With you with us, I think we could at least change direction a bit. And don’t just think about the organization’s future, but think about your own as well. I mean sure you’re doing okay on your own, but with proper resources behind you? You could be doing so much better. Who knows maybe in so many years, YOU could be running this organization.” Tom made a similar argument to you before about joining last time. You weren’t sure about it last time and you’re still not sure about it this time. However, you get the impression if you don’t involve yourself Tom isn’t going to be around to lead much longer and who knows what the hell will happen. They might start encroaching your territory and you wouldn’t really be able to stop them. In fact they might get so wild that the militia cracks down even worse than it already does. You really aren’t sure if this is a good idea, but you figure you have a bit of experience now under your belt so you can better afford to take a risk and as always you could just disappear if things aren’t going well. “Alright, we’ll see how this goes.” You say. > You time passes... Year 22 “And when you’re done robbing everyone at the gladiator frat house, you get the fuck outta there. What you don’t fucking do is stick around to drink, party and compete in a dick sucking contest!” you exclaim. Flameflower and Sunshine both roll their eyes in unison. “It was hardly a competition. I easily beat all the other girls there that night.” Flameflower remarks. “What? I would have beaten you had you not spiked my drink with lotus! My technique was all fucked up thanks to that!” Sunshine says. “Look, nevermind all that! You wanna go suck dick, go suck it on your own time! But when you’re on a job at the university you’re on MY time and you will stick to the damn program! Otherwise you can go take your asses back to Jake and continue risking life and limb on whatever crazy heist he attempts to implement.” “Ugh! I dunno why you’re getting so mad for, we managed to pick even more pockets by sticking around for the extended festivities. Whatever. You’re just like how your uptight dad was.” Flameflower and her sister take their leave of you and then one of them turns her head to look at you briefly and then giggling follows between the pair of them. “I honestly don’t know why I bother with those two.” You say. “Because elves are easy on the eyes, even if they are half breeds.” Zal remarks. “Well it certainly works in their favor at the university. Hard to believe they were ever organized enough to work for my father’s inn at one time. That was surprising to learn when they first approached to work with me. Do elves age at all?” “Not like we do. Those halfbreed bitches are older than me and they still look like fucking teenagers. Oh speaking of unnatural things, I think the magic college is more doable than you thought.” “What? You actually went in there?” “I told you I was.” “You told me you were thinking about it and I distinctly told you to stay away from that place. Too risky fucking around with potential magic security.” “Have you ever even been there?” “No.” “Well then what would you even know about it? And for your information, it isn’t the magic fortress that you seemed to think it was anyway. I walked in and walked out with this!” Zalmora reveals a blue gemstone of some sort. It gives off a faint blue glow, but nothing else. “What…what is that?” you ask. “I dunno, something magical I imagine. Maybe it provides light so you don’t need a torch or lantern.” Zal remarks. “Or maybe it captures souls! How did you even get this?” “I told you, I walked into the college and wandered around until I found something that caught my eye. Don’t worry, I didn’t attract any attention, well other than maybe a few love sick apprentices who didn’t look like they got out much.” “This wasn’t protected or anything?” “Nope, I just found it in a bowl on a shelf in an empty classroom of some sort. Would have taken more items, but I figured I’d stick to mostly casing the place first. I told you, the place isn’t any better protected than any place else it seems. Your ideas that the place is protected by magic traps and living statues are unfounded.” “I’m not convinced and I think you just got lucky.” “Well either way, I’m heading there again in a few days and hauling out more shit. I know a few people that would be more than willing to buy stuff like this.” “And maybe you better not. I’m telling you, this is not a good idea and all its going to do create trouble for all of us. The university is huge, you can easily make a lot of coin without the extra danger of fucking around with magic.” Now Zalmora rolls her eyes. “Y’know those two halfbreed bitches might be whores in thieves clothing, but at least they’re having fun with all this. You know, the only reason why I wanted to be transferred here instead of sticking with Jake is because I thought this might be a nice change of pace to work around a subtler thief. It’s one thing to be professional, but by the fucking gods, you’ve managed to suck out ALL the fun out of this. If it were up to you, you’d still be meekly sneaking around the campus all by yourself and never maximizing the full potential of what is here!” Zalmora says. “Yeah, and I’d be perfectly fine with that. This was all Tom’s idea for me to play mentor, not mine.” You remark. “Hah! I don’t need a damn mentor. I’ve been thieving before you were even thought about! And I don’t need your damn permission either to go rob the magic college. Maybe you can intimidate the rest of the unskilled Talons into acting the way you want, but I’m doing what the hell I want.” “Yeah? And I can go report you to Tom and have you transferred back. You’re ONLY here because I said it was okay in the first place!” “Fine. Go tattle on me like a fucking bitch then. Always knew you had a stick up your ass, but I didn’t realize you were a snitch too.” “Oh don’t give me that snitch shit. Tom’s the boss, he told me I had independent jurisdiction here of who was obeying my way of doing things and who wasn’t. So if I don’t like the way you’re doing shit, guess what? You don’t get to stay and that’s it!” “I see. You’re not a snitch, you’re a pretender to the throne.” “What?” “You’re a pretender to the throne. You’re acting like you’re the boss of the Crimson Talons. The only thing that’s stopping you totally is the fact that Tom is officially in charge. But if he’s allowing you this much leniency and is basically doing what you say anyway then maybe you need to just cut the pretending and take over completely. I’d certainly be more likely to respect AND listen to your orders if that was the case. But then I always preferred men who take what they want…guess that’s why I never minded Jake, even if he is an idiot most of the time. See you around.” Zalmora at this point takes her leave of you. You’ve been working with Zalmora directly only for a few months, but now you’re starting to see why Tom thinks she’s manipulative. She basically just suggested that you go kill him and take over. For what purpose though you can’t say. If she really doesn’t like Tom, why doesn’t she just do it? Though you suppose keeping her own hands clean and being a puppet master is more her thing. After all if you were in charge, you’d catch the blame if things didn’t go well. You suppose it’s an idea to consider, but again even if you wanted the hassle, you’re still not really someone that wants to just kill someone without a good reason. Tom’s been okay with you too, more than okay actually. He is a bit of a weak leader though. You do sort of wonder how he hasn’t caught a knife in the back yet, or the front for that matter. And Zalmora might be right, might be time to take more risks. The thieves under your “command” listen to you, but the actual respect is probably minimal. It might be worth while to keep your options open to become more of a true leader just in case, you wanted to reconsider being head of the Crimson Talons one day. > You start becoming a leader Why not? It isn’t like you’re ever going to get a real job and this is probably the closest thing to “moving up” in your line of work. And it is true, if you became leader of the Crimson Talons, you could shape it how you wanted. You rush to catch up to Zalmora who hasn’t walked too far away yet. “Zal, hold on.” You say. “Yes?” she answers. “Look, you’ve got some good points. Maybe I’m just used to playing things safe because it’s traditionally what I’ve had to do in the past.” “Well I suppose most of the Talons haven’t exactly made things easier in this city with all the really reckless behavior that half of them participate in. But there’s gotta be a balance right? I think the way you go about things is the direction we should be moving in, just we need to start thinking bigger and quite frankly we’re never going to do that with Tom in charge.” “So…what, you suggesting we should kill him then? I don’t see why you don’t do it since you seem to be really keen on getting rid of him.” “Because I don’t want to lead.” “What makes you think I do?” “Because you’re standing here speaking with me and thinking about what I said.” “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m a killer either…look I’ve only ever killed one person and I only did that because he had just mortally stabbed my girlfriend at the time. It was sort of the heat of the moment and I dunno…I’ve just never been that motivated to just go murder someone again. Especially someone like Tom who has been more than all right with me.” “Eh…well I guess it’s a good thing you aren’t as blood thirsty as Jake is. Maybe though you could talk him out of stepping down.” “Not sure if that’s going to work, but in any case I don’t think even with a promotion by murder is going to spontaneously cause people to follow me. I’m going to need to build more respect and like you said, that means taking a few more risks. So making some bigger scores would help in that area as well. In other words, I’m going to come with you on this job to the magic college.” Zal smiles a bit at your comment. “So the magic college isn’t off limits anymore?” Zal asks. “It’s not off limits to US. I don’t want anyone else trying to pilfer from the place until we completely do a thorough casing of the place. Exits, entrances, possible traps or security, valuables, everything. And even then I only want us going in and trying this until some of the others prove themselves capable of being professional enough. I might be becoming a little more flexible on risk taking, but I’m not completely abandoning caution.” You say. “That’s sounds reasonable. Okay, so when do we get started?” You go over the information that Zal has already acquired during her trip to the place. You have no reason to disbelieve her claims that the place isn’t as secure as you thought, you just think that maybe there is more than meets the eye. You tell her that you will go in and do your own inspection and then both of you together can go grab everything you can in one big haul. Using Zal’s previous knowledge, you begin your own scouting of the college. She wasn’t wrong about magical looking items just laying around in class rooms. In general you attempt to stay out of sight. Maybe Zal was comfortable charming horny apprentices, but you doubt if you’re going to get anything other than suspicion. As it turns out it’s fairly easy to stay out of sight anyway since the college of magic is relatively empty. Makes sense you guess since there isn’t exactly large amounts of wizard types nowadays either. Your scouting reveals a little more than Zal’s attempts. You find a huge storage are area in the basement that contains a shitload of items. Most of it is furniture, though very nice looking furniture, if very dusty. However some of this stuff is literally encrusted with jewels or made of precious metal like silver and gold! You can’t believe it’s all just laying around in this place without even a locked door! Granted a solid gold conference table would be pretty damn hard to lift up out of here even by several people, but the smaller items like the various knick knacks you could just take and you could just start prying out the gems on some of these chairs at least. You wonder why all this valuable stuff is down here; maybe these are all some sort of relics of a more magical era? They don’t seem magical though, so you have no idea; you just decide to take a few of the smaller gold vases before leaving. You start looking around thinking that maybe there is some sort of stone statues looming nearby ready to come to life or something, but you leave this odd storage area without any problems. You leave the magic college without incident and later reconnect with Zal and explain what you found; she seems pretty enthusiastic about heading there with you together. Later on that week, the pair of you sneak into the magic college at night. Zal says that since you apparently found a small treasure room of sorts, she wants to go there first. You figured she would so you lead her to where you found it. When you arrive, her eyes light up. “I almost thought you were exaggerating. I have to admit this is almost too easy. I guess being a wizard means being too arrogant to know when to lock up your valuables.” Zal says. “I guess so.” You remark. “Well come on, let’s start prying out those gems and grabbing the smaller stuff. I think we’ll have to be making more than one trip down here.” Zal at this point pulls out her dagger and goes to work on a nearby chair, or throne to be more accurate. You join in by looking for the ornaments that were by the vases you took last time. You don’t get too far along in your looting when you start to get an uneasy feeling. You look over at Zal, but she’s still busy prying gemstone. Then out the corner of your eye you see some figures suddenly appear, you turn around and then catch a bolt of lightning in the chest! “Yvette! I told you to wait, before attacking!” “Sorry, when we reappeared I panicked.” “I told you invisibility never lasts long.” “Get that one before she gets away!” The apprentices and mages of this college apparently weren’t completely unaware that strangers were coming and going into their domain. And apparently one of the professors decided that stopping a pair of thieves would be a good training lesson. Unfortunately for you, Yvette’s lightning bolt zapped you really good. The impact threw you into a wall, burned a hole in your body and fried your internal organs. She didn’t even mean to kill you; she just didn’t know her own power. Hardly matters, you’re still dead and so are all your plans of being the Crimson Talons leader.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 22 “And when you’re done robbing everyone at the gladiator frat house, you get the fuck outta there. What you don’t fucking do is stick around to drink, party and compete in a dick sucking contest!” you exclaim. Flameflower and Sunshine both roll their eyes in unison. “It was hardly a competition. I easily beat all the other girls there that night.” Flameflower remarks. “What? I would have beaten you had you not spiked my drink with lotus! My technique was all fucked up thanks to that!” Sunshine says. “Look, nevermind all that! You wanna go suck dick, go suck it on your own time! But when you’re on a job at the university you’re on MY time and you will stick to the damn program! Otherwise you can go take your asses back to Jake and continue risking life and limb on whatever crazy heist he attempts to implement.” “Ugh! I dunno why you’re getting so mad for, we managed to pick even more pockets by sticking around for the extended festivities. Whatever. You’re just like how your uptight dad was.” Flameflower and her sister take their leave of you and then one of them turns her head to look at you briefly and then giggling follows between the pair of them. “I honestly don’t know why I bother with those two.” You say. “Because elves are easy on the eyes, even if they are half breeds.” Zal remarks. “Well it certainly works in their favor at the university. Hard to believe they were ever organized enough to work for my father’s inn at one time. That was surprising to learn when they first approached to work with me. Do elves age at all?” “Not like we do. Those halfbreed bitches are older than me and they still look like fucking teenagers. Oh speaking of unnatural things, I think the magic college is more doable than you thought.” “What? You actually went in there?” “I told you I was.” “You told me you were thinking about it and I distinctly told you to stay away from that place. Too risky fucking around with potential magic security.” “Have you ever even been there?” “No.” “Well then what would you even know about it? And for your information, it isn’t the magic fortress that you seemed to think it was anyway. I walked in and walked out with this!” Zalmora reveals a blue gemstone of some sort. It gives off a faint blue glow, but nothing else. “What…what is that?” you ask. “I dunno, something magical I imagine. Maybe it provides light so you don’t need a torch or lantern.” Zal remarks. “Or maybe it captures souls! How did you even get this?” “I told you, I walked into the college and wandered around until I found something that caught my eye. Don’t worry, I didn’t attract any attention, well other than maybe a few love sick apprentices who didn’t look like they got out much.” “This wasn’t protected or anything?” “Nope, I just found it in a bowl on a shelf in an empty classroom of some sort. Would have taken more items, but I figured I’d stick to mostly casing the place first. I told you, the place isn’t any better protected than any place else it seems. Your ideas that the place is protected by magic traps and living statues are unfounded.” “I’m not convinced and I think you just got lucky.” “Well either way, I’m heading there again in a few days and hauling out more shit. I know a few people that would be more than willing to buy stuff like this.” “And maybe you better not. I’m telling you, this is not a good idea and all its going to do create trouble for all of us. The university is huge, you can easily make a lot of coin without the extra danger of fucking around with magic.” Now Zalmora rolls her eyes. “Y’know those two halfbreed bitches might be whores in thieves clothing, but at least they’re having fun with all this. You know, the only reason why I wanted to be transferred here instead of sticking with Jake is because I thought this might be a nice change of pace to work around a subtler thief. It’s one thing to be professional, but by the fucking gods, you’ve managed to suck out ALL the fun out of this. If it were up to you, you’d still be meekly sneaking around the campus all by yourself and never maximizing the full potential of what is here!” Zalmora says. “Yeah, and I’d be perfectly fine with that. This was all Tom’s idea for me to play mentor, not mine.” You remark. “Hah! I don’t need a damn mentor. I’ve been thieving before you were even thought about! And I don’t need your damn permission either to go rob the magic college. Maybe you can intimidate the rest of the unskilled Talons into acting the way you want, but I’m doing what the hell I want.” “Yeah? And I can go report you to Tom and have you transferred back. You’re ONLY here because I said it was okay in the first place!” “Fine. Go tattle on me like a fucking bitch then. Always knew you had a stick up your ass, but I didn’t realize you were a snitch too.” “Oh don’t give me that snitch shit. Tom’s the boss, he told me I had independent jurisdiction here of who was obeying my way of doing things and who wasn’t. So if I don’t like the way you’re doing shit, guess what? You don’t get to stay and that’s it!” “I see. You’re not a snitch, you’re a pretender to the throne.” “What?” “You’re a pretender to the throne. You’re acting like you’re the boss of the Crimson Talons. The only thing that’s stopping you totally is the fact that Tom is officially in charge. But if he’s allowing you this much leniency and is basically doing what you say anyway then maybe you need to just cut the pretending and take over completely. I’d certainly be more likely to respect AND listen to your orders if that was the case. But then I always preferred men who take what they want…guess that’s why I never minded Jake, even if he is an idiot most of the time. See you around.” Zalmora at this point takes her leave of you. You’ve been working with Zalmora directly only for a few months, but now you’re starting to see why Tom thinks she’s manipulative. She basically just suggested that you go kill him and take over. For what purpose though you can’t say. If she really doesn’t like Tom, why doesn’t she just do it? Though you suppose keeping her own hands clean and being a puppet master is more her thing. After all if you were in charge, you’d catch the blame if things didn’t go well. You suppose it’s an idea to consider, but again even if you wanted the hassle, you’re still not really someone that wants to just kill someone without a good reason. Tom’s been okay with you too, more than okay actually. He is a bit of a weak leader though. You do sort of wonder how he hasn’t caught a knife in the back yet, or the front for that matter. And Zalmora might be right, might be time to take more risks. The thieves under your “command” listen to you, but the actual respect is probably minimal. It might be worth while to keep your options open to become more of a true leader just in case, you wanted to reconsider being head of the Crimson Talons one day. > You keep things simple You’re not falling for Zal’s manipulation. Tom can keep the headaches because you’ve got enough of it just dealing with the ones that you’re trying to teach here. So things are going to remain the same and no unnecessary risks. You’ve managed to keep things together and not call attention to yourself with that rule and you’re not changing it. And you don’t give a shit what Zal calls you, you’ll be letting Tom know the situation. Given how he feels about her, you’ve no doubt that he’ll side with you. Later you report to Tom just as you planned and also stress that you don’t want to see Zal anywhere near the university since she’s made it clear that she’s going to do her own thing regardless of what you say. Tom thanks you for telling him this information and says he’ll make sure that the university district is off limits to her and if he finds out otherwise, there will be severe consequences. Honestly, you don’t have too much hope that Tom is going to really enforce that last rule. Over the course of the next few months your attention is partially directed towards thinking Zal is going to perform her activities to the university district anyway, but either she obeys the rules or she’s more adept at keeping a low profile than you thought. Either way, there isn’t some alarm raised on campus that is causing militia to start cracking down on the place. The rest of the Talons working under you don’t give you any trouble, save for Sunshine and Flameflower on occasion and even they aren’t that bad and eventually you do become somewhat lenient with them since it would seem they are more than capable of balancing their business with pleasure. You sort of wonder why they didn’t just become prostitutes though seeing as they’re doing as much fucking as they are stealing. As for the rest of the Crimson Talons, things are business as usual elsewhere in the city, but then what do you really care? You’re mostly divorced from those operations. Your slice of the pie is all you ever wanted and you still got that. Year 23 You hear a knock at your door. You really hope that isn’t Virgil, you’re not in the mood for his begging today. Elana makes her usual hostile squeaks until you tell her to calm down. “What!? It’s too fucking early to be banging on my door like this! The sun’s not even setting!” you yell. “Yeah well it’s important. The boss man wants to see you.” Zalmora remarks. “Wha…(sigh) hold on.” You didn’t expect this. You get dressed as quickly as you can and open the door. Zal walks in and looks at Elana who is under a dresser and still giving the occasional angry squeak. “Ugh, that ugly thing still has way too many teeth.” Zalmora says. “What the hell does Tom want and why would he send you of all people to come get me?” you ask. “How should I know? He never tells me anything as you well know. And he probably sent me because it pleases him to send me on menial tasks like this. So you coming or what?” “Yeah, yeah, just give me a few more moments.” You finish getting your gear and leave with Zalmora though you don’t know why she’s walking with you. You haven’t directly interacted with her since last year. “Zal, you are aware that I know how to get to the Talon hideout right? You don’t need to escort me.” You say. “I know, but I sort of felt like we should talk along the way.” Zal says. “I don’t really feel like arguing.” “Who said anything about arguing? I said talk. I feel like we drifted apart after the incident at the university.” “Did we? I didn’t know we were so close.” “Okay, maybe we weren’t, but I still feel like we sort of took a wrong turn somewhere.” “Yeah, it was when you weren’t obeying my orders, accusing me of being a snitch, and then trying to manipulate me into killing Tom.” “…okay…I can see where you might have some feelings about that. And I didn’t say you had to kill Tom, I mean I think you might have been able to convince him into stepping down. That would have been just as good.” “Sure, either way you would have been leading from the shadows.” “I’m not sure why you’re so against taking lead of the Crimson Talons. I mean yeah I get that you don’t have any interest in leading and you like to play things safe and low key. I think that’s not living up to your potential BUT I get it. Let me point out though, whether you intended to or not, you’re actually a leader now. All those thieves that work directly with or under you? They speak highly of you, you know. I mean you have to know this right?” “Get to point Zal.” “My point is, you’re already half way there! Why not take the lead? The Crimson Talons could do better under you. I mean you’d at least eliminate all this talk about possibly getting into the drug trade again.” “Drugs?” “Yeah, Jake and a few others want to get back into selling Yellow Devil. I’m pretty against the idea obviously, but I can’t deny that there wouldn’t be benefits to the organization.” “Well what’s Tom say?” “Dunno, that might be what he wants to talk to you about. But again if he’s asking you for advice on this matter, I think it would just be better if you were in charge to make the final decision on it.” Obviously Zalmora is still pushing for you to take control of the Crimson Talons and to you it’s weird that she would still be attempting it. Even if you did, she has to know that you’re aware of her agenda and wouldn’t be a puppet. Unless it’s something deeper than that, but…no. She’s teasingly flirted a few times, but it isn’t like you and her have actually ever had anything together. You and her are silent for a while until you’re in the sewers and nearly to the hideout. “So…you really don’t want to be head of the Crimson Talons?” Zalmora asks. “Not really, and if you lot are getting into drugs, I’m thinking I might be gone altogether.” You say. “That’s why I said you should just take power and shape this organization how you want it to be.” “Zal, I’m not your damn puppet. You want Tom gone, you do it yourself, then YOU could shape it how YOU want. Now just stop pushing me, because I’m not interested.” You snap. “I see. My apologies for bothering you. I can see my advice was never desired or needed. I suppose I’ll take my leave.” Zalmora then nods to you and begins walking back the way you came. You watch her walk off and just shake your head wondering why you even joined this crazy organization in the first place. Though you’re also wondering if you won’t be leaving it soon. You don’t have to wonder for long as something else happens that you didn’t expect. Before you even reach the hideout door, it opens and several Talon members come rushing out at you with weapons in hand. You’re taken off guard and they soon knock you to the sewer muck and after kicking you around a bit, Jake comes out with a big axe in hand. “Ah, and now to deal with the second threat to the new regime. Pfft. Never liked you anyway. Always thought you were better than all of us, getting your own little section of the city to yourself, getting special treatment from Tom. Well that ends today.” Jake remarks. “Wha…where the hell is Tom?” you utter while spitting up blood. “Geez, thought Zal said you were smart. Then again you followed her here, guess you weren’t too smart. Haven’t you figured it out yet? He’s fucking dead! Just like you soon will be. I’m sure all those that worked with you will fall in line quick when they see your bloody head hanging on the wall.” Jake laughs a bit with the men loyal to him and doesn’t waste any more words on you. He’s here to kill you and that’s what he’s going to do and you’re not going to stop him. The last thing you see is the blade of an axe coming straight at your face.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 21 “Yeah, yeah, here’s the rent.” You say handing over a few silvers to Trobart. As usual he grabs the silvers and gives you mean glance. “I’m getting real tired of your shit! I KNOW you got the money to pay me on fucking time! Telling you right now, you keep pushing me like this, and you’ll be out on your thieving ass!” “I’m sorry. Please don’t throw me out of this palace.” You say. Whether Trobart caught your sarcasm or not, he doesn’t acknowledge it with more verbal abuse, he just storms off. Sometimes it’s just too much fun to mess with him. Really, you could probably afford to live somewhere better now, but this place is cheap enough that you’re reluctant move. Besides if you lived some place more expensive, you wouldn’t be able to spend your money on fun things like wine, women and better equipment on occasion. You head back to your room where Elana comes up to greet you before scampering off again. One thing’s for sure. You haven’t had any problems with normal rats or other pests with Elana around. She’s aggressively territorial and more than willing to make a meal out of them. Even Virgil doesn’t knock on the door to bother you as much since she nearly bit his toe off. You then hear a knock at your door. Well, it doesn’t stop him completely. “Virgil, I think you should know Elana’s hungry right now.” You say. “That’s nice that your girlfriend is starving, but I’m not Virgil, whoever that is. I’m from you friends in Klyton’s most infamous club.” You hear a voice answer. Sounds female. “Crimson Talons?” “(Sigh) Tell the militia why don’t you? You going to let me in or not?” “That depends…why are you here? Nobody from the Talons has ever sought me out before.” “Yeah, well there’s a first time for everything. Look, I’m just here on Tom’s orders. I’m not shouting between a door like this. Either open the door, or I’ll let him know you aren’t interested…” “Alright, alright, hold on.” You say. You tell Elana to stay and not attack (at least not immediately) and you go to open the door cautiously. Upon opening it, you see a dark longhaired woman who while is certainly older than you is still in fit condition. She’s attractive in a trashy sort of way. (Sort of reminds you of an older version of Annah) While you’ve been to the Talon’s headquarters more than a few times, but other than Tom and a guy named Vaughn who is usually the fence for your stolen items, you can’t really say you’ve ever paid too much attention to most of them (let alone learned their names), so you don’t really recognize her. However, with her looks combined with her attire and she definitely looks like the sort that would belong to the Crimson Talons. The woman walks in without you even inviting her in and takes a look around. “Wow, some place you have here. I can see why you didn’t want to join the Talons when you’re obviously doing so well on your own.” She says. “Right, because that abandoned building you all squat in and have to sneak about by going in and out of the shit filled sewers is so much better.” You reply. “Actually, I was paying you a compliment asshole. This place IS better. I mean yeah it’s still a dump, but as you said, at least you’re not stepping over shit every five minutes on your way here and it’s all to yourself.” “…not counting the rats of course.” She adds when she sees Elana who is curled up in the corner where you told her to stay. “Elana’s not a rat, she’s a qweepa.” You say. “Oh, that’s Elana? I thought it was weird I didn’t see some strumpet on your bed when I walked in here. Well whatever it is, it’s ugly and its teeth are too big.” Zalmora says while taking a seat on your bed. “So are you just here to insult my home and my pet or are you actually going to tell me who you are and why Tom sent you?” “I told you I wasn’t insulting your home. Anyway, I’m Zalmora and Tom wants to see you.” “What for?” “Well, you’d have to talk with him about the details, but basically he wants you to reconsider joining us.” “Then you’ve wasted a trip, because as you pointed out I’m doing fine on my own. Besides, didn’t several of your members just get arrested by that botched bank job recently?” “Only two got caught and they weren’t arrested because the militia killed them with they were resisting.” “Oh, well that’s different then. At the rate you lot are going I don’t predict good things for you in the future. You can tell Tom thanks, but no thanks.” “Yeah, he thought you might say that, and honestly if I were in your position I’d probably feel the same way.” “Good, then we understand each other, goodbye…” you say and go to open the door again, but Zalmora doesn’t even move, she just stretches out on your bed and makes herself more comfortable. “Although, I also have to tell you that your cooperation on this matter is in your best interest.” She says. “So, what then? Did Tom send you over here to fuck me in an effort to convince me to join? You seem to be getting quite comfortable on my bed.” “Well I wouldn’t put it past him to have that in mind, but if he really wanted to get results in that way, he should have sent the half-elven whores in the gang instead. If I had to guess why he sent me, it’s because as much as he’s loathed to admit it, I have a decent history of convincing folks. In any case, if you don’t join, don’t bother coming around with your stolen shit anymore, we won’t be fencing it.” “So is that your argument? If I don’t join your little group, you aren’t going to fence for me anymore? Fine. I’ll just take my shit to Fookins the Fat.” You exclaim. “Fookins? You’re going to trust that goblin to fence your shit?” Zalmora chuckles. “Okay fine, I’ll just sell it myself.” “While I don’t doubt that you could, but I get a vibe from you that you’d rather not want to bother. If you were about that aspect of our game, you would have been doing it long before now.” “Well, you might be right, but obviously you lot aren’t giving me a choice.” “Sure we are. Join us and reap the benefits, or don’t and suffer the consequences. I guess this would also be a good time to add that if you don’t join us you might have a target on your back.” Didn’t take long to get to physical threats. You immediately draw your weapon and Elana who was previously at rest, is now alert and prepared to attack on your command. Zalmora doesn’t move though, she just continues to look up at the ceiling with her legs crossed. She either doesn’t realize the seriousness of her situation, or she’s so much of a skilled fighter that she isn’t worried. “You can put that away, I’m not going to kill or even attack you.” Zalmora says. “You just fucking threatened me in my own damn room!” you exclaim. “Actually I didn’t. Tom did and honestly I don’t think he’s got the balls to follow through on said threats. Other freelancers in the city? Maybe. You? Nah. You rescued him from a cage; he’s never going to forget that. He’s likely to be pissed and disappointed that you don’t join, but he’s not going to actively put a contract on your head. He’s not like our last boss Edmund.” At this point she sits up and gets off your bed. You’re still on your guard, but she keeps her distance. “Since I can see you’re a bit tense right now, I’ll leave to let you think it over.” Zal’s approach to this is confusing the hell out of you. It almost feels like she’s deliberately trying to convince you NOT to join. “There isn’t much to think about. Your words have not swayed me, quite the opposite really. Maybe Tom should have sent those two halfbreed whores to convince me instead.” You say. “Truly? Is a quick tumble all it would have really done to convince you? Well, let’s get to it then.” Zal says. “Wait, what, really?” you ask. “Pfft, no!” Zal laughs. “Look, it’s up to you if you want to join. I’m not going over the benefits of joining, because I think you know what those could possibly be AND I think you’re smart enough to know you’re only going to get out of it, what you put in to it. Like I said, you once rescued Tom from a cage, so you’re already in good standing with him. A lot better than most. I’m just giving you a heads up on the downsides of not joining. If you’re comfortable with those, then I guess the choice is easy. You know where to find us if you change your mind, but remember ONLY come to us, IF you change your mind.” Zal opens your door and begins to leave, but then stops. “Just on a personal note, I wouldn’t mind seeing you join us. It would be nice to have another skilled rogue around to work with. Your independent actions in the university district aren’t completely unknown to me. And who knows, we might just have that tumble after all.” Zal then nods at you with a smile and leaves. Well she didn’t sway you until that last bit. Not the tumble part, (though you certainly wouldn’t turn that down) but more of the idea of working with someone else. You don’t think about it too much, but you do sort of miss working with another person. You did it for years with your sister and then Annah for a short time. You’re convinced that if tragedy hadn’t struck with her, she probably would have gotten better. Working by yourself has its advantages and over the years you’ve gotten used to it, but there are more than a few times where it would have helped to have another person by your side. There’s also the convenience that you’d be able to have the Talons still fence shit for you and the possibility that you wouldn’t have a target on your back, even if Zal says the latter is unlikely. Still, you really aren’t sure about the whole joining the Crimson Talons thing. That’s more people than you’d care to work with and you’d have to ultimately answer to someone. Let alone the other concerns you have. > You stay independent The cons far outweigh the pros. You’ve found your niche by plying most of your trade at the university district. You’re staying out of the Talons way and more or less keeping a low profile from the militia. You see no good reason to change that. You guess you’ll have to become more of a “salesman” of sorts if you steal anything that isn’t actual money though. You suppose the drugs you pilfer from the medical school won’t be too hard to get a good price for or find buyers. Maybe it’s time to branch out your skill set anyway. You are working on your own so you really need to be a jack-of-all-trades and try not to rely on outside sources. Especially since you still believe that the Crimson Talons are destined for nothing good in the future. Thinking no more about it, you pack some of your tools in your bag and set off for the university. Later… After picking a few random pockets, you pass by one of the bulletin boards to see if there are any big parties being announced in the near future (or even tonight) since those are always usually profitable to attend. You take note of a couple listed and then you see a notice for a job. ATTENTION! In need of two people to assist in gathering several eggs from a Creptian Blueshell. Location will most likely be in the shores north of Hessla. Trip will be paid for and a reasonable monetary reward will be provided upon completion of the task. Please see me in my office at the medical school for details if interested. Dr. Gossey While you’ve seen a few of these notices in the past since your last job with Dr. Gossey, you’ve actually been reluctant to try it again for several reasons, but you’re feeling a little adventurous. Might be good to get out of the city for a while anyway, because if that Zalmora woman comes around again to convince you to join, you might just be silly enough to do it. You head over to the medical school and unlike last time you easily find Gossey’s office without getting lost. (Though you sort of know this place fairly well by now considering all the medical paraphernalia you’ve stolen from this place) When you arrive, you find that she’s conveniently in her office. When she sees you she greets you warmly. “Well, this is a surprise. I was wondering if we’d ever bump into each other again. I haven’t seen you since the last time you got those qweepas for me. I guess classes are keeping you busy?” Gossey asks. “Yeah, I tend to study a lot, but anyway I’m here about the job posting.” You say. “Oh good! I already got one person to help and since you did such a good job last time in acquiring the qweepas, I think I can safely hire you right away. Are you familiar with Creptain Blueshells?” “Mm, not especially no.” “Well they’re sort of like a cross between a snail and a crab, but about as big as a large dog. I mean they don’t move very fast and they aren’t usually overly aggressive in the scheme of things, but considering we need to take some eggs…well I can guarantee they aren’t going to be happy.” “I see. I don’t suppose they sell these creatures as a delicacy in Hessla do they?” “Oh no. They’re far too poisonous to most life forms for that. In fact beside their shells, that’s probably their number one defense. Don’t let them spit on you.” “They spit?” “Oh yes, but as I said, you’ll have extra help this time. A student from the magic college is coming on the trip, along with my assistant Kelium. Between the three of you, I don’t anticipate you’ll have any problems as long as you remain cautious.” “Magic huh? Hmm, well that sounds like evening the odds a bit at least.” “To be sure, but I know this still has its danger, so it will be fifty gold upon completion. I’d offer a little more, but the other student needs her payment too.” Fifty gold pieces is a nice chunk to go towards your secret savings. And as far as the crab snails monsters go, the wizard can probably handle the heavy lifting what with the fireballs and lightning and such. “Sounds reasonable. So when do we get going?” you ask. “Well since we have you now, I suppose I can get the trip going in three days. I’ll explain to my assistant what you look like and you can just meet up with him at the carriage station in the morning. You’ll probably have to stay in Hessla for the night when you reach it, but from there you should travel north along the coast to seek out the Creptians, but don’t worry on that front, my assistant will have a map and I think you’ll find Kelium much more agreeable than the last time you worked one of these jobs.” Gossey remarks. “Well that’s good to hear. Did Elana graduate then?” you ask. “It’s the strangest thing. She never returned. I don’t really want to think about what might have happened to her, but that’s all in the past, and I’m sure you did your best in trying to convince her that staying in Hessla alone ran a risk. Oh well, all in the past. But right now, all you have to do is make sure you get some of Creptian eggs. That’s the most important thing.” Gossey remarks. Having come to an agreement with Dr. Gossey and her explaining what Kelium looks like along with the magic student Yvette, you take your leave of the university and head back home. Your next few days mainly consist of you preparing yourself for the trip. You pack your short sword, and a couple extra knives along with your flintlock. You also go and steal yourself some anti-venom from the apothecary. (Along with a few other items) You figure it can’t hurt. Finally on the day you’re supposed to meet everyone, you go to the carriage station and seek out your companions for this trip. Doesn’t take long when you see a tall pale man wearing a cap loading up a few bags on a carriage and near him is a shorter woman with light brown hair. You’re guessing that’s them. You also look at the driver and see that it isn’t Yrid. “Hey, you’re Yvette and Kelium right?” you ask, and both of them turn to address you and confirm this question, then you announce who you are. “That’s great. More people to talk with on the trip.” Kelium says easily hoisting another bag on top of the carriage with one arm. “Hi.” Yvette says demurely. Not exactly what you expected. Kelium seems like less like a scholar and more like an athletic type. And you were expecting Yvette to be dressed in a robe or something similar. Maybe even holding a staff or something. At least neither are dressed screaming of “Hey I’m rich, come rob and enslave me!” though. All three of you pile into the carriage, which is already better than last time. You and Kelium sit on one side while Yvette sits on the other and you’re soon on your way. Kelium talks for half of the trip and almost never shuts up. He goes on about his studies and how he’s been helping Dr. Gossey and what he plans to do when he graduates. It probably would all be very fascinating if you actually cared. Still, at least he’s pleasant enough and he’s talking so much about himself he doesn’t ask anything about you at all. You occasionally just give a general agreement with whatever he’s saying. Yvette is quiet and is just mainly listening to Kelium. She doesn’t talk at all. Maybe wizards are just like that. All that isolated studying. Eventually Kelium does shut up because he starts to get sleepy. He mentions that he was studying up on Blueshell Creptians all night just to be extra prepared. He then mentions for you two to wake him when you arrive in Hessla and soon he’s fast asleep complete with snoring. You take this opportunity to sit over on the other side of the carriage. “Um. What are you doing?” Yvette asks a bit suspiciously. “I’m sitting over here, because that snoring giant over there is taking up most of the room, not to mention he’s loud enough even without being seated right next to him. I’d like to reach Hessla and not be deaf in one ear.” You explain. “Oh. Okay then.” Yvette says and then gets over as far as she can when you sit down. “You…don’t trust me do you?” you ask. “Um…no, I mean yes. I mean um…” Yvette stutters. “Hah. It’s okay. I understand being cautious, but I’m really not going to do anything, I mean you’re a wizard. I’m not risking getting a spell cast on me.” “No! It’s not that! It’s just well…I’m not used to being cramped in a small space like this with a bunch of people. I like a lot of personal space.” “Ah. Got it. Also understand. You want me to go back and sit over there?” “No. It’s okay. You seem nice.” “Thanks. Don’t hear that one often. So I’ve never met a wizard before. Tell me everything.” “There isn’t much to tell and I’m not really a wizard. I’m still just an adept. I actually took this job as part of my own assignment of taking what I learned in the classroom and applying it to the field. I was sort of too nervous just to do it alone.” “Well it is a scary world out there at times.” You proceed to speak with Yvette for the rest of the trip who slowly starts to open up a bit. She goes on to tell you that the magic school isn’t even all that big. She’s only one of twenty-three students! Apparently the university is almost on the verge of closing it down since naturally magically talented individuals seem to be born less and less these days. However, magic is still a mighty force in this world and one of the Klyton Council members is a mage himself (Though not a particularly powerful one), so the school remains open. Just as you’re starting to get Yvette to laugh at your dumb goblin jokes, you’re arriving in Hessla and the driver stops. “I guess we should wake up Kelium.” Yvette says. “Yeah, I suppose so.” You reply a bit disappointed. You were starting to enjoy your personal time with Yvette. While Yvette wakes him up, you get out to speak to the driver and ask him to take you to an inn that’s better than the Barnacle. “And DON’T even fucking think about taking us to the Cozy Krak Inn!” you exclaim. “Wasn’t going to sir. I’ve never even heard of the place. I was going to suggest going to the Sea Dog.” “Is it a slavers den?” “Um, no. It’s run by an old ex-pirate and is more or less friendlier than most inns.” “It better be.” You say. You get back in and see that Kelium is awake and the carriage soon takes you to your destination. The Sea Dog is better than the Barnacle, but not by much. However, it at least isn’t trying to appear like something it isn’t. Kelium grabs all the supplies he packed, he doesn’t even ask for help. The ex-pirate that the driver mentioned reminds you of Trobart from the Welcome Mat because as soon as you enter he’s glaring at you with his one good eye and asking what the hell you want. While you would probably return the verbal abuse, Kelium takes it all in stride and simply pays for the rooms. Unfortunately only two are available. Naturally it’s decided that Yvette will take one room and you’ll have to share one with Kelium. Not looking forward to that mostly because the guy snores so loudly. However as it turns out Kelium isn’t ready to go to sleep. “I partially slept on the way here, so I’m wide awake! We should hang out and go find a proper tavern! Or better yet let’s go find a gambling house! Dr. Gossey gave me all this money for the trip; I bet I can fucking double it!” Kelium exclaims. “But don’t you need to be alert for the trip north tomorrow?” you ask. “I’ll be fine! Besides, we don’t have to leave first thing in the morning. Come on, let’s go have a little fun! This place has got to have less restrictions than Klyton!” “I dunno, I really think you should just stay put and try to get some rest. I mean I haven’t slept so…” “Come on man! You’re not one of those guys that studies all the time are you? I mean I figure you took a job like this because you’re an adventurous type! I mean yeah you got a job and I got an assignment, but shit, I ain’t never been to a different town before. I wanna explore the scenery a bit! Maybe we can get Yvette to join us too! I saw you checking her out! She’s a bit too quiet and bookish looking for me, but hey whatever you like man.” On one hand you don’t really have anything against going out and spending someone else’s money and maybe having some fun, but you also don’t relish the idea of having to look after this fool because with his boisterousness you just know he’s going to get himself into a whole mess of trouble and you already got monster crab snails to deal with tomorrow and EVERYONE needs to be prepared for that shit. > You go party with Kelium What the hell, might as well make this trip fun and he’ll probably just leave anyway. At least if you go with him, you’ll be able to have some control over the situation. “Alright, but let’s just me and you go. I doubt if this would be Yvette’s thing.” You say. “Yeah, you’re probably right, don’t need her slowing us down. Okay! So where do you know that’s a good place to go?” Kelium remarks. “Well we could try the Sultry Siren. That’s usually the popular place.” “Great! Lead the way.” You and Kelium head to the Sultry Siren, which is a lot busier than the last time you came here, then again the last time you were here, you weren’t paying excessive attention to the environment. Kelium immediately takes a liking to the place going on about how this was the sort of thing he was talking about. He orders drinks for the pair of you and wastes no time in wanting to get involved in one of the gambling games going on. “Wouldn’t you rather go see one of the ladies they got here?” you ask. “Well…maybe later. I wanna see if I can win some more money first, then I’ll be able to pay more for special requests!” Kelium says excitedly. “Um, sure. I’m gonna warn you though, a lot of these folks pretty serious about their gambling. I’d say play a few times and then stop before you lose ALL your money.” “Me lose? Hardly. I’m not unfamiliar with games of chance and it all comes down to probability! You just have to know the system and the beauty is, it isn’t even cheating. I used to play private games against folks at the University all the time until everyone realized they would just be throwing their money away. These fools probably put all their misguided faith in Yag or whatever that silly deity of luck is called.” “Yeah? Well you might also want to be careful if you intend on winning all the time too. In fact that might even be more dangerous.” “Bah, stop worrying! Here! Go get yourself the best, I’ve got this.” Kelium remarks and hands you a bunch of silvers as if it was nothing. You quickly pocket them and briefly think about stopping Kelium since he’s already throwing large amounts of money around like some clueless tourist. However you then remember you’re supposed to be having fun and Kelium is a big boy and can probably handle himself. You take your silver and indulge in the best looking whore the Sultry Siren has to offer. You have so much fun with Ariel that you lose track of time until she tells you to get out because you’ve run out of coin. Just as well since you probably need to go check to see if Kelium has lost all his money yet. To your surprise he wasn’t joking about knowing “the system” and he’s up by at least a few hundred already. “Hey! You have as much fun as I’ve been having? Here, go have some more fun!” Kelium exclaims and shoves another pile of coins at you. “This is great and all, but don’t you think you better stop? I mean it looks like you’re ahead.” You say. “No way, I’m nowhere near finished yet! More drinks for everyone!” Well it looks like Kelium is spreading the wealth around even though he’s winning. Most people seem to be cheering him on. You see a few disgruntled folks perturbed about losing, but nobody looks like they’re ready to kill him yet. In fact you’re amazed it hasn’t happened already given how much he’s won. Maybe you were worried over nothing. You take Kelium’s coins and get yourself a few drinks before heading to see Ariel again. This sort of merriment goes on for another few hours and by the time you’re done with your third round of fun with Ariel (and a couple of her friends) you’re only slightly less drunk than Kelium who is STILL winning despite the fact he shouldn’t even be standing at this point. Despite your intoxicated state, you’re still aware of your surroundings and now you’re starting see less cheering and more glaring eyes of hatred. You think this would be the time to leave. “Kelium, (hic) it’s getting a bit late, we got that thing to do tomorrow.” You say, pulling at his arm. “B…b…bbut I haven’t…be…begun…(hic) to havffffun yet! (hic).” He slurs. “Yeah you have, come on let’s go…” you say and start grabbing up his coins and pushing him away from the table. However the men he’s currently playing with aren’t receptive to that idea. “Who the fuck are you, his fuck boy? He can’t just leave without letting us have a chance of winning back our money.” One of them says. “Pfft, wouldn’t matter anyway. I’ve been watching this asshole all night and while I can’t prove it, I KNOW he’s gotta be cheating. There’s some magic shit going on or something maybe.” Another remarks. “Hey waitaminute, maybe it’s THIS guy who’s been in control the whole night! Maybe this guy is an illusion or something.” a third says. “What? That’s redic…(hic) ulous. I’ve been spending all my time with the ladies in the back the whole time! I’m not a damn wizard!” you exclaim. Unfortunately the men aren’t convinced and begin advancing on you. You back away, and tell them they can take all the money, but Kelium really isn’t keen on that idea even in his near passed out state. “Whaaaaa!? (hic) Fuck dat! Haf at you!” he says and clumsily tries to draw his sword. This is a very bad move and the men waste no time in turning this situation into what might have been just a beat down, into a stabby bad time. Kelium is instantly run through by the time he draws his blade, then he’s knocked to the floor dead. “Oh shit…” you say and start to run. Under normal circumstances you’d probably be able to get away, but you’re just not in the best coordinated condition and you end up barely getting out the door before one of the gamblers trips you up and you go sprawling to the ground. You feel a crushing blow to your head, which is then followed by someone roughly turning you over. You go for your flintlock, but are stopped and it’s all the excuse they need to put a knife in your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The cons far outweigh the pros. You’ve found your niche by plying most of your trade at the university district. You’re staying out of the Talons way and more or less keeping a low profile from the militia. You see no good reason to change that. You guess you’ll have to become more of a “salesman” of sorts if you steal anything that isn’t actual money though. You suppose the drugs you pilfer from the medical school won’t be too hard to get a good price for or find buyers. Maybe it’s time to branch out your skill set anyway. You are working on your own so you really need to be a jack-of-all-trades and try not to rely on outside sources. Especially since you still believe that the Crimson Talons are destined for nothing good in the future. Thinking no more about it, you pack some of your tools in your bag and set off for the university. Later… After picking a few random pockets, you pass by one of the bulletin boards to see if there are any big parties being announced in the near future (or even tonight) since those are always usually profitable to attend. You take note of a couple listed and then you see a notice for a job. ATTENTION! In need of two people to assist in gathering several eggs from a Creptian Blueshell. Location will most likely be in the shores north of Hessla. Trip will be paid for and a reasonable monetary reward will be provided upon completion of the task. Please see me in my office at the medical school for details if interested. Dr. Gossey While you’ve seen a few of these notices in the past since your last job with Dr. Gossey, you’ve actually been reluctant to try it again for several reasons, but you’re feeling a little adventurous. Might be good to get out of the city for a while anyway, because if that Zalmora woman comes around again to convince you to join, you might just be silly enough to do it. You head over to the medical school and unlike last time you easily find Gossey’s office without getting lost. (Though you sort of know this place fairly well by now considering all the medical paraphernalia you’ve stolen from this place) When you arrive, you find that she’s conveniently in her office. When she sees you she greets you warmly. “Well, this is a surprise. I was wondering if we’d ever bump into each other again. I haven’t seen you since the last time you got those qweepas for me. I guess classes are keeping you busy?” Gossey asks. “Yeah, I tend to study a lot, but anyway I’m here about the job posting.” You say. “Oh good! I already got one person to help and since you did such a good job last time in acquiring the qweepas, I think I can safely hire you right away. Are you familiar with Creptain Blueshells?” “Mm, not especially no.” “Well they’re sort of like a cross between a snail and a crab, but about as big as a large dog. I mean they don’t move very fast and they aren’t usually overly aggressive in the scheme of things, but considering we need to take some eggs…well I can guarantee they aren’t going to be happy.” “I see. I don’t suppose they sell these creatures as a delicacy in Hessla do they?” “Oh no. They’re far too poisonous to most life forms for that. In fact beside their shells, that’s probably their number one defense. Don’t let them spit on you.” “They spit?” “Oh yes, but as I said, you’ll have extra help this time. A student from the magic college is coming on the trip, along with my assistant Kelium. Between the three of you, I don’t anticipate you’ll have any problems as long as you remain cautious.” “Magic huh? Hmm, well that sounds like evening the odds a bit at least.” “To be sure, but I know this still has its danger, so it will be fifty gold upon completion. I’d offer a little more, but the other student needs her payment too.” Fifty gold pieces is a nice chunk to go towards your secret savings. And as far as the crab snails monsters go, the wizard can probably handle the heavy lifting what with the fireballs and lightning and such. “Sounds reasonable. So when do we get going?” you ask. “Well since we have you now, I suppose I can get the trip going in three days. I’ll explain to my assistant what you look like and you can just meet up with him at the carriage station in the morning. You’ll probably have to stay in Hessla for the night when you reach it, but from there you should travel north along the coast to seek out the Creptians, but don’t worry on that front, my assistant will have a map and I think you’ll find Kelium much more agreeable than the last time you worked one of these jobs.” Gossey remarks. “Well that’s good to hear. Did Elana graduate then?” you ask. “It’s the strangest thing. She never returned. I don’t really want to think about what might have happened to her, but that’s all in the past, and I’m sure you did your best in trying to convince her that staying in Hessla alone ran a risk. Oh well, all in the past. But right now, all you have to do is make sure you get some of Creptian eggs. That’s the most important thing.” Gossey remarks. Having come to an agreement with Dr. Gossey and her explaining what Kelium looks like along with the magic student Yvette, you take your leave of the university and head back home. Your next few days mainly consist of you preparing yourself for the trip. You pack your short sword, and a couple extra knives along with your flintlock. You also go and steal yourself some anti-venom from the apothecary. (Along with a few other items) You figure it can’t hurt. Finally on the day you’re supposed to meet everyone, you go to the carriage station and seek out your companions for this trip. Doesn’t take long when you see a tall pale man wearing a cap loading up a few bags on a carriage and near him is a shorter woman with light brown hair. You’re guessing that’s them. You also look at the driver and see that it isn’t Yrid. “Hey, you’re Yvette and Kelium right?” you ask, and both of them turn to address you and confirm this question, then you announce who you are. “That’s great. More people to talk with on the trip.” Kelium says easily hoisting another bag on top of the carriage with one arm. “Hi.” Yvette says demurely. Not exactly what you expected. Kelium seems like less like a scholar and more like an athletic type. And you were expecting Yvette to be dressed in a robe or something similar. Maybe even holding a staff or something. At least neither are dressed screaming of “Hey I’m rich, come rob and enslave me!” though. All three of you pile into the carriage, which is already better than last time. You and Kelium sit on one side while Yvette sits on the other and you’re soon on your way. Kelium talks for half of the trip and almost never shuts up. He goes on about his studies and how he’s been helping Dr. Gossey and what he plans to do when he graduates. It probably would all be very fascinating if you actually cared. Still, at least he’s pleasant enough and he’s talking so much about himself he doesn’t ask anything about you at all. You occasionally just give a general agreement with whatever he’s saying. Yvette is quiet and is just mainly listening to Kelium. She doesn’t talk at all. Maybe wizards are just like that. All that isolated studying. Eventually Kelium does shut up because he starts to get sleepy. He mentions that he was studying up on Blueshell Creptians all night just to be extra prepared. He then mentions for you two to wake him when you arrive in Hessla and soon he’s fast asleep complete with snoring. You take this opportunity to sit over on the other side of the carriage. “Um. What are you doing?” Yvette asks a bit suspiciously. “I’m sitting over here, because that snoring giant over there is taking up most of the room, not to mention he’s loud enough even without being seated right next to him. I’d like to reach Hessla and not be deaf in one ear.” You explain. “Oh. Okay then.” Yvette says and then gets over as far as she can when you sit down. “You…don’t trust me do you?” you ask. “Um…no, I mean yes. I mean um…” Yvette stutters. “Hah. It’s okay. I understand being cautious, but I’m really not going to do anything, I mean you’re a wizard. I’m not risking getting a spell cast on me.” “No! It’s not that! It’s just well…I’m not used to being cramped in a small space like this with a bunch of people. I like a lot of personal space.” “Ah. Got it. Also understand. You want me to go back and sit over there?” “No. It’s okay. You seem nice.” “Thanks. Don’t hear that one often. So I’ve never met a wizard before. Tell me everything.” “There isn’t much to tell and I’m not really a wizard. I’m still just an adept. I actually took this job as part of my own assignment of taking what I learned in the classroom and applying it to the field. I was sort of too nervous just to do it alone.” “Well it is a scary world out there at times.” You proceed to speak with Yvette for the rest of the trip who slowly starts to open up a bit. She goes on to tell you that the magic school isn’t even all that big. She’s only one of twenty-three students! Apparently the university is almost on the verge of closing it down since naturally magically talented individuals seem to be born less and less these days. However, magic is still a mighty force in this world and one of the Klyton Council members is a mage himself (Though not a particularly powerful one), so the school remains open. Just as you’re starting to get Yvette to laugh at your dumb goblin jokes, you’re arriving in Hessla and the driver stops. “I guess we should wake up Kelium.” Yvette says. “Yeah, I suppose so.” You reply a bit disappointed. You were starting to enjoy your personal time with Yvette. While Yvette wakes him up, you get out to speak to the driver and ask him to take you to an inn that’s better than the Barnacle. “And DON’T even fucking think about taking us to the Cozy Krak Inn!” you exclaim. “Wasn’t going to sir. I’ve never even heard of the place. I was going to suggest going to the Sea Dog.” “Is it a slavers den?” “Um, no. It’s run by an old ex-pirate and is more or less friendlier than most inns.” “It better be.” You say. You get back in and see that Kelium is awake and the carriage soon takes you to your destination. The Sea Dog is better than the Barnacle, but not by much. However, it at least isn’t trying to appear like something it isn’t. Kelium grabs all the supplies he packed, he doesn’t even ask for help. The ex-pirate that the driver mentioned reminds you of Trobart from the Welcome Mat because as soon as you enter he’s glaring at you with his one good eye and asking what the hell you want. While you would probably return the verbal abuse, Kelium takes it all in stride and simply pays for the rooms. Unfortunately only two are available. Naturally it’s decided that Yvette will take one room and you’ll have to share one with Kelium. Not looking forward to that mostly because the guy snores so loudly. However as it turns out Kelium isn’t ready to go to sleep. “I partially slept on the way here, so I’m wide awake! We should hang out and go find a proper tavern! Or better yet let’s go find a gambling house! Dr. Gossey gave me all this money for the trip; I bet I can fucking double it!” Kelium exclaims. “But don’t you need to be alert for the trip north tomorrow?” you ask. “I’ll be fine! Besides, we don’t have to leave first thing in the morning. Come on, let’s go have a little fun! This place has got to have less restrictions than Klyton!” “I dunno, I really think you should just stay put and try to get some rest. I mean I haven’t slept so…” “Come on man! You’re not one of those guys that studies all the time are you? I mean I figure you took a job like this because you’re an adventurous type! I mean yeah you got a job and I got an assignment, but shit, I ain’t never been to a different town before. I wanna explore the scenery a bit! Maybe we can get Yvette to join us too! I saw you checking her out! She’s a bit too quiet and bookish looking for me, but hey whatever you like man.” On one hand you don’t really have anything against going out and spending someone else’s money and maybe having some fun, but you also don’t relish the idea of having to look after this fool because with his boisterousness you just know he’s going to get himself into a whole mess of trouble and you already got monster crab snails to deal with tomorrow and EVERYONE needs to be prepared for that shit. > You talk him into staying You can’t believe that you’re actually leaning towards being the “responsible” one here. “Look, I get that this is all very exciting for you seeing as you’ve lived a sheltered rich life and all…” “I am not rich or sheltered! My father has to bust his ass making my tuition payments!” “…yeah…in any case. I’ve been to this town before and its reputation is well earned. There are people here that make the dregs of Klyton look like priests of Joachim and if you run afoul of them, it isn’t going to be good for you.” “Pfft, I can handle trouble.” Kelium says and flexes his muscles a bit and pulls a sword out of his bag. “Yeah, maybe you could handle one person, but the problem is these sort don’t travel alone, they ALWAYS travel in packs and I can honestly say that YOU are not going to handle five or even three by yourself.” “Well wouldn’t you help me? I mean isn’t that why you’re here?” “Your job or assignment is to get some monster crab eggs. MY job is to help you in that task. My job is NOT however looking after your ass while you look for fun or trouble. Now I suggest you get some rest which is what I’m going to do because giant snail monsters that spit poison sound like they need full attention.” You fully expect Kelium to argue some more with you, but he doesn’t. You also expect him to just leave the room by himself, but he doesn’t do that either thankfully. He just says he thought you were going to be fun and starts reading through some of his papers. Feeling a little pleased with yourself, you lay down on your bed and attempt to get to sleep before Kelium genuinely starts to get tired again, because if he starts snoring there is no way you’re going to get any sleep. Much later, you groggily wake up and find that your speech was less effective than you thought. Kelium is not in your room. In fact, it doesn’t even look like his bed has been slept in. You just shake your head and groan. “Stupid fucker probably got himself enslaved or his throat cut.” you mutter, as you get yourself prepared to go look for this idiot. The first stop you make is Yvette’s room. “Hey Yvette.” You say knocking on the door. “Um…yes?” she answers, but not opening the door. “Is Kelium in there?” “No, why would he be? What are you implying?” “…what? Nothing! I’m just asking because he’s gone, and it doesn’t look like he’s slept in his bed either. I’m guessing he took off to have fun in the middle of the night.” “Oh dear. Um…well hold on, I have to get ready. I’ll be out soon.” Yvette says. You half wonder if Kelium is in there and he’s climbing out of a window. If that is the case, it’s going to be real obvious if he and Yvette slept together last night. You aren’t sure why Yvette would bother hiding it though; it isn’t like you really give a shit. As it turns out however, that isn’t the case at all and you don’t even have far to go to find Kelium. You find him just outside the Sea Dog, stripped nearly naked and lying unconscious by the street. “Well, at least that’s one less thing to worry about.” You say to yourself and begin the undesirable task of dragging his ass back inside. It’s sometime at this point, Kelium begins to rouse from his unconsciousness. In between the name-calling and laughter by the locals, you manage to get him back to the room where Yvette joins you both. Kelium has a wicked hang over, but manages to explain what he remembers. He says that after you fell asleep he went out to explore the town and soon found himself in a card game at some place that he can’t remember the name of. He claims he was winning and also says that someone must have drugged his drink and robbed him of everything. “I told you not to go out. You’re just lucky that getting robbed blind was all that happened to you.” You say. “Yeah, yeah, fuck. You sound like some old bitch. Shit. My head. Alright fine. Just let me get my spare clothes, and we can go get these fucking eggs.” Kelium says. “Wait, we’re going now? Are you in condition to do this? Maybe we should wait a day.” Yvette asks. “I’ll be fucking fine! Besides, I just lost all my money. We can’t afford to stay here another night. We need to get these eggs today and then get the fuck outta this shitty town.” You don’t even ask HOW you’re supposed to get back to Klyton if he’s lost all his money. Though you’ve brought a little with you, so you suppose you’ll be footing the carriage bill. Like Yvette, you aren’t sure if Kelium is in the best condition to go do this, but you’re certainly not going to be paying for more time at the inn either, so if he thinks he’s good to go, then you are too. Besides, you’re going to be happy when this is over with and you’re questioning why you ever decided to do this again. “Adventurous…I should have that drunk Virgil check me for demonic possession.” You mutter. After Kelium gets dressed and gathers his supplies (Which at least he’s carrying), the three of you set off on your journey to get these eggs. Unfortunately, its not just a simple matter of sticking to the coast and finding them along the shore, Kelium says you’ll probably have to go into a cave seeing as they like to lay their eggs some place dark, wet and safe. “Um, we have to enter a cave?” Yvette asks. “Yeah, what’s the big deal?” Kelium asks. What Yvette doesn’t answer right away, you step in. “I think Yvette is a bit uncomfortable with small spaces, especially dark ones crawling with monsters.” You say. “Huh? Well that’s just tough because she signed up for this task voluntarily. Nobody held a flintlock to her head. Besides, it’s most likely a big open cave given how large blueshell creptians are.” Kelium remarks. “Oh, well that changes everything.” You travel a bit longer until you start climbing up a small hill. Kelium occasionally looks at the ground and tries to find signs of creptians. He seems to know what he’s doing, despite his condition, though at this point you’re more on the look out of other potential bad types like say bandits or something similar. Meanwhile Yvette looks like she’s expecting trouble everywhere since she’s looking around constantly. “Yvette, calm yourself. Out of the three of us, you’ve probably got the most power here to deal with anything.” You say. “I dunno what you think I can do. I know. I’m not some high mage like in the old stories. As I told you, I’m just starting out and I haven’t even been out of the city before.” “Hm, so you can’t just summon a ball of flame or shoot lighting?” “Um…well not what you’re probably thinking. I mean maybe I could conjure a small palm sized ball of flame. Not sure if that would take down a Blueshell Creptian though, and it takes all my focus just to do it.” “Better than nothing I suppose.” Suddenly you hear Kelium yelling about something. You were so busy speaking with Yvette you didn’t even notice Kelium disappeared…again. “HEY COME HELP ME! SHIT!” Kelium shouts. You and Yvette run over to the other side of the hill you were on and see Kelium with his sword in hand and scrambling for cover behind a rock. You also see what you can only guess is a blueshell creptian. It looks exactly how you pictured. A big snail, with big crab like claws and a blue shell. Nearby the creptian you see a large sloping hole in the ground, you can only imagine that’s where it has made its home. “HEY! MOVE IN MAN! ATTACK!” You hear Kelium shout as a glob of blueshell spit hits the rock he’s hiding behind. You pull out your flintlock and fire at the blueshell and find that the shot doesn’t even penetrate its hard shell. In fact it doesn’t even turn its attention to you, so far it’s just slowly crawling over to Kelium’s position. “Yvette, can you cast some sort of light spell or cause something to glow?” you ask. “Yeah, but how is that going to help?” Yvette says. “It’ll help me search that cave for the eggs while it’s distracted.” “Wait, you’re going in there alone? What happens if there’s another one in there?” “Well, I’ll be running out of there really quick I guess. You just try to distract that blueshell and when I get the eggs we can all get the hell out of here.” “I dunno, I think maybe we should try to work together to kill the blueshell, then deal with the cave.” “And I don’t think we’re going to be able to, or at least not with what we got. Look, I’m going to be as quick as I can. All you have to do is stay away from that thing and find some cover. It doesn’t move that fast.” “I dunno…” Obviously Yvette has some doubt about this plan and if she does there’s a chance she could panic, but you really don’t have confidence in her plan either especially since it means you’d have to get closer or at least aim for a place that isn’t armor plated. > You proceed with your plan It might seem slightly cowardly on your part, but you’re not a damn massive warrior, you sneak about and steal shit. You’re playing to your real strengths, which isn’t going head to head with some big ass armored monster. “Yvette, look this is going to work. I’ll go grab the eggs and you just try to help Kelium. And if shit starts getting too much for you, I want you to just run back to Hessla. There is no damn point in all of us dying.” “But…” “But nothing, you just have to trust me on this. I’ll be fine, I just need to see in that cave, so cast whatever spell you need to, to make that happen.” Yvette is reluctant, but your words and the urgency of the situation causes her to comply. She says some sort of weird shit and moves her hands about and then suddenly a little ball of light appears in front of you. “That will follow you around and should last quite awhile, but you still need to hurry!” Yvette exclaims and then starts casting another spell. You don’t waste any time running down towards the blueshell lair. The creature still doesn’t notice you, but you certainly hear Kelium shouting at you about what you think you’re doing. You enter the blueshell dwelling and your boots are immediately covered in some sort of slime that the monster no doubt left. It smells pretty bad in here, but it isn’t like the stench of something rotten, it’s more like a strong chemical smell that burns your nostrils. The deeper you go, the more slime there is and the stronger the smell, you’re practically gagging at this point. Whether there is another blueshell in here or not isn’t going to matter much longer because you’re about to leave before you become overwhelmed by just the smell. Then that’s when you get lucky and spot something that you guess are eggs. They look oval shaped and seem to have a hard shell so that’s good enough for you. You grab as many as you can and shove them into your bag. You’re really going to have to bathe after this. With the eggs in the bag you run out of this foul cave as quick as you can partially vomiting the whole time. In fact you actually start to feel like you’re going to pass out and that’s when you start to wonder if this slime on your hands from the eggs isn’t also poisonous. You wipe them as much as you can on your clothing and soldier on. Just as the little ball of light that’s following you starts to go out, you see the light of the outside and then you also see a sizable fire and smoke. You were so busy with your task, you sort of blocked out the distant sounds of the battle outside. Upon exiting the cave, the smell hasn’t improved, though now charred crepitan flesh is filling the air. Small fires burn on the sparse grass and you see the burning carcass of the creptian. Whatever power Yvette didn’t think she was capable of she was clearly wrong. You hear some sobbing which you can only guess is her, you follow the sound and see her sitting on the ground with her face in her hands. “Yvette? What…What’s going on? I certainly hope you aren’t crying because killed that thing.” You say. “No! (sob) I’m crying because I didn’t kill it quick enough! Look over there!” Yvette shouts and points to a body not lying too far away. You walk over and see Kelium and he’s completely blue. He was hit face first with the spit (He’s got translucent blue goo all over his head) and whatever happened afterwards obviously took effect immediately. His face is twisted in a manner that its very apparent his death was pretty painful. Still feeling a bit sick yourself, you quickly take some of the anti-venom you bought. You just hope it helps and you aren’t slowly dying. You go back over to Yvette who is still upset. “Yvette, it’s bad what happened, but it really isn’t your fault. I mean this was a dangerous job, any one of us could have died. I mean you killed the beast which means you have more power than you thought you did, that should count for something right?” you say. “But what about Kelium? I mean we were supposed to keep him safe! What are we going to do?” Yvette answers. “Okay, first off, you don’t even need to worry about it. I know how to handle Dr. Gossey. I know it’s going to sound strange, but I don’t think she’s going to be as upset as you are. But I do have to ask, what exactly was your assignment?” “Just to practice my magic in the field and report the results. They have a way to tell if I’m lying or not.” “So we don’t need to cut off a piece of that burning crab snail as proof then?” “No, but I’m wondering if I’ll get marked down for being the cause of someone’s death during my assignment.” “Yvette, you need to put that guilt out of your mind. Seriously. Kelium’s death wasn’t your fault. It really wasn’t. To be honest, if Kelium hadn’t gone out and gotten himself wasted last night, this whole expedition might have gone a little more cautiously. Under the circumstances I’d say we did the best we could have done. Just tell them you tried to be the voice of reason. All of this has truth to it, you just have to know how to spin it and you have to believe it yourself.” “I…dunno…I just wasn’t brought up that way…” “Of course you weren’t, but there really isn’t a good reason why you should possibly suffer a lowered grade because other people fucked up right? Come on, let’s get back to Hessla, I’ll go over everything with you along with way there and on the way back to Klyton. I want to head over to the shoreline though and wash this slime off first though.” You spend your remaining time with Yvette going over the fine art of “telling the truth.” Again, it’s silly to you anyway, because she REALLY didn’t do anything wrong and she’s just blaming herself. However, if it’s going to help calm her when she has to go before this magical lie detector then you don’t mind helping. Not like she deserves getting a bad grade. By the time you’re taking the carriage ride back to Klyton, you’re feeling a little better. You guess you’re not dying of blueshell poison, then again it just got on your hands, you didn’t get a load of the stuff in your face like Kelium did. At some point you fall asleep on the trip to Klyton and Yvette wakes you up when you arrive. “Hey, wake up, we need to switch carriages to go to the university.” Yvette says. “Huh? Wha? It’s night.” You say. “Yes, but we should still get to the university a little after midnight. Should be enough time to get some sleep before seeing Dr. Gossey. Of course I also have to go before my professor to give my report too. What’s on your agenda?” “Um…nothing. No classes. In fact I’m not heading to the university.” “Wait you don’t live on campus?” “Me? Nah, I prefer keeping my personal life and school a bit separate in that regard.” “Oh. I see. Where do you live?” “It’s nowhere special really…so hey I have an idea, why don’t you just worry about your wizard report tomorrow. Like I said, I’ll go see Dr. Gossey and talk to her about what happened. I’ve worked for her before and I know exactly what to say, she’ll understand, trust me.” “I’m still nervous about the report.” “You’ll do fine. Just keep in mind what I said. You didn’t do anything wrong and have nothing to feel guilty about.” You aren’t sure what else to do to alleviate her fears, so you just go for it and kiss her on the lips before she can even do anything about it. She’s in shock and pushes you back. “Wha…what?! Why’d you do that for?!” she exclaims. “I dunno. I like you…and you still seemed to be worried so I did the only thing I could think of that calm you.” “Seriously?! That’s what you thought? You think I’m just some empty headed damsel that’s going to fall for all the honeyed words you’ve been telling me since we’ve been on this trip? I know how you’ve been looking at me; I’m not stupid you know! In fact you’re right this ISN’T my fault! It’s YOURS! If we had worked together as a team, Kelium might very well have lived!” “Oh fuck…forget it. I’m sorry, don’t turn me into a toad.” “I don’t need to, you obviously already have the manners of one!” “…Okay…I’m just gonna leave. Good luck on your report.” You say and just take you leave before Yvette can continue yelling at you. Well that could have gone better. You just couldn’t help it though; you thought her whole modest demeanor was cute and alluring, probably because you don’t encounter many girls like that. Maybe it was for the best though, not like you would have had much of a future with a girl like that. In any case, you’re going home with a bag of slimy monsters eggs. You push Virgil out of the way when you get to the Welcome Mat. “I’m in no mood, you fucking drunk.” You say and slam the door behind you. “Sheesh, you’re very emotional.” You hear him retort. You collapse on the bed and sleep. (At some point in the night, Elana curls up by your feet.) Later… You wake up and immediately make your way to the university. You sort of hope you don’t bump into Yvette, because you’d rather not get into that mess again. After an uneventful trip, you get to Dr. Gossey’s office where you see her writing something out. “Hey, that was quicker than I thought! I trust you have the eggs in that bag?” “Yep, but careful, they still got some of that poisonous slime on them, you can just take the whole bag. No way I’m getting that clean again.” You say and place it on a table. “Not surprised. Hope you didn’t get sick…but I guess if you’re here then you must have had the forethought to prepare yourself. Um…where is my assistant and the other one?” “Oh, Yvette had to give a report to her wizard professors, but I’m sure she’ll show up here later to collect her coin. As for Kelium…well…” “(Sigh) Damn. I guess I should ask how it happened.” “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead…but he wasn’t exactly careful. I tried to tell him not to directly attack the blueshell and that the eggs were good enough, but he really wanted to impress you by bringing back one alive. He didn’t really think that out however and well to make a long story short, he got himself killed and if it hadn’t been for Yvette’s magic, I probably would have died too. It was terrible.” Dr. Gossey shakes her head. “Sounds like Kelium. He always was eager to impress and please. I always told him safety should always take priority. Certainly a loss, but at least you got the eggs, that’s the most important thing.” And of course just like you figured, Gossey’s concern was more about the goal than the lives involved in it. You take your fifty gold and once again leave a bit richer. You know exactly how you’re going to spend some of it too. You leave the university and head to Madam Moonlight’s place. “Haven’t seen you in awhile, will you be having your usual?” the elven madam asks. “Um, no not today. Got kind of a special request this time.” You answer. “Well if you got the coin and it doesn’t involve killing someone, we can probably accommodate.” You explain in some detail about what you want exactly and the madam says that’s a simple request and thought you were going to ask for something elaborate like an orc hermaphrodite to shit and piss on you while you sucked a centaur cock. “What?! NO! That’s disgusting! Why the hell would anyone want that?!” you exclaim. “You’d be surprised, we cater to all types here. Don’t judge.” Moonlight scolds. “Look whatever, just set me up and no horse cocks or shitting orc freaks!” After a few minutes the Moonlight comes back to take you to your girl. You enter the room and see a short woman with light brown hair dressed in a robe. “Hello, I’m Yana and I need you to help me complete my spell ritual. I need your wand in my magic circle…” The woman says while seductively walking over to you. “(Sigh) NO. Your name is Yvette and you’re shy. Not some fucking aggressive trollop! Got it?” you order. “Okay okay, got it! Sheesh, you’re very emotional.” “Yeah, so I’ve heard.” > You time passes... Year 25 “Look, I dunno anything about what that old bastard does in his spare time, I just pay my rent and mind my own business.” You say. The militiamen give you a look like they don’t quite believe you. “Just an innocent in all this eh? Bullshit. Trobart says you’re a rogue through and through.” One of them remarks. “Yeah, and one of your neighbors, Randi I believe? She says you even have ties to the Crimson Talons.” Another adds. You nearly want to laugh, but you resist since you don’t want to piss off the militia unnecessarily. “Really? You’re going to believe a whore and some guy that sells alcohol illegally in his basement? They’re just trying to save their own asses by making false accusations! You turned my room upside down and didn’t find ANY stolen goods. And if I was a Crimson Talon, do you really think I’d be living in the shithole that I’m currently living in?” you answer. “Didn’t say you were a Crimson Talon, just said you had ties to them. And if you think just because we didn’t catch you with anything that you’re off the hook. You deny that you’re a criminal, but as I said, it’s obvious that you have no visible means of support, so you have to be doing something illegal.” A militia officer says. “How do you know I don’t have a proper job? You’re just making baseless assumptions.” “Am I now? I don’t think so. I think it’s obvious that you’re just some second rate pissant sneak thief that is so pathetic at your own lowly trade that you managed to avoid our eye for so long. In fact I can imagine you probably TRIED to join the Crimson Talons, but they just kept you on as an associate bitch because you weren’t good enough to be a real member.” “Interesting theory. Is this going somewhere?” “YOU’RE going to be going somewhere if you don’t shut the fuck up and listen closely to my offer!” the militia officer exclaims, getting in your face. You sit back in your chair and remain silent. The militia officer continues to stare at you assessing your every tell your face might be giving off. “It’s like this criminal scum. You’re on our fucking list now. I’ve got your name, I’ve got your ass. Your best bet would be to just get the fuck out of this city, but I know you. You probably think you’re smarter than me. Well you ain’t and you’re gonna get caught. Maybe not now. Maybe not even next year, but you WILL fuck up. And when you do, I’m going to make sure they put you in the smallest hanging cage we got. Believe that.” The militia officer then pulls back a bit and adopts a less combative stance along with a calmer voice. “Now, all that being said…we do have bigger fish to catch and if you did… say have ties to the Crimson Talons then MAYBE you might know where their hideout is. If you helped us with something like that, then well maybe I might be inclined to not keep such a close eye on you.” Well it’s times like these that make being a criminal not so much fun, though honestly as the years have been going on, you’re starting to wonder why you ever thought it was fun in the first place. You haven’t really much contact with the Crimson Talons since Zalmora visited you that one day asking you to join. All you did hear is that Tom isn’t in charge anymore and was killed by one of the more aggressive members who took over. Word says he’s a real tyrannical asshole, which might explain why none of the Talon members that have gotten arrested haven’t actually ratted on him themselves. It also explains when you have bumped into a couple of their members randomly in the taverns, they’ve been less than friendly and warned you to stay out of their territory. (Which you most certainly have been doing for years now) You do know that their headquarters is still in the same location. You don’t know why the militia doesn’t know where it is though given how they’ve increased their own activity as of late. The militia can be remarkably blind at times. “Look, if I did have dealings with the Crimson Talons, I’d help you out, but I just don’t associate with such people. Apologies.” You say. The militia officer doesn’t look pleased by your answer, and you sort of wonder if he’s going to end up throwing you in jail anyway, but he lets you go. “Okay then, but remember I gave you an out today and you turned it down. Be seeing you soon criminal.” You get up from the chair you’ve been sitting on for who knows how long and walk out the door, though not before one of the militia shoves the back of your head. It’s frustrating, but any dealing with the militia that you walk away from is a victory. From the militia barracks you make your way back to the Welcome Mat, which is practically destroyed at this point. At least it is on the inside. The law-abiding inhabitants (Or at least the criminal ones that didn’t get caught) are busily trying to gather and clean up the mess the militia made of their homes. You imagine Trobart, even with his ratting bullshit on you isn’t going to be able to keep this place any longer. You enter your own ruined room where upon Elana comes out from whatever hole in the wall she was hiding in and squeaks at you. “Hey Elana, glad to see they didn’t get you girl. Now let’s hope they didn’t get anything else either.” You find a chair that wasn’t destroyed and check the hiding spot you have in the ceiling of your room. After checking and pulling out your small locked container you breathe a sigh of relief. Your small savings are still intact. You’ll be needing it too, because everything else was taken. Your weapons, your tools, everything that you use or need in your profession. Granted it wasn’t a lot, but it’s still a loss. You’ll also be needing to find a new place to live. As you’re pondering your next move, your door with the broken lock opens up. It’s Virgil and he appears to be sober for a change. “Damn, they really did a number on yer room too I see.” Virgil says. “Yeah, but it’s still my fucking room. What the hell do you want, I don’t have any money so you can go get drunk.” you say. “And I wasn’t askin’. Sheesh, I was just coming in here to see if you were around. I wanted to apologize for bothering you all the time for money actually.” “Oh?” “Yeah…I mean I dunno if you noticed but I haven’t been around as much lately.” “Hmm, I did notice a reduction in our usual encounters over the past month.” “I’ve been trying to get my life back together. Get myself right with Joachim again. Part of that is me apologizing and trying to make amends for all the times I bothered you.” “Oh yeah? You got a bag full of coins for all the times I gave you money for booze?” “No. I wish I did. I know how you like money…I might even give you a lecture about that, but I’m not really in any position to do so. I first need to get myself right with Joachim and then I might be able to guide others into his light like I was supposed to be doing in the first place.” “Not sure if you preaching at me is any better than you hitting me up for booze money.” “I’m sure to you it isn’t, but I’m here to apologize anyway and if there is something within my power to help you, just let me know.” “Well, thanks I suppose. Can’t really think of anything I need from you though, unless you got an idea of a new cheap place to live at that isn’t completely a shithole.” “Not really, unless you want to sleep in one of the poor rooms at the Church of Joachim. That’s sort of where I’ve been staying lately. Would have been living there before, if I hadn’t gotten asked to leave for my...weakness. Guess I might be living there for good now. Just as well. It was time to move on.” “Don’t think that’s going to work out for me, but thanks for the offer.” Virgil nods and then says something about Joachim’s blessing be upon you. You finish packing up and when you’re only a few steps away from the Welcome Mat, it suddenly occurs to you. Your family’s old inn. It’s still abandoned. You could easily stay there and that would at least save you some of the costs. “Should have thought about that in the first place.” You say and make your way to the inn. Of course as you begin to do so, you realize you’re being followed. That officer wasn’t fucking around when he said he was going to have eyes on you all the time. It takes some time, but you end up losing them, but now you’re practically on the other side of the city! If this is how it’s always going to be, it’s not going to matter where you stay. Maybe it is time to leave Klyton, which you suppose you don’t mind since things haven’t been the greatest here, but you just hate being chased off like this. Of course there’s always the option the officer suggested. You don’t really have any loyalty to the Talons, so if it did help you out in the long run, well it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. It might even help you with less competition around that is actually making it harder for everyone else. Ever since the change in leadership, the Talons have also been selling Yellow Devil which has been causing a bit of a minor crime wave, what with all the extra junkies running around causing problems. (Even at your stomping grounds, the University) Of course being a rat is a pretty damn serious offense in the criminal world (Even if it goes on all the time) and if the Crimson Talons ever did find out, it probably wouldn’t go well for you. > You leave Klyton You’re a lot of things, but you ain’t no rat. Besides, it isn’t like it’s going to make a difference anyway except maybe getting yourself killed if word got out. Your best bet is to seek greener pastures so to speak. Without another thought you make your way to the carriage station. Holgard comes to mind, but there's always some sort of rebellion or power struggle going on there. You'd rather not have to deal with being in the middle of that mess. The Delantium Kingdom is at war with some other nation, so you'd rather avoid the possibility of suddenly getting press ganged or conscripted into military service. The only other place is Hessla, which at least you’re somewhat familiar with. The trip to Hessla is uneventful and when you arrive the same power structure is in place. Tolen is still the governor and his Headsmen provide the order. At least some things remain consistent. After spending a few days in Hessla you realize you’re going to have to find some more reliable way of earning coin because thievery here is too high risk with low reward. Most people here aren’t exactly rolling in coins. Shops are always well protected so is anyone who does have a lot. At best you might get a pirate that’s flush with ill gotten loot, but you’d probably have to get one right off the ship because they spend it like water. Not to mention the Headsmen are probably more vicious than the militia. They might not be as observant, but they don’t need to be. Unlike you, folks here tend to have no qualms about ratting out thieves where upon the Headsmen deal out swift justice. You need to find something suited to your skills. The first thing that comes to mind is piracy given that you’re here in the heart of it. Granted you’re no sailor and you have little knowledge on what exactly is involved, but it is something you imagine your trade might come in handy. Not really knowing how this is done, you head to one of the docks looking for work. First one you try is a big dark skinned bald man who is standing by a large ship with several cannons mounted in it. He looks intimidating, and seems more surprised that you even approached him rather than annoyed. “Um, you lost landlubber?” he asks. “Landlubber?” you respond. “Yeah, that’s definitely you. You ain’t a sailor and you sure as hell aren’t a pirate.” “That obvious?” “Given that you even approached me, you might as well be wearing a sign. So whadda ya want?” “I want to be a pirate.” The man stares at you in disbelief for a moment and looks you up and down before laughing heartily. “Aren’t you a little old to be having dreams of running away to be a pirate? Get the fuck outta here.” The man says. “I’m not that old, I’m probably younger than you. And what difference does it make how old I am?” “Because this here is the Dominator and as I already pointed out, you’re no sailor and we ain’t got time to train you and you’re not nearly young enough to act as a tag along cabin boy. The pirate shit is easy. Any thug off the street could be one. But bein’ a sailor? THAT’S the hard part.” “Are you the captain of this ship then?” “Oh no. I’m Zamed, the first mate. The captain of this fine vessel is Captain Illam and he’s less tolerant than I am so you’re not going to see him at all.” “I have skills! I can fight! I mean I’m an accomplished thief! I’m very stealthy! I can pick almost any lock…ANY lock if given enough time!” “Yeah…that’s not really helping you. Last thing we need is someone on our ship potentially sneaking around and pilfering hard earned loot. And as for yer fighting skills, I doubt if you were doing too much of that if you were sneaking about. I’d wager you wouldn’t be much good in a boarding action or a coastal raid. You even know what its like to be in a real fight and so close to a man that when you stick your blade into him that you can smell death upon him?” Zamed says getting in your face and staring you down. “Actually I do.” You say staring up at Zamed. Zamed continues to study you and then slowly moves back to his original position. “Okay…so maybe you might qualify in that regard, but that still doesn’t mean shit. As I said, we only take on skilled sailors and I KNOW you aren’t one of those.” “But how am I going to learn how to be a sailor if I don’t get any on experience?” “That’s your problem, not mine.” “Bah, this is bullshit.” You say and start to walk away, but Zamed calls to you. “Look, I don’t normally do this, but since you even had the balls to approach me I’ll help you out. You see those docks over there? Go over to that ship and ask if they’re looking for any new crew. The captain has lower standards on his ship, he might accept you.” Zamed says. “That big one over there?” “Hah. No, that one is Captain Yan’s vessel, and you’re not getting on that one. She only accepts women. You want the smaller one. The Steadfast run by Captain Rifiv.” “Figures.” “Hey, that’s your best shot if you’re serious about this life. Besides, don’t let the looks fool you. It’s not called the Steadfast for nothing. Rifiv might be well past his prime, but back in his day he was nothing to sneeze at. He’s probably lived longer than most his contemporaries. Anyway good luck I guess.” You leave Zamed and head to the Steadfast. If this doesn’t work out, you aren’t sure what you’re going to do next. When you get near the vessel, you see a group milling around it just talking with each other. Several of them notice you approach and one addresses you. “Looking for something?” a scruffy man wearing a rag on his head asks. “This is the Steadfast right? I want to join the crew.” You say. They all look at each other and then the scruffy man addresses you again. “You got any skills?” he asks. You go on about your abilities the same way you did to Zamed. They don’t look too impressed either, but they don’t look disappointed either. “Hmm, well we’ve certainly had less skilled people on this vessel. We weren’t actively looking for anyone new though. However, the captain doesn’t tend to mind a few extra hands, so you might get lucky. Come on, let me just go take you to him. The name’s Scully by the way.” You follow Scully up the gangplank and wait as he knocks on the door of what you guess is the captain’s cabin. He gets an answer to come in and after a couple minutes, Scully comes back out and tell you to come in as well. That’s when you meet this Captain Rifiv. He's practically an old man who is having a hard time walking with a cane. He's dressed better than everyone else on the ship, but that isn't saying much since even his fancy overcoat has patches sewn on it. “So Scully says you want to join up. Also tells me your primary background was as a small time thief in Klyton and you have NO experience on the sea at all. That correct?” Captain Rifiv says. “Yes.” You answer. “While the premise is still in the same family of taking other people’s shit, you do realize being a pirate is a lot different than what you’re used to right?” “I do, but I’m willing to learn.” “Better learn quickly then, because if you fall behind or I don’t think you’re pulling your weight then I’ll have you chopped up and thrown overboard for mermaid food. Understand?” “Clearly.” “Okay, we’ll see then. Scully show him where he’ll be sleeping and everything else. And after you’re finished doing that, gather the rest of the men because we’re going to be setting off soon.” Well time to see if you’re cut out for this line of work. > You time passes... Year 28 When you joined three years ago, you figured it would be a couple months maybe. You didn't know how far away all these places you're raiding were going to be, let alone how long it would be before you returned home. The raids themselves aren’t exactly fun for you either. You realize you’re really not the bloodthirsty type who gets off on killing folks all the time. There’s been a lot of times you’ve hung back just so you can avoid most of the direct combat. And that’s starting to getting a bit noticeable mainly because enough of the crew has died that it can’t afford to have any slackers. Fortunately Captain Rifiv hasn’t called you out on it and it’s just been a few of the crew bitching at you. This isn’t even counting the rape and there’s a lot of that you haven’t been engaging in either. Though some of them seem content on buggering each other. (And no matter how long you've been at sea, you can honestly say there's nothing that would even make you THINK about sticking it to any of this loathsome lot you're with!) The only minor upside is you’ve been doing okay as far as loot is concerned. These idiots haven’t been paying attention that you’ve been pilfering the odd coins or baubles from them so you actually have more than your share. However, you aren’t exactly doing all that much better than you were as a regular thief though and worse, you’re stuck at sea most of the time so you can’t even enjoy it like you’d prefer. There’s also the fact that you've learned your way around a ship a lot more, though you question if this knowledge would actually ever be useful since you’re having serious doubts about ever setting foot on another ship ever again. Currently you’re somewhere in the far southwest seas at some small port town called Gix. The Steadfast has been using the place as a rest stop in between raids mainly because it’s the only civilized place in this area that is accepting of pirates and has been for as long as anyone can remember. This place isn’t Hessla though and isn’t a “criminal town.” It’s just run by normal people going about their simple normal lives. The locals are a bit live and let live for the most part. They don’t particularly enjoy having violent drunken pirates visiting, but as long as the pirates aren’t messing with them, they’re fine with accommodating them. Sort of reminds you of how Teckleville used to turn a blind eye to you and your sister robbing travelling merchants. You miss those days and not even the robbing part. You find that you’re missing home in general. Maybe not even home so much you miss the environment as strange as that might seem. Then again, you never had the wanderlust that your sister had. (You imagine other than the killing and rape, she’d find all this pirate stuff pretty exciting) Had things been different you probably would have never left Teckleville. Maybe you would have eventually settled down and become boring like everyone else in that town. At this point that doesn’t seem all that bad. You guess you’re just realizing that you’re starting to get tired of this life. Since you’re hanging out with the Steadfast crew most of the time, you always take the opportunity to stay away from the lot of them when in town. Instead of drinking at the “pirate bar” of the town, you drink at the quieter one that the locals seem to prefer. The first time you entered you got a lot of strange looks, but now nobody bats an eye. You’re just minding your business after all. Still, occasionally the barmaid speaks to you and is fairly cordial. Seems to be in a more talkative mood today… “Another successful voyage of raiding and pillaging?” Ola asks. “I suppose so. Got enough money to spend here.” You answer. “Drinking does seem to be one of the more civilized favorite past times of you lot. Good thing of course since we’d have significantly less coin coming into the town. Sort of wondering though, how come you always come in here rather than going to the usual taverns?” “Because I have to spend practically all my time around those assholes, so the moment I actually don’t have to is a blessing.” “If you don’t like the folks you sail with, why do it?” “Good question, and one I’ve been asking myself more and more each day before finally coming to the inevitable conclusion.” “Which is?” “That this pirate life isn’t for me. As soon as we get back to Hessla, I’m not setting foot on a ship again. (Sigh) Another year at sea though before we return…ugh…I just dunno if I can take it.” “Well, why not just leave now?” “…hmmm…I suppose I could…I doubt if they’d come looking for me. Do you have any transport ships that go to Hessla?” Ola frowns a bit. “We don’t have ANY big ships. In case you haven’t realized, we’re a small town not a bustling trading city we hear you lot talk about. If it weren’t for pirates coming here, we probably would never have much contact with the rest of the world. I mean the best you could do is get yourself a rowboat and row to this Hessla place. How far is it?” Ola asks. “Too far. I doubt if I could even make it to Jicol in a rowboat. Oh well, guess I can tough out another year.” You say. “Why not just stay here?” “Here? What would I do here?” “Um, well you know your way around a ship right? You could work as a fisherman.” “Ugh, trying to get away from boats actually. Still, sitting in a rowboat and peacefully fishing sounds a lot more attractive right now than what I am doing.” “What are some of your other skills…um, I mean those that don’t involve killing and raping people.” “First off, I’ve never raped anyone…” you start to say before Ola interrupts. “You haven’t? Oh thank Kalhu!” You give Ola a bit of a strange look. Granted you two don’t really know each other that well, but she seems way more talkative than she has in the past. If you didn’t know any better you’d say she was flirting with you in some strange way. “Okay, first who is Kalhu?” you ask. “The god of this island of course. All the times you’ve been here, you’ve never heard of him before?” Ola says. “Don’t really pay much attention to religion. You’re not going to preach at me are you?” “No, why would I?’ “Because you seem very interested in my future and we don’t know each other very well, so I’m wondering what this is all about.” Ola looks around and finally sits down next to you. A couple people look, but say nothing, you’re a little taken back by all this though. “This town is a good place with good people. We like our relative isolation, especially after hearing some of the tales from your pirate shipmates and other pirates we’ve dealt with in the past. But um…isolation has its downsides. There sometimes is um…lack of potential mates. At least not related ones.” Ola says. You start to tense up at where this might be going. “Now some women of this town have sex with the pirates that visit here and that’s good as it provides new blood for the town, but it is sometimes hard on these mothers to raise these children without a father around. A good family should have a mother and father.” Ola says. “So…what exactly are you asking me?” “I’m asking if you would consider…(breathes nervously) being my husband.” You had a feeling, but you still weren’t quite prepared. How could you be? It isn’t like you get asked out of the blue to be someone’s husband! Ola goes on to explain that she knows how this might seem strange to an outsider like you, but she says that she fears her arranged marriage to her cousin since he has many undesirable physical traits that would not make for a strong child. However, she also doesn’t wish to submit herself to a one-night stand with some pirate (Apparently she’s a bit on the moral side which is funny that she would come to you in the first place) and wants a husband to stick around to help raise your children. (Yes, she’s already implied that she wants more than one.) So she’s picked you as a “last ditch” effort to find a husband who is physically fit (and attractive as she has mentioned as a secondary concern) and is most assuredly not related to her in some way. She also has said in the few conversations you’ve had with her you seem okay personality wise and not being a rapist is a big plus to her. (Curse your parents for instilling some sort of values in you) For her part, Ola seems like a nice girl and isn’t ugly. She’s no Annah or Yvette, but you could certainly do worse. You’re a bit overwhelmed by all this sudden information though and as much as you don’t want to get back on the Steadfast again, that’s only going to be a year. This is going to be well…presumably until you die because she’s already made it quite clear that passage off this island is a rarity. You probably wouldn’t see home again. But then again what did you really have going on there? You tried being a thief and that didn’t work out like you planned. You tried this pirate thing and that hasn’t worked out either. All you’ve gotten is headache from your life of crime and not much to show for it ultimately. Also you don’t really have a home anymore anyway seeing as you got permanently kicked out of Teckleville. That thought about you finally giving all this up and becoming a normal boring person? Well that day might be today. > You get married It’s crazy and maybe you’re going to severely regret this later, but getting married and out of this life sounds a whole hell of a lot better than getting on that ship for another year. “Fuck it, let’s do it.” You say. “Seriously?” Ola asks a little surprised. “Yeah, I’m serious. Where and when is this going to happen?” “Uh, well when I get off work in a little while we could go to the temple of Kalhu. The shaman should be able to perform the ceremony.” “So we don’t need your parents there or anything?” “No, all we need to be is bonded in the many eyes of Kalhu. This is great! This is really wonderful!” Ola beams. You still have a few questions even though because while you’re half way committing to this, there is still time to back out if it’s too crazy. “Um, okay, but wait I do need to ask. This isn’t going to piss off your family is it? I mean you were engaged to your cousin, I don’t want to cause some family drama or feud.” “Well I suppose my cousin will be upset, but you hardly have to worry about him. He’s not really fit and strong like you are. His mother might also be upset, but as far as my family goes you shouldn’t have too many problems. My father might be gruff with you, but his main concern is if you’re going to be a good provider. Now did you do anything before being a pirate?” You explain to Ola some of your past, which causes another frown from her. However when you get past all the thief stuff and briefly mention dealing with some wildlife for Dr. Gossey she stops you. “Wait, so you have experience trapping and dealing with fauna?” Ola asks. “Well I wouldn’t say that exactly. I mean I had a pet qweepa, but that’s because I had it from when it was a baby. And I had to collect these monster snail crab eggs.” You say. “That may be good enough. My cousin is a trapper and needs help sometimes keeping the pest population down in this town. He can teach you all you need to know. You could probably work with him.” “Won’t that be weird considering I’m marrying you?” “Huh? Oh no, this is a different cousin and he’s married to my older sister so there won’t be any trouble there.” “Oh. Well that’s good to hear, I guess.” Ola goes on excitedly about how she will be a good wife to you and believes that Kalhu must have sent you personally to reward her for her prayers to him. This is all getting a little too “real” for you and you tell her that you need to get a few things from the ship, but this makes her nervous. “You’re coming back right?” she asks. “I’m coming back, don’t worry. I just really need to get the rest of my belongings off the ship. I mean I have a tidy hidden sum still aboard the ship, if I’m staying I don’t want to just abandon that.” You say. “…okay I trust you. But please hurry back!” Ola says and then kisses you on the lips. She then walks away with a smile, but it’s very apparent she’s concerned you are leaving. And honestly you’re wondering if you should. You leave the tavern and quickly make your way back to the ship. You pace the floor of the empty cabin still wondering what the hell you’re going to do. You feel really bad for just leaving Ola. She didn’t really deserve getting her hopes up, only to get them destroyed. But… Getting married? Being a pest trapper? Settling down and having a whole mess o babies? What the hell were you thinking? “Hey, didn’t expect anyone to be aboard, well except the captain and he’s always in his quarters.” One of your fatter crewmates says as he comes wandering in the door. “Hey you seen my lucky dice? Gotta game with Fleegle and Hok an’ those dice never let me down yet.” He asks. “No.” you say still lost in your own thoughts. “Meh, no matter, those two idiots got the worst luck anyway. I’ll easily take them like I took that long haired lass on the last ship we raided, hahahahaha!” You continue to pace and think, but this asshole keeps insisting on speaking to you. “What’s crawled up yer ass and got you all jittery? Yer about to wear a hole in the floor.” He asks. “Nothing.” You say. “Doesn’t look like nothin’ to me. You worrying about all the mermaid rumors in these southern waters? Listen I’ve been at sea long before you were even unleashed from yer father’s balls and I ain’t never seen a mermaid. They don’t even fucking exist…” “Will you just shut the fuck up?! I don’t give a shit about what you have to fucking say! I got my own problems!” you snap. The fat pirate’s demeanor now changes to hostility. “You fucking little cunt. Don’t think I won’t kick the shit out of you and throw you overboard after I’m done shoving my big fat cock up yer prissy ass. I see you walkin’ around here thinkin’ yer too good for this life and keepin’ to yerself. And that’s fine, but I also see that YOU haven’t been pullin’ yer fuckin’ weight around here. Whenever we go on a raid, you stay in the back like a fucking bitch. Well let me tell you something, the next raid we go on, I better see some fucking bloodshed or I’m gonna make good on my previous threat.” This fat ass is twice your size and you don’t have much room to move around. You back down. “Alright, alright, apologies. Just a little preoccupied with something and I didn’t mean to take it out on you.” You say holding your hands up and stepping back. The fat pirate smirks and snorts in distain at your compliance. And it’s at that moment you’ve made your choice. As soon as he turns his back, you punch the fat fuck as hard as you can in the base of his skull. The big man being unprepared for this crumples into the lowest hanging hammock and then you do it again. You aren’t sure if you’ve killed him, but he’s not moving. No matter, they’ll probably think he’s just asleep for awhile. “All that time at sea and you never learned not to turn your back on a thief. Stupid fat asshole.” You say. You quickly gather up your belongings, loot the body of your dead crewmate and leave the ship. Fortunately you don’t bump into any other crewmembers or the captain on your way out. You return to the tavern where Ola works. She’s busy at the moment, but smiles when she sees you. While you wait for her shift to be over, you go through your small bag of valuables (as well as your newly acquired one) and try to find something to give to her. With a bit more luck on your side, you manage to find a gold ring. Probably not her size, but it’s the thought that counts. Later that night, you and Ola go to the temple of Kalhu. The shaman there is a bit strange and so is the ceremony, but happily it’s not that long. Within just a half hour, you’re married and you soon find out that Ola’s years of purity have paid off in your favor because apparently she had A LOT of pent up…”energy.” You don’t even make it that far out the temple before she’s ready to consummate the marriage! Certainly no complaint on that front at least. Over the course of the next few days you mainly hideout at Ola’s cousin’s home (The pest trapper, not the one you just stole his bride to be from) since you’re a little concerned that your fellow crewmates are going to come looking for you. However, they either don’t give a shit that you killed fat ass, or they still think he’s asleep. Either way, they ultimately leave without you and you’re finally in the clear. You aren’t exactly religious yourself, but you do give a little silent praise to Yag for your incredible fortune over these last few days. You just hope if he IS watching over you even to the smallest degree that your luck doesn’t suddenly turn to shit for your brand new life. And it is a brand new life now. You’re married and on your way to be just some boring normal person in some boring small town that was much like the one you got run out of over a decade ago. Not to mention you’ll most likely live out the rest of your life and die here. But that’s okay. Things could be a lot worse. Who knows, maybe you’ll even still find a little excitement here and there even if it is of the mundane kind. This is after all a whole different experience for you to discover and enjoy if you can. Whatever happens, your days as a rogue are over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 28 When you joined three years ago, you figured it would be a couple months maybe. You didn't know how far away all these places you're raiding were going to be, let alone how long it would be before you returned home. The raids themselves aren’t exactly fun for you either. You realize you’re really not the bloodthirsty type who gets off on killing folks all the time. There’s been a lot of times you’ve hung back just so you can avoid most of the direct combat. And that’s starting to getting a bit noticeable mainly because enough of the crew has died that it can’t afford to have any slackers. Fortunately Captain Rifiv hasn’t called you out on it and it’s just been a few of the crew bitching at you. This isn’t even counting the rape and there’s a lot of that you haven’t been engaging in either. Though some of them seem content on buggering each other. (And no matter how long you've been at sea, you can honestly say there's nothing that would even make you THINK about sticking it to any of this loathsome lot you're with!) The only minor upside is you’ve been doing okay as far as loot is concerned. These idiots haven’t been paying attention that you’ve been pilfering the odd coins or baubles from them so you actually have more than your share. However, you aren’t exactly doing all that much better than you were as a regular thief though and worse, you’re stuck at sea most of the time so you can’t even enjoy it like you’d prefer. There’s also the fact that you've learned your way around a ship a lot more, though you question if this knowledge would actually ever be useful since you’re having serious doubts about ever setting foot on another ship ever again. Currently you’re somewhere in the far southwest seas at some small port town called Gix. The Steadfast has been using the place as a rest stop in between raids mainly because it’s the only civilized place in this area that is accepting of pirates and has been for as long as anyone can remember. This place isn’t Hessla though and isn’t a “criminal town.” It’s just run by normal people going about their simple normal lives. The locals are a bit live and let live for the most part. They don’t particularly enjoy having violent drunken pirates visiting, but as long as the pirates aren’t messing with them, they’re fine with accommodating them. Sort of reminds you of how Teckleville used to turn a blind eye to you and your sister robbing travelling merchants. You miss those days and not even the robbing part. You find that you’re missing home in general. Maybe not even home so much you miss the environment as strange as that might seem. Then again, you never had the wanderlust that your sister had. (You imagine other than the killing and rape, she’d find all this pirate stuff pretty exciting) Had things been different you probably would have never left Teckleville. Maybe you would have eventually settled down and become boring like everyone else in that town. At this point that doesn’t seem all that bad. You guess you’re just realizing that you’re starting to get tired of this life. Since you’re hanging out with the Steadfast crew most of the time, you always take the opportunity to stay away from the lot of them when in town. Instead of drinking at the “pirate bar” of the town, you drink at the quieter one that the locals seem to prefer. The first time you entered you got a lot of strange looks, but now nobody bats an eye. You’re just minding your business after all. Still, occasionally the barmaid speaks to you and is fairly cordial. Seems to be in a more talkative mood today… “Another successful voyage of raiding and pillaging?” Ola asks. “I suppose so. Got enough money to spend here.” You answer. “Drinking does seem to be one of the more civilized favorite past times of you lot. Good thing of course since we’d have significantly less coin coming into the town. Sort of wondering though, how come you always come in here rather than going to the usual taverns?” “Because I have to spend practically all my time around those assholes, so the moment I actually don’t have to is a blessing.” “If you don’t like the folks you sail with, why do it?” “Good question, and one I’ve been asking myself more and more each day before finally coming to the inevitable conclusion.” “Which is?” “That this pirate life isn’t for me. As soon as we get back to Hessla, I’m not setting foot on a ship again. (Sigh) Another year at sea though before we return…ugh…I just dunno if I can take it.” “Well, why not just leave now?” “…hmmm…I suppose I could…I doubt if they’d come looking for me. Do you have any transport ships that go to Hessla?” Ola frowns a bit. “We don’t have ANY big ships. In case you haven’t realized, we’re a small town not a bustling trading city we hear you lot talk about. If it weren’t for pirates coming here, we probably would never have much contact with the rest of the world. I mean the best you could do is get yourself a rowboat and row to this Hessla place. How far is it?” Ola asks. “Too far. I doubt if I could even make it to Jicol in a rowboat. Oh well, guess I can tough out another year.” You say. “Why not just stay here?” “Here? What would I do here?” “Um, well you know your way around a ship right? You could work as a fisherman.” “Ugh, trying to get away from boats actually. Still, sitting in a rowboat and peacefully fishing sounds a lot more attractive right now than what I am doing.” “What are some of your other skills…um, I mean those that don’t involve killing and raping people.” “First off, I’ve never raped anyone…” you start to say before Ola interrupts. “You haven’t? Oh thank Kalhu!” You give Ola a bit of a strange look. Granted you two don’t really know each other that well, but she seems way more talkative than she has in the past. If you didn’t know any better you’d say she was flirting with you in some strange way. “Okay, first who is Kalhu?” you ask. “The god of this island of course. All the times you’ve been here, you’ve never heard of him before?” Ola says. “Don’t really pay much attention to religion. You’re not going to preach at me are you?” “No, why would I?’ “Because you seem very interested in my future and we don’t know each other very well, so I’m wondering what this is all about.” Ola looks around and finally sits down next to you. A couple people look, but say nothing, you’re a little taken back by all this though. “This town is a good place with good people. We like our relative isolation, especially after hearing some of the tales from your pirate shipmates and other pirates we’ve dealt with in the past. But um…isolation has its downsides. There sometimes is um…lack of potential mates. At least not related ones.” Ola says. You start to tense up at where this might be going. “Now some women of this town have sex with the pirates that visit here and that’s good as it provides new blood for the town, but it is sometimes hard on these mothers to raise these children without a father around. A good family should have a mother and father.” Ola says. “So…what exactly are you asking me?” “I’m asking if you would consider…(breathes nervously) being my husband.” You had a feeling, but you still weren’t quite prepared. How could you be? It isn’t like you get asked out of the blue to be someone’s husband! Ola goes on to explain that she knows how this might seem strange to an outsider like you, but she says that she fears her arranged marriage to her cousin since he has many undesirable physical traits that would not make for a strong child. However, she also doesn’t wish to submit herself to a one-night stand with some pirate (Apparently she’s a bit on the moral side which is funny that she would come to you in the first place) and wants a husband to stick around to help raise your children. (Yes, she’s already implied that she wants more than one.) So she’s picked you as a “last ditch” effort to find a husband who is physically fit (and attractive as she has mentioned as a secondary concern) and is most assuredly not related to her in some way. She also has said in the few conversations you’ve had with her you seem okay personality wise and not being a rapist is a big plus to her. (Curse your parents for instilling some sort of values in you) For her part, Ola seems like a nice girl and isn’t ugly. She’s no Annah or Yvette, but you could certainly do worse. You’re a bit overwhelmed by all this sudden information though and as much as you don’t want to get back on the Steadfast again, that’s only going to be a year. This is going to be well…presumably until you die because she’s already made it quite clear that passage off this island is a rarity. You probably wouldn’t see home again. But then again what did you really have going on there? You tried being a thief and that didn’t work out like you planned. You tried this pirate thing and that hasn’t worked out either. All you’ve gotten is headache from your life of crime and not much to show for it ultimately. Also you don’t really have a home anymore anyway seeing as you got permanently kicked out of Teckleville. That thought about you finally giving all this up and becoming a normal boring person? Well that day might be today. > You get back to the ship It’s just too much to sacrifice. Maybe you’ll settle down one day, maybe even after you get back to Hessla, but you can’t see yourself doing it here stuck in some island at the ass end of the world to a girl you hardly know. “I’m sorry Ola, but I just can’t do it. You’re a nice girl, but this is too sudden and we don’t know each other well enough.” You say. “I understand. I was not hopeful of my odds anyway.” “We could still, you know…do the other thing if you want.” Ola shakes her head. “I’m sorry but I just wasn’t raised that way. Things might be much easier if I hadn’t. (Sigh) I will remain pure for my husband to be. My cousin deserves that much.” Ola says and gets up to leave. Seeing as things are a bit awkward here now, you decide to leave altogether. You figure you’ll just spend the remainder of your time on board the ship in the bunks. It’ll be time to leave soon anyway. Sure enough in a few days you’re on your way. Year 29 Half of the year has already passed, but it can’t end soon enough. You’re barely getting along with most of the crew at this point and all this violence you’ve been participating in has made you less tolerant in general. You’ve already had a couple of fistfights with a few. While this hasn’t done much to improve your popularity nobody is ever accusing you of being a pussy who doesn’t pull his weight. Figures you’d start fitting in towards the end. Of course you have no intention of continuing being a pirate and are still fully dedicated to leaving this shitty experience behind. You still have no idea what you’re going to do when you get back. Your experience with Ola months ago has made you rethink your ideas of possibly “settling down.” You’re starting to think maybe you might try your hand at being a mercenary or something similar. You have gotten very good at killing and it doesn’t even bother you anymore after all. (It’s just being around all these assholes on this cramped ship that bothers you) As you’re looking off into the ocean pondering your potential new career when you get back, you start to hear something. Yes…kill. You look around and immediately shout at one of your nearest shipmates. “What did you say?” you demand. “Huh? I didn’t say nuthin.” He says and backs away a bit. You return to your thoughts and then hear something else. Kill them all… The voice is very close, like it’s almost coming inside your head. You rub your eyes and then you notice a medium splash in the waters. When you look harder you see a head briefly pop up. Looks female. You need to kill them all and return them to the sea…to be with us…forever Now your mind feels like a thousand needles are being shoved in it as these voices assault it. You crumple to the deck and you’re so busy clutching your head in pain and trying to fight whatever is attacking you, that you don’t even notice that other crew members are starting to suffer similar affects. Some of the crew immediately jump overboard, others are wailing in pain and barely moving. Captain Rifiv at this point has come out of his cabin and begun yelling at everyone to shove wax in their ears. It’s a little too late for you however. The mermaids already have taken advantage of your less than stable mood and are now directing you to do something you’ve thought about doing many times anyway. Namely killing the assholes you’re sailing with. You waste no time in obeying the siren’s call of murdering your shipmates, most of which don’t put up too much of a fight due to their own mind assaults. You do fairly well cutting down most of the crew, but even with mermaid help, you still are only one man and eventually Captain Rifiv puts you down with shot to your back which is then followed up by several cutlass chops to the neck and head by some of the less helpless crew.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 25 “Look, I dunno anything about what that old bastard does in his spare time, I just pay my rent and mind my own business.” You say. The militiamen give you a look like they don’t quite believe you. “Just an innocent in all this eh? Bullshit. Trobart says you’re a rogue through and through.” One of them remarks. “Yeah, and one of your neighbors, Randi I believe? She says you even have ties to the Crimson Talons.” Another adds. You nearly want to laugh, but you resist since you don’t want to piss off the militia unnecessarily. “Really? You’re going to believe a whore and some guy that sells alcohol illegally in his basement? They’re just trying to save their own asses by making false accusations! You turned my room upside down and didn’t find ANY stolen goods. And if I was a Crimson Talon, do you really think I’d be living in the shithole that I’m currently living in?” you answer. “Didn’t say you were a Crimson Talon, just said you had ties to them. And if you think just because we didn’t catch you with anything that you’re off the hook. You deny that you’re a criminal, but as I said, it’s obvious that you have no visible means of support, so you have to be doing something illegal.” A militia officer says. “How do you know I don’t have a proper job? You’re just making baseless assumptions.” “Am I now? I don’t think so. I think it’s obvious that you’re just some second rate pissant sneak thief that is so pathetic at your own lowly trade that you managed to avoid our eye for so long. In fact I can imagine you probably TRIED to join the Crimson Talons, but they just kept you on as an associate bitch because you weren’t good enough to be a real member.” “Interesting theory. Is this going somewhere?” “YOU’RE going to be going somewhere if you don’t shut the fuck up and listen closely to my offer!” the militia officer exclaims, getting in your face. You sit back in your chair and remain silent. The militia officer continues to stare at you assessing your every tell your face might be giving off. “It’s like this criminal scum. You’re on our fucking list now. I’ve got your name, I’ve got your ass. Your best bet would be to just get the fuck out of this city, but I know you. You probably think you’re smarter than me. Well you ain’t and you’re gonna get caught. Maybe not now. Maybe not even next year, but you WILL fuck up. And when you do, I’m going to make sure they put you in the smallest hanging cage we got. Believe that.” The militia officer then pulls back a bit and adopts a less combative stance along with a calmer voice. “Now, all that being said…we do have bigger fish to catch and if you did… say have ties to the Crimson Talons then MAYBE you might know where their hideout is. If you helped us with something like that, then well maybe I might be inclined to not keep such a close eye on you.” Well it’s times like these that make being a criminal not so much fun, though honestly as the years have been going on, you’re starting to wonder why you ever thought it was fun in the first place. You haven’t really much contact with the Crimson Talons since Zalmora visited you that one day asking you to join. All you did hear is that Tom isn’t in charge anymore and was killed by one of the more aggressive members who took over. Word says he’s a real tyrannical asshole, which might explain why none of the Talon members that have gotten arrested haven’t actually ratted on him themselves. It also explains when you have bumped into a couple of their members randomly in the taverns, they’ve been less than friendly and warned you to stay out of their territory. (Which you most certainly have been doing for years now) You do know that their headquarters is still in the same location. You don’t know why the militia doesn’t know where it is though given how they’ve increased their own activity as of late. The militia can be remarkably blind at times. “Look, if I did have dealings with the Crimson Talons, I’d help you out, but I just don’t associate with such people. Apologies.” You say. The militia officer doesn’t look pleased by your answer, and you sort of wonder if he’s going to end up throwing you in jail anyway, but he lets you go. “Okay then, but remember I gave you an out today and you turned it down. Be seeing you soon criminal.” You get up from the chair you’ve been sitting on for who knows how long and walk out the door, though not before one of the militia shoves the back of your head. It’s frustrating, but any dealing with the militia that you walk away from is a victory. From the militia barracks you make your way back to the Welcome Mat, which is practically destroyed at this point. At least it is on the inside. The law-abiding inhabitants (Or at least the criminal ones that didn’t get caught) are busily trying to gather and clean up the mess the militia made of their homes. You imagine Trobart, even with his ratting bullshit on you isn’t going to be able to keep this place any longer. You enter your own ruined room where upon Elana comes out from whatever hole in the wall she was hiding in and squeaks at you. “Hey Elana, glad to see they didn’t get you girl. Now let’s hope they didn’t get anything else either.” You find a chair that wasn’t destroyed and check the hiding spot you have in the ceiling of your room. After checking and pulling out your small locked container you breathe a sigh of relief. Your small savings are still intact. You’ll be needing it too, because everything else was taken. Your weapons, your tools, everything that you use or need in your profession. Granted it wasn’t a lot, but it’s still a loss. You’ll also be needing to find a new place to live. As you’re pondering your next move, your door with the broken lock opens up. It’s Virgil and he appears to be sober for a change. “Damn, they really did a number on yer room too I see.” Virgil says. “Yeah, but it’s still my fucking room. What the hell do you want, I don’t have any money so you can go get drunk.” you say. “And I wasn’t askin’. Sheesh, I was just coming in here to see if you were around. I wanted to apologize for bothering you all the time for money actually.” “Oh?” “Yeah…I mean I dunno if you noticed but I haven’t been around as much lately.” “Hmm, I did notice a reduction in our usual encounters over the past month.” “I’ve been trying to get my life back together. Get myself right with Joachim again. Part of that is me apologizing and trying to make amends for all the times I bothered you.” “Oh yeah? You got a bag full of coins for all the times I gave you money for booze?” “No. I wish I did. I know how you like money…I might even give you a lecture about that, but I’m not really in any position to do so. I first need to get myself right with Joachim and then I might be able to guide others into his light like I was supposed to be doing in the first place.” “Not sure if you preaching at me is any better than you hitting me up for booze money.” “I’m sure to you it isn’t, but I’m here to apologize anyway and if there is something within my power to help you, just let me know.” “Well, thanks I suppose. Can’t really think of anything I need from you though, unless you got an idea of a new cheap place to live at that isn’t completely a shithole.” “Not really, unless you want to sleep in one of the poor rooms at the Church of Joachim. That’s sort of where I’ve been staying lately. Would have been living there before, if I hadn’t gotten asked to leave for my...weakness. Guess I might be living there for good now. Just as well. It was time to move on.” “Don’t think that’s going to work out for me, but thanks for the offer.” Virgil nods and then says something about Joachim’s blessing be upon you. You finish packing up and when you’re only a few steps away from the Welcome Mat, it suddenly occurs to you. Your family’s old inn. It’s still abandoned. You could easily stay there and that would at least save you some of the costs. “Should have thought about that in the first place.” You say and make your way to the inn. Of course as you begin to do so, you realize you’re being followed. That officer wasn’t fucking around when he said he was going to have eyes on you all the time. It takes some time, but you end up losing them, but now you’re practically on the other side of the city! If this is how it’s always going to be, it’s not going to matter where you stay. Maybe it is time to leave Klyton, which you suppose you don’t mind since things haven’t been the greatest here, but you just hate being chased off like this. Of course there’s always the option the officer suggested. You don’t really have any loyalty to the Talons, so if it did help you out in the long run, well it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. It might even help you with less competition around that is actually making it harder for everyone else. Ever since the change in leadership, the Talons have also been selling Yellow Devil which has been causing a bit of a minor crime wave, what with all the extra junkies running around causing problems. (Even at your stomping grounds, the University) Of course being a rat is a pretty damn serious offense in the criminal world (Even if it goes on all the time) and if the Crimson Talons ever did find out, it probably wouldn’t go well for you. > You rat on the Talons Well, ratting on the Crimson Talons probably isn’t the worst thing you’ve done… You go back to the militia barracks where you’re immediately stopped by some of its members who ask what you want. When you tell them that you want to speak to the officer in charge because you have information on the Crimson Talons, they tell you to wait while someone goes and gets Captain Branik, who apparently was the one interrogating you earlier. Doesn’t take long before you see this captain, who gives you a mildly smug look. “Well, look who’s back. Thought you didn’t know anything.” Branik says. “I just remembered some details that slipped my mind.” You retort. “Hmm, well out with it then, and if your information is any good then we will have come to an understanding.” You give out what you know of the Crimson Talons, but specifically their headquarters location. He says something about how he can’t believe they’ve been there the whole time. You also mention the secret sewer tunnel that leads from outside the city. Branik seems especially pleased by this information and mentions he’ll send people through there as well when they move in to attack the place. “This of course is all going to take a little time to put together and confirm, so in the meantime I’d like you to stay in the city. You know, just in case you’re lying and this isn’t some sort of set up.” Branik says. “What? What would I possibly gain by setting you up for anything? YOU told me to help you!” you say. “Yes, but you didn’t do it right away and even managed to disappear from the militia’s watchful eye for awhile. I can’t know if you haven’t already tipped off your Crimson Talon buddies or something more sinister. So to put those concerns to rest, I just need you to stay within the city so that I may easily get a hold of you until this is all over. Be thankful I’m not just throwing you in a cell.” No good deed… It’s the best deal you’re going to get at this point and really you have no idea now if the captain is even going to hold on to his end. Meanwhile you’re probably still going to be having these militia assholes following you all over the city, which you can’t even leave now! You just leave shaking your head at the entire situation. You honestly don’t know what to do with yourself. You suppose you could live on your savings until all this shit blows over, but again you have no idea when that will be and if that asshole captain is even going to give you a break. You still have to find a new place to live and you suppose squatting in your family’s old inn is out now seeing as it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Lacking any better ideas, you decide to go to the Church of Joachim that Virgil suggested. At least it will be free. There are actually more than a few in the city, but you figure Virgil was talking about the one closest to the Welcome Mat so that’s the one you seek out. It’s probably the biggest one anyway due to more poor folks in the area sponging off the charity that the church provides. When you get there you find that it’s feeding the beggars day. Great now you have to put up with that smell along with whatever religious shit that’s going to be preached at you. You see Virgil serving up bowls of swill and approach him since you figure he knows where the flop room for the poor is. “Hey Virgil.” You say while trying not to get in the way of the hungry beggars who are eagerly taking their food and leaving. “Hello. Surprised, but glad to see you. I’m a little busy at the moment, but what can I do for you?” Virgil responds. “You said I could stay here awhile? Having sort of a problem finding a place to live at the moment.” “Oh sure. We have space so you can stay as long as you like, but erm…” “But erm, what?” “Well I know you’re not exactly poor beggar or destitute mother with children and Brother Thadius is sort of a stickler for the rules.” “So what are you saying?” “Well, maybe if you could donate to…” “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” you exclaim at which point Virgil tells you to keep your voice down. “Virgil, you TOLD me that you wanted to make amends to me or whatever and you also TOLD me that I could stay here for free!” you say. “Actually I never said it was free…(Sigh) but I suppose it is true, I might have given you a false impression. For that I am sorry. However, you could still stay here for free, but it would still require something of you.” Virgil says. You at first think Virgil is going to tell you to get him a bottle of alcohol or maybe ask you to steal something. You’re just counting on religious hypocrisy to rear its head, so it’s a bit surprising when he asks you: “If you could help me serve these bowls of soup, that I think would be enough to allow you to stay here for free.” “Wha…are you…(Sigh) fuck it. Fine.” You spend the next few hours serving swill to dirty, smelly beggars, bums, and the destitute. You can’t believe it’s come to this. About the only think that breaks up the monotony is you have to throw out a Yellow Devil junkie who gets a little aggressive with the others. Normally you don’t get excessively hostile to the point of violence unless its necessary, but you’re in a foul mood due to current events. Just as you’re about to really kick his ass until Virgil stops you. “Hey, hey, easy! He’s had enough; look he’s going now. And I think you’ve had enough too. Thanks for your help; you can find a space on the floor in the sleeping area in the back of the church.” Virgil says. You don’t say anything and just head to where Virgil said to go. When you enter the room, it isn’t quite as bad as you thought it would be. Apparently most of the beggar types actually prefer sleeping in their own personal areas on the streets rather than a relatively clean church. Go figure. What you do see more of is “regular poor folk.” Families who have obviously suffered some hardship causing them to be homeless for whatever reason. You imagine their faith in Joachim keeps them going that things will get better. The fools. You find a corner to be in, make a pillow with your bag and try to get some rest despite the sounds of children and people nearby. You can regroup tomorrow, you always do. Next day… You head to the university seeing as you don’t have anything better planned at the moment. Of course as soon as you start heading that way, militia is on your ass already. This is ridiculous. It’s like they suddenly have some sixth sense of your whereabouts. You try to lose them a couple times and while you do succeed, it once again has taken you out of your way to your destination. Eventually you manage to get a carriage and ride to the university. From there you get to work. All is going relatively well, though you do catch sight of more than a few wandering militia. You aren’t sure if they’re there specifically for you or just the usual. On your way through one of the many student-gathering areas, you suddenly hear someone call out your name. You turn around and get a surprise. “Yvette?” you answer. “Glad to see you remembered me. How have you been?” Yvette asks. “Um, I’m okay. And yourself? You probably graduated and are some sort of powerful wizard by now.” “On the graduation part yes, on the powerful wizard bit, well that’s debatable. I’m sort of teaching and doing independent research on possible new spell components. It’s a really good thing that the wizard college has such a generous benefactor on the Klyton Council. Otherwise, I’m not sure what I’d be doing with my life.” “You’re a wizard, surely there’s no limit to what you could do.” “I suppose in some ways, but I guess I just like what I get to do now…is something wrong? You seem a bit distracted.” “No, nothing’s wrong. I’m just surprised to see you, let alone you even talking to me. Last time I remember you were pretty pissed at me.” “Oh. That. Yeah, I always meant to apologize to you about that, but I couldn’t find you. I asked Dr. Gossey, but she said she didn’t know much about you outside the times you helped her. I only knew your first name, but I didn’t know what your area of study was. I must have went through a lot student lists, but never could track you down. I even tried some divination magic, but nothing turned up. Though I never was very good at that. Still, it almost seemed like you never even went here.” “Heh, yeah…wow didn’t realize you looked for me. I’m really flattered.” “Well I gave up after about a year. I figured you probably graduated by then…so what are you doing here then? Are you teaching now too? What was your study anyway?” Yvette is flooding you with questions that you weren’t really prepared to answer with well thought out lies. She’s being pretty friendly though and given how things have been going, it’s nice a change. You sort of wonder about the fact that she looked for you for a year. Obviously, she had more in mind than just to apologize. If you’d known that, you would have made more of an effort to seek her out too, rather than just fucking a whore that looked only vaguely like her a few times. Well, hopefully better late than never… “Okay, I’m just going to come out and ask. Were you interested in me back then?” you ask. “Um…well…” Yvette stutters. “I’ll take that as a yes.” “Well wait no. I mean yeah, but…oh I’m not very good at this.” “Calm yourself then just speak your mind.” “Okay. Well, I didn’t NOT like you. I mean I liked all of our time together up until Kelium died. Between that and worrying about my report, your kiss sort of caught me off guard. After my report was a success, I had time to think about your advance and while I would have preferred something less aggressive, I can’t say that I entirely disliked it. Actually it might have even helped my report.” “How’s that?” “Yes, at the time I was so pissed at you that I ended up telling my superiors the story we agreed upon as well as adding that it was all your fault that things didn’t go as planned. Since I was so mad at you, it came off as believable hence a successful report. I was actually going to thank you for that too.” You laugh a bit. “Well glad it helped I guess. Though I suppose my question is and again this might be a long shot, but are you still interested in me?” you ask. “I dunno. I mean it was years ago. We still don’t know much about each other. I suppose the answer is the same as it was back then, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing you. I’m currently unattached. I have a bit of trouble meeting people that aren’t also magic users and the few I do seem to get scared that I have magic powers.” Yvette answers. “What about other wizards?” “Hah, yeah…well after going out with a few magic users in the past, that has not gone very well. I’ll just leave it at that.” You’re doing okay so far, but here’s where the problem is going to come in, your real life. If you pursue this relationship, you are going to have to change your life severely because you are entirely sure that Yvette is definitely not going to be good with your roguish ways. Oddly, this isn’t completely unappealing to you. Granted you’ve had an okay day here at the university, but how long before the militia gets more savvy and starts watching your movements here a lot more? You still can’t walk to most places without them around and again you still don’t know if they’re going to hold up their end and leave you alone after they bust up the Crimson Talons. When you really think back to what you’ve managed to accomplish as a rogue you aren’t sure if it’s worth it anymore. All you’ve been doing is going through the motions because you don’t know any other way. But if you really put your mind to it, you’re a resourceful guy; you probably COULD do something different if you wanted to. In any case, you still need to know how you’re going to deal with Yvette. You could just tell her the truth about your life, which would prevent a possible shitstorm later, of course it could fuck up things now. Especially since you’ve basically been lying to her up until this point. Of course if you’ve been lying to her all this time, you could just continue doing it and hope for the best. You could still try to change your life, but just not reveal your past. > You lie to Yvette This relationship, if there is even going to be one is on shaky ground already. You can’t imagine the truth really helping you out here. “Yvette, I think before we go any further I should reveal something first because it’s only fair that you know.” You say. “Uh oh.” Yvette responds. You explain that not long after your job with Dr. Gossey, you had to drop out of college because your parents suffered hardship back home and you had to help them out. After burying them both, you tell her there was nothing for you left in that one horse town, so with what money you had from selling the property you returned here. You tell her that you’ve actually only just recently returned hoping you could maybe find work here at the university and re-attend classes in the meantime on a work-study type program, but you haven’t had much luck. You go on to say, you’re sort of giving up on the whole college thing and just trying to find ANY job since your savings are running low. It’s a bullshit tearjerker story that you threw together at the last minute. Naturally Yvette still being the trusting soul you figured she would be, she swallows every line of it. “Oh I had no idea! And I had treated you so terrible before all that happened!” Yvette exclaims. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not like you could have known. Shit happens.” “I suppose, but still. I guess that’s explains why I couldn’t find you.” “Well I’m here now, if you’re still interested of course. I mean I’d completely understand if you weren’t.” “Gee, I mean it would look pretty shallow of me if I said I wasn’t…not that I’m saying that. It’s just it seems like you have a lot of other things you need to take care of before entertaining the idea of us going out together.” “Heh, trust me, you’ve been the single light during this dismal period, so you can bet I’m going to make the effort to spend time with you. I think I might have a lead on a job actually though, so if you could, maybe wait for me a little while longer? We could just meet up here and spend time until I get my shit together. Would that be acceptable?” “I suppose that would be nice. Yes, okay. You can usually find me in the magic college dorms or the college itself. Probably best if you go to the college since the dorms have some security that could be problematic if you aren’t a wizard type or with one.” “Okay, great. Gotta go now, but before I do, may I have your permission this time?” “Permission for what?” “To kiss you of course.” “Oh. Um, well okay, but just on the cheek this time!” You move in and give Yvette a quick peck on the cheek causing her to smile a bit which you return before you take your leave. You make your way back to the church as quick as you can, you don’t even bother worrying about the squad of militia following you around. It’s time to call in that big favor Virgil says he owes you, you just hope he can deliver without some stupid stipulation this time. You find Virgil speaking with a couple of the poor folk about the light of Joachim or whatever. “Virgil! I need your help let’s talk.” “Huh? But I’m in the middle of spreading the word of Joachim.” “Yeah, well you got all the fucking time in the world to do that. These folks aren’t going to get any less desperate within the hour so just talk to me now and be done with it.” Virgil sensing that you’re going to be as obnoxious as you can be until he speaks with you excuses himself and goes to see you. “You know, you’re taking advantage of my kindness.” Virgil says. “Yeah, just like you took advantage of mine when you were begging me for coin during your drunk days. Look, I’m just going to ask for a simple favor, one that will actually get you out of your hair in the long run. Can you get me a job?” you say. “A job? What do you mean?” “A job man! A job! Like you go there, you do some shit and then you go back home and eventually they pay you for all the shit you did. You repeat until dead or fired.” “YOU want a REAL job? Are you sober?” “Completely.” “Wow. You continue to surprise me. Maybe Joachim’s light really has…” “Oh no! Don’t start with the religious shit. I just know you have people coming in and out of this church all the time and not ALL of them are the charity cases. Some of them are just here to pray or attend services or whatever it is you lot do.” “True, but what are you getting at?” “Well I know you religious types have tend to have tight knit communities. Surely you know someone who might be able to give me a job.” “Hmm, maybe. But is there anything in particular you’re looking for?” “Obviously something befitting of my talents!” “Sorry, but I think thievery is off the table.” “Hey I used to sell stolen items too.” “Hmm, wait a minute. You uh, used to pick locks right?” “Sure did and if I may say so myself, I was pretty damn good at it.” “Okay, I do know someone. He’s an older man by the name of Ned and is a locksmith by trade. I think he’s looking for an assistant.” “Huh. Guess that would be a good fit.” “Yeah…too good in fact. You aren’t going to use this as some way of breaking the law are you?” “If I was, do you think I’d tell you? You’re funny. But if it puts your mind at ease, then no I’m not. I can’t leave the city, the militia watches me all the fucking time, and I’m living in a damn church. Obviously my life style has NOT been successful. Time to change it up, especially since I might have a second chance with this girl I like. Yes, I said it. I’m doing this for a girl.” Virgil smirks a bit. “What’s with the grin?” you ask. “Joachim works in mysterious ways. Maybe you don’t see it or choose not to, but his influence is there. Little steps to righteousness and perhaps in more time you…” Virgil says before you interrupt. “Will you get out of here and just go get me that job! And don’t tell him the truth just say I’m an engineer down on my luck or something.” “You want me to lie?!” “I want you to fulfill your damn promise without a bunch of bullshit tacked on to it! Now you do what you gotta do, you can always ask Joachim for forgiveness afterwards.” “(Sigh) Very well. I just hope you’re being truthful in all this.” With the plan set in motion things turn around fairly quickly. In a few days you get the job as an assistant to the locksmith. Turns out he’s a good old guy. Tends to talk a lot about his dead wife and his runaway daughter who he hasn’t seen in decades, but you suppose you understand he has a great sense of loss and wants to vent to someone. You’re just glad he doesn’t ask too much about your life or get too religious on you. The pay is…adequate. It’s at least enough to get yourself a new cheap place and keep you in the basics. In the meantime the militia is still following you around. They’re probably wondering what the hell you’re up to. In the next month, you go see Yvette who is expecting you since you wrote a letter ahead of time. You meet and catch up on what the pair of you have been doing over the past few years, or rather in your case LYING about what you’ve been up to. You still try to keep the lying to a minimum but keeping the topics either light or focusing on her activity instead which is easy since she really likes talking about her spell stuff. (Which to be honest you don’t completely grasp all of it) Within the next few months big news in Klyton hits when its announced that the Crimson Talons have been officially taken down. Captain Branik gets an award from the council and exclaims how brave his people were as they stormed the Talon hideout. Apparently they didn’t take any of them alive though you get the impression that if any did surrender the militia wouldn’t have been the type to just accept it anyway. You don’t get any official word from anyone saying that you’re off the hook let alone any thanks that you were the one that gave the information of their hideout. You do notice that the militia doesn’t follow you around like it once did, so you take that as a sign that you must be off probation so to speak. Still, though you’ve managed to “be good” for a few months now and things are going good with Yvette and your new job isn’t even all that bad even if it’s a little boring at times. There really isn’t any need for you to go back to your old ways. Maybe it’s time to give this new life a longer try. > You time passes... Year 27 “Is it too expensive?” Yvette asks. “Well we could afford it, but I shudder to think what the ongoing property tax is going to be like.” You say. “I suppose…but it’s so nice!” “Maybe, but it’s also a security hazard. I mean the locks on these doors are just pathetic. There are windows everywhere, which would allow for any thief to break into. There isn’t even any fencing around this place. We’d have to spend more money just to secure this place better.” “You are really paranoid sometimes. You always think someone is going to break in someplace. This is a good neighborhood and ever since the Talons were eliminated the crime rate has gone down anyway.” “That’s no reason to be off guard. I’m just saying that as a locksmith I have some experience in these matters.” “Or maybe you’re a thief!” Yvette laughs and teasingly pokes you. “Yeah you got me.” You joke back, finding her comment humorous in a completely different way than she does. You then embrace Yvette and kiss her during the bit of playfulness. She then places your hand on her stomach. It’s not visibly noticeable yet, but your son or daughter is in there. You never thought you’d be in this position, on the verge of marriage with a baby on the way. So much has changed that it’s hard to believe, but everything is good or at least everything save for one thing. You still have yet to meet Yvette’s father. (Yvette’s mother unfortunately died while giving birth to her) You’ve managed to avoid it for a long time. Part of that was because it wasn’t like Yvette was in a hurry for you to meet him either. She’d mention him in passing at times, but she always gave the impression that he was a rather distant and cold man who only paid for Yvette’s college out of the barest sense of parental duty. Still, the man is her father and the fact you got her pregnant BEFORE you married her is something you’re going to have to deal with because Yvette just couldn’t bear to keep a grandchild from him a secret. You know that while he isn’t on the council, he does something important in the government, which is something you generally try to avoid. However, it’s better to get this over with. “I think I should go meet your father.” You say. “Oh. Now?” Yvette asks. “The sooner the better.” “I suppose you’re right. It’s just; it was a nice day before you brought that up. Are you okay going alone? I just met with daddy again a few days ago and he was as unpleasant with me as ever.” “Does he yell and threaten you? I mean you’re a powerful wizard, I would think that would be a deterrent.” “You always keep saying that and I’m not. But anyway, as I said he never does any of that and short of him hitting me which he would never do, it’s not like I’m going to cast a lightning bolt at my father for being a jerk. He just was very disapproving. I mean I suppose I get it…but…” “Yvette, look don’t beat yourself over it. I want you to stay in positive spirits okay?” “Okay. But anyway, he should be home right now. Takes most of his work home with him. I don’t think he gets along with a lot of people there either.” Parting ways with your beloved, you head to Yvette’s father’s home which actually isn’t too far away from where you were looking at potential houses. When you arrive it isn’t a mansion, but certainly nice place befitting of someone who works high up in the government. You knock on the door and half expect a servant of some sort to answer, but instead an older man with dark circles under his eyes, thinning white hair and what is probably a permanent scowl answers the door. His eyes look you up and down and he even makes a little snort sound as if he’s clearly unimpressed by you. “Uh Mr. Franklins?” “Yeah?” “I’m…” “I know who you are. You’re the lowly sneak thief rat who somehow managed to fool my trusting daughter into going out with you. And not only that, but you got her pregnant with your criminal seed before you even had the decency to marry her.” “I…” Before you can even answer this, the old man manages to catch you with a left to your jaw. You fall on your ass and hold the side of your face. The old man packs quite the punch. “Okay. I probably deserved that.” You say. “Pfft. YOU deserve much more than that, however what’s done is done. When you’re done befouling my porch with your presence, you can come inside and befoul that too.” Mr. Franklins remarks. You pick yourself up off the floor and follow Yvette’s father into his house. He sits down in a comfortable chair and just as you’re about to do likewise, he tells you to stop. “No. You don’t get to fucking sit down. You stand there and listen to what I have to say, because I’m not going to repeat myself. Now, before I begin, don’t bother trying to lie to me. As I said, I know who the hell you are. Who you REALLY are. Just because my daughter only recently told me about you, doesn’t mean I wasn’t keeping an eye on you before. I did my research. I’m a little foggy for a few things on your past, but that doesn’t matter. I know that you are…or I suppose WERE a thief of little importance in this city, which you aren’t even a citizen of. It seems the only reason why you stopped is due to pressure from the militia and meeting my daughter again. The first reason I’d dismiss as simple cowardice since you ratted on the Crimson Talons in order to catch a break in the first place. However, the second reason, well that one takes a little more examination.” “If you knew all this why not warn your daughter ahead of time?” “Pfft. Like she’d listen to me. Besides, by the time I did find out about all this, you and her were together for at least a year, and I knew she was in love. It was in her eyes. Never seen her so happy when she was with you. I know it now more than ever just from how she spoke of you to me. Attempting to break you up at that point would have crushed her and now would be unthinkable. And all of that’s on me for not paying attention sooner and having you removed from her life.” “I guess thanks for not having me killed?” “Who said anything about killing you? I said removed. I could have just had the militia kick you out of the city and had you exiled. I’m not a fucking murderer.” Yvette’s father grabs a bottle of wine near his table and pours himself a glass, taking a drink before he continues to lecture you. “Now here it is. Contrary to popular belief, I love my daughter. It may not seem like I do, but it’s true. I just want her to be happy and apparently you make her happy. My point is, I believe you love her too because despite your lies about your past, you haven’t gone back to any criminal activity and I’m guessing now that you’re trying to put down roots you probably won’t be going back to your old life because YOU know that you struck gold when you met my daughter and you’ll do ANYTHING not to fuck that up.” “True.” “Hm, which is about one of the few redeeming qualities about you that I can tell so far. (Sigh) Look, I’m not a complete hard ass, but even with your good intentions I still can’t shake the feeling you’re going to fail my daughter spectacularly in some way in the future. Human nature is flexible only to a point and at some point you are probably going to snap. Maybe you won’t, I don’t know. But I’m going to give you an out right now.” Mr. Franklins suddenly gets up and goes to a drawer, grabs a bag and tosses it to you. You open it up and find diamonds. Flawless diamonds. There has to be hundreds of them here. This is a fortune that you couldn’t even begin to imagine. There is also an odd shaped key and a piece of paper. “That is more riches than you need for your lifetime assuming you’re not being a complete idiot with it. That key and deed are to a place in Jicol which is on an island not far from Hessla. You can probably take a ship to there. Granted I haven’t been to the place in years, so I don’t know what condition it’s in, but with those diamonds I’d wager you could fix the place up. Take them both and never return to Klyton.” “But…” “Yvette? She’ll cry over you for a long time, but she’ll carry on if only for the sake of your child. She’ll probably blame me and I’ll give her reason to. Better that I disappoint her than you. And your child? It will be taken care of, that you can be sure of. Even if my daughter refuses my help to support it, I can pull strings to still help her.” “And if I refuse?” “Then I suppose I’ll have to hope that you prove me wrong.” > You take the loot You love Yvette, but ultimately you guess you love yourself just a little bit more. You think about the sort of life you would have if you did marry Yvette. You’d be an average working class slob with a family. While maybe there is some appeal to that over your old life, this offer is really making you rethink that maybe you were just settling for what seemed easier at the time when things were low. If you married Yvette you’d also have to keep up your lies to her about your past along with worrying about whether or not you’re going to piss off her father enough for him to expose you. Can you really live a satisfying life with something like that hanging over your head? When it comes down to it you suppose you’ve always wanted the easy life and this about as easy as it’s ever going to get for you. “Fine, I’ll take your offer.” You say. “I knew you would.” Franklins says a bit smugly and hands you the key. You look at your newly acquired pay off, before putting it away. You’re already having mixed feelings about your decision. You have mixed feelings about your decision all the way to Hessla where upon your main concern is finding safe passage to Jicol since you don’t want to linger very long here with the fortune you have on your person. Of course you think about going right back to Klyton several times, but by the time you do get a boat ride to Jicol you realize you’re at the point of no return. “Just do it.” You say to yourself as you board the ship. The ride to Jicol is uneventful even though you half expect to get attacked by pirates or something similar along the way. A small part of you even hopes you do because you sort of think you’d deserve it. Eventually you disembark at Jicol and based on the directions that Yvette’s father provided you take your next steps in finding your new home along with familiarizing yourself with the city, which seems a lot less “orderly” than Klyton though definitely more so than Hessla. Despite your rather dour mood, you still keep on your guard. You soon find the place you were looking for and it’s very average looking. Certainly better and bigger than any place you’ve ever lived (including your parents old home) but it’s no mansion. Just as well, you probably wouldn’t know what to do with a place that size. You try your key in the door and enter. You aren’t sure how long Yvette’s father has let this place go unused, but the first thing you notice is the severe dust everywhere. After checking everything it isn’t too bad, except for maybe some fixes on the roof and the qweepa nest you notice in the basement. (And they aren’t friendly like Elana was.) Still even with those problems you’ll have more than enough money to do whatever you want in the forseeable future and that really is the problem you suppose. What DO you do? You don’t need to work and you don’t even particularly want to go back to pursuing your criminal career again either. You’ve been out of practice for a couple years now and why potentially mess up what you have? You can’t just sit around moping and beating yourself up about your decision either. The whole point of making this decision was so you didn’t HAVE to worry about Yvette and your unborn child anymore. You decide the best way to do this is with whores. After about a month you’re slowly becoming more accustomed to living like a wealthy degenerate. You do nothing but eat, drink and fuck whores whenever you can, which is pretty much all the time. Sometimes you still think about Yvette, but eventually those thoughts of her disappear altogether not wishing to dwell on how you most likely broke her heart and what “could have been” if you stayed. You justify your actions that it was better this way for her and you. By the time you’re thirty you’ve gotten fat. Not just average fat either, but like grossly fat. You’re a big fat bastard. You’re also a pimp. Given how much time you spend with whores and how relatively fun you are, you eventually managed to convince a few to work for you, rather than one of the many brothels in the city. After all, your home is a lot nicer thanks to all the work you had done to it and you’re well off enough to allow them to keep more of their money. This works out for you since it provides a steady income (Negating your fears of going completely broke because you were spending so much) and finally gave you something to do with your free time. You still sometimes think of your parents and your sister and how they might be doing. You hope they’re all doing well. Despite being limited to just one sex position that won’t result in a whore’s death it’s all in all a good life. Probably won’t be a very long one given your weight and indulgences, but then you probably beat the odds already. Your days as a rogue are over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 27 “Is it too expensive?” Yvette asks. “Well we could afford it, but I shudder to think what the ongoing property tax is going to be like.” You say. “I suppose…but it’s so nice!” “Maybe, but it’s also a security hazard. I mean the locks on these doors are just pathetic. There are windows everywhere, which would allow for any thief to break into. There isn’t even any fencing around this place. We’d have to spend more money just to secure this place better.” “You are really paranoid sometimes. You always think someone is going to break in someplace. This is a good neighborhood and ever since the Talons were eliminated the crime rate has gone down anyway.” “That’s no reason to be off guard. I’m just saying that as a locksmith I have some experience in these matters.” “Or maybe you’re a thief!” Yvette laughs and teasingly pokes you. “Yeah you got me.” You joke back, finding her comment humorous in a completely different way than she does. You then embrace Yvette and kiss her during the bit of playfulness. She then places your hand on her stomach. It’s not visibly noticeable yet, but your son or daughter is in there. You never thought you’d be in this position, on the verge of marriage with a baby on the way. So much has changed that it’s hard to believe, but everything is good or at least everything save for one thing. You still have yet to meet Yvette’s father. (Yvette’s mother unfortunately died while giving birth to her) You’ve managed to avoid it for a long time. Part of that was because it wasn’t like Yvette was in a hurry for you to meet him either. She’d mention him in passing at times, but she always gave the impression that he was a rather distant and cold man who only paid for Yvette’s college out of the barest sense of parental duty. Still, the man is her father and the fact you got her pregnant BEFORE you married her is something you’re going to have to deal with because Yvette just couldn’t bear to keep a grandchild from him a secret. You know that while he isn’t on the council, he does something important in the government, which is something you generally try to avoid. However, it’s better to get this over with. “I think I should go meet your father.” You say. “Oh. Now?” Yvette asks. “The sooner the better.” “I suppose you’re right. It’s just; it was a nice day before you brought that up. Are you okay going alone? I just met with daddy again a few days ago and he was as unpleasant with me as ever.” “Does he yell and threaten you? I mean you’re a powerful wizard, I would think that would be a deterrent.” “You always keep saying that and I’m not. But anyway, as I said he never does any of that and short of him hitting me which he would never do, it’s not like I’m going to cast a lightning bolt at my father for being a jerk. He just was very disapproving. I mean I suppose I get it…but…” “Yvette, look don’t beat yourself over it. I want you to stay in positive spirits okay?” “Okay. But anyway, he should be home right now. Takes most of his work home with him. I don’t think he gets along with a lot of people there either.” Parting ways with your beloved, you head to Yvette’s father’s home which actually isn’t too far away from where you were looking at potential houses. When you arrive it isn’t a mansion, but certainly nice place befitting of someone who works high up in the government. You knock on the door and half expect a servant of some sort to answer, but instead an older man with dark circles under his eyes, thinning white hair and what is probably a permanent scowl answers the door. His eyes look you up and down and he even makes a little snort sound as if he’s clearly unimpressed by you. “Uh Mr. Franklins?” “Yeah?” “I’m…” “I know who you are. You’re the lowly sneak thief rat who somehow managed to fool my trusting daughter into going out with you. And not only that, but you got her pregnant with your criminal seed before you even had the decency to marry her.” “I…” Before you can even answer this, the old man manages to catch you with a left to your jaw. You fall on your ass and hold the side of your face. The old man packs quite the punch. “Okay. I probably deserved that.” You say. “Pfft. YOU deserve much more than that, however what’s done is done. When you’re done befouling my porch with your presence, you can come inside and befoul that too.” Mr. Franklins remarks. You pick yourself up off the floor and follow Yvette’s father into his house. He sits down in a comfortable chair and just as you’re about to do likewise, he tells you to stop. “No. You don’t get to fucking sit down. You stand there and listen to what I have to say, because I’m not going to repeat myself. Now, before I begin, don’t bother trying to lie to me. As I said, I know who the hell you are. Who you REALLY are. Just because my daughter only recently told me about you, doesn’t mean I wasn’t keeping an eye on you before. I did my research. I’m a little foggy for a few things on your past, but that doesn’t matter. I know that you are…or I suppose WERE a thief of little importance in this city, which you aren’t even a citizen of. It seems the only reason why you stopped is due to pressure from the militia and meeting my daughter again. The first reason I’d dismiss as simple cowardice since you ratted on the Crimson Talons in order to catch a break in the first place. However, the second reason, well that one takes a little more examination.” “If you knew all this why not warn your daughter ahead of time?” “Pfft. Like she’d listen to me. Besides, by the time I did find out about all this, you and her were together for at least a year, and I knew she was in love. It was in her eyes. Never seen her so happy when she was with you. I know it now more than ever just from how she spoke of you to me. Attempting to break you up at that point would have crushed her and now would be unthinkable. And all of that’s on me for not paying attention sooner and having you removed from her life.” “I guess thanks for not having me killed?” “Who said anything about killing you? I said removed. I could have just had the militia kick you out of the city and had you exiled. I’m not a fucking murderer.” Yvette’s father grabs a bottle of wine near his table and pours himself a glass, taking a drink before he continues to lecture you. “Now here it is. Contrary to popular belief, I love my daughter. It may not seem like I do, but it’s true. I just want her to be happy and apparently you make her happy. My point is, I believe you love her too because despite your lies about your past, you haven’t gone back to any criminal activity and I’m guessing now that you’re trying to put down roots you probably won’t be going back to your old life because YOU know that you struck gold when you met my daughter and you’ll do ANYTHING not to fuck that up.” “True.” “Hm, which is about one of the few redeeming qualities about you that I can tell so far. (Sigh) Look, I’m not a complete hard ass, but even with your good intentions I still can’t shake the feeling you’re going to fail my daughter spectacularly in some way in the future. Human nature is flexible only to a point and at some point you are probably going to snap. Maybe you won’t, I don’t know. But I’m going to give you an out right now.” Mr. Franklins suddenly gets up and goes to a drawer, grabs a bag and tosses it to you. You open it up and find diamonds. Flawless diamonds. There has to be hundreds of them here. This is a fortune that you couldn’t even begin to imagine. There is also an odd shaped key and a piece of paper. “That is more riches than you need for your lifetime assuming you’re not being a complete idiot with it. That key and deed are to a place in Jicol which is on an island not far from Hessla. You can probably take a ship to there. Granted I haven’t been to the place in years, so I don’t know what condition it’s in, but with those diamonds I’d wager you could fix the place up. Take them both and never return to Klyton.” “But…” “Yvette? She’ll cry over you for a long time, but she’ll carry on if only for the sake of your child. She’ll probably blame me and I’ll give her reason to. Better that I disappoint her than you. And your child? It will be taken care of, that you can be sure of. Even if my daughter refuses my help to support it, I can pull strings to still help her.” “And if I refuse?” “Then I suppose I’ll have to hope that you prove me wrong.” > You give back the loot You have to admit, there is a small part of you that finds this tempting. A part of you that you thought you had abandoned, but as this bribe attempt has proven, your old nature is still there. Always looking for the easy way no matter what. Maybe Yvette’s father is right in that respect, but if you do fail, it isn’t going to be today and it isn’t going to be over this. You’re refusing and perhaps that’s proof that you aren’t the same person anymore. “Yeah, not taking this. If you want me gone then you’re going to have to do it yourself. I’m not going to make it easy for you and disappear voluntarily, just so it can ease your own conscience that if I took your bribe then you somehow did the right thing because I was a scumbag thief anyway.” You say and toss the bag on the chair. Mr. Franklin nods. “Very well. You’ve made your decision and I’ll have to live with it. Inform Yvette That I begrudgingly accept that you are the father of my grandchild and acknowledge that you’re at least competent enough to be a husband to her. Also that whether she wants me to attend the blessed event or not, I will pay for the entire wedding and whatever else she requires, but I want it to be at a church of Joachim, not one of those Dorna temples or whatever that goddess those wizards pay homage too.” He says. “Didn’t know you were a follower of Joachim.” You respond. “Of course I am! All right thinking folks are! I can only hope that some day my misguided daughter finds the light. Just because she was gifted with magic doesn’t mean she has to kneel before a false goddess.” “I don’t think she does actually. I mean I know sometimes she says a few prayers, but I’ve never known her to go to a temple or anything.” “Ugh. I suppose that’s slightly better. And I don’t expect you’re a follower of Joachim’s light either. Probably a completely godless heathen.” “I dunno, I’ve been to the church of Joachim a few times. Even been a long time friend with a priest of Joachim.” You say embellishing the truth as usual, Mr. Franklins probably doesn’t even believe it, but he hardly cares at this point. “Now obviously I’ll keep your secrets, but I hope for your sake you can maintain your own lies because if you DO hurt her, physically, mentally, emotionally, or whatever I will make it my personal mission to make your life a living hell. And again, I don’t even mean death though you’ll be begging for it by the time I’m done.” Franklins says. “Understood.” You reply. “And you are not off the hook with me. Which means if I need your help with some matter, I’m going to call upon you and I will expect you to comply without complaint!” “What is it that you want me to do exactly?” “Nothing right now. In fact I’m not even sure how someone like you could even help me given my considerable resources. So maybe I’ll never call on you for help. However, the real shits and giggles is YOU won’t know until that day I do. Have fun living with that possibility.” Franklins says with an amused tone. It’s probably the first time he’s sounded upbeat. Franklins then dismisses you and tells you to get the hell out of his house. Well that certainly wasn’t exactly the meeting you were expecting. You suppose it went better than you expected, but worse than you hoped. You just know that old bastard is going to call on you for a favor one day. Still, you need to focus on the here and now and not what might never come and despite everything, you have Yvette’s dad’s support, if not his respect. You have a wedding to prepare for and all that other family stuff coming up. With this final “nail” in the coffin so to speak, it would seem that your life has taken a completely different turn. You can’t imagine ever going back to your old life again. Your mother and father would probably be proud if they knew about any of this. (You assume that they aren’t really dead.) You wonder what your sister would think, but you believe she would be happy for you. Looks like your days as a rogue may have come to an end. > You time passes… Chapter 3B2: The More They Stay The Same Year 30 You knew this damn day would come. You had to make up an excuse to Yvette and Trinity of why you had to meet with him, but you’re fairly certain that they didn’t think anything more of it. Just bonding with an in-law over security advice of the newest and best locks right? Your daughter Trinity did want to come with you, but you told her it would be boring adult stuff and she could visit grandpa another time. You hate lying, but what choice do you have? You hoped and thought that you probably wouldn’t ever be important enough for him to call on you for help, but here you are about to knock on his door. You knock on the door and it opens right away. “Took you long enough. Come in.” Franklins says turning his back to you to as soon as he opens the door. He takes a seat and for a change he tells you to do likewise. “Okay, since I don’t want you here any longer than necessary, let’s get to it. I need you to break into some place.” You didn’t expect this. “What?” you ask. “You got fucking wax in your ears? I need you to break into a place and steal something important.” Franklins remarks. “You do realize I haven’t done that in years right?” “Yes, I’m fucking aware. You’re an average slob with a regular job and family. However, I know damn well you aren’t out of practice because you’re a fucking locksmith by trade.” “True, but…I’m not understanding this. I thought you didn’t approve of my previous occupation.” “I don’t, but desperate times call for desperate measures and besides all that, YOU owe me a favor and this is probably the only way I’m going to be able to call it in. Besides, you’ll be going up against pure evil, so what you’re doing is for the greater good…well I hope Joachim sees it that way at least.” “Wait, pure evil? What the fuck? Look, I don’t want to step out of line here, but I need to ask some questions.” “You don’t want to step out of line, but you’re already stepping out of fucking line by asking damn questions!” “Yeah, and I think it’s fucking valid if you’re sending me up against pure evil! I mean as you’ve pointed out several times in the past, I’m not a damn hero. I was a lowly criminal who is now a working class slob. I never was a fighting type to begin with and tried to avoid it if possible. Nevermind the fact that I’m married to YOUR daughter and father to YOUR grand daughter and I’ve made sure to never hurt either one of them. Seems like this is asking me to potentially do just that at best and just getting myself killed at worst.” “(Sigh) Fine, I suppose you should know in case you need some extra preparation.” Franklins pours himself a glass of wine and takes a drink before continuing. “Okay, do you know who Mr. Reynolds is? Surely you must have heard of the man given that you were a thief at one time.” “Yeah, he’s a loan shark. My family actually was in debt to him once when they owned an inn here. Never met the man personally though since I tried to avoid being in debt.” “Hmm, interesting. Well in any case, the man is more than just a loan shark. He’s an embodiment of evil in this city and needs to be stopped from getting on the Klyton Council which he’s been making plans to do.” “Okay? So if he’s all that bad, why don’t you have him arrested or something? You’re always telling me you have connections.” “Yeah well those connections aren’t good enough to get him and he’s got connections of his own. Doesn’t help that anyone that might speak out against him aren’t just intimidated by him, but are also intimidated by those two goons he hangs around with. One of them being his equally demonic son and weird looking ogre.” “You really don’t like this guy do you?” “No, because despite him being an obvious evil piece of demon shit, he has been gaining a following that genuinely likes him now. In fact the asshole is probably more popular than I am among people who actually pay attention to politics.” “That’s hard to believe.” “Ha ha. But make no mistake, this is no laughing matter, which is why in the next few days, you’re breaking into his place of business and stealing a hexagon shaped container that he keeps a record of all his dealings in. Don’t bother trying to open that though, you’d need magic. Just bring it back here.” “Okay, so got any idea where he keeps it?” “No, but I imagine he’ll probably have it in some sort of safe. Don’t know where that would be either, but it has to be close since I can’t imagine he’d keep it in a bank and would definitely want it close to him. You start laughing. “What?” Franklins asks. “You’re asking me to go steal something that is apparently magical and you don’t have any idea where this item is in the place. Not to mention if this container is magically sealed, I have to believe he’s probably got it in some sort of safe that has magic protection as well if its that important. That means I’m going to need special tools for that job and more time to acquire them.” You answer. “You work as a fucking locksmith!” “Yeah and while the old guy I work for doesn’t ask me too many questions, I can’t just start taking specialized magic lock breaker from the job without some explanation, unless you’re asking me to steal those too…” “Look I don’t give a shit what you gotta do! You need to get into that evil fucker’s office and grab the container and get it back here!” “I dunno, you keep going on about evil, but all of this seems pretty fucking shady. I mean granted I don’t doubt that Reynolds isn’t an asshole given the stories I’ve heard, but how is what you’re planning to do any better? Seems pretty hypocritical that you gave me grief about my background and here you are a self proclaimed follower of Joachim scheming to…” “DAMNIT MAN DON’T YOU KNOW ANYTHING? I just told you the man is DEMONIC SHIT!” Franklins stands up to shout at you. “Wait…you weren’t just saying that as a casual description of how much of an asshole he is?” “NO. He’s a fucking DEMON. Okay, perhaps half demon, but he’s demonic shit and MY kind have been fighting his for a lot longer than you could ever think about!” Franklins suddenly sits back down and begins cursing to himself and you feel like you’ve heard more than he meant to tell you. “What exactly do you mean your kind…wait, are YOU human?” “Yes! No! Fuck! I hate to lie! (Sigh) Damnit, I didn’t want to get into this…I’m half celestial.” “Celestial? So like an angel? YOU’RE an angel?” “No you idiot. I just told you I’m only half. Just like Reynolds is only half demon. Doesn’t matter though, we are mortal enemies as has always been the way.” “Wow. You don’t hear about angels too often.” “Well maybe if you attended the church of Joachim, that wouldn’t be the case you faithless heathen. As I said, I am only half celestial. My foolish father gave up his otherworldly home to be with my mother…but we’re getting off topic…” “Wait a moment! Then that means Yvette…” “Yes, she has celestial blood as well. It’s probably why she has magic potential. It’s probably also why she was always a bit on the trusting side. I never got any of that, all I got was a strong sense of right and wrong and fairly good health all throughout my life. Never been sick once. Better than nothing I suppose and before you even ask, no she doesn’t know any of this and you better keep it that way.” “I don’t get why you wouldn’t tell her though.” “Because it’s a fucking burden knowing that’s why! Because I know I have to live up to some damn ideal that I can’t hope to achieve. Hell, my own father didn’t achieve it and HE was a full blood! I know Yvette and if she knew about all this, she would have wanted to go out on a crusade to right wrongs and all that bullshit with her magical powers and promptly gotten herself killed in the process. Better that she be a good person in her own small, but safe way.” “She might have surprised you and done great deeds or something.” “Oh and you’re the expert on good behavior now?” “Okay, fine I don’t know shit about it. But what about Trinity?” “She would have celestial blood too obviously. Though in her case, I’m sure it’s been diluted so much with your lowborn mortal blood that she isn’t going to have any potential powers and will most likely just live as a normal human. Lucky her.” You can’t believe all this new information that’s been dumped on you. It doesn’t seem real, but Yvette’s dad has never been one to lie and if he is indeed half angel like he claims, you guess it’s hard for him to even do so directly. (Omitting the truth and spinning it, is a different story apparently) All of this still doesn’t change the fact that he’s asking you to do a job, because he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty. Still seems hypocritical to you, not to mention dangerous now that you’re apparently going to be involved in some secret holy war. It occurs to you that you could just refuse. He just admitted all this stuff to you. Now you have a secret. What’s he going to do? You know he not going to kill you or even set it up in such a way that would happen. Have you exiled or get rid of you in some way? You don’t see that happening either. Not now. > You help Franklins Maybe you’re just cautious, or maybe you actually have become a better person, but a deal is a deal. You agreed to help in exchange for his silence so that’s what you’re going to do. Doesn’t mean you’re going to like it though and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re going to go through with it like how Franklins would have you do it. “Okay, a deal’s a deal and I’ll do your dirty work, but I’m going to ask why don’t you just do the obvious.” You say. “What?” Franklins asks. “Kill the bastard. I mean you got militia connections. Surely it wouldn’t take much.” “I’m not using the people who are supposed to be keeping law and order around here as my own personal hit squad.” “Given some of the interaction I’ve had with them and how they massacred the Crimson Talons, most are bullying assholes anyway. They’d probably love an excuse.” “Be that as it may, I’m not going to resort to such tactics…hmm do you know any assassins?” “What? Why? Because I used to be a thief? I know you claim to know all about me, but if that was really true you’d also know I didn’t hang out much with other criminals, let alone professional assassins. If you want one of those, go seek one out yourself, you certainly got the means to do so.” “I’m not associating with anymore criminal scum than I have to. It’s bad enough I have to deal with you.” “Oh fuck you hypocrite. You don’t seem to have any problems with me risking my life breaking into some place, which is run by a half demon. Or maybe you just don’t give a shit? You’ll win whether I succeed or get myself killed in the process right?” “I am not trying to get you killed. I was just under the impression that YOU were very skilled in your…trade. If you don’t think you can handle it, then fine. I’ll figure something else out.” “So you can harass me later? I’m not going to have this hanging over my head…” you start to say before you’re interrupted. “You don’t have anything hanging over your head! Not anymore. I mean I just blabbed a big secret to you and you didn’t even try to use it as leverage against me to weasel out of our deal, which I half expected you to do. At this point I can’t even claim the moral high ground anymore. As far as I’m concerned you’re free of your obligation. You’re obviously better than I previously believed you capable of. Congratulation, now get out of my sight.” That’s a pretty strong statement coming from him. You know that had to be hard for him to admit. “(Sigh) Look, I’m still willing to help, but I’m still not understanding WHY you can’t just use the militia to kill Reynolds. If he’s as evil as you keep claiming, isn’t it better that you just get rid of him as quickly as possible before he can do any real damage?” you ask. “Because it’s a slippery slope. Sure, you may even be right. I abuse my power to eliminate an obvious evil. No harm done. What about next time though? Maybe the next person isn’t demon spawn. Maybe he isn’t even as bad, but is just in my way. Will I resist the temptation? I don’t know and neither do you. I sometimes look at this city and even though it’s probably one of the better bastions of civilization in this forsaken land, I sometimes still see the decay and rot underneath. It’s always there even to a minor degree. Part or the curse of being half angel I suppose, but I’m trying to maintain what order I can without lowering my own standards and I’m already failing horribly at it. I can’t afford to fail even more.” Franklins remarks. Franklins goes back to his drink and you search you mind of a way to help while still trying to fall within his weird angel guidelines. (Or maybe it’s just his own weird personal code that he’s placed upon himself for misguided reasons) “The two goons Mr. Reynolds has. Why don’t you have them arrested? I know you said Reynolds has influence, but I gotta believe his two thugs are probably shady enough that they could at least be held on suspicion right?” “Well…Reynolds’ son has been a minor suspect in some suspicious murders. As for the ogre, I think he’s busted up a few bars. While I’m sure the militia could hold them both for a little while, maybe even a week, but they would be out in a very short period. And I guarantee they won’t turn on Reynolds if that’s what you’re thinking.” “Don’t need them too, just need them out of the way since I’m betting at least one of them is acting as an on duty guard even when his office is closed. I think with them out of the picture, it will lessen the risk to pull this off. I just need more time than what you suggested.” “Wait, you’re still going to do it?” “As I said, a deal’s a deal. You didn’t say shit about my past to Yvette, so I’m going to do this favor for you. Besides, I’d be lying if the challenge isn’t stirring up old interest at this point. Just let me know when those two goons are out of the way. I’ll be working on shit from my end until then.” Franklins is so surprised by your helpfulness he doesn’t even have any snide comments towards you for the rest of your time you speak with him. He’s got some reservations about what you propose, but he says if you think you know what you’re doing, he’s going to trust you. You leave Franklins place wondering if you’ve maybe lost a bit of your mind for agreeing to this task, but then you realize, you were probably just getting a little bored. Still, a lot is riding on your plan and you have to be very careful because this isn’t just you now. It’s your whole family you could potentially lose. It doesn’t make things easier that part of this plan indirectly involves Yvette. You don’t exactly keep up on all of Yvette’s magic studies and such, but you know that she was recently working on something relating to invisibility. Of course you’re really going to have to approach this carefully or this is going to make things infinitely worse. The only reason why you’re considering it is because quite frankly you haven’t exactly been as active as you used to be and have probably gotten slightly out of shape. If you’re invisible however, it takes some of the pressure off of things like not having lightning reflexes and the quickest feet any more. Later as you’re settling down for the night, you address the subject to Yvette who is reading something in bed as she usually does. “So, uh…you mentioned something about working on something related to invisibility?” you ask. “Huh? Yes I am.” Yvette says not looking up from her book. “I remember you mentioning something a week ago or so about it. Is this a new spell or potion or something else?” “It is a potion actually or rather an attempt to strengthen the existing formula.” “Something wrong with the old one?” “Yeah, invisibility potions are hard to make due to the ingredients, which means they’re rare to begin with, but the bigger problem is they have never been very effective.” Yvette says now looking at you. “What, like they only turn you invisible and your clothing is still visible or something like that?” “Hah, that can happen with the wrong ingredients, but the main obstacle is they don’t last very long. Usually ten seconds tops. Most wizards won’t even bother making them due to the long, tedious process involved for such a short payoff. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to extend that to at least a half hour.” “So is it easier to just cast the spell?” “Yeah, but only on yourself. Casting the spell on others can really take it out of you as far as upkeep is concerned. It’s probably why the research on the potion was made. So…why all this sudden interest in my work? You don’t tend to ask most of the time.” “Well to be honest when you speak to me about this stuff, it usually sounds so complicated that I feel sort of dumb.” “That’s ridiculous! You are most certainly not dumb! I mean you had the intelligence to go to Klyton University at one time. I always said you should go back and finish your degree in…engineering wasn’t it?” “Yeah I just don’t have time for that now. Besides, I’d rather spend my free time spending it with Trinity rather than in a class room.” “You are an attentive father.” Yvette says with a smile. “I try, but anyway I was also asking because I was wondering if you could help me in a job.” “Oh?” You explain to her that some government associate of her father wants some elaborate security system, because he doesn’t want any militia guards assigned to his house. You aren’t exactly sure what it’s all about, something about death threats from an unknown ex-government worker. He says he isn’t worried, but it couldn’t hurt to update his security so he asked for you and he wants the best. You explain that you want to test the security you’re installing will be good against someone who is invisible. “Shouldn’t the locks still keep them out? I mean even if someone is invisible, they aren’t intangible.” Yvette asks. “True, but just in case they still manage to get in, I’ve actually have been working on something that detects movement. I guess it’s experimental, sort like what you’ve been doing.” You explain. “Huh. I didn’t know. Well I mean I suppose I can help, though I’m not sure how.” “Well you said you made a bunch of potions of invisibility. Just give me about ten of them and I’ll…” “Wait. Are you going to drink them? You can’t just drink ten invisibility potions one right after another! You’d get sick!” “Well you said they didn’t last long. I’ll pace myself. Wait, haven’t you been making progress on the formula?” “Um, yeah a little bit. I created one that last up to around twenty minutes give or take…wait you don’t want to try that do you? It’s only in the experimental stages and I’ve only tested it on qweepas! You don’t know how many died before I got that right! Its a good thing the university has an infestation of the critters otherwise I might have run out of easy test subjects.” “Well I trust you. Just give me a couple of those improved potions and…” “A couple?! No, if you were going to get any, you’d get ONE. And I still don’t think that would be a good idea.” “You’re going to have to test it on humans at some point right? I could help you with this, while you help me! Yvette thinks about that proposal for a moment. “Well…I suppose it could speed things along…but I dunno…I’d never forgive myself if something went wrong. But if you want to risk it, I’ll give you one like I said.” Yvette says. This is a question of how fast do you think you’ll be and whether you want to risk drinking something that could quite possibly turn you into a purple frog with a cat head or just outright kill you instantly. > You take the experimental potion This whole thing is a gamble, might as well go big. “I’ll take the experimental, as I said, I trust your abilities and this will help you with your own research. Don’t worry.” You say and give Yvette a kiss, though she still seems a bit worried. “Maybe I should go with you when you do this.” Yvette says. “No! I mean, no because this guy doesn’t want anyone else around who isn’t directly working on this and he still has to work shit out on his end and get things prepared. You know how these government types are with their hurry up and wait shit. Chances are, it’s going to be a sudden thing that I’m going to have to drop everything I’m working on at the time. I just want to have the potion when I do need it.” “Hm, well okay. I’ll get it for you tomorrow when I come back from work. You don’t need it sooner I hope.” “Nope, like I said, it’s going to be awhile.” “Okay, but if I make progress in between that time and discover something wrong I don’t want you drinking it!” Well now you just hope that doesn’t happen before Yvette’s father lets you know that Reynolds’ goons are both out of the picture. As it turns out, you don’t have to wait too long and Franklins is pretty efficient in that regard. He informs you that from what he heard, Reynolds protested very loudly about his son and the ogre being arrested and has already claimed that he is going to make sure heads are going to roll for this slander and injustice. Franklins tells you his name predictably came up in the blame game, so he wants you to go get that container before Reynolds starts acting on his threats. You gather up some extra supplies from work. Ned isn’t really going to notice and the guy is practically on the verge of willing you his place of business when he dies anyway. Even when you say you need one of the special magic lock breakers he hardly bats an eye and just tells you to be careful with it since they’re very hard to acquire, let alone make. Later that week when you finally have everything you need and feel prepared, you tell Yvette that you’re going to be working a little late on this paper pusher’s security since this is the moment. She’s of course still worried about you, but also slightly eager to find out what you’ll experience and reminds you to tell her everything. You linger around in the neighborhood where Mr. Reynolds maintains his place of business. In the old days you might have been a little concerned about getting mugged in the area or running afoul of some sort of thugs while you wait, but things are lot more cleaned up without the Crimson Talons around and the militia keeping on top of things. Probably just as well that you gave up your profession when you did…so to speak. Eventually Mr. Reynold’s place of business closes down for the day and unfortunately just as you figured he doesn’t leave. Probably has a whole living area to himself in the building, which means more caution is going to be needed on your part while you search for a safe because you’re going in totally dry. You decide to do this the old fashioned way and stealthily break in and only use the potion if you get into trouble. You’re still a bit hesitant to use it after all. One thing you wish is there that there was a back door to the place, but you looked around earlier for one and no luck. Not even a window, or least not one you could easily climb up to. As the streets become less populated, you head to the front door and work on the lock. It’s actually not difficult and you’re in pretty quickly. You have to put yourself back in that calm mentality when you used to do this before, but it’s a lot more difficult because there are so many things that could go wrong. That’s not even counting that this guy is a half fucking demon. Who knows what sort of powers he really has? You do your best to press forward and just get on with it. You’re just glad you had the forethought to go to the bathroom before you did this. You sneak about his office first, hoping that maybe he keeps a safe in here, but so far all you’re finding is locked drawers with papers and not much else. You do find a fancy looking pistol under his desk. Its way nicer than the one you have at home and has multiple barrels, (You sort of wish you brought it with you) probably a custom job. You figure since you’re here stealing shit anyway, you take it. You eventually finish going through everything you can in the office area and that’s when you realize you’re going to have to search Mr. Reynolds’ living quarters. You give yourself a few moments to mentally prepare yourself and then head through a door where you see some stairs going up and down. You forgot that there might be a cellar to this place. Hoping that the safe might be down there, you decide to try it first. The cellar isn’t cluttered like you’d think it would be. In fact there isn’t much here at all other than a few tables and chair. Though it looks like there are also some shackles and several what could only be torture instruments down here. For deadbeats and others that get on Reynolds’ bad side no doubt. Just as you’re about to give up, and resign yourself to searching in the demon’s inner sanctum, you spot a small hidden door in the floor. Upon closer inspection, it’s definitely a safe of some sort. “Shit, this isn’t even state of the art.” You say to yourself and start trying to open it with your regular tools. You don’t believe that you’re going to be so lucky to find what you’re looking for, but when you finally get it open, you’re pleasantly surprised. “Yag is certainly smiling on me today.” You say even though you’ve never been one to place too much stock in the gods, but really is a good stroke of luck. You take the black hexagon container and place it in your bag. Time to leave. You start walking up the stairs and then suddenly one of the steps breaks and your leg nearly goes through it. It’s all you can do to try to hang on to the nearby railing so you don’t hurt yourself any further even though you still take a tumble backwards. You’re just lucky you didn’t break your leg or your neck, though you aren’t so lucky in that you were completely silent since you did shout in pain briefly before stopping yourself, not to mention all the other noise. You’re sure that probably got Mr. Reynolds’ attention. If he wasn’t awake now, he is now. You quickly stand up from the bottom of the basement stairs and already hear noise coming from above your location. “I hope this works.” You say and take out the invisibility potion and drink it. You feel a strange sensation and half think that you’re going to fall down the stairs from the temporary wooziness. (Though maybe some of that is from the fall) You look at yourself, or at rather your hands and arms and even in this torch lighting you can’t see them anymore. A further glance down your body and you can’t see that either. You’re guessing it is working. You’re about to make your way back up the stairs, but then that’s when you see a figure standing at the top of them. Mr. Reynolds is there with what looks to be a musket. “I know someone’s down here, you might as well come out now and make this quick.” He’s aiming downward, but hasn’t shot you yet. It’s a clear line of sight so the potion must definitely be working. However he’s in the way and you aren’t going to get past him as he makes his way cautiously down. You back up deeper into the basement and figure you might be able to sneak around him. The problem is he isn’t moving much further in and is now just standing near the bottom of the stairs pointing his weapon into the darkness. “Got all the time in the world. The longer you make me wait, the worse it’s going to be for you...hmmm….let me guess…whoever you are, you’re working for Franklins aren’t you? Yeah, it all makes sense now with my two loyal workers being recently arrested.” Mr. Reynolds remarks. He keeps looking around from his position like he’s trying to see something, but it’s not that huge of a basement and if you weren’t invisible you wouldn’t have many places to hide. Still, this potion isn’t going to last forever and you really aren’t sure if you’re going to be able to sneak around him. Of course, you do have that fancy pistol of his that you picked up. Though you weren’t here to assassinate the guy, you were just supposed to steal from him and who knows if bullets are going to work on him? There’s also the fact that you haven’t actually killed anyone since Klint and it isn’t like it’s a major part of your nature though this is a desperate situation, just like it was with Klint. > You sneak around him In your heart you’ve always been a thief, never a killer. You’re going to sneak around him. You move forward cautiously as Reynolds continues to squint in your direction. He can’t see you as far as you can tell. “There you are!” he suddenly shouts and fires directly at you. You feel the burn of lead going into your body and damaging vital organs before falling to the floor. You moan and groan in pain while Reynolds advances on your position. He stands back as he looks on the floor in your direction. “I figured someone was playing hide and seek. Unusual invisibility you have there. Usually potions don’t last that long and if you were a wizard, my shot would have broken your concentration and I doubt there is another wizard lurking nearby. It’s a good thing these ol’ eyes can detect heat if one is close enough.” It’s clear that Mr. Reynolds still can’t quite make everything out, but it’s good enough that he can see you well enough and starts roughly grabbing at your hands, which are attempting to go for his fancy pistol that you stole. You are strong enough to resist, but only initially. Mr. Reynolds eventually manages to grab the pistol and in the ensuing struggle he shoots you with it. This time the shot is fatal. The last thing you hear is Mr. Reynolds cursing that he’ll be unable to get any more information from you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This whole thing is a gamble, might as well go big. “I’ll take the experimental, as I said, I trust your abilities and this will help you with your own research. Don’t worry.” You say and give Yvette a kiss, though she still seems a bit worried. “Maybe I should go with you when you do this.” Yvette says. “No! I mean, no because this guy doesn’t want anyone else around who isn’t directly working on this and he still has to work shit out on his end and get things prepared. You know how these government types are with their hurry up and wait shit. Chances are, it’s going to be a sudden thing that I’m going to have to drop everything I’m working on at the time. I just want to have the potion when I do need it.” “Hm, well okay. I’ll get it for you tomorrow when I come back from work. You don’t need it sooner I hope.” “Nope, like I said, it’s going to be awhile.” “Okay, but if I make progress in between that time and discover something wrong I don’t want you drinking it!” Well now you just hope that doesn’t happen before Yvette’s father lets you know that Reynolds’ goons are both out of the picture. As it turns out, you don’t have to wait too long and Franklins is pretty efficient in that regard. He informs you that from what he heard, Reynolds protested very loudly about his son and the ogre being arrested and has already claimed that he is going to make sure heads are going to roll for this slander and injustice. Franklins tells you his name predictably came up in the blame game, so he wants you to go get that container before Reynolds starts acting on his threats. You gather up some extra supplies from work. Ned isn’t really going to notice and the guy is practically on the verge of willing you his place of business when he dies anyway. Even when you say you need one of the special magic lock breakers he hardly bats an eye and just tells you to be careful with it since they’re very hard to acquire, let alone make. Later that week when you finally have everything you need and feel prepared, you tell Yvette that you’re going to be working a little late on this paper pusher’s security since this is the moment. She’s of course still worried about you, but also slightly eager to find out what you’ll experience and reminds you to tell her everything. You linger around in the neighborhood where Mr. Reynolds maintains his place of business. In the old days you might have been a little concerned about getting mugged in the area or running afoul of some sort of thugs while you wait, but things are lot more cleaned up without the Crimson Talons around and the militia keeping on top of things. Probably just as well that you gave up your profession when you did…so to speak. Eventually Mr. Reynold’s place of business closes down for the day and unfortunately just as you figured he doesn’t leave. Probably has a whole living area to himself in the building, which means more caution is going to be needed on your part while you search for a safe because you’re going in totally dry. You decide to do this the old fashioned way and stealthily break in and only use the potion if you get into trouble. You’re still a bit hesitant to use it after all. One thing you wish is there that there was a back door to the place, but you looked around earlier for one and no luck. Not even a window, or least not one you could easily climb up to. As the streets become less populated, you head to the front door and work on the lock. It’s actually not difficult and you’re in pretty quickly. You have to put yourself back in that calm mentality when you used to do this before, but it’s a lot more difficult because there are so many things that could go wrong. That’s not even counting that this guy is a half fucking demon. Who knows what sort of powers he really has? You do your best to press forward and just get on with it. You’re just glad you had the forethought to go to the bathroom before you did this. You sneak about his office first, hoping that maybe he keeps a safe in here, but so far all you’re finding is locked drawers with papers and not much else. You do find a fancy looking pistol under his desk. Its way nicer than the one you have at home and has multiple barrels, (You sort of wish you brought it with you) probably a custom job. You figure since you’re here stealing shit anyway, you take it. You eventually finish going through everything you can in the office area and that’s when you realize you’re going to have to search Mr. Reynolds’ living quarters. You give yourself a few moments to mentally prepare yourself and then head through a door where you see some stairs going up and down. You forgot that there might be a cellar to this place. Hoping that the safe might be down there, you decide to try it first. The cellar isn’t cluttered like you’d think it would be. In fact there isn’t much here at all other than a few tables and chair. Though it looks like there are also some shackles and several what could only be torture instruments down here. For deadbeats and others that get on Reynolds’ bad side no doubt. Just as you’re about to give up, and resign yourself to searching in the demon’s inner sanctum, you spot a small hidden door in the floor. Upon closer inspection, it’s definitely a safe of some sort. “Shit, this isn’t even state of the art.” You say to yourself and start trying to open it with your regular tools. You don’t believe that you’re going to be so lucky to find what you’re looking for, but when you finally get it open, you’re pleasantly surprised. “Yag is certainly smiling on me today.” You say even though you’ve never been one to place too much stock in the gods, but really is a good stroke of luck. You take the black hexagon container and place it in your bag. Time to leave. You start walking up the stairs and then suddenly one of the steps breaks and your leg nearly goes through it. It’s all you can do to try to hang on to the nearby railing so you don’t hurt yourself any further even though you still take a tumble backwards. You’re just lucky you didn’t break your leg or your neck, though you aren’t so lucky in that you were completely silent since you did shout in pain briefly before stopping yourself, not to mention all the other noise. You’re sure that probably got Mr. Reynolds’ attention. If he wasn’t awake now, he is now. You quickly stand up from the bottom of the basement stairs and already hear noise coming from above your location. “I hope this works.” You say and take out the invisibility potion and drink it. You feel a strange sensation and half think that you’re going to fall down the stairs from the temporary wooziness. (Though maybe some of that is from the fall) You look at yourself, or at rather your hands and arms and even in this torch lighting you can’t see them anymore. A further glance down your body and you can’t see that either. You’re guessing it is working. You’re about to make your way back up the stairs, but then that’s when you see a figure standing at the top of them. Mr. Reynolds is there with what looks to be a musket. “I know someone’s down here, you might as well come out now and make this quick.” He’s aiming downward, but hasn’t shot you yet. It’s a clear line of sight so the potion must definitely be working. However he’s in the way and you aren’t going to get past him as he makes his way cautiously down. You back up deeper into the basement and figure you might be able to sneak around him. The problem is he isn’t moving much further in and is now just standing near the bottom of the stairs pointing his weapon into the darkness. “Got all the time in the world. The longer you make me wait, the worse it’s going to be for you...hmmm….let me guess…whoever you are, you’re working for Franklins aren’t you? Yeah, it all makes sense now with my two loyal workers being recently arrested.” Mr. Reynolds remarks. He keeps looking around from his position like he’s trying to see something, but it’s not that huge of a basement and if you weren’t invisible you wouldn’t have many places to hide. Still, this potion isn’t going to last forever and you really aren’t sure if you’re going to be able to sneak around him. Of course, you do have that fancy pistol of his that you picked up. Though you weren’t here to assassinate the guy, you were just supposed to steal from him and who knows if bullets are going to work on him? There’s also the fact that you haven’t actually killed anyone since Klint and it isn’t like it’s a major part of your nature though this is a desperate situation, just like it was with Klint. > You shoot Reynolds You think how this guy is half demon and probably is the asshole that Franklin made him out to be. You then think about how this is the same guy who messed with your family over their old inn. You also think about how you want to get out of this alive. And finally you think about your wife and daughter and how you want to see them again. Yeah, fuck this guy. You step slightly to the right of where he’s pointing his musket and fire the pistol. The first shot hits him the chest and predictably he lets off a shot of his own before falling down. “Shit…fuck…invisi…” he starts to utter before you move closer and put a couple more shots into him, this time his head. He doesn’t die immediately, instead he makes these horrible inhuman noises and begins flailing about. He tries to even wildly hit you with his musket, but you’re far enough away and empty your pistol which you nearly drop due to the heat it’s giving off. Reynolds stops making his ghastly dying sounds when enough of his brains are on the wall. Seeing that he isn’t breathing anymore or moving, you quickly step over his body and hurry up the stairs and out the building. Along the way, you smash the pistol against a wall and start throwing pieces of it in various trash bins and drains in the street as you head back to Franklins place. You’re a paranoid mess the whole time, thinking that someone is watching you and forgetting that you’re still invisible. Eventually you realize you’re able to see parts of your body again so you guess the potion is wearing off or worn off. Good thing its late and aren’t too many folks around otherwise just suddenly appearing like that might have caused some shock. Doesn’t help your worry and paranoia though. When you get back to Franklins’ home, you beat on the door until he answers. Upon answering, you promptly vomit on his front door step and his shoeless feet. “What the fuck?!” he says. “Apologies….ugh…it all caught up to me…I guess…” you say still feeling a bit queasy and coughing. “(Sigh) Shit…well I hope you have good news at least.” After a bit of clean up, you finally sit down and are calm enough to tell Franklins everything, but the first thing you do is hand him the container as promised. He seems so pleased by this that you telling him a problem cropped up doesn’t even seem to bother him. “Did he see you or something? Don’t worry about that, when the shit he’s been involved in gets out, nobody will even believe him since he’ll be arrested right away.” Franklins says. “Um, yeah I don’t think that’s going to happen.” You say. “What are you on about?” “Well as I said, there was a problem…and there was nothing I could do about it.” “Okay, now you’re starting to concern me, what the hell do you mean?” “I mean I shot him.” “You shot him?!” “Several times actually.” “He’s fucking dead?” “Um, pretty much. Yeah.” Franklins lies back in his chair exhaling deeply almost in shock. “Um, nobody saw me though. I was invisible the entire time.” You add. “Well thank Joachim for small favors. How were you invisi…you know what never mind. (Sigh) Shit. Well…I guess this doesn’t even matter now. Damnit I didn’t ask you to kill the guy!” Franklins says. “It wasn’t like I had a fucking choice! I fully intended on just stealing that container, but shit happened and I was put in a position of either completing this shitty job or possibly being Reynolds’ victim! Besides isn’t this better? I mean hell he’s completely gone now!” “I…I guess so and I don’t shed any tears obviously. But let’s just say I really wanted him alive so I could see the look on his face when I took everything away from him and he could do nothing about it.” “Well if it’s any consolation, the expression on his face when he died was pretty horrific, though not nearly as bad as his screaming.” “Shit, what the hell did you do exactly…again never mind. Well I’m still going to hang on to this for safekeeping. Maybe there is still information inside that might be of use. As for you, if you weren’t seen I guess you’re good too. Though if something is coming your way I really will try my best to give it a detour. Now, you’re SURE he’s dead right?” “Unless he can regenerate from severe head wounds and missing brain matter, yeah he’s dead. And again, he didn’t see me since I was invisible the whole time.” “Well if the worst happens and he is still alive, I still got this container. Okay, well I guess you better get home. I trust you have a good story for Yvette.” “I have a story. I told I would be working late, but she probably didn’t think it would be this late.” “If you have any problems I suppose you can incorporate me into the excuse. I’ll back you up. Anything else?” “Yeah, I’m not doing anything like this ever again. Not for you, not for anyone.” “Good, because I’m not asking. And thanks. You’re a better son in law than I could have hoped for. Maybe you’re a godless heathen, but you stuck your neck out and even killed a demon spawn in the process. That’s gotta for something when judgment day comes.” At this point you take your leave and hurry back home as soon as possible. Naturally it’s very late so everyone is asleep. You attempt to get into bed silently, but your sneaking skills fail to evade Yvette’s notice even though she was asleep. “Hey…you’re home…you were gone all night.” She groggily says. “Yeah, and I’m pissed about it too, the bean counter was an asshole that wanted everything done a certain way and…ugh…I don’t even want to think about it right now.” You say. “Well don’t then. I’m just glad you’re here now. Come closer to me, you’re too far away.” You move closer in the bed so Yvette can cuddle up against you. Normally you tend to like staying a bit free, but after tonight, you’re all for Yvette’s warm soft body. “Oh, did you use the potion?” she asks as she starts drifting back off. “Yeah, worked pretty well. I couldn’t see my own hands when it took effect or anything else on me. I think it lasted about the time you mentioned too.” “Huh…that’s odd. You should have still been able to see yourself and just been invisible to others. Hmm, guess that’s a side effect I didn’t know about, considering Qweepas can’t actually speak. (Yawn) I’ll have to make a note tomorrow.” With those words, Yvette returns to her sleep and you’re in her arms again where you definitely want to be and are glad you were able to return to. Sometimes you hate the fact that you’ve had to lie on occasion to her about things, but there is no way you’re losing this life. Not now. Your days as a rogue are definitely over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe you’re just cautious, or maybe you actually have become a better person, but a deal is a deal. You agreed to help in exchange for his silence so that’s what you’re going to do. Doesn’t mean you’re going to like it though and it certainly doesn’t mean you’re going to go through with it like how Franklins would have you do it. “Okay, a deal’s a deal and I’ll do your dirty work, but I’m going to ask why don’t you just do the obvious.” You say. “What?” Franklins asks. “Kill the bastard. I mean you got militia connections. Surely it wouldn’t take much.” “I’m not using the people who are supposed to be keeping law and order around here as my own personal hit squad.” “Given some of the interaction I’ve had with them and how they massacred the Crimson Talons, most are bullying assholes anyway. They’d probably love an excuse.” “Be that as it may, I’m not going to resort to such tactics…hmm do you know any assassins?” “What? Why? Because I used to be a thief? I know you claim to know all about me, but if that was really true you’d also know I didn’t hang out much with other criminals, let alone professional assassins. If you want one of those, go seek one out yourself, you certainly got the means to do so.” “I’m not associating with anymore criminal scum than I have to. It’s bad enough I have to deal with you.” “Oh fuck you hypocrite. You don’t seem to have any problems with me risking my life breaking into some place, which is run by a half demon. Or maybe you just don’t give a shit? You’ll win whether I succeed or get myself killed in the process right?” “I am not trying to get you killed. I was just under the impression that YOU were very skilled in your…trade. If you don’t think you can handle it, then fine. I’ll figure something else out.” “So you can harass me later? I’m not going to have this hanging over my head…” you start to say before you’re interrupted. “You don’t have anything hanging over your head! Not anymore. I mean I just blabbed a big secret to you and you didn’t even try to use it as leverage against me to weasel out of our deal, which I half expected you to do. At this point I can’t even claim the moral high ground anymore. As far as I’m concerned you’re free of your obligation. You’re obviously better than I previously believed you capable of. Congratulation, now get out of my sight.” That’s a pretty strong statement coming from him. You know that had to be hard for him to admit. “(Sigh) Look, I’m still willing to help, but I’m still not understanding WHY you can’t just use the militia to kill Reynolds. If he’s as evil as you keep claiming, isn’t it better that you just get rid of him as quickly as possible before he can do any real damage?” you ask. “Because it’s a slippery slope. Sure, you may even be right. I abuse my power to eliminate an obvious evil. No harm done. What about next time though? Maybe the next person isn’t demon spawn. Maybe he isn’t even as bad, but is just in my way. Will I resist the temptation? I don’t know and neither do you. I sometimes look at this city and even though it’s probably one of the better bastions of civilization in this forsaken land, I sometimes still see the decay and rot underneath. It’s always there even to a minor degree. Part or the curse of being half angel I suppose, but I’m trying to maintain what order I can without lowering my own standards and I’m already failing horribly at it. I can’t afford to fail even more.” Franklins remarks. Franklins goes back to his drink and you search you mind of a way to help while still trying to fall within his weird angel guidelines. (Or maybe it’s just his own weird personal code that he’s placed upon himself for misguided reasons) “The two goons Mr. Reynolds has. Why don’t you have them arrested? I know you said Reynolds has influence, but I gotta believe his two thugs are probably shady enough that they could at least be held on suspicion right?” “Well…Reynolds’ son has been a minor suspect in some suspicious murders. As for the ogre, I think he’s busted up a few bars. While I’m sure the militia could hold them both for a little while, maybe even a week, but they would be out in a very short period. And I guarantee they won’t turn on Reynolds if that’s what you’re thinking.” “Don’t need them too, just need them out of the way since I’m betting at least one of them is acting as an on duty guard even when his office is closed. I think with them out of the picture, it will lessen the risk to pull this off. I just need more time than what you suggested.” “Wait, you’re still going to do it?” “As I said, a deal’s a deal. You didn’t say shit about my past to Yvette, so I’m going to do this favor for you. Besides, I’d be lying if the challenge isn’t stirring up old interest at this point. Just let me know when those two goons are out of the way. I’ll be working on shit from my end until then.” Franklins is so surprised by your helpfulness he doesn’t even have any snide comments towards you for the rest of your time you speak with him. He’s got some reservations about what you propose, but he says if you think you know what you’re doing, he’s going to trust you. You leave Franklins place wondering if you’ve maybe lost a bit of your mind for agreeing to this task, but then you realize, you were probably just getting a little bored. Still, a lot is riding on your plan and you have to be very careful because this isn’t just you now. It’s your whole family you could potentially lose. It doesn’t make things easier that part of this plan indirectly involves Yvette. You don’t exactly keep up on all of Yvette’s magic studies and such, but you know that she was recently working on something relating to invisibility. Of course you’re really going to have to approach this carefully or this is going to make things infinitely worse. The only reason why you’re considering it is because quite frankly you haven’t exactly been as active as you used to be and have probably gotten slightly out of shape. If you’re invisible however, it takes some of the pressure off of things like not having lightning reflexes and the quickest feet any more. Later as you’re settling down for the night, you address the subject to Yvette who is reading something in bed as she usually does. “So, uh…you mentioned something about working on something related to invisibility?” you ask. “Huh? Yes I am.” Yvette says not looking up from her book. “I remember you mentioning something a week ago or so about it. Is this a new spell or potion or something else?” “It is a potion actually or rather an attempt to strengthen the existing formula.” “Something wrong with the old one?” “Yeah, invisibility potions are hard to make due to the ingredients, which means they’re rare to begin with, but the bigger problem is they have never been very effective.” Yvette says now looking at you. “What, like they only turn you invisible and your clothing is still visible or something like that?” “Hah, that can happen with the wrong ingredients, but the main obstacle is they don’t last very long. Usually ten seconds tops. Most wizards won’t even bother making them due to the long, tedious process involved for such a short payoff. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to extend that to at least a half hour.” “So is it easier to just cast the spell?” “Yeah, but only on yourself. Casting the spell on others can really take it out of you as far as upkeep is concerned. It’s probably why the research on the potion was made. So…why all this sudden interest in my work? You don’t tend to ask most of the time.” “Well to be honest when you speak to me about this stuff, it usually sounds so complicated that I feel sort of dumb.” “That’s ridiculous! You are most certainly not dumb! I mean you had the intelligence to go to Klyton University at one time. I always said you should go back and finish your degree in…engineering wasn’t it?” “Yeah I just don’t have time for that now. Besides, I’d rather spend my free time spending it with Trinity rather than in a class room.” “You are an attentive father.” Yvette says with a smile. “I try, but anyway I was also asking because I was wondering if you could help me in a job.” “Oh?” You explain to her that some government associate of her father wants some elaborate security system, because he doesn’t want any militia guards assigned to his house. You aren’t exactly sure what it’s all about, something about death threats from an unknown ex-government worker. He says he isn’t worried, but it couldn’t hurt to update his security so he asked for you and he wants the best. You explain that you want to test the security you’re installing will be good against someone who is invisible. “Shouldn’t the locks still keep them out? I mean even if someone is invisible, they aren’t intangible.” Yvette asks. “True, but just in case they still manage to get in, I’ve actually have been working on something that detects movement. I guess it’s experimental, sort like what you’ve been doing.” You explain. “Huh. I didn’t know. Well I mean I suppose I can help, though I’m not sure how.” “Well you said you made a bunch of potions of invisibility. Just give me about ten of them and I’ll…” “Wait. Are you going to drink them? You can’t just drink ten invisibility potions one right after another! You’d get sick!” “Well you said they didn’t last long. I’ll pace myself. Wait, haven’t you been making progress on the formula?” “Um, yeah a little bit. I created one that last up to around twenty minutes give or take…wait you don’t want to try that do you? It’s only in the experimental stages and I’ve only tested it on qweepas! You don’t know how many died before I got that right! Its a good thing the university has an infestation of the critters otherwise I might have run out of easy test subjects.” “Well I trust you. Just give me a couple of those improved potions and…” “A couple?! No, if you were going to get any, you’d get ONE. And I still don’t think that would be a good idea.” “You’re going to have to test it on humans at some point right? I could help you with this, while you help me! Yvette thinks about that proposal for a moment. “Well…I suppose it could speed things along…but I dunno…I’d never forgive myself if something went wrong. But if you want to risk it, I’ll give you one like I said.” Yvette says. This is a question of how fast do you think you’ll be and whether you want to risk drinking something that could quite possibly turn you into a purple frog with a cat head or just outright kill you instantly. > You take the regular potions Hopefully, you won’t have to stay invisible for long because you’re not going to risk the experimental. “I’ll just take several of the regular ones.” You say. “Okay…but I’m not giving you ten! I’ll give you three and that should be more than enough and I still think it’s a bad idea to drink so many right after each other, so don’t blame me if you get sick.” Yvette says. “Three?! But...(sigh) fine. So when can you get them for me?” ”I’ll get it for you tomorrow when I come back from work. You don’t need it sooner I hope.” “Nah, he still needs to organize some shit on his end. You know how these government types are with their hurry up and wait shit. Chances are, it’s going to be a sudden thing that I’m going to have to drop everything I’m working on at the time. I just want to have the potions when I do need them.” As it turns out, you don’t have to wait too long and Franklins is pretty efficient in that regard. He informs you that from what he heard, Reynolds protested very loudly about his son and the ogre being arrested and has already claimed that he is going to make sure heads are going to roll for this slander and injustice. Franklins tells you his name predictably came up in the blame game, so he wants you to go get that container before Reynolds starts acting on his threats. You gather up some extra supplies from work. Ned isn’t really going to notice and the guy is practically on the verge of willing you his place of business when he dies anyway. Even when you say you need one of the special magic lock breakers he hardly bats an eye and just tells you to be careful with it since they’re very hard to acquire, let alone make. Later that week when you finally have everything you need and feel prepared, you tell Yvette that you’re going to be working a little late on this paper pusher’s security since this is the moment. You linger around in the neighborhood where Mr. Reynolds maintains his place of business. In the old days you might have been a little concerned about getting mugged in the area or running afoul of some sort of thugs while you wait, but things are lot more cleaned up without the Crimson Talons around and the militia keeping on top of things. Probably just as well that you gave up your profession when you did…so to speak. Eventually Mr. Reynolds’ place of business closes down for the day and unfortunately just as you figured he doesn’t leave. Probably has a whole living area to himself in the building, which means more caution is going to be needed on your part while you search for a safe because you’re going in totally dry. You decide to do this the old fashioned way and stealthily break in and only use the potions if you get into trouble. You only have three and they don’t last very long after all. One thing you wish is there that there was a back door to the place, but you looked around earlier for one and no luck. Not even a window, or least not one you could easily climb up to. As the streets become less populated, you head to the front door and work on the lock. It’s actually not difficult and you’re in pretty quickly. You have to put yourself back in that calm mentality when you used to do this before, but it’s a lot more difficult because there are so many things that could go wrong. That’s not even counting that this guy is a half fucking demon. Who knows what sort of powers he really has? You do your best to press forward and just get on with it. You’re just glad you had the forethought to go to the bathroom before you did this. You sneak about his office first, hoping that maybe he keeps a safe in here, but so far all you’re finding is locked drawers with papers and not much else. You do find a fancy looking pistol under his desk. Its way nicer than the one you have at home and has multiple barrels, (You sort of wish you brought it with you) probably a custom job. You figure since you’re here stealing shit anyway, you take it. You eventually finish going through everything you can in the office area and that’s when you realize you’re going to have to search Mr. Reynolds’ living quarters. You give yourself a few moments to mentally prepare yourself and then head through a door where you see some stairs going up and down. You forgot that there might be a cellar to this place. Hoping that the safe might be down there, you decide to try it first. The cellar isn’t cluttered like you’d think it would be. In fact there isn’t much here at all other than a few tables and chair. Though it looks like there are also some shackles and several what could only be torture instruments down here. For deadbeats and others that get on Reynolds’ bad side no doubt. Just as you’re about to give up, and resign yourself to searching in the demon’s inner sanctum, you spot a small hidden door in the floor. Upon closer inspection, it’s definitely a safe of some sort. “Shit, this isn’t even state of the art.” You say to yourself and start trying to open it with your regular tools. You don’t believe that you’re going to be so lucky to find what you’re looking for, but when you finally get it open, you’re pleasantly surprised. “Yag is certainly smiling on me today.” You say even though you’ve never been one to place too much stock in the gods, but really is a good stroke of luck. You take the black hexagon container and place it in your bag. Time to leave. You start walking up the stairs and then suddenly one of the steps breaks and your leg nearly goes through it. It’s all you can do to try to hang on to the nearby railing so you don’t hurt yourself any further even though you still take a tumble backwards. You’re just lucky you didn’t break your leg or your neck, though you aren’t so lucky in that you were completely silent since you did shout in pain briefly before stopping yourself, not to mention all the other noise. You’re sure that probably got Mr. Reynolds’ attention. If he wasn’t awake now, he is now. You quickly stand up from the bottom of the basement stairs and already hear noise coming from above your location. “I hope this works.” You say and take out one of the invisibility potions and drink it. You feel a strange sensation and half think that you’re going to fall down the stairs from the temporary wooziness. (Though maybe some of that is from the fall) You look at yourself, and don’t see any difference. You can’t even tell if it’s working. You’re about to make your way back up the stairs, but then that’s when you see a figure standing at the top of them. Mr. Reynolds is there with what looks to be a musket. “I know someone’s down here, you might as well come out now and make this quick.” He’s aiming downward, but hasn’t shot you yet. It’s a clear line of sight so the potion must definitely be working. However he’s in the way and you aren’t going to get past him as he makes his way cautiously down. You back up deeper into the basement and figure you might be able to sneak around him. The problem is he isn’t moving much further in and is now just standing near the bottom of the stairs pointing his weapon into the darkness. You probably could sneak by him or maybe you could just shoot him with the pistol you acquired, but your immediate concern is staying invisible since you’re sure that your time on that is about to run out. You take another potion and chug the contents. No sooner have you done so when you start to feel incredibly sick to the point where you actually feel a cramping in your stomach. Yvette wasn’t joking about how quickly these can cause sickness when drunk immediately after each other. You try to prevent yourself from retching and begin to go for your pistol since you know you’re going to give your position away by making retching noises. You unsteadily fire at Reynolds and hit him just before your vomit all over the floor. You hover over your own puddle of sick gagging and not really noticing if you actually killed Reynolds or not. At least not until feel the impact of a shot go into your face causing you to fall backwards. Somehow you’re still alive, but between the pain and the sickness of the potion, you end up falling unconscious. Eventually your wake up and find yourself tied firmly to a chair. Your still have a slightly queasy feeling, your face still hurts very badly and you can only see out of one eye. But all of that is the least of your problems when you see the blurry image of Mr. Reynolds standing nearby next to the table full of torture instruments. “Glad you’re finally awake. Now we can get started. You know, you really are a spitting image of your father…well except for the new hole in your face. How is he doing anyway?” Mr. Reynolds says. “Mgh, wai…t…gh…” is about all you can groan right now. “Well, doesn’t matter I suppose. I’ll find out everything I need to in a day or so I imagine. Not that I really need to since I already know you’re working for Franklins. I swear that old hypocrite couldn’t do something himself so he gets his lowly son in law to do it for him. If I were in your position I’d be really pissed at him right now. This is all his fault you know. He seems to think because of my heritage that I have some sinister plan for this city when that’s far from the truth. All I want to see is it to achieve its fullest potential.” “Ple…ase…I…won’t…” “Won’t what? Tell anyone you were here? Tell Franklins? Get revenge? Of course you won’t because you won’t be leaving here alive. Really the only reason you’re still breathing is because I want to find out a few more things about your loved ones before you die. You committed a crime against me. Not only did you shoot me in the fucking shoulder, but you tried to steal some very personal and valuable property. Now I’m going to take EVERYTHING from you. I know you have a wife and daughter. They will be easy enough to find, though I can imagine Franklins will realize with your disappearance that something has gone wrong and will do everything in his power to protect them, so it might not be easy to get to them first. So let’s start with your parents and their whereabouts…oh I do hope they are still alive…” Mr. Reynolds begins his torture and you try to hold out for as long as you can, but eventually you fail and tell him everything. Your failure unfortunately still doesn’t involve your immediate death. Mr. Reynolds keeps you alive in his basement where eventually his son (who gets out of being in militia custody) takes over the routine torture and he’s not as nice as his father was… You are completely broken by the time Reynolds tosses your mother and fathers’ heads at you. You never thought you’d see them again, and certainly not like this. You don’t even have any tears left to grieve. It is a small mercy that your body just gives out before Reynolds can do the same to your wife and daughter.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3B2: The More They Stay The Same Year 30 You knew this damn day would come. You had to make up an excuse to Yvette and Trinity of why you had to meet with him, but you’re fairly certain that they didn’t think anything more of it. Just bonding with an in-law over security advice of the newest and best locks right? Your daughter Trinity did want to come with you, but you told her it would be boring adult stuff and she could visit grandpa another time. You hate lying, but what choice do you have? You hoped and thought that you probably wouldn’t ever be important enough for him to call on you for help, but here you are about to knock on his door. You knock on the door and it opens right away. “Took you long enough. Come in.” Franklins says turning his back to you to as soon as he opens the door. He takes a seat and for a change he tells you to do likewise. “Okay, since I don’t want you here any longer than necessary, let’s get to it. I need you to break into some place.” You didn’t expect this. “What?” you ask. “You got fucking wax in your ears? I need you to break into a place and steal something important.” Franklins remarks. “You do realize I haven’t done that in years right?” “Yes, I’m fucking aware. You’re an average slob with a regular job and family. However, I know damn well you aren’t out of practice because you’re a fucking locksmith by trade.” “True, but…I’m not understanding this. I thought you didn’t approve of my previous occupation.” “I don’t, but desperate times call for desperate measures and besides all that, YOU owe me a favor and this is probably the only way I’m going to be able to call it in. Besides, you’ll be going up against pure evil, so what you’re doing is for the greater good…well I hope Joachim sees it that way at least.” “Wait, pure evil? What the fuck? Look, I don’t want to step out of line here, but I need to ask some questions.” “You don’t want to step out of line, but you’re already stepping out of fucking line by asking damn questions!” “Yeah, and I think it’s fucking valid if you’re sending me up against pure evil! I mean as you’ve pointed out several times in the past, I’m not a damn hero. I was a lowly criminal who is now a working class slob. I never was a fighting type to begin with and tried to avoid it if possible. Nevermind the fact that I’m married to YOUR daughter and father to YOUR grand daughter and I’ve made sure to never hurt either one of them. Seems like this is asking me to potentially do just that at best and just getting myself killed at worst.” “(Sigh) Fine, I suppose you should know in case you need some extra preparation.” Franklins pours himself a glass of wine and takes a drink before continuing. “Okay, do you know who Mr. Reynolds is? Surely you must have heard of the man given that you were a thief at one time.” “Yeah, he’s a loan shark. My family actually was in debt to him once when they owned an inn here. Never met the man personally though since I tried to avoid being in debt.” “Hmm, interesting. Well in any case, the man is more than just a loan shark. He’s an embodiment of evil in this city and needs to be stopped from getting on the Klyton Council which he’s been making plans to do.” “Okay? So if he’s all that bad, why don’t you have him arrested or something? You’re always telling me you have connections.” “Yeah well those connections aren’t good enough to get him and he’s got connections of his own. Doesn’t help that anyone that might speak out against him aren’t just intimidated by him, but are also intimidated by those two goons he hangs around with. One of them being his equally demonic son and weird looking ogre.” “You really don’t like this guy do you?” “No, because despite him being an obvious evil piece of demon shit, he has been gaining a following that genuinely likes him now. In fact the asshole is probably more popular than I am among people who actually pay attention to politics.” “That’s hard to believe.” “Ha ha. But make no mistake, this is no laughing matter, which is why in the next few days, you’re breaking into his place of business and stealing a hexagon shaped container that he keeps a record of all his dealings in. Don’t bother trying to open that though, you’d need magic. Just bring it back here.” “Okay, so got any idea where he keeps it?” “No, but I imagine he’ll probably have it in some sort of safe. Don’t know where that would be either, but it has to be close since I can’t imagine he’d keep it in a bank and would definitely want it close to him. You start laughing. “What?” Franklins asks. “You’re asking me to go steal something that is apparently magical and you don’t have any idea where this item is in the place. Not to mention if this container is magically sealed, I have to believe he’s probably got it in some sort of safe that has magic protection as well if its that important. That means I’m going to need special tools for that job and more time to acquire them.” You answer. “You work as a fucking locksmith!” “Yeah and while the old guy I work for doesn’t ask me too many questions, I can’t just start taking specialized magic lock breaker from the job without some explanation, unless you’re asking me to steal those too…” “Look I don’t give a shit what you gotta do! You need to get into that evil fucker’s office and grab the container and get it back here!” “I dunno, you keep going on about evil, but all of this seems pretty fucking shady. I mean granted I don’t doubt that Reynolds isn’t an asshole given the stories I’ve heard, but how is what you’re planning to do any better? Seems pretty hypocritical that you gave me grief about my background and here you are a self proclaimed follower of Joachim scheming to…” “DAMNIT MAN DON’T YOU KNOW ANYTHING? I just told you the man is DEMONIC SHIT!” Franklins stands up to shout at you. “Wait…you weren’t just saying that as a casual description of how much of an asshole he is?” “NO. He’s a fucking DEMON. Okay, perhaps half demon, but he’s demonic shit and MY kind have been fighting his for a lot longer than you could ever think about!” Franklins suddenly sits back down and begins cursing to himself and you feel like you’ve heard more than he meant to tell you. “What exactly do you mean your kind…wait, are YOU human?” “Yes! No! Fuck! I hate to lie! (Sigh) Damnit, I didn’t want to get into this…I’m half celestial.” “Celestial? So like an angel? YOU’RE an angel?” “No you idiot. I just told you I’m only half. Just like Reynolds is only half demon. Doesn’t matter though, we are mortal enemies as has always been the way.” “Wow. You don’t hear about angels too often.” “Well maybe if you attended the church of Joachim, that wouldn’t be the case you faithless heathen. As I said, I am only half celestial. My foolish father gave up his otherworldly home to be with my mother…but we’re getting off topic…” “Wait a moment! Then that means Yvette…” “Yes, she has celestial blood as well. It’s probably why she has magic potential. It’s probably also why she was always a bit on the trusting side. I never got any of that, all I got was a strong sense of right and wrong and fairly good health all throughout my life. Never been sick once. Better than nothing I suppose and before you even ask, no she doesn’t know any of this and you better keep it that way.” “I don’t get why you wouldn’t tell her though.” “Because it’s a fucking burden knowing that’s why! Because I know I have to live up to some damn ideal that I can’t hope to achieve. Hell, my own father didn’t achieve it and HE was a full blood! I know Yvette and if she knew about all this, she would have wanted to go out on a crusade to right wrongs and all that bullshit with her magical powers and promptly gotten herself killed in the process. Better that she be a good person in her own small, but safe way.” “She might have surprised you and done great deeds or something.” “Oh and you’re the expert on good behavior now?” “Okay, fine I don’t know shit about it. But what about Trinity?” “She would have celestial blood too obviously. Though in her case, I’m sure it’s been diluted so much with your lowborn mortal blood that she isn’t going to have any potential powers and will most likely just live as a normal human. Lucky her.” You can’t believe all this new information that’s been dumped on you. It doesn’t seem real, but Yvette’s dad has never been one to lie and if he is indeed half angel like he claims, you guess it’s hard for him to even do so directly. (Omitting the truth and spinning it, is a different story apparently) All of this still doesn’t change the fact that he’s asking you to do a job, because he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty. Still seems hypocritical to you, not to mention dangerous now that you’re apparently going to be involved in some secret holy war. It occurs to you that you could just refuse. He just admitted all this stuff to you. Now you have a secret. What’s he going to do? You know he not going to kill you or even set it up in such a way that would happen. Have you exiled or get rid of you in some way? You don’t see that happening either. Not now. > You refuse to help If this was something reasonable maybe you’d be more willing to help, but this hypocrite is going to get you killed. Hell, maybe even on purpose. “I’m not doing your dirty work, especially given how the way you treat me. I’ve already proven myself to you for years now anyway.” You say. “(Snort) So you want credit for acting like you should be acting anyway? Franklins replies. “No, I’m just saying I’m not going live in fear of your blackmailing anymore. You want this done, you need to do it yourself, hypocrite.” “You should watch how you speak to me.” “Or what? You’ll expose my past to Yvette? I’ll take that risk, then she can find out everything that YOU’VE been keeping from her. You two are only just now on better speaking terms thanks to me. What happens when she finds out the truth? You think she’ll ever want to have anything to do with you again? I mean shit; you knew about me being an ex-criminal and didn’t tell her immediately. That would be grounds alone for her to be pissed at you, let alone this new information about her being part angel. You going to also deprive your grand daughter of her father as well?” Franklins just sits in silence with a stare that could kill if it could. (Fortunately, he didn’t say he had those sorts of celestial powers) “Now you got two options. You either let me go out that door and leave me alone in peace where upon we will never speak about this ever again or you can go ahead and try to kill me at some point and if you go that route, you better make sure you get it right. What is NOT going to happen is you telling me what to do like a puppet.” Franklins continues to stare at you in silence. You half expect him to get up and try to kill you with his bare hands, but he doesn’t. “Fine. Go. This is my fault for placing trust in someone of your low moral fiber anyway. Oh and don’t worry, your miserable life is safe.” Franklins says dismissively. You aren’t sure about this at first, but given that Franklins isn’t even prepared to kill Reynolds who is a mortal enemy and demon to boot, you get the impression that he’s telling the truth. You head back home and try to forget about everything that transpired. Even though you’re supposedly in the clear now, you still have a feeling of worry for the next few months. Still, you try to keep your mind occupied with your every day family life, which continues as normal with no odd deviations. By the time a year passes, your concerns of any reprisal by Franklin are nearly gone. Year 32 You have mixed feelings about all this. Most of them negative about this situation of course, but somewhere in the back of your mind, you always knew this day would come. Maybe not like this, but something like it. “Stop here.” Franklins remarks to the carriage driver and two of Franklins men grab you and throw you out of the carriage. You have no idea where you are all you do know is you’ve been riding for quite awhile, so you can’t be anywhere near Klyton anymore. Maybe somewhere to the north? The air is a lot colder, but then you’re naked so it would be slightly chilly no matter where you were. You hear the sounds of footsteps approach as you attempt to stand back up. A boot to your side kicks you back down, followed by a hand roughly taking off your blindfold. You see Franklins staring down at you, even in your beaten and naked state you’d try to attack him if you could, unfortunately your hands are firmly tied behind you. “I should have known after reading about Reynolds winding up dead a year ago that you decided to abandon your so called code completely. Guess you took my advice and decided to do your own dirty work after all.” “Well let’s just say I saw the point of view on one of your crude arguments that fateful day. Plus as you pointed out, he was part demon and killing him was after all in my duty as a being of higher morality and conscience.” Franklins responds. “Still deluded I see. Snatching me up with nobody around and dragging me way the hell out…wherever we are just to kill me seems a bit complex though. Couldn’t you have just had me killed quietly in the city? I’m sure you have the means of disposing of a dead body.” You say. Franklins smiles a bit and pulls out a knife. “You still don’t get it. I didn’t abandon any code and you’re not dying here…well at least not by my hand.” He says and tosses the knife next to you before continuing. “This is exile. I told you I’m no murderer. I’m giving you a chance to live.” “A chance to live? I’m fucking naked in the wilderness!” you shout. “Yes, but you still have a chance. Call it punishment for all those years you freely stole from hard working folks. If you live, well then I guess Joachim has seen fit to absolve you of your sins.” You shake your head. “You’re right. You haven’t changed at all. You’re still a fucking hypocrite hiding behind some code to justify your actions.” “…perhaps…but then I am only part human. I have my flaws that Joachim will surely judge on that day of reckoning.” “You might want to be on the safe side and just kill me, because if I DO survive this, I’m coming back for you.” Franklins at this point chuckles. “No, I don’t think you will. First of all if you do come back to Klyton, I’ll definitely know about it and I WILL have you killed for the punishment for returning from exile is death in accordance with the law. Second, even if you do manage to sneak in, don’t think you’re going to somehow get my daughter on your side. I’ve already taken care of that. Right now she knows everything about you and believes you’ve fled the city due to being under suspicion of several crimes.” “She’d never believe it!” you exclaim. “She already does. Thanks to you, I have a better relationship with her now and she’s never known me to be a liar. Besides, it’s not lying…you were a thief.” You start cursing Franklins out, but he’s unmoved. “I’d save your strength. Night will be coming soon and there are worse than wolves out here. Goodbye son in law and don’t worry about Trinity, I will of course make sure she, along with my daughter are well looked after.” With those last words, Franklins gets back in the carriage and takes off. The first thing you do as you watch the carriage disappear in the distance, is maneuver yourself to try to cut your ropes with the knife that Franklins provided. You still have no idea where you are; there isn’t even a road nearby. Franklin’s carriage apparently had heavy duty wheels to endure the rough wilderness. You struggle to cut your ropes, but it’s a tedious process and not easy. The cold is nipping at you and the light is going out. To top it all off, you think you hear something making noises in the distance and it doesn’t sound like a wolf. By the time you get your hands free, what was making that sound has gotten closer. You don’t know what it is, but all you see is its eyes and teeth before it manages to chase you down and devour you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well, ratting on the Crimson Talons probably isn’t the worst thing you’ve done… You go back to the militia barracks where you’re immediately stopped by some of its members who ask what you want. When you tell them that you want to speak to the officer in charge because you have information on the Crimson Talons, they tell you to wait while someone goes and gets Captain Branik, who apparently was the one interrogating you earlier. Doesn’t take long before you see this captain, who gives you a mildly smug look. “Well, look who’s back. Thought you didn’t know anything.” Branik says. “I just remembered some details that slipped my mind.” You retort. “Hmm, well out with it then, and if your information is any good then we will have come to an understanding.” You give out what you know of the Crimson Talons, but specifically their headquarters location. He says something about how he can’t believe they’ve been there the whole time. You also mention the secret sewer tunnel that leads from outside the city. Branik seems especially pleased by this information and mentions he’ll send people through there as well when they move in to attack the place. “This of course is all going to take a little time to put together and confirm, so in the meantime I’d like you to stay in the city. You know, just in case you’re lying and this isn’t some sort of set up.” Branik says. “What? What would I possibly gain by setting you up for anything? YOU told me to help you!” you say. “Yes, but you didn’t do it right away and even managed to disappear from the militia’s watchful eye for awhile. I can’t know if you haven’t already tipped off your Crimson Talon buddies or something more sinister. So to put those concerns to rest, I just need you to stay within the city so that I may easily get a hold of you until this is all over. Be thankful I’m not just throwing you in a cell.” No good deed… It’s the best deal you’re going to get at this point and really you have no idea now if the captain is even going to hold on to his end. Meanwhile you’re probably still going to be having these militia assholes following you all over the city, which you can’t even leave now! You just leave shaking your head at the entire situation. You honestly don’t know what to do with yourself. You suppose you could live on your savings until all this shit blows over, but again you have no idea when that will be and if that asshole captain is even going to give you a break. You still have to find a new place to live and you suppose squatting in your family’s old inn is out now seeing as it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Lacking any better ideas, you decide to go to the Church of Joachim that Virgil suggested. At least it will be free. There are actually more than a few in the city, but you figure Virgil was talking about the one closest to the Welcome Mat so that’s the one you seek out. It’s probably the biggest one anyway due to more poor folks in the area sponging off the charity that the church provides. When you get there you find that it’s feeding the beggars day. Great now you have to put up with that smell along with whatever religious shit that’s going to be preached at you. You see Virgil serving up bowls of swill and approach him since you figure he knows where the flop room for the poor is. “Hey Virgil.” You say while trying not to get in the way of the hungry beggars who are eagerly taking their food and leaving. “Hello. Surprised, but glad to see you. I’m a little busy at the moment, but what can I do for you?” Virgil responds. “You said I could stay here awhile? Having sort of a problem finding a place to live at the moment.” “Oh sure. We have space so you can stay as long as you like, but erm…” “But erm, what?” “Well I know you’re not exactly poor beggar or destitute mother with children and Brother Thadius is sort of a stickler for the rules.” “So what are you saying?” “Well, maybe if you could donate to…” “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!” you exclaim at which point Virgil tells you to keep your voice down. “Virgil, you TOLD me that you wanted to make amends to me or whatever and you also TOLD me that I could stay here for free!” you say. “Actually I never said it was free…(Sigh) but I suppose it is true, I might have given you a false impression. For that I am sorry. However, you could still stay here for free, but it would still require something of you.” Virgil says. You at first think Virgil is going to tell you to get him a bottle of alcohol or maybe ask you to steal something. You’re just counting on religious hypocrisy to rear its head, so it’s a bit surprising when he asks you: “If you could help me serve these bowls of soup, that I think would be enough to allow you to stay here for free.” “Wha…are you…(Sigh) fuck it. Fine.” You spend the next few hours serving swill to dirty, smelly beggars, bums, and the destitute. You can’t believe it’s come to this. About the only think that breaks up the monotony is you have to throw out a Yellow Devil junkie who gets a little aggressive with the others. Normally you don’t get excessively hostile to the point of violence unless its necessary, but you’re in a foul mood due to current events. Just as you’re about to really kick his ass until Virgil stops you. “Hey, hey, easy! He’s had enough; look he’s going now. And I think you’ve had enough too. Thanks for your help; you can find a space on the floor in the sleeping area in the back of the church.” Virgil says. You don’t say anything and just head to where Virgil said to go. When you enter the room, it isn’t quite as bad as you thought it would be. Apparently most of the beggar types actually prefer sleeping in their own personal areas on the streets rather than a relatively clean church. Go figure. What you do see more of is “regular poor folk.” Families who have obviously suffered some hardship causing them to be homeless for whatever reason. You imagine their faith in Joachim keeps them going that things will get better. The fools. You find a corner to be in, make a pillow with your bag and try to get some rest despite the sounds of children and people nearby. You can regroup tomorrow, you always do. Next day… You head to the university seeing as you don’t have anything better planned at the moment. Of course as soon as you start heading that way, militia is on your ass already. This is ridiculous. It’s like they suddenly have some sixth sense of your whereabouts. You try to lose them a couple times and while you do succeed, it once again has taken you out of your way to your destination. Eventually you manage to get a carriage and ride to the university. From there you get to work. All is going relatively well, though you do catch sight of more than a few wandering militia. You aren’t sure if they’re there specifically for you or just the usual. On your way through one of the many student-gathering areas, you suddenly hear someone call out your name. You turn around and get a surprise. “Yvette?” you answer. “Glad to see you remembered me. How have you been?” Yvette asks. “Um, I’m okay. And yourself? You probably graduated and are some sort of powerful wizard by now.” “On the graduation part yes, on the powerful wizard bit, well that’s debatable. I’m sort of teaching and doing independent research on possible new spell components. It’s a really good thing that the wizard college has such a generous benefactor on the Klyton Council. Otherwise, I’m not sure what I’d be doing with my life.” “You’re a wizard, surely there’s no limit to what you could do.” “I suppose in some ways, but I guess I just like what I get to do now…is something wrong? You seem a bit distracted.” “No, nothing’s wrong. I’m just surprised to see you, let alone you even talking to me. Last time I remember you were pretty pissed at me.” “Oh. That. Yeah, I always meant to apologize to you about that, but I couldn’t find you. I asked Dr. Gossey, but she said she didn’t know much about you outside the times you helped her. I only knew your first name, but I didn’t know what your area of study was. I must have went through a lot student lists, but never could track you down. I even tried some divination magic, but nothing turned up. Though I never was very good at that. Still, it almost seemed like you never even went here.” “Heh, yeah…wow didn’t realize you looked for me. I’m really flattered.” “Well I gave up after about a year. I figured you probably graduated by then…so what are you doing here then? Are you teaching now too? What was your study anyway?” Yvette is flooding you with questions that you weren’t really prepared to answer with well thought out lies. She’s being pretty friendly though and given how things have been going, it’s nice a change. You sort of wonder about the fact that she looked for you for a year. Obviously, she had more in mind than just to apologize. If you’d known that, you would have made more of an effort to seek her out too, rather than just fucking a whore that looked only vaguely like her a few times. Well, hopefully better late than never… “Okay, I’m just going to come out and ask. Were you interested in me back then?” you ask. “Um…well…” Yvette stutters. “I’ll take that as a yes.” “Well wait no. I mean yeah, but…oh I’m not very good at this.” “Calm yourself then just speak your mind.” “Okay. Well, I didn’t NOT like you. I mean I liked all of our time together up until Kelium died. Between that and worrying about my report, your kiss sort of caught me off guard. After my report was a success, I had time to think about your advance and while I would have preferred something less aggressive, I can’t say that I entirely disliked it. Actually it might have even helped my report.” “How’s that?” “Yes, at the time I was so pissed at you that I ended up telling my superiors the story we agreed upon as well as adding that it was all your fault that things didn’t go as planned. Since I was so mad at you, it came off as believable hence a successful report. I was actually going to thank you for that too.” You laugh a bit. “Well glad it helped I guess. Though I suppose my question is and again this might be a long shot, but are you still interested in me?” you ask. “I dunno. I mean it was years ago. We still don’t know much about each other. I suppose the answer is the same as it was back then, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing you. I’m currently unattached. I have a bit of trouble meeting people that aren’t also magic users and the few I do seem to get scared that I have magic powers.” Yvette answers. “What about other wizards?” “Hah, yeah…well after going out with a few magic users in the past, that has not gone very well. I’ll just leave it at that.” You’re doing okay so far, but here’s where the problem is going to come in, your real life. If you pursue this relationship, you are going to have to change your life severely because you are entirely sure that Yvette is definitely not going to be good with your roguish ways. Oddly, this isn’t completely unappealing to you. Granted you’ve had an okay day here at the university, but how long before the militia gets more savvy and starts watching your movements here a lot more? You still can’t walk to most places without them around and again you still don’t know if they’re going to hold up their end and leave you alone after they bust up the Crimson Talons. When you really think back to what you’ve managed to accomplish as a rogue you aren’t sure if it’s worth it anymore. All you’ve been doing is going through the motions because you don’t know any other way. But if you really put your mind to it, you’re a resourceful guy; you probably COULD do something different if you wanted to. In any case, you still need to know how you’re going to deal with Yvette. You could just tell her the truth about your life, which would prevent a possible shitstorm later, of course it could fuck up things now. Especially since you’ve basically been lying to her up until this point. Of course if you’ve been lying to her all this time, you could just continue doing it and hope for the best. You could still try to change your life, but just not reveal your past. > You tell her the truth Best to start a new life with a clean slate. “Yvette, if we’re going to be together I fell like it’s best if I tell you EVERYTHING.” You say. “Oh?” Yvette responds. “Yeah, okay where to start…” You go into your past, though you still leave out a few details. (Like having to leave your town for murder instead of theft) In general you’re truthful though. You’re rolling the dice here and while you’re explaining, you aren’t sure how she’s even taking it. “I just wanted to lay it all out there because I’m ready to turn over a new leaf. I want a life with you and I want that life to have no secrets between us.” Yvette still says nothing; her face just has an expression of shock on it. “Yvette?” you say. “Um…yeah. Well…yeah…” she starts to say. This isn’t good. “Yvette, please say something.” You say. “What do you want me to say? This is pretty damn serious! I mean how CAN I trust you? Up until THIS moment you’ve lied about everything!” Yvette responds. “But I’m not lying now! I’m telling the truth here. I’m no longer going to be a thief, I’m going to go look for real work and…” “Look, I can’t deal with this right now. I’ve got other things on my mind and running into you was a surprise to begin with. Obviously it was a mistake to even admit I had some faint feelings for you at one time. I have to go.” “Well can we talk about this again later?” “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Look, if you ARE serious, then by all means turn your life around and become a productive member of society. I don’t even think you’re that bad of a person…but I can’t be with someone I can’t trust and I can’t trust you. Goodbye.” And there it is again. Doing the right thing and getting no accolades, just a kick in the fucking face. Disappointed with how this entire miserable day has turned out you head back to your place Joachim’s church (With the militia following you the entire time of course). You spend the next few days on your usual routine of sneaking around trying to lose the militia as you perform your work at the university. You might as well considering you can’t leave the city. If things actually been different with Yvette, you probably would have tried to find a real job, but now? What’s the point? You figure it’s free to sleep and eat at the church so you might as well just endure it until the Crimson Talons finally get busted and the militia backs off your ass so you can leave this fucking city. One day in your corner of the church sleeping area, your light sleeping reflexes kick in and you grab a little arm reaching at you. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing you little thief?” you say to the little girl who you’ve just grabbed. She looks at you with wide eyes, but doesn’t scream surprisingly. “Nothing! I’m not a thief and I wasn’t reaching for you, I was just trying to pet Pink Eyes!” she says. “Pink Eyes?” you ask. “Yeah, the funny rat with big teeth by your head.” You turn your head slightly and see Elana sniffing near you. It would seem she located you. You release your grip on the girl’s arm who stands back as you slowly sit up rubbing your eyes. Elana squeaks a few times and finds a less open place to be. “You’re lucky I stopped you kid. Elana here isn’t just a regular rat, she’s a qweepa and she also doesn’t tend to let people just pet her. In fact she’s more likely to eat your fingers.” You say. “She didn’t do that with me. When I saw her, I gave her a little piece of bread I had from breakfast and she nuzzled my hand a bit after she ate the bread. Then I played with her a bit before she ran over to you. Is she your pet?” the little girl asks. “Yeah I guess you could say that. Though apparently she’s a little traitor if she’s being nice to anyone that feeds her. Guess I’m no position to speak ill of rats though. Wait, did you say you already had breakfast?” “Yeah, it’s almost time for them to serve lunch now. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and see you creep in here. Do you have some sort of night job?” “Something like that. Where are your parents?” “My mom’s out looking for work. I…um don’t know who my dad is.” “Oh. Well I got stuff to do, so off you go kid.” “Can I play with Pink Eyes while you’re gone?” “Um…yeah sure I guess if she isn’t chewing your face off. I wouldn’t call attention to her though, not sure what the animal policy is in this place. And if she doesn’t want to be fussed with, then I’d leave her be. Like I said, she isn’t usually this friendly to other people.” You leave the little girl and Elana and step out of the church before Virgil or some other Joachim follower can ask you to do anything. You head to the university seeing as you don’t have anything better planned at the moment. Of course as soon as you start heading that way, militia is on your ass already and this time they don’t just follow you, they actually come up to you and start throwing their weight around. “Hey criminal scum, we’re on to you.” One of them says. “Yeah I know that already. Been through all this with your captain.” You reply. “No, I don’t think you fucking understand!” he says again, pushing you hard this time. “What the hell? I’m not doing anything!” you exclaim. “Bullshit! We know where you’ve been going even though you THINK you’ve been eluding us. You go up to that fancy university. Whatcha going up there for? I know it ain’t to take any fucking classes. We haven’t caught you in the act yet, but it won’t be long.” “Aren’t you supposed to be taking down the Crimson Talons?” “Don’t you worry about that. They’ll be facing justice soon, just like YOU will be. Seein’ you soon asshole.” And there it is, final proof that the militia consists of a bunch of unyielding dicks that are not going to EVER leave you alone. You truly have to get out of this city. Your original plan was to wait until they finally took out the Talons, but they seem to be taking their sweet ass time about it. You suppose if you really wanted to get out, you could take the sewers and leave through the secret exit that the Talons use to get in and out of the city with no fuss. Yeah, seems like a plan, though you figure you’ll wait until it gets darker. In the meantime you head back to the church. When you arrive back to your sleeping area you see that little girl playing with Elana and giving her some of her food. Looks like even your pet has abandoned you. Though considering you’re leaving soon, it’s just as well she seems to have found a new owner. Lacking any more motivation to do anything until tonight, you decide to get some more sleep. Later… You suddenly grab a little arm reaching for you. “Girl…you REALLY need to stop doing that!” you say waking up and letting the girl’s arm go. “Please, my mom is missing and I dunno who to ask for help!” the little girl says frantically “What?” “My mom, she hasn’t returned! She ALWAYS returns before now! She promised she’d never stay out late like this again and I know she wasn’t lying!” “Alright, alright, calm down. What the hell happened?” “My mom…” At this point the little girl starts breaking down in tears and some nearby folks trying to sleep start shushing you. This certainly wasn’t anything you had in mind to deal with right now. From what you can tell it’s pitch black outside. You slept way longer than you intended to and now you’ve got a little girl begging you for help. > You get out of the city This is sad and all, but you’ve got more important problems. Besides the girl’s mother is probably a whore and is just out later than usual to make more coin. Still, you need to calm her down because she’s making a scene and waking everyone up. “Shhh. Shhh. Look, do you know where you mom might have went or where she goes to look for work?” you ask. “I dunno, mostly the taverns?” the little girl asks. “Okay, I’ll go check every tavern in the area then okay? You just stay here and try to get some sleep, or I dunno…play with Elana.” You quickly gather your belongings and bid the little girl goodbye. She looks hopeful at you, but you can only imagine that her disappointment is going to be even greater when you don’t return. Hopefully her mother does show up. You leave the church and make your way to the closest sewer entrance that you know of. Fortunately even this late the militia aren’t patrolling quite as much and it’s easier to sneak around. You descend into the foulness that is the sewers and begin your slog through it and eventual freedom. Along the way you just hope you don’t run into any Crimson Talons. While you doubt if they have heard about you ratting on them since the militia hasn’t made their move yet, but still, you’d rather not bump into them since they’ve gotten more territorial lately anyway. Your thoughts also briefly go back to that little girl and how you feel sort of bad about just leaving. You should have at least been up front with her and told her you couldn’t help her, rather than giving the girl a little bit longer for false hope. Then again, the last time you told the truth it didn’t go so well either. You’ll just be glad to leave this damn city behind. At last you start to see the literal light at the end of the tunnel as you approach the sewer exit leading to the outside. You have no idea how the hell the Talons slog through this day after day, though you suppose they won’t be doing it for much longer. This thought has never been truer than it is right at this moment. No sooner have you made it half way to the exit when all of a sudden several militia men enter through it. You stop in your tracks when you see them. “He’s warned them! Kill the bastard!” one of them shouts. You immediately turn and run. Several shots ring out along with shouting. You catch a bullet in the arm, but manage to keep going. It doesn’t matter though since the militia already has men coming from the other tunnels as well. Today of ALL days is when they decided to storm the Crimson Talon hideout. It figures. In fact the only place to run to is the Crimson Talon’s hideout! Avoiding the militia now seemingly coming from every fucking tunnel, you immediately run to the hideout and start banging on the door to be let in. Even now, the irony that you’re begging for the Talons to help you after you ratted on them in the first place isn’t lost on you. “Open the fucking door! It’s a raid!” you start shouting. There isn’t any answer other than a couple of “what?” or “Who’s banging on the door?” “Come on open the fuck up, it’s…ugggh! SHIT!” you shout and get shot in the back. This time the wound is fatal. You collapse at the door, which still stays firmly shut until the militia comes stomping over your body to batter it down.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Best to start a new life with a clean slate. “Yvette, if we’re going to be together I fell like it’s best if I tell you EVERYTHING.” You say. “Oh?” Yvette responds. “Yeah, okay where to start…” You go into your past, though you still leave out a few details. (Like having to leave your town for murder instead of theft) In general you’re truthful though. You’re rolling the dice here and while you’re explaining, you aren’t sure how she’s even taking it. “I just wanted to lay it all out there because I’m ready to turn over a new leaf. I want a life with you and I want that life to have no secrets between us.” Yvette still says nothing; her face just has an expression of shock on it. “Yvette?” you say. “Um…yeah. Well…yeah…” she starts to say. This isn’t good. “Yvette, please say something.” You say. “What do you want me to say? This is pretty damn serious! I mean how CAN I trust you? Up until THIS moment you’ve lied about everything!” Yvette responds. “But I’m not lying now! I’m telling the truth here. I’m no longer going to be a thief, I’m going to go look for real work and…” “Look, I can’t deal with this right now. I’ve got other things on my mind and running into you was a surprise to begin with. Obviously it was a mistake to even admit I had some faint feelings for you at one time. I have to go.” “Well can we talk about this again later?” “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Look, if you ARE serious, then by all means turn your life around and become a productive member of society. I don’t even think you’re that bad of a person…but I can’t be with someone I can’t trust and I can’t trust you. Goodbye.” And there it is again. Doing the right thing and getting no accolades, just a kick in the fucking face. Disappointed with how this entire miserable day has turned out you head back to your place Joachim’s church (With the militia following you the entire time of course). You spend the next few days on your usual routine of sneaking around trying to lose the militia as you perform your work at the university. You might as well considering you can’t leave the city. If things actually been different with Yvette, you probably would have tried to find a real job, but now? What’s the point? You figure it’s free to sleep and eat at the church so you might as well just endure it until the Crimson Talons finally get busted and the militia backs off your ass so you can leave this fucking city. One day in your corner of the church sleeping area, your light sleeping reflexes kick in and you grab a little arm reaching at you. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing you little thief?” you say to the little girl who you’ve just grabbed. She looks at you with wide eyes, but doesn’t scream surprisingly. “Nothing! I’m not a thief and I wasn’t reaching for you, I was just trying to pet Pink Eyes!” she says. “Pink Eyes?” you ask. “Yeah, the funny rat with big teeth by your head.” You turn your head slightly and see Elana sniffing near you. It would seem she located you. You release your grip on the girl’s arm who stands back as you slowly sit up rubbing your eyes. Elana squeaks a few times and finds a less open place to be. “You’re lucky I stopped you kid. Elana here isn’t just a regular rat, she’s a qweepa and she also doesn’t tend to let people just pet her. In fact she’s more likely to eat your fingers.” You say. “She didn’t do that with me. When I saw her, I gave her a little piece of bread I had from breakfast and she nuzzled my hand a bit after she ate the bread. Then I played with her a bit before she ran over to you. Is she your pet?” the little girl asks. “Yeah I guess you could say that. Though apparently she’s a little traitor if she’s being nice to anyone that feeds her. Guess I’m no position to speak ill of rats though. Wait, did you say you already had breakfast?” “Yeah, it’s almost time for them to serve lunch now. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and see you creep in here. Do you have some sort of night job?” “Something like that. Where are your parents?” “My mom’s out looking for work. I…um don’t know who my dad is.” “Oh. Well I got stuff to do, so off you go kid.” “Can I play with Pink Eyes while you’re gone?” “Um…yeah sure I guess if she isn’t chewing your face off. I wouldn’t call attention to her though, not sure what the animal policy is in this place. And if she doesn’t want to be fussed with, then I’d leave her be. Like I said, she isn’t usually this friendly to other people.” You leave the little girl and Elana and step out of the church before Virgil or some other Joachim follower can ask you to do anything. You head to the university seeing as you don’t have anything better planned at the moment. Of course as soon as you start heading that way, militia is on your ass already and this time they don’t just follow you, they actually come up to you and start throwing their weight around. “Hey criminal scum, we’re on to you.” One of them says. “Yeah I know that already. Been through all this with your captain.” You reply. “No, I don’t think you fucking understand!” he says again, pushing you hard this time. “What the hell? I’m not doing anything!” you exclaim. “Bullshit! We know where you’ve been going even though you THINK you’ve been eluding us. You go up to that fancy university. Whatcha going up there for? I know it ain’t to take any fucking classes. We haven’t caught you in the act yet, but it won’t be long.” “Aren’t you supposed to be taking down the Crimson Talons?” “Don’t you worry about that. They’ll be facing justice soon, just like YOU will be. Seein’ you soon asshole.” And there it is, final proof that the militia consists of a bunch of unyielding dicks that are not going to EVER leave you alone. You truly have to get out of this city. Your original plan was to wait until they finally took out the Talons, but they seem to be taking their sweet ass time about it. You suppose if you really wanted to get out, you could take the sewers and leave through the secret exit that the Talons use to get in and out of the city with no fuss. Yeah, seems like a plan, though you figure you’ll wait until it gets darker. In the meantime you head back to the church. When you arrive back to your sleeping area you see that little girl playing with Elana and giving her some of her food. Looks like even your pet has abandoned you. Though considering you’re leaving soon, it’s just as well she seems to have found a new owner. Lacking any more motivation to do anything until tonight, you decide to get some more sleep. Later… You suddenly grab a little arm reaching for you. “Girl…you REALLY need to stop doing that!” you say waking up and letting the girl’s arm go. “Please, my mom is missing and I dunno who to ask for help!” the little girl says frantically “What?” “My mom, she hasn’t returned! She ALWAYS returns before now! She promised she’d never stay out late like this again and I know she wasn’t lying!” “Alright, alright, calm down. What the hell happened?” “My mom…” At this point the little girl starts breaking down in tears and some nearby folks trying to sleep start shushing you. This certainly wasn’t anything you had in mind to deal with right now. From what you can tell it’s pitch black outside. You slept way longer than you intended to and now you’ve got a little girl begging you for help. > You help the little girl This really goes against everything you tend to believe in, but maybe due to a combination of several bad things you’ve experienced lately, you’re still hoping that MAYBE somehow doing something half way “decent” that the gods or fate or whatever will reward you in some way. (Even though you don’t really believe in a lot of that anyway) First thing you do is calm the little girl down and ask her name since this will be a whole lot easier if you know what to call her. “Mara.” She says. “Okay, first question. Do you know where you mom might have went or where she goes to look for work?” you ask. “I dunno, mostly the taverns?” the little girl asks. “…that really narrows it down…(sigh) alright, I guess I can just try the closest ones in the area. I’ll also need a physical description of her.” “She’s real pretty. She has a flower name too, Violet. Her hair is black like mine and she…um…her chest is sort of large.” Well you weren’t expecting her to give that description of her mom, but you suppose it does help narrow things down a bit more. “Okay, that helps a little…hey wait a minute. Did you ask Virgil to help?” you ask. “The friendly old priest that smells funny? Yeah, I went to his room, but he wouldn’t move no matter how much I pushed him. He just kept snoring.” Mara replies. “Well this is important, and I’ll go wake him up. He’s supposed to be doing good deeds anyway. In the meantime you just stay here and Elana will keep you company.” “Will you come back with her?” “I promise that I’ll come back.” Is all you can say to her before you bid her goodbye. Of course before you leave, you head to where Virgil sleeps in this church. Sure enough he’s snoring soundly. Not excessively loud, but he’s definitely flat out. You don’t bother with the pushing or yelling to wake him up; you just drag him out of bed by his crusty feet. He wakes up just before he hits the floor. “Hey what the…OW! Shit! You?! What the fuck are you dragging me out of bed for?!” Virgil exclaims. You actually sort of smile since that’s more along the line of the old Virgil that you were familiar with. “Aren’t you supposed to be cutting down on the vulgarities now that you’re all holy again? You’ve woke me up plenty of times in the past banging on my door, so consider this payback. Besides, a little girl needs help and you’re supposed to be doing this sort of shit anyway.” You say. “Little girl? What’s going on?” You explain the situation to Virgil, who slowly starts becoming more alert. As you explain, he seems to remember Violet quite well. (Or her tits at least) “Yes, yes, I know who you’re talking about. I’m not sure what to say though. Violet is a prostitute or at least she was trying to get out of that life for the sake of her daughter as far as I know. I mean I know she was trying to get a job as a waitress with little success, but if she’s disappeared during the night, she might have sadly gone back to her old ways and strayed from Joachim’s path.” Virgil remarks. Raven haired beauty with big tits and worked as a whore, now you’re wondering how the hell you never noticed her before. “Well let’s try the taverns first I guess.” You say. “Why am I going with you?” Virgil asks. “Because isn’t it your damn job to help the downtrodden and innocent? Besides, you being an ex-drunk, I figure that you know where ALL the closest taverns are. Also the militia is on my ass constantly, and if they catch me walking around at night, they’ll probably just beat my head in and throw me in jail. I figure if I’m walking around with a priest I shouldn’t get harassed as much. Not like you have anything better to do anyway.” “Um…yeah, but…you’re talking about going to several taverns…I’m just not sure I should be around that much temptation.” “Oh for…just come on! If you start getting thirsty, I’ll slap you in the back of the head to remind you of Joachim’s light or something.” Virgil reluctantly agrees to help, and soon the pair of you are off to go tavern hopping, but not in the good way. You go to several taverns and while a couple people say they remember seeing her or even interacting with her, they tell you they haven’t seen her today. Virgil meanwhile looks longingly at every mug, glass and bottle containing alcohol. It isn’t excessively hard to pull him away, but it’s obviously a struggle. “I beseech you, no more taverns! The temptation is getting to me and it’s taking all my faith in Joachim to give me strength to resist!” Virgil begs. “Okay, okay…(sigh) might as well give up anyway. We’ve covered a lot more ground than I thought we were and still haven’t found shit. I guess we can start trying to brothels.” You say. “Um, I don’t think so.” “What? Are the whores going to be too much temptation too? I thought your weakness was the booze, not the women.” “No, it’s not that. It’s just I doubt very seriously that she’s working in one of the Klyton brothels. At least none of the legal ones. If she was back to whoring, she’d be doing it illegally and who knows where.” “I don’t understand, Mara said her mom was pretty and you even seemed to confirm that. Wouldn’t she be good enough of one of those places? She a Yellow Devil addict or something?” “No, nothing like that. In fact she used to work at Madam Moonlight’s place, but she did something that severely pissed off Moonlight. I dunno what, but it was bad enough to get her fired and Moonlight apparently pulled strings at every other sanctioned brothel to not hire her.” “Hm, I guess that makes sense, I’ve seen Moonlight get pissed at unruly customers and makes them sorry they got out of line. Guess the same goes for her employees. Still surprised I’ve never bumped into this woman before. Well I’m out of ideas, I mean we can’t realistically go to every inn or back alley, to look for her.” “I think the only thing that can be done is to go back. Sometimes we must just place faith in Joachim that he will influence events to a positive end. I’m sure the girl’s mother will come back, she may already be back for all we know.” “Yeah maybe…” You suddenly remember something terrible. “SHIT!” you exclaim. “What?” Virgil asks. “In all the rush to help the girl, I left all my shit at the church and I didn’t even bother to hide it before I left! My savings!” “I doubt very seriously that anyone is going to ransack your belongings and steal what you have. All of those folks are Joachim fearing and righteous.” “Oh? Then what am I doing there then?” “Erm…well on the other hand it would be quite amusing if Joachim balanced things by taking away your wealth.” “What the hell? Why are you condoning theft just because it’s me?!” “I’m not, but I’m just saying there would be a kind of justice if it did occur, considering your own profession…speaking of which…Brother Thadius has expressed concerns about you continuing to sleep in the church. I’ve tried to assure him that you’re looking for real work, but I think we both know that isn’t true and I hate lying to the man. I’m already under scrutiny for…” “I can’t discuss this right now, I gotta go!” You run off to leave Virgil behind and race back to the church. Unfortunately along the way you nearly bump straight into two militiamen who happen to be patrolling. They see you running and jump to their own conclusions. “HALT!” one of them shouts. You haven’t done anything wrong and you don’t even have anything stolen on you since you left all your stuff at the church. Legally they can’t really do anything to you…however that’s never stopped the militia from severely fucking with you before. > You halt They’ve already seen your face and probably already know who you are, so running is just going to get you into more trouble. Might as well deal with this head on. The militia approaches and you make no sudden moves. “Thought it was you. So where the hell are you in such a hurry in the middle of the night? Up to your usual thievery no doubt.” one of them says. “I’m going to church.” You say. “Very funny asshole.” He replies pushing you. “I’m serious! If you’re aware of who I am, then you also know I’ve been living in a Church of Joachim for days now. I’m not lying.” “Or maybe you’re not exactly telling the truth either…seems very fishy that you’re lurking around.” Suddenly another one of their number runs up to them. “Hey! What the hell are you two doing? You’re supposed to be down in the sewers helping with taking out those Talon bastards. The captain’s been looking all over for you and he’s pissed!” he remarks. “What? We got assigned street patrol duty tonight!” “Well you’ve got new orders then, come on let’s go. Who’s this one?” “This is the sneak thief who ratted on the Talons in the first place to save his own hide. Claims he doesn’t have anything stolen on him, but I KNOW he’s been up to something!” “Let’s just quickly throw him in a cell because we need to get into the sewers before the shit goes down. He can be dealt with later.” Just as they’re about to grab you, another figure arrives. One you’d never be so happy to see. “Hey! Ask this guy! He’s a Joachim priest and I’ve been walking around all damn night with him searching for a missing woman!” you exclaim. “Is this true?” one of the men asks. “Yes, it is true. A little girl asked us to seek out her mother. In fact she specifically asked THIS man first! He has done nothing wrong and I would urge that you leave him be lest you anger Joachim for attempting to impede good works.” Virgil says. One of the guards must be a bit religious since he takes Virgil’s warning a little more to heart than the rest of his fellows. “Okay, we’ll let you go this time, but for your sake you better hope that Captain Branik finds out that all your information was good, because if not, you’re gonna wish for a quick execution instead of what we will have planned for you.” As the militia leaves, you think to yourself that it’s probably good that you didn’t try to escape through the sewers and the abandoned tunnel outside the city tonight. You might have gotten caught in the raid. “I don’t normally just tell anyone this, but thanks Virgil.” You say. “No problem. I’m just surprised they still let you go and listened to me at all. If I were a gambling man, I’d wager half of the militia have done worse things than you ever have. Hopefully as Joachim’s teachings spread, so will his influence though and perhaps one day Klyton’s militia won’t just consist mainly of thugs with city sanctioned authority.” Virgil says. “I doubt it. People are just rotten by nature. The only time most do good deeds is when they have no other choice.” “I don’t believe that, and I don’t even think YOU really believe that either. If that really were the case, you wouldn’t be trying to help a little girl find her mother tonight. I mean what’s really in it for you? Nothing. You’re not getting paid for it, you’re just doing it because you felt sorry for an innocent and it was the right thing to do. You’re better than you think you are, we all are. Joachim always tries to make us see that, even if you don’t notice that he’s doing it.” Rather thoughtful comments by Virgil even if you don’t totally see things his way on the whole religious thing. Still, he might have a bit of a point. The pair of you returns to the church where upon you immediately go see if any of your stuff is gone. Instead what you find is Mara sleeping near your belongings with Elana curled up next to her. Doesn’t look like anything has been disturbed other than Mara using your pack as a pillow of sorts. “See? All your stuff was fine. It was being guarded by a little girl and her pet.” Virgil remarks. “No sign of the girl’s mother though.” You say. “Yeah, I admit, I’m a bit worried about that. Mara is going to be upset, but I’m still hoping that maybe she’ll show up soon. Maybe in the morning?” “Maybe, but it’ll be morning in a few hours and I don’t quite have the faith you have Virgil.” “You’ll get there eventually. I suppose I better reclaim some sleep before Brother Thadius shows up here in the morning to give me his plans for the day’s events.” “Doesn’t he sleep here too?” “Him? No, he lives in a proper house. Pretty nice one around the government district.” “Hmm, guess all the donations to Joachim are blessing Thadius pretty well. In any case, I’m going to try to get some sleep as well and for what comes next, I guess I’ll figure that out when I wake up.” You and Virgil part and since Mara has taken your sleeping spot, you sleep on the mattress that presumably was where her and her mother slept. It’s a lot more comfortable than sleeping on the floor for a change. Later… A little hand reaches out to you; this time you only gently grab it. You actually were awake long before she reached for you since you heard her placing all your belongings on the mattress. Not to mention Elana is currently scurrying on the mattress and sniffing about. “Hello Mara.” You say fully waking up and let go of her wrist. As you slowly sit up from your slumber, and look through your belongings that Mara has brought to you. Everything is there and you’re finally relieved to know for certain. Mara watches you with a mixture of concern and sadness. She looks like she might have been crying earlier. “I didn’t take anything.” Mara says. “I didn’t think you would, but I couldn’t be sure if anyone else didn’t. Anyway thanks for bringing me my stuff and guarding it yesterday.” You say. “You didn’t find my mom did you?” “No, unfortunately I didn’t, but Virgil said it’s still possible that she’ll show up this morning.” “It’s the afternoon.” “It is? Oh.” Mara looks down wiping her eyes. This is awkward for you and if she starts crying in front of you, it isn’t like you know what to say. You ask Virgil for help, but he’s likely to just spout a bunch of shit about Joachim. “She promised she wouldn’t…(sniffle)…not anymore. Not after last time.” Mara says. “Last time?” you ask. Mara tells you about how some man roughed up her mom once and nearly killed her in the process a few months ago. She mentions that it sometimes happened before that too, but that was the worst time. A lot of coin went to the apothecary and the clinic and they eventually wound up here while Violet was looking for steady work that didn’t require sex. It’s obvious now that Mara isn’t exactly a naïve child and she’s well aware of the grim realities of this shitty world…still though…she’s a nine year old girl that misses her mom. “She’s probably dead.” She says, trying not to cry. You still can’t think of anything that’s going to make her feel any better. You were planning on leaving this city, but… “Hey Mara, why don’t we wait for your mom a little longer okay? I mean let’s not jump to conclusions, maybe she got some job that wanted her to start right away and it was so tiring that she fell asleep somewhere else.” Mara doesn’t look convinced, but this sliver of hope wrapped in a boldfaced lie seems to at least cause her to agree. “You’ll stay with me?” Mara asks. “Sure, until your mom gets back. Now let’s go get something real to eat. No more of this slop that they serve here.” You say. Mara seems to cheer up slightly during her time with you. She mentions her mother a few times, but in happy reflections on better times she had with her. You didn’t think you would, but you sort of don’t mind your time spent with Mara either. You spend the rest of the day with Mara and the next few days after that. By the end of the week, she hasn’t even mentioned her mother anymore and is more interested in you. Again, not exactly being naïve (and probably overhearing Virgil’s conversations with you at times) she knows that you’re not exactly a “working” man. “Do…you kill people?” Mara asks. “Is that what you think I do?” you ask back. “I dunno. Virgil says that you’re a good man who just does bad things sometimes.” “Hah! Said that did he? No, I don’t kill people…well not usually anyway. I’m more into acquisitions.” “What’s that?” “I find stuff that I need.” “Oh…you’re a thief.” “Well yes, it’s not very impressive when you say it like that.” “It’s just I sort of wished you did kill people.” “Really? Why?” “Because then you could track down who killed my mother and kill them.” Mara at this point walks away from you, leaving you a little speechless. It’s at this moment that Virgil comes over to you. “I see you’re still spending time with Mara. I knew you were a good man. I think it’s wonderful that you’ve been trying to be there for the child.” Virgil says. “Yeah, I suppose so.” You remark. “Of course seeing that her mother is most likely gone, the only thing to do now is to take her to the orphanage.” “Orphanage?” “Well yeah. I mean the child can’t stay here.” “What would it hurt if she did stay here?” “This place shelters the poor and families down on their luck for short periods of time, but unattended children should be in an orphanage and I know you can’t look after her.” “Wait a minute, who says I can’t?” “Look, I know maybe you’ve gotten a little attached to Mara, but really this is a matter for a place that’s capable of looking after a little girl.” “Virgil, I’ve passed by those orphanages and half of them are completely neglected ragamuffins and the other half get beaten all the time and are most likely going to become vicious scoundrels. After all your bitching at me about being a thief, you REALLY think that’s the best place to put her?” “Those places aren’t as bad as you say! I’ll have you know, I grew up in one of those places!” “And that’s supposed to convince me that it’s a good place to send her?” “Oh and because you had both parents, you’re such a good example that it isn’t? I mean I’m trying not to judge, but your parents obviously failed in their duties.” And you’re done. “Fuck you Virgil. Just fuck you, and your Joachim preaching bullshit. My parents were fucking great.” You say and gather up your belongings (And Elana) before walking off. Virgil starts to follow you trying to apologize until he realizes what you’re about to do. You find Mara who is sitting quietly against a wall, looking at the floor. “Come on Mara, we’re leaving. We’re done here.” You say. “What? Where are we going?” Mara asks. “Dunno yet, but we’re going together.” “You can’t just take this child!” Virgil exclaims. “Why not? She’s an orphan right? I’m adopting her. Cuts out the need for her to even go into an orphanage.” “You…your emotions are letting you cloud your judgment! How are YOU going to take care of this child? Please, we must put this in the hands of Joachim and…” “Mara? Do you want to come with me or go to an orphanage? If you don’t want to come with me, just say so. I won’t be mad.” You say. Mara is silent for a half second before: “I want to come with you.” You turn to Virgil and raise your hands. “There’s your answer.” You say. “Of course she’s going to pick you, but that’s not a realistic choice!” Virgil exclaims. “How do you know that this isn’t Joachim’s will? You don’t and neither do I. Only Joachim knows. Praise be to him or whatever it is you say.” You remark and push Virgil out of the way. You ignore Virgil’s protests as you leave and make your way to the carriage station. You know you’re allowed out of the city now given all the Crimson Talons are dead and the restriction for you to leave has been lifted. You suppose you’ll head to Hessla first and from there you’ll figure out a more long-term plan. You just need to get out of this city, especially before you’re wanted for kidnapping along with anything else the militia decides you’re guilty of. You start to think about your situation and realize it’s really fucking crazy. You’re now a fugitive from TWO places and have little girl to look after. (And an oversized rat, but Elana is pretty self-sufficient) Still, you’re convinced that you’re doing the right thing and you don’t even know why. What you do know is you’re going to have to step things up because it’s not just you anymore. “Hey Mara.” You say. “Yes?” Mara answers as she continues to look out of one of the windows, fascinated by it all. “Come over here for a moment.” You say pulling out your small locked container containing what’s left of your savings. “What’s that?” Mara asks. “Something I hope we can both fill up eventually. For now though, it’s practice.” You pull out a lock pick. “I’m going to teach you something useful.” > You time passes… Chapter 3B1: The More They Get Complicated Year 30 A hand reaches for the pouch on your side; you grab it and open your eyes. “Damn it.” Mara exclaims. “I keep telling you, you’re not quiet enough and you make more noise than a clumsy orc. I honestly don’t know how you don’t get caught more often by your marks.” You say sitting up. “Well if I do, that’s only because I’m doing it like how you taught me.” “If you really think that’s how I’ve been teaching you, then you haven’t been paying attention and we need to spend even more time training. What time is it?” “Afternoon. You slept through the morning as usual.” “Sounds about right. So…early bird, what have you been up to this morning?” “Nothing much really. Just wandering around the city and doing stuff.” “Hmm, wouldn’t be with that little gang of hoodlums you hang out with sometimes would it?” Mara does answer immediately. “Figured.” You say shaking your head. “Why are you so against me having friends?” Mara asks. “I’m not. I just think those idiots are a bad influence.” “You’re joking right? YOU think other people are a bad influence on me?” “Oh trust me, the irony isn’t lost on me, however I would propose that I am at least a bad influence in an efficient way. You keep hanging out with that group of losers and well…you remember what happened to the Crimson Talons?” Mara rolls her eyes. “This isn’t Klyton, and my friends aren’t the Crimson Talons!” she exclaims. “No they aren’t. The Talons were more organized and they STILL got completely wiped out due to being reckless. And while maybe the Jicol Watch isn’t as overzealous as the Klyton Militia, but it’s only a matter of time before your friends get into a whole mess of trouble that they’re going to bring down on their own heads because they think punching old ladies in the street and grabbing their coin pouches to be the height of thievery.” You reply. “Only a couple of them do that! And Marco has been telling them not to do it anymore. He said as the Black Hooks, they should be…” You start chuckling. “Black Hooks? They gave themselves a gang name? Oh that’s precious. Truly a name that will stir fear into everyone. And you’re telling me Marco is the leader? The gang already sucks.” “…why…why are you being such an asshole?! Marco’s a great guy and he’s trying to put it all together with my help! He’s a real thief! Just like me and you!” “PFFT!” you say with a mixture of contempt and genuine amusement. “I’ve met Marco when you first introduced me to all these idiots last year and that boy is NOTHING like me. He wasn’t even me at that age. And as for him being like you, I like to think I’m a way better teacher than that despite your previous criticisms.” “You don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re just an cranky old man who doesn’t want me associating with anyone except you!” “Okay first of all, I’m only fucking thirty. Second of all I do know what the hell I’m talking about. I understand your need for friends your own age, but I’m telling you this is the fucking wrong crowd. I’ve seen some of these dumb asses in action when I’m going about my own business and they’re all going to wind up in a bad end.” At this point you stand up and continue your rant. “And as for Marco, of course he wants your help, because out of ALL of them, you’re the only real thief there and he’s hoping that at least SOME of that shit that I’ve taught you will rub off on him. Well that and the fact he also wants you around to get in your pants.” You remark. “Y’know, sometimes I wonder if that’s why you want me around.” Mara retorts. You stop for a split second at this outrageous accusation “Wow. You’re REALLY going to go there? Y’know, if you really think that, then just fucking go. Go off with your little friends. Well? Go! GET THE FUCK OUT!” you shout. Mara jumps back a bit by your yelling and then without another word, she leaves slamming the door behind you. You slump back down on the bed already feeling drained even though you just woke up. Things were getting a bit tenser with Mara for a couple years now. You chalked it up to her being a teenager, but this latest argument has made you start to wonder if it’s worse than just the need to rebel against you. As you try to calm yourself down, Elana jumps up on the bed and very slowly walks over to you. You give her a pet and she curls up to sleep. She does that a lot more nowadays. She’s so old, and right about now you’re feeling the same way. “(Sigh) It’s really damn bad when I’m already missing the old days. Just me and sis against the world. Been downhill ever since that split. Certainly hope she’s doing a lot better than I am right now.” You continue to brood, thinking about what you should have done or shouldn’t have done in your life. Eventually you stop since it’s not doing you any good, so you go back to sleep instead. A few hours later you wake up and find that it’s nighttime. Mara isn’t home, but then maybe she won’t ever come back. Still, you can’t help but be concerned about her. You can only hope that she knows what the hell she’s doing and that you taught her well enough that she doesn’t get caught or can get herself out of trouble. In the meantime you decide to get some of your own work done and leave your humble dwellings to go accomplish just that. A few days pass and Mara still hasn’t come home. However, you’ve still been keeping an eye on her from afar. You mostly know where she is and all her hang outs. She spends most of her time in the city district where docks of lesser importance are located. It isn’t the best area, but given that she’s with her Black Hook friends, you assume that she at least has people to watch her back. (And you figure Marco is especially, but you’d rather not think too much about that) As for the Black Hooks themselves, they’re still pretty low as far as Watch is concerned it seems. When the city is more concerned with keeping a strong naval force to ward off any potential pirate attacks, a group of juvenile delinquents that still haven’t done much more than petty theft, assault and vandalism, just doesn’t rank very high. Honestly, you’re more surprised that Mara hasn’t gotten bored by them all yet since you know she’s a lot more talented than any of them. You know you’d be bored. Then again you suppose you just weren’t very social and never wanted to hang around with too many people. Just one that you could trust. Weeks pass and while you continue to keep an eye on her, sometimes you start to wonder if maybe you should let go. Of course if you did let go, you’d have to leave the city altogether, because you just couldn’t stick around and NOT look out for her. > You leave Jicol Mara is still young, but in this sort of world that’s really no measure of being sheltered from the harsh realities of the world. The girl lost her mother and was mentored by a professional thief. She’s probably more ready to be on her own than most her age. You need to move on though. It’s apparent that your good intensions have been less than successful. That’s fine though, because you’ve learned that more than ever that you should only worry about yourself. You pack up all your stuff and get ready to go. You’re sure you can book passage aboard some ship heading to Hessla. Who knows, maybe you’ll go elsewhere. You get half way to the transport docks and stop. You can’t leave like this. As much as it would be easier to do so, you can’t. You have to apologize to Mara before leaving. She might very well tell you to go to hell. In fact if she’s around her friends, she’s very likely to do that, but still you have to try. You head down to where the Black Hooks usually hang out. These young idiots like to pretend they’re all going to be pirates one day. You can only imagine how they’d really fare if they were in a pirate-dominated town like Hessla instead of this well fortified and more lawful city. Eventually you arrive at the small beach area where there you see the “Black Hooks” all lingering under and around a boardwalk. Up to their usual bragging and bravado of course. “And so I said to that bitch, you’re either giving me your necklace, or I’m gonna take it after I cut off your fucking head! She was pissing her knickers after that hahahaha!” one of them says. “Who’s this asshole coming up?” asks one of them. “Hey dumb fuck, don’t you know this is Black Hook territory?” one of them shouts. “Oh no…” you hear a quieter voice say and you already pinpoint that it’s Mara trying to unsuccessfully hide behind a couple of her friends. “Mara, I know you’re over there, come on out, I want to talk to you.” You say. “Hey old man, Mara ain’t got shit to say to you. She’s with US now and she doesn’t have to worry about you molesting her anymore! Now you better get outta here before we…” Marco says stepping forward before you grab him by the collar and throw him down face down in the sand as hard as you can. Marco spends the rest of his time spitting out sand and rubbing his eyes, while his gang does nothing except look at you. “Is that what you’ve been telling these dickheads? Do you REALLY hate me that much that you’re going to make up stories like that about me? You know, I came to apologize and say goodbye, but if this is what you want, then fuck it. Have a nice life.” You say and turn around to leave. You get a couple steps, before Mara calls out to you. “I never said he molested me! Why the hell did you say that?!” she says to Marco and then calls out to you “Wait! Hold on!” “Mara, what the fuck are you doing?” you hear Marco say as you turn around. “I’m just gonna talk to him, I’ll be back.” “No! He’s just gonna trick you into going back to him!” “Marco, it’ll be fine, let go of me!” “No! I’m the one who loves you!” “Marco, you better let her go.” You say as you approach. He isn’t listening though and once again you grab him, however this time he manages to pull out a flintlock. You would have easily took it away from him had some of his boys not grown a pair and stabbed you in the side and back. You fall to the sand making it red with your blood. Mara is now screaming at Marco to not shoot you, but he’s too committed to care. He’s been waiting a long time to do this to someone and it’s just a bonus that it’s you. You take a shot directly to the chest and the life is already leaving your body. Marco’s gang scatters at this point and Marco himself tries to drag Mara with him, but she manages to pull away until he just swears and values running from the scene of the crime more than her. It’s a shitty way to have it all end like this by some snot nosed kid and in front of another who apparently did care about you in the end as she kneels down beside you crying as you die. You comfort yourself in your last moments with the fact that you weren’t completely alone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3B1: The More They Get Complicated Year 30 A hand reaches for the pouch on your side; you grab it and open your eyes. “Damn it.” Mara exclaims. “I keep telling you, you’re not quiet enough and you make more noise than a clumsy orc. I honestly don’t know how you don’t get caught more often by your marks.” You say sitting up. “Well if I do, that’s only because I’m doing it like how you taught me.” “If you really think that’s how I’ve been teaching you, then you haven’t been paying attention and we need to spend even more time training. What time is it?” “Afternoon. You slept through the morning as usual.” “Sounds about right. So…early bird, what have you been up to this morning?” “Nothing much really. Just wandering around the city and doing stuff.” “Hmm, wouldn’t be with that little gang of hoodlums you hang out with sometimes would it?” Mara does answer immediately. “Figured.” You say shaking your head. “Why are you so against me having friends?” Mara asks. “I’m not. I just think those idiots are a bad influence.” “You’re joking right? YOU think other people are a bad influence on me?” “Oh trust me, the irony isn’t lost on me, however I would propose that I am at least a bad influence in an efficient way. You keep hanging out with that group of losers and well…you remember what happened to the Crimson Talons?” Mara rolls her eyes. “This isn’t Klyton, and my friends aren’t the Crimson Talons!” she exclaims. “No they aren’t. The Talons were more organized and they STILL got completely wiped out due to being reckless. And while maybe the Jicol Watch isn’t as overzealous as the Klyton Militia, but it’s only a matter of time before your friends get into a whole mess of trouble that they’re going to bring down on their own heads because they think punching old ladies in the street and grabbing their coin pouches to be the height of thievery.” You reply. “Only a couple of them do that! And Marco has been telling them not to do it anymore. He said as the Black Hooks, they should be…” You start chuckling. “Black Hooks? They gave themselves a gang name? Oh that’s precious. Truly a name that will stir fear into everyone. And you’re telling me Marco is the leader? The gang already sucks.” “…why…why are you being such an asshole?! Marco’s a great guy and he’s trying to put it all together with my help! He’s a real thief! Just like me and you!” “PFFT!” you say with a mixture of contempt and genuine amusement. “I’ve met Marco when you first introduced me to all these idiots last year and that boy is NOTHING like me. He wasn’t even me at that age. And as for him being like you, I like to think I’m a way better teacher than that despite your previous criticisms.” “You don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re just an cranky old man who doesn’t want me associating with anyone except you!” “Okay first of all, I’m only fucking thirty. Second of all I do know what the hell I’m talking about. I understand your need for friends your own age, but I’m telling you this is the fucking wrong crowd. I’ve seen some of these dumb asses in action when I’m going about my own business and they’re all going to wind up in a bad end.” At this point you stand up and continue your rant. “And as for Marco, of course he wants your help, because out of ALL of them, you’re the only real thief there and he’s hoping that at least SOME of that shit that I’ve taught you will rub off on him. Well that and the fact he also wants you around to get in your pants.” You remark. “Y’know, sometimes I wonder if that’s why you want me around.” Mara retorts. You stop for a split second at this outrageous accusation “Wow. You’re REALLY going to go there? Y’know, if you really think that, then just fucking go. Go off with your little friends. Well? Go! GET THE FUCK OUT!” you shout. Mara jumps back a bit by your yelling and then without another word, she leaves slamming the door behind you. You slump back down on the bed already feeling drained even though you just woke up. Things were getting a bit tenser with Mara for a couple years now. You chalked it up to her being a teenager, but this latest argument has made you start to wonder if it’s worse than just the need to rebel against you. As you try to calm yourself down, Elana jumps up on the bed and very slowly walks over to you. You give her a pet and she curls up to sleep. She does that a lot more nowadays. She’s so old, and right about now you’re feeling the same way. “(Sigh) It’s really damn bad when I’m already missing the old days. Just me and sis against the world. Been downhill ever since that split. Certainly hope she’s doing a lot better than I am right now.” You continue to brood, thinking about what you should have done or shouldn’t have done in your life. Eventually you stop since it’s not doing you any good, so you go back to sleep instead. A few hours later you wake up and find that it’s nighttime. Mara isn’t home, but then maybe she won’t ever come back. Still, you can’t help but be concerned about her. You can only hope that she knows what the hell she’s doing and that you taught her well enough that she doesn’t get caught or can get herself out of trouble. In the meantime you decide to get some of your own work done and leave your humble dwellings to go accomplish just that. A few days pass and Mara still hasn’t come home. However, you’ve still been keeping an eye on her from afar. You mostly know where she is and all her hang outs. She spends most of her time in the city district where docks of lesser importance are located. It isn’t the best area, but given that she’s with her Black Hook friends, you assume that she at least has people to watch her back. (And you figure Marco is especially, but you’d rather not think too much about that) As for the Black Hooks themselves, they’re still pretty low as far as Watch is concerned it seems. When the city is more concerned with keeping a strong naval force to ward off any potential pirate attacks, a group of juvenile delinquents that still haven’t done much more than petty theft, assault and vandalism, just doesn’t rank very high. Honestly, you’re more surprised that Mara hasn’t gotten bored by them all yet since you know she’s a lot more talented than any of them. You know you’d be bored. Then again you suppose you just weren’t very social and never wanted to hang around with too many people. Just one that you could trust. Weeks pass and while you continue to keep an eye on her, sometimes you start to wonder if maybe you should let go. Of course if you did let go, you’d have to leave the city altogether, because you just couldn’t stick around and NOT look out for her. > You stay No, you’re not going anywhere. Maybe she needs her independence and maybe she’s more “worldly” than most would be at her age, but the fact is, she’s still young and if she DOES ever need help, you want to be available. Besides, it isn’t like you’ve really got anywhere important to go. Besides this unpleasantness with Mara, your life here in Jicol hasn’t been that bad. Certainly better than it was in Klyton or your very brief stay in Hessla. Still, you’re starting to wonder if you should try your hand at something new. Not that you really believe that you’re starting to get too old for this, but it would be nice to have an income that’s steadier. You know that they have Qweepa fights here, but you’re a little too attached to Elana to subject her to that. Besides she’s too old and you don’t think that after having one as a pet that you’d want to willingly risk their little ugly rodent lives even if it is for coin. You think for a moment on the various activities you could be doing and then realize you could be a fence. It’s not like you don’t have skill in selling stolen items already. You had to do it when the Crimson Talons stopped fencing for you; you still do it now when you’re selling to the less honest merchants here. What you need to try to do though is make yourself known to other thieves who are unwilling to or don’t know how to wheel and deal with the merchants. Not that you’ve ever particularly hung out within the “criminal circle” in the city, but you are aware of some of them. You figure you can work your way up to bigger clients in time. You get yourself set up and within a month you get a few of the lesser pickpockets to sell you’re a few of the trinkets they’ve stolen. You in return sell those to whoever is willing to buy. Be it an average citizen on the street that needed for a gift for his girlfriend or a less than honest merchant. As you become more engrossed in this work that you spend less time watching out for Mara, however she’s always in the back your mind and you at least try to keep an ear out for possible information. She still hasn’t returned of course and that of course still makes you feel a bit down. A month later your mood doesn’t change much when Elana dies peacefully in her sleep. You bury the little rodent, thanking her for being the link that allowed you meet Mara in the first place. Perhaps it’s due to being a bit lonely and away from the mainland that you start to think about your real family again. You wonder how they’re all doing. Is your sister still having her adventures on the road? Are your mom and dad okay? In fact, you get a little home sick and do something out of character, you write a letter to your family explaining that you’re doing well. You don’t go into great detail of course, you just keep it light and add an apology at the end. You send it by the courier service here, but who knows if it will actually get to them and you have no expectations that you’ll hear anything back. A few more months pass and you’re approached by a couple of young teenagers. You immediately notice that they both have tattoos of black hooks on their arms. “Hey…um…are you the guy?” one asks. “Am I the guy what?” you answer. “Y’know, the guy that buys shit.” You nearly chuckle. Of all the groups that would come to you…then again you suppose it isn’t too surprising, what with the Black Hooks being “on the rise” and all. And what the hell, business is business. “If I was, and I’m not saying that I am, do you have something in particular?” you ask. “Yeah! We just ripped this off from that Artifacts of the Ancients place! LOOK!” one of the teenagers remarks and trusts some sort of vase at you. “Are you fucking stupid showing that thing out here in the open? Put that damn thing away and follow me to some place less likely to get us all fucking pinched!” After doing your business with the Black Hooks, you remind them that you also sell items too and if they need anything in particular you could try to acquire it for them. “You have any Green Lotus?” one of them asks. “Not really a drug dealer guys, you’d have better luck at Desolation Alley if that’s what you’re into. However I can probably find something stronger in a few weeks if you’re interested.” You say. “Stronger? Fuck yeah! Oh wait, it’s not Yellow Devil is it? Because I heard that shit literally melts your brains and body if you use it.” “Oh no, not that. What I’m talking about is actually legal, but not just available to most of the public. Physicians use it mostly for surgeries, it’s called Numb. Used to be able to get a lot of the stuff back in Klyton thanks to their medical school. Not as easy to get here, but I have my ways. Now normally this would cost you more than a bit of coin, but when I get it I’ll give you a discount, but I do want to some information. “What sort of information?” “Do you know a girl named Mara? She’s in your gang.” “We just joined, so we don’t know everyone yet.” One of them remarks. “Wait, Mara? She’s got black hair and was teaching those other guys how to pick a lock a few days ago. She’s Marco’s girlfriend.” The other says. “Ohhhhh, yeah her. She’s fucking pretty, I’d so get her on all fours and fuck the hell out of her.” “Hey! That’s Marco’s girl!” “So? He’s not here.” “Yeah, but I am. I’ve looked after that girl for the past five years you asshole.” You say. The teen suddenly shuts up. “Um, he was just joking…” his friend says. “Hm, I’m sure. Look never mind all that. I just want you two to give me a report on her, and no, I’m not asking you to snitch any of those precious Black Hook plans or secrets, of yours.” “Nothing else?” “No, I just want you to tell me what she’s up to and if she’s okay.” “Well that’s okay I guess, but this Numb shit better be worth it!” “Oh, it’ll be worth it. Trust me.” And with that last bit of assurance, the two teens leave your presence. You hope those two idiots don’t make themselves too obvious in performing your task. You’d hate for them to get caught and then Mara come down just to bitch at you about it. You make a note that you need to go do a proper burglary of that Numb addict doctor that lives over across town. You’re guessing that he must get it through a very well protected shipment from the mainland. Probably even from Klyton. You also know damn well that the last time you cased his place that you found way more than he would ever need for a private practice of his that small. In the meantime, you have to go see a woman you know who is a sucker for fancy looking vases. > You time passes... Year 32 “I just paid you! Dolan exclaims. “Yeah and you know the damn rules Dolan, you can get Numb AFTER you give me the information as well!” you say. “But I don’t know any more! I swear! I’m got my ass chewed out by Marco already for asking too many questions! Hasn’t all the other information I’ve given you in the past been good?” “Hmmm, fine. But I’d advise you to start going easy on this stuff. It’s not as simple to acquire anymore. So unless you want to go risk getting that inferior Green Lotus shit that got your buddy killed due to getting a bad batch, I suggest you not even come back unless you got a lot of coin or some information I can actually use. Now you better get out of here before some other Black Hooks come in to sell something and overhear that you’re spying on all of them.” Dolan meekly takes his small container of Numb and scampers away like the low life he is. The boy had no idea that it was going to lead up to this, though you planned that it would. A somewhat reliable mole in the Black Hooks just so you can keep an ear out on what they’re doing, though it’s still more to keep a check on Mara who apparently is doing well in her position with Black Hooks though that doesn’t surprise you for several reasons. In some ways you’re actually proud of her, but as always there is still concern. Especially with what you’ve been hearing lately and the Jicol Watch is the least of potential problems. A few members of the infamous Ebony Claw Syndicate have been seen in the city. You’ve already heard the many tales of the Ebony Claw Syndicate. They’re a huge organization with a shitload of resources behind them and when they start showing up regularly in a city that usually means it’s currently in their sights for expansion. And if they do expand, there isn’t much that is going to stop them, as most of the criminal here are unorganized. Anyone who they don’t bother to incorporate into their organization is going to just get eliminated. This development has got you slightly more concerned for Mara since as a member of the only potential “organized resistance” to an ECS take over the Black Hooks could very be on the list for elimination. You aren’t really sure what you can do though. You haven’t spoken to Mara since she left two years ago and she’s made no effort to contact you. Of course you haven’t really made the effort to speak with her either and it’s not like you couldn’t meet her alone given the eye you keep on her with your drug addled spy. You suppose you haven’t since you aren’t sure if she’d want to see you. For a couple days you seriously mull over the idea of going to see her or not and that’s when you get a visit from members of the ECS. “Figured it wouldn’t be long before you guys showed up.” You say when they come through the door. The pair of them are about the sort you’d expect from the ECS, a couple of intimidating muscular guys with tattoos. They don’t answer you right away and just briefly look around before addressing you. “I take it you’re the fence of this city?” one of them asks. “Well I’m hardly the only one.” You reply. “Yes, but we’ve heard that you’re probably the best one.” “Really? Glad to hear my reputation is in good standing with the underworld I suppose. Never can quite tell in this line of work as I’m sure you well know.” “Hmm, can’t say I’m impressed with the Jicol underworld if you’re considered the best, but looks can be deceiving I suppose especially since you seem to have even eluded being under suspicion by the Jicol Watch here. It at least shows you know how to keep a low profile, which displays signs of professionalism. In any case my name is Nathan and since you already seemed to know we were going to show up I’m going to go ahead and assume you know why we’re here.” Nathan says. “Well I can take a guess, but for all I know you might be here to kill me.” You reply. “Oh we don’t have nearly enough information about this city and it’s major players to start killing anyone yet. However it doesn’t seem like there are any major players unless we count the actual government…or have we missed someone?” “Are you asking me?” “I don’t know, am I? Surely an important man as you knows things. Of course if you’re saying you don’t know anything, maybe we should talk to someone else…” “Hold on. I didn’t say that I didn’t know anything. It’s just that you’re fairly correct about the situation in Jicol. The underworld element here has no real uniting entity and I don’t have much to add.” “Interesting. So what about this other group I’ve heard about in passing, the Black Hookers or something?” “Um, the Black Hooks. Yes, mostly an unruly gang of amateur teenagers who think they’re tough. Not really that important.” “I see. Though from what I hear their numbers are sizable and the youth are easily molded if given the proper motivation and training.” You don’t respond to Nathan’s last response. Nathan at this juncture makes a few eye and hand gestures to his less talkative comrade. Nathan’s friend nods and stands by the door while Nathan addresses you again. “Okay friendo, I’m going to tell you this because quite frankly I don’t want to be bothered running around speaking to every little two copper thug that’s in this city and you seem to deal with most of them anyway. Even if you don’t then you know enough of them that they’ll spread the word to the rest.” “And that word is exactly?” “The ECS is taking over ALL operations here. A pocket isn’t going to be picked in this city without us guiding the hand and getting our cut. This might not be today, this might not be tomorrow, it might not even be next year, but we are coming and nobody here is going to stop us.” “Anything else?” “Yeah, let everyone know that the ECS isn’t unreasonable. If they seek us out for official membership we will consider them. Even if they aren’t quite up to our standards, we’ll find something for them as an associate. One thing we WILL NOT tolerate however is resistance. So let everyone know, defying the Ebony Claws won’t be in their best interest if they wish to continue their choice of careers in the future.” You don’t have much to add to that, save for a nod. “So I trust I can count on you for this task?” Nathan asks. “Sure, I’ll spread the word, though I’m wondering about my place in this new order you’re proposing.” You say. “Oh I’m not worried about you. You seem intelligent enough to know to step aside when a storm is coming. For now you can continue your business as usual. We can discuss your future when things are more settled. I’m sure we’ll talk again many more times soon.” Nathan smiles and bids you good day. As he and his friend start to walk out the door, you realize that now you really do have to speak with Mara personally. Later on in the week you go to seek her out, though you stay out of sight until you can get her alone which isn’t really a long wait since you find out that she mostly works alone and at night when she’s not socializing with her fellow Black Hooks. You follow her for a while as she creeps into a couple closed businesses, and then make your presence known when she’s sneaking out of a bakery of all places. “Didn’t realize the bakeries were doing so well.” You say. “Shit! Oh damn it, there goes my evening snack!” Mara exclaims when she gets startled by you and then drops the pastry she stole. Mara composes herself and then looks at you. She’s grown a bit. Granted you knew that and you’ve seen her from afar, but this the first time in two years you’ve spoke to her and seen her this close. You sort of expect Mara to either walk away from you or get nasty, but she doesn’t, instead you get: “Hey…dad.” She says. “So, you’re my daughter now?” you ask “Well what would you call us?” “I dunno, you made a pretty damning accusation before you left two years ago.” “Yeah…I really shouldn’t have said that. Always sort of thought I should apologize to you, but…I dunno…guess I was just too stubborn.” “Well I could have apologized as well. I was stubborn too, though I also thought that you’d just yell at me and walk away.” “Maybe in the beginning I suppose, but I haven’t really been angry at you for a long time. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t have gotten as mad as I did, but…” “Yeah I know. You needed to have friends your own age. That’s another reason why I just let you be.” Mara smirks a bit. “Bullshit. You’ve still been keeping an eye on me all this time. Even when you stopped physically spying, you got those two idiots Dolan and Addison when he was still alive to spy for you.” She replies. “Guilty. So when did Dolan confess his guts to you?” you ask with a bit of a smile. “Actually Dolan and Addison never told me anything directly, but they became so obvious as time wore on that I knew they weren’t just being horny guys staring at me and trying to eavesdrop on me. When I found out that several of the Black Hooks would do business with you, I sort of drew my own conclusions after following them around a bit.” Mara remarks. “So any reason why you kept it to yourself and didn’t tell Marco or even confront me about it?” “Well like I said, I was too stubborn to go see you in person again, and I figured why mess up perfectly good business between you and the Black Hooks? That wouldn’t benefit anyone and I didn’t want to see you possibly get hurt since I know that you were just concerned about me.” Mara then walks forward towards and touches your hand. “You stepped up and looked after me when I was well on my way to an orphanage. At least you taught me skills to survive and were nice. Who knows what would have happened in the orphanage. I won’t ever just forget that and I’m sorry we parted the way we did.” “Like I said, that’s all in the past. Don’t worry about that now.” “That’s good to hear you say that, though I feel like you didn’t just come see me to reconnect again.” “There’s trouble coming for everyone in this city and maybe the Black Hooks most of all.” You and Mara go some place more private (And less near some place she just broke into) and you explain the situation with the Ebony Claw Syndicate. While she’s definitely listening to you, you don’t think she quite appreciates the situation. “The Black Hooks will fight back against these Ebony Claws if they start showing up and throwing their weight around.” Mara says. “No, no, that’s exactly what you DON’T want to do with these guys. Look Mara, I’ll acknowledge that the Black Hooks are more skilled than I originally gave them credit for and they’ve lasted longer than I thought too. But when it comes down to it, you’re all still a bunch of teenagers that don’t know shit. The ECS has been around for…shit I dunno even know how long. These guys aren’t just a gang like your Black Hook friends or even the Crimson Talons, they’re a powerful organization that rivals fucking governments at times. Jicol is a prime meat for them and they aren’t going to be denied their dinner.” “I hear what you’re saying, but how do we really know all this? What I mean is, how do we know it isn’t all just stories? Have you really ever had to deal with them in before? They never had a presence in Klyton, maybe their rep is exaggerated.” “I won’t argue that maybe it is to some degree, but I also don’t see the need for a pointless risk. Honestly, the Black Hooks would probably be incorporated into the EBS, you’d probably be fine if you complied.” “Perhaps, but I doubt if Marco would agree to it. He’s got some plans of his own and getting assimilated or pushed around by a rival group isn’t part of it.” “Well you better convince him otherwise then, because it won’t end well for the Black Hooks if you go to war with the Ebony Claws.” Mara has her own suggestion. “Well…can’t we all just unite?” Mara asks. “What do you mean?” you ask. “I mean don’t you have connections with a lot of the other independent thieves and such? I mean surely they wouldn’t want the ECS coming in, pushing them around and taking a cut of their money either.” “Well some of them wouldn’t be pleased. Others I’d wager would just throw their lot in with ECS thanks to their reputation alone.” “But couldn’t we convince enough of them to repel this invasion?” “That’s a tall order, but…I suppose it could be possible. We’d have to act fast though and we’d have to track down the current ECS outpost here and eliminate them all. I mean leave nobody left. With some luck MAYBE with nobody reporting back to the mainland, the ECS will just assume the worst and not bother sending anyone else. If not, well we just continue with the united front and kill the ECS as they arrive until they stop. I don’t have to tell you though how dangerous that’s all going to be.” Mara seems more receptive to that plan, though you’re usually more for anything that’s going to result in less risk for life and limb, but you’ve also got the long term to think about which is do you really want to answer to the ECS? > You comply You’ve already been given a good deal and fighting the ECS is just crazy. Hopefully you can make Mara see that. “Mara, we only just reunited and I don’t want to lose you now. We need to not oppose the ECS.” “Okay. I understand. However, I can’t just abandon my friends either. I’m going to try to convince them…though I don’t know how much success I’m going to have, but I need to try.” You hug Mara and breathe a sigh of relief. It isn’t the complete break from the Black Hooks that you wanted, but it’s a start and she’s at least listening. You part ways with Mara and tell her to be careful. You hope that she gives up her plan before things get worse with the ECS. In the meantime you go back to your own business and perform the task that the ECS told you to do. Many of the thieves’ express a certain amount of fear and respect upon hearing the Ebony Claws are in the city. Several outright say they’re leaving it now. Many others mutter a bit about the end of the independent is at hand. A rare few say they’re actually going to oppose the Claws. Madness, you believe with the last group, but you’re merely relaying information, not trying to change anyone’s minds, other than Mara’s. Weeks pass and while you see Mara every now and then still, you begin to worry because you thought she would have given up this foolishness of convincing the Black Hooks by now. She’s been going for slow burn of trying to convince them, but so far she’s only got a couple who simply say that while they aren’t keen on fighting with the ECS, they don’t really want to oppose Marco. And convincing him has been completely unsuccessful. You really don’t want to interfere since you know if you do, it’s possibly just going to drive Mara back into the Black Hooks. Your concern increases when you hear that the Black Hooks killed two of ECS members and burned down a general store, which was acting as their headquarters. Already the Black Hooks are declaring victory over the ECS, which you know is not true. When you ask Dolan what the two men looked like that they killed, they don’t match the description of Nathan and his friend at all. The ECS probably has a lot more folks on here than anyone knows. The general store was probably just a business front they were getting ready to set up and their real headquarters is elsewhere. Wherever it is though, you know the Black Hooks don’t have long for this world and you need to get Mara the hell out of there. As soon as you’re able, you make your way down to the popular Black Hook hangout near a small beach and under a boardwalk. You see a lot of them drinking, laughing and generally having a good time. You don’t even get the hostile territorial attitude that you’d expect. “Hey it’s fence man! Have a drink! We’re celebrating our victory over those Ebony Claw pussies!” one of them says thrusting a bottle of something at you. “Yeah! We just saved the fuckin’ city! We’re heroes!” another says. “Ohh, who’s this one? He’s old…but handsome, you wanna give me a spanking daddy?” a mildly drunk girl says to you. You tell them all to get off of you and ask if anyone has seen Mara. None of them have though. You don’t have much luck until Marco suddenly shows up. He’s certainly grown since the first time Mara brough him around two years ago, but you’re hardly intimidated. “What the fuck do you want? This is a private celebration for Black Hooks only, not pussies who quake in fear of the ECS! The ECS that WE just destroyed!” he says. “Yeah, sure you did. Look, I’ll leave you assholes to your dead man’s party in a moment, but I’m looking for Mara, now where the hell is she?” “Hey cocksucker, I dunno where you THINK you are, but this is fucking Black Hook territory and you’re talking to the fucking head of it! You don’t come into my fucking place and start…” Before Marco can even finish, you punch him in the face and trip him to the sand. You then place a knee into his chest and pull your flintlock on him. The rest of his minions don’t even make a move against you. They just look on in awe. Marco on the other hand looks on in fear. “I don’t have time for this shit Marco, I wanna know where my daughter is NOW!” you ask. “Okay! Just don’t shoot! I dunno where she is! She kept coming around trying to convince us not to fight with the ECS, but after a really big argument a few days ago, she and a few others that agreed with her finally left for good. I think she’s been hanging out with them on the other side of city! And that’s all I know, I swear!” You’re about to ask where on the other side of the city and that’s when you hear the sound of a bolt going into someone followed by their body dropping. Several more bolts, as well as bullets follow. “Oh shit! It’s the ECS and there’s a shitload of them!” someone screams. You look around from your position and see that there are indeed A LOT of ECS members all armed and surrounding the area. Some of the Black Hooks are trying to escape by swimming out further into the water, but thanks to most of them being drunk, they don’t get very far and just become even easier targets Marco pushes you off of him in an attempt to escape, but he gets struck down by crossbow fire after only getting a few paces away from you. You attempt to shout at the ECS explaining that you’re not with the Black Hooks, but they’re not in a listening mood and as far as their concerned, you were found with them, so… You die on the sand, with several bolts in your body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 32 “I just paid you! Dolan exclaims. “Yeah and you know the damn rules Dolan, you can get Numb AFTER you give me the information as well!” you say. “But I don’t know any more! I swear! I’m got my ass chewed out by Marco already for asking too many questions! Hasn’t all the other information I’ve given you in the past been good?” “Hmmm, fine. But I’d advise you to start going easy on this stuff. It’s not as simple to acquire anymore. So unless you want to go risk getting that inferior Green Lotus shit that got your buddy killed due to getting a bad batch, I suggest you not even come back unless you got a lot of coin or some information I can actually use. Now you better get out of here before some other Black Hooks come in to sell something and overhear that you’re spying on all of them.” Dolan meekly takes his small container of Numb and scampers away like the low life he is. The boy had no idea that it was going to lead up to this, though you planned that it would. A somewhat reliable mole in the Black Hooks just so you can keep an ear out on what they’re doing, though it’s still more to keep a check on Mara who apparently is doing well in her position with Black Hooks though that doesn’t surprise you for several reasons. In some ways you’re actually proud of her, but as always there is still concern. Especially with what you’ve been hearing lately and the Jicol Watch is the least of potential problems. A few members of the infamous Ebony Claw Syndicate have been seen in the city. You’ve already heard the many tales of the Ebony Claw Syndicate. They’re a huge organization with a shitload of resources behind them and when they start showing up regularly in a city that usually means it’s currently in their sights for expansion. And if they do expand, there isn’t much that is going to stop them, as most of the criminal here are unorganized. Anyone who they don’t bother to incorporate into their organization is going to just get eliminated. This development has got you slightly more concerned for Mara since as a member of the only potential “organized resistance” to an ECS take over the Black Hooks could very be on the list for elimination. You aren’t really sure what you can do though. You haven’t spoken to Mara since she left two years ago and she’s made no effort to contact you. Of course you haven’t really made the effort to speak with her either and it’s not like you couldn’t meet her alone given the eye you keep on her with your drug addled spy. You suppose you haven’t since you aren’t sure if she’d want to see you. For a couple days you seriously mull over the idea of going to see her or not and that’s when you get a visit from members of the ECS. “Figured it wouldn’t be long before you guys showed up.” You say when they come through the door. The pair of them are about the sort you’d expect from the ECS, a couple of intimidating muscular guys with tattoos. They don’t answer you right away and just briefly look around before addressing you. “I take it you’re the fence of this city?” one of them asks. “Well I’m hardly the only one.” You reply. “Yes, but we’ve heard that you’re probably the best one.” “Really? Glad to hear my reputation is in good standing with the underworld I suppose. Never can quite tell in this line of work as I’m sure you well know.” “Hmm, can’t say I’m impressed with the Jicol underworld if you’re considered the best, but looks can be deceiving I suppose especially since you seem to have even eluded being under suspicion by the Jicol Watch here. It at least shows you know how to keep a low profile, which displays signs of professionalism. In any case my name is Nathan and since you already seemed to know we were going to show up I’m going to go ahead and assume you know why we’re here.” Nathan says. “Well I can take a guess, but for all I know you might be here to kill me.” You reply. “Oh we don’t have nearly enough information about this city and it’s major players to start killing anyone yet. However it doesn’t seem like there are any major players unless we count the actual government…or have we missed someone?” “Are you asking me?” “I don’t know, am I? Surely an important man as you knows things. Of course if you’re saying you don’t know anything, maybe we should talk to someone else…” “Hold on. I didn’t say that I didn’t know anything. It’s just that you’re fairly correct about the situation in Jicol. The underworld element here has no real uniting entity and I don’t have much to add.” “Interesting. So what about this other group I’ve heard about in passing, the Black Hookers or something?” “Um, the Black Hooks. Yes, mostly an unruly gang of amateur teenagers who think they’re tough. Not really that important.” “I see. Though from what I hear their numbers are sizable and the youth are easily molded if given the proper motivation and training.” You don’t respond to Nathan’s last response. Nathan at this juncture makes a few eye and hand gestures to his less talkative comrade. Nathan’s friend nods and stands by the door while Nathan addresses you again. “Okay friendo, I’m going to tell you this because quite frankly I don’t want to be bothered running around speaking to every little two copper thug that’s in this city and you seem to deal with most of them anyway. Even if you don’t then you know enough of them that they’ll spread the word to the rest.” “And that word is exactly?” “The ECS is taking over ALL operations here. A pocket isn’t going to be picked in this city without us guiding the hand and getting our cut. This might not be today, this might not be tomorrow, it might not even be next year, but we are coming and nobody here is going to stop us.” “Anything else?” “Yeah, let everyone know that the ECS isn’t unreasonable. If they seek us out for official membership we will consider them. Even if they aren’t quite up to our standards, we’ll find something for them as an associate. One thing we WILL NOT tolerate however is resistance. So let everyone know, defying the Ebony Claws won’t be in their best interest if they wish to continue their choice of careers in the future.” You don’t have much to add to that, save for a nod. “So I trust I can count on you for this task?” Nathan asks. “Sure, I’ll spread the word, though I’m wondering about my place in this new order you’re proposing.” You say. “Oh I’m not worried about you. You seem intelligent enough to know to step aside when a storm is coming. For now you can continue your business as usual. We can discuss your future when things are more settled. I’m sure we’ll talk again many more times soon.” Nathan smiles and bids you good day. As he and his friend start to walk out the door, you realize that now you really do have to speak with Mara personally. Later on in the week you go to seek her out, though you stay out of sight until you can get her alone which isn’t really a long wait since you find out that she mostly works alone and at night when she’s not socializing with her fellow Black Hooks. You follow her for a while as she creeps into a couple closed businesses, and then make your presence known when she’s sneaking out of a bakery of all places. “Didn’t realize the bakeries were doing so well.” You say. “Shit! Oh damn it, there goes my evening snack!” Mara exclaims when she gets startled by you and then drops the pastry she stole. Mara composes herself and then looks at you. She’s grown a bit. Granted you knew that and you’ve seen her from afar, but this the first time in two years you’ve spoke to her and seen her this close. You sort of expect Mara to either walk away from you or get nasty, but she doesn’t, instead you get: “Hey…dad.” She says. “So, you’re my daughter now?” you ask “Well what would you call us?” “I dunno, you made a pretty damning accusation before you left two years ago.” “Yeah…I really shouldn’t have said that. Always sort of thought I should apologize to you, but…I dunno…guess I was just too stubborn.” “Well I could have apologized as well. I was stubborn too, though I also thought that you’d just yell at me and walk away.” “Maybe in the beginning I suppose, but I haven’t really been angry at you for a long time. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t have gotten as mad as I did, but…” “Yeah I know. You needed to have friends your own age. That’s another reason why I just let you be.” Mara smirks a bit. “Bullshit. You’ve still been keeping an eye on me all this time. Even when you stopped physically spying, you got those two idiots Dolan and Addison when he was still alive to spy for you.” She replies. “Guilty. So when did Dolan confess his guts to you?” you ask with a bit of a smile. “Actually Dolan and Addison never told me anything directly, but they became so obvious as time wore on that I knew they weren’t just being horny guys staring at me and trying to eavesdrop on me. When I found out that several of the Black Hooks would do business with you, I sort of drew my own conclusions after following them around a bit.” Mara remarks. “So any reason why you kept it to yourself and didn’t tell Marco or even confront me about it?” “Well like I said, I was too stubborn to go see you in person again, and I figured why mess up perfectly good business between you and the Black Hooks? That wouldn’t benefit anyone and I didn’t want to see you possibly get hurt since I know that you were just concerned about me.” Mara then walks forward towards and touches your hand. “You stepped up and looked after me when I was well on my way to an orphanage. At least you taught me skills to survive and were nice. Who knows what would have happened in the orphanage. I won’t ever just forget that and I’m sorry we parted the way we did.” “Like I said, that’s all in the past. Don’t worry about that now.” “That’s good to hear you say that, though I feel like you didn’t just come see me to reconnect again.” “There’s trouble coming for everyone in this city and maybe the Black Hooks most of all.” You and Mara go some place more private (And less near some place she just broke into) and you explain the situation with the Ebony Claw Syndicate. While she’s definitely listening to you, you don’t think she quite appreciates the situation. “The Black Hooks will fight back against these Ebony Claws if they start showing up and throwing their weight around.” Mara says. “No, no, that’s exactly what you DON’T want to do with these guys. Look Mara, I’ll acknowledge that the Black Hooks are more skilled than I originally gave them credit for and they’ve lasted longer than I thought too. But when it comes down to it, you’re all still a bunch of teenagers that don’t know shit. The ECS has been around for…shit I dunno even know how long. These guys aren’t just a gang like your Black Hook friends or even the Crimson Talons, they’re a powerful organization that rivals fucking governments at times. Jicol is a prime meat for them and they aren’t going to be denied their dinner.” “I hear what you’re saying, but how do we really know all this? What I mean is, how do we know it isn’t all just stories? Have you really ever had to deal with them in before? They never had a presence in Klyton, maybe their rep is exaggerated.” “I won’t argue that maybe it is to some degree, but I also don’t see the need for a pointless risk. Honestly, the Black Hooks would probably be incorporated into the EBS, you’d probably be fine if you complied.” “Perhaps, but I doubt if Marco would agree to it. He’s got some plans of his own and getting assimilated or pushed around by a rival group isn’t part of it.” “Well you better convince him otherwise then, because it won’t end well for the Black Hooks if you go to war with the Ebony Claws.” Mara has her own suggestion. “Well…can’t we all just unite?” Mara asks. “What do you mean?” you ask. “I mean don’t you have connections with a lot of the other independent thieves and such? I mean surely they wouldn’t want the ECS coming in, pushing them around and taking a cut of their money either.” “Well some of them wouldn’t be pleased. Others I’d wager would just throw their lot in with ECS thanks to their reputation alone.” “But couldn’t we convince enough of them to repel this invasion?” “That’s a tall order, but…I suppose it could be possible. We’d have to act fast though and we’d have to track down the current ECS outpost here and eliminate them all. I mean leave nobody left. With some luck MAYBE with nobody reporting back to the mainland, the ECS will just assume the worst and not bother sending anyone else. If not, well we just continue with the united front and kill the ECS as they arrive until they stop. I don’t have to tell you though how dangerous that’s all going to be.” Mara seems more receptive to that plan, though you’re usually more for anything that’s going to result in less risk for life and limb, but you’ve also got the long term to think about which is do you really want to answer to the ECS? > You resist You got run out of your home town, you got run out of Klyton, you’re sick of running even if the ECS aren’t driving you out in the traditional sense. Plus you just reunited with Mara, it would probably be best if you stuck by her if you want to continue a good relationship with her. “Mara, maybe you’re right I think we need to fight.” You say. “I agree, though I’ll admit I’m a little scared.” Mara replies. “Well good. You should be scared, because this is going to be dangerous. However, think of it this way. Right now we’ve got a numerical advantage and the element of surprise. The guy that spoke to me, Nathan seems to labor under the impression that I’m going to comply with his wishes to tell everyone to join them. Obviously I’m going to do the opposite.” “Do you think it will work?” “Like I said, it’s not going to be easy. I’m going to put out feelers for the ones who I know will resist first. In the meantime, I want you to go tell your boyfriend AND urge to him how serious this is. We need to all coordinate an attack plan and strike only when the time is right. If we go in half assed on this, we’re all going to hang. Now are you absolutely sure he and the rest of the Black Hooks aren’t going to be likely to join the ECS?” “Very sure. I certainly don’t want to and Marco isn’t my boyfriend.” “…he’s not? Hm, guess my information is severely out of date and Dolan isn’t as thorough as he claims.” “Well… things change, and it hasn’t been long. In fact nobody in the Black Hooks really knows yet.” “Oh. Um, you okay? I mean is there something really bad that happened that you’re not telling me?” “Yeah. It wasn’t a bad split or anything like that. Just wasn’t working out. Anyway, I think we got more important things to worry about with the Claws.” “So we do. Okay, you know what to do and I’m sure we’ll be speaking again sometime in the near future. Oh and I suppose you can go ahead and tell Dolan that he doesn’t need to worry about spying anymore.” “Okay.” Before you part ways, you hug Mara who returns it. You tell her to be careful and that you’re glad to be speaking with her again. You get to work immediately and eventually you manage to get together a group that you’re sure is going to be receptive to opposing the ECS, however a few of them have other concerns. “So who’s leading this resistance? You?” one of them asks. “Well I’m more of an organizer, but I suppose we can all contribute ideas.” You say. “A council? That sound like a terrible idea. Things like this a lot better with a defined leader.” Another says. “I dunno, isn’t this the sort of thing we’re trying to avoid? I mean we’re essentially forming a gang to oppose the ECS. And say we actually succeed, then what? We just avoided getting assimilated or eliminated at the cost of being independent in the first place.” yet another responds. “And what about those Black Hook bastards? You said they’re going to be involved? Can’t say I’m looking forward to that.” A fourth says. “I’m telling you one thing right now if that little shit Marco is supposed to be in charge of this, I’m out right now.” A fifth says. You can see how difficult is going to be already. “Okay, people, people! I understand all these concerns, but let me address some right now! First, this isn’t going to be a gang, its not even going to be a guild. This is just going to be a mutually beneficial alliance. We ALL agree to work together to oppose the ECS or any other threat to our interests. After said threat is gone, we can all go back to being little special grains of sand. As for the Black Hooks, we’re going to be allying with them as well, even if they’re their own separate entity. We just all need to coordinate and get as many people on board with this as possible.” You say. “Can I just say something?” an older man you only know as “Sneaks” asks. “Go ahead.” “I faced the ECS on a regular basis many years ago back in Holgard. I belonged to the Thieves Guild there that opposed them. We tried our best, but ultimately they wiped us out. I dare say I’m one of the few that got away to my knowledge. Now I already knew they were in this city before you even called this meeting. I actually planned on catching first ship out of here just because I didn’t want to go through this mess again. However, while they might be powerful the ECS tends to abandon places if it’s going to cost them more effort than it’s worth.” The old thief stands up from his chair to continue his speech. “So I think you’re correct in that if we do act now before they get entrenched like they did in Holgard, we might just stop them. I’m going to go try to convince a few others that respect my opinion to join us in this task. I urge you all to do the same because if we just let the ECS come in here, it’s going to be worse than you think if we just comply.” Between you and Sneaks’ speeches the rest seem more convinced of this cause. You realize it’s still going to take some hammering out all the details, but this is a good start. A bit more discussion goes on and eventually the group breaks up for the night. You tell Sneaks to stick around though since you want to speak with him a little more. “Hey, a lot of your words really helped I think. Pretty sure some of them would have left otherwise.” You say. “Well you put all this together so I think you’re more responsible than anyone else for this resistance.” Sneaks replies. “Funny enough I was seriously considering in just complying when the ECS first approached me, it was someone else who felt fighting was a more worthy pursuit. Glad she did now.” “Mmm, glad she did too. I think you would have found life under ECS yoke far less desirable than even fighting them. I was thinking that while it’s been well established that this is just a temporary alliance, a couple people were correct in that we probably should have a single leader instead of all of us just shouting ideas. More will get accomplished quicker if you just become the leader. I doubt if anyone is going to have any major objections.” “Oh. Well I guess it probably makes the most sense. You seem to have genuine experience in fighting the ECS though, sure you don’t want to do it?” you half joke. “Nah, I’ve never been a leader. I have been an advisor on more than one occasion though, so I’ll do that if you need.” A few days after you’ve had your meeting with the independents, you meet up with Mara who has brought Marco with her. You haven’t been looking forward to this meeting. You only met him in person once before the first time Mara brought him around two years ago, but he’s grown as well. He still has that tone of arrogance in his voice like he knows everything of course. If anything he’s even worse. “I don’t see why we’re waiting around for a bunch of old fucks before striking at these assholes. Word has it, that they’ve been setting up in a general store on Typhoon street. Me and my Black Hooks could easily take them out! We’ve been waiting for something like this, we got the gear and we’re ready!” Marco says. “Yeah? Well you’ll be even more ready if you’re just a bit more patient Marco. We need to coordinate plans, not go in half assed. I figured Mara explained this already to you.” You reply. Marco scowls a bit. “Hey look, I know this guy is your dad and he deals fairly with us with fencing shit, but he needs to know he can’t just tell me what to do. I’M the leader of the Black Hooks and after we’re done wiping out these Ebony Claw assholes, we’re going to be stepping things up to run this entire city!” “Great, so Mara have the Claw been in contact with any Black Hooks?” you say already getting sick of talking to Marco and deciding to speak with Mara instead. “HEY! I’m the fucking leader! You supposed to be fucking talking to ME about this shit, not my girlfriend!” “First off, I’ll talk to who the fuck I want, especially my daughter. Second, I thought you guys broke up.” Marco’s face drops and he looks more scared than angry. “You…you told him?! You promised you wouldn’t say anything!” Marco says. “No! No! I just told him we broke up!” Mara says. “I think I’m missing something here.” You say. The rest of the short meeting mostly consists of Mara trying to calm Marco down. You don’t know what it’s all about, but you’ve gotten the impression that it’s something embarrassing. By the time Marco does calm down, he’s even pissier with you and now he’s upset with Mara (Though he doesn’t get outright angry) Ultimately he grudgingly accepts the plan of waiting until everyone is ready. You nearly ask Mara what that was all about after he leaves, but you figure maybe it should wait for now. You just tell her to continue to be the rational influence in the Black Hooks. You have another meeting later on that week with Sneaks who has already gathered a bit of information on the ECS. He tells you contrary to what Marco believes, they are NOT all gathered in a general store on Typhoon Street. He mentions that’s just some front they’re already starting to set up. He mentions their real base isn’t even in the city; it’s in some small ruin on the island. “You followed them outside the city?” you ask. “Yeah, looks like an abandoned temple of Fel. I’m really not surprised given their history.” “What do you mean?” “Some of the ECS, mostly the higher ranking ones, have connections to Fel. You’re aware of who that is right?” “Sure, god of shadows. Some rogues are into him though most pray to Yag.” “Well that’s probably because most rogues aren’t actively religious and it’s easier to say few half assed praises to a god who’s just rolling the dice anyway. Dedication to Fel, and I mean true dedication to Fel is a little more involved, but it does seem to have benefits and I’ve seen those unfortunately in action when I was in Holgard.” “Shit. Are you telling me these folks have divine powers?” “No, not all of them, not even most of them. In fact I doubt if any of the ones sent here do. I’m just saying there is a history for high ranking leaders to have shadow powers. In any case, I believe there about thirty or so of them here. It’s definitely going to be a fight whenever we attack.” “Thirty is a lot more than I expected.” “Yeah well they probably were keeping stuff like that secret so if anyone tried anything now, they could determine who was going to be a problem and retaliate in force if they needed to.” Sneaks goes on to suggest that perhaps the Black Hooks should lead the assault since Marco is so eager. In fact he actually goes so far to not so subtly suggest that something should happen to Marco in particular. “I’m sort of wondering where this conversation is going Sneaks.” You say. “Okay, we both know the Black Hooks are a potential problem in the future. I mean yeah they won’t be the ECS, but they could start getting pretty territorial really fast if left unchecked. I’m just saying that the rest of us do a little less to help them and let them take most of the casualties. And if some of them just happen to accidentally get shot by a stray bullet or bolt…well shit happens.” Sneaks remarks. “That’s…pretty damn shady. Though I have to admit, I do see the logic in it, and I might actually consider it except for one major thing.” “What’s that?” “Mara is in the Black Hooks and I’m not exactly keen on using her as fodder.” “Okay, so I’ll just let everyone else know that your daughter is off limits and is not to be targeted.” “I dunno. I mean its one thing to let the Black Hooks take the brunt of the casualties, but it’s completely another thing to actively kill them in the middle of the fight when we’re supposed to be on the same side. Also while Mara might get spared, it’s going to be awfully suspicious if she’s the only Black Hook survivor. We may not be fond of them, but some of these people are her friends. She isn’t a stupid girl and will make her own conclusions.” “Well, I suppose it’s up to you, but I just don’t see it as a bad idea.” > You deal with the Black Hooks fairly While the Black Hooks are mostly a bunch of dumb obnoxious teenagers, they’re still exactly that, a bunch of dumb obnoxious teenagers. Other than Marco, most of the ones you’ve had dealings with haven’t really been hostile towards you. Most of them are probably going to get themselves kill during this fight anyway, no need for any sort of treachery. “No, we can’t afford to start stabbing our allies in the back, especially in this situation. I’m fairly certain the ECS is going to be doing a good enough job of whittling their numbers down anyway.” “Probably right. Just providing alternatives. So should we go over when and how we’re going to plan this attack?” You and Sneaks first go over the plans a few times, then you share this information with the rest of the Jicol Alliance, after sharing it with them, you share it with the Black Hooks. You still aren’t sure of when to attack since you want to make sure to get most if not all in one area and not have to chase any down, given how impatient Marco is getting and the fact that you’re really never going to know for sure when the best time is, you just decide to do it sooner rather than later, especially since you’re as ready as you all are going to get. You spend the day before the attack mostly getting yourself mentally prepared for this. You haven’t killed anyone since Klint and murder in general wasn’t really something you ever wanted make a habit of doing. However, you do know it’s within you to do it and you’re going to have to do it multiple times soon. You just take into consideration that Mara is going to be in danger the whole time and you’re going to have to kill in order to make sure she doesn’t die. Not that you think she’s going to be helpless, but it’s a better frame of mind to put yourself in if you’re thinking that way for this task. Your forces attack the ECS hideout at night. You actually tell the Black Hooks to stay back a bit since they’re more likely to be sloppier and you’re trying to keep this attack as silent as possible before an alarm is raised. You and some of the others sneak around and take out a few of the Claws on the perimeter. After about taking care of the ones outside, that’s when you signal for the Black Hooks (and everyone else) to follow you in. You actually manage to make it down to the lower level of this temple before on of the Black Hooks’ lack of experience start calling attention to the attack and before you know it, the alarm is at last raised. It was good while it lasted. The underground level to this place is almost maze like, with Ebony Claws coming out from behind every corner. You actually manage to stop a few of the Black Hooks from getting killed by pointing out traps that they nearly step on or trip. In fact, they start sticking close to you, Marco or the other more experienced thieves rather than just going off half assed. The whole time this is going on, you’re still trying to keep an eye on Mara who you’ve seen take out at least one person. You aren’t sure if she’s done that before or this is her first time. You guess you’ll ask after this is all over. Bullets, bolts, arrows, blades and traps of all kinds are dodged or blocked many times in this battle. The Ebony Claws fight back with everything they got, which includes several, fire powder bombs that take out a large part of your forces, enough to even up the odds. For your own dislike of the arrogant prick, Marco is actually being a deciding factor in keeping most of the remaining Black Hooks from just turning away and running. You sort of expected him to just be full of bravado and shit his pants when things got bad, but he’s really stepping up. Eventually you, Mara, Marco and a few others reach what you believe to be an altar room of some sort. You see Nathan and his friend that came with him when they first met you. “You fucking idiots. You have no idea of the deep shit you’re all in. You really think even if you some how manage to kill all of us this day, that you’re going to get away with it? Kill them all except that fucker right there, I wanna take my time with him.” Nathan shouts while pointing at you. Nathan at this point spout some sort of gibberish and become blurry and you’re having a hard time focusing on him. It would seem that Sneaks wasn’t entirely correct about none of their number having access to shadow magic. “Marco, you and me deal with the magic asshole, the rest of you cut the other one down and then help us!” you shout. Nathan is moving at a speed that you can barely defend against. If it wasn’t for Marco providing an extra target, you might very well be losing badly though given how it’s going, you still aren’t doing too well. Nathan slashes you across the face with his knife, kicks you in the balls and then slams you to the floor. He then punches you multiple times in the face before Marco manages to recover from his own previous beating and get Nathan off of you by stabbing him in the back. “Bastard!” Nathan grunts and backhands the teen to the floor. Nathan still has more than enough fight in him. He begins cutting up Marco who is desperately trying to cover himself. He manages to roll away and quickly stand up, but he’s losing a lot of blood from all the cuts. Meanwhile Mara has finally finished off Nathan’s friend and is the only one left from that combat. She rushes in to help you and Marco. Mara attempts to stab Nathan, but he anticipates the move and rather than just dodging it, he spins behind Marco causing her to run him through instead. Mara is in so much shock at what she’s done, Nathan takes advantage and pushes Marco’s dying body towards her, causing them both to fall to the floor with her partially trapped underneath. Fortunately for you, Nathan is a bit of a gloater and hasn’t been paying attention to you like he should. While he was kicking Marco’s ass and spouting how stupid it was to oppose the ECS to Mara, you’ve managed to reload your flintlock. Even with your face half beaten and Nathan already a bit blurring from his shadow magic shit he’s using, you’re not missing at this range. You fire and you hit Nathan squarely in the kneecap. He screams in agony and collapses. You always heard it was the most painful place to get shot, you never quite believed that before now, because Nathan isn’t just screaming he’s actually crying and praying to Fel to rescue him. If Fel was listening, he apparently didn’t give a shit, because while Nathan was crying and screaming, Mara recovered from her shock rolled out from under Marco and starts stabbing the shit out of him. By the time you stagger over to Mara, Nathan is a bloody mess. “Mara, Mara, I think he’s dead.” You say touching her shoulder. She looks at you with tears and blood over her face and then stands up to hug you. “I…I’m so glad you’re still alive! I couldn’t bear to lose you too! So many…so many of my friends…” she says. “I know. I know. But we’re alive. That’s the important thing. Other than the obvious, are you okay?” “Physically I guess. I mean I feel better than you look right now.” “You also look better than I look too.” You attempt to joke. “I always did.” Mara says with a faint smile. “Hah. Shit, Let me just lean up against this altar for a moment.” You say and start reloading your flintlock with another shot. “Do you know if we won?” Mara asks. “I believe we might have won this particular battle. Hopefully none of them got away because I’m not really in any condition to go chasing them down.” You say. “Now what?” “Well that is the question I suppose. I imagine we’re really not going to know if we’re in the clear or not for a while. As I said, the ECS may or may not send more folks here eventually to check on what happened. I’m gonna bet that they will and hopefully not many. If and when that day comes we’re going to have to deal with them too. We may even be looking over our shoulder for the rest of our lives if they find out exactly who wiped out everyone, but then again how is that different from how it is now right?” Your conversation with Mara is interrupted by Sneaks who wanders in cautiously. He notes the carnage in the room and nods. “Phew, looks like I missed quite the battle here.” Sneaks says. “Yes, but is there still fighting going on elsewhere?” you say. “I don’t think so, in fact I’m pretty sure we got them all. I counted thirty-six bodies, not counting these two on the floor.” “Looks like there were more than you previously thought.” “Yeah, apologies. Curse these old eyes.” “You know this one had those shadow magic powers you mentioned.” “He did? Shit. Again, my apologies. I really didn’t think they would bother to send someone like that here. At least not initially, they usually hold back their heavies for more important tasks.” “I dunno, establishing a new base of operations and taking over new territory seems pretty important to me.” “Yeah I guess so. But in any case we won. We probably should clean up the bodies and make it seem like nobody was ever here. Also need to hit that storefront in town. There are probably a few there as well. “ “Shit, nearly forgot about that. We still have people left in fighting condition?” “Not many, but I think the few that we do will be more than willing to go now.” “Good, send them over then.” Sneaks nods and tells you he’s glad to see you and your daughter made it through this alive before leaving. Mara noticing you frowning a bit. “What’s wrong?” Mara asks. “I dunno. Maybe nothing. I mean Sneaks has been pretty helpful…it’s just…bah maybe I just have trust issues.” “No need to explain to me. It’s not like you can trust too many people in this line of work.” “Hey, you can always trust me.” You say. “I suppose I can.” You and Mara leave the bloody room with several bodies behind you. You aren’t quite sure what the future holds next, but you survived this day and that’s enough for now. > You time passes... Year 35 A hand reaches for the pouch on your nearby dresser; you grab it and open your eyes. “Nope, still not quick or stealthy enough.” You say and let go of Mara’s hand. “How the hell do you do that? I know I was dead silent that time!” Mara remarks. “Just comes with natural talent I suppose.” Mara at this point playfully punches your arm and sits on the side of the bed, as you sit up. “A little early to be harassing me like this don’t you think?” you say. “It’s the afternoon as usual.” Mara tells you. “Well unless the Ebony Claws have been sighted, you know I don’t like getting up early…they haven’t have they?” “Not that I’ve heard. Though Sneaks wants to talk to you about a matter concerning that.” “Yeah, yeah, he’s been wanting to talk for a few days now. Guess I better get over to him today. He’s been acting sort of odd lately. Well I guess I better get going…um…Mara?” “What?” “I gotta get dressed.” “So don’t let me stop you.” “Well what I mean is, I sort of need privacy, I mean I’m covered by the sheets right now.” “Oh, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” “Okay…don’t really want to hear or know about any little boyfriends you’ve been seeing.” “I wasn’t talking about boyfriends.” Mara says with a smirk. Now the conversation has really gotten strange. “Wait a minute, you haven’t been spying on me have you?” you exclaim. “Relax, I accidently walked in on you asleep once and you were, shall we say less covered up.” Mara says. You feel sort of weird. Slightly embarrassed even. This causes some amusement from Mara. “Okay, I’ll leave. You’re oddly reserved at times.” Mara says and then kisses you on cheek before she leaves. Honestly, you’ve been getting some weird vibes from Mara lately. Sometimes it feels like she’s flirting with you. Which under normal circumstances, you’d probably be perfectly fine with some pretty nineteen year old girl doing that, however in Mara’s case you have severe mixed feelings about it. Of course maybe you’re just reading too much into things, and you’re just the pervert thinking dirty thoughts. Which doesn’t make it much better because that’s been also increasing lately. Trying not to think about any of that too much longer, you get dressed and head to where Sneaks likes to drink. He tends to be in there a lot so you figure you’ve got a good chance of catching him there. You’re in luck and you do in fact see him. He sees you and waves you over. Ten minutes later… “Are you fucking serious Sneaks?” you exclaim. “Sorry it had to come to this, but after that devastating ECS attack last year, it was decided that you shouldn’t be in charge of the Jicol Alliance anymore.” Sneaks remarks. “I wasn’t really in charge of it before as I remember. It was just supposed to be a loose agreement that we unite whenever the Ebony Claws attack. All I did was organize shit.” “Yeah well it was also decided that the Jicol Alliance should be a more permanent institution given the constant threat that the ECS poses.” “What?! And when was all this decided?” “I don’t really think that’s relevant. What is relevant is it’s done and you’re out. Now of course you’re allowed to continue to help in the unified defense of our interests in this city. You and your girlfriend…” “Daughter!” “Yes, of course, my mistake. As I was saying you of course will be allowed in contributing to help when the ECS inevitably comes to attack again. I believe forty percent of your earnings monthly should provide an adequate sum to go towards our defense. Perhaps it could be used to bribe the Captain of the Watch. Get the law to work for us for a change…” You knew it. You knew all those years ago you should have just shot this asshole in that altar room. He’s built up his own little circle of friends and turned the Jicol Alliance into a thieves’s guild with himself as head of it of course. Angered by what Sneaks is trying to pull here, you stand up and point you finger in his face. Nearby tavern dwellers take notice and you also notice some of them look ready to pull their weapons. Some are new but many are familiar faces. Part of the new Jicol Alliance of course. “Look, you want to form your own guild with yourself as leader, fine. You can have that fucking headache. You want me to help out when the ECS shows up, fine, I’ll help. What you’re NOT going to do however is start trying to fucking extort me.” You say. “Hm, sorry you feel that way, but I’m afraid that this isn’t up for negotiation. This is unfortunately for you this is a with us or against us situation. Of course your other option is to leave, I certainly wouldn’t stop you. I respect you enough to do that at least.” Sneaks responds. “Yeah, thank you and fuck you.” Sneaks’ expression now turns to one of irritation. “Okay, I’m going to let that slide because I know this is all pretty upsetting for you.” Sneaks says. “Upset? Upset? We’re pretty much past fucking upset! I should just fucking kill you right now, and don’t think I wouldn’t be fast enough.” You respond. “You’re completely right of course, but you’d never make it out of here alive. Even if you somehow did, you’d be on the run from the Jicol Watch for killing me in public.” “At least I’d have the satisfaction of killing you.” “Y’know while I’m sure you’re not probably not interested I could try to explain why I did what I did. Wasn’t like I had this planned from the beginning.” “Oh great the rationale to clear your guilt. Pfft. Well fine, might as well hear it. I could use a good laugh after all this.” “Have I ever told you about my friend Garrick?” Sneaks asks. “Yeah maybe, said you and he ran the thieves’ guild in Holgard.” You answer in exasperation. “Garrick was a thief, but he had a strong sense of honor, probably too much in our line of work. You actually reminded me of him when you first came proposing the Jicol Alliance to take the fight to the Ebony Claws. Guess that’s another reason why I stuck around. I always was a bit too idealistic, even in my old age now. You, much like him, made it really sound like we would win and drive out the Claws. I was ready to follow and I did for many years.” “So what did you do? Stab him in the back too?” “As a matter of fact I didn’t, though I always wondered if I shouldn’t have been so loyal and blindly accepting of his orders as he made one foolish decision after another that eventually got himself and almost everyone else wiped out by the ECS. Maybe if I had, I’d still be in Holgard, perhaps even running things there.” “So that’s what this is all about? Your boring desire for power?” “That’s more of a side benefit and if I THOUGHT you were still the leader you were the first time we opposed the Ebony Claws, I wouldn’t have even done this. Each year they’ve attacked, we’ve suffered more losses. I don’t even know if we’re going to survive another, but I know if YOU’RE in charge we won’t, so you had to be removed. Look, I’m probably older than I have any right to be in our line of work, but I’ve learned this. I like living, I like surviving, and the only way I’m going to feel like I’m going to continue doing that is if I have complete control over my fate, rather than it being in your hands.” “If you wanted to be in charge, you could have just fucking asked. Instead of all this shit you’ve pulled and extorting me on top of all of it.” “I dunno, maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ve handled this poorly, but it’s been my experience that men in power, no matter how reluctant or how miniscule, do not give it up willingly. Garrick certainly wouldn’t have and he wasn’t a power hungry man, just like you’re not. However, a good leader needs to be focused and much like Garrick, you are not focused.” “Oh well apologies that my life doesn’t revolve around you all the damn time.” “That’s not exactly what I mean…” “I don’t give a shit what you mean, I’m done listening to your long winded story about your excuses.” As you start to stand up to leave, Sneaks suddenly shouts at you to stop. Sneaks usually never shouts so actually gets your attention (along with several other people in the tavern) “You wanna know another thing you and Garrick had in common? You both had a young girl in your care. A daughter of sorts if you will. One that you do your best to try treat as adult, but always have that streak of overprotective fatherly love for her. It’s an admirable trait, but it’s at odds for that other emotion in you. And that’s a love for her as a regular woman, because that’s what she is now. Maybe young, but she’s a woman nonetheless given what’s she’s seen and done. I see it and you REALLY see it.” Sneaks says. “Sneaks, you don’t want to go there…” “Yeah, and neither do you. Garrick didn’t either and it compromised his ability to lead. Besides all the inner turmoil the man probably felt about the morality of the situation, he constantly tried to make sure his little girl was safe…never mind that in his case she was half fucking demon in question, but the problem you both have is the same. You’re always going to place your girlfriend over the organization. Last year that was never more apparent.” “How the fuck can you say that? She’s risking her life along with everyone else!” “Yes, but only in a limited capacity. You always make sure she’s on the less dangerous tasks. I’m not even mad about it. As I said, it’s completely understandable that you want to protect your girlfriend.” “You call her my girlfriend one more time and you’re going to have a short lived reign as Alliance leader.” You say leaning forward into the table. Sneaks leans forward as well, meeting your gaze. “I’m not judging you. She’s not really your…y’know what? This isn’t my business. Sort out your own personal issues on this situation, but I think your real fear is the girl might just feel the same way. In any case, I’ll be expecting my cut by the end of this month. If I have the coin, then I’ll know I have your cooperation, if I don’t receive the payment, then I’ll know that I don’t.” Sneaks then motions for you to leave as if now you can leave. You gladly do so, swearing the whole time. Your mind races about what you can do, what you need to do, what you should do. You really didn’t need this right now. Not when your mind has been preoccupied with other things. Other things that Sneaks also got in your head about. You’ve got an incredible headache by the time you make it home. You just hope Mara isn’t lingering around, because you don’t think you have the energy to deal with all this yet. She’s probably going to want to fight rather than leave. As you open the door to your home, you suddenly feel the sharp jab of a crossbow pointed right at your lower back. “Don’t turn around, just get inside.” A low voice says to you. You raise your hands and slowly walk inside your home where you see a man completely dressed in black leather and wearing an eye patch. You don’t know who this person is, but you can guess where they’re from. “Ebony Claw…great. Perfect end to a fucked up day.” You say. “Hm, seems I caught the leader of the Jicol Alliance at a bad time? Well too bad, we’ve got shit to discuss. Bolt, you can leave, I’ll take it from here.” The man says. You feel the pressure taken off of your lower back and then the front door closing behind you. “Gotta say, figured the Alliance leader would have a better place than this, but then I guess you’re not doing too badly. Anyway have a seat, as I said we’ve got shit to discuss.” This asshole no doubt has shadow powers like Nathan and a couple of the other ECS lieutenants you’ve faced in the past. Still, like all of their type he’s arrogant enough to not even relieved you of your weapons and doesn’t even have another person with him save for the guy that just left. Whatever he’s going to say is most likely going to just be some sort of lie or unreasonable offer. Not to mention the fact that you aren’t exactly the leader of the Jicol Alliance anymore and if he knows that, then he’s going to wonder what the point is with dealing with you. Still, he could be more powerful than what you’ve usually faced, or he might even have some advantage like say having Mara hostage somewhere. He seems to know something about you after all. You could at least listen to him while you figure out a better plan than just trying to be quicker on the draw than he is. > You shoot him No sooner have you pulled your pistol, when the man quickly speaks something and waves his hand making all your surroundings go pitch black. You fire wildly and miss him of course. Then you feel a blade going into your neck. The unnatural darkness lifts hen you fall to the ground and see the man standing over you as you choke on your own blood “That was a very silly thing to do. I was going to offer you a deal. Now your rashness has doomed your precious Alliance when you might have saved it.” He says shaking his head. It hardly matters that he doesn’t know the truth since you’re dead before he walks back out the door to methodically murder the rest of the Jicol Alliance himself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 35 A hand reaches for the pouch on your nearby dresser; you grab it and open your eyes. “Nope, still not quick or stealthy enough.” You say and let go of Mara’s hand. “How the hell do you do that? I know I was dead silent that time!” Mara remarks. “Just comes with natural talent I suppose.” Mara at this point playfully punches your arm and sits on the side of the bed, as you sit up. “A little early to be harassing me like this don’t you think?” you say. “It’s the afternoon as usual.” Mara tells you. “Well unless the Ebony Claws have been sighted, you know I don’t like getting up early…they haven’t have they?” “Not that I’ve heard. Though Sneaks wants to talk to you about a matter concerning that.” “Yeah, yeah, he’s been wanting to talk for a few days now. Guess I better get over to him today. He’s been acting sort of odd lately. Well I guess I better get going…um…Mara?” “What?” “I gotta get dressed.” “So don’t let me stop you.” “Well what I mean is, I sort of need privacy, I mean I’m covered by the sheets right now.” “Oh, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.” “Okay…don’t really want to hear or know about any little boyfriends you’ve been seeing.” “I wasn’t talking about boyfriends.” Mara says with a smirk. Now the conversation has really gotten strange. “Wait a minute, you haven’t been spying on me have you?” you exclaim. “Relax, I accidently walked in on you asleep once and you were, shall we say less covered up.” Mara says. You feel sort of weird. Slightly embarrassed even. This causes some amusement from Mara. “Okay, I’ll leave. You’re oddly reserved at times.” Mara says and then kisses you on cheek before she leaves. Honestly, you’ve been getting some weird vibes from Mara lately. Sometimes it feels like she’s flirting with you. Which under normal circumstances, you’d probably be perfectly fine with some pretty nineteen year old girl doing that, however in Mara’s case you have severe mixed feelings about it. Of course maybe you’re just reading too much into things, and you’re just the pervert thinking dirty thoughts. Which doesn’t make it much better because that’s been also increasing lately. Trying not to think about any of that too much longer, you get dressed and head to where Sneaks likes to drink. He tends to be in there a lot so you figure you’ve got a good chance of catching him there. You’re in luck and you do in fact see him. He sees you and waves you over. Ten minutes later… “Are you fucking serious Sneaks?” you exclaim. “Sorry it had to come to this, but after that devastating ECS attack last year, it was decided that you shouldn’t be in charge of the Jicol Alliance anymore.” Sneaks remarks. “I wasn’t really in charge of it before as I remember. It was just supposed to be a loose agreement that we unite whenever the Ebony Claws attack. All I did was organize shit.” “Yeah well it was also decided that the Jicol Alliance should be a more permanent institution given the constant threat that the ECS poses.” “What?! And when was all this decided?” “I don’t really think that’s relevant. What is relevant is it’s done and you’re out. Now of course you’re allowed to continue to help in the unified defense of our interests in this city. You and your girlfriend…” “Daughter!” “Yes, of course, my mistake. As I was saying you of course will be allowed in contributing to help when the ECS inevitably comes to attack again. I believe forty percent of your earnings monthly should provide an adequate sum to go towards our defense. Perhaps it could be used to bribe the Captain of the Watch. Get the law to work for us for a change…” You knew it. You knew all those years ago you should have just shot this asshole in that altar room. He’s built up his own little circle of friends and turned the Jicol Alliance into a thieves’s guild with himself as head of it of course. Angered by what Sneaks is trying to pull here, you stand up and point you finger in his face. Nearby tavern dwellers take notice and you also notice some of them look ready to pull their weapons. Some are new but many are familiar faces. Part of the new Jicol Alliance of course. “Look, you want to form your own guild with yourself as leader, fine. You can have that fucking headache. You want me to help out when the ECS shows up, fine, I’ll help. What you’re NOT going to do however is start trying to fucking extort me.” You say. “Hm, sorry you feel that way, but I’m afraid that this isn’t up for negotiation. This is unfortunately for you this is a with us or against us situation. Of course your other option is to leave, I certainly wouldn’t stop you. I respect you enough to do that at least.” Sneaks responds. “Yeah, thank you and fuck you.” Sneaks’ expression now turns to one of irritation. “Okay, I’m going to let that slide because I know this is all pretty upsetting for you.” Sneaks says. “Upset? Upset? We’re pretty much past fucking upset! I should just fucking kill you right now, and don’t think I wouldn’t be fast enough.” You respond. “You’re completely right of course, but you’d never make it out of here alive. Even if you somehow did, you’d be on the run from the Jicol Watch for killing me in public.” “At least I’d have the satisfaction of killing you.” “Y’know while I’m sure you’re not probably not interested I could try to explain why I did what I did. Wasn’t like I had this planned from the beginning.” “Oh great the rationale to clear your guilt. Pfft. Well fine, might as well hear it. I could use a good laugh after all this.” “Have I ever told you about my friend Garrick?” Sneaks asks. “Yeah maybe, said you and he ran the thieves’ guild in Holgard.” You answer in exasperation. “Garrick was a thief, but he had a strong sense of honor, probably too much in our line of work. You actually reminded me of him when you first came proposing the Jicol Alliance to take the fight to the Ebony Claws. Guess that’s another reason why I stuck around. I always was a bit too idealistic, even in my old age now. You, much like him, made it really sound like we would win and drive out the Claws. I was ready to follow and I did for many years.” “So what did you do? Stab him in the back too?” “As a matter of fact I didn’t, though I always wondered if I shouldn’t have been so loyal and blindly accepting of his orders as he made one foolish decision after another that eventually got himself and almost everyone else wiped out by the ECS. Maybe if I had, I’d still be in Holgard, perhaps even running things there.” “So that’s what this is all about? Your boring desire for power?” “That’s more of a side benefit and if I THOUGHT you were still the leader you were the first time we opposed the Ebony Claws, I wouldn’t have even done this. Each year they’ve attacked, we’ve suffered more losses. I don’t even know if we’re going to survive another, but I know if YOU’RE in charge we won’t, so you had to be removed. Look, I’m probably older than I have any right to be in our line of work, but I’ve learned this. I like living, I like surviving, and the only way I’m going to feel like I’m going to continue doing that is if I have complete control over my fate, rather than it being in your hands.” “If you wanted to be in charge, you could have just fucking asked. Instead of all this shit you’ve pulled and extorting me on top of all of it.” “I dunno, maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ve handled this poorly, but it’s been my experience that men in power, no matter how reluctant or how miniscule, do not give it up willingly. Garrick certainly wouldn’t have and he wasn’t a power hungry man, just like you’re not. However, a good leader needs to be focused and much like Garrick, you are not focused.” “Oh well apologies that my life doesn’t revolve around you all the damn time.” “That’s not exactly what I mean…” “I don’t give a shit what you mean, I’m done listening to your long winded story about your excuses.” As you start to stand up to leave, Sneaks suddenly shouts at you to stop. Sneaks usually never shouts so actually gets your attention (along with several other people in the tavern) “You wanna know another thing you and Garrick had in common? You both had a young girl in your care. A daughter of sorts if you will. One that you do your best to try treat as adult, but always have that streak of overprotective fatherly love for her. It’s an admirable trait, but it’s at odds for that other emotion in you. And that’s a love for her as a regular woman, because that’s what she is now. Maybe young, but she’s a woman nonetheless given what’s she’s seen and done. I see it and you REALLY see it.” Sneaks says. “Sneaks, you don’t want to go there…” “Yeah, and neither do you. Garrick didn’t either and it compromised his ability to lead. Besides all the inner turmoil the man probably felt about the morality of the situation, he constantly tried to make sure his little girl was safe…never mind that in his case she was half fucking demon in question, but the problem you both have is the same. You’re always going to place your girlfriend over the organization. Last year that was never more apparent.” “How the fuck can you say that? She’s risking her life along with everyone else!” “Yes, but only in a limited capacity. You always make sure she’s on the less dangerous tasks. I’m not even mad about it. As I said, it’s completely understandable that you want to protect your girlfriend.” “You call her my girlfriend one more time and you’re going to have a short lived reign as Alliance leader.” You say leaning forward into the table. Sneaks leans forward as well, meeting your gaze. “I’m not judging you. She’s not really your…y’know what? This isn’t my business. Sort out your own personal issues on this situation, but I think your real fear is the girl might just feel the same way. In any case, I’ll be expecting my cut by the end of this month. If I have the coin, then I’ll know I have your cooperation, if I don’t receive the payment, then I’ll know that I don’t.” Sneaks then motions for you to leave as if now you can leave. You gladly do so, swearing the whole time. Your mind races about what you can do, what you need to do, what you should do. You really didn’t need this right now. Not when your mind has been preoccupied with other things. Other things that Sneaks also got in your head about. You’ve got an incredible headache by the time you make it home. You just hope Mara isn’t lingering around, because you don’t think you have the energy to deal with all this yet. She’s probably going to want to fight rather than leave. As you open the door to your home, you suddenly feel the sharp jab of a crossbow pointed right at your lower back. “Don’t turn around, just get inside.” A low voice says to you. You raise your hands and slowly walk inside your home where you see a man completely dressed in black leather and wearing an eye patch. You don’t know who this person is, but you can guess where they’re from. “Ebony Claw…great. Perfect end to a fucked up day.” You say. “Hm, seems I caught the leader of the Jicol Alliance at a bad time? Well too bad, we’ve got shit to discuss. Bolt, you can leave, I’ll take it from here.” The man says. You feel the pressure taken off of your lower back and then the front door closing behind you. “Gotta say, figured the Alliance leader would have a better place than this, but then I guess you’re not doing too badly. Anyway have a seat, as I said we’ve got shit to discuss.” This asshole no doubt has shadow powers like Nathan and a couple of the other ECS lieutenants you’ve faced in the past. Still, like all of their type he’s arrogant enough to not even relieved you of your weapons and doesn’t even have another person with him save for the guy that just left. Whatever he’s going to say is most likely going to just be some sort of lie or unreasonable offer. Not to mention the fact that you aren’t exactly the leader of the Jicol Alliance anymore and if he knows that, then he’s going to wonder what the point is with dealing with you. Still, he could be more powerful than what you’ve usually faced, or he might even have some advantage like say having Mara hostage somewhere. He seems to know something about you after all. You could at least listen to him while you figure out a better plan than just trying to be quicker on the draw than he is. > You listen to him With the day it’s been, you might as well. You take a seat and watch the Syndicate rep take a few steps back and forth before pulling up a nearby chair to sit as well. You didn’t expect him to be so casual. “Okay, first off, my name is Rook and you’re probably wondering why I haven’t just killed you immediately.” Rook says. “I’m listening.” You answer. “Information on you lot is always fucking spotty thanks to your location and the fact you’ve been fairly successful at keeping us off this island and that’s been an advantage. I, however have been doing my own leg work for a few days, and while I don’t know everything about you lot yet, I know enough that you’re the leader, and you’ve got a pretty young girlfriend.” Rook says. “Actually she’s my daughter.” You remark. “Truly? Hm, the way you two interact…well I’m not here to judge your family business. In any case, sooner or later the Syndicate leadership is going to get it’s head out of its collective ass and actually implement a plan that works instead of trying the same damn thing over and over believing that it will. I swear, it’s like fucking Holgard all over again.” Rook shakes his head at his remark before continuing. “However, before that happens I’m here to offer you a one time deal mainly because change in ECS leadership can only come when dedicated individuals take the initiative on squandered opportunities, such as this place. Especially when they can do it with minimal resource waste.” At this point you’re wondering if Rook’s henchman should have just killed you with a bolt to the back, because this fucker loves the sound of his own pontificating so much that he’s killing you with boredom. “You are obviously a dedicated man of convictions. I imagine you believe that the ECS is going to just come in and take away what you consider freedom hence why you’ve fought us for several years now. Well, I’m here to tell you, you’re right BUT if you make a deal with me right now, I will make sure this city remains more or less out of the eye of the Syndicate. You will just give me personally forty percent of what the Jicol Alliance earns monthly and of course there will be some of my people to oversee things just to make sure there are no more attempts at opposing us.” Rook says. “You personally? Won’t the Syndicate high ups object to that?” you ask. “Oh the appropriate people will be getting a cut too, you don’t need to worry about that.” “I suppose if I say no, you’ll kill me right now.” “Not at all, I’ll just leave and let you wait for the inevitable. As I said, I’m here on my own accord. I don’t particularly have any grand interest in this place unless it’s a potential extra moneymaker for me with minimal effort. I promise you though; the Syndicate will take this place eventually. So it’s either deal with me now and endure indentured servitude or deal with the Syndicate later and face extinction.” It’s good deal actually; it’s so good in fact you start laughing due to the fact that you can’t agree to it, but you do come up with a different one. “Rook, I’ve got an even better deal for you. How about you and all your people just take this place over completely, but I don’t have to give you anything at all and my family just continues to do their own business without interference?” you ask. “Wha…what are you talking about?” Rook asks. “I’m unfortunately not the leader of the Jicol Alliance anymore. One of my closest advisors basically just deposed me and it’s now officially a guild rather than a loose collection of vagabonds only united for self-defense.” “Wait, when the fuck did this happen!?” “Not long before you ambushed me. If you’re thinking about going to him with the same deal though I wouldn’t bother.” “Oh? And why the fuck shouldn’t I? In fact is there any reason why I shouldn’t kill you for wasting my time? “Because the guy currently in charge said he fought you lot in Holgard and has no intention on ever giving up to you. In fact part of the reason he strong-armed his way as leader is because he felt I wasn’t doing a good enough job. Should have known you couldn’t trust a guy that calls himself Sneaks.” Rook’s one good eye widens and stands up suddenly. “Did you just say Sneaks?” Rook asks. “Yeah.” you answer. “That fucker is here? In this city?” “Yeah, you know him?” “Know him? That’s the sonofabitch that took out my fucking eye! He was part of the Holgard Guild that gave me fucking grief for YEARS! I’ve been trying to track down that cocksucker for so long that I can’t even believe you’re telling me that he’s right here!” “I know where he stays and how many other Alliance members there are.” “I didn’t bring anyone else along on this trip save for my friend Bolt and while I don’t doubt we couldn’t handle this ourselves, but I’ll tell you what, as an act of trust if you come help us, you’ve got a deal that all your family’s business dealings and activities will not be taxed by the Syndicate or even by me personally. I swear to Fel and all the shadows that this will be so.” Rook says making some sort of weird gesture afterwards. Normally you’d be skeptical about such a thing, but Rook seems really dedicated to Fel and making declarations like that before one’s god is usually a pretty serious thing so you’re fairly sure he’s being truthful. Not to mention he sounds like he hates Sneaks more than anything else. You give Rook all the necessary information and he tells you to meet him at Sneak’s favorite tavern in thirty minutes. You remind Rook that this is a public place, but he tells you once again, not to worry about it and leaves. As you’re taking the opportunity to get ready for this (and feeling a little upbeat at the same time about it) Mara comes walking in. “Hey dad, who was that guy who just came from the house? He looked really creepy. Almost reminded me of one of those Ebony Claw guys that have the shadow powers.” Mara says. “That’s probably because he was.” You say. “WHAT!?” “Yeah, I expected that response. I can’t go into too much detail, but A LOT happened from between the time you left this afternoon and now.” “Well you’re going to have to at least try to explain it to me!” As quickly as you can (And most of it is walking and talking) you fill her in on everything that’s happened. It’s a lot for her to take in, but her main concern seems to be you and her. “How can we trust this Rook guy? I mean we’ve been fighting the ECS for years and he’s just going to let us go?” Mara says. “That’s the deal. As I said, Rook seems to be more interested in building up his own personal powerbase than as the ECS as a whole. And right now he seems to be more interested in revenge. I’d say we’re the least of his concerns. He doesn’t even need me to help, he just said if I did, he’d honor the deal and considering he made it before his shadow god that’s another reason I don’t have cause to doubt him.” You say. “Well…if you think so.” “I have to say, I thought you’d be more opposed to the idea.” “Well I’m not exactly thrilled with it, but given that Sneaks and the rest betrayed you, I can see the wisdom in just making a deal to protect our own asses. Personally I’m still hoping they all kill each other, but I’ll personally make sure not to target any Ebony Claw members.” “You don’t really need to come, it’s just me that promised.” “No, I’m coming too, I’m not going to miss a chance of getting a measure of revenge on the lot that betrayed us too. But I do always think it’s sweet that you always try to keep me safe. You always look out for me.” Mara says and puts her arm around you briefly and gives you a peck on the cheek. Even in this bit of grim business that you’re about to engage in, Mara’s actions manage to still make you feel the more anxious than anything else. The way she looks at you with love in her eyes… Sneaks was right. That’s what this is and it’s clearly there between there between the pair of you. This is probably wrong, but you might very well die in a few minutes so… You grab Mara around the waist and kiss her deeply. When you finally come up for air you both stare at each other. “That was wrong wasn’t it?” you ask. “Yeah, probably.” Mara replies. “I keep having inappropriate thoughts about you.” “Do they involve taking me from behind and slapping my ass while I call you daddy?” “They do now.” “Then we better hurry up and kill these assholes then.” You and Mara rush to where you’re supposed to meet Rook. When you arrive he tells you that there aren’t any of the Jicol Watch around and there won’t be, so the place is going to be fair game. He mentions don’t worry about anyone trying to escape either since Bolt will be outside taking care of that. “I don’t see your friend.” You say. “And neither will anyone else. I see you brought your daughter along. Good. Extra help is always welcome.” “Actually she’s my girlfriend.” You say proudly causing a bit of a smile from Mara. Rook just stares for a moment, opens his mouth and then stops. “Nevermind. I’m too anxious to kill Sneaks right now. Which brings me to another thing, don’t kill him! You can cripple him, maim him or whatever to stop him from attacking you. I don’t give a good fuck what condition he’s in, just as long as he’s alive long enough for me to piss in his face before he dies.” “Understood.”” “Good, you two go in, I’ll be right behind you.” You and Mara go into the tavern. No sooner has Sneaks seen the pair of you, he already calls for his people to start attacking. Say what you want about Sneaks, but he’s not stupid and knows an attack when he sees it. Of course unfortunately for him, you’ve got very dedicated follower of Fel on your side. Before you even engage one of Sneaks’ men, he has already killed two of them using his shadow magic enhanced speed. It’s a damn good thing you didn’t attack this guy. He’s way more powerful than any of the others you faced in the past. He’s not just a blur, he’s practically invisible. All non-combatants just try to keep their head down as the carnage ensues. Sneaks himself tries to run out the back, but you manage to get in a good shot to the side of his leg, specifically around the knee area. Such an effective place, Sneaks goes crashing to the floor immediately screaming the whole time. He goes for his own pistol, but Mara grabs his hands and stabs daggers through both palms and into the floor. “No, please don’t kill me …(sob) I’ll leave!” Sneaks whimpers. “Too late for that I’m afraid. But I should think you for being right about one thing. Mara and I decided to give into our feelings after all. When all this is over with, we’re going to REALLY give into them. Thanks for showing me the light, now I think it’s time I show you the shadows. I think you know this guy. Apparently he’s been looking for you for a long time.” Rook suddenly becomes more visible to your eyes and stands over Sneaks who looks like he’s seen a ghost from the past. “…YOU! No! Please no! Not him!” Sneaks screams at you. “Good, you remember me. Now you remember this cocksucker?” Rook shouts and then flips up his eye patch revealing a solid black gem, which then shoots a black light into one of Sneaks’ own eyes. Sneaks screams in agony that you kill him as his eye gets destroyed by the black light. Sensing that Rook is going to take his time, you decide to ask if you’re done. “So, should we just leave you to it then?” you ask. “Yeah, we’re good. Bolt and I can hunt down the rest myself. Talk to you later before I leave.” Rook says waving you away and now getting ready to burn out Sneaks’ other eye. You and Mara leave the tavern with Sneaks’ screams still in both of your ears. Surprisingly there’s nobody even remotely around nearby outside and you know there was quite a bit of noise made inside. You dunno what the hell Rook did to make that happened, but you can’t help think he did some sort of shadow magic shit. None of that matter right now to you though, and by the time you get home, the only thing that matters is what’s going between you and Mara in the bed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You got run out of your home town, you got run out of Klyton, you’re sick of running even if the ECS aren’t driving you out in the traditional sense. Plus you just reunited with Mara, it would probably be best if you stuck by her if you want to continue a good relationship with her. “Mara, maybe you’re right I think we need to fight.” You say. “I agree, though I’ll admit I’m a little scared.” Mara replies. “Well good. You should be scared, because this is going to be dangerous. However, think of it this way. Right now we’ve got a numerical advantage and the element of surprise. The guy that spoke to me, Nathan seems to labor under the impression that I’m going to comply with his wishes to tell everyone to join them. Obviously I’m going to do the opposite.” “Do you think it will work?” “Like I said, it’s not going to be easy. I’m going to put out feelers for the ones who I know will resist first. In the meantime, I want you to go tell your boyfriend AND urge to him how serious this is. We need to all coordinate an attack plan and strike only when the time is right. If we go in half assed on this, we’re all going to hang. Now are you absolutely sure he and the rest of the Black Hooks aren’t going to be likely to join the ECS?” “Very sure. I certainly don’t want to and Marco isn’t my boyfriend.” “…he’s not? Hm, guess my information is severely out of date and Dolan isn’t as thorough as he claims.” “Well… things change, and it hasn’t been long. In fact nobody in the Black Hooks really knows yet.” “Oh. Um, you okay? I mean is there something really bad that happened that you’re not telling me?” “Yeah. It wasn’t a bad split or anything like that. Just wasn’t working out. Anyway, I think we got more important things to worry about with the Claws.” “So we do. Okay, you know what to do and I’m sure we’ll be speaking again sometime in the near future. Oh and I suppose you can go ahead and tell Dolan that he doesn’t need to worry about spying anymore.” “Okay.” Before you part ways, you hug Mara who returns it. You tell her to be careful and that you’re glad to be speaking with her again. You get to work immediately and eventually you manage to get together a group that you’re sure is going to be receptive to opposing the ECS, however a few of them have other concerns. “So who’s leading this resistance? You?” one of them asks. “Well I’m more of an organizer, but I suppose we can all contribute ideas.” You say. “A council? That sound like a terrible idea. Things like this a lot better with a defined leader.” Another says. “I dunno, isn’t this the sort of thing we’re trying to avoid? I mean we’re essentially forming a gang to oppose the ECS. And say we actually succeed, then what? We just avoided getting assimilated or eliminated at the cost of being independent in the first place.” yet another responds. “And what about those Black Hook bastards? You said they’re going to be involved? Can’t say I’m looking forward to that.” A fourth says. “I’m telling you one thing right now if that little shit Marco is supposed to be in charge of this, I’m out right now.” A fifth says. You can see how difficult is going to be already. “Okay, people, people! I understand all these concerns, but let me address some right now! First, this isn’t going to be a gang, its not even going to be a guild. This is just going to be a mutually beneficial alliance. We ALL agree to work together to oppose the ECS or any other threat to our interests. After said threat is gone, we can all go back to being little special grains of sand. As for the Black Hooks, we’re going to be allying with them as well, even if they’re their own separate entity. We just all need to coordinate and get as many people on board with this as possible.” You say. “Can I just say something?” an older man you only know as “Sneaks” asks. “Go ahead.” “I faced the ECS on a regular basis many years ago back in Holgard. I belonged to the Thieves Guild there that opposed them. We tried our best, but ultimately they wiped us out. I dare say I’m one of the few that got away to my knowledge. Now I already knew they were in this city before you even called this meeting. I actually planned on catching first ship out of here just because I didn’t want to go through this mess again. However, while they might be powerful the ECS tends to abandon places if it’s going to cost them more effort than it’s worth.” The old thief stands up from his chair to continue his speech. “So I think you’re correct in that if we do act now before they get entrenched like they did in Holgard, we might just stop them. I’m going to go try to convince a few others that respect my opinion to join us in this task. I urge you all to do the same because if we just let the ECS come in here, it’s going to be worse than you think if we just comply.” Between you and Sneaks’ speeches the rest seem more convinced of this cause. You realize it’s still going to take some hammering out all the details, but this is a good start. A bit more discussion goes on and eventually the group breaks up for the night. You tell Sneaks to stick around though since you want to speak with him a little more. “Hey, a lot of your words really helped I think. Pretty sure some of them would have left otherwise.” You say. “Well you put all this together so I think you’re more responsible than anyone else for this resistance.” Sneaks replies. “Funny enough I was seriously considering in just complying when the ECS first approached me, it was someone else who felt fighting was a more worthy pursuit. Glad she did now.” “Mmm, glad she did too. I think you would have found life under ECS yoke far less desirable than even fighting them. I was thinking that while it’s been well established that this is just a temporary alliance, a couple people were correct in that we probably should have a single leader instead of all of us just shouting ideas. More will get accomplished quicker if you just become the leader. I doubt if anyone is going to have any major objections.” “Oh. Well I guess it probably makes the most sense. You seem to have genuine experience in fighting the ECS though, sure you don’t want to do it?” you half joke. “Nah, I’ve never been a leader. I have been an advisor on more than one occasion though, so I’ll do that if you need.” A few days after you’ve had your meeting with the independents, you meet up with Mara who has brought Marco with her. You haven’t been looking forward to this meeting. You only met him in person once before the first time Mara brought him around two years ago, but he’s grown as well. He still has that tone of arrogance in his voice like he knows everything of course. If anything he’s even worse. “I don’t see why we’re waiting around for a bunch of old fucks before striking at these assholes. Word has it, that they’ve been setting up in a general store on Typhoon street. Me and my Black Hooks could easily take them out! We’ve been waiting for something like this, we got the gear and we’re ready!” Marco says. “Yeah? Well you’ll be even more ready if you’re just a bit more patient Marco. We need to coordinate plans, not go in half assed. I figured Mara explained this already to you.” You reply. Marco scowls a bit. “Hey look, I know this guy is your dad and he deals fairly with us with fencing shit, but he needs to know he can’t just tell me what to do. I’M the leader of the Black Hooks and after we’re done wiping out these Ebony Claw assholes, we’re going to be stepping things up to run this entire city!” “Great, so Mara have the Claw been in contact with any Black Hooks?” you say already getting sick of talking to Marco and deciding to speak with Mara instead. “HEY! I’m the fucking leader! You supposed to be fucking talking to ME about this shit, not my girlfriend!” “First off, I’ll talk to who the fuck I want, especially my daughter. Second, I thought you guys broke up.” Marco’s face drops and he looks more scared than angry. “You…you told him?! You promised you wouldn’t say anything!” Marco says. “No! No! I just told him we broke up!” Mara says. “I think I’m missing something here.” You say. The rest of the short meeting mostly consists of Mara trying to calm Marco down. You don’t know what it’s all about, but you’ve gotten the impression that it’s something embarrassing. By the time Marco does calm down, he’s even pissier with you and now he’s upset with Mara (Though he doesn’t get outright angry) Ultimately he grudgingly accepts the plan of waiting until everyone is ready. You nearly ask Mara what that was all about after he leaves, but you figure maybe it should wait for now. You just tell her to continue to be the rational influence in the Black Hooks. You have another meeting later on that week with Sneaks who has already gathered a bit of information on the ECS. He tells you contrary to what Marco believes, they are NOT all gathered in a general store on Typhoon Street. He mentions that’s just some front they’re already starting to set up. He mentions their real base isn’t even in the city; it’s in some small ruin on the island. “You followed them outside the city?” you ask. “Yeah, looks like an abandoned temple of Fel. I’m really not surprised given their history.” “What do you mean?” “Some of the ECS, mostly the higher ranking ones, have connections to Fel. You’re aware of who that is right?” “Sure, god of shadows. Some rogues are into him though most pray to Yag.” “Well that’s probably because most rogues aren’t actively religious and it’s easier to say few half assed praises to a god who’s just rolling the dice anyway. Dedication to Fel, and I mean true dedication to Fel is a little more involved, but it does seem to have benefits and I’ve seen those unfortunately in action when I was in Holgard.” “Shit. Are you telling me these folks have divine powers?” “No, not all of them, not even most of them. In fact I doubt if any of the ones sent here do. I’m just saying there is a history for high ranking leaders to have shadow powers. In any case, I believe there about thirty or so of them here. It’s definitely going to be a fight whenever we attack.” “Thirty is a lot more than I expected.” “Yeah well they probably were keeping stuff like that secret so if anyone tried anything now, they could determine who was going to be a problem and retaliate in force if they needed to.” Sneaks goes on to suggest that perhaps the Black Hooks should lead the assault since Marco is so eager. In fact he actually goes so far to not so subtly suggest that something should happen to Marco in particular. “I’m sort of wondering where this conversation is going Sneaks.” You say. “Okay, we both know the Black Hooks are a potential problem in the future. I mean yeah they won’t be the ECS, but they could start getting pretty territorial really fast if left unchecked. I’m just saying that the rest of us do a little less to help them and let them take most of the casualties. And if some of them just happen to accidentally get shot by a stray bullet or bolt…well shit happens.” Sneaks remarks. “That’s…pretty damn shady. Though I have to admit, I do see the logic in it, and I might actually consider it except for one major thing.” “What’s that?” “Mara is in the Black Hooks and I’m not exactly keen on using her as fodder.” “Okay, so I’ll just let everyone else know that your daughter is off limits and is not to be targeted.” “I dunno. I mean its one thing to let the Black Hooks take the brunt of the casualties, but it’s completely another thing to actively kill them in the middle of the fight when we’re supposed to be on the same side. Also while Mara might get spared, it’s going to be awfully suspicious if she’s the only Black Hook survivor. We may not be fond of them, but some of these people are her friends. She isn’t a stupid girl and will make her own conclusions.” “Well, I suppose it’s up to you, but I just don’t see it as a bad idea.” > You use treachery Sneaks is correct, the Black Hooks are going to be just as big of an issue later on. Sure they may be just a bunch of obnoxious teenagers that are half assed thugs and thieves now, but eventually they’re going to get smarter, better and more aggressive. And you already know that Marco has ideas about his gang eventually controlling the entire city. “Yeah, it’s grim business, but we probably should. We’ll let the Black Hooks go charging in first. I’m going to try to keep Mara close to me, but if she should get away from me, I don’t have to tell you that she isn’t to be targeted. Also you need to make sure she doesn’t see anyone killing a Black Hook member.” you say. “Goes without saying. So should we go over when and how we’re going to plan this attack?” Sneaks asks. You and Sneaks first go over the plans a few times, then you share this information with the rest of the Jicol Alliance, after sharing it with them, you share it with the Black Hooks. You still aren’t sure of when to attack since you want to make sure to get most if not all in one area and not have to chase any down, given how impatient Marco is getting and the fact that you’re really never going to know for sure when the best time is, you just decide to do it sooner rather than later, especially since you’re as ready as you all are going to get. You spend the day before the attack mostly getting yourself mentally prepared for this. You haven’t killed anyone since Klint and murder in general wasn’t really something you ever wanted make a habit of doing. However, you do know it’s within you to do it and you’re going to have to do it multiple times soon. You just take into consideration that Mara is going to be in danger the whole time and you’re going to have to kill in order to make sure she doesn’t die. Not that you think she’s going to be helpless, but it’s a better frame of mind to put yourself in if you’re thinking that way for this task. Your forces attack the ECS hideout at night. You tell the Black Hooks to take the lead and eliminate the outside sentries first. They almost succeed in doing it stealthy, but of course some of them fail in a quiet kill and an alarm has already been raised. The fight on the first floor isn’t too bad, but by the time you get to the underground level which is like a maze, the Black Hooks are dropping like flies. Besides getting killed by Ebony Claws lurking around every corner, they’re not paying attention to how trapped this place is. At the rate they’re dying, nobody will have to bother stabbing any in the back. The whole time this is going on, you’re still trying to keep an eye on Mara who you’ve seen take out at least one person. You aren’t sure if she’s done that before or this is her first time. You guess you’ll ask after this is all over. Bullets, bolts, arrows, blades and traps of all kinds are dodged or blocked many times in this battle. The Ebony Claws fight back with everything they got, which includes several, fire powder bombs that take out a large part of your forces, enough to tip the odds in their favor mainly because the Black Hooks have been completely decimated and now the Alliance is starting to take the casualties. While you planned on killing Marco yourself, he’s already dead from getting blown to pieces by a firebomb. Say what you want about the guy, he actually was keeping the remaining Black Hooks from running away. You have no doubt that the run aways will be killed by Alliance members lagging behind, though you’re starting to think that employing treachery might not have been the way to go about this. Eventually you and Mara, reach what you believe to be an altar room of some sort. You see Nathan and his friend that came with him when they first met you. “You fucking idiots. You have no idea of the deep shit you’re all in. You really think even if you some how manage to kill all of us this day, that you’re going to get away with it? Kill the bitch, I’m gonna take my time with this one.” Nathan shouts while pointing at you. Nathan at this point spout some sort of gibberish and become blurry and you’re having a hard time focusing on him. It would seem that Sneaks wasn’t entirely correct about none of their number having access to shadow magic. I’ll deal with the magic asshole, you cut the other one down and then help me!” you shout to Mara. Nathan is moving at a speed that you can barely defend against. He slashes you across the face with his knife, kicks you in the balls and then slams you to the floor. He then punches you multiple times in the face before blinding you completely by stabbing you in both eyes. You’re left screaming and bloody on the floor and in darkness when Mara knocks Nathan off of you. Mara has only given you temporary relief since Nathan quickly dispatches her. You crawl around on the floor and hear Nathan gloat about what he’s done to you and how he’s going to make you suffer even more, and that’s when you hear a gunshot, followed by the slumping of a body. The gloating has ceased. “MARA?! MARA?! Are you there!?” you scream out, hoping that she’s still alive. Hoping she’s the one that shot Nathan. “She’s dead I’m afraid.” You hear Sneaks say. “No!” you cry out. Between your physical pain and now your emotional pain, you’re a gibbering wreck. Sneaks, without another word reloads his flintlock and shoots you. Whether that’s because he’s a treacherous bastard or whether he was putting you out of your misery, you’ll never know. Doesn’t matter since in those last moments, you wanted to die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This really goes against everything you tend to believe in, but maybe due to a combination of several bad things you’ve experienced lately, you’re still hoping that MAYBE somehow doing something half way “decent” that the gods or fate or whatever will reward you in some way. (Even though you don’t really believe in a lot of that anyway) First thing you do is calm the little girl down and ask her name since this will be a whole lot easier if you know what to call her. “Mara.” She says. “Okay, first question. Do you know where you mom might have went or where she goes to look for work?” you ask. “I dunno, mostly the taverns?” the little girl asks. “…that really narrows it down…(sigh) alright, I guess I can just try the closest ones in the area. I’ll also need a physical description of her.” “She’s real pretty. She has a flower name too, Violet. Her hair is black like mine and she…um…her chest is sort of large.” Well you weren’t expecting her to give that description of her mom, but you suppose it does help narrow things down a bit more. “Okay, that helps a little…hey wait a minute. Did you ask Virgil to help?” you ask. “The friendly old priest that smells funny? Yeah, I went to his room, but he wouldn’t move no matter how much I pushed him. He just kept snoring.” Mara replies. “Well this is important, and I’ll go wake him up. He’s supposed to be doing good deeds anyway. In the meantime you just stay here and Elana will keep you company.” “Will you come back with her?” “I promise that I’ll come back.” Is all you can say to her before you bid her goodbye. Of course before you leave, you head to where Virgil sleeps in this church. Sure enough he’s snoring soundly. Not excessively loud, but he’s definitely flat out. You don’t bother with the pushing or yelling to wake him up; you just drag him out of bed by his crusty feet. He wakes up just before he hits the floor. “Hey what the…OW! Shit! You?! What the fuck are you dragging me out of bed for?!” Virgil exclaims. You actually sort of smile since that’s more along the line of the old Virgil that you were familiar with. “Aren’t you supposed to be cutting down on the vulgarities now that you’re all holy again? You’ve woke me up plenty of times in the past banging on my door, so consider this payback. Besides, a little girl needs help and you’re supposed to be doing this sort of shit anyway.” You say. “Little girl? What’s going on?” You explain the situation to Virgil, who slowly starts becoming more alert. As you explain, he seems to remember Violet quite well. (Or her tits at least) “Yes, yes, I know who you’re talking about. I’m not sure what to say though. Violet is a prostitute or at least she was trying to get out of that life for the sake of her daughter as far as I know. I mean I know she was trying to get a job as a waitress with little success, but if she’s disappeared during the night, she might have sadly gone back to her old ways and strayed from Joachim’s path.” Virgil remarks. Raven haired beauty with big tits and worked as a whore, now you’re wondering how the hell you never noticed her before. “Well let’s try the taverns first I guess.” You say. “Why am I going with you?” Virgil asks. “Because isn’t it your damn job to help the downtrodden and innocent? Besides, you being an ex-drunk, I figure that you know where ALL the closest taverns are. Also the militia is on my ass constantly, and if they catch me walking around at night, they’ll probably just beat my head in and throw me in jail. I figure if I’m walking around with a priest I shouldn’t get harassed as much. Not like you have anything better to do anyway.” “Um…yeah, but…you’re talking about going to several taverns…I’m just not sure I should be around that much temptation.” “Oh for…just come on! If you start getting thirsty, I’ll slap you in the back of the head to remind you of Joachim’s light or something.” Virgil reluctantly agrees to help, and soon the pair of you are off to go tavern hopping, but not in the good way. You go to several taverns and while a couple people say they remember seeing her or even interacting with her, they tell you they haven’t seen her today. Virgil meanwhile looks longingly at every mug, glass and bottle containing alcohol. It isn’t excessively hard to pull him away, but it’s obviously a struggle. “I beseech you, no more taverns! The temptation is getting to me and it’s taking all my faith in Joachim to give me strength to resist!” Virgil begs. “Okay, okay…(sigh) might as well give up anyway. We’ve covered a lot more ground than I thought we were and still haven’t found shit. I guess we can start trying to brothels.” You say. “Um, I don’t think so.” “What? Are the whores going to be too much temptation too? I thought your weakness was the booze, not the women.” “No, it’s not that. It’s just I doubt very seriously that she’s working in one of the Klyton brothels. At least none of the legal ones. If she was back to whoring, she’d be doing it illegally and who knows where.” “I don’t understand, Mara said her mom was pretty and you even seemed to confirm that. Wouldn’t she be good enough of one of those places? She a Yellow Devil addict or something?” “No, nothing like that. In fact she used to work at Madam Moonlight’s place, but she did something that severely pissed off Moonlight. I dunno what, but it was bad enough to get her fired and Moonlight apparently pulled strings at every other sanctioned brothel to not hire her.” “Hm, I guess that makes sense, I’ve seen Moonlight get pissed at unruly customers and makes them sorry they got out of line. Guess the same goes for her employees. Still surprised I’ve never bumped into this woman before. Well I’m out of ideas, I mean we can’t realistically go to every inn or back alley, to look for her.” “I think the only thing that can be done is to go back. Sometimes we must just place faith in Joachim that he will influence events to a positive end. I’m sure the girl’s mother will come back, she may already be back for all we know.” “Yeah maybe…” You suddenly remember something terrible. “SHIT!” you exclaim. “What?” Virgil asks. “In all the rush to help the girl, I left all my shit at the church and I didn’t even bother to hide it before I left! My savings!” “I doubt very seriously that anyone is going to ransack your belongings and steal what you have. All of those folks are Joachim fearing and righteous.” “Oh? Then what am I doing there then?” “Erm…well on the other hand it would be quite amusing if Joachim balanced things by taking away your wealth.” “What the hell? Why are you condoning theft just because it’s me?!” “I’m not, but I’m just saying there would be a kind of justice if it did occur, considering your own profession…speaking of which…Brother Thadius has expressed concerns about you continuing to sleep in the church. I’ve tried to assure him that you’re looking for real work, but I think we both know that isn’t true and I hate lying to the man. I’m already under scrutiny for…” “I can’t discuss this right now, I gotta go!” You run off to leave Virgil behind and race back to the church. Unfortunately along the way you nearly bump straight into two militiamen who happen to be patrolling. They see you running and jump to their own conclusions. “HALT!” one of them shouts. You haven’t done anything wrong and you don’t even have anything stolen on you since you left all your stuff at the church. Legally they can’t really do anything to you…however that’s never stopped the militia from severely fucking with you before. > You run You immediately make a break for it and the militia is soon in pursuit and shouting for any of their fellows within earshot to help them. It’s actually easier than usual to lose the militia since the darkness is more your friend. After a short chase, a few turns down side streets and backtracks later and you’ve lost them. Then you turn a corner and get an unexpected elbow in the face. You stagger back and fall on your ass. Before you can get up though, two militia men have grabbed you. “See? Told you, this one isn’t half as clever as he thinks he is. He’s been doing the same tricks to elude us for the past week, well not this time. Anticipated your ass didn’t we?” one of the militia sneers. “Whatever…you still don’t have anything on me. I didn’t steal shit tonight.” “Silent! We’re going to find out soon.” While the two men are roughly searching you, another one comes running up to them. “Hey! What the hell are you two doing? You’re supposed to be down in the sewers helping with taking out those Talon bastards. The captain’s been looking all over for you and he’s pissed!” he remarks. “What? We got assigned street patrol duty tonight!” “Well you’ve got new orders then, come on let’s go. Who’s this one?” “This is the sneak thief who ratted on the Talons in the first place to save his own hide. Claims he doesn’t have anything stolen on him, but I KNOW he’s been up to something!” “Well knock him out and quickly throw him in a cell because we need to get into the sewers before the shit goes down. He can be dealt with later.” And with those words, you get smashed in the back of the head causing you to go unconscious. When you wake up, you find yourself lying on the dirty smelly floor of a jail cell. Nearby another man sits on a bench with his attention draw towards you now that you’re awake. “You okay there friend? When they brought you in last night I thought they were dragging in a corpse. Your head was bloody and you were flat out.” He says. You groggily sit up and rub the back of your head which now has dried blood on it. (and so does the floor you just got off of) They really clobbered you a good one. Now you’re just wondering if you’re heading for deeper shit soon. “So, what are you in here for?” the man asks. “Misunderstanding.” You respond “Hah, that’s an understatement I’ll bet. Still, those militia bastards will find any excuse to bust someone’s skull open. They got me in here for drunk and disorderly conduct. I’d only had a few drinks and some asshole got in my face so I punched him. Next thing I knew I was getting hauled in here by a couple of militia dicks who just happened to be heading into that tavern for a quick drink. Just my fucking bad luck right?” “Hm, that’s rough.” You say as you start to get up off the floor and use the cell bars as leverage. “I’ll say. But then my luck never has been the best. I think Yag must be perpetually rolling snake eyes for me. I’m probably going to be in more trouble when I get out of here. I was supposed to meet up with my buddies last night. Bah, I guess I’ll just have to deal with the consequences, whatever they may be.” As your overly talkative cellmate goes on about his unlucky lot in life, you are more concerned with your own. You are surprised to soon see Captain Branik himself walk down the hallway with a ring of keys in hand. This could be good or bad. “Ah, you’re up. Apologies about the overzealousness of my men last night, but then again they did have to make sure you weren’t up to your usual criminal activity. Especially not when we had a whole ring of criminals to round up and eliminate. You’ll be happy to know that I found all your information to be very helpful. The raid was a complete success.” Branik says. “What’s going on now?” you ask. “The raid on the Crimson Talon hideout. We went in and laid waste to the place and the criminal scum within it.” “Wait, you destroyed the Talons last night? As in they’re all dead?” your cellmate asks, eavesdropping on the conversation. “Oh yes. They all violently resist arrest and there was nothing else to be done, though I imagine most of their crimes would have just gotten them the hanging cages or execution anyway. Probably for the best. Saves time and paperwork.” Captain Branik chuckles at his last remark and unlocks your cell door. “Wow. They were the biggest criminal organization in Klyton and had been around for decades. And now they’re all just gone. Guess Yag finally rolled snake eyes for them.” Your cellmate remarks. “Are you SURE they’re ALL gone?” you ask Branik, still thinking about the potential repercussions of snitching on them. “Worry not snitchy, they’re all fucking dead. We’re very thorough when it comes to cleaning out the filth. Speaking of cleaning out the filth, I suppose you’re free to go now and I’d advise you to leave the city. Consider this your payment for helping out the Klyton militia.” “Great. Always my pleasure to help out the men of the law.” You remark leaving the cell. “You’re free to go too, drunky, and you better learn how behave yourself in the future or else you’ll get a stiffer penalty than just getting thrown in a nice cell to dry out in!” Branik says. You waste no time in leaving the militia barracks and start pondering your next move. You need to get back to the church to make sure if any of your shit is still there. You fully expect to find that your savings has been ransacked in your absence, but either way from there, you’re leaving this fucking city. As you’re walking and thinking a familiar voice pipes up next to you. “Man, I’m surprised they let either one of us out of there. The militia are usually reluctant to ever let anyone leave their cells unless it’s to go into a hanging cage or a hangman’s rope.” Your former cellmate says. “Uh huh.” You remark. “So, back there, captain asshole said that you gave them information about the Crimson Talons to take them down? Man, that took some big balls to do! There’s no way I could ever do something like that! I’d be way too concerned about one of them killing me for snitching.” “Yeah well, they’re all dead now. No more worries.” “True. You know what else takes big balls though?” “What?!” you respond exasperated and wondering why this dickhead is still talking to you. You get your answer and quick stab to the side of your neck. “Shanking a snitch bitch in broad daylight only a few steps away from the militia barracks!” he says and runs off before your body even falls to the ground. Your last moments as you bleed out and gurgle up blood are the sight of slack jawed onlookers watching you die and the shouting of others calling for the militia.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t believe that you’re actually leaning towards being the “responsible” one here. “Look, I get that this is all very exciting for you seeing as you’ve lived a sheltered rich life and all…” “I am not rich or sheltered! My father has to bust his ass making my tuition payments!” “…yeah…in any case. I’ve been to this town before and its reputation is well earned. There are people here that make the dregs of Klyton look like priests of Joachim and if you run afoul of them, it isn’t going to be good for you.” “Pfft, I can handle trouble.” Kelium says and flexes his muscles a bit and pulls a sword out of his bag. “Yeah, maybe you could handle one person, but the problem is these sort don’t travel alone, they ALWAYS travel in packs and I can honestly say that YOU are not going to handle five or even three by yourself.” “Well wouldn’t you help me? I mean isn’t that why you’re here?” “Your job or assignment is to get some monster crab eggs. MY job is to help you in that task. My job is NOT however looking after your ass while you look for fun or trouble. Now I suggest you get some rest which is what I’m going to do because giant snail monsters that spit poison sound like they need full attention.” You fully expect Kelium to argue some more with you, but he doesn’t. You also expect him to just leave the room by himself, but he doesn’t do that either thankfully. He just says he thought you were going to be fun and starts reading through some of his papers. Feeling a little pleased with yourself, you lay down on your bed and attempt to get to sleep before Kelium genuinely starts to get tired again, because if he starts snoring there is no way you’re going to get any sleep. Much later, you groggily wake up and find that your speech was less effective than you thought. Kelium is not in your room. In fact, it doesn’t even look like his bed has been slept in. You just shake your head and groan. “Stupid fucker probably got himself enslaved or his throat cut.” you mutter, as you get yourself prepared to go look for this idiot. The first stop you make is Yvette’s room. “Hey Yvette.” You say knocking on the door. “Um…yes?” she answers, but not opening the door. “Is Kelium in there?” “No, why would he be? What are you implying?” “…what? Nothing! I’m just asking because he’s gone, and it doesn’t look like he’s slept in his bed either. I’m guessing he took off to have fun in the middle of the night.” “Oh dear. Um…well hold on, I have to get ready. I’ll be out soon.” Yvette says. You half wonder if Kelium is in there and he’s climbing out of a window. If that is the case, it’s going to be real obvious if he and Yvette slept together last night. You aren’t sure why Yvette would bother hiding it though; it isn’t like you really give a shit. As it turns out however, that isn’t the case at all and you don’t even have far to go to find Kelium. You find him just outside the Sea Dog, stripped nearly naked and lying unconscious by the street. “Well, at least that’s one less thing to worry about.” You say to yourself and begin the undesirable task of dragging his ass back inside. It’s sometime at this point, Kelium begins to rouse from his unconsciousness. In between the name-calling and laughter by the locals, you manage to get him back to the room where Yvette joins you both. Kelium has a wicked hang over, but manages to explain what he remembers. He says that after you fell asleep he went out to explore the town and soon found himself in a card game at some place that he can’t remember the name of. He claims he was winning and also says that someone must have drugged his drink and robbed him of everything. “I told you not to go out. You’re just lucky that getting robbed blind was all that happened to you.” You say. “Yeah, yeah, fuck. You sound like some old bitch. Shit. My head. Alright fine. Just let me get my spare clothes, and we can go get these fucking eggs.” Kelium says. “Wait, we’re going now? Are you in condition to do this? Maybe we should wait a day.” Yvette asks. “I’ll be fucking fine! Besides, I just lost all my money. We can’t afford to stay here another night. We need to get these eggs today and then get the fuck outta this shitty town.” You don’t even ask HOW you’re supposed to get back to Klyton if he’s lost all his money. Though you’ve brought a little with you, so you suppose you’ll be footing the carriage bill. Like Yvette, you aren’t sure if Kelium is in the best condition to go do this, but you’re certainly not going to be paying for more time at the inn either, so if he thinks he’s good to go, then you are too. Besides, you’re going to be happy when this is over with and you’re questioning why you ever decided to do this again. “Adventurous…I should have that drunk Virgil check me for demonic possession.” You mutter. After Kelium gets dressed and gathers his supplies (Which at least he’s carrying), the three of you set off on your journey to get these eggs. Unfortunately, its not just a simple matter of sticking to the coast and finding them along the shore, Kelium says you’ll probably have to go into a cave seeing as they like to lay their eggs some place dark, wet and safe. “Um, we have to enter a cave?” Yvette asks. “Yeah, what’s the big deal?” Kelium asks. What Yvette doesn’t answer right away, you step in. “I think Yvette is a bit uncomfortable with small spaces, especially dark ones crawling with monsters.” You say. “Huh? Well that’s just tough because she signed up for this task voluntarily. Nobody held a flintlock to her head. Besides, it’s most likely a big open cave given how large blueshell creptians are.” Kelium remarks. “Oh, well that changes everything.” You travel a bit longer until you start climbing up a small hill. Kelium occasionally looks at the ground and tries to find signs of creptians. He seems to know what he’s doing, despite his condition, though at this point you’re more on the look out of other potential bad types like say bandits or something similar. Meanwhile Yvette looks like she’s expecting trouble everywhere since she’s looking around constantly. “Yvette, calm yourself. Out of the three of us, you’ve probably got the most power here to deal with anything.” You say. “I dunno what you think I can do. I know. I’m not some high mage like in the old stories. As I told you, I’m just starting out and I haven’t even been out of the city before.” “Hm, so you can’t just summon a ball of flame or shoot lighting?” “Um…well not what you’re probably thinking. I mean maybe I could conjure a small palm sized ball of flame. Not sure if that would take down a Blueshell Creptian though, and it takes all my focus just to do it.” “Better than nothing I suppose.” Suddenly you hear Kelium yelling about something. You were so busy speaking with Yvette you didn’t even notice Kelium disappeared…again. “HEY COME HELP ME! SHIT!” Kelium shouts. You and Yvette run over to the other side of the hill you were on and see Kelium with his sword in hand and scrambling for cover behind a rock. You also see what you can only guess is a blueshell creptian. It looks exactly how you pictured. A big snail, with big crab like claws and a blue shell. Nearby the creptian you see a large sloping hole in the ground, you can only imagine that’s where it has made its home. “HEY! MOVE IN MAN! ATTACK!” You hear Kelium shout as a glob of blueshell spit hits the rock he’s hiding behind. You pull out your flintlock and fire at the blueshell and find that the shot doesn’t even penetrate its hard shell. In fact it doesn’t even turn its attention to you, so far it’s just slowly crawling over to Kelium’s position. “Yvette, can you cast some sort of light spell or cause something to glow?” you ask. “Yeah, but how is that going to help?” Yvette says. “It’ll help me search that cave for the eggs while it’s distracted.” “Wait, you’re going in there alone? What happens if there’s another one in there?” “Well, I’ll be running out of there really quick I guess. You just try to distract that blueshell and when I get the eggs we can all get the hell out of here.” “I dunno, I think maybe we should try to work together to kill the blueshell, then deal with the cave.” “And I don’t think we’re going to be able to, or at least not with what we got. Look, I’m going to be as quick as I can. All you have to do is stay away from that thing and find some cover. It doesn’t move that fast.” “I dunno…” Obviously Yvette has some doubt about this plan and if she does there’s a chance she could panic, but you really don’t have confidence in her plan either especially since it means you’d have to get closer or at least aim for a place that isn’t armor plated. > You work together Yvette could be right about another one being in the cave. Even something only half the size as the one you’re seeing now wouldn’t be good to run into in a cramped area. Plus you’d rather keep one of Gossey’s assistant safe this time since it seems like Yvette will just run off without everyone helping. “Alright, I’m going to try to give that overgrown snail a big hole in its body, in the meantime, you need to start trying every spell you can to kill that thing!” you say. Still keeping a good distance, you move into a better position where you might actually be able to hit the thing in a soft fleshy area. You get behind a tree and reload your flintlock as you hear the crackling of lightning and Kelium still shouting for assistance. You fire again at the creature, but once again fail to make any real impact, as it seems to instinctively block your shot with one of its armor plated claws. Yvette is still casting her little fireballs at it, but that’s not having much effect, you yell at her to try something else. However, you’re going to have to get closer unfortunately. You run towards a closer large tree and see Kelium stupidly getting up to move towards you. “NO! Stay the fuck do…” you start to say and then you’re suddenly hit in the side of the head with something half solid, half liquid. You were so busy paying attention to Kelium and making noise, that the creptian spit in your direction and got a solid hit. The translucent goo now covering half your head is extremely poisonous and takes effect immediately. You collapse to the ground and begin to feel your whole body seizing up. You attempt to grab your anti-venom in your pack, but it wouldn’t do any good even if you weren’t practically paralyzed since the poison has already been absorbed into your brain. The pain is great but mercifully short before you die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Tempting, but you might as well stick with it out a little while longer. Oddly part of you doesn’t want to dishonor the agreement with Dr. Gossey even if her assistant is a bitch. Elana doesn’t make many more complaints fortunately and when she does it’s mostly at the driver anyway, though you can imagine you’ll soon be on the receiving end completely. By the time you reach Hessla, night is starting to fall. Elana orders the carriage to stop and then asks the driver where is the best place to stay in the town. The driver suggests the Cozy Krak Inn. He mentions that it is fairly expensive though that usually means it’s never completely filled, but Elana tells him she isn’t worried about the price. The carriage makes its way through Hessla, which is definitely not how you expected it look. You imagined pirates and vagabonds of all types getting into fights and drinking in the streets, but just like the driver said, it isn’t actually all that bad. When you get to the Cozy Krak Inn, you see a large decorated building, which wouldn’t be out of place in the richer areas of Klyton. It’s actually a little more creative looking since it has a whole sea theme complete with some wall murals of sailors battling a giant squid and the inn sign also being in the shape of a squid. “Ugh, how gauche. I suppose it will have to do.” Elana remarks and gets out of the carriage. You step off from the top. “I’m going to go in and getting the room, you grab the supplies from the carriage.” “Wait a minute. I’m just supposed to be here for protection. I didn’t hear anything about being your porter. Besides, doesn’t a place like this usually have someone to do that?” “Maybe, but I’m telling YOU to do it. I’m not risking having the locals run off with valuable equipment and you’re getting paid to protect EVERYTHING, so do your job and look out for the stuff!” Elana remarks and doesn’t even give you a chance to retort before she’s entered the inn. You just stand there speechless for a moment. “Um…there’s a cart over there which should help you get it in all one trip.” The driver points out in an attempt to be sympathetic to your plight. “Thanks.” You grumble and begin to unload the carriage. You should have just hijacked it. After you’re done unloading everything, the driver mentions that if you’re looking for a place to unwind, the Sultry Siren is a good location. He then bids you good night and takes his leave. You enter the inn and find that it resembles more of a mansion than any inn you’ve ever seen. No creaky wooden floors, dim lighting or drunken louts sitting at a nearby bar. You see a desk where Elana is talking with someone and a couple of mean looking men holding poleaxes standing just inside the doorway. You arrive just in time for Elana to finish bitching at the desk clerk and start bitching at you instead. She first goes on to complain that there is no lift so she has to walk to her room on the top floor like a commoner. This is even worse news for you since now you have to lug everything up several flights of stairs. After getting to the room, she complains that it doesn’t match anything she’s used to in Klyton and goes on about how inferior it is. You almost feel like saying you live in a place run by a cranky old man and how your closest neighbors consist of a drunken priest and a whore. Trying to make the best of this, you remain upbeat. “Well, we aren’t going to be here long hopefully. Let’s just try to get some rest.” You say. “What are you doing?” Elana says. “I’m just laying down.” “Not on the bed you’re not!” “But there are TWO beds and I’m not going to try anything!” “Pfft. I’m not worried about that.” Elana says and then brandishes a small ornate pistol. Smaller than other ones you’ve seen actually, but you still don’t want to risk getting shot by it and move out of the way when she thoughtlessly points it at you. “Will you stop waving that thing around?” you say. “I told Dr. Gossey I didn’t need an escort and could take care of myself.” Elana remarks. “Yeah, okay you’re not a woman to be messed with, got it. But I don’t see why I have to sleep on the floor when there are two beds.” “The floor? You’re not sleeping on the floor either. This is MY room. You want a room here, you pay for it yourself!” “…What? Are you serious? Dr. Gossey said this trip was paid for!” “Maybe for me, never said anything about you. Your payment is AFTER the job is done. In fact, shouldn’t you just be standing guard outside my door?” You have no words. You just don’t. You thought dealing with the lowlifes that hang around the Welcome Mat was a chore, but it still pales in comparison to this. If this wasn’t a paying job, there is no way you’d deal with this. However, since it is, you don’t say anything and just grab a chair in the room and exit. Placing the chair nearby, you sit down and make a mental note about never working a real job ever again. The kicker is, you still have a bunch of over grown rats to acquire. Still, you agreed to this so you continue to make the effort and sit outside like a loser. Eventually enough time passes and you start feeling tired or at least bored enough that you’d rather be doing something else. You briefly think about finding another place to stay or even going to the Sultry Siren like the driver suggested, but you really don’t feel like dealing with the stairs again or spending your money. You then wonder if maybe you shouldn’t take this opportunity to break into some of the other rooms. As you’re pondering potential criminal activity, you spot a group of five rough looking men walking down the corridor. They don’t look the sort who would stay here. “Is this the room?” one of them says. “No, it’s further up the hall.” Another remarks. “What? Where that guy in the hood is sitting?” “Yeah, I believe so.” “What the fuck, Metzger. I thought you said this was an easy one.” “There’s just one guy there and he’s smaller than all of us. You really think he’s going to give us trouble? Metzger says. “What if he’s some highly skilled assassin? I mean he’s got a hooded cloak and all…” “By Dolak’s barnacle encrusted balls, if you were any dumber…(Sigh) Just because someone is wearing a hooded cloak don’t make them a highly skilled assassin. Besides, assassins kill people not sit outside hallways like guard dogs.” Metzger remarks. At this point these five men are nearby you, yet are still talking like you aren’t here. You feel like you should stand up at this point. “I can’t help but notice you lot seem to be talking about me.” You say. “Yeah, and what if we are?” Metzger asks. “Well, I suppose I might need to show off my assassin skills.” “Hah! You’re no assassin and even if you are, you’re too damn young to have been at it for very long, let alone skilled enough to take on five of us. My guess is, you’re that rich bitch’s escort or something. Not sure why she’d take a little thing like you though as a guard. Guess being rich doesn’t mean being smart which is evident by the very fact she’s staying here.” “What do you mean?” “Nobody stays at the Cozy Krak Inn, or rather no right thinking Hessla native does, unless they want to be taken as a fucking slave. Fucking clueless visitors.” Metzger laughs. Well this isn’t good. “So you guys are all slavers huh?” you ask. “Yeah, and since I’m in a generous mood I’m going to LET you walk away from this, because Yrid said you weren’t the target.” Metzger remarks. “Who’s Yrid?” “The guy who drove you here. Sheesh, didn’t you even bother to ask his name? In fact you weren’t even supposed to be here, he said you’d probably be at the Sultry Siren fucking a whore or getting drunk given how much your boss was bitching at you.” “Trust me, I’m starting to think that was a better idea right now.” “Hah, got that right. So, I trust you’re stepping aside then…” Metger says and starts advancing with his buddies. This is a really difficult situation. As much as Elana has been a complete bitch to you, you aren’t sure if her getting sold into slavery isn’t disproportionate retribution. > You buy some time You have to try. “Okay. Okay. Hold on guys. I get it and I won’t try to stop you…but uh…” you say trailing off “But what?” Metzger asks. “Well she’s not quite as defenseless as you think. She’s sleeping with not just one, but two pistols in there. Not to mention she’s a crack shot with them.” “Bullshit.” “I’m fucking serious. You think I’m some bodyguard when all I really am is her glorified porter. I don’t think you’re aware of all the bitching I have to hear on a regular basis.” “So what are you saying exactly?” “I’m saying let ME go in there and get her. If you lot go barging in, she’s going to shoot at least two of you in the head before you subdue her. If I go in, she’ll bitch me, but I can get in close enough and knock her ass out before she can do shit. Tired of working for her ass anyway, it’ll be my damn pleasure to turn her over to you personally.” “So let me get this straight, you hate your employer so much that you’re willing to risk getting shot just to turn her over to a bunch of slavers?” “Yes.” “Hmmm….” Metzger looks up and places his hand under his chin as if thinking really hard about this. Your mind races with ideas of what you’re going to do as soon as you enter Elana’s room and how much time you’re going to have to slip out of a window before Metzger and his crew break down the door when you hastily barricade it. That last minute planning is all for naught when you suddenly feel a fist to your face, knocking you on your ass. Before you can even get up, Metzger signals to his men to quickly subdue and shackle you. “How stupid do you think I am boy? You go in there and warn her and make all of our jobs harder than it needs to be. Fuck that. I gave you a chance to leave and you chose to be a hero. Well, hope whoever buys your ass likes fucking heroes, because I anticipate you’ll fetch a good price to some of those degenerates.” Metzger’s men waste no time in relieving you of all your weapons and anything of value, then they put a bag over your head and knock you out. By the time you come too, you’re practically naked and shackled to two other miserable looking souls in a long line of other hopeless and depressed looking individuals. From what you can tell, you’re probably on a ship. You don’t see Elana, but you can only imagine that they got her too. When you ask one of the other captives where you’re going, nobody has a clue or they just don’t answer at all. Wherever you’re going though, it’s going to be a long way from here and an even longer time before you’ll be able to make an escape, assuming you ever get the chance. This is a horrible situation and one you definitely never saw in your future. All you wish is that you were back home with your family. You stifle some of your crying and try to remember that you need to remain strong if you ever hope to get out of this one day. Your life may not be over yet, but your life as a rogue certainly is.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 2B: The More Things Change Year 17 “Yeah, yeah, here’s the rent.” You say handing over a few silvers to Trobart. The innkeeper takes the silver and gives you a scornful look. “Bout fucking time! You’re always late! And don’t think I don’t know how you get this!” Trobart says. “Of course you know how I get this, but it doesn’t stop you from taking the money anyway, you mean old bastard.” You answer. “Watch yer, fuckin’ tongue! One word from me, and the militia would take your ass in quick!” “Pfft, yeah right. You call the militia and they’d probably shut this whole place down. You’re selling booze without a license in the basement and one of your rooms is being used by an unlicensed whore.” “Fuck you cunt face!” Trobart shouts and stomps off. You just shake your head at the old man’s misplaced anger. You head to your room with no more distractions, and then wearily sit on your shitty straw mattress and count what’s left of your ill-gotten loot. Enough to eat for a few days. Granted this hasn’t been the best month, but you swear you thought you’d be doing a lot better than this by now. This city unfortunately though is proving a lot more vigilant than you’d like. You certainly aren’t in Teckleville anymore. What’s really not helping is the Crimson Talons running around carelessly committing clumsy burglaries and heists and bringing the militia down even harder on everything. You’re sort of glad you didn’t join up with them now, because at this rate, the militia is probably going to track them down and execute the lot of them. Still, that doesn’t solve your current problem. Part of you wonders if maybe you should just move on from this city, but you really loathe the idea of travelling again and you aren’t sure where you’d go. Hessla maybe? While you’re pondering your possible future here, you get a knock on the door. “Heeeeey youngster! (hic!) You got any spare….coppers fer the faith?” Great, it’s that drunken priest that has a room across from you. You thought the men of Joachim were supposed to be into purity and restraint. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Joachim was the god of alcohol and hopeless drunks based on this guy’s behavior and actions. “No and I told you to stop bothering me Virgil! Don’t you have a collection box you can pilfer booze money from?” you shout. “Yeah…but no…but I got some (hic) news…” Virgil answers. “Yeah, I already know about Joachim’s blessed light. You tried to tell me about it the first time I came here and you nearly threw up on me in the process.” “I did? Geez, sorry son…but this is different! (hic) Some…somebody…” “Somebody what?” “Somebody was lookin’ fer ya.” Well that peaked your interest. “Oh?” you answer. “Yeah…(hic).” “Hold on.” You say and go answer the door. No sooner have you opened the door when the odor of Virgil hits you full force. You immediately cover your nose and mouth. “Shit, Virgil. When the hell was the last time you washed? You fucking smell worse than a troll’s ass. Granted I’ve never smelled a troll’s ass, but I think it’s a safe bet you smell worse than one.” You say. “Guess again. Hahahahahahaha! (hic) So can ya spare a copper?” “Maybe, so what’s all this about someone looking for me?” “Oh, that. Yeah, this big guy. I mean not like ogre big, but just human big ya know? Old guy too. (hic) I mean not as old as that asshole who own this place, but probably around my age.” “Well that’s still fucking old then, aren’t you like seventy?” “Fuck you. I’ll have you know I’m in my forties…I think…yeah…” “Okay, so big guy in his forties was looking for me. What did he want?” Of course NOW Virgil decides to be uncooperative. “No! No! Fuck you, I’m not tellin’ you shit now. (hic) Who…who…what do you think I am some kinda asshole fer you to abuse? Callin’ me seventy fuckin’ years old. I oughta kick yer ass in the name of Joachim! Yer lucky I’m a man of faith…(hic)” At this point Virgil mumbles and stumbles away, bumps into the door to his room and then after a few tries he finally gets it open and slams it behind him. You suppose you could always ask him again later when he’s feeling less feisty. He will have likely forgotten all about your so-called insult later, of course he probably will have forgotten about the guy looking for you too. You close the door and think on who he could have been talking about. Your dad? Dad’s not a big guy though and you honestly doubt if he would bother to come look for you. Maybe it was Tom from the Crimson Talons? You can’t imagine what he’d want to see you directly for though. You’d imagine if he were trying to recruit you again he’d send an underling to invite you to see him. Tom wasn’t a huge guy either; of course given that Virgil is on the short and scrawny side, he probably thinks you’re a big guy too. Other than those two, you’re drawing a blank. It’s a little concerning that some big guy is looking for you though. You hear another knock on the door. “Virgil?” you ask. “No, it’s Randi. I got some information that you might want to know.” A woman’s voice says Randi is the red headed whore that lives down the hall. Unusual that she’d seek you out, since she’s snotty with you at the best of times. You guess it’s because you turned down her overly aggressive offer the first time you stepped into this inn. You answer the door and she’s as scuzzy as ever. You feel like you’re catching something just by standing this close to her. “Okay, so what’s this information? Because if it’s some big guy that was looking for me, I already know because Virgil told me.” You say. “Oh? Well did he tell you what this big guy wanted too?” Randi asks. “No.” “You’ll want to know then.” “…Well?” “Well what?” “(Sigh) I know you’re not used to hearing this, but spit it out! Tell me what this guy wanted.” “I’m not your fucking secretary. You want to know, you need to pay, ten silvers.” “Ten fucking silvers? You don’t charge that much for a blowjob!” “Yeah well if you want a blowjob, then you can pay half that price, but if you want to know what that guy wanted, it’s ten silvers.” While you’re wondering who this guy is and why he’s looking for you, you’re not exactly keen on giving away most of your hard earned money to some whore who you’re not even fucking. “Yeah well go find two dicks to suck then, because you’re not getting ten silver from me.” You say and shut the door on Randi who shouts some obscenities at you from the hallway. You’ll just remain alert and keep an eye out this guy looking for you. Remain on your guard too, since you still don’t know if this man means you harm or not. Hopefully Virgil can tell you something later. You might have to offer a couple coppers, but it’s far cry from ten silvers. For now though you decide to get some sleep after your long night of thievery. As your lids get heavier, you think on where you could ply your trade with a little more ease and a lot more loot. The rich areas are well patrolled, the government district is well patrolled, the merchant district is well patrolled, and the poor areas are…still patrolled and the folks don’t have shit. It suddenly occurs to you that you’ve never really tried the university district of the city. Might be worth a look, after all it should be filled with stupid rich kids not aware of their surroundings and the Talons don’t seem to go running around there, so there might be less heat. Later… You wake up midday. After getting yourself ready for today’s endeavors, you knock on Virgil’s door, but there is no answer. He’s either still asleep or he’s out collecting donations for Joachim. Probably the latter considering you didn’t contribute to his booze fund. You leave the Welcome Mat Inn, though a little more cautiously than usual. Nobody seems to be approaching or giving you suspicious looks though. Still, wishing to keep a low profile, you stick to the back streets as much as possible and eventually when you get to the better part of town, you catch a coach for your remaining trip to the university. By the time you arrive, the day is beginning to end, but you soon find that the university is still fairly active. After a few hours of just scouting and walking around, it’s much like you figured. A lot of scholarly types with their noses in books and rich kids that do a lot of partying. The dorms have security, but oddly not as much as one might think. You find that despite being dressed in your lower class clothing, nobody is really giving you a second glance. It might be due to your youth though; you probably just look like a struggling student. Wasn’t like your dad was exactly rich when he attended this place either. It occurs to you how strange it is to be at the university at all. You never thought you’d ever “attend” your dad’s old place of higher learning. You’re sure at one time he had hopes you would, but it probably wasn’t under these circumstances. Out of curiosity you pay a visit to the section to where the medical school is located. Seems weird that your father spent so much money and time putting himself through the place while you’re here basically casing it. You’re not that well versed in the value of medical supplies and drugs, but you figure the Crimson Talons could be willing to fence whatever you bring. Hell, you probably could just sell the stuff yourself. You know more than enough folks in your area that bitch about not being able to afford shit from the local apothecary, let alone proper medicine. Of course since this is your first time here, you’re still getting used to all the twisting corridors that this university seems to favor. You end up stepping into a class in session a couple times, before stumbling upon an unattended supply room where you pilfer various bottles of pills and liquids. When you attempt to leave the facility, you go in the direction where you think you came from, but soon find that you made a wrong turn somewhere. Somehow you manage to find yourself in what you think must be an office area since you see various doors with names on them. (All of them with “Dr.” in front) As you’re passing one, the door opens and you find yourself face to face with an older woman with gray hair. “Hey. You here about the job?” the woman asks. “Huh? What?” you answer. “I put out several announcements around campus for an escort job. Hmmm….you don’t look like a warrior and you’re a little young. You one of those students over from the magic college?” “Um, no actually, I just got lost. I’m trying to find my way out of this place.” “Lost? What were you doing here in the first place?” “Well my father used to go here and I…” “Wait a minute…you do you look a little familiar. What’s your father’s name?” You tell this woman your father’s name and she instantly lights up. “Hah! I knew it. You look a lot like your father. He was in my microbiology class when I used to teach it. Did very well too. How he doing?” the woman asks. “Oh he’s doing fine uh Miss…umm…” you reply “Oh I go by Dr. Gossey and nowadays I focus purely on zoology and the biology of the creatures and animals that live in our fascinating world! So are you a student here too and trying to follow in your dad’s footsteps?” “Something like that I suppose. I’m actually just checking out my options right now. You know, to see what I might be interested in.” “Good. Good. Glad to see a young person thinking about their future. Hey, would you consider yourself to be an adventurous spirit?” “I suppose in some ways I am.” “Well I’ve got a job that needs doing and I don’t have time to do it myself and I’d rather not send my assistant there by herself. You familiar with qweepas?” “Aren’t they some really ugly oversized rats?” “In simple terms basically, but they’re much more than that. They’re actually much more intelligent than the average rat. They aren’t even native to the continent, but a lot of them over the years have undoubtedly snuck aboard Hessla pirate ships and now they’re slowly starting to gain a foothold as a pest on the coast. One can only imagine how far they will have spread in another ten years.” “So what is it that you need exactly?” “I need someone to go into Hessla or around that area with my assistant and get me some live specimens. About ten should do. Like I said, I’d send my assistant alone, but I know how dangerous Hessla is especially for a single female, so it would be better if someone went with her.” “So, am I just to be there as hired muscle?” “Yes, though as I noticed before, you don’t seem to be a physical type…not to say you aren’t well proportioned for a young man your age, it’s just I was hoping to get a taker from the gladiator team or someone of similar intimidating size. I only mentioned this at all to you because for one, I haven’t had anyone else come in as strange as that may be. And two I knew your father. I figured it wouldn’t be polite to not offer his son a chance to earn some money towards his education goals, whatever they may be. You could even get a jump start on potential class credits.” This is getting a little strange, but you might as well ask. “So what’s this job pay then?” you ask. “Thirty gold pieces upon completion.” Dr. Gossey replies. “And all I have to do is escort your assistant?” “Yes, and make sure the qweepa specimens get here alive. Those are very important to my research. My assistant will have everything else required for this job and the trip will essentially be completely paid for.” “Do you need a decision now?” “Well it would be nice, but I understand if you need to think on it. Hessla isn’t a safe place and knowing your father, I’m sure he wanted better for you and you grew up in a protected environment and are probably less familiar with handling folks with a more criminal mentality.” Dr. Gossey’s assessment of you nearly makes you laugh. While this is technically a “real” job, you can’t say you aren’t totally unopposed to performing it. Thirty gold is certainly better than what you’ve done in most weeks since your time here and it would give you a chance to go to Hessla for free. Maybe see if things are potentially more lucrative over there. > You don't take the job While the pay seems okay, this doesn’t really seem like your sort of thing. Running around catching rats and escorting some student that lacks common sense on top of it doesn’t sound too fun. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think this is for me.” You say. “Completely understandable. Well, good luck on whatever it is that you’re deciding to go into, and say hello to your father next time you see him.” Dr. Gossey says. “I will.” You say and bid her goodbye. After leaving the medical building you decide to just call it a day at the university. You’ve had an okay haul today and you think the university will be your stomping grounds now. When you finally get back to the neighborhood, you revert back your cautious ways until you finally enter the Welcome Mat and your room. You manage to make it without being accosted by any of its denizens this time. The next day you start your routine of heading to the university and then after a productive day you make your way back home. As you’re heading home in the middle of the night, you suddenly feel uneasy. Like you’re being watched. You look around constantly, but never see anything out of the ordinary. There isn’t anyone following you, though you suppose if they are they’re really good at staying hidden. Your thoughts go back to the man who was looking for you a few days ago. You still don’t know what that was all about and if this is someone meaning you harm. You’re paranoid for the rest of your way home. You don’t change your routine too much other than perhaps taking different ways to get to the university and back home. You still feel uneasy at times, but again nothing happens. However on one of your more mundane trips to get some food, one of the local food merchants who doesn’t normally make much small talk, breaks that habit when you’re looking over the fruit cart. “Hey, some big guy was looking for you yesterday.” The merchant remarks. “So I’ve heard. Got a better description than that?” you ask. “Uh, sort of a bushy beard, but the rest of his face was obviously pretty weathered. Shaved head. Probably in his forties or fifties, but still pretty fit. Carried a pack with him, but no weapons. Well at least none out in the open. Said to tell you that he’d carrying an important message for you from your family and that it’s very urgent that you meet him at the Raggedy Man Inn.” “Hmmm, and that’s it?” “As far as I know.” “Thanks. I’ll just be taking these today.” You say and pay the merchant for your food before leaving. Just keeps getting weirder. All you know about the Raggedy Man Inn is that it’s in a worse part of Klyton than even you stay at. If this guy is some sort of courier, surely he should know where to find you, especially if this is an urgent message from your family. And you can’t begin to know what that might be if true. Part of you wants to just head to the Raggedy Man Inn to confront this person once and for all, but all of this sounds so damn suspicious that you can’t imagine going there would do you any good other than getting caught in a trap. You keep up your usual caution and after about a week passes, nobody is coming up to tell you that some guy is looking for you anymore. You end up wondering if it was some message from your family after all. In any case, you relax slightly and continue with your usual life. After a month, the whole thing seems to be forgotten by anyone that spoke to you about it. In fact you aren’t even thinking about it as much anymore either. You’re mostly thinking about how you’re really making a killing at the university. You come home from another successful night and enter your room… No sooner have you opened the door, when a hand strongly grips your hand and yanks you inside. You feel a foot trip you and you go plunging face first into the floor and hear the door being shut behind you. “Now hol…” you start to say before you feel a boot kicking you in the side of the head. “Stop talking, I don’t want to hear your voice. This has to happen.” You hear a voice say. You manage to roll over and see a muscular older man with a beard standing over you with a very large knife. This is the man that was looking for you. “Who…” you start to say again before the man descends on top of your body and punches you in the face with his free hand. “I said shut up! I thought about this. I thought about the pros and cons for a long time. The right and wrong. And ultimately it all comes back to justice.” The man says. You never put it together based on the vague descriptions by other people before, but you know who this man is. He’s Klint’s father. “You took away my son and not only did you escape, but I see you merely plying your criminal ways here too. I could have easily told the Klyton militia about you, but no, I want to perform this justice myself. Not just for my son you murdered, but for ALL those you’ve hurt!” With those final words, Klint’s father begins stabbing the hell out of you repeatedly with his knife. You scream out several times, but he doesn’t care. In fact he wants to hear your pleas and begging. By the time the militia is called to check on the noise, Klint’s father stabbed you to death and is covered in your blood. He merely turns his head and says that justice has been served.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You figure it might be best to head somewhere that you can at least get your bearings about what you’re going to do in the long term with your life. Still, it would be best to stay off the road and stick to the wilderness. With a new goal, you head in the direction of Klyton and hoping nobody from Teckleville is tracking you. You stick to the woods figuring that it will provide you with more cover. You keep alert for possible denizens that lurk in the woods themselves, but besides a lot of birds and a few normal animals, you don’t encounter anything out of the ordinary. You even manage to get a good night’s sleep, well as good as you can get with as paranoid as you are. Unfortunately the woods eventually begins to thin and if you continue walking the way you are going, you’re going to be in the open plains and if you’re going to march across the open fields, you might as well just walk on the road since you’ll be just as exposed. Since you’re not exactly in danger of starving or anything and the woods themselves seem fairly safe, you decide to play it cautiously by staying in the woods for the rest of the day and travel in the open at night. Hopefully it won’t be a much longer trek to Klyton. You take the opportunity to rest up some more and when the only light in the sky is that of the dim moon, that’s when you leave the edge of the woods. The trees around you soon disappear and all that’s left is you in the open countryside and the occasional sounds of nocturnal animals. You walk across the fields for a while, but as the grass starts getting knee high, you start hearing unfamiliar sounds. While you hope it is only a harmless nocturnal animal (or rather several of them judging by the noises) you get concerned that you might be at a disadvantage if it isn’t, so you quickly make your way back towards the road where you have better vision of any potential low to the ground threats. The road is just as empty as the plains you just left. You continue to keep aware of your surroundings by keeping an ear out for various sounds. You still have this idea that you’re suddenly going to hear Teckleville watchmen on horses galloping on your position. You continue down the road and once again you see something out of the ordinary. This time though it’s a hanging cage along side the road. You’ve heard of those before. Klyton apparently uses them when the jails are full and the criminal hasn’t done anything bad enough to deserve outright death. So they get put in these cages until they eventually die of starvation, exposure or someone grants the mercy of killing them. Either way they aren’t the city’s problem anymore. Seems like it would be kinder to kill them immediately. You walk a little further and you see a few more of them on both sides of the road. Well if there’s anyone inside them, they’re going to be safely locked in a cage. First couple cages you pass are empty. The next one has a decaying smell as you pass, but nobody is in it. You notice on the other side of the road a couple of the cages have bodies in them, but seeing as they aren’t moving, you can only guess you’re probably walking by corpses. At least you think you are. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have any extra water would you?” you suddenly hear one of the slumping figures in the cage say. Well you may have decided to travel at night, but it would seem you’re encountering more people than you thought. “Uh, no not really.” You answer. “That sounded really convincing there son. Come on, if you got any you could spare some. You always got the luxury of grabbing yourself a drink at the first tavern in Klyton…assuming you’re even old enough...I can’t quite see you, but you sound fairly young.” The figure in the cage says. “I’m not young, I’m a grown man!” you exclaim. “Oh. Well apologies then. So can you please spare any water, I’m dying of thirst over here.” “Why should I trust you? You’re in a cage meant for criminals.” “So? What, do you think I’m going to suddenly attack you or something? Even if I had the strength to grab you from between the bars and choked you out or something, that wouldn’t exactly help my situation now would it? If anything it would just be harder to beg for water from the next person that passed by given that your corpse would be near my cage.” Strangely that logic makes a bit of sense to you. “I’m not a violent criminal anyway. I’m just in here because I was a little down on my luck and stole some food. Unfortunately Klyton is pretty overzealous when it comes to their laws.” The man goes on to say. “So you’re a thief?” you ask. “Only out of survival.” “Explains why you got caught. You’re not a professional.” You say. “Oh? Well more apologies then, I didn’t realize I was speaking to a master fucking thief. Of course if you’re so good, why the hell are you wandering out here in the boonies? Shouldn’t you be stealing the King of Delantium’s jeweled chamber pot or something?” “Hey, if you’re still expecting me to give you any water you’re doing a piss poor job at convincing me.” You say getting a bit agitated and stepping closer to the cage. From this distance you get a better visual on the man in the cage. He looks about of average build, and he’s a lot older than you. In fact he looks like he might be around your dad’s age. Of course he gets a better look at you as well. “Heh. You barely have any stubble on your face! I knew you were just a kid! Something about you though…you look strangely familiar.” The man remarks. “I don’t think so, I’ve never been to Klyton.” You say. “No, you don’t look like you have. You look more like someone from a small town…say you wouldn’t be from Teckleville would you? That is the closest town around here.” “…um no why?” you say and then silently cursing yourself that your lie didn’t come out natural. “I’ll take that slight pause as a yes and you really need to work on your attempts at misdirection and lying. What sort of thief are you?” “Better one than you obviously, you can’t even pick the easy lock on your cage.” “Yeah, yeah, so Teckleville huh? Hmm….wait a minute!” The man suddenly asks if you know a doctor from Teckleville, and then goes into a description somewhat matching your dad, even mentions him by name. Does this man know your father? Since you seem to be messing up on your lies right now, you just go ahead and confirm his suspicions. “The gods are truly merciful this night! I knew your father! You look a lot like him when he was young. My name’s Tom and I used to go to school with your father!” “You mean in the university?” “No, I used to go to primary and high school with him. I was one of his friends during childhood. I mean sure we drifted apart obviously, even more so when I dropped out altogether, but me and him were always alright with each other! I heard he moved to Teckleville years ago and had a family. Didn’t know his son was a thief though…how the hell did that happen?” “Long story.” “Hm, I’ll bet…so you were saying this big ass lock on my cage looked easy?” “Yeah, I’ve picked more complex merchant lockboxes.” You say confidently. At this point Tom stops slouching and begins to move towards you as much as he can in his cage. “That’s good…that’s good….so hey instead of water, how about you set me free?” “What? Why should I do that?” “Oh come on! I was a friend of your father’s! Surely he’s mentioned all the fond memories of us playing smash sphere after school.” “Well, actually my father doesn’t speak much about Klyton or the past at all. He prefers to forget it. Says it was mostly stressful.” “Oh....well hey how about this deal then? You’ve never been to Klyton, so how about in exchange for my freedom I give you some basic information on some of the neighborhoods and potential places you could easily go burgle. I mean obviously I’m rubbish at it, but if you’re as good as you say you are, they should be easy for you. You might have less of a problem with releasing him if you could somehow confirm he is who he says he is. Tom certainly seems to know bits about your father that would be hard to know by some complete stranger. Your father never said anything about former childhood friends though, or if he did you weren’t paying attention. > You leave Tom Even if he is a childhood friend of your father, you just don’t trust Tom enough to set him free. “Look, I got my own problems right now and I can’t be taking on someone else’s, so I’m saying goodbye to you.” “Wait! Okay, I get it, I get it. You don’t trust me, but can’t you at least give me that water?” Tom asks. “And I told you I don’t have it to spare! Look, I’m going, maybe the next person will be more generous.” You say. “Fine. I can see you’re nothing like your dad. He would have at least given me the water.” Tom mutters and then mumbles some swears as you leave. You continue along the road and fortunately you don’t have any more late night encounters. Eventually Klyton is in sight and you quicken your pace, anxious to get to your destination. When you get to the city gates, you find them to be heavily guarded and you’re stopped. “Halt, you don’t look like a merchant or anyone else that has a real job. In fact you look a bit suspicious sneaking about the city at this time of night.” One of the guards says. “Sneaking around? But I’m going through the main gate!” you say. “You giving me lip boy? I’m asking the questions here! We don’t need anymore scum like you in this city!” the guard says and pushes you. You’re smart enough not to start a fight with an armored guard, but you’re starting to wonder if you’re going to even get in the city. Fortunately, not all the guards are power drunk assholes and one steps forward to pull the asshole one back a bit. “Oh for fuck’s sake Clyde, calm down and leave the boy alone. Judging by the look of him he’s just a snot nosed kid. Probably ran away from home or something. Hey, kid you got any money on you?” While you normally wouldn’t announce such things, you figure they want a bribe to leave you alone. “Um, yeah…look I don’t have much, but you can have what I…” you start to say. “What? No, we’re not trying to shake you down. This isn’t Holgard son. I just wanted to know so I can tell you which inn you should probably check in at. Seeing as you said you don’t have much, I’d recommend the Welcome Mat, which isn’t that far from the main gate, you really can’t miss it.. The place is cheap and pretty safe. If you still can’t afford their low prices, they’ll probably have some tasks you can do to earn a place on their flop room floor at least.” “Oh, okay. Thanks.” “No problem, but I’m going to warn you once now. I certainly HOPE if you’re sticking around the city, that you have every intention of being a productive citizens. Because if you don’t, well…let’s just say we don’t take kindly to crime around here. I trust you saw all those cages down the road.” “Yes, sir.” “Hm, well that’ll be where you’re heading if you have ill intent in this city. And that’s if you’re lucky.” “Yes, I certainly understand sir.” You say. “Very well, off you go son.” You start to walk towards the city entrance, when Clyde can’t resist talking more shit at you. “Remember what we said! You fuck up and I’m gonna fuck YOU up! You hear me you little shit? I’ll be on your ass! I’ll be on you ALL fucking night and day!” “Yeah, yeah, I got it.” You say. While some of the other guards are chuckling and Clyde’s buddy is telling him to cease his almost rape like threats, Clyde isn’t even paying attention anymore, he HATES your dismissive tone and all he’s feeling is disrespect to his authority. “You fucking little scumbag bitch! Fucking dismiss me will you?” Clyde mutters and before you know it he’s punched you hard with his gauntlet-encased fist. You drop like a sack of potatoes. “NO Clyde! STOP! Shit! Get Clyde off of him!” Clyde’s buddy shouts to everyone, as Clyde is kicking your head in. Eventually they get Clyde off of you, but it’s too late. He’s stomped your head into mush. You can’t even see anymore and you’re already losing your hearing. You think you hear someone shout for a medic, but by then everything goes black.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up fairly early, but then you didn’t really sleep much to begin with. This was more of a brief rest anyway. After a quick check to see if anyone is in the area, you get out of your bloody clothes and change into some new ones. You might not be properly clean, but it’s better than you were. You then check your supplies, which aren’t much. You’ve got a few coins, but you aren’t excessively worried about that since food and water are more important out here in the wilderness. You’ve got a little food and water, but it isn’t going to last long. The only weapon you have currently is your dagger. Part of you is only just now starting to feel the various negative emotions involving your parents and Annah. You can only imagine the shitstorm they’re facing because of your actions. You just hope that they don’t suffer the consequences of what you did. Then there’s Annah. You feel like you should be feeling a lot sadder about her, maybe even crying a bit, but maybe you got all those emotions out of your system when you killed Klint. Still seems a bit surreal that you killed someone. Not just anyone, but someone you knew since childhood, even if you didn’t like him. You definitely don’t feel bad about it and while that can be due to several understandable factors, you can’t help but wonder if you could do it again under different circumstances. You may have to, especially now, though your mind certainly went to a dark place during that time. Whatever the near future holds, you’ll have to deal with it when it happens. Right now you have to make a decision on where you’re going to go because you’re not exactly hot on the idea of staying out here in the wilderness. Your first thought is to head west to the city-state of Klyton. It’s certainly the closest city and it’s the direction you ran from Teckleville anyway. The problem is if anyone from Teckleville is still searching for you, that’s going to be the first place they look. Still, Klyton is the only place you really have any basic knowledge about thanks to your parents both being originally from there. Your father never really spoke too much about it, just saying that the only thing worthwhile that he got there was your mother and he was glad when they finally moved to Teckleville to be closer to your grandmother at the time. Your mother on the other hand didn’t speak so ill of the place, which is surprising since she grew up in a lower class area than your father did. She even said that sometimes she missed the times when she worked at the inn where she met your father in the first place. Of course her knowledge about the city is bound to be a bit out of date. Also, while Klyton has no jurisdiction over Teckleville, it has been known to apprehend wanted criminals from elsewhere trying to hide out there. Not to mention the place in general has a fairly good reputation (And they want to keep it that way) as far as its own security goes. The Delantium Kingdom to the east isn’t really high on your choice list. For one thing, you’d have to backtrack around Teckleville to go in that direction. From what you’ve overheard, the kingdom has been slowly trying to expand again which sounds a lot like more soldier types running around and that’s the last thing you need. Still, the kingdom is a big place and they can’t possibly be everywhere. Sivak is the closest major city there. The only other nearby bastion of major civilization you can think of that’s close is another city state by the name of Holgard. It’s to the south and in terms of existence, it’s only a little older than you are. It was founded by a noble from the Delantium Kingdom. Originally it was most likely supposed to be some sort of outpost or colony for the DK. But whatever the original intent, the noble soon set himself up as absolute ruler with no ties to the kingdom at all. For whatever reason, the DK hasn’t taken any action against him, whether that’s because the cost wouldn’t be worth it, they’ve got more important things to deal with or they’re simply glad to have him gone is unknown. The third possibility isn’t entirely out of the question either, since you’ve overheard travelling merchants say that Baron Varsakken is a very unlikable man and it’s amazing he hasn’t suffered any assassination attempts. His children are apparently little better. Still, you’ve also heard the place is filled with corruption so it would probably be a better place to do your work than Klyton. > You holgard From what little you know of Holgard, it sounds more like a city you could thrive in. The first problem is going to be getting there though. Holgard is still located in a wilder region of the land so road maintenance isn’t always an option due to marauding monsters or bandits. In fact it might not even be safe to stay on the road. In any case it’s a ways there, so you get on with it. Your couple of days of travel are uneventful. Just you and an empty road. When night falls you always get off the road and attempt to find a safe place to sleep in the trees nearby. Though you never really sleep easily and are constantly waking up at various sounds. Third day is a little different as you hear the clopping of horses behind you. At first you get concerned that someone from Teckleville is galloping your way, but a quick glance shows it’s just a merchant caravan. A fairly big one too since you see several men on horseback along with a carriage and large wagon behind it. An idea comes to you and you wait for the caravan to reach your location. It gets a little closer and then stops completely. A couple of the men on horseback speak to someone in the carriage and then both of those men ride out to meet you. Both of them are carrying crossbows and wearing full plate mail. No insignia though so they’re probably mercenaries. “Hey you! What are you doing?” one asks. “I was waiting for your caravan.” You answer. “Yeah? For what purpose?” “Depends. What are you guys selling?” “Nothing to the likes of you. You don’t look like you could afford it anyway.” “I can’t even look?” “No. In fact you’re acting really fucking suspicious just waiting around on the road like this. I’m warning you right now that if this some sort of ambush tactic, you and your bandit buddies are far from equipped to take us on. And I can guarantee YOU are going to be the first one to die.” One mercenary says as he points his crossbow at you. You slightly raise your arms a bit. “Hold on! I’m no bandit! I’m just a traveller a bit down on his luck. I know this road is dangerous, I was just wondering maybe if I could travel with you guys, you’re going to Holgard right?” “No, we’re hired to protect that caravan, not baby sit every stranger along the way.” “You wouldn’t be baby sitting me! I know how to fight, its just safety in numbers. I mean if we run into any trouble I’ll even help. I’m not asking to get paid either.” The mercenaries both glance at each other and don’t look too enticed by your offer, but fortunately they aren’t entirely calling the shots. “Hold on, we’ll have to ask the boss first.” One says and then they both gallop back to the carriage. You don’t wait long before they return. “Okay son, the boss says you can travel with us, in fact he says you can ride with him in the carriage.” The mercenary says. “Wow, really? Well I wasn’t expecting that. Awfully nice of him.” “Yeah…nice. (snort)” the merc says with a slight grin. The other merc chuckles a bit as well and you follow the pair of them back. The closer you get to the carriage; you see that it’s pretty ornate looking. Obviously the merchant who owns this one is very wealthy. When you finally enter the carriage it’s even more luxurious inside. Soft fur lines the seat, the curtains covering the windows are silk and the carriage floor and ceiling are gold plated. A perfumed smell also fills interior. And to your left, is where you see the owner sitting. He’s a grossly fat berk dressed in fancy colorful clothing and a couple of jeweled rings on his fingers. He smiles in your direction denoting friendliness, but he’s looking at you in a way that…well you aren’t used to. “Well hello my dear boy. When they told me there was a young boy out on this ghastly road by himself, I knew I had to provide help. However, their description of you doesn’t do you justice. You are certainly are very fit and firm looking.” He says staring you up and down. Now you know why the mercs were smirking earlier. You sit down across from him and he tells his driver to get on their way before turning his attention completely to you. “So, what a fine lad like you doing on this road by himself? Don’t you know there are bandits and worse about?” the merchant asks. “Yeah, but it’s the only way I know to Holgard.” You say “Well still. A boy like you should be careful. These bandits are terrible brutes. They don’t just rob people, they usually kill them too. Sometimes they do even worse things. Why I shudder to think what they’d do to a handsome lad like yourself. You’d find yourself stripped, beaten and violated several times over before they finally slit your throat…and then perhaps violated repeatedly again…I mean who could stop them if they caught you all alone?” “Nobody I guess.” “Exactly. But we needn’t dwell on such morbid situations now. You are safe with me and I shall make sure no harm will come to your…body…” The merchant licks his lips as he stares at you and it is at this moment you think you now have a general idea of how your sister and Annah must have felt when they had merchants fawning all over them. Fortunately, the merchant doesn’t press whatever unnatural lust he has for you and proceeds to just speak about himself. He mentions his name Graham Oren famous wine merchant (Or at least he thinks he’s famous) and that he’s coming from the Delantium Kingdom to do a bit of business in Holgard. You’re a little disappointed since you were hoping to rip the caravan off in some way, but knowing he’s just hauling wine casks makes stealing those large wooden things a little difficult to do. He goes on to say that normally he wouldn’t bother to travel to the doomed city, but sometimes an in person presence is required to appease certain clients. “Doomed city? Why do you say that?” you ask. “I’m guessing you don’t keep up on politics, m’boy, but then why would someone like you really need to, but yes the city is doomed. The Baron’s days are numbered. Honestly it must only be by Yag’s luck that he’s survived as long as he has.” “Is the Delantium Kingdom coming to take back the city?” Graham looks a little impressed by your basic knowledge of the political landscape. “Well…it would seem you are just full of surprises and here I was thinking you were just another pretty face. But to answer your question, I do believe they have their sights on it, but not necessarily through force. Something about annexing it peacefully so they don’t have to waste the manpower. Probably through the help of one of his children, but given how treacherous they all are, that’s not necessarily a certainty. Still, whether they take it or not, the Baron himself is going to be out of the picture soon. There is a growing discontent in the air by every faction and everyone that has an agenda there. He can’t possibly keep control for much longer.” Well that’s a bit of interesting information about the city, though a bit concerning. You wonder if you’re going to find yourself in the middle of a citywide revolt when you get to Holgard. While you’re pondering that possibility, Graham begins speaking again. “But enough about these things. Let us talk more about you…” Graham says leaning his girth towards you and being bold enough now to put his hand on your leg, which you immediately pull away. “Look, I don’t like being fucking touched and I’m not fucking interested.” “Oh come on, don’t be like that. You knew what you were getting into when you entered this carriage.” Graham remarks and tries to touch your leg again. “I’m serious, don’t do that again.” “Or what? You’ll leave? What if I don’t let you?” Graham remarks and then reveals a decorative and strange looking pistol with multiple barrels. Firearms aren’t common and you’ve only ever seen your grandfather’s old non-working troll gun hanging up in your house, but it’s obvious that this fat bastard is rich enough to have some sort of custom made one. It’s enough to make you freeze up, but you maintain a cool head and don’t panic. “That’s right little lamb, you’re going to stay right here and…” Suddenly a lot of noise and shouting can be heard from outside and one of the mercs rides up to the window. “Sir! Stay inside! We’re being attacked!” he shouts This is enough time to distract Graham and allowing you to act. > You run out of the carriage Only having escape in your mind, you attempt to rush out of the carriage, unfortunately you’re not quite quick enough opening up the door and Graham fires his pistol at you. You feel a hot burn on the right side of your head before you tumble out of the carriage. It takes you a moment to actually realize you haven’t suffered a fatal wound, but only a “graze” that’s taken off your right ear and skin. Your vision is blurry, you feel dizzy, your head is in pain and ringing and the rest of your body isn’t doing much better since you fell pretty hard and twisted your ankle. To top it all off there is a skirmish going on around you. You barely manage to stand yourself up and you nearly fall over several times as you hold your head and try to get out danger. Blood covers one side of your face and you can still feel some of it dripping from the hole where your ear used to be. With a muted ring still going on in your head, you don’t hear the sound of a run away horse galloping your way. You’re trampled by the beast and feel the full weight of its hooves stepping on you and crushing some of your ribs in the process. Now nearly crippled, you don’t even have the strength to get up again, but it hardly matters since one bandit who was sneaking about and trying to avoid the heavier fighting notices that you’re still breathing. He of course has no problem in finishing off a target that can’t fight back.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>From what little you know of Holgard, it sounds more like a city you could thrive in. The first problem is going to be getting there though. Holgard is still located in a wilder region of the land so road maintenance isn’t always an option due to marauding monsters or bandits. In fact it might not even be safe to stay on the road. In any case it’s a ways there, so you get on with it. Your couple of days of travel are uneventful. Just you and an empty road. When night falls you always get off the road and attempt to find a safe place to sleep in the trees nearby. Though you never really sleep easily and are constantly waking up at various sounds. Third day is a little different as you hear the clopping of horses behind you. At first you get concerned that someone from Teckleville is galloping your way, but a quick glance shows it’s just a merchant caravan. A fairly big one too since you see several men on horseback along with a carriage and large wagon behind it. An idea comes to you and you wait for the caravan to reach your location. It gets a little closer and then stops completely. A couple of the men on horseback speak to someone in the carriage and then both of those men ride out to meet you. Both of them are carrying crossbows and wearing full plate mail. No insignia though so they’re probably mercenaries. “Hey you! What are you doing?” one asks. “I was waiting for your caravan.” You answer. “Yeah? For what purpose?” “Depends. What are you guys selling?” “Nothing to the likes of you. You don’t look like you could afford it anyway.” “I can’t even look?” “No. In fact you’re acting really fucking suspicious just waiting around on the road like this. I’m warning you right now that if this some sort of ambush tactic, you and your bandit buddies are far from equipped to take us on. And I can guarantee YOU are going to be the first one to die.” One mercenary says as he points his crossbow at you. You slightly raise your arms a bit. “Hold on! I’m no bandit! I’m just a traveller a bit down on his luck. I know this road is dangerous, I was just wondering maybe if I could travel with you guys, you’re going to Holgard right?” “No, we’re hired to protect that caravan, not baby sit every stranger along the way.” “You wouldn’t be baby sitting me! I know how to fight, its just safety in numbers. I mean if we run into any trouble I’ll even help. I’m not asking to get paid either.” The mercenaries both glance at each other and don’t look too enticed by your offer, but fortunately they aren’t entirely calling the shots. “Hold on, we’ll have to ask the boss first.” One says and then they both gallop back to the carriage. You don’t wait long before they return. “Okay son, the boss says you can travel with us, in fact he says you can ride with him in the carriage.” The mercenary says. “Wow, really? Well I wasn’t expecting that. Awfully nice of him.” “Yeah…nice. (snort)” the merc says with a slight grin. The other merc chuckles a bit as well and you follow the pair of them back. The closer you get to the carriage; you see that it’s pretty ornate looking. Obviously the merchant who owns this one is very wealthy. When you finally enter the carriage it’s even more luxurious inside. Soft fur lines the seat, the curtains covering the windows are silk and the carriage floor and ceiling are gold plated. A perfumed smell also fills interior. And to your left, is where you see the owner sitting. He’s a grossly fat berk dressed in fancy colorful clothing and a couple of jeweled rings on his fingers. He smiles in your direction denoting friendliness, but he’s looking at you in a way that…well you aren’t used to. “Well hello my dear boy. When they told me there was a young boy out on this ghastly road by himself, I knew I had to provide help. However, their description of you doesn’t do you justice. You are certainly are very fit and firm looking.” He says staring you up and down. Now you know why the mercs were smirking earlier. You sit down across from him and he tells his driver to get on their way before turning his attention completely to you. “So, what a fine lad like you doing on this road by himself? Don’t you know there are bandits and worse about?” the merchant asks. “Yeah, but it’s the only way I know to Holgard.” You say “Well still. A boy like you should be careful. These bandits are terrible brutes. They don’t just rob people, they usually kill them too. Sometimes they do even worse things. Why I shudder to think what they’d do to a handsome lad like yourself. You’d find yourself stripped, beaten and violated several times over before they finally slit your throat…and then perhaps violated repeatedly again…I mean who could stop them if they caught you all alone?” “Nobody I guess.” “Exactly. But we needn’t dwell on such morbid situations now. You are safe with me and I shall make sure no harm will come to your…body…” The merchant licks his lips as he stares at you and it is at this moment you think you now have a general idea of how your sister and Annah must have felt when they had merchants fawning all over them. Fortunately, the merchant doesn’t press whatever unnatural lust he has for you and proceeds to just speak about himself. He mentions his name Graham Oren famous wine merchant (Or at least he thinks he’s famous) and that he’s coming from the Delantium Kingdom to do a bit of business in Holgard. You’re a little disappointed since you were hoping to rip the caravan off in some way, but knowing he’s just hauling wine casks makes stealing those large wooden things a little difficult to do. He goes on to say that normally he wouldn’t bother to travel to the doomed city, but sometimes an in person presence is required to appease certain clients. “Doomed city? Why do you say that?” you ask. “I’m guessing you don’t keep up on politics, m’boy, but then why would someone like you really need to, but yes the city is doomed. The Baron’s days are numbered. Honestly it must only be by Yag’s luck that he’s survived as long as he has.” “Is the Delantium Kingdom coming to take back the city?” Graham looks a little impressed by your basic knowledge of the political landscape. “Well…it would seem you are just full of surprises and here I was thinking you were just another pretty face. But to answer your question, I do believe they have their sights on it, but not necessarily through force. Something about annexing it peacefully so they don’t have to waste the manpower. Probably through the help of one of his children, but given how treacherous they all are, that’s not necessarily a certainty. Still, whether they take it or not, the Baron himself is going to be out of the picture soon. There is a growing discontent in the air by every faction and everyone that has an agenda there. He can’t possibly keep control for much longer.” Well that’s a bit of interesting information about the city, though a bit concerning. You wonder if you’re going to find yourself in the middle of a citywide revolt when you get to Holgard. While you’re pondering that possibility, Graham begins speaking again. “But enough about these things. Let us talk more about you…” Graham says leaning his girth towards you and being bold enough now to put his hand on your leg, which you immediately pull away. “Look, I don’t like being fucking touched and I’m not fucking interested.” “Oh come on, don’t be like that. You knew what you were getting into when you entered this carriage.” Graham remarks and tries to touch your leg again. “I’m serious, don’t do that again.” “Or what? You’ll leave? What if I don’t let you?” Graham remarks and then reveals a decorative and strange looking pistol with multiple barrels. Firearms aren’t common and you’ve only ever seen your grandfather’s old non-working troll gun hanging up in your house, but it’s obvious that this fat bastard is rich enough to have some sort of custom made one. It’s enough to make you freeze up, but you maintain a cool head and don’t panic. “That’s right little lamb, you’re going to stay right here and…” Suddenly a lot of noise and shouting can be heard from outside and one of the mercs rides up to the window. “Sir! Stay inside! We’re being attacked!” he shouts This is enough time to distract Graham and allowing you to act. > You atack Graham You aren’t going to let this fat fuck get a chance to possibly shoot you in the back, plus you’re too pissed about him trying to molest you. With a couple quick moves you pull out your dagger, stab him in his arm and relieve him of his fancy pistol. Graham screams out like a little girl and now pleads for his miserable life. “Please! No, don’t kill me!” he whimpers pathetically. Once again, much like how it was Klint, you show no remorse and pull the trigger of the pistol. It’s the first time you’ve ever used one; so the unexpected kickback nearly causes you nearly drop it. You also weren’t expecting it blow half of Graham’s stinking face off. His obese corpse slumps lifelessly against the carriage wall. “Shit.” You remark to yourself being in awe of the power of the weapon. Never being one to miss an opportunity, you quickly deprive Graham’s body of the jeweled rings on his fingers. You then also go through the pockets that you can get to and get a bag full of gold coins. After looting Graham’s body, you remember that there is a skirmish going on outside. A quick glance shows several bandit types fighting the mercs. The mercs are out numbered, but thanks to their armor and better training, they’re doing a good job of fending off the bandits. You get out of the carriage with the intent of just running off into the woods, but then you might get lost. It occurs to you that you do have an advantage that will allow you get away a lot faster and still stay on your course. While one of the mounted mercs bashes in the head of a bandit you take the opportunity to shoot him while his back is turned. The merc’s armor is of no protection and he cries out as he falls from his horse. “Who the hell is that guy?” one of the bandits shouts. “Dunno, but who cares, he’s killing their side!” another says. You quickly run to the now ownerless horse and clumsily get on. You’re a bit vulnerable for a few seconds, but fortunately the bandits seem to now think you’re on their side and don’t focus on you (and the remaining mercs have their hands full) You soon manage to control the horse (which is anxious to get away from the chaos anyway) and gallop away until the skirmish is far behind you and you’re basically left alone again. Unfortunately your horse suddenly starts wheeze and wobble. You manage to hastily get off before it collapses. There on it’s left side you see what the problem is. In all the ensuing the chaos, the horse actually took a few crossbow bolts. Probably damage to vital organs and its adrenaline is finally wearing off. Bad luck for you and even worse luck for the horse. Not having many more options, you start walking. In any case there’s two more bodies to your count now. Granted Graham deserved it, but that merc…well he made a living risking his life, it just happened that today his time was up. You had to survive a dangerous situation and that’s it. That’s how you’re justifying that one anyway. Still, you at least acquired a few goodies for your troubles. You’re going to have to learn more about how to take proper care of this pistol because it’s far too valuable of a weapon to neglect. It’ll certainly make dealing with shit in Holgard a bit more manageable. The rings are what surprise you most. You’re no jeweler, but you have stolen enough cheap baubles in the past that you can tell a fake when you examine it in greater detail. The gems in the rings are actually common, but altered slightly (especially their color) to resemble more valuable ones. Even the ring is gold plated rather than pure. Looks like Graham wasn’t as rich as he made out. However, the little pouch of coins is real money so there’s that at least. You continue along the road, which as you guessed starts alternating from being intact, to dirt with a few stones to being little more than a well worn path in the grass. Even the occasional signs aren’t much help given that many are flat out damaged in some way. Your natural instinct to just keep going in a straight line like you were doing, but unfortunately for you, the path completely disappears into forest. Doesn’t help that the road also branches into several paths that twist in different directions. You weren’t expecting that so you aren’t sure which way to go. While you’re pondering this decision, a voice calls out to you. “Hey! Where youz tryin’ to get to?” You then see a person dressed in simple clothing coming out of the forest. He’s a little shorter than you, in fact he’s a little greener than you too. Doesn’t look like an orc though, not nearly big or massive enough. Goblin perhaps, but he’s taller than one and almost a bit human looking. A short green human with a few warts on his face and a bigger than average nose. In any case, you maintain your usual caution. “Okay, that’s far enough. Who are you?” you ask. “Me? I’m just Warts.” He answers picking his big nose. “Appropriate name.” “Grhm. So youz tryin’ to get to Holgard?” “Yeah, why?” “Well cuz, I can lead you to it. Lotz o’ paths in this forest lead lotz o’ places. Easy to get lost if you don’t know da way.” “You know the way huh? How do I know you aren’t going to lead me into an ambush?” “Youz don’t I suppoze. Take yer chances going alone an’ getting lost, don’t care. I just try to earn a little extra coin for drink an’ leadin’ clueless humies like yerself gets me some…well when they aren’t throwin’ rocks at me that is.” “What are you exactly?” you ask. “Huh? What you mean?” Warts replies. “I mean, you don’t look quite like any greenskin I’ve ever seen.” “You seen a lot o them have ya?” “Well no, but I’ve heard tales…” “Then you don’t really know nuthin’ then do ya?” Warts says in a perturbed tone. Actually he’s got a bit of a point. You decide to get right to the matter. “Alright, assuming I take you up on your generous offer, how much is it?” you ask. “Oh, yeah price…hmm, you want to go to Holgard right? Five gold coins.” Warts answers. “Five gold coins just to lead me through the forest? That’s fucking outrageous!” “Holgard is tricky to get to if you don’t know the way. Lot of false paths get made. Besides, you lot usually have more than enough gold. I see you humies travelling all over in your rolly boxes filled with goods.” “Do I look like I’m in a rolly box carting around a wagon full of treasures? I’m just a simple traveller down on his luck.” “Down on luck huh? You should pray to Yag more. Anywayz five gold. Final offer.” This greenskin obviously has no concept of haggling. It really isn’t like you don’t have the coin, it’s more like you don’t want to give so much to the likes of him after being fortunate enough to acquire it in the first place. Ultimately, he’s either telling the truth about the forest being that treacherous or he’s completely bullshitting you. You’ll just have to decide for yourself. > You pay Warts He might be bullshitting you, but you’re not exactly familiar with this area, so you might as well not take chances. Still, you got a better idea on payment. “Hey Warts, I don’t have the five gold coins, but I do have these.” You say and hold out Graham’s rings to Warts. Warts approaches cautiously and then takes one of the rings from your hand. He inspects it and then speaks. “Grm. Okay, sure these will do. Stupid hobgoblin tribe around here always likes pretty jewelry even if it fakesy.” He says and takes the other one from your hand. “Fake?” you say in a completely surprised tone, though not completely put on since you didn’t think someone like Warts would know. “Yeah, fake… youz really didn’t know?” “No, I’m afraid I come from a small town and don’t have a good eye for that sort of thing. The merchant passing through was very convincing when he was selling them. I bought them for a girl I liked, but alas, I was unlucky in love too, so I just kept them.” “Grm. Youz gotta have a better eye and pray to Yag more. Anywayz, come on let’s get goin, don’t wanna stand out here tooz long. Dis path is da one.” You start following Warts who leads the way. “So…there are hobgoblins in this area?” you ask. “Oh yeah, the Spider Fang tribe, but there don’t really come around the way we’re goin’ so no need to worry about getting’ eaten. Can’t wait to get back to them though. With these rings, Snuffit will allow me at least ten ruts with ‘er. Way better than getting’ drunk…well sometimes better anyway.” Warts remarks. “Are you a member of the Spider Fangs?” “Me? Nah…too much humie blood. Can’t ever be part of tribe proper. Good thing mum good fighter and loves me, otherwise tribe probably would ‘ave eaten me when I was born.” “Wait, your mom is a hobgoblin? Who was your father then?” “Dunno, some humie bandit that attacked and tried to rut with her in the forest. Me mum said it was dark and he seemed pretty surprised when he realized she wasn’t another human. Mentioned he tasted like cheap beer after she was done wit him, so I guess he liked to drink.” Since you have no words for that story, you just silently continue to follow. Warts and you trudge along a dirt path for quite sometime until it disappears completely. “Okay, from here, we go…dis way…no wait dis way…I think…” Warts says. “You think? Don’t you know?” you reply. “Yeah, yeah, I just haven’t used this way in a long time. Gotta pass a haunted cabin. Accidently passed out there once, ended up shitting my good pants, though not sure if that was just because of the ghost.” “Haunted cabin? Why the hell are we going near it then?” “Cause it’s the safest way. Even the bandit types don’t like goin’ near it and nobody from the Spider Fang tribe is brave enough either. Sides, it’s really only haunted sometimes.” “Sometimes? But what if today is that day?” “Well hope youz brought extra pants den. Really though, it’s a lot safer. Da ghost really only messes with people that go in that cabin. I mean if you wanna risk it, we could go another way I know, but there’s been a lotta bandits travelling back an through that area. Normally, I’d just go that way since I know all da best hidin’ places and even if they did see me, I’d disappear again before they could even mount an attack. However you’re probably not as stealthy as me, so you’d probably get yerself seen and gutted. Might even rut wit youz first, some of these bandits aren’t picky.” “I’m actually no stranger to being stealthy myself when I have to be.” “Truly? Grm. Well it’s up to you.” “I’d rather take my chances sneaking pass some bandits than possibly dealing with something I can’t even hurt.” “Okay, hope yer as sneaky as you claim, cuz all bets are off if the bandits catch sight of ya. Dis way.” Once again Warts leads the way and you follow. You trudge through the forest for quite sometime and eventually it gets dark, but you still haven’t seen any signs of bandits or anyone else really. Warts doesn’t seem to be concerned, but you’re constantly alert, thinking behind every tree lies an ambush. “Gettin’ pitch black, gonna have to stop soon.” Warts says. “What? We’re not walking through the night? In fact won’t it be easier to slip by any potential hostiles in the dark?” you ask. “You want to continue, be my guest, but I’m gonna get some sleep. I’m tired. Sides, looks like we got lucky. Guess the bandit crew that was wandering around this area moved on. Praise Yag.” “As you say.” You reply, still looking around. While you’re half tempted to go on without Warts, you’re still holding on to the slight hope that he actually knows where he’s going, so you start looking for a tree to climb and sleep in. “Hey, what youz doin? You think youz a squirrel or somethin’?” Warts asks. “I’m not sleeping down here on the ground. What if something wanders by before I can properly react? I’ll be in a tree so I can at least be somewhat out of immediate sight.” “Youz gonna fall out and break yo’ neck too. All youz gotta do is cover yerself in dirt and leaves and shit. Hides youz just fine.” Warts says and begins doing just that. “Yeah well when you’re already green and smell like the outdoors, I suppose it’s a lot easier to camouflage yourself with little effort. I’ll take my chances in a high tree.” Warts shakes his head unconvinced and continues to cover himself. You have to admit, if you didn’t know he was there, you probably wouldn’t notice him if you were just wandering by. As for you, you climb to a sturdy and large enough branch that will support your weight and you can at least somewhat perch yourself on. You already know you aren’t going to sleep deep tonight, but you figure that’s sort of been the standard problem while out here. “I’ll be so damn glad to be out of the damn wilderness.” You say to yourself. You’re up for quite awhile, but hear nothing except the usual sounds of various insects, owls and other nocturnal animals. Eventually sleep catches up with you and you close your eyes. You aren’t sure how long you’re asleep, but you open your eyes when you start hearing voices nearby. “I told ya, I heard something.” “Probably just another raccoon. I don’t know why we gotta patrol over here anyway.” “Cause the boss said so that’s why! You know there are savage greenskins that live in this forest. We’re supposed to make sure none of them get too close to the main cam…I knew it. I knew I heard something! Snoring! And it’s coming from over there!” At this point you’re awake enough to see everything that’s going on below. You see two men who you guess are bandits. Seems like Warts didn’t take into account that his camouflage attempt would all be for naught due to his large honker making noise. It doesn’t take long before they kick and prod at his hidden location, waking him up. “Hah! A filthy greenskin! Probably a scout! Kill him!” one of the bandits shouts. Warts just barely avoids their attacks and tries to scramble away from his prone position, but one of the bandits manages to trip him up before he can run and it isn’t looking good as he gets kicked in the face by the other one. Not that you have any loyalty to Warts and he’s been pretty snarky towards you in general, but he’s still your guide and if you don’t want to get lost… You waste no time and try to climb down your tree as fast as you can. Fortunately, the bandits are have decided to have a little fun before killing him directly. They proceed to continue kicking Warts and don’t notice you at all. > You shoot the bandits One thing you’ve learned since acquiring your new weapon is how easy it kills folks with minimal effort on your part. You shoot one of the bandits in the back before anyone knows what’s going on. He falls to the ground screaming out in pain. He isn’t dead yet, but he might as well be. The other bandit at this point has turned around and raised his arms though still holding on to his weapon. “Shit. Okay…look this ain’t got nothin’ to do with you son. So why don’t you put that thing away and…ARGH!” Warts has wasted no time and already cut into back the bandit’s legs. The bandit falls and you kick away his dropped weapon while Warts proceeds to crawl on the bandit’s back and repeatedly stab the hell out of him. Meanwhile you go over the other incapacitated bandit and finish him off by slitting his throat. By the time you’ve done that, Warts has already finished off the other one. “Quick let’s loot the bodies and get outta here. All that noise your shooty gun made might have attracted something else!” Warts exclaims. The bandit you killed doesn’t really have anything of value on him, though you do take his short sword since one can never have too many weapons. After that’s done, Warts tells you to follow him and the pair of you are off again. You keep up the brisk pace for the remainder of the night, which soon starts turning to day again. You also can now see a break in the trees. You’ve finally reached the end of this blasted forest and a large walled city is now in sight! “See? Told ya I’d get ya to Holgard.” Warts proudly remarks. “You wouldn’t have been getting me anywhere if I hadn’t saved your life a few moments ago.” You say. “Bah…if youz let me die, you woulda been lost.” “Perhaps, but you would have been still dead.” “Grh. Well…maybe I do owe ya some thanks…I’m not given back these rings you paid me with though!” “Didn’t expect you to. Just wanted you to remember that I saved your ass.” “Okay, okay…anyway, the main road’s over that way. I trust youz can make it from here.” “Yeah.” “Good. Oh, word of advice, don’t go flashin’ dat shooty around unless you’re gonna use it. The guards don’t take kindly to folks just carrying those things around.” “Can’t I just bribe them to look the other way?” “Sure, but unless you’re someone of importance, or have connections or something, they’ll probably just take it from youz anyway. ‘Specially with as fancy as that one you got is. Never seen one like yers before. Youz not really a down on your luck traveller from a small town are you?” “Well, I am from a small town, but I may have had a little more fortune than I let on when we first met. Not much more though.” “Grm, well lyin’ will serve you well in Holgard. The city has a lotz o’ opportunities, for someone like you.” “Someone like me?” “Yeah, youz stealthy, youz a liar and I saw ya kill someone without hesitation. Youz no doubt a rogue, possibly even an assassin, but you seem a little young to have been one of those for very long. In any case, you’ll be able to hone whatever skill you do have. Just don’t piss off the Ebony Claw Syndicate in the process.” “Who are they?” “They run the underworld of Holgard, though I think they’re still trying to stamp out a few other lingering organizations. They don’t much care for freelancer types either. I guess you could try to join them, but don’t ask me how, I’m not familiar with their initiation practices.” “Any suggestions on where to go first when I get to the city?” “Um, the Hell’s Own Inn might be good for the likes of you. Despite its name, it’s fairly safe. Sort of neutral ground too, so youz won’t be stompin’ around in someone’s territory.” With that last bit of advice, Warts says he’s heading off to see Snuffit and the two of you part company. You follow the road to Holgard and of course when you get to the city gates you get stopped. “Sorry friend, but we can’t just let anyone in this fine city. Well not before checking you first.” The guard says with a smirk. “Sure, I understand…just let me…whoops.” You say and drop a few of your gold coins on the ground. The guard slowly picks one up. “Y’know, I think we can dispense with the check. You look like an okay lad. Off you go.” He says and finishes picking up the rest of your coins. You didn’t really want to let go of your coin like that, but you couldn’t risk being searched. You’re just glad he wasn’t a greedy asshole. Well you’ve finally reached your destination and you now have an entire city of corruption to perform your work in. First thing you’re going to do though is find that inn Warts mentioned. You’d really like to sleep in a proper bed if only for a little while, then you can take it from there. It doesn’t take you long to find the place; it isn’t even in too bad of an area. When you enter a few people watch you, but don’t say anything. The burly looking innkeeper just asks you what you want and when you say a room for a day, he asks for payment, which you hand to him in exchange for a key. The room isn’t the same luxury you had back home, but it isn’t bad considering the price. Between this room and the recent bribe however, you realize you’re going to have to start getting to work fairly soon because your money is already starting to run low. You sort of wonder if maybe you should seek out some sort of connection to see about joining the Ebony Claws, but then you figure you should probably get to know the city first before joining anyone. Not to mention that while you get the idea that this Ebony Claw Syndicate is the big swingin’ dick around here, you’re not really keen on the whole idea of having to “work” for someone else. The whole point of being a rogue was so you didn’t HAVE to get a real job and have a boss in the first place! If you get wrapped up in an organization like the Ebony Claws, you’re also likely to be in it “for life” and that’s a bit too much commitment for you. No, the best thing to do is to keep a low profile and make your own way for now. It’s a big city and you’re ready to take what you can. (And not draw any unwanted attention in the process) > You time passes... Chapter 2D: Unwanted Attention Year 17 This city is a violent crime ridden pit of corruption. And while you don’t actually mind all that, what you do wish is that you didn’t have to concern yourself with potentially stumbling into Ebony Claw Syndicate territory, which according to most of them is basically the entire city. They’re more of a danger than the Holgard Watch. There’s also the Thieves’ Guild, which is the ECS chief rival from what you’ve learned. Apparently the Thieves Guild was established here first, but when the ECS moved in with their Blue Dream trade, they’ve been slowly winning the fight over the underworld Originally, the Guild was more of a loose confederation of thieves and such. Nobody ever forced anyone to join, but there were benefits if you did such as not having to worry about paying extra for fencing stolen goods, ease of bribing guards for major crimes, etc. As the Thieves’ Guild has been losing ground however, they’ve been less “free spirited” and have been actively trying to recruit any freelance thief, burglar, pick pocket they can. However, they’re more reasonable about it than the ECS since they still don’t force you to join and will let you remain independent. As opposed to the ECs who normally just beat the hell out of any freelancers as a warning once and if they get caught again, it ends much worse. There are a few other smaller factions, but they’re so low that they’re barely worth considering. Fortunately so far you’ve managed to avoid the attention of any group mainly due to focusing on stealing actual coin and dealing primarily with a non-aligned fence by the name of Yinen for your stolen valuables. You met him at the Hell’s Own Inn where you still reside at. Funny thing is you didn’t seek him out; he came to you asking if you needed a fence. After a bit of suspicion and getting over some trust issues (Which you still have concerning him) you agreed and he’s been taking all your business. You aren’t sure who he’s selling your stolen goods to and he’s probably taking a little more than he should, but it’s worth it just so you don’t have to worry about selling the stuff yourself or seeking one out and having to get involved with one of the major factions in the city. In any case, you’ve been more or less making a decent living here and despite a healthy amount of paranoia, you actually like it here. It’s definitely not Teckleville. “Yeah, these will fetch you a nice price. Might take a few days though. You alright with waiting?” Yinen remarks examining your gems. “Yeah, that’s fine. Just get me the value in bullets and a pistol cleaning kit.” You say. “Oh. Okay, sure. But more bullets again? Are you planning to shoot everyone in Holgard? I didn’t realize you used it so much, I would think such a loud weapon would incur too much noise in your profession.” “I don’t use it much actually, but it makes me feel safe.” “Well, can’t argue with that. Things in this city have been feeling a little more tense than usual. Rumors are that there are dark forces gathering to stage a coup on the Baron.” “Dark forces? What, as opposed to the dark forces under the Baron’s control?” “Nah, I mean like REAL dark forces. There’s just rumors about religion being involved, it’s very weird.” “What, you mean like Fel, the god of shadows? You told me their temple has ties to the ECS. You saying the Ebony Claw Syndicate is going to take over the city directly?” “I dunno, but I don’t think it’s them we should worry about. Tell me, have you ever heard of Neroth?” “Not really religious so no.” “Not surprised, most people don’t unless they’re really into the old text dedicated to Joachim. You familiar with him right?” “Yeah, it’s general a religion that preaches peace and shit.” “Well there was a time when it didn’t and that’s mainly due to Neroth. Neroth was like the opposite of Joachim. Good verses evil type shit. People forget that it was only a couple hundred years ago when the Church of Joachim was burning and crusading on a regular basis due to their desire to stomp out any followers of Neroth and things they generally tied to him such as the supernatural. Nowadays the Joachimites are generally peace loving pacifists for the most part, but that’s only due being mostly successful in destroying those that follow Neroth and then subsequently going so overboard that some of the Joachimites finally realized they needed to rein it in before they became like their hated enemies.” “Hm, didn’t realize you were a theologian. How do you know all this?” you ask. “Eh, I grew up in a Joachim household. Didn’t take obviously, but still I don’t like hearing rumors of Neroth worshippers being in the city. I mean say what you want about Karn or even Fel, but they aren’t actively evil deities. Neroth is bad news man.” Before you can respond you’re suddenly interrupted by a familiar voice. “Bah, none of doze gods compare to Yag. No point worrying about shit, when you’ve run outta luck, yer time iz up and that’s all there iz to it.” You look and see Warts standing nearby clutching something in his hand. Looks like a bunch of small figurines of some sort. “Warts? What’re you doing here?” you ask. “Sellin these figures. Found ‘em in da woods with a bunch of broken boxes. Probably somethin off a Caravan that bandits were tryin to steal from. Dunno why dey didn’t take these. Tried to use dem for barter with Spiderfangs, but dey dumb. Think these things iz cursed. Superstitious idjits.” Warts remarks and hands five figurines to Yinen who takes them. “Hmm, odd. They look like something that you’d find in some tribal village. I’d say Sotakian, but these don’t look reptilian enough and I’ve never known the lizards to have craft stuff out of valuable material. You got Ivory, jade, gold, silver and platinum here. Wonder if they’re a complete set. Well I’m sure I’ll find someone interested.” Yinen hands Warts a bag of coins, which Warts takes and then looks displeased about. “Ey! Wat’s dis then? I may be just some dumb halfbreed hobgob, but I know damn well that shit is worth more!” Warts exclaims. “I gave you MORE than enough Warts. I still have find someone interested in this shit as you put it.” Yinen remarks. “Bah, you humies always tryin’ ta cheat. Fine. Should be enuff for drink and Snuffit for awhile anyways.” You take your leave to head up to your room, you figure you’ll stay in a couple days waiting for Yinen’s payment. You’ve got enough to take a break for a while. As you’re half way to your room, you hear the patter of feet running behind you and you quickly turn around with your pistol. “EY! Don’t shoot!” Warts says. “Warts, what the hell, you should know better than to run up on me like that! Why are you following me anyway?” “I wanted ta catch ya before I left. I noze I still owez youz a debt, well I’m here ta repay.” “Oh?” “Yeah, I wuz thinkin’ I could help ya on a job or sumthin.” “Help? No I don’t think so. I work alone.” “An howzat workin’ out? Doesn’t look like yer doin’ all that well if yer still livin’ here. If I had ta guess, youz still small time.” “I do alright halfbreed, and what’s it to you anyway?” “I’m just sayin’ you could be doin’ better if you went fer better targets. Have you even broken into one of dem nobles’ homes yet?” “Well, no…but I’m working up to it.” “Pfft. Wat kinda thief are ya?” “Look, I’ve cased the high class rich area several times and the homes got security up the ass. The aristocrats got more watchmen on their payroll than the average merchant. I know I’m no slouch, but if I can get enough coin with lower risk targets, why take the fucking chance? Besides, I’m trying to keep a low profile anyway.” “Well what about Lord Reginald?” “Who?” “Sheesh, youz been in dis city for a year and you don’t even know the major players! Lord Reginald is some well off guy dat got a title becuz he’s dah Baron’s son’s friend. Hear he’s more than dat though.” “Yeah so what’s this all got to do with me?” “Well he lives more on the edge of da high end district. He doesn’t even own a mansion, just a modest house. He has no family an’ he also doesn’t pay for any extra guards. Not even mercs, which prolly means he’s got more coin than it appears” “There has to be a catch. I mean if he’s well off and a special friend of the Baron’s son, then he’s gotta have connections and protection.” “Well, dere’s some rumors about him and not just about him pokin’ the Baron’s son like a woman. Like he’s got magic powers or sumthin’. Guess makes sense he don’t need extra help.” “So you’re saying we should got rob a wizard.” “Nah, he’s no wizard, he’s just got some magic powers. Prolly just rumors anyway. Sides, should be easiest stealin’ from one lone man, than one who has a shitload of guards right?” “A lone man, who might be able to turn me into ash with a flick of a finger and has who knows whatever else in his home. Assuming I even go for this, why do I need you to come along again? I didn’t realize you were actually a thief, figured you were more of an opportunistic scavenger.” “Pfft, I’ve been sneakin’ around, nicking stuff long before youz was even thought about! You try growin up as a half breed in a mostly hostile tribe. I had ta steal to survive sometimes! Sides I could carry more stuff for ya! Also, if ya getz inta trouble I could help. Like last time!” “Last time I helped YOU.” “Yeah, well I’m offerin’ anyway. I don’t even want dat big of a cut…” And THERE it is. Warts definitely isn’t doing this solely for altruistic reasons. “Thought you said you were helping me out?” “I am! You don’t expect me to do it fer free do ya? Come on, give a hob halfbreed a break. The place is ripe fer the pluckin’ an best of all ya don’t have ta worry if its Ebony Claw territory.” You shake your head that you’re considering this. “Okay, okay, we can go do this, but I’m getting some rest first, just tell me where the place is exactly and I’ll meet you there later. When is the best time to break into this place anyway?” Warts gives you some directions and then says it probably would be best to meet him there around midnight since he says he’s seen this Reginald person leave at night and stay out until dawn. Sounds more like something you do, but if he’s not going to be there then that’s when you need to be there. You part ways with Warts and get some sleep. Hours pass and when you wake up you find that it’s night time, still too early though. You stay your room a bit going over all your tools and equipment and making sure everything is in order. Eventually you decide that you’re going to be as ready as you’re going to be and leave. You head downstairs and find that the inn has the usual crowd with one important difference. You see Warts lying under a table with a couple of big mugs of alcohol on it. Surprisingly, the owner has not thrown him out; unsurprisingly everyone is avoiding that table. You walk over to the halfbreed and kick him in the foot, which causes him to stir, so he’s not completely out of it. “Warts! What the hell are you doing here?” you ask. “Huh? I…uh…buh…I waz just…” Warts slurs as he sits up and just manages to not hit his head on the table. “You were just what? What were you doing Warts? Fixing the table leg? Counting the number of nails in the wood? Having an out of body experience and travelling a different plane of existence? You talked me into doing this job and now I find you in no condition to do anything.” “Ey! I’m up! I’m up! I ain’t forgot wat we’re supposed ta do, an’ I’m more than ready! I’m not drunk, I just had a little rest like you did.” You have your doubts about that, though Warts stands up without too much trouble. > You take Warts with you You might as well go together at this point, you knew he wasn’t going to be the ideal partner to begin with. Who knows, maybe you can use him as bait or something. “Alright, come on let’s go.” You say. “Hold on a minute.” Warts says and finishes off one of the mugs that wasn’t quite empty yet. “Seriously?” “Hey, I’m thirsty. Alright NOW let’s go.” Warts and you leave the inn and after looking around a bit and scratching his head he beckons you to follow him. He walking just fine, so maybe he isn’t that bad off. You continue to follow without another word, until he gets to a secluded spot with a sewer covering. “What the hell are you doing? You ask. “Tryin’ to take dis thing off, wat’s it look like ya idjit? Help me over here.” Warts says trying to take off the sewer lid. “No, I mean why the fuck are we entering the sewers?” “Cuz, it’s the best way to get into Reginald’s house. He’s got a secret passage to it down here.” “How the hell you know this?” “Cuz people talk shit all the time and not even realize ol’ Warts is even there to lissen. Waz in a garbage bin and heard these two weird guys in red robes talkin about it in an alley awhile back.” “…okay I’m not even going to ask why the hell you were in a garbage bin, but weird guys in red robes, secret passages…are you sure Reginald isn’t part of some fucking cult? I mean this is starting to sound a lot more complicated and dangerous.” “Well, why ya think I wanted someone else to come along?” “YOU said this was for MY benefit!” “Oh yeah…well it is! Look humie, ya gotta take big risks in dis profession. I don’t doubt yer skilled. You’ve lasted longer than most independently in dis city. But I’m tellin ya, there’s more out there that yer missin. I mean, sure it’s foolish ta go head to head against da ECS, but robbin some rich asshole that may or may not be a wizard? Well dat’s different.” “I really don’t see how since both can get you killed. However, I do see your point to a small degree. I have been playing it a bit on the safe side. Still, if this is looking to be more trouble than it’s worth then I’m getting the hell out as quick as possible.” “Sounds like a plan ta me.” You help Warts with the sewer covering and the pair of you descend into the smelly depths. It actually isn’t too bad, but that might be because you’re standing next to Warts and his own stench is cancelling out that of the sewers. Warts gets slightly more talkative as you walk to your destination. He mentions that the Thieves Guild has their hideout somewhere down here, but he doesn’t know where. Neither does the ECS, since they’d probably mount an attack if they could. Warts also goes on about how he’s not fond of the ECS since a lot of them tend to have ties to Fel while he’s dedicated to Yag. Says that worshipping Fel if you’re a thief is like cheating since he’s the god of shadows and all. Though he’s not so much opposed to that, so much as he doesn’t like all the dedication Fel seems to want. Yag on the other hand doesn’t really require anything and he not might bless you anyway, but then he might give you a lot even if you don’t do much. Warts claims that ALL the gods are like that, so he might as well pray to one that is at least honest about it all. “Why worship any god at all?” you ask. “Wat? You crazy or sumthin? You don’t pick a god, youz gonna be in trouble when ya die! Even pickin’ some stupid god like Karn would be better than nuthin! You don’t believe in anything an’ who knows WHERE yer soul goes! Nah, better to pick somethin’ just in case.” It’s a little surprising just how serious Warts takes religion, well as serious as a follower to the God of Luck and Chance can be anyway. (It also occurs to you how it’s weird how everyone’s been getting religious on you lately) “Eh, I guess I can sort of see that logic. I’m not really religious, but occasionally I have said the odd thanks to Yag.” You say. “That’s all ya need man. He’s lissening, even if he doesn’t do anything.” Warts says. You and Warts continue a little longer and then he stops. “Okay, think wez gettin’ close. Should be a secret wall around here from what I heard.” Warts says and begins pushing on the wall nearby. “This seems a bit unprotected.” You say looking around for potential traps. “It’s a secret door, maybe he didn’t anticipate anyone finding it.” “You said the Thieves Guild is down here, surely they would have found it if this is their territory.” “It’s a big ass sewer and they’re the Thieves Guild not the Holgard Watch. Dey don’t exactly patrol da place. They’re all most likely up top breaking into shit. Besides, I told ya, they ain’t the ECS. They aren’t very territorial anyway. Dat’s why we can walk around here without as much concern…well except for giant rats and such.” Just as you’re about to ask Warts another question about the Thieves’ Guild, Warts finds what you’re looking for and when he does so a large bolt just whizzes over his head and into the wall behind him. “Man, good thing Yag lissened to me.” Warts says. “Good thing you’re short and constantly walk around slightly hunched over most of the time. Oddly, this makes me feel slightly better. If there weren’t any traps at all I’d be even more paranoid about how easy this was. So far it seems like this guy just has shitty security, but then we haven’t actually gone inside yet.” You respond. You and Warts both enter the passage and soon find yourself in a cellar with a bunch of wine barrels. Tons of them. Warts looks like he’s hit a gold mine and immediately starts grabbing wine bottles. “Hey, leave some room for actual valuable, you’re supposed to be carrying shit for me, remember?” “I am grabbing valuables! You realize how much old bottles of wine go fer?” “Okay, point taken, just don’t drink them all.” While Warts plays wine expert, you take a look around the room and find that there are stairs leading up and a solid metal door to your left, which is locked. Since you don’t want to go too far from Warts while he’s alone with a bunch of wine, you stay in the cellar and pick the lock of the metal door, which is surprisingly easy. You enter the dimly lit room and find what could only be a room dedicated to dark magical endeavors of some sort. There’s two demonic looking idols starring at you and the pentagrams and symbols on the floor aren’t any you recognize. There’s also blood splatters on them. From what little you now know of this Reginald, this guy is into some dark shit. Everything about this makes you want to just get the hell out right now, but you’re already here now and you’d hate to just leave with wine bottles. You walk carefully around the room making sure you don’t step on any symbols or inside any circles just in case. You also keep an eye on the demonic idols, which still feel like they’re watching you. There isn’t much else in the room itself, though there is another door off to the side, this one isn’t locked and you open it. However, you soon wish you hadn’t. You see a row of cages and various torture devices along with dead bodies in most of them. “Fucking hell, I came here to rob some shit, not take a tour of a slaughterhouse.” You say to yourself. Just as you’re about to shut the door a voice calls out. “Stranger! You’re not one of them! Not one those red robed freaks! (sob) Please! Help me! I can’t die here, not like this! I watched my…(choke) just please…help. Who knows when they’ll be back!” a nearly naked young girl in a cage begs. She reaches out to you desperately hoping that you’ll rescue her. You definitely didn’t sign up for this…however given what you’ve seen here, you’d be quite the heartless dick if you just left her here to this horrible fate. “Curse my parents for some of their morality getting through…” you say and head over to the cage. The lock isn’t that difficult to pick and you soon get it open causing the girl to not even wait around, she just runs past you, out the torture room and beyond. You suppose you can understand her not wanting to stick around, but a thank you would have been nice. So much for good deeds. Seeing as there isn’t anything else in here, you return to the wine room where you unsurprisingly see Warts drinking. “Hey, some humie gal just ran through here an into da sewers wearin’ practically nuthin’.” Warts says. “Yeah and I’m glad to see that didn’t interrupt your important work. Thought you were supposed to be helping.” You say. “Wat’s yer problem? I am helpin’! Sides dese valuable bottles, I found out one of the barrels had a hollowish sound. Smashed it open and there was a body inside, idiots didn’t bother looting it and he had some good stuff still on him.” Warts answers and takes another swig from a bottle. “Warts, you’re telling me you found a body in one of these barrels and you’re STILL drinking the fucking wine?” Warts suddenly stops drinking. He ponders your words a bit and then sniffs the top of the bottle. Then he promptly gives a little shrug. “Still tastes alright ta me.” Warts says “Of course it does. Look, we’re getting the hell out of here. This place has been a big fat zero.” You say. “What about all these valuable bottles of wine? An’ ya haven’t even checked da upstairs yet!” “Yeah well I’ve checked enough of the basement to know that most likely there isn’t going to be anything that precious up there that’s going to make me want to stay another moment in this fucking house. There’s some dark magic going on here and I’m not sticking around for it rub off on me.” “Just say a prayer ta Yag, you’ll be fine.” “And as you like to point out, he might not listen.” “Fine, we can leave if you really wants, but I’m just sayin’ we haven’t gone through the entire house yet.” Funny how Warts is content on letting you do all the exploration. He could have easily been searching the upstairs while you were stumbling upon sacrificial captives. > You leave now Warts can stay and get drunk here if he wants, but you’re not sticking around. You’re also not leaving without something for your trouble, you take Wart’s pack on a table stuffed with bottles and leave. “Ey! Dat’s my shit!” Warts shouts and immediately begins to follow you. You make your way back through the sewers as quick as you can, while Warts is complaining. “Look, I knows ya didn’t wanna stick around, but some of dose bottles is my cut!” Warts says. “As far as I’m concerned, you drank more than your cut back at the house! Besides, you told me you looted some body you found in one of the barrels, I’d say you came out ahead.” You respond. “Alright, alright, but can ya at least gimme my pack back?!” “I’ll give it back to you when we get to safety, staying around here is just not a good idea…shit!” You suddenly hear the sounds of multiple footsteps heading your direction and you immediately find an alcove to hide in and pull out your pistol. Warts of course crowds your hiding spot, you just hope the smell of the sewers masks his own odor from whoever is approaching. And it’s not just one either, it’s a whole group of them. “Reginald said we need to get another sacrifice for the next ritual to Neroth. You know Reginald is very particular about these things.” A red robed individual says passing by. “Then Reginald can stop buttfucking the baron’s son for one second and start doing his own dirty work. I know he likes to think he’s some sort of high priest of Neroth and all, but he’s a fucking dabbling ponce. Him and his noble boyfriend have no real idea of how this shit works.” Another one says. “Say that to his face.” “Don’t worry I will when the time comes. The only reason why I’m following this fool, is because he’s got connections. When this city is in our grasp, then all bets are off, and you, ALL of you had best know what side you stand on. A true believer in the ways of Neroth or a fucking pretender. Neroth isn’t about sacrifices and decadent orgies. It’s about fucking chaos. It’s about bringing ruin to civilization. To spit in the eye of all things dedicated to order and good, even to the smallest degree. The Baron’s son is free to take over this city if he wants, but I guarantee the only thing he’s going to be ruling over is a smoldering pile of rubble. I suggest you ALL remember that.” The group of red robed folks don’t say much to their more passionate comrade, but a couple give some quieter acknowledgements of agreement. Meanwhile you’re still hiding in the darkness wondering if you’ll get lucky and get a kill with every bullet before they take you down. Fortunately they move on past you without seeing you. After waiting a bit, you leave your hiding spot and make your way back even quicker than before. Even Warts isn’t complaining anymore and is focused on escape. You don’t stop to rest until you get back up top. “Shit…thank Yag we got outta there when we did.” Warts says catching his breath. “Thank ME, that we got out when we did. I can only imagine the shit we would have been in had we still been in the house when they got back to it.” “Yeah, suppose that was good thinkin’ on yer part. Guess you do deserve most of the loot.” “I was taking it anyway, such as it is. Damn, guess Yinen was right about Neroth cultists though. Just one more fucked up thing in this city. Probably best if I don’t tell him where I got these bottles of wine.” You transfer the bottles out of Wart’s pack and into your own and after a few exchanged words, you and he parts ways. You can’t say this was the best night out, though you’d be lying if a small part of you didn’t get a minor thrill out of it all. You might have even enjoyed all this, if you made out with more stuff. You return to Hell’s Own and take the rest of the night off. Hopefully you can get a good price for the wine otherwise it really will have been all pretty pointless. The next morning as soon as you make your way down stairs to go see Yinen, you’re approached by two figures. One of them is very non-descript and oldish looking man, probably not a bad quality to have for blending in with the crowd during a quick getaway actually. The other you can’t tell due to the hood, but judging from the smaller body type with more curves, and long white hair peeking out from the hood they’re probably female. “Hi, friend.” The older one says. “Okay, I already know anyone who starts calling me friend as a greeting is probably the exact opposite.” You say. “My, you’re a suspicious one. Though understandable and smart. However, if you give the pair of us time, you will soon see there is no need for animosity.” “Don’t see why I should give you time at all.” “Well maybe it’s because you’ve been operating on our turf for quite some time now.” Your hearts sinks when you hear this and then you instinctively start to go for your weapon. However the older man backs off and raises his hands. “Relax. That wasn’t a threat. That was just to get your attention. We’re not the Ebony Claw if that’s what you’re worried about.” He says. “Thieves Guild. Thought you guys didn’t have turf.” You say not really relaxing too much. “Officially we don’t, but ever since the ECS, well it helps to label things. At least until they’re gone anyway. In any case my name is Garrick and your recent exploits, along with your ongoing ones have caught our attention, so if you don’t mind, can we sit down to speak?” You didn’t plan on this, but it would probably be better if you didn’t cause a scene, so you, Garrick and his quiet friend all sit at table. “So, this is Thieves Guild territory now? I always thought this place was supposed to be neutral.” You say. “It is for the most part it is, though officially it’s ours. Really it just gets spread around that this is neutral territory to keep the new non-aligned thieves feeling safe. You’re not exactly the only new one that’s come through here thinking they don’t have to join a side if they want to continue to ply their trade. You’ve just lasted longer and shown more skill than most.” “Wait a minute, is Warts part of the Thieves Guild?” “Heh, Warts is more of a outside ally. He’s actually spoken highly of you. As has Yinen. That’s why I’ve come to see you for myself.” Well this just goes to show how wet behind the ears you still are that you never thought that you’d been in a Thieves Guild haven the whole time. Even Warts managed to fool you. Though it does explain a few things. Maybe this whole thing was a test. “So are you the leader of the Thieves Guild?” “I’m more of its…yes, well I guess leader would be the term, but honestly I hate it. You’re probably thinking I’m here to press gang you into joining, but I’m not. In fact there was a time when this place was filled with freelance thieves. The city is a big thriving place after all, plenty of loot to go around. Our Guild is more of a club of sorts rather than some sinister octopus organization. People join because they want to, well that and the fact that we do tend to pull off the more lucrative jobs and get better deals on selling stolen merchandise. You have to do a job for the good of the Guild every now and then, but even then you still get a cut of the money. But I’m sure to some extent, you’re aware of some of this.” “Yeah, I am, but this still feels like recruitment.” “Times are harder since the Ebony Claw moved in, and I won’t lie, there is a war going on. And there is also strength and protection in numbers. “So which do you think is more necessary? Your protection or my strength?” “Why not both? Look I can see you’re in a bit of a hurry to sell off your loot, so how about this token of good will, I’ll give you five platinum pieces what you got in your bag.” “Five plat?” Garrick dumps the coins in front of you, which you immediately inspect. They’re real and a lot more than what you were expecting to get for your trouble. Garrick’s friend turns her head a bit towards him, but doesn’t say anything. You get the impression she doesn’t approve. Meanwhile, you waste no time in handing over the bottles to Garrick. “So, you’re really not here to force me to join you? This isn’t a trick?” you ask. “If it was, do you think we’d tell you? However, if you think you can handle the Syndicate all by yourself good luck. I’m sure if you haven’t caught their attention by now, you soon will. The ECS is fairly efficient that way. In any case, we’re reaching a hand out to you because we think you’d be an asset to the Guild. If you don’t like it, you can always leave the city entirely. That’s already better than the Claw. Once you join them, it’s for life.” Garrick remarks. “Wasn’t planning on joining them either.” “Glad to hear it, but will you at least think about our offer? If you change your mind, just let Yinen know. In any case, pleasure meeting you and doing business. Hope we can do it again on a regular basis.” And with those last words, Garrick and his associate get up and make their exit, leaving you to ponder your next decision. Which of course is to go spend your new wealth. You spend the next few days not doing much of anything other than buying some things you need and spending a little extra on better quality food than you normally do. You also visit one of the better brothels in the city and as it turns out when you enter you’re met with a lot of positivity by the madam and some of the other ladies. At first you figure they’re just being nice to get more money out of you, but as it turns out the girl you set free back in Reginald’s house was a worker here. (She’s thoughtfully been given a couple days off so she can get her head back in the game again) As a result of your actions, you get a discount, which you take full advantage of. You leave the brothel feeling like robbing that cultist’s house wasn’t a bad thing after all. You even entertain the idea that Yag has blessed you a bit. Then not five minutes later after leaving the brothel you’re attacked on the street by three thugs catching you slipping. A crushing blow to your head is felt, though fortunately not enough to knock you out completely, just enough to cause you to fall to the ground. “This the one Mantis mentioned. Quick, let’s finish him off.” One says. “You idiot, we were supposed to drag him someplace quiet and not draw a fucking crowd in front of us.” The second remarks. “What difference does it make? Not like any of the people around are going to stop us anyway.” The third adds. “The difference is we’re supposed to be at least somewhat discreet.” “Fuck that. This sends a message to everyone not to fuck with us!” “Okay then how about this? The Holgard Watch might look the other way every now and then, but they’ll stop doing that if we’re blatantly murdering people in the streets. Only they get to do that. You want to answer to Mantis when he’s bitching about one of our Blue Dream houses getting raided suddenly?” “Eh, fine. Better disarm this…ARGH!” one of the thugs shouts as you jam your dagger into his leg up to the hilt. You scramble away and manage to get back up, but one of the thugs is already upon you. The whole time slack jawed gawkers either just watch in silence or they run off not wishing to be caught up in this. You feel a punch to the face sending to back to the ground, but fortunately away from the pair of them. The two thugs ignore their companion still screaming with a dagger in his leg and advance on you again. You aren’t completely drained of energy, and you probably could try to run, they were arguing about not killing you in the street and given all the commotion going on, they may abandon their task if you prove to be too much trouble right now. Of course you don’t have a pistol for nothing. > You run If you start killing people in the middle of the street in front of everyone, you’re just going to bring unwanted heat on you by the Holgard Watch and unlike the Syndicate you don’t have the luxury of having them in your pocket to look the other way. You pick yourself up and begin running again. “Shit, is this asshole really going to make me run? Fuck this.” one of them says. In a perfect world, this would be followed by them ceasing their harassment of you. In your world however, it means one of the thugs threw a dagger into your back. You drop instantly. “Quick, get him now!” Groaning in pain, you fumble to grab your pistol. You manage to turn over and get off a shot, dropping one of your assailants, but the other quickly wrestles the weapon from you and begins beating you in the face with it. Your attempts to struggle soon come to an end as he begins destroying your nose along with the rest of your face with it. The Ebony Claw Syndicate certainly sent a reminder to all onlookers that they are the not to be opposed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Warts can stay and get drunk here if he wants, but you’re not sticking around. You’re also not leaving without something for your trouble, you take Wart’s pack on a table stuffed with bottles and leave. “Ey! Dat’s my shit!” Warts shouts and immediately begins to follow you. You make your way back through the sewers as quick as you can, while Warts is complaining. “Look, I knows ya didn’t wanna stick around, but some of dose bottles is my cut!” Warts says. “As far as I’m concerned, you drank more than your cut back at the house! Besides, you told me you looted some body you found in one of the barrels, I’d say you came out ahead.” You respond. “Alright, alright, but can ya at least gimme my pack back?!” “I’ll give it back to you when we get to safety, staying around here is just not a good idea…shit!” You suddenly hear the sounds of multiple footsteps heading your direction and you immediately find an alcove to hide in and pull out your pistol. Warts of course crowds your hiding spot, you just hope the smell of the sewers masks his own odor from whoever is approaching. And it’s not just one either, it’s a whole group of them. “Reginald said we need to get another sacrifice for the next ritual to Neroth. You know Reginald is very particular about these things.” A red robed individual says passing by. “Then Reginald can stop buttfucking the baron’s son for one second and start doing his own dirty work. I know he likes to think he’s some sort of high priest of Neroth and all, but he’s a fucking dabbling ponce. Him and his noble boyfriend have no real idea of how this shit works.” Another one says. “Say that to his face.” “Don’t worry I will when the time comes. The only reason why I’m following this fool, is because he’s got connections. When this city is in our grasp, then all bets are off, and you, ALL of you had best know what side you stand on. A true believer in the ways of Neroth or a fucking pretender. Neroth isn’t about sacrifices and decadent orgies. It’s about fucking chaos. It’s about bringing ruin to civilization. To spit in the eye of all things dedicated to order and good, even to the smallest degree. The Baron’s son is free to take over this city if he wants, but I guarantee the only thing he’s going to be ruling over is a smoldering pile of rubble. I suggest you ALL remember that.” The group of red robed folks don’t say much to their more passionate comrade, but a couple give some quieter acknowledgements of agreement. Meanwhile you’re still hiding in the darkness wondering if you’ll get lucky and get a kill with every bullet before they take you down. Fortunately they move on past you without seeing you. After waiting a bit, you leave your hiding spot and make your way back even quicker than before. Even Warts isn’t complaining anymore and is focused on escape. You don’t stop to rest until you get back up top. “Shit…thank Yag we got outta there when we did.” Warts says catching his breath. “Thank ME, that we got out when we did. I can only imagine the shit we would have been in had we still been in the house when they got back to it.” “Yeah, suppose that was good thinkin’ on yer part. Guess you do deserve most of the loot.” “I was taking it anyway, such as it is. Damn, guess Yinen was right about Neroth cultists though. Just one more fucked up thing in this city. Probably best if I don’t tell him where I got these bottles of wine.” You transfer the bottles out of Wart’s pack and into your own and after a few exchanged words, you and he parts ways. You can’t say this was the best night out, though you’d be lying if a small part of you didn’t get a minor thrill out of it all. You might have even enjoyed all this, if you made out with more stuff. You return to Hell’s Own and take the rest of the night off. Hopefully you can get a good price for the wine otherwise it really will have been all pretty pointless. The next morning as soon as you make your way down stairs to go see Yinen, you’re approached by two figures. One of them is very non-descript and oldish looking man, probably not a bad quality to have for blending in with the crowd during a quick getaway actually. The other you can’t tell due to the hood, but judging from the smaller body type with more curves, and long white hair peeking out from the hood they’re probably female. “Hi, friend.” The older one says. “Okay, I already know anyone who starts calling me friend as a greeting is probably the exact opposite.” You say. “My, you’re a suspicious one. Though understandable and smart. However, if you give the pair of us time, you will soon see there is no need for animosity.” “Don’t see why I should give you time at all.” “Well maybe it’s because you’ve been operating on our turf for quite some time now.” Your hearts sinks when you hear this and then you instinctively start to go for your weapon. However the older man backs off and raises his hands. “Relax. That wasn’t a threat. That was just to get your attention. We’re not the Ebony Claw if that’s what you’re worried about.” He says. “Thieves Guild. Thought you guys didn’t have turf.” You say not really relaxing too much. “Officially we don’t, but ever since the ECS, well it helps to label things. At least until they’re gone anyway. In any case my name is Garrick and your recent exploits, along with your ongoing ones have caught our attention, so if you don’t mind, can we sit down to speak?” You didn’t plan on this, but it would probably be better if you didn’t cause a scene, so you, Garrick and his quiet friend all sit at table. “So, this is Thieves Guild territory now? I always thought this place was supposed to be neutral.” You say. “It is for the most part it is, though officially it’s ours. Really it just gets spread around that this is neutral territory to keep the new non-aligned thieves feeling safe. You’re not exactly the only new one that’s come through here thinking they don’t have to join a side if they want to continue to ply their trade. You’ve just lasted longer and shown more skill than most.” “Wait a minute, is Warts part of the Thieves Guild?” “Heh, Warts is more of a outside ally. He’s actually spoken highly of you. As has Yinen. That’s why I’ve come to see you for myself.” Well this just goes to show how wet behind the ears you still are that you never thought that you’d been in a Thieves Guild haven the whole time. Even Warts managed to fool you. Though it does explain a few things. Maybe this whole thing was a test. “So are you the leader of the Thieves Guild?” “I’m more of its…yes, well I guess leader would be the term, but honestly I hate it. You’re probably thinking I’m here to press gang you into joining, but I’m not. In fact there was a time when this place was filled with freelance thieves. The city is a big thriving place after all, plenty of loot to go around. Our Guild is more of a club of sorts rather than some sinister octopus organization. People join because they want to, well that and the fact that we do tend to pull off the more lucrative jobs and get better deals on selling stolen merchandise. You have to do a job for the good of the Guild every now and then, but even then you still get a cut of the money. But I’m sure to some extent, you’re aware of some of this.” “Yeah, I am, but this still feels like recruitment.” “Times are harder since the Ebony Claw moved in, and I won’t lie, there is a war going on. And there is also strength and protection in numbers. “So which do you think is more necessary? Your protection or my strength?” “Why not both? Look I can see you’re in a bit of a hurry to sell off your loot, so how about this token of good will, I’ll give you five platinum pieces what you got in your bag.” “Five plat?” Garrick dumps the coins in front of you, which you immediately inspect. They’re real and a lot more than what you were expecting to get for your trouble. Garrick’s friend turns her head a bit towards him, but doesn’t say anything. You get the impression she doesn’t approve. Meanwhile, you waste no time in handing over the bottles to Garrick. “So, you’re really not here to force me to join you? This isn’t a trick?” you ask. “If it was, do you think we’d tell you? However, if you think you can handle the Syndicate all by yourself good luck. I’m sure if you haven’t caught their attention by now, you soon will. The ECS is fairly efficient that way. In any case, we’re reaching a hand out to you because we think you’d be an asset to the Guild. If you don’t like it, you can always leave the city entirely. That’s already better than the Claw. Once you join them, it’s for life.” Garrick remarks. “Wasn’t planning on joining them either.” “Glad to hear it, but will you at least think about our offer? If you change your mind, just let Yinen know. In any case, pleasure meeting you and doing business. Hope we can do it again on a regular basis.” And with those last words, Garrick and his associate get up and make their exit, leaving you to ponder your next decision. Which of course is to go spend your new wealth. You spend the next few days not doing much of anything other than buying some things you need and spending a little extra on better quality food than you normally do. You also visit one of the better brothels in the city and as it turns out when you enter you’re met with a lot of positivity by the madam and some of the other ladies. At first you figure they’re just being nice to get more money out of you, but as it turns out the girl you set free back in Reginald’s house was a worker here. (She’s thoughtfully been given a couple days off so she can get her head back in the game again) As a result of your actions, you get a discount, which you take full advantage of. You leave the brothel feeling like robbing that cultist’s house wasn’t a bad thing after all. You even entertain the idea that Yag has blessed you a bit. Then not five minutes later after leaving the brothel you’re attacked on the street by three thugs catching you slipping. A crushing blow to your head is felt, though fortunately not enough to knock you out completely, just enough to cause you to fall to the ground. “This the one Mantis mentioned. Quick, let’s finish him off.” One says. “You idiot, we were supposed to drag him someplace quiet and not draw a fucking crowd in front of us.” The second remarks. “What difference does it make? Not like any of the people around are going to stop us anyway.” The third adds. “The difference is we’re supposed to be at least somewhat discreet.” “Fuck that. This sends a message to everyone not to fuck with us!” “Okay then how about this? The Holgard Watch might look the other way every now and then, but they’ll stop doing that if we’re blatantly murdering people in the streets. Only they get to do that. You want to answer to Mantis when he’s bitching about one of our Blue Dream houses getting raided suddenly?” “Eh, fine. Better disarm this…ARGH!” one of the thugs shouts as you jam your dagger into his leg up to the hilt. You scramble away and manage to get back up, but one of the thugs is already upon you. The whole time slack jawed gawkers either just watch in silence or they run off not wishing to be caught up in this. You feel a punch to the face sending to back to the ground, but fortunately away from the pair of them. The two thugs ignore their companion still screaming with a dagger in his leg and advance on you again. You aren’t completely drained of energy, and you probably could try to run, they were arguing about not killing you in the street and given all the commotion going on, they may abandon their task if you prove to be too much trouble right now. Of course you don’t have a pistol for nothing. > You shoot These people are already trying to kill you in broad daylight in front of people, all bets are fucking off. You sit up and pull out your pistol which causes the closest thug’s eyes to widen. “Shi…” is all he utters before you blast him in the chest. As he falls, his comrade has already turned and ran, but you fire off another shot as soon as you stand back up and land a hit to the back of his skull. The one you hit in the chest lies bleeding, clutching his blood soaked shirt and still convulsing. He’s dying, but you’re not waiting that long and shoot him in the head. You pass by the other one you shot in the back of the head and towards the one still screaming about his leg. Except now, he’s not crying about his leg now so much as he’s begging for mercy. “Wait! Stop! If you kill me, the Ebony Claw Syndicate will continue to hound you! Let me live and I can…” he says before you interrupt. “Fuck you. You’re nobody important and I’d wager the ECS would look MORE favorable on me by culling their ranks of pieces of shit that can’t even do their job right.” You say, and then shoot him twice in the head. With your last assailant dead, you grab your dagger out of his leg and get the hell out of the area since you’ve become more aware of your surroundings which are people screaming, yelling and generally running away. While this place might be a crime cesspit, the fact that you openly killed three Ebony Claw members in front of everyone (Which is something at least one of them was trying to avoid doing to you) you probably look crazier than the usual type of criminal around here, especially since you aren’t even in the worst part of the city. Besides all that, you don’t exactly have any protection from the Holgard Watch so they aren’t likely to just look away in your case. You take several side streets and even backtrack a few times, before you eventually just go down one of the sewer openings in the hopes of hiding for a while. You actually wander down there for a while since it isn’t like you’re an expert in navigating your way around in the sewers. You run into a few bums, some really destitute Blue Dream junkies, and some oversized fauna, but nobody of any major importance. Eventually you get to a part of the sewer that seems familiar from the last time you were here and you make your way back up. When you exit, you find that you’re not too far from Hell’s Own Inn, so you get back there as soon as possible since you think you need to reconsider an option you were given earlier. You head straight to Yinen who assumes you’re to meet him for business as usual. “Hey, I got those bullets and that cleaning kit you wanted.” Sinin says. “Yeah, that’s great, I might be needing that soon, look I gotta talk to you. Garrick approached me a couple days ago.” You say. “Yeah I know, I told him that I didn’t think you’d be interested in joining…wait I hope you’re not mad at me for not telling you about having connections to the Guild. I assumed you probably knew somewhere in the back of your mind and I wasn’t supposed to be announcing that anyway.” “Shut up for a minute, I’m trying to tell you that I want to join.” “You do?” “Yeah, Garrick told me to talk to you if I changed my mind.” “Oh, okay. Yeah sure, what caused you to change your mind?” “I dunno, I guess the safety in numbers thing. So when do I get to go to the big hideout?” “Hold on there! Just because you join doesn’t mean you get to go to the main base of operations. If every new recruit got to go there after they joined, the ECS probably would have discovered its location by capturing and torturing one of them. There’s also a process of weeding out potential spies. Certainly hope you didn’t run off and join the ECS and then hope to get in good with them by doing that.” “I don’t think the ECS is going to let me join anytime soon considering I just shot three of them.” “You what?” “Three of them jumped me and I had to defend myself.” “Are they dead?” “I certainly hope so since I shot them all in the head to make sure.” You explain in a little more detail about what happened and Yinen starts to look more concerned. “Shit. Man, you’re going to definitely be marked now. I’m surprised you didn’t just leave the city.” Sinin says. “I thought about it as I was stomping around the sewers, but what good would that do? If the ECS is going to be as pissed at me as I think they’ll probably be, it’s not like they won’t send assassins after me elsewhere. If I’m here and join you guys at least there’s a chance.” You respond. “Honestly, sometimes I wonder, but I guess I shouldn’t talk like that. Shit, I can’t believe that you…well I’ll definitely inform Garrick. I can’t say if this is going to get you into the Guild lair itself, but it probably will make Garrick look favorably upon you. Just stay in this inn for a while, , all your food and drink will be taken care of. Someone more important than me will contact you. Here, take your bullets and kit while you’re at it.” You take your stuff and head to your room where you immediately reload your pistol and start organizing your belongings and items, just in case you need to leave in a hurry. You spend a lot of time in your room basically pacing the floor, wondering if you’ve made the right decision, but you try not to think about it too much since it’s done now and you’ll hopefully have new allies that will at least watch your back. Eventually you get tired of being in your room and decide to go take advantage of your free food and drink. You find an empty table, put your back against the wall and partake in your meal. You constantly watch the door expecting trouble to come in. Of course while you were so busy watching the door, you completely didn’t notice the person coming up to your table and sits down across from you. It’s the woman that was with Garrick earlier. You still can’t quite make out her face, it’s as if the hood completely shrouds it in darkness. The white hair still peaks out though. As she sits across from you, she says nothing. She just stares. Or at least you assume she’s staring at you, you can’t see her eyes. “Hey. I remember you. You’re Garrick’s friend. Guess you’re the one he sent to contact me.” You say. You get no answer. You take a drink and try again. “Um, never did get your name.” No answer. You wait for a little while expecting something, but just silence. You’re a little on edge as it is, so you fall back to mild churlishness. “So…is this silent act supposed to shed more light on whether or not I’m in the Guild or not or are you just fascinated by my good looks?” Suddenly a dagger comes short of severing the finger from your hand while the woman reaches over the table to grab you by your shirt. She’s a lot stronger than she would appear since you’re partially yanked out of your seat towards her. You finally see her face due to being so close to her now. She’s quite pretty. Unnaturally alluring might be a more accurate word, but obviously she isn’t entirely human. Besides her hair being pure white, her eyes now give away an otherworldly appearance and right now her eyes are glowing a reddish color and look like they could twist mithril with the stare they’re giving you. “Listen up, because I’m only saying this once! Maybe Garrick thinks you’re an asset to the Guild, but I’m not convinced. You better show me something better than the pitiful displays you’ve shown since you got here.” She says. Every logical fiber of your being tells you that you should just shut the fuck up, but maybe it’s your nerves or you feel like this is some sort of test or maybe its this woman herself…but whatever the reason… you don’t shut the fuck up. “So, been watching me since I got here huh? Good to know.” You see her roll her eyes and she releases you and sits back down. “Please, I didn’t even know about you until recently and that’s only because you and that lowly halfbreed foolishly went and half assed robbed a rich Neroth cultist.“ the woman says. “Hey that wasn’t my idea.” You point out. “Well then you’re shit at picking a partner and I question your wisdom.” “Okay, fair, but I’d say I made the best of the situation AND got out of there without getting caught.” “So what? You ended up saving a whore who then blabbed to her fellow whores about the so-called noble thief that saved her life! You do realize that you’re probably not JUST on the ECS hit list, but you’ve probably just made enemies with certain members of what passes for the aristocracy around here along with a cult of fanatics.” “So what you’re saying is I should have just left the girl to get tortured and killed. I’ll remember that for next time.” “What I’m saying is it was fucking sloppy and you’re not half as good as you think you are.” “Okay, but I know I can’t be as bad as you’re making out either. If I was so horrible, your boss wouldn’t be considering me.” “First off, Garrick is NOT my fucking boss. I don’t have a boss. Second, if you were any worse, I’d seriously be questioning Garrick’s decision on this. Arguably the ONLY thing in your favor as far as I’m concerned is the fact you killed three ECS members. And you did that sloppy as well and it isn’t making me inclined to impress me any more than when I first had the displeasure of laying eyes on you.” This girl REALLY dislikes you to a point where you’re almost wondering if you did something to her personally or something. Then again you’ve had people try to kill you for less. Yet…you can’t help it…there’s something about her that just… “Well I hope I can impress you in the future since now that I have laid eyes upon your lovely face, I can definitely say that it has not been a displeasure.” The hooded woman sits back a bit as if you’ve actually succeeded in making her slightly uncomfortable. “Maybe you feeble charm works on whores, but you’ll find that I’m unimpressed by such attempts.” She says dismissively. “Maybe I need to try harder then.” You respond. At this point you succeed in making her angry again, she actually sits up and snatches her dagger out of the table and waves it at you. “And maybe you need to learn your limitations.” she exclaims. “Maybe I’m just setting my sights higher. If I’m joining your Guild, I’m going to have to be better than I am. That means taking more risks even when there is potential danger.” You look at her dead serious when you say this. You actually don’t even know where all this is coming from honestly. It’s almost like you’re under a spell. The hooded woman doesn’t even acknowledge what you’re saying. “Tomorrow night, be prepared to go on a job with a Guild member. A REAL Guild member. He will meet you here and from there we’ll see if we need to waste anymore time with you.” She says. “It won’t be you? A pity, well I’ll be looking forward to the day when we can do a job together.” You respond. Without even realizing it, you’ve touched her other hand that’s on the table. She of course immediately notices this and for a split second she probably considers breaking or stabbing your hand, but instead she just pulls her hand away and then steps back from the table altogether. “You…you are not going to last that long.” She says and then leaves. As soon as she steps out of the inn, you sit there in a daze for a while, but then you suddenly snap out of it. “What the fuck was wrong with me? I could have gotten myself killed, flirting like that.” You briefly wonder if maybe you drank too much, but that definitely wasn’t it. You’d say it was the woman herself that was causing you to do that, but she didn’t seem like she wanted anything to do with you on that front. You head back to your room and you can’t get your mind off of her. You’d visit a brothel, but that didn’t work out so well last time. So you take the matter in hand… By the time the tomorrow night rolls around, you’re sort of glad to meet up with the other Guild member since you’re hoping it will clear your mind. The Guild member in question calls himself Sneaks. He’s an older man, though certainly still younger than Garrick. Says he’s been friends with Garrick for a long time and also mentions that he hopes you’re as promising as he’s heard. The job that you and Sneaks are to perform doesn’t sound all that difficult, which is just as well since you’re still having problems focusing. When he asks if you have any questions, you just have one and that’s what’s the name of the hooded woman who spoke to you yesterday. Immediately Sneaks shakes his head. “Oh for…you saw her face and looked straight into her eyes didn’t you? Fuck. Well that explains why she came back all pissed off and not very talkative yesterday. Though she’s surly at the best of times. It’s a temporary effect kid, try to just focus on the job okay?” “I don’t understand.” Sneaks sighs a bit. “Okay, real quick. Her name is Tanya and if you want to make yourself happy, you will NOT pursue that one. Just forget about her. I know it’s difficult right now, but you’ll be better off. Trust me.” Sneaks says. “Is she involved with someone else?” you ask. “Not exactly, but…look she’s got some demon blood in her. I mean surely you realized that she wasn’t quite human right?” “Well yeah, but demon didn’t come to mind, but so what? I don’t care, I want to get to know her…” “Hah! I know how YOU want to get to know her! Trust me, you aren’t the first to try, and you probably won’t be the last, but so far every guy I’ve seen try has failed. Just walk away. Now get your mind off her ass and back to business.” While Sneaks’ advice is well meaning, it wasn’t exactly Tanya’s ass that was clouding your mind, but rather her face. Fortunately Sneaks is also correct in that the effect does seem to dissipate. As for the job, it goes a lot better than the one you did with Warts that’s for sure. Sneaks says that it’ll still be awhile before you’re allowed to actually go to the Guild proper, he says that as long as you keep up the good work, you’ll eventually get to see it. However, at this point you just want to see Tanya again. Looks like she didn’t leave your thoughts completely. Probably for the best that she’s still lingering in your mind, because if you really thought about just how deep of shit you probably are as far as powerful enemies you’ve made, you’d probably be a lot more depressed. > You time passes... Year 18 “Yep, Garrick’s been very impressed with you. I’d say a few more jobs and you’ll finally get invited to where all the magic takes place.” Sneaks says. “I can hardly wait.” You say. “Well geez son, don’t sound so enthusiastic. Last year you kept asking me if you were any closer to getting into the Guild headquarters.” “Last year, I was still a bit more optimistic about my choice in joining the guild.” “Oh? And how exactly did we fail you your majesty?” “That’s not exactly what I mean, but if we’re going that route, I just thought I’d be doing slightly better while aligned with you lot.” Sneaks starts laughing. “Well that’s your first problem right there. Joining a criminal organization that’s currently feuding with another one isn’t exactly a stable future son.” Sneaks says. “I know that too, it’s just…okay…I’m just a little concerned that we aren’t doing too much directly against the Ebony Claw Syndicate. I mean shouldn’t we be doing something more to decrease their power? Their presence hasn’t exactly decreased in the city and if anything it has only gotten stronger.” You respond. “I dunno about that, I’d say they’re probably struggling like everyone else currently. If they were truly stronger in presence they’d be directly attacking us and some of our hangouts more often.” “Well that’s still a problem since it’s still not progress, it’s just keeping the status quo.” “So, what are you going to do? Shoot them all?” “Well considering how many I have shot, I’d say it’s not a bad plan. Not to mention it’s something I could have easily done on my own.” “And you would have been dead already on your own. But if you really feel like you could do better on your own then nothing is holding back from leaving. Why stay?” “Because obviously I’m still an optimistic idiot.” “I don’t believe that, I believe its MORE likely you’re just sticking around because you’re an infatuated idiot.” “What?” “Don’t play dumb with me, I know you still got a thing for Tanya after I told you to just walk away. I remember when we all had to work on that job together three months ago, I swear at one point with how hard you were starin’ at her, I thought you were going to whip your dick out and start wackin’ it right there.” You laugh at that remark. “You laugh because you know it’s true.” Sneaks says. “Yeah well it certainly is a better reason than anything else I could come up with, and I’m not totally convinced that goal isn’t at least as possible as wiping out the ECS as a force in this city.” You respond. “I dunno about that. You’ve at least killed Ebony Claw members, you haven’t even gotten a kind word from Tanya yet.” “Yes I did! She said she couldn’t believe I was still alive and that I had to be the idiot bastard son of Yag eternally blessed with more luck than actual ability.” “Hm. Well actually coming from her that IS a kind word. Congrats. At the risk of inflating your ego even more…and she’d probably kill me if I told you…she actually would somewhat agree with you on your views about the Ebony Claw. She sort of wishes we took the fight more to them too. Actually you could probably count me in that group as well.” “So why the hell aren’t we doing more then and why isn’t Garrick being pro-active?” “He actually is, just not in the way you think. He thinks an all out gang war would be a mistake due to them having the numbers. He might be right, I don’t know. But all that shit we steal and the Guild gets a cut of? That doesn’t all just go towards equipment and extra casks of booze for the headquarters. Some of that money goes towards more important things like bribes, paying off the Watch and getting a few underpaid bean counters on our side to muddle paper work on occasion.” “Well that’s great and all, but how’s that fuck up the Ebony Claw?” “It doesn’t, but it keeps a balance. You don’t think they don’t do the same thing? Try to manipulate the law in their favor? The only reason why the Holgard Watch doesn’t mess with either side much is because they’re taking bribes from both sides. They got best racket in this city. They practically never even have to do their fucking jobs! Garrick HOPES that one day he’ll be able to manipulate the right people that will cripple the EC, but I can say right now, he’s doomed to failure, because at his core, he’s too fucking nice. Bribery only gets you so far. To do what he wants to do, he’d need to rely more on blackmail and extortion, which isn’t something he’s too fond of getting heavily into.” “Surprised nobody’s tried to kill him and take power from him.” “I said he’s nice, not a pussy. There have been a few who have tried over the years, mostly before the EC established a greater presence, but the man isn’t unskilled in the ways of defending himself. Besides the Thieves Guild isn’t the Ebony Claw and because Garrick is so fucking nice, people generally like him enough that they’d rather keep him as head of the organization. Not to mention we don’t exactly have the most ambitious bunch in the Guild. Most of the really ruthless, kill their own mother types to get ahead join the EC. We’re not Joachimites, but I’d still wager that most of us in the Guild have just a few more scruples than the average EC member.” “Yeah, well scruples doesn’t win wars.” “No argument there. Look kid, I’m not sure what to tell you, except I do hope you stick with us. I don’t care what your reasons are, whether its for safety, or riches or your ongoing failed pursuit of Tanya’s demon pussy. We need more…for the lack of a better word…warrior types in the Guild.” “Never considered myself a warrior before, but I suppose I’ll take it as a compliment.” “Of course you will, that’s how I meant it. Anyway, I gotta go. Garrick’s holding some sort of meeting for some of us important elite. Tell ya what, I’ll try to convince Garrick to let you in the Guild’s inner sanctum already. I know it’s not Tanya’s inner sanctum, but here’s something that might help you in that goal, she’s supposed to be casing the Museum of the Ancients tonight. Who knows, maybe if you get there quick enough she might even let you help.” As your eyes light up, Sneaks smiles and parts ways with you. You of course don’t waste any time heading to the Museum of the Ancients. You’ve never considered burglarizing that place before, but you suppose it makes sense that there would be some pretty valuable stuff in there. Though you imagine that it’s more protected than even some of the banks here. You’ve only had the fortune of working with Tanya a couple times before and that was always in a group and she of course always limited her contact with you in those cases. You still don’t exactly know WHY you’re as drawn to her as you are. Well you do and it’s probably due to her demonic heritage and whatever powers of charm she put on you. (Accidently you guess given her stand offish personality towards you) Sneaks said the effects should have worn off by now since you don’t even see her that much. Granted you aren’t thinking about her all the time, but if you ever have the chance to be around her (Like you do now) you’re going to take it. Luckily you manage to arrive unaccosted by anyone, the law or otherwise. Now you’re just hoping you find Tanya before the fun begins. The surrounding area outside the museum, the place is more or less empty. There aren’t too many other people in the area other than a few Holgard Watchmen patrolling around which you keep clear of. You look around to see where Tanya might be, but again its possible she already went inside. You bet she went in from the rooftop. Every time you’ve worked with her, she’s always favoring the rooftops. Of course you prefer a more grounded approach so as soon as it looks safe, you simply run up to the front door and pick the lock, which is a lot easier than you thought it would be. You look around the museum and mostly see a lot of oversized items that you’d need at least two people to carry to get out of here. Statues, suits of rusty armor, oversized tapestries and the like. While you’re sure some of this stuff is valuable to someone, it wouldn’t exactly be the easiest to just lift out of here. Though you haven’t seen or heard any night guards of any kind at all. Seems weird that this place doesn’t have any security. You try to keep an ear out for anyone that might be walk around, but it’s nothing but silence. You start to wonder if she came and left already or maybe this was all Sneaks idea of a practical joke. Wouldn’t be the first time. Since you can’t find her or detect anyone else roaming these halls, you decide that you might as well see if there actually is anything here that you might be worth taking. Eventually after wandering a bit, you stumble into an area that seems more promising. “Royal treasures of Old Galpatis” you say to yourself as you read the sign to exhibit room. You don’t know too much about Galpatis except shit that your sister sometimes spoke about from some book she read. It was supposed to be a great empire thousands of years ago that destroyed itself as all these ancient civilizations tend to do for whatever reason. Probably had something to do with necromancy or something. In any case you enter and see in the dim torchlight you see proper treasure that you could actually carry out of here. A lot of old necklaces, bracelets, crowns with gems and similar items behind glass, though some, like the weapons are mounted securely on the wall. A couple of weapons that catch your eye are a pair of ornate looking dagger. Not even tarnished and definitely still usable. You probably could easily pry them from the walls though you’d have to reach a bit since they’re little higher than you. Of course you do have your trusty glasscutter with you and you could just start getting to work on grabbing what you can from the displays. > You get the daggers It suddenly occurs to you that maybe there are traps about, but they’re magical in nature. You start cutting the glass and who knows what might happen. The daggers seem like there is possibly less danger involved seeing as they just fastened them to the wall. Of course it isn’t just an easy matter of ripping the dagger from the wall, you grab a prybar from your pack and start to get to work, but given their height above you, it’s awkward. You pry and pry, but don’t seem to be making any headway. You begin to think that the daggers are being held in place by magic and you might be right considering that you suddenly feel a force knock the prybar from your hand and as you try to grab it you stumble into one of the isolated stands with a glass case knocking it over and falling on the broken glass. Fortunately you’re mostly protected by your clothing, though you’re still picking glass out of bits of your body. However, you don’t do that for long since you notice the diamond necklace that has now been released from its cage. You might as well grab that instead. No sooner have you picked it up and that’s when you feel an unnatural chill in the air. “That’s not good.” You say and get the hell out of the Galpatis exhibit room. Doesn’t help though, you’re still feeling like the unnatural cold is following you. You get the very real feeling that SOMETHING is following you, but you don’t dare look behind you, all you want to do is get out of the museum and HOPE that whatever this is doesn’t follow you outside. You see the exit in the distance and then you see a wispy green glow materialize in front of it. A malevolent face briefly appears and then one of the statues closest to you comes to life! “Shit!” you exclaim and just barely manage to avoid getting your head smashed in. You look around and see that now several of the statues are coming to life. The exit is blocked by that ghostly thing so even if you could maneuver past the statues, you aren’t getting out that way. “HEY! Grab the damn rope!” a voice shouts from above. You look up and see Tanya on the second floor throwing a rope to you over the railing. You waste no time in grabbing and climbing up it while she pulls you up. The statues try to grab you at first, but then soon realize the best way to get you is going up the stairs. As you grab the railing, Tanya grabs your arm and hoists you over it. You almost feel like she’s going to yank your arm off, but of course you see a glimpse of her face again as she’s pulling you up and you’re almost smitten enough to forget all about the extreme danger you’re currently in. Hurry you fool before I regret saving you!” Tanya shouts and runs towards another rope that hangs from an opening she’s made in the glass dome on the roof Following her lead you make your way to the rope and quickly climb up it where you’re staring directly at Tanya’s ass the entire time. Again, probably a good thing since your focus isn’t on the invisible horrors that are desperately trying to get your attention by whispering demoralizing things in your ears to cause you to give up hope and stop trying to escape. Doesn’t work though, Tanya’s ass is literally saving your own. Eventually you manage to get to the roof where you and Tanya both start leaping across the tops of nearby buildings. When you get far enough away, Tanya at last stops to take a breather and then also punches you in the face. “What was that for?” you ask. “Do you even need to ask?! Your incompetent bumbling nearly got not just yourself killed, but ME as well! What the fuck were you even doing there? Did you KNOW I was going to be there?” Tanya asks. “Well…” “Let me guess, Sneaks told you…I’m going to kill him.” “Where were you anyway? I looked for you for awhile.” “I was in the basement stealing the Tivan Crystal.” “Oh. I didn’t think to check the basement.” “Given all the security you set off, it’s apparent you didn’t think at all! I was just on my way to leave when I heard glass breaking and the scampering of your feet. Did you really think you could just smash and grab shit in a place like that without consequence?” “I didn’t mean to at first. It was an accident. I just wanted to get you something since I couldn’t find you. Here.” You say and pull the diamond necklace out of your bag. “You’re joking right? I could steal, and have stolen items a lot more valuable than this!” “Yes, I’m sure you have, but its value is not the point, this is my gift to you. The motivation behind it is important.” “You expect me to believe you stole this for me?” “Believe what you wish, the point is that it’s yours now my dear.” You say and put the necklace in her hand. Tanya looks at the necklace in disbelief, and addresses you again. “So…wait…you REALLY think I’m going to wear this? Surely even someone of your intelligence can see that I’m not some dainty aristocrat who dresses in fancy gowns and adores myself with jewelry.” “You may do whatever you wish with it. You may throw it away, keep it and wear it, keep it and then sell it or just keep it period. It doesn’t matter. It was just my way of thanking you for not just saving my life, but also the pleasure of being in the glow of your beauty.” Tanya is now looking at you in disbelief. “…you…you…I…” Tayna starts to say. “Yes?” you ask. “Look! I don’t know what the hell your game is, but I’m not playing, and I’m not fooled!” “But I’m not trying to fool you, it’s merely a gift to…” “Stop it! Stop it right now! And stop looking at me like that, if you want to keep your eyesight! I don’t want to hear anymore of your honeyed words! We part ways here and don’t you dare try to follow me!” Tanya yells and pulls her hood even more over her head, before leaping to the next building. You naturally ignore her and start following her anyway. You must hop across three rooftops before Tanya stops again. “LOOK, this is NOT going to…” A bolt whizzing by suddenly interrupts Tanya’s words. At first you think briefly that it’s the guardian museum and it’s followed you, but it turns out to be a more tangible enemy instead. Several men with crossbows suddenly materialize on the roofs nearby and a few of them even on the roof you’re currently on. You both instantly duck down and try to find cover. Several other bolts follow though fortunately the ECS has not employed skilled marksmen. “Bah! All those bolts and you lot couldn’t hit a behemoth’s butt with a bass fiddle! I told you fuckers to practice! Just fucking close in for the kill!” you hear someone shout. You and Tanya can’t go in any direction without facing ECS members, but given the state you’re in right now, you’re not exactly avoiding a fight and neither is Tanya. “Looks like some of the EC are begging to be declawed. I’m always up for whittling down their ranks.” You say. “First thing you’ve said, that I agree with.” Tanya remarks. While the EC might be terrible shots, you certainly aren’t, you shoot three of them before they even manage to close in. Tanya on the other hand is perfectly content on taking on five of the assassins in close combat. One of the members however is standing back and still blinking in and out of existence. He’s obviously using that blasted shadow magic. He’s mainly giving orders right now, but if he gets in the fight, you don’t anticipate things going well. You try to take aim at him, but you’re stopped by two EC members who both nearly stab you. After dodging their blows, you shoot the pair of them. Seeing as you’ve only got one shot left and no real time to reload, you turn your attention back to the EC leader, who is now gone. Tanya is still working on two other EC members and you’re about to go over to help her, when a magic missile of some sort hits you. You drop your weapon and collapse. You almost feel like all the energy has been drained out of you. You’re so weak, you can hardly even push yourself back up, though a hefty kick soon stops that attempt. “Finally got your ass! It’s like they always say, you want something done right, ya gotta do it yourself. So you think you can just get away with shooting our members like some cowardly sonofabitch?” the shadow magic wielder remarks. “You…you just hit me with a fucking magic missile!” you wheeze, pointing out his hypocrisy. This of course isn’t appreciated and you soon receive another kick. “Silence! I’m gonna enjoy this.” Fortunately, he doesn’t get the chance due to all his gloating which was enough time for Tanya to finish off her last opponent and run over to help you again. However, he’s quick enough to avoid her attacks. The pair of them duel while you lie there trying to gather your strength. You’re really woozy and weak. You eventually manage to stand up, but you feel like you’re going to teeter over again. Tanya is still fighting the EC leader, but she’s not making much progress. In fact, he might even have a slight advantage since he hasn’t been exerting himself as much as she has tonight. You look over to your right and see your pistol lying nearby. You’ve got one shot in it and you’re not exactly in the best condition as far as accurately aiming anything right now. Of course you could just try to help Tanya in the more traditional way and try to backstab him. Still not ideal, but if you miss, you’re not likely to hit Tanya by accident. > You get your pistol In the condition you’re in and how quick he’s moving, you question if you’ll even be able to hit him, but you also know you’re currently not much good in a straight up fight right now. You stagger over to your pistol and nearly fall over just trying to pick it up. You look over at the duel and Tanya’s still holding her own, but the bastard’s shadow magic is giving him the edge. You try to aim, but you can’t get a clear shot and when you do, he’s already moved out of the way or you’re suffering from dizziness. You try to get a little closer and every inch of you is struggling to not slip into unconsciousness. You see the EC member block several of Tanya’s attacks and then manages to knock her down with some sort of glowing magic from his hand. He moves in for the kill as she hits the ground, but it’s best opening you’ve got now. You fire and hope the figure in the center is the real one before you collapse again. You aren’t unconscious for long as Tanya soon slaps you awake. “Hey, get up! We need to get out of here, before more of these assholes show up.” Tanya says. “Guh, did I get that sonofabitch?” you utter and slowly sit up. “Yeah, you blew half of his head off. Pretty sure that was Mantis.” “Mantis…I think I heard that name before.” “You should, he was one of the Ebony Claw’s lieutenants. Explains why he had access to shadow magic.” “Yeah well his magic couldn’t stop a bullet. You okay?” As you ask this, you touch Tanya’s arm, which she retracts. “Yeah, I’m fine! Get your hands off me! And I could have taken him without your help you know.” Tanya exclaims. “I know, just trying to help.” You reply. “Yeah, well your help could have gotten me killed what with you stumbling all over the place.” “Apologies.” “Hm. Well, I guess you did do your part. Almost makes up for the bumbling you did back at the museum. Anyway I highly recommend that YOU go home as soon as you can, I’m going to go report everything to the Guild.” “Why don’t I come with you?” “Hah, nice try, but there are still questions out on you.” “I’ve been fucking killing EC members since I joined and I just shot one of their leaders in the face. Fairly certain I’m on your side.” “Well it’s not up to me.” “Oh, so you’re saying if it WAS up to you, you’d let me in?” “I didn’t say that, and I’m going to address something else. While I know its unfortunate that my…ugh… condition has made you more drawn to me, you need to fucking snap out of it. It’s been two years and even those I work with closely don’t behave this way around me.” “From the stories Sneaks has told me, you’ve put so much fear in would be suitors that they’re too scared to make any advances on you. Just because they’re not being obvious about it, doesn’t mean the desire isn’t there.” “First, Sneaks talks too much and second, well maybe YOU need to start internalizing some of that desire as well. Get control of yourself. It’ll get better and go away over time.” “Maybe my feelings are genuine, you ever think of that?” “Yeah right. You barely even know me.” “Maybe not, but I’d like to get to know you better. I mean you think I’m a complete fucking idiot? I know that your little demon aura or whatever is probably affecting me, but that’s really not having as much of an effect on this as you think. Especially since I don’t just think about us in a sexual manner. I think about us just talking and…” Tanya looks at you very irritated by your words. “Okay, I don’t want to hear anymore. Shut up and don’t bring up my condition again! Stick to jacking off or get yourself a whore, I don’t give a fuck WHAT you do, just fucking do it and get yourself under fucking control! You flirt with me again and it’ll be the last fucking time, got it?!” Tanya doesn’t even give you a chance to respond, she just turns away from you and takes off across the rooftops again. You don’t follow, not due to fearing for any violent repercussion, but more because you’re not exactly feeling up to leaping across rooftops right now. Instead, you go ahead and loot the Ebony Claw members’ bodies. Sort of makes up for not getting anything from the museum. By the time you’re done, you feel your strength has returned enough that you can safely climb down from your position and get back to street level again. You look at your full coin pouch and ponder your next move. “Well, I guess the night is still young. Might as well.” A few minutes later you arrive at your destination. “Hey! Haven’t seen you here in a long time! How’s the scourge of the Ebony Claw?” the madam asks. “Is that what I’m being called now?” you respond. “I’m sure in certain circles you are, the EC more likely has more colorful names for you, but let’s not dwell on that. You’re here for fun. What would you like tonight?” “Uh, I kind of have a special request. I know it’s short notice, but…” “Say no more! We’ll do everything to try to accommodate your needs as long as you have the coin and don’t worry, your discount is still in place!” “Thanks.” You start going into an elaborate description of what you want the girl to look like. The madam nods a few times. “Yeah, we can accommodate that, and I know just the right girl too. Head on upstairs third door on your right. She’ll be with you soon.” You head upstairs feeling a little weird about all this, while you’re waiting you almost have second thoughts, then the girl comes in. You see a girl wearing nothing but a black open cloak. All her fun parts are fully exposed to you, save for her face, which is partially hidden due to a hood over the top half of her head. Long white hair can be seen peeking out though. They did a pretty good job in matching your description. “Hello. I’m Tanya and…” the girl says. “Stop. Don’t say anymore. Your voice doesn’t sound like hers and you’re already too friendly. I don’t want to ruin the illusion so let’s just get to it.” Without another word, fake Tanya approaches you and you waste no time spinning her around, lifting her cloak up, and doing her on all fours, mainly because it’s easier to immerse yourself if you aren’t looking at her face which might work from a distance, but isn’t going work very well if you’re staring full on at her. In any case, the session is pretty intense. Afterwards you’re collapsed on the bed, while “Tanya” professionally starts to collect herself. “I know you got other customers, I’ll get up in a second, I just gotta catch my breath for a moment.” You say. “Take your time, I wasn’t shoving you out the door just yet. I know you didn’t want me to talk, but I felt like I should at least thank you before we parted ways here.” She says. “Thank me? For what?” “For saving my life of course.” “Tanya” takes off the hood and white wig revealing her natural brown hair. Now that you’ve got a full look at her, you recognize her, even if the voice wasn’t immediately familiar. “It’s you! You were the one I freed from that cage!” you say. “Yep, it’s me. I actually worried that you MIGHT recognize me and it would break your illusion, glad that it didn’t.” “No, you were just about perfect…shit…so how have you been?” “Oh. Okay I guess. A lot more paranoid, still have nightmares sometimes, but at least I’m still alive and attractive enough to still whore.” “Damn…well let me at least pay full price, I know the madam said I had a discount, but…” “Oh no. This one’s on me. No charge at all and I’ll just make up the difference elsewhere. Honestly, I wanted to reward you before, but I missed you the first time you came here and then you never came back here until tonight.” “Yeah, I suppose I’ve been a bit busy what with fighting the ECS and all.” “Hm. We all got our struggles. Well, I guess we better get going, time and money and all. You did have a good time though right?” “Huh? Oh yeah! Yes, it was good. There were definitely times where I thought I was with…well someone else.” “Good. I’m glad. That’s what I’m here for.” You don’t say anything else and just focus on getting dressed. As you start to leave, you ask one more question. “What is your real name?” “Naji.” You don’t exchange any more words with her and you exit the establishment. Been a weird night for you. Granted you’ve had more than your fair share of such nights, but this one will probably stand out in your mind. Especially due to what happens next. “Don’t turn around. Into that alley now. You try anything, and you’ll have a bolt through the back. Move.” A voice whispers as you feel a crossbow shoved into your back. You didn’t even see anyone around, but you don’t have much choice except to comply for now. When you get to the alley you’re met by a scarred looking man with an eye patch. “Ah there you are, we have much to discuss. My name is Rook.” He says. Rook looks like an assassin of some sort, but it’s obvious that he’s also a man that prides himself on how he looks since even in this dirty alley he stands out as being dressed more like a government official rather than some lowly thug. His eye patch has a claw symbol on it. His comrade with the crossbow is still unknown to you since you haven’t turned around at all. About all you tell is that they’re very fond of that crossbow. After sizing you up a bit, Rook speaks again. “You’ve been busy during your stay here in Holgard. Pick pocketing, burglary, and all those other activities that are frowned upon by the law. Not to mention all the Ebony Claw members you’ve been murdering. So tell me, do you feel that you can just rob this city blind and do as you please?” Rook asks. “Basically.” You retort. “Why?” “ Because I can.” “Ah, I see. You feel your skills are a waste if not practiced. I can identify with that.” At this point, Rook slugs you in the stomach, dropping you to your knees. You didn’t even see it coming since he was standing far enough a way that he wasn’t in reach and then suddenly he was in front of you. As you struggle back up, you feel that blasted crossbow still at your back. “Normally someone like you would be disposed of, however many of my peers are short sighted and don’t always see opportunity clearly. The fact that you’ve managed to survive this long either means you’re incredibly lucky or you’re more intelligent than you appear. I’m hoping it’s the latter since if you are intelligent that means you have untapped potential.” Rook says. “I sure hope so at this point.” You respond still trying to gather yourself from Rook’s punch. “I do too, because despite what you may have heard about us, you will soon see that if you’re in this line of work, joining the Ebony Claw really is the way of the future. As I’m sure you’re somewhat aware, you’ve come at an interesting time. There are some changes going on in this city. Rebellion in the air, rumors of demonic cultists, but none of that matters. Business is what matters. What matters is that WE come out on top when smoke clears. The best way we can do that, is by controlling as much of the criminal activity as possible. By uniting the Underworld under one organization we will be able to survive whatever chaos is to come. That is the goal of the Ebony Claw Syndicate…well at least one of the goals anyway.” “So I take it you’re the head of the Ebony Claw?” This comment makes Rook smirk a little. “Oh no. I’m merely one of the more important people in this particular city. There are far more higher ranking people than myself all over, but we all perform our tasks for things we believe in and our various loyalties right?” Rook says. “I suppose.” You answer. “The Thieves Guild is one of the chief obstacles that stands in the way of my task. This relic of the past still holds on to their shortsighted archaic ideas and morals. Their antics bring unnecessary chaos, which is certainly something we don’t need more of in this city. Still, they aren’t complete fools as they have managed to hide within the city and we still can’t locate their hideout. Surprisingly even the ones we’ve captured have either managed to kill themselves or been dedicated enough that they have not revealed its location. I also am working with less than ideal resources available. If things were different…but…ah I get off topic. In any case, I am looking for alternative solutions. One of these involves you.” “I hate to break this to you, but they haven’t even let me in their little clubhouse yet.” “Oh, I’m sure that will change soon. I mean from what I can tell, you’re a rising star in their organization. I have full confidence that you will be soon accepted.” “You’re more optimistic than me then.” “You find that in this line of work, optimism helps keep you going at times, which is why I’m also optimistic that when the time comes you WILL see the advantage of joining US.” “Why would I do that?” “Because, you’re not just a mere rogue. You’re a killer. You could even be an assassin if you wanted to be. Granted you’re not exactly subtle what with your love of firearms, but sometimes that isn’t important. The Thieves Guild is limited. The Ebony Claw? WE are everywhere! You have the potential to really rise up in ranks. You want money? Infamy? Power? It’s all available if you’re smart and skilled enough.” “I feel like this is a trick.” “And you wouldn’t be wrong to think that. Paranoia is good and healthy, but I promise you that this is a real offer. I know you’ll need to think about this though, so I don’t expect you to agree right now. However, if you want some sort of assurance that I’m telling the truth, all hits on you are called off. As of right now unless you’re attacking an EC member and they’re acting in self defense, you will not be targeted.” Now this really sounds like a trick. “Bullshit.” You say. “Nope, it’s true. Wish I could have stopped that fool Mantis BEFORE we met, but seems like you took care of that. Oh and thanks for eliminating a rival tonight. Anyway, I trust you’ll be making the right decision, because it would be a shame if I had to kill you the next time we see each other.” Rook then chuckles a bit at his comment. “What am I saying? You wouldn’t see me, if I killed you.” With that last threat, Rook takes his leave, you don’t feel the crossbow anymore so you slowly turn around, but as expected nobody is there. The next day just when you think your life can’t get any more complicated… “Hey kid! Good news! You’re in! We were debating about letting you in early and a lot of people were against it since they felt you needed to spend more paying dues as it were, but then Tanya came back and spoke about what you did last night against the Ebony Claw and her opinions pushed Garrick, who was just bending to popular opinion anyway, to make a final decision to let you in! Ain’t that great?” Sneaks says. “Yeah…great.” You remark. > You time passes... Year 19 “That’s the third large group of cultists we’ve had to evade in our own fucking sewers. Something needs to be done about those shitheads because not even the EC is giving us this much trouble down here.” Sneaks says. “Agreed. They’ve been spreading all over the damn place. Granted I’m not much for religion, but given what I know from what Yinen has said about Neroth AND seen what these fanatics do first hand, I’m not exactly keen on them spreading any further.” You add. “I understand the concerns, but we’re already warring with the EC, the last thing we need is to open up a front against a bunch of Neroth worshipers.” Garrick says. “We don’t need to open up a front, because they’ve already made it quite clear that they’ve already done so. I don’t know about anyone else, but every time I bump into those fanatics they attack on sight.” Sneaks says. “If you’re just bumping into them accidentally, then you’re lucky because I know by their personalized threats they’re specifically targeting me.” You add. “I told you that rescuing that whore would catch up to you.” Tanya says. “That was years ago and they didn’t even see me do it!” “Yeah, but that tart and her friends spread the word about your deeds a long time ago. I’m more surprised they you weren’t targeted sooner by them.” “Well apparently they were too busy with other things than bothering with the likes of the kid here. In any case I’m just saying we need to thin out their ranks or something because while I know we aren’t officially territorial, we shouldn’t have to deal with daggers at our throats right outside our front door.” Sneaks says. “Exactly. And if left unchecked who is to say they won’t find this place? Not to mention these assholes worship a dark god. The last thing we need is for them to do is gather enough power to start summoning shit. Last thing we need is demons running around down here.” You add. As soon as you say that, everyone looks at you and then also looks at Tanya who is also looking in your direction with her head cocked to the side almost intrigued by what you’re going to say next. “Shhhhit...” you quietly say which causes a snicker from Sneaks. Tanya doesn’t even address what you said she instead turns her attention back to Garrick. “Word fumbling aside, he has a point Garrick. They all do. We can’t ignore this potential threat any longer.” Tanya says. “Maybe… (Sigh) I just don’t want to lose any more people especially when we may need them in the future.” Garrick says. After a brief moment of silence, Garrick speaks again. “Okay, fine. Maybe we need to do something. The question is what exactly? I’m still loathe to go all out gang war on a bunch of fanatics, because you know they’re only going to hit back with more fervor…maybe…wait a minute. We could set it up so it looks like the Ebony Claw is targeting them. That will hopefully draw some heat off of us on both sides.” Garrick says. Garrick begins to go into a plan to start ambushing the cultists, but also to ambush a few Ebony Claws and plant their bodies among the dead cultists so the living ones can stumble upon them and vice versa. In the meantime he says he’s going to try to grease the right palms to gain some sort of meeting with Reginald and appear as an “ally” against the Ebony Claw so Reginald will tell his people to leave the Guild alone. It’s not a bad plan, though you’re really not sure on the whole “allying” with Reginald bit. “Um, I’m not sure if this Reginald is ally material.” You say. “Well we need to try, because if you haven’t noticed, we are at a bit of a disadvantage. Reginald is Farrad’s boyfriend. You know, the baron’s son? The one who is probably going to attempt a coup on his father soon? If he’s actually successful it’s probably best that we’re not on his bad side at least.” Garrick retorts with annoyance. “I can see that logic, but I still have concerns if allying with religious fanatics that participate in human sacrifice is a good idea. I mean hell, I’d rather temporarily ally with the Ebony Claw against the cultists at this point…” “Well it’s a damn good thing that YOU don’t have to make the fucking decisions isn’t it then?!” Garrick’s sudden snap causes you to shut up immediately and everyone else to stand in silence. You certainly weren’t expecting it, but then Garrick in general has been less than friendly with you, as your time in the Guild proper has come about. He’s certainly nowhere near like he was when he first offered his hand to you in joining. You have some theories about why, but for now you just answer: “Your call. Apologies.” Garrick gives you a dirty look and starts assigning tasks to people. He doesn’t give one to you though. As everyone starts to leave, you go up to Tanya and offer to help her on her assignment and that’s when you get a scolding voice again. “Hey! Leave her be.” Garrick orders. “But I was just…” you start to say before you’re interrupted again. “Did I assign you and Tanya to work together? No I didn’t.” “Garrick, it’s actually okay, I can…” Tanya says before Garrick interrupts her as well. “Stay out of this Tanya! Everyone get to work! Except YOU.” Tanya looks at you a little sympathetically as she leaves with the rest, which is definitely not the norm, and part of what you imagine is the problem Garrick is having with you. Soon it’s just you and Garrick and he wastes no time in speaking. “You know when I brought you in, I thought you’d be an asset to us. Sure you weren’t exactly what I normally look for, but your actions against the Ebony Claw couldn’t be ignored. Your ongoing work to prove yourself worthy of becoming one of the inner circle couldn’t be ignored. Granted, I was still a little hesitant at the time since I was starting to have some doubts since so many thought you should continue to prove yourself, but Tanya’s words in your favor…well those couldn’t be ignored either.” You don’t say anything. “I also can’t ignore how you look at her and more importantly how she looks at you.” Garrick says. “I don’t think she looks at me with anything but scorn.” You say in an effort to deflect. “Bullshit. Maybe at one time she did. Not anymore. You’re not so stupid to not realize that. Hell, she tried to speak up for you just now. I don’t know HOW you did it, but you’ve actually been getting through that normally solid brick wall she puts up to shield herself again all would be suitors. I have seen MANY try and while I imagine that she leaves a lasting impression due to her nature, I have seen NONE continue to pursue her, or those that have, have met with physical violence that either put a definite stop to it. Somehow you have miraculously avoided that. Somehow YOU have defied what shouldn’t be possible.” You continue to stand there and say nothing, which only causes Garrick to throw something at you, which you narrowly dodge. “WELL? Aren’t you going to say anything?!” Garrick shouts. “I’m not sure what to say. Anything I say, you’re not going to like.” You answer. “Well permission to speak fucking freely then.” “Okay, well I don’t see how this is any of your concern. Tanya, from what I can tell is a full grown woman that’s MORE than capable of taking care of herself and dealing with the likes of me. And as far as I know, you’re not her father either even if you see her as some sort of surrogate daughter.” “It…it doesn’t make sense! WHY YOU?! There have been FAR better suitors in the past!” “You mean like you?” “W…what?” “Oh come on! I think given your increasing hostility towards me this is going beyond a father-daughter type of protectiveness. You’re acting like a jealous boyfriend or something. I’m succeeding where you and so many others obviously failed.” Garrick just starts shaking his head. “No, I…I never…I never…” “Or maybe I’m succeeding in something you never had the guts to do at all? That’s it isn’t it? You’ve never made any sort of advance on her, and just admired her from afar since you were always secure in the fact that she always drove everyone away. I’m guessing perhaps you thought one day Tanya would come to you of her own accord and…” Now Garrick lifts up the table and flips it at you. For an older guy, he’s certainly fit. “You think you know everything don’t you? Well let me tell you something, you don’t know shit. YOU are still a BOY and YOU are not worthy of Tanya.” Garrick says getting in your face. “Okay. Then what would make me worthy…in your eyes?” you ask. Garrick starts laughing. “Are…are you actually asking me? You seem to have all the answers, you figure it out. But while you’re trying to figure it out, go do what you’re actually good at and go kill our enemies. GO! Get the fuck outta my sight!” You leave Garrick and exit the meeting room somewhat expecting there to be a few people hanging around outside listening to the conversation, but it would appear that nobody wanted to be around for Garrick’s anger to be directed towards them as well. Not even Sneaks lingered behind. Since you didn’t even get paired up with a full fledged Guild member, you suppose you could just go gather a few associates to help you, though you believe you’re probably more than capable of performing the task yourself. Honestly though, you’re ready to just dispense with the plan and do something else instead like try to kill Reginald. Those assholes have been targeting you anyway. Also seems like it would solve the problem a lot better than trying to be friends with him. Cutting off the head of a cult usually results in it falling apart. The problem of course is he isn’t as easy to get to anymore. The secret passage to his home no longer exists as one person in the Guild soon learned when he tried to break in that way thinking that it would be an easy job and nearly got himself killed in the process. If there’s another secret passage to the house, you have no idea where it is and it’s probably better protected now. Which would mean a more traditional approach, but again, he’s got security up the ass and has his own personal retinue of guards around his home. Perks of fucking minor nobility you suppose. In any case, you’d be doing this alone though because nobody would help you in this task. Say what you want about Garrick, but everyone listens to him and this would definitely be going against his plans. Though you do have another option, and that’s going to the Ebony Claw Syndicate for help. Rook called off the hit and so far other than a few unavoidable skirmishes here and there, the EC has not been actively targeting you. You never thought you’d feel this way, but you’ve actually considered joining them lately mainly because things have been just so miserable in the Guild. If it weren’t for Tanya, you probably would have done it already. Rook has never followed up on your last meeting, you don’t know exactly what his game is, but you imagine if you come in for help, he’s going to want that inside information on the Guild. > You kill Reginald yourself As much as you’ve been toying with the idea, you’re still not quite sure about throwing your lot in with the EC yet. You’re walking a pretty traitorous line as it is just by not telling anyone that they ever approached you, but then it isn’t like you can exactly tell them, can you? Killing Reginald is going to take some scouting and planning. As far as you know the man is rarely ever leaving his house anymore or if he is, he’s not seen doing it. Since you’re not exactly getting any further with Tanya at the moment, Garrick’s pissed at you and you’re essentially doing your own thing, you might as well stay somewhere other than the Guild while you do this. You head to Hell’s Own Inn since it’s at least some place that you know and can consider hospitable. Bruno, the innkeeper nods when he sees you. Funny how you never really learned his name until after you stopped living here on a regular basis. “Hey Bruno, I’ll have a room. My old one if it’s currently available.” You say. “A room? Thought you were living in the Guild quarters ever since they let you into inner circle.” Bruno says. “Yeah well I’ve got something I need to do on my own and I can’t be creeping in and out of sewers to do it. Where’s Yinen, I might have a few things to trade with him.” “Yinen? Haven’t seen him in days.” “You haven’t seen him? He practically never leaves this place.” “I know, which is why it’s weird that I didn’t even see him leave. Unless he left in the middle of the night, but none of the staff saw him leave either.” “Nobody has thought to look into this?” “What am I going to do, call the Holgard Watch?” “No, but we could at least get somebody from the Guild or even one of the associates to look in on this. I mean he’s one of our best fences. Seems like for all the Guild’s talk of solidarity, they’re dropping the ball on this one.” “He hasn’t been gone THAT long. I figured maybe he had a special delivery or deal to take care of elsewhere. If he’s gone for much longer I guess one of the associates can go look for him.” “What about Warts? He tends to not have much to do.” “He’s been gone longer than Yinen. Though I think in his case he’s deliberately staying away. Last thing he mentioned to me is that bad things are going to happen here soon and he doesn’t want to be around when they do. Can’t say as I blame him either. I’m still surprised this place hasn’t gotten hit yet by the Ebony Claw. What the hell is Garrick doing about them anyway? Because as far as I can tell, they’re not dropping in presence.” “I dunno, we’ve been taking the fight to them, but the rumors are that they’re getting reinforcements from the Delantium Kingdom. Also, we’ve been having problems with cultists running around in the sewers.” “Yeah, I’ve been reading about a couple of brutal murders in the paper that are thought to be the work of Neroth cultists. Actually, maybe that explains Yinen’s disappearance. He always was a little nervous when it came to anything relating to Neroth. Maybe he took off like Warts did.” “Maybe so. I feel like he might have told someone first. Guess he might have been really scared though.” “In any case, you’re in luck. Your old room is available, but I’ll be needing some rent for it. Business is a little slow what with not many folks coming to visit the city as much now.” “Are you kidding me? (Sigh) Fine. Whatever. Here, take this, but not a silver more.” Bruno takes your payment and you head to your old room. You take a quick inventory of your equipment and make plans to go case Reginald’s home, but then you hear noise outside and a quick peek out your window reveals that the Holgard Watch are putting down a group of dissidents and decide to stay put for a little while. That’s been a more common sight too nowadays. Even on your way here, you were trying to avoid getting caught up the various groups of protesters that have been more frequent. Part of you wonders if Warts doesn’t have the right idea, but at this point you’ve got a few loose ends that need to be tied up first. One of which is killing the head of this cult that’s been trying to kill you. It’s odd that you feel so strongly about this given that the EC was trying to kill you for years, but then maybe that’s because you knew the EC was an enemy that from you can gather is much bigger than you could ever hope to fight. You consider it a victory that you even managed to get them to stop attacking you though you know you’re going to have to deal with them again eventually. You just don’t know how yet. These fanatics however, there’s a limit to their power for now. Right now they’ve grown and if left unchecked, who knows, they may take over the city. Sure you could flee and maybe you’d be fine. But you might also be running for the rest of your life as cults tend to not be satisfied with staying in one place and love to spread. Add their desire to summon demons and such into that mix and it might be best to nip this in the bud right now. It’s funny how you never really used to think that far ahead before, but you suppose you’ve seen and done a lot since your simple days in Teckleville. “Certainly hope you’re having an easier time of it than I am sis.” You say to yourself. Over the course of the next three days you make visits to Reginald’s home and spend hours watching the place. You never see anyone come in or out of the place though. Indeed, you’ve never seen Reginald at all except from descriptions of him. Holgard Watch patrols the grounds night and day, but you don’t see them ever enter the home either. You wonder if they even know what’s going on in there or more likely they do, but don’t care. Eventually you spend an entire day and night on a nearby rooftop watching the place, hoping that you’ll see him come out. He never does though. In your state of weariness, you barely react in time to hear someone approaching. “You can put that away, it’s just me. Glad to see you’re more alert than you appear though.” Tanya says when you spin around pointing your pistol at her. “What’re you doing here? I sort of thought if anyone was going to check up on me, it would be Sneaks.” You say putting your weapon down. “Hah, like you’d get him to climb up on rooftops, let alone jumping from them nowadays.” “Guess you’re right. So what do you want?” “What do I want? No comments about my beauty? No flirty statements? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d finally shaken off the effects. So you must be in a really shitty mood.” “What’s the point? You’ve made it quite clear you’re not interested and others have also made it quite clear as well, so why bother beating my head up against a wall?” Tanya doesn’t answer you immediately as your answer has caught her off guard a bit. “What happened between you and Garrick after the meeting?” Tanya asks. “Nothing.” You answer. “Doesn’t seem like nothing considering you’re disobeying orders. It seems to me you’re trying to figure out a way to take out Reginald directly. That’s why you’ve been spying on his house for the past few days.” “Looks like I’m not the only one that’s been spying.” “I’ve been keeping track of what every main group is doing, don’t flatter yourself.” “Be that as it may, I thought the Guild was supposed to just be a loose alliance anyway and Garrick wasn’t officially our boss. And if he isn’t our boss, then that means I can do what the hell I want.” “You know that’s not exactly true.” “Maybe not, but I’m not following orders this time. And it’s not ONLY because these fuckers have been targeting me. These Neroth cultists are a bigger danger than the EC. Maybe they haven’t been fucking with us as long, but if their leader or high priest or whatever is fucking the Baron’s son then who is to say their goal isn’t to turn the city into a theocracy? If something like that happens I can bet that there won’t be any freedom to do anything here and they certainly aren’t going to be dealing with the likes of us and quite frankly Garrick’s an idiot if he believes he can somehow reason with them on some level, I’ve seen what the hell they do.” “I see your point, but I somewhat understand his logic for attempting to make an alliance. However he’s relying on something that I already told him isn’t going to make a difference.” “What do you mean?” “Well you said it yourself. They worship a dark god and are probably trying to summon infernal beings if they haven’t done so already. I believe Garrick thinks that having me by his side if he ever got to meet with Reginald, would help since y’know…being half infernal and all.” “Hm. Didn’t consider that. Would that work?” “Probably not. I even told Garrick as much when he first approached me about the plan earlier. At best Reginald might temporarily ally in an effort to separate me from the rest of the Guild and probably attempt to convince me to join them and embrace my heritage or some shit. I don’t even like…my condition. Last thing I want to do is embrace it. Already had to deal with that once before, don’t feel like dealing with it again.” “Deal with it again?” “Yes, and we’re not talking about it. In any case, I’m here to help you in your plan, because I believe you’re completely right about this. These cultists need to be destroyed and taking their leader out will at least severely lessen their power.” You nod silence and with a somewhat uplifted spirit. “Thanks. I didn’t expect any help, least of all from you.” You say. “Well, we’re on the same side aren’t we? However, I do think YOU should get some rest before we attempt this. So you head back to Hells Own, get some sleep and tomorrow night, you and I will meet up outside here. In the meantime, I’m going to talk to Sneaks and few others to see if I can’t get them to make a bit of extra distraction for Neroth’s most loyal. I’m not going to let too many in on this plan though for obvious reasons.” Tanya remarks. “Good idea, again thanks. I really appreciate this.” “Hm, well off you go. We’ve got a big night tomorrow so be prepared as much as you can.” You bid Tanya goodbye who just nods an acknowledgment and leaves. Since you’ve got your orders to rest, you climb down from your spot and head back to the inn. You get a couple of blocks and suddenly you feel like you’re being watched. You start to look around, but nobody is around. You quicken your pace and a couple seconds later, you feel a crossbow in your back. “Shit.” You say. “Don’t turn around. Alley. Now.” A familiar voice says. Once again you obey the man with the crossbow and enter the nearby alley where once again, you see Rook. “Glad we could meet again.” Rook says. “It’s not like I ever had a choice.” You answer. “Not true! You could always choose to escape, I wouldn’t bet on your chances, but you can’t say you don’t have a choice. You also have a choice to give me information on the location of the Thieves’ Guild or not. I know for a fact you’ve long been a member of their inner circle so you should have lots of information on the layout along with the location.” “Um…well…I don’t know ALL of the layout…you see there was some debate about even letting me in, so they still don’t trust me completely and as such they haven’t allowed me full access.” “No problem. Just the location will do. It’s not ideal, but I have more than enough confidence that we’ll be able to take it anyway.” You’re silent. You can’t think of anyway to lie or stall. It’s either betray the Guild or die. You feel the crossbow still in your back, Rook inspects you as you struggle with the morality of this decision. “Tell me, why do you hesitate? Do you have close friends in the Guild? I can only imagine that the answer is yes, because if the answer was no, you would be spilling your guts right now. In fact, you probably would have done so on our first meeting. It’s obvious you have no real love for the organization itself because if you did, you wouldn’t even be considering any of this in the first place. You would be a good little Guild soldier and tell me how you’d never betray Garrick or the Guild. At which point I’d stop wasting my time and kill you. So you must have emotional attachment to someone there. Tell me who it is, and perhaps an arrangement can be made.” Rook says. “What sort of arrangement?” you ask. “The Ebony Claw doesn’t like to waste potential talent. Or at least I don’t, hence why we’re having this pleasant conversation. If you can convince your friend or friends to join you in seeing that the future is the Ebony Claw, then I have no problem with them joining as well. Quite frankly, we’ll probably need the manpower.” “I don’t think she…” Rook interrupts you and you realize you’ve already given away too much. “She? Oh wait….” Rook chuckles. “Of course. It’s her isn’t it? Garrick’s little demonkin. This explains everything! Did you fall in love with her?” “Well I…” “Ha ha! You poor silly enchanted fool! She’s half succubus you know. That’s why you’re all fucked up and not thinking straight. Why I’ll bet if it wasn’t for her charming everyone, Garrick wouldn’t have half the people in his Guild.” “She didn’t enchant me! In fact she doesn’t even like using her powers like that!” you say getting agitated and temporarily forgetting that you’re at Rook’s mercy. “Oh of course she doesn’t. That’s all part of her act. The puritanical demon seductress. Gets everyone hot an bothered and keeps them on a string by not actually putting out. How better to control the average man? I’ll tell you what, we could use someone like her in the EC. Would make things easier to a certain extent.” You don’t say anything, while Rook continues to chuckle. “Okay, I’ll give you a little more time because you seem to believe that yours is true love. If you do manage to convince the demonkin to join though, well that will just prove I was right in seeing your potential. However, I can’t walk away from this meeting without nothing, so I still need you to do something for me or at least provide some sort of information.” Rook responds. “What did you have in mind?” you ask. “I don’t know, you tell me. A plan of some sort perhaps. I’ll decide if it’s important enough or not.” Currently the Guild doesn’t have any plans other than the one involving the Neroth worshippers and making it look like the EC are attacking them. The only other plan you can tell Rook is your plan directly against Reginald, you just aren’t sure Rook’s going to find that one important enough and you’ll end up having give out the Guild’s plan anyway. > You give away the Guild's plan Rook might be testing you to see if you’ll lie to him or not. You’d rather not take that chance so you better just come clean now. “We’re mounting an attack on the Neroth cultists because they’ve been fucking with us. More specifically, we’re mounting an attack on the Neroth cultists and going to make it look like Syndicate did it. We’re also going try to ally with them, though to be honest that’s the shit part of the plan.” You say. “I see. Well that is a very important bit of information. I thank you for telling me, though it would have been more impressive if I didn’t have to initially pull it from you. No matter, give me the details and how you’re involved exactly.” “I’m not. I’m doing my own thing because I’m not really into Garrick’s plan in the first place. The Neroth cultists have been targeting me specifically longer than they’ve been fucking with the Guild, so I was going to just go take out Reginald and be done with it.” “Interesting. To be honest those Neroth worshipping assholes DO need to be dealt with. While some in the Ebony Claw don’t consider them top priority, I see them as a potential problem in the future. Especially since we’ve started to have our own run ins with them. Though I may be a bit biased considering they did kidnap my cousin once. Oh, by the way, always meant to thank you for rescuing her.” “Wait…you mean…Naji is…” “A whore that doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing with her life, but she’s still my cousin and she should finally get a little justice. This city already has more than enough gods competing, and as a dedicated disciple to Fel, I see no reason why I shouldn’t aid directly in their fall. Consider the Holgard Watch taken care of by tomorrow.” “What, really?” “Yes. Obviously you’re still going to have to kill Reginald and whatever fanatics he has in the house with him, but the Holgard Watch? They can always change loyalties and those that can’t, well they’ll be dealt with. Consider this another favor from your friends at the Ebony Claw.” You silently acknowledge Rook’s words. While this is certainly going to help you out, you’re not sure if you’re going to be able to afford all these “favors” when it comes time to pay up. “Well then I guess this concludes our business again. I suppose I’ll be sending some of my people to start actively hunting down groups of Guild members based on the information you told me. Next time we see each other though, I trust you’ll have that other vital information for me. Time is growing short you know, and I would hate to see you on the wrong side.” Rook says and pats you hard on the side of your face a couple times before walking away. You soon no longer feel the crossbow at your back and that’s when you know it’s okay to move again. You make your way back to the inn where you’re supposed to be getting some rest like Tanya suggested, but after your encounter with Rook, you’re more wound up than ever. Eventually you do fall asleep and by the time you wake up, it’s night and you’re rushing to go meet Tanya. When you get the place you were going to meet you find that she’s not there. You wait around for awhile, but still no sign of her. You wonder if she changed her mind, then you wonder if she went in already because you also noticed that Reginald’s house doesn’t have the extra Holgard Watch security around it. (Rook was true to his word) “Shit, I hope not. I’ve been standing around like a dumb ass if that’s the case.” You mutter and rush back down to street level again. You open the gate (which the guards helpfully left unlocked) and go to the front door which you lockpick with ease. You’d think even with the guards he would have gotten a better lock, but whatever makes your task easier. You slowly walk into the dimly lit foyer with your weapon drawn. You search the downstairs cautiously and methodically, but don’t find any one. In the back of your mind you wish this was just a simple breaking and entering job because you’re seeing a lot fancy decoration and you’re sure Reginald has more portable valuables laying around in a safe or something somewhere. Still no sign of Tanya. You begin to worry if something happened to her if she came here at all. It also crosses you mind that it’s possible she got held up before coming here. Rook did say he was sending some of his people to go actively hunt Guild members. For all you know she ran afoul of one of those groups or had to help other Guild members. While you’re looking around for stairs to the cellar, you hear some thumping coming from the upstairs. Things have been more or less silent so far, so this it cause to give you alarm. You immediately head back to the large set of stairs that lead up in the foyer. As you’re heading up the stairs, you notice that the lighting is becoming much darker. It’s almost as if the candles from the chandelier are going out. You get to near the top of the landing and then it goes completely dark. You then feel several hands grab at you You manage to fire off your pistol once before several hands take it from you. “Fuck!” You say and begin to struggle. “Restrain the unbeliever!” “Don’t kill him, this infidel must be properly sacrificed! Since you have no intention of going quietly, you fight your assailants. It’s hard to see in the dark, but you’re doing the best you can. Eventually you manage to get your arms free and draw your blade. You slash blindly, hitting someone before you try to make your way back downstairs. You’re half way down the stairs with footsteps and yelling not far behind. You then suddenly feel a force of a person grabbing and tackling you with abandon. The pair of you goes rolling down the stairs and don’t stop until you hit the bottom. You feel a sharp pain in your right leg when you try to move it. Doesn’t take long before you realize it’s broken. Your assailant was less lucky and managed to break his neck during the tumble down the stairs. That doesn’t help you that much though since his body is partially holding you down and his buddies are already almost upon you. “Shit, he killed Daniel!” Gotta love the “outrage” by a bunch of demon worshippers, not to mention the fact that Daniel killed himself by tackling you in the first place! You crawl the best you can from out under Daniel’s body and swing your blade at anyone coming near, but it’s no use. There are just too many and despite hacking a couple of them at the legs, they soon begin stomping and kicking you. The best you can do is try to cover yourself until eventually one person tells them all to stop. You raise your head and see a man with a goatee in a red robe. A couple of other larger men in red robes stand behind him. Granted everyone around you is wearing red, but it’s obvious that this is the one you were looking for. This is Reginald. He motions the others to pick you up which they do despite you struggling and the agony of a broken leg. Reginald walks towards you. “So, you’ve returned. I know you’re the one that so rudely broke into my home and stole that girl years ago. We were a little pre-occupied in nabbing you before and you seem to be skilled enough to fight off our recent attempts. Not sure why you stupidly decided to believe you could get away with walking in here alone again, but you’ll soon learn that was a very grave mistake. Going to have something very special planned for you.” Before you can answer with some sort of defiant reply, two of the red robed assholes holding you go down to throwing daggers in their faces from above! Of course this also means you fall to the floor as well since your leg is broken and you can’t stand. It’s still dark, but even from your prone position and in your one eye that hasn’t closed shut you can see a figure running about on the second floor balcony and throwing more daggers. It has to be Tanya. “Damnit, it’s a full on assault! Take this asshole to the dungeons, the rest of you get whoever that is and be on the look out for others!” Reginald orders. Several cultists try to pick you up again, but you do everything you can to prevent them from doing so. Eventually you get walloped and kicked in the head enough times that you’re unable to do much of anything except struggle to stay conscious. You’re dragged across the floor and down some steps while the chaos of shouting and running is around you. Eventually you no longer feel a wooden floor but cold stone. As you are continually dragged across the cellar area, you are now starting to black out. Your only thoughts are that you hope Tanya will be okay and save your ass on top of everything else. Unfortunately, those are the last thoughts you ever have. The cultists dragging you to the dungeon cell aren’t exactly being the most gentle and your already battered head takes a few more hits, then when they throw you in the cell, they give you a couple more kicks as well. You don’t feel the pain any longer since you’re unconscious by this point. It’s just as well that you soon die from internal head trauma since Tanya isn’t even successful in retrieving your body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as you’ve been toying with the idea, you’re still not quite sure about throwing your lot in with the EC yet. You’re walking a pretty traitorous line as it is just by not telling anyone that they ever approached you, but then it isn’t like you can exactly tell them, can you? Killing Reginald is going to take some scouting and planning. As far as you know the man is rarely ever leaving his house anymore or if he is, he’s not seen doing it. Since you’re not exactly getting any further with Tanya at the moment, Garrick’s pissed at you and you’re essentially doing your own thing, you might as well stay somewhere other than the Guild while you do this. You head to Hell’s Own Inn since it’s at least some place that you know and can consider hospitable. Bruno, the innkeeper nods when he sees you. Funny how you never really learned his name until after you stopped living here on a regular basis. “Hey Bruno, I’ll have a room. My old one if it’s currently available.” You say. “A room? Thought you were living in the Guild quarters ever since they let you into inner circle.” Bruno says. “Yeah well I’ve got something I need to do on my own and I can’t be creeping in and out of sewers to do it. Where’s Yinen, I might have a few things to trade with him.” “Yinen? Haven’t seen him in days.” “You haven’t seen him? He practically never leaves this place.” “I know, which is why it’s weird that I didn’t even see him leave. Unless he left in the middle of the night, but none of the staff saw him leave either.” “Nobody has thought to look into this?” “What am I going to do, call the Holgard Watch?” “No, but we could at least get somebody from the Guild or even one of the associates to look in on this. I mean he’s one of our best fences. Seems like for all the Guild’s talk of solidarity, they’re dropping the ball on this one.” “He hasn’t been gone THAT long. I figured maybe he had a special delivery or deal to take care of elsewhere. If he’s gone for much longer I guess one of the associates can go look for him.” “What about Warts? He tends to not have much to do.” “He’s been gone longer than Yinen. Though I think in his case he’s deliberately staying away. Last thing he mentioned to me is that bad things are going to happen here soon and he doesn’t want to be around when they do. Can’t say as I blame him either. I’m still surprised this place hasn’t gotten hit yet by the Ebony Claw. What the hell is Garrick doing about them anyway? Because as far as I can tell, they’re not dropping in presence.” “I dunno, we’ve been taking the fight to them, but the rumors are that they’re getting reinforcements from the Delantium Kingdom. Also, we’ve been having problems with cultists running around in the sewers.” “Yeah, I’ve been reading about a couple of brutal murders in the paper that are thought to be the work of Neroth cultists. Actually, maybe that explains Yinen’s disappearance. He always was a little nervous when it came to anything relating to Neroth. Maybe he took off like Warts did.” “Maybe so. I feel like he might have told someone first. Guess he might have been really scared though.” “In any case, you’re in luck. Your old room is available, but I’ll be needing some rent for it. Business is a little slow what with not many folks coming to visit the city as much now.” “Are you kidding me? (Sigh) Fine. Whatever. Here, take this, but not a silver more.” Bruno takes your payment and you head to your old room. You take a quick inventory of your equipment and make plans to go case Reginald’s home, but then you hear noise outside and a quick peek out your window reveals that the Holgard Watch are putting down a group of dissidents and decide to stay put for a little while. That’s been a more common sight too nowadays. Even on your way here, you were trying to avoid getting caught up the various groups of protesters that have been more frequent. Part of you wonders if Warts doesn’t have the right idea, but at this point you’ve got a few loose ends that need to be tied up first. One of which is killing the head of this cult that’s been trying to kill you. It’s odd that you feel so strongly about this given that the EC was trying to kill you for years, but then maybe that’s because you knew the EC was an enemy that from you can gather is much bigger than you could ever hope to fight. You consider it a victory that you even managed to get them to stop attacking you though you know you’re going to have to deal with them again eventually. You just don’t know how yet. These fanatics however, there’s a limit to their power for now. Right now they’ve grown and if left unchecked, who knows, they may take over the city. Sure you could flee and maybe you’d be fine. But you might also be running for the rest of your life as cults tend to not be satisfied with staying in one place and love to spread. Add their desire to summon demons and such into that mix and it might be best to nip this in the bud right now. It’s funny how you never really used to think that far ahead before, but you suppose you’ve seen and done a lot since your simple days in Teckleville. “Certainly hope you’re having an easier time of it than I am sis.” You say to yourself. Over the course of the next three days you make visits to Reginald’s home and spend hours watching the place. You never see anyone come in or out of the place though. Indeed, you’ve never seen Reginald at all except from descriptions of him. Holgard Watch patrols the grounds night and day, but you don’t see them ever enter the home either. You wonder if they even know what’s going on in there or more likely they do, but don’t care. Eventually you spend an entire day and night on a nearby rooftop watching the place, hoping that you’ll see him come out. He never does though. In your state of weariness, you barely react in time to hear someone approaching. “You can put that away, it’s just me. Glad to see you’re more alert than you appear though.” Tanya says when you spin around pointing your pistol at her. “What’re you doing here? I sort of thought if anyone was going to check up on me, it would be Sneaks.” You say putting your weapon down. “Hah, like you’d get him to climb up on rooftops, let alone jumping from them nowadays.” “Guess you’re right. So what do you want?” “What do I want? No comments about my beauty? No flirty statements? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d finally shaken off the effects. So you must be in a really shitty mood.” “What’s the point? You’ve made it quite clear you’re not interested and others have also made it quite clear as well, so why bother beating my head up against a wall?” Tanya doesn’t answer you immediately as your answer has caught her off guard a bit. “What happened between you and Garrick after the meeting?” Tanya asks. “Nothing.” You answer. “Doesn’t seem like nothing considering you’re disobeying orders. It seems to me you’re trying to figure out a way to take out Reginald directly. That’s why you’ve been spying on his house for the past few days.” “Looks like I’m not the only one that’s been spying.” “I’ve been keeping track of what every main group is doing, don’t flatter yourself.” “Be that as it may, I thought the Guild was supposed to just be a loose alliance anyway and Garrick wasn’t officially our boss. And if he isn’t our boss, then that means I can do what the hell I want.” “You know that’s not exactly true.” “Maybe not, but I’m not following orders this time. And it’s not ONLY because these fuckers have been targeting me. These Neroth cultists are a bigger danger than the EC. Maybe they haven’t been fucking with us as long, but if their leader or high priest or whatever is fucking the Baron’s son then who is to say their goal isn’t to turn the city into a theocracy? If something like that happens I can bet that there won’t be any freedom to do anything here and they certainly aren’t going to be dealing with the likes of us and quite frankly Garrick’s an idiot if he believes he can somehow reason with them on some level, I’ve seen what the hell they do.” “I see your point, but I somewhat understand his logic for attempting to make an alliance. However he’s relying on something that I already told him isn’t going to make a difference.” “What do you mean?” “Well you said it yourself. They worship a dark god and are probably trying to summon infernal beings if they haven’t done so already. I believe Garrick thinks that having me by his side if he ever got to meet with Reginald, would help since y’know…being half infernal and all.” “Hm. Didn’t consider that. Would that work?” “Probably not. I even told Garrick as much when he first approached me about the plan earlier. At best Reginald might temporarily ally in an effort to separate me from the rest of the Guild and probably attempt to convince me to join them and embrace my heritage or some shit. I don’t even like…my condition. Last thing I want to do is embrace it. Already had to deal with that once before, don’t feel like dealing with it again.” “Deal with it again?” “Yes, and we’re not talking about it. In any case, I’m here to help you in your plan, because I believe you’re completely right about this. These cultists need to be destroyed and taking their leader out will at least severely lessen their power.” You nod silence and with a somewhat uplifted spirit. “Thanks. I didn’t expect any help, least of all from you.” You say. “Well, we’re on the same side aren’t we? However, I do think YOU should get some rest before we attempt this. So you head back to Hells Own, get some sleep and tomorrow night, you and I will meet up outside here. In the meantime, I’m going to talk to Sneaks and few others to see if I can’t get them to make a bit of extra distraction for Neroth’s most loyal. I’m not going to let too many in on this plan though for obvious reasons.” Tanya remarks. “Good idea, again thanks. I really appreciate this.” “Hm, well off you go. We’ve got a big night tomorrow so be prepared as much as you can.” You bid Tanya goodbye who just nods an acknowledgment and leaves. Since you’ve got your orders to rest, you climb down from your spot and head back to the inn. You get a couple of blocks and suddenly you feel like you’re being watched. You start to look around, but nobody is around. You quicken your pace and a couple seconds later, you feel a crossbow in your back. “Shit.” You say. “Don’t turn around. Alley. Now.” A familiar voice says. Once again you obey the man with the crossbow and enter the nearby alley where once again, you see Rook. “Glad we could meet again.” Rook says. “It’s not like I ever had a choice.” You answer. “Not true! You could always choose to escape, I wouldn’t bet on your chances, but you can’t say you don’t have a choice. You also have a choice to give me information on the location of the Thieves’ Guild or not. I know for a fact you’ve long been a member of their inner circle so you should have lots of information on the layout along with the location.” “Um…well…I don’t know ALL of the layout…you see there was some debate about even letting me in, so they still don’t trust me completely and as such they haven’t allowed me full access.” “No problem. Just the location will do. It’s not ideal, but I have more than enough confidence that we’ll be able to take it anyway.” You’re silent. You can’t think of anyway to lie or stall. It’s either betray the Guild or die. You feel the crossbow still in your back, Rook inspects you as you struggle with the morality of this decision. “Tell me, why do you hesitate? Do you have close friends in the Guild? I can only imagine that the answer is yes, because if the answer was no, you would be spilling your guts right now. In fact, you probably would have done so on our first meeting. It’s obvious you have no real love for the organization itself because if you did, you wouldn’t even be considering any of this in the first place. You would be a good little Guild soldier and tell me how you’d never betray Garrick or the Guild. At which point I’d stop wasting my time and kill you. So you must have emotional attachment to someone there. Tell me who it is, and perhaps an arrangement can be made.” Rook says. “What sort of arrangement?” you ask. “The Ebony Claw doesn’t like to waste potential talent. Or at least I don’t, hence why we’re having this pleasant conversation. If you can convince your friend or friends to join you in seeing that the future is the Ebony Claw, then I have no problem with them joining as well. Quite frankly, we’ll probably need the manpower.” “I don’t think she…” Rook interrupts you and you realize you’ve already given away too much. “She? Oh wait….” Rook chuckles. “Of course. It’s her isn’t it? Garrick’s little demonkin. This explains everything! Did you fall in love with her?” “Well I…” “Ha ha! You poor silly enchanted fool! She’s half succubus you know. That’s why you’re all fucked up and not thinking straight. Why I’ll bet if it wasn’t for her charming everyone, Garrick wouldn’t have half the people in his Guild.” “She didn’t enchant me! In fact she doesn’t even like using her powers like that!” you say getting agitated and temporarily forgetting that you’re at Rook’s mercy. “Oh of course she doesn’t. That’s all part of her act. The puritanical demon seductress. Gets everyone hot an bothered and keeps them on a string by not actually putting out. How better to control the average man? I’ll tell you what, we could use someone like her in the EC. Would make things easier to a certain extent.” You don’t say anything, while Rook continues to chuckle. “Okay, I’ll give you a little more time because you seem to believe that yours is true love. If you do manage to convince the demonkin to join though, well that will just prove I was right in seeing your potential. However, I can’t walk away from this meeting without nothing, so I still need you to do something for me or at least provide some sort of information.” Rook responds. “What did you have in mind?” you ask. “I don’t know, you tell me. A plan of some sort perhaps. I’ll decide if it’s important enough or not.” Currently the Guild doesn’t have any plans other than the one involving the Neroth worshippers and making it look like the EC are attacking them. The only other plan you can tell Rook is your plan directly against Reginald, you just aren’t sure Rook’s going to find that one important enough and you’ll end up having give out the Guild’s plan anyway. > You give away your own plan You’re pretty much fucked either way, but you’re going to gamble that Rook will be satisfied with revealing your plan, with some embellishments of course. “Garrick sent me on a mission to kill Reginald.” “The cult leader that seduced his way into high society? Interesting.” “Yes, the Neroth cult is getting out of hand and the Guild is having severe problems with them so I was ordered to take out the leader. Been spending a few days staking out his home in an effort to figure out the best approach, but he’s got guards every fucking where.” “Hmm, I see. To be honest those Neroth worshipping assholes DO need to be dealt with. While some in the Ebony Claw don’t consider them top priority, I see them as a potential problem in the future. Especially since we’ve started to have our own run ins with them. Though I may be a bit biased considering they did kidnap my cousin once. Oh, by the way, always meant to thank you for rescuing her.” “Wait…you mean…Naji is…” “A whore that doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing with her life, but she’s still my cousin and she should finally get a little justice. So while normally I would love to see two enemies kill each other and making things a lot easier for us, it would be best if the followers of Neroth were curtailed. This city already has more than enough gods competing, and as a dedicated disciple to Fel, I see no reason why I shouldn’t aid directly in their fall. Consider the Holgard Watch taken care of by tomorrow.” “What, really?” “Yes. Obviously you’re still going to have to kill Reginald and whatever fanatics he has in the house with him, but the Holgard Watch? They can always change loyalties and those that can’t, well they’ll be dealt with. Consider this another favor from your friends at the Ebony Claw.” You silently acknowledge Rook’s words. While this is certainly going to help you out, you’re not sure if you’re going to be able to afford all these “favors” when it comes time to pay up. “Well then I guess this concludes our business again. Next time we see each other, I trust you’ll have that vital information for me. Time is growing short you know, and I would hate to see you on the wrong side.” Rook says and pats you hard on the side of your face a couple times before walking away. You soon no longer feel the crossbow at your back and that’s when you know it’s okay to move again. You make your way back to the inn where you’re supposed to be getting some rest like Tanya suggested, but after your encounter with Rook, you’re more wound up than ever. Eventually you do fall asleep and by the time you wake up, it’s night and you’re rushing to go meet Tanya. She’s of course on the rooftop where you were yesterday. “I was expecting you here earlier, it’s not like you to leave things at the last moment.” Tanya remarks. “I guess I was more tired than I thought.” You say. “I nearly went in before you, because a perfect opportunity just opened up ten minutes ago. All of the guards left.” “What?” “All of the guards just left. I saw a couple of them speak to each other and then one called to some of the others and they all just collectively left. I couldn’t believe it myself. That’s why I was hoping you’d hurry up since who knows how long they’ll be gone.” Well looks like Rook wasn’t a liar and he came through. Almost makes you start to wonder WHY he’s being so helpful. He doesn’t fit what you know about the EC at all. True, this is probably just all to get you to rat on the Guild, but it still seems above and beyond. Of course he might think now that you’ll be able to talk Tanya into switching sides too. He didn’t seem convinced you’d be able to do it, but then maybe it’s a small effort on his part for large potential gain. Honestly, you aren’t even sure how or if you’d ever be able to approach the subject with Tanya. As far as you know she’s always been pretty dedicated to the Guild even if she’s aloof to most of the members. But this is a problem for another time; right now you’ve got a cult priest to assassinate. Tanya says she’s still going with her original plan of leaping to the roof of the house and breaking in that way. You doubt if you could make it since the distance is a little farther than average, but then you aren’t blessed with infernal blood allowing you to do shit like that. You say you’re going to just go in the front door now that everyone is gone. Assuming he’s not in the cellar or not there at all, you’re guessing you’ll be able to catch him upstairs or down. Besides the unknown factor of his location, there’s also the unknown factor of what abilities he has or what else is in the house. At best you’re hoping he’s just some mouthpiece for bloodthirsty cult. At worst he’s going to be summoning demons and have all sorts of other dark magic at his disposal. You make your way down to street level again, open the gate (which the guards helpfully left unlocked) and go to the front door which you lockpick with ease. You’d think even with the guards he would have gotten a better lock, but whatever makes your task easier. You slowly walk into the dimly lit foyer with your weapon drawn. You search the downstairs cautiously and methodically, but don’t find any one. In the back of your mind you wish this was just a simple breaking and entering job because you’re seeing a lot fancy decoration and you’re sure Reginald has more portable valuables laying around in a safe or something somewhere. While you’re looking around for stairs to the cellar, you hear some thumping coming from the upstairs. Things have been more or less silent so far, so this it cause to give you alarm. You immediately head back to the large set of stairs that lead up in the foyer. As you’re heading up the stairs, you notice that the lighting is becoming much darker. It’s almost as if the candles from the chandelier are going out. You get to near the top of the landing and then it goes completely dark. “Oh shit.” You say to yourself and immediately turn your head towards the direction of the chandelier. Then when you turn your head back forward, you nearly fall backwards when you see Tanya standing right in front of you. “Fuck!” you utter out loud and then Tanya grabs your tunic so you don’t fall. “Thanks.” You say. Tanya doesn’t seem to acknowledge your gratitude though; instead she pulls you closer to her. At this distance, even in the darkness, you can make out her normally shrouded face. The first time you saw it at this range you were partially enchanted. This time is no different, but you’re still aware enough that this isn’t normal behavior for her, especially in these circumstances. “Tanya?” you utter. You get no answer, what you do get is a kiss on your lips. The feeling is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. It’s very pleasant, but as it goes on, you start to feel weak. In fact you try to pull away, but when you do so, Tanya’s eyes glow red, she makes a growling sound and then shoves your away. You tumble down the stairs and while you fortunately don’t break anything, you unfortunately smack your head so hard you’re dazed. If you could actually see anything in this darkness, you’d probably be seeing double. You hear a bunch of footsteps and then you feel a couple sets of hands lifting you up and finally a fist coming straight at your face. When you wake up, you’re in a cell, completely naked. A brief look at your surroundings and you know exactly where you are. It’s the torture chamber where you saved Naji. In fact, you’re in the exact same cell. You look around, but there’s nothing in your cell that you find useful, you do notice that there is someone else in the next cell over. They’re sitting in a corner rocking back and forth mumbling. While the person has obviously been through hell and you’ve definitely never seen this person naked before, the face and hair are still recognizable despite some of the fresh wounds. You can hardly believe it. “Yinen?” you ask. Yinen briefly looks at you and while he knows who you are, he returns to his rocking and mumbling. You can’t even tell what he’s saying, but he sounds like he saying something religious. You hear Joachim’s name being mentioned a few times. Well this explains where Yinen has been. Poor bastard’s probably been tortured for quite awhile. You still don’t know what happened with Tanya either. Was a spell cast on her? She is half succubus, was the “presence of Neroth” forcing her to act more within her nature? You don’t know, but what you do know is you need to get the hell out of here. You’re not filled with confidence that you’re going to survive whatever is to come, but you sure hope whatever they have planned its quick. Grabing a hold of the door in a vain attempt to open it and feeling a little hopeless yourself, you say your own prayer though yours is more along the lines of “I sure hope Yag is throwing a seven for me tonight.” “Ah, prayer! The last refuge of a scoundrel as they say. I’ve always disagreed with that though. Prayer can be a powerful tool. I should know as my dark father has blessed me with much since my dedicated prayer to him.” A voice says. You turn your head and see a man with a goatee in a red robe. A couple of other larger men in red robes stand behind him. “However I think you shall find that your prayers will go unanswered here. Neroth holds complete sway as he soon will over this city and eventually the world!” Given his superior attitude and boasting, you can only imagine this is Reginald. He gives you a look that reminds you of that fat perverted merchant you had to kill years ago. You instinctively cover yourself. “Oh we have a shy one do we? I must say, you shouldn’t be, given your body. However, as much as I would love to throw you over the altar in front of my congregation and introduce my dick to your ass while slitting your throat as I released, I’ve got something better planned for you.” Reginald remarks. “Hope its better than ass rape.” You say. “Hah. Depends on your viewpoint I suppose. I know you’re the one that so rudely broke into my home and stole that girl years ago. We were a little pre-occupied in nabbing you before and you seem to be skilled enough to fight off our recent attempts. However when you walked in here of your own accord, and with that infernal spawn…well that almost makes up for all the years you were able to go on breathing.” Reginald motions the two large men to open the cell door. You back up ready to fight, though Reginald shakes his head and makes some gestures with his hand and your body completely tenses up like you’re paralyzed. “We don’t have time for that, important work must be done. That half-breed you walked in with has only begun to realize the untapped potential of her powers. Honestly, I don’t know how she has managed to suppress her infernal side for so long. Most daughters of true succubi by her age have long since gone on to embrace their infernal heritage. This one was obviously lost, but no more.” Reginald says. “What did you do to her?” you ask as the two men grab your arms and start dragging you out. “Me? I did nothing other than speak a few truths to her guided by Neroth’s wisdom, though as I said, his presence in this house is stronger than most. I believe she felt it, just as all who follow do. However, she’s still not complete, that’s where you will come in. She will complete her transformation with you as the sacrifice and we will ALL witness it, and it shall be glorious to see a higher being achieve freedom!” Reginald motions the two men to drag you to the room with the altar and large pentagram on the floor. When you enter, you’re thrown into said pentagram. A crowd of red robed individuals watches silently. When you get your head up off the floor, the paralysis is wearing off, but now you see Tanya in front of you looking at you like a predator with its prey. She definitely doesn’t seem like herself. “Daughter of Neroth! Embrace your true heritage and kill this sacrifice in the name of your dark father! We shall all bask in the glory of your transformation!” Reginald shouts followed by several of his followers. You manage to stand up, but you doubt if you’re going to be much match for Tanya. Even if you weren’t naked and unarmed, you probably wouldn’t be a match. Despite the fact that death is most likely imminent, you’ve still got this unnatural attraction to Tanya, or rather genuine attraction, but unnatural due to the situation at hand. This is really looking like the end for you, unless you can come up with something. > You try to reason with Tanya You’d never be able to take her in a fight, your only chance is talk your way out of this. Try to make her remember who she is and not what these cultists are trying to make her. “Tanya, it’s me! You gotta snap out of this! These people are trying to control you!” you say. Tanya however isn’t responsive; she just approaches in a seductive way that is making it very hard for you to focus on anything else except the obvious. Tanya moves closer to you and runs her fingers through your hair and then lifts your head up with one hand and puts another hand to her lips in a “shhhhh” motion. It’s apparent she’s toying with you like a cat would with a mouse. “Tanya, you…have to remember…” you utter and then Tanya shuts you up with one of her kisses. You can’t resist. You embrace Tanya as she guides you down to the floor, still continuing to press her lips against yours. And once again you begin to feel the effects of her succubus kiss. Tanya mounts you and begins grinding her body into yours. While it’s everything you ever hoped it would be, a part of you still knows this is killing you. Meanwhile the chanting of the Neroth cultists grows louder. “Tanya…” She doesn’t answer you, she just continues with her actions which are now beginning to get faster and rougher. Her eyes glow red once again and she slams your arms down to the floor. You can feel her talons digging into your flesh. The mixture of pain and pleasure is almost too much to handle. You begin to feel very drained and dyhydrated. You gasp for Tanya to stop, but she doesn’t. She has now taken on a less human looking appearance and the noises she’s making definitely aren’t loving moans of ecstasy. “DAUGHTER OF NEROTH FINISH OFF THIS INFIDEL AND EMBRACE YOUR TRUE NATURE AT LAST!” Reginald shouts above the rest of the chanting. Tanya looks down at you and even in your hazy condition you no longer see any glimpse of the girl you knew in her eyes any longer. All that remains is a beast out for blood. Tanya quenches that desire when she brings her fangs down on your throat and rips it out. The mercy of a quick death was perhaps her last gift to you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re pretty much fucked either way, but you’re going to gamble that Rook will be satisfied with revealing your plan, with some embellishments of course. “Garrick sent me on a mission to kill Reginald.” “The cult leader that seduced his way into high society? Interesting.” “Yes, the Neroth cult is getting out of hand and the Guild is having severe problems with them so I was ordered to take out the leader. Been spending a few days staking out his home in an effort to figure out the best approach, but he’s got guards every fucking where.” “Hmm, I see. To be honest those Neroth worshipping assholes DO need to be dealt with. While some in the Ebony Claw don’t consider them top priority, I see them as a potential problem in the future. Especially since we’ve started to have our own run ins with them. Though I may be a bit biased considering they did kidnap my cousin once. Oh, by the way, always meant to thank you for rescuing her.” “Wait…you mean…Naji is…” “A whore that doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing with her life, but she’s still my cousin and she should finally get a little justice. So while normally I would love to see two enemies kill each other and making things a lot easier for us, it would be best if the followers of Neroth were curtailed. This city already has more than enough gods competing, and as a dedicated disciple to Fel, I see no reason why I shouldn’t aid directly in their fall. Consider the Holgard Watch taken care of by tomorrow.” “What, really?” “Yes. Obviously you’re still going to have to kill Reginald and whatever fanatics he has in the house with him, but the Holgard Watch? They can always change loyalties and those that can’t, well they’ll be dealt with. Consider this another favor from your friends at the Ebony Claw.” You silently acknowledge Rook’s words. While this is certainly going to help you out, you’re not sure if you’re going to be able to afford all these “favors” when it comes time to pay up. “Well then I guess this concludes our business again. Next time we see each other, I trust you’ll have that vital information for me. Time is growing short you know, and I would hate to see you on the wrong side.” Rook says and pats you hard on the side of your face a couple times before walking away. You soon no longer feel the crossbow at your back and that’s when you know it’s okay to move again. You make your way back to the inn where you’re supposed to be getting some rest like Tanya suggested, but after your encounter with Rook, you’re more wound up than ever. Eventually you do fall asleep and by the time you wake up, it’s night and you’re rushing to go meet Tanya. She’s of course on the rooftop where you were yesterday. “I was expecting you here earlier, it’s not like you to leave things at the last moment.” Tanya remarks. “I guess I was more tired than I thought.” You say. “I nearly went in before you, because a perfect opportunity just opened up ten minutes ago. All of the guards left.” “What?” “All of the guards just left. I saw a couple of them speak to each other and then one called to some of the others and they all just collectively left. I couldn’t believe it myself. That’s why I was hoping you’d hurry up since who knows how long they’ll be gone.” Well looks like Rook wasn’t a liar and he came through. Almost makes you start to wonder WHY he’s being so helpful. He doesn’t fit what you know about the EC at all. True, this is probably just all to get you to rat on the Guild, but it still seems above and beyond. Of course he might think now that you’ll be able to talk Tanya into switching sides too. He didn’t seem convinced you’d be able to do it, but then maybe it’s a small effort on his part for large potential gain. Honestly, you aren’t even sure how or if you’d ever be able to approach the subject with Tanya. As far as you know she’s always been pretty dedicated to the Guild even if she’s aloof to most of the members. But this is a problem for another time; right now you’ve got a cult priest to assassinate. Tanya says she’s still going with her original plan of leaping to the roof of the house and breaking in that way. You doubt if you could make it since the distance is a little farther than average, but then you aren’t blessed with infernal blood allowing you to do shit like that. You say you’re going to just go in the front door now that everyone is gone. Assuming he’s not in the cellar or not there at all, you’re guessing you’ll be able to catch him upstairs or down. Besides the unknown factor of his location, there’s also the unknown factor of what abilities he has or what else is in the house. At best you’re hoping he’s just some mouthpiece for bloodthirsty cult. At worst he’s going to be summoning demons and have all sorts of other dark magic at his disposal. You make your way down to street level again, open the gate (which the guards helpfully left unlocked) and go to the front door which you lockpick with ease. You’d think even with the guards he would have gotten a better lock, but whatever makes your task easier. You slowly walk into the dimly lit foyer with your weapon drawn. You search the downstairs cautiously and methodically, but don’t find any one. In the back of your mind you wish this was just a simple breaking and entering job because you’re seeing a lot fancy decoration and you’re sure Reginald has more portable valuables laying around in a safe or something somewhere. While you’re looking around for stairs to the cellar, you hear some thumping coming from the upstairs. Things have been more or less silent so far, so this it cause to give you alarm. You immediately head back to the large set of stairs that lead up in the foyer. As you’re heading up the stairs, you notice that the lighting is becoming much darker. It’s almost as if the candles from the chandelier are going out. You get to near the top of the landing and then it goes completely dark. “Oh shit.” You say to yourself and immediately turn your head towards the direction of the chandelier. Then when you turn your head back forward, you nearly fall backwards when you see Tanya standing right in front of you. “Fuck!” you utter out loud and then Tanya grabs your tunic so you don’t fall. “Thanks.” You say. Tanya doesn’t seem to acknowledge your gratitude though; instead she pulls you closer to her. At this distance, even in the darkness, you can make out her normally shrouded face. The first time you saw it at this range you were partially enchanted. This time is no different, but you’re still aware enough that this isn’t normal behavior for her, especially in these circumstances. “Tanya?” you utter. You get no answer, what you do get is a kiss on your lips. The feeling is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. It’s very pleasant, but as it goes on, you start to feel weak. In fact you try to pull away, but when you do so, Tanya’s eyes glow red, she makes a growling sound and then shoves your away. You tumble down the stairs and while you fortunately don’t break anything, you unfortunately smack your head so hard you’re dazed. If you could actually see anything in this darkness, you’d probably be seeing double. You hear a bunch of footsteps and then you feel a couple sets of hands lifting you up and finally a fist coming straight at your face. When you wake up, you’re in a cell, completely naked. A brief look at your surroundings and you know exactly where you are. It’s the torture chamber where you saved Naji. In fact, you’re in the exact same cell. You look around, but there’s nothing in your cell that you find useful, you do notice that there is someone else in the next cell over. They’re sitting in a corner rocking back and forth mumbling. While the person has obviously been through hell and you’ve definitely never seen this person naked before, the face and hair are still recognizable despite some of the fresh wounds. You can hardly believe it. “Yinen?” you ask. Yinen briefly looks at you and while he knows who you are, he returns to his rocking and mumbling. You can’t even tell what he’s saying, but he sounds like he saying something religious. You hear Joachim’s name being mentioned a few times. Well this explains where Yinen has been. Poor bastard’s probably been tortured for quite awhile. You still don’t know what happened with Tanya either. Was a spell cast on her? She is half succubus, was the “presence of Neroth” forcing her to act more within her nature? You don’t know, but what you do know is you need to get the hell out of here. You’re not filled with confidence that you’re going to survive whatever is to come, but you sure hope whatever they have planned its quick. Grabing a hold of the door in a vain attempt to open it and feeling a little hopeless yourself, you say your own prayer though yours is more along the lines of “I sure hope Yag is throwing a seven for me tonight.” “Ah, prayer! The last refuge of a scoundrel as they say. I’ve always disagreed with that though. Prayer can be a powerful tool. I should know as my dark father has blessed me with much since my dedicated prayer to him.” A voice says. You turn your head and see a man with a goatee in a red robe. A couple of other larger men in red robes stand behind him. “However I think you shall find that your prayers will go unanswered here. Neroth holds complete sway as he soon will over this city and eventually the world!” Given his superior attitude and boasting, you can only imagine this is Reginald. He gives you a look that reminds you of that fat perverted merchant you had to kill years ago. You instinctively cover yourself. “Oh we have a shy one do we? I must say, you shouldn’t be, given your body. However, as much as I would love to throw you over the altar in front of my congregation and introduce my dick to your ass while slitting your throat as I released, I’ve got something better planned for you.” Reginald remarks. “Hope its better than ass rape.” You say. “Hah. Depends on your viewpoint I suppose. I know you’re the one that so rudely broke into my home and stole that girl years ago. We were a little pre-occupied in nabbing you before and you seem to be skilled enough to fight off our recent attempts. However when you walked in here of your own accord, and with that infernal spawn…well that almost makes up for all the years you were able to go on breathing.” Reginald motions the two large men to open the cell door. You back up ready to fight, though Reginald shakes his head and makes some gestures with his hand and your body completely tenses up like you’re paralyzed. “We don’t have time for that, important work must be done. That half-breed you walked in with has only begun to realize the untapped potential of her powers. Honestly, I don’t know how she has managed to suppress her infernal side for so long. Most daughters of true succubi by her age have long since gone on to embrace their infernal heritage. This one was obviously lost, but no more.” Reginald says. “What did you do to her?” you ask as the two men grab your arms and start dragging you out. “Me? I did nothing other than speak a few truths to her guided by Neroth’s wisdom, though as I said, his presence in this house is stronger than most. I believe she felt it, just as all who follow do. However, she’s still not complete, that’s where you will come in. She will complete her transformation with you as the sacrifice and we will ALL witness it, and it shall be glorious to see a higher being achieve freedom!” Reginald motions the two men to drag you to the room with the altar and large pentagram on the floor. When you enter, you’re thrown into said pentagram. A crowd of red robed individuals watches silently. When you get your head up off the floor, the paralysis is wearing off, but now you see Tanya in front of you looking at you like a predator with its prey. She definitely doesn’t seem like herself. “Daughter of Neroth! Embrace your true heritage and kill this sacrifice in the name of your dark father! We shall all bask in the glory of your transformation!” Reginald shouts followed by several of his followers. You manage to stand up, but you doubt if you’re going to be much match for Tanya. Even if you weren’t naked and unarmed, you probably wouldn’t be a match. Despite the fact that death is most likely imminent, you’ve still got this unnatural attraction to Tanya, or rather genuine attraction, but unnatural due to the situation at hand. This is really looking like the end for you, unless you can come up with something. > You fight for your life While talking might work under normal circumstances, you’re literally having a hard enough time trying to focus on your own sense of self-preservation because part of you wants to just embrace her and go out fucking if your semi-erection is any indication. You’re probably going to die anyway, but at least in your head you can take comfort in the fact that you tried. “Tanya…Tanya…please….” You say and hang your head down in an effort to look defeated. Tanya moves closer to you and runs her fingers through your hair and then lifts your head up with one hand and puts another hand to her lips in a “shhhhh” motion. It’s apparent she’s toying with you like a cat would with a mouse, but something about it is very alluring. So much so that you almost forget to punch her right in the face. This is more than enough to surprise her and cause her reel back a bit. You immediately look around for a way to escape. However the crowd is converging on you, including Reginald, but he’s instead telling everyone to back off. “No! Let her finish him off! His impotent fighting will only prolong the inevitable and make her transformation all the more sweeter as she will tear him apart with no mercy!” he shouts. By this point Tanya has recovered and with how pissed she looks right now Reginald may be right on that last part. You stand your ground with your fists up, and Tanya runs towards you. You throw another punch, but she dodges and gives you a swift punch to your stomach and knocks all the wind out of you. Now while you’re hunched over trying to catch your breath, she grabs your throat with one hand and your balls with the other. Just as you’re thinking you’re going to be soon singing soprano, something unexpected happens. Instead of crushing your manhood, she instead lifts you up over her head, not that this isn’t still painful of course. But the next thing she does is even more unexpected. Instead of slamming you into the floor or something similar she instead throws you at Reginald who is taken completely off guard by this. “Wha fuck!” he utters before you go crashing into him. With you and Reginald on the floor, the congregation is now really getting agitated. Those two large cultists that dragged you from the cell immediately go to get you off of Reginald, but before they can, you hear grunts and howls of pain as Tanya has stabbed them both. Blood has now sprayed all over the place and you feel the crushing weight of a dead body falling on you. “You and that half breed bitch will pay for this! Kill them both!” Reginald shouts. Reginald isn’t exactly in the best position to give any orders however as he’s in an even worse position than you since he’s now buried under two bodies rather than just yours. He struggles to get his arms free and while you’re trying to do the same you get another idea. Your head is at his chest level right now, and mustering all your strength you manage to move your entire body forward and slam the top of your head up into his jaw repeatedly. He tries to stop you, but he still can’t get his arms entirely free. You’re naked and you’ve got one dead man on top of you and you’re currently rubbing up against another one trying kill you, if someone had told you that you’d ever be in this situation you never would have believed it. Eventually you break his jaw causing him to moan and wail, or at least the best he can do with a broken jaw. You take the opportunity to roll sideway and wiggle out from under the dead cultist. You catch a few short punches to your side, but you eventually get free. Reginald despite being in pain begins to do likewise. Wasting no time, you take advantage of his still prone position and use the heel of your foot to bring it down on Reginald’s nose. If you didn’t break it the first time, you certainly do the second. By the third and forth time you’ve stomped it into mush. Your balls still ache, the top of your head is sore, your foot hurts like hell and you’re pretty sure you’ve got a bone fragment in it, but Reginald is currently choking on his own blood and struggling to breath with a mashed up nose and broken jaw so you’re currently doing much better than he is. You take his head and start smashing it as hard as you can on the stone floor. Reginald tries to feebly stop you, but he’s too weak at this point and with the back of his skull being caved in and his brains starting to leak out of his head he soon loses consciousness forever. After finishing the bloody deed, you take a moment to catch your breath. You finally get a chance to be more aware of your surroundings and see Tanya has been making short work of the remaining cultists that have still stuck around. After finishing off the last cultist she turns to face you and once again you’re still a little concerned about as you have no idea if she’s actually still on your side again or she just decided to go on killing rampage. “Well don’t just stand there with a stupid look on your face, we need to get the hell out here and at least take a robe off of one of these assholes and put it on. I’ve seen way more of you than I ever wanted to!” She appears to be back to normal. “Wait a minute, what the hell happened to you a few moments ago? In fact what the hell happened to you period?” “I…I don’t want to talk about it, look we need to get the fuck outta here. I don’t like it here and I don’t…feel right just being here. We need to fucking go NOW.” “Alright, alright, shit…robe…robe…” As you’re stripping off a robe of one of the corpses, Tanya’s looking around as if she’s expecting more trouble. While that might very well be the case, you can tell it’s more than that. “Shit! Yinen! He’s still in the fucking cage back there, we need to let him out.” You say as you’re putting on the robe. “What? I don’t have the damn keys and we don’t have time to search all these fuckers.” Tanya exclaims. “Well I’d pick the lock, but it’s not like I have a lockpick anymore, do you have any?” “Here, but hurry the hell up I’m not sticking around here any longer than I have to.” You catch the lockpick that Tanya tosses at you and run back to the torture chamber. You go back to Yinen’s cell and start opening the cell, but he just continues to do the usual rocking back and forth and mumbling. “Yinen! Come on! We gotta get the hell out of here! Yinen!” you say and approach him. Yinen finally realizes someone is there with him, but instead of jumping at the chance to be free, he starts screaming. “NO! NO! I WON’T GO WITH YOU! GET AWAY! PLEASE! JOACHIM SAVE ME!” At first you’re confused to as why he’s acting this way and doesn’t see that it’s you, but then you think it might be the fact that you’re wearing a red robe. “Yinen! It’s me! I’m not one of them! I’m…” “NO! LIES! NEROTH IS THE FATHER OF LIES AND EVIL! JOACHIM! BRING DOWN YOUR HOLY VENGENCE AND SAVE ME!” Yinen shouts and suddenly lunges at you. You fend off his attack in an effort not to hurt him too badly, but he isn’t so much interested in fighting as he is escaping. He runs off yelling after he manages to maneuver around you. You hear Tanya shout something in the next room and you run back to her. “Was that him? He ran right past me screaming.” Tanya asks. “Yeah, I dunno, the guy’s head is all fucked up. They really did something to him, I dunno if he’s going to be the same.” You say. “He’s not the only one, now WE need to leave.” Tanya doesn’t wait any longer, she runs into the room with all the wine barrels and you follow as close as possible. You’d suggest looking for the passage to the sewers for a quicker exit, but you aren’t even sure if it exists anymore, besides she’s already made her way up the stairs to the ground floor. Yinen must have known the way out since the door is already open, or rather the hidden bookshelf door that was hiding the stairs to the cellar. From here, you both make your way out the house (And again, find the door already open) You don’t exactly know where Tanya’s running to, but you continue to follow her and eventually she stops somewhere secluded. Then she start going through her clothing. “Here. Take this thing and leave me be.” She says and hands you back your pistol. In all the ensuing mayhem you completely forgot that you had potentially lost your favorite weapon. “Thanks…but where did you get this?” you ask. “I took it when they were stripping your clothes off, I dunno why I did. I really don’t understand why I did anything. I thought I was past this. I need to get my head together and figure this shit out.” Tanya says. “Tanya can you at least tell me something? I mean did Reginald case a spell or what? I mean was all his babbling true, Neroth is your father in some way?” “No! And I’m not just saying that because I don’t want that to be true. I’m saying that, because my real father from what my succubus bitch of a mother told me was some drunk dickhead that she killed immediately after mating with and because Reginald doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. While he may have been sucking Neroth’s infernal cock in the spiritual sense, I still know more about the infernal realm more than he EVER could have and trust me, if he had known, he wouldn’t have been worshipping Neroth or whatever petty infernal warlord that’s setting himself up as a god to mortals at any given time.” “Wait, you’ve been there? You’ve actually crossed into a different plane?” “No, but I don’t need to physically be there and I hope I never do. I saw enough based on what my mother showed me and I resisted the lure of it then and I’m going to continue to do so.” “You keep bringing up your mother, I thought you were an orphan.” “I was. Wasn’t like she took care of me, she tossed me aside as soon as I was born and I suppose I was lucky to be born female and she wasn’t hungry at the time. Look, while I’m sure this is all very intriguing for you, I am fucking done talking about this. If you want to know what happened to me, I don’t fucking know! Maybe all the demonic ties that Reginald and by proxy his home had to the infernal realm had some effect and I lost control because I’ve let my guard down to it over the years. I guess I was lucky that you punched me in the face to snap me out of it. Thanks, but just because you know some shit about me doesn’t mean we’re getting closer!” “I wasn’t even thinking about that…” “Bullshit! That’s ALL you ever think about. I know you do. You can’t even help yourself. Pfft, your earlier lie about not being interested me anymore when we were on the rooftop before all this happened was laughable. I know for a fact that you regularly have sex with some whore that tries to look like me. In fact isn’t she the same one you saved? Boy you must LOVE that. It’s almost like you can pretend that you saved me like some hero.” “Um…” “What? You embarrassed? You’re not THAT embarrassed if you’re still doing it. Besides, it’s not like you’d be the first, you just happen to be one of the few that’s been doing it the longest.” “Tanya, I really don’t know what you want from me at this point. I mean I’m really trying my best. I thought we were at least getting along.” “And THAT’S a failing on my part. If anything I’ve allowed you to get TOO close lately! I need to fucking redouble my efforts, I see that now. I should have known to keep my distance from you and I should have NEVER offered to help you on this task!” You can see this is a losing battle and you’re tired so you decide to bow out. “Ok Tanya, you’ve made your point, I’m leaving. Thanks for saving me again, see you later.” You start to leave, but Tanya spins you around. “Don’t you turn your back on me, and this is for punching me in the fucking face!” Tanya says and kicks you hard in the balls. You crumple to the ground and Tanya starts to say something, but then stops and then starts again. “I’m…sorry…I just…I can’t… just stay away from me.” She says and quickly runs off. After vomiting a little bit you eventually stand back up and stagger back to the Hell’s Own Inn. Thankfully you aren’t accosted by anyone along the way. When you get back, Bruno sees you and gives you a sideways glance at first. “Okay, it’s you. I saw a red robe and got a little nervous. What’s with the red robe anyway, aren’t those the ones that Neroth cultists wear?” Bruno asks. “Yeah, I just joined so you better watch out.” You say. “Ha ha funny guy. What’s the real story?” “I don’t want to even get into it right now, I’ll tell you another time, I just want to go rest.” “Sure, whatever.” You start making your way upstairs, but stop to ask one question. “Hey Bruno, Yinen didn’t come in here by any chance did?” you ask. “I told you, I haven’t seen him in days. He probably left the city.” Bruno says. “I bet he wishes he did.” You mumble and head to your room. You take off the blood stained and rank red robe and collapse on your bed. You’ve spent a lot of the night naked tonight, and not in a good way. The only good thing about tonight is you killed the top asshole of the cult that was trying to kill you. You imagine there are still others around, but you can’t worry about it right now. As you slowly drift off with your hand covering your abused testicles, you think about how things are just fucked up with Tanya now. It’s like you’re back to square one, but maybe you were just deluding yourself anyway. Of course despite all this AND the fact that she tried to kill you today, you still go to sleep dreaming about her. > You time passes... Year 20 “I’m not obsessed.” You exclaim which causes a look of skepticism from Sneaks. “Okay, maybe I’m a little obsessed, but not in the way you’re saying.” You say. “Look kid, I’ll let you in on a little secret, I’ve jerked off thinking about Tanya too. I don’t think there’s a man that’s been in contact with her for any length of time that hasn’t. Hell, there’s been guys in the Guild into men and they STILL admitted to having thoughts about her. She had a dick of course in their fantasies, but my point is, she still had an effect. It’s part of her demon heritage, but the effects should have long since worn off and I’m telling you the way you’re going is not fucking healthy.” “But my feelings for her are not just physical. I mean yeah that’s part of it, but I’ve been getting to know her and I feel a real connection with her.” Now Sneaks is totally confused. “I thought you were staying away from her ever since you took out Reginald.” Sneaks asks. “I have! But I keep seeing her in my dreams! And those dreams have been becoming more frequent lately. In these dreams, we spend time together and talk and laugh and…” “And fuck. Probably a lot of fucking. Look, sounds like you’re having some nice dreams, but dreams aren’t real and with some of the ones you’ve described they sound impossible. Just go back to fucking that whore that dresses like her, it’s the closest you’re going to get.” “I can’t even do that anymore, I feel like I’m cheating on Tanya. I’m telling you, this is really happening. I don’t know how, but it is. I mean don’t succubi invade dreams? I mean maybe she’s trying to tell me something even if she isn’t doing it in the real world.” “Real world being the key word here. Are you listening to yourself? Look, I don’t know what to tell you man, I mean…(sigh) okay say for the sake of argument this IS all true, have you even spoken to her directly about it?” “Well no, I’ve been trying to stay away and respect her wishes to leave her alone.” Sneaks slaps you upside the head. “What the hell?!” you say. “That’s without a doubt, the stupidest fucking shit you’ve ever said involving Tanya. I’ve known you since you joined the Guild and you’ve flirted with her shamelessly beyond a point where others have gotten shanked by her for their troubles. The ONLY other person I know who’s gotten this obsessed with Tanya and lived is Garrick, though Yag knows he’d NEVER fucking admit that.” Sneaks says. “So…I was right about Garrick?” “Of course you were right about him. Why do you think he still holds a grudge against you even though you’re staying away from Tanya? I mean in his case, I don’t think it started out that way…shit I HOPE it didn’t start out that way since he took her in when she was a young teenager, but in any case. Garrick has been in love with Tanya for a very long time now. He’ll never make a move of course, which is why I’m telling YOU that if you REALLY think you’ve got a shot with Tanya, then you need to just go talk to her, because the non-confrontational routine? Yeah that doesn’t work and it isn’t your style anyway.” “Weren’t you the one that once told me once to forget about her?” “Yeah well I’m hoping you’ll listen to me on this advice this time because it’s apparent that you’re bound for a path of destruction. At least if you go talk to her you’ll get that over quickly and who knows, maybe just MAYBE, you’re right about all this. In any case, I’m going to go see if there’s anyone around to play cards with.” “I think a lot of the members are out enjoying the riots.” “Yeah fuck that, it’s absolute chaos out there. Surprised the Baron’s managed to still keep control of some of the city. Mostly the merchant’s district, rich areas and his palace of course, but it’s getting worse. To be honest, I would leave the city, but unfortunately I’ve still got a streak of loyalty and I’d never just abandon Garrick. Too much history, even if I don’t agree with him sometimes. Anyway, see you later and good luck.” Sneaks leaves you and you immediately go to see if Tanya is in her quarters. You already know what you’re going to say, because you’ve been saying it in your mind for a long time now, you’re just mentally preparing yourself the verbal (and possibly physical) repercussions of your confrontation. Has to be done though because this has gone on long enough and if Tanya genuinely has no interest in you then you’re not going to stick around just to have something you desire greatly dangling in front of you everyday and can’t do anything about it. As you approach Tanya’s quarters you hear voices coming from it. You slow your pace and strain your ears to listen and eventually hide just outside her door. “Tanya, I can throw him out of the Guild, if he’s been bothering you again. Honestly I would have done it sooner had you not told me not to after that stunt with the Neroth cultists.” You hear Garrick say. “He hasn’t been bothering me Garrick, if anything he’s been honoring my wishes. He’s been a perfect fucking gentleman…or at least as close as he can get to one.” “Be that as it may, I know something is wrong.” “I’m fine Garrick, stop fussing.” “Tanya, I KNOW something is going on with you. I’ve known you since you were girl and I know when you’re more troubled than usual. I mean if you don’t tell me, I can’t help…” “That’s fucking right Garrick, you CAN’T fucking help! Nobody can! So stop playing the over protective dad role trying to save his little girl and just get the hell out of my quarters.” “Tanya, you forget that…” “Yes, Garrick I fucking know. You brought me in off the streets when I was some poor dirty orphan stealing food and had run away from the home for the umpteenth time! How long are you going to bring that up? I’ve never said I wasn’t appreciative, I think my time staying here has proven that, but if you think I OWE you something more, then you’ve been a fool for a longer time than even he has! Worse even.” “Tanya! I’ve never…” Before Garrick can complete his statement, you finally enter the room causing an immediate hostile look from Garrick and a look of exasperation from Tanya. “Oh great…” Tanya says. “YOU! Get out of here, we’re having a private conversation!” Garrick yells. “Tanya, WE need to talk. There’s something going on between us and I have to think you know what I mean. This has been a long time coming and I can’t just continue to walk around here in silence any longer.” You say. “I’ll tell you what, you don’t need to be walking around here anymore period. You’re out of the Guild! You’ve been nothing a headache since I allowed you in here! I can’t believe I was so blind to think you would be an asset in the first place!” “Garrick, I’m not even arguing with you and I’ll be more than happy to leave this shitty Guild, but I’ve got to speak to Tanya first.” “Go ahead then.” Tanya says a bit defeated. “Tanya, I’ve been having dreams about you for past few months ever since everything that went down with the Neroth cultists. Now I dunno if you’re doing it on purpose or what, but these dreams have been more than just dreams, it’s like…it’s like they’re real somehow. You’re talking to me. WE’RE talking to each other about, well everything. My past, your past, our likes, our dislikes. I swear it’s like we’ve been dating without actually going out.” “Bullshit. You don’t know shit about Tanya. You’ve been making shit up in your delusional mind. Wishful thinking about shit that’s never going to happen! Okay asshole, if you know so much, why don’t you give us a little history lesson?” “Gladly.” You begin with a description of the orphanage Tanya grew up in and the apathetic lady who ran it. You mention how Tanya had to beat up two older boys when she was six because they were accusing her of stealing their food. After she broke one boy’s arms and the nose of the other boy, the other children remained afraid of her. She ran away from the orphanage altogether by the time she was nine and lived on the streets until she was around thirteen where upon Garrick caught her trying to pick his pocket. You even describe the type of day it was, mentioning that it was lightly raining. After he caught Tanya he offered her a place in the Guild. At this point Tanya and Garrick are just silent as you relay this information. Garrick’s mouth nearly hangs open as he knows you’re exactly right about everything. He can’t believe that you know all this. Tanya even looks a away a couple times. “And you told me, that you’ve remained loyal for the past twenty some odd years since that time at first because you originally felt obligated to Garrick for giving you a home and helping you when nobody else was, but there was a point when you started to feel less satisfied here and you considered leaving.” You say. “Tanya! You never told me this! Is this true?!” Garrick remarks. Tanya doesn’t answer, she just looks at you like you’re going to tell him anyway, so why stop? “She never told anyone that. She would have left too, but then her mother showed up and after her brief meeting, she stayed with the Guild. Not because she had great attachment to it, but because she feared what she might do without it keeping her somewhat grounded. The Guild became a sort of sanctuary against her infernal nature. Sure, thievery isn’t exactly the most noble of professions, but it’s a far cry from what infernals like to engage in.” you say. Garrick turns back to Tanya. “Tanya, you could have told me this! Why didn’t you? I could have…” Garrick starts to say before he’s interrupted. “You could have what Garrick? Tried to make everything better like you always think you can? This is what I was talking about earlier, you CAN’T FUCKING HELP ME! Nobody can! I mean just look at what’s occurred…I’m meeting this infatuated loser in his dreams and telling him my whole life story and I was only barely aware of some of it! How long before I have complete control over it? My infernal nature is coming out and it can’t be stopped. Stop trying to fucking save me because I’m NEVER going to love you Garrick or at least not in the way YOU want.” Tanya shouts Garrick says nothing; he just staggers back a bit against a table like all the wind has been knocked out of him. Tanya now turns her attention towards you. “And as for you, your best option would be running far away from this place and from me before it gets worse. I don’t care how much you THINK you’re in love with me.” Tanya says. “Or even how much you might be in love with me?” you answer. “Now THAT is wishful thinking and not what is happening.” “Okay, maybe love isn’t the right word, but I have a hard time believing that you didn’t contact me in my dreams for shits and giggles. You’re actually fun in those dreams and I know you well enough in the real world that you never do anything remotely fun. It’s like you wanted me to see another side of you that nobody else does. Arguably the closest person you were close to before I showed up was Garrick, and you only see him as a father figure at best. You didn’t contact him in his dreams. You didn’t show up in anyone else’s either. You showed up in mine because you obviously have a fondness for…” “SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Garrick suddenly shouts and lunges at you. He tackles you to the floor and you roll around briefly with him, but you soon get him off of you. However, he’s managed to pilfer your pistol that was tucked in your clothing. “Garrick! Put that down!” Tanya shouts. “Why?! Just so you can go off with this dickhead? No! How many people have fallen for you Tanya? How many? I’ve lost count. Why does THIS one get your affection?” Garrick screams and then starts laughing. “I WAS the one who took you in! I WAS the one who gave you purpose and apparently I was the one who gave you salvation! Don’t you see Tanya? I’M the one who loves you! I always did! But if I can’t have you…then I suppose I’ll have to accept that…but what I won’t accept is someone else having you instead!” Garrick is pointing the pistol right at you and ready to fire. You might be quick enough to stop him, or you might not. Tanya looks like she might do something, but who knows? > You grab the gun from Garrick You take that chance that you’re quick enough and Garrick is so emotional right now that he’s not focused like he should. You lunge for the pistol. A loud sound is heard followed by the sensation of a burning force hitting you hard in the lower chest. Still working on adrenaline you don’t stop and continue to try to wrestle the pistol from Garrick. He fires again, but this time misses as you move his arm and then break his wrist completely causing him to drop it. Tanya at this point intervenes and tackles Garrick and you all go tumbling on the floor. Tanya starts screaming at Garrick and punching him in the face while he unsuccessfully tries to fend her off. You on the other hand are now coming to realize that you’ve been shot pretty badly and your adrenaline has worn off. You cough blood and wheeze as death is finally catching up to you. Tanya goes over to you and starts telling you to hold on while she frantically attempts to look for something in her room to help you, but there isn’t anything and it wouldn’t help anyway. You look over to your left and see Garrick’s face mashed into bloody mush. Not being able to find anything to help your wound, Tanya attempts to lift you up, but you tell her to stop. “Tanya, stop. You’re not going to get me to an infirmary or the apothecary in time.” You say. “But…it can’t end like this! Not now! Not when I…(sob)” “Just wasn’t (cough) meant to be…but it’s okay. At least I know finally.” And with those last words your eyes begin to close and you feel the taste of Tanya’s lips on your own before you pass on.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 20 “I’m not obsessed.” You exclaim which causes a look of skepticism from Sneaks. “Okay, maybe I’m a little obsessed, but not in the way you’re saying.” You say. “Look kid, I’ll let you in on a little secret, I’ve jerked off thinking about Tanya too. I don’t think there’s a man that’s been in contact with her for any length of time that hasn’t. Hell, there’s been guys in the Guild into men and they STILL admitted to having thoughts about her. She had a dick of course in their fantasies, but my point is, she still had an effect. It’s part of her demon heritage, but the effects should have long since worn off and I’m telling you the way you’re going is not fucking healthy.” “But my feelings for her are not just physical. I mean yeah that’s part of it, but I’ve been getting to know her and I feel a real connection with her.” Now Sneaks is totally confused. “I thought you were staying away from her ever since you took out Reginald.” Sneaks asks. “I have! But I keep seeing her in my dreams! And those dreams have been becoming more frequent lately. In these dreams, we spend time together and talk and laugh and…” “And fuck. Probably a lot of fucking. Look, sounds like you’re having some nice dreams, but dreams aren’t real and with some of the ones you’ve described they sound impossible. Just go back to fucking that whore that dresses like her, it’s the closest you’re going to get.” “I can’t even do that anymore, I feel like I’m cheating on Tanya. I’m telling you, this is really happening. I don’t know how, but it is. I mean don’t succubi invade dreams? I mean maybe she’s trying to tell me something even if she isn’t doing it in the real world.” “Real world being the key word here. Are you listening to yourself? Look, I don’t know what to tell you man, I mean…(sigh) okay say for the sake of argument this IS all true, have you even spoken to her directly about it?” “Well no, I’ve been trying to stay away and respect her wishes to leave her alone.” Sneaks slaps you upside the head. “What the hell?!” you say. “That’s without a doubt, the stupidest fucking shit you’ve ever said involving Tanya. I’ve known you since you joined the Guild and you’ve flirted with her shamelessly beyond a point where others have gotten shanked by her for their troubles. The ONLY other person I know who’s gotten this obsessed with Tanya and lived is Garrick, though Yag knows he’d NEVER fucking admit that.” Sneaks says. “So…I was right about Garrick?” “Of course you were right about him. Why do you think he still holds a grudge against you even though you’re staying away from Tanya? I mean in his case, I don’t think it started out that way…shit I HOPE it didn’t start out that way since he took her in when she was a young teenager, but in any case. Garrick has been in love with Tanya for a very long time now. He’ll never make a move of course, which is why I’m telling YOU that if you REALLY think you’ve got a shot with Tanya, then you need to just go talk to her, because the non-confrontational routine? Yeah that doesn’t work and it isn’t your style anyway.” “Weren’t you the one that once told me once to forget about her?” “Yeah well I’m hoping you’ll listen to me on this advice this time because it’s apparent that you’re bound for a path of destruction. At least if you go talk to her you’ll get that over quickly and who knows, maybe just MAYBE, you’re right about all this. In any case, I’m going to go see if there’s anyone around to play cards with.” “I think a lot of the members are out enjoying the riots.” “Yeah fuck that, it’s absolute chaos out there. Surprised the Baron’s managed to still keep control of some of the city. Mostly the merchant’s district, rich areas and his palace of course, but it’s getting worse. To be honest, I would leave the city, but unfortunately I’ve still got a streak of loyalty and I’d never just abandon Garrick. Too much history, even if I don’t agree with him sometimes. Anyway, see you later and good luck.” Sneaks leaves you and you immediately go to see if Tanya is in her quarters. You already know what you’re going to say, because you’ve been saying it in your mind for a long time now, you’re just mentally preparing yourself the verbal (and possibly physical) repercussions of your confrontation. Has to be done though because this has gone on long enough and if Tanya genuinely has no interest in you then you’re not going to stick around just to have something you desire greatly dangling in front of you everyday and can’t do anything about it. As you approach Tanya’s quarters you hear voices coming from it. You slow your pace and strain your ears to listen and eventually hide just outside her door. “Tanya, I can throw him out of the Guild, if he’s been bothering you again. Honestly I would have done it sooner had you not told me not to after that stunt with the Neroth cultists.” You hear Garrick say. “He hasn’t been bothering me Garrick, if anything he’s been honoring my wishes. He’s been a perfect fucking gentleman…or at least as close as he can get to one.” “Be that as it may, I know something is wrong.” “I’m fine Garrick, stop fussing.” “Tanya, I KNOW something is going on with you. I’ve known you since you were girl and I know when you’re more troubled than usual. I mean if you don’t tell me, I can’t help…” “That’s fucking right Garrick, you CAN’T fucking help! Nobody can! So stop playing the over protective dad role trying to save his little girl and just get the hell out of my quarters.” “Tanya, you forget that…” “Yes, Garrick I fucking know. You brought me in off the streets when I was some poor dirty orphan stealing food and had run away from the home for the umpteenth time! How long are you going to bring that up? I’ve never said I wasn’t appreciative, I think my time staying here has proven that, but if you think I OWE you something more, then you’ve been a fool for a longer time than even he has! Worse even.” “Tanya! I’ve never…” Before Garrick can complete his statement, you finally enter the room causing an immediate hostile look from Garrick and a look of exasperation from Tanya. “Oh great…” Tanya says. “YOU! Get out of here, we’re having a private conversation!” Garrick yells. “Tanya, WE need to talk. There’s something going on between us and I have to think you know what I mean. This has been a long time coming and I can’t just continue to walk around here in silence any longer.” You say. “I’ll tell you what, you don’t need to be walking around here anymore period. You’re out of the Guild! You’ve been nothing a headache since I allowed you in here! I can’t believe I was so blind to think you would be an asset in the first place!” “Garrick, I’m not even arguing with you and I’ll be more than happy to leave this shitty Guild, but I’ve got to speak to Tanya first.” “Go ahead then.” Tanya says a bit defeated. “Tanya, I’ve been having dreams about you for past few months ever since everything that went down with the Neroth cultists. Now I dunno if you’re doing it on purpose or what, but these dreams have been more than just dreams, it’s like…it’s like they’re real somehow. You’re talking to me. WE’RE talking to each other about, well everything. My past, your past, our likes, our dislikes. I swear it’s like we’ve been dating without actually going out.” “Bullshit. You don’t know shit about Tanya. You’ve been making shit up in your delusional mind. Wishful thinking about shit that’s never going to happen! Okay asshole, if you know so much, why don’t you give us a little history lesson?” “Gladly.” You begin with a description of the orphanage Tanya grew up in and the apathetic lady who ran it. You mention how Tanya had to beat up two older boys when she was six because they were accusing her of stealing their food. After she broke one boy’s arms and the nose of the other boy, the other children remained afraid of her. She ran away from the orphanage altogether by the time she was nine and lived on the streets until she was around thirteen where upon Garrick caught her trying to pick his pocket. You even describe the type of day it was, mentioning that it was lightly raining. After he caught Tanya he offered her a place in the Guild. At this point Tanya and Garrick are just silent as you relay this information. Garrick’s mouth nearly hangs open as he knows you’re exactly right about everything. He can’t believe that you know all this. Tanya even looks a away a couple times. “And you told me, that you’ve remained loyal for the past twenty some odd years since that time at first because you originally felt obligated to Garrick for giving you a home and helping you when nobody else was, but there was a point when you started to feel less satisfied here and you considered leaving.” You say. “Tanya! You never told me this! Is this true?!” Garrick remarks. Tanya doesn’t answer, she just looks at you like you’re going to tell him anyway, so why stop? “She never told anyone that. She would have left too, but then her mother showed up and after her brief meeting, she stayed with the Guild. Not because she had great attachment to it, but because she feared what she might do without it keeping her somewhat grounded. The Guild became a sort of sanctuary against her infernal nature. Sure, thievery isn’t exactly the most noble of professions, but it’s a far cry from what infernals like to engage in.” you say. Garrick turns back to Tanya. “Tanya, you could have told me this! Why didn’t you? I could have…” Garrick starts to say before he’s interrupted. “You could have what Garrick? Tried to make everything better like you always think you can? This is what I was talking about earlier, you CAN’T FUCKING HELP ME! Nobody can! I mean just look at what’s occurred…I’m meeting this infatuated loser in his dreams and telling him my whole life story and I was only barely aware of some of it! How long before I have complete control over it? My infernal nature is coming out and it can’t be stopped. Stop trying to fucking save me because I’m NEVER going to love you Garrick or at least not in the way YOU want.” Tanya shouts Garrick says nothing; he just staggers back a bit against a table like all the wind has been knocked out of him. Tanya now turns her attention towards you. “And as for you, your best option would be running far away from this place and from me before it gets worse. I don’t care how much you THINK you’re in love with me.” Tanya says. “Or even how much you might be in love with me?” you answer. “Now THAT is wishful thinking and not what is happening.” “Okay, maybe love isn’t the right word, but I have a hard time believing that you didn’t contact me in my dreams for shits and giggles. You’re actually fun in those dreams and I know you well enough in the real world that you never do anything remotely fun. It’s like you wanted me to see another side of you that nobody else does. Arguably the closest person you were close to before I showed up was Garrick, and you only see him as a father figure at best. You didn’t contact him in his dreams. You didn’t show up in anyone else’s either. You showed up in mine because you obviously have a fondness for…” “SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Garrick suddenly shouts and lunges at you. He tackles you to the floor and you roll around briefly with him, but you soon get him off of you. However, he’s managed to pilfer your pistol that was tucked in your clothing. “Garrick! Put that down!” Tanya shouts. “Why?! Just so you can go off with this dickhead? No! How many people have fallen for you Tanya? How many? I’ve lost count. Why does THIS one get your affection?” Garrick screams and then starts laughing. “I WAS the one who took you in! I WAS the one who gave you purpose and apparently I was the one who gave you salvation! Don’t you see Tanya? I’M the one who loves you! I always did! But if I can’t have you…then I suppose I’ll have to accept that…but what I won’t accept is someone else having you instead!” Garrick is pointing the pistol right at you and ready to fire. You might be quick enough to stop him, or you might not. Tanya looks like she might do something, but who knows? > You wait You’re putting a lot of trust into Tanya right now… Since you aren’t going for the gun, you attempt to stall for time. “Garrick, look, she isn’t exactly tripping over herself for me either despite me revealing all this information. If anything she probably dislikes me even more now. She’s not worth dying for so you want me gone, fine, I’m going. And if it will suffice, my apologies.” You say and start backing away with your hands up. “I’m afraid that will NOT suffice!” Garrick exclaims before Tanya tackles him. Tanya knocks the pistol from his hand and easily subdues him while you grab your weapon off the floor. He struggles for a bit, but then eventually just stops and starts crying. “Tanya, move out of the way.” You say fully intent on killing Garrick “No! I know what he did, but you’re not killing him! Despite everything, the man DID help me at one time and I’m not going to just forget that. Just leave us.” Tanya says. “What about…you know what, forget it.” You’re done. You might still have strong feelings for Tanya, but obviously you’re going to have to get over them and hopefully in time they will eventually dissipate by putting as much space as you can between you and her. You also hope the dreams will come to an end because if they don’t that’s going to make the process a lot harder, if not impossible. Troubles for another time however and you’ll deal with it when you have to. You make your way out of the Thieves’ Guild as quick as you can, into the sewers and to the closest manhole cover. One thing you aren’t going to miss and that’s mucking around in the damn sewers. You look around and see a few stores that have been looted, some in the process of being looted, but nothing excessive. The city isn’t on fire or anything. (Just a couple of buildings) Your goal is to get the hell out and as far as possible from this damn city because there really isn’t anything holding you here now. You attempt to avoid potential trouble by taking the quieter side streets. Midway through you half wonder if you should have just used the sewers until you got closer to the front gate, but it’s too late now. You turn down an alleyway to avoid a Holgard Watch patrol rounding up dissidents, and that’s when you bump right into Tanya. While you are caught off guard a bit, there’s a small part of you that was sort of hoping you’d see her. “Do I even need to ask how you even tracked me in all this chaos?” you ask. “If you’re already dreaming about me, I think you know the answer. I’ve pretty much imprinted on you at this point, though I suppose not completely.” Tanya replies. “What does that mean exactly?” “It means if you wanted to, you could still get away. You would eventually in time get away from me or any feelings relating to me. Even the dreams would disappear eventually. Probably would be the best option for you because I can’t imagine it getting any better for you, if you stayed.” “Yeah, well I always sort of figured those might be my options anyway, but what do YOU want? I mean I get the reasons for you pushing me away, but is that what you really want?” “I don’t know. Not really. I would like to have a close relationship with you, I probably have even before the cultist incident. I mean now especially considering I know nearly everything about your life just like you know most of mine. Like you said, we’ve practically been dating, just without the hassle of going out.” “I don’t think we’re really dating types anyway.” “Hah, probably not. I just don’t know though. I mean how do I know if your feelings are real for me, or if it’s all just infernal magic? How do I know that my feelings for you are genuine or if I’m just luring you in and going to just suck out your soul eventually?” “I’ve asked myself the same question multiple times as I’m sure you have. I mean I’m sure some of it is infernal influence, since I was just about to leave and now here I am completely re-considering. However, I think this is the important difference. I NEED to know if you really feel the same way. If don’t, even to the smallest degree, then I’ll know that I should leave. It won’t be easy, but I’ll deal with it. If I was completely under your spell, I don’t think I’d even have the capacity to even think about leaving.” “Well that’s just it, you’re not completely under my spell or influence, but I’m worried that one day you might get that way! I mean I want you to be a freethinking being. There’s so much shit going on and I’m experiencing changes a lot faster than I ever have before. Look!” And this point Tanya takes her hood off and you not only see her lovely face clearly, but two little horns. She must go to great lengths to arrange her hair to cover them, along with wearing the hood. “Uh, how long have you had those?” you ask. “A few weeks now.” Tanya remarks. “Oh. Well you shouldn’t cover them, I find them to be cute.” You say trying to bring a little levity to the situation. “I’m going to gore you with them if you don’t start taking this seriously! I mean I just killed Garrick and I don’t even feel that bad about it. I mean shouldn’t I feel something?” “Wait. He’s fucking dead? You stopped ME from killing him. What the hell happened?” “I spoke with Garrick a little in an attempt to calm him down, but the man was a complete emotional wreck. He practically begged me to kill him at that point since he claimed he couldn’t go on living the way he was living. So I honored his wishes. It was the least I could do.” “So…it was a kindness. I mean it’s a little unorthodox, and granted I’m certainly not shedding any tears, but it wasn’t like you killed him in cold blood.” “Yeah, but for better or worse, the man WAS my father in a way. I mean ignoring all the rest of his unwanted feelings, I do remember the positives. Despite all that, I haven’t even cried. Shouldn’t I cry?” “I dunno, maybe his recent actions muted your feelings or maybe you’re just dealing with them in another way…um are able to cry? Serious question.” “Yes. Just haven’t done it since I was a child though. I guess it’s not important anyway. My point is I’m worried that I might become a complete monster and I don’t want you to be in my path when that happens since you’ll most likely be the first victim.” “Well the fact that you’re so concerned about me, is a pretty good indication that you’re no heartless monster and you’re talking about something that MIGHT happen, not that it will. Besides, despite all of what we’ve shared you still don’t know everything about me either.” “What? You a shapeshifter or something?” “No, I wish it was that interesting. But what I’m referring to is something a lot more mundane. Just a secret of my own I’ve been harboring and if we’re going to be together, I might as well come clean right now.” You explain your dealings with the Ebony Claw Syndicate, constantly pointing out that you are NOT actually a member and that you haven’t even done anything that would harm the Guild, though you wonder if that even matters anymore given that Tanya just killed Garrick. Tanya’s reaction is one of shock. For a moment it looks like she’s going to punch you, but then she just shakes her head and actually chuckles. You think it’s the first time you’ve seen her remotely laugh. “Fuck it. I mean at one time I would have killed you as a hypocritical traitor, but what difference does it make now? I already killed the head of the Guild. I’m hardly in a position to judge. If anything, I think I feel better about all this.” Tanya says. “What do you mean?” you ask. “Well here I was worrying that my infernal influence was slowly turning you into my slave or something, but obviously I don’t have that much influence if you’re able to keep a pretty big secret like that from me.” “Um, well I did just confess to you.” “Oh right. Shit.” “I knew I shouldn’t have pointed that out. I do want to stress though I never actually betrayed the Guild though, I always wanted to tell you because I felt it was the honest thing to do. I just never could figure out a good way to do it and then for awhile you wanted me to leave you alone and…” “Just stop. As I said, it hardly matters now. (Sigh) The next question, is where does this all leave us? I mean seeing as you’re a half spy for the Syndicate and I just murdered the leader of the Guild, it’s not like either of us can go back.” “Before you caught up to me, I was about ready to leave the city.” “It’s not a bad idea, though I’ve never left Holgard. There’s also the fact that you have some unfinished business with the Ebony Claw Syndicate. Aren’t you worried they might hunt you down?” “Well if I stay here, they’re even more likely to find me. They probably aren’t going to bother looking for me anyway. And wouldn’t you be with me?” “I suppose I would. However, I’m still reluctant to leave Holgard.” “Why? What’s holding you here now?” “Nothing I suppose, but maybe I wouldn’t mind leaving Holgard if it didn’t feel like running. I mean I’ve spent so many years fighting the Ebony Claw, I’d hate to just hand the fucking city over to them. Yeah, I know it’s foolish, and maybe I’m just feeling the need to at least avenge the Guild considering I practically just destroyed it myself.” “I think they were always going to win. They just have the numbers and now you’re suggesting just the two of us going against them?” “I don’t see why not and I mean we probably could do a lot more damage with just the two of us no longer being restrained by Garrick’s caution. We can make a plan. The more I’m thinking about it, the more I really want to do this. I feel like giving myself this purpose would be a good way of directing my energy. Granted it’s not exactly the most virtuous way, but surely it’s still a positive thing taking down a criminal organization that engages in various violent and illegal activity, right?” Seems Tanya is trying to figure out a few things in light of trying to handle all her recent actions and physical changes. She tells you that she would like you to stay to help her, but she would completely understand if all you want to do is put as much distance as you can between yourself and this place. Infernal influence or not, you’re not going to let her go into this alone. Besides you wouldn’t mind taking out that one eyed asshole, or at least that fucker that keeps shoving a crossbow in your back. “Okay. I’m in. I stayed here for you this long and I’m not going to leave when you need my help the most. So, let’s get to this plan of yours.” Tanya smiles a bit and then hugs you. A bit sudden, but certainly not unwelcome. You have to admit, you’re already glad you’ve made this decision even if you’re dreading the danger that’s to come from it. “So, what’s the plan and what’s it all going to entail exactly?” “Let’s go some place else to discuss this. Probably not at the Guild headquarters or Hell’s Own, though, um…let’s go the Lighthouse.” Tanya says. “The Lighthouse?” “Yeah, it’s an inn close to the docks area and they probably aren’t getting much business anymore what with less ships coming in right now. We can use that as our meeting and planning place for right now.” Tanya says and puts her hood back up. The pair of you travels there without any problems. It seems the rioting and civil unrest has died down for the rest of the night. The owner of The Lighthouse seems pretty surprised (and happy) that anyone is checking in since the place is practically empty. You pay for your one room and the pair of you head to it. No sooner have you entered the room and you’re about to ask Tanya about what she has planned, you see her taking her clothing off. “Tanya, wha…what’re you doing?” you ask. “What’s it look like? I’m getting ready to make love to you. In fact why are you still dressed? I would have thought you’d be the first one to have your pants off by now.” Tanya says. “I…well I just didn’t know we were getting into that tonight, I mean I figured you might need a little time. Plus, I figured we were going to discuss the plan to take down the Ebony Claw Syndicate which is not going to be an easy task. “All the more reason to do this now. One of us could die when we start seriously pursuing this path. Now I know maybe this isn’t going to be a big deal to you, but I think I’d like to actually experience sex in the flesh to see what all the fuss is about.” “Wait….you’ve never?” “No. Why would I? I’ve never fancied anyone before and I’ve been fighting my succubus heritage remember? That means no sex of any kind. Hell, up until that incident with the cultists, I hadn’t even kissed anyone before.” “I was your first kiss too?” “Yep, looks like you’re conquering the rest of the virgin territory tonight. Hope that’s not too much pressure, but then why would it be? Not like I can compare you to anyone else right?” “Um, sure I guess so.” “Hm. Anyway, take off your clothes, I really want to get to this.” You have to admit, after all the times you’ve fantasized and dreamed about these encounters, none of them ever were like this. The two of you soon get to it and it’s fairly interesting. Tanya might be a virgin, but she’s obviously a natural. Of course being half succubus might have something to do with that. The session goes on for quite awhile. While you definitely don’t want to disappoint, you find that you’re struggling in the endurance department, though you’re not sure if it’s because Tanya’s taking out decades of pent up sexual energy on you or again, it’s because she’s part succubus and she’s actively draining your own energy. She can tell you’re obviously feeling ill effects and finishes you off before she possibly inadvertently kills you. “Are you okay?! You look really pale, I have some water in my pack.” “I’m…(wheeze) fine…I’ll take that water though.” You struggle to say. As you down the water, Tanya cuddles up next to you lovingly. “So was it like you imagined?” she asks. “It was good of course, but definitely more intense. What about you?” you ask. “It was okay.” “Oh.” “No! I don’t mean that as an insult! You were fine and enjoyed all the closeness and it was pleasurable, but somehow I was expecting more given how much people talk about it.” “Well we can try again later after... shit, I’m tired. I dunno if I’m in any condition to process a plan right now.” “Don’t worry about that. You get your rest, I’ll just be right here beside you.” You slowly start to drift off as you feel Tanya rubbing against your body and almost wrapping herself around you like a second skin. She then whispers “I love you.” in your ear and makes some odd noises which aren’t exactly the most human sounding, however they do sound content, so at least there’s that. While there wasn’t a ceremony of any kind, you suddenly get the very real impression that you’re married now. > You on to business The next day, you surprisingly wake up in the afternoon. Tanya apparently has been awake for quite awhile though, but she’s basically been watching you sleep for most of that time. While you’d think that would probably be creepy, but considering what she is, you can’t say you’re all that surprised. Besides, she went to the trouble to go get you food. “Well this is a nice surprise.” You say taking the nearby tray. “I just got what they sell here at the inn. I want to make sure you’ve got your strength up for tonight’s assault on the Guild. I know I drained you during our…closeness last night. I really didn’t mean to.” Tanya says. “I know. It’s okay.” “But I have concerns about our future intimacy, if I’m going to nearly be killing you every time.” “I’m sure there are potions to help. Quick trip to the apothecary and all that.” “I hope so.” While Tanya has her worries about your sex life together, you’re actually feeling a bit more positive about all this. Tanya’s concern for your well-being at least shows she’s not going to eat your soul anytime soon. You and Tanya spend the rest of your time talking about her plan. It’s actually fairly simple. She tells you to go back to Rook and report everything you know about the Guild. Location and everything. She says when your information pans out to be true, and what remains of the Guild is destroyed then you’ll be in the Ebony Claw with no problems and from that point onward, you can tell relay vital information which she can use. “Wait a moment, what about all the thieves in the Guild headquarters when the Claw comes to take it down?” you ask. “Well I thought about that and…well they’re just going to have to be losses for the greater goal. I mean I could warn everyone, but if it’s empty then that’s going to look might suspicious for you.” “Are you sure the place is going to be packed anyway? I mean you did just kill Garrick, surely someone has found his body by now. People might be a bit suspicious and not wish to hang around.” “Um. No, they probably didn’t. First off, nobody but Garrick would dare enter my quarters in the first place. Second, I made sure to hide it from immediate sight after the deed was done.” “You hid his…nevermind. Probably good thinking on your part given what we’re planning.” “Do you have a problem with this plan?” “Me? Well other than the danger of becoming a mole in the EC, I suppose not, though you do realize how ruthless this plan is if you’re willingly sacrificing those you once called comrades for years right?” “Yes, and I already came to the conclusion that I never was really close to most of them anyway. True, maybe I saw the Guild as my family in some way, but ultimately I was pretty much always alone. I never bothered to interact with any of them except on a job and still always kept to myself. I’m sure you saw that as well.” “True. Still though. Not even Sneaks?” “Not really. I think you were closer to Sneaks than I ever was. That going to be a problem?” “Not exactly going to be taking any pleasure in it, but I’m with you all the way on this, so it’s gotta be done.” Tanya nods at your pragmatism on the situation and tells you that you should go report to Rook and get the ball rolling on the first phase of this plan. You leave the Lighthouse and head to the Poisoned Blade Inn which is the well known Ebony Claw hang out in the city. Granted you don’t know if Rook is actually going to be there, but given that’s the only way you can think of to get into contact with him, that’s where you go. Unsurprisingly before you even get in the place, you’re getting a lot of dirty looks from obvious Ebony Claw members on the streets. Your reception is no warmer when you get inside and you get stopped instantly by a group of EC members. “You better have a REAL good reason for coming in here.” One of them says shoving your shoulder a bit. “I do actually. I’m looking for Rook, I got important business with the man and I don’t exactly know how to contact him so I came here.” “Is that so? Well if you don’t know how to properly contact him, maybe YOU shouldn’t be looking for him, let alone coming in here uninvited.” At this point you’re shoved again, this time hard enough to move you back a bit. “Alright fine, I’ll go and one of you can relay the message that I need to see him.” “We ain’t your fucking messengers!” the man says and before he can lay another hand on you, you pull your pistol. “I got six shots here, maybe I’m not making it out of here alive, but six of you are going down with me, and YOU are definitely first.” You say and then you feel a familiar object shoved in your back. The rest of the EC members back away from you at this point. “Y’know, I wonder how effective of a killer you would be without that fancy pistol of yours.” A voice whispers. “One might ask the same of someone who does nothing but remain invisible and bushwacks people from behind with a crossbow.” You say. “What do you want to see Rook for?” “It’s about the Thieves Guild.” “Alright. I’ll take you to him then.” You suddenly feel a blow to the back of your head and you go unconscious. When you wake up, you’re in a chair at a table with Rook sitting across from you. “Shit…was that really necessary?” you ask rubbing the back of your head. “My right hand isn’t entirely convinced of your potential and so wanted to keep directions to our current location secret. He’s a bit of a hard sell, however let’s get on with it. You said you had important information about the Guild yes?” Rook asks. You begin to go into detail about the Thieves Guild and it’s location. You also mention you already killed Garrick and Tanya which is why you left. Rook’s eyebrow rises at this revelation. “Truly? And how did this come about?” Rook asks. “In my attempt to convince Tanya, things unfortunately turned…violent. I was lucky to get off a headshot before she landed a hit on me. Don’t worry, nobody else knows about me and I got rid of the bodies.” You say. “Hm, Just as well as you killed that demonkin I suppose. She might have been a bit of a wildcard. In any case you can finish off the rest when you lead the attack tomorrow. “So, you’re sending me along to finish the job huh?” you ask. “Did you really expect any less? I mean shouldn’t be too hard considering you already killed your girlfriend. Besides, you’re still the best one who knows about the place, so it would still be helpful if you were there in person.” Rook says. “What’re you going to be doing?” “A lot more important things than rolling around in the sewers with some thieves that’s for sure. Don’t worry; there will be someone to supervise this mission. You won’t see them, but you can be sure they’ll be there handy with a crossbow when the time comes.” “If you’re talking about who I think you are, they better not be jamming it into my back considering we’re supposed to be on the same side now.” You say. “Well do a good job, and you won’t ever have to worry about Bolt ever again. Now go prepare yourselves, or whatever you have to do and meet the crew in the sewers tomorrow morning at this location.” Rook says pointing at the map. “Okay, sounds like a plan.” “Oh one more thing, I want that asshole Sneaks alive. I got unfinished business with him.” Rook says tapping his eyepatch. Never occurred to you that Rook was the one Sneaks was talking about when he said he stabbed an EC lieutenant in the eye once. After a few more words, Rook escorts you out of the room and you soon learn you’re at a bigger Ebony Claw headquarters that leads up into a warehouse and then eventually between the poor area of Holgard and the merchant district. From there you return to The Lighthouse where you get some rest for tomorrow. Tanya isn’t around though, but maybe she really wants to keep a low profile now. The next morning you arrive at the appointed location where other Ebony Claw members are waiting for you. “Took you long enough. Other members are in various places in the sewers ready to ambush any escaping Guild members.” One of them says. “Alright, let’s do this then.” You say. You lead the way, completely surprising several thieves when you arrive. The battle, if you can still call it that isn’t much of one. What made you such a vicious killer of Ebony Claw members, has also made you an equally vicious killer Guild members. Combined with the Ebony Claw backup, it’s no contest. Without Garrick around there’s no organization whatsoever and most of them attempt to flee rather than fight. Garrick himself is still hidden in Tanya’s room, you drag out his body and shoot it a couple times as “proof” you killed him earlier. You look all over the place for Sneaks, but you don’t find him at all. In fact, when you go to his room, some of his stuff is even gone. You wonder if he sensed something amiss and just quietly left on his own. As you’re exiting Sneaks room, a grubby dwarf walks up to you. “Hey, you. You see any more Guild members run this way?” he asks. “No, I think we got all of them that were here. I can’t find Sneaks though. He’s nowhere to be found.” You answer. “Hm. Rook’s not going to be happy about that. Oh well, maybe he’ll pop up somewhere. Roaches always do. Guess all that’s left is the looting which I think the boys are doing a good job of right now. The Syndicate has been thinking of expanding into slave trade here and this place will probably make a good location with some additions. Anyway, we should get back to Rook.” You didn’t recognize it immediately, but this man’s voice is familiar, You then also notice the crossbow he’s holding. “You Bolt?” you ask which causes a smirk across his face. “I was wondering when you’d recognize me.” You return to Rook who is full of praise and goes on about how you’re going to go far in this organization. He tells you he’ll be in contact with you again soon for a more permanent future assignment and even hands you a pouch full of gold. “Go ahead, take some of that and celebrate with Naji or something. My cousin’s actually been missing you at the brothel. I dare say I think the girl had a genuine crush on you. Maybe you can get a new girlfriend to replace your demonkin one, but you know what they say, you can’t turn a whore into a housewife. Hah!” He says before dismissing you. You head back to the Lighthouse where you once again don’t find Tanya. When you bed down for the night however, she finds you in your dreams which now are a lot more vivid of her. “Where are you?” you ask. “I’m in a safe place, don’t worry, I’ll meet with you person when there is need to do so. In the meantime, I think this is one of the best ways for us to communicate don’t you think?” “Well I suppose nobody will suddenly catch me talking to you, that’s for sure. Anyway, it’s done.” “I know. We can talk about the next phase of the plan later, right now let us just spend relaxing time together. I know, tell me more about the little village you came from.” “Really? That place is so fucking boring.” “I imagine it probably was, but from some reason, I find tales of your youthful antics amusing.” “Hm, glad someone does, because nobody in Teckleville certainly did at the time, except for maybe for me and my sister. Okay, I guess there’s more than a few stories I haven’t told yet…” As you and Tanya spend time together in your dream, somewhere else in your mind is concerned with just how much danger you’ve put yourself in being a mole in the Ebony Claw Syndicate. Never mind the fact that you’ve got an increasingly more powerful half succubus that can access you in your dreams now. You just hope you never get on her bad side. > You time passes… Year 21 It’s amazing what changes can happen in just a year and that’s not even counting the fact that Holgard is in complete anarchy right now, though it probably helps quite a bit. With your ongoing information, Tanya has carried out one woman attacks on various ECS locations and been more or less successful in the endeavor. Though perhaps not entirely “one woman” she’s been using the chaos and the various factions of the city to her advantage, mostly the remaining disorganized followers of Neroth that have still been skulking around, though she’s been luring even the Holgard Watch to do her bidding sometimes. While you haven’t brought it up to her, you think Tanya’s lost sight of her “original goal” of simply taking down the Ebony Claw Syndicate. She may have even believed that’s what she was doing at first, but now? She’s just been enjoying the chaos. She’s enjoying making people kill and fight. Granted they probably were going to do that anyway, but she’s not exactly curtailing what’s currently going on right now. Still, she always returns to you excitedly going on about what she’s done and what she’s planning and everything else. When you meet in person, it’s always a special event (If literally draining). You remember how hostile she was towards you for years, but now she only ever looks at you with affection. You must have told your mundane stories about your life in Teckleville more than a few times to her, but for whatever reason she seems to enjoy them. Maybe it’s due to her own childhood being less fun since despite everything you didn’t really have it all that bad. In fact if you’d just obeyed the rules, you would have had a pretty easy life. (You certainly wouldn’t be in this situation) You aren’t sure how succubi are supposed to act and granted she’s not a full blood one, but it’s very strange that despite her obvious descent into morally questionable actions, she’s still very attached to you. (Or maybe you’re just not used to a very loving girlfriend, your only one before Tanya was Annah) She’s also starting to change physically. Her horns for one are a little bigger and her eyes now have a permanent other worldly look. Most obvious though is her wings. They started off as two little lumps on her back that you noticed during one of your intimacy sessions. The next time you saw her, she had two small wings and are probably going to get even larger. As for you, you’ve basically been just trying to keep a low profile as you go about your ECS duties, which are currently as an enforcer at a profitable Blue Dream house in the poor district. It’s a rather lowly position for someone of your talents, but on the plus side, it’s so unimportant that Rook doesn’t even suspect you of any wrong doing and it helps that at least a few of the top Blue Dream distributors at the place have diarrhea of the mouth due to ongoing sampling of some of the drug and never shut the fuck up about sensitive ECS information. Rook has been trying to keep things together, but he’s been obviously losing control. The ECS leadership in the Delantium Kingdom has refused to help with reinforcements any more. They’ve told him that he needs to work with what he has and if he fails, it’s not going to be good for him. You know he’s been trying to gain more help from the Temple of Fel, but that’s been having mixed results mainly due to the fact that while they may all worship the same God of Shadows, the pure dedicated followers don’t necessarily share the same goals as the Ebony Claw. Still, they’ve been contributing enough help to “lend” Shadow Blades to act as extra protection. Them, along with Bolt and Rook’s own shadow magic abilities are going to make him quite formidable. Which is sort of a problem now that Tanya has decided that it’s time to actually take out the Ebony Claw leadership for good. Arguably, she probably could have wiped out the Ebony Claw Syndicate with your help (Or at least this increasingly smaller chapter of it) months ago. But she got so distracted with enjoying the bedlam, that it allowed Rook to fortify like he has. Of course Tanya’s not at all worried about any of this, but that’s easy for her to say when she’s got all her new infernal powers now. Even with her help, it isn’t like you’ve got much defense against a bunch of highly trained shadow magic using killers. To her credit, she’s told you to stay behind on this one, claiming that she can take care of it herself. You have your doubts though. It would be a tough fight even for her. You’d hate to just stand by while she got herself killed, not to mention if she failed, it would be really obvious that you were involved considering you told Rook you killed her. So you’d have to help anyway, and you still don’t fancy your chances. You do have one idea, but it’s a long shot and possibly one that could get you killed immediately. You could go try to talk to the head of the Temple of Fel. You don’t know exactly what you’d say, but your hope would be to try to convince him that supporting the Ebony Claw, isn’t in the best interest of the temple. “What?! No! That’s a stupid idea! I told you, I’ll take care of it by myself, I don’t need your help, let alone the help of my enemies.” Tanya shouts. “Tanya, I’m serious. This is a really BAD idea, assaulting Rook’s home by yourself. I mean don’t you even at least have those cultists you can send, or maybe someone else?” “The last of the Neroth cultists died weeks ago and are probably enduring unimaginable torture right now as their reward and as for sending anyone else, I’m a little tired of acting from behind the scenes, I want to enjoy a bit of hands on mayhem for a change.” “Tanya, are you listening to yourself? You’re starting to lose control and getting drunk on the chaos. Maybe I should have said something earlier, but you’ve been this way for quite sometime now. I love you and all, but you REALLY need to get a grip. You’re not even thinking strategically anymore.” Your defiant words aren’t something she hears very often, at first she looks surprised, even slightly hurt, but then that turns to anger very quickly. She grabs you and throws you against the wall very hard. “…shit…” is all you can utter as you hit the stone and slump to the floor. “HOW FUCKING DARE YOU QUESTION MY IDEAS! I’m the one in control here! YOU follow MY lead! YOU are only allowed the magnificence of my presence because I allow it and you should be grateful!” Tanya bellows and her voice seems to invade your very mind a bit. You look up from your position and focus on Tanya. She’s changed physically again. Her wings are bigger for one thing (you called that one) and now her skin has a reddish hue. If you didn’t know better, you’d think her eyes were going to burn a hole in you with how she’s staring at you. Reminds of the old days when she used to get pissed at you, though she never slammed you this hard into a wall before. The dominating voice you just heard is also a bit new. As a half succubus she always had a bit of a seductive tone, but this is different. Her voice just now sent a chill of fear within you. Maybe she’s not completely embracing her “succubus side” but she’s certainly embracing the demonic heritage. Still, this is the girl you chose, so if this is how you’re going out then so be it. You struggle to get back up and lean against the wall as you address her. “Well, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you can take them alone. You’re obviously in full control of yourself, what with putting a mere mortal like me in my place and all. No need for my help anymore. I see that now.” Tanya’s stance towards you softens a bit, but not by much. She doesn’t even apologize; she just leaves the ruined house you were meeting her in and takes to the air. She apparently has decided to give absolutely zero fucks about being seen anymore. You don’t know how much time you have or even if it’s going to matter, but you still feel compelled to help in some way. Maybe she isn’t the Tanya that you fell in love with anymore, but for better or worse, you’re going to help her whether that means directly or indirectly. > You help directly For all her change, you know that Tanya’s probably still considering your last statement to her. Which means she probably isn’t going to attack Rook immediately giving you a bit of time to form a plan. Two things you think about first is that she may be right in that going to the Fel Temple is a bad idea. If they were willing to help Rook (no matter how reluctantly) they probably aren’t going to listen to someone who isn’t actually a follower. The other thing is, Tanya has changed so much now that she probably isn’t recognizable anymore, not that she really made her face visible in the first place, but she looks more like a traditional demon now rather than the half breed she actually is. You think you can spin a lie… You go to your “place of work” where the usual group of lowly Ebony Claw thugs stand around keeping the Blue Dream addicts in line. Meanwhile you head to the two assholes who run the place. Dreamweaver and Mr. Dream. The unimaginative idiots must have thought they were being real clever with those names. One of them looks up as he’s counting coins while the other is sorting out blue dream vials. Neither one of them particularly likes you, so this will be all the more simple. “The fuck do you want fancy boy? Don’t you have addicts to keep in line out front or managing the rest of those other losers?” Mr. Dream asks. “Not today.” You say. “The fuck you mean by that? I’m in no mood for your attitude today. I don’t even know why the hell you were even allowed in our organization after what you’ve done. You put several of my friends in the ground you fucker!” “Good news then. Today, you get to join them.” “Wha…shit!” Mr. Dream is too late to draw his own flintlock as you plant a bullet in his head and Dreamweaver fairs no better. You’ve killed the pair of them and predictably the shots draw the attention of some of the others. Using your former bosses’ firearms, you take out two EC thugs and then use the remainder of your own bullets to take out three more. A couple of the thugs probably just flat out ran off, so you don’t waste much time and cut off the heads of the two Dreams and shoving them in nearby sack holding a bunch of Blue Dream which you dump out first. After helping yourself to some of the gold, you walk out of the office and through the rest of building until you get to the courtyard where several of junkies are still lingering about despite all the gunshots. “Hey…can I go in to get my fix yet? I’ve been waiting out here for hours!” one remarks. “Actually all of you can go in and help yourself to all the Blue Dream you want, but one of you has to come with me and for that to happen, I need the worst of you lot to do something for a lot of coin, so who’s done the most awful thing here?” You ask. The various addicts excited by the prospect of getting free drugs immediately start telling on each other. A couple of them confess what they've done since they apparently are thinking long term and want the coin rather than just the drugs. A lot of them haven’t done much except steal or perform sexual favors. A couple of them have killed, but none catch your attention until one of them starts accusing another one of having sex with children. He denies it and so it goes back and forth though a couple of the others back up the accuser. “Enough! Is this even remotely true? I got shit to do and I need to know now. So if everyone here wants to get their free drugs, you need to fucking confess or step aside and let someone else earn this coin. I'm not going to judge you anyway.” The one who was accused slowly steps forward. “Well, it was just one time. She was ten and she wanted to know about sex and I figured it was my duty as a parent to…” You don’t even wait, you just shoot him. This causes the rest to run a bit or take cover, but they don’t go far. You quickly go to the sick fuck’s body and cut off his head with your short sword and shove it in your bag of heads. The addict stand around gawking for a moment, but then quickly realize they should go get their free drugs and run inside the house, leaving you to head over to Rook’s place. While normally walking about in the open during the day with a bag of heads where the blood is leaking through might cause some issues, but given the state of the city, it just serves as a warning for people not to mess with you. Rook, nowadays rarely leaves his mansion. You aren’t sure who had it before he did, but you do know he just took it over soon after the Guild was wiped out. You’re stopped at the front gate by one of the Ebony Claw members. “What do you want and what the hell is in the bag?” she asks. “Severed heads of fucking loudmouths and spies. Look, I got important shit to talk to Rook about and I just dragged my ass through riots to get here, so let me the fuck in.” you say. “You don’t give the damn orders here! Nobody gets in to see Rook without his say so! So you’re just going to have wait until one of us goes to see if it’s okay first and I don’t particularly feel motivated to do so and neither does anyone else, let alone for the likes of you.” “I don’t have time for this. Bitch, you will LET me in there because if you don’t I’m going to do to YOU and the rest of these assholes what I did to these fuckers.” At this point you dump out the contents of the bag and bloody heads drop out. “SHIT! That’s Mr. Dream!” one of them exclaims. “And that one’s Dreamweaver! He fucking killed them!” another exclaims. The female Claw member who was talking to you before now looks a little more concerned by your presence and starts going for her weapon. “Do not even fucking think about it sweetheart. I will fucking shoot you in both tits and then after I’m done killing the rest of these sorry excuses for Syndicate members, I will violate your dying body and the last thing you’re going to feel before you leave this shitty earth is me coming inside your ass and laughing while doing it.” You threaten. “Shit…fuck man. There’s no need for damn rape threats. Fine, you wanna go see Rook you crazy fucker, be my fucking guest. You’re still not getting past those Shadow Blade guys though and if you do, Rook’s going to be pissed at you for killing some of his top Blue Dream dealers anyway. I hope he fucking cuts your dick and balls off and shoves them down your throat!” The female Claw member says and starts motioning for the others to open the gates while you collect the bloody heads and shove them back the bag. As you walk through the gates and towards the mansion, you shake your head. “Shit, that was a bit dark for me, but hell, no wonder the Syndicate is going to shit, if they’re backing down from a threat like that.” You say. You get to the front door and you are immediately stopped by some cloaked individuals who just suddenly appear around you. You fight the instinct to immediately go for your weapon, not that you’d be fast enough anyway since two of them have already grabbed your arms, while another takes your bag and all your weapons. “What’s you business here?” one of them asks. Taking a politer approach you explain everything or rather you spin your lie which isn’t completely a lie since the two Dreams were pair of loudmouth assholes that blabbed shit so freely that’s what allowed you to relay most inside information to Tanya in the first place. You add the extra bit that the head of the Blue Dream addict was a Neroth cultist spy and explain that’s how come groups of Neroth cultists have been fucking up Ebony Claw interests as of late. The head Shadow Blade whispers to one of his comrades who enters the mansion. “He’ll be back in a moment, then we’ll proceed from there.” He says and then motions for the ones holding your arms to let you go. They don’t give you back your weapons (or the bag) though. You wait in silence for a bit, and then eventually the other one comes out and nods. “Okay, looks like you’re in the clear for now. Follow him inside and if you survive your meeting with Rook and he okays it, then you’ll get your weapons back.” The lead Shadow Blade says. As you start to head in, the lead Shadow Blade grabs your shoulder and whispers to you. “All secrets are eventually uncovered by Fel.” He says and then lets go of your shoulder. The pair of you look at each other briefly, and its almost like the Shadow Blade is telling you already that he thinks you’re lying. It’s enough to put some fear into you though you hold it together and go inside the mansion. After following the Shadow Blade through a series of halls and eventually to Rook’s office. He sits behind a desk with Bolt on his right side and slightly behind his chair. Rook is talking with another skinny man off to the side that you’ve never seen before, but judging by all the books on the desk, you guess that he might be some beancounter that tracks the accounts and such. “Rook, we are hemorrhaging coin. We are not going to have enough to kick up to the Syndicate Directors this month. This state of anarchy is really bad for business and the deal you made with the Temple of Fel REALLY took a large chunk out of our treasury.” “And what the fuck was I supposed to do Lloyd? We had a manpower shortage, and I was getting no fucking help from the directors! Those fuckers have been sitting on their fat asses in the Delantium Kingdom for so fucking long they don’t even know what it’s really like to struggle any fucking more. The Temple of Fel is an ally to the Syndicate and apparently the only reliable one I have right now besides Bolt here. And THIS asshole, who I may have put too much trust in, apparently just took it upon himself to waste two of my best distributors!” Rook says turning his attention to you. Rook at this point stands up. “Now I was already told the little story that you told everyone outside in order to get in here, but why don’t you go over it again with me directly so I can try to grasp it myself and attempt to understand your logic.” You’re on the spot and now you suddenly don’t feel very sure about this plan, but you’re here now so you better be convincing. > You tell the story again with complete confidence Adding more lies is only going to trip you up on details if further questioned. Better to stick with the same story. You tell Rook the same story you told the Shadow Blade outside and try to remain as calm as possible the whole time. You manage, but it’s stressful as hell as Rook is studying you the entire time along with Bolt staring at you with that typical grim dwarven expression and even this Lloyd person who occasionally makes a brief frown. Eventually you finish which is followed by some uncomfortable silence. Rook looks over at Bolt who shrugs, then over to Lloyd who is quite vocal. “This guy’s talking bullshit. I dunno what his game is, but I don’t like his story and I think you should kill him.” Lloyd says. “Who the fuck are you to call me a liar!? You weren’t there, that’s what happened!” you exclaim. “Doubt it. I’ve seen the best liars in action and you aren’t one of them. Your whole story sounds suspicious and given what I already have heard about you, I’m not sure why Rook ever trusted you.” This little smug asshole’s tone is enough to cause you to nearly go at him, but Rook and Bolt both react in a manner that suggest that you shouldn’t even attempt it. “Rook, I’m telling you the damn truth.” “Yeah, well I’m not sure if I’m quite convinced. I mean there are some things about your story that feel a little weak and I don’t have the luxury of interrogating Mr. Dream or Weaver, because you killed them both. All I got is your word and right now, that’s not much.” “Well what do you want me to do? Swear to the gods? I mean I’ll swear to Fel if that will…” This remark causes Rook to give you a stare that could burn a hole through you. “The fuck did you say?” he asks. Before you can even answer, Rook smashes his fist into your face and begins kicking you on the floor. He also starts ranting at you about disrespecting the name of Fel. Saying that an unbeliever such as yourself attempting to invoke the name in order to gain some sort of leverage because of his own faith is offensive to him. Rook now really doesn’t believe anything you have to say, so the only chance you hope to have is to hold out until Tanya gets here. Unfortunately Rook is so mad, that he’s intent on killing you now. Before you can beg, fight back or attempt to talk your way out of this, Rook removes his eyepatch revealing a black gem in his eye socket. A solid black beam of dark energy emits from it and hits you in your head. The dark energy liquefies your brain while having the added bonus of creating horrifying visions as you die. You scream and writhe in physical and mental agony for a few minutes before your body gives out completely.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For all her change, you know that Tanya’s probably still considering your last statement to her. Which means she probably isn’t going to attack Rook immediately giving you a bit of time to form a plan. Two things you think about first is that she may be right in that going to the Fel Temple is a bad idea. If they were willing to help Rook (no matter how reluctantly) they probably aren’t going to listen to someone who isn’t actually a follower. The other thing is, Tanya has changed so much now that she probably isn’t recognizable anymore, not that she really made her face visible in the first place, but she looks more like a traditional demon now rather than the half breed she actually is. You think you can spin a lie… You go to your “place of work” where the usual group of lowly Ebony Claw thugs stand around keeping the Blue Dream addicts in line. Meanwhile you head to the two assholes who run the place. Dreamweaver and Mr. Dream. The unimaginative idiots must have thought they were being real clever with those names. One of them looks up as he’s counting coins while the other is sorting out blue dream vials. Neither one of them particularly likes you, so this will be all the more simple. “The fuck do you want fancy boy? Don’t you have addicts to keep in line out front or managing the rest of those other losers?” Mr. Dream asks. “Not today.” You say. “The fuck you mean by that? I’m in no mood for your attitude today. I don’t even know why the hell you were even allowed in our organization after what you’ve done. You put several of my friends in the ground you fucker!” “Good news then. Today, you get to join them.” “Wha…shit!” Mr. Dream is too late to draw his own flintlock as you plant a bullet in his head and Dreamweaver fairs no better. You’ve killed the pair of them and predictably the shots draw the attention of some of the others. Using your former bosses’ firearms, you take out two EC thugs and then use the remainder of your own bullets to take out three more. A couple of the thugs probably just flat out ran off, so you don’t waste much time and cut off the heads of the two Dreams and shoving them in nearby sack holding a bunch of Blue Dream which you dump out first. After helping yourself to some of the gold, you walk out of the office and through the rest of building until you get to the courtyard where several of junkies are still lingering about despite all the gunshots. “Hey…can I go in to get my fix yet? I’ve been waiting out here for hours!” one remarks. “Actually all of you can go in and help yourself to all the Blue Dream you want, but one of you has to come with me and for that to happen, I need the worst of you lot to do something for a lot of coin, so who’s done the most awful thing here?” You ask. The various addicts excited by the prospect of getting free drugs immediately start telling on each other. A couple of them confess what they've done since they apparently are thinking long term and want the coin rather than just the drugs. A lot of them haven’t done much except steal or perform sexual favors. A couple of them have killed, but none catch your attention until one of them starts accusing another one of having sex with children. He denies it and so it goes back and forth though a couple of the others back up the accuser. “Enough! Is this even remotely true? I got shit to do and I need to know now. So if everyone here wants to get their free drugs, you need to fucking confess or step aside and let someone else earn this coin. I'm not going to judge you anyway.” The one who was accused slowly steps forward. “Well, it was just one time. She was ten and she wanted to know about sex and I figured it was my duty as a parent to…” You don’t even wait, you just shoot him. This causes the rest to run a bit or take cover, but they don’t go far. You quickly go to the sick fuck’s body and cut off his head with your short sword and shove it in your bag of heads. The addict stand around gawking for a moment, but then quickly realize they should go get their free drugs and run inside the house, leaving you to head over to Rook’s place. While normally walking about in the open during the day with a bag of heads where the blood is leaking through might cause some issues, but given the state of the city, it just serves as a warning for people not to mess with you. Rook, nowadays rarely leaves his mansion. You aren’t sure who had it before he did, but you do know he just took it over soon after the Guild was wiped out. You’re stopped at the front gate by one of the Ebony Claw members. “What do you want and what the hell is in the bag?” she asks. “Severed heads of fucking loudmouths and spies. Look, I got important shit to talk to Rook about and I just dragged my ass through riots to get here, so let me the fuck in.” you say. “You don’t give the damn orders here! Nobody gets in to see Rook without his say so! So you’re just going to have wait until one of us goes to see if it’s okay first and I don’t particularly feel motivated to do so and neither does anyone else, let alone for the likes of you.” “I don’t have time for this. Bitch, you will LET me in there because if you don’t I’m going to do to YOU and the rest of these assholes what I did to these fuckers.” At this point you dump out the contents of the bag and bloody heads drop out. “SHIT! That’s Mr. Dream!” one of them exclaims. “And that one’s Dreamweaver! He fucking killed them!” another exclaims. The female Claw member who was talking to you before now looks a little more concerned by your presence and starts going for her weapon. “Do not even fucking think about it sweetheart. I will fucking shoot you in both tits and then after I’m done killing the rest of these sorry excuses for Syndicate members, I will violate your dying body and the last thing you’re going to feel before you leave this shitty earth is me coming inside your ass and laughing while doing it.” You threaten. “Shit…fuck man. There’s no need for damn rape threats. Fine, you wanna go see Rook you crazy fucker, be my fucking guest. You’re still not getting past those Shadow Blade guys though and if you do, Rook’s going to be pissed at you for killing some of his top Blue Dream dealers anyway. I hope he fucking cuts your dick and balls off and shoves them down your throat!” The female Claw member says and starts motioning for the others to open the gates while you collect the bloody heads and shove them back the bag. As you walk through the gates and towards the mansion, you shake your head. “Shit, that was a bit dark for me, but hell, no wonder the Syndicate is going to shit, if they’re backing down from a threat like that.” You say. You get to the front door and you are immediately stopped by some cloaked individuals who just suddenly appear around you. You fight the instinct to immediately go for your weapon, not that you’d be fast enough anyway since two of them have already grabbed your arms, while another takes your bag and all your weapons. “What’s you business here?” one of them asks. Taking a politer approach you explain everything or rather you spin your lie which isn’t completely a lie since the two Dreams were pair of loudmouth assholes that blabbed shit so freely that’s what allowed you to relay most inside information to Tanya in the first place. You add the extra bit that the head of the Blue Dream addict was a Neroth cultist spy and explain that’s how come groups of Neroth cultists have been fucking up Ebony Claw interests as of late. The head Shadow Blade whispers to one of his comrades who enters the mansion. “He’ll be back in a moment, then we’ll proceed from there.” He says and then motions for the ones holding your arms to let you go. They don’t give you back your weapons (or the bag) though. You wait in silence for a bit, and then eventually the other one comes out and nods. “Okay, looks like you’re in the clear for now. Follow him inside and if you survive your meeting with Rook and he okays it, then you’ll get your weapons back.” The lead Shadow Blade says. As you start to head in, the lead Shadow Blade grabs your shoulder and whispers to you. “All secrets are eventually uncovered by Fel.” He says and then lets go of your shoulder. The pair of you look at each other briefly, and its almost like the Shadow Blade is telling you already that he thinks you’re lying. It’s enough to put some fear into you though you hold it together and go inside the mansion. After following the Shadow Blade through a series of halls and eventually to Rook’s office. He sits behind a desk with Bolt on his right side and slightly behind his chair. Rook is talking with another skinny man off to the side that you’ve never seen before, but judging by all the books on the desk, you guess that he might be some beancounter that tracks the accounts and such. “Rook, we are hemorrhaging coin. We are not going to have enough to kick up to the Syndicate Directors this month. This state of anarchy is really bad for business and the deal you made with the Temple of Fel REALLY took a large chunk out of our treasury.” “And what the fuck was I supposed to do Lloyd? We had a manpower shortage, and I was getting no fucking help from the directors! Those fuckers have been sitting on their fat asses in the Delantium Kingdom for so fucking long they don’t even know what it’s really like to struggle any fucking more. The Temple of Fel is an ally to the Syndicate and apparently the only reliable one I have right now besides Bolt here. And THIS asshole, who I may have put too much trust in, apparently just took it upon himself to waste two of my best distributors!” Rook says turning his attention to you. Rook at this point stands up. “Now I was already told the little story that you told everyone outside in order to get in here, but why don’t you go over it again with me directly so I can try to grasp it myself and attempt to understand your logic.” You’re on the spot and now you suddenly don’t feel very sure about this plan, but you’re here now so you better be convincing. > You take a risk with even more lies Fel might be uncover all secrets, but he can’t find you if you keep one step ahead by piling on more bullshit to hide under. “This is Lloyd?” you ask. Your question catches Rook and Lloyd off guard. Bolt just remains stoic. “Yes, that’s fucking Lloyd, but how is that fucking relevant t to your situation?” Rook exclaims. “It’s very relevant, because apparently this asshole has been skimming money for himself for years.” You say. Now Rook and Bolt both look over at hapless Lloyd who is now on the verge of shitting his pants and you haven’t even gotten started. “Wha…what?! That’s absurd!” Lloyd says. “That’s not what Mr. Dream said. He said you’ve been ripping off the Syndicate for years and just shuffling the book around or whatever it is you do. I don’t quite understand all that mathy stuff myself, but I guess you’re good at it, if you got away with it for so long…” you say. “This asshole is lying Rook!” “In fact Mr. Dream said he wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t caved in to take a hit of Blue Dream on a dare two years ago when you were getting the take and they dared you to try a hit of Blue Dream. You ended up caving in and got so high you started bragging to him and Dreamweaver about your genius system. Where upon they blackmailed you into giving them a cut…” “ROOK! You’re not seriously listening to this?! This man has told a story about Mr. Dream and Dreamweaver being snitches! Now he’s claiming we were all ripping you off!” “No, I never said the Dreams were snitches, I said they were loudmouth assholes that blabbed so much they let a Neroth spy catch wind of all our operations so they could fuck them up. And as for you lot ripping off the Syndicate, well why the hell else would this chapter be hemorrhaging coin as you put it? I work at that Blue Dream House and I know damn well we make more than THIS.” At this point you empty your pockets and coin pouch of some of the gold you took from the Blue Dream House and dump in all on the floor. “That is all I found in the safe after I killed those two idiots. I looked all over for a hiding place, thinking they might have it elsewhere, but I guess they weren’t dumb enough to hide it on the premises. In any case it’s pretty obvious Rook should be getting way more coin than he’s been getting and you’re obviously trying to get him killed by the directors…” “ROOK! I swear to Fel I am NOT doing that! This…” “Lloyd. Calm yourself and sit the fuck down before you have a heart attack. Have drink or something while you’re at it.” Rook says. While Lloyd pours himself a glass of some sort of liquor and sits down, Rook steps out from behind his desk and approaches you. “Okay, this is a very elaborate story you’re telling. My question is this though. How do you know all this shit in the first place? I mean I only have your word on this. I can’t obviously interrogate Mr. Dream or Weaver about this, because you fucking killed them. Lloyd here is obviously hysterical and going to plead his innocence. I’m NOT even saying what you’re saying is a lie because we ARE all a bunch of fucking criminals when it comes down to it, but I’m gonna need a little more convincing.” Rook says. “Well, I’m not sure what else I can do.” “That’s not a great start, however let me help you. For instance, if Mr. Dream and Weaver were these loudmouths that you claim they were, why the hell didn’t you report any of this sooner?” “Well for one thing, I was always kept in the fucking courtyard for the most part. I didn’t really catch wind of a lot of this until recently and I still didn’t know what was bullshit and what wasn’t. Mr. Dream once bragged that he shut down a brothel once because he wore out all the women that night, and I know damn well that didn’t happen because he barely could last five minutes with the Blue Dream whores if the jokes were any indication. I wanted to collect more information first before moving forward on it.” “They were potentially fucking stealing money and talking about sensitive information, what the fuck else were you waiting for?!” “Okay fine. I fucked up. Maybe I should have moved sooner. That’s on me and I’ll take whatever punishment you decide. However as soon as I found out about the Neroth spy skulking about, I acted. I mean maybe I should have come to you first, but I was so pissed after I interrogated that dickhead that I just lost it. I cut off that fuckers feet and hands and he was still laughing about how stupid we were for letting our secrets slip so easily.” “Okay, but that’s the other part of your story I don’t entirely understand. Why the hell are the Neroth cultists have such a damn hard on for us anyway? I mean granted we aren’t buddies, but it’s not like we’ve gone out of our way to fuck with them.” “From what I can tell they see us as the biggest threat to control over the city. The spy admitted it and I mean their previous actions over the past few months have proven that due to all their attacks. Not to mention the Syndicate is allied with the Temple of Fel which is a rival god, so it makes perfect sense to take out two enemies so closely linked. And I suppose perhaps maybe I am to blame as well. The cult of Neroth and I have sort of a history and it probably doesn’t help the Syndicate that they have a personal vendetta against me. I still get the odd cultist trying to assassinate me every now and then.” “Hm, I suppose that makes sense. Didn’t realize there were that many left though. Figured we killed them all by now.” “Um, yeah that’s the other bit and the main reason why I came to warn you directly. There aren’t many of them left and so they’re desperate. One of the things the cultist laughed about before he died was the fact that all this chaos has allowed them to summon a greater infernal or something. He didn’t say what it was exactly, just that it was coming to wreak havoc on the Syndicate. And I hate to step out of line here, because I know I’ve already probably pissed you off, but the more time we waste with trying to determine if I’m a liar or not, is less time we have preparing for this attack.” Rook looks at you for a while. You know that he’s trying to see if you’re lying about all this. You maintain your composure. He looks over at Bolt who seems to shrug, then he looks over at Lloyd who continues to nervously drink. Rook finally turns his attention back to you. “Okay, I’ll have more of the members brought here to protect the place.” Rook remarks. “No! That’s not what you should do!” you exclaim. “Why the fuck not? You just said there’s a fucking demon coming to attack us.” “There is, but think about it. I mean this is your home, there’s no business conducted here or at least not in the direct sense. That demon is probably going to hit our Blue Dream Houses, our brothels, whatever businesses we’re collecting protection on and what about that brand new slave market that opened up in the old Thieves Guild?” “So you’re saying we need more protection on all of our interests. Well that’s great and all, but we don’t exactly have that many more people. Any extra we do have are protecting this place.” “Well…” “Wait, are you seriously telling me I should lower my own fucking security? What the hell happens if the demon does strike here?!” “Well I mean you’re skilled at fighting, you can do all that shadow magic stuff. Bolt here obviously has his talents as a marksman. I mean I’ll help too, granted I’m not as good as you two, but I HAVE had experience in fighting a demon before…okay she was a half demon and I got lucky, but who knows I might lucky again. I’m just saying that the three of us are better equipped to fight a demon than the regular Syndicate members at other locations. I think they could benefit with at least some help from a Shadow Blade assigned to them.” Rook is rubbing his face at all the information you’ve been dropping on him. On top of all his other concerns, this is all a bit overwhelming. Meanwhile Lloyd has managed to calm himself down long enough for him to start talking again. “Rook, I don’t understand why you’re listening to this man. He was KILLING us for years before he joined and he hasn’t stopped! He just walked in here with the heads of two of our best people and is accusing me of ripping off the Syndicate! I’ve dedicated my LIFE to this organization and you should know that because you’ve known me for a lot longer than you’ve known this fucking liar!” Lloyd says. “Lloyd, I’ve honestly only known you only a little longer than I’ve known this guy. YOU were sent here from the Delantium Kingdom as so called help with the money matters and all that other shit. For all I know you’ve been sent here to spy on me and setting me up to fail.” “WHAT?!” “You heard me! I get absolutely no fucking support from the directors when I need it the most. You claim we don’t have enough money to send back when we should damn well have a surplus! At this point I’m less inclined to trust YOU than I am him.” “Rook! I know you’re under a lot of stress right now, but listen to reason! I…” “Bolt.” Without another word, Bolt shoots Lloyd in the throat, who clutches his neck and gurgles a bit before he slumps down dead. “Bolt, tell our Shadow Blade friends outside that each one of them needs to go to our most profitable locations. Probably not enough of them to cover them all, but we got what we got.” Rook says. “What about the members at the gate?” Bolt asks. “Oh, they can stay. If the demon does show up here, maybe they can hurt it a bit before it kills them.” “Okay Rook.” “And get this man’s weapons back while you’re at it.” Bolt walks out the door and now it’s just you and Rook. “As for you, make yourself useful and dispose of Lloyd’s body, I don’t care what you do with it, just get it out of my office.” Rook orders. “You got it.” You say. As you’re dragging Lloyd’s carcass away all you can do is thank Yag that Rook’s paranoia was placed in a direction other than yourself. Eventually you dump Lloyd’s body somewhere in the backyard and turn around to return to the mansion only to find the Shadow Blade leader standing before you. You try to be taken too much by surprised, but you can’t help be a little startled. “Here are your weapons. Bolt told me that Rook said it was okay to give them back to you. I guess you’ll be needing them anyway if this place comes under attack by demons and all.” He says handing them over to you. You cautiously take them while the Shadow Blade just continues to study you. “I suppose I will be bidding you goodbye and off to defend your distasteful slave market, apparently Rook wants the best of us there. Pity, you seem fairly more interesting now that you’re still alive. I can only imagine what story you must have told Rook for him to believe you as well killing one of his top advisors. Very impressive.” You don’t reply. “Bolt seems to have more doubt judging by his demeanor, but then dwarves tend to be skeptical by nature. Fortunately for you, dwarves are also very loyal and he won’t deviate from Rook’s orders too much.” You continue to not respond and just walk past the Shadow Blade. “Tell me, do you think you could take them both?” he asks. “What?” you ask. “Simple question. Do you think you could take them both? I mean I’m not counting those idiots at the gate, they wouldn’t get to the fight in time before you or the other two were dead anyway. But without us here, it would be a perfect opportunity to assassinate them. True, they both weld a bit of shadow magic, but let’s be honest…they pale in comparison to a true follower of Fel. And if anything this life has taught me, it’s that anyone can be killed at anytime by anyone. Just need the right combination and the perfect time to strike.” “Are you trying to tell me something?” “I don’t know. Am I? I thought I was merely asking a question.” “Your question is accusatory and I don’t know what you’re talking about with all this assassination business. If you believe that my intentions are not what they seem then why not act?” “Just as Bolt follows his orders loyally, I do as well. Not to Rook, but to the Temple and ultimately to Fel. My immediate superior told me to perform a task and that’s to help the Ebony Claw against its enemies wherever possible. It so happens that Rook is the head of the EC so if he wants us elsewhere and for you to stay here, who am I to argue? Perhaps I have misjudged you, if so then apologies my friend.” The Shadow Blade leader gives a small bow and leaves. You really don’t know what to make of that one. It seems as if he probably knew you were lying, but ultimately didn’t give a shit because he doesn’t really want to be helping the Ebony Claw anyway. Of course this leave you with the question of whether you SHOULD kill Rook and Bolt now while you have the element of surprise or if you should wait for Tanya because you know it won’t be that long before she decides to attack anyway. > You kill Bolt and Rook You still don’t know when Tanya’s going to arrive and you already dodged one close call. The longer you stick around here, the more likely Rook’s going to figure out why you’re really here. Time to end this now. You return to Rook who is currently going through a few of Lloyd’s books. Bolt is nowhere to be found, though for all you know he’s around somewhere in the room. He’s going to be the dangerous one, because as soon as you kill Rook, he’s going to be firing on you from somewhere. You’ll have do some sort of acrobatics when you take Rook by surprise. Meanwhile Rook is just shaking his head as he tosses one of the books aside. “I can’t even be bothered to go through this shit right now.” Rook says. You don’t reply, you just unload several bullets into his chest before he can even react. You then duck and roll to the side hoping that you’ll avoid getting hit by Bolt’s crossbow. Rook’s body drops to the floor and you also hear the noise of a bolt going into Rook’s desk. If you hadn’t moved, that would have gone right into you. You turn around and fire from your prone position, but Bolt once again blinks out of sight. Having the disadvantage again, you now duck behind Rook’s desk and attempt to push his body aside. To your surprise, Rook isn’t quite dead yet! “You…(wheeze) fuck…” he utters as he weakly grabs you with one hand and attempts to get his eye patch off with the other. You have no idea why he’s doing that, but you hardly care. You briefly struggle with Rook and put another bullet in him, this time to his face, which certainly kills him this time. However your victory is short lived since it gave Bolt just enough time to reload and run over to your location and put a bolt through the back of your neck. You actually manage to survive just long enough to see a winged figure crash through the large window in the room before your vision goes completely black forever.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fel might be uncover all secrets, but he can’t find you if you keep one step ahead by piling on more bullshit to hide under. “This is Lloyd?” you ask. Your question catches Rook and Lloyd off guard. Bolt just remains stoic. “Yes, that’s fucking Lloyd, but how is that fucking relevant t to your situation?” Rook exclaims. “It’s very relevant, because apparently this asshole has been skimming money for himself for years.” You say. Now Rook and Bolt both look over at hapless Lloyd who is now on the verge of shitting his pants and you haven’t even gotten started. “Wha…what?! That’s absurd!” Lloyd says. “That’s not what Mr. Dream said. He said you’ve been ripping off the Syndicate for years and just shuffling the book around or whatever it is you do. I don’t quite understand all that mathy stuff myself, but I guess you’re good at it, if you got away with it for so long…” you say. “This asshole is lying Rook!” “In fact Mr. Dream said he wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t caved in to take a hit of Blue Dream on a dare two years ago when you were getting the take and they dared you to try a hit of Blue Dream. You ended up caving in and got so high you started bragging to him and Dreamweaver about your genius system. Where upon they blackmailed you into giving them a cut…” “ROOK! You’re not seriously listening to this?! This man has told a story about Mr. Dream and Dreamweaver being snitches! Now he’s claiming we were all ripping you off!” “No, I never said the Dreams were snitches, I said they were loudmouth assholes that blabbed so much they let a Neroth spy catch wind of all our operations so they could fuck them up. And as for you lot ripping off the Syndicate, well why the hell else would this chapter be hemorrhaging coin as you put it? I work at that Blue Dream House and I know damn well we make more than THIS.” At this point you empty your pockets and coin pouch of some of the gold you took from the Blue Dream House and dump in all on the floor. “That is all I found in the safe after I killed those two idiots. I looked all over for a hiding place, thinking they might have it elsewhere, but I guess they weren’t dumb enough to hide it on the premises. In any case it’s pretty obvious Rook should be getting way more coin than he’s been getting and you’re obviously trying to get him killed by the directors…” “ROOK! I swear to Fel I am NOT doing that! This…” “Lloyd. Calm yourself and sit the fuck down before you have a heart attack. Have drink or something while you’re at it.” Rook says. While Lloyd pours himself a glass of some sort of liquor and sits down, Rook steps out from behind his desk and approaches you. “Okay, this is a very elaborate story you’re telling. My question is this though. How do you know all this shit in the first place? I mean I only have your word on this. I can’t obviously interrogate Mr. Dream or Weaver about this, because you fucking killed them. Lloyd here is obviously hysterical and going to plead his innocence. I’m NOT even saying what you’re saying is a lie because we ARE all a bunch of fucking criminals when it comes down to it, but I’m gonna need a little more convincing.” Rook says. “Well, I’m not sure what else I can do.” “That’s not a great start, however let me help you. For instance, if Mr. Dream and Weaver were these loudmouths that you claim they were, why the hell didn’t you report any of this sooner?” “Well for one thing, I was always kept in the fucking courtyard for the most part. I didn’t really catch wind of a lot of this until recently and I still didn’t know what was bullshit and what wasn’t. Mr. Dream once bragged that he shut down a brothel once because he wore out all the women that night, and I know damn well that didn’t happen because he barely could last five minutes with the Blue Dream whores if the jokes were any indication. I wanted to collect more information first before moving forward on it.” “They were potentially fucking stealing money and talking about sensitive information, what the fuck else were you waiting for?!” “Okay fine. I fucked up. Maybe I should have moved sooner. That’s on me and I’ll take whatever punishment you decide. However as soon as I found out about the Neroth spy skulking about, I acted. I mean maybe I should have come to you first, but I was so pissed after I interrogated that dickhead that I just lost it. I cut off that fuckers feet and hands and he was still laughing about how stupid we were for letting our secrets slip so easily.” “Okay, but that’s the other part of your story I don’t entirely understand. Why the hell are the Neroth cultists have such a damn hard on for us anyway? I mean granted we aren’t buddies, but it’s not like we’ve gone out of our way to fuck with them.” “From what I can tell they see us as the biggest threat to control over the city. The spy admitted it and I mean their previous actions over the past few months have proven that due to all their attacks. Not to mention the Syndicate is allied with the Temple of Fel which is a rival god, so it makes perfect sense to take out two enemies so closely linked. And I suppose perhaps maybe I am to blame as well. The cult of Neroth and I have sort of a history and it probably doesn’t help the Syndicate that they have a personal vendetta against me. I still get the odd cultist trying to assassinate me every now and then.” “Hm, I suppose that makes sense. Didn’t realize there were that many left though. Figured we killed them all by now.” “Um, yeah that’s the other bit and the main reason why I came to warn you directly. There aren’t many of them left and so they’re desperate. One of the things the cultist laughed about before he died was the fact that all this chaos has allowed them to summon a greater infernal or something. He didn’t say what it was exactly, just that it was coming to wreak havoc on the Syndicate. And I hate to step out of line here, because I know I’ve already probably pissed you off, but the more time we waste with trying to determine if I’m a liar or not, is less time we have preparing for this attack.” Rook looks at you for a while. You know that he’s trying to see if you’re lying about all this. You maintain your composure. He looks over at Bolt who seems to shrug, then he looks over at Lloyd who continues to nervously drink. Rook finally turns his attention back to you. “Okay, I’ll have more of the members brought here to protect the place.” Rook remarks. “No! That’s not what you should do!” you exclaim. “Why the fuck not? You just said there’s a fucking demon coming to attack us.” “There is, but think about it. I mean this is your home, there’s no business conducted here or at least not in the direct sense. That demon is probably going to hit our Blue Dream Houses, our brothels, whatever businesses we’re collecting protection on and what about that brand new slave market that opened up in the old Thieves Guild?” “So you’re saying we need more protection on all of our interests. Well that’s great and all, but we don’t exactly have that many more people. Any extra we do have are protecting this place.” “Well…” “Wait, are you seriously telling me I should lower my own fucking security? What the hell happens if the demon does strike here?!” “Well I mean you’re skilled at fighting, you can do all that shadow magic stuff. Bolt here obviously has his talents as a marksman. I mean I’ll help too, granted I’m not as good as you two, but I HAVE had experience in fighting a demon before…okay she was a half demon and I got lucky, but who knows I might lucky again. I’m just saying that the three of us are better equipped to fight a demon than the regular Syndicate members at other locations. I think they could benefit with at least some help from a Shadow Blade assigned to them.” Rook is rubbing his face at all the information you’ve been dropping on him. On top of all his other concerns, this is all a bit overwhelming. Meanwhile Lloyd has managed to calm himself down long enough for him to start talking again. “Rook, I don’t understand why you’re listening to this man. He was KILLING us for years before he joined and he hasn’t stopped! He just walked in here with the heads of two of our best people and is accusing me of ripping off the Syndicate! I’ve dedicated my LIFE to this organization and you should know that because you’ve known me for a lot longer than you’ve known this fucking liar!” Lloyd says. “Lloyd, I’ve honestly only known you only a little longer than I’ve known this guy. YOU were sent here from the Delantium Kingdom as so called help with the money matters and all that other shit. For all I know you’ve been sent here to spy on me and setting me up to fail.” “WHAT?!” “You heard me! I get absolutely no fucking support from the directors when I need it the most. You claim we don’t have enough money to send back when we should damn well have a surplus! At this point I’m less inclined to trust YOU than I am him.” “Rook! I know you’re under a lot of stress right now, but listen to reason! I…” “Bolt.” Without another word, Bolt shoots Lloyd in the throat, who clutches his neck and gurgles a bit before he slumps down dead. “Bolt, tell our Shadow Blade friends outside that each one of them needs to go to our most profitable locations. Probably not enough of them to cover them all, but we got what we got.” Rook says. “What about the members at the gate?” Bolt asks. “Oh, they can stay. If the demon does show up here, maybe they can hurt it a bit before it kills them.” “Okay Rook.” “And get this man’s weapons back while you’re at it.” Bolt walks out the door and now it’s just you and Rook. “As for you, make yourself useful and dispose of Lloyd’s body, I don’t care what you do with it, just get it out of my office.” Rook orders. “You got it.” You say. As you’re dragging Lloyd’s carcass away all you can do is thank Yag that Rook’s paranoia was placed in a direction other than yourself. Eventually you dump Lloyd’s body somewhere in the backyard and turn around to return to the mansion only to find the Shadow Blade leader standing before you. You try to be taken too much by surprised, but you can’t help be a little startled. “Here are your weapons. Bolt told me that Rook said it was okay to give them back to you. I guess you’ll be needing them anyway if this place comes under attack by demons and all.” He says handing them over to you. You cautiously take them while the Shadow Blade just continues to study you. “I suppose I will be bidding you goodbye and off to defend your distasteful slave market, apparently Rook wants the best of us there. Pity, you seem fairly more interesting now that you’re still alive. I can only imagine what story you must have told Rook for him to believe you as well killing one of his top advisors. Very impressive.” You don’t reply. “Bolt seems to have more doubt judging by his demeanor, but then dwarves tend to be skeptical by nature. Fortunately for you, dwarves are also very loyal and he won’t deviate from Rook’s orders too much.” You continue to not respond and just walk past the Shadow Blade. “Tell me, do you think you could take them both?” he asks. “What?” you ask. “Simple question. Do you think you could take them both? I mean I’m not counting those idiots at the gate, they wouldn’t get to the fight in time before you or the other two were dead anyway. But without us here, it would be a perfect opportunity to assassinate them. True, they both weld a bit of shadow magic, but let’s be honest…they pale in comparison to a true follower of Fel. And if anything this life has taught me, it’s that anyone can be killed at anytime by anyone. Just need the right combination and the perfect time to strike.” “Are you trying to tell me something?” “I don’t know. Am I? I thought I was merely asking a question.” “Your question is accusatory and I don’t know what you’re talking about with all this assassination business. If you believe that my intentions are not what they seem then why not act?” “Just as Bolt follows his orders loyally, I do as well. Not to Rook, but to the Temple and ultimately to Fel. My immediate superior told me to perform a task and that’s to help the Ebony Claw against its enemies wherever possible. It so happens that Rook is the head of the EC so if he wants us elsewhere and for you to stay here, who am I to argue? Perhaps I have misjudged you, if so then apologies my friend.” The Shadow Blade leader gives a small bow and leaves. You really don’t know what to make of that one. It seems as if he probably knew you were lying, but ultimately didn’t give a shit because he doesn’t really want to be helping the Ebony Claw anyway. Of course this leave you with the question of whether you SHOULD kill Rook and Bolt now while you have the element of surprise or if you should wait for Tanya because you know it won’t be that long before she decides to attack anyway. > You wait for Tanya Very tempting, but while you think you could get the drop on one, you don’t think you’d be able to get both of them, which you suppose answers the Shadow Blade’s question earlier. When Tanya is here though, you’ll better be able to take advantage of the situation. You just hope you haven’t misjudged her and she’ll actually rethink her position on attacking Rook, though if enough time passes, you’re going to just have to risk acting on your own anyway. You return to Rook who is currently going through a few of Lloyd’s books. Bolt is nowhere to be found, though for all you know he’s around somewhere in the room. Rook is just shaking his head as he tosses one of the books aside. “I can’t even be bothered to go through this shit right now.” Rook says. “Probably all bullshit anyway considering Lloyd was stealing from the Syndicate.” You answer. “Yeah well at this point I’m starting to think if Lloyd had just cut me in on that deal as well he might still be alive, because I’m seriously starting to wonder why I’m bothering anymore. It’s obvious that I am not getting the support I need and it’s almost like Holgard is an afterthought for them. I mean if they don’t even want a fucking chapter here then fine with me, I got other interests.” Rook doesn’t elaborate on that, but you stay silent. Rook watches you for a moment and then speaks again. “Fuck it, you’ve been one of the few that’s actually been useful to me. How do you feel about starting something new?” Rook asks. “New how?” you ask. “I’m talking a new organization. I mean this revolution is going to be over eventually and frankly after everything that’s gone on, I’m not seeing a good reason to even stay with the Ebony Claw Syndicate anymore.” “If we went out on our own, aren’t we going to have to worry about retaliation?” “Yeah, but fuck. How is going to be any different than any other rival? They obviously don’t even give that much of a shit about this place anyway and we’ll have a complete monopoly on the underworld here. We will definitely be entrenched and they’ll have to send an army which I don’t see them doing.” “What about the Temple of Fel? I mean I’m still hazy on how what the ECS and their temple’s relationship is, but aren’t they allies?” “Not as close as you think and as I am a dedicated follower to Fel, I believe my strong relationship to them would help me more. At worst they would stay neutral. At best, well let’s just say I’ve got very strong ties to the temple here and I know for a fact that being aligned with Fel is going to be the way of the future here in Holgard. I don’t take it you’re a believer yet though.” “Well not as such no, but I certainly wouldn’t be one to piss any of his faithful off.” “Heh, well that’s a start…” Suddenly the large window behind Rook shatters as two small fireballs break through. Still being near the doorway, you’re not in immediate danger, but you duck behind the entryway anyway. You peek around the corner and see Rook’s desk full of books on fire, and Rook himself has fallen flat on the ground, but otherwise unhurt. Then you see her fly in. It’s Tanya and her transformation is now complete. Gone are any vestiges of “modesty” as she’s completely naked. Her skin has become a deep red, she has shiny black wings, and her horns are certainly prominent through her long white hair. She has sharp teeth that now accompany her deadly seductress face and sharp talons far superior to any manmade weapon she might’ve used at one time. Not that she necessarily needs them because apparently she can create little fireballs from her palms and is preparing to throw another at Rook. Rook rips off his eye patch revealing a black gem which he then directs his attention to Tanya and blasts her with a beam of black energy. Halting her fireball attack for a moment. Wasting no time, you enter the room and shoot Rook several times with your pistol. He doesn’t even know what hit him as the bullets hit his body and he slumps to the floor. You then feel a bolt going into your back and then another one just narrowly grazing the back of your head. You fall to the floor and you probably would be dead right there if not for Tanya who has already recovered from Rook’s attack. You don’t see what happens next, but you certainly hear it when a guttural scream is heard followed by the sound of flesh being ripped, bones being cracked and then a piece of arm being tossed over your head. Then you soon feel the bolt in your back being forcefully pulled out, followed by her hand touching the wound and burning it, causing you to yell out. You close your eyes and breathe hard for a moment trying to ignore the pain and then you’re suddenly lifted up. “Foolish mortal, you could have gotten yourself killed.” Tanya growls and then with you in her arms, she takes flight back out the window. You look down on the city from the sky and it’s a surreal feeling. You might even appreciate it if you weren’t in a lot of pain right now. You fly around for a bit and eventually she starts her decent downward. Because you’re not quite used to this sensation you close your eyes again almost thinking you’re going smash in the ground. Instead however, she lands near the abandoned and semi-ruined inn the Lighthouse and places you on one of the empty beds there. “Can you move around? Can you feel anything?” Tanya asks. “Fuck, of course I can feel, my whole fucking body hurts, especially my back. As far as moving around is concerned, yeah, I can, but I don’t fucking want to. See? I’m moving my foot!” “Okay, good. At least you’re not paralyzed then. I would have hated to have to put you out of your misery.” “Wouldn’t have been fun for me either. Sheesh. You couldn’t just heal me you’re your new infernal magic abilities instead?” “As far as I know I don’t have that ability and I doubt healing magic is something that most infernals have anyway given their destructive nature.” “I suppose you’re right.” You wince in pain as you attempt to shift position on the bed. Tanya just looks at you with a stare that feels very oppressive. “I’m guessing you’re just looking on me with distain of how weak of a human I am right about now.” You say. “No…well partly that, but I was thinking more of how this was where we spent our first time of intimacy together. That was such a special moment for me, in more ways than one I think.” Tanya says. “What do you mean?” “I dunno, I think it became a turning point in my reluctance to accept my heritage. I started to realize that I really should be embracing my potential not hiding from it. Something definitely changed that’s for sure, but I suppose not everything did.” Tanya holds your hand, which is very warm to the touch. When you look at her face again, you can still sort of see the old Tanya there. You still feel very close to her, though you’re a little worried about what might come next. “I can’t stay here.” Tanya says. “I can see how a flying demon might very well attract attention in a civilized area.” You say. “Not just this city. This…world. I’m feeling very drawn to my roots as it were. Never thought I’d be longing to go to such an awful place, but I feel I must, if only to learn more about myself.” “I see. So you’re going home then? Can you do that?” “I feel like I should be able to soon. When I do leave, you’ll probably experience a bit of a longing, but I think it shouldn’t be too crippling. The further away I am from you physically the better you’ll be able to get over it and move on.” “I didn’t get over it when I first saw you. You really think I’m going to now? You said we bonded.” “I suppose we did…though I don’t believe this is going to impact you as much as it will me. My bond with you is only supposed to be temporary so I can access you better at which point I should be draining your life force and eating your soul, or whatever it is I’m supposed to do. I can’t very well go around being a proper succubus if I’m monogamous.” “I sort of was afraid you’d say something like that.” Tanya’s hand releases yours and moves over you to your face. You fully expect her to do something violent, but instead she just caresses your cheek. “You worry too much, I’m severely broken anyway. If I had embraced all this years before when my mother first approached me, then you might have cause for concern. However, there’s still too much ugh…mortal in me. I am forever going to be at war with myself, though perhaps it’s this internal struggle and late blooming that’s causing my rapid transformation and surge in power. I look at you for example and still feel love. I shouldn’t, but I do. I even hate myself a little for being so weak, but at the same time I don’t care. All these conflicting thoughts and torment are probably helping me be a better infernal because hatred, even self-hatred is a great quality to have as an infernal.” “So…you’re not going to kill me?” “Not today, probably not ever. I shall learn to live with this weakness and I’ll refocus my energy into other worthy endeavors. Fucking men and leading them astray isn’t something I find all that appealing anyway. Besides, you’re human and your kind have pitifully short life spans. You’ll live, what? Sixty more years at most and in your case of being a professional criminal, it is doubtful you’ll live to old age. Then after you’re dead, there will be no more weakness. I can be patient. It’s a good trait for an infernal anyway.” You nearly laugh at how matter a factly Tanya says this. “Well I appreciate your patience Tanya, and it’s certainly better than the alternative.” Tanya sits next to you on the bed and now her eyes look less hard, the non-infernal side is showing. “Our time together wasn’t long enough.” She says with sadness. “Maybe, but I enjoyed what time there was. Besides, you said it yourself that we’re bonded. So our time together isn’t really over, it’s just different I suppose.” You say. Tanya hugs you, and you ignore the pain you feel when she applies her squeeze around you. She then carefully kisses you on the lips. You don’t even feel the drain. She then wipes her eyes and stands up. “Move on from me. Goodbye my love.” She says and leaves. You continue to lie on the bed mostly motionless just thinking about how she’s really gone now and allow yourself to weep a bit. Eventually enough time passes that you get ahold of yourself and you feel a little rested enough to sit up. You reach into your small bag still on your person and check to see if you’ve still got your water skin or food since you’re getting a little hungry and thirsty As you’re rummaging through, you find something you definitely didn’t put in there. A large black gem. Actually it’s a little sticky from blood on it, but this could only be from Rook’s eye socket. Tanya must have ripped it out while you had your eyes closed from after she pulled the bolt from your back. You never felt her put anything in your bag though, then again you weren’t exactly paying attention. You smile at this parting gift from Tanya. “Goodbye Tanya.” > You time passes... Year 23 You take a moment to catch your breath after running from the guards. Warts soon joins you, though he’s got more on his mind than just catching his breath. “What da hell? Youz wuz just gonna leave me there?!” he says. “Warts, they didn’t even see you, they only saw me, and I figured you’d be fine anyway. And look, I was right, you’re here to bitch at me.” You say. “Bullshit. Anyways, youz wouldn’t have alerted the guards if youz wuz a better thief!” “Fuck you, I’m a fucking fantastic thief! I was part of the Guild AND the Syndicate!” “Yeah? And where are they now?” “Both gone, while I outlasted both organizations.” “Hm, from what youz told me, sounds more like you destroyed them both. No wonder nobody else wants to work with you. Youz a jinx.” “Then why are you still willing to work with me?” “Cuz I got Yag wit me always. Sides, it’s usually more profitable than working with the Spider Fangs nowadays. Idjits too busy warring with da elves rather than simple banditry. Not hangin’ around for dat.” “What about your guide gig?” “Bah, nobody gets lost like they used to. Dat Baroness has mades effort to chop a lotta trees in da surrounding area and make a road as opposed to the simple dirt path it once had.” “Yeah Baroness Varsakken is unfortunately a lot more efficient than her father was. Been a steady increase in security in the city making life harder in general. Miss the days when they wouldn’t even bother you or you could easily just bribe them.” “Dat’s becuz there’s no organizations anymore. Without da Syndicate or even the Guild around, the criminal element here is easy pickin’ for da guvment. No need to appease or even profit from them. Easier ta just execute or toss ‘em in prison.” Warts never appears to be bright a lot of times, but it’s insight like that which always reminds you that he isn’t as stupid as he tries to pretend. He’s right of course. The criminal element has been disorganized ever since the city pulled back from anarchy and Baroness Ludmilla Varsakken took power from her father Vlad and brother Farad (And most certainly had a hand in killing them both). The Ebony Claw Syndicate chapter here never regrouped. None of the members who survived (And were mostly the lower ranks anyway), ever tried to reform and seemed to just go their own way. The ECS leadership back in the Delantium Kingdom never came back to “reclaim” their chapter either. You assume that they wrote this place off as a loss and moved on. Initially this all seemed pretty ideal, as you were no longer under their threats or watchful eye and at the time the Holgard Watch was still fairly weak and recovering from the anarchy. In time though, it turned out Ludmilla was far more competent and more pragmatic than her father and started actually focusing on making the city safer and less of pit of crime and disorder that it’s become known for. Which in turn is making your profession a bit harder. The more you think about it, you’re starting to wonder about what the hell you’re doing with your own life and it isn’t exactly as good as it could be. This living day to day without thinking about the future was okay before, but now you’re starting realize that maybe you should be rethinking your simplistic approach to life. Because even if you’re still a good enough thief to evade the law and trouble most of the time, you’re getting a little bored of doing it. Something different might be in order. You think again back to just a few years ago and the fact that you were part of not one but two criminal organizations. You didn’t give it too much thought at the time, mainly because you were thinking more about Tanya, but sometimes you wondered what it would be like to be running said organizations. Given how Garrick and Rook ended up, you have to believe that you’d do just as good of a job as they did, maybe even better. Maybe YOU could form a new organization. If you did, you’d certainly bring in more money and strengthen the underworld here again. Maybe you could even influence the government like the Ebony Claw Syndicate and the Guild once did. “Warts, I think I should form an organization.” You say. “Wut? Dat’s a terrible idea.” Warts says. “Why?” “Cuz, more people around, more problems, dat’s why! I mean you should know dat better than anywun! Besides, I know too, Spider Fang tribe, full of idjits, why you think I stay to myself a lot?” “Because they don’t truly accept you from what you told me, and besides didn’t you tell me the Spider Fang tribe survived when others didn’t because they worked together the best?” “Tru…but they probably gettin’ demselves killed by warring with da elves. Sides, ain’t nobody gonna follow youz. Youz a jinx remember? Anyone left from the Syndicate isn’t likely ta like ya.” “Yeah? Well they don’t need to like me, they just need to fear and believe in me. You forget, I was known as a Claw killer before I joined. I mean that should still count as a serious reputation.” “Maybe…but I dunno…seems like ya just invitin’ trouble.” “Can’t be any worse than what I’ve already been through.” “Hm, so whatcha callin’ it?” “Calling what?” “Yer gang, ya idjit. Geez.” “Oh. Shit, guess I should come up with a name. Fuck. Can’t think of one right now.” “Sounds like a great start.” “Forget the name for now, what we need to do is gather up everyone.” “We? I didn’t agree ta dis.” “Warts, you’ll fucking help me, because I’ve saved your damn life on more than one occasion.” “Sheesh, if I’d known you’d become such a fucking asshole, I woulda left ya ta rot in the woods years ago. Alright, fine. I’ll help, but only becuz I ain’t got anything better ta do right now. I ain’t getting’ tied down in dis little organization of yers either, assumin’ it even gets off da ground to begin wit. So whatcha need?” Seeing as you don’t want to be bothered hunting down every petty criminal in Holgard, you assign Warts that task. As strange as it may seem, he can be fairly convincing to those of similar low status. As for you, you’re of the mind that you need to find a suitable headquarters. You suppose you could just “take over” the current inn you’re living at. It wouldn’t take much to intimidate the owner, though your bigger concern is visibility. Gone are the days where organizations like the ECS could just sit out in the open and the Watch would turn a blind eye. You’d have to be more careful to keep up the appearance of legitimacy. Ideally, you’d like to use the old Thieves’ Guild location. The problem with that is it’s currently an underground slave market and run by the closest thing to a “criminal organization” still left in Holgard. When word of Rook being dead spread, remnants of ECS members that had been assigned to the slave market just stayed there and went into business for themselves. Some of the other members joined soon after. It’s one of the few things that the Holgard Watch has not been efficient in eliminating. Though the location never was known to general law enforcement anyway. From what you know, they’re little more than a gang of thugs, but they’re organized enough that they’ve lasted this long and even have ties to certain pirate groups based in Hessla. You can’t imagine that convincing them is going to be easy, in fact you might have to wait a bit before trying. Go there when you’ve built up a bit more muscle as a show of force. Of course you could just go in now and shoot everyone. Probably a lot more dangerous and you’d be depriving yourself of possible followers, but if you’re successful, you’d certainly establish yourself as the big swinging dick of the underworld, along with taking over the territory you wanted in the first place. > You patience and Diplomacy If you’re really serious about doing this, then going in guns blazing might be counter productive, even fatal if you’re attempting to do it alone. Better you should at least make some other alliances first before taking on the slavers. While you’re mentally preparing yourself for this potential problem for later, Warts is still around asking you questions. “Ay, youz still with me?” Warts asks. “Huh? Yeah, just deep in thought.” You answer. “Hm, never had dat problem. Anywayz I was askin’ where ya gonna hold dis meetin’ of Holgard’s most wanted, an when?” “Oh. Just tell them to come to the Blackheart Inn, where I’m currently staying by the weekend. That should give you enough time to scout the streets, taverns, and wherever else. Oh and let them know that the drinks will be on me, so that should help entice them as well.” “Blackheart Inn…why the hell don’t these inns ever have invitin’ names? Like I dunno, the friendly titties, or sumthin.” “Because that name was taken by one of the brothels presumably. Anyway, I leave you to it. I probably should start preparing what I’m going to say. Ugh, wish my sister was here, she’d probably be able to write an inspiring speech for me or something.” You leave Warts and head home to the Blackheart Inn. On your way to your room, you toss a bag of coins to the innkeeper stating that you’re going to be having a “gathering” on the weekend and you need . He doesn’t ask questions since he knows by now what sort of man you are and more importantly all the coin you’ve given him is understanding enough. Days pass and eventually the time has come for you to convince everyone that they need to join you. You aren’t sure if it’s going to be entirely successful, but hopefully you can convince most of them if only to mount an assault on the slavers. “Ay, I gotz a lotta people here. Aren’t ya comin ta make a speech ‘bout a glorious future or sumthin?” Warts says. “Yes, but I’m establishing how things are going to work already. THEY will wait for ME. They’re at my beck and call, not the other way around.” You reply. “Yeah? Well I still say ya betta hurry up. A lot ain’t dat patient.” “Duly noted. I’ll be there soon. Just let them know.” You head to the large back room of the inn, where you’re met by several criminal types. A lot of them have already been drinking heavily. Some nod at you with respect, while others not so much. “Oh ‘ere he is. Fuckin’ thought you’d never show up.” One says. “Yeah, you drag us all here sayin’ it’s important and then don’t even show up on time for yer own meeting.” Another remarks. “Hell, if it wasn’t for him payin’ for da ale, I wouldn’t even be here. So what’s dis all about?” A third says. “Glad you asked. You see, while Warts was inviting you all here in a civilized manner to join me, I was planning for all of our futures.” You say before you’re interrupted. “Wait a minute, did you say join you?” “Yes, I’m rebuilding an organization for us and you’re all invited to join and get richer than you are.” This response is met with a lot of derision. “Join you?! I see you’ve been drinking too!” one laughs. “Not that I’m not flattered by the offer, but weren’t you part of the Syndicate AND the Guild? Seems suspicious that both were destroyed while you’re still here.” Another adds. “Yeah, and I was part of the Syndicate once too. Not for very long, but long enough to remember that you were killing them at one time. Some of those guys were my fucking friends! Okay, maybe not friends, but a couple owed me money which I’ll never fucking get back now!” a third says. “You’ll get that money back and more if you just follow me. I have a vision for this city and if we unify we could be greater than the Guild or the Syndicate ever was!” “Yeah an maybe the elf queen will let me fuck her in the ass while we’re at it. This is a lot of bullshit. I’m doing fine on my own.” At this point you try to go into the benefits of uniting, but barely anyone is listening. Even the ones that are more receptive have their issues. “Look, I’m not saying it isn’t a nice idea, but I’m still not seeing why we should be following you. I mean I know you’ve got a bit of a reputation as a skilled killer and I’m certainly not going to fuck with you, but there’s a difference between being a killer and a leader. I haven’t seen any evidence that you’re a leader.” One of them says. “Yeah, I mean I’d sooner join up with Elias who runs the slave market. The only reason why I haven’t is because he’s a fucking asshole.” Another remarks. “Glad you brought that up, because Elias’ days are numbered. I intend on taking him out.” You say. “Oh yeah? You and what army?” “Us! I mean that’s what I’ve been saying this whole time! If we join forces, nobody can stop us! Taking out Elias and taking his wealth and his place is just the first step in getting this new organization up and running. So? Who’s with me?” Not many apparently, as most of them don’t even bother replying and just leave. “What seriously? We could fucking take him together!” you exclaim in anger. “Maybe, maybe not, but again, I don’t see why we should be following you to do it. A lot of us are still going to get killed and for what? There’s no profit in this.” “I just explained there’s a shitload of profit in this!” “Well I’m not convinced and I don’t think most of us are either. I mean if you got the balls to go take him out yourself, then I’ll be the first one to sign up afterwards.” “If I take him out myself, then you might want to worry about your future in this city for rejecting my offer now.” “Yeah, well I guess I’ll have to deal with that when it comes to pass.” “You’ll deal with it now!” You pull out your pistol and shoot the man you were speaking to in the back. This is soon followed by several other people pulling their own weapons and others just outright running away. You put down those that attack you and probably scared everyone, but you don’t think you convinced anyone. Even Warts apparently ran off during the shooting. You curse that this didn’t go better. The owner of the Blackheart is pissed enough that he yells about you ruining his place with a mess of bodies. He surprisingly even has the courage to say you’re no longer welcome to stay in his establishment and possibly bringing heat down on his place. You don’t bother arguing; you already know what you have to do. You need to just take out Elias and after you do that, you’ll have your own place, everyone else will fall in line and that will be that. Patience and diplomacy have failed. You go to your room and pack all your shit. In particular all the firearms you’ve acquired and head to another inn to get a night’s rest before taking on the slavers. The next night, with all your gear, you head to the nearest sewer entrance and descend down. You still remember the way to the Thieves Guild so it doesn’t take long. When you get closer to where the entrance would be located you start to wonder where anyone is since surely there would be guards or lookouts posted outside to let people in (or keep people out). You approach the entrance and then you hear footstep behind you. You turn around and open fire managing to hit one of your assailants while the others duck behind the walls. The door to the slave market then opens up and you just narrowly avoid getting blasted with a musket. You fall to the floor and manage to put another attacker down with your pistol, but it’s apparent that someone from last night’s meeting tipped off Elias because his people were waiting for you. You scramble back to your feet, but you’re in a very bad position. You’re trapped in a narrow corridor with people shooting at you behind and ahead. Even with your skills, you have no cover and you soon take a couple shots that put you down. Refusing to give up you manage to get off one more shot before Elias’ people finally finish you off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 23 You take a moment to catch your breath after running from the guards. Warts soon joins you, though he’s got more on his mind than just catching his breath. “What da hell? Youz wuz just gonna leave me there?!” he says. “Warts, they didn’t even see you, they only saw me, and I figured you’d be fine anyway. And look, I was right, you’re here to bitch at me.” You say. “Bullshit. Anyways, youz wouldn’t have alerted the guards if youz wuz a better thief!” “Fuck you, I’m a fucking fantastic thief! I was part of the Guild AND the Syndicate!” “Yeah? And where are they now?” “Both gone, while I outlasted both organizations.” “Hm, from what youz told me, sounds more like you destroyed them both. No wonder nobody else wants to work with you. Youz a jinx.” “Then why are you still willing to work with me?” “Cuz I got Yag wit me always. Sides, it’s usually more profitable than working with the Spider Fangs nowadays. Idjits too busy warring with da elves rather than simple banditry. Not hangin’ around for dat.” “What about your guide gig?” “Bah, nobody gets lost like they used to. Dat Baroness has mades effort to chop a lotta trees in da surrounding area and make a road as opposed to the simple dirt path it once had.” “Yeah Baroness Varsakken is unfortunately a lot more efficient than her father was. Been a steady increase in security in the city making life harder in general. Miss the days when they wouldn’t even bother you or you could easily just bribe them.” “Dat’s becuz there’s no organizations anymore. Without da Syndicate or even the Guild around, the criminal element here is easy pickin’ for da guvment. No need to appease or even profit from them. Easier ta just execute or toss ‘em in prison.” Warts never appears to be bright a lot of times, but it’s insight like that which always reminds you that he isn’t as stupid as he tries to pretend. He’s right of course. The criminal element has been disorganized ever since the city pulled back from anarchy and Baroness Ludmilla Varsakken took power from her father Vlad and brother Farad (And most certainly had a hand in killing them both). The Ebony Claw Syndicate chapter here never regrouped. None of the members who survived (And were mostly the lower ranks anyway), ever tried to reform and seemed to just go their own way. The ECS leadership back in the Delantium Kingdom never came back to “reclaim” their chapter either. You assume that they wrote this place off as a loss and moved on. Initially this all seemed pretty ideal, as you were no longer under their threats or watchful eye and at the time the Holgard Watch was still fairly weak and recovering from the anarchy. In time though, it turned out Ludmilla was far more competent and more pragmatic than her father and started actually focusing on making the city safer and less of pit of crime and disorder that it’s become known for. Which in turn is making your profession a bit harder. The more you think about it, you’re starting to wonder about what the hell you’re doing with your own life and it isn’t exactly as good as it could be. This living day to day without thinking about the future was okay before, but now you’re starting realize that maybe you should be rethinking your simplistic approach to life. Because even if you’re still a good enough thief to evade the law and trouble most of the time, you’re getting a little bored of doing it. Something different might be in order. You think again back to just a few years ago and the fact that you were part of not one but two criminal organizations. You didn’t give it too much thought at the time, mainly because you were thinking more about Tanya, but sometimes you wondered what it would be like to be running said organizations. Given how Garrick and Rook ended up, you have to believe that you’d do just as good of a job as they did, maybe even better. Maybe YOU could form a new organization. If you did, you’d certainly bring in more money and strengthen the underworld here again. Maybe you could even influence the government like the Ebony Claw Syndicate and the Guild once did. “Warts, I think I should form an organization.” You say. “Wut? Dat’s a terrible idea.” Warts says. “Why?” “Cuz, more people around, more problems, dat’s why! I mean you should know dat better than anywun! Besides, I know too, Spider Fang tribe, full of idjits, why you think I stay to myself a lot?” “Because they don’t truly accept you from what you told me, and besides didn’t you tell me the Spider Fang tribe survived when others didn’t because they worked together the best?” “Tru…but they probably gettin’ demselves killed by warring with da elves. Sides, ain’t nobody gonna follow youz. Youz a jinx remember? Anyone left from the Syndicate isn’t likely ta like ya.” “Yeah? Well they don’t need to like me, they just need to fear and believe in me. You forget, I was known as a Claw killer before I joined. I mean that should still count as a serious reputation.” “Maybe…but I dunno…seems like ya just invitin’ trouble.” “Can’t be any worse than what I’ve already been through.” “Hm, so whatcha callin’ it?” “Calling what?” “Yer gang, ya idjit. Geez.” “Oh. Shit, guess I should come up with a name. Fuck. Can’t think of one right now.” “Sounds like a great start.” “Forget the name for now, what we need to do is gather up everyone.” “We? I didn’t agree ta dis.” “Warts, you’ll fucking help me, because I’ve saved your damn life on more than one occasion.” “Sheesh, if I’d known you’d become such a fucking asshole, I woulda left ya ta rot in the woods years ago. Alright, fine. I’ll help, but only becuz I ain’t got anything better ta do right now. I ain’t getting’ tied down in dis little organization of yers either, assumin’ it even gets off da ground to begin wit. So whatcha need?” Seeing as you don’t want to be bothered hunting down every petty criminal in Holgard, you assign Warts that task. As strange as it may seem, he can be fairly convincing to those of similar low status. As for you, you’re of the mind that you need to find a suitable headquarters. You suppose you could just “take over” the current inn you’re living at. It wouldn’t take much to intimidate the owner, though your bigger concern is visibility. Gone are the days where organizations like the ECS could just sit out in the open and the Watch would turn a blind eye. You’d have to be more careful to keep up the appearance of legitimacy. Ideally, you’d like to use the old Thieves’ Guild location. The problem with that is it’s currently an underground slave market and run by the closest thing to a “criminal organization” still left in Holgard. When word of Rook being dead spread, remnants of ECS members that had been assigned to the slave market just stayed there and went into business for themselves. Some of the other members joined soon after. It’s one of the few things that the Holgard Watch has not been efficient in eliminating. Though the location never was known to general law enforcement anyway. From what you know, they’re little more than a gang of thugs, but they’re organized enough that they’ve lasted this long and even have ties to certain pirate groups based in Hessla. You can’t imagine that convincing them is going to be easy, in fact you might have to wait a bit before trying. Go there when you’ve built up a bit more muscle as a show of force. Of course you could just go in now and shoot everyone. Probably a lot more dangerous and you’d be depriving yourself of possible followers, but if you’re successful, you’d certainly establish yourself as the big swinging dick of the underworld, along with taking over the territory you wanted in the first place. > You ruthless Aggression Well, shooting people is something you’re good at, so it might actually be easier anyway. Though you hope you aren’t too rusty at it, you haven’t been doing as much shooting as you once did. (And as much as it might be more convenient at times, openly killing Holgard Watchmen on a whim is likely to get you hunted down a lot quicker) Still, you do try to keep in practice in the sewers where nobody gives a shit if you’re firing off a weapon you’re not supposed to own anyway. You’ve also acquired a few other firearms over the years as well. You’ve got a musket, a blunderbuss, and various other one shot flintlocks. You might as well bring them all for this, because you’re not going in subtle. While you’re mentally preparing yourself for this assault in your head, Warts is still around asking you questions. “Ay, youz still with me?” Warts asks. “Huh? Yeah, just deep in thought.” You answer. “Hm, never had dat problem. Anywayz I was askin’ where ya gonna hold dis meetin’ of Holgard’s most wanted, an when?” “Oh. Just tell them to come to the Blackheart Inn, where I’m currently staying by the weekend. That should give you enough time to scout the streets, taverns, and wherever else. Oh and let them know that the drinks will be on me, so that should help entice them as well.” “Blackheart Inn…why the hell don’t these inns ever have invitin’ names? Like I dunno, the friendly titties, or sumthin.” “Because that name was taken by one of the brothels presumably. Look, I’m leaving you to it, I gotta go get ready.” “Ready for what?” “I got my own shit to do before this meeting. Later.” You leave Warts and head home to the Blackheart Inn. On your way to your room, you toss a bag of coins to the innkeeper stating that you’re going to be having a “gathering” on the weekend and you need . He doesn’t ask questions since he knows by now what sort of man you are and more importantly all the coin you’ve given him is understanding enough. You go to your room and after moving about furniture to access your items, you check everything and load it all up. You then get some rest, because tomorrow you’ve got big plans. The next night, with all your gear, you head to the nearest sewer entrance and descend down. You still remember the way to the Thieves Guild so it doesn’t take long. No sooner do you get closer to where the entrance would be located and several of the slavers are hanging around. “Shit! He’s got…” Before any of them can make a move or sound other than a scream, you’ve shot your blunderbuss and taken out three of them with the spread. You finish off the fourth severely wounded one on the ground with blade to his neck. You can’t be sure if that’s already alerted more of them, but you enter quickly. As soon as you do, you’ve draw attention not from the ones running the market, but from some of the potential buyers. More than a few just run for cover, others foolishly draw on you, which you return in kind. As you get closer to the hub, more of the slavers appear to defend their territory. A few of them are armed with crossbows and their own firearms, so you take a nearby customer and use him as a meat shield. He screams the entire time until he finally takes a shot to his head, splattering part of his brains on you. You toss away the body and shoot several more of your assailants with your pistol. At this point the market is in chaos. People are running everywhere and a couple mini-fights have broke out, including a couple of the livelier slaves that are taking advantage of this situation. Eventually you’ve shot and stabbed enough people and the rest have either fled or cowering somewhere. All things considered, you haven’t been wounded too badly in all this. You guess you never lose your touch on some things. “HEY! HEY! STOP SHOOTING! CAN’T WE COME TO A DEAL?!” a female voice shouts. “Perhaps. You the leader of this lot?” you answer. “No, you shot off half of his fucking face five minutes ago. Though, I guess maybe I am now. I’m Vera. What the hell do you even want?” “I want this place, that’s what I want.” You answer. “Yeah? Well most of the fucking slaves just got killed thanks to you.” “I don’t give a shit about the slaves. I want this territory! This whole fucking area and eventually the city. I’m putting together a new underworld organization to be a real force in Holgard again and this would be a good spot for the main base of operations.” “Is that so? Well I’m not sure if murdering potential members was a good way to go about it.” “An example had to be made and you lot were the strongest. The sad fact of life is our kind only ever really respond to is fear and strength, so this was entirely necessary.” “Pretty sure the entire world works that way, still I can’t argue with your logic. Look, I know who you are. We actually met when you were working for the Syndicate.” “We did?” “Yeah, back at Rook’s mansion, you came by with a bag of bloody heads and threatened to rape and kill me if I didn’t let you in.” “…oh yeah, I remember that. Um, I wasn’t really going to rape you, I would have just killed you. I was just trying to be threatening to get my point across.” “Yeah, well you’re really good at that obviously. Look, you’re not getting any problems from me or whoever else you left alive. So you want this place? Fine, I ain’t fucking dying for it.” Well that was easier than you thought. “Okay. That’s good. What about my offer?” you say. “Oh, you mean the one about creating a new criminal empire and joining you? Uh…well do I really have a choice?” “Not really, unless you want to leave the city entirely.” “Hm, how generous of you. Fuck it, I guess I’m in, can’t speak for anyone else still alive though. I just hope you do as good of a job in a leadership position as you are at killing people.” “Guess we’ll find out together. In the meantime, clean this place up and sell off whatever remaining slaves you have. If we do get back into that business, it’ll have to be done elsewhere. In any case, expect me and a bunch of others to be moving in here by the weekend. I suggest you take second best room you can. That’s it for now, but before I go, I need to take something first.” After some quick looting of bodies and few other tasks, you give Vera a few more instructions who seems to readily comply to anything you command. She’s just glad she survived your attack (Again it would seem). You soon return back to the Blackheart Inn and make a request to the innkeeper before retiring to your room. You take steps in coming up with potential plans and ideas of how to organize all this for the remaining week. While you hope Warts has managed to convince a lot of people to come to this gathering, you’re confident that even if that isn’t the case, in time many will eventually flock to you. When the night of the gathering comes, you don’t make an appearance right away. Eventually Warts comes to get you. “Ay, I gotz a lotta people here. Aren’t ya comin ta make a speech ‘bout a glorious future or sumthin?” Warts says. “Yes, but I’m establishing how things are going to work already. THEY will wait for ME. They’re at my beck and call, not the other way around.” You reply. “Yeah? Well I still say ya betta hurry up. A lot ain’t dat patient.” “Duly noted. I’ll be there soon. Just let them know.” Warts nods and heads off. Meanwhile you go see the innkeeper about something and he gets a large bag out of his icebox. “Glad to be rid of that thing.” He says. With the bag over your shoulder, you head to the large back room of the inn, where you’re met by several criminal types. A lot of them have already been drinking heavily. Some nod at you with respect, while others not so much. “Oh ‘ere he is. Fuckin’ thought you’d never show up.” One says. “Yeah, you drag us all here sayin’ it’s important and then don’t even show up on time for yer own meeting.” Another remarks. “Hell, if it wasn’t for him payin’ for da ale, I wouldn’t even be here. So what’s in da bag?” A third says. “Glad you asked. You see, while Warts was inviting you all here in a civilized manner to join me, I was having a discussion with a group that might be less willing to see reason…” You say before you’re interrupted. “Wait a minute, did you say join you?” “Yes, I’m rebuilding an organization for us and you’re all invited to join and get richer than you are.” This response is met with a lot of derision. “Join you?! I see you’ve been drinking too!” one laughs. “Not that I’m not flattered by the offer, but weren’t you part of the Syndicate AND the Guild? Seems suspicious that both were destroyed while you’re still here.” Another adds. “Yeah, and I was part of the Syndicate once too. Not for very long, but long enough to remember that you were killing them at one time. Some of those guys were my fucking friends! Okay, maybe not friends, but a couple owed me money which I’ll never fucking get back now!” a third says. “And as I said, stick with me and you’ll get richer than you are, now don’t anyone fucking interrupt again. As I was saying, I was having a discussion with a group that might be less willing to see reason than you lot, so I took it upon myself to take matters into my own hands. Hope none of you were into slaves, because the market might be closed for awhile.” You say. You then dump the contents of the bag on the floor and several bloody frozen heads roll out. This is met by gasps, shock, silence and one person surprisingly even throws up. “By fucking Yag’s loaded dice. That one’s Ellis! He ran the slave market!” one says. “Are you sure? Half of its face is blown off. Ugh.” Another remarks. “Either way, he sure killed a lot of people. Fucking hell…” a third says. You clear your throat to call the attention back to you and off the heads you just dropped on the floor. “Yes gentlemen, I did kill a lot of people and if you’d like to not be on that list, you’ll either join me or get the hell out my way. Because it’s like this; I really want to be in charge. Are there any objections?” Several of the people look at each other in silence wondering if anyone is going to protest, but nobody does. “Very well. Let’s get to it then shall we?” And so you take your next steps in building a new criminal organization. (You’re still having trouble thinking up a good name though) > You time passes... Year 25 Things could always be better of course, but all things considered the Nocturnal League is doing well under your leadership. You actually managed to surprise yourself. Reminds you of when your father once told you that you could do very well anything if you just applied yourself. Well you did, but you’re pretty sure he didn’t have this in mind. Of course part of your success isn’t just all your own talent. It probably helps that the city is once again experiencing an inner conflict. Not a revolution or anything like that, but more of a religious faction war. Holgard has always had a bit of a problem with religion and it’s the fact that there is too much of it in the city. It didn’t start off as violent as its become, but its been bad enough that the Holgard Watch has been more focused on breaking up fights between religious factions and members in the streets than keeping an eye on crime and happily, the Holgard Watch has slowly started to revert back to their corrupt ways. Not enough like the old days, but enough that they aren’t as much of a problem anymore. As for your organization’s role in the current religious squabble, you’ve managed to keep out of it so far and you’ve told everyone else to do likewise. This is mainly towards a few ex-Syndicate members that still have leanings towards the Temple of Fel. Though more than a few in your group give a few prayers to Yag too and while you’ve been known to do the same from time to time, you aren’t looking to side with them either. At least not unless there is some profitable reason for doing so. In any case, there are also other areas some of your more enterprising members have been trying to convince you of expanding into. “I’m telling you, we really should bring slave market back. It brought in a lot of coin when it existed and I’m fairly certain I could convince some of those Hessla pirates to bring their business here again.” Vera says. “Feh, if it did all that well, why weren’t you rich?” Warts asks. “Because Elias was a bastard boss that kept most of the money and then would promptly blow it all on alcohol and Blue Dream. I know with a more levelheaded person like our current boss running things, a new slave market could be even more profitable.” “Sheesh, such obvious flattery. Why don’t ya just suck his dick while ya at it?” “Fuck off Warts, why the hell is this half breed even still allowed around here? He’s always claiming he isn’t really part of the League anyway.” “Eh, Warts likes to play the role of a freelance outsider, mainly because he’s been doing it for so long he’s comfortable in that role. Nevermind the fact that deep down inside he wants to be part of a tribe. And that’s us, though he’ll never admit that, right Warts?” you say. “Right. No wait! I’m not part of the League! Fuck, youz twisted my words! Anyway, slave market is a bad idea, too much upkeep, an’ too much trouble ta capture people. Youz should just expand outside the city and send sum people ta rob the merchants on da road.” Warts says. “Oh, brilliant idea. Since when the hell did we become a bunch of unsophisticated bandits?” Vera remarks. “Given the lot we have, I don’t think sophisticated is exactly the word that would describe most here.” You remark. “Well you may be right, but come on, don’t you think we’re at least above that sort of guileless criminal activity? Besides, you send some of these people out there to do that and it isn’t like you can keep as good of an eye on them. If they get successful enough, they may just decide to keep everything and fuck off elsewhere leaving us with nothing.” As with most ideas, everything has its pros and cons, you need to think about all this a lot more. You tell Warts and Vera this and while Warts happily leaves your office to go about his own hobbies, Vera stays behind. “Is there something else?” you ask. Vera goes over to the door and locks it, which immediately causes you to draw on her. “Shit! What the hell man?” she exclaims raising her hands up. “What the hell indeed, you’re the one locking the door and acting all suspicious.” You answer. “I’m not trying to assassinate you if that’s what you’re thinking, I just wanna talk to you a little more privately so we aren’t interrupted.” “About what? I told you I’d think about your proposal.” “Yes, but I REALLY think I can convince you that my idea is a good one.” At this point Vera starts unbuttoning her shirt and unsuccessfully attempting to walk seductively towards you and stumbling in the process. It’s pretty embarrassing. “Stop. Stop. Stop. Are you seriously doing what I think you’re trying to do?” you ask. “Hey look, I’m not proud. If I gotta suck your dick in order to convince you to set up a new slave market here and make me head slaver, then that’s what I’ll fucking do.” “Head slaver, interesting choice of words considering this situation. And now you don’t just want me to go with your idea, you want to be in charge of it. That’s pretty presumptuous of you.” “It’s pretty presumptuous that you won’t, after I’m done.” Looks like she took Wart’s suggestion to heart. At this point Vera’s on her knees in front of you and her face is practically making a beeline towards your crotch. While this “offer isn’t completely unenticing, you’ve got some reservations and not just the usual ones. “Vera just stop. This isn’t going to work.” You say pushing her away a bit. “What? So you wanna fuck me? I mean we can do that too…um you don’t want to do it the other way do you? I mean…if I gotta take it in the ass, (sigh) I will, but you can’t expect me to fake enjoying that.” “No! We’re not doing anything Vera. Just put your tits away and get your hands off my dick.” While this would probably be enough to give most the hint that one isn’t interested, Vera’s a little more persistent. “Okay, I’m confused. Based on my observations of how I’ve seen you look at women, I know damn well you like girls. In fact, I’ve noticed you even checking me out on occasion and your dick was getting hard when I was touching it so I know it can’t be because you find me repulsive. And I doubt if you have any moral objections…” Vera says before you interrupt. “That’s exactly it. I like to get to know someone first before being intimate with them. Maybe that sounds weird to someone so free with their…sexual activity, but that’s just how I was raised and some things just stuck with me.” “You’re kidding. We work together, while I don’t pretend that we know everything about each other, we’re not exactly strangers.” “Look, I don’t shit where I eat, so if you don’t mind, get the fuck out of here and go blow somebody who cares!” Vera isn’t exactly buying your excuse, but she’s buttoning up her shirt and getting back up. “I know you’re the boss and all, but I have to say, sometimes you’re a very poor liar. But, whatever just as long as you’re not chopping my head off to make a point I guess.” Vera lets herself out and you’re breathing a sigh of relief that you didn’t give in since you’re fairly certain you would have, had Vera not left when she did. You’ve never told anyone this, but you’re convinced that having sex results in your partner’s death. Not instantly, but there’s been too many incidences for it to be a coincidence. For a long time after your parting of ways with Tanya you didn’t even show much interest in other women. Indeed you felt a great loss as if she died and you were in mourning. Tanya however, was correct that in time you’d “get over” her. Maybe not mentally (You can’t help but think about her still) but physically you definitely did. So it was with no surprise that during your time before forming the League you went with a few other women from time to time. And every single one of them died. In your line of work you tend to bump into the same people and frequent the same places. So you started to get suspicious when women you had been intimate with started always winding up dead… The taverns… “Where’s Lucy? Usually she’s serving drinks tonight.” “Lucy? You didn’t hear? She fell off the docks and drowned two days ago. Tragic.” The streets… “Any of you lot seen Ophelia around?” “You mean the new up and coming cutpurse with the cute face and nice ass? She got a bolt to the head a week ago. Found dead in an alley. Damn shame, she had a lot of potential. Fucking tragic.” And especially the brothels… “I think I’d like Francine tonight.” “Francine? Oh, you must not have heard. She was found dead of a Yellow Devil overdose a week ago. It’s weird because I made sure none of my girls ever took drugs, let alone that vile stuff. Tragic.” “Oh. Sorry to hear it. Um, well I guess I’ll take Patricia then.” “She’s no longer with us either. She was murdered by some unknown assailant nearly a month ago. Very tragic.” “Well shit…” “I might as well tell you too, that Helena is also gone. Died in a house fire yesterday. I tell you, it’s been a tough time for this place lately, but hey we’re always here to please and there are still many lovely girls here. Hey did you want to see Naji? She’s free this time and it’s been years since you indulged in her services. I bet she’d love to see you again. Always said you used to be the best customer she ever had.” “Um, no. I gotta go.” While perhaps it is just very bad luck and coincidence that all these ladies that you were intimate with, met tragic deaths, but you feel very certain that this has something to do with being bonded with Tanya. It’s your curse as it were. If you were a complete asshole you suppose you wouldn’t give a shit and just think with your dick anyway, but even if you just gave into your base desires, Vera’s useful enough that you’d hate to lose her help in the organization. Besides all that, you half wonder if Tanya is somehow keeping track of you. Granted you’ve not seen her in person or even a dream ever since she departed to the infernal realm, but she said she’d always be linked to you. What if every girl you’ve fucked is just making her madder and madder? What if one day she’ll come back to punish your “infidelity”? True, you two were never married and she did tell you to go live your life, but…well she IS a demon and who knows what the hell she’s like now. You’re starting to wonder that maybe you weren’t so much bored when you came up with the idea to form the Nocturnal League so much as you were trying to keep your mind occupied on other things. It actually has worked great in that regard, or it did until Vera was about to pursue promotion via cock sucking. (Well at least taking matters into your own hand is always safe) In any case, you put Vera’s inviting mouth out of your mind and refocus on business, which involves going over the ideas that were proposed to you by Vera and Warts in the first place. > You expand outside Holgard Besides your distaste for slavery, Warts’ plan sounds a lot simpler to implement and you figure Vera won’t be occasionally trying flirt with you for favors (or whatever) if you side with him and hence removing temptation. Vera’s right about someone potentially “going rogue” and just fucking off to do their own thing so you’ll have to really lay down the punishment implications to everyone about doing such a thing. Which is exactly what you do. You also tell everyone to not create a bloodbath and if they do, they need to take steps in covering their tracks. Last thing you want is to create too much attention. Warts is mildly smug about you choosing his plan over Vera who in turn is obviously perturbed. She makes no pretenses about not wanting to be one of those stumbling about in the woods. You reassure her she can focus on her city activities since reassigning her would just cause unnecessary conflict in the long term anyway. A few months pass and you’re making a fair amount on this venture. You weren’t sure about it at first, but Warts had a good idea. Surprisingly he has another one. “Hey boss, I got some hobs from da Spider Fangs dat wanna join wit us.” Warts says. “Really? Thought you told me the Spider Fangs shun human civilization centers.” You say. “Eh, ever since dey got their asses kicked hard by da elves and lost a good portion of the tribe, there’s been sum serious re-thinkin’ on how things are gonna work now. Anyway, just wunderin’ if they can join.” “I’m guessing you had something in mind for them to specifically do?” “I figured dey can take part in robbin’ da merchants gig we got going now.” “Yeah, and I figured that’s what you’d suggest. Probably would be the best use of their skills I imagine. I suppose that would free up some of the folks who still aren’t exactly thrilled about their new assignment. They can come back to the city and the hobs can take their place. Now do I have to talk to these hobs about how I want things done or are you taking care of it?” “I’ll take care of it. Most of dem are teenagers so be better if I speak to dem. I know what ta say.” Before you can say anything else, a small ugly green child wanders in behind Warts. You don’t know how old it is, but it can’t be older than a toddler. “Wargh! blag! Graaah!” it shouts causing Warts to turn around. “Damnit, Gubbins! I told ya ta wait in da corridor!” Warts reprimands the child. “Warts, I’ll admit I’m not completely familiar with the growth size of hobgoblins, but I know damn well that’s no teenager.” “Wut? No! Dis one ain’t robbin’ merchants, well at least not for another few years anyway. Dis iz my son.” Now you’re just confused. “Your son? When the hell did you have a kid?” you ask. “Two years ago I guess. Didn’t know for an entire year either since I hadn’t been back ta visit Snuffit in awhile. Boy wuz she pissed at me when I returned. Anyway, he’s sort of with me for awhile since Snuffit says I should be spendin’ time him. She’s probably right. It’s hard growin’ up with no father.” Warts says with a bit of an introspective look down. “Hm, I suppose you would know about that. You never told me all this about having a family and shit.” “Didn’t think you’d be interested given how youz got yer mind on other things. Got a daughter too, Zuggins. Twins actually. That’s another reason why Snuffit wuz so pissed at me. Hey, didn’t youz say you were a twin?” “Yeah. So about these other hobs, you sure they’re going to listen to you? Last time I remember you weren’t accepted as a true hob with the Spider Fangs.” “I told ya, things are different now. Most of da assholes I didn’t get along with are dead in dat tribe and it’s takin’ a new look on things as it were. Most of da young hobs I’m suggestin, are orphans now anyway and like I said, I kinda know what it’s like not growin’ up with at least one parent so I think dey gonna…I dunno identify wit me more an’ youz don’t have ta waste yer time.” You think about this a few moments. “Alright, you seem to have come up with one good idea that’s gone over well, so I’m trusting you on this Warts. Go make the preparations.” Warts nods and leaves with his spawn who sticks his tongue at you. You snicker a bit at the thought of Warts having a couple kids, but you suppose he seems happy with them. You’re just glad you aren’t saddled with any; you’ve got enough complications in your life. Then again with the curse you have, that isn’t likely to ever be a problem. In any case when Vera hears about what you’ve allowed she doesn’t do much but shake her head. “What?” you ask. “Nothing, you’re the boss.” She says. “But obviously you have issues with this.” “Look, if you want to hire more hobs on the payroll fine. I can see them being an asset in a menial manner, and working outside Holgard on the road robbery jobs is probably the best place for them mainly because I won’t have to deal with the filthy greenskins.” “But?” “But, my issue is you placing so much fucking trust in Warts. I thought you were smarter than that. Mark my words, that little halfbreed is going to get drunk with power and try to betray you.” “Warts? I…mean I’d never rule anything out, but Warts really isn’t the leader type. I’m surprised he’s taken on as much responsibility as he has honestly.” “Yeah, well maybe his new family man role is urging the halfbreed to start thinking about his future. Maybe his ugly hob bitch is nagging him to earn more for their equally foul hob spawn.” “Sheesh Vera, I didn’t know you hated hobs so much.” “Yeah well they’re a bunch of savages, and I’d watch Warts if I were you. Nothing worse than a mildly intelligent savage with delusions of grandeur.” Well Vera’s made it quite clear how she feels at any rate. A few more months pass and so far there haven’t been any issues with your arrangement and business is doing fine. The religious faction war is still going on, but you’re still keeping out of that one. The only thing that’s starting to bother you a bit is that Warts has apparently restructured the “bandit parties” outside Holgard without your knowledge. While you replaced some of your less “outdoors” folks with hobs, Warts has been completely segregating the groups so that the hobs are all in one and all the humans are in another. When confronted by this, Warts explains that the hobs just work better together since they all grew up in the same tribe. He also says there’s less potential for infighting during slow periods. He then points to how much success they’ve had with this arrangement. Still, you’ve got enough to manage and until you see signs of treachery on Warts’ part, you’ll continue to let him handle the outside operations. You’re fairly confident you’ll be savvy enough to realize if something is going wrong and even if you don’t catch it, Vera’s suspicious enough of Warts that she’ll probably tell you. Year 26 “I told you this was going to happen!” Vera shouts, as she’s running along side you. “Damn it! Don’t fucking follow us! Spread out! Spread out! Everyone spread out!” you shout at the various members also running in your direction. You never saw this coming. And despite Vera’s comments, she didn’t either, or at least not what she assumed. She was so busy worrying that Warts and the hobs were going to fuck you over that she didn’t take into consideration that their recklessness and stupidity is what drew more attention by the government, though you think you played a large part in that same stupidity by NOT keeping a better eye on things and just leaving it all to Warts. Now it’s everyone for themselves as you’re stomping through the sewers trying to evade the Holgard Watch who apparently took a step back from keeping the religious factions from destroying small parts of the city, to focus on the assholes who were severely disrupting trade in the city. It’s one thing to rob the odd merchant here and there, but when enough of them were going missing, the Baroness had no choice but to step in. And she stepped hard. Ideally, you could have separated yourself and just placed all the blame on the hobs and claiming that they weren’t part of the Nocturnal League, but Ludmilla was unfortunately a little smarter than just sending her troops into the woods and had a series of spies (Some of who you think were probably Felians, since you know she had ties to the church at one point). Hobs, never being the subtlest ended up unwittingly showing the Baroness where the hell your secret tunnels to the city were and practically to your front fucking doorstep as they were dragging goods back. It’s actually amazing you managed to fight your way out of this surprise attack like you did. Your headquarters is gone though and you can’t imagine that your businesses in the city are going to be around much longer. Eventually you finally evade the law and it’s just you and Vera panting heavily ankle deep in shit water. She immediately starts bitching at you about your bad choices while you’re attempting to figure out your next move. “Will stop fucking being a massive bitch right now? I know everything’s fucked up! I just need a minute to think for a moment!” you say, trying not to shout and possibly alert attention. “Think? You should have been doing that before! This is a fucking disaster! Y’know I actually thought you were someone worth following. I even had a little crush on you even though you kept turning me down, but shit, I can see now that you’re a damn jinx at best and a complete fucking idiot at worst and I’m not hanging around you any longer! Have a nice fucking life!” Vera snaps. As Vera starts walking away from you, you realize that you have no more organization and no more followers of any kind and oddly that’s what feels more like a loss to you than the massive amount of coin. You were actually stating to just get into your role as an underworld boss and now its over already! Ironically, the only thing you might have left are your people outside of Holgard unless Ludmilla caught up with them too, but given how many of her people came to wipe you out just now, you have to think she focused her forces on the inside of the city rather than the outside. You imagine Warts might be out there somewhere, it’s just a matter of tracking him down. Then again, Warts and the hobs are what caused this mess in the first place; maybe you need to just start over somewhere else. Still, you don’t want to start completely over. This is a lot easier with help and Vera would still be pretty useful in that regard. She’s pretty pissed at you though so you don’t know if that ship has sailed. > You convince Vera For all her faults, Vera’s your best shot at properly rebuilding a new organization again. You probably should have gone with her plans to get into the slave trade rather than listen to Warts in the first place. You run back to Vera and call out to her. “Vera stop. Stop. Let’s talk about this. I apologize for calling you a bitch.” You say. “Will you keep your fucking voice down? There are soldiers crawling all over the sewers right now and you’re calling attention to our location! And as I said, I don’t have anything else to say to you. It’s obvious you’ve never appreciated my advice, so I don’t see why I should waste anymore time with you.” Vera snaps. When you don’t respond immediately, Vera stops walking and stares at you expectantly. “Well?” Vera asks. “Because…because I really do care about you.” You say suddenly. “Oh fuck off! You do not! You have gone out of your way several times to make it quite clear that you are NOT interested in me. You’re just telling me this shit so I’ll join you again and now I’m fucking insulted that you think so low of me that I’ll follow you around like some love sick admirer.” “No, it’s true! I really do have feelings for you, I just was too …argh, it’s a long story. Just you gotta believe me on this.” “You’re going to have to do a better job at explaining if you want me to believe you.” You realize this is going to take a lot of sweet talk to patch this relationship up and in the back of your mind if you’re successful, you’re still going to have another issue to deal with, but maybe if you explain the curse to her, she’ll be sympathetic. “(Sigh) Fine. I’ve never told this to anyone before, but for you I’ll do it. Okay, here it is, I’m fucking cursed.” You say. “No shit.” Vera remarks. “No, I’m not talking about what happened with the League, that was just…bad management on my part though I suppose the curse played a part in my bad decisions.” “Look, if you’re cursed, then I REALLY don’t want anything to do with you.” “Will you listen?! You asked me to explain, so I’m trying to! It’s not that sort of curse anyway. It’s on my dick and that’s why I kept pushing you away.” Vera steps back from you. “What you got crotch rot?” Vera asks. “I wish it was that simple. No, what I got is…” Suddenly you hear a loud blast and feel the piercing of a metal object hitting you in the back. You fall down in the filthy water and struggle to breathe, let alone get back up. The shouting of several watchmen is heard followed by Vera shouting back and returning fire. She attempts to pull you up, but the bullet has shattered your spine and you’re not going anywhere “Go…just go…” you utter as she gives you a frustrated look mixed with sadness before running off. Dying face down in shit water is one of the less dignified ways to go out, but you don’t dwell on it to much before one of Holgard’s finest puts you down for good with a bullet to your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Besides your distaste for slavery, Warts’ plan sounds a lot simpler to implement and you figure Vera won’t be occasionally trying flirt with you for favors (or whatever) if you side with him and hence removing temptation. Vera’s right about someone potentially “going rogue” and just fucking off to do their own thing so you’ll have to really lay down the punishment implications to everyone about doing such a thing. Which is exactly what you do. You also tell everyone to not create a bloodbath and if they do, they need to take steps in covering their tracks. Last thing you want is to create too much attention. Warts is mildly smug about you choosing his plan over Vera who in turn is obviously perturbed. She makes no pretenses about not wanting to be one of those stumbling about in the woods. You reassure her she can focus on her city activities since reassigning her would just cause unnecessary conflict in the long term anyway. A few months pass and you’re making a fair amount on this venture. You weren’t sure about it at first, but Warts had a good idea. Surprisingly he has another one. “Hey boss, I got some hobs from da Spider Fangs dat wanna join wit us.” Warts says. “Really? Thought you told me the Spider Fangs shun human civilization centers.” You say. “Eh, ever since dey got their asses kicked hard by da elves and lost a good portion of the tribe, there’s been sum serious re-thinkin’ on how things are gonna work now. Anyway, just wunderin’ if they can join.” “I’m guessing you had something in mind for them to specifically do?” “I figured dey can take part in robbin’ da merchants gig we got going now.” “Yeah, and I figured that’s what you’d suggest. Probably would be the best use of their skills I imagine. I suppose that would free up some of the folks who still aren’t exactly thrilled about their new assignment. They can come back to the city and the hobs can take their place. Now do I have to talk to these hobs about how I want things done or are you taking care of it?” “I’ll take care of it. Most of dem are teenagers so be better if I speak to dem. I know what ta say.” Before you can say anything else, a small ugly green child wanders in behind Warts. You don’t know how old it is, but it can’t be older than a toddler. “Wargh! blag! Graaah!” it shouts causing Warts to turn around. “Damnit, Gubbins! I told ya ta wait in da corridor!” Warts reprimands the child. “Warts, I’ll admit I’m not completely familiar with the growth size of hobgoblins, but I know damn well that’s no teenager.” “Wut? No! Dis one ain’t robbin’ merchants, well at least not for another few years anyway. Dis iz my son.” Now you’re just confused. “Your son? When the hell did you have a kid?” you ask. “Two years ago I guess. Didn’t know for an entire year either since I hadn’t been back ta visit Snuffit in awhile. Boy wuz she pissed at me when I returned. Anyway, he’s sort of with me for awhile since Snuffit says I should be spendin’ time him. She’s probably right. It’s hard growin’ up with no father.” Warts says with a bit of an introspective look down. “Hm, I suppose you would know about that. You never told me all this about having a family and shit.” “Didn’t think you’d be interested given how youz got yer mind on other things. Got a daughter too, Zuggins. Twins actually. That’s another reason why Snuffit wuz so pissed at me. Hey, didn’t youz say you were a twin?” “Yeah. So about these other hobs, you sure they’re going to listen to you? Last time I remember you weren’t accepted as a true hob with the Spider Fangs.” “I told ya, things are different now. Most of da assholes I didn’t get along with are dead in dat tribe and it’s takin’ a new look on things as it were. Most of da young hobs I’m suggestin, are orphans now anyway and like I said, I kinda know what it’s like not growin’ up with at least one parent so I think dey gonna…I dunno identify wit me more an’ youz don’t have ta waste yer time.” You think about this a few moments. “Alright, you seem to have come up with one good idea that’s gone over well, so I’m trusting you on this Warts. Go make the preparations.” Warts nods and leaves with his spawn who sticks his tongue at you. You snicker a bit at the thought of Warts having a couple kids, but you suppose he seems happy with them. You’re just glad you aren’t saddled with any; you’ve got enough complications in your life. Then again with the curse you have, that isn’t likely to ever be a problem. In any case when Vera hears about what you’ve allowed she doesn’t do much but shake her head. “What?” you ask. “Nothing, you’re the boss.” She says. “But obviously you have issues with this.” “Look, if you want to hire more hobs on the payroll fine. I can see them being an asset in a menial manner, and working outside Holgard on the road robbery jobs is probably the best place for them mainly because I won’t have to deal with the filthy greenskins.” “But?” “But, my issue is you placing so much fucking trust in Warts. I thought you were smarter than that. Mark my words, that little halfbreed is going to get drunk with power and try to betray you.” “Warts? I…mean I’d never rule anything out, but Warts really isn’t the leader type. I’m surprised he’s taken on as much responsibility as he has honestly.” “Yeah, well maybe his new family man role is urging the halfbreed to start thinking about his future. Maybe his ugly hob bitch is nagging him to earn more for their equally foul hob spawn.” “Sheesh Vera, I didn’t know you hated hobs so much.” “Yeah well they’re a bunch of savages, and I’d watch Warts if I were you. Nothing worse than a mildly intelligent savage with delusions of grandeur.” Well Vera’s made it quite clear how she feels at any rate. A few more months pass and so far there haven’t been any issues with your arrangement and business is doing fine. The religious faction war is still going on, but you’re still keeping out of that one. The only thing that’s starting to bother you a bit is that Warts has apparently restructured the “bandit parties” outside Holgard without your knowledge. While you replaced some of your less “outdoors” folks with hobs, Warts has been completely segregating the groups so that the hobs are all in one and all the humans are in another. When confronted by this, Warts explains that the hobs just work better together since they all grew up in the same tribe. He also says there’s less potential for infighting during slow periods. He then points to how much success they’ve had with this arrangement. Still, you’ve got enough to manage and until you see signs of treachery on Warts’ part, you’ll continue to let him handle the outside operations. You’re fairly confident you’ll be savvy enough to realize if something is going wrong and even if you don’t catch it, Vera’s suspicious enough of Warts that she’ll probably tell you. Year 26 “I told you this was going to happen!” Vera shouts, as she’s running along side you. “Damn it! Don’t fucking follow us! Spread out! Spread out! Everyone spread out!” you shout at the various members also running in your direction. You never saw this coming. And despite Vera’s comments, she didn’t either, or at least not what she assumed. She was so busy worrying that Warts and the hobs were going to fuck you over that she didn’t take into consideration that their recklessness and stupidity is what drew more attention by the government, though you think you played a large part in that same stupidity by NOT keeping a better eye on things and just leaving it all to Warts. Now it’s everyone for themselves as you’re stomping through the sewers trying to evade the Holgard Watch who apparently took a step back from keeping the religious factions from destroying small parts of the city, to focus on the assholes who were severely disrupting trade in the city. It’s one thing to rob the odd merchant here and there, but when enough of them were going missing, the Baroness had no choice but to step in. And she stepped hard. Ideally, you could have separated yourself and just placed all the blame on the hobs and claiming that they weren’t part of the Nocturnal League, but Ludmilla was unfortunately a little smarter than just sending her troops into the woods and had a series of spies (Some of who you think were probably Felians, since you know she had ties to the church at one point). Hobs, never being the subtlest ended up unwittingly showing the Baroness where the hell your secret tunnels to the city were and practically to your front fucking doorstep as they were dragging goods back. It’s actually amazing you managed to fight your way out of this surprise attack like you did. Your headquarters is gone though and you can’t imagine that your businesses in the city are going to be around much longer. Eventually you finally evade the law and it’s just you and Vera panting heavily ankle deep in shit water. She immediately starts bitching at you about your bad choices while you’re attempting to figure out your next move. “Will stop fucking being a massive bitch right now? I know everything’s fucked up! I just need a minute to think for a moment!” you say, trying not to shout and possibly alert attention. “Think? You should have been doing that before! This is a fucking disaster! Y’know I actually thought you were someone worth following. I even had a little crush on you even though you kept turning me down, but shit, I can see now that you’re a damn jinx at best and a complete fucking idiot at worst and I’m not hanging around you any longer! Have a nice fucking life!” Vera snaps. As Vera starts walking away from you, you realize that you have no more organization and no more followers of any kind and oddly that’s what feels more like a loss to you than the massive amount of coin. You were actually stating to just get into your role as an underworld boss and now its over already! Ironically, the only thing you might have left are your people outside of Holgard unless Ludmilla caught up with them too, but given how many of her people came to wipe you out just now, you have to think she focused her forces on the inside of the city rather than the outside. You imagine Warts might be out there somewhere, it’s just a matter of tracking him down. Then again, Warts and the hobs are what caused this mess in the first place; maybe you need to just start over somewhere else. Still, you don’t want to start completely over. This is a lot easier with help and Vera would still be pretty useful in that regard. She’s pretty pissed at you though so you don’t know if that ship has sailed. > You find Warts Vera’s made her point clear and quite frankly you don’t really think its worth it to convince her if she’s got that much bad feelings toward you. You’d be better off starting from scratch. Hopefully, you won’t have to though since again there’s a chance some of your people might be still in the woods somewhere. After skulking about in the sewers for an unfortunate length of time, you finally manage to sneak out and away from the city entirely. You think about going to your private stash you have buried, but decide if you really need monetary incentive to convince anyone to still follow you, then it probably won’t be worth it or you can do it as a last resort. You try to go to the last known places where your people had camps, but you have to spend most of your time avoiding the Holgard Watch who are patrolling the nearby area a lot more. After having to kill a few of them, you find remnants of one of the League’s camps which display signs of battle what with the bloody bodies of your people lying around. It’s apparent that the Watch isn’t bothering to take prisoners. Doesn’t look like they took out the League hob camp though since you don’t find them among the dead (you do find some of the Watch dead though). Given that they’re probably a lot more experienced outdoors they probably retreated further into the forest. While you’re not exactly some wilderness tracker, hobs aren’t exactly the cleanest and tend to leave trash around. You begin to follow the trail as best you can. You continue your search, but it’s been awhile since you’ve been stomping about in the wilderness and it’s soon apparent that you’re not exactly prepared since you get turned around several times. You spend the next few days in the forest getting yourself more lost despite the fact that you thought you were logically following a trail. You imagine they headed to Spiderfang territory but its not like you even know if you’re close to there or not. You’re tired, dirty, hungry, thirsty and just all around miserable. Eventually you decide to just give up and try to make your way back. You THINK you might know how to get back to the main road and from there you’re going to go back to dig up your stash and make your way elsewhere entirely because this has been a complete disaster. You’re starting to wonder if you should have just tried to convince Vera to join you. In your haste to try to get your bearings, you’re slightly less observant of the little things and unfortunately for you that results in worse than just being lost. You step into a pit trap and fall directly onto several sharpened branches. The pain is excruciating since you weren’t lucky enough for the wooden spikes to kill you right away. You howl out in agony for hours, but nobody comes. Eventually the blood loss and organ damage takes enough of a toll on you that you begin to lose consciousness. You’re dying and at this point you don’t even care anymore. Your last thoughts are how it’s an ignoble death to die like some animal out in the middle of the woods, but it’s a lot better than continuing to be in pain. You wish you had done a lot of things differently in your life, but it’s too late for that now. A day later your body is found by some hobs who were in the League and Warts soon learns of your demise when they bring your body to the hobgoblin village for food where he and the rest retreated to. Apparently you had stumbled into Spiderfang territory after all. Out of respect, Warts insists that you be properly buried rather than eaten. At least there was a little dignity after all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 25 Things could always be better of course, but all things considered the Nocturnal League is doing well under your leadership. You actually managed to surprise yourself. Reminds you of when your father once told you that you could do very well anything if you just applied yourself. Well you did, but you’re pretty sure he didn’t have this in mind. Of course part of your success isn’t just all your own talent. It probably helps that the city is once again experiencing an inner conflict. Not a revolution or anything like that, but more of a religious faction war. Holgard has always had a bit of a problem with religion and it’s the fact that there is too much of it in the city. It didn’t start off as violent as its become, but its been bad enough that the Holgard Watch has been more focused on breaking up fights between religious factions and members in the streets than keeping an eye on crime and happily, the Holgard Watch has slowly started to revert back to their corrupt ways. Not enough like the old days, but enough that they aren’t as much of a problem anymore. As for your organization’s role in the current religious squabble, you’ve managed to keep out of it so far and you’ve told everyone else to do likewise. This is mainly towards a few ex-Syndicate members that still have leanings towards the Temple of Fel. Though more than a few in your group give a few prayers to Yag too and while you’ve been known to do the same from time to time, you aren’t looking to side with them either. At least not unless there is some profitable reason for doing so. In any case, there are also other areas some of your more enterprising members have been trying to convince you of expanding into. “I’m telling you, we really should bring slave market back. It brought in a lot of coin when it existed and I’m fairly certain I could convince some of those Hessla pirates to bring their business here again.” Vera says. “Feh, if it did all that well, why weren’t you rich?” Warts asks. “Because Elias was a bastard boss that kept most of the money and then would promptly blow it all on alcohol and Blue Dream. I know with a more levelheaded person like our current boss running things, a new slave market could be even more profitable.” “Sheesh, such obvious flattery. Why don’t ya just suck his dick while ya at it?” “Fuck off Warts, why the hell is this half breed even still allowed around here? He’s always claiming he isn’t really part of the League anyway.” “Eh, Warts likes to play the role of a freelance outsider, mainly because he’s been doing it for so long he’s comfortable in that role. Nevermind the fact that deep down inside he wants to be part of a tribe. And that’s us, though he’ll never admit that, right Warts?” you say. “Right. No wait! I’m not part of the League! Fuck, youz twisted my words! Anyway, slave market is a bad idea, too much upkeep, an’ too much trouble ta capture people. Youz should just expand outside the city and send sum people ta rob the merchants on da road.” Warts says. “Oh, brilliant idea. Since when the hell did we become a bunch of unsophisticated bandits?” Vera remarks. “Given the lot we have, I don’t think sophisticated is exactly the word that would describe most here.” You remark. “Well you may be right, but come on, don’t you think we’re at least above that sort of guileless criminal activity? Besides, you send some of these people out there to do that and it isn’t like you can keep as good of an eye on them. If they get successful enough, they may just decide to keep everything and fuck off elsewhere leaving us with nothing.” As with most ideas, everything has its pros and cons, you need to think about all this a lot more. You tell Warts and Vera this and while Warts happily leaves your office to go about his own hobbies, Vera stays behind. “Is there something else?” you ask. Vera goes over to the door and locks it, which immediately causes you to draw on her. “Shit! What the hell man?” she exclaims raising her hands up. “What the hell indeed, you’re the one locking the door and acting all suspicious.” You answer. “I’m not trying to assassinate you if that’s what you’re thinking, I just wanna talk to you a little more privately so we aren’t interrupted.” “About what? I told you I’d think about your proposal.” “Yes, but I REALLY think I can convince you that my idea is a good one.” At this point Vera starts unbuttoning her shirt and unsuccessfully attempting to walk seductively towards you and stumbling in the process. It’s pretty embarrassing. “Stop. Stop. Stop. Are you seriously doing what I think you’re trying to do?” you ask. “Hey look, I’m not proud. If I gotta suck your dick in order to convince you to set up a new slave market here and make me head slaver, then that’s what I’ll fucking do.” “Head slaver, interesting choice of words considering this situation. And now you don’t just want me to go with your idea, you want to be in charge of it. That’s pretty presumptuous of you.” “It’s pretty presumptuous that you won’t, after I’m done.” Looks like she took Wart’s suggestion to heart. At this point Vera’s on her knees in front of you and her face is practically making a beeline towards your crotch. While this “offer isn’t completely unenticing, you’ve got some reservations and not just the usual ones. “Vera just stop. This isn’t going to work.” You say pushing her away a bit. “What? So you wanna fuck me? I mean we can do that too…um you don’t want to do it the other way do you? I mean…if I gotta take it in the ass, (sigh) I will, but you can’t expect me to fake enjoying that.” “No! We’re not doing anything Vera. Just put your tits away and get your hands off my dick.” While this would probably be enough to give most the hint that one isn’t interested, Vera’s a little more persistent. “Okay, I’m confused. Based on my observations of how I’ve seen you look at women, I know damn well you like girls. In fact, I’ve noticed you even checking me out on occasion and your dick was getting hard when I was touching it so I know it can’t be because you find me repulsive. And I doubt if you have any moral objections…” Vera says before you interrupt. “That’s exactly it. I like to get to know someone first before being intimate with them. Maybe that sounds weird to someone so free with their…sexual activity, but that’s just how I was raised and some things just stuck with me.” “You’re kidding. We work together, while I don’t pretend that we know everything about each other, we’re not exactly strangers.” “Look, I don’t shit where I eat, so if you don’t mind, get the fuck out of here and go blow somebody who cares!” Vera isn’t exactly buying your excuse, but she’s buttoning up her shirt and getting back up. “I know you’re the boss and all, but I have to say, sometimes you’re a very poor liar. But, whatever just as long as you’re not chopping my head off to make a point I guess.” Vera lets herself out and you’re breathing a sigh of relief that you didn’t give in since you’re fairly certain you would have, had Vera not left when she did. You’ve never told anyone this, but you’re convinced that having sex results in your partner’s death. Not instantly, but there’s been too many incidences for it to be a coincidence. For a long time after your parting of ways with Tanya you didn’t even show much interest in other women. Indeed you felt a great loss as if she died and you were in mourning. Tanya however, was correct that in time you’d “get over” her. Maybe not mentally (You can’t help but think about her still) but physically you definitely did. So it was with no surprise that during your time before forming the League you went with a few other women from time to time. And every single one of them died. In your line of work you tend to bump into the same people and frequent the same places. So you started to get suspicious when women you had been intimate with started always winding up dead… The taverns… “Where’s Lucy? Usually she’s serving drinks tonight.” “Lucy? You didn’t hear? She fell off the docks and drowned two days ago. Tragic.” The streets… “Any of you lot seen Ophelia around?” “You mean the new up and coming cutpurse with the cute face and nice ass? She got a bolt to the head a week ago. Found dead in an alley. Damn shame, she had a lot of potential. Fucking tragic.” And especially the brothels… “I think I’d like Francine tonight.” “Francine? Oh, you must not have heard. She was found dead of a Yellow Devil overdose a week ago. It’s weird because I made sure none of my girls ever took drugs, let alone that vile stuff. Tragic.” “Oh. Sorry to hear it. Um, well I guess I’ll take Patricia then.” “She’s no longer with us either. She was murdered by some unknown assailant nearly a month ago. Very tragic.” “Well shit…” “I might as well tell you too, that Helena is also gone. Died in a house fire yesterday. I tell you, it’s been a tough time for this place lately, but hey we’re always here to please and there are still many lovely girls here. Hey did you want to see Naji? She’s free this time and it’s been years since you indulged in her services. I bet she’d love to see you again. Always said you used to be the best customer she ever had.” “Um, no. I gotta go.” While perhaps it is just very bad luck and coincidence that all these ladies that you were intimate with, met tragic deaths, but you feel very certain that this has something to do with being bonded with Tanya. It’s your curse as it were. If you were a complete asshole you suppose you wouldn’t give a shit and just think with your dick anyway, but even if you just gave into your base desires, Vera’s useful enough that you’d hate to lose her help in the organization. Besides all that, you half wonder if Tanya is somehow keeping track of you. Granted you’ve not seen her in person or even a dream ever since she departed to the infernal realm, but she said she’d always be linked to you. What if every girl you’ve fucked is just making her madder and madder? What if one day she’ll come back to punish your “infidelity”? True, you two were never married and she did tell you to go live your life, but…well she IS a demon and who knows what the hell she’s like now. You’re starting to wonder that maybe you weren’t so much bored when you came up with the idea to form the Nocturnal League so much as you were trying to keep your mind occupied on other things. It actually has worked great in that regard, or it did until Vera was about to pursue promotion via cock sucking. (Well at least taking matters into your own hand is always safe) In any case, you put Vera’s inviting mouth out of your mind and refocus on business, which involves going over the ideas that were proposed to you by Vera and Warts in the first place. > You expand inside Holgard Everything else aside, Vera did have point about Wart’s plan which doesn’t seem very efficient. If anything engaging in more banditry on the roads to Holgard might cause the government to increase security so trade isn’t hampered. Better you should stick to things that won’t directly fuck with the government too much directly and Vera already has experience in the whole slave market thing so you’re confident she’ll know how to run it properly. The only thing you do have concerns about is…well the whole slavery thing. You don’t profess to be a saint of Joachim, but this seems a bit too far even for you. You aren’t even sure where you’re going to be getting these slaves from in the first place. Since she’s the expert, you decide to have another discussion with Vera about all this before making a final decision, but not right now. You figure after what happened you probably should wait a bit before seeing her again. The next day you meet with her in your office again and she seems surprised that you’re entertaining her idea. “Wow, I just thought after yesterday, you weren’t interested. Well this is great, you’ll see!” Vera remarks. “Well I’m still going to need convincing if this is something we need to get into. So you’ll need to persuade me why this is worth pursuing AND I don’t mean with your body.” You say. “Very well. What did you have concerns with exactly?” “Warts mentioned that keeping captives costs coin. I mean how much are we going to be spending to keep them before selling them?” “Oh, not that much. Really all you have to do is provide the bare minimum most of the time.” “But doesn’t that sort of decrease the quality?” “Yes if enough time passes, but that’s why you try to sell as quickly as possible. Obviously women typically sell for a lot more than men and they sell faster.” “So where are we getting these slaves anyway?” “Well back when I was working for Elias, we usually nabbed people off the street. Get ‘em drunk at a tavern. Trick ‘em into a dark alley. Y’know like robbing someone except instead of taking just their money, you take them too. Sometimes we bought them off of Hessla pirates and sold them for a higher profit to someone else. I’ll have to get re-connect with my Hessla contacts before we can do that though.” You look down a bit and frown. “What’s wrong?” Vera asks. “I dunno, maybe this is just not something I feel comfortable with.” “Wait a minute. You’ve got a moral quandary about THIS too? If I didn’t know any better I’d start thinking I had joined Joachim’s church!” “Look, I told you that YOU needed to convince me. So convince me.” “Okay so what are you having a problem with exactly? Wait, let me guess. It’s the whole sex thing isn’t it? Geez, you got some weird hang ups about sex.” “Well that IS what these women are going to be sold for right?” “How is that different than the brothels we run?” “It’s a big fucking difference! For one, the whores at least have a say in things.” “Does it make a difference that some of the guys are probably used for fuck holes too?” “Not really.” “Okay, then would it make a difference if ALL the slaves were just being used to go get worked to death in some iron mine?” “Well…at least I’d feel like we were at least contributing to the economy in some way as opposed to just feeling like we’re running one big rape factory.” “Oh and I suppose our protection rackets and our Purple Wish dens are great contributions to society as well.” “Call it my own twisted sense of honor, but at least our extortion of businesses isn’t completely one sided. I mean we ARE offering protection. Also we’re not shoving Purple Wish down anyone’s throat. If people want to get high, we’re providing a product. If people want to be idiots and get addicted well that’s on them. Our gambling places work the same way. Nobody is forcing anyone to go into debt.” “Hmm, maybe not, but I still think we should re-open a slave market. Sex slaves are just too profitable to not get into.” “Well wait a minute. What about fighting slaves? Y’know slaves that fight each other and people bet on who wins.” “You mean like for underground gladiator matches? Eh…yeah we bought a few of pit slaves once and it didn’t go so well. You want to talk about upkeep, those bastards need upkeep because you need to keep them in good condition for a potential buyer. Not to mention on almost every occasion they tried to escape or kill one of us. One of them actually succeeded in killing four people under Elias before being subdued. I don’t think it’s worth it and I find it funny that you’re perfectly okay with that brand of slavery as opposed to the sexual kind. You really are a prude aren’t you?” “Maybe I am, but I’m also still not entirely convinced of the upkeep costs being low. I mean if we’re going to go into this, I would prefer our slaves to be known as being good quality and not half starving and dirty.” “Well if you’re worried about that, we could always stick to children.” “Children?!” “Sure! We used to sell more than a few back in the old days and they’re really low upkeep and easy to nab as well.” You’re done. “No. We are NOT capturing and selling fucking kids! THAT is where I’m drawing the damn line. In fact I’m thinking this whole thing is a bad idea.” You say. “So…what then? You’re going to go with Wart’s idea?” Vera asks. “No, that’s retarded for different reasons. I’m going with my own idea. We’re going to hold underground gladiator matches.” “I thought you said we weren’t getting into slaves.” “We aren’t, this will all be voluntary. Plenty of stupid assholes that are willing to try to prove they’re tough for a bit of coin. If they get themselves killed, well that’s on them and either way, we don’t need to worry about keeping anyone in good condition, unless we’re fixing a particular fight. Hell, we could also use people that are falling behind in their debts to participate rather than breaking their legs. So no slaves needed.” “I dunno, if we’re pressing potential deadbeats into fights, that’s sort of like enslaving them isn’t it?” “Okay, maybe it is, but at least we’re just trying to make our money back from said deadbeat as opposed to snatching some hapless girl off the streets.” “Well we could always apply this to our brothel whores too. I mean if a whore doesn’t make enough money for the month then she gets her ass thrown into slavery for slacking off.” You never knew that Vera is REALLY into this whole slave trade business. Though you suppose given that she worked as one for so long, it makes sense she wants to stick with it. You’re not going to hold it against her, but you’ve definitely realized that you’ve still got some scruples, scant though they may be. “We’re not peddling sex slaves of any kind, Vera. That’s it.” You say. “You sure you’re in the right business, boss?” Vera asks. “I could always cut your head off and let you decide.” “Okay, okay, no need for threats, I know you’re a badass. It’s just that I’m finding out that you’re strangely principled in ways that I’m not used to in our line of work. I guess maybe that’s a good thing. Shows you aren’t some complete psycho I suppose.” “Oh, I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion, but at least you can take comfort in the fact that IF you ever fail me, I’m not going to have you stripped naked and sell your ass to pirates.” “Well that’s one less thing to worry about at least.” After going over some more details, you tell Vera to gather up a crew and start setting things up. It isn’t what she exactly envisioned she’d be doing, but then she’s not running things. A few months pass and you’re making a good amount of coin with this new venture and you can take a little relief that there’s still some things you aren’t going to do even in your position… “Hey boss, I got some hobs from da Spider Fangs dat wanna join the fights tonight.” Warts says. “Really? Thought you told me the Spider Fangs shun human civilization centers.” You say. “Eh, ever since dey got their asses kicked hard by da elves and lost a good portion of the tribe, there’s been sum serious re-thinkin’ on how things are gonna work now. Anyway, just wunderin’ if they can join.” “Well sure, we always got room. In fact why are you coming to me about it, and not Vera anyway?” “Well I did, an’ she told me to come ta youz cuz youz might object to sum of dem.” “What would I object to, I’m no racist.” “Nah, not dat. It’s just a few of dem are young teenagers and Vera said youz might have a problem with dat.” “Oh.” Before you can give a more thorough answer a small ugly green child wanders in behind Warts. You don’t know how old it is, but it can’t be older than a toddler. “Wargh! blag! Graaah!” it shouts causing Warts to turn around. “Damnit, Gubbins! I told ya ta wait in da corridor!” Warts reprimands the child. “Warts, I’ll admit I’m not completely familiar with the growth size of hobgoblins, but I know damn well that’s no teenager.” “Wut? No! Dis one ain’t fightin’, well at least not for another few years anyway. Dis iz my son.” Now you’re just confused. “Your son? When the hell did you have a kid?” you ask. “Two years ago I guess. Didn’t know for an entire year either since I hadn’t been back ta visit Snuffit in awhile. Boy wuz she pissed at me when I returned. Anyway, he’s sort of with me for awhile since Snuffit says I should be spendin’ time him. She’s probably right. It’s hard growin’ up with no father.” Warts says with a bit of an introspective look down. “Hm, I suppose you would know about that. You never told me all this about having a family and shit.” “Didn’t think you’d be interested given how youz got yer mind on other things. Got a daughter too, Zuggins. Twins actually. That’s another reason why Snuffit wuz so pissed at me. Hey, didn’t youz say you were a twin?” “Yeah. So about these other hobs…” “Um, yeah, they’re fighting age to be sure. An’ remember these are hobgoblin children that have been livin’ in da wild all their lives. I guarantee they’ve all probably killed already.” “I suppose that’s true. Do their parents know about this?” “I think most of dem are orphans due to the feud with da elves an’ they’re here to either start a new life or tryin’ ta make some coin for da tribe.” You think about this a few moments and then throw up your hands. “Fuck it, if they wanna fight. Not gonna stop them. Anyway, go talk to Vera about the match details of who to pair them up against.” Actually you should get her to set them up with an elven opponent if possible. Should incite a little more bloodthirst.” Warts nods and leaves with his spawn who sticks his tongue at you. You snicker a bit at the thought of Warts having a couple kids, but you suppose he seems happy with them. You’re just glad you aren’t saddled with any; you’ve got enough complications in your life. Then again with the curse you have, that isn’t likely to ever be a problem. > You time passes... Year 27 While conflict can be good for business, there sometimes is a point when it starts becoming a hindrance. Especially when the wrong side is winning. “The Joachimites are starting to break this stalemate and win this religious war you know. The Yagites are gone and so are the followers of Karn. The Dornans are still around, but they’ve decided to just put up a force field around their temple and ride it all out. That just leaves the Temple of Fel and rumors are that they expended a lot of their power taking down the Karnites.” Vera says. “Dey ain’t gonna last long against dem purity fanatics. They’re worse than those Neroth cultists were and there is a lot more of dem.” Warts adds. “Yeah, an’ more people are starting to join. Maybe not in their fighting ranks, but that isn’t our problem. What IS our problem is these folks are the same ones preaching for purity and living a clean life to everyone. We’re going to start having serious complications if they win and have complete influence over the city as the only religion.” The concerns that Vera and Warts both bring up aren’t lost on you, in fact you’ve been having them yourself. You’ve already been seeing a drop in profit in most of your business ventures. You were hoping to avoid getting involved and you certainly didn’t anticipate the Joachimites being so violently fanatical as they’ve been. Then again nobody really did. What you don’t understand is why the hell they’ve even been allowed to get this far. There was always the rumor that Baroness Varsakken herself was a worshipper of Fel so you would have thought she might have intervened in some direct way. But maybe it was just rumors. You can’t help but wonder if the Ebony Claw Syndicate was still around if the Temple of Fel would be doing much better than they are. It might be a case that you’re going to have to be the ones to help instead. You’re not exactly on friendly terms with the Felians, but you’ve never really had any problems with them either. Your issues with them are just like you have with any religion and that’s that you find them to be too restrictive. Honestly, if you had it to do over again, you might have sided with the Yagites since they seemed the least fanatical, though even Warts didn’t think much of them claiming that people shouldn’t organize to worship Yag in the first place. In any case, you aren’t even sure if the Felians will be receptive to an alliance or what it might even entail. You have to try though because you can’t afford to just sit by and do nothing anymore. “Guess I need to have a meeting with whoever is the head of the Temple of Fel. Do we have any actual information on that?” Vera remarks. “Um, not really boss. You know the Felians, they’re a pretty secretive bunch. In fact, don’t even know where they’re all holding out at actually now ever since their temple was directly attacked and partially destroyed.” “Mm, well put the word out that I want to talk with the high priest or whoever. I’m sure it’ll get back to them eventually.” Your orders are carried out and life continues as usual for you. Weeks pass and for a while you think you’re probably not going to get an answer. In fact you start to wonder if the Joachimites already succeeded in wiping them all out. However, one night when you’re in bed you awaken and sit up with your pistol drawn from under your pillow. A dark figure that you can barely make out sits in the corner of the room. “Not sure why you’re bothering with that thing. I could have killed you several times over already and that’s even before you actually woke up. My name is Shade.” The figure says. “Appropriate name. Was wondering when one of you lot would show up.” You say, lowering your weapon. “We’ve been a little pre-occupied as of late. Defending the faith of Fel is a tireless cause, but one we take very seriously.” “I suppose its even more tiring when you’re on the losing side.” “It may appear that way to the ignorant faithless, but I assure you that is not the case. We are merely biding our time and will strike when the time is right.” “Sure you are. And that’s why you’re here wondering what I might have to say to help quicken that wait time.” “You presume much for a petty criminal.” “Pet…okay, you know what. I’m sick of this. We can sit here all night and verbally kick each other in the balls, but the point is, I wanted to speak with you about a mutual enemy, which are those fanatical Joachimites. Now they haven’t been a direct threat to me and mine yet, but I imagine when they finally are through with you, we’ll be next in their purity crusade. Since I’d rather not have to deal with them by myself, I reached out to you for a possible alliance. I figured since you once had a similar set up with the Ebony Claw Syndicate, you wouldn’t be opposed to the idea.” You hear a snort of laughter when you mention the ECS. “Something funny?” you ask. “Yes, irony is always funny.” Shade says. “What do you mean?” “Not everyone was keen on our alliance with the Syndicate. In fact I was very vocal against our alliance with them. I felt it sullied our faith to associate with such criminals. Allowing some of them into our shadow magic secrets. It was a disgrace to Fel’s name. Joachimite’s foolishly believe they have the cornerstone on the concept of purity. Let me tell you, purity isn’t only found in the so called light.” “Well I can see that you have some strong feelings on all this.” “Damn right I do. Which is why I didn’t kill you immediately even though I could tell you had your own agenda against the Ebony Claw Syndicate the first time I met you. Now here I am dealing with you again despite our temple’s break from alliances with the unworthy.” You pause and realize who you’re talking to exactly. You remember at the time after everything that happened with the ECS you wondered if you’d have to deal with this man again. You never thought it would be in this capacity though. “So, you were sent by the Fel leadership to deal with yet another criminal group. Yeah, I can see where that would piss you off.” You say. “It’s even worse since I AM the Temple’s leadership this time. Shortly after the ECS started to collapse with the death of their boss which I have no doubt you had a hand in, there was another debate on whether or not help. It was then when I decided that our temple should seize the chance to discard our alliance and go back to basics. Let’s just say the disagreement with the leadership at the time got heated and I took our temple back to what it should be focusing on.” Shade says. “And it looks like that worked out real well for you.” “It did. At least for a time. In any case, all of my actions would seem to have been for naught since I’m here. While perhaps I believe outside influences are a corrupting influence on our faith, I must also be pragmatic if our faith is to survive in this city.” “What I don’t understand is how you lot let yourselves get in this position in the first place. I mean you fuckers sneak about silently, turn invisible, and are one with the shadows. I mean arguably that’s why the Ebony Claw was so feared in the first place, due to your alliance along with its top leaders being practitioners of Shadow magic, and I imagine they couldn’t even do everything your top followers could. What about other Fel temples elsewhere? You can’t just call on help from them? Not to mention I thought you lot even had government influence. I mean I always heard the rumor that Baroness Ludmilla was a follower of Fel.” “Well the part of that is easy to answer, because it relates back to my break away from outside influence. You see, the next closest chapter, which exists in the Delantium Kingdom where they still maintain close ties to the ECS, doesn’t exactly approve of THIS particular chapter. Hence I can expect no help from them. As for the Baroness, well let’s just say she’s a politician first and even more of a dabbler than a typical ECS lieutenant. It probably doesn’t help that I cut most ties with her on our temple other than bare minimum cordial tolerance for her superficial intrigue on our faith.” “If you hadn’t been so much of a fanatic, you might have had a few more friends to help you now.” “I remind you, that if I hadn’t been so much of a fanatic, I would have killed you a long time ago. However, you are right of course unfortunately. Lately I’ve been wondering if all of this that has happened is Fel’s way of punishing me for my hubris and past transgressions. I suppose it is equally amusing that my own rigid fanaticism caused my temple’s downfall, while that same rigid fanaticism is causing the Joachimites’ churches resurgence. Their god has been blessing them not just in the martial ways, but of magic as well. Our own shadow magic is practically rendered useless when faced with their light magic. Can’t even get anyone close enough to stealthily assassinate their known top priests. Let alone the one who’s actually leading them.” “Who is leading them anyway? I mean we’ve only got a few rumors and names.” “A bit of an enigma. So much so, it would actually make Fel proud. All we know is they call themselves The Inquisitor.” “That’s the same name I’ve heard a few times.” “Yeah and that’s about all that’s known about him, assuming it’s a guy. Have no real clue since whenever there have been sightings of the Inquisitor; the person is wearing a white mask along with a long white robe. Could be anything under there.” “You can’t assassinate him?” “Besides the fact that he moves around a lot, we’ve tried several times and we can’t get close enough. He’s also got some sort of magical protection that deflects projectiles of any kind. I suppose if we had more people maybe we could try to overwhelm him, but those damn Joachimites…they do not go down easy. Some of them rival a Karnite priest in their stubbornness to die and I should know because I’ve had to fight several of each. Yes, they are definitely not the peace and love pacifists they once were. I guess perhaps the Neroth cultists that were plaguing the city years ago lit that spark of hate back in them.” While all this is mildly fascinating, you think it’s time to get to business. “Shit, I was hoping this might be easier if we aligned. The way you’re talking you make it sound like this Inquisitor is nigh invulnerable.” You say. “I’m sure he’s not invulnerable. Peel away all that protection and I’m sure he bleeds like everyone else. It’s just getting through it, that’s all. As much as I’m loathed to admit, your help WOULD probably go a long way in the Joachimites’ eventual defeat. For one thing they aren’t expecting an attack from your group. Set it up right and you could probably do a lot of damage with your first attack. Be prepared for the retaliation though, because it will be fierce. Hope you’re ready to take some personnel losses.” Shade says. “I’m more concerned by financial losses, but better to take a big loss now than a complete loss later if we don’t help at all. Just wish there was another way rather than the slog that’s going to ensue. If we could take out this Inquisitor leader immediately, I would imagine the rest might lose some of their fight.” “Don’t be so sure. Remember, all of these people are motivated by their love and faith of Joachim, not this Inquisitor. He’s just leading the charge. However, you may have a point in that if he was out of the picture quicker, then perhaps those of lesser conviction may indeed be shaken enough to no longer be a concern. While our attempts at breaking through the Inquisitor’s magic defenses have failed, I can think of one group who might be able to and that’s the Dornans.” “And I take it you’re not on good terms with them either.” “No, however you are a neutral party and if you’re willing, you might be able to talk with them. Of course there’s a bit of a danger though. The Dornans as you might know have taken a cocoon like approach to this whole event with their protective barrier around their own temple. Only Holgard Watchmen who patrol through the area at times are allowed anywhere near the place. The Joachimites attempted an attack on it once and they were incinerated almost instantly. Even they haven’t dared to do it again.” “So if I go to talk with them, at best they’ll probably ignore me, at worst they’ll turn me into ash.” “Essentially, yes. Up to you though if you want to take that risk. If you do and assuming you’re successful, I believe on my end we can track down the latest where abouts of the Inquisitor and hit him hard. This brings me to my question to you. Regardless of what approach we go with, what exactly is it that you want of the Temple of Fel in exchange for your assistance in this matter?” “Oh that. Well I haven’t made up my mind on that exactly yet. Don’t worry though, I have no intention on insisting that you teach me or any Nocturnal League members shadow magic or otherwise intertwine our two organizations. All I ask for is if there comes a day where I need a really need a big favor, I expect you to honor it.” You say. “How big exactly?” Shade asks. “Oh not bigger than saving an entire organization from extinction I assure you. In any case, I know you’re obviously a man of great faith so I expect you to make this promise to Fel that you will help me whenever that day comes. Do this and I will take your word as true.” You hear nothing for a moment followed by a loud sigh. This has to be killing Shade, but better his pride dies tonight than the meager remains of his temple. “Very well. Assuming you succeed in helping us, I swear by the purity of the shadows provided by Fel that give us protection against our enemies that I will help you when you call upon it in the future and extend that protection to you. Now, do you have an idea of which way you want to go with the attack?” > You war of attrition While there may be more Joachimites than Felians, you know there aren’t more of them than the Nocturnal League. It’ll just be a matter of keeping up the pressure and whittling them down. Eventually there won’t be enough of them to defend this Inquisitor properly and that’s when you’ll make the killing strike. When you explain this to Shade however, he’s less than enthusiastic about your rather laid back plan. “Honestly I had hoped you had a better idea than just simply trying to wear them down.” Shade remarks. “Well all your attempts at going in for the kill immediately have failed so maybe a new approach is what is needed.” You reply. “If you haven’t noticed, my organization is fighting for its survival and we don’t have time to sit on our hands and wait for the enemy to overwhelm us!” “They won’t now, you’ve got our help. With our forces together the Joachimites will eventually crumble. I don’t care who this Inquisitor asshole is, he won’t be shit after all his buddies start dying.” Shade doesn’t look convinced, but he reluctantly agrees with your plan. You don’t wait too long before you put your plan into action. Also doesn’t take long before the Joachimites are on the defensive. Your first few attacks are particularly devastating to their ranks. This isn’t without cost however. As time goes on, the Joachimites manage to drum up more support in the form of their non-combative followers. All those regular Joachim fearing Holgard citizens that weren’t directly involved are now becoming more of a problem as several start openly standing up to Nocturnal League members in the streets preaching about how the League is a blight on this godless city and divine justice will soon be upon you. This never goes well for them of course, but it’s not doing wonders for you either. With so many standing up to the League, it’s harder to maintain the natural fear you were instilling in the population. Relying on more brutal methods to keep people in check works, but unfortunately you can’t collect money from the dead and the violence from your organization is getting so bad that even the normally corrupt Holgard Watch has to step in to maintain some semblance of order and you begin to lose business. In fact it gets to a point where the Baroness demands that ALL hostilities between the religious factions come to a halt or she’ll be sending in soldiers to deal with everyone involved. This goes about as well as you might expect. The Inquisitor, still as zealous as ever makes a rare public appearance calling for a holy crusade on the city itself and that anyone who truly believes in Joachim’s light, should follow or be cast down into darkness like the rest of the infidels. It is during this speech that the Felians, attempt to launch one more direct attack upon him. Shade himself even leads the charge. You would have helped had you known about it, but coordinated efforts between you and Shade haven’t been the best since you agreed to join him in the first place. You weren’t there to witness it first hand, but the assassination attempt is a failure. Shade is even killed in the process, brought down by some sort of divine light that utterly melted him. The sight was so impressive that anyone who was on the fence about joining the Joachimites became a believer that day. With the Felians broken, any of them alive after that point flee their temple and the city itself. Which ultimately leaves you and the Baroness to combat this religious mad man. (The Dornans continue to remain fiercely neutral and refuse to see anyone, remaining behind a magical barrier around their temple. The Nocturnal League isn’t out of the fight, but many of the members are seriously starting to question your leadership since nobody is making as much coin with religious fanaticism taking root and your businesses no longer being the draw they used to. A couple foolishly attempt to challenge you (which results in their death) but more of them are just thinking about leaving the city for better pickings. Warts ends up being one of those since he just disappears one day and doesn’t return. It’s possible he’s dead, but you remember he did this before during the last major Holgard conflict. Vera’s pissed and you are too to a small degree, but you aren’t excessively surprised. You continue your fight with the Joachimites and fortunately get a little relief from the government since Ludmilla finally calls a halt to ongoing hostilities towards the League since the Joachimites are a greater threat. However your activities are severely limited to just running brothels and gambling. Other activities such as extortion or dealing drugs are to no longer be tolerated. You don’t have much choice in the matter since much like the government; you can’t fight a war on two fronts and are just managing to keep the League from collapsing internally. After a few months, you maintain a more defensive posture and focus on consolidation of your own forces while Ludmilla spares no expensive in stomping out the Joachimite religion in the city. Eventually enough oppressive laws along with Ludmilla somehow coming to a deal with the Dornans to provide minor assistance the Inquisitor’s last holdout with his most fanatical followers are tracked down and defeated. All religion save for the temple of Dorna are outlawed and anyone holding Joachimite beliefs is sentenced to death, putting a final end to the religious faction war in the city once and for all. As for you and the League, it’s been a war of attrition indeed and you curse the fact that you allowed yourself to get wrapped up in this in the first place, but then again who knows if this wouldn’t have happened eventually anyway and at least the Joachimites will no longer plague the city. You’re in a much weaker position now, but you imagine that you can hopefully bounce back from it. You just need time. Year 28 “Maybe the halfbreed really is dead if he hasn’t returned yet. I certainly hope that’s the case.” Vera remarks. “Possibly, but it’s only been a year and things still aren’t really settled yet in this city. He’s probably just waiting it all out a little longer. In any case, what was it that you wanted to suggest?” you ask. “I was going to suggest that maybe it’s time we start looking to better opportunities because Holgard in its current state isn’t getting any better for us. That baroness bitch has become miss law and order all of a sudden and she’s even employing more magic in this task now thanks to her new alliance with the Dornans!” “Well last I heard Klyton isn’t exactly that great for rogues like us and Hessla is a piss poor pirate town. The Delantium Kingdom is Ebony Claw territory, so that doesn’t give many options to expand.” “I was thinking of Jicol.” “Where?” “Jicol is a port city on an island west of Hessla. They’ve got a large enough navy to fend off pirates, but as far as I know, they don’t really focus on their land based security as much.” “How do you know this?” “I got some pirate contacts who tell me shit from time to time. Honestly, I’m thinking we should just take the whole operation there, but I’m guessing you might be a little reluctant to just leave Holgard entirely.” “Well yeah, but I’ve always trusted your judgement and you’ve stuck with this organization through some rough times, so if this Jicol is open like you’re claiming, then maybe we should check it out. I guess I’d send you with some people to get started.” Vera smiles a bit when you approve of her idea so quickly. You try not to think about it too much, but you’re pretty certain that Vera is genuinely attracted to you and not just on a physical or “career” level. You don’t really want to ever think about it due to the whole fact that you’re cursed. Something you haven’t really had time to think about too much, but you need to fix it someday if you ever want to have any sort of relationship again. Maybe you could try to go see the Dornans about getting it lifted or something. In the meantime, Vera also springs some extra news on you that you weren’t expecting. “Oh, some man with a shaved head and several burn scars on his face and hands was asking about you by name at one of our brothels. He said he knew you from the old days.” Vera says. “Oh? Wait, this wasn’t an older guy was it?” you ask, suddenly wondering if it was Sneaks. (You never did learn what happened to him) “No, this guy said his name was Yinen. Said he used to do some business with you…name sounds familiar.” “Yinen? Yeah I know him! He was a fence for the Thieves Guild. Well for the Syndicate too really, maybe that’s why the name sounds familar, but in any case the last time I saw him was when I rescued him from a Neroth torture cell. Never did know what happened to him either, where the hell has he been?” “I dunno, this is second hand info I got from some of our people. All I know is he wants to speak with you about settling some debts.” “Debts? The only one I can think of between us is him repaying me for saving his life.” “Well maybe that’s what he wants to do. Here.” Vera gives you a small piece of parchment with some writing on it. “He gave this to our people and this apparently is an address of where he’s currently staying at and said you can meet him there at anytime. You want me to just have some people bring him here though?” “Nah, I can make the trip down there. He’s not Nocturnal League anyway, so he doesn’t need to know our hideout. Though who knows, maybe we’ll have a new member. Could use the help right about now. Anyway, why don’t you start making the arrangements for your trip to Jicol.” As Vera sets out to follow your orders, you decide to go visit Yinen now while you’ve got the time. You’re sort of wondering what Yinen’s meeting is all about. Last time you saw him, it wasn’t under the best circumstances and he was ranting like a madman after his torture by the Neroth cult. Hopefully he’s gotten over all that. You soon arrive at a run down house in a lower class district. The house itself looks like it suffered through the recent conflicts in the city. Wouldn’t be the only property in this city to do so. You knock on the door and soon it opens and that’s when you see Yinen. “Yinen? What the hell happened to you?” you say remarking about several things applying to him. “Hello old comrade, as for what happened to me, that’s a long story. First though, come on in and let me say I want to apologize for attacking you that day you saved me from that wretched cell.” “It’s fine. It was a long time ago…but I don’t remember the Nerothians burning you. Where did you get all these burn marks on your hands and face?” “That’s an even longer story and I’ll tell you about that too, but rest assured, what you see on my hands and face is just a fraction of what is practically all over. Doesn’t matter though, I healed and grew stronger. I had far greater losses than any superficial physical appearance.” You step inside and Yinen closes the door before walking into a humble living area. “You’ll have to excuse the mess and disrepair of this place. Used to be my parents until they died.” Yinen says. “Oh. Didn’t know your parents lived here.” You answer. “Why would you? I tended to keep my old business life as private as possible. They were good Joachim fearing folks that didn’t have much to do with me anyway. Of course that’s also what got them killed. Ludmilla didn’t show much mercy to any of those faithful to Joachim and my parents while peaceful would never willingly give up their faith. You can guess what happened.” “Yeeah…I imagine that would suck. So they died during that conflict?” “Yes, last year towards the end of it, before the Inquisitor was finally brought down by Ludmilla’s troops. I only heard about my parents a few months after everything had died down. I was a little pre-occupied with something else at the time, but I rushed back here to this accursed city as soon as possible to take care of various affairs.” Yinen at this point goes over to a small box and pulls a couple ornamental objects out of it. They look like symbols dedicated to Joachim. “Careful with those, you get caught with them and it’s the death penalty rather than just a fine and jail time. Sort of surprised those objects weren’t destroyed when your parents were…killed.” You say. “Oh these didn’t belong to them. These are mine. This house was either filled with broken furniture or garbage until I moved in. Apparently the government didn’t bother repurposing it or even seizing the property for housing someone else. Just left abandoned.” Yinen says. “Your stuff and you snuck it in here? Are you crazy?” “I suppose to many I am. I have even questioned my own sanity at times, but then I remember, Joachim has given me his guidance and holy mission. And no matter what, I will not fail in that mission. I have learned from my failures and will follow a new path to bring his divine justice.” At this point Yinen’s voice sounds more fanatical even if it remains calm and you get a very uneasy feeling. So uneasy in fact that you go for your weapon. Yinen turns around and before you know it, your pistol burns so hot in your hand that you drop it. You go for your blade, but once again you burn your hand. “Joachim’s will cannot be stopped and this city WILL learn this. I regret that I must destroy you who once saved my life. Indeed if not for you, I would not be on my holy path that I am today. For that I thank you, but you are one of the many symptoms of wickedness in this city. Perhaps if you had not attacked my flock so brutally a parley might have been possible, but then I should know that one cannot suffer a sinner. One can only cleanse them.” Yinen says raising his hands, which are emanating a white glowing light. “Shit…it was you. You were the…” “When the baroness’ men tried to kill me by setting my last church on fire and barricading me inside, they should have known that fire only purifies and will never kill those on the right path or those whose work is not yet done. All that happened in my near death experience was my focus became even clearer with the will of Joachim. I give you the only mercy I can to an infidel. I give you a quick death and may Joachim forgive you.” You attempt to run out the door, but before you even reach it, your whole body spontaneously combusts into flames. You scream in agony as the fire completely engulfs your body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 27 While conflict can be good for business, there sometimes is a point when it starts becoming a hindrance. Especially when the wrong side is winning. “The Joachimites are starting to break this stalemate and win this religious war you know. The Yagites are gone and so are the followers of Karn. The Dornans are still around, but they’ve decided to just put up a force field around their temple and ride it all out. That just leaves the Temple of Fel and rumors are that they expended a lot of their power taking down the Karnites.” Vera says. “Dey ain’t gonna last long against dem purity fanatics. They’re worse than those Neroth cultists were and there is a lot more of dem.” Warts adds. “Yeah, an’ more people are starting to join. Maybe not in their fighting ranks, but that isn’t our problem. What IS our problem is these folks are the same ones preaching for purity and living a clean life to everyone. We’re going to start having serious complications if they win and have complete influence over the city as the only religion.” The concerns that Vera and Warts both bring up aren’t lost on you, in fact you’ve been having them yourself. You’ve already been seeing a drop in profit in most of your business ventures. You were hoping to avoid getting involved and you certainly didn’t anticipate the Joachimites being so violently fanatical as they’ve been. Then again nobody really did. What you don’t understand is why the hell they’ve even been allowed to get this far. There was always the rumor that Baroness Varsakken herself was a worshipper of Fel so you would have thought she might have intervened in some direct way. But maybe it was just rumors. You can’t help but wonder if the Ebony Claw Syndicate was still around if the Temple of Fel would be doing much better than they are. It might be a case that you’re going to have to be the ones to help instead. You’re not exactly on friendly terms with the Felians, but you’ve never really had any problems with them either. Your issues with them are just like you have with any religion and that’s that you find them to be too restrictive. Honestly, if you had it to do over again, you might have sided with the Yagites since they seemed the least fanatical, though even Warts didn’t think much of them claiming that people shouldn’t organize to worship Yag in the first place. In any case, you aren’t even sure if the Felians will be receptive to an alliance or what it might even entail. You have to try though because you can’t afford to just sit by and do nothing anymore. “Guess I need to have a meeting with whoever is the head of the Temple of Fel. Do we have any actual information on that?” Vera remarks. “Um, not really boss. You know the Felians, they’re a pretty secretive bunch. In fact, don’t even know where they’re all holding out at actually now ever since their temple was directly attacked and partially destroyed.” “Mm, well put the word out that I want to talk with the high priest or whoever. I’m sure it’ll get back to them eventually.” Your orders are carried out and life continues as usual for you. Weeks pass and for a while you think you’re probably not going to get an answer. In fact you start to wonder if the Joachimites already succeeded in wiping them all out. However, one night when you’re in bed you awaken and sit up with your pistol drawn from under your pillow. A dark figure that you can barely make out sits in the corner of the room. “Not sure why you’re bothering with that thing. I could have killed you several times over already and that’s even before you actually woke up. My name is Shade.” The figure says. “Appropriate name. Was wondering when one of you lot would show up.” You say, lowering your weapon. “We’ve been a little pre-occupied as of late. Defending the faith of Fel is a tireless cause, but one we take very seriously.” “I suppose its even more tiring when you’re on the losing side.” “It may appear that way to the ignorant faithless, but I assure you that is not the case. We are merely biding our time and will strike when the time is right.” “Sure you are. And that’s why you’re here wondering what I might have to say to help quicken that wait time.” “You presume much for a petty criminal.” “Pet…okay, you know what. I’m sick of this. We can sit here all night and verbally kick each other in the balls, but the point is, I wanted to speak with you about a mutual enemy, which are those fanatical Joachimites. Now they haven’t been a direct threat to me and mine yet, but I imagine when they finally are through with you, we’ll be next in their purity crusade. Since I’d rather not have to deal with them by myself, I reached out to you for a possible alliance. I figured since you once had a similar set up with the Ebony Claw Syndicate, you wouldn’t be opposed to the idea.” You hear a snort of laughter when you mention the ECS. “Something funny?” you ask. “Yes, irony is always funny.” Shade says. “What do you mean?” “Not everyone was keen on our alliance with the Syndicate. In fact I was very vocal against our alliance with them. I felt it sullied our faith to associate with such criminals. Allowing some of them into our shadow magic secrets. It was a disgrace to Fel’s name. Joachimite’s foolishly believe they have the cornerstone on the concept of purity. Let me tell you, purity isn’t only found in the so called light.” “Well I can see that you have some strong feelings on all this.” “Damn right I do. Which is why I didn’t kill you immediately even though I could tell you had your own agenda against the Ebony Claw Syndicate the first time I met you. Now here I am dealing with you again despite our temple’s break from alliances with the unworthy.” You pause and realize who you’re talking to exactly. You remember at the time after everything that happened with the ECS you wondered if you’d have to deal with this man again. You never thought it would be in this capacity though. “So, you were sent by the Fel leadership to deal with yet another criminal group. Yeah, I can see where that would piss you off.” You say. “It’s even worse since I AM the Temple’s leadership this time. Shortly after the ECS started to collapse with the death of their boss which I have no doubt you had a hand in, there was another debate on whether or not help. It was then when I decided that our temple should seize the chance to discard our alliance and go back to basics. Let’s just say the disagreement with the leadership at the time got heated and I took our temple back to what it should be focusing on.” Shade says. “And it looks like that worked out real well for you.” “It did. At least for a time. In any case, all of my actions would seem to have been for naught since I’m here. While perhaps I believe outside influences are a corrupting influence on our faith, I must also be pragmatic if our faith is to survive in this city.” “What I don’t understand is how you lot let yourselves get in this position in the first place. I mean you fuckers sneak about silently, turn invisible, and are one with the shadows. I mean arguably that’s why the Ebony Claw was so feared in the first place, due to your alliance along with its top leaders being practitioners of Shadow magic, and I imagine they couldn’t even do everything your top followers could. What about other Fel temples elsewhere? You can’t just call on help from them? Not to mention I thought you lot even had government influence. I mean I always heard the rumor that Baroness Ludmilla was a follower of Fel.” “Well the part of that is easy to answer, because it relates back to my break away from outside influence. You see, the next closest chapter, which exists in the Delantium Kingdom where they still maintain close ties to the ECS, doesn’t exactly approve of THIS particular chapter. Hence I can expect no help from them. As for the Baroness, well let’s just say she’s a politician first and even more of a dabbler than a typical ECS lieutenant. It probably doesn’t help that I cut most ties with her on our temple other than bare minimum cordial tolerance for her superficial intrigue on our faith.” “If you hadn’t been so much of a fanatic, you might have had a few more friends to help you now.” “I remind you, that if I hadn’t been so much of a fanatic, I would have killed you a long time ago. However, you are right of course unfortunately. Lately I’ve been wondering if all of this that has happened is Fel’s way of punishing me for my hubris and past transgressions. I suppose it is equally amusing that my own rigid fanaticism caused my temple’s downfall, while that same rigid fanaticism is causing the Joachimites’ churches resurgence. Their god has been blessing them not just in the martial ways, but of magic as well. Our own shadow magic is practically rendered useless when faced with their light magic. Can’t even get anyone close enough to stealthily assassinate their known top priests. Let alone the one who’s actually leading them.” “Who is leading them anyway? I mean we’ve only got a few rumors and names.” “A bit of an enigma. So much so, it would actually make Fel proud. All we know is they call themselves The Inquisitor.” “That’s the same name I’ve heard a few times.” “Yeah and that’s about all that’s known about him, assuming it’s a guy. Have no real clue since whenever there have been sightings of the Inquisitor; the person is wearing a white mask along with a long white robe. Could be anything under there.” “You can’t assassinate him?” “Besides the fact that he moves around a lot, we’ve tried several times and we can’t get close enough. He’s also got some sort of magical protection that deflects projectiles of any kind. I suppose if we had more people maybe we could try to overwhelm him, but those damn Joachimites…they do not go down easy. Some of them rival a Karnite priest in their stubbornness to die and I should know because I’ve had to fight several of each. Yes, they are definitely not the peace and love pacifists they once were. I guess perhaps the Neroth cultists that were plaguing the city years ago lit that spark of hate back in them.” While all this is mildly fascinating, you think it’s time to get to business. “Shit, I was hoping this might be easier if we aligned. The way you’re talking you make it sound like this Inquisitor is nigh invulnerable.” You say. “I’m sure he’s not invulnerable. Peel away all that protection and I’m sure he bleeds like everyone else. It’s just getting through it, that’s all. As much as I’m loathed to admit, your help WOULD probably go a long way in the Joachimites’ eventual defeat. For one thing they aren’t expecting an attack from your group. Set it up right and you could probably do a lot of damage with your first attack. Be prepared for the retaliation though, because it will be fierce. Hope you’re ready to take some personnel losses.” Shade says. “I’m more concerned by financial losses, but better to take a big loss now than a complete loss later if we don’t help at all. Just wish there was another way rather than the slog that’s going to ensue. If we could take out this Inquisitor leader immediately, I would imagine the rest might lose some of their fight.” “Don’t be so sure. Remember, all of these people are motivated by their love and faith of Joachim, not this Inquisitor. He’s just leading the charge. However, you may have a point in that if he was out of the picture quicker, then perhaps those of lesser conviction may indeed be shaken enough to no longer be a concern. While our attempts at breaking through the Inquisitor’s magic defenses have failed, I can think of one group who might be able to and that’s the Dornans.” “And I take it you’re not on good terms with them either.” “No, however you are a neutral party and if you’re willing, you might be able to talk with them. Of course there’s a bit of a danger though. The Dornans as you might know have taken a cocoon like approach to this whole event with their protective barrier around their own temple. Only Holgard Watchmen who patrol through the area at times are allowed anywhere near the place. The Joachimites attempted an attack on it once and they were incinerated almost instantly. Even they haven’t dared to do it again.” “So if I go to talk with them, at best they’ll probably ignore me, at worst they’ll turn me into ash.” “Essentially, yes. Up to you though if you want to take that risk. If you do and assuming you’re successful, I believe on my end we can track down the latest where abouts of the Inquisitor and hit him hard. This brings me to my question to you. Regardless of what approach we go with, what exactly is it that you want of the Temple of Fel in exchange for your assistance in this matter?” “Oh that. Well I haven’t made up my mind on that exactly yet. Don’t worry though, I have no intention on insisting that you teach me or any Nocturnal League members shadow magic or otherwise intertwine our two organizations. All I ask for is if there comes a day where I need a really need a big favor, I expect you to honor it.” You say. “How big exactly?” Shade asks. “Oh not bigger than saving an entire organization from extinction I assure you. In any case, I know you’re obviously a man of great faith so I expect you to make this promise to Fel that you will help me whenever that day comes. Do this and I will take your word as true.” You hear nothing for a moment followed by a loud sigh. This has to be killing Shade, but better his pride dies tonight than the meager remains of his temple. “Very well. Assuming you succeed in helping us, I swear by the purity of the shadows provided by Fel that give us protection against our enemies that I will help you when you call upon it in the future and extend that protection to you. Now, do you have an idea of which way you want to go with the attack?” > You decisive Strike If you have a chance to take down the Joachimites in an expedient manner then you’re going to take it. Last thing you want is this to drag out any longer than you have to. You tell Shade that you’re going to try to meet with the Dornans. Shade sounds a bit surprised when you tell him but agrees that it is worth a try along with saying that they probably won’t kill you just for asking for an audience. (You sure hope he’s right.) He goes on to tell you that their high priest is Elder Flynn and he tends to be a bit aloof and always involved in some magic experiment so you might not even get to speak to him directly as he prefers to let one of his subordinates take care of things. Shade also mentions if you’ve got anything magical laying around, that might help you get a meeting with any of them since they love collecting magic items. Shade then tells you he’ll be preparing things on his side and in the unlikely event that you actually manage to get Dornan help and depending on how much help, you two can plan out your next move at that time. With those last words, Shade seemingly disappears into the darkness completely. The next day you explain the situation to Vera and Warts. Neither one is exactly enthused about the idea, but they’re just glad you’re not asking either of them to do it. “Hope Yag’s rolling in yer favor.” Warts says. “If he is, I hope he does better than he did for his loyal worshippers. Just wish I had something more than this pair of dried unicorn balls as a possible offering...Warts are you even sure this shit is magical?” You say. “Itz from a unicorn ain’t it? Itz magic trust me. Witch doctors grind dem up and make inta potions dat make yer dick HARD. Youz can last fer hours let me tell ya. One time wit Snuffit, I…” “That’s okay, don’t need to hear the details. Anyway, guess it’ll have to do.” “At the risk that you’ll take me with you, are you sure you should go attempt to do this alone?” Vera asks. “I’m literally going to speak to a bunch of people that practically eat, sleep and shit magic. If they decide to kill me, there is little anyone else in the League is going to be able to do to help so there’s really no point in anyone else getting potentially disintegrated. That’s probably not going to happen, but in case shit does go south and I don’t come back, I guess it’ll be up to you lead this organization.” “What seriously?” “Well you and Warts are the closest thing I have to seconds and I doubt if Warts wants the commitment. So you’re the obvious choice.” “Got dat right. Barely wanna do the shit I hafta.” Warts interjects. “Wow, that’s a huge responsibility and a lot of trust in me. I’m not sure what to say, thanks I guess.” Vera says responding to you. “Well I’m not dead yet, so don’t start sweating or celebrating prematurely. Okay, I’m off.” You set off to the temple of Dorna. Along the way you see several groups of Joachimite fanatics preaching their faith to passersby. Most of the citizens are just trying to go about their day and are meekly just accepting the various pamphlets the Joachimites are aggressively distributing. Your own League members should be so intimidating. Yep, their ranks definitely need to be whittled down severely. You’re just hoping the Dornans will help. That’s what you’re most concerned about, because if you don’t get their help in some meaningful way, you know full well you’ll be taking some losses if it turns into a straight up fight with the Joachimites. The closer you get to the area of Dorna’s temple, the less people you see around in general. The force field that shimmers in and out of existence and surrounds the temple has certainly done its job in keeping everyone away. When you get so close to the place that you could actually touch the field if you wanted to, you notice that beyond the field there is a robed individual sitting on steps to the entrance and reading a book. ‘Hello?” you say in order to get their attention. The robed individual looks up and you see it’s a woman. She puts her books aside to address you. “Oh hello. Not many people even walk this way anymore let alone get this close. Last ones who tried were those silly Joachimites. They learned the hard way of course. So anyway, my name is Heather and what brings the leader of the infamous Nocturnal League here?” she says. “You know who I am?” “Oh yes of course! We’re the worshippers of Dorna! Goddess of not just magic but of knowledge! We try to make it a point of knowing everything and everyone that might be important for one never knows when the knowledge may come in handy.” “Hm, never realized I actually was all that important really.” “You’re an underworld boss who not only orchestrated the downfall of the Thieves Guild, but also the Ebony Claw Syndicate chapter in this city. THEN you created your own organization, which has quickly started to gain the same influence as the ECS once did here. You are also known to be very dangerous with firearms, particularly your custom made one. While you’re probably not important in the grand scheme of the world, you’re definitely important in this city at least.” You chuckle at that brief history of yourself. “Well I suppose that’s all true, though I had good reasons for everything.” You say. “Of course you did. And I imagine you’re also here for another good reason. So what is it that you want?” Heather asks. “To cut to the chase, I wish to speak to your Elder Flynn as I’m seeking your help in taking down the Joachimites. I believe it is in everyone’s best interest that they aren’t allowed to spread in this city. Plus, I figure your group of all people would finally want to put an end to this religious war.” “Hm, well seeing as we’ve already made it impossible for the Joachimites or anyone else for that matter to attack us, the war is already over as far as we’re concerned.” “But if the Joachimites win, they’ll be coming for you next and just because they were turned back by your barrier before doesn’t mean they won’t try when they have no more opponents left. Hell, if they become very influential they may even gain the help of the government to kick you out.” “I do not believe that will happen. You are allied with the Felians are you not?” “We came to an understanding, yes.” “Then the predictions came true. Elder Flynn was correct in predicting that eventually your group would get involved and side with what’s left of the worshippers of Fel. He also predicted that such an alliance would result in your side’s victory. So with that in mind, I don’t believe the Elder would have any more to speak on the matter. The Joachimites will be destroyed. The Felians will be in no condition to do anything to us assuming they survive at all and your organization will be so weakened that even if you were any sort of rival to us, you wouldn’t be able to do anything either.” “Look, I’m not asking you to put your asses on the line at all. I was just told that you’d have something to help take down this Inquisitor asshole who seemingly has almost as much magical protection as you lot do. I mean I can pay you guys.” “You have anything magical on you?” Heather asks. “I got these!” you say and hold up a large leather pouch containing the unicorn testicles. Meanwhile Heather stands behind the barrier doing something with her hands. When you realize she might be casting a spell, you get nervous. “What’re you doing?” you ask. “Checking something. Hmm, interesting. Very interesting. Perhaps Elder Flynn will be interested in helping you after all.” Heather says and suddenly an opening in the barrier appears. “Well? Come on in, I’m not supposed to leave this open for very long!” Wasting no time, you enter and the barrier closes behind you. Heather tells you to follow her. “Did you want these now?” you ask shoving the leather pouch at her. “What? No and Elder Flynn isn’t going to want those things either. In fact, just put those away.” “Then why did you let me in?” “Because you’ve got something far more magical than a pair of glorified horse balls. You’ve got ties to the infernal realm! You were marked by a succubus!” “…um…oh. Uh…” is about all you can spit out since you’re taken off guard by the statement. Also you’re not exactly sure what this means exactly. Heather seems pretty excited though. “And it appears that you’ve been marked for quite awhile. Succubi aren’t known for keeping their mortal mates alive for very long. Maybe a year a most and most non-magical humans can’t withstand the drain for extended periods of time. How did you pull this off? Nevermind, you can tell Flynn all about it when I bring you to him, he’ll be just as interested in all this as I am.” Heather leads you into the temple which almost resembles more of a library than a place of worship. Several other Dornans see Heather and you and disapproval already ensues. “Heather! What the hell are you doing?!” one yells “Why have you let an infidel inside our sanctum?” another adds. “Guys relax! He’s no threat to us and I have a good reason! Elder Flynn will want to meet this one!” Heather says. “Oh? I will, will I?” another voice says before a set of double doors opens up. There you see an old man in robes. He looks very much like what you’d think a wizard would look like, or in his case priest-wizard. Heather wastes no time in telling him (and everyone else) that you’ve been marked by a succubus and also how you want help against the Joachimites. Elder Flynn does a similar thing with his hands that you saw Heather do and he comes to the same conclusion. “I see. Well our criminal friend here certainly does have a unique condition. I would be very interested in learning how this came about exactly.” Elder Flynn remarks. “May I sit in on this Elder?” Heather asks. “Very well, you may observe, but do not speak. As for the rest of you, return to your tasks. I will call upon you when needed. Now then you, follow me into my chambers and tell me your tale. Then perhaps we can come to some sort of deal.” You and Heather follow Elder Flynn into his chambers which contains a lot of tables filled with bottles, jars, and other laboratory equipment. More books of course and several strange markings on the floor. Elder Flynn motions you to take a seat and you do so before explaining “your tale” as it were. You talk about Tanya for quite awhile. Honestly, it’s kind of nice to talk about her as you’ve never done so before. Not even to Warts, even though you know he’s aware about what occurred between you two. Flynn sits and listens very intently, never interrupting and just writing notes on parchment. Heather on the other hand looks like she wants to ask you all sorts of questions and is doing her best to not speak. While talking about Tanya is nice, you also remind yourself of the loss you feel without her around. You explain that it’s not as bad as it was when you first parted ways, but every now and then you have that empty feeling. You also mention “the curse” which peaks Flynn’s interest even more. He asks you several questions on that, which you answer. “Interesting. It would seem that despite your girlfriend going against her nature she still managed to leave behind something that ultimately causes harm, even if it wasn’t to you directly. Anyway, fascinating tale and I believe this is your lucky day.” Flynn remarks. “It is?” you ask. “Yes, how would you like my help AND get rid of your curse?” “You can do that?” “I believe it is possible, however you’d have to undergo a ritual first.” “Um, what sort of ritual?” “You’re bonded with a demon. Doesn’t matter if she wasn’t born a pure blood anymore because she’s obviously embraced her heritage fully now. That bond might be dormant and perhaps even non-malignant, but it exists. Which means at any time she can reach you, but it also means YOU can reach her. You of course don’t have the means, but I on other hand do. I’m proposing that we perform a ritual to bring this Tanya back here.” This proposal is getting strange and giving you all sorts of mixed feelings. On one hand you’d like nothing more than to see her again, but on the other… “Um, okay so when Tanya is brought back here, then what?” you ask. “Well I bind her of course.” Flynn remarks. “What?!” “Properly bound infernals can be very useful sources of knowledge as well as servants. She’ll be a good addition to the temple. Also when I bind her, her hold on you will also be broken and you’ll be free.” At this point you stand up and have to do everything within your power to not attack Flynn. You know he’d probably easily disintegrate you before you could even do anything, but the temptation is still there. However you aren’t adverse to verbal abuse. “No, fuck you and fuck this plan.” You say as calm as you can. “(Sigh) I thought you might say that. You’re missing the big picture.” Flynn remarks. “What big picture?! You’re talking about enslaving my fucking girlfriend! You didn’t think I might get pissed about that?” “Please just calm down. We were getting along before.” Heather remarks. “Yeah? Well that’s probably because you lot weren’t talking about imprisoning my girlfriend before and having me play a role in that! How would you like it if you had to be part of a magic ritual you didn’t want any part in?” “If it was in pursuit of greater knowledge and wisdom, I’d be willing to make that sacrifice.” “Glad to hear you say that Heather, because I will need your assistance in this ritual.” Flynn remarks. “Huh?” “I need something to help call the demon back to this realm just to give the spell a little more power. Usually for most demons this requires a sacrifice of some sort, however given that Tanya is a succubus, I don’t think blood will be necessary, so fortunately I just need you to have sex with him inside the circle.” Heather’s face looks completely dumb struck. She has no words. You on the other hand are just shaking your head and giving a cynical laugh about it all. “This just gets better and better. Tell me, are you going to be jacking your old wrinkled dick the whole time too?” Your crude remark is enough to finally set off Elder Flynn’s temper. “Look, you glorified cut throat, just THINK for a moment! The Tanya you knew is GONE. She left you for the infernal realm a LONG time ago and probably forgotten about you. In fact you’re very lucky she has because I guarantee that she is NOT the same woman you knew. She has most likely become a being of pure evil, no matter what she might have told you before she left. Any concept of love would be gone by now along with any affection for you.” Flynn rants. “You don’t know that.” You say. “No, I DO know that! I’ve done far more studies and forgotten more about infernals than you’ll ever know and there is one constant, they always…ALWAYS become creatures of mayhem, chaos and destruction in one way or another, and have no affection for ANYONE, let alone anyone far weaker than themselves.” Elder Flynn says this with such conviction that you don’t respond and are just wondering if you’re going to be able to get out of here alive. “Now I know this is all very emotional for you, but I think you’re smart enough to see that I know what the hell I’m talking about on this subject. And if that doesn’t convince you, then consider this. By participating in this ritual, you’ll be free of Tanya’s grip on you. No longer will you feel the loss of her presence and better yet, you’ll be able to love another without putting their life in danger. Doesn’t that alone sound worthwhile? And I’m not even counting the help I will give you against the Joachimites. So you see, there is no downside to this deal.” You have to admit, Flynn is making a pretty sound argument. There have been many times you’d like to “move on” but it’s obvious that you can’t unless you go through with this ritual. > You do the ritual Not exactly ideal circumstances but if this is what it’s going to take to break the curse along with gaining help from the Dornans then this is what you need to do. Part of you still feels bad about betraying Tanya like this and you’re not looking forward to when you “meet” her again. Still, Flynn is probably correct in that she is most likely not the same girl anymore. “Very well, if this is the only way.” You say. “Glad to see you’re finally thinking rationally. Okay, let’s not waste anymore time, I’m going to have my acolytes prepare the summoning room. Heather can take you to it in about ten minutes or so. Since she’s going to be directly involved in this ritual, I would recommend that you take that time to start getting yourself ready. I trust you like girls and I assume that Heather is attractive enough for you. However, I understand if these conditions are making you feel a little under pressure so if Heather’s physical charms aren’t enough, we can resort to magic means if necessary. I’d rather we didn’t though since these types of things always work better under natural conditions.” Elder Flynn remarks. “Um, I think I can manage, but what about Heather? I mean are you fine to go along with this?” you ask. “We all make sacrifices in the pursuit of Dorna’s wisdom.” Heather says and looks a little embarrassed and resigned by this whole situation. “Indeed. I’ll see you both soon.” Flynn says and leaves. You look at Heather as she looks at you. “Heather we really don’t have to if…” you start to say before she’s all over you. You don’t really resist at this point though you do have to eventually stop her. “Okay, okay, I’m suitably in the mood if that was what you were trying to accomplish, I think we better get to the summoning room before the magic happens prematurely.” You say. Heather just acknowledges the obvious and tells you to follow her. She seems to be trying to maintain a certain detachment about all this. You can honestly say if you were her, you certainly wouldn’t be doing it, then again you’ve never had that much dedication to a deity either which seems to be her main motivation and perhaps intimidation by Flynn. When you get to the summoning room, Flynn is already there with some of his people. Flynn nods when he sees you and Heather. “Ah, there you are, if you two can get undressed and get in that circle, you can commence with the consummation.” Flynn says. “Um, is there anything else we have to do?” “No. You two just focus on the physical part of this ritual and we’ll be doing the rest. Though it is going to be vital that you last at least more than two minutes.” “Yeah, yeah, I’ll manage. Sheesh.” “Very well. Also, and I feel I need to stress this again, when your succubus appears, it is vital that you DO NOT LISTEN to ANYTHING she has to say! In fact, you should just get the hell out of the room as soon as possible. You can wait elsewhere in the temple while we finish binding the demon.” You almost want to say something, specifically argue with Flynn, but you know that’s not going to help and will be useless. You need to let Tanya go even if it is hard to do. This is going to be for your own good. It’s also going to get you help with the Joachimites, which is sort of the main reason why you came here in the first place, but that seems more like a secondary concern now. As you’re getting undressed, Heather briefly says that she’d like to be on top during all this. You see no reason to disagree since it’s all going to get the job done and you figure maybe it eases her mind that she at least is going to have some “control” over the situation. (Or maybe she’s just more comfortable that way) Soon you and Heather are in position and it’s almost like she’s read your mind about the awkwardness of an audience since she whispers in your ear… “It’s just me and you here, just relax and ignore everything else except me, I’m your whole world right now.” She then follows that up with a fairly passionate kiss and rhythmic motion of her body. You don’t know if Heather is using some sort of magic on you after all, or she’s just that good, either way she knows what the hell she’s doing and you’re completely at ease and able to ignore the weird chanting of Flynn and his people. Time passes and eventually in-between the moaning and grunting, suddenly Heather begins to cough and she starts to wheeze. “You okay?” you ask. “Yeah…I’m…fine…” Heather remarks. “You don’t seem fine, maybe…OW SHIT!” Heather suddenly starts to dig her nails into your arms and is actively holding you down. It’s enough for you to try to resist, but somehow she’s a lot stronger than she appears. Not to mention she is putting all her weight on you and got you in locked in quite securely with her lower body. In fact it almost feels like she’s crushing you. “Heather, what the fuck! This is really fucking hurting! Get the hell off me! FLYNN!” Flynn does absolutely nothing and just continues chanting, meanwhile Heather continues to look unwell and go on with her task. She starts to cough up blood on you. “Oh fuck, we need to stop this right now!” you shout. “Can’t…gotta…finish…ugh…I feel…insides are on fire.” And at this point blood is no longer just coming out of her mouth and given some of the other orifices, it isn’t all blood either. You are covered in blood, shit and vomit from nearly head to toe and that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is whatever is happening to Heather isn’t just expressing itself with bodily excretions, Heather’s magical powers are also starting to go wild. Her nails that were digging into your flesh now feel like hot coals as you can see her hands starting to glow a red color. Fighting the urge not to vomit yourself, you desperately try to get Heather off of you, but again she’s firmly wrapped around you and pinning you down. You call for Flynn to help you and even Heather starts to scream for assistance as it seems she is not completely in control of her own body. No help comes though and it’s apparent that Flynn doesn’t give a shit about either one of you at this point. You manage to finally get one of your arms free, but it’s a little late since now part of your own flesh is in flames. Punching Heather in the face a few times only results in her instinctively retaliating with blast of lightning to YOUR face. You collapse back to the floor as Heather’s screams get fainter to your ears and your last sight before your vision fades, is Heather’s body literally ripping and exploding into bloody chunks of gore and now a different form looms over you. You can’t make any detail out except the outline of a much taller impressive demonic looking figure. “Tanya…I’m…sorry…” you utter before you pass the world.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you have a chance to take down the Joachimites in an expedient manner then you’re going to take it. Last thing you want is this to drag out any longer than you have to. You tell Shade that you’re going to try to meet with the Dornans. Shade sounds a bit surprised when you tell him but agrees that it is worth a try along with saying that they probably won’t kill you just for asking for an audience. (You sure hope he’s right.) He goes on to tell you that their high priest is Elder Flynn and he tends to be a bit aloof and always involved in some magic experiment so you might not even get to speak to him directly as he prefers to let one of his subordinates take care of things. Shade also mentions if you’ve got anything magical laying around, that might help you get a meeting with any of them since they love collecting magic items. Shade then tells you he’ll be preparing things on his side and in the unlikely event that you actually manage to get Dornan help and depending on how much help, you two can plan out your next move at that time. With those last words, Shade seemingly disappears into the darkness completely. The next day you explain the situation to Vera and Warts. Neither one is exactly enthused about the idea, but they’re just glad you’re not asking either of them to do it. “Hope Yag’s rolling in yer favor.” Warts says. “If he is, I hope he does better than he did for his loyal worshippers. Just wish I had something more than this pair of dried unicorn balls as a possible offering...Warts are you even sure this shit is magical?” You say. “Itz from a unicorn ain’t it? Itz magic trust me. Witch doctors grind dem up and make inta potions dat make yer dick HARD. Youz can last fer hours let me tell ya. One time wit Snuffit, I…” “That’s okay, don’t need to hear the details. Anyway, guess it’ll have to do.” “At the risk that you’ll take me with you, are you sure you should go attempt to do this alone?” Vera asks. “I’m literally going to speak to a bunch of people that practically eat, sleep and shit magic. If they decide to kill me, there is little anyone else in the League is going to be able to do to help so there’s really no point in anyone else getting potentially disintegrated. That’s probably not going to happen, but in case shit does go south and I don’t come back, I guess it’ll be up to you lead this organization.” “What seriously?” “Well you and Warts are the closest thing I have to seconds and I doubt if Warts wants the commitment. So you’re the obvious choice.” “Got dat right. Barely wanna do the shit I hafta.” Warts interjects. “Wow, that’s a huge responsibility and a lot of trust in me. I’m not sure what to say, thanks I guess.” Vera says responding to you. “Well I’m not dead yet, so don’t start sweating or celebrating prematurely. Okay, I’m off.” You set off to the temple of Dorna. Along the way you see several groups of Joachimite fanatics preaching their faith to passersby. Most of the citizens are just trying to go about their day and are meekly just accepting the various pamphlets the Joachimites are aggressively distributing. Your own League members should be so intimidating. Yep, their ranks definitely need to be whittled down severely. You’re just hoping the Dornans will help. That’s what you’re most concerned about, because if you don’t get their help in some meaningful way, you know full well you’ll be taking some losses if it turns into a straight up fight with the Joachimites. The closer you get to the area of Dorna’s temple, the less people you see around in general. The force field that shimmers in and out of existence and surrounds the temple has certainly done its job in keeping everyone away. When you get so close to the place that you could actually touch the field if you wanted to, you notice that beyond the field there is a robed individual sitting on steps to the entrance and reading a book. ‘Hello?” you say in order to get their attention. The robed individual looks up and you see it’s a woman. She puts her books aside to address you. “Oh hello. Not many people even walk this way anymore let alone get this close. Last ones who tried were those silly Joachimites. They learned the hard way of course. So anyway, my name is Heather and what brings the leader of the infamous Nocturnal League here?” she says. “You know who I am?” “Oh yes of course! We’re the worshippers of Dorna! Goddess of not just magic but of knowledge! We try to make it a point of knowing everything and everyone that might be important for one never knows when the knowledge may come in handy.” “Hm, never realized I actually was all that important really.” “You’re an underworld boss who not only orchestrated the downfall of the Thieves Guild, but also the Ebony Claw Syndicate chapter in this city. THEN you created your own organization, which has quickly started to gain the same influence as the ECS once did here. You are also known to be very dangerous with firearms, particularly your custom made one. While you’re probably not important in the grand scheme of the world, you’re definitely important in this city at least.” You chuckle at that brief history of yourself. “Well I suppose that’s all true, though I had good reasons for everything.” You say. “Of course you did. And I imagine you’re also here for another good reason. So what is it that you want?” Heather asks. “To cut to the chase, I wish to speak to your Elder Flynn as I’m seeking your help in taking down the Joachimites. I believe it is in everyone’s best interest that they aren’t allowed to spread in this city. Plus, I figure your group of all people would finally want to put an end to this religious war.” “Hm, well seeing as we’ve already made it impossible for the Joachimites or anyone else for that matter to attack us, the war is already over as far as we’re concerned.” “But if the Joachimites win, they’ll be coming for you next and just because they were turned back by your barrier before doesn’t mean they won’t try when they have no more opponents left. Hell, if they become very influential they may even gain the help of the government to kick you out.” “I do not believe that will happen. You are allied with the Felians are you not?” “We came to an understanding, yes.” “Then the predictions came true. Elder Flynn was correct in predicting that eventually your group would get involved and side with what’s left of the worshippers of Fel. He also predicted that such an alliance would result in your side’s victory. So with that in mind, I don’t believe the Elder would have any more to speak on the matter. The Joachimites will be destroyed. The Felians will be in no condition to do anything to us assuming they survive at all and your organization will be so weakened that even if you were any sort of rival to us, you wouldn’t be able to do anything either.” “Look, I’m not asking you to put your asses on the line at all. I was just told that you’d have something to help take down this Inquisitor asshole who seemingly has almost as much magical protection as you lot do. I mean I can pay you guys.” “You have anything magical on you?” Heather asks. “I got these!” you say and hold up a large leather pouch containing the unicorn testicles. Meanwhile Heather stands behind the barrier doing something with her hands. When you realize she might be casting a spell, you get nervous. “What’re you doing?” you ask. “Checking something. Hmm, interesting. Very interesting. Perhaps Elder Flynn will be interested in helping you after all.” Heather says and suddenly an opening in the barrier appears. “Well? Come on in, I’m not supposed to leave this open for very long!” Wasting no time, you enter and the barrier closes behind you. Heather tells you to follow her. “Did you want these now?” you ask shoving the leather pouch at her. “What? No and Elder Flynn isn’t going to want those things either. In fact, just put those away.” “Then why did you let me in?” “Because you’ve got something far more magical than a pair of glorified horse balls. You’ve got ties to the infernal realm! You were marked by a succubus!” “…um…oh. Uh…” is about all you can spit out since you’re taken off guard by the statement. Also you’re not exactly sure what this means exactly. Heather seems pretty excited though. “And it appears that you’ve been marked for quite awhile. Succubi aren’t known for keeping their mortal mates alive for very long. Maybe a year a most and most non-magical humans can’t withstand the drain for extended periods of time. How did you pull this off? Nevermind, you can tell Flynn all about it when I bring you to him, he’ll be just as interested in all this as I am.” Heather leads you into the temple which almost resembles more of a library than a place of worship. Several other Dornans see Heather and you and disapproval already ensues. “Heather! What the hell are you doing?!” one yells “Why have you let an infidel inside our sanctum?” another adds. “Guys relax! He’s no threat to us and I have a good reason! Elder Flynn will want to meet this one!” Heather says. “Oh? I will, will I?” another voice says before a set of double doors opens up. There you see an old man in robes. He looks very much like what you’d think a wizard would look like, or in his case priest-wizard. Heather wastes no time in telling him (and everyone else) that you’ve been marked by a succubus and also how you want help against the Joachimites. Elder Flynn does a similar thing with his hands that you saw Heather do and he comes to the same conclusion. “I see. Well our criminal friend here certainly does have a unique condition. I would be very interested in learning how this came about exactly.” Elder Flynn remarks. “May I sit in on this Elder?” Heather asks. “Very well, you may observe, but do not speak. As for the rest of you, return to your tasks. I will call upon you when needed. Now then you, follow me into my chambers and tell me your tale. Then perhaps we can come to some sort of deal.” You and Heather follow Elder Flynn into his chambers which contains a lot of tables filled with bottles, jars, and other laboratory equipment. More books of course and several strange markings on the floor. Elder Flynn motions you to take a seat and you do so before explaining “your tale” as it were. You talk about Tanya for quite awhile. Honestly, it’s kind of nice to talk about her as you’ve never done so before. Not even to Warts, even though you know he’s aware about what occurred between you two. Flynn sits and listens very intently, never interrupting and just writing notes on parchment. Heather on the other hand looks like she wants to ask you all sorts of questions and is doing her best to not speak. While talking about Tanya is nice, you also remind yourself of the loss you feel without her around. You explain that it’s not as bad as it was when you first parted ways, but every now and then you have that empty feeling. You also mention “the curse” which peaks Flynn’s interest even more. He asks you several questions on that, which you answer. “Interesting. It would seem that despite your girlfriend going against her nature she still managed to leave behind something that ultimately causes harm, even if it wasn’t to you directly. Anyway, fascinating tale and I believe this is your lucky day.” Flynn remarks. “It is?” you ask. “Yes, how would you like my help AND get rid of your curse?” “You can do that?” “I believe it is possible, however you’d have to undergo a ritual first.” “Um, what sort of ritual?” “You’re bonded with a demon. Doesn’t matter if she wasn’t born a pure blood anymore because she’s obviously embraced her heritage fully now. That bond might be dormant and perhaps even non-malignant, but it exists. Which means at any time she can reach you, but it also means YOU can reach her. You of course don’t have the means, but I on other hand do. I’m proposing that we perform a ritual to bring this Tanya back here.” This proposal is getting strange and giving you all sorts of mixed feelings. On one hand you’d like nothing more than to see her again, but on the other… “Um, okay so when Tanya is brought back here, then what?” you ask. “Well I bind her of course.” Flynn remarks. “What?!” “Properly bound infernals can be very useful sources of knowledge as well as servants. She’ll be a good addition to the temple. Also when I bind her, her hold on you will also be broken and you’ll be free.” At this point you stand up and have to do everything within your power to not attack Flynn. You know he’d probably easily disintegrate you before you could even do anything, but the temptation is still there. However you aren’t adverse to verbal abuse. “No, fuck you and fuck this plan.” You say as calm as you can. “(Sigh) I thought you might say that. You’re missing the big picture.” Flynn remarks. “What big picture?! You’re talking about enslaving my fucking girlfriend! You didn’t think I might get pissed about that?” “Please just calm down. We were getting along before.” Heather remarks. “Yeah? Well that’s probably because you lot weren’t talking about imprisoning my girlfriend before and having me play a role in that! How would you like it if you had to be part of a magic ritual you didn’t want any part in?” “If it was in pursuit of greater knowledge and wisdom, I’d be willing to make that sacrifice.” “Glad to hear you say that Heather, because I will need your assistance in this ritual.” Flynn remarks. “Huh?” “I need something to help call the demon back to this realm just to give the spell a little more power. Usually for most demons this requires a sacrifice of some sort, however given that Tanya is a succubus, I don’t think blood will be necessary, so fortunately I just need you to have sex with him inside the circle.” Heather’s face looks completely dumb struck. She has no words. You on the other hand are just shaking your head and giving a cynical laugh about it all. “This just gets better and better. Tell me, are you going to be jacking your old wrinkled dick the whole time too?” Your crude remark is enough to finally set off Elder Flynn’s temper. “Look, you glorified cut throat, just THINK for a moment! The Tanya you knew is GONE. She left you for the infernal realm a LONG time ago and probably forgotten about you. In fact you’re very lucky she has because I guarantee that she is NOT the same woman you knew. She has most likely become a being of pure evil, no matter what she might have told you before she left. Any concept of love would be gone by now along with any affection for you.” Flynn rants. “You don’t know that.” You say. “No, I DO know that! I’ve done far more studies and forgotten more about infernals than you’ll ever know and there is one constant, they always…ALWAYS become creatures of mayhem, chaos and destruction in one way or another, and have no affection for ANYONE, let alone anyone far weaker than themselves.” Elder Flynn says this with such conviction that you don’t respond and are just wondering if you’re going to be able to get out of here alive. “Now I know this is all very emotional for you, but I think you’re smart enough to see that I know what the hell I’m talking about on this subject. And if that doesn’t convince you, then consider this. By participating in this ritual, you’ll be free of Tanya’s grip on you. No longer will you feel the loss of her presence and better yet, you’ll be able to love another without putting their life in danger. Doesn’t that alone sound worthwhile? And I’m not even counting the help I will give you against the Joachimites. So you see, there is no downside to this deal.” You have to admit, Flynn is making a pretty sound argument. There have been many times you’d like to “move on” but it’s obvious that you can’t unless you go through with this ritual. > You refuse to do the ritual Maybe you’re not thinking rationally and you’re also still holding on to lingering feelings for Tanya, but that doesn’t also stop you from being suspicious of this ritual anyway. The fact that you have to fuck one of Flynn’s disciples for this is already enough to raise an eyebrow from you, but even if this is all on the level and Flynn is being completely truthful, you can’t bring yourself to do this only for Tanya to be enslaved to this asshole. Tanya may very well be a creature of evil that’s doing horrible things and no longer cares about you, but that doesn’t negate the memories that you have of her. You remember that one of her stronger traits is that she cherished her freedom. If you sentenced her to magical enslavement, you’d feel pretty damn shitty about yourself and you’re fairly certain you’d just replace your sense of loss with a bigger sense of guilt. Hell, it probably would be better just to kill her. (You also never realized how very against slavery you are no matter what form or who it is. You suppose love of freedom is something) There is also the fact that you have no idea if Flynn’s spell is going to keep her imprisoned forever or if it’s even going to work. If you go ripping Tanya from wherever she is into a magical prison, you can bet that you’re going to be right near the top of her shit list if she ever escapes and you don’t fancy your chances if Flynn turns out to be no match for her. So you’re not doing this for various reasons. Still, you have your concerns about getting out of here so you calm yourself down and address Flynn in a civil manner again. “Elder Flynn, I apologize for my outburst towards you earlier. Out was out of line, but as you can tell my feelings in all this are very intertwined. I can’t easily separate them even if I know it would be rational to do so. I loved and still love Tanya no matter what she’s become. Maybe…maybe I just need more time to think about it, but I cannot bring myself to do this thing. At least not now.” Elder Flynn stares at you a bit, strokes his beard and then finally answers you. “Very well. I believe you are being foolish about all this, but then those that do not follow Dorna are often mere babes in their cribs when it comes to greater wisdom. I certainly hope you do change your mind, but if you do come here again, you had best make sure you are VERY certain to go through with it. I will not be so understanding on a second intrusion. Heather, escort our guest out.” Heather motions you towards the door quietly and you nod once more at Flynn before exiting. Your walk to the temple entrance is silent as a few acolytes watch you leave, but say nothing. Finally when you’re outside, Heather speaks. “You’re not coming back are you?” Heather says. “If you were in my position, would you?” you replies “Probably not. I want to say though it was very wise of you to address Elder Flynn in a respectful manner and I even understand your feelings on this matter.” “Hm, for all the good it’s going to do. Oh well, I’m at least getting out of here in one piece, and I’m sure you’re glad you don’t have to fuck a complete stranger.” Heather makes a nervous laugh. “Yes, well there is that. Not that you’re unattractive mind you, but…well it was a bit awkward. Under different circumstances it might have been fun, but I suppose you’re forever bound to another.” Heather says. “Looks that way.” You answer. Heather opens a hole in the barrier, which you step through. Before you make your way back home, Heather asks if you can wait a moment and then runs back inside the temple. You’re not exactly sure what Heather is up to, but you put some space between you and the barrier in the meantime. She comes back out fairly quickly and after making another hole in the barrier she hands you a solid black glass sphere through it. “What’s this?” you ask. “It’s an null orb and it’s from my own personal collection.” Heather says. “What’s it do?” “When you break it, it will completely nullify all magic in the immediate area for a time. I’m fairly certain it should take down whatever the magic defenses that the Joachimite Inquisitor might have. You’ll still have to get in close and you’ve got one shot, but you’ve got a chance.” You look at the orb for a moment as if you’re going to see something other than utter blackness before putting it away. “Thank you Heather. This is more than I expected. I’ll remember this.” You say. Heather nods and you finally put this whole odd meeting behind you. When you get back to the League Lair, Vera looks like she’s relieved that you made it back. You guess she was still sort of overwhelmed by the idea that she might be running things. “You made it back alive, so I’m guessing you were successful?” Vera asks. “Well, I wasn’t unsuccessful. I’ve got something that supposedly will help against this Inquisitor, but it’s a one shot deal. The next step is speaking with Shade again though and how we’re going to set up this attack.” You say. In the next few days Shade finally manages to get around to speaking with you again. He tells you he’s been placing what little remains of his manpower in gathering information and has determined exactly where the Inquisitor is currently staying which apparently is a humble house where a normal Joachim fearing couple lives. He says nothing is special about this couple and has no idea why the Inquisitor is staying there, but that’s where he’s been. Shade also mentions that looks are very deceiving however on the external security front. Shade says it took all of his willpower to keep up his shadow magic to remain undetected (And apparently years off his life given that he looks older than he should now), but he learned that the Inquisitor has been using similar illusionary magic to make Joachimite fanatics invisible as well. Several of these invisible holy warriors are just laying in wait in case of an attack. “Now, I doubt either side is going to remain hidden for very long from each other but as soon as we attack, the Inquisitor will soon intervene directly and then we’ll be at a complete disadvantage.” Shade says. “It’s okay, I’ve got something that’s going to make magic in general completely useless to everyone.” You say. “So you were successful then. Mind telling me what you have?” “It’s an item that you need to break within the vicinity of the Inquisitor. You just need to get in close enough to do it though. As long as that happens however, his defenses will go down and he’ll be vulnerable to everything. Here.” You say and hand the orb to Shade. Shade doesn’t take it and instead gives you a bit of a suspicious look. “What? It’s not a trick.” You exclaim. “Maybe not, but forgive me if I’m less trusting of the Dornans than you are.” “Shade, YOU told me to seek their aid if possible and I got it. What more do you want?” “Nothing, but I have no idea if that thing strips magic ability permanently or what. For all I know Flynn is setting us all up.” “He’s not, because I didn’t get this from fucking Flynn, I got this from a different Dornan.” “Oh, that makes me feel even better. You got it from one of his lessers. To be honest, IF this IS indeed the powerful item you believe it to be, I’m a little leery that you’re so freely giving it to me, rather than keeping it for yourself.” You know this isn’t going to help matters, but given what you’ve been through already… “I’m giving it to you because your weak ass magic is already going to be fucked by the Inquisitor so you don’t have anything to lose. Not to mention that between the pair of us, YOU are the close combat expert so you’ll most likely get in closer than I’ll be able to since we still have to fight through all those fanatics. Fucking hell Shade, I’m doing YOU a fucking favor, so stop being a paranoid asshole and take the damn orb in the spirit of our fucking alliance that its being offered!” Shade’s stare softens a bit and he even smirks a bit before taking the orb. “Very well, you’ve made your point. Let it be known though if something goes wrong and we both survive it, I’m going to kill you.” Shade says. “Fair enough. Anyway I’ll be hand picking my own people for the attack along with still being there in person since it’ll be the only way I’ll feel comfortable that my orders are going to be carried out. We probably should look at a map of this area to go over the details better.” You say. You spend a couple more days planning and preparing. Despite his magic going to be rendered impotent, Shade still wants to attack at night since he feels his people are still going to hold advantage over the Joachimites during that time. Since you don’t have any real preference, you agree. The night of the attack comes and you lie in wait from a distance with your people. You soon hear the scuffles and shouts of battle. Unlike the faithful of Fel, the faithful of Joachim aren’t exactly the most quiet when they fight. You soon join the fight and find that there are indeed a lot of Joachimites that seem to be coming out nowhere. They are screaming their deity’s name and how they’re going to purge all unbelievers, still they seem a little take off guard when you arrive. Shade so far is holding the advantage due to him and his people teleporting all over the place, but you imagine that won’t last long. In the meantime, you order your people to stay together and not get surrounded. After about twenty minutes of combat, the streets are starting to pile up with bodies. You half expect the Watch to arrive with all the noise going on, but then the government has for the most part taken a slightly hands off approach to the religious conflict since it started, which explains why it’s gone on as long as it has. And then the Inquisitor finally makes his arrival. You’ve never seen the guy before, but he certainly makes an impression especially since he emanates a white light from his person making him visible to all even in this darkness. He looks exactly like how Shade described him, though he’s also carrying a mace in his hand. “FOUL FOLLOWERS OF FEL! LET TONIGHT BE YOUR LAST!” his voice booms and then suddenly several beams of light from the sky seem to target every Felian in the street, as soon as you see this, you tell your own people to find cover wherever they can. Shade’s people are unable to simply teleport or even turn invisible. A few barely manage to find cover before the beams of light completely ignite the unfortunate ones that couldn’t escape. “BURN IN THE PURE LIGHT OF JOACHIM! THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM HIS TRUTH!” Shade himself is unfortunate enough to not react in time before being caught in this light. He is set aflame, however fortunately for you he has enough in him to take out the null orb and throw it to ground. It shatters and suddenly the white light surrounding the Inquisitor disappears and so do the beams of white light coming from the sky. The Inquisitor starts screaming prayers to Joachim, but nothing happens, the rest of his people seem confused by this sudden “disappearance” of their divine weapon, but you’re not confused and you urge your people to press the advantage since Shade is obviously no longer in any shape to do so. You keep your eyes on the Inquisitor (Who is still pretty visible in the dark due to his white robes) and unsurprisingly realizing he doesn’t have his magic advantage anymore, he runs away. Though you were expecting him to just start running down the street, instead he runs back in the house he was staying at. You waste no time in following him, fighting and dodging along the way. You kick the door in and you find the Inquisitor standing in the middle of the room with his mace held ready for battle. An old couple stands further behind, frightened out of their minds and holding each other. “YOU! I knew you were an infidel, but I didn’t know you’d thrown your lot in with the blasphemous shadow worshippers! No matter, you too shall face the righteous justice of…” While the Inquisitor is giving a monologue, you take the opportunity to end this by shooting him several times. He falls backwards crashing into a table and knocking over several other items as well. The old woman screams and begins sobbing. You walk over to the Inquisitor’s body to make sure he’s dead and see that he is indeed still alive, but he won’t be for long. In between his gasping and wheezing he tries to speak. “Don’t…ki…please…not…” he says. “Little late for that.” You reply reloading your pistol. “Not me…par…ents…for…old times…please…” You look over at the old couple and guess the Inquisitor means them. You suppose you know why he came running back in here now. What you don’t get is that he seems to know you and not just by reputation. At this point the Inquisitor’s parents run over and kneel by him. Both are sobbing and his mother lifts his head a bit and removes the white mask he was wearing. “I’m…coming home…Joachim…I see his light…” Yinen remarks and then he dies. You did not see that one coming. Of course you never knew his parents either. You aren’t even sure how you feel about it. What caused this radical transformation? You can somewhat guess that perhaps Yinen never quite got over his experience of getting captured by the Neroth cultists. His return to his Joachimite upbringing to the point of zealotry was the result. You wish you had known Yinen was the inquisitor the whole time. Maybe you could have spoke to him. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter now, it’s done. You leave Yinen’s parents to their grief and dead son. As for the battle outside, it’s winding down with your side winning, but you’ve suffered more than few losses. Still, could have been worse. The few Felians still left have managed to bring Shade back from the brink of death, but he’s a mess, what with burns all over his body and the fact he previously pre-maturely aged himself. This war has cost him quite dearly. You actually don’t think he’ll live too much longer or if he does, he’s going to be spending the rest of his days as a cripple. However, apparently he’s pleased that this was a “win.” He even manages to say a genuine statement of gratitude. Saying that the Temple of Fel will come to the aid of the Nocturnal League if you ever need it. You imagine this “war” won’t entirely be over just by the events tonight, but this was definitely a big turning point and probably in a few months, it’ll be over completely and then you can refocus back on business. > You time passes... Year 29 Lot can change in just a few years, some things you predicted, others not so much. The Church of Joachim being outlawed in the city wasn’t too surprising given all the trouble that was caused and how Holgard in general tends more towards embracing sin and vice rather than moving away from it. Still, sort of funny that the faith is now in the company of it’s eternal enemy, Neroth as far as being illegal. As for the other faiths, only the temples of Dorna and Fel maintain any presence in the city and in the Felians case, that’s thanks to Shade dying soon after the war was over and the new leader Gloom, making an effort to strengthen their relationship with the upper echelons of the government, namely Baroness Ludmilla. Gloom has also extended a hand to the Nocturnal League, stating that the temple would be more than willing to come to an understanding like it had with the Ebony Claw Syndicate and train your members in shadow magic. You declined that offer though. You’ve always said members are free to pray to whoever they want, but if they’re going to be wrapped up in Fel (or whoever) that hardcore then they can go take up some black robes and start living in their temple’s meditation rooms. The less religion you have in your organization the better. Still, your cordial relationship with the temple has had benefits you hadn’t intended. Due to the Felians being on better terms with the Baroness, some of that “understanding” has inadvertently trickled down towards you. As a result the Nocturnal League has freer reign over the city than it once did. Possibly similar to what the ECS once had. So things are going good for the Nocturnal League and business couldn’t be better. You haven’t had any decisions of the major kind lately, but for whatever reason this has caused you to sometimes over think the minor ones now that do crop up. Like right now for instance. “You were invited to the Baroness’ yearly costume party? How the hell did that happen and why aren’t you immediately making preparations to go?!” Vera asks. “Just one of the perks of being allied with the temple of Fel I suppose. Gloom had one of his members deliver this letter to me a week ago. Apparently Baroness Ludmilla has heard interesting things about me and would like me to show up at her party so she can see for herself.” You say. “She thinks yer intresstin’? She really doesn’t know youz at all.” Warts snarks and chuckles at his own attempt at a joke. “Well, you have to go right? I mean it’s the Baroness.” Vera says. “I dunno. I mean I suppose I see why I should, just don’t really feel up to it.” You reply. “What? When the Baroness of Holgard calls you to court, you have to go!” “Never knew you were such a supporter of our dear ruler. You secretly harboring royalist admiration?” “No. It’s not like that! I mean yeah she’s royalty, but not really. I mean… I dunno, I’ve always sort of admired how she took power from her father and brother I guess. She’s a very powerful independent woman and has remained that way. I guess that’s what I admire.” “Hm. Well I guess I just see her as another corrupt aristocrat that used her position of power to gain even more power. Not that that’s a bad thing, but nothing special. Lot harder to do when you aren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth.” “Yes, yes, we all know. You cleverly lied, cheated, stole and murdered your way to your position. You’re the epitome of a self made man. We’re all very impressed. Truly. I’m wet just thinking about it. Still, I really think you should go to this party, if only so you don’t inadvertently offend her which then will cause our current friendly relationship with the law to become unnecessarily complicated.” “Yeah, I already took that into consideration. (Sigh) I suppose I’m going, though the letter also says I should bring one more person with me since that’s apparently the rule of this event.” As soon as you’ve said that, Vera’s eyes light up. “Me! You gotta take me! Seriously I will seriously suck your dick if you take me to this party.” Vera exclaims. “You mean aren’t already?” Warts responds. “Wha? Why is that your go to action with me?” you say. “I’ll do whatever you want to do then, look I don’t care! I just really gotta go to this thing!” “Why? Wait a minute, you don’t have a crush on the Baroness do you? I mean you were praising her pretty hard a moment ago.” “No! This ain’t about pussy bumpin! Its just…(sigh) nevermind you’ll just make fun and if you don’t I know damn well this ugly half breed will.” “Oh fuck you, Vera.” “Warts, step out of here. While there won’t be any dick sucking involved, I am sort of interested in why Vera wants to go so badly.” “Gruh, fine by me. I certainly don’t wanna go. I gotta go see my kids anywayz, later.” After Warts leaves you motion Vera to speak which she does though she’s still a bit hesitant to do so, fearing that you’ll make fun. Vera suddenly goes into more of her life story than you ever thought to ask of her. She mentions that her mother was once very briefly employed as a maid during the Baron’s reign of the city. She goes on to say that her mother always told her that she once had a brief fling with him while she was cleaning one of the guest bedrooms. Unfortunately the Baron being the asshole he typically was, he had all the maids, including Vera’s mother, replaced a week later because he claimed his palace wasn’t getting clean enough. In any case, Vera said that shortly afterwards, her mother discovered she was pregnant and claimed to the day she died that Vera’s real father was really the Baron. “Wait a minute…you’re telling me you’re actually bastard royalty?!” you ask. “I knew you’d make fun or not believe me.” Vera says. “Honestly, it’s not really that far fetched given what I’ve always heard about the old Baron. Though I’m just surprised you’ve never mentioned it before. Seems like something you’d brag about.” “And get myself fucking killed?! No thanks! One of the big reasons my mother never told anyone or even tried to get financial support from the Baron is the fear of some assassin coming in to kill her and me. I mean I’m hardly the only illegitimate child the baron probably had and his son Farad was notorious for having suspected bastards killed. And if he didn’t do it, I can’t imagine Ludmilla was any different. Especially now.” “I guess that makes sense.” “Honestly, you’re the ONLY person I’ve told about this and now that I’ve done it, I feel a little weird and vulnerable.” “Well, I’m not going to say anything. Not like there would be anything to gain. Though I guess this is why you want to go to this party so badly huh? Experience what might have been? Possibly even briefly speak with your older half sister?” “…sort of. I know it’s silly, but…sometimes I do think of a life that is different than this one.” Vera’s thoughtful words are a little out of the ordinary, but not lost on you. Not like you don’t have similar thoughts on your own life at times. “Okay, I guess we’ll go together then. Not like I can think of anyone else to take anyway. Says it’ll be in three days so I suggest you prepare yourself.” You say. “I will! Thank you for this boss!” Vera beams. “Don’t mention it, princess.” You mock. “So, what are you going to be wearing?” “I dunno. Some mask of some sort I imagine since it’s a costume party. Which makes me wonder, how the hell is the Baroness going to know it’s me if I’m wearing a mask?” “I imagine she’s got some way of figuring it out. Make sure you dress nice though! I’ve heard about these things and if we go in looking like we crawled out of the sewers, they’ll turn us away, invitation or not.” “Yeah, yeah, I’ll take a trip to the tailor’s or something.” A few days and a trip to the tailor’s later, you’re dressed and ready to go to this thing. You’re not exactly comfortable in this type of clothing, but many League members compliment you on your new threads. Warts of course has something to say. “Oh well la de da, if it ain’t da duke of da undaworld.” Warts say. “Don’t even start, where the hell is Vera, she’s the one that made a bigger deal of all this?” “You ain’t seen her yet? She’s even fancier than you are right now. If it gets anymore highbrow here, we’re gonna hafta forge all dat gold and silver we got inta fancy eatin’ utensils.” “Yeah, well this is a one time thing. So where’s Vera again?” “She’s in her room I think…um don’t tell her I said so, but she iz sorta pretty. I mean she wouldn’t be MY type, but y’know dressed like she iz right now, she looks like of doze princesses or sumthin. Hah, Vera a princess, dat’s funny.” “Yeah…hysterical. Later Warts.” You shake your head and go get Vera. You don’t even bother knocking on the door, you just enter and that’s when you see Vera who turns around from her mirror to face you. She does indeed look a lot different than you’re used to seeing her. “Wow. You look, really different.” You say. “Good different or bad different?” Vera asks. “Neither…I mean good of course. Look, I’m just saying you could easily blend in with the rest of the aristocratic types. You’re very pretty, like a princess and I’m not just saying that.” “Thank you. You look…appropriate too.” “The hell’s that mean? I’ll have you know I got a lot of compliments!” “Well of course you did, you’re the boss. They’re hardly going to tell you, you look like shit. Not that you do. You’re fine. I guess we should get going, do you have your mask?” “Yeah, got one of those half masks. Don’t really feel like struggling to breath with a full mask on that covers my mouth and nostrils. Still covers most of my face so I figure I’m good.” You say and put it on. “I think most people will be wearing those so, you’ll fit in fine. I got one too.” Vera says and puts on her her mask and the pair of you are soon on your way. When you get to the palace you’re sort of relieved since you half expect that you’re going to get robbed on your way there. A guard stops you at the gates and you show your personalized invitation at which point you’re waved through. You and Vera take a moment to sort of absorb the fact of where you actually are for a moment. The seat of rulership, the palace! The grounds are certainly well taken care of and it’s obvious that every effort has been spared to make it look as festive as possible. The closer you get to the palace the more grandiose everything is. You also notice the increase in guards and you and Vera are patted down more than once. You get inside the palace and the elegance of the interior is about what you expect. Vera is practically enamored by everything. Right now, she’s probably imagining herself as that princess you ribbed her about being. As for you, you’re a bit more of a harder sell on being impressed by such things, but if you could run your organization from a place like this instead, you certainly wouldn’t turn it down. You and Vera spend a bit of time just looking around until Vera wonders if you should start actively mingling with some of the other guests. You’re of course against this idea, but you soon are forced into doing so anyway by someone you weren’t expecting to talk to, or at least not so early. “Well, if it isn’t the head of the Nocturnal League. Glad you could make it, I was hoping you would.” And there you are standing before Baroness Ludmilla Varsakken. She wears no mask and at this close range you get a good look at her. She almost looks like she could be a vampire what with her skin on the paler side and the black hair accentuating it. She’s beautiful of course, but just looking into her eyes a bit you can see a very ruthless woman before you. You also take a good look at her in general and then glance over at Vera. Now that you’re looking at them both, there could very well be a family resemblance. “Well, you certainly like to stare.” Ludmilla says, noticing your examination. “Oh, um, apologies. Just sort of…overwhelmed you know. Never thought I’d be before royalty.” You say. “Hah, not the complete uncouth rogue I’ve heard our mutual Felian acquaintances tell me about I see. Good.” “How did you know it was me anyway?” “I make it a point of knowing all my guests as they arrive. Not to mention your clothing isn’t exactly shall we say refined enough. While I’m sure you thought it was very upscale looking, but the workmanship is obviously from one of the mediocre tailors in the city. Only a crimelord with no care for such extravagant airs would believe it to be sufficient for this party. Not to worry though, I will not hold it against you. You tried.” “I appreciate that, and your invitation.” “You quite welcome, and who is your companion here? She certainly seems to have a better grasp on the dress code. I dare say this dress is better than a few of the boring nobles here.” “Thank you! I had it custom made a long time ago. Always knew I’d get to wear it some day!” Vera says a bit excitedly. “Now that’s what I like to hear. A woman that plans in advance.” At this point Ludmilla begins speaking to Vera and you excuse yourself to get a drink. While you don’t normally do so, you get the impression you’re going to need a bit of extra help to get through the night. You can’t believe you’re even in this situation, let alone acting the way you are. Still, you suppose it makes for an interesting change. Still, you really don’t want to be here all night. You made your appearance and now you’d like nothing more than to leave. Vera however looks like she’s having a good time and to be honest you don’t want to ruin that. She does help you a lot with the League. So you go back to Vera and Ludmilla and stand nearby in an attempt to be social. Ludmilla goes back and forth speaking to you and Vera, though she surprisingly is more talkative to Vera. The Baroness seems to like to talk and can already guess that you’re not exactly the most gregarious. Ludmilla and Vera talk for quite awhile, it’s actually pretty amazing since it’s about absolutely nothing. Or at least nothing you’re much interested in. Ludmilla is mostly talking about herself and the troubles of being of noble birth. Goes on about how Vera’s lucky to not have to worry about such things. Condescending of course, but if Vera noticed it, she’s not fussed or at least not letting it show. It’s sort of ironic anyway since Vera could very well HAVE had such problems if fate swung a different way. Eventually though Ludmilla tells the pair of you that while she was pleased to meet you both, she has other guests to see, even though they probably won’t be as interesting you are. And the pair of you are left on your own. “Well that was interesting.” You say. “Hm. Certainly was. Never thought I’d ever be directly in the presence of royalty before. Well not without my hands and feet in chains at least.” Vera remarks. “Hah! Same here. So, you ready to go?” “What? Already? The party’s just started and you want to leave?” “Well, I mean I dunno what else there really is to do here. I mean we came, we saw, we met the baroness. I mean we covered all the important shit. Not like I really have any desire to talk to any of the other assholes around here.” “But, I wanted to stay a bit longer though. However, if you want to leave, I guess that’s fine with me. You’re the boss after all.” “Alright, we can stay a little longer, but I’m going to find someplace away from most of these people. You can do what you like. I’ll come looking for you in a while I guess.” “Thanks boss, I’ll see you later.” Vera says and suddenly kisses you on the cheek before walking off to enjoy living the “high society life” for a little longer. As for you, you decide to just look around to waste time. You grab another drink and try to stick to less “populated” areas of the palace. Though obviously you’re still limited to where you’re allowed to go. Guards standby keeping an eye on everything. Time passes and while a few people attempt to speak to you, and few others seem to be talking about you (Mostly about your clothes) you basically ignore them all and just keep to your plan of moving about and sticking to areas where there are less people. While you’re doing that however, you’re also studying some of the lay out of the palace, or at least what you’re able to. You also take notice of what valuable objects would be easy to take. You briefly flirt with the idea of stealing something from this place, but common sense soon wins out. Last thing you want to do is even risk pissing off the Baroness, especially since you’re on good terms with her. Still, sometimes you miss the days of when you just stole things for a living. After wandering a bit more and entertaining the idea of pilfering the palace, you discard your usual procedure of avoiding the crowds and walk towards a room where you hear some music followed by a lot of clapping. You arrive just in time to see a crowd disperse before a group of musicians that apparently have just finished performing. Shame, from what little you heard, it sounded pretty good. You go and get yourself another drink and that’s when you start to feel a little odd. Whatever this stuff is, it’s apparently stronger than the taste would indicate. Still, it’s a party right? Might as well try to loosen up. You realize you’re not nearly as fun loving as you used to be when you were younger. In fact, you’re downright stodgy at times. All you practically do is fucking work. Being a criminal isn’t fun anymore, it’s actually not even dangerous at this point, it’s just well… mundane. How the hell did it come to this? If you wanted to be mundane, you might as well have stayed in Teckleville and followed in your dad’s footsteps. Maybe he was right after all. No. You’ve seen and done much in your life thanks to leaving that boring town. After all, you’re here in baroness’ palace! You’re just in a rut that’s all. When you get back, you’re going to shake things up within the League. Maybe expand again, maybe even to a new city like Hessla or Klyton. Still, it’s all pretty pointless without someone to share it with. You couldn’t go back home and say “Look mom and dad, look at what I’ve done!” It sucks. Your sister would probably be impressed, but who knows where she is. You hope she’s having more fun than you are right now. You miss her sometimes. Simpler times. Happier times. Fuck it, you need another drink. As you go to get another you bump into a couple that are making out. “Excuse me.” You say. “Mmm…” the woman says and strokes your arm as you pass by. The guy she’s kissing takes no notice; he’s too focused on her. You briefly think of Vera and how she kissed you not too long ago. Makes you wonder if she’s got more than a bit of attraction toward you. You know she’s always making these sexual offers toward you, but as far as you know she’s not really known to be the “good time” girl within the Nocturnal League. So it makes you wonder if she actually feels affection towards you on some level. Sometimes you think about her too, since you work so closely together. It’s almost like you’re an old married couple. Of course it could be a case that she’s perfectly fine being a potential whore if it’s going to benefit her in the long run. Since you’re the boss, and the only one above her in rank, makes sense that she’d only be offering you such extra “benefits.” Regardless, you probably would have made a move on her if it wasn’t for your condition. You nearly bump into another couple also making out. By the time you grab your drink, you realize there are a lot of people kissing and hugging each other. And some of them are getting pretty hot and heavy. Now you think of Tanya. You wish Tanya was still around. You’d love to share your success with her, but you guess that she moved on a long time ago. She claimed you’d move on, but you haven’t. How could you? She was everything to you. If it wasn’t for her, it’s debatable that you would have even did any of this. You probably would have fucked around in Holgard for a few years and then just left when the Ebony Claw Syndicate started taking notice of you. She kept you around and made you fall in love with her. But you can’t hate her for that. It wasn’t her fault. It just was her nature. You look around and now you see several people doing more than just kissing now. “What the fuck?” you say to yourself and get up to leave. You must have wandered into some weird orgy room. You make it to a hallway and that’s when you’re starting to feel really…excited. You’ve got an erection right now that you could stab someone to death with and you are about ready to murder the closest woman available and worse, they’re just about ALL available. Hell, with the way you’re feeling, you’re starting to worry if you aren’t going to just fuck everyone on your way to the exit because it’s been YEARS since you’ve had sex and right now your dick isn’t caring. It has to be the drinks. You’re sure of it. This whole party is probably just an excuse for rich people to have decadent orgies anonymously with each other. You need to get out of here before you kill everyone at this party with your cursed dick. The problem is you aren’t sure if you’re even going to make it that far. The best you might be able to do is find a place with no people about and stay there until the effects of the drink wear off. (Whenever that is) > You run to the exit You need to just get the hell out of here, because staying is surely going to doom someone. You continue your trip to the exit, trying not to look at any of the people having sexual encounters along the way. Several times you have to push people away after they grab at you. Eventually you just start punching them, and for a couple of them that just turns them on even more. “Uhn yeah, beat me harder! I like it like that!” “This is fucked.” You mutter. You try to think of the most unattractive and least erotic things you can think of like the Holgard sewers, and similar things. You also hit yourself in crotch a few times and unlike the masochist freaks, that works to lessen your arousal. Doesn’t get rid of it entirely though and you’re not doing that too much more because it hurts like a sonofabitch. Eventually you make it out of the palace. The guards don’t even react when they see you and just shrug as you continue to run from the palace and out the gates into the city. As soon as you’re in the public area of the city again, you realize now you’ve got another problem. Instead of having a strong sexual desire around a bunch of other people who are also suffering the same condition, you’re now potentially around a bunch of people who aren’t suffering it at all. You try to walk down the more isolated street with nobody about, but you need to get off them entirely before you potentially start molesting someone or worse. You’d go to a brothel, but if you did, you’d just end up killing all your employees. “Hey, didn’t expect to bump into you. I didn’t realize you left the party too. Figured you were bedding some aristocrat or something.” You spin around and see Vera. “Vera, what the hell are you doing here?” you ask. “I was on my way back home. Shortly after we separated I wandered and talked to a few people and even looked around seeing if I could steal anything, but there really wasn’t a good opportunity, and then something weird happened.” Vera says. “Let me guess, everyone got all friendly?” “Yeah, REALLY friendly. Didn’t know it was going to be that kind of party. Guessing something was in the drinks. Glad I hadn’t drank anything while I was there. Still, I might have paired up with one of the horny aristocrat guys if it had just been a one on one thing, but then Ludmilla was around and she started hitting on me too and I got really creeped out. I mean she didn’t know of course, but she could potentially be my half sister, and that just really put me out of the mood entirely. I ran out as soon as I could.” “Yeah, potentially fucking a sibling, I can see where that would put a damper on things…” you say barely able to contain yourself “Um, what’s wrong with you? You’re fidgeting and sweating. You keep putting your hand on your crotch…wait a minute. Did you have the drinks?” “Vera, I’m telling you, you need to leave me right now, because I’m having a REALLY hard time here.” Vera smiles a bit and grabs at the obvious bulge in your pants. You nearly don’t back away. “Shit. You ARE having a hard time. Well hell, come on let’s put that to good use.” “Vera, you need to seriously stop!” you say. “Oh come on! I don’t see what the hell is wrong with me! I mean shit; you act like I got the fucking plague! You’re a real fucking asshole you know that?” “Vera…” “No! I’m going to say some shit that YOU need to hear! I know all about your ex-girlfriend. Warts mentioned that you were really head over heels for a demonkin once when he suggested that I was banging my head up against a wall with you. Said that’s probably the real reason why you don’t have any relationships at all because you’re still in love with the infernal bitch.” “Yeah well Warts don’t know the whole fucking story.” “What’s to know? You’re obviously still holding a candle for her like a fucking idiot. You think she gives a shit about you? No. She was a DEMON. They don’t give a shit about anything! And here you are still being faithful for a girl that isn’t around meanwhile you outright continue to ignore people who ARE here and do care for you. Someone who knows your likes and dislikes. Someone who has done more than she would normally do and would probably do a lot more stupid shit because for some fucked up reason she really likes you.” Vera at this point looks down a bit and rubs her eyes. “No. LOVES you. More than you’ll ever damn well know.” You don’t really know what to say. You always knew Vera had some attraction to you, but you didn’t think it extended this far. Even with everything that’s going on with your body right now, this information has made you focus on something other than sex. “Vera, I really don’t know what to say, except if you believe that I haven’t ever thought about us, well you don’t know me as well as you think. Hell, tonight I even enjoyed pretending a bit that we were going out on some fancy date, well until the drugged drinks that is.” “Then what the hell’s the problem?” “The problem is, I’ll fucking kill you! My dick is fucking cursed!” “What?!” “Look, I’m having a difficult time as it is trying not to be all over you right now, so here’s the short version.” You quickly explain how you came to learn about your unfortunate condition and everything else relating to it. When Vera asks about a cure, you explain that the cost is too high from what you know about the one time it was offered to you. “So you see? I haven’t been avoiding a relationship with you for no damn reason. I’ve been trying to keep you alive! And if you want to stay that way, I’d suggest you fucking leave right this minute. I need to go jerk off or something in an alley right now.” You say. Vera is silent for a moment “Okay, well why don’t I at least help you with that?” Vera suddenly says. “What?” you say. “Why don’t you at least let me jerk you off? I mean it’s not sex right? You’re not penetrating me. I’m just going to be lending a helping hand as it were.” “Vera, while I appreciate the offer, I’m still not sure if that’s a good idea.” “Look, you know how I feel about you. And you’re saying you have feelings for me, so isn’t this the type of shit couples are supposed to do for one another? Help each other out?” You aren’t sure if it’s the drink that’s breaking down your willpower or Vera’s fairly convincing argument, but you can’t hold back anymore. “Okay. Okay. I guess maybe you make a solid point. I’m still really worried about you though.” “Don’t worry about me. You just try to relax as I take care of everything. Let’s go over there, that looks like a secluded spot.” You and Vera duck into an alleyway and soon Vera is helping you out directly. And then again. And then a third and FOURTH time and you’re still not sated. “What the hell did they put into those drinks? Ground up unicorn testicles?” Vera says wiping her hands. “Shit, this isn’t working. Fuck what if its permanent?” “No, this has to wear off eventually. We’re just going to have to do something else.” Vera begins to lower herself. “What the hell are you doing?!” you exclaim. “What does it look like?” she asks “You can’t do that! You’ll die!” “It’s not sex right? I mean not really. I’ll be fine.” “I’m pretty sure it counts, some of those other women blew me too.” “Yeah, but you also fucked them, and we’re not doing that, so again just relax and let me take care of it.” “But…oh shit…” You can’t even argue anymore as you feel the glory that is Vera’s oral skills. Given how many times she’s offered this to you in the past, this has got to be a major fantasy for her or something. Soon… “Fuck. That was a lot. You good?” Vera says wiping off her mouth a bit. “I really wish I could say I was, but you’re going to have to stay down there a little longer.” “Yeah, as much fun as that was, I’m not sucking your dick all night. You’re putting that thing to better use.” At this point Vera begins lifting her dress up and grinding herself into you. “Vera! Shit! We REALLY can’t do this! You WILL die!” you say, but still holding on to her body tightly. “Y’know what I’ve been thinking? I think you’re fucking imagining things. I think all those girls were just a bad coincidence and you jumped to conclusions because as I said, you’re still holding a torch for your ex and felt guilty about it.” Vera responds. “What? Where do you get that idea from?” “I get that idea from the fact that you have no damn proof that your dick is cursed from what you’ve told me. I mean if it really was cursed, I’d think those women would have melted shortly after or something, not died from common shit like drug overdoses or fires. You just had a string of bad luck and made assumptions.” “Vera, you can’t know that.” “Yeah, well I’ve never been one to play it too safe, so if this is it for me, there are worse ways. Might as well at least be because you fucked me. Now let’s do this already.” “Right here in this dirty ass alley?” “You didn’t seem to have any objections before when your dick was in my mouth.” “I still think this is a really bad idea…” “I guess we’ll see, now fuck me like it’s my last night here, because it might very well be.” Against your better judgment (or any judgment really) you finally give what Vera’s always wanted from you. “Oh… shit. Fuck, this is going to be good.” She says as you enter inside her. You’ve barely gotten started fucking her up against a nearby wall and she’s already trying not to make a lot of noise and failing at it. This session quite unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. It’s raw; it’s dirty and it almost feels violent. As you’re giving it to Vera hard, she still manages to surprise you. “Put your hands around my throat.” She suddenly says. “What?!” you ask. “Oh and call me a whore too. I want to imagine you’re raping me in this alley. Y’know like when you pretend threaten to do when we first met?” “That’s…sort of fucked up Vera” “I’m attracted to the likes of you, are you really all that surprised that I’m a little fucked up?” You’re starting to get the impression that Vera’s love for you is a little more twisted that you originally believed. You sort of wonder if it’s been borderline obsession and she’s just done a good job of keeping it together. You’re just not sure if this is such a good idea given that the women you have sex with tend to die afterwards. > You decline the request As horny as you are, there some things you don’t really want to risk doing. “Vera, I’m not going to start choking you. I practically feel like I’m killing you already.” You say. “Not stopping you though is it? Come on, just choke me a little, I can take it.” “Vera I really don’t want to, can we just get on with this…” Vera suddenly slaps you. “Vera…” Vera then slaps you again harder. “Okay stop that!” Vera doesn’t and instead leans in and bites your ear so hard she draws blood. “VERA WHAT THE FUCK!? THAT FUCKING HURT!” you exclaim holding your ear. “Help! I’m being raped!” Vera shouts. “Shhhh! What the fuck are you doing!? You trying to get me…” “RAPE! RAPE! RAPE!” At this point you slam Vera against the wall and put your hand to her mouth. “Shut the fuck up! You trying to get the Watch to arrest us? Ow! My fingers!” you exclaim as Vera manages to bite your fingers. At this point you’re genuinely angry. Under normal circumstances, you’d probably just completely disengage, but seeing as you’re still aroused, you decide to give into Vera’s obvious kink. “Fine, I’ll give you what you want if only to shut you up!” “Well stop talking lover and just do it…ulp…yeah…just like that…” You place your hands around Vera’s throat and begin choking her. At first it’s only light, but as your thrusting gets quicker and harder, you begin tightening your grip. “Okay…you can…loosen up…a bit…” Vera gasps. But you don’t. In fact your mind has gone into a very dark place. You start seeing images of death. Not just hers though. You see the deaths of all the other women you had sex with since Tanya. “St…op…” Vera says and begins to struggle. You don’t even reply, you just continue strangling her. Vera now is fighting for her life, but despite kneeing you in the crotch several times, you’re not even fazed. Even your desire for sex has been muted over your desire to kill her. “You’ll never replace her! NEVER!” you start to shout. You are then suddenly smashed in the back of the head by something, causing you to collapse. “Lady are you alright? We were watching over there and saw him getting too rough!” someone says, meanwhile someone else is still kicking you. While Vera is recovering and coughing, you pull your pistol. “Watch out!” Vera barely manages to utter before you blast the asshole that’s currently kicking you. The bum falls to the ground, and then the other tries to run, but you easily shoot him as well. Vera, realizing that she can’t run, tries to appeal to you. “Please, you have to stop this!” she says. You are really not thinking straight however. The drugs in your body combined with being pushed into aggressiveness and some unknown factor that’s really causing you to have bloody thoughts, and it’s a volatile combination. Still, it’s almost like you aren’t completely yourself. Part of you feels like you’ve done something like this before, and that you always tried to stop it, but couldn’t. There is a brief moment of clarity and then only overwhelming guilt followed by rage. “Why? This is what you wanted and I warned you of the consequences. You thought you were going to be different. YOU thought you were going to steal me away from Tanya! But YOU were wrong! They ALL were! I made sure of that!” you exclaim and point your pistol at Vera. Now you’ve completely lost it. A loud shot is heard, but it isn’t from your pistol. It’s from the musket of a Holgard watchman who overheard all the noise and came running. In typical Holgard Watch fashion he shot first and didn’t even bother asking questions. You fall to the ground a final time with a bloody hole in the side of your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need to just get the hell out of here, because staying is surely going to doom someone. You continue your trip to the exit, trying not to look at any of the people having sexual encounters along the way. Several times you have to push people away after they grab at you. Eventually you just start punching them, and for a couple of them that just turns them on even more. “Uhn yeah, beat me harder! I like it like that!” “This is fucked.” You mutter. You try to think of the most unattractive and least erotic things you can think of like the Holgard sewers, and similar things. You also hit yourself in crotch a few times and unlike the masochist freaks, that works to lessen your arousal. Doesn’t get rid of it entirely though and you’re not doing that too much more because it hurts like a sonofabitch. Eventually you make it out of the palace. The guards don’t even react when they see you and just shrug as you continue to run from the palace and out the gates into the city. As soon as you’re in the public area of the city again, you realize now you’ve got another problem. Instead of having a strong sexual desire around a bunch of other people who are also suffering the same condition, you’re now potentially around a bunch of people who aren’t suffering it at all. You try to walk down the more isolated street with nobody about, but you need to get off them entirely before you potentially start molesting someone or worse. You’d go to a brothel, but if you did, you’d just end up killing all your employees. “Hey, didn’t expect to bump into you. I didn’t realize you left the party too. Figured you were bedding some aristocrat or something.” You spin around and see Vera. “Vera, what the hell are you doing here?” you ask. “I was on my way back home. Shortly after we separated I wandered and talked to a few people and even looked around seeing if I could steal anything, but there really wasn’t a good opportunity, and then something weird happened.” Vera says. “Let me guess, everyone got all friendly?” “Yeah, REALLY friendly. Didn’t know it was going to be that kind of party. Guessing something was in the drinks. Glad I hadn’t drank anything while I was there. Still, I might have paired up with one of the horny aristocrat guys if it had just been a one on one thing, but then Ludmilla was around and she started hitting on me too and I got really creeped out. I mean she didn’t know of course, but she could potentially be my half sister, and that just really put me out of the mood entirely. I ran out as soon as I could.” “Yeah, potentially fucking a sibling, I can see where that would put a damper on things…” you say barely able to contain yourself “Um, what’s wrong with you? You’re fidgeting and sweating. You keep putting your hand on your crotch…wait a minute. Did you have the drinks?” “Vera, I’m telling you, you need to leave me right now, because I’m having a REALLY hard time here.” Vera smiles a bit and grabs at the obvious bulge in your pants. You nearly don’t back away. “Shit. You ARE having a hard time. Well hell, come on let’s put that to good use.” “Vera, you need to seriously stop!” you say. “Oh come on! I don’t see what the hell is wrong with me! I mean shit; you act like I got the fucking plague! You’re a real fucking asshole you know that?” “Vera…” “No! I’m going to say some shit that YOU need to hear! I know all about your ex-girlfriend. Warts mentioned that you were really head over heels for a demonkin once when he suggested that I was banging my head up against a wall with you. Said that’s probably the real reason why you don’t have any relationships at all because you’re still in love with the infernal bitch.” “Yeah well Warts don’t know the whole fucking story.” “What’s to know? You’re obviously still holding a candle for her like a fucking idiot. You think she gives a shit about you? No. She was a DEMON. They don’t give a shit about anything! And here you are still being faithful for a girl that isn’t around meanwhile you outright continue to ignore people who ARE here and do care for you. Someone who knows your likes and dislikes. Someone who has done more than she would normally do and would probably do a lot more stupid shit because for some fucked up reason she really likes you.” Vera at this point looks down a bit and rubs her eyes. “No. LOVES you. More than you’ll ever damn well know.” You don’t really know what to say. You always knew Vera had some attraction to you, but you didn’t think it extended this far. Even with everything that’s going on with your body right now, this information has made you focus on something other than sex. “Vera, I really don’t know what to say, except if you believe that I haven’t ever thought about us, well you don’t know me as well as you think. Hell, tonight I even enjoyed pretending a bit that we were going out on some fancy date, well until the drugged drinks that is.” “Then what the hell’s the problem?” “The problem is, I’ll fucking kill you! My dick is fucking cursed!” “What?!” “Look, I’m having a difficult time as it is trying not to be all over you right now, so here’s the short version.” You quickly explain how you came to learn about your unfortunate condition and everything else relating to it. When Vera asks about a cure, you explain that the cost is too high from what you know about the one time it was offered to you. “So you see? I haven’t been avoiding a relationship with you for no damn reason. I’ve been trying to keep you alive! And if you want to stay that way, I’d suggest you fucking leave right this minute. I need to go jerk off or something in an alley right now.” You say. Vera is silent for a moment “Okay, well why don’t I at least help you with that?” Vera suddenly says. “What?” you say. “Why don’t you at least let me jerk you off? I mean it’s not sex right? You’re not penetrating me. I’m just going to be lending a helping hand as it were.” “Vera, while I appreciate the offer, I’m still not sure if that’s a good idea.” “Look, you know how I feel about you. And you’re saying you have feelings for me, so isn’t this the type of shit couples are supposed to do for one another? Help each other out?” You aren’t sure if it’s the drink that’s breaking down your willpower or Vera’s fairly convincing argument, but you can’t hold back anymore. “Okay. Okay. I guess maybe you make a solid point. I’m still really worried about you though.” “Don’t worry about me. You just try to relax as I take care of everything. Let’s go over there, that looks like a secluded spot.” You and Vera duck into an alleyway and soon Vera is helping you out directly. And then again. And then a third and FOURTH time and you’re still not sated. “What the hell did they put into those drinks? Ground up unicorn testicles?” Vera says wiping her hands. “Shit, this isn’t working. Fuck what if its permanent?” “No, this has to wear off eventually. We’re just going to have to do something else.” Vera begins to lower herself. “What the hell are you doing?!” you exclaim. “What does it look like?” she asks “You can’t do that! You’ll die!” “It’s not sex right? I mean not really. I’ll be fine.” “I’m pretty sure it counts, some of those other women blew me too.” “Yeah, but you also fucked them, and we’re not doing that, so again just relax and let me take care of it.” “But…oh shit…” You can’t even argue anymore as you feel the glory that is Vera’s oral skills. Given how many times she’s offered this to you in the past, this has got to be a major fantasy for her or something. Soon… “Fuck. That was a lot. You good?” Vera says wiping off her mouth a bit. “I really wish I could say I was, but you’re going to have to stay down there a little longer.” “Yeah, as much fun as that was, I’m not sucking your dick all night. You’re putting that thing to better use.” At this point Vera begins lifting her dress up and grinding herself into you. “Vera! Shit! We REALLY can’t do this! You WILL die!” you say, but still holding on to her body tightly. “Y’know what I’ve been thinking? I think you’re fucking imagining things. I think all those girls were just a bad coincidence and you jumped to conclusions because as I said, you’re still holding a torch for your ex and felt guilty about it.” Vera responds. “What? Where do you get that idea from?” “I get that idea from the fact that you have no damn proof that your dick is cursed from what you’ve told me. I mean if it really was cursed, I’d think those women would have melted shortly after or something, not died from common shit like drug overdoses or fires. You just had a string of bad luck and made assumptions.” “Vera, you can’t know that.” “Yeah, well I’ve never been one to play it too safe, so if this is it for me, there are worse ways. Might as well at least be because you fucked me. Now let’s do this already.” “Right here in this dirty ass alley?” “You didn’t seem to have any objections before when your dick was in my mouth.” “I still think this is a really bad idea…” “I guess we’ll see, now fuck me like it’s my last night here, because it might very well be.” Against your better judgment (or any judgment really) you finally give what Vera’s always wanted from you. “Oh… shit. Fuck, this is going to be good.” She says as you enter inside her. You’ve barely gotten started fucking her up against a nearby wall and she’s already trying not to make a lot of noise and failing at it. This session quite unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. It’s raw; it’s dirty and it almost feels violent. As you’re giving it to Vera hard, she still manages to surprise you. “Put your hands around my throat.” She suddenly says. “What?!” you ask. “Oh and call me a whore too. I want to imagine you’re raping me in this alley. Y’know like when you pretend threaten to do when we first met?” “That’s…sort of fucked up Vera” “I’m attracted to the likes of you, are you really all that surprised that I’m a little fucked up?” You’re starting to get the impression that Vera’s love for you is a little more twisted that you originally believed. You sort of wonder if it’s been borderline obsession and she’s just done a good job of keeping it together. You’re just not sure if this is such a good idea given that the women you have sex with tend to die afterwards. > You fulfill the request Never let be said you won’t honor a lady’s request. You put your hands around Vera’s neck, but are very aware of not to actually choke her (Even if she is telling you to squeeze a little harder at times). As fucked up as Vera might be for requesting this, you’re definitely thinking that you’re probably worse since you’re starting to enjoy this. Your thoughts even goes to a dark place during this and you partially struggle to keep in mind that you shouldn’t actually be trying to strangle her to death. In any case you and Vera continue your sexual activities and even though you’re the weakly choking her a bit, you’re the one that starts feeling delirious and out of breath. At one point you actually blurt out: “I love you.” “Shut up, you’re breaking the fantasy.” Vera replies. “Um, I mean you dirty whore, you’re fit only to be fucked and killed!” While this seems to really do it for Vera, you still think this is a really bad idea considering that she may very well really die after all this. Doesn’t stop you though and you continue until you (and her) are completely spent. At which point you collapse nearly directly on top of her and lose consciousness right there in the alley. When you wake up you surprisingly find yourself back at headquarters in your bed. You feel very drained and thirsty. Reminds you of when you were with Tanya. You look over to your right and nearly jump when you find Vera lying next to you just staring. “What the hell?! How did we get here?” you ask. “Well after you collapsed, I paid some bums who apparently had been watching us the whole time to help me drag you to the nearest brothel, from there I found some of our people and they carried you the rest of the way here.” “Great. Now I have to worry about my reputation along with you as well.” “I hardly think some bums are going to be a concern, and so some of the gang carried you home, big deal. It’s not like you got the shit kicked out of you. You just passed out from a mixture of alcohol and wild sex. In fact I went on about how you were giving it to me really good last night. If anything your reputation just increased a bit. Even better, because I wasn’t even lying.” Vera remarks and moves in to caress your body. “And you?” “And me what? Oh you still worried about the whole curse thing? Obviously I’m still here and doing fine, so obviously your concern is misplaced. I told you that you’ve probably been living like a monk for years for no reason and there is no curse. We could’ve been having fun a long time ago, but better late than never right?” “Vera, I told you, the curse doesn’t work like that. You could die tomorrow or even a month from now.” “Yeah, and I could also die a year from now. You going to blame that on a so called curse as well? Shit happens. And that’s exactly what happened to those girls. I mean none of the ones you told me about were exactly in the safest of positions. Whores, tavern wenches, one was another thief. I mean it’s a cruel world and living in Holgard doesn’t make it any easier. Just because they happened to die shortly after you fucked them, doesn’t mean your dick is cursed.” You don’t answer, but you don’t look convinced. “I mean I know you. You typically think things out before making any major decisions, surely you must have considered that this was just in your head and you weren’t cursed?” Vera says. “Yeah I did. Several times in fact, but there were just too many coincidences for me to not come to the conclusion I did. Not to mention I still think about Tanya from time to time. I mean it’s certainly not as strong as it once was, but she’s still there. And if she’s still in my head, what else was left behind?” you ask. “Well of course you’re still going to think about her. From what I can tell, she had fucking demon powers that aided in fucking with your head. Not to mention it sounds like you had a genuine relationship with her. Those things mixed together are going to cause some lingering feelings. I mean shit, I remember this asshole boyfriend I had back when I was a teenager. He wasn’t even a demon and he knew how to say all the right shit to me and I was fool enough to fall for it most of the time. And despite the fact he’s no longer in my life, there’s still a part of me that remembers the few really good times with him.” “What happened to him?” “Got himself killed by being a dumb ass during a robbery. I cried over him for days, and like I said sometimes I still even think about him but my point is I got over him and moved on. And I think that’s what you’re having a hard time doing. You got some sort of weird loyalty going on with this demon chick. Reminds me of those widows that wear black forever after their husbands die. Life’s too damn short to live in the past, which is why I’m not going to fucking worry about a curse and YOU shouldn’t either. We should have gotten together a long time ago.” You know Vera made a brief argument last night about this. At the time you weren’t really thinking straight to really take it into proper consideration and you half believed she just really wanted your dick. And while that still might be true, it doesn’t mean she isn’t wrong. Even if she doesn’t necessarily believe everything she’s saying and is just hedging her bets that you aren’t cursed, she must REALLY be into you if she’s risking potential death. You can’t help but be pretty attracted to that sort of dedication. In fact, if you weren’t still feeling so drained you’d probably have with Vera again right now. “You’re right, I have been hanging on to a memory and making excuses. Time put everything from the past aside and see what happens.” You reply. After getting something to drink, you muster up as much energy you can to get around to dictating orders for everyone today, though you end up letting Vera taking over those duties for the most part today while you’re still recovering from yesterday. (Which she’s happy to do) As much as you’re trying to put the past aside and focus on your new relationship with Vera which is seemingly going well, it’s not entirely simple. For whatever reason Tanya keeps popping up in your head. Actually more frequently that she has in quite awhile. Like when you weren’t with anyone you only thought about her briefly once every month or so. Now? She’s passing through your mind at least once a day. Sometimes more. You continue to try to ignore it, but then your mind starts going to a darker place. You begin to see the images of the women you had sex with in the past after Tanya and their deaths. Honestly before recently when you started explaining all this Vera you hadn’t given them much thought. You never actually saw them die when you were informed of their deaths, yet now you’re seeing their deaths quite clearly, like you were actually there. Worse, now you’re starting to visualize Vera’s death and it all comes to a head when you have very real nightmare involving you stabbing her to death. “Argh! Fuck!” you exclaim waking up. “What the hell?” Vera says waking up next to you. “Oh shit. Thank the gods, you’re still alive!” you say and immediately hold her tight. “Of course I’m still alive. Wait, have you still been worrying about that curse I told you was bullshit?” “Yeah, for awhile now. But I don’t think its bullshit. For the past month I’ve been having these really dark thoughts and I keep seeing the deaths of those girls and the worst part about all of that is I’m starting to think that I killed them.” “I told you, you didn’t. Those were all accidents or coincidences, not a fucking curse!” “No! That’s not what I’m saying! I’m saying, the girl that died in the fire? I SAW myself light the place up! The other that died of an overdose of Yellow Devil? I fucking injected her with it! And now I’ve been seeing myself stab you to death! This is worse that I thought! Before I thought maybe it was just demonic forces doing their work independently, but now it’s ME directly! I mean I’m not sure what’s worse, the fact that maybe there’s a curse on me causing me to kill these women OR something is fucked up in my head and it’s just been me the whole time! Either way, you’re not safe around me!” Despite this revelation and you being obviously upset, Vera is silent and doesn’t move from her spot. “Okay. We can still work through this.” She replies calmly. “Are you serious?” “Fuck yes I’m serious! As far as I know all couples have their issues, yours just happens to be more complicated. Okay first thing you need to do is go fuck some whores.” “What?!” “You heard me. I want you to go fuck a bunch of whores. Pick a brothel we own and fuck as many as you can. I mean I know you didn’t do it before because you didn’t want to put their lives in jeopardy and that’s very sweet of you. One of your endearing qualities, but we need to see if any of this is true once and for all. Obviously if they start dying off then maybe this curse business has some merit and if it IS you doing it, then it’s going to be really obvious soon enough. I mean maybe you’ll get some of them, but no way in hell you’re going to be able to kill them all without getting caught.” This is insane. “But, what if I target you first? I mean I’m already thinking about it!” “You’re not going to kill me. And if you try I think you know I can take care of myself. And even in the off chance you do, well then it’s not going to matter because I’ll be dead.” “But what about me?! Don’t you think I’ll feel really bad about killing you?!” Vera touches your face. “I’m sure you will. You’ll probably even cry over me for a while. The sadder thing is, it’ll still be more emotion than anyone else has ever shown me. I told you I’m in this for the long haul. So if that means you if I have to temporarily let you fuck other women and all this still possibly resulting in my death, then so fucking be it.” Vera’s unbelievably fanatical devotion to you is really starting to reach a level that you didn’t think was possible. Whatever “condition” is fucking with your head, it’s going to have a really difficult time in getting you to actually kill her “Now you want me to go with you to the brothel? Will it help if I’m there?” Vera asks. “Um, no. I’ll go there by myself. Um, what if this all turns out to be true?” you ask. “Well, then I guess you’ll have to get the priests of Dorna to cure you. I know you said you declined before since it all felt a little sketchy and you didn’t feel right about the ritual, but desperate times and all that.” “Yeah, I suppose it’ll be the only way. Shit…” “Hey, we’ll get through this.” Vera kisses you and you’re soon on your way to one of the brothels. When you arrive, you’re greeted warmly since it’s been a long time since you’ve been to it and not just because you own the place. And so begins “the test.” The first time, it takes awhile for you to get into it mainly because now you feel like you’re not just cheating on Tanya, but that you’re also cheating on Vera! Then again, it’s not cheating at all is it? Tanya isn’t in the picture anymore and hasn’t been for years and Vera gave you permission. Once you settle that in your mind you’re able to get on with it, with fewer issues. You still end up having some thoughts about those dead women, and even Vera and the whores you were with today. Except it wasn’t quite as vivid. You repeat the process and by the time a week passes you’re experiencing the thoughts even less. Now Vera isn’t even showing up. Oddly some of the whores still are, but again it’s very minor. You aren’t thinking about Tanya either. A month passes and you haven’t had any dark thoughts and nothing has happened to any of the whores or Vera. The dead women however are still with you. The images of you being there now feel more like a faint memory. You get the terrible feeling you DID kill them. You aren’t sure if it’s due to a curse or some mental break down you had after the break up with Tanya, but they aren’t going away. You’re going to just have to try to rebury those thoughts again. Vera’s been pretty understanding through all this so that’s certainly helping, but you’re wondering if maybe it would help even more if you weren’t in Holgard any longer. “Expansion? Where?” Vera asks. “I dunno, but besides all the other shit going on in my head, I have been thinking about business matters too.” You say. “Okay, so were you thinking about starting a League chapter in the Delantium Kingdom? “No. For whatever reason the Ebony Claw Syndicate has not fucked with us. If we start going into their territory, that could change. Besides this this isn’t really expansion so much as relocation. I really think for my own mental health I need a change of location. Too many fucked up memories and baggage here.” “Hm, I see. Well you ever heard of Jicol?” “Think I’ve heard some of the Hessla pirates we deal with mention it sometimes. Don’t know much though.” “It’s a port town west of Hessla and from what I’ve heard it’s wide open like a whore’s legs. Nobody has tried to organize anything there and the city focuses so much on defending against potential pirate attacks that it doesn’t have the heightened security like say Klyton does in recent years. I say we start there.” “That sounds good.” “Okay, so are we not keeping a presence at all here?” “I thought about it, but again, I don’t want too many ties to this place. I mean I’d keep Warts in charge of a chapter here, but I doubt that he’ll want the headache of running it. I figure I’ll just pass the businesses off to the next most qualified person who can start a new organization and we’ll take the half of the treasury and whoever wants to come with us to relocate.” “What if nobody comes?” “Well we’ll still have the coin and we can still restart in Jicol with all new people. Or it can just end up being just us. I don’t care. My mental well being and my relationship with you is more important than coin.” “More important than coin? Wow, you really do care about me.” “Of course I do, why would you doubt that?” “Well I know how I feel, and I can make good guesses on your feelings, but it’s never a sure thing you know? But I’m happy to have confirmation. In any case, I go where you go. We’ll start over in Jicol and be successful, in fact I’ve already got my own ideas about what can get us a good head start…” With Vera by your side, a new prospect on the horizon and your “condition” either subdued or gone completely you’re feeling more positive about the future. > You time passes... Chapter 3D1: Nocturnal Ambitions Year 30 Properly getting with Vera and relocating is the best decision you could have made you think. You definitely feel more at ease and not as stressed out all the time. And more importantly you’ve finally shaken off the effects of whatever it was that was fucking with your head before. Still, there always problems that crop up in your line of work. Nothing that can be done to eliminate that. “These Black Hooks are dumb ass snot nosed kids.” You say. “Perhaps, but you know those type tend to be very eager to prove themselves.” Vera says. “Maybe so, but I’m just not sure I want that lot incorporated into our organization.” “Well the only other option is to wipe them out then, because I think you know from direct experience that two major criminal organizations in one city tends to lead to a whole lot of conflict.” “Hah, I’d hardly call the Black Hooks a major anything. They’re a gang of wannabes, but I guess you do have a point and everyone does have to start somewhere. Yeah, probably should try to recruit them now when they’re young and moldable. Might be good to have some more local people and bolster our ranks a bit more.” “Okay, so how do you want to do this?” “Talk to the leader and his lieutenants I guess. Martin is his name?” “Marco actually.” “Whatever. Have some of our people go to one of their little hangouts to set up a meeting and explain to them if they don’t accept the invitation then I’ll have my answer of how to deal with them. Now are we certain that they are the only other organization in the city?” “Yeah, all other criminal activity in the city is mostly by independents and unorganized.” “Okay, well we probably should start gathering them too in time, but we’ll deal with the Black Hooks first. Vera kisses you goodbye to go perform her regular duties and get things rolling on the Black Hooks situation. A couple days pass and you’ve finally gotten your answer from the Black Hooks and apparently despite some tough talk by Marco, he’s agreed to meet with you, just outside the city. Given what you know of him and the Black Hooks, they’re a gang of youths that engage in a lot of petty crime such as punching old ladies and taking their coin bags. You’re also aware that more than a few of them though are getting hooked on Purple Wish so that might play a part in negotiations. Though as far as you’re concerned, this isn’t going to be much of a negotiation, it’s going to be you telling these wannabes if they want to be continue along their path of delinquency, they’re going to have to start falling in line. You naturally get to the meeting a little early and have some of your people hiding nearby in case something happens, but honestly you’re not worried. Eventually Marco and three of his people of them arrive. Two of them look a little jittery. Another one is female and given that she’s hanging on Marco’s arm, it must be his little trashy girlfriend. Marco gives you the hard stare to which of course you’re quite unimpressed by. “I trust you know who I am.” You say. “Yeah, you run that new gang called the Nocturnal League.” “Oh, we’re a lot more than just a gang.” “Okay, whatever. So we’re here. What the fuck did you want to talk about?” Marco says. “Hm, I’ll ignore the bluster and chalk it up to nerves.” “Hey! I’m not nervous! There’s four of us out here and just one of you!” Marco exclaims, not knowing just how close he is to death at anytime. “Relax, it wasn’t an insult, but tell me Marco, where do you see the Black Hooks in five years?” “Five years?” “Yes, that’s what I said. Where do you see yourself and your gang in that time? What’s the plan? Do you have a plan?” Marco just looks at you and then at his buddies with a blank expression. Predictable. Stupid ass teenager doesn’t have a plan. “Well? Come on boy think! I know you lot engages in minor thievery and pointless vandalism. Were you planning on moving into drugs and whores? Get into the Qweepa fights perhaps? Unite all the criminals in the city into your little gang and take over all of Jicol’s underworld?” “Um…” “Um? Um is not a plan you halfwit. Am I just wasting my time here?” “Okay! Fuck! I dunno! I mean I guess we want to be pirates.” You shake your head. “Okay, you lot want to be pirates. Alright, do you own a ship?” “No.” “You have no ship. Are you saving coin to buy one?” “Um…” “I’ll take that as a no. Do you know how to sail?” “No.” “Fucking hell, do any of you losers at least KNOW any fucking pirates?” “I do!” the girl says. “Hm, I bet you do.” You reply. “Hey what’s that supposed to mean?” Marco asks. “It means your little girlfriend is the only one here that at least has any connections, and since I’m a gentleman I won’t elaborate any further since it’s none of my concern anyway. My point is you fuckers have no damn ambition. You lot probably haven’t even left this island have you?” The four of them again look down and at each other. “I thought so. When I was your age I had already killed several men, left home and was travelling the world!” Travelling the world might be pushing it, but travelling to Holgard is still more than these little shits have done. At this point you begin lecturing Marco about how their criminal activity is petty and amateur along with bringing unnecessary heat down by the Jicol Watch. Something about this seems familiar… “Hey! Get off our fucking asses! What gives you the right to yell at us? You’re not our fucking dad!” And yep, that’s what seemed familiar. Shit, you never thought you’d sound like your father, but you guess the old man’s personality is there after all. In any case, you hope you’re a little more successful than he was in getting some unruly teenagers in line. “Yeah, I’m not your dad, but here’s the thing, I AM in charge. From now on, the Nocturnal League is taking over everything and you can either be part of that, or you can get the hell out of the way. The choice is yours. What you don’t want is to be IN our way. Now I’m telling you lot this first because you’re closest thing to an organization in this city so you’re officially the biggest competition, as laughable as that is. You’re also getting the chance to join a REAL one along with better training for all your youthful activity that the law disapproves of. So, you with me or not?” “So what happens if I say no?” Marco asks. “You’re free to leave. Though I’d suggest that you go get a regular job like a barrel maker or go try to be a cabin boy on a pirate ship and pursue that dream because as I said, the Black Hooks as of now are a thing of the past.” You reply. “So we have no choice.” “Sure you do, just not the one you want. Look, I get that this is going to be the hardest for you since you’re in a leadership position and you probably don’t like people telling you what to do and all I can say to that is well tough shit. You’re either going to have to suck it up or as I said, get the hell out of my way. Now if it’ll lessen the sting to your pride, I can say, you may retain some of your leadership role in a limited capacity. I’m going to need help in assimilating the rest of your people and the smoother this goes down, the better off we’ll ALL be.” This ultimatum is met with some silence and then the four of them begin whispering amongst themselves. It’s actually sort of amusing to you. Marco turns to you and speaks. “Fuck you. We’re not joining.” Marco says. You just sigh thinking that this was going so well too. “Oh? And that’s what all of you have decided?” you say. “That’s what I’VE decided.” “Funny, because I could have swore I saw you conversing with your friends which signifies to me that maybe you AREN’T the leader you claim if you have to speak with anyone before making a final decision as important as this.” “I AM the leader and I’m not following some asshole that’s trying to scare me. I know some shit about you. You only just got here and only have a handful of people. The Black Hooks have WAY more than you. You don’t look so tough and if you didn’t have that pistol, I’d kick your ass.” “Is that right?” Well you expected some resistance, but you figured it would be half assed negotiation, not Marco finding the balls to stand up to you. The simple thing would be to shoot him and get this over with since you’re fairly sure the rest are going to fall in line, but you’ll make greater point by actually humoring this asshole. Besides, he’s annoyed you enough that you’ll take some delight in kicking his ass. “Okay then, but first.” You say and whistle for your people to come out of hiding. Marco and his people look a little surprised which just proves how dumb they really are if they thought you were out here alone. “Since I’m fairly certain as soon as I’m kicking Marco’s ass, he’s going to call for help, I want you two to make sure this is indeed a fair fight. Shoot anyone who interferes.” “Wait, how do I know they won’t shoot us, if I win?” “Don’t worry, you won’t win.” You say and hand your pistol over to one of your people. Marco pulls a knife and begins to look for an opening to which to attack. You just watch him. “I want you three to pay attention, because what I do to Marco, I’ll also do to you if you choose to follow him…well not you. You can have a position in the brothel.” You say to Marco’s buddies. Predictably this enrages him and he swings wildly at you with his knife, you easily dodge his clumsy attacks and with a few punches to his face, he’s already on the ground. You then step on his wrist and take the knife from him. “Too fucking easy.” At this point Marco attempts to punch you in the balls with his other hand, but instead you stomp him in the face. You then proceed to break his arm, he screams in pain and his girlfriend looks away while his buddies look like they’ve just realized how serious this is. You point Marco’s own knife at his face and he’s already crying and begging for his life. “No! (sob) Please! I don’t wanna die! I apologize! I… (sob)” Marco screams. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up. YOU brought this on yourself. Up until now, you’ve just been playing, but this is what happens when you make bad fucking choices. There are consequences.” you say as you prod the knife into his face so it bleeds. “However, you’re fortunate that today those consequences aren’t fatal.” You stand up and step back while Marco’s people slowly go see to him. “You change your mind?” Marco of course says he does and his people do as well. “Good, now go back and tell the rest of your gang about the change in leadership. Also assure them that they all stand to make more coin and who knows maybe you lot will actually scrape enough to buy a ship one day. In the meantime Marco, I’m going to be counting on you to make this transition smooth. I don’t want to have to straighten out the rest of your gang the way I had to with you, I don’t have the fucking time. Understand?” Marco nods his head and thanks you for not killing him. “Yes, well I am the nice one. Now get the hell out of here.” Marco and his crew leave as quick as they can and head back to Jicol. After chuckling a bit with your own people and taking your pistol back, you do start to do likewise. Or at least you try to. You’re not used to stomping about the jungle area outside Jicol and unfortunately you end up getting turned around and lost. You begin cursing as your two underlings try not to anger you any further by staying silent. As you’re still wandering through the jungle you stumble upon a ruined structure. Looks like a temple and by its design it looks like one dedicated to Fel. Seeing as it’s starting to get dark, you half wonder if you shouldn’t just take shelter in here for the night and start fresh tomorrow. Not to mention there could be something of value in there. > You take shelter You’ve always hated the wilderness. You still have the bad memories of when you had to trounce about the forests on your way to Holgard. It’s so easy to get lost, especially at night. Better to stay in a structure until day break when you can at least see better. You can only imagine how concerned Vera is right now. Hell, she might have even declared war on the Black Hooks believing them to have killed you, but there isn’t much you can do about that at the moment. You tell your two people you’re going to take shelter in the temple and you all head inside. After lighting a couple torches, you get a better look at your surroundings and the place looks about like what you’d expect, though it’s obviously much bigger than the temple in Holgard. It’s also covered in spiderwebs. It’s a long shot, but you think about the possibility of some valuable items still here. Temples usually have that sort of thing lying around. You might as well take a look given that you’ll be spending the night here. “Let’s have a look around. Grab anything that looks like it might have some value.” You say. You all search the immediate nearby rooms and areas, but don’t find much save for a lot more cobwebs. You enter one room, you find a couple of old vases that look like they might hold value. As you’re looking at those, one of your people ends up finding a stairway leading down. “Hey boss. Found something.” “Hm, I suppose if there is anything of value, it might be down there. Of course who knows what might be down there, so we should be careful. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were traps.” You and your two people slowly head down the steps, when suddenly you start to hear squeaking. At first you think it might be rats, but the squeak is a bit of a lower tone. You soon see several sources of the squeaking running at you from the darkness of the bottom of the stairwell. “Shit, there’s a fucking shitload of qweepas!” Your underling instinctively starts swinging his torch at them, but qweepas tend to be a bit more fearless than normal rats especially in a large pack like this and merely just avoid the flames by running around his swing radius. Doesn’t take long before one of them has managed to get to his legs and bite him. He shouts in pain and slips down the stairs. While this wasn’t enough to kill him, the old traps that were at the bottom of said stairs well and you see a swinging spike impaling him. Meanwhile there are more qweepas coming up from the stairs. A lot of them. You and your other underling immediately run back up the stairs, while qweepas are biting at your heels the whole time. Some of them are even managing to leap on your back. You both get to the top of the stairs and have to stop to get the damn things off of you before they gnaw through your clothes and your body. You start stabbing, burning and throwing the oversized rats against the walls. You’ve got bites all over you and you’re bleeding all over, but that’s nothing compared to your surviving underling who isn’t quite so lucky when a qweepa manages to bite into his neck, puncturing an artery. Flailing and crying out, he falls to the floor mobbed by several qweepas who are eager to finish him off. You manage to get away, but the qweepas haven’t given up yet. You end up getting a couple more leaping on you, which causes you to have to slow down your pace again to get them off. In the process, you drop your torch and fumble around in a corridor desperately trying to avoid an ignoble fate of getting eaten by these things. As you’re doing this, you’ve moved far enough away from your dropped light source that you can’t even see what’s around you clearly. In your thrashing you’ve stumbled down a corridor you didn’t explore and specifically into a larger gathering of spiderwebs. You were pretty careful about avoiding those before and burning the smaller patches that were in your way earlier, but now you’ve fallen into right into one big patch. The webbing is incredibly sticky, and now you’re having a hard time even moving at all. Despite this impediment, you manage to get rid of the last of the qweepas, and fortunately for you, there doesn’t seem to be any more qweepas attacking you. Unfortunately that’s because even most qweepas know better than to go near the spider webs. As you’re trying to pull yourself free, you soon find out that these webs weren’t just made by multitudes of little spiders, or even several big ones. A vibration on the web is felt as you’re still fumbling around in the dark and you look just in time to see a very large mass descend upon you. You can’t see it clearly, but fear over takes you since you know what it could only be. And much like spiders of the smaller variety, it injects a poison, which paralyzes you, but it doesn’t bother wrapping you up and save you for later. It’s hungry now and just decides to eat you alive right then and there.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3D1: Nocturnal Ambitions Year 30 Properly getting with Vera and relocating is the best decision you could have made you think. You definitely feel more at ease and not as stressed out all the time. And more importantly you’ve finally shaken off the effects of whatever it was that was fucking with your head before. Still, there always problems that crop up in your line of work. Nothing that can be done to eliminate that. “These Black Hooks are dumb ass snot nosed kids.” You say. “Perhaps, but you know those type tend to be very eager to prove themselves.” Vera says. “Maybe so, but I’m just not sure I want that lot incorporated into our organization.” “Well the only other option is to wipe them out then, because I think you know from direct experience that two major criminal organizations in one city tends to lead to a whole lot of conflict.” “Hah, I’d hardly call the Black Hooks a major anything. They’re a gang of wannabes, but I guess you do have a point and everyone does have to start somewhere. Yeah, probably should try to recruit them now when they’re young and moldable. Might be good to have some more local people and bolster our ranks a bit more.” “Okay, so how do you want to do this?” “Talk to the leader and his lieutenants I guess. Martin is his name?” “Marco actually.” “Whatever. Have some of our people go to one of their little hangouts to set up a meeting and explain to them if they don’t accept the invitation then I’ll have my answer of how to deal with them. Now are we certain that they are the only other organization in the city?” “Yeah, all other criminal activity in the city is mostly by independents and unorganized.” “Okay, well we probably should start gathering them too in time, but we’ll deal with the Black Hooks first. Vera kisses you goodbye to go perform her regular duties and get things rolling on the Black Hooks situation. A couple days pass and you’ve finally gotten your answer from the Black Hooks and apparently despite some tough talk by Marco, he’s agreed to meet with you, just outside the city. Given what you know of him and the Black Hooks, they’re a gang of youths that engage in a lot of petty crime such as punching old ladies and taking their coin bags. You’re also aware that more than a few of them though are getting hooked on Purple Wish so that might play a part in negotiations. Though as far as you’re concerned, this isn’t going to be much of a negotiation, it’s going to be you telling these wannabes if they want to be continue along their path of delinquency, they’re going to have to start falling in line. You naturally get to the meeting a little early and have some of your people hiding nearby in case something happens, but honestly you’re not worried. Eventually Marco and three of his people of them arrive. Two of them look a little jittery. Another one is female and given that she’s hanging on Marco’s arm, it must be his little trashy girlfriend. Marco gives you the hard stare to which of course you’re quite unimpressed by. “I trust you know who I am.” You say. “Yeah, you run that new gang called the Nocturnal League.” “Oh, we’re a lot more than just a gang.” “Okay, whatever. So we’re here. What the fuck did you want to talk about?” Marco says. “Hm, I’ll ignore the bluster and chalk it up to nerves.” “Hey! I’m not nervous! There’s four of us out here and just one of you!” Marco exclaims, not knowing just how close he is to death at anytime. “Relax, it wasn’t an insult, but tell me Marco, where do you see the Black Hooks in five years?” “Five years?” “Yes, that’s what I said. Where do you see yourself and your gang in that time? What’s the plan? Do you have a plan?” Marco just looks at you and then at his buddies with a blank expression. Predictable. Stupid ass teenager doesn’t have a plan. “Well? Come on boy think! I know you lot engages in minor thievery and pointless vandalism. Were you planning on moving into drugs and whores? Get into the Qweepa fights perhaps? Unite all the criminals in the city into your little gang and take over all of Jicol’s underworld?” “Um…” “Um? Um is not a plan you halfwit. Am I just wasting my time here?” “Okay! Fuck! I dunno! I mean I guess we want to be pirates.” You shake your head. “Okay, you lot want to be pirates. Alright, do you own a ship?” “No.” “You have no ship. Are you saving coin to buy one?” “Um…” “I’ll take that as a no. Do you know how to sail?” “No.” “Fucking hell, do any of you losers at least KNOW any fucking pirates?” “I do!” the girl says. “Hm, I bet you do.” You reply. “Hey what’s that supposed to mean?” Marco asks. “It means your little girlfriend is the only one here that at least has any connections, and since I’m a gentleman I won’t elaborate any further since it’s none of my concern anyway. My point is you fuckers have no damn ambition. You lot probably haven’t even left this island have you?” The four of them again look down and at each other. “I thought so. When I was your age I had already killed several men, left home and was travelling the world!” Travelling the world might be pushing it, but travelling to Holgard is still more than these little shits have done. At this point you begin lecturing Marco about how their criminal activity is petty and amateur along with bringing unnecessary heat down by the Jicol Watch. Something about this seems familiar… “Hey! Get off our fucking asses! What gives you the right to yell at us? You’re not our fucking dad!” And yep, that’s what seemed familiar. Shit, you never thought you’d sound like your father, but you guess the old man’s personality is there after all. In any case, you hope you’re a little more successful than he was in getting some unruly teenagers in line. “Yeah, I’m not your dad, but here’s the thing, I AM in charge. From now on, the Nocturnal League is taking over everything and you can either be part of that, or you can get the hell out of the way. The choice is yours. What you don’t want is to be IN our way. Now I’m telling you lot this first because you’re closest thing to an organization in this city so you’re officially the biggest competition, as laughable as that is. You’re also getting the chance to join a REAL one along with better training for all your youthful activity that the law disapproves of. So, you with me or not?” “So what happens if I say no?” Marco asks. “You’re free to leave. Though I’d suggest that you go get a regular job like a barrel maker or go try to be a cabin boy on a pirate ship and pursue that dream because as I said, the Black Hooks as of now are a thing of the past.” You reply. “So we have no choice.” “Sure you do, just not the one you want. Look, I get that this is going to be the hardest for you since you’re in a leadership position and you probably don’t like people telling you what to do and all I can say to that is well tough shit. You’re either going to have to suck it up or as I said, get the hell out of my way. Now if it’ll lessen the sting to your pride, I can say, you may retain some of your leadership role in a limited capacity. I’m going to need help in assimilating the rest of your people and the smoother this goes down, the better off we’ll ALL be.” This ultimatum is met with some silence and then the four of them begin whispering amongst themselves. It’s actually sort of amusing to you. Marco turns to you and speaks. “Fuck you. We’re not joining.” Marco says. You just sigh thinking that this was going so well too. “Oh? And that’s what all of you have decided?” you say. “That’s what I’VE decided.” “Funny, because I could have swore I saw you conversing with your friends which signifies to me that maybe you AREN’T the leader you claim if you have to speak with anyone before making a final decision as important as this.” “I AM the leader and I’m not following some asshole that’s trying to scare me. I know some shit about you. You only just got here and only have a handful of people. The Black Hooks have WAY more than you. You don’t look so tough and if you didn’t have that pistol, I’d kick your ass.” “Is that right?” Well you expected some resistance, but you figured it would be half assed negotiation, not Marco finding the balls to stand up to you. The simple thing would be to shoot him and get this over with since you’re fairly sure the rest are going to fall in line, but you’ll make greater point by actually humoring this asshole. Besides, he’s annoyed you enough that you’ll take some delight in kicking his ass. “Okay then, but first.” You say and whistle for your people to come out of hiding. Marco and his people look a little surprised which just proves how dumb they really are if they thought you were out here alone. “Since I’m fairly certain as soon as I’m kicking Marco’s ass, he’s going to call for help, I want you two to make sure this is indeed a fair fight. Shoot anyone who interferes.” “Wait, how do I know they won’t shoot us, if I win?” “Don’t worry, you won’t win.” You say and hand your pistol over to one of your people. Marco pulls a knife and begins to look for an opening to which to attack. You just watch him. “I want you three to pay attention, because what I do to Marco, I’ll also do to you if you choose to follow him…well not you. You can have a position in the brothel.” You say to Marco’s buddies. Predictably this enrages him and he swings wildly at you with his knife, you easily dodge his clumsy attacks and with a few punches to his face, he’s already on the ground. You then step on his wrist and take the knife from him. “Too fucking easy.” At this point Marco attempts to punch you in the balls with his other hand, but instead you stomp him in the face. You then proceed to break his arm, he screams in pain and his girlfriend looks away while his buddies look like they’ve just realized how serious this is. You point Marco’s own knife at his face and he’s already crying and begging for his life. “No! (sob) Please! I don’t wanna die! I apologize! I… (sob)” Marco screams. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up. YOU brought this on yourself. Up until now, you’ve just been playing, but this is what happens when you make bad fucking choices. There are consequences.” you say as you prod the knife into his face so it bleeds. “However, you’re fortunate that today those consequences aren’t fatal.” You stand up and step back while Marco’s people slowly go see to him. “You change your mind?” Marco of course says he does and his people do as well. “Good, now go back and tell the rest of your gang about the change in leadership. Also assure them that they all stand to make more coin and who knows maybe you lot will actually scrape enough to buy a ship one day. In the meantime Marco, I’m going to be counting on you to make this transition smooth. I don’t want to have to straighten out the rest of your gang the way I had to with you, I don’t have the fucking time. Understand?” Marco nods his head and thanks you for not killing him. “Yes, well I am the nice one. Now get the hell out of here.” Marco and his crew leave as quick as they can and head back to Jicol. After chuckling a bit with your own people and taking your pistol back, you do start to do likewise. Or at least you try to. You’re not used to stomping about the jungle area outside Jicol and unfortunately you end up getting turned around and lost. You begin cursing as your two underlings try not to anger you any further by staying silent. As you’re still wandering through the jungle you stumble upon a ruined structure. Looks like a temple and by its design it looks like one dedicated to Fel. Seeing as it’s starting to get dark, you half wonder if you shouldn’t just take shelter in here for the night and start fresh tomorrow. Not to mention there could be something of value in there. > You get back to Jicol You need to get back home as soon as possible; you really don’t want to be out in the jungle after dark, especially in some ruined temple. Who knows what the hell is living in that thing. After a big of retracing and thinking, you and your people eventually remember the way back to Jicol and you’re breathing a sigh of relief since it truly would have been a silly thing to get yourself lost and killed in the wilderness. When you get back to Vera she asks what the hell happened since you were gone so long. She nearly called the rest of the League to go attack the Black Hooks. You explain everything. “You let him live? You sure he’s not going to try to get revenge someday?” Vera asks. “He might, but I’m not particularly worried that he will. Right now he’s got proper fear in him and he’ll get the rest of the Black Hooks in line with the League. They’ve been following him this long so they’ll listen and in time his influence will be less as we split them up and have them work with other people. I mean yeah I could have shot him, but I think not killing him was the better play in the long run.” You say. “I guess we’ll see.” In the months to follow, the Black Hooks do indeed fall in line and you’ve expanded the League greatly as far as membership is concerned. Of course there’s a lot of training involved, but thankfully many of them are quick learners after all. It’s also one of the major competitors out of the way and when you get better consolidated you’ll be able to move on to the independent folks as well. You’ll soon have this city’s entire underworld under the Nocturnal League’s control at this pace. Year 31 “What the fuck, I thought nobody else here was organized!” you exclaim. “They weren’t, but I guess when word got around about what happened with the Black Hooks, the independents formed a loose alliance. They call themselves the Jicol Coalition of Rogues.” Vera remarks. “They can’t actually believe they’ll win.” You say. “Maybe not, but I believe that they at least think they’ll make things harder. Maybe even to the point that you’ll give up.” Vera remarks. “Yeah, that’s not happening.” “Well that means war then, but I have to remind you, we can’t just start stabbing people in the streets. The Jicol Watch isn’t as corrupt as the Holgard Watch was, in fact they’ve been starting to become a pain in the ass and I’m getting concerned that they’re going to actually raid our headquarters one day.” “Yeah, I know. It’s been a concern of mine too. Now that the League is bigger, we’re probably attracting a lot more attention. “Maybe we need to relocate.” “Well we could do that, but the city is only so big. Eventually we’ll have to relocate again. (Sigh) One of the things I didn’t think I’d miss is the spacious sewers of Holgard.” “Didn’t you say you saw a structure outside the city, in the jungle?” “Yes after meeting with Marco, when I got lost I found that ruined temple. We didn’t explore it really though. Actually always meant to go back to give it a proper look though. I believe it was dedicated to Fel.” “Oh. Well I was going to suggest that we make our base there. I mean regardless of what they do in the city, the Jicol Watch are definitely not going to harass us out there, but I’m not sure if I want to do that if it was a temple dedicated to Fel.” “Hm, that’s not a bad idea though. I mean it might it be a bit of a trip and take some work in cleaning up, but having something defensible like that would be a lot better than the current tavern front we’re operating out of.” “That sounds fairly labor intensive, not to mention dangerous and I’m still leery about making Fel Temple our base. I was part of the Syndicate and saw some of the shit Rook could do with Fel’s divine power. I wouldn’t want to piss off a god.” “Yeah I’ve seen shadow magic as well by EC members and the actual priests, but honestly, I’m more concerned with more corporal trouble than divine right now.” “Again, I suppose it’s up to you and I’ll support your decision, but I feel like this is also going to take time away from combating the JCR.” For all the issues with this, you’re convinced that this is going to be better in the long run. “We’re taking that temple and as for the JCR, there hasn’t been any real aggression yet. I mean from what you’ve said, they aren’t really united except in defense against assimilation. Unless they attack, we’ll hold off for now, and perhaps in time, we can lure some over without the need for combat. There will be a day of reckoning though.” The month clearing out the ruined temple is a grueling process. It fortunately isn’t inhabited by anything worse than some over sized spiders and a shitload of qweepas. You mostly use the ex-Black Hooks to do a lot of the grunt work, even if they grumble a lot. Marco’s keeps the louder ones in line, but eventually even he has to complain when it turns out there are a lot of traps in the lower passages of the temple that have killed a few of them. After a bit of going back and forth of explaining that disarming traps is part of their training, you ultimately give them a break by stepping in and helping out directly. When you get down to the lower passages, you can sort of see their complaints, considering it’s like a maze down here. You nearly trip some of the traps yourself, but thanks to your years of skill, you avoid any injury (and impress some of these ex-Hooks all the more) What is more interesting to you however is when you stumble upon rooms still filled with a few objects. Mostly vases and such, but you do find some more valuable items as well. Soon you’ve got a bunch of teenagers arguing over treasure and you have to remind them… “Not sure what you lot are arguing about, all this shit is going to me first, especially since I was the one who disarmed most of these traps in the first place. In any event we can probably get a good price for most of this stuff and the League could always use more coin in the general treasury.” You say. At this point you tell everyone that they can finally head back to the city to return to their former duties, which they seem relieved about. You spend the next day just you by yourself in your new future headquarters as you go through the various valuable objects trying to appraise how much you should be able to get for them. As you’re putting a vase aside, you suddenly hear something and you draw your pistol. “Before you start shooting, it’s just me. I see I came just in time to see you giving the children a break.” Vera says slowly entering the room. “Vera? Didn’t expect you to come here so soon.” You remark. “Yeah, well I figured I needed to get over my fears if this is going to be our new headquarters. I have to say, it is a lot better than that front we’re currently using. I still have my concerns though. Are you really sure we’re not pissing off some divine being doing this?” “I dunno, but I’m guessing if Fel really didn’t like it, he would have already killed all of us with shadow monsters by now.” “Not necessarily, he could just do it over time. He is a god after all.” “True, but I remember something you said. We could all die randomly at anytime, but it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s any curse or greater reason behind it. Just means shit happens.” “I suppose that’s true. Still, if we do start seeing shadow monsters, I think we should just get the hell off the island and not look back.” “Works for me. So any information of what’s going on with this new coalition of independent rogues? Like maybe who the leader is? “Nothing new. Still can’t figure out who is the leader yet. Then again it’s supposed to be a defensive alliance against us, not a proper organization.” “Yeah and that’s bullshit. The Thieves’ Guild was supposed to be a so called alliance of independent rogues as well and they definitely had a leader. Someone always has to be calling the shots at the top of the pyramid. The fact that we haven’t found this person yet indicates to me that they got much more in mind than simple defense. My other concern is the Jicol Watch. While this temple will keep us from getting completely fucked over if they ever come down hard on us, it still doesn’t change that all of our businesses could still be fucked in the city.” Vera starts to speak and then stops. “Seems like you have something to say. Out with it, I think we’ve gotten to a place in our relationship where we can talk about anything now.” You say. “Well I was just thinking, I over heard some of the Black Hooks saying once that there was an abandoned dock not far from this temple that nobody uses anymore. We could probably fix it up. Strong arm some carpenters and wood workers to do it and get some of our people to do any extra needed labor.” Vera says. “Hmmm, I see where you’re going with this. You’re saying we wouldn’t have to rely on Jicol’s docks to trade with pirates, smugglers and some corrupt merchants if shit really went bad for us. Good idea, but I can’t imagine the government is going to just let us get away doing that.” “The Jicol’s government is fairly hands off at times. Considering they let pirates dock in the city as long as they aren’t pillaging or causing trouble, they probably aren’t going to care about what we’re doing out here. I mean that’s why we’re setting up a base out here right? In fact, I’d say they’d probably prefer it if those type came over here instead. In time we could probably build up a small trading outpost and move some of our businesses out of Jicol entirely.” “Sounds like you’re talking about building a city.” “Maybe nothing so grand as a city, but something like a smaller version of Hessla except with us in charge.” “That’s a nice idea, but this all seems pretty damn expensive and keep in mind we still don’t even have control over all the criminal activity here.” “Yeah I was thinking about other potential avenues of revenue too and while I know you were against it before, I REALLY think we should go into it now…” You already know what Vera is suggesting. “Slave trade.” You say. “Look, I know how you feel about this and back in Holgard it didn’t matter as much since it was a bigger city with more options, but here? We’re in a perfect position to take advantage of the thriving slave trade in this area.” Vera remarks. “Thriving slave trade? As far as I know there aren’t any slave rings in Jicol.” “Exactly! There has never been enough organization to do it right here. We could set up shop and as I said, slaver and pirate ships come here all the time for supplies or rest and he Jicol government doesn’t give a shit as long as they aren’t trying to pillage the place. If we have our own dock, we could easily start selling slaves without even the hassle of potentially getting shit from the Jicol government.” “So where are we getting these slaves again?” “Well we are at war with the independents right? I figure we can start with them. We got this big new base now, plenty of places to keep them in chains.” Vera’s suggestion solves a few issues you suppose. Maybe it’s due to recently discovering that you murdered several innocent women and blacked it out that’s changed things, but for whatever reason engaging in slave trade just doesn’t seem to repulse you so much anymore. If word gets out that you’re selling your enemies into slavery that could scare a lot of folks into joining. Getting killed is one thing, but getting turned into a slave might be enough to give some people pause. “Okay Vera, I can see some advantages for us going into this business and since you’ve got all the expertise, I’m going to hand this task for you to oversee.” you say. “Great. I’ll start letting my pirate contacts know that we’re in the slave trade business. Word will spread and I can’t wait to get started!” “Hm, well I guess we better get started on getting all this up and running. I guess I should ask though, what is it with you and the slave trade anyway? Not that I would ever profess to be a Jochim saint, but I can’t say I’m going to necessarily enjoy this.” “I dunno, I guess because when I did it before I was really good at it.” “Well you’re good at a lot of other things too, but you’re not volunteering for a position at a whore house.” “Ha ha. Fortunately for you, I enjoy doing that for free.” “Pfft, not that free. I’m paying half of everything everyday.” “Best coin you’ll ever spend. Anyway as I was saying, I wasn’t just good, I dare say I was damn near the best. I could talk of some of those so called master slavers from Hessla into a deal in my favor. Always felt a great sense of accomplishment when I took advantage of one of those fat bastards. I think I never got a chance to truly shine though because Elias was a controlling asshole, but with you I know this will be different. Everything is different now that we’re finally together.” Without another word, Vera hugs and kisses you lovingly, which then leads to sex. You can’t help but think that the whole slave trade subject must turn her on in some way which is another reason for her enthusiasm, but it’s hardly surprising given what you know about her. Vera’s got some fucked up sexual quirks. You really know how to pick ‘em. You went from a demonkin who tried to turn you away at every opportunity to a woman who practically adores you so much that she gets off on you “raping” her. Maybe you just weren’t meant to have an average girlfriend, let alone an average relationship. Makes sense given that you don’t lead an average life either. However that magical moment of passion in the ruins of a structure dedicated to a deity of shadows, leads to a very average outcome. Soon… “WHAT?! How the hell did that happen?!” you exclaim. “The usual way I suspect.” Vera remarks. “I know that, I just mean…I thought you couldn’t get pregnant! Something about your lady innards being barren.” “Well I thought so to, I mean I’ve had sex tons of other times with other guys before you and then we’ve had it a lot when we got together and nothing. I can’t imagine what changed.” “Well I mean are you sure? I mean your belly isn’t big.” “It’s still too early for me to start looking like an ogre after feeding time at the halfling trough, but I have been feeling nauseous and peeing a lot more. Also my tits feel tender sometimes.” “Well that explains why you bitched at me so much when went up and suddenly squeezed them a couple days ago.” “I mean just to be really sure I actually saw a physician in Jicol and he pretty much confirmed it.” “Shit, well how much does he charge to solve the problem?” “What? No! I don’t want to get rid of it!” “What seriously? You want to keep it?” “Well I admit, I never really saw myself as a mother, but I mean…I dunno…we already got roots in place, we might well have a family.” “But…but what about the slave trade? You said you were going to be in charge of that!” “And I still will be. Nothing’s changed on that front. I’ll just have a midwife or some shit nearby. Y’know I think one our people has some experience in that matter. Apparently she was the oldest of fifteen siblings and had to help deliver most of them. Can you imagine? I’m telling you right now, we are NOT having fourteen more of these fuckers.” Right now you’re having difficulty even imagining having one! Your mind is going all over the place and you’re having a hard time coming to grips with this. You certainly never saw yourself as a father. Should you even be bringing up a kid in this sort of life? While being a criminal and having a family isn’t something new, it rarely works out well as enemies see it as an added potential weakness to pounce on. Vera can see you’re having some problems with this and tries to calm you. “It’s going to be okay you know. I mean so far we’ve been making a lot of progress with little resistance so far. I mean I know there is the Jicol Coalition of Rogues that needs to be dealt with, but there are already whispers of some of them about to jump ship. If you’re worried about me, don’t be. I’ll be fine to do my job. If anything I’ll be safer by being closer to our headquarters since the slave shit is going to just be run from here directly and to the rebuilt docks. I won’t even have to travel to Jicol.” Vera says. “I suppose that’s true.” “And after I actually have the baby? Again, it’s not going to be a problem. Even if we’re in the middle of a gang war, I’ll strap the little bugger on my back and fight off potential assassins if I have to. My point is, I’m in this with you all the way. Motherhood isn’t going to change me drastically.” Well even if you were going to try to talk Vera out of this, you doubt if you’d succeed or at least you doubt you’d succeed without a lot of drama which might very well result in something pretty devastating for everyone. Not that you were going to though since Vera’s words have convinced you that everything will indeed be fine, or at least manageable. You aren’t sure what sort of father you’re going to make, but you suppose you’ll find out. You end the conversation on a positive note of looking forward to this unexpected upcoming event. You suppose since Vera’s going to need extra help, you have more of the ex-Black Hooks help her with getting the docks fixed and ready and tell some of your old veterans to start capturing these Coalition fuckers and bringing them back to the temple in chains. You also tell them that if the opportunity presents itself and it isn’t going to cause a lot of problems, to capture a few pretty ladies as well. You may not be the smooth talker or have the expertise that Vera has, but you know pretty females are always in demand somewhere and they should give Vera a good start on this venture. All this dwelling on you starting a new family makes you think about your pre-existing one and how they’re all doing. It’s strange you suppose, but you get the urge to write to your parents. You don’t give them all the details, but you tell them that you’re doing okay and that you’re finally “settling down” with a family of your own. You also apologize for how events unfolded that caused you to leave in the first place and that you know that they both tried to raise you the best they could and were lucky to have them for parents. You finish the letter by telling them you love them and if they see sis, that you love her too. You send the letter off and have no idea if it’ll ever actually reach them and even if it does, you probably won’t ever get an answer back, but you feel better about making the attempt. > You time passes... Year 32 “Okay, we’re heading out to finish these assholes for good. You stay here and keep things running here as you do.” You say. “Oh sure, keep me at home, to look after the kids while you go out and have fun.” Vera says. “Well, it’s important that you know your place as a woman. Speaking of kids, where’s Kol?” “Gertrude is currently looking after him.” “I swear I don’t really like you leaving our son with her.” “He’s fine and she’s been nothing but helpful. I mean hell, she’s probably one of the few people I’d trust with him.” “Dangerous to go around trusting the lot we associate with, but something about her bothers me.” “You didn’t even know who the hell she was until she was promoted to midwife and babysitter. Which is amazing since she’s one of our older members that stuck with us since Holgard.” “Alright, alright, if you trust her then I guess that’s good enough for me.” “No it isn’t.” “Yeah, probably not, but I don’t have time to worry about it right now.” “Why are you even going on this task? You said you had people in Jicol located at the docks to make sure he didn’t try to get away and there are more than enough people to attack where the JCR are making their headquarters.” “I want to make sure everything goes right. I can’t just sit around barking orders while getting old and fat. That’s how crime bosses assassinated. I need to keep in practice and my skills sharp.” “Hm, I suppose that makes sense, but I’d say you’re not really in any danger of being perceived as weak by any of our underlings right now.” “And I intend to keep it that way.” “I’d prefer it if you took less risks, besides if anyone was going to challenge your position you’d be dead before you even knew what was going on since I’d just poison your food and the shit would be over with.” “Poison? Really? I would have thought if it was going to be you, you’d probably stab me while in the middle of sex.” “Mm, too risky. Besides, that would just be foreplay not murder.” “Well let’s not do that either.” “You’re always so reserved. But if you’re really insisting on going, be careful and don’t lead the charge.” Vera has been overly concerned with your safety ever since she had Kol. You suppose you get why she is now due to you being the father of her child and all, but sometimes it’s a bit too much. “I’ll be fine Vera, stop fussing!” you exclaim. “You sure you’re not also going out of revenge?” Vera asks. “Revenge?” “Yeah, Revenge tends make people a little reckless and I mean this has been sort of personal since you learned who the leader of JCR is.” “Mm, I mean it certainly was unexpected when I found out. Perhaps less unexpected when he wouldn’t even hear me out, but I can’t say this is out of revenge. I imagine he would be more motivated by revenge than I would, hence why he stuck around to fight. I’d say if anything I’m more motivated by tying up an old loose end that doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass in the future.” “I suppose that makes sense. Okay then, apologies for my fussing as you put it..” You kiss Vera goodbye and say one more thing before leaving. “Gotta say though when Sneaks ran away all those years ago, I never expected it was to Jicol.” You head to Jicol to go meet Marco and the rest. Along the way you think about how history is sort of repeating itself here. A larger criminal organization crushing a smaller one. The only difference is you’re the leader of the larger one this time. You have to wonder why Sneaks didn’t just take off like he did last time. Unless he really is that pissed at you, which you assume he is, otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered with all this and you would have easily taken over long before now. When you get to the simple home that the JCR was using as a main headquarters, you find that your people are currently arguing with some of the Jicol Watch. Great. “Keep talking to me like that you little shit, and I’ll just run all of your assess in. I still remember you and your gang of hooligans breaking several windows and punching old people in the face a couple years ago!” one of the guards says. “Yeah well things are different now and YOU don’t tell us what to do anymore!” Marco exclaims. You smack Marco upside the head when you arrive. “Yeah, but I do. Now shut the fuck up Marco, and what’s the problem here?” you ask. “The problem is, your little crime war was supposed to be kept to a dull fucking roar and for the past couple months you lot have been murdering each other in the streets and scaring the shit out of the civvies! You also got gangs of thugs like these loitering around. Now I know we have an agreement that will keep most of the scum out of this city for good, but the mayor is getting very weary of this conflict and is wondering if he shouldn’t just have all parties involved executed.” The watchman captain says. “The same mayor that allows pirates and the like to use his docks? Please, the mayor is no fucking Joachimite saint. We moved all of our shit out of Jicol and now we’re doing the job that YOU lot couldn’t. We’re almost done with finishing off these assholes, we just need to clean out this place and get their leader.” “And we’re here to see it gets done thoroughly because this needs to be finished TODAY.” The watchman captain at this point signals to his platoon that all draw their weapons and then turns back to you as if daring you to argue. “Fine. If you want to help, I’m not going to stop you, but stay out of our way.” “Oh I wouldn’t worry about that, because you lot will be taking the lead anyway. Not about to have you bunch sneaking about behind us.” Marco starts to say something, but you stop him. “But boss…” Marco says. “Shut up Marco. Alright, let’s finish these fuckers for good.” You say to your people and motion to enter the place. No sooner has one of your people stepped into the front door and they nearly get beheaded by a swinging axe trap. Unfortunately, they still get skewered by the spear trap when they ducked and dodged to the left. You shake your head. “For fuck’s sake people, this place is going to have traps up the ass, keep alert!” you shout. For at least the next hour, you search the house disarming traps and uncovering secret doors. You don’t find anyone though. Meanwhile the Jicol Watch is still standing in the front room getting impatient. “Well?” the captain remarks. “Well what?” you answer. “I thought you said the leader was here and so far this place is empty.” “Yeah well I imagine there’s a hidden trapdoor that we haven’t uncovered yet. They’re probably either hiding underground, or maybe even escaped through a tunnel.” “Underground tunnel? There isn’t much they could dig without risking hitting water and flooding said tunnels. In case you didn’t realize, we’re on a fucking island.” “I’m aware, but that doesn’t mean they still didn’t do it. Besides all that, the leader has experience with underground dwellings that are half submerged in water.” Before you can have any further discussion, Marco comes back to you. “Hey boss, we found a trapdoor, looks like it goes down into a cellar. Um, we also lost Orin. Got a bunch of spikes in the face when he opened the trap door.” “Idiot. Anyway, see? I told you there was going to be a trapdoor.” You say. “Hm, well you’re still leading the way.” The Watchman captain says. After a few more of your people check out the immediate room below, you descend down the ladder. You give a quick look and see that this room wasn’t dug out recently. It was actually part of the original house since it actually has solid walls and a solid floor. However, to your left, is where you start to see the construction. You examine the entrance of the dug out tunnel in an attempt to detect any traps but find nothing. Your people go a little further and soon discover that there are tunnels going in several different directions. “Well, have to hand it to you Sneaks, you didn’t just sit on your hands. You literally dug in deep to make it difficult to root the last of you fuckers out.” You think to yourself. Given the extensive amount of tunnels, you’re actually surprised he didn’t end up flooding Jicol with a misplaced dig like the Watchman captain was talking about. You briefly go down one of the tunnels and soon find that you’re ankle deep in water. This is going to be a mess hunting Sneaks and whoever else down here. In fact, you’re starting to wonder if Vera was right and you shouldn’t even bother being here. Especially with the Jicol Watch being involved as well. > You leave Yeah, fuck this. You start walking down these tunnels and who knows what the hell is in store for you. For all you know Sneaks has traps set to collapse the damn things. “Marco, we’re getting the hell out of here. We’re also getting all of our people that we got posted at the docks, I got a better idea.” You say. “What about this Sneaks asshole?” Marco asks. “Oh, I haven’t forgotten about him, but running through this little rat maze he’s created isn’t in my game plan. The JRC at this point is dead and he’s not going to resurrect it in any capacity. Even if he tries, the Jicol Watch is so fed up with all of us, they’ll crack down hard on them and we won’t have to do shit. No, Sneaks is going to either try to escape off the island OR possibly try to assassinate me eventually. If it’s the first one, I have a better idea of how to prevent that. If it’s the second, he better hope he gets it right.” You and your people turn back and proceed to climb back up to the ground floor where the Jicol Watchmen are still milling about. “What are you lot doing? Don’t tell me you finished them off already.” The Watchman captain remarks. “No, but I doubt that they’re going very far. We’ll get the rest of them later.” You respond. “What?! Maybe we weren’t clear, but this shit is ending TODAY.” “Okay, well you lot go down there and end it today then. Isn’t that why you’re here? I never said I was going to stand in your way.” You attempt to leave, but the captain stands in your way. It’s obvious now that there were other plans in play here. “Okay, I see and I get it. You saw an opportunity and you were going to take advantage. Well, that opportunity is gone now, and there are enough of us to make this a problematic fight. Killing me won’t bring down the Nocturnal League anyway. My wife is more than able to handle the leadership position and she’s not going to spare any expense in getting revenge. Not to mention, regardless of the outcome, I am more than fast enough to take YOU out. You sure you want to do this?” The captain thinks about going for his own flintlock, while you’re confident that you’ll take him and at least a couple of his people out before you get mobbed. If you’re lucky, your people will move in quick enough that you’ll be able to fight your way through the chaos and run your ass out of Jicol. It’s not the best odds, but you’ve been in worse situations. However, the captain isn’t exactly eager to risk his own life this day. “Get your people out of this city and back to that fucking broken down temple in the jungle you call home. I never want to see you or your kind in this city again. If I do, you’ll be executed on sight. The Nocturnal League and whatever other gang of criminal cutthroats that tries to form in Jicol are through here. Understand?” the captain warns. “Sure. You have your clean law abiding city and that will always be he case. No need to ever worry about the likes of us again.” You say sarcastically. At this point the captain and his people let you pass and you immediately tell Marco and the rest to go contact your other League members milling about at the Jicol docks to go back home. Meanwhile you’ll going to speak to some of the pirate contacts you have that might be currently in port. Not long after you conclude your last remaining business in Jicol, an explosion is heard followed by a loud rumble. Sounds like it’s coming from the direction you just came from. Doesn’t take long before people are running and screaming about the city sinking since whatever happened, the streets are being filled with water. You can probably guess what happened though. The Jicol Watch went ahead and fumbled down in Sneaks’ rat maze and probably triggered a trap, which collapsed the tunnels just like you figured they would. It probably also caused enough water to flood everything and rise high enough to start flooding the nearby area as well. While it probably isn’t going to cause the city to sink like how everyone is currently shouting and panicking about, it’s certainly going be a lot of damage to repair. Also a big positive is the fact that in times of disasters, crime usually goes up. You imagine that some of the Jicol Watch is now down quite a few people too, so you predict that the League’s forays into Jicol will still go relatively unscathed as long as you keep a low profile. When you get back home, you explain what happened, though Vera is just pleased to see you and says she’s doesn’t know why she worried in the first place. “Well, your words did help rein me in a bit. You were right, no need to take unnecessary chances if I don’t need to, hence why I just left.” You say. “Glad to hear it, but what about Sneaks? You think he’s dead?” “Oh I imagine he had an escape plan in all this. We’ll catch up to him again sooner or later, I’m not worried. I made preparations.” “Okay then, if you say it’s handled then I guess it is.” Two months later... “Yeah, he’s in there boss. Hasn’t been too roughed up, like you said.” Marco says. “Okay, good.” You say and then enter the room. Upon entering you see an old defeated looking man in a chair, though not completely broken. Sneaks looks at you without hate, but more with an attitude of “Let’s just get this over with already.” However, you’re not quite done yet. “I was starting to wonder when you’d ever try to get off the island. There was a bet going on that you would come here to try to assassinate me, but I always knew you’d try to run. It was the smartest play after what happened of course. What took you so long?” “Well if you hadn’t noticed. I’m not just a wanted criminal for being the ex-leader of the JRC, but also for causing severe destruction to Jicol. Was a little difficult raising the coin to bribe my way onto a merchant ship since I knew you probably had all your pirate and smuggler buddies on the look out for me. Even trying to sneak aboard a ship was impossible. Maybe if I had been younger…fucking old age.” “Yeah it sucks.” “I should have known that you had connections everywhere, but I couldn’t scrounge a damn living in the half drowned remnants of Jicol anymore. So I took a risk and got captured by a opportunistic merchant rather than a pirate or slaver, the result is the same I suppose.” “If you had been smart, you would have left long before this even happened rather than forming the JRC in the first place. Shit, I didn’t even know you were here until that happened. Why’d you bother? You usually always played things smart. Did revenge cloud your judgment?” “That was part of it I suppose. Imagine my surprise that I found out it was you of all people starting up a new organization here. All my old thoughts of remembering how you and Tanya betrayed all of us…well that made me feel like something needed to be done to stop you. If you had just been some random asshole, I wouldn’t have bothered.” “I guess I should be flattered.” “I also really thought we could win. Wasn’t like you were the ECS after all.” “True, but you’re forgetting that I also brought down the ECS in Holgard.” “So I heard. I gotta admit, when I first met you, I thought you might go far in this profession…but I didn’t see you quite as ruthless as all this. I mean maybe you aren’t ECS, but you’re sure copying their rulebook. What exactly did we DO to you anyway? Weren’t we always good to you in the Guild? I mean I know Garrick was an asshole to you about Tanya but was betrayal really necessary? Couldn’t you just let her go?” “At the time, I couldn’t. Tried. Couldn’t.” “So basically Tanya is your excuse for your actions?” “No. Tanya’s in the past. Has been for a long time. She left me long ago to seek her destiny in hell. This, is all me, though perhaps I am being influenced by another woman in my life, but then I have a son with her, so you could say I’m securing a future with my family.” “Well it certainly is a legacy to be proud of. Slave trading …even that’s something I wouldn’t have thought you capable of. Then again you already proved to be a traitor without any honor so I guess it isn’t too surprising.” At this point you’re getting annoyed with Sneak’s disappointed routine. Especially when it’s meaningless. “You have no idea of what I’m capable of Sneaks. Honestly, I wouldn’t even rank slave trading as the worst thing I’ve ever done. But since you’re pointing the finger and moralizing like a Joachimite priest, let’s turn this back on you for a moment. The day before I helped wipe out the Thieves Guild, YOU were gone. You must have already known the shit was going to get hot really quick and you turned tail and fled. You talk about how I betrayed everyone, but what about you? I was only a member for a few years and not even liked by Garrick. Why the fuck would I stay loyal? Tanya? She was a demonkin, you know demons can’t be trusted. YOU were supposed to be Garrick’s best friend and dedicated to his organization. Where the fuck were YOU?” Sneaks looks down and doesn’t answer. “Did you even warn anyone that there might be an attack soon? Or did you just pick up your shit and run as fast as you could as soon as you figured it out? In fact aren’t YOU the one who said Garrick was a fool for having too much of a moral code?” you say. “Yes, you’re right of course. There is no real honor among rogues. I ran like the preverbal thief in the night to save my own ass, and it was the smartest thing I ever did. I should have done it again as soon as I learned about you being here instead of letting sentimentality of my old friend and wounded pride cloud my judgment.” Sneaks snorts and chuckles. “Thought that MAYBE I could even get some redemption for at least not dying with my friends years ago. Guess I finally get to make good on that now…unless you’re planning on selling me into slavery like you have with so many others.” You draw your pistol as you walk over to Sneaks. “No. I figure I at least owe you a quick death for old times sake. Not to mention you wrecking Jicol the way you did, you’ve given me even less to have to worry about since now that place doesn’t even have the strong law enforcement numbers it once did, meaning the Nocturnal League’s influence on it isn’t even gone. Besides, I doubt even Vera would be able to talk a slaver into buying you for much anyway.” You point your pistol right at Sneak’s forhead as he looks up at you. “Any last words?” you ask. “Just a question. If I hadn’t run all those years ago, would you have still killed me during the attack on the Guild?” Sneaks asks. You pause for a moment. You’ve gone over this scenario in the past a few times and you already know the answer. “Yes.” “Hm, I guess this was worth it then.” You shoot Sneaks causing his body to jerk back with enough force that he falls back on his chair to the floor. Never thought he’d be a loose end you’d have to tie up, but life is always full of surprises. In any case, the JCR is finally finished and with Jicol still trying to rebuild, you’re in a stronger position than ever. Which is good, because you’ve recently heard news that the Ebony Claw Syndicate has recently retaken it’s position back in Holgard by either re-assimilating the “Holgard League” (As your splinter group called itself) or crushing those that opposed the re-assimilation. You can only imagine that it’s just a matter of time before they come sniffing around here eventually. Maybe it won’t happen, but better that you be prepared so you don’t end up like the Thieves’ Guild or the JRC since that would be quite the ironic fate indeed. > You time passes... Year 33 You’ve had to deal with many struggles during your life and not all of them of the mundane criminal variety. If that were the case, your life would have probably been a lot simpler. The worst you believe was whenever you had to deal with magic shit. Specifically that time when you had to deal with the Neroth cultists. You really thought you were dead that night. If it hadn’t been for Tanya, you would have. Hell, you would have been dead without her when you dealt with that bushwacking shadow magic using asshole Bolt as well. Then there was the time you had to deal with the Joachimites and while Tanya wasn’t there for that, you still had some magical assistance of your own to take out Yinin. The point is, you always at least had a way to deal with magical threats. This however you have no idea… “Are you absolutely sure?” you ask. “Yes. I was sitting there watching Kol playing on the floor with some blocks and stacking them. Then I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me because it looked like he was interacting with the shadows cast by the blocks due to the candle light. Then I realized that’s exactly what he was doing.” Vera remarks and she holds on to Kol who looks fairly unfazed by any of what you’re discussing. He just smiles at you. You rub your hands on your head. “I told you making our home in a fucking Fel temple wasn’t going to be a good idea.” Vera remarks. “Duly noted, but that’s not really helpful right now. What we need to do is go find someone with more magical knowledge than you or I to look at Kol.” “Well who might that be? This island doesn’t exactly have a lot of priests or wizard types.” “There’s that witch that runs that shop in Jicol.” “Didn’t her place get destroyed during the flood? Even if it didn’t I’m not sure what some witch could do if Fel cursed our son.” Suddenly a voice speaks causing you both to look toward the entryway of the room. “Your son hasn’t been cursed by Fel, quite the opposite in fact. Your son has actually been blessed by him and he’s now displaying the affects.” Gertrude says. If you didn’t like Gertrude acting as a “babysitter” on occasion before, the way she’s speaking doesn’t make you like her any better. You immediately start to move towards her. Meanwhile Gertrude immediately puts her hands up and backs away. “Boss! I’m not the enemy! Honest!” she quickly says as Vera grabs your shoulder to stop you. “Very well Gert, but you need to speak quickly NOW.” Vera says. Gertrude breathes a sigh of relief and starts talking. “Okay, don’t get mad, but I thought I saw the signs that your son had the shadow gift a few times before.” Gertrude says. “Wait, you KNEW and didn’t fucking tell us?!” you exclaim. “I wasn’t sure! Like your wife, I thought maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks on me or I was overly tired. However a couple days ago something happened that couldn’t possibly be the case. I saw Kol making shadows on the wall with his hands. At first it just seemed to be him trying to figure out what was going on and not realizing it was the candlelight causing it, but then the shadows began acting independent of what his hands were doing. Soon they became little figures which he watched and was amused by, and then they disappeared altogether. I would have told you sooner, but…I dunno I was sort of shook up myself about it and I couldn’t figure out how to approach it and I kept going over…” “Alright, alright, fine, Gert. Does anyone else know?” Vera says. “Not to my knowledge. But again, this isn’t a bad thing! This is a good thing! Your son obviously has natural shadow magic ability.” “You seem to know a lot of about this, why is that exactly?” you say once again moving towards Gertrude. “Well, as I told your wife before, I came from a large family and my one of my younger brothers became a Felian priest. Oscar displayed similar signs of having shadow magic abilities, as he grew older. Bit more of a late bloomer than your son though, but they were still present. He of course went to the temple in Holgard, where they started training him immediately, but I guess he was really showing some talent because he ended up getting transferred to the main temple in the Delantium Kingdom. Haven’t really spoken to him since, but I always figured that didn’t hurt my own standing in the ECS at the time seeing as the two organizations were allies.” “Okay, that explains a few things, but do you know how this happened exactly? I mean is it just because we’re inhabiting a Fel Temple?” “I don’t know. I mean I’m not an expert on the whole will of the gods thing. I imagine it probably is playing a part. When Oscar was born my mom went into labor right in front of the Fel Temple in Holgard, so I assume maybe something similar is going on here. Maybe infants just catch Fel’s attention, but as I said, I’m no expert. We’d need to contact a priest of Fel to gain further information on all this stuff. In fact, you’re probably going to want to do that anyway since his abilities are probably going to get stronger and he’ll need the guidance. Don’t really know any Fel priests on this island though.” Gertrude says. You start shaking your head. “No, I’m not having my son joining a bunch of fanatics.” You say. “Okay, but his powers might become uncontrollable without proper guidance and I think you both know just how dangerous shadow magic can be. He’s obviously been chosen by Fel, so I don’t think you have choice.” Gertrude remarks. “That’s bullshit, there’s always a choice.” “Gert, can you excuse us for a moment?” Vera asks. “Oh. Yeah sure.” Gertrude leaves while Vera goes to put Kol (Who has fallen asleep during all this) in his basket. “Look Vera, I know you’re close with Gertrude and she’s been helpful, but I’m NOT inviting religious fanatics here, let alone having my son join them.” You say. “Not sure why you’re yelling, considering I agree, but I’m still leery about seeing some witch. I almost feel like we should just try to handle this ourselves.” Vera remarks. “Well, it doesn’t hurt to have a non-aligned magic user give their opinion, but if I feel like things are shady there, like her demanding his blood or something, then I’ll be walking out of there as well.” “Okay, but I’m still concerned about this.” The next day, you gather up Kol and prepare to head to Jicol. You ask if Vera wants to come, but she says she has a bunch of slaves she needs to sell and besides all that she says if something goes wrong and you are both killed, she’ll still be around to take revenge. Walking through the jungle nowadays is a lot safer nowadays, though that probably can’t be said for Jicol. Ever since the city got half flooded, it’s been having criminal activity problems, though not really coming from your end of things, since you’ve practically got your own small town now (Still trying to think of an official name for it). It’s more along the lines of people who lost everything in the disaster are preying upon each other and other citizens in general. Between trying to still keep a strong naval force to ward off pirates and cleaning up after the disaster, Jicol’s order attempts have been lack luster. So much for their plans of having a “clean city.” You’re not really concerned though since you’re still capable of taking care of yourself and three of your people have offered to come with you, which seems wise just in case the desperate think about messing with you. Even the Jicol Watch isn’t going to hassle you when they got people killing each other over qweepa meat. When you get to Jicol, it’s looking about as well as it did the last time you bothered to come here. It’s a bit of a chore to get to your destination since it’s right around where most of the flooding occurred so you have to take a small boat to the area. One thing that’s on the strange side is probably Kol. You were sort of expecting him to make a lot of noise or otherwise be lively during this whole thing, especially since this is his first real trip outside the temple, but he’s been fairly quiet. Then again he’s thankfully never been a loud child. Makes you wonder if his quietness also has something to do with Fel. You still haven’t seen any of the evidence of shadow magic like your wife or Gertrude have though. You eventually find the shop you’re looking for “Elegant Elixirs.” You tell your people to wait outside and you open the door and you’re immediately assaulted by the strong smell of herbs and who knows what else. It actually causes you to cough a bit. “Hm? Who is that? Better not be you Timothy, I told you I wouldn’t have that endurance potion ready until tomorrow. The whores will just have to wait…” an old lady says as she comes out from another room. She sees you and she looks a bit surprised, but not overly so. “Oh. Well haven’t seen you in here before. What brings the head of the Nocturnal League to my humble shop?” “You know who I am?” “Doesn’t everyone? You’re arguably better known than the Mayor of Jicol, ol’ whatshisname. Probably more popular at this point too. Surprised you haven’t just taken this city over, or what’s left of it anyway.” “Eh, I’m good with what I got right now. Anyway, I’m here to see you since you’re the closest person I know to a wizard on this island.” “Am I now? Funny, I usually get called a hedge witch at best and a charlatan that sells distilled goblin dung at worst…well I suppose that last bit is true, but I save that for the asshole customers.” “Well as I said, I’m not here for potions, I’m here to see if you can assist me with my son’s condition which I doubt if any potion is going to cure and a doctor isn’t going to be able to help either.” “Hm, I did notice you carrying a little one on you back. Son huh? Well sit him on the table over there and tell me what’s going on then.” You sit Kol on the table and being your tale, while the old witch begins studying him. As you’re telling your tale, the witch does some sort of motion with her hands which briefly causes her to turn invisible. She then smiles and tells Kol to make the same hand gesture. “What are you doing?” You ask. “Shh, quiet.” The witch says. Kol smiles back and he seems to understand what the witch wants him to do. After a couple of fumbled tries, he repeats the same thing the witch did and sure enough he too very briefly blinks out of existence. Then he laughs about it. “Well that checks out.” “Shit. That’s the first time I’ve actually seen Kol do any shadow magic stuff. So should I be concerned?” “About what exactly? Your son just happens to be the lucky few, that has natural magical talent. Just happens to be shadow oriented, though with a little training, he could probably become skilled in other types as well. I imagine some place like the magic university in Delantium would be a good place to send him if he really wants to take advantage of his abilities. Though I suppose the one in Klyton is okay if you want to save money.” “But what about Fel?” “What about him? Oh you worried that your son is some chosen one or something? Let me tell you about Fel, he’s like all the rest of the gods, doesn’t really give a shit about any of us except as a source of amusement. You worship him or something?” “Not really, just wondered if we pissed him off by using his temple for something other than worship.” “Unless you’re openly cursing Fel name, I doubt if he’s concerned. You would have certainly known by now. I mean I do agree that you probably caught his attention in some manner since your son is definitely skilled. Was he conceived in that temple by any chance?” “Uh, yeah. The timing is about right. It was odd too since my wife didn’t think she was fertile.” “She might not have been, Fel might have seen fit to give her a little help, hence why the boy has powers.” You suddenly get a horrible thought. “Wait…you saying Fel fucked my wife and this is actually his son?” you ask. “No! Sheesh, you can’t tell that the kid looks like you? My eyesight is shit and even I see the resemblance. I’m saying Fel just provided a little magical or in this case divine assistance as far as the baby process is concerned. Your intimacy caught Fel’s attention since it probably was the first time in decades anything like that went on in the place. Why you might ask? Well because it’s a little known fact that Fel gets bored very easily and he probably did it just to amuse himself. Seriously, if most of the Felians knew what Fel was REALLY like, that would change the whole damn religion forever. Or maybe some of them do, but don’t care since it’s convenient to keep the hierarchy structure in place.” “You seem to know a lot about the Felians.” “That’s because I used to be one. In fact I was a member of that very temple you’re currently using when I was young and foolish. Even had one of those silly names they all like using. Grayhaze. I suppose it was better than my original name at least. Don’t ask.” “Wait, before we moved in, hasn’t that temple been abandoned for at least over a couple hundred years?” “Yeah?” Grayhaze says as if you’re going to ask her age next. “Um, never mind. So you’re saying Fel isn’t going to bother us at all?” Grayhaze exhales a bit, scratches her brow before answering. “Well…I wouldn’t necessarily say that. However, it’s not going to be in the form of shadow demons or anything like that. That’s actually not how he works despite what the reputation might be. Now once again, do you two worship Fel or acknowledge him in small some way?” “As I said, no. My wife didn’t even like the idea of making the temple a headquarters.” “Okay, good, then he’s not going to fuck with either of you directly through your dreams. Though honestly Fel is more of a voyeur most of the time anyway. It’s his minions that do all the heavy lifting so you’ll want to avoid them. In fact, I’d say you shouldn’t involve ANY Fel worshippers at all in this shit. They’d probably try to take your son away or something. Speaking of your son, now Fel MIGHT take more of a direct interest in him since he is linked to shadow magic, but again it’s mostly going be in the form of petty mind games of manipulation. Still, that might be concerning since he’s an impressionable child and all.” “Great.” “Could be worse. I mean Fel’s an asshole, but at least it’s not Neroth right? However, I think I can help you. It’s going to cost you though.” “Money’s no object.” “Oh well money’s certainly nice, but I don’t really need any. I do however need ingredients for my potions. Lots of useful stuff out in the jungle, but I don’t get out much anymore, especially with this place being half submerged nowadays. I got a garden, but just can’t grow certain things in these conditions you know?” “So you want me to gather plants for you?” “Well you can send your underlings to do it for all I care, but what I want is a free lifetime supply of alchemy supplies and the like. I know you’re a man of means so should be pretty easy for you. Again, I don’t care where you get them from, but I’m going to make a list and that’s what I want. And when I run out or need something else, I’m going to want you to provide it for free.” “This better be some really good help if you’re making all these demands.” “Oh it is, I assure you. I don’t get much call for enchantments, probably because nobody bothers to ask, but I got a medallion lying around that I can enchant for your son to wear so when he goes to sleep it should block out any potential mental meddling.” You look at Kol and you look at Grayhaze and you can’t help but have more questions. “What about his magical powers?” “What about them? I mean he’ll continue to have those. That’s a separate issue.” “Should he have training so he doesn’t accidently blow something up?” “Well I hope you aren’t asking me to train him, I’m far too old and like my free time too much. Honestly, he’s probably not going to display too much power until he’s a little older than he is right now. However, I suppose I do have an old magic tome I can sell you. I don’t need it anymore and I have a few more, but he should probably start off with something simple when it looks like his abilities are getting a bit out of hand. While you may not be magical yourself, you can still assist him. Don’t worry, it’s in common so you or your wife can at least read the words in it, assuming you’re both literate.” “Yes we can read.” You say with annoyance. “I’ll take the book too.” “Very good. Okay, so our deal for the medallion and a hundred gold for the book. It’ll take me some time to enchant the medallion so come back in an hour unless you want to wait.” “Nah, I’ll come back, I have to go get the coin anyway. Come on Kol.” You take Kol and head back outside. You wonder where your people are since they’re nowhere to be found. Since you know that they know better than to just fuck off while they’re supposed to be helping you, you can only imagine one possibility… “Don’t move.” You turn and see Gertrude standing nearby with the people you came with and all of them are pointing flintlocks at you. “Knew you were untrustworthy.” You say. “Well a good leader tends to have good instincts. If it’s any consolation, I really didn’t want it to go down this way and it’s nothing personal.” Gertrude remarks. “Nothing personal? Not sure if I believe that given that you’re pointing a pistol at me.” “Look, I was part of the Ebony Claw and you know how powerful they are. When they dissolved in Holgard I could hardly believe it. When I learned that you had a hand in that to some degree and you stepped in with building the Nocturnal League, I thought that maybe you were definitely a man worth following. I even thought relocating was a good idea than staying in Holgard.” “Is this the part where you tell me why exactly you decided to be a traitorous piece of shit? Because if it is, then hurry up.” Gertrude laughs. “Traitor? You’re calling ME a traitor? What the fuck did you do? You betrayed not only the Thieves Guild, but the Ebony Claw Syndicate as well! All of which I might add is ALL catching up with you. Your old pal that escaped the Guild purge recently opposed you and now the Syndicate has retaken Holgard. How long is it going to be, before THEY decide they want revenge on you as well? Fuck that, I’m making a deal before they send in the assassin squad and murder us all in that temple.” Gertrude says. “You really think the Syndicate is going to just accept you back into its ranks?” you respond. “I don’t see why not actually. I never actually betrayed them, however, your son is going to be a nice bonus. If I take him to my brother, I’m pretty sure I can get him to pull some strings so I don’t just get accepted but also a higher position in the Syndicate as well. So you see, this isn’t being a traitor, this is improving my situation in life, that’s what you did right?” “The difference is you’re not going to live to see the results because if you think I’m going to just hand my son over, you’re fucking delusional.” “You put up a fight and you may not be the only casualty. Hand Kol over and I can assure you that your son will most likely have a better life than he would with you. The priests will probably see him as a chosen of Fel or something. Surely you would rather have your son be in his own position of power some day rather than a dead brat at the bottom of the Jicol bay.” > You shield Kol from harm You’re not handing Kol over and you sure as hell aren’t going to let any harm come to him. You immediately turn with Kol in your arms and duck down while trying to run back into the store. And you are not quick enough as two shots go right into your back causing you to fall but somehow you miraculously manage to shift your weight so you don’t completely crush Kol in the process, though he’s definitely under you and not happy about it because he’s crying quite loudly. You almost want to join him given how much pain you’re currently in. “What the fuck are you idiots doing!? You could have hurt the baby! We need him alive!” you hear Gertrude remark “Sorry Gert.” One says. “Don’t be sorry, just fucking get the baby and let’s…shit he’s not dead!” You interrupt their little spat by managing to turn over and barely sitting yourself up. You manage to fire off your pistol, killing two of them. Gertrude fires and the last one however manage to hit you again just before your last shots bring them both down as well. Your body once again falls back to the ground in pain causing you to shout out. Though the pain now is only in your upper body since the lower half has gone numb, you can’t even move your legs. Your son cries nearby and you don’t think you’re surviving this one. Probably due to the shooting, nobody is around of course. You feel like all the strength is leaving your body and lacking any other ideas, you call out Grayhaze’s name in the hopes that maybe she can help you. You do this for quite some time, but she doesn’t arrive, neither does anyone else and you’re starting to get sleepy. You try to calm Kol down with an increasingly weaker voice. Just as you’re starting to lose consciousness, Grayhaze comes out of her store. She sees you and shakes her head. “Shit. I was hoping I was hearing things when I heard my name being called. Especially when not that many know it. I can’t do anything for you. Your wounds are too severe and there isn’t enough time.” Grayhaze says. “Just…t…ake Kol…conta…ct…Vera…in the…League…” That’s your last request, you can only hope that Grayhaze follows it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 33 You’ve had to deal with many struggles during your life and not all of them of the mundane criminal variety. If that were the case, your life would have probably been a lot simpler. The worst you believe was whenever you had to deal with magic shit. Specifically that time when you had to deal with the Neroth cultists. You really thought you were dead that night. If it hadn’t been for Tanya, you would have. Hell, you would have been dead without her when you dealt with that bushwacking shadow magic using asshole Bolt as well. Then there was the time you had to deal with the Joachimites and while Tanya wasn’t there for that, you still had some magical assistance of your own to take out Yinin. The point is, you always at least had a way to deal with magical threats. This however you have no idea… “Are you absolutely sure?” you ask. “Yes. I was sitting there watching Kol playing on the floor with some blocks and stacking them. Then I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me because it looked like he was interacting with the shadows cast by the blocks due to the candle light. Then I realized that’s exactly what he was doing.” Vera remarks and she holds on to Kol who looks fairly unfazed by any of what you’re discussing. He just smiles at you. You rub your hands on your head. “I told you making our home in a fucking Fel temple wasn’t going to be a good idea.” Vera remarks. “Duly noted, but that’s not really helpful right now. What we need to do is go find someone with more magical knowledge than you or I to look at Kol.” “Well who might that be? This island doesn’t exactly have a lot of priests or wizard types.” “There’s that witch that runs that shop in Jicol.” “Didn’t her place get destroyed during the flood? Even if it didn’t I’m not sure what some witch could do if Fel cursed our son.” Suddenly a voice speaks causing you both to look toward the entryway of the room. “Your son hasn’t been cursed by Fel, quite the opposite in fact. Your son has actually been blessed by him and he’s now displaying the affects.” Gertrude says. If you didn’t like Gertrude acting as a “babysitter” on occasion before, the way she’s speaking doesn’t make you like her any better. You immediately start to move towards her. Meanwhile Gertrude immediately puts her hands up and backs away. “Boss! I’m not the enemy! Honest!” she quickly says as Vera grabs your shoulder to stop you. “Very well Gert, but you need to speak quickly NOW.” Vera says. Gertrude breathes a sigh of relief and starts talking. “Okay, don’t get mad, but I thought I saw the signs that your son had the shadow gift a few times before.” Gertrude says. “Wait, you KNEW and didn’t fucking tell us?!” you exclaim. “I wasn’t sure! Like your wife, I thought maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks on me or I was overly tired. However a couple days ago something happened that couldn’t possibly be the case. I saw Kol making shadows on the wall with his hands. At first it just seemed to be him trying to figure out what was going on and not realizing it was the candlelight causing it, but then the shadows began acting independent of what his hands were doing. Soon they became little figures which he watched and was amused by, and then they disappeared altogether. I would have told you sooner, but…I dunno I was sort of shook up myself about it and I couldn’t figure out how to approach it and I kept going over…” “Alright, alright, fine, Gert. Does anyone else know?” Vera says. “Not to my knowledge. But again, this isn’t a bad thing! This is a good thing! Your son obviously has natural shadow magic ability.” “You seem to know a lot of about this, why is that exactly?” you say once again moving towards Gertrude. “Well, as I told your wife before, I came from a large family and my one of my younger brothers became a Felian priest. Oscar displayed similar signs of having shadow magic abilities, as he grew older. Bit more of a late bloomer than your son though, but they were still present. He of course went to the temple in Holgard, where they started training him immediately, but I guess he was really showing some talent because he ended up getting transferred to the main temple in the Delantium Kingdom. Haven’t really spoken to him since, but I always figured that didn’t hurt my own standing in the ECS at the time seeing as the two organizations were allies.” “Okay, that explains a few things, but do you know how this happened exactly? I mean is it just because we’re inhabiting a Fel Temple?” “I don’t know. I mean I’m not an expert on the whole will of the gods thing. I imagine it probably is playing a part. When Oscar was born my mom went into labor right in front of the Fel Temple in Holgard, so I assume maybe something similar is going on here. Maybe infants just catch Fel’s attention, but as I said, I’m no expert. We’d need to contact a priest of Fel to gain further information on all this stuff. In fact, you’re probably going to want to do that anyway since his abilities are probably going to get stronger and he’ll need the guidance. Don’t really know any Fel priests on this island though.” Gertrude says. You start shaking your head. “No, I’m not having my son joining a bunch of fanatics.” You say. “Okay, but his powers might become uncontrollable without proper guidance and I think you both know just how dangerous shadow magic can be. He’s obviously been chosen by Fel, so I don’t think you have choice.” Gertrude remarks. “That’s bullshit, there’s always a choice.” “Gert, can you excuse us for a moment?” Vera asks. “Oh. Yeah sure.” Gertrude leaves while Vera goes to put Kol (Who has fallen asleep during all this) in his basket. “Look Vera, I know you’re close with Gertrude and she’s been helpful, but I’m NOT inviting religious fanatics here, let alone having my son join them.” You say. “Not sure why you’re yelling, considering I agree, but I’m still leery about seeing some witch. I almost feel like we should just try to handle this ourselves.” Vera remarks. “Well, it doesn’t hurt to have a non-aligned magic user give their opinion, but if I feel like things are shady there, like her demanding his blood or something, then I’ll be walking out of there as well.” “Okay, but I’m still concerned about this.” The next day, you gather up Kol and prepare to head to Jicol. You ask if Vera wants to come, but she says she has a bunch of slaves she needs to sell and besides all that she says if something goes wrong and you are both killed, she’ll still be around to take revenge. Walking through the jungle nowadays is a lot safer nowadays, though that probably can’t be said for Jicol. Ever since the city got half flooded, it’s been having criminal activity problems, though not really coming from your end of things, since you’ve practically got your own small town now (Still trying to think of an official name for it). It’s more along the lines of people who lost everything in the disaster are preying upon each other and other citizens in general. Between trying to still keep a strong naval force to ward off pirates and cleaning up after the disaster, Jicol’s order attempts have been lack luster. So much for their plans of having a “clean city.” You’re not really concerned though since you’re still capable of taking care of yourself and three of your people have offered to come with you, which seems wise just in case the desperate think about messing with you. Even the Jicol Watch isn’t going to hassle you when they got people killing each other over qweepa meat. When you get to Jicol, it’s looking about as well as it did the last time you bothered to come here. It’s a bit of a chore to get to your destination since it’s right around where most of the flooding occurred so you have to take a small boat to the area. One thing that’s on the strange side is probably Kol. You were sort of expecting him to make a lot of noise or otherwise be lively during this whole thing, especially since this is his first real trip outside the temple, but he’s been fairly quiet. Then again he’s thankfully never been a loud child. Makes you wonder if his quietness also has something to do with Fel. You still haven’t seen any of the evidence of shadow magic like your wife or Gertrude have though. You eventually find the shop you’re looking for “Elegant Elixirs.” You tell your people to wait outside and you open the door and you’re immediately assaulted by the strong smell of herbs and who knows what else. It actually causes you to cough a bit. “Hm? Who is that? Better not be you Timothy, I told you I wouldn’t have that endurance potion ready until tomorrow. The whores will just have to wait…” an old lady says as she comes out from another room. She sees you and she looks a bit surprised, but not overly so. “Oh. Well haven’t seen you in here before. What brings the head of the Nocturnal League to my humble shop?” “You know who I am?” “Doesn’t everyone? You’re arguably better known than the Mayor of Jicol, ol’ whatshisname. Probably more popular at this point too. Surprised you haven’t just taken this city over, or what’s left of it anyway.” “Eh, I’m good with what I got right now. Anyway, I’m here to see you since you’re the closest person I know to a wizard on this island.” “Am I now? Funny, I usually get called a hedge witch at best and a charlatan that sells distilled goblin dung at worst…well I suppose that last bit is true, but I save that for the asshole customers.” “Well as I said, I’m not here for potions, I’m here to see if you can assist me with my son’s condition which I doubt if any potion is going to cure and a doctor isn’t going to be able to help either.” “Hm, I did notice you carrying a little one on you back. Son huh? Well sit him on the table over there and tell me what’s going on then.” You sit Kol on the table and being your tale, while the old witch begins studying him. As you’re telling your tale, the witch does some sort of motion with her hands which briefly causes her to turn invisible. She then smiles and tells Kol to make the same hand gesture. “What are you doing?” You ask. “Shh, quiet.” The witch says. Kol smiles back and he seems to understand what the witch wants him to do. After a couple of fumbled tries, he repeats the same thing the witch did and sure enough he too very briefly blinks out of existence. Then he laughs about it. “Well that checks out.” “Shit. That’s the first time I’ve actually seen Kol do any shadow magic stuff. So should I be concerned?” “About what exactly? Your son just happens to be the lucky few, that has natural magical talent. Just happens to be shadow oriented, though with a little training, he could probably become skilled in other types as well. I imagine some place like the magic university in Delantium would be a good place to send him if he really wants to take advantage of his abilities. Though I suppose the one in Klyton is okay if you want to save money.” “But what about Fel?” “What about him? Oh you worried that your son is some chosen one or something? Let me tell you about Fel, he’s like all the rest of the gods, doesn’t really give a shit about any of us except as a source of amusement. You worship him or something?” “Not really, just wondered if we pissed him off by using his temple for something other than worship.” “Unless you’re openly cursing Fel name, I doubt if he’s concerned. You would have certainly known by now. I mean I do agree that you probably caught his attention in some manner since your son is definitely skilled. Was he conceived in that temple by any chance?” “Uh, yeah. The timing is about right. It was odd too since my wife didn’t think she was fertile.” “She might not have been, Fel might have seen fit to give her a little help, hence why the boy has powers.” You suddenly get a horrible thought. “Wait…you saying Fel fucked my wife and this is actually his son?” you ask. “No! Sheesh, you can’t tell that the kid looks like you? My eyesight is shit and even I see the resemblance. I’m saying Fel just provided a little magical or in this case divine assistance as far as the baby process is concerned. Your intimacy caught Fel’s attention since it probably was the first time in decades anything like that went on in the place. Why you might ask? Well because it’s a little known fact that Fel gets bored very easily and he probably did it just to amuse himself. Seriously, if most of the Felians knew what Fel was REALLY like, that would change the whole damn religion forever. Or maybe some of them do, but don’t care since it’s convenient to keep the hierarchy structure in place.” “You seem to know a lot about the Felians.” “That’s because I used to be one. In fact I was a member of that very temple you’re currently using when I was young and foolish. Even had one of those silly names they all like using. Grayhaze. I suppose it was better than my original name at least. Don’t ask.” “Wait, before we moved in, hasn’t that temple been abandoned for at least over a couple hundred years?” “Yeah?” Grayhaze says as if you’re going to ask her age next. “Um, never mind. So you’re saying Fel isn’t going to bother us at all?” Grayhaze exhales a bit, scratches her brow before answering. “Well…I wouldn’t necessarily say that. However, it’s not going to be in the form of shadow demons or anything like that. That’s actually not how he works despite what the reputation might be. Now once again, do you two worship Fel or acknowledge him in small some way?” “As I said, no. My wife didn’t even like the idea of making the temple a headquarters.” “Okay, good, then he’s not going to fuck with either of you directly through your dreams. Though honestly Fel is more of a voyeur most of the time anyway. It’s his minions that do all the heavy lifting so you’ll want to avoid them. In fact, I’d say you shouldn’t involve ANY Fel worshippers at all in this shit. They’d probably try to take your son away or something. Speaking of your son, now Fel MIGHT take more of a direct interest in him since he is linked to shadow magic, but again it’s mostly going be in the form of petty mind games of manipulation. Still, that might be concerning since he’s an impressionable child and all.” “Great.” “Could be worse. I mean Fel’s an asshole, but at least it’s not Neroth right? However, I think I can help you. It’s going to cost you though.” “Money’s no object.” “Oh well money’s certainly nice, but I don’t really need any. I do however need ingredients for my potions. Lots of useful stuff out in the jungle, but I don’t get out much anymore, especially with this place being half submerged nowadays. I got a garden, but just can’t grow certain things in these conditions you know?” “So you want me to gather plants for you?” “Well you can send your underlings to do it for all I care, but what I want is a free lifetime supply of alchemy supplies and the like. I know you’re a man of means so should be pretty easy for you. Again, I don’t care where you get them from, but I’m going to make a list and that’s what I want. And when I run out or need something else, I’m going to want you to provide it for free.” “This better be some really good help if you’re making all these demands.” “Oh it is, I assure you. I don’t get much call for enchantments, probably because nobody bothers to ask, but I got a medallion lying around that I can enchant for your son to wear so when he goes to sleep it should block out any potential mental meddling.” You look at Kol and you look at Grayhaze and you can’t help but have more questions. “What about his magical powers?” “What about them? I mean he’ll continue to have those. That’s a separate issue.” “Should he have training so he doesn’t accidently blow something up?” “Well I hope you aren’t asking me to train him, I’m far too old and like my free time too much. Honestly, he’s probably not going to display too much power until he’s a little older than he is right now. However, I suppose I do have an old magic tome I can sell you. I don’t need it anymore and I have a few more, but he should probably start off with something simple when it looks like his abilities are getting a bit out of hand. While you may not be magical yourself, you can still assist him. Don’t worry, it’s in common so you or your wife can at least read the words in it, assuming you’re both literate.” “Yes we can read.” You say with annoyance. “I’ll take the book too.” “Very good. Okay, so our deal for the medallion and a hundred gold for the book. It’ll take me some time to enchant the medallion so come back in an hour unless you want to wait.” “Nah, I’ll come back, I have to go get the coin anyway. Come on Kol.” You take Kol and head back outside. You wonder where your people are since they’re nowhere to be found. Since you know that they know better than to just fuck off while they’re supposed to be helping you, you can only imagine one possibility… “Don’t move.” You turn and see Gertrude standing nearby with the people you came with and all of them are pointing flintlocks at you. “Knew you were untrustworthy.” You say. “Well a good leader tends to have good instincts. If it’s any consolation, I really didn’t want it to go down this way and it’s nothing personal.” Gertrude remarks. “Nothing personal? Not sure if I believe that given that you’re pointing a pistol at me.” “Look, I was part of the Ebony Claw and you know how powerful they are. When they dissolved in Holgard I could hardly believe it. When I learned that you had a hand in that to some degree and you stepped in with building the Nocturnal League, I thought that maybe you were definitely a man worth following. I even thought relocating was a good idea than staying in Holgard.” “Is this the part where you tell me why exactly you decided to be a traitorous piece of shit? Because if it is, then hurry up.” Gertrude laughs. “Traitor? You’re calling ME a traitor? What the fuck did you do? You betrayed not only the Thieves Guild, but the Ebony Claw Syndicate as well! All of which I might add is ALL catching up with you. Your old pal that escaped the Guild purge recently opposed you and now the Syndicate has retaken Holgard. How long is it going to be, before THEY decide they want revenge on you as well? Fuck that, I’m making a deal before they send in the assassin squad and murder us all in that temple.” Gertrude says. “You really think the Syndicate is going to just accept you back into its ranks?” you respond. “I don’t see why not actually. I never actually betrayed them, however, your son is going to be a nice bonus. If I take him to my brother, I’m pretty sure I can get him to pull some strings so I don’t just get accepted but also a higher position in the Syndicate as well. So you see, this isn’t being a traitor, this is improving my situation in life, that’s what you did right?” “The difference is you’re not going to live to see the results because if you think I’m going to just hand my son over, you’re fucking delusional.” “You put up a fight and you may not be the only casualty. Hand Kol over and I can assure you that your son will most likely have a better life than he would with you. The priests will probably see him as a chosen of Fel or something. Surely you would rather have your son be in his own position of power some day rather than a dead brat at the bottom of the Jicol bay.” > You use Kol as a shield This is probably the biggest risk that you are EVER going to take, or at least one of the most questionable ones. You can’t even believe you’re considering it, but given that Gert and the rest have the drop on you, it might be your only chance. You’re going to bet that despite her threat, Gertrude is NOT going to risk shooting your son. Besides wanting him to advance her own status, she probably did develop some form of connection while she was baby-sitting and you’re not convinced she’s going to be that ruthless anyway. You hold Kol close who doesn’t know quite what’s going on and to your surprise… “Dada!” Kol says. “Fucking great. Your first words. Look, if we both get out of this alive, never tell your mother about this.” You say, and kiss his forehead. You then crouch down and stretch your arms out to place Kol in front of you and begin moving back and forth in a jerky motion. Gertrude’s expression would almost be funny if this wasn’t so serious. “Wha…SERIOUSLY? You are fucked up! NO, DON’T!” Gertrude shouts and prevents one of the other traitors from firing at you, or rather pushes his arm so the shot goes wild. While they’re arguing amongst themselves, this gives you the split second you need to drop Kol (Which since you’re crouching, isn’t far at all) and pull your own pistol. “SHIT!” Gertrude shouts and at this point loses all of her confidence and tries to run. You shoot the two traitors that didn’t fire yet and then on the one that did. Then you shoot Gertrude in the back. With all your assailants down, you immediately check on Kol who isn’t physically hurt, but is upset by all the loud noise. “Yeah, I know, the bad people made a lot of loud noise. Shhhh, it’s okay. It’s over now. Well actually let’s make sure.” You pick Kol up in one arm and walk over to the bodies of the traitors who are indeed dead. A little further up though you see Gertrude still moving a little and groaning. You quicken your pace and stop her from trying to get in a shot at you as her last act. “Shit…fuck…agh…” Gertrude utters as you step on her wrist, take away her weapon and kick her over. “Good, you’re not dead yet. Now, you need to tell me who else was involved in this little scheme or I’m going to pop into that hag’s shop and buy something to keep you alive so I can torture the shit out of you until you DO tell me everything.” You threaten. “Please…no…” “Start talking then bitch.” “But…how do I know you won’t believe me and torture me anyway?” “You don’t! But if you don’t start talking, I’m going to keep you alive for years to torture on general principle! Each day will be a living hell and you’ll be praying to ALL the gods for the merciful release of death!” “Okay! There’s nobody else! I barely even trusted these fuckers enough to follow me with this plan.” “You in contact with the Felians or the ECS?” “No…I was planning on…agh…doing that when I got to the mainland.” “Anything else?” “Nothing else, I swear!” “You know what Gert?” “…what?” “I believe you.” Gertrude closes her eyes, and grits her teeth, bracing for her death as you put two in her head. No sign of the Jicol Watch, in fact no sign of anyone. You use this opportunity to loot the bodies of whatever valuables they might have had on them since you need the coin for the book anyway. Happily Gertrude seemed to have a nice sized sapphire on her, which should definitely cover the cost in addition to the gold you do have. Since it’s one less thing for you to worry about, you figure you’ll go in and just wait in Grayhaze’s shop for the remainder of your time here. You head back into Grayhaze’s shop as you continue to attempt to calm Kol down. Doesn’t take long before she comes out of the back to see what’s going on. “If you expect me to get this enchantment finished in a timely manner, you’re going to have to keep the noise down.” Grayhaze says. “Apologies, I’ve almost got him quiet.” You respond. “I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about whatever it is that happened outside. I might be old, but my hearing isn’t. I heard shouting and several gunshots. I’m guessing that you had something to do with that. Hope you didn’t leave a mess right outside my door because the Jicol Watch rarely comes out this way to clean up anything.” “Well the bodies aren’t exactly outside your front door, more like just near your shop. One of them is just outside the butcher’s shop a few doors down though.” “Great, I’ll have to remember to go get my meat from elsewhere for the next month, because I know what the cheapskate owner’s going to do. Though I suppose things are tough all over…if you could, drag those bodies that ARE outside my shop in here. I’ll knock off a few coins for the book.” “Uh, sure I suppose I can do that. I won’t overlook a chance to get a discount.” “Glad to hear it. And because I can already see it running through your mind, no I am NOT going to eat the bodies. I’m going to harvest some of the organs for potion ingredients.” “Hey, I don’t care what you do with them, though aren’t you really just making other people into cannibals if you’re using corpse parts to make potions?” “Eh, by that time, it’ll be a diluted mixture filled with so much other stuff that it’s not worth even considering. Besides, it’s really no worse than what I put into some of my potions. If some of these customers knew what I used in my sexual prowess potions, I guarantee they’d probably rather go lacking in that area.” After a period of dragging bodies, keeping Kol entertained and general waiting around, eventually Grayhaze is finished with her task and comes back with a small black medallion and a small book. “It’s finished. This chain is small enough that it should go around the boy’s neck without it falling off in his sleep. However, I’m not a blacksmith so if you’re concerned with it breaking, you might want to get a better one made. Obviously the boy is going to grow, so you’ll obviously have to get a bigger chain eventually anyway. It’s the medallion that’s enchanted though, so no need to worry about losing the magic.” “Okay, do I need to bring this in to recharge it at some point?” “You shouldn’t need to. However, I can do this enchantment on any item. So if you brought in a ring, which might be a more secure item for your son to wear in the future, it won’t cost anything as long as you stick to the deal. You don’t however and you can forget about me doing you any sort of business with you ever again.” “Sounds good to me.” “Good, here’s the book, the list of the various ingredients I’ll be needing is in it.” “And here’s the coin, hope you’ll accept a sapphire.” “Yeah that’s fine.” After a few more moments of Grayhaze explaining when Kol should probably start actively training from the book and how you can assist in this manner, you take your leave. It isn’t until night that you finally get back to which Vera is relieved to see you both. Kol actually fell asleep on the journey. “I was about to send some people to Jicol to go after you guys. What’s this around Kol’s neck?” Vera says as she takes Kol from you. “Protection, in fact we’ve a lot to discuss. However, I think things are going to be fine.” “Glad it turned out well then. Tell me all about it. But first, things have been busy here and I think Marco and the rest of his immediate crew wanted to see you tomorrow to ask about building their own ship or something. Says he’s got an idea that will make us bunch of coin. Who knows though. I’ve also got some slavers coming in so I’ll be busy as well tomorrow.” “It’s fine. I’ll take Kol with me.” “You will? Um, okay. Usually you don’t.” “It’s fine. I probably should spend more time with him anyway.” Vera smiles a bit. “Well this is a nice side to see of you. Still, you sure? I mean I’m sure Gertrude can look after him if you find that you’ve got more to do than you planned.” Vera says. “Yeah, I’m sure because I just fired Gertrude.” You say. “Fired? Wait…really?” Vera says suddenly coming to the understanding of your words very quickly. “Yep, just one of the many changes that were needed for Kol’s future well being. That one was probably the most fun though.” > You times passes… Year 34 “I gotta say Marco, I was skeptical when you first brought the idea to me and going by the story you’re telling me, I’d say I was completely right. Fortunately for you Yag smiles on fools and it worked out anyway.” You remark. “Yeah…I suppose so.” Marco says standing before you looking completely disheveled. “What I don’t understand is why you came so clean with everything. I mean given the haul you brought in, I wasn’t even going to bother asking you too many in depth questions.” “Uh, yeah I know, but I was afraid if you thought everything went completely well, you would have sent us out again.” “Hm, I suppose that was a bit of forward thinking on your part then, because you’re probably right. Guess this is one of those rare cases where honesty was the best policy after all. Well I guess you and your little friends have finally gotten your pirate dreams out of your heads now.” “Yeah, it sucks. Months out at sea, nothing to do. Rationing food and water. And the worst is getting lost. As I said, it was a good thing that merchant ship came when it did, our boat was starting to sink.” “Certainly an unconventional way of taking over a ship. Signaling for help legitimately, being invited aboard as an act of mercy and then when you were feeling slightly better, you just held them all at gunpoint. Still, not only did you bring back an entire new ship intact, you brought back most of the crew as slaves, as well as all the loot. Not sure what we’re going to do with crates of scrolls with Nichan writing all over them, but I’m sure someone is going to have an interest in this stuff. Always a market for something.” Marco just nods silently, he’s obviously just glad you aren’t punishing him and he’s back on dry land. You didn’t think much of Marco and his “gang” when you first met them, and to be honest you still don’t, but you suppose they’ve come a long way since those days or at least the ones that have survived have. “Alright Marco, I guess you and what’s left of your group friends can go take some time or whatever for the next couple days. Don’t go too far though, never know when some extra bodies might be needed.” You say. “Thanks boss.” Marco replies and takes his leave. With Marco’s shit out of the way, you go about inspecting the latest expansions around the temple, which is now starting to resemble a “town hall” since there are separate buildings popping up all around it. These aren’t just criminal types either opening up brothels or gambling centers. You’ve actually got a some ex-Jicol citizens opening up legitimate businesses since Jicol is on the downturn and they’ve lost their homes and businesses in that city thanks to the flooding disaster that the city STILL hasn’t completely recovered from. Doesn’t really hurt to have cooks, blacksmiths and the like around so you’ve assured that they will not be harassed as long as they pay the usual “protection tax.” While it’s not exactly a proper town, already people are starting to give it the name of Nightfall. You imagine the name is related to the Nocturnal League’s name as well as the deity that the temple was once dedicated to. Speaking of Fel, you’ve been checking to make sure Kol hasn’t been having any odd dreams or anything. So far so good, and Grayhaze’s medallion is obviously working. He still casts his little shadow tricks every now and then, but again nothing major. You figure in another couple years he’ll be ready to start learning from Grayhaze’s book proper. As for you, the only concerns you’ve been having, as of late is the Ebony Claw Syndicate and to a lesser extent, the Jicol government. The ECS is always a looming threat in the back of your mind. You know there is going to be a reckoning with them soon and it’s probably going to initially come in the form of intimidation first. So far they haven’t even contacted you, though you imagine when they do it’s probably going to be in the form of several shadow magic trained assassins. If they’re feeling benevolent, they’ll try to intimidate you first into paying them a cut of your profits and then get rid of you later. You suppose you could be big enough and out of the way enough that a take over might be considered costly for them and not worth it, but you can’t help but believe that they’ll try anyway. Your more immediate concern however is the Mayor of Jicol who has implemented draconian measures in rebuilding Jicol due to the fact that people were starting to leave the city and even coming to Nightfall. He’s completely shut the gates to the city and not allowing anyone in or out unless it’s by ship and even then it’s only legitimate trade as Jicol has now banned all pirates and the like from using their harbor anymore. In fact if they come within a certain range of the city, they’ll be fired upon. This has put a bit of a crimp in your own businesses a bit. Your own “habor” isn’t nearly big enough to accommodate all the visitors you might get. You’re trying to expand, but there is so much else to do. Not to mention slaver ships and pirates now have to sail all the way around the island to dock at Nightfall so they don’t get fired on now. It’s a pain in the ass for everyone involved. Getting Grayhaze’s supplies to her is also a concern, you’ll need to get those to her somehow and with the city locked down, the only option is to somehow sneak in which means either digging a tunnel and risking another flood, or taking a small boat and trying row around to one of the open areas where the sea and the city have no barrier, but that would be incredibly risky given the heightened security. Using swimmers would probably be less risky, but not much better. It was suggested a few times in the past that the League should just try to take over Jicol, but honestly it’s not like that would have been really feasible or cost effective to even attempt. However, it’s starting to look like you might have to do something though. You envision that it would be possible to have your people sneak in during the night and employ hit and run assassination tactics against the Jicol Watch, and ultimately open the gates to let the rest of your people in. Still, your numbers still aren’t overwhelming enough to make the potential victory to not be costly. This isn’t even counting the small fortress that the mayor of Jicol never leaves which again isn’t a problem to get into, but who know what the hell is in store for you inside. Even if you take Jicol, you’re still left with its naval forces. Who knows if they’ll just surrender or not. Any plan to attack Jicol is going to come at a cost. Since you aren’t sure what to do, you ask the only person you trust about all this. “I don’t know.” Vera says. “Great, I was hoping for some enlightenment on this situation.” You remark. “Well I mean you’ve explained the pros and cons of everything and I more or less agree with everything, including not being sure of what the best approach is.” “Well in any case, I gotta get the supplies to Grayhaze. Last thing I need is to piss off an old witch on top of everything.” “Sneaking in the city shouldn’t be an issue should it?” “Eh, it’s going to be a pain in the ass, but it can be done. It’s also possible that this is going to just be temporary and even if it isn’t, it probably won’t hurt our business too much and we’ll survive.” “Yeah, but…wait a minute. What about that merchant ship that Marco just brought in?” “What about it?” “Couldn’t we use it to get into the Jicol harbor?” “Maybe once, and then they’d probably execute everyone on board. Our people aren’t exactly the most subtle, if you were thinking about having them masquerade as merchants.” “I dunno, Marco managed to do it and he’s an idiot.” “Marco and his crew were also genuinely in danger at the time so it was a lot more believable that they needed help.” “Well why don’t we do that?” “Do what?” “Put the ship in danger?” “What are you suggesting then?” “I’m saying we hire some pirates to attack our ship as it approaches Jicol. Naturally the Jicol navy is going to go into action and our ship safely gets in the harbor while they’re distracted.” “And then?” “Well then our people come screaming out of it and start wreaking havoc in the city.” “Hm, certainly a different idea I had about infiltrating the city which involved sending a few to scale the walls or swim around and attack silently over the course of a few days.” “Could work too. I mean if we did attack, we probably should go all the way with it so employing both tactics would be best. Also if we were going this route, with hiring pirates to provide back up, I think I can convince one I know Zamed, to lead.” “Hm. I know who you’re talking about. Never trusted him.” “Well he’s a pirate, of course he’s not trust worthy, but he’s had the most experience with doing privateer work for the Delantium Kingdom, so he’d probably be able to organize a small group of ships to harass our enemies effectively. Of course it would be very expensive to secure their reliability.” “I dunno. I mean the plan with the merchant ship sounds okay, but I’m not sure if I want to pay out any more coin for pirate assistance. Also I don’t see them lasting too long against the Jicol navy and that seems like a waste.” “Well you wouldn’t pay them all of it obviously and you could promise them some of the spoils. Either one of two things is going to happen. Either none of them survive and you won’t have to pay them or some of them survive which means they turned out to be a better investment after all and you still probably won’t have to pay much since I can’t imagine there will be that many survivors.” Well there’s a couple ways you could go if you did decide to take over Jicol, though maybe the best solution is to just leave it be. > You attack Jicol with assistance Vera’s right, if you’re going to do this, you need to exploit every resource you can. “Alright, you have any idea if Zamed is coming around anytime soon?” you ask. “I believe he’s probably due in a week or so. He’s been getting sort of predictable as of late.” Vera says. “Hate waiting, but fine. I suppose in the meantime I’ll start getting shit ready on our side of things, since even if Zamed falls through, we’re still doing this. Guess I better inform Marco that his days at sea aren’t quite finished yet since he’ll be the one to take the merchant ship seeing as he’s got the most experience with it and nobody else here is much of a sailor.” “Neither is Marco apparently from what you mentioned on his attempt to be a pirate.” “Hm, I’m confident that he’ll have at least enough experience to pull this off, since that’s not going to be the hard part anyway, it’s getting off the ship and out of the harbor area alive as soon as he enters it.” Later when you inform Marco, (who was just starting to enjoy his time off) he is indeed not happy about hearing what his latest task is going to be, but you don’t need him to be happy about it, just compliant. Which of course he is. He does carouse extra harder though for the remainder of the time off you’ve given him though. You inform the rest of the League of your plan and assign your most skilled to start finding ways (or making ways) of sneaking into the city now. You tell them not to engage anyone and to keep a low profile while they’re scouting the security and such. You then tell them you want a report on everything within the next few days. Eventually the large dark skinned pirate known as Zamed comes into dock and you have a meeting with him as soon as he gets off the ship. He’s a little surprised, but intrigued. “I have to say, I’m wondering what this is all about, you don’t usually speak with me like Vera has in the past. How is she anyway? Last time I saw her she looked pretty fit. Glad to see having a child did not ruin her figure.” Zamed says obviously trying to prod you. “Yep, she is and still as limber too. I’m very lucky man, but enough about her, let’s talk about business. Sit.” You say not even blinking an eye. Zamed snorts and sits down and you go into your plan and his place in it. Already he takes umbrage to the fact that you’re including him even though he hasn’t agreed to anything. “Wait a second, you’re making a lot of assumptions here. I haven’t agreed to this little plan of yours and I’m not sure what makes you think that I’m going to.” Zamed remarks. “Because you like coin and you’re not adverse to great risk. Why else would you have hired yourself out as a privateer for the Delantium Kingdom and getting in the middle of their war with Nichan? You could have easily made a comfortable living robbing fat merchant ships. Given all that, with my plan you stand to make a lot of coin and for significantly less risk.” “I’m not so sure about that. I wasn’t ever directly attacking a single Nichan city or facing the full might of their fleet. I just harassed and plundered their isolated ships, not to mention I planned out ambushes. Attacking Jicol is greater risk and you know it is, otherwise you wouldn’t even be asking for help from the likes of me.” “You’re right. It IS a risk, but you’re not doing this alone. The entire Nocturnal League is going to be assaulting the city at the same time you and whoever of your grog swilling buddies you can muster up for this task. As I said, there will be a sizable amount of coin for all of you in addition to whatever plunder you wish from the town itself…well except Elegant Elixirs.” “Hrm. Why is that shop run by that old hag off limits?” “I have a deal with her.” “Okay…well not really interested in such things anyway. And while your offer is interesting, I’m still not convinced going up against the Jicol navy is a good use of my time. You still haven’t given an amount you intend to pay me and while plunder is nice, Jicol isn’t exactly the most booming trading port anymore. They’re having their own economy issues and stealing from poor cities that can put up a good fight isn’t exactly profitable.” “You’re right about Jicol of course, but that’s another reason why this isn’t going to be as dangerous as you believe. While Jicol certainly has enough ships to still look impressive, I don’t think you’ve been around lately to know what condition their fleet is truly in. They’ve had to forego their expensive upkeep and in some cases even downsize their crews. Jicol’s small flotilla is a hollow version of its former self.” “Is that right? I had heard that rumor a few months ago.” “It’s been a fact even before they closed their gates and tightened their security. Last gasp of a frightened government that knows its days are numbered. I mean it hasn’t even fought anyone is quite sometime, how ready are they really without ongoing conflict to keep the skills sharp? You and I both know if you want to stay at the top of your field, you have to practice.” “True.” “And if you want to know the exact amount I’m ready to pay you, twenty thousand in gold coin. And that’s just for you personally. Every captain you get under your command for this will get ten. However we both know there is going to be casualties, so YOU will get half of any dead captains’ share. Now I’m sure you can do the math and realize that will be a shitload of riches correct?” Zamed’s eyes glaze over at the fortune he stands to make from all this. “I suppose…with that sort of reward, the risk is worth it. However, I’d like to have half of my payment now.” “Yeah and you not show up at all? Not risking that. The best I can do is give you a thousand for hearing me out as your taste of the rewards to come.” “Well I had to try. So is there an exact timeframe for this assault?” You continue your discussion of your plan… A few months pass and eventually Zamed returns with six more ships, Marco and his crew are about as ready as they’re going to be and your spies that have been sneaking in and out of Jicol, have made steps in opening the gates along with just creating as much havoc for ground forces as possible during the actual attack. As far as your involvement, you’re going to take a lesson from the last time you led one of these attacks. Meaning you’re not going to put yourself on the front lines and going to stay at a camp a mile away from Jicol’s gates. The day of the attack within the first hour you can hear cannons going off even from your position further in the jungle. With any luck Marco’s crew will manage to make it to the Jicol harbor without getting sunk in the crossfire. In another couple hours, a runner comes to you with news that your people have opened the gates and fighting is going on all over the city. Marco and his crew successfully entered the harbor and managed to fool the Jicol Watch long enough to break through, meanwhile Zamed’s force has drawn away most of the Jicol ships, which are now fighting, in the open sea. No sooner has this runner given you this information when a loud explosion is heard along with a visible black cloud in the distance of the city, you surmise that Marco’s merchant ship that was also full of explosives was set off in the harbor. A few days pass and you finally step foot into Jicol proper. The Jicol navy has been either put out of action at the bottom of the sea or sailed away. Zamed and his own people have already begun pillaging the city. There is resistance still of course, but so far things are looking completely in your favor and apparently the Mayor of Jicol’s small fortress has already been breached. You head there immediately and find Marco standing outside giving orders though he looks almost as bad as he did when he came back from his foray as a pirate. “Marco! This may surprise you, but I am actually glad to see you’re alive.” You say. “Thanks boss, um we’ve almost taken the city, just trying to make our way to the mayor’s inner sanctum.” “Good, you remember the order was to keep him alive right?” “Yeah boss.” “Okay. I heard Zamed lives, but do you know of the other pirate captains?” “Um, not sure. At least one of them I suppose.” “Alright, you take some people and go find all those sea dogs and tell them I want to see them as soon as possible, I’ll take it from here with the mayor here.” Marco nods and you begin overseeing the final death knell of Jicol’s government…at least as it currently exists. After forty five minutes of observing the chaos around you and waiting, eventually the Mayor of Jicol is presented before you. He’s about as unimpressive as his title. An overweight older man with spectacles. On the paler side of things, which makes sense given how reclusive he was. Obviously more of a planner and bureaucrat than any sort of fighting ruler. And yet a stare of defiance still exists in his eye as he’s being hauled out to you. “I should have had the Watch stomp out your organization years ago while you were in your infancy.” He says. “I certainly would have. To be fair though this probably wouldn’t have been possible if not for that flooding disaster. Never did quite recover from that.” You say and then look at the destruction around you. “Wonder if this place will recover from this, going to take a lot to rebuild this place. I guess we’ll see.” You remark. “Just get it over with.” “No, no, no, this isn’t how we’re playing this. At least not yet. We’re both going to just stand here and talk while we wait for some of my people to come back.” Since the mayor is in no mood to be talkative, you start things off by mentioning that it was a major mistake closing off his city in the way he did. You understand the reasoning, but by that time it just caused more enemies that might not have otherwise been. Like the pirates for one example. “Being a friendly harbor to pirates and the like made you fairly safe from them. I dare say it was a bigger deterrent than your navy in some respects. Changing what wasn’t broken was foolish.” You say. “Guess I’ll remember that for the next city I oversee.” The mayor remarks. “Glad you’re staying optimistic.” You talk to the mayor for a little while longer about how you’ve come to understand the struggles of running a town of sorts and how even though taking control of this place, you are not looking forward to the operations of it. The mayor just looks at you with a continued defiance until a couple of your people bring a woman in her late middle age to you. She probably was prettier back when she was younger. Now the mayor’s eye betray him slightly as a glint of concern crosses his face before returning to defiance. “We all have someone we care about mayor. It’s a weakness, but an unavoidable one for most I think. You’re not married and this one is one of the few non military and non government people that had been seen entering this place on many occasions. So guessing this woman is a long time girlfriend? Perhaps even a daughter? Not both I hope…” “Whatever you have planned, I’m not playing your game.” “This isn’t a game mayor, but I think we’re about to see one. Marco! You’re back with Zamed and whoever these other people are.” You say turning your attention away from the mayor and the woman for a moment. Marco and the people with him nod and stand back as Zamed and two other scruffy looking men stand before you. All three of them look annoyed that you’ve taken them away from whatever else they were doing. “I hope this is about our payment.” Zamed says. “Oh it is. So out of the seven ships, you three are what’s left huh? Didn’t catch your names.” You say. “Captain Elias of the Kraken.” A fat bearded man slightly shorter than Zamed says. “Captain Nimi of the Seadragon.” A weathered looking elf with odd coral looking armor says. “Wow, those are some impressive names for ships. Bet you lot gave hell to the Jicol navy.” “Damn straight we did and those that we didn’t sailed away like scared guppies!” Elias laughs. “As I recall, YOU nearly ran away like a scared guppy until I saved your fat ass.” Nimi remarks. “I should cut yer tongue out for saying such lies, ya pointy eared boy lover!” “Gentlemen! I’m sure you both played your role.” “Yes, but I’M the lead commander here! And I think it’s time to pay the coin, have you brought it with you on a baggage cart somewhere?” “Oh I would never bring such a large sum with me. It can be picked up when you dock your ship at Nightfall. Let’s see, four dead captains means you get an extra ten on top of the twenty you’re already getting Zamed. And you two get ten apiece…now which one of you two nearly sailed away from battle again?” Nimi immediately says Elias who once again protests to the point where he’s looking like he’l get violent. Meanwhile Zamed tells them both to shut up. “I saw the entire battle from the deck of my own ship and Elias you WERE about to sail away. In fact your ship and crew took the least damage out of everyone here! You oughta be glad that I’m not shooting you and taking half your share!” Zamed says. “Now that’s a grand idea there Zamed. Marco…” you say. Zamed’s eyes widen and he goes for his weapon. “N…” is all he gets out before you outdraw him and put three in his face. Meanwhile marco has killed the elf captain with a shot to the back of his head making his armor useless. Captain Elias stands there in shock as two of your men disarm him. He really is a big coward. “Shit! Don’t…” Elias utters. “Shut up. Now I trust twenty thousand gold is enough for you and enough to throw at your crew and the crews of these dead captains to ensure their loyalty under your new command of two more ships now?” you ask. “Um…sure! Yeah! That’s more than enough for me and my…larger crew now!” “Glad to hear it. I suggest you go tell everyone of your good fortune and meet me at Nightfall in a day for your payment.” Captain Elias and grovels gratitude before leaving. You snort a bit of laughter before walking over to the mayor and the woman who have been watching the entire time. “Now as I was saying, this isn’t a game. You think I really want to run the boring day to day shit of a city, even a half destroyed one? I barely like doing it for the little town I run. No, better to leave that in the hands of someone with experience, someone like you. Of course this place will have to have new security now that all yours are dead, but I can provide that. Of course if you don’t want the job…” you say and then look at the woman. “Fine. I’ll do it.” The mayor says probably rethinking everything after what everything he’s seen. “Glad to hear it and don’t worry, you’ll have as much help as you need to rebuild this place. Come to think of it, we do have a surplus of slaves. Maybe Jicol could start using such cheap labor on a regular basis. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to see an old woman who has probably been wondering where her supply shipment has been for months.” People have been suggesting it for years, but Jicol is finally under the grip of the Nocturnal League, meaning this entire island is under your control. If the Ebony Claw Syndicate sets foot on here now, you’ll be in a stronger position to deal with them. At least that’s the general idea. > You time passes... Year 35 Talking to two Syndicate representatives isn’t exactly what you want to be doing right now, but this day was coming one way or another. The well-dressed man with a thin mustache is Percy and has been the more talkative of the two. The other by the name of Toz is some sort of greenskin halfbreed also well dressed. Probably of orc heritage since he’s much bigger than Warts was. He also doesn’t talk much and mainly just stands around looking intimidating. Unsurprisingly the pair of them have shadow magic powers. However you anticipated that which why you had Grayhaze enchant something that would at least even up the odds. A ring. Not quite an anti-magic field, but something to dull the shadow magic around you. Probably wouldn’t be enough to stop them if they really wanted to kill you, but along with all your more mundane security, it’s enough to give them pause if they tried. However if that were the intent, you probably wouldn’t be having a conversation at all. “I have to say, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when the Syndicate sent me here, but I am a little impressed with what your organization has accomplished in such a short amount of time. You certainly have not just carved out this little island for yourself, but much of sea paths on this side of the world. You’re practically like your own nation.” Percy remarks. “Never thought about it that way, but I suppose you might be right. I also suppose I should be wondering if the Delantium Kingdom will be declaring war on me to put an outpost here.” You say with a mild chuckle. “I believe they have their hands quite full still with Nichan, though I hear you’re starting to have more trouble with Hessla nowadays. I imagine you would be major competition for their once near monopoly on business for this part of the world.” “Hm, I guess you could say relations are strained with Hessla, but we offered them a fair deal. Their Governor is the one that decided to be greedy and reject it. His unwillingness to embrace in a positive manner change is what is causing people to do less business there. He probably fears that I’m going to come there with a fleet and take his city like I did with Jicol, but it’s not even the same situation. The Nocturnal League doesn’t seek to expand past our reach. This island is more than enough territory for us.” “They say it’s a wise man who knows his limitations. Perhaps by making your home in an old temple once dedicated to Fel has resulted in him providing that wisdom. Ah, tis a shame that the Syndicate only just started sending people this way. Reclaiming a lost temple to his great shadow would have been not just a boon to the Syndicate, but to the glory of Fel.” You always hate how intertwined the Syndicate is with the whole Fel religion. Makes dealing with them always uncertain. Are they interested in profit or are they interested in spreading faith? “Oh well, the Syndicate’s loss for being too slow when opportunity called I suppose. Doesn’t happen often, but we hope to correct that by hopefully having a working relationship with your organization.” Percy remarks. “Well I certainly want an amicable relationship with the Syndicate and as I said, I have no intention on expanding into your territory.” “Yes, so you’ve said. However, your island is becoming very popular in terms of the slave trade. It’s just one of the big reason why Hessla is so angry with you. The Syndicate has never relied on the slave trade as our main source of income, indeed for whatever reason it’s just never been a cornerstone. One of the few things we’re just dabblers in. We’re trying again however, and while Hessla in the past has always been a stubborn partner in such thing in the past, we’re hoping the League’s rising status in this part of the world will be more open in such matters.” “So basically what you’re saying is instead of you having to deal with independent slavers all the time, you want to just deal with us.” ‘We find that it’s always better to deal with a single reliable source rather than all these unwashed disorganized types. We would of course bring our own ship here for pick up. Also we’ve notice that the drug of choice here on this island is either Green Lotus or that very poor substitute of Blue Dream, Purple Wish. As part of our new arrangement we could provide Blue Dream for you to distribute here. Makes a lot of money, we should know after all.” And here it is, the Syndicate trying to get their foot just enough in the door. “Yes, I suppose you’ve given me a lot to think about as far as business is concerned.” You say. “Oh sure, we understand. We’re going to be in Jicol for awhile so we can sort out details then. Honestly, I’d prefer to stay here in Nightfall closer to the temple, but Toz here is a little on the paranoid side and doesn’t wish to sleep in the heart of… let’s just say, an unproven ally’s home, but I’m sure that will change soon! Besides, Fel’s shadow is everywhere after all and his dark blessing is with his faithful always.” Percy remarks. At this point Percy says a few more pleasantries and then remarks about looking forward to the meeting with you in a few days. Toz on the other hand just stares at you with the typical hostile greenskin eyes and follows Percy. After they leave, several of your people escort them out of the room and anyone else left, seems to relax slightly. “So that’s the average Syndicate member, boss?” Marco asks. “Not the average. They wouldn’t send their average. They send their more threatening to talk to someone like me. They also sent an extra one, which I guess means I’m really special. Lucky me.” You say. “So you think we should just kill them?” “Ideally that would be the safest move in the short term, but not in the long term and if we are going to war with them, I’d like to be sure that it’s necessary. So far they haven’t given any indication that they’re planning anything other than an aggressive business exchange that would have them visiting here on occasion…which granted could lead to problems in the future. In any case, we’ll wait for now.” You tell Marco to keep everyone extra alert while the Syndicate is visiting and then go see Vera who is down in the slave den as usual. Right now she’s speaking with one of her overseers. “What the hell have you been doing with these elves, Halford? They look like shit and nobody wants elven bitches that look like shit, they want them to look like they just came out of the fairy kingdom farting rainbows and sunshine.” Vera remarks. “Apologies Countess, some of the new recruits thought to take advantage of a few of them last night. They’ve already been dealt with, even sold the ringleader this morning.” Halford replies. “Hrm, well release the rest then, and remind them that these slaves are not their personal fuck toys unless they’re actually going to be paying for them out of pocket. As for these elves, well have them cleaned as much as you can and hopefully some of the buyers aren’t picky about bruises.” Halford nods and complies with Vera’s orders and as he’s leaving he also nods in respect to you. “I see you weren’t joking about wanting to be called countess.” you remark. “Well we do run an entire island, seems perfectly reasonable to declare ourselves the rulers of it.” Vera says. “True, though interesting you’ve picked a royal title though.” “Well I don’t know about you, but a title like governor or mayor doesn’t sound nearly as impressive. Besides if you remember I do have royal blood in my veins.” “Ah yes. Your father may have been the late Baron Varsakken. Still, even if true, you’ve given yourself the title of countess rather than baroness.” “Well unlike the rest of that Varsakken clan, I’m actually in control of an entire island rather than just a city. I think that calls for a higher title status.” “Heh, well why not queen then?” “Too predictable and self-important. I’m still grounded enough to know who and what I am.” “Well glad to see you’re staying grounded. Where is Kol?” “He’s studying from that book you got him in my office and Layla is watching him.” You shake your head especially since this seems very familiar. “I know you spoke to me about this before, but I’m not convinced having a slave looking after our son is the best idea.” “Well you said, you had to meet with those ECS assholes and didn’t want Kol around during that. And I couldn’t supervise Kol’s studies. This isn’t like Gertrude, Layla was from some well to do family that Elias’ crew apparently slaughtered on a transport ship. From the moment she was brought here she’s basically been willing to do anything from getting sold as a fuck hole to some rich pervert or something similar.” “Sort of surprised Elias didn’t use her as a personal fuck hole if he was the one that brought her here.” “Elias likes dick.” “Really? Huh, didn’t know that. Well anyway, compliant frightened slave girl or not, I’m wary about this.” “Fine, if you’re that concerned they’re in the next room, you go speak with them both and get a feel for her. And when I say feel, I don’t mean fucking her.” “What?” “Oh relax. I know you aren’t really going to fuck her! She’s a slave after all not royalty like me. She is very pretty though and the image of fucking her is probably going to pass through your mind. I’ll be expecting you to lay it down really good tonight.” “Uh…okay…” “In any case, as I said speak with her yourself and if you still don’t think she’s a suitable sitter then we can sell her ass. Anyway tell me about your meeting with the ECS afterwards, I’ll be free soon. Just have to check on one more slave shipment.” Vera kisses you goodbye and heads off to the next group of cages while you head to her office. Upon opening the door, you see your son fidgeting in his seat his in front of his spell book. He looks up and over at you before quickly returning to his book. Glad to see he knows that you really want him to focus on his studies. The girl who you’re guessing is Layla doesn’t look that old. She looks to be in her late teens and is probably from some far off land given her darker complexion and some of her facial features. She’s also still dressed in clothing that doesn’t match her current slave status. (At least for most of them around here) Vera was right though, she is pretty. “Um, you’re the Count right?” Layla utters. “Count? Oh. Right, Vera, Countess, whatever. No, unlike my wife, I see no need for formal titles. You’re my son’s new sitter from what she’s told me.” “Yes, I have been doing my best in seeing to it that Kol here is practicing his…erm, shadow magic.” “Can I play with my shadow creatures dad?” Kol asks. “Has it been three hours yet?” “I don’t know…” “You know that it hasn’t. You have to learn other magic, not just the shadow stuff even if you find it easier. Layla, has he been practicing?” you ask, while Kol goes back to his book. “Um, yes I think so.” “You think so? Either he has or hasn’t.” “Erm, I just mean I don’t know much about this magic stuff. I’ve just been making sure he’s been reading this book. I did see him create a small ball of light briefly though.” “Hm, okay. So Layla, do you have any other family? I mean besides the ones that those pirates killed?” “Yes, I have an uncle back in Harazan.” “Where the hell is that?” “Far to the south and west.” “He rich?” “I imagine he is now. He’s wanted my father’s business and fortune for years. With everyone dead, and me stuck here, he’s next in line to get everything.” “I’m guessing he won’t be looking for you anytime soon.” “…no…” Layla says looking downward. “So tell me Layla, what is your plan?” “My plan?” “Yes, I mean surely you’re not content on being a slave. Who would be? And I can tell even in your less than perfect condition, you obviously came from wealth. You certainly look more royal than my wife. You’re probably at least of noble birth. In any case, you are definitely not cut out to be a slave of any kind.” “What you say is partly true I suppose. I very much would not like to be a slave, but I fear I have little choice in the matter. I was raised…not sheltered, but very much protected. I don’t have many skills that would be of practical use. I suppose its of some blessing that the pirate captain who spared me saw me as fetching a good price rather than to be something passed around by his crew.” “Hm, Yag certainly threw a seven for you.” “Your wife probably would have sold me until I noticed how she was struggling with looking after your son while conducting her business. I quickly begged to help her by explaining I looked after my own little brother many times. I’m still not sure how I convinced her, but here we are.” “Yes, here we are.” “If you’re concerned that I’m plotting to escape, I’m not sure how I could without you knowing and I do not believe I’d make it very far. I fear that this is my life now and can only hope that you and your wife are merciful masters.” “You’re surprisingly resigned and calm about all this.” “I have already mourned over my family and continue to do so in the night when I cry myself to sleep. However, it is said that Ahamed has a reason for every event. I am hoping that I might see and understand this one and from there gain greater wisdom. My own family owned a few slaves for basic tasks, perhaps I am to learn how they felt.” “Ahamed?” “Yes, he who burns brighter than the sun and shows the way of peace.” “Oh, a god.” “The only true god.” “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before, just not that particular one. Great. Well at least you aren’t a Felian I guess.” “Did you say Fel?” “Felian, followers of Fel, god of shadows.” “Are you a worshipper of this…god?” “No. I just said I was glad that you weren’t, why the hell would I be?” “Oh, because your son was telling me before you came in that this Fel was speaking with him and…” Your eyes immediately widen and your whole body tenses up. “WHAT?!” you exclaim causing Layla to cringe in her chair, but your attention is towards Kol. You immediately start interrogating the boy and her. After five minutes Kol and Layla are both in tears from your demanding questioning, however you have learned a few things. Apparently Kol’s medallion has been coming off in the middle the night and for the past week Fel has been speaking to Kol. Not to a great extent, but he’s definitely been visiting your son and remarking about how great shadow magic is compared to all other forms of magic. He’s also been trying to convince Kol of keeping the medallion off as soon as he goes to sleep. However the most alarming part is Fel asking your son if he would like to go be with Felians as he could see to it that they treat him very well. He even mentions possibly having agents that would come get him. Now you’re wondering if this means Percy and the other one are here to take away your son…or is Fel referring to other agents that he hasn’t sent yet? Kol was apparently afraid to tell you or Vera this since he thought you’d both be angry, but he opened up to Layla since she seemed nice. Meanwhile your mind is racing on how to handle all this. > You have the ECS representatives killed You’ve got all the information you need. No need to prolong this and besides, this was always a possibility anyway. Looks like you’ll be going to war with the Syndicate. You figure it’ll take them at least a month or two before they figure out something has gone wrong when they don’t return. You’ll have time to prepare at least. In the meantime you need to calm your son (and Layla) down. “Alright, alright, Kol. I’m not mad. Calm down. In fact, you calm down as well, you’re not getting sold anytime soon Layla.” You say addressing the both of them. “Dad, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you or mom. I’ll make sure the medallion is around my neck good.” Kol says. “Actually might be time to get you a ring, but don’t worry about that right now. Just go back to your studies for now.” You then turn to Layla. “And I trust you aren’t going to speak of this.” You say. “Of course not! I don’t even talk much with the other slaves! I swear to Ahmed as I do not want my situation to become even worse.” Layla remarks. “Good, that’s the proper way to feel.” You immediately leave and call for Marco who arrives shortly. “I want you to gather the best and most skilled assassin types we have and send them to kill those two ECS fuckers. Then I want you to send a group of twenty more of the next best along with them. I don’t care how they’re killed, just do it quickly. Also I want all ships to not leave this fucking island until they’re dead. We are not fucking this up.” “We’re going to war with the Syndicate? I thought everything was going well, boss.” “Shit changes. Now do what I tell you. Oh and I want their heads as proof.” “Okay boss, I’ll get right on it. Um, what if any of them are currently helping the Countess?” “I don’t give a shit, you reassign them anyway, if my wife has a problem she can come talk to me.” Marco takes his leave and you begin to mentally make preparations of how you’re going to have to prepare your defenses. You figure you’ll have a few months before the Syndicate realizes something has happened to their people and get their shit together to send a force after you. Doesn’t take long before Vera comes to see you. “What the hell is going on? Marco just came in and took a few of my best slave minders and said if I had any complaint, I need to see you because he’s just following orders.” Vera says. You explain the situation to Vera who is probably more concerned about Kol than any war with the Syndicate. She even asks you where Kol is and how he’s doing. After giving your answer about that, she gets a little pissed that you haven’t made the arrangements to get a ring enchanted for him and goes off to see Kol immediately. Doesn’t take long before the task is underway. You eventually get a report from Marco that unfortunately despite the unexpected attack and all the people you sent, you only managed to get one of them, and it was the orc since they tried to take him out first believing he’d be a tougher target, turned out to be true since he killed most of the people you sent before succumbing to the multiple shots to his body and head in the initial attack. Percy apparently didn’t even try to help his friend and just ran off. He still cut down a few people along the way, but nobody can guess where he is now. Being more paranoid than ever, you order that everyone from Nightfall to Jicol be on the look out. You also make sure Kol is kept under watch as all times. A few days pass and several of the pirates, merchants, slavers and sailors begin to protest that you won’t let them leave the island, but in order to somewhat alleviate their complaints you wave any costs they might have. This helps somewhat, but many of them still aren’t very happy. The slavers especially since they feel like they’re being held captive and of course they know all about doing that to others. Meanwhile you’re getting increasingly agitated with the fact that Percy still hasn’t been found. He could be anywhere. You even order searches of the deeper jungle areas, which doesn’t do much except get some of your people killed by dangerous wildlife. Even if he was hiding in the jungle, they probably wouldn’t find him anyway. You insist on Kol being kept locked up in his room at all times. Vera isn’t sure if that’s the best idea, but she doesn’t have a better one. She’s mainly just as frustrated about this situation as you are and you’re both lashing out at each other a lot. Another week passes and still no sign of him at all. There haven’t even been any “mysterious” deaths. However, you soon get some not so mysterious deaths when a couple of the pirate captains kill some of your people while leaving the island. You manage to sink one of the ships, but one manages to sail away. This situation is getting bad for business because opening fire on your usual partners is a sure way to have them never come back or worse seek revenge. Though you half wonder if Percy eventually got to these folks anyway. Perhaps promising a reward from the Syndicate if they got him off the island. If that’s the case, you can only hope he was on the ship you managed to sink. With things also starting to get restless in Jicol, you don’t really have much choice but to ease up on the restrictions. One way or another he’s probably getting off the island if he hasn’t already and you’ll just have to be prepared quicker. A month passes and the entire island feels like it’s under the shadow of the Syndicate. Everyone is on edge expecting a Syndicate attack even if it is a little too early. You still keep Kol locked up for his own safety, but he’s obviously not happy about it. At this point he’s wearing an anti-magic ring to nullify any potential contact with Fel since the last thing you need is a god whispering in your son’s ear. Vera becomes concerned about you and tells you that you need to relax even if the situation isn’t ideal because the last thing the Nocturnal League needs right now is an unstable leader. You take her words under advisement, which is much more reasonable than she hoped for. You know she’s right after all; it isn’t going to do anyone any good if you’re in the state you’re in now. Another month passes and things have settled down slightly. You constantly ask for news updates from the mainland, but nothing of major importance is reported. No rumors of the Syndicate preparing for an attack or anything. By the middle of the year, things are almost back to normal on the island. You’ve still got a lot of extra security around the temple, but restrictions have loosened a bit to the point where you’re not keeping Kol locked up anymore. You still have not heard a single thing about the Syndicate. No threats, no rumors, nothing. Or at least nothing concerning you. True they could be playing it close to the vest, but you think you would have gotten at least something by now. Either the Syndicate is just making you sweat or they’ve decided it wouldn’t be worth their time or resources in going to war with you. While things are still pretty tense, you continue to try to get on with your business. While you’re going over some of your expenses, you hear a knock at your office door. “Marco, I told you just come in if you got something important to report.” You remark. “It’s not Marco, he’s been killed!” a voice says from the other side of the door. “What?!” “He’s been killed! A lot of people have, you need to come this! I think it’s an attack!” “Are Vera and Kol safe!?” you say starting to get up. “I’m not sure about Vera, but Kol is definitely safe.” “Hold on…fuck…” you mutter realizing that today must be the fucking day that the entire Syndicate declares war. However, you were wrong. You open the door and immediately you see a familiar face staring at you and before you can do anything a blade strikes quickly across your throat. You manage to raise your pistol before Percy easily grabs it from your hand as you fall to the floor choking on your own blood. It was just one. “You know, it would have been easy to kill you months ago, but I think my time here in hiding has provided me with all the necessary information to give to the Syndicate to best effectively attack your organization. Well that and it was nice to see the shocked look on your face when you saw me again. Didn’t have to be this way, but you can take solace in the fact that your son will not be harmed. His destiny with Fel is greater than what fate will befall the rest of this island.” With that last cold response of a man who was determined to take away everything important to you, your vision goes dark.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 35 Talking to two Syndicate representatives isn’t exactly what you want to be doing right now, but this day was coming one way or another. The well-dressed man with a thin mustache is Percy and has been the more talkative of the two. The other by the name of Toz is some sort of greenskin halfbreed also well dressed. Probably of orc heritage since he’s much bigger than Warts was. He also doesn’t talk much and mainly just stands around looking intimidating. Unsurprisingly the pair of them have shadow magic powers. However you anticipated that which why you had Grayhaze enchant something that would at least even up the odds. A ring. Not quite an anti-magic field, but something to dull the shadow magic around you. Probably wouldn’t be enough to stop them if they really wanted to kill you, but along with all your more mundane security, it’s enough to give them pause if they tried. However if that were the intent, you probably wouldn’t be having a conversation at all. “I have to say, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when the Syndicate sent me here, but I am a little impressed with what your organization has accomplished in such a short amount of time. You certainly have not just carved out this little island for yourself, but much of sea paths on this side of the world. You’re practically like your own nation.” Percy remarks. “Never thought about it that way, but I suppose you might be right. I also suppose I should be wondering if the Delantium Kingdom will be declaring war on me to put an outpost here.” You say with a mild chuckle. “I believe they have their hands quite full still with Nichan, though I hear you’re starting to have more trouble with Hessla nowadays. I imagine you would be major competition for their once near monopoly on business for this part of the world.” “Hm, I guess you could say relations are strained with Hessla, but we offered them a fair deal. Their Governor is the one that decided to be greedy and reject it. His unwillingness to embrace in a positive manner change is what is causing people to do less business there. He probably fears that I’m going to come there with a fleet and take his city like I did with Jicol, but it’s not even the same situation. The Nocturnal League doesn’t seek to expand past our reach. This island is more than enough territory for us.” “They say it’s a wise man who knows his limitations. Perhaps by making your home in an old temple once dedicated to Fel has resulted in him providing that wisdom. Ah, tis a shame that the Syndicate only just started sending people this way. Reclaiming a lost temple to his great shadow would have been not just a boon to the Syndicate, but to the glory of Fel.” You always hate how intertwined the Syndicate is with the whole Fel religion. Makes dealing with them always uncertain. Are they interested in profit or are they interested in spreading faith? “Oh well, the Syndicate’s loss for being too slow when opportunity called I suppose. Doesn’t happen often, but we hope to correct that by hopefully having a working relationship with your organization.” Percy remarks. “Well I certainly want an amicable relationship with the Syndicate and as I said, I have no intention on expanding into your territory.” “Yes, so you’ve said. However, your island is becoming very popular in terms of the slave trade. It’s just one of the big reason why Hessla is so angry with you. The Syndicate has never relied on the slave trade as our main source of income, indeed for whatever reason it’s just never been a cornerstone. One of the few things we’re just dabblers in. We’re trying again however, and while Hessla in the past has always been a stubborn partner in such thing in the past, we’re hoping the League’s rising status in this part of the world will be more open in such matters.” “So basically what you’re saying is instead of you having to deal with independent slavers all the time, you want to just deal with us.” ‘We find that it’s always better to deal with a single reliable source rather than all these unwashed disorganized types. We would of course bring our own ship here for pick up. Also we’ve notice that the drug of choice here on this island is either Green Lotus or that very poor substitute of Blue Dream, Purple Wish. As part of our new arrangement we could provide Blue Dream for you to distribute here. Makes a lot of money, we should know after all.” And here it is, the Syndicate trying to get their foot just enough in the door. “Yes, I suppose you’ve given me a lot to think about as far as business is concerned.” You say. “Oh sure, we understand. We’re going to be in Jicol for awhile so we can sort out details then. Honestly, I’d prefer to stay here in Nightfall closer to the temple, but Toz here is a little on the paranoid side and doesn’t wish to sleep in the heart of… let’s just say, an unproven ally’s home, but I’m sure that will change soon! Besides, Fel’s shadow is everywhere after all and his dark blessing is with his faithful always.” Percy remarks. At this point Percy says a few more pleasantries and then remarks about looking forward to the meeting with you in a few days. Toz on the other hand just stares at you with the typical hostile greenskin eyes and follows Percy. After they leave, several of your people escort them out of the room and anyone else left, seems to relax slightly. “So that’s the average Syndicate member, boss?” Marco asks. “Not the average. They wouldn’t send their average. They send their more threatening to talk to someone like me. They also sent an extra one, which I guess means I’m really special. Lucky me.” You say. “So you think we should just kill them?” “Ideally that would be the safest move in the short term, but not in the long term and if we are going to war with them, I’d like to be sure that it’s necessary. So far they haven’t given any indication that they’re planning anything other than an aggressive business exchange that would have them visiting here on occasion…which granted could lead to problems in the future. In any case, we’ll wait for now.” You tell Marco to keep everyone extra alert while the Syndicate is visiting and then go see Vera who is down in the slave den as usual. Right now she’s speaking with one of her overseers. “What the hell have you been doing with these elves, Halford? They look like shit and nobody wants elven bitches that look like shit, they want them to look like they just came out of the fairy kingdom farting rainbows and sunshine.” Vera remarks. “Apologies Countess, some of the new recruits thought to take advantage of a few of them last night. They’ve already been dealt with, even sold the ringleader this morning.” Halford replies. “Hrm, well release the rest then, and remind them that these slaves are not their personal fuck toys unless they’re actually going to be paying for them out of pocket. As for these elves, well have them cleaned as much as you can and hopefully some of the buyers aren’t picky about bruises.” Halford nods and complies with Vera’s orders and as he’s leaving he also nods in respect to you. “I see you weren’t joking about wanting to be called countess.” you remark. “Well we do run an entire island, seems perfectly reasonable to declare ourselves the rulers of it.” Vera says. “True, though interesting you’ve picked a royal title though.” “Well I don’t know about you, but a title like governor or mayor doesn’t sound nearly as impressive. Besides if you remember I do have royal blood in my veins.” “Ah yes. Your father may have been the late Baron Varsakken. Still, even if true, you’ve given yourself the title of countess rather than baroness.” “Well unlike the rest of that Varsakken clan, I’m actually in control of an entire island rather than just a city. I think that calls for a higher title status.” “Heh, well why not queen then?” “Too predictable and self-important. I’m still grounded enough to know who and what I am.” “Well glad to see you’re staying grounded. Where is Kol?” “He’s studying from that book you got him in my office and Layla is watching him.” You shake your head especially since this seems very familiar. “I know you spoke to me about this before, but I’m not convinced having a slave looking after our son is the best idea.” “Well you said, you had to meet with those ECS assholes and didn’t want Kol around during that. And I couldn’t supervise Kol’s studies. This isn’t like Gertrude, Layla was from some well to do family that Elias’ crew apparently slaughtered on a transport ship. From the moment she was brought here she’s basically been willing to do anything from getting sold as a fuck hole to some rich pervert or something similar.” “Sort of surprised Elias didn’t use her as a personal fuck hole if he was the one that brought her here.” “Elias likes dick.” “Really? Huh, didn’t know that. Well anyway, compliant frightened slave girl or not, I’m wary about this.” “Fine, if you’re that concerned they’re in the next room, you go speak with them both and get a feel for her. And when I say feel, I don’t mean fucking her.” “What?” “Oh relax. I know you aren’t really going to fuck her! She’s a slave after all not royalty like me. She is very pretty though and the image of fucking her is probably going to pass through your mind. I’ll be expecting you to lay it down really good tonight.” “Uh…okay…” “In any case, as I said speak with her yourself and if you still don’t think she’s a suitable sitter then we can sell her ass. Anyway tell me about your meeting with the ECS afterwards, I’ll be free soon. Just have to check on one more slave shipment.” Vera kisses you goodbye and heads off to the next group of cages while you head to her office. Upon opening the door, you see your son fidgeting in his seat his in front of his spell book. He looks up and over at you before quickly returning to his book. Glad to see he knows that you really want him to focus on his studies. The girl who you’re guessing is Layla doesn’t look that old. She looks to be in her late teens and is probably from some far off land given her darker complexion and some of her facial features. She’s also still dressed in clothing that doesn’t match her current slave status. (At least for most of them around here) Vera was right though, she is pretty. “Um, you’re the Count right?” Layla utters. “Count? Oh. Right, Vera, Countess, whatever. No, unlike my wife, I see no need for formal titles. You’re my son’s new sitter from what she’s told me.” “Yes, I have been doing my best in seeing to it that Kol here is practicing his…erm, shadow magic.” “Can I play with my shadow creatures dad?” Kol asks. “Has it been three hours yet?” “I don’t know…” “You know that it hasn’t. You have to learn other magic, not just the shadow stuff even if you find it easier. Layla, has he been practicing?” you ask, while Kol goes back to his book. “Um, yes I think so.” “You think so? Either he has or hasn’t.” “Erm, I just mean I don’t know much about this magic stuff. I’ve just been making sure he’s been reading this book. I did see him create a small ball of light briefly though.” “Hm, okay. So Layla, do you have any other family? I mean besides the ones that those pirates killed?” “Yes, I have an uncle back in Harazan.” “Where the hell is that?” “Far to the south and west.” “He rich?” “I imagine he is now. He’s wanted my father’s business and fortune for years. With everyone dead, and me stuck here, he’s next in line to get everything.” “I’m guessing he won’t be looking for you anytime soon.” “…no…” Layla says looking downward. “So tell me Layla, what is your plan?” “My plan?” “Yes, I mean surely you’re not content on being a slave. Who would be? And I can tell even in your less than perfect condition, you obviously came from wealth. You certainly look more royal than my wife. You’re probably at least of noble birth. In any case, you are definitely not cut out to be a slave of any kind.” “What you say is partly true I suppose. I very much would not like to be a slave, but I fear I have little choice in the matter. I was raised…not sheltered, but very much protected. I don’t have many skills that would be of practical use. I suppose its of some blessing that the pirate captain who spared me saw me as fetching a good price rather than to be something passed around by his crew.” “Hm, Yag certainly threw a seven for you.” “Your wife probably would have sold me until I noticed how she was struggling with looking after your son while conducting her business. I quickly begged to help her by explaining I looked after my own little brother many times. I’m still not sure how I convinced her, but here we are.” “Yes, here we are.” “If you’re concerned that I’m plotting to escape, I’m not sure how I could without you knowing and I do not believe I’d make it very far. I fear that this is my life now and can only hope that you and your wife are merciful masters.” “You’re surprisingly resigned and calm about all this.” “I have already mourned over my family and continue to do so in the night when I cry myself to sleep. However, it is said that Ahamed has a reason for every event. I am hoping that I might see and understand this one and from there gain greater wisdom. My own family owned a few slaves for basic tasks, perhaps I am to learn how they felt.” “Ahamed?” “Yes, he who burns brighter than the sun and shows the way of peace.” “Oh, a god.” “The only true god.” “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before, just not that particular one. Great. Well at least you aren’t a Felian I guess.” “Did you say Fel?” “Felian, followers of Fel, god of shadows.” “Are you a worshipper of this…god?” “No. I just said I was glad that you weren’t, why the hell would I be?” “Oh, because your son was telling me before you came in that this Fel was speaking with him and…” Your eyes immediately widen and your whole body tenses up. “WHAT?!” you exclaim causing Layla to cringe in her chair, but your attention is towards Kol. You immediately start interrogating the boy and her. After five minutes Kol and Layla are both in tears from your demanding questioning, however you have learned a few things. Apparently Kol’s medallion has been coming off in the middle the night and for the past week Fel has been speaking to Kol. Not to a great extent, but he’s definitely been visiting your son and remarking about how great shadow magic is compared to all other forms of magic. He’s also been trying to convince Kol of keeping the medallion off as soon as he goes to sleep. However the most alarming part is Fel asking your son if he would like to go be with Felians as he could see to it that they treat him very well. He even mentions possibly having agents that would come get him. Now you’re wondering if this means Percy and the other one are here to take away your son…or is Fel referring to other agents that he hasn’t sent yet? Kol was apparently afraid to tell you or Vera this since he thought you’d both be angry, but he opened up to Layla since she seemed nice. Meanwhile your mind is racing on how to handle all this. > You gather more information first Again, if you’re going to move to make war on the ECS, you’re going to be absolutely sure. Also you’ve now just upset your son and while this is very serious, you might need to employ less aggressive tactics. “Alright, alright, Kol. I’m not mad. Calm down. In fact, you calm down as well, you’re not getting sold anytime soon Layla.” You say addressing the both of them. The pair of the them begin to calm down and cease crying while you’re coming up with a risky idea. “Dad, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you or mom. I’ll make sure the medallion is around my neck good.” Kol says. “Actually might be time to get you a ring, however maybe not right away. Tell me more about Fel son. How is he exactly towards you? Does he scare you?” you ask. “Um, he’s kinda scary. I’ve never seen him. It’s just like…I dunno…a voice. It’s loud, but it’s like whispery. I don’t know if he means to be scary though.” “What do you mean?” “He’s not mean to me. He just talks to me. It’s just really dark and his voice is creepy and that’s scary. He says he wants to be my friend.” “Hmm, do you talk to him back?” “Yes, I asked him if he had a mom and dad, but he just laughed and said a god has no parents. I asked him if he had any friends, and he said he just had followers in places like this temple, but said they weren’t nearly as amusing as you and mom.” “Amusing? Why does Fel find us so amusing?” “Um, he said he thinks what you did with the temple is a lot more fun than his other temples because of all those people you put in cages.” “I see. Glad we could entertain I guess.” “Fel also says that he wishes he could speak to me more often.” “And I’ll just bet he wants you to go to sleep without the medallion. Tell you what, when you go to sleep tonight don’t wear the medallion.” “Really?” “Yes, you have my permission, however, and this is very important. When you talk to Fel tonight, I want you to ask him who is going to take you away so you know what they look like.” “But dad I don’t want to go away! I want to stay here with you and mom! Honest!” “Yes, I know son and I won’t let anyone take you away. But this is just pretend and I want you to ask Fel anyway okay?” “Okay.” “Kol, I think that’s been enough studying for today, you can go play. Don’t forget to put away your spell book though.” Kol nods and runs off with his book. “Hope I know what the hell I’m doing.” You mutter to yourself before turning your attention to Layla who is still sitting quietly and wondering what you’re going to do next. “I trust you know to keep your mouth shut about this.” You say to Layla. “Yes, of course! Who would I even tell? I don’t even understand what exactly is going on.” Layla remarks. “I dunno, you might talk casually with your fellow slaves.” “I’m not exactly friends with anyone here. Ever since your wife had me looking after your son, she keeps me isolated from the rest of the slaves. If anything they probably dislike me more for having better living conditions. Sir, I swear to Ahmed I will not say anything you say or do if you don’t wish it. My situation is very dire compared to my previous life, but I certainly don’t want it to get any worse by angering you or your wife.” “Hm, well see that you continue with that line of thinking. In any case, you can go tell my wife that I want to talk with her and that you’ll do as a sitter for Kol when needed. At least until further notice.” “Very well.” Layla remarks obediently and leaves. You wait for Vera still pondering your decision. When Vera arrives and you explain everything, she of course has her own strong opinions on it. “What?! After everything you said and did to prevent Fel from contacting Kol, you’re now saying it’s perfectly fine?” Vera remarks. “No! That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying…gah…look it’s already happening and unfortunately it’s probably going to happen from time to time anyway. Even if I get that enchanted ring for Kol, I can almost guarantee he’s going to take it off at some point when we aren’t around. Maybe he’ll be curious, maybe he’ll be pissed and do it to spite us. I’m already envisioning what a problem he’s going to potentially be when he gets older what with his magic abilities. I’m just thinking that MAYBE restricting him too much is an exercise in failure. I know it obviously was with my parents.” You say. “Okay, I get what you mean on that, but this plan of yours still seems pretty dangerous. Not only are we risking war with the ECS, the Felians, but the god itself.” “Might as well go big. If Kol is going to speak with Fel, we might as well try to use it to our benefit. According to Kol, Fel finds what we’ve done with the temple to be amusing, so we can’t be completely on his bad side. Look, I’m going to speak with Kol again before he goes to bed and really, this isn’t going to be a regular thing. If Kol gets the information he needs, then the enchanted medallion or ring when I get it is going right back on the next time he sleeps.” Vera has a bit of apprehension in the eyes, but as usual she tend to side with your decision, which is good since you don’t need to be second guessing yourself anymore than you already are in your head. Later that night when Kol goes to bed, you and Vera both speak with him and say generally positive things to him. You also go on about the plan and to remember that no matter what Fel says, he will never love Kol as much as you and Vera will. This seems to put the Kol at ease and he goes to sleep fairly quickly. You and Vera however definitely don’t that night. The pair of you can’t sleep so you both engage in the usual intimate pastime, but after that fails to completely distract you, you both go check on Kol, who is actually sleeping pretty soundly. The pair of you watch over him for some time, though eventually you start getting a little restless and tell Vera you’re going to get some work accomplished. Vera however, insists on staying with Kol. When morning arrives, you’re still awake and you check on Kol, and find that Vera has fallen asleep in a chair next to Kol, who is still sleeping. Your arrival wakes her up though. “Wha? You’re back. How long was I asleep?” Vera asks rubbing her eyes. “I dunno, this is the first time I’ve checked on you both. You son wakes up hearing both your voices. “Mom? Dad? What are you both doing in my room?” he asks. You immediately ask him how did he sleep and about his dreams. Naturally the boy is still groggy, but he soon answers your questions since he thankfully remembers his conversation with Fel who did indeed visit him. Kol tells you that he asked Fel about being taken away by Fel’s agents, to which he asked further questions if he was sure that was what he wanted and why. Kol tells you he didn’t really know how to answer other than “I don’t know” You grimace a bit, thinking that this plan of yours probably didn’t work, but apparently Fel indulged the boy anyway explaining the benefits of such a thing, oddly he also explained the benefits of staying here too. Then he told Kol that if he was really serious, he should contact a well dressed man with a thin mustache and he will be able to get him off the island before anyone figures it out since he knows what to do already. The description already sounds like Percy. “Kol, is that the only agent that Fel described to you? Didn’t say anything about an orc?” you ask. “No dad. Just the man.” Kol says. “That’s odd. Wouldn’t he have sent both of them?” Vera remarks. “Have no idea. I can’t know the mind of a god. For all we know he could be lying about everything.” You say. “Should we really start second guessing ourselves? I mean wasn’t the whole plan to learn this information and act on it?” “Yes, but…argh…this is really…fuck it, let’s do this. I want those two summoned back here and tell them I’m ready to talk about a deal. I also want you to take Kol away from here and go to the armory or something with several of our best and wait until this is over.” “Do you really think you need to handle this directly? I mean we’ve got several people; surely it would be just a simple matter of having one of them sneakily pop them in the back of the head with a single shot. Or shit, we could just send a bunch of people to overwhelm them right now where they’re staying. I mean it just seems safer for all of us.” Vera might have a point, though part of you finds this pretty personal enough that you’d rather take care of this directly. “I…I don’t want to leave you guys. I want to stay here.” Your son suddenly says. “You will son. You win.” You answer reassuringly. “We’re not taking any chances with them somehow escaping, I want to see this done right. I’m going to have enough people with me that the odds are going to be heavily in my favor though.” Vera reluctantly agrees to your plan, though she says she’d prefer to just ambush the pair of them. You set things in motion and have some of your people go fetch the ECS reps. You aren’t exactly sure how this is going to play out, but you put on extra body armor and armed yourself with a couple extra blades and pistols and have Marco and everyone that’s going to be with you do likewise. Honestly, you aren’t sure how good your ring is going to be, but you hope it’s good enough to keep you alive. If nothing else, they aren’t surviving this. Time passes and eventually Percy and Toz arrive. Percy looks as jovial as he has since he got here, while Toz looks about as grim serious as he always has. You still aren’t sure what to do about him. Fel didn’t mention him, but you can’t imagine that you aren’t going to have to kill him as well. Looks like you’ll be going to war with the ECS and you’ll be firing the first shot. Really wish you could have avoided this, but that’s no other way. Percy looks at his surroundings and with a smile he begins to speak. “I’m getting the impression, you don’t want to talk about a deal with the Syndicate after all.” Percy says, which causes Toz to immediately stand a little straighter and the rest of your people to put their hands to their weapons. You don’t even bother to make the pretense and pull your pistol immediately and point it at Percy. Percy doesn’t seem bothered though and even puts his hand on Toz to keep him from attacking. “You realize you’re killing yourself right? And I don’t mean starting a war with the Syndicate, because you aren’t going to live to see that anyway. Even with your advantage and weak anti-magic ring, I…WE have more than enough power and skill to overcome what’s just in this room. True, we probably won’t survive, but we’ll do enough damage to this entire place that when our absence is noticed, the Syndicate WILL assume the worst and send people to mop up what’s left. Terrible way to do business.” Percy says. “That’s a possibility I considered long before you ever showed up. However, this isn’t business. This is personal.” You remark. “Oh? Interesting. Have I offended you directly in some way? Perhaps Toz here has? I know he’s a little on the impersonal side, but…” “Cut the shit. You’re here to steal my son. You know about him and you’re here to take him to back to your main temple. Not happening.” Percy seems surprised to hear you accuse him of this, but he soon returns to his smiling self. Toz on the other hand is showing a stone face looking like he really wants to get on with the fighting. “Alright. Well, I can see this IS personal. On both sides. I mean I can’t very well disobey a direct order from my god can I? I can only guess you must have found this out from your son who is also in contact with our shadowy lord. I wouldn’t expect a godless heathen like you to understand, but if Fel is speaking to the boy then that only PROVES that he’s destined for greatness! Think of it, your son is one of Fel’s chosen! Surely you want what’s best for your son. No harm would come to him.” Percy says. “You seriously expect me to just hand him over?” you ask. “Yes! Because it’s your ONLY logical move. I am willing to forget all this as…an over protective parent outburst. Completely understandable. I will even work out a better deal between you and the Syndicate. Your son will no doubt rise in the ranks of our order. Just think, YOU will have a powerful ally on the inside, close to the Temple of Fel in the years to come. If you ever have trouble with the Syndicate, you will able to get support from our order to smooth anything over. It seems like a winning situation for all of us.” “Perhaps, but that’s still not happening.” Finished with talking, you open fire and nearly instantly you feel like everything is slowing down in front of you. You see your first bullet actually hanging in the air and then Percy moving to the left. What torchlight there was in the room, goes out completely. You begin swearing and shouting orders, desperately trying to adjust your eyes to the darkness. You already hear noises of men being killed and unfortunately they sound like yours. All you can make out is a bunch of dark figures struggling with each other. You suppose you could just fire blindly and hope you get them or maybe try to retreat out the exit where there is more light. > You fire You’re probably going to hit some of your own people, but oh well. You fire the remainder of your shots and from the sound of things you probably hit at least a couple people. The problem is you can’t be sure who so you take this opportunity to head towards the nearest exit and at least get to a better lit area. The entire temple to on alert anyway, so you should be getting reinforcements soon. While your ring might not seem like it’s helping, you’re actually moving at your own speed rather than suffering from whatever slow effects that were cast. Unfortunately for you, not fast enough as you feel several sharp objects go into your back before you even make it out the room. You fall to the floor face first and then attempt to crawl towards the better-lit corridor, but the last thing you hear is Percy whispering “Could have settled this a lot easier, but take solace that your bad choices will not affect your son.” Then he slits your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Again, if you’re going to move to make war on the ECS, you’re going to be absolutely sure. Also you’ve now just upset your son and while this is very serious, you might need to employ less aggressive tactics. “Alright, alright, Kol. I’m not mad. Calm down. In fact, you calm down as well, you’re not getting sold anytime soon Layla.” You say addressing the both of them. The pair of the them begin to calm down and cease crying while you’re coming up with a risky idea. “Dad, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you or mom. I’ll make sure the medallion is around my neck good.” Kol says. “Actually might be time to get you a ring, however maybe not right away. Tell me more about Fel son. How is he exactly towards you? Does he scare you?” you ask. “Um, he’s kinda scary. I’ve never seen him. It’s just like…I dunno…a voice. It’s loud, but it’s like whispery. I don’t know if he means to be scary though.” “What do you mean?” “He’s not mean to me. He just talks to me. It’s just really dark and his voice is creepy and that’s scary. He says he wants to be my friend.” “Hmm, do you talk to him back?” “Yes, I asked him if he had a mom and dad, but he just laughed and said a god has no parents. I asked him if he had any friends, and he said he just had followers in places like this temple, but said they weren’t nearly as amusing as you and mom.” “Amusing? Why does Fel find us so amusing?” “Um, he said he thinks what you did with the temple is a lot more fun than his other temples because of all those people you put in cages.” “I see. Glad we could entertain I guess.” “Fel also says that he wishes he could speak to me more often.” “And I’ll just bet he wants you to go to sleep without the medallion. Tell you what, when you go to sleep tonight don’t wear the medallion.” “Really?” “Yes, you have my permission, however, and this is very important. When you talk to Fel tonight, I want you to ask him who is going to take you away so you know what they look like.” “But dad I don’t want to go away! I want to stay here with you and mom! Honest!” “Yes, I know son and I won’t let anyone take you away. But this is just pretend and I want you to ask Fel anyway okay?” “Okay.” “Kol, I think that’s been enough studying for today, you can go play. Don’t forget to put away your spell book though.” Kol nods and runs off with his book. “Hope I know what the hell I’m doing.” You mutter to yourself before turning your attention to Layla who is still sitting quietly and wondering what you’re going to do next. “I trust you know to keep your mouth shut about this.” You say to Layla. “Yes, of course! Who would I even tell? I don’t even understand what exactly is going on.” Layla remarks. “I dunno, you might talk casually with your fellow slaves.” “I’m not exactly friends with anyone here. Ever since your wife had me looking after your son, she keeps me isolated from the rest of the slaves. If anything they probably dislike me more for having better living conditions. Sir, I swear to Ahmed I will not say anything you say or do if you don’t wish it. My situation is very dire compared to my previous life, but I certainly don’t want it to get any worse by angering you or your wife.” “Hm, well see that you continue with that line of thinking. In any case, you can go tell my wife that I want to talk with her and that you’ll do as a sitter for Kol when needed. At least until further notice.” “Very well.” Layla remarks obediently and leaves. You wait for Vera still pondering your decision. When Vera arrives and you explain everything, she of course has her own strong opinions on it. “What?! After everything you said and did to prevent Fel from contacting Kol, you’re now saying it’s perfectly fine?” Vera remarks. “No! That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying…gah…look it’s already happening and unfortunately it’s probably going to happen from time to time anyway. Even if I get that enchanted ring for Kol, I can almost guarantee he’s going to take it off at some point when we aren’t around. Maybe he’ll be curious, maybe he’ll be pissed and do it to spite us. I’m already envisioning what a problem he’s going to potentially be when he gets older what with his magic abilities. I’m just thinking that MAYBE restricting him too much is an exercise in failure. I know it obviously was with my parents.” You say. “Okay, I get what you mean on that, but this plan of yours still seems pretty dangerous. Not only are we risking war with the ECS, the Felians, but the god itself.” “Might as well go big. If Kol is going to speak with Fel, we might as well try to use it to our benefit. According to Kol, Fel finds what we’ve done with the temple to be amusing, so we can’t be completely on his bad side. Look, I’m going to speak with Kol again before he goes to bed and really, this isn’t going to be a regular thing. If Kol gets the information he needs, then the enchanted medallion or ring when I get it is going right back on the next time he sleeps.” Vera has a bit of apprehension in the eyes, but as usual she tend to side with your decision, which is good since you don’t need to be second guessing yourself anymore than you already are in your head. Later that night when Kol goes to bed, you and Vera both speak with him and say generally positive things to him. You also go on about the plan and to remember that no matter what Fel says, he will never love Kol as much as you and Vera will. This seems to put the Kol at ease and he goes to sleep fairly quickly. You and Vera however definitely don’t that night. The pair of you can’t sleep so you both engage in the usual intimate pastime, but after that fails to completely distract you, you both go check on Kol, who is actually sleeping pretty soundly. The pair of you watch over him for some time, though eventually you start getting a little restless and tell Vera you’re going to get some work accomplished. Vera however, insists on staying with Kol. When morning arrives, you’re still awake and you check on Kol, and find that Vera has fallen asleep in a chair next to Kol, who is still sleeping. Your arrival wakes her up though. “Wha? You’re back. How long was I asleep?” Vera asks rubbing her eyes. “I dunno, this is the first time I’ve checked on you both. You son wakes up hearing both your voices. “Mom? Dad? What are you both doing in my room?” he asks. You immediately ask him how did he sleep and about his dreams. Naturally the boy is still groggy, but he soon answers your questions since he thankfully remembers his conversation with Fel who did indeed visit him. Kol tells you that he asked Fel about being taken away by Fel’s agents, to which he asked further questions if he was sure that was what he wanted and why. Kol tells you he didn’t really know how to answer other than “I don’t know” You grimace a bit, thinking that this plan of yours probably didn’t work, but apparently Fel indulged the boy anyway explaining the benefits of such a thing, oddly he also explained the benefits of staying here too. Then he told Kol that if he was really serious, he should contact a well dressed man with a thin mustache and he will be able to get him off the island before anyone figures it out since he knows what to do already. The description already sounds like Percy. “Kol, is that the only agent that Fel described to you? Didn’t say anything about an orc?” you ask. “No dad. Just the man.” Kol says. “That’s odd. Wouldn’t he have sent both of them?” Vera remarks. “Have no idea. I can’t know the mind of a god. For all we know he could be lying about everything.” You say. “Should we really start second guessing ourselves? I mean wasn’t the whole plan to learn this information and act on it?” “Yes, but…argh…this is really…fuck it, let’s do this. I want those two summoned back here and tell them I’m ready to talk about a deal. I also want you to take Kol away from here and go to the armory or something with several of our best and wait until this is over.” “Do you really think you need to handle this directly? I mean we’ve got several people; surely it would be just a simple matter of having one of them sneakily pop them in the back of the head with a single shot. Or shit, we could just send a bunch of people to overwhelm them right now where they’re staying. I mean it just seems safer for all of us.” Vera might have a point, though part of you finds this pretty personal enough that you’d rather take care of this directly. “I…I don’t want to leave you guys. I want to stay here.” Your son suddenly says. “You will son. You win.” You answer reassuringly. “We’re not taking any chances with them somehow escaping, I want to see this done right. I’m going to have enough people with me that the odds are going to be heavily in my favor though.” Vera reluctantly agrees to your plan, though she says she’d prefer to just ambush the pair of them. You set things in motion and have some of your people go fetch the ECS reps. You aren’t exactly sure how this is going to play out, but you put on extra body armor and armed yourself with a couple extra blades and pistols and have Marco and everyone that’s going to be with you do likewise. Honestly, you aren’t sure how good your ring is going to be, but you hope it’s good enough to keep you alive. If nothing else, they aren’t surviving this. Time passes and eventually Percy and Toz arrive. Percy looks as jovial as he has since he got here, while Toz looks about as grim serious as he always has. You still aren’t sure what to do about him. Fel didn’t mention him, but you can’t imagine that you aren’t going to have to kill him as well. Looks like you’ll be going to war with the ECS and you’ll be firing the first shot. Really wish you could have avoided this, but that’s no other way. Percy looks at his surroundings and with a smile he begins to speak. “I’m getting the impression, you don’t want to talk about a deal with the Syndicate after all.” Percy says, which causes Toz to immediately stand a little straighter and the rest of your people to put their hands to their weapons. You don’t even bother to make the pretense and pull your pistol immediately and point it at Percy. Percy doesn’t seem bothered though and even puts his hand on Toz to keep him from attacking. “You realize you’re killing yourself right? And I don’t mean starting a war with the Syndicate, because you aren’t going to live to see that anyway. Even with your advantage and weak anti-magic ring, I…WE have more than enough power and skill to overcome what’s just in this room. True, we probably won’t survive, but we’ll do enough damage to this entire place that when our absence is noticed, the Syndicate WILL assume the worst and send people to mop up what’s left. Terrible way to do business.” Percy says. “That’s a possibility I considered long before you ever showed up. However, this isn’t business. This is personal.” You remark. “Oh? Interesting. Have I offended you directly in some way? Perhaps Toz here has? I know he’s a little on the impersonal side, but…” “Cut the shit. You’re here to steal my son. You know about him and you’re here to take him to back to your main temple. Not happening.” Percy seems surprised to hear you accuse him of this, but he soon returns to his smiling self. Toz on the other hand is showing a stone face looking like he really wants to get on with the fighting. “Alright. Well, I can see this IS personal. On both sides. I mean I can’t very well disobey a direct order from my god can I? I can only guess you must have found this out from your son who is also in contact with our shadowy lord. I wouldn’t expect a godless heathen like you to understand, but if Fel is speaking to the boy then that only PROVES that he’s destined for greatness! Think of it, your son is one of Fel’s chosen! Surely you want what’s best for your son. No harm would come to him.” Percy says. “You seriously expect me to just hand him over?” you ask. “Yes! Because it’s your ONLY logical move. I am willing to forget all this as…an over protective parent outburst. Completely understandable. I will even work out a better deal between you and the Syndicate. Your son will no doubt rise in the ranks of our order. Just think, YOU will have a powerful ally on the inside, close to the Temple of Fel in the years to come. If you ever have trouble with the Syndicate, you will able to get support from our order to smooth anything over. It seems like a winning situation for all of us.” “Perhaps, but that’s still not happening.” Finished with talking, you open fire and nearly instantly you feel like everything is slowing down in front of you. You see your first bullet actually hanging in the air and then Percy moving to the left. What torchlight there was in the room, goes out completely. You begin swearing and shouting orders, desperately trying to adjust your eyes to the darkness. You already hear noises of men being killed and unfortunately they sound like yours. All you can make out is a bunch of dark figures struggling with each other. You suppose you could just fire blindly and hope you get them or maybe try to retreat out the exit where there is more light. > You retreat While your enemies are distracted, you need to get to a better location. The entire temple to on alert anyway, so you should be getting reinforcements soon. While your ring might not seem like it’s helping, you’re actually moving at your own speed rather than suffering from whatever slow effects that were cast. You run to where you know the closest exit to be and run towards the better-lit corridor. Already several of your people are heading in your direction. “The fuckers are in there and…SHIT!” The torches go out leaving you in complete darkness again. You instinctively duck down and sure enough you hear the whizzing of several things, followed by the gurgling of the men near you in the corridor. One of them falls on you as you try to fire blindly in the dark towards the direction behind you. Other footsteps run off, retreating from your position and you’re about to do the same when you suddenly feel a strong grip on your wrist and slamming your hand against the wall causing you to drop your pistol. You swing at your assailant, who you now can see is Percy, but your punch is blocked and you’re knocked to the floor. You manage to see the glint of a blade in the darkness and then Percy drops hi knees in your stomach, knocking the air out of you and attempts to stab you. He’s quick, but despite your state of gasping for air you’re just quick enough to grab ahold of the knife-wielding arm from stabbing you in the face, though it’s now just inches from it. You attempt to roll and kick, but all of Percy’s weight is on you. “Your fucking ring still won’t save you. Could have settled this a lot easier, but take solace that your bad choices will not affect your son. Now…ugh…” You hear the sound of a sharp object going into flesh, but it isn’t yours. Even in this dark, you can see the dead expression of Percy whose mouth now hangs open slack jawed and dripping blood all over you. His neck is also dripping blood and his body is even heavier on you. At first you think one of your people saved you, but then the torches suddenly light again and there you see standing over you and Percy’s corpse is Toz in the process of removing his blade from Percy’s neck. You go for your pistol, but Toz immediately sees this. More of your people arrive at the end of the corridor ready to open fire. Even with shadow magic, he’s bound to get hit without much space to dodge in. “Call off your men, or this will not end well.” Toz says. “Maybe not, but I’m not handing over my son to you.” You remark. “I don’t want him. That’s not why I’m here. Now call off your people, I’ve killed your enemy as you can see.” You wave a hand down in the direction of your people from your prone position. “Yeah, why did you do that?” you ask. “As I said, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here on behalf of the Ebony Claw Syndicate, not the Order of Fel. I was given no instructions by them or their god, and even if I was, my loyalty is always with the Syndicate first. They really do want a deal. Any past animosity you may or may not have had with them has been waved. This is business and everyone involved can make lots of money.” Toz says. “That’s very pragmatic of the Syndicate, but unusual for the Order of Fel. I mean you guys that are heavily into the shadow magic side of things tend to follow that first.” “And orcs tend to be brutish thugs that speak in short sentences, but there are exceptions as you can see.” “Alright, I suppose we can talk more. Just let me get this corpse off of me.” You verbally order your men to stand down, but approach slowly as you push Percy’s body off of you. Toz stands back and keeps his guard up. Eventually you both return to the original room where you find everyone dead. You also see Marco lying near another body face down. “Damn Marco.” You say and go over to him. “I trust you realize that I was just defending myself during the chaos.” Toz says. “Yes, we’ve already established all that. But still, he was a valued employee. Improved much since the first time I met him…wait a minute…he’s breathing.” You quickly turn Marco over and he’s moaning about being in pain, which is probably true since his face has a hole in it where you guess he was stabbed. Fortunately it just missed his eye and the blade went into his upper cheek instead. “Boss…ugh…dying…” he utters spitting up a little blood. “You are not fucking dying. This isn’t a fatal wound you sissy. Get up and get yourself patched up.” You say and start motioning him to get up. “K…ooogh…hurts…” Marco slowly gets up holding the side of his face and is helped by a couple others out the room. You turn your attention to Toz. “Let’s get on with this deal which I hope you know isn’t going to be the same one that Percy first proposed when you both first got here, however it’ll still be good for the Syndicate.” After only an hour of discussion you and Toz come to an acceptable deal. You don’t think Toz wanted to stay any longer than he needed to since he says he’ll be leaving right away. You can’t help but ask though… “Won’t the Order of Fel be pissed at you and in general?” you say. “I don’t see why. Percy died on the way here when the ship was attacked by mermaids and he jumped overboard when hearing their deadly song.” “Hm, well I suppose that’s one way to explain away everything. Will it work?” “The Syndicate won’t care as long as the this deal is pleasing to them which it should be. As for the Order, well the goals and the Syndicate’s goals clash at times. It’s an ongoing struggle, but I believe with this deal, your son will not be whisked away in the middle of the night or something similar.” Toz replies. “I’ll be on guard nonetheless.” “Well that’s wise anyway. Though Percy never even told me this plan. I only learned about it the moment it was revealed in this room. I do not even believe the Order gave this command as Percy claimed he heard it directly from Fel himself. Though your words indicated that Fel spoke to your son as well. I cannot know why a god would give one a command, but only to sabotage it. Seems contradictory, but I’ve never pretended to be the most fanatical follower. I worship purely for the extra power that the god gives me for whatever reason and use that power to support the Syndicate.” Toz at this point bids you goodbye and soon you go find Vera in the armory where she waits with several of your best fighters and your son. The pair of them are pretty happy to see you, even if Kol doesn’t quite know everything that’s going on. “You okay dad?” Kol asks coming up to you. “Yes, I’m fine son. And you don’t need to worry anymore either.” You reply and give him a pat on the head. Vera approaches you. “I heard fighting and wanted to help, but you insisted I stay here.” Vera says. “Yeah, glad you listened, it got a little closer than I thought it would, but it’s all worked out now.” You answer. “You sure?” “Well you can never be completely sure about these things, but we’ll keep our guard up as usual and keep an extra special eye on Kol just in case. Maybe Grayhaze has something for that. We need to go to her anyway and get a ring enchanted to block out Fel again.” “You don’t think that we’ve angered a god by thwarting his plans?” “Well from what I can tell, Fel’s plans mainly consist of him amusing himself. That was probably satisfied today from what I’ve heard of him. Anyway, can’t rage against the gods, just can only hope they don’t fuck you up too much. Still a pain in the ass though.” “Sometimes I wonder if maybe our lives got more complicated after we left Holgard.” “Perhaps in some ways, but its all been worth it. No point in wondering what if. In fact, given where I was mentally before we actually got together, I’m glad this is where choices led me.” You give Vera an embrace and a kiss, which she returns. With today’s crisis averted, everyone soon goes back to their routines, though you take the rest of day off to spend time with your family. It’ll be a brief break, but at least a pleasant one and given the life you’ve chosen it’s best you cherish those when you can. Long gone are the days of being a simple rogue. You’ve risen to a station even you never imagined.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 34 “I gotta say Marco, I was skeptical when you first brought the idea to me and going by the story you’re telling me, I’d say I was completely right. Fortunately for you Yag smiles on fools and it worked out anyway.” You remark. “Yeah…I suppose so.” Marco says standing before you looking completely disheveled. “What I don’t understand is why you came so clean with everything. I mean given the haul you brought in, I wasn’t even going to bother asking you too many in depth questions.” “Uh, yeah I know, but I was afraid if you thought everything went completely well, you would have sent us out again.” “Hm, I suppose that was a bit of forward thinking on your part then, because you’re probably right. Guess this is one of those rare cases where honesty was the best policy after all. Well I guess you and your little friends have finally gotten your pirate dreams out of your heads now.” “Yeah, it sucks. Months out at sea, nothing to do. Rationing food and water. And the worst is getting lost. As I said, it was a good thing that merchant ship came when it did, our boat was starting to sink.” “Certainly an unconventional way of taking over a ship. Signaling for help legitimately, being invited aboard as an act of mercy and then when you were feeling slightly better, you just held them all at gunpoint. Still, not only did you bring back an entire new ship intact, you brought back most of the crew as slaves, as well as all the loot. Not sure what we’re going to do with crates of scrolls with Nichan writing all over them, but I’m sure someone is going to have an interest in this stuff. Always a market for something.” Marco just nods silently, he’s obviously just glad you aren’t punishing him and he’s back on dry land. You didn’t think much of Marco and his “gang” when you first met them, and to be honest you still don’t, but you suppose they’ve come a long way since those days or at least the ones that have survived have. “Alright Marco, I guess you and what’s left of your group friends can go take some time or whatever for the next couple days. Don’t go too far though, never know when some extra bodies might be needed.” You say. “Thanks boss.” Marco replies and takes his leave. With Marco’s shit out of the way, you go about inspecting the latest expansions around the temple, which is now starting to resemble a “town hall” since there are separate buildings popping up all around it. These aren’t just criminal types either opening up brothels or gambling centers. You’ve actually got a some ex-Jicol citizens opening up legitimate businesses since Jicol is on the downturn and they’ve lost their homes and businesses in that city thanks to the flooding disaster that the city STILL hasn’t completely recovered from. Doesn’t really hurt to have cooks, blacksmiths and the like around so you’ve assured that they will not be harassed as long as they pay the usual “protection tax.” While it’s not exactly a proper town, already people are starting to give it the name of Nightfall. You imagine the name is related to the Nocturnal League’s name as well as the deity that the temple was once dedicated to. Speaking of Fel, you’ve been checking to make sure Kol hasn’t been having any odd dreams or anything. So far so good, and Grayhaze’s medallion is obviously working. He still casts his little shadow tricks every now and then, but again nothing major. You figure in another couple years he’ll be ready to start learning from Grayhaze’s book proper. As for you, the only concerns you’ve been having, as of late is the Ebony Claw Syndicate and to a lesser extent, the Jicol government. The ECS is always a looming threat in the back of your mind. You know there is going to be a reckoning with them soon and it’s probably going to initially come in the form of intimidation first. So far they haven’t even contacted you, though you imagine when they do it’s probably going to be in the form of several shadow magic trained assassins. If they’re feeling benevolent, they’ll try to intimidate you first into paying them a cut of your profits and then get rid of you later. You suppose you could be big enough and out of the way enough that a take over might be considered costly for them and not worth it, but you can’t help but believe that they’ll try anyway. Your more immediate concern however is the Mayor of Jicol who has implemented draconian measures in rebuilding Jicol due to the fact that people were starting to leave the city and even coming to Nightfall. He’s completely shut the gates to the city and not allowing anyone in or out unless it’s by ship and even then it’s only legitimate trade as Jicol has now banned all pirates and the like from using their harbor anymore. In fact if they come within a certain range of the city, they’ll be fired upon. This has put a bit of a crimp in your own businesses a bit. Your own “habor” isn’t nearly big enough to accommodate all the visitors you might get. You’re trying to expand, but there is so much else to do. Not to mention slaver ships and pirates now have to sail all the way around the island to dock at Nightfall so they don’t get fired on now. It’s a pain in the ass for everyone involved. Getting Grayhaze’s supplies to her is also a concern, you’ll need to get those to her somehow and with the city locked down, the only option is to somehow sneak in which means either digging a tunnel and risking another flood, or taking a small boat and trying row around to one of the open areas where the sea and the city have no barrier, but that would be incredibly risky given the heightened security. Using swimmers would probably be less risky, but not much better. It was suggested a few times in the past that the League should just try to take over Jicol, but honestly it’s not like that would have been really feasible or cost effective to even attempt. However, it’s starting to look like you might have to do something though. You envision that it would be possible to have your people sneak in during the night and employ hit and run assassination tactics against the Jicol Watch, and ultimately open the gates to let the rest of your people in. Still, your numbers still aren’t overwhelming enough to make the potential victory to not be costly. This isn’t even counting the small fortress that the mayor of Jicol never leaves which again isn’t a problem to get into, but who know what the hell is in store for you inside. Even if you take Jicol, you’re still left with its naval forces. Who knows if they’ll just surrender or not. Any plan to attack Jicol is going to come at a cost. Since you aren’t sure what to do, you ask the only person you trust about all this. “I don’t know.” Vera says. “Great, I was hoping for some enlightenment on this situation.” You remark. “Well I mean you’ve explained the pros and cons of everything and I more or less agree with everything, including not being sure of what the best approach is.” “Well in any case, I gotta get the supplies to Grayhaze. Last thing I need is to piss off an old witch on top of everything.” “Sneaking in the city shouldn’t be an issue should it?” “Eh, it’s going to be a pain in the ass, but it can be done. It’s also possible that this is going to just be temporary and even if it isn’t, it probably won’t hurt our business too much and we’ll survive.” “Yeah, but…wait a minute. What about that merchant ship that Marco just brought in?” “What about it?” “Couldn’t we use it to get into the Jicol harbor?” “Maybe once, and then they’d probably execute everyone on board. Our people aren’t exactly the most subtle, if you were thinking about having them masquerade as merchants.” “I dunno, Marco managed to do it and he’s an idiot.” “Marco and his crew were also genuinely in danger at the time so it was a lot more believable that they needed help.” “Well why don’t we do that?” “Do what?” “Put the ship in danger?” “What are you suggesting then?” “I’m saying we hire some pirates to attack our ship as it approaches Jicol. Naturally the Jicol navy is going to go into action and our ship safely gets in the harbor while they’re distracted.” “And then?” “Well then our people come screaming out of it and start wreaking havoc in the city.” “Hm, certainly a different idea I had about infiltrating the city which involved sending a few to scale the walls or swim around and attack silently over the course of a few days.” “Could work too. I mean if we did attack, we probably should go all the way with it so employing both tactics would be best. Also if we were going this route, with hiring pirates to provide back up, I think I can convince one I know Zamed, to lead.” “Hm. I know who you’re talking about. Never trusted him.” “Well he’s a pirate, of course he’s not trust worthy, but he’s had the most experience with doing privateer work for the Delantium Kingdom, so he’d probably be able to organize a small group of ships to harass our enemies effectively. Of course it would be very expensive to secure their reliability.” “I dunno. I mean the plan with the merchant ship sounds okay, but I’m not sure if I want to pay out any more coin for pirate assistance. Also I don’t see them lasting too long against the Jicol navy and that seems like a waste.” “Well you wouldn’t pay them all of it obviously and you could promise them some of the spoils. Either one of two things is going to happen. Either none of them survive and you won’t have to pay them or some of them survive which means they turned out to be a better investment after all and you still probably won’t have to pay much since I can’t imagine there will be that many survivors.” Well there’s a couple ways you could go if you did decide to take over Jicol, though maybe the best solution is to just leave it be. > You attack Jicol without assistance You think you need to keep this all in the family so to speak. No need to hire a bunch of pirates who might not be reliable anyway. “We’re doing this ourselves. I don’t want to rely on outside help, also we can get this plan underway a lot quicker with just us involved.” You say. “Well if you think that’s best.” Vera remarks. “I think it is. Guess I better inform Marco that his days at sea aren’t quite finished yet since he’ll be the one to take the merchant ship seeing as he’s got the most experience with it and nobody else here is much of a sailor.” “Neither is Marco apparently from what you mentioned on his attempt to be a pirate.” “Hm, I’m confident that he’ll have at least enough experience to pull this off, since that’s not going to be the hard part anyway, it’s getting off the ship and out of the harbor area alive as soon as he enters it.” Later when you inform Marco, (who was just starting to enjoy his time off) he is indeed not happy about hearing what his latest task is going to be, but you don’t need him to be happy about it, just compliant. Which of course he is. He does carouse extra harder though for the remainder of the time off you’ve given him though. You inform the rest of the League of your plan and assign your most skilled to start finding ways (or making ways) of sneaking into the city now. You tell them not to engage anyone and to keep a low profile while they’re scouting the security and such. You then tell them you want a report on everything within the next few days. A month passes and Marco and his crew are about as ready as they’re going to be and your spies that have been sneaking in and out of Jicol, have made steps in opening the gates along with just creating as much havoc for ground forces as possible during the actual attack. As far as your involvement, you’re going to take a lesson from the last time you led one of these attacks. Meaning you’re not going to put yourself on the front lines and going to stay at a camp a mile away from Jicol’s gates. The day of the attack within the first hour you wait anxiously for a report. With any luck Marco’s crew will manage to make it off their ship before they’re all slaughtered. In another couple hours, a runner finally comes to you with news that your people have opened the gates and fighting is going on all over the city. Marco and his crew successfully entered the harbor and managed to fool the Jicol Watch long enough to break through and start joining the attack on the city. No sooner has this runner given you this information when a loud explosion is heard along with a visible black cloud in the distance of the city, you surmise that Marco’s merchant ship that was also full of explosives was set off in the harbor. A few days pass and the fighting is still going on and it’s not going well. The Jicol forces have managed to maintain a stalemate. Marco has apparently died in the fighting as well. You’re still at the camp, not having set foot in the city yet and you’re starting to wonder if this was a good idea. You might have to hire pirates and mercenaries to finish this job if things continue to go this way. Suddenly you hear several loud explosions, but this time coming from the direction of Nightfall! You immediately start running back in that direction and bump into one of your people along the way. “Boss! Boss! Jicol has mounted a counter attack! They’re blasting us with cannons from their ships and we can’t do shit about it!” he says. “Are their no pirates docked in our harbor?” “No, and the one slaver ship was sunk during the initial volley.” “Why the fuck wasn’t I informed soon…” More explosions are heard and now you’re seeing chunks of stone flying overhead. “Shit!” you say and push your underling aside and continue to run towards Nightfall. When you arrive, you find several dead bodies and people running about in panic. Some of your men ask you for further instructions, but you’re not even paying attention, you’re just looking at the temple, which is half in ruins. You don’t see Vera or Kol and you’re sure they would be out of the temple by now. You run towards the temple even though some are telling you not to go in since its being targeted, but you don’t listen or care. You run through the increasingly unstable temple which is already starting to collapse from weakened structure in an attempt to find your wife and child. And you do, but no longer alive. You find the pair of them not far apart from each other. Their broken bodies are partially covered by several large stones, which you assume killed them instantly. You collapse in despair and begin to weep, ignoring the several new explosions causing more of the temple to crumble around you. You brought all of this on them. While you probably could get out in time, you don’t bother, choosing to die along side your family in the same manner they died.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 32 “Okay, we’re heading out to finish these assholes for good. You stay here and keep things running here as you do.” You say. “Oh sure, keep me at home, to look after the kids while you go out and have fun.” Vera says. “Well, it’s important that you know your place as a woman. Speaking of kids, where’s Kol?” “Gertrude is currently looking after him.” “I swear I don’t really like you leaving our son with her.” “He’s fine and she’s been nothing but helpful. I mean hell, she’s probably one of the few people I’d trust with him.” “Dangerous to go around trusting the lot we associate with, but something about her bothers me.” “You didn’t even know who the hell she was until she was promoted to midwife and babysitter. Which is amazing since she’s one of our older members that stuck with us since Holgard.” “Alright, alright, if you trust her then I guess that’s good enough for me.” “No it isn’t.” “Yeah, probably not, but I don’t have time to worry about it right now.” “Why are you even going on this task? You said you had people in Jicol located at the docks to make sure he didn’t try to get away and there are more than enough people to attack where the JCR are making their headquarters.” “I want to make sure everything goes right. I can’t just sit around barking orders while getting old and fat. That’s how crime bosses assassinated. I need to keep in practice and my skills sharp.” “Hm, I suppose that makes sense, but I’d say you’re not really in any danger of being perceived as weak by any of our underlings right now.” “And I intend to keep it that way.” “I’d prefer it if you took less risks, besides if anyone was going to challenge your position you’d be dead before you even knew what was going on since I’d just poison your food and the shit would be over with.” “Poison? Really? I would have thought if it was going to be you, you’d probably stab me while in the middle of sex.” “Mm, too risky. Besides, that would just be foreplay not murder.” “Well let’s not do that either.” “You’re always so reserved. But if you’re really insisting on going, be careful and don’t lead the charge.” Vera has been overly concerned with your safety ever since she had Kol. You suppose you get why she is now due to you being the father of her child and all, but sometimes it’s a bit too much. “I’ll be fine Vera, stop fussing!” you exclaim. “You sure you’re not also going out of revenge?” Vera asks. “Revenge?” “Yeah, Revenge tends make people a little reckless and I mean this has been sort of personal since you learned who the leader of JCR is.” “Mm, I mean it certainly was unexpected when I found out. Perhaps less unexpected when he wouldn’t even hear me out, but I can’t say this is out of revenge. I imagine he would be more motivated by revenge than I would, hence why he stuck around to fight. I’d say if anything I’m more motivated by tying up an old loose end that doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass in the future.” “I suppose that makes sense. Okay then, apologies for my fussing as you put it..” You kiss Vera goodbye and say one more thing before leaving. “Gotta say though when Sneaks ran away all those years ago, I never expected it was to Jicol.” You head to Jicol to go meet Marco and the rest. Along the way you think about how history is sort of repeating itself here. A larger criminal organization crushing a smaller one. The only difference is you’re the leader of the larger one this time. You have to wonder why Sneaks didn’t just take off like he did last time. Unless he really is that pissed at you, which you assume he is, otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered with all this and you would have easily taken over long before now. When you get to the simple home that the JCR was using as a main headquarters, you find that your people are currently arguing with some of the Jicol Watch. Great. “Keep talking to me like that you little shit, and I’ll just run all of your assess in. I still remember you and your gang of hooligans breaking several windows and punching old people in the face a couple years ago!” one of the guards says. “Yeah well things are different now and YOU don’t tell us what to do anymore!” Marco exclaims. You smack Marco upside the head when you arrive. “Yeah, but I do. Now shut the fuck up Marco, and what’s the problem here?” you ask. “The problem is, your little crime war was supposed to be kept to a dull fucking roar and for the past couple months you lot have been murdering each other in the streets and scaring the shit out of the civvies! You also got gangs of thugs like these loitering around. Now I know we have an agreement that will keep most of the scum out of this city for good, but the mayor is getting very weary of this conflict and is wondering if he shouldn’t just have all parties involved executed.” The watchman captain says. “The same mayor that allows pirates and the like to use his docks? Please, the mayor is no fucking Joachimite saint. We moved all of our shit out of Jicol and now we’re doing the job that YOU lot couldn’t. We’re almost done with finishing off these assholes, we just need to clean out this place and get their leader.” “And we’re here to see it gets done thoroughly because this needs to be finished TODAY.” The watchman captain at this point signals to his platoon that all draw their weapons and then turns back to you as if daring you to argue. “Fine. If you want to help, I’m not going to stop you, but stay out of our way.” “Oh I wouldn’t worry about that, because you lot will be taking the lead anyway. Not about to have you bunch sneaking about behind us.” Marco starts to say something, but you stop him. “But boss…” Marco says. “Shut up Marco. Alright, let’s finish these fuckers for good.” You say to your people and motion to enter the place. No sooner has one of your people stepped into the front door and they nearly get beheaded by a swinging axe trap. Unfortunately, they still get skewered by the spear trap when they ducked and dodged to the left. You shake your head. “For fuck’s sake people, this place is going to have traps up the ass, keep alert!” you shout. For at least the next hour, you search the house disarming traps and uncovering secret doors. You don’t find anyone though. Meanwhile the Jicol Watch is still standing in the front room getting impatient. “Well?” the captain remarks. “Well what?” you answer. “I thought you said the leader was here and so far this place is empty.” “Yeah well I imagine there’s a hidden trapdoor that we haven’t uncovered yet. They’re probably either hiding underground, or maybe even escaped through a tunnel.” “Underground tunnel? There isn’t much they could dig without risking hitting water and flooding said tunnels. In case you didn’t realize, we’re on a fucking island.” “I’m aware, but that doesn’t mean they still didn’t do it. Besides all that, the leader has experience with underground dwellings that are half submerged in water.” Before you can have any further discussion, Marco comes back to you. “Hey boss, we found a trapdoor, looks like it goes down into a cellar. Um, we also lost Orin. Got a bunch of spikes in the face when he opened the trap door.” “Idiot. Anyway, see? I told you there was going to be a trapdoor.” You say. “Hm, well you’re still leading the way.” The Watchman captain says. After a few more of your people check out the immediate room below, you descend down the ladder. You give a quick look and see that this room wasn’t dug out recently. It was actually part of the original house since it actually has solid walls and a solid floor. However, to your left, is where you start to see the construction. You examine the entrance of the dug out tunnel in an attempt to detect any traps but find nothing. Your people go a little further and soon discover that there are tunnels going in several different directions. “Well, have to hand it to you Sneaks, you didn’t just sit on your hands. You literally dug in deep to make it difficult to root the last of you fuckers out.” You think to yourself. Given the extensive amount of tunnels, you’re actually surprised he didn’t end up flooding Jicol with a misplaced dig like the Watchman captain was talking about. You briefly go down one of the tunnels and soon find that you’re ankle deep in water. This is going to be a mess hunting Sneaks and whoever else down here. In fact, you’re starting to wonder if Vera was right and you shouldn’t even bother being here. Especially with the Jicol Watch being involved as well. > You finish the job You’re here now, you might as well finish it. Besides, it would be best if you saw to eliminating Sneaks because you sure as hell don’t want him escaping somehow to give you grief later. You tell your people to extra careful for traps and to keep alert, you then proceed to hunt down the last of the JCR. Things go very slowly, but initially at least people aren’t getting themselves killed. Trouble comes when you actually come up against the remnants of the JCR who have made several cubbyholes and the like to launch ambush attacks. Not to mention you’re practically waist deep in water now and as far as the Jicol Watch is concerned, there is no sign of them. Apparently they’ve all just decided to stay up top and let you take the beating. On top of all that, you still haven’t found Sneaks. With only you, Marco and a couple others left, you’re finally done. “Fuck this Marco, we’re going back. This has been a fool’s errand and we’re done with it.” You say. “But Boss, what about…” Marco starts to say before a loud explosion from one of the corridors suddenly interrupts him. You soon look on in horror as a surge of water starts coming at you. You don’t even have time to run. More explosions are heard and then the water hits you hard. You struggle to swim as the torrent takes you, but with now water seemingly rising and pouring in from everywhere, you can’t even find an air pocket. Several minutes pass and you eventually can’t hold your breath any longer giving into a watery death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 29 Lot can change in just a few years, some things you predicted, others not so much. The Church of Joachim being outlawed in the city wasn’t too surprising given all the trouble that was caused and how Holgard in general tends more towards embracing sin and vice rather than moving away from it. Still, sort of funny that the faith is now in the company of it’s eternal enemy, Neroth as far as being illegal. As for the other faiths, only the temples of Dorna and Fel maintain any presence in the city and in the Felians case, that’s thanks to Shade dying soon after the war was over and the new leader Gloom, making an effort to strengthen their relationship with the upper echelons of the government, namely Baroness Ludmilla. Gloom has also extended a hand to the Nocturnal League, stating that the temple would be more than willing to come to an understanding like it had with the Ebony Claw Syndicate and train your members in shadow magic. You declined that offer though. You’ve always said members are free to pray to whoever they want, but if they’re going to be wrapped up in Fel (or whoever) that hardcore then they can go take up some black robes and start living in their temple’s meditation rooms. The less religion you have in your organization the better. Still, your cordial relationship with the temple has had benefits you hadn’t intended. Due to the Felians being on better terms with the Baroness, some of that “understanding” has inadvertently trickled down towards you. As a result the Nocturnal League has freer reign over the city than it once did. Possibly similar to what the ECS once had. So things are going good for the Nocturnal League and business couldn’t be better. You haven’t had any decisions of the major kind lately, but for whatever reason this has caused you to sometimes over think the minor ones now that do crop up. Like right now for instance. “You were invited to the Baroness’ yearly costume party? How the hell did that happen and why aren’t you immediately making preparations to go?!” Vera asks. “Just one of the perks of being allied with the temple of Fel I suppose. Gloom had one of his members deliver this letter to me a week ago. Apparently Baroness Ludmilla has heard interesting things about me and would like me to show up at her party so she can see for herself.” You say. “She thinks yer intresstin’? She really doesn’t know youz at all.” Warts snarks and chuckles at his own attempt at a joke. “Well, you have to go right? I mean it’s the Baroness.” Vera says. “I dunno. I mean I suppose I see why I should, just don’t really feel up to it.” You reply. “What? When the Baroness of Holgard calls you to court, you have to go!” “Never knew you were such a supporter of our dear ruler. You secretly harboring royalist admiration?” “No. It’s not like that! I mean yeah she’s royalty, but not really. I mean… I dunno, I’ve always sort of admired how she took power from her father and brother I guess. She’s a very powerful independent woman and has remained that way. I guess that’s what I admire.” “Hm. Well I guess I just see her as another corrupt aristocrat that used her position of power to gain even more power. Not that that’s a bad thing, but nothing special. Lot harder to do when you aren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth.” “Yes, yes, we all know. You cleverly lied, cheated, stole and murdered your way to your position. You’re the epitome of a self made man. We’re all very impressed. Truly. I’m wet just thinking about it. Still, I really think you should go to this party, if only so you don’t inadvertently offend her which then will cause our current friendly relationship with the law to become unnecessarily complicated.” “Yeah, I already took that into consideration. (Sigh) I suppose I’m going, though the letter also says I should bring one more person with me since that’s apparently the rule of this event.” As soon as you’ve said that, Vera’s eyes light up. “Me! You gotta take me! Seriously I will seriously suck your dick if you take me to this party.” Vera exclaims. “You mean aren’t already?” Warts responds. “Wha? Why is that your go to action with me?” you say. “I’ll do whatever you want to do then, look I don’t care! I just really gotta go to this thing!” “Why? Wait a minute, you don’t have a crush on the Baroness do you? I mean you were praising her pretty hard a moment ago.” “No! This ain’t about pussy bumpin! Its just…(sigh) nevermind you’ll just make fun and if you don’t I know damn well this ugly half breed will.” “Oh fuck you, Vera.” “Warts, step out of here. While there won’t be any dick sucking involved, I am sort of interested in why Vera wants to go so badly.” “Gruh, fine by me. I certainly don’t wanna go. I gotta go see my kids anywayz, later.” After Warts leaves you motion Vera to speak which she does though she’s still a bit hesitant to do so, fearing that you’ll make fun. Vera suddenly goes into more of her life story than you ever thought to ask of her. She mentions that her mother was once very briefly employed as a maid during the Baron’s reign of the city. She goes on to say that her mother always told her that she once had a brief fling with him while she was cleaning one of the guest bedrooms. Unfortunately the Baron being the asshole he typically was, he had all the maids, including Vera’s mother, replaced a week later because he claimed his palace wasn’t getting clean enough. In any case, Vera said that shortly afterwards, her mother discovered she was pregnant and claimed to the day she died that Vera’s real father was really the Baron. “Wait a minute…you’re telling me you’re actually bastard royalty?!” you ask. “I knew you’d make fun or not believe me.” Vera says. “Honestly, it’s not really that far fetched given what I’ve always heard about the old Baron. Though I’m just surprised you’ve never mentioned it before. Seems like something you’d brag about.” “And get myself fucking killed?! No thanks! One of the big reasons my mother never told anyone or even tried to get financial support from the Baron is the fear of some assassin coming in to kill her and me. I mean I’m hardly the only illegitimate child the baron probably had and his son Farad was notorious for having suspected bastards killed. And if he didn’t do it, I can’t imagine Ludmilla was any different. Especially now.” “I guess that makes sense.” “Honestly, you’re the ONLY person I’ve told about this and now that I’ve done it, I feel a little weird and vulnerable.” “Well, I’m not going to say anything. Not like there would be anything to gain. Though I guess this is why you want to go to this party so badly huh? Experience what might have been? Possibly even briefly speak with your older half sister?” “…sort of. I know it’s silly, but…sometimes I do think of a life that is different than this one.” Vera’s thoughtful words are a little out of the ordinary, but not lost on you. Not like you don’t have similar thoughts on your own life at times. “Okay, I guess we’ll go together then. Not like I can think of anyone else to take anyway. Says it’ll be in three days so I suggest you prepare yourself.” You say. “I will! Thank you for this boss!” Vera beams. “Don’t mention it, princess.” You mock. “So, what are you going to be wearing?” “I dunno. Some mask of some sort I imagine since it’s a costume party. Which makes me wonder, how the hell is the Baroness going to know it’s me if I’m wearing a mask?” “I imagine she’s got some way of figuring it out. Make sure you dress nice though! I’ve heard about these things and if we go in looking like we crawled out of the sewers, they’ll turn us away, invitation or not.” “Yeah, yeah, I’ll take a trip to the tailor’s or something.” A few days and a trip to the tailor’s later, you’re dressed and ready to go to this thing. You’re not exactly comfortable in this type of clothing, but many League members compliment you on your new threads. Warts of course has something to say. “Oh well la de da, if it ain’t da duke of da undaworld.” Warts say. “Don’t even start, where the hell is Vera, she’s the one that made a bigger deal of all this?” “You ain’t seen her yet? She’s even fancier than you are right now. If it gets anymore highbrow here, we’re gonna hafta forge all dat gold and silver we got inta fancy eatin’ utensils.” “Yeah, well this is a one time thing. So where’s Vera again?” “She’s in her room I think…um don’t tell her I said so, but she iz sorta pretty. I mean she wouldn’t be MY type, but y’know dressed like she iz right now, she looks like of doze princesses or sumthin. Hah, Vera a princess, dat’s funny.” “Yeah…hysterical. Later Warts.” You shake your head and go get Vera. You don’t even bother knocking on the door, you just enter and that’s when you see Vera who turns around from her mirror to face you. She does indeed look a lot different than you’re used to seeing her. “Wow. You look, really different.” You say. “Good different or bad different?” Vera asks. “Neither…I mean good of course. Look, I’m just saying you could easily blend in with the rest of the aristocratic types. You’re very pretty, like a princess and I’m not just saying that.” “Thank you. You look…appropriate too.” “The hell’s that mean? I’ll have you know I got a lot of compliments!” “Well of course you did, you’re the boss. They’re hardly going to tell you, you look like shit. Not that you do. You’re fine. I guess we should get going, do you have your mask?” “Yeah, got one of those half masks. Don’t really feel like struggling to breath with a full mask on that covers my mouth and nostrils. Still covers most of my face so I figure I’m good.” You say and put it on. “I think most people will be wearing those so, you’ll fit in fine. I got one too.” Vera says and puts on her her mask and the pair of you are soon on your way. When you get to the palace you’re sort of relieved since you half expect that you’re going to get robbed on your way there. A guard stops you at the gates and you show your personalized invitation at which point you’re waved through. You and Vera take a moment to sort of absorb the fact of where you actually are for a moment. The seat of rulership, the palace! The grounds are certainly well taken care of and it’s obvious that every effort has been spared to make it look as festive as possible. The closer you get to the palace the more grandiose everything is. You also notice the increase in guards and you and Vera are patted down more than once. You get inside the palace and the elegance of the interior is about what you expect. Vera is practically enamored by everything. Right now, she’s probably imagining herself as that princess you ribbed her about being. As for you, you’re a bit more of a harder sell on being impressed by such things, but if you could run your organization from a place like this instead, you certainly wouldn’t turn it down. You and Vera spend a bit of time just looking around until Vera wonders if you should start actively mingling with some of the other guests. You’re of course against this idea, but you soon are forced into doing so anyway by someone you weren’t expecting to talk to, or at least not so early. “Well, if it isn’t the head of the Nocturnal League. Glad you could make it, I was hoping you would.” And there you are standing before Baroness Ludmilla Varsakken. She wears no mask and at this close range you get a good look at her. She almost looks like she could be a vampire what with her skin on the paler side and the black hair accentuating it. She’s beautiful of course, but just looking into her eyes a bit you can see a very ruthless woman before you. You also take a good look at her in general and then glance over at Vera. Now that you’re looking at them both, there could very well be a family resemblance. “Well, you certainly like to stare.” Ludmilla says, noticing your examination. “Oh, um, apologies. Just sort of…overwhelmed you know. Never thought I’d be before royalty.” You say. “Hah, not the complete uncouth rogue I’ve heard our mutual Felian acquaintances tell me about I see. Good.” “How did you know it was me anyway?” “I make it a point of knowing all my guests as they arrive. Not to mention your clothing isn’t exactly shall we say refined enough. While I’m sure you thought it was very upscale looking, but the workmanship is obviously from one of the mediocre tailors in the city. Only a crimelord with no care for such extravagant airs would believe it to be sufficient for this party. Not to worry though, I will not hold it against you. You tried.” “I appreciate that, and your invitation.” “You quite welcome, and who is your companion here? She certainly seems to have a better grasp on the dress code. I dare say this dress is better than a few of the boring nobles here.” “Thank you! I had it custom made a long time ago. Always knew I’d get to wear it some day!” Vera says a bit excitedly. “Now that’s what I like to hear. A woman that plans in advance.” At this point Ludmilla begins speaking to Vera and you excuse yourself to get a drink. While you don’t normally do so, you get the impression you’re going to need a bit of extra help to get through the night. You can’t believe you’re even in this situation, let alone acting the way you are. Still, you suppose it makes for an interesting change. Still, you really don’t want to be here all night. You made your appearance and now you’d like nothing more than to leave. Vera however looks like she’s having a good time and to be honest you don’t want to ruin that. She does help you a lot with the League. So you go back to Vera and Ludmilla and stand nearby in an attempt to be social. Ludmilla goes back and forth speaking to you and Vera, though she surprisingly is more talkative to Vera. The Baroness seems to like to talk and can already guess that you’re not exactly the most gregarious. Ludmilla and Vera talk for quite awhile, it’s actually pretty amazing since it’s about absolutely nothing. Or at least nothing you’re much interested in. Ludmilla is mostly talking about herself and the troubles of being of noble birth. Goes on about how Vera’s lucky to not have to worry about such things. Condescending of course, but if Vera noticed it, she’s not fussed or at least not letting it show. It’s sort of ironic anyway since Vera could very well HAVE had such problems if fate swung a different way. Eventually though Ludmilla tells the pair of you that while she was pleased to meet you both, she has other guests to see, even though they probably won’t be as interesting you are. And the pair of you are left on your own. “Well that was interesting.” You say. “Hm. Certainly was. Never thought I’d ever be directly in the presence of royalty before. Well not without my hands and feet in chains at least.” Vera remarks. “Hah! Same here. So, you ready to go?” “What? Already? The party’s just started and you want to leave?” “Well, I mean I dunno what else there really is to do here. I mean we came, we saw, we met the baroness. I mean we covered all the important shit. Not like I really have any desire to talk to any of the other assholes around here.” “But, I wanted to stay a bit longer though. However, if you want to leave, I guess that’s fine with me. You’re the boss after all.” “Alright, we can stay a little longer, but I’m going to find someplace away from most of these people. You can do what you like. I’ll come looking for you in a while I guess.” “Thanks boss, I’ll see you later.” Vera says and suddenly kisses you on the cheek before walking off to enjoy living the “high society life” for a little longer. As for you, you decide to just look around to waste time. You grab another drink and try to stick to less “populated” areas of the palace. Though obviously you’re still limited to where you’re allowed to go. Guards standby keeping an eye on everything. Time passes and while a few people attempt to speak to you, and few others seem to be talking about you (Mostly about your clothes) you basically ignore them all and just keep to your plan of moving about and sticking to areas where there are less people. While you’re doing that however, you’re also studying some of the lay out of the palace, or at least what you’re able to. You also take notice of what valuable objects would be easy to take. You briefly flirt with the idea of stealing something from this place, but common sense soon wins out. Last thing you want to do is even risk pissing off the Baroness, especially since you’re on good terms with her. Still, sometimes you miss the days of when you just stole things for a living. After wandering a bit more and entertaining the idea of pilfering the palace, you discard your usual procedure of avoiding the crowds and walk towards a room where you hear some music followed by a lot of clapping. You arrive just in time to see a crowd disperse before a group of musicians that apparently have just finished performing. Shame, from what little you heard, it sounded pretty good. You go and get yourself another drink and that’s when you start to feel a little odd. Whatever this stuff is, it’s apparently stronger than the taste would indicate. Still, it’s a party right? Might as well try to loosen up. You realize you’re not nearly as fun loving as you used to be when you were younger. In fact, you’re downright stodgy at times. All you practically do is fucking work. Being a criminal isn’t fun anymore, it’s actually not even dangerous at this point, it’s just well… mundane. How the hell did it come to this? If you wanted to be mundane, you might as well have stayed in Teckleville and followed in your dad’s footsteps. Maybe he was right after all. No. You’ve seen and done much in your life thanks to leaving that boring town. After all, you’re here in baroness’ palace! You’re just in a rut that’s all. When you get back, you’re going to shake things up within the League. Maybe expand again, maybe even to a new city like Hessla or Klyton. Still, it’s all pretty pointless without someone to share it with. You couldn’t go back home and say “Look mom and dad, look at what I’ve done!” It sucks. Your sister would probably be impressed, but who knows where she is. You hope she’s having more fun than you are right now. You miss her sometimes. Simpler times. Happier times. Fuck it, you need another drink. As you go to get another you bump into a couple that are making out. “Excuse me.” You say. “Mmm…” the woman says and strokes your arm as you pass by. The guy she’s kissing takes no notice; he’s too focused on her. You briefly think of Vera and how she kissed you not too long ago. Makes you wonder if she’s got more than a bit of attraction toward you. You know she’s always making these sexual offers toward you, but as far as you know she’s not really known to be the “good time” girl within the Nocturnal League. So it makes you wonder if she actually feels affection towards you on some level. Sometimes you think about her too, since you work so closely together. It’s almost like you’re an old married couple. Of course it could be a case that she’s perfectly fine being a potential whore if it’s going to benefit her in the long run. Since you’re the boss, and the only one above her in rank, makes sense that she’d only be offering you such extra “benefits.” Regardless, you probably would have made a move on her if it wasn’t for your condition. You nearly bump into another couple also making out. By the time you grab your drink, you realize there are a lot of people kissing and hugging each other. And some of them are getting pretty hot and heavy. Now you think of Tanya. You wish Tanya was still around. You’d love to share your success with her, but you guess that she moved on a long time ago. She claimed you’d move on, but you haven’t. How could you? She was everything to you. If it wasn’t for her, it’s debatable that you would have even did any of this. You probably would have fucked around in Holgard for a few years and then just left when the Ebony Claw Syndicate started taking notice of you. She kept you around and made you fall in love with her. But you can’t hate her for that. It wasn’t her fault. It just was her nature. You look around and now you see several people doing more than just kissing now. “What the fuck?” you say to yourself and get up to leave. You must have wandered into some weird orgy room. You make it to a hallway and that’s when you’re starting to feel really…excited. You’ve got an erection right now that you could stab someone to death with and you are about ready to murder the closest woman available and worse, they’re just about ALL available. Hell, with the way you’re feeling, you’re starting to worry if you aren’t going to just fuck everyone on your way to the exit because it’s been YEARS since you’ve had sex and right now your dick isn’t caring. It has to be the drinks. You’re sure of it. This whole party is probably just an excuse for rich people to have decadent orgies anonymously with each other. You need to get out of here before you kill everyone at this party with your cursed dick. The problem is you aren’t sure if you’re even going to make it that far. The best you might be able to do is find a place with no people about and stay there until the effects of the drink wear off. (Whenever that is) > You find a secluded room You aren’t making it to the exit and even if you did, you still have to make it out the front gates, and through the streets of the city before you get home. Your “condition” isn’t going allow you to get that far, you need to isolate yourself NOW. You quickly start opening doors to rooms in the hopes that at least one of them is completely empty. After stumbling into a couple rooms that are in the process of being used, you finally find a small guest room that seems to be empty since apparently people are dispensing with notions of privacy and content on fucking in public. You quickly enter and try to get over your condition. It’s no use though, you had quite a few of those drinks and the urge is overwhelming. Since it isn’t going away anytime soon, you do the only thing you can think of… And then you do it again immediately after. …and then a third AND fourth time. “What the fuck did they put in the damn drinks, ground up unicorn testicles?” you mutter. At this point the excitement still hasn’t subsided, and you still don’t think you’d make it outside. And if you bumped into Vera on the way, well you’d definitely be taking her up on all those blowjobs she’s offered you in the past. (In fact you were thinking about her the second time around) Just as you’re about to start round five, the door opens! You forgot to lock it and suddenly it’s like that time you were a teenager and your sister walked in on you accidently. (Man, that was awkward) “Shit! Get out of here!” you say, though your eyes are already drawn to this woman’s body, which is still covered up, but only by a very colorful form-fitting outfit. She wears a half mask similar to the one you’re wearing and her long hair is freely flowing behind her and partially on her shoulders. It’s not white, but it’s blonde enough to vaguely remind you of Tanya. (Though at this point she’s dominating your thoughts) While you’re busy making mental images, you’ve neglected to cover yourself and this woman has been doing the same to you. “Shit.” You say attempting to cover up with a pillow and then once again telling her to get out. “If I step out of this room I’m gonna end up fucking every person out there! Granted I’m usually up for a good time, but I still like them ONE at a time. There is some seriously decadent shit going on out there and I was THIS close to joining in on it. If I knew they were going to put something in the drinks here, I never would have agreed to come to this damn thing!” the masked woman says. “Well we’re in agreement there.” “SHIT!” “What?!” “As soon as I started feeling weird I put down some of my belongings and left them elsewhere. One of particular importance too! Fuck, I can’t go get it now. Argh, I guess it’ll be safe. Probably won’t get stolen, but I sure hope somebody doesn’t destroy it in an attempt to shove it up their ass or something. Look, I just need a place to hide for a while. At least until the effects wear off.” “I don’t think that’s a good idea because if you haven’t noticed, this is MY hiding spot! As for when the effects are going to wear off I have no idea. I just jerked off four times in a row and I’m still hard as a rock.” “Four times? Fuck, that is fucking sexy…” The masked woman says and begins to touch herself while looking over your direction. “Hold on! Easy there girl!” you say backing up a bit on the bed. “Shit…this isn’t going to work. We can’t both stay here, or least we can’t both stay here and not be fucking each other. To hell with it…” Without another word, the masked woman begins to take her clothes off. “What the hell?! This is NOT a good idea!” you shout. “Maybe not, but I can’t take this feeling any longer. My plan was similar to yours, but apparently that hasn’t worked for you either. We might as well alleviate the pressure and have some fun. And at least I’m not going to feel too bad about fucking a complete stranger as long as it’s a one on one deal.” The top part of her costume is off and you’re about ready to go fondle her tits. In fact you’re already standing up from the bed and walking towards her to do just that. “I seriously CAN’T do this.” You say, barely stopping yourself. “And are you seriously telling me, you don’t want THIS?” she says and forcefully puts your hands on her tits. As you caress her breast, you can feel the temptation overwhelming you. Her body is just…perfect to you right now. “Oh trust me, I want nothing more than to get you on all fours and thrust into you until you’re crying from so much pleasure.” “Well let’s get on with that then, because that actually sounds like a lot of fun.” “I…I can’t! I really can’t do this!” you say and pull your hands away, the woman’s hands however go immediately to your crotch. “Your dick says otherwise. Come on, I’m fucking ready and I know you are.” She says. “It would be dangerous.” You say as you enjoy the scent of her this close up. “I sure hope so.” Without another word, the woman kisses you and shoves her tongue in your mouth. You manage to briefly stop the grinding of your bodies long enough and pull your lips apart to speak. “Stop, stop! Seriously, this could be dangerous for you!” you say. “What? Wait, you don’t have the fucking crotch rot do you?” she asks. “No, nothing like that, it’s just…it’s complicated and I don’t have time to explain. You see, my girlfriend’s a…” “Mmmm, I won’t tell her if you don’t.” the woman says and begins going down on you. And it feels sooooooo good. You tried. You really tried. But you can’t. You just can’t any longer. The temptation is too great and this woman is too damn skilled, along with being very pretty. (At least from what you can tell, she’s still partially covered with her mask) “Hold on, hold on, stop.” You say one more time gently pushing her head away. “Fucking kidding me? What the hell now?” the woman asks. “If we’re gonna do this…go lock the door at least. Last thing we need is more people wandering in and before we know it, it’s not just us any longer.” “Yeah, you got a point. Okay.” As you watch her walk away, some guilt wells up inside you. You’re going to kill this girl and you just don’t have the willpower to stop yourself. The worst of it, is that guilt quickly goes away as you walk up behind her while she’s locking the door and quickly strip off her panties before taking her on all fours on the bed like you promised. “Oh… fuck yeah. That’s what I’m talking about.” She pants as you enter inside her. The session is quite unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. It’s raw; it’s passionate and practically animalistic. And that’s saying something considering you used to have sex with a succubus. Somehow though, it’s much different. With Tanya, she was always still dominant in some way. With this woman, it’s…well hard to describe. Maybe you’ve just longed for intimacy for so long, maybe it’s the drugged drinks enhancing the pleasure to an unnatural degree, maybe it’s the anonymity, maybe this girl is actually a magical fairy with a magical vagina, or maybe it’s a combination of several factors. In any case it’s almost like your bodies are in perfect sync with each other. Like it feels so natural and right that you’re achieving some sort of emotional and even spiritual fulfillment as well as a physical one. You’re so damn delirious that at one point in between the huffing and puffing and panting and dirty talk you suddenly blurt out: “I love you.” And to your equal surprise: “I love you too…don’t stop.” She replies, followed by a pleasured moan. Needless to say, you don’t until you (and her) are completely spent. At which point you collapse nearly directly on top of her and fall asleep or rather lose consciousness. You don’t know how long you’re out for, but when you wake up you’re by yourself and there is no sign of the woman you were with. You half wonder if you hallucinated her, but you see that there is a discarded mask so you’re guessing she was actually here. You slowly get up and rip your own mask off your face and look around for your clothes. While you’re getting dressed you start feeling a sight ache all over your body. You feel drained in fact, almost reminds you of how you used to feel with your sessions with Tanya. But that woman wasn’t Tanya. Last night was just you and some beautiful stranger under the effects of a powerful aphrodisiac that pushed the limits of your endurance. And of course that beautiful stranger will soon be dead. Just as well as you never learned her name or even saw her face. Makes the fact that you just condemned her to death a lot easier to cope with. Not much that can be done anyway. At least she had fun; at least you believe she did given her squeals of ecstasy. You stumble out of the room and find that several servants are cleaning up everywhere along with several disheveled noble types walking around half dressed and hung over. Nobody pays much attention to you and just goes about their own business as you make your way to exit the palace. As you get to the front door of the palace you see Baroness Ludmilla standing nearby saying goodbye to all her guests that are staggering out. The baroness doesn’t look any worse for wear. Either she didn’t drink what everyone else did or she’s got amazing recuperative powers. When she sees you, she waves you over. “Hello again! I was hoping to catch you before you left! And by your appearance, it looks like you had quite the experience last night! Hope it was fun for you!” Ludmilla says. “It was different I can say that much. Have you seen Vera?” you ask. “Hm? Oh you mean the girl you came here with? No, I haven’t seen her since the festivities were just getting started.” “Okay then, guess I’ll see her back home then.” “I’m sure that’s where she is. Goodbye and again I’m glad you came. I’m just sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk more, but you know what? We should meet again sometime. Just us two. Talk about life and shit.” “Um, sure I guess. Goodbye.” You give a small bow to the Baroness, believing that you probably should show some sort of deference to her station. She seems to like that, and then you turn to leave because honestly you can’t get out of there fast enough. It’s a long walk back home and you’re thirsty as hell. Probably dehydrated from all the wild sex you had. Along the way you stop inside a tavern and order a drink. Nothing alcoholic this time though. When the tavern keeper pours you a cup of apple cider, you go to pay for it and find what little coin you had in your pocket is gone! You check you other pockets and still nothing. “I don’t fucking believe this…she fucking robbed me? Bitch!” you exclaim. “Um, sir?” the tavern keeper says. “What?” you say still distracted by the fact that you can’t believe you got robbed. “I…um… know who you are sir, and um, there’s no charge.” “Oh, thanks.” Well at least reputation has its benefits and now you’re just irritated that you even spent any amount of energy feeling guilty about having sex with that thieving bitch. After drinking your fill and resting a moment, you eventually make your way back to the League headquarters where business is going on as usual. You ask various members if they’ve seen Vera, eventually you bump into her and she answers herself. She doesn’t look any worse for wear. “Hey boss. There you are. Guess you found the party a lot more interesting than I did after all. What happened to you?” Vera remarks. “Never mind all that. What happened to you?” you ask. “Oh shortly after we separated I wandered and talked to a few people and even looked around seeing if I could steal anything, but there really wasn’t a good opportunity, and then something weird happened.” “Let me guess, everyone got all friendly?” “Yeah, REALLY friendly. Didn’t know it was going to be that kind of party. Guessing something was in the drinks. Glad I hadn’t drank anything while I was there. Still, I might have paired up with one of the horny aristocrat guys if it had just been a one on one thing, but then Ludmilla was around and she started hitting on me too and I got really creeped out. I mean she didn’t know of course, but she could potentially be my half sister, and that just really put me out of the mood entirely. I ran out as soon as I could.” “Yeah, potentially fucking a sibling, I can see where that would put a damper on things. Wish a damper was put on me last night.” “So what DID happen to you? Did you get caught up in an orgy?” Vera asks with a grin. “No, but I did spend the entire night fucking some woman who apparently robbed me after I passed out.” Vera starts immediately laughing at how someone like you fell prey to something like that. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.” You grumble. “I’m sorry, but the fact you got caught like that is just hilarious.” Vera says. “Yeah well, she’s not getting too far.” “Oh, you know who she is?” “Huh? Nah, I just have a strong feeling that fate is going to catch up to her. Anyway, I don’t want to dwell on it anymore, let’s just get to work. In fact before shit happened yesterday, I was thinking about potential expansion.” “Where exactly? You thinking about getting a League chapter in the Delantium Kingdom?” “Maybe…but probably not. For whatever reason the Ebony Claw Syndicate has not fucked with us. If we start going into their territory, that could change. However I was thinking we could physically expand where isn’t a strong organized criminal presence.” “I suppose it’s worth looking into, I’ve got a suggestion of where we should.” “Oh?” “You ever heard of Jicol?” “Think I’ve heard some of the Hessla pirates we deal with mention it sometimes. Don’t know much though.” “It’s a port town west of Hessla and from what I’ve heard it’s wide open like a whore’s legs. Nobody has tried to organize anything there and the city focuses so much on defending against potential pirate attacks that it doesn’t have the heightened security like say Klyton does in recent years. I say we start there.” Looks like you’ve got a new prospect. > You time passes... Chapter 3D2 Power Struggle Year 31 “When are they supposed to arrive again?” you ask. “Um, lesee… the ECS rep is supposed to be here tomorrow by carriage.” Warts says. “Okay. It’s been what, like a decade that they haven’t taken an interest in this place ever since they lost their chapter here, now all of a fucking sudden I’m receiving letters and having to meet with their reps.” “Better dat den assassin blades.” “I guess. Just wondering why now all of a sudden.” “Maybe itz our expansion inta Jicol? We’s startin’ ta get bigger, dat shit kinda draws tenshun. Probably shoulda stayed small.” “It was a risk, I suppose. Then again they might have fucked with us anyway. At least now we’re a little stronger. Speaking of which, maybe we should get some of Gloom’s people here tonight as extra security until this visit is over. Might as well put that alliance we have to good use.” “Grh, I still don’t trust dem shadow guyz. Dey used ta be allied wit da Syndicate.” “Yeah. I know their faith is for the most part still chummy with the Syndicate, but ever since Shade split from the main faith, this particular temple seems to be independent and follow its own agenda. I guess we can get a feel of where their alliances lie at least. Sort of wish Vera was still around sometimes as an extra pair of hands and eyes, but she’s more useful in Jicol. I think she needed the change of scenery anyway.” “How iz things dere anyway?” “Last message I got from her she said there weren’t any problems. Even starting to recruit a few of the locals there, which is good so we don’t have to send any more people from here. Not to mention the profit she sent last month was the biggest yet.” “You ever think she’s skimmin’?” “Vera? Nah, but I’m sure she’s probably running something on the side for herself. Which is fine by me if she is. I’d rather have her overlooking things there than anyone else.” Later you go to the Temple of Fel to speak with Gloom about extra back up. Gloom as usual is always willing to assist you. You’ve always felt Gloom was way too friendly to be a Felian (Even his name is ironic) but better cordial than hostile you suppose. One thing you have noticed is that over the years, the Felians aren’t quite the disciplined shadowy priests they once were. Not to say they wouldn’t be formidable in a fight, but they definitely aren’t like how they were under their previous leadership. Gloom wasn’t even aware that the Syndicate was visiting. For a group that’s generally known for being masters of secrets and such, they seem a bit out of the loop nowadays. After coming to an agreement with Gloom, you leave the temple and make your way back to your headquarters. The next day the ECS representative arrives. As mentioned in the correspondence to you, you meet in a “neutral” location at a tavern called the Bloody Bandit (Warts was right, why don’t more of these places have inviting names?) You arrive with a few of the larger hobgoblins by your side. You weren’t sure at first, but letting some of Wart’s “buddies” from the Spiderfang tribe join was a good idea. They aren’t as big as an ogre or as muscular as an orc but they’re just as ugly and mean enough to intimidate most. You look around and notice that at least one of Gloom’s people is here. There might be more, but if they are, they must be better at hiding themselves. In any case, you’re satisfied that you have an advantage if it comes to a fight. Then you see who can only be who you’re supposed to meet. A well dressed man with a thin mustache sitting all by himself and not looking very concerned about his surroundings. The fact that he’s here by himself speaks of his confidence that he’s either powerful enough to survive whatever you might have in store, or the consequences of him will be so severe that you won’t even try. He’s not drinking anything, but when he sees you he nods and waves you over. You tell your hobgoblin retinue to wait nearby and mentally prepare yourself. You sit down and the man briefly smiles. “Well, right on time. Always a good sign when someone is punctual. When I noticed the shadow blades come in here, I thought for a moment you were using some sort of weak psychological intimidation tactic and try to make me sweat while you came in late. Though I suppose you’re just more concerned with security given your green buddies over there. Hobs are an unusual choice though. We usually use ogres or orcs, but then you use the savages you got access to right? I can appreciate a man who improvises. In any case, my name is Percy and I’m sure you want to get to it.” “I do like to be direct.” “So I’ve heard. Oh I’ve heard a lot about you actually. Don’t know everything about you of course, but that’s okay, a little mystery is always welcome. What do you say about mystery?” “Not a fan of it. I sort of prefer to know everything I can, so I’m not caught off guard.” “Heh, and I knew that about you too! Maybe you’re not so mysterious, but that’s okay too!” Percy pats your hand from across the table in his enthusiasm. Honestly, you don’t know if the guy is flirting with you at this point. Maybe it’s a tactic to try to make you uncomfortable, whatever it is, you stay stoic. “So what is it that the Syndicate wishes of the Nocturnal League?” you ask. “Ah that is the question isn’t it? What DOES the Syndicate want? I bet ever since you heard from us, you’ve been wondering. Is this a threat? Is this a deal? Is this an alliance? Is it a prelude to an attack? What COULD it be? Why has the Syndicate suddenly taken an interest in Holgard again after it abandoned it a decade ago? Well? Do YOU have any ideas?” Percy asks. “I’m a cynic so I’m guessing you’re here to say you’re taking over and this is my one warning to get out of the way. At best, you’ll want me to still stick around. At worst, you’ve probably already poisoned me when you touched my hand.” Percy laughs out loud. “You my friend have a very interesting imagination! I assure you, if we wanted you dead, we wouldn’t even be talking right now. You are partially correct though.” Percy says. “You’re taking over.” You remark. “No. Well not directly. We DO want you to stick around though. You see, we have done a little research on you. We know you came here years ago, we also know you were part of the Thieves’ Guild here before that and were instrumental in its destruction which THEN led to you being part of the Syndicate chapter here. Before Rook apparently blundered and cocked everything up. During all that time though, up until you created this Nocturnal League, you at your core were a thief. A good one though from what I’ve heard.” “Don’t get to do it much anymore.” “Mm, so to sum up, we have a simple thief who survived the destruction of not one, but two organizations that held the most sway in the underworld here. You then went on to create your own organization, which is now the only game in town. You also apparently managed to leverage an alliance with the Temple of Fel here. That is an interesting one considering the faithful of Fel and the Syndicate have been allies for many decades. Intertwined one might even say.” “This group is a little different.” “Indeed. I believe the High Shadow back in Delantium has had some issues with this particular branch in general, but that’s an internal matter on their end. In any case back to you, it’s all very impressive for someone of humble origins and very unusual how it all seemed to work out in your favor. One might even think you planned everything… well either that or you had the gods on your side.” “Never really planned to be in the position I’m currently in and the only god I’ve ever gave a few words to is Yag and even then not much.” “Well, then he must be rolling well for you every time. Perhaps it is luck that drives success in this city after all. Strategy, logic and even simple might seem to eventually fail in this city. This place is has always been problematic ever since the late Baron Vlad Varsakken declared his independence from Delantium. Even when we had a chapter here, it was always the least profitable of all of our holdings even with all the corruption going on, so when the leadership finally collapsed here and the rest of the lower ranks scattered to the winds. People higher than myself decided to wash their hands of the whole thing, not unlike the Delantium Kingdom did before I guess. However, things change and one of those changes is you sharing in your obvious success.” And here it is, the shakedown. “I can see by your face you aren’t pleased with that last statement, but I think you should look upon it as a compliment. Just think, YOU managed to do what the Syndicate could not. You made a success here with no competition and you built it all from the ground up. Granted you did use some of our people and even altered our product…Purple Wish? Come on, we all know that’s just an inferior version of Blue Dream, but it’s probably for the best that you didn’t try to rip us off directly. We might have very well sent assassins in that case.” Percy says. “I had considered that, hence why I suggested changing the formula.” You say. “See always thinking! Which is why a direct take over wouldn’t be as efficient. I mean why come in here and stomp about establishing our dominance and wasting manpower and resources when you’re here? A perfectly reasonable and intelligent man more than capable of running things and knowing to give us our due.” “Also knowing I don’t have choice in the matter either.” “But there is ALWAYS choice! I just know you’ll make the right one! I’m going to give you a sum and you can tell me if it’s fair or rip it up. What you can’t do is negotiate though. I’m afraid I’m not here to do that.” With this statement, Percy suddenly takes a small piece of parchment out of his pocket and moves it across the table. You take it and look at it. It’s not unreasonable, but it’s not exactly something you’d be looking forward to paying every month. Especially when you’re already kicking bribes to the Holgard government. Still, you’re getting a lot of leeway all things considered. For now you’re going to accept. You can always figure something out later. “Very well I accept.” You say. “Good! I knew you would! You didn’t get where you are by being an idiot! Now that business is over, I’m going to be in the city a few more days before coming to see you again for the first payment. Now I know you’re a busy man with busy people, so I don’t expect you lot to see to me and I’m more than capable of protecting myself. However, I would like some suggestions on where all the good spots to have fun and unwind are here.” After giving Percy some suggestions he shakes your hand and thanks you before leaving. As for you, you don’t feel like going back to work right away either. You dismiss your hob crew and tell the Felians to just go back to whatever it is they do since you just want a moment by yourself (Even if you are still in a tavern) While you’re racking your brain on how to deal with this new situation, you get another visitor. “Tough day in the underworld?” You look and see a woman in Dorna robes. It’s been awhile, but you recognize her immediately. It’s Heather. “Heather? This is unexpected. How did you know I was even here?” You say. “Magic is a very handy thing to be skilled in when locating someone. I’ve been meaning to see you for a while now. In fact I was coming to see you today and I’m glad I caught you when I did since it seems like you’ve been meeting with others. Like that man from the Syndicate.” Heather remarks. “You seem to have a lot of interest in me all of a sudden. Is this personal, or did Elder Flynn send you on behalf of your temple?” “Oh this is temple business, but Elder Flynn didn’t send me. In fact he’s no longer in charge. I am.” “I see. Did you…” “Kill him? Oh no. There was a large magical disturbance last year at a known wizard’s home miles outside Holgard. An old acquaintance of the Elder actually. Flynn, myself and several other high ranking members went to investigate and let’s just say it didn’t go well and I was the only survivor. However it did mean there was now need of a new leader and since I still was the most experienced. I took charge. Well, took charge of the few that remained of our order at least.” “Hm. Didn’t know that. Then again you lot are always insular so I just assumed you were being bookworms as usual and never leaving your temple. I’m surprised you told me that your temple isn’t as strong as it once was. Still, I would have thought the Felians would at least have knowledge of this and been all over it, but then they’re hardly the order they once were too.” “You’re right about that one, in fact that’s why I’m proposing you need a new ally and abandon your old ones.” “New ally…wait…what, your people?” “Why not? We’ve worked together before and obviously I trust you enough to reveal my temple’s status to you.” “Yes, which is why I’m less than enthused. I mean no offense, but if your order only mainly consists of you and a few acolytes now, why would I abandon the Felians for you lot? This seems like you’re just wanting to wipe out the Felians and you need my numbers to help you do it. And why now anyway? You two haven’t had any problems. Even during the faith war here, you two didn’t have any trouble.” “Because the Felians DO know that we’re currently weak and they’ve already been conspiring to finish us off. Why they haven’t revealed such info to your organization I couldn’t say. Perhaps they felt that this didn’t concern you or you wouldn’t care. However, the shadow lurking fools are as you say, definitely not the order they once were. Even with our lesser strength we’ve already fought off several assassination attempts. Still, it’s only a matter of time before they DO ask for assistance and that’s most likely going to be you…or the Syndicate. They are back in this city are they not?” Now this meeting just became a little more serious. Heather seems to know a lot about your situation, but then given that she’s got magic coming out her ass, you aren’t that surprised. “Yes, they are. What are you exactly proposing Heather?” you ask. “The Fel temple is rogue in many ways. I don’t propose to be an expert on their beliefs, but even I know that by breaking with its long time Syndicate alliance, it is only a matter of time before they are reabsorbed back into their faith’s proper doctrine. That’s either going to happen because we will eventually manage to do enough harm that they’ll beg for help from their father temple in Delantium or they’ll slowly be forced back into submission when the Syndicate eventually starts pushing their weight here. That is what they’re doing aren’t they?” Heather says. “Somewhat…yes.” “My proposal is this. WE ally against the Felians. They aren’t going to expect an attack from you and you probably know when and where best to strike. We will provide back up of course to minimize the losses. In return you get allies that are much more powerful in the ways of magic and aren’t likely to backstab you in the future. Our goal aren’t the same, but don’t conflict either, so I’d say that already makes us better than the Felians.” “For the sake of argument, let’s say I agree to this. I still don’t see how this helps me all that much. I’m going to be taking most of the risk and damage and if anything the Syndicate might get a little suspicious if I start wiping out former allies.” “I think you and I both know they’re going to be suspicious of you anyway, but if this helps, I will personally assist you in anyway I can in any matter. I mean maybe I never said this properly years ago, but I did appreciate that you turned down Elder Flynn’s ritual suggestion. Not something I ever forgot.” Heather looks at you with a mixture of anticipation and hopefulness. Perhaps even a bit of desperation. The fact that she’s asking you at all says to you that she’s not exactly confident that she’ll win without your help. Honestly, you aren’t sure about all this. While Heather has brought up some concerning points. The Felians ARE your allies and granted in this business such things can be fleeting, you start stabbing them in the back and where does it end? You also aren’t so sure about replacing a solid known ally with an uncertain one, especially if they aren’t exactly any better than the ones you have. Gloom also hasn’t really ever given you any reason to suddenly turn on him. Unless you’re going to count the fact that his people never said they were waging a private war to finish off the Dornans. Then again, maybe Gloom considered it an internal matter and didn’t feel the need to bother you with it. And the Syndicate just complicates matters. How are they going to react or will they even care at all? Percy did mention the temple here was frowned upon by the faithful in Delantium. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if you wiped them out. > You ally with Heather The more you think about it, the more this makes sense in a ruthless pragmatic sort of way. The temple of Fel here could very well become an arm of the Syndicate again, maybe not today or tomorrow, but when it happens, you’re going to be in a much more dangerous position. You still aren’t exactly sure about the Dornans, but you’re willing to give Heather the benefit of the doubt that she has genuine intentions. This still could all backfire of course, but you’ll have to take that chance too. However, being an ally is a two way street and Heather did say she would help you in any way she could. “Okay Heather, I’m going to risk this, but as a show of good will I’m going to need something from you too.” You say. “Of course. What is it?” Heather asks. “There’s a representative from the Syndicate here as you know. Now I have to pay him an amount of coin that I don’t particularly want to before he leaves in a few days.” “Wait, so you want me to kill him?” “Well, you probably would be better equipped since I do have reason to believe that he’s probably highly skilled in shadow magic. While maybe with a bit of preparation my people could take him since he’s alone, but it wouldn’t be pretty. However, that wouldn’t really solve my problem. The Syndicate would just rightfully assume I killed him and then have good reason to be pissed at me and that wouldn’t be good.” “So what are you asking exactly?” “Any way you could alter his mind or something similar?” “Well there are spells that can do all sorts of things, but again, did you have an idea of what you wanted exactly?” You and Heather start to discuss each other’s plans. Your situation with Percy is easy enough Heather says, and assures you that she will be able to implement something with the help of her people. Gloom and his people will be a little more difficult, but the pair of you come up with something that should work. It’ll just require a little bullshit on your part, but you’ve been doing that for so long that you’re definitely an expert in it. In any event, you’re going to go meet with Gloom while Heather plans to ambush Percy. The next day you head to the Temple of Fel. Several Felians don’t even seem to be bothered by your intrusion, which would be a much different story if Shade or his predecessors were running things. When one of them asks what your business is at the temple, you simply tell them that you wish to see Gloom at which point they go check to see if he’s available and fortunately he is so you can get this over with today hopefully. (Along with it going smoothly) You walk through the dark temple and eventually to Gloom’s chambers where he sits writing something. When you enter he smiles and greets you. (You’ve always found his general friendly personality to not quite match his name, let alone his faith) “Come in, come in, I was just finishing up my latest sermon. Have my faithful been providing an adequate job with your extra security? There haven’t been any issues have there?” Gloom asks. “No, not at all. In fact I was going to tell you I won’t be needing them after all, seems I overreacted with the Syndicate visit.” You answer. “Ah, I see. Well better safe than sorry. So how did your meeting with the Syndicate go?” “Better than I hoped. Worse than I feared. So has the Syndicate been to see you?” “Us? No. I don’t see why they would. Why do you ask?” “Oh, I figured while the Syndicate isn’t making a direct threatening presence, I figure they might still be snooping about and trying to stir up animosity between allies.” “Ah, yes I can see where that would be a concern, but I assure you we have no dealings with them even if the Temple of Fel has been considered the Syndicate’s traditional ally. As you know while we are faithful to Fel, we believe in following our own path. We are your allies, not the Syndicate.” “Yes, this particular temple has been engaged in the concept of flexibility for quite some time now. And I appreciate your dedication to our partnership, which is why I’m puzzled that you did not ask for our help on your own matter.” “Our matter?” “Well your attempt to wipe out the Dornans of course.” Gloom drops his friendly persona, though not to a hostile expression, but more of a serious one. “I considered that as a private conflict between faith and saw no reason to bother you with it, I know you’re very busy and all. Though I do wonder how you found out about it, since we’ve very good about keeping this quiet. The Baroness would come down on everyone if the two remaining religious factions in the city were openly fighting in the streets.” Gloom says. “Because the leader of the Dornans came to me yesterday begging for an alliance. She wants me to turn on you. She even gave me one of these again.” You pull out a solid black orb causing Gloom’s eyes to widen. He remembers a similar magic object was used during the final battle with the Joachimites. You continue to speak quickly before Gloom makes any rash moves. “Don’t worry my friend, obviously I’m not here for treachery. Besides, I’m here by myself. Even without your magic I would never succeed so it would be a pretty poor plan indeed. I am however giving it to you. Just like I gave this to Shade when we fought the Inquisitor. Here you go.” Gloom warily looks at you as he slowly takes the orb. When he finally grabs it, he seems to relax a little more, but he’s definitely not comfortable. Still he hasn’t killed you yet, so that’s a good sign. Meanwhile you’re doing your best to remain calm yourself under these conditions, so you continue to speak. “I have to say I was a little surprised that the Dornan high priestess came to me though. I figured with all their magic they would be more than able to take care of themselves.” You say. “They’re in a vulnerable state so they need all the help they can get right now. However, they’re still very dangerous. In fact I thought that with their new leadership, they would soon collapse altogether, but as it turned out they have proved more resilient than I thought. They’re attempting to rebuild and I’m not just talking about their numbers, I’m talking about their influence in this city.” Gloom remarks. “What do you mean?” “The Dornan high priestess or matriarch as her followers call her now, has made steps in meeting with Baroness Varsakken over the past few months. She obviously intends on gaining favor with Ludmilla and eventually get rid of us and that can’t happen.” “Wow. Didn’t know that, but isn’t the Baroness a dedicated follower of Fel?” “Eh, the Baroness has always been a dabbler. Her faith in Fel isn’t the most dedicated. Indeed she probably has always been more interested in learning shadow magic rather than revering Fel. Still, it was useful to have ruler that was friendly towards us. Unfortunately the new Dornan leadership seems have opened their own doors to teaching the ways of magic and Ludmilla is all too eager to jump on such an offer even if it means paying lip service to both gods.” “Won’t one of these divine beings eventually punish Ludmillia for her fickle nature?” you say mildly jokingly. “Perhaps, but it my experience the gods do things in their own time and as a mortal I can’t wait that long. In any case it would seem that perhaps Fel has assisted in the more direct destruction of the immediate threat that are the Dornans.” Gloom examines the orb in his hand after his statement before continuing. “So what exactly was the plan anyway? How did she even trust you enough?” Gloom asks. “Oh, she was trying to prey upon my paranoia with the Syndicate, claiming that you would eventually turn against me and other shit. Also during that whole getting Dornan help against the Joachimites, I fucked her once.” You say. “Truly?” “Yeah, the Elder at the time was being sort of a dick to her and I bumped into her crying about it. Seeing an opportunity, I sort of reassured her of her worth and well you know how women fall for that sort of thing. One thing lead to another and I think she’s always been a little sweet on me after that. As for the plan, I was supposed to just come in here with my people, break the orb so you couldn’t use any magic and then make sure all of you were dead.” “Hm, she might as well have placed her faith in Dorna rather than you for all good either would do her. The Dornans do have powerful magic to be sure, but they are poor fighters. Evening the odds with this object and they stand no chance. I’m going to personally enjoy this I believe and you’ve proven that our alliance is indeed a strong one. We will strike their temple in force. I want to make sure none escape, then we’ll destroy it.” “Did you want the League’s assistance?” “Well, you’ve done enough already and I never even asked for it. I see now that I probably should have though. I believe we can do this ourselves, however if you still wish to help, I will not turn it down.” “I’ll be there with a few of my people. Couldn’t hurt.” Gloom tells you that he’ll organize an attack in a few days, you tell him that works for you since you have some other business to attend to. A couple days pass and that other business finally comes to pass and this is what you’ve been more concerned about. You meet Percy at the same tavern with the payment. Once again he’s very friendly. “On time as usual. Very glad that you value promptness as I am in a bit of a hurry. I believe I may have had too much fun here and I should be getting back. I thank you for your suggestions on where to go.” Percy says. “No problem, so will you be back next month at this time?” you ask. “Probably not me, but someone will. Probably of much lesser importance of course. I was just here this time to extend the hand and make the deal as it were. Still glad we came to one.” “Yes, I agree. Better for business all around.” “Yes! Yes exactly!” “Anyway, I have your payment. Um, just so we’re clear how much was it again?” “Oh come on now. You trying one last try at lowering the price? I told you I wasn’t here to haggle. You know it was a thousand gold pieces.” “Yes, I knew, and I have it here. Just a poor attempt at a joke I suppose.” “Hm, well jokes are fine, but never about the Syndicate business. I hope you remember that.” “I will.” You have two of your hobgoblin muscle show Percy a large chest of gold to which he nods and you tell them to load it on the carriage outside. “And with that, our business is concluded. I bid you good day and wish you well in your future endeavors, especially if it’s going to make the Syndicate money!” Percy stands up, shaking your hand and leaves. You can’t believe that worked. You don’t know what the hell Heather did to him, but he actually believed he only asked you for a thousand gold monthly payment as opposed to the much larger sum he asked before. You can imagine his superiors are going to be upset, but it won’t be at you, it’ll be at him for fucking up a deal that they’re stuck with now. Well at least you hope they won’t try to re-negotiate immediately. You’ve bought yourself a little more time at least. Meanwhile, you still have to go stab the Felians in the back though you’re sort of wondering about still going through with that now what you’ve heard about Heather cozying up to the Baroness. Seems like now more than ever she’s attempting to use you as a pawn. Granted she was allying with you for mutual benefit before, but this seems a little different now. What exactly is she planning? Then again, if she is getting friendly with the Baroness, is it really going to make a difference to you? And Heather did just come through for you on the Syndicate thing. > You stick with the deal One double cross is enough for now, no need to complicate matters. Besides, regardless of Heather’s own agenda, she’s probably not wrong about the Felians. Going to be interesting when you see the look on Gloom’s face when he realizes the orb you gave him doesn’t work. The night of the attack comes and you meet with Gloom just a few blocks away from the Dornan Temple, you have your usual hob retinue with you. (You’re really getting used to having these guys around nowadays) Gloom is with a few of his own people, but even without magic powers you can sense some are probably nearby in the shadows. “Once again, glad that this is a joint effort though I don’t think it was necessary to bring as many people with you as you did. The orb is going to nullify all magic and when that happens, those Dornan priests aren’t going to be much match for us.” Gloom says. “Yeah, well I want to be on the safe side. My people are going to remain outside anyway, you know just in case any try to escape. I’ll come in with your people. Speaking of which are you really bringing them all?” you ask. “Yes, this is something that’s been a long time coming and nobody who is a true follower of Fel should miss out on. Honestly, it was foolish to believe they wouldn’t be a problem. Shadow Master Shade warned me to always watch them you know, just before he died. A few of his interpretations of the faith may have been a bit too restrictive, but he had his own wisdom on practical matters.” “Well, after tonight, you won’t need to worry about watching them ever again.” With those last words all of you march towards the temple. The few wanderers still outside in the area immediately go find shelter when they see a group of mean looking hobgoblins and Felians walking down the street. The Dornan Temple doesn’t even have their usual lookout standing outside, though you imagine the Dornans have some sort of magical detection going on and this plan has already been expected. Gloom blasts the temple’s doors off their hinges with a dark magic bolt of some sort. Then he takes the lead, you tell your hobgoblins to stand guard outside and kill anyone who tries to escape. They faithfully obey and you enter with the crowd of Felians that are entering the temple, staying close to the back of course. Heather and her much smaller group are already there to meet the Felians. “It ends today and the faith of Fel will rule supreme in the city at last!” Gloom shouts and throws down the orb. A bit more dramatic than you’d expect from a Felian, but then Gloom’s whole attack tonight is a bit more theatrical than a typical Felian would go about this. Good thing too, since if he behaved more like his predecessors he wouldn’t be going in so recklessly like this. No sooner has Gloom made his announcement, a white light washes over the room and suddenly all of Gloom’s previously shadow cloaked people are now visible. Naturally Gloom just assumes this is just the effects of the orb, but he’s soon very surprised to learn that the Dornans have not lost any of their magic abilities at all. Several of them are incinerated instantly by Dornan spells. Gloom himself manages to cut down a single acolyte before he’s finally brought down by some spell that causes him to age rapidly and then fall over dead. They may be a small group, but this temple is where their magic is the most powerful and you’re getting to witness a lot of it first hand, you’re just glad you’re not on the receiving end. While the remaining Felians realize that this is a lost cause and attempt to run, you do you part in shooting a few of them while your hob crew enthusiastically cuts down these lesser Felians that have more fear than fight left in them. A Holgard watch patrol shows up, but doesn’t intervene, instead they just turn right back around, probably thinking they don’t get paid enough to deal with this level of conflict. Soon, it’s all over and the Felians are no more as a force in this city and you’re just hoping you made the right choice in allies. Heather commands her people to start cleaning up the bodies before she goes over to speak to you. She looks a little worn and tired, but then you guess magic takes its toll just as much as regular combat. “Told you the plan would work as long as you got them in here.” Heather remarks. “Yeah, thankfully Gloom was a trusting fool and practically a heretic of his own faith which generally goes about things in a much subtler manner.” You answer. “I suppose that did make things easier. Thanks again for you help on this. The expression on Gloom’s face was priceless when he realized the orb didn’t work!” “Mm, didn’t see it, I was just concerned about not getting caught in the cross fire of a stray magic missile or possible a Felian blade after realizing they had been had.” “Oh, you never in any true danger. Even if you had gotten wounded we could have easily fixed you up with healing magic.” “As you say…well in any case I certainly hope you’re as chummy with the Baroness as you’re supposed to be, because this little fight did attract attention and last I heard any open fighting between the religious faiths was frowned upon. Not to mention the League was involved and I certainly down want repercussions of this to cause my organization to suffer for it.” Heather looks at you as if you weren’t supposed to know her dealings with the Baroness. “Know about that do you?” she asks. “Gloom might have mentioned it. He never elaborated and what you were talking about with her, but I get the impression he didn’t know and just feared a power grab and wanted to strike first before you had the whole city worshipping Dorna.” You answer. “I see. His sudden attacks make a lot more sense now, though if he had come to me directly, we probably could have even come to an agreement.” “Doubt it. He was still very dedicated to Fel even if he wasn’t a stickler for doctrine.” “But that’s just it, my conversations with the Baroness weren’t about religious faith. They were about magic in general. I was urging that she should seriously consider setting up a magic school here. Especially since I know she’s very interested in the subject.” “A magic school?” “Why not? The Delantium Kingdom has a very well established university; even Klyton has a small one. Surely a city as large as Holgard is worthy of one.” “I guess? Little bit out of my area of expertise. So wait, you aren’t planning on making Dorna the only goddess to worship in the city?” “Not really. I mean that seems to be a side effect of all this, but honestly I don’t care who worships what. I believe the pursuit of keeping magic alive is more important than worship at this point. I’m not sure if you realize it, but magic isn’t exactly a common thing nowadays and has been in decline. In a couple hundred years after the last few powerful wizards die out, what then? Dorna is a the goddess of magic and knowledge, I can better serve her through teaching rather than just worship.” Sort of an interesting goal you weren’t expecting from Heather. Not really one that directly interferes with your own business either, perhaps it could even be a new opportunity, if it ever gets off the ground. Heather goes on to say that she will of course smooth all this over with Ludmilla and more importantly make sure there are no repercussions for the League. A couple weeks pass and sure enough, you haven’t been harassed by the Holgard Watch (Well within reason). After a month rolls around a Syndicate collector comes by and asks for the thousand, very no-nonsense and anxious to be on his way. When you name drop Percy, just to see if you can get any information on what might have happened to him, the rep says he doesn’t even know the man. You pay him with the chest full of coin and he’s on his way. Nothing else is mentioned or happens. Meanwhile one of the requests to Heather is asking if she can figure out a way to lift your curse. She says she doesn’t know other than the ritual Elder Flynn suggested that time and apparently he never did give the exact details about what it all entailed as far as the words to say and such. (And she’s not exactly keen on bringing up the other known detail you both know about) However, she says she still has a lot of his notes and writing to go through, so she will try to find out how to do it and perhaps maybe there are other ways to lift it as well. Looks like you picked your new allies wisely. Hopefully this all proves to be even more useful in the future. > You time passes... Year 32 It’s been awhile, but it’s good to see Vera again even if she’s just here for a visit. She’s got some strong opinions on some of the changes that have happened recently though. “I still can’t believe the Felians are gone completely. I mean I just remember them always being here. Then again, so were a lot of groups I suppose. Still, sort of surprised you managed to gain an alliance with the Dornans.” Vera remarks. “Don’t see why it’s really all that surprising. Heather helped us in the past and she’s running things now. The Dornans aren’t even very religious anymore; they turned their temple into a school of sorts. Don’t think they’ve got many takers yet though.” You say. “Hm. I’m also still a little concerned about what you did with the Syndicate though. Might have been better in the long run to just pay their price.” “Are you kidding me Vera? You didn’t see what they were trying to extort from us. Besides, we’ve been okay so far and they haven’t even suddenly tried to raise the rate.” “I dunno. I know you have a lucky habit of getting over on the Syndicate, but I feel like this is pushing it. I have to think they must know something, but they’re biding their time to lull you into a false sense of security before they strike.” “Oh trust me, ever since I stepped foot into this city, I’ve been on my guard constantly. Don’t really know any other way to live at this point. However I’m going to soon be hiring a lot of cheap muscle in the form of all the hobgoblins, so I’m slightly less concerned about the Syndicate.” “What? You can’t seriously be considering recruiting MORE hobs.” “Why not? They’ll actually be perfect for this. Most of them either come here just itching to break someone’s legs or they go join the fight arena. Though a few odd ones join the Holgard Watch instead, go figure.” “Maybe, but I’ve noticed a severe increase in hobs in this organization since I came back to Holgard. Just don’t want this place turning into the Roach Leg Tribe.” “It’s Spiderfang Tribe actually and they’re still far outnumbered for that to happen. Well, for now at least. In any case, most of them have been migrating to Holgard quite a bit over the years. I guess most are learning that city life isn’t all that bad and you can still be just as much of a violent asshole here as you can out in the wild and get routinely paid for it. Hmm, actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I guess it makes sense that a few of them join the Holgard Watch after all.” “Well your call I guess, at least I don’t have deal with them. Dealing with Warts was enough for me. Though I’m not convinced a bunch of unruly hobs are going to be the end all of extra protection.” “Hence why we’re also close allies to a group of wizards.” “You seem pretty confident in our new wizard allies. Just how friendly are you with this Heather? I mean are you fucking her or something?” “No I’m not actually.” “Ah, so you’re TRYING to fuck her.” “Actually I’m not, but I’m not sure what difference it would make to you if I was.” “None I suppose, though I was just trying to figure out what might have been the motivator to throw your lot in with trusting this sorceress and her adepts. But if you say it was purely a practical and strategic move for the good of the League, then that’s good enough for me.” “Speaking of fucking, who was that big dark skinned guy who you were reluctant to leave when you were getting off the ship?” “Oh, that’s Zamed. He’s the captain of the Traveler. He’s a Hessla pirate, we tend to have business with a lot of them in Jicol, but Zamed’s been about the only one I’ve really taken a shine to lately. Still, it’s just as well as he’s a pirate. Don’t think I’d want him around ALL the time. Best to keep these sort of things free and flexible.” “Interesting. Though I thought Jicol was supposed to be pirate free.” “Eh, it’s pirate free in that the city doesn’t have to worry about them ever attacking the place, but that doesn’t mean they can’t stop there for supplies as long as they behave. Besides, Zamed’s been more of a privateer recently, though I suppose it’s a thin line. He’s been doing a lot of work for the Delantium Kingdom in their war against Nichan. Which is something I sort of want to bring up with you because it could possibly affect the League.” “Well guess I better hear it then.” Vera takes a drink of the rum she’s brought with her from Jicol before continuing. “Okay, I guess I’ll start at the beginning. Let’s see…what do you know of Peter Varsakken? Youngest son of Vlad.” Vera asks. “Um, nothing actually. Didn’t know there was another one of Vlad’s spawn running around. Wait, is this another one of his bastards, like you?” you ask with a smirk. “Oh no. He’s very much legitimate. It’s just that after he had a disagreement with his father and fled the city, all records were pretty much erased of him. He’s basically been living in exile in the Delantium Kingdom. Peter’s disagreement with his father involved the whole breaking away from the Delantium Kingdom in the first place. Peter was the only one who saw it as treason and remained loyal to Delantium. Over the years Peter has been trying to amass an army to take back the city.” “It’s my understanding that the Delantium Kingdom hasn’t exactly been in a big hurry to retake this place. I mean it’s been decades hasn’t it?” “Well they’ve been sort of busy with other things, like their recent war with Nichan for example. While the ruling class over there doesn’t want to spend their resources and treasury to take this place back, they certainly won’t turn down someone else willing to do the job, and that’s where Peter comes in. He’s of noble birth, loyal to the kingdom and would be an excellent governor for this city and absorb it back into Delantium’s fold.” “I see, and how do you know all this?” “As I said Zamed has been privateering for the Delantium Kingdom and he was contacted by Peter who is still trying to amass a conquering force of men and ships to take back his birthright. In fact Zamed is supposed to be organizing the majority of a flotilla of Hessla privateers” “And you trust this pirate?” “Of course not, but I trust the fact that I know how to lay it down good enough that he told me all this stuff in the bedroom without me even asking.” “Okay, I don’t need details on that part.” “Anyway, Peter’s been at this for years ever since he got exiled. He’s suffered many set backs in his quest to retake Holgard. Every time he’s been on the verge of being ready, something has happened. This was partially thanks to the Ebony Claw Syndicate sabotaging his efforts in Delantium, and sometimes even the Temple of Fel would hinder his efforts as well. However, since things have changed drastically over the years in this city, he’s in the best position he’s ever been in to retake this place.” “What makes you think he won’t get sabotaged again by either group? I mean the Ebony Claw might not have a direct presence here, but they’re still making some coin from us. Same is some what true of the Felians, though different reasons. They’re allies with the ECS, so they tend to help them.” “I don’t think they care this time. I mean thanks to your magical shenanigans they don’t make enough from us for it to make much difference either way I suppose. If the League suffers severely from this invasion, the ECS will most likely just come in directly and finish it off.” “Well that’s presumptuous that we’re going to get the shit kicked out of us. As long as we don’t stand toe to toe with an invading force and stay out of the damn way, I imagine we’ll get through it. Hell, it isn’t like we don’t have routes out of the city if need be. Honestly though unless this Peter is bringing the full force of the Delantium army, I don’t see him winning. Ludmilla counts wizards among her allies and has a strong fleet of her own, so I question if this Peter is even going to succeed. And say Peter does win, then what? Is this guy some law and order fanatic? He’s a Varsakken and from what I can tell every single one of their family members are corrupt. So it would just be a matter of coming to an understanding with him so business continues as usual.” “Well that might be easier to do if we dealt with him now then. In fact I sort of wanted to address that idea.” “Oh?” Vera goes into the explanation that from the information she’s gathered from Zamed, Peter is most likely going to win. While he doesn’t have the Delantium army at his command, he does have several orc mercenary companies along with a few wizards that he’s managed to make friends with from the Delantium magic university. She also has heard that while Peter isn’t exactly a Joachimite purity zealot, his time in the Delantium Kingdom has probably given him more of an appreciation for a more orderly society as opposed to one that embraces rampant corruption so readily. So he’s most likely not going to look favorably upon the Nocturnal League. However, he’s still pragmatic enough that he’d probably give leniency to a group that actively helped him and a deal could very well be made as you said. Vera goes on to say she truly believes that this is the best chance for the Nocturnal League to survive in Holgard. “You seem to have given this some thought, and while I do often appreciate your input on things, the one problem I have in this case is you’re getting all of this information second hand from a pirate. Now I know you said your vertical smile caused the guy to go all stupid over you, so you’re certain he’s on the up and up. However, HIS information might also be mixed with rumors, half-truths and outright lies that he’s overheard. I mean if you were fucking Peter Varsakken himself and getting this information from him, I might believe the situation is as hopeless as you’re saying.” You say. “I thought you might feel that way, so how about this then…Peter Varsakken is meeting Zamed. We could go to this meeting as well and we could hash out our demands.” Vera remarks. “Wait. You’re telling me that you were planning on going to meet with this Peter without me?” “No! Of course not! I came here first because I wanted to see what your decision would be on this. I mean look, I understand what you’re saying, but based on everything I’ve learned, the outcome seems grim even if we managed to keep our head down during the initial invasion. But, you’re right too, I am getting all this information second hand, so maybe it would be a good idea to actually talk with this Peter in person, before coming to any sort of decision. If we did, you and I could both make an assessment of whether to throw our lot in or not.” “I dunno…(Sigh) yeah I suppose it couldn’t hurt, though I’m just wondering about the people we already have alliances with. I mean pissing off the Holgard magic school isn’t something I exactly want to do, also you mentioned the ECS has been thwarting this guy’s efforts for a long time, and I’m still not convinced that they won’t still do that even if they haven’t done it yet. By siding with Peter, we could piss them off which wouldn’t be any good either.” “Well…it’s your call I suppose boss. I just don’t want us to get swept away in the flood of this upcoming conflict. I want to see us survive.” “Pretty sure we all want that.” You swear if it isn’t a rebellion or faction war, it’s a fucking invasion in this city. It’s enough to make you want to pick up and just leave everything behind rather than deal with this shit. However, you’ve built something here, so you’re not doing that until all else fails. Whether or not you can strike a good deal with Peter or not, there is one very personal reason you’d prefer to stay loyal to your current allies and that’s the fact that so far Heather is your only sure lead on getting fixed from your curse. If you backstab them and live, you’re still fucked because there goes a potential cure. It’s selfish, but it’s a pretty strong motivator. While Vera has said that Peter has wizard connections as well, that’s not a sure thing that you can get help from them. They’re assisting Peter and have no reason to do the same for you. About the only thing you can do is try to see if Heather and her people might join Peter’s invasion. Hell, if that’s the case then you’d definitely be willing to help Peter as well. Of course doing that might not go over well either and you’d tip your hand pretty severely. Might be better to talk to Peter first and get all the information from him and then go speak to Heather so you’d at least have something that might be useful to her if worse came to worst in your meeting. > You talk to Heather first Maybe you’re a little paranoid but you don’t feel comfortable going to a meeting in unfamiliar territory with someone who you know virtually nothing about save for what Vera’s managed to tell you. Peter could see this as an opportunity to take you out as a potential obstacle to his conquest. Vera by herself on the other hand is less of a target, not to mention she’s got a pirate boyfriend with her. “I’m not going to this meeting, however since you’re so friendly with this Zamed and he’s going anyway, you can continue to accompany him. Then you can come back here and tell me what you think.” You say. “You don’t want to go yourself? I would have thought this would be something so important that you’d want to directly deal with it.” Vera says. “While it would be nice to just have unlimited power to deal with everything directly, I’ve got a bunch of shit to take care of here. I trust that you’ll be fine and I trust you’ll be able to assess the situation and give me proper feedback of our best options.” “Okay. That’s a lot of confidence in me, boss.” “Well, if I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t have put you in charge of our chapter at Jicol, which obviously has been thriving under your management. You’ve always been an asset to the Nocturnal League…and hell you’re probably one of the few people I consider a friend.” Vera looks a bit moved by your words. Honestly, you didn’t really plan to say something like that, but it felt right under the circumstances. Vera nods and agrees with your words and then moves in to hug you which you return. It’s a bit of a longer than average hug and it’s pretty obvious that there has always been a little something there between the two of you, but thanks to your curse you’ve never tried to pursue it. Vera herself probably believes that you’re just not interested in her that way at this point. What might have been you suppose, but then again who knows? You still hold out hope that you’ll get cured one day so the future isn’t set in stone yet. But first things first and that’s preparing for this invasion and how you’re going to go about it. After seeing Vera off, you go to the Temple of Dorna, which of course has now been transformed, into a school. Still looks practically the same and there still aren’t many people in the place. Seems that not many have taken advantage of the chance to learn magic, or more likely, nobody in this scum-ridden city has the talent for it. (Or the money) You don’t get far before you’re stopped by two teenagers. “Hey you, this isn’t a fucking Purple Wish Den! This place is for wizards only!” a pimply faced young man says. The young woman with him gives you a dirty look with an amused sneer. “It is? I thought it was a brothel. Good thing it isn’t though because I don’t need a blowjob that badly.” You say, then you look over at the girl with him. “Well, maybe you’d be okay after a couple ales.” “HEY! That’s my girlfriend, you asshole!” “Oh? Well I’m sure she’ll appreciate someone taking longer than two minutes for a change.” “Ew! Fucking perv! You think you’re funny? You won’t be so funny after I set your balls on fire.” The young woman says. “Ah, you’ve got the crotch rot then, okay then I’ll pass. Look, while all this has been amusing, I’m not here for either one of you snotnosed brats, I’m here to see Heather.” “That’s Grand Matriarch to you and I don’t see why she’d want to see you at all.” Before you can respond, the pimply man suddenly points a finger at you and zaps you in the chest with a lightning bolt! Well lighting bolt isn’t exactly the right word, since you aren’t exactly knocked on your ass, but it is a tiny jolt that catches off guard and it did hurt. “OW!” you shout. “Yeah! How ya like that goblin fucker? You mess with us an, SHIT! AAARGH!” the young man starts to say before you grab his finger which he was still pointing at you and break it. Like the sissy he is, he breaks down crying on the floor clutching his broken finger, meanwhile you’ve already drawn your pistol on the teenage girl. “Don’t even think about it sweetheart. I can pull this trigger before you can utter an incantation.” You say. “What in Dorna’s name is going on here?” a voice shouts. You look away briefly and see Heather with a couple of other wizard behind her. “Apologies Heather, but…well fuck, these two pissed me off and I didn’t have time for their bullshit.” You say. “Obviously. Cooper! Gwen! Step away from that man. I told you two before to never mistake your magic for invincibility. And that mindset works even more against you when you insist on being within reach of the head of the Nocturnal League. He could have very well killed the pair of you before I even showed up.” Heather says. “Shit, you’re the leader of the infamous League? Um, we’re sorry we didn’t mean anything!” Gwen says. “Gwen, stop groveling and take your boyfriend to go practice your healing magic for a change.” As Gwen picks her sniveling boyfriend off the floor, Heather tells the other wizards behind her to return to their lessons and approaches you. “I swear, I could make life a living hell for that girl and she apologizes to you rather than me.” Heather says shaking her head. “Well she probably knows you aren’t going to kill her, meanwhile I was pointing a gun at her head.” You say. “Meh, knowing that one, she’ll probably develop a fantasy about you. She’s got a thing for bad boys.” “And the one with the broken finger is a bad boy?” “Closest thing to one around here I suppose. Anyway, thanks for not doing any major damage to them, I don’t have many students as it is. Now I assume you’re here to see me, so let’s head to my office.” You follow Heather to her office, which of course resembles more of a lab, however its kept in a much more organized manner than when you were in Elder Flynn’s lab. Heather sits down and moves some papers and books around on her desk while addressing you. “I haven’t forgotten you and our deal, just so you know. I just haven’t made much progress on searching for a way to lift your curse. I did find Elder Flynn’s notes on the subject when you came in here, but honestly he was a little sketchy on the details concerning the curse part. Though I imagine once your ex was called in and bound, she would be able to be commanded to lift whatever curse she put on you. Still, he was probably more concerned with capturing a demon than curing you and after reading what would have happened to me, I’m even happier that you declined the ritual.” “Yeah, I know. You wouldn’t want sex with me.” “That’s actually not the part I’m talking about. In fact if it were JUST that, I’d be willing to get naked with you while my highly trained assistants performed the incantations for the ritual right now. However, what the Elder neglected to mention is the fact that this ritual would result in the poor girl’s death.” “What?” “Yeah, your succubus ex, wouldn’t just be summoned forth into this world, she’d be brought forth into the body of the girl you’d be having sex with.” “You mean like possession?” “I mean like the girl would literally explode into chunks gore and blood, when your ex arrived and chances are your ex wouldn’t be too happy with you either and you probably wouldn’t have much time to get out of her immediate vicinity before she killed you too.” “Shit…that’s fucked up.” “Yeah. And I would have been willing to just go along with it, not knowing shit. By Dorna was I a fucking fool back then. Anyway, I hope this news isn’t too disappointing for you.” “Well…it’s a bit disheartening…however I wasn’t even here about that.” “Oh?” “Yeah, and since there’s no other way to say it, I’m going to just be right up front with you, like you were up front with me.” You explain everything you’ve learned about Peter Varsakken’s invasion, which immediately catches Heather’s attention. You don’t go into detail about sending one of your people to meet with Peter, but you do ask the direct question if she’s supporting Ludmilla. “Well, appreciate you coming to me with this. When the invasion comes, it will be important for us to coordinate.” Heather remarks. “So I take it you’re not worried about this and siding with Ludmilla?” “Worried? Hmm…perhaps a little cautious, but the situation isn’t nearly as grim as your sources told you which you said was from a pirate captain he hired?” “That was the source, yes. Wait, you seem like you know something about this.” “I do and so does Ludmilla. I mean she might be a bit flakey at times, but the woman is not dim. She’s been making her own preparations and so have we. Honestly I’m sort of surprised given your new connections to the Ebony Claw, you would have learned of this plan long ago.” “They aren’t exactly forth coming with information. Our relationship isn’t the most open. I don’t even know if they’re planning on sabotaging Peter this time like I’ve been told they have in the past.” “Mm, that’s always a possibility. Though our own information says Peter’s come to some sort of understanding with them this time and they won’t interfere, however that doesn’t matter. Peter’s invasion isn’t going to succeed.” “You seem very sure and very well informed on this. Have you increased your telepathic powers or something?” “Hah! I wish. No, but I have been in contact with the Delantium Kingdom’s magic University and made a couple friends there while trying to get this school up and running. I’ve been told the TWO wizards he’s hired were drop outs from the university and while I wouldn’t suggest that you go up against them, I’m secure that my people will be able to handle them. So no, he doesn’t even have a squad of wizards at his command. If anything his orc mercs are going to be a bigger problem assuming they even make it to the fight that is. A lot can happen between Delantium and Holgard.” “Okay…well that does sound less hopeless than I heard.” “Make no mistake, this city IS going to suffer some shit, but I can’t imagine that it’s going to be any worse than the last time the Varsakken’s had it out with each other. Reports say he’ll probably be ready next year. So let me ask you, were you considering joining Peter’s invasion then?” You chuckle at the thought of saying “yes” at this point. “Well let’s just say I was keeping my options open based on which way you were going.” You say. “Aw, that’s sweet, upholding our alliance. And who says there isn’t honor in the underworld.” Heather says. “Yeah, well I can’t backstab everyone, it might hurt my reputation.” “Indeed. You’re already responsible for the demise of the Thieves’ Guild, an ECS chapter, the Joachimites and the Felians.” “Hey, I was never affiliated with the Joachimites.” “True. You had better sense than that. Well if that’s all, I should be getting back. Have to train these folks in battle magic after all, I assume if you come across and new information, you’ll share it.” You bid Heather goodbye and make your way back home where you get back to business. Though you’re a little concerned about Vera getting back okay. A month passes and she does indeed make it back of which you’re most relieved. She tells you that you were right all along and that siding with Peter isn’t the best way to go on this based on the meeting she had. Vera tells you that his terms weren’t even very good, just basic amnesty for anything done before he takes back the city and perhaps a bit of leniency on softer criminal activity, but not continued free reign like you have now. However she said that she was given permission to accept Peter’s deal for you, so as far as he knows, you’re on his side. “Good, nice thinking Vera.” You say. “Well I figured it shouldn’t be a wasted trip. So what have you been up to?” “Speaking with our magical allies. Seems they got more information on Peter than we do. The guy only has two wizards at his command for example and the Baroness is well aware of Peter’s plans.” “I see. Well guess all that’s left now is for us is the year to prepare, what do you need me to do?” “I need you back in Jicol where you can keep an eye on things there. Also, I want to make sure if shit goes really bad here, this organization will still exist in some form at least and there will be somewhere to retreat to. If possible try to convince some of those pirates you deal with not to join Zamed’s flotilla. I hope you weren’t too attached to him.” “Meh, I was done with him anyway. I suppose I’ll be taking another ship back to Jicol though.” After spending a few more days in Holgard, Vera finally takes her leave and she’s gone again. You’ll definitely miss her being around, you hope the next time you see her it’ll be under better circumstances. In fact you just hope you’ll actually survive to see her again, or hell just survive period. While Heather did reassure you of some of your concerns, there is still an invasion to “look forward to.” You’ve survived a lot in this city and sometimes you wonder if it really is Yag rolling well for you, but you’re hoping that you really are just that good at all this. > You time passes... Year 33 “Shit, these fucking orcs don’t die like they should.” You say after putting two more shots in a large greenskin trying to get back up. “Don’t think it matters boss, this brothel’s fucked, and not in a good way. Just bout every whore in here is dead.” Warts says. “All of them?” “Well there were a couple survivors, but I think their whorin’ days are over.” “Damnit, that’s another one destroyed.” “An wez lost a few purple wish houses and sum gambling dens too. Hopefully we can save da rest before we don’t have anything left.” You look around at the destruction of the brothel you’re currently in and try to temporarily ignore the loud chaos going on outside as you gather your thoughts on what to do next. “Damnit.” You say seeing a familiar woman on the floor with an axe wound in her head. “Wat?” Warts asks. “I know this whore or rather I did. Name was Naji. She was that girl that I rescued back when you talked me into ripping off Reginald’s house.” “Sheesh, dat wuz a long time ago boss. Yer memory iz good if you can member whores. I can’t even member when my weddin’ anniversary is, though I wuz drunk at the time an’ Snuffit reminds me anyway.” “Well she was a bit special for awhile, but as you might know my heart always really belonged to Tanya. I knew Naji was still whoring, and after we got the Nocturnal League set up I made sure she always had a job in one of our brothels, but I never did speak with her again in person. Always thought about it sometimes, but just figured I could get around to it when I wasn’t busy. Guess it’s too late now. Seems rather pointless that I even rescued her given that she just wound up dead anyway.” “Well look on da bright side boss, it looks like she got a cleaner death with a quick axe strike as opposed to wat dose cultist fuckers woulda did.” “I suppose. She also was Rook’s cousin, which probably saved me from him killing me. In any case, I’m having serious concerns about this attack.” “Well yeah boss, da whole cities goin’ ta shit again.” “No, I mean why the fuck are we even being attacked? I mean yeah I get orcs tend to be enthusiastic about their marauding, but something about the fact that OUR businesses are getting attacked like they were military targets seems really fucking suspicious.” “Mebbe dat Peter knew we weren’t really gonna help him.” “Well that’s definitely possible, but it still doesn’t explain why we would be targeted so much and so accurately. I would think he’d want to focus his forces on taking the palace or taking out the mage school. Also his invasion force was a lot larger than first reports mentioned.” “I guess Vera wasn’t too successful in convincin’ other pirates to not join her ex-boyfriend.” “I’m a little concerned about her too, since the last message we got was six months ago from her and she said she was having some success in her endeavors.” “Well she must be okay, because we wuz still gettin’ da cut from her even last month.” “I suppose, but at the rate shit is going down here, we might not even be able to pay the pittance that the ECS asks for every month.” “You sayin’ you don’t have a secret personal stash?” “Of course, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to part with my shit to pay the damn ECS. I’m sure you’d feel the same way about your stash.” “Pfft, I ain’t got no personal stash. Snuffit takes it all. Speakin’ of her, I think I’ll be getting back to her. Seems like this city is a lost cause an’ if you’re smart you should just get the hell out too.” “What the fuck Warts. You’re just gonna abandon everything?” “Well yeah. I don’t exactly have some bond with dis place. I mean it wuz fun while it lasted, but looks like its come to an end. I mean maybe dis place will be better again in a couple years or so. An’ didn’t you make plans to retreat to Jicol is shit started to go wrong?” “Yeah, but again, I’m still not sure if everything there is okay.” “Bah, Vera’s fine, she’s probably just really fuckin’ busy. I mean you know how it is. Look dis iz the ways I sees da situation…” Warts steps over a couple bodies before addressing you again. He gives you a more serious look than he normally does. “Youz gotta be the luckiest Yag blessed bastard I know, beside myself. You shoulda died so many times, Yag musta been rollin’ loaded dice. However, an’ don’t say dis offen but dere iz a time ta step away from da table and dis iz one o’ dem times. I myself have stayed alive as long as I have cuz I knew when ta walk away.” Warts says. “And you think this is one of those times, you don’t think there’s still a chance to turn this around?” you ask. “Well yeah, there’s always a chance, such are the whimsical ways of Yag, but the odds just ain’t lookin’ good enough for me to take da risk, so I’m off whether you’re sticking around or not, but I’d rather you leave with me, because…” Warts coughs a bit and looks away. You hear a sniffle. “Warts…are you crying?” you ask. “NO! I’m not cryin’ like sum sissy elf! It’s all dis dust bein kicked up due to da battle! Anyway, we’ve known each other a long ass time, made a lotta coin, did a lotta stupid stuff, an’ in sum cases even saved me from getting’ killed. Sometime youz waz an asshole, but you still were better than most an’ especially anyone in da Spiderfang Tribe. Yer, the closest thing I’ve had to a friend, an I’d rather our parting of ways go with me knowing dat yer on yer way ta Jicol rather than dying here over nuthin’.” Warts says. “So you wouldn’t be coming to Jicol?” “Nah, too far. I’ll probably just find work in Spider Fang territory, open a tradin’ post maybe. Most of da folks dat hated me are dead now anyway so it ain’t like I gotta worry bout bein’ a halfbreed anymore. I should be closer to my family anyway. In fact dat’s another reason youz should go to Jicol. Start a family with Vera, I know you likes her. Forget dat demon girl that’s still plaguin’ yer mind, she’s gone.” Warts doesn’t really know the whole story to that of course, and you don’t really have time to go into it right now, but despite all that, Warts does raise some good points. You’re not out of the fight yet though and you’ve been through two city upheavals already, you can easily survive a third as long as you’re smart about all this. You ran away from home once before, you’re not doing it again, especially not now when you’ve built a life here. Might not be ideal to most, but it’s yours. “Warts, you do what you gotta do, but I’m gonna do what I gotta do. Just remember whether the Nocturnal League survives or not, I’m still going to be here if you want to work with me again the future.” Warts shakes his head while giving a slight broken tooth grin. “Suppose I shouldn’t expected any less from ya. Youz haz a death wish. Always haz fightin’ dangerous groups of cutthroats, goin’ head ta head with religious fanatics, fucking demon bitches… youz gonna get yerself killed one day and it ain’t gonna be a pretty death when it happens. But guess I gotta respect all dat. I hope Yag’s still usin’ loaded dice, cuz yer gonna need ‘em.” Warts says. “We’ll see each other again Warts.” You respond. Warts nods at your confidence which you return before he takes his leave. Now alone, you briefly check the rest of the brothel for any remaining survivors. You don’t find any, but you do tell the couple that Warts mentioned to go find a better place to hide if they can. While you could just start jumping back into the action, you’d still rather have some back up and the only place you’re going to be certain to find some is back at the Nocturnal League’s headquarters where you’re probably going to find the rest of your remaining members hiding or attempting to wait this out. Good thing you’re already not in the greatest of moods because you don’t imagine it getting any better when you have to deal with your “employees.” When you get back, most of them are a bit on edge, but others are just lazing about playing cards or just generally doing nothing. “Oh, uh hey boss. You’re alive.” “Yeah well I can see you’re really glad that I am. Why the fuck are you assholes sitting around playing cards, you do realize there is a siege going on and our businesses are getting all fucked up right?” you say. “You said we should guard this place.” “I said SOME of you and as I remember, you weren’t one of them. In fact, most of you should be up there defending our interests. I’m not even asking you to be a fucking hero or defend the city because I know damn well that’s a pointless endeavor.” “Boss, I don’t see why we should risk our lives when we can just wait shit out down here.” And there it is. The excuse you’ve been expecting. “Oh this should be good. Go on about why you feel this way…whatever the fuck your name is.” “I’m really not trying to be disrespectful boss, but it seems like we can just pick up the pieces after all this is over. If anything we’ll be in a stronger position since the populace won’t be in any condition to oppose us and it’ll take awhile before the new ruler imposes any sort of order. And this Peter is another Varsakken right? He’s probably not going to be any better than his sister, so it’ll be business as usual.” “That’s a nice thought. I see you really thought this out while sitting on your chair playing cards and drinking your ale. Here’s another thought though. While we’re sitting here playing cards, telling jokes and jerking each other off, all of our business interests are getting fucked up. All our Purple Wish dens? Destroyed. That’s a shitload of our income right there and it can’t be easily made up. Our whores? Slaughtered. Again can’t easily be made up, unless you lot are gonna start selling your asses to make up the loss and I guarantee it wouldn’t. Our protection rackets? Well you can’t extort corpses, and that’s what A LOT of them are right now thanks to orcs just killing everything in sight. I mean fuck, we ARE supposed to be protecting these hapless suckers if not out of the goodness of our hearts then at least for our own pockets! Shit, that’s the whole damn point!” Your voice continues to rise as you walk around the room admonishing your people. “This idea that we’ll just pick up everything after everything is over is laughable, because there won’t be that much left and what IS left, Peter Varsakken is going to be establishing order over, and I’m telling you right now, whether he’s as corrupt as the rest of his family or not isn’t the issue. The issue is, we DON’T have a good working relationship with him like we do with his sister. Shit like that takes time and trust, both of which we are in short supply of. And to top it all off the ECS is going to still be breathing down our necks telling us we better pay up by the end of the month. How are we going to fucking do that if all of our income has turned to fucking rubble? Is ANY of this getting through or am I talking to a bunch of fucking retards?” Suddenly another one stands up. “Well gee boss, why don’t you get your precious hobs to fucking do all this shit?” “Because most of the hobs are fucking dead that’s why, which is another loss since a lot of them were our best pit fighters. And I highly recommend you take it way down, before I take YOU down.” Now several others stand up to join the troublemaker. Though a few of them look unsure. Some don’t take a side and just quietly slink back into a place where they might be safe from the fighting. One thing you are noticing is nobody seems to be siding with you. This is worse than you thought. You already have your hand on your weapon. “No! You’ve been bossing us about for months getting prepared for this fucking invasion and none of us see why we should even be involved. You do this ALL the damn time, dragging us into these unnecessary conflicts instead of just staying the fuck out of it. You did this with the religious faction war, you did this with the Felians, who were supposed to be our allies and now you’re doing it here. And who is on the losing end of all of this shit? US! That’s who! We’re the ones fucking dying! Well no fucking more! We’re all staying down here and riding this out, and if you don’t like it, tough shit, because if you haven’t noticed by now, you’re fresh outta friends and you don’t even have your filthy hob scum to protect your ass anymore.” “Seriously, you ALL feel this way? You fuckers are the most short sighted assholes ever if you’ve decided that right now would be the best time to pull a double cross and MORE fool you that you didn’t kill me right away.” “Well we can take care of that right now, and you don’t have enough bullets to kill us all.” “I don’t need to kill you all, I’m just gonna kill you and I don’t need hobs to do my work.” The troublemaker’s eyes widen and he goes for his own flintlock, but he’s too slow of course and you’ve already killed him and three others before everyone has taken cover. Nobody else is returning fire or attempting to attack, which means you’ve probably asserted your dominance once again. “That’s what I thought. Now contrary to this dead fucker’s words, I’ve been risking my ass more than ANY of you since day fucking one! Who the hell was it that was leading the damn charge when we took out the Joachimites and Felians? As I remember it was me. And what the hell have I been doing while you lot were hiding like cowards, I’ve been trying to keep this organization together by defending our shit! So don’t give me this bullshit that I’ve been leading from the back. Maybe the real problem is you shitheads have all gotten lazy because you have no regular opposition. Scared of a real fight. Y’know what? Fuck all of you. I’m going back up there to try to salvage what this organization still has left. The rest of you can either help or get the fuck out of the way, but what you can’t do is stay here. Because when I come back, I find ANYONE still here, you’ll be joining these troublemakers on the floor.” With those last words you leave. You have no idea if you’re even going to have an organization left if you survive all this, but that doesn’t matter right now. Right now you’re going to do something even more foolish and find out what the hell’s going on with Heather and her crew of wannabes because if you can get the wizards to help you in this chaos, staying here will have at least been worth the effort. Tracking them down is fairly easy because it’s the part of the city that EVERYONE is avoiding, lot of explosions, debris flying in the air, fire, strange lights and even stranger noises in general. When you arrive in the general vicinity, you finally get a good look at what’s going on. You see several creatures that remind you of some sort of demonic dwarves since they’re about the same height, and pretty stocky. They’re attacking a group of wizards wearing purple robes which you’re guessing are Heather’s people though you don’t see her. Heather’s people are holding their own, but the problem is the demons don’t stay dead or rather as soon as one is killed another one materializes. They can’t possibly keep this up forever. A little bit in the distance you also catch sight of a man in a shabby brown robe. You’re guessing this is the one summoning the demons. He must have some strong protection up, because demons aren’t known to enjoy being summoned by mortals. You also see two figures battling it out on top of one of the few standing buildings left in the area. You see all manner of magic being thrown about and most of it hitting nearby parts of the city. You can’t quite make out the figures, but you’re guessing one of those might be Heather. The way you see it, you can either climb up the building to try to help Heather or try to help her students. > You help Heather Honestly, Heather is still your best chance at getting cured, so if she’s dead then you might as well have left Holgard when this all happened. Besides, you don’t fancy your chances against multiple demons and a wizard. You figure if you’re quiet and careful enough you’ll be able to sneak up to the top of the building and just shoot the wizard opposing Heather in the back. Well that’s the ideal plan anyway. You duck into the building that Heather and her opponent are fighting on top of and avoid the demon-wizard battle completely. Surprisingly the inside of the building (which you think is Holgard’s hall of records. Some sort of government building anyway, you have no idea, never been here or paid attention to it before) isn’t too torn up by the fighting, though it looks like the people hiding here didn’t fair too well since you’re seeing a lot of dead bodies that look like they have the life drained out of them. You on the other hand are feeling a little weird. Not like your life is suddenly being drained out of you, but more like a feeling of energy around you. Almost like your hair is starting to stand on end. Must be all the magic being thrown about. You’re just about to head up to the second floor and that’s when you hear a groaning noise. You look back, but you already know what you’re going to see. Several of the corpses you just passed are now getting up and they’re all making their way towards you. “Of course. Shit.” You say and quicken your pace and the corpses do likewise. With a bunch of undead now chasing you, it’s a very good thing that government buildings tend to have the same layouts making it at least easy for you to keep finding the next flight of stairs. This is counter balanced by more corpses of the government officials stirring whenever you reach a new floor. By the time you make it to the top floor, you’ve got a horde chasing you. You scramble up the ladder to the roof and fling open the hatch. There upon the roof, you see Heather and her antagonist throwing bolts of magic and blocking each other’s attacks. It would seem they’re evenly matched and neither one is paying any attention to you. Meanwhile, corpses are making their way up the ladder. You shoot the first one in the head and then slam the hatch down and stomp on it a couple times. It’s not going to hold them for long, and you can’t stand here forever keeping all your weight on it. The noise of your pistol now causes the opposing wizard to take notice of you. He doesn’t waste any time in throwing a bolt of energy at you. You try to get out of the way, but you still get hit with a blast strong enough to cause you to go flying backwards. You ignore the pain in your chest as you desperately attempt to not fall off the side of the roof. The top half of your body hangs over the edge as you struggle to move from your precarious position. You manage to sit up just in time to see the wizard throwing another magic bolt your way. This probably would have been the end of you had the hatch not opened back up and corpses crawling out of it. Instead of hitting you, the bolt hits a couple of the corpses instead and you scramble out of the way so as not to get hit by flying body parts heading your way. As the horde continues to pour onto the roof, your visibility of the other wizard and Heather is starting to be blocked by said horde. You desperately shoot at the horde, but unlike your previous experience back at the League headquarters, you’re not going to intimidate them by killing a few. There’s nowhere to go either. The closest building isn’t close enough that you could easily jump to it, even if it was still intact. At best, from this height you MIGHT survive a fall with several broken bones and given what else is going on down in the streets, you probably wouldn’t survive too much longer. “Fuck. Looks like Warts was right. Yag’s crapped out.” You say to yourself, drawing your blade for a final stand. Just as one of the slack jawed dead eyed corpses gets within reach of you, you’re suddenly floating upward! After lingering in the air for a moment, you slowly start floating over the street causing the rest of the corpses to follow and go right over the side of the building. It’s fascinating and scary as hell at the same time since you could easily be dropping to your own death right now. From your position, you see Heather on the far side of the building with one raised hand in your direction. You also see the other wizard lying on the roof smoldering and still burning. You didn’t see it because you were too occupied with fighting corpses, but it would appear your arrival was enough distraction that allowed Heather to get the upper hand over her opponent. With all the undead now a pile of splattered bodies on the street (Well most of them anyway) and no longer a threat, Heather pulls you forward and gently places you back on the rooftop where upon you walk over to her. “Thanks.” You say. “Thank you for the distraction. Shit, I’m fucking exhausted dealing with asshole.” Heather says and indeed looking very worn. In fact, she even looks a bit older. “I was actually coming to do more than just be a distraction, but suddenly I was getting attacked by a hundred dead bean counters.” “Yeah, the repercussions of wild dark magic being thrown around. This building might have some strong magic protection, but it didn’t do shit for the people inside.” “It does?” “Well yeah. It’s where all the records to the city are held. Last thing the government wants is stuff like that getting destroyed. I put the protection wards up myself when Ludmilla requested it months ago. Why do you think the building is still more or less intact?” “Hm, thought it was unusual. Anyway, your students are having their own problem with demons that they’re fighting in the streets right now. I think the other wizard keeps summoning them.” “Of course he is. Y’know, that’s probably why these idiots got themselves kicked out of the Delantium University in the first place, dabbling with necromancy and demonology. That shit could potentially destroy a world if used as reckless as it has been here. Well guess I better sort this out, before taking a break.” You tell Heather where you saw the fighting going on and she goes over to the right side of the building and sees for herself. It’s still a stalemate from what you can tell and fortunately Heather says this will be easy to take care of. She conjures up a fireball and directs it towards the other wizard in the street below. He’s not even looking in that direction so he takes the hit. You then see a figure screaming and burning which is then followed by one of the demons leaping on him and ripping him apart. Heather’s people take advantage of the situation and blast the demons with all they have. Without the other wizard up keeping the spell, they aren’t materializing any longer and stay permanently dead. Though you do see one leap away from the battle and out of sight. Looks like that will just be one more evil thing brought into this world. (Not that it’s going to make much of a difference) With the immediate threat over with, you and Heather head back down the ladder where thankfully there aren’t anymore walking dead lurking about. Heather’s students soon meet up with the both of you. They look even more tired than she does and you notice there are significantly less of them than the last time you remember. “Grand Matriarch! Are you hurt!? I can heal you!” Gwen asks. “I’m fine Gwen, see to our friend though, maybe he’s hurt, I saw him take a magic bolt to the chest.” Heather remarks. Gwen goes over to you and starts to check you out, but you don’t feel like you really need any tending to either. “Thanks, but I’m really okay.” You say. “Let me just cast a minor healing spell, you look like you could use it. Were you fighting before you got here?” Gwen remarks and starts casting something over you. “Yeah, mostly orcs, some humans. All assholes.” “Wow, orcs huh? That takes some courage to go toe to toe with the likes of those big green guys.” “Eh, I had some green guys of my own. A little on smaller side though. Hm, starting to feel a lot better. At least not aching in pain anymore. Guess I did need that after all. Thanks.” “You’re welcome!” Gwen’s attitude is a lot different than you last remember. “Where’s your boyfriend?” “Huh? Oh Cooper? He’s not my boyfriend anymore, he ran off a couple months ago. He didn’t want to stick around during the invasion. He was a big coward after all, not like you.” “Um, yeah. I think I’m okay right now Gwen.” “You sure?” “Yeah, thanks.” “The man said he doesn’t need any more attention so stop hovering over him and go back over there with the rest of your class.” Gwen gives you a small smile before leaving you to go back to the rest of her, causing Heather to make an eye roll. “Called it.” Heather says. “Hm, well I guess better that she’s friendly now.” You say. “She’s still fucking annoying. If she didn’t show such natural talent for magic, I’d probably just throw her ass out of the school.” “Wow, I would think you’d want everyone you could get. I mean there aren’t many of you after all.” “Yeah well you don’t have to deal with her on a daily basis. However, you are correct in that pragmatism did also influence the decision to keep her around. I’m about the last very experienced wizard in this city now anyway. The few remaining true Dornans either left when I first got the school started or died during this invasion. Still it’ll be enough to turn back the tide. It’s just really taking its toll on me. Pretty sure you can already tell.” “Well I wasn’t going to say anything.” “You didn’t need to. Magic has a habit of making you old before your time. That’s why whenever you someone talks about wizards; the stereotype is some decrepit old person. It’s not that far off, except the old person usually isn’t all that old in years at least. But such is the price we pay for being skilled in the gift that Dorna bestowed upon this world.” Heather, yourself and her group take this moment to rest up and talk a bit of strategy. The current situation is bad, but not entirely unwinnable. You just have to make one major attack to turn the tide. Heather is in favor of helping what little remains of Ludmilla’s defenses at her palace. Heather says breaking up the attack going on there should destroy the rest of Peter’s forces or at least the majority of them. At that point he won’t have enough people to take the city, let alone hold it given that Ludmilla will still be alive at that point. When you ask if there is any other alternative, Heather says, you all could attack Peter directly since he’s probably still aboard his ship. The problem with that is, there is still a good-sized fleet near the Holgard docks. Heather says casting magic at the ships might bring a few of them down, but not before the rest of them start firing cannonballs back, and who knows if you’re going to get Peter or not. Still, if you take out Peter then it isn’t like you’re going to have to worry about him ever trying this in another five to ten years and having to deal with it again. > You defend the palace What Peter may or may not do in the future is something you’ll just have to face then, but right now it’s probably best to make sure Ludmilla is still in power after all this. “Let’s go bail out the baroness I guess. Though it’s not exactly like I got magic to throw around like the rest of you, not sure how much help I’ll be.” You say. “Well since it’s an incredibly bad idea to summon demons or raise corpses for protection, it can’t hurt for you to provide a little extra protection. Where is the rest of your crew anyway?” Heather asks. “Don’t ask, in fact after this is all over I might not even have one anymore. Anyway, let’s get on with this.” With as much rest as you’re going to get under these conditions, you and the wizards are soon on your way to the palace. You actually don’t have many problems on the way there, but you do come across a few unexpected faces. It’s some of the Nocturnal League. They look like they’ve already been in a few scrapes. “There you are boss! We’ve been looking all over for ya!” one of them remarks. “Well, you’ve found me, and I hope for your sake, you’ve come to help.” You say. “We have! Um, we’ve managed to save couple of our brothels from getting too fucked up. We’ve also been having people take the whores back to headquarters and stay there until it’s safe.” “Glad to hear we’re making Holgard safe for whores again at least. Come on, you’ve all got a new task. We’re heading to the palace and making sure to keep these spell slingers safe along the way because they need to save their strength for what lies ahead.” Not questioning your leadership again, your people follow you. As you get closer to the palace, you start coming across more of the fighting again. This must be where the rest of the orc mercs were sent when they weren’t tearing up your shit. Ludmilla’s people have been holding out pretty well all things considering. The orcs haven’t even breached the palace yet thankfully. If you hadn’t come along when you did though, they might have. Seeing as you’re not actually soldiers you stick to your plan of just protecting Heather and her students while they do the heavy lifting. Dozens of orc and human mercs go down by magical means be it fire, lightning, frost, or even giant weasel. (Somehow one of the Heather’s people summoned giant hostile weasel in the middle of the battle area, certainly was an unexpected sight) As for you, you do your best in keeping skirmishers from getting in close. Several of your League underlings don’t survive though and after it’s all said and done, you’re pretty much the last man standing from your group, but the day is won and what little remains of the invasion force flees. You aren’t sure if they’re going to regroup later, but there probably isn’t enough for them to do so at this point. Peter will probably have to abandon his plans of retaking his “birthright” and try again another day. Hopefully not anytime soon. You look over at your wizard allies and all of them are alive or more importantly Heather is still alive. She’s looking even worse now though. She’s roughly around your age, and now she looks about fifteen years older. You ask her if she’s okay and she snaps at you which is slightly out of character for her, but you suppose this all has really taken a toll on her. With the immediate threat gone, the battered palace doors are finally opened up and you’re all urged to enter since the baroness wishes to speak with you all When you enter, you surprisingly see Baroness dressed for battle; no fancy royal robes, she’s wearing finely made armor. A sword even hangs by her side. Apparently she was fully prepared to not go quietly if need be. First thing she does is address Heather and her people and going on about how she is thankful for their help. Heather is doing her best to look cordial, but it’s obvious that she barely even wants to be here anymore. Doesn’t help when Ludmilla mentions Heather’s obvious aging through magic use and mentions that she made sure to use her own magic sparingly so as not to over exert herself. You can imagine that if this was anyone else but the baroness, Heather would be igniting her on fire for her words since Ludmilla’s coming off like she’s just as knowledgable about magic as Heather is. After a brief discussion about sweeping up the remainder of the invasion force she finally turns her attention to you. Heather and the rest leave since they more work to do and Heather looks anxious to get out of there in the first place. “So, we meet again nocturnal one. Glad to see even our criminal element has a sliver of patriotism in them to defend this great city as opposed to just taking advantage of the chaos.” Ludmilla remarks. “Well, honestly, it was probably more stubbornness and pragmatism on my part rather than patriotism.” You answer. “Hm, well whatever works I say. Your service here will not be forgotten whatever your reasons may be. You can be assured that this government’s relationship with your organization will continue to be a positive one after all this is finally over.” “Glad to hear it, but I don’t think I’ve got an organization anymore. Most of them are dead, and the rest that are still alive I don’t even want to be bothered to manage anymore.” “Truly? Are you going into a new line of work then?” “Probably not, I wouldn’t know what else I could use my skills for anyway.” “You ever thought about working for me directly?” You didn’t expect that. “Work for you? Doing what exactly?” you ask. “Well it occurs to me, the intel that I received on this invasion wasn’t completely accurate. And this inaccuracy could have easily resulted in a loss. I need a better intelligence system, The Felians were good at this, but Heather convinced me that their…departure would make things better. I’ve mostly relied on her divination and contacts within the Delantium Kingdom University. However, I feel this may be putting too much pressure on her since I’m sure you agree, all of this has been an ordeal for her.” Ludmilla remarks. “Looks that way.” “Indeed, so I believe some of the burden should go to someone that obviously has more flexibility and hands on skill in spying and lurking about and I have to believe someone like you has experience in shadowy works and underhanded ways of gathering vital information when necessary.” “I suppose my skills would come in handy for such a task.” “Yes, I’m glad you see it that way and I would also remind you that while perhaps many of your numbers have been decimated, not all of them have and you already have a great system in place to draw from. I mean your brothels alone should be a beacon of information.” “Those always did come in handy for blackmail.” “And just think, you will now have MORE resources at your disposal and no longer need to worry about the law…not that you did before, but that specter still loomed over you even if it was a friendly one.” Ludmilla takes your hand, though you don’t get an impression of an attempt at seduction or attraction, just more of a way of getting your attention. It’s working. “But even a friendly dragon can crush a village whenever it feels like it. I know someone like you probably cherishes the freedom that most living outside the law come to embrace. But I tell you now that living outside the law is nothing compared to using it to rule over others. Bending it to your will as you see fit and never having to answer for it. Why? Because you make the rules and they’re completely legitimate. Don’t be a villager living near a friendly dragon, BE the dragon.” You smile a bit. The baroness certainly has a way with words. “I understand what you’re saying baroness, however even if I take you up on your offer, I don’t think I’m the friendly dragon in the scenario. That would still be you.” You say, causing her to laugh a bit. “Well, this is why you’d make a good spymaster. You’re a realist that doesn’t have delusions of grandeur! You’re right of course, I am the friendly dragon, but you at least wouldn’t have to worry about the friendly dragon’s minions because you’d indirectly be in charge of them, to a limited degree of course. Better to stand with the dragon than be under its talons.” This is just so surreal to you right now. Never in your life did you ever think you’d get an offer like this. Then again never in your life did you ever think you would ever do this much fighting either, but you guess on that day when you took your first life and had to run your ass out of Teckleville, it’s been a path of increasing bloodshed ever since. Why should Ludmilla’s offer be any stranger? Sure it’s shady and corrupt, but actually working for a government with a “real job” it’s a scenario ALMOST what your parents always wanted and at this point, why not? Might make a nice change of pace. “Well…when you put it like that, I suppose how can I say no?” In the weeks to come, you settle into your new job without much difficulty. Your main task at first is helping in reinforcing order in the city after the invasion since there is a decrease in Holgard soldiers that can patrol the streets. Establishing spies and informants about the various goings on in the city is fairly easy since the few Nocturnal League folks that remained loyal (and were still alive) are practically begging you for a chance to join. While you still aren’t sure what happened to Vera, you write a letter to her, informing her of the situation. Telling her that she’s in charge of the Nocturnal League now or whatever she wants to call it as you have moved on. You also tell her you’d like to meet with her in person if possible since you believe you still need to hammer out some details. Eventually the ECS representative comes calling for their cut (with back interest), they find that the Nocturnal League is no more in the city and they can’t do shit to you about it because you’re practically the right hand of the baroness. You aren’t sure what the repercussions though might be. You take it for granted that assassination might always be a possibility, but you’re about as prepared for that as you’re going to be. You’re more of the mind that they may just start leaning on Vera directly. Within the next two months, you’ve ironically eliminated most of the random crime in the city thanks to your secret police system. It’s probably the most orderly the city has ever been. Ludmilla certainly approves and gives you praise for being so efficient in your new position. You also finally get a response back from Vera though it’s brief. She tells you that everything is fine, but she herself has been preoccupied lately with a power struggle from some upstarts trying to start a new organization and the Jicol law enforcement being more vigilant as of late. She also says that she will watch out for the ECS and will visit Holgard as soon as she is able and wishes you well in your new position. Nothing else is said. No personal thoughts on the new situation, just facts and explanations. You half wonder if it’s even her, but the terrible handwriting is unmistakable. You chalk it up to her being perhaps very surprised by everything combined with being busy. In any case you know she’s alive. In between your new job and your concerns about your past comrade. You’ve also been thinking a lot about your family. You can imagine that your parents wouldn’t exactly be thrilled about your new position even if you did officially “go legit. While it would be easy to just forget about them, as you haven’t seen them in nearly two decades now, you can’t just dismiss them completely. After all, despite everything your mother probably still loves you and your father…well he DID bail you out of trouble for years. You decide to write a letter to them. You’re going to keep it short and vague and you don’t expect any attempt at contact back, but at least they’ll know that you’re alive and doing well. (Even if they’re skeptical about how you explain things in your letter to them) You’d like to send a letter to your sister too, but who knows where she is, so you end the letter to your parents saying you send your love to your sister as well and to let her know if they ever see her. > You time passes... Year 34 Ever since the invasion last year, Heather’s demeanor has changed considerably, though you imagine her premature aging and heavy task load don’t help… “No, I still haven’t found a way to undo your curse I’ve been really fucking busy lately in case you haven’t noticed.” Heather says. “Okay! No need to snap at me. I just thought I’d ask since it’s been awhile since we were in the same location.” You say. “Yeah well I got other shit to do. Not only do I have the thankless AND hopeless task of training what pathetic remnants of what passes for wizards nowadays, but I also have a lot of tasks from the baroness who wants protection spells all over the walls of this fucking city.” “Hm, Ludmilla is very big on defense nowadays. Understandable though given what happened.” “I thought that’s what she had you for. Sneaking about snatching dissidents and potential threats off the streets.” “I can snatch malcontents off the streets all I want or even send assassins out, but it’s never going to be enough for Ludmilla. She really wants to be safe and your magic spells greatly enhance that.” “Safe. Pfft. I could fry her brain inside her skull with minimal effort and all her protection would be for naught.” “Watch it there, treasonous words. Though any particular reason why you haven’t?” “Because I went to so much damn effort to keep her in power and ally with her, it seems pretty counter productive to just kill her now.” “Well you could take over.” “Hah. Funny guy. I’d rather fry my own brain than have the even more thankless task of running a city. I have enough on my hands running a school.” “Ludmilla seems to enjoy rulership of this city.” “She would. Look, I’d love to stand around and just bullshit with you, but as I said, I’m fucking busy today and I’d like to get in a nap first.” “Okay, fine. But you really haven’t found ANY way to dispel my curse yet?” “No, unless you want to go through Flynn’s ritual and go get yourself an unsuspecting girl to sacrifice.” “(Sigh) I know it might seem really weird, but I’m just not THAT much of a bastard yet.” “Suit yourself. Though if you ever change your mind and you really want to do me a favor, ask Gwen to help. She doesn’t have any knowledge of what will happen and I’m almost certain that she’d jump at the chance to fuck you.” “Sheesh, what did that poor girl do to you now?” “She’s fucking annoying and that’s enough. I curse the fact that she’s so naturally talented, so I’m reluctant to do anything worse than just verbally abuse her.” “But…you just offered to sacrifice her to cure me.” “Yeah well, if Elder Flynn thought it was good enough for me, it’s good enough for her.” “Wow. Okay then. I’ll leave you be.” Heather doesn’t even acknowledge your goodbye and just turns away to leave, walking a lot slower than she used to. She has truly become a very bitter woman. You’re a little concerned about her talking so freely killing the baroness. Not really because you have some great love of serving the baroness, but more the fact that such talk and your knowledge of it without doing anything about it could potentially get you in trouble if it somehow got overheard by someone else. Not to mention her general more miserable attitude nowadays puts you on less comfortable footing with her. Nothing worse than a cranky wizard. Still, you guess she’s fine for now. In any case you’re looking forward to finally meeting up with Vera in another day or so. She’s finally had time from her busy schedule of being a crime boss to come to Holgard. You’re sort of interested in learning more about what’s going on in Jicol since your new position has gotten a bit slow in Holgard, you’ve started sending out agents to various other places to keep apprised of the events going on there. So far you’ve only sent one to Klyton and a few to Delantium. You figured there was no immediate point in sending one to Jicol since in the few letters Vera sent back she’s given you brief reports herself and says that everything has been going better there and she’s suffered no visits from the ECS, which you’re glad to hear since you were sure she would. Seeing as you have nothing else to do today you decide to go relax for a few hours at the Unwavering Unicorn which is the only known tavern in Holgard that has managed to survive every form of major strife that’s occurred in this city. It wasn’t actually called that though until after this latest attack though. You guess the owner decided a name modification was in order. Makes a change from picking the usual unwelcoming violent names like Bloodbath Inn though. You take a seat in the back with your drink and enjoy the musicians currently on the stage. In the old days you probably would have preferred to spend your off time at a brothel, but you’re starting to get to a point where you’re not even missing sex any more. Which is a bit worrying on a certain level. Maybe you need to seek out new help on this situation. Maybe give your agents a new side mission of contacting the magic schools. Delantium and Klyton both have one after all. While your feelings for Tanya have certainly diminished over time, she’s certainly always going to be in your thoughts thanks to this curse. While you’re thinking about that, a man dressed in a dark hooded cloak nearly sneaks up on you and you’re just quick enough to pull your pistol out on him before he reaches your table. Given that you didn’t see him until the last minute, you can only imagine that he’s a shadow blade from the temple of Fel and most likely here on the orders of the ECS. You quickly look around. “Oh don’t worry. It’s just me and I’m not here to harm you. I doubt if I would be in any condition to do so anymore even with my magic now. Couldn’t even sneak up on you.” The man says. The chipper voice is familiar and now when you get a good look at the figure so is the face, even if it is partially disfigured now on one side. The man places a small box on the table with a hand that has two missing fingers. “Percy.” You say, though you don’t put your weapon away. “Glad you recognized me, even though I’m a little less than I originally was when we first met. But then I have you or more specifically your little wizard allies to thank for that don’t I? Ugh, I’m sitting down, feel free to keep your weapon on me though if it makes you feel better. Fucking wooden leg…” Percy sits down and you’re wondering what all this is about. “In that box you will find the noses of your agents you sent to Delantium. While the ECS recognizes that you are obviously a hard to kill man with powerful enough allies to cause more trouble than it’s worth to keep fucking with you, they will NOT tolerate you spying on their territory. Do it again, and it won’t matter who your friends in high places are. Consider this a respectful warning.” Percy says shoving the box a little closer to you. “Well, that was certainly generous of them. Were they generous enough to keep my agents alive?” you say. “After they were done with them, I’d say they were generous enough to put them out their misery. Sometimes I wish they’d done the same to me, but I guess I was just too important. Lucky me.” “At least you still have your nose.” “The physical deformities you see and even the some you don’t pale in comparison to the mental scars I have along with the ongoing headaches and nightmares thanks to you and your wizard bitch. The Ebony Claw leadership in conjunction with the Temple of Fel spent months probing and prodding my brain to learn what exactly happened to me during my first trip here. I wish every fucking day they had just killed me for incompetence. At least then I would have died in ignorance. But hey, I’m not bitter and it’s all in the past.” At this point Percy calls a waitress over and orders a drink. “So they knew.” You say. “Of course they knew! Did you really think you got away with it?” Percy says. “Well I figured if they ever learned the truth they would waste no time in getting their revenge.” “Oh the ECS is good at being patient when it wants to be. Revenge was planned, but they wanted to come up with something suitable. Now of course the standby for a less direct approach at revenge was doing something horrible to your family and loved ones…” You remain deadpan and show no expression when this is brought up, but a deep anxiety wells up inside you and you fear the worst. “However after asking around at that backwards little town you grew up in, it seemed that you left not on the best of terms anyway. Apparently you were a complete disappointment to your parents. Hell, from what I heard, not a single person spoke well of you, except for some trashy barmaid that claimed to be your girlfriend at one time.” Huh. You guess your father DID manage to save Annah. You’d show more expression of being happy to hear that, but you know you can’t right now. “In any case, killing your parents that you never seemed to give a shit about and some old ex that you fucked as a teenager hardly seemed like revenge at that point and certainly wouldn’t have meant much to you. Now your sister on the other hand was a slightly different story. It would appear that you got along very well with her since most from Teckleville said as much. Partners in crime during your youth from what I heard.” You don’t know if you can keep up this stonewall face much longer… “However, she was fortunate enough to have at one time save the life of someone currently in the top ECS leadership. He apparently has always been a little smitten with her too. So thanks to all that she was safe.” You now relax a little. Your worst fears are now over though Percy still hasn’t finished his story of revenge so you know SOMETHING bad must still be coming. “Other loved ones, friends or family of note were looked into, but the only other major one we ever learned about was a demonkin girl by the name of Tanya.” Percy says as he takes his drink from the returning waitress. “Good luck with that one.” You say barely able to contain a smile. “Hm, Indeed. You keep interesting allies. Also explains how you’ve survived so long. In any case, about this time a plain old assassination attempt was planned, but then that ongoing failure Peter Varsakken was slowly starting to gather enough forces to invade Holgard. In the past ECS had problems with him doing this, but at that time? Not so much, and it was looking like maybe an agreement could be reached. Peter was just happy we wouldn’t be sabotaging him this time.” You start nodding. “I knew those orcs were specifically targeting Nocturnal League businesses.” You say. “Well tearing down everything you had built before you died was only part of it. The next part was supposed to be the stinger, but it wasn’t anticipated that you’d actually STAY in this forsaken city and fight to the bitter end rather than run off to Jicol. And it certainly wasn’t anticipated that you’d move up in status. After it was all said and done the ECS leadership decided everything evened out and they washed their hands of it. You were out of their hair as far as business competition anymore.” “Okay, but the Nocturnal League still exists and if I had retreated to Jicol I would have just been running it there, unless you had assassins waiting for me on the way.” At this point Percy takes a big drink from his mug and gives you a big smug smile. “Y’know it’s probably too late at this point for it to matter and the Syndicate would probably prefer this to remain a secret just in case they want to use this person in the future, but given all the shit I had to go through because of you AND the Syndicate, I’m giving a big fuck you to both and telling you because at this point what is the worst either of you could do to me?” And here it comes… “There was one other person that we found that you seemed to have a bit of affection for, though killing her wouldn’t have really changed much. Sure you would have been pissed, maybe a little upset, but it wouldn’t have devastated you. If anything you would have just tried to retaliate, wasting more of our time.” “Vera.” You say. “Yes, your once second in command and dare I say…friend? Maybe even a little more? In any case, we had an interesting discussion with her and it didn’t even take much for her to agree to betray you when the time came. Guess once Ebony Claw, always Ebony Claw. She works with us now, indirectly of course, but we’re making more profit from her than we ever were with you that’s for sure.” “Bullshit.” “Is it? Think about it. Wasn’t Peter’s fleet just a little bigger than you planned despite all of Vera’s promises that she was going to convince Hessla pirates otherwise?” “That doesn’t prove anything.” “Didn’t she also try to convince you that siding with Peter would be a good idea and that you should go talk with him? That was actually the first bait, which you obviously didn’t take. The original plan was to try to kill you while aboard the ship. Second plan was when you retreated to Jicol, she would have killed you there, but as usual you’ve got the luck of Yag constantly with you. I sometimes think maybe that’s who I should have picked as a deity instead. I might not be all fucked up now.” Considering you thought your family might be dead or in danger, this information isn’t nearly as bad, but it’s still pretty hard hitting and half of the problem is you don’t know if Percy isn’t just telling you this to fuck with you. The other half is you can’t dismiss it either. In fact, his story is more plausible than you’d care to admit. Vera’s letters to you since the invasion have always been a bit vague and come off less “close” than they did in the past and Peter’s large fleet is something you always wondered about since you know Vera could be convincing when she wanted to be. It just might have been in the wrong way. Plus even the fact that she hasn’t told you that she’s been dealing with the ECS is suspect. While you’re pondering all this, Percy finishes up his drink. “Well I can see you got a lot to think about. Whatever it is you decide to do isn’t going to matter to the ECS. So kill her if you wish, there’s probably someone even more pliable in the Nocturnal League that’s more than willing to continue working with us. If I were you though? I’d do something worse than kill her because as you can see with me, there are worse things than dying.” With those words Percy gets up, wincing in a bit of pain as he does. “Remember, no more of your people in Delantium.” As Percy hobbles away, you briefly consider opening the small box he left, but don’t bother, instead throwing it away. You also briefly consider shooting Percy, but given the pathetic state he’s already in and potential problems it could bring, you decide against it. He’s just the messenger anyway. It isn’t until you get home that you allow yourself an emotional release. Within your explosive rage of breaking a few things and yelling, you eventually calm down. > You confrontation Maybe it’s paranoia and maybe you’re feeling the emotional effects of possibly being betrayed, but as far as you’re concerned, even if you find out that you’re wrong and she gets pissed about you even accusing her and never speaks to you ever again, you’re still going to feel better about all this. You’re going to find out one way or another after she gets off that ship. You’re a bundle of energy until the day Vera arrives. When she does its all smiles and hugs like you’re both so happy to see each other. Maybe she’s even being sincere, you don’t know yet. “Glad to finally see you here. How are things in Jicol?” you ask. “Oh you know, it’s the same old thing. Some good days, some bad, but can’t complain. The Nocturnal League isn’t the same without you though.” Vera remarks. “I’ll bet. So is there any place you wanted to go first?” “You a tour guide for Holgard now too? Well, I suppose after all the shit that happened during the invasion resulted in a lot of damage and rebuilding, so I’m almost betting my favorite tavern isn’t even standing anymore.” “The Blackheart? Nah. Totally destroyed. I think there’s a new weapon shop there now.” “Oh well. I suppose the old Nocturnal headquarters is gone now too?” “Not gone, but it’s currently under construction. Trying to turn it into a proper place to train any future agents. Bunch of dwarves there right now, and they aren’t fond of anyone getting in the way of their work. Warts suggested getting goblins since it would be much cheaper, but I figured the extra money would be worth sturdier construction.” “Wow, really taking your new job seriously huh? Well in any case I don’t have any preference on where to go, so whatever you decide, we can do that.” “Well I was thinking of taking you back to my place.” Vera looks at you with a smile. “Well that’s very forward of you. You didn’t even offer me dinner first.” Vera remarks. “I didn’t ask if you if you were currently with anyone either.” You say. “Would it really matter to you if I was?” “Not really.” “Well I guess let’s go then.” Vera takes your arm and the pair of you walk to your home. Along the way you and her talk about some of changes in the city. The discussion is fairly light and superficial, though Vera’s demeanor is pretty affectionate. You went into this with a flirty approach since you wanted to see if there was a complete personality change with her. So far though, she’s acting about how you’ve always known her to. You’re getting the impression that she might not be faking all of it or if she is, she’s doing a very good job. Whether she is or not though doesn’t matter, you’re still learning the facts today. When you get to your home, you show her around a bit makes a lot of comments about how nice the place is and that it’s better than her own current dwelling. “Ah the bar, I’ll just help myself if you don’t mind.” Vera says pouring herself a drink. “Go ahead.” You answer. “Is that a real Daquala head on the wall?” “Yeah, Warts gave me that as a house warming gift. Didn’t like the ugly thing at first, but eh, it’s sort of grown on me now.” “So how is the halfbreed anyway?” “He’s fine. Runs some trading post with his family in Spiderfang territory. He exchanges information for coin with me from time to time.” “Sheesh, Warts a family man with a regular job, you working for the government. So much has changed here and it all seems so odd.” “In some ways I suppose it is, but then Holgard was never a beacon of justice. I mean I’m still involved in a lot of shady dealings. I just got legal permission to do it now.” “Hah, I suppose that’s true.” “So how about you?” “How about me what?” “I’ve been going on and on about myself and you haven’t told me about what’s going on with you.” “Oh, like I said, nothing much. Just dealing with smugglers and pirates, staying a step ahead of the law when I have to, trying to keep the organization together and keep turning a profit. You know the routine, you had to do it.” “Mm, and you said you haven’t had any trouble from the Ebony Claw Syndicate?” “Nope. Not a peep from them. Guess they just don’t care about the League since it’s so small and not really a threat to them.” “I suppose not, but still I thought for sure they would pay you a visit after they found out, the League’s only remaining holdings were in Jicol and under new management.” “I dunno. Maybe they’re preoccupied with other things…hey so since you work directly for Ludmilla now, have you been invited to any more of her fancy parties?” Okay. She was pretty quick to change the subject… You entertain some more of Vera’s questions and the pair of you also proceed to talk about the “old days. The pair of you laughs about various events that occurred while you two worked together. You’re having such a good time reminiscing that you almost forget that you’re probably talking to someone who betrayed you. However, it’s always still in the back of your mind and you haven’t forgotten. You suppose as much as you want to find out, you’re trying to enjoy “what once was” while you still can. Meanwhile Vera’s gotten a little tipsier and a whole lot flirtier. “So. We finally gonna fuck or what?” Vera asks, moving in a little closer on you. “Now who’s being forward?” you say. “Well I mean you invited me over, you’re showing off your big house and you’re plying me with alcohol. You don’t need to wait until I pass out, I’m more than willing right now.” “Hm, I can tell. Though you actually started drinking without me giving it to you.” “I suppose I did. I guess I always have taken the initiative in our relationship.” “You always did have a thing for me didn’t you?” “I’d tell you not to flatter yourself, but I think you know I have always found you quite attractive. Don’t even know why exactly, considering the first time we met you threatened me with rape.” “Oh come on, I told you a long time ago that I wasn’t actually going to do that.” “I know, but I’m fucked up enough to find that enticing in some weird way, but only if it was you of course.” “Wow, that is fucked up. Maybe I should wait until you’re passed out then.” Vera laughs a bit. “No, I want to be fully awake for when you ravish me.” “Sure I’m not going to be pissing off any pirate boyfriends of yours?” “None that matter. And if you meant Zamed, I’m pretty sure he’s not going to object since I heard he died pissing off the Governor of Hessla months ago. Not like I’d seen him since we went with your idea to side with Ludmilla anyway. Seems like it was the right choice given the circumstances.” Vera moves in to kiss you, and you slightly move away. “Funny you should bring that up since I heard an interesting story about all that recently.” You say. “Oh?” Vera asks with a mild annoyance that you didn’t kiss her back. “Yeah, a Syndicate member paid me a visit recently. Said you’ve been dealing with them. Said you’ve been dealing with them for awhile now.” Vera sits back and you look at her face. It’s like all the color has drained from it and it’s at that moment you know, no matter what she tells you, she’s betrayed you. You’re just wondering if she’s going to admit to it. “Well?” “Um…shit…I didn’t want to tell you. I thought you’d be mad. But…” Vera exhales deeply and then continues. “I have had dealings with the ECS, but I sort of had to. I mean they still wanted a cut of the profits, what could I do? I know you would understand that part, but I’m guessing you’re not too pleased to find out I was slave trading again.” Your eyes briefly widen and go back to normal when she admits to that. You didn’t actually know about the slave trading, though you suppose you aren’t too surprised. It’s what she did before she joined with you and you imagine that it’s pretty lucrative what with all the pirate types she has to do business with. She probably was doing it the whole time she was sent to Jicol. Honestly you don’t really give a shit though. What is more telling is she’s admitting to it now meaning that she’s trying to admit a “lesser” offense to distract from a greater one she’s hiding. It’s one of the oldest criminal tricks in the book. You look at Vera and it’s very apparent she’s hoping that you’ll believe this partial truth and let it go. You won’t though, and she probably knows that too. “Vera. Before we continue, I’m going to have to ask you to disarm. I know that…” Before you can get another word in, Vera suddenly throws the rest of her drink in your face and springs from your couch and tries to run for the front door. She doesn’t get far though thanks to her balance not being the best due to her alcohol intake. She trips and slams hard on the floor and then promptly throws up as well. Meanwhile all you’ve done is stand up and drawn your pistol. You walk over to her, as she crawls away from the liquid mess she’s left on the floor. She turns over and sits on the floor with her knees to her chest and her back against the wall. She looks at you and then starts to cry. You can hardly believe this is the same woman you once trusted with your life. “(Sob) You…you know (sob) don’t you?” Vera says. “Well I know what the smug asshole ECS rep told me and you’ve pretty much confirmed it with your actions. In fact I sort of figured you’d outright deny everything or put up more of a fight. Didn’t think it would be this easy. Guessing you must feel guilty about all this on some level. Again before we continue, I’m going to have to ask you disarm.” Vera nods and slowly throws away her blades and her own flintlock far enough away that she wouldn’t reach them in time. You thought you were going to be far angrier about all this, but now you’re almost feeling pity, but maybe that’ll change when you question her. “Okay, so here’s the ultimate question. Why?” you ask. “I…don’t know.” Vera says. “You’re REALLY going to have to do better than that Vera.” “I don’t know! I guess I was pissed at you okay?” “You were pissed at me? For what?! I thought we got along really well!” “Yeah as friends. You always KNEW I wanted to be more than that and instead of being direct, you just sent me away to a fucking island while you were fucking that wizard chick.” “Vera…what the hell? This isn’t even making any sense! I was direct with you multiple times if you recall. As I remember I never even lead you on in any way. And for the record I was not fucking Heather. In any case I hardly see how that’s an excuse for you trying to have me killed!” “I didn’t try to have you killed! I just wanted us to be close again! You were supposed to retreat back to Jicol, not stay here and be the fucking hero of Holgard!” “Okay, some of this still isn’t making any sense. Actually a lot of it, but this is a much different version of what was going to happen to me when I got back to Jicol. I was told you were going to kill me.” “I wasn’t going to kill you! And I would have stood up to the ECS if they tried!” “That’s not what I heard.” “And you believe the ECS about everything? Don’t you think that they might be lying about some of it just to fuck with you? To turn us against each other?” “Well, yeah I considered that, but considering some of their story has already been confirmed as true, I’m finding it a little easier to believe an organization that has made no pretenses of being pissed with me than a woman who is obviously more mentally unstable than I ever could have known. And they already turned us against each other when you agreed to deal with them! Either you’re so delusional that you believed working with the ECS would somehow bring us together, and I’m really struggling to believe you’re that stupid, or you’re just lying about everything. At this point either one wouldn’t surprise me.” Vera makes one last outburst. “Why didn’t you just let this go? (sob) There was no more danger to you any more and I certainly wasn’t going to conspire against you again. I felt sick the first time I did it. Obviously I STILL feel sick about it. I felt this way ever since I realized how deep I was getting. I was just so…I don’t know…. (sniffle) I would always think about that time we got to go to the baroness’ party. I remember mentally believing myself to be a princess and you a prince. How I wished it were you and me that night instead of you and some random whore. I really think things could have been different between us. We could have been more than friends. Even now, I wish we could just forget everything and just live in this house together as husband and wife. I don’t understand, I did everything for you. Why couldn’t you just…love me? (Sob)” As Vera breaks down again into tears, you’re almost at a loss for words at this point. Your relationship with women has always been “complicated” but this is a new one on you. You never realized just how damn deep Vera’s feelings were for you and honestly it’s still a bit of a mystery to you. Especially given that she betrayed you. And she did betray you. No matter what her twisted logic may dictate, you can’t forget that. And you can’t forgive it. Even if you are genuinely feeling sorry for Vera right now. The ECS may not have gotten the most hurtful revenge on you, but they didn’t exactly fail. You can’t even be mad at them. Maybe in some weird way this is finally all your good luck crapping out on you. You have done a lot of treacherous shit yourself after all. In any case, you also remember Percy’s advice about doing something worse than killing her. You aren’t sure if it’ll make you feel any better about this, but you’re fairly certain it isn’t going to make you feel any worse. > You mercy Whatever Vera has done to you, you’re not going to torture her anymore. What’s done is done and there is no need in drawing this out. You put away your pistol and crouch down besides Vera who is still upset and probably expecting you to kill her. “Vera…Vera…shhhhh…calm down…” you say. Vera still doesn’t look in your direction still crying. You run your hand briefly over her hair and then move in closer to hug her. Vera immediately hugs you back, you feel her squeeze you as if her life depended on it. “Don’t let go…don’t let go…just hold me forever…” she says in between the tears. “I got you Vera.” You say. “(sob) I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” “I know.” Vera mumbles more things about how she wishes you both could do everything all over. She then feels something against the side of her head. She moves her head back enough and looks at you with tears in her eyes. “I love you…” she says. You pull the trigger, blowing Vera’s brains out the other side of her head onto the wall and also getting blood on you in the process. You sit with Vera’s body for a moment saddened that this was necessary at all. You wipe your own eyes and eventually stand up and compose yourself. You get some of your people to dispose of Vera’s body making some comment that she was an enemy to Holgard. (Not that they were going to question you anyway) And that’s it. There’s nothing more to it. You’d like to forget about this dark day as soon as possible, but you know that’s going to take a bit of time. To get your mind off it, you focus on your other problem, which is the curse you’re still dealing with. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for that, things might have been different with Vera in the first place. Since Heather doesn’t seem to be very helpful right now, you go back to wondering if you should seek help from other magic types which again makes you consider sending someone to ask around Klyton or the magic University in Delantium. You already got an agent that reports on Klyton so that’s no problem. Delantium however is another story since Percy just said the ECS killed everyone you sent there. While you don’t want to piss off the ECS severely, you also don’t like being told where you can’t go. You decide to hold off on sending anyone to Delantium until you get word back from your agent in Klyton. Based on his report, you can make your decision to risk sending some to Delantium or not. A month passes and eventually you get word from your agent in Klyton. She mentions that the Klyton magic school is barely better than the one in Holgard and the only main difference is they have a nicer looking school and tend to be more “scholarly” as opposed to “battle ready.” Your agent says that they were interested in based on the sealed letter you had her deliver to them. However it would require you to take a trip to Klyton. A bit unusual for you considering you haven’t left Holgard in…well since you got here nearly twenty years ago. You imagine you could get the time to leave though if you wanted. This brings you back to pondering if you should still send an agent to the Delantium magic university. Chances are, if they’re interested they’re going to just ask you to do what the robes in Klyton want you to do. Namely go there yourself and that’s probably even going to be even more dangerous than just sending an agent there. > You send an agent to Delantium You might as well explore all your options and you really don’t feel like being intimidated. You’ll just pick your most competent agent and tell him to be extremely careful and to not linger there anymore than he has to or he’s going to suffer a horrible fate After sending your agenr off, once again you play the waiting game. During this time you’re pretty paranoid, expecting ECS assassins to strike at any moment. You increase security and generally don’t get much sleep. On the plus side, it’s kept your mind off Vera completely. Eventually in a month your agent returns to you none the worse for wear. He explains he had no problems whatsoever. Also says that he delivered your message and explains to you that a wizard going by the name High Mage Teklis says he’s interested in your situation and will meet with you in a week since he was supposed to visit the Holgard magic school anyway for a potential exchange of ideas. Your agent then gives you a sealed letter saying Teklis provided details for you within it. You open it up and it just explains that he’ll be bringing various objects to detect and dispel any curses you might have brought on by infernal creatures. He goes on to assure you that he’s studied infernals and has all the confidence that he can fix it. Of course he also gives you a price too for his time. It’s actually a pretty high number, and you’re sort of surprised that a wizard would be interested in such “mundane” rewards, but in any case, it’s doable and certainly no object for getting rid of a curse. You spend the time before he arrives going about your regular business and squeezing a little extra money from the citizens under the guise of a mandatory “defense tax” so you don’t lose most of your current savings paying the wizard. You have your people tell you when Teklis arrives in the city, though to your surprise when he finally does, he comes directly to your home escorted by one of your people. You see a very well dressed older man in a suit rather than wizard robes standing before you. He also carries a satchel with him. After he greets you, you return the greeting and dismiss your agent who escorted him. “You seem surprised to see me, you were expecting me correct?” Teklis says. “Yes, however I was also told that you were meeting with the head of the wizard school here and I figured that would be your first priority of your trip.” You say. “I can already tell how that’s going to go. A lot of attempts by the one in charge trying to convince me that they are an upstanding place of learning when it’s probably going to consist of a group little more than organized hedge mages or a large coven.” “Wow. Don’t mince words do you?” “Just telling you what I’m expecting.” “Far be it from me to get involved in your wizard standards, but the head of the school and her students did protect this city not too long ago.” “Oh I don’t mean to say they won’t have talent at all, but I can imagine in a place like this that they won’t be the most disciplined of magic users. It’s really not their fault and at least they have practical experience rather than that dying school in Klyton where all they seemingly do is read old dusty books and argue about theory all day.” Apparently the Delantium Kingdom wizards think very highly of themselves. “However, apologies if I have insulted your friend. My understanding is that you are friends with…Heather is it?” “Well nowadays I’d say that wouldn’t exactly be the term I’d use, but yes we do have a working relationship. In any case, your views on her school are not my concern; you can take that up with her. I’m just glad that you agreed to meet me.” “Yes, when your agent came to the university asking questions and I caught wind of it, I was intrigued and then when I found out a little bit more of your situation in the letter I was even more interested. So hence why I’m here to meet you first. We can actually get started right away as long we aren’t going to be disturbed.” “No I can’t imagine we will be. Do we need to clear furniture for you to make a circle on the floor or something?” Teklis laughs as he puts his satchel on a table and pulling out objects. “Oh no. None of that. Well at least not yet since I don’t know how back this curse you say is. Now I know you went over some of it your condition in your letter, but I get the impression you didn’t tell me everything and I’m going to need to know everything if I’m going to properly help you.” You begin to explain in the shortest detail possible about your relationship with Tanya and the after effects. While you’re doing that, Teklis occasionally holds up some strange objects at you, some of which glow. He also says a few words and does a lot of hand motions in front of you, occasionally telling you to just continue your story and not to worry about what he’s doing. Eventually you complete your tale and Teklis completes whatever it is he was doing. “Well?” you ask. “Well, I got good news and bad news.” Teklis says. “Well, give me the good since I haven’t had much of that lately.” “Okay, well you aren’t cursed.” “What?” “You aren’t cursed. I detect no curses on you. Infernal or otherwise.” “Are you sure?” “Quite sure. I’ve studied infernals long enough to know that you haven’t been cursed by one. Now I do detect traces of infernal presence on you, but given what you told me about your relationship with this Tanya girl, that’s hardly surprising and that’s always going to be there.” “Well…maybe she gave me a disease? Like demon crotch rot or something?” Teklis laughs again. “Trust me m’boy if you had demon crotch rot, you would know immediately and we wouldn’t be having this pleasant conversation. No, you don’t have anything. I mean I can’t explain why those women died after you had sex with them. Maybe it was just bad coincidence and you jumped to conclusions because somewhere in your mind you missed Tanya so much and it was easier for you not to pursue someone else. If you got a curse, it’s just the one you made up in your mind.” Well this is a bizarre outcome. You almost can’t believe it. “I have to say, never met someone who had a relationship with a succubus and gone on to live a relatively normal life. Usually they’re either killed by said succubus or less common, they commit suicide after an extended period time of separation. Of course I guess it helped you met her before she completely transformed. I imagine your short lived relationship with her was very special.” Teklis says. “Yeah…it was. It’s been years now and for the most part I do get on with my life, but there really isn’t a day that goes by that an image of her doesn’t briefly pop up in my mind. I don’t necessarily always feel the loss, but she’s there in my head you know?” you say. Teklis nods and puts away a couple of his magic objects. “So is that the bad news? That I’ll always have a vague sense of loss that won’t ever go away?” you ask. “No, the bad news is much worse than that.” Teklis says. “Shit, what is it? Am I going to start feeling a greater sense of loss as time goes on? Am I going to die of a broken heart in a few years or something?” “Oh you’re going to die, but not in a few years and certainly not of a broken heart.” Suddenly Teklis waves his hand and everything seems to slow to a crawl and the room begins to darken. You instinctively go for your pistol, but every move you make is a snails pace compared to Teklis who is now directing his hands towards you. You are hit by a solid black beam of dark energy and feel your life force not just draining, but being ripped from you. Every part of you feels like its being eaten alive which might be somewhat true as your body begins to shrivel and you collapse to the floor, too weak to stand up any longer, let alone hold your weapon. “The Syndicate should have done this years ago.” Teklis says. Those words are the last you hear before everything goes black forever.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Whatever Vera has done to you, you’re not going to torture her anymore. What’s done is done and there is no need in drawing this out. You put away your pistol and crouch down besides Vera who is still upset and probably expecting you to kill her. “Vera…Vera…shhhhh…calm down…” you say. Vera still doesn’t look in your direction still crying. You run your hand briefly over her hair and then move in closer to hug her. Vera immediately hugs you back, you feel her squeeze you as if her life depended on it. “Don’t let go…don’t let go…just hold me forever…” she says in between the tears. “I got you Vera.” You say. “(sob) I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” “I know.” Vera mumbles more things about how she wishes you both could do everything all over. She then feels something against the side of her head. She moves her head back enough and looks at you with tears in her eyes. “I love you…” she says. You pull the trigger, blowing Vera’s brains out the other side of her head onto the wall and also getting blood on you in the process. You sit with Vera’s body for a moment saddened that this was necessary at all. You wipe your own eyes and eventually stand up and compose yourself. You get some of your people to dispose of Vera’s body making some comment that she was an enemy to Holgard. (Not that they were going to question you anyway) And that’s it. There’s nothing more to it. You’d like to forget about this dark day as soon as possible, but you know that’s going to take a bit of time. To get your mind off it, you focus on your other problem, which is the curse you’re still dealing with. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for that, things might have been different with Vera in the first place. Since Heather doesn’t seem to be very helpful right now, you go back to wondering if you should seek help from other magic types which again makes you consider sending someone to ask around Klyton or the magic University in Delantium. You already got an agent that reports on Klyton so that’s no problem. Delantium however is another story since Percy just said the ECS killed everyone you sent there. While you don’t want to piss off the ECS severely, you also don’t like being told where you can’t go. You decide to hold off on sending anyone to Delantium until you get word back from your agent in Klyton. Based on his report, you can make your decision to risk sending some to Delantium or not. A month passes and eventually you get word from your agent in Klyton. She mentions that the Klyton magic school is barely better than the one in Holgard and the only main difference is they have a nicer looking school and tend to be more “scholarly” as opposed to “battle ready.” Your agent says that they were interested in based on the sealed letter you had her deliver to them. However it would require you to take a trip to Klyton. A bit unusual for you considering you haven’t left Holgard in…well since you got here nearly twenty years ago. You imagine you could get the time to leave though if you wanted. This brings you back to pondering if you should still send an agent to the Delantium magic university. Chances are, if they’re interested they’re going to just ask you to do what the robes in Klyton want you to do. Namely go there yourself and that’s probably even going to be even more dangerous than just sending an agent there. > You just head to Klyton After all you’ve been through, maybe some time away from Holgard is exactly what you need right now. Plus you’re not exactly anxious to go pissing off the Ebony Claw Syndicate again after they basically left you off with a warning. So you write a letter back to the Klyton magic university and explain that you’ll be heading that way as soon as possible. You also write a letter to your agent there saying that you want her to meet you and make arrangements for when you arrive next week. You then pack a few things and give notice to the baroness that you’re leaving for Klyton making something up about rumors that her brother Peter is potentially working with the Klyton government in order to form his next invasion. Being the paranoid sort she is, she’s perfectly fine with you going there personally to check things out. Of course as you predicted, you still have to stick around a bit to take care of some of your current business. After a few days of taking care of your mundane tasks you catch the next carriage out of Klyton and you’re soon on your way. The trip to Klyton is uneventful, but it gives you plenty of time to think and even appreciate the countryside somewhat. You haven’t left the city in so long, you almost forgot what wilderness looked like. A lot of the wooded area that used to surround Holgard is gone now thanks to years of Ludmilla expanding the roads and building the fleet to protect the city. Just as well as Warts runs his trading post now as he won’t get many offers as a guide anymore. By nightfall, the woods disappear completely and become more open field. It’s at this point you drift in and out of sleep a bit. You see a few random homes and eventually you see the city. Much like Holgard, great walls surround it and the tops of tall structures can be seen looming above, though such structures already look fancier than any in Holgard. When you’re within the gates it’s dawn and you can see that the city is a lot cleaner and organized looking than Holgard. Granted since you’ve risen in status, Holgard has gotten a bit better about this, but this is definitely a city that has never undergone the same struggles Holgard ever has. Also unlike Holgard there are a lot more carriages not only going in and out of the city, but also within it. Public transportation was never a high priority in Holgard for various reasons, you’re wondering though if it should start. Your parents differed on speaking about their old home to you and your sister. Your mother sometimes would talk about fond memories in Klyton, but your father not so much. As far as he was concerned the best thing about the city was meeting your mother. Makes you wonder though how things might have been different if you’d run to Klyton instead of Holgard. In any case, you’re not here to sight see; you’re here in the hopes that your condition can get cured or dispelled or whatever they have to do. You exit the carriage and your agent is soon there to greet you. “Hello sir. Your trip was without trouble I trust?” she asks. “It was.” You answer. “Good to hear. I have you booked at the Galloping Mare Inn. It’s one of the better places in this city.” “That’s fine. Just as long as it isn’t infested with vermin. I’d rather get a bit of rest without potentially getting bitten. (Yawn) So how far is it…apologies what’s your name again?” “I’m Claire, and it’s not far sir, we can take a carriage to there quicker. It’s also fairly close to the university so when you’re rested I can take you over there.” You nod and soon the pair of you are in another carriage and heading over to your inn. You arrive at the Galloping Mare where Claire leads you to your room and you immediately head over to the bed and get some rest. You figure you won’t sleep too long since you already slept a little on the ride to Klyton. You wake up in a few hours and fortunately its still light outside. Probably afternoon by now though. After preparing yourself, you leave your room and find Claire downstairs having a drink with some merchant type. When she sees you approach she excuses herself and immediately goes to see you. “You’re awake sir, are you ready to go?” Claire asks. “Yes, who was that?” you ask. “Oh just one of my contacts for information sir. I can give you a full report of what’s been going on here after you’ve completed your business with the wizards if you like.” “Sure, might as well. Okay let’s go.” Doesn’t take long for you to get there and soon you’re at your dad’s old place of higher learning. You never thought you’d ever be here. Claire then takes you to the magic school area of the campus and that’s where you part ways with her. She tells you she’ll be back at the inn. You step inside one of the magic university buildings and expect to be stopped or “greeted” much like how you were in Holgard by Heather’s underlings. Instead you encounter nobody and walk down several empty corridors almost wondering if the place has been abandoned. Eventually you see some old guy in a robe and figure he must be someone of importance. You call out and he slowly turns to you and making motions with his hands. “Hold on! Hold on! I’m not here to do anything sinister! I’m the director of Holgard security and I’m here about a curse. I have one on me. I sent two letters to this place and my agent gave them both to your people. I was told you agreed to meet me and could help.” “Hm, must have been High Mage Thomas. He tends to like to speak for the rest of us whether we want him too or not. The man for some reason believes magic should mainly be used for altruistic reasons. The man might as well be a Joachimite Priest if he’s going to believe such nonsense.” The grumpy wizard says, but puts down his hands. “Isn’t this a school? Where is everyone?” “It is a school, but I’m not sure what you were expecting. Magic isn’t exactly a common force in the world that it used to be so you’re not going to find with place overflowing with people. If it were, things would be severely different in this city. Not to mention the government isn’t exactly the most keen on supporting it. If it wasn’t for one of our own on the Klyton Council, I dare say this place would have been shutdown entirely.” “That’s rather short sighted, wizards can be useful allies in case of an attack.” “Hm, well glad to see you have some sense at least from a pragmatic standpoint, which is more than can be said for those fools on the Klyton Council. Though there’s currently a man running for a spot on there. He seems to be more in favor of relaxing the magic restrictions in this city. I might actually vote for him. Anyway you said had a curse or some such bother?” “Yes.” “Well, I guess since you’re here, might as well take a look at you. Indeed I’m currently the only one here to do so. Come with me.” The old wizard motions you to follow him and mentions that his name is Ahmed. When you ask where are all the other wizards, he says that most of the staff are at some conference and as for any students, the few that they do have are currently out performing their field assignments for classes so they wouldn’t really be lingering around here. “I’m sure there are a couple of other staff actually around, but probably locked up in their labs either performing experiments or reading. That’s how it usually is for us nowadays though. Seems like we’re all just studying magic rather than actually using it for any real purpose.” “But you said you send the students on field assignments.” “And depending on the wizard, even that could be fairly easy. Personally I send them to at least bring down a beast of some sort, but many staff member have gotten so complacent they usually just tell them to go hunt down various plants. Honestly it’ll probably be the most excitement they’ll ever get if they stay in Klyton. And if they do stay, they’ll probably become staff and they’ll send their students on some piss easy task, because hey that’s what they had to do so why break the cycle? Feh, it’s really fucking pathetic of what this institution has become.” Ahmed sounds really bitter. Makes you wonder why he’s still here Soon you enter a small lab and he motions you to sit in a chair and asks you to tell him exactly about your condition and how it’s affecting you and how you acquired it. You go into your story about Tanya and most of what that entails. While you’re speaking Ahmed occasionally holds up a glowing magic object to you and mumbles a few incantations. He just ignores you whenever you ask what he’s doing and finally he speaks. “You don’t have a curse on you.” Ahmed says. “What?” you say. “I detect no curses. Infernal or otherwise.” “Are you sure?” “I’d take that as an insult if I actually thought you knew what you were questioning. However, yes I am quite sure.” Well maybe it’s not a curse, maybe it’s a magic disease like demon crotch rot or something.” “Trust me, if THAT was your problem, you wouldn’t even be here right now.” “But…but all those girls. They all died.” “Yeah, well shit happens. Look, I can’t explain that since I wasn’t there. All I can tell you is you don’t have any curses on you. As for the girls, well it sounds like you weren’t exactly going with the most morally upstanding ones and violent death is usually a common one amongst the lower class and lesser born. I’d chalk it up to bad coincidence.” Well this is a bizarre outcome. You almost can’t believe it. “However, there IS something.” Ahmed adds. “Shit, I knew it.” You respond. “Well calm down it’s not actually bad, or at least not actively bad.” “What is it?” “Your relationship with a succubus is extremely unusual and while she didn’t curse you, she DID leave a mark on you. Now most of the time when this happens, the victim usually dies after the succubus finally tires of them and kills them personally or in a much rarer case, the victim falls into a deep depression and commits suicide after an extended period time of separation because the succubus has abandoned them.” “So is that going to happen to me?” “Well, you’ve already lived much longer than someone marked by a succubus. Now I imagine in your case it helped immensely that you developed a loving relationship with this Tanya before she fully changed, but I’m sure you still feel the loss correct?” “It is still there from time to time. Yes.” “Mm. Well I wouldn’t want to assume that you’re going to be fine just because you’ve severely beaten the odds. You’re still marked and who knows what that could do if it ever really kicked in. However, we can purge that from you. If we did you probably wouldn’t feel as bad and a great weight would be lifted.” “That can be done? Wait, do I have to have sex with some girl in a circle while you perform the ritual to summon Tanya?” “What?! No! Where did you get that idea? We don’t need to summon anything, but it’s still going to take a little prep work on my end first. I would like you to come back here in a couple days and see me if possible.” You think about it at first wondering if you should go through with it. Then you think that that’s pretty much why you came here in the first place and it would be good to finally rid yourself of all of Tanya’s “presence” even if you were fond of her. Plus now this sounds even less risky than it did before. “Sure. Might as well have a clean slate.” “Good, glad to hear it. Okay, you can leave now, I should start preparing.” You part ways with Ahmed and feeling slightly more upbeat you rush out of the magic school and head back to the inn where you find Claire speaking with a couple people. “Claire! Where’s the nearest brothel in this city?!” you ask. “Um, a couple blocks south of here sir. The Fancy Tickler” Claire responds. “Thanks!” Before she can even respond back, you’re gone and already on your way. When you get to the Fancy Tickler, you immediately start throwing coin around so that the ladies can start throwing their pussy your way. You spend practically the whole night at the place. Then the next day you do it all over again. It truly is a wonderful thing to be free! Third day in Klyton and you figure Ahmed should have his shit together by now and you’re ready to get this taken care of completely. You enter the magic school which is still relatively empty and head to Ahmed’s lab. When you arrive, you see Ahmed speaking with a very well dress man with a goatee. They both turn towards you. “I’m here. What’s going on and who is this?” you ask. “This is Mr. Reynolds. I believe I mentioned him the last time we spoke. He’s running for a spot on the Klyton Council.” Ahmed says. “Oh.” Mr. Reynolds begins to move closer towards you, studying you even. “You…you look very familiar. Almost like someone I once did business with…tell me someone in your family ever own an inn here?” Mr. Reynolds asks. “Um…yeah my grandparents, though my dad also worked there.” You say. “Hah! Yes! That’s where you looked familiar. I loaned your grandfather money which your father ended up paying off. Well, this is a nice coincidence, or perhaps fate?” Searching your memory, you remember in one of your mother’s stories about the inn she mentioned a Mr. Reynolds before. You never knew much detail though since you never really paid much attention. Mr. Reynolds flashes a smile at you, which really puts you at unease. In fact you’re starting to smell something not unlike brimstone. And that smell can only mean one thing. “Fuck! Infernal!” you shout and before you can even get your pistol out, Ahmed’s already cast a spell that’s frozen you in place. Mr. Reynolds sniffs the air around you a bit and then speaks. “Yes, this one certain does have a tether to the infernal realm and I can certain use such a thing for the upcoming election, though hardly need the entire body, just the heart will do.” You look on helplessly as Mr. Reynolds slowly puts his hand into your chest and pulls out your still beating heart. He then thanks Ahmed for this and says he will definitely honor his agreement to push magic as a greater force in this city. As for you, your body slumps lifelessly to the floor and will play no more role in world events whatever those may be.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe it’s paranoia and maybe you’re feeling the emotional effects of possibly being betrayed, but as far as you’re concerned, even if you find out that you’re wrong and she gets pissed about you even accusing her and never speaks to you ever again, you’re still going to feel better about all this. You’re going to find out one way or another after she gets off that ship. You’re a bundle of energy until the day Vera arrives. When she does its all smiles and hugs like you’re both so happy to see each other. Maybe she’s even being sincere, you don’t know yet. “Glad to finally see you here. How are things in Jicol?” you ask. “Oh you know, it’s the same old thing. Some good days, some bad, but can’t complain. The Nocturnal League isn’t the same without you though.” Vera remarks. “I’ll bet. So is there any place you wanted to go first?” “You a tour guide for Holgard now too? Well, I suppose after all the shit that happened during the invasion resulted in a lot of damage and rebuilding, so I’m almost betting my favorite tavern isn’t even standing anymore.” “The Blackheart? Nah. Totally destroyed. I think there’s a new weapon shop there now.” “Oh well. I suppose the old Nocturnal headquarters is gone now too?” “Not gone, but it’s currently under construction. Trying to turn it into a proper place to train any future agents. Bunch of dwarves there right now, and they aren’t fond of anyone getting in the way of their work. Warts suggested getting goblins since it would be much cheaper, but I figured the extra money would be worth sturdier construction.” “Wow, really taking your new job seriously huh? Well in any case I don’t have any preference on where to go, so whatever you decide, we can do that.” “Well I was thinking of taking you back to my place.” Vera looks at you with a smile. “Well that’s very forward of you. You didn’t even offer me dinner first.” Vera remarks. “I didn’t ask if you if you were currently with anyone either.” You say. “Would it really matter to you if I was?” “Not really.” “Well I guess let’s go then.” Vera takes your arm and the pair of you walk to your home. Along the way you and her talk about some of changes in the city. The discussion is fairly light and superficial, though Vera’s demeanor is pretty affectionate. You went into this with a flirty approach since you wanted to see if there was a complete personality change with her. So far though, she’s acting about how you’ve always known her to. You’re getting the impression that she might not be faking all of it or if she is, she’s doing a very good job. Whether she is or not though doesn’t matter, you’re still learning the facts today. When you get to your home, you show her around a bit makes a lot of comments about how nice the place is and that it’s better than her own current dwelling. “Ah the bar, I’ll just help myself if you don’t mind.” Vera says pouring herself a drink. “Go ahead.” You answer. “Is that a real Daquala head on the wall?” “Yeah, Warts gave me that as a house warming gift. Didn’t like the ugly thing at first, but eh, it’s sort of grown on me now.” “So how is the halfbreed anyway?” “He’s fine. Runs some trading post with his family in Spiderfang territory. He exchanges information for coin with me from time to time.” “Sheesh, Warts a family man with a regular job, you working for the government. So much has changed here and it all seems so odd.” “In some ways I suppose it is, but then Holgard was never a beacon of justice. I mean I’m still involved in a lot of shady dealings. I just got legal permission to do it now.” “Hah, I suppose that’s true.” “So how about you?” “How about me what?” “I’ve been going on and on about myself and you haven’t told me about what’s going on with you.” “Oh, like I said, nothing much. Just dealing with smugglers and pirates, staying a step ahead of the law when I have to, trying to keep the organization together and keep turning a profit. You know the routine, you had to do it.” “Mm, and you said you haven’t had any trouble from the Ebony Claw Syndicate?” “Nope. Not a peep from them. Guess they just don’t care about the League since it’s so small and not really a threat to them.” “I suppose not, but still I thought for sure they would pay you a visit after they found out, the League’s only remaining holdings were in Jicol and under new management.” “I dunno. Maybe they’re preoccupied with other things…hey so since you work directly for Ludmilla now, have you been invited to any more of her fancy parties?” Okay. She was pretty quick to change the subject… You entertain some more of Vera’s questions and the pair of you also proceed to talk about the “old days. The pair of you laughs about various events that occurred while you two worked together. You’re having such a good time reminiscing that you almost forget that you’re probably talking to someone who betrayed you. However, it’s always still in the back of your mind and you haven’t forgotten. You suppose as much as you want to find out, you’re trying to enjoy “what once was” while you still can. Meanwhile Vera’s gotten a little tipsier and a whole lot flirtier. “So. We finally gonna fuck or what?” Vera asks, moving in a little closer on you. “Now who’s being forward?” you say. “Well I mean you invited me over, you’re showing off your big house and you’re plying me with alcohol. You don’t need to wait until I pass out, I’m more than willing right now.” “Hm, I can tell. Though you actually started drinking without me giving it to you.” “I suppose I did. I guess I always have taken the initiative in our relationship.” “You always did have a thing for me didn’t you?” “I’d tell you not to flatter yourself, but I think you know I have always found you quite attractive. Don’t even know why exactly, considering the first time we met you threatened me with rape.” “Oh come on, I told you a long time ago that I wasn’t actually going to do that.” “I know, but I’m fucked up enough to find that enticing in some weird way, but only if it was you of course.” “Wow, that is fucked up. Maybe I should wait until you’re passed out then.” Vera laughs a bit. “No, I want to be fully awake for when you ravish me.” “Sure I’m not going to be pissing off any pirate boyfriends of yours?” “None that matter. And if you meant Zamed, I’m pretty sure he’s not going to object since I heard he died pissing off the Governor of Hessla months ago. Not like I’d seen him since we went with your idea to side with Ludmilla anyway. Seems like it was the right choice given the circumstances.” Vera moves in to kiss you, and you slightly move away. “Funny you should bring that up since I heard an interesting story about all that recently.” You say. “Oh?” Vera asks with a mild annoyance that you didn’t kiss her back. “Yeah, a Syndicate member paid me a visit recently. Said you’ve been dealing with them. Said you’ve been dealing with them for awhile now.” Vera sits back and you look at her face. It’s like all the color has drained from it and it’s at that moment you know, no matter what she tells you, she’s betrayed you. You’re just wondering if she’s going to admit to it. “Well?” “Um…shit…I didn’t want to tell you. I thought you’d be mad. But…” Vera exhales deeply and then continues. “I have had dealings with the ECS, but I sort of had to. I mean they still wanted a cut of the profits, what could I do? I know you would understand that part, but I’m guessing you’re not too pleased to find out I was slave trading again.” Your eyes briefly widen and go back to normal when she admits to that. You didn’t actually know about the slave trading, though you suppose you aren’t too surprised. It’s what she did before she joined with you and you imagine that it’s pretty lucrative what with all the pirate types she has to do business with. She probably was doing it the whole time she was sent to Jicol. Honestly you don’t really give a shit though. What is more telling is she’s admitting to it now meaning that she’s trying to admit a “lesser” offense to distract from a greater one she’s hiding. It’s one of the oldest criminal tricks in the book. You look at Vera and it’s very apparent she’s hoping that you’ll believe this partial truth and let it go. You won’t though, and she probably knows that too. “Vera. Before we continue, I’m going to have to ask you to disarm. I know that…” Before you can get another word in, Vera suddenly throws the rest of her drink in your face and springs from your couch and tries to run for the front door. She doesn’t get far though thanks to her balance not being the best due to her alcohol intake. She trips and slams hard on the floor and then promptly throws up as well. Meanwhile all you’ve done is stand up and drawn your pistol. You walk over to her, as she crawls away from the liquid mess she’s left on the floor. She turns over and sits on the floor with her knees to her chest and her back against the wall. She looks at you and then starts to cry. You can hardly believe this is the same woman you once trusted with your life. “(Sob) You…you know (sob) don’t you?” Vera says. “Well I know what the smug asshole ECS rep told me and you’ve pretty much confirmed it with your actions. In fact I sort of figured you’d outright deny everything or put up more of a fight. Didn’t think it would be this easy. Guessing you must feel guilty about all this on some level. Again before we continue, I’m going to have to ask you disarm.” Vera nods and slowly throws away her blades and her own flintlock far enough away that she wouldn’t reach them in time. You thought you were going to be far angrier about all this, but now you’re almost feeling pity, but maybe that’ll change when you question her. “Okay, so here’s the ultimate question. Why?” you ask. “I…don’t know.” Vera says. “You’re REALLY going to have to do better than that Vera.” “I don’t know! I guess I was pissed at you okay?” “You were pissed at me? For what?! I thought we got along really well!” “Yeah as friends. You always KNEW I wanted to be more than that and instead of being direct, you just sent me away to a fucking island while you were fucking that wizard chick.” “Vera…what the hell? This isn’t even making any sense! I was direct with you multiple times if you recall. As I remember I never even lead you on in any way. And for the record I was not fucking Heather. In any case I hardly see how that’s an excuse for you trying to have me killed!” “I didn’t try to have you killed! I just wanted us to be close again! You were supposed to retreat back to Jicol, not stay here and be the fucking hero of Holgard!” “Okay, some of this still isn’t making any sense. Actually a lot of it, but this is a much different version of what was going to happen to me when I got back to Jicol. I was told you were going to kill me.” “I wasn’t going to kill you! And I would have stood up to the ECS if they tried!” “That’s not what I heard.” “And you believe the ECS about everything? Don’t you think that they might be lying about some of it just to fuck with you? To turn us against each other?” “Well, yeah I considered that, but considering some of their story has already been confirmed as true, I’m finding it a little easier to believe an organization that has made no pretenses of being pissed with me than a woman who is obviously more mentally unstable than I ever could have known. And they already turned us against each other when you agreed to deal with them! Either you’re so delusional that you believed working with the ECS would somehow bring us together, and I’m really struggling to believe you’re that stupid, or you’re just lying about everything. At this point either one wouldn’t surprise me.” Vera makes one last outburst. “Why didn’t you just let this go? (sob) There was no more danger to you any more and I certainly wasn’t going to conspire against you again. I felt sick the first time I did it. Obviously I STILL feel sick about it. I felt this way ever since I realized how deep I was getting. I was just so…I don’t know…. (sniffle) I would always think about that time we got to go to the baroness’ party. I remember mentally believing myself to be a princess and you a prince. How I wished it were you and me that night instead of you and some random whore. I really think things could have been different between us. We could have been more than friends. Even now, I wish we could just forget everything and just live in this house together as husband and wife. I don’t understand, I did everything for you. Why couldn’t you just…love me? (Sob)” As Vera breaks down again into tears, you’re almost at a loss for words at this point. Your relationship with women has always been “complicated” but this is a new one on you. You never realized just how damn deep Vera’s feelings were for you and honestly it’s still a bit of a mystery to you. Especially given that she betrayed you. And she did betray you. No matter what her twisted logic may dictate, you can’t forget that. And you can’t forgive it. Even if you are genuinely feeling sorry for Vera right now. The ECS may not have gotten the most hurtful revenge on you, but they didn’t exactly fail. You can’t even be mad at them. Maybe in some weird way this is finally all your good luck crapping out on you. You have done a lot of treacherous shit yourself after all. In any case, you also remember Percy’s advice about doing something worse than killing her. You aren’t sure if it’ll make you feel any better about this, but you’re fairly certain it isn’t going to make you feel any worse. > You revenge It would be much kinder to just kill Vera now and be done with it and perhaps you would under normal circumstance. However, you have another problem that doesn’t seem to be getting solved another way anytime soon and as grim as the current solution is, this is probably about the only time you’re going to feel someone is deserving of it. You put away your pistol and crouch down besides Vera who is still upset and probably expecting you to kill her. “Vera…Vera…shhhhh…calm down…I’m not going to hurt you.” “(sniffle) You’re…you’re not?” “No…I mean you REALLY fucked up. Like seriously fucked up. But I guess in your own warped way you thought you were doing something good. Actually I don’t even understand it all, but it really doesn’t matter since maybe some of this is my fault. I should have told you a long time ago.” “Wait, what? Tell me what?” “(Sigh) Well while I tried my best to never lead you on, you would be correct in thinking that I did have some affection for you as well. I mean how could I not? We were practically like an old married couple at times.” Vera’s expression begins to change from one of despair to one of hope. “You did? I knew it! But, why didn’t you ever return it? Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Vera asks. “Because I’m fucking cursed that’s why and that’s what I should have just told you. If I had maybe this could have all been avoided.” You say. “Cursed? How?” “It’s a long story…” And so you finally explain to Vera starting at the beginning when you first met Tanya. You tell her about your odd relationship with the demon girl you fell in love with. Vera never interrupts much except to say that Warts did tell her about Tanya very briefly once, but not in too much detail since he never paid much attention to your love life. Vera seems genuinely fascinated by it all. She’s even sympathetic. You suppose in some ways your obsession with Tanya mirrors her obsession with you a bit. (Though obviously in a vastly different way) Part of you wonders if things really would have been different if you told Vera this before. Too late now you guess. While you’re telling the stories of Tanya to Vera, you’re also partially reliving some of the good times you experienced with her. You actually haven’t thought about those in awhile seeing as you were trying to keep her “out of your head” as much as you could. Finally you get to when you finally parted ways with Tanya, along with what you soon discovered whenever you were intimate with another girl. Vera now looks very stunned. “Shit. I never knew. I mean… fuck. You’ve been trying not to kill me for years.” Vera says. “Yeah. Shame you couldn’t return the favor.” Vera looks away after your comment and goes silent. Her face is one of guilt and shame. “Okay, maybe that was unnecessary. But I can’t just forget what you did. However, I do think I know how you can make it right, but it might be a little too weird for you.” You say. “What, weirder than this?” Vera asks. “Yeah, it’s a possible cure and I think you can help.” “A cure? Of course I’ll help! What is it that you need? I’ll do it! It’s the least I can do after what I put you through.” “Well you do this for me, and you can consider us even. We can even have a fresh start.” You take Vera’s hand and look into her eyes. “Together.” Vera probably just got really wet right now as she grabs your hand with her other one. “As I said. I’ll do it. What do you need?” You explain that one of the reasons you were so friendly with Heather wasn’t because you were fucking her, but because she could potentially lift the curse. It just was taking her awhile to research it. You then explain that she recently discovered that it can be lifted only by performing a ritual that involves an act of intimacy with one that loves you. “Wait, so are you saying we have to be fucking during this spell?” Vera asks. “We have to be fucking inside a magic circle to be precise. That’s to keep us safe. Heather’s going to be there the whole time doing her magic thing of lifting my curse. I know it’s weird, but that’s how the spell works I guess.” “And after that you’ll be cured? You won’t be cursed anymore?” “Yes.” “Okay then. If this is the last thing that needs to be done for us to be together then let’s do it. I mean it’s the least I can do after all the shit I did anyway.” “Let’s not dwell on the past any more okay? Let’s just dwell on the future.” With those words you move in and finally kiss Vera on the lips. She embraces the kiss and grabs your head as you do so as if this is all she’s ever wanted. And it probably is. It probably would be more enjoyable for you as well if things were different. (And if she hadn’t just vomited) You explain that the pair of you should head to the magic school right away so you can get on with your lives together so that’s exactly what you both do. When you get to the school, you’re not stopped by rebellious teenage wizards this time. Though you are stopped by… “Hey! It’s me Gwen! Remember me? I healed you up during the invasion! Do you need healing again?!” Gwen beams. “Hi Gwen, ah no healing today, but I really do need to see Heather, is she around?” “Yes, but she’s very cranky.” “When isn’t she cranky? Tell her I’m here I’m about that thing she was researching for me and I’m here to go through with it. She’ll know what I’m talking about.” “Oh. Um, hadn’t heard much about this, but then the Grand Matriarch doesn’t tell everyone everything I suppose. I’ll go get her.” While Gwen walks away to get Heather, Vera squeezes your hand a bit. The pair of you wait in silence and soon you see Heather slowly walking towards you both, yelling at Gwen about something who goes running off elsewhere. “Wait, is that Heather? I remember seeing her a couple times and she didn’t look like that! What the fuck happened to her?” Vera asks. “Magic is a bitch to the aging process apparently.” You say. Eventually Heather gets to you both giving you both the stink eye. “So. You’re going through with the ritual huh?” Heather asks you. “Yes. Vera and I have finally realized after all these years that we love each other and thanks to that love, the necessary last element is in place for you to perform this ritual so that you may lift the curse.” You answer. “I see…is this true?” Heather asks Vera. “Yes. Our relationship hasn’t always been the most stable, but I know I’ve loved this man for quite sometime and I know with his self sacrificing actions of turning me away and suffering in silence for years, that he loves me as well.” Vera says. Heather is silent for a moment. You think she’s trying to stifle a laugh, which would probably be the first time she’s done that in awhile. Gwen soon comes back saying she’s prepped the room. “Okay then. Vera, you go with Gwen who will take you to the summoning room and give you a couple of other instructions. We’ll be there shortly, I just need to speak to you about something unrelated that the Baroness brought up first.” Heather remarks. “Um, okay. I’ll see you soon Vera.” You say. “We’ll be seeing a lot more of each other after this.” Vera says and gives you another kiss before her and Gwen leave. Heather is just shaking her head the whole time and then turns to you with a smile. “I gotta say, I did not see that one coming. That was your second in command at one time right?” Heather asks. “Yes.” You answer. “Shit. I mean after all your talk about not wanting to sacrifice some unsuspecting girl, you pick her? A woman that obviously loves you?” “Yes.” “Fuck, that is some cold blooded ruthless evil shit that a Neroth cultist would be proud of. I can’t imagine what she did exactly to piss you off. She did piss you off right?” “Yes, are we going to get on with this?” “Alright, alright, yeah. I just want to make sure this is something you REALLY want, because once I start this ritual I can’t have you having second thoughts in the middle of it. It would be bad for ALL involved.” “Trust me, I’m made my decision and she deserves this and I fucking deserve my freedom.” “Alright I’m going to explain a few things before hand. First off I suggest you fuck Vera from behind, because I’m not sure exactly how pissed your ex is going to be when she’s transported from her dimension and you’re going to want to be getting out of their as soon as you can. What you don’t want is Vera to start grabbing you tightly and preventing you to leave as she dies horribly from the inside out desperately holding on to the only thing she loves and then suddenly you’re covered in blood and gore and face to face with your pissed off demon ex instead. In fact I highly recommend you get out of there when Vera starts screaming and convulsing and not in the good way.” “Got it.” “Also, this ritual is going to still take a little time, so I really hope you can last longer than two minutes. It’s not going to work at all if you’re releasing before I can even get the first incantation out.” “Thanks for your confidence, but I think I can manage.” “I hope so. Lastly I don’t give a shit what you your feelings were for your ex, you NEED to remember that she’s a fucking demon. So don’t fucking listen to ANY thing she says. You just let me take care of her.” “What are you going to do?” “I’m going to be holding her at bay and hopefully sending her back because if I can’t then we’re all going to be fucked. Anyway, let’s do this.” You and Heather proceed to the summoning room and when the door is opened there you see Gwen standing near a table with a few books and Vera in all her naked glory standing in a large circle with symbols in it. Never seen her like this before and it’s a bit of a surprise. “Undress please, we’ll be starting soon.” Heather says to you before addressing Gwen. “Gwen did you make the other circles?” “Yes Grand Matriarch, perfect just like you said.” “Better damn well be. Well? Get in your circle if you want to assist!” “But I’m not even familiar with what’s going on exactly.” “(Sigh) Yeah sometimes spontaneity happens in magic. Look, just grab that top book on the table, turn to page thirteen and recite the words when I give you the signal. You won’t have much to do and it’s a simple enough task even for you.” “Yes, Grand Matriarch.” As you’re getting undressed, you’re mentally preparing yourself for all this. Sex in front of an “audience”, sacrificing a former friend, summoning your demon ex, lifting a curse…it’s a lot to all process. If anything you’re slightly concerned not so much of finishing to quick, but getting started! When you’re naked you step into the circle with Vera who immediately begins to embrace you. “Okay, you two can start anytime now.” Heather says. “I guess we better get to it then. Um, I guess I’ll help you out.” Vera remarks. And like that, Vera immediately does what she’s offered to do to you several times before in the past. It doesn’t take long before you’re more than ready for the main act, and given how good she apparently is, you need to stop her anyway. You spin Vera around and as you caress her body, and then suddenly pulling her hair you whisper in her ear. “You deserve this.” You say. “Mmmm…yes…I do…give it to me hard lover.” And so the hate fucking begins. Though Vera is blissfully unaware of this and just thinks it’s all to heighten the experience. While you’re thrusting in and out of Vera, Heather and Gwen are reciting a bunch of words that you’re trying to drown out so you can focus on the task at hand. It’s funny because you’re actually giving Vera what she’s always wanted; it’s just that she’s not going to like the end result. It’s almost like you’re stabbing her to death considering you’re practically killing this woman with your cock right now. And as fucked up as that all sounds, it’s actually helping in keeping you in the mood and making you more enthusiastic. (The combo of going this long without sex and under these circumstances you think have really warped you) Time passes and eventually in-between the moaning and grunting, suddenly Vera begins to cough and she nearly collapses to the floor, but you prevent that by holding her up, though you can tell it’s starting. “You need to finish now! Hurry!” Heather suddenly shouts before returning to her chanting. Following instructions, you do just that, though at this point Vera is definitely beginning to not feel well and suddenly coughs up blood. “Shit…ugh something’s wrong! My entire body feels like its on fire! (Sob) Please…I..ARGH!” It’s a good thing you finish right at that moment, because Vera’s own release was not just from her mouth this time. Your mid to lower half is now covered in a mixture of blood and shit causing you to recoil in horror and disgust. You promptly scramble away from Vera and puke your own guts out, though fortunately in your case it isn’t blood. Gwen, always the helpful one casts some sort of spell on you that cleans you off, causing Heather to snap. “GWEN! FUCKING CONCENTRATE!” Vera at this point has collapsed completely inside the circle and she begins making horrible screams and wails as her body begins to bleed not just from every orifice, but also from her pores. You watch a little dumbfounded. Partially still recovering from being sick and what you’re witnessing. Vera’s cries and pleads for you to help her, but there isn’t much you’d be able to do anyway. You force yourself to watch this brutal spectacle and you even shed a few tears thinking that maybe she didn’t deserve this. Vera’s body eventually contorts into an unnatural state and she unleashes a shriek that is definitely not human sounding. She can take no more and with that, her body splits and explodes. You manage to avoid getting pelted by gore again by hiding behind an alchemical counter. When you look again, that’s when you see her. Tanya. And she’s much different looking now. Even before when she transformed here in this world there was still a human quality about her. Now? She’s at least a foot taller than you and her wings along with her horns even bigger and more impressive. She has hooves rather than proper feet. Her body looks more muscular and athletic looking rather than traditionally curvy and sexy. In fact she’s not even naked, she’s wearing some sort of form fitting armor and a wicked looking sword hangs by her side. She looks more like a demonic knight of some sort rather than her succubus origins would imply. One of the few things though that remains recognizable to you is her long white hair and her face. And once she gets the general idea of her new surroundings, her eyes finally meet yours. “You.” She says in a voice slightly deeper than you remember. “Hello Tanya.” You reply, not quite sure of how to react. > You reunion While you’re fumbling to at least get your underwear and pants back on, Tanya looks around again, still staying in the circle of course. She examines the gory chunks of flesh that once were Vera and reaches down with a taloned hand. She tastes some of the blood and then pops the whole thing into her mouth. “If you’re going to get rid of your curse, you best do it now while she’s trapped. While she’s in that circle you can command her to release you and she has no choice but to do so. So get on with it!” Heather exclaims. With your pants now back on, you approach Tanya, who stares at you from the circle. She doesn’t look pleased, but then you aren’t sure if that’s just here natural look now. “Tanya, I command you to take off this curse you put on me.” You say trying to be as authoritative as you can, but honestly you’re scared shitless. And Tanya knows it. In fact she just steps closer to the edge of the circle. “You command ME? Have you grown so arrogant in your meager mortal life that you believe you can even do that?” Tanya asks. “No, but…” you start to say before you’re interrupted. “Then you’ve just grown stupider.” “Tanya…” “That isn’t even my name anymore worm. I have become something much greater and I have long shed any connection to my pathetic mortal years.” “Even me?” Tanya doesn’t answer you, but instead just gives a huffing growl. “The one on the floor who I tasted. This one loved you, yet you obviously sacrificed her to summon me. Why?” Tanya asks. “I told you, I want you to lift the curse that…” you begin to answer. “No! I mean why did you sacrifice her?” “She betrayed me.” “I see. And you felt that she deserved this horrible fate?” You’re about to answer yes, but then on reflection you stop yourself. “No. She probably didn’t, but I made a pragmatic decision because I needed something and she was the best way to get it.” Tanya nods at your answer, meanwhile Heather is getting impatient. “For fuck’s sake stop talking so much and just COMMAND it to lift the fucking curse! The more you talk, the more it’s going to beguile you into doing something stupid, like stepping into the circle with it!” Heather yells. “Silence wizard! I will deal with YOU later. If my former…human wishes to speak with me, then he will do so until our business is done. Now then, before we move on to this curse you speak of, I wish to ask more questions about you, one of which is why have you not moved on from me? I asked you to do so.” Tanya says. “I can’t! You put a curse on me that prevents me from having sex with any other woman! Anytime I do, they wind up dead a few days later!” you answer. “So why blame me? I haven’t been anywhere on this world until you summoned me.” “Well who else would it be? Yag fucking around with his magic dice? I mean I have a hard time believing its coincidence; there were too many women that died! I mean maybe you didn’t mean to place it on me, maybe it was some sort of after effect of your power of something.” “Oh I assure you human, I’m fully aware of my powers, but placing curses? Not my style and never will be. I learned a long time ago, even when I was here in my last remaining years tethered to this world that I enjoy direct bloodshed.” “But…it had to be you…I mean…wasn’t it?” “Maybe it was YOU.” This accusation causes you to step back a bit. “Me? That’s absurd.” You say. “Is it? Think hard now.” Tanya replies. “I think I’d know if I had killed all those women and some of those were accidents!” “Or maybe you made them look like they were. It’s Holgard, not like the Watch was going to double check for barmaids and whores.” “I can’t believe it.” “Okay…if it makes you feel any better, perhaps I AM to blame indirectly. Obviously you didn’t get over me the way I told you too and were still obsessed with my magnificence. I suppose I can’t fault you, after all a mere mortal woman would pale in comparison. But those women? I had no direct hand in causing their deaths. That was ALL you. Even now I can see it in your mind.” “What?!” “I can see into your mind. We’re bonded remember? Now granted that bond was severely weakened when I left this realm, but now? You’re like an open book. I can see shit in your mind that you’ve blocked out which is exactly what you did when you were on your whore killing spree.” “But…” “Why? Because you love me madly obviously and you always will. You killed those women out of fear that you were betraying that love. However, you have a strange morality about you and that caused you to block it out. How you did it so easily, well that’s probably thanks to our bond and you gaining a very tiny bit of my mental powers. Except you didn’t even realize you were using it of course.” “But if all this is true, I must have moved on because I stopped doing it.” “Well yes, but that’s mainly because your conscious mind came to the conclusion that I must have put a curse on you so you used THAT as an excuse to not get involved with another woman again. Even this Vera woman, that you obviously had a lot of affection for. I dare say if you had actually given it a chance you might have even broke the cycle. Enough time had passed between us by then and your feelings for Vera were much stronger than they were for the other women. But your love for me just proved too strong. Think about it. Even though she betrayed you, you could have just killed her or even forgave her if you so desired. Instead, you sacrificed her to summon me.” “But I did it because I HAD to see you!” Tanya folds her arms and smiles a bit. “And there it is…and here I am.” Tanya says. “By the gods…” you say suddenly coming to an epiphany. “You are a fool to listen to this demon and when she eats your soul, I am not going to be able to help you.” Heather interjects. You might be a fool, but unfortunately Tanya’s words are proving correct. Your memories are all suddenly flooding back. You see the murders as clear as yesterday now. You see what you did and how you even enjoyed doing it at times. It was you. It was you the entire time and you blacked it all out. You slowly slump to the floor trying to process everything and you can’t do it. You just stutter a couple of words and trail off. “You cannot command me to lift a curse that I never placed on you mortal. The only curse you have is your love of me and I can’t help you with that. I wish I could, but you didn’t listen to me when I told you not to pursue me in the first place and this is where we are now.” Tanya says with a bit of sympathy in her voice. While you’re coming to grips with your uncovered memories, Heather is done with this whole thing. “Enough! We’ve apparently solved your problem, now we’re moving on. Demon, I command YOU to transfer the life essence of that woman over there to me.” Heather yells. “WHAT?! Grand Matriarch you can’t mean that!” Gwen answers. “Oh shut up! This shouldn’t even be a surprise to you, never liked you anyway. I’m tired of looking and feeling like an old bat while I’m only in my thirties!” Give me this woman’s youth and then you may return to your own realm.” Gwen attempts to leave her circle but soon learns that she’s trapped within it. Attempts at casting a spell to escape or even attack Heather similarly fail. Lacking any other means of freedom, Gwen panics and begins to plead for her life. “You keep interesting female company since we parted mortal. Based on the mewling waif, the old hag over there and the meat chunks on the floor apparently they’ve all been a bunch of treacherous backstabbing bitches, pathetic naïve weaklings or both. No wonder you still long for me. At least even with my infernal heritage I never lied to you.” Tanya says. “Demon! I AM in charge here! I COMMAND YOU in Dorna’s name to perform my task!” Tanya starts to laugh. “I don’t recognize your gods and that’s not how it works! That’s not how ANY of this works!” Tanya says. “What?!” Heather remarks. “Someone isn’t up on their guide to infernals because you can’t command me to do shit for you. This one probably isn’t in most books about us because it isn’t a common occurrence, but you cannot command an infernal whose heart belongs to someone. And my heart unfortunately belongs to this mortal until he dies or purposely breaks it. And in any case, this circle you made to hold me doesn’t even have the correct symbols on it…” And with those words Tanya slowly steps out of the circle to Heather’s horror. “Oh shit! Gwen you fucking idiot!” Heather shouts and quickly begins to call for help, along with casting a beam of frost at Tanya. Tanya blocks the beam with one hand and then waves her other arm and suddenly most of the furniture in the room is thrown against the door to barricade it. Meanwhile you get out of the way so you don’t get hit by Heather’s magic or get stepped on by Tanya’s cloven hooves. You look on in slight awe as you see Tanya draw her sword, which is now on fire and Heather just barely blocking it from cleaving her in two by casting a magic shield. “Please! Help me out of this circle!” you suddenly hear. You forgot all about Gwen who out of everyone here is innocent in all this. You aren’t sure how this magic circle shit works, but you can’t think of anything else to do except try to pull Gwen out of it. And to your amazement it actually works. “Come on, we need to get the hell out of here.” You say and rush to the barricaded door, though some books on the floor suddenly distract Gwen. “What the fuck are you doing?! We gotta get out of here before those two bring this whole place down on our heads!” you shout. “If Heather doesn’t win, then we’re going to need something to stop your ex, I’m looking for some sort of spell. Just focus on unbarricading the door. Hopefully the other students are working on the other side to get in here.” Gwen says as she hastily goes through book pages. Lacking any other plan, you go with Gwen’s and start trying to move the various desks, tables, chairs and cabinets agaist the door. You can hear shouting on the other side to which you yell back for them to blow the damn door open and get their asses in here. You’ve moved and thrown aside exactly one large desk and that’s when you hear a scream. You slowly turn your head and see that Tanya has broken through whatever magical defenses Heather had and cut her in half. Heather was no slouch as a wizard, for Tanya to have easily killed her like that...it just defies words of how powerful she’s gotten. Be that as it may, it would seem that Gwen found something to harm Tanya because she unleashes a blast of magic energy straight into her back causing a monstrous howl. It slows her down, but not much as she’s already spun around to face Gwen. She stomps on the ground causing the floor to crack and forcing Gwen to jump out of the way lest she fall into the Holgard sewers, though maybe that would have been a better idea. At least then there would have been multiple escape routes. At this point some of the other students have manages to blast part of the door open. Several begin trying to climb over the furniture still in the way. “BURN.” Tanya utters and you jump back just in time to see all of the furniture barricade go up in flames along with unfortunate wizards that were climbing over it at the time. The screams of burning wizards are soon drowned out by another bellow of pain by Tanya when Gwen hits her with another blast of whatever magic she’s using. This time Tanya falls to one knee briefly, but it isn’t enough and now she’s heading straight for Gwen like an angry charging minotaur. Gwen however is surprisingly holding her ground and preparing another magic blast. You spy your pistol on the floor and you grab it, but as strange as it may be, you aren’t sure who to use it on. The whole time during Tanya’s arrival, you’ve had a stirring within you again. Namely your obsessive love for Tanya. Even this monstrous demonic form, she is still the object of everything you desire in heart and you don’t want to see her hurt no matter how well she’s able to defend herself. But you’ll never be free if you hang on to the idea of a relationship that can never be. > You aim for Tanya It’s time to be free, no matter what the cost. You empty your pistol at Tanya. You know you hit her at three times in the head and that’s enough to cause her charge at Gwen to halt temporarily when she collapses on the floor. Gwen doesn’t miss a step and unleashes her magic. Tanya once again makes an unearthly scream as she’s hit by the blast. It’s enough to shake the room a bit and hurt your ears. Gwen looks exhausted, but unfortunately despite her wounds, Tanya is just getting started Tanya suddenly gets back up and even with one eye left and a broken horn from your bullets, she flat out ignores the pain of having a hole burned straight through her armor and body as Gwen attempts to stop her second charge at her. Gwen attempts to put up some sort of magic protection, but Tanya picks her up with ease and smashes her into the wall several times like a rag doll. There is no scream, just the flopping about of a bloody broken body. You are attempting to reload your pistol, but you already know it’s not going do any good when Tanya is finally done tormenting Gwen’s body in death and tosses it aside to turn her attention towards you. You can’t even run as there is a barrier of fire blocking the exit. The best you can do is get off one more shot before Tanya is upon you and breaks your arm in two and then ripping part of it off. The physical pain is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before, but perhaps it still pales in comparison to the inner you still have for a love that could never be and is now gone forever. Tanya picks you up by the other good arm and dangles you above the ground like a slab of meat. You look into her one good eye and see a fury that isn’t just one of normal hate or even demonic rage. It’s the stare of one who has been betrayed by their one true love. This is the end you know it. “I…I’m sorry Tanya…” is all you can say. And somewhere even now you see a spark of what Tanya once was. “No. Thank you mortal. You’ve freed us both.” Tanya replies. With no more feelings left for you, Tanya appropriately pulls your heart from you chest and eats it before your eyes. You die just before Tanya drops you back to the floor again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While you’re fumbling to at least get your underwear and pants back on, Tanya looks around again, still staying in the circle of course. She examines the gory chunks of flesh that once were Vera and reaches down with a taloned hand. She tastes some of the blood and then pops the whole thing into her mouth. “If you’re going to get rid of your curse, you best do it now while she’s trapped. While she’s in that circle you can command her to release you and she has no choice but to do so. So get on with it!” Heather exclaims. With your pants now back on, you approach Tanya, who stares at you from the circle. She doesn’t look pleased, but then you aren’t sure if that’s just here natural look now. “Tanya, I command you to take off this curse you put on me.” You say trying to be as authoritative as you can, but honestly you’re scared shitless. And Tanya knows it. In fact she just steps closer to the edge of the circle. “You command ME? Have you grown so arrogant in your meager mortal life that you believe you can even do that?” Tanya asks. “No, but…” you start to say before you’re interrupted. “Then you’ve just grown stupider.” “Tanya…” “That isn’t even my name anymore worm. I have become something much greater and I have long shed any connection to my pathetic mortal years.” “Even me?” Tanya doesn’t answer you, but instead just gives a huffing growl. “The one on the floor who I tasted. This one loved you, yet you obviously sacrificed her to summon me. Why?” Tanya asks. “I told you, I want you to lift the curse that…” you begin to answer. “No! I mean why did you sacrifice her?” “She betrayed me.” “I see. And you felt that she deserved this horrible fate?” You’re about to answer yes, but then on reflection you stop yourself. “No. She probably didn’t, but I made a pragmatic decision because I needed something and she was the best way to get it.” Tanya nods at your answer, meanwhile Heather is getting impatient. “For fuck’s sake stop talking so much and just COMMAND it to lift the fucking curse! The more you talk, the more it’s going to beguile you into doing something stupid, like stepping into the circle with it!” Heather yells. “Silence wizard! I will deal with YOU later. If my former…human wishes to speak with me, then he will do so until our business is done. Now then, before we move on to this curse you speak of, I wish to ask more questions about you, one of which is why have you not moved on from me? I asked you to do so.” Tanya says. “I can’t! You put a curse on me that prevents me from having sex with any other woman! Anytime I do, they wind up dead a few days later!” you answer. “So why blame me? I haven’t been anywhere on this world until you summoned me.” “Well who else would it be? Yag fucking around with his magic dice? I mean I have a hard time believing its coincidence; there were too many women that died! I mean maybe you didn’t mean to place it on me, maybe it was some sort of after effect of your power of something.” “Oh I assure you human, I’m fully aware of my powers, but placing curses? Not my style and never will be. I learned a long time ago, even when I was here in my last remaining years tethered to this world that I enjoy direct bloodshed.” “But…it had to be you…I mean…wasn’t it?” “Maybe it was YOU.” This accusation causes you to step back a bit. “Me? That’s absurd.” You say. “Is it? Think hard now.” Tanya replies. “I think I’d know if I had killed all those women and some of those were accidents!” “Or maybe you made them look like they were. It’s Holgard, not like the Watch was going to double check for barmaids and whores.” “I can’t believe it.” “Okay…if it makes you feel any better, perhaps I AM to blame indirectly. Obviously you didn’t get over me the way I told you too and were still obsessed with my magnificence. I suppose I can’t fault you, after all a mere mortal woman would pale in comparison. But those women? I had no direct hand in causing their deaths. That was ALL you. Even now I can see it in your mind.” “What?!” “I can see into your mind. We’re bonded remember? Now granted that bond was severely weakened when I left this realm, but now? You’re like an open book. I can see shit in your mind that you’ve blocked out which is exactly what you did when you were on your whore killing spree.” “But…” “Why? Because you love me madly obviously and you always will. You killed those women out of fear that you were betraying that love. However, you have a strange morality about you and that caused you to block it out. How you did it so easily, well that’s probably thanks to our bond and you gaining a very tiny bit of my mental powers. Except you didn’t even realize you were using it of course.” “But if all this is true, I must have moved on because I stopped doing it.” “Well yes, but that’s mainly because your conscious mind came to the conclusion that I must have put a curse on you so you used THAT as an excuse to not get involved with another woman again. Even this Vera woman, that you obviously had a lot of affection for. I dare say if you had actually given it a chance you might have even broke the cycle. Enough time had passed between us by then and your feelings for Vera were much stronger than they were for the other women. But your love for me just proved too strong. Think about it. Even though she betrayed you, you could have just killed her or even forgave her if you so desired. Instead, you sacrificed her to summon me.” “But I did it because I HAD to see you!” Tanya folds her arms and smiles a bit. “And there it is…and here I am.” Tanya says. “By the gods…” you say suddenly coming to an epiphany. “You are a fool to listen to this demon and when she eats your soul, I am not going to be able to help you.” Heather interjects. You might be a fool, but unfortunately Tanya’s words are proving correct. Your memories are all suddenly flooding back. You see the murders as clear as yesterday now. You see what you did and how you even enjoyed doing it at times. It was you. It was you the entire time and you blacked it all out. You slowly slump to the floor trying to process everything and you can’t do it. You just stutter a couple of words and trail off. “You cannot command me to lift a curse that I never placed on you mortal. The only curse you have is your love of me and I can’t help you with that. I wish I could, but you didn’t listen to me when I told you not to pursue me in the first place and this is where we are now.” Tanya says with a bit of sympathy in her voice. While you’re coming to grips with your uncovered memories, Heather is done with this whole thing. “Enough! We’ve apparently solved your problem, now we’re moving on. Demon, I command YOU to transfer the life essence of that woman over there to me.” Heather yells. “WHAT?! Grand Matriarch you can’t mean that!” Gwen answers. “Oh shut up! This shouldn’t even be a surprise to you, never liked you anyway. I’m tired of looking and feeling like an old bat while I’m only in my thirties!” Give me this woman’s youth and then you may return to your own realm.” Gwen attempts to leave her circle but soon learns that she’s trapped within it. Attempts at casting a spell to escape or even attack Heather similarly fail. Lacking any other means of freedom, Gwen panics and begins to plead for her life. “You keep interesting female company since we parted mortal. Based on the mewling waif, the old hag over there and the meat chunks on the floor apparently they’ve all been a bunch of treacherous backstabbing bitches, pathetic naïve weaklings or both. No wonder you still long for me. At least even with my infernal heritage I never lied to you.” Tanya says. “Demon! I AM in charge here! I COMMAND YOU in Dorna’s name to perform my task!” Tanya starts to laugh. “I don’t recognize your gods and that’s not how it works! That’s not how ANY of this works!” Tanya says. “What?!” Heather remarks. “Someone isn’t up on their guide to infernals because you can’t command me to do shit for you. This one probably isn’t in most books about us because it isn’t a common occurrence, but you cannot command an infernal whose heart belongs to someone. And my heart unfortunately belongs to this mortal until he dies or purposely breaks it. And in any case, this circle you made to hold me doesn’t even have the correct symbols on it…” And with those words Tanya slowly steps out of the circle to Heather’s horror. “Oh shit! Gwen you fucking idiot!” Heather shouts and quickly begins to call for help, along with casting a beam of frost at Tanya. Tanya blocks the beam with one hand and then waves her other arm and suddenly most of the furniture in the room is thrown against the door to barricade it. Meanwhile you get out of the way so you don’t get hit by Heather’s magic or get stepped on by Tanya’s cloven hooves. You look on in slight awe as you see Tanya draw her sword, which is now on fire and Heather just barely blocking it from cleaving her in two by casting a magic shield. “Please! Help me out of this circle!” you suddenly hear. You forgot all about Gwen who out of everyone here is innocent in all this. You aren’t sure how this magic circle shit works, but you can’t think of anything else to do except try to pull Gwen out of it. And to your amazement it actually works. “Come on, we need to get the hell out of here.” You say and rush to the barricaded door, though some books on the floor suddenly distract Gwen. “What the fuck are you doing?! We gotta get out of here before those two bring this whole place down on our heads!” you shout. “If Heather doesn’t win, then we’re going to need something to stop your ex, I’m looking for some sort of spell. Just focus on unbarricading the door. Hopefully the other students are working on the other side to get in here.” Gwen says as she hastily goes through book pages. Lacking any other plan, you go with Gwen’s and start trying to move the various desks, tables, chairs and cabinets agaist the door. You can hear shouting on the other side to which you yell back for them to blow the damn door open and get their asses in here. You’ve moved and thrown aside exactly one large desk and that’s when you hear a scream. You slowly turn your head and see that Tanya has broken through whatever magical defenses Heather had and cut her in half. Heather was no slouch as a wizard, for Tanya to have easily killed her like that...it just defies words of how powerful she’s gotten. Be that as it may, it would seem that Gwen found something to harm Tanya because she unleashes a blast of magic energy straight into her back causing a monstrous howl. It slows her down, but not much as she’s already spun around to face Gwen. She stomps on the ground causing the floor to crack and forcing Gwen to jump out of the way lest she fall into the Holgard sewers, though maybe that would have been a better idea. At least then there would have been multiple escape routes. At this point some of the other students have manages to blast part of the door open. Several begin trying to climb over the furniture still in the way. “BURN.” Tanya utters and you jump back just in time to see all of the furniture barricade go up in flames along with unfortunate wizards that were climbing over it at the time. The screams of burning wizards are soon drowned out by another bellow of pain by Tanya when Gwen hits her with another blast of whatever magic she’s using. This time Tanya falls to one knee briefly, but it isn’t enough and now she’s heading straight for Gwen like an angry charging minotaur. Gwen however is surprisingly holding her ground and preparing another magic blast. You spy your pistol on the floor and you grab it, but as strange as it may be, you aren’t sure who to use it on. The whole time during Tanya’s arrival, you’ve had a stirring within you again. Namely your obsessive love for Tanya. Even this monstrous demonic form, she is still the object of everything you desire in heart and you don’t want to see her hurt no matter how well she’s able to defend herself. But you’ll never be free if you hang on to the idea of a relationship that can never be. > You aim for Gwen That’s it; you’ll always be a slave to loving Tanya. You were doomed when you first laid eyes on her. You’ve also learned that you did a bunch of terrible shit because of it and what you did to Vera was terrible too despite what she did to you. You’re not a virtuous person and you most likely never will be, but never let it be said that you’re all bad. You aim for Gwen, but not a kill shot, instead you shoot just so the bullet whizzes in front of her face causing her to break her concentration and even stumble back a bit. Then you quickly address Tanya. “TANYA STOP! DO NOT KILL THIS WOMAN! I COMMAND YOU!” you shout. Just a few paces away from Gwen with her sword in hand, she manages to stop herself from trampling over her. She snorts and turns a scowling face towards you. “Why do you stop me mortal?! Do you love this woman?” Tanya asks. “No. I don’t, but she doesn’t deserve to die either.” You say and walk towards the pair of them. You see Gwen attempting to cast another spell and that’s when you really point your pistol at her. “Gwen, you will NOT harm Tanya. If you continue to attack, I’ll kill you myself.” You say. “But…but we’ve got her! She can’t do shit right now! I can kill her and then you’ll finally be free, isn’t that what you wanted?” Gwen remarks. “No. I love this woman. Why would I want to be free of that?” “Because she’s a demon that is incapable of it?” “If that were true she would be ripping my head off right now. Gwen, I saved your life twice today, you can do me this favor.” Gwen backs off and nods. “Very well, but I’m not sticking around and I suggest you and your…love leave as soon as possible, because I doubt the Holgard Watch is going to be as understanding when they arrive.” Gwen replies and quickly runs over to the burning barricade and casts a spell to put it out before proceeding out the destroyed door opening. Now you’re alone with Tanya who doesn’t look pleased with you. You’re about to speak when she suddenly grabs you and suddenly jumps in the air and takes to flight. Using her wings as a shield she envelopes herself (and you) as she breaks through the ceiling of the school. Afterward, she spreads her wings our again and flies high above the city. You never thought you’d see Holgard from this view again. Tanya is silent the whole time as she holds you close to her body and flies away from Holgard and eventually landing in a spot not far outside it, but away from anyone else. She drops you to the ground when you’re close enough and finally she speaks when she lands near you. “You’re a fool. A complete and utter fool. You always were.” Tanya says. “I know.” You answer. “I wish you had shot at me instead, then you would have ended both of our torment when I ripped you apart for breaking my heart.” “Couldn’t do that.” “If you REALLY loved me as much as you claim, you would have! Do you realize how hard it is for me to ignore my feelings for you? Why do you think I look like a soldier of war rather than a seductress now? I tried to eliminate everything and anything that even reminded me of intimacy. I had to fight and struggle not only to block you out of my mind and the weakness that entailed with it, but also endure the taunts and challenges of other infernals who refused to see me as anything other than a succubus with human blood in my veins.” “But you proved them wrong didn’t you?” “Yes! I proved them all wrong. I thrived on the hate, their hate, my hate, all of it. I used it to achieve greatness. I am now a general in the Infernal Legions! I have personally beheaded and carved up celestials and won battles against seemingly impossible enemies. I am no mere succubus. I am a personification of rage, war, and hate.” “I always knew you’d do well.” “And you know what I really hate? YOU. I hate the day I ever met you. I hate that you were instrumental in my current status. I hate that you summoned me back to this pathetic world. I HATE the fact that I love you.” “But without it, where would you be?” Your last words are too much and Tanya takes a step towards you and backhands you across the face. She probably wasn’t even using half of her strength either and you go sprawling to the ground in a daze. After spitting a bit of blood and rubbing your head a bit, you slowly get back up and that’s when you hear quiet sobbing. You look and you see Tanya sitting on the ground with her knees tucked in and her head buried in her arms. Except this isn’t the demon of war form that you’ve been seeing. This isn’t even her succubus form. It’s the form of the girl you fell love with. Even her clothes are the same. “Tanya…” you say and walk over to her, but she pulls away a bit when you go to touch her. “But what I hate…(sob) most of all… is…that we can’t be together…” You don’t know what to say. There isn’t anything you can say. She’s right and it sucks. Instead you just sit next to her and hold her. She holds on to you back, finally giving in to her human feelings for you, no matter how buried they were. “I have to go back.” Tanya says with a sniffle. “I know, but you could stay, just for a little while. Let’s just enjoy what we have right here. Right now. Hey, we never watched the sunset together, why don’t we do that?” You say. Tanya wipes her eyes and nods. “Okay.” The pair of you just sit and hold each other in silence for quite awhile as you watch the sunset and then later the stars. One of the benefits of being bonded is not even having to speak. Sometimes one of you remembers a fond moment from your collective past and you both give a smile at each other, even an occasional laugh. During one of those moments, you both look deep into each other’s eyes and you finally move in to kiss. From there, you both do what lovers tend to do. And for those moments of intimacy under the night sky, the pair of you has blocked out everything else and it’s just you two. Afterwards, the pair of you fall asleep under the stars. The next day you wake up. You feel some of the aches from yesterday’s events, but you’re not too bad off. You look and Tanya isn’t next to you and you expect her to be gone, but after looking around a bit, you see her standing by herself (still in her human form) over looking a small cliff by the sea. You walk over to her. “I sort of figured you’d be gone when I woke up.” You say. “Couldn’t leave it like that. You deserve a proper goodbye.” Tanya says still looking at the ocean. “No way you can stay a little longer I guess.” “As nice as last night was, it’s best I don’t get used to it. The longer I stay here, the more I’ll lose myself. I can’t afford that weakness. I know to you I’ll always be that girl you fell in love with, but I assure you I am much more now and very different. I have responsibilities that you couldn’t hope to know.” “Well I can imagine leading hell armies is pretty taxing.” Tanya turns to you. “You really don’t judge do you?” Tanya says. “Isn’t that what unconditional love is all about?” you say. “I suppose. But it’s one thing to love someone despite them being say a thief. It’s quite another to love someone who has committed genocide on a whole populace.” “I’m guessing they had it coming.” Tanya chuckles at your remark. “You always did know how to make me laugh despite my best efforts not to.” Tanya says. “Besides, you just informed me that I murdered a bunch of innocent women that I had sex with and blocked it out. I’m hardly in a position to judge you.” You reply. “Oh you didn’t kill all of them.” “What?!” “You didn’t kill all of them. You missed one, but I sort of get the weird impression that you wouldn’t have anyway. It’s odd. You had some real harmony with that one and it was just a one-night stand. I dare say you didn’t even get to that level with that Vera girl and you knew her quite well.” You think for a moment of who Tanya could even be talking about. At first you think it might be Naji, but you only had sex with her before Tanya left. Then you remember. “Wait. That masked blonde at the baroness’ party? Fuck! If I wanted to kill any of them, it would have been her! That bitch fucking picked my pockets while I was asleep and ran off!” you exclaim. “Heh, smart girl. In any case, I never saw in your mind that you killed her, so who knows, maybe if you ever meet her again you should hang on to her, she might just be the one that allows you to get over me.” “I don’t think there’s going to ever be a girl that does that.” Tanya strokes your face with her hand and gives a faint smile. “No. Probably not.” She says and then kisses you one last time. “Please do not summon me ever again. Goodbye my love.” She steps away from you and before your eyes you see her disappear in a small red flash. And she’s gone again. This time forever. You sit on the ground and stare at the ocean for awhile. You weep a bit at your loss and a sense of depression hangs over you. You even briefly consider heading over the cliff, but you dismiss that idea pretty quickly. Suicidal thoughts have never been something you’ve dwelled on and you can only imagine how disgusted Tanya would be with you if you did. She’d want you to move on not give up and that’s what you’ll try to do. You eventually get back up and decide you probably should be making your way back to Holgard, you can only imagine the shitstorm that’s going on there right now. Though you guess that Gwen will take the initiative and blame everything on Heather (Which is sort of true anyway; you didn’t expect that twist) and take over what’s left of the school. You sort of wonder if maybe you should follow up on Gwen’s flirting now, but then would she even be interested any more given what she’s learned about you? You suppose the best way to find out is to just go for it. If she isn’t then you’ll move on to someone else. If she is, well you’ll have to remember not to try to kill her and blackout about it. With a new positive attitude in mind, you set off towards Holgard. “Goodbye Tanya.” You say.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Honestly, Heather is still your best chance at getting cured, so if she’s dead then you might as well have left Holgard when this all happened. Besides, you don’t fancy your chances against multiple demons and a wizard. You figure if you’re quiet and careful enough you’ll be able to sneak up to the top of the building and just shoot the wizard opposing Heather in the back. Well that’s the ideal plan anyway. You duck into the building that Heather and her opponent are fighting on top of and avoid the demon-wizard battle completely. Surprisingly the inside of the building (which you think is Holgard’s hall of records. Some sort of government building anyway, you have no idea, never been here or paid attention to it before) isn’t too torn up by the fighting, though it looks like the people hiding here didn’t fair too well since you’re seeing a lot of dead bodies that look like they have the life drained out of them. You on the other hand are feeling a little weird. Not like your life is suddenly being drained out of you, but more like a feeling of energy around you. Almost like your hair is starting to stand on end. Must be all the magic being thrown about. You’re just about to head up to the second floor and that’s when you hear a groaning noise. You look back, but you already know what you’re going to see. Several of the corpses you just passed are now getting up and they’re all making their way towards you. “Of course. Shit.” You say and quicken your pace and the corpses do likewise. With a bunch of undead now chasing you, it’s a very good thing that government buildings tend to have the same layouts making it at least easy for you to keep finding the next flight of stairs. This is counter balanced by more corpses of the government officials stirring whenever you reach a new floor. By the time you make it to the top floor, you’ve got a horde chasing you. You scramble up the ladder to the roof and fling open the hatch. There upon the roof, you see Heather and her antagonist throwing bolts of magic and blocking each other’s attacks. It would seem they’re evenly matched and neither one is paying any attention to you. Meanwhile, corpses are making their way up the ladder. You shoot the first one in the head and then slam the hatch down and stomp on it a couple times. It’s not going to hold them for long, and you can’t stand here forever keeping all your weight on it. The noise of your pistol now causes the opposing wizard to take notice of you. He doesn’t waste any time in throwing a bolt of energy at you. You try to get out of the way, but you still get hit with a blast strong enough to cause you to go flying backwards. You ignore the pain in your chest as you desperately attempt to not fall off the side of the roof. The top half of your body hangs over the edge as you struggle to move from your precarious position. You manage to sit up just in time to see the wizard throwing another magic bolt your way. This probably would have been the end of you had the hatch not opened back up and corpses crawling out of it. Instead of hitting you, the bolt hits a couple of the corpses instead and you scramble out of the way so as not to get hit by flying body parts heading your way. As the horde continues to pour onto the roof, your visibility of the other wizard and Heather is starting to be blocked by said horde. You desperately shoot at the horde, but unlike your previous experience back at the League headquarters, you’re not going to intimidate them by killing a few. There’s nowhere to go either. The closest building isn’t close enough that you could easily jump to it, even if it was still intact. At best, from this height you MIGHT survive a fall with several broken bones and given what else is going on down in the streets, you probably wouldn’t survive too much longer. “Fuck. Looks like Warts was right. Yag’s crapped out.” You say to yourself, drawing your blade for a final stand. Just as one of the slack jawed dead eyed corpses gets within reach of you, you’re suddenly floating upward! After lingering in the air for a moment, you slowly start floating over the street causing the rest of the corpses to follow and go right over the side of the building. It’s fascinating and scary as hell at the same time since you could easily be dropping to your own death right now. From your position, you see Heather on the far side of the building with one raised hand in your direction. You also see the other wizard lying on the roof smoldering and still burning. You didn’t see it because you were too occupied with fighting corpses, but it would appear your arrival was enough distraction that allowed Heather to get the upper hand over her opponent. With all the undead now a pile of splattered bodies on the street (Well most of them anyway) and no longer a threat, Heather pulls you forward and gently places you back on the rooftop where upon you walk over to her. “Thanks.” You say. “Thank you for the distraction. Shit, I’m fucking exhausted dealing with asshole.” Heather says and indeed looking very worn. In fact, she even looks a bit older. “I was actually coming to do more than just be a distraction, but suddenly I was getting attacked by a hundred dead bean counters.” “Yeah, the repercussions of wild dark magic being thrown around. This building might have some strong magic protection, but it didn’t do shit for the people inside.” “It does?” “Well yeah. It’s where all the records to the city are held. Last thing the government wants is stuff like that getting destroyed. I put the protection wards up myself when Ludmilla requested it months ago. Why do you think the building is still more or less intact?” “Hm, thought it was unusual. Anyway, your students are having their own problem with demons that they’re fighting in the streets right now. I think the other wizard keeps summoning them.” “Of course he is. Y’know, that’s probably why these idiots got themselves kicked out of the Delantium University in the first place, dabbling with necromancy and demonology. That shit could potentially destroy a world if used as reckless as it has been here. Well guess I better sort this out, before taking a break.” You tell Heather where you saw the fighting going on and she goes over to the right side of the building and sees for herself. It’s still a stalemate from what you can tell and fortunately Heather says this will be easy to take care of. She conjures up a fireball and directs it towards the other wizard in the street below. He’s not even looking in that direction so he takes the hit. You then see a figure screaming and burning which is then followed by one of the demons leaping on him and ripping him apart. Heather’s people take advantage of the situation and blast the demons with all they have. Without the other wizard up keeping the spell, they aren’t materializing any longer and stay permanently dead. Though you do see one leap away from the battle and out of sight. Looks like that will just be one more evil thing brought into this world. (Not that it’s going to make much of a difference) With the immediate threat over with, you and Heather head back down the ladder where thankfully there aren’t anymore walking dead lurking about. Heather’s students soon meet up with the both of you. They look even more tired than she does and you notice there are significantly less of them than the last time you remember. “Grand Matriarch! Are you hurt!? I can heal you!” Gwen asks. “I’m fine Gwen, see to our friend though, maybe he’s hurt, I saw him take a magic bolt to the chest.” Heather remarks. Gwen goes over to you and starts to check you out, but you don’t feel like you really need any tending to either. “Thanks, but I’m really okay.” You say. “Let me just cast a minor healing spell, you look like you could use it. Were you fighting before you got here?” Gwen remarks and starts casting something over you. “Yeah, mostly orcs, some humans. All assholes.” “Wow, orcs huh? That takes some courage to go toe to toe with the likes of those big green guys.” “Eh, I had some green guys of my own. A little on smaller side though. Hm, starting to feel a lot better. At least not aching in pain anymore. Guess I did need that after all. Thanks.” “You’re welcome!” Gwen’s attitude is a lot different than you last remember. “Where’s your boyfriend?” “Huh? Oh Cooper? He’s not my boyfriend anymore, he ran off a couple months ago. He didn’t want to stick around during the invasion. He was a big coward after all, not like you.” “Um, yeah. I think I’m okay right now Gwen.” “You sure?” “Yeah, thanks.” “The man said he doesn’t need any more attention so stop hovering over him and go back over there with the rest of your class.” Gwen gives you a small smile before leaving you to go back to the rest of her, causing Heather to make an eye roll. “Called it.” Heather says. “Hm, well I guess better that she’s friendly now.” You say. “She’s still fucking annoying. If she didn’t show such natural talent for magic, I’d probably just throw her ass out of the school.” “Wow, I would think you’d want everyone you could get. I mean there aren’t many of you after all.” “Yeah well you don’t have to deal with her on a daily basis. However, you are correct in that pragmatism did also influence the decision to keep her around. I’m about the last very experienced wizard in this city now anyway. The few remaining true Dornans either left when I first got the school started or died during this invasion. Still it’ll be enough to turn back the tide. It’s just really taking its toll on me. Pretty sure you can already tell.” “Well I wasn’t going to say anything.” “You didn’t need to. Magic has a habit of making you old before your time. That’s why whenever you someone talks about wizards; the stereotype is some decrepit old person. It’s not that far off, except the old person usually isn’t all that old in years at least. But such is the price we pay for being skilled in the gift that Dorna bestowed upon this world.” Heather, yourself and her group take this moment to rest up and talk a bit of strategy. The current situation is bad, but not entirely unwinnable. You just have to make one major attack to turn the tide. Heather is in favor of helping what little remains of Ludmilla’s defenses at her palace. Heather says breaking up the attack going on there should destroy the rest of Peter’s forces or at least the majority of them. At that point he won’t have enough people to take the city, let alone hold it given that Ludmilla will still be alive at that point. When you ask if there is any other alternative, Heather says, you all could attack Peter directly since he’s probably still aboard his ship. The problem with that is, there is still a good-sized fleet near the Holgard docks. Heather says casting magic at the ships might bring a few of them down, but not before the rest of them start firing cannonballs back, and who knows if you’re going to get Peter or not. Still, if you take out Peter then it isn’t like you’re going to have to worry about him ever trying this in another five to ten years and having to deal with it again. > You attack the fleet Cut off the head and the rest is going to follow. “We need to take out that fleet. If Peter gets away, turning back this invasion isn’t going to matter.” You say. “And if Ludmilla dies, then what?” Heather remarks. “Well I dunno, but worst case scenario, one of us picks up the pieces and takes over the city instead. Not like we’d do any worse.” Heather’s a little surprised to hear you say that, though you just sort of came up with it in the moment. “I still feel very strongly that we should help the baroness. However I guess you have a point about Peter. It’s not ideal, but I guess we’ll have to split up.” “Split up?” “Yes, seeing as my students held their own against a trained diabolist I’d hope they’d be able to handle some mundane orcs.” “That’s a terrible idea, we’re going to need all the firepower we can get!” “Don’t worry, I can handle it myself. Besides, it’ll be a lot harder for them to focus on a single smaller target rather than a group. You should go with my students however. They probably should have someone to back them up for protection. I mean there’s not much you can do to help against a bunch of ships anyway. Speaking of crews, where is the rest of your people?” Heather asks. “Don’t ask, in fact after this is all over I might not even have any people. Anyway, I still think splitting up is a bad idea, but I guess if you say you can handle it yourself, I trust you.” With as much rest as you’re going to get under these conditions, you and the student wizards are soon on your way to the palace. Heather parts ways with you, but you really wish she didn’t. She still looked very tired for one thing and you’re not entirely convinced that you shouldn’t focus on one thing instead of splitting up. You don’t have many problems on the way there, but you do come across a few unexpected faces. It’s some of the Nocturnal League. They look like they’ve already been in a few scrapes. “There you are boss! We’ve been looking all over for ya!” one of them remarks. “Well, you’ve found me, and I hope for your sake, you’ve come to help.” You say. “We have! Um, we’ve managed to save couple of our brothels from getting too fucked up. We’ve also been having people take the whores back to headquarters and stay there until it’s safe.” “Glad to hear we’re making Holgard safe for whores again at least.” You get an idea. “Okay, you lot are going with these wizards to the palace. I want you to do everything in your power to protect them. Seriously, it’s the most important thing in the world right now.” You say and start walking off. “Wait, where are you going boss?” “I got protection of my own to do. Don’t worry about me. Just do what I tell you!” Not questioning your leadership again, your people follow your orders and you run off towards the docks. You just hope Heather managed to get there since your own trip to the docks isn’t without struggle. When you finally get within sight of the docks you see several ships burning and sinking into the water. Looks like Heather is already getting to work as you see a lone figure running about casting magic into the bay area. You run towards her and then immediately have to take cover as the sounds of several cannons are fired in Heather’s (and your) direction. The area was already half destroyed from the initial attack and pillaging, but with Heather’s recent attack on his fleet, Peter is determined to destroy the entire harbor and then some. As you hide behind a partially destroyed building. Deafening explosions are all around you. Temporary loss of hearing aside, you’re otherwise fine. You look out from the rubble and still see Heather encased in a glowing blue shield of some sort. However, you also see several smaller boats rowing towards docks. Heather’s putting up a good fight, but you need to go help her. You run towards Heather and another cannon explosion hits not far from you. The force is enough to throw you to the ground and you’re pelted by bits of debris. With your head now bleeding and feeling dizzy, you slowly stand back up only for another nearby explosion to knock you back down again. This time you struggle to push yourself up and look up just in time to see Heather fighting off some of the sailors that have managed to get to the docks (or what’s left of them). You stand up and begin firing wildly at the sailors though Heather is easily destroying them with a chain lightning spell. With the wave of Peter’s men dead, Heather takes a quick breather and it’s at that moment she finally notices you. She nods. You nod. And then another volley of cannons fires off and completely obliterates everything in front of you. You fly backwards and eventually slam into something made of harder stuff than you are and you go unconscious. You’re out for who knows how long, but by the time you wake up it’s dark and the sounds of battle have died down though your hearing still isn’t very good and your head is throbbing. You stagger around a bit before getting your bearings. In this darkness several burning fires provide most of the nearby illumination. It’s nothing but destruction everywhere. “Hey! Hey you!” a voice calls out. You spin around and see five men dressed for battle. They don’t look like Holgard Watch either. You nearly go for your pistol and that’s when you realize you don’t have it anymore. The only weapon you currently have on you is a dagger still in its sheath and you’re not likely to succeed a confrontation in your condition. You could run, but you’re still a bit dazed and they’re already almost on you. “Who are you? We’re trying to clear the streets of people right now and don’t need anyone skulking about! Where is your home?” one of them says. “Huh? I…I live…um…in Teckleville.” You say desperately trying to find the words to get out of this. “Teckleville? Never heard of it! What the hell are you doing out here then?” “I was… I was visiting my sister.” “Visiting your sister? Was she a whore here?” the man laughs along with his fellows. “No…I look…my head really hurts and I’m a little dizzy…” The man suddenly grabs you by the shirt and slams you up against a nearby destroyed wall. “More than your head is going to hurt if you don’t start answering my questions! You say you were here to visit your sister, but that smells like bullshit to me! You look like a common thief trying to take advantage of the chaos! Well that shit ain’t gonna pass now that Baron Peter Varsakken is in charge!” “Peter Varsakken?” you ask. “Yeah! He visited his sister too and decided he liked the city so much that he took it in the name of the Delantium Kingdom!” Well that’s it. The struggle has been lost and you need to get the hell out of here somehow. “Please, I’m no thief! I’m just a bard and I was just here visiting my sister when the…liberation began. The baroness’ men wouldn’t let anyone leave and killed anyone who tried! Not to mention my sister was scared so of course I stayed with her. When the fighting got really bad even her home wasn’t safe and looters…(choke) took her. I tried to fight, but I’m not a fighting man and it was just luck that I was only smashed in the head and left for dead. I later got up and tried to find her, but…the violence…I never saw so much violence before…I thought of my sister…and…(Sniffle).” The man that grabbed you relents slightly with his grip. “I just sort of got lost trying to hide from the bloodshed and before I knew it there was an explosion and I woke up here. Now I don’t know where my sister is and I fear the worst…(sob).” You say really trying to put on the tears by rubbing your eyes a lot. The military soldiers look at each other and the one that grabbed you pulls you off the wall and begins motioning you to go. “Fine. Get out of here. Go on back to your village or wherever you come from bard. And remember to sing the song of Peter Varsakken’s glorious victory here today!” the man shouts and give you one last shove before moving on. Now free, you hurry along the way and find the quickest sewer entrance and enter. You figure you can move around down there with less hassle and get out of the city quicker. You briefly wonder if you should go back to your headquarters to check if there is anyone there, but really it’s still better to just get the hell out as quickly as possible. Besides, the Nocturnal League has practically got to be dead here now. Might as well move on to your back up plan, which is to head to Jicol. You eventually get out of Holgard and with your hands you dig up your private stash that you hid in the nearby wilderness. You figure you got enough coin for a trip to Jicol though you’re going to have to walk to the nearest city which Klyton. It’s a long walk too, but fortunately the route from Holgard is no longer impeded as much by a lot of woods and roads are much more prominent now. With any luck, you’ll run into a Klyton carriage on its way to Holgard and you can tell them the news and get a ride back. One month later... “Jicol huh? Yeah I guess I can take you along, but not for free obviously.” The trader says. “Will this suffice?” you reply and show him a few platinum coins. “Yeah, that will do it. You’ll have to sleep in the cargo hold though and if I find out you’ve messed about with any of the goods down there, well if you aren’t familiar with the term keelhauling, you’ll become very familiar. We leave tomorrow morning. Don’t be late.” You leave the trader and head back to where you’ve been currently staying in Hessla. You thought you’d never get a ship to take you to Jicol. Less ships have been coming through Hessla lately thanks to the invasion at Holgard. Also all known pirates have been banned from entering Jicol. You guess that’s why not many ships from here are currently allowed to travel there. The next day you board the trader ship and make your way to the cargo hold which contains mostly spices and cloth material that you’d have no interest in stealing anyway. You imagine it’s going to be months before you actually arrive in Jicol, and it’s probably not going to be a comfortable trip either. On the plus side, you’ll be glad to eventually see Vera after this miserable time. Days pass into weeks and you more or less keep to yourself and just eat with the rest of the crew when its time then go back to your place in the cargo hold. Then as you’re sleeping one day… “Oh come on! This is bullshit! I’m a fucking registered citizen of Hessla you can’t fucking rob me!” a voice says. Sounds like the trader. “Apologies, but shit is tough all over nowadays. Besides you need to relax, we’re not taking all of it. Just a little bit.” A deeper voice says. “The Governor of Hessla is going to hear about this Zamed! There are certain laws in place for a reason!” “Telling the Governor of Hessla? You think that’s a wise thing to be threatening me with Flint given the circumstances?” You hear the name Zamed and your immediately sit up and accidently hit your head, cursing in the process. “Who else is down here Flint?!” Zamed says “Just some extra passenger that paid coin.” Flint responds. Before you know it, you see Zamed and some of his people along with the trader. You aren’t sure how this is going to go, but you’re ready to pull your pistol. You just wish it was multiple shots like your old one. Zamed squints a little and then speaks. “Wait a minute. I know you. Shit, thought you died in Holgard.” Zamed says. “Almost did.” You answer. “Well Flint, this is your lucky day. You can keep all your cargo, I’ll just be taking this one.” “I thought pirates were currently banned from Jicol.” “Jicol? Oh wait, you actually think I was going to take you there? To Vera?” “Call me an optimist.” “Wrong day for optimism, friend. No, gonna take you to the Syndicate. They’ll pay a nice price for you. Not sure what you did to piss them off, but they really got it in for you.” “I figured those orcs weren’t just wrecking my businesses on accident.” “Indeed. Well we can do this the easy way or the hard way. The choice is yours.” “Not gonna be the easy way I can tell you that, and if you attempt to do this the hard way, you’ll have a bullet in your head before you can make another step.” “Pfft, Vera always went on about how great you were with a pistol. She always bragged about you. The way I see it, if you were so great then why the hell did she betray you?” “What the hell are you on about?” “Clueless idiot. Vera’s been in cahoots with the Syndicate for a long time now. She was also in on the whole invasion. If anything I’m saving you time because if you got to Jicol, she would have only turned your ass in to the Syndicate herself.” “What? I don’t believe you. Vera would never betray me, let alone hand me over to the Syndicate!” “It’s of minor importance. However, you may be right about her not turning you in, she always was a little too sweet on you. Talking about you even after we…y’know what? Fuck this, I can just bring in your head…” Zamed pulls his pistol and you fire landing one right between his eyes as promised. However this isn’t enough to deter the rest of his men who rush at you. You fight with your sword as best you can, but eventually you are cut down.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 33 “Shit, these fucking orcs don’t die like they should.” You say after putting two more shots in a large greenskin trying to get back up. “Don’t think it matters boss, this brothel’s fucked, and not in a good way. Just bout every whore in here is dead.” Warts says. “All of them?” “Well there were a couple survivors, but I think their whorin’ days are over.” “Damnit, that’s another one destroyed.” “An wez lost a few purple wish houses and sum gambling dens too. Hopefully we can save da rest before we don’t have anything left.” You look around at the destruction of the brothel you’re currently in and try to temporarily ignore the loud chaos going on outside as you gather your thoughts on what to do next. “Damnit.” You say seeing a familiar woman on the floor with an axe wound in her head. “Wat?” Warts asks. “I know this whore or rather I did. Name was Naji. She was that girl that I rescued back when you talked me into ripping off Reginald’s house.” “Sheesh, dat wuz a long time ago boss. Yer memory iz good if you can member whores. I can’t even member when my weddin’ anniversary is, though I wuz drunk at the time an’ Snuffit reminds me anyway.” “Well she was a bit special for awhile, but as you might know my heart always really belonged to Tanya. I knew Naji was still whoring, and after we got the Nocturnal League set up I made sure she always had a job in one of our brothels, but I never did speak with her again in person. Always thought about it sometimes, but just figured I could get around to it when I wasn’t busy. Guess it’s too late now. Seems rather pointless that I even rescued her given that she just wound up dead anyway.” “Well look on da bright side boss, it looks like she got a cleaner death with a quick axe strike as opposed to wat dose cultist fuckers woulda did.” “I suppose. She also was Rook’s cousin, which probably saved me from him killing me. In any case, I’m having serious concerns about this attack.” “Well yeah boss, da whole cities goin’ ta shit again.” “No, I mean why the fuck are we even being attacked? I mean yeah I get orcs tend to be enthusiastic about their marauding, but something about the fact that OUR businesses are getting attacked like they were military targets seems really fucking suspicious.” “Mebbe dat Peter knew we weren’t really gonna help him.” “Well that’s definitely possible, but it still doesn’t explain why we would be targeted so much and so accurately. I would think he’d want to focus his forces on taking the palace or taking out the mage school. Also his invasion force was a lot larger than first reports mentioned.” “I guess Vera wasn’t too successful in convincin’ other pirates to not join her ex-boyfriend.” “I’m a little concerned about her too, since the last message we got was six months ago from her and she said she was having some success in her endeavors.” “Well she must be okay, because we wuz still gettin’ da cut from her even last month.” “I suppose, but at the rate shit is going down here, we might not even be able to pay the pittance that the ECS asks for every month.” “You sayin’ you don’t have a secret personal stash?” “Of course, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to part with my shit to pay the damn ECS. I’m sure you’d feel the same way about your stash.” “Pfft, I ain’t got no personal stash. Snuffit takes it all. Speakin’ of her, I think I’ll be getting back to her. Seems like this city is a lost cause an’ if you’re smart you should just get the hell out too.” “What the fuck Warts. You’re just gonna abandon everything?” “Well yeah. I don’t exactly have some bond with dis place. I mean it wuz fun while it lasted, but looks like its come to an end. I mean maybe dis place will be better again in a couple years or so. An’ didn’t you make plans to retreat to Jicol is shit started to go wrong?” “Yeah, but again, I’m still not sure if everything there is okay.” “Bah, Vera’s fine, she’s probably just really fuckin’ busy. I mean you know how it is. Look dis iz the ways I sees da situation…” Warts steps over a couple bodies before addressing you again. He gives you a more serious look than he normally does. “Youz gotta be the luckiest Yag blessed bastard I know, beside myself. You shoulda died so many times, Yag musta been rollin’ loaded dice. However, an’ don’t say dis offen but dere iz a time ta step away from da table and dis iz one o’ dem times. I myself have stayed alive as long as I have cuz I knew when ta walk away.” Warts says. “And you think this is one of those times, you don’t think there’s still a chance to turn this around?” you ask. “Well yeah, there’s always a chance, such are the whimsical ways of Yag, but the odds just ain’t lookin’ good enough for me to take da risk, so I’m off whether you’re sticking around or not, but I’d rather you leave with me, because…” Warts coughs a bit and looks away. You hear a sniffle. “Warts…are you crying?” you ask. “NO! I’m not cryin’ like sum sissy elf! It’s all dis dust bein kicked up due to da battle! Anyway, we’ve known each other a long ass time, made a lotta coin, did a lotta stupid stuff, an’ in sum cases even saved me from getting’ killed. Sometime youz waz an asshole, but you still were better than most an’ especially anyone in da Spiderfang Tribe. Yer, the closest thing I’ve had to a friend, an I’d rather our parting of ways go with me knowing dat yer on yer way ta Jicol rather than dying here over nuthin’.” Warts says. “So you wouldn’t be coming to Jicol?” “Nah, too far. I’ll probably just find work in Spider Fang territory, open a tradin’ post maybe. Most of da folks dat hated me are dead now anyway so it ain’t like I gotta worry bout bein’ a halfbreed anymore. I should be closer to my family anyway. In fact dat’s another reason youz should go to Jicol. Start a family with Vera, I know you likes her. Forget dat demon girl that’s still plaguin’ yer mind, she’s gone.” Warts doesn’t really know the whole story to that of course, and you don’t really have time to go into it right now, but despite all that, Warts does raise some good points. You’re not out of the fight yet though and you’ve been through two city upheavals already, you can easily survive a third as long as you’re smart about all this. You ran away from home once before, you’re not doing it again, especially not now when you’ve built a life here. Might not be ideal to most, but it’s yours. “Warts, you do what you gotta do, but I’m gonna do what I gotta do. Just remember whether the Nocturnal League survives or not, I’m still going to be here if you want to work with me again the future.” Warts shakes his head while giving a slight broken tooth grin. “Suppose I shouldn’t expected any less from ya. Youz haz a death wish. Always haz fightin’ dangerous groups of cutthroats, goin’ head ta head with religious fanatics, fucking demon bitches… youz gonna get yerself killed one day and it ain’t gonna be a pretty death when it happens. But guess I gotta respect all dat. I hope Yag’s still usin’ loaded dice, cuz yer gonna need ‘em.” Warts says. “We’ll see each other again Warts.” You respond. Warts nods at your confidence which you return before he takes his leave. Now alone, you briefly check the rest of the brothel for any remaining survivors. You don’t find any, but you do tell the couple that Warts mentioned to go find a better place to hide if they can. While you could just start jumping back into the action, you’d still rather have some back up and the only place you’re going to be certain to find some is back at the Nocturnal League’s headquarters where you’re probably going to find the rest of your remaining members hiding or attempting to wait this out. Good thing you’re already not in the greatest of moods because you don’t imagine it getting any better when you have to deal with your “employees.” When you get back, most of them are a bit on edge, but others are just lazing about playing cards or just generally doing nothing. “Oh, uh hey boss. You’re alive.” “Yeah well I can see you’re really glad that I am. Why the fuck are you assholes sitting around playing cards, you do realize there is a siege going on and our businesses are getting all fucked up right?” you say. “You said we should guard this place.” “I said SOME of you and as I remember, you weren’t one of them. In fact, most of you should be up there defending our interests. I’m not even asking you to be a fucking hero or defend the city because I know damn well that’s a pointless endeavor.” “Boss, I don’t see why we should risk our lives when we can just wait shit out down here.” And there it is. The excuse you’ve been expecting. “Oh this should be good. Go on about why you feel this way…whatever the fuck your name is.” “I’m really not trying to be disrespectful boss, but it seems like we can just pick up the pieces after all this is over. If anything we’ll be in a stronger position since the populace won’t be in any condition to oppose us and it’ll take awhile before the new ruler imposes any sort of order. And this Peter is another Varsakken right? He’s probably not going to be any better than his sister, so it’ll be business as usual.” “That’s a nice thought. I see you really thought this out while sitting on your chair playing cards and drinking your ale. Here’s another thought though. While we’re sitting here playing cards, telling jokes and jerking each other off, all of our business interests are getting fucked up. All our Purple Wish dens? Destroyed. That’s a shitload of our income right there and it can’t be easily made up. Our whores? Slaughtered. Again can’t easily be made up, unless you lot are gonna start selling your asses to make up the loss and I guarantee it wouldn’t. Our protection rackets? Well you can’t extort corpses, and that’s what A LOT of them are right now thanks to orcs just killing everything in sight. I mean fuck, we ARE supposed to be protecting these hapless suckers if not out of the goodness of our hearts then at least for our own pockets! Shit, that’s the whole damn point!” Your voice continues to rise as you walk around the room admonishing your people. “This idea that we’ll just pick up everything after everything is over is laughable, because there won’t be that much left and what IS left, Peter Varsakken is going to be establishing order over, and I’m telling you right now, whether he’s as corrupt as the rest of his family or not isn’t the issue. The issue is, we DON’T have a good working relationship with him like we do with his sister. Shit like that takes time and trust, both of which we are in short supply of. And to top it all off the ECS is going to still be breathing down our necks telling us we better pay up by the end of the month. How are we going to fucking do that if all of our income has turned to fucking rubble? Is ANY of this getting through or am I talking to a bunch of fucking retards?” Suddenly another one stands up. “Well gee boss, why don’t you get your precious hobs to fucking do all this shit?” “Because most of the hobs are fucking dead that’s why, which is another loss since a lot of them were our best pit fighters. And I highly recommend you take it way down, before I take YOU down.” Now several others stand up to join the troublemaker. Though a few of them look unsure. Some don’t take a side and just quietly slink back into a place where they might be safe from the fighting. One thing you are noticing is nobody seems to be siding with you. This is worse than you thought. You already have your hand on your weapon. “No! You’ve been bossing us about for months getting prepared for this fucking invasion and none of us see why we should even be involved. You do this ALL the damn time, dragging us into these unnecessary conflicts instead of just staying the fuck out of it. You did this with the religious faction war, you did this with the Felians, who were supposed to be our allies and now you’re doing it here. And who is on the losing end of all of this shit? US! That’s who! We’re the ones fucking dying! Well no fucking more! We’re all staying down here and riding this out, and if you don’t like it, tough shit, because if you haven’t noticed by now, you’re fresh outta friends and you don’t even have your filthy hob scum to protect your ass anymore.” “Seriously, you ALL feel this way? You fuckers are the most short sighted assholes ever if you’ve decided that right now would be the best time to pull a double cross and MORE fool you that you didn’t kill me right away.” “Well we can take care of that right now, and you don’t have enough bullets to kill us all.” “I don’t need to kill you all, I’m just gonna kill you and I don’t need hobs to do my work.” The troublemaker’s eyes widen and he goes for his own flintlock, but he’s too slow of course and you’ve already killed him and three others before everyone has taken cover. Nobody else is returning fire or attempting to attack, which means you’ve probably asserted your dominance once again. “That’s what I thought. Now contrary to this dead fucker’s words, I’ve been risking my ass more than ANY of you since day fucking one! Who the hell was it that was leading the damn charge when we took out the Joachimites and Felians? As I remember it was me. And what the hell have I been doing while you lot were hiding like cowards, I’ve been trying to keep this organization together by defending our shit! So don’t give me this bullshit that I’ve been leading from the back. Maybe the real problem is you shitheads have all gotten lazy because you have no regular opposition. Scared of a real fight. Y’know what? Fuck all of you. I’m going back up there to try to salvage what this organization still has left. The rest of you can either help or get the fuck out of the way, but what you can’t do is stay here. Because when I come back, I find ANYONE still here, you’ll be joining these troublemakers on the floor.” With those last words you leave. You have no idea if you’re even going to have an organization left if you survive all this, but that doesn’t matter right now. Right now you’re going to do something even more foolish and find out what the hell’s going on with Heather and her crew of wannabes because if you can get the wizards to help you in this chaos, staying here will have at least been worth the effort. Tracking them down is fairly easy because it’s the part of the city that EVERYONE is avoiding, lot of explosions, debris flying in the air, fire, strange lights and even stranger noises in general. When you arrive in the general vicinity, you finally get a good look at what’s going on. You see several creatures that remind you of some sort of demonic dwarves since they’re about the same height, and pretty stocky. They’re attacking a group of wizards wearing purple robes which you’re guessing are Heather’s people though you don’t see her. Heather’s people are holding their own, but the problem is the demons don’t stay dead or rather as soon as one is killed another one materializes. They can’t possibly keep this up forever. A little bit in the distance you also catch sight of a man in a shabby brown robe. You’re guessing this is the one summoning the demons. He must have some strong protection up, because demons aren’t known to enjoy being summoned by mortals. You also see two figures battling it out on top of one of the few standing buildings left in the area. You see all manner of magic being thrown about and most of it hitting nearby parts of the city. You can’t quite make out the figures, but you’re guessing one of those might be Heather. The way you see it, you can either climb up the building to try to help Heather or try to help her students. > You help her students Heather’s a powerful wizard and can probably take care of herself. Her students on the other hand you’re not so sure of and you’re going to need all the magic help possible if you’re going to turn back this invasion. If you can take out the opposing wizard, that would probably break the stalemate and then you all can help Heather if still necessary. You figure if you can sneak in range and get off a shot, you’ll kill the wizard and dispel the demons he keeps warping in. Well that’s the ideal plan anyway. You sneak around a few buildings trying to stay away from the direction of the fighting and getting closer hoping the whole time nobody notices you. Eventually you go into a partially destroyed building and get to the third floor of it to take your shot since you figure you’ll at least be out of immediate danger of the demons suddenly turning around and attacking you. Taking aim, your pull the trigger and shoot the wizard in the back. You were aiming for his head, but it seems to have done the trick anyway as the wizard goes down. All that magic and you figured he neglected a protection spell against more mundane dangers. Whether the bullet killed him or not doesn’t really matter since the demons warping in aren’t under his control anymore and instead of immediately getting themselves killed by the students, a couple of them attack the easy prey on the ground instead. You watch a couple of them take chunks from the wizard and go bounding away. The students make quick work of most of the remaining demons that do insist on continuing their attack. Meanwhile, you’re making your way back down to go meet up with the students now that the demon threat is over with. You exit the partially destroyed building and still see that Heather is fighting her opponent on the roof of the intact building. She needs help fast and you begin shouting at the students when you get closer to them. “Hey! Hey! I’m on your side! Heather needs help! Look!” you shout pointing up and towards the roof. No sooner have you done that, when they start shouting back and it looks like they’re prepping spells. “What the fuc…shit!” Feeling in danger you immediately start firing at the students. A couple of them go down, cuasing the rest to scatter a bit and a few magic bolts go wild in your direction missing you. Unfortunately they also miss the demons they were trying to hit behind you. Your shouting caused the escaped demons that you thought left the area to come back for seconds on another easy target. You hear the growls and turn around just in time for one of them to almost be on you. The last thing you see are inhuman jaws enclosing on your face followed by a sickening crunch sound.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 32 It’s been awhile, but it’s good to see Vera again even if she’s just here for a visit. She’s got some strong opinions on some of the changes that have happened recently though. “I still can’t believe the Felians are gone completely. I mean I just remember them always being here. Then again, so were a lot of groups I suppose. Still, sort of surprised you managed to gain an alliance with the Dornans.” Vera remarks. “Don’t see why it’s really all that surprising. Heather helped us in the past and she’s running things now. The Dornans aren’t even very religious anymore; they turned their temple into a school of sorts. Don’t think they’ve got many takers yet though.” You say. “Hm. I’m also still a little concerned about what you did with the Syndicate though. Might have been better in the long run to just pay their price.” “Are you kidding me Vera? You didn’t see what they were trying to extort from us. Besides, we’ve been okay so far and they haven’t even suddenly tried to raise the rate.” “I dunno. I know you have a lucky habit of getting over on the Syndicate, but I feel like this is pushing it. I have to think they must know something, but they’re biding their time to lull you into a false sense of security before they strike.” “Oh trust me, ever since I stepped foot into this city, I’ve been on my guard constantly. Don’t really know any other way to live at this point. However I’m going to soon be hiring a lot of cheap muscle in the form of all the hobgoblins, so I’m slightly less concerned about the Syndicate.” “What? You can’t seriously be considering recruiting MORE hobs.” “Why not? They’ll actually be perfect for this. Most of them either come here just itching to break someone’s legs or they go join the fight arena. Though a few odd ones join the Holgard Watch instead, go figure.” “Maybe, but I’ve noticed a severe increase in hobs in this organization since I came back to Holgard. Just don’t want this place turning into the Roach Leg Tribe.” “It’s Spiderfang Tribe actually and they’re still far outnumbered for that to happen. Well, for now at least. In any case, most of them have been migrating to Holgard quite a bit over the years. I guess most are learning that city life isn’t all that bad and you can still be just as much of a violent asshole here as you can out in the wild and get routinely paid for it. Hmm, actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I guess it makes sense that a few of them join the Holgard Watch after all.” “Well your call I guess, at least I don’t have deal with them. Dealing with Warts was enough for me. Though I’m not convinced a bunch of unruly hobs are going to be the end all of extra protection.” “Hence why we’re also close allies to a group of wizards.” “You seem pretty confident in our new wizard allies. Just how friendly are you with this Heather? I mean are you fucking her or something?” “No I’m not actually.” “Ah, so you’re TRYING to fuck her.” “Actually I’m not, but I’m not sure what difference it would make to you if I was.” “None I suppose, though I was just trying to figure out what might have been the motivator to throw your lot in with trusting this sorceress and her adepts. But if you say it was purely a practical and strategic move for the good of the League, then that’s good enough for me.” “Speaking of fucking, who was that big dark skinned guy who you were reluctant to leave when you were getting off the ship?” “Oh, that’s Zamed. He’s the captain of the Traveler. He’s a Hessla pirate, we tend to have business with a lot of them in Jicol, but Zamed’s been about the only one I’ve really taken a shine to lately. Still, it’s just as well as he’s a pirate. Don’t think I’d want him around ALL the time. Best to keep these sort of things free and flexible.” “Interesting. Though I thought Jicol was supposed to be pirate free.” “Eh, it’s pirate free in that the city doesn’t have to worry about them ever attacking the place, but that doesn’t mean they can’t stop there for supplies as long as they behave. Besides, Zamed’s been more of a privateer recently, though I suppose it’s a thin line. He’s been doing a lot of work for the Delantium Kingdom in their war against Nichan. Which is something I sort of want to bring up with you because it could possibly affect the League.” “Well guess I better hear it then.” Vera takes a drink of the rum she’s brought with her from Jicol before continuing. “Okay, I guess I’ll start at the beginning. Let’s see…what do you know of Peter Varsakken? Youngest son of Vlad.” Vera asks. “Um, nothing actually. Didn’t know there was another one of Vlad’s spawn running around. Wait, is this another one of his bastards, like you?” you ask with a smirk. “Oh no. He’s very much legitimate. It’s just that after he had a disagreement with his father and fled the city, all records were pretty much erased of him. He’s basically been living in exile in the Delantium Kingdom. Peter’s disagreement with his father involved the whole breaking away from the Delantium Kingdom in the first place. Peter was the only one who saw it as treason and remained loyal to Delantium. Over the years Peter has been trying to amass an army to take back the city.” “It’s my understanding that the Delantium Kingdom hasn’t exactly been in a big hurry to retake this place. I mean it’s been decades hasn’t it?” “Well they’ve been sort of busy with other things, like their recent war with Nichan for example. While the ruling class over there doesn’t want to spend their resources and treasury to take this place back, they certainly won’t turn down someone else willing to do the job, and that’s where Peter comes in. He’s of noble birth, loyal to the kingdom and would be an excellent governor for this city and absorb it back into Delantium’s fold.” “I see, and how do you know all this?” “As I said Zamed has been privateering for the Delantium Kingdom and he was contacted by Peter who is still trying to amass a conquering force of men and ships to take back his birthright. In fact Zamed is supposed to be organizing the majority of a flotilla of Hessla privateers” “And you trust this pirate?” “Of course not, but I trust the fact that I know how to lay it down good enough that he told me all this stuff in the bedroom without me even asking.” “Okay, I don’t need details on that part.” “Anyway, Peter’s been at this for years ever since he got exiled. He’s suffered many set backs in his quest to retake Holgard. Every time he’s been on the verge of being ready, something has happened. This was partially thanks to the Ebony Claw Syndicate sabotaging his efforts in Delantium, and sometimes even the Temple of Fel would hinder his efforts as well. However, since things have changed drastically over the years in this city, he’s in the best position he’s ever been in to retake this place.” “What makes you think he won’t get sabotaged again by either group? I mean the Ebony Claw might not have a direct presence here, but they’re still making some coin from us. Same is some what true of the Felians, though different reasons. They’re allies with the ECS, so they tend to help them.” “I don’t think they care this time. I mean thanks to your magical shenanigans they don’t make enough from us for it to make much difference either way I suppose. If the League suffers severely from this invasion, the ECS will most likely just come in directly and finish it off.” “Well that’s presumptuous that we’re going to get the shit kicked out of us. As long as we don’t stand toe to toe with an invading force and stay out of the damn way, I imagine we’ll get through it. Hell, it isn’t like we don’t have routes out of the city if need be. Honestly though unless this Peter is bringing the full force of the Delantium army, I don’t see him winning. Ludmilla counts wizards among her allies and has a strong fleet of her own, so I question if this Peter is even going to succeed. And say Peter does win, then what? Is this guy some law and order fanatic? He’s a Varsakken and from what I can tell every single one of their family members are corrupt. So it would just be a matter of coming to an understanding with him so business continues as usual.” “Well that might be easier to do if we dealt with him now then. In fact I sort of wanted to address that idea.” “Oh?” Vera goes into the explanation that from the information she’s gathered from Zamed, Peter is most likely going to win. While he doesn’t have the Delantium army at his command, he does have several orc mercenary companies along with a few wizards that he’s managed to make friends with from the Delantium magic university. She also has heard that while Peter isn’t exactly a Joachimite purity zealot, his time in the Delantium Kingdom has probably given him more of an appreciation for a more orderly society as opposed to one that embraces rampant corruption so readily. So he’s most likely not going to look favorably upon the Nocturnal League. However, he’s still pragmatic enough that he’d probably give leniency to a group that actively helped him and a deal could very well be made as you said. Vera goes on to say she truly believes that this is the best chance for the Nocturnal League to survive in Holgard. “You seem to have given this some thought, and while I do often appreciate your input on things, the one problem I have in this case is you’re getting all of this information second hand from a pirate. Now I know you said your vertical smile caused the guy to go all stupid over you, so you’re certain he’s on the up and up. However, HIS information might also be mixed with rumors, half-truths and outright lies that he’s overheard. I mean if you were fucking Peter Varsakken himself and getting this information from him, I might believe the situation is as hopeless as you’re saying.” You say. “I thought you might feel that way, so how about this then…Peter Varsakken is meeting Zamed. We could go to this meeting as well and we could hash out our demands.” Vera remarks. “Wait. You’re telling me that you were planning on going to meet with this Peter without me?” “No! Of course not! I came here first because I wanted to see what your decision would be on this. I mean look, I understand what you’re saying, but based on everything I’ve learned, the outcome seems grim even if we managed to keep our head down during the initial invasion. But, you’re right too, I am getting all this information second hand, so maybe it would be a good idea to actually talk with this Peter in person, before coming to any sort of decision. If we did, you and I could both make an assessment of whether to throw our lot in or not.” “I dunno…(Sigh) yeah I suppose it couldn’t hurt, though I’m just wondering about the people we already have alliances with. I mean pissing off the Holgard magic school isn’t something I exactly want to do, also you mentioned the ECS has been thwarting this guy’s efforts for a long time, and I’m still not convinced that they won’t still do that even if they haven’t done it yet. By siding with Peter, we could piss them off which wouldn’t be any good either.” “Well…it’s your call I suppose boss. I just don’t want us to get swept away in the flood of this upcoming conflict. I want to see us survive.” “Pretty sure we all want that.” You swear if it isn’t a rebellion or faction war, it’s a fucking invasion in this city. It’s enough to make you want to pick up and just leave everything behind rather than deal with this shit. However, you’ve built something here, so you’re not doing that until all else fails. Whether or not you can strike a good deal with Peter or not, there is one very personal reason you’d prefer to stay loyal to your current allies and that’s the fact that so far Heather is your only sure lead on getting fixed from your curse. If you backstab them and live, you’re still fucked because there goes a potential cure. It’s selfish, but it’s a pretty strong motivator. While Vera has said that Peter has wizard connections as well, that’s not a sure thing that you can get help from them. They’re assisting Peter and have no reason to do the same for you. About the only thing you can do is try to see if Heather and her people might join Peter’s invasion. Hell, if that’s the case then you’d definitely be willing to help Peter as well. Of course doing that might not go over well either and you’d tip your hand pretty severely. Might be better to talk to Peter first and get all the information from him and then go speak to Heather so you’d at least have something that might be useful to her if worse came to worst in your meeting. > You talk to Peter first Vera’s usually got good instincts, if she’s saying that you should at least speak with Peter, then you probably should do it. You can always speak to Heather after you come back depending on how the meeting goes. “Alright Vera, I’ll meet with Peter. However, I want you to stay here.” You say. “Wait, why?” Vera asks. “Because if anything happens I want to make sure someone competent is still in charge of the League. I trust Zamed will be fine in taking just me correct?” “Yeah, I’ll talk to him, though I really think it would be better if we both went.” “Again, as I said, I want someone in charge around here. I certainly can’t entrust it all to Warts can I?” “Hah, guess not. Okay, I’ll speak to Zamed that went he leaves, you’ll be coming with him and he can come pick me up when you return.” “Yeah, and tell him to make room for ten hobs as well. No way in hell I’m going without at least some back up even if this Peter’s got a whole army behind him.” Vera nods and leaves to go presumably talk to Zamed. Meanwhile you’ve got to get ready for your first trip aboard a ship. When you finally board the Traveller, Zamed greets you and shows you to where you’ll be staying on his ship. “This will be fine.” You say. “I should certainly hope so, these are the quarters of some of my own crew. As a favor to Vera, I have allowed you to bring aboard your…greenskins and provided comfortable accommodations. I certainly hope your savages don’t get sick all over my ship.” Zamed’s comments are enough to draw some mean looks from your hobs. “I’d watch your choice of words if you want the greenskins to remain less savage.” You say. “Pfft. This is MY fucking ship. I’ll speak how I please. You all had best remember that.” Zamed replies. “And YOU had best remember that if anything out of the ordinary should happen to me on this trip, you’re not going to survive long enough to enjoy it.” Zamed now gives you a look like he wants to do something, but instead spits near your feet and walks away. You tell your hobs to keep close to you and be ready for anything. You certainly hope your meeting with Peter goes better. Your time aboard the Traveller goes by slowly as there isn’t much to do except wait. You don’t interact much with Zamed and the rest of the crew for obvious reasons. The only thing Zamed tells you is you’re heading towards an island with a small fishing town called Seabreeze which is under Delantium dominion. Peter apparently wants to keep major meetings with criminals away from the mainland for whatever reason. Hobs are great at protection, but not much for conversation (And unfortunately most of them DO get sick on the trip, apparently hobs don’t take well to sailing), so you mainly just do a lot of thinking about what you’re going to say to Peter when you finally meet him. After a couple weeks pass you finally get to your destination. An even larger ship is in the all too small harbor of Seabreeze. That one must be Peter’s. Between his ship and the Traveller, there’s barely any room for the small fishing boats to squeeze in. Eventually you disembark and several armored men equipped with muskets and swords meet you and Zamed. “You are Zamed, correct?” one of the higher ranking looking ones asks. “Yes.” Zamed answers. “The rightful Baron Peter Varsakken has half of your payment ready. You will receive the other half afterwards as agreed. If you follow these men, they will take you to it. Your men will stay here.” Zamed doesn’t look too concerned about going by himself and just shrugs and follows the Delantium soldiers. The one who was speaking now turns to you. “You can return to your ship. Your captain will be back shortly.” “He’s not my captain. I came here on behalf of the Nocturnal League organization in Holgard.” You say. The man is taken aback. “I see. I did not know that such a meeting had been arranged.” The man says. “Neither did I, this was sort of sprung on me at the last second. I was however told by a subordinate that Peter…” you start to say before you’re interrupted. “BARON PETER.” “…the Baron…was looking for all the allies he could get in his quest to take back what was rightfully stolen from him.” “Hmm, indeed he was seeking out potential allies on the inside. I was not however aware that it was more criminals. We have enough of that lot with these pirates masquerading as privateers. Still, Baron Peter Varsakken is a pragmatic man and will listen to what you have to say. Your greenskins will have to stay here and you will turn your weapons over to me obviously.” You really don’t like this idea, but you’re here now so you might as well go all the way with it. However, you’re not giving your weapons over to this Delantium tight ass. You instead hand them to one of your hobs and tell them to go back to the ship. This is fine with the Delantium solder and he tells you to follow him. You take a brief walk through the small town of Seabreeze which seems like this is the most attention it’s received in a long time. The inhabitants watch everything. Soon, you stop at a run down little tavern called the Jolly Lobster. (A much happier sounding name than taverns in Holgard that’s for sure) Surprisingly the place is filled with more Delantium soldiers not doing much of anything except enjoying their drink. Among them is a regal looking man who is probably about your age. You’re guessing that’s probably Peter. He doesn’t look quite how you expected. He seems like he would be more than capable in a fight. The soldier who escorted you here explains to Peter the situation and his attention is immediately caught. He tells the rest of the soldiers at his table to clear so that you may sit and talk. As you do so, Peter is already studying you. Delantium soldiers sitting nearby also stare at you. “You nervous?” Peter asks. “I’d be a fool if I didn’t have some concerns about my current situation. Though I wasn’t really here to insult you or show disrespect, I was here about a potential alliance. My intentions are nothing but positive.” “Your intentions are nothing but self serving. You sense change is coming and you want to be on the right side when it comes. It’s perfectly understandable. You are the leader of the infamous Nocturnal League correct?” “Yes.” Peter nods. “I don’t have much information on you, but I do have enough to know that you have an uncanny knack of survival. The Ebony Claw Syndicate provided some of that information.” “Hm, from what I heard, you weren’t exactly friendly with them.” “Well, let’s just say things change. Sometimes old antagonists can be new allies, or at least non-antagonists. In fact you happen to be one reason why the Syndicate isn’t actively sabotaging me this time. Indeed, when I liberate Holgard, some of the orc mercenaries that the Syndicate provided will be actively targeting the Nocturnal League. They aren’t exactly happy with you for some reason.” Well this is news. You aren’t sure if you should be happy or uneasy that Peter is so freely admitting this. “I have an idea of why, but what I don’t understand is why you would tell me directly.” “Because I have no real love for the Syndicate. Honestly, I’m just using them for their help in taking back Holgard. I really don’t care if they succeed in their petty revenge against you. That being said, I don’t care about you either. Your organization, if it survives will be a thorn in the Delantium law I intend to re-establish in Holgard and will be dealt with eventually anyway. With this information you could stay and fight which will result in your death either during or after the liberation or you could leave to save yourself. Either way, your organization will not plague Holgard.” “Sounds like you’ve made up your mind.” “Not at all. You’re here so I figure you have something to say. Perhaps you can convince me of your worth.” Peter looks at you and leans in. “So convince me.” You take a moment to gather up some of the things you thought about saying to Peter and then throw out most of it before you speak. You tell Peter that a criminal element will always exist in some way in a city as large as Holgard. Better that he deal with a friendly crime lord who can maintain order over it rather than wasting time attempting to stomp it all out. You also remind him that without you around, the Syndicate will definitely attempt to re-establish a presence back in the city and they engage in activities much worse like slave trading than your organization does. You also say you can easily provide skirmish support as your group is very familiar with the city and the sewers in particular. You’d be able to help pick off Ludmilla’s troops. Peter seems in intrigued by your arguments, but he doesn’t show any positivity in your favor until you mention that you might be able to get the mages in Holgard on his side. “If you manage to do that, I will certainly take your organization’s right to exist in Holgard into consideration.” And that’s about the best you do with Peter. The rest of the discussion is mainly him going on about what he intends to change and similar things. He surprisingly doesn’t ask you much about Ludmilla even though you mention that you met her. Soon, he says that he has more important business to attend to and dismisses you at which point several soldiers escort you out and most of the way to the Traveller. The only thing going through your mind during this is that you’d probably be better off not allying with Peter. Even if Heather is receptive to the idea of switching sides, it’s still no safety guarantee for you. The question remains if you’re going to stay in Holgard and fight or just run off to Jicol and run things there. It’s certainly the easier and safer solution. When you finally board the Traveller, you’re getting harder stares than you normally are by Zamed’s crew. You also notice a few of them look a little beat up and their clothing is torn. You chalk it up to perhaps some internal squabble and then when you return to your quarters that’s when you realize what’s happened. The quarters where you and the hobs were staying at is a wreck. While there aren’t any bodies it’s obvious what happened with all the blood everywhere. You immediately search the quarters hoping that you can find a weapon of some sort. “It’s a good thing your hobs still weren’t feeling their best, might have been a more difficult fight. Looking for this?” Zamed says. You turn around and see him holding your repeating pistol. “Excellent workmanship. Not sure how you came across it, but rest assured it will be in better hands, much like Vera.” Zamed says. “Is this what this is about? I’ve never even fucked Vera and never made a move on her!” you say. “Perhaps not, but she talks about you constantly. Always goes on about how great you are. The way I see it, if you were so great then why the hell did she betray you?” “What the hell are you on about?” “Clueless idiot. Vera’s been in cahoots with the Syndicate for a long time now. In fact that’s what this is really about anyway. I’m turning your ass in to the Syndicate for a shitload of coin.” “What? I don’t believe you. Vera would never betray me!” “It’s of minor importance. However, you might be right, she might still be a little too sweet on you and I doubt if she’ll believe any story I come up with. Better to just not bother picking her up. Oh well. It was good while it lasted, but as for you, you’re on your way out.” Zamed points your pistol at you and fires hitting you in the chest. You fall backwards and struggle to breathe for a moment until Zamed walks over and finishes the job by putting two shots more in your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The more you think about it, the more this makes sense in a ruthless pragmatic sort of way. The temple of Fel here could very well become an arm of the Syndicate again, maybe not today or tomorrow, but when it happens, you’re going to be in a much more dangerous position. You still aren’t exactly sure about the Dornans, but you’re willing to give Heather the benefit of the doubt that she has genuine intentions. This still could all backfire of course, but you’ll have to take that chance too. However, being an ally is a two way street and Heather did say she would help you in any way she could. “Okay Heather, I’m going to risk this, but as a show of good will I’m going to need something from you too.” You say. “Of course. What is it?” Heather asks. “There’s a representative from the Syndicate here as you know. Now I have to pay him an amount of coin that I don’t particularly want to before he leaves in a few days.” “Wait, so you want me to kill him?” “Well, you probably would be better equipped since I do have reason to believe that he’s probably highly skilled in shadow magic. While maybe with a bit of preparation my people could take him since he’s alone, but it wouldn’t be pretty. However, that wouldn’t really solve my problem. The Syndicate would just rightfully assume I killed him and then have good reason to be pissed at me and that wouldn’t be good.” “So what are you asking exactly?” “Any way you could alter his mind or something similar?” “Well there are spells that can do all sorts of things, but again, did you have an idea of what you wanted exactly?” You and Heather start to discuss each other’s plans. Your situation with Percy is easy enough Heather says, and assures you that she will be able to implement something with the help of her people. Gloom and his people will be a little more difficult, but the pair of you come up with something that should work. It’ll just require a little bullshit on your part, but you’ve been doing that for so long that you’re definitely an expert in it. In any event, you’re going to go meet with Gloom while Heather plans to ambush Percy. The next day you head to the Temple of Fel. Several Felians don’t even seem to be bothered by your intrusion, which would be a much different story if Shade or his predecessors were running things. When one of them asks what your business is at the temple, you simply tell them that you wish to see Gloom at which point they go check to see if he’s available and fortunately he is so you can get this over with today hopefully. (Along with it going smoothly) You walk through the dark temple and eventually to Gloom’s chambers where he sits writing something. When you enter he smiles and greets you. (You’ve always found his general friendly personality to not quite match his name, let alone his faith) “Come in, come in, I was just finishing up my latest sermon. Have my faithful been providing an adequate job with your extra security? There haven’t been any issues have there?” Gloom asks. “No, not at all. In fact I was going to tell you I won’t be needing them after all, seems I overreacted with the Syndicate visit.” You answer. “Ah, I see. Well better safe than sorry. So how did your meeting with the Syndicate go?” “Better than I hoped. Worse than I feared. So has the Syndicate been to see you?” “Us? No. I don’t see why they would. Why do you ask?” “Oh, I figured while the Syndicate isn’t making a direct threatening presence, I figure they might still be snooping about and trying to stir up animosity between allies.” “Ah, yes I can see where that would be a concern, but I assure you we have no dealings with them even if the Temple of Fel has been considered the Syndicate’s traditional ally. As you know while we are faithful to Fel, we believe in following our own path. We are your allies, not the Syndicate.” “Yes, this particular temple has been engaged in the concept of flexibility for quite some time now. And I appreciate your dedication to our partnership, which is why I’m puzzled that you did not ask for our help on your own matter.” “Our matter?” “Well your attempt to wipe out the Dornans of course.” Gloom drops his friendly persona, though not to a hostile expression, but more of a serious one. “I considered that as a private conflict between faith and saw no reason to bother you with it, I know you’re very busy and all. Though I do wonder how you found out about it, since we’ve very good about keeping this quiet. The Baroness would come down on everyone if the two remaining religious factions in the city were openly fighting in the streets.” Gloom says. “Because the leader of the Dornans came to me yesterday begging for an alliance. She wants me to turn on you. She even gave me one of these again.” You pull out a solid black orb causing Gloom’s eyes to widen. He remembers a similar magic object was used during the final battle with the Joachimites. You continue to speak quickly before Gloom makes any rash moves. “Don’t worry my friend, obviously I’m not here for treachery. Besides, I’m here by myself. Even without your magic I would never succeed so it would be a pretty poor plan indeed. I am however giving it to you. Just like I gave this to Shade when we fought the Inquisitor. Here you go.” Gloom warily looks at you as he slowly takes the orb. When he finally grabs it, he seems to relax a little more, but he’s definitely not comfortable. Still he hasn’t killed you yet, so that’s a good sign. Meanwhile you’re doing your best to remain calm yourself under these conditions, so you continue to speak. “I have to say I was a little surprised that the Dornan high priestess came to me though. I figured with all their magic they would be more than able to take care of themselves.” You say. “They’re in a vulnerable state so they need all the help they can get right now. However, they’re still very dangerous. In fact I thought that with their new leadership, they would soon collapse altogether, but as it turned out they have proved more resilient than I thought. They’re attempting to rebuild and I’m not just talking about their numbers, I’m talking about their influence in this city.” Gloom remarks. “What do you mean?” “The Dornan high priestess or matriarch as her followers call her now, has made steps in meeting with Baroness Varsakken over the past few months. She obviously intends on gaining favor with Ludmilla and eventually get rid of us and that can’t happen.” “Wow. Didn’t know that, but isn’t the Baroness a dedicated follower of Fel?” “Eh, the Baroness has always been a dabbler. Her faith in Fel isn’t the most dedicated. Indeed she probably has always been more interested in learning shadow magic rather than revering Fel. Still, it was useful to have ruler that was friendly towards us. Unfortunately the new Dornan leadership seems have opened their own doors to teaching the ways of magic and Ludmilla is all too eager to jump on such an offer even if it means paying lip service to both gods.” “Won’t one of these divine beings eventually punish Ludmillia for her fickle nature?” you say mildly jokingly. “Perhaps, but it my experience the gods do things in their own time and as a mortal I can’t wait that long. In any case it would seem that perhaps Fel has assisted in the more direct destruction of the immediate threat that are the Dornans.” Gloom examines the orb in his hand after his statement before continuing. “So what exactly was the plan anyway? How did she even trust you enough?” Gloom asks. “Oh, she was trying to prey upon my paranoia with the Syndicate, claiming that you would eventually turn against me and other shit. Also during that whole getting Dornan help against the Joachimites, I fucked her once.” You say. “Truly?” “Yeah, the Elder at the time was being sort of a dick to her and I bumped into her crying about it. Seeing an opportunity, I sort of reassured her of her worth and well you know how women fall for that sort of thing. One thing lead to another and I think she’s always been a little sweet on me after that. As for the plan, I was supposed to just come in here with my people, break the orb so you couldn’t use any magic and then make sure all of you were dead.” “Hm, she might as well have placed her faith in Dorna rather than you for all good either would do her. The Dornans do have powerful magic to be sure, but they are poor fighters. Evening the odds with this object and they stand no chance. I’m going to personally enjoy this I believe and you’ve proven that our alliance is indeed a strong one. We will strike their temple in force. I want to make sure none escape, then we’ll destroy it.” “Did you want the League’s assistance?” “Well, you’ve done enough already and I never even asked for it. I see now that I probably should have though. I believe we can do this ourselves, however if you still wish to help, I will not turn it down.” “I’ll be there with a few of my people. Couldn’t hurt.” Gloom tells you that he’ll organize an attack in a few days, you tell him that works for you since you have some other business to attend to. A couple days pass and that other business finally comes to pass and this is what you’ve been more concerned about. You meet Percy at the same tavern with the payment. Once again he’s very friendly. “On time as usual. Very glad that you value promptness as I am in a bit of a hurry. I believe I may have had too much fun here and I should be getting back. I thank you for your suggestions on where to go.” Percy says. “No problem, so will you be back next month at this time?” you ask. “Probably not me, but someone will. Probably of much lesser importance of course. I was just here this time to extend the hand and make the deal as it were. Still glad we came to one.” “Yes, I agree. Better for business all around.” “Yes! Yes exactly!” “Anyway, I have your payment. Um, just so we’re clear how much was it again?” “Oh come on now. You trying one last try at lowering the price? I told you I wasn’t here to haggle. You know it was a thousand gold pieces.” “Yes, I knew, and I have it here. Just a poor attempt at a joke I suppose.” “Hm, well jokes are fine, but never about the Syndicate business. I hope you remember that.” “I will.” You have two of your hobgoblin muscle show Percy a large chest of gold to which he nods and you tell them to load it on the carriage outside. “And with that, our business is concluded. I bid you good day and wish you well in your future endeavors, especially if it’s going to make the Syndicate money!” Percy stands up, shaking your hand and leaves. You can’t believe that worked. You don’t know what the hell Heather did to him, but he actually believed he only asked you for a thousand gold monthly payment as opposed to the much larger sum he asked before. You can imagine his superiors are going to be upset, but it won’t be at you, it’ll be at him for fucking up a deal that they’re stuck with now. Well at least you hope they won’t try to re-negotiate immediately. You’ve bought yourself a little more time at least. Meanwhile, you still have to go stab the Felians in the back though you’re sort of wondering about still going through with that now what you’ve heard about Heather cozying up to the Baroness. Seems like now more than ever she’s attempting to use you as a pawn. Granted she was allying with you for mutual benefit before, but this seems a little different now. What exactly is she planning? Then again, if she is getting friendly with the Baroness, is it really going to make a difference to you? And Heather did just come through for you on the Syndicate thing. > You change your mind You got what you wanted from Heather as far as the Syndicate was concerned. It’s a shitty situation, but you’re doing what you got to do to survive it. Not that you have some great love for the Felians, and you don’t even mind Heather, but who knows what the hell her real agenda is if she’s making friends in high places. Plus better the devil you know than the one you don’t. All that remains is somehow warning Gloom about the orb. It’s going to be tough considering you convinced him to take it in the first place. Last thing you want to happen is to arouse suspicion from him. Upon thinking about it you decide you’ll just have to take Heather by surprise when you accompany Gloom on his invasion of the temple. She’ll be expecting you to be on her side, so you should have the drop on her and her people. You’ll need to make those shots count and attempt to take cover immediately. After the battle, you can claim ignorance about the orb and just tell Gloom that she must have been attempting to kill you by giving you a non-working one in the first place. The night of the attack comes and you meet with Gloom just a few blocks away from the Dornan Temple, you have your usual hob retinue with you. (You’re really getting used to having these guys around nowadays) Gloom is with a few of his own people, but even without magic powers you can sense some are probably nearby in the shadows. “Once again, glad that this is a joint effort though I don’t think it was necessary to bring as many people with you as you did. The orb is going to nullify all magic and when that happens, those Dornan priests aren’t going to be much match for us.” Gloom says. “Yeah, well I want to be on the safe side. We’ll come in with your people.” You say. “I appreciate it. This is something that’s been a long time coming. Honestly, it was foolish to believe they wouldn’t be a problem. Shadow Master Shade warned me to always watch them you know, just before he died. A few of his interpretations of the faith may have been a bit too restrictive, but he had his own wisdom on practical matters.” With those last words all of you march towards the temple. The few wanderers still outside in the area immediately go find shelter when they see a group of mean looking hobgoblins and Felians walking down the street. The Dornan Temple doesn’t even have their usual lookout standing outside, though you imagine the Dornans have some sort of magical detection going on and this plan has already been expected. Gloom blasts the temple’s doors off their hinges with a dark magic bolt of some sort. Then he takes the lead, you tell your hobgoblins to rush forward for the kill as soon as the orb is dropped. They faithfully obey and you all enter with the crowd of Felians that are entering the temple. Heather and her much smaller group are already there to meet the Felians. “It ends today and the faith of Fel will rule supreme in the city at last!” Gloom shouts and throws down the orb. A bit more dramatic than you’d expect from a Felian, but then Gloom’s whole attack tonight is a bit more theatrical than a typical Felian would go about this. Good thing too, since if he behaved more like his predecessors he wouldn’t be going in so recklessly like this. No sooner has Gloom made his announcement, a white light washes over the room and suddenly all of Gloom’s previously shadow cloaked people are now visible. Naturally Gloom just assumes this is just the effects of the orb, but he’s soon very surprised to learn that the Dornans have not lost any of their magic abilities at all. Knowing what’s really going on, you waste no time in firing at Heather while your hobs rush forward to attack. A couple of the Dornan acolytes are cut down as they were caught completely off guard by this, however your own attack has proven ineffective against Heather who apparently had a protective spell up just in case you decided to betray her. In fact as the bullets fail to hurt her, she just turns her head and looks at you with a minor head shake. “Shit…” They may be a small group, but this temple is where their magic is the most powerful. Most of your hobs are incinerated instantly by the remaining Dornan spells. A lot of the Felians too, before Gloom orders a retreat. He doesn’t make it out though before he’s brought down by some spell that causes him to age rapidly and then fall over dead. You don’t make it out either. A spell freezes you in place and while you helplessly watch others escape or die in front of you, you can only imagine what grim fate Heather has in store for you after this is over. As it turns out, Heather’s imagination is a lot darker than yours. She manages to punish you for a week before she contacts the Syndicate about your double cross on them and hands you over. They’re more than happy to finish the job of putting you out of your misery.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3D2 Power Struggle Year 31 “When are they supposed to arrive again?” you ask. “Um, lesee… the ECS rep is supposed to be here tomorrow by carriage.” Warts says. “Okay. It’s been what, like a decade that they haven’t taken an interest in this place ever since they lost their chapter here, now all of a fucking sudden I’m receiving letters and having to meet with their reps.” “Better dat den assassin blades.” “I guess. Just wondering why now all of a sudden.” “Maybe itz our expansion inta Jicol? We’s startin’ ta get bigger, dat shit kinda draws tenshun. Probably shoulda stayed small.” “It was a risk, I suppose. Then again they might have fucked with us anyway. At least now we’re a little stronger. Speaking of which, maybe we should get some of Gloom’s people here tonight as extra security until this visit is over. Might as well put that alliance we have to good use.” “Grh, I still don’t trust dem shadow guyz. Dey used ta be allied wit da Syndicate.” “Yeah. I know their faith is for the most part still chummy with the Syndicate, but ever since Shade split from the main faith, this particular temple seems to be independent and follow its own agenda. I guess we can get a feel of where their alliances lie at least. Sort of wish Vera was still around sometimes as an extra pair of hands and eyes, but she’s more useful in Jicol. I think she needed the change of scenery anyway.” “How iz things dere anyway?” “Last message I got from her she said there weren’t any problems. Even starting to recruit a few of the locals there, which is good so we don’t have to send any more people from here. Not to mention the profit she sent last month was the biggest yet.” “You ever think she’s skimmin’?” “Vera? Nah, but I’m sure she’s probably running something on the side for herself. Which is fine by me if she is. I’d rather have her overlooking things there than anyone else.” Later you go to the Temple of Fel to speak with Gloom about extra back up. Gloom as usual is always willing to assist you. You’ve always felt Gloom was way too friendly to be a Felian (Even his name is ironic) but better cordial than hostile you suppose. One thing you have noticed is that over the years, the Felians aren’t quite the disciplined shadowy priests they once were. Not to say they wouldn’t be formidable in a fight, but they definitely aren’t like how they were under their previous leadership. Gloom wasn’t even aware that the Syndicate was visiting. For a group that’s generally known for being masters of secrets and such, they seem a bit out of the loop nowadays. After coming to an agreement with Gloom, you leave the temple and make your way back to your headquarters. The next day the ECS representative arrives. As mentioned in the correspondence to you, you meet in a “neutral” location at a tavern called the Bloody Bandit (Warts was right, why don’t more of these places have inviting names?) You arrive with a few of the larger hobgoblins by your side. You weren’t sure at first, but letting some of Wart’s “buddies” from the Spiderfang tribe join was a good idea. They aren’t as big as an ogre or as muscular as an orc but they’re just as ugly and mean enough to intimidate most. You look around and notice that at least one of Gloom’s people is here. There might be more, but if they are, they must be better at hiding themselves. In any case, you’re satisfied that you have an advantage if it comes to a fight. Then you see who can only be who you’re supposed to meet. A well dressed man with a thin mustache sitting all by himself and not looking very concerned about his surroundings. The fact that he’s here by himself speaks of his confidence that he’s either powerful enough to survive whatever you might have in store, or the consequences of him will be so severe that you won’t even try. He’s not drinking anything, but when he sees you he nods and waves you over. You tell your hobgoblin retinue to wait nearby and mentally prepare yourself. You sit down and the man briefly smiles. “Well, right on time. Always a good sign when someone is punctual. When I noticed the shadow blades come in here, I thought for a moment you were using some sort of weak psychological intimidation tactic and try to make me sweat while you came in late. Though I suppose you’re just more concerned with security given your green buddies over there. Hobs are an unusual choice though. We usually use ogres or orcs, but then you use the savages you got access to right? I can appreciate a man who improvises. In any case, my name is Percy and I’m sure you want to get to it.” “I do like to be direct.” “So I’ve heard. Oh I’ve heard a lot about you actually. Don’t know everything about you of course, but that’s okay, a little mystery is always welcome. What do you say about mystery?” “Not a fan of it. I sort of prefer to know everything I can, so I’m not caught off guard.” “Heh, and I knew that about you too! Maybe you’re not so mysterious, but that’s okay too!” Percy pats your hand from across the table in his enthusiasm. Honestly, you don’t know if the guy is flirting with you at this point. Maybe it’s a tactic to try to make you uncomfortable, whatever it is, you stay stoic. “So what is it that the Syndicate wishes of the Nocturnal League?” you ask. “Ah that is the question isn’t it? What DOES the Syndicate want? I bet ever since you heard from us, you’ve been wondering. Is this a threat? Is this a deal? Is this an alliance? Is it a prelude to an attack? What COULD it be? Why has the Syndicate suddenly taken an interest in Holgard again after it abandoned it a decade ago? Well? Do YOU have any ideas?” Percy asks. “I’m a cynic so I’m guessing you’re here to say you’re taking over and this is my one warning to get out of the way. At best, you’ll want me to still stick around. At worst, you’ve probably already poisoned me when you touched my hand.” Percy laughs out loud. “You my friend have a very interesting imagination! I assure you, if we wanted you dead, we wouldn’t even be talking right now. You are partially correct though.” Percy says. “You’re taking over.” You remark. “No. Well not directly. We DO want you to stick around though. You see, we have done a little research on you. We know you came here years ago, we also know you were part of the Thieves’ Guild here before that and were instrumental in its destruction which THEN led to you being part of the Syndicate chapter here. Before Rook apparently blundered and cocked everything up. During all that time though, up until you created this Nocturnal League, you at your core were a thief. A good one though from what I’ve heard.” “Don’t get to do it much anymore.” “Mm, so to sum up, we have a simple thief who survived the destruction of not one, but two organizations that held the most sway in the underworld here. You then went on to create your own organization, which is now the only game in town. You also apparently managed to leverage an alliance with the Temple of Fel here. That is an interesting one considering the faithful of Fel and the Syndicate have been allies for many decades. Intertwined one might even say.” “This group is a little different.” “Indeed. I believe the High Shadow back in Delantium has had some issues with this particular branch in general, but that’s an internal matter on their end. In any case back to you, it’s all very impressive for someone of humble origins and very unusual how it all seemed to work out in your favor. One might even think you planned everything… well either that or you had the gods on your side.” “Never really planned to be in the position I’m currently in and the only god I’ve ever gave a few words to is Yag and even then not much.” “Well, then he must be rolling well for you every time. Perhaps it is luck that drives success in this city after all. Strategy, logic and even simple might seem to eventually fail in this city. This place is has always been problematic ever since the late Baron Vlad Varsakken declared his independence from Delantium. Even when we had a chapter here, it was always the least profitable of all of our holdings even with all the corruption going on, so when the leadership finally collapsed here and the rest of the lower ranks scattered to the winds. People higher than myself decided to wash their hands of the whole thing, not unlike the Delantium Kingdom did before I guess. However, things change and one of those changes is you sharing in your obvious success.” And here it is, the shakedown. “I can see by your face you aren’t pleased with that last statement, but I think you should look upon it as a compliment. Just think, YOU managed to do what the Syndicate could not. You made a success here with no competition and you built it all from the ground up. Granted you did use some of our people and even altered our product…Purple Wish? Come on, we all know that’s just an inferior version of Blue Dream, but it’s probably for the best that you didn’t try to rip us off directly. We might have very well sent assassins in that case.” Percy says. “I had considered that, hence why I suggested changing the formula.” You say. “See always thinking! Which is why a direct take over wouldn’t be as efficient. I mean why come in here and stomp about establishing our dominance and wasting manpower and resources when you’re here? A perfectly reasonable and intelligent man more than capable of running things and knowing to give us our due.” “Also knowing I don’t have choice in the matter either.” “But there is ALWAYS choice! I just know you’ll make the right one! I’m going to give you a sum and you can tell me if it’s fair or rip it up. What you can’t do is negotiate though. I’m afraid I’m not here to do that.” With this statement, Percy suddenly takes a small piece of parchment out of his pocket and moves it across the table. You take it and look at it. It’s not unreasonable, but it’s not exactly something you’d be looking forward to paying every month. Especially when you’re already kicking bribes to the Holgard government. Still, you’re getting a lot of leeway all things considered. For now you’re going to accept. You can always figure something out later. “Very well I accept.” You say. “Good! I knew you would! You didn’t get where you are by being an idiot! Now that business is over, I’m going to be in the city a few more days before coming to see you again for the first payment. Now I know you’re a busy man with busy people, so I don’t expect you lot to see to me and I’m more than capable of protecting myself. However, I would like some suggestions on where all the good spots to have fun and unwind are here.” After giving Percy some suggestions he shakes your hand and thanks you before leaving. As for you, you don’t feel like going back to work right away either. You dismiss your hob crew and tell the Felians to just go back to whatever it is they do since you just want a moment by yourself (Even if you are still in a tavern) While you’re racking your brain on how to deal with this new situation, you get another visitor. “Tough day in the underworld?” You look and see a woman in Dorna robes. It’s been awhile, but you recognize her immediately. It’s Heather. “Heather? This is unexpected. How did you know I was even here?” You say. “Magic is a very handy thing to be skilled in when locating someone. I’ve been meaning to see you for a while now. In fact I was coming to see you today and I’m glad I caught you when I did since it seems like you’ve been meeting with others. Like that man from the Syndicate.” Heather remarks. “You seem to have a lot of interest in me all of a sudden. Is this personal, or did Elder Flynn send you on behalf of your temple?” “Oh this is temple business, but Elder Flynn didn’t send me. In fact he’s no longer in charge. I am.” “I see. Did you…” “Kill him? Oh no. There was a large magical disturbance last year at a known wizard’s home miles outside Holgard. An old acquaintance of the Elder actually. Flynn, myself and several other high ranking members went to investigate and let’s just say it didn’t go well and I was the only survivor. However it did mean there was now need of a new leader and since I still was the most experienced. I took charge. Well, took charge of the few that remained of our order at least.” “Hm. Didn’t know that. Then again you lot are always insular so I just assumed you were being bookworms as usual and never leaving your temple. I’m surprised you told me that your temple isn’t as strong as it once was. Still, I would have thought the Felians would at least have knowledge of this and been all over it, but then they’re hardly the order they once were too.” “You’re right about that one, in fact that’s why I’m proposing you need a new ally and abandon your old ones.” “New ally…wait…what, your people?” “Why not? We’ve worked together before and obviously I trust you enough to reveal my temple’s status to you.” “Yes, which is why I’m less than enthused. I mean no offense, but if your order only mainly consists of you and a few acolytes now, why would I abandon the Felians for you lot? This seems like you’re just wanting to wipe out the Felians and you need my numbers to help you do it. And why now anyway? You two haven’t had any problems. Even during the faith war here, you two didn’t have any trouble.” “Because the Felians DO know that we’re currently weak and they’ve already been conspiring to finish us off. Why they haven’t revealed such info to your organization I couldn’t say. Perhaps they felt that this didn’t concern you or you wouldn’t care. However, the shadow lurking fools are as you say, definitely not the order they once were. Even with our lesser strength we’ve already fought off several assassination attempts. Still, it’s only a matter of time before they DO ask for assistance and that’s most likely going to be you…or the Syndicate. They are back in this city are they not?” Now this meeting just became a little more serious. Heather seems to know a lot about your situation, but then given that she’s got magic coming out her ass, you aren’t that surprised. “Yes, they are. What are you exactly proposing Heather?” you ask. “The Fel temple is rogue in many ways. I don’t propose to be an expert on their beliefs, but even I know that by breaking with its long time Syndicate alliance, it is only a matter of time before they are reabsorbed back into their faith’s proper doctrine. That’s either going to happen because we will eventually manage to do enough harm that they’ll beg for help from their father temple in Delantium or they’ll slowly be forced back into submission when the Syndicate eventually starts pushing their weight here. That is what they’re doing aren’t they?” Heather says. “Somewhat…yes.” “My proposal is this. WE ally against the Felians. They aren’t going to expect an attack from you and you probably know when and where best to strike. We will provide back up of course to minimize the losses. In return you get allies that are much more powerful in the ways of magic and aren’t likely to backstab you in the future. Our goal aren’t the same, but don’t conflict either, so I’d say that already makes us better than the Felians.” “For the sake of argument, let’s say I agree to this. I still don’t see how this helps me all that much. I’m going to be taking most of the risk and damage and if anything the Syndicate might get a little suspicious if I start wiping out former allies.” “I think you and I both know they’re going to be suspicious of you anyway, but if this helps, I will personally assist you in anyway I can in any matter. I mean maybe I never said this properly years ago, but I did appreciate that you turned down Elder Flynn’s ritual suggestion. Not something I ever forgot.” Heather looks at you with a mixture of anticipation and hopefulness. Perhaps even a bit of desperation. The fact that she’s asking you at all says to you that she’s not exactly confident that she’ll win without your help. Honestly, you aren’t sure about all this. While Heather has brought up some concerning points. The Felians ARE your allies and granted in this business such things can be fleeting, you start stabbing them in the back and where does it end? You also aren’t so sure about replacing a solid known ally with an uncertain one, especially if they aren’t exactly any better than the ones you have. Gloom also hasn’t really ever given you any reason to suddenly turn on him. Unless you’re going to count the fact that his people never said they were waging a private war to finish off the Dornans. Then again, maybe Gloom considered it an internal matter and didn’t feel the need to bother you with it. And the Syndicate just complicates matters. How are they going to react or will they even care at all? Percy did mention the temple here was frowned upon by the faithful in Delantium. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if you wiped them out. > You stay with Gloom It’s a tempting offer, but if you double cross everyone you’re going to soon find yourself with enemies on all sides. “I appreciate you being up front with me with this offer and perhaps under better circumstances, I’d be more than happy to have you as allies, but think about it. If I backstab the Felians so easily after being allied with them, would you ever truly trust me?” you say. Heather’s look of hopefulness drops. “No. No I suppose I wouldn’t. But…I’m sure you wouldn’t really want us as enemies.” Heather says, “Well that sounds like a threat.” You say. “It wasn’t! That’s not how I meant it! I just mean, if you’re allied with the Felians, then we’re going to eventually butt heads and I’d rather not have to fight you for practical and personal reasons.” “Well as you know the Felians haven’t come to us for help. The best I can do if they do ask for help is tell them that their little war with you is their own affair and not in the best business interest of the League. What happens after that…well I’ll still be here to assist the survivors should they need it.” “That’s very…pragmatic of you. Though I suppose your word that you at least won’t help the Felians is the best I can hope for. Very well, I shall leave you to your business. Good day.” Heather leaves and you’re finally left alone. It’s been a busy day. A couple days pass and the time to meet up with Percy is at hand and you haven’t been looking forward to it. You meet Percy at the same tavern with the payment. Once again he’s very friendly. “On time as usual. Very glad that you value promptness as I am in a bit of a hurry. I believe I may have had too much fun here and I should be getting back. I thank you for your suggestions on where to go.” Percy says. “No problem, so will you be back next month at this time?” you ask. “Probably not me, but someone will. Probably of much lesser importance of course. I was just here this time to extend the hand and make the deal as it were. Still glad we came to one.” “Yes, I agree. Better for business all around.” “Yes! Yes exactly!” “Anyway, I have your payment. It’s right outside loaded on that carriage you probably passed on your way in here.” “Yes, I trust the correct amount is in those chests. I mean I’m sure it is, but I think you know the issues that would occur if that wasn’t the case.” “Yes, I’m quite aware. “Good, and with that, our business is concluded. I bid you good day and wish you well in your future endeavors, especially if it’s going to make the Syndicate money!” Percy stands up, shakes your hand and leaves. You’re really going to hate this new arrangement. You send a message off to Vera explaining the situation. Over the next few months, you start to really hate it as you start to feel the crunch of not having that extra surplus anymore. It’s not really much of a problem for you personally per say, but the rest of the League members aren’t exactly happy paying more dues as it were. In fact when the Felians actually come to you for assistance on wiping out the Dornans, you legitimately have an excuse that you can’t spare the people and it’s not cost effective to do so. As expected Gloom is not very happy with you not helping, though you point out that you’re not happy that he just suddenly sprung this on you and attempt to deflect the blame by claiming he was keeping secrets from you about his private war with the Dornans. The ultimate results of that skirmish is eventual defeat of the Dornans, though with a very high cost to the Felians. The Felians wind up having less numbers than the Dornans had when the faction war was restarted. Little more than a handful and Gloom isn’t counted among them any longer. The new leader Dusk doesn’t even renew contact with you and instead the temple returns to an isolationist mindset, keeping to themselves. You guess you’ve lost the Felians as an ally, but you’re not quite concerned about that given how low their numbers are. Around this time you get a message back from Vera who expresses concern about the new developments with the Syndicate. She goes on to say that she’ll be in Holgard in a few months with her usual cut. She says when she gets there you and her should speak more on this since it’s a conversation that should take place in person. You’ll be looking forward to her thoughts on this matter since while things haven’t gone to complete shit yet, you get the impression it won’t be long. > You time passes... Year 32 It’s been awhile, but it’s good to see Vera again even if she’s just here for a visit. She’s got some strong opinions on some of the changes that have happened recently though. “I’m not sure if staying neutral was the best decision. We probably should have directly helped the Felians. They were our allies after all and now we don’t have any.” Vera says. “We still have an understanding with the Baroness. So, we’re not that bad off.” You say. “I suppose, but…” “But what?” “Well that’s something I need to talk to you about because it could possibly affect the League.” “Well guess I better hear it then.” Vera takes a drink of the rum she’s brought with her from Jicol before continuing. “Okay, I guess I’ll start at the beginning. Let’s see…what do you know of Peter Varsakken? Youngest son of Vlad.” Vera asks. “Um, nothing actually. Didn’t know there was another one of Vlad’s spawn running around. Wait, is this another one of his bastards, like you?” you ask with a smirk. “Oh no. He’s very much legitimate. It’s just that after he had a disagreement with his father and fled the city, all records were pretty much erased of him. He’s basically been living in exile in the Delantium Kingdom. Peter’s disagreement with his father involved the whole breaking away from the Delantium Kingdom in the first place. Peter was the only one who saw it as treason and remained loyal to Delantium. Over the years Peter has been trying to amass an army to take back the city.” “It’s my understanding that the Delantium Kingdom hasn’t exactly been in a big hurry to retake this place. I mean it’s been decades hasn’t it?” “Well they’ve been sort of busy with other things, like their recent war with Nichan for example. While the ruling class over there doesn’t want to spend their resources and treasury to take this place back, they certainly won’t turn down someone else willing to do the job, and that’s where Peter comes in. He’s of noble birth, loyal to the kingdom and would be an excellent governor for this city and absorb it back into Delantium’s fold.” “I see, and how do you know all this?” “The captain who brought me here, Zamed has been privateering for the Delantium Kingdom. He was contacted by Peter who is still trying to amass a conquering force of men and ships to take back his birthright. In fact Zamed is supposed to be organizing the majority of a flotilla of Hessla privateers” “And you trust this pirate?” “Of course not, but I trust the fact that I know how to lay it down good enough that he told me all this stuff in the bedroom without me even asking.” “Okay, I don’t need details on that part.” “Anyway, Peter’s been at this for years ever since he got exiled. He’s suffered many set backs in his quest to retake Holgard. Every time he’s been on the verge of being ready, something has happened. This was partially thanks to the Ebony Claw Syndicate sabotaging his efforts in Delantium, and sometimes even the Temple of Fel would hinder his efforts as well. However, since things have changed drastically over the years in this city, he’s in the best position he’s ever been in to retake this place.” “What makes you think he won’t get sabotaged again by either group? I mean the Ebony Claw might not have a direct presence here, but they’re still making some coin from us. Same is somewhat true of the Felians, though different reasons. They’re allies with the ECS, so they tend to help them and it isn’t like the Felian Temple here is our enemy even if they aren’t aligned or in any position to do anything in the first place.” “Perhaps, but I’m just not sure if the Baroness is a sure thing in the future. If Peter invades and assuming the League here survives the chaos of it, from what I’ve heard Peter is lot more of a law and order fanatic than his father and siblings. He’s going to re-establish Delantium law here and that means a whole lot less freedom.” “So you think I should make a deal with this Peter Varsakken?” “Heh, if I thought that might help, I might suggest it, but even if that was successful, you’re still kicking a hell of a lot of coin to not just the Holgard government in bribes, but to the ECS for their cut as well. And that will be true even if Peter doesn’t invade Holgard or fails.” “So what are you suggesting?” Vera touches you hand. “Leave here and come to Jicol.” Vera says. “What? I can’t do that, I got shit to run here. Who am I going to leave in charge? Warts?” “Leave whoever you want in charge. I’m suggesting that you completely abandon Holgard. I dunno, maybe make a deal with the Syndicate. Hand Holgard over to them as a one time pay off to not be taxed anymore. Our territory can be Jicol and they can have the rest. Seems like they might go for that.” “That would be severe pay cut and I’m not fond of the idea of running away.” “Oh come on, that’s pride talking. Fuck pride. I mean this place is potentially standing in the way of a shitstorm and I’d rather pull you out of its direction. And while it might be a drop in coin, trust me we do just fine in Jicol. We’ll do even better if we aren’t paying off the Syndicate anymore too.” “Hmm, I’m interested in just HOW well you’re doing in Jicol. I mean I figured you were always holding back a bit.” “What?! I’ll have you know that I’ve NEVER skimmed off the top! While it is true much coin has been made under my management of the League, you’ve always gotten your cut! However…if you decide to come to Jicol, you may as well know, I do have a side business for my own independent of the League.” “Of your own, what would…” You suddenly know immediately what Vera is engaged in. “…oh wait. Shit. You’re in the slave trade again aren’t you?” Vera’s hand doesn’t move away from yours, instead she just squeezes yours a bit more. “I know! I know! I should have told you sooner, but it seemed cowardly in a letter and I felt I should at least tell you in person! I know you’re not fond of slavery, but the location and demand was too good to pass up in Jicol. I’d be a fool if I didn’t excel in something I was skilled in.” “Well I suppose I can’t fault you for that. (Sigh)” “You aren’t yelling and screaming, I trust you’re not mad?” “No. I mean I’m hardly in a position to judge on any moral grounds and I don’t even give a shit about the extra coin you’re making. It’s just…I dunno. Slavery is just one of those things I feel…icky about. Don’t ask me why.” “How is it any different than making some dumb ass addicted to Purple Wish? They basically become a slave to the drug.” “The dumb asses getting addicted to Purple Wish have a choice. Look, as I said, I’m not pissed or anything like that, but if I was to come to Jicol, I’d have some strong feeling about you continuing your slave trade business. In any case I’m still not convinced that I should just run away. Speaking with Peter Varsakken would at least be a better idea, though I’m not exactly sure how I’d go about setting up a meeting with him…wait a minute, that pirate of yours Zamed. He wouldn’t happen to be meeting him anytime soon would he?” “I believe he’s going to meet him after he leaves. In fact he tried to convince me that I should go with him, but I didn’t see much point with the League attempting to ally with Peter for the same reasons I told you.” “Hmm, maybe I should go with him and try to meet with Peter. Feel him out and see if there is any potential there.” “I dunno. That really seems like a bad idea. I really wish you would just come to Jicol instead.” It’s apparent that Vera’s desire for you to go to Jicol is more than just pragmatic reasons. The girl is obviously carrying feelings for you. Always has most likely. If things were different, you might be more inclined to jump at the chance, but this fucking curse is sort of preventing you from such a thing, but that’s not really your immediate concern right now. Still, you aren’t totally dismissing that idea. Vera usually has good instincts about this sort of thing so it might very well be a good idea to get the hell out of Holgard. Then again, there’s no certainty that Peter’s even going to win, assuming he even invades in the first place. It would be pretty wasteful to just abandon everything you built here. > You leave Holgard Making impulsive decisions based on other people’s suggestions isn’t something you normally do, but things here in Holgard have been one headache after another. Even if everything involving this potential invasion goes well, what’s going to be the next major incident? A freak tidal wave destroying the city? Seems like there is always some major shit going on in Holgard that affects the whole damn place and you’re starting to wonder if it isn’t just you that’s cursed, but the whole fucking city. Fuck it, why not? Maybe it’s time for a change. “Vera, okay. I’ll come to Jicol.” You say. “I didn’t think you’d actually listen to me about this.” Vera says with a smile. “Yeah well, I’m starting to re-examine things going on in my life and cutting down on potential problems even at great cost is a lot more inviting everyday. However, I obviously still can’t just pick up a leave, I need to get shit together first. Might take a few weeks considering that I have to contact the Syndicate and who knows how long they’ll take to get back with me, though I’m hoping fairly quick if I’m telling them about handing over Holgard to them.” “Oh of course. The rumors about Peter’s invasion are he won’t be ready for another year at least.” “Hm, well in any case, I’m still going to try to speed this up with the Syndicate. After that, then I can get the hell out of this city.” Vera at this point goes on about how she’s glad that you’re doing this. She also apologizes if she over stepped a boundary by touching your hand the way she did since she’s aware of your whole “not fucking co-workers” policy. She goes on to say that she just sometimes feels very close to you and probably due to not seeing you for awhile combined with all the mess that’s been going on caused her to briefly display greater affection. She says it won’t happen again. You aren’t sure about Vera’s feelings towards you or her slave trading, but you can address those later when you get there. The first major step is negotiating with the Syndicate since you aren’t sure if they’re actually going to let you walk away or not. If they don’t, well that might put a crimp in your plans. You soon say goodbye to Vera and start getting things in order. The Syndicate rep should be by in another week, you figure you can tell him directly that you wish to speak with someone higher up on the food chain about turning your holdings over. When that day comes, the rep doesn’t give you much argument about it and states that he will report this to his superiors immediately since he’s sure that they will be very interested. He anticipates that you will probably get a message for a meeting time soon after he reports to them. While you’re waiting for that meeting, you keep going back and forth on when you should tell your own people about this. You figure that you should probably at least wait until after the meeting since it doesn’t do any good getting them in a tizzy if things don’t work out. You anticipate that it’s going to be a mixed reaction at best. Still, there is one person you tell since you figure they deserve to know. “Geez, didn’t expect dat.” Wartz says. “You pissed?” you ask. “Pissed? Nah. I mean I sort of had a feelin’ sumthin’ like dis wuz comin. Shit in Holgard never stays stable fer long. Best ta get out now if dere’s gonna be an invasion.” “You could come to Jicol, it isn’t like the League is disappearing. It’s just relocating.” “Naw, too far an’ I don’t wanna be on sum ship. Just thinkin’ about bein surrounded by water makes me queasy. I guess I’m gonna just look inta opening up that trading post in Spiderfang territory like Snuffit suggested I do not too long ago. Probably should be closer ta family anywayz.” “Well I certainly wish you luck if that’s what you’re going to do.” “Luck? Got dat shit in abundance as long as I keep Yag’s faith. I suggest you do the same. An’ I’d also suggest dat youz just leave and not tell anyone else when da time comes.” “What, seriously?” “Yeah seriously. You’ll have a fuckin’ riot on yer hands as soon as you break da news. Sum are gonna feel betrayed. Sum don’t like the Syndicate. Others are gonna be tryin’ ta take power. An all doze hobs you recruited? Theys just gonna be confused. Let da Syndicate handle the mess. I mean I trust dat Vera’s already got people in Jicol right? Not like you need any of them from here anyway.” “So take off like a thief in the night then, I suppose I can do that. This is actually starting to sound easier and easier now. I’m just hoping that my meeting with the Syndicate goes well.” In a few days you get a message delivered to you from the ECS. It says that someone will meet you at the Blood Bandit in another week. You get the impression you know who that’s going to be. A week passes and sure enough while you’re waiting at the Bloody Bandit, Percy comes walking in. He’s as upbeat as he was the last time you met with him. He sits down and immediately orders a drink. “Ah here on time as always. Glad to see you continue with that habit. And I also see that you’ve brought no other protection with you either for this meeting. Very interesting that you should be so trusting, but then your relationship with the Syndicate has been a cordial one so why should there be animosity?” Percy says. “I want out.” You reply. “Excuse me?” “I want out, and I’m willing to give up Holgard to the Syndicate completely in order to get out.” Percy sits back with a intrigued look on his face. “I see. Well this is slightly different bit of business than I thought you had in mind. I thought perhaps you wanted to try to renegotiate our payment terms or perhaps ask for assistance in expanding to Klyton. A complete surrender of one’s business to us without any force or influence at all is extremely rare. May I ask, why you’re doing it?” “Does it matter?” “It may, because for all we know you might have some hidden agenda.” “There’s no agenda, I’m just getting sick of this fucking city. I’m also sick of paying off the Syndicate. Since you consider this your territory anyway, you might as well have the headache of running it, because I’m done.” “Once you’re in this game, you don’t easily get out like you’re proposing, but I don’t think you’re leaving anyway. The Syndicate is well aware that you have part of your organization on Jicol. We thought about expanding there ourselves on occasion.” “Okay, let’s talk plain then. I’m handing over Holgard and ALL its holdings to you directly. That means you can take all the profits from here, influence shit how you see fit and probably do a much better job than I ever could. In exchange, you leave Jicol to the Nocturnal League.” “And why would we leave Jicol alone?” “Because we’re not a damn threat? We’ve never been a threat.” “Maybe the Nocturnal League by itself isn’t a threat, but YOU on the other hand…I dunno…you have a reputation. I mean while this all looks advantageous to us, something about letting you run off to an island while you plot and scheme away from our immediate attention, well that seems fairly dangerous. Maybe you can’t do anything to us now, but who can say in the years to come? It’s best to keep and eye on you.” “You greatly overestimate my ambition and motivation to take on an organization such as the Syndicate.” “And you greatly underestimate our generosity and intelligence if you believe we’d just let you walk away.” While you’re realizing this isn’t going well. Percy happily takes his drink from the barmaid. “I don’t understand why you’re fucking with me, don’t you have an usurper to sabotage?” you blurt out getting frustrated. “Usurper…ohhh, you know about Peter Varsakken’s plans do you? Is that the real reason why you’re leaving? Well if you were concerned that he was coming here to wreck the place you need not have been. You have my assurance that Peter will fail in his invasion as usual. Business here will not be disrupted.” Percy remarks. “Look, I don’t really give a shit. I’m just saying that I’m OUT of Holgard regardless of that happening or not.” “Okay. Fine. Consider this a pardon from the Syndicate. You are free to leave, but what you won’t be doing is running the Nocturnal League from Jicol. As far as the Syndicate is concerned, the Nocturnal League is just a tool for us to use as we see fit. We’ll get someone else to run it. Maybe your second in command will be more receptive, we were thinking about contacting her anyway. She was an ex-Claw after all.” “Fuck, alright! Alright! You win, I’ll stay here. If there isn’t going to be an invasion I guess it won’t be…” “No.” Percy says finishing off his drink. Percy’s remark catching you off guard. “No? No what?” you reply. “No. You won’t be staying here. Clearly you’re unhappy in Holgard and you’re really unhappy with our business arrangement. Not really a good idea to keep someone on that’s a ball of anger and frustration. So as I said, you are a free man and the world is your oyster. I’d advise you not entering the Delantium Kingdom, Holgard or Jicol though as you are no longer welcome in ECS territory.” Percy says. This asshole’s not even negotiating anymore. “Well I guess concludes our business and it looks like I’m going to be staying here a little longer to sort things out. I’ll give you the day to gather your belongings and leave the city. Hmmmm, maybe I should contact that rogue Temple to Fel while I’m here too. They probably should be brought back into the fold…” At this point Percy leaves the table and doesn’t pay any more attention to you. You can’t believe what just happened. EVERYTHING has just been stripped away from you and worse. This isn’t what you wanted and you all you can feel is that frustration and anger Percy referenced earlier. So much so that you waste no time in standing up and pulling out your pistol with every intention of shooting Percy in the back. You know you’re going to be hunted forever by the ECS after this, but you don’t even care. They were imposing so much on your life anyway, you feel you have nothing to lose. You empty your pistol into Percy’s back as he’s walking towards the door. The few tavern patrons run for cover and every shot hits him. Or at least they would have if it were actually him. Whatever shadow magic tricks he was using have fooled you completely as the shots pass right through the false image and into the solid oak door. You then feel two sharp blades thrust hard into your back. You crumple to the floor instantly. “Thank you for that. This was a much easier course of action rather than potentially having to deal with you later down the road.” Percy crouches down next to you as you attempt to crawl away. “Not the most noble of ends, but still better than most in our line of work. And if it’s any consolation, Sydicate leadership was thinking about having you done away with eventually anyway. Honestly, they should have done it a long time ago, but…well I’m but a servant to a greater purpose.” With those last words, Percy grabs you by the hair to lift your head up and slits your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 32 It’s been awhile, but it’s good to see Vera again even if she’s just here for a visit. She’s got some strong opinions on some of the changes that have happened recently though. “I’m not sure if staying neutral was the best decision. We probably should have directly helped the Felians. They were our allies after all and now we don’t have any.” Vera says. “We still have an understanding with the Baroness. So, we’re not that bad off.” You say. “I suppose, but…” “But what?” “Well that’s something I need to talk to you about because it could possibly affect the League.” “Well guess I better hear it then.” Vera takes a drink of the rum she’s brought with her from Jicol before continuing. “Okay, I guess I’ll start at the beginning. Let’s see…what do you know of Peter Varsakken? Youngest son of Vlad.” Vera asks. “Um, nothing actually. Didn’t know there was another one of Vlad’s spawn running around. Wait, is this another one of his bastards, like you?” you ask with a smirk. “Oh no. He’s very much legitimate. It’s just that after he had a disagreement with his father and fled the city, all records were pretty much erased of him. He’s basically been living in exile in the Delantium Kingdom. Peter’s disagreement with his father involved the whole breaking away from the Delantium Kingdom in the first place. Peter was the only one who saw it as treason and remained loyal to Delantium. Over the years Peter has been trying to amass an army to take back the city.” “It’s my understanding that the Delantium Kingdom hasn’t exactly been in a big hurry to retake this place. I mean it’s been decades hasn’t it?” “Well they’ve been sort of busy with other things, like their recent war with Nichan for example. While the ruling class over there doesn’t want to spend their resources and treasury to take this place back, they certainly won’t turn down someone else willing to do the job, and that’s where Peter comes in. He’s of noble birth, loyal to the kingdom and would be an excellent governor for this city and absorb it back into Delantium’s fold.” “I see, and how do you know all this?” “The captain who brought me here, Zamed has been privateering for the Delantium Kingdom. He was contacted by Peter who is still trying to amass a conquering force of men and ships to take back his birthright. In fact Zamed is supposed to be organizing the majority of a flotilla of Hessla privateers” “And you trust this pirate?” “Of course not, but I trust the fact that I know how to lay it down good enough that he told me all this stuff in the bedroom without me even asking.” “Okay, I don’t need details on that part.” “Anyway, Peter’s been at this for years ever since he got exiled. He’s suffered many set backs in his quest to retake Holgard. Every time he’s been on the verge of being ready, something has happened. This was partially thanks to the Ebony Claw Syndicate sabotaging his efforts in Delantium, and sometimes even the Temple of Fel would hinder his efforts as well. However, since things have changed drastically over the years in this city, he’s in the best position he’s ever been in to retake this place.” “What makes you think he won’t get sabotaged again by either group? I mean the Ebony Claw might not have a direct presence here, but they’re still making some coin from us. Same is somewhat true of the Felians, though different reasons. They’re allies with the ECS, so they tend to help them and it isn’t like the Felian Temple here is our enemy even if they aren’t aligned or in any position to do anything in the first place.” “Perhaps, but I’m just not sure if the Baroness is a sure thing in the future. If Peter invades and assuming the League here survives the chaos of it, from what I’ve heard Peter is lot more of a law and order fanatic than his father and siblings. He’s going to re-establish Delantium law here and that means a whole lot less freedom.” “So you think I should make a deal with this Peter Varsakken?” “Heh, if I thought that might help, I might suggest it, but even if that was successful, you’re still kicking a hell of a lot of coin to not just the Holgard government in bribes, but to the ECS for their cut as well. And that will be true even if Peter doesn’t invade Holgard or fails.” “So what are you suggesting?” Vera touches you hand. “Leave here and come to Jicol.” Vera says. “What? I can’t do that, I got shit to run here. Who am I going to leave in charge? Warts?” “Leave whoever you want in charge. I’m suggesting that you completely abandon Holgard. I dunno, maybe make a deal with the Syndicate. Hand Holgard over to them as a one time pay off to not be taxed anymore. Our territory can be Jicol and they can have the rest. Seems like they might go for that.” “That would be severe pay cut and I’m not fond of the idea of running away.” “Oh come on, that’s pride talking. Fuck pride. I mean this place is potentially standing in the way of a shitstorm and I’d rather pull you out of its direction. And while it might be a drop in coin, trust me we do just fine in Jicol. We’ll do even better if we aren’t paying off the Syndicate anymore too.” “Hmm, I’m interested in just HOW well you’re doing in Jicol. I mean I figured you were always holding back a bit.” “What?! I’ll have you know that I’ve NEVER skimmed off the top! While it is true much coin has been made under my management of the League, you’ve always gotten your cut! However…if you decide to come to Jicol, you may as well know, I do have a side business for my own independent of the League.” “Of your own, what would…” You suddenly know immediately what Vera is engaged in. “…oh wait. Shit. You’re in the slave trade again aren’t you?” Vera’s hand doesn’t move away from yours, instead she just squeezes yours a bit more. “I know! I know! I should have told you sooner, but it seemed cowardly in a letter and I felt I should at least tell you in person! I know you’re not fond of slavery, but the location and demand was too good to pass up in Jicol. I’d be a fool if I didn’t excel in something I was skilled in.” “Well I suppose I can’t fault you for that. (Sigh)” “You aren’t yelling and screaming, I trust you’re not mad?” “No. I mean I’m hardly in a position to judge on any moral grounds and I don’t even give a shit about the extra coin you’re making. It’s just…I dunno. Slavery is just one of those things I feel…icky about. Don’t ask me why.” “How is it any different than making some dumb ass addicted to Purple Wish? They basically become a slave to the drug.” “The dumb asses getting addicted to Purple Wish have a choice. Look, as I said, I’m not pissed or anything like that, but if I was to come to Jicol, I’d have some strong feeling about you continuing your slave trade business. In any case I’m still not convinced that I should just run away. Speaking with Peter Varsakken would at least be a better idea, though I’m not exactly sure how I’d go about setting up a meeting with him…wait a minute, that pirate of yours Zamed. He wouldn’t happen to be meeting him anytime soon would he?” “I believe he’s going to meet him after he leaves. In fact he tried to convince me that I should go with him, but I didn’t see much point with the League attempting to ally with Peter for the same reasons I told you.” “Hmm, maybe I should go with him and try to meet with Peter. Feel him out and see if there is any potential there.” “I dunno. That really seems like a bad idea. I really wish you would just come to Jicol instead.” It’s apparent that Vera’s desire for you to go to Jicol is more than just pragmatic reasons. The girl is obviously carrying feelings for you. Always has most likely. If things were different, you might be more inclined to jump at the chance, but this fucking curse is sort of preventing you from such a thing, but that’s not really your immediate concern right now. Still, you aren’t totally dismissing that idea. Vera usually has good instincts about this sort of thing so it might very well be a good idea to get the hell out of Holgard. Then again, there’s no certainty that Peter’s even going to win, assuming he even invades in the first place. It would be pretty wasteful to just abandon everything you built here. > You stay in Holgard As much as your current situation isn’t exactly the most ideal, you’re not really ready to just cut and run just yet. Not to mention you doubt if the Syndicate is going to just let you walk away even if you offered them Holgard. It’s like they say, you can’t just walk away from this life unless you’re planning on going into hiding in a far away land. In any case, Peter’s invasion is probably going to be sabotaged again by the Syndicate since they’re going to want to protect their business here. “Vera, thanks for the information and I’ll take steps to prepare just in case, but I’m not just abandoning Holgard unless it’s really hopeless.” You say. “(Sigh) I figured you’d say that. Well I don’t suppose there is much more I can convince you then since you seem to be immune to my other charms. Um… sorry about touching your hand like that, I sometimes forget our boundaries. I just…worry sometimes.” Vera remarks. “It’s fine. Anyway, looks like I’ll need to get some more hobs on the payroll.” “What? You can’t seriously be considering hiring more hobs.” “Well if an invasion does occur then they’re going to be my best personal defense. You wouldn’t happen to know how long before Peter gets his shit together do you?” “The rumor is at least by next year.” “Okay should be plenty of time to prepare. Guess that’s it then.” “Guess so. “You going to leave with your pirate boyfriend?” “Who Zamed? He’s not my boyfriend, he was just a convenient dick. He’s on his way to meet with Peter anyway so I’m leaving on another ship in a few days. Tried to convince me to do so as well, but I saw no reason for that and even if I did I’d at least bring it to your attention first. I suppose you might be right about all this possibly not even panning out anyway. I probably could even help on that front by convincing some of the pirates I do business with to not join Zamed’s flotilla.” “Certainly couldn’t hurt.” You and Vera talk a bit more about less important matters before you eventually part ways due to having business to take care of. You see Vera one more time before she leaves where upon she says that she tells you to be careful and hugs you goodbye. A few months pass and besides hiring more hobs, it’s pretty much business as usual. About a week after the latest visit by the Syndicate rep to pick up their cut, you get a surprising request from the Temple of Fel to meet with you. Apparently Dusk wants to speak about re-establishing an alliance. Since it seems like a good time to boost your ranks you agree to meet though you do it on your own territory since you’re not fool enough to meet with a shadow priest with no back up. Honestly, you don’t know much about Dusk other than he’s significantly younger than both of his predecessors that took power. When he arrives you intend on expanding your knowledge on him and what his temple has been up to lately. As it turns out, not much. He states that he thought inward reflection might help them find greater meaning of Fel’s plan, which in turn made him realize that without allies the Temple is doomed to die a slow lingering death. “What makes you say that? It isn’t like there are anymore religious factions in this city anymore.” You ask. “True, but it isn’t like there are flocks of people stepping up to join us either. Religion, perhaps even the gods themselves have seemingly abandoned this city. I suppose with all the strife I can’t really blame them either. I try to keep the faith, but it’s getting harder every day.” “So what are you getting at?” “What I’m getting at is that while what remains of our temple may still hold Fel’s dark wisdom, the truth is, we cannot possibly continue as a congregation here. Our temple has started to fall into decay. The baroness who once was a dabbler in our faith has even abandoned us. We got a message not too long ago about a new law taxing religious organizations, which we can’t pay of course. Of course if we don’t, the government is going to just demolish our temple to build a new inn there or something.” “Wait, are you asking the Nocturnal League for a loan?” Dusk’s face turns to one of embarrassment. “Sad to say, but in a sense yes. Honestly, we’re asking for a little more than that. We want you to take over our temple’s taxes just so we still have a roof over our heads. The temple has been our home for quite awhile along with having special meaning spiritually for the remainder of us, so we are very reluctant to leave it. In exchange, we will act as soldiers for the Nocturnal League. Whatever you need done, we’ll do it. I’m sure you could use our talents in your line of work. If you wish, we will even teach shadow magic to those willing to learn and have the talent. Well this is a little different than you were expecting. You thought this was going to be a negotiation, not begging for a hand out. The temple of Fel really has fallen on hard times if they’ve been reduced to this state. While the whole point of being a criminal is to not pay taxes to begin with, you do see the potential here. It really couldn’t hurt to have some shadow priests indebted to you especially if Peter invades. Plus that temple could very well be used for other things. You ask how much the taxes are which Dusk tells you and you find a little on the high side, but you’re able to do it. You actually give them the stipulation that you’re turning the temple into a new brothel (though they will still have their own living quarters) and you don’t want them preaching about Fel to any League members. You still don’t want your organization being mixed too much with religious fanaticism. Dusk doesn’t even blink at your request, he just agrees. Truly a beaten man from a beaten organization. In any case at least this gives you a bit of magic leverage if trouble comes your way in whatever form. Year 33 Peter Varsakken’s invasion has been going on for a few weeks now, and so far the he’s succeeded in is destroying Ludmilla’s fleet and Holgard’s docks. The one time you want the Ebony Claw to be effective, they slack off. So much for protecting their own interests. Still, on the plus side, Peter’s failed miserably on getting much further mainly because he doesn’t have enough men to hold this place. Most of his mercenaries have been killed and while he does have two wizards to help him, they are literally the only thing that’s keeping him in the fight. Ludmilla’s palace might as well be impregnable. She’s using her own elite troops and magic to protect it, which is probably a mix of shadow and whatever she managed to learn from the Dornans before they got wiped out. As for you, you’ve mostly managed to keep away from the majority of the fighting. You’ve only taken a bit of collateral damage from a couple of your businesses getting destroyed, but that was to be expected. All in all, you’ve been doing okay. Since it’s in your interest to not have Peter win, you’ve ordered Dusk and his friends to take out Peter’s wizards. With them out of the way things can go back to normal or as normal as they get here. In the meantime you mostly wait around in your headquarters getting reports from people while the chaos goes on above. Warts surprisingly has stuck by your side rather than running off though he says he was sorely tempted. Things just aren’t quite grim enough for him to do it yet though. “Hey boss, dat Dusky shadow iz at the door sayin he’s got important news about the task you sent him on.” Warts says. “Yeah, I sent him and his people to kill Peter’s wizards. Did he do it?” you ask. “I dunno, but he’s the only one standing outside in da sewers and he looks half dead.” “Shit, that doesn’t sound good. Well send him in here, maybe he killed at least one of them.” Eventually Warts returns with Dusk who indeed looks very battle worn. The robe he wears is in tatters making him look more like a begger and his skin that’s exposed is obviously burned. His face even has several fresh wounds on it. “Shit, Warts wasn’t lying, you do look half dead.” You say. “Better half than all.” Dusk replies while wincing a bit from his pain. “The other Felians?” “Yes, dead. All of them. I’m the only one who survived. I can only hope my lost brothers and sisters are with Fel now.” “Fuck, did you at least kill one of the bastards?” “Killed both of them. They are no longer an issue. I anticipate that Peter will have no choice but to abandon his invasion now.” A weight is lifted when you hear this news. You were expecting Dusk to tell you something bad, so you have to ask again. “Wait, so you were successful? You killed them both?” you ask. “Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.” Dusk says. “Hell yeah! This is fucking great! Warts, take the rest of the hobs here go on a street cleaning mission. There probably shouldn’t be too many of Peter’s men at this point, but the quicker these shitheads are gone, the better. Also make the rounds at all of our businesses too.” “You want me to take even them?” Warts asks pointing at your hob bodyguards. “Yeah, I want to speak with Dusk privately anyway.” Warts shrugs and waves the two hobs standing nearby to come with him leaving you and Dusk alone. “You need medical attention or something? I thin we’ve got someone with some minor skills in that field around here.” You ask. “No, I’m good really. Shit…I just need to rest for awhile. Gather my strength again.” Dusk replies. “Sure. Sure. Take your time. You certainly earned it. Why don’t you tell me what happened, I’m sure it was a difficult battle.” Dusk with some effort tells you about his conflict with both of the wizards. The way he tells it is actually pretty impressive. You doubt if you could have faced two wizards like that. As he gets towards the end of his tale he starts to sound a little better. “That’s one hell of a tale Dusk.” You say. “And it’s not even over yet.” Dusk says. “Yeah, but it soon will be. Like you said, Peter will probably realize he can’t hold this place.” “That wasn’t what I was talking about.” “What did you mean then?” Dusk puts one finger to his lips and says “Shhhhh” At this point the candle light in your office goes out, immediately causing you to yell out, but no sound is made and instead you feel a blade going into you several times before you can even draw your weapon. As you collapse on the floor, wheezing and coughing up blood, Dusk’s whispering voice can be heard. “Fel will now forgive the transgressions of my temple for breaking away from the true faith and embrace me as a proper member of the fold. Fel will become a power once again in this city.” You feel one more sharp stab into your body before footsteps run off and out your office door. By the time any of your people realize something is amiss, you’re dead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 21 It’s amazing what changes can happen in just a year and that’s not even counting the fact that Holgard is in complete anarchy right now, though it probably helps quite a bit. With your ongoing information, Tanya has carried out one woman attacks on various ECS locations and been more or less successful in the endeavor. Though perhaps not entirely “one woman” she’s been using the chaos and the various factions of the city to her advantage, mostly the remaining disorganized followers of Neroth that have still been skulking around, though she’s been luring even the Holgard Watch to do her bidding sometimes. While you haven’t brought it up to her, you think Tanya’s lost sight of her “original goal” of simply taking down the Ebony Claw Syndicate. She may have even believed that’s what she was doing at first, but now? She’s just been enjoying the chaos. She’s enjoying making people kill and fight. Granted they probably were going to do that anyway, but she’s not exactly curtailing what’s currently going on right now. Still, she always returns to you excitedly going on about what she’s done and what she’s planning and everything else. When you meet in person, it’s always a special event (If literally draining). You remember how hostile she was towards you for years, but now she only ever looks at you with affection. You must have told your mundane stories about your life in Teckleville more than a few times to her, but for whatever reason she seems to enjoy them. Maybe it’s due to her own childhood being less fun since despite everything you didn’t really have it all that bad. In fact if you’d just obeyed the rules, you would have had a pretty easy life. (You certainly wouldn’t be in this situation) You aren’t sure how succubi are supposed to act and granted she’s not a full blood one, but it’s very strange that despite her obvious descent into morally questionable actions, she’s still very attached to you. (Or maybe you’re just not used to a very loving girlfriend, your only one before Tanya was Annah) She’s also starting to change physically. Her horns for one are a little bigger and her eyes now have a permanent other worldly look. Most obvious though is her wings. They started off as two little lumps on her back that you noticed during one of your intimacy sessions. The next time you saw her, she had two small wings and are probably going to get even larger. As for you, you’ve basically been just trying to keep a low profile as you go about your ECS duties, which are currently as an enforcer at a profitable Blue Dream house in the poor district. It’s a rather lowly position for someone of your talents, but on the plus side, it’s so unimportant that Rook doesn’t even suspect you of any wrong doing and it helps that at least a few of the top Blue Dream distributors at the place have diarrhea of the mouth due to ongoing sampling of some of the drug and never shut the fuck up about sensitive ECS information. Rook has been trying to keep things together, but he’s been obviously losing control. The ECS leadership in the Delantium Kingdom has refused to help with reinforcements any more. They’ve told him that he needs to work with what he has and if he fails, it’s not going to be good for him. You know he’s been trying to gain more help from the Temple of Fel, but that’s been having mixed results mainly due to the fact that while they may all worship the same God of Shadows, the pure dedicated followers don’t necessarily share the same goals as the Ebony Claw. Still, they’ve been contributing enough help to “lend” Shadow Blades to act as extra protection. Them, along with Bolt and Rook’s own shadow magic abilities are going to make him quite formidable. Which is sort of a problem now that Tanya has decided that it’s time to actually take out the Ebony Claw leadership for good. Arguably, she probably could have wiped out the Ebony Claw Syndicate with your help (Or at least this increasingly smaller chapter of it) months ago. But she got so distracted with enjoying the bedlam, that it allowed Rook to fortify like he has. Of course Tanya’s not at all worried about any of this, but that’s easy for her to say when she’s got all her new infernal powers now. Even with her help, it isn’t like you’ve got much defense against a bunch of highly trained shadow magic using killers. To her credit, she’s told you to stay behind on this one, claiming that she can take care of it herself. You have your doubts though. It would be a tough fight even for her. You’d hate to just stand by while she got herself killed, not to mention if she failed, it would be really obvious that you were involved considering you told Rook you killed her. So you’d have to help anyway, and you still don’t fancy your chances. You do have one idea, but it’s a long shot and possibly one that could get you killed immediately. You could go try to talk to the head of the Temple of Fel. You don’t know exactly what you’d say, but your hope would be to try to convince him that supporting the Ebony Claw, isn’t in the best interest of the temple. “What?! No! That’s a stupid idea! I told you, I’ll take care of it by myself, I don’t need your help, let alone the help of my enemies.” Tanya shouts. “Tanya, I’m serious. This is a really BAD idea, assaulting Rook’s home by yourself. I mean don’t you even at least have those cultists you can send, or maybe someone else?” “The last of the Neroth cultists died weeks ago and are probably enduring unimaginable torture right now as their reward and as for sending anyone else, I’m a little tired of acting from behind the scenes, I want to enjoy a bit of hands on mayhem for a change.” “Tanya, are you listening to yourself? You’re starting to lose control and getting drunk on the chaos. Maybe I should have said something earlier, but you’ve been this way for quite sometime now. I love you and all, but you REALLY need to get a grip. You’re not even thinking strategically anymore.” Your defiant words aren’t something she hears very often, at first she looks surprised, even slightly hurt, but then that turns to anger very quickly. She grabs you and throws you against the wall very hard. “…shit…” is all you can utter as you hit the stone and slump to the floor. “HOW FUCKING DARE YOU QUESTION MY IDEAS! I’m the one in control here! YOU follow MY lead! YOU are only allowed the magnificence of my presence because I allow it and you should be grateful!” Tanya bellows and her voice seems to invade your very mind a bit. You look up from your position and focus on Tanya. She’s changed physically again. Her wings are bigger for one thing (you called that one) and now her skin has a reddish hue. If you didn’t know better, you’d think her eyes were going to burn a hole in you with how she’s staring at you. Reminds of the old days when she used to get pissed at you, though she never slammed you this hard into a wall before. The dominating voice you just heard is also a bit new. As a half succubus she always had a bit of a seductive tone, but this is different. Her voice just now sent a chill of fear within you. Maybe she’s not completely embracing her “succubus side” but she’s certainly embracing the demonic heritage. Still, this is the girl you chose, so if this is how you’re going out then so be it. You struggle to get back up and lean against the wall as you address her. “Well, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you can take them alone. You’re obviously in full control of yourself, what with putting a mere mortal like me in my place and all. No need for my help anymore. I see that now.” Tanya’s stance towards you softens a bit, but not by much. She doesn’t even apologize; she just leaves the ruined house you were meeting her in and takes to the air. She apparently has decided to give absolutely zero fucks about being seen anymore. You don’t know how much time you have or even if it’s going to matter, but you still feel compelled to help in some way. Maybe she isn’t the Tanya that you fell in love with anymore, but for better or worse, you’re going to help her whether that means directly or indirectly. > You go directly to the Temple of Fel This might even be more dangerous than trying to take out Rook directly, but you still think it’s your best shot. You probably still got time since for all her changes you know that Tanya’s probably still considering your last statement to her. Which means she probably isn’t going to attack Rook immediately giving you a bit of time to form a plan. You head to the Temple of Fel which isn’t exactly easy considering there are several riots going on, but eventually you get there. The area of the temple is fairly quiet compared to other parts of the city. Perhaps even the average rebel knows better than to fuck around it. Which makes you question your own sanity of why you’ve insisted on coming here. But you didn’t make this trip for nothing, so you take a deep breath and head up the steps to the door and then suddenly your arms are grabbed by two Felians who suddenly appear. Your first instinct is to fight, but you resist the urge to struggle. Wouldn’t do you any good anyway. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m with the Ebony Claw Syndicate!” You say. “And? You think that makes it okay for you to just enter? If you haven’t noticed there’s a lot of strife currently going on in the city and we aren’t just letting anyone come inside.” One of the Felians says. “I get it, but I really need to talk to your high priest or whoever is in charge.” “You want to speak with the high priest? Why in Fel’s name would we let you do that? You might be ECS, but you aren’t even one of the faithful! I can tell! You better get out of here before you’re unable to do so!” “But…I really need…” Before you can say another word, the two Fel priests roughly toss you down the stairs. Normally such a spill wouldn’t be that bad. Maybe a few scrapes and bruises, but the luck of Yag isn’t with you at this moment. You end up tumbling down the stone steps and twisting your neck in a manner that it’s not supposed to twist. Another bounce down the steps and you break it. By the time your reach the bottom, you’re already dead. Even the two priests are a bit alarmed by their unintended actions, but they just dispose of your body away from the temple and in a nearby alleyway where it will most likely be assumed that you were killed by the various acts of violence currently going on in the city, assuming stray dogs or rats don’t eat it first.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 19 “That’s the third large group of cultists we’ve had to evade in our own fucking sewers. Something needs to be done about those shitheads because not even the EC is giving us this much trouble down here.” Sneaks says. “Agreed. They’ve been spreading all over the damn place. Granted I’m not much for religion, but given what I know from what Yinen has said about Neroth AND seen what these fanatics do first hand, I’m not exactly keen on them spreading any further.” You add. “I understand the concerns, but we’re already warring with the EC, the last thing we need is to open up a front against a bunch of Neroth worshipers.” Garrick says. “We don’t need to open up a front, because they’ve already made it quite clear that they’ve already done so. I don’t know about anyone else, but every time I bump into those fanatics they attack on sight.” Sneaks says. “If you’re just bumping into them accidentally, then you’re lucky because I know by their personalized threats they’re specifically targeting me.” You add. “I told you that rescuing that whore would catch up to you.” Tanya says. “That was years ago and they didn’t even see me do it!” “Yeah, but that tart and her friends spread the word about your deeds a long time ago. I’m more surprised they you weren’t targeted sooner by them.” “Well apparently they were too busy with other things than bothering with the likes of the kid here. In any case I’m just saying we need to thin out their ranks or something because while I know we aren’t officially territorial, we shouldn’t have to deal with daggers at our throats right outside our front door.” Sneaks says. “Exactly. And if left unchecked who is to say they won’t find this place? Not to mention these assholes worship a dark god. The last thing we need is for them to do is gather enough power to start summoning shit. Last thing we need is demons running around down here.” You add. As soon as you say that, everyone looks at you and then also looks at Tanya who is also looking in your direction with her head cocked to the side almost intrigued by what you’re going to say next. “Shhhhit...” you quietly say which causes a snicker from Sneaks. Tanya doesn’t even address what you said she instead turns her attention back to Garrick. “Word fumbling aside, he has a point Garrick. They all do. We can’t ignore this potential threat any longer.” Tanya says. “Maybe… (Sigh) I just don’t want to lose any more people especially when we may need them in the future.” Garrick says. After a brief moment of silence, Garrick speaks again. “Okay, fine. Maybe we need to do something. The question is what exactly? I’m still loathe to go all out gang war on a bunch of fanatics, because you know they’re only going to hit back with more fervor…maybe…wait a minute. We could set it up so it looks like the Ebony Claw is targeting them. That will hopefully draw some heat off of us on both sides.” Garrick says. Garrick begins to go into a plan to start ambushing the cultists, but also to ambush a few Ebony Claws and plant their bodies among the dead cultists so the living ones can stumble upon them and vice versa. In the meantime he says he’s going to try to grease the right palms to gain some sort of meeting with Reginald and appear as an “ally” against the Ebony Claw so Reginald will tell his people to leave the Guild alone. It’s not a bad plan, though you’re really not sure on the whole “allying” with Reginald bit. “Um, I’m not sure if this Reginald is ally material.” You say. “Well we need to try, because if you haven’t noticed, we are at a bit of a disadvantage. Reginald is Farrad’s boyfriend. You know, the baron’s son? The one who is probably going to attempt a coup on his father soon? If he’s actually successful it’s probably best that we’re not on his bad side at least.” Garrick retorts with annoyance. “I can see that logic, but I still have concerns if allying with religious fanatics that participate in human sacrifice is a good idea. I mean hell, I’d rather temporarily ally with the Ebony Claw against the cultists at this point…” “Well it’s a damn good thing that YOU don’t have to make the fucking decisions isn’t it then?!” Garrick’s sudden snap causes you to shut up immediately and everyone else to stand in silence. You certainly weren’t expecting it, but then Garrick in general has been less than friendly with you, as your time in the Guild proper has come about. He’s certainly nowhere near like he was when he first offered his hand to you in joining. You have some theories about why, but for now you just answer: “Your call. Apologies.” Garrick gives you a dirty look and starts assigning tasks to people. He doesn’t give one to you though. As everyone starts to leave, you go up to Tanya and offer to help her on her assignment and that’s when you get a scolding voice again. “Hey! Leave her be.” Garrick orders. “But I was just…” you start to say before you’re interrupted again. “Did I assign you and Tanya to work together? No I didn’t.” “Garrick, it’s actually okay, I can…” Tanya says before Garrick interrupts her as well. “Stay out of this Tanya! Everyone get to work! Except YOU.” Tanya looks at you a little sympathetically as she leaves with the rest, which is definitely not the norm, and part of what you imagine is the problem Garrick is having with you. Soon it’s just you and Garrick and he wastes no time in speaking. “You know when I brought you in, I thought you’d be an asset to us. Sure you weren’t exactly what I normally look for, but your actions against the Ebony Claw couldn’t be ignored. Your ongoing work to prove yourself worthy of becoming one of the inner circle couldn’t be ignored. Granted, I was still a little hesitant at the time since I was starting to have some doubts since so many thought you should continue to prove yourself, but Tanya’s words in your favor…well those couldn’t be ignored either.” You don’t say anything. “I also can’t ignore how you look at her and more importantly how she looks at you.” Garrick says. “I don’t think she looks at me with anything but scorn.” You say in an effort to deflect. “Bullshit. Maybe at one time she did. Not anymore. You’re not so stupid to not realize that. Hell, she tried to speak up for you just now. I don’t know HOW you did it, but you’ve actually been getting through that normally solid brick wall she puts up to shield herself again all would be suitors. I have seen MANY try and while I imagine that she leaves a lasting impression due to her nature, I have seen NONE continue to pursue her, or those that have, have met with physical violence that either put a definite stop to it. Somehow you have miraculously avoided that. Somehow YOU have defied what shouldn’t be possible.” You continue to stand there and say nothing, which only causes Garrick to throw something at you, which you narrowly dodge. “WELL? Aren’t you going to say anything?!” Garrick shouts. “I’m not sure what to say. Anything I say, you’re not going to like.” You answer. “Well permission to speak fucking freely then.” “Okay, well I don’t see how this is any of your concern. Tanya, from what I can tell is a full grown woman that’s MORE than capable of taking care of herself and dealing with the likes of me. And as far as I know, you’re not her father either even if you see her as some sort of surrogate daughter.” “It…it doesn’t make sense! WHY YOU?! There have been FAR better suitors in the past!” “You mean like you?” “W…what?” “Oh come on! I think given your increasing hostility towards me this is going beyond a father-daughter type of protectiveness. You’re acting like a jealous boyfriend or something. I’m succeeding where you and so many others obviously failed.” Garrick just starts shaking his head. “No, I…I never…I never…” “Or maybe I’m succeeding in something you never had the guts to do at all? That’s it isn’t it? You’ve never made any sort of advance on her, and just admired her from afar since you were always secure in the fact that she always drove everyone away. I’m guessing perhaps you thought one day Tanya would come to you of her own accord and…” Now Garrick lifts up the table and flips it at you. For an older guy, he’s certainly fit. “You think you know everything don’t you? Well let me tell you something, you don’t know shit. YOU are still a BOY and YOU are not worthy of Tanya.” Garrick says getting in your face. “Okay. Then what would make me worthy…in your eyes?” you ask. Garrick starts laughing. “Are…are you actually asking me? You seem to have all the answers, you figure it out. But while you’re trying to figure it out, go do what you’re actually good at and go kill our enemies. GO! Get the fuck outta my sight!” You leave Garrick and exit the meeting room somewhat expecting there to be a few people hanging around outside listening to the conversation, but it would appear that nobody wanted to be around for Garrick’s anger to be directed towards them as well. Not even Sneaks lingered behind. Since you didn’t even get paired up with a full fledged Guild member, you suppose you could just go gather a few associates to help you, though you believe you’re probably more than capable of performing the task yourself. Honestly though, you’re ready to just dispense with the plan and do something else instead like try to kill Reginald. Those assholes have been targeting you anyway. Also seems like it would solve the problem a lot better than trying to be friends with him. Cutting off the head of a cult usually results in it falling apart. The problem of course is he isn’t as easy to get to anymore. The secret passage to his home no longer exists as one person in the Guild soon learned when he tried to break in that way thinking that it would be an easy job and nearly got himself killed in the process. If there’s another secret passage to the house, you have no idea where it is and it’s probably better protected now. Which would mean a more traditional approach, but again, he’s got security up the ass and has his own personal retinue of guards around his home. Perks of fucking minor nobility you suppose. In any case, you’d be doing this alone though because nobody would help you in this task. Say what you want about Garrick, but everyone listens to him and this would definitely be going against his plans. Though you do have another option, and that’s going to the Ebony Claw Syndicate for help. Rook called off the hit and so far other than a few unavoidable skirmishes here and there, the EC has not been actively targeting you. You never thought you’d feel this way, but you’ve actually considered joining them lately mainly because things have been just so miserable in the Guild. If it weren’t for Tanya, you probably would have done it already. Rook has never followed up on your last meeting, you don’t know exactly what his game is, but you imagine if you come in for help, he’s going to want that inside information on the Guild. > You get help from the Ebony Claw If Rook is already extending his hand, you might as well take it at this point. You’re at least on better terms with him than you are with Garrick. As for Tanya, well you’re going to have to just cut your losses you think on that one. It’s obvious that isn’t going to work out and you need to accept that despite how you might feel. Since you aren’t exactly sure how to contact Rook, the only place you can think of to go is the Poison Blade Inn since that’s the best known Ebony Claw Syndicate hang out. You don’t know what kind of greeting you’re going to get, but you’re going to have to be on your guard, but then you always are. You make your way to the Poison Blade Inn and along the way, you soon start getting hostile stares at various people. You’re definitely not in a friendly neighborhood. When you actually enter the Poison Blade, everyone immediately looks at you. “What the fuck do you want?” one of them demands. “I need to contact a man by the name of Rook, I have important business with him. Specifically information.” You reply. “Is that so? Well how about you tell me and I’ll go relay it to him and he can decide. Rook is much too busy to be dealing with the likes of you.” “Uh huh, look I dunno what your problem is with me exactly but I’m not your enemy, we’re on the same damn side so…” At this point the one speaking to you spits on your boots and gets in your face. Several more members close in on you at this point. This could get really ugly. “My problem…OUR problem with you is you fucking killed many of our friends and associates. Now you just walk in here like you think you own the place? You’re Guild scum, no you’re worse than Guild scum. You’re a fucking rat. You think if you sell out those assholes that’s going to make you good with us? Better think again. I don’t give a fuck what deal you made, you’re not coming in here demanding shit. If you got important information for Rook, he’ll contact you directly himself. YOU wait for him. Now I suggest you walk right back out that door and don’t come back unless you’re actually invited.” Sensing that despite being taken off the hit list, your “immunity” only gets you so far. If you caused trouble here, you are not making it out alive. You just nod and back slowly out of the Poison Blade Inn and make your way out of the neighborhood as quick as possible. After leaving immediate danger, you start to wonder if joining the EC is the way to go after all since it seems like everyone in it hates you. On one hand you can’t be too surprised, but on the other now it seems like a less favorable choice. Instead of having the boss angry at you, you’ll have the rest of the damn organization angry at you. You can’t fucking win, maybe you need to just get the hell out of the city altogether. That would certainly solve a lot of problems. In the mean time, you might as well find a new place to stay while you figure things out. You head to Hell’s Own Inn since it’s at least some place that you know and can consider hospitable. Before you can however, you are suddenly grabbed while passing an alley and slammed up against a wall. You’re then punched several times before you can even react and your pistol is taken away. “Go for your sword and it gets shoved up your ass traitor!” Tanaya says. “Tanya, wha…” you utter and then get another fist in the face causing you to crumple. Tanya then begins kicking you and you curl up while shouting for mercy and asking what the hell is going on. “STOP! STOP! What the hell did I do?!” you utter. “You have the balls to ask that? You know what the fuck you did! You’ve been talking with the Syndicate!” “Tanya…I…” “Don’t insult me by fucking lying! I SAW you! I’ve been following what you were up to since I didn’t think you’d meekly accept Garrick’s orders. I didn’t however believe that you’d go full fucking traitor! How the hell was I so damn stupid to trust you?!” “Tanya, it’s not what it seems! I’m…I’m…” You can’t even come up with a good lie though it doesn’t matter since Tanya isn’t really in a mood to listen, let alone believe you. She grabs your neck with one hand is slowly crushing your windpipe as you dangle off the ground. Her eyes are even giving off a faint reddish glow, it’s like you’ve unleashed her demonic side. You try to beg for her to listen one last time. “Tan…(cough) (ack)” “Shut up, just shut up! I should have known better! Should have known you weren’t different! Didn’t think you’d be worse though!” If you weren’t on the verge of dying, you’d swear that Tanya’s words aren’t just about your betrayal of the Guild. She’s obviously taking this personally. Your suspicions are confirmed when you see Tanya’s eyes water a bit just before she breaks your neck.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It suddenly occurs to you that maybe there are traps about, but they’re magical in nature. You start cutting the glass and who knows what might happen. The daggers seem like there is possibly less danger involved seeing as they just fastened them to the wall. Of course it isn’t just an easy matter of ripping the dagger from the wall, you grab a prybar from your pack and start to get to work, but given their height above you, it’s awkward. You pry and pry, but don’t seem to be making any headway. You begin to think that the daggers are being held in place by magic and you might be right considering that you suddenly feel a force knock the prybar from your hand and as you try to grab it you stumble into one of the isolated stands with a glass case knocking it over and falling on the broken glass. Fortunately you’re mostly protected by your clothing, though you’re still picking glass out of bits of your body. However, you don’t do that for long since you notice the diamond necklace that has now been released from its cage. You might as well grab that instead. No sooner have you picked it up and that’s when you feel an unnatural chill in the air. “That’s not good.” You say and get the hell out of the Galpatis exhibit room. Doesn’t help though, you’re still feeling like the unnatural cold is following you. You get the very real feeling that SOMETHING is following you, but you don’t dare look behind you, all you want to do is get out of the museum and HOPE that whatever this is doesn’t follow you outside. You see the exit in the distance and then you see a wispy green glow materialize in front of it. A malevolent face briefly appears and then one of the statues closest to you comes to life! “Shit!” you exclaim and just barely manage to avoid getting your head smashed in. You look around and see that now several of the statues are coming to life. The exit is blocked by that ghostly thing so even if you could maneuver past the statues, you aren’t getting out that way. “HEY! Grab the damn rope!” a voice shouts from above. You look up and see Tanya on the second floor throwing a rope to you over the railing. You waste no time in grabbing and climbing up it while she pulls you up. The statues try to grab you at first, but then soon realize the best way to get you is going up the stairs. As you grab the railing, Tanya grabs your arm and hoists you over it. You almost feel like she’s going to yank your arm off, but of course you see a glimpse of her face again as she’s pulling you up and you’re almost smitten enough to forget all about the extreme danger you’re currently in. Hurry you fool before I regret saving you!” Tanya shouts and runs towards another rope that hangs from an opening she’s made in the glass dome on the roof Following her lead you make your way to the rope and quickly climb up it where you’re staring directly at Tanya’s ass the entire time. Again, probably a good thing since your focus isn’t on the invisible horrors that are desperately trying to get your attention by whispering demoralizing things in your ears to cause you to give up hope and stop trying to escape. Doesn’t work though, Tanya’s ass is literally saving your own. Eventually you manage to get to the roof where you and Tanya both start leaping across the tops of nearby buildings. When you get far enough away, Tanya at last stops to take a breather and then also punches you in the face. “What was that for?” you ask. “Do you even need to ask?! Your incompetent bumbling nearly got not just yourself killed, but ME as well! What the fuck were you even doing there? Did you KNOW I was going to be there?” Tanya asks. “Well…” “Let me guess, Sneaks told you…I’m going to kill him.” “Where were you anyway? I looked for you for awhile.” “I was in the basement stealing the Tivan Crystal.” “Oh. I didn’t think to check the basement.” “Given all the security you set off, it’s apparent you didn’t think at all! I was just on my way to leave when I heard glass breaking and the scampering of your feet. Did you really think you could just smash and grab shit in a place like that without consequence?” “I didn’t mean to at first. It was an accident. I just wanted to get you something since I couldn’t find you. Here.” You say and pull the diamond necklace out of your bag. “You’re joking right? I could steal, and have stolen items a lot more valuable than this!” “Yes, I’m sure you have, but its value is not the point, this is my gift to you. The motivation behind it is important.” “You expect me to believe you stole this for me?” “Believe what you wish, the point is that it’s yours now my dear.” You say and put the necklace in her hand. Tanya looks at the necklace in disbelief, and addresses you again. “So…wait…you REALLY think I’m going to wear this? Surely even someone of your intelligence can see that I’m not some dainty aristocrat who dresses in fancy gowns and adores myself with jewelry.” “You may do whatever you wish with it. You may throw it away, keep it and wear it, keep it and then sell it or just keep it period. It doesn’t matter. It was just my way of thanking you for not just saving my life, but also the pleasure of being in the glow of your beauty.” Tanya is now looking at you in disbelief. “…you…you…I…” Tayna starts to say. “Yes?” you ask. “Look! I don’t know what the hell your game is, but I’m not playing, and I’m not fooled!” “But I’m not trying to fool you, it’s merely a gift to…” “Stop it! Stop it right now! And stop looking at me like that, if you want to keep your eyesight! I don’t want to hear anymore of your honeyed words! We part ways here and don’t you dare try to follow me!” Tanya yells and pulls her hood even more over her head, before leaping to the next building. You naturally ignore her and start following her anyway. You must hop across three rooftops before Tanya stops again. “LOOK, this is NOT going to…” A bolt whizzing by suddenly interrupts Tanya’s words. At first you think briefly that it’s the guardian museum and it’s followed you, but it turns out to be a more tangible enemy instead. Several men with crossbows suddenly materialize on the roofs nearby and a few of them even on the roof you’re currently on. You both instantly duck down and try to find cover. Several other bolts follow though fortunately the ECS has not employed skilled marksmen. “Bah! All those bolts and you lot couldn’t hit a behemoth’s butt with a bass fiddle! I told you fuckers to practice! Just fucking close in for the kill!” you hear someone shout. You and Tanya can’t go in any direction without facing ECS members, but given the state you’re in right now, you’re not exactly avoiding a fight and neither is Tanya. “Looks like some of the EC are begging to be declawed. I’m always up for whittling down their ranks.” You say. “First thing you’ve said, that I agree with.” Tanya remarks. While the EC might be terrible shots, you certainly aren’t, you shoot three of them before they even manage to close in. Tanya on the other hand is perfectly content on taking on five of the assassins in close combat. One of the members however is standing back and still blinking in and out of existence. He’s obviously using that blasted shadow magic. He’s mainly giving orders right now, but if he gets in the fight, you don’t anticipate things going well. You try to take aim at him, but you’re stopped by two EC members who both nearly stab you. After dodging their blows, you shoot the pair of them. Seeing as you’ve only got one shot left and no real time to reload, you turn your attention back to the EC leader, who is now gone. Tanya is still working on two other EC members and you’re about to go over to help her, when a magic missile of some sort hits you. You drop your weapon and collapse. You almost feel like all the energy has been drained out of you. You’re so weak, you can hardly even push yourself back up, though a hefty kick soon stops that attempt. “Finally got your ass! It’s like they always say, you want something done right, ya gotta do it yourself. So you think you can just get away with shooting our members like some cowardly sonofabitch?” the shadow magic wielder remarks. “You…you just hit me with a fucking magic missile!” you wheeze, pointing out his hypocrisy. This of course isn’t appreciated and you soon receive another kick. “Silence! I’m gonna enjoy this.” Fortunately, he doesn’t get the chance due to all his gloating which was enough time for Tanya to finish off her last opponent and run over to help you again. However, he’s quick enough to avoid her attacks. The pair of them duel while you lie there trying to gather your strength. You’re really woozy and weak. You eventually manage to stand up, but you feel like you’re going to teeter over again. Tanya is still fighting the EC leader, but she’s not making much progress. In fact, he might even have a slight advantage since he hasn’t been exerting himself as much as she has tonight. You look over to your right and see your pistol lying nearby. You’ve got one shot in it and you’re not exactly in the best condition as far as accurately aiming anything right now. Of course you could just try to help Tanya in the more traditional way and try to backstab him. Still not ideal, but if you miss, you’re not likely to hit Tanya by accident. > You backstab You’d rather not risk hitting Tanya, you need to get in close. As you attempt to move forward, you have a bit of trouble trying to keep your balance since you’re still very woozy. Tanya’s still holding her own, but the bastard’s shadow magic is giving him the edge. Fortunately his back is still towards you. You try to get a little closer and every inch of you is struggling to not slip into unconsciousness. You see the EC member block several of Tanya’s attacks and then manages to knock her down with some sort of glowing magic from his hand. You see him going in for the kill and that’s when you make your own lunging attack. And promptly trip over yourself only to fall next to him. The EC member is distracted enough that he doesn’t attack Tanaya in her prone position; he does however attack you instead. This time the magic missile hits you directly in the side of the head on top of being at point blank range. The flesh is burned off followed by your skull cracking and brain partially melting. This might have given Tanya enough time to recover and press her own advantage, but you’re out of fight and more importantly this existence.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 18 “Yep, Garrick’s been very impressed with you. I’d say a few more jobs and you’ll finally get invited to where all the magic takes place.” Sneaks says. “I can hardly wait.” You say. “Well geez son, don’t sound so enthusiastic. Last year you kept asking me if you were any closer to getting into the Guild headquarters.” “Last year, I was still a bit more optimistic about my choice in joining the guild.” “Oh? And how exactly did we fail you your majesty?” “That’s not exactly what I mean, but if we’re going that route, I just thought I’d be doing slightly better while aligned with you lot.” Sneaks starts laughing. “Well that’s your first problem right there. Joining a criminal organization that’s currently feuding with another one isn’t exactly a stable future son.” Sneaks says. “I know that too, it’s just…okay…I’m just a little concerned that we aren’t doing too much directly against the Ebony Claw Syndicate. I mean shouldn’t we be doing something more to decrease their power? Their presence hasn’t exactly decreased in the city and if anything it has only gotten stronger.” You respond. “I dunno about that, I’d say they’re probably struggling like everyone else currently. If they were truly stronger in presence they’d be directly attacking us and some of our hangouts more often.” “Well that’s still a problem since it’s still not progress, it’s just keeping the status quo.” “So, what are you going to do? Shoot them all?” “Well considering how many I have shot, I’d say it’s not a bad plan. Not to mention it’s something I could have easily done on my own.” “And you would have been dead already on your own. But if you really feel like you could do better on your own then nothing is holding back from leaving. Why stay?” “Because obviously I’m still an optimistic idiot.” “I don’t believe that, I believe its MORE likely you’re just sticking around because you’re an infatuated idiot.” “What?” “Don’t play dumb with me, I know you still got a thing for Tanya after I told you to just walk away. I remember when we all had to work on that job together three months ago, I swear at one point with how hard you were starin’ at her, I thought you were going to whip your dick out and start wackin’ it right there.” You laugh at that remark. “You laugh because you know it’s true.” Sneaks says. “Yeah well it certainly is a better reason than anything else I could come up with, and I’m not totally convinced that goal isn’t at least as possible as wiping out the ECS as a force in this city.” You respond. “I dunno about that. You’ve at least killed Ebony Claw members, you haven’t even gotten a kind word from Tanya yet.” “Yes I did! She said she couldn’t believe I was still alive and that I had to be the idiot bastard son of Yag eternally blessed with more luck than actual ability.” “Hm. Well actually coming from her that IS a kind word. Congrats. At the risk of inflating your ego even more…and she’d probably kill me if I told you…she actually would somewhat agree with you on your views about the Ebony Claw. She sort of wishes we took the fight more to them too. Actually you could probably count me in that group as well.” “So why the hell aren’t we doing more then and why isn’t Garrick being pro-active?” “He actually is, just not in the way you think. He thinks an all out gang war would be a mistake due to them having the numbers. He might be right, I don’t know. But all that shit we steal and the Guild gets a cut of? That doesn’t all just go towards equipment and extra casks of booze for the headquarters. Some of that money goes towards more important things like bribes, paying off the Watch and getting a few underpaid bean counters on our side to muddle paper work on occasion.” “Well that’s great and all, but how’s that fuck up the Ebony Claw?” “It doesn’t, but it keeps a balance. You don’t think they don’t do the same thing? Try to manipulate the law in their favor? The only reason why the Holgard Watch doesn’t mess with either side much is because they’re taking bribes from both sides. They got best racket in this city. They practically never even have to do their fucking jobs! Garrick HOPES that one day he’ll be able to manipulate the right people that will cripple the EC, but I can say right now, he’s doomed to failure, because at his core, he’s too fucking nice. Bribery only gets you so far. To do what he wants to do, he’d need to rely more on blackmail and extortion, which isn’t something he’s too fond of getting heavily into.” “Surprised nobody’s tried to kill him and take power from him.” “I said he’s nice, not a pussy. There have been a few who have tried over the years, mostly before the EC established a greater presence, but the man isn’t unskilled in the ways of defending himself. Besides the Thieves Guild isn’t the Ebony Claw and because Garrick is so fucking nice, people generally like him enough that they’d rather keep him as head of the organization. Not to mention we don’t exactly have the most ambitious bunch in the Guild. Most of the really ruthless, kill their own mother types to get ahead join the EC. We’re not Joachimites, but I’d still wager that most of us in the Guild have just a few more scruples than the average EC member.” “Yeah, well scruples doesn’t win wars.” “No argument there. Look kid, I’m not sure what to tell you, except I do hope you stick with us. I don’t care what your reasons are, whether its for safety, or riches or your ongoing failed pursuit of Tanya’s demon pussy. We need more…for the lack of a better word…warrior types in the Guild.” “Never considered myself a warrior before, but I suppose I’ll take it as a compliment.” “Of course you will, that’s how I meant it. Anyway, I gotta go. Garrick’s holding some sort of meeting for some of us important elite. Tell ya what, I’ll try to convince Garrick to let you in the Guild’s inner sanctum already. I know it’s not Tanya’s inner sanctum, but here’s something that might help you in that goal, she’s supposed to be casing the Museum of the Ancients tonight. Who knows, maybe if you get there quick enough she might even let you help.” As your eyes light up, Sneaks smiles and parts ways with you. You of course don’t waste any time heading to the Museum of the Ancients. You’ve never considered burglarizing that place before, but you suppose it makes sense that there would be some pretty valuable stuff in there. Though you imagine that it’s more protected than even some of the banks here. You’ve only had the fortune of working with Tanya a couple times before and that was always in a group and she of course always limited her contact with you in those cases. You still don’t exactly know WHY you’re as drawn to her as you are. Well you do and it’s probably due to her demonic heritage and whatever powers of charm she put on you. (Accidently you guess given her stand offish personality towards you) Sneaks said the effects should have worn off by now since you don’t even see her that much. Granted you aren’t thinking about her all the time, but if you ever have the chance to be around her (Like you do now) you’re going to take it. Luckily you manage to arrive unaccosted by anyone, the law or otherwise. Now you’re just hoping you find Tanya before the fun begins. The surrounding area outside the museum, the place is more or less empty. There aren’t too many other people in the area other than a few Holgard Watchmen patrolling around which you keep clear of. You look around to see where Tanya might be, but again its possible she already went inside. You bet she went in from the rooftop. Every time you’ve worked with her, she’s always favoring the rooftops. Of course you prefer a more grounded approach so as soon as it looks safe, you simply run up to the front door and pick the lock, which is a lot easier than you thought it would be. You look around the museum and mostly see a lot of oversized items that you’d need at least two people to carry to get out of here. Statues, suits of rusty armor, oversized tapestries and the like. While you’re sure some of this stuff is valuable to someone, it wouldn’t exactly be the easiest to just lift out of here. Though you haven’t seen or heard any night guards of any kind at all. Seems weird that this place doesn’t have any security. You try to keep an ear out for anyone that might be walk around, but it’s nothing but silence. You start to wonder if she came and left already or maybe this was all Sneaks idea of a practical joke. Wouldn’t be the first time. Since you can’t find her or detect anyone else roaming these halls, you decide that you might as well see if there actually is anything here that you might be worth taking. Eventually after wandering a bit, you stumble into an area that seems more promising. “Royal treasures of Old Galpatis” you say to yourself as you read the sign to exhibit room. You don’t know too much about Galpatis except shit that your sister sometimes spoke about from some book she read. It was supposed to be a great empire thousands of years ago that destroyed itself as all these ancient civilizations tend to do for whatever reason. Probably had something to do with necromancy or something. In any case you enter and see in the dim torchlight you see proper treasure that you could actually carry out of here. A lot of old necklaces, bracelets, crowns with gems and similar items behind glass, though some, like the weapons are mounted securely on the wall. A couple of weapons that catch your eye are a pair of ornate looking dagger. Not even tarnished and definitely still usable. You probably could easily pry them from the walls though you’d have to reach a bit since they’re little higher than you. Of course you do have your trusty glasscutter with you and you could just start getting to work on grabbing what you can from the displays. > You cut the glass You’ve already got enough daggers; you don’t really need to waste time getting some slightly fancier ones while there are obviously more valuable objects that you can pilfer. You look around for potential traps or alarms around the display cases and find nothing, so you get started and begin carefully cutting the glass. The jeweled crown is what really catches your eye. The regular jewelry is going to bring a nice price of course, but that crown isn’t like something you’ve ever stolen before. You remove the glass and grab the crown. No sooner have you picked it up and that’s when you feel an unnatural chill in the air and you’re struck by a powerful vision. You see a sprawling city though it’s much larger than any sort of city you’ve ever been to (granted you’ve only been to Holgard, but you can tell it’s much bigger than that). Also unlike Holgard everything is very orderly and the buildings are in much better condition in general. At first you wonder if you’re seeing some city in the Delantium Kingdom since you’ve never been there, but something about this place seems different. Like you don’t think you’re even in the same time period. The people are dressed very different than you know. The building architecture isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen. Once again searching your memory again of your sister’s old stories, you think you’re seeing Galpatis. Or at least some portion of the old empire. Currently, you’re seeing everything from above. Almost like you’re flying over the city, but you’re not actually there. The only thing that is certain is that you’re still holding the crown in your hand. Before you can ponder what exactly is going on, a voice suddenly pierces your mind. “THIEF! DISCARD ME NOW OR FACE DIRE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR GREED!” Well that command couldn’t be much clearer. As far as you know you aren’t in any immediate danger, but then right now you’re seeing a vision and you don’t know what’s going on in the “real world.” For all you know you could be surrounded by guards. The “voice” you’re hearing could even be some sort of protection to scare rogues such as yourself into dropping the crown. You’re either going to have to mentally break the illusion you’re experiencing or drop the crown and give up on this prize. > You drop the crown There is some strange magic at work here and it’s obviously best if you didn’t fuck around with it. You play it safe and release the crown. No sooner that you do so that you feel like you’re falling and then you suddenly back in the museum room again and the crown is back in its case with the glass once again intact. “Shit, that was weird.” You say and stare at the crown a bit. You then immediately notice how much colder it is in this room. You aren’t even sure how long you’ve been actually sitting here. Feeling uneasy, you stand up and head towards the exit of this room only to be stopped by a living statue. “Fuck!” you shout, only narrowly dodging the statue’s swing at your head. You turn to run out the other side of the room, but you then see two more statues blocking that way as well. You desperately try to fight your way out, expending all your shots and destroying a good portion of one of the statues, but more of them come into the room and block your escape. All it takes is one of them to get in a good hit. The bones in the left side of your face shatter as you go down to the floor from one of their punches. You try to get up, but the rest of your skull is crushed under a statue’s stone foot.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve already got enough daggers; you don’t really need to waste time getting some slightly fancier ones while there are obviously more valuable objects that you can pilfer. You look around for potential traps or alarms around the display cases and find nothing, so you get started and begin carefully cutting the glass. The jeweled crown is what really catches your eye. The regular jewelry is going to bring a nice price of course, but that crown isn’t like something you’ve ever stolen before. You remove the glass and grab the crown. No sooner have you picked it up and that’s when you feel an unnatural chill in the air and you’re struck by a powerful vision. You see a sprawling city though it’s much larger than any sort of city you’ve ever been to (granted you’ve only been to Holgard, but you can tell it’s much bigger than that). Also unlike Holgard everything is very orderly and the buildings are in much better condition in general. At first you wonder if you’re seeing some city in the Delantium Kingdom since you’ve never been there, but something about this place seems different. Like you don’t think you’re even in the same time period. The people are dressed very different than you know. The building architecture isn’t like anything you’ve ever seen. Once again searching your memory again of your sister’s old stories, you think you’re seeing Galpatis. Or at least some portion of the old empire. Currently, you’re seeing everything from above. Almost like you’re flying over the city, but you’re not actually there. The only thing that is certain is that you’re still holding the crown in your hand. Before you can ponder what exactly is going on, a voice suddenly pierces your mind. “THIEF! DISCARD ME NOW OR FACE DIRE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR GREED!” Well that command couldn’t be much clearer. As far as you know you aren’t in any immediate danger, but then right now you’re seeing a vision and you don’t know what’s going on in the “real world.” For all you know you could be surrounded by guards. The “voice” you’re hearing could even be some sort of protection to scare rogues such as yourself into dropping the crown. You’re either going to have to mentally break the illusion you’re experiencing or drop the crown and give up on this prize. > You keep the crown This is a unique form of security, but you’re no weak willed fool. You begin to try to disbelieve your surroundings and try to move. Seeing as you’re in the air, it’s almost like you’re swimming. It’s all pretty surreal and you’re expecting this illusion to end. “FOOL! IF YOU WANT THE SACRED TREASURES OF GALPATIS SO BAD THEN EXPERIENCE ITS TRUE GLORY!” The voice booms and suddenly you’re falling towards the city! The shock causes you to panic because now this doesn’t feel like an illusion. You immediately drop the crown believing that it might correct things, but all that happens is the crown starts falling to the ground too. At first you think you’re going to die, but then you notice that you’re falling not just towards the city, but you’re over an area which looks to have some large trees. With a little luck, MAYBE you can slow your descent before hitting the ground. Shifting your weight slightly, you brace for painful impact of attempting to hit every branch on the way down. When you’re within reach of the top of the tree, you desperately start grabbing at extended branches just within reach. You unsurprisingly break several of them trying to hang on, along with ripping your hands up pretty good. You’re very lucky you don’t get impaled and eventually you hit the ground bruising most of your body. You curse when you notice your pistol has broken into two pieces. However, you’re still alive. Though in your dazed state, you realize that your “arrival” didn’t go unnoticed with several strangely dressed onlookers pointing at you. A couple of them even shout over at you. You sit up and using the base of the tree you stand yourself up. You’re in a lot of pain right now, and it’s at this moment that you realize you can’t understand what any of these gawkers are saying to each other or you. Some of the words sound similar to ones you know, but it’s almost like they’re all speaking a different language. You at first wonder if you hit the ground so hard that it damaged your head so you can’t understand what people are saying anymore, but given where you are and how everyone is dressed, you’ve got a bad feeling that you’re a LONG way from Holgard anymore. And for all you know this could still all be some elaborate illusion. In any case, you’re drawing a crowd and you’ve had enough experience to know that’s never a good thing. You quickly make your escape away from the crowd, especially when you hear more shouting coming towards your position. You don’t know where the hell you are, but you’re guessing it must be a park of some sort inside the city. You need to find a secluded place and get your bearings. As you move as quickly as you can with a twisted ankle and sore feet, you spy out the corner of your eye, the crown laying in the grass by some bushes. Seeing as this is what got you into this in the first place, you figure you might as well retrieve it. No sooner have you picked it up again, you hear the voice again. “STILL ALIVE THIEF? YOU ARE STRONGER THAN YOU LOOK.” “End this illusion…whatever you are!” you sputter. “THIS IS NO ILLUSION. WHAT YOU SEE IS VERY REAL. JUST LIKE YOUR PAIN. YOU WANTED A GREAT TREASURE OF OLD GALPATIS. THERE IS NO GREATER TREASURE THAN LIVING DURING THE APEX OF ITS GLORY. TIS MORE THAN A SCOUNDREL LIKE YOU DESERVES!” “Wait. You’re…you’re saying I’m actually here? I traveled back in fucking time?! Bullshit, this has to be an illusion!” “DISBELIEVE AT YOUR OWN PERIL, BUT THERE ARE NO LIES AND THERE IS NO RETURN. YOU LOST THAT OPTION WHEN YOU STUCK WITH YOUR GREED. YOUR LIFE OF GREED HAS ALREADY COST YOU DEARLY. HOWEVER, YOU HAVE THE CHANCE AT A NEW LIFE IF YOU LET GO. CONTINUE ON YOUR PATH AND YOU WILL MOST CERTAINLY BE DOOMED.” This is a lot to take in. You truly do not know what to make of all this. If this crown, or voice, or whatever is telling the truth, you are in deeper shit than you could have ever imagined. You’re stuck not just in an unknown city or even a foreign land, you’re in a whole other time period! You’ve got to think. Of course, while you’re thinking about how you’re going to survive in this new situation, you still might need a lot of coin to make it a little easier. You look at the crown. > You keep the crown Again, this crown got you into this mess; you might as well keep it at this point. You tuck the crown away in your pack hoping that it stops speaking to you. You limp away and eventually find your way out of the park. (Or what you assume was a park anyway) You walk down a street catching a lot of glances. Most of the inhabitants of this city are human (Though you’re seeing a couple of races that you’ve never even seen before) so you’re not standing out so much on that aspect, but the way you’re dressed is definitely cause for intrigue. Unfortunately for you, you’re so intriguing that when several military looking men come running in your direction they immediately begin shouting at you in a language that you still can’t understand. You aren’t really in any condition to run and there are enough of them that you don’t think you could fight them all. You don’t even have the advantage of your pistol any longer. Having no other choice, you attempt to play it dumb and make gestures that you don’t understand them. It isn’t really a plan, so much as it’s the lack of one since you really can’t understand them. Though eventually when they get exasperated enough, you understand them all too well. One of the soldiers grabs you while another begins grabbing your belongings such as your weapons and your pack. They toss everything out, but when they see the crown, all of their eyes narrow and you know enough that you’re in even deeper shit. You can’t make out everything they say in between the beating, but you think you understood some of the words as older forms of various swears. You also heard “emperor” which is very bad since as far as you can figure, the crown belongs to the emperor of Galpatis Empire. While you expect to be killed right there in the streets, the soldiers eventually stop beating you and take you away in chains. Apparently they uphold a very civilized legal system here and you are to be properly judged rather than just executed immediately. You spend months in a dungeon waiting for judgment. During those first few weeks you try to find a way to escape. When you never find an opening of any sort, you just give up. After all what would you escape to? You’re nowhere near home or anything else that you know. You are a man out of time. Resigned to your situation, you spend the remainder of your time learning some of the language to crudely communicate with the guards or other prisoners. You learn manage to learn a few things that your sister would find very interesting seeing as she did read a few things about Galpatis. Your chances of ever telling her are nil of course. Still, you hope she’s doing a lot better than you currently are. Eventually your day arrives and predictably your case is pretty cut and dry. You’re found guilty of stealing one of the emperor’s royal crowns (You guess he has several) and the sentence is death. You have to wonder why it took so damn long to sentence you seeing as they found it on you. You can only guess this place has a really backed up legal system on top of it being “civilized.” While it doesn’t help you out, it makes you wonder if this was “meant to happen.” Like were you supposed to go back in time and steal this crown? Did this originally happen? But then you didn’t really steal it at all or at least you didn’t steal it in this time period. The guards just found it on you, but they clearly were LOOKING for a thief. So what happened to the original one? You eventually stop worrying about it; it’s not going to matter anyway. The waiting period for the execution is happily a lot swifter and by the time you walk to the chopping block; you’re ready to accept your fate.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is a unique form of security, but you’re no weak willed fool. You begin to try to disbelieve your surroundings and try to move. Seeing as you’re in the air, it’s almost like you’re swimming. It’s all pretty surreal and you’re expecting this illusion to end. “FOOL! IF YOU WANT THE SACRED TREASURES OF GALPATIS SO BAD THEN EXPERIENCE ITS TRUE GLORY!” The voice booms and suddenly you’re falling towards the city! The shock causes you to panic because now this doesn’t feel like an illusion. You immediately drop the crown believing that it might correct things, but all that happens is the crown starts falling to the ground too. At first you think you’re going to die, but then you notice that you’re falling not just towards the city, but you’re over an area which looks to have some large trees. With a little luck, MAYBE you can slow your descent before hitting the ground. Shifting your weight slightly, you brace for painful impact of attempting to hit every branch on the way down. When you’re within reach of the top of the tree, you desperately start grabbing at extended branches just within reach. You unsurprisingly break several of them trying to hang on, along with ripping your hands up pretty good. You’re very lucky you don’t get impaled and eventually you hit the ground bruising most of your body. You curse when you notice your pistol has broken into two pieces. However, you’re still alive. Though in your dazed state, you realize that your “arrival” didn’t go unnoticed with several strangely dressed onlookers pointing at you. A couple of them even shout over at you. You sit up and using the base of the tree you stand yourself up. You’re in a lot of pain right now, and it’s at this moment that you realize you can’t understand what any of these gawkers are saying to each other or you. Some of the words sound similar to ones you know, but it’s almost like they’re all speaking a different language. You at first wonder if you hit the ground so hard that it damaged your head so you can’t understand what people are saying anymore, but given where you are and how everyone is dressed, you’ve got a bad feeling that you’re a LONG way from Holgard anymore. And for all you know this could still all be some elaborate illusion. In any case, you’re drawing a crowd and you’ve had enough experience to know that’s never a good thing. You quickly make your escape away from the crowd, especially when you hear more shouting coming towards your position. You don’t know where the hell you are, but you’re guessing it must be a park of some sort inside the city. You need to find a secluded place and get your bearings. As you move as quickly as you can with a twisted ankle and sore feet, you spy out the corner of your eye, the crown laying in the grass by some bushes. Seeing as this is what got you into this in the first place, you figure you might as well retrieve it. No sooner have you picked it up again, you hear the voice again. “STILL ALIVE THIEF? YOU ARE STRONGER THAN YOU LOOK.” “End this illusion…whatever you are!” you sputter. “THIS IS NO ILLUSION. WHAT YOU SEE IS VERY REAL. JUST LIKE YOUR PAIN. YOU WANTED A GREAT TREASURE OF OLD GALPATIS. THERE IS NO GREATER TREASURE THAN LIVING DURING THE APEX OF ITS GLORY. TIS MORE THAN A SCOUNDREL LIKE YOU DESERVES!” “Wait. You’re…you’re saying I’m actually here? I traveled back in fucking time?! Bullshit, this has to be an illusion!” “DISBELIEVE AT YOUR OWN PERIL, BUT THERE ARE NO LIES AND THERE IS NO RETURN. YOU LOST THAT OPTION WHEN YOU STUCK WITH YOUR GREED. YOUR LIFE OF GREED HAS ALREADY COST YOU DEARLY. HOWEVER, YOU HAVE THE CHANCE AT A NEW LIFE IF YOU LET GO. CONTINUE ON YOUR PATH AND YOU WILL MOST CERTAINLY BE DOOMED.” This is a lot to take in. You truly do not know what to make of all this. If this crown, or voice, or whatever is telling the truth, you are in deeper shit than you could have ever imagined. You’re stuck not just in an unknown city or even a foreign land, you’re in a whole other time period! You’ve got to think. Of course, while you’re thinking about how you’re going to survive in this new situation, you still might need a lot of coin to make it a little easier. You look at the crown. > You discard it The crown’s been nothing but trouble and you’re likely just going to suffer more by keeping the damn thing. Not to mention you don’t really want to put up with its scolding advice again. Throwing the crown into the bushes you limp away and eventually find your way out of the park. (Or what you assume was a park anyway) You walk down a street catching a lot of glances. Most of the inhabitants of this city are human (Though you’re seeing a couple of races that you’ve never even seen before) so you’re not standing out so much on that aspect, but the way you’re dressed is definitely cause for intrigue. Unfortunately for you, you’re so intriguing that when several military looking men come running in your direction they immediately begin shouting at you in a language that you still can’t understand. You aren’t really in any condition to run and there are enough of them that you don’t think you could fight them all. You don’t even have the advantage of your pistol any longer. Having no other choice, you attempt to play it dumb and make gestures that you don’t understand them. It isn’t really a plan; so much as it’s the lack of one since you really can’t understand them. Though eventually when they get exasperated enough, you understand them all too well. One of the soldiers grabs you while another begins grabbing your belongings such as your weapons and your pack. They dump everything out and then after a few words to each other, one of them points in a different direction and they all leave. Whatever it is they were looking for you didn’t have, though you get the very real impression that it was a good idea to leave that crown behind after all. Of course your situation is still pretty damn dire. You’re stuck in the past and unless you get access to some really powerful magic, you’re going to be living the rest of your life here no matter what else you achieve. You’re also at a disadvantage of not knowing the language or even your general location let alone how things work around here. The best you have to go on is a few old stories your sister told you and that’s going to have to be enough for now The voice in the crown told you that you’d have to give up your roguish ways and start a new life, but that’s really not going to be possible even if you wanted to. Right now you can see that you’re going to have to steal to survive. Possibly even the basics like new clothes because you are really sticking out with what you’re currently wearing. Once you get that down, then maybe you can figure out a way to get back to your own time. > You time passes... Year 21 “Oh come on Saldinius you can’t do better than that?” you say. “Sorry, but times are hard right now, that’s the best I can offer!” Saldinius replies making a shrugging motion. “Bah, fine. You’re lucky I got more important shit to do.” You take your coin from Saldinius and make your way back to your humble room back at an inn. (Some things never change) The Galpatis Empire might be going through a “Golden Age” but from what you can tell life is pretty much the same here as it was in your time. The poor bastards are struggling to survive, the rich bastards are sitting on their fat asses reaping all the benefits and everyone in between is just trying to make their own way to be a rich bastard and avoid becoming one of the poor bastards. Still, you suppose you could have wound up in a worse city when you got stuck here. Galapolis is the shining jewel and seat of the Empire and it’s easily five times the size of Holgard ever was. There is no shortage of opportunity for a rogue like yourself here. Crime doesn’t change too much after all and if anything you’re probably a little more skilled at it than most. That first year was really hard though. You sometimes didn’t know if you were going to make it or not. It wasn’t really the survival aspect, but more the mental aspect. True you didn’t exactly have a “good life” in your own time, but you still had ties. Many nights you thought about your family and how you’d possibly never see them again. You even cried on more than one occasion. Maybe you left on bad terms, but probably in the back of you mind somewhere you thought that maybe you’d reconcile somehow with your mom and dad. Of course there was your sister as well, though you probably thought about her more since you used some of the knowledge from her stories to help you through this. You found the inner strength to carry on by learning the language, the surroundings and everything else you could. It’s quite the accomplishment really. Unfortunately the only thing you haven’t learned is how to get back home. You haven’t lost hope on that dream though. Magic seems to be more common, or rather more impressive from what you’ve seen of it. The city of Galpatolis is protected by a giant invisible shield for example and when a dragon attacked (You nearly shit your pants when you saw one of those for the first time especially since it was much larger than the stories you heard) the beast couldn’t even penetrate the defenses and its breath attack was reflected back. Eventually it was brought down by more magical defenses that disintegrated it completely. If the magic here has that power, then surely there might be a way back home with it. The main problem is magic seems to be highly restricted to the upper class. Like nobles and such. It isn’t even like you’ve ever found any practicing hedge wizards or witches. Those types apparently get rounded up fairly quickly or they probably live far away from the Empire, which is pretty damn large. (As far as you can tell you’re currently located where the Delantium Kingdom would be located and Galpatis Empire stretches much more than that.) There doesn’t even seem to be any “divine magic” either or religion as you know it anyway. The citizens of the Empire all seem to worship the current Emperor as a “living god.” (The body just being a vessel for him until he discards it for a new one) Deities in any other sense seem to be fringe beliefs at best or considered to be reserved for uncivilized barbarians that live outside the empire. In any case, you’ve asked around and done as much research as you can on the matter and there is one place in the Empire which has slightly more relaxed rules on magic and that’s the town of Arcanius. Though it’s not so much of a town as it is a giant magic testing area. There is where all the less disciplined, unwanted bastard children of nobles who have minor abilities or just downright anti-social wizards go to practice their skills without as much supervision though apparently there is still a powerful warden that oversees everything. The funny thing is, it isn’t restricted to go there, but there is little reason for the average non-magical person to do so. For one thing it’s a very long journey and not in the most hospitable place of the Empire (Close to the Cloudpeake Mountains) Second, it isn’t like the average Empire citizen wants to hang around a bunch of unhinged miscreant magic types. Though for you, it’s probably your only possible chance at getting back home. In any event, you’ve raised enough coin and made the right shady connections to gain rare passage there. The use of carriages is a lot more exclusive during this time, let alone using them to travel to another city. However seeing as you’re heading to a town not many want to go to anyway, your obvious lack of nobility isn’t as much of an issue. Indeed you’ll probably be assumed to be another bastard. The ride leaves tomorrow and you need to be on it so you need to get your rest. You spend the rest of the day and night packing everything you plan on taking, because if all goes to plan, you won’t be coming back. You head to where the carriages are getting ready to leave and with a few extra bribes, bullshit explanations, and general apathy of the soldiers, you’re waved into one of the carriages heading to Arcanius. It’s going to be a several day journey from what you know so you’re glad when you find that you have a carriage all to yourself. You’ll be able to stretch out. Eventually there is some shouting heard outside, along with the crack of several whips. Before you know it you’re on your way. You never were much of a reader before, but seeing how long this trip is going to be, you figured it would be a good idea to take some literature with you along the way. If you do manage to get back, you might even be able to sell this stuff for a hefty profit. Galpatis items would no doubt go for a lot. (And you’ve collected a few other small items with this in mind) As you spend a few days reading some books (and improve your basic understanding of the Empire’s language in general) your thoughts start to wander a bit. What if you’ve changed the future just by being here? You’ve never pondered this before, but maybe it’s due to reading too much philosophy during the trip, but what if you’ve changed things? You can’t imagine that you’ve changed that much since you’ve surprisingly haven’t even killed anyone since being here. You’ve stolen a lot of things, but is any of that really going to make a difference in the long run? You don’t know. What if you go back and there is nothing to go back to? Or more specifically what if you made changes here to the point that you don’t exist? “Oh shit.” You mutter as you ponder this new possibility. At first you were concerned that you might not be able to get back home. Now you’re concerned that maybe you shouldn’t go back home! You go back and forth on this many times. Staying here has always been something you thought might be inevitable anyway so would it really matter? You get the impression that if you stayed here, you could probably carve out a future for yourself. You think with time and effort you could rise to be greater than your current status in the criminal world. Hell, you probably could get your own organization started. For all you know you’re the founder of the Ebony Claw Syndicate. Now you start to wonder if you were MEANT to be here. “What the hell am I thinking? I need to go back! I can’t fucking stay here…can I?” you say to yourself. In any case your struggles with metaphysical matters soon turn into very real struggles because your carriage (along with the rest) are suddenly attacked! You hear shouting and the galloping of several horses. A look outside your window and you see a bunch of figures on horseback armed with spear type weapons and bows. At this range you think they might be green skinned. Probably orcs given the noises they’re making. So much for Empire territory being safe everywhere. Granted you are currently closer to one of its borders, but you’d think that would just mean they’d protect it a hell of a lot better. The carriage you’re currently on goes faster, but it’s obvious that the orc raiders are going to attempt to cut everyone off assuming they don’t kill everyone with arrows first. Several of said arrows go into your carriage and you try to get as flat as possible. You really wish you still had your pistol. You’d at least be able to fire back. “THEY’RE GOING TO CATCH UP TO US! EVERYONE TO ARMS!” you hear someone shout and the carriage comes to a halt. Last time you looked, there was a hell of a lot of orcs. Granted you have some of the Empire’s soldiers with you and hopefully a few of the bastard passengers in the other carriages are above average with their lack of formal magic training, but it’s not going to be an easy fight. You almost wonder if you should just run for your life. As strange as it is, you haven’t been in a real life or death fight in years since you’ve been here. You’re probably a little rusty. There’s also the fact that most of the people you ever fought with were other humans. Orcs are a whole different story. Especially this blood thirsty looking lot. > You help fight off the orcs You need to get to Arcanius. If you run and these assholes lose, then you’re in for a long walk. If you run away and they live, you can’t imagine that the survivors aren’t going to be keen on taking you along after you abandoned them, also resulting in a long walk. You’re going to have to at least make the attempt, as much as you’d rather just run. Still, there’s no reason to go rushing headlong into battle. On top of being on horseback, the orcs are armed with bows, spears and javelins. You aren’t some heavily armored soldier and you don’t have magic powers to fire back. If you still had your pistol this might not be as big of a deal since you could easily fire back at them. Since you don’t have any of those things, you figure you’ll continue to hide in the carriage until you see a suitable opening to attack. You remain low to the floor in the carriage, occasionally looking out the window. You mostly the orcs circling about on horseback and using their bows to their advantage, though a couple of the novice mages are breaking up that advantage by slinging a few magic missile spells while hiding behind the shield wall that the soldiers have created. For a while it looks like you might survive all this and not even have to fight after all. Unfortunately that’s when the leader shows up. He’s not riding a horse either, but a chariot pulled by what looks like giant armored boars. Several of his people rally in front of him and they all make a beeline charge towards the soldiers, while others ride around to flank the sides. To their credit, the soldiers hold the wall and a few of the mages don’t even run and instead try to take out the main force approaching, but ultimately the orcs have more numbers and the leader is tough. His chariot crashes spectacularly into the shield wall, breaking through and trampling several of the soldiers. The boars and chariot aren’t in the best of shape either of course, but that doesn’t matter since the leader has already jumped off it and begin chopping people up directly with a huge axe. “Shit. Should have left when I had the chance.” You say and leave the carriage as quick as you can. Realizing that this is a lost battle, you quickly start trying to free one of the living horses still attached to one of the carriages (and desperately trying to get free of the chaos by trying to drag the carriage despite the fact that it’s dead fellows along side it are preventing such a thing) Of course while you’re trying to do this one of the mounted orcs appears and gallops straight towards you. You try to get back in the carriage to avoid being trampled or cut down, but instead the orc grabs the last javelin on his back and throws it at you. Predictably he’s a good shot and you’re impaled through the back and out your chest. Your death is instantaneous.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 21 “Oh come on Saldinius you can’t do better than that?” you say. “Sorry, but times are hard right now, that’s the best I can offer!” Saldinius replies making a shrugging motion. “Bah, fine. You’re lucky I got more important shit to do.” You take your coin from Saldinius and make your way back to your humble room back at an inn. (Some things never change) The Galpatis Empire might be going through a “Golden Age” but from what you can tell life is pretty much the same here as it was in your time. The poor bastards are struggling to survive, the rich bastards are sitting on their fat asses reaping all the benefits and everyone in between is just trying to make their own way to be a rich bastard and avoid becoming one of the poor bastards. Still, you suppose you could have wound up in a worse city when you got stuck here. Galapolis is the shining jewel and seat of the Empire and it’s easily five times the size of Holgard ever was. There is no shortage of opportunity for a rogue like yourself here. Crime doesn’t change too much after all and if anything you’re probably a little more skilled at it than most. That first year was really hard though. You sometimes didn’t know if you were going to make it or not. It wasn’t really the survival aspect, but more the mental aspect. True you didn’t exactly have a “good life” in your own time, but you still had ties. Many nights you thought about your family and how you’d possibly never see them again. You even cried on more than one occasion. Maybe you left on bad terms, but probably in the back of you mind somewhere you thought that maybe you’d reconcile somehow with your mom and dad. Of course there was your sister as well, though you probably thought about her more since you used some of the knowledge from her stories to help you through this. You found the inner strength to carry on by learning the language, the surroundings and everything else you could. It’s quite the accomplishment really. Unfortunately the only thing you haven’t learned is how to get back home. You haven’t lost hope on that dream though. Magic seems to be more common, or rather more impressive from what you’ve seen of it. The city of Galpatolis is protected by a giant invisible shield for example and when a dragon attacked (You nearly shit your pants when you saw one of those for the first time especially since it was much larger than the stories you heard) the beast couldn’t even penetrate the defenses and its breath attack was reflected back. Eventually it was brought down by more magical defenses that disintegrated it completely. If the magic here has that power, then surely there might be a way back home with it. The main problem is magic seems to be highly restricted to the upper class. Like nobles and such. It isn’t even like you’ve ever found any practicing hedge wizards or witches. Those types apparently get rounded up fairly quickly or they probably live far away from the Empire, which is pretty damn large. (As far as you can tell you’re currently located where the Delantium Kingdom would be located and Galpatis Empire stretches much more than that.) There doesn’t even seem to be any “divine magic” either or religion as you know it anyway. The citizens of the Empire all seem to worship the current Emperor as a “living god.” (The body just being a vessel for him until he discards it for a new one) Deities in any other sense seem to be fringe beliefs at best or considered to be reserved for uncivilized barbarians that live outside the empire. In any case, you’ve asked around and done as much research as you can on the matter and there is one place in the Empire which has slightly more relaxed rules on magic and that’s the town of Arcanius. Though it’s not so much of a town as it is a giant magic testing area. There is where all the less disciplined, unwanted bastard children of nobles who have minor abilities or just downright anti-social wizards go to practice their skills without as much supervision though apparently there is still a powerful warden that oversees everything. The funny thing is, it isn’t restricted to go there, but there is little reason for the average non-magical person to do so. For one thing it’s a very long journey and not in the most hospitable place of the Empire (Close to the Cloudpeake Mountains) Second, it isn’t like the average Empire citizen wants to hang around a bunch of unhinged miscreant magic types. Though for you, it’s probably your only possible chance at getting back home. In any event, you’ve raised enough coin and made the right shady connections to gain rare passage there. The use of carriages is a lot more exclusive during this time, let alone using them to travel to another city. However seeing as you’re heading to a town not many want to go to anyway, your obvious lack of nobility isn’t as much of an issue. Indeed you’ll probably be assumed to be another bastard. The ride leaves tomorrow and you need to be on it so you need to get your rest. You spend the rest of the day and night packing everything you plan on taking, because if all goes to plan, you won’t be coming back. You head to where the carriages are getting ready to leave and with a few extra bribes, bullshit explanations, and general apathy of the soldiers, you’re waved into one of the carriages heading to Arcanius. It’s going to be a several day journey from what you know so you’re glad when you find that you have a carriage all to yourself. You’ll be able to stretch out. Eventually there is some shouting heard outside, along with the crack of several whips. Before you know it you’re on your way. You never were much of a reader before, but seeing how long this trip is going to be, you figured it would be a good idea to take some literature with you along the way. If you do manage to get back, you might even be able to sell this stuff for a hefty profit. Galpatis items would no doubt go for a lot. (And you’ve collected a few other small items with this in mind) As you spend a few days reading some books (and improve your basic understanding of the Empire’s language in general) your thoughts start to wander a bit. What if you’ve changed the future just by being here? You’ve never pondered this before, but maybe it’s due to reading too much philosophy during the trip, but what if you’ve changed things? You can’t imagine that you’ve changed that much since you’ve surprisingly haven’t even killed anyone since being here. You’ve stolen a lot of things, but is any of that really going to make a difference in the long run? You don’t know. What if you go back and there is nothing to go back to? Or more specifically what if you made changes here to the point that you don’t exist? “Oh shit.” You mutter as you ponder this new possibility. At first you were concerned that you might not be able to get back home. Now you’re concerned that maybe you shouldn’t go back home! You go back and forth on this many times. Staying here has always been something you thought might be inevitable anyway so would it really matter? You get the impression that if you stayed here, you could probably carve out a future for yourself. You think with time and effort you could rise to be greater than your current status in the criminal world. Hell, you probably could get your own organization started. For all you know you’re the founder of the Ebony Claw Syndicate. Now you start to wonder if you were MEANT to be here. “What the hell am I thinking? I need to go back! I can’t fucking stay here…can I?” you say to yourself. In any case your struggles with metaphysical matters soon turn into very real struggles because your carriage (along with the rest) are suddenly attacked! You hear shouting and the galloping of several horses. A look outside your window and you see a bunch of figures on horseback armed with spear type weapons and bows. At this range you think they might be green skinned. Probably orcs given the noises they’re making. So much for Empire territory being safe everywhere. Granted you are currently closer to one of its borders, but you’d think that would just mean they’d protect it a hell of a lot better. The carriage you’re currently on goes faster, but it’s obvious that the orc raiders are going to attempt to cut everyone off assuming they don’t kill everyone with arrows first. Several of said arrows go into your carriage and you try to get as flat as possible. You really wish you still had your pistol. You’d at least be able to fire back. “THEY’RE GOING TO CATCH UP TO US! EVERYONE TO ARMS!” you hear someone shout and the carriage comes to a halt. Last time you looked, there was a hell of a lot of orcs. Granted you have some of the Empire’s soldiers with you and hopefully a few of the bastard passengers in the other carriages are above average with their lack of formal magic training, but it’s not going to be an easy fight. You almost wonder if you should just run for your life. As strange as it is, you haven’t been in a real life or death fight in years since you’ve been here. You’re probably a little rusty. There’s also the fact that most of the people you ever fought with were other humans. Orcs are a whole different story. Especially this blood thirsty looking lot. > You run Remembering when your other carriage ride was attacked by bandits, you didn’t stick around and fight them, you took off and ran and it worked out (more or less). Seems like the same strategy should apply here. You get out of the carriage and start unhooking one of the horses tied to your carriage. The driver who is still nearby sees what you’re doing. “Hey! What the hell are you doing? You need to start slinging spells at those orcs!” the driver shouts. “Yeah, well that won’t be happening.” You say. The driver at this point grabs your arm. “And why the fuck not?” “Because I’m not a fucking wizard asshole!” you reply and then slug the driver in face. He falls to the ground and you successfully get the horse free. You’re about to mount it when the driver once again attempts to stop you. “Cowardly sonof…” That’s all he gets out before you shove a dagger in his throat and kick him to the ground again. You don’t bother to retrieve the dagger as you see orcs quickly swaming the area, you just get on the horse and gallop away. Your next plan is to follow the road and hopefully you’ll eventually reach your destination. It’s not ideal and you’re still not exactly sure of the directions, but you’re hoping you can figure it out as you go or hope that the Empire at least has signs on their more isolated roads even if they apparently don’t have proper security on them. You haven’t gotten far when a javelin whizzes past you. You look behind and see two orcs in pursuit. You can’t really do much except duck as low as you can and try to outpace them. You see a bridge in the distance and head towards it. You feel something hit your back, or rather your backpack. Fortunate that you were wearing it to block the arrow. One of the orcs has dispensed with ranged attacks and is concentrating on closing the gap. When you get to the bridge, he’s almost on you and swinging a morning star. You draw your sword and try to swing it at the orc. Unfortunately the orc’s morning star partially wraps around it. Between riding and awkwardly trying to fight, you don’t have enough grip to pull the sword back, especially since the orc is much stronger and pulling his own weapon back as well. So you do the only logical thing and let go of the sword causing the orc to pull too much on his end, lose his balance; fall off his horse and over the side of bridge. You don’t have too much time to celebrate however since the other orc hasn’t given up on ranged attacks and throws his last javelin at you. On the plus side it doesn’t hit you. The bad news is it hits the horse causing it to flail and causing you to also lose balance and go over the side of the bridge! The water isn’t excessively deep, but the current in the river is strong that it instantly starts carrying your away. You no idea where the hell it’s taking you, but your main concern is trying not to drown. You tread water for a while in your attempt to get to shore despite the strong current. Eventually you manage to grab on to a fallen tree trunk and drag yourself to shore. You’re soaked, you’re cold, and you’re exhausted. You lost your pack during your time in the river and you have no idea where you are now, but you’re too tired to care. You lie motionless on the muddy bank you’re on for a moment just trying to gather yourself, but as they say, no rest for the wicked. “Shit!” you shout just barely rolling out of the way of the large branch wielded by the orc who also fell off the bridge. You don’t know where he came from and you didn’t even hear him, but none of that matters right now. What matters is how you’re going to survive his assault. Miraculously, despite losing nearly all your other possessions in the river, you still have one extra dagger on your person. You draw it, but you don’t have a positive feeling about your chances. As tired as you are, the orc is fairly clumsy about swinging his branch at you so you manage to dodge. Obviously more used to fighting on horseback. Still, the orc has a lot more endurance than you do and eventually he catches you with a glancing blow upside your head. You fall to the ground, dazed. Expecting the next hit to crush your skull, you hear the orc make a more anguished cry. You look and see a woman dressed in fur clothing with a bow and she’s currently getting another arrow ready now that the orc’s attention is directed towards her and didn’t go down from the first shot. She hits it again, but it keeps coming. Now she begins to panic, but still attempts to get off another shot. She misses though. Meanwhile, you’ve managed to recover a bit, and once again you can take the opportunity to run while the orc’s attention is divided. > You run Having no pride and a strong sense of self-preservation, you muster up all your remaining energy and run in the opposite direction of the orc and woman. You run a good distance through some trees, but you soon find yourself very winded and you have to stop. You don’t hear anything following you, so you take that as a good sign. The problem now however is you are completely lost. You’re not even by the river anymore and you’re reluctant to retrace your steps lest you run into your greenskin friend again. You rest a moment and figure afterwards you’ll get your bearings though you’re now so drained that the moment you lay up against a tree and close your eyes, you fall asleep. When you wake up, it’s dark and you’re still in pain, along with being cold, the only good thing is you think you must have lost the orc since you doubt if you have reawakened at all Since attempting to travel in this darkness would be foolish in your condition, you don’t try. You just continue to try to get some more rest and hope you can find your way back to some sort of civilization at this point because you still really hate the wilderness. You close your eyes again and manage to get back to sleep. At some point you wake up again. This time you couldn’t have been asleep too long since it’s still dark. However that’s not the important part. The important part is the fact that two red eyes are staring at you in the darkness. And it certainly isn’t an orc. You grab your dagger and rise to your feet, and that’s about all you manage to do before whatever the creature is rushes forward and completely overwhelms you. Your screams are brief before its claws tear through your soft skin and its teeth rip out your tasty organs.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Remembering when your other carriage ride was attacked by bandits, you didn’t stick around and fight them, you took off and ran and it worked out (more or less). Seems like the same strategy should apply here. You get out of the carriage and start unhooking one of the horses tied to your carriage. The driver who is still nearby sees what you’re doing. “Hey! What the hell are you doing? You need to start slinging spells at those orcs!” the driver shouts. “Yeah, well that won’t be happening.” You say. The driver at this point grabs your arm. “And why the fuck not?” “Because I’m not a fucking wizard asshole!” you reply and then slug the driver in face. He falls to the ground and you successfully get the horse free. You’re about to mount it when the driver once again attempts to stop you. “Cowardly sonof…” That’s all he gets out before you shove a dagger in his throat and kick him to the ground again. You don’t bother to retrieve the dagger as you see orcs quickly swaming the area, you just get on the horse and gallop away. Your next plan is to follow the road and hopefully you’ll eventually reach your destination. It’s not ideal and you’re still not exactly sure of the directions, but you’re hoping you can figure it out as you go or hope that the Empire at least has signs on their more isolated roads even if they apparently don’t have proper security on them. You haven’t gotten far when a javelin whizzes past you. You look behind and see two orcs in pursuit. You can’t really do much except duck as low as you can and try to outpace them. You see a bridge in the distance and head towards it. You feel something hit your back, or rather your backpack. Fortunate that you were wearing it to block the arrow. One of the orcs has dispensed with ranged attacks and is concentrating on closing the gap. When you get to the bridge, he’s almost on you and swinging a morning star. You draw your sword and try to swing it at the orc. Unfortunately the orc’s morning star partially wraps around it. Between riding and awkwardly trying to fight, you don’t have enough grip to pull the sword back, especially since the orc is much stronger and pulling his own weapon back as well. So you do the only logical thing and let go of the sword causing the orc to pull too much on his end, lose his balance; fall off his horse and over the side of bridge. You don’t have too much time to celebrate however since the other orc hasn’t given up on ranged attacks and throws his last javelin at you. On the plus side it doesn’t hit you. The bad news is it hits the horse causing it to flail and causing you to also lose balance and go over the side of the bridge! The water isn’t excessively deep, but the current in the river is strong that it instantly starts carrying your away. You no idea where the hell it’s taking you, but your main concern is trying not to drown. You tread water for a while in your attempt to get to shore despite the strong current. Eventually you manage to grab on to a fallen tree trunk and drag yourself to shore. You’re soaked, you’re cold, and you’re exhausted. You lost your pack during your time in the river and you have no idea where you are now, but you’re too tired to care. You lie motionless on the muddy bank you’re on for a moment just trying to gather yourself, but as they say, no rest for the wicked. “Shit!” you shout just barely rolling out of the way of the large branch wielded by the orc who also fell off the bridge. You don’t know where he came from and you didn’t even hear him, but none of that matters right now. What matters is how you’re going to survive his assault. Miraculously, despite losing nearly all your other possessions in the river, you still have one extra dagger on your person. You draw it, but you don’t have a positive feeling about your chances. As tired as you are, the orc is fairly clumsy about swinging his branch at you so you manage to dodge. Obviously more used to fighting on horseback. Still, the orc has a lot more endurance than you do and eventually he catches you with a glancing blow upside your head. You fall to the ground, dazed. Expecting the next hit to crush your skull, you hear the orc make a more anguished cry. You look and see a woman dressed in fur clothing with a bow and she’s currently getting another arrow ready now that the orc’s attention is directed towards her and didn’t go down from the first shot. She hits it again, but it keeps coming. Now she begins to panic, but still attempts to get off another shot. She misses though. Meanwhile, you’ve managed to recover a bit, and once again you can take the opportunity to run while the orc’s attention is divided. > You finish off the orc While normally you’d take this opportunity to run, you’re pissed enough at the orc for trying to kill you in the first place and grateful enough that this woman just probably saved your life. You run at the orc with your dagger in hand and manage to get it to the ground in its weakened state. You stab it in the back multiple times and don’t stop until the woman calls out to you. “Okay. I think you killed it.” She shouts. You snap out of your killing trance for a moment and see you’ve made quite the mess. You stand up breathing heavily. “Fucking greenskins.” You exclaim, kicking the dead body. “I hope this isn’t a possible invasion. We saw another one a few months ago, though he was much smaller and ran off when he saw us. He was nowhere near as big as this one.” The woman remarks. “Fortunately for you that you weren’t where I just was, because there was a bunch of orcs that size on horseback about to destroy the Caravan I was part of.” The woman shakes her head. “I thought the empire was supposed to be making the land safe. So much for their promises, well anyway, thanks for saving my life. I froze up a bit when that orc didn’t go down with the second arrow.” The woman says. “You’re welcome, but I’d say you saved mine first seeing as that orc would have caved my skull in if you hadn’t shown up.” You respond. “Hm, I suppose that’s true enough. Guess we helped each other. So where was this Caravan and where were you going?” “Shit, I don’t even know now. I know I was probably north east of here. There was a stone bridge and then I fell into the river and wound up here. I was travelling from Galpatolis and going to Arcanius.” The woman’s eyes widen when you say that. “I see. Why?” “I got business there. I’d really appreciate it if you could tell me how I could get there from here.” You say walking towards her, but then you experience a moment of fatigue and your legs give out causing you to partially collapse to the ground. The woman goes to help you up. “Hey, you still don’t look that great. Look, you’re barely in any condition to walk anywhere let along travelling all the way to Arcanius. Why don’t you come back with me where you can at least rest and heal up? I mean as I said, you did help me kill the orc. My village isn’t that far away.” “Okay, yeah that sounds fine.” You say not really wishing to argue since she’s right about you not being in the best condition right now. The woman tells you her name is Keira and her village is Tarvo. She goes on about how it was absorbed by the Empire decades ago and how they used to even have a sizable amount of soldiers there, but eventually they realized the village was never going to be a problem as far as rebellions go. As it stands there are only a few soldiers and a single Galpatis official who probably got sent there because he pissed someone off. As a result he doesn’t really enforce many official Galpatian laws other than something obvious like murder or rape and allows everyone to go about their normal lives. Eventually you get to the village, which is fairly humble. It’s probably smaller than your old home of Teckleville. “Hey Keira, you catch that hunting this time?” some other woman asks and points at you. “Sort of. He was fighting an orc and we both brought it down together.” Keira replies. “An orc? This close to the village?! Shit. We need to tell the magistrate about that! Not that I really want soldiers stomping about here, but if orcs are going to be a problem then I’d rather we have better defenses then we have!” “Mm. Well, I need to get back to my home and patch him up.” “Okay, but don’t Ardan see you taking another man inside your home! He might get the wrong idea!” Keira makes a minor laugh and waves at the woman, though you notice Keira also rolling her eyes when she turns her head away. You soon get to Keira’s home which isn’t large, but you suppose it’s big enough to serve Keira’s needs since she’s living here alone. She gets a fire started and you welcome the warmth since you’ve been near freezing since you got out of the water. “You know you’ll get warmer quicker if you get your clothes off. Those are going to need to dry properly anyway.” Keira says. “Um what?” a little taken by surprise. “What? Is what you got under those clothes so impressive that you think I just won’t be able to contain myself? Or perhaps you’re just shy?” “Well, after the day I had, I really wasn’t expecting it to end with a pretty woman asking me to take my clothes off. I’m half expecting you to turn into a monster of some sort which would be more in line with my luck lately.” Keira chuckles a bit. “Well that won’t happen, so perhaps your luck is better than you think. Perhaps even Yaz is looking over you.” “Did you say Yag?” “No, I said Yaz. You know, the god of fortune? I don’t suppose he’s worshipped in Galpatolis.” “No, but he’s called Yag where I come from.” “Ah. Interesting. I suppose divine beings go by many names though. Glad to know you weren’t one of those silly people that worships the emperor though I didn’t think you were really from Galpatolis since you don’t look like you are.” “You could tell just by looking at me?” “I could tell just by how you speak and act. You speak the language like you only just learned it. You’re obviously not a native Galpatian. Where are you from originally?” “Eh, I’m originally from a small village far to the south. It’s so small, nobody really knows it exists.” “Hm, I guess the Empire came and annexed your people too huh?” “Something like that…ouch!” you say feeling the aches and pains in your body. “Okay, I think it’s time you took your clothes off, you probably got some wounds that need patching up and I can get to them better if you’re naked.” “I gotta say, this is still pretty unusual for me. That other woman mentioned someone called Ardan, I mean I don’t want your husband…” “Ardan is NOT my husband.” “Okay, well boyfriend then.” “He’s barely that, and if he does come in here, he can just step right back out, because he pissed me off recently anyway. I don’t want to talk about that though. Besides, nothing is happening between us anyway. I don’t just become involved with strange men I find in the wilderness, so let’s get you fixed up.” “Okay then if you insist.” You still feel a bit weird about all this, but honestly with as much pain you’re in right now, you really aren’t thinking about Keira in that way. (Well at least not immediately) Eventually Keira stitches up some of your wounds and places some sort of healing salve on them. She then gives you some spare furs to wrap yourself up in while your clothing dries. She tells you that you can stay here for a few days so you can heal up. As much as you’re in a hurry to get to Arcanius, it probably would be best if you rested. As the days pass Keira says with you here, she’s probably spent more time in her home than she has since her mother died since she had to be around more to take care of her. Apparently Keira prefers being outdoors hunting even when she doesn’t need to, even sleeping outside under the stars at times rather than coming home. She says that sometimes she’d like to travel, but she says she’s never quite had the nerve to do it. She’s not sure why exactly seeing as there isn’t much to tie her here except Ardan though once again she doesn’t speak much more about him. Keira asks you a few questions about yourself, which you keep vague with half truths, misdirections and outright lies. You don’t want to discuss your real situation anymore than she wants to discuss Ardan. Keira also tells you how to get to Arcanius though she doesn’t ask why you’re going again. Going by her directions, it’s going to still be a long ass trip, especially with no horse or other mode of transportation now. You don’t even have any supplies for such a journey though maybe Keira will give you some before you leave. When you’re feeling slightly better you insist on walking about the village which Keira is happy to see since she doesn’t feel the need to check up on you. You wander the village a bit and are mostly met with stares, but nothing more. A few people actually have heard about you since news spread in this village fairly quickly. It’s mostly positive, since killing an orc is something to be celebrated here. In fact a few people are so nice they actually give you some free food. As you’re accepting a few of these free gifts, a couple of soldiers approach saying that you’re the one they’ve been hearing about and how the magistrate wants to see you about the orc found near the village since a few people have expressed concern to him about it. Seeing as you aren’t really doing anything better right now and in no condition to resist. You go with the soldiers and follow to a slightly better looking building than the rest of the village. The magistrate doesn’t look like the typical noble that you’ve seen many times before back in Galpatolis. He’s got more facial hair and a general less kept appearance. It’s apparent he barely gives a shit about formalities anymore since he gives his nose a quick pick and blows it out before even speaking to you. The meeting isn’t very long. The magistrate just asks you some general questions about yourself and how you came to be in the situation where you were fighting an orc in the first place. You give him the same story you told Keira and he seems to accept that as a suitable explanation. He doesn’t even ask why you were going to Arcanius. The man just seems to be fulfilling the basics of his duties. “I see. So the orc you were fighting was separated from his fellows. Which means these villagers are jumping to conclusions that there is an imminent attack from orc savages. Glad to hear it, since I doubt if those assholes in the capital would bother sending anyone up here anyway. Very well. You’re dismissed.” The magistrate says. “Okay. Um, is there any transportation from here to Arcanius?” “Sure, put one foot in front of the other and start walking. What? Did you think we’d give you a horse for killing a single orc that you apparently lead near here in the first place? I got more important matters to care of. Out.” And with those words, the magistrate’s soldiers start escorting you out the office and soon out the building as well. Well at least the law isn’t trying to arrest you for a change. In any case, you get the strong impression you’ll have to steal a horse before you leave this place. Not before at least another day of rest though. You wander the village a bit more before heading back to Keira’s home. When you arrive, she’s still not back yet, though she did say now that you’re feeling better, she might be gone a little longer. That’s awfully trusting of her to just assume some stranger isn’t going to take her stuff. You guess thieves aren’t a real problem around here since everyone knows one another and she probably believes you to be an upstanding person. She doesn’t have much that you’d want to take anyway, not to mention you’d be quite the scoundrel indeed if you stole from a woman who has done nothing but help you. You aren’t quite that much of an asshole. Still, doesn’t prevent you from being a little nosey and you look through some of her belonging that are more out in open. As you’re picking up what looks to be a flute sitting on a small table by her bed, you hear footsteps behind you. “So you’re the guy that killed an orc and has been living here with Keira? You are far less impressive than I heard about.” A voice says. You turn around and see a large older man standing in the entryway with a small axe in his hand. You just can’t catch a break. “And you’re Ardan I presume. Surprised I haven’t seen you sooner.” You say. “I was out hunting and I come back after a few days only to find that another man is trying to steal MY woman!” Ardan exclaims. “Okay look, I’m not stealing your woman. She’s just letting me stay here until I recover. In fact I should be leaving by tomorrow.” “Oh so you think you can just fuck my woman and leave then?” “I haven’t fucked her! In fact NOTHING has happened between us!” “Oh we’re going to see about that. Come on.” “What?” “Come on. We’re going to both go see Keira. I know her better than anyone and I’ll know if she’s lying or not when I confront her with you there.” “But she’s out hunting.” “So? I know what grounds she prefers and that’s where we’re going. Now you’re coming with me or I’m going to break your legs and drag you out of here.” Ardan grips his axe tightly after threatening you. Well he’s no orc, but you doubt if he’d be an easy fight either. The guy is predictably crazy jealous and you suppose to can understand his view point, but that doesn’t change the fact that for all you know he’s going to just take you out to a more secluded place and murder you there. > You go with Ardan If Ardan has plans on killing you, he doesn’t seem like he’d be averse to doing it right here if need be. If you need to run, better that you’re not in an enclosed space to more easily get away. “Okay, I’m coming with you. I really don’t want any trouble. When we get to Keira, you’ll see that nothing is going on.” You say and raise your hands up. Ardan is still giving you a look that could kill but seems to calm down enough that he opens the door to let you go through it first. “And don’t think about trying to run, I can split a grizzly’s skull with this axe from a large distance. Wouldn’t take much to do the same to the likes of you.” Ardan says as you pass him. The pair of you walk out of the village and in this light and at this range, you see his face better and something about him looks very familiar. “What the fuck are you staring at me for?” Ardan asks. “Nothing! Sheesh, I mean we are walking together and sometimes I’m going to look over at you. You really need to relax, you’re going to see that Keira loves you, not me.” You say trying to calm him again. “She doesn’t love me! If she did, she wouldn’t make me angry all the time!” “Well what does she do?” “What does she do? What the hell doesn’t she do?! She’s constantly having these ideas!” “A dangerous past time indeed.” You say and fortunately Ardan doesn’t realize your sarcasm and instead continues to rant. “I know! She does silly things like try to play that flute thing instead of focusing on more important matters!” “Like what?” “Like not wasting her time playing a flute for one thing! She’s horrible at it anyway and when I helpfully point this out to save her time, she gets pissed at me!” “Wow, I can’t imagine why.” “Also she wants to leave the village like there’s something more out there for her! There’s nothing that she needs outside the village that I can’t provide! I mean…” If it wasn’t obvious before, it’s very apparent now that this Ardan is incredibly insecure and most likely controlling. You can see why Kiera didn’t want to talk about him. Oddly, he’s ranting about her so much now that it’s almost like he’s angrier at her than he is at you now. A step up you suppose, you figure maybe there might be hope to get out of this without a fight after all. Again though, he seems familiar somehow. Even his voice is starting to remind you of someone you know. “She wants to leave me after all I’ve fucking done for her! I taught her how to hunt better! I was by her side when her mother was dying! And fucking another man is how she repays me?” “Ardan, I didn’t have sex with Keira.” “It doesn’t even fucking matter if you did or not. My point is, she’s letting a damn stranger live with her before ME! That just shits all over our relationship as far as I’m concerned! And another thing…” And then it hits you. You can’t even believe it. You recognize this man. Or at least you recognize his facial features and voice. The beard was throwing you before, but there can be no mistake. This Ardan could easily pass for your dad if your dad was more muscular and taller. You’ve also been yelled at your father enough that the voice is even similar. Ardan has to be an ancestor of yours! What the hell are the chances? Yag must have flipped the coin on the edge for you this time. And if this man is indeed some ancestor of yours that means Keira is also! (You feel a little weird being naked in front of her now) It makes sense; she has similar traits that your sister has. Hell, now that you’re thinking about it, Keira does have a similar nose as her. Ardan is obviously older than Keira by probably at least twenty years since she’s probably about your age. You sort of wonder how this relationship even got started, but then again an older guy with a much younger woman isn’t that uncommon. Still, this is all almost too much for you to comprehend. A few days ago you were pondering if you were meant to be here, well maybe THIS is the reason! Your ancestors are obviously having problems; maybe YOU need to fix them. Meanwhile Ardan is still complaining. “Hey! Are you listening to me? We’re going this way!” Ardan shouts. “Oh. Apologies. I was just thinking about your situation and I was wondering if you’ve tried being more supportive of her.” “Supportive? I just told you all the shit I’ve done for her!” “Yes, but it always seems like you’re doing these things and expecting a certain consistent behavior. I mean she’s a woman not a dog.” “What do you mean?” “What I mean is, it sounds like she just wants you to not yell at her so much when she wants to try something new. You telling her that she sucks at the flute might be the truth, but you could approach it a different way and not just tell her to give it up. You need to be more…sensitive.” You can’t believe you just gave that as advice, but if that’s what it’s going to take to make sure you exist, then so be it. Ardan scoffs as you continue. “I mean if she wants to leave the village why not go with her? You’re both hunters no? Surely between the pair of you, you would have no trouble in the foraging for food and water aspect or even overcoming dangers.” “Because I’ve lived here all my life and never felt the need to travel. I’m happy where I’m at and SHE needs to be happy too!” “It doesn’t really work that way.” “What the fuck would you know about it?” “Okay, I’m not saying I’m an expert, but I know that talking to Keira the way you’ve been telling me you’ve been doing isn’t going to win her over. I mean I’ve spoke with her and…” “So what then? You telling me YOU know how to talk better to my woman than I do? Is that what you’re getting at?” You can’t believe your ancestor is THIS much of a stubborn asshole. Or rather you can, but you’re almost starting to feel sorry for your great grandmother many times over if this is the guy she’s going to have to continue sleeping with so you eventually exist. “You’re not understanding me.” You say almost immediately realizing your poor choice of words. “So you’re saying I’m stupid as well? You know what, you’ve been doing a lot of fucking talking, trying to fool me. Well I’m not fooled. You’ve obviously charmed Keira with your words and turned her against me!” “Wha…how?! I only just got here! You were having problems with her long before I arrived!” “Yeah well when I get rid of you that will be one less problem!” “Oh shit!” With a throaty yell, Ardan attacks you with his axe. Fortunately you’re a lot more agile than he is, so you manage to dodge his swings. You can’t even fight back, since you doubt if you could overpower him physically and you certainly can’t kill him. “Ardan! Listen to me! I’m not your enemy!” you shout, but he isn’t listening. You continue to back away and dodge, but you aren’t sure how much longer you can keep this up because Ardan seems to have a lot of energy in trying to kill you. “Ardan! Stop” you say and just barely manage to duck Ardan’s axe. Taking a risk, you draw your dagger and try to stab his weapon arm so he’ll at least drop it. You succeed and he drops his axe. When you go to pick it up however, Ardan just decides to tackle you, however the pair of you are near a slope and as a result, both of you go tumbling down a steep hill. You both roll down it gaining speed and eventually even separating from each other. You fortunately manage to grab on to some bushes growing along the slope. Ardan however keeps rolling and that’s when you see that the slope doesn’t stop on flat ground, but instead what looks to be a long drop over a cliff. “Oh fuck!” you say Ardan just manages to stop himself from going over the side completely by grabbing the cliff edge. You try to run down as fast as you can without tumbling again. “Ardan! Hold on! I’m coming!” you shout. You get just in range and then that’s when you see his fingers slip followed by a yell. Your heart sinks and you can only hope that the drop wasn’t as far as you think. The yell stops and you slowly look over the side. And that’s when you see Ardan’s broken body on a pile of rocks. This is a complete disaster. You feel sick and you actually throw up. If your time here hasn’t changed history before, it certainly has now, because your family as you know it, is dead. You sort of expect yourself to blink out of existence, but that doesn’t happen. You don’t know why, but maybe it doesn’t work like that because you’re still in the past. But what happens now if you return to the future? Even if the mages at Arcanius can help you, you certainly can’t return to your time now. You run through a gamut of thoughts and emotions just thinking about all this. In between the thinking you keep kicking yourself for stealing that fucking crown. It warned you and you didn’t listen. You then ponder the idea that you keep going back to, “What if you’re meant to be here?” and that’s when you come to a damning realization. “Shit. It’s the only way now.” You mutter to yourself and mentally prepare yourself. When you get back to Keira’s home, you find that she’s home. “Hey, there you are! I was thinking you left for Arcanius without saying goodbye. I mean not that you need to, but it would be the polite thing to do.” “Oh, I wouldn’t do that. Not when you’ve done so much for me. In fact I was sort of wondering if you’d come with me.” “Come with you? To Arcanius?” “Nah, I’ve decided a change of plans and I’m just going to head back to Galpatolis. I know how much you said you wanted to travel and see new places, so I figured I’d ask if you wanted to come.” Keira looks a bit surprised by all this. “I…I don’t really know.” Keira remarks. “What are you afraid of? You obviously have a wanderlust that needs to be sated and I’m willing to travel with you so you won’t be alone on the journey. I mean we can go to different places if you like, but I figured we’d start with Galpatolis since it’s a place I know very well and there’s plenty to do there. I mean you could even bring your flute if you like. I noticed one sitting on your table. Didn’t even knew you played, I wouldn’t mind hearing you.” Keira briefly looks over at it and her eyes widen as if this encouragement is the first she’s heard in awhile from anyone. You take a deep breath and approach her closer. “Look, I know this is a big change, but sometimes when big changes present themselves, your best bet is to embrace them. I know I haven’t known you long and maybe I’m over stepping a boundary here, but I think you’re meant for things outside of this simple village.” Keira smiles a bit at you. “You’re lucky you’re cute, otherwise I might not be so swayed by your charming words. However, I sense that you’re being genuine with me and I think you’re right anyway. I SHOULD follow my desires. I shall pack immediately!” Keira suddenly kisses you on the cheek and excitedly goes to pack. Since you’re a little tired from accidently killing your ancestor and all, you tell her you want to get some sleep and start the journey tomorrow. She agrees and continues to pack. The next day, Keira wakes you up at the crack of dawn and the pair of you leave Tarvo. While you’re still a little groggy, Keira is very talkative and still very excited about all this. You figure with as good of terms you’re on with her, by the time your reach Galpatolis the pair of you should have already consummated your relationship. A little on the optimistic side perhaps, but you really need to seal this deal because it’s not really your life you’re worried about anymore, it’s your entire lineage. Sure you feel pretty weird about the fact that you’re going to be sexing up what is your distant relative, but you remind yourself, that this is the only way. Plus it doesn’t hurt that she’s attractive and has a pleasant personality. “Hey I meant to ask you before you made your suggestion last night, as I was coming home yesterday, someone told me they thought they saw you coming out of my home with Ardan earlier.” Keira remarks. “Ardan? Never saw him. They must have been mistaken, though I’m surprised I never saw him.” You reply. “Hm. Yes, it is strange. I thought he’d at least show up threatening you or something similar. He was very jealous and possessive.” “Who knows. Hey, how about you play something on your flute?” you say quickly changing the subject. “Oh I don’t know. I’m not very good and I only know a few songs that my mother taught me.” “Well you can’t get good unless you practice!” “I suppose that’s true. Okay! I’ll play The Laughing Elf and his Talking Unicorn.” “I don’t believe I know that one. Okay, go ahead.” Keira excitedly starts to play her song. And she’s fucking terrible. You feel like your ears are being raped. You suffer in silence as she continues to play horribly all the while thinking, she has to get better in her later years. At least you hope she does because it’s going to be a punishment if musicianship skips this generation. You also hope her poor skills on the flute don’t also match other skills involving blowing. “How does it sound?” Keira asks. “Like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Just keep at it.” You say with a smile. While you’re not sure if your life as a rogue is over, but it certainly has taken a very different turn.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While normally you’d take this opportunity to run, you’re pissed enough at the orc for trying to kill you in the first place and grateful enough that this woman just probably saved your life. You run at the orc with your dagger in hand and manage to get it to the ground in its weakened state. You stab it in the back multiple times and don’t stop until the woman calls out to you. “Okay. I think you killed it.” She shouts. You snap out of your killing trance for a moment and see you’ve made quite the mess. You stand up breathing heavily. “Fucking greenskins.” You exclaim, kicking the dead body. “I hope this isn’t a possible invasion. We saw another one a few months ago, though he was much smaller and ran off when he saw us. He was nowhere near as big as this one.” The woman remarks. “Fortunately for you that you weren’t where I just was, because there was a bunch of orcs that size on horseback about to destroy the Caravan I was part of.” The woman shakes her head. “I thought the empire was supposed to be making the land safe. So much for their promises, well anyway, thanks for saving my life. I froze up a bit when that orc didn’t go down with the second arrow.” The woman says. “You’re welcome, but I’d say you saved mine first seeing as that orc would have caved my skull in if you hadn’t shown up.” You respond. “Hm, I suppose that’s true enough. Guess we helped each other. So where was this Caravan and where were you going?” “Shit, I don’t even know now. I know I was probably north east of here. There was a stone bridge and then I fell into the river and wound up here. I was travelling from Galpatolis and going to Arcanius.” The woman’s eyes widen when you say that. “I see. Why?” “I got business there. I’d really appreciate it if you could tell me how I could get there from here.” You say walking towards her, but then you experience a moment of fatigue and your legs give out causing you to partially collapse to the ground. The woman goes to help you up. “Hey, you still don’t look that great. Look, you’re barely in any condition to walk anywhere let along travelling all the way to Arcanius. Why don’t you come back with me where you can at least rest and heal up? I mean as I said, you did help me kill the orc. My village isn’t that far away.” “Okay, yeah that sounds fine.” You say not really wishing to argue since she’s right about you not being in the best condition right now. The woman tells you her name is Keira and her village is Tarvo. She goes on about how it was absorbed by the Empire decades ago and how they used to even have a sizable amount of soldiers there, but eventually they realized the village was never going to be a problem as far as rebellions go. As it stands there are only a few soldiers and a single Galpatis official who probably got sent there because he pissed someone off. As a result he doesn’t really enforce many official Galpatian laws other than something obvious like murder or rape and allows everyone to go about their normal lives. Eventually you get to the village, which is fairly humble. It’s probably smaller than your old home of Teckleville. “Hey Keira, you catch that hunting this time?” some other woman asks and points at you. “Sort of. He was fighting an orc and we both brought it down together.” Keira replies. “An orc? This close to the village?! Shit. We need to tell the magistrate about that! Not that I really want soldiers stomping about here, but if orcs are going to be a problem then I’d rather we have better defenses then we have!” “Mm. Well, I need to get back to my home and patch him up.” “Okay, but don’t Ardan see you taking another man inside your home! He might get the wrong idea!” Keira makes a minor laugh and waves at the woman, though you notice Keira also rolling her eyes when she turns her head away. You soon get to Keira’s home which isn’t large, but you suppose it’s big enough to serve Keira’s needs since she’s living here alone. She gets a fire started and you welcome the warmth since you’ve been near freezing since you got out of the water. “You know you’ll get warmer quicker if you get your clothes off. Those are going to need to dry properly anyway.” Keira says. “Um what?” a little taken by surprise. “What? Is what you got under those clothes so impressive that you think I just won’t be able to contain myself? Or perhaps you’re just shy?” “Well, after the day I had, I really wasn’t expecting it to end with a pretty woman asking me to take my clothes off. I’m half expecting you to turn into a monster of some sort which would be more in line with my luck lately.” Keira chuckles a bit. “Well that won’t happen, so perhaps your luck is better than you think. Perhaps even Yaz is looking over you.” “Did you say Yag?” “No, I said Yaz. You know, the god of fortune? I don’t suppose he’s worshipped in Galpatolis.” “No, but he’s called Yag where I come from.” “Ah. Interesting. I suppose divine beings go by many names though. Glad to know you weren’t one of those silly people that worships the emperor though I didn’t think you were really from Galpatolis since you don’t look like you are.” “You could tell just by looking at me?” “I could tell just by how you speak and act. You speak the language like you only just learned it. You’re obviously not a native Galpatian. Where are you from originally?” “Eh, I’m originally from a small village far to the south. It’s so small, nobody really knows it exists.” “Hm, I guess the Empire came and annexed your people too huh?” “Something like that…ouch!” you say feeling the aches and pains in your body. “Okay, I think it’s time you took your clothes off, you probably got some wounds that need patching up and I can get to them better if you’re naked.” “I gotta say, this is still pretty unusual for me. That other woman mentioned someone called Ardan, I mean I don’t want your husband…” “Ardan is NOT my husband.” “Okay, well boyfriend then.” “He’s barely that, and if he does come in here, he can just step right back out, because he pissed me off recently anyway. I don’t want to talk about that though. Besides, nothing is happening between us anyway. I don’t just become involved with strange men I find in the wilderness, so let’s get you fixed up.” “Okay then if you insist.” You still feel a bit weird about all this, but honestly with as much pain you’re in right now, you really aren’t thinking about Keira in that way. (Well at least not immediately) Eventually Keira stitches up some of your wounds and places some sort of healing salve on them. She then gives you some spare furs to wrap yourself up in while your clothing dries. She tells you that you can stay here for a few days so you can heal up. As much as you’re in a hurry to get to Arcanius, it probably would be best if you rested. As the days pass Keira says with you here, she’s probably spent more time in her home than she has since her mother died since she had to be around more to take care of her. Apparently Keira prefers being outdoors hunting even when she doesn’t need to, even sleeping outside under the stars at times rather than coming home. She says that sometimes she’d like to travel, but she says she’s never quite had the nerve to do it. She’s not sure why exactly seeing as there isn’t much to tie her here except Ardan though once again she doesn’t speak much more about him. Keira asks you a few questions about yourself, which you keep vague with half truths, misdirections and outright lies. You don’t want to discuss your real situation anymore than she wants to discuss Ardan. Keira also tells you how to get to Arcanius though she doesn’t ask why you’re going again. Going by her directions, it’s going to still be a long ass trip, especially with no horse or other mode of transportation now. You don’t even have any supplies for such a journey though maybe Keira will give you some before you leave. When you’re feeling slightly better you insist on walking about the village which Keira is happy to see since she doesn’t feel the need to check up on you. You wander the village a bit and are mostly met with stares, but nothing more. A few people actually have heard about you since news spread in this village fairly quickly. It’s mostly positive, since killing an orc is something to be celebrated here. In fact a few people are so nice they actually give you some free food. As you’re accepting a few of these free gifts, a couple of soldiers approach saying that you’re the one they’ve been hearing about and how the magistrate wants to see you about the orc found near the village since a few people have expressed concern to him about it. Seeing as you aren’t really doing anything better right now and in no condition to resist. You go with the soldiers and follow to a slightly better looking building than the rest of the village. The magistrate doesn’t look like the typical noble that you’ve seen many times before back in Galpatolis. He’s got more facial hair and a general less kept appearance. It’s apparent he barely gives a shit about formalities anymore since he gives his nose a quick pick and blows it out before even speaking to you. The meeting isn’t very long. The magistrate just asks you some general questions about yourself and how you came to be in the situation where you were fighting an orc in the first place. You give him the same story you told Keira and he seems to accept that as a suitable explanation. He doesn’t even ask why you were going to Arcanius. The man just seems to be fulfilling the basics of his duties. “I see. So the orc you were fighting was separated from his fellows. Which means these villagers are jumping to conclusions that there is an imminent attack from orc savages. Glad to hear it, since I doubt if those assholes in the capital would bother sending anyone up here anyway. Very well. You’re dismissed.” The magistrate says. “Okay. Um, is there any transportation from here to Arcanius?” “Sure, put one foot in front of the other and start walking. What? Did you think we’d give you a horse for killing a single orc that you apparently lead near here in the first place? I got more important matters to care of. Out.” And with those words, the magistrate’s soldiers start escorting you out the office and soon out the building as well. Well at least the law isn’t trying to arrest you for a change. In any case, you get the strong impression you’ll have to steal a horse before you leave this place. Not before at least another day of rest though. You wander the village a bit more before heading back to Keira’s home. When you arrive, she’s still not back yet, though she did say now that you’re feeling better, she might be gone a little longer. That’s awfully trusting of her to just assume some stranger isn’t going to take her stuff. You guess thieves aren’t a real problem around here since everyone knows one another and she probably believes you to be an upstanding person. She doesn’t have much that you’d want to take anyway, not to mention you’d be quite the scoundrel indeed if you stole from a woman who has done nothing but help you. You aren’t quite that much of an asshole. Still, doesn’t prevent you from being a little nosey and you look through some of her belonging that are more out in open. As you’re picking up what looks to be a flute sitting on a small table by her bed, you hear footsteps behind you. “So you’re the guy that killed an orc and has been living here with Keira? You are far less impressive than I heard about.” A voice says. You turn around and see a large older man standing in the entryway with a small axe in his hand. You just can’t catch a break. “And you’re Ardan I presume. Surprised I haven’t seen you sooner.” You say. “I was out hunting and I come back after a few days only to find that another man is trying to steal MY woman!” Ardan exclaims. “Okay look, I’m not stealing your woman. She’s just letting me stay here until I recover. In fact I should be leaving by tomorrow.” “Oh so you think you can just fuck my woman and leave then?” “I haven’t fucked her! In fact NOTHING has happened between us!” “Oh we’re going to see about that. Come on.” “What?” “Come on. We’re going to both go see Keira. I know her better than anyone and I’ll know if she’s lying or not when I confront her with you there.” “But she’s out hunting.” “So? I know what grounds she prefers and that’s where we’re going. Now you’re coming with me or I’m going to break your legs and drag you out of here.” Ardan grips his axe tightly after threatening you. Well he’s no orc, but you doubt if he’d be an easy fight either. The guy is predictably crazy jealous and you suppose to can understand his view point, but that doesn’t change the fact that for all you know he’s going to just take you out to a more secluded place and murder you there. > You stay put You doubt if you’re going to go meet Keira and if Ardan’s going to kill you, you’re not going to make it easy for him by going where it’s isolated. “Yeah, I got a better idea. Let’s just wait for Keira to come back home.” You say. “No, this needs to be settled now and I’m not going to wait around.” Ardan replies. “Well if you think I’m going into the woods with you alone, you’re sadly mistaken.” “You should have thought about that before you decided to move in on my woman.” “Again, I didn’t move in on her!” “You’re living here and you expect me to believe that?” “Fuck this. Your mind is obviously made up about me, so if you’re going to try to kill me, you better just try to do it now, otherwise I’m going to just leave.” “You’re not going anywhere.” Ardan now moves towards you and he looks fully intent on using that axe now. “Well then I guess you’ve made your choice.” You say. “Guess I have.” Ardan answers. You draw your dagger and then throw a nearby cup on the small table at Ardan. He blocks his face and then swings his axe at you. In these close quarters its difficult to avoid him, but you’re still a lot more agile than him. You honestly don’t intend on fighting him, your goal is to get around him and out the door so you can get outside. Ardan swings a few more times and you duck and roll. You stab Ardan in the leg and while he’s fallen to one knee due to that wound, you achieve your goal of getting around him and out the door. Your next move is to try to find a horse, which as far as you know the few that are in town are near the magistrate building. You run back towards that way, meanwhile Ardan has recovered from his wound and begins shouting. “STOP THAT FUCKER! HE JUST TRIED TO KILL ME!” he shouts. Unbelievable. Hoping that nobody takes him seriously, you continue to run and then you feel a hard force hit you in the back of the head. You fall to the ground and hear screams of people nearby. Your vision begins to darken as your hands try to feel the back of your head, which of course has Ardan’s axe in it. You then hear several people shouting and then nothing at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You might as well go together at this point, you knew he wasn’t going to be the ideal partner to begin with. Who knows, maybe you can use him as bait or something. “Alright, come on let’s go.” You say. “Hold on a minute.” Warts says and finishes off one of the mugs that wasn’t quite empty yet. “Seriously?” “Hey, I’m thirsty. Alright NOW let’s go.” Warts and you leave the inn and after looking around a bit and scratching his head he beckons you to follow him. He walking just fine, so maybe he isn’t that bad off. You continue to follow without another word, until he gets to a secluded spot with a sewer covering. “What the hell are you doing? You ask. “Tryin’ to take dis thing off, wat’s it look like ya idjit? Help me over here.” Warts says trying to take off the sewer lid. “No, I mean why the fuck are we entering the sewers?” “Cuz, it’s the best way to get into Reginald’s house. He’s got a secret passage to it down here.” “How the hell you know this?” “Cuz people talk shit all the time and not even realize ol’ Warts is even there to lissen. Waz in a garbage bin and heard these two weird guys in red robes talkin about it in an alley awhile back.” “…okay I’m not even going to ask why the hell you were in a garbage bin, but weird guys in red robes, secret passages…are you sure Reginald isn’t part of some fucking cult? I mean this is starting to sound a lot more complicated and dangerous.” “Well, why ya think I wanted someone else to come along?” “YOU said this was for MY benefit!” “Oh yeah…well it is! Look humie, ya gotta take big risks in dis profession. I don’t doubt yer skilled. You’ve lasted longer than most independently in dis city. But I’m tellin ya, there’s more out there that yer missin. I mean, sure it’s foolish ta go head to head against da ECS, but robbin some rich asshole that may or may not be a wizard? Well dat’s different.” “I really don’t see how since both can get you killed. However, I do see your point to a small degree. I have been playing it a bit on the safe side. Still, if this is looking to be more trouble than it’s worth then I’m getting the hell out as quick as possible.” “Sounds like a plan ta me.” You help Warts with the sewer covering and the pair of you descend into the smelly depths. It actually isn’t too bad, but that might be because you’re standing next to Warts and his own stench is cancelling out that of the sewers. Warts gets slightly more talkative as you walk to your destination. He mentions that the Thieves Guild has their hideout somewhere down here, but he doesn’t know where. Neither does the ECS, since they’d probably mount an attack if they could. Warts also goes on about how he’s not fond of the ECS since a lot of them tend to have ties to Fel while he’s dedicated to Yag. Says that worshipping Fel if you’re a thief is like cheating since he’s the god of shadows and all. Though he’s not so much opposed to that, so much as he doesn’t like all the dedication Fel seems to want. Yag on the other hand doesn’t really require anything and he not might bless you anyway, but then he might give you a lot even if you don’t do much. Warts claims that ALL the gods are like that, so he might as well pray to one that is at least honest about it all. “Why worship any god at all?” you ask. “Wat? You crazy or sumthin? You don’t pick a god, youz gonna be in trouble when ya die! Even pickin’ some stupid god like Karn would be better than nuthin! You don’t believe in anything an’ who knows WHERE yer soul goes! Nah, better to pick somethin’ just in case.” It’s a little surprising just how serious Warts takes religion, well as serious as a follower to the God of Luck and Chance can be anyway. (It also occurs to you how it’s weird how everyone’s been getting religious on you lately) “Eh, I guess I can sort of see that logic. I’m not really religious, but occasionally I have said the odd thanks to Yag.” You say. “That’s all ya need man. He’s lissening, even if he doesn’t do anything.” Warts says. You and Warts continue a little longer and then he stops. “Okay, think wez gettin’ close. Should be a secret wall around here from what I heard.” Warts says and begins pushing on the wall nearby. “This seems a bit unprotected.” You say looking around for potential traps. “It’s a secret door, maybe he didn’t anticipate anyone finding it.” “You said the Thieves Guild is down here, surely they would have found it if this is their territory.” “It’s a big ass sewer and they’re the Thieves Guild not the Holgard Watch. Dey don’t exactly patrol da place. They’re all most likely up top breaking into shit. Besides, I told ya, they ain’t the ECS. They aren’t very territorial anyway. Dat’s why we can walk around here without as much concern…well except for giant rats and such.” Just as you’re about to ask Warts another question about the Thieves’ Guild, Warts finds what you’re looking for and when he does so a large bolt just whizzes over his head and into the wall behind him. “Man, good thing Yag lissened to me.” Warts says. “Good thing you’re short and constantly walk around slightly hunched over most of the time. Oddly, this makes me feel slightly better. If there weren’t any traps at all I’d be even more paranoid about how easy this was. So far it seems like this guy just has shitty security, but then we haven’t actually gone inside yet.” You respond. You and Warts both enter the passage and soon find yourself in a cellar with a bunch of wine barrels. Tons of them. Warts looks like he’s hit a gold mine and immediately starts grabbing wine bottles. “Hey, leave some room for actual valuable, you’re supposed to be carrying shit for me, remember?” “I am grabbing valuables! You realize how much old bottles of wine go fer?” “Okay, point taken, just don’t drink them all.” While Warts plays wine expert, you take a look around the room and find that there are stairs leading up and a solid metal door to your left, which is locked. Since you don’t want to go too far from Warts while he’s alone with a bunch of wine, you stay in the cellar and pick the lock of the metal door, which is surprisingly easy. You enter the dimly lit room and find what could only be a room dedicated to dark magical endeavors of some sort. There’s two demonic looking idols starring at you and the pentagrams and symbols on the floor aren’t any you recognize. There’s also blood splatters on them. From what little you now know of this Reginald, this guy is into some dark shit. Everything about this makes you want to just get the hell out right now, but you’re already here now and you’d hate to just leave with wine bottles. You walk carefully around the room making sure you don’t step on any symbols or inside any circles just in case. You also keep an eye on the demonic idols, which still feel like they’re watching you. There isn’t much else in the room itself, though there is another door off to the side, this one isn’t locked and you open it. However, you soon wish you hadn’t. You see a row of cages and various torture devices along with dead bodies in most of them. “Fucking hell, I came here to rob some shit, not take a tour of a slaughterhouse.” You say to yourself. Just as you’re about to shut the door a voice calls out. “Stranger! You’re not one of them! Not one those red robed freaks! (sob) Please! Help me! I can’t die here, not like this! I watched my…(choke) just please…help. Who knows when they’ll be back!” a nearly naked young girl in a cage begs. She reaches out to you desperately hoping that you’ll rescue her. You definitely didn’t sign up for this…however given what you’ve seen here, you’d be quite the heartless dick if you just left her here to this horrible fate. “Curse my parents for some of their morality getting through…” you say and head over to the cage. The lock isn’t that difficult to pick and you soon get it open causing the girl to not even wait around, she just runs past you, out the torture room and beyond. You suppose you can understand her not wanting to stick around, but a thank you would have been nice. So much for good deeds. Seeing as there isn’t anything else in here, you return to the wine room where you unsurprisingly see Warts drinking. “Hey, some humie gal just ran through here an into da sewers wearin’ practically nuthin’.” Warts says. “Yeah and I’m glad to see that didn’t interrupt your important work. Thought you were supposed to be helping.” You say. “Wat’s yer problem? I am helpin’! Sides dese valuable bottles, I found out one of the barrels had a hollowish sound. Smashed it open and there was a body inside, idiots didn’t bother looting it and he had some good stuff still on him.” Warts answers and takes another swig from a bottle. “Warts, you’re telling me you found a body in one of these barrels and you’re STILL drinking the fucking wine?” Warts suddenly stops drinking. He ponders your words a bit and then sniffs the top of the bottle. Then he promptly gives a little shrug. “Still tastes alright ta me.” Warts says “Of course it does. Look, we’re getting the hell out of here. This place has been a big fat zero.” You say. “What about all these valuable bottles of wine? An’ ya haven’t even checked da upstairs yet!” “Yeah well I’ve checked enough of the basement to know that most likely there isn’t going to be anything that precious up there that’s going to make me want to stay another moment in this fucking house. There’s some dark magic going on here and I’m not sticking around for it rub off on me.” “Just say a prayer ta Yag, you’ll be fine.” “And as you like to point out, he might not listen.” “Fine, we can leave if you really wants, but I’m just sayin’ we haven’t gone through the entire house yet.” Funny how Warts is content on letting you do all the exploration. He could have easily been searching the upstairs while you were stumbling upon sacrificial captives. > You search the rest of the house Well in for a copper in for a trove. “Fine, but whatever I find I’m keeping. You stay here and continue getting drunk seeing that that’s what you’re good at.” You say and make your way up the stairs while Warts continues to do what you suggested. You get to the ground floor and begin to search the downstairs cautiously and methodically, all the while grabbing whatever looks valuable. By the time you’re finished, you’ve more or less filled your pack, you’re starting to think that Warts had the right idea after all, but you decide you’ve pushed your luck enough and that it’s time to go, even if there is a second floor to loot. As you’re making your way back down the stairs, Warts suddenly is running up them. “Warts, what the hell?” you ask “Up! Go back! Up! We gotta… HRUP!” Warts vomits all over your legs and boots. You’re about to yell at him, but then you soon see what’s caused all this excitement from him in the first place. Several people in red robes are shouting and running after him, and now most likely you too now that they’ve seen you. You immediately turn around and run back up the stairs, though Wart is busily trying to get past you. In between that, the heavier pack and the vomit still covering your boots, you end up slipping and tumbling down the stairs and into the cultists. While the cultists cushion your fall down the stairs, it doesn’t do much on improving your situation overall. There are enough of them that after the fall to the bottom, you’re immediately nabbed, beaten and stripped. And not just your of your weapons, you’re stripped of your all your clothing and throw you into one of the cells that you rescued that girl. They’re even less pleased when they learn that you released her. You aren’t killed right away, but after a couple of weeks you wish you had. By the time you’re sacrificed, you’re a babbling mess that is grateful for death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 2D: Unwanted Attention Year 17 This city is a violent crime ridden pit of corruption. And while you don’t actually mind all that, what you do wish is that you didn’t have to concern yourself with potentially stumbling into Ebony Claw Syndicate territory, which according to most of them is basically the entire city. They’re more of a danger than the Holgard Watch. There’s also the Thieves’ Guild, which is the ECS chief rival from what you’ve learned. Apparently the Thieves Guild was established here first, but when the ECS moved in with their Blue Dream trade, they’ve been slowly winning the fight over the underworld Originally, the Guild was more of a loose confederation of thieves and such. Nobody ever forced anyone to join, but there were benefits if you did such as not having to worry about paying extra for fencing stolen goods, ease of bribing guards for major crimes, etc. As the Thieves’ Guild has been losing ground however, they’ve been less “free spirited” and have been actively trying to recruit any freelance thief, burglar, pick pocket they can. However, they’re more reasonable about it than the ECS since they still don’t force you to join and will let you remain independent. As opposed to the ECs who normally just beat the hell out of any freelancers as a warning once and if they get caught again, it ends much worse. There are a few other smaller factions, but they’re so low that they’re barely worth considering. Fortunately so far you’ve managed to avoid the attention of any group mainly due to focusing on stealing actual coin and dealing primarily with a non-aligned fence by the name of Yinen for your stolen valuables. You met him at the Hell’s Own Inn where you still reside at. Funny thing is you didn’t seek him out; he came to you asking if you needed a fence. After a bit of suspicion and getting over some trust issues (Which you still have concerning him) you agreed and he’s been taking all your business. You aren’t sure who he’s selling your stolen goods to and he’s probably taking a little more than he should, but it’s worth it just so you don’t have to worry about selling the stuff yourself or seeking one out and having to get involved with one of the major factions in the city. In any case, you’ve been more or less making a decent living here and despite a healthy amount of paranoia, you actually like it here. It’s definitely not Teckleville. “Yeah, these will fetch you a nice price. Might take a few days though. You alright with waiting?” Yinen remarks examining your gems. “Yeah, that’s fine. Just get me the value in bullets and a pistol cleaning kit.” You say. “Oh. Okay, sure. But more bullets again? Are you planning to shoot everyone in Holgard? I didn’t realize you used it so much, I would think such a loud weapon would incur too much noise in your profession.” “I don’t use it much actually, but it makes me feel safe.” “Well, can’t argue with that. Things in this city have been feeling a little more tense than usual. Rumors are that there are dark forces gathering to stage a coup on the Baron.” “Dark forces? What, as opposed to the dark forces under the Baron’s control?” “Nah, I mean like REAL dark forces. There’s just rumors about religion being involved, it’s very weird.” “What, you mean like Fel, the god of shadows? You told me their temple has ties to the ECS. You saying the Ebony Claw Syndicate is going to take over the city directly?” “I dunno, but I don’t think it’s them we should worry about. Tell me, have you ever heard of Neroth?” “Not really religious so no.” “Not surprised, most people don’t unless they’re really into the old text dedicated to Joachim. You familiar with him right?” “Yeah, it’s general a religion that preaches peace and shit.” “Well there was a time when it didn’t and that’s mainly due to Neroth. Neroth was like the opposite of Joachim. Good verses evil type shit. People forget that it was only a couple hundred years ago when the Church of Joachim was burning and crusading on a regular basis due to their desire to stomp out any followers of Neroth and things they generally tied to him such as the supernatural. Nowadays the Joachimites are generally peace loving pacifists for the most part, but that’s only due being mostly successful in destroying those that follow Neroth and then subsequently going so overboard that some of the Joachimites finally realized they needed to rein it in before they became like their hated enemies.” “Hm, didn’t realize you were a theologian. How do you know all this?” you ask. “Eh, I grew up in a Joachim household. Didn’t take obviously, but still I don’t like hearing rumors of Neroth worshippers being in the city. I mean say what you want about Karn or even Fel, but they aren’t actively evil deities. Neroth is bad news man.” Before you can respond you’re suddenly interrupted by a familiar voice. “Bah, none of doze gods compare to Yag. No point worrying about shit, when you’ve run outta luck, yer time iz up and that’s all there iz to it.” You look and see Warts standing nearby clutching something in his hand. Looks like a bunch of small figurines of some sort. “Warts? What’re you doing here?” you ask. “Sellin these figures. Found ‘em in da woods with a bunch of broken boxes. Probably somethin off a Caravan that bandits were tryin to steal from. Dunno why dey didn’t take these. Tried to use dem for barter with Spiderfangs, but dey dumb. Think these things iz cursed. Superstitious idjits.” Warts remarks and hands five figurines to Yinen who takes them. “Hmm, odd. They look like something that you’d find in some tribal village. I’d say Sotakian, but these don’t look reptilian enough and I’ve never known the lizards to have craft stuff out of valuable material. You got Ivory, jade, gold, silver and platinum here. Wonder if they’re a complete set. Well I’m sure I’ll find someone interested.” Yinen hands Warts a bag of coins, which Warts takes and then looks displeased about. “Ey! Wat’s dis then? I may be just some dumb halfbreed hobgob, but I know damn well that shit is worth more!” Warts exclaims. “I gave you MORE than enough Warts. I still have find someone interested in this shit as you put it.” Yinen remarks. “Bah, you humies always tryin’ ta cheat. Fine. Should be enuff for drink and Snuffit for awhile anyways.” You take your leave to head up to your room, you figure you’ll stay in a couple days waiting for Yinen’s payment. You’ve got enough to take a break for a while. As you’re half way to your room, you hear the patter of feet running behind you and you quickly turn around with your pistol. “EY! Don’t shoot!” Warts says. “Warts, what the hell, you should know better than to run up on me like that! Why are you following me anyway?” “I wanted ta catch ya before I left. I noze I still owez youz a debt, well I’m here ta repay.” “Oh?” “Yeah, I wuz thinkin’ I could help ya on a job or sumthin.” “Help? No I don’t think so. I work alone.” “An howzat workin’ out? Doesn’t look like yer doin’ all that well if yer still livin’ here. If I had ta guess, youz still small time.” “I do alright halfbreed, and what’s it to you anyway?” “I’m just sayin’ you could be doin’ better if you went fer better targets. Have you even broken into one of dem nobles’ homes yet?” “Well, no…but I’m working up to it.” “Pfft. Wat kinda thief are ya?” “Look, I’ve cased the high class rich area several times and the homes got security up the ass. The aristocrats got more watchmen on their payroll than the average merchant. I know I’m no slouch, but if I can get enough coin with lower risk targets, why take the fucking chance? Besides, I’m trying to keep a low profile anyway.” “Well what about Lord Reginald?” “Who?” “Sheesh, youz been in dis city for a year and you don’t even know the major players! Lord Reginald is some well off guy dat got a title becuz he’s dah Baron’s son’s friend. Hear he’s more than dat though.” “Yeah so what’s this all got to do with me?” “Well he lives more on the edge of da high end district. He doesn’t even own a mansion, just a modest house. He has no family an’ he also doesn’t pay for any extra guards. Not even mercs, which prolly means he’s got more coin than it appears” “There has to be a catch. I mean if he’s well off and a special friend of the Baron’s son, then he’s gotta have connections and protection.” “Well, dere’s some rumors about him and not just about him pokin’ the Baron’s son like a woman. Like he’s got magic powers or sumthin’. Guess makes sense he don’t need extra help.” “So you’re saying we should got rob a wizard.” “Nah, he’s no wizard, he’s just got some magic powers. Prolly just rumors anyway. Sides, should be easiest stealin’ from one lone man, than one who has a shitload of guards right?” “A lone man, who might be able to turn me into ash with a flick of a finger and has who knows whatever else in his home. Assuming I even go for this, why do I need you to come along again? I didn’t realize you were actually a thief, figured you were more of an opportunistic scavenger.” “Pfft, I’ve been sneakin’ around, nicking stuff long before youz was even thought about! You try growin up as a half breed in a mostly hostile tribe. I had ta steal to survive sometimes! Sides I could carry more stuff for ya! Also, if ya getz inta trouble I could help. Like last time!” “Last time I helped YOU.” “Yeah, well I’m offerin’ anyway. I don’t even want dat big of a cut…” And THERE it is. Warts definitely isn’t doing this solely for altruistic reasons. “Thought you said you were helping me out?” “I am! You don’t expect me to do it fer free do ya? Come on, give a hob halfbreed a break. The place is ripe fer the pluckin’ an best of all ya don’t have ta worry if its Ebony Claw territory.” You shake your head that you’re considering this. “Okay, okay, we can go do this, but I’m getting some rest first, just tell me where the place is exactly and I’ll meet you there later. When is the best time to break into this place anyway?” Warts gives you some directions and then says it probably would be best to meet him there around midnight since he says he’s seen this Reginald person leave at night and stay out until dawn. Sounds more like something you do, but if he’s not going to be there then that’s when you need to be there. You part ways with Warts and get some sleep. Hours pass and when you wake up you find that it’s night time, still too early though. You stay your room a bit going over all your tools and equipment and making sure everything is in order. Eventually you decide that you’re going to be as ready as you’re going to be and leave. You head downstairs and find that the inn has the usual crowd with one important difference. You see Warts lying under a table with a couple of big mugs of alcohol on it. Surprisingly, the owner has not thrown him out; unsurprisingly everyone is avoiding that table. You walk over to the halfbreed and kick him in the foot, which causes him to stir, so he’s not completely out of it. “Warts! What the hell are you doing here?” you ask. “Huh? I…uh…buh…I waz just…” Warts slurs as he sits up and just manages to not hit his head on the table. “You were just what? What were you doing Warts? Fixing the table leg? Counting the number of nails in the wood? Having an out of body experience and travelling a different plane of existence? You talked me into doing this job and now I find you in no condition to do anything.” “Ey! I’m up! I’m up! I ain’t forgot wat we’re supposed ta do, an’ I’m more than ready! I’m not drunk, I just had a little rest like you did.” You have your doubts about that, though Warts stands up without too much trouble. > You go by yourself Warts is going to be a liability, you’re better off going by yourself. You’ve already got the directions. “Ey! Where youz goin?!” Warts exclaims. “Not with you that’s for certain.” You reply and leave. Wasting no more time, you make your way to Reginald’s home as quickly as possible. When you arrive, the place looks fairly unprotected. The Holgard Watch is still patrolling the area of course, but they aren’t standing guard over it like gargoyles. It’s a simple matter of just waiting and sneaking over to the front door, which has a pathetically easy lock. You walk about the dimly lit ground floor and begin looking around cautiously. It doesn’t take long before you start pilfering several expensive looking items. With your pack nearly full of loot, you consider leaving, but you figure you should at least give the second floor a look seeing as you’re here and you may just find something even better. You walk upstairs and begin creeping around the landing and going in the various rooms. One thing you notice is while you were told how this place was the home of some big cultist, so far you haven’t really found any evidence of anything like that. Well at least not until you find Reginald’s master bedroom. It is there that while going through a few containers, you find evidence of his religious practices namely in the form of some dark tomes. You glance through them and see a lot of writing in a language you don’t understand and you start to feel a little uncomfortable. Like a chill goes up your spine. “Fuck this. I’m not taking this shit.” You mutter and quickly put the books back in the drawer. As you’re about to leave, you spot a red jeweled medallion and figure you’ll nab that on your way out. Unfortunately, this was probably more dangerous than the books since those were only dangerous if you spoke the text in them. The medallion on the other hand contains powerful magic and since you don’t have the right protection against it, you’re fucked. The moment you touch the medallion, you feel immediately compelled to put it on. As soon as you do so, your body is instantly paralyzed and you fall to the floor. You’re still aware of your surroundings, but can’t do shit about anything. You soon begin to panic and you’d probably cry out if you were able. You lay there motionless until dawn and the terror becomes worse as you hear what you guess to be Reginald coming up the stairs. He’s quite amused when he finds you and is even more amused when he puts you through the twisted tortures dedicated to his dark god before ultimately sacrificing you to it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>He might be bullshitting you, but you’re not exactly familiar with this area, so you might as well not take chances. Still, you got a better idea on payment. “Hey Warts, I don’t have the five gold coins, but I do have these.” You say and hold out Graham’s rings to Warts. Warts approaches cautiously and then takes one of the rings from your hand. He inspects it and then speaks. “Grm. Okay, sure these will do. Stupid hobgoblin tribe around here always likes pretty jewelry even if it fakesy.” He says and takes the other one from your hand. “Fake?” you say in a completely surprised tone, though not completely put on since you didn’t think someone like Warts would know. “Yeah, fake… youz really didn’t know?” “No, I’m afraid I come from a small town and don’t have a good eye for that sort of thing. The merchant passing through was very convincing when he was selling them. I bought them for a girl I liked, but alas, I was unlucky in love too, so I just kept them.” “Grm. Youz gotta have a better eye and pray to Yag more. Anywayz, come on let’s get goin, don’t wanna stand out here tooz long. Dis path is da one.” You start following Warts who leads the way. “So…there are hobgoblins in this area?” you ask. “Oh yeah, the Spider Fang tribe, but there don’t really come around the way we’re goin’ so no need to worry about getting’ eaten. Can’t wait to get back to them though. With these rings, Snuffit will allow me at least ten ruts with ‘er. Way better than getting’ drunk…well sometimes better anyway.” Warts remarks. “Are you a member of the Spider Fangs?” “Me? Nah…too much humie blood. Can’t ever be part of tribe proper. Good thing mum good fighter and loves me, otherwise tribe probably would ‘ave eaten me when I was born.” “Wait, your mom is a hobgoblin? Who was your father then?” “Dunno, some humie bandit that attacked and tried to rut with her in the forest. Me mum said it was dark and he seemed pretty surprised when he realized she wasn’t another human. Mentioned he tasted like cheap beer after she was done wit him, so I guess he liked to drink.” Since you have no words for that story, you just silently continue to follow. Warts and you trudge along a dirt path for quite sometime until it disappears completely. “Okay, from here, we go…dis way…no wait dis way…I think…” Warts says. “You think? Don’t you know?” you reply. “Yeah, yeah, I just haven’t used this way in a long time. Gotta pass a haunted cabin. Accidently passed out there once, ended up shitting my good pants, though not sure if that was just because of the ghost.” “Haunted cabin? Why the hell are we going near it then?” “Cause it’s the safest way. Even the bandit types don’t like goin’ near it and nobody from the Spider Fang tribe is brave enough either. Sides, it’s really only haunted sometimes.” “Sometimes? But what if today is that day?” “Well hope youz brought extra pants den. Really though, it’s a lot safer. Da ghost really only messes with people that go in that cabin. I mean if you wanna risk it, we could go another way I know, but there’s been a lotta bandits travelling back an through that area. Normally, I’d just go that way since I know all da best hidin’ places and even if they did see me, I’d disappear again before they could even mount an attack. However you’re probably not as stealthy as me, so you’d probably get yerself seen and gutted. Might even rut wit youz first, some of these bandits aren’t picky.” “I’m actually no stranger to being stealthy myself when I have to be.” “Truly? Grm. Well it’s up to you.” “I’d rather take my chances sneaking pass some bandits than possibly dealing with something I can’t even hurt.” “Okay, hope yer as sneaky as you claim, cuz all bets are off if the bandits catch sight of ya. Dis way.” Once again Warts leads the way and you follow. You trudge through the forest for quite sometime and eventually it gets dark, but you still haven’t seen any signs of bandits or anyone else really. Warts doesn’t seem to be concerned, but you’re constantly alert, thinking behind every tree lies an ambush. “Gettin’ pitch black, gonna have to stop soon.” Warts says. “What? We’re not walking through the night? In fact won’t it be easier to slip by any potential hostiles in the dark?” you ask. “You want to continue, be my guest, but I’m gonna get some sleep. I’m tired. Sides, looks like we got lucky. Guess the bandit crew that was wandering around this area moved on. Praise Yag.” “As you say.” You reply, still looking around. While you’re half tempted to go on without Warts, you’re still holding on to the slight hope that he actually knows where he’s going, so you start looking for a tree to climb and sleep in. “Hey, what youz doin? You think youz a squirrel or somethin’?” Warts asks. “I’m not sleeping down here on the ground. What if something wanders by before I can properly react? I’ll be in a tree so I can at least be somewhat out of immediate sight.” “Youz gonna fall out and break yo’ neck too. All youz gotta do is cover yerself in dirt and leaves and shit. Hides youz just fine.” Warts says and begins doing just that. “Yeah well when you’re already green and smell like the outdoors, I suppose it’s a lot easier to camouflage yourself with little effort. I’ll take my chances in a high tree.” Warts shakes his head unconvinced and continues to cover himself. You have to admit, if you didn’t know he was there, you probably wouldn’t notice him if you were just wandering by. As for you, you climb to a sturdy and large enough branch that will support your weight and you can at least somewhat perch yourself on. You already know you aren’t going to sleep deep tonight, but you figure that’s sort of been the standard problem while out here. “I’ll be so damn glad to be out of the damn wilderness.” You say to yourself. You’re up for quite awhile, but hear nothing except the usual sounds of various insects, owls and other nocturnal animals. Eventually sleep catches up with you and you close your eyes. You aren’t sure how long you’re asleep, but you open your eyes when you start hearing voices nearby. “I told ya, I heard something.” “Probably just another raccoon. I don’t know why we gotta patrol over here anyway.” “Cause the boss said so that’s why! You know there are savage greenskins that live in this forest. We’re supposed to make sure none of them get too close to the main cam…I knew it. I knew I heard something! Snoring! And it’s coming from over there!” At this point you’re awake enough to see everything that’s going on below. You see two men who you guess are bandits. Seems like Warts didn’t take into account that his camouflage attempt would all be for naught due to his large honker making noise. It doesn’t take long before they kick and prod at his hidden location, waking him up. “Hah! A filthy greenskin! Probably a scout! Kill him!” one of the bandits shouts. Warts just barely avoids their attacks and tries to scramble away from his prone position, but one of the bandits manages to trip him up before he can run and it isn’t looking good as he gets kicked in the face by the other one. Not that you have any loyalty to Warts and he’s been pretty snarky towards you in general, but he’s still your guide and if you don’t want to get lost… You waste no time and try to climb down your tree as fast as you can. Fortunately, the bandits are have decided to have a little fun before killing him directly. They proceed to continue kicking Warts and don’t notice you at all. > You attempt to silently slit their throats You figure if you start shooting, you might attract more of their fellows or something worse. Better to do this silently, even if it means getting closer. You manage to creep up on the first bandit and grab him. You aren’t exactly accustomed to do this though, so your technique isn’t perfect. You struggle a bit before managing to messily slit his throat. This all of course has alerted the other bandit who doesn’t waste anytime in attacking you. He starts off by kicking his buddy who you’re still holding to. The dead weight of a dying man being pushed hard in your direction is enough to cause you to lose balance and fall backwards with a body on top of you. You struggle to get out from under the dead body and going for your pistol, but the bandit has already taken advantage of your prone situation, by kicking you in the head. He then crotches down to punch you in the face several times before grabbing your pistol. You’re in a half conscious state and you can only hope Warts does something, but unlike you, he takes the opportunity to run rather than help. “Well, what’s this you were going for? (Whistle) Shit, never seen one like this before and I ain’t seen many. Dumbass kid, shoulda used this to begin with. Bet you’ll never make that mistake again.” The bandit says then drives his sword in your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t going to let this fat fuck get a chance to possibly shoot you in the back, plus you’re too pissed about him trying to molest you. With a couple quick moves you pull out your dagger, stab him in his arm and relieve him of his fancy pistol. Graham screams out like a little girl and now pleads for his miserable life. “Please! No, don’t kill me!” he whimpers pathetically. Once again, much like how it was Klint, you show no remorse and pull the trigger of the pistol. It’s the first time you’ve ever used one; so the unexpected kickback nearly causes you nearly drop it. You also weren’t expecting it blow half of Graham’s stinking face off. His obese corpse slumps lifelessly against the carriage wall. “Shit.” You remark to yourself being in awe of the power of the weapon. Never being one to miss an opportunity, you quickly deprive Graham’s body of the jeweled rings on his fingers. You then also go through the pockets that you can get to and get a bag full of gold coins. After looting Graham’s body, you remember that there is a skirmish going on outside. A quick glance shows several bandit types fighting the mercs. The mercs are out numbered, but thanks to their armor and better training, they’re doing a good job of fending off the bandits. You get out of the carriage with the intent of just running off into the woods, but then you might get lost. It occurs to you that you do have an advantage that will allow you get away a lot faster and still stay on your course. While one of the mounted mercs bashes in the head of a bandit you take the opportunity to shoot him while his back is turned. The merc’s armor is of no protection and he cries out as he falls from his horse. “Who the hell is that guy?” one of the bandits shouts. “Dunno, but who cares, he’s killing their side!” another says. You quickly run to the now ownerless horse and clumsily get on. You’re a bit vulnerable for a few seconds, but fortunately the bandits seem to now think you’re on their side and don’t focus on you (and the remaining mercs have their hands full) You soon manage to control the horse (which is anxious to get away from the chaos anyway) and gallop away until the skirmish is far behind you and you’re basically left alone again. Unfortunately your horse suddenly starts wheeze and wobble. You manage to hastily get off before it collapses. There on it’s left side you see what the problem is. In all the ensuing the chaos, the horse actually took a few crossbow bolts. Probably damage to vital organs and its adrenaline is finally wearing off. Bad luck for you and even worse luck for the horse. Not having many more options, you start walking. In any case there’s two more bodies to your count now. Granted Graham deserved it, but that merc…well he made a living risking his life, it just happened that today his time was up. You had to survive a dangerous situation and that’s it. That’s how you’re justifying that one anyway. Still, you at least acquired a few goodies for your troubles. You’re going to have to learn more about how to take proper care of this pistol because it’s far too valuable of a weapon to neglect. It’ll certainly make dealing with shit in Holgard a bit more manageable. The rings are what surprise you most. You’re no jeweler, but you have stolen enough cheap baubles in the past that you can tell a fake when you examine it in greater detail. The gems in the rings are actually common, but altered slightly (especially their color) to resemble more valuable ones. Even the ring is gold plated rather than pure. Looks like Graham wasn’t as rich as he made out. However, the little pouch of coins is real money so there’s that at least. You continue along the road, which as you guessed starts alternating from being intact, to dirt with a few stones to being little more than a well worn path in the grass. Even the occasional signs aren’t much help given that many are flat out damaged in some way. Your natural instinct to just keep going in a straight line like you were doing, but unfortunately for you, the path completely disappears into forest. Doesn’t help that the road also branches into several paths that twist in different directions. You weren’t expecting that so you aren’t sure which way to go. While you’re pondering this decision, a voice calls out to you. “Hey! Where youz tryin’ to get to?” You then see a person dressed in simple clothing coming out of the forest. He’s a little shorter than you, in fact he’s a little greener than you too. Doesn’t look like an orc though, not nearly big or massive enough. Goblin perhaps, but he’s taller than one and almost a bit human looking. A short green human with a few warts on his face and a bigger than average nose. In any case, you maintain your usual caution. “Okay, that’s far enough. Who are you?” you ask. “Me? I’m just Warts.” He answers picking his big nose. “Appropriate name.” “Grhm. So youz tryin’ to get to Holgard?” “Yeah, why?” “Well cuz, I can lead you to it. Lotz o’ paths in this forest lead lotz o’ places. Easy to get lost if you don’t know da way.” “You know the way huh? How do I know you aren’t going to lead me into an ambush?” “Youz don’t I suppoze. Take yer chances going alone an’ getting lost, don’t care. I just try to earn a little extra coin for drink an’ leadin’ clueless humies like yerself gets me some…well when they aren’t throwin’ rocks at me that is.” “What are you exactly?” you ask. “Huh? What you mean?” Warts replies. “I mean, you don’t look quite like any greenskin I’ve ever seen.” “You seen a lot o them have ya?” “Well no, but I’ve heard tales…” “Then you don’t really know nuthin’ then do ya?” Warts says in a perturbed tone. Actually he’s got a bit of a point. You decide to get right to the matter. “Alright, assuming I take you up on your generous offer, how much is it?” you ask. “Oh, yeah price…hmm, you want to go to Holgard right? Five gold coins.” Warts answers. “Five gold coins just to lead me through the forest? That’s fucking outrageous!” “Holgard is tricky to get to if you don’t know the way. Lot of false paths get made. Besides, you lot usually have more than enough gold. I see you humies travelling all over in your rolly boxes filled with goods.” “Do I look like I’m in a rolly box carting around a wagon full of treasures? I’m just a simple traveller down on his luck.” “Down on luck huh? You should pray to Yag more. Anywayz five gold. Final offer.” This greenskin obviously has no concept of haggling. It really isn’t like you don’t have the coin, it’s more like you don’t want to give so much to the likes of him after being fortunate enough to acquire it in the first place. Ultimately, he’s either telling the truth about the forest being that treacherous or he’s completely bullshitting you. You’ll just have to decide for yourself. > You go it alone You’re not paying him shit, this is probably some sort of set up. “Yeah, I think I’m good on my own.” You say. “Grm. Suit yerself.” Warts says and then without another word he disappears back into the forest. You thought for sure he’d at least try to lower his price if you declined his help, but you guess not. In any case you still aren’t sure of which way to go, so you gamble and just pick a path that looks the most promising. You figure you could always backtrack if feels like you’re going the wrong way. (You hope) You walk along your chosen path for a while, still keeping an eye out for any potential ambushes. In fact you don’t even walk directly on the path, you mostly just stick close like you were following a river. Speaking of which you eventually come across a real river with a bridge and everything. There even looks to be a sign post nearby, which makes you think that you are probably going in the right direction. Unfortunately it also looks like a group of four bandits has boldly decided to set up a blockade of sorts here. They haven’t seen you yet, so that’s at least one good thing in your favor. Of course while you only see four bandits, who knows if there are more hiding nearby with bows or something. In fact you probably shouldn’t linger here too long. You slink away and head upstream hoping you’ll find another way. (And not get too lost in the process) You don’t have too much luck for the most part, but then you see one area where the water looks low enough to cross. You decide to make the attempt. All goes well until it turns out the water wasn’t as low as you thought and you’re now knee deep in it. You’re already a third way across however and you press on. By the time the water is nearly up to your chest, the current begins to pull you and you’re soon not walking across the river bottom anymore. You try to maintain control of the situation, but the current is swifter than you anticipated, not to mention you don’t know how to swim. You’re fortunate in that you don’t get pulled too far downstream or go completely underwater before you manage to grab hold of a rock which is close enough to the other side that you pull yourself to the other side of the river bank. Your possessions are another story however. You’ve lost your coin bag, along with the pistol you just managed to acquire. About the only thing you have left is your dagger. You curse your luck along with the forest, the river and your situation in general. After releasing a torrent of swearing, you move on. Eventually night falls and along with now being cold and wet, you’re also starting to feel tired. You aren’t even sure if you’re heading in the right direction anymore since you got a bit discombobulated when you were struggling not to drown. Still, you press on and that’s when you think you see a slight respite in this mess. You see a cabin, though probably an abandoned one as there is no light coming from it. You just hope there isn’t anyone or anything lurking inside. You cautiously approach the cabin and while you have a feeling of unease the entire time, when you explore around it, you don’t find anything out of the ordinary. Of course it is dark, so maybe you’re missing something, but so far it doesn’t look like anyone is making camp here. As soon as you try the door though all your senses start to scream danger and you draw your dagger and spin around. You are met with the sight of a man in a robe standing nearby. It’s hard to see his face, but the light of the moon shows he’s a lot older than you. You lift your dagger up in a defensive stance, but the man isn’t moving. “Put that away son, it wouldn’t do you any good again me or anything else out around here I’d wager. In fact you shouldn’t even be around this cabin. Bad things happen here.” The man says. “Yeah? Well what’re you doing out here then?” you ask. “Good help is hard to find nowadays. What’s your story, you look a little worse for wear.” “What’s it to you?” “Sheesh, just trying to make conversation. You don’t look like one of the many bandits out here. You ain’t green, so you aren’t hobgoblin. Can’t see any points in those ears, so not an elf either. Given your age though, what you do look like is a lost lamb in the woods. Is that what you are?” “No and I’m doing just fine out here.” “Bullshit, kid. You look like a half drowned rat. What’d you do, fall in the river?” he says and starts to step forward. “Get the fuck back old man! I’m no damn lamb in the woods, I’ve killed people!” you say thrusting your dagger in his direction a bit. “Is that right? Hmm, perhaps you could be useful. You just a fighter? You got any other skills?” “Yeah…I mean what the hell you wanna know for?” “Because as I said, good help is hard to find and I got a lot of tasks that need doing. Now I know you’re lost out here, but I’ll tell ya what, I’ll get you out of this forest and set you up with a place to stay and whatever else you might need if you help me in my tasks.” “No thanks, I already killed one old pervert in exchange for his so called help.” “Well that explains why you’re so mistrustful. Look kid, I barely even think about that anymore and you don’t have the right equipment anyway. I’m a wizard and I do a lot research and experiments. Unfortunately, the material that I sometimes need requires me to come outside which I’d rather not do. I used to have an apprentice of sorts to help out on that front, but well let’s just say shit happens.” “A wizard that does experiments? And how do I know that I’m not going to be one of those experiments?” “Because if I wanted you for that purpose, I would have already cast a spell to immobilize you and taken you back to my place already. I’m just looking for someone to help me do the grunt work I don’t want to be bothered to do. I can also promise to pay you, if saving your life just isn’t good enough.” “How much?” “We can discuss that later, but I need to know if you want the job, because I’m not staying out here all night.” “Well where is your place? Holgard?” “Pfft, not that cess pit. Though it isn’t too far from there.” “How far is it?” “Oh, don’t worry about that, I can get us there real quick. So you in or not?” > You go with the wizard “(Sigh) It seems like I don’t have that much of a choice seeing as I’m pretty fucked out here.” You say. “So that’s a yes I take it?” the wizard remarks. “Yeah, I’ll accept your help.” “Great, now hold still.” Before you even know what’s happening, a bright light flashes before your eyes and encompasses you. You’re blind for a few moments and then when you open your eyes again, you find yourself in a room with fancy paintings, expensive furniture and some heads of creatures unknown to you. Just as you’re admiring the new view, you’re spun around and find yourself face to face with your “savior.” He briefly grabs your left wrist and you feel a tingling sensation on it. Needless to say you pull away and step back. “What the fuck?!” you exclaim rubbing your wrist. “Really, I hardly think that’s anyway to talk to the man who just saved your life.” The wizard remarks Your wrist stops tingling and when you look down at it, you notice a new little symbol on your skin that resembles an eight. “What the hell did you just do to me?” you ask. “Nothing bad I assure you, but I suppose much like you I’m a bit on the mistrustful side, so I wanted to secure the agreement we made.” The wizard says. “What did you DO?” “Put a geas on you. Don’t worry though you still have lots of freedom.” “What the hell’s a geas? And what do you mean by I still have lots of freedom? Did you just magically enslave me or some shit?!” “(Sigh) I hate it when it’s put like that. I suppose if you want to look at it that way, then yes. I’m the only one who can take it off though so you might as well not kick up about it.” “Oh? Well I can imagine the spell also doesn’t work when you’re dead either.” You say and draw your dagger. However as soon as you do, you feel as if you’ve been dealt a hefty kick to the crotch. You fall to the floor holding on to your nether regions. “That was a very silly thing to do. Even if I couldn’t blast you into ash before you’d even reach me with that pig sticker, the geas prevents you from harming me in the first place. You’re just lucky I’m not fond of pointless cruelty. Most of the time when one tries to directly defy a geas, it causes extreme pain throughout your entire body. I altered the spell of course.” The wizard remarks. “So I’m supposed to be glad you’re only magically kicking me in the balls instead?” you ask as the pain slowly begins to fade. The wizard at this point puts a hand to his face and shakes his head. He paces a bit and then speaks again. “Okay look, let’s start over. Hello my name’s Ral and I’m your new employer until I feel our contract is done. In return for your service, you will receive lodgings and food. Quality lodgings too I might add. I will also provide whatever equipment you need for whatever task I send you on. If I don’t have it, well I’ll provide coin so you can go buy whatever you need at that cess pit Holgard which as I mentioned I don’t live too far from.” Ral pauses a bit before continuing. “Now before you start arguing with me again, let me tell you about the exact nature of your geas. First of all, you’ve still got all the freedom you want. You want to leave my home and go drown your sorrows in whores and booze, go right ahead. Holgard’s just a couple days away and I’m not going to stop you. In fact you can go on a three-day bender if you want, but after that, I’d advise you to start making your way back before you start feeling the effects of the spell. The pain will start in your genitals as you’ve already experienced, but the longer you resist, the geas is going to start taking on a more traditional role and you will feel that pain all over your body. Depending on your constitution you MIGHT be able to last up to three weeks of defiance. No more than that though and you really don’t want to know what happens.” “What happens if something else prevents me from reaching you or I’m otherwise detained?” “Well I suggest you don’t let it detain you for over a week.” “That’s fucking bullshit. You claim I got all this freedom, but you’ve just stated I’m practically tethered to the area!” “Y’know I would have thought someone in your situation would see this as an opportunity, not a reason to complain. Not to mention being grateful that I just saved your life. Despite your boasts of being a killer, you stink more of common thief. You’re on the youngish side, so you were probably originally from a boring small backwoods town and going to Holgard to make a name for yourself or whatever. Well guess what? You would have been just one of many cutthroat vagabond thugs there. Your chances of succeeding would have been minute at best. If the Ebony Claw Syndicate didn’t do away with you for encroaching on their territory, they would have used you up and spat you out if you were dumb enough to join them. Not to mention the whole city is a mass riot waiting to happen. Mark my words, you’ll be thanking me that I did you this favor by next year.” At this point Ral tells you he’s done speaking on this matter right now as he has important work to get back to. He tells you the lay out of his home, where your bedroom is and how you can help yourself to whatever food and drink you want in the kitchen. His home is your home as he puts it. He then mentions that Holgard is west of his home if you need to go there. He also says there’s a small village called Dert to the east as well which is actually a lot closer, but his opinion of that place is even lower. From his descriptions, it sounds similar to your hometown, but smaller, poorer and even more insular. “I’ll give you a month to get accustomed to the surrounding area and your situation, but I fully expect you to be ready to perform my tasks by that time, and none of this ungratefulness any longer.” He says and then leaves you alone in his living room. You just slump down in one of the cushy chairs and despair at your new situation. Your eyes wander the room for a bit until they fixate on one of the stuffed creature heads. “Well at least my head isn’t up on a wall yet I guess.” You say with a sigh. > You time passes... Chapter 2C: Indentured Servitude Year 17 A year. A year of this magical slavery has passed already and you’re far from thanking Ral for this despite what he told you. It hasn’t been as bad as it could be, but it certainly could be a hell of a lot better. Boredom and tedium are the main enemies mainly because Ral has you doing an endless amount of mundane tasks such as cleaning his home or gathering shit for him and unfortunately, that usually consists of various plants in the forest. Which you suppose has made you a bit more knowledgeable about the outdoors, but that isn’t exactly knowledge you ever desired! If you’re lucky, he’ll send you to Holgard to acquire something and that’s really the only time you bother going to that city. Only having a week of “slack” doesn’t give you a whole lot of time to go venturing out to Holgard like you probably would on a regular basis. Two days to get there, two day back. It’s hardly worth it most of the time hence why you tend to do all your thievery during these mundane trips. The thing is, you don’t even really need to steal anything since everything is provided for you. You aren’t really doing it for the thrills either because you’re forever pissed about your situation. You’re more or less doing it just to stay in practice. The only good thing is you believe your time there is so infrequent and your mark so insignificant, that you haven’t ever drawn the ire or even the attention of any of the other criminal organizations in Holgard, let alone what passes for the law there. Sometimes you’ll go to Dert to “practice” though you don’t really like to mainly because there’s no challenge. You suppose it’s just as well as you just doing it to keep your skills from rusting, because you certainly wouldn’t be getting rich from taking anything from those poor bastards that live there. The people there aren’t exactly welcoming to you either and you feel like you’re going to get lynched at any time. If that ever actually figured it out that you’ve been stealing from the place as opposed to passing yourself off as a “herbalist.” (All that time gathering plants has at least come in handy for something) You’ve been trying to figure out some way of escape, but there doesn’t seem to be anything for it. You actually did disappear for more than a week once, but you returned pretty quickly after two days of increasing pain. You can’t imagine what you would have felt any longer than that. Ral didn’t even seem fussed that you attempted it. Killing Ral is out of the question since about the only thing you can do is briefly think about it on occasion. You’ve wondered if he has anything lying around that could break the spell, but even if you got lucky and found something of Ral’s that could help you (and could actually figure out how to use it), Ral keeps important rooms like his lab and his library magically locked. (And who knows what other protection he has) So you’re stuck for now. In the meantime… “Ah, you’re here good.” Ral says poking his head into your room “Where else would I be? Not like I can go too far. Can’t you just track my location with the spell anyway?” You say. “More or less, but considering it’s easy enough for me to just peek in the rooms of the house you have access to, I didn’t really see the need to do it immediately. Anyway, I have a job for you.” “I just gathered a bunch of plants for you yesterday!” “I’m actually in need something on the rarer side, that’s harder to get a hold of, I need you to get a plant called gray blossom. Fortunately I know someone who has it. Unfortunately, they probably won’t be willing to give it up very easily.” “Oh? So I’m actually going to use my natural talents for a change?” “In a manner of speaking yes, though if you can steal from a vampire, I’d be very impressed.” “Did you just say vampire?” “Yes, she’s the only person I know that has the plant that I need for my experiments. Or at least within the area and least amount of trouble to get it. Easy for him to say, he isn’t the one that has to get it. “I’m sure you’re aware that dismal village Dert has that huge graveyard not far from it, well she lives in one of the old crypts there. Now if you really feel your skills are up to the task, you could try to sneak in there while she’s asleep during the day and get the gray blossom, but I had a more conventional trade in mind.” Ral says and then produces a jar of red liquid. You can already take a guess what it is. “Wait, she’ll just readily accept a jar of blood as payment?” you ask. “This isn’t just regular blood, it’s a jar of sprite blood. She loves the stuff.” Ral answers “Aren’t sprites really small? Looks like a lot of blood for a sprite.” “Obviously that’s because it’s at least thirty of the little buggers. Now Isabella will probably try to use her vampire abilities on you like mesmerism, but don’t worry, that spell you hate so much will keep you perfectly safe from such attempts at charm or mind control.” “Oh yeah? Well what if she decides to just rip my head off instead?” “No it wouldn’t protect you from that of course. Though she doesn’t just go around killing people on a whim, indeed that’s why Dert still exists at all. This is also why I’m suggesting that you just give her this blood for the blossom. She might be difficult and try to barter with you or even imply violence if she got up on the wrong side of the coffin, but she’s not likely to just kill you. If she catches you stealing however, well her violent reaction is going to be on you.” “Not sure if that wouldn’t be an improvement on my current situation.” You remark. “You’ll find her in a mausoleum that says Mablava at the top front of it. From there, you’ll have to fumble around and find the secret button revealing the stairs that lead to the underground crypt where she makes her home proper. I think it’s somewhere on the bottom right wall. It’s been awhile. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll find it. I’d advise you to announce your presence and state your business right away before you even descend. Probably would be best to do this at dusk when she’s just getting up. If you do it in the day, she’ll be asleep and she won’t be pleased about you disturbing her slumber. If you wait until night, you might miss her since she might have left her home. Now assuming you didn’t piss her off, I’ll expect you back fairly soon. Off you go.” Having given you your orders and the sprite blood, Ral starts to take his leave as if nothing else needs to be said, but you still have some concerns. “Hey wait! That’s it? I mean shouldn’t you be giving me some magical weapon, or something silver at least?” you ask. “What for? Wouldn’t do you any good anyway. Do you even know anything about vampires, or just what you’ve heard from stories? Look, if I actually thought your life was in any real danger, I’d provide you with either the proper equipment or the coin so you could go buy it. I dare say even if you do something foolish like try to steal from her and get caught, if you drop my name she’ll probably still let you off the hook, though perhaps with a nasty scar. This should be a simple enough task that you aren’t going to have any difficulties.” Ral says. You don’t bother arguing any more since you know Ral’s made his mind up and is barking the orders that you’re going to have to obey anyway. You can only hope he’s correct about his vampire associate. You make your way to Dert, which doesn’t take long. By the time you which the vicinity of the area, it’s still day time which means you still have time to spare waiting around before meeting up with this Isabella. Since you don’t especially feel like putting up with suspicious dumb ass yokels today, you decide that you’ll just head straight to the graveyard and wait there. When you arrive, you never realized just how damn big the place was as you’ve only ever glanced at it from afar and certainly never had any reason to go there. In fact, it’s almost the same size as Dert itself, in fact, it may even be the same size. You can’t imagine why the village would need that big of a graveyard. Was Dert bigger at one point? Plague perhaps? In any case you spend some time looking for the mausoleum and eventually you find it. It isn’t very big; though you imagine that underneath it is where all the space is. Must be for a family, though they must have been richer than everyone else in that village. This all makes you wonder if Isabella is an original inhabitant of this village or maybe she’s just making her home her in this place. You also start wondering if there are other creatures potentially lurking about here. Ghouls? Ghosts? You haven’t seen or heard anything since you’ve got here and the entire place has been as empty and silent as a well…tomb. As you creep yourself out, you’re getting less enthusiastic about just hanging around a graveyard waiting for night to come. Maybe you should just steal the gray blossom now while day still exists. > You steal the Gray Blossom Meeting a vampire at night just seems like a bad idea even if you were properly prepared. No, you’re going to go with your instinct on this rather than Ral’s suggestions. You begin looking for the secret button on the right wall. As it turns out, this uses up a lot of time because you have a hell of a time finding the damn thing since it’s in a near inaccessible place behind a solid stone sarcophagus. At this point you’re hoping you get out before the sun sets. After stretching and reaching for the thing, you hear a click and a section of the floor on the left side opens up. You look down, but only see a dimly lit stairway, which you hope doesn’t lead you through some catacomb maze. When you get to the bottom, you find a better-lit crypt that is fairly clean all things considered. You see several sturdy coffins lining the walls and you can also smell a faint whiff of some sort of flower. Nobody is here, though you see another entryway, which looks like it leads further into the bowels of this place. As much as you don’t like the idea, you’ll have to go further in because there doesn’t seem to be any plant life here or at least none that resembles what you were tasked to find. You go through a long corridor which occasionally has smaller rooms off to the side, but you don’t find much in any save for some neatly placed furnishings. Other than the coffins you already passed you haven’t seen anything else like that, so you aren’t sure if this Isabella sleeps in one of those and you already passed her or she’s deeper within this place. Either way, you just want to be out of here before she wakes up. You continue further and unfortunately just like you thought you start getting to forks in path. Still not knowing where to look, you just pick a path and hope for the best. You eventually come to a room, you sort of wish you hadn’t. You see several naked people chained up and the room stained with blood. The people aren’t screaming or calling for help though. They’re just standing there in a trance condition. You can only guess this must be some sort of feeding room for Isabella. You don’t linger too long. You continue to go through twisting corridors, which increasingly start becoming less “polished” with a lot less torches and you also feel like you’re starting to go deeper underground. You’re starting to feel like you’re not going to find what you’re looking for if you keep heading this way, so you decide to turn back. And then you suddenly stop when you hear a voice coming from the direction that you are currently heading: “I know someone is here, lurking about in my home. Hope you’re a very well prepared group of adventurers or skilled vampire hunters because it’s not going to be good when I eventually find you. And I WILL find you.” You genuinely piss yourself at that point and in desperation you immediately run back into darkness. You have no idea where you’re going and you end up stumbling and tripping quite a bit as you make your hopeless escape. “Only one of you huh? That was quite foolish. You realize that you’re making a lot of noise correct? I’m a lot faster than you are and know my home better than you do, if I wanted to catch you right now, I could. You should probably save yourself time and just sit put. If you do, I’ll promise to make it quick and not keep you around as a blood slave.” You hear Isabella’s voice say. You don’t know how close she is now, but she doesn’t sound as far away as before. Alone, scared and in pitch darkness, you scream out. “Isabella, please! I don’t want to die! Have mercy!” “Don’t want to die? Then why the hell did you intrude on my home in the way you did? In fact, how the hell do you know my name or even how to get in here in the first place?” “Ral! Ral sent me! He even gave me a gift to give to you!” There is silence for a moment. “Ah, that explains some of this then. The old bastard must want something from me, and he sent a lackey to do the job. However, he must either not value your life or he’s gotten forgetful in his old age, because I can’t imagine that he would have told you to come wandering down here without at least announcing yourself.” “He did! He did!” “Oh? Then YOU must be stupid or not a very good servant to Ral if you didn’t follow his instructions. Either way, I don’t think he’s going to miss you. This might have gone very differently had you not rudely trespassed on my domain. Don’t bother begging anymore, I’m not listening.” With this confirmation that you are well and truly fucked, you gather your remaining strength and continue to run blindly in the dark. You’re stopped when you hit something. It isn’t a wall though, it’s softer than that, but much deadlier. It’s pitch dark, but even at this close range, you see the faint glow of inhuman eyes along with pearly white teeth that sink right into your neck. The life literally drains from your body as Isabella feeds upon you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 2C: Indentured Servitude Year 17 A year. A year of this magical slavery has passed already and you’re far from thanking Ral for this despite what he told you. It hasn’t been as bad as it could be, but it certainly could be a hell of a lot better. Boredom and tedium are the main enemies mainly because Ral has you doing an endless amount of mundane tasks such as cleaning his home or gathering shit for him and unfortunately, that usually consists of various plants in the forest. Which you suppose has made you a bit more knowledgeable about the outdoors, but that isn’t exactly knowledge you ever desired! If you’re lucky, he’ll send you to Holgard to acquire something and that’s really the only time you bother going to that city. Only having a week of “slack” doesn’t give you a whole lot of time to go venturing out to Holgard like you probably would on a regular basis. Two days to get there, two day back. It’s hardly worth it most of the time hence why you tend to do all your thievery during these mundane trips. The thing is, you don’t even really need to steal anything since everything is provided for you. You aren’t really doing it for the thrills either because you’re forever pissed about your situation. You’re more or less doing it just to stay in practice. The only good thing is you believe your time there is so infrequent and your mark so insignificant, that you haven’t ever drawn the ire or even the attention of any of the other criminal organizations in Holgard, let alone what passes for the law there. Sometimes you’ll go to Dert to “practice” though you don’t really like to mainly because there’s no challenge. You suppose it’s just as well as you just doing it to keep your skills from rusting, because you certainly wouldn’t be getting rich from taking anything from those poor bastards that live there. The people there aren’t exactly welcoming to you either and you feel like you’re going to get lynched at any time. If that ever actually figured it out that you’ve been stealing from the place as opposed to passing yourself off as a “herbalist.” (All that time gathering plants has at least come in handy for something) You’ve been trying to figure out some way of escape, but there doesn’t seem to be anything for it. You actually did disappear for more than a week once, but you returned pretty quickly after two days of increasing pain. You can’t imagine what you would have felt any longer than that. Ral didn’t even seem fussed that you attempted it. Killing Ral is out of the question since about the only thing you can do is briefly think about it on occasion. You’ve wondered if he has anything lying around that could break the spell, but even if you got lucky and found something of Ral’s that could help you (and could actually figure out how to use it), Ral keeps important rooms like his lab and his library magically locked. (And who knows what other protection he has) So you’re stuck for now. In the meantime… “Ah, you’re here good.” Ral says poking his head into your room “Where else would I be? Not like I can go too far. Can’t you just track my location with the spell anyway?” You say. “More or less, but considering it’s easy enough for me to just peek in the rooms of the house you have access to, I didn’t really see the need to do it immediately. Anyway, I have a job for you.” “I just gathered a bunch of plants for you yesterday!” “I’m actually in need something on the rarer side, that’s harder to get a hold of, I need you to get a plant called gray blossom. Fortunately I know someone who has it. Unfortunately, they probably won’t be willing to give it up very easily.” “Oh? So I’m actually going to use my natural talents for a change?” “In a manner of speaking yes, though if you can steal from a vampire, I’d be very impressed.” “Did you just say vampire?” “Yes, she’s the only person I know that has the plant that I need for my experiments. Or at least within the area and least amount of trouble to get it. Easy for him to say, he isn’t the one that has to get it. “I’m sure you’re aware that dismal village Dert has that huge graveyard not far from it, well she lives in one of the old crypts there. Now if you really feel your skills are up to the task, you could try to sneak in there while she’s asleep during the day and get the gray blossom, but I had a more conventional trade in mind.” Ral says and then produces a jar of red liquid. You can already take a guess what it is. “Wait, she’ll just readily accept a jar of blood as payment?” you ask. “This isn’t just regular blood, it’s a jar of sprite blood. She loves the stuff.” Ral answers “Aren’t sprites really small? Looks like a lot of blood for a sprite.” “Obviously that’s because it’s at least thirty of the little buggers. Now Isabella will probably try to use her vampire abilities on you like mesmerism, but don’t worry, that spell you hate so much will keep you perfectly safe from such attempts at charm or mind control.” “Oh yeah? Well what if she decides to just rip my head off instead?” “No it wouldn’t protect you from that of course. Though she doesn’t just go around killing people on a whim, indeed that’s why Dert still exists at all. This is also why I’m suggesting that you just give her this blood for the blossom. She might be difficult and try to barter with you or even imply violence if she got up on the wrong side of the coffin, but she’s not likely to just kill you. If she catches you stealing however, well her violent reaction is going to be on you.” “Not sure if that wouldn’t be an improvement on my current situation.” You remark. “You’ll find her in a mausoleum that says Mablava at the top front of it. From there, you’ll have to fumble around and find the secret button revealing the stairs that lead to the underground crypt where she makes her home proper. I think it’s somewhere on the bottom right wall. It’s been awhile. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll find it. I’d advise you to announce your presence and state your business right away before you even descend. Probably would be best to do this at dusk when she’s just getting up. If you do it in the day, she’ll be asleep and she won’t be pleased about you disturbing her slumber. If you wait until night, you might miss her since she might have left her home. Now assuming you didn’t piss her off, I’ll expect you back fairly soon. Off you go.” Having given you your orders and the sprite blood, Ral starts to take his leave as if nothing else needs to be said, but you still have some concerns. “Hey wait! That’s it? I mean shouldn’t you be giving me some magical weapon, or something silver at least?” you ask. “What for? Wouldn’t do you any good anyway. Do you even know anything about vampires, or just what you’ve heard from stories? Look, if I actually thought your life was in any real danger, I’d provide you with either the proper equipment or the coin so you could go buy it. I dare say even if you do something foolish like try to steal from her and get caught, if you drop my name she’ll probably still let you off the hook, though perhaps with a nasty scar. This should be a simple enough task that you aren’t going to have any difficulties.” Ral says. You don’t bother arguing any more since you know Ral’s made his mind up and is barking the orders that you’re going to have to obey anyway. You can only hope he’s correct about his vampire associate. You make your way to Dert, which doesn’t take long. By the time you which the vicinity of the area, it’s still day time which means you still have time to spare waiting around before meeting up with this Isabella. Since you don’t especially feel like putting up with suspicious dumb ass yokels today, you decide that you’ll just head straight to the graveyard and wait there. When you arrive, you never realized just how damn big the place was as you’ve only ever glanced at it from afar and certainly never had any reason to go there. In fact, it’s almost the same size as Dert itself, in fact, it may even be the same size. You can’t imagine why the village would need that big of a graveyard. Was Dert bigger at one point? Plague perhaps? In any case you spend some time looking for the mausoleum and eventually you find it. It isn’t very big; though you imagine that underneath it is where all the space is. Must be for a family, though they must have been richer than everyone else in that village. This all makes you wonder if Isabella is an original inhabitant of this village or maybe she’s just making her home her in this place. You also start wondering if there are other creatures potentially lurking about here. Ghouls? Ghosts? You haven’t seen or heard anything since you’ve got here and the entire place has been as empty and silent as a well…tomb. As you creep yourself out, you’re getting less enthusiastic about just hanging around a graveyard waiting for night to come. Maybe you should just steal the gray blossom now while day still exists. > You wait Stealing from a vampire just seems like a bad idea even if you were properly prepared. No, you’re going to follow the rules to the letter on this one. Time passes and eventually the sun starts setting and you begin looking for the secret button on the right wall. As it turns out, this uses up plenty of time because you have a hell of a time finding the damn thing since it’s in a near inaccessible place behind a solid stone sarcophagus. After stretching and reaching for the thing, you hear a click and a section of the floor on the left side opens up. You look down, but only see a dimly lit stairway, which you hope leads immediately to Isabella since you don’t really want to potentially work your way through some catacomb maze. You walk down a few steps and then call out to Isabella. “Isabella?!” you shout. A few seconds later you get a response. “A visitor that knows me? This is a surprise. Your voice doesn’t sound familiar however, so I can only assume someone who knows me must have sent you and I can guess who that might have been.” You hear Isabella call back. “Um, Ral sent me.” You say. “(Sigh) I thought so. He’s too cowardly to face me in person, yet he probably wants something from me. Well come on down, I promise I won’t bite.” You’re still a bit nervous about all this, but this is the task you’ve been given, so down you go. When you get to the bottom, you find a better-lit crypt that is fairly clean all things considered. You see several sturdy coffins lining the walls and you can also smell a faint whiff of some sort of flower. Nobody is here, though you see another entryway, which looks like it leads further into the bowels of this place. “Stay in the foyer! I don’t want you wandering about my home! I’ll be there in a moment.” you hear Isabella shout from that direction. You aren’t kept waiting long when a woman appears from the crypt entryway. Ivory skin and long raven hair, beautiful and young looking though certainly older than you. Isabella is the exact idea of what people have in mind when (and if they bother to) think of a vampire, the only thing that’s missing is the royal or elegant clothes which isn’t wearing. In fact she’s not wearing clothes at all. You might be more inclined to look at her naked body if she weren’t a vampire, but since she is, you aren’t sure what the etiquette is. “Okay, you can stop adverting your eyes, I’m a vampire not a medusa. Besides, you know you want to look anyway.” Well that answers that question. “Well? You going to tell me what Ral wants or are you going to just stare at my tits all night?” Isabella asks. “Is this a trick question?” you ask. “Look, I’m going to give you exactly one minute to tell me what the hell Ral wants or I’m going to start getting angry.” “Apologies, I just wasn’t quite expecting this. Ral wants some of your gray blossom and in exchange he’s given me this, to give to you.” You say and pull out the jar of sprite blood from your pack. Isabella walks over to you and when she’s right in front of you, you feel very anxious as she stares at you. You know Ral said she can’t charm you, but you feel like she’s doing SOMETHING to your mind. She takes the jar from your hand and opens it, giving it a sniff. Her nose turns up and her demeanor becomes more annoyed. “Ugh, what is this shit? Is…is this sprite blood?” she asks. “Yeah, Ral said you liked it.” You say. “Then he’s a forgetful fool or deliberately trying to insult me. I hate sprite, it was brownie blood that I liked! Either way it’s apparent he cares nothing for our time together and just wants something as usual. Biggest mistake in the recent century was going out with him.” While that’s a bit of interesting information, you’re far more concerned about your own ass now that Isabella seems displeased. “Okay, well I guess I’ll just leave and let him know then…” you say. “Wait, where are you going?” Isabella suddenly grabs your arm. It isn’t a hurtful grip, but it is strong and cold. Her expression is predatory and you feel like you’re about to become dinner. Maybe she isn’t able to control your mind, but she’s doing a good enough job of putting fear into you anyway. “I…don’t suppose it wouldn’t do me any good to beg would it?” you ask. “No. However, I can see by this symbol on your arm, you are magically enslaved to Ral and despite him being disrespectful to me, I shall not act in kind and kill you since I know how hard good servants are to come by. I haven’t had one in decades. However, YOU have to make up for Ral’s failings.” Isabella says. “So, what do I need to do? Go collect some brownies?” “Hah, well that would be ideal. But you’d have to travel all the way to Gnarlwood to even find a population of them and even then I doubt you would have the means to even capture one, let alone enough to fill a jar. Not to mention that would take far too long and we need a quicker solution.” “And what would that be?” “You need to go get me dinner and the closest location is Dert obviously.” “So you want me to go bring someone to you?” “Ah, no. Not just anyone. I want you to bring me a child. Girl, boy, doesn’t matter. Youthful blood is always the best when it comes to humans.” While you probably would have had some difficulties even bringing in a regular Dert citizen, you believe you could have justified it if you brought in one that tends to be an asshole towards you every time you visit. But a child? You’re a little hesitant on that request. “I…I um…I’m not sure…” you say. “Why not? If Ral told you he needed you to kill a child you’d do it.” Isabella remarks. “And that’s only because this fucking spell would compel me to, it wouldn’t be like I’d enjoy it.” “Tch. That’s an excuse. You could easily kill yourself rather than kill a child. The geas doesn’t prevent that.” “Can’t you just do it?” “Sure I could, but I’m asking YOU to do it. Now if you want the gray blossom, you’re getting that child for me, although…” Isabella at this point presses her entire body against yours and sniffs you, particularly your neck. “You’re a teenager, so I suppose your blood would do. It doesn’t smell like you’ve been befouling it with a bad diet at least.” “I thought you said you weren’t going to kill me?” “I’m not. I’m just going to drink a little of your blood and I’m not even going to bite you unless you ask me to. I’m giving you an out here. You can either let me feed on you, or go round me up a kid from the village.” “How do I know you won’t just kill me or get so excited that you won’t stop feeding on me?” Isabella chuckles a bit. “You think your blood is going to be just so tasty that I’m going to lose all sense of control? You certainly have a high opinion of yourself! But honestly? You don’t know. But isn’t the mystery of the unknown making it all the more curious for you?” Isabella asks with a cold touch of her hand to your cheek. “Not really.” You say. “Well tough shit, because those are your options.” > You get a child “Okay, okay, I’ll do it. I’ll get a kid.” You say. “Very well, although I was a little curious to see what you tasted like. Now don’t take too long, but then I imagine you won’t be able to anyway, what with your tether and all. Off you go and for your sake you better not make a scene and if you do, you better not lead a peasant mob here!” Isabella remarks. You leave Isabella’s crypt glad that you made it out alive, but with very mixed feelings about what you’ll need to do next. With night having fully fallen now, you expect that most in Dert are going to be in their homes. You try to remember which families have children, because in all your visits to the place, it isn’t like you’ve ever paid much attention to that aspect. After a bit of thought one family comes to mind, middle-aged couple who have a simpleton for a son who has actually bothered you in the past with questions which you believe should make your task a lot easier. You aren’t sure if just breaking in and snatching him in the middle of the night is the way to go though. Maybe you should take the less forceful approach on this since the boy is likely just going to scream out even if he is stupid. You wait a bit longer in the graveyard before making your way to Dert, which by the time you reach it, is just as silent as the graveyard. You sneak about the village until you reach what you think is the right house. After peeping into the open windows, you find that you were correct. The one you’re looking for is asleep on his cheap straw mattress. You can’t remember the boy’s name though, so you just start whispering “boy” to him Eventually you wake the idiot up. “Huh, whut?” the boy answers. “Come on, its time to go.” You say. “Aren’t you herb man? What you doing here?” “Yes, I’m collecting a special kind of herb that only grows at night, but I need help finding it, specifically your help.” You’re sort of winging it here, so you’re just making shit up as you go along and hoping for the best. It isn’t like you have much experience in kidnapping. “But (Yawn) I’m not supposed to go anywhere after night. Mommy and daddy said I’m supposed to be in bed or else I’ll be whipped.” The boy remarks. “It’s okay, I spoke to them already. They said you can help me, now come to the window, I’ll lift you out.” You say. “I dunno…” “Come on, aren’t you always asking me questions about what herbs, roots and flowers I collect for my profession? Come with me and you’ll find out.” “Well…” “Just come on, you can trust me. You see me all the time.” “Okay.” The boy gets up and goes to the window. The little shit is heavier than he looks, but with some effort you lift the boy up and outside. You still can’t remember what his name is. “Where do we go now herb man?” he asks. “Just follow me, and be REALLY quiet.” You say and soon the pair of you making your way out of the village as quick as you can. Naturally as soon as you leave the village though, the boy starts to hesitate. “Um…I’m not supposed to leave the village. Mommy and daddy said…” the boy says. “Look, I said I already talked to them, they said its fine, now come on.” You exclaim “But…but it’s really dark out here and there might be monsters deeper in the woods.” “We’re not going too much farther, just follow me a little more.” “…that way is to the graveyard! I’m not going there!” At this point your patience has worn thin and you’re having difficulties with doing this anyway. Something inside you snaps and you punch the boy in the face! The boy falls to the ground, but he’s tougher than you thought since it doesn’t knock him out. He does start wailing very loudly and running from you as soon as he gets up though. “Shit!” you shout and start chasing him back to the village. You catch up to him fairly quickly, but unfortunately for you, his cries have called the attention of the village, along with his parents who thought they heard noises earlier around their house anyway. As you’re struggling with the boy and punching him in the face a couple more times to shut him up, an angry mob has already formed to lynch a child abductor such as yourself. You abandon your task and just try to get the hell out of there, but several stones thrown at you impede your escape when one hits you in the head doing enough damage to cause you to collapse to the ground. This is all the mob needs in order to catch up to you. No amount of pleading or explanation will appease this mob and they don’t even bother to lynch you anyway, they just stomp you to death as you lay on the ground and then set your battered corpse on fire.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Stealing from a vampire just seems like a bad idea even if you were properly prepared. No, you’re going to follow the rules to the letter on this one. Time passes and eventually the sun starts setting and you begin looking for the secret button on the right wall. As it turns out, this uses up plenty of time because you have a hell of a time finding the damn thing since it’s in a near inaccessible place behind a solid stone sarcophagus. After stretching and reaching for the thing, you hear a click and a section of the floor on the left side opens up. You look down, but only see a dimly lit stairway, which you hope leads immediately to Isabella since you don’t really want to potentially work your way through some catacomb maze. You walk down a few steps and then call out to Isabella. “Isabella?!” you shout. A few seconds later you get a response. “A visitor that knows me? This is a surprise. Your voice doesn’t sound familiar however, so I can only assume someone who knows me must have sent you and I can guess who that might have been.” You hear Isabella call back. “Um, Ral sent me.” You say. “(Sigh) I thought so. He’s too cowardly to face me in person, yet he probably wants something from me. Well come on down, I promise I won’t bite.” You’re still a bit nervous about all this, but this is the task you’ve been given, so down you go. When you get to the bottom, you find a better-lit crypt that is fairly clean all things considered. You see several sturdy coffins lining the walls and you can also smell a faint whiff of some sort of flower. Nobody is here, though you see another entryway, which looks like it leads further into the bowels of this place. “Stay in the foyer! I don’t want you wandering about my home! I’ll be there in a moment.” you hear Isabella shout from that direction. You aren’t kept waiting long when a woman appears from the crypt entryway. Ivory skin and long raven hair, beautiful and young looking though certainly older than you. Isabella is the exact idea of what people have in mind when (and if they bother to) think of a vampire, the only thing that’s missing is the royal or elegant clothes which isn’t wearing. In fact she’s not wearing clothes at all. You might be more inclined to look at her naked body if she weren’t a vampire, but since she is, you aren’t sure what the etiquette is. “Okay, you can stop adverting your eyes, I’m a vampire not a medusa. Besides, you know you want to look anyway.” Well that answers that question. “Well? You going to tell me what Ral wants or are you going to just stare at my tits all night?” Isabella asks. “Is this a trick question?” you ask. “Look, I’m going to give you exactly one minute to tell me what the hell Ral wants or I’m going to start getting angry.” “Apologies, I just wasn’t quite expecting this. Ral wants some of your gray blossom and in exchange he’s given me this, to give to you.” You say and pull out the jar of sprite blood from your pack. Isabella walks over to you and when she’s right in front of you, you feel very anxious as she stares at you. You know Ral said she can’t charm you, but you feel like she’s doing SOMETHING to your mind. She takes the jar from your hand and opens it, giving it a sniff. Her nose turns up and her demeanor becomes more annoyed. “Ugh, what is this shit? Is…is this sprite blood?” she asks. “Yeah, Ral said you liked it.” You say. “Then he’s a forgetful fool or deliberately trying to insult me. I hate sprite, it was brownie blood that I liked! Either way it’s apparent he cares nothing for our time together and just wants something as usual. Biggest mistake in the recent century was going out with him.” While that’s a bit of interesting information, you’re far more concerned about your own ass now that Isabella seems displeased. “Okay, well I guess I’ll just leave and let him know then…” you say. “Wait, where are you going?” Isabella suddenly grabs your arm. It isn’t a hurtful grip, but it is strong and cold. Her expression is predatory and you feel like you’re about to become dinner. Maybe she isn’t able to control your mind, but she’s doing a good enough job of putting fear into you anyway. “I…don’t suppose it wouldn’t do me any good to beg would it?” you ask. “No. However, I can see by this symbol on your arm, you are magically enslaved to Ral and despite him being disrespectful to me, I shall not act in kind and kill you since I know how hard good servants are to come by. I haven’t had one in decades. However, YOU have to make up for Ral’s failings.” Isabella says. “So, what do I need to do? Go collect some brownies?” “Hah, well that would be ideal. But you’d have to travel all the way to Gnarlwood to even find a population of them and even then I doubt you would have the means to even capture one, let alone enough to fill a jar. Not to mention that would take far too long and we need a quicker solution.” “And what would that be?” “You need to go get me dinner and the closest location is Dert obviously.” “So you want me to go bring someone to you?” “Ah, no. Not just anyone. I want you to bring me a child. Girl, boy, doesn’t matter. Youthful blood is always the best when it comes to humans.” While you probably would have had some difficulties even bringing in a regular Dert citizen, you believe you could have justified it if you brought in one that tends to be an asshole towards you every time you visit. But a child? You’re a little hesitant on that request. “I…I um…I’m not sure…” you say. “Why not? If Ral told you he needed you to kill a child you’d do it.” Isabella remarks. “And that’s only because this fucking spell would compel me to, it wouldn’t be like I’d enjoy it.” “Tch. That’s an excuse. You could easily kill yourself rather than kill a child. The geas doesn’t prevent that.” “Can’t you just do it?” “Sure I could, but I’m asking YOU to do it. Now if you want the gray blossom, you’re getting that child for me, although…” Isabella at this point presses her entire body against yours and sniffs you, particularly your neck. “You’re a teenager, so I suppose your blood would do. It doesn’t smell like you’ve been befouling it with a bad diet at least.” “I thought you said you weren’t going to kill me?” “I’m not. I’m just going to drink a little of your blood and I’m not even going to bite you unless you ask me to. I’m giving you an out here. You can either let me feed on you, or go round me up a kid from the village.” “How do I know you won’t just kill me or get so excited that you won’t stop feeding on me?” Isabella chuckles a bit. “You think your blood is going to be just so tasty that I’m going to lose all sense of control? You certainly have a high opinion of yourself! But honestly? You don’t know. But isn’t the mystery of the unknown making it all the more curious for you?” Isabella asks with a cold touch of her hand to your cheek. “Not really.” You say. “Well tough shit, because those are your options.” > You let her bite you “I can’t do it. I mean I’m flexible on a lot of shit, but yeah I just don’t think I can go get a kid for you to chow down on. I mean I’m not judging since I know that’s what you have to do, but I can’t be a part of that.” You say. “Hm, how wonderfully moral of you. So does that mean I have your invitation to bite you?” Isabella asks. “I…I guess so. I’m just going to roll the dice here and hope to Yag that you’re honest.” “Oh I’m honest.” Isabella smiles and at last you see her perfect white teeth complete with the slightly large fangs. You just hope this isn’t the last thing you see. Isabella pushes you up against a wall and presses up against you in a half seductive half predatory fashion. “So…are you ready?” she whispers in your ear. “As much as I can be I suppose.” You answer. “I want to hear you say it. I want you to beg me to penetrate your skin with my teeth and feast upon you like the chattel you are.” Isabella demands. “Wha…what?!” “Say it!” “Okay! Okay! I want your fangs inside me! I want it so badly! Give it to me!” you exclaim. Without another word, Isabella bites down on you and you feel her fangs enter. It hurts at first and then it’s uncomfortable, but after a few seconds of Isabella sucking, you’re starting to just feel weird. It’s kind of sexy really. As she’s doing her thing on you, you start to feel dizzy and light headed. You think you might collapse, but Isabella is holding you up so you don’t fall. Oddly despite believing that you’re very likely going to die, you decide to at least get one thrill out of the situation and wrap your arms around Isabella’s lovely naked body and grab her ass in the process. Then you pass out. The next day you wake up in the middle of the graveyard. Your neck is sore and you’ve got a letter in your hand. You read it soon after you realize you’re not dead. Thank you for a lovely evening. Your blood was quite delicious; I suppose you were right to worry that I may not be able to contain myself, however I resisted much to your relief no doubt. In your pack, you will find several gray blossoms from my garden, I hope Ral finds that adequate because he’s not getting any more from me and you can tell him he’s still an asshole. I have also kept the sprite blood. I don’t like to drink it, but I know of other uses for it. May your servitude to Ral end soon. Isabella P.S. Don’t be a stranger, now that you know the way. A dubious offer to be sure, but at least she seems to like you, or your blood at any rate. It’s a little sad that vampire violation is the best thing that’s happened to you since leaving Teckleville. At least you didn’t kill a kid you suppose and you got to touch a vampire’s ass. So, that’s something. After checking your pack for the gray blossom, you get up off the ground, rub your neck a bit, and set off back towards Ral’s place. When you arrive, Ral is in his lab so you just go lay down since you still feel a bit lightheaded from the blood loss. Eventually Ral finds you. “You’re back. Well?” he asks. “There are a bunch of gray blossoms sitting on the table over there.” You say. Ral looks and goes to gather them. “Hm, didn’t expect to get this much. Guess she really liked the blood.” Ral says. “I’ll say.” You snort. “You didn’t have any trouble?” “Not really. She was very accommodating.” “I am very surprised to hear that.” “Oh, she did tell me to tell you that you’re still an asshole.” “Ah, well that does sound more like her.” Ral, satisfied with your explanation and quite frankly just happy you got him what he sent you to get, takes his leave. You suppose you could have told him the whole story, but would it have even mattered or would he have even cared? No to both. Besides, you figure what happened between you and Isabella was “special” enough that it should just remain between the two of you. > You time passes... Year 19 “…and stay away from my daughter, mage minion!” you hear the angry farmer shout as you run away and still attempting to get your pants back on. You soon make it out of Dert and take a breather. Ever since the citizens of Dert finally realized that you were “working” for Ral, (Nobody ever really bought the herbalist story) their attitude towards you hasn’t gotten any better. If anything they’re even less friendly. Good thing for you they’re a bunch of ignorant cowards at heart because they’re reluctant to just string you up since they think it might draw Ral’s ire somehow. A few even believe you’re magical. You aren’t really going deter that sort of thinking despite the reality that Ral could probably give a shit if you got killed or not. Of course some (like bored wayward farmers’ daughters) find your “mysterious aura” enticing. Another type of thinking you aren’t exactly going to deter either. Still, you probably shouldn’t push your luck. Fear and hesitation can easily be overridden in a quick moment of violence. Then again, it’s not like you’ve got much else to do with your time. You return to Ral’s home and find that he’s actually expecting you AND he doesn’t have a menial task for you for a change. “I need you to go get me a blood gem.” Ral says. “Blood gem? Gee, that sounds like it involves vampires again.” You answer. “No, no, no. There aren’t any vampires this time around, just a lot of sotakians or lizard folk as you might call them.” “Didn’t know there were any sotakians in the area.” “There aren’t, you’ll be going to Sotak Swamp. The sotakians use blood gems in their idols, so just seek out one of those and you should be good.” “Uh, not that I don’t live to serve thanks to the spell that forces me to, but isn’t that pretty far away? I don’t think I’m making it back in a week and that’s if I even knew how to get around there in the first place.” “Don’t worry about that, you’re going to have a guide and you’re going to be teleported to a relatively close to where you need to be. When you get the item and back to the original location, you’ll be teleported back here.” “Hm, well I guess that makes things slightly easier, who is this guide?” Ral points to a small winged being flying in from the next room. You guess he’s a fairy of some sort, but you couldn’t guess what kind. He doesn’t look happy. “This is Tych, your sprite guide. He’ll be able to direct you to where you need to go.” Ral says. “Sprite huh? Weird to see one alive this time rather than just the blood.” You say. “Yes, Tych you could say was most inspired to save his own life when I first encountered him. In return for his servitude rather than death, it was he who gathered twenty of his kind in one place and made that process a whole lot easier.” “Wait, how long has Tych been here and where’s he been? This is the first time I’ve seen him.” “Oh he’s been here maybe about as long as you have and you haven’t seen him because I tend to keep him in my lab where I can keep a better eye on him. Sprites, like most fairy folk tend to be tricksters and Tych in particular is one of the more treacherous of his kind. In fact you may find him to be very friendly towards you since he’ll probably be trying to convince you that you two should work together to escape. I of course advise you not to listen to such nonsense that will only get you into more trouble.” “Great, and you’re sending this little devious bastard to guide me?” “As long as you insist on sticking to the task I’ve given you, he won’t be able to resist helping. So don’t listen to anything else he says and you’ll be fine. Think of it this way, you’re his direct superior and what you say goes.” You’re not sure about this, but as always you have little choice in the matter so you gather up what equipment you believe is going to be useful and return to Ral who says a few words and before you know it, you’re blinded by a flash of light. As you’re still shaking off the effects of temporary blindness, your guide is in no hurry. “Take your time plivik. It’s been awhile since I’ve been outside so I’m going to enjoy every moment we’re out here.” Tych says in a high pitched squeaky voice that almost makes you want to laugh. “Where exactly are we anyway?” you ask finally getting over your condition and finding yourself in new surroundings. “Oh we’re in Gnarlwood Forest, not too far from the border of Sotak Swamp. More specifically we’re in a fairy circle or an old abandoned one at least. Of course even abandoned ones have magic to them, probably why Ral sent me with you too. Makes the teleportation connection easier for him to cast. He’s not nearly as powerful of a wizard as he thinks he is.” “Hm, well he’s still got the pair of us doing his dirty work.” “True plivik, but that won’t last forever. If we work together we’ll be able to overcome his magic that’s binding the both of us to him.” “Oh? How so?” Tych giggles a bit. “Ral has made a big mistake in letting me come back here! We fairy folk as you may know are magical by nature, but I cannot break our magical chains by myself. However, my village isn’t too far from here and it would help the both of us plivik. With their help, Ral’s spell could easily be overcome.” Tych says. “Why would they help me? I’m not a sprite.” You ask. “What does that matter plivik? You’re still a being in need of help. I can see you’re not a bad person, and just like me, you are just forced to serve a bad master. If you tell me to guide you to the other sprites, we can go right now.” “You keep calling me plivik, what does that mean?” “Oh, it’s just a word in my native tongue. Just means friend.” “We’re friends all of a sudden?” “We both don’t like Ral and wish to be free of his chains correct? I’d say that already makes us have enough in common to be friends even if we just met, plivik.” “Ral said you would be friendly towards me to do something underhanded and that I shouldn’t pay any attention to what you have to say unless it directly involves the task.” “Well of course he’s going to say that, plivik. He wants to keep us divided. He also told you that I lead twenty of my people to be ground up into into blood paste. I guarantee that I would never do such a hideous thing even to save my own life! He used a spell to capture us all and it was only by pure luck that he decided to keep me around as a pet to torment. You know he keeps me in a glass jar on his lab desk and shakes it around?” You can see how this is going to go. You’re going to have to play “Who’s the liar?” the whole time during this task. “I think we should stick to the task for now.” You say. “Oh I understand your hesitation. How about this, we go get the blood gem first and when we return here then you can decide to return to Ral or go to the sprite community I mentioned. That should give you time to decide whether I’m trustworthy or not. Just think about it okay?” Tych says. “Hm, I suppose that’s reasonable.” “Great! Now let’s get this task underway then.” Tych goes on to tell you due to his own capture, he’s hoping that his information about the area is still the same. He tells you that from your position he knows that there should be a sotakian place of worship within a day’s walk. “Now if we head north and then west there’s a clearer path to where we need to get to. We’re going to have to be careful to avoid elven patrols though. Just hope they aren’t on heightened alert because that’s going to make sneaking around a lot harder.” Tych says. “I don’t suppose the fact that we’re planning on desecrating one of their enemy’s idols would make them friendly?” you say. “A good idea, but it wouldn’t make any difference. Elves are a bunch of territorial assholes. They think EVERYTHING in Gnarlwood forest is under their control. As a human, you’d still be seen as an interloper and most likely killed. And as for me, well let’s just say it wouldn’t be much better than Ral’s magical enslavement.” “Sounds like it would just be easier to immediately go west and bypass the patrols.” “You would think that, but chances are it would take just as long due to all the high marshes and sinking bogs in the area. That’s not even counting whatever creatures are lurking there. Not even the sotakians make their homes that way and consider it sacred ground due to the daquala population in the area.” “Wait, what’s a daquala?” “Oh, they’re a creature about the size of one of your dogs but a whole lot more vicious and meaner. They can also camouflage themselves to practically be invisible. However, I don’t think they would necessarily be a problem, they tend to sleep a lot and most of them should be hibernating this time of year. You’re more likely to get swallowed by quicksand or a giant swamp serpent honestly. Still, I suppose if we got lucky it would cut our time by half. Up to you, plivik.” > You go through the swamp Either way sounds dangerous, but if one way is going to be quicker, you might as well take that one though you have one major concern. “You sure these daquala things are hibernating?” you ask. “As I said, most of them probably are this time of year, but that’s not certain. I still say the quicksand and sinkholes are more of a hazard, since I’m going to be able to tell you if daqualas are in the area. Their camouflage doesn’t work so well against Sprite eyes.” Tych remarks. “Good, then you keep a look out for those things and let me worry about where I step.” “Very well plivik.” Before you set off, you break off a piece of a low hanging branch so you at least have a good sized piece of wood to test solid ground with. Doesn’t take too long before you and Tych get to the edge of the forest where the ground is starting to become more noticeably wet and softer. You start using the branch as well as relying on Tych to scout ahead. Tych goes on to say, he’s fairly certain that there is a smaller sotakian village if you keep heading west. He also mentions that it should still have some sort of idol since the sotakians are pretty serious about their worship. As you and Tych travel through the swamp, you find that Tych is a bit overly talkative in general. He even acknowledges that he is, but he’s just so happy to talk to ANYONE who isn’t Ral. Most of his talk concerns Gnarlwood and Sotak swamp and how elves are a bunch of assholes, so it isn’t completely useless banter though you’re more concerned with his chatter calling attention to you what with the invisible monsters possibly around. “Hey look, while I get that you like to talk, I also like to live. I’m already not happy about being ankle deep in water, so cut with the chatter and keep an eye out for those invisible things or whatever your magical pixie eyes show you.” You snap. “Pixie? I’m fucking sprite, not a fucking pixie you fucking plivik!” Tych angrily responds. “…fucking friend…what? Wait a minute, what does plivik REALLY mean?!” “Take a guess asshole! Fucking pixie…” “Alright! Alright! I fucking apologize! Shit, I didn’t realize there was that much of a damn difference!” Tych sputters for a moment, as he’s too angry to even speak about your ignorance on the matter. “There are a shitload of differences!” he exclaims. “Well how would I know, both of you guys are tiny and fly around with your little wings right?” you say. “How would you like it if I called you an orc instead of a human because to me you’re both big, ugly and stomp around on your feet because you’re not blessed enough to even have wings in the first place?!” “Ah, but orcs are green and that’s a very obvious difference!” “And pixies have less shiny wings! Have you even SEEN a pixie? They’re not as pretty as we are and live around fucking fungus! If they didn’t have wings they’d be as low as brownies!” “Okay, keep your voice down, you’re getting all excited and the whole point I was trying to make in the first place was for you to shut the hell up.” “No! I’m not going to shut the hell up when it comes to…” And then right before your eyes, you see the side of a large reptilian face pass right in front of you as it swallows Tych whole. The rest of its long legless body follows as it splashes back into the water. It might not have been a daquala, but Tych did mention large water serpents in the area. The serpent makes a second pass and while you block with the branch you have, you still get knocked down. Now that you’re in a more prone position, he serpent attempts to coil around you. You pull out your short sword at this point and give it a few hacks, which is enough to cause it to swim away though you aren’t entirely sure if it’s gone. Not like the water is transparent enough to see through given how muddy it is. You stand up and make your way out of the area as quick as you can. You dropped your branch somewhere in the water when you got knocked over and with Tych dead, you try to go back the way you came because you certainly aren’t going to be able to navigate through the swamps this way. Your only hope is get back to the forest and follow the road into the swamp and hopefully from there you’ll be able to find a better path to a lizard village. This isn’t a good situation. And of course it only gets worse when it gets darker and you’re jumping at every unfamiliar sound thinking that it’s some beast ready to pounce. Naturally you end up going thigh deep into mud thanks to being preoccupied. You curse and struggle at first until you remember that you’re not supposed to struggle when in this situation. Of course you’re waist high by the time you remember. You stop struggling and try to find something solid to grab on to so you can pull yourself out. For once you get lucky and manage to slowly drag and twist yourself so you can grab ahold of a rotten stump. “Okay. Okay. I can get out of this…” you say to yourself. It takes awhile and sometimes it feels like you’re being pulled in deeper by some force other than just nature, but eventually you make it and drag yourself out. You’re soaking wet, muddy and tired, but you’re out. “Shit…thank Yag…damn…” you pant. Not wishing to be in this part of swamp by the time its pitch dark, you get up using the stump once again as leverage, along with a nearby soft rock. Soft rock? And that when you find out your left hand was not on a “soft rock” at all, but a sleeping daquala who completely drops the camouflage when you wake it up. It’s so quick that you don’t quite see what it really looks like except that it has many teeth. Many MANY sharp teeth.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 19 “…and stay away from my daughter, mage minion!” you hear the angry farmer shout as you run away and still attempting to get your pants back on. You soon make it out of Dert and take a breather. Ever since the citizens of Dert finally realized that you were “working” for Ral, (Nobody ever really bought the herbalist story) their attitude towards you hasn’t gotten any better. If anything they’re even less friendly. Good thing for you they’re a bunch of ignorant cowards at heart because they’re reluctant to just string you up since they think it might draw Ral’s ire somehow. A few even believe you’re magical. You aren’t really going deter that sort of thinking despite the reality that Ral could probably give a shit if you got killed or not. Of course some (like bored wayward farmers’ daughters) find your “mysterious aura” enticing. Another type of thinking you aren’t exactly going to deter either. Still, you probably shouldn’t push your luck. Fear and hesitation can easily be overridden in a quick moment of violence. Then again, it’s not like you’ve got much else to do with your time. You return to Ral’s home and find that he’s actually expecting you AND he doesn’t have a menial task for you for a change. “I need you to go get me a blood gem.” Ral says. “Blood gem? Gee, that sounds like it involves vampires again.” You answer. “No, no, no. There aren’t any vampires this time around, just a lot of sotakians or lizard folk as you might call them.” “Didn’t know there were any sotakians in the area.” “There aren’t, you’ll be going to Sotak Swamp. The sotakians use blood gems in their idols, so just seek out one of those and you should be good.” “Uh, not that I don’t live to serve thanks to the spell that forces me to, but isn’t that pretty far away? I don’t think I’m making it back in a week and that’s if I even knew how to get around there in the first place.” “Don’t worry about that, you’re going to have a guide and you’re going to be teleported to a relatively close to where you need to be. When you get the item and back to the original location, you’ll be teleported back here.” “Hm, well I guess that makes things slightly easier, who is this guide?” Ral points to a small winged being flying in from the next room. You guess he’s a fairy of some sort, but you couldn’t guess what kind. He doesn’t look happy. “This is Tych, your sprite guide. He’ll be able to direct you to where you need to go.” Ral says. “Sprite huh? Weird to see one alive this time rather than just the blood.” You say. “Yes, Tych you could say was most inspired to save his own life when I first encountered him. In return for his servitude rather than death, it was he who gathered twenty of his kind in one place and made that process a whole lot easier.” “Wait, how long has Tych been here and where’s he been? This is the first time I’ve seen him.” “Oh he’s been here maybe about as long as you have and you haven’t seen him because I tend to keep him in my lab where I can keep a better eye on him. Sprites, like most fairy folk tend to be tricksters and Tych in particular is one of the more treacherous of his kind. In fact you may find him to be very friendly towards you since he’ll probably be trying to convince you that you two should work together to escape. I of course advise you not to listen to such nonsense that will only get you into more trouble.” “Great, and you’re sending this little devious bastard to guide me?” “As long as you insist on sticking to the task I’ve given you, he won’t be able to resist helping. So don’t listen to anything else he says and you’ll be fine. Think of it this way, you’re his direct superior and what you say goes.” You’re not sure about this, but as always you have little choice in the matter so you gather up what equipment you believe is going to be useful and return to Ral who says a few words and before you know it, you’re blinded by a flash of light. As you’re still shaking off the effects of temporary blindness, your guide is in no hurry. “Take your time plivik. It’s been awhile since I’ve been outside so I’m going to enjoy every moment we’re out here.” Tych says in a high pitched squeaky voice that almost makes you want to laugh. “Where exactly are we anyway?” you ask finally getting over your condition and finding yourself in new surroundings. “Oh we’re in Gnarlwood Forest, not too far from the border of Sotak Swamp. More specifically we’re in a fairy circle or an old abandoned one at least. Of course even abandoned ones have magic to them, probably why Ral sent me with you too. Makes the teleportation connection easier for him to cast. He’s not nearly as powerful of a wizard as he thinks he is.” “Hm, well he’s still got the pair of us doing his dirty work.” “True plivik, but that won’t last forever. If we work together we’ll be able to overcome his magic that’s binding the both of us to him.” “Oh? How so?” Tych giggles a bit. “Ral has made a big mistake in letting me come back here! We fairy folk as you may know are magical by nature, but I cannot break our magical chains by myself. However, my village isn’t too far from here and it would help the both of us plivik. With their help, Ral’s spell could easily be overcome.” Tych says. “Why would they help me? I’m not a sprite.” You ask. “What does that matter plivik? You’re still a being in need of help. I can see you’re not a bad person, and just like me, you are just forced to serve a bad master. If you tell me to guide you to the other sprites, we can go right now.” “You keep calling me plivik, what does that mean?” “Oh, it’s just a word in my native tongue. Just means friend.” “We’re friends all of a sudden?” “We both don’t like Ral and wish to be free of his chains correct? I’d say that already makes us have enough in common to be friends even if we just met, plivik.” “Ral said you would be friendly towards me to do something underhanded and that I shouldn’t pay any attention to what you have to say unless it directly involves the task.” “Well of course he’s going to say that, plivik. He wants to keep us divided. He also told you that I lead twenty of my people to be ground up into into blood paste. I guarantee that I would never do such a hideous thing even to save my own life! He used a spell to capture us all and it was only by pure luck that he decided to keep me around as a pet to torment. You know he keeps me in a glass jar on his lab desk and shakes it around?” You can see how this is going to go. You’re going to have to play “Who’s the liar?” the whole time during this task. “I think we should stick to the task for now.” You say. “Oh I understand your hesitation. How about this, we go get the blood gem first and when we return here then you can decide to return to Ral or go to the sprite community I mentioned. That should give you time to decide whether I’m trustworthy or not. Just think about it okay?” Tych says. “Hm, I suppose that’s reasonable.” “Great! Now let’s get this task underway then.” Tych goes on to tell you due to his own capture, he’s hoping that his information about the area is still the same. He tells you that from your position he knows that there should be a sotakian place of worship within a day’s walk. “Now if we head north and then west there’s a clearer path to where we need to get to. We’re going to have to be careful to avoid elven patrols though. Just hope they aren’t on heightened alert because that’s going to make sneaking around a lot harder.” Tych says. “I don’t suppose the fact that we’re planning on desecrating one of their enemy’s idols would make them friendly?” you say. “A good idea, but it wouldn’t make any difference. Elves are a bunch of territorial assholes. They think EVERYTHING in Gnarlwood forest is under their control. As a human, you’d still be seen as an interloper and most likely killed. And as for me, well let’s just say it wouldn’t be much better than Ral’s magical enslavement.” “Sounds like it would just be easier to immediately go west and bypass the patrols.” “You would think that, but chances are it would take just as long due to all the high marshes and sinking bogs in the area. That’s not even counting whatever creatures are lurking there. Not even the sotakians make their homes that way and consider it sacred ground due to the daquala population in the area.” “Wait, what’s a daquala?” “Oh, they’re a creature about the size of one of your dogs but a whole lot more vicious and meaner. They can also camouflage themselves to practically be invisible. However, I don’t think they would necessarily be a problem, they tend to sleep a lot and most of them should be hibernating this time of year. You’re more likely to get swallowed by quicksand or a giant swamp serpent honestly. Still, I suppose if we got lucky it would cut our time by half. Up to you, plivik.” > You take the forest path While you’re going to have to stomp through the swamps eventually, if you can avoid the areas that contain vicious invisible beasts that would probably be better for your survival. “Okay, we’ll take the long way.” You say. “Probably for the best.” Tych remarks. As you and Tych travel through the forest, you find that Tych is overly talkative. He even acknowledges that he is, but he’s just so happy to talk to ANYONE who isn’t Ral. Most of his talk concerns Gnarlwood and Sotak swamp, so it isn’t completely useless banter though you’re more concerned with his chatter calling attention to you. He has much to criticize when it comes to elves and says it was they who started the war with the sotakians in the first place. And ever since that point, now everyone else who lives in Gnarlwood forest that was more or less minding their own business has to deal with the consequences. “The sotakians were perfectly content on staying in their swamps before the elves pushed them. The sotakians would just take a few elves every now and then for their primitive sacrifices, it wasn’t personal and the sotakians never tried to encroach on their territory.” Tych says. “I can’t imagine WHY the elves would take that badly.” You reply. “It isn’t like the elves couldn’t afford to lose a few of their number given how much they rut with each other. Not to mention as I said, elves are a bunch of territorial assholes. They just used their war as an excuse to try to lord it over the rest of us that live in Gnarlwood. Demanding tribute, conscripting us to help them. Nevermind the fact that the rest of us don’t have problem with the sotakians. A bunch of degenerate hedonistic imperialist assholes is what they are.” “Interesting. Elves generally don’t have that reputation of being particularly interested in conquest, well other than the sexual kind I suppose. I dunno, I haven’t really run into many save for passing by a few aggressive whores in Holgard.” “Hm, well luckily for you humans, you’ve already established your dominance in this land. If you were in lesser numbers, the elves would be trying to conquer you lot as well. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the elves hadn’t sent out their people to go purposely mate with humans and other races to create more half breeds in the world.” “What would they gain by that?” “Spies of course! Half elves would make excellent spies to gather information about the rest of the world and human governments in particular. Mark my words plivik, there will come a day when elves will try to pull their bullshit on humanity. I know you humans already tend to be foolishly entranced by their superficial looks. Ugh, dunno how anyone could find those freaks attractive.” Yep, Tych certainly has strong opinions on elves. Most of your journey is uneventful and despite Tych’s ranting. Eventually you do get weary of the sprite’s squeaks and tell him to keep it down. Tych apologizes and complies. As night begins to fall, you decide to camp for the night so once again you find yourself a tree you can climb up and reasonably sleep in. “What are you doing, plivik?” Tych asks as you climb up a tree. “Maybe you sprites can see in the dark, but I can’t unfortunately. Not to mention I need to get some rest if I’m going to go steal the eyes from sacred sotakian statues tomorrow.” You respond. “Hm, I suppose you’re right. Very well my wings could use a rest too and it’ll be nice to sleep outside rather than a glass jar for a change. (Sigh) Just wish I could sleep with my beloved Gink tonight. Even the sight of her would be most welcome.” “You’re married?” “You surprised? Though I’m not married in the way that you probably are thinking. There was no lavish ceremony like you big legs seem to like to have. Gink and I just bonded under the moon in private and made our commitment statements to each other. We’re the only ones that matter, so why all the need for a crowd to watch?” “Makes sense to me actually.” “What about you?” “What about me what?” “Do you have someone?” “No. I mean I had someone for a few months, but it didn’t last…anyway I wasn’t married and honestly it’s not something I’ve ever thought about. Especially not now.” “Yes, I suppose our predicament would put other concerns first. Remember though, it doesn’t have to be that way.” Tych flits away and goes off to find a soft leaf to sleep on. You remain awake for a little while wondering if Tych is lying about everything, telling half truths, or being completely honest. Eventually you fall asleep. Later you wake up to Tych’s squeaky voice. “Wake up! Wake up, plivik! Elves are in the area and they’re on the move!” “Huh? What? Here? Now? I didn’t even hear anything!” you respond, suddenly waking up and catching yourself before you fall. “Well no, they aren’t right here under us plivik, but close enough! I woke up early and did a little scouting north. There are a bunch of them marching down that well trodden path that leads into the swamp. It looks like a war party.” “So are they going to attack a lizard village?” “I would imagine so.” “I guess taking the path is completely off the table now.” “It is until they clear the area which might be awhile.” “Do you know what village they’re going to attack? Were we heading in that direction?” “I actually did hear some of their conversation and they’re striking the closest one on the border and fully intend on wiping it out. I think I know which one that is and it’s a fairly large one. Makes sense that they would send so many soldiers. Our destination was going to be a little to the southwest when we reached the swamp. A smaller village that was further in the swamp.” “Would both of them contain idols?” “Well the sotakians are pretty religious, and they usually have one somewhere in their villages, why?” “I’m just wondering if instead of me trying to sneak around a lizard village by myself that maybe I shouldn’t just shadow the war party and snatch the gems from a village that’s going to be raided instead.” Tych gives you a concerned look. “I don’t know plivik, that sounds pretty risky. As I said, the elves are likely to attack you as well.” Tych says. “You’re probably right, if only because they’re going to wonder what the hell I’m doing there, but lizards are still going to be their primary targets. At least if I get seen, there’s going to be enough distraction on both sides that I might avoid getting targeted. If I get caught in the other village, it’s just going to be me by myself surrounded by lizards and I don’t expect you’d be much help.” You respond. “Way to have confidence in me, plivik. I’ll have you know I can fly about the other village without causing any attention and give you a run down on how to best approach the place. Certainly seems safer than what you’re proposing.” “Hmm, okay, we’ll go with your idea again.” “It is the safer course I assure you, plivik. I am also happy that you have so much trust in me.” Tych responds. “I’m just hoping I don’t regret it.” Since you’re intending on going with the original plan, Tych says that he’s going to go back to watch the elven war party and let you know when the path is clear. He suggests that even when they do finally all pass by, it would probably still be best to keep off the path proper and just follow the general direction of it until you get to the swamp. From there he’ll once again guide the way and scout ahead. As Tych takes his leave, you sit back and wait. You sort of feel like you haven’t been doing much on this task, though you suppose Tych IS your guide so it makes sense that he’s doing most of the work to get you to your destination. You don’t know how long you wait, but it’s enough that you end up going back to sleep for a little while. The second time Tych wakes you isn’t quite as jarring. Having been given the all-clear reassurance, you climb down from the tree and follow Tych as he leads you into the Sotak swamp. The swamp is about like what you imagined, it’s muggy, very wet and filled with a lot of little biting and stinging insects. (Though in Tych’s case, they aren’t all that small and he tends to perch on your shoulder for most of the way) You don’t encounter anything too bad; save for a couple of the larger reptilian predators (Tych says they’re crocomoths) and in both cases they’re busily feasting on something else and you slip by unnoticed. Despite you practically being up to your knees in muddy water you’re making good time all things considered and then that’s when you hear a faint sounds in the distance coming from the north. Sounds like a horn. You walk a few more minutes and that’s when you begin to hear a lot of splashing, several voices shouting and heading in your direction from the south and getting closer by the second. “Those must be sotakians!” Tych says. “Shit, I just realized, that horn sound we heard was probably was some alarm from that other village getting attacked. There’s probably going to be a shitload of lizards heading our way!” you say. “We have to hide!” Tych at this point does exactly that and flies away! Whether he’s completely left you or not is irrelevant because all that matters now is you finding your own hiding spot. You don’t know how many are heading in your direction and how spread out they are, but all you can do is hope you stay out of their sight. > You hide in some tall reeds Hiding underwater holds the danger of drowning on top of getting stepped on and getting discovered. You’ll take your chances with tall reeds and hope for the best. You run to the left and hide in a thick clump of reeds getting as low as you possibly can without actually being completely submerged. You keep your weapon ready as you hear the splashing of several bodies heading your direction. You expect one of those lizards to suddenly stumble upon you at any time. You only hope you kill him so quickly that none of his fellows notice. Unfortunately, you’re paying so much attention to if the lizards are going to stumble upon you, you don’t notice the nearby snake nest that you’ve stumbled into. You suddenly feel several small piecing bites in your flesh. This causes you to jump up and yell involuntarily as you quickly try to get the colorful little snakes off of you. Of course this then calls the attention of not just one, but several lizards who were running by at the time. They notice you and after a few hisses and something in a language you don’t understand, three of them move in to attack you while the rest continue their other mission of defending their settlement. Besides outnumbering you, the lizards are bigger than you and probably faster than you in this sort of environment. They’re also most definitely better warriors than you. However, none of that really matters because you’re currently in no condition to fight or flee from the sotakians. Whatever type of snakes those were, they were highly poisonous and you just got bit by several of them. By the time one of the lizards even reaches your position, you’ve fallen to the ground vomiting, your heart beating much to fast, and you feel like the interior of your body is on fire. Your eyes roll in the back of your head and then you lose complete consciousness before dying face down in muddy water.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While you’re going to have to stomp through the swamps eventually, if you can avoid the areas that contain vicious invisible beasts that would probably be better for your survival. “Okay, we’ll take the long way.” You say. “Probably for the best.” Tych remarks. As you and Tych travel through the forest, you find that Tych is overly talkative. He even acknowledges that he is, but he’s just so happy to talk to ANYONE who isn’t Ral. Most of his talk concerns Gnarlwood and Sotak swamp, so it isn’t completely useless banter though you’re more concerned with his chatter calling attention to you. He has much to criticize when it comes to elves and says it was they who started the war with the sotakians in the first place. And ever since that point, now everyone else who lives in Gnarlwood forest that was more or less minding their own business has to deal with the consequences. “The sotakians were perfectly content on staying in their swamps before the elves pushed them. The sotakians would just take a few elves every now and then for their primitive sacrifices, it wasn’t personal and the sotakians never tried to encroach on their territory.” Tych says. “I can’t imagine WHY the elves would take that badly.” You reply. “It isn’t like the elves couldn’t afford to lose a few of their number given how much they rut with each other. Not to mention as I said, elves are a bunch of territorial assholes. They just used their war as an excuse to try to lord it over the rest of us that live in Gnarlwood. Demanding tribute, conscripting us to help them. Nevermind the fact that the rest of us don’t have problem with the sotakians. A bunch of degenerate hedonistic imperialist assholes is what they are.” “Interesting. Elves generally don’t have that reputation of being particularly interested in conquest, well other than the sexual kind I suppose. I dunno, I haven’t really run into many save for passing by a few aggressive whores in Holgard.” “Hm, well luckily for you humans, you’ve already established your dominance in this land. If you were in lesser numbers, the elves would be trying to conquer you lot as well. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the elves hadn’t sent out their people to go purposely mate with humans and other races to create more half breeds in the world.” “What would they gain by that?” “Spies of course! Half elves would make excellent spies to gather information about the rest of the world and human governments in particular. Mark my words plivik, there will come a day when elves will try to pull their bullshit on humanity. I know you humans already tend to be foolishly entranced by their superficial looks. Ugh, dunno how anyone could find those freaks attractive.” Yep, Tych certainly has strong opinions on elves. Most of your journey is uneventful and despite Tych’s ranting. Eventually you do get weary of the sprite’s squeaks and tell him to keep it down. Tych apologizes and complies. As night begins to fall, you decide to camp for the night so once again you find yourself a tree you can climb up and reasonably sleep in. “What are you doing, plivik?” Tych asks as you climb up a tree. “Maybe you sprites can see in the dark, but I can’t unfortunately. Not to mention I need to get some rest if I’m going to go steal the eyes from sacred sotakian statues tomorrow.” You respond. “Hm, I suppose you’re right. Very well my wings could use a rest too and it’ll be nice to sleep outside rather than a glass jar for a change. (Sigh) Just wish I could sleep with my beloved Gink tonight. Even the sight of her would be most welcome.” “You’re married?” “You surprised? Though I’m not married in the way that you probably are thinking. There was no lavish ceremony like you big legs seem to like to have. Gink and I just bonded under the moon in private and made our commitment statements to each other. We’re the only ones that matter, so why all the need for a crowd to watch?” “Makes sense to me actually.” “What about you?” “What about me what?” “Do you have someone?” “No. I mean I had someone for a few months, but it didn’t last…anyway I wasn’t married and honestly it’s not something I’ve ever thought about. Especially not now.” “Yes, I suppose our predicament would put other concerns first. Remember though, it doesn’t have to be that way.” Tych flits away and goes off to find a soft leaf to sleep on. You remain awake for a little while wondering if Tych is lying about everything, telling half truths, or being completely honest. Eventually you fall asleep. Later you wake up to Tych’s squeaky voice. “Wake up! Wake up, plivik! Elves are in the area and they’re on the move!” “Huh? What? Here? Now? I didn’t even hear anything!” you respond, suddenly waking up and catching yourself before you fall. “Well no, they aren’t right here under us plivik, but close enough! I woke up early and did a little scouting north. There are a bunch of them marching down that well trodden path that leads into the swamp. It looks like a war party.” “So are they going to attack a lizard village?” “I would imagine so.” “I guess taking the path is completely off the table now.” “It is until they clear the area which might be awhile.” “Do you know what village they’re going to attack? Were we heading in that direction?” “I actually did hear some of their conversation and they’re striking the closest one on the border and fully intend on wiping it out. I think I know which one that is and it’s a fairly large one. Makes sense that they would send so many soldiers. Our destination was going to be a little to the southwest when we reached the swamp. A smaller village that was further in the swamp.” “Would both of them contain idols?” “Well the sotakians are pretty religious, and they usually have one somewhere in their villages, why?” “I’m just wondering if instead of me trying to sneak around a lizard village by myself that maybe I shouldn’t just shadow the war party and snatch the gems from a village that’s going to be raided instead.” Tych gives you a concerned look. “I don’t know plivik, that sounds pretty risky. As I said, the elves are likely to attack you as well.” Tych says. “You’re probably right, if only because they’re going to wonder what the hell I’m doing there, but lizards are still going to be their primary targets. At least if I get seen, there’s going to be enough distraction on both sides that I might avoid getting targeted. If I get caught in the other village, it’s just going to be me by myself surrounded by lizards and I don’t expect you’d be much help.” You respond. “Way to have confidence in me, plivik. I’ll have you know I can fly about the other village without causing any attention and give you a run down on how to best approach the place. Certainly seems safer than what you’re proposing.” “Hmm, okay, we’ll go with your idea again.” “It is the safer course I assure you, plivik. I am also happy that you have so much trust in me.” Tych responds. “I’m just hoping I don’t regret it.” Since you’re intending on going with the original plan, Tych says that he’s going to go back to watch the elven war party and let you know when the path is clear. He suggests that even when they do finally all pass by, it would probably still be best to keep off the path proper and just follow the general direction of it until you get to the swamp. From there he’ll once again guide the way and scout ahead. As Tych takes his leave, you sit back and wait. You sort of feel like you haven’t been doing much on this task, though you suppose Tych IS your guide so it makes sense that he’s doing most of the work to get you to your destination. You don’t know how long you wait, but it’s enough that you end up going back to sleep for a little while. The second time Tych wakes you isn’t quite as jarring. Having been given the all-clear reassurance, you climb down from the tree and follow Tych as he leads you into the Sotak swamp. The swamp is about like what you imagined, it’s muggy, very wet and filled with a lot of little biting and stinging insects. (Though in Tych’s case, they aren’t all that small and he tends to perch on your shoulder for most of the way) You don’t encounter anything too bad; save for a couple of the larger reptilian predators (Tych says they’re crocomoths) and in both cases they’re busily feasting on something else and you slip by unnoticed. Despite you practically being up to your knees in muddy water you’re making good time all things considered and then that’s when you hear a faint sounds in the distance coming from the north. Sounds like a horn. You walk a few more minutes and that’s when you begin to hear a lot of splashing, several voices shouting and heading in your direction from the south and getting closer by the second. “Those must be sotakians!” Tych says. “Shit, I just realized, that horn sound we heard was probably was some alarm from that other village getting attacked. There’s probably going to be a shitload of lizards heading our way!” you say. “We have to hide!” Tych at this point does exactly that and flies away! Whether he’s completely left you or not is irrelevant because all that matters now is you finding your own hiding spot. You don’t know how many are heading in your direction and how spread out they are, but all you can do is hope you stay out of their sight. > You hide underwater You quickly grab one of the many reeds nearby, break it and put it in your mouth as you sink underneath the muddy water you’ve been stomping through. You just hope that YOU don’t get stomped on. Getting trampled on by multiple lizard feet would be a pretty ignoble death. Of course this isn’t even counting whatever the hell might be lurking under the water ready to swim into your ear and lay eggs in your brain. (You have an overactive imagination sometimes) You lay on the muddy swamp floor, trying to make yourself as small as possible. Doesn’t take long before you hear the sounds of lizards shouting their incomprehensible language and running past you, though it’s very muted and garbled due to you being underwater. Despite the water being muddy and your sight getting blurred in the process, you do see a couple of large looming figures run past from your prone position. A couple of the sotakian’s taloned feet stomp near you. One right near your head, but you get lucky and none of them actually step or trip over you. Still, you aren’t sure if all of them have passed so you’re reluctant to move, fortunately Tych returns and flies near your reed. You can’t quite make out what he’s saying, but you think you see him waving his arms like an “all clear” signal, so you sit up out of the water and catch a good breath. “That was quite the bit of quick thinking, plivik.” Tych remarks. “Are they all gone?” you ask in between breaths. “Yes, I believe so, quite a lot of them actually. From above, I could see them spread out all over the nearby area, you got very lucky. I doubt if running to the left or right would have escaped their gaze.” “Where did you go?” “As I said plivik, I just flew straight up until they passed. Are you surprised? You already claimed I wouldn’t be useful in a fight.” “Yeah I suppose not. Actually with that many, pretty sure I’d be dead as well.” “Glad you’re not holding a grudge plivik. In any case, our destination should be a whole lot manageable to deal with now. I suspect only a few sotakians remain in the village so your job should be easier. I will still scout the village to let you know the best approach of course.” You’re really hoping that will be the case, because as sopping wet as you are now, you’re not exactly in the highest spirits and are eager to get this shitty task over with. You and Tych make your way to your destination and sure enough the sotakian village is fairly empty. There are still a few lizards around and sure enough a couple of them are guarding a big lizard statue in the center of the village with blood gems for eyes. Fortunately Tych also mentions that there are some bamboo cages with elves in them. He says they look miserable and in terrible condition (he mentions that pretty gleefully), but he thinks if they got free, they’d certainly try to make a run for it. So that’s your plan, you’re going to create a distraction by releasing the prisoners. You cautiously approach the village and sneak around the huts, hoping that none of the little lizard children wandering around suddenly stumble upon you. When you get to the cages, Tych wasn’t kidding about the elves. They look like they might have been in here for weeks and they’re skinny even for elves. However, when they see you, they take notice, but say nothing. You reinforce this by putting your fingers to your lips and then working on the lock. The lock itself isn’t even metal, its’ a simple latch mechanism that can easily be opened from the outside, so it’s child’s play to you. The prisoners looks so thankful and a couple even whisper a few things that you don’t understand in their native tongue, but you assume its some sort of thankful. They all start to make their way out and then that’s when you nod to Tych and get out of the immediate vicinity. Tych flies over to the sotakians and begins shouting at them and pointing over in the direction of their prisoners. The sotakians are a bit confused at first by some sprite yelling at them and would probably swat him down, but when they look to where Tych is pointing, they find their escaped prisoners a lot more important to chase down. The lizards guarding the statue, along with most of the others chase after the prisoners who are now running for their lives. With the village nearly completely empty of any warriors of any kind, you make a dash to the statue and begin prying out its eyes. While you’re not exactly slow in this task, you’re certainly not fast enough to escape completely unnoticed, especially since there are still lizard children and a few mothers (At least you’re assuming the remaining adults might be female, you can’t tell) still in the village and notice your desecration. They begin hissing and converging on your position. With the gems in your possession, you pull out your sword and begin making a hasty retreat out of this accursed swamp. Lizard children might be small, but they still have a full set of sharp teeth and piercing talons. They’re fairly fast too, especially since they’re used to this environment. You have no choice but to cut a couple of the little scalies down in your escape, but not before they lay in some good bites and claw slashes on your arms and legs. It’s probably only because of these casualties, that they stop pursuing you as the rest of them get scared and the mothers wish to keep the rest of their broods safe. (You hear some odd wailing noises behind you) Eventually you put a lot of distance between you and the village. You sort of lost him again in all the mayhem, but you soon find out that Tych is never far from your position. “Whew! That got intense! I almost thought you weren’t going to make it plivik, with all those sotakian children trying to eat you.” Tych says. “I didn’t think I was for a moment.” You answer taking a breather. “This might be a weird question, but do you feel bad for killing sotakian children?” “What?!” “I mean I know it was a matter of life and death, but still…” “Damn right it was a matter of life and death! I didn’t enjoy it if that’s what you’re asking, but then I didn’t exactly have time to worry about the moralities of killing little scaly children either, who I might add were probably more dangerous than typical wild predator. Felt like I was getting attacked by a pack of animals rather than anything with higher intelligence what with all the growling, hissing, biting and tearing.” “Apologies plivik, I just sort of wanted to know what kind of person you were. Just as you weren’t completely sure about me, I also wasn’t completely sure about you. I am glad to see you are a person that doesn’t enjoy killing even if you are pragmatic by nature. It would have made me hesitant to take you back to my village even if I do desire freedom.” “Hold on, who said anything about going back to your village? We got the gems, we’re going back to Ral’s.” “You still don’t trust me, after all we’ve been through, plivik? Don’t you want freedom? All we have to do is go back to my village and we can be free of Ral’s spell! I can even lead you safely out of this forest and have you back on your way to Holgard or whatever other human settlement you had in mind to go to. And you could even think of those blood gems as your reward for this whole shitty experience. Those have to be worth quite a bit. Not like they’re common.” “Why don’t we just get out of this fucking swamp before I think anymore about this okay?” “Very well plivik.” Tych shuts up for awhile and the pair of you make your way back. You feel like once you’re out of the swamp, the worst of this will be behind you. You have some concerns about potentially bumping into more lizards or even elves, but Tych is fairly confident that won’t be the case. “The sotakians barely ever retreat and especially not on their own territory. Also, the lot that came from the other village will have probably cut off the elves from any sort of escape. Those stupid pliviks are going to be completely massacred. Elves deserve what they get. I hope the sotakians also hunted down those other ones and recaptured them.” Tych remarks. Strange that Tych should be so concerned with your possible enjoyment of killing when he himself obviously gets a lot of pleasure from elven suffering. You get the real impression that elves must have done more to him than he’s already said. It’s the only explanation for his sadistic hatred. When you make it back to the forest, night is beginning to fall. You walk a little longer and eventually you make it back to the tree where you slept the first time you passed through this way. The next morning Tych is buzzing in your ear about heading back to his village again. Considering you’ll arrive at the fairy ring in a few hours, it isn’t surprising that he desperately wants a final answer from you about the subject. He already made some of his points yesterday. Besides the obvious freedom, you’d be pretty well off with the blood gems you have. > You go to his village Tych’s offer is too tempting and despite a few times where he flew away and hid, he still helped you out in the long run. Ral on the other hand has done nothing but enslave you and when he isn’t having you do menial labor, he’s sending you on dangerous missions like this one. You might as well risk it. If it doesn’t work or Tych is just planning on freeing himself somehow, you can always just head back to the fairy ring. You can make up a story to Ral, not like he’s going to care as long as he has his blood gems. “Okay Tych, let’s go to your village, but I’m REALLY putting a lot of trust in you and hoping you’re planning on freeing us both as opposed to saving your own ass somehow.” You say. “Oh, we’ll both be free, don’t worry! Come on let’s go plivik, I’m really excited about this!” Tych beams and flies off at a slightly faster pace than usual. You spend the better part of the day following Tych who really is so excited that you nearly lose him several times in the forest. Several times he stops to wait and laments the fact that your big clumsy legs aren’t fast enough to keep up with him. Eventually you get to a point where Tych tells you to stop. “Okay, hold on plivik. We’re getting very close, but I better go ahead first. Not like we invite a lot of big people into our villages.” Tych says. “Where is it anyway?” you ask. “It’s up high in the trees. What? Did you think we lived on the ground like you wingless pliviks do? I’m going to go see the elder and tell him what’s going on, I have no reason to believe that he won’t help.” “Hmm, I’m still half expecting you to just disappear.” “You followed me this far and you still don’t trust me? I’m coming back plivik, just wait here.” Tych flies upward towards the very high nearby trees. You watch him the entire time until he completely disappears in the foliage. You continue to look up and around to see if you can make out some sort of sign of a fairy village, but you can’t see anything. Eventually you stop straining your eyes and neck and just lean up against one of the trees and wait. Unsurprisingly, you’re waiting quite awhile. You start thinking about leaving as it begins to get darker, but you’re just hoping that Tych is taking a long time because he stopped to fuck his wife or something. Tych eventually returns and calls to you as he’s flying down. “Hey plivik you’re still here! Really glad you are, I told you I’d be back. I told the rest of the village and they’ll all be coming down to meet you soon since we can’t very well expect you to come meet us.” Tych says. “What’s going on exactly?” you ask. “It’s like I said, in order to break the spell it’s going to require the entire village’s help. Involves a lot of chanting, magical power and shit.” “And shit? That doesn’t sound very specific. Do you know if this will even work?” “It’ll work, trust me.” “It better because…ow. what the hell…” You feel a little sharp jab in your arm. At first you think an insect has bitten or stung you, but upon closer in inspection it’s a tiny arrow. You pull it out and they look at Tych who just shrugs his shoulders. “Hey I did say I’d come back and that you’d be free. I didn’t say you’d come out of this alive.” Before you can even make the attempt to lunge at Tych (who just flies out of the way) you are suddenly hit by several tiny arrows on all sides. It’s like multiple needles going in your body and while it isn’t the most pleasant feeling, it isn’t the thing that kills you. The fact that they drugged everyone of their arrow is what kills you, or rather helps lead to your eventual death. You fall to the ground completely paralyzed, you can’t even speak, but you’re fully aware of your surroundings. You watch as several sprites descend from the trees. You can’t make out much from your position, but it looks like one of them flies over to speak with Tych. “So you say this human is the one that captured you and the rest your company?” the elder asks. “Not by himself, but he was helping the wizard that did. I can’t bring them back and I couldn’t kill the wizard, but I at least hoped that bringing this plivik to the village could at least give the families some measure of justice.” Tych remarks. “It won’t ease the pain for most, but I suppose it will bring a little closure since we never did know what the hell happened. We assumed it was elves or even sotakians.” “I’m just glad to be home and finally free. I thank you elder for managing to release me from that dreadful magic.” As you listen to Tych spin more lies, it suddenly occurs to you that yesterday he referred to the elves as pliviks. And he’s certainly no friend to elves. You wish you had caught that before, because it’s obvious that word is something insulting and given that he’s been calling you that since he met you, that pretty much says it all on what he ever thought about you. The elder tells the rest of the sprites about how Tych is to be honored by bringing home an enemy that led to the deaths of so many in the village. And in his honor he is going to allow Tych to marry one of his many daughters. Sonofabitch wasn’t even married. After a few more lies and speeches, the sprites finally descend on you to celebrate Tych’s homecoming along with dispensing justice; this will take the form of a feast. You never knew sprites ate flesh, but you soon learn first hand as several sharp teeth start chewing on your body. It’s agonizing being slowly eaten alive; especially since they’re so small this doesn’t kill you quickly. But after nearly a week, your chewed and bitten body finally expires.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly grab one of the many reeds nearby, break it and put it in your mouth as you sink underneath the muddy water you’ve been stomping through. You just hope that YOU don’t get stomped on. Getting trampled on by multiple lizard feet would be a pretty ignoble death. Of course this isn’t even counting whatever the hell might be lurking under the water ready to swim into your ear and lay eggs in your brain. (You have an overactive imagination sometimes) You lay on the muddy swamp floor, trying to make yourself as small as possible. Doesn’t take long before you hear the sounds of lizards shouting their incomprehensible language and running past you, though it’s very muted and garbled due to you being underwater. Despite the water being muddy and your sight getting blurred in the process, you do see a couple of large looming figures run past from your prone position. A couple of the sotakian’s taloned feet stomp near you. One right near your head, but you get lucky and none of them actually step or trip over you. Still, you aren’t sure if all of them have passed so you’re reluctant to move, fortunately Tych returns and flies near your reed. You can’t quite make out what he’s saying, but you think you see him waving his arms like an “all clear” signal, so you sit up out of the water and catch a good breath. “That was quite the bit of quick thinking, plivik.” Tych remarks. “Are they all gone?” you ask in between breaths. “Yes, I believe so, quite a lot of them actually. From above, I could see them spread out all over the nearby area, you got very lucky. I doubt if running to the left or right would have escaped their gaze.” “Where did you go?” “As I said plivik, I just flew straight up until they passed. Are you surprised? You already claimed I wouldn’t be useful in a fight.” “Yeah I suppose not. Actually with that many, pretty sure I’d be dead as well.” “Glad you’re not holding a grudge plivik. In any case, our destination should be a whole lot manageable to deal with now. I suspect only a few sotakians remain in the village so your job should be easier. I will still scout the village to let you know the best approach of course.” You’re really hoping that will be the case, because as sopping wet as you are now, you’re not exactly in the highest spirits and are eager to get this shitty task over with. You and Tych make your way to your destination and sure enough the sotakian village is fairly empty. There are still a few lizards around and sure enough a couple of them are guarding a big lizard statue in the center of the village with blood gems for eyes. Fortunately Tych also mentions that there are some bamboo cages with elves in them. He says they look miserable and in terrible condition (he mentions that pretty gleefully), but he thinks if they got free, they’d certainly try to make a run for it. So that’s your plan, you’re going to create a distraction by releasing the prisoners. You cautiously approach the village and sneak around the huts, hoping that none of the little lizard children wandering around suddenly stumble upon you. When you get to the cages, Tych wasn’t kidding about the elves. They look like they might have been in here for weeks and they’re skinny even for elves. However, when they see you, they take notice, but say nothing. You reinforce this by putting your fingers to your lips and then working on the lock. The lock itself isn’t even metal, its’ a simple latch mechanism that can easily be opened from the outside, so it’s child’s play to you. The prisoners looks so thankful and a couple even whisper a few things that you don’t understand in their native tongue, but you assume its some sort of thankful. They all start to make their way out and then that’s when you nod to Tych and get out of the immediate vicinity. Tych flies over to the sotakians and begins shouting at them and pointing over in the direction of their prisoners. The sotakians are a bit confused at first by some sprite yelling at them and would probably swat him down, but when they look to where Tych is pointing, they find their escaped prisoners a lot more important to chase down. The lizards guarding the statue, along with most of the others chase after the prisoners who are now running for their lives. With the village nearly completely empty of any warriors of any kind, you make a dash to the statue and begin prying out its eyes. While you’re not exactly slow in this task, you’re certainly not fast enough to escape completely unnoticed, especially since there are still lizard children and a few mothers (At least you’re assuming the remaining adults might be female, you can’t tell) still in the village and notice your desecration. They begin hissing and converging on your position. With the gems in your possession, you pull out your sword and begin making a hasty retreat out of this accursed swamp. Lizard children might be small, but they still have a full set of sharp teeth and piercing talons. They’re fairly fast too, especially since they’re used to this environment. You have no choice but to cut a couple of the little scalies down in your escape, but not before they lay in some good bites and claw slashes on your arms and legs. It’s probably only because of these casualties, that they stop pursuing you as the rest of them get scared and the mothers wish to keep the rest of their broods safe. (You hear some odd wailing noises behind you) Eventually you put a lot of distance between you and the village. You sort of lost him again in all the mayhem, but you soon find out that Tych is never far from your position. “Whew! That got intense! I almost thought you weren’t going to make it plivik, with all those sotakian children trying to eat you.” Tych says. “I didn’t think I was for a moment.” You answer taking a breather. “This might be a weird question, but do you feel bad for killing sotakian children?” “What?!” “I mean I know it was a matter of life and death, but still…” “Damn right it was a matter of life and death! I didn’t enjoy it if that’s what you’re asking, but then I didn’t exactly have time to worry about the moralities of killing little scaly children either, who I might add were probably more dangerous than typical wild predator. Felt like I was getting attacked by a pack of animals rather than anything with higher intelligence what with all the growling, hissing, biting and tearing.” “Apologies plivik, I just sort of wanted to know what kind of person you were. Just as you weren’t completely sure about me, I also wasn’t completely sure about you. I am glad to see you are a person that doesn’t enjoy killing even if you are pragmatic by nature. It would have made me hesitant to take you back to my village even if I do desire freedom.” “Hold on, who said anything about going back to your village? We got the gems, we’re going back to Ral’s.” “You still don’t trust me, after all we’ve been through, plivik? Don’t you want freedom? All we have to do is go back to my village and we can be free of Ral’s spell! I can even lead you safely out of this forest and have you back on your way to Holgard or whatever other human settlement you had in mind to go to. And you could even think of those blood gems as your reward for this whole shitty experience. Those have to be worth quite a bit. Not like they’re common.” “Why don’t we just get out of this fucking swamp before I think anymore about this okay?” “Very well plivik.” Tych shuts up for awhile and the pair of you make your way back. You feel like once you’re out of the swamp, the worst of this will be behind you. You have some concerns about potentially bumping into more lizards or even elves, but Tych is fairly confident that won’t be the case. “The sotakians barely ever retreat and especially not on their own territory. Also, the lot that came from the other village will have probably cut off the elves from any sort of escape. Those stupid pliviks are going to be completely massacred. Elves deserve what they get. I hope the sotakians also hunted down those other ones and recaptured them.” Tych remarks. Strange that Tych should be so concerned with your possible enjoyment of killing when he himself obviously gets a lot of pleasure from elven suffering. You get the real impression that elves must have done more to him than he’s already said. It’s the only explanation for his sadistic hatred. When you make it back to the forest, night is beginning to fall. You walk a little longer and eventually you make it back to the tree where you slept the first time you passed through this way. The next morning Tych is buzzing in your ear about heading back to his village again. Considering you’ll arrive at the fairy ring in a few hours, it isn’t surprising that he desperately wants a final answer from you about the subject. He already made some of his points yesterday. Besides the obvious freedom, you’d be pretty well off with the blood gems you have. > You head to the fairy ring You might have very well gone with him as Tych was more or less helpful during the task and didn’t display any outward signs of treachery. However, you did notice one thing in something he said yesterday… “So what does plivik REALLY mean Tych?” you ask. “Huh? I don’t understand. I told you, it means friend.” Tych says. “I don’t think it does.” “Well okay, it’s not an exact translation, but it’s basically the same thing.” “If that’s the case, then why did you refer to the elves as stupid pliviks yesterday when you spoke about them?” “Erm…I did?” “Yeah, you did. And given your extreme dislike of them, I doubt very seriously that you were calling them friends even if it made sense in the context that you were speaking about them. Which it wouldn’t.” Tych at this point begins to try to explain that the word has several meanings in his language and it all goes back to the complexities of sprites’ rich and long history of linguistics. The whole time he’s telling you this, he’s also flying away from you to a safe distance, which pretty much tells you all you need to know. “Uh huh. We’re going back to Ral’s.” you say. “Noooo! I can’t go back there, not after being in the outdoors again! I want to be free! Come on pliv…come on friend, you really want to be Ral’s slave? Wouldn’t you rather be free?” “Sure. But the problem is, I don’t fucking trust you to be the one to help me in that task. Ral said you led twenty other sprites to their death to save your own life, I can’t know if that’s something similar that you have in store for me so you can gain your own freedom. For all I know you might even be trying to get me killed for the shits and giggles given how much you enjoy elven suffering.” “Now that’s not true! I don’t hate humans. I wouldn’t get any pleasure out of leading you to your death.” “Oh? I guess that’s comforting to know that even though you WERE going to lead me to my death, that you wouldn’t laugh about it.” “Well of course I wouldn’t laugh… I MEAN NO! No, I wouldn’t even do that! Shit! You’re confusing me!” “Glad I’m not as confused as you seem to be. We’re going to the fairy ring and teleporting back to Ral’s place.” Tych tries to convince you that he doesn’t have some hidden agenda, but it falls on deaf ears. Eventually he gives in and goes into a litany of swears and curses the whole time you travel to the fairy ring. “Plivik” comes up often, and at this point you imagine that means something like “asshole.” Basically Tych’s been calling you an asshole since the journey began. When you teleport back to Ral’s place, you find yourself in the same location as you left. Tych looks depressed again as Ral enters the room. “Ah, I sensed you two came back. I must say, you look a little weathered and worn, though I suppose this task would have its challenges. I trust you didn’t encounter too much trouble?” Ral asks. “Would it matter if we did?” you ask. “Not really, so where are the gems?” “Here.” “Thanks, and Tych was helpful? Didn’t try to talk you into anything foolish?” “Nope, he was completely beneficial. Don’t think I could have done it without his advice actually.” Ral’s surprised to hear you say that, and Tych even more so. The sprite probably thought you’d tattle on him. Honestly, you didn’t see much point in doing so though. Ral already told you Tych was treacherous, all it would do is confirm what he told you and it isn’t like Ral is going to punish him any more than he already does by keeping him in a glass jar. As far you’re concerned, this might keep the pair of them guessing. Tych especially, assuming the mini-bastard has got any sort of conscience. If he does though, not snitching on him COULD help in the future. Long shot of course, but it’s not like you have many potential allies at this point who might help you. Eventually Ral dismisses you and Tych gloomily follows him into the lab. You take the opportunity to go clean yourself since you’re still covered in mud and swamp water. You hope by all the gods you don’t have go there ever again. > You time passes... Year 21 When you first started messing around with Lisa, she was just like all the other young Dert girls that had started taking an interest in you when you started coming around a lot more. Just a bored girl that found you to be a spark of excitement in her backwards little village. Lisa however, stood out mainly because she wasn’t naïve or outright stupid like rest. (You still laugh about the one girl who thought she was going to force you into a crossbow wedding by having a child. Unfortunately for her, swallowing doesn’t result in pregnancy.) She managed to keep your interest and not in just a physical way. Before you realized it, you were in a relationship again. But it was nice since it allowed you a bit of escapism from your own prison like situation. (And certainly cheaper than going to Holgard whores) While her father has threatened you with physical violence on several occasions (As many others have as well), you and her have always found places to meet. She always listens to whatever tales of “adventure” you have to tell her. Sometimes you make it sound more exciting than it really is, but she always enjoys them and asks many questions since it’s like she’s able to experience some of the excitement vicariously. Lately though it’s starting to look like your stories don’t quite quell the restlessness that Lisa seems to have… “Holgard? Oh you don’t want to go there now. I think they’re about to have a city wide riot or revolution or some shit.” You say. “Well that certainly sounds more interesting than having to milk cows all day.” Lisa replies. “You’re also a lot less likely to get killed milking cows.” “Perhaps, but you still get to do interesting stuff all the time, what with you working for a wizard and all.” “I wouldn’t exactly say I’m working for him. I think I’ve already confided to you about my situation as far as that goes.” “Yes I know and that’s also a cause for me to worry about our future. It even causes me to have concerns about your feelings for me.” “Oh come on…you know how I feel about you.” “Do I? I sometimes get the impression that you probably wouldn’t come around if you weren’t tethered by the wizard’s spell. I imagine we probably wouldn’t have even met if it hadn’t been the case. Am I wrong?” “(Sigh) Well…yes IF Ral hadn’t magically enslaved me, we probably wouldn’t have met. But it happened and we DID meet AND I chose you to be with. I mean doesn’t that count for something?” Lisa doesn’t answer right away; she just takes your hand and looks into your eyes. “I know you probably do have feelings for me, but I also can’t shake the feeling that I’m just a nice distraction from your situation, just as you’re a nice distraction from mine. We’re both prisoners of a sort, but the difference is my cage is of my own accord.” Lisa says. “What do you mean?” you ask. “What I mean is I would like to leave this boring village, but the only thing that really holds me back is fear and the lack of any real skill to survive in the outside world, or at least the world you’ve described to me. And I know you can’t be making it all up despite you probably wanting me to believe all those impossible feats you’ve done.” Lisa gives you a small hug and kisses you on the cheek, which causes you to embrace her a bit tighter than usual. You feel like she’s saying goodbye to you right now, but that isn’t the case. “I’m obviously not going anywhere yet, but I’m just informing you that things need to change a bit at some point. I know we have fun together and I hope we continue to have fun together for many years to come, but don’t take me for granted.” Lisa goes back to looking at the sky probably still thinking about wanting to leave her boring farm life behind her while you’re thinking about how much of an idiot you’ve been for filling her head with tales of adventure. You couldn’t have just stuck with one of the dumb passive ones could you? Why the hell did you go for the independent thinker of the village? Well it’s done and to be honest it’s that trait that made her more attractive anyway. It isn’t like you can blame her for wanting to leave Dert. The place is duller than Teckleville ever was. In any case, you aren’t willing to risk losing Lisa even if she isn’t likely to leave in the near future. You have to at least make the effort to keep her around. Your reasons are probably selfish, but she’s also correct that you would miss her if she weren’t in your life. This would be a whole lot simpler if you weren’t under Ral’s spell. Maybe it’s time for that situation to change. Of course even after all these years, you still have no idea of how to do that and Ral doesn’t seem to be relenting anytime soon. Of course you do have another option and that’s going back to Isabella. Despite her invitation of coming back to see her at anytime, you never have for several reasons. Still, you have pondered it many times because you believe that if anyone knows how to break Ral’s hold over you, it would be her and she’d probably be willing to help given how much she doesn’t seem to like him. > You ask Isabella to help you This isn’t even just about keeping Lisa in your life, this is about not being Ral’s whipping boy anymore. “You’re right Lisa, things do have to change.” You say and stand up. “Wait, where are you going?” Lisa asks. “I’m going to make moves in changing my situation and by doing so, hopefully it changes yours as well.” You start to walk away and Lisa goes after you. “Wait! Hold on! I don’t want you doing anything rash! I mean like I said I’m not going anywhere! I was just talking; I mean I can’t imagine I’ll ever have the courage to leave Dert anyway. I’d rather be stuck here and you still be alive!” Lisa says. “Lisa, don’t backtrack now. You made a good point and your desires are perfectly reasonable. Why should you be stuck here? If I’m around, all it’s going to do is give you an excuse not to take that next step. You’ll grow old and resentful that you might have done more with your life.” You say. “I just don’t want you to do something that’s going to get you killed.” “What if I should die on some fool mission for Ral anyway? You willing to risk wasting more years you could have spent doing something else? No, you had the right idea from the start. You can’t be stuck here and neither can I. If I die doing this now, then at least that releases you from any excuse of staying in Dert. Also, this has been a long time coming. If it alleviates some of your concerns however, I’m not going to just attack Ral. I can’t, even if I thought I’d be a match for him. Anyway, hopefully the next time I see you, I’ll be free. Either way, you’ll most certainly be.” You give Lisa a kiss goodbye and leave her to go talk to Isabella. You head to the Dert graveyard and even though it’s still daylight, you don’t bother waiting until dusk. You just open up the secret entrance and head down to Isabella’s “foyer.” Out of some concern for your safety and wishing to show some sort of respect, you don’t go any further than that and just call out her as loud as you can several times. You don’t get an answer right away and you can’t even be sure if she heard you. She could be a deep sleeper. You aren’t sure about vampire habits after all. You think you’re going to have to wait anyway, but you soon get an answer when you hear footsteps and Isabella appears to you in the entrance that leads deeper into her home. (Yes, she’s still naked like last time) “You play with your life, waking me up like this human.” Isabella says. “As I remember you told me not to be a stranger.” You answer. “Hmm, a minor failing on my part thanks in part to your delicious blood. However, you’re here now and I’m awake, so state your business and I hope this isn’t related to Ral again.” “It is, but it’s against him.” “Oh? You have my attention.” “I was hoping you could free me of him. I mean you sort of implied you could when we first met.” “I did? As I recall I said I could kill you, but I wouldn’t since I know how hard good servants are to come by. Never really said I could break a geas.” “Well, I guess I just sort of thought you could given how um… long you’ve been around. Surely you’re very powerful.” “Clumsy attempts at flattery (sigh). Though I suppose you’re at least trying. Look human, I don’t have anything against you. Actually, you’re an alright sort, but I just can’t help you. Well not in the way that you’d like, though I could be wrong about that.” “What? Does it require you drinking some more of my blood? Here, have at it!” you say and start exposing your neck more to Isabella who steps towards you. “Oh, it would require more than just your blood to break the spell.” Isabella at this point gets very close to you and begins to show her fangs. Then suddenly she looks up and sniffs the air and with a minor snarl, she throws you aside and rushes up the stairs behind you. You’re bewildered by all of it, partially due to taking a hard hit against the wall and the other fact that she just ran up the stairs and it isn’t even nighttime yet. Just as you’re about to follow to see what it’s all about, you hear some squealing and cries, which get closer. Your heart sinks when Isabella returns with Lisa and has her by the hair. “Irresponsible fool! You didn’t think to close the door behind you when you entered my home? I can only guess this one is from Dert. You know her?” Isabella asks. You quickly say you do, as Lisa displays her fear, sadness and probably confusion on the situation clearly on her face and her cries. You can’t believe you didn’t know that she followed you. “Isabella, she didn’t know. Please, just let her go.” You say in a calm manner while raising your hands. “Let her go? Yeah, I can’t do that. She’ll tell the rest of those Dert idiots about me.” “I won’t…” Lisa starts to say before Isabella twists her hair and forces her to her knees. “Silence! YOU don’t get to say anything!” “Come on Isabella, she’s so fucking scared, she’s not going to say anything about you. Besides what are you worried about? Surely a bunch of stupid peasants are no match for you.” “More clumsy flattery. Stupid peasants can do a whole lot more than you think if there’s enough of them and they’re angry enough. They can certainly cause me enough trouble that I’d probably have to move. I chose this place because it’s a nice quiet area far enough away from that city full of criminal blood bags and a blissfully ignorant village close by.” “Wait! Can’t we come to some sort of understanding?!” “Ah yes, you always do like to make deals don’t you? Well let’s see, before this one so rudely interrupted us, I was going to free you from Ral. If you’re still interested in that, I can oblige, however I don’t think you’re going to like it.” “What is it? Please, if it’ll save Lisa and give me my freedom then I’ll pay the price!” “Well, just so happens that I’d like a manservant of my own and despite this recent display of incompetence, I think you’d make a worthwhile one. You certainly are no stranger to menial labor and you’re at least pleasing to the eyesight.” “Wait, you want me to pledge myself to you or something?” “More like or something. I’m asking you to give yourself completely over to me of your own free will. When you do that, then I can drain you dry and we can begin.” “Wait…are you proposing what I think you are?” “Yes.” “But I’d just be substituting one form of slavery for another AND I’d be dead on top of it!” “The term is actually undead and really now, you can’t possibly compare serving me to be the same as serving Ral. I don’t see why this is such a hard decision. I’ve known mortals who would have jumped at the chance you have. And given that we’ve already shared a bit of…closeness in the past, I know damn well there’s a part of you that likes the idea.” It’s taking everything within you to keep control of your own emotions at this point. You don’t like the fact that you’re so powerless to help Lisa directly. Lisa doesn’t say anything, but just continues to look on at you in fear and just sobs quietly. You can’t tell if she wants to tell you to do it, to save her own life, or not to do it because of the consequences. Your only thought right now however, is to save Lisa. “Alright! Alright! I’ll do it. Just don’t kill Lisa!” you shout. Isabella smiles when you say that while Lisa just weeps. “Are you sure? I need your full cooperation on this. I can’t just go transforming you while you’re under a geas unless I have your complete submission. Do I have your complete dedication to me?” “Yes, whatever you want!” Isabella suddenly picks Lisa up by the hair and tosses her hard into the wall. You instinctively go to help, but are stopped by Isabella who has already grabbed and stopped you. “Feel free to grab my ass again if it makes you feel better about all this.” Isabella says and then bites down on your neck. It’s the same as last time. First pain, then discomfort and then just a weird dizzy feeling. Soon light headiness follows and then you’re starting to lose consciousness altogether. Just before you do though, Isabella stops feeding on you and then quickly bites herself on the wrist. Using the open wound, she pours some of her blood into your own mouth and a metallic taste hits your tongue and eventually slides down your throat. “Haven’t done this in a while, but I think I’m actually wet with anticipation. Mmmm…” Isabella remarks and then kisses you on the mouth before finishing you off. Everything goes dark. You don’t know how much time passes, but when you wake up, you’re feeling quite different. You’re not breathing, you’re cold and you’re hungry. And that’s when you see you’re in a room with Lisa who is in shackles on one of the walls. She’s been stripped naked and her head hangs down. “Lisa…?” you utter as you start to stand up. “Don’t worry my little cryptmate, she’s not dead. I keep my promises, however I obviously still can’t let her leave.” You hear Isabella say causing you to turn your head to your left. Isabella leans in the doorway of the room you’re currently in with her arms folded as if she’s studying what you’re going to do next. “She can’t just stay prisoner here.” You say. “Well that’s about the only choice available to her.” Isabella replies. “Couldn’t you have just erased her memory or something? I thought vampires could control minds.” “We can hypnotize and charm if we’re up close to a mortal, but that’s really more for short periods of time and just long enough for us to get someone and finish them off. Of course if we bite and release, we need to keep visiting that person to keep them docile. However, I’m not really keen on travelling back and forth to Dert everyday. I prefer to keep my blood slaves in my home so I know exactly where they are. Nothing worse than your dinner suddenly regaining their free will or getting themselves killed in something unrelated.” “Wait, is THAT what Lisa is for? Your blood slave?” “No. She’s YOUR blood slave. Think of this as my gift to you, along with this being your first steps in learning what it truly means to be a vampire.” You don’t even know how to feel. You’re absolutely speechless. Isabella has played a cruel trick on you. As you’re still in shock, Isabella continues. “Now, I can tell by your face, that you probably believe me to be the worst sort of monster, but let me tell you, this is me in a merciful mood. Your little…human is currently in a trance that I put her in. Now YOU can keep her that way yourself with my guidance and in doing so, you should be able to feed on her for quite some time without having to get a new person. This should get you used to the idea of what you need to do in order to survive now, not to mention this girl was someone you had feelings for. If you can get over feeding on her then you won’t have any lingering pangs of conscious in the future which will make this all much easier in the long run. Trust me, I know.” “I can’t…I can’t just drink Lisa’s blood and watch her waste away as I slowly kill her! “Well she’s going to waste away eventually even if you don’t feed on her. In fact it’ll just take longer and since I have no intention on keeping her in a trance, you can decide if you want to hear her cries and screams as she eventually gets to the point where she’s begging for death as a release from this horrible situation. Or you can decide to keep her docile until she eventually just dies quietly. Up to you, she’s your responsibility.” Isabella talks about Lisa being in a horrible situation, which it is, but at least she’s completely unaware of it, unlike you. Lisa wanted to leave her village and now it’s looking like she’s never going to leave this room thanks to you. You’re wishing you never came here. You feel a mixture of negative emotions right now, and maybe it’s due to your new state of unlife they feel worse than you ever remember. The worst you’ve ever felt was during the time you killed Klint after he stabbed Annah. Right now, your feel like that multiplied by ten, but you’re desperately trying to maintain something of rational thought. Then rage takes over, rage like you never had before. You abandon all caution and attack Isabella. Isabella doesn’t even look surprised. She rolls her eyes and even with your new quick vampire reflexes, Isabella easily takes you down and pins you. You snarl, and struggle and try to get up, but she’s just too strong for you. You don’t even know how long you do this for, but eventually Isabella tires of your resistance and takes your head and smashes it into the hard stone floor. Would have definitely killed you had you still been human, but instead you’re just left temporarily dazed. Isabella follows up with a few punches and then a display of dominance with her face transforming into something much harsher and monstrous than you’ve seen before (even whenever she bit you) you briefly wonder if your own face has transformed as well since you didn’t give much thought to such things at the time. With the fight taken out of you, you finally relent. Isabella’s appearance also changes back, but she still maintains her hold on you. “You’re lucky I don’t stay mad for long, but attack me again and you’ll see how mad I can really get.” she says. “You might as well just kill me now and be done with it then.” You say. “Oh no, you don’t seem to understand, you’re MINE. I didn’t transform you into a vampire just to kill you. You’ll soon learn that there are things much worse than death…MUCH worse.” “Oh like what you are forcing me into?” “Hey I didn’t force you to do anything. You could have declined my offer and walked away. You gave yourself willingly to me.” “Yeah, to save Lisa! Not this! If I knew you were going to twist shit around…” “You probably STILL would have made the same choice. Face it. You wanted to be free of Ral and you were tempted by my offer anyway. Saving your human was just an added bonus.” “Stop calling her my human! Her name’s Lisa and she’s my girlfriend!” “That’s cute, but I’m your girlfriend now. Congratulations on trading up.” Isabella is now just mocking you. Now that you’ve calmed down a bit, you start trying to think of an unconventional way to still save Lisa. “Okay. I get it. You’re in charge. But maybe we can make a deal.” You say. “Again with the deals. If I hadn’t already drained all your blood, I’d swear you were part infernal. Very well, this should be entertaining…” Isabella remarks. “What if you make her a vampire?” “I’m not turning her into a vampire; I’m obviously already going to have my hands full with you learning about your new vampire life. I’ve got other things to do with my time.” “I’ll do it then!” “Hah! Nice idea, but you aren’t nearly powerful enough to do that yet. You’re not even powerful enough to turn her into a ghoul. In any case I do not wish to have another vampire here anyway. Call me old fashioned, but I believe three is a crowd and I don’t see much benefit for me. I’m not into women or orgies, despite all the myths about vampires being decadent sex fiends. I’m also not trying to make a fucking nest. Been part of one of those before and it’s worse than living around mortals. So let’s stop all this nonsense about turning this…Lisa into a vampire.” “I…just…I can’t kill her.” “(Sigh) Very well I can see that perhaps this was too upsetting of a lesson. I will do it to spare you the anguish, but I really hoped you were going to be stronger than this.” “Wait! You said she’s mine.” “Yes, I did.” “Then I can do what I want with her correct?” “If you’re suggesting that because she’s yours that that means you can release her, you’re sorely mistaken. This isn’t some contract that you’ve found a loophole in. My word is still final on this matter.” “No, but she’s my responsibility you said. That means I can take care of her if I wish right? Couldn’t I just keep her hypnotized and make sure she gets food and water?” Isabella smirks at your question. “So you wish to keep her as you would a pet then? How long did you intend on doing this for?” “Until I can transform her into another vampire.” Now Isabella laughs and completely releases you, allowing you to sit up. “She won’t live long enough for that to happen. You’ll abandon that idea as your feelings for her fade or give in to your own hunger first. If by some miracle you some how manage it, she certainly won’t be young like you are anymore. You’ll be transforming her in her later years…unless you transform her into a ghoul before then, but that has its own set of problems. No, I don’t see this working, but if this is REALLY what you want, then sure.” “You’re saying yes?” “I am. It will be interesting just to see how long you last. I imagine you’ll last at least a few years even. One of your attractive traits is you obviously have a sense of loyalty and even a little nobility despite your lowly origins. However, the care for your pet will be your responsibility along with your other ones for me and if your pet becomes a problem then I’m going to step in and I think we both know what that means correct?” “Yes, I understand.” “Very well then, I suppose I should teach you how to maximize some of your new powers, particularly the whole hypnosis thing. Afterwards, I’ll give you the tour of my home proper, then you can get to work on what duties I require of you. While I’m sure you won’t find most of those fun, I can guarantee one of them will be despite however you may feel for Lisa. That being said, let’s get started.” Isabella takes you over to Lisa who is still in a trance. She even releases her from her shackles for this lesson. As you’re listening to her instructions, your gaze briefly passes over your wrist and you realize the little symbol that Ral put on you is gone. You aren’t sure if the cost was worth it. > You time passes... Year 25 How the hell do you keep a vast underground crypt clean? Answer: You don’t. One thing you never knew about vampires is how they can become obsessed with the smallest details. Probably has to do with the enhanced senses. Isabella apparently is a neat freak and due to this quirk she spent most of her time rearranging, cleaning, and generally tidying up her home. An impossible task of course, but that didn’t stop her from trying. Even the room where she keeps the blood “donors” is clean. Doesn’t look like the slaughterhouse that one would expect it to be. Unfortunately due to being at her beck and call that means you get to help her or at least do most of it now. As one would expect, it takes up most of your time. You think between her and Ral, you’ve done more housework than thievery. About the only thing you don’t have to take care of is her underground garden, which is her own personal project that she spends a lot of time on. In fact, with you around now she doesn’t even have to leave it to get food much anymore. She just has you do it. She also has you doing her. You can’t be sure if it’s true affection she has for you or just her basic needs that she wants satisfied. It feels like the latter most of the time, but there are moments where it seems to be more. It’s just a weird situation altogether and while you’d hate to admit it, its one of the better things about being in servitude to Isabella rather than Ral. Meanwhile you’ve got a project of your own in the form of Lisa. You spend whatever free time you have with her. Making sure she’s provided with nourishment and drink. Usually you just steal food from the farms in Dert along with drawing water from their well, but occasionally you get something different from Holgard and try to mix things up. (You never thought your thievery would ever be used primarily for food!) Lisa’s reactions to everything are very “neutral.” That’s of course mainly due to the perpetual trance she’s in. She is always polite and docile, and never really doing too much on her own, not that she would have much to do anyway considering she’s mostly relegated to her single room. (That you’ve also taken time to furnish) Isabella says that in time, you’ll be able to get her to behave more like a “normal” person, but the fact is, she’ll always be acting according to how you want her to act. Much like a puppet. It’s all pretty frustrating. There’s also a part of you that is starting to wonder about what you’re doing. Are you doing this because you love Lisa? Are you doing this out of some sense of guilt? Or are you doing this just to pass the time? At this point you don’t know anymore. It can’t be out of a sense of “humanity” because other than Lisa, you’ve adjusted fairly well to the whole snatching up people and drinking their blood until they die thing. You wonder if maybe you should turn Lisa into a ghoul, since apparently she’d have a lot more free will, while still remaining dedicated to you. You stare at Lisa who sits quietly in her chair staring in such a way that it almost makes you think that somewhere within her head, there’s a part of her that’s still the free willed Lisa and she’s screaming to get out. Would transforming her really be any worse than she is now? It wouldn’t be perfect, but at least she’d be able to do more things on her own without you needing to tend to her constantly. “I figured you’d be in here.” Isabella remarks upon entering the room. “I finished cleaning for today…or did you need something else?” you answer. “Not right now and surprisingly my garden doesn’t need tending to at this moment. I’m just checking up on you I suppose. Did I interrupt a potential moment of bliss between you and your pet?” “What?” “Oh come on, you don’t need to deny anything. It’s not like I care. I’m hardly jealous of that.” “…no! No! I don’t do that with her!” “What seriously? I figured you were just really quiet about it. Or maybe on the occasions you took her deeper into the catacombs, you were fucking her in one of the more secluded spots there. Guess that explains why you keep her clothed.” “I sometimes take her for walks because I believe she needs a change of scenery every once in awhile. And I’m not having sex with her, because I’m not a rapist. She’s under a trance.” “So are all the folks we keep here to take blood from, except we’re ultimately killing them. You don’t seem to have a problem with that.” “It’s…it’s just different.” “I suppose it is…but not really. I have to admit, I didn’t think you’d last this long with her, but I guess your feelings were stronger for her than I thought…or maybe you’re just doing this to prove some point to yourself. Either way, I can already tell that you’re starting to realize the futility of your plan.” “I want to make her into a ghoul.” Isabella looks at you and just shakes her head. “I knew it would come to this. Look, if you really do have any lingering feelings for Lisa, you’ll just kill her now and be done with it.” Isabella remarks. “What’s wrong with making her a ghoul? You mentioned before that it would stop her from aging any more and she’d still be under my influence. Are you just afraid that if I take this step, it will just bring her closer to me and further from you?” “Oh you, and your assumptions. Trust me, if I really felt remotely intimidated by either of you in any way, you’d both be dead. However, if you really want my thoughts on this, you turn her into a ghoul and I guarantee it will only make you appreciate me all the more.” “Well what exactly is so bad about turning her into a ghoul? You’ve never gone into detail.” “First of all, you’re probably still not powerful enough to do it even with my magnificent blood in your body, though I suppose you could try anyway. Second of all, I’ve made a ghoul before and while it’s true they make good servants who are completely dedicated to you, there’s enough drawbacks that I don’t understand why any vampire would bother…unless they’re really desperate for ego stroking I suppose.” “Okay, so what then…she’ll fawn all over me?” “Yes, and while that might sound enticing at first, I promise that you’ll get sick of it. At least YOU would at any rate. You’ve never struck me as the time that needs constant reassurance of how amazing you are.” “I dunno, it might still be nice to hear once in awhile.” “Well, if you want to hear how amazing you are, I guess we can go back to my room. I promise, I’ll make it sound authentic.” You don’t want to, but you actually actual laugh at Isabella’s remark causing her to smile. “Okay, see that right there is a good example of why you shouldn’t even bother with this plan. You know you like it here with me.” Isabella remarks. “Maybe I’m trying the best out of my bad situation. We’re not exactly equals in this relationship you know.” You say. “Oh and you and Lisa would be? You and I are a much closer if we’re going to go that route. You’re so far above her right now it’s comparing a rot grub to a human. Speaking of rot grubs, that’s the third thing you might want to know about when creating a ghoul.” “What?” “For whatever reason and nobody I know has ever figured this out. Ghouls develop disgusting habit and quirks.” “Drinking blood doesn’t already qualify?” “I’m sure to some it would, but how about eating bugs, dead bodies or even shit? You really want Lisa to kiss you with that mouth after she’s been chowing down on a rotting corpse?” “Well can’t I tell her not to do that?” “You can try, but short of keeping her confined, that’s just doomed to failure. As obedient as they are, some urges are just too powerful. And that’s just the eating habits. I haven’t even gotten to the weird social habits because if allowed to go out and interact with the rest of the world, ghouls tend to lack the subtlety that vampires do…well most vampires anyway. You turn her into a ghoul and you better keep a CLOSE eye on her. Otherwise she’s going to go wandering into Dert and probably expose herself to all the little peasant children. I’m sure that won’t attract attention at all.” Isabella’s made a real good case against the whole ghoulification process. Though you’re still wondering if she isn’t just exaggerating so you won’t try it. You spend time hovering over Lisa anyway; you think you could manage to keep her from doing anything weird. Part of you wants to do it just to prove Isabella wrong, but then is that a good excuse for doing it at all? Your original intent is so you could stop Lisa from getting any older and giving her a bit of free will. > You make Lisa into a ghoul Maybe your feelings have faded. Hell, maybe you didn’t even ever truly love her to begin with, but you still feel responsible enough for her situation that you’re not giving up on Lisa. “I’m doing it. I can make this work.” You say. “Very well.” Isabella remarks with a bit of a sigh. “I have to say, I’m still sort of surprised that you’re so permissive in all this.” “Contrary to what YOU may think of me. I do have a sense of kindness…or maybe I’m just fond of you enough that I don’t just kill the pair of you to be done with this failed attempt of courtship.” “Courtship…” you scoff. “Yes, that what this was, at least to me. What would you have me do? Wait around for you to give me flowers or some other meaningless gesture? Go out to…I dunno the local festival? I’m a fucking vampire. I take what I want and at the time I wanted you. But I can see now that method wasn’t the way to go about it. Personally, I don’t even think you have any feelings of love for this girl, just a sense of guilt. However, if THIS is what is going to make you happy, then fine. I’ll show you how. Either you’re going to come to become so disgusted with what Lisa has become that you’ll finally do away with her yourself and we can try again. Or you’ll stay with her and maintain your delusions. Either way the pair of you will be free because I’m not going to have you both living here if that’s the case.” “That’s…pretty generous of you, but…” you start to say and then stop yourself. “But what?” “Um, nothing…” “Pfft, I already know what you were going to ask before you realized it would be stupid to do so, though again it isn’t going to bother me.” “And what did you think I was going to ask?” “That what if you just fake it for your freedom and how will I know? To the former, go ahead. If you’re REALLY willing to put yourself through all this, just to be released from me, then you deserve your freedom. At least it will give me a bit of pride that I will have released a very patient one of my kind into the world. Lot of young vampires fuck up due to being impulsive. But then, I suppose you’ve already had a lot of experience at being patient haven’t you? In any case, we should get started.” Isabella tells you that the process is fairly simple, however due to you being on the younger side, she isn’t sure how long it will take, if at all. The best you can do is just keep feeding her blood on a regular basis until she starts to show signs of change. “Now of course she’s already a bit on the paler side due being stuck down here with no sun all the time. So the thing you’re probably going to notice immediately is her starting to show signs of free will. She’ll probably start by addressing you without needing to be addressed first. She’ll of course also start being very affectionate, wanting to please you in every way.” Isabella explains. “But it’s different from the trance correct?” “Oh yes. Much different. In fact, she’ll be immune to that to some degree. Her loyalty towards you will be unquestionable due to sharing of blood, but she’s still going to do things on her own and it might not matter how much you tell her not to. As I said, ghouls tend to have disgusting habits and urges. In fact if you’ve ever heard the tales of how vampires are a bunch of decadent sex fiends, well THAT’S the reason. Ghouls that somehow manage to get elevated to vampirehood, never fully shed those more vile traits. Always best to go from mortal straight to vampire with no transition in between, like I did with you.” Isabella says and strokes your face. Isabella observes you bite yourself and then feed your blood to Lisa. It actually isn’t as easy as all that. Despite being in a trance, Lisa still doesn’t react well to the whole blood drinking thing, especially that of a vampire’s. She starts gagging and coughing even though she’s also trying to follow your command of doing it. Even reluctantly forcing her head to you doesn’t work and she ends up vomiting. “Lisa doesn’t have much of a gag reflex eh?” Isabella jokes, which you try to ignore and just refocus your efforts. “How long do I have to do this?” you ask. “Well until she at least manages to keep some of it down at least. As I said, it isn’t going to happen instantly either. You’re probably going to have to do this every day for months. Possibly even more than once a day since you’re still a young vampire. All I can suggest is you better make sure you keep YOUR strength up, but you better not go using up all the humans chained up in the larder. Also you’re still obligated to your duties to me. Anyway, I’ll leave you to it.” You continue to force Lisa to suck on you and eventually she keeps some of it down. You start to feel a little weird yourself so you tell her to stop and you go replenish yourself with someone in the larder, despite Isabella’s warnings. You’ll just have to go nab humans for her more frequently. If she thinks all this is going to deter you, it isn’t. Now that Isabella has hinted at freedom, your motivation for doing all this is doubled. You spend months slaving away more than you had under Ral or even Isabella before all this mainly because you have to increase capturing the amount of blood “donors” not just for Isabella, but for yourself. It’s really tempting to just grab someone from Dert, but Isabella has always had a rule against taking too many people from there lest the ignorant peasants start getting riled up, or worse, just pick up and leave. So it’s mostly a lot of ambushing bandits, travellers and (ugh) hobgoblins in the forests. There’s always Holgard too, but the journey even with your speed is still always a pain in the ass dragging someone from there since you have to keep feeding Lisa your blood at a regular interval. (Not to mention there’s currently religious conflict going on there between the factions) Needless to say, all of this makes you a lot more irritable and tired all the time (Basically, you feel like a human by vampire standards) Months pass just like Isabella said they would, but you don’t give up and eventually you start to see the signs of Lisa changing. It starts by her talking to you and addressing you by name. She’s very confused at first, but as you start to explain it all to her, she doesn’t even seem to care. In fact, she seems very happy that you’ve gone to so much effort to save her life. “Oh my beloved! I KNEW you always loved me deeply! Let me show my appreciation to you!” Lisa exclaims and proceeds to jump on you. It’s a little strange, but given all you’ve gone through to turn her, and she seems to be so willing, you don’t turn her down. Isabella still doesn’t seem fussed by this turn of events. She does seem to decrease her own demands for sex though. Cleaning is still a priority unfortunately, but considering Lisa now has all this energy she starts helping you do it. It’s during one of these cleanings that you start to see what Isabella was warning about. “Lisa, I bring in real food, you don’t need to eat the bugs crawling around this place!” you exclaim. “I’m sorry honey, but I dunno…they just looked so…inviting. And they’re nice and crunchy too. I like the way they sometimes wiggle in my mouth…mmmm…tehehehehe…” Lisa says trailing off into a disturbing giggle. “Look, just don’t eat them, and don’t eat anything else that isn’t proper food either.” “But…but what about your delicious yummy blood?” “That’s still fine.” “Good! Because I want some right now!” “You just had some a few hours ago!” “But I need it! I need to suck on you!” It’s just the beginning. Year 26 “Well, you proved yourself. You wanted it bad enough and I’m true to my word. You and your ghoul bitch are free. Now get the hell outta my crypt, it’s still night right now, so if you hurry you can find other shelter before dawn.” Isabella suddenly remarks to you during one of your few moments to yourself. You’re so tired, all you can muster up is a “huh?” “You heard me, you’re free, get out.” Isabella remarks. “Now?” you ask. “Yes! I said get out! I’m sick of you doing a half assed job of keeping this place clean and your bitch eating my food. Never mind the fact that I don’t exactly get off on hearing you lot have sex. Though I’m guessing that was your idea that she scream as loud as she could.” “I thought you weren’t jealous and didn’t give a shit.” “I don’t actually. But I’m certainly not going to share you in any capacity with something that’s currently up in the graveyard as we speak, digging up coffins and eating rotten carcasses.” “What?! She got out again? Why didn’t you stop her?!” “Not my concern and neither are you anymore. You were fun for a while and I don’t regret our time. Just confirmed my original thoughts of why I stay single to begin with. Anyway, take care and a part of me hopes that deep down that you do truly love this girl, but then I’ve always been a bit of a romantic.” Isabella tells you that you’ve got a short period of time to leave not just her crypt, but also the area. She mentions that if she catches you or Lisa still in the area she’ll kill the pair of you since she doesn’t want you lingering around to possibly fuck up her relative peace by preying upon Dert. You gather up what belongings you still value and take your leave. Sure enough when you exit the crypt, you hear Lisa snuffling about in the graveyard. You soon find that she’s already dug up a grave and half eaten body parts lie all around her. She looks up from the rotten leg bone she’s chewing on and wastes no time in running to greet you, though it’s more like an animal loping at you. Lisa attempts to kiss you, but the stench of her breath is horrible and that’s saying something considering how resilient you’ve gotten to such things. You turn your head away and tell her to calm herself. “I’m sorry, I know I’m suppose to stay in the crypt, but I just got so hungry and nipped out for a quick snack since I know you don’t like me touching the chained up humans in that one room. Anyway, is it time to give me some more of your yummy blood? I could use a drink after that meal! Say, do you want some of this leg?” You look at Lisa and she’s absolutely nothing like the girl you were so fond of years ago. She doesn’t even look the same. While she’s not aging anymore, she’s definitely changing in appearance in other ways. Her clothes and body are constantly dirty; her hair is a matted nest crawling with insects. Her teeth have bits of decayed flesh in them and who knows what else. She smells like the same corpses she eats. Her personality is that of a spineless lackey that isn’t even completely obedient. And the kicker to all this is you willingly had sex with this thing repeatedly just to gain your freedom. You can’t imagine the number of times you dreaded keeping up the sham. Of course it’s done now. You don’t really need to go through it any longer. > You take Lisa with you You can’t do it. It’s not right. You made her into this and she’s your responsibility now. For good or ill. “Lisa, come on it’s time to go.” You say. “I know, I know. Back to the crypt.” Lisa says. “No, we’re moving out of there. We’re going…well I’m not sure yet. But we’re going.” “Wait. So…no more Isabella? It’s just me and you now?” “That’s about the size of the situation, yes.” Lisa can barely contain her joy. She immediately hugs and kisses you on the mouth. You taste a mixture of rotten meat and who the hell knows what else. It’s foul and you immediately push her away and try not to show your displeasure. “Okay, okay that’s enough of that. We’ll have plenty of time for that later. Right now we have to leave this area. I think we probably should head to Holgard. I know of a crypt in their graveyard we can use while we figure out our next move from there.” You say. “Whatever you say my love, I will follow you anywhere!” Lisa beams. You just can’t beat undying devotion. Your journey to Holgard takes a little longer than you would like mainly because Lisa has the attention span of a small child. It doesn’t help that she was relatively sheltered from the world as a human, having never really left Dert and then later as a ghoul confined to Isabella’s crypt. So this is all very interesting to her. The biggest concern is when you have to dig a hole in the ground to sleep during the day. You try to pick some place relatively secluded and really stress how much you want Lisa to stay in the vicinity. She of course is full of promises, but you just assume you’re rolling the dice. When you wake up, you are happy to find that Lisa has indeed obeyed your command. You see the remains of a couple small woodland animals, so you guess she might have wandered, but probably not too far. Maybe she’s starting to learn. As you approach Holgard, you have to once again stress to her NOT to just go attacking the first living being she sees. She’s heard about Holgard many times, so again this is a very big event for her. You know the only thing she likes more than eating flesh is drinking your blood, so you use that as a reward encouragement. Hopefully it will be enough. Entering and exiting Holgard is a big hassle nowadays mainly due to the religious strife going on between the various churches. It’s going on year two at this point and has just gotten worse. Not to the extent the Varsakken family civil war did, but it could start going that way. Still, some intimidating looks and minor mental suggestion on the weak-minded human guards causes them to let you pass without question. Lisa of course asks why you didn’t just kill them to which you explain that now that you’re going to be living in a city, you both need to practice the art of subtlety a lot more often. Lisa seems confused by this, but hopefully she’ll understand it soon, otherwise you you won’t be sticking around Holgard for too long. You both head to the graveyard and find yourself an older one that doesn’t look like it gets too much visitation and after a few adjustments, you make a space for yourself and Lisa. And as promised, you give Lisa some of your blood, which she happily accepts. While Lisa sucks on you, you ponder what exactly you’re going to do next now that you’re here. You think if it wasn’t for Lisa, you’d probably have an urge to just move on and go somewhere far away. Not that you’ve ever been a wanderer by nature, but Holgard just doesn’t hold the interest it once did when you first set out to it as a young thief so many years ago. Things have changed severely and going back to your “old life” in any capacity certainly isn’t much of an option anymore. There’s also the fact that there is still that holy war of sorts going on in the city. You haven’t really been keeping up on it mainly because you’ve been preoccupied with Lisa, but you’ve visited Holgard enough over the past year that it isn’t ending anytime soon. You still wouldn’t be that concerned with it, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Church of Joachim has seemingly turned from it’s normal peace and love teachings and turned into a more militant faction that has been going on about cleaning up this stinking city of evil influences of the earthly and supernatural kind. The supernatural part is the bit that is cause for concern. However, you need a “stable” place to stay until you can train Lisa better since just travelling here was an ordeal in keeping track of her. Until that time, you’ll just have to redouble your efforts in keeping a low profile and hopefully Lisa does too. A few weeks later… After a rare night of going out by yourself and leaving Lisa alone to her own devices, you come back and find her speaking with some woman in the graveyard. At first you think it's Isabella, but if that was the case, she would have already killed her (And probably you) Besides, Holgard is far enough away from her territory. Plus this woman is dressed in a blue and purple robe. Isabella always went around naked. Your second instinct is to just attack immediately, but given that this woman is talking to Lisa so calmly and Lisa isn’t trying to rip her throat out causes you to believe there are greater forces at work Sensing that this is going to be a plate full of shit you’re going to have to deal with, you merely make your presence known. The woman says nothing, but just watches. “Hello. This looks…friendly.” You say. “My love! I just stayed in the graveyard like you told me to, and this lady just showed up. I would have killed her, but for some reason…I suddenly didn’t feel like it. Maybe I’m learning restraint like you’re always telling me to?” Lisa answers. “What have you been talking about with this…lady?” “Nothing much. Just about how much I love you and how much you love me and how good corpses taste, but not as much as the living people! She’s been very friendly for a meat sack and just asking about when you will return. Um…you’re not mad at me are you? Please don’t be mad!” “No. I’m not mad. I’m sure my teachings of restraint had something to do with you not killing this woman. I’m very proud of you. Head on inside home, I’ll be in soon.” “Okay! But not too long okay? The sun will be coming up soon and I don’t want you to burn up!” Lisa heads back home, leaving you with the robed woman. “Alright, whatever little magic trick you used to subdue Lisa, isn’t going to work on me, so whatever your business is make it quick because as she said, the sun is coming up soon.” The woman nods. “Don’t get too many vampires making their home in the city. Passing through on occasion, but never permanent residents. In fact I believe you’ve passed through here on several occasions haven’t you?” she says. “Get to the point.” “Very well. I’m obviously not here to make an enemy out of you. Your business is your own. However, I’m sure you’re aware that certain other groups in this city are less accepting of your activities.” “Yes, I’m fully aware of the Joachim fanatics and I’ve been staying out of their way and everyone else’s that matter. INCLUDING the followers of Dorna, goddess of magic. I recognize your robes, sorceress.” “Yes, I’m sure you have kept your head down. But your female friend seems to be less discreet. She was dancing and singing to herself while feasting on a rotten skull when I walked up. What if I had been an angry mob of Joachimites? Wouldn’t have been good, that’s for sure.” “Yeah well she’s still learning. I will talk to her.” “You’re not a very old vampire are you?” “How would you know if I was or not? We don’t age.” “True, but the fact that you speak with mild respect about your ghoul and even call her by name makes me believe that you’re not old. Most older vampires are cynical and apathetic at best and outright arrogant and cruel most of the time. The way you interact with her is almost an attempt at treating her like an equal. In fact I’d venture to guess that ghoul was probably your girlfriend at one time.” “You keep testing my patience human, you’ll learn just how cruel I can be.” “Okay, okay. I’m out of line. I shouldn’t presume. Look, I’m sure you’re aware of the troubles going on. I’m not exactly sure what changes are coming, but rest assured the followers of Dorna will weather this, but we aren’t stupid. We know that we are very small in comparison to the other religions here. The fact that the Joachimites gathered so many in such a short period of time took everyone by surprise I think, let alone their more violent outlook. Between them and the followers of Fel, they make up most of soldiers in this war, which hasn’t completely spilled into full on war yet, but it’s getting there.” “So what do you want from me?” “Nothing. Or rather nothing at this time. I am merely seeking potential allies. As I said, we who follow Dorna respect magic and knowledge. We also respect magical beings and would not condemn them to die due to mere ignorance and fear. I believe if we work together, we could both make ourselves a little safer from hostile forces. In fact, we could even set you and your girlfriend up in our own private mausoleum. It would be much nicer than this public graveyard where just anyone can walk into.” Nice offer, but you’re skeptical. “I think we’ll be fine right where we are at and as for your offer of an alliance, I’m still not sure what benefit there would be for allying with you lot. As you said, you’re much smaller than the rest of the factions. I mean it seems like if I was going to ally with anyone, I’d be better off allying with the followers of Fel. I mean don’t they have ties to the Ebony Claw Syndicate? I’ve even heard rumors that Baroness Varsakken is a priestess. Seems like they’re going to be on the winning team.” “Well that IS the safe bet. And it would perhaps be wise in your case to consider it. I’m sure they would also welcome a vampire ally.” Dorna pauses for a moment as if to collect her thoughts before continuing. “However, think on this as well. If all the rumors about them are true, they are indeed very powerful. In fact so powerful that why have they not just purged all the other sects yet? There are plenty of other rumors going around that the Felians might not even be completely united. Many of the true believers think that the Ebony Claw is a corrupting influence on proper worship of the shadow god. Even the Baroness is having a hard time keeping them all in line along with ruling the city. You ally with them and you could find yourself a pawn in whatever private power struggle they’re engaged in and that’s along with the external troubles coming as well.” “Maybe I’ll just stick by myself, seems to be working just fine so far.” “Again, perfectly valid. You have no reason to trust any of us. I am merely extending my hand. It’s up to you if you want to take it. I will leave you to your rest. If you change your mind, I’m sure you’re familiar with where our temple is, and you’re invited to enter.” The sorceress (priestess?) takes her leave and you head inside your home before the sun comes up. Lisa of course is waiting patiently by your resting area. You open up your wrist and allow her to suck on you while you ponder your options. You suppose that some sort of agreement with the Dornans could be beneficial assuming they’re serious about providing a better place where you wouldn’t be as accessible. Of course you’ve dealt with one wizard type before and well…you know how that turned out. > You ally with the Dornans You suppose it doesn’t hurt to hear more. It is true that they need all the help they can get and it wouldn’t be so terrible to have a group of wizards watching your back. You decide that you’ll visit their temple tomorrow night. The next night before you leave for the Dornan Temple, you command that Lisa is to be more careful if she ventures out of the crypt and not to call attention to herself by singing or dancing or indulging in whatever other little quirks she has. You also tell her you may even be moving to a better place soon anyway. Lisa doesn’t seem to care about that so much as she’s just happy to be going where you go. With Lisa spoken to, you take your leave. Doesn’t take long for you to get to the temple, though you don’t really travel to this part of the city as much since you prefer to stay close to home due to all the trouble going on in the city with this religious faction war. The blue and purple temple isn’t excessively large but it’s ornate enough looking that it stands out. There are no obvious guards standing outside the temple, but you suspect that even with the factions at each other’s throats like they are, nobody is foolish enough to assault the temple directly or even enter it. You’ve been invited though so you stroll in, if a bit cautiously since you still aren’t sure if they have magic traps set up or something. When you enter it resembles more of a library than a place of worship, but then Dorna isn’t just a goddess of magic, but of knowledge. A few priests notice you come in, but only one approaches you. “You’re the vampire, correct? Heather said a vampire might be coming by and you look like one.” a young man says. “Really? Most of the people I come across can’t tell.” “Most people are idiots that don’t have the blessed knowledge that only Dorna can provide. But we’re not here to dwell on the struggles of the ignorant masses, come with me, Elder Flynn will want to speak with you.” The acolyte motions you to follow him which you do so to what seems to be a meditation room where you see several other priests sitting in a circle with their heads bowed down and their eyes closed. An older one stands in the middle of them all and turns his attention towards you and the acolyte. “Elder Flynn, the vampire is here.” The acolyte remarks. “Thank you. You may take your leave now.” Elder Flynn remarks at which point the acolyte bows his head and does as he’s commanded. Elder Flynn motions you to come closer, but you’re still a little suspicious about this so you remain put. “I’m good right here.” You say. “Very well, I just didn’t feel like shouting half way across the room.” Elder Flynn remarks. “So what is it that you wanted to speak to me about?” “Well you came to us, I figured you had something that you wanted to say.” “You were the one who told one of your minions to seek me out, I’m just here because she said that you wanted allies.” “If she worded it that way, then she misspoke, I told her that we wanted help not allies per say.” “Whatever, so do you want my help or not?” “Oh yes. Your help would be most welcome. Vampires have a lot of magical energy within them by their nature. Or unnature so to speak. Even lowly ones like you have much to offer.” “Great idea to insult me on our first meeting. So far you haven’t impressed, and I’ve had enough of arrogant wizard shitheads to last me a lifetime.” “Good, because yours is about to end.” And with that threat, the door behind you slams shut and Elder Flynn begins chanting something and the rest of the priests are following suit. You have no idea what he’s doing, but it can’t be anything good. > You try to escape You suspect that Flynn most have some sort of magical protection around him, not to mention that even if you did manage to kill him, you’re still severely outnumbered. Your best bet is to break down that door. It’s solid metal and probably magically locked, but you have to try. You begin kicking near where the hinges would be, ignoring the fact that Elder Flynn and his lot are still chanting whatever it is that they’re trying to do. You eventually make progress and the door begins to give way, though whatever magic is locking it is still holding it in place. You aren’t going to be able to destroy the door quick enough at this rate. You back up from the door and even now you can hear the chanting getting louder, like they’re starting to reach the end of it. You run as fast as you can and using all of your body weight and strength you ram into the door, hoping to break it. You hit the door, which at last gives completely away just as they complete their spell. The room you just escaped from is suddenly bathed in a bright light. Bright as the sun and it has the exact same effect it would have on a vampire such as you. You feel the burn on your backside and scramble up off the destroyed door and run for cover or more specifically the exit of the temple. “Get that fucking leech!” one of the acolytes shouts and as you’re on your way to escape the priests not involved in the ritual start casting their own spells on you. You manage to slash the throat of one who is standing directly in front of the exit and get the hell out of there though you’re still partially on fire and all feeling sluggish from the effects of a slow spell that was cast on you. Still, you’re out of the temple now and from there you easily manage to lose any pursuing priests by ducking into a sewer entrance. After making sure you’re not being chased any longer, you take a breather and then promptly swear up a storm at your situation. “Fuck! I’m a fucking vampire and I’m still putting up with shit and now I’m fucking literally hiding in it! Why the fuck does this keep happening to me?! I would have been better off just letting the mob back home stringing me up for killing Klint. At my misery would have been quick. Shit. (Sigh) Gotta think…” You can’t go back home to your crypt, the Dornans are probably already heading there. Even if they aren’t you don’t want to risk it. Not that you don’t have desire for revenge, but right now, you’re hardly in any condition and you’d be fighting an entire temple of those magic fanatics. You briefly wonder if you shouldn’t try to reach out towards the Felians, but then trying to get allies is what got you in here in the first place. Right now, the only person you can trust is yourself. Well there’s Lisa, but you think you’re going to have to leave her behind, assuming that the Dornans haven’t already stormed the crypt and killed her already. You tried, but you can’t be bothered to train her any longer. The situation has changed and you just need to get the hell out of this city. You don’t know where, but it isn’t safe for you to live comfortably here any longer. This city is probably going to suffer yet another civil war of sorts anyway, it probably would be best to leave. You don’t know where you’re going to go, but you need to just start over elsewhere. Hopefully away from anymore fucking wizards. You follow the sewers until you get close to the docks area of the city. Holgard always has trade ships leaving its harbor going to various locations. You exit the sewers and sneak aboard one of them. You think this one is going to the Delantium Kingdom, but it might be going to some place you’ve never heard of, you don’t really care as long as you’re away from this area. Never been aboard a ship before, so this will be a new experience. Hopefully, an uneventful one. You imagine you’ll get hungry on the journey, but as far as you know there’s enough crew on the ship that you’ll be able to get by. Just have to be stealthy about it which even in your current condition you’ll be able to do. You still don’t know exactly what you’re going to do with the rest of your undead life, but your days as a common rogue are over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You suppose it doesn’t hurt to hear more. It is true that they need all the help they can get and it wouldn’t be so terrible to have a group of wizards watching your back. You decide that you’ll visit their temple tomorrow night. The next night before you leave for the Dornan Temple, you command that Lisa is to be more careful if she ventures out of the crypt and not to call attention to herself by singing or dancing or indulging in whatever other little quirks she has. You also tell her you may even be moving to a better place soon anyway. Lisa doesn’t seem to care about that so much as she’s just happy to be going where you go. With Lisa spoken to, you take your leave. Doesn’t take long for you to get to the temple, though you don’t really travel to this part of the city as much since you prefer to stay close to home due to all the trouble going on in the city with this religious faction war. The blue and purple temple isn’t excessively large but it’s ornate enough looking that it stands out. There are no obvious guards standing outside the temple, but you suspect that even with the factions at each other’s throats like they are, nobody is foolish enough to assault the temple directly or even enter it. You’ve been invited though so you stroll in, if a bit cautiously since you still aren’t sure if they have magic traps set up or something. When you enter it resembles more of a library than a place of worship, but then Dorna isn’t just a goddess of magic, but of knowledge. A few priests notice you come in, but only one approaches you. “You’re the vampire, correct? Heather said a vampire might be coming by and you look like one.” a young man says. “Really? Most of the people I come across can’t tell.” “Most people are idiots that don’t have the blessed knowledge that only Dorna can provide. But we’re not here to dwell on the struggles of the ignorant masses, come with me, Elder Flynn will want to speak with you.” The acolyte motions you to follow him which you do so to what seems to be a meditation room where you see several other priests sitting in a circle with their heads bowed down and their eyes closed. An older one stands in the middle of them all and turns his attention towards you and the acolyte. “Elder Flynn, the vampire is here.” The acolyte remarks. “Thank you. You may take your leave now.” Elder Flynn remarks at which point the acolyte bows his head and does as he’s commanded. Elder Flynn motions you to come closer, but you’re still a little suspicious about this so you remain put. “I’m good right here.” You say. “Very well, I just didn’t feel like shouting half way across the room.” Elder Flynn remarks. “So what is it that you wanted to speak to me about?” “Well you came to us, I figured you had something that you wanted to say.” “You were the one who told one of your minions to seek me out, I’m just here because she said that you wanted allies.” “If she worded it that way, then she misspoke, I told her that we wanted help not allies per say.” “Whatever, so do you want my help or not?” “Oh yes. Your help would be most welcome. Vampires have a lot of magical energy within them by their nature. Or unnature so to speak. Even lowly ones like you have much to offer.” “Great idea to insult me on our first meeting. So far you haven’t impressed, and I’ve had enough of arrogant wizard shitheads to last me a lifetime.” “Good, because yours is about to end.” And with that threat, the door behind you slams shut and Elder Flynn begins chanting something and the rest of the priests are following suit. You have no idea what he’s doing, but it can’t be anything good. > You attack Flynn That door is solid metal and probably magically locked, you doubt if you could even punch through it in time even with your enhanced strength, but you’re still much faster than you used to be and you’re certain that you can reach him before you can cast whatever spell he’s casting. You’re still going to be out numbered, but you’re just going to have to hope for the best because you don’t have many options. You run towards Flynn and lunge over the priests. Or at least you would have if they weren’t forming a magical barrier, which you hit full on and go sprawling to the floor backwards. As you’re picking yourself up off the floor, Elder Flynn and his people are still chanting and it’s getting louder. You try to pull at one of the other priests, hoping that maybe that will break the barrier, but they’re not only creating the barrier, they’re within it as well. You futility punch at the barrier and even attempt to mind control one of the priests, but nothing works, they’re too focused and protected. Out of ideas, you run back to the door and begin punching at it in frustration. You eventually manage to put your fist through it, but it’s a little too late. The room is suddenly bathed in a bright light. Bright as the sun and it has the exact same effect it would have on a vampire such as you. You flail around on fire and desperately try to find cover, but there is none. You scream, wail and eventually collapse to the floor until you’re nothing but a pile of bones and ashes. Afterwards, Elder Flynn tells his followers to gather up your ashes and grind up what remains of your bones for spell components, as they will be helpful in the current religious faction war going on.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t do it. It’s not right. You made her into this and she’s your responsibility now. For good or ill. “Lisa, come on it’s time to go.” You say. “I know, I know. Back to the crypt.” Lisa says. “No, we’re moving out of there. We’re going…well I’m not sure yet. But we’re going.” “Wait. So…no more Isabella? It’s just me and you now?” “That’s about the size of the situation, yes.” Lisa can barely contain her joy. She immediately hugs and kisses you on the mouth. You taste a mixture of rotten meat and who the hell knows what else. It’s foul and you immediately push her away and try not to show your displeasure. “Okay, okay that’s enough of that. We’ll have plenty of time for that later. Right now we have to leave this area. I think we probably should head to Holgard. I know of a crypt in their graveyard we can use while we figure out our next move from there.” You say. “Whatever you say my love, I will follow you anywhere!” Lisa beams. You just can’t beat undying devotion. Your journey to Holgard takes a little longer than you would like mainly because Lisa has the attention span of a small child. It doesn’t help that she was relatively sheltered from the world as a human, having never really left Dert and then later as a ghoul confined to Isabella’s crypt. So this is all very interesting to her. The biggest concern is when you have to dig a hole in the ground to sleep during the day. You try to pick some place relatively secluded and really stress how much you want Lisa to stay in the vicinity. She of course is full of promises, but you just assume you’re rolling the dice. When you wake up, you are happy to find that Lisa has indeed obeyed your command. You see the remains of a couple small woodland animals, so you guess she might have wandered, but probably not too far. Maybe she’s starting to learn. As you approach Holgard, you have to once again stress to her NOT to just go attacking the first living being she sees. She’s heard about Holgard many times, so again this is a very big event for her. You know the only thing she likes more than eating flesh is drinking your blood, so you use that as a reward encouragement. Hopefully it will be enough. Entering and exiting Holgard is a big hassle nowadays mainly due to the religious strife going on between the various churches. It’s going on year two at this point and has just gotten worse. Not to the extent the Varsakken family civil war did, but it could start going that way. Still, some intimidating looks and minor mental suggestion on the weak-minded human guards causes them to let you pass without question. Lisa of course asks why you didn’t just kill them to which you explain that now that you’re going to be living in a city, you both need to practice the art of subtlety a lot more often. Lisa seems confused by this, but hopefully she’ll understand it soon, otherwise you you won’t be sticking around Holgard for too long. You both head to the graveyard and find yourself an older one that doesn’t look like it gets too much visitation and after a few adjustments, you make a space for yourself and Lisa. And as promised, you give Lisa some of your blood, which she happily accepts. While Lisa sucks on you, you ponder what exactly you’re going to do next now that you’re here. You think if it wasn’t for Lisa, you’d probably have an urge to just move on and go somewhere far away. Not that you’ve ever been a wanderer by nature, but Holgard just doesn’t hold the interest it once did when you first set out to it as a young thief so many years ago. Things have changed severely and going back to your “old life” in any capacity certainly isn’t much of an option anymore. There’s also the fact that there is still that holy war of sorts going on in the city. You haven’t really been keeping up on it mainly because you’ve been preoccupied with Lisa, but you’ve visited Holgard enough over the past year that it isn’t ending anytime soon. You still wouldn’t be that concerned with it, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Church of Joachim has seemingly turned from it’s normal peace and love teachings and turned into a more militant faction that has been going on about cleaning up this stinking city of evil influences of the earthly and supernatural kind. The supernatural part is the bit that is cause for concern. However, you need a “stable” place to stay until you can train Lisa better since just travelling here was an ordeal in keeping track of her. Until that time, you’ll just have to redouble your efforts in keeping a low profile and hopefully Lisa does too. A few weeks later… After a rare night of going out by yourself and leaving Lisa alone to her own devices, you come back and find her speaking with some woman in the graveyard. At first you think it's Isabella, but if that was the case, she would have already killed her (And probably you) Besides, Holgard is far enough away from her territory. Plus this woman is dressed in a blue and purple robe. Isabella always went around naked. Your second instinct is to just attack immediately, but given that this woman is talking to Lisa so calmly and Lisa isn’t trying to rip her throat out causes you to believe there are greater forces at work Sensing that this is going to be a plate full of shit you’re going to have to deal with, you merely make your presence known. The woman says nothing, but just watches. “Hello. This looks…friendly.” You say. “My love! I just stayed in the graveyard like you told me to, and this lady just showed up. I would have killed her, but for some reason…I suddenly didn’t feel like it. Maybe I’m learning restraint like you’re always telling me to?” Lisa answers. “What have you been talking about with this…lady?” “Nothing much. Just about how much I love you and how much you love me and how good corpses taste, but not as much as the living people! She’s been very friendly for a meat sack and just asking about when you will return. Um…you’re not mad at me are you? Please don’t be mad!” “No. I’m not mad. I’m sure my teachings of restraint had something to do with you not killing this woman. I’m very proud of you. Head on inside home, I’ll be in soon.” “Okay! But not too long okay? The sun will be coming up soon and I don’t want you to burn up!” Lisa heads back home, leaving you with the robed woman. “Alright, whatever little magic trick you used to subdue Lisa, isn’t going to work on me, so whatever your business is make it quick because as she said, the sun is coming up soon.” The woman nods. “Don’t get too many vampires making their home in the city. Passing through on occasion, but never permanent residents. In fact I believe you’ve passed through here on several occasions haven’t you?” she says. “Get to the point.” “Very well. I’m obviously not here to make an enemy out of you. Your business is your own. However, I’m sure you’re aware that certain other groups in this city are less accepting of your activities.” “Yes, I’m fully aware of the Joachim fanatics and I’ve been staying out of their way and everyone else’s that matter. INCLUDING the followers of Dorna, goddess of magic. I recognize your robes, sorceress.” “Yes, I’m sure you have kept your head down. But your female friend seems to be less discreet. She was dancing and singing to herself while feasting on a rotten skull when I walked up. What if I had been an angry mob of Joachimites? Wouldn’t have been good, that’s for sure.” “Yeah well she’s still learning. I will talk to her.” “You’re not a very old vampire are you?” “How would you know if I was or not? We don’t age.” “True, but the fact that you speak with mild respect about your ghoul and even call her by name makes me believe that you’re not old. Most older vampires are cynical and apathetic at best and outright arrogant and cruel most of the time. The way you interact with her is almost an attempt at treating her like an equal. In fact I’d venture to guess that ghoul was probably your girlfriend at one time.” “You keep testing my patience human, you’ll learn just how cruel I can be.” “Okay, okay. I’m out of line. I shouldn’t presume. Look, I’m sure you’re aware of the troubles going on. I’m not exactly sure what changes are coming, but rest assured the followers of Dorna will weather this, but we aren’t stupid. We know that we are very small in comparison to the other religions here. The fact that the Joachimites gathered so many in such a short period of time took everyone by surprise I think, let alone their more violent outlook. Between them and the followers of Fel, they make up most of soldiers in this war, which hasn’t completely spilled into full on war yet, but it’s getting there.” “So what do you want from me?” “Nothing. Or rather nothing at this time. I am merely seeking potential allies. As I said, we who follow Dorna respect magic and knowledge. We also respect magical beings and would not condemn them to die due to mere ignorance and fear. I believe if we work together, we could both make ourselves a little safer from hostile forces. In fact, we could even set you and your girlfriend up in our own private mausoleum. It would be much nicer than this public graveyard where just anyone can walk into.” Nice offer, but you’re skeptical. “I think we’ll be fine right where we are at and as for your offer of an alliance, I’m still not sure what benefit there would be for allying with you lot. As you said, you’re much smaller than the rest of the factions. I mean it seems like if I was going to ally with anyone, I’d be better off allying with the followers of Fel. I mean don’t they have ties to the Ebony Claw Syndicate? I’ve even heard rumors that Baroness Varsakken is a priestess. Seems like they’re going to be on the winning team.” “Well that IS the safe bet. And it would perhaps be wise in your case to consider it. I’m sure they would also welcome a vampire ally.” Dorna pauses for a moment as if to collect her thoughts before continuing. “However, think on this as well. If all the rumors about them are true, they are indeed very powerful. In fact so powerful that why have they not just purged all the other sects yet? There are plenty of other rumors going around that the Felians might not even be completely united. Many of the true believers think that the Ebony Claw is a corrupting influence on proper worship of the shadow god. Even the Baroness is having a hard time keeping them all in line along with ruling the city. You ally with them and you could find yourself a pawn in whatever private power struggle they’re engaged in and that’s along with the external troubles coming as well.” “Maybe I’ll just stick by myself, seems to be working just fine so far.” “Again, perfectly valid. You have no reason to trust any of us. I am merely extending my hand. It’s up to you if you want to take it. I will leave you to your rest. If you change your mind, I’m sure you’re familiar with where our temple is, and you’re invited to enter.” The sorceress (priestess?) takes her leave and you head inside your home before the sun comes up. Lisa of course is waiting patiently by your resting area. You open up your wrist and allow her to suck on you while you ponder your options. You suppose that some sort of agreement with the Dornans could be beneficial assuming they’re serious about providing a better place where you wouldn’t be as accessible. Of course you’ve dealt with one wizard type before and well…you know how that turned out. > You stay on your own You’re a damn vampire. You don’t need the help of some fucking wizard bitches. They probably just want to get you in their temple where they can do some sort of magic shit that WILL work on you and then harvest you for spell components or something. You’re not going to seek the aid of any of these factions. Your days of asking for help are over. The only one you can count on is yourself and you can easily protect your own dwelling if those religious nuts come beating down your crypt door. You need to make some improvements to your home. You pat Lisa on the head and motion her to stop sucking. “Come on, we got work to do girl.” You say. “Huh? But it’s almost day, aren’t you going to sleep soon my love?” Isabella asks. “No, but we’re going to working out of the sunlight anyway, so it doesn’t matter.” You (and Lisa) begin to dig out tunnels and space underneath the current crypt you’re residing in. You do this over the course of several weeks, only taking quick breaks to go feed. You make sure only you leave because the last thing you want is for Lisa to get distracted. Promises and rewards of your own blood keep her happy enough that she obeys you with no straying. You continue to work on your home and probably become slightly absorbed with fixing it, making alterations and securing it. You wonder if that’s the vampire tendency to obsess about details kicking in. (You definitely won’t be cleaning it though, you’ve had enough of that) Isabella had an extensive catacomb system in her crypt, but due to being in a city, you have to work within its limits somewhat. For one, Holgard is a costal town. Last thing you need is the sea flooding most of your tunnels. Holgard also has an extensive sewer system and you’ve had to make sure that your home doesn’t have multiple passages leading into it. However, you do make one entrance because you ultimately decide that it probably would be better to just come and in out through the sewers which lead all over the place and make travelling around a bit more convenient if you ever need to do it during the day. Lisa also can easily find something for herself to feast on in the sewers as well. Be it vermin or potentially even some hapless bum. You’d rather her skulk around down here than out in the open. You seal up the crypt “entrance” tight and trap it just in case anyone is really determined to go searching for you that way. The entire time you’re doing this, you’re keeping aware of events that are going on in the city. So far nothing out of the ordinary or more importantly, no angry Joachimites storming the streets looking for supernatural horrors to destroy. In fact, they’ve been fairly quiet. The only thing you’ve recently heard is an assassination attempt on the high warrior priest of Karn which the Felians are getting blamed for (Of course they’re denying it) and that the worshippers of Yag somehow changed all the Dorna symbols into dicks. Not just images or representation of dicks, but actual dicks. When the Dornan priests and priestesses woke up that day, they found their entire temple literally covered in dicks (Of all sizes) from the inside and out. Fortunately this seems to have pissed off the Dornans enough to focus their attention elsewhere and as such they have not made any more overtures to you. After months of work, you’re still making improvements (And with your new found obsession, you’re likely to be always doing so), but your home is pretty much complete. You’ve even taken time to furnish it a bit just so it doesn’t feel like a simple cave dwelling. You imagine that the lumber yards, ironmongers, and furniture shops and don’t normally get many thefts and burglaries, but they’ve certainly suffered a rash of them lately. The one thing that you weren’t expecting in all this, is you’ve sort of “re-bonded” a bit with Lisa. After having spent so much time working closely with her and doing something actually productive, you definitely don’t feel the same “guilty obligation” you once did for making her into a ghoul. It’s nothing like how it used to be of course, but your feelings for her are approaching a fondness that you once had. They must be, because you’re starting to look past her usual disheveled appearance and ignore whatever foul smells she’s immersed herself in, though you’ve been trying to help her on that front by providing her with perfumes, oils and incense. (The herbalist shops have received a rash of burglaries as well) With your home project, your “ghoulfriend”, plentiful food supply and continued rouguish activities (Which you didn’t think you’d actually ever go back into on any major scale) you’ve officially made Holgard your stomping grounds and at this point you’re not going to be run off by anyone. The mortals can burn this city to the ground in whatever power struggle they’re having at the moment, but one thing is certain, you’re going to still be just fine under the smoldering ruins of it. > You time passes... Chapter 3C2: Price of Freedom Year 30 “No, no, no, you can’t play that card.” You say. “Oh. Um…okay then this one.” Lisa says. You play your own card that easily beats the rest of Lisa’s hand. “I hate this stupid game.” She exclaims and throws her cards down on the table causing you to smile a bit. “Well you’re getting better at it.” “I just don’t see the point in us playing games when we could be feeding together or better yet, fucking instead.” “Now Lisa, you know there’s more to existence than just the base needs.” “Pfft, not much more, come on lover, I’ll let you do whatever you want to me.” “You let me do whatever I want all the time. Maybe later. However, if you don’t want to play games though, you can always got feast on those whores we got in the meat room.” “Ohhh! You mean we’re not saving them anymore?” “Well we’re saving two of them for the rest of the week. You can go eat the third one though. Pick whichever one you want. I’ll join you a little later.” Lisa makes that disturbing squeal and kisses the side of your face before running off to go eat. You still aren’t sure if you actually “love” Lisa, but you definitely don’t mind her affection again, now that you’ve gotten her to regularly perfume herself and chew on mint herbs once in awhile. In fact, you do believe you’ve trained Lisa fairly well all things considered. Even her personality has changed slightly so that she isn’t a complete toadying suck up. Makes you wonder if Isabella was just bullshitting you about it being so difficult. You pack up your deck of cards and check on some of your tunnels. You thought you saw the support beam warping. You might need to replace it. You don’t think you’ll ever get this place just right. As you’re inspecting your work, your other senses perk up. You can sense someone coming and its not some idiots trying to get into the topside crypt (It was funny how those Joachimites fell for that blade trap a few years ago). This is someone approaching from the sewer entrance, which means this is a hell of a lot more serious because you keep it well hidden. And this someone, you don’t think is mortal… You approach your “front door” to the sewers cautiously and fully prepared for a fight when you hear a muffled yet familiar voice from the other side. “I can tell you’re approaching. Yes, you! Your essence to me will always be strong even when you make your home in the middle of some filthy human shithole.” Isabella remarks. “Isabella?” you answer. “Yes, I’m sure you can tell it was me, unless these sewers have completely destroyed your senses. Why the hell did you make your home in such a place?” “Seemed like a good idea at the time, besides, nobody bothers me down here.” “Well that I can certainly believe. Look, you going to let me in now so we can talk because standing out here in the muck isn’t my idea of a pleasant evening.” “With all respect Isabella, why the hell are you here? Last time we talked, you weren’t exactly pleased with me.” “Long story. And I’d argue that we parted ways on fairly amicable terms. You didn’t really expect me to share you with that lesser being did you? I told you that.” “You also told me, that you’d kill the both of us.” “Oh, that was just my way of getting you both the hell out, and look it worked. In fact I’m currently extending my courtesy, by simply NOT smashing in this wall and barging in.” “You can’t do that. This is my home and I haven’t invited you in!” You hear Isabella chuckling from the other side. “Oh my sweet young vampire. You still have so much to learn. I’m your maker, I will always be connected to you even if I don’t have direct influence anymore. And that means your home will ALWAYS be my home too. So let me in or I’m wrecking this not so secret wall of yours, and I’m sure you don’t want that.” You hate these “new rules” that pop up about your current existence. “Alright, alright, fine.” you say and slide open the wall And there you see Isabella looking the same way as when you left her crypt. Including being naked. “Glad to see you’re still intelligent enough to know when to listen to your betters. Always liked that about you.” She says and steps inside. Isabella sniffs a bit. “Hmm, the odor is much better in here. Ah, I smell fresh blood nearby and another familiar scent…though somehow different…wait…is that your ghoul? She still around?” “For your information, yes Lisa is here and if this is some attempt of trying to get me back, forget it, because we’re still together.” Isabella smirks. “Hm, guess good minions are hard to come by. No point in throwing one out right? Tell me, were the sewers her idea? In any case, I hate to break your male ego, but I’m not here in some silly attempt to get you back. I’m here because I need your help.” Isabella says. “Wait, you need MY help?” you say. “Yes, but don’t think that this an opportunity to hold something over my head. I’m a very resourceful woman and you are just one of my resources I need to help accomplish my task.” “Hm, glad to be held in such high esteem.” “As well you should especially because this also involves another old acquaintance of yours. Ral.” All the figures from the past are coming out tonight… “What does Ral have to do with this?” you ask. “He fucking destroyed my home and Dert, that’s what he has to do with this! Honestly I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it since I imagine this haven of scum has a lot of gossip going on.” “Honestly, as the years have worn on, I’ve been becoming more of a recluse so I don’t keep up or even pay attention to most of the shit I hear the mortals talk about unless it really sounds like it’s going to affect me directly. If it wasn’t for the whole needing to feed situation and requiring the occasional supplies to fix up my home, I’d just stay down here with Lisa and never leave. Still, to my knowledge Dert was never very important and I doubt if anyone in Holgard even gave a shit about the place if they even knew it existed at all.” “Nevertheless, it’s gone, along with my home and Ral has to pay for that.” “I think you’re going to have to start from the beginning and let’s talk some place where I can sit and at least take all this in.” You take Isabella through some of your home and head towards one of your “living areas.” Isabella remarks that she is impressed by what you have done given the limitations you had to work with. “I see you tried your best to emulate the layout of my own crypt and catacombs even if they aren’t nearly as tidy.” Isabella says. “Glad you approve. I need to stop here first.” You say. As you’re passing the meat room, you see Lisa completely engorging herself on one of the whores that she’s completely ripped apart. She’s covered in gore and entrails and loving every minute of it. You imagine this would be a horrific sight to the other two chained up, if they weren’t under a trance. Lisa bloody face looks up from her feeding and grins at you, but then her grin becomes a look of worry when she sees Isabella behind you. “Wha…what…what’s she doing here?! I thought it was just you and me from now on! You said so!” Lisa says. “It is, and it always will be, my grave flower. Isabella just came to visit about something and I have to talk to her about it.” “…you’re mad at me, aren’t you? Please don’t be mad at me! I can do better! I’ll…I’ll chew more of those mint herbs you want me to! You’re bored…you want a threeway don’t you? I can go down on Isabella while you ram it into me hard. You can hurt me really good, and split me open. I don’t care. Please just let me be around to still worship you. You’re my love and my entire life!” Isabella stifles a snort of laughter, causing you to briefly glare at her, before you approach Lisa. You kneel down in the large blood puddle and caress her face (which is sticky with blood). It’s times like this when Lisa’s slavish ghoul personality comes out in full force. “Lisa, Lisa…don’t get upset. You’re the only woman for me and you always will be. It’s why I’ve always stayed with you. You understand that right?” “But…she’s back now…” “Isabella is just visiting. We’re not getting together. We’re just going to talk and that’s all I swear. You’re my lovely grave flower and nobody can replace you.” You say and kiss Lisa who hugs you tightly. She attempts to do more than that, but you have to remind her that later would be a better time. Lisa accepts your reassurances, but still has a look of concern on her face. Lisa soon goes back to eating the whore’s liver, probably in an attempt to comfort herself. You stand up and motion Isabella to follow you. You fully expect to hear taunting comments, but surprisingly you hear none. When you get to your destination, Isabella tells you what exactly is going on with Ral. Isabella tells you that a few months ago, during one of her resting periods, her home was completely collapsed from the inside out by an earth elemental. She said it took her weeks to dig herself out and by the time she did she found that the entire graveyard was now a large sinkhole. She doesn’t know what happened to the elemental since the attack just suddenly stopped like it just disappeared. Lacking any other immediate choices, she decided to head to Dert and charm someone there and use their dwelling for a while until she could figure out her next step. However, when she got to Dert, she found that nearly all the people had been turned to stone. Not just the people though, but most of the plant and animal life in the surrounding area as well. The few people that hadn’t been turned to stone were nothing but bits of flesh still hanging off bones. She proceeded cautiously since she was aware that only a few things could cause something like this, either powerful magic or certain creatures. As it turned out, it was both. She eventually found a family of four that had been hiding in a root cellar for quite some time. They were all very frightened and assumed she was another monster to come to kill them. (Probably due to the whole unnatural paleness and naked thing) After subduing the father, Isabella demanded to know what had transpired in the village. He explained that a few days ago, a female creature with a snake body appeared in the middle of the village along with four medium-sized reptile like creatures, which seemed to be her pets. There was a brief moment of confusion from both sides at first, but then the woman spoke something in a hissing type language and all hell broke loose. Most of the village was either turned to stone or ripped apart and consumed by the reptilian beasts. The family hid in some sort of community root cellar when they couldn’t get to their home proper, they told Isabella that they could hear the screams of people that apparently tried to hide as well, but the creatures stayed in the village to make sure they had wiped out everyone. In fact, the family was very surprised that Isabella didn’t see them since they were certain they were still lurking about. Isabella at this point tells you that she imagines that the creatures were most definitely a medusa and basilisks. She also says neither of them make their homes anywhere near this area either and it would be rare enough for one to show up, let alone a group like that. And given that they just suddenly appeared (and then apparently disappeared at some point, since there were no signs that they left the area to go elsewhere, yet they also were no longer around) the way they did, there had to be powerful magic at work. She goes on to tell you that both creatures do not normally make their homes in this area and it would be rare enough for one of them to turn up and wipe out an entire village, let alone a group of them. This combined with the earth elemental incident, and the cause of all this could only be Ral. She doesn’t know why he would do something like this and she doesn’t much care, all she cares about is the fact that Ral fucked up her home and convenient feeding grounds and for that he has to pay. “He’s been on borrowed time as it is.” Isabella says. “Are you sure it was him? I mean Ral was an asshole, but he never seemed to deliberately be the type to cause destruction for the shits and giggles. I mean is there proof?” you ask. “I don’t need fucking proof, I got instinct! And as I said, I don’t care if it was just some spell that went wrong, he’s gotta fucking pay for what he did. And YOU are going to help me.” “How the hell am I supposed to do that? I mean earth elementals, creatures that turn shit to stone, and wizard shit on top of all of it? I dealt with Ral before and it didn’t go well, not sure if I’m too keen on facing him again.” “You’re also not a weak human anymore! You’re a fucking vampire with all the advantages that go along with it! I’m going to be doing most of the heavy lifting anyway. I just need you to get in his home and if possible try to get me in there as well.” “How? His home isn’t my home. I wouldn’t be able to get in it anymore than you would.” “Yes you would, you were his servant were you not? Think back. Ral invited you in to his home long before you became a vampire.” As strange as it may seem, you do remember his exact words to you during that time. “My home is your home.” Weird that you never really thought about before, but then your mind was preoccupied with other things you suppose. “Well, maybe I guess…but I just don’t see how any of this is my problem! YOU said you released me and I thought…perhaps foolishly that you were at least a woman with a sense of honor. I mean I stayed out of your way and made a life for myself elsewhere, I don’t see why I should have to help you.” “You’re saying you don’t even want to do this even out of a sense of revenge on Ral?” “Maybe at one time I would have if I’d known I could enter his home so easily. But now? It’s all in the past and I’ve made a life not just for myself here, but for Lisa as well. I just don’t see why I should go potentially fucking that up when things are good. I mean…obviously you’re a hundred times more powerful than me and I can’t stop you from forcing me to help you under threat of death, but…I dunno…whatever…I just thought things were finally going well for me.” You slump in your chair and despair a bit about your situation. Isabella studies you a moment and then addresses you. “You’re right. You’re right about everything. I did release you and you aren’t really any under obligation to help. You’re also right in that I could just threaten to kill you and your little fuck toy if you don’t help me, though I’d probably go for extended torture since I don’t think you’d fear immediate death as much.” Isabella remarks. “So where are we then?” you ask. “So, I’m going to give you a reasonable compromise, because I still have a soft spot for you. If you help me kill Ral, I can promise that I will never darken your path again. At least not on purpose. However, if you don’t want to help me in that way, I’m going to give you another option and that is you must leave this place.” “What?” “If you’re not going to help me kill Ral, I need to plan another method of attack without you, and for that, I’m going to need my own home to do that from. I don’t want to waste time finding or building my own right now, so yours…such as it is, will have to do. Give me this place and I will never darken your doorstep again.” “That’s mostly because I won’t have a doorstep any longer.” “Well be that as it may, the option is there. You can be truly free and go find somewhere else to live. I don’t doubt you couldn’t set yourself up just as well somewhere else, but I also don’t doubt that somewhere within you, that you wouldn’t mind getting revenge on Ral.” > You help Isabella You really don’t want to start all over again with finding or building another home. You’re comfortable here and don’t want to move. So if this one last thing means you get to stay here, then so be it. “Very well, I’ll help, but what if I can’t get in anyway?” you ask. “Well, we might have to come back to reassess a new plan. I’m almost sure that you will be able to get in though.” Isabella says. “I sure hope so, because as much as I want to keep my home and perhaps even not mind the revenge bit, I’m not sure if I’m prepared to be in a perpetual stalemate where I’m sharing this place with you. I’d rather just pick up and leave I think.” “Understandable, and that’s certainly your choice if it comes to that, but let’s keep positive thoughts. So, are you ready to go?” “What, now?” “Well sure. The night is still young and I figured you wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.” “I suppose you’re right, but I think I’m going to need at least a little time to explain this Lisa.” “What for? Just say you’re leaving and will be back in a day or two. It isn’t like she’s going to leave you and I’m sure she’ll be satisfied if you tell her she can eat those two girls I saw chained up. Ghouls are easily distracted and appeased, I’m sure you well know.” “Yeah and I’m sure that YOU well know that I treat Lisa as an equal, not like some pet!” “Of course you do. Very well, talk to your child then, I will see you in the (ugh) sewers.” Isabella takes her leave and you’re about to head back to the meat room, when you notice blood puddles and small trails in the hallway. You follow them to a small dead end to another tunnel you’ve been recently working on and that’s where you find Lisa huddled in a corner chewing on a bone and making a weird (yet relatively quiet) noise. Almost like she’s crying, but not quite. She looks up at you mournfully. “Lisa, I’m not mad if you were listening to us.” you say. “You’re leaving with her aren’t you?” Lisa asks. “I have to if we want to keep our home. Don’t you want us to keep the home we’ve made here?” “I…I don’t want you to go. I need you…can’t…can’t I come with you?” “Lisa, it’s going to be really dangerous. I mean I’m sure you remember my stories about Ral. We’re going to be going up against him and I don’t want to worry about you getting hurt.” “But I could help! I want to help! Please let me help!” Lisa says grabbing your arm with fanatical dedication in her eyes. It’s against your better judgment, but if you leave her here she could just get into trouble anyway. Perhaps even more without you close by and her probably getting depressed about the situation. If you take her with you, at least you can keep an eye on her and she’ll be happy. It’s one more factor to worry about, but if you’re really serious about trying to treat her like an equal, keeping her contained like pet (or child as Isabella said) isn’t the way to go about it. Besides Lisa isn’t defenseless. “Very well, but you REALLY need to obey all my commands during this task. Seriously, you can’t go wandering off in search of food or any else of the sort. You need to follow all my orders to the letter. Understand?” “I do! I do my love! Oh thank you! I’ll be a big help! You’ll see!” Lisa showers you with a lot of affection and as usual she goes for the crotch immediately. You half think about stopping her since this is going to take awhile and you’re supposed to be on your way to Ral’s, but you feel like Lisa deserves a reward for dealing with all this (And hell, so do you) so… Later, you meet Isabella who is still standing in the sewers close to your secret wall. “About fucking time. Don’t tell me, I already know what you were doing…aaaand I see we now have a loadstone with us. Fantastic!” Isabella remarks when she sees Lisa behind you. Lisa looks down a bit when Isabella calls her out. “Look, she can be of help. It’s going to take us a couple days to get to Ral’s so it might be useful to have someone that can at least scout around during the day while we sleep in the ground.” “More like give ourselves away. Fine, I suppose she would be useful fodder if worse comes to worse. Let’s go, we’ve already wasted…” You place one hand on Isabella’s shoulder and spin her around when she turns her back on you. “Let’s get one thing fucking straight. Lisa is NOT fodder. She’s not a minion, she’s not my fuck toy, she’s not a child, she’s not a fucking pet! Lisa is my fucking mate. She came because she wants to help me and I want her to help me. This, what we’re doing right now? Is to help you. However, if you keep insulting Lisa and being a general bitch to her, you can go do this on your own and both of us will find some place else to live. I’m putting up with a lot of things and I’m not trying to step out of line against my so called betters, but I’m not going to put up with how you talk to and about her! AGH SHIT!” Isabella quickly grabs your wrist twists it and throws you to the hard floor face first. Lisa, rushes to attack, but is easily slapped aside into the nearby wall as Isabella applies pressure to your arm and shoves her knee into your back. “First of all, don’t you EVER fucking touch me again uninvited! You lost that privilege a long time ago. This is your ONLY warning about it. Second…fine. I apologize. I was not behaving in a way befitting of my class. I won’t insult your lady again. Glad to see that it really was true love.” Isabella gets off you and you wince a bit in lingering pain as you stand up. You then go over to Lisa and ask if she’s okay, to which she replies that she is. You then both follow Isabella who has walked ahead of you. Things are silent for more or less during the journey out of Holgard. It’s sort of a weird silence and soon after you’re making your way through the forest, you make conversation. “So, while I can imagine what happened, what did you do with the family you found in that root cellar?” you ask “Oh them? Well I had to rebuild my strength after being stuck underground for weeks, so after they told me what happened, drained all of them.” Isabella remarks. “Yep, figured as much.” “Honestly, I might have kept three of them alive under normal circumstances, but it wasn’t the normal circumstances and I do have a weakness for children’s blood.” “Did…did the children taste sweet?” Lisa suddenly asks. Isabella smiles a bit. “Yes, the children did taste sweet. Their blood usually does though unless they’re horrible greenskins. Rather go hungry than drink their blood, no matter what age most of the time.” Isabella remarks. “Some greenskins aren’t bad, but they’re always very tough. They are an acquired taste and even the dead sometimes taste better than the average hobgoblin.” Lisa remarks. “I’m sure you have a very versatile palate Lisa, not many can boast such a talent.” Isabella’s remark could be taken as a backhanded compliment at best or a sarcastic insult at worst, but Lisa seems to take what she said as a benign praise, so you let it go. Eventually dawn starts to arrive and you and Isabella take shelter in the ground. Lisa herself never seems to require as much sleep, so she’ll be still be wandering around for some of the day (Though still probably trying to stay in the shade which shouldn’t be a problem due to being in a forest). You aren’t sure if you should have her do a little scouting while you’re asleep or have her protect your resting area though. > You protect your resting area You thought about letting Lisa scout ahead before the journey started, but you’ve sort of reassessed that idea. You still remember when you were a human and how you easily got lost in this damn forest, which is what caused you to bump into Ral in the first place. You’ve traveled this area so much in the past that it would take a lot of effort to get yourself lost again, but Lisa really hasn’t. Granted you’d be able to track her down if she got lost, but you’d rather not waste time looking for her as soon as you wake up. “Lisa, I want you to stay in this general area, okay? You’ll be guarding my resting place. You don’t want some animal or person to come digging me up while the sun is out do you?” you say. “Never! I’ll stay here my love and make sure your rest isn’t disturbed!” “Okay, I’ll see you this evening.” You say and kiss Lisa before digging yourself a shallow hole to sleep in. (Lisa helps pat down the dirt to make sure you’re completely covered) Later… You wake up as your usual internal “clock” tells you to do so and dig yourself out to a nice moonlit night. Lisa stands by with Isabella who has woken up before you. Lisa wastes no time in trying to brush the dirt off of you. (And popping the occasional insect in her mouth while doing it) “About time you got up. I got information to tell you.” Isabella remarks. “How long you been awake?” you ask. “Longer than you have. I would have woken you sooner, but I figured I’d do my own scouting ahead first. I haven’t been back that long.” “Okay, so what do you have to tell me?” “We’re not the only ones heading to Ral’s tower. There are a group of six people in blue and purple robes camped not far from here.” “Those sound like Dornans. In all the time I was slaving for Ral, I never knew him to worship Dorna.” “He never did when I was on better terms with him either. I don’t think he’s ever revered anything except maybe his own magical research.” “You think maybe all this is the work of the Dornans?” “Not exactly sure, but given that they’re dedicated to the Goddess of magic, maybe they’re investigating all the weird shit going on in this area. If anyone else knew about it, cared about it and was also equipped to handle whatever is going on, it would be them. Of course, they’re probably unlikely to just tell us.” “They’re probably very likely to just try to kill us. I got approached by one a few years back proposing an alliance and I didn’t trust them then.” “Smart move. We need to get rid of all but one. The last one we can interrogate and then kill them. I’m not exactly sure just how magically talented these folks are, but unless they’re all mostly acolytes, six of them are still enough to give more than enough trouble. And if they’re heading to Ral’s place, I’d very much believe that most, if not all are very competent spell slingers and far beyond being mere acolytes. It would probably help to have a distraction.” “I hope you aren’t suggesting Lisa.” “No, I’m suggesting you. No offense to your lady, but Lisa would potentially be a liability. They’d just take control of her and turn her against us.” “Unfortunately you’re probably right. Very well, what exactly do you want me to do?” “Nothing much, just go up to their camp and start talking with them. They probably won’t even attack right away since they’ll be too arrogant to believe that they’re in any real danger. If I’ve learned anything wizard types love to go on about their own relative importance when given the chance. I can probably take down two or three of them by surprise. Hopefully you can take out at least one. The remaining ones should at least even up the odds for us. You ready?” “Ready as I’m going to be.” After Isabella tells you where they are (and you reassure Lisa not to follow you), you’re soon on your way to meet six wizards. When you get to the camp, you make no pretense on being sneaky and fully announce yourself, the Dornans all stand up, save for one of them that looks older than the rest. “What do you want vampire?” one of them with a shitty goatee asks. “That obvious?” you respond. “Very. Now, you want to tell us why you’re intruding on our camp or do we make spell components out of your ashes?” “Hey, what’s with the threats? There are six of you guys and just one of me! I hardly think I’d be able to take all of you on.” “Damn right you wouldn’t, you walking leech.” “Hey, steady there Travis. I know this one!” one of the female members says. It’s the same woman who approached you years ago about an alliance. “You know this blood sucker, Heather?” Travis asks. “Yeah, he lives in Holgard. Or as far as I know he still does. He’s not that old and is definitely no threat to us. He’s the one that was approached back when all the faiths were at each other’s throats. You never did get back to us on that offer.” Heather says stepping closer towards you. “I figured me never showing up at your temple was my answer. Besides, looks like you guys came out okay without my help.” You answer. “Indeed, so where’s your ghoul girl?” “Alas, she is no longer with me. Taken down by those accursed Joachimites during those years of strife.” “See? You should have allied with us; such a loss could have been prevented.” “Probably for the best. As a vampire I probably should start getting used to the loss of those I once loved. So what are you lot doing out here?” “We could ask the same of you. Even more so since you seem to have evaded Travis’ initial question.” “Oh nothing interesting. I occasionally leave Holgard to hunt in the wild. I find that it keeps the senses sharp. Besides, the bandit types out here tend to put up more of a fight than the cutpurses in Holgard.” “Hm, so why approach us?” “I dunno, Just looking for company to talk to. I get sort of lonely sometimes, especially with Lisa gone. I even tried to make another ghoul once, but…eh, it wasn’t the same and I disposed of it.” ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s a real shame. Poor depressed vampire wallowing about how nobody understands his pain. Boo fucking hoo. Why the hell is it that half of all you vampires are like this? Shit, I got more respect for those leeches that just rip your head off and dispense with all the pretense of trying to be living creatures with real feelings. If you’re really that tortured, just go take a walk in the sun and be done with it.” Travis says dismissively. “What is with your hostility? I understand your need to be cautious given the circumstances, but you don’t need to act like a complete asshole. I just asked what you guys were doing out here and if you don’t want to tell me, fine I’ll just leave you to it.” “Don’t mind Travis, he just doesn’t like the outdoors and it’s been making him cranky. If you really want to know though, we’re just investigating magical disturbances around this area.” “Heather! Why the fuck would you tell him that?” Travis remarks. “Yeah, this leech doesn’t need to know our business.” Another says. “Oh what difference does it really make? Not like he’s got some unholy alliance with Ral. Besides, Elder Flynn would have said something by now, if I did something wrong, isn’t that right Elder Flynn? Elder Flynn? Elder?” At this point they all turn towards the old man who is still sitting down and not saying a word. Then suddenly he slumps forward and his head comes off. “SHIT!” someone shouts and before any of them can react, Isabella has already opened up the throats of two of them. You dodge a bolt of flame and take out another Dornan. Travis, however, speaks some words and a flash of light blinds you long enough to cause him to get away. Meanwhile Heather has already cast a speed spell and completely run off, “You get that goatee asshole, I’ll chase down the speed bitch!” Isabella shouts. She didn’t need to tell you twice. While Travis can’t out pace you in the long run, he’s smart enough to cast an illusion and you see several versions of him split up and run into different directions and whatever magic he’s using to cause illusions, its also masking him so you can’t tell which one is the real one just by scent. Fortunately for you he’s arrogant enough to not just run away which will at least give you a chance to kill him. Unfortunately, that also gives him a chance to kill you and you once again narrowly dodge a bolt of magic thrown your way by him (or an illusion) hiding behind one of the many trees. “If you think you’re taking me down, guess again leech. I’ve destroyed creatures far more threatening than you.” Travis taunts. You don’t answer you just try to focus on any and all sounds. You stop completely and listen, then you suddenly grab a figure hiding behind a large oak tree and squeeze by the neck. Travis’ eyes bulge and he gasps, but then at the point where you would have easily crushed his throat, he begins to laugh and the illusion disappears. You then get blasted in the back by a bolt of flame. You feel the burn and have to roll on the ground like an idiot putting it out. “Stupid fucking leech! This is going to be so easy!” In between your charred clothing and flesh, you do catch another familiar scent. It isn’t Travis’ however. It’s Lisa. You can only guess she decided to try to help after all and is in the vicinity somewhere. > You go to her immediately While Lisa has gone hunting by herself many times without you around before, this is different since as far as you know she’s never faced an opponent like this before. Your protective instincts kick in and you rush to her. When you think it to be safe you come out of hiding and run in her direction. Unfortunately Travis was waiting to ambush you and several illusions of himself step out and zap you with flame bolts. You avoid a few of them, but not all. A good portion of you is on fire and you desperately try to put it out, while trying to get back into cover. While you were burned, you were still in fighting shape, however when Lisa saw that you were the one in danger so she rushed to YOUR aid rather than staying in hiding. That worked out even less well for her than it did for you. Travis sets her on fire as well, but rather than seeking cover or trying to put out the flames, she freaks out and runs around flailing and screaming at the nearest illusion. She destroys it of course, but it isn’t the real Travis, so it hardly matters. You call out to Lisa and tell her to get the hell out of the area. “Lisa, roll on the fucking ground and get the hell out of…no! Stop!” you shout when you see her suddenly stop and then run right towards you, flames and all. Travis must have used the same spell Heather did, years ago when she had Lisa under control. Your own influence over Lisa struggles against the spell and while it probably would have won out eventually, One of Travis’ illusions takes the opportunity to shoot you in the back with another ball of flame. Your concentration is broken and Lisa tackles you to the ground. Screaming, yelling and flailing on the ground while the pair of you burn is cut short when Travis finally ends it all with one last gout of fire conjured from his hands.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You thought about letting Lisa scout ahead before the journey started, but you’ve sort of reassessed that idea. You still remember when you were a human and how you easily got lost in this damn forest, which is what caused you to bump into Ral in the first place. You’ve traveled this area so much in the past that it would take a lot of effort to get yourself lost again, but Lisa really hasn’t. Granted you’d be able to track her down if she got lost, but you’d rather not waste time looking for her as soon as you wake up. “Lisa, I want you to stay in this general area, okay? You’ll be guarding my resting place. You don’t want some animal or person to come digging me up while the sun is out do you?” you say. “Never! I’ll stay here my love and make sure your rest isn’t disturbed!” “Okay, I’ll see you this evening.” You say and kiss Lisa before digging yourself a shallow hole to sleep in. (Lisa helps pat down the dirt to make sure you’re completely covered) Later… You wake up as your usual internal “clock” tells you to do so and dig yourself out to a nice moonlit night. Lisa stands by with Isabella who has woken up before you. Lisa wastes no time in trying to brush the dirt off of you. (And popping the occasional insect in her mouth while doing it) “About time you got up. I got information to tell you.” Isabella remarks. “How long you been awake?” you ask. “Longer than you have. I would have woken you sooner, but I figured I’d do my own scouting ahead first. I haven’t been back that long.” “Okay, so what do you have to tell me?” “We’re not the only ones heading to Ral’s tower. There are a group of six people in blue and purple robes camped not far from here.” “Those sound like Dornans. In all the time I was slaving for Ral, I never knew him to worship Dorna.” “He never did when I was on better terms with him either. I don’t think he’s ever revered anything except maybe his own magical research.” “You think maybe all this is the work of the Dornans?” “Not exactly sure, but given that they’re dedicated to the Goddess of magic, maybe they’re investigating all the weird shit going on in this area. If anyone else knew about it, cared about it and was also equipped to handle whatever is going on, it would be them. Of course, they’re probably unlikely to just tell us.” “They’re probably very likely to just try to kill us. I got approached by one a few years back proposing an alliance and I didn’t trust them then.” “Smart move. We need to get rid of all but one. The last one we can interrogate and then kill them. I’m not exactly sure just how magically talented these folks are, but unless they’re all mostly acolytes, six of them are still enough to give more than enough trouble. And if they’re heading to Ral’s place, I’d very much believe that most, if not all are very competent spell slingers and far beyond being mere acolytes. It would probably help to have a distraction.” “I hope you aren’t suggesting Lisa.” “No, I’m suggesting you. No offense to your lady, but Lisa would potentially be a liability. They’d just take control of her and turn her against us.” “Unfortunately you’re probably right. Very well, what exactly do you want me to do?” “Nothing much, just go up to their camp and start talking with them. They probably won’t even attack right away since they’ll be too arrogant to believe that they’re in any real danger. If I’ve learned anything wizard types love to go on about their own relative importance when given the chance. I can probably take down two or three of them by surprise. Hopefully you can take out at least one. The remaining ones should at least even up the odds for us. You ready?” “Ready as I’m going to be.” After Isabella tells you where they are (and you reassure Lisa not to follow you), you’re soon on your way to meet six wizards. When you get to the camp, you make no pretense on being sneaky and fully announce yourself, the Dornans all stand up, save for one of them that looks older than the rest. “What do you want vampire?” one of them with a shitty goatee asks. “That obvious?” you respond. “Very. Now, you want to tell us why you’re intruding on our camp or do we make spell components out of your ashes?” “Hey, what’s with the threats? There are six of you guys and just one of me! I hardly think I’d be able to take all of you on.” “Damn right you wouldn’t, you walking leech.” “Hey, steady there Travis. I know this one!” one of the female members says. It’s the same woman who approached you years ago about an alliance. “You know this blood sucker, Heather?” Travis asks. “Yeah, he lives in Holgard. Or as far as I know he still does. He’s not that old and is definitely no threat to us. He’s the one that was approached back when all the faiths were at each other’s throats. You never did get back to us on that offer.” Heather says stepping closer towards you. “I figured me never showing up at your temple was my answer. Besides, looks like you guys came out okay without my help.” You answer. “Indeed, so where’s your ghoul girl?” “Alas, she is no longer with me. Taken down by those accursed Joachimites during those years of strife.” “See? You should have allied with us; such a loss could have been prevented.” “Probably for the best. As a vampire I probably should start getting used to the loss of those I once loved. So what are you lot doing out here?” “We could ask the same of you. Even more so since you seem to have evaded Travis’ initial question.” “Oh nothing interesting. I occasionally leave Holgard to hunt in the wild. I find that it keeps the senses sharp. Besides, the bandit types out here tend to put up more of a fight than the cutpurses in Holgard.” “Hm, so why approach us?” “I dunno, Just looking for company to talk to. I get sort of lonely sometimes, especially with Lisa gone. I even tried to make another ghoul once, but…eh, it wasn’t the same and I disposed of it.” ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s a real shame. Poor depressed vampire wallowing about how nobody understands his pain. Boo fucking hoo. Why the hell is it that half of all you vampires are like this? Shit, I got more respect for those leeches that just rip your head off and dispense with all the pretense of trying to be living creatures with real feelings. If you’re really that tortured, just go take a walk in the sun and be done with it.” Travis says dismissively. “What is with your hostility? I understand your need to be cautious given the circumstances, but you don’t need to act like a complete asshole. I just asked what you guys were doing out here and if you don’t want to tell me, fine I’ll just leave you to it.” “Don’t mind Travis, he just doesn’t like the outdoors and it’s been making him cranky. If you really want to know though, we’re just investigating magical disturbances around this area.” “Heather! Why the fuck would you tell him that?” Travis remarks. “Yeah, this leech doesn’t need to know our business.” Another says. “Oh what difference does it really make? Not like he’s got some unholy alliance with Ral. Besides, Elder Flynn would have said something by now, if I did something wrong, isn’t that right Elder Flynn? Elder Flynn? Elder?” At this point they all turn towards the old man who is still sitting down and not saying a word. Then suddenly he slumps forward and his head comes off. “SHIT!” someone shouts and before any of them can react, Isabella has already opened up the throats of two of them. You dodge a bolt of flame and take out another Dornan. Travis, however, speaks some words and a flash of light blinds you long enough to cause him to get away. Meanwhile Heather has already cast a speed spell and completely run off, “You get that goatee asshole, I’ll chase down the speed bitch!” Isabella shouts. She didn’t need to tell you twice. While Travis can’t out pace you in the long run, he’s smart enough to cast an illusion and you see several versions of him split up and run into different directions and whatever magic he’s using to cause illusions, its also masking him so you can’t tell which one is the real one just by scent. Fortunately for you he’s arrogant enough to not just run away which will at least give you a chance to kill him. Unfortunately, that also gives him a chance to kill you and you once again narrowly dodge a bolt of magic thrown your way by him (or an illusion) hiding behind one of the many trees. “If you think you’re taking me down, guess again leech. I’ve destroyed creatures far more threatening than you.” Travis taunts. You don’t answer you just try to focus on any and all sounds. You stop completely and listen, then you suddenly grab a figure hiding behind a large oak tree and squeeze by the neck. Travis’ eyes bulge and he gasps, but then at the point where you would have easily crushed his throat, he begins to laugh and the illusion disappears. You then get blasted in the back by a bolt of flame. You feel the burn and have to roll on the ground like an idiot putting it out. “Stupid fucking leech! This is going to be so easy!” In between your charred clothing and flesh, you do catch another familiar scent. It isn’t Travis’ however. It’s Lisa. You can only guess she decided to try to help after all and is in the vicinity somewhere. > You focus on Travis Lisa’s a big ghoul, she’s going to have to fend for herself. Besides, the best way you can defend her is if you kill Travis as quick as possible. Since Travis likes to talk shit, you might as well respond in kind. “Okay Travis, you got me on that one. Cherish the moment because it’s the last chance you’re going to get. In fact, if you were smart, you’d just run now. I know deep down you’re scared and just too arrogant to admit it.” You exclaim. “Scared? Me? I’m not the one who is floundering around like kitten in the river right now. Seems to me, that you’re the arrogant one who doesn’t know when he’s beaten.” Travis retorts. You see a figure out the corner of your eye getting ready to cast a spell and you rush forward to kill it. Another illusion, but you know enough not to stick around as two bolts of lightning barely miss you. “Is this your plan? Attempt to kill all my illusions until you single me out? Shit plan and doomed to failure. I can keep this up all night. You on the other hand, will have to turn in when day breaks. And whoever that other vampire was, is going to be too busy chasing down Heather. You’re alone out here and fucked. The best you can hope for is a stalemate before you run like a bitch before the sunrise. You won’t get it though, vampire ashes aren’t easy to come by.” “Yeah, yeah, just keep telling yourself that and ignore the fact that you aren’t pissing your robe right now.” You play more dodge the magic spell with Travis and continue to taunt him the whole time. You aren’t sure if it’s taking him off his offense, but you’re getting frustrated that you can’t seem to locate him. Destroying his illusions when you can, while satisfying, doesn’t bring you any closer to your goal since he’s just creating more. You don’t know where Lisa is in all this either, but you’ve got bigger concerns right now. Eventually Travis gets lucky again and one of his illusions zaps you in the chest with a lightning bolt. It tries to finish you off with a fireball, but you narrowly escape. At this rate he’s going to set the whole forest on fire. As you’re taking protection behind a tree and recovering, you suddenly hear screams coming from behind a cluster of rocks. “Shit…did she really get him?” you say to yourself and swiftly run over towards the screaming. And there you see Lisa partially on top of Travis and chewing through one of his arms while he desperately tries to punch her with the other, shrieking the entire time. “No, no more of that.” You say and break Travis’ free arm so he can’t flail it around at Lisa any longer. His screams of agony don’t get any longer, and in fact he begins to just stop making much noise at all. “Yeah, looks like the shock and blood loss are kicking in. You’re lucky that Lisa got to you first. If it were up to me, I would have stretched out your torment a lot longer.” Travis tries to speak, but all he can do is bubble up some blood from his mouth and struggle to stay awake. “Guess there’s one silver lining in this for you, you’re getting eaten by someone who doesn’t make any pretenses of what she is right? I’m sure she appreciates your respect, along with your flesh.” Lisa finishes chewing through Travis’ right arm and then gives him one good chomp on the side of his neck, which finally kills him, though it doesn’t kill Lisa’s hunger and she continues to feed. “You did good Lisa. Thank you.” You say and kiss her on the top of her head which finally allows breaks her attention long enough to briefly nuzzle against your leg before returning to eat. “I hate to break up your feast, but we have other matters to take care of, come on, let’s head back to the Dornan camp. Hopefully Isabella didn’t kill the other one. Oh, you can bring his arm with you.” Lisa wastes no time in following you back to the camp, though there is still one thing you’re wondering about. “Lisa, how the hell did you single out Travis in all the illusions?” you ask. “Oh that was easy. I just sniffed him out.” Lisa answers as a bit of meat flies from her mouth. “How? I couldn’t even get his scent.” “You were right about him being scared. He had pissed himself. Easy to get scent for me after that. I hunt in the sewers all the time, you know. I can usually single out the origins of bodily waste under the right circumstances. It took some time for me to perfect that skill, I’ve always wanted to tell you about it, would you like to hear how…” “Um, okay Lisa. Maybe another time.” Funny how you desperately trained yourself to try to block out the various “aromas” of the sewers, meanwhile Lisa completely embraced them. Whatever works you guess. You soon return to the camp and go through the bodies since Isabella isn’t around. You don’t really find much though, at least not any more that what Heather told you. Having little else to do, you decide to sit and wait, while Lisa eats one of the Dornans. Time passes a bit and you start to wonder if you shouldn’t just go back home. This was more of Isabella’s thing and if she’s not here then you really don’t have strong feelings about getting revenge on Ral. Sure it would be nice, but you’ve had enough of fighting wizards for tonight. Unfortunately Isabella comes back just as you’re thinking on this, with Heather over her shoulder. “I’m guessing you didn’t leave yours alive.” Isabella asks. “Nope, I’m afraid Lisa’s hunger took care of that, but I figured you’d show restraint since I was certain you wouldn’t place too much faith in us anyway.” You respond. “Didn’t know Lisa was even going to be around since you told her to stay put. In any case I suppose you were correct in thinking that I wouldn’t believe you to have as much restraint, so this one is still alive. Knocked her ass out when I finally caught up with her, so I haven’t gotten any information from her yet. I guess we can do that together at least.” Doesn’t take long for Isabella to slap Heather awake. When she sees the two of you hovering over her, she’s obviously very frightened and turns to what most do in a hopeless situation. “Oh please, Dorna give me the knowledge and power to overcome my disadvantageous position. I will make the large sacrifice in your honor if you only lend me your wisdom.” She says and begins praying which Isabella puts a stop to with another slap. “Oh no, you aren’t mumbling some prayer and casting another spell. The best you can hope for in your situation is if you don’t piss me off and you get a quick death. Now tell me what you know about Ral and what’s going on out here.” “Can’t we come to some sort of agreement?” Heather asks. Isabella looks at you. “Reminds me of you with all these attempts at bargaining.” Isabella remarks. “Well, you gotta admit, it worked for me.” You answer. “Yeah, well it’s not working for this bitch, now TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU FUCKING KNOW!” Isabella’s face becomes that monstrous expression that manages to scare Heather even more than she already is. She starts crying and pleading and ultimately agreeing to tell her everything she knows even though it isn’t much. Heather explains that none of them really knew what to find out here and it was Elder Flynn who first sensed the magic disturbance. He wasn’t sure at first about checking it out, but after much meditation (And sensing other disturbances) he decided that he needed to confront his old comrade. Apparently the Elder and Ral were old friends when they were young, but obviously had a disagreement in ideology as far as magic. The Elder of course thought it was a Dorna’s most precious gift to the world and thanks must always be given to her for it. Ral on the other hand just believed that it was a force to be mastered like any other and didn’t even acknowledge Dorna. She said most knew about Ral since he was a wizard of some power even if he was very reclusive most of the time, but Elder Flynn didn’t speak of him in any detail until recently. Said that his experiments had probably gone too far and he would have to be stopped before Dorna’s wrath was brought upon the world. Even though the Elder said the disturbances had died down and they hadn’t seen anything unusual yet, he said they still needed to confront Ral since he was dangerous wild card. Heather didn’t speak out, but she got the impression that this meeting was just something the Elder seemed to want more than correcting magical disturbance. “Oh, that was Flynn? Damn, didn’t even recognize him, though I thought there was something vaguely familiar about his scent. If I had recognized him, maybe I would have tried a different approach. Oh well.” Isabella remarks. “Wait, you knew the Elder?” Heather asks. “Yeah, he and Ral were competing for my attention when they were young! That’s why the friendship broke up. Ideological disagreement my fine undead ass. Flynn wasn’t hooked up in all this Dorna worship shit when I knew him. I mean he was more religious than Ral, but he wasn’t a fanatic.” “What did Ral do that won you over?” you ask out of genuine curiosity. “He made me laugh. In any case, I guess that doesn’t help us much, but it was worth a try. Alright, let’s get this done…” “WAIT! Please! I’m no threat anymore! I didn’t even want to fight you guys! You! When we met, wasn’t I reasonable to you?” Heather exclaims, trying to appeal to you. “When we first met, you fucking did some sort of charm on Lisa to make her docile.” you say. “But…please! (sob) I don’t wanna die! I didn’t even want to come out here! (sob) Wait! I know! Make me into a vampire! I mean I could be a good one! I’m already a night owl and I could make a good apprentice! Please, I just don’t want to die…” At this point Heather is groveling completely at Isabella’s feet. This is such a pathetic display, you’re sort of feeling a bit for the girl. “Isabella, maybe you could make her into a vampire? I mean she probably could help you quite a bit on building a new home, what with being a sorceress and all.” You say. “Hello, my name is Isabella, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m not turning this bitch into a vampire just because she’s begging for her life. I have standards. I only turn those that are mate potential into vampires.” Isabella sniffs. “Do you HAVE to have sex with the person you turn into a vampire?” “Yes, and as I think you know I’m not into women.” “Just pretend you’re in college.” “What?” “I dunno, my dad said a lot of girls at his university used to do that and then got married to some guy anyway.” “Yeah, no. Look, if you’re so keen on saving this human, then you could always turn her into a ghoul.” Lisa looks up long enough from the corpse she’s eating to give an angry growl at that suggestion. Lisa might be willing to serve you unquestioningly, but she still wants to be the only ghoul in your life, not that you were considering it anyway. “Too bad Heather, hope your afterlife with Dorna is a pleasant one.” You say and without another word Isabella kills Heather. Isabella feeds and then you do likewise. The three of you then continue your journey to Ral’s home. Along the way you start noticing discoloration of the trees and odd-looking plant life. Some of them even look carnivorous, but you guess they don’t like the taste of undead flesh so they don’t attack. (And Lisa must not be very appetizing either) “This doesn’t look like it belongs here.” You say. “Sure doesn’t. What the hell did Ral do?” Isabella says. “Given all this change and how the Dornans said it dying down, maybe he’s not even alive anymore.” “For his sake, he better not be.” After passing a few more landscape oddities, you at last reach Ral’s home and it looks about the same as you last saw it. There aren’t any creatures or anything wandering about, though you’re not getting a sense of complete safety either. “Well, it’s all yours. See if you can’t get in.” Isabella says. You don’t say anything other than to tell Lisa to stay put and you’ll be back in a moment. You approach Ral’s home and try the front door. It’s locked of course, so you pull out a lockpick and easily open it. You step forward… And nothing happens. You apparently are allowed in the house. Now to see if Isabella’s other idea will work. You stand in the doorway and motion Lisa and Isabella over. Lisa easily enters the house since she wasn’t barred by strange rules anyway. Isabella however, still can’t get in. “Shit.” She remarks. “I don’t understand, I thought you said you were always welcome in a place that was my home.” You say. “Eh, more weird rules. This place, while you were welcomed in here, still officially isn’t your home, it’s Ral’s. I figured it was a long shot. I’m going to try to figure out something out here, in the meantime you need to find out what’s going on. I’d rather you not kill Ral and leave him for me, but if you have to, I’ll certainly understand.” Isabella takes her leave and you and Lisa are left in a very dusty living area. Looks like this place went to pot after you weren’t around to clean it anymore. “Well, let’s take this slow I guess. Lisa, you stay very close to me.” You say and begin exploring rooms methodically. The eerie thing about all this, is you aren’t hearing any noise whatsoever. Usually you used to at least hear faint noises sometimes from his lab, but there is nothing. Speaking of his lab you eventually decide you might as well just search that place now. You make your way there and immediately notice something wrong. The door is open. That door was always locked. You cautiously peek inside Ral’s lab for the first time. And it’s a complete wreck. There is equipment everywhere; you know Ral wouldn’t have left it like this if he could help it. Except he can’t help it, because he’s currently on the floor with a broken neck. He looks like he’s been dead awhile. And then you see another familiar face. Tych. You see him flying around between various large tomes and mixing something on one of the only clean lab workbenches. This all seems a bit strange, but in any case Tych hasn’t noticed you yet. > You call out to him There really is no need to be so physical in this situation, so you call out. “Hey Tych!” you shout. He spins around and immediately flies upward so he’s safe. “You? What are you doing here? Thought you died a long time ago.” Tych says. “I did, I’m a vampire.” You answer. “Hm, well that was one way of breaking the geas I suppose. I’m guessing it was Isabella that provided that option, is she here? Ral might be dead, but you still don’t know what the hell is going on here and Tych isn’t exactly a beacon of trustworthiness himself. For all you know he’s caused all this, you figure you better keep the real story a little hazy. “No, I haven’t seen Isabella in years. I sort of broke it off with her when I realized Lisa here was a my true love.” You say and put your arm around her, which she of course doesn’t mind, though she also seems interested in Ral’s corpse. “Surprised she allowed you to leave so easily.” Tych says. “Eh, wasn’t exactly easy. In fact, it was sort of a lopsided relationship to begin with.” “Mm, sounds like Isabella.” “Didn’t realize you knew so much about her actually.” “Ral spoke about her quite a bit. Used to always go on about how he wished things had ended better with her. Talked about her so much that I felt like I knew the woman even though I’d never even seen her.” “I see, so…what exactly happened here?” Tych shakes his head. “A complete failure, that’s what happened. A few months ago Ral was trying to cast some spell he had been working on for years and it backfired spectacularly. He was experimenting with portals that could transport you anywhere in the world. Unfortunately what happened instead is he created a very unstable one and that’s when the rock creature appeared in the middle of the lab and started smashing up the place. Ral barely managed to get off a couple spells before the thing smashed him in the head and disappeared as quickly as it showed up. It was during this time, my jar got smashed.” “Why didn’t you escape?” “I would have but I heard some rumbling outside along with other noises, so I thought Ral’s spell had a ripple effect on the outside area. I still haven’t left this house for fear of what might be out there. How severe is the damage?” “Some weird landscape changes, some odd monsters popping up in places they shouldn’t be, but that’s about all I know. I was in Holgard and it didn’t reach that far. In fact I think the effects of the spell are dying out.” “Truly? I would have thought with all the chaos here and the time Ral spent on the spell, it had catastrophic effects of great magnitude. Damn, I feel like a cowardly fool, but being in the hub of it all I guess made me afraid. My long-term captivity also kept me here. Just got comfortable being safe I guess. So Holgard huh? I guess that brings me to my question of why you’re here, if the effects didn’t reach there.” You pause a very brief moment as you come up with your lie without much problem. “Oh that was me being a victim of circumstance again. There was a war between the religious factions in Holgard a few years ago and at the time it was mutually beneficial to ally with the Dornans. The war has long since been over, but I still had a deal with them to help when I could and a group of them wanted to explore the magical disturbances their elder sensed in this area. I think they’re the only ones who knew or cared.” “Oh? So are they with you?” “Nah, they’re all dead. Got killed by a medusa and her pet basilisks. Just one example of creatures not native to the area popping up.” “Interesting. Just wondering because Ral mentioned him a few times in the past…but was there an Elder Flynn with you in all this?” You weren’t sure before, but you’re starting to get a strange feeling about this conversation, however you continue to speak as normal. “Yeah, he was there, but I never spoke much with the man. Always seemed to be pretty serious and save for a few basic directions. I understood him to be a man of great magic ability, but that didn’t mean much when the medusa surprised him and the inevitable happened.” You explain. “Hm, I see. Hard to believe he was taken out so easily after what Ral told me about him.” Tych says. “It wasn’t an easy battle to survive. Honestly, Lisa and I almost went home after that. However, by that time I came all this way so I figured I might as well try to learn what happened here and the only person I could think of that might shed some light is Ral.” “You didn’t think you’d be met with hostility for escaping?” “Eh, in all the time I knew him even as his unwilling lackey, he wasn’t excessively cruel or even one to hold that much of a grudge. I sort of figured he wrote me off as dead years ago and moved on. Plus I figured as a vampire I’d at least be on somewhat of an equal footing that he wouldn’t try anything as long as I didn’t act in a threatening manner.” Tych nods a bit. “I suppose you’re right on that account. Ral was a lot of things, but he was never petty. Well that’s about the only information I have for you. I’m actually glad you came by however, since I now know that it isn’t a cataclysm out there. I’ll probably be leaving a lot sooner now.” “I bet your wife misses you.” You say. “Huh? Oh yes my wife…I’d be surprised if she hasn’t moved on already. Though I wouldn’t blame her if she had I suppose. I’ve had a lot of time to think during my time here and while Ral certainly kept me imprisoned, I have to admit I wasn’t exactly innocent. I dunno, maybe my captivity was punishment for all my misdeeds in the past. My apologies for my wrongs against you as well.” “Well other than calling me a plivik and lying to me, you didn’t really do any direct damage. Long time ago and literally another life. Anyway, I suppose we’ll be going. Hey Lisa, get away from that body, we’ll find you someone to eat on the way home.” You say motioning Lisa to come with you instead of sniffing around Ral’s corpse. Tych waves goodbye and you soon exit the home. After looking around a bit, you find Isabella digging around the house. It looks like she’s trying to destroy the foundation in an attempt to just destroy the house. “You know it would probably be much easier to just set the place on fire.” You remark. “Probably, but I don’t exactly have a torch handy at the moment. So, you’re back out here and none the worse for wear. I assume you have news? Did Ral send you out here to an attempt to beg for his life?” Isabella asks. “Ral’s dead.” You say. “What?!” “Well…I suppose he isn’t completely dead.” “He’s either dead or he isn’t! Wait, shit, he’s not a lich is he?!” “He’s a sprite.” “WHAT?! Okay, you need to explain!” Isabella exclaims. You try to collect your thoughts on everything that transpired during your conversation before explaining to her your whole conversation. “I mean I don’t know for certain, but I REALLY think Ral’s in the body of a sprite slave he once had. That sprite’s name was Tych and he didn’t sound anything like the person that I knew. I mean I know a lot of time has passed, but I just got a very real feeling that I was talking with Ral and not Tych.” You explain. “Well did you see Ral’s body anywhere?” Isabella asks. “Oh yeah, he was on the floor with his neck broken. Looked like he had been dead for a while. Tych, or Ral rather said he met his fate by some strange rock creature.” “Hmmm…wait…yeah. Your belief has merit. I mean I can’t enter the house still, while you can. If Ral was dead, I would have been able to enter with no problems. How the hell did he get into the body of a sprite?!” “I dunno, I didn’t ask since I was trying to pretend that I believed him to be Tych and I did that because I also have no reason to disbelieve that he isn’t still a powerful wizard. Not sure if he believed if I believed him, but it got me out unscathed.” Isabella is silent for a moment and then throws a handful of dirt to the ground while stepping out of the large hole she has been digging. “Ah fuck it. I’m done.” She says. “What, seriously? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, but you seemed pretty intent on all this revenge before.” You answer. “Yeah. I honestly can’t be bothered now. I mean if you’re wrong and that’s not Ral at all, it’s hardly worth going to all the trouble to bring down a house just to kill a sprite especially since I don’t even like their blood. And if it is Ral, I can’t even torture him like I want in his new sprite body. I mean yeah I could still do it, but it just wouldn’t be the same. I suppose a part of me was just looking for an excuse to see you again. Shit, I think a small part of me just wanted to see Ral again too. It’s funny that you made up your story about getting lonely to the Dornans, but the reality is, it really does happen. Even to those that are normally fine with isolation like me.” “But you’re centuries old, surely you must have known other people.” “Sure, and most of them are dead, either naturally or otherwise. Hell, I might have even made a reconnection with Flynn had I known it was him. I managed to ignore the prolonged isolation I think for so long because I had a nice home I made for myself. The garden kept me busy too. Now I don’t even have that and while I’m no stranger to having to start completely over it isn’t the most fun thing to do.” You start get a little worried about where this might be leading. “Don’t worry, I’m not taking your home. Living right next to a sewer isn’t exactly my taste. Besides, you and Lisa are happy there and as I said, I’ve always been a bit of a romantic even if it never quite works out for me.” Isabella says. “Why don’t you just knock on the door and call out to Ral? He might be willing to talk.” You say. “Nice idea, but no. We’re not going to rekindle anything especially with him stuck in the body of a fucking sprite now. Besides it isn’t like I’m still not mad at him for destroying my home even if it was an accident. No, I think maybe it’s time for me to move on from this area altogether. Maybe the Delantium Kingdom, or at least pass through there. There are maybe at least one or two folks I know living in that area, maybe they’re still interesting. Anything’s possible right?” “Seems like it. If you asked me when I was a teenager where I’d be at thirty, it wouldn’t be assaulting a wizard’s home as a vampire with another vampire and ghoul by my side. My answer would have been probably still robbing travelling merchants with my twin sister in my hometown. Still think about her and the rest of the family sometimes and wonder how they’re doing, but that’s all a past life.” “I wouldn’t write off the past completely, it usually has a way of sneaking up on you even when you’re not a mortal. I mean it certainly did recently for you. Well, thank you for your help, you truly are free now. You take care okay? And take care of Lisa too. You make a lovely couple.” With those last words, Isabella briefly moves forward a bit, perhaps to make physical contact with you, but stops herself. She instead turns away and walks off into the forest. You soon lose sight of her and it’s just you and Lisa. “Is she gone for good?” Lisa asks. “Yeah I think she is.” You say. “Good, it’s just you and me again. Just like it always should be!” “Yes it is, come on let’s go back home.” Part of you wonders if you were really correct about Tych actually being Ral and what exactly happened. You suppose you’ll never know the entire story, and actually you’re fine with that. This has been a very strange past couple of days. Surreal even. You were forced into this quest for revenge and there was even an unrelated struggle before you reached your destination, then when you finally reached that destination, it was sort of an anti-climatic conclusion. You suppose that’s just how shit happens sometimes. Not everything ends with a gigantic battle. (And you’re fine with that too) You’re just glad you’re done with it and hopefully you can finally go about your existence in relative peace.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Lisa’s a big ghoul, she’s going to have to fend for herself. Besides, the best way you can defend her is if you kill Travis as quick as possible. Since Travis likes to talk shit, you might as well respond in kind. “Okay Travis, you got me on that one. Cherish the moment because it’s the last chance you’re going to get. In fact, if you were smart, you’d just run now. I know deep down you’re scared and just too arrogant to admit it.” You exclaim. “Scared? Me? I’m not the one who is floundering around like kitten in the river right now. Seems to me, that you’re the arrogant one who doesn’t know when he’s beaten.” Travis retorts. You see a figure out the corner of your eye getting ready to cast a spell and you rush forward to kill it. Another illusion, but you know enough not to stick around as two bolts of lightning barely miss you. “Is this your plan? Attempt to kill all my illusions until you single me out? Shit plan and doomed to failure. I can keep this up all night. You on the other hand, will have to turn in when day breaks. And whoever that other vampire was, is going to be too busy chasing down Heather. You’re alone out here and fucked. The best you can hope for is a stalemate before you run like a bitch before the sunrise. You won’t get it though, vampire ashes aren’t easy to come by.” “Yeah, yeah, just keep telling yourself that and ignore the fact that you aren’t pissing your robe right now.” You play more dodge the magic spell with Travis and continue to taunt him the whole time. You aren’t sure if it’s taking him off his offense, but you’re getting frustrated that you can’t seem to locate him. Destroying his illusions when you can, while satisfying, doesn’t bring you any closer to your goal since he’s just creating more. You don’t know where Lisa is in all this either, but you’ve got bigger concerns right now. Eventually Travis gets lucky again and one of his illusions zaps you in the chest with a lightning bolt. It tries to finish you off with a fireball, but you narrowly escape. At this rate he’s going to set the whole forest on fire. As you’re taking protection behind a tree and recovering, you suddenly hear screams coming from behind a cluster of rocks. “Shit…did she really get him?” you say to yourself and swiftly run over towards the screaming. And there you see Lisa partially on top of Travis and chewing through one of his arms while he desperately tries to punch her with the other, shrieking the entire time. “No, no more of that.” You say and break Travis’ free arm so he can’t flail it around at Lisa any longer. His screams of agony don’t get any longer, and in fact he begins to just stop making much noise at all. “Yeah, looks like the shock and blood loss are kicking in. You’re lucky that Lisa got to you first. If it were up to me, I would have stretched out your torment a lot longer.” Travis tries to speak, but all he can do is bubble up some blood from his mouth and struggle to stay awake. “Guess there’s one silver lining in this for you, you’re getting eaten by someone who doesn’t make any pretenses of what she is right? I’m sure she appreciates your respect, along with your flesh.” Lisa finishes chewing through Travis’ right arm and then gives him one good chomp on the side of his neck, which finally kills him, though it doesn’t kill Lisa’s hunger and she continues to feed. “You did good Lisa. Thank you.” You say and kiss her on the top of her head which finally allows breaks her attention long enough to briefly nuzzle against your leg before returning to eat. “I hate to break up your feast, but we have other matters to take care of, come on, let’s head back to the Dornan camp. Hopefully Isabella didn’t kill the other one. Oh, you can bring his arm with you.” Lisa wastes no time in following you back to the camp, though there is still one thing you’re wondering about. “Lisa, how the hell did you single out Travis in all the illusions?” you ask. “Oh that was easy. I just sniffed him out.” Lisa answers as a bit of meat flies from her mouth. “How? I couldn’t even get his scent.” “You were right about him being scared. He had pissed himself. Easy to get scent for me after that. I hunt in the sewers all the time, you know. I can usually single out the origins of bodily waste under the right circumstances. It took some time for me to perfect that skill, I’ve always wanted to tell you about it, would you like to hear how…” “Um, okay Lisa. Maybe another time.” Funny how you desperately trained yourself to try to block out the various “aromas” of the sewers, meanwhile Lisa completely embraced them. Whatever works you guess. You soon return to the camp and go through the bodies since Isabella isn’t around. You don’t really find much though, at least not any more that what Heather told you. Having little else to do, you decide to sit and wait, while Lisa eats one of the Dornans. Time passes a bit and you start to wonder if you shouldn’t just go back home. This was more of Isabella’s thing and if she’s not here then you really don’t have strong feelings about getting revenge on Ral. Sure it would be nice, but you’ve had enough of fighting wizards for tonight. Unfortunately Isabella comes back just as you’re thinking on this, with Heather over her shoulder. “I’m guessing you didn’t leave yours alive.” Isabella asks. “Nope, I’m afraid Lisa’s hunger took care of that, but I figured you’d show restraint since I was certain you wouldn’t place too much faith in us anyway.” You respond. “Didn’t know Lisa was even going to be around since you told her to stay put. In any case I suppose you were correct in thinking that I wouldn’t believe you to have as much restraint, so this one is still alive. Knocked her ass out when I finally caught up with her, so I haven’t gotten any information from her yet. I guess we can do that together at least.” Doesn’t take long for Isabella to slap Heather awake. When she sees the two of you hovering over her, she’s obviously very frightened and turns to what most do in a hopeless situation. “Oh please, Dorna give me the knowledge and power to overcome my disadvantageous position. I will make the large sacrifice in your honor if you only lend me your wisdom.” She says and begins praying which Isabella puts a stop to with another slap. “Oh no, you aren’t mumbling some prayer and casting another spell. The best you can hope for in your situation is if you don’t piss me off and you get a quick death. Now tell me what you know about Ral and what’s going on out here.” “Can’t we come to some sort of agreement?” Heather asks. Isabella looks at you. “Reminds me of you with all these attempts at bargaining.” Isabella remarks. “Well, you gotta admit, it worked for me.” You answer. “Yeah, well it’s not working for this bitch, now TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU FUCKING KNOW!” Isabella’s face becomes that monstrous expression that manages to scare Heather even more than she already is. She starts crying and pleading and ultimately agreeing to tell her everything she knows even though it isn’t much. Heather explains that none of them really knew what to find out here and it was Elder Flynn who first sensed the magic disturbance. He wasn’t sure at first about checking it out, but after much meditation (And sensing other disturbances) he decided that he needed to confront his old comrade. Apparently the Elder and Ral were old friends when they were young, but obviously had a disagreement in ideology as far as magic. The Elder of course thought it was a Dorna’s most precious gift to the world and thanks must always be given to her for it. Ral on the other hand just believed that it was a force to be mastered like any other and didn’t even acknowledge Dorna. She said most knew about Ral since he was a wizard of some power even if he was very reclusive most of the time, but Elder Flynn didn’t speak of him in any detail until recently. Said that his experiments had probably gone too far and he would have to be stopped before Dorna’s wrath was brought upon the world. Even though the Elder said the disturbances had died down and they hadn’t seen anything unusual yet, he said they still needed to confront Ral since he was dangerous wild card. Heather didn’t speak out, but she got the impression that this meeting was just something the Elder seemed to want more than correcting magical disturbance. “Oh, that was Flynn? Damn, didn’t even recognize him, though I thought there was something vaguely familiar about his scent. If I had recognized him, maybe I would have tried a different approach. Oh well.” Isabella remarks. “Wait, you knew the Elder?” Heather asks. “Yeah, he and Ral were competing for my attention when they were young! That’s why the friendship broke up. Ideological disagreement my fine undead ass. Flynn wasn’t hooked up in all this Dorna worship shit when I knew him. I mean he was more religious than Ral, but he wasn’t a fanatic.” “What did Ral do that won you over?” you ask out of genuine curiosity. “He made me laugh. In any case, I guess that doesn’t help us much, but it was worth a try. Alright, let’s get this done…” “WAIT! Please! I’m no threat anymore! I didn’t even want to fight you guys! You! When we met, wasn’t I reasonable to you?” Heather exclaims, trying to appeal to you. “When we first met, you fucking did some sort of charm on Lisa to make her docile.” you say. “But…please! (sob) I don’t wanna die! I didn’t even want to come out here! (sob) Wait! I know! Make me into a vampire! I mean I could be a good one! I’m already a night owl and I could make a good apprentice! Please, I just don’t want to die…” At this point Heather is groveling completely at Isabella’s feet. This is such a pathetic display, you’re sort of feeling a bit for the girl. “Isabella, maybe you could make her into a vampire? I mean she probably could help you quite a bit on building a new home, what with being a sorceress and all.” You say. “Hello, my name is Isabella, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m not turning this bitch into a vampire just because she’s begging for her life. I have standards. I only turn those that are mate potential into vampires.” Isabella sniffs. “Do you HAVE to have sex with the person you turn into a vampire?” “Yes, and as I think you know I’m not into women.” “Just pretend you’re in college.” “What?” “I dunno, my dad said a lot of girls at his university used to do that and then got married to some guy anyway.” “Yeah, no. Look, if you’re so keen on saving this human, then you could always turn her into a ghoul.” Lisa looks up long enough from the corpse she’s eating to give an angry growl at that suggestion. Lisa might be willing to serve you unquestioningly, but she still wants to be the only ghoul in your life, not that you were considering it anyway. “Too bad Heather, hope your afterlife with Dorna is a pleasant one.” You say and without another word Isabella kills Heather. Isabella feeds and then you do likewise. The three of you then continue your journey to Ral’s home. Along the way you start noticing discoloration of the trees and odd-looking plant life. Some of them even look carnivorous, but you guess they don’t like the taste of undead flesh so they don’t attack. (And Lisa must not be very appetizing either) “This doesn’t look like it belongs here.” You say. “Sure doesn’t. What the hell did Ral do?” Isabella says. “Given all this change and how the Dornans said it dying down, maybe he’s not even alive anymore.” “For his sake, he better not be.” After passing a few more landscape oddities, you at last reach Ral’s home and it looks about the same as you last saw it. There aren’t any creatures or anything wandering about, though you’re not getting a sense of complete safety either. “Well, it’s all yours. See if you can’t get in.” Isabella says. You don’t say anything other than to tell Lisa to stay put and you’ll be back in a moment. You approach Ral’s home and try the front door. It’s locked of course, so you pull out a lockpick and easily open it. You step forward… And nothing happens. You apparently are allowed in the house. Now to see if Isabella’s other idea will work. You stand in the doorway and motion Lisa and Isabella over. Lisa easily enters the house since she wasn’t barred by strange rules anyway. Isabella however, still can’t get in. “Shit.” She remarks. “I don’t understand, I thought you said you were always welcome in a place that was my home.” You say. “Eh, more weird rules. This place, while you were welcomed in here, still officially isn’t your home, it’s Ral’s. I figured it was a long shot. I’m going to try to figure out something out here, in the meantime you need to find out what’s going on. I’d rather you not kill Ral and leave him for me, but if you have to, I’ll certainly understand.” Isabella takes her leave and you and Lisa are left in a very dusty living area. Looks like this place went to pot after you weren’t around to clean it anymore. “Well, let’s take this slow I guess. Lisa, you stay very close to me.” You say and begin exploring rooms methodically. The eerie thing about all this, is you aren’t hearing any noise whatsoever. Usually you used to at least hear faint noises sometimes from his lab, but there is nothing. Speaking of his lab you eventually decide you might as well just search that place now. You make your way there and immediately notice something wrong. The door is open. That door was always locked. You cautiously peek inside Ral’s lab for the first time. And it’s a complete wreck. There is equipment everywhere; you know Ral wouldn’t have left it like this if he could help it. Except he can’t help it, because he’s currently on the floor with a broken neck. He looks like he’s been dead awhile. And then you see another familiar face. Tych. You see him flying around between various large tomes and mixing something on one of the only clean lab workbenches. This all seems a bit strange, but in any case Tych hasn’t noticed you yet. > You sneak up and grab him You figure with your speed you’ll easily be able to catch Tych before he’ll notice and then you can question him on what happened here. And you probably would have if Lisa hadn’t been with you to snuffle about and bumping into some debris while wandering over towards Ral’s corpse. Tych spins around and just narrowly flits out of your way. He’s incredibly surprised. “SHIT! YOU?” he exclaims and then this is followed by him putting his hands together and unleashing a beam (much larger than you’d think for his size) of magical energy straight into your face, melting it completely. You flail about blind for a moment and you can hear Lisa snarl and shriek when she sees that you’re being attacked, but those noises seem to be silenced fairly quickly. You’re in no condition to help Lisa because you can’t even help yourself at this point. “I don’t know how you broke the geas, but I’m not taking any chances!” you hear Tych say. You’ve never known Tych to be able to cast spells like this. Something about this is weird, but it hardly matters and you’ll never know the true mystery since Tych finishes you off by melting a hole through your chest and destroying your heart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You really don’t want to start all over again with finding or building another home. You’re comfortable here and don’t want to move. So if this one last thing means you get to stay here, then so be it. “Very well, I’ll help, but what if I can’t get in anyway?” you ask. “Well, we might have to come back to reassess a new plan. I’m almost sure that you will be able to get in though.” Isabella says. “I sure hope so, because as much as I want to keep my home and perhaps even not mind the revenge bit, I’m not sure if I’m prepared to be in a perpetual stalemate where I’m sharing this place with you. I’d rather just pick up and leave I think.” “Understandable, and that’s certainly your choice if it comes to that, but let’s keep positive thoughts. So, are you ready to go?” “What, now?” “Well sure. The night is still young and I figured you wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.” “I suppose you’re right, but I think I’m going to need at least a little time to explain this Lisa.” “What for? Just say you’re leaving and will be back in a day or two. It isn’t like she’s going to leave you and I’m sure she’ll be satisfied if you tell her she can eat those two girls I saw chained up. Ghouls are easily distracted and appeased, I’m sure you well know.” “Yeah and I’m sure that YOU well know that I treat Lisa as an equal, not like some pet!” “Of course you do. Very well, talk to your child then, I will see you in the (ugh) sewers.” Isabella takes her leave and you’re about to head back to the meat room, when you notice blood puddles and small trails in the hallway. You follow them to a small dead end to another tunnel you’ve been recently working on and that’s where you find Lisa huddled in a corner chewing on a bone and making a weird (yet relatively quiet) noise. Almost like she’s crying, but not quite. She looks up at you mournfully. “Lisa, I’m not mad if you were listening to us.” you say. “You’re leaving with her aren’t you?” Lisa asks. “I have to if we want to keep our home. Don’t you want us to keep the home we’ve made here?” “I…I don’t want you to go. I need you…can’t…can’t I come with you?” “Lisa, it’s going to be really dangerous. I mean I’m sure you remember my stories about Ral. We’re going to be going up against him and I don’t want to worry about you getting hurt.” “But I could help! I want to help! Please let me help!” Lisa says grabbing your arm with fanatical dedication in her eyes. It’s against your better judgment, but if you leave her here she could just get into trouble anyway. Perhaps even more without you close by and her probably getting depressed about the situation. If you take her with you, at least you can keep an eye on her and she’ll be happy. It’s one more factor to worry about, but if you’re really serious about trying to treat her like an equal, keeping her contained like pet (or child as Isabella said) isn’t the way to go about it. Besides Lisa isn’t defenseless. “Very well, but you REALLY need to obey all my commands during this task. Seriously, you can’t go wandering off in search of food or any else of the sort. You need to follow all my orders to the letter. Understand?” “I do! I do my love! Oh thank you! I’ll be a big help! You’ll see!” Lisa showers you with a lot of affection and as usual she goes for the crotch immediately. You half think about stopping her since this is going to take awhile and you’re supposed to be on your way to Ral’s, but you feel like Lisa deserves a reward for dealing with all this (And hell, so do you) so… Later, you meet Isabella who is still standing in the sewers close to your secret wall. “About fucking time. Don’t tell me, I already know what you were doing…aaaand I see we now have a loadstone with us. Fantastic!” Isabella remarks when she sees Lisa behind you. Lisa looks down a bit when Isabella calls her out. “Look, she can be of help. It’s going to take us a couple days to get to Ral’s so it might be useful to have someone that can at least scout around during the day while we sleep in the ground.” “More like give ourselves away. Fine, I suppose she would be useful fodder if worse comes to worse. Let’s go, we’ve already wasted…” You place one hand on Isabella’s shoulder and spin her around when she turns her back on you. “Let’s get one thing fucking straight. Lisa is NOT fodder. She’s not a minion, she’s not my fuck toy, she’s not a child, she’s not a fucking pet! Lisa is my fucking mate. She came because she wants to help me and I want her to help me. This, what we’re doing right now? Is to help you. However, if you keep insulting Lisa and being a general bitch to her, you can go do this on your own and both of us will find some place else to live. I’m putting up with a lot of things and I’m not trying to step out of line against my so called betters, but I’m not going to put up with how you talk to and about her! AGH SHIT!” Isabella quickly grabs your wrist twists it and throws you to the hard floor face first. Lisa, rushes to attack, but is easily slapped aside into the nearby wall as Isabella applies pressure to your arm and shoves her knee into your back. “First of all, don’t you EVER fucking touch me again uninvited! You lost that privilege a long time ago. This is your ONLY warning about it. Second…fine. I apologize. I was not behaving in a way befitting of my class. I won’t insult your lady again. Glad to see that it really was true love.” Isabella gets off you and you wince a bit in lingering pain as you stand up. You then go over to Lisa and ask if she’s okay, to which she replies that she is. You then both follow Isabella who has walked ahead of you. Things are silent for more or less during the journey out of Holgard. It’s sort of a weird silence and soon after you’re making your way through the forest, you make conversation. “So, while I can imagine what happened, what did you do with the family you found in that root cellar?” you ask “Oh them? Well I had to rebuild my strength after being stuck underground for weeks, so after they told me what happened, drained all of them.” Isabella remarks. “Yep, figured as much.” “Honestly, I might have kept three of them alive under normal circumstances, but it wasn’t the normal circumstances and I do have a weakness for children’s blood.” “Did…did the children taste sweet?” Lisa suddenly asks. Isabella smiles a bit. “Yes, the children did taste sweet. Their blood usually does though unless they’re horrible greenskins. Rather go hungry than drink their blood, no matter what age most of the time.” Isabella remarks. “Some greenskins aren’t bad, but they’re always very tough. They are an acquired taste and even the dead sometimes taste better than the average hobgoblin.” Lisa remarks. “I’m sure you have a very versatile palate Lisa, not many can boast such a talent.” Isabella’s remark could be taken as a backhanded compliment at best or a sarcastic insult at worst, but Lisa seems to take what she said as a benign praise, so you let it go. Eventually dawn starts to arrive and you and Isabella take shelter in the ground. Lisa herself never seems to require as much sleep, so she’ll be still be wandering around for some of the day (Though still probably trying to stay in the shade which shouldn’t be a problem due to being in a forest). You aren’t sure if you should have her do a little scouting while you’re asleep or have her protect your resting area though. > You scout ahead One of the reasons you brought her along was so she could help and you already had the idea of letting her scout ahead so you might as well let her do it. “Lisa, while we’re asleep, I want you to scout ahead. Don’t go too far, but don’t attack anything, no matter how tasty it may look to you. Unless it’s a random animal I guess. In any case I want you to come back when you’re done and just wait here until we wake up.” You command. “Yes, my love.” Lisa responds. “Okay, I’ll see you this evening.” You say and kiss Lisa before digging yourself a shallow hole to sleep in. (Lisa helps pat down the dirt to make sure you’re completely covered) Later… You are forcibly pulled from your sleep and into the sunlight! You weren’t pulled out by hands either, it was some magical force that dragged you out. You’re still mostly covered in dirt and partially asleep but the sun is burning your face and eyes. “ARRGHAGH SHIT!” you shout and start trying to scramble for cover, but only get a ball of flame in your face. Several mages stand around you, but making very sure to stay out of your way. You try to lunge for one of them, but are magically shoved to the ground “Destroy that lesser one before the greater one wakes up. I want to speak to her personally and she’s going to have an even less pleasant reaction when she’s up.” The oldest one says. You have no idea what is going on besides the fact that you’re being attacked and are fairly helpless against your assailants. The sunlight is burning you and sapping your strength, you’re near blind and you’re struggling against a magical force that’s trying to keep you pinned to the ground. Despite your decreased vision, you make out the shape of Lisa standing among the robed mages. It can be surmised that these mages did something to her to cause her to lead them all back here. You try to re-enforce your will upon her so she helps you again, but with all the pain you’re in, it’s very hard to concentrate. You feel a sharp spike go into your chest. It’s some sort of magic blade that you see glowing a bright purple when you look down at your chest, then it disappears and two more appear to finish you off through decapitation.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3C2: Price of Freedom Year 30 “No, no, no, you can’t play that card.” You say. “Oh. Um…okay then this one.” Lisa says. You play your own card that easily beats the rest of Lisa’s hand. “I hate this stupid game.” She exclaims and throws her cards down on the table causing you to smile a bit. “Well you’re getting better at it.” “I just don’t see the point in us playing games when we could be feeding together or better yet, fucking instead.” “Now Lisa, you know there’s more to existence than just the base needs.” “Pfft, not much more, come on lover, I’ll let you do whatever you want to me.” “You let me do whatever I want all the time. Maybe later. However, if you don’t want to play games though, you can always got feast on those whores we got in the meat room.” “Ohhh! You mean we’re not saving them anymore?” “Well we’re saving two of them for the rest of the week. You can go eat the third one though. Pick whichever one you want. I’ll join you a little later.” Lisa makes that disturbing squeal and kisses the side of your face before running off to go eat. You still aren’t sure if you actually “love” Lisa, but you definitely don’t mind her affection again, now that you’ve gotten her to regularly perfume herself and chew on mint herbs once in awhile. In fact, you do believe you’ve trained Lisa fairly well all things considered. Even her personality has changed slightly so that she isn’t a complete toadying suck up. Makes you wonder if Isabella was just bullshitting you about it being so difficult. You pack up your deck of cards and check on some of your tunnels. You thought you saw the support beam warping. You might need to replace it. You don’t think you’ll ever get this place just right. As you’re inspecting your work, your other senses perk up. You can sense someone coming and its not some idiots trying to get into the topside crypt (It was funny how those Joachimites fell for that blade trap a few years ago). This is someone approaching from the sewer entrance, which means this is a hell of a lot more serious because you keep it well hidden. And this someone, you don’t think is mortal… You approach your “front door” to the sewers cautiously and fully prepared for a fight when you hear a muffled yet familiar voice from the other side. “I can tell you’re approaching. Yes, you! Your essence to me will always be strong even when you make your home in the middle of some filthy human shithole.” Isabella remarks. “Isabella?” you answer. “Yes, I’m sure you can tell it was me, unless these sewers have completely destroyed your senses. Why the hell did you make your home in such a place?” “Seemed like a good idea at the time, besides, nobody bothers me down here.” “Well that I can certainly believe. Look, you going to let me in now so we can talk because standing out here in the muck isn’t my idea of a pleasant evening.” “With all respect Isabella, why the hell are you here? Last time we talked, you weren’t exactly pleased with me.” “Long story. And I’d argue that we parted ways on fairly amicable terms. You didn’t really expect me to share you with that lesser being did you? I told you that.” “You also told me, that you’d kill the both of us.” “Oh, that was just my way of getting you both the hell out, and look it worked. In fact I’m currently extending my courtesy, by simply NOT smashing in this wall and barging in.” “You can’t do that. This is my home and I haven’t invited you in!” You hear Isabella chuckling from the other side. “Oh my sweet young vampire. You still have so much to learn. I’m your maker, I will always be connected to you even if I don’t have direct influence anymore. And that means your home will ALWAYS be my home too. So let me in or I’m wrecking this not so secret wall of yours, and I’m sure you don’t want that.” You hate these “new rules” that pop up about your current existence. “Alright, alright, fine.” you say and slide open the wall And there you see Isabella looking the same way as when you left her crypt. Including being naked. “Glad to see you’re still intelligent enough to know when to listen to your betters. Always liked that about you.” She says and steps inside. Isabella sniffs a bit. “Hmm, the odor is much better in here. Ah, I smell fresh blood nearby and another familiar scent…though somehow different…wait…is that your ghoul? She still around?” “For your information, yes Lisa is here and if this is some attempt of trying to get me back, forget it, because we’re still together.” Isabella smirks. “Hm, guess good minions are hard to come by. No point in throwing one out right? Tell me, were the sewers her idea? In any case, I hate to break your male ego, but I’m not here in some silly attempt to get you back. I’m here because I need your help.” Isabella says. “Wait, you need MY help?” you say. “Yes, but don’t think that this an opportunity to hold something over my head. I’m a very resourceful woman and you are just one of my resources I need to help accomplish my task.” “Hm, glad to be held in such high esteem.” “As well you should especially because this also involves another old acquaintance of yours. Ral.” All the figures from the past are coming out tonight… “What does Ral have to do with this?” you ask. “He fucking destroyed my home and Dert, that’s what he has to do with this! Honestly I’m surprised you haven’t heard about it since I imagine this haven of scum has a lot of gossip going on.” “Honestly, as the years have worn on, I’ve been becoming more of a recluse so I don’t keep up or even pay attention to most of the shit I hear the mortals talk about unless it really sounds like it’s going to affect me directly. If it wasn’t for the whole needing to feed situation and requiring the occasional supplies to fix up my home, I’d just stay down here with Lisa and never leave. Still, to my knowledge Dert was never very important and I doubt if anyone in Holgard even gave a shit about the place if they even knew it existed at all.” “Nevertheless, it’s gone, along with my home and Ral has to pay for that.” “I think you’re going to have to start from the beginning and let’s talk some place where I can sit and at least take all this in.” You take Isabella through some of your home and head towards one of your “living areas.” Isabella remarks that she is impressed by what you have done given the limitations you had to work with. “I see you tried your best to emulate the layout of my own crypt and catacombs even if they aren’t nearly as tidy.” Isabella says. “Glad you approve. I need to stop here first.” You say. As you’re passing the meat room, you see Lisa completely engorging herself on one of the whores that she’s completely ripped apart. She’s covered in gore and entrails and loving every minute of it. You imagine this would be a horrific sight to the other two chained up, if they weren’t under a trance. Lisa bloody face looks up from her feeding and grins at you, but then her grin becomes a look of worry when she sees Isabella behind you. “Wha…what…what’s she doing here?! I thought it was just you and me from now on! You said so!” Lisa says. “It is, and it always will be, my grave flower. Isabella just came to visit about something and I have to talk to her about it.” “…you’re mad at me, aren’t you? Please don’t be mad at me! I can do better! I’ll…I’ll chew more of those mint herbs you want me to! You’re bored…you want a threeway don’t you? I can go down on Isabella while you ram it into me hard. You can hurt me really good, and split me open. I don’t care. Please just let me be around to still worship you. You’re my love and my entire life!” Isabella stifles a snort of laughter, causing you to briefly glare at her, before you approach Lisa. You kneel down in the large blood puddle and caress her face (which is sticky with blood). It’s times like this when Lisa’s slavish ghoul personality comes out in full force. “Lisa, Lisa…don’t get upset. You’re the only woman for me and you always will be. It’s why I’ve always stayed with you. You understand that right?” “But…she’s back now…” “Isabella is just visiting. We’re not getting together. We’re just going to talk and that’s all I swear. You’re my lovely grave flower and nobody can replace you.” You say and kiss Lisa who hugs you tightly. She attempts to do more than that, but you have to remind her that later would be a better time. Lisa accepts your reassurances, but still has a look of concern on her face. Lisa soon goes back to eating the whore’s liver, probably in an attempt to comfort herself. You stand up and motion Isabella to follow you. You fully expect to hear taunting comments, but surprisingly you hear none. When you get to your destination, Isabella tells you what exactly is going on with Ral. Isabella tells you that a few months ago, during one of her resting periods, her home was completely collapsed from the inside out by an earth elemental. She said it took her weeks to dig herself out and by the time she did she found that the entire graveyard was now a large sinkhole. She doesn’t know what happened to the elemental since the attack just suddenly stopped like it just disappeared. Lacking any other immediate choices, she decided to head to Dert and charm someone there and use their dwelling for a while until she could figure out her next step. However, when she got to Dert, she found that nearly all the people had been turned to stone. Not just the people though, but most of the plant and animal life in the surrounding area as well. The few people that hadn’t been turned to stone were nothing but bits of flesh still hanging off bones. She proceeded cautiously since she was aware that only a few things could cause something like this, either powerful magic or certain creatures. As it turned out, it was both. She eventually found a family of four that had been hiding in a root cellar for quite some time. They were all very frightened and assumed she was another monster to come to kill them. (Probably due to the whole unnatural paleness and naked thing) After subduing the father, Isabella demanded to know what had transpired in the village. He explained that a few days ago, a female creature with a snake body appeared in the middle of the village along with four medium-sized reptile like creatures, which seemed to be her pets. There was a brief moment of confusion from both sides at first, but then the woman spoke something in a hissing type language and all hell broke loose. Most of the village was either turned to stone or ripped apart and consumed by the reptilian beasts. The family hid in some sort of community root cellar when they couldn’t get to their home proper, they told Isabella that they could hear the screams of people that apparently tried to hide as well, but the creatures stayed in the village to make sure they had wiped out everyone. In fact, the family was very surprised that Isabella didn’t see them since they were certain they were still lurking about. Isabella at this point tells you that she imagines that the creatures were most definitely a medusa and basilisks. She also says neither of them make their homes anywhere near this area either and it would be rare enough for one to show up, let alone a group like that. And given that they just suddenly appeared (and then apparently disappeared at some point, since there were no signs that they left the area to go elsewhere, yet they also were no longer around) the way they did, there had to be powerful magic at work. She goes on to tell you that both creatures do not normally make their homes in this area and it would be rare enough for one of them to turn up and wipe out an entire village, let alone a group of them. This combined with the earth elemental incident, and the cause of all this could only be Ral. She doesn’t know why he would do something like this and she doesn’t much care, all she cares about is the fact that Ral fucked up her home and convenient feeding grounds and for that he has to pay. “He’s been on borrowed time as it is.” Isabella says. “Are you sure it was him? I mean Ral was an asshole, but he never seemed to deliberately be the type to cause destruction for the shits and giggles. I mean is there proof?” you ask. “I don’t need fucking proof, I got instinct! And as I said, I don’t care if it was just some spell that went wrong, he’s gotta fucking pay for what he did. And YOU are going to help me.” “How the hell am I supposed to do that? I mean earth elementals, creatures that turn shit to stone, and wizard shit on top of all of it? I dealt with Ral before and it didn’t go well, not sure if I’m too keen on facing him again.” “You’re also not a weak human anymore! You’re a fucking vampire with all the advantages that go along with it! I’m going to be doing most of the heavy lifting anyway. I just need you to get in his home and if possible try to get me in there as well.” “How? His home isn’t my home. I wouldn’t be able to get in it anymore than you would.” “Yes you would, you were his servant were you not? Think back. Ral invited you in to his home long before you became a vampire.” As strange as it may seem, you do remember his exact words to you during that time. “My home is your home.” Weird that you never really thought about before, but then your mind was preoccupied with other things you suppose. “Well, maybe I guess…but I just don’t see how any of this is my problem! YOU said you released me and I thought…perhaps foolishly that you were at least a woman with a sense of honor. I mean I stayed out of your way and made a life for myself elsewhere, I don’t see why I should have to help you.” “You’re saying you don’t even want to do this even out of a sense of revenge on Ral?” “Maybe at one time I would have if I’d known I could enter his home so easily. But now? It’s all in the past and I’ve made a life not just for myself here, but for Lisa as well. I just don’t see why I should go potentially fucking that up when things are good. I mean…obviously you’re a hundred times more powerful than me and I can’t stop you from forcing me to help you under threat of death, but…I dunno…whatever…I just thought things were finally going well for me.” You slump in your chair and despair a bit about your situation. Isabella studies you a moment and then addresses you. “You’re right. You’re right about everything. I did release you and you aren’t really any under obligation to help. You’re also right in that I could just threaten to kill you and your little fuck toy if you don’t help me, though I’d probably go for extended torture since I don’t think you’d fear immediate death as much.” Isabella remarks. “So where are we then?” you ask. “So, I’m going to give you a reasonable compromise, because I still have a soft spot for you. If you help me kill Ral, I can promise that I will never darken your path again. At least not on purpose. However, if you don’t want to help me in that way, I’m going to give you another option and that is you must leave this place.” “What?” “If you’re not going to help me kill Ral, I need to plan another method of attack without you, and for that, I’m going to need my own home to do that from. I don’t want to waste time finding or building my own right now, so yours…such as it is, will have to do. Give me this place and I will never darken your doorstep again.” “That’s mostly because I won’t have a doorstep any longer.” “Well be that as it may, the option is there. You can be truly free and go find somewhere else to live. I don’t doubt you couldn’t set yourself up just as well somewhere else, but I also don’t doubt that somewhere within you, that you wouldn’t mind getting revenge on Ral.” > You leave Holgard You’re not getting wrapped up in Isabella’s shit with Ral. You thought you were done with both of them and you intend on keeping it that way, even if that means you need to find some new place to live. “It’s all yours.” You say and stand up. “What seriously? You’re not helping? You don’t want revenge?” Isabella asks in a genuinely surprised manner. “Not particularly. I mean sure I don’t have any love for Ral, but unless the man is coming to magically enslave me again, I just really don’t feel the need to go looking for trouble. I moved on and made a new life for myself and I’m happy with it. I dunno Isabella, maybe you should do the same.” Isabella’s face is noticeably annoyed by your remark, but she doesn’t threaten you or anything, just more of an expression of exasperation and disappointment. “Very well, but I didn’t think that you were the type to run and hide when opportunity presented itself. Some just aren’t meant for greater things I guess. After you leave, you needn’t concern yourself with me interfering with your little boring life in the future.” You nearly want to argue with Isabella and bring up several things, but you decide that if you really do want to get out of this situation with minimal conflict, your best bet is to just let it go. Without another word, you stand up and leave Isabella to brood. Despite her sneering words at you, you can’t help but notice her glancing at you leave with a bit of melancholy in her eyes. Maybe she was hoping to rekindle something that wasn’t there in the first place. Who knows? She never really did open up to you even in all those years you were forced to be together, maybe if she had, things would have been different like she thought they would be. You’re about to head back to the meat room, when you notice blood puddles and small trails in the hallway. You follow them to a small dead end to another tunnel you’ve been recently working on and that’s where you find Lisa huddled in a corner chewing on a bone and making a weird (yet relatively quiet) noise. Almost like she’s crying, but not quite. She looks up at you mournfully. “Lisa, I’m not mad if you were listening to us.” you say. “You’re leaving with her aren’t you?” Lisa asks. “No. Not at all. In fact me and you are leaving together.” “We are? Where are we going?” “Not sure honestly, but we’re not going to be living here anymore.” “Why? Are we being kicked out?” “In a manner of speaking yes. But I’d rather us have to start all over again and be free, than have to be a servant again. So, we’ll be hitting the road so to speak. You have anywhere in mind that you’d like to go?” “Um…I dunno…I’ve never been anywhere other than here and Dert.” “True I suppose. But I didn’t know if you’d heard of any place you might like to go…though I suppose you don’t bother making conversation with too many people.” Lisa looks introspective for a moment and then speaks again. “The Delantium Kingdom?” she asks. “Really? Didn’t know you had any interest to go there.” You say. “One time, I stumbled upon a fancy dressed man in the sewers who was from the Delantium Kingdom.” “He told you that?” “Oh yes, he claimed that he was a very important man there and if I killed him, people would come looking for him and seek revenge. Of course I didn’t worry about that.” “Of course. I don’t suppose you know what such an important man was doing in the sewers do you?” “No, I dunno what he was doing in the sewers, maybe he was lost, but in any event he tasted better than anyone from Holgard.” You smile a bit at Lisa’s reasons for suggesting the Delantium Kingdom. A very simple pleasure of food and the possibility of it tasting better there. It’s as good of a reason as any you suppose, since you don’t have many ideas at the moment. “Okay, then if you want to go to the Delantium Kingdom then that’s where we’ll go to start over. It’s going to be a long way, so maybe we should take a ship rather than travelling over land.” You say. “Ohh, I’ve never been on a ship before!” Lisa exclaims. “Neither have I, so it’ll be a new experience for the pair of us. I of course also imagine we’ll have to stowaway on a ship heading there, but that shouldn’t be too hard. Even hiding aboard the vessel shouldn’t pose too much of a challenge.” “I might get hungry though.” “I’m sure I will too, but I’m confident that they’ll be able to afford losing a few crew members without arousing too much suspicion. If it starts getting risky, you can always feed on me a little more and I’ll worry about getting sustenance so that I can keep both of our strength up.” Lisa displays a big smile at that idea. Anything that allows her to suck on you more than usual is always a good thing in her eyes. With a hug and a kiss, Lisa is once again happy since she knows that Isabella isn’t threatening her position anymore. (Not that she was in the first place) You don’t bother taking much with you, save for a few of your old thief tools and that’s mainly for sentimental value, as you don’t really do much of that sort of thing anymore. But things change, just like they are right now and just like how they probably will in the future. You and Lisa sneak aboard a trading vessel carrying a lot of cargo. Makes hiding in the bowels of the ship a lot easier with all the crates and boxes around. Occasionally one of you leaves the confines of one of the crates to feed, but mostly the pair of you just lie next to each other and enjoying each other’s company as you wait to reach your destination. Your days as a common rogue might be over, but you remain positive that your best days as a vampire have yet to be realized and hopefully those are coming soon.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe your feelings have faded. Hell, maybe you didn’t even ever truly love her to begin with, but you still feel responsible enough for her situation that you’re not giving up on Lisa. “I’m doing it. I can make this work.” You say. “Very well.” Isabella remarks with a bit of a sigh. “I have to say, I’m still sort of surprised that you’re so permissive in all this.” “Contrary to what YOU may think of me. I do have a sense of kindness…or maybe I’m just fond of you enough that I don’t just kill the pair of you to be done with this failed attempt of courtship.” “Courtship…” you scoff. “Yes, that what this was, at least to me. What would you have me do? Wait around for you to give me flowers or some other meaningless gesture? Go out to…I dunno the local festival? I’m a fucking vampire. I take what I want and at the time I wanted you. But I can see now that method wasn’t the way to go about it. Personally, I don’t even think you have any feelings of love for this girl, just a sense of guilt. However, if THIS is what is going to make you happy, then fine. I’ll show you how. Either you’re going to come to become so disgusted with what Lisa has become that you’ll finally do away with her yourself and we can try again. Or you’ll stay with her and maintain your delusions. Either way the pair of you will be free because I’m not going to have you both living here if that’s the case.” “That’s…pretty generous of you, but…” you start to say and then stop yourself. “But what?” “Um, nothing…” “Pfft, I already know what you were going to ask before you realized it would be stupid to do so, though again it isn’t going to bother me.” “And what did you think I was going to ask?” “That what if you just fake it for your freedom and how will I know? To the former, go ahead. If you’re REALLY willing to put yourself through all this, just to be released from me, then you deserve your freedom. At least it will give me a bit of pride that I will have released a very patient one of my kind into the world. Lot of young vampires fuck up due to being impulsive. But then, I suppose you’ve already had a lot of experience at being patient haven’t you? In any case, we should get started.” Isabella tells you that the process is fairly simple, however due to you being on the younger side, she isn’t sure how long it will take, if at all. The best you can do is just keep feeding her blood on a regular basis until she starts to show signs of change. “Now of course she’s already a bit on the paler side due being stuck down here with no sun all the time. So the thing you’re probably going to notice immediately is her starting to show signs of free will. She’ll probably start by addressing you without needing to be addressed first. She’ll of course also start being very affectionate, wanting to please you in every way.” Isabella explains. “But it’s different from the trance correct?” “Oh yes. Much different. In fact, she’ll be immune to that to some degree. Her loyalty towards you will be unquestionable due to sharing of blood, but she’s still going to do things on her own and it might not matter how much you tell her not to. As I said, ghouls tend to have disgusting habits and urges. In fact if you’ve ever heard the tales of how vampires are a bunch of decadent sex fiends, well THAT’S the reason. Ghouls that somehow manage to get elevated to vampirehood, never fully shed those more vile traits. Always best to go from mortal straight to vampire with no transition in between, like I did with you.” Isabella says and strokes your face. Isabella observes you bite yourself and then feed your blood to Lisa. It actually isn’t as easy as all that. Despite being in a trance, Lisa still doesn’t react well to the whole blood drinking thing, especially that of a vampire’s. She starts gagging and coughing even though she’s also trying to follow your command of doing it. Even reluctantly forcing her head to you doesn’t work and she ends up vomiting. “Lisa doesn’t have much of a gag reflex eh?” Isabella jokes, which you try to ignore and just refocus your efforts. “How long do I have to do this?” you ask. “Well until she at least manages to keep some of it down at least. As I said, it isn’t going to happen instantly either. You’re probably going to have to do this every day for months. Possibly even more than once a day since you’re still a young vampire. All I can suggest is you better make sure you keep YOUR strength up, but you better not go using up all the humans chained up in the larder. Also you’re still obligated to your duties to me. Anyway, I’ll leave you to it.” You continue to force Lisa to suck on you and eventually she keeps some of it down. You start to feel a little weird yourself so you tell her to stop and you go replenish yourself with someone in the larder, despite Isabella’s warnings. You’ll just have to go nab humans for her more frequently. If she thinks all this is going to deter you, it isn’t. Now that Isabella has hinted at freedom, your motivation for doing all this is doubled. You spend months slaving away more than you had under Ral or even Isabella before all this mainly because you have to increase capturing the amount of blood “donors” not just for Isabella, but for yourself. It’s really tempting to just grab someone from Dert, but Isabella has always had a rule against taking too many people from there lest the ignorant peasants start getting riled up, or worse, just pick up and leave. So it’s mostly a lot of ambushing bandits, travellers and (ugh) hobgoblins in the forests. There’s always Holgard too, but the journey even with your speed is still always a pain in the ass dragging someone from there since you have to keep feeding Lisa your blood at a regular interval. (Not to mention there’s currently religious conflict going on there between the factions) Needless to say, all of this makes you a lot more irritable and tired all the time (Basically, you feel like a human by vampire standards) Months pass just like Isabella said they would, but you don’t give up and eventually you start to see the signs of Lisa changing. It starts by her talking to you and addressing you by name. She’s very confused at first, but as you start to explain it all to her, she doesn’t even seem to care. In fact, she seems very happy that you’ve gone to so much effort to save her life. “Oh my beloved! I KNEW you always loved me deeply! Let me show my appreciation to you!” Lisa exclaims and proceeds to jump on you. It’s a little strange, but given all you’ve gone through to turn her, and she seems to be so willing, you don’t turn her down. Isabella still doesn’t seem fussed by this turn of events. She does seem to decrease her own demands for sex though. Cleaning is still a priority unfortunately, but considering Lisa now has all this energy she starts helping you do it. It’s during one of these cleanings that you start to see what Isabella was warning about. “Lisa, I bring in real food, you don’t need to eat the bugs crawling around this place!” you exclaim. “I’m sorry honey, but I dunno…they just looked so…inviting. And they’re nice and crunchy too. I like the way they sometimes wiggle in my mouth…mmmm…tehehehehe…” Lisa says trailing off into a disturbing giggle. “Look, just don’t eat them, and don’t eat anything else that isn’t proper food either.” “But…but what about your delicious yummy blood?” “That’s still fine.” “Good! Because I want some right now!” “You just had some a few hours ago!” “But I need it! I need to suck on you!” It’s just the beginning. Year 26 “Well, you proved yourself. You wanted it bad enough and I’m true to my word. You and your ghoul bitch are free. Now get the hell outta my crypt, it’s still night right now, so if you hurry you can find other shelter before dawn.” Isabella suddenly remarks to you during one of your few moments to yourself. You’re so tired, all you can muster up is a “huh?” “You heard me, you’re free, get out.” Isabella remarks. “Now?” you ask. “Yes! I said get out! I’m sick of you doing a half assed job of keeping this place clean and your bitch eating my food. Never mind the fact that I don’t exactly get off on hearing you lot have sex. Though I’m guessing that was your idea that she scream as loud as she could.” “I thought you weren’t jealous and didn’t give a shit.” “I don’t actually. But I’m certainly not going to share you in any capacity with something that’s currently up in the graveyard as we speak, digging up coffins and eating rotten carcasses.” “What?! She got out again? Why didn’t you stop her?!” “Not my concern and neither are you anymore. You were fun for a while and I don’t regret our time. Just confirmed my original thoughts of why I stay single to begin with. Anyway, take care and a part of me hopes that deep down that you do truly love this girl, but then I’ve always been a bit of a romantic.” Isabella tells you that you’ve got a short period of time to leave not just her crypt, but also the area. She mentions that if she catches you or Lisa still in the area she’ll kill the pair of you since she doesn’t want you lingering around to possibly fuck up her relative peace by preying upon Dert. You gather up what belongings you still value and take your leave. Sure enough when you exit the crypt, you hear Lisa snuffling about in the graveyard. You soon find that she’s already dug up a grave and half eaten body parts lie all around her. She looks up from the rotten leg bone she’s chewing on and wastes no time in running to greet you, though it’s more like an animal loping at you. Lisa attempts to kiss you, but the stench of her breath is horrible and that’s saying something considering how resilient you’ve gotten to such things. You turn your head away and tell her to calm herself. “I’m sorry, I know I’m suppose to stay in the crypt, but I just got so hungry and nipped out for a quick snack since I know you don’t like me touching the chained up humans in that one room. Anyway, is it time to give me some more of your yummy blood? I could use a drink after that meal! Say, do you want some of this leg?” You look at Lisa and she’s absolutely nothing like the girl you were so fond of years ago. She doesn’t even look the same. While she’s not aging anymore, she’s definitely changing in appearance in other ways. Her clothes and body are constantly dirty; her hair is a matted nest crawling with insects. Her teeth have bits of decayed flesh in them and who knows what else. She smells like the same corpses she eats. Her personality is that of a spineless lackey that isn’t even completely obedient. And the kicker to all this is you willingly had sex with this thing repeatedly just to gain your freedom. You can’t imagine the number of times you dreaded keeping up the sham. Of course it’s done now. You don’t really need to go through it any longer. > You leave Lisa behind Isabella was right. Ghouls are disgusting creatures and however long you live in this new vampire life, you are never making another one again, unless you were trying to completely humiliate someone. Lisa, really didn’t deserve this fate and you’ve long since saw that it would have been a kindness to just kill her. However, in her current form she allowed you to regain your freedom so you’ll always remember her for that, along with when she was human. You think about killing her now, and it’s not really because you wouldn’t do so, if only to release her from this hellish state of life, but you’ve still got one last idea to stick it to Isabella for putting you in this situation to begin with. “Lisa, you remember your old home Dert and how to get there correct?” you ask. “Oh yes! I remember it well! It’s full of humans! Fleshy…delicious human…” Lisa starts to say trailing off as she thinks of exactly that. “Yes, it is. Well because you’ve been a good girl, you can go there and eat all you want!” “I…I can!?” “Yes! You can empty the entire village if you want!” “Oh….oh THANK YOU!” “Yes, well I am the nice one.” Lisa attempts to kiss you again, but once again you block her from doing so. “First thing I’m going to do is eat my father! That old bastard never wanted us to be together! THEN I’m going to eat that bitch Lindsay! I remember that dumb whore stupidly bragged about getting pregnant when she gave you a blowjob! But I don’t blame you of course, you know that right?” Lisa says. “Oh I know. I know. Actually I’d sort of forgotten about that, but then I’ve been a bit preoccupied with other things. Anyway, have fun.” You reply. “Wait, aren’t you coming with me?” “Oh no. I have some important business to take care of for Isabella in Holgard. Might be awhile so don’t wait up for me.” “Oh…well okay. I was hoping that we were gonna do this together…I don’t like how you take orders from that Isabella bitch. I’m sorry. I know I’m not supposed to talk bad about her, but I don’t like her. I can’t wait for us to be free of her so it can be just you and me together forever!” If only you had the patience, Lisa’s obsessive dream might have come true, but you just don’t. You’re tired of having to serve or help other people in any capacity. You just really need to be by yourself for a while. A LONG while. Still, no point in not giving the girl one last thrill. You quickly open up your wrist and motion Lisa to drink, which she does so gladly. You give her a little more than usual since you figure she’s going to need the extra strength to take on an entire village. Even assuming she survives that, she still will be no match for Isabella who will no doubt eventually learn of this, but at least you’ve given Lisa a nice going away present. Afterwards you pat Lisa on the head and tell her to scamper off before all the humans in Dert get away. With this last command you watch Lisa lope into the darkness towards Dert. Isabella’s going to be pissed. You half wonder if she’ll hunt you down for doing this, but for some reason you don’t really care if she does. You just sort of wish you could figure out a way to get a little revenge on that asshole Ral too, but that might be for a different day you guess. You briefly think about making your way to Holgard since it is the closest settlement of where you can feed easily, but you figure you probably should just leave the region entirely. Not to mention being a “normal” thief just doesn’t hold the same thrill it once did and it’s not even necessary anymore. You’ve never been a wanderer by nature, but maybe you’ll start to become one now. Who knows, maybe you’ll even bump into your sister in your travels. You like to think that she’d find your transformation very interesting, or at least the story of how it happened. You hope she’s doing okay, or at least doing better than you are. After thinking on it, you decide to head towards the direction of the Delantium Kingdom. You know it’s going to be quite a journey even with your speed. You hope you’ll find shelter along the way. You always hate having to just dig yourself a hole in the ground. But there will undoubtedly be little communities like Dert or your old home of Teckleville along the way for you to rest and feed at. There always are. As you begin to walk, you aren’t sure what you’re going to do with the rest of your undead life, but your days as a common rogue are over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 25 How the hell do you keep a vast underground crypt clean? Answer: You don’t. One thing you never knew about vampires is how they can become obsessed with the smallest details. Probably has to do with the enhanced senses. Isabella apparently is a neat freak and due to this quirk she spent most of her time rearranging, cleaning, and generally tidying up her home. An impossible task of course, but that didn’t stop her from trying. Even the room where she keeps the blood “donors” is clean. Doesn’t look like the slaughterhouse that one would expect it to be. Unfortunately due to being at her beck and call that means you get to help her or at least do most of it now. As one would expect, it takes up most of your time. You think between her and Ral, you’ve done more housework than thievery. About the only thing you don’t have to take care of is her underground garden, which is her own personal project that she spends a lot of time on. In fact, with you around now she doesn’t even have to leave it to get food much anymore. She just has you do it. She also has you doing her. You can’t be sure if it’s true affection she has for you or just her basic needs that she wants satisfied. It feels like the latter most of the time, but there are moments where it seems to be more. It’s just a weird situation altogether and while you’d hate to admit it, its one of the better things about being in servitude to Isabella rather than Ral. Meanwhile you’ve got a project of your own in the form of Lisa. You spend whatever free time you have with her. Making sure she’s provided with nourishment and drink. Usually you just steal food from the farms in Dert along with drawing water from their well, but occasionally you get something different from Holgard and try to mix things up. (You never thought your thievery would ever be used primarily for food!) Lisa’s reactions to everything are very “neutral.” That’s of course mainly due to the perpetual trance she’s in. She is always polite and docile, and never really doing too much on her own, not that she would have much to do anyway considering she’s mostly relegated to her single room. (That you’ve also taken time to furnish) Isabella says that in time, you’ll be able to get her to behave more like a “normal” person, but the fact is, she’ll always be acting according to how you want her to act. Much like a puppet. It’s all pretty frustrating. There’s also a part of you that is starting to wonder about what you’re doing. Are you doing this because you love Lisa? Are you doing this out of some sense of guilt? Or are you doing this just to pass the time? At this point you don’t know anymore. It can’t be out of a sense of “humanity” because other than Lisa, you’ve adjusted fairly well to the whole snatching up people and drinking their blood until they die thing. You wonder if maybe you should turn Lisa into a ghoul, since apparently she’d have a lot more free will, while still remaining dedicated to you. You stare at Lisa who sits quietly in her chair staring in such a way that it almost makes you think that somewhere within her head, there’s a part of her that’s still the free willed Lisa and she’s screaming to get out. Would transforming her really be any worse than she is now? It wouldn’t be perfect, but at least she’d be able to do more things on her own without you needing to tend to her constantly. “I figured you’d be in here.” Isabella remarks upon entering the room. “I finished cleaning for today…or did you need something else?” you answer. “Not right now and surprisingly my garden doesn’t need tending to at this moment. I’m just checking up on you I suppose. Did I interrupt a potential moment of bliss between you and your pet?” “What?” “Oh come on, you don’t need to deny anything. It’s not like I care. I’m hardly jealous of that.” “…no! No! I don’t do that with her!” “What seriously? I figured you were just really quiet about it. Or maybe on the occasions you took her deeper into the catacombs, you were fucking her in one of the more secluded spots there. Guess that explains why you keep her clothed.” “I sometimes take her for walks because I believe she needs a change of scenery every once in awhile. And I’m not having sex with her, because I’m not a rapist. She’s under a trance.” “So are all the folks we keep here to take blood from, except we’re ultimately killing them. You don’t seem to have a problem with that.” “It’s…it’s just different.” “I suppose it is…but not really. I have to admit, I didn’t think you’d last this long with her, but I guess your feelings were stronger for her than I thought…or maybe you’re just doing this to prove some point to yourself. Either way, I can already tell that you’re starting to realize the futility of your plan.” “I want to make her into a ghoul.” Isabella looks at you and just shakes her head. “I knew it would come to this. Look, if you really do have any lingering feelings for Lisa, you’ll just kill her now and be done with it.” Isabella remarks. “What’s wrong with making her a ghoul? You mentioned before that it would stop her from aging any more and she’d still be under my influence. Are you just afraid that if I take this step, it will just bring her closer to me and further from you?” “Oh you, and your assumptions. Trust me, if I really felt remotely intimidated by either of you in any way, you’d both be dead. However, if you really want my thoughts on this, you turn her into a ghoul and I guarantee it will only make you appreciate me all the more.” “Well what exactly is so bad about turning her into a ghoul? You’ve never gone into detail.” “First of all, you’re probably still not powerful enough to do it even with my magnificent blood in your body, though I suppose you could try anyway. Second of all, I’ve made a ghoul before and while it’s true they make good servants who are completely dedicated to you, there’s enough drawbacks that I don’t understand why any vampire would bother…unless they’re really desperate for ego stroking I suppose.” “Okay, so what then…she’ll fawn all over me?” “Yes, and while that might sound enticing at first, I promise that you’ll get sick of it. At least YOU would at any rate. You’ve never struck me as the time that needs constant reassurance of how amazing you are.” “I dunno, it might still be nice to hear once in awhile.” “Well, if you want to hear how amazing you are, I guess we can go back to my room. I promise, I’ll make it sound authentic.” You don’t want to, but you actually actual laugh at Isabella’s remark causing her to smile. “Okay, see that right there is a good example of why you shouldn’t even bother with this plan. You know you like it here with me.” Isabella remarks. “Maybe I’m trying the best out of my bad situation. We’re not exactly equals in this relationship you know.” You say. “Oh and you and Lisa would be? You and I are a much closer if we’re going to go that route. You’re so far above her right now it’s comparing a rot grub to a human. Speaking of rot grubs, that’s the third thing you might want to know about when creating a ghoul.” “What?” “For whatever reason and nobody I know has ever figured this out. Ghouls develop disgusting habit and quirks.” “Drinking blood doesn’t already qualify?” “I’m sure to some it would, but how about eating bugs, dead bodies or even shit? You really want Lisa to kiss you with that mouth after she’s been chowing down on a rotting corpse?” “Well can’t I tell her not to do that?” “You can try, but short of keeping her confined, that’s just doomed to failure. As obedient as they are, some urges are just too powerful. And that’s just the eating habits. I haven’t even gotten to the weird social habits because if allowed to go out and interact with the rest of the world, ghouls tend to lack the subtlety that vampires do…well most vampires anyway. You turn her into a ghoul and you better keep a CLOSE eye on her. Otherwise she’s going to go wandering into Dert and probably expose herself to all the little peasant children. I’m sure that won’t attract attention at all.” Isabella’s made a real good case against the whole ghoulification process. Though you’re still wondering if she isn’t just exaggerating so you won’t try it. You spend time hovering over Lisa anyway; you think you could manage to keep her from doing anything weird. Part of you wants to do it just to prove Isabella wrong, but then is that a good excuse for doing it at all? Your original intent is so you could stop Lisa from getting any older and giving her a bit of free will. > You don't do it Other than the obvious, Isabella hasn’t really lied to you. She might be manipulative, but if she’s even telling some of the truth about what Lisa will become as a ghoul, it probably isn’t worth it. Would the Lisa you once knew really want to become something like that? Would she even want to become a vampire for that matter? The thing is, you don’t even really know. As the years have gone by, you realize that you didn’t know her excessively well. You had some good times with her and she was a distraction from being under Ral’s thumb, but did you really love her? No. You were just hanging on to a memory of the past and in her current trance state, that memory continues to fade as you watch her get older and continue to behave like some emotionless golem. The real Lisa wanted to live an adventure. This isn’t an adventure and this isn’t life. Isabella’s right, you do have more in common with her. Arguably, you even know her better despite the fact that Isabella still hasn’t really told you much about her own past (which must be extensive). This realization still causes you to feel sadness. You really thought that if you just hung on to Lisa, that maybe your situation would work itself out, but it isn’t. This is your life or unlife as it were. You put your face in your hands and try not to weep, but you fail. Isabella attempts to comfort you by putting an arm around you, but you eventually pull away. “Oh dear…I can see this didn’t go the way I planned at all. (Sigh) Very well…I see what needs to be done. You need to go. I release you.” Isabella says. “What?” you answer. “You heard me. I release you. You’re not happy here and you never will be. You’re also always going to be resentful towards me on some level. Guess I should have known, but spending decades being detached from humanity sort of makes one become less aware of certain social niceties.” “What about Lisa?” “Oh yes, her. Well I’m sure you do realize that she still can’t leave here. Can’t do anything about that. However, I’m correct in assuming that you no longer feel the same way about her anymore?” “Yes…but…” “I’ll make it quick. Just go.” “Thank you.” You give one last look at Lisa and briefly think about giving her a goodbye hug or even a kiss, but it would be a meaningless gesture to someone who is in no state of mind to appreciate it anyway. And even if she were, she most likely wouldn’t want anything to do with you. You take your leave of Isabella’s home and don’t look back. (Fortunately it’s night time right now) As sad as you are about what happened with Lisa, you now feel a great weight lifted off of you. Namely the ball and chain of slavery. First Ral and then Isabella. For the first time since you left your home, you’re actually free. Truly free. It’s a little surreal. Since you’re lacking in any other ideas at the moment and need some time to think, you head to the closest place that you can think of where you can find reasonable dwellings and can feed easily, Holgard. When you arrive, you head to the graveyard. Many times in your past visits to Holgard, you’ve found temporary places to stay any time you got stuck here before the sunrise. While it probably would be just as easy to stay at an inn, you suppose your years with Isabella have caused you to appreciate the solitude of a crypt. You find yourself an older one that doesn’t look like it gets too much visitation and after a few adjustments, you make a space for yourself. What will you do with yourself now? What DO vampires do to pass the time? It can’t all just be drinking blood obviously. Isabella had her garden (and cleaning until you showed up) Your concerns aren’t so much in the present you suppose, but the future since you’ve got a long one ahead of you. Your previous profession of thievery seems all rather pointless now. You don’t need money to live anymore and you don’t even get that much of a thrill out of it like you once did, of course most of your roguish skills were being used to steal for Lisa, so it hasn’t been for your original reasons for a long time anyway. All of this also has had you wondering how your family is doing, and if they’re all okay. You imagine your parents really wouldn’t want anything to do with you now, so there’s no point in visiting them even you weren’t facing mob justice there (And as a vampire, you can’t imagine the folks in Teckleville would be any friendlier towards you, though you suppose you’d be able to handle them easier now). You like to think your sister would still speak with you though. She’d probably find it all very fascinating, which you suppose it is in some ways. For a while you think you can go back to your “old life.” Pick up where you left off, or rather what you originally wanted to do in the first place after you left Teckleville. This works, but only temporarily. Part of you would stay in Holgard and just go about a simple existence of feeding on unlucky souls and possibly burglarizing a store just to pass the time. It isn’t like you’re exactly unhappy doing that, but after a few months you realize it isn’t so much the monotony of your life that’s bothering you, but rather the area. First, Holgard is currently undergoing a “holy war” of sorts between its various religious factions. While it’s making things chaotic enough for you go unnoticed, you can’t help but get a little concerned when the Church of Joachim starts talking about forming groups to hunt down evil supernatural elements that are corrupting the city as part of their crusade to prove they are what’s best for Holgard. Second (and somewhat more importantly) Holgard used to be a sort of “escape” from Ral and later Isabella. You used to be able to put it out of your mind that you were under someone else’s command for a little while. Now? Holgard just feels like you haven’t “moved on” from your shackles. Or at least not moved on enough. While you’ve never been a wanderer like your sister and maybe it’s a combination of your previous experiences, along with being a vampire, but you feel the urge to travel. You don’t know where, but you have to get out of this city. Maybe even find something else to do. Holgard always has trade ships leaving its harbor going to various locations. You sneak aboard one in the middle of night and hide yourself in one of them. You think this one is going to the Delantium Kingdom, but it might be going to some place you’ve never heard of, you don’t really care as long as you’re away from this area. Never been aboard a ship before, so this will be a new experience too. You imagine you’ll get hungry on the journey, but as far as you know there’s enough crew on the ship that you’ll be able to get by. Just have to be stealthy about it, but then that isn’t really a problem anymore. You still don’t know exactly what you’re going to do with the rest of your undead life, but your days as a common rogue are over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 21 When you first started messing around with Lisa, she was just like all the other young Dert girls that had started taking an interest in you when you started coming around a lot more. Just a bored girl that found you to be a spark of excitement in her backwards little village. Lisa however, stood out mainly because she wasn’t naïve or outright stupid like rest. (You still laugh about the one girl who thought she was going to force you into a crossbow wedding by having a child. Unfortunately for her, swallowing doesn’t result in pregnancy.) She managed to keep your interest and not in just a physical way. Before you realized it, you were in a relationship again. But it was nice since it allowed you a bit of escapism from your own prison like situation. (And certainly cheaper than going to Holgard whores) While her father has threatened you with physical violence on several occasions (As many others have as well), you and her have always found places to meet. She always listens to whatever tales of “adventure” you have to tell her. Sometimes you make it sound more exciting than it really is, but she always enjoys them and asks many questions since it’s like she’s able to experience some of the excitement vicariously. Lately though it’s starting to look like your stories don’t quite quell the restlessness that Lisa seems to have… “Holgard? Oh you don’t want to go there now. I think they’re about to have a city wide riot or revolution or some shit.” You say. “Well that certainly sounds more interesting than having to milk cows all day.” Lisa replies. “You’re also a lot less likely to get killed milking cows.” “Perhaps, but you still get to do interesting stuff all the time, what with you working for a wizard and all.” “I wouldn’t exactly say I’m working for him. I think I’ve already confided to you about my situation as far as that goes.” “Yes I know and that’s also a cause for me to worry about our future. It even causes me to have concerns about your feelings for me.” “Oh come on…you know how I feel about you.” “Do I? I sometimes get the impression that you probably wouldn’t come around if you weren’t tethered by the wizard’s spell. I imagine we probably wouldn’t have even met if it hadn’t been the case. Am I wrong?” “(Sigh) Well…yes IF Ral hadn’t magically enslaved me, we probably wouldn’t have met. But it happened and we DID meet AND I chose you to be with. I mean doesn’t that count for something?” Lisa doesn’t answer right away; she just takes your hand and looks into your eyes. “I know you probably do have feelings for me, but I also can’t shake the feeling that I’m just a nice distraction from your situation, just as you’re a nice distraction from mine. We’re both prisoners of a sort, but the difference is my cage is of my own accord.” Lisa says. “What do you mean?” you ask. “What I mean is I would like to leave this boring village, but the only thing that really holds me back is fear and the lack of any real skill to survive in the outside world, or at least the world you’ve described to me. And I know you can’t be making it all up despite you probably wanting me to believe all those impossible feats you’ve done.” Lisa gives you a small hug and kisses you on the cheek, which causes you to embrace her a bit tighter than usual. You feel like she’s saying goodbye to you right now, but that isn’t the case. “I’m obviously not going anywhere yet, but I’m just informing you that things need to change a bit at some point. I know we have fun together and I hope we continue to have fun together for many years to come, but don’t take me for granted.” Lisa goes back to looking at the sky probably still thinking about wanting to leave her boring farm life behind her while you’re thinking about how much of an idiot you’ve been for filling her head with tales of adventure. You couldn’t have just stuck with one of the dumb passive ones could you? Why the hell did you go for the independent thinker of the village? Well it’s done and to be honest it’s that trait that made her more attractive anyway. It isn’t like you can blame her for wanting to leave Dert. The place is duller than Teckleville ever was. In any case, you aren’t willing to risk losing Lisa even if she isn’t likely to leave in the near future. You have to at least make the effort to keep her around. Your reasons are probably selfish, but she’s also correct that you would miss her if she weren’t in your life. This would be a whole lot simpler if you weren’t under Ral’s spell. Maybe it’s time for that situation to change. Of course even after all these years, you still have no idea of how to do that and Ral doesn’t seem to be relenting anytime soon. Of course you do have another option and that’s going back to Isabella. Despite her invitation of coming back to see her at anytime, you never have for several reasons. Still, you have pondered it many times because you believe that if anyone knows how to break Ral’s hold over you, it would be her and she’d probably be willing to help given how much she doesn’t seem to like him. > You focus on Lisa You made one deal with a powerful being and it didn’t go well. No need to do it twice, especially with a vampire. At best you’d probably be a pawn in whatever plans she has. Your fate is currently sealed and you can’t do much to change it, but maybe you can at least help Lisa achieve some of her goals. “Lisa, how serious are you about leaving this place?” you ask. “What do you mean?” she responds. “I mean could you leave right now if you had to?” “…um…well not right now…I mean I’d have to gather up some things at least and I don’t have much money. Like none actually.” “That doesn’t matter. In fact forget about money right now, I’m asking could you leave soon, if you had to?” Lisa wasn’t actually expecting this line of questioning, and it’s obvious she feels pressured, but if she’s serious about her desires, you need to know. “I… I mean yeah I guess I could if I had to.” She says. “Good. I want you to go home and get everything you think you’re going to need, but don’t over pack. Meet me here tomorrow morning and we’ll set off for Holgard.” You say. “What really?” “Yes, really. You said you wanted to see it, so I’ll take you there. You’re not having second thoughts already are you?” “Well, I just…I dunno. I feel like this would be a one way trip for me. If I disappeared from Dert for as long as its going to take us to get to Holgard, I get the impression I might not be welcome back home anymore. Then where would I be?” “I thought as much, which is why I’m going to give you some of my money to get you started. Don’t worry, I got enough of it, I can always get more and it’s not really doing me much good anyway. However, I’m also going to teach you my own trade.” “Thievery? I dunno…I mean I want to leave Dert, but I’m not sure if I have it in me to do what you do.” “Sure you do. Look, just think about everything I said. If you don’t like the idea at all then you don’t have to meet me here in the morning. If we get to Holgard and decide you don’t want to do what I do, I’m sure we can find something else. My point is, I don’t know if I’m ever going to be free of Ral’s spell, but I can at least help you achieve your goals in my limited way because I really do love you.” Well nothing like going all in even if you aren’t entirely sure… Of course now that you’ve said this to Lisa she’s so touched by your crossing that final line of feelings, she immediately hugs and kisses you and probably also ready to go all in with travelling to Holgard even if she was still nervous about it. Of course now YOU’RE nervous about all this! You return to Ral’s gathering up most of your money stash. You didn’t really realize just how much you had managed to acquire. Even spending it on whores and carousing didn’t really put as much of a dent in it as you thought. Which is good since you’d prefer to put Lisa up some place that isn’t a complete shithole when you get to Holgard. Besides the place being a city of cutthroats and thieves, you’re more concerned about the rising tensions going on there. There is the very real danger of a revolution of sorts going on there, but that will have to be something to deal with when it happens. You half expect Ral to suddenly ask you to go perform some risky task, but he doesn’t. In fact Ral hasn’t asked you to do anything lately, he hasn’t even been on your ass about cleaning his home or fetching roots or flowers for whatever reason. He’s been locked in his lab for a couple weeks at least now, which is fine by you since that gives you a bit of time to get Lisa settled in Holgard. The next day you meet up with Lisa who is definitely ready to go. She seems much more confidant about this than she was yesterday. She’s a little worried about getting accosted on the way to Holgard, due to the stories she’s heard about bandits, and to be honest you are too given how much money you’re travelling with along with a pretty young girl, but you surprisingly never encounter a single soul. When you finally reach Holgard, you end up having to bribe a guard a hefty sum just so he doesn’t fuck with you both, so you pretty much get robbed anyway. It’s still not too bad and you have more than enough to set up Lisa at some place to stay. Lisa is overwhelmed by the size of Holgard and she looks like a clueless berk as she looks around at every little thing. Many times you have to keep a close eye on her, just to make sure she doesn’t wander too far and get herself kidnapped or something similar. Eventually you make it to a place called the Sterling Silver. It’s one of the better inns that isn’t a complete criminal haven and still some place that you’re currently able to afford. After getting a bit settled, Lisa’s still eager to explore the city, though you really have to sit her down and stress the danger of this place. “Yes, you’ve told me all this before in your past tales to me and on the journey here. I’m not stupid.” Lisa says. “I didn’t say you were, but whether you want to hear it or not, you’re out of your element and you need know how to survive here. I don’t mind telling you I’m going to be severely worried about you all the time now. (Sigh) Well let’s get started.” You spend the next two days attempting to teach Lisa the basics of thievery. She’s not exactly a natural at it, but fortunately there are so many thieves in the city, you’re never in serious trouble with the law as soon as you both manage to run immediately from the area. Though you’re more concerned with your activity calling attention to the Thieves’ Guild or worse, the Ebony Claw Syndicate. You’ve been fortunate enough to avoid their attention, but Lisa’s clumsy attempts might start doing that. And of course the bigger problem is you’re not exactly going to be around to hold Lisa’s hand all the time, since even if Ral isn’t sending you on some forsaken mission, you still have return there just so you aren’t suffering from the geas affects. Lisa keeps trying to reassure you that she’ll be fine, but you feel better leaving her your flintlock just so she isn’t completely defenseless. Lacking any more to do, you take your leave and can only hope she doesn’t get killed or worse on her first night alone in this place. You return to Ral’s in a few days and it’s the same thing, he’s still locked in his lab. It would be too much to hope that he’s dead, but you can still hear faint sounds on the other side of the lab door. You go to sleep and then as soon as you wake up, you immediately head back to Holgard again. When you arrive this time, you have to wait around for Lisa since she isn’t at her room. Eventually she shows up and you’re hugging her as soon as she walks in the door of the inn. She’s happy to see you too, but keeps telling you not to worry so much about her. This routine goes on for weeks, you arrive in Holgard, are relieved to see Lisa’s still alive, try to teach her the art of thievery and then head back to Ral’s. Occasionally it’s broken up by Ral leaving notes telling you to grab various ingrediants for him and just leaving them by the lab door. In the meantime, the situation in Holgard is getting worse. The Baron’s guards have been executing dissidents in the streets and there are rumors that the folks behind this dissident movement aren’t much better than the fat ass who runs this city, but then that’s hardly surprising. The Ebony Claws and the Thieves’ Guild have also been engaging in direct confrontation with each other. Strangely despite all this, Lisa isn’t exactly concerned. Another week passes and you come to understand why. “You’ve been just flat out mugging people?!” you say. “Mostly.” She says. “Wha…when?” “About a month ago when I realized I’m rubbish at the whole sneaking about thing. Look, I know it’s something you’re good at, but it’s just not me. I really tried several times, but I kept messing up and nearly getting myself killed in the process. In fact it was when one of the shopkeepers actually caught me and I was forced to pull out the flintlock to stop him from doing any harm to me. Since I had him at my mercy, I just robbed him at gunpoint while I was at it. Then I realized, I should have been doing that to begin with.” You have to say, while you knew Lisa was attracted to the bad, you didn’t expect her to go this route. No wonder she isn’t worried about the current state of the city. “…why didn’t you tell me?” “Well, because you seemed so happy trying to teach me about what you do. Besides, some of it I still use. Lock picking is always handy. You seem upset, are you disappointed I’m not doing what you do?” “I actually don’t care about that so much that I’m really concerned that your actions might start attracting attention and I don’t mean the guards. You could very well be robbing merchants or people under the protection of the ECS and if they find out, it’s not going to be good. I’d wager the only reason why you’re getting away with it is because you’ve been lucky with your targets or the ECS is so caught up in their own shit with the Guild that they’re in conflict with.” “Well, maybe I should join the ECS, then it won’t be an issue.” You have no words. Well you do, it’s just it takes you awhile to gather them. “Have you gone completely barmy?! Even I wouldn’t join the ECS! They’re a group of utterly ruthless killers and don’t tolerate fuck ups. I mean sure I’m not exactly in a position of casting moral judgment, but they’re just fucking cruel. Not to mention, I’m fairly certain they’re all caught up in Fel worship, making them religious fanatics on top of everything else. I’d join the Guild before them, and I wouldn’t join the Guild mainly because I’m fairly certain they’re not going to be around much longer.” You exclaim. “Well I guess I’m just going to have to be more careful. You need to relax, you’re all tense. You come to me and I’ll make it better.” At this point Lisa starts making overtures of affection. You’re not exactly in the mood due to your worry, but Lisa soon gets you in the mood with enough effort. It’s at least enough to put it out of your mind for awhile. When you leave Lisa this time, you take solace in the fact that she at least has learned how to survive in her own way and it didn’t involve whoring. However, when you return to Ral’s this time, you’ve got new concerns. Ral is actually waiting for you. “Finally back. Glad to see you adhere to the bare minimum of what is required of you.” Ral says. “What’s going on?” you ask. “What’s going on, is you’re not around nearly as much as you should be. I know you think because I’m locked away in my lab most of the time that that means you can just do whatever, but I remind you that you’re supposed to be upkeeping this place. Look at all this dust!” “Apologies, but you didn’t say anything about that on your notes to me.” “I shouldn’t NEED to tell you! And I also shouldn’t have to be leaving notes for you in the first place! It’s fucking inconvenient. If I wasn’t actually busy with something really important I’d just make your tether even shorter, but I can see that’s not really going to solve the issue. You’re obviously pre-occupied with something else with as much time as you’ve been spending away from here. Let me guess, a girl?” “Well, yeah.” “(Sigh) If I was a vindictive sort, I suppose I could do all sorts of things to cause you pain, but there’s really no good reason for that and I can see that our own relationship has hit a wall with this new development. So I’m going to offer you another deal. I’ll release the geas after you go on one last mission for me.” “…what?” “You heard correctly. One more mission and then you get your freedom. I trust this sounds good to you?” “Yeah! I mean there’s no catch is there? Like I’m free, but I have the head of a chicken and goat legs or something right?” “Ha ha! You sure have a funny imagination. But no, once you do this mission, you’ll be completely free to live your life and you’ll never have to deal with me ever again.” “Great! So what needs to be done?” “I need you to bring back the heart of a Wazia.” “Wait, don’t they live in the Cloudpeak Mountains?” “Yes, they also eat trolls and manticores.” “But I’m no warrior! You know that! That’s suicide!” “Oh I’m sending Tych with you, he can help.” “What’s Tych going to do, sparkle in its face?” “I dunno, you’ll have to work it out with him on various tactics to employ.” “The Cloudpeak Mountains are also practically on the other side of the continent! Are you going to teleport me there like last time?” “Oh yes, and I’m going to personally equip you for this assignment, so no need to worry about getting winter gear or whatever else you need for the cold. In fact, the cold won’t even be an issue at all.” “That better be one warm coat.” “Oh you won’t ever need a coat again, after what I’m going to do. Stand still.” Before you even get a “wha…” out Ral taps you in the head and you’re instantly paralyzed and fall to the floor. You don’t even feel pain, you don’t feel anything at all actually. “Now, I need to start on your transformation…where did I put my stiletto again…” You don’t know what Ral is doing to you. You don’t even know how much time passes. You aren’t even really aware of your surroundings. It’s like you’re in a trance and everything has gone blank in your mind. > You time passes... Year 23 “HHHHHHHHHH!” you gasp as you suddenly sit up from a table. Cold air emanates from your mouth though you don’t feel very cold. You don’t feel much of anything except a mild sense of panic and confusion. You briefly look at body which is completely naked and see that you are now a pale blue coloring. You look around the room and see a lot of lab equipment, books, and other alchemy related items. Ral stands by watching you. Tych is also hovering near him dressed in who looks to be very tiny winter clothing for him. “See, told you he’d survive.” Ral remarks and then makes a note on a piece of parchment. “Oh joy, I get to go with him now.” Tych says. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO ME?!” you shout. You’d probably get up and attack Ral, but apparently the geas is still in effect. Ral strokes his beard and frowns a bit before answering you. “Well I made you better for one thing. You don’t have to ever worry about the cold ever again.” “I can’t fucking feel anything! Everything is a numb sensation!” “Hmm, yes, I thought that might happen. A minor drawback I assure you. You are now practically cold personified. Your body now magically produces cold around you. Even I can feel it from here. Seriously, you could stand naked on top of the Cloudpeak Mountains now and never freeze to death. You’ll also find that you’re a little slower than you were, though you’re also probably a little stronger as well so it all evens out. Unexpected side effect. In any case, we should probably get you ready for your task. As ready as you are, I doubt you want to go naked.” You might not be able to do anything against Ral, but that doesn’t stop you from getting pissed and start yelling at him about your situation. When he mentions more than a year has passed, you even start to destroy his equipment until he stops you with some sort of hold spell. After a few more warnings about you continuing to getting an attitude with him, Ral finally gets on with explaining your task. He says he’s teleporting you to a plateau in the Cloudpeak Mountains. From there he says Tych will lead the way. Apparently in the year he was experimenting on you, he was also having Tych locate a wazia lair in that area. Other than your regular clothes, he enchants your short sword so it will be more effective in combat, and then hands you one of those rare repeating crossbows and a quiver of bolts. “I hope you know how to use one of these.” Ral remarks. “I’m more familiar with flintlocks, but I imagine this is probably easier seeing as this is one of the state of the art crossbows. These repeating ones are rare and expensive. Didn’t know you kept up on technological advances though.” You say. “Why wouldn’t I? Just because I don’t have any use for it, doesn’t mean I don’t see the utility of it for the unwashed masses. I figure between that and your enchanted weapon, you should be more than prepared. Your pack is over there. Has some food and climbing gear in it. Should be more than enough to help you.” You go over and get your pack; Tych is hovering by it, looking just as miserable as you feel right now. “The pair of you ready, I trust?” Ral asks. “I guess.” You say. “Tych is magically tied to me, so there is no need for fairy circles or any other places of power this time. You just need to very close to him for the transportation to work on you, along with him making the appropriate signal so I can pull him back here, I trust you remember was that was Tych?” “Yes, Ral.” Tych responds in a defeated manner and flies onto your shoulder. “Good, I expect you’ll be successful like last time and just think, you’ll be a free man afterwards, so you have plenty of motivation.” Without another word, Ral waves his hands a bit and your eyes are met with a bright light, followed by more bright light, though this is of the natural kind. You look and see that your surroundings are that of a flat icy, snowy landscape with mountains and hills nearby and the sun shining overhead. There isn’t a soul around though save for Tych who instantly gets off of you. “Fuck, you’re not much warmer than this horrible landscape. So much for using you for extra warmth.” Tych says. “I can’t feel much of anything. I mean I can sense the wind blowing, but there’s just a dull cool feeling. It’s not unpleasant, but it isn’t pleasant either.” You respond. “Well, Ral did experiment on you. I have to say, I’ll be glad when this mission is over with, because I’ve had enough of freezing my fucking wings off here. Scouting around for large hostile monsters in the snow and cold isn’t my idea of a good time. I’d rather be in the fucking jar.” “I don’t understand why he needs us to do this anyway. I mean he’s a fucking powerful wizard, couldn’t he have done this himself a lot easier?” “Of course he could have, but he’s a fucking sadist. Why else would he make you into some slave boy and then turn you into a freak and keep me in a damn jar, play teleportation snap back with me for the past year and also have me scout around this icy wasteland?” “How long has that been going on?” “Oh a little after he put you in that trance and started cutting into you and doing who knows what else. Ral’s experiments on you might have been done sooner if he hadn’t gotten distracted with other things. He keeps trying to make greater strides in teleportation spells and I think he’s planning on making a portal next. Of course he needs to test shit so he uses me as a fucking canary and then snaps me back home when he thinks enough time has passed. Makes me physically ill every time he does it. Those first few months I puked on every trip.” Tych fixes his little fur hat before continuing. “And in these last few months? I’ve teleported back and forth to this fucking place looking for a wazia like I’m some great monster hunter! I don’t want to fucking do this! My instinct is to fly AWAY from really big ravenous monsters, not seek them out!” “Trust me, I don’t want to be here either.” “At least you’re free after all this! I’m not. Even if the wazia kills you, you’ll still be doing better than me, but I don’t think that will be the case, check you pack. You’ll find something better than what Ral supplied you with.” You take off you pack and at the top you find a clear bottle of something dark green. It feels slightly warm even to you. “What the hell is this? Looks like some sort of poison.” You say. “And you would be correct. It’s greenfire from the plant of the same name. They’re normally only found in the Sotakian swamp and even then they’re rare. In any case, Ral had it lying around his lab and while you two were talking I took the opportunity to lug it into your pack. Hey, I’m stronger than I look, especially with all the hardship I’ve had to endure.” Tych explains. “So…what’s it do exactly?” “It’s not called greenfire for nothing. It gets in your blood and makes you feel like your blood and innards are on fire. The effects are pretty quick though you’re in excruciating pain before you die. “Okay, so I should just dip my bolts into this to bring down the beast a lot easier.” “Hah! Are you kidding? Even with this poison, I doubt very seriously that you’ll be able to kill it before it kills you. I take it you’ve never even seen a wazia.” “Nope, just know them by stories.” “Well I didn’t know anything about them at all, but after seeing one, I can tell you that the stories don’t do them justice.” “Then what the hell are you suggesting then?” “Nothing, I’m just telling you that your odds aren’t good.” You’ve practically been asleep an entire year and this is the situation you’ve awoken to. You’ve been magically altered and thrust into a bad situation and now you have to put up with an obnoxious sprite on top of everything else. “Tych, just take me to the fucking lair.” You say. “Alright, alright, no need to snap at me, plivik.” Tych responds. “I know what that means, you little shit.” “Oh yeah, you do…well let’s just get on with it then like you said.” You begin to follow Tych. Every now and then you reflexively wrap your cloak around yourself in order to stay warm, but then you also remember you don’t really have that problem anymore. It wouldn’t help anyway; you still feel a numb coolness no matter what you do since that sensation is coming from within your body as opposed to the external reasons. You suppose this condition is beneficial out here in a place like this, but you can’t imagine going through the rest of your life like this. After all this is over, you’re going to have to seek out a way to reverse or cure it, if it’s even possible. You wonder if that’s what Ral has planned for you. He “frees” you, but in exchange for changing you back to normal, you have to undergo some sort of servitude again. You really wish you just let the mob back in Teckleville kill you at this point, with any luck maybe the wazia will. You travel in the freezing mountainous terrain for two days. (At some point during all this you take the opportunity to poison your bolts) Even with your immunity to the cold, it’s still a treacherous journey given that you’re no mountain climber. Tych has lead you through to the path of least resistance to the lair and fortunately it isn’t actually very high up, in fact it’s actually at a lower altitude than where you originally teleported in. “Let me guess, it’s in this large sloping dark cave.” You say to Tych. “Got it right in one. I saw it entering here a few times and judging by the large pile of bones out here, I’d say it’s definitely a permanent home for it. Well I’ll wait out here. If you aren’t out within a day, I can safely assume you’ve met your demise.” Tych says. “Wait, how the hell am I going to see in there? Despite my magical alteration, I don’t have dark vision unfortunately. I need you to come with me and sparkle a bit so I have some light.” “What? That wasn’t part of the plan. I go in and start sparkling and I’m going to be a target since it’ll see me first!” “Yeah, but you’re also a small target that can fly all over the place. It’s not like it’s going to go after you if it can get a target on the ground that’s shooting bolts at it a lot easier.” Tych REALLY isn’t keen on this idea, but given that he wants to be out of this situation as much as you do, he relents. “Alright, fine. But only because you’re probably right about the wazia going after you and the fact that despite everything, you’ve dealt pretty straight with me. I still remember when you didn’t rat me out to Ral about the last time we worked together…wait…you hear that?” Tych suddenly says mid sentence. “Shit, is it the wazia?” you ask, not hearing the sounds other than the wind, but readying your crossbow. “No, if it was that, we’d already be fucked. It’s a small whine. You don’t hear it? It’s coming from over there.” Tych points over to a group of rocks and large bones. (and then he flies behind you). You now hear the sounds too, and with your crossbow ready and slowly move towards where they’re coming from. Whatever is making the noise can’t be that big since rock and bone pile isn’t very large either, when you finally walk around it, you see what is making the noise. A small feline creature with an odd-looking face making pitiful whimpers. It looks up at you and backs up and raising its tail, which looks like it has small spikes on it. It attempts to growl a bit, but it’s obvious the beast is frightened. As it stands right now, the pair of you are both ready to shoot. “Shit, that’s a manticore.” Tych says and takes cover behind you again. “What? That? I thought they were much bigger.” You say. “It’s a cub, plivik. Still, I wouldn’t want to get shot by one of those spikes.” “Well that must mean its mother is nearby. Are you sure you got the right lair?” “Yes, I’m sure! Its mother probably got eaten by the wazia and somehow it managed to escape. Hey, you know we could use this.” “What do you mean?” “Wazias pretty much eat anything thrown at them. If you poisoned this cub, you could toss it at the wazia who would inevitably consume it and the poison would work even better. At the very least it would cause the creature so much pain it would slow it down giving you a chance to shoot it a lot more with bolts.” You look at the manticore, which is still looking pretty pitiful, but still also in a fighting position. You aren’t sure if you’ll be quick enough to shoot him before he shoots you. > You shoot the manticore Tych’s plan has merit and would make your task easier. Also you’d probably be putting this beast out of its misery given that its mother died and will likely get eaten by the wazia anyway. Might as well put it to good use. You pull the trigger of your crossbow and hit the manticore, but unfortunately it’s not a fatal shot and you only hit it in between its front limb and chest. It makes an odd combination of a roaring whine and flings its barbs at you. You’re not quick enough to dodge completely and get hit in the leg. While your condition makes you number to pain, it doesn’t make it disappear completely. You curse, fall down and from your prone position quickly fire the remainder of you bolt clip at the manticore blindly. You get lucky and some of those actually hit the creature causing it to make a final howl before dying. As you’re attempting pull manticore barbs out of your leg, Tych appears again now that all the danger is over with. “Thought you were usually quicker than that.” Tych sniffs. “Gimme a fucking break, I’ve been incapacitated for a year, not to mention this new condition I have is fucking up my reflexes. Shit…” you say looking at the new holes in your leg. “Well at least you got your bait now.” “Yeah, I guess so. Let’s get on with this” You limp over to the dead manticore cub and reclaim your bolts before picking up its carcass. You then enter the cave with Tych barely following ahead of you. He’s flying as high as he can which provides just enough light for you to not break your neck walking around the cave. As you were travelling here earlier, Tych was telling you a bit about wazias. He mentioned that they resembled very large moles with a huge gaping maw where the face would be. The mole comparison doesn’t sound very threatening, but he also said that it has a very tough hide and layers of fat, which is why Tych doesn’t think your bolts, would be as effective as they might otherwise be. Hopefully this poisoned manticore body will help. You suppose you’ll find out. You start to hear loud sounds, you can’t see anything yet, but you have to be getting closer. The loud sounds soon become rumbles and then Tych suddenly shouts to you. “Shit, it’s digging under you! Get the hell out of there!” Tych begins flying back towards the exit and you do likewise as the rumbling is nearly right under you. In your haste, you drop the manticore body, hoping that maybe the creature will pop up to eat it. It would be hard enough to keep up with Tych under normal circumstances, but thanks you’re your leg wounds, you’re attempting the impossible. You end up stumbling and tripping in the decreasing light that he’s giving off as he flits away. Your verbal commands of getting Tych to stop have no effect and soon, he’s gotten so far ahead of you, you’re left in the dark causing you to completely fall over as you continue to trip over shit. You don’t have time to get back up when the rumbling is now coming from right underneath you. You never even see the beast, you just feel yourself sinking into the ground and then several sharp teeth, crushing, piercing and cutting your body whole. The only consolation is it happened so quick that you didn’t even feel it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 23 “HHHHHHHHHH!” you gasp as you suddenly sit up from a table. Cold air emanates from your mouth though you don’t feel very cold. You don’t feel much of anything except a mild sense of panic and confusion. You briefly look at body which is completely naked and see that you are now a pale blue coloring. You look around the room and see a lot of lab equipment, books, and other alchemy related items. Ral stands by watching you. Tych is also hovering near him dressed in who looks to be very tiny winter clothing for him. “See, told you he’d survive.” Ral remarks and then makes a note on a piece of parchment. “Oh joy, I get to go with him now.” Tych says. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO ME?!” you shout. You’d probably get up and attack Ral, but apparently the geas is still in effect. Ral strokes his beard and frowns a bit before answering you. “Well I made you better for one thing. You don’t have to ever worry about the cold ever again.” “I can’t fucking feel anything! Everything is a numb sensation!” “Hmm, yes, I thought that might happen. A minor drawback I assure you. You are now practically cold personified. Your body now magically produces cold around you. Even I can feel it from here. Seriously, you could stand naked on top of the Cloudpeak Mountains now and never freeze to death. You’ll also find that you’re a little slower than you were, though you’re also probably a little stronger as well so it all evens out. Unexpected side effect. In any case, we should probably get you ready for your task. As ready as you are, I doubt you want to go naked.” You might not be able to do anything against Ral, but that doesn’t stop you from getting pissed and start yelling at him about your situation. When he mentions more than a year has passed, you even start to destroy his equipment until he stops you with some sort of hold spell. After a few more warnings about you continuing to getting an attitude with him, Ral finally gets on with explaining your task. He says he’s teleporting you to a plateau in the Cloudpeak Mountains. From there he says Tych will lead the way. Apparently in the year he was experimenting on you, he was also having Tych locate a wazia lair in that area. Other than your regular clothes, he enchants your short sword so it will be more effective in combat, and then hands you one of those rare repeating crossbows and a quiver of bolts. “I hope you know how to use one of these.” Ral remarks. “I’m more familiar with flintlocks, but I imagine this is probably easier seeing as this is one of the state of the art crossbows. These repeating ones are rare and expensive. Didn’t know you kept up on technological advances though.” You say. “Why wouldn’t I? Just because I don’t have any use for it, doesn’t mean I don’t see the utility of it for the unwashed masses. I figure between that and your enchanted weapon, you should be more than prepared. Your pack is over there. Has some food and climbing gear in it. Should be more than enough to help you.” You go over and get your pack; Tych is hovering by it, looking just as miserable as you feel right now. “The pair of you ready, I trust?” Ral asks. “I guess.” You say. “Tych is magically tied to me, so there is no need for fairy circles or any other places of power this time. You just need to very close to him for the transportation to work on you, along with him making the appropriate signal so I can pull him back here, I trust you remember was that was Tych?” “Yes, Ral.” Tych responds in a defeated manner and flies onto your shoulder. “Good, I expect you’ll be successful like last time and just think, you’ll be a free man afterwards, so you have plenty of motivation.” Without another word, Ral waves his hands a bit and your eyes are met with a bright light, followed by more bright light, though this is of the natural kind. You look and see that your surroundings are that of a flat icy, snowy landscape with mountains and hills nearby and the sun shining overhead. There isn’t a soul around though save for Tych who instantly gets off of you. “Fuck, you’re not much warmer than this horrible landscape. So much for using you for extra warmth.” Tych says. “I can’t feel much of anything. I mean I can sense the wind blowing, but there’s just a dull cool feeling. It’s not unpleasant, but it isn’t pleasant either.” You respond. “Well, Ral did experiment on you. I have to say, I’ll be glad when this mission is over with, because I’ve had enough of freezing my fucking wings off here. Scouting around for large hostile monsters in the snow and cold isn’t my idea of a good time. I’d rather be in the fucking jar.” “I don’t understand why he needs us to do this anyway. I mean he’s a fucking powerful wizard, couldn’t he have done this himself a lot easier?” “Of course he could have, but he’s a fucking sadist. Why else would he make you into some slave boy and then turn you into a freak and keep me in a damn jar, play teleportation snap back with me for the past year and also have me scout around this icy wasteland?” “How long has that been going on?” “Oh a little after he put you in that trance and started cutting into you and doing who knows what else. Ral’s experiments on you might have been done sooner if he hadn’t gotten distracted with other things. He keeps trying to make greater strides in teleportation spells and I think he’s planning on making a portal next. Of course he needs to test shit so he uses me as a fucking canary and then snaps me back home when he thinks enough time has passed. Makes me physically ill every time he does it. Those first few months I puked on every trip.” Tych fixes his little fur hat before continuing. “And in these last few months? I’ve teleported back and forth to this fucking place looking for a wazia like I’m some great monster hunter! I don’t want to fucking do this! My instinct is to fly AWAY from really big ravenous monsters, not seek them out!” “Trust me, I don’t want to be here either.” “At least you’re free after all this! I’m not. Even if the wazia kills you, you’ll still be doing better than me, but I don’t think that will be the case, check you pack. You’ll find something better than what Ral supplied you with.” You take off you pack and at the top you find a clear bottle of something dark green. It feels slightly warm even to you. “What the hell is this? Looks like some sort of poison.” You say. “And you would be correct. It’s greenfire from the plant of the same name. They’re normally only found in the Sotakian swamp and even then they’re rare. In any case, Ral had it lying around his lab and while you two were talking I took the opportunity to lug it into your pack. Hey, I’m stronger than I look, especially with all the hardship I’ve had to endure.” Tych explains. “So…what’s it do exactly?” “It’s not called greenfire for nothing. It gets in your blood and makes you feel like your blood and innards are on fire. The effects are pretty quick though you’re in excruciating pain before you die. “Okay, so I should just dip my bolts into this to bring down the beast a lot easier.” “Hah! Are you kidding? Even with this poison, I doubt very seriously that you’ll be able to kill it before it kills you. I take it you’ve never even seen a wazia.” “Nope, just know them by stories.” “Well I didn’t know anything about them at all, but after seeing one, I can tell you that the stories don’t do them justice.” “Then what the hell are you suggesting then?” “Nothing, I’m just telling you that your odds aren’t good.” You’ve practically been asleep an entire year and this is the situation you’ve awoken to. You’ve been magically altered and thrust into a bad situation and now you have to put up with an obnoxious sprite on top of everything else. “Tych, just take me to the fucking lair.” You say. “Alright, alright, no need to snap at me, plivik.” Tych responds. “I know what that means, you little shit.” “Oh yeah, you do…well let’s just get on with it then like you said.” You begin to follow Tych. Every now and then you reflexively wrap your cloak around yourself in order to stay warm, but then you also remember you don’t really have that problem anymore. It wouldn’t help anyway; you still feel a numb coolness no matter what you do since that sensation is coming from within your body as opposed to the external reasons. You suppose this condition is beneficial out here in a place like this, but you can’t imagine going through the rest of your life like this. After all this is over, you’re going to have to seek out a way to reverse or cure it, if it’s even possible. You wonder if that’s what Ral has planned for you. He “frees” you, but in exchange for changing you back to normal, you have to undergo some sort of servitude again. You really wish you just let the mob back in Teckleville kill you at this point, with any luck maybe the wazia will. You travel in the freezing mountainous terrain for two days. (At some point during all this you take the opportunity to poison your bolts) Even with your immunity to the cold, it’s still a treacherous journey given that you’re no mountain climber. Tych has lead you through to the path of least resistance to the lair and fortunately it isn’t actually very high up, in fact it’s actually at a lower altitude than where you originally teleported in. “Let me guess, it’s in this large sloping dark cave.” You say to Tych. “Got it right in one. I saw it entering here a few times and judging by the large pile of bones out here, I’d say it’s definitely a permanent home for it. Well I’ll wait out here. If you aren’t out within a day, I can safely assume you’ve met your demise.” Tych says. “Wait, how the hell am I going to see in there? Despite my magical alteration, I don’t have dark vision unfortunately. I need you to come with me and sparkle a bit so I have some light.” “What? That wasn’t part of the plan. I go in and start sparkling and I’m going to be a target since it’ll see me first!” “Yeah, but you’re also a small target that can fly all over the place. It’s not like it’s going to go after you if it can get a target on the ground that’s shooting bolts at it a lot easier.” Tych REALLY isn’t keen on this idea, but given that he wants to be out of this situation as much as you do, he relents. “Alright, fine. But only because you’re probably right about the wazia going after you and the fact that despite everything, you’ve dealt pretty straight with me. I still remember when you didn’t rat me out to Ral about the last time we worked together…wait…you hear that?” Tych suddenly says mid sentence. “Shit, is it the wazia?” you ask, not hearing the sounds other than the wind, but readying your crossbow. “No, if it was that, we’d already be fucked. It’s a small whine. You don’t hear it? It’s coming from over there.” Tych points over to a group of rocks and large bones. (and then he flies behind you). You now hear the sounds too, and with your crossbow ready and slowly move towards where they’re coming from. Whatever is making the noise can’t be that big since rock and bone pile isn’t very large either, when you finally walk around it, you see what is making the noise. A small feline creature with an odd-looking face making pitiful whimpers. It looks up at you and backs up and raising its tail, which looks like it has small spikes on it. It attempts to growl a bit, but it’s obvious the beast is frightened. As it stands right now, the pair of you are both ready to shoot. “Shit, that’s a manticore.” Tych says and takes cover behind you again. “What? That? I thought they were much bigger.” You say. “It’s a cub, plivik. Still, I wouldn’t want to get shot by one of those spikes.” “Well that must mean its mother is nearby. Are you sure you got the right lair?” “Yes, I’m sure! Its mother probably got eaten by the wazia and somehow it managed to escape. Hey, you know we could use this.” “What do you mean?” “Wazias pretty much eat anything thrown at them. If you poisoned this cub, you could toss it at the wazia who would inevitably consume it and the poison would work even better. At the very least it would cause the creature so much pain it would slow it down giving you a chance to shoot it a lot more with bolts.” You look at the manticore, which is still looking pretty pitiful, but still also in a fighting position. You aren’t sure if you’ll be quick enough to shoot him before he shoots you. > Back off slowly Maybe it’s because you’re in a shitty situation yourself that you’re feeling a bit sorry for the pitiful creature that presumably just lost its mother and now has to fend for itself. “Fuck it.” You say, and slowly start backing away, though the beast never lets its own guard down. “What the hell are you doing. Shoot the little bastard!” Tych remarks. “I don’t feel like it alright? Besides, I’ll probably need to save all the bolts I can for the wazia.” You get out of the line of sight of the manticore, but Tych won’t let this go. “Are you actually feeling sympathy for the creature? This thing would eat you if it was big enough! In fact, given that its probably hungry without its mother around now, I’m surprised it isn’t at least attempting to anyway! Think of it this way, it can’t survive very long on its own, you’d be performing an act of mercy if you killed it and at least its death would help us.” At this point you take off your pack and look for some of your remaining rations. Dried meat, it’s as good as anything. “Wait, are you actually going to feed it now? Have you gone completely barmy?” “Probably.” You say. You go back to the manticore which once again has adopted a defensive stance, but you toss the meat in front of it which it cautiously moves close to, sniffs and then starts to eat, all the while still eyeing you suspiciously. You leave the beast to feed. “You know, you could have at least poisoned the food if you didn’t have the balls to just shoot it.” Tych remarks. “Well, I guess I’m just going to have to get my balls back by killing this wazia, now stop bitching at me and let’s get this done.” You snap. You enter the cave with Tych barely following ahead of you. He’s flying as high as he can which provides just enough light for you to not break your neck walking around the cave. As you were travelling here earlier, Tych was telling you a bit about wazias. He mentioned that they resembled very large moles with a huge gaping maw where the face would be. The mole comparison doesn’t sound very threatening, but he also said that it has a very tough hide and layers of fat, which is why Tych doesn’t think your bolts, would be as effective as they might otherwise be. You suppose you’ll find out. You start to hear loud sounds, you can’t see anything yet, but you have to be getting closer. The loud sounds soon become rumbles and then Tych suddenly shouts to you. “Shit, it’s digging under you! Get the hell out of there!” Tych begins flying back towards the exit and you do likewise as the rumbling is nearly right under you. While its hard to keep up with Tych, you manage to do so. By the time you see the light of the exit, the rumbling is nearly coming from right underneath you. You instinctively jump forward just in time for the wazia finally come up and try to eat you. You get up as quickly as you can and that’s when you finally see the creature. And it does indeed resemble a giant mole. A giant mole with nothing but a giant mouth with rows of teeth for a face. It also has pretty large claws as well, but you’re too busy trying get out of its immediate grasp as opposed to admiring them. You make it outside with the wazia following close behind. When you’re out in the open, you take advantage of the light and space and begin firing your crossbow at the thing which has mixed results. Your aim isn’t exactly true due to nerves and generally trying to staying away from the wazia, but it hardly matters when it’s as big as it is. Most of your shots hit, but much like Tych warned, its tough hide seems to be outright deflecting a lot of them. And for the bolts that are actually sinking in, you certainly hope the poison starts working soon, because so far it hasn’t had any notable affect. The only thing that’s in your favor is that the beast isn’t exactly the fastest when not underground, but it tries to keep you off balance by smashing its claws on the ground and causing minor quakes. Large clumps of snow begin to fall from above and given your location, you’re wondering if an avalanche won’t just bury you at this rate. (Of course maybe that’s its intent, it can just easily dig itself out and eat your corpse later) You see Tych keeping his distance, flying about watching everything. “Tych, distract it damn it! I need to reload this thing!” you shout while running and fumbling with the cumbersome crossbow magazine. To his credit, Tych actually listens somewhat to you and shouts at it (in his high pitched squeaky voice) and even flies near it very briefly, but his presence is mostly ignored. Tych doesn’t try too much harder than that, but you do get another helper. The manitcore cub that you fed earlier and completely forgot about starts flinging its own spikes at the wazia. They don’t seem to do anything to it, but between it and Tych, it’s enough to refocus its attention briefly giving you enough time to reload your crossbow properly. You fire a few times at the wazia with mixed results again, the manticore cub runs fast enough that the wazia doesn’t bother to follow it and quickly turns its attention back to you. It charges at you, but now you’re starting to notice the beast is getting even slower and now begins making loud wailing noises and they aren’t just due to anger. The wazia is finally feeling the affects of the poison and begins flailing about. It begins smashing its entire body into the ground and now even larger chunks of ice and snow begin to fall from above. Along with it trying to cause an avalanche, it begins trying to dig underground again since it isn’t sure what is exactly causing it such great pain, and is trying to escape. You can’t allow that to happen though, because if it does, even if it dies, it’s going to be so deep underground that digging its carcass out is going to be a nightmare. Throwing a bit of caution to the wind, you get closer to wazia and fire upon it. Your fortunate enough that this stops it from digging long enough to try to swipe at you with its claws. It clumsily tries to do this several times. At this point you’ve run out of bolts and drawn your sword though realistically you wouldn’t be able to get close enough to it that it couldn’t still kill you. You’re just trying to keep the beast from escaping and hoping the mountains don’t come crashing down on your head. Eventually as its motions towards you stop altogether and it opens its maw completely one last time to let out a woeful howl and then collapses. It twitches a few more times and finally stops moving completely. You just look at the wazia for a moment before slowly moving closer to it. Just as you get to its body, Tych sneaks up on you. “Is it dead?” he asks, buzzing in your ear. “Damn it Tych, you fucking startled me!” you snap. “Apologies, but I figured you’d be more aware of your surroundings.” “I guess its dead. Shit, I was wondering if that poison was ever going to kick in.” “Yep, looks like I saved your ass on this one.” “Hm, I guess you did your part.” “Damn straight I did, which is why I think YOU should help me now!” “How the hell am I going to help you?” “By killing Ral obviously.” “Nice idea, but I’m still bound by a geas remember?” “Well after he takes it off of you, just chop his head off.” “Yeah, like he isn’t going to take precautions. I’m fairly certain that if he does stick with his promise, I’m not going to be able to just chop his head off as you say. In fact I imagine he’s set this up so I stay bound to him so he can reverse this condition I have.” “Wait, you aren’t actually going to DO that if freedom is an option are you?” “What choice do I have? It’s not like I want to go through the rest of my life like this.” “Shit, I’d go through life with my wings fucking clipped if it meant not spending most of my life in a jar and being at that plivik’s whims!” You suppose Tych has a point and it is one you’re more inclined to go with since it might be possible to get your condition reversed elsewhere. All this might not mean anything however, if Ral has no intention on releasing you from the geas anyway. In the meantime you have a heart to carve out of the dead beast in front of you. About midway through Tych starts calling to you again. “Hey! Watch out, the manticore is back!” he exclaims and hides on the other side of the dead wazia. You turn from your bloody work and look. The manticore cub is indeed back and watching you, but its not in a defensive stance anymore, it seems to be more curious than anything else. “I’m not worrying about it since it probably isn’t going to do anything, but if it makes you feel better…” Tych probably thought you were going to follow up that statement with you trying to kill it, but you instead you just reach into your pack and give it another piece of dried meat, which it happily eats and no longer is interested in anything else. “There you go Spikey.” You say coming up with an on the spot name for him. “You just gave away the last of the food!” Tych exclaims. “What does it matter? As soon as I dig this heart out, and you perch on my shoulder, Ral will teleport us back anyway right?” “I guess, I just don’t understand why you’re indulging that creature.” “Good thing I did, since it distracted the wazia better than you did.” “Hey I did my best considering my size, you dick!” You go back to your unpleasant work. Not so much because of the gore and blood, but the smell is awful even with your dulled senses. Eventually you cut the large organ out and carry the thing out of the wazia’s body. You then sit down to take a breather. “Shit, I think that was almost as much work as killing this thing.” You say. “Did you get it?” Tych asks. “Yeah, why are you so far away? I figured you’d be anxious to get out of this cold at least even if you don’t like the jar.” “I would, but that thing is nearby!” Tych remarks and points to the manticore that is now coming up to you. “Tych, you’re worrying over nothing. He’d fling spikes at me before you given how close he is. Just get over here and get us home.” “Fine. Did you think anymore on killing Ral yet?” “Yeah I’ve thought about it, and I guess you’ll know soon enough.” Tych isn’t enthused by your response or the manticore being nearby, but he flies to you anyway. He sits on your shoulder, makes a few weird hand gestures and before you know it, a flash of blinding light hits you and you’re in the lab again. You also feel something bump your leg. You look down and see that the manticore cub has teleported with you and is currently nuzzling against your leg. “Shit!” Tych remarks and flies away to hide again. Meanwhile Ral walks in from one of his other rooms in the lab wondering what all the noise is about. “So you’re back and successful as I knew you would be. Hello, what’s this?” Ral asks. Spikey growls a bit when he sees Ral. “Spikey no!” you say and do your best to try to calm him which involves petting his head and neck. This seems to work somewhat since he relaxes, but still eyes Ral warily. “Hmm, I see you brought back more than just the heart. You didn’t need to go beyond what was required, but I appreciate the enthusiasm. The manticore parts will come in handy for spell components.” Ral says. “What? No, it helped take down the wazia and I guess it got caught up in the teleportation process.” “So?” “So, I dunno seems sort of fucked up to just hand him over to you for parts after he helped me.” “What are you going to do with him, keep him as a pet?” “Well I suppose I could…” “A pet manticore? What do you think you are a frost giant? That’s silly, you aren’t going to have the means to tame such a beast when he starts to grow! You sure you don’t want to hand that beast over? I could give you something extra.” “Can you reverse this fucking condition you imposed on me?” you ask. “I imagine could, but that would require that you stick around a bit longer. I mean that can be arranged...” You’re not getting trapped. You can’t get trapped again. “No, I’ll figure out another way.” You say. “Very well. Put that heart on the table and... wait a minute where did Tych go? I saw him fly off to hide, not sure why he bothers to do that, since he knows I can just teleport him back in the jar at anytime.” Ral says as you lift up the oversized organ and slam it on the nearby table. “Can we get on with this?” you ask getting impatient. “In a moment and don’t presume to give orders, I still haven’t freed you yet and you’d be well to remember that. Now step back, you’re very cold you know.” Ral says. “Of course I’m fucking cold, you did this to me!” “And I offered to reverse the process, but you declined.” “Damn straight I declined, I’m not going to fall for your tricks again. The first time you enslaved me, the second time you made me into a freak!” “If you like, that can remain your reality.” Ral warns. Ral raises his hands as if to cast a spell and that’s when you see Tych flying over his head struggling with a small-uncorked glass tube that’s as big as him. “Hey glakface, try casting magic now!” Tych shouts and then pours a clear fluid on Ral, who looks up just in time for it splatter on his face, and he even gets some in his mouth. “Gargh! (cough) (hack) blagh!” Ral gags and begins hacking up and rubbing his eyes. “He can’t cast magic! Don’t just stand there plivik, kill the bastard!” Tych squeaks. > You take advantage of the situation Given your recent exchange with Ral and your own suspicious nature, you question if Ral intends on releasing you. Perhaps getting rid of Ral IS the way to go and this would be the best time to do it. You’re still under the effects of the geas, and any violent action towards Ral by you would be met with immediate pain, however with his temporary inability to cast spells you wonder if you couldn’t dispose of him quick enough that you’d survive it. Not to mention you do have a pet manticore now. “Spikey attack! ARGH!” you shout and feel a sharp pain to your crotch, which causes you to nearly double over. The only reason why you aren’t completely laid out is your new condition has dulled some of your pain reception to a small degree. (Now is one of those times it came in handy) Spikey isn’t completely sure what you meant, but given that you’re excitedly pointing at Ral who is also making loud noises and flailing about due to the shit that Tych poured on him, Spikey isn’t feeling comfortable towards him anyway. Spikey flings several small quills into Ral’s body. The old wizard howls in pain. Spikey may be just a manticore cub, but it still hurts. Due to the geas, a large part of you wants to stop Spikey from attacking and it’s taking everything for you not to do that. You feel the pain spread over your body and it’s getting worse. You finally collapse to the floor. Spikey runs forward and begins biting Ral, he even succeeds in ripping off part of his hand. Ral is begging for mercy at this point, but he’s getting nothing, but Tych’s taunts. You weakly pull out a dagger, but you can barely hold it in your hand as you attempt to crawl over to Ral. The pain you’re experiencing is nearly unbearable. Meanwhile Ral is experiencing his own form of pain, but despite being unable to cast magic and being a frail old man, he somehow manages to get Spikey off of him, who yelps when thrown into a nearby table. “Come here, you little bastard!” he snarls and with a blink, Tych is suddenly within the one good hand of Ral. It would appear his powers are starting to come back. “I’m going to crush you into…ARGH SHIT!” Ral shouts as you plunge your dagger into his ankle. The old man partially falls on top of you, but that doesn’t compare to the wave of agony you experience after stabbing Ral. Your condition is no longer numbing anything, not even a little bit. You feel like you’re suffering a heart attack, castration and a mace smashing your brains in, all the while being burned alive. Unsurprisingly your body goes into complete shock, shuts down and you go unconscious. Blackness follows. Time passes and eventually you wake up to a couple sensations. One being a rough tongue licking your face and another being a faint sweet taste on your lips and in your mouth. “Hey! Did it work? You alive?” Tych remarks. “Guh, buh, what work?” you sputter and move a bit causing Spikey to stop licking your face. “The healing potion I tried to pour into your mouth. I guess it did, you’re alive. Wasn’t sure it worked since you looked pretty dead.” “I felt really dead. Is Ral dead?” “Oh that plivik? Yeah. Your pet took care of that soon after you stabbed him. Ripped out his throat. I don’t think that spell is on you anymore.” You look at your wrist and it’s true, you no longer see the mark there anymore. “So that’s it. I’m free. Finally free.” You say. “Yeah, thanks to me.” Tych sniffs. “Ral was planning on releasing me anyway.” “You don’t believe that. If you did, you wouldn’t have nearly killed yourself, trying to kill him.” “Well I suppose I did have my doubts and followed your lead. What was that shit you poured on him anyway?” “Oh, liquefied gazer eye. Not sure what Ral was planning with it, but then he was always experimenting with shit.” “Not familiar with gazers.” “Lucky you, they’re even worse than wazias. Anyway, you’re not the only one who is free, so I guess this is where we part ways.” As strange as it seems you’re a little taken back by how quick Tych is to part company, but then it wasn’t like you two were great friends or anyway. “Oh. Okay. Yeah sure, I suppose you’ll be wanting to go home to your wife.” You say. “…what the hell, I’ll let you on a little secret, I’m not married. I just said I was hoping it would gain me sympathy when we first met.” Tych admits. “Why am I not surprised?” “But you’re right, I am still going home. I need to straighten out some things there. What were you planning on doing?” “Dunno really. I still got this condition. First thing I think I need to do is try to figure out how to reverse it. Guess I’ll start by heading to Holgard.” “Well sounds like you’ve got the adventure ahead of you. Can’t say it was a pleasure being forced to work with you, but I suppose it could have been worse. And we both got revenge on Ral, so it worked out I guess. See you around blivik.” “What’s that mean? Dickhead or something?” “What? Oh blivik? No, it means friend. Well maybe not friend, but comrade in arms I guess.” “Sounds very similar plivik.” “Yeah well, sometimes in our culture the two are interchangeable.” “That I can believe. Bye Tych and thanks.” Tych nods his head and flies out the lab door, leaving you alone. (Well with a manticore cub that is currently eating Ral’s body nearby). You don’t leave right away, instead you take the opportunity to start going through Ral’s lab seeing if you can find any clue of what he did to you. You find lots notes, but his handwriting is pretty bad and you can’t make much sense of the diagrams. You think they might pertain to you, but you aren’t really sure. You temporarily slump in a chair nearby realizing that you’ve lost some of your life and your thoughts keep wandering back to Lisa. What happened to her? You were supposed to meet up with her in Holgard as you often did. At the time the city was on the verge of a rebellion. Does she even still live? And if she does, she surely must believe you are dead and moved on. It’s a bit depressing considering your feelings for her, but lost love is the least of your concerns right now. You suppose either way, your next move is to Holgard, either to seek her out or to seek a way to fix your condition. In any case, you’re sitting on a small fortune of magical equipment. Granted you don’t know what most of it does, but at the very least, you’d be able to get a good price for some of the stuff that you can’t figure out. Holgard will be the perfect place to At the very least you can use this place as a home of sorts which seems strange given that you’ve been stuck here, but then you’re not exactly beholden to Ral anymore and it’s not a bad place as far as homes go. You even have a pet to defend it when you’re not around. You spend a few more days going through Ral’s house before finally deciding to make your way to Holgard. Takes awhile to convince Spikey not to follow you, but eventually he gets the hint and stays around the house. You figure he’s probably more than able to hunt whatever wildlife is in the area. You make your way to Holgard and the journey is uneventful and the same as you remembered, though you’re noticing that when you camp down for the night, the next morning the grass has a layer of frost on it. You’re going to be leaving a trail of it at this pace. When you get to Holgard, you find that the city is a lot calmer than when you remember. While doing some business with an apothecary, you learn that the old ruler got overthrown and his daughter now rules the city. “Yeah, be glad you missed that one. It was a pretty brutal time…did it just get chilly in here? In fact, did the temperature drop outside because everything you’ve handed over to sell feels a bit cold to the touch.” the apothecary says. “Hadn’t noticed.” You answer. “…you uh sure you’re all right pal? You look a little pale. I figured when you came in here you came in to buy, not to sell.” “You got anything that can cure this?” you say and grab the apothecary’s wrist. “Shit! You’re fucking ice! Let me go! Please! Take anything you want!” “I’m not here to rob you! I’m serious when I ask, if you have anything that can cure this condition.” You say and let go of the man’s wrist. The apothecary steps back and rubs his wrist a bit. “I can honestly tell you that I have nothing that would help you. I can only believe that magic must be at work. Is that the case?” he asks. “Yeah, and I killed the wizard who did it.” “Well, I guess he had it coming. Wasn’t one of those Dornans was it?” “No.” “Hm, okay that’s good, because they’re about the only folks that I think would be able to help you. They’re pretty interested in all things pertaining to magic, though I’d be careful since it’ll be the knowledge that’s important, not the person. You might have killed a wizard, but I don’t think even you would be able to kill a whole temple of them if things go south.” “Noted. Can’t think of anyone else?” “Not really, I mean unless you want to head all the way to Delantium Kingdom and their magic university. It has a good reputation and they aren’t swayed by religious fanaticism. There’s a small magic college in Klyton, but I wouldn’t waste my time.” “Why not?” “Because I graduated from there and the magic college there is rubbish, that’s why. It’s understaffed and only kept afloat due to one of the council members being a mage. It’s not bad if you want to learn how to mix potions and such, but the wizards there aren’t exactly the most skilled in magic and they’d probably be just as baffled by your condition as I am. You’d probably end up as a toad with their bumbling.“ Great, more wizards. > You head to the Delantium Kingdom The Dornans might be closer, but they also sound like religious fanatics. You don’t really need to deal with that right now. You’re not exactly keen on dragging your cold ass all the way to the Delantium Kingdom, but if it’s your best shot, then that’s where you need to go. Besides, maybe it might be good anyway. You’ve spent more than enough time around Holgard and its surrounding area and it hasn’t got you very far, maybe a change in scenery is in order. It isn’t like things have gone that great for you around here and as for Lisa, if she’s still alive, you have no doubt that she’s moved on with her life. Maybe she’s even some high-ranking Ebony Claw member. Whatever she’s doing, you hope she’s doing well at it. You leave the apothecary and head to the docks to book a passage to the Delantium Kingdom. Unsurprisingly you get some strange looks, and the first couple captains turn you away believing that your unnatural chill must be the result of a curse and don’t want it rubbing off on the voyage. (You can’t blame them for their caution since they’re at least half right about it being a curse of sorts) Eventually though you get a captain with less interest in gods and suspicion and more interested in coin. You pay the man and make your way to the cargo area since he doesn’t have any more room for proper passengers, and he apparently thinks you’ll keep some of the food fresher on the long trip just with your presence. Doesn’t matter, you’ve been in less than ideal conditions before. You just need a ride; this isn’t going to be forever. You make your way down to the cargo hold where you make a place for yourself near the crates of lemons and limes. It’s as good as any. You’ll have lots of time to think on your way to your destination. One of your main thoughts is what you’re going to do with your life if you do get cured. Obviously being a rogue never really worked out for you. Arguably, you haven’t been one since you left Teckleville. You’ve had more “work” as a monster hunter of all things. Not that it’s something you necessarily wanted to make a living at doing, but you have raised your skill with a weapon over the years, not to mention all your new outdoorsman skills. Maybe you should be doing something using those talents instead at this point. You’re sure you’d be good at it. Makes you realize that if you had those skills to begin with instead, you probably wouldn’t have gotten lost in the forest and in Ral’s debt in the first place. Of course if that hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t have gained what you do know now. Funny how that works. Also funny how it finally took you until now to realize that your parents were right all along and that this “life” was just going to lead to trouble. In any case, you aren’t sure what the future holds, if you’ll be cured, if you’ll remain this way or if you’ll be killed in the process. You do know however that your days as a common rogue are over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Given your recent exchange with Ral and your own suspicious nature, you question if Ral intends on releasing you. Perhaps getting rid of Ral IS the way to go and this would be the best time to do it. You’re still under the effects of the geas, and any violent action towards Ral by you would be met with immediate pain, however with his temporary inability to cast spells you wonder if you couldn’t dispose of him quick enough that you’d survive it. Not to mention you do have a pet manticore now. “Spikey attack! ARGH!” you shout and feel a sharp pain to your crotch, which causes you to nearly double over. The only reason why you aren’t completely laid out is your new condition has dulled some of your pain reception to a small degree. (Now is one of those times it came in handy) Spikey isn’t completely sure what you meant, but given that you’re excitedly pointing at Ral who is also making loud noises and flailing about due to the shit that Tych poured on him, Spikey isn’t feeling comfortable towards him anyway. Spikey flings several small quills into Ral’s body. The old wizard howls in pain. Spikey may be just a manticore cub, but it still hurts. Due to the geas, a large part of you wants to stop Spikey from attacking and it’s taking everything for you not to do that. You feel the pain spread over your body and it’s getting worse. You finally collapse to the floor. Spikey runs forward and begins biting Ral, he even succeeds in ripping off part of his hand. Ral is begging for mercy at this point, but he’s getting nothing, but Tych’s taunts. You weakly pull out a dagger, but you can barely hold it in your hand as you attempt to crawl over to Ral. The pain you’re experiencing is nearly unbearable. Meanwhile Ral is experiencing his own form of pain, but despite being unable to cast magic and being a frail old man, he somehow manages to get Spikey off of him, who yelps when thrown into a nearby table. “Come here, you little bastard!” he snarls and with a blink, Tych is suddenly within the one good hand of Ral. It would appear his powers are starting to come back. “I’m going to crush you into…ARGH SHIT!” Ral shouts as you plunge your dagger into his ankle. The old man partially falls on top of you, but that doesn’t compare to the wave of agony you experience after stabbing Ral. Your condition is no longer numbing anything, not even a little bit. You feel like you’re suffering a heart attack, castration and a mace smashing your brains in, all the while being burned alive. Unsurprisingly your body goes into complete shock, shuts down and you go unconscious. Blackness follows. Time passes and eventually you wake up to a couple sensations. One being a rough tongue licking your face and another being a faint sweet taste on your lips and in your mouth. “Hey! Did it work? You alive?” Tych remarks. “Guh, buh, what work?” you sputter and move a bit causing Spikey to stop licking your face. “The healing potion I tried to pour into your mouth. I guess it did, you’re alive. Wasn’t sure it worked since you looked pretty dead.” “I felt really dead. Is Ral dead?” “Oh that plivik? Yeah. Your pet took care of that soon after you stabbed him. Ripped out his throat. I don’t think that spell is on you anymore.” You look at your wrist and it’s true, you no longer see the mark there anymore. “So that’s it. I’m free. Finally free.” You say. “Yeah, thanks to me.” Tych sniffs. “Ral was planning on releasing me anyway.” “You don’t believe that. If you did, you wouldn’t have nearly killed yourself, trying to kill him.” “Well I suppose I did have my doubts and followed your lead. What was that shit you poured on him anyway?” “Oh, liquefied gazer eye. Not sure what Ral was planning with it, but then he was always experimenting with shit.” “Not familiar with gazers.” “Lucky you, they’re even worse than wazias. Anyway, you’re not the only one who is free, so I guess this is where we part ways.” As strange as it seems you’re a little taken back by how quick Tych is to part company, but then it wasn’t like you two were great friends or anyway. “Oh. Okay. Yeah sure, I suppose you’ll be wanting to go home to your wife.” You say. “…what the hell, I’ll let you on a little secret, I’m not married. I just said I was hoping it would gain me sympathy when we first met.” Tych admits. “Why am I not surprised?” “But you’re right, I am still going home. I need to straighten out some things there. What were you planning on doing?” “Dunno really. I still got this condition. First thing I think I need to do is try to figure out how to reverse it. Guess I’ll start by heading to Holgard.” “Well sounds like you’ve got the adventure ahead of you. Can’t say it was a pleasure being forced to work with you, but I suppose it could have been worse. And we both got revenge on Ral, so it worked out I guess. See you around blivik.” “What’s that mean? Dickhead or something?” “What? Oh blivik? No, it means friend. Well maybe not friend, but comrade in arms I guess.” “Sounds very similar plivik.” “Yeah well, sometimes in our culture the two are interchangeable.” “That I can believe. Bye Tych and thanks.” Tych nods his head and flies out the lab door, leaving you alone. (Well with a manticore cub that is currently eating Ral’s body nearby). You don’t leave right away, instead you take the opportunity to start going through Ral’s lab seeing if you can find any clue of what he did to you. You find lots notes, but his handwriting is pretty bad and you can’t make much sense of the diagrams. You think they might pertain to you, but you aren’t really sure. You temporarily slump in a chair nearby realizing that you’ve lost some of your life and your thoughts keep wandering back to Lisa. What happened to her? You were supposed to meet up with her in Holgard as you often did. At the time the city was on the verge of a rebellion. Does she even still live? And if she does, she surely must believe you are dead and moved on. It’s a bit depressing considering your feelings for her, but lost love is the least of your concerns right now. You suppose either way, your next move is to Holgard, either to seek her out or to seek a way to fix your condition. In any case, you’re sitting on a small fortune of magical equipment. Granted you don’t know what most of it does, but at the very least, you’d be able to get a good price for some of the stuff that you can’t figure out. Holgard will be the perfect place to At the very least you can use this place as a home of sorts which seems strange given that you’ve been stuck here, but then you’re not exactly beholden to Ral anymore and it’s not a bad place as far as homes go. You even have a pet to defend it when you’re not around. You spend a few more days going through Ral’s house before finally deciding to make your way to Holgard. Takes awhile to convince Spikey not to follow you, but eventually he gets the hint and stays around the house. You figure he’s probably more than able to hunt whatever wildlife is in the area. You make your way to Holgard and the journey is uneventful and the same as you remembered, though you’re noticing that when you camp down for the night, the next morning the grass has a layer of frost on it. You’re going to be leaving a trail of it at this pace. When you get to Holgard, you find that the city is a lot calmer than when you remember. While doing some business with an apothecary, you learn that the old ruler got overthrown and his daughter now rules the city. “Yeah, be glad you missed that one. It was a pretty brutal time…did it just get chilly in here? In fact, did the temperature drop outside because everything you’ve handed over to sell feels a bit cold to the touch.” the apothecary says. “Hadn’t noticed.” You answer. “…you uh sure you’re all right pal? You look a little pale. I figured when you came in here you came in to buy, not to sell.” “You got anything that can cure this?” you say and grab the apothecary’s wrist. “Shit! You’re fucking ice! Let me go! Please! Take anything you want!” “I’m not here to rob you! I’m serious when I ask, if you have anything that can cure this condition.” You say and let go of the man’s wrist. The apothecary steps back and rubs his wrist a bit. “I can honestly tell you that I have nothing that would help you. I can only believe that magic must be at work. Is that the case?” he asks. “Yeah, and I killed the wizard who did it.” “Well, I guess he had it coming. Wasn’t one of those Dornans was it?” “No.” “Hm, okay that’s good, because they’re about the only folks that I think would be able to help you. They’re pretty interested in all things pertaining to magic, though I’d be careful since it’ll be the knowledge that’s important, not the person. You might have killed a wizard, but I don’t think even you would be able to kill a whole temple of them if things go south.” “Noted. Can’t think of anyone else?” “Not really, I mean unless you want to head all the way to Delantium Kingdom and their magic university. It has a good reputation and they aren’t swayed by religious fanaticism. There’s a small magic college in Klyton, but I wouldn’t waste my time.” “Why not?” “Because I graduated from there and the magic college there is rubbish, that’s why. It’s understaffed and only kept afloat due to one of the council members being a mage. It’s not bad if you want to learn how to mix potions and such, but the wizards there aren’t exactly the most skilled in magic and they’d probably be just as baffled by your condition as I am. You’d probably end up as a toad with their bumbling.“ Great, more wizards. > You head to the Temple of Dorna Considering you don’t trust wizards anyway, you might well check out the ones that are already here. You’re going to just be on your guard as usual. You figure while you’re at it, you can look into trying to find out what happened to Lisa and if she’s still around. You ask the apothecary where the temple is since it isn’t exactly a place you ever visited when you used to come to the city and your memory is still hazy on where everything is again. You head to the temple and while you remain hooded as usual, you still draw a little attention from people who are close enough to get a better look at you. Fortunately, you’re strange enough looking that nobody gets hostile. When you get to the temple, you don’t even get very far since two of its members stop you just inside the entrance. “And just where do you think you’re going, you…what the hell are you anyway? Damn you’re cold, step back.” a man with a goatee asks. “Yeah, I was hoping you guys could help me with this.” You say. “Maybe we should tell Elder Flynn about this, Travis.” The other one says. “The Elder is in meditation and can’t be disturbed for a week, you know that! Still, this is something he might find interesting. Tell me, how did you come to be this way?” Travis asks. You give a brief rundown on what happened, when you mention Ral by name the pair of them seems more interested in that, than what happened to you. “Wait, you’re telling me that YOU killed Ral?” Travis asks. “I helped…oh shit…he wasn’t secretly a Dorna worshipper was he?” you ask. “No true follower of Dorna would do it in secret! He was an infidel as far as I know. Though honestly, I’m not too familiar with the man, Elder Flynn apparently knows him quite well and all I know about that is they’re not fond of each other. So…he’s dead huh?” “Yes.” “Okay, this is something Elder Flynn would definitely want to know about. Unfortunately as I said, he’s in meditation and can’t be disturbed at all. You could come back then. I’m sure the Elder would be able to help.” “Well…I guess I can wait a little longer. So I just come back here in a week?” “Yes, in a week.” “Okay then.” You turn to leave and look back to see Travis and his buddy whispering about something. Probably about you no doubt. Still, at least they didn’t try to do anything bad to you or anything, though that’s still a possibility you suppose. The only thing to do now is wait, but you’re going to have to find something to do in the meantime. You could go back home, but you honestly don’t feel like making that trek again, not to mention after spending so much time in Ral’s house, you aren’t exactly itching to go back so soon. You have more than enough money so you figure you’ll just find an inn to stay at. You stay at a place called the Baroness. (Named after the current ruler no doubt) The innkeeper is a bit wary of you, but after giving him a few extra coins for a room he no longer has a problem with you. (Other than telling you to stand back from him) You spend a couple days not doing much of anything important except information gathering. It’s difficult to eavesdrop on conversations (let alone trying to strike up one) with your new condition, but you do manage to at least figure out some basics on the underworld situation. Apparently along with there being a new ruler, the Ebony Claw Syndicate has a greater monopoly on all criminal activity in the city. There are still independents as such things can never be completely wiped out, but the Thieves’ Guild was completely destroyed along with any other minor organized rivals Last time you remember, Lisa said she was thinking about joining them. At the time you hoped she wouldn’t, but given the situation now, you suppose if she has, it’s better that she picked the winning side. Of course this is all still assuming she’s alive or even still in the city. You can’t be sure of any of this, but since you have time to kill and not much else going on, you seek out Ebony Claw members to question. Not exactly something most do, but then you don’t have much to lose and at this point you’d wager that you’re a much better than average fighter than you used to be if it comes to that. You head to a place called the Poisoned Blade Inn, which even before they took over the entire underworld was a known Ebony Claw hang out. As soon as you enter, it’s almost like the Dorna Temple all over again, because you gain everyone’s attention, mainly because you don’t even bother covering yourself with a hood like you normally do. “Well…this is an unusual sight.” “Looks like the Dornans have been experimenting again.” “Did it just get colder in here?” “Hey, pale man! You lost?” “Careful, he looks like he might have magic about him.” “Yeah, well he ain’t the only one.” Several obvious ECS members are already converging on your position. “Not here for trouble, just looking for the most direct way of getting answers. Does anyone here know a woman named Lisa? She’d be around my age.” You say holding up your hands. The ECS members do not put down their guard just because you are though. “Even if any of us did know such a woman, what makes you think we’d tell you?” the most aggressive ECS member says. “Look, if you haven’t heard of her, fine, I made a mistake and I’ll just go.” “Oh you made a mistake alright just by walking in this place and the only place you’re going is the sewers after we dump your body!” The man suddenly grabs your arm and attempts to pull you towards him in order to stab you, but as soon as he grabs your arm he pulls his hand back. You draw your weapon and everyone steps back a bit. “SHIT! This guy is fucking freezing!” the man exclaims. “He’s a sorcerer! Quick, shoot him before he unleashes more frost magic!” another shouts. Soon another man with a partially shaved head and a huge black claw tattooed on the shaved part appears from the back of the crowd. “Alright, alright, everyone fucking settle down. Obviously the man didn’t come here to fight, he wants information, but that’s going to cost. I trust you have some coin?” “Yeah, hope you don’t mind it cold.” You say and toss a small pouch of coins at him, which he catches. “Fine with me, you bought yourself an audience. Come with me into my office.” You follow the man as the rest of them get out of your way. His “office” is really just a more secluded table towards the back, but it serves its purpose. The pair of you sit down and you learn the man’s name is Mantis. “Geez, you really do give off the cold. Not sensing that you’re a sorcerer though. You look human…curse perhaps?” Mantis asks. “Something like that, getting it taken care of.” You respond. “Well good luck with that iceman. In any case we’re not here to talk about your condition, you were asking about a woman named Lisa. Now for some reason you came to a know Ebony Claw location to ask us specifically. So what makes you think we might know this woman? And a better description would help.” You give a physical description of her based on what you remember of what she looked like. It’s almost a little concerning that you’ve almost forgotten what she looks like, but you believe your description has sufficed and it’s your additional information that you think that she may have joined the Ebony Claw Syndicate that gets attention. “Hmm, I see. So you’re looking for your long lost girlfriend? Is that it? You sure she just didn’t want any more to do with you? It happens you know.” “I’m fairly certain that isn’t the case. We were on good terms before our…separation which wasn’t either of our faults. Look I already know she could have very well moved on or even be dead. If that’s the case, then I’ll just deal with it, but one of the last things she was talking about was possibly joining you guys. I didn’t think it was a good idea, but if she did join and she’s still part of your organization, then I’d just like to know so if I have to ask every EC member, then that’s what I’ll do until I get confirmation.” “Well, From what you’ve told me, she doesn’t sound like ECS material, but then maybe she got lucky and blew the right person…(Sigh) Look, I can ask around, but I can’t make any promises. Our organization is fucking huge you understand and I couldn’t even tell you every member in this city, let alone anywhere else. Shit, for all I know she might be a higher rank than me because I’m nowhere near the top of the food chain. And if that’s the case then I can’t just be giving away her location and I’m also not doing this for free.” “I just paid you.” “Yeah, you paid for an audience with me. Now you’re going to pay for me to ask around about your ex. However, I’m not going to ask you for money. I want you to perform a task for me.” “A task?” “Yeah. If I’m going to potentially be giving information out one of our members to a stranger, I want to see just how dedicated you are about this. Now you look like you’d be able to handle yourself in a fight. You came in here by yourself after all.” “You want me to go rob a bank or steal something?” “Pfft. The syndicate has no need to be involved in such petty activities to supplement our income. The Blue Dream trade is thriving and whores and gambling are too. No, what needs to be done is something a lot more violent. You familiar with Karn?” “The God of warriors?” “Combat, strength, all that related shit. Well their priests are starting to become a pain in the ass by encroaching on our territory.” “I wasn’t aware the Karnites were into drugs, whores and gambling.” “They aren’t, but they’re in the business of faith and that’s a problem to the Temple of Fel. Not long ago, a Karnites broke all the limbs of one of Fel’s faithful. This can’t go unpunished. I want you to go kill the asshole and bring me back the ring he wears on his hand as proof.” You always heard rumors that the Ebony Claw Syndicate were more than just a criminal organization and the reasons why they were so powerful were due to their ties to the God of shadows. Looks like this confirms such things. “Okay. So why send me? The syndicate has loads of assassins I’d wager. In fact don’t the followers of Fel specialize in that sort of thing?” You say. “And you’d be right, but we just got finished with a full blown war with the Thieves Guild and the other petty organizations. We’re really not looking to get into another one so soon without rebuilding a bit. As for the Fels themselves, well apparently it’s not high on their priority list, but you can bet that if it did get taken care of, those involved would find favor with the temple.” Mantis says with a smile. Obviously Mantis wants to use you to advance his own petty ambitions. “In any case, you’re not affiliated with us and you’re not a follower of Fel. If you purposely start a fight with a Karnite and kill him then it has the added bonus of not being attached to either of us.” Mantis continues. “Wait, you want me to just kill this guy out in the open?” you ask. “You’re not too familiar with the Karnite faith are you? Issue a personal challenge and it’s all perfectly fine. Hell, even the city watch isn’t going to do shit about it. Other Karnites themselves won’t even retaliate, as they’ll see it as an honorable challenge from a lone challenger. Though to be on the safe side, I’d try to make it seem like a natural challenge. I dunno, bump into him on the street and pick a fight or something.” “What about the ring? Won’t they be upset about me taking a holy item?” “Eh, well they probably won’t be happy about it, however you’d be taking a trophy and if someone wasn’t strong enough to keep it, then in their eyes they don’t deserve it. In fact, they may even ask if you want to join them…but obviously I wouldn’t advise that.” > You take the job If this is going to help you find Lisa, then this is what you’re going to have to do. “Okay fine. Tell me what this corpse looks like.” You say. “That’s what I like to hear iceman.” Mantis remarks. Mantis gives you a physical description of the Karnite in question and his few haunts when he isn’t at his temple. As befitting of a follower of Karn, he is constantly training his body and you can see him running laps in the area close to his temple early in the morning. Before you leave, Mantis tells you that he’ll look into finding out all he can about Lisa and if she is in fact an Ebony Claw, he’ll tell you how you can contact her providing that you’re successful. The next few days you spend scouting and spying on your target’s activities. As expected he doesn’t indulge in much. Most of his time is spent in the temple. He only occasionally leaves to purchase a few pieces of fruit, which he seems to enjoy. He doesn’t exactly purchase them either, he just takes them from the poor fruit seller who is far too intimidated by the burly holy man to tell him not to. You thought about picking a fight with him when he was taking one of his morning runs, but you believe this might be better. So eventually you make your move. “Hey! Watch it! I was going for that apple!” you say mildly bumping into the priest. The priest looks at you with annoyance, but he doesn’t make a hostile move towards you. In fact he backs off a bit, but he also doesn’t give you the apple either. “Are you fucking deaf? I said I WAS going for that apple!” you say raising your voice. “Sir! There are many other apples to choose from! Please pick any of the others. They’re all fresh I assure you!” the fruit seller remarks nervously. “I suggest you listen to the shopkeep.” The Karnite priest says. “Pfft, I don’t give a shit what fruit boy says, let alone you! You’re one of those karnites aren’t you? I can tell by your shitty brown robes. Supposed to be masters of combat or something. I’m hardly impressed.” “I’m not here to impress you, but if you would like a sample of my abilities, I would be more than willing to show you.” “Yeah, right. And after I kick your ass, you’ll get all your Karnite buddies after me.” “With how you’re boasting, I’m surprised that would be a concern. However, we can make it a one on one contest as per the doctrines of our faith. No retaliation for whatever the outcome. This one and any of these onlookers can be witnesses.” “Um…sure…okay. Whatever you say.” The fruit seller responds. “I will say though, I’m detecting magic emanating off of you. If you’re a sorcerer of some sort, this agreement is off.” The priest adds. “I’m not a sorcerer. This is just me. You backing out?” you respond. “No, I just suppose this will make things more interesting. Though I hope you realize that when we do this, I don’t intend on just…in your words kicking your ass. Karn’s honor demands no less that I end you permanently.” “That’s okay, I wasn’t planning on holding back either.” You pull your short sword and the priest adopts a defensive stance. He doesn’t seem at all worried that you have a weapon. After a couple of swings, you find out why since he easily disarms you. When you attempt to go for your dagger, he grabs your wrist to stop you and punches you hard in the face. While it doesn’t hurt as much as it would a “normal” person, you still feel the impact. Despite your icy skin and emanation, the priest shows no signs that he’s bothered by it. Though no doubt as one of the Karn’s faithful he’s trained himself to not feel pain like other people. This is very apparent when you actually land a couple of blows and he reacts about as much as you would, which is barely phasing him. You may have had your battles with arguably more “powerful” beings and creatures than this priest, but then there were other circumstances involved. You are learning first hand that the priests of Karn live up to their reputation. It’s only due to your condition that you manage to stand as long as you do, but eventually he lands a really good punch and this time you go down to the ground. With you on the ground, the priest immediately takes advantage by taking one of your legs and breaking it. You definitely feel the physical trauma of bone snapping through your skin, though thanks to your dulled senses you don’t go into shock and you manage to swing your other leg as hard as you can and kick the priest in the side of the head. He isn’t expecting that reaction and you catch him slightly off guard. He’s temporarily dazed and lets go of your broken leg. It isn’t enough however, since you’re still at a disadvantage with a broken leg. You finally manage to pull your dagger in a desperate attempt to even the odds. The priest avoids your attempts at stabbing at him with your dagger from your prone position. Instead, he kicks your hand, followed by stomping on it, breaking your fingers. Sensing that you’re much more manageable prey now, the priest puts his foot to your neck and stomps on it. It’s enough to crush your windpipe causing you to gasp for air, but your slow asphyxiation is put to an end when he breaks your neck with a couple more stomps.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Considering you don’t trust wizards anyway, you might well check out the ones that are already here. You’re going to just be on your guard as usual. You figure while you’re at it, you can look into trying to find out what happened to Lisa and if she’s still around. You ask the apothecary where the temple is since it isn’t exactly a place you ever visited when you used to come to the city and your memory is still hazy on where everything is again. You head to the temple and while you remain hooded as usual, you still draw a little attention from people who are close enough to get a better look at you. Fortunately, you’re strange enough looking that nobody gets hostile. When you get to the temple, you don’t even get very far since two of its members stop you just inside the entrance. “And just where do you think you’re going, you…what the hell are you anyway? Damn you’re cold, step back.” a man with a goatee asks. “Yeah, I was hoping you guys could help me with this.” You say. “Maybe we should tell Elder Flynn about this, Travis.” The other one says. “The Elder is in meditation and can’t be disturbed for a week, you know that! Still, this is something he might find interesting. Tell me, how did you come to be this way?” Travis asks. You give a brief rundown on what happened, when you mention Ral by name the pair of them seems more interested in that, than what happened to you. “Wait, you’re telling me that YOU killed Ral?” Travis asks. “I helped…oh shit…he wasn’t secretly a Dorna worshipper was he?” you ask. “No true follower of Dorna would do it in secret! He was an infidel as far as I know. Though honestly, I’m not too familiar with the man, Elder Flynn apparently knows him quite well and all I know about that is they’re not fond of each other. So…he’s dead huh?” “Yes.” “Okay, this is something Elder Flynn would definitely want to know about. Unfortunately as I said, he’s in meditation and can’t be disturbed at all. You could come back then. I’m sure the Elder would be able to help.” “Well…I guess I can wait a little longer. So I just come back here in a week?” “Yes, in a week.” “Okay then.” You turn to leave and look back to see Travis and his buddy whispering about something. Probably about you no doubt. Still, at least they didn’t try to do anything bad to you or anything, though that’s still a possibility you suppose. The only thing to do now is wait, but you’re going to have to find something to do in the meantime. You could go back home, but you honestly don’t feel like making that trek again, not to mention after spending so much time in Ral’s house, you aren’t exactly itching to go back so soon. You have more than enough money so you figure you’ll just find an inn to stay at. You stay at a place called the Baroness. (Named after the current ruler no doubt) The innkeeper is a bit wary of you, but after giving him a few extra coins for a room he no longer has a problem with you. (Other than telling you to stand back from him) You spend a couple days not doing much of anything important except information gathering. It’s difficult to eavesdrop on conversations (let alone trying to strike up one) with your new condition, but you do manage to at least figure out some basics on the underworld situation. Apparently along with there being a new ruler, the Ebony Claw Syndicate has a greater monopoly on all criminal activity in the city. There are still independents as such things can never be completely wiped out, but the Thieves’ Guild was completely destroyed along with any other minor organized rivals Last time you remember, Lisa said she was thinking about joining them. At the time you hoped she wouldn’t, but given the situation now, you suppose if she has, it’s better that she picked the winning side. Of course this is all still assuming she’s alive or even still in the city. You can’t be sure of any of this, but since you have time to kill and not much else going on, you seek out Ebony Claw members to question. Not exactly something most do, but then you don’t have much to lose and at this point you’d wager that you’re a much better than average fighter than you used to be if it comes to that. You head to a place called the Poisoned Blade Inn, which even before they took over the entire underworld was a known Ebony Claw hang out. As soon as you enter, it’s almost like the Dorna Temple all over again, because you gain everyone’s attention, mainly because you don’t even bother covering yourself with a hood like you normally do. “Well…this is an unusual sight.” “Looks like the Dornans have been experimenting again.” “Did it just get colder in here?” “Hey, pale man! You lost?” “Careful, he looks like he might have magic about him.” “Yeah, well he ain’t the only one.” Several obvious ECS members are already converging on your position. “Not here for trouble, just looking for the most direct way of getting answers. Does anyone here know a woman named Lisa? She’d be around my age.” You say holding up your hands. The ECS members do not put down their guard just because you are though. “Even if any of us did know such a woman, what makes you think we’d tell you?” the most aggressive ECS member says. “Look, if you haven’t heard of her, fine, I made a mistake and I’ll just go.” “Oh you made a mistake alright just by walking in this place and the only place you’re going is the sewers after we dump your body!” The man suddenly grabs your arm and attempts to pull you towards him in order to stab you, but as soon as he grabs your arm he pulls his hand back. You draw your weapon and everyone steps back a bit. “SHIT! This guy is fucking freezing!” the man exclaims. “He’s a sorcerer! Quick, shoot him before he unleashes more frost magic!” another shouts. Soon another man with a partially shaved head and a huge black claw tattooed on the shaved part appears from the back of the crowd. “Alright, alright, everyone fucking settle down. Obviously the man didn’t come here to fight, he wants information, but that’s going to cost. I trust you have some coin?” “Yeah, hope you don’t mind it cold.” You say and toss a small pouch of coins at him, which he catches. “Fine with me, you bought yourself an audience. Come with me into my office.” You follow the man as the rest of them get out of your way. His “office” is really just a more secluded table towards the back, but it serves its purpose. The pair of you sit down and you learn the man’s name is Mantis. “Geez, you really do give off the cold. Not sensing that you’re a sorcerer though. You look human…curse perhaps?” Mantis asks. “Something like that, getting it taken care of.” You respond. “Well good luck with that iceman. In any case we’re not here to talk about your condition, you were asking about a woman named Lisa. Now for some reason you came to a know Ebony Claw location to ask us specifically. So what makes you think we might know this woman? And a better description would help.” You give a physical description of her based on what you remember of what she looked like. It’s almost a little concerning that you’ve almost forgotten what she looks like, but you believe your description has sufficed and it’s your additional information that you think that she may have joined the Ebony Claw Syndicate that gets attention. “Hmm, I see. So you’re looking for your long lost girlfriend? Is that it? You sure she just didn’t want any more to do with you? It happens you know.” “I’m fairly certain that isn’t the case. We were on good terms before our…separation which wasn’t either of our faults. Look I already know she could have very well moved on or even be dead. If that’s the case, then I’ll just deal with it, but one of the last things she was talking about was possibly joining you guys. I didn’t think it was a good idea, but if she did join and she’s still part of your organization, then I’d just like to know so if I have to ask every EC member, then that’s what I’ll do until I get confirmation.” “Well, From what you’ve told me, she doesn’t sound like ECS material, but then maybe she got lucky and blew the right person…(Sigh) Look, I can ask around, but I can’t make any promises. Our organization is fucking huge you understand and I couldn’t even tell you every member in this city, let alone anywhere else. Shit, for all I know she might be a higher rank than me because I’m nowhere near the top of the food chain. And if that’s the case then I can’t just be giving away her location and I’m also not doing this for free.” “I just paid you.” “Yeah, you paid for an audience with me. Now you’re going to pay for me to ask around about your ex. However, I’m not going to ask you for money. I want you to perform a task for me.” “A task?” “Yeah. If I’m going to potentially be giving information out one of our members to a stranger, I want to see just how dedicated you are about this. Now you look like you’d be able to handle yourself in a fight. You came in here by yourself after all.” “You want me to go rob a bank or steal something?” “Pfft. The syndicate has no need to be involved in such petty activities to supplement our income. The Blue Dream trade is thriving and whores and gambling are too. No, what needs to be done is something a lot more violent. You familiar with Karn?” “The God of warriors?” “Combat, strength, all that related shit. Well their priests are starting to become a pain in the ass by encroaching on our territory.” “I wasn’t aware the Karnites were into drugs, whores and gambling.” “They aren’t, but they’re in the business of faith and that’s a problem to the Temple of Fel. Not long ago, a Karnites broke all the limbs of one of Fel’s faithful. This can’t go unpunished. I want you to go kill the asshole and bring me back the ring he wears on his hand as proof.” You always heard rumors that the Ebony Claw Syndicate were more than just a criminal organization and the reasons why they were so powerful were due to their ties to the God of shadows. Looks like this confirms such things. “Okay. So why send me? The syndicate has loads of assassins I’d wager. In fact don’t the followers of Fel specialize in that sort of thing?” You say. “And you’d be right, but we just got finished with a full blown war with the Thieves Guild and the other petty organizations. We’re really not looking to get into another one so soon without rebuilding a bit. As for the Fels themselves, well apparently it’s not high on their priority list, but you can bet that if it did get taken care of, those involved would find favor with the temple.” Mantis says with a smile. Obviously Mantis wants to use you to advance his own petty ambitions. “In any case, you’re not affiliated with us and you’re not a follower of Fel. If you purposely start a fight with a Karnite and kill him then it has the added bonus of not being attached to either of us.” Mantis continues. “Wait, you want me to just kill this guy out in the open?” you ask. “You’re not too familiar with the Karnite faith are you? Issue a personal challenge and it’s all perfectly fine. Hell, even the city watch isn’t going to do shit about it. Other Karnites themselves won’t even retaliate, as they’ll see it as an honorable challenge from a lone challenger. Though to be on the safe side, I’d try to make it seem like a natural challenge. I dunno, bump into him on the street and pick a fight or something.” “What about the ring? Won’t they be upset about me taking a holy item?” “Eh, well they probably won’t be happy about it, however you’d be taking a trophy and if someone wasn’t strong enough to keep it, then in their eyes they don’t deserve it. In fact, they may even ask if you want to join them…but obviously I wouldn’t advise that.” > You refuse the job You aren’t having any part in possibly getting caught up in some faction war. This Mantis guy doesn’t seem reliable on if he can give you any useful information anyway. “Thank you for your time, but I’m going to have to pass.” You say. “Fine by me, but let me tell you this. Don’t come back here again for any reason. If fact I’d advise you not to ask the Syndicate for any help on this matter again. This was a one-time offer. Now leave.” Mantis remarks. You leave the Poison Blade Inn no closer to finding Lisa. You know Mantis warned you, but given that he admitted that even he didn’t know every EC member, you toy with the idea of just simply asking elsewhere. You spend most of the week at various gambling halls, brothels, seedy taverns and fighting arenas. Most of which are run by the Syndicate, but you don’t find Lisa and the few people that are talkative enough have never heard of her. Eventually you start getting enough suspicious looks in the crowds that even you think you should stop while you’re ahead. In any case, you’ve got another task, which is curing your condition. You eventually return to the Dornan temple hoping that their elder can help. This time however, you’re stopped before you even get inside. “Hey! I’ve seen you before!” a female voice says, as you’re about to open the door. You turn around and see a young female Dornan priestess in the usual blue and purple robes. “Yeah, you’re that pale guy that was talking to Travis and Mathias last week. I remember being surprised that Travis didn’t throw you out immediately. You here to see him? Because he hasn’t been around since that time, him or Mathias in fact. We’ve sort of been wondering where he is, well not really for our sake since it’s been peaceful without him, but Elder Flynn isn’t going to like him being gone for so long since Travis was supposed to unofficially be in charge while he was in meditation.” “Wait, your Elder, he isn’t STILL in meditation is he?” “Yeah, but it should only be a couple days before he’s done. Did you need to see him?” “Yeah, Travis told me to come back in a week so I could see him to possibly cure my condition.” The female priestess looks at you a bit before replying. “Hmm, yes I have noticed that you’re giving off a small cold draft along with your pale skin. Uh…I probably shouldn’t do this, but um…you MIGHT not want to meet Elder Flynn.” She says. “Why not?” you ask. “Well…don’t get me wrong I’m a dedicated worshipper of Dorna and all her wisdom and mysteries of magic yet to be uncovered, but Elder Flynn is a bit on the radical side of uncovering some mysteries and acquiring knowledge.” “Meaning?” “Well, meaning that you might find yourself entranced, on a table getting chopped up to see what exactly is causing this condition and how best that it can be harnessed. I mean it’s also completely possible that won’t happen, but I figured you should at least know the risk since I’m sure Travis didn’t tell you.” You take your hand off the door and sigh in defeat. “Great.” You say. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did this happen to you anyway?” Since you don’t have anything better to do now and she was kind enough to warn you, you go ahead and tell her. Heather as you learn her name listens intently to your story. “Ral huh? I wonder if that explains why Travis and Mathias lit out of here so quickly.” Heather says. “What do you mean?” you ask. “Well you told them that Ral was dead meaning nobody is guarding that house anymore. The pair of them probably went over to loot the place of whatever magic they could find.” “Oh shit. I wasn’t thinking. Fuck! They’ve probably completely stripped the place by now!” “What difference would it make to you? You don’t use magic.” “No, but I AM still using that house as a residence and that’s all my stuff now! Not to mention I was planning on selling some of that shit over time. I gotta get over there!” “Well hold on, you can’t just face them alone! At least let me go with you so they don’t turn you into a jackalope or something!” “Fine, but keep up!” You soon make your way out of Holgard and back to your house. You never thought you’d consider it your house, but hell after all the shit you put up with there and killing Ral for it, you feel you’re entitled to it more than two asshole wizard priests just looting the place. Heather tells you that you’d get there faster if you let her cast a haste spell on the pair of you. You’re a little reluctant at first given your past with wizards, but eventually you give in and by the end of the day, you’re back at your house. You see that the front door is wide open. “I’m going to murder the pair of these thieves.” You say (The irony isn’t lost on you given your past) “H…hey wait! You can’t just kill them!” “The hell I can’t, I killed one wizard already and I doubt if these two are more powerful than Ral.” “Maybe not, but there’s two of them and besides all that, they might be assholes but they’re still my Dornan brothers! I understand your anger, but I’m not going to just stand by and let you kill them. Look let me just go in first and talk to them.” You don’t like this at all, but you’ve rather not have to fight three wizards so you relent. “Fine.” Heather goes in and you follow. Though you don’t get very far inside when you see blood all over the floor. You then see a body. “Mathias!” Heather shouts and goes over to him. You look at Mathias’ body and see a couple of chunks bitten from his body along with several quills in him. “Shit, I can’t believe I forgot he was still here.” You say. “Who’s still here?!” Heather exclaims. “Spikey.” “Who’s that?” “My pet manticore.” “Wait. You have a pet manticore? “Sure, doesn’t everyone?” “How the hell do you forget something like that?” “It’s been a busy week and I’ve had a couple of more important things on my mind. Also I thought I left him outside, though maybe I did and he wandered in when your people broke in. I hope these assholes didn’t hurt him.” You say and follow the other trail of blood leading to the lab door, which is open. You look around the lab and see some equipment knocked over along with some quills embedded in various places. You see another body on the floor though this one is almost completely eaten and it’s mostly just bones now. You imagine that this is probably Travis. Spikey (who is a little larger than when you last saw him) is here gnawing on one of these bones and sees you. He growls a bit at first, but then comes up to you. And you cautiously give him a pet. “Have you actually gotten bigger already? And what are these things?” you say and also notice little nubs on his back that weren’t there before. “Those are the beginnings of wings.” Heather remarks. Spikey sees her and immediately raises his tail up until you start to try to calm him down. “Heather you can’t just sneak up like that! He’s not that friendly around strangers!” you shout. “Obviously, but I’m not fussed.” Heather remarks and then waves her hands a bit and she goes up to Spikey and pets him who is suddenly very friendly towards her. “Hmm, apparently your buddies didn’t think of that.” “Might’ve caught Travis off guard, if he was looting this place he probably wasn’t focusing on anything else. Then I imagine Mathias panicked since he’s always been prone to do that and tried to run away which didn’t work of course.” “Not that I’m complaining, but you don’t seem too concerned about your fellow priests like you were a moment ago.” “Well, Travis I never gave a shit about. Matthias was okay, but he didn’t exactly have the strongest of backbone. If he did, he might still be alive. Plus how they died was on them. I mean it isn’t like you killed them in cold blood. They were looting your home and your guard creature killed them because they weren’t wise enough to assess the dangers before hand. I can accept that.” “Very pragmatic of you.” “Dorna does teach us the virtues of pragmatism. Speaking of which, I have pragmatic proposition for you.” “Okay…” Heather asks if she can look through Ral’s stuff and take some of it. She explains that in exchange for doing so, she can try to look into your condition personally and try to figure out how to reverse it. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” you ask. “You don’t I suppose. All I can give you is my word and hopefully my actions today have given you something to judge my character. I may be a worshipper of Dorna, but I’m not a fanatic like the Elder. Also, there is no point in telling him about his old acquaintance Ral being dead. Not when I can come here and use the knowledge found here myself.” Heather remarks. “Ah, so do you plan to usurp your Elder?” “I didn’t say that, but one never knows about the future. In any case, your condition is intriguing enough for me to try to look into. I promise I won’t attempt anything too invasive unless you agree to it.” “How chivalrous of you. (Sigh) Yeah, I guess I’ll trust you, for now at least. What about your Dornan brothers?” “I’ll just say I haven’t seen them and have no idea where they are. I might warn you however that other Dornan members have probably seen you given that you’ve been around and inside the temple. A few of them might have even seen you speaking with Travis. Might be best if you lay low for awhile and not even go to Holgard.” “You might be right, but I can’t promise anything. I’m sort of looking for someone there…but then they might be dead or gone anyway. Yeah I guess I can stay out of sight and make other arrangements.” Heather and you come to an agreement and she proceeds to look through the lab. She actually doesn’t take much, just a few books that you have no use for anyway. She says that she’ll be back as soon as she can and next time she comes by she’ll look into your condition. In the meantime you spend time at your home not really doing much of anything except a lot of contemplation. You think about how you probably won’t ever see Lisa again, but you also think about your family and how they might be doing. Did Annah survive? Where is your sister and what is she doing right now? Is she okay? All of these people that were once important in your life are just not around anymore and you doubt if you’ll ever see them again either. Even if you weren’t in the condition you’re in now, you couldn’t return home with how you left it anyway. You don’t actually expect Heather to return or if she does she’ll return with a group of other wizards to end you, which you barely even care about at this point, but she eventually does return and it’s alone. She subjects you to a few minor tests that she can think of to do and even gives you a few potions to drink. You agree to it mainly because you don’t have much to lose. None of the potions work however save for a couple actually making you sick and causing you to vomit. “Apologies, but I can’t think of anything else to do that isn’t more invasive.” Heather remarks. “It’s fine. It’s fine. Ugh. Maybe…maybe we can do that another day though. Not feeling too well right now. Take whatever you like from the lab, I’m sure there’s more shit you could find useful. I’m not going to Holgard to sell any of it any time soon.” “You sure you’re okay?” “I’m fine, I’m just going to lay down for awhile. Remember to lock the door on your way out.” Heather’s a little surprised by your permissiveness given that you were ready to kill two of her fellow priests for being here not long ago, but your consent is what makes all the difference. That and the fact that you’re still feeling a little depressed about things on top of not feeling well physically. You get into bed and sleep, when you wake up. You find a note with a bottle next to it on a nearby table. It’s from Heather telling you that the contents should make you feel better since it’s a healing potion of sorts. You down the liquid and it starts to work. Heather also says she isn’t sure when the next time she’ll be back, but she’ll try to make it as soon as she can. Well it seems like you can trust this Heather at least along with her being someone that can actually help you or try to, which means it’s a start. Who knows if any of this will help or change things though. > You time passes... Year 25 “I’ve looked through ALL of Ral’s writings along with researching various tomes we have at the temple and I can’t figure out exactly WHAT he did to you. I mean I can guess what he did, but even if I’m right, I still have no idea how to reverse it.” Heather remarks. You know Heather’s done more than you ever expected from her, but you can’t help but feel frustrated by all this. If your condition wasn’t getting worse, it probably would be tolerable, but it is getting worse. Not so much for you in terms of life and death directly, but you’re starting to effect things in a wider area. At this point your home is freezing to most (or at least to Heather when she visits) and frost covers everything you come in contact with now. You don’t even have to touch it for long. Even Spikey makes his home outside the house rather than inside, though it’s just as well since he’s huge now. Which is leading to the other issue and that’s the fact your icy home is starting to look very out of place compared to the rest of the surrounding landscape. Granted you’re isolated from most major population centers, but there is Dert. Dert is close enough that it’s only going to take a few of the more adventurous young folks to go wandering from that backwards village and bring back tales of an “Ice Castle” with a manticore guarding it. (Fortunately Spikey has never wandered towards Dert and his hunting grounds are mainly elsewhere.) Heather herself has been trying to keep your presence a secret since apparently Elder Flynn has been sensing a minor growth in magical energy in the area. So far he assumes it’s Ral just working on something, but Heather stresses that if he finds out the truth, he’ll definitely be heading to your home. Heather is also stressed out due to the fact that she’s been keeping all this from her comrades and on top of everything else, there’s the beginning of religious faction war going on in Holgard. Since she’s out of any ideas that you might find acceptable, she suggests the last thing she can think of and that’s that you leave and head north. She believes your condition is exaggerated by the warmer climate. (Even more so now due to it being a hotter summer than usual) While you’ve sort of guessed that to some extent, she thinks that if you were just constantly living in a colder environment, your condition would even out and you might not attract as much attention. “So…what then? I’m supposed to just go live on a mountain top somewhere?” you say. “No, I’m just saying that you could probably live some place colder and your condition not be as much of a problem. You’d at least blend in a bit better. As it stands now, you’re starting to attract a lot of attention and you were previously pretty isolated before. Not to mention you’ve got a big ass manticore wandering around nearby. You stay here and you’re probably going to have groups of hired adventurers beating down your door.” Heather remarks. “You just want me to leave because you’re worried about your own ass.” “Damn right I am! I mean I’m risking every time I come here, every time I lie to Elder Flynn. You realize how much my stomach is in knots about this? And you know what? Fuck you. I’ve been helping you out trying to figure out how to cure you! I’ve tried potions, spells, salves, rituals and even prayers to Dorna on your behalf!” “You’ve also been helping yourself to magical shit I have.” “So? It’s been mutually beneficial, but now it’s starting to get risky to a point of where I’m no longer comfortable.” “Alright, I get it. I get it. But I’m just not too keen on this idea that I’m supposed to just pick up and leave.” “Well, I dunno any other solutions. I mean when was the last time you went to Holgard and didn’t start drawing a crowd? Didn’t you say that the guards actually prevented you from entering last time? You said you had to sneak in and then you soon got run out of there. I mean it’s only going to be a matter of time that you start drawing the attention of someone you aren’t going to be able to deal with.” “Your boss is really getting that suspicious huh?” “Elder Flynn is a concern of course, but it might actually be lucky for you that there’s religious strife going on in Holgard right now. But I was talking in general. Look, we’ve gotten along for a while now, and maybe if circumstances were different I’d say stick around longer, but…” Heather turns away from you a bit and exhales. In fact she starts to sniffle a bit. “What? Wait a minute…no…really? You never gave any indication! Hell, we’ve never even kissed! Though I suppose given my condition that might cause problems. That’s why you never acted on it” you say. “Oh trust me, there’s ways we could have gotten around that aspect. A simple protection of cold would have done that. It’s just… it could never really work okay? And yeah initially I was helping you because it was beneficial to me personally, but I did genuinely want to help because you seemed like an okay guy that was in a bad situation. Even with you telling me tales of your shady past, there was always a charm about you.” Heather remarks wiping her eyes a bit. “If I ever run into my sister again, I’m sure she’ll be amused to hear that some of her charisma finally wore off on me. Well if it makes you feel any better, I’ve had more than my fair share of thoughts about you as well.” “I’m sure.” “I don’t mean just the dirty ones though, I mean I figured even if you were only helping for the magic knowledge and items, it still was nice that someone was helping me.” “Sort of wish you were only thinking of me in a dirty way, it would make this a lot easier. (Sigh) I shouldn’t have said anything.” “I wish you have said something sooner, I mean now what am I supposed to do? Just leave, knowing all this?” “If you do have feelings for me like you say then I beg you to leave because you’ll just make it harder for me in the long run. I know it’s selfish to put myself first, but it is what it is.” “Okay, I’m not mad because I get it, but I don’t see why WE can’t just leave together. I mean you could continue trying to figure out how to cure me and you could probably start up another Dorna church up north and convert barbarian tribes or something. ” “Heh, nice idea. Tempting even, but no. My life is here.” You’re getting frustrated at this point. “What are you fucking this Elder Flynn or something?” “What? No! He’s like a hundred years old and I don’t have daddy issues!” “Well what’s really keeping you here then?” “Look, maybe an infidel like you can’t understand, but my temple is also my family and with all the trouble going on right now, I’m not going to just abandon them.” “Haven’t you been hording knowledge and the shit you get from me?” “Yeah, well it’s a complicated family relationship.” “Guess I can’t relate much…(sigh) Okay, fine. I’ll leave, but only because you did try to help me, I’m a sucker for a pretty face and the fact I don’t really have any other ties here and it’ll make things easier for you.” You start to get ready to pack, but Heather stops you. “Hold on a second. You don’t need to leave right this minute.” She says and makes a few little hand gestures causing a brief blue glow around her. Then she kisses you. It doesn’t feel as good as you remember the last time you did this with Lisa. Even the good stuff is dulled, but what the hell, you’ll take it. You and Heather get to it and you have a rather interesting time going about your intimacy. Heather’s spell is working, but it’s obvious she’s still feeling some mild…well the word isn’t exactly discomfort, but let’s just say she has never pleasured herself with an icicle in the past so it’s a cool sensation down there for her. However she’s a trooper and you must be doing something right because by the time you’re done she’s covered in frost. No, that’s not a euphemism either; she’s literally covered in frost. (In fact if this was all taking place in a modern setting, there could be a whole joke about “The Iceman Cometh”) You on the other hand were sort of hoping that experience while pleasant enough would maybe raise your body temperature a little, but no, you’re still as cold as ever. After a moment of basking in frosty bliss, Heather brushes herself off and gets dressed. “I hope that you can somehow find a way to cure yourself, but whether you do or not, take care okay?” With those last words she gives you one more kiss and leaves you alone. This experience has arguably been the best thing that’s happened to you since you woke up in your condition. Of course maybe you’re just sort of feeling that way due to the fact that you haven’t exactly been with anyone in a long damn time. Part of you wants to just go to her temple, but going to Holgard isn’t going to do anything but cause problems for her and you, so you’ll wait. You know she’ll be back. You figure Heather will probably come back here in a couple days to see if you’re still around and to potentially look for any items she may have missed. When she comes back, you’ll make every effort to convince her to come with you. So you wait. A week passes, then a month, then two months… By this time, you’re still laboring under the delusion that she’s going to come back and mainly subsisting on frozen berries, fruit and roots that you don’t go too far to collect from your home. In the meantime Spikey, being an apex predator in the area has steadily over the past few years been depleting most of the wildlife. He was also supplementing this with the many bandit groups that make their homes in the woods at times. However, even bandits eventually get wise to the fact that it might not be the best idea to have a hideout where many of their fellows are disappearing at an alarming rate. If his attention wasn’t in the direction of Dert before it is now. You however don’t really know any of this until you get a knock on the door one night. Thinking that it’s Heather, you spring from your chair, and open it. And you’re met by a woman, one you even know, but not Heather. “…Isabella?” you say upon seeing her. Isabella frowns as you just stare at her naked body in surprise. “Glad you remember what my tits look like.” She says. “…Apologies, but I really wasn’t expecting you. I thought another…nevermind, what are you doing here?” you ask. “I’m here to speak to Ral…what the hell happened to you? You’re as pale as I am and you’re giving off some serious cold. This whole house is, given the frost and ice in the area. What the hell IS Ral doing in there?” “Well…” “Look, no offense, but I’m not in the mood to speak to his magic slave. I want you to go bring his ass out of his lab to come speak to me right now. I mean I thought we had an understanding at least that if we HAD to be neighbors he wouldn’t fuck things up for me. Now I got a bunch of dead people in Dert due to his escaped manticore or pet or experiment or whatever the fuck. I told him that backwards dung heap of a hamlet was MY ongoing food source and was not to be messed with.” “Wait, Spikey attacked Dert?” “Spikey? That its name? Real original. But yeah it was a damn blood bath there. Hell, I could smell it even from my crypt. The beast killed ten people. I would have tracked it down easily, but considering its scent was also leading in this direction, I’d pay Ral a visit first since I was sure this was all his fault. And judging from what I’m seeing, I was right. So get his ass out here!” “That’s going to be a problem given that he’s dead.” “Dead? Bullshit.” “I’m serious. He’s been dead for like two years now.” Now Isabella is the one showing some surprise. The fact that she is surprised means you must have really caught he off guard. You remember that Ral and her had a relationship in the past. From some of her brief sad expression, she perhaps didn’t have complete loathing for him. Isabella looks down a bit and closes her eyes before speaking again. “(Sigh) Damn. Didn’t think I’d still feel something for the bastard, but I guess you never know until it happens. I guess this means you’re no longer a magic slave and you’re in fact responsible for this mess then. How? You’re no wizard. And how did you kill Ral anyway?” Isabella asks. “I didn’t kill Ral, he just died of natural causes in his bed.” You quickly say. “Hah! Nice try, but you’re lying. Look, I don’t care if you killed him, if he’d made me a slave I’d have killed him too.” “Well, I had help and it wasn’t easy.” “I’m sure. So what’s with the eternal winter here?” “Ral’s last gift to me.” You give a quick explanation of events of your condition to Isabella who listens to everything. “So…it was this Heather was the one you were waiting for then?” Isabella asks. “Yeah, but well…that’s a long story.” You say with a sigh. “Let me guess you fell for your nurse.” “She wasn’t a nurse, she was a priestess.” “Nurse, priestess, whore, doesn’t matter. Your circumstance is as old as time. You fell for the one taking care of you when nobody else would. It happens a lot, but I think your case its just desperation.” “Excuse me?” “Well, you’ve been waiting for this girl for two months you said. It’s obvious she isn’t coming back.” “She could just be busy! There’s a religious war going on in Holgard right now! You know, we made love the last time I saw her!” “And? That probably was just a goodbye pity fuck. Look, I didn’t see how you two interacted and I’m only getting some of what you’re telling me, so I’m not going to say this girl didn’t have feelings for you, but its obvious she cares more about herself or at least her own life.” “You don’t know shit!” you snap. “Okay, look, whatever. I actually don’t care that much, but we still need to settle this issue with your pet manticore along with your snowman condition because both of them are going to fuck up my shit. The manticore can be settled easily since I can just kill the beast and be done with it. But you are a whole other problem.” “Wait a minute you can’t just kill my pet! And why the hell am I a problem, I don’t even go near Dert.” “Yeah, but your aura might. I mean from what little you’ve told me, your condition is getting worse and if that’s the case, the last thing I need is for it to freeze over Dert and cause all the peasants there to pick up and leave due to failed crops. It’s bad enough some are already talking about leaving due to the manticore attack. Others are even talking about hiring adventurers. Last thing I need is a group of fortune seekers stomping around the area and stumbling on my place of rest.” “I’m sure you’d be able to handle them.” “That’s not the damn point, my point is I like things peaceful and they can’t be, if there are certain elements in the area fucking everything up! So the way I see it, is you got two choices. You either leave, or I cure you.” Once again Isabella has given you a little surprise. “What? You can cure me? How?!” you ask. “Invite me in and I’ll show you.” Isabella responds with a smile. “Uh…no…things aren’t quite bad enough for me to want to commit suicide.” “Who said I was going to kill you? I’d make you into a vampire.” “Wait. Why? Would that work?” “Sure. The transformation process practically gives you a clean slate. I’d be very surprised if it didn’t work. As for why…well let’s just say why not?” “…I feel like there’s a catch…” “Well of course there’s a catch, I don’t just offer the gift to anyone. I’d require you to help me around the crypt as it were.” And there it is. “A slave. You want me to be your slave.” You say. “You wouldn’t be a slave, you’d be my…companion. You think your few years of no meaningful intimacy are bad? Come back when you’ve had a century or so of it. I just felt a pang of loss over a man that I practically loathed for decades. Now I know I’m moving in quick on you, but when you’ve been as solitary as I have, you tend to not let social rules dictate your actions. I’m offering not only a cure for your condition and immortality, but also a chance for you not to worry about having to be alone ever again. You can’t say you aren’t tempted. I still remember that night we had years ago. Look, I’ll be back in a couple nights. If you’re still here, then I’ll know you’ve accepted my offer. If you’re gone, I know you haven’t. And when I say I’ll be back in a couple nights, you can bet that I’ll mean it.” Isabella says and leaves. And once again you’re left alone with a big decision. You knew you were going to have to make one soon, but these events haven’t definitely given you more to think about. > You stay and accept the offer It’s not a perfect solution, in fact it might very well be worse, but you see no other option. Maybe you just don’t even care anymore. Ever since you left Teckleville, you’ve been confined somehow. Ral did it directly with the geas, then even in death he did it with this condition he forced upon you. Now it would appear Isabella is planning to do the same. She claims that you’ll be her companion, but you really don’t get the impression that you’ll be equal. Not really. Hell, maybe in some twisted way you want someone else giving the orders and that’s why you’re going to do this. But it doesn’t matter; you just can’t deal with being like this any longer. At least this way you’ll have someone on your side on a regular basis. Of course maybe you’re just deluding yourself and hoping for something that isn’t there. Just like you did when you waited for Heather. Again, it doesn’t matter, you’re going to go through with this plan because it’s the easiest way out. So you wait, and in the next two nights, you hear a knock on the door. You open it and as expected it’s her. “Well, given that you’re here, I’d say that means you’ve decided to take me up on my offer. I have to say, this pleases me and you will soon see just how lucky you are that I chose you. Now, if you’ll just invite me in, we can get to this, or you can step out here, if you prefer. Up to you.” Isabella says. “Might as well come in. My home is your home now.” “Indeed, but I’m sure you realize that we’ll be living at my superior home…however I suppose this isn’t a bad place to use as a surface dwelling of sorts. Always was curious about what it looked like inside. Though I’m guessing there wasn’t frost all over the place.” Isabella remarks as she enters and gives a brief glance around before turning to you. “So…are you ready to ascend a higher form of existence?” Isabella asks. “Um…yes…but I just have a question.” You say. “Of course. I can answer all your concerns about this process.” “It’s actually about Spikey.” “Oh?” “Well I was wondering what was going to happen with him.” “What did you want to happen to him?” “Well considering I’m going along with all this, I’d like to request that you not kill him. I mean as a vampire couldn’t you just charm the beast to not attack Dert?” “That doesn’t work forever. The beast could shake off the effects when it’s out in the wild at any time. I can’t be expected to keep up on it and before you volunteer to do it, you aren’t going to have the time either. Even if we managed to keep the beast from attacking the village, there’s still the issue that he’s probably killing all the wildlife in the area, which could actually have worse effects in the long run. He really doesn’t belong here.” “Is there nothing that can be done? I mean I get that you don’t have an attachment to him, but he did save my life once.” “Hmm, I can see that you’re more attached to this animal than I thought…very well I suppose I understand. There’s another solution, but you’re going to have to still be prepared to say goodbye to him.” “Why?” “Because we’ll take him some place else to live that’s why. We can make a trip out of it or something I suppose.” “Okay, I guess that’s reasonable. Thanks.” “Well I am the reasonable one. So, you ready?” “I guess as much as I’m going to be, now you’re sure this is going to work?” “I have no doubt that it won’t, now come to me and let me warm you up.” Isabella’s statement is more of a turn of a phrase considering her own undead ass is as cold as a grave, but then she probably is still warmer than you are. You approach Isabella who embraces you in her arms. She doesn’t flinch from your icy body and instead kisses you on your lips. You wish you weren’t so numb that you could actually enjoy this bit. Eventually she stops kissing you and her mouth roams a bit lower and to the side. This is it. You feel a sharp sensation enter your neck (which doesn’t cause you pain) followed by a draining one. Isabella herself is having a mildly difficult time sucking your blood, which is probably a little slushy due to your frosty condition, but she’s getting through it. Soon light headiness follows and then you’re starting to lose consciousness altogether. Just before you do though, Isabella stops feeding on you and then quickly bites herself on the wrist. Using the open wound, she pours some of her blood into your own mouth and a metallic taste hits your tongue and eventually slides down your throat. “You just made the best decision in your mortal life… now experience ascension.” Isabella remarks and then kisses you on the mouth again before finishing you off. Everything goes dark. You don’t know how much time passes, but when you wake up, you’re feeling quite different. You’re not breathing, and you’re hungry. You’re still cold, but now it’s changed. You’re no longer a walking glacier. It worked, but now what? And where are you? You look around and find that you’re no longer in your home. You’re lying on a stone floor for one thing. There’s no light, but you aren’t finding that to be a problem since now you have some sort of night vision. You also see two human figures shackled to the walls. They’re both naked and have their heads hanging down. You sense that they’re still alive, but they aren’t struggling so you can only assume they’re either so demoralized that don’t have the desire, or they’re under control in some way. “Good, right on time for you to be awake. So, how do you feel? Hungry I suspect. Well you can have one of those two on the wall, Don’t completely drain them though, I like to keep them around awhile, saves me from having to go out as often…though with you around now, I guess I hopefully won’t have to do that anymore at all.” Isabella remarks while standing in an entryway. You don’t say anything; you just slowly get up as you’re still feeling a little strange. Isabella goes over to help you. “Here, I got you. Let’s get you over to the food, you’ll feel much better I think after you eat. Don’t worry, it’s a very basic process, and I’ll guide you through it, then afterwards we can do some other things that are also very basic. I’m sure that will be fun for the both of us.” Isabella guides you over to the human wretch that’s chained up and tells you where to bite so you don’t just kill the person right away. She’s right of course, it is all very easy. Hell, you don’t even hesitate with doing it. Why you don’t is probably a combination of several factors. If anything you feel like you’re in a daze right now and Isabella is taking the lead. While its entirely possible that she’s got some sort of control over you, it’s more along the lines that you’re just perfectly willing to let her take the lead. She promised exactly what she said, she cured you. Why be ungrateful or defiant? Why fight what is now your nature, which is to feed on other living beings’ blood? You ultimately chose this, so you might as well embrace it. If this makes you completely “evil” now, you really don’t give a shit. You were dancing on the edge of it anyway, and that didn’t even work out very well. Maybe now that you’ve completely crossed over, maybe things will start going a lot better for you. The fact that you and Isabella soon have a round of passionate bloody vampire sex soon after you’re done feeding can only mean things are in fact improving for you… Right? > You time passes... Year 26 It’s amazing how things can be going fairly well for you, and you’ll still find shit to be dissatisfied about. What might be worse is the new nature of you “confinement.” It’s another gilded cage. (Or fancy crypt in this case.) While not much is ever demanded of you, Isabella definitely is treating you less than equal as you have to clean the crypt One thing you never knew about vampires is how they can become obsessed with the smallest details. Probably has to do with the enhanced senses. Isabella apparently is a neat freak and due to this quirk she spent most of her time rearranging, cleaning, and generally tidying up her home. An impossible task of course, but that didn’t stop her from trying. Even the room where she keeps the blood “donors” is kept clean and isn’t the slaughterhouse that one would expect it to be. She still cleans of course, but you’re doing most of it now. It’s really boring especially since you had to do this to a lesser degree at Ral’s and at least there, you were able to let it go for a week at times. Not to mention it’s fucking impossible to “clean” a vast underground crypt in the first place. About the only thing you don’t have to take care of is her underground garden, which is her own personal project that she spends a lot of time on. In fact, with you around now she doesn’t even have to leave it to get food much anymore. She just has you do that, which is sort of plus, since that’s one of two major things that break up the monotony. You initially would lure a citizen of Dert back to the crypt, but in time you started wandering a bit more and realized with all the bandits making hideouts in forest, you might as well give yourself a bit more of a challenge. Sometimes you will boldly face a group of them. The poor dumb bastards never realize they don’t have a chance and you proceed to tear them apart, satisfying your own hunger and leaving only one or two alive to bring back to Isabella. The second major thing would be your routine intimacy with Isabella. It’s a little odd, mainly because you’ve got mixed feelings on the emotional side of things. Isabella is very comfortable with the physical aspect, but in a lot of ways she’s still pretty distant. Makes a bit hard for you to return serious affection when you aren’t sure if you’re just there as a dick for her to use when she’s in the mood. While you don’t really have any real complaints about that aspect that might make this bit of “captivity” worse since it’s really difficult to complain when you’re getting quality sex thrown in your direction on a regular basis. But since you’re not totally whipped, you’re going to complain anyway. Not to mention you just need more to occupy your time. There has to be more than just feeding and fucking, especially since you’re supposed to be immortal now. Though you’d be lying if you weren’t worried, she IS vastly more powerful than you after all and can easily subvert your free will if she so desired. (She never has though) You wait for one of the rare moments that she isn’t in her private garden to speak with her since even after a year she still doesn’t allow you in there. “Oh, hello. Have you been waiting out here for me the whole time?” Isabella asks. “Sort of. Oh I brought back dinner. A couple of children from Dert this time. I know it’s risky since it causes more hysteria in the locals when kids go missing, but I was very careful and I figured you deserved something special.” You answer. “Mmm, you’re always so doting. Well, with your news and the fact I finally got my deathshade growing properly, I’m in a good mood tonight, so we can do that thing you always want to do to me after I eat.” “Uh, yeah that’s something to look forward to, but I was actually here to speak to you about something that’s been on my mind lately.” “Oh, okay then.” “Now I’m already prepared for you to say no, but I want to make my argument clear…” “Okay, so what is it?” “Don’t get mad…” “If you don’t hurry up and get to your point, I guarantee I’m going to start getting mad. Just fucking say it already!” “Okay! I want more freedom.” “I see…” “Now hold on, I don’t mean I want to leave you! I just…agh…I need more out of life, or unlife as it were.” “More? You have all you need. A home, a nearby food source, a beautiful companion by your side. I mean I’m not sure I understand.” “And that’s all great. Really it is. Probably better than I ever could have stumbled upon. It’s like…well okay here’s a good example. You have that garden. That garden that you love to spend all, occupying your free time when you have it. I mean you don’t even let me in there, so I’m assuming it’s something pretty special to you. I guess I’m saying I need my own garden. Not literally of course.” “Hmmm, I understand what you’re saying…I suppose I have just taken your happiness for granted.” “Don’t get me wrong, I am happy, I just need something more to do and no offense, but cleaning this crypt isn’t it.” “Hah, well I figured. I’d hoped that you would have developed a bit of an obsession for it like I somewhat did, but I imagine your servitude to Ral might have dampened that. Okay, so you’re basically saying you want a hobby, fine. But I wasn’t exactly stopping you from getting one. So what did you have in mind exactly?” Well so far this is going better than you thought, though Isabella’s question brings up the fact that perhaps you haven’t thought this entirely through. “I’m…I’m not exactly sure…I was sort of expecting you to be against it. Okay, well anyway I’ve been killing bandits in the forests. Lots of them actually.” You say. “I figured you must have found some other food source since you didn’t often eat here. So you have a bit of the bloodlust do you? That can happen with new vampires. As long as you don’t massacre Dert, I don’t care what you do.” Isabella responds. “I’m thinking I’d like to go to Holgard once in awhile.” “You haven’t before? Again, I assumed when you weren’t feeding much here, you might be nipping off to Holgard to eat.” “I sort of wasn’t sure if you wanted me to go that far.” “Sheesh, do I really come off of that controlling? Holgard isn’t that far. It’s not like you’re a lowly human anymore that is going to take forever and a day to walk there. With your speed, you could go there and be back before dawn. Hell, if you really needed to, it wouldn’t bother me if you stayed there for a few nights. Get it all out of your system. If culling a few extra humans to satisfy your bloodlust is what you need to do, well Holgard couldn’t be a better place to do it. It’s a crime-ridden city where murder occurs daily. You’d fit right in and never arouse suspicion.” “True, but it’s not just the killing, it’s I used to be a rogue before all this happened...and I’ve been thinking on those days I do miss them.” “So…what then? You want to go to Holgard to be a common thief?” “Well when you say it like that, it doesn’t sound as impressive. It’s more like I just wonder if my desire for it is still there or am I just missing something from a simpler time I guess.” “Weren’t you doing it during your time with Ral? I know he didn’t keep you on that short of a leash.” “Yes, but I was so miserable that I don’t think I ever really enjoyed it most of the time. About the only time I did, was when I was training…um…another…” Isabella’s eyebrow raises as you stop yourself from mentioning Lisa. You quickly change up the conversation a bit. “My point is, I haven’t really gotten to enjoy doing it since I left Teckleville. Actually even before that, since I started enjoying it less after my sister left. However, I feel like I should give it one more go to see if it really was something I liked doing, or maybe I just liked doing it with someone who was also interested in it.” “You actually may find such petty thievery much too easy now. After all you have powers that you didn’t have before.” “Perhaps, but I also can’t just break into any old house either not being invited and all.” “True, but that can be easily gotten around if you can charm the owner into letting you in. There are also public buildings of course like shops. In any case, if this is something you want to pursue, I’m not going to deny you your eccentricities. We all have our interests. I believe this may be left over longings for your old human life, which is natural for new vampires as well. I also think you’ll get bored eventually, but I leave you to work through it. Anyway, was that it?” “Um, yeah basically.” “Good, now I’m going to feed on these children you got me, and then we can do that other things. Fairly certain you aren’t going to go anywhere tonight.” Well she’s right about that. The next night you make your way to Holgard and it’s true, thanks to your supernatural speed you get there fairly quickly, you don’t even catch the attention of the guards outside the gate. You haven’t been here in so long; you never thought you’d actually miss it. Hasn’t really changed at all though there is one thing you’re noticing and that’s the fact the streets are practically empty. Its not even that late, usually there’s still more activity than this. You see the watch patrolling around, but they’re in groups much larger than you remember. They also tend to eye you very suspiciously. Granted you’re here for trouble, but you decide that it probably isn’t the best idea if you start off by murdering several Holgard Watchmen so you start avoiding said groups. It occurs to you that something here has changed drastically. Last time you heard any news of this place was Heather and she told you there was a war brewing between the religious factions. Maybe things have gotten worse? In any case you decide to eat first and head to the lower class districts where there are less patrols and probably easier to get a quick meal. You roam the streets, but it looks like even the lower elements have tried to set up some sort of safety plan during this uncertain time. Bums and the like are lingering together. Whores are as well and even performing their trade in groups. The worst part is instead of the Watch, there are Ebony Claw Syndicate members patrolling around and they’re probably even more diligent since some of the ECS are also Fel followers. You soon realize that you’re probably going to have to just enter a tavern and just lure someone away and get them in private or just risk the attention and wipe out a small group as quick as possible. Actually you’re keener on the second idea since you’re getting a bit impatient with how inconvenient this has been. Just as you’re turning a corner a man in a green robe literally runs into you. It’s enough to cause you to stagger since you weren’t paying attention, as you were lost in thought. The man himself is on the ground. He looks scared, but strangely not because of you. He keeps looking around. “By Yag, you’re a pale one. Wait… you a vampire?” the man asks. “Well there’s no point in me lying since you’re going to be my food soon.” You respond. “Yeah? Well we that follow Yag all know that eventually we can’t beat the odds forever. In fact tonight the odds were REALLY against me. Didn’t see it ending like this though, certainly wasn’t in the temple betting pool, hah! However I’d suggest you do it quickly before the Dornans get here. They see you and they’ll use you for spell components, that is if the Joachimites don’t get here first and just burn your undead ass.” The Yagite priest continues to look around, waiting for what you’re going to do, but it was always obvious. “Well guess I better follow your advice and make this quick then.” You say and pick up the man and bite his neck. He makes little resistance other than gasping out some last prayer to Yag. You haven’t been eating long when you’re interrupted. The Yag priest wasn’t kidding when he said someone would be here soon. “Yagite scum, you’ll pay for…wha…?” a female voice says. You look in the direction of the voice and snarl at being disturbed. You see a woman dressed in purple and blue robes and a couple of other members of her temple behind her. “Vampire!” one of them shouts and begins to cast something and you leap into action. “No, wait!” the female member says and backs away, but you and her subordinates aren’t listening. You head towards the acolyte that was attempting to cast a spell. After you easily put your fist through his chest, you feel flames at your back, which the other acolyte has cast at you. The flames hurt, but it isn’t nearly enough to save him, you’re just too quick and you rip out his throat. You savior the quick taste of blood before turning towards your last foe. “Stop! Stop! It’s me!” the woman continues to shout as she puts a shield up and that’s when your bloodlust subsides long enough to finally recognize who she is. It’s Heather. You certainly didn’t expect to run into her on your first night here. In the back of your head, you sort of had a concern that maybe if you ever did, it would stir up complicated feelings about her. However, at this moment the only thing you’re feeling is the desire to slash her open and drink her dry… > You stop your attack It takes everything within you, but you stop completely. Heather may not have been your girlfriend or even a friend in the traditional sense, but she was trying to help you once and her company however brief did comfort during that time. You can’t just forget all that. “Shit. Heather. Apologies. I…well as you can see, I’ve undergone a transformation since we last spoke.” You say. “What the hell happened? Are you…I mean you’re really a…” Heather starts to say. “Vampire? Yes. I found a cure to my other condition after all.” “But…how? I mean not only how did you know, how did you find a vampire that would do it without killing you outright?” “Let’s just say, fate sometimes finds a way of finding you and when it does, embrace it.” “Okay, but I mean this is a severe change and irreversible.” “It’s better than that cold condition I had. I don’t think you really know how unbearable that got.” “No, I suppose I never truly did. So…is this better then?” “For the most part, I mean I can never see the sun again, but then I never was a day person to begin with. Oh and I have to drink blood from others to survive.” “You have to kill them too?” “The two normally go hand in hand, but considering the types I’m often killing around here, I don’t think anyone is going to miss them.” “Well, I’m certainly going to miss my two acolytes.” “Apologies.” “You said that before. Doesn’t change the fact that they’re dead. ” “Well, my new condition gets a little intense sometimes. I get in this mode and I just…well you saw what happened. Though I stopped myself for you. That’s the important thing right?” “I…guess. Maybe I should go. I’m going to somehow explain how I got two members killed hunting one pathetic Yagite. Nevermind, take care I guess.” Heather backs off slowly from you, still keeping her shield up and her eyes on you the whole time. You almost want to stop her, but you realize that maybe this is for the best that she reacted in this way. Not wishing to attract any excessive attention with all the bodies around, you take your leave and head back home without bothering to engage in whatever roguish endeavors you originally were intending. As you make your way back home, you feel somewhat weird about the situation with Heather. You feel like it should be over and done with, but you can’t stop thinking about her. Why? Are you trying to hang on to some sort of “humanity?” Are you thinking about what could have been if things had been different? Do you think there still could be? You quickly dismiss all of these thoughts mainly because it’s stupidly suicidal to begin with. Isabella is your mate now and you really don’t have many complaints about her. She’s been more than understanding and helpful even if you don’t feel exactly “close” to her sometimes. Speaking of which, when you arrive back home, Isabella soon comes to greet you. It would seem Isabella decided to wait up for you for a change. You weren’t expecting her to. “Well that was quick. I at least expected you to stay out until dawn. Did you have fun stealing items and whatever else?” Isabella remarks. “I didn’t bother. I mostly ate and then got out of there.” You answer. “What happened?” “Just ran into a bit of unexpected resistance. Nothing I couldn’t handle though. The religious factions in Holgard are practically having open battle in the streets, so it’s making things a bit more chaotic than usual. Even the Joachimites have formed mobs to burn what they consider the unholy. Exciting though.” “Hm, interesting. So does this mean you’re not going back?” “Eh, not sure yet. I think I need to reassess.” “Well whatever you like dear. Come now, let’s lay together.” The next few days you stay away from Holgard and go back to hunting bandits and wanderers outside. During this time you think about how it’s probably silly of you to avoid Holgard just because of Heather. Holgard is a big city and while its certainly possible to run into her again, you’re confident that you don’t have any real feelings for her. It was just a brief bit of emotion brought on by your surprise to see her. Judging by her own reaction she’s probably never going to want to be near you if she can help it. Of course this does bring up the question of how you’ll react exactly if you DO see her again. You doubt if you’ll kill her though. A week passes and you’re back in Holgard. This time though, you decide to engage in some thievery rather than hunting. That was of course one of the things you were wondering if you’d be interested in doing again. You spend a few hours breaking into some jewelry stores with relative ease. Seems Isabella was right that you aren’t getting the same thrill from it like you used to. It’s just a little too easy and you suppose it’s just not the same as hunting down something and drinking its blood. Still, no point in discarding what you’ve got now. You’ve never known Isabella to wear jewelry (or anything else for that matter) but maybe she’ll appreciate the pretties all the same. As you’re sneaking back out of one of the stores, a familiar voice calls to you. “Got anything pretty for me in there? Gotta say, didn’t expect to find you ripping off some trinket store.” Heather remarks standing nearby. “Wha…Heather? What the hell are you doing here? Are you following me?” you ask. “Well somewhat. I’ve actually been looking for you for the past several days since I wanted to apologize for being so stand offish with you. “ “Oh. It’s fine, completely understandable.” You say getting ready to move on. “I’ve been casting detect undead regularly since that night just to apologize. I’m guessing since you haven’t back to the city for a while, our reunion was unexpected for you as well. Are you really okay? I mean sincerely?” “Yes, I’m fine. Just in a bit of a hurry, I just robbed this store and the rogue in me likes to leave the scene of a crime as soon as possible.” “Oh, right! Yeah, makes sense. Well can I come with you? I really would like to catch up with you. So much has happened and I besides how I acted last time, I sort of want to apologize for how we parted before that too.” Part of you really wants to say “No.” and just take off. A very small part of you feels like you should just kill her to avoid complications. However the largest part of you is the one that actually wants to talk with her like an idiot. Guess which one you follow? “Uh, okay fine. Just let’s go some place secluded.” You say. You waste no time leaving the area and soon you and Heather are in some empty non-descript dark alley. “Not exactly what I had in mind. I figured we’d go to one of the neutral taverns and talk.” Heather says. “I don’t like crowds, besides any petty thugs that stumble upon us are going to be up shit’s creek if they start trouble.” “I guess you got that one right, though I’d be more concerned with the ECS patrols given their Fel connections, but again I suppose we could take them. Anyway, how have you been?” Heather asks you in more detail about your vampirism, but you’re somewhat hazy on the details of the hows and whys. (And you certainly don’t mention Isabella) You get the impression Heather knows you’re hiding something, but decides not to press the issue, probably not wishing to potentially anger you. Instead of interrogating you all night long, she decides to talk about herself and what she’s been up to since you parted ways. Heather goes on to say that she’s risen in rank at her temple and is practically second in command only to Elder Flynn himself. Though whenever she mentions him you don’t get a tone of fondness. “Far be it from me to pry, but I get the strong impression you don’t like Elder Flynn anymore.” You say. “I…I don’t dislike him. It’s just…ugh. He’s been too passive in this war of the faith! He keeps wanting to play defensively when we should be going more on the attack! Dorna is the strongest goddess of all and while our temple may be one of the smallest in this city, we make up in quality! I’d put any of ours against ten Felians! And the temple of Fel are arguably our only true competition here mainly because there are so many.” Heather remarks. “What about the rest of the factions?” “Not even worth speaking of. The Yagites are practically finished here. The brainless followers of Karn will eventually follow. The Joachimites would be more of a challenge, but again, they only have numbers on their side and not even to the extent that the Felians have. They would fall as well. I believe we could crush all other factions and make a separate peace with the temple of Fel. It’s not ideal, but at least it would cut the competition down in the long run.” You always detected a bit of ambition in Heather even back when you were trading magic items for her help before. It would appear she’s only gotten more so. “Well, sounds like you’ve got your hands full.” You say. “Yes, I do and I don’t get adequate help to perform the tasks I really need to do. Bah, anyway, I don’t mean to unload my troubles on to you. I’m not even sure why I am. I guess it’s the act of a desperate woman.” Heather remarks. “Okay, you’ll have to explain that one a little more.” “ I suppose, I was hoping assuming you’re willing of course that you might help me.” “Help you do what exactly?” “Take down a rival faction.” “What, all by ourselves?” “I think we could do it! With your vampire powers and my magic abilities, I know for a fact that we could probably take out the Yagites or even Karnites!” “I dunno…this whole thing really isn’t my concern.” “Well, you like blood right? I mean you’d practically be bathing in it. And given what I saw of you with my acolytes, you definitely like killing. Unless you’re seriously telling me you like easily stealing from shops more.” “Can’t deny that. I do like killing and I do like blood. It’s just...” “For the love of Dorna! You can’t help me in the same way I tried to help you in the past? Have you forgotten so quickly of all the risks I took?” Heather says with a raised voice. She then realizes that she may have overstepped a boundary when your attitude becomes less cordial. “No, I haven’t forgotten. I also haven’t forgotten of how you just left me to save your own ass when things were getting too risky for you. I even suggested that we run away together, but no. Your faith was more important and that’s what you chose. Now, you’re seriously getting pissed at me for not wanting to get involved in your personal war that I don’t really give a shit about? I think YOU forget that you’re addressing a vampire. One who is close enough to drain you dry before you could even utter a single incantation to defend yourself right now. I haven’t even used my powers of suggestion on you to make you into my puppet and have you do what I want before ultimately disposing of you. And if I chose to do so, there would be no way for you to stop me. So don’t forget THAT.” Your firm reminder of who you are to Heather causes her to back off a bit. She even looks a bit embarrassed. “You’re right of course…I just…I know…” Heather immediately brandishes a small dagger. “What the hell are you doing?” you ask fully prepared to defend yourself. “I want to prove that my feelings for you, haven’t gone away. I’ve always thought fondly of our intimacy together that day. I’ve always felt saddened as well. Always wondering what might have been. I never dreamed that we could have another chance. But now with you back, maybe I thought we could try again. It won’t be easy, but I’m willing to take that step. I offer myself to you once again. You may do whatever you will to me. Ravish me here in this alley like a common whore, drink my blood until you’ve had your fill, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I trust you. Perhaps then, when you’ve had your way with me, you may find that part of you still has feelings for me as well. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have spared me at all.” Heather says and cuts her arm. She then thrusts the bleeding limb at you. Tempting you like this, is very risky on her part since it’s likely to just cause you to go into a feeding frenzy and kill her outright. However, perhaps she was right about you still having some feelings for her because you keep yourself in check and only take a little of her blood. Heather winces a bit, but when your mouth soon moves to her own she is enjoying it. You waste no time in turning her around and lifting up her robe and having your way roughly with her against the nearby wall. As you thrust inside her, you whisper in her ear. “Do you really desire my help?” “Yes. Do with me, as you like. Just help me crush my enemies in Dorna’s name.” “I’ll help you crush your enemies, but the only name you’ll be praising tonight is going to be mine.” You can sense her excitement, her fear, her tension, everything. Something about all this is really doing it for you as well. You’re totally dominating her and that’s even more exhilarating than just killing someone and drinking their blood. This isn’t even like having sex with Isabella either. This is something new you’re experiencing and you’re going to enjoy the hell out of it. You keep Heather quite during your intimacy by putting your hand over her mouth. Her stifled squeaks and your own reserved grunts are the only sound until your time is done with her. Heather takes a moment to catch her breath. She’s probably never quite been treated that way before. “That was…uh…(whew) I…” “A glimpse of things to come. Now, I’ll be back tomorrow night and we can continue with your plans. I’m sure you’ll find me again.” You respond. You leave Heather in the alley to collect herself and head home feeling a bit more positive about your trip to Holgard this time. When you get home Isabella is in her garden, you decide not to disturb her and get some early rest. You figure you’re going to have to save your strength for what you’ve gotten yourself into. > You time passes... Year 27 This religious war has been the most fun you’ve had in a long time. While you’ve mostly been taking advantage of the chaos that the city has been plaguing the city again, you have also been working along side Heather in her efforts to take down the other religious factions. Heather isn’t supposed to be engaging the other factions as much as she’s doing, since Elder Flynn was still against being so aggressive. However, she’s been openly arguing with him and convincing others members to follow her lead on this strategy. Since she’s a respected voice within her group, Elder Flynn has relented a bit. It’s mostly been directed towards the Yagites since she wants to make a concentrated effort on one group, but occasionally others are fought as well. However, she’s been keeping all dealings with you as close to the vest as possible. Whenever you work with her, it’s always just her and there are no other Dornans helping. You aren’t sure why, but then you’ve never bothered to ask. In any case, you’re just in this for the killing and fucking Heather mostly. Right now, you’re in the process of attacking the main temple of Yag. Their numbers have dwindled to a point where an attack wouldn’t be suicidal. Pathetically easy in fact as you face little resistance and soon leave Heather behind to “sweep up” the acolytes that pose no real challenge. You burst into the inner sanctum of Yag’s temple. Several followers busily attempt to call forth incantations in order to stop you, but the most damage one does is summon forth a bunch of butterflies to flutter in your face. The winds of their “luck magic” are blowing the wrong way constantly. Yag either isn’t listening, doesn’t give a shit or is finding it all pretty amusing. Either way, the advantage is yours. You rip into three members and then two more before you’re half way across the room. The Yagite high priest is busily rolling dice on his altar (which resembles more of a craps table) Every now and then he looks up at you, but continues to roll his dice, cursing the entire time. Eventually you reach him and just as you grab him he manages to roll one last time. You both see the results and its snake eyes. “Looks like you lose.” You say. “We’ve been losing for quite some time now. Tried to bet big, but it’s all come to this. Such is the way of Yag.” The high priest says “You Yagites are very odd, you certainly don’t want to die, but the few that I have ever spoken with always have a resigned fate when the time comes.” “Well there’s no point in fighting fate son. When your numbers don’t come up, there’s nothing that can be done about it. We had a good run here in Holgard, but I guess the odds were more against us than we thought. I got one question for you though. What the hell do you have against us? We don’t hunt vampires. We don’t hunt anything. I’d think you’d be after the Joachimites more than us…or are we just an easier target? You the Dornans pet vampire or what? You know those assholes will eventually dispose of you too.” “I’m nobody’s fucking pet!” you snap and start to crush the high priest’s windpipe. Heather walks in and you turn to look at her. “Don’t kill him yet, I need to interrogate him first!” Heather shouts. You drop the high priest to the floor. He coughs a bit and then begins to struggle to laugh. “What’s so fucking funny?” you ask. “Yeah, sure. You’re nobody’s pet.” The high priest laughs. This small act of disrespect is enough for you to kick him in the face, putting your foot partially through it killing him instantly. “What the fuck!? I told you I wanted him alive to interrogate! The Yagites might be broken by this, but they could have hideouts still in the city somewhere! He probably could have revealed other information as well!” Heather scolds. “Heather, I think you’re forgetting who you’re talking to again.” You remark. “Yeah, I know who I’m talking to, and YOU’RE supposed to be following my lead on these matters!” “I did.” You suddenly grab Heather, lift her robe up and bend her over the altar. Doesn’t take long before you’ve established your dominance again. It’s a common routine for the pair of you at this point. You both enjoy it. After you’re done, you’re ready to move on, but of course Heather isn’t done with you yet. “Where are you going?” Heather asks. “I helped you wipe out this temple and I fucked you. My job is done for the night.” “Well, you don’t need to leave so damn quickly. I want to make plans for our next major endeavor.” “Fine, but make it quick and we probably shouldn’t stick around in a temple full of dead priests.” You and Heather take your leave of the temple and find a secluded spot to talk about your next moves. Or at least Heather is, you’re just listening. “Okay, I think our next move should focus on the Joachimites.” Heather remarks. “I figured you’d say the Karnite since they’re few in number.” You say. “I would, but I believe the Felians are in the process of wiping them out. No need to get in their way and no need to waste time on something someone else is doing anyway. Joachimites are a big problem though and I figure you being a vampire and all, you’d enjoy taking them out all the more.” “I’m actually indifferent. All these mortals are just blood bags to me. Whether they have some irrational hate for me or not is irrelevant since I’m killing them anyway.” “Well I suppose that’s one way to look at it. Um, it might take awhile for me to call on your help though on this. I need to talk this over with my brothers and sisters and get them on board with this too. Elder Flynn was eventually fine with wiping out the Yagites, might be harder to convince him about the Joachim fanatics though.” “Sure, whatever. I’ll just be stalking the streets like I normally do. Maybe I’ll bump into a Joachimite from time to time to give us less to worry about in future battles with them.” “Yeah about that, I was sort of wondering if you could take a break from the city for awhile. Like maybe a few months or so.” “Excuse me?” “Our relationship is getting a bit harder to hide from the rest of my brethren.” “So, what difference does it make? I thought you lot weren’t supernatural hating fanatics.” “We aren’t, but you don’t understand. If they knew I had a vampire helping me, it would cause unnecessary complications.” “Oh come on, I can’t imagine that your people don’t know at all about me already.” “They don’t actually. If they did, I probably would have been confronted already, especially by Elder Flynn. He’d be asking WHY I had not been sharing you with the rest as a valuable resource.” “Resource?” “Yes resource. To most of them, you wouldn’t be looked upon as an individual, but rather a weapon to be used to the fullest degree.” “Well isn’t that what you’re sort of doing?” “I am not! Our relationship is more than that! Or at least I thought it was, do you feel differently?” “I’m not getting into this again.” You say. “Well maybe we should, because lately I feel like you don’t appreciate ALL the risks I take to keep us together! This is like when I was visiting you during your cold curse all over again!” And this was something you were trying to avoid. Heather has an uncanny knack of turning everything around to make it all about herself and be overly dramatic about it as well. While Heather goes into a tirade about how much she’s sacrificing for your relationship, you don’t even bother sticking around, you just leave. You don’t have to listen to this, because you’ve heard it all before, and at this point you’re sort of wondering WHY you’re still putting up with it. You guess you have enough fondness for Heather that you don’t want to kill her, but you’re starting to get the real impression that she’s not really relationship material either. Sure she’s masochistic enough to put up with your own power trip bullshit, but you could probably just charm some random mortal if you really wanted to do that with significantly less hassle. And it’s apparent she feeds off of it in some weird way. Maybe she’s a vampire too in her own fashion. In any case, you head back home. You start to think maybe you haven’t been appreciating Isabella as much as you should be. Sure, she’s a bit condescending at times when she disapproves of something you’ve done, but she’s centuries old. Of course she’s going to be like that. If anything she’s very tolerant of you. In fact she’s helped you more than Heather ever has and unlike Heather she can keep up the pace in the bedroom. Why the hell have you even been cheating on her again? Because you’re an idiot that still doesn’t know what the hell you want. Makes sense you suppose. Your life has been fairly off track ever since you left Teckleville and you’ve been fumbling around ever since. That changes after tonight. You’re going to go home and reaffirm your dedication to Isabella. Especially since you also realize that despite having been with her for a couple years, you still don’t know much about her own past. Well at least you thought you were. Isabella as it turned out had other plans. As soon as you walk into the crypt you find Isabella waiting for you to tell you that you’re leaving. “You’re kicking me out?!” you exclaim. “Considering that it’s almost dawn, you’ll be able to stay here until tomorrow night, but as soon as the sun goes down, I want you out of here.” Isabella says. “But can’t we talk about this?!” “No. You’ve had MORE than enough time to talk about what’s going on with you, yet you’ve chosen to try to hide your actions. It’s obvious that you have some human whore on the side. Mind you, I didn’t even care at first…even assumed you’d probably stray from time to time. Most likely fucking your prey before you killed them. However I’ve detected the same familiar scent on you for months now. Obviously it’s same the woman.” “Wait, you knew?” “Of course I knew. I’m not an idiot. Or did you not notice that I stopped sharing the bed with you months ago?” “I just figured you were really into your garden.” “Hm, well if you had any concern, you would have known I was sleeping in there. In any case, I figured I’d still give you some time to either confess or even better, eventually get bored enough to kill her, but given I can still smell the stench of her on you even tonight, I’m guessing you haven’t done that.” “Isabella, you’re so damn aloof towards me that I don’t even know if you care whether I’m here or not most of the time. I mean if we didn’t fuck, we might as well just be cryptmates. You never talk to me about yourself, and I’m not mind reader, I mean if I had known that me seeing Heather was…” “Heather? Is that its name then? Tell me, what exactly is so special about this woman that she’s gotten so much of your attention?” You explain as short as possible of your odd long-term relationship with Heather. To Isabella’s credit, she listens without anger and doesn’t interrupt. “I see. Well, I suppose then it does make a little more sense. Here I was thinking it was some random pretty face, however I’m somewhat relieved to hear that there was at least some deeper reasoning behind it all. Perhaps this is the woman for you after all.” Isabella says. “What? No! In fact I was just coming over here to reaffirm my love for you! Heather isn’t the one for me!” you remark. “Isn’t she? Seems like you’ve been spending more time helping her in her tasks than what would be normal. You obviously have fondness for this girl. And you’re right, you don’t really know me that well at all. Perhaps some of that is my fault. Decades of being alone tend to make one reclusive even to those that you have feelings for, but as I said, I was always here and you could have made the effort.” “But I’m making it now! I love you!” “No. No you don’t. You had a fight with your girlfriend because she’s demanding something that you don’t want to do so you’re going for the easy way out, by falling back on me. Well, that’s not how relationships work. You sometimes have to do shit you don’t want to do rather than running off at the first sign of trouble.” Isabella approaches you with a smile and touches your face. “Now maybe it IS a case that you don’t love this Heather and have decided that she isn’t for you, but in any case you don’t love me and I don’t really love you either. I was just lonely and liked you well enough that I thought you might fulfill that gap and you did, for a while at least. You’re a free vampire and I’ve told you all the basics of what this life is like. Anything else, you’ll have to figure out yourself. Take care okay?” Isabella, without another word turns to leave you. You decide to make a last ditch effort and put your hand on her shoulder. She spins around so quick that you’re on the floor from a punch to the face before you realize it. “What the fuck!? I was just going to kiss you!” you exclaim holding your face in pain. “And I told you it was over and I meant it. This isn’t going to be one of those rewritten happy endings in a children’s fairy tale where the man kisses the girl and everything is all better again.” Isabella says. “Obviously not…shit…” As Isabella leaves you on the floor to ponder your misguided judgment of how she really feels about you, you also ponder what you’re going to do when you get up tomorrow night. It’s too much to think about right now so you just go to bed. The next night, you gather your meager belongings and leave the crypt as quickly as you can. No sign of Isabella, you assume she’s in her garden, but you don’t want to be around for her to see you again anyway. You aren’t sure where to go. Your first instinct is to just go to Holgard. Heather told you not to, but why the hell do you really need to listen to her for? Actually you still haven’t sorted out all your feelings about that relationship yet either. Isabella might have had it right in that you were just running away from Heather because you didn’t want to do what she said. Maybe you could talk with her though. Sure, she’s a bit dramatic at times, but she’s usually willing to listen. She has taken risks for you, so that is worth considering. Of course part of you just wants to say “fuck it” and leave this area entirely. Seems like nothing good has come of it ever since you left Teckleville. > You go to Holgard You might as well go back to Holgard and stay there until you figure out your next major move. No real reason to leave considering the plentiful food source. You can probably make a home in one of the tombs in their graveyard in the meantime. Not to mention you’re loathed to leave just because Heather doesn’t want you around for a while. You can’t believe the nerve of her. She’s pretty annoying at times, if she were anyone else, you wouldn’t be putting up with it, but since you are, Isabella might have been correct in thinking you must have stronger attachment to her than you even let on. In any case, you make your way back to Holgard and kill a few whores before ultimately fixing up a suitable tomb for yourself. Over the course of a few weeks you take the opportunity to hunt down a few Joachimites that are stupid enough to wander in smaller groups just so you don’t have to deal with as many of the fanatics in the future. You aren’t terribly surprised when you eventually get a visit from Heather. “Hello? You awake? I know you’re in here.” You hear Heather say as she steps inside the tomb. “Yeah, now I’m awake! Close the fucking door, you’re letting the daylight in!” you shout from inside your stone coffin. When you hear the door close, you slide the slab open and sit up. “What the hell do you want? I’m trying to get some rest, you couldn’t have come around night instead of the middle of the fucking day?” you say. “You probably wouldn’t have been home, what with you massacring Joachimites and all.” Heather says. “Probably not. Let me guess, you’re here to bitch at me for being here at all.” “Well, I sort of know that would be pointless since you obviously aren’t going to listen. In fact I sort of figured after our last talk, you’d be here more often anyway. So are you living in the city now? I thought you lived somewhere outside of it.” “Yeah, things have changed since our last talk, so I’m living here now. You mad about that too?” Heather shakes her head and sighs. “Stop being an asshole for a moment, I’m trying to tell you that I don’t care. I realize that I shouldn’t have tried to tell you what to do. I apologize. I’m just really stressed about everything on my mind lately.” “Hm, well I guess you did have your reasons. Honestly though, I don’t understand why you haven’t just killed the old bastard yet. I mean that IS what your end game ultimately is right? Take over the temple along with having it be one of the two remaining religions in this city?” “Yes…but I really don’t like it. Elder Flynn has been like a father to me. I mean in the eyes of Dorna, he basically IS my father in some ways. I really didn’t want it to come to this, but his path to not the right one for the future of our temple. Dorna is a goddess that deserves more attention and respect. We won’t get that if we remain as we are.” “Well not everyone has the ability to be a wizard, let alone the discipline or talent.” “True, but that doesn’t mean the non-magical people can’t pay their respects. Dorna is also a goddess of knowledge. It’s very sad that so many are content on remaining ignorant.” “The fools have got to have their fun.” “Be that as it may. Deposing Elder Flynn is not going to be easy. I really need to make sure I have everyone on my side in the temple first and I do mean everyone. Best way to do that is convince them that my way is working and honestly your recent activity has been helping rather than hurting.” “Well of course it is, I’m killing the opposition.” “Yes, but I had feared that it might cause unwanted attention before I had time to organize and talk to my brethren first. However, most of them haven’t needed much convincing. I think wiping out the Yagites has caused a domino effect and many are willing to follow my plans.” “What about Elder Flynn?” “Well that’s the other thing. He’s been in meditation for a week now. Granted he’s been known to disappear like that anyway, but the fact that he’s withdrawn for so long during this time is strange. Though it’s another reason why your actions haven’t bothered me. Elder Flynn hasn’t been focusing on outside activities.” “So why not kill him now? Sounds like you’ve got this already wrapped up.” “Again, not so simple. Plus, he’s in meditation, which means he’s currently got magic shields and such around him. He’d also be at his most powerful since he’s been storing up energy.” “I dunno, I think you’re hesitating and overthinking this shit. I say the longer you wait, the worse the harder it’s going to be.” “I know…that’s why I want you to help when the time comes.” “Me? You’re the one with all the magic friends and defenses!” “You’ve already had experience killing one powerful wizard right?” “Yes, but that was sheer luck when I really think about it. And I had help.” “And you’ll have even more help when the time comes. I’ll still be there, along with the rest of the temple!” Heather approaches closer and leans into your chest while staring into your eyes. “Please I just really need your direct support on this. I know we’ve been having our problems lately, and I know you’ve been going above and beyond. But I really feel like we have something special. If I didn’t believe we did, I would have never given myself so willingly to you. I feel like your strength and ruthlessness of what needs to be done will make me less likely to waver in this task.” You look at Heather and see the hopeful desperation in her eyes. You also see her dedication to you. You suppose it is true. Despite all your problems, the pair of you do have a lovers bond and you could do worse than Heather. (And you don’t just think that because Isabella isn’t in your life anymore) “Okay, I’ll help you directly on this, but if we’re going to do this, it needs to be done as soon as possible. I’m ready to go now and do it for example.” You say. “Oh no, not right now. I still should organize more.” Heather remarks. “Look Heather, the old bastard needs to die if you really want to take over. That’s all there is to it. You have to put your sentimentality aside. Now I’ve already agreed to help, but you NEED to play your part.” “I will! I will! I just really need to set things in motion and solidify alliances. Give me at least a couple days, okay? Whether everything is good or not, we’ll go through it.” “Very well. So, where are attacking tonight? I assume you’ve got a group of Joachimite fanatics in mind.” “Hm, maybe you should save your strength and just relax with a good meal. In fact maybe you should have little magic with your meal, then afterwards you can satisfy your other appetites. “ Heather cuts herself for you and you indulge in her blood without another word. After you’ve had enough, you proceed to take her up on her other offer. The next few nights are uneventful for you and you go for easier prey since you keep in mind of what you’re going to be up against soon. You just hope Heather actually goes through with it and doesn’t come back to you in saying something like “Um…I think we need to wait some more…” She shows up after three days have passed. “There you are, glad to see it only took you one extra day.” You say. “There were some complications.” Heather remarks nervously. “Hm…you seem very nervous. I do hope you aren’t going to tell me you need more time.” “No, tonight is the night. I’ve managed to convince most of my brethren to side with me either directly or at least look the other way. Elder Flynn himself has finally left his meditation. He’s not going to go down without a fight, but I believe we’ll be able to take him.” “That’s good to hear, but you still seem really nervous.” “Of course I’m nervous! This is a winner take all gamble and on top of never facing someone so powerful, I’m also facing a man I used to respect. (Sigh) Well like you said, best to just get it over with, stand still.” “What for?” “I’m going to cast protective magic on you. You might be supernatural, but if you go in without any protection, Elder Flynn is going to just incinerate you with a beam of light.” “Oh. Well okay, anything that will help then.” Heather mumbles some prayers to Dorna and casts something over you and you’re bathed in some sort of blue light temporarily. It lasts a few seconds and then disappears. After casting the spell, Heather seems a bit calmer. “Okay, that should do it. How do you feel?” “I don’t feel any different, is it working?” “Yes, if you felt something then something would be wrong. Okay, let’s go do this dark task. We’re going back to the temple. Those that are in on the plan will be there, along with Elder Flynn.” “Nothing like killing a man in his own home, let’s go.” You and Heather make haste to the temple of Dorna and when you arrive a group of young acolytes stand around outside. One of them approaches Heather. “Sister, you’re here. All of us here are ready to follow your lead. Those that do not wish to take part have left and will not stand in your way.” The young priest says. “Understandable. This is grim business. There will be no retribution upon them afterwards.” Heather remarks. “Understood…is this the vampire?” the priest says looking at you a bit anxiously. Before you can say anything Heather speaks quickly. “Yes, and he’s already been informed and will help us.” “Very well, Elder Flynn is in the summoning chamber. I believe he’s engrossed in an experiment of some sort. He doesn’t know or suspect anything.” “Good, then I guess the best thing to do would be to just rush in there and take him by surprise.” You, Heather and all her little friends enter the temple. Heather takes lead and after walking down a few corridors you all come to a solid ornate double door. “Okay, this is it.” Heather remarks and exhales. “Let’s do it.” You say and open up the doors. At this point you take the lead. Your hope is that you’ll be so quick that this will be over before anyone realizes it. You see an old man at a bunch of tables with various alchemy equipment on them at the far end of the room. You’re already half way across it before he turns around. Then just as you get almost within range of him, you suddenly freeze in place with a wave of his hand. At this moment you’d say “Shit!” but you can’t speak either. You think that at least Heather and the rest will come in to help you, but after a few seconds of no sounds of shouting or orders, you realize this situation is even worse. Elder Flynn is noticing that you’re realizing that too. “What’s wrong vampire? Have you finally realized that you’ve been played like a like a cheap lute? I knew Sister Heather’s ambitions long ago. While she did her best to try to keep things secret from me, she should have known that Dorna favors the most knowledgable and wise and in this case, that’s me.” Elder Flynn waves his hand a bit more and after a few moments you see out of the corner of your eye, Heather levitating slightly off the floor and then being slowly placed back on it. She’s frozen as well. “The rest of you hanging about the door over there can leave. You’ve played your part, get back to your studies or whatever tasks you need to do. And close the door too.” Flynn remarks and you soon hear the sound of the doors close behind you. Now it’s just the three of you alone. Elder Flynn walks over to Heather. “I looked upon you as a daughter, do you know that? Even though I knew you sought to one day replace me, I had hoped that you would at least be smart about it. Such a waste. You are going to severely pay for your treachery girl. I can’t describe just how much, but you’ll soon experience it for yourself.” Elder Flynn then walks over to you. “You on the other hand I suppose are an unwitting pawn in all this. Barely more intelligent than a zombie servant. Fitting, considering you’re little better than one. Vampires are always such slaves to their base needs and yours have lead you to this fate. Take solace in the fact that you won’t have to see your little girlfriend suffer, but I will be using your ashes in an interesting spell I have in store for her.” You want to attack, yell, bite, scream, and rip apart Flynn, but all your anger is impotent in your current frozen state. Then it’s gone when Flynn casts a strong beam of light which incinerates you quickly, though not quick enough for you not to feel the pain before you die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 27 This religious war has been the most fun you’ve had in a long time. While you’ve mostly been taking advantage of the chaos that the city has been plaguing the city again, you have also been working along side Heather in her efforts to take down the other religious factions. Heather isn’t supposed to be engaging the other factions as much as she’s doing, since Elder Flynn was still against being so aggressive. However, she’s been openly arguing with him and convincing others members to follow her lead on this strategy. Since she’s a respected voice within her group, Elder Flynn has relented a bit. It’s mostly been directed towards the Yagites since she wants to make a concentrated effort on one group, but occasionally others are fought as well. However, she’s been keeping all dealings with you as close to the vest as possible. Whenever you work with her, it’s always just her and there are no other Dornans helping. You aren’t sure why, but then you’ve never bothered to ask. In any case, you’re just in this for the killing and fucking Heather mostly. Right now, you’re in the process of attacking the main temple of Yag. Their numbers have dwindled to a point where an attack wouldn’t be suicidal. Pathetically easy in fact as you face little resistance and soon leave Heather behind to “sweep up” the acolytes that pose no real challenge. You burst into the inner sanctum of Yag’s temple. Several followers busily attempt to call forth incantations in order to stop you, but the most damage one does is summon forth a bunch of butterflies to flutter in your face. The winds of their “luck magic” are blowing the wrong way constantly. Yag either isn’t listening, doesn’t give a shit or is finding it all pretty amusing. Either way, the advantage is yours. You rip into three members and then two more before you’re half way across the room. The Yagite high priest is busily rolling dice on his altar (which resembles more of a craps table) Every now and then he looks up at you, but continues to roll his dice, cursing the entire time. Eventually you reach him and just as you grab him he manages to roll one last time. You both see the results and its snake eyes. “Looks like you lose.” You say. “We’ve been losing for quite some time now. Tried to bet big, but it’s all come to this. Such is the way of Yag.” The high priest says “You Yagites are very odd, you certainly don’t want to die, but the few that I have ever spoken with always have a resigned fate when the time comes.” “Well there’s no point in fighting fate son. When your numbers don’t come up, there’s nothing that can be done about it. We had a good run here in Holgard, but I guess the odds were more against us than we thought. I got one question for you though. What the hell do you have against us? We don’t hunt vampires. We don’t hunt anything. I’d think you’d be after the Joachimites more than us…or are we just an easier target? You the Dornans pet vampire or what? You know those assholes will eventually dispose of you too.” “I’m nobody’s fucking pet!” you snap and start to crush the high priest’s windpipe. Heather walks in and you turn to look at her. “Don’t kill him yet, I need to interrogate him first!” Heather shouts. You drop the high priest to the floor. He coughs a bit and then begins to struggle to laugh. “What’s so fucking funny?” you ask. “Yeah, sure. You’re nobody’s pet.” The high priest laughs. This small act of disrespect is enough for you to kick him in the face, putting your foot partially through it killing him instantly. “What the fuck!? I told you I wanted him alive to interrogate! The Yagites might be broken by this, but they could have hideouts still in the city somewhere! He probably could have revealed other information as well!” Heather scolds. “Heather, I think you’re forgetting who you’re talking to again.” You remark. “Yeah, I know who I’m talking to, and YOU’RE supposed to be following my lead on these matters!” “I did.” You suddenly grab Heather, lift her robe up and bend her over the altar. Doesn’t take long before you’ve established your dominance again. It’s a common routine for the pair of you at this point. You both enjoy it. After you’re done, you’re ready to move on, but of course Heather isn’t done with you yet. “Where are you going?” Heather asks. “I helped you wipe out this temple and I fucked you. My job is done for the night.” “Well, you don’t need to leave so damn quickly. I want to make plans for our next major endeavor.” “Fine, but make it quick and we probably shouldn’t stick around in a temple full of dead priests.” You and Heather take your leave of the temple and find a secluded spot to talk about your next moves. Or at least Heather is, you’re just listening. “Okay, I think our next move should focus on the Joachimites.” Heather remarks. “I figured you’d say the Karnite since they’re few in number.” You say. “I would, but I believe the Felians are in the process of wiping them out. No need to get in their way and no need to waste time on something someone else is doing anyway. Joachimites are a big problem though and I figure you being a vampire and all, you’d enjoy taking them out all the more.” “I’m actually indifferent. All these mortals are just blood bags to me. Whether they have some irrational hate for me or not is irrelevant since I’m killing them anyway.” “Well I suppose that’s one way to look at it. Um, it might take awhile for me to call on your help though on this. I need to talk this over with my brothers and sisters and get them on board with this too. Elder Flynn was eventually fine with wiping out the Yagites, might be harder to convince him about the Joachim fanatics though.” “Sure, whatever. I’ll just be stalking the streets like I normally do. Maybe I’ll bump into a Joachimite from time to time to give us less to worry about in future battles with them.” “Yeah about that, I was sort of wondering if you could take a break from the city for awhile. Like maybe a few months or so.” “Excuse me?” “Our relationship is getting a bit harder to hide from the rest of my brethren.” “So, what difference does it make? I thought you lot weren’t supernatural hating fanatics.” “We aren’t, but you don’t understand. If they knew I had a vampire helping me, it would cause unnecessary complications.” “Oh come on, I can’t imagine that your people don’t know at all about me already.” “They don’t actually. If they did, I probably would have been confronted already, especially by Elder Flynn. He’d be asking WHY I had not been sharing you with the rest as a valuable resource.” “Resource?” “Yes resource. To most of them, you wouldn’t be looked upon as an individual, but rather a weapon to be used to the fullest degree.” “Well isn’t that what you’re sort of doing?” “I am not! Our relationship is more than that! Or at least I thought it was, do you feel differently?” “I’m not getting into this again.” You say. “Well maybe we should, because lately I feel like you don’t appreciate ALL the risks I take to keep us together! This is like when I was visiting you during your cold curse all over again!” And this was something you were trying to avoid. Heather has an uncanny knack of turning everything around to make it all about herself and be overly dramatic about it as well. While Heather goes into a tirade about how much she’s sacrificing for your relationship, you don’t even bother sticking around, you just leave. You don’t have to listen to this, because you’ve heard it all before, and at this point you’re sort of wondering WHY you’re still putting up with it. You guess you have enough fondness for Heather that you don’t want to kill her, but you’re starting to get the real impression that she’s not really relationship material either. Sure she’s masochistic enough to put up with your own power trip bullshit, but you could probably just charm some random mortal if you really wanted to do that with significantly less hassle. And it’s apparent she feeds off of it in some weird way. Maybe she’s a vampire too in her own fashion. In any case, you head back home. You start to think maybe you haven’t been appreciating Isabella as much as you should be. Sure, she’s a bit condescending at times when she disapproves of something you’ve done, but she’s centuries old. Of course she’s going to be like that. If anything she’s very tolerant of you. In fact she’s helped you more than Heather ever has and unlike Heather she can keep up the pace in the bedroom. Why the hell have you even been cheating on her again? Because you’re an idiot that still doesn’t know what the hell you want. Makes sense you suppose. Your life has been fairly off track ever since you left Teckleville and you’ve been fumbling around ever since. That changes after tonight. You’re going to go home and reaffirm your dedication to Isabella. Especially since you also realize that despite having been with her for a couple years, you still don’t know much about her own past. Well at least you thought you were. Isabella as it turned out had other plans. As soon as you walk into the crypt you find Isabella waiting for you to tell you that you’re leaving. “You’re kicking me out?!” you exclaim. “Considering that it’s almost dawn, you’ll be able to stay here until tomorrow night, but as soon as the sun goes down, I want you out of here.” Isabella says. “But can’t we talk about this?!” “No. You’ve had MORE than enough time to talk about what’s going on with you, yet you’ve chosen to try to hide your actions. It’s obvious that you have some human whore on the side. Mind you, I didn’t even care at first…even assumed you’d probably stray from time to time. Most likely fucking your prey before you killed them. However I’ve detected the same familiar scent on you for months now. Obviously it’s same the woman.” “Wait, you knew?” “Of course I knew. I’m not an idiot. Or did you not notice that I stopped sharing the bed with you months ago?” “I just figured you were really into your garden.” “Hm, well if you had any concern, you would have known I was sleeping in there. In any case, I figured I’d still give you some time to either confess or even better, eventually get bored enough to kill her, but given I can still smell the stench of her on you even tonight, I’m guessing you haven’t done that.” “Isabella, you’re so damn aloof towards me that I don’t even know if you care whether I’m here or not most of the time. I mean if we didn’t fuck, we might as well just be cryptmates. You never talk to me about yourself, and I’m not mind reader, I mean if I had known that me seeing Heather was…” “Heather? Is that its name then? Tell me, what exactly is so special about this woman that she’s gotten so much of your attention?” You explain as short as possible of your odd long-term relationship with Heather. To Isabella’s credit, she listens without anger and doesn’t interrupt. “I see. Well, I suppose then it does make a little more sense. Here I was thinking it was some random pretty face, however I’m somewhat relieved to hear that there was at least some deeper reasoning behind it all. Perhaps this is the woman for you after all.” Isabella says. “What? No! In fact I was just coming over here to reaffirm my love for you! Heather isn’t the one for me!” you remark. “Isn’t she? Seems like you’ve been spending more time helping her in her tasks than what would be normal. You obviously have fondness for this girl. And you’re right, you don’t really know me that well at all. Perhaps some of that is my fault. Decades of being alone tend to make one reclusive even to those that you have feelings for, but as I said, I was always here and you could have made the effort.” “But I’m making it now! I love you!” “No. No you don’t. You had a fight with your girlfriend because she’s demanding something that you don’t want to do so you’re going for the easy way out, by falling back on me. Well, that’s not how relationships work. You sometimes have to do shit you don’t want to do rather than running off at the first sign of trouble.” Isabella approaches you with a smile and touches your face. “Now maybe it IS a case that you don’t love this Heather and have decided that she isn’t for you, but in any case you don’t love me and I don’t really love you either. I was just lonely and liked you well enough that I thought you might fulfill that gap and you did, for a while at least. You’re a free vampire and I’ve told you all the basics of what this life is like. Anything else, you’ll have to figure out yourself. Take care okay?” Isabella, without another word turns to leave you. You decide to make a last ditch effort and put your hand on her shoulder. She spins around so quick that you’re on the floor from a punch to the face before you realize it. “What the fuck!? I was just going to kiss you!” you exclaim holding your face in pain. “And I told you it was over and I meant it. This isn’t going to be one of those rewritten happy endings in a children’s fairy tale where the man kisses the girl and everything is all better again.” Isabella says. “Obviously not…shit…” As Isabella leaves you on the floor to ponder your misguided judgment of how she really feels about you, you also ponder what you’re going to do when you get up tomorrow night. It’s too much to think about right now so you just go to bed. The next night, you gather your meager belongings and leave the crypt as quickly as you can. No sign of Isabella, you assume she’s in her garden, but you don’t want to be around for her to see you again anyway. You aren’t sure where to go. Your first instinct is to just go to Holgard. Heather told you not to, but why the hell do you really need to listen to her for? Actually you still haven’t sorted out all your feelings about that relationship yet either. Isabella might have had it right in that you were just running away from Heather because you didn’t want to do what she said. Maybe you could talk with her though. Sure, she’s a bit dramatic at times, but she’s usually willing to listen. She has taken risks for you, so that is worth considering. Of course part of you just wants to say “fuck it” and leave this area entirely. Seems like nothing good has come of it ever since you left Teckleville. > You leave Maybe Isabella throwing you out is a good thing. While you were officially “free” you never really felt that way since you always sort of felt indebted to her. Hell, maybe that’s why you started your relationship with Heather in the first place. You sub-consciously wanted to get caught…though that was a pretty stupid way to go about it. Isabella could have easily been so pissed at you that she killed you. However as it turned out luck favored the foolish, which is ironic considering you just recently had a hand in slaughtering a temple of Yag. In any case, you realize that with nothing tying you to this area anymore, you might as well just leave. You don’t have any real feelings for Heather, and she’s already made it clear your presence there is inconvenient. You’ve also long since lost interest in Holgard and you can go hunt for blood anywhere. You’ve never been, but you decide to head towards the Delantium Kingdom. Should be big enough for you to thrive in and better yet, nobody to answer to at all. You aren’t sure what your future holds in your new independent vampire life, but your days of being a simple rogue are definitely over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 26 It’s amazing how things can be going fairly well for you, and you’ll still find shit to be dissatisfied about. What might be worse is the new nature of you “confinement.” It’s another gilded cage. (Or fancy crypt in this case.) While not much is ever demanded of you, Isabella definitely is treating you less than equal as you have to clean the crypt One thing you never knew about vampires is how they can become obsessed with the smallest details. Probably has to do with the enhanced senses. Isabella apparently is a neat freak and due to this quirk she spent most of her time rearranging, cleaning, and generally tidying up her home. An impossible task of course, but that didn’t stop her from trying. Even the room where she keeps the blood “donors” is kept clean and isn’t the slaughterhouse that one would expect it to be. She still cleans of course, but you’re doing most of it now. It’s really boring especially since you had to do this to a lesser degree at Ral’s and at least there, you were able to let it go for a week at times. Not to mention it’s fucking impossible to “clean” a vast underground crypt in the first place. About the only thing you don’t have to take care of is her underground garden, which is her own personal project that she spends a lot of time on. In fact, with you around now she doesn’t even have to leave it to get food much anymore. She just has you do that, which is sort of plus, since that’s one of two major things that break up the monotony. You initially would lure a citizen of Dert back to the crypt, but in time you started wandering a bit more and realized with all the bandits making hideouts in forest, you might as well give yourself a bit more of a challenge. Sometimes you will boldly face a group of them. The poor dumb bastards never realize they don’t have a chance and you proceed to tear them apart, satisfying your own hunger and leaving only one or two alive to bring back to Isabella. The second major thing would be your routine intimacy with Isabella. It’s a little odd, mainly because you’ve got mixed feelings on the emotional side of things. Isabella is very comfortable with the physical aspect, but in a lot of ways she’s still pretty distant. Makes a bit hard for you to return serious affection when you aren’t sure if you’re just there as a dick for her to use when she’s in the mood. While you don’t really have any real complaints about that aspect that might make this bit of “captivity” worse since it’s really difficult to complain when you’re getting quality sex thrown in your direction on a regular basis. But since you’re not totally whipped, you’re going to complain anyway. Not to mention you just need more to occupy your time. There has to be more than just feeding and fucking, especially since you’re supposed to be immortal now. Though you’d be lying if you weren’t worried, she IS vastly more powerful than you after all and can easily subvert your free will if she so desired. (She never has though) You wait for one of the rare moments that she isn’t in her private garden to speak with her since even after a year she still doesn’t allow you in there. “Oh, hello. Have you been waiting out here for me the whole time?” Isabella asks. “Sort of. Oh I brought back dinner. A couple of children from Dert this time. I know it’s risky since it causes more hysteria in the locals when kids go missing, but I was very careful and I figured you deserved something special.” You answer. “Mmm, you’re always so doting. Well, with your news and the fact I finally got my deathshade growing properly, I’m in a good mood tonight, so we can do that thing you always want to do to me after I eat.” “Uh, yeah that’s something to look forward to, but I was actually here to speak to you about something that’s been on my mind lately.” “Oh, okay then.” “Now I’m already prepared for you to say no, but I want to make my argument clear…” “Okay, so what is it?” “Don’t get mad…” “If you don’t hurry up and get to your point, I guarantee I’m going to start getting mad. Just fucking say it already!” “Okay! I want more freedom.” “I see…” “Now hold on, I don’t mean I want to leave you! I just…agh…I need more out of life, or unlife as it were.” “More? You have all you need. A home, a nearby food source, a beautiful companion by your side. I mean I’m not sure I understand.” “And that’s all great. Really it is. Probably better than I ever could have stumbled upon. It’s like…well okay here’s a good example. You have that garden. That garden that you love to spend all, occupying your free time when you have it. I mean you don’t even let me in there, so I’m assuming it’s something pretty special to you. I guess I’m saying I need my own garden. Not literally of course.” “Hmmm, I understand what you’re saying…I suppose I have just taken your happiness for granted.” “Don’t get me wrong, I am happy, I just need something more to do and no offense, but cleaning this crypt isn’t it.” “Hah, well I figured. I’d hoped that you would have developed a bit of an obsession for it like I somewhat did, but I imagine your servitude to Ral might have dampened that. Okay, so you’re basically saying you want a hobby, fine. But I wasn’t exactly stopping you from getting one. So what did you have in mind exactly?” Well so far this is going better than you thought, though Isabella’s question brings up the fact that perhaps you haven’t thought this entirely through. “I’m…I’m not exactly sure…I was sort of expecting you to be against it. Okay, well anyway I’ve been killing bandits in the forests. Lots of them actually.” You say. “I figured you must have found some other food source since you didn’t often eat here. So you have a bit of the bloodlust do you? That can happen with new vampires. As long as you don’t massacre Dert, I don’t care what you do.” Isabella responds. “I’m thinking I’d like to go to Holgard once in awhile.” “You haven’t before? Again, I assumed when you weren’t feeding much here, you might be nipping off to Holgard to eat.” “I sort of wasn’t sure if you wanted me to go that far.” “Sheesh, do I really come off of that controlling? Holgard isn’t that far. It’s not like you’re a lowly human anymore that is going to take forever and a day to walk there. With your speed, you could go there and be back before dawn. Hell, if you really needed to, it wouldn’t bother me if you stayed there for a few nights. Get it all out of your system. If culling a few extra humans to satisfy your bloodlust is what you need to do, well Holgard couldn’t be a better place to do it. It’s a crime-ridden city where murder occurs daily. You’d fit right in and never arouse suspicion.” “True, but it’s not just the killing, it’s I used to be a rogue before all this happened...and I’ve been thinking on those days I do miss them.” “So…what then? You want to go to Holgard to be a common thief?” “Well when you say it like that, it doesn’t sound as impressive. It’s more like I just wonder if my desire for it is still there or am I just missing something from a simpler time I guess.” “Weren’t you doing it during your time with Ral? I know he didn’t keep you on that short of a leash.” “Yes, but I was so miserable that I don’t think I ever really enjoyed it most of the time. About the only time I did, was when I was training…um…another…” Isabella’s eyebrow raises as you stop yourself from mentioning Lisa. You quickly change up the conversation a bit. “My point is, I haven’t really gotten to enjoy doing it since I left Teckleville. Actually even before that, since I started enjoying it less after my sister left. However, I feel like I should give it one more go to see if it really was something I liked doing, or maybe I just liked doing it with someone who was also interested in it.” “You actually may find such petty thievery much too easy now. After all you have powers that you didn’t have before.” “Perhaps, but I also can’t just break into any old house either not being invited and all.” “True, but that can be easily gotten around if you can charm the owner into letting you in. There are also public buildings of course like shops. In any case, if this is something you want to pursue, I’m not going to deny you your eccentricities. We all have our interests. I believe this may be left over longings for your old human life, which is natural for new vampires as well. I also think you’ll get bored eventually, but I leave you to work through it. Anyway, was that it?” “Um, yeah basically.” “Good, now I’m going to feed on these children you got me, and then we can do that other things. Fairly certain you aren’t going to go anywhere tonight.” Well she’s right about that. The next night you make your way to Holgard and it’s true, thanks to your supernatural speed you get there fairly quickly, you don’t even catch the attention of the guards outside the gate. You haven’t been here in so long; you never thought you’d actually miss it. Hasn’t really changed at all though there is one thing you’re noticing and that’s the fact the streets are practically empty. Its not even that late, usually there’s still more activity than this. You see the watch patrolling around, but they’re in groups much larger than you remember. They also tend to eye you very suspiciously. Granted you’re here for trouble, but you decide that it probably isn’t the best idea if you start off by murdering several Holgard Watchmen so you start avoiding said groups. It occurs to you that something here has changed drastically. Last time you heard any news of this place was Heather and she told you there was a war brewing between the religious factions. Maybe things have gotten worse? In any case you decide to eat first and head to the lower class districts where there are less patrols and probably easier to get a quick meal. You roam the streets, but it looks like even the lower elements have tried to set up some sort of safety plan during this uncertain time. Bums and the like are lingering together. Whores are as well and even performing their trade in groups. The worst part is instead of the Watch, there are Ebony Claw Syndicate members patrolling around and they’re probably even more diligent since some of the ECS are also Fel followers. You soon realize that you’re probably going to have to just enter a tavern and just lure someone away and get them in private or just risk the attention and wipe out a small group as quick as possible. Actually you’re keener on the second idea since you’re getting a bit impatient with how inconvenient this has been. Just as you’re turning a corner a man in a green robe literally runs into you. It’s enough to cause you to stagger since you weren’t paying attention, as you were lost in thought. The man himself is on the ground. He looks scared, but strangely not because of you. He keeps looking around. “By Yag, you’re a pale one. Wait… you a vampire?” the man asks. “Well there’s no point in me lying since you’re going to be my food soon.” You respond. “Yeah? Well we that follow Yag all know that eventually we can’t beat the odds forever. In fact tonight the odds were REALLY against me. Didn’t see it ending like this though, certainly wasn’t in the temple betting pool, hah! However I’d suggest you do it quickly before the Dornans get here. They see you and they’ll use you for spell components, that is if the Joachimites don’t get here first and just burn your undead ass.” The Yagite priest continues to look around, waiting for what you’re going to do, but it was always obvious. “Well guess I better follow your advice and make this quick then.” You say and pick up the man and bite his neck. He makes little resistance other than gasping out some last prayer to Yag. You haven’t been eating long when you’re interrupted. The Yag priest wasn’t kidding when he said someone would be here soon. “Yagite scum, you’ll pay for…wha…?” a female voice says. You look in the direction of the voice and snarl at being disturbed. You see a woman dressed in purple and blue robes and a couple of other members of her temple behind her. “Vampire!” one of them shouts and begins to cast something and you leap into action. “No, wait!” the female member says and backs away, but you and her subordinates aren’t listening. You head towards the acolyte that was attempting to cast a spell. After you easily put your fist through his chest, you feel flames at your back, which the other acolyte has cast at you. The flames hurt, but it isn’t nearly enough to save him, you’re just too quick and you rip out his throat. You savior the quick taste of blood before turning towards your last foe. “Stop! Stop! It’s me!” the woman continues to shout as she puts a shield up and that’s when your bloodlust subsides long enough to finally recognize who she is. It’s Heather. You certainly didn’t expect to run into her on your first night here. In the back of your head, you sort of had a concern that maybe if you ever did, it would stir up complicated feelings about her. However, at this moment the only thing you’re feeling is the desire to slash her open and drink her dry… > You continue She’s nothing to you now. Not a lover, not a friend. Perhaps if you had something more with her, maybe it would be different, but you didn’t. A mutually beneficial arrangement, an admission of feelings and a one-time incident of intimacy, doesn’t save her. She’s blood. However, you’re no fool. Heather isn’t without power, so you stop your attack and collapse to the ground on your knees. You put your head low and rub your hands over face. “Heather…Oh…what have I become?! I…I’m a monster…by the gods, I’m so sorry! I would never…I would never hurt you Heather!” you wail. “Wha…what happened?” Heather ask, but still staying far enough away with a shield up “I tried to live with the curse of the cold, but I just couldn’t. It had left me utterly alone and had driven away the only thing that was ever good in my life. You. The longer I was in my cold exile, the more I dwelled on what could have been with you. I came close to suicide, believing that moment with you would be the last good thing that would ever happen to me. Knowing what I know now, I wish I had gone through with it.” You slowly stand up and continue to look ashamed by your actions. “But my will to live I suppose was a bit too strong. Indeed some of that was due to you. I thought maybe, just MAYBE if I could fix myself, that I could rekindle what we might have had. Even if you had moved on, it still would have been worth it, I thought. So I followed a rumor, and then a trail, and then eventually found the undead creature that was bored enough to help me. Risky, but I figured if he was going to kill me, what would I really lose? Fortunately he turned out to be rather sympathetic in his own way.” you say. “But WHY did you do this?! I mean you had to have known the results!” Heather asks. “As I said…for you…I foolishly believed that somehow I could be different. That it could survive on animal blood or the blood of creatures, it worked…for awhile.” You look at Heather mournfully; Heather still looks a bit cautious, but is looking a bit more sympathetic towards you (Well more sympathetic towards you than she is with her followers laying on the street dead) “I tried…I tried so hard…I even sacrificed Spikey…I soon realized that I would never be fit to be in your presence.” you say and choke up a little before continuing. “But the call of the thirst was just too strong and I found myself heading back towards civilization…I figured at least maybe here in this cesspit of crime, that maybe killing murderers and the like wouldn’t make me as bad…but with each life I take, I find that I’m just getting more detached...I’ve started thinking about even targeting those that aren’t deserving of it… I almost sought you out for help, but I was too ashamed… I’m so lost… Heather….please help me…” “I…I don’t know if I can. I mean this isn’t even like the condition you had. I mean I don’t know of anything that can reverse being undead!” “Please Heather…you helped me once before. I see you and know there’s hope again. Please help me…” “I…” You continue to stare at Heather who now has dropped her magic barrier and begun to move a little closer to you. Your voice and your eyes have managed to get her to lower her guard. It’s not complete, but at this point you’re close enough that it doesn’t matter. You lunge and before Heather can do anything else, you’ve easily restrained her and about to bite. She looks at you with wide-eyed terror. “No, please don’t…” she utters. And for a brief moment, you actually consider it. “Shhhh, it’ll only hurt a little and then oblivion.” You whisper and then bite down on her jugular like a ravenous animal. Her blood tastes different than most humans, but in a good way. Might be due to her magical nature. In any case you drink deeply and hold her tight as if you were making love to her, and in a way you are. Heather struggles at first, but she soon begins to weaken and then ultimately give in until her life force is gone. After you’re finished, you look at her dead face and close her eyes. “You finally helped me Heather. May your goddess Dorna embrace you.” With bodies all around, it’s sort of amazing that nobody else has stumbled upon you. (Of course maybe someone did and wisely turned around before you noticed.) Not wishing to spend anymore time here, you take your leave and head back home without bothering to engage in whatever roguish endeavors you originally were intending. As you make your way back home, you feel somewhat weird about your actions. You feel like you should feel remorse, and sometimes you think you’re beginning to have a twinge of it, but then it’s gone. You didn’t have to kill Heather. You weren’t that hungry. You could have stopped yourself. So why did you do it? What was the real reason? Self-preservation. If you hadn’t killed her, you would have surely done something stupid like develop an attachment to her again and that would have led to your death and most likely hers anyway. Either Isabella would have killed you or Heather’s fanatical friends would have. You don’t need to complicate your life like that. Better that she serve as food than as a distraction. Looks like you’re fine with sticking to the basics after all. When you arrive back home, Isabella soon comes to greet you. It would seem Isabella decided to wait up for you for a change, you weren’t expecting her to, but the fact that she did, just confirms that you made the right decision. “Well that was quick. I at least expected you to stay out until dawn. Did you have fun stealing items and whatever else?” Isabella remarks. “I didn’t bother. I mostly ate.” You answer. “Oh? Well hope you got a good one then.” “I did. I ate my ex-girlfriend.” Isabella’s eyebrows rise in intrigue. “Really? Isabella asks, but not in a jealous way, just curious. “Well, I suppose she wasn’t really a girlfriend…we just knew each other and we were intimate once.” You answer. “I see. And were you so excited that you were intimate again? Perhaps she found your dark charms alluring and in the heat of passion, you couldn’t help yourself?” “I manipulated her into dropping her guard after I slaughtered her friends, then I drank her dry…and I didn’t feel anything about it. This woman who once tried to help me, I felt nothing after killing her other than it was necessary. And the only excitement I felt was when I was feeding and holding her warm body close as it slowly turned as cold as mine." Isabella takes your words in and slowly begins to move towards you while caressing her own body. “That…is soooo sexy….I had no idea that you were capable of such a thing. Killing random peasants and bandits is one thing, but this…well that’s something different. I want you inside me, right now.” Isabella remarks. You sort of wonder if Isabella has always been this horny or maybe this is just her making up for lost time due to a long period of isolation. Either way you’re not complaining. The next night you prepare to go out to Holgard again. This time you’re fully prepared to just hunt though. The city is about to have yet another major ongoing problem, or maybe a solution depending on one’s outlook on things. > You time passes... Chapter 3C1: The Beast Unleashed Year 30 “Well of course there are vampire hunters running around in Holgard now. I told you that you probably needed to start showing a bit of restraint now that the religious factions aren’t killing each other anymore.” Isabella remarks. “You said that Holgard was a perfect spot for me to hunt due to all the crime and violence!” you reply. “Yeah, but still within reason. I mean from some of the tales you’ve told me in the past, it sounds like you just leave a killing field in your wake half the time. As I said, you probably were only getting away with it due to the religious faction war, but now that that’s over with, they’re on to you. Look, you had your fun, but it’s probably time to rein it in a bit anyway. You had like what five years? Honestly, I probably gave you your freedom a bit too quickly.” “So what, are you cracking the whip on me now?” “No, but I will say that I’m fond of you enough that I would LIKE you to still be around for a long time to come. You might think a few vampire hunters are no problem, but I imagine they aren’t the only ones hunting you. I mean you were taking advantage of the religious faction war, I have to believe that some of them groups aren’t vampire friendly either. Wasn’t your ex a Dornan? Pretty sure those wizard priests might have discovered a vampire operating in the city by now and I’m not even counting the fanatical Joachimites you told me about.” “So what are you saying exactly?” “I’m saying that maybe you should give Holgard a break for awhile if you can’t restrain yourself. Go find another hunting ground that isn’t going to attract attention. I’m sure there are little isolated towns and villages further east of here. I’m sure there are probably bandits preying upon them as well, so you’ve got a wide selections to choose from.” You somewhat frown at that suggestion. “If I’m going to skulk about a village luring peasants to their doom, I might as well be grocery shopping for you in Dert.” You say. “Well I dunno, go wipe out an entire hamlet then, I don’t care. Just don’t be a dumb ass and leave any witnesses. Because I’m going to tell you this as well, it’s one thing if you’re going to insist on playing with your immortality, but it’s quite another if you start fucking with mine. If your actions end up causing a group of adventurers to come barging down here in the middle of the day, waking up my beauty sleep, you are going to wish you’d been staked and beheaded after I get done with you. Understand?” Isabella says with a calm threatening tone that is enough to unnerve even you. “Yes…dear.” You meekly utter. Isabella gives you a stern look and then leaves you to your own devices. Isabella may not have any direct power over you, but she’s still powerful enough to crush you if she wanted to. You don’t actually think she’d kill you, but you don’t doubt that she wouldn’t make your unlife miserable for a very long time. If you weren’t so grateful for everything she’s done for you, you might be inclined to leave and not return. However in the grand scheme of things you’re fairly happy with her so there isn’t much incentive to do so. She’s usually right anyway. Might be time to settle down a bit. Mass slaughter is starting to lose its appeal anyway. Well not ALL its appeal, but maybe you should change it up, especially if you want to go back to Holgard one day. For the first few weeks, you don’t go to Holgard and instead wander further to the east a bit. Honestly, you’ve never traveled in that direction for any extended length of time save for when you released Spikey back into the wild. That was slightly harder than you thought it would be, but at least it was better than Isabella killing him. You sort of wonder if you’ll run into him, but you don’t, who knows where he is now. (You hope he’s happily eating people wherever he is though) You do know is if you go far enough you’ll reach the borders of the Delantium Kingdom. Of course that’s still quite the ways even with your speed and you aren’t that adventurous. What you do find are a few small isolated villages. Bigger than Dert and nearly the size of the your old home of Teckleville. Same sort of people too, funny how no matter where you go, places like this are the same everywhere. You skulk around these minor villages, luring an unsuspecting peasant or two for food, but it’s dull since it’s basically like when you do it back in Dert. You encounter nomads, brigands, and raider types of various races. Again, those are more fun since you can let loose a bit more, but a lot of these tend to be on the non-human side and at this point you’ve acquired more of a taste for human blood as opposed to greenskin or some of the other savage races you’ve come across. Upon your return on these daily travels, Isabella almost never asks you what you were up to. She doesn’t seem to care as long as you aren’t bringing trouble to her crypt. Sometimes you mention what you’ve been up to and she listens, and sometimes asking basic questions back, nothing more though. A few months pass, and you’re about ready to go back to Holgard just to see if things have died down there a bit, but you decide to stick it out a little while longer and continue doing what you’re doing. You head to Maldito, which is one of the more remote villages, even compared to most on your list. When you get within sight of it however, you’re surprised. The entire village is in flames. You can hear screaming and yelling still coming from the place and the stench of blood and death is thick. You’re getting hungry just thinking about it. You cautiously move towards the village and find where the majority of the voices are coming from. A mixed group of rough looking orcs, gnolls, and even a few hobgoblins are currently lording it over the remaining peasants they haven’t killed. Currently a couple of the women are being raped and they’re torturing the shit out of several of the men. Despite the large amount of savage races, a human seems to be the leader. Figures. He is addressing the peasants who are focused on him despite all the horror around them. “Know that you lot brought this on yourselves! All you had to do is provide food, basic goods and some time with your daughters, sisters and wives on a regular basis and this shithole of a town would be spared Green Eye’s wrath. Instead you’ve been hiring mercenaries to cut down our men for weeks! NOW you have to pay!” the human bandit says. “NO! I swear it! We’ve done no such thing! We would nev…” “SILENCE!” the human bandit snaps interrupting the older peasant trying to beg for mercy. The human leader soon picks the old man up off the ground and stabs him in the throat before tossing him back on the floor. “I don’t actually give a shit if it WAS you or not! One of the villages in this area did, and when they get the message of what we’re doing to your village, they’ll fall in line, or they’re going to suffer the same fate! Rape everyone in every fucking orifice, kill them all and shove their dismembered corpses on big fucking spiked sticks.” Grim stuff. The odd thing is you actually feel slightly sorry for these pitiful peasants since you probably inadvertently caused this. You were slaughtering so many bandits over last couple of months, you didn’t think that they were actually united any way. You also didn’t think that these bandit types would jump to the conclusions that the villagers were behind it. Though you suppose it makes sense that they would. After years of just ruthlessly drinking the living and seeing them as nothing more than blood bags, it seems odd that you would feel protective of them for some reason. Maybe, this is how Isabella feels about Dert in some ways. The people in that village are all food to her, but they’re hers and she doesn’t want anyone else fucking with them. You guess you’ve developed a similar attachment. Who knew? Yeah, you’re not going to let bottom-feeding scum throw away perfectly good food… You enter the village, you don’t even try to hide. You break the neck of three hobgoblins and put your fist through an orc before anyone even mounts an attack. “Shit! Get your dick outta that bitch, can’t you see we’re being attacked?!” the human bandit shouts. The gnolls clumsily attempt to chop you with their long axes, but its all too easy to avoid their blows and shatter their spines, you quickly shut their dog like howls up by stomping their heads into mush. The remaining bandits fair no better against you. “He’s too fucking fast! He’s not human! He’s not…” are the last words of a half orc before you finish him off, along with his buddies. Soon it’s only the human bandit leader left and to his credit; he hasn’t run off (like some of the hobgoblins tried to do) “Let me guess…vampire?” You nod silently. “Shit…I had a feeling it wasn’t just mercenaries after seeing the carnage on a couple of those sites. So are…” You’re done entertaining this lesser form, you rush forward and rip out his throat mid sentence. You drink his blood and throw his corpse next to the body of the old man he had just killed not a few moments before. Meanwhile the peasants that the bandits rounded up haven’t even run. They’ve all just huddled together watching you, probably with just as much fear as they had before you arrived. You look upon them and they have never looked more like the herd of sheep they truly are. They are prey and always will be in their current form. You have a mind to finish them all off, until one brave one approaches on his hands and knees. “You…you have saved us!” he shouts. “Saved you? You shortsighted sheep, I only saved you because these assholes were killing off my livestock and I hate to waste food. I’ve been feeding on you lot for months now. Didn’t you even notice how some of you had gone missing?” you say. “We…we assumed perhaps the bandits had taken some of us in the middle of the night. But please, spare us your unholy wrath and we will worship you, my dark lord!” Well this has turned interesting… “Worship you say? What exactly are you proposing?” you ask. “Yes, we…we can’t defend ourselves against Green Eye’s bandits and now that you’ve killed this group, he’s just going to send more to finish us off. You could defend us and in exchange we could provide…what you need….” The man says. “I need blood you do know that right?” “Yes, but if it means just a few of us dying as opposed to all of us dying then it will be worth it. Please, I beg you. Whatever you wish, we will provide.” This could be just the thing to break up the monotony. It’s also perfect due to the remoteness of it all. You’d have people willing to give themselves to you, and the bandits you can just massacre as usual. Of course doing something like this might be slightly more involved than you’d prefer. You can also imagine that it probably wouldn’t be as cut and dry as you’re going to want it to be. Lot of factors still at play and you question if you want the headache. > You accept the challenge What the hell it isn’t like you’ve got anything better to do. You’ve been enjoying it more out here than Holgard anyway. Still you know this isn’t going to be all fun and blood, so you need to start establishing rules. “Rise.” You tell the man groveling before you. He does so slowly before you. “I will accept your obedience, but you must know what this means. This means tribute in blood when I call for it. This means anyone of you here could be called to sustain me in exchange for my protection!” “We understand…” “No, I don’t think you truly do mortal. However, you soon will. And if you find my terms at any point unacceptable, there will be no negotiation; I will finish the job that the bandits failed to do and wipe out this entire village. Now, let us talk about your bandit problem.” The man who is the village’s speaker says his name is Vic and explains the situation with the bandits. He says Green Eye, is the unseen bandit leader that is believed to have made his hideout in an old abandoned dwarf mine in the hills nearby. As far as anyone knows, nobody in this village (or any other in the area) has ever seen Green Eye, except the bandits who mention him (or her) from time to time. Still never a physical description either except for the green eye that seems to unnerve them. Vic says he understands that you will not be able to look over them constantly, but something must be done about the bandits soon since they will surely come looking to see what happened to their fellows and if that happens to be during the day… You tell Vic to not concern himself with it any longer because you’re taking care of it tonight one way or another. He just needs to remember his promise to you. This village is yours and as such, he needs to get the rest of the people back to rebuilding it as soon as possible. After Vic gives you some basic directions on where the mine is located, you take your leave. Honestly, it’s not that difficult to find now that you know which way to go since you’re catching the scent of foul savage races the closer you get. Eventually you get to the entrance, which doesn’t even have anyone guarding it though judging by the smell and mess, this is definitely inhabited. The mine is actually well lit, so you’re guessing there must be more human types in here at least. You soon hear the sounds revelry and then in a large opening you see a group of mortals of varying races. Mostly the savage type like hobgoblin, orc and even an ogre. The human bunch doesn’t surprise you. There are even a couple elves in the mix and at least one race you don’t recognize. What does surprise you is the equal amount of female members in the group. There are a couple that are obviously bandits as well, but a lot of them just look like they’re there for either “fun” or they have a large amount of children around them. You didn’t expect to find a community of sorts here. Makes sense that they’re raiding the other villages for food and basic supplies rather than just valuables. In any case, it hardly matters since you’ve got a task to do… You kill three bandits before they even know what’s going on, you then kill several of their fun women and the ogre before they all decide to stop trying to defend themselves and start running and hiding. The yelling, screaming and crying fills your ears and you realize with all the tunnels and crevices, it might take awhile to hunt everyone down, so you’re going to make this easier. “Listen up to all those that value their miserable lives! The village of Maldito is under my protection and I am their bloody tyrant. Your actions against it have come to an end! Turn over Green Eye, and I’ll allow the rest of you to slink out of here. Choice is yours.” You shout. You voice echoes throughout the mine a bit and then silence. A moment passes and just when you think you’re going to have to hunt them all down anyway, you hear a thumping noise. Soon, you see a single short figure coming out from down a mine corridor; he carries some sort of rifle and is walking with a limp and a faint green glow is coming from the top of him You then get a better look and he’s a dwarf, which you didn’t quite expect to be leading this rabble. He’s dressed in heavy leather armor, though it might be just regular dwarven miner clothing for all you know. He’s got an obvious metal leg replacing his missing one. His rifle isn’t one of the usual designs you’ve seen in Holgard. Has a wider barrel for one thing and looks of much better workmanship. Shiny even. His face is that of a usual Dwarf, bearded, long hair and grizzled. Of course the main thing that sticks out about him is his green “eye” which you don’t think is even an eye. It looks more like a glowing gem of some sort. If it has any magic properties, they aren’t affecting you (yet). His other eye is non-existent and covered with a patch, so maybe the green one just helps him see. In any case, the man obviously has no fear and has come out to meet you alone, which means he’s either stupid or he’s got something to say and hoping you might be in a mood to listen. It’s going to be one of those nights you see… “I take it you’re Green Eye.” You say. “And I take it you’re the one that’s been fucking up my people. Edgrin said that he didn’t think it was mercs and might be something worse like a vampire for example, but…bah what’s done is done now. I assume if you’re going on about that shithole village that means you just killed him and all my people that I sent there to make an example of the place.” Green Eye responds. “That’s right, and now I’m here to kill you and everyone else here.” “Hmm, and I don’t doubt that you couldn’t, though I would at least like to propose a different offer. One that you might find advantageous.” “Okay, I’ll bite.” “As you can see, much like Maldito, we are just a community trying to get by in this life. We are just happen to be predators rather than prey. I’m sure you can identify.” “Understand, yes. Identify. No. Because if we’re using food chain comparisons, then I would the top predator and you lot are in my way…” “Very well, I get it. How about this? We completely leave Maldito alone forever. There are more than enough villages in the area that we can shakedown. And to be quite honest, we probably don’t need as much from them anyway now that you’ve killed about half of us.” “As far as I’m concerned, those villages are also mine.” “Come on be reasonable. You just said that you have direct control over Maldito who apparently are filled with pleading peasants willing to do whatever you want. I mean unless you’re planning on carving out an empire you really don’t need all those villages. I might add, that it’s beneficial to have us around.” “I don’t see how, you’re just another competitor.” “True, but you’ve already made your point to us. I certainly have no plans on tangling with you ever again. Do you really believe that if you kill all of us, that there won’t be another group of assholes to just take our place? Then what? You have to do this all over again and while you probably don’t have any particular problems with that, you might not arrive to save your village like you did this time. These fucking mongrels and greenskins are stupid as shit and never learn lessons most of the time. I’m probably the only thing keeping them all from idiotically just razing the entire area.” “So what your saying, is I should leave you alive so the status quo can stay relatively intact and give myself less hassle in the long run.” “And to save my own ass, and the sorry asses of my community…such as they are.” It’s intriguing enough for you to consider since it might be nice to just rule over the town without actually ever having to defend it again or wondering if you’re going to stumble across a burnt husk of a village. Still, this can’t be a negotiation that you feel comfortable with, without some sort of capitulation on Green Eye’s part. “This sounds very nice and all, but at its core, this deal benefits you far more than me. I have no assurance that you’ll keep your word. For all I know you’re going to just bide your time and regroup. Perhaps even attempt to attack me.” You say. “You’re joking right? What the hell are we going to do to you? We have no weapons to even hurt you with, I mean this rifle is mainly just to give me a sense of false security. You think we have any way to contact hunters even if we were so inclined? In fact I’d argue that the villages you’ve been feeding on would be more likely to do that than us.” Green Eye strokes his beard a bit and sees that you’re not moved by his assurances. “Okay, I think I know what you’re getting at. You want tribute from us. Well how about this? We occasionally take women from the villages for…recreation. Sometimes they go back, sometimes they realize that they like it here better. How about we take maybe one or two for you as a gesture of our goodwill?” Green Eye asks. “That’s a good offer, but a child would be better. The blood of the youth always is.” You say. “A…child? You want a kid?” “Is that a problem? The people that you sent to Maldito didn’t seem to think so when they were planning to execute everyone there.” “That was different and it’s just that…we don’t normally…I mean…shit. Okay fine, we’ll start taking children I guess. Um, how many did you need?” “Oh not many. I mean just one every month is fine. Don’t want to depopulate the area after all. And I’d say it’s more than fair to you.” “I suppose it is. I accept your generous proposal.” “Of course you will, because it’s the only option for you. Now then, I’ll be expecting my tribute by the end of this month, have it waiting for me by the entrance, because if I actually have to set foot in this place again, it’ll be the end of this community.” Green Eye nods and you turn to leave, though you’re curious about one thing. “Oh, just wondering…how does a dwarf become the leader of a bandit community full of savages anyway?” you ask. “The mine dried up and I was too stupid to leave obviously.” Green Eye answers. Satisfied with this answer you leave the mine. You return home, nearly at dawn. Isabella doesn’t ask what you’ve been doing since she knows you’ve been doing your usual routine of hunting in the wilderness or preying upon the villages. You imagine she’ll start asking questions eventually, she’s probably going to nag you about your actions possibly attracting attention, but for now you’re going to just enjoy your new hobby. > You time passes... Year 31 You finish drinking your fill of the girl and release her though she still clings to you tightly like you’re her entire world despite the fact that she’s already married to some young man in this village.. As usual you have left this one alive since the less outright deaths the better. Besides, the more you feed on these peasants and don’t kill them, the more they seem to be enamored with you. The fools believe your “mercy” is some sort of blessing. “Is there anything else you require of me, m’lord?” she asks in a mild daze. “Actually now that you mention it, yeah. Now that I’m done sucking on you, I’ll give you the honor of sucking on me. You know what to do.” You say. The girl nods and slowly lowers herself before you. Now THIS is what being a vampire is all about, or at least what it should be. Lording it over the lessers and reaping the benefits. Not hiding on the outskirts of civilization. Ever since this arrangement you’ve actually been enjoying yourself again. Even more than when you used to go hunting in Holgard, which you haven’t been going to at all anymore. As for Isabella, she spends all her time in her precious garden and you’re starting to wonder if she even cares what you do anymore as long as it doesn’t involve messing with Dert or calling attention to your home. The only time she has asked you a question is she started wondering where you were getting all the children from since she was concerned you might be “over farming” Dert, but she seemed satisfied with your answer. She’s benefiting so why should she care? The girl finishes servicing you and then you send her home in a better status for her husband than before. Tiring of your own time here tonight, you prepare to leave and exit the “home” that you use when visiting. Before you leave however, you’re met by Vic. Usually he knows better than to crowd you like this so it makes you a little wary. “That’s close enough! Encroach on my personal space any further and it’ll be the last! Now what is it that you feel the need to waste my time with?” “Well I was just wondering, since I’ve been so loyal to you lord and helpful in in convincing the others to stay loyal…I was just wondering if there would ever come a time that you might bless me with the same gift that you have. Not that I would be nearly as powerful as you of course m’lord. I live to serve after all.” This again… Vic has brought this up before, and this topic has come up with more than a few of the ladies you’ve been dining on. You of course always give the same answer, that it isn’t a “gift” that can be given so lightly and will only ever go to the worthy. Telling them that you can’t make them vampires because you’re not old enough to do it yet, wouldn’t actually make you look like the “all powerful” dark lord that you’ve set yourself up as. Still, as far as you know you ARE able to make them into ghouls. Isabella explained all this to you in your first weeks as a vampire. She always said making a ghoul wasn’t worth it since they are some of the most pathetic creatures she’s ever had the displeasure of knowing. She made one once and killed it soon after because she found its habits too disgusting and its fawning far too annoying. Of course Isabella’s personality is a little different than yours. You would probably be fine with more fawning. In fact absolute loyalty might be a plus. As for disgusting habits, well you wouldn’t have to live with them on a regular basis and so what if they eat a few bugs? However, it still isn’t something you’re going to just do right away and would need to think on. After all, you turn one person or multiple people into a ghoul or ghouls, how are they going to act towards the rest of the normal people? Not like you can watch them constantly. “I’ll think about it, now get out of my way!” you say and knock Vic aside. You head home pondering the possible ramifications of taking that extra step. When you finally do get home, you find that your night hasn’t gotten less complicated. “Have fun with your human whores?” Isabella asks. “Thought you’d be in your garden. That’s where you like to spend all your time isn’t it?” you say, not even answering her question. “True, but perhaps I’ve been sticking my head in the flowers for far too long and ignoring the situation that’s going on.” “What situation?” “The situation where you’ve apparently dominated an entire village to your will. Maybe even more.” “No, just the one. What difference does it make? I’m not attracting any attention and I’ve been bringing children home to you on monthly basis.” “Yes, which is why I haven’t said anything, however I’ve been noticing a change in your behavior with me.” “You have? Surprised, considering all the time you spend in your garden.” “Okay, if you’re bitching about us not spending enough time together, all you had to do is say something and I would have obliged. Since when have I not helped you out in any way I can? It’s why you’re here in the first place.” “And THAT right there is the problem!” “What?” “You treating me like a second class citizen around here!” “Are you kidding me? I gave you fucking complete freedom!” “You know that doesn’t matter. Not really in the scheme of things. You’re more powerful than me. You always will be and you will always see me as your lesser. Sometimes it feels like you scold me as if I was some child.” “Well when you act like one at times, that’s what happens. And if I really saw you as my lesser, I wouldn’t have even bothered with you in the first place. I saw something special in you, but obviously I was mistaken. Besides all that, don’t give me that I never let you have fun business because it’s not even true in the first place. If anything I’ve been TOO permissive. You’re on a fucking power trip right now and while I get it because you feel like you’re getting the attention you feel you deserve, I’m telling you right now that if you continue like this, it’s going end badly.” “I don’t understand WHY you’re giving me shit for this. You do the same thing with Dert, you’re just less hands on.” “Exactly. I’m not rolling around in the pigpen with the pork chops! You’re in there, not only rolling around with them, you’re also fucking the pigs. AND don’t even tell me that you don’t do that, because you stink of humans most nights when you come back. Though I’m not so much mad about that bit as I am severely disappointed.” “So what are you saying exactly?” ‘What I’m saying is YOU are heading down a path that I’ve seen play out several times with others I was close to in the past. Not really willing to go through it again.” “So, what then? You’re going to forbid me to do this then?” “No, actually I’m not. You’re a free willed vampire, go play with your mortals and lord it over them. That seems to be what is making you happy. What I am saying however is if you insist on doing this though, you’ll be doing it elsewhere because I’m not going to sit by and watch the inevitable, let alone get caught up in it. Obviously you feel stifled here, so maybe you need to go do this anyway.” Well that’s done it for you. You’re not going to get threatened by an ultimatum. You and Isabella haven’t been getting along for a while now anyway. If she’s giving you the option for a clean break now, you probably should take it while you can. “I’ll be gone tomorrow night. I trust that will be okay.” You answer. “Fine by me. You can sleep elsewhere in the crypt though, because you certainly won’t be sleeping in my bed.” Isabella says. “Yeah, probably for the best.” “Well then, it was fun while lasted and I hope you succeed in whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve. Goodbye.” And with those cold last words, Isabella turns and leaves you. While maybe you sort of knew this was coming for some time, there is a part of you that’s going to miss Isabella. She did do so much for you, but ultimately you needed your freedom the most. And now you have it. The next night, you leave the crypt with what little belongings you still have attachment to as quick as you can. You don’t bump into Isabella; you assume she’s in her garden as usual. You make your way to Maldito, where you are met with the usual praise and submissive behavior. “Vic, get all your best builders and tradespeople together, I want a meeting with them.” You order. “Um, okay m’lord.” Vic answers. You meet with them to let them know that you’re going to be around a lot more often, so you want a proper home, rather than the simple empty one room house they just let you use when you are here. Your news is met with an overjoyed reaction for the most part, though you get the impression some are just reacting more out of fear of defying you. In any case, you aren’t asking for much in the short term. Just a small underground area underneath the house you stay at. “Oh! So like a root cellar!” one of them beams. “Yeah…just like a root cellar.” You answer rolling your eyes a bit. In any case it’s a simple enough task for them that you figure they won’t take long in doing it. In the meantime, you have the unpleasant task of digging a hole in the forest and sleeping there. The first night is a real wake up call of how much better it was sleeping in a nice soft bed next to Isabella, but you need to get over that. A month passes and it’s still not finished mainly because one of the more skilled carpenters had a heart attack on the job. You’re pissed about this inconvenience, but it is what it is. In the meantime, when you make your usual meeting with Green Eye’s community, you tell the guard at the entrance that you won’t require a child every month anymore. Instead, they can just bring a girl like Green Eye originally suggested. By the middle of the second month it’s still not finished. You have no idea what the hell is holding these idiots up. Vic says something about the structural integrity is shaky and there being a danger over everything caving in. You’re getting irritated to the point that you almost lash out and kill one of them, but then you realize you need these fools right now. So you kill the tavern owner instead. Not like serving drinks is a job that requires special skills that you need. Besides, his wife can take over and she’s more compliant to you anyway. You start wondering if this would go faster if you made them ghouls. The main problem that you can see is that they’re all weak humans that aren’t even in the best of shape in the first place and require sleep and regular food. If you made them ghouls they’d work for you tirelessly night and day. (They’d be able to see in the dark as well) And they could eat…well anything really. There isn’t really much stopping you now, since you now ARE here constantly to monitor their behavior. Though there is a real desire to still not do it too, since you’d essentially be “rewarding” them all for shit work so far. If you were going to do it, you’d rather do for those that deserve it at least. > You make some of them ghouls You might as well start making ghouls if you’re going to be using this place as your new home now. You’ll feel safer if with absolutely loyal day guards around anyway. You call everyone to the village square the following night. It’s a little surprising for everyone, but of course they don’t want to disobey you. “Okay, I’ve gathered you all here because it’s come up many times that some of you desire the same gift I have. This makes sense since you would indeed be better in every way and you would also be closer to your god. However, none of you are yet worthy of such a thing. In fact some of you never will be! Yet, I am a merciful master and as such I will bestow a minor bit of my power so that you may get a taste of it. Who knows, maybe in time you will impress me to the point that I will eventually complete your transformation.” At this point your words are met with signs of hope and excitement. You expected that, so that’s one less thing to worry about. You’re still wondering which people exactly to choose and how many. You probably want to pick the key members in the community though, so you figure you might as well give Vic what he’s always wanted first. “Okay Vic, come on over here and we’ll get started.” You say and cut your arm to drain some of your blood in a cup. “Um, me m’lord?” Vic asks. “Yeah you! Who the hell else’s name is Vic in this village? Now come on.” “Uh, that’s okay I don’t think I’m quite worthy yet. I believe that there are many others here deserving of your gift more.” “You’re joking right? You’ve been begging me to turn you since I took control of this place. You’re just nervous, come on.” “No, I really realize now that I shouldn’t have annoyed with my petty request as I did. I thank you for your generous offer, but perhaps one of the many lovely young women that…” “Vic, stop being a bitch and get over here!” you say raising your voice. At this point the crowd is getting agitated with Vic’s stalling and begin pushing him forward, telling him that he’s a “chosen one” and he should be embracing this moment. Vic slowly moves towards your position and then suddenly his eyes roll in the back of his head and he wobbles a bit before falling over. “Oh for fuck’s sake…” you say shaking your head. One of the other villagers goes over to help Vic, but after some inspection… “He’s dead m’lord!” the village “doctor” exclaims. “He’s fucking dead?!” you say. “Heart attack it seems. I believe all the excitement of being a benefactor of your glory was too much for him.” “Maybe…” Something about this doesn’t seem right. “Kick his body. In fact I want several of you to stomp on it.” You say. “M’lord?” someone asks. “You heard me.” Not wishing to anger you, several of the villagers comply. Vic’s body just absorbs the kicks and doesn’t move. “Okay, I guess he’s really dead, set his body on fire, no need to waste anymore time burying it. Actually never mind, there’s a torch right here, I’ll do it.” You take a nearby torch and go over to Vic’s body. As you slowly lower the flaming piece of wood closer to Vic’s body, you watch his eyes. You watch… Then just as you touch Vic’s body with the actual flame, his eyes open and his entire form changes into a thin smooth gray skinned creature. Its face isn’t anything like you’ve seen before, having only slits for a nose, a simple line like mouth and its eyes are just white orbs. “SHIT!” it shouts in different voice than before and immediately rolls away and attempts to scramble for safety. While the villagers are confused and scared by all this, you of course keep your cool and easily catch this creature and drag it into the empty house you reside at in the village to interrogate it. “Okay, what the hell are you?” you demand. “Please! I’m a doppelganger and I’m only doing my job!” it pleads pathetically. “By job, you mean spying and infiltration! I only know ONE person that rules over a ragtag group of multi-racial misfits that might have the balls to do such a thing. How long have you been working for Green Eye?” The doppelganger wastes no time in selling out Green Eye. It says it’s been with Green Eye for quite some time, but only was infiltrating Maldito shortly after you threatened Green Eye. It says it was originally masquerading as the head carpenter, but soon changed into Vic (and in both cases obviously secretly killed) when it realized you were serious about making the village your permanent home. It of course has been in contact with Green Eye off and on the whole time. “So what the hell is Green Eye exactly planning?” “Well originally he just wanted to keep a check on you, but when you made Maldito your permanent home, he got more concerned. I think he’s planning on attacking you directly and most likely destroying the village.” “Because that worked out so well last time. So what then has he hired hunters or something? Should have known he wasn’t going to be above doing that.” “No, actually he’s been crafting silver weapons for everyone. Mostly daggers, but I know for a fact he’s been focusing on silver shot for the few firearms we have.” “Where’s he getting all this silver from?” “The mine I guess. Green Eye said it used to be a silver mine before it ran out.” “Well apparently it didn’t completely run dry if he’s got enough to scrap weapons together. Gotta hand it to Green Eye, though. He’s been busy and I underestimated his fear of me. Smart of him to not tell me that it used to be a silver mine too. I didn’t even think of that.” “So…what are you going to do?” “Kill my enemy of course, might as well start with you. Wonder what doppelganger tastes like…” you say and prepare to bite. “No! Wait! Please! I could help even more! If you attack now, you’d never get Green Eye. He’s got a whole system of hidden tunnels, traps and shit. You might wipe out everyone under his leadership, but I doubt if you’d find him. He knows those mines like nobody else.” “Oh, I’m sure I’d find him eventually.” “Well, maybe, but as I said, he’s probably trapped the entire place too and considering he’s been preparing for you, some of those might even be dangerous to you. Let me go back and…” “You think I’m stupid? You sold out Green Eye so quick and you were supposed to be on his side. How quick would you sell me out?” “But this is different, I can see you’re the more powerful force in this instance and I always side with the winning team. It’s what my kind does. Green Eye doesn’t know that you know that you know anything. In fact I can probably get him to meet with you. You’re supposed to pick up your new tribute soon aren’t you?” “Yeah, so?” “Well let ME go and pick it up. Except I wouldn’t go as me, I’ll go as YOU.” “Wait, you’re going to copy me?” “Yes. And I’m going to arrive at Green Eye’s place during the day to do it. I will pretend that I’m such a powerful and old vampire that I have the capacity to walk around in the daytime! This will throw them all off so much that they’ll scramble to appease you quickly. When they drag out the girl, I will then claim it isn’t good enough and that I will be back at night to renegotiate the deal with Green Eye personally. He’ll be concerned enough that he’ll meet with you, probably seeing if you have any other weaknesses, since thinking you can walk around in the daytime is going to cause him to discard his original plans. Of course it’ll actually be you who’ll meet him at night, at which point you’ll easily be able to over power him and whoever else is with him. Trust me, it’ll work!” An intriguing plan you suppose, you just aren’t convinced though. “Sounds like a shit plan, and I still don’t trust you. I don’t think you can convincingly copy me anyway.” You say. “The hell you say! I’ll have you know that I am one the most skilled of my kind! I can easily copy you, right down to your quirky mannerisms. Especially since I’ve been observing you for awhile now.” The doppelganger says a little insulted. “Is that so? Well prove it, and maybe I’ll make a decision based on how good your performance is.” You let the doppelganger go and it has prepared itself to display its powers to you. It takes a bit longer to transform into looking like you than when it transformed back to its real form. The first thing you realize is you haven’t seen yourself in years. The dop looks like you, or at least what you looked like before you became a vampire, then again you haven’t aged since then so that’s presumably what you still look like. The dop then begins to talk like you and act like you. It’s very arrogant, condescending and just an all around dick. Which means it’s copying you exactly. “See? I can pull this off! Just give me a chance and hey, when Green Eye is dead, I could help you in other ways as well!” the dop exclaims as it transforms back. It certainly is an eager creature. You just aren’t sure if you can trust it. And if you can’t trust it, then why take chances? > You trust the doppelganger You’re not so much trusting the dop, so much as you’re going to take a chance that it fears you enough that it’s being honest. Since if it IS telling the truth and willing to work for you, he would come in pretty handy. Still, you’re going to be careful as you can about this. “Okay, first of all, are you absolutely SURE this plan is going convince Green Eye to meet with me?” you ask. “Yes, I am. If he thinks something is wrong, but fixable he’ll more often than not take a personal approach to it even if it might risk his life, just like when he first spoke with you. If I know him, he’ll probably want to appease you so he can give himself more time to re-think a new strategy of how to deal with you if he believes you can walk around in the day time.” The dop says. You can’t really tell due to its nearly featureless expression, but it sounds confident in its words. You suppose that will have to do. “Alright then, we’ll try the plan.” You say. “Y…you will? Oh thank the gods! I swear I will be loyal to you!” the dop exclaims. “We’ll see, but first I need to prepare you a bit.” You say and move towards it. “Prepare?” “Yeah, just relax a bit, don’t move and… brace yourself!” You suddenly lunge on the dop who is taken by surprise by your speed. You bite the dop in the arm and drink a little of its blood. It actually tastes pretty terrible and you nearly spit it out. In the meantime the dop is making a horrible screaming noise and doesn’t stop until you smack it upside the head. “Stop that, it’s annoying.” You say and release it. “Y…you bit me!” the dop says rubbing its arm. “Sure did. Call it an extra precaution in case you get the bright idea to try to betray me. I can always sense where you are now. So if any of this goes south, I’m going to know where to find YOU immediately.” The doppelganger might have those empty white orbs for eyes, but you can still see the fear in them. Honestly, while you will be able to sense it if it’s close by, you aren’t going to be able to instantly track it from anywhere. Still, it doesn’t know that. “I wasn’t going to betray you.” The dop whines. “Well, now I know you won’t. Now you stay here, I’m going to go get one of the villagers so you can blend in again. I’ll drain them and you can walk out like nothing happened. The body can be disposed of later.” you answer. “Wait which one?” “What difference does it make? I dunno the tavern keeper’s wife I guess. Might as well considering I already killed her husband. Plus it’s an easy enough task even for you and you’ll hear all the village gossip at lot easier, not that it matters I suppose.” “Mm, okay. I don’t have to worry about you suddenly picking on me to bite now and I prefer female forms anyway, it’s always easier when the gender matches.” You pause for a moment. “Wait…you’re female?” you ask. “Well we doppelgangers are pretty flexible about it all for obvious reasons, but yes, I personally identify as female. Can’t you tell?” she says. “Um, no not really. I mean you’re just a smooth gray nearly featureless being. It’s not like I can see tits or anything. I mean…I can’t even see a hole down there…or anywhere for that matter; then again I haven’t really been exploring. I guess if you were a guy it would have been more obvious I suppose.” “Oh you solids with your constant exposed reproductive organs. We doppelgangers transcend such concerns since we only display them when necessary such as for sex or expelling waste. Until that time they remain hidden and protected.” “Okay, well however works…don’t really want to know, but if that’s the case how the fuck was I supposed to be able to tell that you’re female or not?” “By my eyes of course! Those of my kind that identify as female tend to change our eye color to white while those that identify as males tend to change them to black.” “What color are they normally?” “Oh gray.” “Great. Very illuminating. Next time I run into one of you doppys, I’ll try to remember all that.” “Erm, could you please not call me a doppy? It is considered offensive to my…” You glare at the doppelganger as your patience wears thin. “Um…nevermind. Just happy to serve and being included, sir.” She says submissively. You leave the house and find that a minor crowd has gathered from a safe distance. They’re probably wondering what exactly happened, time to make up a story. “Is that…thing gone m’lord?” someone asks. “Yes, of course it is. Didn’t you hear its death scream? I interrogated it first though. Apparently those bandits I thought I took care of have regrouped and will be trying to attack again. However, we know the truth now and can prepare. I’m going to track them down and finish them off for good, however I’m still going to bless some of you and when I do, you will be charged with helping the defense of this village. I trust you all will be up for the challenge should it come to that.” You say. “Of course m’lord! We all will!” “Then we will start tomorrow night, for now though I wish to spend time with you. The rest of you go home and worry no longer about any of this.” You say and point to the tavern owner’s wife. She goes over to you immediately. As the crowd disperses and obeys your command, you head into your home with your victim. You don’t bother with the foreplay and get straight to the feeding. You’ve done this with her several times already, but this time will be different for her. As usual she puts up no resistance and even as you’re obviously killing her she still whispers “I love you” in your ear and holds you tightly. You finish her off and drop her body to the floor. Meanwhile the dop was watching the shadows. You look at her and from her body language she cringes a bit. “Geez… you really are ruthless. I mean I’ve seen you on occasion drink people, but…never quite like that. She said she loved you and you just…look I just want to remind you, I am definitely NOT going to betray you.” “Glad to hear it, now stop wasting time and take her form or whatever it is you do.” The dop wastes no time and soon there is a “new” tavern keeper’s wife…actually you find out her name was Kayla. The doppelganger knew her better than you actually did, despite you feeding on her on a regular basis. After “Kayla” leaves to get more acquainted with her new role, you look around to make sure you can dispose of the real one safely. You aren’t sure why you’re bothering being so secretive since the villagers would probably be fine with a doppelganger if you told them to be fine with it. However, you do think it’s probably a good idea to slowly introduce such things to them. While they may accept you as a master, they may be less willing to accept some other non-human lurking about as well. At least not until you make some of them non-human. The next night you start again with what you originally planned. This time you pick a married couple at random and decide to see how it goes. You give them both some of your blood which causes them to gag a bit and then generally feel “weird.” The pair of them eventually stagger back home, and you tell Kayla to keep an eye on them both since you won’t be able to observe them during the day. A couple days and nights pass and you repeat the process with them and just when you’re starting to get frustrated, they start to show a change. The pair of them become more fawning than usual towards you and you don’t even have to do anything. They’re also paler and beginning to move in a less normal fashion. It’s more of a loping gait. Their appetite becomes a lot less normal as well. You think you’ve finally changed them into ghouls. You’re glad it didn’t take as long as Isabella once suggested it would if you attempted it. However, you soon discover all her warnings were correct. First off, they ARE very annoying with how much they’re underfoot all the time. Still, they are very obedient and they soon finish digging out the area meant to be your new resting place under the house. It’s crude, but you figure it can be worked on continually. For now though it’s functional enough that you don’t need to sleep in a hole in the ground in the forest nearby. Keeping them subdued when you’re asleep is another matter however. While you attempt to tell them to stand guard over you, they’re little like children in that they get bored and have short attention spans. While they haven’t actually attacked anyone yet, they’re acting aggressive enough that it won’t be long. This naturally causes some of the other villagers to be wary and now that’s potentially messing up your relationship with them. To counter act this, you give a few intimidating speeches, re-hyponotize a few of the key villagers again and have the two ghouls whipped before the mob and scold them for their behavior. The pathetic creatures soon learn that they aren’t going to be chewing on their neighbors anytime soon. Still, it does make other villagers less eager to want to become ghouls now, though you’re sort of wondering if it’s worth it anyway. While you’re trying to keep a precarious balance of humans and non-humans together through your powers and plain old fear, Kayla reminds you that it will soon be time for her to meet with Green Eye’s people and start part one of that plan. You originally thought you might send one of the ghouls with her, but that would probably just confuse them, or they’ll fuck up the plan and they might even eat Kayla. So she’s going alone. You’re still fairly concerned about this, but this is what you’ve decided on, so that’s what you’re going to do. You don’t even go to sleep that day; you stay awake mostly pacing in your underground sleeping area. You send Stinky and Fatty (Your new names for your ghouls since you never bothered to learn their real names) to go fetch you a “drink” so you can keep your strength up. You also tell them to keep an eye out for Kayla. At any moment you fully expect to hear the sounds of an attack above you. You aren’t going to be able to help, so you hope Stinky and Fatty are up to the task. However, the pair of them eventually come back with Kayla who is back in her human form. “Here she is master!” Stinky says excitedly. “Did we do good?” Fatty adds. “Yeah, now get the hell out of here. Go dig up one of the corpses in the forest and reward yourself or something.” You hardly need to tell them twice and they both leave you alone. “Well?” you ask. “Well, I’m back and it’s done. I made enough trouble that Green Eye will be willing to speak with you tonight. I didn’t really want to be at Green Eye’s any longer than I had to anyway, let alone directly confront him. Fairly certain that gem eye of his sees through disguises. In fact, I highly suggest that you not talk to him and just attack as soon as you see him, lest you fall under his command.” Kayla says. “You’re joking right? I’m a fucking vampire. I am the one who commands.” “Yeah, I know you’ve got powers of your own, but it’s that gem eye. It’s magic. How the hell do you think he got that motley bunch to work for him?” “You seem immune considering you’re selling him out.” “Well I imagine that might be a combination of being a doppelganger, along with not being in his presence for an extended period of time. Whenever I was though, I felt the urge to serve him. I mean think about it, he managed to convince YOU not to wipe out his group the first time around. How the hell did he do that? I like to think I’ve gotten to know you well enough that you’re not really a man that takes chances on potential future threats so you sparing him and everyone else seems a bit out of character.” “I spared and took a chance on you.” “True I suppose, but still…I dunno I’m just saying you probably shouldn’t speak with him just to be safe.” “Your concern is touching. I’m guessing it’s dark about now, I’ll be heading out with the ghouls then.” “Okay, well did you need me for anything else then?” “Not right now and assuming you haven’t set me up, I will remember your actions on this task.” You take your leave of Kayla to go get your ghouls. You find them quite easily in the forest nearby finishing off a corpse. One of them hits the other and points at you. “The master is coming! The master is here!” Fatty says excitedly and runs up to you until you smack him down. “I need the pair of you to accompany me to an important meeting. When we get there though don’t do anything until I say so.” Fatty and Stinky follow you happily as you make your way to Green Eye’s mine. You feel like you’re walking into a trap the entire time, but at least you’ve got some help. Normally you wouldn’t even be concerned, but you haven’t rested or fed too much so you don’t feel like you’re a full strength either. Eventually you see the mine and you also see a short figure surrounded by several figures at the entrance. They don’t look like his usual men though. They’re all female and look very cowed for one thing. “I wasn’t expecting this.” You say. “Well considering you arrived here in broad daylight demanding your tribute and then saying it wasn’t good enough, I figured I’d offer you a selection. All of these girls are from the nearby villages.” Green Eye says. “What if I want them all?” “Well then I guess you’re getting them all, far be it for me to fight a vampire that can walk around in the daytime. Interesting trick. Didn’t know you guys could do that. Almost hard to believe…” “Well you saw it with your own eye.” “Actually I didn’t, I got the report second hand from one of my men. Granted I trust him…or rather I trust that he believes what he saw, but let’s just say, I have some questions.” “I’m not here to answer yours.” “True, but I’m going to ask anyway, because I strongly think something weird is going on here and I’d rather we talk than it come to violence.” “Of course you would, because you’d be on the losing end of that deal.” “Most likely, but are you so sure? I see you’ve brought two friends with you, meaning you’re smart enough to not take this meeting lightly.” “Choose your next words carefully dwarf.” “I always do. I have a hunch that we’re both being set up to kill each other. I’m betting you’ve been talking with that treacherous dop haven’t you? I bet that’s even who impersonated you. It’s a liar you know. All of their kind are, and I should have known better than to have one in my community. Our relationship has been cordial and can remain that way. I will even increase the tribute. We don’t have to fight.” Green Eye says. Something is very weird about all this. Green Eye seems a lot more relaxed than you are right now and with how much he’s talking; it feels almost like he’s stalling you for some purpose. Maybe he’s got his men hiding elsewhere to ambush, but there really isn’t any place to hide nearby. The fact that he’s pointed out potential treachery of the doppelganger makes you suspicious though. For all you know Green Eye’s telling the truth. > You attack Whether you’re getting set up or not isn’t the issue. The fact remains Green Eye has obviously still been spying on you at best and gearing up to kill you at worst. You can deal with Kayla when you return because you don’t intend on dying tonight. “Kill everything!” you shout. “SHIT! FIRE!” Green Eye shouts back. Stinky and Fatty both advance forward and every one of the girls that looked so submissive, suddenly draw pistols out from their clothing and Green Eye raises his own large barreled rifle. What happens next is a bit of a blur. Your speed, your ghouls and the nervousness of the girls helps you avoid most of the shots, however at this close range you still catch one to the leg. This is enough to cause you to stumble long enough for Green Eye to pick his shot, which would have probably hit you in the head, if it wasn’t for Fatty taking the silver bullet straight to his body and ripping his gut open and tearing up his insides. You roll out of the way to avoid being crushed by the falling ghoul, and scramble to get to Green Eye who is already in the process of taking his next shot. Meanwhile most of the girls that fired at you are either running, or they’re being mauled by Stinky. You grab one of the girls that was trying to run and throw her hard into Green Eye. His shot goes wild as she hits him. By the time he recovers, you grab his rifle and then break it over his head. He falls and then you grab the girl you just threw and sink your teeth into her neck for a quick taste that you don’t even finish. You then toss her dying bleeding out body aside and refocus your attention back to Green Eye who is trying to get back up. “OBEY VAMPIRE! O…” he shouts as one last attempt to stop you. “Not likely.” You answer and then rip out his green gem eye. Green Eye (Now No Eye) screams in agony as you crush the gem. You aren’t entirely sure if it ever had an effect on you, but no point in taking chances. He tries to pathetically kick at you from his prone position, but even with silver lodged in your leg, you easily move out of the way. He shouts a bunch of curses at you, some that are probably dwarven, but you finally put an end to his flailing with repeated stomps to his head. It’s done. Green Eye is dead and all the bitches that were shooting at you are either dead or run off. Stinky is busily eating one of them, unconcerned with her dead husband lying nearby. You guess she’s probably just happy eating and that you’re alive. You have no idea if you rest of Green Eye’s people are lurking in the mine or if they fled ahead of time. Chances are, without Green Eye’s leadership, whatever remains of the “community” isn’t going to stay together anyway. You suppose you could go hunt them down if they are in the mines, but honestly you’re a little wary that Green Eye might have set up a system of traps or something to get you in case he failed. You see no reason to bother playing in tunnels trying to avoid traps and ambushes with a wounded leg. Instead you start destroying to support beams around the entrance and eventually you cause a cave in. If anyone is hiding inside, they’re going to have a hell of a time digging their way out. “Come on Stinky, let’s go home.” You say. “Did I do good?” she asks. “A lot better than Fatty, that’s for sure. Stinky makes a weird laugh and snuffles about looking for a choice piece of meat to take with her on the way home. “Oh that reminds me…” you say. When you get back to Maldito, you toss the mushy decapitated head of Green Eye towards the feet of a nearby villager who is standing “guard” as a night watch. He’s a little horrified by the head, but stays put wondering what this all means. “Rejoice citizens, Green Eye and his band of cutthroats truly are no more. I have finished them off utterly. Spread the word.” You announce. Your words and actions of course get the desired effect of praise from the villager, who immediately runs off to tell everyone (and considering that it’s fairly late, waking most of them up). You tell Stinky to go find something to do since you’ve got something important to take care of. She complies and runs off back into the forest. You head to the tavern and apparently it’s a slower night since not many are in. Kayla is cleaning a glass with a bored expression Everyone though looks when you enter. “Everyone except Kayla leave. Celebrate the death of our enemies outside.” You say. You don’t need to say it twice, everyone obeys and Kayla puts down the glass she’s cleaning. “So…I take it you killed Green Eye?” she asks. “He had some interesting things to say about you before I did.” You answer. “I’m not surprised. Probably was trying to save his own skin.” “Probably, but I get the impression he wasn’t completely wrong. Tell me the truth, did you sort of set that up hoping that we’d probably kill one another? Maybe just side with whoever came out the winner?” “No, I knew you’d win. I mean you obviously had more power than Green Eye who was essentially a crippled dwarf with a bit of magic to help him. As I said, I am loyal to you now.” “Now. Interesting choice of words. Sort of implies you might not be in the future.” You stare at Kayla who begins to look very nervous. “So…um…you gonna kill me too?” she asks. “Should I kill you?” you ask. “Probably not doing myself any favors, but I suppose if you wanted to play it safe, you should. However, I of course would rather you didn’t. I said I could continue to help you and I meant that. There are other villages nearby, and I don’t see why you can’t take those over as well. I can help.” “Oh, right. The little pose as me, walking around in the daytime trick to make out like I’m a REALLY powerful vampire.” “Well, it’s not a bad idea, you have to admit. It’ll keep the rest of the ignorant villages guessing of when you’ll show up or not. Plus you’ll be able to directly take tribute, instead of relying on Green Eye now.” “Still don’t see why I really need you. I mean I could easily put the fear into any village all by myself. I can create ghouls for the daytime.” “And you trust your creatures completely to not mess things up? I think we both know the answer to that. Perhaps they do learn in time, but honestly you can’t afford to wait around forever for them.” “Okay, this sounds all very nice, about you wanting to serve and all of that, however WHY?” “Why what?” “Why do you want to serve me, why are you helping? You can transform into anything. Surely you could probably say go to the Delantium Kingdom and pose as an aristocrat’s wife and live a safe pampered life without much concern. Why risk serving a vampire for not much reward and the threat of violence done upon you? In fact why were you serving Green Eye for that matter? I can’t imagine that was much better.” “Well as I pointed out, Green Eye’s magic gem had a little to do with my servitude to him. As for you, well you already bit me. You made it quite clear you could find me anywhere now so what’s the point in me even leaving? I might as well try to make the best of this situation. Also, on top of being afraid of you, you’re using your vampire powers on me, compelling me to stay.” “What? I’ve done no such thing actually. And if I were, you wouldn’t even be aware of it. Well at least I don’t think you would be.” “Maybe you’re not aware that you’re doing it. You are very alluring you know, and I have no idea why because you’re even more…abrasive than Green Eye was.” You’re wondering if Kayla’s on to something, maybe your powers are getting stronger and you have a more “commanding aura” now. You know you always felt it a bit with Isabella and it didn’t really ever go away until she made you independent. You also wondering if you’re starting to miss Isabella in some way. Not really on the physical side of things since you got the village girls for that (Though they aren’t as good as Isabella of course) but just in other ways. For example, while you definitely don’t want a return to someone being above you, you are starting to find it a bit boring talking with people that are quaking in fear all the time. You didn’t think you would, but then you didn’t think you’d ever be in this position either. “So, you’re saying it’s ALL on me huh? Somehow I’m really not buying it. I feel like you have some sort of agenda.” You say. “Well, I suppose if you feel that way then I guess your choice is clear. Could you please try to not make it painful?” Kayla asks a bit meekly. “Will you stop with that already? I’m not going to kill you…well at least not today. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you probably weren’t rooting for me to get killed though you probably wouldn’t have been that broken up about it if I had. Also I’m intrigued enough by you that I’d like to keep you around. It’s somewhat more interesting to speak with someone who isn’t completely fearful of me every once in awhile.” “I think I’ve made it quite clear on many occasions that I am quite afraid of you.” “Eh, yeah, but it’s not the same as the rest of the mortals out there. Not to mention I don’t think you’re as afraid as you claim you are. But that’s okay, since we seem to be on the same page with future goals, speaking of which we should start talking about those.” “As you wish, you’re in charge after all.” You and Kayla begin you discuss your plans. > You time passes... Year 34 Maldito; the village of ghouls and your ruling capital. Though you aren’t exactly sure now if what you’re ruling is worth all that much. Green Eye was terrorizing the villages in the area long before you showed up and was still terrorizing them for you when you arrived. It wasn’t hard to intimidate them into submission. If you killing their former tormenter wasn’t enough to do it, then you being a vampire certain was. Kayla posing as “you” in the daytime, was just overkill. Maldito was eventually ghoulified completely, so if a village steps out of line, you’ve got an “army” to threaten them with. Though once again, it’s overkill considering you could wipe out every one of the villages yourself. The ghouls are just if you need something done in the daytime instead. Ghouls really are the most loathsome creatures you’ve ever had to be around. Everything about them disgusts you. Their habits, their sycophantic behavior, their smell, everything. They’re lower than humans and you’re surrounded by them, but at least their loyalty is certain and they watch during the day. This is what “ruling” does to you, makes you paranoid. Even with as scared as you have the rest of the villages, you still believe that one of them is going to get brave enough to actually do something about it. Maybe to some degree you’re even hoping one will just to break up the monotony. Still it’s all yours and you don’t answer to anyone. You aren’t sure if these are really the “best times” though. Something is missing. You spend a lot of time trying to remember the “good old days” but really when were those? Certainly wasn’t when you were enslaved by Ral, though you suppose your brief time with Lisa was the exception. You still wonder what happened to her, hopefully she’s doing better than you, if she’s still alive. Wasn’t when you had to spend time as a magically altered freak either. Once again, your only bright spot with that was Heather trying to help you. You’ve been thinking about your brief reunion with her in some of these moments of introspection and you still don’t feel bad about it, but you do think that she probably didn’t deserve it. Just bad timing. When you were with Isabella? Well there were a lot of good times you’ll admit, but if things were truly that good, you wouldn’t have left. You can only imagine if Isabella saw you now, she’d probably just be shaking her head at you. She’d probably even be right to do so. She always did know better, but then you were meant to be free and that’s always been your problem. Even now, ruling all these worthless peasants, you still feel like a prisoner. You haven’t really been free since your days as a petty thief with your sister. Now THOSE were the good old days. You wish you could go back to those times if only for a little while. As you sit in your own underground lair (Now properly built) you sense someone living approaching. It’s Kayla. You still don’t know her real name, but dops don’t really have them anyway so you just continue calling her by a dead tavern keeper’s wife. She doesn’t even use that form anymore and just stays in her “natural” one when around Moldito. She only uses human forms (or yours) outside the village. You’re still a little mystified of her exact intentions. She’s been with you for a couple years now and hasn’t shown any sign of leaving or betrayal. You can’t imagine that she’s entirely happy with her lot. She’s not a ghoul and she isn’t a fearful ignorant human either. You’re in charge and YOU’RE not entirely happy, so why would she be? She has said in the past that she’s happy serving you, but really have a hard time believing that. You’re a tyrannical dick. Unless, she’s in love with you, but that would be weird. You actually have been actively not using any sort of suggestive powers on her just to see how she acts. Besides, she’s never given that indication though again, maybe you’re just bad at reading the signs of a doppelganger. “Um, am I disturbing you sir?” Kayla asks. “Not really, just living up to the stereotype of the brooding vampire I suppose. What’s going on?” you respond. “Uh, dunno how to tell you this, so I might as well come out and say it, but I was doing my usual routine in one of the villages and apparently they’ve caught the attention of hunters.” “Hunters?” “Yes, apparently a group of them were investigating the village of Ulig recently. Now I don’t know if anyone said anything outright, but due to all of their suspicious behavior they might have inadvertently told the hunters something anyway. Many of the villagers I overheard seemed to be worried that they did that accidently.” “Well how many of these hunters were there and where are they?” “They’re currently in Sibogri, but they may be coming here soon. I dunno exactly how many there are, but apparently a sizable group. Ten maybe? Maybe more. I feel like this really can’t be a coincidence and someone must have told someone about all this.” “Well obviously, if there are that many. I don’t even think there were that many when they were in Holgard and that was a huge city. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is so many due to them hearing rumors of a day walking vampire.” “Apologies sir.” “What’re you apologizing for?” “The daytime thing I know was mainly my idea and I was just apologizing to you for bringing this upon you.” “Are you kidding? This is probably the most excitement I’ve had in awhile. Besides, I imagine that hunters would have come around here eventually.” “So you’re not mad or concerned about all this?” “Not really, it’s actually a motivator.” “Oh? Well what were you planning on doing then?” Well that is the question isn’t it? The obvious thing to do would be to fight, but given how you’ve been feeling lately, you could probably very well just leave. Where would you go? You have no idea, but it’s an option. In the meantime… “Kayla. Why are you still here?” you suddenly ask. “I’ll leave sir. Apologies.” Kayla responds. “No, not that! I mean why are you still here?” “Is…this a test?” “No! Look, what I’m asking and there is no right or wrong answer here, is why are you still here? I mean are you in love with me or something similar?” “Um…well…not exactly…it’s complicated. Can we talk about something else?” “Besides the hunter thing, this day is becoming the most interesting one in years. I should have asked this question years ago. What’s so complicated? You either are or you aren’t.” Kayla is silent for a moment due to the awkward spot you’ve put her in. You can see her trying to come up with an answer and after some thought… “Nope, it’s still not simple, but I can try to explain if that will please you.” Kayla answers. “Well better than nothing I guess. Go ahead.” You answer. “As a doppelganger, we do tend towards those with power. Eventually we tend to imprint upon them unless someone better comes along. I suppose that explains why I was with Green Eye for so long. However, I was also planning to kill him eventually and take his place. That’s sort of what we do.” “So…you’re basically admitting to me, that you were planning on killing me all along.” “Well…it’s complicated.” “So you’ve said. Look, you just admitted that you were planning to kill me. I think it would be in your best interest to explain in more detail.” “I honestly haven’t really been planning to kill you though. I mean I assumed I would at some point, but considering I’m already impersonating you most of the time and reaping some of power thrill directly when I’m doing it, the feeling isn’t as strong. Muted in fact.” “And that’s it?” “There’s also the fact that you created a bunch of ghouls that I wouldn’t be able to control since they know I’m not really you. Not to mention I don’t think I’d be able to kill you, so I’m sort of stuck and now it’s gotten to the point where I’m comfortable in my position and don’t really feel a desire to leave. I mean I could, but I’d probably feel really lost for a while as I tried to find a suitable role equal in status to this one and that’s not the greatest feeling for a doppelganger.” Well more enlightenment on the race of doppelgangers, but you notice she didn’t entirely answer the original question. Doesn’t matter you suppose, you’re going to do what you want anyway, but there is one more important question. “So you’re saying that if I fight these hunters, you aren’t going to suddenly switch sides again?” you ask. “Not likely sir. Hunter types tend to be nomadic and have no real hierarchy. Also they are constantly seeking out vampires and the like to kill. I already know enough about vampires that I don’t want to be hunting them on a regular basis. I’m with you sir.” Kayla responds. Well, that’s something you guess. “We’re going to fight.” You say. “Never expected anything different sir. So how are we going to go about this?” Kayla asks. “We need to gather a bit more information. If they aren’t staying in the villages themselves, then that means they must be making camp in the forest. Maybe send Stinky…no wait not her. Send Lurky, to scout the nearby forest area. He tends to be quieter and smells less pungent than most of the other ghouls. I want you to keep doing your usual routine of blending in at the other villages. Try to gather as much information as possible. As for me, I’m going to start building up the defenses on this place. Probably should have done it years ago.” “You think you have time to build a wall?” “No, but I once was a rogue and I knew how to set traps. Didn’t do it often, but I knew how. If the hunters storm this place, it isn’t just ghouls and me; they’re going to have to deal with. The only thing I’ll need to worry about are the ghouls accidently setting them off, but I think I can probably make them understand where they can go and where they can’t. Let the rest of them know though, that I’m going to address them all as soon as it goes dark, so they all better be around.” Kayla nods and goes to carry out your orders. Meanwhile you work on a few things until it’s dark so you can address your ghouls. You address what’s going on to your ghouls who of course all listen intently. They’re actually eager to go fight right now, but you tell them there will be time for that soon. You tell them to start digging holes and placing sharpened sticks, spikes and then camouflaging them. Not all the houses are used in the village anymore since the ghouls seem to all like just staying outside and only really enter the bigger village hall if the sun especially bothers them. You deicide to trap some of these abandoned homes since you imagine the hunters will be meticulous enough to search every home. You spend the next few days doing this and then eventually you get a report from Kayla who has some interesting news. “Wait, so they’re torturing people?” you say. “Yeah and they apparently got people doing this in several villages. They aren’t letting anyone go either.” Kayla says. “How many of these assholes are there?” “I still don’t have an exact number, but it’s looking like more than ten. Maybe fifty and I don’t think this is just hunters, the Church of Joachim is getting mentioned a lot, along with terms like purging and cleansing.” “Shit, this is a fucking crusade. How the hell did we not see something this large coming?” “Well we are a bit isolated even compared to the other villages, but I apologize sir, I probably should have noticed something sooner.” “It’s done now. Lurky hasn’t even come back yet, so who knows if he’s still alive. This is starting to look like more trouble than it’s worth. What the hell am I really fight for anyway?” Kayla doesn’t respond, she just shifts a bit nervously at your rise in temper. You think about your options, and just flat out leaving seems like a perfectly valid one. > You fight It may not be much and you may not entirely be satisfied with it, but this is your home for now and if you’re ever going to leave it, it’s going to be on your own terms, it won’t be due to getting run off. You calm down a bit and gather your thoughts. “Okay, if these are also Joachimites that we’re also dealing with, they’re also going to have holy men and possibly even a little magic. We can’t really afford to just wait for them to come to us, because I’ve run into these fanatics back in Holgard and they will absolutely kill every villagers if they think it’s Joachim’s will.” “I don’t know much about the human gods, and nothing about Joachim, but from what I heard, I don’t doubt it.” Kayla says. “Well generally the Joachimites are supposed to be pacifists, but occasionally you get a very militant sect and they can make a follower of Karn look like pussies by comparison. In any case, this could work in our favor. If they’re torturing the hell out of the villagers, those same villagers are probably looking for their undead savior. Meaning me. Now I could go at night, but I’d like to keep up the illusion of walking around in the day. So I want you to take about twenty ghouls including Stinky and go wipe out any hunters or Joachimites at Ulig for starters. I also want you to encourage the villagers to start resisting the fanatics a lot better than they have been doing obviously.” Kayla doesn’t look confident in your orders. “Um…” “Problem?” you ask. “While the ghouls leave me be and some of them will even listen to me if I say the orders come from you, but you’re asking me to herd twenty of them into battle. I just don’t think they’re going to listen to me like that.” “Just say I’m giving the order or hell, bring Stinky and I’ll tell her and she can relay the rest…” “It’s uh, not that sir. I…um…the ghouls don’t like me. Never have. I think they believe I shouldn’t be so close to you when none of them get to be. I mean if it wasn’t for you, I’m fairly certain they’d attack me.” “Of course they would, but I’m here, so they won’t.” “That still doesn’t mean they’re going to be totally obedient to me. Even when I’m in your form they don’t like it. I believe they find my scent offensive.” “Wait, they’re offended by YOUR smell? I don’t think I’ve ever detected any sort of scent from you. It’s as bland as your near featureless appearance.” “Maybe that’s problem. I’d probably have more success if I smelled more like you.” “So what are you getting at exactly? You saying you need to rub up against me or something?” “Well I was suggesting something a little more than that. If we could be physically intimate, I believe I could adequately copy your scent and commanding presence…” You’ve practically got an army of religious fanatic vampire killers beating down your door and Kayla wants your dick. You’d laugh if this situation wasn’t so serious…actually you laugh anyway. “Are you seriously telling me you want to have sex with me right now?” you say. “I know it seems like a weird time given all that’s going on, but it really would help with the task you’ve assigned to me.” Kayla responds. “I don’t see...fuck it. If it’s going to help, let’s get to it. However, you’re going to have to change first. I mean maybe you’re a beauty right now to other doppys, but you’re just not doing it for me in your natural form.” “Understandable. Um, is there any particular form you would like?” “I dunno, surprise me? Wait, on second thought, don’t surprise me.” “I think I know of a form that will please you. I’ve heard you describe her enough to me that I think I can copy her.” “Wait, who are you…oh.” And before your eyes, you see Kayla transform into the image of Isabella, well ALMOST the image of her. She’s not a perfect match since she’s only working by your description and one major thing that’s standing out is the eyes. Her eyes are still those blank white orbs. “Well? Does this work?” Kayla asks a bit hopefully. “I suppose it’ll have to, because we don’t have time for you to get it perfect. Well let’s get this done. Now is there anything I should know about? I mean you aren’t going to start transforming into a gray blob or something in the middle of this are you?” “Not unless you want me too sir.” “Good and no I don’t. Okay, come over here.” Kayla comes over to you and the first thing she does is kiss you on the lips and puts her arms around you. It’s weird, for multiple reasons. Least of which is because you’re embracing something that looks like “Isabella” but obviously isn’t her. While you appreciate the attempt at illusion, those white orb eyes are destroying it. “Hold on, stop.” You say. “Did I do something wrong?” Kayla asks. “Not as such, but…you’re going to have to turn around and bend over for this.” “Oh, okay.” During the act, Kayla takes every opportunity to insist that you rub her body and press up against her as much as possible as she wants to get your full “essence.” While she said she wasn’t going to turn into a gray blob during this, she starts having a very “squishy” feeling to you. It’s almost like her body is partially melding on to yours. She tells you to hold her tighter and goes on about how good this all feels to her. You’re a little reluctant to do so since it isn’t like Kayla’s a vampire and you could easily break her if you used all your strength, but then again, you partially feel like you’re fucking water. And that of course makes you concerned that she’s going to envelope you or something. None of that happens though, and after an “interesting” time with Kayla, you feel even weirder about it all and there’s a sticky gray coating on most of your body. “Ew.” You quietly say to yourself. “That was wonderful! I’ve never known someone so intimately like that! I could really feel all your power! It was all so intoxicating! Mmmm.” Kayla says and continues to rub up against you and putting your arms around her body. She’s in complete ecstasy and while you’re not surprised due to your magnificent sexual prowess, there’s shit that needs to be done. “Look, you think you can take lead the ghouls now?” you say and start separating yourself from her. (Which isn’t easy since you seem to be literally sticking to her) “Yes, I think it should be easier now.” “Good, get going. I want this done.” “Very well sir.” Kayla looks a little disappointed that you’re already shoving her out the door, but you had no plans on making this a permanent “thing” anyway. It’s going to be a little weird now though. However, you don’t want low morale so… “Kayla, just remember if it starts looking bad, make a strategic retreat. I can always make more ghouls, but I can’t replace you.” “Why thank you sir! And I will, but hopefully it won’t come to that.” Kayla responds with a smile before transforming into you and leaving. Well, now things are going to be even weirder, but you’ll worry about that later. All you can do now is wait and hope that the attack is successful. As it gets dark, you start to grow impatient and begin to suspect the worst, but Kayla returns. Not many ghouls follow her, but she’s back. She knows how much you hate interacting with “yourself” so she transforms back into her natural form. “You’re back, I was just about to go to Ulig myself. I trust it was a success?” You say. “It was, though as you can see, there were many casualties. Most of the ghouls I took with me died, including Stinky. A lot of the villagers were also massacred as well, but I believe they are more determined to fight against the fanatics after my speech to them.” Kayla says. “Okay, it’s the start. I’m going to head to Yilbov. It’s the next closest village to us and hopefully they don’t know what’s gone on in Ulig yet, but I trust you let nobody escape.” “No, none of them fled in the first place. They fought to the death.” “Good. That’s exactly what I’m going to give them.” “Wait, don’t you want anyone to go with you?” “No, I’m going to do this myself and stealthy because they’re probably going to be even more alert for trouble. Better if I go alone rather than having ghouls tipping my hand. It’s been awhile since I’ve done it this way, so it’ll be fun for me.” “As you wish sir. Just be careful. The hunters and Joachimites we encountered were well prepared. Silver shot, silver weapons, even bombs.” “Not surprised but…” Just as you’re about to complete your sentence, you see a ghoul running towards you. It’s Lurky. He looks severely wounded. “Master! Master!” he shouts. “Lurky? Thought you might be dead. What the hell happened to you?” You answer. “I almost was! Caught and tortured! There are many many hunters and those crazy worshippers in the forest! A large camp!” “How many?” “Lots! Well…none now.” “Wait, you telling me that YOU killed them all?” “No! I didn’t even kill one! Had help! Someone like you!” “Someone like me? Wait…another vampire?” Before you even put the pieces together, a familiar figure arrives and gets all the ghouls attention in town. It isn’t due to her naked body though, it’s because this is a woman of great power and dominance. “Sir…is that…” Kayla asks. “Yes, that’s her and if she’s here, it can’t be good.” Isabella has arrived and judging by the look of distain on her face, she’s not in the best of moods. She throws several ghouls out of her way and tells them to back off. They comply, but the fact they’re all in awe of her and ignoring you completely is telling of how much power she’s currently displaying. Even Kayla looks a bit entranced by her. Isabella approaches you and you just stand there like prey. Fortunately she just slaps the hell out of you. You take it since you don’t have much choice and nobody is rushing to help you either. You rub your face and address Isabella. “Hello Isabella, you’re looking as lovely as …” “Don’t fucking flatter me, I know how good I look! Ugh…this place…its crawling with ghouls. I don’t know how you can stand the filth or the smell. I feel dirty just standing here. I understand you need humans to kick around, but I thought I taught you better than to associate with ghouls. Have you REALLY looked at the company you’re keeping?” “Yes, I’m well aware Isabella.” “Are you? Because I think if you thought about it, you’d realize that hanging around with humans, ghouls, and…shit…I don’t even know what you’re supposed to be.” Isabella says temporary distracted by Kayla. “I’m a doppelganger. Heard much about you. Pleasure to meet you at last.” Kayla says with a little bow. Isabella turns back to you. “Well, at least you have someone around here with a little class I guess.” “Isabella, what are you even doing here? I thought you never wanted to see me again.” You ask. “And I would have been glad to oblige. However, your actions here had consequences. Severe ones. Did you really think that you could just conquer a bunch of villages and it NOT cause any attention? My home is ruined thanks to you.” “Wait, what?” “I suppose its more fool me for not paying more attention to your actions, I just didn’t expect you to stir up a fucking crusade. The large group of Joachimites and hunters marched through Dert and burned the entire village. The poor dumb bastards never even knew there was a vampire living nearby.” “They destroyed Dert?” “Yes, and by the time I found out about it, the crusade had already moved on towards your area. I might have known sooner, but I had already stocked up on villagers previously and had food for a while. In any case, my reliable food source was destroyed and I went to hunt the assholes who did it. Eventually I caught up with them and found your minion getting tortured. After killing most of them with only one or two managing to get away, I turned my attention to him. Of course your loyal minion told me everything that he didn’t tell his captors for obvious reasons, however I sort of suspected you were the cause of all this anyway. I warned you and you didn’t listen. You never listen…” And you feel like you’re in the crypt again… Still, as usual she’s sort of right. Doesn’t mean you like it though. “Okay, I get it. So I take it you’re here to help?” you say. “Help? Well that is an interesting dilemma. If you weren’t involved, I’d probably finish off the rest of these fanatics and hunters myself and be on my way, but considering that you are involved, I’m tempted to just take off and leave you to deal with the rest of the situation. I’ve probably killed enough of them to qualify as revenge and it’s not going to change the fact that I need to find a new place to live since my livestock has all been killed.” Isabella says. “Can’t you just go to Holgard or prey upon travellers nearby?” “Yes, I suppose I could, but ugh…that’s not ideal. Then again neither is looking for a new home. In any case, I’m still not convinced on helping you.” “Um…Miss…Isabella? If I may…” Kayla says. “Actually under normal circumstances, you may not, however since I’m more willing to listen to a complete stranger right now rather than my ex, you might as well dare to address me. Say what you have to doppelganger.” Isabella remarks. “I…we…would be most grateful for your help. While you may have eliminated a great camp in the forest, there are still many enemies currently occupying the villages in the nearby area and as you said, one or two from the camp you destroyed got away. I can only imagine they are already on their way to warn their fellows which means they will be more prepared. I think we would be able to handle this situation much easier with your superior skills assuming you wish to help us, oh great mistress of the night.” Isabella cocks her head to the side listening to Kayla trying to appeal to her sense of vanity. “Where did you find this one? It’s good at this. It’s respectful without being excessively annoying like a ghoul or quaking in fear like a human, and it almost comes off as sincere. It may even be sincere. However, I’m not actually interested in hearing your minions beg on your behalf. I’d rather hear YOU do it.” “What for? I mean you either care enough about your revenge or you don’t. I mean I was planning on taking care of this myself before you showed up anyway…” Kayla suddenly goes over to you. “Sir, I really think we should take her help. There are an awful lot of hunters still alive and we would probably lose less humans and ghouls with your ex helping us. It will just be better in the long run.” > You ask Isabella for help It would be the pragmatic thing to do. Isabella is a lot more powerful than you are and at the very least, it’ll make all of this go a lot easier and quicker. You put up with Isabella’s superior attitude for years, you can put up with it for this small moment. Also there is a small part…well a little more than small actually, that misses her. “Isabella, and I do mean this sincerely, I would like your assistance on this task. I fucked up, and should have thought about consequences of trying to carve out some sort of empire of sorts. Especially when I don’t have much help to begin with. I got drunk with power and overly confident about everything. So again, if it will appease you, I’m begging for your aid.” You say. Isabella looks at you as you try to look as humble as possible to her. “Nice. Not as convincing as your doppelganger though.” Isabella remarks. “What? I’m being sincere! I really do want your help!” “Yes, I know you do and I even know you mean it, but my concern is, are you actually going to LEARN from any of this? I seriously have my doubts about that. Chances are when all this is over, you’ll go right back to doing the same thing, perhaps even believing that you’ll do it better next time.” “So, you’re not helping.” “I didn’t say that, stop presuming my actions!” Isabella snaps. There’s a pause and then Isabella shakes her head. “By the gods I’m too sentimental for old flames sometimes…” she says to herself. “I will help you, but this is the last time! If you decide to continue acting like an idiot after this, you’re on your own. Okay, give me the lay of the land so I know exactly where we’re attacking.” As soon as Isabella is given a map of the area and told where certain places are specifically, she seems uninterested in the specifics and repeatedly says she’ll take care of most of the remaining villages tonight and any remaining ones she’ll deal with tomorrow night. In the meantime you proceed with your own plan of going to Yilbov. Kayla stays behind with the ghouls. By the time you get to Yilbov, it feels like a very familiar scene. Namely when Green Eye’s men were pillaging Maldito, though minus the rape and double the torture and burning alive. “FOLLOWERS OF THE EVIL SPAWN MUST BE PURGED! THE WILL OF JOACHIM DEMANDS IT! NOW REPENT AND ACCEPT THE MERCY OF JOACHIM BEFORE THE RIGHTEOUS FIRE CLEANSES YOUR FILTHY SOUL!” Several villagers are tied to stakes and begging for their lives. Some are saying they were forced to serve you, others claim ignorance, and none of it does any good of course. The fanatics are burning some infidels tonight and that’s that. Meanwhile there are several hunters patrolling the village in groups of two. You manage to actually take out four of them before alerting everyone to your presence. It was a good try at least. “IT’S THE VAMPIRE! KILL IT! KILL IT NOW!” the head zealot shouts and quickly burns the rest of the villagers tied to stakes. Gunfire, crossbow bolts, and silver throwing knives are all fired or hurled in your direction. It’s a bit chaotic with all the villagers running around, but at least some of them are taking hits for you, though perhaps not voluntarily. You take down several Joachimites, before the head zealot calls forth a beam of light from his hands and aims it at you. “FEEL JOACHIM’S BURNING LIGHT, DEMON OF THE NIGHT!” You feel it all right too, and it hurts like hell when it briefly hits your chest. You quickly get a nearby villager to use as a shield, but it doesn’t work, you soon smell flesh burning as the beam burns right through the villager. You get temporary relief by ducking behind a house. The problem lies with the zealot being on a high platform in an open area and his spell seemingly following you without error. You peek behind the corner and see that he’s still yelling about killing you all the while his victims are screaming and burning close around him. While you’re pondering your best move to get to him, you get shot in your side by a hunter. His next shot would have been your head had you not been quick enough to dodge. You rush the hunter and break his neck with ease and trying to ignore the pain of the silver now lodged in your body. “Shit…need to finish this asshole. What this…oh this might work.” You say and find a spherical metal object on the body of the hunter. It’s a firebomb. You grab it and the body of the hunter and go to face the zealot again. “YOU CANNOT HIDE BLOOD LEECH! THE LIGHT WILL ALWAYS FIND YOU!” the zealot says as his light beams hit the body of the hunter. You smell the burn and it won’t be long before it goes through, but you hopefully don’t need that long. You throw the firebomb at the zealot, which misses, but it didn’t need to hit him and you weren’t aiming at him anyway. You just needed it to hit one of the burning villagers near him. Before you know it an explosion occurs showering the entire area with wood, flames, and body parts. You continue to use the body as a shield. Last thing you need is a random piece of wood flying into your heart. After the destruction has died down a bit, the remainder of the Joachimite fanatics clumsily try to bash your head in with silver cudgels. They fail and join the rest of the dead. And there are certainly a lot of them. This village is in complete ruins. Most of the villagers are dead or hiding, a few though are angry. “YOU! You brought this upon us all! Even Green Eye was better than this! You’ve been preying upon all of us and it stops today!” someone shouts and then you feel a silver bolt in your back. “Agh! Fuck! Ungrateful wretches!” you exclaim and turn your attention to the group of peasants that have grabbed hunter weapons to finish you off. They have about as much success as they did. Your wrath is swift and brutal. After putting down the minor peasant revolt, you address any villagers still around, but hiding. “If you still wish to live under my protection, you had best find shelter in the nearby village of Ulig. If not, then I suggest you take to the wilderness now, and forget about this place for the rest of your short lives.” You take your leave of the village and head back home. A little slower than usual due to all the silver in the side of your body. You’re going to have to get Kayla to help fish the stuff out. Eventually you get back home and find that Isabella is already in your lair and speaking with Kayla! They’re seemingly having a friendly conversation as well. “Oh that doesn’t surprise me, he’s always been like that. I think his parents must have… oh speaking of which, look who just came back. Sheesh, you look a little worn.” Isabella says. “Um, welcome back sir! I was just talking with Isabella.” Kayla says a bit more nervously. “Yes, I’ve been finding Kayla an excellent conversationalist and it’s rare I find those.” “Hm, while you two were talking I’ve been getting shot full of silver! I thought you were going to help!” you exclaim. “I did and I finished.” “…but…you couldn’t have! How many villages did you get to? “Three. Five was how many you had right? You already dealt with one and I assume you just dealt with the other. Also, I managed to save most of your little humans in the process. You know what your problem is? You have too many villages to look after. You should just group all your followers in one big place. It’ll be easier for you to rule that way, if you’re going to insist on doing this.” You have no words you just sit down still in pain. You think Kayla is going to ask if you’re okay or go see to you, but instead she continues to hang around Isabella. “Hey, that’s a good idea Isabella. See? Isn’t it good you begged her for help?” Kayla says. “Best idea ever obviously.” You say. “Okay I know what the problem is, your girlfriend isn't showing you proper attention, am I right?” Isabella says. “What?!” you answer. “Um…” Kayla stutters. Isabella looks at the pair of you back and forth. “Well that’s what you two are right? I mean I’ve gotten a vibe between the pair of you and I’m usually not wrong on these sorts of things.” “No!” you say. “Um…I suppose it’s complicated.” Kayla responds. “What’s so complicated? Not like anyone else is in the middle of this…wait, he’s not fucking a ghoul is he? Because that would be…” “I’m not fucking a ghoul!” “Then what’s the problem? You two are fucking right?” “No!” you say. “Um…it’s complicated.” Kayla responds again. Isabella start to laugh a bit and you’re getting annoyed. Kayla just remains silent. “What’s so fucking funny?” you exclaim. “You of course. We’re not together, do you actually think I care what you’re fucking now?” Isabella says. “That’s not the point.” “Okay, look since I’m not going to get a straight answer from you, I’ll ask your girlfriend. Have you two been intimate? Don’t worry, I don’t care.” “Well, we have, but it was only once and I sort of talked him into it because it was part of a plan.” Kayla answers. “Oh this just gets better. Talked him into it huh? I’m sure you didn’t need to try very hard.” “Okay, you’ve had a good laugh, but I don’t see why this is any of your concern.” You say. Isabella stands up and gives you a serious look. “I’ll tell you why, because your actions have had consequences in my life for quite some time. From the moment you showed up at my crypt begging me for Gray Moss for Ral, to the moment when you had that frozen curse and even now you brought a crusade on my doorstep. You’ve been quite troublesome since we met, but I’ve been talking with Kayla here and I’ve found some illumination which I didn’t expect to.” “And that would be?” “That would be despite it all, I’ve always helped you out because I like you. And because I do, I’m going to go back on my word and help you again.” And before your eyes, Isabella spins around and with one quick move she rips Kayla’s head off and throws it across the room and into the wall behind you. You stand up as Kayla’s headless body leaks gray goo from the body. “SHIT! What the fuck did you do that for?!” you exclaim. “What? You didn’t actually love it did you?” Isabella asks. “No! But…she was a useful servant!” “She was serving nobody but herself. I talked with that one long enough to see that. You can’t trust doppys.” “Thought you said you never saw a doppelganger before.” “I haven’t, or at least not one in its natural form, but in any case I didn’t say I didn’t know anything about them. You don’t live for centuries without reading tomes and books about things every now and then. That doppy had sex with you, meaning it most definitely gathered enough of your presence to take the next step, which was to copy you perfectly, dispose of you and take over.” “What? No, that can’t be right.” “I’m serious. Have I ever lied to you?” “I suppose not, but still…” “Hell, it was getting friendly with me when you weren’t here. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it would have turned into you and then later some where down the road tried to get close to me in your form. Wouldn’t have worked of course, I would have known that it wasn’t you. Anyway, I should get going, it’ll be dawn soon and I’m going to have to dig a hole in the ground. It’s so undignified, but it is what it is.” “You’re leaving?” “Well, I told you I was just here to help. What, you weren’t hoping I killed the doppy because I wanted to get back with you did you?” “Would it really be so bad?” Isabella walks over to you and kisses you. “No, but we’re obviously in different places right now. Tell you what, assuming you survive another century, come find me in the Delantium Kingdom.” “You not going back home?” “No, because you’re most likely going to still be fucking around here and possibly drawing attention to yourself again, plus it’s not going to be the same with Dert gone. Besides maybe I need a change of scenery anyway. Going to miss the garden, but I can make another one elsewhere, better maybe. Who knows? See you around.” You watch as Isabella walks toward the exit of your lair, but before she leaves she stops. “Before I go, tell me. When you were intimate with the dop, did she look like me at the time?” Isabella asks. “Well… sort of…but not quite. It’s complicated.” You answer. “I knew it.” Isabella laughs and leaves. It’s been an eventful night and you’ve got a lot to do tomorrow night, but for now, you’re going to get some rest.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It may not be much and you may not entirely be satisfied with it, but this is your home for now and if you’re ever going to leave it, it’s going to be on your own terms, it won’t be due to getting run off. You calm down a bit and gather your thoughts. “Okay, if these are also Joachimites that we’re also dealing with, they’re also going to have holy men and possibly even a little magic. We can’t really afford to just wait for them to come to us, because I’ve run into these fanatics back in Holgard and they will absolutely kill every villagers if they think it’s Joachim’s will.” “I don’t know much about the human gods, and nothing about Joachim, but from what I heard, I don’t doubt it.” Kayla says. “Well generally the Joachimites are supposed to be pacifists, but occasionally you get a very militant sect and they can make a follower of Karn look like pussies by comparison. In any case, this could work in our favor. If they’re torturing the hell out of the villagers, those same villagers are probably looking for their undead savior. Meaning me. Now I could go at night, but I’d like to keep up the illusion of walking around in the day. So I want you to take about twenty ghouls including Stinky and go wipe out any hunters or Joachimites at Ulig for starters. I also want you to encourage the villagers to start resisting the fanatics a lot better than they have been doing obviously.” Kayla doesn’t look confident in your orders. “Um…” “Problem?” you ask. “While the ghouls leave me be and some of them will even listen to me if I say the orders come from you, but you’re asking me to herd twenty of them into battle. I just don’t think they’re going to listen to me like that.” “Just say I’m giving the order or hell, bring Stinky and I’ll tell her and she can relay the rest…” “It’s uh, not that sir. I…um…the ghouls don’t like me. Never have. I think they believe I shouldn’t be so close to you when none of them get to be. I mean if it wasn’t for you, I’m fairly certain they’d attack me.” “Of course they would, but I’m here, so they won’t.” “That still doesn’t mean they’re going to be totally obedient to me. Even when I’m in your form they don’t like it. I believe they find my scent offensive.” “Wait, they’re offended by YOUR smell? I don’t think I’ve ever detected any sort of scent from you. It’s as bland as your near featureless appearance.” “Maybe that’s problem. I’d probably have more success if I smelled more like you.” “So what are you getting at exactly? You saying you need to rub up against me or something?” “Well I was suggesting something a little more than that. If we could be physically intimate, I believe I could adequately copy your scent and commanding presence…” You’ve practically got an army of religious fanatic vampire killers beating down your door and Kayla wants your dick. You’d laugh if this situation wasn’t so serious…actually you laugh anyway. “Are you seriously telling me you want to have sex with me right now?” you say. “I know it seems like a weird time given all that’s going on, but it really would help with the task you’ve assigned to me.” Kayla responds. “I don’t see...fuck it. If it’s going to help, let’s get to it. However, you’re going to have to change first. I mean maybe you’re a beauty right now to other doppys, but you’re just not doing it for me in your natural form.” “Understandable. Um, is there any particular form you would like?” “I dunno, surprise me? Wait, on second thought, don’t surprise me.” “I think I know of a form that will please you. I’ve heard you describe her enough to me that I think I can copy her.” “Wait, who are you…oh.” And before your eyes, you see Kayla transform into the image of Isabella, well ALMOST the image of her. She’s not a perfect match since she’s only working by your description and one major thing that’s standing out is the eyes. Her eyes are still those blank white orbs. “Well? Does this work?” Kayla asks a bit hopefully. “I suppose it’ll have to, because we don’t have time for you to get it perfect. Well let’s get this done. Now is there anything I should know about? I mean you aren’t going to start transforming into a gray blob or something in the middle of this are you?” “Not unless you want me too sir.” “Good and no I don’t. Okay, come over here.” Kayla comes over to you and the first thing she does is kiss you on the lips and puts her arms around you. It’s weird, for multiple reasons. Least of which is because you’re embracing something that looks like “Isabella” but obviously isn’t her. While you appreciate the attempt at illusion, those white orb eyes are destroying it. “Hold on, stop.” You say. “Did I do something wrong?” Kayla asks. “Not as such, but…you’re going to have to turn around and bend over for this.” “Oh, okay.” During the act, Kayla takes every opportunity to insist that you rub her body and press up against her as much as possible as she wants to get your full “essence.” While she said she wasn’t going to turn into a gray blob during this, she starts having a very “squishy” feeling to you. It’s almost like her body is partially melding on to yours. She tells you to hold her tighter and goes on about how good this all feels to her. You’re a little reluctant to do so since it isn’t like Kayla’s a vampire and you could easily break her if you used all your strength, but then again, you partially feel like you’re fucking water. And that of course makes you concerned that she’s going to envelope you or something. None of that happens though, and after an “interesting” time with Kayla, you feel even weirder about it all and there’s a sticky gray coating on most of your body. “Ew.” You quietly say to yourself. “That was wonderful! I’ve never known someone so intimately like that! I could really feel all your power! It was all so intoxicating! Mmmm.” Kayla says and continues to rub up against you and putting your arms around her body. She’s in complete ecstasy and while you’re not surprised due to your magnificent sexual prowess, there’s shit that needs to be done. “Look, you think you can take lead the ghouls now?” you say and start separating yourself from her. (Which isn’t easy since you seem to be literally sticking to her) “Yes, I think it should be easier now.” “Good, get going. I want this done.” “Very well sir.” Kayla looks a little disappointed that you’re already shoving her out the door, but you had no plans on making this a permanent “thing” anyway. It’s going to be a little weird now though. However, you don’t want low morale so… “Kayla, just remember if it starts looking bad, make a strategic retreat. I can always make more ghouls, but I can’t replace you.” “Why thank you sir! And I will, but hopefully it won’t come to that.” Kayla responds with a smile before transforming into you and leaving. Well, now things are going to be even weirder, but you’ll worry about that later. All you can do now is wait and hope that the attack is successful. As it gets dark, you start to grow impatient and begin to suspect the worst, but Kayla returns. Not many ghouls follow her, but she’s back. She knows how much you hate interacting with “yourself” so she transforms back into her natural form. “You’re back, I was just about to go to Ulig myself. I trust it was a success?” You say. “It was, though as you can see, there were many casualties. Most of the ghouls I took with me died, including Stinky. A lot of the villagers were also massacred as well, but I believe they are more determined to fight against the fanatics after my speech to them.” Kayla says. “Okay, it’s the start. I’m going to head to Yilbov. It’s the next closest village to us and hopefully they don’t know what’s gone on in Ulig yet, but I trust you let nobody escape.” “No, none of them fled in the first place. They fought to the death.” “Good. That’s exactly what I’m going to give them.” “Wait, don’t you want anyone to go with you?” “No, I’m going to do this myself and stealthy because they’re probably going to be even more alert for trouble. Better if I go alone rather than having ghouls tipping my hand. It’s been awhile since I’ve done it this way, so it’ll be fun for me.” “As you wish sir. Just be careful. The hunters and Joachimites we encountered were well prepared. Silver shot, silver weapons, even bombs.” “Not surprised but…” Just as you’re about to complete your sentence, you see a ghoul running towards you. It’s Lurky. He looks severely wounded. “Master! Master!” he shouts. “Lurky? Thought you might be dead. What the hell happened to you?” You answer. “I almost was! Caught and tortured! There are many many hunters and those crazy worshippers in the forest! A large camp!” “How many?” “Lots! Well…none now.” “Wait, you telling me that YOU killed them all?” “No! I didn’t even kill one! Had help! Someone like you!” “Someone like me? Wait…another vampire?” Before you even put the pieces together, a familiar figure arrives and gets all the ghouls attention in town. It isn’t due to her naked body though, it’s because this is a woman of great power and dominance. “Sir…is that…” Kayla asks. “Yes, that’s her and if she’s here, it can’t be good.” Isabella has arrived and judging by the look of distain on her face, she’s not in the best of moods. She throws several ghouls out of her way and tells them to back off. They comply, but the fact they’re all in awe of her and ignoring you completely is telling of how much power she’s currently displaying. Even Kayla looks a bit entranced by her. Isabella approaches you and you just stand there like prey. Fortunately she just slaps the hell out of you. You take it since you don’t have much choice and nobody is rushing to help you either. You rub your face and address Isabella. “Hello Isabella, you’re looking as lovely as …” “Don’t fucking flatter me, I know how good I look! Ugh…this place…its crawling with ghouls. I don’t know how you can stand the filth or the smell. I feel dirty just standing here. I understand you need humans to kick around, but I thought I taught you better than to associate with ghouls. Have you REALLY looked at the company you’re keeping?” “Yes, I’m well aware Isabella.” “Are you? Because I think if you thought about it, you’d realize that hanging around with humans, ghouls, and…shit…I don’t even know what you’re supposed to be.” Isabella says temporary distracted by Kayla. “I’m a doppelganger. Heard much about you. Pleasure to meet you at last.” Kayla says with a little bow. Isabella turns back to you. “Well, at least you have someone around here with a little class I guess.” “Isabella, what are you even doing here? I thought you never wanted to see me again.” You ask. “And I would have been glad to oblige. However, your actions here had consequences. Severe ones. Did you really think that you could just conquer a bunch of villages and it NOT cause any attention? My home is ruined thanks to you.” “Wait, what?” “I suppose its more fool me for not paying more attention to your actions, I just didn’t expect you to stir up a fucking crusade. The large group of Joachimites and hunters marched through Dert and burned the entire village. The poor dumb bastards never even knew there was a vampire living nearby.” “They destroyed Dert?” “Yes, and by the time I found out about it, the crusade had already moved on towards your area. I might have known sooner, but I had already stocked up on villagers previously and had food for a while. In any case, my reliable food source was destroyed and I went to hunt the assholes who did it. Eventually I caught up with them and found your minion getting tortured. After killing most of them with only one or two managing to get away, I turned my attention to him. Of course your loyal minion told me everything that he didn’t tell his captors for obvious reasons, however I sort of suspected you were the cause of all this anyway. I warned you and you didn’t listen. You never listen…” And you feel like you’re in the crypt again… Still, as usual she’s sort of right. Doesn’t mean you like it though. “Okay, I get it. So I take it you’re here to help?” you say. “Help? Well that is an interesting dilemma. If you weren’t involved, I’d probably finish off the rest of these fanatics and hunters myself and be on my way, but considering that you are involved, I’m tempted to just take off and leave you to deal with the rest of the situation. I’ve probably killed enough of them to qualify as revenge and it’s not going to change the fact that I need to find a new place to live since my livestock has all been killed.” Isabella says. “Can’t you just go to Holgard or prey upon travellers nearby?” “Yes, I suppose I could, but ugh…that’s not ideal. Then again neither is looking for a new home. In any case, I’m still not convinced on helping you.” “Um…Miss…Isabella? If I may…” Kayla says. “Actually under normal circumstances, you may not, however since I’m more willing to listen to a complete stranger right now rather than my ex, you might as well dare to address me. Say what you have to doppelganger.” Isabella remarks. “I…we…would be most grateful for your help. While you may have eliminated a great camp in the forest, there are still many enemies currently occupying the villages in the nearby area and as you said, one or two from the camp you destroyed got away. I can only imagine they are already on their way to warn their fellows which means they will be more prepared. I think we would be able to handle this situation much easier with your superior skills assuming you wish to help us, oh great mistress of the night.” Isabella cocks her head to the side listening to Kayla trying to appeal to her sense of vanity. “Where did you find this one? It’s good at this. It’s respectful without being excessively annoying like a ghoul or quaking in fear like a human, and it almost comes off as sincere. It may even be sincere. However, I’m not actually interested in hearing your minions beg on your behalf. I’d rather hear YOU do it.” “What for? I mean you either care enough about your revenge or you don’t. I mean I was planning on taking care of this myself before you showed up anyway…” Kayla suddenly goes over to you. “Sir, I really think we should take her help. There are an awful lot of hunters still alive and we would probably lose less humans and ghouls with your ex helping us. It will just be better in the long run.” > You refuse Isabella's help Considering Isabella has seemingly already wiped out a majority of the fanatics, your task is going to be a lot easier now. She’s already helped enough; you aren’t going to beg her for more help especially if she’s going to be telling you what to do the whole time. You still like her and all, but there was a reason you didn’t work out. “Isabella, I appreciate the assistance you have already given, but I think we can all handle it from here.” Isabella briefly looks insulted, but she quickly hides it. Seems she figured you’d give in. “I see. Well if that’s how you feel about it, then I shall take my leave. Good luck I suppose. I mean that in general, since even if you do succeed I doubt you’re actually going to learn any sort of lesson from it all. I can imagine that the same thing will happen again five years down the road and I’m certainly not going to be anywhere near here when it does. Guess I’ll see what the Delantium Kingdom is like this time of year. Goodbye.” Without another word, Isabella takes her leave. Kayla suggests that you reconsider, but you tell her to remember her position, as it isn’t her call in the first place. “Very well sir didn’t mean to overstep my boundaries.” She says. “I’m going Yilbov, I’ll be back as soon as I can.” You say and take your leave as well. By the time you get to Yilbov, it feels like a very familiar scene. Namely when Green Eye’s men were pillaging Maldito, though minus the rape and double the torture and burning alive. “FOLLOWERS OF THE EVIL SPAWN MUST BE PURGED! THE WILL OF JOACHIM DEMANDS IT! NOW REPENT AND ACCEPT THE MERCY OF JOACHIM BEFORE THE RIGHTEOUS FIRE CLEANSES YOUR FILTHY SOUL!” Several villagers are tied to stakes and begging for their lives. Some are saying they were forced to serve you, others claim ignorance, and none of it does any good of course. The fanatics are burning some infidels tonight and that’s that. Meanwhile there are several hunters patrolling the village in groups of two. You manage to actually take out four of them before alerting everyone to your presence. It was a good try at least. “IT’S THE VAMPIRE! KILL IT! KILL IT NOW!” the head zealot shouts and quickly burns the rest of the villagers tied to stakes. Gunfire, crossbow bolts, and silver throwing knives are all fired or hurled in your direction. It’s a bit chaotic with all the villagers running around, but at least some of them are taking hits for you, though perhaps not voluntarily. You take down several Joachimites, before the head zealot calls forth a beam of light from his hands and aims it at you. “FEEL JOACHIM’S BURNING LIGHT, DEMON OF THE NIGHT!” You feel it all right too, and it hurts like hell when it briefly hits your chest. You quickly get a nearby villager to use as a shield, but it doesn’t work, you soon smell flesh burning as the beam burns right through the villager. You get temporary relief by ducking behind a house. The problem lies with the zealot being on a high platform in an open area and his spell seemingly following you without error. You peek behind the corner and see that he’s still yelling about killing you all the while his victims are screaming and burning close around him. While you’re pondering your best move to get to him, you get shot in your side by a hunter. His next shot would have been your head had you not been quick enough to dodge. You rush the hunter and break his neck with ease and trying to ignore the pain of the silver now lodged in your body. “Shit…need to finish this asshole. What this…oh this might work.” You say and find a spherical metal object on the body of the hunter. It’s a firebomb. You grab it and the body of the hunter and go to face the zealot again. “YOU CANNOT HIDE BLOOD LEECH! THE LIGHT WILL ALWAYS FIND YOU!” the zealot says as his light beams hit the body of the hunter. You smell the burn and it won’t be long before it goes through, but you hopefully don’t need that long. You throw the firebomb at the zealot, which misses, but it didn’t need to hit him and you weren’t aiming at him anyway. You just needed it to hit one of the burning villagers near him. Before you know it an explosion occurs showering the entire area with wood, flames, and body parts. You continue to use the body as a shield. Last thing you need is a random piece of wood flying into your heart. After the destruction has died down a bit, the remainder of the Joachimite fanatics clumsily try to bash your head in with silver cudgels. They fail and join the rest of the dead. And there are certainly a lot of them. This village is in complete ruins. Most of the villagers are dead or hiding, a few though are angry. “YOU! You brought this upon us all! Even Green Eye was better than this! You’ve been preying upon all of us and it stops today!” someone shouts and then you feel a silver bolt in your back. “Agh! Fuck! Ungrateful wretches!” you exclaim and turn your attention to the group of peasants that have grabbed hunter weapons to finish you off. They have about as much success as they did. Your wrath is swift and brutal. After putting down the minor peasant revolt, you address any villagers still around, but hiding. “If you still wish to live under my protection, you had best find shelter in the nearby village of Ulig. If not, then I suggest you take to the wilderness now, and forget about this place for the rest of your short lives.” You take your leave of the village and head back home. A little slower than usual due to all the silver in the side of your body. You’re going to have to get Kayla to help fish the stuff out. When you return Kayla does indeed tend to your wounded body. She’s very attentive and even offers you some of her blood to keep up your strength and help with the healing process since there aren’t any humans around. You take her up on her offer, since while her blood is horrible tasting, you can’t afford to be a chooser right now. You tell Kayla that tomorrow morning she needs to take ALL the ghouls to one of the villages and wipe out all the enemies there as well. You rest up for most of the day, hoping that the attack goes successfully and a counter attack doesn’t occur while you’re trying to rest. Fortunately Kayla returns, unfortunately she’s gotten half of the ghouls killed in the process. The other half is in various conditions ranging from somewhat bruised to missing a few body part. Kayla also says that most of the village was destroyed and not even by the fanatics. There were too many ghouls for her to control properly and some of them ran amok. By the time she got them all back under control and eliminated the fanatics, most of the villagers were either dead or they fled. So while you officially won, you lost the village, worse, you lost the humans in it. Kayla is obviously no general, and while yelling at her makes you feel slightly better, it doesn’t really solve anything. You just realize you’re going to have to redouble your efforts at the fourth village. Later that night you head to Goloki with your ghouls and you have more success, but probably not much more. In fact, it’s a good thing you took your ghouls otherwise you might have been in trouble. You’re wounded several times and lose a good number of ghouls. You do manage to keep more villagers alive. After drinking a few of them to heal yourself somewhat, you tell the survivors to head to Ulig. You think after all this is over, you’re just going to have your people in one village. It would be a lot easier to rule them that way. You eventually stagger back to Moldito and once again Kayla tries to tend to you as best she can. She asks if you’re sending her with the remainder of the ghouls to attack the last village in the morning, but given her last two attempts resulted in heavy losses, you tell her, you’ll just take care of it tomorrow night. After giving a few general commands to her, you go to your room to try to rest. This is taking it out of you more than you thought it would. It really is a good thing Isabella took out the main camp, but you’re starting to wonder if you let your pride get in the way of making things easier. You quickly dismiss such thoughts and eventually close your eyes to rest. You don’t know how long you sleep for, but you’re suddenly woken up, by the sounds of battle above you. “Shit! Don’t tell me they counter attacked…” you say to yourself getting up. Nobody has come down to your lair yet, not even Kayla or ghouls, so you assume that they’re defending. Must have been sudden if nobody informed you. Its still daytime, so there’s little you can actually do except wait for someone to come to you. You could go up and try to give orders from the ground floor inside your home, but that’s a dangerous position. A couple of those bombs that the hunters like using so much could blow it up and if not get you completely in the blast, it would destroy the house on top of you and probably expose you to the sun. You’re also not healed completely, so it would be better to just save your strength and wait for them to come to you. It is frustrating just waiting around though. You start wondering if the traps you set are working, how many hunters you’re going to have to deal with and if Kayla’s dead or not. You chalk up Kayla being dead since she probably would have come to you by now and while she can look like you, she isn’t actually you, and doesn’t have your powers to stand up to the hunters. Eventually you start to hear the sounds of footsteps coming down the stairs. Multiple ones. This is it. You wait for the first hunter that turns the corner and put your fist through his chest. However no sooner have you done that when two Joachim zealots blast you with that burning light spell to your face. Despite being half blind and your face on fire, you kill one of them and a hunter that stabs you in chest (But fortunately missing your heart), but then you hear the other zealot shout some prayer of some kind and you suddenly feel a great sense of terror. Something you haven’t felt since you were human. Part of you feels the desire to run, while another part of you feels the desire to just quake in fear and freeze. “YOU CANNOT RESIST THE WILL OF JOACHIM! FEAR HIS BURNING STARE AND DIE UNHOLY CREATURE!” This is soon followed up by multiple gunshots to your body and head. Silver burns through your body and you fall to the ground. You have truly never felt so helpless. You roll over and attempt to crawl away, but someone hacks at one of your legs and practically severs it. Your cry out in agony. “Chop the vile thing’s head off and be done with it!” someone shouts. “Hey look behind us.” Someone else says. “Tilderman? I thought you were dead…wait what’re you doing?” another voice asks. You then hear the sound of a metal clank on the floor. Several people shouting “SHIT!” and then a deafening blast. The blast probably would have killed you outright had it not been shielded by the hunters closer to it. As it stands you’ve only lost part of your legs (One of which was partially severed anyway) part of your back it literally on fire and you’ve got burns on most of your body. You have just enough strength to roll over a couple times to put the flames out, but you don’t know how you’re going to heal from this. Miraculously your hearing isn’t completely gone and the muffled ringing goes away pretty quickly. Charred body parts are all over the corridor and the smell of burned flesh and blood is filling the air along with smoke and powder. You hear a single set of footsteps approaching, and you certainly hope it isn’t another hunter, because you’re not in much condition to fight right now. You then see a figure step through the smoke and by the way they’re dressed and armed with a repeating crossbow, they do indeed look like a hunter, however you see the eyes which are those familiar blank white orbs. “Kayla?” you ask. “It is I.” she answers. “Thank the gods…except for that asshole Joachim.” “I wouldn’t thank them yet sir.” Kayla points the crossbow at you. “Wha…are you serious?!” you say. “Very serious sir. Your usefulness to me is at an end and I’ll never have a better opportunity to kill you. Without any more ghouls around, now I don’t have to worry about them either. The number of villagers is at a manageable number and I’m sure they’ll be even more pliable now, especially without their ruler eating any more of them. In a few more years, who knows? Maybe I’ll go try to find that Isabella and rekindle our relationship. She seemed much more powerful than you anyway.” With those last words, you see Kayla transform into you and then fires multiple silver bolts into your heart. As your body seizes up and goes into a paralysis, Kayla takes a saber and finishes you off with a chop to your neck.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 34 Maldito; the village of ghouls and your ruling capital. Though you aren’t exactly sure now if what you’re ruling is worth all that much. Green Eye was terrorizing the villages in the area long before you showed up and was still terrorizing them for you when you arrived. It wasn’t hard to intimidate them into submission. If you killing their former tormenter wasn’t enough to do it, then you being a vampire certain was. Kayla posing as “you” in the daytime, was just overkill. Maldito was eventually ghoulified completely, so if a village steps out of line, you’ve got an “army” to threaten them with. Though once again, it’s overkill considering you could wipe out every one of the villages yourself. The ghouls are just if you need something done in the daytime instead. Ghouls really are the most loathsome creatures you’ve ever had to be around. Everything about them disgusts you. Their habits, their sycophantic behavior, their smell, everything. They’re lower than humans and you’re surrounded by them, but at least their loyalty is certain and they watch during the day. This is what “ruling” does to you, makes you paranoid. Even with as scared as you have the rest of the villages, you still believe that one of them is going to get brave enough to actually do something about it. Maybe to some degree you’re even hoping one will just to break up the monotony. Still it’s all yours and you don’t answer to anyone. You aren’t sure if these are really the “best times” though. Something is missing. You spend a lot of time trying to remember the “good old days” but really when were those? Certainly wasn’t when you were enslaved by Ral, though you suppose your brief time with Lisa was the exception. You still wonder what happened to her, hopefully she’s doing better than you, if she’s still alive. Wasn’t when you had to spend time as a magically altered freak either. Once again, your only bright spot with that was Heather trying to help you. You’ve been thinking about your brief reunion with her in some of these moments of introspection and you still don’t feel bad about it, but you do think that she probably didn’t deserve it. Just bad timing. When you were with Isabella? Well there were a lot of good times you’ll admit, but if things were truly that good, you wouldn’t have left. You can only imagine if Isabella saw you now, she’d probably just be shaking her head at you. She’d probably even be right to do so. She always did know better, but then you were meant to be free and that’s always been your problem. Even now, ruling all these worthless peasants, you still feel like a prisoner. You haven’t really been free since your days as a petty thief with your sister. Now THOSE were the good old days. You wish you could go back to those times if only for a little while. As you sit in your own underground lair (Now properly built) you sense someone living approaching. It’s Kayla. You still don’t know her real name, but dops don’t really have them anyway so you just continue calling her by a dead tavern keeper’s wife. She doesn’t even use that form anymore and just stays in her “natural” one when around Moldito. She only uses human forms (or yours) outside the village. You’re still a little mystified of her exact intentions. She’s been with you for a couple years now and hasn’t shown any sign of leaving or betrayal. You can’t imagine that she’s entirely happy with her lot. She’s not a ghoul and she isn’t a fearful ignorant human either. You’re in charge and YOU’RE not entirely happy, so why would she be? She has said in the past that she’s happy serving you, but really have a hard time believing that. You’re a tyrannical dick. Unless, she’s in love with you, but that would be weird. You actually have been actively not using any sort of suggestive powers on her just to see how she acts. Besides, she’s never given that indication though again, maybe you’re just bad at reading the signs of a doppelganger. “Um, am I disturbing you sir?” Kayla asks. “Not really, just living up to the stereotype of the brooding vampire I suppose. What’s going on?” you respond. “Uh, dunno how to tell you this, so I might as well come out and say it, but I was doing my usual routine in one of the villages and apparently they’ve caught the attention of hunters.” “Hunters?” “Yes, apparently a group of them were investigating the village of Ulig recently. Now I don’t know if anyone said anything outright, but due to all of their suspicious behavior they might have inadvertently told the hunters something anyway. Many of the villagers I overheard seemed to be worried that they did that accidently.” “Well how many of these hunters were there and where are they?” “They’re currently in Sibogri, but they may be coming here soon. I dunno exactly how many there are, but apparently a sizable group. Ten maybe? Maybe more. I feel like this really can’t be a coincidence and someone must have told someone about all this.” “Well obviously, if there are that many. I don’t even think there were that many when they were in Holgard and that was a huge city. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is so many due to them hearing rumors of a day walking vampire.” “Apologies sir.” “What’re you apologizing for?” “The daytime thing I know was mainly my idea and I was just apologizing to you for bringing this upon you.” “Are you kidding? This is probably the most excitement I’ve had in awhile. Besides, I imagine that hunters would have come around here eventually.” “So you’re not mad or concerned about all this?” “Not really, it’s actually a motivator.” “Oh? Well what were you planning on doing then?” Well that is the question isn’t it? The obvious thing to do would be to fight, but given how you’ve been feeling lately, you could probably very well just leave. Where would you go? You have no idea, but it’s an option. In the meantime… “Kayla. Why are you still here?” you suddenly ask. “I’ll leave sir. Apologies.” Kayla responds. “No, not that! I mean why are you still here?” “Is…this a test?” “No! Look, what I’m asking and there is no right or wrong answer here, is why are you still here? I mean are you in love with me or something similar?” “Um…well…not exactly…it’s complicated. Can we talk about something else?” “Besides the hunter thing, this day is becoming the most interesting one in years. I should have asked this question years ago. What’s so complicated? You either are or you aren’t.” Kayla is silent for a moment due to the awkward spot you’ve put her in. You can see her trying to come up with an answer and after some thought… “Nope, it’s still not simple, but I can try to explain if that will please you.” Kayla answers. “Well better than nothing I guess. Go ahead.” You answer. “As a doppelganger, we do tend towards those with power. Eventually we tend to imprint upon them unless someone better comes along. I suppose that explains why I was with Green Eye for so long. However, I was also planning to kill him eventually and take his place. That’s sort of what we do.” “So…you’re basically admitting to me, that you were planning on killing me all along.” “Well…it’s complicated.” “So you’ve said. Look, you just admitted that you were planning to kill me. I think it would be in your best interest to explain in more detail.” “I honestly haven’t really been planning to kill you though. I mean I assumed I would at some point, but considering I’m already impersonating you most of the time and reaping some of power thrill directly when I’m doing it, the feeling isn’t as strong. Muted in fact.” “And that’s it?” “There’s also the fact that you created a bunch of ghouls that I wouldn’t be able to control since they know I’m not really you. Not to mention I don’t think I’d be able to kill you, so I’m sort of stuck and now it’s gotten to the point where I’m comfortable in my position and don’t really feel a desire to leave. I mean I could, but I’d probably feel really lost for a while as I tried to find a suitable role equal in status to this one and that’s not the greatest feeling for a doppelganger.” Well more enlightenment on the race of doppelgangers, but you notice she didn’t entirely answer the original question. Doesn’t matter you suppose, you’re going to do what you want anyway, but there is one more important question. “So you’re saying that if I fight these hunters, you aren’t going to suddenly switch sides again?” you ask. “Not likely sir. Hunter types tend to be nomadic and have no real hierarchy. Also they are constantly seeking out vampires and the like to kill. I already know enough about vampires that I don’t want to be hunting them on a regular basis. I’m with you sir.” Kayla responds. Well, that’s something you guess. “We’re going to fight.” You say. “Never expected anything different sir. So how are we going to go about this?” Kayla asks. “We need to gather a bit more information. If they aren’t staying in the villages themselves, then that means they must be making camp in the forest. Maybe send Stinky…no wait not her. Send Lurky, to scout the nearby forest area. He tends to be quieter and smells less pungent than most of the other ghouls. I want you to keep doing your usual routine of blending in at the other villages. Try to gather as much information as possible. As for me, I’m going to start building up the defenses on this place. Probably should have done it years ago.” “You think you have time to build a wall?” “No, but I once was a rogue and I knew how to set traps. Didn’t do it often, but I knew how. If the hunters storm this place, it isn’t just ghouls and me; they’re going to have to deal with. The only thing I’ll need to worry about are the ghouls accidently setting them off, but I think I can probably make them understand where they can go and where they can’t. Let the rest of them know though, that I’m going to address them all as soon as it goes dark, so they all better be around.” Kayla nods and goes to carry out your orders. Meanwhile you work on a few things until it’s dark so you can address your ghouls. You address what’s going on to your ghouls who of course all listen intently. They’re actually eager to go fight right now, but you tell them there will be time for that soon. You tell them to start digging holes and placing sharpened sticks, spikes and then camouflaging them. Not all the houses are used in the village anymore since the ghouls seem to all like just staying outside and only really enter the bigger village hall if the sun especially bothers them. You deicide to trap some of these abandoned homes since you imagine the hunters will be meticulous enough to search every home. You spend the next few days doing this and then eventually you get a report from Kayla who has some interesting news. “Wait, so they’re torturing people?” you say. “Yeah and they apparently got people doing this in several villages. They aren’t letting anyone go either.” Kayla says. “How many of these assholes are there?” “I still don’t have an exact number, but it’s looking like more than ten. Maybe fifty and I don’t think this is just hunters, the Church of Joachim is getting mentioned a lot, along with terms like purging and cleansing.” “Shit, this is a fucking crusade. How the hell did we not see something this large coming?” “Well we are a bit isolated even compared to the other villages, but I apologize sir, I probably should have noticed something sooner.” “It’s done now. Lurky hasn’t even come back yet, so who knows if he’s still alive. This is starting to look like more trouble than it’s worth. What the hell am I really fight for anyway?” Kayla doesn’t respond, she just shifts a bit nervously at your rise in temper. You think about your options, and just flat out leaving seems like a perfectly valid one. > You leave You know when something looks like a losing battle. This is mostly on you anyway, you let yourself get too much attention with your actions and now you’ve got an army of fanatics on your ass. You let your pride get in the way and thought you knew better; well this is what happens. You’re starting to think Isabella was right. You could kick yourself for fucking up your relationship with her now; then again her being right doesn’t mean she wasn’t being domineering. In any case, you can’t go home again and you probably should just move forward anyway. Maybe you need to go some place new entirely, like the Delantium Kingdom or something. Without another word, you go gather what little personal belongings you still regard as important. “What are you doing?” Kayla asks. “I’m leaving. Not going to stick around for this. Not worth it and I’m sick of the headache anyway.” You answer. “But sir! You can’t just leave all this!” “Sure I can, watch me.” “But…” “What, do you want to run this place? Be my guest, you can pretend you’re me, like you’ve been doing.” “But that won’t be the same and…(sigh) okay fine sir. I can see the wisdom in this. I’ll just get ready to go too.” “No, you’re not coming.” “What?” “You heard me, you’re not coming and neither are the ghouls. Going it alone again for awhile.” “But what am I supposed to do?!” “I don’t care, do whatever you like. You’re released from my servitude, in fact I said you could leave on your own many times before, so you were always free to leave. Ugh, still gotta wait for night fall.” As you prepare for a long wait, Kayla begins pacing a bit and then starts trying to convince you to fight, but it’s not working and the more she’s trying to convince you the less patient you get with her. “Kayla, your voice is beginning to anger me. I told you to leave.” You say. “I just really believe that you can win against these interlopers. Then after you win, your reputation will be so fearsome, nobody will ever attempt to invade you again.” Kayla says. “I seriously doubt that.” “You won’t know unless you fight sir. I mean you didn’t get all this by just standing back.” “And you seem a little too eager for me to try. Why is that exactly? And don’t tell me how much you believe I can win, because it’s more than that. You seem to just not want me to leave your side given that you were also willing to leave.” Kayla gets a bit quiet and then sputters a bit before gathering her thoughts. “Um…well…okay you got me sir. I’m in love with you and I should have just outright admitted it before. I was just embarrassed because…well I know you would never have such feelings for me like that. Apologies sir, I will leave.” Kayla turns to leave. “Hold on wait. Come back over here. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe I’ve been lying to myself.” You say. “Sir?” Kayla asks. “Maybe I do have some feelings for you as well Kayla. I just didn’t want to admit it due to everything.” “You mean me being a doppelganger?” “Well part of that I suppose, but more because none of my past relationships have ever worked out well. Maybe I’ve let that cause the distance between us as a master and servant, but perhaps we should attempt to become more.” “Oh sir! Do you really mean it?!” “Yes. Whatever I ultimately decide to do, we’re going to do it together from now on. Now come to me my love, I want us to finally embrace intimately.” Kayla rushes excitedly to you and puts her arms around you. You look deep into her blank white eyes. “Do you want me to turn into a more pleasing form sir?” “No, I want to do this to you in your natural form.” Kayla’s normally featureless face displays a wide smile, which might be a little unnerving if you weren’t who you are. She’s very happy. Good. She was a loyal servant for a long time so she earned a happy last moment. You then twist Kayla’s head around and tear it off completely. You then toss the head aside as gray goo leaks out of the body. Obviously she was up to something and leaving her alive might have just caused problems for you in the long run. Better to play it cautiously, especially with all the attention you’ve attracted. Last thing you need is someone pretending to be you and you don’t have direct control over it. You continue to wait in silence until darkness falls and that’s when you take your leave. You don’t even bother giving your ghouls any last orders or anything like that. You just run off as quickly as possible in the night. You still have a distance to travel and you don’t really know how you’ll fair in the Delantium Kingdom, but it can’t be too much worse than what you’ve already been through. You have a lot more time to learn from your mistakes as well. Your days as a common rogue might be long over, but your life as a vampire is just beginning.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re not so much trusting the dop, so much as you’re going to take a chance that it fears you enough that it’s being honest. Since if it IS telling the truth and willing to work for you, he would come in pretty handy. Still, you’re going to be careful as you can about this. “Okay, first of all, are you absolutely SURE this plan is going convince Green Eye to meet with me?” you ask. “Yes, I am. If he thinks something is wrong, but fixable he’ll more often than not take a personal approach to it even if it might risk his life, just like when he first spoke with you. If I know him, he’ll probably want to appease you so he can give himself more time to re-think a new strategy of how to deal with you if he believes you can walk around in the day time.” The dop says. You can’t really tell due to its nearly featureless expression, but it sounds confident in its words. You suppose that will have to do. “Alright then, we’ll try the plan.” You say. “Y…you will? Oh thank the gods! I swear I will be loyal to you!” the dop exclaims. “We’ll see, but first I need to prepare you a bit.” You say and move towards it. “Prepare?” “Yeah, just relax a bit, don’t move and… brace yourself!” You suddenly lunge on the dop who is taken by surprise by your speed. You bite the dop in the arm and drink a little of its blood. It actually tastes pretty terrible and you nearly spit it out. In the meantime the dop is making a horrible screaming noise and doesn’t stop until you smack it upside the head. “Stop that, it’s annoying.” You say and release it. “Y…you bit me!” the dop says rubbing its arm. “Sure did. Call it an extra precaution in case you get the bright idea to try to betray me. I can always sense where you are now. So if any of this goes south, I’m going to know where to find YOU immediately.” The doppelganger might have those empty white orbs for eyes, but you can still see the fear in them. Honestly, while you will be able to sense it if it’s close by, you aren’t going to be able to instantly track it from anywhere. Still, it doesn’t know that. “I wasn’t going to betray you.” The dop whines. “Well, now I know you won’t. Now you stay here, I’m going to go get one of the villagers so you can blend in again. I’ll drain them and you can walk out like nothing happened. The body can be disposed of later.” you answer. “Wait which one?” “What difference does it make? I dunno the tavern keeper’s wife I guess. Might as well considering I already killed her husband. Plus it’s an easy enough task even for you and you’ll hear all the village gossip at lot easier, not that it matters I suppose.” “Mm, okay. I don’t have to worry about you suddenly picking on me to bite now and I prefer female forms anyway, it’s always easier when the gender matches.” You pause for a moment. “Wait…you’re female?” you ask. “Well we doppelgangers are pretty flexible about it all for obvious reasons, but yes, I personally identify as female. Can’t you tell?” she says. “Um, no not really. I mean you’re just a smooth gray nearly featureless being. It’s not like I can see tits or anything. I mean…I can’t even see a hole down there…or anywhere for that matter; then again I haven’t really been exploring. I guess if you were a guy it would have been more obvious I suppose.” “Oh you solids with your constant exposed reproductive organs. We doppelgangers transcend such concerns since we only display them when necessary such as for sex or expelling waste. Until that time they remain hidden and protected.” “Okay, well however works…don’t really want to know, but if that’s the case how the fuck was I supposed to be able to tell that you’re female or not?” “By my eyes of course! Those of my kind that identify as female tend to change our eye color to white while those that identify as males tend to change them to black.” “What color are they normally?” “Oh gray.” “Great. Very illuminating. Next time I run into one of you doppys, I’ll try to remember all that.” “Erm, could you please not call me a doppy? It is considered offensive to my…” You glare at the doppelganger as your patience wears thin. “Um…nevermind. Just happy to serve and being included, sir.” She says submissively. You leave the house and find that a minor crowd has gathered from a safe distance. They’re probably wondering what exactly happened, time to make up a story. “Is that…thing gone m’lord?” someone asks. “Yes, of course it is. Didn’t you hear its death scream? I interrogated it first though. Apparently those bandits I thought I took care of have regrouped and will be trying to attack again. However, we know the truth now and can prepare. I’m going to track them down and finish them off for good, however I’m still going to bless some of you and when I do, you will be charged with helping the defense of this village. I trust you all will be up for the challenge should it come to that.” You say. “Of course m’lord! We all will!” “Then we will start tomorrow night, for now though I wish to spend time with you. The rest of you go home and worry no longer about any of this.” You say and point to the tavern owner’s wife. She goes over to you immediately. As the crowd disperses and obeys your command, you head into your home with your victim. You don’t bother with the foreplay and get straight to the feeding. You’ve done this with her several times already, but this time will be different for her. As usual she puts up no resistance and even as you’re obviously killing her she still whispers “I love you” in your ear and holds you tightly. You finish her off and drop her body to the floor. Meanwhile the dop was watching the shadows. You look at her and from her body language she cringes a bit. “Geez… you really are ruthless. I mean I’ve seen you on occasion drink people, but…never quite like that. She said she loved you and you just…look I just want to remind you, I am definitely NOT going to betray you.” “Glad to hear it, now stop wasting time and take her form or whatever it is you do.” The dop wastes no time and soon there is a “new” tavern keeper’s wife…actually you find out her name was Kayla. The doppelganger knew her better than you actually did, despite you feeding on her on a regular basis. After “Kayla” leaves to get more acquainted with her new role, you look around to make sure you can dispose of the real one safely. You aren’t sure why you’re bothering being so secretive since the villagers would probably be fine with a doppelganger if you told them to be fine with it. However, you do think it’s probably a good idea to slowly introduce such things to them. While they may accept you as a master, they may be less willing to accept some other non-human lurking about as well. At least not until you make some of them non-human. The next night you start again with what you originally planned. This time you pick a married couple at random and decide to see how it goes. You give them both some of your blood which causes them to gag a bit and then generally feel “weird.” The pair of them eventually stagger back home, and you tell Kayla to keep an eye on them both since you won’t be able to observe them during the day. A couple days and nights pass and you repeat the process with them and just when you’re starting to get frustrated, they start to show a change. The pair of them become more fawning than usual towards you and you don’t even have to do anything. They’re also paler and beginning to move in a less normal fashion. It’s more of a loping gait. Their appetite becomes a lot less normal as well. You think you’ve finally changed them into ghouls. You’re glad it didn’t take as long as Isabella once suggested it would if you attempted it. However, you soon discover all her warnings were correct. First off, they ARE very annoying with how much they’re underfoot all the time. Still, they are very obedient and they soon finish digging out the area meant to be your new resting place under the house. It’s crude, but you figure it can be worked on continually. For now though it’s functional enough that you don’t need to sleep in a hole in the ground in the forest nearby. Keeping them subdued when you’re asleep is another matter however. While you attempt to tell them to stand guard over you, they’re little like children in that they get bored and have short attention spans. While they haven’t actually attacked anyone yet, they’re acting aggressive enough that it won’t be long. This naturally causes some of the other villagers to be wary and now that’s potentially messing up your relationship with them. To counter act this, you give a few intimidating speeches, re-hyponotize a few of the key villagers again and have the two ghouls whipped before the mob and scold them for their behavior. The pathetic creatures soon learn that they aren’t going to be chewing on their neighbors anytime soon. Still, it does make other villagers less eager to want to become ghouls now, though you’re sort of wondering if it’s worth it anyway. While you’re trying to keep a precarious balance of humans and non-humans together through your powers and plain old fear, Kayla reminds you that it will soon be time for her to meet with Green Eye’s people and start part one of that plan. You originally thought you might send one of the ghouls with her, but that would probably just confuse them, or they’ll fuck up the plan and they might even eat Kayla. So she’s going alone. You’re still fairly concerned about this, but this is what you’ve decided on, so that’s what you’re going to do. You don’t even go to sleep that day; you stay awake mostly pacing in your underground sleeping area. You send Stinky and Fatty (Your new names for your ghouls since you never bothered to learn their real names) to go fetch you a “drink” so you can keep your strength up. You also tell them to keep an eye out for Kayla. At any moment you fully expect to hear the sounds of an attack above you. You aren’t going to be able to help, so you hope Stinky and Fatty are up to the task. However, the pair of them eventually come back with Kayla who is back in her human form. “Here she is master!” Stinky says excitedly. “Did we do good?” Fatty adds. “Yeah, now get the hell out of here. Go dig up one of the corpses in the forest and reward yourself or something.” You hardly need to tell them twice and they both leave you alone. “Well?” you ask. “Well, I’m back and it’s done. I made enough trouble that Green Eye will be willing to speak with you tonight. I didn’t really want to be at Green Eye’s any longer than I had to anyway, let alone directly confront him. Fairly certain that gem eye of his sees through disguises. In fact, I highly suggest that you not talk to him and just attack as soon as you see him, lest you fall under his command.” Kayla says. “You’re joking right? I’m a fucking vampire. I am the one who commands.” “Yeah, I know you’ve got powers of your own, but it’s that gem eye. It’s magic. How the hell do you think he got that motley bunch to work for him?” “You seem immune considering you’re selling him out.” “Well I imagine that might be a combination of being a doppelganger, along with not being in his presence for an extended period of time. Whenever I was though, I felt the urge to serve him. I mean think about it, he managed to convince YOU not to wipe out his group the first time around. How the hell did he do that? I like to think I’ve gotten to know you well enough that you’re not really a man that takes chances on potential future threats so you sparing him and everyone else seems a bit out of character.” “I spared and took a chance on you.” “True I suppose, but still…I dunno I’m just saying you probably shouldn’t speak with him just to be safe.” “Your concern is touching. I’m guessing it’s dark about now, I’ll be heading out with the ghouls then.” “Okay, well did you need me for anything else then?” “Not right now and assuming you haven’t set me up, I will remember your actions on this task.” You take your leave of Kayla to go get your ghouls. You find them quite easily in the forest nearby finishing off a corpse. One of them hits the other and points at you. “The master is coming! The master is here!” Fatty says excitedly and runs up to you until you smack him down. “I need the pair of you to accompany me to an important meeting. When we get there though don’t do anything until I say so.” Fatty and Stinky follow you happily as you make your way to Green Eye’s mine. You feel like you’re walking into a trap the entire time, but at least you’ve got some help. Normally you wouldn’t even be concerned, but you haven’t rested or fed too much so you don’t feel like you’re a full strength either. Eventually you see the mine and you also see a short figure surrounded by several figures at the entrance. They don’t look like his usual men though. They’re all female and look very cowed for one thing. “I wasn’t expecting this.” You say. “Well considering you arrived here in broad daylight demanding your tribute and then saying it wasn’t good enough, I figured I’d offer you a selection. All of these girls are from the nearby villages.” Green Eye says. “What if I want them all?” “Well then I guess you’re getting them all, far be it for me to fight a vampire that can walk around in the daytime. Interesting trick. Didn’t know you guys could do that. Almost hard to believe…” “Well you saw it with your own eye.” “Actually I didn’t, I got the report second hand from one of my men. Granted I trust him…or rather I trust that he believes what he saw, but let’s just say, I have some questions.” “I’m not here to answer yours.” “True, but I’m going to ask anyway, because I strongly think something weird is going on here and I’d rather we talk than it come to violence.” “Of course you would, because you’d be on the losing end of that deal.” “Most likely, but are you so sure? I see you’ve brought two friends with you, meaning you’re smart enough to not take this meeting lightly.” “Choose your next words carefully dwarf.” “I always do. I have a hunch that we’re both being set up to kill each other. I’m betting you’ve been talking with that treacherous dop haven’t you? I bet that’s even who impersonated you. It’s a liar you know. All of their kind are, and I should have known better than to have one in my community. Our relationship has been cordial and can remain that way. I will even increase the tribute. We don’t have to fight.” Green Eye says. Something is very weird about all this. Green Eye seems a lot more relaxed than you are right now and with how much he’s talking; it feels almost like he’s stalling you for some purpose. Maybe he’s got his men hiding elsewhere to ambush, but there really isn’t any place to hide nearby. The fact that he’s pointed out potential treachery of the doppelganger makes you suspicious though. For all you know Green Eye’s telling the truth. > You listen You’ll humor this asshole a little longer because despite him keeping calm, you can tell he’s still scared by his heartbeat even from where you are. You’re really not detecting any other signs of life either nearby. It’s just Green Eye and the seven bitches. “Treacherous is a funny word for you to use, considering YOU’RE the one crafting silver weapons and planning an attack.” You say. “Okay first of all, I was NEVER planning an attack. I’m not stupid enough to attack you on your own turf even during the day. And as for the weapons, well can you fucking blame me? I mean I got a vampire living right next fucking door. I wouldn’t fancy my chances in a straight up fight, but I NEED to have something that’s going to make me feel safer.” Green Eye explains. “Okay, so what about sending the dop to spy on me in the first place?” “That was its idea! It kept swearing to me that it wouldn’t get caught, damn fool I was to believe it. Look, I’ll admit I fucked up on that end, but as I said, I got fucking scared and I’m not ashamed to admit it in front of all these bitches here. You want me to beg? I will. I’d even get on both knees, but that’s a little difficult for me for obvious reasons. Though I’d still struggle with it if that’s what it requires to save this community.” “That’s pretty humble of you.” “Why do you think I’m out here by myself? I’m hoping that if you decide to just kill me anyway, you’ll just be satisfied with that and not kill everyone else too. I know they ain’t much and are even less than bandit scum in your eyes, but I’m fucking protective of them and I’d trade my life for my fuck up.” Sounds sincere and you really weren’t expecting this reaction. You sort of wonder if the dop WAS setting you both up. You wouldn’t put it past her. You’re still not sure, but if you are going to kill him you don’t want to give him the slight chance of lifting that rifle up quick enough to shoot you. “Green, drop your weapons, I’m coming over there to inspect your tribute.” “…okay! Whatever you say.” Green Eye shouts, and drops his rifle, along with several smaller firearms and melee weapons (mostly daggers) on his person. Seeing that he’s dropped his weapons, you motion to your ghouls to follow you. You get closer and can sense how tense they’re all becoming. Though you misinterpret that as fear alone. “Watch your head.” Green Eye says as you’re nearly right in front of his group of girls. Who then all pull out flintlocks and catching you off guard at this close range they can’t miss you even as nervous as most of them are. Silver shot burns through your chest, head and a couple other places on your person. It doesn’t exactly kill you, but you’re dropped immediately. Stinky and Fatty waste no time in attacking the ladies that have fired upon you, unfortunately they weren’t really the threat anymore. Green Eye ignores the ghouls tearing up the women and instead picks up his rifle and aims it right at your head as you attempt to get back up. Part of your skull and brains go flying and you drop back to the ground. Still not dead, but with severe brain injury even as a vampire you’re bewildered and paralyzed in your current condition. You begin gibbering to yourself about something that happened a long time ago. It’s actually when you were a child, but you don’t even know what you’re talking about, all your memories are a jumbled mess along with your thought process. “I didn’t steal the cookies!” you shout and then start laughing. This exclamation is the last thing you ever say before another powerful blast takes nearly the rest of your head off. Your sight goes dark. With practically just a lower half of your jaw still moving and the rest of your body just twitching, you neck is severed with an axe.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You might as well start making ghouls if you’re going to be using this place as your new home now. You’ll feel safer if with absolutely loyal day guards around anyway. You call everyone to the village square the following night. It’s a little surprising for everyone, but of course they don’t want to disobey you. “Okay, I’ve gathered you all here because it’s come up many times that some of you desire the same gift I have. This makes sense since you would indeed be better in every way and you would also be closer to your god. However, none of you are yet worthy of such a thing. In fact some of you never will be! Yet, I am a merciful master and as such I will bestow a minor bit of my power so that you may get a taste of it. Who knows, maybe in time you will impress me to the point that I will eventually complete your transformation.” At this point your words are met with signs of hope and excitement. You expected that, so that’s one less thing to worry about. You’re still wondering which people exactly to choose and how many. You probably want to pick the key members in the community though, so you figure you might as well give Vic what he’s always wanted first. “Okay Vic, come on over here and we’ll get started.” You say and cut your arm to drain some of your blood in a cup. “Um, me m’lord?” Vic asks. “Yeah you! Who the hell else’s name is Vic in this village? Now come on.” “Uh, that’s okay I don’t think I’m quite worthy yet. I believe that there are many others here deserving of your gift more.” “You’re joking right? You’ve been begging me to turn you since I took control of this place. You’re just nervous, come on.” “No, I really realize now that I shouldn’t have annoyed with my petty request as I did. I thank you for your generous offer, but perhaps one of the many lovely young women that…” “Vic, stop being a bitch and get over here!” you say raising your voice. At this point the crowd is getting agitated with Vic’s stalling and begin pushing him forward, telling him that he’s a “chosen one” and he should be embracing this moment. Vic slowly moves towards your position and then suddenly his eyes roll in the back of his head and he wobbles a bit before falling over. “Oh for fuck’s sake…” you say shaking your head. One of the other villagers goes over to help Vic, but after some inspection… “He’s dead m’lord!” the village “doctor” exclaims. “He’s fucking dead?!” you say. “Heart attack it seems. I believe all the excitement of being a benefactor of your glory was too much for him.” “Maybe…” Something about this doesn’t seem right. “Kick his body. In fact I want several of you to stomp on it.” You say. “M’lord?” someone asks. “You heard me.” Not wishing to anger you, several of the villagers comply. Vic’s body just absorbs the kicks and doesn’t move. “Okay, I guess he’s really dead, set his body on fire, no need to waste anymore time burying it. Actually never mind, there’s a torch right here, I’ll do it.” You take a nearby torch and go over to Vic’s body. As you slowly lower the flaming piece of wood closer to Vic’s body, you watch his eyes. You watch… Then just as you touch Vic’s body with the actual flame, his eyes open and his entire form changes into a thin smooth gray skinned creature. Its face isn’t anything like you’ve seen before, having only slits for a nose, a simple line like mouth and its eyes are just white orbs. “SHIT!” it shouts in different voice than before and immediately rolls away and attempts to scramble for safety. While the villagers are confused and scared by all this, you of course keep your cool and easily catch this creature and drag it into the empty house you reside at in the village to interrogate it. “Okay, what the hell are you?” you demand. “Please! I’m a doppelganger and I’m only doing my job!” it pleads pathetically. “By job, you mean spying and infiltration! I only know ONE person that rules over a ragtag group of multi-racial misfits that might have the balls to do such a thing. How long have you been working for Green Eye?” The doppelganger wastes no time in selling out Green Eye. It says it’s been with Green Eye for quite some time, but only was infiltrating Maldito shortly after you threatened Green Eye. It says it was originally masquerading as the head carpenter, but soon changed into Vic (and in both cases obviously secretly killed) when it realized you were serious about making the village your permanent home. It of course has been in contact with Green Eye off and on the whole time. “So what the hell is Green Eye exactly planning?” “Well originally he just wanted to keep a check on you, but when you made Maldito your permanent home, he got more concerned. I think he’s planning on attacking you directly and most likely destroying the village.” “Because that worked out so well last time. So what then has he hired hunters or something? Should have known he wasn’t going to be above doing that.” “No, actually he’s been crafting silver weapons for everyone. Mostly daggers, but I know for a fact he’s been focusing on silver shot for the few firearms we have.” “Where’s he getting all this silver from?” “The mine I guess. Green Eye said it used to be a silver mine before it ran out.” “Well apparently it didn’t completely run dry if he’s got enough to scrap weapons together. Gotta hand it to Green Eye, though. He’s been busy and I underestimated his fear of me. Smart of him to not tell me that it used to be a silver mine too. I didn’t even think of that.” “So…what are you going to do?” “Kill my enemy of course, might as well start with you. Wonder what doppelganger tastes like…” you say and prepare to bite. “No! Wait! Please! I could help even more! If you attack now, you’d never get Green Eye. He’s got a whole system of hidden tunnels, traps and shit. You might wipe out everyone under his leadership, but I doubt if you’d find him. He knows those mines like nobody else.” “Oh, I’m sure I’d find him eventually.” “Well, maybe, but as I said, he’s probably trapped the entire place too and considering he’s been preparing for you, some of those might even be dangerous to you. Let me go back and…” “You think I’m stupid? You sold out Green Eye so quick and you were supposed to be on his side. How quick would you sell me out?” “But this is different, I can see you’re the more powerful force in this instance and I always side with the winning team. It’s what my kind does. Green Eye doesn’t know that you know that you know anything. In fact I can probably get him to meet with you. You’re supposed to pick up your new tribute soon aren’t you?” “Yeah, so?” “Well let ME go and pick it up. Except I wouldn’t go as me, I’ll go as YOU.” “Wait, you’re going to copy me?” “Yes. And I’m going to arrive at Green Eye’s place during the day to do it. I will pretend that I’m such a powerful and old vampire that I have the capacity to walk around in the daytime! This will throw them all off so much that they’ll scramble to appease you quickly. When they drag out the girl, I will then claim it isn’t good enough and that I will be back at night to renegotiate the deal with Green Eye personally. He’ll be concerned enough that he’ll meet with you, probably seeing if you have any other weaknesses, since thinking you can walk around in the daytime is going to cause him to discard his original plans. Of course it’ll actually be you who’ll meet him at night, at which point you’ll easily be able to over power him and whoever else is with him. Trust me, it’ll work!” An intriguing plan you suppose, you just aren’t convinced though. “Sounds like a shit plan, and I still don’t trust you. I don’t think you can convincingly copy me anyway.” You say. “The hell you say! I’ll have you know that I am one the most skilled of my kind! I can easily copy you, right down to your quirky mannerisms. Especially since I’ve been observing you for awhile now.” The doppelganger says a little insulted. “Is that so? Well prove it, and maybe I’ll make a decision based on how good your performance is.” You let the doppelganger go and it has prepared itself to display its powers to you. It takes a bit longer to transform into looking like you than when it transformed back to its real form. The first thing you realize is you haven’t seen yourself in years. The dop looks like you, or at least what you looked like before you became a vampire, then again you haven’t aged since then so that’s presumably what you still look like. The dop then begins to talk like you and act like you. It’s very arrogant, condescending and just an all around dick. Which means it’s copying you exactly. “See? I can pull this off! Just give me a chance and hey, when Green Eye is dead, I could help you in other ways as well!” the dop exclaims as it transforms back. It certainly is an eager creature. You just aren’t sure if you can trust it. And if you can’t trust it, then why take chances? > You kill it Trusting a duplicitous creature that can mimic you perfectly? Yeah that’s a great idea and won’t at all turn around and bite you in the ass later on! You’re not taking chances, the dop dies and then Green Eye and the rest of his crew after, you don’t care how many tunnels he’s got in that mine of his, he is not going to hide from you. First things first though. You approach the dop without another word and bit it on the neck. It makes a horrible wailing noise and no sooner have you drunk some of its blood that you immediately stop because it tastes completely fucking horrible. “Ugh! Shit! I’ve tasted greenskins better than you!” you say spitting out most of the gray stuff. The dop attempts to get away after your temporary distraction, but it’s a futile endeavor, you catch it and ignore its last pleas for mercy before breaking its neck. You aren’t actually sure if that’s going to kill it, so you decapitate it just to be sure. You leave the house and find that a minor crowd has gathered from a safe distance. They’re probably wondering what exactly happened, time to make up a story. “Is that…thing gone m’lord?” someone asks. “Yes, of course it is. Didn’t you hear its death scream? I interrogated it first though. Apparently those bandits I thought I took care of have regrouped and will be trying to attack again. However, we know the truth now and can prepare. I’m going to track them down and finish them off for good, however I’m still going to bless some of you and when I do, you will be charged with helping the defense of this village. I trust you all will be up for the challenge should it come to that.” You say. “Of course m’lord! We all will!” “Then we will start tomorrow, for now though I wish to spend time alone.” You spend the rest of the night wondering if you should just go ahead and attack tomorrow night or wait around to turn some of the villagers into ghouls so you have help. As much as you hate to waste time to let them get better equipped, you decide if the mines are as trapped and treacherous as the dop claimed they were, it probably would be to go in with help, if only to use as fodder. The next night you start again with what you originally planned. This time you pick a married couple at random and decide to see how it goes. You give them both some of your blood which causes them to gag a bit and then generally feel “weird.” The pair of them stagger back home. You then repeat this process with five more villagers before you need to stop as it’s a drain on your own strength. A couple days and nights pass and you repeat the process with all of them and just when you’re starting to get frustrated, they start to show a change. The seven of them become more fawning than usual towards you and you don’t even have to do anything. They’re also paler and beginning to move in a less normal fashion. It’s more of a loping gait. Their appetite becomes a lot less normal as well. You think you’ve finally changed them into ghouls. You’re glad it didn’t take as long as Isabella once suggested it would if you attempted it. However, you soon discover all her warnings were correct. First off, they ARE very annoying with how much they’re underfoot all the time. Still, they are very obedient and they soon finish digging out the area meant to be your new resting place under the house. It’s crude, but you figure it can be worked on continually. For now though it’s functional enough that you don’t need to sleep in a hole in the ground in the forest nearby. Keeping them subdued when you’re asleep is another matter however. While you attempt to tell them to stand guard over you, they’re little like children in that they get bored and have short attention spans. While they haven’t actually attacked anyone yet, they’re acting aggressive enough that it won’t be long. This naturally causes some of the other villagers to be wary and now that’s potentially messing up your relationship with them. To counter act this, you give a few intimidating speeches, re-hyponotize a few of the key villagers again and have a few of the more aggressive ghouls whipped before the mob and scold them for their behavior. The pathetic creatures soon learn that they aren’t going to be chewing on their neighbors anytime soon. Still, it does make other villagers less eager to want to become ghouls now, though you’re sort of wondering if it’s worth it since it’s taking your strength to upkeep all the ghouls which is in turn taking more of a toll on your villagers anyway. While you’re trying to keep a precarious balance of humans and non-humans together through your powers and plain old fear, you also keep in mind that it will soon be time to meet up with Green Eye and his crew. You just hope you’ll have the element of surprise to a point where it won’t matter how many silver weapons they have. When the night finally comes, you head to Green Eye’s mine with your ghouls who happily follow. When you arrive, the lone hobgoblin guard stands there at the entrance with the child tribute. You can already sense the rise in the savage’s heartbeat when he sees you arrive with your ghouls. The child of course is already scared. “Um…we have your tribute as usual.” The hobgoblin says. “Yeah, about that. Don’t really need the kids anymore. There’s been a change in recent developments.” You respond. “Oh?” “Yeah, in fact I’ve decided to make the whole tribute process simpler by getting rid of you all” It doesn’t take long for the hobgoblin to process what you mean exactly. His eyes widen and he turns to run, but you catch him before he gets anywhere and break his neck. You turn to address your ghouls who are already in the process of advancing. The boy who is tribute is frozen in fear. “Hold on, wait…ah damn it! Fatty! Fuck, I was going to tell you lot to leave the boy alone so he could tell the tale to his village of how I saved him from the bandit scum. Never mind now I guess.” You smack your ghouls around to get them to stop feeding on the boy and the hobgoblin so you can get the rest of this task finished. You once again enter the mine and once again you come to the large open area where most of Green Eye’s people are gathered. No sign of Green Eye, but in the meantime, you’ll be wiping out the rest of his people. Doesn’t take long for your ghouls to start howling and leaping into battle with abandon. You don’t bother reining them in. Green Eye’s people are for the most part unprepared, but there is some resistance. With the silver weapons, they probably would do a lot better than last time against you, but since you brought a bunch of ghouls, they do about as well as last time. The battle in the main cavern is quick and bloody, several of your ghouls go chasing people down in various tunnels. The rest of them start feasting on the dead already in the immediate area. While you hear sounds of fighting and screaming coming from various tunnels, you still have not seen Green Eye; it would appear your hunt for him is going to begin right now. Since you’ve already been warned about the place being trapped, you figure it probably would be a good thing if you took some of your ghouls directly with you. Of course it might be a good idea to leave most of them here to guard this area just in case Green Eye tries to escape this way when you’re looking for him. You decide you can probably afford to take two and leave the remaining two here. The other three that went running off will probably wander back here eventually. You then give your orders and you pick the tunnel that you remember seeing Green Eye walk from the last time you were here. You cautiously walk around even keeping the ghouls slightly back, since while they are expendable, you don’t want to just lose them unless you have to. So far though, and you aren’t coming across anything out of the ordinary. This is good in that there aren’t any dangers that have been nearly killing you, but bad in that you haven’t uncovered any secret passage ways or rooms that Green Eye might be hiding in. Eventually you stop hearing any noise of combat. Either your ghouls killed everyone or you’re getting far enough a way from you original location. Later, you’ve already gone down several dead ends and while you’re not lost, you are getting frustrated since there doesn’t seem to be any clue of where Green Eye is. You start to curse yourself in that it might have been a good idea to try to leave one of his people alive to point you in the right direction. Even leaving the dop alive and dragging it with you, would have helped. You start to get paranoid that maybe Green Eye has doubled back somehow and managed to escape so you start heading back to the large cavern near the entrance. The problem is you do it so fast that you aren’t as cautious this time, and while you passed through several tunnels that weren’t trapped, you don’t take into consideration that Green Eye didn’t sneak around and trap them after you already passed through. Even then, you might have been quick enough or had the danger sense to avoid something amiss, but your ghouls are another matter. No sooner have you heard the “Spong!” noise that you quickly look to where you need to take cover. A huge rumble occurs in front of you and before your eyes you see both of your ghouls gets crushed by a cave in by an explosion. You are actually blown back a bit and quickly scramble up when you also see that this isn’t just a cave in, but a cascading effect. You have no choice but to run back deeper into the mines, though you’re so busy trying to get away, you end up taking a tunnel you haven’t explored. You run down the unexplored tunnel trying to avoid getting buried and hoping you outrun it or find an exit of some sort. You find an exit, but it’s down. Once again, not paying attention, you fall down a pit. You attempt to grab on to the sides of the smooth wall, but you only succeed in ripping your fingernails off in the process and it disappears eventually anyway as you fall into a larger underground cavern and slam hard into the rocky ground below. Your yells of pain echo throughout the cavern. You’ve most definitely broken several bones in your legs. You’ll regenerate, but it’s going to be slow, especially without any fresh blood around, unless there are some rats around. As you start to look for something like that, you feel more rumbling. At first you think it’s ceiling collapsing on you here, but then you realize the sound is coming from below. This silver mine closing down wasn’t due to it running dry, it was more because there was an infestation of giant insect things in the lower parts of it, which you have now discovered. The chittering becomes louder and eventually several many legged, many eyed things burst forth from the ground. You fight about as best as you can in your situation, but you’re weak, crippled and overwhelmed. You die screaming in the darkness as you are devoured.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 31 You finish drinking your fill of the girl and release her though she still clings to you tightly like you’re her entire world despite the fact that she’s already married to some young man in this village.. As usual you have left this one alive since the less outright deaths the better. Besides, the more you feed on these peasants and don’t kill them, the more they seem to be enamored with you. The fools believe your “mercy” is some sort of blessing. “Is there anything else you require of me, m’lord?” she asks in a mild daze. “Actually now that you mention it, yeah. Now that I’m done sucking on you, I’ll give you the honor of sucking on me. You know what to do.” You say. The girl nods and slowly lowers herself before you. Now THIS is what being a vampire is all about, or at least what it should be. Lording it over the lessers and reaping the benefits. Not hiding on the outskirts of civilization. Ever since this arrangement you’ve actually been enjoying yourself again. Even more than when you used to go hunting in Holgard, which you haven’t been going to at all anymore. As for Isabella, she spends all her time in her precious garden and you’re starting to wonder if she even cares what you do anymore as long as it doesn’t involve messing with Dert or calling attention to your home. The only time she has asked you a question is she started wondering where you were getting all the children from since she was concerned you might be “over farming” Dert, but she seemed satisfied with your answer. She’s benefiting so why should she care? The girl finishes servicing you and then you send her home in a better status for her husband than before. Tiring of your own time here tonight, you prepare to leave and exit the “home” that you use when visiting. Before you leave however, you’re met by Vic. Usually he knows better than to crowd you like this so it makes you a little wary. “That’s close enough! Encroach on my personal space any further and it’ll be the last! Now what is it that you feel the need to waste my time with?” “Well I was just wondering, since I’ve been so loyal to you lord and helpful in in convincing the others to stay loyal…I was just wondering if there would ever come a time that you might bless me with the same gift that you have. Not that I would be nearly as powerful as you of course m’lord. I live to serve after all.” This again… Vic has brought this up before, and this topic has come up with more than a few of the ladies you’ve been dining on. You of course always give the same answer, that it isn’t a “gift” that can be given so lightly and will only ever go to the worthy. Telling them that you can’t make them vampires because you’re not old enough to do it yet, wouldn’t actually make you look like the “all powerful” dark lord that you’ve set yourself up as. Still, as far as you know you ARE able to make them into ghouls. Isabella explained all this to you in your first weeks as a vampire. She always said making a ghoul wasn’t worth it since they are some of the most pathetic creatures she’s ever had the displeasure of knowing. She made one once and killed it soon after because she found its habits too disgusting and its fawning far too annoying. Of course Isabella’s personality is a little different than yours. You would probably be fine with more fawning. In fact absolute loyalty might be a plus. As for disgusting habits, well you wouldn’t have to live with them on a regular basis and so what if they eat a few bugs? However, it still isn’t something you’re going to just do right away and would need to think on. After all, you turn one person or multiple people into a ghoul or ghouls, how are they going to act towards the rest of the normal people? Not like you can watch them constantly. “I’ll think about it, now get out of my way!” you say and knock Vic aside. You head home pondering the possible ramifications of taking that extra step. When you finally do get home, you find that your night hasn’t gotten less complicated. “Have fun with your human whores?” Isabella asks. “Thought you’d be in your garden. That’s where you like to spend all your time isn’t it?” you say, not even answering her question. “True, but perhaps I’ve been sticking my head in the flowers for far too long and ignoring the situation that’s going on.” “What situation?” “The situation where you’ve apparently dominated an entire village to your will. Maybe even more.” “No, just the one. What difference does it make? I’m not attracting any attention and I’ve been bringing children home to you on monthly basis.” “Yes, which is why I haven’t said anything, however I’ve been noticing a change in your behavior with me.” “You have? Surprised, considering all the time you spend in your garden.” “Okay, if you’re bitching about us not spending enough time together, all you had to do is say something and I would have obliged. Since when have I not helped you out in any way I can? It’s why you’re here in the first place.” “And THAT right there is the problem!” “What?” “You treating me like a second class citizen around here!” “Are you kidding me? I gave you fucking complete freedom!” “You know that doesn’t matter. Not really in the scheme of things. You’re more powerful than me. You always will be and you will always see me as your lesser. Sometimes it feels like you scold me as if I was some child.” “Well when you act like one at times, that’s what happens. And if I really saw you as my lesser, I wouldn’t have even bothered with you in the first place. I saw something special in you, but obviously I was mistaken. Besides all that, don’t give me that I never let you have fun business because it’s not even true in the first place. If anything I’ve been TOO permissive. You’re on a fucking power trip right now and while I get it because you feel like you’re getting the attention you feel you deserve, I’m telling you right now that if you continue like this, it’s going end badly.” “I don’t understand WHY you’re giving me shit for this. You do the same thing with Dert, you’re just less hands on.” “Exactly. I’m not rolling around in the pigpen with the pork chops! You’re in there, not only rolling around with them, you’re also fucking the pigs. AND don’t even tell me that you don’t do that, because you stink of humans most nights when you come back. Though I’m not so much mad about that bit as I am severely disappointed.” “So what are you saying exactly?” ‘What I’m saying is YOU are heading down a path that I’ve seen play out several times with others I was close to in the past. Not really willing to go through it again.” “So, what then? You’re going to forbid me to do this then?” “No, actually I’m not. You’re a free willed vampire, go play with your mortals and lord it over them. That seems to be what is making you happy. What I am saying however is if you insist on doing this though, you’ll be doing it elsewhere because I’m not going to sit by and watch the inevitable, let alone get caught up in it. Obviously you feel stifled here, so maybe you need to go do this anyway.” Well that’s done it for you. You’re not going to get threatened by an ultimatum. You and Isabella haven’t been getting along for a while now anyway. If she’s giving you the option for a clean break now, you probably should take it while you can. “I’ll be gone tomorrow night. I trust that will be okay.” You answer. “Fine by me. You can sleep elsewhere in the crypt though, because you certainly won’t be sleeping in my bed.” Isabella says. “Yeah, probably for the best.” “Well then, it was fun while lasted and I hope you succeed in whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve. Goodbye.” And with those cold last words, Isabella turns and leaves you. While maybe you sort of knew this was coming for some time, there is a part of you that’s going to miss Isabella. She did do so much for you, but ultimately you needed your freedom the most. And now you have it. The next night, you leave the crypt with what little belongings you still have attachment to as quick as you can. You don’t bump into Isabella; you assume she’s in her garden as usual. You make your way to Maldito, where you are met with the usual praise and submissive behavior. “Vic, get all your best builders and tradespeople together, I want a meeting with them.” You order. “Um, okay m’lord.” Vic answers. You meet with them to let them know that you’re going to be around a lot more often, so you want a proper home, rather than the simple empty one room house they just let you use when you are here. Your news is met with an overjoyed reaction for the most part, though you get the impression some are just reacting more out of fear of defying you. In any case, you aren’t asking for much in the short term. Just a small underground area underneath the house you stay at. “Oh! So like a root cellar!” one of them beams. “Yeah…just like a root cellar.” You answer rolling your eyes a bit. In any case it’s a simple enough task for them that you figure they won’t take long in doing it. In the meantime, you have the unpleasant task of digging a hole in the forest and sleeping there. The first night is a real wake up call of how much better it was sleeping in a nice soft bed next to Isabella, but you need to get over that. A month passes and it’s still not finished mainly because one of the more skilled carpenters had a heart attack on the job. You’re pissed about this inconvenience, but it is what it is. In the meantime, when you make your usual meeting with Green Eye’s community, you tell the guard at the entrance that you won’t require a child every month anymore. Instead, they can just bring a girl like Green Eye originally suggested. By the middle of the second month it’s still not finished. You have no idea what the hell is holding these idiots up. Vic says something about the structural integrity is shaky and there being a danger over everything caving in. You’re getting irritated to the point that you almost lash out and kill one of them, but then you realize you need these fools right now. So you kill the tavern owner instead. Not like serving drinks is a job that requires special skills that you need. Besides, his wife can take over and she’s more compliant to you anyway. You start wondering if this would go faster if you made them ghouls. The main problem that you can see is that they’re all weak humans that aren’t even in the best of shape in the first place and require sleep and regular food. If you made them ghouls they’d work for you tirelessly night and day. (They’d be able to see in the dark as well) And they could eat…well anything really. There isn’t really much stopping you now, since you now ARE here constantly to monitor their behavior. Though there is a real desire to still not do it too, since you’d essentially be “rewarding” them all for shit work so far. If you were going to do it, you’d rather do for those that deserve it at least. > You leave them human You’re not rewarding these people any more than you have to. These mortals are just going to have to work harder. The rest of the month passes and fortunately they seem to be making better progress with the project, should be done by next month at least. Before that happens you go over to Green Eye’s mine to pick up your tribute. There’s a single hobgoblin guard at the entrance with a girl looking down the entire time. “Here’s the new tribute. Green Eye says he hopes she is suitable and assures you that she has not been touched by anyone here.” The hobgoblin remarks. You look at the peasant girl who is obviously frightened out of her mind, but too terrified to run or do anything. “Look at me.” You command and lift her chin up so she looks into your eyes. You say a few commanding words to her and soon she loses all will of her own. She then walks away from Green Eye and holds you tightly. “Shit, wish I had that ability. It would make a whole of things much easier with the missus.” The hobgoblin remarks. “Tell Green Eye, the tribute was suitable.” You say and then leave with your tribute to head back home. The third month rolls around and at last your humans have finished your home. You inspect it and find nothing out of place. It looks like it was reinforced with several pillars and they even tried their best to make it look “homey.” “Do you like it m’lord? We tried to make sure that everything would be comfortable for you and later we can expand on it if you wish.” Vic asks in his usual toadying manner. “Yeah it’s fine, and get back! You are entirely too fucking close!” you shout, slapping him. Honestly it’s a far cry from Isabella’s crypt, but it’s better than sleeping in a dug out hole in the ground in the forest. You’re in a mildly jovial mood so you decide to celebrate by spending the night in it not doing much of anything except feeding on and fucking a couple of the village girls. There are no objections obviously. Night passes into day and while you’re fast asleep, you’re suddenly awakened by the noise above you. At first you think it’s just the villagers being noisy, but by the sounds of yelling and screaming, something else is going on. “Shit...” you say to yourself already knowing what might be going on. Since you drank one of the girls dry last night, you tell the remaining living one to go take a quick peek at what’s going on. She does so and as soon as she pops her head up from the trapdoor, a gun blast is heard and her body drops from the top of the ladder and on the floor in front of you. Most of her face is blown off. “Yubin, you bleedin’ idjit! Ya supposed ta shoot da pale man! Quick! Reload! Reload!” you hear an orc shout. Those backstabbing…they are going to rue this day… You quickly make your way up the ladder and find yourself facing several of Green Eye’s boys. “Shit! Daggers!” the closest orc shouts. You make quick work of the orc shouting orders and then the one immediately next to him. Several of the humans and halfbreeds attempt to stab you next, and the last one of them just manages to sink his blade into your shoulder before you break his neck. The pain is more than you expected it to be. It doesn’t just feel like a sharp pain, but more like a hot burning sensation all throughout your shoulder and top part of your arm. You pull it out and see why. The blade is silver. “Sonof…Argh!” you utter when you feel a blast of gunshot in your back from Yubin who was busily reloading his musket just outside the doorway to the house. The silver in the shot is enough to drop you. “He’s not dead yet! Shoot him! Shoot him again!” you hear Vic shout. “I can’t! I’m outta da stuff! I’m gettin’ outta here!” Yubin’s remarks and then runs off. “Shit. HEY! Get Big Tooth over here, we need his help! It’s the man who killed his brother anyway!” You can’t believe Vic is working with Green Eye’s bandits. When did this happen? Was this always the case? Was it the long con? Did he have some secret meeting recently? In any case it doesn’t matter. Vic and several of the bandits have already returned to the house. One of the bandits, Big Tooth is an ogre. Vic orders him to drag your ass out of the house while the others attempt to help. Normally, you’d be strong enough to resist, but you’re partially paralyzed from the silver shot lodged in your spine and it isn’t healing anytime soon. Big Tooth drags you by both legs and while you struggle, even taking down one of the bandits along the way; it doesn’t take long before Big Tooth’s strength (which is also enhanced due to his anger that you killed his brother last year) manages to get you to the doorway and that’s when you start feel the burn of the sun. You snarl and try to hang on to anything so as to not get dragged all the way out, but the other bandits start hacking at your hands with their silver daggers causing you to eventually lose your grip after losing several fingers. Big Tooth gives one more pull and you are at last fully exposed to the sun. You roll around screaming in agony as your skin begins to burn. All around you the village isn’t doing too much better, what with some of it being in flames and all. Green Eye’s men are finally finishing the job you prevented them from doing last year. Your last thoughts are of how Isabella was right about this not ending well, just before Big Tooth stomps your burning skull into nothing but bloody brains and bone fragments.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3C1: The Beast Unleashed Year 30 “Well of course there are vampire hunters running around in Holgard now. I told you that you probably needed to start showing a bit of restraint now that the religious factions aren’t killing each other anymore.” Isabella remarks. “You said that Holgard was a perfect spot for me to hunt due to all the crime and violence!” you reply. “Yeah, but still within reason. I mean from some of the tales you’ve told me in the past, it sounds like you just leave a killing field in your wake half the time. As I said, you probably were only getting away with it due to the religious faction war, but now that that’s over with, they’re on to you. Look, you had your fun, but it’s probably time to rein it in a bit anyway. You had like what five years? Honestly, I probably gave you your freedom a bit too quickly.” “So what, are you cracking the whip on me now?” “No, but I will say that I’m fond of you enough that I would LIKE you to still be around for a long time to come. You might think a few vampire hunters are no problem, but I imagine they aren’t the only ones hunting you. I mean you were taking advantage of the religious faction war, I have to believe that some of them groups aren’t vampire friendly either. Wasn’t your ex a Dornan? Pretty sure those wizard priests might have discovered a vampire operating in the city by now and I’m not even counting the fanatical Joachimites you told me about.” “So what are you saying exactly?” “I’m saying that maybe you should give Holgard a break for awhile if you can’t restrain yourself. Go find another hunting ground that isn’t going to attract attention. I’m sure there are little isolated towns and villages further east of here. I’m sure there are probably bandits preying upon them as well, so you’ve got a wide selections to choose from.” You somewhat frown at that suggestion. “If I’m going to skulk about a village luring peasants to their doom, I might as well be grocery shopping for you in Dert.” You say. “Well I dunno, go wipe out an entire hamlet then, I don’t care. Just don’t be a dumb ass and leave any witnesses. Because I’m going to tell you this as well, it’s one thing if you’re going to insist on playing with your immortality, but it’s quite another if you start fucking with mine. If your actions end up causing a group of adventurers to come barging down here in the middle of the day, waking up my beauty sleep, you are going to wish you’d been staked and beheaded after I get done with you. Understand?” Isabella says with a calm threatening tone that is enough to unnerve even you. “Yes…dear.” You meekly utter. Isabella gives you a stern look and then leaves you to your own devices. Isabella may not have any direct power over you, but she’s still powerful enough to crush you if she wanted to. You don’t actually think she’d kill you, but you don’t doubt that she wouldn’t make your unlife miserable for a very long time. If you weren’t so grateful for everything she’s done for you, you might be inclined to leave and not return. However in the grand scheme of things you’re fairly happy with her so there isn’t much incentive to do so. She’s usually right anyway. Might be time to settle down a bit. Mass slaughter is starting to lose its appeal anyway. Well not ALL its appeal, but maybe you should change it up, especially if you want to go back to Holgard one day. For the first few weeks, you don’t go to Holgard and instead wander further to the east a bit. Honestly, you’ve never traveled in that direction for any extended length of time save for when you released Spikey back into the wild. That was slightly harder than you thought it would be, but at least it was better than Isabella killing him. You sort of wonder if you’ll run into him, but you don’t, who knows where he is now. (You hope he’s happily eating people wherever he is though) You do know is if you go far enough you’ll reach the borders of the Delantium Kingdom. Of course that’s still quite the ways even with your speed and you aren’t that adventurous. What you do find are a few small isolated villages. Bigger than Dert and nearly the size of the your old home of Teckleville. Same sort of people too, funny how no matter where you go, places like this are the same everywhere. You skulk around these minor villages, luring an unsuspecting peasant or two for food, but it’s dull since it’s basically like when you do it back in Dert. You encounter nomads, brigands, and raider types of various races. Again, those are more fun since you can let loose a bit more, but a lot of these tend to be on the non-human side and at this point you’ve acquired more of a taste for human blood as opposed to greenskin or some of the other savage races you’ve come across. Upon your return on these daily travels, Isabella almost never asks you what you were up to. She doesn’t seem to care as long as you aren’t bringing trouble to her crypt. Sometimes you mention what you’ve been up to and she listens, and sometimes asking basic questions back, nothing more though. A few months pass, and you’re about ready to go back to Holgard just to see if things have died down there a bit, but you decide to stick it out a little while longer and continue doing what you’re doing. You head to Maldito, which is one of the more remote villages, even compared to most on your list. When you get within sight of it however, you’re surprised. The entire village is in flames. You can hear screaming and yelling still coming from the place and the stench of blood and death is thick. You’re getting hungry just thinking about it. You cautiously move towards the village and find where the majority of the voices are coming from. A mixed group of rough looking orcs, gnolls, and even a few hobgoblins are currently lording it over the remaining peasants they haven’t killed. Currently a couple of the women are being raped and they’re torturing the shit out of several of the men. Despite the large amount of savage races, a human seems to be the leader. Figures. He is addressing the peasants who are focused on him despite all the horror around them. “Know that you lot brought this on yourselves! All you had to do is provide food, basic goods and some time with your daughters, sisters and wives on a regular basis and this shithole of a town would be spared Green Eye’s wrath. Instead you’ve been hiring mercenaries to cut down our men for weeks! NOW you have to pay!” the human bandit says. “NO! I swear it! We’ve done no such thing! We would nev…” “SILENCE!” the human bandit snaps interrupting the older peasant trying to beg for mercy. The human leader soon picks the old man up off the ground and stabs him in the throat before tossing him back on the floor. “I don’t actually give a shit if it WAS you or not! One of the villages in this area did, and when they get the message of what we’re doing to your village, they’ll fall in line, or they’re going to suffer the same fate! Rape everyone in every fucking orifice, kill them all and shove their dismembered corpses on big fucking spiked sticks.” Grim stuff. The odd thing is you actually feel slightly sorry for these pitiful peasants since you probably inadvertently caused this. You were slaughtering so many bandits over last couple of months, you didn’t think that they were actually united any way. You also didn’t think that these bandit types would jump to the conclusions that the villagers were behind it. Though you suppose it makes sense that they would. After years of just ruthlessly drinking the living and seeing them as nothing more than blood bags, it seems odd that you would feel protective of them for some reason. Maybe, this is how Isabella feels about Dert in some ways. The people in that village are all food to her, but they’re hers and she doesn’t want anyone else fucking with them. You guess you’ve developed a similar attachment. Who knew? Yeah, you’re not going to let bottom-feeding scum throw away perfectly good food… You enter the village, you don’t even try to hide. You break the neck of three hobgoblins and put your fist through an orc before anyone even mounts an attack. “Shit! Get your dick outta that bitch, can’t you see we’re being attacked?!” the human bandit shouts. The gnolls clumsily attempt to chop you with their long axes, but its all too easy to avoid their blows and shatter their spines, you quickly shut their dog like howls up by stomping their heads into mush. The remaining bandits fair no better against you. “He’s too fucking fast! He’s not human! He’s not…” are the last words of a half orc before you finish him off, along with his buddies. Soon it’s only the human bandit leader left and to his credit; he hasn’t run off (like some of the hobgoblins tried to do) “Let me guess…vampire?” You nod silently. “Shit…I had a feeling it wasn’t just mercenaries after seeing the carnage on a couple of those sites. So are…” You’re done entertaining this lesser form, you rush forward and rip out his throat mid sentence. You drink his blood and throw his corpse next to the body of the old man he had just killed not a few moments before. Meanwhile the peasants that the bandits rounded up haven’t even run. They’ve all just huddled together watching you, probably with just as much fear as they had before you arrived. You look upon them and they have never looked more like the herd of sheep they truly are. They are prey and always will be in their current form. You have a mind to finish them all off, until one brave one approaches on his hands and knees. “You…you have saved us!” he shouts. “Saved you? You shortsighted sheep, I only saved you because these assholes were killing off my livestock and I hate to waste food. I’ve been feeding on you lot for months now. Didn’t you even notice how some of you had gone missing?” you say. “We…we assumed perhaps the bandits had taken some of us in the middle of the night. But please, spare us your unholy wrath and we will worship you, my dark lord!” Well this has turned interesting… “Worship you say? What exactly are you proposing?” you ask. “Yes, we…we can’t defend ourselves against Green Eye’s bandits and now that you’ve killed this group, he’s just going to send more to finish us off. You could defend us and in exchange we could provide…what you need….” The man says. “I need blood you do know that right?” “Yes, but if it means just a few of us dying as opposed to all of us dying then it will be worth it. Please, I beg you. Whatever you wish, we will provide.” This could be just the thing to break up the monotony. It’s also perfect due to the remoteness of it all. You’d have people willing to give themselves to you, and the bandits you can just massacre as usual. Of course doing something like this might be slightly more involved than you’d prefer. You can also imagine that it probably wouldn’t be as cut and dry as you’re going to want it to be. Lot of factors still at play and you question if you want the headache. > You just kill them all and be done with it As much as the idea of ruling over this miserable lot like a king appeals to you on some level, the fact is you don’t really want to be bothered micromanaging. You imagine it’s why Isabella doesn’t bother directly controlling Dert. It’s much simpler for her to just let them live their own lives and only intervene when absolutely necessary. Would have been nice to have killed the bandits before they fucked up the village, since then the peasants wouldn’t have known about you. Now that they do, you can’t very well just let them live. One of them would surely blab at one of the other villages and the whole point of this, was to lay low in the first place. “Rise.” You tell the man groveling before you. He does so slowly before you. “Your terms…” you start to say. “Yes?” he asks with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. You grab him by the throat and break his neck with ease. The light goes out of his eyes and he slumps to the ground. “Are not acceptable.” You add. The rest of the peasants are paralyzed with fear or crying. Most of the crying comes from the children though. This gives you an idea. “Listen up sheep! Do not attempt to escape, I guarantee you will not make it. I’m fast and strong enough to kill and catch everyone here! Your lives are forfeit this night. If I had not come here, the bandits would have finished you off. You have nobody to blame but yourselves for being so weak. However, I have a counter proposal to make this necessary deed at least somewhat less horrific.” You stare at the peasants for a bit, making sure you’ve got their full attention, though they really aren’t going anywhere at this point. Actually you aren’t sure if they ALL decided to run and scatter if you actually would be able to catch and kill all of them, but so far they’re so scared they believe anything you say. “Provide no resistance, and I will make your deaths quick. Also, some of you have children. I will spare the children and take them away from here so they won’t be defenseless against the bandits or the surrounding wilderness. This is the best offer you’re going to get.” “How do we know you’re telling the truth and that you’ll not harm the children?” one asks. “You don’t. But think of it this way, resist me and I’ll make sure the children die FIRST before your eyes. Comply and at worst you can die wondering if I kept my word.” That certainly got most of their attention. In typical fashion, most of the parents are more than willing to sacrifice themselves for their children. Even some of the ones who don’t have any are compliant. Amusingly some beg if you can turn them into a vampire instead. You respond that none of them are worthy of “the gift.” You of course aren’t going to tell the truth that you can’t make any of them into vampires if you wanted to anyway, since Isabella has explained that you have to be much older than you currently are before you could even attempt it. You might be able to make them into ghouls at best, but from what Isabella has told you about ghouls, you’d rather not have such disgusting creatures fawning all over you all the time either. Parents attempt to calm their children, but it’s a lost cause, most of them are too upset. You push the parents aside and have them group the children together. You speak in a calming voice to them all. It’s hard to focus on all of them like this, but fortunately children seem to be more susceptible to vampiric suggestion. Soon, the children are in a dazed like condition. “See? Now they won’t even experience the horror of watching me kill you all. Shall we begin?” Without another word, you unleash terrible violence upon the peasants. Despite their promise to comply, most of them try to run anyway. Human instinct you suppose. Though it doesn’t matter much since they stupidly don’t scatter very far you easily catch the lot that do run anyway. Others do thankfully comply. Some of these are the parents who are tearfully spending their last moments with their children (even if they are currently hypnotized). After you finish off the last mewling mother and drink her dry, you turn your attention to the children who are thankfully still under your suggestion. “Okay then, let’s go children, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover and unfortunately you lot don’t run as fast as me…hmm. Maybe that cart will do…” You load all the children onto an undamaged cart and push it as fast as you can. It’s slower than if you were by yourself, but then its also faster than if they all had to follow you on foot. Difficulty comes when you reach the forest since you have to start maneuvering between trees, eventually you have to stop, but it’s not too bad since you’re almost at your destination anyway. “Come on kids, we’re running from here.” It’s a tedious task of herding these children and having to slow down for them, but eventually you reach your destination. Just in time too since it’s almost dawn. You’re just glad you haven’t attracted any unwanted attention during this whole thing. You make your way down the steps and probably due to all the footsteps, Isabella comes to meet you. She looks like she was prepared for a fight too. “What the hell?! With all the footsteps I heard, I thought it was some group of hunters or something!” Isabella remarks. “Well this should make you a bit happier.” You answer and present the children behind you. “What’s all this then? Children? Where did you get them from? Not Dert I hope.” “No, not from Dert, not from Holgard either. They’re from a place that actually no longer exists.” “Did you finally lose control and wipe out an entire village? So much for laying low.” “No I only wiped out half of one. Bandits already fucked up the place before I even got there. Killed them and the remaining villagers. The only witnesses are these children, which I thoughtfully brought home to you.” “Really? Just for me huh?” “Well I know you really like child blood and it isn’t like I’m going to have the patience to stretch the little bastards out like you do, so they’re all yours.” Isabella is very happy with you right now, she embraces you lovingly and gives you a playful bite which you return. “Mmm, I knew I picked you for a reason…” “Just one request though. Could you keep the kids hypnotized? I mean I know you tend to do that with your food anyway, but uh, I sort of promised that no harm would come to them.” “What? What deal is this? I thought you said you didn’t leave anyone alive.” “I didn’t, and I mean officially I’m NOT harming the kids since I’m giving them to you, but… I dunno…I’d feel a little less like a liar if the kids don’t feel any pain while you drink their blood.” Isabella smiles a bit at your odd sense of “morality.” “Aww, that is so adorable. You have a twisted code of honor. Very well, but you didn’t really need to worry about it anyway, last thing I need to hear are children caterwauling throughout my crypt. I know some vampires love to hear their lunch beg and scream and claim it makes the blood taste better. Not me. I prefer my food to just be silent so I can eat in peace. In any case, let me get these lovelies locked up and I’ll be meeting you in the bedroom. I hope you aren’t too tired from your earlier actions, because I suggest you prepare yourself.” Whether you were tired or not, wouldn’t make any difference to you anyway. You make your way to the bedroom thinking that while you might not be a king over some groveling peasants, you’ll certainly be king in here and that’s a whole lot more fun. When Isabella comes to the bedroom, she stands in the doorway just staring at you for a moment. At first you think she’s just taking in all your manliness, but then she beckons you off the bed. “You come with me, I got something else in mind. Something special…but don’t worry we’ll still get to that.” You do so and soon realize that she’s taking you to her garden. She’s NEVER done that. When you enter, the garden is quite sizeable and bathed in a glowing blue light. You always knew there was a light source in there due to the glow you could see whenever Isabella exited it, but now you know it comes from some sort of luminescent fungus that is all over the walls and ceiling. “It’s not sunlight, but it works well enough. Come walk with me.” Isabella says and takes your hand to enter her garden. The garden is unsurprisingly very well cared for. There are all sorts of flowers, though you’ve never been an expert on such matters, but you’re fairly certain there are types of plants here that don’t normally grow in this environment. You weren’t aware there was a small reservoir of water here either, almost like a pond, but then you imagine that would make having a garden here a lot easier with a water source. Isabella doesn’t say anything and just takes you through the garden. She begins pointing to the various plants and giving small histories of them. She also starts to tell you about her own memories of when she first saw these various plants and flowers. It becomes a very intimate history of her life and who she is. It’s actually all very enlightening mainly because even after all these years you STILL didn’t know much about her past. All these years you believed her to be some sort of royalty. Perhaps even a princess of some sort of long lost Empire. But no, her beginnings are actually very humble, possibly even more humble than your own. She was a simple peasant girl that worked in a flower shop. Then one night she caught the eye of a vampire who was of minor royalty (Though trying very hard to keep it secret from the general public). He revealed his true nature immediately to her, but insisted that he had no intention on hurting her. Isabella explains that she at first complied with him out of fear, but eventually she didn’t mind spending time with him. She says she doesn’t know if it was because he was working his dark charms on her, or that she was young and foolish, but she said whatever the reason, she did come to love him. She says she never really knew why he chose her. She suspects her looks helped initially, but it wasn’t like she was special in that regard. He could have easily had any upper class lady, but then perhaps he knew that marrying one of them would have drawn more attention to himself while marrying a lower class girl might just be grateful for the uplifted standing and if he had to silence her, well who would care? Still, marrying someone of such lowly birth raised eyebrows anyway. Didn’t take long before everything started to fall apart and those that would seek to harm him started focusing on various eccentricities, oddities and other things that caused people to start to wonder. For a time, Isabella mostly stayed on his castle grounds spending much of her time in the gardens. She said it was the only place that put her at ease since she knew even with as much power as her husband had, there would be no way he could fight all the forces gathering against him. Of course he wouldn’t leave either. He would fight and die. Isabella was prepared to die with him, but he realized that none of this would be her concern if he hadn’t dragged her into this life in the first place. So he did the only thing he could think of to save her, he gave her the gift of immortality and told her to live her life as she saw fit. She didn’t want to leave at first, but he insisted and perhaps to some degree Isabella did love her own life more than him. Isabella left in the middle of the night, just before the siege of his castle started. A few months later she had heard that he had died and they had a priest of Joachim dowse his burnt corpse in holy water after removing his head. Isabella goes on about a few other bits of her life, but her origins are what are most fascinating. Makes you wonder why now all of a sudden she’s decided to tell you. “Because I’m finally comfortable with you. Sure, you mess up every now and then, but ultimately you listen and do something special for me. I know living with me hasn’t been easy because you probably were always wondering where exactly you stood with me. Well tonight I revealed my soul to you…so to speak. You must understand that this was very difficult for me. I’ve tried this before, and it’s never ended well.” Isabella says. “Well, I guess you have probably had a very eventful past.” You reply. “You only know a minor bit of it, but enough about the past, I want to embrace the future. Embrace me here in the garden, in the soil and amongst the plants. Maybe we’re dead, but I want to make love with life surrounding us.” Rather poetic. You can’t say all this doesn’t emotionally move you somewhat. You and Isabella proceed to be intimate in the garden and it’s definitely the most positive experience you’ve ever had. You might have thought in the past that you were in love before, but now you truly know it. > You time passes.. Year 34… The more Holgard changes the more it stays the same. It’s a good thing everyone has such short memories here. Then again, hard for anyone to worry about vampires when nobody actually found you. Most of the real hunters have moved on. There’s still the Joachimites, but they’re more likely to go burn a poor old woman as a witch before they actually go hunting for a vampire. Lot easier for one thing. Nowadays Holgard is back to being under the plain old paranoia it normally suffers from. You’ve heard rumors of that the Delantium Kingdom is going to try to reclaim this city, but that’s about the only major thing and it’s not likely true anyway. Still, laying low in the backwoods and only coming here occasionally was a good idea. Of course you tend to spend more time with Isabella now since the two of you are a proper couple now. You find stories about her old life fascinating (Though you tend to want her to gloss over any bits about ex-lovers) though you know who would really find them interesting, your sister. You bet she could make an entire opera or something out of Isabella’s life. Probably a couple of them. You’ve sort of been thinking about your family lately and how they might all be doing. You assume that they’re all still alive of course. You sort of miss them all as strange as that may seem given what you’ve done and what you are now. Your last shred of humanity you suppose. Regardless, you’d never be able to visit them even if you weren’t wanted for murder in your hometown. Or rather, you could go back because nobody could stop you or you could be stealthy about it, but you don’t think you should. It’s a closed chapter in your old life and going back in person would just cause more problems. Still, you wonder if you shouldn’t get a message to your mother. You’re sure she’d at least like to know if you were doing okay. You’d send one to your sister, but who knows where she is. Maybe you could write a letter and send it off via one of those courier services. You suppose you better put a quill, ink and parchment on the list of shit you need to get along with the items Isabella sent you to get at the flower nursery here. Funny that after everything that’s occurred in your “life” you still have to do a little roguery the occasional store every once in awhile. You guess the more you change the more you stay the same as well. You of course find it much simpler now. It also no longer gives you the rush that it once did, but then that’s no surprise, you’ve come a long way since those simple rogue days. You head to the nursery and easily break in like you’ve done many times before. You imagine the old couple that run this place wonder where they’ve misplaced their various seeds, supplies and such on many occasions. After grabbing the things Isabella sent you to get, you start rummaging through the small office there to find potential writing supplies, then you suddenly sense something living nearby and it’s not the plants. At first you wonder if it’s one of the old couple that runs this place because if it is, you’ll just stealthily sneak out as you’ve done before. (No point in killing a business owner of where you do most of your “shopping”) However, you can see that this figure is not carrying a lantern of any sort and is actively trying to stay hidden in the darkness. The form is definitely female and they haven’t noticed that YOU’VE noticed them yet. This person is obviously following you and while it would be a simple matter of just killing her, you’d like to know why first. You maneuver around behind furniture and aisles a bit and then just when you get behind this person, they turn around and attempt to dodge you. Quick, but not quick enough to avoid your grasp. You easily disarm them and finally get a good look. The face is older, but you’d still be able to recognize it anywhere. You’re still taken aback though. “Lisa?” you ask. “Long time no see.” Lisa says unruffled. “What the hell are you doing here?” “I might ask you the same. Even when you weren’t a vampire you weren’t exactly stealing flowers.” “Long story, but I’ve questions of my own. Like why you were following me. However, I’d rather continue this discussion elsewhere.” “Sure, but are you going to let me go first? Your grip is like fucking iron and it’s obvious that if I wished you any harm, I’m far outclassed.” You remember a similar situation like this with another “ex” however that was a little different. You didn’t really have a proper relationship with Heather like you did with Lisa and also that was when you were a bit of a “wilder” vampire. You’ve started having a little more restraint since those earlier years. You release Lisa who heads outside and you follow her out before relocking the door. “You re-secure the places you break into now?” Lisa asks. “Not usually, but this place is a bit different. Alright, let’s get in that alley and you can tell me everything.” You say and start motioning Lisa to follow. “An alley? I thought we’d go to a tavern at least if we’re going to catch up.” “Yeah, I don’t really mingle with the crowds unless I have to anymore. Besides, I actually feel safer in an alley than a tavern given how many eyes are in those places.” “Understandable, I guess it makes sense for you to lay low given that there’s a price on your head.” “What?!” “Yeah, but I figured you knew that already. I mean it’s not on your head personally; it’s just on the Vampire of Holgard. I was very surprised when I found out that might be you.” “Wait, what?! I thought all that shit had been forgotten about and you’re a hunter?!” “No, of course not. I’m an Ebony Claw assassin. Maybe the general public forgets shit when it dies down, but the ECS NEVER forgets.” “But I haven’t even been targeting ECS members.” “Yeah, I’ve been getting that impression, but so far you’re the only vampire I’ve been able to track in this city.” This is nuts. Lisa is an Ebony Claw assassin. You always wondered if she joined while you were away, but she took a very different path than you thought. You guess she learned how to take care of herself all too well. Strange to think that she was once just a simple peasant girl that longed to see the world. But then Isabella was once a simple peasant girl at one time too. And the fact you’re finding out you have a contract on your head is even more of a shocker. Though you suppose that you may have very well killed some of their members during the religious faction war, but you haven’t been killing any of them recently, at least not that you know of. Is someone setting you up? “Wait, how long have you followed me and how the hell did I not know it before?” you ask. “Heh, well I AM a very skilled assassin and I kept my distance for a long time. In fact it wasn’t until I figured out it was you that I decided to get close like I did. Had you been any other vampire, I would have been executing you from afar. No way I’d really want to tangle with a real one up close no matter how good I am. As far as how long I’ve tracked you, well I’ve noticed you come here over the course of a few months now. I know you must have a lair somewhere nearby but it’s probably not actually in the city. In any case since I’m fairly certain it isn’t you, I can only imagine it might be another one. Someone you know?” “I doubt that, I only know one other and she’s a bit…reclusive. Look are you even sure if it’s a vampire?” “Well from all the information I’ve been given the ECS leadership here seems to believe it to be the case. Hmmm, maybe a new approach is in order. I think you should come with me so we can straighten this all out.” “Wait, you seriously expect me to go walking into an ECS hangout? You just told me I got a contract on my head!” “You mean to tell me you’re worried? Judging by your skills, you’d be able to wipe out everyone there. Honestly, the Holgard branch of ECS is hardly anything for you to worry about, that why they got me from the Delantium Kingdom. I’m just suggesting though that maybe it still might be a good idea to clear this all up directly. I mean after all I’m not the only assassin and as good as I am, I’m nothing compared to a Fel touched shadow blade assassin. Now someone like that might actually give you problems. They’re also less likely to bother getting down to the truth and just carry out a hit. Better to clear things like this up, trust me. The ECS is not an organization you want on your ass.” While you’re sure Lisa has a point, you really aren’t sure about all this. “Look, I know this is pretty strange for you seeing me like this under these circumstances. I know it’s been a long time and we’ve both moved on in very different life directions, but I still remember the good times we had. So for old times sake, will you trust me on this?” You look at Lisa and despite the fact that the years have taken their toll on her and cynicism has taken root in her demeanor, that last bit she said reminded you of the young girl you once were very fond of. Once again some things remain the same. “Very well, since this is you, I’ll go, but as soon as I sense I’m going to get attacked, I’m killing everyone there. I mean if I’m already on a contract list, I might as well give them a reason at this point.” “Fair enough, but I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about. Mantis is the current ECS leader here. He’s a sonofabitch, but he’s pretty reasonable.” “Mantis…that name sounds familiar. I think I spoke to him once when I tried to ask the ECS for help with an affliction I had.” “Oh? You tried to cure your vampire condition?” “Uh, no. This actually was a different condition I had due to Ral on top of being geased. The vampirism ended up curing me of it actually…yeah things got a bit complicated for a while after we parted ways. In any case, I don’t remember him being that high up or all that reasonable.” “Well the original old leader, Rook moved on to bigger things and well, the ECS tends to have enthusiastic violent promotions so to speak and eventually Mantis made his way through the ranks. Still with all the extra responsibility he’s learned to be a little more patient I suppose.” “Haven’t we all…” You and Lisa make your way to Mantis’s hang out which apparently is still the Poisoned Blade Inn. She mentions he prefers to stay at the “hub” of things Along the way, Lisa asks why you never met her again since she waited a long time for you; you explain Ral’s experiment and what happened exactly to you. Lisa listens intently and offers her sympathies. She says that during that time you were out of action she had to deal with the Holgard civil war. She mentions this was when she joined the ECS. She said after it was all over, the ECS transferred her to the Delantium Kingdom and there is where she learned to be an assassin. “So…you’ve been in the Delantium Kingdom all this time huh? Guess that’s why I never ran into you.” You say. “You looked for me?” Lisa asks. “Initially I did, but as I said, I eventually figured you moved on or were dead. Not to mention I didn’t think you’d want me anyway by that point.” “Oh…I dunno. I was falling in love with you even when you were forced to work for Ral. I’m certain I might have been able to look past what you are now. It isn’t like I’m in any position to judge you morally after all. Well looks like we’re getting close to it.” Before you can reply, you sense several figures lurking nearby. “You’ve got some balls showing up here!” a voice shouts and before you know it a person literally materializes in front of you and Lisa. It’s enough to catch you a bit off guard, but you react quick enough to attack your assailant, though apparently not enough to land a hit. This person cannot possibly be a normal human. You wonder if this is one of those Fel touched Lisa mentioned. You then hear a shot of a pistol, followed by a burning sensation in your upper back. You collapse to the ground on one knee in pain and feel like part of you is on fire. Good thing you aren’t human. However, Lisa’s the only one behind you, and it’s obvious that she just shot you in the back. You aren’t sure if it was an accident or if she’s just lead you into a trap. > You accident Considering that Lisa is supposed to be a well trained assassin that knew what you were before you even met her, seems like if she was going to do any real damage, she would have at least loaded her pistol with silver shot or something similar. You’re going to chalk it up to an accident for now, besides you’ve already got someone right in front of you trying to kill you. Your attacker in front of you attempts to stab you in the face while you’re still hurt, but you dodge, grab his wrist and make him stab himself in the stomach while breaking his arm at the same time. Standing up again, you sense another person nearby and sure enough they once again appear right in front of you. “Get out of the way!” you hear Lisa shout and you hear several more shots fired off. Seems like Lisa has herself one of those fancy repeating pistols. This time however you avoid getting hit, but dodging to the right while your attacker is hit twice in the chest. “Shit!” you hear Lisa shout and another Fel assassin materializes in front of her. She’s not quick enough and you see her fall to the ground when the assassin shoots her with crossbow. You’re about to run over to help, but another assassin with a shock of white hair appears and throws a lit firebomb in Lisa’s direction before running off. You jump to catch it and throw it to the left, and it ends up going right through a window of the Poisoned Blade Inn. “Well…so much for diplomacy…” you say and run back to avoid the upcoming blast. Lisa is currently struggling with her attacker, but by the time you get the both of them, the bomb finally goes off. The impact of the blast knocks you down and the three of you are rolling on the ground on top of one another. At some point in the chaos you feel a blade in your ribs from the person who is on your back. Since this person isn’t very heavy and you can feel the tits on your back, you’re assuming this person is a woman. For Lisa’s sake, you hope that this is a female EC assassin… You smash your head as hard as you can backwards into the assassin’s face. It’s enough for her to lose her grip. You notice that he other figure crawling from underneath you is indeed Lisa, so happily you know she didn’t just accidently wound you again. The female assassin tries blink away or whatever it is they do, but you catch her arm just as she turns herself invisible. Well not invisible to you though. You pull the blade out that she shoved in your rib and shove it into her ear, then you drop her. While all this is going on, a few EC members have been running out of their now fiery hang out screaming and burning. Lisa is leaning up against a nearby wall looking down at the bolt in her thigh. “What the hell happened?” she asks. “Well after you shot me in the back, it all became pretty chaotic.” You answer. “I’m sorry about that…shit…I need to take this…” Lisa says and takes out a vial of something and swallows the contents, and then pulls out the bolt. “You alright?” “Yeah, come on, we gotta get that bastard…the Watch is probably coming anyway.” “Wait, what bastard?” “Mantis, of course. He probably got away through a trapdoor to the sewers, come on there should be a sewer entrance around here. Maybe we can still track him.” Lisa starts limping away as fast as she can, but stumbles. “Shit…that poisoned bolt is still fucking me up…I’ll be alright. I just…” “No you won’t. Here.” You say and just pick Lisa up over your shoulder and get out of the immediate area before you have to massacre the Holgard Watch. After ducking into alley a couple blocks away from the chaos, you finally put Lisa down who is looking slightly better. While you don’t think she set you up, given all that’s happened you are getting the impression that Lisa has not told you everything. “Alright Lisa, out courtesy for what we once had, you got ONE chance to explain yourself.” You say. “Or what…(ugh) you gonna drink me dry?” Lisa says wincing at the pain of her wound and unconcerned about your tone. You pick Lisa up by her shoulders and your more monstrous threatening face becomes visible. She tries her best to not look scared, but you can sense the fear. “You need to drop the tough girl act, right now. Because I’ve done a hell of a lot worse than kill an old girlfriend since the last time you saw me.” You say. “Oh yeah? Well maybe you’d be doing me a favor if you did. At least it would be you then.” You can see the desperation now in her eyes and it’s enough to calm you down. Well you guess not all of the “human” has left you. “Lisa, just tell me what the hell is going on already, because I’m getting the impression that I’m not the one that needs to worry about a contract on my head.” You say. Lisa keeps it together and tells you the story. The contract is actually on her head, specifically Mantis put it on her a few years ago, or at least set it up. She mentions he’s been a thorn in her side shortly after she joined the ECS. At first he would constantly hit on her when she was stationed in Holgard. Then when she got transferred to the Delantium Kingdom to become a better trained assassin, she thought she was done with him, but eventually he was also in the DK for awhile making upwardly mobile moves of his own. For whatever reason he continued to harass her and trying to make things harder for her. He eventually returned to Holgard when another member, Rook, was promoted. Mantis took over the ECS in this city and now had direct ties to Fel Temple as well. With all this extra influence and power, he set things in motion to set her up on some job that resulted in the death of another high ranking ECS member. Since then, she’s been on the ECS hit list. She knows it was Mantis though that was behind it all and she fully intends on killing him. You take all this in and ask one question. “Okay, so where did I come in on all this?” you ask. “You didn’t. Not initially anyway. You might have missed me, but I actually was in Dert for a brief period of time. I was sort of hiding, pondering my next move, along with making peace with my father since I didn’t exactly leave that village on good terms. It’s funny; when I got there I actually missed how boring it all was. At least I didn’t have a crime syndicate trying to kill me when I lived there. Didn’t know there was a vampire living in the graveyard nearby though.” “Wait, you saw me? I’m usually so careful.” “You were careful, but you’re also probably used to the people in Dert not wandering near there at night. I was actually there lost in thought about my own situation and that’s when I saw someone skulking out one of the tombs. It was actually a little unnerving since while I’ve experienced some out of the ordinary shit in my life, undead was not one of them. I couldn’t quite make out your face at first, but for a very brief moment I saw it in moonlight and the resemblance was unmistakable. I couldn’t believe it. I mean I thought you were dead, but not like this!” Lisa holds on to her side and pauses for a moment before continuing. “So I followed you since you seemed to have purpose about what you were doing. You’re very quick of course so I probably caught up to you in Holgard just as you were getting ready to leave it. From there I got a good look at you and knew there was no mistaking who you were.” “So wait, why didn’t you contact me then?” “Because I saw you bite some hooker and drink her dry, that’s why! I sort of figured that it might not be the best idea to confront you. I didn’t even follow you back to the Dert cemetery, I just stayed in Holgard since I figured I needed to get on with my revenge. That was a couple months ago.” “Seems like you should have gotten on with it before now.” “Well I still had to do some reconnaissance. Get myself prepared and all that other shit.” “Seems like it would be very dangerous being here in the manticore’s den and all.” “Actually it seemed like it was easier. Mantis may have security up the ass, but he tends to keep it all around himself. Sort of makes other parts of the city under less watch by his people.” “Yeah, but still seems like something you’d want to do quick and get the hell out as soon as possible.” “Unfortunately, there was no easy way to do it. If I tried what we just did, I would have gotten cut down easily and Mantis himself is a Fel worshipper or at least he pays enough lip service that he has powers of his own. He’s never alone either in the rare moments he leaves his place. I couldn’t reliably ask for any help on this, but then I randomly noticed you enter the city again. So I followed you again and every other time you came here since despite how stealthy you are, you tend to follow a routine. Always saw you go into that plant nursery and tonight…well I thought I’d risk getting your help.” “Well okay, but why didn’t you just tell me that? Why all the subterfuge?” “Wasn’t sure if it was going to work at all first. Second, I got the impression that maybe you’d be more willing to help if YOU were in trouble rather than me. Third, I’ve relied on subterfuge so much in life now, that it just comes naturally.” “I suppose I understand, but this really would have been easier had you just told me. I mean I would have helped if you had just asked flat out.” “Truly? Even though you have a special vampire lady in your life?” “How do you know I have a special vampire lady?” “You mentioned you only knew one other vampire and that SHE was reclusive. I’m willing to bet she’s the one that also made you. I’m sure it’s an interesting story.” “It is. She really helped me out and in time it became more.” “Hmm, I’m not looking for a rekindling or anything, but is it possible that you could…” “Ah…no. I mean trust me, I would if I could since I think it would make shit a whole lot easier for you, but yeah, I can’t transform anyone into a vampire. Not old enough yet. Best I can do is ghoul and trust me, you definitely don’t want that.” “I see. Well figured I'd ask, shit…I’ve spent so much time resting, Mantis is probably long gone by now.” “Would he have left the city?” “No, but he’s probably at one of his many safehouses or even the Fel Temple. And even with your help, I realize I’m in no condition to assault any of these places. I’m going to have to heal up and try again. It’s going to be difficult staying low now that I’ve made my presence known. Look, I appreciate the help even though I tricked you into it, but this really isn’t your concern. You have your own concerns and our paths split long ago. You are under no obligation to help me any further.” > You help Lisa While you don’t like that you were lied to, there’s not much for it now. While you aren’t sure if someone saw your face, at least one of those assassins got away and is probably undoubtedly going to say that Lisa had help. You might as well help Lisa, if only to potentially save your own ass trouble in the future. Plus, you’d be lying if you didn’t feel a little something to actually want to help her. “While I wished you had told me the truth immediately, I’m not going to just leave you hanging because honestly, I think this is a suicide mission for you. You can’t take down this Mantis without some help.” “Well I’m not going to turn down your help and I will fully appreciate it, but you helping me isn’t going to be a problem is it?” “Oh, you mean with my special lady vampire as you put it? Well, I’m inclined not to tell her, but I probably shouldn’t since she’s not an idiot and will find out anyway.” “Won’t she be upset with you?” “You might think that, but I dunno she’s been around a long time and certain things don’t necessarily bother her the way you might think they would. I mean I’ll explain the situation…and well I guess I’ll think of something.” “Hey, I don’t want to mess your shit up so if you can’t do it. That’s perfectly fine. I mean this is my problem and we aren’t together anyway. However, if you can help, meet me in five days at the Holgard graveyard at night. I need to heal up a bit and probably track down where Mantis is actually hiding out at now anyway. Who knows, maybe if we’re really lucky that firebomb killed him after all.” “Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it. Take care in the mean time and hopefully we’ll meet up later.” You take your leave of Lisa and get out of Holgard as quick as possible. When you get home, Isabella immediately notices you look a little battle worn. “You run into trouble dear?” Isabella asks. “Ran into an old…acquaintance. It was a mess and uh...well there’s still unfinished business.” You answer awaiting the storm. Isabella looks at you for a moment. “Okay, first question. Did you at least get my supplies?” Isabella asks. “Yes, I have them right here.” You say handing over your pack to her. “Good. Second question. This acquaintance, wouldn’t happen to be a girl would it? Possibly even an ex from your mortal life?” “She is. Or was. She was a girl from Dert that I was with during my time enslaved to Ral. I lost contact with her during my time getting experimented on by Ral.” “Truly? Odd that you’ve never mentioned her before.” “I didn’t want to talk about my old flames with you.” “You really think I’d get jealous about that?” “No, I just felt it was respectful not to bring them up.” “Hah…nice answer. You always do know how to say the right things. Okay, so I guess my next question would have been are you fucking this mortal, but I’m going to guess that’s a no, so just tell me what’s going on and why you’re involved.” As short as you can, you explain your entire night; you also add that part of the reason you want to help is you think that in all the chaos one of the assassins got away and while probably not recognizing you they will definitely know there was another helper and the last thing you want is to bring chaos home. “I see. Well under normal circumstances, I’d say kill this little mortal bitch for lying and present her head to the Ebony Claw since she got you into this mess in the first place. However, I get that you probably don’t want to do that and knowing the ECS, that might not help anyway. Pftt. The Syndicate. I remember when they were still just a petty gang of thugs in the fledging Delantium Kingdom at one point. Okay, you’re supposed to meet her in five days right?” Isabella asks. “Yes, in the graveyard there.” “How original. Okay, since this is potentially going to impact our home and life together, I’m going to help you and your little human ex out. However that means I’m going to do some of my own investigation.” “Um, okay! That’s great! I mean this will definitely make everything easier. I guess we can…” “We? Oh no no no no my dear. I’m going to do this by myself. I work better alone in situations like this. You are going to stay as far away as possible from Holgard.” “Wait, you’re not going to attack the ECS yourself are you?” “Of course not, I’m just going to do my own reconnaissance because I haven’t been to the city in decades and it might help if I knew the lay out. Not to mention I can probably gain information that you or this Lisa girl would not be able to. You just take a break and I dunno, collect dinner from Dert while I’m out. Then in five days we’ll meet up with your human.” Isabella’s reaction to this wasn’t at all what you were expecting. You thought that maybe she’d be mildly annoyed and maybe she’d be fine with you taking care of this due to potential repercussions. You didn’t however expect her direct help. You guess it makes sense as you are mated after all, but the fact she doesn’t want you to get in her way is puzzling. Well in any case, she trusts you, so you trust her and if this is how she wants to do it, then this is how its going. You spend the next four nights basically hanging around the home. You go to Dert once to lure a couple of people to the cells, but for the most part that’s it. Meanwhile Isabella nearly leaves immediately when the sun goes down and then stays out until it’s nearly time for it to come back up. She never elaborates on what she’s doing except to mention that Holgard has only gotten worse since the last time she was there and says the whole city should be cleansed from the map for the good of everyone. On the fourth night she comes home a little earlier and is entirely in the mood to have a round of wild rough sex. You aren’t sure what’s prompting this, though it could be the potential idea that you’ll all be going into battle soon. Either way, you’ve never complained before so why start now? Finally the fifth night arrives. “Get up my love. It’s time to end this.” Isabella remarks. As you and Isabella make your way to Holgard, you start to ask her questions about what she was doing during her time in Holgard, but she just smiles and says to not worry about it since she’ll reaveal all when you get to the graveyard. “You trust me don’t you?” she asks. “…well I trust that you aren’t planning anything sinister for me, but I must admit all this secrecy is a bit concerning.” You answer. “You worry too much.” Eventually you get to the graveyard. Lisa isn’t really hanging around in plain site, but you can sense she must be around, Isabella on the other hand calls her own immediately. “Little human, come on out from behind the fifth tomb from the left with the broken statue on top of it. Don’t worry it’s safe, nothing but us vampires out here.” She says. Reluctantly and very cautiously Lisa steps out from her hiding space. Her guard is up causing Isabella to roll her eyes. “Honestly, your ex offers to bail your ass out after you lied and you give this sort of welcome? And please, if I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead so put that away.” Isabella remarks. “I take it this is your better half? Didn’t expect her to actually help. Where are her clothes?” Lisa remarks putting her weapon away. “Isabella has long since abandoned the desire to wear such things.” You answer. “I thought maybe it was just her way of bragging of how beautiful she was.” “Hm. I’ll take that as a compliment, human. And I suppose you were probably pretty back in your younger years. I can see how he would have had a fondness for you.” This is getting weird, so you step in before it turns worse. “Okay, you’re both pretty princesses, now let’s get on with this. The both of you have been stalking these city streets so what’s the situation?” you ask. “Honestly, I’m not sure. I mean I’ve interrogated a few EC members and done what investigating I could without alerting the EC of my presence. All I know is Mantis is indeed alive and he’s either in a safehouse down in the sewers under Dagger Row or he’s hiding out in the Temple of Fel. I’m really hoping it’s the safehouse, because I don’t fancy the chances of attacking a Fel Temple and I doubt if we’ll even be able to sneak in. I mean these are followers of the God of Shadow.” “Oh he’s definitely in the Fel Temple, in fact we should go make our way there now.” Isabella remarks. “Wait, you’re saying he’s there for certain? How do you know that?” “Because I’m better than you human, that’s why, now are we settling this or what?” “Isabella, you have been fairly mysterious about what you’ve been doing here.” “And that’s because I don’t want to ruin the surprise for you dear. Both of you just follow my lead in all this and we’ll all get home before the dawn.” “Okay, I know you’re probably old and…” Isabella glares at Lisa for that remark. Meanwhile Lisa looks like she just pissed herself. “Um… powerful, but…” “Dear, tell your human to stop speaking before this act of kindness becomes for naught.” Isabella remarks in an annoyed tone. “I think you better just keep quiet Lisa.” You say. The three of you make your way to the Temple of Fel. Isabella gives exactly zero fucks as she walks naked through the streets of Holgard. As expected she gets more than a few looks by the few folks still out at night, but nobody says anything. Not lewd comments, not protests, nothing. Not even the group of watchmen that you walk by say anything. Isabella’s powers of mind control are in full affect. “Your girlfriend isn’t exactly subtle.” Lisa whispers to you. “Yeah well when you’re that powerful, you tend to not give a shit about things. I’m actually less concerned about the Watch and more concerned about EC assassins, Fel touched or not. I feel like being so obvious like this we’d be getting attacked by now given that they’ve been looking for you.” “And they won’t, I told you, all will be revealed when we get to the temple now cut the chatter and keep up.” Isabella snaps. The rest of your journey is uneventful until you get close to the Fel Temple and that’s when you see a group dressed purple and blue robes. Dornans? What are they doing here? An old man steps from the group when the three of you approach. “Isabella, always a pleasure to see you.” He remarks with a bit of a upbeat tone. “Yes, yes, Flynn I know you love me, but we’re here on important business. Is all the shit sorted out with the Felians? Because I was planning on getting this done with quick.” Isabella remarks. “Yes, The Felians are more interested in keeping the religious peace rather than protecting one of their Ebony Claw associates. So yes, they are completely willing to turn this Mantis character over and apparently his treachery has been exposed by whatever limited process that their shadow magic does anyway, so this appears to be a settled affair as soon as you meet with them.” Flynn remarks. You and Lisa are overwhelmed with surprise. You can’t believe this. “Wait. That’s it? We’re not fighting anyone?” you say. “Mantis is just being turned over? Just like that? I’m actually cleared?!” Lisa adds. “Yes, you may provide your undying thanks to me later, for now though let’s continue.” Isabella remarks eager to get on with it. As the three of you start to leave, Flynn calls out. “Isabella…” Flynn says, causing Isabella to turn around exasperated. “Flynn, look, I thanked you for this already, but that’s all it was okay? Nothing more.” “But I just thought…” “Yeah I know what you thought and you were wrong as usual. This is why I always went for Ral instead of you back in the day. You were a spineless worm that thought just being a compliant was good enough for me. Goodbye Flynn.” Isabella looks at you. “What?” she asks. “Didn’t know you went out with the leader of the Dornan temple.” You say. “Yeah well I used my ex to help out your ex. Come on.” The three of you head to the Fel Temple, which you see a single cloaked figured looming at the bottom of the steps of it. Near him is a crumpled figure. You notice that this is the same assassin with the shock of white hair throwing around firebombs last time. He nods at the three of you. The crumpled figure on the ground is Mantis, he’s alive, but he doesn’t look too good. He’s pale and emaciated looking and he’s shivering the entire time while mumbling nonsense quietly. Certainly looks different than the last time you saw him years ago. “Greetings again. I am here on the behalf of the Master of Shadows as he has other important matters. As I remember you are the one called Lisa?” he asks, pointing to her. “I am…what did you do to Mantis?” Lisa asks. “Only what was required to keep order and peace. This man attempted to use Fel to hide his actions, but he didn’t realize that he can’t hide his actions from Fel who sees all things hidden. Things might have gone better had he not resisted. Perhaps even a compromise could have been reached, but as you can see he chose otherwise and by the time he begged for mercy…well it was far too late.” Lisa steps forward. “And what about me?” Lisa asks. “Your name has been cleared…well more or less. I’m sure thanks to your actions, you have most likely angered other EC members and you will most likely still have to watch your back, such is the nature of the business. However, the general order of elimination will be lifted and more importantly, Fel is not seeking retribution. Still, you may want to watch yourself for awhile.” The man says. “So that’s it then.” “That is indeed it for this situation. I leave you with your revenge, though perhaps it may be a mercy now. And since you have caught the attention of Fel, perhaps if you ever feel you’re up to the challenge, you would be more than welcome to join the shadow of Fel. You will find that being obedient to him, will make you much more efficient in your tasks.” “I’ll keep that in mind.” The man then turns around and then suddenly cloaks into invisibility, though you can still sense him until he goes back into the temple. “Okay, looks like that’s done. Let’s go.” Isabella remarks. “Wait. I don’t know how to thank you.” Lisa says. “You can’t mortal, think of this as your lucky night.” “Actually I can think of a way.” You say. “You best pick your next words with care.” Isabella remarks. “No, not that! It’s just before all this shit happened, I was thinking about home and getting a message to my family. Lisa, do you remember my stories to you about Teckleville?” you say. “Yes, I do remember.” Lisa remarks. “Well, do you think in between your assassinations, you could go see my family and assure them that I’m doing okay? I mean I’d do it…but…” “Say no more. I’d be more than willing to relay a general message of your happiness.” “Thanks Lisa.” “No, thank you. I mean that and will never forget this.” “Alright now we really are going. Say goodbye to your little human and for her sake she better never cross your path, let alone mine ever again.” Isabella remarks. You and Isabella leave Lisa to her revenge on Mantis. You turn to look one last time and see her finish him off. Odd night, you were expecting a huge and very likely deadly battle, but it all worked out very easy. In any case, you follow Isabella who probably is anxious to get back to her garden. She’s been away from it for far too long for her. You know she went out of her way to help you and you also know that she’s annoyed that she had to, but you also know that she must care about you very much that she did. And that’s why you love this woman.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Considering that Lisa is supposed to be a well trained assassin that knew what you were before you even met her, seems like if she was going to do any real damage, she would have at least loaded her pistol with silver shot or something similar. You’re going to chalk it up to an accident for now, besides you’ve already got someone right in front of you trying to kill you. Your attacker in front of you attempts to stab you in the face while you’re still hurt, but you dodge, grab his wrist and make him stab himself in the stomach while breaking his arm at the same time. Standing up again, you sense another person nearby and sure enough they once again appear right in front of you. “Get out of the way!” you hear Lisa shout and you hear several more shots fired off. Seems like Lisa has herself one of those fancy repeating pistols. This time however you avoid getting hit, but dodging to the right while your attacker is hit twice in the chest. “Shit!” you hear Lisa shout and another Fel assassin materializes in front of her. She’s not quick enough and you see her fall to the ground when the assassin shoots her with crossbow. You’re about to run over to help, but another assassin with a shock of white hair appears and throws a lit firebomb in Lisa’s direction before running off. You jump to catch it and throw it to the left, and it ends up going right through a window of the Poisoned Blade Inn. “Well…so much for diplomacy…” you say and run back to avoid the upcoming blast. Lisa is currently struggling with her attacker, but by the time you get the both of them, the bomb finally goes off. The impact of the blast knocks you down and the three of you are rolling on the ground on top of one another. At some point in the chaos you feel a blade in your ribs from the person who is on your back. Since this person isn’t very heavy and you can feel the tits on your back, you’re assuming this person is a woman. For Lisa’s sake, you hope that this is a female EC assassin… You smash your head as hard as you can backwards into the assassin’s face. It’s enough for her to lose her grip. You notice that he other figure crawling from underneath you is indeed Lisa, so happily you know she didn’t just accidently wound you again. The female assassin tries blink away or whatever it is they do, but you catch her arm just as she turns herself invisible. Well not invisible to you though. You pull the blade out that she shoved in your rib and shove it into her ear, then you drop her. While all this is going on, a few EC members have been running out of their now fiery hang out screaming and burning. Lisa is leaning up against a nearby wall looking down at the bolt in her thigh. “What the hell happened?” she asks. “Well after you shot me in the back, it all became pretty chaotic.” You answer. “I’m sorry about that…shit…I need to take this…” Lisa says and takes out a vial of something and swallows the contents, and then pulls out the bolt. “You alright?” “Yeah, come on, we gotta get that bastard…the Watch is probably coming anyway.” “Wait, what bastard?” “Mantis, of course. He probably got away through a trapdoor to the sewers, come on there should be a sewer entrance around here. Maybe we can still track him.” Lisa starts limping away as fast as she can, but stumbles. “Shit…that poisoned bolt is still fucking me up…I’ll be alright. I just…” “No you won’t. Here.” You say and just pick Lisa up over your shoulder and get out of the immediate area before you have to massacre the Holgard Watch. After ducking into alley a couple blocks away from the chaos, you finally put Lisa down who is looking slightly better. While you don’t think she set you up, given all that’s happened you are getting the impression that Lisa has not told you everything. “Alright Lisa, out courtesy for what we once had, you got ONE chance to explain yourself.” You say. “Or what…(ugh) you gonna drink me dry?” Lisa says wincing at the pain of her wound and unconcerned about your tone. You pick Lisa up by her shoulders and your more monstrous threatening face becomes visible. She tries her best to not look scared, but you can sense the fear. “You need to drop the tough girl act, right now. Because I’ve done a hell of a lot worse than kill an old girlfriend since the last time you saw me.” You say. “Oh yeah? Well maybe you’d be doing me a favor if you did. At least it would be you then.” You can see the desperation now in her eyes and it’s enough to calm you down. Well you guess not all of the “human” has left you. “Lisa, just tell me what the hell is going on already, because I’m getting the impression that I’m not the one that needs to worry about a contract on my head.” You say. Lisa keeps it together and tells you the story. The contract is actually on her head, specifically Mantis put it on her a few years ago, or at least set it up. She mentions he’s been a thorn in her side shortly after she joined the ECS. At first he would constantly hit on her when she was stationed in Holgard. Then when she got transferred to the Delantium Kingdom to become a better trained assassin, she thought she was done with him, but eventually he was also in the DK for awhile making upwardly mobile moves of his own. For whatever reason he continued to harass her and trying to make things harder for her. He eventually returned to Holgard when another member, Rook, was promoted. Mantis took over the ECS in this city and now had direct ties to Fel Temple as well. With all this extra influence and power, he set things in motion to set her up on some job that resulted in the death of another high ranking ECS member. Since then, she’s been on the ECS hit list. She knows it was Mantis though that was behind it all and she fully intends on killing him. You take all this in and ask one question. “Okay, so where did I come in on all this?” you ask. “You didn’t. Not initially anyway. You might have missed me, but I actually was in Dert for a brief period of time. I was sort of hiding, pondering my next move, along with making peace with my father since I didn’t exactly leave that village on good terms. It’s funny; when I got there I actually missed how boring it all was. At least I didn’t have a crime syndicate trying to kill me when I lived there. Didn’t know there was a vampire living in the graveyard nearby though.” “Wait, you saw me? I’m usually so careful.” “You were careful, but you’re also probably used to the people in Dert not wandering near there at night. I was actually there lost in thought about my own situation and that’s when I saw someone skulking out one of the tombs. It was actually a little unnerving since while I’ve experienced some out of the ordinary shit in my life, undead was not one of them. I couldn’t quite make out your face at first, but for a very brief moment I saw it in moonlight and the resemblance was unmistakable. I couldn’t believe it. I mean I thought you were dead, but not like this!” Lisa holds on to her side and pauses for a moment before continuing. “So I followed you since you seemed to have purpose about what you were doing. You’re very quick of course so I probably caught up to you in Holgard just as you were getting ready to leave it. From there I got a good look at you and knew there was no mistaking who you were.” “So wait, why didn’t you contact me then?” “Because I saw you bite some hooker and drink her dry, that’s why! I sort of figured that it might not be the best idea to confront you. I didn’t even follow you back to the Dert cemetery, I just stayed in Holgard since I figured I needed to get on with my revenge. That was a couple months ago.” “Seems like you should have gotten on with it before now.” “Well I still had to do some reconnaissance. Get myself prepared and all that other shit.” “Seems like it would be very dangerous being here in the manticore’s den and all.” “Actually it seemed like it was easier. Mantis may have security up the ass, but he tends to keep it all around himself. Sort of makes other parts of the city under less watch by his people.” “Yeah, but still seems like something you’d want to do quick and get the hell out as soon as possible.” “Unfortunately, there was no easy way to do it. If I tried what we just did, I would have gotten cut down easily and Mantis himself is a Fel worshipper or at least he pays enough lip service that he has powers of his own. He’s never alone either in the rare moments he leaves his place. I couldn’t reliably ask for any help on this, but then I randomly noticed you enter the city again. So I followed you again and every other time you came here since despite how stealthy you are, you tend to follow a routine. Always saw you go into that plant nursery and tonight…well I thought I’d risk getting your help.” “Well okay, but why didn’t you just tell me that? Why all the subterfuge?” “Wasn’t sure if it was going to work at all first. Second, I got the impression that maybe you’d be more willing to help if YOU were in trouble rather than me. Third, I’ve relied on subterfuge so much in life now, that it just comes naturally.” “I suppose I understand, but this really would have been easier had you just told me. I mean I would have helped if you had just asked flat out.” “Truly? Even though you have a special vampire lady in your life?” “How do you know I have a special vampire lady?” “You mentioned you only knew one other vampire and that SHE was reclusive. I’m willing to bet she’s the one that also made you. I’m sure it’s an interesting story.” “It is. She really helped me out and in time it became more.” “Hmm, I’m not looking for a rekindling or anything, but is it possible that you could…” “Ah…no. I mean trust me, I would if I could since I think it would make shit a whole lot easier for you, but yeah, I can’t transform anyone into a vampire. Not old enough yet. Best I can do is ghoul and trust me, you definitely don’t want that.” “I see. Well figured I'd ask, shit…I’ve spent so much time resting, Mantis is probably long gone by now.” “Would he have left the city?” “No, but he’s probably at one of his many safehouses or even the Fel Temple. And even with your help, I realize I’m in no condition to assault any of these places. I’m going to have to heal up and try again. It’s going to be difficult staying low now that I’ve made my presence known. Look, I appreciate the help even though I tricked you into it, but this really isn’t your concern. You have your own concerns and our paths split long ago. You are under no obligation to help me any further.” > You leave Lisa to deal with this Maybe if Lisa had been upfront with you it would be different, but you really don’t like being lied to and given that Lisa is telling you that you don’t need to help her and she’s got this, you don’t feel exactly obligated. “Okay, if you say you got this then I’ll take my leave. Just be careful all right and good luck.” you say. “I will, and it was good to see you again…I…I wish things had been different.” Lisa says with a mildly sad tone in her voice. “Yeah, me too sometimes.” You leave Lisa behind in the alley and make your way as quickly as you can out of Holgard. You’re ready to be done with this night. When you get home, Isabella immediately notices you look a little battle worn. “You run into trouble dear?” Isabella asks. “Ran into an old…acquaintance. It was a mess. It’s settled though.” You answer not really wishing to go much into it, but prepared to explain if you have to. Isabella looks at you for a moment. “Okay. Did you at least get my supplies?” “Yes, I have them right here.” You say handing over your pack to her. And that’s the type of relationship you have with Isabella. She trusts you. If you say it got taken care of, then it’s taken care of. You avoid Holgard for a while. While you don’t think you’re in any danger, the last thing you need is to run into some other old face causing shit for you. It would be just your luck that you’d run into Tych again. Months pass and you eventually go to Holgard again to pick up some things for Isabella. Not that you’re doing much mingling or listening to rumors, but you know enough that the Ebony Claw Syndicate is still firmly in control of the underworld here so you guess Lisa didn’t exactly bring them down, but then she was only trying to kill one specific person. You have no idea about this Mantis though, if he’s dead, alive, or what. Same for Lisa. In any case you hope she got her revenge at least. Year 35 You wake up to the sounds of several feet coming the stairs. You can’t tell how many, but you already are getting the push by Isabella who is awake and ready for a fight. “Get up! We’re being attacked!” she shouts. You get up and you’re already hearing shouting from the foyer. “Fucking hunters! I’ll water my garden with their blood for intruding on my home!” Isabella shouts and is already gone to meet the invaders. Screams soon follow. You head out to join the fight and there is a whole lot more light than usual thanks to all the torches. After striking down a few of them, you notice an ebony claw tattoo on some of them. These aren’t hunters. “Shit! There’s two of them! Why didn’t someone check this?!” one of them shouts. Multiple gunshots are fired at you and Isabella and in these narrow catacombs, even as quick as you are, you’re still catching a few bullets. Unfortunately, the Ebony Claw has prepared well and loaded their firearms with silver shot. It hurts like hell, but you fight through the pain and take out the closest fucker with a gun in his hand. You feel a blade sinking into your back, which feels like a burning piece of steel, though it’s probably silver again. You turn around and find yourself face to cowl with one of those Fel assassins that teleported behind you. You get another silver blade in your gut before you twist his head backwards. Severely wounded you quicken your pace to where Isabella is. She’s managed to push them all the way back to the foyer all by herself. Blood and bodies are everywhere. You’re damn glad she’s on your side. You reach the foyer just in time to see several round metal objects bounce down the stairs and on the floor. Isabella is finishing off two more assassins and hasn’t seen the cluster of firebombs yet. You immediately pull her away and throw her into the nearby corridor just as the bombs are exploding. You try to shield Isabella, and catch some of the blast. Your flesh burns from your bones, your bones crack and break, some of your internal organs melt and it feels like your whole body has been dunked in acid. You scream out something unnatural, but it isn’t for long because everything goes black. You’re out and you don’t know for how long. “Beloved! You there? Can you hear me?” you hear, but your vision is still black. “Mufh hungh…gh…” is all you can utter before you’re out again. Time passes… You open you eyes and find your vision is severely impaired. You have no depth perception and the eye that does work is very blurry. You still feel like your body is on fire, but you can’t scream out. You must be laying on a table or something because you are elevated. Still, you can make out an outline of a woman standing near someone in a chair nearby. “I SWEAR! I SWEAR TO FEL AND ALL THE GODS, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ELSE! PLEASE! GRANT ME MERCY!” Your hearing works at least. You struggle to sit up, but it’s no use. You don’t have the energy and collapse again. More time passes… You open your eyes again. Still no depth perception, but your vision is a little clearer. You can finally tell where you’re at. You’re still at home, and lying on one of the many slabs in the crypt. Your body hurts less, but you’re still not feeling good. You try to sit up again and that’s when you realize you’re a bloody mess. Both of your legs are missing, or at least missing enough that you wouldn’t be able to walk. Attempting to reach out only results in your right arm being able to do so since your left is a skeletal stump at the elbow. Speaking of skeletal, you can sense that part of your spine is exposed to the world and what lies inside you isn’t fairing much better. You can see your blackened heart beating through your ribcage. While you’re an undead monster, that doesn’t mean that you don’t find all this a bit alarming. “Oh shit…shit…shit…fuck…fuck!” you start to say with an increased tone in your voice. Isabella soon comes running in. You notice she’s in relatively good condition though one side of her face is scarred and parts of her body are also burned. “You’re up! What’s wrong?” Isabella asks. “What’s wrong? Look at me! I…I can’t fucking live like this! Please just put me out of my fucking misery!” you say and you’re almost close to tears. Isabella goes over to sooth you as you continue to panic. “Shhhh, it’s okay. This is the first time you’ve been maimed severely. Yeah, I panicked a bit too when it first happened to me centuries ago and I didn’t even have anyone with me to help either. We’re more resilient than you think. You’ll heal up. It’s gonna take a long time, but you WILL be in one piece again eventually.” “I…I…I will?” “Well yeah. Just takes blood. How do you think I got you this healed up in the first place? I’m been using the blood of the assholes that attacked us, the Dert citizens and my own for days trying to heal you and myself up. We’re going to have to be moving on soon though, as much as I hate it, but it’s just not ideal anymore. The Ebony Claw will undoubtedly regroup and send more of their fools to try to kill us.” “Wait, did you kill them all?” “I probably would have had it not been daylight. I only managed to run down three of them before the sunlight was burning my fine undead ass to a crisp. Still, got quite a bit of information out of them. Didn’t know you were wanted by them for helping an old girlfriend of yours a year ago. Guessing that’s the thing you thought was taken care of? Looks like it wasn’t.” You’re at a loss for words. “I…I fucked up.” You finally utter. “You most certainly did fuck up. I hope she was worth the poke and cuddle, because after they caught and tortured the shit out of her before they killed her that’s how they found out about where you lived. Fortunately she didn’t know anything about me. I’m guessing you never told her.” Isabella responds. “Shit. I DID tell her about you! I mean not in so many words, but she guessed I had a special vampire lady in my life as she put it. And I most certainly did not have sex with her! I swear!” You give a brief rundown of what exactly happened that night you met Lisa. Isabella listens intently. Now you’re worried that Isabella isn’t going to believe you and is keeping you alive to make your existence horrible. “Calm down, I believe you. Though I’d almost say it probably would’ve been better if you’d fucked her. At least you would have gotten something out of all this. Also might have been better if you had helped her. She might not have blabbed about this place. Apparently they were planning on ambushing you in Holgard, but since I haven’t needed anything from there lately, you haven’t been going. So they fell back on attacking directly and have been gearing up to raid this place for the past few months. Well what’s done is done now.” “At the risk of actually pissing you off, I’m curious to as why you aren’t angrier.” “At you? Well, I am pissed at you, but considering you’re currently a piece of mutilated meat that’s still in pain and has a long way to go before getting back to normal, I think this was your punishment. Honestly my anger is directed towards the bottom feeding mortals that dared attack in the first place. I don’t care what sort of connections they have; I’ll take down the entire ECS in Holgard and then some just so they remember they picked the wrong vampire to order a hit on. You’ll be helping of course.” Nothing like a purpose. “Well I’d love to, but I’m not exactly able right now.” “I didn’t mean now. We’re going to move to a new location. Probably Ral’s old home in the meantime. I already checked it out and surprisingly nobody was even squatting there. That will just be temporary though, until you’re healed up enough to walk on your own. We’ll probably need to wipe out the remainder of Dert in order to get enough blood, but it’s not like it’s we’re going to be living here anymore anyway. After that we’re both going to Holgard, and we’re going to cause so much mayhem, they’ll think there’s a new civil war going on.” “I’m glad you didn’t give up on me for this.” “No, I made a commitment to you, for good or bad times and right now this is bad, but it’s nothing we can’t get over. Come on, hold on to me, we’re heading to our new temporary home….I’m really going to miss my garden. Oh well, let’s go my love.” Isabella turns around and with all your energy you hoist yourself and hang on to her back. It’s a little awkward with only one good arm that only has three fingers left wrapped around her, but Isabella’s more than strong enough to carry your dead weight. The pair of you are soon off and running through the moonlight to your new home. You’re down now, but things could definitely be a lot worse. You’ve got a lot to plan and think about though with this new conflict with the entire ECS though. Your life as a common rogue might be over, but your “life” as a vampire has only just begun.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 34… The more Holgard changes the more it stays the same. It’s a good thing everyone has such short memories here. Then again, hard for anyone to worry about vampires when nobody actually found you. Most of the real hunters have moved on. There’s still the Joachimites, but they’re more likely to go burn a poor old woman as a witch before they actually go hunting for a vampire. Lot easier for one thing. Nowadays Holgard is back to being under the plain old paranoia it normally suffers from. You’ve heard rumors of that the Delantium Kingdom is going to try to reclaim this city, but that’s about the only major thing and it’s not likely true anyway. Still, laying low in the backwoods and only coming here occasionally was a good idea. Of course you tend to spend more time with Isabella now since the two of you are a proper couple now. You find stories about her old life fascinating (Though you tend to want her to gloss over any bits about ex-lovers) though you know who would really find them interesting, your sister. You bet she could make an entire opera or something out of Isabella’s life. Probably a couple of them. You’ve sort of been thinking about your family lately and how they might all be doing. You assume that they’re all still alive of course. You sort of miss them all as strange as that may seem given what you’ve done and what you are now. Your last shred of humanity you suppose. Regardless, you’d never be able to visit them even if you weren’t wanted for murder in your hometown. Or rather, you could go back because nobody could stop you or you could be stealthy about it, but you don’t think you should. It’s a closed chapter in your old life and going back in person would just cause more problems. Still, you wonder if you shouldn’t get a message to your mother. You’re sure she’d at least like to know if you were doing okay. You’d send one to your sister, but who knows where she is. Maybe you could write a letter and send it off via one of those courier services. You suppose you better put a quill, ink and parchment on the list of shit you need to get along with the items Isabella sent you to get at the flower nursery here. Funny that after everything that’s occurred in your “life” you still have to do a little roguery the occasional store every once in awhile. You guess the more you change the more you stay the same as well. You of course find it much simpler now. It also no longer gives you the rush that it once did, but then that’s no surprise, you’ve come a long way since those simple rogue days. You head to the nursery and easily break in like you’ve done many times before. You imagine the old couple that run this place wonder where they’ve misplaced their various seeds, supplies and such on many occasions. After grabbing the things Isabella sent you to get, you start rummaging through the small office there to find potential writing supplies, then you suddenly sense something living nearby and it’s not the plants. At first you wonder if it’s one of the old couple that runs this place because if it is, you’ll just stealthily sneak out as you’ve done before. (No point in killing a business owner of where you do most of your “shopping”) However, you can see that this figure is not carrying a lantern of any sort and is actively trying to stay hidden in the darkness. The form is definitely female and they haven’t noticed that YOU’VE noticed them yet. This person is obviously following you and while it would be a simple matter of just killing her, you’d like to know why first. You maneuver around behind furniture and aisles a bit and then just when you get behind this person, they turn around and attempt to dodge you. Quick, but not quick enough to avoid your grasp. You easily disarm them and finally get a good look. The face is older, but you’d still be able to recognize it anywhere. You’re still taken aback though. “Lisa?” you ask. “Long time no see.” Lisa says unruffled. “What the hell are you doing here?” “I might ask you the same. Even when you weren’t a vampire you weren’t exactly stealing flowers.” “Long story, but I’ve questions of my own. Like why you were following me. However, I’d rather continue this discussion elsewhere.” “Sure, but are you going to let me go first? Your grip is like fucking iron and it’s obvious that if I wished you any harm, I’m far outclassed.” You remember a similar situation like this with another “ex” however that was a little different. You didn’t really have a proper relationship with Heather like you did with Lisa and also that was when you were a bit of a “wilder” vampire. You’ve started having a little more restraint since those earlier years. You release Lisa who heads outside and you follow her out before relocking the door. “You re-secure the places you break into now?” Lisa asks. “Not usually, but this place is a bit different. Alright, let’s get in that alley and you can tell me everything.” You say and start motioning Lisa to follow. “An alley? I thought we’d go to a tavern at least if we’re going to catch up.” “Yeah, I don’t really mingle with the crowds unless I have to anymore. Besides, I actually feel safer in an alley than a tavern given how many eyes are in those places.” “Understandable, I guess it makes sense for you to lay low given that there’s a price on your head.” “What?!” “Yeah, but I figured you knew that already. I mean it’s not on your head personally; it’s just on the Vampire of Holgard. I was very surprised when I found out that might be you.” “Wait, what?! I thought all that shit had been forgotten about and you’re a hunter?!” “No, of course not. I’m an Ebony Claw assassin. Maybe the general public forgets shit when it dies down, but the ECS NEVER forgets.” “But I haven’t even been targeting ECS members.” “Yeah, I’ve been getting that impression, but so far you’re the only vampire I’ve been able to track in this city.” This is nuts. Lisa is an Ebony Claw assassin. You always wondered if she joined while you were away, but she took a very different path than you thought. You guess she learned how to take care of herself all too well. Strange to think that she was once just a simple peasant girl that longed to see the world. But then Isabella was once a simple peasant girl at one time too. And the fact you’re finding out you have a contract on your head is even more of a shocker. Though you suppose that you may have very well killed some of their members during the religious faction war, but you haven’t been killing any of them recently, at least not that you know of. Is someone setting you up? “Wait, how long have you followed me and how the hell did I not know it before?” you ask. “Heh, well I AM a very skilled assassin and I kept my distance for a long time. In fact it wasn’t until I figured out it was you that I decided to get close like I did. Had you been any other vampire, I would have been executing you from afar. No way I’d really want to tangle with a real one up close no matter how good I am. As far as how long I’ve tracked you, well I’ve noticed you come here over the course of a few months now. I know you must have a lair somewhere nearby but it’s probably not actually in the city. In any case since I’m fairly certain it isn’t you, I can only imagine it might be another one. Someone you know?” “I doubt that, I only know one other and she’s a bit…reclusive. Look are you even sure if it’s a vampire?” “Well from all the information I’ve been given the ECS leadership here seems to believe it to be the case. Hmmm, maybe a new approach is in order. I think you should come with me so we can straighten this all out.” “Wait, you seriously expect me to go walking into an ECS hangout? You just told me I got a contract on my head!” “You mean to tell me you’re worried? Judging by your skills, you’d be able to wipe out everyone there. Honestly, the Holgard branch of ECS is hardly anything for you to worry about, that why they got me from the Delantium Kingdom. I’m just suggesting though that maybe it still might be a good idea to clear this all up directly. I mean after all I’m not the only assassin and as good as I am, I’m nothing compared to a Fel touched shadow blade assassin. Now someone like that might actually give you problems. They’re also less likely to bother getting down to the truth and just carry out a hit. Better to clear things like this up, trust me. The ECS is not an organization you want on your ass.” While you’re sure Lisa has a point, you really aren’t sure about all this. “Look, I know this is pretty strange for you seeing me like this under these circumstances. I know it’s been a long time and we’ve both moved on in very different life directions, but I still remember the good times we had. So for old times sake, will you trust me on this?” You look at Lisa and despite the fact that the years have taken their toll on her and cynicism has taken root in her demeanor, that last bit she said reminded you of the young girl you once were very fond of. Once again some things remain the same. “Very well, since this is you, I’ll go, but as soon as I sense I’m going to get attacked, I’m killing everyone there. I mean if I’m already on a contract list, I might as well give them a reason at this point.” “Fair enough, but I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about. Mantis is the current ECS leader here. He’s a sonofabitch, but he’s pretty reasonable.” “Mantis…that name sounds familiar. I think I spoke to him once when I tried to ask the ECS for help with an affliction I had.” “Oh? You tried to cure your vampire condition?” “Uh, no. This actually was a different condition I had due to Ral on top of being geased. The vampirism ended up curing me of it actually…yeah things got a bit complicated for a while after we parted ways. In any case, I don’t remember him being that high up or all that reasonable.” “Well the original old leader, Rook moved on to bigger things and well, the ECS tends to have enthusiastic violent promotions so to speak and eventually Mantis made his way through the ranks. Still with all the extra responsibility he’s learned to be a little more patient I suppose.” “Haven’t we all…” You and Lisa make your way to Mantis’s hang out which apparently is still the Poisoned Blade Inn. She mentions he prefers to stay at the “hub” of things Along the way, Lisa asks why you never met her again since she waited a long time for you; you explain Ral’s experiment and what happened exactly to you. Lisa listens intently and offers her sympathies. She says that during that time you were out of action she had to deal with the Holgard civil war. She mentions this was when she joined the ECS. She said after it was all over, the ECS transferred her to the Delantium Kingdom and there is where she learned to be an assassin. “So…you’ve been in the Delantium Kingdom all this time huh? Guess that’s why I never ran into you.” You say. “You looked for me?” Lisa asks. “Initially I did, but as I said, I eventually figured you moved on or were dead. Not to mention I didn’t think you’d want me anyway by that point.” “Oh…I dunno. I was falling in love with you even when you were forced to work for Ral. I’m certain I might have been able to look past what you are now. It isn’t like I’m in any position to judge you morally after all. Well looks like we’re getting close to it.” Before you can reply, you sense several figures lurking nearby. “You’ve got some balls showing up here!” a voice shouts and before you know it a person literally materializes in front of you and Lisa. It’s enough to catch you a bit off guard, but you react quick enough to attack your assailant, though apparently not enough to land a hit. This person cannot possibly be a normal human. You wonder if this is one of those Fel touched Lisa mentioned. You then hear a shot of a pistol, followed by a burning sensation in your upper back. You collapse to the ground on one knee in pain and feel like part of you is on fire. Good thing you aren’t human. However, Lisa’s the only one behind you, and it’s obvious that she just shot you in the back. You aren’t sure if it was an accident or if she’s just lead you into a trap. > You trap While you know you and Lisa went separate ways in life, and this betrayal was always a possibility, it still stings enough to fill you with rage. Your attacker in front of you attempts to stab you in the face while you’re still hurt, but you dodge, grab his wrist and make him stab himself in the stomach while breaking his arm at the same time. You then turn your attention to Lisa who is pointing the pistol at you again. She shouts something, but you don’t even hear it, you just rush her. She doesn’t even get off a shot, you knock her to the ground and get on top of her. “Wait…” she utters and then you rip out her throat with your fangs and taste her blood. You then sense another figure hovering near you and you throw a punch to his kneecap, shattering it. He screams and falls to the ground, but he manages to shoot you with a bolt before doing so. At this point you feel several bolts go into your back. They hurt like hell, but it’s nothing compared to when you’re hit by a firebomb. “Come on, she’s dead! Let’s get the hell outta here!” you hear someone shout and then a deafening explosion. The explosion knocks you into the wall of a nearby building and you separately attempt to roll out the flames. It’s during this that you realize that you’ve partially lost a leg in the blast. At this point all this noise is enough to alert everyone in the nearby area. Several Ebony Claw members come out of the bar and even some of the Holgard Watch come running to the scene. Meanwhile, you’re burned badly, wounded severely, and attempting to crawl away. Someone shouts “A monster! Kill it!” and then even more hell breaks loose. You are no longer attacked by the Fel touched assassins anymore (Who apparently have made themselves scarce), but instead you’re attack by a combined mob of regular Ebony Claw members and a few of the Holgard Watch. You attempt to fight off the mob, but in your condition you can’t fight effectively or even get away. Normal weapons might not normally kill vampires, but when there are enough of them cutting you into bloody pieces they will still do the job, especially when you’re beheaded. After you’re a heap of almost unrecognizable gore, one of the Watch takes his torch and sets your remains on fire. The only consolation in all this is Holgard is probably going to be stalked by an even more powerful vampire in the near future.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 25 “I’ve looked through ALL of Ral’s writings along with researching various tomes we have at the temple and I can’t figure out exactly WHAT he did to you. I mean I can guess what he did, but even if I’m right, I still have no idea how to reverse it.” Heather remarks. You know Heather’s done more than you ever expected from her, but you can’t help but feel frustrated by all this. If your condition wasn’t getting worse, it probably would be tolerable, but it is getting worse. Not so much for you in terms of life and death directly, but you’re starting to effect things in a wider area. At this point your home is freezing to most (or at least to Heather when she visits) and frost covers everything you come in contact with now. You don’t even have to touch it for long. Even Spikey makes his home outside the house rather than inside, though it’s just as well since he’s huge now. Which is leading to the other issue and that’s the fact your icy home is starting to look very out of place compared to the rest of the surrounding landscape. Granted you’re isolated from most major population centers, but there is Dert. Dert is close enough that it’s only going to take a few of the more adventurous young folks to go wandering from that backwards village and bring back tales of an “Ice Castle” with a manticore guarding it. (Fortunately Spikey has never wandered towards Dert and his hunting grounds are mainly elsewhere.) Heather herself has been trying to keep your presence a secret since apparently Elder Flynn has been sensing a minor growth in magical energy in the area. So far he assumes it’s Ral just working on something, but Heather stresses that if he finds out the truth, he’ll definitely be heading to your home. Heather is also stressed out due to the fact that she’s been keeping all this from her comrades and on top of everything else, there’s the beginning of religious faction war going on in Holgard. Since she’s out of any ideas that you might find acceptable, she suggests the last thing she can think of and that’s that you leave and head north. She believes your condition is exaggerated by the warmer climate. (Even more so now due to it being a hotter summer than usual) While you’ve sort of guessed that to some extent, she thinks that if you were just constantly living in a colder environment, your condition would even out and you might not attract as much attention. “So…what then? I’m supposed to just go live on a mountain top somewhere?” you say. “No, I’m just saying that you could probably live some place colder and your condition not be as much of a problem. You’d at least blend in a bit better. As it stands now, you’re starting to attract a lot of attention and you were previously pretty isolated before. Not to mention you’ve got a big ass manticore wandering around nearby. You stay here and you’re probably going to have groups of hired adventurers beating down your door.” Heather remarks. “You just want me to leave because you’re worried about your own ass.” “Damn right I am! I mean I’m risking every time I come here, every time I lie to Elder Flynn. You realize how much my stomach is in knots about this? And you know what? Fuck you. I’ve been helping you out trying to figure out how to cure you! I’ve tried potions, spells, salves, rituals and even prayers to Dorna on your behalf!” “You’ve also been helping yourself to magical shit I have.” “So? It’s been mutually beneficial, but now it’s starting to get risky to a point of where I’m no longer comfortable.” “Alright, I get it. I get it. But I’m just not too keen on this idea that I’m supposed to just pick up and leave.” “Well, I dunno any other solutions. I mean when was the last time you went to Holgard and didn’t start drawing a crowd? Didn’t you say that the guards actually prevented you from entering last time? You said you had to sneak in and then you soon got run out of there. I mean it’s only going to be a matter of time that you start drawing the attention of someone you aren’t going to be able to deal with.” “Your boss is really getting that suspicious huh?” “Elder Flynn is a concern of course, but it might actually be lucky for you that there’s religious strife going on in Holgard right now. But I was talking in general. Look, we’ve gotten along for a while now, and maybe if circumstances were different I’d say stick around longer, but…” Heather turns away from you a bit and exhales. In fact she starts to sniffle a bit. “What? Wait a minute…no…really? You never gave any indication! Hell, we’ve never even kissed! Though I suppose given my condition that might cause problems. That’s why you never acted on it” you say. “Oh trust me, there’s ways we could have gotten around that aspect. A simple protection of cold would have done that. It’s just… it could never really work okay? And yeah initially I was helping you because it was beneficial to me personally, but I did genuinely want to help because you seemed like an okay guy that was in a bad situation. Even with you telling me tales of your shady past, there was always a charm about you.” Heather remarks wiping her eyes a bit. “If I ever run into my sister again, I’m sure she’ll be amused to hear that some of her charisma finally wore off on me. Well if it makes you feel any better, I’ve had more than my fair share of thoughts about you as well.” “I’m sure.” “I don’t mean just the dirty ones though, I mean I figured even if you were only helping for the magic knowledge and items, it still was nice that someone was helping me.” “Sort of wish you were only thinking of me in a dirty way, it would make this a lot easier. (Sigh) I shouldn’t have said anything.” “I wish you have said something sooner, I mean now what am I supposed to do? Just leave, knowing all this?” “If you do have feelings for me like you say then I beg you to leave because you’ll just make it harder for me in the long run. I know it’s selfish to put myself first, but it is what it is.” “Okay, I’m not mad because I get it, but I don’t see why WE can’t just leave together. I mean you could continue trying to figure out how to cure me and you could probably start up another Dorna church up north and convert barbarian tribes or something. ” “Heh, nice idea. Tempting even, but no. My life is here.” You’re getting frustrated at this point. “What are you fucking this Elder Flynn or something?” “What? No! He’s like a hundred years old and I don’t have daddy issues!” “Well what’s really keeping you here then?” “Look, maybe an infidel like you can’t understand, but my temple is also my family and with all the trouble going on right now, I’m not going to just abandon them.” “Haven’t you been hording knowledge and the shit you get from me?” “Yeah, well it’s a complicated family relationship.” “Guess I can’t relate much…(sigh) Okay, fine. I’ll leave, but only because you did try to help me, I’m a sucker for a pretty face and the fact I don’t really have any other ties here and it’ll make things easier for you.” You start to get ready to pack, but Heather stops you. “Hold on a second. You don’t need to leave right this minute.” She says and makes a few little hand gestures causing a brief blue glow around her. Then she kisses you. It doesn’t feel as good as you remember the last time you did this with Lisa. Even the good stuff is dulled, but what the hell, you’ll take it. You and Heather get to it and you have a rather interesting time going about your intimacy. Heather’s spell is working, but it’s obvious she’s still feeling some mild…well the word isn’t exactly discomfort, but let’s just say she has never pleasured herself with an icicle in the past so it’s a cool sensation down there for her. However she’s a trooper and you must be doing something right because by the time you’re done she’s covered in frost. No, that’s not a euphemism either; she’s literally covered in frost. (In fact if this was all taking place in a modern setting, there could be a whole joke about “The Iceman Cometh”) You on the other hand were sort of hoping that experience while pleasant enough would maybe raise your body temperature a little, but no, you’re still as cold as ever. After a moment of basking in frosty bliss, Heather brushes herself off and gets dressed. “I hope that you can somehow find a way to cure yourself, but whether you do or not, take care okay?” With those last words she gives you one more kiss and leaves you alone. This experience has arguably been the best thing that’s happened to you since you woke up in your condition. Of course maybe you’re just sort of feeling that way due to the fact that you haven’t exactly been with anyone in a long damn time. Part of you wants to just go to her temple, but going to Holgard isn’t going to do anything but cause problems for her and you, so you’ll wait. You know she’ll be back. You figure Heather will probably come back here in a couple days to see if you’re still around and to potentially look for any items she may have missed. When she comes back, you’ll make every effort to convince her to come with you. So you wait. A week passes, then a month, then two months… By this time, you’re still laboring under the delusion that she’s going to come back and mainly subsisting on frozen berries, fruit and roots that you don’t go too far to collect from your home. In the meantime Spikey, being an apex predator in the area has steadily over the past few years been depleting most of the wildlife. He was also supplementing this with the many bandit groups that make their homes in the woods at times. However, even bandits eventually get wise to the fact that it might not be the best idea to have a hideout where many of their fellows are disappearing at an alarming rate. If his attention wasn’t in the direction of Dert before it is now. You however don’t really know any of this until you get a knock on the door one night. Thinking that it’s Heather, you spring from your chair, and open it. And you’re met by a woman, one you even know, but not Heather. “…Isabella?” you say upon seeing her. Isabella frowns as you just stare at her naked body in surprise. “Glad you remember what my tits look like.” She says. “…Apologies, but I really wasn’t expecting you. I thought another…nevermind, what are you doing here?” you ask. “I’m here to speak to Ral…what the hell happened to you? You’re as pale as I am and you’re giving off some serious cold. This whole house is, given the frost and ice in the area. What the hell IS Ral doing in there?” “Well…” “Look, no offense, but I’m not in the mood to speak to his magic slave. I want you to go bring his ass out of his lab to come speak to me right now. I mean I thought we had an understanding at least that if we HAD to be neighbors he wouldn’t fuck things up for me. Now I got a bunch of dead people in Dert due to his escaped manticore or pet or experiment or whatever the fuck. I told him that backwards dung heap of a hamlet was MY ongoing food source and was not to be messed with.” “Wait, Spikey attacked Dert?” “Spikey? That its name? Real original. But yeah it was a damn blood bath there. Hell, I could smell it even from my crypt. The beast killed ten people. I would have tracked it down easily, but considering its scent was also leading in this direction, I’d pay Ral a visit first since I was sure this was all his fault. And judging from what I’m seeing, I was right. So get his ass out here!” “That’s going to be a problem given that he’s dead.” “Dead? Bullshit.” “I’m serious. He’s been dead for like two years now.” Now Isabella is the one showing some surprise. The fact that she is surprised means you must have really caught he off guard. You remember that Ral and her had a relationship in the past. From some of her brief sad expression, she perhaps didn’t have complete loathing for him. Isabella looks down a bit and closes her eyes before speaking again. “(Sigh) Damn. Didn’t think I’d still feel something for the bastard, but I guess you never know until it happens. I guess this means you’re no longer a magic slave and you’re in fact responsible for this mess then. How? You’re no wizard. And how did you kill Ral anyway?” Isabella asks. “I didn’t kill Ral, he just died of natural causes in his bed.” You quickly say. “Hah! Nice try, but you’re lying. Look, I don’t care if you killed him, if he’d made me a slave I’d have killed him too.” “Well, I had help and it wasn’t easy.” “I’m sure. So what’s with the eternal winter here?” “Ral’s last gift to me.” You give a quick explanation of events of your condition to Isabella who listens to everything. “So…it was this Heather was the one you were waiting for then?” Isabella asks. “Yeah, but well…that’s a long story.” You say with a sigh. “Let me guess you fell for your nurse.” “She wasn’t a nurse, she was a priestess.” “Nurse, priestess, whore, doesn’t matter. Your circumstance is as old as time. You fell for the one taking care of you when nobody else would. It happens a lot, but I think your case its just desperation.” “Excuse me?” “Well, you’ve been waiting for this girl for two months you said. It’s obvious she isn’t coming back.” “She could just be busy! There’s a religious war going on in Holgard right now! You know, we made love the last time I saw her!” “And? That probably was just a goodbye pity fuck. Look, I didn’t see how you two interacted and I’m only getting some of what you’re telling me, so I’m not going to say this girl didn’t have feelings for you, but its obvious she cares more about herself or at least her own life.” “You don’t know shit!” you snap. “Okay, look, whatever. I actually don’t care that much, but we still need to settle this issue with your pet manticore along with your snowman condition because both of them are going to fuck up my shit. The manticore can be settled easily since I can just kill the beast and be done with it. But you are a whole other problem.” “Wait a minute you can’t just kill my pet! And why the hell am I a problem, I don’t even go near Dert.” “Yeah, but your aura might. I mean from what little you’ve told me, your condition is getting worse and if that’s the case, the last thing I need is for it to freeze over Dert and cause all the peasants there to pick up and leave due to failed crops. It’s bad enough some are already talking about leaving due to the manticore attack. Others are even talking about hiring adventurers. Last thing I need is a group of fortune seekers stomping around the area and stumbling on my place of rest.” “I’m sure you’d be able to handle them.” “That’s not the damn point, my point is I like things peaceful and they can’t be, if there are certain elements in the area fucking everything up! So the way I see it, is you got two choices. You either leave, or I cure you.” Once again Isabella has given you a little surprise. “What? You can cure me? How?!” you ask. “Invite me in and I’ll show you.” Isabella responds with a smile. “Uh…no…things aren’t quite bad enough for me to want to commit suicide.” “Who said I was going to kill you? I’d make you into a vampire.” “Wait. Why? Would that work?” “Sure. The transformation process practically gives you a clean slate. I’d be very surprised if it didn’t work. As for why…well let’s just say why not?” “…I feel like there’s a catch…” “Well of course there’s a catch, I don’t just offer the gift to anyone. I’d require you to help me around the crypt as it were.” And there it is. “A slave. You want me to be your slave.” You say. “You wouldn’t be a slave, you’d be my…companion. You think your few years of no meaningful intimacy are bad? Come back when you’ve had a century or so of it. I just felt a pang of loss over a man that I practically loathed for decades. Now I know I’m moving in quick on you, but when you’ve been as solitary as I have, you tend to not let social rules dictate your actions. I’m offering not only a cure for your condition and immortality, but also a chance for you not to worry about having to be alone ever again. You can’t say you aren’t tempted. I still remember that night we had years ago. Look, I’ll be back in a couple nights. If you’re still here, then I’ll know you’ve accepted my offer. If you’re gone, I know you haven’t. And when I say I’ll be back in a couple nights, you can bet that I’ll mean it.” Isabella says and leaves. And once again you’re left alone with a big decision. You knew you were going to have to make one soon, but these events haven’t definitely given you more to think about. > You stay and reject the offer You’re not going anywhere and you’re not going to be a slave again even if the offer is from beautiful naked vampire. Isabella can’t do shit to you anyway as long as you stay in the house at night. You’re not even concerned that much about Spikey, as you’re sure that a beast of his size can probably at least fly away from Isabella if she proves too much. You’re a little concerned about when Heather shows up however, but hopefully Heather shows up during the day. She’s a priestess too, so it isn’t like she’s completely defenseless. Defying a vampire is going to be dangerous, but probably no more dangerous than killing a wizard that had enslaved you. You stock up on food over the next two days along with gathering what few magical items you have left only to remember that Heather probably already took the most useful stuff. No matter, you’ll just have to be careful. Later that night you hear a knock on the door. You open it and as expected it’s her. “Well, given that you’re here, I’d say that means you’ve decided to take me up on my offer. I have to say, this pleases me and you will soon see just how lucky you are that I chose you. Now, if you’ll just invite me in, we can get to this, or you can step out here, if you prefer. Up to you.” Isabella says. “Thanks but no thanks, I’ve decided to turn down your offer. While I’m sure you wouldn’t go out of your way to make my life miserable, we still would not be equal and I’ve had enough of having to deal with sort of situation.” You say. Isabella frowns at your statement. “I see…so I take it that you have stayed around to politely inform me that you’re leaving then?” she asks. “No.” you respond. “Excuse me?” “Look Isabella, I can appreciate your situation and I will definitely try to train Spikey to hunt elsewhere, but I’m not going to just leave because you’re making lightly veiled threats.” “Oh believe me, when I make my threats, they are never light or veiled.” “Well you certainly implied a threat as far as I’m concerned. You gave me two choices, well I’m taking a third one. I need to stay here and you’re not running me off.” “Hmm, this Heather girl must have really laid it down good. I guess I can see your point even if I think you’re being short sighted on this matter. Perhaps I came across a little too aggressively, but as I said, isolation has made me a bit less focused on the whole courtship process. In any case, apologies.” “Oh…well I accept. I have to say, I thought you were going to be madder than you are.” “Why would I be mad, I said I get where you’re coming from. You clearly have strong feelings for this girl. Strong enough that you risked facing me believing I was going to go into some frothing vampire rage no doubt.” “Well that was the concern.” “Hah, you needn’t have done so. Takes more than that to really make me that mad.” Even in your condition, you were still a bundle of nerves and worry about this moment. You feel much more relaxed now that you see Isabella isn’t mad or even showing signs of wanting to retaliate. Isabella talks with you a bit more saying that she hopes that Heather feels the same way about you. She’s really surprising you with how understanding she is, and you continue to just feel calmer with her. And that’s when you’re done for… She couldn’t use it on you when you were magically tethered to Ral, but since that’s no longer the case, Isabella easily uses her powers to charm you so gradually that you don’t even realize it. You foolishly allowed yourself to get into an extended conversation with her and when she tells you to step outside for a moment, you obey. As you embrace her, Isabella takes you into her arms and looks into your eyes. “If only you hadn’t been defiant and just taken one of the other choices…such a waste.” She says and then bites you on the neck. And she has no intention on turning you either. It’s an odd sensation from the last time she did it since you don’t even feel any pain. Isabella herself is having a mildly difficult time sucking your blood which is probably a little slushy due to your frosty condition, but she gets through it. You don’t.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 25 “I’ve looked through ALL of Ral’s writings along with researching various tomes we have at the temple and I can’t figure out exactly WHAT he did to you. I mean I can guess what he did, but even if I’m right, I still have no idea how to reverse it.” Heather remarks. You know Heather’s done more than you ever expected from her, but you can’t help but feel frustrated by all this. If your condition wasn’t getting worse, it probably would be tolerable, but it is getting worse. Not so much for you in terms of life and death directly, but you’re starting to effect things in a wider area. At this point your home is freezing to most (or at least to Heather when she visits) and frost covers everything you come in contact with now. You don’t even have to touch it for long. Even Spikey makes his home outside the house rather than inside, though it’s just as well since he’s huge now. Which is leading to the other issue and that’s the fact your icy home is starting to look very out of place compared to the rest of the surrounding landscape. Granted you’re isolated from most major population centers, but there is Dert. Dert is close enough that it’s only going to take a few of the more adventurous young folks to go wandering from that backwards village and bring back tales of an “Ice Castle” with a manticore guarding it. (Fortunately Spikey has never wandered towards Dert and his hunting grounds are mainly elsewhere.) Heather herself has been trying to keep your presence a secret since apparently Elder Flynn has been sensing a minor growth in magical energy in the area. So far he assumes it’s Ral just working on something, but Heather stresses that if he finds out the truth, he’ll definitely be heading to your home. Heather is also stressed out due to the fact that she’s been keeping all this from her comrades and on top of everything else, there’s the beginning of religious faction war going on in Holgard. Since she’s out of any ideas that you might find acceptable, she suggests the last thing she can think of and that’s that you leave and head north. She believes your condition is exaggerated by the warmer climate. (Even more so now due to it being a hotter summer than usual) While you’ve sort of guessed that to some extent, she thinks that if you were just constantly living in a colder environment, your condition would even out and you might not attract as much attention. “So…what then? I’m supposed to just go live on a mountain top somewhere?” you say. “No, I’m just saying that you could probably live some place colder and your condition not be as much of a problem. You’d at least blend in a bit better. As it stands now, you’re starting to attract a lot of attention and you were previously pretty isolated before. Not to mention you’ve got a big ass manticore wandering around nearby. You stay here and you’re probably going to have groups of hired adventurers beating down your door.” Heather remarks. “You just want me to leave because you’re worried about your own ass.” “Damn right I am! I mean I’m risking every time I come here, every time I lie to Elder Flynn. You realize how much my stomach is in knots about this? And you know what? Fuck you. I’ve been helping you out trying to figure out how to cure you! I’ve tried potions, spells, salves, rituals and even prayers to Dorna on your behalf!” “You’ve also been helping yourself to magical shit I have.” “So? It’s been mutually beneficial, but now it’s starting to get risky to a point of where I’m no longer comfortable.” “Alright, I get it. I get it. But I’m just not too keen on this idea that I’m supposed to just pick up and leave.” “Well, I dunno any other solutions. I mean when was the last time you went to Holgard and didn’t start drawing a crowd? Didn’t you say that the guards actually prevented you from entering last time? You said you had to sneak in and then you soon got run out of there. I mean it’s only going to be a matter of time that you start drawing the attention of someone you aren’t going to be able to deal with.” “Your boss is really getting that suspicious huh?” “Elder Flynn is a concern of course, but it might actually be lucky for you that there’s religious strife going on in Holgard right now. But I was talking in general. Look, we’ve gotten along for a while now, and maybe if circumstances were different I’d say stick around longer, but…” Heather turns away from you a bit and exhales. In fact she starts to sniffle a bit. “What? Wait a minute…no…really? You never gave any indication! Hell, we’ve never even kissed! Though I suppose given my condition that might cause problems. That’s why you never acted on it” you say. “Oh trust me, there’s ways we could have gotten around that aspect. A simple protection of cold would have done that. It’s just… it could never really work okay? And yeah initially I was helping you because it was beneficial to me personally, but I did genuinely want to help because you seemed like an okay guy that was in a bad situation. Even with you telling me tales of your shady past, there was always a charm about you.” Heather remarks wiping her eyes a bit. “If I ever run into my sister again, I’m sure she’ll be amused to hear that some of her charisma finally wore off on me. Well if it makes you feel any better, I’ve had more than my fair share of thoughts about you as well.” “I’m sure.” “I don’t mean just the dirty ones though, I mean I figured even if you were only helping for the magic knowledge and items, it still was nice that someone was helping me.” “Sort of wish you were only thinking of me in a dirty way, it would make this a lot easier. (Sigh) I shouldn’t have said anything.” “I wish you have said something sooner, I mean now what am I supposed to do? Just leave, knowing all this?” “If you do have feelings for me like you say then I beg you to leave because you’ll just make it harder for me in the long run. I know it’s selfish to put myself first, but it is what it is.” “Okay, I’m not mad because I get it, but I don’t see why WE can’t just leave together. I mean you could continue trying to figure out how to cure me and you could probably start up another Dorna church up north and convert barbarian tribes or something. ” “Heh, nice idea. Tempting even, but no. My life is here.” You’re getting frustrated at this point. “What are you fucking this Elder Flynn or something?” “What? No! He’s like a hundred years old and I don’t have daddy issues!” “Well what’s really keeping you here then?” “Look, maybe an infidel like you can’t understand, but my temple is also my family and with all the trouble going on right now, I’m not going to just abandon them.” “Haven’t you been hording knowledge and the shit you get from me?” “Yeah, well it’s a complicated family relationship.” “Guess I can’t relate much…(sigh) Okay, fine. I’ll leave, but only because you did try to help me, I’m a sucker for a pretty face and the fact I don’t really have any other ties here and it’ll make things easier for you.” You start to get ready to pack, but Heather stops you. “Hold on a second. You don’t need to leave right this minute.” She says and makes a few little hand gestures causing a brief blue glow around her. Then she kisses you. It doesn’t feel as good as you remember the last time you did this with Lisa. Even the good stuff is dulled, but what the hell, you’ll take it. You and Heather get to it and you have a rather interesting time going about your intimacy. Heather’s spell is working, but it’s obvious she’s still feeling some mild…well the word isn’t exactly discomfort, but let’s just say she has never pleasured herself with an icicle in the past so it’s a cool sensation down there for her. However she’s a trooper and you must be doing something right because by the time you’re done she’s covered in frost. No, that’s not a euphemism either; she’s literally covered in frost. (In fact if this was all taking place in a modern setting, there could be a whole joke about “The Iceman Cometh”) You on the other hand were sort of hoping that experience while pleasant enough would maybe raise your body temperature a little, but no, you’re still as cold as ever. After a moment of basking in frosty bliss, Heather brushes herself off and gets dressed. “I hope that you can somehow find a way to cure yourself, but whether you do or not, take care okay?” With those last words she gives you one more kiss and leaves you alone. This experience has arguably been the best thing that’s happened to you since you woke up in your condition. Of course maybe you’re just sort of feeling that way due to the fact that you haven’t exactly been with anyone in a long damn time. Part of you wants to just go to her temple, but going to Holgard isn’t going to do anything but cause problems for her and you, so you’ll wait. You know she’ll be back. You figure Heather will probably come back here in a couple days to see if you’re still around and to potentially look for any items she may have missed. When she comes back, you’ll make every effort to convince her to come with you. So you wait. A week passes, then a month, then two months… By this time, you’re still laboring under the delusion that she’s going to come back and mainly subsisting on frozen berries, fruit and roots that you don’t go too far to collect from your home. In the meantime Spikey, being an apex predator in the area has steadily over the past few years been depleting most of the wildlife. He was also supplementing this with the many bandit groups that make their homes in the woods at times. However, even bandits eventually get wise to the fact that it might not be the best idea to have a hideout where many of their fellows are disappearing at an alarming rate. If his attention wasn’t in the direction of Dert before it is now. You however don’t really know any of this until you get a knock on the door one night. Thinking that it’s Heather, you spring from your chair, and open it. And you’re met by a woman, one you even know, but not Heather. “…Isabella?” you say upon seeing her. Isabella frowns as you just stare at her naked body in surprise. “Glad you remember what my tits look like.” She says. “…Apologies, but I really wasn’t expecting you. I thought another…nevermind, what are you doing here?” you ask. “I’m here to speak to Ral…what the hell happened to you? You’re as pale as I am and you’re giving off some serious cold. This whole house is, given the frost and ice in the area. What the hell IS Ral doing in there?” “Well…” “Look, no offense, but I’m not in the mood to speak to his magic slave. I want you to go bring his ass out of his lab to come speak to me right now. I mean I thought we had an understanding at least that if we HAD to be neighbors he wouldn’t fuck things up for me. Now I got a bunch of dead people in Dert due to his escaped manticore or pet or experiment or whatever the fuck. I told him that backwards dung heap of a hamlet was MY ongoing food source and was not to be messed with.” “Wait, Spikey attacked Dert?” “Spikey? That its name? Real original. But yeah it was a damn blood bath there. Hell, I could smell it even from my crypt. The beast killed ten people. I would have tracked it down easily, but considering its scent was also leading in this direction, I’d pay Ral a visit first since I was sure this was all his fault. And judging from what I’m seeing, I was right. So get his ass out here!” “That’s going to be a problem given that he’s dead.” “Dead? Bullshit.” “I’m serious. He’s been dead for like two years now.” Now Isabella is the one showing some surprise. The fact that she is surprised means you must have really caught he off guard. You remember that Ral and her had a relationship in the past. From some of her brief sad expression, she perhaps didn’t have complete loathing for him. Isabella looks down a bit and closes her eyes before speaking again. “(Sigh) Damn. Didn’t think I’d still feel something for the bastard, but I guess you never know until it happens. I guess this means you’re no longer a magic slave and you’re in fact responsible for this mess then. How? You’re no wizard. And how did you kill Ral anyway?” Isabella asks. “I didn’t kill Ral, he just died of natural causes in his bed.” You quickly say. “Hah! Nice try, but you’re lying. Look, I don’t care if you killed him, if he’d made me a slave I’d have killed him too.” “Well, I had help and it wasn’t easy.” “I’m sure. So what’s with the eternal winter here?” “Ral’s last gift to me.” You give a quick explanation of events of your condition to Isabella who listens to everything. “So…it was this Heather was the one you were waiting for then?” Isabella asks. “Yeah, but well…that’s a long story.” You say with a sigh. “Let me guess you fell for your nurse.” “She wasn’t a nurse, she was a priestess.” “Nurse, priestess, whore, doesn’t matter. Your circumstance is as old as time. You fell for the one taking care of you when nobody else would. It happens a lot, but I think your case its just desperation.” “Excuse me?” “Well, you’ve been waiting for this girl for two months you said. It’s obvious she isn’t coming back.” “She could just be busy! There’s a religious war going on in Holgard right now! You know, we made love the last time I saw her!” “And? That probably was just a goodbye pity fuck. Look, I didn’t see how you two interacted and I’m only getting some of what you’re telling me, so I’m not going to say this girl didn’t have feelings for you, but its obvious she cares more about herself or at least her own life.” “You don’t know shit!” you snap. “Okay, look, whatever. I actually don’t care that much, but we still need to settle this issue with your pet manticore along with your snowman condition because both of them are going to fuck up my shit. The manticore can be settled easily since I can just kill the beast and be done with it. But you are a whole other problem.” “Wait a minute you can’t just kill my pet! And why the hell am I a problem, I don’t even go near Dert.” “Yeah, but your aura might. I mean from what little you’ve told me, your condition is getting worse and if that’s the case, the last thing I need is for it to freeze over Dert and cause all the peasants there to pick up and leave due to failed crops. It’s bad enough some are already talking about leaving due to the manticore attack. Others are even talking about hiring adventurers. Last thing I need is a group of fortune seekers stomping around the area and stumbling on my place of rest.” “I’m sure you’d be able to handle them.” “That’s not the damn point, my point is I like things peaceful and they can’t be, if there are certain elements in the area fucking everything up! So the way I see it, is you got two choices. You either leave, or I cure you.” Once again Isabella has given you a little surprise. “What? You can cure me? How?!” you ask. “Invite me in and I’ll show you.” Isabella responds with a smile. “Uh…no…things aren’t quite bad enough for me to want to commit suicide.” “Who said I was going to kill you? I’d make you into a vampire.” “Wait. Why? Would that work?” “Sure. The transformation process practically gives you a clean slate. I’d be very surprised if it didn’t work. As for why…well let’s just say why not?” “…I feel like there’s a catch…” “Well of course there’s a catch, I don’t just offer the gift to anyone. I’d require you to help me around the crypt as it were.” And there it is. “A slave. You want me to be your slave.” You say. “You wouldn’t be a slave, you’d be my…companion. You think your few years of no meaningful intimacy are bad? Come back when you’ve had a century or so of it. I just felt a pang of loss over a man that I practically loathed for decades. Now I know I’m moving in quick on you, but when you’ve been as solitary as I have, you tend to not let social rules dictate your actions. I’m offering not only a cure for your condition and immortality, but also a chance for you not to worry about having to be alone ever again. You can’t say you aren’t tempted. I still remember that night we had years ago. Look, I’ll be back in a couple nights. If you’re still here, then I’ll know you’ve accepted my offer. If you’re gone, I know you haven’t. And when I say I’ll be back in a couple nights, you can bet that I’ll mean it.” Isabella says and leaves. And once again you’re left alone with a big decision. You knew you were going to have to make one soon, but these events haven’t definitely given you more to think about. > You pack up and leave While Isabella’s offer is tempting, you can’t risk being a slave again even if it means a cure for your condition. You’d also just be trading one condition for another, what would being a vampire even be like? You’d be dead and feeding on blood. You’re not quite ready for that either. However, you’re wise enough to know that you really can’t stay either. Even if you stayed inside at night. Isabella is still a powerful vampire, she’d probably figure out how to get to you eventually. Last thing you need is an enemy of that magnitude. So you have to leave. There’s nothing tying you here anyway. Heather hasn’t showed up and is unlikely to do so, you were just holding out hope for something that was never really there in the first place. Remembering Heather’s advice about going north, you start looking at various maps that Ral had stashed around his lab. For someone who spent most of his time in his lab, he certainly had some detailed ones. You never really looked at them before, but now’s the time. You focus on his northern maps to see where you might be heading. Besides your forced foray into the wintery wilderness, you honestly don’t know much about the great north other than there are some small settlements up there. After some perusing of a map, you decide to make your way to some place just called “Evergreen.” It’s probably the closest northern settlement you’ll reach from your current location. You have no idea what you’re going to do there; assuming you can even fit in or stick around. You imagine you’ll end up just living by yourself in the outdoors. You’ve probably spent more time in uncivilized wilderness than populated centers. You never thought that would happen, but it has, and you’ve gotten used to it. Then of course, you never thought a lot of stuff would happen. Your roguish days have slowly been coming to an end for years now, in fact it probably could be argued that you haven’t really been one since you left Teckleville. Though you suppose in some ways your skills have just been used for other purposes. Maybe you could set yourself up as a trapper or hunter? You’ve certainly got more skill in tracking large animals and beasts now. Speaking of large beasts, you remind yourself that you’re going to have to try to get Spikey to follow you. It’s not going to be easy, but you figure you can’t really leave him to prowl around here or else Isabella will kill him. You pack what you can and leave note on the door for Isabella saying you’ve left since you figure it doesn’t hurt to be polite to a vampire that did at least give you an option. After a bit of searching (Doesn’t take long) you finally manage to get Spikey to mildly follow you, though he does a lot of wandering off for long periods of time presumably to hunt. You aren’t really sure if he’s going to follow you the whole way or disappear along the way, but at least you’re getting him away from potential danger. You briefly wonder if maybe you could try to ride him to make the journey faster, but while Spikey is tolerant of you, you doubt if he’s going allow himself to be anyone’s steed! Being driven away from a place you called home for so very long seems very familiar. While it was always your sister that had the wanderer’s spirit, it would seem that same spirit has been forced upon you. You still hope she’s doing better than you are. It’s literally a cold harsh reality that your future is uncertain. However, you’re confident that you’ll probably survive it. Who knows, maybe you’ll even discover a cure to your condition one day. In any case, your life as a common rogue is over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe it’s because you’re in a shitty situation yourself that you’re feeling a bit sorry for the pitiful creature that presumably just lost its mother and now has to fend for itself. “Fuck it.” You say, and slowly start backing away, though the beast never lets its own guard down. “What the hell are you doing. Shoot the little bastard!” Tych remarks. “I don’t feel like it alright? Besides, I’ll probably need to save all the bolts I can for the wazia.” You get out of the line of sight of the manticore, but Tych won’t let this go. “Are you actually feeling sympathy for the creature? This thing would eat you if it was big enough! In fact, given that its probably hungry without its mother around now, I’m surprised it isn’t at least attempting to anyway! Think of it this way, it can’t survive very long on its own, you’d be performing an act of mercy if you killed it and at least its death would help us.” At this point you take off your pack and look for some of your remaining rations. Dried meat, it’s as good as anything. “Wait, are you actually going to feed it now? Have you gone completely barmy?” “Probably.” You say. You go back to the manticore which once again has adopted a defensive stance, but you toss the meat in front of it which it cautiously moves close to, sniffs and then starts to eat, all the while still eyeing you suspiciously. You leave the beast to feed. “You know, you could have at least poisoned the food if you didn’t have the balls to just shoot it.” Tych remarks. “Well, I guess I’m just going to have to get my balls back by killing this wazia, now stop bitching at me and let’s get this done.” You snap. You enter the cave with Tych barely following ahead of you. He’s flying as high as he can which provides just enough light for you to not break your neck walking around the cave. As you were travelling here earlier, Tych was telling you a bit about wazias. He mentioned that they resembled very large moles with a huge gaping maw where the face would be. The mole comparison doesn’t sound very threatening, but he also said that it has a very tough hide and layers of fat, which is why Tych doesn’t think your bolts, would be as effective as they might otherwise be. You suppose you’ll find out. You start to hear loud sounds, you can’t see anything yet, but you have to be getting closer. The loud sounds soon become rumbles and then Tych suddenly shouts to you. “Shit, it’s digging under you! Get the hell out of there!” Tych begins flying back towards the exit and you do likewise as the rumbling is nearly right under you. While its hard to keep up with Tych, you manage to do so. By the time you see the light of the exit, the rumbling is nearly coming from right underneath you. You instinctively jump forward just in time for the wazia finally come up and try to eat you. You get up as quickly as you can and that’s when you finally see the creature. And it does indeed resemble a giant mole. A giant mole with nothing but a giant mouth with rows of teeth for a face. It also has pretty large claws as well, but you’re too busy trying get out of its immediate grasp as opposed to admiring them. You make it outside with the wazia following close behind. When you’re out in the open, you take advantage of the light and space and begin firing your crossbow at the thing which has mixed results. Your aim isn’t exactly true due to nerves and generally trying to staying away from the wazia, but it hardly matters when it’s as big as it is. Most of your shots hit, but much like Tych warned, its tough hide seems to be outright deflecting a lot of them. And for the bolts that are actually sinking in, you certainly hope the poison starts working soon, because so far it hasn’t had any notable affect. The only thing that’s in your favor is that the beast isn’t exactly the fastest when not underground, but it tries to keep you off balance by smashing its claws on the ground and causing minor quakes. Large clumps of snow begin to fall from above and given your location, you’re wondering if an avalanche won’t just bury you at this rate. (Of course maybe that’s its intent, it can just easily dig itself out and eat your corpse later) You see Tych keeping his distance, flying about watching everything. “Tych, distract it damn it! I need to reload this thing!” you shout while running and fumbling with the cumbersome crossbow magazine. To his credit, Tych actually listens somewhat to you and shouts at it (in his high pitched squeaky voice) and even flies near it very briefly, but his presence is mostly ignored. Tych doesn’t try too much harder than that, but you do get another helper. The manitcore cub that you fed earlier and completely forgot about starts flinging its own spikes at the wazia. They don’t seem to do anything to it, but between it and Tych, it’s enough to refocus its attention briefly giving you enough time to reload your crossbow properly. You fire a few times at the wazia with mixed results again, the manticore cub runs fast enough that the wazia doesn’t bother to follow it and quickly turns its attention back to you. It charges at you, but now you’re starting to notice the beast is getting even slower and now begins making loud wailing noises and they aren’t just due to anger. The wazia is finally feeling the affects of the poison and begins flailing about. It begins smashing its entire body into the ground and now even larger chunks of ice and snow begin to fall from above. Along with it trying to cause an avalanche, it begins trying to dig underground again since it isn’t sure what is exactly causing it such great pain, and is trying to escape. You can’t allow that to happen though, because if it does, even if it dies, it’s going to be so deep underground that digging its carcass out is going to be a nightmare. Throwing a bit of caution to the wind, you get closer to wazia and fire upon it. Your fortunate enough that this stops it from digging long enough to try to swipe at you with its claws. It clumsily tries to do this several times. At this point you’ve run out of bolts and drawn your sword though realistically you wouldn’t be able to get close enough to it that it couldn’t still kill you. You’re just trying to keep the beast from escaping and hoping the mountains don’t come crashing down on your head. Eventually as its motions towards you stop altogether and it opens its maw completely one last time to let out a woeful howl and then collapses. It twitches a few more times and finally stops moving completely. You just look at the wazia for a moment before slowly moving closer to it. Just as you get to its body, Tych sneaks up on you. “Is it dead?” he asks, buzzing in your ear. “Damn it Tych, you fucking startled me!” you snap. “Apologies, but I figured you’d be more aware of your surroundings.” “I guess its dead. Shit, I was wondering if that poison was ever going to kick in.” “Yep, looks like I saved your ass on this one.” “Hm, I guess you did your part.” “Damn straight I did, which is why I think YOU should help me now!” “How the hell am I going to help you?” “By killing Ral obviously.” “Nice idea, but I’m still bound by a geas remember?” “Well after he takes it off of you, just chop his head off.” “Yeah, like he isn’t going to take precautions. I’m fairly certain that if he does stick with his promise, I’m not going to be able to just chop his head off as you say. In fact I imagine he’s set this up so I stay bound to him so he can reverse this condition I have.” “Wait, you aren’t actually going to DO that if freedom is an option are you?” “What choice do I have? It’s not like I want to go through the rest of my life like this.” “Shit, I’d go through life with my wings fucking clipped if it meant not spending most of my life in a jar and being at that plivik’s whims!” You suppose Tych has a point and it is one you’re more inclined to go with since it might be possible to get your condition reversed elsewhere. All this might not mean anything however, if Ral has no intention on releasing you from the geas anyway. In the meantime you have a heart to carve out of the dead beast in front of you. About midway through Tych starts calling to you again. “Hey! Watch out, the manticore is back!” he exclaims and hides on the other side of the dead wazia. You turn from your bloody work and look. The manticore cub is indeed back and watching you, but its not in a defensive stance anymore, it seems to be more curious than anything else. “I’m not worrying about it since it probably isn’t going to do anything, but if it makes you feel better…” Tych probably thought you were going to follow up that statement with you trying to kill it, but you instead you just reach into your pack and give it another piece of dried meat, which it happily eats and no longer is interested in anything else. “There you go Spikey.” You say coming up with an on the spot name for him. “You just gave away the last of the food!” Tych exclaims. “What does it matter? As soon as I dig this heart out, and you perch on my shoulder, Ral will teleport us back anyway right?” “I guess, I just don’t understand why you’re indulging that creature.” “Good thing I did, since it distracted the wazia better than you did.” “Hey I did my best considering my size, you dick!” You go back to your unpleasant work. Not so much because of the gore and blood, but the smell is awful even with your dulled senses. Eventually you cut the large organ out and carry the thing out of the wazia’s body. You then sit down to take a breather. “Shit, I think that was almost as much work as killing this thing.” You say. “Did you get it?” Tych asks. “Yeah, why are you so far away? I figured you’d be anxious to get out of this cold at least even if you don’t like the jar.” “I would, but that thing is nearby!” Tych remarks and points to the manticore that is now coming up to you. “Tych, you’re worrying over nothing. He’d fling spikes at me before you given how close he is. Just get over here and get us home.” “Fine. Did you think anymore on killing Ral yet?” “Yeah I’ve thought about it, and I guess you’ll know soon enough.” Tych isn’t enthused by your response or the manticore being nearby, but he flies to you anyway. He sits on your shoulder, makes a few weird hand gestures and before you know it, a flash of blinding light hits you and you’re in the lab again. You also feel something bump your leg. You look down and see that the manticore cub has teleported with you and is currently nuzzling against your leg. “Shit!” Tych remarks and flies away to hide again. Meanwhile Ral walks in from one of his other rooms in the lab wondering what all the noise is about. “So you’re back and successful as I knew you would be. Hello, what’s this?” Ral asks. Spikey growls a bit when he sees Ral. “Spikey no!” you say and do your best to try to calm him which involves petting his head and neck. This seems to work somewhat since he relaxes, but still eyes Ral warily. “Hmm, I see you brought back more than just the heart. You didn’t need to go beyond what was required, but I appreciate the enthusiasm. The manticore parts will come in handy for spell components.” Ral says. “What? No, it helped take down the wazia and I guess it got caught up in the teleportation process.” “So?” “So, I dunno seems sort of fucked up to just hand him over to you for parts after he helped me.” “What are you going to do with him, keep him as a pet?” “Well I suppose I could…” “A pet manticore? What do you think you are a frost giant? That’s silly, you aren’t going to have the means to tame such a beast when he starts to grow! You sure you don’t want to hand that beast over? I could give you something extra.” “Can you reverse this fucking condition you imposed on me?” you ask. “I imagine could, but that would require that you stick around a bit longer. I mean that can be arranged...” You’re not getting trapped. You can’t get trapped again. “No, I’ll figure out another way.” You say. “Very well. Put that heart on the table and... wait a minute where did Tych go? I saw him fly off to hide, not sure why he bothers to do that, since he knows I can just teleport him back in the jar at anytime.” Ral says as you lift up the oversized organ and slam it on the nearby table. “Can we get on with this?” you ask getting impatient. “In a moment and don’t presume to give orders, I still haven’t freed you yet and you’d be well to remember that. Now step back, you’re very cold you know.” Ral says. “Of course I’m fucking cold, you did this to me!” “And I offered to reverse the process, but you declined.” “Damn straight I declined, I’m not going to fall for your tricks again. The first time you enslaved me, the second time you made me into a freak!” “If you like, that can remain your reality.” Ral warns. Ral raises his hands as if to cast a spell and that’s when you see Tych flying over his head struggling with a small-uncorked glass tube that’s as big as him. “Hey glakface, try casting magic now!” Tych shouts and then pours a clear fluid on Ral, who looks up just in time for it splatter on his face, and he even gets some in his mouth. “Gargh! (cough) (hack) blagh!” Ral gags and begins hacking up and rubbing his eyes. “He can’t cast magic! Don’t just stand there plivik, kill the bastard!” Tych squeaks. > You do nothing Considering you’re still under a geas, there isn’t much you can do in the first place. In fact you’re sort of pissed at Tych right now considering you were about to get released by Ral! “What the hell are you waiting for plivik?! Move in! Attack!” Tych shouts. “Tych, you’re a fucking asshole! I was close to freedom! I’m not helping your sparkling ass now!” you shout back. “Wha…shit…” At this moment Tych realizes his plan has fallen through and he desperately goes to find something else that could possibly help him in the lab. Meanwhile Ral is already starting to get over his situation and stumbles over to one of his tables and downs some potion. Whatever it did, its helped him significantly. Tych is nowhere to be seen at this point, but that soon changes when Ral instantly teleports him back. The little bastard has never looked so terrified. “I allowed you to live and this is how you repay me? Not too surprising I guess, but I thought you at least had enough sense to not try to kill me. You’re going to pay dearly for this.” Ral says. You continue to stand back, keeping Spikey in check and watch as Tych suddenly clutches his head. He begins making high pitched screeches and eventually drops to the floor like a stone, which is quite the height since he was still hovering and a fair distance from the floor. He’s probably broken his little legs, but that’s the least of his problems. Tych continues to writhe in agony on the floor. Blood starts pooling around him. You aren’t sure exactly what Ral is doing, but it apparently causing Tych to bleed from every orifice. Eventually the sprite’s body can’t take it anymore and convulses a couple times before finally dying. You aren’t sure if he deserved all that, but you’re just glad that wasn’t you. Ral now turns his attention to you and already by his stare you’re feeling a little nervous. “Hey, I didn’t plan that! That was all Tych. I can’t even do anything against you remember?” “Maybe not, but you didn’t do exactly that much to help me either.” “Wha…what? I figured you had it! I mean what damage is a sprite going to do to you?” “Apparently more than I anticipated. I have a very hard time believing that he didn’t try to convince you to help, he seemed VERY sure you were when he shouted at you. Why else would he make such an attempt?” “Because he was desperate! I swear I wasn’t conspiring against you!” “I dunno, you were pretty argumentative earlier…” At this point you feel so threatened that you begin to think about acting against Ral, despite the geas. It takes everything within you, but you suddenly shout “Spikey attack!” You instantly fall to the floor clutching your groin in pain, Spikey attacks, but given that Ral was already in a state of alertness, he waves his hand and teleports himself out the way of the barbs, then follows up with freezing Spikey in solid ice. “That was a very silly thing to do. If I didn’t think you were against me before I do now. Last thing I need is to release you and you cause problems for me later no matter how minor that would actually be.” “No wait!” Those are the last words you utter before you’re put into some sort of magic stasis. Instead of killing you, Ral keeps you around to experiment on from time to time and do tests. (Spikey on the other hand is ground up into spell components) The only good thing is you’re completely oblivious to any of this and you definitely don’t experience any passage of time. Your mind is there, but in a dream like state. Most of the time this is positive as you often dream about having a pleasant experiences with people you were on good terms with in real life, such as you sister or Lisa (Or rarely, even Annah or your parents) for you like this, but of course thanks to Ral’s magic, you suffer no physical effects of this coma state. However, there does come a day where you’re having one of your more pleasant dreams and suddenly everything starts getting ripped away from you. In the dreamland all sorts of horrors attack you, from lizardmen to wazias and manticores. You see those close to you killed many times over, driving you insane for you can do nothing to stop it. In the real world something even worse is going on. You’ll never know what exactly of course (Let alone why), but it involves Ral destroying your sense of self or quite literally wiping your mind. The sudden chaos of your dreams is just the beginning of your brain failing to make sense of it all, but eventually everything you know starts disappearing and being replaced by other unfamiliar images. Well a few of them are familiar, but the fact that all the familiar ones are related to Ral, is a little concerning. “Your world” shrinks and one by one all those you knew independent of Ral disappear. People like Tych and Isabella are still there, but you begin to perceive them in a very different way. Even “you” are not feeling yourself. You start to feel like a stranger in your own head. And then finally, you cease to exist as you know it and only Ral remains.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re not paying him shit, this is probably some sort of set up. “Yeah, I think I’m good on my own.” You say. “Grm. Suit yerself.” Warts says and then without another word he disappears back into the forest. You thought for sure he’d at least try to lower his price if you declined his help, but you guess not. In any case you still aren’t sure of which way to go, so you gamble and just pick a path that looks the most promising. You figure you could always backtrack if feels like you’re going the wrong way. (You hope) You walk along your chosen path for a while, still keeping an eye out for any potential ambushes. In fact you don’t even walk directly on the path, you mostly just stick close like you were following a river. Speaking of which you eventually come across a real river with a bridge and everything. There even looks to be a sign post nearby, which makes you think that you are probably going in the right direction. Unfortunately it also looks like a group of four bandits has boldly decided to set up a blockade of sorts here. They haven’t seen you yet, so that’s at least one good thing in your favor. Of course while you only see four bandits, who knows if there are more hiding nearby with bows or something. In fact you probably shouldn’t linger here too long. You slink away and head upstream hoping you’ll find another way. (And not get too lost in the process) You don’t have too much luck for the most part, but then you see one area where the water looks low enough to cross. You decide to make the attempt. All goes well until it turns out the water wasn’t as low as you thought and you’re now knee deep in it. You’re already a third way across however and you press on. By the time the water is nearly up to your chest, the current begins to pull you and you’re soon not walking across the river bottom anymore. You try to maintain control of the situation, but the current is swifter than you anticipated, not to mention you don’t know how to swim. You’re fortunate in that you don’t get pulled too far downstream or go completely underwater before you manage to grab hold of a rock which is close enough to the other side that you pull yourself to the other side of the river bank. Your possessions are another story however. You’ve lost your coin bag, along with the pistol you just managed to acquire. About the only thing you have left is your dagger. You curse your luck along with the forest, the river and your situation in general. After releasing a torrent of swearing, you move on. Eventually night falls and along with now being cold and wet, you’re also starting to feel tired. You aren’t even sure if you’re heading in the right direction anymore since you got a bit discombobulated when you were struggling not to drown. Still, you press on and that’s when you think you see a slight respite in this mess. You see a cabin, though probably an abandoned one as there is no light coming from it. You just hope there isn’t anyone or anything lurking inside. You cautiously approach the cabin and while you have a feeling of unease the entire time, when you explore around it, you don’t find anything out of the ordinary. Of course it is dark, so maybe you’re missing something, but so far it doesn’t look like anyone is making camp here. As soon as you try the door though all your senses start to scream danger and you draw your dagger and spin around. You are met with the sight of a man in a robe standing nearby. It’s hard to see his face, but the light of the moon shows he’s a lot older than you. You lift your dagger up in a defensive stance, but the man isn’t moving. “Put that away son, it wouldn’t do you any good again me or anything else out around here I’d wager. In fact you shouldn’t even be around this cabin. Bad things happen here.” The man says. “Yeah? Well what’re you doing out here then?” you ask. “Good help is hard to find nowadays. What’s your story, you look a little worse for wear.” “What’s it to you?” “Sheesh, just trying to make conversation. You don’t look like one of the many bandits out here. You ain’t green, so you aren’t hobgoblin. Can’t see any points in those ears, so not an elf either. Given your age though, what you do look like is a lost lamb in the woods. Is that what you are?” “No and I’m doing just fine out here.” “Bullshit, kid. You look like a half drowned rat. What’d you do, fall in the river?” he says and starts to step forward. “Get the fuck back old man! I’m no damn lamb in the woods, I’ve killed people!” you say thrusting your dagger in his direction a bit. “Is that right? Hmm, perhaps you could be useful. You just a fighter? You got any other skills?” “Yeah…I mean what the hell you wanna know for?” “Because as I said, good help is hard to find and I got a lot of tasks that need doing. Now I know you’re lost out here, but I’ll tell ya what, I’ll get you out of this forest and set you up with a place to stay and whatever else you might need if you help me in my tasks.” “No thanks, I already killed one old pervert in exchange for his so called help.” “Well that explains why you’re so mistrustful. Look kid, I barely even think about that anymore and you don’t have the right equipment anyway. I’m a wizard and I do a lot research and experiments. Unfortunately, the material that I sometimes need requires me to come outside which I’d rather not do. I used to have an apprentice of sorts to help out on that front, but well let’s just say shit happens.” “A wizard that does experiments? And how do I know that I’m not going to be one of those experiments?” “Because if I wanted you for that purpose, I would have already cast a spell to immobilize you and taken you back to my place already. I’m just looking for someone to help me do the grunt work I don’t want to be bothered to do. I can also promise to pay you, if saving your life just isn’t good enough.” “How much?” “We can discuss that later, but I need to know if you want the job, because I’m not staying out here all night.” “Well where is your place? Holgard?” “Pfft, not that cess pit. Though it isn’t too far from there.” “How far is it?” “Oh, don’t worry about that, I can get us there real quick. So you in or not?” > You decline the offer “No, I don’t think so. If you’re as powerful as you say you are, there’s gotta be a catch if you want me to willingly agree to help you.” You say. “Hmm, you’re more clever than you look, but perhaps a bit short sighted as potential opportunity. You can’t gain something without risk, boy. Oh well, I won’t bother you anymore, it was just an offer after all.” The man says and disappears into the forest. You’re still a little leery of the man’s intent so you get in the cabin as fast as you can and close the door. You look out the window a few times, but see nobody lurking around. You don’t even hear any noise outside. The cabin itself is completely dark save for the moonlight coming from the window and the few small holes in the roof. It’s also a simple one-room abode with barely any furnishing, so if anything were hiding in here, it would have to be doing a very good job of it. In any case, you don’t have anything that would get the fireplace started, but there is a simple straw bed in the corner. You prod at it a couple times just to make sure it isn’t infested with anything and then you lay down. No sooner have you lain down your lids begin to get very heavy. Odd, you were sort of still wound up from your recent encounters, but you guess the stress of the day has finally caught up with you. You close your eyes and sleep takes you. You dream of your home in Teckleville except you’re not living with your parents and you’re actually happily married to Annah. In real life this would be very unlikely situation, but since this is a dream you don’t think much about it. Life is good. You’re well respected in the village and you work as a locksmith. Not too much of a stretch given your familiarity with locks, but as the dream builds upon this perfect life, you start to feel uneasy. Still, you’re so happy with Annah and your brand new son. One night you and she are looking at him sleeping in his crib. “Isn’t he beautiful?” Annah asks. “Not as beautiful as you.” You say and then kiss her. “Mmmm, that’s how we go this one here.” She says as you both enter your own bedroom. You stare into her eyes and caress her hair. “I wish this moment would never end.” You say “Do you mean that?” “Of course.” Annah suddenly then looks at you more seriously and squeezes your hand. “No, I have to know, do you really mean it? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me?” > Yes Something about this all seems so wrong somehow…but yet you can’t help but feel finally at peace here. “Yes, I do want to spend the rest of my life with you.” You say. Annah hugs you tight and you embrace her and you never worry about anything else ever again. You two live a lifetime in bliss and happiness in Teckleville and you watch your child grow up and then your grandchildren. You grow old and so does Annah, but towards the end on your deathbed when Annah is hovering over you, her face changes, in fact she is no longer the same woman and a much younger one to boot. This new smiling young woman with red hair touches your face just before you close your eyes for the last time. Years later a group of adventurers find your skeletal remains still lying on the bed in that cabin. As they search through your remains, they can’t help but notice that your skull seems to be smiling.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“No, I don’t think so. If you’re as powerful as you say you are, there’s gotta be a catch if you want me to willingly agree to help you.” You say. “Hmm, you’re more clever than you look, but perhaps a bit short sighted as potential opportunity. You can’t gain something without risk, boy. Oh well, I won’t bother you anymore, it was just an offer after all.” The man says and disappears into the forest. You’re still a little leery of the man’s intent so you get in the cabin as fast as you can and close the door. You look out the window a few times, but see nobody lurking around. You don’t even hear any noise outside. The cabin itself is completely dark save for the moonlight coming from the window and the few small holes in the roof. It’s also a simple one-room abode with barely any furnishing, so if anything were hiding in here, it would have to be doing a very good job of it. In any case, you don’t have anything that would get the fireplace started, but there is a simple straw bed in the corner. You prod at it a couple times just to make sure it isn’t infested with anything and then you lay down. No sooner have you lain down your lids begin to get very heavy. Odd, you were sort of still wound up from your recent encounters, but you guess the stress of the day has finally caught up with you. You close your eyes and sleep takes you. You dream of your home in Teckleville except you’re not living with your parents and you’re actually happily married to Annah. In real life this would be very unlikely situation, but since this is a dream you don’t think much about it. Life is good. You’re well respected in the village and you work as a locksmith. Not too much of a stretch given your familiarity with locks, but as the dream builds upon this perfect life, you start to feel uneasy. Still, you’re so happy with Annah and your brand new son. One night you and she are looking at him sleeping in his crib. “Isn’t he beautiful?” Annah asks. “Not as beautiful as you.” You say and then kiss her. “Mmmm, that’s how we go this one here.” She says as you both enter your own bedroom. You stare into her eyes and caress her hair. “I wish this moment would never end.” You say “Do you mean that?” “Of course.” Annah suddenly then looks at you more seriously and squeezes your hand. “No, I have to know, do you really mean it? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me?” > No You sense something wrong…this isn’t your life and this is no mere dream. Something is trying to make you “stay here.” Somehow you manage to wake yourself up and when you do, you really wish you hadn’t. You see a ghostly rotting figure hovering over you. It looks female in appearance, but only vaguely. “I TRIED TO MAKE YOU HAPPY!” it shrieks and attacks you. You of course have no weapon that can defend against such a supernatural creature. You try to get up, but an unnatural force holds you down. You scream as you feel an icy pain envelope your body and your mind is filled with terrible images. Your screams are followed by your entrails and vital organs being ripped out, your bones being broken and your head ultimately being twisted all the way around and pulled off. Afterwards the apparition nuzzled up to your decapitated corpse making cooing noises, cradling your bloody head and whispering “It’ll be better next time…next time my love…next time….”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t going to let this fat fuck get a chance to possibly shoot you in the back, plus you’re too pissed about him trying to molest you. With a couple quick moves you pull out your dagger, stab him in his arm and relieve him of his fancy pistol. Graham screams out like a little girl and now pleads for his miserable life. “Please! No, don’t kill me!” he whimpers pathetically. Once again, much like how it was Klint, you show no remorse and pull the trigger of the pistol. It’s the first time you’ve ever used one; so the unexpected kickback nearly causes you nearly drop it. You also weren’t expecting it blow half of Graham’s stinking face off. His obese corpse slumps lifelessly against the carriage wall. “Shit.” You remark to yourself being in awe of the power of the weapon. Never being one to miss an opportunity, you quickly deprive Graham’s body of the jeweled rings on his fingers. You then also go through the pockets that you can get to and get a bag full of gold coins. After looting Graham’s body, you remember that there is a skirmish going on outside. A quick glance shows several bandit types fighting the mercs. The mercs are out numbered, but thanks to their armor and better training, they’re doing a good job of fending off the bandits. You get out of the carriage with the intent of just running off into the woods, but then you might get lost. It occurs to you that you do have an advantage that will allow you get away a lot faster and still stay on your course. While one of the mounted mercs bashes in the head of a bandit you take the opportunity to shoot him while his back is turned. The merc’s armor is of no protection and he cries out as he falls from his horse. “Who the hell is that guy?” one of the bandits shouts. “Dunno, but who cares, he’s killing their side!” another says. You quickly run to the now ownerless horse and clumsily get on. You’re a bit vulnerable for a few seconds, but fortunately the bandits seem to now think you’re on their side and don’t focus on you (and the remaining mercs have their hands full) You soon manage to control the horse (which is anxious to get away from the chaos anyway) and gallop away until the skirmish is far behind you and you’re basically left alone again. Unfortunately your horse suddenly starts wheeze and wobble. You manage to hastily get off before it collapses. There on it’s left side you see what the problem is. In all the ensuing the chaos, the horse actually took a few crossbow bolts. Probably damage to vital organs and its adrenaline is finally wearing off. Bad luck for you and even worse luck for the horse. Not having many more options, you start walking. In any case there’s two more bodies to your count now. Granted Graham deserved it, but that merc…well he made a living risking his life, it just happened that today his time was up. You had to survive a dangerous situation and that’s it. That’s how you’re justifying that one anyway. Still, you at least acquired a few goodies for your troubles. You’re going to have to learn more about how to take proper care of this pistol because it’s far too valuable of a weapon to neglect. It’ll certainly make dealing with shit in Holgard a bit more manageable. The rings are what surprise you most. You’re no jeweler, but you have stolen enough cheap baubles in the past that you can tell a fake when you examine it in greater detail. The gems in the rings are actually common, but altered slightly (especially their color) to resemble more valuable ones. Even the ring is gold plated rather than pure. Looks like Graham wasn’t as rich as he made out. However, the little pouch of coins is real money so there’s that at least. You continue along the road, which as you guessed starts alternating from being intact, to dirt with a few stones to being little more than a well worn path in the grass. Even the occasional signs aren’t much help given that many are flat out damaged in some way. Your natural instinct to just keep going in a straight line like you were doing, but unfortunately for you, the path completely disappears into forest. Doesn’t help that the road also branches into several paths that twist in different directions. You weren’t expecting that so you aren’t sure which way to go. While you’re pondering this decision, a voice calls out to you. “Hey! Where youz tryin’ to get to?” You then see a person dressed in simple clothing coming out of the forest. He’s a little shorter than you, in fact he’s a little greener than you too. Doesn’t look like an orc though, not nearly big or massive enough. Goblin perhaps, but he’s taller than one and almost a bit human looking. A short green human with a few warts on his face and a bigger than average nose. In any case, you maintain your usual caution. “Okay, that’s far enough. Who are you?” you ask. “Me? I’m just Warts.” He answers picking his big nose. “Appropriate name.” “Grhm. So youz tryin’ to get to Holgard?” “Yeah, why?” “Well cuz, I can lead you to it. Lotz o’ paths in this forest lead lotz o’ places. Easy to get lost if you don’t know da way.” “You know the way huh? How do I know you aren’t going to lead me into an ambush?” “Youz don’t I suppoze. Take yer chances going alone an’ getting lost, don’t care. I just try to earn a little extra coin for drink an’ leadin’ clueless humies like yerself gets me some…well when they aren’t throwin’ rocks at me that is.” “What are you exactly?” you ask. “Huh? What you mean?” Warts replies. “I mean, you don’t look quite like any greenskin I’ve ever seen.” “You seen a lot o them have ya?” “Well no, but I’ve heard tales…” “Then you don’t really know nuthin’ then do ya?” Warts says in a perturbed tone. Actually he’s got a bit of a point. You decide to get right to the matter. “Alright, assuming I take you up on your generous offer, how much is it?” you ask. “Oh, yeah price…hmm, you want to go to Holgard right? Five gold coins.” Warts answers. “Five gold coins just to lead me through the forest? That’s fucking outrageous!” “Holgard is tricky to get to if you don’t know the way. Lot of false paths get made. Besides, you lot usually have more than enough gold. I see you humies travelling all over in your rolly boxes filled with goods.” “Do I look like I’m in a rolly box carting around a wagon full of treasures? I’m just a simple traveller down on his luck.” “Down on luck huh? You should pray to Yag more. Anywayz five gold. Final offer.” This greenskin obviously has no concept of haggling. It really isn’t like you don’t have the coin, it’s more like you don’t want to give so much to the likes of him after being fortunate enough to acquire it in the first place. Ultimately, he’s either telling the truth about the forest being that treacherous or he’s completely bullshitting you. You’ll just have to decide for yourself. > You threaten Warts Why risk getting lost or paying this greedy greenskin when you can just force him to lead you out of this forest? You get closer and then pull out your pistol. Warts eyes go big for a moment. “Iz dat one of those shooty things?” Warts asks. “Yep, and better yet, it’s one of those multiple shooty things.” You respond. “Hey, I don’t got no money humie. The only thing I got in my pants is muh dick and I ain’t givin up dat.” “What you’re going to do is lead me out of this here forest for free or you get a hole in you bigger than one of your nostrils.” “Grm. So that’s how it is huh? Ol’ Warts gets cheated again. (Sigh) Fine. You got the upper hand, follow me.” Warts says in a resigned tone. Warts begins to walk and you follow close behind. Several times you get the impression he’s going to try to run off, but it seems like he’s so reconciled to his fate. Almost like this has happened to him before. Time passes and it feels like you’ve been walking through this forest longer than expected. “Hey greenskin, how much further is it?” you ask. “We still got a ways ta go. The damn bandits are all over dis forest and I’m trying to keep us away from their camps. So we gotta go the long way less you fancy a fight.” Warts responds. “No, I guess not.” “Grm. Didn’t think so. You wouldn’t last in a real fight without dat shooter.” “Alright watch it, pimples.” “Dat’s Warts!” “Whatever just shut up and keep moving.” Warts continues to remain silent about his situation as you keep the pistol trained on him. Night begins to fall and once again you begin to get agitated. “Great, it’s getting fucking dark now. If you think you’re going to…” you start to say. “SHHHHHH! Hear dat?” Warts says and stops to listen. “No.” you say, genuinely not hearing anything. Warts stands still for a moment moving his head as if to hear the sound he heard again, then all of a sudden… “SHIT! IT’S A BLOOD STALKER! RUN! RUN!” he shouts and takes off ahead of you. You’re actually so surprised by Warts exclamation that you don’t even try to shoot him, you just try to follow him as you also run through the trees. You aren’t sure what a blood stalker is and you still don’t even hear anything, but Warts never stops shouting about running for your life. He even turns his head to see if you’re still following and that’s when he takes a fall over something on the ground. “ARGH SHIT FUCK! MY LEG!” he yells. “Come on get up!” you say momentarily stopping. “Can’t! My leg’s all twisted! You’ll have to carry me!” “Fuck that, you’re on your own!” you say and just continue running ahead. You fully expect Warts to shout obscenities about you leaving him behind, but you don’t. Since you haven’t looked back, you actually think the blood stalker caught him, but you don’t hear any screams. Then you soon believe that the blood stalker has caught you because you feel multiple sharp sensations go into your chest. However, you’re conscious enough to realize it isn’t any sort of creature at all, but instead a swing trap that you triggered while running and not paying attention. You look down and see several sharpened branches puncturing your body, yet keeping it held up at the same time. Blood comes out of your mouth and despite the pain being fairly terrible, you cannot even utter anything louder than a dying groan. “Hey Warts! Ya cowardly little grub, youz can come out now! Got da bastard!” you hear a gruff voice exclaim. “I wasn’t hidin’ ya idjit, I was pretendin’ to be hurt in a fall.” Warts shouts back. At this point the pain is becoming more of a numbness and your vision is beginning to blur. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a green figure bend down to pick up something, most likely the pistol you dropped when you triggered the trap. “Hey a shooty. Dis what the humie was threatin’ you wit?” the hobgoblin asks. “Yeah, an watch where you point dat thing! I had enough of that already.” Warts exclaims. “Guess you were lucky me an’ da boys were out huntin’ this way. Too many humies in da forest nowadays.” “Yeah an’ fortunately I noticed the signs since I nearly stepped in hobgoblin shit a couple times. Just glad this dumb humie couldn’t tell the difference between it and regular animal shit.” “Well you always were an expert on shit Warts.” You can barely hear the two greenskins now as your body continues to bleed out and your organs shut down. “Heard ya yellin’ about a blood stalker. You still usin’ dat ol’ lie?” The hobgoblin asks. “Hasn’t failed yet surprisingly. Guess people just don’t know there ain’t no such creature.” Warts replies. “Well, guess let’s start strippin’ him. Huntin’ been a bit thin, so this is actually a bit of luck for us. Tell ya what, you can have what’s in his pockets and I’m just gonna keep da shooty and his body for eats, deal?” “Better deal than I got from this asshole.” “K, hey you lot! Get yer asses over here an’ help us pull dis meat off the trap.” Soon several hands grab your limp body and pull it off the spiked trap. At this point any remaining life your body might have had is gone and you don’t even hear the further taunts of Warts or his hobgoblin buddies.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up fairly early, but then you didn’t really sleep much to begin with. This was more of a brief rest anyway. After a quick check to see if anyone is in the area, you get out of your bloody clothes and change into some new ones. You might not be properly clean, but it’s better than you were. You then check your supplies, which aren’t much. You’ve got a few coins, but you aren’t excessively worried about that since food and water are more important out here in the wilderness. You’ve got a little food and water, but it isn’t going to last long. The only weapon you have currently is your dagger. Part of you is only just now starting to feel the various negative emotions involving your parents and Annah. You can only imagine the shitstorm they’re facing because of your actions. You just hope that they don’t suffer the consequences of what you did. Then there’s Annah. You feel like you should be feeling a lot sadder about her, maybe even crying a bit, but maybe you got all those emotions out of your system when you killed Klint. Still seems a bit surreal that you killed someone. Not just anyone, but someone you knew since childhood, even if you didn’t like him. You definitely don’t feel bad about it and while that can be due to several understandable factors, you can’t help but wonder if you could do it again under different circumstances. You may have to, especially now, though your mind certainly went to a dark place during that time. Whatever the near future holds, you’ll have to deal with it when it happens. Right now you have to make a decision on where you’re going to go because you’re not exactly hot on the idea of staying out here in the wilderness. Your first thought is to head west to the city-state of Klyton. It’s certainly the closest city and it’s the direction you ran from Teckleville anyway. The problem is if anyone from Teckleville is still searching for you, that’s going to be the first place they look. Still, Klyton is the only place you really have any basic knowledge about thanks to your parents both being originally from there. Your father never really spoke too much about it, just saying that the only thing worthwhile that he got there was your mother and he was glad when they finally moved to Teckleville to be closer to your grandmother at the time. Your mother on the other hand didn’t speak so ill of the place, which is surprising since she grew up in a lower class area than your father did. She even said that sometimes she missed the times when she worked at the inn where she met your father in the first place. Of course her knowledge about the city is bound to be a bit out of date. Also, while Klyton has no jurisdiction over Teckleville, it has been known to apprehend wanted criminals from elsewhere trying to hide out there. Not to mention the place in general has a fairly good reputation (And they want to keep it that way) as far as its own security goes. The Delantium Kingdom to the east isn’t really high on your choice list. For one thing, you’d have to backtrack around Teckleville to go in that direction. From what you’ve overheard, the kingdom has been slowly trying to expand again which sounds a lot like more soldier types running around and that’s the last thing you need. Still, the kingdom is a big place and they can’t possibly be everywhere. Sivak is the closest major city there. The only other nearby bastion of major civilization you can think of that’s close is another city state by the name of Holgard. It’s to the south and in terms of existence, it’s only a little older than you are. It was founded by a noble from the Delantium Kingdom. Originally it was most likely supposed to be some sort of outpost or colony for the DK. But whatever the original intent, the noble soon set himself up as absolute ruler with no ties to the kingdom at all. For whatever reason, the DK hasn’t taken any action against him, whether that’s because the cost wouldn’t be worth it, they’ve got more important things to deal with or they’re simply glad to have him gone is unknown. The third possibility isn’t entirely out of the question either, since you’ve overheard travelling merchants say that Baron Varsakken is a very unlikable man and it’s amazing he hasn’t suffered any assassination attempts. His children are apparently little better. Still, you’ve also heard the place is filled with corruption so it would probably be a better place to do your work than Klyton. > You kingdom The Delantium Kingdom is a large piece of territory and whether they’re increasing their military endeavors or not, there are still bound to be places where the security is going to be less than adequate. It’s a long way to Sivak though, and you’re probably going to have to more or less stick to the roads since you only have the vague knowledge that it’s east somewhere. You’ll probably hit one of the many small villages under Delantium rule first, so you’ll be able to learn a little more about the Kingdom in general, as well as hone your skills and hopefully make a little profit at those. You figure by the time you get to Sivak you will have a clearer idea of what your long term plans are. With this goal in mind, you backtrack around Teckleville, maintaining caution the entire time. You stick mainly to wooded areas, hoping that you not only don’t run into someone from Teckleville trying to hunt you down, but potentially anything worse. You’ve never really been big on hanging out in the wilderness after all so you don’t know what to expect. When you once again put enough distance between you and Teckleville again, you slowly start exiting the wooded areas (which are starting to thin anyway) and start following the road directly. The road itself is empty for most of the time, though you do pass a couple merchant caravans heading in the opposite direction. You just think how if you were still in Teckleville, you probably would have been stealing from them. Whenever night starts to fall you temporarily get off the road and sleep in the fields behind whatever cover you can find though you never really sleep easily and are constantly waking up at various sounds. Despite being on the road for a few days, you don’t know when you’ve actually crossed into Delantium territory until you see a sign post along side the road that states that fact. Not far from the signpost is a building, probably a roadside inn of some sort. As you make your way towards the inn, you hear the clopping of horses behind you. At first you get concerned that someone from Teckleville is galloping your way, but a quick glance shows it’s probably just some other travellers given their relaxed pace. In any case, it’s getting dark again and as much as you’re getting used to sleeping outside, you’d prefer to sleep on a normal bed for a change. You just hope that you’ve got enough for a room. You enter the inn, which is fairly empty. An older woman sweeps the floor, while an older man stands behind a bar. You see a couple of people sitting at tables, but none of them really pay much attention to you. You figure that the man behind the bar is the innkeeper so you go up to him to ask how much for a room. The price he gives you is just out of your price range, too bad you can’t just “steal a room.” “Come on, you can’t cut me a break? I’m only a few coppers short.” You say. “I cut you a break, and all of a sudden I get a reputation that I just let everyone walk all over me. Before I know it I got every wanderer in the region asking for handouts. No! You pay the price or get the hell outta my establishment!” the innkeeper exclaims. “Ren, you oughta be glad anyone even pays for the misfortune of staying at this shitty establishment!” you hear a voice chuckle. You turn and see three people walking in the place, probably the travellers that you saw earlier. The speaker (and presumably leader of the group) is a man dressed in leather armor with a sword by his side. His two companions are dressed in a similar manner. “Flynt! Been awhile since you’ve stopped by. You want the usual?” Ren remarks. “You know me so well.” The innkeeper calls to the older woman (probably his wife) to go get the special wine from the cellar and then begins exchanging pleasantries with Flynt and his men. He seems to have forgotten about you entirely, though this Flynt seems to be looking over in your direction a bit. Just as you’re about to leave, Flynt calls over to you. “Hey son, don’t you still want that room?” Flynt asks. “Um…well yeah, but I don’t have the money.” You answer. “Yeah, money is always an issue these days, but I think I’ve got a solution to your problem. Just hold on a moment while we get our drinks.” Flynt hands over a few gold coins to Ren who takes them and then heads over to a table. He then waves you over to come sit with him and his buddies. You figure it can’t hurt to hear what he has to say. “Sooo, where you from son?” Flynt asks. “Why?” you ask. “Hey, Mr. Flynt asked you a question!” one of Flynt’s friends snaps. “Easy there! We’re just having a conversation, not an interrogation! I apologize for my friend; sometimes our line of work keeps one on edge. It’s okay if you don’t want to tell us where you’re from, a man has a right to his secrets.” Flynt says in a cordial tone. The one guy who snapped at you is still giving you a hard look, meanwhile the other one isn’t paying too much mind to you at all and is focused on his drink. Flynt of course is still smiling at you from across the table. You aren’t quite sure how to play this so you decide to go with your immediate thoughts. “So you said something about solving my money problems?” you ask. “Straight to the point. I can appreciate that. You want to get the how out of the way.” Flynt says. “Actually I was thinking more about the why.” “Heh, suspicious type aren’t you? That’s a good quality. Smart. Yes, I may indeed have an ulterior motive…but let me ask you this first. Are you familiar with the shadowy arts?” You look a bit wary at Flynt and his fellows after that question. “Oh don’t worry son, we’re not soldiers for the Delantium Kingdom or any other law men if that’s what you’re worried about. I just get a vibe from you, that you might be…shall I say skilled in the less than legal endeavors. I’m usually good at judging people with only a bit of observation…so am I right?” “…if I was…and I’m not saying that I am. What business is it of yours?” you ask. “Well it could be that this is an opportunity you won’t want to miss. Especially seeing as you’re currently too poor to afford a room in this shithole. Look, here’s the deal, we’re in a little trouble with the law right now and have to lay low for a while. In fact we’re probably going to be leaving soon after we have our drinks. However, I have to make a delivery to a man in Sivak, are you familiar with the city?” “I was heading that way, but I’ve never been there.” “Oh just stay on this road, heed the signs and you really can’t miss it.” Flynt takes another drink before continuing. “As I said, I have to make a delivery to a man by the name of Crasnov. He runs a pottery shop by the same name. If you could take this package to him when you reach the city, I’d certainly be in your debt.” At this point Flynt pulls out a fist sized wrapped bundle and pushes it towards you. He then pulls out twenty gold coins and puts them right next to the bundle. “Now, the only rules are, you don’t tamper with it and you definitely don’t give it to anyone else except Crasnov. If you accomplish that, you will be rewarded with more money and I guarantee you will have the thanks of some powerful friends. Friends that may call upon you for other lucrative opportunities.” “Wait, you’re basically paying me to be a courier?” you ask. “If you wish to see it that way. If I were you though, I would see it as a first step to become an important person in certain circles.” Twenty gold coins up front just to deliver a package and more reward afterwards seems like a pretty good deal. Plus the making connections bit is what entices you a bit more. “Okay, I’ll take the job.” You say. “Knew you were a smart and ambitious boy. Good, glad this is settled. Now judging the distance from here to Sivak, and you should get there in about four more days as long as you follow the roads and keep on a normal timetable of walking and resting. Too bad you don’t have a horse; otherwise you’d easily cut that time in half. I do urge you NOT to take too much longer than six days though.” Flynt says. “What happens if I don’t get there in six days?” “Well let’s just say many people would be upset with you. If you’re concerned with being timely however, you can probably buy a horse with some of that new money, over in Hegglesburg. You should reach that town by tomorrow and they might have a horse you can buy.” You nod and thank Flynt while pocketing the coins and grabbing the package. “Well I trust you know just about all you need to. Remember, that package is very important, so guard it carefully. Though I don’t expect that you’re going to have any problems, Delantium’s military definitely makes sure bandits and the like are less of a threat, especially on the roads.” Flynt remarks. “Yeah speaking of that, should I be worried about getting stopped by the law?” you ask. “Why? Are YOU a wanted criminal son?” “Um…no I guess not.” “Heh. You guess not? Not sure are we? Well let me rephrase…are you a wanted criminal within the Delantium Kingdom?” “No, this is my first time within its borders actually.” “Then you’re safe son. You aren’t going to get randomly hassled. You just look like another young wanderer. Just keep your head down around the law and you should be fine. Was there anything else?” “No, I guess not.” “Okay then, my fellows and I are going to finish our drinks and then get back on our way. Unlike you, we don’t have the luxury of an unknown reputation. Such is our burden in life. I trust you’ll want to get some rest for your journey tomorrow. Perhaps we’ll meet again in the future.” Flynt wishes you good luck and returns to finishing up his drink. His friends are doing likewise and you take that as your sign to leave the table. You return to Ren and hand him a gold coin for a room to which he just grunts and hands you a key. “Upstairs, last room on the left. Best one in the establishment. You’re out of here by morning.” He says. You head upstairs and make your way to your room. When you open the door, the room is nothing special. It’s not bad, just nothing that would stand out to think this is a good one. Still, if this is the best room, it’s a good thing you didn’t get one of the lesser ones. You settle in for the night thinking about your task. You didn’t expect to get someone approaching you to perform a job, even if it is just a courier one. Still, this seems pretty low risk for decent money so you’re not complaining. You go to sleep wondering if things are starting to look up for you. > Next morning “BUST IT DOWN!” a voice shouts followed by the splintering of your door. You’re barely awake before you’re rushed by several men dressed in chainmail. “DON’T MOVE!” one shouts as several spears are pointed directly at you. “What’s going on?!” “Shut up!” one of the men says and pokes you in the chest with his spear hard enough that it superficially breaks the skin. You don’t say any more, but between the men holding you at bay with spears and a couple other searching your room, you fear the worst. One of them inevitably grabs the package you put under your bed. He then opens it and while you’re having a hard time seeing from your position, he pulls out some of its contents and holds up a vial with blue material inside it. “Is it contraband, sir?” one of them asks. “Yeah, there’s twenty vials of Blue Dream in here.” A slightly more decorated man remarks. “You think it’s the Ebony Claw Syndicate?” “Who else would it be? They’re the ones who mostly smuggle and deal this stuff.” “But this kid doesn’t look like he’s Claw. He doesn’t even have the tattoo on his arm.” “Meh, maybe he has it elsewhere…doesn’t matter, what matters is he’s going away for a long damn time.” A feeling of dread overwhelms you. “Hey wait! Can’t we talk about this?!” you say. The man with the package turns to you. “And what would we have to talk about criminal? You’ve got enough Blue Dream here to get the entire town of Hegglesburg trashed. This seems like a pretty simple situation as far as I’m concerned. You think because you’re young, you deserve leniency? Hah! You can try it on the judge when he sentences you, but in any case you’re coming with us.” You’re lifted up roughly from your bed by the men with spears (Who you’re assuming are Delantium soldiers at this point) Your arms are put behind your back and iron shackles are placed on your wrists. When you’re marched down the stairs and in front of various inn onlookers, you hear Ren complain about them breaking his door, to which the one that was talking to you earlier remarks that Ren’s lucky that they aren’t taking him in and shutting this whole place down. When you exit the inn, you’re shoved into the back of a cart. Another older man with many scares on his face in iron shackles sits in the cart. He gives you a brief look and then returns to looking back at the cart floor. “The prisoner is secure, sergeant.” One of the soldiers says. “Okay, let’s take this drug dealing trash back to Sivak.” The sergeant says, still hanging on to the Blue Dream package. This is the second time this week that you’ve been accused of a serious crime and once again you didn’t even mean to do it! Was this all a set up, while Flynt took off to parts unknown? Flynt DID seem pretty willing to just hand off illegal drugs to you. Then again, why bother setting you up, when he could have just hid them somewhere rather than risk losing the product altogether? Maybe this is all just more bad luck hitting you. In any case, your mind starts racing about what you can do in your current situation. First thing you think about is escape. The cart is going slow enough that you could probably easily jump out and just run. The problem with that plan is there are multiple mounted guards to the front and back of you. They would easily run you down and most likely kill you for attempting to escape. The second thing you can think of is what the sergeant said. Something about the Ebony Claw Syndicate. You can make an educated guess that Flynt and his friends were part of this organization. Maybe if you told them everything that transpired at the inn, they would let you go. Of course you could just resign yourself to your fate for now and look for an opportunity later. > You rat out Flynt You’re not taking the fall for some assholes you’re not even connected with, you didn’t even know about Blue Dream OR the Ebony Claw Syndicate until today! “Hey! I wanna tell your superior something!” you say. “Shut up criminal, or we’ll have you WALK the rest of the way tie to back of the cart!” one of the guards remarks. “But this is really important! It’s about the Blue Dream! Your sergeant will want to hear this!” “I said SHUT IT!” the same guard says and trots his horse next to the side of the cart and hits you in the head with a small cudgel causing you to fall off your seat and onto the cart floor. The other man in cuffs just watches you as you attempt to get up. “Alright what the hell’s going on back here?” the sergeant asks riding his horse back to the cart. “This criminal claims he’s got something really important to tell you about the Blue Dream we confiscated.” “Oh, still trying to talk his way out of it is he? (Sigh) Fine. Let him get it over with, so we can get on with this in silence.” “Thank you, sir! Thank you for allowing me to tell my side!” The sergeant tells his people to stop and then you begin to tell your tale. You mention how Flynt came up to you and how you accepted his offer because you needed the money and thought it was just a simple delivery since he never mentioned what was in the package. As you’re telling the story, the sergeant begins to look a little concerned. “This Flynt you mentioned is a known Ebony Claw Syndicate lieutenant and you’re saying you aren’t affiliated with them? All right son, just stop talking right now and get…” the sergeant says. “What you don’t believe me? I would have never carried illegal drugs had I known!” you exclaim. “You’re not listening kid, I’m telling you to get…” “Do you need more information? He gave me the name of the person I was supposed to deliver to! Someone named Crasnov that runs a pottery shop in Sivak!” “Shut the fuck up kid and get the hell out of the…SHIT!” Suddenly the other prisoner has lunged at you and you’re taken completely off guard. While you couldn’t have known that the other prisoner in the cart was an Ebony Claw enforcer, the sergeant certainly did, but by the time he and his people get him off of you, the man has managed to head-butt you in the face, breaking your nose followed by ripping your throat out with just his teeth. As you lie gurgling and bleeding to death you see the enforcer spit part of your flesh back at your face. “Fucking rat.” He says before you die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“BUST IT DOWN!” a voice shouts followed by the splintering of your door. You’re barely awake before you’re rushed by several men dressed in chainmail. “DON’T MOVE!” one shouts as several spears are pointed directly at you. “What’s going on?!” “Shut up!” one of the men says and pokes you in the chest with his spear hard enough that it superficially breaks the skin. You don’t say any more, but between the men holding you at bay with spears and a couple other searching your room, you fear the worst. One of them inevitably grabs the package you put under your bed. He then opens it and while you’re having a hard time seeing from your position, he pulls out some of its contents and holds up a vial with blue material inside it. “Is it contraband, sir?” one of them asks. “Yeah, there’s twenty vials of Blue Dream in here.” A slightly more decorated man remarks. “You think it’s the Ebony Claw Syndicate?” “Who else would it be? They’re the ones who mostly smuggle and deal this stuff.” “But this kid doesn’t look like he’s Claw. He doesn’t even have the tattoo on his arm.” “Meh, maybe he has it elsewhere…doesn’t matter, what matters is he’s going away for a long damn time.” A feeling of dread overwhelms you. “Hey wait! Can’t we talk about this?!” you say. The man with the package turns to you. “And what would we have to talk about criminal? You’ve got enough Blue Dream here to get the entire town of Hegglesburg trashed. This seems like a pretty simple situation as far as I’m concerned. You think because you’re young, you deserve leniency? Hah! You can try it on the judge when he sentences you, but in any case you’re coming with us.” You’re lifted up roughly from your bed by the men with spears (Who you’re assuming are Delantium soldiers at this point) Your arms are put behind your back and iron shackles are placed on your wrists. When you’re marched down the stairs and in front of various inn onlookers, you hear Ren complain about them breaking his door, to which the one that was talking to you earlier remarks that Ren’s lucky that they aren’t taking him in and shutting this whole place down. When you exit the inn, you’re shoved into the back of a cart. Another older man with many scares on his face in iron shackles sits in the cart. He gives you a brief look and then returns to looking back at the cart floor. “The prisoner is secure, sergeant.” One of the soldiers says. “Okay, let’s take this drug dealing trash back to Sivak.” The sergeant says, still hanging on to the Blue Dream package. This is the second time this week that you’ve been accused of a serious crime and once again you didn’t even mean to do it! Was this all a set up, while Flynt took off to parts unknown? Flynt DID seem pretty willing to just hand off illegal drugs to you. Then again, why bother setting you up, when he could have just hid them somewhere rather than risk losing the product altogether? Maybe this is all just more bad luck hitting you. In any case, your mind starts racing about what you can do in your current situation. First thing you think about is escape. The cart is going slow enough that you could probably easily jump out and just run. The problem with that plan is there are multiple mounted guards to the front and back of you. They would easily run you down and most likely kill you for attempting to escape. The second thing you can think of is what the sergeant said. Something about the Ebony Claw Syndicate. You can make an educated guess that Flynt and his friends were part of this organization. Maybe if you told them everything that transpired at the inn, they would let you go. Of course you could just resign yourself to your fate for now and look for an opportunity later. > You stay silent These soldiers seem to have made up their mind about you and trying to explain things is probably just going to get you a beating. You figure if you’re going before a judge, you can always explain things to him and hope he takes mercy, though you aren’t optimistic about it. Lacking any other plan, you just sit in silence as the soldiers take you to your appointed destination. It’s times like this, you wish your sister was here, she’d be able to help you. In fact you’re starting to have a greater appreciation for your parents as well at this point. How many times did you avoid real trouble thanks to your father’s influence? As you ponder your life choices you glance at the other man in the cart who doesn’t say anything to you. In fact he doesn’t even really look at you. Upon a few more glances at him, you notice he has a tattoo of a black claw on his shoulder. You wonder if this man is a member of the Ebony Claw Syndicate. If that is the case you realize it’s probably a good thing that you didn’t say anything about Flynt. The last thing you need right now is a pissed off gang member wanting to kill you for being a rat. In fact, it makes you wonder if you should say anything to the judge at all. If this Ebony Claw Syndicate is as sinister as they sound, it might be dangerous to go ratting on their people. Of course that doesn’t leave you many options. You mostly pass the rest of the time observing the scenery as you travel through Hegglesberg and farmlands. Eventually though the sky darkens and the soldiers prepare to camp for the night. “Alright we’ll stop here for tonight and set up camp. Anders and Levin, you two can watch Mr. Scars and the kid and make sure they can’t escape.” The sergeant says. With a few gruff orders, you and Mr. Scars are both taken to a nearby tree and tied to it securely with a rope while the rest of the soldiers make camp. As you’re watching the soldiers go about their jobs (And your guards doing more talking with each other than actually watching you) Mr. Scars finally says something to you. “So, busted with twenty vials of Blue Dream eh?” he asks in a low tone. “How did you know?” you ask. “I heard the sergeant talking with one of his men about it earlier.” “Oh. They think I’m some big dealer and part of the Ebony Claw Syndicate too, but I’m not either of those things.” “Hm. Didn’t think you were Claw, but I thought maybe you might be a prospect….hmmm…let me guess did you run into a man going by the name Flynt?” You aren’t sure if you should be talking, so you don’t say anything. “Heh, I’ll take your silence as a yes. Though I suppose it’s a good sign that you’re not very forthcoming with that info. Talkers don’t last long in this business. Of course maybe you’re not telling me because you ripped him off…” “I didn’t!” you exclaim which causes the guards to look over at you and then you get quiet again until they look away. “I didn’t, he paid me to deliver a package to someone. I didn’t even know what was in it, until the guards confiscated it. Hell, I didn’t even know about the Ebony Claw Syndicate!” “Yeah, sounds like Flynt. It’s an unconventional method of recruitment, but sometimes he likes to randomly test youngsters that he feels could be useful. Dunno why he does things that way, but when you’ve got drugs and coins to blow, I guess you can afford to take risks like that. I dunno, I’m just in it for the violence myself.” You continue to stay silent. “Anyway, you’re probably looking at twenty years kid. One for each vial. The kingdom has been really cracking down lately on it. Probably get sent to Dreadcage too. They send all the serious offenders there.” Fear wells up inside you upon hearing that news. You try to keep it together, but you’re having a hard time and you start exhaling multiple times, closing your eyes and muttering, “oh fuck, oh shit.” several times. “Wow, kid. You’re not going to last in prison if you take that approach. They see you come in like that and you’re gonna be sucking every dick in the joint and worse.” “Isn’t there something I can do to stop this?” you ask. “Well, you could try to escape I guess, but I’m betting you already figured the soldiers would easily run you down before you got very far. I suppose you could try to beg for mercy when you go before the judge, maybe even use your youth as an excuse. Depending on the judge, that MIGHT get you some time shaved off, but you’ll still be doing a lot of it…and I think I don’t have to warn you about the dangers of ratting out Flynt and whoever it was you were supposed to deliver to in the first place to try to save your ass.” This is just a nightmare. You’re almost thinking maybe you should have just risked getting lynched back in Teckleville. At least there you would’ve had your parents to help you and maybe even Annah, assuming she lived. At worst, you would have at least died at home. “Well…I ain’t no rat, so that wasn’t ever a possibility anyway.” You say in an attempt to at least make Mr. Scars less likely to be suspicious of you. “Bullshit kid, in your situation and first time? You probably thought about it. Don’t worry though, everyone usually does at one time or another, just as long as you don’t actually do it…well either that or make damn sure the reward is high enough.” Mr. Scars chuckles. “Yeah, well I might do better in prison than you think…” you say and then you whisper…”I’ve killed someone before.” Mr. Scars looks at you as if to detect whether you’re lying or not. “Hm, maybe you have, or maybe you haven’t, but that really doesn’t matter. You’re going to be locked away with a lot of killers. Most of them a lot tougher and bigger than the likes of you. So just because you killed your girlfriend or mom because she pissed you off doesn’t mean you’re some hard man.” “I didn’t kill my…” you start to say before the one of the guards starts actually paying attention to you. “HEY! The two of you stop fucking conspiring over there! In fact the pair of you need to shut the fuck up and just go to sleep because tomorrow you’ll both be going before the judge and sentenced for your crimes! Enjoy your last night of freedom criminal scum!” And with that, you and Mr. Scars do no more talking for the rest of the night, though Mr. Scars was done talking and ready to sleep anyway. You on the other hand have a hard time getting to sleep, knowing what awaits you. The next morning, you’re put back on the cart and continue your journey to Sivak. You reach your destination by midday. Sivak is larger than anything you’ve ever seen and some of its buildings are very impressive. It’s a very bustling place with people walking around everywhere. You just wish you were free to enjoy it. At this point you wonder if you shouldn’t just try to escape now. The streets are very busy and it would be a lot harder for the soldiers to get around on their horses. If you’re quick enough you might even lose them in an alleyway or something. Of course that doesn’t stop the fact that you’re still shackled and ultimately surrounded by more soldiers than ever, but maybe you can figure that dilemma out later. > You escape Maybe this is a foolish decision, but you have to try. The more you think about having to spend twenty years in a prison the more you know you aren’t going to be able to handle it. You stand up in the cart at which point several soldiers tell you to sit back down and begin pointing their spears in your direction and closing the gap. Mr. Scars just smiles a bit sensing what you’re going to do. You jump from the cart and into a group of passing citizens, which happily prevent you from falling directly into the cobblestones. You quickly get up off the mass of bodies and start running. “STOP! STOP THAT MAN!” one guard shouts. “Somebody grab him!” another remarks. “Don’t just stand there, get his ass!” the sergeant exclaims. “Run rabbit! Run!” Mr. Scars laughs. You run through the streets of Sivak, crashing and bumping into people along the way. Surprisingly or maybe not so surprisingly nobody is really trying to stop you on purpose, the average citizens seem to be more concerned with getting the hell out of your way. The soldiers are still trying to chase you on horseback, but it’s proving a little more difficult with all the people in the way. The funny thing is they’re actually doing MORE damage by trampling over several citizens in their efforts to get to you! Eventually you make so many turns down various twisting narrow streets, the soldiers on horseback can’t effectively follow, but the new ones on foot that have been alerted continue the pursuit just fine. You probably would be able to evade your pursuers if not for the fact that your hands are shackled behind you and you don’t know your way around the city. That’s very apparent, when you find that you’ve just run around in a circle and surrounded by soldiers. “Surrender now and we might even leave you in good enough condition to stand before the judge!” one of the soldiers says. You can’t surrender. Not now. You were meant to be free and if you can’t be free then it’s no life at all. You attempt to pass the soldiers in front of you and are met by their spears. To their credit, they actually do try to subdue you first by slamming you to the ground, but when you continue to struggle and kick, one of the less patient ones skewers you in the side which is then followed by another spear to your chest. You bleed out like the proverbial stuck pig and wheeze like one as breathing becomes more difficult. It isn’t exactly a quick or dignified death, but at least you didn’t die in a cell.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>These soldiers seem to have made up their mind about you and trying to explain things is probably just going to get you a beating. You figure if you’re going before a judge, you can always explain things to him and hope he takes mercy, though you aren’t optimistic about it. Lacking any other plan, you just sit in silence as the soldiers take you to your appointed destination. It’s times like this, you wish your sister was here, she’d be able to help you. In fact you’re starting to have a greater appreciation for your parents as well at this point. How many times did you avoid real trouble thanks to your father’s influence? As you ponder your life choices you glance at the other man in the cart who doesn’t say anything to you. In fact he doesn’t even really look at you. Upon a few more glances at him, you notice he has a tattoo of a black claw on his shoulder. You wonder if this man is a member of the Ebony Claw Syndicate. If that is the case you realize it’s probably a good thing that you didn’t say anything about Flynt. The last thing you need right now is a pissed off gang member wanting to kill you for being a rat. In fact, it makes you wonder if you should say anything to the judge at all. If this Ebony Claw Syndicate is as sinister as they sound, it might be dangerous to go ratting on their people. Of course that doesn’t leave you many options. You mostly pass the rest of the time observing the scenery as you travel through Hegglesberg and farmlands. Eventually though the sky darkens and the soldiers prepare to camp for the night. “Alright we’ll stop here for tonight and set up camp. Anders and Levin, you two can watch Mr. Scars and the kid and make sure they can’t escape.” The sergeant says. With a few gruff orders, you and Mr. Scars are both taken to a nearby tree and tied to it securely with a rope while the rest of the soldiers make camp. As you’re watching the soldiers go about their jobs (And your guards doing more talking with each other than actually watching you) Mr. Scars finally says something to you. “So, busted with twenty vials of Blue Dream eh?” he asks in a low tone. “How did you know?” you ask. “I heard the sergeant talking with one of his men about it earlier.” “Oh. They think I’m some big dealer and part of the Ebony Claw Syndicate too, but I’m not either of those things.” “Hm. Didn’t think you were Claw, but I thought maybe you might be a prospect….hmmm…let me guess did you run into a man going by the name Flynt?” You aren’t sure if you should be talking, so you don’t say anything. “Heh, I’ll take your silence as a yes. Though I suppose it’s a good sign that you’re not very forthcoming with that info. Talkers don’t last long in this business. Of course maybe you’re not telling me because you ripped him off…” “I didn’t!” you exclaim which causes the guards to look over at you and then you get quiet again until they look away. “I didn’t, he paid me to deliver a package to someone. I didn’t even know what was in it, until the guards confiscated it. Hell, I didn’t even know about the Ebony Claw Syndicate!” “Yeah, sounds like Flynt. It’s an unconventional method of recruitment, but sometimes he likes to randomly test youngsters that he feels could be useful. Dunno why he does things that way, but when you’ve got drugs and coins to blow, I guess you can afford to take risks like that. I dunno, I’m just in it for the violence myself.” You continue to stay silent. “Anyway, you’re probably looking at twenty years kid. One for each vial. The kingdom has been really cracking down lately on it. Probably get sent to Dreadcage too. They send all the serious offenders there.” Fear wells up inside you upon hearing that news. You try to keep it together, but you’re having a hard time and you start exhaling multiple times, closing your eyes and muttering, “oh fuck, oh shit.” several times. “Wow, kid. You’re not going to last in prison if you take that approach. They see you come in like that and you’re gonna be sucking every dick in the joint and worse.” “Isn’t there something I can do to stop this?” you ask. “Well, you could try to escape I guess, but I’m betting you already figured the soldiers would easily run you down before you got very far. I suppose you could try to beg for mercy when you go before the judge, maybe even use your youth as an excuse. Depending on the judge, that MIGHT get you some time shaved off, but you’ll still be doing a lot of it…and I think I don’t have to warn you about the dangers of ratting out Flynt and whoever it was you were supposed to deliver to in the first place to try to save your ass.” This is just a nightmare. You’re almost thinking maybe you should have just risked getting lynched back in Teckleville. At least there you would’ve had your parents to help you and maybe even Annah, assuming she lived. At worst, you would have at least died at home. “Well…I ain’t no rat, so that wasn’t ever a possibility anyway.” You say in an attempt to at least make Mr. Scars less likely to be suspicious of you. “Bullshit kid, in your situation and first time? You probably thought about it. Don’t worry though, everyone usually does at one time or another, just as long as you don’t actually do it…well either that or make damn sure the reward is high enough.” Mr. Scars chuckles. “Yeah, well I might do better in prison than you think…” you say and then you whisper…”I’ve killed someone before.” Mr. Scars looks at you as if to detect whether you’re lying or not. “Hm, maybe you have, or maybe you haven’t, but that really doesn’t matter. You’re going to be locked away with a lot of killers. Most of them a lot tougher and bigger than the likes of you. So just because you killed your girlfriend or mom because she pissed you off doesn’t mean you’re some hard man.” “I didn’t kill my…” you start to say before the one of the guards starts actually paying attention to you. “HEY! The two of you stop fucking conspiring over there! In fact the pair of you need to shut the fuck up and just go to sleep because tomorrow you’ll both be going before the judge and sentenced for your crimes! Enjoy your last night of freedom criminal scum!” And with that, you and Mr. Scars do no more talking for the rest of the night, though Mr. Scars was done talking and ready to sleep anyway. You on the other hand have a hard time getting to sleep, knowing what awaits you. The next morning, you’re put back on the cart and continue your journey to Sivak. You reach your destination by midday. Sivak is larger than anything you’ve ever seen and some of its buildings are very impressive. It’s a very bustling place with people walking around everywhere. You just wish you were free to enjoy it. At this point you wonder if you shouldn’t just try to escape now. The streets are very busy and it would be a lot harder for the soldiers to get around on their horses. If you’re quick enough you might even lose them in an alleyway or something. Of course that doesn’t stop the fact that you’re still shackled and ultimately surrounded by more soldiers than ever, but maybe you can figure that dilemma out later. > You stay put You don’t know this city very well and you’d most likely be caught within five minutes, you’d probably also be beaten for your troubles at best. You aren’t quite suicidal enough to try…or perhaps you’re just not brave enough. Whatever the case, you stay put and resign yourself to whatever fate the judge has for you. You hang your head down and stare at the floor of the cart, not really wishing to see any more of a city you aren’t going to be able to take advantage of. A bit of time passes before you hear Mr. Scars speak to you. “Hey kid.” Mr. Scars says. “What?” you ask slowly looking up. “This doesn’t have to be the worst day of your life.” “Well it certainly isn’t the best.” “Heh, well okay, but this could be a lot worse. In fact maybe Yag has blessed you with a little luck given your situation.” “Luck? I’m on my way to prison!” “Yes, but you had the fortune of meeting me in an uncharacteristically generous mood.” You start to listen carefully. “Okay, here’s the deal. When you get sentenced to Dreadcage, find a human there by the name of Ponyride…and don’t you dare laugh at the name. As silly as it might sound you don’t want to know how he acquired it. Just ask any syndicate member where he is and they’ll take you to him if you mention my name. It’ll be real easy to find one of them since a lot of them are there and you just look for the tattoo.” Mr. Scars says and juts out his shoulder. “What will Ponyride do?” “Well, he’s gonna want proof you know me first, so tell him the phrase: The Duchess sure had a velvet throat. He’ll know what it means.” As you take a moment to remember the phrase, Mr. Scars continues. “If you’re still blessed by Yag at this point, he’ll honor the favor he owes me and give you a bit of protection for a while. Maybe a year at most. Should be more than enough time for you to get settled in and learn the routines without extra hassle. After that, you’re going to be on your own. Now I’m no recruiter, but I suggest that since you’ll already be getting the benefits of Ebony Claw protection, you might want to get in good with us on a permanent basis, as it will potentially make the rest of your stay slightly less dangerous. I’m sure Ponyride will have something for you to do, but that’s on you and your choice.” Well this isn’t freedom, but at least it’s a glimmer of hope. “I…I really don’t know what to say…I mean thank you of course, but why are you doing this? What’s in it for you?” “Me? Nothing I guess, but I suppose I remember the first time I did some time in a prison. I was younger than you and it was a lesser offense, but it still wasn’t a pleasant experience and I know I would’ve been glad for any help I could have gotten.” The cart and entourage of soldiers starts to slow down as you approach a large important looking white building with a lot of steps. “The thing is with my record, I know I’m probably getting sentenced to be executed in a few months. There isn’t really anything anyone can do for me, so I might as well call in the last favor I have left for someone that it will help. Use it or lose it as they say.” Mr. Scars says. “…but still…this is like a really big thing. I mean you barely know me and this is going to really help me out.” You say still in disbelief of your luck. “Yeah, well make the most of it kid. Just out of curiosity though…who did you supposedly kill?” “The guy who stabbed my girlfriend... I had to run away from home after that.” “Well shit kid, that’s more along the lines of justice as far as I can tell. Not sure if that really makes you a cold blooded killer at all, but I guess it’s a good thing you know you can do it, if you have to right?” At this point the cart stops completely and the pair of you are taken out and marched to the white building. When you enter the pair of you are still together for a little while, but eventually the sergeant tells some of his men to take you down a different corridor to Judge Randal. He and the rest take Mr. Scars down another and you part company. When you get to Judge Randal, he sits behind his high desk and looks incredibly tired. You see him sentence various people before he finally gets to you. He hears what you were charged with and just shakes his head. “(Sigh) Do you have anything to say in your defense?” he asks. You take a suggestion from what Mr. Scars said earlier and try to imply you’re just a poor dumb kid that did something really stupid. The judge doesn’t look impressed. “Uh huh. Listen, I hear that excuse all the time and sometimes its even true, but you were found with twenty vials of Blue Dream my boy. You didn’t just stumble upon that, you’re obviously working for someone bigger. Probably someone in the Ebony Claw Syndicate. If you’re really sorry for what you’ve done, then you’re going to have to give me more than the baby in woods act.” You’re silent. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Twenty years at Dreadcage. Next.” The judge remarks. You are quickly taken away and soon marched back outside, but this time to a large enclosed wagon with several horses at the front. You’re shoved inside and shackled to a few other prisoners. All of them are sizing you up and you do your best not to show any fear as the wagon door is closed and you’re on your way to Dreadcage. There is little light in the wagon, save for what’s coming through the very small windows at the very top of it. Still, you manage to examine a few of the other prisoners and fortune strikes again when you see one with a black claw tattoo sitting across from you. “You Ebony Claw?” you ask the man. “What the fuck’s it to you pretty boy?” he answers. “Mr. Scars wants you to take me to see Ponyride when we get to Dreadgate.” The man’s eyes widen a bit when you mention Mr. Scars, but nods. “Very well.” He answers. You don’t reach Dreadcage until nightfall, but when you finally reach it and exit the wagon, you can see that it definitely lives up to its name with the massive walls, towers and high fences. You are then marched inside the prison where upon you and the rest are striped, hosed down, checked and given prison apparel. Your new “name” according to the prison is now 97P904. After this experience, you are shown your new cell. You cellmate is surprisingly a Halfling! Though within the first five minutes of meeting him he’s quite firm about stating what is his and warns you that he’s not going to tolerate any shit from the likes of you. You maintain a respectful attitude and listen to his lecture, until your Claw “liaison” comes to find you. “Hey, Ponyride is ready to see you.” He says which causes a bit of confusion from your cellmate who probably didn’t expect you to have such connections. You get the impression his attitude towards you will be a lot different when you return. You walk through the prison attempting to ignore the various threats and stares you’re getting. You remember that you have to show absolutely no weakness or fear. Several ECS member congregate around Ponyride’s cell. Ponyride himself is a muscular average sized man with a shaved head. He has several tattoos that in some way signify his allegiance to his organization. Ponyride gets off his bed and approaches you with the usual hard stare that you’re getting used to by everyone that has to prove how tough they are. “So, I hear you know Mr. Scars and he told you to speak with me. If that’s true then you’ll have something important to tell me. If not…well you’re going to get the privilege of learning exactly why they call me Ponyride.” This causes a few chuckles from Ponyride’s cohorts, but you maintain your composure and simply utter the phrase. “The Duchess sure had a velvet throat.” Ponyride smiles and nods. “I came enough to fill a fucking moat. Hah! Glad to see Mr. Scars remembers the good times. Alright, I dunno how he knows you, but if he trusted you enough to give you that phrase, then it’s good enough for me. So I’m guessing you want protection right?” “Mr. Scars said a year’s worth.” “A fucking year huh? Mr. Scars overestimates this favor I owe him. Ah, all right, what the hell, things are pretty peaceful right now I guess I can spare some. The Ebony Claw will make sure you’re under our general protection, but remember, you ARE NOT one of us. That means if you severely fuck up or get in the way of our business, all bets are fucking off. Got me, pretty boy?” “Understood.” “Good, and remember when a year is up you’re on your fucking own. If you want anything from us after that, you gotta pay just like everyone else or join, but we can talk about that later if you so desire. Now leave me, I got important shit to do.” You are dismissed and the Claw member who took you to see Ponyride escorts you away and then leaves you to your own devices. Well you’ve bought yourself a little time, now you have to get started learning everything you can about this place and deciding on how to spend your time here. Because you sure have a lot of it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Six months later… As you sit counting your ill-gotten loot from the latest traveling merchant in town, your girlfriend is watching you with an exasperated expression. Of course she tends to look like that a lot. “Ugh. This part is soooo boring! I dunno why you didn’t steal the jewelry, I liked some of those necklaces.” Annah exclaims. “Because you know I prefer hard coin in my possession rather than anything else.” You reply trying not to lose count. “So? You’re not the only one involved in doing this you know! You couldn’t just think about ME for once and steal some pretty items?” “Annah, if you wanted one of those necklaces so bad, you could have just stolen it yourself. You were closer to the merchant and easily had him distracted.” “He was gross. Breathing heavy and touching my legs, it was all I could do not to vomit…y’know you could have defended my honor.” It’s going to be one of those days… “(Sigh) And how exactly was I going to do that while I was breaking into his lockbox in his tent? The whole point is for me not to attract any sort of attention and that’s getting more difficult to do what with a lot of the merchants hiring more guards nowadays.” Annah rolls her eyes. It’s no secret that Annah was certainly drawn to you because she’s a little on the wild side and doesn’t have the best of reputations herself. While she certainly lets you do things to her that are a lot of fun, she’s not the partner in crime that your sister was and she certainly complains a lot more. A LOT more. Annah’s got the looks and flirting down, but that’s about it. Your sister actually had the talent to get the attention of people even if they weren’t some weak willed slob that went nuts over the latest sweet young thing that batted their eyes at them. She could lure them with a tale or a song and keep a whole entourage captivated if need be. You suppose Annah’s lack of skill has had the benefit of increasing your own since you’ve definitely had to be quicker and sneakier. Still, it isn’t just her lack of skill and bitching that’s the problem since that you can deal with. It’s the fact that she’s way more maintenance than you thought she’d be and she’s been getting worse in that aspect. You know you’re probably going to have to give her a little bit more this time around just to keep her appeased. At this point you haven’t really been saving much at all and you were planning on moving out of your parents home by now because that situation hasn’t gotten any better since your sister left. Lately you’ve been starting to wonder if you shouldn’t just do what your sister did and leave. It’s just getting to be too much hassle to steal in this town and it definitely isn’t as much fun as it used to be. Where you would go though, you aren’t sure. You’re going to have to figure it out. In the meantime, you hand over Annah’s share. “Okay, here you go…so what do you want to do now?” you ask. “Well since you were unwilling to steal me one of those nice necklaces, I guess I’ll have to buy a cheap ass one from that hag that runs Sparkling Treasures.” Annah replies. “So, we’re going to Jasmine’s shop.” “Yeah, and she’s going to be giving me the evil eye the entire time. Thinking I’m going to steal something.” “Well to be fair, you can’t blame her. I’ll come with you, but as far as I know I’m still banned from the place ever since I stole a bracelet for my sister’s birthday. Of course that was before we decided that the town was completely off limits.” “Whatever, I don’t really want to hear about how you spoiled your other girlfriend right now. It’s bad enough that continually criticize me and say I’m not as good as sister.” “What the…first of all I’m sick of these rumors about me and her when it wasn’t even like that! Second of all, I just said ONCE that our capers might run smoother if you had a better array of talents rather than just relying on your looks.” “There you go again putting me down! I don’t see you complaining about my talents when you’re having your five minutes of fun…” “Now don’t even start with that! Look, I don’t want to fight! Let’s just go get your necklace.” “I need more money!” “What?!” “What you gave me isn’t enough for the one I want!” “Didn’t you just say Jasmine sells cheap quality shit?” “Yeah, but that old bitch charges an arm and leg for it, so I need more money!” You shake your head and reach into your pocket. “(Sigh) Fine. Here, take it! Take it all!” you exclaim and hand over most of your coins to Annah, who takes them without blinking an eye. At this point you’re wondering why if she thinks you’re such a bad bum to her that why is she with you at all. “Thanks baby!” Annah beams and kisses you. Well that answers your question. As Annah grabs your arm while you walk to Jasmine’s shop, you continue to think about leaving here. The only thing is, are you going to do it like your sister did and just leave in the middle of the night, or are you going to actually say goodbye first? You sort of think with as much grief as you give your parents, they might actually like to at least say goodbye to you seeing as they didn’t get that chance with your sister. Of course that might be just wishful thinking on your part. “Okay, since you said you’re not allowed in, just wait outside and I’ll be out soon.” Annah says as you get to Sparkling Treasures. “I’ll be here.” You remark. Annah hasn’t been gone long when you encounter more trouble. “Well if it isn’t the notorious thief of Teckville. Shouldn’t you be skulking around in the shadows stealing from little old ladies?” It’s Klint and ever since your sister left, he’s been even more of an asshole to you and you’re not really sure why. “Klint, seriously what the hell is your problem? I don’t understand this continued antagonism towards me. I don’t go over to your family’s chicken farm and steal the cocks out of your hand.” Klint as usual is slow on the uptake and doesn’t even get the double meaning insult you just said, but he’s mad at you anyway. “Because it’s all your fucking fault! I could have gotten with your sister if YOU hadn’t been around!” “Oh for fuck’s sake, if my sister had ANY attraction to you, she certainly would have showed it. She didn’t and now she’s GONE, okay? Get the hell over it already…” Klint at this point starts getting closer to you and raising his voice and you begin to take a more defensive stance. “FUCK YOU! It was ALL your fault! How could I have a chance with her when YOU corrupted her! Tell me…did she smell like flowers when you embraced her? Did she taste like honey when you kissed her? Did the very heavens move when you plunged into her?” he asks with a mixture of anger and resentment, but also with a glint of eagerness that you’ll tell him. While you knew Klint was always a bit obsessed with your sister, you never quite knew how bad it was until just now. He’s totally lost it. “Klint, contrary to what the rumors are, none of that happened you sick fuck. Look, just go home before something bad happens…” you say. “Oh something bad is gonna happen alright sister fucker!” He says and then brandishes a knife partially covered in blood and with a few feathers stuck to it. And of course nobody is around to see all this despite it being broad daylight. Or maybe they’re just watching from windows and don’t care. You’re not exactly popular after all. “Klint, put that knife back and just walk away now.” You say stepping back. “Everyone in this town hates you, y’know. Even that whore you hang around with now. She came on to me the other night saying how she wanted a proper fuck as opposed to your pathetic attempts. I didn’t fuck her though; I just let her suck my dick. Did she kiss you today? Ha ha ha ha!” You ignore Klint’s ramblings and continue to focus on his knife, which is now aiming towards your face, even if you are trying to widen the gap between you two. “Klint, last chance to get that knife out of my face.” “Or you’ll what?” Well it’s a good question, what are you going to do? > You try to disarm Klint While Klint is holding knife, you still doubt he’s serious about killing you with it. He’s a lot of talk and trying to scare you, time to call his bluff by kicking his ass. You throw a punch at Klint’s face, which probably hurts your hand more than it hurts his face. Still, it’s enough to cause him to reel back a bit and drop his knife. “Shit…you’re paying for that asshole!” he utters as you’re still shaking your hand from the pain of punching him. Klint charges at you and you dodge out of the way, but your leg doesn’t completely clear the charge and you fall to the ground face first. Fortunately you trip up Klint in the process, who instead of taking advantage, continues to stumble in the direction he was already running in. Unfortunately, he crashes right into Annah who was coming out of the store at the time. “Hey what’s…SHIT!” Annah yelps as Klint’s body tackles into her. You recover just in time to see Klint hovering near her body. She’s lying up against the door of Jasmine’s shop looking a little crumpled. You take advantage by elbowing Klint in the back of the head. He staggers and falls to the ground again where you proceed to kick him. “You crushed my girlfriend you fucker!” you shout. You’re doing a pretty good job stomping on him, but he isn’t out of the fight yet and manages to grab your foot and cause you to fall to the ground as well. Now seizing his opportunity he rolls over and gets on top of your chest and proceeds to punch you in the face though you’re doing your best in trying to block the attacks. “Don’t worry about your whore getting crushed because I’m gonna crush your fuckin’ skull…AGH!” Klint shouts. You can’t quite tell at first from your prone position, but you see Annah standing behind Klint and a knife in her hand, which she’s using not just once on him, but several times. “Fucking asshole, get off! Get off of him!” she shouts stabbing Klint in the back several times. Eventually Klint falls over and off to the side of you and you slide out from underneath him. While you’re still recovering, Annah is about to stab Klint again. “Hold on! Hold on! Stop! Stop!” you exclaim and take the knife away from Annah before she commits murder. “What?! That asshole was kicking your ass!” Annah exclaims. “First, I had it under control, second, you already stabbed him several times, the last thing you need is to outright kill…” “You fuckin’ bitch…” Klint utters and somehow manages to sit up and grabs Annah’s arm. Without thinking you stab Klint in the neck. Blood trickles from his mouth, his eyes glance over to you and then he falls back to the ground with the knife still in his neck. “Oh shit…” you say. “Look out behind you!” Annah shouts. “YOU MURDERER!” a gruff voice shouts from behind. Still at a heightened state of alert, you stab at whoever it is behind you, and just manage to nick their arm with your own dagger before twisting away. You now see that your fight with Klint has drawn out a lot of the townsfolk. Bastards were probably watching the entire time. The man who tried to pull you away was the Wilfred the pub owner. It’s a good thing he’s not one of the appointed town watch, but it probably won’t be long. “You little bastard! You see that? He tried to kill me too! Someone get the town watch! Someone go get Klint’s family too, they need to know what this murderer did to their boy!” Wilfred shouts as he clutches his bleeding arm. Several other townsfolk go running off shouting about your deeds, and a few others look as if they’re going to take their chances apprehending you themselves and while Wilfred is a fat out of shape barkeep, you don’t know if you’d do as well against the blacksmith who is now approaching you with a hammer in hand. With a lynch mob starting to form, you do the only thing you can and that’s run. Which you notice Annah has already done and left you to fend for yourself! After a few moments of running and backtracking, you’ve managed to make it home and lose most of the ones that were half heartedly trying to nab you, but it won’t be long before what passes for real law enforcement around here is beating down your door. You only have a short time to gather what you can and get the hell out of here. Of course as soon as you come in, your mother sees you with blood on your clothes and demands to know what is going on. “By the gods! What have you done!? What have you DONE?!” your mother shouts. “I didn’t do anything! Where’s dad?!” you ask. “I’m right here….oh shit. Fuck! What the hell did you do now?!” your dad says walking into the room. “I didn’t do anything! There was a fight and Klint attacked me and then Annah stabbed him and then I stabbed him and…” “Oh what the fuck, did you kill him?” your father asks. “Yeah, I mean I’m not sure, I suppose, but look I gotta get outta here!” you say and push both of your parents out of the way to go gather a few things from your room. Surprisingly your father doesn’t say much more, he just gathers up his emergency physician’s bag and mutters to himself. You think you hear him saying how you’re a fuck up before he leaves, but that’s about it. Your mom on the other hand as you’re hastily grabbing a few items, is tearfully going on about how you (And your sister) wasted your potential and she doesn’t know where she and your father went wrong. You have little time and it isn’t much, but you try to reassure her that it isn’t either of their faults. You’d like to calm her down some more, but there are a bunch of people soon banging at the door. “STOP HIDING BEHIND YER MAMA’S SKIRT AND GET OUT HERE MURDERER!” you hear a voice shout. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry for everything. I…I gotta go.” You say as you leave your mother crying and go to climb out your window. You manage to just get out of your backyard when you hear someone else shout that they see you and you’re soon off and running from a mob again. It takes a bit of stealth and hiding on your part (along with distancing yourself from Teckleville) but eventually as the sky goes dark, you’re fairly certain nobody from the town is still chasing you, or if they are, they might have made camp for the night. As for you, you’re in the middle of a wood, still wearing your bloody clothes (fortunately you managed to grab some spare in your pack though) unsure of where you’re going to go exactly. On top of it all you aren’t sure what happened to Annah though knowing her she probably blamed you for everything. You’re so tired. You can’t even process all of it anymore. You have to rest. You find a tree that looks sturdy and high enough, so you climb it and prepare to sleep for the night. You just hope that anyone that might still be looking for you at this late hour doesn’t think to look up. As you drift off to sleep, your thoughts go to your sister. “Well sis, whether things are working out for you or not right now, at least your exit wasn’t like this.” > Next Day You wake up fairly early, but then you didn’t really sleep much to begin with. This was more of a brief rest anyway. After a quick check to see if anyone is in the area, you get out of your bloody clothes and change into some new ones. You might not be properly clean, but it’s better than you were. You then check your supplies, which aren’t much. You’ve got a few coins, but you aren’t excessively worried about that since food and water are more important out here in the wilderness. You’ve got a little food and water, but it isn’t going to last long. The only weapon you have currently is your dagger. As you’re checking your supplies, you hear the sound of something approaching you. Dread grips your body, you hide behind the nearest tree and you draw your dagger. You take a quick peek and see that it’s Annah stomping through the underbrush with the grace of a clumsy horse. “Shit, fucking thorns. Ouch!” you hear her say and you come out of hiding. “Annah!” you exclaim and walk over to her. “There you are! Y’know, you could have warned me about leaving town, instead of making me trudge through the fucking woods looking for you!” Annah snaps. Ornery as usual. “Wha…how the hell did you even find me anyway?” you ask. “Dunno, I figured you’d hide some place familiar. This is the area where we first did it so I took a chance.” Annah says. “It is?” Annah hits you. “Yes! By the gods, I can’t believe you fucking forgot! In fact it was YOUR idea to go way the hell out here, I just wanted to do it over behind Derrick’s barn where I first gave you a blowjob.” “Wait. We were behind Derrick’s barn during that?” Annah hits you again “Glad to see all of our intimacy together meant so much to you. Asshole. I dunno why I even came out here to find you! Sorry we can’t all be like your perfect sister. Bet you remember where you first fucked her!” At this point you stop Annah from hitting you again and try to maintain some control over this situation. “Alright! Alright! I get it, I’m an insensitive asshole, but you REALLY need to stop with these accusations of sister fucking especially when it isn’t even true! Shit, I’m not calling you a whore that sucked Klint’s dick!” you say. “WHAT?! I did no such thing!” Annah exclaims. “Well he claimed you did before he attacked me.” “Pfft. He wished. Look, I get that the dumb asses in town thought I was a whore, but Klint was repulsive…besides he was always sniffing around your sister while she was still around. Never paid any attention to me.” “Well I figured he was just talking shit anyway…(Sigh) anyway this is a mess. I’m glad to see you escaped town though.” “Escaped? Nah, I just came out here to find you on my own. Don’t worry, I made sure nobody was following me.” “Wait, you didn’t get in any trouble?” “No. They all saw you kill Klint. I mean I did get asked questions, but I just said you and Klint got into a fight and you accidently killed him in the process. They didn’t seem convinced that you killed him by accident though, so yeah they’re still pissed at you.” You’re almost speechless right now. “Are…Are you fucking kidding me?! YOU were the one that stabbed him repeatedly in the back! I actually stopped YOU from killing Klint!” you exclaim. “Yeah, and then you stabbed him in the throat and killed him. Why are you yelling at me?!” Annah remarks. Now you can’t even speak. You just rub your hands over your face and pace rapidly. In a strange way, you not even that mad at Annah. Everyone pretty much hated you anyway and Annah’s actually just being herself. And that’s so tragic that it causes you to laugh. “What’s so funny?” Annah asks. “The absurdity of this horrible situation.” You answer. “So what’s the plan? “Good question. Can’t stay out here in the wilderness.” “Ohhh! Let’s to Klyton!” Annah says excitedly. Well that would be one option you were pondering. It’s certainly the closest city and it’s the direction you ran from Teckleville anyway. The problem is if anyone from Teckleville is still searching for you, that’s going to be the first place they look. Still, Klyton is the only place you really have any basic knowledge about thanks to your parents both being originally from there. Your father never really spoke too much about it, just saying that the only thing worthwhile that he got there was your mother and he was glad when they finally moved to Teckleville to be closer to your grandmother at the time. Your mother on the other hand didn’t speak so ill of the place, which is surprising since she grew up in a lower class area than your father did. She even said that sometimes she missed the times when she worked at the inn where she met your father in the first place. Of course her knowledge about the city is bound to be a bit out of date. Also, while Klyton has no jurisdiction over Teckleville, it has been known to apprehend wanted criminals from elsewhere trying to hide out there. Not to mention the place in general has a fairly good reputation (And they want to keep it that way) as far as its own security goes. “Well we could also head to Holgard or the Delantium Kingdom, I think the closest city there is Sivak” you say. “No! I want to go to Klyton! I’ve never been there!” Annah demands. “But you’ve never been to the other places either!” “Yeah well, they’re too far away, and we could run into bandits and you wouldn’t be much help if they tried to gang rape me. I don’t want to be out here any longer than I have to be.” “Y’know, YOU don’t need to be out here at all considering you apparently threw me under the horse and cart and you’re not even in any trouble for any of this!” You almost expect Annah to hit you again, but now she does something worse...she doesn’t do it often, but… “Oh no…” you say when you see her eyes starting to water. “I knew it! You blame me for everything! You always blame me for everything that goes wrong! All I fucking did was try to help you when Klint was kicking your ass too! (Sob!) You’re right, I DON’T have to be out here, but I’m out here because I fucking love you okay? (Sob!) I don’t even know why, because you’re a fucking ungrateful asshole!” Annah cries and then runs off to a nearby tree to continue sobbing. “(Sigh) Damn it….” You say to yourself. While you’re questioning the idea that this is even a good idea, the fact remains is that in Annah’s strange way she is here for you right now. In fact, she’s possibly the ONLY person on your side right now. So for better or worse you’ll put up with her. (For now) “Annah….look, I’m sorry about my tone okay? But you gotta understand I’m trying to deal with all this shit and I can hardly think right now. I mean I didn’t even think I was going to see you again. I’m also worried about my parents. I mean yeah I didn’t get along with them, but they certainly don’t deserve the shitstorm they’re probably going through with the rest of the town right now. I mean what about your mom? You don’t think she’s wondering where you are right now?” you say while rubbing her shoulders “(Sniffle) Have you met my mom? She probably doesn’t even know I’m gone yet. Hell, she probably doesn’t even know everything that happened yesterday.” Annah says turning around and wiping her eyes. “Yeah, I suppose so, she is drunk a lot of the time. But anyway, like I said, I’m trying to process the fact that I’m now wanted for murder. I don’t even know how I feel on THAT fact either. The actual murder. I mean I feel like maybe I should feel bad or something.” “Bad? Why would you feel bad? Klint was an asshole, I’m certainly not upset over it.” “Well…yeah I suppose I’m not either and it was mostly in self-defense and an accident despite what everyone in town says. Still though, makes me wonder if I’m capable of killing again.” “I sure hope so, because it’s dangerous out here! Is that dagger the only weapon you got?” “Hm? Yeah. Apologies, but I didn’t exactly have time to buy a sword on my way out of town.” “Oh well, I guess it will have to do. Just hope we don’t run into anything bigger than a hungry rat.” “It’s not the size of the weapon, it’s how you use it.” “Yes dear, you keep telling yourself that…so are we going to Klyton now?” “Yeah, we’re going to Klyton…” Annah makes “Squeee!” sound and then kisses you saying how exciting it will be to finally go to the “Big City.” Honestly, you think Annah’s enthusiasm to go to Klyton is a little misplaced even if she wasn’t travelling with a wanted murderer. At least she isn’t bitching anymore though. However, that doesn’t last and she inevitably starts complaining when you insist on staying off the road and sticking to the woods to keep out of sight of any potential person from Teckleville that might be tracking you. “Dunno why you think this makes you more hidden. I found you in the woods.” Annah remarks. “Yeah, well not everyone has the magical ability to find me like you do, now come on and keep it down!” You answer. “You know there are blood stalkers out here and bandits who…” “Will try to rape you. Yes, I know. You’ve only mentioned that three or four times already. What is your preoccupation with getting raped?” “You saying that wouldn’t happen?” “No…I…agh! Look it’s getting dark enough that I can barely see shit in front of me and we probably should just stop for the rest of the night. I’ll see if there’s a suitable tree to sleep in…” “A tree? I’m not sleeping in a tree! It sounds uncomfortable and I could fall out and break my neck!” “It’s safer than you think, you just prop yourself up against the trunk and a large enough branch. It’ll actually be safer than sleeping on the ground. Up in a tree we can at least…” “I’m not sleeping in a fucking tree! I’m hungry, and it’s getting cold! We should build a fire!” You face palm at your situation. The tree thing you’re flexible on, but a fire? That’s potentially asking for trouble. Still, if you make a fire, you’ll hopefully shut Annah up. > You make a fire Honestly, if anything Annah’s loud bitching is going to attract more attention to your position than a fire at this point. “Alright! Alright! Just stop! We’ll build a damn fire. I think I got a tinderbox, never used it though since I didn’t exactly spend nights out in the wilderness, so you’re going to have to bear with me.” You gather up a bunch of broken branches, break out your tinderbox and begin fumbling around with the flint “Do you even know what you’re doing?” Annah asks. “Not really.” “Sheesh, this isn’t sex. I figured this would be a simple enough task, even for you.” “Fuck, Annah. I told you I wasn’t an expert at doing this but feel free to help me if you know how!” You answer throwing the flint down. “So I guess it is sex. (sigh) Move!” Annah remarks and takes over. And of course she does it nearly instantly and you soon have a fire going. You’re getting incredibly angry and starting to regret letting her tag along now. You’re under enough pressure as it is and you can’t deal with her attitude right now. “Hey I said I was also hungry, didn’t you bring any food?” Annah remarks. “You want food? You want fucking food? HERE! Take it! Take everything I fucking have!” you shout as you pull out apples from your bag and start throwing them at her. “HEY! STOP! Stop you fucking asshole!” she replies dodging apples. “I oughta do worse than throw fucking apples at you!” “Oh like what? You gonna stab and kill me too?” Annah asks while picking up a nearby apple. “Don’t tempt me.” “Threats of violence. Nice. I can’t believe I recently cried over you.” “I can’t believe you even meant it. Y’know before all this shit went down, I was actually thinking about breaking up with you in the first place. And guess what, I was right about…” Your words are interrupted by a flying apple. You dodge it and Annah’s eyes go a bit wide when she sees you come at her. She doesn’t get far when you tackle her to the ground. After a bit of struggling you manage to subdue her, by getting on top of her and holding her wrists down. You’re breathing heavy and have a nasty look in your eyes. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do that! You know how I get! Please just don’t hurt me!” Annah begs and starts to tear up again. Despite your rather aggressive dominance over Annah, you weren’t actually planning to do anything except scare her really bad, which you definitely succeeded in doing. Any ideas of battery, torture, murder or (as Annah usually believes), rape weren’t in the equation. Unfortunately nobody else saw it that way. And between the fire AND your very loud arguing and fighting with Annah, someone came to investigate. You suddenly feel a crushing blow to the back of your head and you crumple on top of Annah’s body. You have a little strength left to push yourself up a bit, but another blow succeeds in knocking you out. When you wake up, you find yourself in a cell, which look very familiar. It should, because you’ve been in it before. You’re at the Teckleville jail. “Well, looks like the Teckleville Terror is finally up and from here on your ass belongs to me until your execution.” A familiar voice remarks. It’s Sheriff Walford. Just one of your many admirers. You sit up from the floor and rub your head. “(Groan) I knew lighting that fire was a bad idea.” You say. “You’re just full of them boy and you’ll be paying for them soon because your luck has finally run out.” Walford says from his desk “Surprised you just didn’t tell your men to kill me on sight.” “Oh trust me, when they caught you tryin’ to rape that girl, they wanted to, but I specifically told them to bring you in alive no matter what the circumstances. Because I personally want to see you hang.” “How law abiding of you. (Sigh) I don’t suppose it would help if I said Annah’s lying about that.” “Lyin that you WEREN’T tryin ta rape her? Pfft, already know that son.” “Wait, you tellin’ me that Annah didn’t accuse me of rape?” “No she didn’t for some strange reason. She claims you and her were just having an argument, but my boys said it sure as hell didn’t look like that to them. Dunno what spell you got that girl under, but it ain’t gonna save your ass because you’re STILL wanted for the murder of Klint! You were fortunate that his father didn’t catch you before my men did though I wouldn’t have minded if he had.” Wow, that’s a bit surprising about Annah. She knows you better than you thought AND she’s still trying in her own way to defend you. The sheriff goes on to say that she isn’t the only one either. Apparently your father has hired the best freelance advocate he could find in Klyton. While it’s a pretty grim conclusion that you’re going to be found guilty, your father made so much of a stink that he demanded that you at least get a trial of sorts. It would appear you have more people on your side than you thought A few days pass and Annah tries to see you, but they won’t let her in. Your parents won’t be denied however and of course your expensive advocate speaks to you as well to get all your information. The day finally comes and you’re trotted out before practically the whole town, most of which are already booing and calling for your blood. The town mayor is overseeing this trial and going to make the final decision. While you’ve never directly done any wrong to him, he doesn’t particularly like you so in your mind you might as well be going to the noose already. Still, you don’t give up. You don’t actually speak in your own trial, your advocate speaks for you and does a WAY better job than you ever could. Annah and your parents both testify on your behalf, and even a few people begrudgingly admit that they saw the entire fight with Klint and say you didn’t really mean to kill him. You really wish your sister was around because you imagine that she would be able to charm a few more folks to your side. Of course the other side paints you out to be evil incarnate whenever they can. Klint’s parents in particular. Eventually the mayor says he’s heard enough and that’s when you think here comes the execution sentence. “(Sigh) As long as I’ve been mayor, this young man has been a blight on this town despite his father and mother being good people. I can’t fault them for defending him because above all else he is their son. But another son was killed and that’s the main reason we’re here today. The rape accusation…well quite frankly the young girl denies that it happened and if she’s deluded enough to defend her abusive criminal boyfriend…well I just shake my head in dismay and nothing else. Given her own shady reputation, I’m actually inclined they just enjoy a sick relationship.” The mayor continues. “But getting back to the murder. While tragic, I have to weigh all arguments. We all know that Klint himself was no angel. I’m sorry to say that in front of his parents, but it’s true. This was a case of the stupid antics of youth getting way out of hand. And as much as I dislike this budding criminal in front of me, I truly don’t believe he killed Klint out of malice. At this point several people start booing again until the mayor calls for order. “That’s enough! I’m mayor of this damn town and this is my decision which I haven’t even got to yet! My verdict is guilty BUT I’m not giving this young man death. It was an accident and despite everything I’ve said, I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable with myself executing a youth who made a very bad mistake. However, he can’t stay here. So my final decision is exile as of tomorrow. You come back and you WILL be executed, you understand?” the mayor says. “I understand, sir and I thank you for your fair judgment.” You reply and nod. “Take him back to his cell, release him in the morning.” The crowd goes nuts at this decision and the Teckleville Watch barely manage to get you back to the jail unscathed. After throwing you back in your cell, Sheriff Walford flips his desk over as his men standby. “Are you secretly a son of Yag or just permanently blessed by him? Because there is no way one person can be so fucking lucky!” he exclaims. “It wasn’t luck sheriff, it was justice. Look on the bright side, I won’t be here to bother you anymore…which is what I was trying to do in the first place before you dragged me back here.” You say. The sheriff is so flustered he can’t even be bothered to yell at you anymore. He just says you’re going to get yours and soon before leaving. You secretly smirk at things going your way for a change and lay down thinking about what you’re going to do with your new exiled life tomorrow. Probably the same thing you were going to do before, except without Annah tagging along. Sure, she helped you out, but you can see that relationship is just doomed to cause more problems than you need. (Like this incident!) Eventually you go to sleep figuring you’re going to need your energy for traveling tomorrow. In the middle of the night you suddenly hear your cell door open and you groggily wake up. “Wha…what’s going on…is it morning all…ULP!” you utter. “For my son, you murdering bastard!” you hear a deep voice say as a large figure rushes in your cell on top of you and you feel a blade go into your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up fairly early, but then you didn’t really sleep much to begin with. This was more of a brief rest anyway. After a quick check to see if anyone is in the area, you get out of your bloody clothes and change into some new ones. You might not be properly clean, but it’s better than you were. You then check your supplies, which aren’t much. You’ve got a few coins, but you aren’t excessively worried about that since food and water are more important out here in the wilderness. You’ve got a little food and water, but it isn’t going to last long. The only weapon you have currently is your dagger. As you’re checking your supplies, you hear the sound of something approaching you. Dread grips your body, you hide behind the nearest tree and you draw your dagger. You take a quick peek and see that it’s Annah stomping through the underbrush with the grace of a clumsy horse. “Shit, fucking thorns. Ouch!” you hear her say and you come out of hiding. “Annah!” you exclaim and walk over to her. “There you are! Y’know, you could have warned me about leaving town, instead of making me trudge through the fucking woods looking for you!” Annah snaps. Ornery as usual. “Wha…how the hell did you even find me anyway?” you ask. “Dunno, I figured you’d hide some place familiar. This is the area where we first did it so I took a chance.” Annah says. “It is?” Annah hits you. “Yes! By the gods, I can’t believe you fucking forgot! In fact it was YOUR idea to go way the hell out here, I just wanted to do it over behind Derrick’s barn where I first gave you a blowjob.” “Wait. We were behind Derrick’s barn during that?” Annah hits you again “Glad to see all of our intimacy together meant so much to you. Asshole. I dunno why I even came out here to find you! Sorry we can’t all be like your perfect sister. Bet you remember where you first fucked her!” At this point you stop Annah from hitting you again and try to maintain some control over this situation. “Alright! Alright! I get it, I’m an insensitive asshole, but you REALLY need to stop with these accusations of sister fucking especially when it isn’t even true! Shit, I’m not calling you a whore that sucked Klint’s dick!” you say. “WHAT?! I did no such thing!” Annah exclaims. “Well he claimed you did before he attacked me.” “Pfft. He wished. Look, I get that the dumb asses in town thought I was a whore, but Klint was repulsive…besides he was always sniffing around your sister while she was still around. Never paid any attention to me.” “Well I figured he was just talking shit anyway…(Sigh) anyway this is a mess. I’m glad to see you escaped town though.” “Escaped? Nah, I just came out here to find you on my own. Don’t worry, I made sure nobody was following me.” “Wait, you didn’t get in any trouble?” “No. They all saw you kill Klint. I mean I did get asked questions, but I just said you and Klint got into a fight and you accidently killed him in the process. They didn’t seem convinced that you killed him by accident though, so yeah they’re still pissed at you.” You’re almost speechless right now. “Are…Are you fucking kidding me?! YOU were the one that stabbed him repeatedly in the back! I actually stopped YOU from killing Klint!” you exclaim. “Yeah, and then you stabbed him in the throat and killed him. Why are you yelling at me?!” Annah remarks. Now you can’t even speak. You just rub your hands over your face and pace rapidly. In a strange way, you not even that mad at Annah. Everyone pretty much hated you anyway and Annah’s actually just being herself. And that’s so tragic that it causes you to laugh. “What’s so funny?” Annah asks. “The absurdity of this horrible situation.” You answer. “So what’s the plan? “Good question. Can’t stay out here in the wilderness.” “Ohhh! Let’s to Klyton!” Annah says excitedly. Well that would be one option you were pondering. It’s certainly the closest city and it’s the direction you ran from Teckleville anyway. The problem is if anyone from Teckleville is still searching for you, that’s going to be the first place they look. Still, Klyton is the only place you really have any basic knowledge about thanks to your parents both being originally from there. Your father never really spoke too much about it, just saying that the only thing worthwhile that he got there was your mother and he was glad when they finally moved to Teckleville to be closer to your grandmother at the time. Your mother on the other hand didn’t speak so ill of the place, which is surprising since she grew up in a lower class area than your father did. She even said that sometimes she missed the times when she worked at the inn where she met your father in the first place. Of course her knowledge about the city is bound to be a bit out of date. Also, while Klyton has no jurisdiction over Teckleville, it has been known to apprehend wanted criminals from elsewhere trying to hide out there. Not to mention the place in general has a fairly good reputation (And they want to keep it that way) as far as its own security goes. “Well we could also head to Holgard or the Delantium Kingdom, I think the closest city there is Sivak” you say. “No! I want to go to Klyton! I’ve never been there!” Annah demands. “But you’ve never been to the other places either!” “Yeah well, they’re too far away, and we could run into bandits and you wouldn’t be much help if they tried to gang rape me. I don’t want to be out here any longer than I have to be.” “Y’know, YOU don’t need to be out here at all considering you apparently threw me under the horse and cart and you’re not even in any trouble for any of this!” You almost expect Annah to hit you again, but now she does something worse...she doesn’t do it often, but… “Oh no…” you say when you see her eyes starting to water. “I knew it! You blame me for everything! You always blame me for everything that goes wrong! All I fucking did was try to help you when Klint was kicking your ass too! (Sob!) You’re right, I DON’T have to be out here, but I’m out here because I fucking love you okay? (Sob!) I don’t even know why, because you’re a fucking ungrateful asshole!” Annah cries and then runs off to a nearby tree to continue sobbing. “(Sigh) Damn it….” You say to yourself. While you’re questioning the idea that this is even a good idea, the fact remains is that in Annah’s strange way she is here for you right now. In fact, she’s possibly the ONLY person on your side right now. So for better or worse you’ll put up with her. (For now) “Annah….look, I’m sorry about my tone okay? But you gotta understand I’m trying to deal with all this shit and I can hardly think right now. I mean I didn’t even think I was going to see you again. I’m also worried about my parents. I mean yeah I didn’t get along with them, but they certainly don’t deserve the shitstorm they’re probably going through with the rest of the town right now. I mean what about your mom? You don’t think she’s wondering where you are right now?” you say while rubbing her shoulders “(Sniffle) Have you met my mom? She probably doesn’t even know I’m gone yet. Hell, she probably doesn’t even know everything that happened yesterday.” Annah says turning around and wiping her eyes. “Yeah, I suppose so, she is drunk a lot of the time. But anyway, like I said, I’m trying to process the fact that I’m now wanted for murder. I don’t even know how I feel on THAT fact either. The actual murder. I mean I feel like maybe I should feel bad or something.” “Bad? Why would you feel bad? Klint was an asshole, I’m certainly not upset over it.” “Well…yeah I suppose I’m not either and it was mostly in self-defense and an accident despite what everyone in town says. Still though, makes me wonder if I’m capable of killing again.” “I sure hope so, because it’s dangerous out here! Is that dagger the only weapon you got?” “Hm? Yeah. Apologies, but I didn’t exactly have time to buy a sword on my way out of town.” “Oh well, I guess it will have to do. Just hope we don’t run into anything bigger than a hungry rat.” “It’s not the size of the weapon, it’s how you use it.” “Yes dear, you keep telling yourself that…so are we going to Klyton now?” “Yeah, we’re going to Klyton…” Annah makes “Squeee!” sound and then kisses you saying how exciting it will be to finally go to the “Big City.” Honestly, you think Annah’s enthusiasm to go to Klyton is a little misplaced even if she wasn’t travelling with a wanted murderer. At least she isn’t bitching anymore though. However, that doesn’t last and she inevitably starts complaining when you insist on staying off the road and sticking to the woods to keep out of sight of any potential person from Teckleville that might be tracking you. “Dunno why you think this makes you more hidden. I found you in the woods.” Annah remarks. “Yeah, well not everyone has the magical ability to find me like you do, now come on and keep it down!” You answer. “You know there are blood stalkers out here and bandits who…” “Will try to rape you. Yes, I know. You’ve only mentioned that three or four times already. What is your preoccupation with getting raped?” “You saying that wouldn’t happen?” “No…I…agh! Look it’s getting dark enough that I can barely see shit in front of me and we probably should just stop for the rest of the night. I’ll see if there’s a suitable tree to sleep in…” “A tree? I’m not sleeping in a tree! It sounds uncomfortable and I could fall out and break my neck!” “It’s safer than you think, you just prop yourself up against the trunk and a large enough branch. It’ll actually be safer than sleeping on the ground. Up in a tree we can at least…” “I’m not sleeping in a fucking tree! I’m hungry, and it’s getting cold! We should build a fire!” You face palm at your situation. The tree thing you’re flexible on, but a fire? That’s potentially asking for trouble. Still, if you make a fire, you’ll hopefully shut Annah up. > No compromise Enough is enough. “Shut the fuck up already and stop being a bitch! Shit!” you yell. “Bitch? You fucking shithead, why don’t you…” Annah starts to say before you interrupt “NO! I’m not fucking finished! You’re gonna listen for a damn change, and don’t think your crying routine is going to work again, because I’m too pissed right now! Look, this is how it’s gonna be…” Annah surprisingly (and reluctantly) shuts up. “We’ll sleep on the ground, but we’re not starting a damn fire! Last thing we need to attract possible attention of Teckleville locals looking for me, or monsters or bandits…you know the ones that apparently just love to rape you in every scenario? If you’re cold, well you’ll just have to be satisfied with my body heat and cuddle up against me.” You say. “You hate cuddling. You always say it feels like you’re being confined.” Annah replies. “Yeah, well I hate a lot of things right now, but I’m willing to make that sacrifice. Now I didn’t address this before, but did you even pack anything useful with you, I notice you’re travelling kind of light.” “I have some money.” “Great. I suppose that will come in useful when we finally get to Klyton. (Sigh) Okay, I brought some food, mostly fruit, and water, so I guess you can have some of that. Don’t eat and drink all of it though…and before you even start, NO I’m not implying anything about your damn weight. I just don’t know how much further it is to Klyton.” “What about you? What are you going to eat?” “Well that’s just one more sacrifice I guess. Really I’ll be fine. Let’s just…let’s just try not to fight much more okay? I’m under a lot of stress right now and it’s not helping either of us. I know I sound at this moment, but deep down for some fucked up reason I’m actually glad you’re here. At least I know you care.” Surprisingly you think you might have gotten through to Annah this time, as she quietly nods her head instead of her usual routine of talking back. She then goes to hug you, which you return. The remainder of the night is pretty quiet in fact. You’re still half paranoid about someone sneaking up on you both, but you never even hear anything out of the ordinary. Predictably Annah does indeed cuddle up next to you during the night. While she sleeps fairly sound, you remain in a half sleep state and waking up periodically. You’ll be glad when you get to Klyton. The next day is fairly mundane until you notice that the woods is beginning to thin out. If you continue walking the way you are going, you’re going to be in the open fields. and if you’re going to march across the open plains, you might as well just walk on the road since you’ll be just as exposed. “Well, looks like no more hiding in the trees.” Annah says. “Looks like. If I was by myself, I’d probably just rest up here at the edge of these woods and walk through the night so as to continue the low profile…but since I know you’re pretty eager to get the hell out of nature’s embrace, we’ll continue along.” “We travelling through those fields?” “Nah, if we’re going to march across the open fields, we might as well just walk on the road since we’ll be just as exposed either way. The road will be easier to traverse as well since that grass looks like it gets knee high.” You and Annah make your way back towards the road and now you’re looking around more than ever. You continue to keep aware of your surroundings by keeping an ear out for various sounds. You still have this idea that you’re suddenly going to hear Teckleville watchmen on horses galloping on your position. “Will you please stop acting so nervous? I doubt if anyone from home is even looking for you anymore and if they are, I hardly think they’re going to go all the way to Klyton. It wasn’t like you killed the blacksmith, it was just Klint.” Annah says. “Yeah well you still aren’t the one that’s potentially going to hang.” You say. “So you keep telling me. Look I think you know I’m just as nervous for other reasons being out here, but I’m trying to stay calm because…well you’re with me and I know you’ll protect me.” “I thought you said I wouldn’t be much help with my little dagger.” “I admit I spoke too harshly. I’m sorry. I know you’d probably kill enough of them giving me a chance to run before they cut you down.” You start to laugh. “Hey, what about helping me like you did with Klint?” you chuckle. “Yeah, I guess I could try…we’ll see how it goes when the time comes. But until then, you acting all jittery and anxious is making me feel the same way, so I’d like it if you could take it down a bit…shit what are those?” Annah says pointing ahead. You see what Annah is talking about. It’s a hanging cage along side the road. You’ve heard of those before. Klyton apparently uses them when the jails are full and the criminal hasn’t done anything bad enough to deserve outright death. So they get put in these cages until they eventually die of starvation, exposure or someone grants the mercy of killing them. Either way they aren’t the city’s problem anymore. Seems like it would be kinder to kill them immediately. “Well at least we know we’re getting pretty close to the city. Besides, if there is anyone inside, they’re going to be locked up in the cages. Just stay away from grabbing reach.” You say. First couple cages you pass are empty. The next one has a decaying smell as you pass, but nobody is in it. You notice on the other side of the road a couple of the cages have bodies in them, but seeing as they aren’t moving, you can only guess you’re probably walking by corpses. At least you think you are. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have any extra water would you?” you suddenly hear one of the slumping figures in the cage say. Before you can even answer, Annah speaks up. “No, and even if we did, we wouldn’t waste it on a dead man.” Annah snaps. “Okay, it was just a question. Sheesh…that’s some girl you got there son. Good luck to ya with that one.” The man says in a way that sounds sympathic. You and Annah press on past the cages. Eventually Klyton is in sight and you both quicken your pace, anxious to get to your destination as night has now fallen. When you get to the city gates, you find them to be heavily guarded and you’re stopped. “Halt, you two don’t look like merchants or anyone else that has a real job. In fact you both look a bit suspicious sneaking about the city at this time of night.” One of the guards says. “Sneaking around? But we’re going through the main gate!” you say. “You giving me lip boy? I’m asking the questions here! We don’t need anymore scum like you in this city!” the guard says and pushes you. You’re smart enough not to start a fight with an armored guard, but you’re starting to wonder if you’re going to even get in the city. “Please sir, we just want to get within the safety of the city. It’s night and we don’t want to get accosted by monsters or bandits that plague the countryside.” Annah says in a pleading voice. “Hmph! Shoulda thought about that before you left wherever it is you came from!” the guard says. “Indeed we wouldn’t have risked leaving our small town sir, but…well you see we are in love and our parents didn’t approve. We had no choice but to flee and get married elsewhere. Klyton was the closest and safest place.” “Disobedient to your parents huh? Now I know you’re not fit for this city!” Annah at this point gets closer to the guard as she spins this tale. “I know we just look like delinquent ragamuffins to you, but we’re just young and lacking options. We’re just simple folks in the scheme of things and we can’t help how we appear right now or how we feel about each other. Yes, we don’t have much money, but my beloved is skilled in the blacksmithing trade. He’s even willing to work as a dung sweeper if he can’t get an apprenticeship and I fully intend on trying to get work as a waitress.” Annah goes back to your side and holds your hand . “All we want to do is start a new life and family together here. Would you really deny us entry when the only thing we’re guilty of is being young and in love?” She says and then kisses you on the cheek. At this point the guard Annah’s been speaking to, wipes his eye. He then puts a hand in his pocket. “(sniffle) Here. Take this. Think of it as a wedding gift.” He says and hands you a few silvers which you take. “Thank you sir.” You say. “It’s nothing. Go inside. (Sniffle) I’m not sure which gods you two worship, but there is a church of Joachim the Pure that’s open all the time. You can probably get married there right now. It’s just two rights and a left from where you go past the city gates. You can also find a cheap inn in the same area. You should have enough.” The guard says still trying to keep it together. As you pass the guard, Annah thanks him and says that you’ll both say a prayer in Joachim’s name for his kindness. When you both get past the city gates and far enough away, you finally say something. “Okay, THAT was some of your best work. Shit, even I was starting to get a little choked up.” You say smiling. “Think so? Thanks! If everyone here is as much of a soft sell as that guard, we’re going to clean up.” “Hopefully. Well we’re finally here. Definitely bigger than I thought, we probably can get better bearings of this place tomorrow during the day. So you want to go find that inn the guard mentioned?” “You mean spend the night together? Why how improper! We aren’t even married!” Annah laughs. You laugh too as the pair of you go seek a room for the night. Well, you’re in a big city now. All you have to do now is figure out how to thrive here. Your mind races with a list of things you have to do. Even with Annah by your side, it’s still going to be overwhelming at first, but you still have hope that you’ll be able to find the fortune and purpose here that you weren’t going to find in Teckleville. > You time passes... Chapter 2E: Partners In Crime Year 17 “Annah, I know how to pick a fucking lock, will you stop bitching? This is for your benefit. Are you even paying attention?” you say. “Yes, I’m fucking paying attention. I’m just getting bored and you’re taking too fucking long. If I wanted that experience I’d just suck your dick.” Annah replies. “Ha fucking ha. There. Got it.” “Finally. Hey you asshole! Why the hell did you slap my hand?” Annah says, hitting you back. “Because if you were paying attention, you’d see there’s a blade trap almost well hidden in the roof of the safe. Had I not been here, you’d be giving me hand jobs with your left hand rather than your right in your foreseeable future.” “You won’t be getting ANY sort of job if you continue to abuse me!” “Continue to…nevermind. Let me just disarm this and we can get the fuck out of here. And pay attention to what I’m doing!” So much for Annah changing when she got to Klyton. You sometimes think you’ve gotten to her and she’ll stop bitching so much, but it’s always just temporary. You really miss working with your sister. While Annah has certainly improved some of her skills she’s ultimately just too damn impatient and lazy for all this and despite her bitching about being the “distraction” during some of your jobs, she relies on it a lot. You figured showing her the more practical and direct aspects of the job, she’d be more appreciative, but this character flaw of bitching non-stop is making you rethink this too. You get the strong impression that she’d rather not help you at all and just would rather reap the benefits. Which at this point might at least be easier on you since you’d be able to work in peace, though if that was the case, why the hell would you need to give her any of it? You’d be better off alone and keep everything. After swiftly disarming the trap, you grab the valuables inside which consists mainly of gold coins and couple pieces of expensive looking jewelry. Not a bad haul. Annah picked a good home to break into even if you would have liked a little more time to case the place first. Having gotten your loot, the pair of you leave as fast as possible. You both stop temporarily just before you get back to your neighborhood. “Hold on, let’s be careful. Don’t really feel like stumbling into any Bloody Talons right now, especially with this stash.” You say. “I thought they were the Crimson Talons.” Annah says. “I dunno, I think that was their old name. Heard something about a change in leadership and apparently the new leader is some sort of psycho. Nearly got into it with a few of them two days ago saying that I better not be working on their turf. Which apparently is practically most of the city according to them.” “Well if we moved to a better neighborhood, we wouldn’t have to sneak about like this and I don’t like living at the Welcome Mat, there are a bunch of whores, drunks, and dregs of the city that live there.” “The Welcome Mat is a shitty place I agree, but we’re less likely to draw attention there. I mean we’re a young couple with no visible means of support. Granted the asshole who runs the place is always bitching about his rent, but given that he’s selling booze without a license in his basement and got whores living in his hotel he’s not likely to turn us in. I mean there is also the militia to worry about and it feels like they’ve been increasing their own patrols in response to the Bloody Talons.” “Pfft, nobody is going to care what we might be doing as long as we’re paying the coin to live wherever we’re choosing to live at and dressing the part” “Maybe, but I prefer that we also save a little of our coin because, who knows when we might need it for a bribe or to get the hell out of Klyton one day.” “What’s the point of stealing shit, if we’re not going to have fun with it?! I’m tired of eating low class food and never getting to wear any of the shinies we take. If I wanted that life, I would have stayed in Teckleville.” “Look, we’ll talk about this later when we’re not out in the open potentially…” “Well what do we have here?” A voice exclaims. You and Annah both turn around to see three men bigger than you. Not by much, but certain enough that three of them are more than you’d be able to handle with just a short sword. In fact you recognize them as the ones that you were just telling Annah about. “Hey, I know you! You’re that shithead we spoke to earlier this week about not working on our turf. What the fuck are you doing here?” one of them says recognizing you as well. “Not working on your turf obviously. I’m not doing anything except…going off with this whore.” You say “WHAT?!” Annah exclaims completely fucking up your excuse. “Hey paid your price, I’m not giving you another coin!” you remark trying to salvage the situation, but Annah is being uncooperative tonight. “I’m not a fucking whore, I had enough of being called that in Teckleville! And I’m not going to pretend to be one, just because you’re scared of these three assholes.” The two Bloody Talons are more amused than angry, but they haven’t lost interest. “Nice try shithead. Now obviously since you tried to fucking lie to us, you HAVE been working on our turf. However, hand over what’s in your pack now and you and your stupid bitch MIGHT walk away unscathed.” The talkative one says. “Stupid bitch? You’re the ones in a dumb ass gang probably giving half of your shit to your boss. I’d say you’re the stupid bitches here.” Annah replies. Going to be one of those nights… “Don’t think I won’t beat the shit out of you AFTER I’m done beating the shit out of your boyfriend here, you mouthy bitch.” the talkative Talon warns. “Oh I can think of better things to do with her mouth.” Another says. “Yeah…you might be right. Maybe we’ll be taking something else along with what’s in your pack.” “You fuckers and your Halfling dicks aren’t going to do shit! Now get the fuck out of here, before my boyfriend pulls out his pistol!” You have no firearm of any kind, but unlike Annah, you know when to take advantage of a cue. So you immediately reach into your clothing, which causes the Bloody Talons to immediately run from your position like idiots. Which is when you take the opportunity to grab Annah’s hand and run the hell out of there as fast as you can. “HEY HE DOESN’T HAVE A GUN!” you hear one of the geniuses shout, but you and Annah don’t look back or stop until you get to the safety of the Welcome Mat and even then you go straight to your room. You lock the door immediately and then you finally speak. “Annah, what the fuck is wrong with you?! We could have been killed!” you exclaim. “I know, that’s why I got us out of that situation by bluffing that you had a gun. I’d think you’d be grateful that I’m so quick on my feet.” You nearly have no words… “Grateful?! I could have gotten us out of that situation a lot easier if you’d just gone along with the whore story!” you say. “And I said I’m not a fucking whore and I’m not going to pretend to be one either! Besides, they weren’t buying that story anyway. My way worked!” Annah replies. “Yeah, and what if they had been a little braver and called the bluff OR shit, one of them had a flintlock of their own?” “Pfft, they’re cowardly gutter scum at heart that’s why they rove in packs and are part of a bullshit gang and did you see how they were dressed? Fucking rags, no way they could even afford a firearm.” You might as well be talking to a brick wall. While you’re trying not to get frothing mad and think of a calm way to explain that now thanks to Annah, you definitely will have the Bloody Talons on your asses, Annah has moved on to taking your pack and emptying the contents on the bed and going through them. You notice she’s putting aside a lot of the contents next to herself. “What’re you doing?” you ask. “I’m taking my share. I figure since I saved our asses tonight, that entitles me to a lot more.” “Saved our asses? I repeat, you nearly got us fucking killed! And on top of that, I had to prevent you from getting your hand chopped off because you were trying to grab shit before checking for traps!” “Why don’t you want me to have nice things?” “What?” “You don’t want me to have nice things! You don’t want me to try to improve my self. You want to keep me dressed in rags, looking like shit and generally being miserable.” “Annah, okay THAT is not even true. I don’t have any control over how you…” “Are you afraid if I start feeling good about myself I’ll start looking for someone better?” “Now you’re just being melodramatic and ridiculous.” “And there you go dismissing my feelings again!” “Annah, if you’re so unhappy and dissatisfied with me, then why are you still around? I mean I’m not twisting your arm and holding you here.” “So I’m an inconvenience to you? I’m starting to wonder if you really love me at all.” You think about your next words and the possible consequences, but then you do it anyway, because you’ve had it. “I’m starting to wonder too, given all the shit you put me through on a daily basis!” Annah’s eyes widen. “Be very careful with your next words to me.” Annah warns. “Fuck that, I’ve tried everything with you and nothing fucking works! You are content on just berating me day in day out! When you aren’t bitching about what I’m doing, you’re finding new stuff to nag me about! I thought maybe things would be different here between us, but I guess not. So since you can’t seem to let go, I’ll do all the work as usual…” At this point you start grabbing all the loot on the bed and putting it into a nearby bag. Then you go to where you keep your “savings” and take some of that out and throw that into the bag as well. You then thrust the bag of valuables into Annah’s hand. “Wha…what are you doing?” Annah asks. “Giving you what you obviously need. Hope you find someone better.” You say and start pushing Annah towards the door who is resisting the whole time. “Hey! Tha…That’s it? Just like that and you’re just fucking kicking me out?! What about the rest of my clothes and belongings?!” “You got more than enough coin to buy all the nice things you ever wanted, and I know you have just enough skill to get by. It’s been fun and I’ll always remember the good times. Bye Annah.” You say and you shove Annah out the door. You expect Annah to bang on the door or at least yell at you, maybe even cry, but that doesn’t happen. You just hear her footsteps walking off. Things between the two of you were always volatile, probably for the best that this ended now. You always thought it would Annah that would eventually leave though; you guess maybe she just needed a little extra shove. Without much else to do and this being a bit of an exhausting event, you go to sleep. When you wake up its midday and feeling refreshed. “Annah, are you…oh right.” You say remembering she’s not here, which still seems odd. You sort of figured that maybe she’d sneak back in or something. Going to be a little weird without her around you think, but life goes on. After all you didn’t expect her to come with you in the first place. You move on to pondering what your plans are today. While you gave most of the stash to Annah, you can easily live on what you have left for a month before you even need to go out again. You figure you’ll ponder your long-term goals after getting something to eat. You take some of your coin and exit your room. As you’re trying to leave the inn, you bump into Randi, the red headed whore that lives in the building. Better than that drunk Joachim priest Virgil asking for a donation again you suppose. “Hey handsome, what’s going on?” she asks a bit flirtatiously. “Nothing, just going to get some food.” you reply. “I see. Where’s your girlfriend?” “Hell if I know, we’re not together any more.” “Is that right? Well, you looking for some company then?” “Eh, I wasn’t planning on it…” “Oh come on, let me satisfy your other appetites. I’ll even give you a discount for your broken heart.” Randi says thrusting her chest out and moving in closer to you. You look at Randi who, as far as whores go isn’t exactly top tier, though it looks like she’s put a little more effort into her job today. Normally you probably wouldn’t give Randi a second look, but it’s not like you have anything better to do and she’s probably going to be cheaper than a girl at an established brothel. > You go with Randi What the hell, moving on is all part of the healing process. “Okay Randi, let’s go.” You say. You go off with Randi back to her room where you have…an interesting time. Actually interesting is an understatement. While you really only have Annah to compare her to, you soon learn why Randi keeps in steady business despite not necessarily being the best looking of whores. Afterwards you spend some of the day seeking out new burglary opportunities, though since you’re a lot lower on coin due to spending some of it on Randi earlier, you engage in a little more pick pocketing. A couple days pass and you have a burning sensation the next time you piss. “Shit.” You exclaim and realize that Randi has left you a reminder of your good time with her. You really should have known better you suppose, but you’re still angry. And you don’t feel any less angry when you bump into her in the hallway. “Hey handsome, you interested in another date with me? I’ll even give you another discount, you look like you’re still in pain.” Randi says. “Pain? Shit yeah I’m in pain. You fucking gave me crotch rot you dumb whore!” “What? Oh I did not. You probably just got the burn. Just go to the apothecary and get yourself the antidote. That’s what other people do.” “Maybe if you’d warned me ahead of time it wouldn’t be fucking necessary!” “I find that when I tell people they change their mind. People are so judgmental about that sort of thing.” “I fucking wonder why, get the hell out of my way disease bag!” “Oh fuck you. I didn’t hear you complaining a few days ago!” You walk past Randi and make a quick trip to the nearest apothecary. Just your luck, you get there and there’s a long line. Probably all there to get cured from the shit they caught from Randi. You wait for a few hours and the line never seems to move which makes sense since there’s only one healer and his assistant working. By the time you start to get closer, the assistant decides to tell everyone that they’re closing for the day. While this seems to come to no surprise to some of the people, and others grumble a bit, but you’re one of the few that begins yelling loudly. “What!? I’ve been waiting fucking hours!” you exclaim. “Apologies sir, but my master is not taking any more business today, he needs to rest like everyone else.” “Well wake him the fuck up! I got a case of dick fire over here and I need the fucking cure!” “Sir. I understand your issues. Look, if you come here first thing in the morning, you can be one of the first to get served.” “What the name of the medicine I need?” “Excuse me sir?” “The medicine! What do I need exactly to cure my fucking dick?” The assistant is a little bewildered by your question, but he answers you and even tells you what it looks like when you ask. You then thank him and leave. The shop closes and you go back to the Welcome Mat (and shoving Virgil aside when he predictably asks you for coin as usual). You wait until the middle of the night and then make your way back to the apothecary, which you easily break into. After a bit of searching you find the medicine you’re looking for and immediately down the stuff. It’s foul, but hopefully it works as intended. Just in case, you grab several more bottles of the stuff. Feeling mildly more relieved of your situation; you exit the shop with the intent of heading back home. And then you feel a fist to the side of your face. This is then followed by a few kicks and then two people picking you up. “So, not working our turf huh? What the hell you doing breaking into a place we’re protecting? Where’s yer gun at? Oh right, you don’t have one” a man says while searching you and taking away your weapons. “Hell, where’s his mouthy bitch at? Still would like to shut her up.” One of the men holding you up says. You can only see out one eye and its dark, but you know immediately that these are the same Bloody Talons you ran into the night you broke up with Annah. The one who just took away your weapons holds your dagger up in a threatening manner. “You’re dead.” He says. “Wait, I can…ugh!” you get out before taking a blade to your body repeatedly. Eventually your body hangs limp and the Bloody Talons drop you to the ground. Then with a final killing blow, one of them jams the dagger into the back of your neck and leave your bloody body to be gnawed on by the alley rats until morning.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 2E: Partners In Crime Year 17 “Annah, I know how to pick a fucking lock, will you stop bitching? This is for your benefit. Are you even paying attention?” you say. “Yes, I’m fucking paying attention. I’m just getting bored and you’re taking too fucking long. If I wanted that experience I’d just suck your dick.” Annah replies. “Ha fucking ha. There. Got it.” “Finally. Hey you asshole! Why the hell did you slap my hand?” Annah says, hitting you back. “Because if you were paying attention, you’d see there’s a blade trap almost well hidden in the roof of the safe. Had I not been here, you’d be giving me hand jobs with your left hand rather than your right in your foreseeable future.” “You won’t be getting ANY sort of job if you continue to abuse me!” “Continue to…nevermind. Let me just disarm this and we can get the fuck out of here. And pay attention to what I’m doing!” So much for Annah changing when she got to Klyton. You sometimes think you’ve gotten to her and she’ll stop bitching so much, but it’s always just temporary. You really miss working with your sister. While Annah has certainly improved some of her skills she’s ultimately just too damn impatient and lazy for all this and despite her bitching about being the “distraction” during some of your jobs, she relies on it a lot. You figured showing her the more practical and direct aspects of the job, she’d be more appreciative, but this character flaw of bitching non-stop is making you rethink this too. You get the strong impression that she’d rather not help you at all and just would rather reap the benefits. Which at this point might at least be easier on you since you’d be able to work in peace, though if that was the case, why the hell would you need to give her any of it? You’d be better off alone and keep everything. After swiftly disarming the trap, you grab the valuables inside which consists mainly of gold coins and couple pieces of expensive looking jewelry. Not a bad haul. Annah picked a good home to break into even if you would have liked a little more time to case the place first. Having gotten your loot, the pair of you leave as fast as possible. You both stop temporarily just before you get back to your neighborhood. “Hold on, let’s be careful. Don’t really feel like stumbling into any Bloody Talons right now, especially with this stash.” You say. “I thought they were the Crimson Talons.” Annah says. “I dunno, I think that was their old name. Heard something about a change in leadership and apparently the new leader is some sort of psycho. Nearly got into it with a few of them two days ago saying that I better not be working on their turf. Which apparently is practically most of the city according to them.” “Well if we moved to a better neighborhood, we wouldn’t have to sneak about like this and I don’t like living at the Welcome Mat, there are a bunch of whores, drunks, and dregs of the city that live there.” “The Welcome Mat is a shitty place I agree, but we’re less likely to draw attention there. I mean we’re a young couple with no visible means of support. Granted the asshole who runs the place is always bitching about his rent, but given that he’s selling booze without a license in his basement and got whores living in his hotel he’s not likely to turn us in. I mean there is also the militia to worry about and it feels like they’ve been increasing their own patrols in response to the Bloody Talons.” “Pfft, nobody is going to care what we might be doing as long as we’re paying the coin to live wherever we’re choosing to live at and dressing the part” “Maybe, but I prefer that we also save a little of our coin because, who knows when we might need it for a bribe or to get the hell out of Klyton one day.” “What’s the point of stealing shit, if we’re not going to have fun with it?! I’m tired of eating low class food and never getting to wear any of the shinies we take. If I wanted that life, I would have stayed in Teckleville.” “Look, we’ll talk about this later when we’re not out in the open potentially…” “Well what do we have here?” A voice exclaims. You and Annah both turn around to see three men bigger than you. Not by much, but certain enough that three of them are more than you’d be able to handle with just a short sword. In fact you recognize them as the ones that you were just telling Annah about. “Hey, I know you! You’re that shithead we spoke to earlier this week about not working on our turf. What the fuck are you doing here?” one of them says recognizing you as well. “Not working on your turf obviously. I’m not doing anything except…going off with this whore.” You say “WHAT?!” Annah exclaims completely fucking up your excuse. “Hey paid your price, I’m not giving you another coin!” you remark trying to salvage the situation, but Annah is being uncooperative tonight. “I’m not a fucking whore, I had enough of being called that in Teckleville! And I’m not going to pretend to be one, just because you’re scared of these three assholes.” The two Bloody Talons are more amused than angry, but they haven’t lost interest. “Nice try shithead. Now obviously since you tried to fucking lie to us, you HAVE been working on our turf. However, hand over what’s in your pack now and you and your stupid bitch MIGHT walk away unscathed.” The talkative one says. “Stupid bitch? You’re the ones in a dumb ass gang probably giving half of your shit to your boss. I’d say you’re the stupid bitches here.” Annah replies. Going to be one of those nights… “Don’t think I won’t beat the shit out of you AFTER I’m done beating the shit out of your boyfriend here, you mouthy bitch.” the talkative Talon warns. “Oh I can think of better things to do with her mouth.” Another says. “Yeah…you might be right. Maybe we’ll be taking something else along with what’s in your pack.” “You fuckers and your Halfling dicks aren’t going to do shit! Now get the fuck out of here, before my boyfriend pulls out his pistol!” You have no firearm of any kind, but unlike Annah, you know when to take advantage of a cue. So you immediately reach into your clothing, which causes the Bloody Talons to immediately run from your position like idiots. Which is when you take the opportunity to grab Annah’s hand and run the hell out of there as fast as you can. “HEY HE DOESN’T HAVE A GUN!” you hear one of the geniuses shout, but you and Annah don’t look back or stop until you get to the safety of the Welcome Mat and even then you go straight to your room. You lock the door immediately and then you finally speak. “Annah, what the fuck is wrong with you?! We could have been killed!” you exclaim. “I know, that’s why I got us out of that situation by bluffing that you had a gun. I’d think you’d be grateful that I’m so quick on my feet.” You nearly have no words… “Grateful?! I could have gotten us out of that situation a lot easier if you’d just gone along with the whore story!” you say. “And I said I’m not a fucking whore and I’m not going to pretend to be one either! Besides, they weren’t buying that story anyway. My way worked!” Annah replies. “Yeah, and what if they had been a little braver and called the bluff OR shit, one of them had a flintlock of their own?” “Pfft, they’re cowardly gutter scum at heart that’s why they rove in packs and are part of a bullshit gang and did you see how they were dressed? Fucking rags, no way they could even afford a firearm.” You might as well be talking to a brick wall. While you’re trying not to get frothing mad and think of a calm way to explain that now thanks to Annah, you definitely will have the Bloody Talons on your asses, Annah has moved on to taking your pack and emptying the contents on the bed and going through them. You notice she’s putting aside a lot of the contents next to herself. “What’re you doing?” you ask. “I’m taking my share. I figure since I saved our asses tonight, that entitles me to a lot more.” “Saved our asses? I repeat, you nearly got us fucking killed! And on top of that, I had to prevent you from getting your hand chopped off because you were trying to grab shit before checking for traps!” “Why don’t you want me to have nice things?” “What?” “You don’t want me to have nice things! You don’t want me to try to improve my self. You want to keep me dressed in rags, looking like shit and generally being miserable.” “Annah, okay THAT is not even true. I don’t have any control over how you…” “Are you afraid if I start feeling good about myself I’ll start looking for someone better?” “Now you’re just being melodramatic and ridiculous.” “And there you go dismissing my feelings again!” “Annah, if you’re so unhappy and dissatisfied with me, then why are you still around? I mean I’m not twisting your arm and holding you here.” “So I’m an inconvenience to you? I’m starting to wonder if you really love me at all.” You think about your next words and the possible consequences, but then you do it anyway, because you’ve had it. “I’m starting to wonder too, given all the shit you put me through on a daily basis!” Annah’s eyes widen. “Be very careful with your next words to me.” Annah warns. “Fuck that, I’ve tried everything with you and nothing fucking works! You are content on just berating me day in day out! When you aren’t bitching about what I’m doing, you’re finding new stuff to nag me about! I thought maybe things would be different here between us, but I guess not. So since you can’t seem to let go, I’ll do all the work as usual…” At this point you start grabbing all the loot on the bed and putting it into a nearby bag. Then you go to where you keep your “savings” and take some of that out and throw that into the bag as well. You then thrust the bag of valuables into Annah’s hand. “Wha…what are you doing?” Annah asks. “Giving you what you obviously need. Hope you find someone better.” You say and start pushing Annah towards the door who is resisting the whole time. “Hey! Tha…That’s it? Just like that and you’re just fucking kicking me out?! What about the rest of my clothes and belongings?!” “You got more than enough coin to buy all the nice things you ever wanted, and I know you have just enough skill to get by. It’s been fun and I’ll always remember the good times. Bye Annah.” You say and you shove Annah out the door. You expect Annah to bang on the door or at least yell at you, maybe even cry, but that doesn’t happen. You just hear her footsteps walking off. Things between the two of you were always volatile, probably for the best that this ended now. You always thought it would Annah that would eventually leave though; you guess maybe she just needed a little extra shove. Without much else to do and this being a bit of an exhausting event, you go to sleep. When you wake up its midday and feeling refreshed. “Annah, are you…oh right.” You say remembering she’s not here, which still seems odd. You sort of figured that maybe she’d sneak back in or something. Going to be a little weird without her around you think, but life goes on. After all you didn’t expect her to come with you in the first place. You move on to pondering what your plans are today. While you gave most of the stash to Annah, you can easily live on what you have left for a month before you even need to go out again. You figure you’ll ponder your long-term goals after getting something to eat. You take some of your coin and exit your room. As you’re trying to leave the inn, you bump into Randi, the red headed whore that lives in the building. Better than that drunk Joachim priest Virgil asking for a donation again you suppose. “Hey handsome, what’s going on?” she asks a bit flirtatiously. “Nothing, just going to get some food.” you reply. “I see. Where’s your girlfriend?” “Hell if I know, we’re not together any more.” “Is that right? Well, you looking for some company then?” “Eh, I wasn’t planning on it…” “Oh come on, let me satisfy your other appetites. I’ll even give you a discount for your broken heart.” Randi says thrusting her chest out and moving in closer to you. You look at Randi who, as far as whores go isn’t exactly top tier, though it looks like she’s put a little more effort into her job today. Normally you probably wouldn’t give Randi a second look, but it’s not like you have anything better to do and she’s probably going to be cheaper than a girl at an established brothel. > You decline her invitation Maybe you’re no longer with Annah, but if you’re going to start fucking whores, you could still do better than Randi. “No thanks, I’m good.” You say. “Hm, I understand. Still holding a candle for her huh? Y’know, anytime I saw you two together she was bitching at you. If you ask me, you seem like you’re better off anyway.” Randi says. “Well nobody asked you Randi, look just leave me alone, you aren’t selling anything I’m interested in.” Randi now looks offended. “Oh fuck you asshole. You think you’re better than me? Your girlfriend obviously didn’t think so since she wised up and left your ass.” Randi says. “I broke up with her, you presumptuous whore.” You say as she walks away waving a dismissing hand back at you. You leave the Welcome Mat and go get yourself some food and then spend the rest of the day seeking out new burglary opportunities. Normally you would have spent the rest of the day doing the whole distract and con jobs with Annah, but without her around now, you’re content on focusing no longer having to directly deal with people. You spend the next few weeks working by yourself and generally getting by. You’ve manage to nearly build up what you gave to Annah. During this time you’re also mainly avoiding the Bloody Talons (along with the Klyton Militia) who are a little more aware of you now thanks to that night Annah mouthed off to them. Fucking Annah… While you’ve generally been having a fine time without her constant bitching, you’d be lying if you said you didn’t still think about her. She was fun in a lot of physical ways, it was just about everything else she did that made her less fun. You’re still a little surprised that she hasn’t popped up again on your doorstep. You thought maybe she would have by now. The fact that she hasn’t does give you a little concern that maybe the Bloody Talons got a hold of her (or some similar fate) but if something bad has befallen her, there’s not much you can do about it and it’s certainly not your fault. Then again you did throw her out… “Bah, stop thinking about her. You’re better off. She probably went back home a lot richer than I am right now.” You mutter to yourself. As you’re trying to put the thoughts of your ex out of your mind, you start wondering about the possibility of leaving Klyton yourself after you acquire a little more. Besides the Bloody Talons potentially giving you grief, they’ve also been terrorizing the city with their actions, which means the Klyton Militia has been cracking down harder on everything. Part of you wonders if maybe you should just move on from this city, but you really loathe the idea of travelling again and you aren’t sure where you’d go. Hessla maybe? While you’re pondering your possible future you bump into Virgil as you’re stepping in the Welcome Mat. “Heeeeey youngster! (hic!) You got any spare….coppers fer the faith?” Virgil asks. The odor of Virgil’s rancid breath hits you full force. You immediately cover your nose and mouth. You thought the followers of Joachim were supposed to be into purity and restraint. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Joachim was the god of alcohol and hopeless drunks based on this guy’s behavior and actions. “Shit, Virgil. When the hell was the last time you washed? You fucking smell worse than a troll’s ass. Granted I’ve never smelled a troll’s ass, but I think it’s a safe bet you smell worse than one.” You say. “Guess again. Hahahahahahaha! (hic) So can ya spare a copper?” “No and I told you to stop bothering me Virgil! Don’t you have a collection box you can pilfer booze money from?” you shout. “Yeah…but no…but I got some (hic) news…” “Yeah, I already know about Joachim’s blessed light. You tried to tell me about it the first time I came here and you nearly threw up on me in the process.” “I did? Geez, sorry son…but this is different! (hic) Some…somebody…” “Somebody what?” “Somebody was lookin’ fer ya.” Well that peaked your interest. “Oh?” you answer. “Yeah…(hic) Yeah, this big guy. I mean not like ogre big, but just human big ya know? Old guy too. (hic) I mean not as old as that asshole who own this place, but probably around my age.” Virgil says. “Well that’s still fucking old then, aren’t you like seventy?” “Fuck you. I’ll have you know I’m in my forties…I think…yeah…” “Okay, so big guy in his forties was looking for me. What did he want?” Of course NOW Virgil decides to be uncooperative. “No! No! Fuck you, I’m not tellin’ you shit now. (hic) Who…who…what do you think I am some kinda asshole fer you to abuse? Callin’ me seventy fuckin’ years old. I oughta kick yer ass in the name of Joachim! Yer lucky I’m a man of faith…(hic)” At this point Virgil mumbles and stumbles away still mumbling and swearing. You suppose you could always ask him again later when he’s feeling less feisty. He will have likely forgotten all about your so-called insult later, of course he probably will have forgotten about the guy looking for you too. As you head back to your room, you ponder who he could have been talking about. Your dad? Dad’s not a big guy though and you honestly doubt if he would bother to come look for you. Might have been one of those Bloody Talon assholes, though honestly you’re a bit surprised that they haven’t shown up here before. Other than those possibilities, you’re drawing a blank of who might be looking for you. It’s a little concerning though. You’ll just remain alert and keep an eye out this guy looking for you. Remain on your guard too, since you still don’t know if this man means you harm or not. Hopefully Virgil can tell you something later. For now though you decide to get some sleep after your long night of thievery. As your lids get heavier, you think on where you could ply your trade with a little more ease and a lot more loot. The rich areas are well patrolled, the government district is well patrolled, the merchant district is well patrolled and has Bloody Talons running about, and the poor areas are definitely Bloody Talon territory and the folks don’t have shit. It suddenly occurs to you that you’ve never really tried the university district of the city. Might be worth a look, after all it should be filled with stupid rich kids not aware of their surroundings and the Talons don’t seem to go running around there, so there might be less heat overall. You wake up midday. After getting yourself ready for today’s endeavors, you knock on Virgil’s door, but there is no answer. He’s either still asleep or he’s out collecting donations for Joachim. Probably the latter considering you didn’t contribute to his booze fund. You leave the Welcome Mat Inn, though a little more cautiously than usual. Nobody seems to be approaching or giving you suspicious looks though. Still, wishing to keep a low profile, you stick to the back streets as much as possible and eventually when you get to the better part of town, you catch a coach for your remaining trip to the university. By the time you arrive, the day is beginning to end, but you soon find that the university is still fairly active. After a few hours of just scouting and walking around, it’s much like you figured. A lot of scholarly types with their noses in books and rich kids that do a lot of partying. The dorms have security, but oddly not as much as one might think. You find that despite being dressed in your lower class clothing, nobody is really giving you a second glance. It might be due to your youth though; you probably just look like a struggling student. Wasn’t like your dad was exactly rich when he attended this place either. It occurs to you how strange it is to be at the university at all. You never thought you’d ever “attend” your dad’s old place of higher learning. You’re sure at one time he had hopes you would, but it probably wasn’t under these circumstances. As you’re having these inner reflections, you see a group of people hanging around laughing and generally having their attention focused on a little black and white curly haired dog, which is enjoying the attention. What gains your attention however is you recognize one of these people. It’s Annah! Her hair is fixed up and she’s dressed like she’s the daughter of some rich nobleman. Looks like she put all that loot you gave her and indeed bought herself something nice and apparently she’s bought a dog as well. You never knew she wanted one of those. Annah hasn’t seen you, but that’s probably because she’s busy picking everyone’s pockets while they’re all distracted and laughing. Or rather she’s trying to, the problem is the dog moves around enough that people are constantly changing the direction of where they’re looking. You shake your head and move towards the group. “Excuse me, I’m new here and I’m looking for the medical school.” You say. Annah’s eyes instantly go wide and then they narrow with a “Get the fuck out of here.” look. Meanwhile her little dog has also seen you and unlike with everyone else, it has decided to growl and give a little bark before running behind someone’s leg. “Oh, sure it’s just past those buildings over there.” Someone answers. “Over there? I just came from over there and I didn’t see it.” You reply. “No, over to the west. There’s a big statue. You can’t miss it.” “The big statue with the sword? I was over that way too and still didn’t see it.” “No, that’s on the east side, I’m talking about the west side. There’s a statue of a physician wearing a plague mask.” “Can’t say I’ve seen that. Where did you say it was again?” “The west side! The west!” “Okay, calm down! I was just asking where the medical school is and you’re giving me directions to a statue.” “I’m not give….argh.” “Here let me try…” a girl says stepping in to explain. You manage to keep up this idiot charade for quite awhile completely exasperating the entire group to the point where several of them are calling you a retard and don’t know how the hell you’re even breathing, let alone getting in this university. Meanwhile Annah realizes what you’re doing and manages to easily pick everyone’s pockets while they’re focused on you. She then takes off with her dog. “Oh wait, I’m supposed to go to the school of magic, not medicine. Duh. Apologies.” You say trying not to laugh while everyone calls you names. As you walk away you decide to call it a night. While you didn’t really engage in any lucrative opportunities yourself, you’re sort of glad to learn that Annah is alive and well. You suppose you do miss her a bit. In any case, you decide that the university district might be the place to start plying your trade since the militia patrols are infrequent and the Bloody Talon assholes aren’t around here. Of course that might mean bumping into Annah again so that’s definitely a potential drawback, but it’s still a big place and she doesn’t have some claim on it. You’ll try to stay out of her way though if you happen to see her. Over the next few days you start making your routine visits to the university. You find it particularly easy to just go into the dorms and start pilfering things. These students have more money than a sense of security it seems. And the actual university security must be everyone that tried out for the Klyton militia and failed miserably. After a week of looting the male dorms you decide to change it up and move on to the female dorms. You’ll have to be more stealthy considering you can’t just wander about as freely in there, but you’ve been doing this long enough now that you’re confident that you shouldn’t have too many problems. Fortunately there are always a lot of parties going on and this weekend there is a big one that everyone is supposed to be excited to go to, so you figure that’s the best time to strike. After some stealthy moves you get in and begin rummaging through empty rooms. You’re doing fairly well until you get to your fifth room and as you’re going through one of the drawers you suddenly hear a little growl. “I KNEW you were fucking stalking me! Get out! Get the fuck out of my room!” Annah suddenly shouts and hits you in the head with a shoe. You have no idea where she was hiding, you thought you were pretty observant and careful. “Ow! Your room?” you say and begin blocking her attacks. “Yes! This is my fucking room! Checkers attack!” Annah commands and you feel her fluffy hound viciously bite you on the ankle. “Fuck! Little shit!” you say and kick the beast off of you causing it to yelp and hide behind Annah though still growling. “You fucking asshole! You kicked my dog!” “You told it to attack me! And how the hell is this your room, since when are you in college?” “What’s it to you? What? You didn’t think I could make it on my own did you?” “Well…” “You didn’t! I knew it! You’ve never supported me! Well as you can see I’m doing just fine without you, better in fact!” “Oh sure, that’s why I had to help you last week distracting those idiots you were trying to pick pocket.” “I was doing just fine with that! So why the fuck are you here anyway? You trying to get back with me? Because if you are, that ship has sailed a long time ago the moment you threw me out! Now stop stalking me and get out before I call security!” > You try to explain yourself As usual Annah’s overreacting and you just need to calm her down. “Annah, if you could just calm down a fucking second, I’m not fucking stalking you! I happen to…” you start to say before she interrupts. “HELP THERE’S A RAPIST IN MY ROOM! HELP! HELP!” Annah screams. “Annah! Are you fucking kidding me?!” Annah doesn’t stop screaming though and then her dog starts barking again. This causes you to try to shut her up by grabbing her, but this just makes things worse as she begins to struggle and hit you while continuing to scream. Then on top of that, her dog bites your leg again. Realizing that she’s in no mood to listen to reason and is just determined to get you out of here, you release her and shake her mutt off your leg and turn to leave. Before you get out the door though she throws something at you which hits you in the head pretty hard. “Fuck.” You utter and stumble out the door. “I hope I cracked your fucking skull RAPIST!” Annah continues to shout. You stagger as fast as you can out of the dorm, but thanks to the blow to your head, you’re feeling pretty dizzy. Annah’s shouting also drew the attention of the few others that were currently in the dorm. The fact that she screamed rape doesn’t help as now every other woman in the place is screaming too. You don’t get far from the dorm when security shows up. Any other time security isn’t a problem around here, but when several women are screaming rapist they come heavy. A gunshot is heard as you’re trying to flee causing you to instinctively duck, though due to your dizziness, you end up tripping and falling. You manage to get back up and then another gunshot rings out. This one unfortunately hitting you in the back. You fall back down to the ground and don’t get up again. If you were still alive, you probably wouldn’t have found it surprising that Annah cried over you for weeks apologizing that she got you killed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe you’re no longer with Annah, but if you’re going to start fucking whores, you could still do better than Randi. “No thanks, I’m good.” You say. “Hm, I understand. Still holding a candle for her huh? Y’know, anytime I saw you two together she was bitching at you. If you ask me, you seem like you’re better off anyway.” Randi says. “Well nobody asked you Randi, look just leave me alone, you aren’t selling anything I’m interested in.” Randi now looks offended. “Oh fuck you asshole. You think you’re better than me? Your girlfriend obviously didn’t think so since she wised up and left your ass.” Randi says. “I broke up with her, you presumptuous whore.” You say as she walks away waving a dismissing hand back at you. You leave the Welcome Mat and go get yourself some food and then spend the rest of the day seeking out new burglary opportunities. Normally you would have spent the rest of the day doing the whole distract and con jobs with Annah, but without her around now, you’re content on focusing no longer having to directly deal with people. You spend the next few weeks working by yourself and generally getting by. You’ve manage to nearly build up what you gave to Annah. During this time you’re also mainly avoiding the Bloody Talons (along with the Klyton Militia) who are a little more aware of you now thanks to that night Annah mouthed off to them. Fucking Annah… While you’ve generally been having a fine time without her constant bitching, you’d be lying if you said you didn’t still think about her. She was fun in a lot of physical ways, it was just about everything else she did that made her less fun. You’re still a little surprised that she hasn’t popped up again on your doorstep. You thought maybe she would have by now. The fact that she hasn’t does give you a little concern that maybe the Bloody Talons got a hold of her (or some similar fate) but if something bad has befallen her, there’s not much you can do about it and it’s certainly not your fault. Then again you did throw her out… “Bah, stop thinking about her. You’re better off. She probably went back home a lot richer than I am right now.” You mutter to yourself. As you’re trying to put the thoughts of your ex out of your mind, you start wondering about the possibility of leaving Klyton yourself after you acquire a little more. Besides the Bloody Talons potentially giving you grief, they’ve also been terrorizing the city with their actions, which means the Klyton Militia has been cracking down harder on everything. Part of you wonders if maybe you should just move on from this city, but you really loathe the idea of travelling again and you aren’t sure where you’d go. Hessla maybe? While you’re pondering your possible future you bump into Virgil as you’re stepping in the Welcome Mat. “Heeeeey youngster! (hic!) You got any spare….coppers fer the faith?” Virgil asks. The odor of Virgil’s rancid breath hits you full force. You immediately cover your nose and mouth. You thought the followers of Joachim were supposed to be into purity and restraint. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think Joachim was the god of alcohol and hopeless drunks based on this guy’s behavior and actions. “Shit, Virgil. When the hell was the last time you washed? You fucking smell worse than a troll’s ass. Granted I’ve never smelled a troll’s ass, but I think it’s a safe bet you smell worse than one.” You say. “Guess again. Hahahahahahaha! (hic) So can ya spare a copper?” “No and I told you to stop bothering me Virgil! Don’t you have a collection box you can pilfer booze money from?” you shout. “Yeah…but no…but I got some (hic) news…” “Yeah, I already know about Joachim’s blessed light. You tried to tell me about it the first time I came here and you nearly threw up on me in the process.” “I did? Geez, sorry son…but this is different! (hic) Some…somebody…” “Somebody what?” “Somebody was lookin’ fer ya.” Well that peaked your interest. “Oh?” you answer. “Yeah…(hic) Yeah, this big guy. I mean not like ogre big, but just human big ya know? Old guy too. (hic) I mean not as old as that asshole who own this place, but probably around my age.” Virgil says. “Well that’s still fucking old then, aren’t you like seventy?” “Fuck you. I’ll have you know I’m in my forties…I think…yeah…” “Okay, so big guy in his forties was looking for me. What did he want?” Of course NOW Virgil decides to be uncooperative. “No! No! Fuck you, I’m not tellin’ you shit now. (hic) Who…who…what do you think I am some kinda asshole fer you to abuse? Callin’ me seventy fuckin’ years old. I oughta kick yer ass in the name of Joachim! Yer lucky I’m a man of faith…(hic)” At this point Virgil mumbles and stumbles away still mumbling and swearing. You suppose you could always ask him again later when he’s feeling less feisty. He will have likely forgotten all about your so-called insult later, of course he probably will have forgotten about the guy looking for you too. As you head back to your room, you ponder who he could have been talking about. Your dad? Dad’s not a big guy though and you honestly doubt if he would bother to come look for you. Might have been one of those Bloody Talon assholes, though honestly you’re a bit surprised that they haven’t shown up here before. Other than those possibilities, you’re drawing a blank of who might be looking for you. It’s a little concerning though. You’ll just remain alert and keep an eye out this guy looking for you. Remain on your guard too, since you still don’t know if this man means you harm or not. Hopefully Virgil can tell you something later. For now though you decide to get some sleep after your long night of thievery. As your lids get heavier, you think on where you could ply your trade with a little more ease and a lot more loot. The rich areas are well patrolled, the government district is well patrolled, the merchant district is well patrolled and has Bloody Talons running about, and the poor areas are definitely Bloody Talon territory and the folks don’t have shit. It suddenly occurs to you that you’ve never really tried the university district of the city. Might be worth a look, after all it should be filled with stupid rich kids not aware of their surroundings and the Talons don’t seem to go running around there, so there might be less heat overall. You wake up midday. After getting yourself ready for today’s endeavors, you knock on Virgil’s door, but there is no answer. He’s either still asleep or he’s out collecting donations for Joachim. Probably the latter considering you didn’t contribute to his booze fund. You leave the Welcome Mat Inn, though a little more cautiously than usual. Nobody seems to be approaching or giving you suspicious looks though. Still, wishing to keep a low profile, you stick to the back streets as much as possible and eventually when you get to the better part of town, you catch a coach for your remaining trip to the university. By the time you arrive, the day is beginning to end, but you soon find that the university is still fairly active. After a few hours of just scouting and walking around, it’s much like you figured. A lot of scholarly types with their noses in books and rich kids that do a lot of partying. The dorms have security, but oddly not as much as one might think. You find that despite being dressed in your lower class clothing, nobody is really giving you a second glance. It might be due to your youth though; you probably just look like a struggling student. Wasn’t like your dad was exactly rich when he attended this place either. It occurs to you how strange it is to be at the university at all. You never thought you’d ever “attend” your dad’s old place of higher learning. You’re sure at one time he had hopes you would, but it probably wasn’t under these circumstances. As you’re having these inner reflections, you see a group of people hanging around laughing and generally having their attention focused on a little black and white curly haired dog, which is enjoying the attention. What gains your attention however is you recognize one of these people. It’s Annah! Her hair is fixed up and she’s dressed like she’s the daughter of some rich nobleman. Looks like she put all that loot you gave her and indeed bought herself something nice and apparently she’s bought a dog as well. You never knew she wanted one of those. Annah hasn’t seen you, but that’s probably because she’s busy picking everyone’s pockets while they’re all distracted and laughing. Or rather she’s trying to, the problem is the dog moves around enough that people are constantly changing the direction of where they’re looking. You shake your head and move towards the group. “Excuse me, I’m new here and I’m looking for the medical school.” You say. Annah’s eyes instantly go wide and then they narrow with a “Get the fuck out of here.” look. Meanwhile her little dog has also seen you and unlike with everyone else, it has decided to growl and give a little bark before running behind someone’s leg. “Oh, sure it’s just past those buildings over there.” Someone answers. “Over there? I just came from over there and I didn’t see it.” You reply. “No, over to the west. There’s a big statue. You can’t miss it.” “The big statue with the sword? I was over that way too and still didn’t see it.” “No, that’s on the east side, I’m talking about the west side. There’s a statue of a physician wearing a plague mask.” “Can’t say I’ve seen that. Where did you say it was again?” “The west side! The west!” “Okay, calm down! I was just asking where the medical school is and you’re giving me directions to a statue.” “I’m not give….argh.” “Here let me try…” a girl says stepping in to explain. You manage to keep up this idiot charade for quite awhile completely exasperating the entire group to the point where several of them are calling you a retard and don’t know how the hell you’re even breathing, let alone getting in this university. Meanwhile Annah realizes what you’re doing and manages to easily pick everyone’s pockets while they’re focused on you. She then takes off with her dog. “Oh wait, I’m supposed to go to the school of magic, not medicine. Duh. Apologies.” You say trying not to laugh while everyone calls you names. As you walk away you decide to call it a night. While you didn’t really engage in any lucrative opportunities yourself, you’re sort of glad to learn that Annah is alive and well. You suppose you do miss her a bit. In any case, you decide that the university district might be the place to start plying your trade since the militia patrols are infrequent and the Bloody Talon assholes aren’t around here. Of course that might mean bumping into Annah again so that’s definitely a potential drawback, but it’s still a big place and she doesn’t have some claim on it. You’ll try to stay out of her way though if you happen to see her. Over the next few days you start making your routine visits to the university. You find it particularly easy to just go into the dorms and start pilfering things. These students have more money than a sense of security it seems. And the actual university security must be everyone that tried out for the Klyton militia and failed miserably. After a week of looting the male dorms you decide to change it up and move on to the female dorms. You’ll have to be more stealthy considering you can’t just wander about as freely in there, but you’ve been doing this long enough now that you’re confident that you shouldn’t have too many problems. Fortunately there are always a lot of parties going on and this weekend there is a big one that everyone is supposed to be excited to go to, so you figure that’s the best time to strike. After some stealthy moves you get in and begin rummaging through empty rooms. You’re doing fairly well until you get to your fifth room and as you’re going through one of the drawers you suddenly hear a little growl. “I KNEW you were fucking stalking me! Get out! Get the fuck out of my room!” Annah suddenly shouts and hits you in the head with a shoe. You have no idea where she was hiding, you thought you were pretty observant and careful. “Ow! Your room?” you say and begin blocking her attacks. “Yes! This is my fucking room! Checkers attack!” Annah commands and you feel her fluffy hound viciously bite you on the ankle. “Fuck! Little shit!” you say and kick the beast off of you causing it to yelp and hide behind Annah though still growling. “You fucking asshole! You kicked my dog!” “You told it to attack me! And how the hell is this your room, since when are you in college?” “What’s it to you? What? You didn’t think I could make it on my own did you?” “Well…” “You didn’t! I knew it! You’ve never supported me! Well as you can see I’m doing just fine without you, better in fact!” “Oh sure, that’s why I had to help you last week distracting those idiots you were trying to pick pocket.” “I was doing just fine with that! So why the fuck are you here anyway? You trying to get back with me? Because if you are, that ship has sailed a long time ago the moment you threw me out! Now stop stalking me and get out before I call security!” > You just leave When Annah is like this, she’s just going to keep on, and since she’s obviously managed to fool people into thinking that she’s a registered student here, you’re at a disadvantage if she starts causing trouble. Best to just leave. You hold up your hands and bow your head. “Alright, alright, you win. I’ll go. You won’t see me anymore. Didn’t mean to intrude and I’m glad you’re doing well for yourself and not laying dead somewhere. I really mean that.” You say and back off. Annah just sniffs at you with a scowl while petting Checkers in her arms. You leave the dorm with haste as well as the campus. Then its trip back to “home sweet home.” You save your coin and walk back tonight, part of that walk involves thinking about Annah. You sort of figured you’d bump into her again, maybe on some level you might have even wanted to, but you didn’t expect it to be like that. You’re guessing she’s been lying about being in college, but it has to be more than that if she’s actually living in one of the dorms. You remember your dad saying he lived in one for a while and how it was a big hassle to get a room in one. You can only think that she stole someone’s identity and maybe some forgery was involved. You suppose she could have paid someone to forge something or maybe they just don’t bother checking the records very close anymore. In any case, she’s apparently got a sweet set up for however long it lasts. Sort of wish you’d thought of something like that. You guess you under-estimated her resourcefulness. “Why the hell wasn’t she suggesting this shit when we were together, instead of bitching all the time? Things might have…ugh, fuck it.” You mutter. You get home to the Welcome Mat and bump into Trobart, the crusty owner of the place. He gives you a dirty look like he gives you all the time. “Hey you thieving asshole, I hope you stole enough to make rent this month because I’m raising it.” He suddenly says. “What? Why?” you respond. “Because fuck you that’s why. You’re not special, it’s going up for everyone. Speaking of not being special, I’m not your fucking personal secretary, so if you got lowlifes looking for you again, don’t expect me to pass along another message!” “Message? What message?” “Some big guy probably in his forties or fifties, with a bushy beard, shaved head and weathered face came in and started asking everyone about you like he was the fucking Klyton Militia, put everyone on fucking edge.” “Was he armed or something?” “No he wasn’t fucking armed, at least not openly, but he was big and asking questions. Pretty sure you know that the folks here don’t want that shit and I especially don’t want it! I swear if you bring trouble here, I’m throwing your ass out!” “Yeah yeah got it.” You say trying not to be excessively dismissive. “In any case, the fucker said he was carrying an important message for you from your family and that it’s very urgent that you meet him at the Raggedy Man Inn.” “That’s it?” “Yeah that’s fucking it.” “Okay, thanks.” Trobart shakes his head at you and moves on while you head back to your room. Along the way, you bump into Virgil who you haven’t seen in a long time and were looking for, but now that Trobart’s given you the info… “Heeeeey you…” Virgil starts to say. “Lost your chance Virgil, get out of my way.” You say and shove him aside causing him to fall. You shut your door, ignoring Virgil’s cursing and pondering this new information you’ve been given. Well this just keeps getting weirder. All you know about the Raggedy Man Inn is that it’s in a worse part of Klyton than even you stay at. If this guy is some sort of courier, surely he already knows where to find you, especially if this is an urgent message from your family. And you can’t begin to know what that might be if true. And why the hell wouldn’t he just leave the message here? Unless it’s something he has to deliver personally. Part of you wants to just head to the Raggedy Man Inn to confront this person once and for all, but all of this sounds so damn suspicious that you can’t imagine going there would do you any good other than getting caught in a trap. Bloody Talons, pissed off ex, and some mysterious asshole looking for you, maybe its just time to leave Klyton completely. You really hate having to travel again though. Maybe you just need to find a better place to live. You’ll think more on this tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and you go back to the university to ply your trade without any incident this time. You don’t see Annah thankfully, but you’ve been keeping away from the female dorms and any popular gathering spots since that seems to be how she’s working the place. You’ve actually taken an interest in sneaking into the medical school and stealing various drugs lying around. While it’s not exactly an area you’ve been into before, you’re fairly certain there’s a market in selling typically unavailable drugs (and more reliable). You keep up your usual caution and after about a week, nobody is trying to tell you that some guy is looking for you anymore. You end up wondering if it was some message from your family after all. You’ve also made a nice profit from your dabbling in the drug trade. You even managed to perhaps get the Bloody Talons off your back since you sold to a lone Talon who seemed agreeable to the idea that maybe he could convince others to leave you alone if you managed to get more of the stuff. (You still aren’t allowed to work on their turf though) With things going well you continue with your life a little more relaxed. And while you’re coming back from the university one night… No sooner have you opened the door, when a hand strongly grips your hand and yanks you inside. You feel a foot trip you and you go plunging face first into the floor and hear the door being shut behind you. “Now hol…” you start to say before you feel a boot kicking you in the side of the head. “Stop talking, I don’t want to hear your voice. This has to happen.” You hear a voice say. You manage to roll over and see a muscular older man with a beard standing over you with a very large knife. This is the man that was looking for you. “Who…” you start to say again before the man descends on top of your body and punches you in the face with his free hand. “I said shut up! I thought about this. I thought about the pros and cons for a long time. The right and wrong. And ultimately it all comes back to justice.” The man says. You never put it together based on the vague descriptions by other people before, but you know who this man is. He’s Klint’s father. “You took away my son and not only did you escape, but I see you merely plying your criminal ways here too. I could have easily told the Klyton militia about you, but no, I want to perform this justice myself. Not just for my son you murdered, but for ALL those you’ve hurt!” he shouts. “Checkers attack!” you hear and this is followed by growling. “AGH! Shit! Get off!” Klint’s father shouts as Annah’s dog has once again proven to be a vicious ankle biter. You have no idea when or why Annah was following you, but you’re glad she did. (And a testament to her stealth skills again, because you never even knew she was) Taking advantage of the distraction, you grab Klint’s father’s wrist and wrestle the knife from his grip. The man is strong for his age, but between you, Checkers and even Annah hitting him in the head with a blackjack, you manage to disarm him and slide out from underneath. “Fucking bitch!” KF shouts, getting in an upright position, kicking Checkers off of his leg and slapping Annah at the same time. “I remember you too, you fucking whore. You can join your…Urk!” KF says before you interrupt him by stabbing him in the back. He clumsily punches at you by flailing his arms backwards and even hits you in the face, but you don’t stop, you pull out the dagger and stab him again. And again, and again, and again, until he’s lost his strength to even stand anymore. And then with all your strength you sink the blade in the back of his damned neck severing his spinal column from the rest of his head and through the front so part of the tip is coming out. “Stop! He’s dead!” Annah says. “Shit…yeah…(pant) the fuck you come from?” you gasp. “I followed you obviously, but let’s talk about that later, we need to get the fuck outta here!” “Fuck, right. Hold on.” You immediately go grab your savings stash and shove it in your pack, while Annah has already picked up her dog and took off. “Hey cut out the noise! What the fuck are you degenerates doing over….oh what the fuck?!” Trobart says as he stands in the hallway just outside your door as you trying to exit the room. “Fuck. Look, here.” You say and hand him a shitload of coins and even a few gems you had. “This ain’t fucking enough! You’ve murdered this asshole right in my damn hotel! This is fucking serious! I run a clean place here.” “Fine, here.” You say dropping a few more coins in his overfilled hands which fall to the floor. “No, this is too fucking far! You’re gonna…” “I don’t have time for this…” You suddenly slam Trobart up against the wall which surprises the hell out of him. “Look here, you old fuck! This asshole just tried to kill me and it was self defense! But even if you don’t believe that then believe this, if I can do THAT to this fucker, I can do WORSE to your ass. You tell the fucking militia and I will fucking burn this shithole to the damn ground and everyone in it after ram my fist up your ass and tear out your damn spine!” you threaten. “Alright! Alright! Shit! I know how to keep quiet you crazy fuck!” Trobart exclaims. “Good, keep the coin.” You take your leave as quickly as possible. No sign of Annah, but then she always was good at making herself scarce whenever the shit really went down. You get a few blocks away and sure enough, you hear her. “Hey! Over here!” you hear Annah say from an alleyway. You stop and go over to her. “You all right?” she asks while holding Checkers who curls up as close as she can to Annah when she sees you. “Yeah, I’m fine. Probably won’t need to worry about the law this time either. Well hopefully anyway.” “Glad to hear it.” “Hm, so why the hell were you following me? And before you even start, YES I am thankful you did, otherwise Klint’s father probably would have killed me…shit I just realized I’ve killed that entire bloodline now and nearly under the same circumstances. Fucking hell…” “I was following you because I wanted to talk to you since I’m well aware that you’ve still been thieving at the university. Though I appreciate that you were staying out of my way.” “What, have you been following me on the campus as well? Didn’t you just accuse me of stalking you the last time we met?” “You were in my room! What the hell was I supposed to think? Look, I just want to know, were you serious when you said you were glad to see I was doing well without you?” “Well I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little envious that you’ve managed to have it a lot easier than me so quickly, but yes, I’d rather see you doing well than as I said before laying dead somewhere. I mean…yeah I guess I was an asshole that night I threw you out, but fuck you can’t deny that you didn’t play some part in compelling me to it.” Annah surprisingly nods her head a bit. “Maybe…but you didn’t have to be so mean. I cried over you for days.” Annah says. “I find that hard to believe.” You retort. “Well it’s true you asshole! You were my first love, I had fun with you! And I thought you felt the same! I figured the best way to get over you was to just do it, but you still lingered in my mind every once in awhile. THEN you suddenly show up at the university and stir all my shit up again! I go some nights feeling sick thinking about what went so wrong that caused us to break up.” Annah says getting emotional. Well now you really do feel like an asshole. You actually figured if Annah did have any strong feelings for you, she had gotten over them fairly quickly. “Sorry Annah.” You say not really knowing how to follow up. “Look…” Annah says trying to maintain her composure. “I’m not saying we should get back together, because I dunno I guess you’re right, maybe we’re just not good like that. But we got history and I can’t ignore that. I don’t know anyone else in this city. Or at least nobody I really connect with. I still need ONE person that I really know in this city. Someone I can count on. So maybe… we can still work together from time to time?” You nod. “Of course. If there’s ever some big job or even small job that you want to pull off and need extra help with, I’ll be around.” “Okay. Well, I should get back. What are you going to do?” “I dunno, find a new place to live I guess. Maybe move some place more upscale, hey how exactly DID you pull off living in a dorm anyway? I mean I have so many question about that situation.” “Yes, well maybe another time. Anyway you take care, okay?” “I will.” Annah turns and walks off. You watch her and follow her a bit until you see her catch a carriage. It’s been a weird night. Your encounter with Annah aside, you still haven’t fully processed the fact that you had to kill Klint’s father tonight. You aren’t quite sure how you feel about that, except better him than you. And that you really need to invest in a flintlock. You’re done with this wrestling around on the floor with a knife shit. > You time passes... Year 21 “You’re raising the rent here?!” you say. “Hey, cost of living. Or more specially Klyton raising property taxes to put it into security of the city. Your Bloody Talon pals have really been raising hell lately.” Hank replies. “The Talons are far from being my pals. I don’t even do business with those crazy fuckers anymore. Haven’t ever since they pulled that shit last year where killed a bunch of the militia. Associating with psycho assholes on any level like that is a sure way of getting targeted.” “Well be that as it may, the new rent price remains. Hey, you should be lucky; I’m letting you stay here. I don’t generally have people making their homes here. Clientele tends to be travelling merchants and such staying for awhile, which I know damn well you’re stealing from. Another risk I’m taking.” “I’m also getting you proper pain killers for cheap and you don’t have to roll the dice getting whatever the shit the apothecary thinks is going to work on any given day.” “Another reason you’re getting to stay here.” “Bah, you let that dumb poet stay here for fucking free and as far as I can tell all she does is drive away your customers with her horrible poetry that she does on stage.” “Yeah well unless you’re somehow suddenly transforming into a young girl that’s willing to suck my dick on a regular basis, you don’t get to stay for free.” You think for a moment. “Say Hank, what would you say if I told you I could find some actual talent to grace that stage of yours that might drum up more business?” “Well, I’d say that would certainly go a long way in decreasing your rent. The problem with that plan is I’m going to have to pay for actual talent unless you know of some idiots that are going to work for free or practically for free.” “Oh I’m sure I could probably find some.” “Well I’ll be waiting then.” Great, now all you have to do is go find some starving artist types. Time to take a trip to the university, specifically to the school of arts. Personally you’ve always tended to stay away from that area due to the unbearable pretentiousness and the fact that the fuckers never much coin to their name. Must be nice not having to do shit all day and having your expensive “education” being paid for you. You never really thought about it before, but shit, your dad worked fucking hard to achieve his goals. Makes you almost feel guilty about the fact that you pursued a life of crime, but at least you’ve got a little of his “work ethic” right? Also makes you appreciate some of the songs your sister made up in her spare time. Granted you never were much into some of the songs she wrote, but even when she was sixteen she was writing shit a lot better (and certainly playing a lot better) than some of these so called bards around here. Hopefully she’s doing well, wherever she is. Knowing how Hank has a predilection for young girls, you attempt talk up some of those first. Unfortunately you aren’t having much success for whatever reason. Normally something like this would crush your ego, but since you doing this more to alleviate your financial costs rather than getting laid, you’re just more annoyed than anything else. Moving on to guys, you don’t have much success there either. It would appear nobody is interested in slumming and are perfectly content on plying their trade at the artsy locations around the campus. You question how ANY of these fuckers know anything about “life experience” if they aren’t even traveling out of their comfort zones. “Bunch of fucking poseurs. And of course none of them got two gold coins to their name.” You mutter as you go through the pittance you managed to steal. As you’re taking a break from your failed talent search, you run into a more familiar face. “What the hell are you doing on this part of campus? These fuckers don’t have any coin and if you’re trying to sell them drugs, you’re doomed to fail since most of them all smoke that shitty version of Green Lotus that they grow themselves. Barely even gets you high.” Annah remarks. “No kidding. That’s all I’ve smelled since I’ve been here. Hate it. I wouldn’t even be here if I wasn’t trying to find cheap talent for the inn I’m currently living at. What’re you doing here? And where’s that little hell hound of yours?” you say. “I got a roommate that take classes over here and she needed me to help her move her big ass painting. Looks like she just vomited paint all over a white board, but I guess that’s what gets you an A around here. As for Checkers, she’s safely asleep at my place. So talent search huh? What’s that all about?” “Just trying to lower my rent a bit. Hey, you got any more artsy friends that are into poetry and singing and shit like that?” “Eh, not really. Even Jenny, the one I just helped I’m only good with because she helped with a couple jobs last year.” You tilt your head. “Been doing jobs without me?” you ask. “Sometimes, I don’t need a master lock pick or safe cracker all the time. Sometimes honeyed words will do.” “Didn’t think you needed any help in that department.” “I don’t usually, but let’s just say Jenny’s willing to go that extra step sometimes to gain access to the inaccessible. Under certain circumstances, you’d probably like her.” “Hm, I’ll bet. Well I guess I’ll see you around.” “What so soon? We haven’t seen each other for awhile. Come, I’ll help you. What are you looking for exactly? “ Annah asks. You explain the situation in greater detail and Annah says that she (or Jenny at least) can probably find what you’re looking for. “Now, we can probably convince some of these girls into slumming, but the problem is, they aren’t going to want to stick around. Especially if you’re trying practically pimp them out to some gross old inn owner. So this means that doesn’t really solve your issues. What you need is someone that’s going to come back and is willing to work for practically nothing. Would a band suffice, because I got one in mind and they’ll probably just perform for free drinks.” Annah says. “Sure, what’s the catch?” you ask. “Well they’re a group of elves for one thing and I think you know how unruly those fuckers can get. It’s mainly why this band doesn’t play many places outside the few locations around the campus that are prepared for their brand of wild shit since most tavern and inn owners don’t want to deal with them. Now the plus side is they’re going to draw a crowd, believe me. I’ve seen it multiple times.” “You think they’ll go for it?” “Sure, they’re elves. They are probably eager to play at a whole new location for a change. Plus Jenny will probably fuck all of them if that doesn’t convince them.” “Wow. Okay then. Oh, they aren’t too destructive are they?” “Eh, not in the traditional sense no. I mean any damage they do cause is mostly confined to on stage and going to be minor compared to the crowd they bring in. However, they do have some rather interesting theatrics on stage. It’s part of why people like to watch them.” “Sounds reasonable I guess. What are they called anyway?” “Nature’s Revenge.” “Hm, how elven. Alright when’s the soonest you can get all this done?” “Probably in a couple days. You’re at the Laughing Devil right? We’ll just show up on the weekend. Tell your inn owner to be prepared for a large crowd. Larger than that place has ever seen.” “Sounds good. Well guess that’s it then. Glad I ran into you. Been awhile since we’ve worked together on something.” “I suppose it has.” “So…you still in those dorms?” “Oh, nah. Couldn’t keep up that ruse forever and still be officially enrolled here without arousing suspicion. I just live with Jenny now in this small home her parents pretty much paid for.” Once again, Annah has a much better set up than you do. Not that you really care…okay maybe you’re curious, but you have to ask… “Um, so you and this Jenny…” Annah rolls her eyes. “Ew. No. And you wish.” Annah says. “Okay, okay, I had to ask. I still don’t know how you originally pulled off this whole college student thing, which you still won’t tell me.” You say. “Another time perhaps. So what about you? You still living your usual frugal existence? I’m guessing so if you’re concerned about your living arrangements.” “The Laughing Devil isn’t that cheap, and far from being the shithole the Welcome Mat was so it’s not that frugal.” “I’m also guessing you’ve probably got a small fortune hidden away like one of those dragon stories of old.” “You always did know me.” “Now that’s one thing I never understood about you, why do you bother saving? You’re an excellent thief. I mean I’d never deny that. You could be living so much better than you are.” “Well I guess we can’t all be blessed with the charisma you have.” “You could probably work on that, but that’s beside the point. I’m just saying you could be doing better. Sometimes I think you’re content on being a near do well.” Now you roll your eyes. “Right. This coming from the woman who is sponging off some other woman who is sponging off her parents. Look, you got your way of doing things, I got mine. I once again thank you for your help, but we’re not fucking so I don’t have to listen to this…whatever this is.” You say. You start to walk away. “Well what if we were fucking?” You turn around. “What?” “I know you heard me. And I KNOW damn well you still think about it. I’ve know the stories about you requesting that those little brothel whores to try to look like me when you’re at those places.” “I did that like maybe few times years ago after we first broke up! Fuck, I mean I didn’t…shit…how do you even know about that?” “Face it, you never got over me.” “Hmm, considering that you have more of a habit of spying and stalking me, I’d say that could be said more about you.” At this point Annah walks up closer to you. She’s actually looking pretty good right now. The make up isn’t too much, but it’s definitely enough to make her look more seductive than she might normally. She smells nice too. Some sort of flowery perfume you guess. Living in luxury has its perks. “I’ve never denied it. Doesn’t matter how many other guys I’ve been with since you, I’ve always said you were the first and will probably be my only true love.” Annah says running her index finger down the side of your face. “I see…wait…how many guys have you been with?” you ask. “Hah…you jealous? See? Why don’t you just admit that you fucked up, and breaking up with me was the worst mistake you ever made? Think about all time we’ve spent apart in this city yet still working great together as a team stealing from rich asshole’s houses that I’ve cased. It’s always been me and you versus everyone else. So much of that time while fruitful, could have been a lot more fun if we had been still intimate. I miss the fun we had. Don’t you miss the fun?” Annah now practically has her legs wrapped around you. Fortunately you’re still in the school of arts area so nobody is really paying much attention since public outdoor fucking isn’t that uncommon around here, what with everyone being a free spirit and all. While you might just be thinking with your dick right now, you’d still rather have a bit of privacy. “Okay, Annah you got my attention, but if we’re gonna do this, we need more privacy.” You say. “Of course, let’s go back to your place.” Annah replies. “My place? That’s a little far. Can’t we just go to yours? Your roommate is in class right now.” “Eh, I’d rather not. Without going into too much detail, I tried to have company over once when she wasn’t around and she pitched a bitch about it. And given what I’ve got in store for you, it’s going to be real obvious I’ve had someone over. Hell, we might not even be done by the time she gets back.” You smile a little at that remark. “Is that right? Well maybe we can spare the extra time to go back to my place. We’re taking a carriage though.” You say. “Good, we can start on the way there then.” Annah says. So after quickly catching a carriage and getting inside in, Annah is true to her word and wastes no time in getting started. By the gods you have missed her mouth… When you reach the Laughing Devil, you almost just want to fuck her in the carriage rather than pulling your pants up and going to your room. However you manage to do it anyway and are practically running with one hand holding up your pants and the other grabbing Annah’s hand who is keeping up with your pace and going on about how she’s going to do all those things that you had those whores do, but do it way better. You still don’t know how she knew about some of that stuff, but you’re eager to see her prove herself. You manage to get to your room and you’ve got your dick in her before you even get to the bed. In any case, once again Annah isn’t fucking around (so to speak) and proves just what you’ve been missing all these years. You seriously don’t remember it being this good before. Not that it was ever really bad with her, but this is something else. She’s either learned something in the time you’ve been apart or she’s been holding back all this time. It’s so good in fact that you actually feel genuinely drained and get sleepy soon after you climax. “By the gods…I love you…” you utter and then drift off. > You later... You wake up and find that it’s now nighttime. You groggily look around and don’t see Annah. You call out to her, but there is no answer. You sit up and after stretching a bit, you suddenly have a horrible realization. “Oh shit. Shit! Shit! No, no, no, no. Fuck!” you say as you immediately go to the loose floorboard under the dresser where you keep your hidden savings. You continue to curse yourself for being so stupid and not realizing something was up from the start. And then you find that your savings are still there. Even the blade trap you have set hasn’t been disturbed. You then breathe sigh a relief as you put everything back. While Annah didn’t rip you off, you guess that she just didn’t want to stick around. You figure that she had to get back to the university to get prepare things on her end. Or at least you thought she did until she comes walking back in the room. “Oh you’re finally up sleepyhead. Given how long you slept, guessing you haven’t had that sort of loving in a long time. Not surprised.” Annah says. “You’re still here.” You reply. “Of course I am. Did you not want me to be?” “No! I do. I’m just surprised.” “Why? What, did you think I was going to do, rob you blind while you were asleep and leave?” “Heh, no…” “Pfft, liar. You DID think that. I bet you checked all your hiding spots in this room after you woke up.” Your silence confirms her accusations. “It’s okay, I probably would have done the same. I came on so strong I guess it would be natural for you to have some suspicion.” Annah says. “Actually, at the time I wasn’t thinking at all except the obvious. In fact the only worry I had was that you might be fucking with me and were going to just leave me at the university with a massive hard on.” You reply. “Nah, I’d never do that to you.” “So where did you go?” “Oh I just came back from speaking to your inn owner Hank. Told him that all about the cheap talent that’s going to grace his inn this weekend. He seemed receptive to the idea. Kept staring at my tits the whole time, I’m assuming if I hadn’t mentioned that I was your girlfriend, he would have tried to touch me as well. Ugh, he’s gross. But in any case everything’s set on this side, I just have to speak with Nature’s Revenge and a few others and this place will be party central.” “You didn’t need to speak to Hank, I would ‘ve done that, but thanks for saving me the trouble. You’ve certainly been more than helpful today.” “Well…I suppose I do have an ulterior motive of sorts.” “…oh well I guess you’re telling me to my face at least. Alright out with it.” Annah sits next to you on the bed and holds one of your hands. This must be serious. “I need your help on a job.” She says. “…that’s it? I thought you were going to ask for something unreasonable. Wait, are we trying to rob a bank or city hall or something?” “No, nothing like that. Just need you to crack open Jenny’s safe.” Now you’re totally confused. Annah smiles and explains before you can ask the obvious. “I’ve tried several times to get into the thing while she wasn’t around, but no luck. I’m just not skilled at it like you are. I need an expert.” Annah says. “Well that answers one obvious question, but why other one would be why? I mean not that I particularly care I suppose, but I was under the impression you were somewhat friends with this girl.” “Eh, we have common interests in some regards. She’s a typical rich kid doing illegal shit every now and then for kicks, but lately she’s been sort of a bitch to live with. Which brings me to my other reason of why I’m doing this. I’m leaving the city so I figured I wouldn’t leave empty handed.” “Wait, you’re leaving the city?! Why? Where are you going to go? Did you intend on telling me?” Annah goes on to tell you that she’s getting bored of Klyton and wants to see more of the world. She says that when she first came to Klyton she initially wanted to live here for the rest of her life, believing it to have everything she’d ever want. She then says its funny that masquerading as a university student caused her to learn more about the world and how she wants to see more of it. So that’s why she’s leaving. As for telling you, she said she went back and forth on whether or not if she should since even though you weren’t together any more, she got the impression that you might be inclined to talk her out of leaving. Running into you when she did and your reaction to her advances sort of solved that personal dilemma though. “I want you to come with me.” She says. “Annah…” you start to say. “I know, I know, you’re not a traveller and you hate it, but you’ll be with me. That should certainly take some of the sting out. And I know…I know in the past how I was always nagging you. I think you’ll find that I’ve changed a lot since then.” “Well that is true.” “I mean I want us to start completely over together and part of that would be leaving this city and going some place else.” “Where would we go?” “I dunno, anywhere. Hessla for starters? The point is I want you to come with me. I mean…I just don’t see it as a bad idea given how we obviously feel towards each other.” Well Annah always does get right to the point on how she really feels about you. Maybe she’s right, maybe you could use a change of scenery. You’ve certainly saved more than enough to move and live comfortably elsewhere. (You assume Hessla is probably cheaper, if that’s your first destination) “Okay, Annah. I’ll come with you, but that sort of makes this getting elven musicians and shit here sort of pointless.” “Not really. I mean I still need some time to get ready for the trip and I imagine even with your meager belongings you might not want to just suddenly jump on a carriage. Also, this weekend is still going to be the best time to go rob Jenny’s safe since she’s going to be home the rest of the week. I can also convince her to come with me here to enjoy the show. So while I’m here with her, you can go clean out her safe and take a few other items as well.” “So what exactly did this Jenny do to you?” “As I said, she’s been a fucking bitch and even if I wasn’t leaving the city, I’d probably be moving out soon anyway. Trust me, she’s got this coming.” “Hey, I’m not judging. So of course I’ll need some more information on the lay out of this place.” Annah goes into great detail about her place of residence and everything you’ll find in it. She mentions the safe itself is under the bed, but points out that Jenny has a few nice pieces of jewelry in another more accessible box on her dresser. When you ask if she knows what’s actually in the safe, Annah says as far as she knows there are some valuable family heirlooms in there and probably a few gems and coins as well. “Jenny might come from money, but she’s a bit of a hording cheapskate, somewhat like you in that regard. As I said, under different circumstances, you’d probably get along with her.” Annah say with a chuckle. Annah then tells you that when you’re done robbing the place; meet her back at the Laughing Devil and you can go from there. In the meantime, Annah says she better get back to the university to get the rest of this plan in motion. You spend the rest of the week more or less taking it easy and mentally preparing yourself for taking another trip. You didn’t envision yourself leaving Klyton like this, but you’re starting to look forward to the idea. Maybe your dick’s not so dumb. Annah comes to meet you the day before with a few bags (and Checkers who is still the furry little demon dog that growls at you when she sees you) stating that Nature’s Revenge will be coming tomorrow night along with a few other amateur bard types, but definitely better than the chick spouting shitty poetry on a regular basis. She says word is already spreading around the university and there should be a large crowd. “So it’s a all set. As you might have noticed I’ve brought some bags with me, I figured you won’t mind me staying here tonight. It’ll save time.” Annah remarks. “Of course not, but what about Jenny?” you ask. “Oh I already told her about the big gathering tomorrow. I told her I’d meet her here and as far as she knows I’m just staying at my boyfriend’s place tonight, which isn’t a lie. Oh shit. I forgot my key to the house to give you.” “Hardly a problem. I can pick the lock.” “You’re so talented. I’ll be so glad when we’re out of this city. I’m bored of it already. Come on, make me less bored.” Annah says and begins caressing and kissing on you. You see no reason to decline this request and spend more quality time with Annah for the rest of day (and night). You wake up the next day a little later than usual and find Annah going through her bags. You also hear the sound of music and mild revelry in the distance. “Shit, is that the band? Am I late? Fuck I gotta get going!” you say. “Relax, Nature’s Revenge isn’t even here yet, that’s just some opening act and it only just started. If you were late, I would have woke you up.” Annah says. “Yeah…still I should get going.” “Jenny’s not even here yet either. You’ve got time.” Annah says and stops what she’s doing, goes over to the bad and grabs your cock. “Again? But…shouldn’t I really get going?” you say. “As I said, you’ve got time. You can skip the foreplay.” Annah says and before you can reply, she’s kissing and getting on top you. Well no point in arguing with her when she’s like this… After spending even more quality time with Annah (which took longer than you meant to) you’re putting on your pants, grabbing your pack with tools, steeping over Checkers (who has been sleeping most of the time she’s been here) and rushing out the door. “Be careful, I love you!” Annah beams while lying naked on the bed. “Yeah…and you stay exactly like that when I return.” You reply and close the door. You run past the crowds in the Laughing Devil which are cheering some bard on stage and go outside where you run into three tattooed androgynous looking elves with wild colored hair carrying instruments and exiting a nearby carriage. You’re guessing that this is Nature’s Revenge. Not really giving a shit about them, you just push past and get in the easily accessible carriage and tell the driver to take you to the university. Eventually as you get close to the destination you get out since Annah’s old home is off campus, not actually on it. When you finally get there, it’s indeed a nice home, but not overly fancy. You’ve probably passed it a few times not really giving it a second look. After a quick perusal of the outside surroundings, you’re guessing the Jenny has already left so you quickly get to work on picking the lock, which is easy for you of course. You get inside and immediately head to the location of the safe since you want to be in and out of here as soon as possible. Pushing the bed slightly, you uncover the safe and get to work. It’s actually not too complex, but you’re not surprised Annah couldn’t get it open. She never was adept at it, hence why she’s gotten you in the first place. You crack the safe and indeed find quite a bit of coin in the safe. You find a couple of small objects that may or may not be valuable though. Seems like Annah thought there was more in there than there actually was, still, it’s not a bust by any means. As you finish dumping the contents into your pack, you’re about to check the rest of the house, and that’s when you suddenly hear the front door open! What the fuck!? Did she actually come home already? You didn’t even remember to bring your weapons with you since you were in such a hurry, not that you wanted to turn this into a murder in the first place. You figure you got two options at this point, either hide or try to escape out a window. > You hide You quickly scramble from your prone position and look for a hiding spot. Your hope is you can somehow sneak past Jenny and run out the front door. You run into the other bedroom, which you presume, used to be Annah’s and hide in the closet. First thing you notice is that Annah is leaving a shitload of clothes behind, but then again it would be impossible to pack everything. The second thing you notice is stout wooden hangers one of which you grab as a weapon just in case. Meanwhile, you hear giggling and footsteps of what sounds like two people rather than just one, and the lower sounding voice of the second voice sounds male. You stand in the closet listening to Jenny and whoever the guy is and hear them get closer, though eventually their voices trail off in a different direction and given what they’re laughing and talking about, it sounds like they’re heading towards Jenny’s bedroom, which is a relief to you. When you hear the throes of ecstasy, that’s when you make your move and quickly nip out of Annah’s room, past Jenny’s room and soon out the front door, with nobody the wiser. You put a lot of distance between yourself and Jenny’s house and eventually you manage to catch a carriage and go back to the Laughing Devil. When you arrive, the place is the busiest you’ve ever seen. The merriment is even spilling outside a bit. So much so that you notice Klyton Watchmen milling about nearby which makes you a bit nervous. You head inside as fast as you can, fighting through the crowds. You see Nature’s Revenge up on stage performing some sort of minor magical act along with one of them playing music. Its very colorful and interesting, but right now you just want to find Annah and get the hell out of here. You manage to make it to your room, as just as you do, Annah grabs your ass, scaring the hell out of you. “Hey handsome, you get lucky yet?” Annah remarks holding a drink in her other hand. “What the fuck! You startled me! And after…nevermind let’s talk inside and do it quickly.” You remark and start guiding Annah inside. “Alright, alright, I see you want to get to celebrating again.” Annah hands you the drink she’s holding when you get inside. “What’s this for?” you ask. “To celebrate, I mean you were successful right?” Annah asks. “Yeah, but…” “Well have a drink then. I mean I know you don’t do it a lot, but I think the start of our new lives is call for it. I’d drink with you, but I think I might have had my limit. Any more and I’ll be dancing naked through the streets! Hey remember that time I nearly did that in Teckleville before you stopped me?” “Yeah, but…” Annah at this point shoves the drink in your hand and takes your pack out of your other hand. She opens it up and smiles. “Heh, I knew you’d be able to do it.” She says and then kisses you on the lips. “Hey Annah I…” you start to say before being interrupted again. “Wait, I know how YOU really want to celebrate…” Annah begins taking off her clothes and getting on the bed. “Annah, I’m trying to tell you, I really think we should get out of here right now. There’s Klyton Militia about outside and it’s a little disconcerting that your friend Jenny came home while I was in the middle of robbing the place.” “What? I didn’t even see her leave. In fact I thought she was still out there.” “Well no, she apparently came home with some guy and I had to sneak out.” “Nobody saw you right?” “No.” “Then there’s nothing to worry about, come on lover, I got my own lock that I want your pick in.” At this point Annah turns around on all fours and turns her head to the side to give you that “What’re you waiting for, start fucking!” look. Without thinking about it anymore, you down the drink in your hand, toss it aside and start to unbuckle your pants. You manage to get a few minutes into it and you start to feel woozy. At first you just think that you’re just getting too much of a good thing too fast, but then your vision starts to get blurry. “The fuck…shit…” you say and slide out of Annah and fall backwards on the floor narrowly missing Checkers who barks at you, being annoyed that your nearly fell on her. As your body goes numb and your vision now starts to darken, you genuinely think you’re dying. You see Annah stand over you and then everything goes black. Later You wake up with a really bad headache. In fact most of your body aches, but you don’t feel very weak and manage to sit up. Sunlight is coming through the window, so it must be daytime and your eyes are certainly feeling it. You manage to stand up and through the squinting, you notice a piece of paper on the nightstand. You notice there’s writing on it and after rubbing your eyes a bit; you read it even though you have somewhat of an idea of what’s happened. Asshole, If you’re reading this then I’ve already left the city and you’re awake. I wasn’t sure if I drugged the drink too much, but I took a chance. I’m just glad you decided to drink at all. I wasn’t confident I’d necessarily be able to knock you out by hitting you in the head. If you haven’t checked already, you’ll find that I’ve emptied your savings and taken everything you stole from that house you robbed yesterday. I could have ripped you off that first night we spent together, since I found the hiding spot while you were sleeping, but then I wouldn’t have been able to use you one more time would I? I suppose you’re wondering if I planned all this out, well no not initially. I really was getting ready to move on with my life and leave the city, but running into just presented an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Sweet revenge. Revenge that I kept toying with for years and finally had the guts to go through with. Honestly, I’m a little surprised that you fell so easily to my charms as well as my lies. I mean there never was a Jenny. That was just some woman’s house I broke into recently and could never get the safe open. I guess you had more feelings for me than I thought, or maybe I’m just that good. But I hope it’s the first because that means you might be having strong feelings of betrayal right now. I never forgot that night you threw me out. I never forgave it either. And fuck your lame ass apology you tried to give earlier about it. Hopefully this will give you some sort of taste of what I felt that night and if not, well at least I got your loot. And after all this, you’re still my first love and probably my only because I can’t trust anyone ever again. This is what you’ve done to me. Annah P.S. Don’t bother going to Hessla to try to track me down, I didn’t go there. You sit down on the bed and lie back trying to process all this. You got fucked in more ways than one and the worst part, you don’t have anyone to blame but yourself. Your dick was dumb after all. You feel like you should be angrier about this and you are pissed to some extent. Maybe even a little hurt, but small part of you can’t help but admire the fact that Annah pulled your strings so flawlessly. She must have been seething for years and still managed to keep it from you since you really thought she was over it. Some damn fine restraint on her part. Not much you can do about it anyway at this point. You suppose you could go to Hessla anyway since she might have been lying about not going there, but it’ll be long walk since you don’t even have money for a carriage there, of course that can be corrected pretty quickly. But what are you really going to do, if you do find her? Kill her? You’re not going to do that even with as mad as you are, you know damn well you wouldn’t be able to. You’ve never even hit her (except slapping her ass during sex) the whole time you were together and she was bitching at you constantly and arguably that was worse than what she just did to you since it was ongoing. Maybe she deserved her revenge, maybe you’ve just got a soft spot for her, or maybe you just can’t be bothered. Whatever the case, you won’t be chasing her down. As for what you’re going to do, you guess you need to build up your coin all over again. She didn’t take your tools or weapons, so that’s a plus. The whole reason why you were leaving Klyton was to start this new life with Annah. Now that that’s off the table, you might as well stay a little longer. Who knows though, maybe you will leave one day. You get dressed and gather your tools of the trade and exit your room ready to get to work. As you’re doing so, you run into Hank who is telling his various employees to clean up the mess in the main room with the stage. He sees you and walks over. “Well I have to say, you came through. Got those elven bitches to agree to perform here once a month. With as many people that were here last night I made more money than I have in a month. Consider your rent lowered.” Hank remarks. “Oh. Thanks. Told you I’d do it.” You reply. “Hm. Where’s that girlfriend of yours?” “Ah, she took off. Just wasn’t working out y’know? She bitched a lot.” “Oh. Yeah I guess I can understand that. Who needs that buzzing in your ear right? Still, she was sweeeet. I bet you had fun with her while it lasted.” “Indeed.” “Not as fine as those elven bitches though. Fuck, one of them had lips that could make a man cry and that one was fucking wild let me tell you.” You give Hank an odd look. “What elven bitches are we talking about exactly?” you ask. “Nature’s Revenge! The lead singer. She was a fucking beauty. I mean I know elves tend to be pretty, but fuck. I wasted no time in putting the moves on her after their set and she was already giving me head. Fucking hell it was great!” Hank remarks. “Uhh, Hank, all of them were guys.” “What? Nah, you’re fucking with me.” “Hank, I’m really not. I’m serious. I mean I know it’s hard to tell sometime with elves, but they were definitely guys. All of them.” Hank’s former happy expression drops and he sits down in a nearby chair with a hand over his mouth. “Hank? You, okay?” you ask. “I…but…she couldn’t… I mean I would have known… by the gods…” “What?” “I…I fucked the elf in the ass.” Hank whispers, with his eyes darting around making sure nobody else is listening. You nearly have to stop yourself from laughing. “How the hell did you not know, if you got that far?” you ask. “I dunno! I mean I just…I was drunk okay! She or he or whatever wanted to get fucked in the ass and I wasn’t thinking with anything except my dick at that point. Oh shit, I feel sick…” Hank says. “Yep…thinking with your dick. Gets you into trouble every time. Though I gotta say, hasn’t gotten me in quite the same trouble.” “You can’t tell anyone!” “Okay, okay, I’m not gonna say shit. However, I think I’d like my room to be free.” “What?!” “You heard me.” “Fuck you. Just fuck you.” “Sorry, I’m not a free spirited elf.” “Shhhh! Keep your voice down!” “So free room then?” “Yeah yeah sure! Just don’t say anything!” “Sure thing, but how are you going to keep your elf from talking?” “Fuck. I’m gonna have…shit, I need to talk to her, I mean him, I mean…damnit!” “I’ll leave you to it.” As you leave Hank with his dilemma, you think to yourself, things could always be worse. > You time passes... Year 23 “Here you go, but Hank you really need to start going easy on this shit. It’s getting a little harder to get. It’s almost as if the Klyton medical school is starting to realize their Numb supply is getting stolen.” You say giving Hank his fix. “Can’t you just go steal from the hospital?” Hank asks. “Well yes I could and I have, but they got their shit a lot more secure. Probably better than some jewelry stores. I start making that place a regular target and the price is going to go up.” “Up? You’re already getting free fucking room and board!” “And you’re still fucking that elf that you don’t want anyone to know about.” “You know, I’ve been thinking more about that and I’m starting to think that T’ra’ni is right and I shouldn’t be ashamed of who I am. I mean why should I? It’s no big deal.” “Hm, well that fine that you’re discovering shit about yourself. Personally I don’t give a shit, but I’ve gotten very comfortable here and I’m saying I don’t want to pay any fucking rent and if you try to make me, you aren’t going to have to worry about if I’m going to blab about your sexual habits, you just won’t be getting any more Numb. I got other customers and there are always other places I can find to live.” Hank looks a little surprised by your hardened approach on this. You’re not sure why, it’s not like you two are good buddies or something. You’re his fucking dealer and he’s hooked on the shit you can easily get for him. “You’re a fucking asshole.” Hank replies. “Yeah well, be that as it may, this place isn’t doing all that bad since I arrived. I don’t see you starving and besides androgynous elves, you’re swimming in college pussy and getting your drugs. So I say things are going to stay as they are for now.” You say. Hank wants to say more, but he just gives you a dirty look and walks off. With that bullshit out of the way, you head to your free room. Before you even get there, you see a woman lingering in front of the door. She doesn’t look like one of the college crowd that comes here now, or a merchant or possibly a wannabe bard. She’s dressed in pragmatic clothing more suited to one skilled of the ways of a rogue. In some ways she looks a little like an older version of Annah. In other words, a woman of quality. “Ah, there you are. I was waiting for you and didn’t want to just surprise you by waiting inside your room. You know, you really should get better locks on the door. I’d think someone like you would know better.” The woman remarks. “It’s not usually a problem. Besides, I learned a long time ago that it often doesn’t matter how good the lock, if someone wants in, they’re getting in.” you reply. “True. I guess you would know. Anyway, I’m Zalmora.” “Hm. Is that supposed to mean something?” “No, though I know you’ve sold shit to the Bloody Talons in the past, surprised you haven’t heard any of them talking about me in passing. Or more likely bitching about me.” “I don’t really have long conversations with Talon assholes. I generally just want them to buy their shit and go murder an old lady or whatever it is they do nowadays. In fact, are they still even around? Last I heard a shitload of them got killed two months ago in a big Klyton militia raid. Including their leader Jake.” “Yeah, the Bloody Talons are indeed no more. Oh sure there’s a couple of them still lingering about trying to keep what’s left of the rabble, but I anticipate that even that will be gone by the end of the year thanks to the militia.” “Well, that’s what they get for being so high profile and generally being a bunch of unsubtle idiots. Wait, were you in the Talons?” “I was. And it’s all true, they were a bunch of unsubtle idiots. Wasn’t always like that of course when we were the Crimson Talons, but well shit happens. Perhaps that’s how I managed to stay undetected since I was probably one of the few that was still a professional. Kind of like you in that way right?” “I guess. So why’d you stay?” “Love I guess? I mean Jake was a bloodthirsty asshole that was a terrible leader, but I think he cared about me as much as he understood it anyway. And he had a certain charm, at times.” “Sounds like a true love story. Anyway, what did you want? Are you here to buy or something?” “Actually I was wondering if you’d be interested in doing a job with me. I’m well aware of your skills and I think it would go a lot easier with your assistance.” “I’m sure it would, but I don’t partner with anyone.” “You don’t? I thought you had a girl you routinely partnered with all the time. Wasn’t she your girlfriend or…oh wait…bad break up?” You don’t reply. “Okay, I see. Yeah I suppose that might put a crimp in your trust level which is probably low enough seeing our line of work and all.” Zalmora remarks. “Not to mention I don’t even know you.” You add. “Well does that matter? I’d argue that familiarity is one of the more minor factors in whether you can trust someone or not. I mean there were a few times in the Talons where apparent friends backstabbed each other.” “I suppose that’s a valid point. However, it’s still a factor never the less. I mean just speaking on a professional level, I know I’m good, but I don’t know how good YOU are. I just know you were in the Bloody Talons and given what I knew of most of them doesn’t speak highly.” Zalmora chuckles a bit. “Something funny?” you ask. “Yeah. Never thought MY skills would ever be called into question. That’s good though, means you really are a professional and serious about your work. Look, I’m going to go ahead and tell you what the job is. Kenzer’s Gems and Jewels.” Zalmora says. “Kenzer’s huh? I just got done telling someone that the Klyton hospital has better security then most jewelry stores and of course now you’re telling me you’re hitting the one exception. Place might as well be a bank. In fact a bank might be easier. Still, you got my attention so you might as well come inside and tell me of this mad plan.” You open the door and you both enter where after mentioning something about your room, she goes into detail about the plan. The plan is actually surprisingly simple. It’s just a basic break in with more attention on the security and locks. She says that she’s actually been casing the place on and off for a year and even acquired special dwarven thieving tools to help in her task. Her main concern is possible magic protection which seems like a given and partially asked for your help since she knows your area is the university which also houses the college of magic and was wondering if perhaps you had any access to or perhaps even acquired anything that might bypass such things. You explain that you’ve always sort of stayed away from the college of magic despite lurking around there a couple times out of curiosity. You say you’ve toyed with the idea pilfering from there before since it never seemed like the place was any better protected than most of the other parts of the university, but you were always a bit paranoid that you’d pick up something that might just give you a fate worse than death. Zalmora nods at your words. “I see. Well would you have any problems with me poking about the place?” Zalmora asks. “What the college of magic? No. I mean you don’t need my permission.” You say. “Yes, I know I don’t, however I know its in your territory so to speak, I don’t really want to cause any potential problems.” “Heh, well gotta say, I’m not used to this sort of professional courtesy from anyone before, let alone anyone from the Talons who were often telling ME to get the fuck off their territory whether I was working there or not. In any case, you’ll get no issues from me. Though I’d be careful fucking around in there.” “Risks of the trade. I imagine you’d know something of that.” “True, though I think I make more coin selling the various hospital drugs I steal. If I actually knew how to make the shit, I’d probably just do that instead because its far less work especially since there’s practically no competition. Unless you count the various Green Lotus dealers and they certainly don’t count.” “Yeah the Talons were once in the drug trade. Not sure why we stopped really. I think the new leader at the time Tom wanted to step away from it since it drew too much heat. Then again Yellow Devil causing addicts to melt would certainly that. Sort of figured when Jake took charge we might get back into it, but still a bit too organized for him I think. Honestly I think he would have just preferred leading a gang that ambushed travellers on the roads.” “Hm. Well he certainly might have lasted longer. You act like a mad dog, you’ll eventually get put down like one.” “Indeed. However, I’d say staying put and getting too comfortable like a fat lazy cat is likely to get one eventually grabbed by the scruff, put in a bag and thrown in a river.” “Okay, I feel like that was directed at me.” “More of a warning. Not sure if you realize it or not but security has increased a lot in the city. Granted a lot of that might be the fault of the Bloody Talons making such a mess of things, but the reasons don’t matter. What matters is, things are getting harder for people like us.” “Didn’t you just say that’s the risks of the trade?” “Yeah, but there’s also anticipating getting out of the way of trouble you can’t handle. Not saying that time is now, but it’s coming soon. And this nice comfortable set up you have might all come crashing down even if you’re careful. After all, with the Talons out of the way, attention is going to focus on the next biggest criminals in the city and I’d say you’d fit the bill.” “Duly noted. Well if you’re done with your warnings, I have things to do.” Zalmora looks at you and starts to leave, but you can already tell she’s not done talking. Story of your life. “So you’re not interested in partnering up?” Zalmora asks. “Why are you so interested in partnering up with me? I mean I get some of the reasons that you’ve explained, but this is still pretty damn sudden. I mean there’s still a trust issue here.” “Well because as you pointed out robbing Kenzer’s isn’t going to be an easy job and it would probably be better to have an extra pair of eyes and hands around. And…maybe this is going to sound odd from someone you don’t know, but you’re obviously a talented thief and maybe I just like a little social interaction from time to time from another one in our business.” “So…what then? You miss your Talon buddies? I can’t help with that. They were a bunch of idiots and I was never in this to make friends. Unless you’re saying you’re missing your boyfriend. If that’s the case, well…as you’ve gathered I’m not exactly trusting on that front either however I’m not going to say no to a tumble I suppose.” Zalmora sighs at you. “Fine, you’re an asshole like everyone else in this trade then. Thanks for what information you did provide and apologies for wasting your time.” Zalmora at this point turns to leave for real this time and there’s a part of you that wants to stop her, even though you think it might be more trouble than its worth. > You let Zalmora go No, you went down that road before. Not going down it again especially not with someone you know practically nothing about. And you certainly aren’t going to take the risk of robbing Kenzer’s. There are easier targets, no need to take unnecessary chances. You just hope she doesn’t fuck things up for you when she goes poking around the magic college. You return to your usual routine. A couple days later a big explosion is heard from another part of the city. You don’t know what it is until much later. Turns out that it was Kenzer’s jewelry store. You eventually get the story of a failed attempt at robbing the store in the night and apparently the one involved died in the explosion. Burned body parts were found amongst the destruction. You can only guess that was Zalmora. Hell of a way to go, but given you didn’t think it was a great idea anyway, you’re glad you decided not to go with her. Once again you return to your usual routine. Year 24 “Hank. Hank. HANK!” you shout. “Huh, wha?” Hank sputters while waking up and drooling on himself. ‘Here. I got your latest supply of Gray.” Hank fumbles to get the bag a couple times, but eventually he does. He then says something about you know where his safe is and just take the money from there, before he shoves the pills in his mouth. You thought he was bad on Numb, but ever since you had to start stealing a poor substitute used mainly on people with the plague, he’s gotten a lot worse. He even offered to blow you for a fix once. It was pretty pathetic. The Laughing Devil is barely functioning like it used to anymore. Long gone are the wild parties filled with college types. Now it’s starting to become a hang out for the dregs of the city. Granted half of the people are your customers, so you’re probably a big part of the problem. The bigger problem is it’s not exactly all that great to live at anymore. At one time you were just living here for free because the owner was dependent on you. Now, it’s pretty much acting as a front for your activities since Hank has really fallen behind in running it proper. Not to mention you’re starting to get paranoid that the whole place might get raided one day. Klyton is just becoming more of a problem to operate in everyday. You start to think that maybe its time to leave. Of course, you do have a pretty good set up here. If you took more of a hand in cleaning it up a bit, you might be able to continue to go unnoticed. It would be like owning your own inn without having to actually run it. > You fix up the inn You’ve worked too hard and grown too accustomed to your life style here and you’re not about to be scared off. You just need to make some severe changes. The irony that you’re actually going to work hard to keep an inn open isn’t lost on you. First things first, you need to get rid of Hank. The guy is too far gone now to run this place properly and even if you could get him clean, you wouldn’t exactly have a hold over him anymore. In fact, he’d probably start trying to reassert himself again. Which means you need someone new to run the place, or at least do all the actual “inn” shit. The problem is Hank hasn’t been able to keep many steady employees ever since his severe downslide. In fact the ONLY person that’s still hanging around with him is Amanda, the awful poet that he was sticking his dick in on a regular basis when you first got here. You’re not quite sure why she still hangs around. She doesn’t do poetry anymore and you’re fairly certain she’s not still fucking him either. She’s not even a junkie. As near as you can figure, she’s just living here for free and helping out with keeping the inn running so it doesn’t get shut down and she’s living on the streets. You don’t think you’ve ever talked too much to Amanda before, but today that’s going to change. You wait until Amanda is seemingly not busy and then approach her as she’s taking a break. “Another hard day of work, am I right?” you say sitting down at the same table. “Huh? Yeah.” She answers. “Sucks how much you have to do around here and you’re practically doing it all yourself.” “Life’s tough all over.” “True, but Hank could at least help you out more than he has. I mean it’s his fucking inn and the guy is just letting the place go to shit. I remember when this place was really popular.” “Would have been better had that not ever happened. Just made things worse, sort of like you.” “Pardon?” “You’ve been living here for years now and you have never said two fucking words to me before. Now all of a sudden you’re speaking to me? What the hell do you want?” “The fuck’s with the hostility?” “You fucking ruined my life that’s why! YOU were the one that invited all those other poets and musicians to perform here, which showed me, how I don’t even have as much talent as a bunch of fucking college kids. Then on top of everything else you turned Hank into a brain dead zombie and made this place into a damn drug den. So now because I have no other fucking skills whatsoever, I’m stuck here trying to prop up Hank because he’s practically all I fucking got at this point and making sure this place stays afloat, that is if the militia doesn’t raid the place one day soon.” Well you sort of weren’t expecting that rant. In fact you expected Amanda to be a meek girl with esteem issues, but seems like there’s more that meets the eye. No matter, you can still work with this. “Well, consider this my way of making amends for troubling you because I’ve come up with a plan that might benefit the both of us.” “What’re you talking about?” You explain you want to clean this place up since she’s right to be worried about the place getting raided by the militia. You also tell her that she doesn’t need to prop Hank up either since she could easily just run the inn herself seeing as she’s practically doing that now. “So wait, are you suggesting that I kill Hank? I don’t think I could do that even if I never had the highest opinion of him to begin with.” Amanda says. “No, you don’t kill him right away. YOU marry him, THEN you kill him. That way you’ll get the inn without any hassle.” You say. “Fucking hell, that’s pretty fucking cold. I mean shit, I just don’t have that in me I don’t think.” “If you had it in you to blow that sleezy fucker on a regular basis, along with continuing to work a thankless job just for a roof over your head, pretty sure murder shouldn’t be an issue. Besides, just look at the guy. You’d be doing him a favor at this point.” “Oh fuck you, you’re a fucking thief and drug dealer. You’re in no position to judge me! And I’m not a murderer.” “Okay fine I’ll do the fucking deed. Figured I might have to anyway. Hell I’ll even make it painless. I’ll just give him something lethal and tell him it’ll make him feel better. Boom. Mission accomplished. Then you can just continue running the place with free reign. Does that make it easier for you?” You remark. “I suppose, but I still don’t see how this makes things better for the inn. I mean it’s still a drug den.” “Yeah, I’m going to take steps to help you clean up the place in that regard. I’ve sort of realized that I started to get lazy and began shitting where I eat. I need to keep my business separate from this place. I’ll try to also get the college crowd back in this place.” “Ugh. Hate those pretentious fuckers.” “Yeah well rich kids with coin to waste like to drink so it’s worth it.” “So what’s all in this for you again?” “I don’t like moving and I like living here for free too so I feel that helping you achieve ownership of this place should cover my rent for a lifetime.” “Well I suppose that’s reasonable. So, I need to get married huh? Never thought it would be under these circumstances. I’m just wondering what priest is going to be willing to do it though. I mean most of those Joachimite fuckers are so puritanical that they might refuse based on Hank being so zonked. And I doubt if Hank will be up to walking to city hall. We might have to dry him out and if we do that, he might not necessarily be in the frame of mind to marry me.” “Nah, I actually know of a priest who’s perfect for this. So do we have a deal?” “That’s it? There’s nothing else involved is there? I mean you’re not going to ask for sexual favors are you?” “No, hadn’t planned on it.” “Okay. Deal. But I don’t want to know about what you’re going to do to Hank exactly and I want his body taken care of because that’s not something I want any part of.” “Fine. As I said, I’ll take care of that. Right then; guess I’m off to get the priest and sort all that shit out. The sooner we get this rolling the better.” With the first part of your plan in mind, you head to the Welcome Mat where you hope Virgil is still living. When you arrive, you see the place is still the same shithole it’s always been, though it probably isn’t much worse than the Laughing Devil at this point. Thankfully Trobart isn’t around to give you any shit. You go to Virgil’s room and knock. When you get no answer, you just pick the lock and open the door. You find him predictably passed out. “Virgil! Virgil! Get up you old drunk! Got work for you and probably some free booze on top of it.” You exclaim. “Huh? Wha?” Virgil sputters. “Hm, funny how that bit of information woke you up immediately. Seriously, get up I need you for a wedding.” “Wazzat? Weddin’?” “Yeah a wedding.” “K…wait you gettin’ married to dat girl you run around wit?” “Oh no, I’m not getting married at all, this is for someone else.” “Oh good. Dat girl was a bitch.” “Hah, yes. Yes she was.” “So who you marryin?” “I told you, I’m not getting married, I need you to marry two other people. Now enough with the questions and let’s go!” “Alright! Alright! Fuck. Dere better be a sizable donat…(hic!) donation fer Joachim.” “Yeah, yeah, there will be, now come on.” You help Virgil up off the floor and begin to help him out his room. No sooner have you started doing this when you hear a bunch of noise followed by shouting. “IN THE NAME OF THE KLYTON MILITIA THIS PLACE HAS BEEN MARKED AS UNLAWFUL IN THE EYES OF THE LAW!” you hear a voice exclaim. You can’t believe this. This is exactly what you were working to avoid at the Laughing Devil and you get caught up in a raid upon your return here! You immediately drop Virgil and try to run out the back way of the Welcome Mat, but the militia already has that covered as well when several of them bust in the back door. You turn to run back the other way, and thanks to a few of the militia being overly enthusiastic about their job, you get a poleaxe to your back and then trampled on by several heavy boots when you fall to the floor. This results in severe head trauma which doesn’t kill you immediately, but you do go unconscious. A coma in fact. If someone was a kind soul that was checking, your life might have been still saved by a healing potion or even medical attention. However the militia just assumes you’re just one of the many law breaking casualties and they toss your unconscious body on the cart with the rest of the dead after they’ve taken the living into custody. You aren’t unconscious for too much longer however and at some point during the journey to the mass grave they dump you in, your life slips away altogether, sparing you from being buried alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No, you went down that road before. Not going down it again especially not with someone you know practically nothing about. And you certainly aren’t going to take the risk of robbing Kenzer’s. There are easier targets, no need to take unnecessary chances. You just hope she doesn’t fuck things up for you when she goes poking around the magic college. You return to your usual routine. A couple days later a big explosion is heard from another part of the city. You don’t know what it is until much later. Turns out that it was Kenzer’s jewelry store. You eventually get the story of a failed attempt at robbing the store in the night and apparently the one involved died in the explosion. Burned body parts were found amongst the destruction. You can only guess that was Zalmora. Hell of a way to go, but given you didn’t think it was a great idea anyway, you’re glad you decided not to go with her. Once again you return to your usual routine. Year 24 “Hank. Hank. HANK!” you shout. “Huh, wha?” Hank sputters while waking up and drooling on himself. ‘Here. I got your latest supply of Gray.” Hank fumbles to get the bag a couple times, but eventually he does. He then says something about you know where his safe is and just take the money from there, before he shoves the pills in his mouth. You thought he was bad on Numb, but ever since you had to start stealing a poor substitute used mainly on people with the plague, he’s gotten a lot worse. He even offered to blow you for a fix once. It was pretty pathetic. The Laughing Devil is barely functioning like it used to anymore. Long gone are the wild parties filled with college types. Now it’s starting to become a hang out for the dregs of the city. Granted half of the people are your customers, so you’re probably a big part of the problem. The bigger problem is it’s not exactly all that great to live at anymore. At one time you were just living here for free because the owner was dependent on you. Now, it’s pretty much acting as a front for your activities since Hank has really fallen behind in running it proper. Not to mention you’re starting to get paranoid that the whole place might get raided one day. Klyton is just becoming more of a problem to operate in everyday. You start to think that maybe its time to leave. Of course, you do have a pretty good set up here. If you took more of a hand in cleaning it up a bit, you might be able to continue to go unnoticed. It would be like owning your own inn without having to actually run it. > You get out now Yeah, you’re not taking any chances. You need to get the hell out now. Where to go though is the issue. Lacking any other ideas, you suppose you’ll head to Hessla and take it from there. One of the problems with being thrifty thief/drug dealer is you’ve got more coin than you can easily carry. Granted you’ve got it hidden in what you believe is a good location, you won’t be able to easily check on it, even if you come back here to transport more of it later. That’s going to have to be a concern for later though. You can always steal more coin. You’ve had to start over again before, you can do it again if need be. You pack up all your important shit, along with some of your savings and immediately make your way to the carriage station. There is a lot of militia milling about when you get there, but fortunately other than a few suspicious glances, you don’t even get harassed. You board a carriage believing that you have no doubt made the right decision. Two other passengers board the carriage. A young couple who mostly ignore you since they’re really into each other. From what you can gather based on their conversation in between the kissing they’re running away together due to their parents not approving. You nearly laugh thinking back at how Annah fooled that guard when you first got to Klyton with a bullshit story like that. You were probably about the same age as the couple when that happened. You still miss her in some ways. The carriage ride starts off uneventful and you even feel comfortable enough to get some sleep since you don’t particularly want to watch the couple slop all over one another. Your sleep is suddenly awakened by a lot of screaming and yelling, a gunshot and then the carriage smashing into something and flipping on its side. You and the couple go tumbling all over the carriage. You survive, though a bit banged up. The couple are still alive too, though the man looks to be very dazed with a big gash on his head and his woman is crying over him. You soon hear several voices shouting in excitement and getting louder. Doesn’t take long before the carriage door (which is now above you due to how the carriage flipped) opens up and you’ve got someone with a crossbow pointing at you. “Hey lads, we got some survivors! An’ one of dem is a lovely lookin’ young thing! If nothing else, we’re gonna have some fun tonight! Hey you! Don’t fuckin’ move or I’ll put a bolt in yer ‘ed!” a bandit says before warning you directly. Soon several of his fellows come and get you and the couple. They grab you first since they rightly seem to believe you’re the biggest threat. You exit the carriage and see some dead horses with bolts in them which no doubt contributed to the carriage crashing. The driver and the extra protector are nowhere to be seen, though you assume were killed before or after the crash. The bandits take away all your weapons and your pack. When one of them opens it up, they’re thrilled with what they see. “Fuck, between this and that girl. We hit the mother lode today!” one of them says. “Is that right Lou? Let me see what you got that’s so great and why you fucking felt the need to attack without me.” A voice suddenly says. You see a female elf wearing next to nothing save for a few tattoos approach. “Had to Flameflower, opportunity arose and we needed to seize it. And it paid off! Look!” Flameflower grabs the pack from Lou and looks inside with a nod. “Okay. Glad you guys didn’t wait until I was done taking a shit then since this seems to have worked out. Hmm, this one’s pretty, almost familiar looking.” Flameflower says giving you a look before being distracted by screams of the girl being pulled out of the carriage by some of the other bandits. “Haylon! Will you shut that bitch up?! Put a gag in her mouth or shove your cock in it. I can’t hear myself think!” Flame shouts. “Apologies Flame. Um, what should we do with this one?” Haylon says pointing to the young man who they’re holding up since he’s barely conscious. “Shit, two young pretties today. Guess Yag’s really rolling well for me for a change. Hm, he looks like he’s almost on his way out. Guess we better do him quick unless we want to add necrophilia to our agenda. Fuck it, might still do that, day’s early. Anyway, let’s get his pants off and I’ll start sucking. Hey have his bitch watch, she might learn something so she can satisfy the rest of you boys.” This is some fucked up shit and while you aren’t exactly sure what these fuckers are going to do to you, you are not going to just wait around to find out. With as much force as you can muster, you punch Lou in the side of the face while his attention is divided and take off running. This is soon followed by shouts calling for you to be stopped. Several bolts whizz by you and for a moment you think you’re going to get away and then you feel a sensation in your head. You immediately see a moment in your youth when you were with your sister, playing and laughing in Teckleville. Such a happy time. This vision then blinks away and you fall to the ground twitching a bit as your brain begins shutting down along with the rest of your body due to the bolt buried in your skull.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 23 “Here you go, but Hank you really need to start going easy on this shit. It’s getting a little harder to get. It’s almost as if the Klyton medical school is starting to realize their Numb supply is getting stolen.” You say giving Hank his fix. “Can’t you just go steal from the hospital?” Hank asks. “Well yes I could and I have, but they got their shit a lot more secure. Probably better than some jewelry stores. I start making that place a regular target and the price is going to go up.” “Up? You’re already getting free fucking room and board!” “And you’re still fucking that elf that you don’t want anyone to know about.” “You know, I’ve been thinking more about that and I’m starting to think that T’ra’ni is right and I shouldn’t be ashamed of who I am. I mean why should I? It’s no big deal.” “Hm, well that fine that you’re discovering shit about yourself. Personally I don’t give a shit, but I’ve gotten very comfortable here and I’m saying I don’t want to pay any fucking rent and if you try to make me, you aren’t going to have to worry about if I’m going to blab about your sexual habits, you just won’t be getting any more Numb. I got other customers and there are always other places I can find to live.” Hank looks a little surprised by your hardened approach on this. You’re not sure why, it’s not like you two are good buddies or something. You’re his fucking dealer and he’s hooked on the shit you can easily get for him. “You’re a fucking asshole.” Hank replies. “Yeah well, be that as it may, this place isn’t doing all that bad since I arrived. I don’t see you starving and besides androgynous elves, you’re swimming in college pussy and getting your drugs. So I say things are going to stay as they are for now.” You say. Hank wants to say more, but he just gives you a dirty look and walks off. With that bullshit out of the way, you head to your free room. Before you even get there, you see a woman lingering in front of the door. She doesn’t look like one of the college crowd that comes here now, or a merchant or possibly a wannabe bard. She’s dressed in pragmatic clothing more suited to one skilled of the ways of a rogue. In some ways she looks a little like an older version of Annah. In other words, a woman of quality. “Ah, there you are. I was waiting for you and didn’t want to just surprise you by waiting inside your room. You know, you really should get better locks on the door. I’d think someone like you would know better.” The woman remarks. “It’s not usually a problem. Besides, I learned a long time ago that it often doesn’t matter how good the lock, if someone wants in, they’re getting in.” you reply. “True. I guess you would know. Anyway, I’m Zalmora.” “Hm. Is that supposed to mean something?” “No, though I know you’ve sold shit to the Bloody Talons in the past, surprised you haven’t heard any of them talking about me in passing. Or more likely bitching about me.” “I don’t really have long conversations with Talon assholes. I generally just want them to buy their shit and go murder an old lady or whatever it is they do nowadays. In fact, are they still even around? Last I heard a shitload of them got killed two months ago in a big Klyton militia raid. Including their leader Jake.” “Yeah, the Bloody Talons are indeed no more. Oh sure there’s a couple of them still lingering about trying to keep what’s left of the rabble, but I anticipate that even that will be gone by the end of the year thanks to the militia.” “Well, that’s what they get for being so high profile and generally being a bunch of unsubtle idiots. Wait, were you in the Talons?” “I was. And it’s all true, they were a bunch of unsubtle idiots. Wasn’t always like that of course when we were the Crimson Talons, but well shit happens. Perhaps that’s how I managed to stay undetected since I was probably one of the few that was still a professional. Kind of like you in that way right?” “I guess. So why’d you stay?” “Love I guess? I mean Jake was a bloodthirsty asshole that was a terrible leader, but I think he cared about me as much as he understood it anyway. And he had a certain charm, at times.” “Sounds like a true love story. Anyway, what did you want? Are you here to buy or something?” “Actually I was wondering if you’d be interested in doing a job with me. I’m well aware of your skills and I think it would go a lot easier with your assistance.” “I’m sure it would, but I don’t partner with anyone.” “You don’t? I thought you had a girl you routinely partnered with all the time. Wasn’t she your girlfriend or…oh wait…bad break up?” You don’t reply. “Okay, I see. Yeah I suppose that might put a crimp in your trust level which is probably low enough seeing our line of work and all.” Zalmora remarks. “Not to mention I don’t even know you.” You add. “Well does that matter? I’d argue that familiarity is one of the more minor factors in whether you can trust someone or not. I mean there were a few times in the Talons where apparent friends backstabbed each other.” “I suppose that’s a valid point. However, it’s still a factor never the less. I mean just speaking on a professional level, I know I’m good, but I don’t know how good YOU are. I just know you were in the Bloody Talons and given what I knew of most of them doesn’t speak highly.” Zalmora chuckles a bit. “Something funny?” you ask. “Yeah. Never thought MY skills would ever be called into question. That’s good though, means you really are a professional and serious about your work. Look, I’m going to go ahead and tell you what the job is. Kenzer’s Gems and Jewels.” Zalmora says. “Kenzer’s huh? I just got done telling someone that the Klyton hospital has better security then most jewelry stores and of course now you’re telling me you’re hitting the one exception. Place might as well be a bank. In fact a bank might be easier. Still, you got my attention so you might as well come inside and tell me of this mad plan.” You open the door and you both enter where after mentioning something about your room, she goes into detail about the plan. The plan is actually surprisingly simple. It’s just a basic break in with more attention on the security and locks. She says that she’s actually been casing the place on and off for a year and even acquired special dwarven thieving tools to help in her task. Her main concern is possible magic protection which seems like a given and partially asked for your help since she knows your area is the university which also houses the college of magic and was wondering if perhaps you had any access to or perhaps even acquired anything that might bypass such things. You explain that you’ve always sort of stayed away from the college of magic despite lurking around there a couple times out of curiosity. You say you’ve toyed with the idea pilfering from there before since it never seemed like the place was any better protected than most of the other parts of the university, but you were always a bit paranoid that you’d pick up something that might just give you a fate worse than death. Zalmora nods at your words. “I see. Well would you have any problems with me poking about the place?” Zalmora asks. “What the college of magic? No. I mean you don’t need my permission.” You say. “Yes, I know I don’t, however I know its in your territory so to speak, I don’t really want to cause any potential problems.” “Heh, well gotta say, I’m not used to this sort of professional courtesy from anyone before, let alone anyone from the Talons who were often telling ME to get the fuck off their territory whether I was working there or not. In any case, you’ll get no issues from me. Though I’d be careful fucking around in there.” “Risks of the trade. I imagine you’d know something of that.” “True, though I think I make more coin selling the various hospital drugs I steal. If I actually knew how to make the shit, I’d probably just do that instead because its far less work especially since there’s practically no competition. Unless you count the various Green Lotus dealers and they certainly don’t count.” “Yeah the Talons were once in the drug trade. Not sure why we stopped really. I think the new leader at the time Tom wanted to step away from it since it drew too much heat. Then again Yellow Devil causing addicts to melt would certainly that. Sort of figured when Jake took charge we might get back into it, but still a bit too organized for him I think. Honestly I think he would have just preferred leading a gang that ambushed travellers on the roads.” “Hm. Well he certainly might have lasted longer. You act like a mad dog, you’ll eventually get put down like one.” “Indeed. However, I’d say staying put and getting too comfortable like a fat lazy cat is likely to get one eventually grabbed by the scruff, put in a bag and thrown in a river.” “Okay, I feel like that was directed at me.” “More of a warning. Not sure if you realize it or not but security has increased a lot in the city. Granted a lot of that might be the fault of the Bloody Talons making such a mess of things, but the reasons don’t matter. What matters is, things are getting harder for people like us.” “Didn’t you just say that’s the risks of the trade?” “Yeah, but there’s also anticipating getting out of the way of trouble you can’t handle. Not saying that time is now, but it’s coming soon. And this nice comfortable set up you have might all come crashing down even if you’re careful. After all, with the Talons out of the way, attention is going to focus on the next biggest criminals in the city and I’d say you’d fit the bill.” “Duly noted. Well if you’re done with your warnings, I have things to do.” Zalmora looks at you and starts to leave, but you can already tell she’s not done talking. Story of your life. “So you’re not interested in partnering up?” Zalmora asks. “Why are you so interested in partnering up with me? I mean I get some of the reasons that you’ve explained, but this is still pretty damn sudden. I mean there’s still a trust issue here.” “Well because as you pointed out robbing Kenzer’s isn’t going to be an easy job and it would probably be better to have an extra pair of eyes and hands around. And…maybe this is going to sound odd from someone you don’t know, but you’re obviously a talented thief and maybe I just like a little social interaction from time to time from another one in our business.” “So…what then? You miss your Talon buddies? I can’t help with that. They were a bunch of idiots and I was never in this to make friends. Unless you’re saying you’re missing your boyfriend. If that’s the case, well…as you’ve gathered I’m not exactly trusting on that front either however I’m not going to say no to a tumble I suppose.” Zalmora sighs at you. “Fine, you’re an asshole like everyone else in this trade then. Thanks for what information you did provide and apologies for wasting your time.” Zalmora at this point turns to leave for real this time and there’s a part of you that wants to stop her, even though you think it might be more trouble than its worth. > You stop Zalmora You must be getting bored (or lonely) because this is probably a bad idea. “Alright, alright, stop. I’ll help.” You say. “Hey don’t feel the need to pity me, I don’t need or want it.” Zalmora responds. “I’m not, I’m just thinking that I know the college of magic layout better than you and if you’re going to hit that place first then it would probably be best if I came with you. Last thing I need is you getting caught and then security around the university starts getting tighter as well.” “Heh, okay.” Zalmora smirks a bit at your response as if she doesn’t quite buy your excuse to help. Though to be fair, your reasoning isn’t totally a lie. You go into detail about the layout of the place and what she can probably expect. You tell her that unlike most places its actually better to go there during the day since the wizard types seem to be more active at night. You mention that the while the security isn’t tight, there’s probably a reason for that which is there doesn’t seem to be much just lying around waiting to get snatched. The few times you did lurk about there, all you mostly found within easy reach were a lot of unlabeled potions and spell ingredients. “I guess it not being secure isn’t entirely true since the upper floors seem magically locked so I never got up there. Also there is the basement level, but uh, I got a few feet down there, heard weird noises and got the hell out of there and never went back. Not going to risk going down there again either. Anyway, when did you want to do this?” “I can meet you here in a couple days. Any particular time?” “I guess sometime in the morning. It’s a little early for me, but probably best to get started early.” “Okay. Well I’m glad this wasn’t a wasted trip and I look forward to working with you…what changed your mind?” “Hell if I know. I’m probably being an idiot and thinking with dick again.” Zalmora chuckles. “So basically like most guys then. Still, I appreciate the honesty. Alright I’ll see you.” Zalmora takes her leave and you take steps to move most of your savings to another hiding spot. In couple days true to her word Zalmora comes to your door. “Hey, I’m here. Not sure why you wanted me here so early, but I’m guessing you wanted to go over things for tonight.” Zalmora says. “Tonight? I wanted you here early so we can go early since there’s less activity then.” You say. “Less activity? Kenzer’s would be open right now.” “Kenzer’s? I’m talking about the magic college.” “The magic college? Oh! Fuck, well this is embarrassing that there was miscommunication on our first potential job together. I meant going to Kenzer’s today. I already went to the college of magic.” “What? But I thought you wanted me to go with you.” “Well I got the impression you didn’t really want to go and as I said I thought you were talking about Kenzer’s place. Anyway, I got some stuff. Check it out.” Zalmora takes a small pack off her back and goes over to a table and dumps out some of the contents. A few of them are potion bottles, a couple are some sort of odd glowing stones and some sort of silver tube with a hole at the top. “Well that’s great, but do you actually know what any of this shit is?” you ask. “Actually I do! These potions make you invisible!” “You’re shitting me.” “No! I drank one and that’s exactly what happened!” “You drank…fuck. Well you’re braver than me, I’ll give you that.” “Well maybe not as much as you think. These actually were sort of labeled. Maybe not directly on the bottle, but in a little book nearby where I guess some wizard was making notes on what they were making. Anyway, they don’t last long though and you feel sort of dizzy, even a bit nauseous after becoming visible again. Well at least I did.” “Okay, still might come in handy. What about these stones?” “These apparently are some sort of magic explosive. I guess you throw them really hard at something and it explodes. Um, the notebook didn’t exactly say how powerful though.” “And you had those rolling around in your pack. Great. Okay, so what about the whistle?” “Oh this? Just some silver whistle I found lying around and looked valuable. Here you go. Consider it your cut for your information.” Zalmora says tossing you the whistle. “Uh okay. Thanks I guess.” You say catching it. “I suppose I didn’t find anything like a magical lockpick, but hopefully Kenzer don’t have any magic locks like I’m anticipating.” “Well if worse comes to worst, I guess we could blow up something with those stones and drink the potions as we get away with the loot.” “I like the way you think. So…I guess we got a bunch of time. Any suggestions on how to spend it?” “Well, I got up way earlier than I normally do, so if it’s all the same to you, I’m going back to sleep. You can see your way out.” “Really? Didn’t expect that to be your suggestion.” “What, you thought I was going to suggest sex? I already did that once before and you weren’t interested.” “You give up so easily?” “No, I just figure if it is going to happen, my chances will increase after a successful job…either that or you’ll double cross me and leave me for dead. It’s a risk either way, but it is what it is.” With those words, you put your whistle on the end table next to your bed and lay down. Zalmora looks at the door for a moment and then over at you. “Hey you wouldn’t mind if I slept here would you?” Zalmora asks. “What? Wait. You mean actual sleep right?” you respond. “Yes. I just don’t feel like going all the way back home, I got all my equipment for tonight’s job and it’s not like I got anything else going on today. Might as well get some rest.” “…fuck it. Okay, but where are you expecting to sleep? I’m not giving up the bed in my own place.” “You don’t need to, I’ll just share it. I trust you’ll be a gentleman. Move over.” Without another word, Zalmora is plopping herself on your bed and nudging you over. You swear, you can’t tell what’s going on with this woman. She’s being very forward, but holding back at the same time. It’s not quite teasing though. Maybe all of this is some sort of weird way of showing she can be trusted? If so, you’re not convinced. “If you’re planning on robbing me while I sleep, you’ll find I’m a light sleeper and that silver whistle you gave me is probably the most valuable thing in the room now anyway.” You say. “Wasn’t planning on it. I’m guessing that ex of yours did something like that?” Zalmora says. “Not talking about it…what’re you doing?” “I’m going to sleep, why?” “Because you’re all up on me. I mean it’s weird enough that you want to share a bed, now you got your arm and leg on me. A few more moves and we might as well be fucking. I mean if that’s what you want to do, you can just tell me since I’m not sleepy enough to not oblige that request.” “I just…look, I was just used to sleeping next to a warm body on a semi-regular basis and I miss it. Even if said warm body was an asshole most of the time. So no, I’m not looking for sex, I just want that feeling of closeness I guess. Yeah I know it’s weird, but as you said, it is what it is. So if this is just too much of a cock tease for you I guess I’ll go home and come back later.” “No. no, it’s fine. I guess I get it…but you have to be into me on at least a physical level. I mean surely you wouldn’t be doing this with some bum on the street?” “Alright, you’re right about that one. Just try to keep the groping to a minimum for now.” And with those words, Zalmora closes her eyes and after staring at her a moment, you do likewise. It’s nothing something you normally do, but it is sort of nice. Makes you miss when you and Annah used to do this on a regular basis. Later you awaken to find that night has fallen and hear the sounds of merriment in the distance. Sounds like another lively night on stage. “I was just about to wake you.” Zalmora says, going through her pack by candlelight. “How long you been awake?” you ask. “I dunno, the bards and people cheering woke me up a couple hours ago I guess. I thought you said you were a light sleeper.” “I usually am. Maybe your body being against mine was just so comforting it lulled me into a deep sleep.” You half joke. “Hm, glad you enjoyed it. Given your general view on things, maybe you needed just as much as I did. Anyway, you ready to go do this?” “Yep, let’s get going.” You and Zalmora take your leave and head to Kenzer’s Gems and Jewels. An hour later… As you’re puking up your guts from the after affects of the invisibility potion, Zalmora is anxiously looking around, hoping none of the Klyton Watch are patrolling the sewers. “Hurry up, I’d rather we put more distance between us and the shop!” Zalmora says. “Ugh…don’t you mean smoking crater? That shop is in ruins and I’m amazed I even survived the blast. Pretty sure I got broken glass in my body and I know I’ve got burns because I can still feel the fucking heat from my blackened clothes.” You say trying to regain your composure from your vomiting. “Apologies, but really didn’t know that was going to happen. I mean the first stone didn’t do anything except make a small pop.” “You could have waited a bit, I was sure I had that lock open. Fuck, whatever. It’s done now. Anyway you alright?” “Oh. Yeah, I managed to take cover and just got some scraps rather than getting blown out one of the windows.” “Did we get anything?” “Uh, unfortunately I think in all the confusion the bag of gems I had split and everything fell out. I only managed to save a few and not even the more valuable ones. Do you have anything?” “Yeah a lot of pain. Agh. Fuck, I’m going home.” “Hold on, let’s go back to my place. You go into the Laughing Devil looking like that and someone might put two and two together when they hear about what happened. You know how easily people talk. I mean yeah it’s a slim chance, but why risk it?” “Fine whatever. Just want to get to some place to rest. Just lead the way.” You and Zalmora walk through the filthy sewers to her place in relative silence. The pair of you are both keeping an eye out just in case, but you’re fairly certain that despite everything, you go out of there before anyone really saw you, let alone the Watch. Of course who knows what else lurks down here in this place. “I gotta say, you’re taking all of this better than I thought you would.” Zalmora says. “I’m a little too drained to bitch about how badly it all went. Besides, I didn’t really lose anything I suppose. Which is more than I can say the last time I worked with a partner. I mean I’m still alive and in one piece.” You respond. “Heh. If I was working with Jake he would have been yelling and screaming the whole time at me and saying it was all my fault.” “Well at least he would have had some basis in fact for bitching. If I had been working with Annah and she had been the one to throw that explosive stone, she would have STILL blamed me for everything and bitched for the next three days.” “Yikes. I take it Annah was your ex?” “Yeah, though to be honest we weren’t really together in that way for awhile. We had just been working on jobs on and off until…ah I don’t know why I’m talking about this, it’s not important.” “No, go on. I’d like to hear. Certainly beats just listening to the sounds of the sewers.” “What the hell…” You go into a little more detail about Annah and what she was like. It’s sort of odd, you’ve never really talked about her to someone else before. Zalmora just listens for the most part, but eventually asking why you were with her. Your answer is one you’ve gone over in your own head several times before. The only answer you can come up with is “It’s complicated.” “No it isn’t. You loved her. Not saying it was the type of love you read about in badly written romance stories with knights saving virginal damsels, but you put up with her and still kept contact with her despite you throwing her out. Which seemed like more of a rash move on your part that you probably regretted later since it sounds like you were even willing to give it all another chance. First loves are hard to shake. I should know.” “Oh was that the situation with Jake?” “Hah, no. Jake was…something else, but my first love was when I was younger and well let’s just say it could have ended better.” “Yeah well I’m definitely over her now.” “Are you? I really couldn’t help but notice how you described her physical appearance you kept referring to ME sometimes in comparison. Such as hair, eyes, mouth…” “What? Wait. No! I just…uh bad at describing people and couldn’t think of a better way to do it. I mean she doesn’t look like you at all! You’re older! … Oh fuck… Shit. I don’t mean it like that. I mean you’re…” “Calm down I know what the hell you mean. Please, it takes more than that to offend me. What you’re basically saying is I look like a…more mature version of your ex.” “Uh, yeah I guess so. And definitely nowhere near as bitchy.” “Well you haven’t gotten on my bad side yet.” “I can’t imagine it’ll be any worse than the relative pleasant side of you considering that side nearly blew me up.” Zalmora laughs at your comment and the pair of you continue to speak all the way back to her home. It actually lightens both of your moods. Zal’s home is humble, but it’s definitely a welcome place to rest after this failed night. You spend a couple days there recovering at Zal’s insistence since the job was her idea to begin with and she feels partially responsible. You have to admit, you really feel like this is all a set up for something worse because you haven’t had someone this pleasant with you for quite awhile. But there is no other shoe dropping so far. In fact Zalmora makes a comment about supposing that you won’t be working together again given that this first job was a big failure. “No. We can try this again. No shortage of other places to blow up after all.” You respond. “Ah, well that’s true. And we haven’t fucked yet.” Zalmora says. “There is that I suppose.” Zalmora looks at you. “Well?” Zal says. “Well what?” you say. “You want to get that out of the way?” “What, now?” “You still need time to heal?” “No, I think can manage.” “Well let’s get to it then.” “You…sure about this?” “If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t be suggesting it.” “As long as you’re sure…agh fuck…shit my fucking side…uh you think you can be on top?” “Pfft, like you were going to have a choice.” This looks like the beginning of a brand new partnership… > You time passes... Year 25 “Think it’s time to leave Klyton.” Zalmora remarks. “You think so?” you respond. “With the increase in Klyton militia activity in the city? Yeah. Unless you’re thinking about a career change.” “Are you thinking about one?” “Eh, there are times when I think about what else I could be doing with my life, but pretty sure settling down and having a whole mess o’ babies isn’t high on the list. Well certainly not the babies part at least.” “Definitely not. Kids always grow up to disappoint…well that’s probably what my parents think anyway. In any case, I see no reason to change things up.” “Heh, well you’re still young. You might change your mind.” “Doubt it. I mean I can’t see myself really doing anything else other than what I’m more or less doing right now.” “So you think when you’re in your seventies you’re going to be sneaking about in houses and buildings?” “Assuming I live that long, I would hope that I will have acquired enough to live on for the remainder of my life by then.” “Ah yes, your thrifty ways. A very atypical trait for someone in our line of work barring a few dwarven thieves I’ve known in the past.” “Well I’m just aware that times may not always be plentiful, so better to have something to fall back on.” “That’s very pragmatic. You sure you don’t have any dwarven blood?” “Heh. Nah. I mean when I was still working with my sister, I was doing this mostly due to it being fun. Never really spent much of what I stole, hell I even misplaced a bauble from time to time because it just wasn’t important enough that I cared. I mean I could just steal from another travelling merchant right? Then when I was with Annah, I couldn’t even keep most of what I stole without her spending it almost immediately.” “So you’ve said.” “Yeah, well I think my short time in an actual relationship with her caused me to always hang on to whatever I managed to keep and in time it just became a habit.” “Not a bad habit to have. Most don’t think about the future.” “So what’s bringing this all on anyway?” Zalmora exhales and stretches a bit before answering. Zal goes into how when she was much younger she originally was doing this out of survival and the fun came later when she realized how good she was at it. For awhile it was a mixing with business with pleasure sort of thing. However lately she’s been starting to dwell on the future mainly because she’s starting to realize the little aches and pains in her body she feels when running from the militia or her reflexes slowing down as she narrowly avoids a trap she’s disarmed. You tell her she’s hardly ready for the grave, which she of course knows that, but each year it becomes something she thinks about more and more. She again mentions that she’s not interested in settling down with dreams of a family or even “retiring” from this life anytime soon, but she would like to have an end game as it were. “I suppose one of the few benefits of being in a gang was there was a mild sense of community. At least there was when it was the Crimson Talons. More people were around to assist and you could take a break for a while. I suppose at one point I even figured I’d become one of those old members that just sent you young folks on assignments and reap the benefits.” Zal says. “So…you saying you want to start a new gang?” you ask. “Hell no. If anything I should have left the Crimson Talons when it became the Bloody Talons, but you know, I was an idiot who thought I was in love or whatever it was. In any case, I’m done with the whole gang part of my life. What I’m doing now is fine, but I know at some point I’m not going to want to do this anymore.” “Well, that’s why we save.” “And that’s at least a plan, though I guess…I dunno…I suppose it might be nice to have steady income without having to risk our lives for it.” “That sounds like having a real job.” “Well I know neither of us want to do that, but maybe we should consider something that isn’t like a real job, but still mostly legal if we want to stay in Klyton because shit is just getting harder here. Hence why I suggested we might need to get the hell out of the city.” “Well any suggestions on where to go? Hessla? Holgard? Delantium?” “Eh, none of those choices are all that great. The Delantium Kingdom and Holgard both have an Ebony Claw Syndicate presence and as I said before dealing with gang shit is the last thing I want to be doing in my life now. I suppose the best of the lot would be Hessla. It’s close, The Syndicate doesn’t have any real presence there and the law there is non-existent. At least in the traditional sense. The governor of Hessla still keeps a tight reign on things so it isn’t chaos there, so random murders, muggings and burglaries are frowned upon, but say opening up a slave market would be fine provided the governor is getting his cut.” “I don’t think I’m into selling slaves.” “Well obviously I wasn’t suggesting that, but you do sell drugs. You could do that in Hessla without worrying about the legal ramifications.” “Okay, but I’m not making them. I can’t sell the medical shit I steal from Klyton’s hospitals if I don’t have easy access to it.” “Well maybe you could branch out. I mean Hessla is a pirate haven, lots of stuff coming in and out of that place. You probably could fence items. People always seeking out things or looking to sell.” “That sounds like running a pawn shop which sounds like a job…” “Don’t think of it as running a pawn shop, think of it as…running a black market.” “Hah. Well that does make it sound more appealing. Okay, but surely Hessla already has several such established places there.” “Well its called competition. Obviously I didn’t say it would be easy, but it’s an option worth thinking about. And you wouldn’t be doing this alone, I’d be helping you of course.” Zalmora puts one of her hands on yours and squeezes slightly as if to reassure you of her words. Zal isn’t one for a lot of affection, but during your relationship with her you know her feelings are genuine. No unnecessary drama either. She comes off a bit “guiding” at times, like she’s doing right now. Still, it’s better than bitching. You’re not quite sure about this idea that’s she got though. Still seems a bit too close to having a proper job though she’s probably right about Klyton getting a bit of a hassle to function in nowadays. You need time to think about it. Zal said she wasn’t rushing into this anyway and who knows; you or her might come up with a different idea in the meantime. A few weeks pass and you get news about the militia raiding the Laughing Devil. You’re sort of surprised it took them so long because even before you stopped living there it had started to get a reputation for hosting “indecent acts without a license” and becoming a Green Lotus den. Just as well that you started living with Zalmora otherwise you might have gotten swept up in said raid. Still, Zal was concerned before and she’s really alarmed now, so much so that she’s urging you both to leave immediately with just what you can carry. “But I got a shitload of savings stashed…somewhere. I can’t easily just leave with it right now!” you remark. “Do you feel it’s safe? Do you think anyone is going to find it?” Zal asks not even taking offense that you’ve still kept the location secret from her. “Well nobody’s found it yet so I think it’s fine.” “Good, you can come back and get it later then. We need to move now. You sold shit to more than a few of those assholes at the Laughing Devil, the owner in particular. How long before one of them drops your name and the militia tracks you here?” “Alright, alright, fuck it. I’ve lost it all before, I can make it all back again if it comes to that. Let’s get packed.” You and Zal start packing as much as you can as quick as you can and make your way to the carriage station. You ask Zal if she feels some sort of way about having to abandon her house, but she just replies that it’s not like she’s leaving a mansion and was more or less just a place that she could keep her stuff and a roof over her head. She then mumbles something about thanking her uncle that left it to her and tells you to quicken your pace. You get within sight of the carriage station and then you see several patrols of militia walking about the area. A few of them are even walking in your direction. Your instinct is to keep cool and just walk by them as if nothing is wrong since if you run or even turn around at this point it’s going to arouse suspicion. However Zal is already whispering another suggestion. “Let’s run now. I know the closest manhole and we’ll lose them in the sewers.” > You walk by the militia You suddenly start running and they’re definitely going to know something is up. Better to just play it cool. “It’ll be fine, we just need to keep calm.” You say continuing to walk towards the station. “I’m telling you right now, we need to run.” Zal remarks. “We’ll be fine, just stop talking.” Your visible minor disagreement with Zal has already caused enough suspicious however by the militia approaching who were looking for an excuse anyway. “You two halt!” one of them remarks. And as soon as that’s said, Zalmora has taken off running. “Zal! Shit. Fuck…” you sputter as you realize you now have no choice but to follow suit. Of course this split second of confusion combined with how close you let them get in the first place is unfortunately just enough for the militia to catch you. Naturally, they slam you to the ground and begin disarming you. Nearly literally since they break one of your arms in the process. Next step is taking away your backpack and once they see what’s inside, if there was the slimmest chance that they might still let you go, it’s gone. You actually expect them to just kill you right then and there, but they end up dragging you to the Klyton jail where they lock you up. You spend about a week inside still suffering from a broken arm. You keep holding out for the false hope that maybe Zal is going to pull off some daring rescue, but that doesn’t happen. She’s gone and while there’s a part of you that is very angry about it, you’re more mad at yourself for not running when she suggested it in the first place. You probably could pick the lock even with a broken arm, but you wouldn’t get far. The only upside is you’ve got a cell all by yourself while its decided on if they’re going to do anything worse to you. A month passes and finally a Captain Branik, head of the militia tells you that you’re going to be executed. “What?! I can’t even defend myself? You didn’t even arrest me committing a crime!” you exclaim. “What’s to defend? When we caught you, you had a shitload of coin and other valuables. You obviously have no visible means of support and you were trying to leave the city. Doesn’t take a scholar to put everything together. Shit, we even got reason to believe you were involved in blowing up Kenzer’s jewelry store and found a silver whistle that someone in the wizard’s college reported stolen years ago. You’ve obviously been very busy and good at keeping a low profile. Well Yag’s dice have finally rolled snake eyes for you and you’re finally going to pay the price.” Branik says. “Look even if I was guilty of whatever you think I’m guilty of, can’t you just exile me? I mean I was leaving anyway. I won’t come back!” “Exile? We rarely do that anymore. That doesn’t teach anyone shit and it’s going to just let a criminal free to attack caravans on the road. Yeah, not risking that. Shit, I wouldn’t even risk putting you in one of those hanging cages we got. You’d probably pick the lock and get away with all your experience. No, the best thing we need to do with you is make an example. You’ll be hanged tomorrow.” And that’s it. No defense, no escape, no anything. You sit down and feel sick. It’s weird, you’ve been in other situations where death could have found you, but something about waiting for it in a cell makes it feel worse. Probably because you have time to think about it. You can’t think about though, you’ll just make yourself more upset. Instead you try to think about your family oddly enough. You think back to the happier times you had in Teckleville and you think about how you wish you never had to leave. You don’t get much sleep and when they wake you up to get you, you’re very tired. But not without some fight left. The guards come in to get you and you immediately try to fight with one good arm. Naturally you don’t do very well, though you were really hoping that they’d at least kill you right there, but instead they just beat the shit out of you and break your other arm before dragging you to the gallows before an enthusiastic crowd wanting to see their entertainment. Your body is in so much pain from the broken bones and beatings that when you feel the noose slip over your neck you’re just glad this will be over soon. Some militia asshole goes on about justice for a moment until you manage enough strength to tell him to shut the fuck up and just get on with it. The hooded executioner soon grants your wish and pulls the lever. Your neck snaps almost instantly as you go through the trap door.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 25 “Think it’s time to leave Klyton.” Zalmora remarks. “You think so?” you respond. “With the increase in Klyton militia activity in the city? Yeah. Unless you’re thinking about a career change.” “Are you thinking about one?” “Eh, there are times when I think about what else I could be doing with my life, but pretty sure settling down and having a whole mess o’ babies isn’t high on the list. Well certainly not the babies part at least.” “Definitely not. Kids always grow up to disappoint…well that’s probably what my parents think anyway. In any case, I see no reason to change things up.” “Heh, well you’re still young. You might change your mind.” “Doubt it. I mean I can’t see myself really doing anything else other than what I’m more or less doing right now.” “So you think when you’re in your seventies you’re going to be sneaking about in houses and buildings?” “Assuming I live that long, I would hope that I will have acquired enough to live on for the remainder of my life by then.” “Ah yes, your thrifty ways. A very atypical trait for someone in our line of work barring a few dwarven thieves I’ve known in the past.” “Well I’m just aware that times may not always be plentiful, so better to have something to fall back on.” “That’s very pragmatic. You sure you don’t have any dwarven blood?” “Heh. Nah. I mean when I was still working with my sister, I was doing this mostly due to it being fun. Never really spent much of what I stole, hell I even misplaced a bauble from time to time because it just wasn’t important enough that I cared. I mean I could just steal from another travelling merchant right? Then when I was with Annah, I couldn’t even keep most of what I stole without her spending it almost immediately.” “So you’ve said.” “Yeah, well I think my short time in an actual relationship with her caused me to always hang on to whatever I managed to keep and in time it just became a habit.” “Not a bad habit to have. Most don’t think about the future.” “So what’s bringing this all on anyway?” Zalmora exhales and stretches a bit before answering. Zal goes into how when she was much younger she originally was doing this out of survival and the fun came later when she realized how good she was at it. For awhile it was a mixing with business with pleasure sort of thing. However lately she’s been starting to dwell on the future mainly because she’s starting to realize the little aches and pains in her body she feels when running from the militia or her reflexes slowing down as she narrowly avoids a trap she’s disarmed. You tell her she’s hardly ready for the grave, which she of course knows that, but each year it becomes something she thinks about more and more. She again mentions that she’s not interested in settling down with dreams of a family or even “retiring” from this life anytime soon, but she would like to have an end game as it were. “I suppose one of the few benefits of being in a gang was there was a mild sense of community. At least there was when it was the Crimson Talons. More people were around to assist and you could take a break for a while. I suppose at one point I even figured I’d become one of those old members that just sent you young folks on assignments and reap the benefits.” Zal says. “So…you saying you want to start a new gang?” you ask. “Hell no. If anything I should have left the Crimson Talons when it became the Bloody Talons, but you know, I was an idiot who thought I was in love or whatever it was. In any case, I’m done with the whole gang part of my life. What I’m doing now is fine, but I know at some point I’m not going to want to do this anymore.” “Well, that’s why we save.” “And that’s at least a plan, though I guess…I dunno…I suppose it might be nice to have steady income without having to risk our lives for it.” “That sounds like having a real job.” “Well I know neither of us want to do that, but maybe we should consider something that isn’t like a real job, but still mostly legal if we want to stay in Klyton because shit is just getting harder here. Hence why I suggested we might need to get the hell out of the city.” “Well any suggestions on where to go? Hessla? Holgard? Delantium?” “Eh, none of those choices are all that great. The Delantium Kingdom and Holgard both have an Ebony Claw Syndicate presence and as I said before dealing with gang shit is the last thing I want to be doing in my life now. I suppose the best of the lot would be Hessla. It’s close, The Syndicate doesn’t have any real presence there and the law there is non-existent. At least in the traditional sense. The governor of Hessla still keeps a tight reign on things so it isn’t chaos there, so random murders, muggings and burglaries are frowned upon, but say opening up a slave market would be fine provided the governor is getting his cut.” “I don’t think I’m into selling slaves.” “Well obviously I wasn’t suggesting that, but you do sell drugs. You could do that in Hessla without worrying about the legal ramifications.” “Okay, but I’m not making them. I can’t sell the medical shit I steal from Klyton’s hospitals if I don’t have easy access to it.” “Well maybe you could branch out. I mean Hessla is a pirate haven, lots of stuff coming in and out of that place. You probably could fence items. People always seeking out things or looking to sell.” “That sounds like running a pawn shop which sounds like a job…” “Don’t think of it as running a pawn shop, think of it as…running a black market.” “Hah. Well that does make it sound more appealing. Okay, but surely Hessla already has several such established places there.” “Well its called competition. Obviously I didn’t say it would be easy, but it’s an option worth thinking about. And you wouldn’t be doing this alone, I’d be helping you of course.” Zalmora puts one of her hands on yours and squeezes slightly as if to reassure you of her words. Zal isn’t one for a lot of affection, but during your relationship with her you know her feelings are genuine. No unnecessary drama either. She comes off a bit “guiding” at times, like she’s doing right now. Still, it’s better than bitching. You’re not quite sure about this idea that’s she got though. Still seems a bit too close to having a proper job though she’s probably right about Klyton getting a bit of a hassle to function in nowadays. You need time to think about it. Zal said she wasn’t rushing into this anyway and who knows; you or her might come up with a different idea in the meantime. A few weeks pass and you get news about the militia raiding the Laughing Devil. You’re sort of surprised it took them so long because even before you stopped living there it had started to get a reputation for hosting “indecent acts without a license” and becoming a Green Lotus den. Just as well that you started living with Zalmora otherwise you might have gotten swept up in said raid. Still, Zal was concerned before and she’s really alarmed now, so much so that she’s urging you both to leave immediately with just what you can carry. “But I got a shitload of savings stashed…somewhere. I can’t easily just leave with it right now!” you remark. “Do you feel it’s safe? Do you think anyone is going to find it?” Zal asks not even taking offense that you’ve still kept the location secret from her. “Well nobody’s found it yet so I think it’s fine.” “Good, you can come back and get it later then. We need to move now. You sold shit to more than a few of those assholes at the Laughing Devil, the owner in particular. How long before one of them drops your name and the militia tracks you here?” “Alright, alright, fuck it. I’ve lost it all before, I can make it all back again if it comes to that. Let’s get packed.” You and Zal start packing as much as you can as quick as you can and make your way to the carriage station. You ask Zal if she feels some sort of way about having to abandon her house, but she just replies that it’s not like she’s leaving a mansion and was more or less just a place that she could keep her stuff and a roof over her head. She then mumbles something about thanking her uncle that left it to her and tells you to quicken your pace. You get within sight of the carriage station and then you see several patrols of militia walking about the area. A few of them are even walking in your direction. Your instinct is to keep cool and just walk by them as if nothing is wrong since if you run or even turn around at this point it’s going to arouse suspicion. However Zal is already whispering another suggestion. “Let’s run now. I know the closest manhole and we’ll lose them in the sewers.” > You run to the sewers With as many militia fuckers that are around the station, it might be best to run while you can. You give a look at Zal and nod, then the pair of you turn around and start walking away fast. One of the militia shouts at you both to stop which then leads to you both running; this is then followed by them chasing you. Running with a full pack on your back is never a fun thing, but its not like you haven’t done it a few times before. Desperately prying a manhole cover off while trying to escape the law is even less fun. The worst of course is stomping about in the sewers. You didn’t like it the first time you did it. Fortunately Zal is still more familiar with them than the militia is and after lying low in some unknown corner of these marvels of sanitation eventually you lose them altogether. “We’re not getting out of this city the conventional way.” Zalmora remarks. “Scaling the wall is going to be a little tough. Probably would still be easier to sneak out one of the gates.” You say. “It’ll be even easier to sneak out of the city using these sewers. There’s an old passage the Talons used to use to get in and out of the city sometimes. I just hope it hasn’t been completely blocked off since the militia took them out.” “Surprised the Talons didn’t use it to escape.” “A few of them might have for all I know, but when the militia stormed the hideout, some of them came through that route to make sure nobody escaped that way. I’m just glad I happened to be pissed at Jake at the time and wasn’t around when any of it happened.” “I didn’t know that.” “Yeah well it’s not something I like to dwell on too much. The whole last time we spent time together being angry with him and all. It’s in the past anyway and right now getting through the present is more important. Come on.” Eventually you get to the tunnel that Zal was speaking about and it has indeed been blocked off, however it hasn’t been blocked in a manner that would be impossible to get through as only a set of iron bars along with a few iron gates with locks on them have been installed. You and Zal get to work on opening them and eventually you pop them all and soon you’re making your way out to the great outdoors and more importantly those awful sewers. “Fucking hell, never thought I’d be so glad to see the countryside again. I don’t know how the hell you dealt with those sewers on regular basis.” You remark. “You get used to it. You get used to a lot of things…anyway I guess we’re walking to Hessla now.” Zalmora says. “That’ll be fun. How long will that take?” you say. “A few days I imagine. Uh, you got food and water?” “I got some water. I don’t think I have any food. Not exactly a hunter either.” “Well I guess we’ll just eat when we get there.” You and Zal begin to walk west towards your destination. As you put more and more distance between you and Klyton, you have a myriad of thoughts running through your mind though some of those are surprisingly about your family. You briefly wonder how they’re all doing. You imagine your mom and dad lives are a lot easier without you around anymore. As for your sister, you hope she’s doing a lot better than you are right now. You weren’t sure about “starting over” before, but it looks like you’ll be doing it whether you want to or not. New town, new possible “profession”, you’re not exactly looking forward to all of it. The only good factor in all this is Zalmora who has been by your side pretty solidly since you partnered up with her. You certainly have a great deal of feelings for her as well, and yet… You still don’t fully trust her. You don’t know why… well you do know why; it’s what happened with Annah. Zal has never given you any reason to not trust her, but then Annah didn’t give you any reason either for years. As you struggle with this minor conundrum, you suddenly call out to Zal. “Yes?” Zal replies. “I…I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about where I keep my secret stash.” You say. “Oh. I wasn’t fussed about it.” “No, I mean it’s not right. You’ve been there for me since we started our relationship and I’m still mistrustful of you when I shouldn’t be. I mean shit, I haven’t even told you I love you.” “Do you?” “Well…yeah. Of course I do.” “That didn’t sound sure.” “I do!” “It’s fine. I mean I haven’t said it to you either.” “Yeah, but I know you do.” “Oh. You KNOW that. How?” “Well…because…you know! I mean you show it all the time. Just all the stuff you do.” “There are lots of people that will standby you for various reasons, even the right ones. Doesn’t prove anything. I would think your own past experience would confirm that.” “Yeah well…I can’t worry about every detail. Sometimes you have to roll the dice and hope Yag lets you roll a seven.” “So throwing caution to the wind and leaving it to the gods huh?” “Seems like it.” Zal at this point gives you a kiss and mentions how glad she is that she met you. “So about my secret stash…” you start to say. “Oh you don’t need to tell me. I already know where it’s at.” Zal says. “What?!” “That’s why I said I wasn’t fussed. I already knew its location.” “And you’re just now telling me?” “If I’d told you before, you would’ve freaked out like you’re doing now, thinking I was going to rob you and then you’d have to go find a new spot and it would have put unnecessary work on you, especially since where you did hide it was a very good spot anyway and not likely to be found. Well not unless you’re me. Besides, even if you had moved it, I would have just found out again.” You don’t answer this revelation from Zal. It’s a bit concerning, well a lot concerning really. On one hand it shows that when it comes to your significant others you’re really shit at hiding anything from them. On the other it shows Zal’s been keeping secrets as well, though maybe that isn’t too surprising. “Oh come on, don’t look like that. I told you just now didn’t I? Besides, if I wanted to rob you I would have done it sooner.” Zal says. “I’ve heard that one before. So what did you do? Follow me?” You respond. “Yep. I wanted to have my own back up plan in case you turned out to be an asshole like Jake or worse. Wasn’t putting myself through that again.” “I see.” “But you weren’t. Or at least not one to me. So it all worked out and we’re still together.” Part of you considers that you should really rethink your relationship with Zalmora, but after a moment… “Fuck it. Not going to stress about this. It’s not like it’s going to be easy for anyone to get to now at this point. Just hope its safe in the time when we can go back and get it.” You say. “Should be. We’ll come back in a month or so with a small wagon and go through the sewers and pick it up. That building you hid it near has been abandoned for as long as I’ve been alive in Klyton. Nobody ever seems to bother with it. The city has never had any plans to turn it into something else, nobody else has ever bought it, hell even bums don’t even squat in it. It’s almost like its cursed. Any particular reason why you picked it?” Zal says. “Eh, my family used to own the place. Ran it as an inn. My dad even worked there while he was trying to complete college.” “Really? Well that’s…wait…what the hell is that?” You hear the same noise and both you and Zalmora turn your attention towards the wooded area to the left and draw your flintlocks. Several scruffy looking individuals jump down from the trees with weapons in hand. The one who seems to be the leader is an elven woman with face paint and a wild hairstyle and steps forward with a crossbow in her hands. While you’re about ready to fire, Zalmora actually stops you. “Flameflower. Didn’t know you survived the last raid on the Bloody Talons’ hideout.” Zalmora says. “Yeah, well my sister didn’t.” Flameflower retorts focusing her attention solely at Zal and moving slowly forward towards her. You keep your own firearm focused on Flameflower, though the rest of her people are also stepping forward and it’s looking grim. “Sorry to hear that. Sunshine was always friendly towards me.” “She wanted her face in your vertical smile. Where were you during that raid?” “I was on a job.” “Yeah, a job. Always seemed a little convenient that YOU weren’t around when the shit went down.” “So what are you saying Flame? You saying I ratted on the Talons?” “I dunno. You always acted like you were too good for the gang most of the time.” “I was putting in more work for the gang than most were. I was also in it before you even joined. So don’t act like I wasn’t a true Talon or whatever you’re implying. And I certainly wasn’t a fucking rat.” “Oh you were putting in work all right. You were fucking Jake. Never did understand what he saw in you. I had far more in common with him.” “What can I say? The heart wants what the heart wants.” “Yeah and it obviously got him killed.” “No, being an overly violent reckless idiot is what got him killed.” Flame is now very close to you and Zal. In fact probably idiotically so. You’d easily blow her face off at this range, even Zal would probably get off a shot before Flame unleashed her crossbow. Flame would have been more dangerous if she’d stayed further back and just ambushed you from the trees. Flameflower turns her attention briefly towards you. “So who’s this one trying to look dangerous? Jake’s replacement?” Flame asks. “Something like that. He does look dangerous doesn’t he?” Zal remarks. “Pfft. He looks like he should be working in a brothel servicing aging women that are trying to desperately hang on to their youth. But then again, I guess that’s what he’s sort of already doing.” “Yeah well we can’t all have elven blood in our veins to help to assist in halting the aging process halfbreed. You want to talk about desperately hanging on to youth, look in a mirror, since last I remember you’re about a decade older than me and you’re still hanging out with people that could be your children. Look at you, running around half naked in the trees like some fucking savage. Is this what you’ve been doing since the Talons were put out of business?” “What can I say? I finally decided to embrace my elven heritage completely and live wild and free.” “Well it definitely is you.” “It is me, isn’t it? So, what are you and your pretty manservant doing outside Klyton?” “It’s a long story.” “Well did you want to go back to our camp and tell me all about it? Could certainly do with some new anecdotes other than the ones these assholes talk about over and over.” “Sure. We could probably do with a rest after recent events.” “Zal?” you say. “Don’t worry. We’re not in any danger, well not in any more danger than we were in Klyton anyway.” Zalmora says. “Yeah, lighten up pretty boy. We’re not killing you. Might still kill Zal if she pisses me off enough, but you…yeah I’d definitely have plans for you…” Flameflower at this point makes an obscene gesture with her fingers and tongue. You aren’t quite sure how to react to being harassed like this. Zal just shakes her head and rolls her eyes at Flame’s advances towards you. “Flame is a lot of talk. Just stay close to me, I’ll protect you.” Zalmora says with a smirk. Despite her earlier threats and hostile demeanor, Flameflower is relatively cordial towards Zalmora for the remainder of the night at her camp. She explains to Zal that after she escaped she decided to take up the life of a bandit and along the way she’s managed to acquire a new gang though they don’t really have any official name. She also says that while they operate around Klyton, they often move around a bit in case the militia starts sniffing around. Zal reveals a bit about your own situation with the militia and the situation within Klyton. Flameflower just nods and says it sounds like she’s better off out here. She even offers Zal to join her gang. “Nah, sort of done with the whole gang thing Flame, but thanks anyway.” Zal remarks. “Bah, still think you’re too good for the rest. Whatever. So, what about you pretty boy? You apparently like older women and I can tell you I got way more experience than Zal here. Make you feel things you didn’t even know you had senses for.” Flameflower says with the same predatory gaze she’s had the whole time. “Um, no I’m good.” You reply. “Your loss. You know…you look familiar. Like someone I briefly knew when I was a lot younger. I used to work at an inn with my sister as a waitress for a while. Mom thought it would instill some sense of responsibility in us. (Snort) Mom was an idiot.” “How odd. I was just telling Zal here about how my family used to own an inn in Klyton.” Flameflower suddenly slaps her leg and points at you. “That’s it! There was a guy and his mother that used to run a place called the Traveler’s Inn. You look like him. He married some other waitress that worked there. Sort of a quiet girl. Always thought she was a bit prissy. I think her name was…Elsa?” “Eliza. That’s my mom.” You say. “Yeah, I can see that. Though you look more like your father. Hrm. Small world it seems.” “Indeed.” “Well if neither of you are interested in joining, you two are still welcome to rest here until morning. Consider it my rare courtesy towards an old gang acquaintance who my dead dear sister had a minor crush on and the eye candy who I’d have my legs wrapped around if this situation was a bit different right now.” “Hm, well we appreciate it Flame.” Zalmora responds. “Anyway, you guys want any dwarven ale? We got several barrels of the shit and nobody here likes it. Not even sure why we took it really. I think one of these idiots said it might be valuable, but hell if I know where to unload it. I mean we’re fucking bandits, we aren’t exactly in the business of trading much of what we take.” You and Zal look at each other. “Y’know Flame, we’re thinking about starting up a new business in Hessla, If you hang on to that ale for just a bit longer, I think we might be able to get you something in exchange for it.” Zal says. This new business isn’t exactly going to be the type of work you’re used to, but maybe this new phase won’t be too bad. You suppose you’ll soon find out though. > You time passes... Year 27 “You sure you’re going to be fine going to see Flameflower and her gang of reprobates by yourself?” you ask Zalmora. “I’ll be more than fine. Flame’s been overjoyed to have someone that can get various supplies for her on a regular basis, so she’s probably been friendlier with me than she was in the Talons. We’ve also been doing well with our dealings with her. I think she’s actually starting to get organized. She’s got that permanent hideout now and actually came up with a name.” Zalmora remarks. “Oh? What is it?” “The Flame Blades, though I think it’s a work in progress. Anyway, I’ll probably be gone a few days. According to the badly written note she sent, she’s managed to snag a lot of shit and as usual she’s just piled it all up in corner since she doesn’t have any immediate use for it. Hopefully some of it is actually valuable, but she hasn’t disappointed yet.” “Okay. Be careful.” “Of course I will, but if you’re really worried about me, you could go in my place. I’m sure Flameflower would be happy to see you. You might even get us a discount if you were willing to go that extra step.” “Ha ha. Pretty sure if that happened, Flame would just keep me as her sex captive and you’d leave me with her as revenge for fucking around on you in the first place.” “Oh, only for a year, then I’d trade some elven wine for you or something.” “Glad to see I’m in such high demand. Anyway, I’ll hold things down here.” “Good, oh and try not to get into another argument with Lorenzo from Little Lorenzo’s while I’m gone.” “That fucking Halfling has been an asshole since we opened up shop here. Keeps blaming his financial problems on us and I’m not putting up with him going trying to bad mouth us to potential customers.” “And he’s been completely ineffective in that endeavor. Why? Because he’s a fucking Halfling and unless it’s food, nobody fucking pays attention to shit they got to say. If anything, when you went over and started breaking his windows you drew more attention to his shop…as well as the Governor’s Headsmen. Let’s try to avoid that again.” “Alright. I’ll try to keep that in mind.” Zalmora kisses you goodbye and takes her leave and you’re left to your own devices. So far your time in Hessla has been okay. Though you’re still getting used to the idea of having a job despite what Zal says. Sure you’re dealing in a lot of stolen goods and you’ve done that before on a smaller scale, but you still have been missing the whole hands on approach to how you used to do things. Then again life has been a lot easier and could be a lot worse. As the day passes you get the usual routine. Selling a few used muskets here, taking in a few exotic vases there, coin given and coin received. The usual. As you’re taking stock of some of the items you have in the store, you briefly look when you hear the door open. You see a woman dressed in traveller’s clothing with an eye patch over her left eye walking in with a bag over her shoulder and a little dog by her feet. “Hey, no anim…wait a minute…Annah?” you say. “Um…yeah…it’s me.” She replies a bit meekly. Part of you can’t believe that you’re seeing her again, another part of you sort isn’t surprised. By the same token, part of you wants to go over and strangle her, while a small part of you wants to go over and hug her. She walks further into the store with a minor limp. Her dog, which you presume, is still Checkers, follows closely and is still about the same size the last time you saw the infernal furry beast. While you’re feeling a lot of emotions right now, one of the reasons why you aren’t acting on any of the negative ones is the condition she’s in. Eye patch, limp, if she had a hook, she could pass for one of the pirates in Hessla as this point. When she gets closer, you notice scars around her neck. Like either someone unsuccessfully tried to slit her throat or tried to hang her. “Annah…what the fuck happened?” you ask. “I…I fucked up.” Annah responds. “Well obviously.” “Can I sit down a moment?” “Sure go ahead. I was getting ready to close down for the day anyway.” Annah finds a chair and sits down putting her bag on the floor. When she does, its almost as if some of her burdens have been lifted, if only for a moment. Checkers curls up next to one of her feet. As you’re locking up, you’re just having a hard time believing it’s actually her. “Well I guess I wouldn’t blame you for laughing at me right now.” Annah responds. “Laugh? Annah, this is fucking tragic seeing you like this. I mean…fuck sure I was pretty angry with that stunt you pulled, the last time I saw you. Even briefly thought about chasing you down, but even I certainly wouldn’t have done this to you. Shit, I didn’t even wish this on you.” You say. “Heh…I guess I always knew that despite everything you’d still have some feelings for me. I suppose that’s why I came to find you. You know I tried Klyton first. Had a hell of a time finding out you had moved here. Not surprised you finally moved given how strict things have gotten in Klyton. However, I am surprised to find you running a store of sorts.” “Yeah well, things change.” “Indeed. I’m guessing the woman I heard you were with was one of the reasons for that change. Don’t worry; I’m not here to mess that up. Actually I’m glad you found someone because it’s certainly hard being by yourself. Wish I’d realized that sooner. Is she here?” “No. If she were, we might not be having this long of a conversation. Which brings me to the point of this visit. Now I still don’t know what happened to you, but obviously, you sought me out so I could help you in some way. So what is it?” “It’s a long story.” “Yeah well Zalmora isn’t going to be back for awhile, so start talking.” Annah tells you that soon after your “parting of ways” she went to the Delantium Kingdom. She says that she lived pretty well there, but it all started to fall apart when she got involved with the Ebony Claw Syndicate. “By the gods, why the hell would you do that for?” you utter. “I thought I was smart enough to handle them. Of course if I was really smart I would have left Delantium as soon as one of them approached me with their propositions.” Annah answers. Annah goes on about how she dug a deeper and deeper hole for herself with the Syndicate until finally they began to lose patience with her and before she could disappear, they caught her and it wasn’t good. She tells you that in the scheme of things she got off light since the others directly involved in the plan weren’t so lucky. She was just considered loosely connected so managed to keep her life. However, she says you’re not seeing the scars she has on her back where they also whipped her. It was by the luck of Yag that one of the Syndicate members was such an animal lover that he didn’t kill Checkers as part of the “lesson.” After the debt was paid in blood and what little coin she had, she left the Delantium Kingdom. “And then you came to find me?” you ask. “Well I actually thought about going home to Teckleville, but despite everything I wasn’t completely ready to admit defeat and live some boring life. In fact, that’s part of the reason I’m here.” Annah at this point takes her bag and gives you it. You look at her and you slowly open it. “By the gods...” You utter. You put your hand inside the bag and pull out a fist full of vials filled with Blue Dream. The entire bag is full of them. There must be a small fortune here. “This is a lot of fucking Blue Dream, Annah. You realize how much fucking Blue Dream you got here?” “Not exactly, no. Do you know?” “No, I don’t, but it’s a fucking lot.” “Can you give me a fair price? I understand you need to make a profit.” “Annah, I’m not a fucking Blue Dream lord! I mean sure I sold some medical shit back in Klyton, but this is a whole different situation.” “How so?” “First off, I’m sure you realize that Ebony Claw Syndicate has domination on this product. They’re very fucking protective of it. I mean if you’re caught selling this shit and you’re not ECS, they will take it out on your ass.” “Well isn’t Hessla free of ECS influence?” “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still come here. I start selling this shit in Hessla and I’ll have a Syndicate hit squad on me before the Governor’s Headsmen can do shit about it. Which brings me to the second point. The Governor of Hessla has a shaky relationship with the Syndicate. If anything causes that tenuous peace to start going south, he’s going to take steps to correct it. And if that means turning over the troublemaker to the Syndicate, then that’s what’s going to happen.” “No way to do it quietly?” “Annah, I could be as careful as possible and some idiot would blab. All it takes is one damn junkie. The only other option is to sell it all in one sale to minimize the risk, but I have no knowledge of anyone that needs that much Blue Dream and has the coin to buy it. Annah, this is REALLY dangerous to even have this in your possession. You have to know that.” “I know I only got one fucking eye, a leg that has a permanent limp and deep scars on my back now thanks to the damn Syndicate. I might not be able to do anything to them, but I’m getting something out of them. They don’t know anyway. As I said, they thought the Blue Dream was lost by one of the other poor sons of bitches they killed.” “And you just happened to have it hidden somewhere the whole time of course.” “I had a back up plan. I always do.” You rub your eyes and shake your head. Annah looks at you with her one good eye and realizes that she may have assumed too much. “Alright. I can see you can’t help me. It’s okay. I get it. You got a nice life and don’t want to fuck that up. Thanks for at least hearing me out for old times sake.” Annah says. Annah goes to take the bag, and that’s when you stop her. “Hang on. Didn’t say I couldn’t help you. Though I’m wondering why I should…(sigh) fuck it. I’m hoping I’m doing this because I’m greedy, because if it’s because I still having feelings for you, I truly am an idiot. I got an idea of how I can unload this. Letting you know right now however, I’m taking full advantage and bending you over good on this deal.” You say. “You going to kiss me and tell me I’m still pretty at least?” Annah replies. “Of course. No reason I can’t still be a gentleman.” You tell Annah to wait and you head to the back of the store where your living quarters are and then go to your personal safe where you take out the remainder of what savings you have left. It’s still not as much as what the Blue Dream is worth, but as you already told her, Annah’s going to have to be satisfied with the deal. You come back and find Annah petting Checkers in her lap. You then hand her a new bag of loot, which Annah looks in. “It’s the best I can do Annah.” You say. “This will do. I can take this and easily make more with it, if need be. Learned a few gambling tricks while in Delantium. Um, this isn’t going to fuck up things with your new girl is it?” Annah asks. “Zalmora? Eh, I think I’ll be able to talk my way out of it though. Hope so at least.” “Maybe you shouldn’t tell her then.” “Hah. She’d figure out I was hiding something and I’d just get into more trouble. If I’ve learned anything, I’m shit at deception when it comes to those I happen to be intimate with.” “Well give me the Blue Dream back, I don’t want to cause you unnecessary trouble. I did enough of that when we were together.” “Don’t worry about it. I used all my savings rather than the store’s anyway. So while she’ll probably call me an idiot and ask if I fucked you or not, that’s probably where it will end, then we’ll figure out who we can sell the Blue Dream to and get rich. “Wait, this is ALL your savings?” “Yep. You’ve got it all again. Just think, you didn’t even have to steal it this time.” “Y’know, I’m really sorry about that. I wish…” “Forget it Annah. It was a long time ago and I got over it.” Annah puts Checkers down and slowly stands up. She briefly smiles and moves towards you. “I…wish things had been different.” Annah says getting a bit of a quiver in her voice. “Things are what they are. No point in dwelling on them now.” Annah looks down and nods. She sniffles and rubs her eye. “Just, take care of yourself okay? And for fuck’s sake don’t have anymore dealings with the Ebony Claw Syndicate.” “I won’t and I won’t forget this either.” Annah suddenly moves in quick and gives you a kiss you on the lips. “You’re still my first and only love. You always will be.” Annah says and then turns around to exit the shop. She limps as quickly as she can with Checkers faithfully following her. And she’s gone again. It’s still a little unreal to you and you even get a little emotional after your encounter with Annah. After composing yourself, you focus on what she left you with, namely a shitload of Blue Dream. Despite what you told Annah, you’re not really sure how you’re going to get rid of it with ease. Zal will probably have some ideas, though you’re dreading the conversation you’re going to have to have with her. Fortunately you’ve got a few days to prepare yourself. A few days pass and Zal still isn’t back yet. When two more days pass after that, you stop worrying about your conversation with Zal and just start to worry in general. Your worries are soon answered when a little boy suddenly comes running in your shop that day with a note saying someone on the edge of Hessla gave him this message to give to you. Pretty boy, Bring ALL your shit now or the bitch dies. Sincerely, Flameflower Your heart sinks and you feel sick. At first you wonder why Flame is doing this since your “business relationship” with her and her gang was always positive. Then again, does it matter what the reasons are? She’s a fucking violent criminal and the risk was always there. The important thing is she’s holding Zal hostage and you have to do something about it. > You comply with the note You’re not some hardened bandit. In fact, you’ve probably gotten a little out of shape due to your less strenuous life. You are not going to be able to just go in Flame’s camp and take everyone out like some warrior priest of Karn. You’d just get yourself and Zal killed at best if you tried to save her. Granted that could happen anyway, but you’re hoping that if you grovel enough, it’ll appeal to Flame’s ego enough that she’ll be amused enough to let you both go. It’s not going to be fun, but if it’s what is going to get the job done then so be it. You go to the store safe and empty it all out. You hope it’s enough since it’s been a slower month this month. You also wish you hadn’t given away your own savings to Annah since you probably could have used it assuming you get out of this. You guess you really will be selling Blue Dream for a while. It then occurs to you that maybe you can use it as extra bargaining. You decide to take a couple vials in the hopes that you can convince Flameflower, you can get her a lot more of the stuff if she doesn’t kill you or Zal. You’re nervous as all hell, but you compose yourself trying to keep focused on saving Zal. Once your get yourself in that state of mind, you leave. From past conversations with Zalmora, you remember the general location of Flame’s hideout. Takes about a day, but eventually you find it thanks to Flame’s people being fairly loud while wandering around the area. You figure you’ll speed this up by surrendering to Flame’s men as they’ll take you straight to her, so you call out to the ones you see and begin putting up your hands stating that Flameflower is expecting you. Three bandits come at you, with one pointing a crossbow at you. First thing they do is search you for weapons and take the bag of loot off of you. When one with a full beard looks inside, his eyes bug out. “Fucking nice.” He says. “Never seen anyone shit all stupid as you walking around with this small fortune without even a weapon. You must have goblin shit for brains.” A younger looking bandit adds. “As I said, Flameflower is expecting me and that small fortune you’re holding is hers.” You say. “Sounds about right, that’s way more than that bitch would ever share with us.” The biggest one says. “Y’know this is the first I’m hearing of this. Who are you?” the bearded one holding the loot asks. You explain who you are and the situation, and while they vaguely know about Flameflower having ongoing dealings with people in Hessla, it seems like these three have only just been informed of her recent plan as apparently they haven’t been back to the camp for awhile and been trying to find easy picking on the road with no success. “Well, guess we better take this asshole back to Flame.” The young bandit says. “What for?” the bearded one asks. “He just said she’s expecting him, that’s why dipshit.” The tall one says. “Yeah, I know that you lanky horse fucker, I’m just saying it’s not like she knows he’s coming right this minute. There’s nobody around. We could just kill this fucker and take this for ourselves. I mean shit, we’ve just spent days out here and for what? Fucking foot rot and nearly getting our asses shot by all too well equipped caravans, because she didn’t see fit to send more people with us.” “I dunno. What if this gets back to Flame? She’ll fucking have our balls for breakfast.” “Who says we need to even stick around? I mean there’s enough here for the three of us to live okay for awhile. At least enough to not have to fumble around in this fucking wilderness for an existence.” “Y’know what, you’re right. FUCK Flameflower. That bitch gave me fucking crotch rot on three separate occasions. I’m surprised I even got a dick left. Let’s take this shit and head to Hessla.” The young one finally says in an outburst. This has gone horribly wrong. You need to get out of here now. While the bandits are still talking about their plans you immediately turn to run. “Shit!” the youngest one says and immediately gives chase. At one time you probably could have outran him, but again you’ve been a little out of shape since your quieter time with Zalmora and he eventually tackles you to the ground. The pair of you struggle for awhile, but despite being out of practice, you still prove to be stronger and manage to overpower the young bandit, killing him with his own dagger. And then you feel a bolt go into your back causing you to collapse on top of the bandit you just killed. You struggle to crawl away, but the tall bandit who just shot you takes his time and manages to reload and finish you off with another bolt to your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 27 “You sure you’re going to be fine going to see Flameflower and her gang of reprobates by yourself?” you ask Zalmora. “I’ll be more than fine. Flame’s been overjoyed to have someone that can get various supplies for her on a regular basis, so she’s probably been friendlier with me than she was in the Talons. We’ve also been doing well with our dealings with her. I think she’s actually starting to get organized. She’s got that permanent hideout now and actually came up with a name.” Zalmora remarks. “Oh? What is it?” “The Flame Blades, though I think it’s a work in progress. Anyway, I’ll probably be gone a few days. According to the badly written note she sent, she’s managed to snag a lot of shit and as usual she’s just piled it all up in corner since she doesn’t have any immediate use for it. Hopefully some of it is actually valuable, but she hasn’t disappointed yet.” “Okay. Be careful.” “Of course I will, but if you’re really worried about me, you could go in my place. I’m sure Flameflower would be happy to see you. You might even get us a discount if you were willing to go that extra step.” “Ha ha. Pretty sure if that happened, Flame would just keep me as her sex captive and you’d leave me with her as revenge for fucking around on you in the first place.” “Oh, only for a year, then I’d trade some elven wine for you or something.” “Glad to see I’m in such high demand. Anyway, I’ll hold things down here.” “Good, oh and try not to get into another argument with Lorenzo from Little Lorenzo’s while I’m gone.” “That fucking Halfling has been an asshole since we opened up shop here. Keeps blaming his financial problems on us and I’m not putting up with him going trying to bad mouth us to potential customers.” “And he’s been completely ineffective in that endeavor. Why? Because he’s a fucking Halfling and unless it’s food, nobody fucking pays attention to shit they got to say. If anything, when you went over and started breaking his windows you drew more attention to his shop…as well as the Governor’s Headsmen. Let’s try to avoid that again.” “Alright. I’ll try to keep that in mind.” Zalmora kisses you goodbye and takes her leave and you’re left to your own devices. So far your time in Hessla has been okay. Though you’re still getting used to the idea of having a job despite what Zal says. Sure you’re dealing in a lot of stolen goods and you’ve done that before on a smaller scale, but you still have been missing the whole hands on approach to how you used to do things. Then again life has been a lot easier and could be a lot worse. As the day passes you get the usual routine. Selling a few used muskets here, taking in a few exotic vases there, coin given and coin received. The usual. As you’re taking stock of some of the items you have in the store, you briefly look when you hear the door open. You see a woman dressed in traveller’s clothing with an eye patch over her left eye walking in with a bag over her shoulder and a little dog by her feet. “Hey, no anim…wait a minute…Annah?” you say. “Um…yeah…it’s me.” She replies a bit meekly. Part of you can’t believe that you’re seeing her again, another part of you sort isn’t surprised. By the same token, part of you wants to go over and strangle her, while a small part of you wants to go over and hug her. She walks further into the store with a minor limp. Her dog, which you presume, is still Checkers, follows closely and is still about the same size the last time you saw the infernal furry beast. While you’re feeling a lot of emotions right now, one of the reasons why you aren’t acting on any of the negative ones is the condition she’s in. Eye patch, limp, if she had a hook, she could pass for one of the pirates in Hessla as this point. When she gets closer, you notice scars around her neck. Like either someone unsuccessfully tried to slit her throat or tried to hang her. “Annah…what the fuck happened?” you ask. “I…I fucked up.” Annah responds. “Well obviously.” “Can I sit down a moment?” “Sure go ahead. I was getting ready to close down for the day anyway.” Annah finds a chair and sits down putting her bag on the floor. When she does, its almost as if some of her burdens have been lifted, if only for a moment. Checkers curls up next to one of her feet. As you’re locking up, you’re just having a hard time believing it’s actually her. “Well I guess I wouldn’t blame you for laughing at me right now.” Annah responds. “Laugh? Annah, this is fucking tragic seeing you like this. I mean…fuck sure I was pretty angry with that stunt you pulled, the last time I saw you. Even briefly thought about chasing you down, but even I certainly wouldn’t have done this to you. Shit, I didn’t even wish this on you.” You say. “Heh…I guess I always knew that despite everything you’d still have some feelings for me. I suppose that’s why I came to find you. You know I tried Klyton first. Had a hell of a time finding out you had moved here. Not surprised you finally moved given how strict things have gotten in Klyton. However, I am surprised to find you running a store of sorts.” “Yeah well, things change.” “Indeed. I’m guessing the woman I heard you were with was one of the reasons for that change. Don’t worry; I’m not here to mess that up. Actually I’m glad you found someone because it’s certainly hard being by yourself. Wish I’d realized that sooner. Is she here?” “No. If she were, we might not be having this long of a conversation. Which brings me to the point of this visit. Now I still don’t know what happened to you, but obviously, you sought me out so I could help you in some way. So what is it?” “It’s a long story.” “Yeah well Zalmora isn’t going to be back for awhile, so start talking.” Annah tells you that soon after your “parting of ways” she went to the Delantium Kingdom. She says that she lived pretty well there, but it all started to fall apart when she got involved with the Ebony Claw Syndicate. “By the gods, why the hell would you do that for?” you utter. “I thought I was smart enough to handle them. Of course if I was really smart I would have left Delantium as soon as one of them approached me with their propositions.” Annah answers. Annah goes on about how she dug a deeper and deeper hole for herself with the Syndicate until finally they began to lose patience with her and before she could disappear, they caught her and it wasn’t good. She tells you that in the scheme of things she got off light since the others directly involved in the plan weren’t so lucky. She was just considered loosely connected so managed to keep her life. However, she says you’re not seeing the scars she has on her back where they also whipped her. It was by the luck of Yag that one of the Syndicate members was such an animal lover that he didn’t kill Checkers as part of the “lesson.” After the debt was paid in blood and what little coin she had, she left the Delantium Kingdom. “And then you came to find me?” you ask. “Well I actually thought about going home to Teckleville, but despite everything I wasn’t completely ready to admit defeat and live some boring life. In fact, that’s part of the reason I’m here.” Annah at this point takes her bag and gives you it. You look at her and you slowly open it. “By the gods...” You utter. You put your hand inside the bag and pull out a fist full of vials filled with Blue Dream. The entire bag is full of them. There must be a small fortune here. “This is a lot of fucking Blue Dream, Annah. You realize how much fucking Blue Dream you got here?” “Not exactly, no. Do you know?” “No, I don’t, but it’s a fucking lot.” “Can you give me a fair price? I understand you need to make a profit.” “Annah, I’m not a fucking Blue Dream lord! I mean sure I sold some medical shit back in Klyton, but this is a whole different situation.” “How so?” “First off, I’m sure you realize that Ebony Claw Syndicate has domination on this product. They’re very fucking protective of it. I mean if you’re caught selling this shit and you’re not ECS, they will take it out on your ass.” “Well isn’t Hessla free of ECS influence?” “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still come here. I start selling this shit in Hessla and I’ll have a Syndicate hit squad on me before the Governor’s Headsmen can do shit about it. Which brings me to the second point. The Governor of Hessla has a shaky relationship with the Syndicate. If anything causes that tenuous peace to start going south, he’s going to take steps to correct it. And if that means turning over the troublemaker to the Syndicate, then that’s what’s going to happen.” “No way to do it quietly?” “Annah, I could be as careful as possible and some idiot would blab. All it takes is one damn junkie. The only other option is to sell it all in one sale to minimize the risk, but I have no knowledge of anyone that needs that much Blue Dream and has the coin to buy it. Annah, this is REALLY dangerous to even have this in your possession. You have to know that.” “I know I only got one fucking eye, a leg that has a permanent limp and deep scars on my back now thanks to the damn Syndicate. I might not be able to do anything to them, but I’m getting something out of them. They don’t know anyway. As I said, they thought the Blue Dream was lost by one of the other poor sons of bitches they killed.” “And you just happened to have it hidden somewhere the whole time of course.” “I had a back up plan. I always do.” You rub your eyes and shake your head. Annah looks at you with her one good eye and realizes that she may have assumed too much. “Alright. I can see you can’t help me. It’s okay. I get it. You got a nice life and don’t want to fuck that up. Thanks for at least hearing me out for old times sake.” Annah says. Annah goes to take the bag, and that’s when you stop her. “Hang on. Didn’t say I couldn’t help you. Though I’m wondering why I should…(sigh) fuck it. I’m hoping I’m doing this because I’m greedy, because if it’s because I still having feelings for you, I truly am an idiot. I got an idea of how I can unload this. Letting you know right now however, I’m taking full advantage and bending you over good on this deal.” You say. “You going to kiss me and tell me I’m still pretty at least?” Annah replies. “Of course. No reason I can’t still be a gentleman.” You tell Annah to wait and you head to the back of the store where your living quarters are and then go to your personal safe where you take out the remainder of what savings you have left. It’s still not as much as what the Blue Dream is worth, but as you already told her, Annah’s going to have to be satisfied with the deal. You come back and find Annah petting Checkers in her lap. You then hand her a new bag of loot, which Annah looks in. “It’s the best I can do Annah.” You say. “This will do. I can take this and easily make more with it, if need be. Learned a few gambling tricks while in Delantium. Um, this isn’t going to fuck up things with your new girl is it?” Annah asks. “Zalmora? Eh, I think I’ll be able to talk my way out of it though. Hope so at least.” “Maybe you shouldn’t tell her then.” “Hah. She’d figure out I was hiding something and I’d just get into more trouble. If I’ve learned anything, I’m shit at deception when it comes to those I happen to be intimate with.” “Well give me the Blue Dream back, I don’t want to cause you unnecessary trouble. I did enough of that when we were together.” “Don’t worry about it. I used all my savings rather than the store’s anyway. So while she’ll probably call me an idiot and ask if I fucked you or not, that’s probably where it will end, then we’ll figure out who we can sell the Blue Dream to and get rich. “Wait, this is ALL your savings?” “Yep. You’ve got it all again. Just think, you didn’t even have to steal it this time.” “Y’know, I’m really sorry about that. I wish…” “Forget it Annah. It was a long time ago and I got over it.” Annah puts Checkers down and slowly stands up. She briefly smiles and moves towards you. “I…wish things had been different.” Annah says getting a bit of a quiver in her voice. “Things are what they are. No point in dwelling on them now.” Annah looks down and nods. She sniffles and rubs her eye. “Just, take care of yourself okay? And for fuck’s sake don’t have anymore dealings with the Ebony Claw Syndicate.” “I won’t and I won’t forget this either.” Annah suddenly moves in quick and gives you a kiss you on the lips. “You’re still my first and only love. You always will be.” Annah says and then turns around to exit the shop. She limps as quickly as she can with Checkers faithfully following her. And she’s gone again. It’s still a little unreal to you and you even get a little emotional after your encounter with Annah. After composing yourself, you focus on what she left you with, namely a shitload of Blue Dream. Despite what you told Annah, you’re not really sure how you’re going to get rid of it with ease. Zal will probably have some ideas, though you’re dreading the conversation you’re going to have to have with her. Fortunately you’ve got a few days to prepare yourself. A few days pass and Zal still isn’t back yet. When two more days pass after that, you stop worrying about your conversation with Zal and just start to worry in general. Your worries are soon answered when a little boy suddenly comes running in your shop that day with a note saying someone on the edge of Hessla gave him this message to give to you. Pretty boy, Bring ALL your shit now or the bitch dies. Sincerely, Flameflower Your heart sinks and you feel sick. At first you wonder why Flame is doing this since your “business relationship” with her and her gang was always positive. Then again, does it matter what the reasons are? She’s a fucking violent criminal and the risk was always there. The important thing is she’s holding Zal hostage and you have to do something about it. > You try to save Zalmora You briefly think about emptying out the store’s till and taking all that coin along with the Blue Dream to Flame, but is that really going to work? If Flame has already suddenly taken Zal hostage, chances are she’ll just keep everything you bring and kill the pair of you. It’s an impossible situation and the more you dwell on it, the angrier you get. You’re going there all right, but you’re not going there to negotiate. You going there armed for combat. You’ve never been one to seek out a fight; indeed you’ve usually always tried to avoid such things, be it from the law or other criminals. But you have killed before, and you know you can do it again. And right now there has never been a better reason. You don’t know if you’re going to survive this, as you’re not some hardened bandit like they are. Indeed, you’ve probably gotten a little out of shape due to your less strenuous life. However, some skills you never unlearn. You’re a rogue and you’ll take them one by one silently if need be or die trying. While your intention is going to try to be silent as possible, one can never be too sure, so you grab various small firearms you have in the shop and check and recheck them. You then grab a small hand crossbow and several bolts. As prepared as you’re going to be, you head out. From past conversations with Zalmora, you remember the general location of Flame’s hideout. Takes about a day, but eventually you find it thanks to Flame’s people being fairly loud while wandering around the area. You see two of them and mentally prepare yourself for the first casualties you’re about to inflict in this task. You sneak up and slit one of the bandit’s throats. He makes just enough noise for him to alert his fellow, which you shoot in the chest with your crossbow. Fortunately you’re close enough you can’t really miss. Two down, and who knows how many more to go. As Zal said, Flame’s been getting organized so she’s probably got more people than when you first met her. You picked a hell of a time to attack a bandit camp. You kill three more, one nearly escaping to warn his fellows. He still made enough noise for someone to possibly hear so who knows how much time you actually have. The funny thing is how easy this actually is, you thought you’d have a harder time of it, but so far these bandits have been putting up a pitiful showing. Maybe these bandits are so used to attacking defenseless travellers that most of them don’t really have much skill in actual combat. By the time you get to the camp however, they know something is going on as you see a few running back and forth and shouting. You manage to kill one more in secret before several of them finally spot you. With no more element of surprise, you shoot two more and severely wound another before Flameflower comes out from her tent and demands that her people capture you alive. You try to backtrack so you aren’t encircled, but it’s too late, you’ve been successfully outflanked. You feel a bolt go into your leg and then another into your arm. You drop to the ground in pain. You see one of Flame’s people coming and you weakly throw a dagger at him before you feel a blow to the back of your head. As you lose consciousness, you hear Flameflower’s voice. “Fucking hell, pretty boy got some fight in him! You know how I like me a badass, this is gonna be fun!” Everything goes black. When you wake up, you find yourself stripped naked, standing stretched out with your arms and legs tied to two poles. Flameflower sits nearby throwing pebbles at your face. Two bigger bandits stand near the tent entrance. “Finally up. Shit, been waiting for what feels like forever.” Flame says. “Where the hell is Zal?” you utter. “I’d be more concerned about yourself right now. Especially after what you pulled. Shit, you really made a mess of things pretty boy. What did you think you were going to do? Come in and kill all of us and save the girl like in one of those badly written fairy tales?” “Something like that.” “Well that took a lot of balls I’ll give you that. Shit, wish someone felt that way about me. I know none of these assholes would try to save me if I was being held hostage. Fucking romantic and shit y’know? Zal always did know how to pick ‘em I guess.” Flameflower stands up and walks over to you. She begins caressing your upper body a bit and then moves her hand lower to just grope you. “Mmm yeah. Now, I know you are probably feeling a wide range of emotions right now. The chief one probably being hate and anger, which I understand, but that shit isn’t gonna do you any good except get you killed slowly and painfully.” “Where the fuck is Zal?!” “THAT BITCH IS FUCKING DEAD! She was fucking dead before I even sent the note! I had my boys beat and rape her before they dumped her in the woods to let the fucking animals eat her dead violated ass. Thought about keeping her body around to taunt you with, but honestly, even I couldn’t stand the sight of her. She was all nasty and gross looking. Cum and blood all over her fucking face, flies started crawling on her. I mean I nearly threw up myself y’know?” You feel a southern “squeeze” on your tender bits, but that pain doesn’t even match the pain you feel from hearing this news. “You gonna cry over that dead cunt? Let me tell you something about Zalmora. That fucking bitch was a damn rat traitor. I have no doubt in my mind that she’s the reason that the Klyton militia found our old hideout. You know how I know? Because in her last moments she even offered to trade YOU to me in exchange for her miserable life. So much for true love.” “That didn’t happen.” “Oh? And you know this because you were here? You a fucking wizard or something? You don’t know shit pretty boy. Nobody EVER really knows anybody. Especially when shit goes down. I mean you think Zal thought I was going to kill her? Of course she didn’t. She thought in her arrogance that our profitable business arrangement was enough. That I was just some dumb ass that was easily appeased and granted, I was for a while. Shit, despite thinking she was a stuck up cunt, I didn’t even really hate her, just was business.” “Business?” “Yes. I decided on a better arrangement that didn’t involve you two. But none of this shit matters now. What matters now is pleasure AND how much you want to live. Normally I’d just kill you and this would be over with, but I want that dick. Tired of fucking these smelly ugly fuckers. Want some of what Zal had for a change. A nice face to look at as I’m riding that cock. Now I’m going to get that, whether YOU want to or not, but the more willing you are, the greater you improve your chances.” “Better just kill me then because I doubt if I’m going to be up for that.” “Hah, you think I can’t get you hard? Shit, I got several ways I could get you hard. I slide that dick down my velvet throat a few times and you’d be harder than a rock golem. I could have one of my boys here fuck you in the ass a bit. Saw that happen to a couple guys a few times, doesn’t always seem to work, but still fun to watch though. However, I got a better idea because I want you to last and I want to enjoy this for as long as possible. Lou, get that shit you use on your dick.” “Um, the wart ointment?” Lou asks. “No, goblin shit for brains, I’m talking about the stuff that gives you more stamina than the usual two pumps you do.” “Oh! Okay boss.” “In the meantime, I think I’ll get a taste of things to come…” As you stand tied helpless while Flameflower has a sword fight with you in her mouth, all you can think about is how the hell you’re going to get out of this, along with how many diseases you dick is probably getting right now. When Lou returns with a small bottle Flame tell him and the other goon to force your mouth open and turn your head up as she pours the contents down your throat. Tastes horrible, whatever it is, but you soon feel the effects. “Well now. Looks like you really like me after all! Lou, Haylon, untie pretty boy here and get some help holding him down outside, I want an audience for this!” After punching you in the gut to take the wind out of you, Lou and Haylon cut your ropes and drag you outside where some of the bandits start whooping it up. After a couple more punches to you face several of the bandits hold your arms and legs. “Hey! Not the face boys! Like I said, I want him to have a clear look at these magnificent tits bouncing in front of him!” Flameflower says as she exits her tent completely naked. Flameflower poses a bit to the cheers of her bandit buddies and then looks down at you as you remain helpless “Yeah, I know I’m beautiful. Now brace yourself pretty boy, because you may feel a burning sensation…” Flameflower lowers herself on you and you’re convinced you just shoved your dick in a vat of lava. Flameflower’s name has taken on a whole new meaning. You might indeed be as hard as a rock golem, but you sure aren’t enjoying this experience. You still don’t know if you’re surviving this, but even if you do, your dick might not. This whole situation is just horrible as Flameflower laughs and people cheer her on and you’re utterly powerless to stop any of it. While it feels like forever, it’s only been an hour and you finally release into her, though it feels more like a stream of fire. “Aww! I was just enjoying that and I’m not done yet!” Flameflower gets in close and whispers in your ear. “I know what you can do.” Flameflower says and licks your face before getting off of you. “Get him on his knees lads, pretty boy here is gonna finish me off like a real gentleman. I want all of you uncouth louts to take notes!” You are forced up and then slammed down to your knees by Flame’s biggest goons. At this point you feel like you want to die, but somewhere within you, you still feel that spark of survival. Flameflower stands in front of you and you’re literally eye level to her nasty infested diseased hole. You nearly want to retch from the smell. Flameflower grabs a knife from one of her people, which she runs gently across the side of your cheek. “Now, I want you to do mommy right. I want you to make me come hard and multiple times. You understand? Because if you don’t, what you’re experiencing now, can be ten times worse and much longer.” Flameflower begins pushing your head closer to her snatch and you’re still trying to figure out a way to survive this. “Wait, so if I do this…will you let me live?” you ask. Flameflower starts laughing and then looks at you while roughly grabbing the back of your head to look at her. “I’m probably still going to kill you. However, IF you show some enthusiasm, then MAYBE I’ll keep you around as my lick bitch.” Flameflower holds the knife close to your head as she uses her other hand to push your head into her. As your face gets so close that you can now see the crabs, you close your eyes, mentally praying to ALL the gods that you’ll be able to do this without puking or passing out from the smell (and/or taste). Your tongue nervously starts to exit your mouth… And suddenly an explosion deafens you and causes you to tip over and you aren’t the only one. You look up in time to see the crowd around you disperse. Another explosion occurs and this one is close enough that a few bandits get caught in it. Someone invested in some firebombs. Meanwhile Flameflower is standing around barking orders at everyone and then her attention turns back to you. “I don’t know what asshole is attacking us, but YOU are not getting away. Lou, Haylon, get him!” You quickly start scrambling away only to have Lou grab your arm. Just as Haylon is about to back him up, a shot is heard and Haylon’s head partially explodes like a ripe melon. More shots are fired causing Flameflower to run for cover as bodies start dropping. You punch Lou in the face causing him to let go of you and then grab a dagger from one of his sheaths and stab him in the neck with it. You look around and that’s when you see who it is that’s been attacking. Annah limps slowly around the camp, welding some sort of fancy repeating pistol. You didn’t even know she had one of those. She’s not missing a shot either, even with only one good eye. Once again this woman is just full of surprises. “I got this, go get that naked bitch!” Annah shouts. Last time you saw Flameflower, she ran back into her tent, probably to get a better weapon, however there are still some bandits that haven’t given up the fight and while Annah’s a good shot, she’s still going to have to reload. > You help Annah Ignoring Annah’s commands, you immediately grab a crossbow off of one of the dead bodies nearby and a short sword. Annah fires off one more round and then has to reload just like you figured she round. A couple of the bandits try to rush her, but you fire your own crossbow at them. You miss, but it’s enough to cause one to desperately try to get out of the way and stop his advance. The other bandit trying to attack Annah you cross swords with. You do okay, but you’re still hurting from getting hit with a bolt in your arm and leg earlier (along with everything else) not to mention you’re without any protection. Eventually the other bandit you shot at, regains his composure and moves in to attack you, however at this point Annah has already reloaded and before either bandit can gain the advantage on you, she’s shot both of them. You turn around just in time to see Flameflower come out of her tent with two pistols and you immediately shove Annah out of the way and try to duck in the process, but then you feel another burning sensation. This one however is on the left side of your head followed by the ringing pain of where an ear once was and a bloody hole now all that remains. “SHIT!” you shout and fall to the ground holding the left side of your head. You fully expect another shot to either kill you or Annah as you’re both prone and Flame was holding two pistols. “CHECKERS KILL!” you hear Annah shout despite the ringing. This is followed by the sounds of growling, shouting and then several shots being fired from nearby. By the time you get up, you see Checkers happily trotting over to Annah who stands nearby and looking over at Flameflower’s body. Annah limps over towards Flameflower and just as you’re about to tell her to be careful, she fires again at Flame’s hand, which apparently was going for the pistol she dropped after being attacked by Checkers. “Argh! Shit! Fuck!” Flame manages to gurgle as she loses a couple fingers. You and Annah now both approach Flame who is a bloody mess at this point. Still, she’s managing to hang on to continue to look defiantly at you. “(Cough) Fuck…who’s this bitch with the great aim? Nother girlfriend?” Flame asks. “Something like that.” Annah remarks. “(Gurgle) well ain’t you a (cough) fuckin lady killer, pretty boy…” You pick up the pistol that Flame was trying to grab. You then kneel down and ram the pistol in her mouth, breaking out some of her teeth in the process. “Hold on baby, I’m gonna shoot my load, get that velvet throat of yours ready…” you say. “Mmugh guh ack…” Flame chokes and weakly tries to struggle against you. You pull the trigger and blow most of her head apart. Blood splatters everywhere, along with brains and skull. “Was it good for you?” As you slowly stand up, you feel a bit numb. Annah touches your shoulder, but you ignore it. You just feel like you’re in another place. You aren’t even aware if all the bandits are dead, you just walk into Flame’s tent and when inside, you sit down and just think about everything that transpired. Meanwhile Annah looks around to see if there are any more enemies and fortunately it looks like you both killed them all. The pair of you ironically just made the roads a lot safer from thievery and murder. By the time Annah comes back to check on you, you’ve managed to gather yourself enough that you’ve got your clothes back on. You’re still sort of sitting and staring into nothing though. “You um…all…nevermind that’s a stupid question. Of course you’re not alright.” Annah says. “I’m not. But I will be eventually. I just…got a lot on my mind right now.” “I’m really sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. Fucking bum leg…” “It’s okay Annah. Better that you came late, rather than not at all. I’m guessing you were spying on me again?” “Well, after our exchange in your shop a few days ago, I was still in Hessla pondering whether or not to try to win you back or at least give you back your savings and take the Blue Dream off your hands so you didn’t have the hassle. When I saw you leave the shop and then heading towards out of town looking like you had a grim purpose, I knew something must be wrong, so I followed. Hell of a time keeping up. Thankfully Checkers is an excellent tracker. Again, my apologies.” “And again, it’s a good thing you did. Fuck…” You begin to feel the weight of what happened to you and you put your head in your hands desperately trying not to cry, but you can’t help it. Seeing that you’re distressed, Annah goes over to try to comfort you, but you stop her. “Don’t. Annah. Just don’t. I’m probably fucking crawling with disease and you don’t need to be around that. Not to mention that my mind is in a very dark place right now.” “Okay. I understand and I get it. I just want you to know though; I went through something similar so I’m here, okay? I’m going to leave you alone and I’ll just be outside looking around again. I’m not going anywhere.” You nod and Annah leaves. While what Flameflower did to you was certainly traumatic enough, what you’re really upset about is Zalmora. She’s dead, and you don’t even know where the body is, not that you’d probably want to see it after what Flameflower described. Though the worst of it is, was Flameflower telling the truth or just fucking with your head? Not about what they did before killing her, though that’s terrible enough, but did Zal really offer to trade you to Flameflower in a desperate attempt to survive? You have a hard time believing that and yet Flame was right about one thing, nobody ever truly knows anybody. Who knows what the hell happened. Maybe the agony was just so great for Zal that she did something so desperate and unthinkable to survive. You nearly did and would have if Annah hadn’t showed up when she did. In the end, does it really matter if she did? She’s dead and you’ll never really know the truth. You’re fairly certain that it was bullshit, but even it wasn’t…well you guess you can live with the idea that you understand. You never experienced any betrayal by Zalmora, so you’ll remember her as your relationship was with her. A pleasant one with many happy memories. Because that’s all you got of her now. You slowly gather the rest of your belongings and briefly go through Flameflower’s tent. You’re not really in the mood to loot, but it’s a habit and it’s not like you’re going to come back here ever again. You don’t find much of actual value except a bit of coin, however what you find more interesting is a few more notes laying on a table. Out of curiosity you read some of them and put one in your pocket before exiting the tent. Outside, you find Annah sitting on the ground with an overstuffed bag and petting Checkers. They both look in your direction and Checkers even trots over to you as if to greet you. Hard to believe the little furball is friendly with you, though she probably has contributed to saving your life on more than one occasion. “You ready?” Annah asks. “Yeah.” You answer giving Checkers a quick pet. “Okay, my apologies if the trip to Hessla takes awhile due to my leg.” “It’s fine, but I was going to Klyton.” “Klyton? Why?” “Because I got a fire down below, I’d like something that’s sure to cure it and Klyton has better medical facilities. I’m not worried about the store right now.” “Ah. Yeah I get it. Well I understand if you need to go on ahead. I can meet you in Klyton if you want.” “Yeah…I don’t think I’m going to be good company Annah. Not for a long while. I got a shitload of baggage I need to work out and go through. Last thing I want to do is drive you away because I’m in a dark mood.” "Isn’t that what you’re doing now?” “No. You know why? Because despite every shitty thing that’s happened, I have learned one thing, we always find each other somehow. Maybe we’ll part ways now, but I know we’re going to see each other again. I dunno, maybe that’s how our relationship works best. You have saved my life multiple times now. I doubt if I’m ever going to be able to repay that debt no matter how much you take from my savings. I look at you and I really wish I’d been there to help you with the Syndicate.” “It’s okay. You would have just gotten us both killed.” Annah starts to smile and then you chuckle a bit. “Probably right.” You say. “So this is goodbye again.” Annah replies. “Just for a little while. Maybe next time…maybe next time we’ll get it right.” Annah goes to hug you, and despite you reminding her of your carrying of three hundred sexual diseases, she hugs you anyway. She then says she’s going to head back to Hessla since it’s closer and less of a strain on her legs. She then says she’ll probably book passage on a ship to Holgard, since she hasn’t been there yet. The two of you then part ways. You make your way to Klyton trying hard to ignore your pain. You really hope you can get something before your dick falls off. When you finally get to Klyton, you nonchalantly nod at the guards and ask where the closest and cheapest medical facilities in the city as you just got robbed and barely escaped with your life. Given how you look and the serious tone of your voice, the guard has no reason to disbelieve your story and tells you how to get to the nearest apothecary and says they really need to do more to start keeping the nearby roads safe from bandits. You enter Klyton and from there you immediately know where to go. You head to Klyton hospital and while you might not have done this in awhile, you never really forget. Fortunately the medicine for curing dick rot is a lot easier to acquire than Numb and the rest of the shit you used to sell, so security isn’t as strong. You grab a couple bottles of the strongest stuff you can find and make haste out of the hospital. You down one bottle of the medicine which tastes terrible, but hopefully it works. In the meantime you pay for a cheap inn and try to get some rest, which you fail at since you have nightmares the whole time. A couple days pass and your dick starts to feel better, though still not a hundred percent. The rest of your body still aches as well, but your mind is still dealing with the shit that happened. You weep over Zal a bit despite already having come to grips with it. Your mind always goes back to anger and hate though. You half wish Flameflower was alive so you could kill her slower this time. You “support” your stay at the cheap inn, the old way. Klyton may have tightened their security, but people remain oblivious idiots that don’t watch their coin purses. If anything, they seem to be less observant. Must be due to feeling safer. After about two weeks, your body is more or less healed and your dick is no longer burning like a blacksmith’s furnace. Your mind still isn’t quite right, but then was it ever? Still, you’re in a better frame of mind of what you’re going to do. You catch a carriage and head back to Hessla. When you arrive and get back to the shop, you’re actually surprised it hasn’t been looted or burned down or something. Then again hasn’t been the end of the month for the Governor to take a cut yet. You look around and see everything still in place. When you go to your safe though, you get a bit of a surprise. You find all your savings inside. The Blue Dream bag is gone. You guess Annah broke in the store (along with cracking the safe! Another thing she must have learned) and returned everything. You just hope Annah doesn’t get into any trouble trying to sell that Blue Dream, but then again if she does, she’ll probably get out of it. You look around the shop remembering the good times you had here with Zal, then load your savings into your pack and take the silver whistle Zalmora first gave you and leave the shop for good. You book passage on a ship, which is leaving for Jicol. You’ve always heard about opportunities there and you’ve never been there before. Might as well try some place new. Before you leave however you make one more visit. You enter Little Lorenzo’s shop. Lorenzo’s shop as usual is empty. Even without you as direct competition, he’s not doing any better. The halfling’s eyes widen when he sees you. Obviously he thought you weren’t coming back. You draw your pistol. “Wait! We can…” You fire and hit the Halfling in the head. His body slumps over with unspectacular thud. “Next time, don’t put shit in writing.” You throw the crumpled correspondence between Lorenzo and Flameflower near his body before walking back out. > You time passes... Chapter 3E: Reunited Year 30 None of your dealings with gangs has ever been positive which is why its odd that you inadvertently became looked up to one. Granted it’s made up of a bunch of snot nosed teenagers, but they’ve been trying to emulate you for years since they were snot nosed kids. The Black Hooks have been unofficially looking to you for guidance ever since you easily caught a couple of them trying to pick your pocket a couple years ago and scolded them for their sloppy technique. Some of them seem to have potential, others just seem like they’re just in it to cause trouble and be rebellious. Their “leader” Marco talks a big game and even seems to resent the fact that so many in his gang speak positively of you, but in the scheme of things, he seems like he wants to be like you on some level. Still, as teenagers are want to do, they don’t always listen very well. You certainly didn’t. “Marco, I know you and your little friends are really proud about your recent string of break ins, but you lot still have a lot to learn about stealth. I’ve told you the story about the Bloody Talons haven’t I?” you remark. “Yes! A million times!” Marco says exasperatedly. “And you’ll hear it a million more until you fuckers get it right or you’re going to end up just like the Bloody Talons! More importantly, you’re making shit unnecessarily more difficult for the rest of us trying to make a living out here. The more reckless you are, the more the Jicol Watch starts actually cracking down on everyone. We don’t need that shit. We got it good here thanks to Jicol tending to worry more about pirates than us land based criminals.” “I think I’d rather be a pirate.” “Pfft, no you wouldn’t. You like the IDEA of being a pirate because you hear all about their glorious tales of raping and pillaging whenever they dock here. Trust me, I’ve dealt with enough pirates for them to tell me some of their stories to know that that life isn’t all that glamorous. Most of the time it’s a lot of waiting around on a ship fighting off scurvy and other crew members trying to do harm to your fucking asshole by shoving a dick it in. You want to get fucked in the ass?” “Um, no?” “You didn’t sound so sure about that. Because if that’s what you want, I’m pretty sure there are a lot of pirate captains that would like a cabin boy like you.” “No! Fuck no.” “Alright then. In any case, stop immediately breaking windows when you’re struggling with a lock. Locks are like women and sometimes you gotta take a little time with them before they open up and give you the goods. It’s a pain in the ass, but most of the time it’s worth it and you’ll feel a better sense of accomplishment. Understand?” “Yeah, I suppose so.” “So what are you trying to sell this time?” After doing a little bartering and taking advantage of Marco’s lack of knowledge of the value of his stolen goods, you bid him and his buddies goodbye and remind him to remember what you said. As you make your way back to your humble home, halfway there you get the sense that you’re being followed and watched. It isn’t he Black Hook either. “Alright, you lot might as well come out, unless you intend on shooting me from the shadows that you’re hiding in.” A single older man steps out from said shadows. “Nope, just me.” He says. “Who are you?” you ask. “Oh I go by the same name I have for years now. Sneaks. Though apparently not sneaky enough seeing as you sensed me. Such is the failing of once superior skills with getting old.” “You won’t be getting too much older if you keeping following me around, now what do you want?” “No need for hostility friend, though I suppose it would have been better to just approach you directly. Honestly, I’ve known about you for a year or so now, but seeing as I do my own fencing like most others like myself around here, never really needed to speak with you before.” “Oh? So do you have something then?” “Oh no. It’s not that. It’s more of a concern that…well let’s just say the underworld community has.” “Underworld community? First I’m hearing of an organized gang here.” “That’s because there isn’t one and we’re all hoping it stays that way. Nothing good comes from monolithic organizations. I should know I had to directly fight the Ebony Claw Syndicate back in Holgard and ultimately lost.” “Well you’ll get no argument from me. I’ve never been part of a gang and never had any positive experiences with them.” “Interesting. Then one wonders why you’re actively encouraging and acting as a mentor of sorts to one.” You nearly chuckle at what Sneaks is getting at. “The Black Hooks? I mean yeah I guess they’re a gang, but they’re hardly the Ebony Claw Syndicate. They’re mostly a bunch of dumb teenagers.” You say. “Well I’m sure the Syndicate started as a bunch of dumb teenagers too, until someone molded and lead them to be a powerful organization.” Sneaks replies. “I am NOT the leader of the Black Hooks nor do I have any desire to be. That dubious honor belongs to their mildly more intelligent member, Marco. I can’t help it if some of them look to me for tips and shit. If anything, my guidance as you call it, is making things better for the rest of us. I just told them to knock it off with their smash and grab routines and other shit that brings the heat down on everyone.” “Yes, I can see that would be a good thing, however I don’t think you’re looking at the greater picture. You are correct in that they’re mostly dumb teenagers and their actions draw more attention. However, I also imagine that they wouldn’t last very long. Sooner, rather than later, the Jicol Watch would wipe out most of them and things would be harder for the rest of us for awhile, but eventually the status quo would return since Jicol has always been more concerned with a potential pirate attack rather than anything else.” “Your point?” “My point is, YOU are teaching them to be better criminals. Basically, more of them are going to survive and even thrive because of you. Not only does this mean more competition for all of us, it also means the Black Hooks are likely to survive as a gang. This organization is going to eventually realize that they outnumber the independent competition and take steps to eliminate said competition, or force them to join. Since some of us aren’t likely to go quietly, some of the independents are going to form their OWN gang for protection and before you know it, there’s a war going on. As I said, I’ve read that tale before and it didn’t end well.” “So you’re telling me who I can or can’t associate with?” “Look, I’m not saying to not continue to do whatever business you have with them. I wouldn’t dream of doing something like that. Anyway I said my piece. Do what you want obviously. I’m just suggesting that helping them as much as you have been, might not be in any of our best interests in the long run.” “Duly noted.” With those words, Sneaks nods and takes his leave. You have to admit, he does have somewhat of a point, but on the other hand some of it sounded like a threat with that last bit. You continue on your way home and then you see a figure near it. The figure isn’t even hiding. They’re just casually sitting on your front step. Seems you’re popular today. As you approach a little cautiously, the notice the figure is female and a little furry animal pop out from around her then… “Annah?” you call out. “I was wondering when you’d get home. I would have let myself in, but who knows what traps you’ve rigged and I’m not quite as nimble anymore. Besides, wouldn’t be polite right?” Annah replies. “Glad to see you’ve at last respected my boundaries. Not just for me, but for yourself. That door doesn’t even lead inside, come on, I’ll take you the real way.” “Oh, a secret way in. Nice, but aren’t you concerned about me knowing?” “Not at this point. Besides, I don’t keep anything of actual value in here anyway.” “Of course you don’t.” After leading Annah in the real way to your home (with Checkers slowly following behind), she asks you how you’ve been and what you’ve been up to. You give a brief answer that you’ve been doing better since the last time you saw her (physically and mentally) and how it’s mostly been back to the standard burglary for you along with some fencing for the Black Hooks. “Black Hooks huh? They Jicol’s version of the Talons?” Annah asks. “They wish. It’s mostly a bunch of teenagers being wild. Though I’ve been mildly trying to direct them away from what led to the Talons’ demise in Klyton.” You say. “That’s rather altruistic of you.” “It’s more like covering my own ass in the long run so Jicol doesn’t turn into another Klyton. However, someone recently told me that I should just let these kids twist in the wind and get themselves killed by the law since it gets rid of a potential greater threat in the future, like the Black Hooks actually becoming competent and powerful united force.” “I can see a logic in both approaches actually. So what were you planning to do?” “Nothing. I’m going to continue to go about my life and if anyone gets in my face about what I’m doing, I’ll deal with it then.” “Sounds like you. Sooo…the Black Hooks the only gang in the city?” “If you can call them that. Yeah. Everyone else is more or less independent though I’m sure a few work together at times. Nobody really has any turf though as far as places being off limits to others. Not even the Black Hooks are like that, though they do have a location where they all hang out that they probably consider their own.” “Would you say there is a strong disregard for authority here in the underworld community?” “Isn’t there always?” “Well yes, but I meant it sounds like other than the Black Hooks, nobody is really organized and probably would resist against such a thing.” “Annah, this is an odd line of questioning you’re going for…out with it.” Annah looks down a bit, before looking at you again. You have to say, you still aren’t used to that eye patch she has. “Promise you won’t get mad?” Annah asks. “Well that doesn’t sound good. (Sigh) Fine. I promise I’ll TRY not to get mad.” You reply. “Okay. Well, since we last saw each other, I’ve been in Holgard and I’ve sort of had dealings with the Ebony Claw Syndicate.” “Oh for…” “No, no, it’s okay. I’m actually on good terms with them now. Well at least the chapter in Holgard. Apparently the head there Rook. Isn’t too pleased with some of the leadership decisions in the Delantium Kingdom and he’s been making a few moves of his own. To cut a long story short, I’ve been working with the Syndicate.” “You joined the fucking Syndicate?!” “No! I’m more like a hired gun. Literally, most of the time. I…uh…accept a lot of contracts on people.” “…Wow. Okay then. Still, I would have thought the Syndicate would have had people like that on their payroll.” “Eh, that’s sort of the problem with the Holgard chapter. It doesn’t get much support from the top. It’s almost seen as more of a money-making outpost. Enough to keep a presence in, but not important enough to put extra manpower into. This might not be a problem if Holgard didn’t suffer shit like civil rebellions and religious faction fights every five years or so. As a result the Syndicate chapter in Holgard has had to make more use of independents than they would like. Though they tend to REALLY want you to join. I’ve gotten the sales pitch several times. Fortunately I’m good enough at what I do that I’ve been able to decline and still remain unaligned.” “Seems like a dangerous game you’re playing Annah. I mean this is the same organization that…well did THAT to you.” “Same organization, but different people and different circumstances. Besides, I’m not trying to rip them off this time. I’m legitimately doing work for them, which is why I’m here actually.” Annah goes into an explanation that the head of the Syndicate chapter in Holgard, Rook is looking to expand his own power base here on Jicol. Since Annah has done such good work for him in the past he’s sent her here to scout the place rather than sending his own people. She says that her main job is to make a note of all the major players in the city. She says that when she learned you were living here, she figured she could save some of the legwork by directly speaking to you about it. “So…what then? Is the Syndicate just going to take this entire city over?” you ask. “Well that’s the plan, unless it turns out to be too much trouble, but based on even what little you’ve told me and what little I’ve seen, this place seems pretty ripe for a Syndicate takeover. Or at least Rook’s takeover.” Annah says briefly petting Checkers who is asleep by her feet. “There’s nothing I can do to stop this?” “Well no, not really. The Syndicate is really looking to branch out here. Nothing that can be done about that unless you’re going to try to unite everyone against them, but it would be pretty stupid to try that. The Syndicate pretty much always gets what they want. I should know.” “It still surprises me that you’d be working for them, given what happened. You never did tell me exactly.” “Okay. I get what you mean. But shit happened and I wound up in bed with the Syndicate again. Fortunately it’s been in my favor this time. It’s sort of an amusing tale, maybe I’ll tell you about it when I’m not currently so busy.” Annah replies. “Still never told me about how you managed to get a room in the Klyton university dorms either.” “Heh. Well I’ll tell you that story too. I want to tell you everything. I mean…shit…I still miss you, y’know? When I found out you lived here I was looking forward to seeing you again. Last time we parted company you said we’d meet again as we seem to be destined to always do.” “Yeah I remember. Just thought it might be under less complicated circumstances this time.” “I don’t think that’s how our relationship goes.” “Obviously not.” Annah takes a deep breath and continues. “The Syndicate is coming, but it probably won’t be immediately. In the meantime, I can speak positively about you when I get back to Holgard and you could probably become an associate much like I am. I could even relocate here while we prepare this place and we could work on tasks together like in the old days. Lots of coin to be made and we both know how much you like that.” Annah says. While you wouldn’t mind such a thing under normal circumstances, you really aren’t keen on Annah’s Syndicate involvement. > You fully help Annah Annah’s ultimately always done what she’s wanted to do so trying to talk her out of this is probably pointless. However, you know you want Annah back in your life since you’ve missed her, so you’ll help her completely in her task. That’s from the emotional standpoint. From a pragmatic standpoint, it sounds like the Syndicate is coming whether Annah works for them or not. As dangerous as it might be to get involved with the Syndicate, you do see the benefit potential and with Annah around at least you won’t necessarily have to change your life around too much or possibly relocate again. You give Annah a rundown on every underworld contact you have of relative importance, along with the strength and numbers of the Black Hooks. You then also give Annah an approximate guess on the strength of the Jicol Watch and how effective they are. “Would you say they’re susceptible to working with the Syndicate? The Holgard Watch has never been too much of a problem in that regard.” Annah says. “Well, the Jicol Watch isn’t adverse to a bribe here and there, but the Mayor of Jicol tends to pay them well enough for them to not to make a habit of it.” You say. “Mayor of Jicol? Anything like the Governor of Hessla?” “He’s ten times more reclusive. Apparently most haven’t seen him in decades. About the only descriptions that exist are that the Mayor is male and human, but who knows? In any case, while this place is no stranger to corruption, it still adheres to law and order fairly strongly. Not Klyton level, but that’s probably due to more emphasis on their fleet rather than land force which is thankfully smaller.” “I see. Anything else?” “Not really. So…you going to go assassinate them all now?” “Heh. Well, based on everything you’ve told me, doesn’t seem like I need to bother. I suppose I could anyway. You said you spoke to someone called Sneaks that used to belong to the Thieves Guild in Holgard recently? I bet Rook would want to someone like that taken care of. Maybe the leader of the Black Hooks as well just to keep that group from getting too organized.” You think for a moment. “Well, how about something to make your job a lot easier. I’ll invite most of the more well known rogues to a gathering and get them all in one location. I’ll say it’s something that’s going to affect everyone and that it’s really important. Shouldn’t be too hard, Sneaks already came to me saying a lot of the independents are bitching about the Black Hooks so they’ll probably be willing to speak especially if I’m seemingly alone.” You say. “Well that would simplify things. Um, don’t you do business with most of them? Isn’t this going to affect that?” “Probably for the better since they’re more competition than anything else. I don’t give a shit about any of them. Especially if they’re already complaining about how I interact with the Black Hooks. Speaking of which let’s leave Marco and the rest out of this. The Black Hooks can ultimately be incorporated into the Syndicate, I can help in that regard.” “Hm. Well if you say you can do it, then that sounds fine to me. You know them better than I do. It certainly would go a long way to have a force here that’s already asset to the Syndicate.” “Okay, I guess I’ll start setting all this up tomorrow.” “Very well. So um, you don’t mind me staying here while we take care of all this do you?” “Of course not. I only got the one bed though.” “Well good, you know how I always like you to cuddle with me after sex anyway.” “Hm, I was going to build up a bit more to it, but glad to see you’re on board with that.” “Pfft, its probably the main reason I came to speak with you in the first place. Well that and to see if we still had a chance together. I know these circumstances aren’t the most ideal, but when have things ever been normal for us? There’s so much time that we’ve missed together. I just really want to make it work this time.” “So do I.” Annah immediately goes to kiss you. “Then let’s get started.” She says and continues to kiss you while trying to strip off her clothing. You proceed to rekindle the old flames. Next day… “Hey, wake up. I know I’d love for you to sleep next to me naked all day, but sadly we’ve got some business to take care of.” Annah says while nudging you awake, meanwhile you feel something wet on your hand, which is hanging over the side of the bed causing you to pull it away. “Ah! Something…oh it’s Checkers. She was licking my hand.” You say. “She likes you, though it’s probably hard for you to believe.” “Well the furry beast has assisted in saving my life a few times, so not that hard I suppose. Okay, well I’m up. Guess I’ll get started on that thing. Thinking I’ll hold the meeting just outside Jicol. There’s a small clearing that’s been used sometimes for such things.” You proceed to get dressed and then give Annah a kiss before you leave. You seek out every rogue you know that could potentially be trouble in the future and explain that Sneaks recently spoke to you and after sleeping on it a bit you decided that everyone is right and the Black Hooks have to go, but you can’t do it alone and you want to have a meeting to coordinate an attack. Surprisingly everyone you speak to is receptive to this idea and agrees to come to this meeting. Granted you have a fairly “honest” reputation and nobody really likes the Black Hooks, but you thought you were going to have a few suspicious folks hesitate. Even Sneaks is glad to hear you listened to him. “Somehow I knew you were a man of reason.” Sneaks says. “Yeah, well apologies for being stand offish yesterday, I just…well I have an aversion to advice sometimes.” You remark. “Hm, well it’s a common trait in our line of work. Think nothing of it. Still, do you think we need to completely wipe out the Black Hooks?” “Well yeah, I mean isn’t this what you wanted yesterday?” “I said I would like to see them gone, though not necessarily killed. I mean I thought about some of the stuff you said as well yesterday and you were right that they’re just a bunch of dumb teenagers in the scheme of things. No way to just scare them or even perhaps just kill the leader?” “No half measures on this I’m afraid. The Black Hooks have enough confidence now that it isn’t completely tied up in just Marco. Besides, you know how gangs work. You kill the leader, and another one just pops up and could even be worse. No, as ruthless as this may be, it’s going to be necessary.” “True. Oh well. Better them than us in the future. Okay, I’ll be there at the meeting tonight. The quicker we get this grim business over with, the better.” Having done your part, you return home where you find Annah looking around. “Oh there you are, you talk to everyone you needed to?” Annah remarks. “Yeah, can’t believe I convinced everyone.” You answer. “Well you can be charming without trying sometimes.” “Weird, always thought my sister was the one who had that trait.” “Oh she did, however it probably seemed like she was better at it since she naturally has a more outgoing personality. Plus she had the advantage that most, if not all your marks tended to be old horny guys that liked pretty young girls.” “Hm, guess I never thought about it that way before. Anyway, are you prepared? There’s probably more of them coming than I thought.” “How many?” “Counting Sneaks. Nine total.” “Shit, I’ll probably kill six of them before they realize what’s going on. You’ll be assisting right?” “Of course.” “Yeah, we got this then. Well we got a lot of time to spare, let’s go spend it in bed again.” “And you say I’m the charming one.” After another round of intimacy, Annah asks you for directions to this clearing so she can get there ahead of time before anyone else. You give her the directions and then you also tell to be careful since its not like the jungles are exactly free of unfriendly wildlife. You then prepare your own firearms. You might not have the fancy ones Annah has or have her skill, but you’re bringing enough pistols to hopefully kill someone before they can kill you or escape. You then make your way to the clearing. When you get there, you find that everyone is there already. Several of them are clearly armed with firearms of their own, with muskets and blunderbusses being openly held. Apparently there was some caution. “See? Told you he was going to come alone.” One of them says. “Yeah, that’s why you came here an hour in advance just to make sure there weren’t any Black Hooks hiding out to ambush us.” Another adds. “Hm, I see trust is in short supply around here.” You remark. “You can’t be that surprised. Hell you’re betraying your Black Hook buddies. I mean what are the rest of us supposed to think?” a third remarks with a chuckle. “Okay gentlemen, I think all of our minds are a bit more at ease now. I apologize to our friend who organized this meeting, but I think under the circumstances, he should understand our caution.” Sneaks remarks. “Of course I do, I mean I certainly didn’t come without weapons. For all I knew you lot were going to murder me out here.” You say. “Still could.” One rogue says, stepping forward a bit. “True. But now I know which one to aim for first before I go.” You say. “Hah, he’s gotcha there.” Another laughs. “But anyway, I didn’t call you all here for a pissing contest. I called you all here because there’s an important matter that needs taking care of and contrary to popular belief I’m not buddies with the Black Hooks.” “So you said to me earlier today, so what’s this plan of yours to wipe them out and how can we help?” Sneaks ask. You walk around a bit to get into a better location that you’ll be able to take cover quickly before answering. You aren’t sure where Annah is, but if you know her as well as you know you do, she’s not far away and probably already in position. “Well you didn’t let me finish Sneaks. I’m not betraying the Black Hooks either and you all can help me by not putting up a fight.” You say and draw one of your pistols. “Shit!” Sneaks shouts and tries to get out of the clearing. Before anyone can get off a shot, Annah has opened fire and killed six of them. just like she said she would. You get one that tries to run at you with a dagger. The one with the blunderbuss fires wildly into the direction where he thinks the other shots are coming from and then you shoot him in the back. You look around and find that Sneaks is gone. You assume he’s heading back to the city though you’re just guessing though since it’s fairly dark. You’re also concerned about Annah, since that one with the blunderbuss did fire into the jungle and it’s possible he hit her. “Annah! Annah! Where are you? Are you alright?” you shout, then you hear a gunshot in the near distance, followed by a yelp. You run towards the noise and find Sneaks lying in the grass clutching his chest, that has a bloody hole in it. Annah stands nearby calmly reloading her pistol. “There you are. See, told you no problem. Wish this old asshole hadn’t ran though, hate having to run nowadays. Well it’s more of a quick limp, but I can get around fast if I really need to.” Annah says. “Thank the gods, you’re alive.” You say. Meanwhile Sneaks utters a few curses at you in between his dying breaths. “Well, I can’t argue with all that Sneaks, but think of it this way. At least it wasn’t the Black Hooks or even some insignificant dick that killed you. The Syndicate finally caught up with you.” You say which then causes a brief look of surprise in Sneaks’ eyes before you use your last flintlock to shoot him in the head. “So that was that Sneaks guy you told me about huh? Guess I’ll mention to Rook that a long escaped enemy has been dealt with though I’m sure the Syndicate has so many enemies on their shit list, this one won’t matter too much. Still, I’m sure it’ll be looked upon as favorably.” Annah says. “So what’s the plan now?” you ask. “Well, I return to Holgard with all the information you provided along with what we did tonight. Then I’ll try to get back here as soon as possible and we can take it from there.” “Are you so sure Rook will send you back here?” “Pretty sure he’ll want me here to assist in getting the Syndicate set up here. In any case I’m still an independent assassin, not official Ebony Claw Syndicate so if he’s got ideas to have me do something else, I don’t have any obligation to do it and I’ll be coming back here anyway.” “Hm, well I guess you know this guy better than I do. Just be careful. I still don’t really like this situation with the Syndicate, but you can count on my support whatever you decide to do.” “And that’s why I’m returning no matter what.” Annah kisses you and the pair of you return to Jicol and then home. Annah wants to get back to you as soon as possible so she leaves for Holgard on a ship the next day. She says she’d like to leave Checkers with you since she’s getting old and doesn’t really like to travel as much anymore. You agree, though partially because at least the beast is sort of still like having part of Annah around. The whole time, you can’t help but think back to Zalmora and how she left you believing she’d be back after accomplishing her task. And you’ve got even longer to worry about something happening this time. There’s nothing for it however, except get back to work, which you begin to immerse yourself in. You start off by playing a more active role in the Black Hooks “guidance.” You explain to Marco that things are going to start changing around Jicol eventually and they’ll need to be better than they are now. Granted you’re always telling them that, but you really emphasize the point. You suggest that they start getting into the protection racket. You also expand your own endeavors to lending coin and using the Black Hooks as the occasional enforcers for those that don’t pay up. Funny that Sneaks and the rest were worried about what the Black Hooks were going to become and your possible role in it and it turned out they were right all along. However the concerns of the dead don’t matter now, and with nobody really in the way to stop you from organizing a moldable bunch of teenagers, you effectively become Jicol’s new crime boss. Other independents either stay out of your way, seek to curry favor or just leave. Months pass and as they do, your concern for Annah grows and you start to get a little more ruthless in your actions. You know you’re partially preparing the Black Hooks to be incorporated by the Syndicate as part of Annah’s plan, but if she doesn’t return, you swear you’re going to take the lot of them with you on a ship to Holgard to extract vengeance on the Syndicate. Then one day you get a knock on your door. Checkers, who has normally been on the quiet side since Annah left you with her, starts getting very excited. You answer the door cautiously and… “Surprise! You miss me?” Annah says. Normally you’d be overjoyed to see her given how much worry you’ve had, but Annah has yet another new physical change. A great big belly. You stare in disbelief. “Oh, don’t worry. This is definitely your work.” Annah says rubbing her belly. “It better damn well be.” You answer. After sorting practical things out, you two surprisingly decide to get married since it seems like the thing to do now. It’s not a big affair, but it’s respectful. Marco is your best man for the lack of anyone else around; he’s overly honored by the position and hopes your first child is a masculine one. As strange as this whirlwind is, your thoughts return to the rest of your family. You can’t help but wonder what they’d think of all this. You doubt if you’ll ever get a response back, but you write a letter to your mother and father a week after the wedding and explain without too much detail that you’ve gotten married to Annah and are having a family of your own. You tell them you hope that they are doing well and if they ever see your sister to tell her that you hope she is well also. > You time passes... Year 32 “So yeah, they’re going to start rebuilding that old Fel temple in the jungle and turning it into a headquarters soon.” Marco tells you. “So Annah told me.” You answer. “All the Black Hooks might soon be incorporated into the Syndicate proper as well, rather than just as associates. I don’t think we would have been considered as quickly without you and your wife’s input.” “Good. You guys certainly deserve it, after all the hard work you’ve put in.” “Um yeah, so are you going to join the Syndicate too?” “Me? I dunno. Been pretty preoccupied what with the family and all.” “Yeah, yeah I know, but um…well its just if you don’t become a full member, I’ll probably have more authority than you in certain matters. I mean I don’t think it’ll come to this, but they could even have me take over this major operation here.” You smile a bit. “Is that right? Who said this?” you ask. “Nathan, the Syndicate leader here.” Marco says. “Of course he did.” “I mean I wouldn’t want to do it of course, but I mean order are orders. I mean you know how I really respect everything you’ve done and shit.” “Don’t worry about it Marco, because I’m not. You do what you gotta do and worry about your own future.” “Um, okay boss.” Marco leaves your shop and shake your head at Marco’s almost apologetic warning. The boy would probably hesitate if he actually ever had to go against you. Long enough for you to get the advantage anyway, but you doubt if it would ever come to that. The Syndicate has mostly been happy with what you’ve been doing, though they do bring up the fact that you really should become a full member. You think Annah already would have, if not for you dragging your feet on the issue. You aren’t sure why you are since you’re practically ECS at this point. You suppose there’s just a part of you that doesn’t want to have that final binding agreement since if you do; it really would be for life. You suppose the choice might have been easier had you not just had one baby, but twins with Annah. That really complicated everything. (Especially when after they were born, the resemblance to you was unmistakable, so there was no getting out of it) Annah at first seemed fine to take a step back from her “job” to be a mother, and she still doesn’t mind it, but over time she’s been getting antsy. You think it started soon after Checkers died of old age last year. She’s been going on about wanting to get back into things. In fact when you return home, you find Annah waiting up for you in the front room. This can’t be good. “We need to talk. And I mean talk without raising our voices because I just got Emma and Evan to sleep.” Annah says. “Okay…” you respond. “I need to get back to work.” “Well I said you could help me at my shop, bring the kids along and keep them in the back and…” “No. Maybe you’re content to sit around and letting your Black Hook kids do your legwork, but I want to be more active than that. Shit, you used to be more active too once.” “Well its not like with the Syndicate around I can just go breaking into homes anymore, not that I need to. Besides, as you said, I got the Black Hooks doing shit for me.” “Yeah that’s another thing. I know a lot of them look up to you like some weird surrogate father figure, but those teenagers are not your children and as loyal as you believe them to be, the Syndicate’s influence is only going to grow and eventually they might not be as reliable as you think they are. Besides, YOU now have real children you need to think about.” “So what are you getting at exactly Annah?” “We need to make some really big fucking changes in our lives or we’re going to be fucked over by the Syndicate.” “I might remind you that being all hooked up with the Syndicate was your idea in the first place.” “Yeah, because I see it as an opportunity for both of us. Especially now.” “An opportunity to be indebted to a powerful merciless organization that will punish you severely if you fuck up? I mean I’m really not seeing it as a beneficial thing.” Annah rubs her temples with some exasperation before continuing. “You’re REALLY not seeing the benefits we have if we fully commit.” Annah says. “Then why don’t you explain it to me slowly because I know you’ve tried before and I still just don’t get it.” You reply. “Rook said this whole operation could be ours.” “Oh yes, your buddy in Holgard. That’s why he sent that Nathan guy to oversee things.” “He only sent Nathan because neither one of us are proper ECS members! Of course he’s still going to give preferential treatment to an actual member no matter how much he might like us.” “He might like you, but I’m guessing that stopped when you showed up last time pregnant. And as for me he doesn’t know me so I doubt if he gives a shit.” “Okay first off, pretty sure Rook likes men. He’s got some friend called Bolt he’s really close with. I dunno. In any case as I said before, I did many assassin jobs for him in the past successfully so I’ve always had his respect. When I told him just in passing about Sneaks, the guy nearly broke into song and dance. I mean he REALLY hated that guy apparently. His only complaint is that he didn’t get to kill Sneaks himself. I mean just based on THAT deed alone he was ready to hand operations of Jicol over to me. But I’ve explained that before.” “Sorry, but I just don’t have as much trust in this Rook as you do okay? I mean I hardly believe he’s going to just hand Jicol over to us…or rather you for nothing.” “Well of course not for nothing, obviously money would have to be kicked up to him, but shit we’re already doing that now to Nathan. I mean if we’re going to be in this position, we might as well have a whole island to run.” “Yeah well I don’t think Nathan’s going to just step aside.” “Well that’s why we kill him and take over.” You give a brief chuckle in disbelief. “So wait, not only are you suggesting that we join the Syndicate fully, but that we also kill one of its leaders? How the hell does that work?” “Very easily. Its not like Rook particularly likes Nathan. He only sent him because I never fully committed. Ultimately Rook isn’t going to care if Nathan dies via an accident. If we get rid of him and those most loyal to him, then boom. We got control of this entire island and all we have to do is send coin back to Rook every once in awhile.” “You do realize that it’s not going to be just be a simple matter of shooting Nathan right? The guy is all wrapped up in that Fel shadow magic shit. And I still don’t see how we can just get away with killing him. I mean I know the Syndicate is ruthless and people get executed for fucking up all the time, but if murdering your immediate superior was so commonly accepted the organization wouldn’t last very long.” “And you’re right, but again Nathan really isn’t favored and we’ve got the benefit of being far enough away that we can sort of operate differently around here.” “Oh right, all of this is supposed to be Rook’s private money making operation so he can gain more power and influence with the Syndicate to shake up the organization or something. Still not keen on being part of that big scheme either. Add the whole increase in Fel worship and it all just seems pretty risky.” “Our whole lives have been risky. I mean every time you broke into a home and stole something you were taking a risk. Every day you spend being a criminal is risky. We don’t live nice safe lifestyle in case you hadn’t noticed.” “Yeah, I get that, but there’s still a fucking limit.” Annah reaches out to you. You know she’s really trying to convince you now. “You say that if we commit that we’re running a high risk. You might be right. However, I’d propose that if we don’t, we’ll run an even higher risk. I mean maybe I’ve never really said this before, but you’ve got more potential than you ever give yourself credit for. I mean look what you did with the Black Hooks. If it wasn’t for the Syndicate you’d be kingpin of Jicol. Hell, you were for a while. I know you partly did everything because this was my idea, but there’s a part of you that still had the desire.” “Maybe…” “However, I get that you’ve always had concerns about all this. And I know we’ve gone back and forth about this a few time before. So, I think if you’re not willing to make that next step, then we need to do something that I believe you’ve probably thought about many times.” “Which is?” “We relocate. I don’t know where though, I assume you’ve had some thoughts on that matter.” “Well you’re not wrong about relocating. Though unfortunately I don’t have a good idea of where. Preferably a place without any Syndicate influence, though Hessla and Klyton are sort of out of the question in that regard for other reasons. Maybe some place farther north, I’m just not as familiar with many of the settlements that way though. I know they tend to be smaller. Probably more dwarves.” “Hm. Not exactly ideal.” “I know. That’s one of the reasons why I haven’t really mentioned it to you. I mean I don’t really want to have to start all over again either. I’ve done it about three times already. And right now, even with the Syndicate looming over us, this has probably been the best set up I’ve had. I just can’t ignore that threat though, even if I do see the logic and benefits in your plan.” You and Annah are silent for a moment and then she speaks again. “Well, I just want you to know, whatever you decide, I’ll follow your lead. I was serious when I said that I want us to work this time. So if that means if we stay here or go north, or if I get back to what I want to do or I have to continue playing full time mom, then that’s what I’ll do.” Annah says. That’s quite the sacrifice for Annah who has traditionally always done her own thing. Granted she’s changed a lot since being a teenager, but still sort of a switch considering she started this conversation with the desire of wanting to be more active in the business both of you have chosen. > You join the Syndicate Maybe Annah’s right. Maybe you need to just take a risk here. This is the life you’ve chosen and it’s always been full of risk. High stakes mean high reward and Annah seems confident that you can pull this off. “Okay Annah, we’ll join the Syndicate. I still have my concerns about this idea, but I believe in you and that’s good enough.” You say. Annah smiles and hugs you. “This is going to work, and we’ll be set, you’ll see.” Annah says. “So what do we do exactly?” you ask. “We’ll have to go down to the Syndicate headquarters, that ruined Fel temple they’re currently cleaning up. And from there I assume Nathan will walk us through the formalities of the oath, then a tattoo and then that’ll be it.” “Really? We don’t get beat up or something first?” “This isn’t the Bloody Talons. I mean the Syndicate does ask for people to prove themselves first, but given I’ve always had the favor of Rook and everything we’ve done for the Syndicate, I’d say we’ve more than proven ourselves.” “Hm, maybe you have, but not sure if that’s extended to me. Besides, I don’t think Nathan’s never been the friendliest so I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants some sort of extra proving not just for me, but you as well.” “Even if he does, it can’t be too outlandish. And if it is, well I suppose we could just kill him first and explain it to Rook afterwards.” “Yeah, I’m still concerned about that part of the plan as well. Aren’t those Fel users supposed to be really quick due to their magic?” “They can be, but Nathan’s probably not highly skilled in it. Not to say we shouldn’t still get the drop on him, but it’s not impossible for us to kill him.” “So when are we doing that?” “When we get the opportunity. The sooner the better. Preferably after we’re officially in the Syndicate, but like I said, if shit happens, then it happens.” “Well shit’s definitely going to happen one way or another.” You and Annah make plans to meet with Nathan soon, though the first concern is who is going to look after Emma and Evan while you’re both away for this. The only options you can come up with are the Black Hooks have a few mothers that work as nannies. You wind up with the least objectionable and competent one and hire her. Annah mentions she wished she’d known about this before, as she wouldn’t have had to play stay at home mom quite as much. The next thing happens is Annah goes to see Nathan by herself figuring that she’ll be able to best approach this. You’re a little nervous about her heading to the temple by herself, but she soon returns stating that Nathan was surprisingly very open to the idea. “What seriously? I thought he didn’t care for either of us.” You say. “If he didn’t, he’s either hiding it pretty well now or gotten over it. Said that he even recently received a message from Rook asking if he managed to convince us to properly join yet. He said he’s glad we’re joining since it makes dealing with us a lot easier since he hates dealing with associates and he can now send a message back to Rook to get him off his back about it.” “Hm, I dunno. Marco mentioned that Nathan’s been talking shit about us, or me at least.” “Well I’m not saying we place complete trust in the guy, just that he’s not giving extra grief about us joining. Said we can come to the temple tomorrow to get everything sorted out. After that, then we can move on to the next step.” “I don’t think we should go to the temple together.” “What?” “I don’t think we should go to the temple to together. For all we know Nathan might be planning to kill us too. If we go there together then it’s going to be really easy for him. I’ll go tomorrow by myself.” “If what you’re saying is true, then I’d stand a better chance against him by myself.” “Maybe so, but I’m not taking that risk with you…I mean I know you’re different, but I let Zalmora go off by herself once and she never came back. At least this way, I’ll just get killed and you can escape if I don’t return.” “If you don’t return, I hope you realize I wouldn’t run, I’d be trying to avenge you immediately.” “Well then you’ll at least have the advantage of being free to do so then.” Annah says she understands the logic in your plan, though asks you again if this is what you want to do. You reply that it is and the next day, you head out of Jicol and to the Fel temple where Nathan is waiting for you. When you arrive, you’re met by Syndicate members, who obviously don’t care too much for you and pat you down for weapons before allowing you to go see Nathan who is surprised only to see you. “Where’s Annah?” Nathan asks. “Unfortunately maternal issues called. She said she apologizes and that she’d be in tomorrow.” You reply which obviously causes a look of annoyance on Nathan’s face. “Fucking hell, SHE’S the one that saw me about this shit and now she blows me off? I’m doing you both a fucking favor here!” “We understand that and again you have our apologies.” “Apologies doesn’t make up for my fucking time! She better damn well realize that whether she shit out kids or not is irrelevant to Syndicate business! I mean this isn’t just an insult to the Syndicate, it’s an insult to fucking Fel! We’re in HIS HOUSE!” “Well I can make the appropriate sacrifices to him, if…” “Appropriate sacrifices, pfft. You’re no believer, whatever you offered would mean shit to him!” This is more of the Nathan you expected and you start to wonder if you’re going to get out of this alive. However Nathan instead throws up his hands. “Fine, whatever. Your wife is Rook’s favorite assassin and really wants her in the organization. Far be it from me to piss him off, so tell her to come in tomorrow. In any case, let’s get you sorted out now.” Nathan goes through a surprisingly brief oath that you’re supposed to repeat. He mentions that usually the oath is a bit longer, but since you’re partially being accepted due to Annah and that you’re seen more as a mid level Syndicate supervisor of grunts with no signs of being dedicated to Fel, Nathan feels the basic oath is enough. With the oath finished Nathan calls for one of his people to give you a Syndicate tattoo. Since you don’t particularly want it to show in public, you get it on your back, which ends up taking much longer than the oath did. (And a lot more painful) After getting the tattoo, Nathan apathetically mentions you’re now in the Syndicate and dismisses you with some comment about how you need to get the Black Hooks more organized since a lot of them aren’t going to make it into becoming full members in their current state. You return back home at night. “Glad to see you’re finally back. I was starting to have my own concerns that you were right after all.” Annah replies. “Well he wasn’t pleased that you weren’t there. Went on about his time being wasted, though he acted about how I expected him to which actually put me a little more at ease after I realized he wasn’t going to kill me right then and there. Fortunately he seems to be more concerned with Rook’s approval of you, so he seemed more resigned than anything else.” You say. “Connection in high places helps.” “Anyway, the tattoo took the longest time, and he’ll be expecting you tomorrow. I imagine your oath might be a little longer than mine though.” You show your tattoo to Annah, who says she’ll probably get hers on her arm seeing as her back is all scarred up and a tat probably wouldn’t look as good. The next day, Annah goes to the temple and you take Evan and Emma with you to your shop. It’s a chore looking after them and focusing on business, but after one of the Black Hook’s nanny mothers shows up, things are a little easier. You continue with your work as normal for most of the day. When night falls you don’t think too much about it since you figure the process is taking longer for Annah. You finish up your duties and lock up thinking you’ll be glad when you get rid of Nathan so you won’t have to be concerned with him anymore. When you get home, you expect to be met by a nanny telling you she’s just put the twins to bed or apologizing for failing in the task. Or even better you’d find that Annah has returned. Instead, as soon as you enter your own home, you feel burning lead slamming into you, causing you to fall to the floor clutching your chest. “What the fuck are you doing?! Nathan wanted him alive you asshole!” a voice shouts. “Oh shit, I heard the door open and I got nervous!” another voice says. “Fuck. Well hopefully the two brats are good enough to torture his wife with. Unger is already on his way to the temple with them. Come on let’s get the fuck out of here and leave this fucker to die.” You grasp at one the Syndicate member’s legs as they run out the door, but a swift kick soon gets them free. In these last moments you can only assume that Nathan planned a double cross all along. Probably just altered his plans when the pair of you didn’t show up together yesterday. You wheeze and cough blood while cursing yourself for taking this foolish risk and can only hope that Annah gets out of this herself because your role in this world is done.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 32 “So yeah, they’re going to start rebuilding that old Fel temple in the jungle and turning it into a headquarters soon.” Marco tells you. “So Annah told me.” You answer. “All the Black Hooks might soon be incorporated into the Syndicate proper as well, rather than just as associates. I don’t think we would have been considered as quickly without you and your wife’s input.” “Good. You guys certainly deserve it, after all the hard work you’ve put in.” “Um yeah, so are you going to join the Syndicate too?” “Me? I dunno. Been pretty preoccupied what with the family and all.” “Yeah, yeah I know, but um…well its just if you don’t become a full member, I’ll probably have more authority than you in certain matters. I mean I don’t think it’ll come to this, but they could even have me take over this major operation here.” You smile a bit. “Is that right? Who said this?” you ask. “Nathan, the Syndicate leader here.” Marco says. “Of course he did.” “I mean I wouldn’t want to do it of course, but I mean order are orders. I mean you know how I really respect everything you’ve done and shit.” “Don’t worry about it Marco, because I’m not. You do what you gotta do and worry about your own future.” “Um, okay boss.” Marco leaves your shop and shake your head at Marco’s almost apologetic warning. The boy would probably hesitate if he actually ever had to go against you. Long enough for you to get the advantage anyway, but you doubt if it would ever come to that. The Syndicate has mostly been happy with what you’ve been doing, though they do bring up the fact that you really should become a full member. You think Annah already would have, if not for you dragging your feet on the issue. You aren’t sure why you are since you’re practically ECS at this point. You suppose there’s just a part of you that doesn’t want to have that final binding agreement since if you do; it really would be for life. You suppose the choice might have been easier had you not just had one baby, but twins with Annah. That really complicated everything. (Especially when after they were born, the resemblance to you was unmistakable, so there was no getting out of it) Annah at first seemed fine to take a step back from her “job” to be a mother, and she still doesn’t mind it, but over time she’s been getting antsy. You think it started soon after Checkers died of old age last year. She’s been going on about wanting to get back into things. In fact when you return home, you find Annah waiting up for you in the front room. This can’t be good. “We need to talk. And I mean talk without raising our voices because I just got Emma and Evan to sleep.” Annah says. “Okay…” you respond. “I need to get back to work.” “Well I said you could help me at my shop, bring the kids along and keep them in the back and…” “No. Maybe you’re content to sit around and letting your Black Hook kids do your legwork, but I want to be more active than that. Shit, you used to be more active too once.” “Well its not like with the Syndicate around I can just go breaking into homes anymore, not that I need to. Besides, as you said, I got the Black Hooks doing shit for me.” “Yeah that’s another thing. I know a lot of them look up to you like some weird surrogate father figure, but those teenagers are not your children and as loyal as you believe them to be, the Syndicate’s influence is only going to grow and eventually they might not be as reliable as you think they are. Besides, YOU now have real children you need to think about.” “So what are you getting at exactly Annah?” “We need to make some really big fucking changes in our lives or we’re going to be fucked over by the Syndicate.” “I might remind you that being all hooked up with the Syndicate was your idea in the first place.” “Yeah, because I see it as an opportunity for both of us. Especially now.” “An opportunity to be indebted to a powerful merciless organization that will punish you severely if you fuck up? I mean I’m really not seeing it as a beneficial thing.” Annah rubs her temples with some exasperation before continuing. “You’re REALLY not seeing the benefits we have if we fully commit.” Annah says. “Then why don’t you explain it to me slowly because I know you’ve tried before and I still just don’t get it.” You reply. “Rook said this whole operation could be ours.” “Oh yes, your buddy in Holgard. That’s why he sent that Nathan guy to oversee things.” “He only sent Nathan because neither one of us are proper ECS members! Of course he’s still going to give preferential treatment to an actual member no matter how much he might like us.” “He might like you, but I’m guessing that stopped when you showed up last time pregnant. And as for me he doesn’t know me so I doubt if he gives a shit.” “Okay first off, pretty sure Rook likes men. He’s got some friend called Bolt he’s really close with. I dunno. In any case as I said before, I did many assassin jobs for him in the past successfully so I’ve always had his respect. When I told him just in passing about Sneaks, the guy nearly broke into song and dance. I mean he REALLY hated that guy apparently. His only complaint is that he didn’t get to kill Sneaks himself. I mean just based on THAT deed alone he was ready to hand operations of Jicol over to me. But I’ve explained that before.” “Sorry, but I just don’t have as much trust in this Rook as you do okay? I mean I hardly believe he’s going to just hand Jicol over to us…or rather you for nothing.” “Well of course not for nothing, obviously money would have to be kicked up to him, but shit we’re already doing that now to Nathan. I mean if we’re going to be in this position, we might as well have a whole island to run.” “Yeah well I don’t think Nathan’s going to just step aside.” “Well that’s why we kill him and take over.” You give a brief chuckle in disbelief. “So wait, not only are you suggesting that we join the Syndicate fully, but that we also kill one of its leaders? How the hell does that work?” “Very easily. Its not like Rook particularly likes Nathan. He only sent him because I never fully committed. Ultimately Rook isn’t going to care if Nathan dies via an accident. If we get rid of him and those most loyal to him, then boom. We got control of this entire island and all we have to do is send coin back to Rook every once in awhile.” “You do realize that it’s not going to be just be a simple matter of shooting Nathan right? The guy is all wrapped up in that Fel shadow magic shit. And I still don’t see how we can just get away with killing him. I mean I know the Syndicate is ruthless and people get executed for fucking up all the time, but if murdering your immediate superior was so commonly accepted the organization wouldn’t last very long.” “And you’re right, but again Nathan really isn’t favored and we’ve got the benefit of being far enough away that we can sort of operate differently around here.” “Oh right, all of this is supposed to be Rook’s private money making operation so he can gain more power and influence with the Syndicate to shake up the organization or something. Still not keen on being part of that big scheme either. Add the whole increase in Fel worship and it all just seems pretty risky.” “Our whole lives have been risky. I mean every time you broke into a home and stole something you were taking a risk. Every day you spend being a criminal is risky. We don’t live nice safe lifestyle in case you hadn’t noticed.” “Yeah, I get that, but there’s still a fucking limit.” Annah reaches out to you. You know she’s really trying to convince you now. “You say that if we commit that we’re running a high risk. You might be right. However, I’d propose that if we don’t, we’ll run an even higher risk. I mean maybe I’ve never really said this before, but you’ve got more potential than you ever give yourself credit for. I mean look what you did with the Black Hooks. If it wasn’t for the Syndicate you’d be kingpin of Jicol. Hell, you were for a while. I know you partly did everything because this was my idea, but there’s a part of you that still had the desire.” “Maybe…” “However, I get that you’ve always had concerns about all this. And I know we’ve gone back and forth about this a few time before. So, I think if you’re not willing to make that next step, then we need to do something that I believe you’ve probably thought about many times.” “Which is?” “We relocate. I don’t know where though, I assume you’ve had some thoughts on that matter.” “Well you’re not wrong about relocating. Though unfortunately I don’t have a good idea of where. Preferably a place without any Syndicate influence, though Hessla and Klyton are sort of out of the question in that regard for other reasons. Maybe some place farther north, I’m just not as familiar with many of the settlements that way though. I know they tend to be smaller. Probably more dwarves.” “Hm. Not exactly ideal.” “I know. That’s one of the reasons why I haven’t really mentioned it to you. I mean I don’t really want to have to start all over again either. I’ve done it about three times already. And right now, even with the Syndicate looming over us, this has probably been the best set up I’ve had. I just can’t ignore that threat though, even if I do see the logic and benefits in your plan.” You and Annah are silent for a moment and then she speaks again. “Well, I just want you to know, whatever you decide, I’ll follow your lead. I was serious when I said that I want us to work this time. So if that means if we stay here or go north, or if I get back to what I want to do or I have to continue playing full time mom, then that’s what I’ll do.” Annah says. That’s quite the sacrifice for Annah who has traditionally always done her own thing. Granted she’s changed a lot since being a teenager, but still sort of a switch considering she started this conversation with the desire of wanting to be more active in the business both of you have chosen. > You relocate It’s not ideal, but maybe it’s been a long time coming. You need to get out of here before you’re unable to. “We’ve got coin saved up. Not as much as I’d like, but enough for us to be comfortable for a while. I’ve heard of a port town far to the north on the mainland called Yiktolv that’s supposed to be experiencing a growth boom. Lots of opportunities and such, but apparently very much still a frontier type environment meaning there shouldn’t be much law crawling all over the place. Fairly certain two enterprising people like us could find something to do in such an environment.” You say. “Okay, I guess we better make the preparations then. I’m sure we’ll be fine. Well, it’s late and we probably should both get some sleep.” Annah says, You both head to bed, though you don’t sleep much for several reasons. There’s so much shit you need to get done. You spend the next month fencing as much as you can and selling off items that have been in your possession for awhile now at a slightly lower rate. You also start giving Marco a bit more responsibility with the whole debt-collecting thing. At one time you just gave him orders on what you needed, but you start allowing him to see the actual books and lists. Marco’s smart enough to know something must be up if you’re doing this. You give him a short explanation, which of course he’s not exactly overjoyed to hear you leaving, but he’s grateful that you’re passing your business on to him. “Remember, I’m handing this to you. Try not to let that asshole Nathan reassign you or some shit. You’ve got a crew. I mean maybe you’re all going to be Syndicate one day, but I assume you had your closest ties with your fellow Black Hooks, so it isn’t like you don’t have any back up.” You say. “I understand and thanks.” Marco replies. After about two months, you and Annah are pretty much set and you have already made arrangements to board a ship mostly carrying fabric to Yiktolv. Normally such a cargo ship wouldn’t take any old passengers, but enough coin talks. You really only want to take such a ship mainly because its potentially less of a target for pirates. After all you’ve got a trunk full of valuables, along with your family. As concerned as you were in beginning about all this, you’re starting to feel more hopeful about this new beginning. Even Annah is sort of looking on the bright side of this endeavor. The day you’re scheduled to leave, you, Annah and the twins make your way to the ship with a cart carrying your belonging, but you can’t help have a feeling of unease. The ship’s crew takes your things and you board the ship with no problems, but you’re still feeling anxious. You just sense something wrong. And then it happens. Just as the ship is about to leave, a bunch of shouting for it to stop along with threats occurs and then you glance over the side and see Nathan, along with several of his Syndicate men begin making their way up the gang plank. Behind them are Marco and several Black Hooks. He looks a little cowed. Nathan just gives a intimidating glance at the captain of the ship who slinks away to his cabin while the rest of his crew also find a way of making themselves scarce. Annah shields Emma and Evan and tells them to get behind her. Annah’s good, but you’re not sure with Nathan’s shadow magic powers. And while Marco is here with some of his people, you can’t really be sure he’d help if it really comes down to it. Pressure by a powerful organization can be effective. “You planning on leaving before saying goodbye Annah?” Nathan addresses her as if you’re not even around. “Didn’t know we needed to.” You remark. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you wore the pants in the relationship.” “What?” “Oh come on, while you may have run your petty crime ring of snot nosed teens before we arrived, everyone knows that Annah’s the real threat here. Shit, I remember how Rook used to love telling stories about her in Holgard. If he wasn’t a pillow biter I would have sworn he was in love with her. Of course that was before she decided to become a brood sow.” “Nathan, you call my wife a brood sow again, you’re going to see just how dangerous I AM.” “Ohh! You hear that? The sound of a wounded ego. What do you think of your mentor Marco? You think he could take me?” Marco doesn’t answer and just looks down. Causing Nathan to get annoyed and walk over to him. “Hey! I’m talking to you boy! Answer the fucking question!” Nathan says smacking Marco upside the head. “Um, no sir.” Marco answers meekly. “You see that? Not even your star pupil thinks that highly of you, but as fun as all this is, let’s get to why I’m here. Coin. Coin that belongs to the Syndicate.” “What’re you talking about Nathan? I left instructions and lists with Marco about who owes coin. Not to mention I put aside this month’s cut for the Syndicate and left it at the shop. Shit, I even left a little extra since I figured it would be a gesture of good will.” “Yeah? Well that’s thoughtful. Wasn’t that thoughtful lads? The problem is, your good will don’t mean shit. Now you’re not Syndicate and obviously you’re too much of a pussy to join so honestly I don’t give a shit if you leave. Saves me the hassle of having to kill you later since I never thought much of you anyway. In fact the only reason why I’m being THIS generous is despite Annah being a…mother now, I know she’s still deadly with those pistols. I imagine right now, she could take out several of us if this turns unpleasant.” Nathan then turns to walk back towards your direction. “However, as good as she is, she’s not faster than me and more importantly she’s not fast enough to save YOU. So to prevent this from turning unpleasant, all I’m requesting is you hand over ALL your coin. I know you’ve probably got a chest full of it. Call it your exit tax. Do that, and you can be on your way to wherever the fuck you’re scurrying off to.” You are feeling an anger right now that you nearly can’t contain. You almost aren’t thinking straight. You look at Nathan’s smug face and you just want to shoot it. You know the reputation of shadow magic and how effective it is. Even Annah has told you some of the things she’s witnessed. You’re about to pull your pistol and he looks so eager for you to try. Still, he can’t be THAT fast can he? Even if you missed, sure Annah would be able to… You feel a hand on your shoulder, and you turn to look at Annah who just shakes her head a bit. “We’ll be fine.” She says. And those words seem to calm you enough to drop your hands to your side. “Take your tax. It’s in a black trunk below us.” You say. “Smart move listening to your woman. She knows all too well the penalties of trying to fuck over the Syndicate. That’s how she got that lovely eye patch isn’t it? Marco, go make yourself useful and go get the fucking trunk.” Nathan says snapping his fingers at him. Marco and the other Black Hooks head to the lower decks without another word. Meanwhile you go over to be closer with Annah and your children. Nathan of course takes this opportunity to continue to mock you both, presumably to still try to goad you into fight. Soon, Nathan begins to get more irritated by the fact that Marco hasn’t returned yet. “Fucking hell, what is taking so damn long? Go see what those fucking idiots are doing.” Nathan says to his men who head down below. Next thing you know, the sounds of shouting followed by fighting can be heard. You can’t believe it. “What the fuck…” Nathan says and moves towards the stairway leading to below decks. And that distraction is all the time Annah needs. Without a word, she pushes you to the side, pulls her pistol and unloads it into Nathan. Three of the shots turn his head into a bloody mess before his lifeless body hits the deck. “Quick, go help your minions, they might need it.” Annah says and starts reloading. This wasn’t part of the plan, but you have to take advantage where you can. You go down below where you find the Black Hooks fighting it out with the Syndicate. Fortunately for the Hooks, they had the advantage of ambushing them, but it’s still a good thing you’re there to help. After it’s all said and done, you’ve killed them all, though not without casualties. Marco himself is wounded, but alive. “You alright?” you ask. “Yeah…ah…fuck.” Marco replies. “Hm. You realize you just dug a deep hole and jumped waist deep in shit right?” “I know, but I just couldn’t stand by and let him horse fuck you like that.” “Appreciated. I knew who you’d side with if it came down to it.” “Is that asshole dead?” “Yeah, Annah filled him full of holes as soon as the fighting down here occurred. Turned his attention away just for a few seconds and that was it.” “Good. But what happens now? Are you still leaving?” “Good question.” You motion for the remaining Black Hooks to help Marco and you head back to the upper decks where you find Annah trying to calm down a very worried captain. (Though oddly, your two children just stand by unaffected by the situation other than maybe curiosity) “Relax captain, the Syndicate isn’t going to take it out on you. This will all be taken care of. Just head back in your cabin and when you come back out in a few hours, everything will be fixed and you can be on your way.” Annah says which the captain doesn’t necessarily believe, but he’s scared enough to be hopeful, so he does exactly what Annah says. You approach Annah as she’s then asking if Emma and Evan are okay. “They seem disturbingly calm about all this, obviously going to grow up to be unfeeling killers like their mother.” Annah remarks to you. “I sure hope so. I know I’ll feel safer.” You respond. “Speaking of safety, How exactly are we proceeding with all this? I mean what just happened is what you wanted to avoid.” “Yeah, I know, but shit happens. Guess we’re staying now.” “What? You mean you want to stay and not head to Yiktolv?” “What’s the fucking point now? I mean we just carried out your plan, we might as well risk it now. If we go running off, I doubt even Rook would look kindly upon killing his representative here without at least replacing him. Not like Marco would be up for that task and the last thing I want to wake up one night in Yiktolv with Syndicate assassins surrounding me. If we get ahead of this, and Rook likes you as much as you and even Nathan said he does, well maybe we’ll be okay.” “Oh, I think I can spin all this in a message to Rook. We might need to kick a little extra coin up to him this coming tribute though, just on the safe side.” “Well I figured, but we’re sure as shit not paying all of it. Marco and his lot can contribute half that considering he got us into this in the first fucking place. I’d have them pay all of it, but I know those fuckers are still poor for the most part.” You and Annah look at one another. “Well we tried to walk away didn’t we?” Annah asks. “Yeah. But things probably would have been the same in Yiktolv. I mean I suppose this way we don’t need to start all over after all. Wasn’t looking forward to that, let me tell you.” You say. “Maybe it sounds strange, but I feel more positive about our future than I did.” “Yeah, that sounds strange since we could very well be in more danger, but that’s why I love you. Anyway come on and let’s throw this asshole overboard. We’re probably going to have to take care of any other Syndicate members that were loyal to him soon. They’ll probably all be at the temple.” After a few month’s time of “clean up” and coercion, things are settled on Jicol. When news finally reached Rook, he didn’t mind Nathan’s death and was glad to have Annah on board as his new representative on Jicol running things there. (You’ve always been seen as just part of the package even if you’re actually handling more of the business side of things) You officially become Ebony Claw Syndicate. You’re supposed to get the tattoo, but you never do since you have the luxury of running things in Jicol and things are a little more lax there as far as “gang formalities” go. While in the scheme of things, you might just be one cog in a larger organization; your simple days as common rogue are definitely over. In any case it doesn’t seem so bad, and besides the fact that you have to split more time with Annah looking after your children, things run more or less smoothly and you’re doing fairly well. In fact you wonder why the hell you didn’t just go with Annah’s plan in the first place.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3E: Reunited Year 30 None of your dealings with gangs has ever been positive which is why its odd that you inadvertently became looked up to one. Granted it’s made up of a bunch of snot nosed teenagers, but they’ve been trying to emulate you for years since they were snot nosed kids. The Black Hooks have been unofficially looking to you for guidance ever since you easily caught a couple of them trying to pick your pocket a couple years ago and scolded them for their sloppy technique. Some of them seem to have potential, others just seem like they’re just in it to cause trouble and be rebellious. Their “leader” Marco talks a big game and even seems to resent the fact that so many in his gang speak positively of you, but in the scheme of things, he seems like he wants to be like you on some level. Still, as teenagers are want to do, they don’t always listen very well. You certainly didn’t. “Marco, I know you and your little friends are really proud about your recent string of break ins, but you lot still have a lot to learn about stealth. I’ve told you the story about the Bloody Talons haven’t I?” you remark. “Yes! A million times!” Marco says exasperatedly. “And you’ll hear it a million more until you fuckers get it right or you’re going to end up just like the Bloody Talons! More importantly, you’re making shit unnecessarily more difficult for the rest of us trying to make a living out here. The more reckless you are, the more the Jicol Watch starts actually cracking down on everyone. We don’t need that shit. We got it good here thanks to Jicol tending to worry more about pirates than us land based criminals.” “I think I’d rather be a pirate.” “Pfft, no you wouldn’t. You like the IDEA of being a pirate because you hear all about their glorious tales of raping and pillaging whenever they dock here. Trust me, I’ve dealt with enough pirates for them to tell me some of their stories to know that that life isn’t all that glamorous. Most of the time it’s a lot of waiting around on a ship fighting off scurvy and other crew members trying to do harm to your fucking asshole by shoving a dick it in. You want to get fucked in the ass?” “Um, no?” “You didn’t sound so sure about that. Because if that’s what you want, I’m pretty sure there are a lot of pirate captains that would like a cabin boy like you.” “No! Fuck no.” “Alright then. In any case, stop immediately breaking windows when you’re struggling with a lock. Locks are like women and sometimes you gotta take a little time with them before they open up and give you the goods. It’s a pain in the ass, but most of the time it’s worth it and you’ll feel a better sense of accomplishment. Understand?” “Yeah, I suppose so.” “So what are you trying to sell this time?” After doing a little bartering and taking advantage of Marco’s lack of knowledge of the value of his stolen goods, you bid him and his buddies goodbye and remind him to remember what you said. As you make your way back to your humble home, halfway there you get the sense that you’re being followed and watched. It isn’t he Black Hook either. “Alright, you lot might as well come out, unless you intend on shooting me from the shadows that you’re hiding in.” A single older man steps out from said shadows. “Nope, just me.” He says. “Who are you?” you ask. “Oh I go by the same name I have for years now. Sneaks. Though apparently not sneaky enough seeing as you sensed me. Such is the failing of once superior skills with getting old.” “You won’t be getting too much older if you keeping following me around, now what do you want?” “No need for hostility friend, though I suppose it would have been better to just approach you directly. Honestly, I’ve known about you for a year or so now, but seeing as I do my own fencing like most others like myself around here, never really needed to speak with you before.” “Oh? So do you have something then?” “Oh no. It’s not that. It’s more of a concern that…well let’s just say the underworld community has.” “Underworld community? First I’m hearing of an organized gang here.” “That’s because there isn’t one and we’re all hoping it stays that way. Nothing good comes from monolithic organizations. I should know I had to directly fight the Ebony Claw Syndicate back in Holgard and ultimately lost.” “Well you’ll get no argument from me. I’ve never been part of a gang and never had any positive experiences with them.” “Interesting. Then one wonders why you’re actively encouraging and acting as a mentor of sorts to one.” You nearly chuckle at what Sneaks is getting at. “The Black Hooks? I mean yeah I guess they’re a gang, but they’re hardly the Ebony Claw Syndicate. They’re mostly a bunch of dumb teenagers.” You say. “Well I’m sure the Syndicate started as a bunch of dumb teenagers too, until someone molded and lead them to be a powerful organization.” Sneaks replies. “I am NOT the leader of the Black Hooks nor do I have any desire to be. That dubious honor belongs to their mildly more intelligent member, Marco. I can’t help it if some of them look to me for tips and shit. If anything, my guidance as you call it, is making things better for the rest of us. I just told them to knock it off with their smash and grab routines and other shit that brings the heat down on everyone.” “Yes, I can see that would be a good thing, however I don’t think you’re looking at the greater picture. You are correct in that they’re mostly dumb teenagers and their actions draw more attention. However, I also imagine that they wouldn’t last very long. Sooner, rather than later, the Jicol Watch would wipe out most of them and things would be harder for the rest of us for awhile, but eventually the status quo would return since Jicol has always been more concerned with a potential pirate attack rather than anything else.” “Your point?” “My point is, YOU are teaching them to be better criminals. Basically, more of them are going to survive and even thrive because of you. Not only does this mean more competition for all of us, it also means the Black Hooks are likely to survive as a gang. This organization is going to eventually realize that they outnumber the independent competition and take steps to eliminate said competition, or force them to join. Since some of us aren’t likely to go quietly, some of the independents are going to form their OWN gang for protection and before you know it, there’s a war going on. As I said, I’ve read that tale before and it didn’t end well.” “So you’re telling me who I can or can’t associate with?” “Look, I’m not saying to not continue to do whatever business you have with them. I wouldn’t dream of doing something like that. Anyway I said my piece. Do what you want obviously. I’m just suggesting that helping them as much as you have been, might not be in any of our best interests in the long run.” “Duly noted.” With those words, Sneaks nods and takes his leave. You have to admit, he does have somewhat of a point, but on the other hand some of it sounded like a threat with that last bit. You continue on your way home and then you see a figure near it. The figure isn’t even hiding. They’re just casually sitting on your front step. Seems you’re popular today. As you approach a little cautiously, the notice the figure is female and a little furry animal pop out from around her then… “Annah?” you call out. “I was wondering when you’d get home. I would have let myself in, but who knows what traps you’ve rigged and I’m not quite as nimble anymore. Besides, wouldn’t be polite right?” Annah replies. “Glad to see you’ve at last respected my boundaries. Not just for me, but for yourself. That door doesn’t even lead inside, come on, I’ll take you the real way.” “Oh, a secret way in. Nice, but aren’t you concerned about me knowing?” “Not at this point. Besides, I don’t keep anything of actual value in here anyway.” “Of course you don’t.” After leading Annah in the real way to your home (with Checkers slowly following behind), she asks you how you’ve been and what you’ve been up to. You give a brief answer that you’ve been doing better since the last time you saw her (physically and mentally) and how it’s mostly been back to the standard burglary for you along with some fencing for the Black Hooks. “Black Hooks huh? They Jicol’s version of the Talons?” Annah asks. “They wish. It’s mostly a bunch of teenagers being wild. Though I’ve been mildly trying to direct them away from what led to the Talons’ demise in Klyton.” You say. “That’s rather altruistic of you.” “It’s more like covering my own ass in the long run so Jicol doesn’t turn into another Klyton. However, someone recently told me that I should just let these kids twist in the wind and get themselves killed by the law since it gets rid of a potential greater threat in the future, like the Black Hooks actually becoming competent and powerful united force.” “I can see a logic in both approaches actually. So what were you planning to do?” “Nothing. I’m going to continue to go about my life and if anyone gets in my face about what I’m doing, I’ll deal with it then.” “Sounds like you. Sooo…the Black Hooks the only gang in the city?” “If you can call them that. Yeah. Everyone else is more or less independent though I’m sure a few work together at times. Nobody really has any turf though as far as places being off limits to others. Not even the Black Hooks are like that, though they do have a location where they all hang out that they probably consider their own.” “Would you say there is a strong disregard for authority here in the underworld community?” “Isn’t there always?” “Well yes, but I meant it sounds like other than the Black Hooks, nobody is really organized and probably would resist against such a thing.” “Annah, this is an odd line of questioning you’re going for…out with it.” Annah looks down a bit, before looking at you again. You have to say, you still aren’t used to that eye patch she has. “Promise you won’t get mad?” Annah asks. “Well that doesn’t sound good. (Sigh) Fine. I promise I’ll TRY not to get mad.” You reply. “Okay. Well, since we last saw each other, I’ve been in Holgard and I’ve sort of had dealings with the Ebony Claw Syndicate.” “Oh for…” “No, no, it’s okay. I’m actually on good terms with them now. Well at least the chapter in Holgard. Apparently the head there Rook. Isn’t too pleased with some of the leadership decisions in the Delantium Kingdom and he’s been making a few moves of his own. To cut a long story short, I’ve been working with the Syndicate.” “You joined the fucking Syndicate?!” “No! I’m more like a hired gun. Literally, most of the time. I…uh…accept a lot of contracts on people.” “…Wow. Okay then. Still, I would have thought the Syndicate would have had people like that on their payroll.” “Eh, that’s sort of the problem with the Holgard chapter. It doesn’t get much support from the top. It’s almost seen as more of a money-making outpost. Enough to keep a presence in, but not important enough to put extra manpower into. This might not be a problem if Holgard didn’t suffer shit like civil rebellions and religious faction fights every five years or so. As a result the Syndicate chapter in Holgard has had to make more use of independents than they would like. Though they tend to REALLY want you to join. I’ve gotten the sales pitch several times. Fortunately I’m good enough at what I do that I’ve been able to decline and still remain unaligned.” “Seems like a dangerous game you’re playing Annah. I mean this is the same organization that…well did THAT to you.” “Same organization, but different people and different circumstances. Besides, I’m not trying to rip them off this time. I’m legitimately doing work for them, which is why I’m here actually.” Annah goes into an explanation that the head of the Syndicate chapter in Holgard, Rook is looking to expand his own power base here on Jicol. Since Annah has done such good work for him in the past he’s sent her here to scout the place rather than sending his own people. She says that her main job is to make a note of all the major players in the city. She says that when she learned you were living here, she figured she could save some of the legwork by directly speaking to you about it. “So…what then? Is the Syndicate just going to take this entire city over?” you ask. “Well that’s the plan, unless it turns out to be too much trouble, but based on even what little you’ve told me and what little I’ve seen, this place seems pretty ripe for a Syndicate takeover. Or at least Rook’s takeover.” Annah says briefly petting Checkers who is asleep by her feet. “There’s nothing I can do to stop this?” “Well no, not really. The Syndicate is really looking to branch out here. Nothing that can be done about that unless you’re going to try to unite everyone against them, but it would be pretty stupid to try that. The Syndicate pretty much always gets what they want. I should know.” “It still surprises me that you’d be working for them, given what happened. You never did tell me exactly.” “Okay. I get what you mean. But shit happened and I wound up in bed with the Syndicate again. Fortunately it’s been in my favor this time. It’s sort of an amusing tale, maybe I’ll tell you about it when I’m not currently so busy.” Annah replies. “Still never told me about how you managed to get a room in the Klyton university dorms either.” “Heh. Well I’ll tell you that story too. I want to tell you everything. I mean…shit…I still miss you, y’know? When I found out you lived here I was looking forward to seeing you again. Last time we parted company you said we’d meet again as we seem to be destined to always do.” “Yeah I remember. Just thought it might be under less complicated circumstances this time.” “I don’t think that’s how our relationship goes.” “Obviously not.” Annah takes a deep breath and continues. “The Syndicate is coming, but it probably won’t be immediately. In the meantime, I can speak positively about you when I get back to Holgard and you could probably become an associate much like I am. I could even relocate here while we prepare this place and we could work on tasks together like in the old days. Lots of coin to be made and we both know how much you like that.” Annah says. While you wouldn’t mind such a thing under normal circumstances, you really aren’t keen on Annah’s Syndicate involvement. > You talk Annah out of this Annah might think she has a handle on things and maybe she does, but you need to try to talk her out of getting in too deep with the Syndicate again. But you also think that maybe starting with a lecture might not be the way to go about it, so you start with helping her a little. You give a rundown on every underworld contact you have of relative importance, along with the strength and numbers of the Black Hooks. You then also give Annah an approximate guess on the strength of the Jicol Watch and how effective they are. “Would you say they’re susceptible to working with the Syndicate? The Holgard Watch has never been too much of a problem in that regard.” Annah says. “Well, the Jicol Watch isn’t adverse to a bribe here and there, but the Mayor of Jicol tends to pay them well enough for them to not to make a habit of it.” You say. “Mayor of Jicol? Anything like the Governor of Hessla?” “He’s ten times more reclusive. Apparently most haven’t seen him in decades. About the only descriptions that exist are that the Mayor is male and human, but who knows? In any case, while this place is no stranger to corruption, it still adheres to law and order fairly strongly. Not Klyton level, but that’s probably due to more emphasis on their fleet rather than land force which is thankfully smaller.” “I see. Anything else?” “Not really. So…you going to go assassinate them all now?” “Heh. Well, based on everything you’ve told me, doesn’t seem like I need to bother. I suppose I could anyway. You said you spoke to someone called Sneaks that used to belong to the Thieves Guild in Holgard recently? I bet Rook would want to someone like that taken care of. Maybe the leader of the Black Hooks as well just to keep that group from getting too organized.” You just sort of stare at Annah for a moment and exhale a bit while briefly rubbing your hand over your chin. This doesn’t go unnoticed. “What? Is there some other potential obstacle you haven’t mentioned?” Annah asks. “No. I saw you in action three years ago remember? I have no doubt you’ve only gotten more dangerous since then and are more than a match for anyone here.” You answer. “But?” “But, you told me to think about working with you on this Syndicate business and I truly do not see a good ending for us that way if we stick with them and the longer we do it, the harder it’s going to be to get out. I personally don’t want to associate with them. The Black Hooks are about the most I’m going to tolerate for reasons I’ve mentioned. You say you aren’t formally connected with the Syndicate and that’s good, because I think after you do this last job for them, you REALLY need to break ALL ties with them. Things might be going good now, but they might not always be.” “You could say that about anything.” “Yeah I could, but I’m talking about this. Look, you say this Rook fellow isn’t happy with the rest of the Syndicate leadership and he’s trying to build a power base here. This sounds like it’s the prelude to a big internal power struggle, which is likely to escalate very quickly. Now I don’t pretend to know as much about the Syndicate as you do, but from what I gather, any threat to the leadership is going to be met with an extreme use of force to ALL involved. Best thing to do when that happens is to be as far away from the conflict as possible.” Your words about a potential violent power struggle have weight and she looks as if she didn’t really think about that before. “Hm. You might have a point about that. I’m going to have to think on that.” Annah says. “Annah, I’d rather you not think and just do what I tell you.” You answer. “Well apologies, but that’s not the kind of woman I am. Pretty sure you know that.” “Yeah, don’t I know it…” you say and then start chuckling. “What’s so funny?” “I was just thinking about how many times back in Teckleville I used to go out my mind telling you to do something and you’d just blatantly ignore me.” “Teckleville…seems like a lifetime ago.” “Yeah, it’s weird though sometimes I still think about the place and my family. Wonder how my mom and dad are doing. Probably living a safe and boring life. Drama free life too without me around. I guess if we’d stayed our lives would’ve eventually been safe and boring too.” “I dunno, you almost got killed there.” “Yeah. Can’t go home again anyway.” “Is…that what you want?” “Eh. I mean when was running a semi-legitimate business, I thought it was a little dull at times, but there was sort of a relief that I wasn’t looking over my shoulder every five minutes. But of course after that all was over, I obviously went back to my old ways.” “Any particular reason why you did?” “No. Just habit I guess. Plus, wasn’t like I had a reason to really go legit anymore.” “So it took the love of honest woman to make you settle down?” “Wouldn’t call Zalmora an honest woman, she was an ex-Talon. Just had more sense than the rest. I dunno, I liked her and she liked me and I thought you were gone for good so I suppose I just latched on to her.” “So you didn’t love her?” “Yeah. I mean fuck, I dunno. I assume I must have on some level. What’s with all the questions?!” “Okay, relax. Just asking. I’m not mad or anything. I mean it’s not like I didn’t meet someone during my eventful stay in the Delantium Kingdom.” “Oh? You never mentioned that during our last meeting.” “Well I was still sorting it out then not to mention all that other shit with you went down. Wasn’t really a good time for the story.” “Let me guess. It involved the Ebony Claw Syndicate.” “Yeah he was definitely a Syndicate member. Met him by chance, but had years of fun with him. Had so much fun that he got the fool notion to want to run away with me with a bunch of the Syndicate’s coin. Sure you know how that one turned out.” You nod and don’t say anything while she continues. “Funny thing is, I thought for a brief moment that I’d put you behind. I’d gotten over you. I mean I THOUGHT what I had for him was love. But it wasn’t.” “Oh? What was it then?” “Distraction. I mean what we were doing was wild and exciting. Defying the law, ripping off the Syndicate, I probably loved all that more than him. Didn’t really realize that until I was being fucking tortured and I gave him up so easily.” “What?” “Oh sure, I held out a bit, but honestly most of the shit the Syndicate did to me was AFTER I gave up his secret hiding spot. I imagine they would have done much worse or killed me had I not given him up so easily. You know they killed him right in front of me, after they tortured the both of us. Even when they told him how I gave him up, he wasn’t mad he just kept pleading for them not to kill me.” “Well…I guess you did what you had to.” “Damn right I did. And I don’t feel any remorse about it. I mean at first I was upset, but I think that was mostly from the physical torture and fear that I was also going to die that night. As for him? All I could think is how foolish he was for falling for me in the first place.” “That’s some cold shit…but again I get it.” “After I was let go, I dwelled on all of it for very long time. I wondered if I was evil or crazy, even wondered if I was possessed by a demon. However when I found you again in that store in Hessla, all those old feelings I felt for you, they came back and I was right. You would always be my one and only.” Annah puts her hands in her face and you can tell she’s starting to get emotional. “I…I guess I just wanted to know if you really loved another even briefly and the reasons. As I said, I don’t care, but the fact that you were able to move on and I wasn’t, the fact that you don’t kill unless you have to, while I’ve done it without hesitation says a lot about me. (sniffle) Namely…I’m fucked up. I don’t know if I got that way over time, or it was always there.” “Well I wouldn’t call myself a beacon of role model behavior Annah. I mean I haven’t been tortured by the ECS or had the same experiences you’ve had. All that plays a part and take a toll. There’s still A LOT we don’t know about each other and missing gaps, despite the fact that we seem to be drawn to each other. Maybe if we talked more…” Annah immediately goes to kiss you. “I don’t want to talk anymore. I just want to feel you inside me again. I want you to love me again.” She says and continues to kiss you while trying to strip off her clothing. You proceed to help her achieve her desires. It’s been a long time since you’ve been intimate with her like this. Even as forward as she was with the initiation of this, she suddenly becomes unsure when your hands embrace her and run across her back. She even attempts to pull away a little, but you reassure her that it’s okay and that you don’t care. You aren’t sure why, but you also feel the need to mention that you cleared up that shit you caught from Flameflower (whatever the hell it was). Oddly, you don’t think it would even matter to Annah right now, but she gives a brief smile at your insistence of being Later... You wake up to Annah laying next to you dressed again and just staring at you. “I know, I know. Watching you sleep is probably creepy.” Annah remarks. “Considering I once woke up after you drugged me and robbed me blind, this is a lot more preferable. What the hell…” you reply when you feel a wetness on your hand that’s hanging over the bed. You look over briefly and realize its Checkers licking your hand. You sit up and move your hand away. “Hm, uncharacteristically friendly of Checkers to be licking my hand rather than biting my ankle.” You say. “She likes you, you know.” Annah says. “Well the furry beast has participated in saving my life a few times, so I guess she’s alright. Has she grown at all? She looks about the same size when I first saw her.” “Not much. Just grown older I suppose.” “Happens to the best of us.” “I don’t really like to think about how her years are probably coming to an end soon though. Weird, I know considering what I’ve been doing the last few years.” “Well seems like she’s had a good life under your care. Whatever else you may be thinking about yourself Annah, you’ve got a nurturing side to you.” You give Checkers a pet and get up to get dressed. Annah continues to go from watching you and staring at nothing in particular. By the time you’re half dressed, she suddenly gets up. “Hey, so I gotta go now. Best that I get this information back to the Syndicate and all.” Annah says. “You’re leaving? Already?” you ask. “Yeah, no point in sticking around. If the Syndicate wants anyone wiped out, they can do it themselves.” “Ah. So you’re taking my advice and this is going to be your last job with them?” “Yeah. I thought about it and you’re right. I need to do something else with my life. This…path with or without the Syndicate that I’m on really isn’t the healthiest. I don’t sleep much, I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, well you know how it is.” “Yeah I know how it can get. And I imagine for you it’s worse. So what are you going to do?” “I dunno, guess I’ll have to figure that out. In any case, you might want to start thinking about relocating yourself. Not immediately, but y’know.” “I could just come with you right now. I mean its not like I’m tied to this place.” “As much as I’d like that, I think I need to work some things out. Last thing I want to do is destroy what little we still have left due to some stupid argument we’re going to inevitably get into.” “Annah, I don’t really get this. I mean it’s obvious you want to get back together and I’m open to it, so I don’t see the need for you to just go wandering off again. We’re obviously both different than we were thirteen years ago. Whatever personal demons and shit we got to deal with, we can deal with them together.” “Remember how you weren’t ready the last time we met up? It wasn’t your fault or my fault, just bad timing?” “Yeah, but…” “Well, this is yet another case of that. I got shit going on in my head that I don’t even want to heap on you. Your life as it is right now, is calm. I know you. You like to keep things simple. That’s probably why you nearly went legit with Zal. It was easier and more convenient at the time since that’s the way life seemed to be heading. When it was gone, you fell back into the old ways, because again it was easy and familiar. While I know I’m familiar, I’m definitely NOT easy to be with. I don’t know what the future for me holds. Everything is always a whirlwind of thrills and not always in a good way. You don’t want to deal with that and I don’t want you to have to deal with it. At least not until I believe I’ve got my shit together enough that it’s not going to fuck up your feelings for me.” “Annah, unless you shot me in the dick or something, whatever you got going on right now isn’t likely to change how I feel, but fine. I won’t bother arguing with you even though I really want to. Obviously you feel strongly about this, so once again I’ll see you when I see you and hopefully whenever that is, you won’t be affiliated with these Syndicate assholes again.” Annah touches your face and smiles a bit. “I’ll be careful.” She says and kisses you goodbye before calling Checkers to follow her. And once again Annah’s gone. One of these days the pair of you are going to get your timing right. In the meantime, you at least got some knowledge about what changes are about to come to Jicol even if not immediately. You figure you’ll stick around for now and see how things go. Maybe you can even prepare for the coming storm. > You time passes... Year 32 “So yeah, they’re going to start rebuilding that old Fel temple in the jungle and turning it into a headquarters soon.” Marco tells you. “Hm, looks like the Syndicate is moving quicker everyday.” You answer. “Yeah, but its good. I mean I know you told us all to watch our asses, but so far the Syndicate members that we’ve had dealings with have all been pretty reasonable guys. Even said that the Black Hooks could be fully incorporated as full members in a year or so. We’ve been doing a lot better in general.” “Well glad to hear it. Maybe I was wrong.” “It’s okay. I guess you were just looking out for us like you always have. Y’know, you should join too! You’re really skilled and the Syndicate is looking for members like that!” “So I’ve heard. A couple of them have approached me a few times, but I’m just not interested.” “Yeah, but if you joined you wouldn’t need to pay protection and you’d be able to do whatever you wanted!” “Pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do WHATEVER I wanted. It’s not like the old days where you can just break and enter into anywhere. Thanks, but I’m good with what I’m doing now. Anyway, what’s the Syndicate tax this month? Did it go up to help rebuild the temple?” “No, it’s the same, but you know you don’t need to worry about it. I got you covered, but I just don’t know how long I’m gonna be able to. Sooner or later the Syndicate might get one of their guys to start doing the collecting. That’s why I’m trying to become a real member soon!” “Thanks as usual Marco, but don’t worry yourself too much about it. I’ll be fine.” “Okay…see you later then. And thanks for unloading that other stuff for me.” “No problem. Later Marco.” Marco leaves your “shop” and you just shake your head and smile at what a few little words of encouragement and support can do to mold a young mind. Marco probably sees you as the dad he wished he had. You imagine some of the other Black Hooks d too. Which of course is handy since its paid off as far as you not really having to kick anything up to the Syndicate whose presence has becoming more noticeable in last few months. Might be time to leave soon. You don’t know where you’ll go though. While you’re pondering this, the door opens and someone comes in. “Son, you and I need to have a long talk.” You can’t believe it. He’s older (But to you he was always old and unfun) but you’d never mistake his face or his voice. “Dad?” you ask. “Of course its me!” he responds. “Wh…what the hell are you doing here?” “Trust me, it’s not something I wanted to do, but after a long talk with your mother, its what we both decided in the hopes that you’ve still got it in you to do the right thing. Call us hopeless optimists.” “You came all the way here to give me a lecture after nearly twenty years? How the hell did you even find me?!” “Annah told us. Well told us where your last where abouts were anyway. She said you’d probably still be here since you’ve always had a tendency to stay put unless you absolutely have to move, which sounds about right.” “Wait, you’ve spoke to Annah?! When?” “Nearly on a daily basis, for the past couple years. Pretty much ever since she come back to Teckleville and had the babies.” “WHAT?!” “Congratulations, you’ve got twins you’ve never seen.” You are getting flooded with so much information right now that you can’t even process it all. “That’s…impossible. Last time I saw Annah was two years ago.” “Yeah well that timeline matches up since that’s how old they are. Look, I delivered them myself, not to mention they look like you and your sister. You’re definitely the father, despite Annah trying not to admit it. That didn’t last long though, since I’m pretty sure that’s why she came back to Teckleville in the first place. She knew your mother and I wouldn’t NOT help her.” ‘I…don’t believe it. I mean…and I hate even asking this, are you REALLY sure? I mean maybe this…” “Is what? A scam to get money from us? Boy, I wasn’t born yesterday. I told you, the two little buggers look like you and your sister. The genetics are impossible to ignore. I mean the hair is darker and there’s a difference in eye color, but there’s no mistake. Shit, I even hired a wizard from Klyton to double check. They’re definitely your work.” “Fuck…” “Yeah, well that’s what got you into this mess. Anyway, this brings me to why I’m here. YOU need to come back and take responsibility. I understand you’re off having fun being a criminal, but even Annah gave that up after having children. They need a father and your mother and I need a fucking a break. Our days of running about catching two twin terrors are supposed to be over.” “Wait, why are you just now coming to get me then?” “Oh, I wanted to get you a lot sooner. However Annah always claimed that she didn’t know where you were. Having raised two of the best liars, I knew she wasn’t telling the truth, but I always assumed you pissed her off and she didn’t want you involved. However, thanks to your mother’s monthly interrogating via niceness, Annah finally broke down a few months ago and as it turned out Annah just didn’t want you to put your own life on hold for this. She said she’d put you through enough trouble in the past. Ain’t that sweet?” “Sounds like her.” “Also sounds fucking retarded. Why the hell should you get to continue to live without care and responsibility? Your mother of course thought you should come back too, but she was worried about me going to get you. Thought we should hire bounty hunters to find you, but I figured I’d make more of an impression and you’re probably already adept at avoiding capture anyway. So here I am.” “Yes, so here you are. You might have been better off going with mom’s idea though. At least you would have had a better chance of getting me back to Teckleville. Speaking of which, how the hell can I go back anyway? Aren’t I wanted for murder there?” “Oh. Yeah, no. That actually got settled shortly after you ran off with Annah. Some of the witnesses to the fight admitted Klint started it and you killing him was more of an accident and even self defense.” “You’re shitting me.” “Nope. Surprised me too. Not that you weren’t a murderer, since I figured Klint started it because he was an asshole like his father, but that people actually came around and spoke up in your favor. Anyway, the charges were dropped which pissed off Klint’s dad who left the village swearing revenge and that was about the end of it.” “So you’re saying I’m completely free and clear?” “Yep. Have been for years now. The old sheriff is dead now anyway, so it’s not even like you have worry about him either. In fact Annah, works as a deputy of the town now, so you’ve got a lot of breathing room as far as your shady past is concerned.” “Annah’s a…what the…well I guess she found something new to do like she said she would.” “Yep. And it’s time you do as well.” Your dad sees the apprehensive and non-committal look on your face and sighs. “And of course you’re going to be stubborn about this…” he remarks. “Dad, I appreciate the update and all this news about Annah, but this is a lot to fucking take in! I mean I don’t know what she’s told you, but our relationship isn’t exactly the most stable. I mean its not like she came here herself and TOLD me about her being pregnant. Shit, she didn’t even tell you and Mom where I was until recently like you said. I might not have even been here anymore. Obviously she thinks we’re better off apart.” “Bullshit, if she really thought that, she wouldn’t have come back home at all. She knew your mother and I would help her. Gods know her own lush of a mother isn’t going to help. Look, I’m not some relationship expert, but obviously you two have enough chemistry between each other that you got yourselves into this mess.” “Maybe, but kids didn’t really play a part in any of it.” “Yeah well shit happens. You think your mother and I planned for twins? Also didn’t plan on you two being criminals. Still don’t know why the hell you two turned out the way you did considering you had everything.” “Here we go, another lecture…I’m not a fucking teenager anymore dad.” “Damn right you aren’t, which is why its time you stopped fucking acting like one and take some responsibility for a fucking change! What the hell do you have going on that’s oh so fucking important right now? From what I can tell this dump you’re living in, you aren’t exactly living some carefree life of a swashbuckler like in those badly written novels. What, you spend all the coin you steal on wine and whores?” “I’ll have you know I live frugally and save very carefully.” “Well great. Good for you. Glad to hear you’re a thrifty thief. Actually explains a lot. Now, if you’ve got so much coin saved up, you’ve got enough to support your children.” “Is this what it’s ultimately about? Fine, I’ll go empty out my safe and you can take it all to give to Annah and the kids.” Your father suddenly gives you a minor tap upside your head. It’s unexpected and you almost feel like you’re ten years old again. “What the fuck?!” you utter. “This isn’t about money, this is about responsibility and YOU needing to fucking take some! Your children need their father, you’ve already missed some of it, you really want to miss it all?” your father says. “Why don’t you do it? Obviously you think I’m a no good vagabond, so I would make a terrible father.” “Maybe you would, but I don’t think so. Surprised to hear me say that?” “A little.” “Well I’m not saying it to boost your ego, I’m saying it because I believe based on what Annah’s told me about you and the boy I used to know. There is a streak of responsibility in you. I mean even as a thief you’re obviously preparing for the future by saving your ill-gotten loot. I remember how you always stuck by your sister and tried to take the blame for some of the more serious shenanigans you two got up to. It looks like you’re running some sort of shop here and Annah’s said you’ve run a shop in the past with some other woman that you apparently had a stable relationship with. You’ve got it in you to be a contributing member of society.” “I don’t know about that.” “Well you won’t know unless you try and you might as well try with a family. As far as you and Annah are concerned, well I don’t know if you two are going to be a proper husband and wife. I mean it’ll be good if you can, and I’m inclined to believe you two are still in love. However, if that doesn’t work out, you should at least still be there for your children.” “You don’t think I’ll just be a bad influence?” “Oh, I don’t doubt that you won’t to some degree, however I also don’t think you’re going to want to put up with the headache of raising two little criminals. I know Annah certainly won’t and I can’t say I’d want to be on her bad side. What the hell happened to her anyway? I swear she can shoot the wings off a fly.” “Long story, though I don’t know all of it since she’s never told me the whole story about her adventures during our times away from each other either.” “Well maybe that’s something you can finally catch up on and bond over. Besides, y’know, your kids of course.” “Maybe.” Your father puts a hand on your shoulder. “Look, this has been an exciting adventure for me and all, but I really want to get back home before your mother starts hiring a search party. I need to know if you’re coming with me or not. It’s a simple answer that doesn’t require much overthinking. If you are, let’s get going now. If you aren’t, then I won’t bother you again with this.” > You go with your father It’s a strange position that you never thought you’d ever be in, but you’re in it and even stranger, you’re ready to embrace it. One thing your father said that convinced you the most was the question of “What are you doing that’s so important?” Nothing. You are not doing anything of major importance. If anything, you’re probably living just as boring of a life in Jicol as you would in Teckleville. You haven’t actually done any real thieving since the Syndicate started making more of a presence here, you do more middle man merchant shit than anything else. You could leave and start over elsewhere which is what you thinking about doing anyway. But if you’re going to do that, you might as well have a better purpose than just doing the same thing again. Besides, you’ve done fairly well in this profession all things considered. You might as well “retire” ahead of the game before something REALLY bad happens to you. This might as well be your out as it were. Not to mention, Annah’s saved your life several times over. The least you could do to repay her is to help out with your spawn. That’s going to be weird though. You suppose you’ll just have to muddle through that, hopefully better than your own parents did. “Okay dad, I’ll come with you, but need to get some things first and make some arrangements.” You say. “By the gods, you actually listened to me for once. I’m not going to question it, but glad to see I finally got through.” Your father says in partial disbelief and relief. To ensure a safe trip home with your savings, you hire a few mercenaries to escort you to Klyton. From there you figure you shouldn’t have much problem. You also leave your “shop” and home to Marco and his group, though you don’t tell him that immediately, you write a message and hand it to a courier to give it to Marco in a few days. Just a simple note not explaining where you went, just that you had to leave and that they can do whatever they want with the property. Finally you board a ship heading to Hessla with your father (and your small retinue). While you’re on board, your father has one more surprise for you that you have plenty of time to talk about along the way. “Oh by the way son, I guess I might as well tell you, you’ve got a younger brother now.” Your father says. “WHAT?! How?!” “Pretty sure you’re familiar with the process.” “Ha ha. I’m talking about you and mom. I mean you guys are old!” “Fuck you, we’re weren’t THAT old when you and your sister took off. True, we sort of thought that part of our lives was over, but soon after you were gone, I guess nature decided to give us another chance to get it right. And we did. Adam has never been a problem child.” “Hm, well congratulations I guess. Another new family member for me to meet I suppose.” “Speaking of family, you know anything about your sister? Any contact with her at all?” “No. I do wonder what she’s been up to though. Always hope she’s okay.” “She is as far as I know. Your mother and I get occasion messages from her. Not many and the last one I think was a few years ago but she said she was doing fine. Having her own adventures no doubt.” “Oh. Well I’m glad to hear that. Hope that’s still the case. I miss her.” “Your mother and I do as well. Despite her criminal ways, she was always creative. Just wish she put more into that instead of…well unlawful behavior. Still, I guess she has been doing that from some of the stuff she’s written to us.” The rest of the trip is mainly you catching up with your father. It’s odd, but neither of you really argues once. You even laugh and joke a few times. You don’t tell him everything that happened though. Some things you just would rather leave buried. At least for now. Your father never really presses you for too much information anyway. He probably doesn’t want to know some of what you were involved in. Although there is one question… “Just wondering, I mentioned Klint’s father left Teckleville muttering about revenge. My guess is he went to go look for you. You never ran into him did you?” “Nope. Can’t say I ever did.” “I only ask since you mentioned you ran to Klyton, and my guess is that’s where he first went to look for you. I asked Annah once and she said she never bumped into him either. Still, seems strange he never came back here.” “Dad, if he did, you know Klyton’s a huge city. I mean it wasn’t like I was making myself well known there either. If he did go there, he must have given up and went elsewhere. Not exactly like safe travels are a sure thing, hence why I hired mercs for part of our trip.” Your father looks at you a moment. You already know he’s trying to see if you’re lying. “Okay. Just thought I’d ask.” You aren’t sure if your father believes you or he just doesn’t care and was merely curious. Either way, he doesn’t press the issue. You eventually reach Hessla, then Klyton and from Klyton you start the last stretch of your trip in the carriage ride to Teckleville. That’s when you begin to get nervous. You didn’t think that would happen, but you begin to get so nervous that its visibly noticeable to your father. “Not having second thoughts I hope.” Your father says. “No, not at this point. Too late to turn back now. Fuck…” you say. “Son, you’ll be fine. You’ll soon realize this isn’t the end of the world.” “Yeah, I guess.” “Think of it this way. What’s the worst thing that has ever happened to you? Don’t tell me if you don’t want. Just think about it. Now with that in mind, do you have ANY thought that reuniting with Annah and seeing your children for the first time is going to be remotely worse than that?” You think for a moment, wincing a bit about your encounter with Flameflower. “No. Definitely can’t be anywhere near as bad.” You say. “Well, see? There you go then.” You father says and then pats you on the shoulder a couple times. Which is easy for dad to say considering he doesn’t really know the extent of just how bad that event was. In any case, you manage to calm yourself down and just try to rest before you get to your destination. Eventually you reach Teckleville during the night. Your father wakes you up. “Get up, we’re here. I’ll help the driver get your things off the carriage, in the meantime you go knock on the door and make your presence known.” Your dad says. “Wha? Wait, where exactly are we?” you ask half asleep. “Teckleville, ya idjit. We’re near Annah’s home. Still early in the night so you probably aren’t going to be waking her up.” “Shit. I’m really here. Okay, well guess nothing to it, but to do it.” “You’ll be fine.” You get out of the carriage and your dad once again points to the house where Annah lives. Fairly small, but then, probably doesn’t need too much room and this is the best she could do. You have no idea why you’re still so nervous. You’ve bumped into Annah several times in the past after long stretches of being separated. Why is this different? Oh right. The other thing that’s different is you’re seeking her out, or rather your dad dragged you to her. In most other instances, she’s always been the one to go to you. She didn’t even tell you about being pregnant. She could have at least got a message to you or something if she really thought it was important for you to know. Apparently she didn’t. You know what your father said her reasoning was, but maybe she really just wanted to make a clean break. Start fresh. Maybe you being here isn’t what she would want at all. For all you know she’s going to tell you to get right back on that carriage and go away. You march up to the door and before you can even knock, the door opens. “Annah. I…” you start to say before she immediately hugs and kisses you. Well so much for her telling you to go away. Apparently the love is still there. “Your mother told me your father went to get you. When I heard the carriage outside I just hoped it was you!” Annah exclaims with some emotional tears in her eyes. “Annah, why didn’t you just tell me?” you ask. “I don’t know! It was stupid, but I just thought…I dunno a part of me just didn’t think you needed to be saddled with all this. But I’m so glad you’re here now! You’re back right? You’re not going anywhere right?” “As far as I know I’m not going anywhere Annah.” “Oh I’m so glad. We’ll finally be a proper family.” As you embrace Annah’s tight hold on you and those words of being a “proper family” you feel a small part of your old life slipping away. Not really in a bad way, but you really know now for certain that things are never going to be the same. You’re going to have to find something legitimate to do. You doubt even fencing stolen goods is going to be something you can engage in around here. You’ll think of something though. Your father and driver drop your trunk of stuff near you. “Well I can see you two got a lot to talk about. I’ll leave you to it. Your mother will probably be by to see you tomorrow so expect to see her.” Your dad says as the driver walks away back to the carriage. “Um, okay dad. And thanks.” You say. “Hm. Told you, it would be fine.” Soon, the carriage is gone and so is your father, leaving you and Annah alone. Well not totally alone. “So hey let me help you get that trunk in and you can finally meet your son and daughter.” Annah says. “Don’t worry I’ll get the trunk.” You say and take one side of the hefty trunk and drag it just inside the house. “I’ve actually told them about you a few times.” “Oh? Hopefully just the good stuff, because I’m sure their grandfather will be more than willing to tell them the bad.” “Come on, I’ll take you to them.” As the front door closes and Annah takes your hand, you realize your life as a rogue is over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 32 “So yeah, they’re going to start rebuilding that old Fel temple in the jungle and turning it into a headquarters soon.” Marco tells you. “Hm, looks like the Syndicate is moving quicker everyday.” You answer. “Yeah, but its good. I mean I know you told us all to watch our asses, but so far the Syndicate members that we’ve had dealings with have all been pretty reasonable guys. Even said that the Black Hooks could be fully incorporated as full members in a year or so. We’ve been doing a lot better in general.” “Well glad to hear it. Maybe I was wrong.” “It’s okay. I guess you were just looking out for us like you always have. Y’know, you should join too! You’re really skilled and the Syndicate is looking for members like that!” “So I’ve heard. A couple of them have approached me a few times, but I’m just not interested.” “Yeah, but if you joined you wouldn’t need to pay protection and you’d be able to do whatever you wanted!” “Pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do WHATEVER I wanted. It’s not like the old days where you can just break and enter into anywhere. Thanks, but I’m good with what I’m doing now. Anyway, what’s the Syndicate tax this month? Did it go up to help rebuild the temple?” “No, it’s the same, but you know you don’t need to worry about it. I got you covered, but I just don’t know how long I’m gonna be able to. Sooner or later the Syndicate might get one of their guys to start doing the collecting. That’s why I’m trying to become a real member soon!” “Thanks as usual Marco, but don’t worry yourself too much about it. I’ll be fine.” “Okay…see you later then. And thanks for unloading that other stuff for me.” “No problem. Later Marco.” Marco leaves your “shop” and you just shake your head and smile at what a few little words of encouragement and support can do to mold a young mind. Marco probably sees you as the dad he wished he had. You imagine some of the other Black Hooks d too. Which of course is handy since its paid off as far as you not really having to kick anything up to the Syndicate whose presence has becoming more noticeable in last few months. Might be time to leave soon. You don’t know where you’ll go though. While you’re pondering this, the door opens and someone comes in. “Son, you and I need to have a long talk.” You can’t believe it. He’s older (But to you he was always old and unfun) but you’d never mistake his face or his voice. “Dad?” you ask. “Of course its me!” he responds. “Wh…what the hell are you doing here?” “Trust me, it’s not something I wanted to do, but after a long talk with your mother, its what we both decided in the hopes that you’ve still got it in you to do the right thing. Call us hopeless optimists.” “You came all the way here to give me a lecture after nearly twenty years? How the hell did you even find me?!” “Annah told us. Well told us where your last where abouts were anyway. She said you’d probably still be here since you’ve always had a tendency to stay put unless you absolutely have to move, which sounds about right.” “Wait, you’ve spoke to Annah?! When?” “Nearly on a daily basis, for the past couple years. Pretty much ever since she come back to Teckleville and had the babies.” “WHAT?!” “Congratulations, you’ve got twins you’ve never seen.” You are getting flooded with so much information right now that you can’t even process it all. “That’s…impossible. Last time I saw Annah was two years ago.” “Yeah well that timeline matches up since that’s how old they are. Look, I delivered them myself, not to mention they look like you and your sister. You’re definitely the father, despite Annah trying not to admit it. That didn’t last long though, since I’m pretty sure that’s why she came back to Teckleville in the first place. She knew your mother and I wouldn’t NOT help her.” ‘I…don’t believe it. I mean…and I hate even asking this, are you REALLY sure? I mean maybe this…” “Is what? A scam to get money from us? Boy, I wasn’t born yesterday. I told you, the two little buggers look like you and your sister. The genetics are impossible to ignore. I mean the hair is darker and there’s a difference in eye color, but there’s no mistake. Shit, I even hired a wizard from Klyton to double check. They’re definitely your work.” “Fuck…” “Yeah, well that’s what got you into this mess. Anyway, this brings me to why I’m here. YOU need to come back and take responsibility. I understand you’re off having fun being a criminal, but even Annah gave that up after having children. They need a father and your mother and I need a fucking a break. Our days of running about catching two twin terrors are supposed to be over.” “Wait, why are you just now coming to get me then?” “Oh, I wanted to get you a lot sooner. However Annah always claimed that she didn’t know where you were. Having raised two of the best liars, I knew she wasn’t telling the truth, but I always assumed you pissed her off and she didn’t want you involved. However, thanks to your mother’s monthly interrogating via niceness, Annah finally broke down a few months ago and as it turned out Annah just didn’t want you to put your own life on hold for this. She said she’d put you through enough trouble in the past. Ain’t that sweet?” “Sounds like her.” “Also sounds fucking retarded. Why the hell should you get to continue to live without care and responsibility? Your mother of course thought you should come back too, but she was worried about me going to get you. Thought we should hire bounty hunters to find you, but I figured I’d make more of an impression and you’re probably already adept at avoiding capture anyway. So here I am.” “Yes, so here you are. You might have been better off going with mom’s idea though. At least you would have had a better chance of getting me back to Teckleville. Speaking of which, how the hell can I go back anyway? Aren’t I wanted for murder there?” “Oh. Yeah, no. That actually got settled shortly after you ran off with Annah. Some of the witnesses to the fight admitted Klint started it and you killing him was more of an accident and even self defense.” “You’re shitting me.” “Nope. Surprised me too. Not that you weren’t a murderer, since I figured Klint started it because he was an asshole like his father, but that people actually came around and spoke up in your favor. Anyway, the charges were dropped which pissed off Klint’s dad who left the village swearing revenge and that was about the end of it.” “So you’re saying I’m completely free and clear?” “Yep. Have been for years now. The old sheriff is dead now anyway, so it’s not even like you have worry about him either. In fact Annah, works as a deputy of the town now, so you’ve got a lot of breathing room as far as your shady past is concerned.” “Annah’s a…what the…well I guess she found something new to do like she said she would.” “Yep. And it’s time you do as well.” Your dad sees the apprehensive and non-committal look on your face and sighs. “And of course you’re going to be stubborn about this…” he remarks. “Dad, I appreciate the update and all this news about Annah, but this is a lot to fucking take in! I mean I don’t know what she’s told you, but our relationship isn’t exactly the most stable. I mean its not like she came here herself and TOLD me about her being pregnant. Shit, she didn’t even tell you and Mom where I was until recently like you said. I might not have even been here anymore. Obviously she thinks we’re better off apart.” “Bullshit, if she really thought that, she wouldn’t have come back home at all. She knew your mother and I would help her. Gods know her own lush of a mother isn’t going to help. Look, I’m not some relationship expert, but obviously you two have enough chemistry between each other that you got yourselves into this mess.” “Maybe, but kids didn’t really play a part in any of it.” “Yeah well shit happens. You think your mother and I planned for twins? Also didn’t plan on you two being criminals. Still don’t know why the hell you two turned out the way you did considering you had everything.” “Here we go, another lecture…I’m not a fucking teenager anymore dad.” “Damn right you aren’t, which is why its time you stopped fucking acting like one and take some responsibility for a fucking change! What the hell do you have going on that’s oh so fucking important right now? From what I can tell this dump you’re living in, you aren’t exactly living some carefree life of a swashbuckler like in those badly written novels. What, you spend all the coin you steal on wine and whores?” “I’ll have you know I live frugally and save very carefully.” “Well great. Good for you. Glad to hear you’re a thrifty thief. Actually explains a lot. Now, if you’ve got so much coin saved up, you’ve got enough to support your children.” “Is this what it’s ultimately about? Fine, I’ll go empty out my safe and you can take it all to give to Annah and the kids.” Your father suddenly gives you a minor tap upside your head. It’s unexpected and you almost feel like you’re ten years old again. “What the fuck?!” you utter. “This isn’t about money, this is about responsibility and YOU needing to fucking take some! Your children need their father, you’ve already missed some of it, you really want to miss it all?” your father says. “Why don’t you do it? Obviously you think I’m a no good vagabond, so I would make a terrible father.” “Maybe you would, but I don’t think so. Surprised to hear me say that?” “A little.” “Well I’m not saying it to boost your ego, I’m saying it because I believe based on what Annah’s told me about you and the boy I used to know. There is a streak of responsibility in you. I mean even as a thief you’re obviously preparing for the future by saving your ill-gotten loot. I remember how you always stuck by your sister and tried to take the blame for some of the more serious shenanigans you two got up to. It looks like you’re running some sort of shop here and Annah’s said you’ve run a shop in the past with some other woman that you apparently had a stable relationship with. You’ve got it in you to be a contributing member of society.” “I don’t know about that.” “Well you won’t know unless you try and you might as well try with a family. As far as you and Annah are concerned, well I don’t know if you two are going to be a proper husband and wife. I mean it’ll be good if you can, and I’m inclined to believe you two are still in love. However, if that doesn’t work out, you should at least still be there for your children.” “You don’t think I’ll just be a bad influence?” “Oh, I don’t doubt that you won’t to some degree, however I also don’t think you’re going to want to put up with the headache of raising two little criminals. I know Annah certainly won’t and I can’t say I’d want to be on her bad side. What the hell happened to her anyway? I swear she can shoot the wings off a fly.” “Long story, though I don’t know all of it since she’s never told me the whole story about her adventures during our times away from each other either.” “Well maybe that’s something you can finally catch up on and bond over. Besides, y’know, your kids of course.” “Maybe.” Your father puts a hand on your shoulder. “Look, this has been an exciting adventure for me and all, but I really want to get back home before your mother starts hiring a search party. I need to know if you’re coming with me or not. It’s a simple answer that doesn’t require much overthinking. If you are, let’s get going now. If you aren’t, then I won’t bother you again with this.” > You refuse the call While there is a part of you that feels sort of shitty about this, you don’t feel like you have some obligation to go back to Teckleville. Annah obviously didn’t want you involved otherwise she would have told you (or even your family) a lot sooner than she did. In fact this makes you sort of reconsider your relationship with Annah in the first place. Sure, you two have love for one another, but it’s always been the same and you two never stay together for whatever reason. If you go back, why should this time be any different? Might even be worse with children involved, you really don’t think you’d make that great of a father. You’d feel trapped for one thing. Maybe you’d feel different if it was just you and Annah settling down and living somewhere other than Teckleville together. You nearly did it before with Zalmora. Hell, you don’t necessarily need anyone. You’ve been doing okay on your own and you’re just not feeling this scenario so it’s probably for the best that you stay away and just move on entirely. Still, you do feel somewhat of an obligation. Even if Annah didn’t ask for your help directly you’ll try to provide it anyway, assuming your father is willing to take it for you. “Dad, hang on just a second.” You say and go to the back of your shop and open up the safe (and disarm the traps) You then haul out some of the coin to put in a bag and a smaller amount in a nearby backpack with your basic tools. You come back with your father still waiting and shove the bag in his hand. You’re making this quick because arguing with him is a pointless endeavor. “What’s this?” your dad asks. “That’s everything I have in the shop. Now, I got more at home, but I doubt you’re going to wait around to accept it and honestly carrying more might require hiring mercenaries to help protect it on your way back to…” You get a headshake and a sigh before you can finish. Apparently your dad already knows what you’re going to say. “Y’know, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised by this, but I sort of hoped I’d be wrong. Unfuckingbelievable. Y’know what, you’re right, I’m not gonna stick around and you can keep this shit as well. You’ve made your decision to not return, well good because I don’t want to see you ever again.” Your father says and throws the bag of coin on the floor before walking out. You stand there for a moment pondering your decision. You almost rush out the door to go apologize and say you’re returning, but then you decide your first decision is your true feelings. You’re not done living your own life, with responsibility only to yourself. Seeing as you were going to leave here soon anyway, you gather up the coin that your father left and make your way to book passage on a ship. You’re just going to leave it all behind and not look back. You have no idea where you’ll be heading, but your life as a rogue will continue with no further interference from your past.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You briefly think about emptying out the store’s till and taking all that coin along with the Blue Dream to Flame, but is that really going to work? If Flame has already suddenly taken Zal hostage, chances are she’ll just keep everything you bring and kill the pair of you. It’s an impossible situation and the more you dwell on it, the angrier you get. You’re going there all right, but you’re not going there to negotiate. You going there armed for combat. You’ve never been one to seek out a fight; indeed you’ve usually always tried to avoid such things, be it from the law or other criminals. But you have killed before, and you know you can do it again. And right now there has never been a better reason. You don’t know if you’re going to survive this, as you’re not some hardened bandit like they are. Indeed, you’ve probably gotten a little out of shape due to your less strenuous life. However, some skills you never unlearn. You’re a rogue and you’ll take them one by one silently if need be or die trying. While your intention is going to try to be silent as possible, one can never be too sure, so you grab various small firearms you have in the shop and check and recheck them. You then grab a small hand crossbow and several bolts. As prepared as you’re going to be, you head out. From past conversations with Zalmora, you remember the general location of Flame’s hideout. Takes about a day, but eventually you find it thanks to Flame’s people being fairly loud while wandering around the area. You see two of them and mentally prepare yourself for the first casualties you’re about to inflict in this task. You sneak up and slit one of the bandit’s throats. He makes just enough noise for him to alert his fellow, which you shoot in the chest with your crossbow. Fortunately you’re close enough you can’t really miss. Two down, and who knows how many more to go. As Zal said, Flame’s been getting organized so she’s probably got more people than when you first met her. You picked a hell of a time to attack a bandit camp. You kill three more, one nearly escaping to warn his fellows. He still made enough noise for someone to possibly hear so who knows how much time you actually have. The funny thing is how easy this actually is, you thought you’d have a harder time of it, but so far these bandits have been putting up a pitiful showing. Maybe these bandits are so used to attacking defenseless travellers that most of them don’t really have much skill in actual combat. By the time you get to the camp however, they know something is going on as you see a few running back and forth and shouting. You manage to kill one more in secret before several of them finally spot you. With no more element of surprise, you shoot two more and severely wound another before Flameflower comes out from her tent and demands that her people capture you alive. You try to backtrack so you aren’t encircled, but it’s too late, you’ve been successfully outflanked. You feel a bolt go into your leg and then another into your arm. You drop to the ground in pain. You see one of Flame’s people coming and you weakly throw a dagger at him before you feel a blow to the back of your head. As you lose consciousness, you hear Flameflower’s voice. “Fucking hell, pretty boy got some fight in him! You know how I like me a badass, this is gonna be fun!” Everything goes black. When you wake up, you find yourself stripped naked, standing stretched out with your arms and legs tied to two poles. Flameflower sits nearby throwing pebbles at your face. Two bigger bandits stand near the tent entrance. “Finally up. Shit, been waiting for what feels like forever.” Flame says. “Where the hell is Zal?” you utter. “I’d be more concerned about yourself right now. Especially after what you pulled. Shit, you really made a mess of things pretty boy. What did you think you were going to do? Come in and kill all of us and save the girl like in one of those badly written fairy tales?” “Something like that.” “Well that took a lot of balls I’ll give you that. Shit, wish someone felt that way about me. I know none of these assholes would try to save me if I was being held hostage. Fucking romantic and shit y’know? Zal always did know how to pick ‘em I guess.” Flameflower stands up and walks over to you. She begins caressing your upper body a bit and then moves her hand lower to just grope you. “Mmm yeah. Now, I know you are probably feeling a wide range of emotions right now. The chief one probably being hate and anger, which I understand, but that shit isn’t gonna do you any good except get you killed slowly and painfully.” “Where the fuck is Zal?!” “THAT BITCH IS FUCKING DEAD! She was fucking dead before I even sent the note! I had my boys beat and rape her before they dumped her in the woods to let the fucking animals eat her dead violated ass. Thought about keeping her body around to taunt you with, but honestly, even I couldn’t stand the sight of her. She was all nasty and gross looking. Cum and blood all over her fucking face, flies started crawling on her. I mean I nearly threw up myself y’know?” You feel a southern “squeeze” on your tender bits, but that pain doesn’t even match the pain you feel from hearing this news. “You gonna cry over that dead cunt? Let me tell you something about Zalmora. That fucking bitch was a damn rat traitor. I have no doubt in my mind that she’s the reason that the Klyton militia found our old hideout. You know how I know? Because in her last moments she even offered to trade YOU to me in exchange for her miserable life. So much for true love.” “That didn’t happen.” “Oh? And you know this because you were here? You a fucking wizard or something? You don’t know shit pretty boy. Nobody EVER really knows anybody. Especially when shit goes down. I mean you think Zal thought I was going to kill her? Of course she didn’t. She thought in her arrogance that our profitable business arrangement was enough. That I was just some dumb ass that was easily appeased and granted, I was for a while. Shit, despite thinking she was a stuck up cunt, I didn’t even really hate her, just was business.” “Business?” “Yes. I decided on a better arrangement that didn’t involve you two. But none of this shit matters now. What matters now is pleasure AND how much you want to live. Normally I’d just kill you and this would be over with, but I want that dick. Tired of fucking these smelly ugly fuckers. Want some of what Zal had for a change. A nice face to look at as I’m riding that cock. Now I’m going to get that, whether YOU want to or not, but the more willing you are, the greater you improve your chances.” “Better just kill me then because I doubt if I’m going to be up for that.” “Hah, you think I can’t get you hard? Shit, I got several ways I could get you hard. I slide that dick down my velvet throat a few times and you’d be harder than a rock golem. I could have one of my boys here fuck you in the ass a bit. Saw that happen to a couple guys a few times, doesn’t always seem to work, but still fun to watch though. However, I got a better idea because I want you to last and I want to enjoy this for as long as possible. Lou, get that shit you use on your dick.” “Um, the wart ointment?” Lou asks. “No, goblin shit for brains, I’m talking about the stuff that gives you more stamina than the usual two pumps you do.” “Oh! Okay boss.” “In the meantime, I think I’ll get a taste of things to come…” As you stand tied helpless while Flameflower has a sword fight with you in her mouth, all you can think about is how the hell you’re going to get out of this, along with how many diseases you dick is probably getting right now. When Lou returns with a small bottle Flame tell him and the other goon to force your mouth open and turn your head up as she pours the contents down your throat. Tastes horrible, whatever it is, but you soon feel the effects. “Well now. Looks like you really like me after all! Lou, Haylon, untie pretty boy here and get some help holding him down outside, I want an audience for this!” After punching you in the gut to take the wind out of you, Lou and Haylon cut your ropes and drag you outside where some of the bandits start whooping it up. After a couple more punches to you face several of the bandits hold your arms and legs. “Hey! Not the face boys! Like I said, I want him to have a clear look at these magnificent tits bouncing in front of him!” Flameflower says as she exits her tent completely naked. Flameflower poses a bit to the cheers of her bandit buddies and then looks down at you as you remain helpless “Yeah, I know I’m beautiful. Now brace yourself pretty boy, because you may feel a burning sensation…” Flameflower lowers herself on you and you’re convinced you just shoved your dick in a vat of lava. Flameflower’s name has taken on a whole new meaning. You might indeed be as hard as a rock golem, but you sure aren’t enjoying this experience. You still don’t know if you’re surviving this, but even if you do, your dick might not. This whole situation is just horrible as Flameflower laughs and people cheer her on and you’re utterly powerless to stop any of it. While it feels like forever, it’s only been an hour and you finally release into her, though it feels more like a stream of fire. “Aww! I was just enjoying that and I’m not done yet!” Flameflower gets in close and whispers in your ear. “I know what you can do.” Flameflower says and licks your face before getting off of you. “Get him on his knees lads, pretty boy here is gonna finish me off like a real gentleman. I want all of you uncouth louts to take notes!” You are forced up and then slammed down to your knees by Flame’s biggest goons. At this point you feel like you want to die, but somewhere within you, you still feel that spark of survival. Flameflower stands in front of you and you’re literally eye level to her nasty infested diseased hole. You nearly want to retch from the smell. Flameflower grabs a knife from one of her people, which she runs gently across the side of your cheek. “Now, I want you to do mommy right. I want you to make me come hard and multiple times. You understand? Because if you don’t, what you’re experiencing now, can be ten times worse and much longer.” Flameflower begins pushing your head closer to her snatch and you’re still trying to figure out a way to survive this. “Wait, so if I do this…will you let me live?” you ask. Flameflower starts laughing and then looks at you while roughly grabbing the back of your head to look at her. “I’m probably still going to kill you. However, IF you show some enthusiasm, then MAYBE I’ll keep you around as my lick bitch.” Flameflower holds the knife close to your head as she uses her other hand to push your head into her. As your face gets so close that you can now see the crabs, you close your eyes, mentally praying to ALL the gods that you’ll be able to do this without puking or passing out from the smell (and/or taste). Your tongue nervously starts to exit your mouth… And suddenly an explosion deafens you and causes you to tip over and you aren’t the only one. You look up in time to see the crowd around you disperse. Another explosion occurs and this one is close enough that a few bandits get caught in it. Someone invested in some firebombs. Meanwhile Flameflower is standing around barking orders at everyone and then her attention turns back to you. “I don’t know what asshole is attacking us, but YOU are not getting away. Lou, Haylon, get him!” You quickly start scrambling away only to have Lou grab your arm. Just as Haylon is about to back him up, a shot is heard and Haylon’s head partially explodes like a ripe melon. More shots are fired causing Flameflower to run for cover as bodies start dropping. You punch Lou in the face causing him to let go of you and then grab a dagger from one of his sheaths and stab him in the neck with it. You look around and that’s when you see who it is that’s been attacking. Annah limps slowly around the camp, welding some sort of fancy repeating pistol. You didn’t even know she had one of those. She’s not missing a shot either, even with only one good eye. Once again this woman is just full of surprises. “I got this, go get that naked bitch!” Annah shouts. Last time you saw Flameflower, she ran back into her tent, probably to get a better weapon, however there are still some bandits that haven’t given up the fight and while Annah’s a good shot, she’s still going to have to reload. > You run after Flameflower If Annah says she’s got it, then you have no reason to doubt her since she seems fully capable. You grab one of the crossbows off the dead body nearby and head to the tent that Flameflower ducked into. As soon as you enter, you get there just in time to see Flameflower grabbing a pistol off her table. You fire just as she spins around to fire. You hit her in the stomach causing her to crumple to her knees, however she manages to hit you in the face. You fall back as your nose explodes and your vision turns completely red. Somehow you’re still alive, though you’re an incredible amount of pain and can hardly breathe as blood is filling up the hole where your nose once was. You choke up more blood trying to breathe through your mouth in between crying out in agony. Meanwhile, Flameflower isn’t dead yet and manages to crawl over to you to finish you off by stabbing you repeatedly with her dagger. It’s a mercy at that point.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up and find that it’s now nighttime. You groggily look around and don’t see Annah. You call out to her, but there is no answer. You sit up and after stretching a bit, you suddenly have a horrible realization. “Oh shit. Shit! Shit! No, no, no, no. Fuck!” you say as you immediately go to the loose floorboard under the dresser where you keep your hidden savings. You continue to curse yourself for being so stupid and not realizing something was up from the start. And then you find that your savings are still there. Even the blade trap you have set hasn’t been disturbed. You then breathe sigh a relief as you put everything back. While Annah didn’t rip you off, you guess that she just didn’t want to stick around. You figure that she had to get back to the university to get prepare things on her end. Or at least you thought she did until she comes walking back in the room. “Oh you’re finally up sleepyhead. Given how long you slept, guessing you haven’t had that sort of loving in a long time. Not surprised.” Annah says. “You’re still here.” You reply. “Of course I am. Did you not want me to be?” “No! I do. I’m just surprised.” “Why? What, did you think I was going to do, rob you blind while you were asleep and leave?” “Heh, no…” “Pfft, liar. You DID think that. I bet you checked all your hiding spots in this room after you woke up.” Your silence confirms her accusations. “It’s okay, I probably would have done the same. I came on so strong I guess it would be natural for you to have some suspicion.” Annah says. “Actually, at the time I wasn’t thinking at all except the obvious. In fact the only worry I had was that you might be fucking with me and were going to just leave me at the university with a massive hard on.” You reply. “Nah, I’d never do that to you.” “So where did you go?” “Oh I just came back from speaking to your inn owner Hank. Told him that all about the cheap talent that’s going to grace his inn this weekend. He seemed receptive to the idea. Kept staring at my tits the whole time, I’m assuming if I hadn’t mentioned that I was your girlfriend, he would have tried to touch me as well. Ugh, he’s gross. But in any case everything’s set on this side, I just have to speak with Nature’s Revenge and a few others and this place will be party central.” “You didn’t need to speak to Hank, I would ‘ve done that, but thanks for saving me the trouble. You’ve certainly been more than helpful today.” “Well…I suppose I do have an ulterior motive of sorts.” “…oh well I guess you’re telling me to my face at least. Alright out with it.” Annah sits next to you on the bed and holds one of your hands. This must be serious. “I need your help on a job.” She says. “…that’s it? I thought you were going to ask for something unreasonable. Wait, are we trying to rob a bank or city hall or something?” “No, nothing like that. Just need you to crack open Jenny’s safe.” Now you’re totally confused. Annah smiles and explains before you can ask the obvious. “I’ve tried several times to get into the thing while she wasn’t around, but no luck. I’m just not skilled at it like you are. I need an expert.” Annah says. “Well that answers one obvious question, but why other one would be why? I mean not that I particularly care I suppose, but I was under the impression you were somewhat friends with this girl.” “Eh, we have common interests in some regards. She’s a typical rich kid doing illegal shit every now and then for kicks, but lately she’s been sort of a bitch to live with. Which brings me to my other reason of why I’m doing this. I’m leaving the city so I figured I wouldn’t leave empty handed.” “Wait, you’re leaving the city?! Why? Where are you going to go? Did you intend on telling me?” Annah goes on to tell you that she’s getting bored of Klyton and wants to see more of the world. She says that when she first came to Klyton she initially wanted to live here for the rest of her life, believing it to have everything she’d ever want. She then says its funny that masquerading as a university student caused her to learn more about the world and how she wants to see more of it. So that’s why she’s leaving. As for telling you, she said she went back and forth on whether or not if she should since even though you weren’t together any more, she got the impression that you might be inclined to talk her out of leaving. Running into you when she did and your reaction to her advances sort of solved that personal dilemma though. “I want you to come with me.” She says. “Annah…” you start to say. “I know, I know, you’re not a traveller and you hate it, but you’ll be with me. That should certainly take some of the sting out. And I know…I know in the past how I was always nagging you. I think you’ll find that I’ve changed a lot since then.” “Well that is true.” “I mean I want us to start completely over together and part of that would be leaving this city and going some place else.” “Where would we go?” “I dunno, anywhere. Hessla for starters? The point is I want you to come with me. I mean…I just don’t see it as a bad idea given how we obviously feel towards each other.” Well Annah always does get right to the point on how she really feels about you. Maybe she’s right, maybe you could use a change of scenery. You’ve certainly saved more than enough to move and live comfortably elsewhere. (You assume Hessla is probably cheaper, if that’s your first destination) “Okay, Annah. I’ll come with you, but that sort of makes this getting elven musicians and shit here sort of pointless.” “Not really. I mean I still need some time to get ready for the trip and I imagine even with your meager belongings you might not want to just suddenly jump on a carriage. Also, this weekend is still going to be the best time to go rob Jenny’s safe since she’s going to be home the rest of the week. I can also convince her to come with me here to enjoy the show. So while I’m here with her, you can go clean out her safe and take a few other items as well.” “So what exactly did this Jenny do to you?” “As I said, she’s been a fucking bitch and even if I wasn’t leaving the city, I’d probably be moving out soon anyway. Trust me, she’s got this coming.” “Hey, I’m not judging. So of course I’ll need some more information on the lay out of this place.” Annah goes into great detail about her place of residence and everything you’ll find in it. She mentions the safe itself is under the bed, but points out that Jenny has a few nice pieces of jewelry in another more accessible box on her dresser. When you ask if she knows what’s actually in the safe, Annah says as far as she knows there are some valuable family heirlooms in there and probably a few gems and coins as well. “Jenny might come from money, but she’s a bit of a hording cheapskate, somewhat like you in that regard. As I said, under different circumstances, you’d probably get along with her.” Annah say with a chuckle. Annah then tells you that when you’re done robbing the place; meet her back at the Laughing Devil and you can go from there. In the meantime, Annah says she better get back to the university to get the rest of this plan in motion. You spend the rest of the week more or less taking it easy and mentally preparing yourself for taking another trip. You didn’t envision yourself leaving Klyton like this, but you’re starting to look forward to the idea. Maybe your dick’s not so dumb. Annah comes to meet you the day before with a few bags (and Checkers who is still the furry little demon dog that growls at you when she sees you) stating that Nature’s Revenge will be coming tomorrow night along with a few other amateur bard types, but definitely better than the chick spouting shitty poetry on a regular basis. She says word is already spreading around the university and there should be a large crowd. “So it’s a all set. As you might have noticed I’ve brought some bags with me, I figured you won’t mind me staying here tonight. It’ll save time.” Annah remarks. “Of course not, but what about Jenny?” you ask. “Oh I already told her about the big gathering tomorrow. I told her I’d meet her here and as far as she knows I’m just staying at my boyfriend’s place tonight, which isn’t a lie. Oh shit. I forgot my key to the house to give you.” “Hardly a problem. I can pick the lock.” “You’re so talented. I’ll be so glad when we’re out of this city. I’m bored of it already. Come on, make me less bored.” Annah says and begins caressing and kissing on you. You see no reason to decline this request and spend more quality time with Annah for the rest of day (and night). You wake up the next day a little later than usual and find Annah going through her bags. You also hear the sound of music and mild revelry in the distance. “Shit, is that the band? Am I late? Fuck I gotta get going!” you say. “Relax, Nature’s Revenge isn’t even here yet, that’s just some opening act and it only just started. If you were late, I would have woke you up.” Annah says. “Yeah…still I should get going.” “Jenny’s not even here yet either. You’ve got time.” Annah says and stops what she’s doing, goes over to the bad and grabs your cock. “Again? But…shouldn’t I really get going?” you say. “As I said, you’ve got time. You can skip the foreplay.” Annah says and before you can reply, she’s kissing and getting on top you. Well no point in arguing with her when she’s like this… After spending even more quality time with Annah (which took longer than you meant to) you’re putting on your pants, grabbing your pack with tools, steeping over Checkers (who has been sleeping most of the time she’s been here) and rushing out the door. “Be careful, I love you!” Annah beams while lying naked on the bed. “Yeah…and you stay exactly like that when I return.” You reply and close the door. You run past the crowds in the Laughing Devil which are cheering some bard on stage and go outside where you run into three tattooed androgynous looking elves with wild colored hair carrying instruments and exiting a nearby carriage. You’re guessing that this is Nature’s Revenge. Not really giving a shit about them, you just push past and get in the easily accessible carriage and tell the driver to take you to the university. Eventually as you get close to the destination you get out since Annah’s old home is off campus, not actually on it. When you finally get there, it’s indeed a nice home, but not overly fancy. You’ve probably passed it a few times not really giving it a second look. After a quick perusal of the outside surroundings, you’re guessing the Jenny has already left so you quickly get to work on picking the lock, which is easy for you of course. You get inside and immediately head to the location of the safe since you want to be in and out of here as soon as possible. Pushing the bed slightly, you uncover the safe and get to work. It’s actually not too complex, but you’re not surprised Annah couldn’t get it open. She never was adept at it, hence why she’s gotten you in the first place. You crack the safe and indeed find quite a bit of coin in the safe. You find a couple of small objects that may or may not be valuable though. Seems like Annah thought there was more in there than there actually was, still, it’s not a bust by any means. As you finish dumping the contents into your pack, you’re about to check the rest of the house, and that’s when you suddenly hear the front door open! What the fuck!? Did she actually come home already? You didn’t even remember to bring your weapons with you since you were in such a hurry, not that you wanted to turn this into a murder in the first place. You figure you got two options at this point, either hide or try to escape out a window. > You escape You need to get the hell out of here. The longer you stay the more chance you’re going to get caught. You immediately go for the window in the room and your hopes of a speedy escape are dashed when you find out the damn thing has been painted shut. Doesn’t help that the window is slightly higher than you’d like, making even trying to pull it upward a chore. With the voices (and giggling) coming closer, you get desperate and pick up a nearby metal knick-knack of some sort and use it to break the window. You know you’ll be heard, but you’re hoping you’ll be quick enough to get out. You smash the window and try to break the remaining side pieces so you don’t get cut up too badly, but by this time your actions have already drawn the attention of Jenny and apparently her very large gentleman caller. “HEY!” he shouts which causes you to hurl the metal object at his head before you make a small leap to climb out the window. You make it half way through before Jenny’s boyfriend grabs your legs. He must be on the wrestling team or something because you cannot escape his grip and he easily yanks you back. While this might have originally only resulted in you most likely getting your ass kicked, followed by the law taking you in, however you experience something a little different. The window still had jagged glass bits around the edges and when Jenny’s boyfriend pulled you, you naturally got scraped on most of those. Wouldn’t have been so bad due to your protective clothing, but then you caught a sharp piece against your unprotected neck while getting pulled and unfortunately sliced open an artery. Even Jenny’s boyfriend is shocked when you’re choking on your own blood when you hit the floor and die soon afterwards.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 1: Dark Beginnings Well, you did it again. You slacked off all semester and didn’t study for your finals. There’s no way you’re going to pass your nature magic test tomorrow. Those things are always killers. You don’t even know why you enrolled in that class; you aren’t even interested in being a nature mage. You don’t even like the damn outdoors! Oh wait, you know why, it’s because you saw a cute witch taking the class, so like a dumb ass, you signed up for it. Naturally the moment you tried to impress her with some sort of cantrip, she laughed at you and said even if she was straight, she wouldn’t go for a half assed hedge wizard like you! You really should’ve known better, half of those witches are lesbians anyway. That whole Mother Earth Goddess worship caters to the rug munching. (And no, there aren’t any MALE witches, any self respecting man would call himself a WARLOCK, not a damn witch!) (Sigh) Like your little sister’s B’ar’b Dolly once said “Magic is hard!” Indeed. Sometimes you curse the day your mother passed her magical elven blood on to you. Still, you’re here now, so you need to make the best out of your life. You’re already going to hear it from both of your parents of how you’ve been nothing but a disappointment to the both of them. Your Dad will probably do a little more than say that, he’ll probably personally ride up to the University and beat the hell out of you for wasting his hard earned pillaging money to send you there in the first place. Arrgh! You just wish you were good at SOME kind of magic! You have the ability; you just don’t have the focus! That’s always been the problem with you. Your sister has it easy, she took after Dad. Narrow minded focus on killing someone with a blunt instrument doesn’t take too much effort. Of course you had to be the one that greater things were expected of. You’ve tried all the schools, evocation, conjuration, illusion, divination; all of them. You can’t excel in any of it. You can only get so far and then the words and gestures and well all of it just becomes too fucking confusing for you. However, you haven’t tried the “darker arts”, but your Mom would definitely never approve. (Your Dad probably wouldn’t care, but if you upset your Mom, it’s a warhammer upside the head) In fact it’s illegal to study any of them. They caused too much trouble in the past and nearly destroyed the world at one time. All who are known to even dabble in such arts are immediately taken into custody and executed. You don’t think you’d want to be summoning demons anyway; even the few “friendly ones” that work on campus are fucking assholes to the Nth degree. You can only imagine how bad the ones who haven’t been living among mortals are. However there is another dark art which you have to admit you’ve always had a bit of curiosity about. The art in question is necromancy. At this point you’re willing to at least see if you’re good at ANYTHING, so for shits and giggles you decide to blow off your test which you’re going to fail anyway and go see if you can find out more about this outlawed dark art. Though being a lazy sort you decide to try the library first. > You go make a trip to the library Even though you’re supposed to be a wizard in training, you spend as little time as possible in library if you can help it. Normally you just check out whatever you need to read for a class and leave. You have little faith in finding anything substantial on Necromancy in there, but maybe you can find something that will at least quell this thirst for knowledge on it. You realize you’re treading on dangerous ground, but you have to try to learn more. The library is huge however, and you’re unsure of where to look, it’s not like there’s a section on Necromancy or Outlawed Magic, but you figure you’ll look in the History section first. You glance and browse through the stacks until you pick up a few choice books that look like they might contain something, sit down in a quiet corner and begin to read. Naturally you don’t learn too much. The history books mainly go on about how bad the Dead War was, important battles, the atrocities of the Lich Lord, the typical stuff you’ve read time and time again. Still, you’re determined to find something new. You spend hours reading until you realize you’ve spent the day in the library and that it’s now night time. Oddly the library is mostly empty, and that’s probably because finals are now over, one of which you’ve now undoubtedly failed. You think of how stupid you’ve been to obsess over an outlawed art that you probably wouldn’t be any good at anyway! You’ve only been dwelling on the subject to ignore your own problems that you could’ve tried to solve yourself, instead of fantasizing about being some Necromancer. Raising the dead…what good would that do you? Delusions of grandeur. You wouldn’t have enough motivation to try to take over the world anyway. There was only one person who truly motivated you, and she’s gone. You begin to think about Serena and begin to feel sorrow like when you first lost her. You’ve had enough of death. You leave the library in a daze and head back home to sleep off this miserable day. You can’t escape though; even your dreams bring death. You dream about Serena. At first she’s alive and vibrant, and then suddenly she dies before your eyes. Then you see her grave with you sobbing over it and shouting how you demand that she not leave you. Then she rises from her grave…and you wake up only to come face to face with her! She is a ghost floating near your bed. “HOLY SHIT!” you shout and back up against your headboard. “Shhhh! Hush my love, I’m risking a lot just by being here.” She says looking around as if someone is going to bust down your door any minute. “Serena, what’s going on? This isn’t a dream is it?” “No, my dear I assure you that I am very real. And I have a message for you.” “A message?” “Yes, embrace death and all the beauty it has to offer.” “You want me to kill myself, to join you?” Serena laughs a bit. “No silly, you are to become a necromancer and bring the purity of death to the world.” “…yeah right. With my aptitude of magic, I doubt if I could raise a mouse skeleton.” “You always did lack confidence in yourself. I suppose that’s why they sent me to motivate you one last time. Though I admit, I would’ve come to see you anyway.” “They?” Serena side steps your question and continues. “Look we haven’t much time, but you HAVE the ability to become the greatest Necromancer since the Great Lich Lord who brought the world near the brink of extinction centuries ago, but you cannot do it alone…at least not yet. You must have allies. There are others like you on this campus who long to practice the dark arts. Seek them out and take over this college as your first step to your destiny.” “What? Hold on! What makes you think I want to do all this?” Serena floats closer to you and touches your face with a ghostly hand. You feel completely calm. “Because deep down it IS what you want. You know your thoughts are dominated by death. You even think of me rather than living girls and I’ve been dead for years. The very fact that your mind played a part in summoning me here is also proof of your desire.” “I miss you…” “I know you do, but my point is, even before I died I remember you having an interest in the dark arts. Indeed it’s part of what attracted me to you. But now I must return and you must fulfill your part in this world, whether you succeed or fail at this endeavor will ultimately be up to you, but I believe you will succeed.” Serena then floats a little closer to kiss you. “Farewell, my love.” She says and then disappears. You’re now wide awake and pacing the floor. You’ve been ambivalent about pursuing this path before, but the more you think about it and with this visit from Serena, this is the path you’re going to choose. And why not? It’s not like you have any better options in your life at this point. You’re going to do it, and though Serena mentioned others like you being on campus, you’re damned if you have a clue to as of knowing who they are since you don’t really socialize. Still, you can think of two people that could get you started. (Or at least not rat on you, when you start inquiring about Necromancy) The next day you take your first steps towards darkness… > You go talk to your creepy conjuration professor, Mr. Demar Chapter 2: Death Awaits Serena’s right, you’re going to need the help of others and you head to Mr. Demar’s office. Mr. Demar’s class was probably the only one you didn’t struggle in too much. It’s not really a popular field given that conjuration can lead to summoning demons. Still, there is use for it on a minor level, though of course it’s strictly regulated by most governments. Mr. Demar was a good professor, but the general agreement by everyone in your class, was that he was REALLY creepy. Plus there were always rumors about him. You always got the impression he was interested in doing a lot more with his area of expertise, but had to settle for teaching. He always seemed to be alright with you though. When you get to his office, surprisingly it’s open and he’s busily shuffling some papers around. “Mr. Demar?” “Huh? What? Damn it, I thought I locked that door! Oh it’s you, what do you want? And lock that door.” “Well uh…I had some questions…” “Okay, what are they? Out with it.” He says continuing to look at some strange parchments. “Well, uh…I guess it’s about magic, and I guess um…” Mr. Demar looks up at you like he’s going to slap you for stuttering so much. You finally speak up. “I want to know more about Necromancy.” Mr. Demar steps back and gives you a few inspecting stares. “I dunno what you’re talking about, in fact if you don’t get out of here I’m going report you to the dean for asking such questions.” He warns, but you get the impression that he’s not telling the truth. He probably thinks you were sent to spy on him by the dean or something. It’s not like he hasn’t been held under close scrutiny before. “Mr. Demar, I’m not trying to get you into trouble, it’s me! I really want to learn Necromancy, and you’re about the only one I think can help me! I actually was worried about coming to you and I was nervous about the whole thing!” “Hmm, well I guess I always did think you were inclined towards the dark arts and given your annoying stuttering a moment ago, you do sound like you were nervous. Okay, you want to learn? I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you like I’m currently teaching so many others right now. Surprised? Yes, the time is coming to pass that we who are inclined to REAL power begin to make our place in this world…permanently. Though I still have concerns about you, I mean while you did about average in my class, I’m well aware that you’re not exactly the best student in other fields. I question whether you can handle the power of the dark arts, let alone become a Necromancer.” You stand up straight and reply. “I’m confident that this is my path.” “Good, I’m glad you said that, because there’s no going back and this path is not for the weak. We also must maintain secrecy at all times until the day that we may take what is rightfully ours. Now come with me, we’re going to see exactly what kind of potential you have.” Mr. Demar casts a spell and opens up a portal. He then prepares to enter it and beckons you to follow him, which you do. Suddenly you’re whisked away into a place of near darkness. Given your immediate surroundings you’d guess that you’re underground somewhere. You can hear the clinking of chains though nearby and moans. “Where are we?” “Your testing area, this where we’re going to find out what exactly you’re made of. In the next room, you’ll find some undead friends. They’re currently chained up, but they won’t be for long. Now, you can kill them, but as a Necromancer you’re supposed to be controlling them, so obviously you should try to do that.” “But I don’t know how! You haven’t taught me any spells!” “And I’m not going to, you’re going to have to figure this out yourself, but I will say this, it’s all about the strength of willpower. Tap into your magical energy and if you have what it takes, you’ll succeed. I’ll leave you to it.” Demar disappears back into the portal and leaves you all by yourself. You’ve really gotten yourself into it and now there really isn’t any going back, and you can hear the chains from the next room dropping to the ground and the moans getting louder and closer. There’s a large bone on the ground and not much else in the room, and you can’t run either as there are no other exits. > You pick up the bone and defend yourself You pick up the large bone and prepare for whatever is coming at you. A couple of zombies enter and as soon as they see you they shamble over. You’re a little shaken, and you attempt to do exactly what Demar said, but you’re not having any effect. Soon one of the zombies is almost upon you and you lash out with the bone. You give a few good whacks to the first one’s skull causing it to collapse lifeless once again. You do the same to the second one. You’re breathing hard and thank the fact that they were slow enough not to easily catch you. However, your victory is short lived, when Demar appears again. “(Sigh) you killed them, after I told you that was not the purpose. Plus you gave a poor showing in even attempting to control them. I don’t see a future for you, if you cave under pressure like that.” You’re a little dejected, but the worse is yet to come, when you find you won’t be leaving this place. Mr. Demar can’t risk you knowing about this place yet not being a disciple of his. He didn’t last this long being undetected by taking chances. With a few quick mumblings and you feel your body ravaged by rot. It’s a horrible death, but one that results in you rising to take the place of the “test” zombies you just ruined. You spend your remaining undead life shambling around underground until eventually when Demar feels it’s time to attack, you’re one of the first cannon fodder troops to be destroyed in the attempted take over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 2: Death Awaits Serena’s right, you’re going to need the help of others and you head to Mr. Demar’s office. Mr. Demar’s class was probably the only one you didn’t struggle in too much. It’s not really a popular field given that conjuration can lead to summoning demons. Still, there is use for it on a minor level, though of course it’s strictly regulated by most governments. Mr. Demar was a good professor, but the general agreement by everyone in your class, was that he was REALLY creepy. Plus there were always rumors about him. You always got the impression he was interested in doing a lot more with his area of expertise, but had to settle for teaching. He always seemed to be alright with you though. When you get to his office, surprisingly it’s open and he’s busily shuffling some papers around. “Mr. Demar?” “Huh? What? Damn it, I thought I locked that door! Oh it’s you, what do you want? And lock that door.” “Well uh…I had some questions…” “Okay, what are they? Out with it.” He says continuing to look at some strange parchments. “Well, uh…I guess it’s about magic, and I guess um…” Mr. Demar looks up at you like he’s going to slap you for stuttering so much. You finally speak up. “I want to know more about Necromancy.” Mr. Demar steps back and gives you a few inspecting stares. “I dunno what you’re talking about, in fact if you don’t get out of here I’m going report you to the dean for asking such questions.” He warns, but you get the impression that he’s not telling the truth. He probably thinks you were sent to spy on him by the dean or something. It’s not like he hasn’t been held under close scrutiny before. “Mr. Demar, I’m not trying to get you into trouble, it’s me! I really want to learn Necromancy, and you’re about the only one I think can help me! I actually was worried about coming to you and I was nervous about the whole thing!” “Hmm, well I guess I always did think you were inclined towards the dark arts and given your annoying stuttering a moment ago, you do sound like you were nervous. Okay, you want to learn? I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you like I’m currently teaching so many others right now. Surprised? Yes, the time is coming to pass that we who are inclined to REAL power begin to make our place in this world…permanently. Though I still have concerns about you, I mean while you did about average in my class, I’m well aware that you’re not exactly the best student in other fields. I question whether you can handle the power of the dark arts, let alone become a Necromancer.” You stand up straight and reply. “I’m confident that this is my path.” “Good, I’m glad you said that, because there’s no going back and this path is not for the weak. We also must maintain secrecy at all times until the day that we may take what is rightfully ours. Now come with me, we’re going to see exactly what kind of potential you have.” Mr. Demar casts a spell and opens up a portal. He then prepares to enter it and beckons you to follow him, which you do. Suddenly you’re whisked away into a place of near darkness. Given your immediate surroundings you’d guess that you’re underground somewhere. You can hear the clinking of chains though nearby and moans. “Where are we?” “Your testing area, this where we’re going to find out what exactly you’re made of. In the next room, you’ll find some undead friends. They’re currently chained up, but they won’t be for long. Now, you can kill them, but as a Necromancer you’re supposed to be controlling them, so obviously you should try to do that.” “But I don’t know how! You haven’t taught me any spells!” “And I’m not going to, you’re going to have to figure this out yourself, but I will say this, it’s all about the strength of willpower. Tap into your magical energy and if you have what it takes, you’ll succeed. I’ll leave you to it.” Demar disappears back into the portal and leaves you all by yourself. You’ve really gotten yourself into it and now there really isn’t any going back, and you can hear the chains from the next room dropping to the ground and the moans getting louder and closer. There’s a large bone on the ground and not much else in the room, and you can’t run either as there are no other exits. > You try to prepare and concentrate You begin to concentrate and prepare for whatever is coming at you. A couple of zombies enter and as soon as they see you they shamble over. You maintain your calmness and focus, backing up only to get out their reach. It’s not work though, but you refuse to give up so you do something that you never thought you’d ever use. You’re underground and there are a lot of roots where you’re at, you remember a minor spell you learned in you nature magic class. You cast the spell, and the roots entwine the zombies’ feet causing them to be unable to move at you anymore. You then concentrate on controlling them, which now comes a lot easier to you because you don’t feel in danger anymore. When you’re sure you have a hold on them, you release the roots and then practice telling the zombies what to do. Sort of fun, like having a pet. Your fun is cut short when Mr. Demar reappears. “Well, that was an interesting way of handling things. Don’t think I’ve ever seen combining nature magic with necromancy before. Usually the student kills one of the zombies with a fireball or something and then focuses all their attention to control the other one. Still, whatever works, and you are one of the few that’s managed to control the both of them with no training in necromancy at all, so you have natural talent. And natural talent will serve you better for this path.” “I understand why you gave me the test, but I have to say I thought you’d start me off on raising the dead rather than controlling them first.” You say. “Ah! Yes, that’s a common misconception. You want to know why most necromancers fail even before they get started? Because they lack the control. Raising the dead is relatively easy; controlling them takes a great deal more focus and power. Most of the time a neophyte necromancer will go to the local graveyard and end up getting himself killed by the very bodies he raised because he can’t control them. Okay, I think it’s time we introduce you to the rest of the class. We’ll have lots of time to practice while most of the so called regular students are away for vacation.” “Uh, I’m ready, but I was supposed to go visit my family for vacation…and well also I don’t think I’ve passed all my classes either, specifically the nature magic class.” “What? (Sigh) Very well I shall take care of your grade; I know exactly how to handle the situation and I have a lot more pull in this school than most could ever dream of. As for your family members, I’ll leave that up to you. Surely you can think up something to tell them, right?” “Yeah.” “Very well then, it’s all settled. Time to meet the rest of your kind.” Once again Mr. Demar takes you through another portal. You’re still underground, but now you’re in a more structured setting with actual bricks rather than a cave like setting. You’re soon introduced to the rest of Mr. Demar’s “class” known as the Dark Order. Some of whom you’ve actually seen on campus or even in your other classes. Those that know you are surprised. “You’re letting THAT guy in here? I remember him back in Illusion class, and he ended up creating clones that punched the professor in the face!” “That’s nothing, back in Evocation class; he ended up setting the professor on fire.” “Okay that’s enough class! I can assure you that he has the potential to master the dark arts. He wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think so. Now Trelik and Felsa, you’re coming with me, the rest of you practice your lessons and one of you help our newest associate here get started, we’re all in this together you know.” After Demar leaves with two of his students, you’re left to your own devices as it seems nobody wants to help you. You look around the study area a bit and you start to pick up one of the many tomes lying around until someone comes up to you. “Hey, do you even know what those are for?” an ugly student asks you. “Well, they have a skull on the front, and from the looks of them they contain descriptions of various types of undead creature. My guess necromancy.” “Yeah, so what do you know of it?” “Not much, that’s why I’m here obviously, isn’t that why everyone else is?” “Not at all, in fact you’re only the fifth necromancer-to-be here. Most of the students are into studying how to control the infernal planes. You know Demonology. There’s even a guy studying on the lost art of temporal magic.” “Temporal? You mean time?” “Yep, a lot of people forget about that one being outlawed as well. Good reason, considering it could really fuck up something if not used properly. I’d actually stay away from Quayle, I think all that studying on time has made him a little loopy. He tends to talk backwards, and sideways a lot. Even Mr. Demar has a hard time keeping him on track.” “Interesting, so what’s your name, are you a demonologist?” “Me, nope I’m one of the disciples of death as they say. My name’s Sebastian. You might as well meet the others, you’ll be working with.” Sebastian takes you over to two other students. Catalina and Irwin. They nod at you and go back to their training which involves creating a some sort of bone golem. Catalina looks somewhat familiar. Sebastian tells you the other is Trelik who just left with Mr. Demar. “He’s the most skilled, besides Mr. Demar of course.” Sebastian says. “So what exactly do I start on first?” you ask. “I’d start out with raising and controlling some skeletons. I know you probably did the zombie thing, but you’ll need to hone your skill a lot and skeletons are easier to practice with. Take this book, and get started. You’ll find the bone pits down the corridor and to the right, don’t go left though; the demonologists got some bad ass demon locked in a circle down there. He’s really pissed off too. Best stay away.” You take one of the necromantic tomes and head down the corridor. On your way there, you begin to hear a voice penetrating your head. “You, come here. I know you. You seek power. I can give you that power; you need not waste your time studying anymore. I can grant it to you instantly. You want to be a master of death? Come to me…” This voice is very tempting. > You head down the left corridor You feel compelled to follow the voice and you head down the left corridor where eventually you come across a demon sitting in a couched position in a circle. He’s looking at the chalk that creates the circle around him, before looking up at you. He’s a lot bigger and meaner looking than even the demons you’ve met on campus. He certainly doesn’t seem happy to be trapped. You suspect that they summoned this guy up from hell recently. “Who are you?” “My real name is unimportant, but you can call me Velzix…and you are the new disciple of Demar’s delusional bunch of would be shit starters. They believe that they will be able to take over this school by using the dark arts. And perhaps they may, but such a victory will be fleeting. Mortals lack long term vision. They will not be prepared when the entire world unites against them…but you can be spared that fate. Free me, and I promise you that you will become a powerful force in the struggle ahead.” “While that sound tempting, demons are known for their deceitful nature and infamous for getting around loopholes in so called deals they make.” You say. “Yes, it is something we pride ourselves on…very well I will not harm you when you free me. That is what you worried about isn’t it?” “It had crossed my mind.” “Okay, now you may free me.” > You free Velzix You easily remove the chalk around Velzix. “Ah yes, another lack of vision, if they had been smarter they would’ve also placed a magical barrier around the chalk circle and bound me in magic chains. Well, now they shall pay for their arrogance!” Velzix now free from his prison lets out an unearthly roar and pushes you aside to take revenge on his captors. As you recover and get off the floor, you can already hear the sounds of battle, followed by screams. You hesitantly head towards the study area, and there you see carnage. The demon has easily killed everyone and is now casting some sort of spell. “Now that I’m free, this world is going to suffer. That puny mortal Demar’s petty plans pale in comparison in what I have in mind. He’ll be first on the list that I’ll track down. Shouldn’t take long.” He says and opens a portal to the infernal realm where upon several smaller demons come pouring out eager for blood. In fact they see you and begin to step towards you. “H…hey! You said no harm would come to me!” “I said that I would not harm you. I never said anything about them! Ha ha! Like I said you mortals lack such vision!” You don’t even have time to run before the demons jump on top of you and begin to rip you to pieces, the only good thing is you were spared the horrors that Velzix unleashed upon the world.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You feel compelled to follow the voice and you head down the left corridor where eventually you come across a demon sitting in a couched position in a circle. He’s looking at the chalk that creates the circle around him, before looking up at you. He’s a lot bigger and meaner looking than even the demons you’ve met on campus. He certainly doesn’t seem happy to be trapped. You suspect that they summoned this guy up from hell recently. “Who are you?” “My real name is unimportant, but you can call me Velzix…and you are the new disciple of Demar’s delusional bunch of would be shit starters. They believe that they will be able to take over this school by using the dark arts. And perhaps they may, but such a victory will be fleeting. Mortals lack long term vision. They will not be prepared when the entire world unites against them…but you can be spared that fate. Free me, and I promise you that you will become a powerful force in the struggle ahead.” “While that sound tempting, demons are known for their deceitful nature and infamous for getting around loopholes in so called deals they make.” You say. “Yes, it is something we pride ourselves on…very well I will not harm you when you free me. That is what you worried about isn’t it?” “It had crossed my mind.” “Okay, now you may free me.” > You negotiate some more Velzix isn’t pleased that you’re attempting to negotiate with him. He feels he’s given you a fair deal, and he begins to raise his voice at what he considers to be your outrageous demands. Of course this doesn’t help since it causes some of your fellow students to come wondering what’s going on and hoping Velzix hasn’t escaped. “Hey! What’re you doing here! You’re not even a demonologist!” one of them yells. “Weak minded fool was probably tempted by Velzix’s voice.” “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never said anything to him, he wandered down here on his own accord, and started talking to me about striking a deal of some kind.” Velzix says with a smile. “I DID NOT!” you protest. Your protests don’t do too much to help you though. The rest of the students decide you’re either lying, or you don’t have the mental strength to resist the temptations of Velzix. And in either case you’re a liability that they can’t afford. You’re struck by several lightning bolts and your corpse is completely burned black before you even fall to the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You begin to concentrate and prepare for whatever is coming at you. A couple of zombies enter and as soon as they see you they shamble over. You maintain your calmness and focus, backing up only to get out their reach. It’s not work though, but you refuse to give up so you do something that you never thought you’d ever use. You’re underground and there are a lot of roots where you’re at, you remember a minor spell you learned in you nature magic class. You cast the spell, and the roots entwine the zombies’ feet causing them to be unable to move at you anymore. You then concentrate on controlling them, which now comes a lot easier to you because you don’t feel in danger anymore. When you’re sure you have a hold on them, you release the roots and then practice telling the zombies what to do. Sort of fun, like having a pet. Your fun is cut short when Mr. Demar reappears. “Well, that was an interesting way of handling things. Don’t think I’ve ever seen combining nature magic with necromancy before. Usually the student kills one of the zombies with a fireball or something and then focuses all their attention to control the other one. Still, whatever works, and you are one of the few that’s managed to control the both of them with no training in necromancy at all, so you have natural talent. And natural talent will serve you better for this path.” “I understand why you gave me the test, but I have to say I thought you’d start me off on raising the dead rather than controlling them first.” You say. “Ah! Yes, that’s a common misconception. You want to know why most necromancers fail even before they get started? Because they lack the control. Raising the dead is relatively easy; controlling them takes a great deal more focus and power. Most of the time a neophyte necromancer will go to the local graveyard and end up getting himself killed by the very bodies he raised because he can’t control them. Okay, I think it’s time we introduce you to the rest of the class. We’ll have lots of time to practice while most of the so called regular students are away for vacation.” “Uh, I’m ready, but I was supposed to go visit my family for vacation…and well also I don’t think I’ve passed all my classes either, specifically the nature magic class.” “What? (Sigh) Very well I shall take care of your grade; I know exactly how to handle the situation and I have a lot more pull in this school than most could ever dream of. As for your family members, I’ll leave that up to you. Surely you can think up something to tell them, right?” “Yeah.” “Very well then, it’s all settled. Time to meet the rest of your kind.” Once again Mr. Demar takes you through another portal. You’re still underground, but now you’re in a more structured setting with actual bricks rather than a cave like setting. You’re soon introduced to the rest of Mr. Demar’s “class” known as the Dark Order. Some of whom you’ve actually seen on campus or even in your other classes. Those that know you are surprised. “You’re letting THAT guy in here? I remember him back in Illusion class, and he ended up creating clones that punched the professor in the face!” “That’s nothing, back in Evocation class; he ended up setting the professor on fire.” “Okay that’s enough class! I can assure you that he has the potential to master the dark arts. He wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think so. Now Trelik and Felsa, you’re coming with me, the rest of you practice your lessons and one of you help our newest associate here get started, we’re all in this together you know.” After Demar leaves with two of his students, you’re left to your own devices as it seems nobody wants to help you. You look around the study area a bit and you start to pick up one of the many tomes lying around until someone comes up to you. “Hey, do you even know what those are for?” an ugly student asks you. “Well, they have a skull on the front, and from the looks of them they contain descriptions of various types of undead creature. My guess necromancy.” “Yeah, so what do you know of it?” “Not much, that’s why I’m here obviously, isn’t that why everyone else is?” “Not at all, in fact you’re only the fifth necromancer-to-be here. Most of the students are into studying how to control the infernal planes. You know Demonology. There’s even a guy studying on the lost art of temporal magic.” “Temporal? You mean time?” “Yep, a lot of people forget about that one being outlawed as well. Good reason, considering it could really fuck up something if not used properly. I’d actually stay away from Quayle, I think all that studying on time has made him a little loopy. He tends to talk backwards, and sideways a lot. Even Mr. Demar has a hard time keeping him on track.” “Interesting, so what’s your name, are you a demonologist?” “Me, nope I’m one of the disciples of death as they say. My name’s Sebastian. You might as well meet the others, you’ll be working with.” Sebastian takes you over to two other students. Catalina and Irwin. They nod at you and go back to their training which involves creating a some sort of bone golem. Catalina looks somewhat familiar. Sebastian tells you the other is Trelik who just left with Mr. Demar. “He’s the most skilled, besides Mr. Demar of course.” Sebastian says. “So what exactly do I start on first?” you ask. “I’d start out with raising and controlling some skeletons. I know you probably did the zombie thing, but you’ll need to hone your skill a lot and skeletons are easier to practice with. Take this book, and get started. You’ll find the bone pits down the corridor and to the right, don’t go left though; the demonologists got some bad ass demon locked in a circle down there. He’s really pissed off too. Best stay away.” You take one of the necromantic tomes and head down the corridor. On your way there, you begin to hear a voice penetrating your head. “You, come here. I know you. You seek power. I can give you that power; you need not waste your time studying anymore. I can grant it to you instantly. You want to be a master of death? Come to me…” This voice is very tempting. > You head to the bone pits No way, you’re not going down that path. There are too many stories about demons fucking people over in their deals. In fact, you’re a little worried about the fact that this “class” has more dedicated demonologist than necromancers. Still you’ll just have to deal with it for now, you can only hope they know what they’re doing and have a better grasp on things than a certain cabal of wizards did during the Dead War. As for you, you need to start mastering your own branch of magic. When you get to the pits, you are literally surrounded by bones. You open up your book and begin to read a bit before casting your spell. Your first attempt isn’t too bad. You animate one skeleton, and surprisingly it doesn’t attack you. You continue to practice this, and while it’s only been an hour, you’ve already animated thirty skeletons, all of which are completely obedient and not attempting to attack you at all. You’re not sure if this is normal, good or bad for a beginner, but given how many problems you had with other branches of magic, you think you’re doing pretty well. In fact you feel pretty proud of yourself. You decide to get a little more inventive and you see rusty weapons on the floor along with the bones. You command the skeletons to pick them up and begin to start sparring with each other. They do so, without problems. This sound of minor battle brings in a few of the students, most of whom are shocked. “What’s going…whoa. I thought you said you never did this before.” Sebastian says walking in. “I haven’t…I dunno, it’s just coming so easy to me. For the first time I feel like I’m actually good at something!” you say. “Well, it’s a lot better than what you did in Enchantment class when you managed to charm all those frogs which then proceeded to attack the professor.” Catalina says. “That was you? I even heard about that. Man, what is it with you and your spells accidentally hurting your professors in some way?” Irwin adds. You ignore Irwin’s question, and address Catalina. “I thought I remembered you from somewhere. I asked you out once.” “Hmm, yes and you were unsuccessful in that as well. I suggest you stop looking at me and pay attention to your little army there, before they get out of hand. Like that one.” You turn around and stop one of the skeletons that’s wandering in your direction and then command him to go back to sparring. “Man, I’ve never seen someone with this much control just starting out. Well Trelik comes to mind, but he was already very skilled in general magic and was learning directly under Mr. Demar. From what others have said, you were completely inept at magic and have no previous training in this stuff whatsoever. You’re like an idiot savant of necromancy or something.” Sebastian says. “Um…thanks. I think.” “Well anyway, glad you’ve joined up. We’ll leave you be. If you want to try something harder, there’s more tomes in the study area and just ask one of us where the other practice centers are.” And so it goes. You find your place among the Dark Order and practice your skills there, in fact it gets to the point that you rarely leave the secret underground base at all. You begin to catch the attention of Mr. Demar who is very impressed with your ability to learn and master so quickly. “Natural” isn’t the word for it, more like prodigy. Trelik however is showing signs of jealousy… Mr. Demar has to tell you to take a break every now and then or else you’ll drain yourself. You don’t feel that way though, you feel like you have more energy than ever. As he promised your grades were “fixed” though Mr. Demar’s actions meaning you don’t get kicked out of the college. You tell your parents that you’re taking an advanced course in magic that requires you to stay and how you’re really excited about it. Your Mom is a little disappointed that she won’t see you, but is happy to hear that you’re doing so much better in school. If she only knew… The City of Nuro is a quieter place with less students around, but the guise of secrecy still must be kept. After a month has passed you find out that this “class” aren’t the only allies Mr. Demar has. He’s been teaching the dark arts for years and most of his “graduates” are living in this city. The attack is going to come when classes first start up again. Demar feels that it will actually be more beneficial to attack with more people in the city because after the demons are done with the killing, the Necromancers can raise the dead to reinforce the hold on the city. One key part in all of this is Quayle. He is to cast a slow spell of the greatest proportions over the city. While everyone else is moving at a near stand still, the Dark Order will be able to take over key locations much easier. While all of this sounds exciting you can’t help but still be concerned about this plan. Mr. Demar is placing most of his faith in the demonologist, which you suppose is understandable given his background in conjuration, but you feel as if you necromancers are getting put on the backburner. Sure you’re playing your part, but it almost seems as if you’re just there as “back up”. Not to mention you’re still not keen on the whole idea of dealing with so many demons. Of course these concerns are the least of your problems as another month goes by, Trelik is becoming a complete asshole to you. Within the short time you’ve been here, he’s time and time again attempted to sabotage your spells, but usually you manage to overcome. You’ve got a month to go before the final plans are in place, but suddenly Mr. Demar has some news he’s not pleased to inform everyone of. “Class, we’ve got a delegate from the Vampire Clans. I don’t think I have to tell you how annoying this is.” You ask Sebastian what’s the problem and what exactly is going. Sebastian tells you that ever since the clans heard about Demar’s plans, they’ve been strongly opposed to them for they fear that it will draw attention to their one last stronghold which is kept invisible and secret to the rest of the world. It is there where the last of the “ruling” class vampires still exist, most of them having been killed or degenerated into little more than mindless beasts that are eventually hunted down. While you’re fascinated by Sebastian’s explanation of things, you’re suddenly singled out by Trelik. “YOU! Do you find this so unimportant that you feel the need not to pay attention?” “No. I just didn’t know the whole situation and I was asking…” “If you wanted more information you should’ve been asking Mr. Demar after he was done talking!” “Okay, okay. That will do Trelik. Someone should’ve explained it to him before actually, given that he’ll be playing a large part in this plan. In fact, maybe he should come with me to meet the delegate instead.” “But Mr. Demar! I have more experience in this sort of thing!” “True, but to be quite honest, the blood suckers don’t care too much for you. You’re too combative. So how about it? Do you wish to be present when I speak to this delegate?” > You go with Mr. Demar “Sure I’ll go.” “Very well, you and Felsa are coming with me. Trelik, you go brush up on the attack strategy.” “But!” “No buts! Just do it!” Trelik storms off while you, Mr. Demar and Felsa head towards the conference room. When you arrive, you see a single pale emaciated figure. He doesn’t look at all like the vampires you’ve heard of in past. There is no regality here. “It’s about time you showed up. I must confess I was not enthused about you leaving me here waiting like a dog. We have very important matters to discuss!” he hisses. “My apologies Yolev. I just needed to take care of a few things. Please sit, and let us all discuss this.” “There really is no discussion Mr. Demar! You are to cease your plan immediately lest you face the full brunt of the vampire clans! Your foolish mortal desires will kill us all and we cannot allow that to happen! We must continue to survive!” “Survive? Is that all you vampires worry about anymore? Why at one time you were secret rulers and puppet masters. Hell, without you the Great Lich Lord wouldn’t have made nearly as much progress as he did.” “And THAT folly of those ignorant vampires is exactly why we must stop you now. The Dead War cost us greatly, we should not have thrown our lot in with a mad man who was determined to bring death to the world. It was only at the last minute that the wiser of us realized to do so would be detrimental to us. Almost too late. We are only a shadow of our former selves, but that shadow is still long…and we can make life difficult for you.” Yolev warns. “I don’t respond well to idle threats, but I will say this, your fears are unfounded. The Dark Order is not seeking to bring death to the world, we are merely going to reestablish the proper order of things. The strong were meant to rule, and WE are the strong. Those who master the dark arts have always been strong. It is why we are so feared and hated and hunted. You should not be against us Yolev. You should see this as an opportunity to reestablish your rightful place as vampires.” Mr. Demar’s words have a slight effect on Yolev. He falls silent and looks almost wistful of ancient times, when his kind roamed more free in civilization, rather than hiding and cowering on the outskirts like animals. He quickly snaps out of it though. “Idealistic words, Mr. Demar, but even if we were still to use what little influence we still have, I cannot believe that you and a few students can change the world. Even if you manage to take this one city, you can’t believe that you’ll get away with it. You there! You’re one of these students are you not? What do you think? And tell me what you TRULY think, not what Mr. Demar wants you to think.” Yolev points to you. “Well uh…I think we can do it.” You stutter off guard. “…You think you can do it? Is that all you have to say about it? This is what you’re working with Mr. Demar? How could we ever place any faith in your plan when you’re training near idiots that can barely form sentences?” “Yolev, you might be a delegate, but you best watch your tone, you’re not in the best position right now, and given your previous threats you’re already treading on dangerous ground.” “You dare to threaten ME? I’ve crushed greater men AND women than you!” “Yeah, and now you’re a running lap dog for some so called vampire king who rules over nothing but a few remaining scraps of a dying legacy.” As this begins to get hostile, you notice Felsa preparing to cast something. You think that if you say anything, things are only going to get worse, so you stand back and do nothing, but hostilities don’t cease and eventually Felsa casts a blast of fire at Yolev, he falls to the floor trying to beat out the flames, but Demar isn’t pleased. “FELSA! WHY DID YOU DO THAT!?” he shouts and then finishes off Yolev by casting some sort of spell that causes his chest to explode. Two Imps suddenly appear and begin to rip Yolev apart before he can get a chance to recover. “The pair of you really fucked up today! You with your actions and you with your bumbling! I might as well had Trelik with me! Shit! (Sigh) Alright. Fine we can still do this, but the vampires are going to be pissed off at us now for killing their delegate and it’s definitely going to make things harder. Come on we got a lot to prepare for.” The last month is no picnic. Mr. Demar has you all training a lot harder than you have before. He’s been pushing everyone a lot harder to the point that they’re getting tired and sloppy. One of the demonologists gets eaten by a brimstone beast. Another accidentally casts a spell backwards and causes himself to be sucked into the infernal realm. Morale isn’t exactly the highest. But the plan goes through and after the first week classes go back in session, the gates of hell are literally opened. Portals appear all over various parts of not only the campus, but also the city. Demons come swarming out of the portals gleefully killing all in their path. The demonologist lead the attack, while you and the other three necromancers take advantage of all the new corpses in the area. Soon, you have a fair sized army of dead. Mr. Demar himself is taking on the head professors at the college, with the help of Felsa and Trelik. Given the amount of explosions you’re seeing from the streets, you’re glad you got a “lower” assignment. All seems to be going well until it looks like the demons have decided to leave the city limits, one of the demonologists tries to corral them back shouting that they are supposed to only concentrate on Nuro, but they laugh and simply say: “You didn’t mention that in the deal!” With the demons completely unreliable now, it’s up to you necromancers to take up the slack. You do alright, but there’s still a lot of resistance and something has gone wrong with Quayle’s spell as your attackers are beginning to move at a normal rate instead of a slower one. You don’t see this ending well, unless something changes quick. Even if you win, you know you got a shit load of problems ahead of you. > You attempt to regroup Victory isn’t beyond your grasp, you just need to regroup and organize. You immediately seek out Irwin, Sebastian and Catalina. You find Sebastian and Catalina, and they’re running low on viable corpses. “Hey, glad you could get here, the Nuro mage guards are putting up a hell of a fight! The demonologists can’t keep the demons in line and whatever former graduates Mr. Demar had to help us are probably all dead by now!” Sebastian explains. “Yeah, it’s bad all over. Where’s Irwin?” you ask. “Irwin? He’s dead; can’t you see his body lying over there with all the arrows in it?” Catalina points out. “Well, no point in letting this go to waste, we need all the help we can get.” You say and command Irwin to rise to join the rest of the horde You tell Catalina and Sebastian to hand control over the rest of their troops to you, as if you can concentrate them with a single mind, you’ll be able to break the doors down of city hall and take out the remainder of the mage guards holding out there. You also tell them that one should head back to the college itself and go check on Quayle, and the other should go help out Mr. Demar. Oddly enough Sebastian and Catalina obey your orders immediately. You begin to feel even more confident in your power of command. You proceed to tell your now larger undead horde to attack the last bastion of Nuro’s governmental control. You unleash blasts of dark energy at the mage guards who attempt to defend from the windows while your zombies and skeletons break down the doors and begin to massacre all those inside. You enter the building nearly oblivious to the carnage. You feel a very real sense of calming peace amongst the death. Eventually you encounter the “First Citizen” of Nuro busily trying to slay as many of your soldiers as possible, but as you continue to raise them, even he realizes it’s a futile endeavor. A skeleton warrior hacks his arm off with an axe, and then a recently raised mage guard clubs him in the head with a small mace. He falls to the floor of his own office before your feet and looks up at you. “Why? You…you’ll never get away with this…” he sputters as he bleeds out. “You might be right, but it’ll be interesting to see if I do.” You calmly say and kick him in the face before another skeleton lands a killing blow to him. He is then raised to join the ranks. You exit the building and notice that the city is near empty. At least as far as the living go. The dead however are plentiful, bodies litter the streets. More resources for you, you think. A demonologist looking very worn from battle sees you and you have to stop your small horde from attacking. “Hey hold on! I’m on your side! Shit, this didn’t turn out as planned, did it?” “Oh I dunno, we got the city.” “Yeah, but Mr. Demar is still battling the rest of the staff in the college and I’m really worried about what the hell’s going on with Quayle’s spell, I don’t know if you’ve experienced it yet, but I’ve been seeing buildings phase in and out of existence. I knew fucking around with time would be trouble!” “Where are all of the demons?” you ask. “Most of them left! I mean there’s a few that stuck around, most of the weaker variety. There was a major demon called Velzix who was supposed to be helping, but he took off as well. Bah! Unreliable lot they are. I should’ve done what you did, become a necromancer! The dead always obey.” “Not always…but you may still fulfill your wish after all this is over, so where exactly are Mr. Demar and Quayle, I mean I know they’re in the university, but where exactly?” “You can’t miss either one of them, Quayle’s located in east section of campus, where you see all the damn buildings phasing in and out. As for Mr. Demar, well I’m sure you can still hear the explosions. I’m going to try to corral at least some of the imps and help Mr. Demar, I’m not going anywhere near the eastside of the campus though. I’m off!” The demonologist runs to go do what he said, leaving you with a couple choices of proceeding. You could go try to fix this problem with Quayle since it won’t do anyone any good if the city collapses on itself or disappears to gods know where, of course you don’t know exactly what you’re going to do, hell you’ve never even spoken to Quayle before. He was always kept locked up by himself in his room studying most of the time. Of course you could go help Mr. Demar, chances are he could solve the problem with Quayle a lot better if he survives. > You go deal with Quayle Mr. Demar is a powerful wizard and he’s already got help, along with the help you sent and also the help that’s coming. You need to do something about this time problem. When you get to the east campus, the demonologist was right, you see a lot of weird things going on, nearby plants are growing older and younger before your eyes, buildings are indeed disappearing and reappearing. It’s a mess. You see Catalina watching it all in wonder. She looks at you briefly only to acknowledge your presence and then goes back to watching the changing landscape. “I see you choose to check on Quayle.” You say. “Yeah, I think he’s in that small gray building over there, the only one that seems to be stable. I can’t get to him though, well at least I’m not risking it, I sent some of my troops in there and I watched them either accelerate in rot and disintegrate, or even stranger actually turn back into their living selves until they eventually became babies and then nothing. In fact I’m getting out of here as it only seems to be getting worse. This plan sucks.” Catalina replies. “Well someone’s gotta go in, so I guess I’ll do it. I’ve risked too much already to fail. I suggest you go help Mr. Demar.” you exclaim. “Wow, this whole thing has really made you really authoritative. You’ve come a long way since Enchantment class.” “Yeah well I’ve had a revelation that I’m really good at this necromancy stuff and I won’t be denied my career in it before it’s truly begun.” You suddenly grab Catalina and kiss her on the lips; she pushes you away and slaps your face. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?! Just because you’re not incompetent at one thing, doesn’t automatically mean I’m wet for you!” “Well let me show you I’m not incompetent in two things then!” “Ha ha. Maybe later, like next century. Nice try though. But I will go help Mr. Demar seeing as that would be the best course of action for me. Good luck with the time storm there.” As you check out Catalina’s ass as she leaves you realize you should be focusing on the task at hand, but it’s just you feel so alive for the first time in awhile as ironic as that may seem given the circumstances. You begin to employ the same strategy that Catalina did, and you get mostly the same results she did, however you currently have a lot more troops than she, so eventually you manage to map out a safe path to the building she thought Quayle was located in. Apparently she was right, you see him sitting in one of the auditorium class rooms in a lotus like position on the floor in a trance. A strange white field of energy surrounds him. “You are the future…there is no future…there are many futures…it’s all so fascinating…” he says in an echoed voice. “Hey Quayle, we pretty much won, you can stop doing whatever it is you’re doing with time now. It’s really starting to mess things up.” “Things have started to get better…they will get worse…they will stay the same, all is relative… how will you proceed…you have decided…” “Uh, yeah. Look Quayle you NEED to stop what you’re doing, the whole fucking city is going to disappear if you don’t, and I don’t want to know where it might end up. So stop this right now!” As soon as you give this order, a flash of light appears from above Quayle’s head and a bizarre creature with way too many tentacles comes out. Naturally it attacks. You dodge out of the way of its tentacle whip and command what remains of your troops to attack. You don’t know why, but you don’t feel very well in its presence. You feel like you’re about to vomit. “There are so many things…worse than hell…worse than death…madness…insanity…I must show everyone…I have shown everyone…I have lost…I have won…” Quayle’s either gone completely mad, or he’s speaking perfect sense. Probably both, but either way if this one creature is any indication of what he’s talking about, you’ll have to stop him, but you’re having a really hard time concentrating as strange thoughts begin to enter your mind. You see all manner of images from the past and the present…you dare say the future. It’s all going so fast though and you’re getting dizzy. > You cast a blast of negative energy at Quayle You attempt to concentrate, but as you do so another strange creature appears and smacks you in the face, knocking you to the ground. You don’t even have time to recover before it begins to wrap one of its powerful tentacles around your head and squeezes until your skull cracks and your brains come leaking out. Given what is in store for the world, you were lucky to be killed so quickly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Mr. Demar is a powerful wizard and he’s already got help, along with the help you sent and also the help that’s coming. You need to do something about this time problem. When you get to the east campus, the demonologist was right, you see a lot of weird things going on, nearby plants are growing older and younger before your eyes, buildings are indeed disappearing and reappearing. It’s a mess. You see Catalina watching it all in wonder. She looks at you briefly only to acknowledge your presence and then goes back to watching the changing landscape. “I see you choose to check on Quayle.” You say. “Yeah, I think he’s in that small gray building over there, the only one that seems to be stable. I can’t get to him though, well at least I’m not risking it, I sent some of my troops in there and I watched them either accelerate in rot and disintegrate, or even stranger actually turn back into their living selves until they eventually became babies and then nothing. In fact I’m getting out of here as it only seems to be getting worse. This plan sucks.” Catalina replies. “Well someone’s gotta go in, so I guess I’ll do it. I’ve risked too much already to fail. I suggest you go help Mr. Demar.” you exclaim. “Wow, this whole thing has really made you really authoritative. You’ve come a long way since Enchantment class.” “Yeah well I’ve had a revelation that I’m really good at this necromancy stuff and I won’t be denied my career in it before it’s truly begun.” You suddenly grab Catalina and kiss her on the lips; she pushes you away and slaps your face. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?! Just because you’re not incompetent at one thing, doesn’t automatically mean I’m wet for you!” “Well let me show you I’m not incompetent in two things then!” “Ha ha. Maybe later, like next century. Nice try though. But I will go help Mr. Demar seeing as that would be the best course of action for me. Good luck with the time storm there.” As you check out Catalina’s ass as she leaves you realize you should be focusing on the task at hand, but it’s just you feel so alive for the first time in awhile as ironic as that may seem given the circumstances. You begin to employ the same strategy that Catalina did, and you get mostly the same results she did, however you currently have a lot more troops than she, so eventually you manage to map out a safe path to the building she thought Quayle was located in. Apparently she was right, you see him sitting in one of the auditorium class rooms in a lotus like position on the floor in a trance. A strange white field of energy surrounds him. “You are the future…there is no future…there are many futures…it’s all so fascinating…” he says in an echoed voice. “Hey Quayle, we pretty much won, you can stop doing whatever it is you’re doing with time now. It’s really starting to mess things up.” “Things have started to get better…they will get worse…they will stay the same, all is relative… how will you proceed…you have decided…” “Uh, yeah. Look Quayle you NEED to stop what you’re doing, the whole fucking city is going to disappear if you don’t, and I don’t want to know where it might end up. So stop this right now!” As soon as you give this order, a flash of light appears from above Quayle’s head and a bizarre creature with way too many tentacles comes out. Naturally it attacks. You dodge out of the way of its tentacle whip and command what remains of your troops to attack. You don’t know why, but you don’t feel very well in its presence. You feel like you’re about to vomit. “There are so many things…worse than hell…worse than death…madness…insanity…I must show everyone…I have shown everyone…I have lost…I have won…” Quayle’s either gone completely mad, or he’s speaking perfect sense. Probably both, but either way if this one creature is any indication of what he’s talking about, you’ll have to stop him, but you’re having a really hard time concentrating as strange thoughts begin to enter your mind. You see all manner of images from the past and the present…you dare say the future. It’s all going so fast though and you’re getting dizzy. > You physically tackle him The tentacle creature has almost killed all your troops, you’re too dizzy to cast a spell, you need to just bum rush this fool. You run towards the front of the class where he sits and just narrowly dodge another tentacle beast appearing suddenly in front of you. “…stop…stop it…you must stop…” You tackle Quayle and something completely unexpected and disgusting happens. His body literally breaks like a fragile glass vase and all manner of insects and maggots come crawling out, mostly on you. “EEEEYEEECAAAGH!” you yell trying to get them all off of you, completely ignoring anything else. Fortunately for you, whatever you did has stopped the temporal disturbance. The creatures disappear and everything else seems to go back to normal. After stomping on some centipedes you notice Quayle’s head has rolled into a corner. Surprisingly it’s still alive. “Thank you…you are the future…perhaps…” his head says before it just simply disappears. You shake your own head at all of this. As much as you’ve seen during your time in the Dark Order, you’ve never seen anything like this! And you hope never to again. You’re still a little shaken. You take a breather while your few remaining troops wander about, but still obediently awaiting your orders. You can’t hear anymore explosions; you wonder if Mr. Demar has won, you hope he has, considering you’ve been doing a lot for the “cause” so to speak. You exit the building and begin to walk over to the other side of the campus where the explosions were coming from. You’re a little tired, but you feel like you might have to be ready for anything, so you raise more of the dead to protect you for possible battle. It’s almost so easy now; you barely need to concentrate even in this fatigued state. You arrive to burning buildings and ruins of towers. Once again you see Catalina standing outside talking to a demonologist. After they leave, Catalina sees you and once again seems unimpressed by you. You think you’re warming up to her. “Huh, took you long enough. You missed all the major battle while you were playing around with Quayle.” “Playing around? You don’t even want to know what I’ve been through, and I’ll wager it wasn’t nearly as…disturbing as what you went through.” “Doubt it, by the time I got here Mr. Demar had already lost Felsa, Trelik had betrayed him, and Sebastian was killed. Luckily I was here to provide back up for the final battle with the Dean. We’ve won, but Mr. Demar is very weak right now, I dunno if he’s going to survive his wounds.” “Shit, sounds like I did miss a lot, so is Trelik dead?” “Nope, the coward ran off when he realized he couldn’t beat Mr. Demar.” “Can I see him?” “Sure I guess, he’s in library, or what’s left of it.” You enter the library briefly remembering when you came in here to seek more necromantic knowledge. Now you have more than you could’ve ever imagined. You see Mr. Demar sitting at a table looking through a book while he winces in pain while clutching his stomach. He’s bloody, as well as burned. He’s a mess. “(Sigh) This didn’t turn out the way I planned at all. Of course those that follow the dark path never seem to get their way. I wonder why. Is it simple arrogance or is it just the cosmos balancing things out?” he says not looking up. “Mr. Demar, those wounds, you really should…” “I know what my mistake was, I was thinking too big. I should’ve concentrated on one dark art. Spread my attention too thin, and this mess was the result. (Cough) Thought I was going to rule it all…” “Your wounds are…” “Ah fuck it; I knew what I was getting into when I started along this path. I have no regrets other than trusting Trelik. Treacherous bastard. Heed my words, this path is not one of trust. You are truly alone. No matter how powerful you get, there’s always someone seeking to topple you and steal what you have.” “Mr…” Mr. Demar now addresses you directly. “Listen to me; this is your last lesson. At least from me, because for what lies ahead of you will be the greatest test of all. You’re obviously a powerful necromancer, and you’re only going to become more so. You must take advantage of your powers, and do everything you can to survive and crush those who oppose you. If that means war so be it, but if you can achieve this through peace do not be so quick to dismiss it. Chances are this will not be an option for you, but anything is possible. Just never back down. You are a ruler, not a subject. The city is yours if you can hold on to it. The entire world is yours…if you can hold on to it…” Mr. Demar collapses on the table. Strange that someone so powerful chose to die, since you get the impression his death could’ve been prevented with some strong healing magic. Did he feel that he failed and death was what he deserved? Was he deep down too cowardly to handle the hardship ahead? Or was he just tired? You’ll never know for certain you suppose. You exit the library, where Catalina meets you. “So what’s going on?” she asks. “I’m in charge, that’s what’s going on.” You reply. Catalina looks surprised at the bluntness and simplicity of your answer. “Well, I suppose we could do worse…so what’s next fearless leader?” “Good question.” > You good question indeed. You are about to take your necromantic career to its next level Chapter 3: One Foot In The Grave One year has passed… It’s hard to believe it, but it’s been a year since you took control of Nuro…or rather Aftermath as you renamed it. The “Nuro Incident” as it came to be known was a shock to the civilized world. Nobody had anticipated such a thing occurring despite all preparations. Certainly not to Nuro given it’s near “invincible” reputation. The Grand Alliance was immediately formed to retake the city, but fortunately for you, you weren’t the only problem they had. Velzix, a demon lord who soon left Nuro during its attack, managed to unite the rest of the demons that felt the need to break their contract with the Dark Order turned their attention to the Tulan Kingdom. Right now he’s established his own rule, enslaving the population and is most likely planning further conquest assuming he can keep his own troops from fighting each other long enough. Trelik the “other necromancer” has been rampaging across the countryside in a vain attempt to establish some sort of dominion of his own, but so far without any real allies he’s yet to be successful. His actions have still kept the Grand Alliance and other governments busy however. As for you, you’ve already managed to hold off one Grand Alliance attack quite successfully due to your preparations. The first thing you did was command all the surviving Dark Order members to become necromancers. Some of them the more die hard demonologists hated this idea, so you gave them the option of taking their chances with Velzix or alone against the Grand Alliance. After being presented with these two undesirable prospects, they grumbled, but the rest soon fell in line. Catalina was mainly responsible for training them, given that she’s the only other “true” necromancer in the city. You’re glad of that as it saved you from having to do everything. Your relationship with Catalina’s has improved mainly because you’ve proven yourself to be a competent leader that has managed to hold on to the city despite the odds. She still acts like she’s not interested in you, but you catch an extended glance from her every now and then. Oh yeah she’s definitely warming up to you. You haven’t heard anything from your family, you can only wonder what they think of all this and in some ways you don’t want to know. While things are somewhat quiet now, that’s not going to last. The Grand Alliance will keep attacking and who knows how long they’ll be distracted with Velzix and Trelik? They may very well overwhelm you in time, if the other threats are taken care of. You can’t just sit in your throne room and prepare for the next attack; you’ll need to be proactive about this threat. This of course this means conquest. Your standing army is stronger than ever right now and your powers in necromancy have grown considerably with the last year. You’re confident that you could probably take over a small kingdom. Gaining more territory that your enemy can’t use is usually a good way of making things harder for them. > The path of conquest calls Ah the time honored the tradition of all true rulers… “Catalina, I think it’s time we expand.” You say walking into her study. “Oh you do, do you? Well, there’s no shortage of places. Got somewhere in particular in mind?” “A few places, but this is sort of why I’m talking to you, I figure it’ll be good to have your input.” “Wow, laying it on thick today aren’t we?” “Yeah…do you like it?” “Maybe.” She says with a faint smile. “Good, but seriously I’m thinking we should attack the Brot Kingdom. It’s close, and its military is weak.” “Normally I’d agree, but I think you’re forgetting that our former classmate Trelik has currently established a presence there.” “Yeah, I was thinking we could get rid of him at the same time.” “Easier said than done I hope you realize. I know he’s a treacherous asshole that’s been run ragged by the Grand Alliance, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less formidable. Not to mention we’ll still have the Brot military to handle and hopefully the Grand Alliance doesn’t show up in the area. Speaking of which, Trelik’s pitiful endeavors have been keeping them busy. Get rid of him and they’ll pay more attention to us.” “Alright then, where do you think we should attack?” “Here.” Catalina points to a rather barren area known as the Drozz Wasteland which contains barbaric orc tribes, though ogres, goblins and similar “uncivilized” races dwell there as well. “What the hell are we supposed to do with that?” “Do you realize how many soldiers we can get in that area? The tribes in there are disorganized and unlikely to give us a meaningful fight. We can suffer minimal losses and gain more than what we started out with. Then we can use those gains against more formidable foes!” “Cat baby, THAT is not going to be easy. First of all I know something of orcs and the green bastards don’t know when to fucking quit most of the time. Even with the fear of an undead army, I guarantee they’ll still fight. Same thing with the ogres, trolls, minotaurs and GIANTS that live in that area! Giants, Catalina. Fucking giants. Not to mention those tribes have the full advantage of the knowledge of the terrain.” “What difference does that make? It’s not like our army needs to eat or even sleep! Those tribes are fighting each other most of the time too. By the time we’ve slaughtered half of those mongrel tribes, it’s still unlikely that the rest will unite against us in any meaningful way. You said giants live there and perhaps that will be a challenge, but think about it, we could RAISE those same giants to use against our enemies in the future!” While the idea of raising undead giants is appealing, you still have reservations about attacking the area. You have a big decision to make. > You attack the Brot Kingdom As much as raising undead colossuses would be cool, you decide that taking over the Brot Kingdom will be easier and you’ll be able to take out Trelik at the same time. “I think I’ll go with my plan of attacking the Brot Kingdom.” “You just want to be all macho and kill Trelik.” “Maybe…does it turn you on?” “Ha ha. Perhaps if you’re successful. Are you going to do this personally?” “Of course, I don’t think any of the other necromancers can take on Trelik by themselves, and I’d rather have you here looking after things.” “Really? You’re trusting me to run Aftermath?” “Yeah, now I want you to keep a good run of things here, and if the Grand Alliance attacks I want to know immediately, so I can get here!” “Okay, but I doubt if that’ll happen. I’d be more concerned with them attacking you when you’re at the Brot Kingdom.” “I’ll be fine, okay I’m off.” “Good luck!” she says and quickly kisses you on the cheek before you leave. You stare at her for a moment in shock and she stares back. “What?” she asks as if nothing happened. “Nothing, but we’ll discuss THAT later when I return.” You say. “Maybe. If you’re good and return victorious.” “I don’t think I’ll be good, but I will be returning victorious.” You decide to take a couple of extra necromancers with you for support as you march your undead horde towards the Brot Kingdom. By the time you get there you can see the destruction that Trelik has wrought. It’s obvious where he’s been. Some corpses linger around the razed towns he’s obviously been through, but you immediately bring them under your control. It’s apparent that Trelik hasn’t focused on fortifying his holdings too much and he probably wasn’t expecting you to arrive at all. Given his weakened state, you wonder if you should bother attacking Trelik immediately. Perhaps you should take out the remaining Brot military just to get them out of the way first seeing as they might be more of a threat. > You attack Trelik Your thirst to get rid of one of your rivals overcomes you and he is closer, so you continue your march towards where he’s located, it doesn’t take long as you just follow the heavier population of undead wandering around. You continue to easily take control of his unsupervised troops. At last you reach the heart of his domain, where you are less able to take control of his undead and you’re forced to destroy them. You catch sight of each other during the battle. “You! You’re the cause of my current problems! It should’ve been me to take Nuro! That’s all gonna change today though! You were a fool to come here, you should’ve stayed behind your safe walls!” While Trelik is ranting at you, you choose to take a more active approach and blast him with a beam of negative energy. He falls and temporarily loses control of his undead. You take advantage of it and enforce your own will over them. Trelik’s position isn’t good considering he’s surrounded. “NO! Don’t follow him, follow me! You’re supposed to follow me! NOOOOO!” are his last words before he’s butchered by his once obedient corpses. “All too easy, now let’s finish off the Brot military and take over this place completely.” You remark. Taking Trelik’s remaining army you march upon the heart of the Brot Kingdom. The place is better defended than you thought, but your numbers are overwhelming and you don’t have to worry about Trelik being at your back. You conquer the Brot Kingdom within a period of a few days. A Grand Alliance army attempts to retake your conquests within the week, but you’ve fortified your position by then and successfully defeat them. You leave a few of your most competent necromancers in charge and return to Aftermath in triumph. Catalina meets you. “So, what’s the update?” “I killed Trelik, I conquered the Brot Kingdom, then I kicked the Grand Alliance’s asses.” You say putting your arm around her. She’s not resisting anymore. “Hmm, sounds like you were very victorious. So now what?” “Now what? You and me in the bedroom, that’s what!” You and Catalina at last end this little dance and consummate your relationship. And just think all it took was destruction and killing on a grand scale! Four years pass… It’s been five years since you took control of Aftermath and you’ve made progress. Though not much. Many changes have certainly have come about. Your territory now encompasses a little more than just Aftermath, but besides the former Brot Kingdom, your other holdings are minor towns that dot the landscape. You call your region the Dead Dominion. The population consists mainly of the dead, with necromancers typically being the only living beings, though there are pockets of living that have pledged their loyalty to you in exchange for mercy. You have granted it. You and Catalina are now truly King and Queen of the dead. Velzix has benefited a little from your success; he’s managed to hold on to his own realm, but has failed to expand. While he’s stilling having problems of his own, rumors are that he’s attempting to rip open a portal of the largest size to unleash all of the horrors the infernal plane has to offer. The Grand Alliance is attempting to handle the pair of you, but has only succeeded in fighting to a stalemate. Rumors are the Zalan Empire is attempting to take full control over the Grand Alliance in order to pursue a more extreme course of action. You have not heard anything from you family. You know your Dad’s mercenary company has been fighting in the outskirts of Velzix’s realm. Your sister has become a respected and successful Grand Alliance captain. She’s managed to hold back the tide of your dead horde from gaining anymore ground for a couple years now. As for your Mom, who knows? You’d prefer not to know what she thinks of you. You aren’t making anymore progress. You’ve expanded as much as you’re able without making yourself vulnerable. You know you’re going to have to do something soon, but allying with Velzix isn’t an option. Making peace with the Grand Alliance isn’t either. The Vampire Clans have unsuccessfully sent assassins after you, but they have all failed. However one night you are visited by another vampire who you almost kill before he begs and insists that he has a message for you from the Clans. He states that they are willing to talk to you. He says he can take you to their secret fortress. That is the only area where Lord Rostov will agree for any types of negotiations to take place. At this point you’re open to the possibility of peace talks if it’ll reduce the number of enemies you have, though Catalina is wary of this. > You kill the messenger Catalina’s right, you can’t take the chance of trusting these bloodsucking bastards. If they get you in their fortress, that’s going to be it for you. “I regret to inform you, but your trip here has been wasted and so has you existence.” You say as Catalina sets him ablaze with a fireball and you cause his heart to explode. “Wow, that was oddly familiar.” You reply and then order the remains to be cleaned up before going about your business again. Indeed it was very familiar since you were witness to Mr. Demar and Felsa doing a similar thing to delegate Yolev five years ago. And much like those two, you’ve set yourself on a course that will end badly like it did for them. Five years pass… It’s been ten years since you took control of Aftermath and now it looks like that’s all finally coming to an end. Velzix never quite managed to succeed in his plan to open up the portal, and was struck down by your Dad’s mercenary company of all things. Your Dad died during the battle and he was declared a hero who sacrificed all in the cause of good. A statue of him now stands in the Zalan Empire’s capital. Funny how mad men can be made into heroes so easily With no other enemies the Grand Alliance turns its full attention to you and they’re relentless with your sister leading them. She manages to take back everything you ever conquered until at last she’s at the gates of Aftermath itself. You defend her attacks many times and you only grow weaker each passing day. However, it is not your sister that kills you. It is by another group of vampire assassins who once again slip in under the cover of night. You’re no longer able to fight them effectively due to all the energy you’ve been expending fighting your sister’s army outside. Catalina is dispatched first when she attempts help you, when you see her fall; you gain a surge of adrenaline and manage to kill one of the assassins. You wound another severely, but ultimately they strike you down and only a bloody mess is left for your sister to find when she finally breaks down the gates of Aftermath.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your thirst to get rid of one of your rivals overcomes you and he is closer, so you continue your march towards where he’s located, it doesn’t take long as you just follow the heavier population of undead wandering around. You continue to easily take control of his unsupervised troops. At last you reach the heart of his domain, where you are less able to take control of his undead and you’re forced to destroy them. You catch sight of each other during the battle. “You! You’re the cause of my current problems! It should’ve been me to take Nuro! That’s all gonna change today though! You were a fool to come here, you should’ve stayed behind your safe walls!” While Trelik is ranting at you, you choose to take a more active approach and blast him with a beam of negative energy. He falls and temporarily loses control of his undead. You take advantage of it and enforce your own will over them. Trelik’s position isn’t good considering he’s surrounded. “NO! Don’t follow him, follow me! You’re supposed to follow me! NOOOOO!” are his last words before he’s butchered by his once obedient corpses. “All too easy, now let’s finish off the Brot military and take over this place completely.” You remark. Taking Trelik’s remaining army you march upon the heart of the Brot Kingdom. The place is better defended than you thought, but your numbers are overwhelming and you don’t have to worry about Trelik being at your back. You conquer the Brot Kingdom within a period of a few days. A Grand Alliance army attempts to retake your conquests within the week, but you’ve fortified your position by then and successfully defeat them. You leave a few of your most competent necromancers in charge and return to Aftermath in triumph. Catalina meets you. “So, what’s the update?” “I killed Trelik, I conquered the Brot Kingdom, then I kicked the Grand Alliance’s asses.” You say putting your arm around her. She’s not resisting anymore. “Hmm, sounds like you were very victorious. So now what?” “Now what? You and me in the bedroom, that’s what!” You and Catalina at last end this little dance and consummate your relationship. And just think all it took was destruction and killing on a grand scale! Four years pass… It’s been five years since you took control of Aftermath and you’ve made progress. Though not much. Many changes have certainly have come about. Your territory now encompasses a little more than just Aftermath, but besides the former Brot Kingdom, your other holdings are minor towns that dot the landscape. You call your region the Dead Dominion. The population consists mainly of the dead, with necromancers typically being the only living beings, though there are pockets of living that have pledged their loyalty to you in exchange for mercy. You have granted it. You and Catalina are now truly King and Queen of the dead. Velzix has benefited a little from your success; he’s managed to hold on to his own realm, but has failed to expand. While he’s stilling having problems of his own, rumors are that he’s attempting to rip open a portal of the largest size to unleash all of the horrors the infernal plane has to offer. The Grand Alliance is attempting to handle the pair of you, but has only succeeded in fighting to a stalemate. Rumors are the Zalan Empire is attempting to take full control over the Grand Alliance in order to pursue a more extreme course of action. You have not heard anything from you family. You know your Dad’s mercenary company has been fighting in the outskirts of Velzix’s realm. Your sister has become a respected and successful Grand Alliance captain. She’s managed to hold back the tide of your dead horde from gaining anymore ground for a couple years now. As for your Mom, who knows? You’d prefer not to know what she thinks of you. You aren’t making anymore progress. You’ve expanded as much as you’re able without making yourself vulnerable. You know you’re going to have to do something soon, but allying with Velzix isn’t an option. Making peace with the Grand Alliance isn’t either. The Vampire Clans have unsuccessfully sent assassins after you, but they have all failed. However one night you are visited by another vampire who you almost kill before he begs and insists that he has a message for you from the Clans. He states that they are willing to talk to you. He says he can take you to their secret fortress. That is the only area where Lord Rostov will agree for any types of negotiations to take place. At this point you’re open to the possibility of peace talks if it’ll reduce the number of enemies you have, though Catalina is wary of this. > You talk to the Clans You figure that this is worth the chance, so you agree, but Catalina is staying behind. The messenger says that only you were invited anyway so that is not a problem. “Are you sure about this?” Catalina asks you. “Not really, but I’m not too sure about our future…I mean I know we’re doing okay now, but I get the impression that it’s only a matter of time. If dealing with Lord Rostov can help us, then I gotta try.” Catalina nods and kisses and hugs you goodbye before you and this messenger go teleporting off to the secret Vampire Clan fortress. He pulls out a black cube, presses a button and you both are immediately in the throne room of Lord Rostov. You still have no idea where this place is, but you’re surrounded by several vampires. Some of which have a regal look about them as opposed to the hideous appearance that most of them have nowadays. Lord Rostov gets up from his seat and greets you. “Ah, the necromancer. You’ve been causing quite a bit of trouble I hear. The Grand Alliance has had many problems with you, though those should be coming to an end soon I should think.” “Because you’re gonna kill me?” you ask, expecting trouble. “Hmm, that’s a rather blunt assumption, but I suppose a possible one. However, that need not be the case. That is why I have called you to talk.” “Okay I’m listening.” “Yes. What I’m offering is for you to give up your mad plan of murdering the world in exchange for immortality.” “…what?” “I’m saying if you give up your plan, you may stay here and become one of us.” You don’t really know what to say at this point. “…I don’t know what to say…I mean why would you offer this?” “Ah, a valid question. Well, as you know we’ve been monitoring you. So far you’ve outlasted far longer than you should have, showing that you are a survivor and a man who can thrive under pressure. I personally respect such traits. You would be a fine addition to the clans and quite frankly I wouldn’t mind having someone new to talk to. Trust me these lot haven’t said anything interesting for a LONG time.” Lord Rostov says dismissively to his silent court. “While your offer has some appeal, I still don’t know. I mean…” ”Why the hesitation? You are a necromancer, is not immortality not your ultimate goal? And this is the only way you’re going to achieve it my friend, for even if I choose to let you go, you will not last too much longer out there. As I speak the Grand Alliance will be pursuing a more efficient way to deal with you and that ignorant demon Velzix. I’m sure you’re aware that we do have influence over the mortal world and we are setting things up to defend the status quo. A demonic playground and a graveyard are unacceptable outcomes.” “I understand that, but you keep saying that I’m going to murder the world. I don’t necessarily have any desire to do that. I mean I’ve been just trying to defend myself for the most part. If I could live in peace with the civilized nations I wouldn’t be attempting to take anymore territory. In fact I haven’t for a long time. I mean you said you had influence. Couldn’t we just come to an understanding and you pull some strings to get the Grand Alliance to leave me alone?” Lord Rostov laughs at your proposal. “Even I cannot do that, even if I chose to do so! The living will always distrust and be repulsed by the undead. They would continue to attack even if we used our influence to cause a change in attitudes and policies. And I would not do so anyway. You are too much of a danger to the world. You claim you do not wish to turn the world into a mass grave, and you may even believe it. But how long really will you be able to contain your nature? You won’t. Just as we cannot contain our nature either.” “Well if you feel I’m so dangerous, why keep me alive at all, let alone turn me into a vampire?” “Because as I have said, you are worthy of such a gift and you would be someone new to talk to. Not to mention if you haven’t noticed, our numbers are no longer what they once were, and they’re even less due to our failed assassination attempts. It would be nice to get them back up again. And if you were to become one of us, your need to kill the entire world would lose its appeal. After all you cannot kill your food supply without killing yourself.” “I guess that’s true.” “Yes. And just think, you’ll still achieve immortality and in a much better form. Do you really want to be a rotting skeletal lich? Also, you can still control the world; we shall always have our hand in guiding the ways of our livestock. That is why we need more of us, so we can once again gain total control over them. You are being offered a better deal than you could ever achieve yourself. What will your answer be?” Lord Rostov has basically given you an “out” as it were. A rather generous one, almost too generous. You can’t help but think he doesn’t have an angle. Still, he’s making a lot of sense. “…Catalina…may she join me?” “Ah yes. Your mate. I suppose so. Assuming she wishes to join you. So I take it, you are accepting my offer?” “Yes, yes I am.” “Excellent. You will see that this was the best choice, now you may feel a slight sting…” Before you know what Lord Rostov means, you are suddenly grabbed from behind and bitten in the neck by a vampiress. You feel your blood drain from your body and soon your life fades completely. Your heart ceases beating and then you die. A few hours pass and you rise again. You feel quite different, but definitely stronger. Quicker too. In fact you feel better than ever. Lord Rostov stands by to watch you get up. “Welcome to your new life, now you may go attempt to convince your mate, but be quick about it, I will have further orders for you.” You nod and head back to Aftermath where you meet Catalina in your new superior form. She can’t believe it. “YOU WENT AHEAD AND DID THIS WITHOUT ME?” “No! I was thinking about us the whole time! I mean why do you think I came back for you? We can have it all and we can have it together!” “Yeah, and I’m sure Lord Rostov has offered this gift out of the goodness his rotten heart. Didn’t you think he has a hidden agenda?” “I’m sure he does, but look we can’t fight them in our current state. If we go this route we can possibly be in a position where we can defend ourselves better. We won’t have to worry about the Grand Alliance or any of that anymore.” “Yeah, just a lot of shifty vampires probably all trying to plot against each other.” “True, but if we’re together we can handle it. Come with me Catalina, I want us to be together in this.” Catalina thinks silently about it for a moment, and then allows you to embrace her where you begin to drain her blood. You feel completely invigorated by doing this, possibly because you have such a strong bond with her. She soon dies and after you wait a few hours, she rises again. She now will remain forever beautiful. “Are you ready my dear?” “Yes.” You and Catalina return to vampire fortress via black cube and begin your new lives. and things change thanks to the influence of the vampire clans. Influence you played a part in. Velzix never quite managed to succeed in his plan to open up the portal, and was struck down by your Dad’s mercenary company of all things. Your Dad died during the battle and he was declared a hero who sacrificed all in the cause of good. A statue of him now stands in the Zalan Empire’s capital. Funny how mad men can be made into heroes so easily. Lord Rostov asked if you wanted to have the statue taken down, but you declined. It made your Mom happy. Your own dominion soon fell into disarray without your guidance. Many necromancers attempted to take your place, but ultimately the Grand Alliance army lead by your sister crushed them all and retook everything that once was under your control. The status quo is soon restored and the puppet master weavings of the Vampire Clans continue. You and Catalina will have other journeys during this new life, but your journey as a necromancer is over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as raising undead colossuses would be cool, you decide that taking over the Brot Kingdom will be easier and you’ll be able to take out Trelik at the same time. “I think I’ll go with my plan of attacking the Brot Kingdom.” “You just want to be all macho and kill Trelik.” “Maybe…does it turn you on?” “Ha ha. Perhaps if you’re successful. Are you going to do this personally?” “Of course, I don’t think any of the other necromancers can take on Trelik by themselves, and I’d rather have you here looking after things.” “Really? You’re trusting me to run Aftermath?” “Yeah, now I want you to keep a good run of things here, and if the Grand Alliance attacks I want to know immediately, so I can get here!” “Okay, but I doubt if that’ll happen. I’d be more concerned with them attacking you when you’re at the Brot Kingdom.” “I’ll be fine, okay I’m off.” “Good luck!” she says and quickly kisses you on the cheek before you leave. You stare at her for a moment in shock and she stares back. “What?” she asks as if nothing happened. “Nothing, but we’ll discuss THAT later when I return.” You say. “Maybe. If you’re good and return victorious.” “I don’t think I’ll be good, but I will be returning victorious.” You decide to take a couple of extra necromancers with you for support as you march your undead horde towards the Brot Kingdom. By the time you get there you can see the destruction that Trelik has wrought. It’s obvious where he’s been. Some corpses linger around the razed towns he’s obviously been through, but you immediately bring them under your control. It’s apparent that Trelik hasn’t focused on fortifying his holdings too much and he probably wasn’t expecting you to arrive at all. Given his weakened state, you wonder if you should bother attacking Trelik immediately. Perhaps you should take out the remaining Brot military just to get them out of the way first seeing as they might be more of a threat. > You attack the Brot military You march your horde toward the heart of the Brot Kingdom where Trelik hasn’t been yet. You find that it’s a little better defended than you thought. They have mustered up all their remaining hero types to lend their hand to the defense. It takes a week before you manage to even reduce the Brot Kingdom to shambles and knocking on their capital gates. This probably would’ve went quicker however, had Trelik not been launching his own attacks at your back and stealing some of your troops. Another week passes and you finally complete your attack on the Brot Kingdom. You manage to drive off Trelik, but fail to kill him. You also end up having to fend off a Grand Alliance attack which further weakens you. Your resources are stretched out and you’ve lost many of your necromancers to help support a large army. It’s draining much of your energy just to maintain your defenses. You send a message to Catalina asking if there’s anyway to get reinforcements, but she replies that doing so would be unwise as the Grand Alliance has sent another army on the way to Aftermath. You decide to maintain a skeleton crew as it were in the Brot Kingdom and head back to Aftermath post haste. You arrive just in time to defend Aftermath, which you do successfully…barely. At this point you’re running on empty and you have to rest to recharge yourself. All of this has been a greater ordeal than you thought and it’s only going to get greater. Four years pass It’s been five years since you took Aftermath, and you’ve made little progress. In fact you sense the end is near and you’ll be happy about it because this has been a miserable time and you wonder what the hell you were thinking all those years ago when you pursued this path… When Velzix was finally defeated, the Grand Alliance was able to focus the full brunt of its attention towards you, leaving you in a perpetual state of being on the defensive. Never again were able to attempt another act of conquest and over the years you eventually lost the Brot Kingdom. Vampire assassins from the clans made multiple attempts on your life. You barely fought them off. The last attack left you horribly scarred; it was only due to Catalina’s sacrifice that you survived. You’ll miss her dedication to you and your time together which was the only good thing about any of this. You recently received a letter from your family. It’s been so long you’d almost forgotten you had one. It’s your Mom. She begs for you to give yourself up as she doesn’t want your sister to have to fight you in the next Grand Alliance attack, which apparently she’s leading. Good old Mom, she always did try to protect you from your sister. But not this time. You’re going to carry this through to the end. You finish up writing your letter back to Mom just as The Grand Alliance has broken down your gates. The cause of “good” has won. You wait for their final arrival in your throne room. You see your sister approach with her elite guards, she says nothing. Just a look of scorn on her face says it all. You stand up. “Let’s do it.” You say and unleash a blast of negative energy and summon ghostly soldiers to defend you. The fight is furious, but your sister has the cause of righteousness on her side. She eventually reaches you and stabs you through the heart. You look down and tell your sister one last thing. “…letter…on the desk…take it to Mom…tell her…I’m sorry…”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ah the time honored the tradition of all true rulers… “Catalina, I think it’s time we expand.” You say walking into her study. “Oh you do, do you? Well, there’s no shortage of places. Got somewhere in particular in mind?” “A few places, but this is sort of why I’m talking to you, I figure it’ll be good to have your input.” “Wow, laying it on thick today aren’t we?” “Yeah…do you like it?” “Maybe.” She says with a faint smile. “Good, but seriously I’m thinking we should attack the Brot Kingdom. It’s close, and its military is weak.” “Normally I’d agree, but I think you’re forgetting that our former classmate Trelik has currently established a presence there.” “Yeah, I was thinking we could get rid of him at the same time.” “Easier said than done I hope you realize. I know he’s a treacherous asshole that’s been run ragged by the Grand Alliance, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less formidable. Not to mention we’ll still have the Brot military to handle and hopefully the Grand Alliance doesn’t show up in the area. Speaking of which, Trelik’s pitiful endeavors have been keeping them busy. Get rid of him and they’ll pay more attention to us.” “Alright then, where do you think we should attack?” “Here.” Catalina points to a rather barren area known as the Drozz Wasteland which contains barbaric orc tribes, though ogres, goblins and similar “uncivilized” races dwell there as well. “What the hell are we supposed to do with that?” “Do you realize how many soldiers we can get in that area? The tribes in there are disorganized and unlikely to give us a meaningful fight. We can suffer minimal losses and gain more than what we started out with. Then we can use those gains against more formidable foes!” “Cat baby, THAT is not going to be easy. First of all I know something of orcs and the green bastards don’t know when to fucking quit most of the time. Even with the fear of an undead army, I guarantee they’ll still fight. Same thing with the ogres, trolls, minotaurs and GIANTS that live in that area! Giants, Catalina. Fucking giants. Not to mention those tribes have the full advantage of the knowledge of the terrain.” “What difference does that make? It’s not like our army needs to eat or even sleep! Those tribes are fighting each other most of the time too. By the time we’ve slaughtered half of those mongrel tribes, it’s still unlikely that the rest will unite against us in any meaningful way. You said giants live there and perhaps that will be a challenge, but think about it, we could RAISE those same giants to use against our enemies in the future!” While the idea of raising undead giants is appealing, you still have reservations about attacking the area. You have a big decision to make. > You attack the Drozz Tribes Catalina has a way of swaying you to her plan. (She does have experience in enchantment after all) She knew the whole raising undead giants thing would appeal to you! Of course you actually have to kill them first. “Alright Catalina, we’ll go with this plan, but I’m going to do it personally, so you’re in charge of things here for awhile.” “Really? You’re not only following my advice, but you’re also trusting me to run Aftermath?” “Yeah I’m whipped, now I want you to keep a good run of things here, and if the Grand Alliance attacks I want to know immediately, so I can get here!” “Okay, but I doubt if that’ll happen. They’ve been preoccupied with Velzix lately.” “Hmm, y’know we’ll have to do something about him too later, but first I guess I got some barbarians to kill.” “Good luck!” she says and quickly kisses you on the cheek before you leave. You stare at her for a moment in shock and she stares back. “What?” she asks as if nothing happened. “Nothing, but we’ll discuss THAT later when I return.” You say. “Maybe. If you’re good and return victorious.” “I don’t think I’ll be good, but I will be returning victorious.” You decide that given the long stretches of barren plains of where you’re heading. Incorporeal undead shall work better. You need speed, and the tribes will probably have little in the way of magic to combat you. You also take a couple extra necromancers with you along with your army of ghosts, spirits and wraiths. You make pretty good time and suffer no attacks on the way, probably because of the rather low profile and somewhat hard to see aspects of your army. When you arrive in the Drozz region, it’s night, but still as desolate as you remember it. Your Dad took you here a couple times during his attempts to “toughen” you up when he still thought he could turn you into a warrior. You hated it then, and you hate the place now. After casting a sense life spell, you start to head towards the direction of the nearest tribe, but your uncanny connection with death lets you know that you’re being watched and not by the living… Suddenly from over a small hill top a group of misshapened creatures pop their heads up. After what looks to be chatter between the creatures, they lope in your direction. Ghouls. One of the filthier forms of undead. Typically they were created by vampires, who used to use them as tougher servants. (Basically mortals who weren’t “worthy” enough for the gift of vampirism) but that would mean that there’s a vampire in the area. You don’t have time to think too hard about it, you just react and dominate your will over the ghouls. For some reason they’re very resistant to you and you’re forced to destroy them. More ghouls appear however, and soon you’re surrounded. “Where the fuck are these things coming from?” one of your necros asks. “Stay calm. Don’t lose control…VAMPIRE! SHOW YOURSELF! If you’re going to assassinate me, I would’ve thought the clans were at least honorable enough to not rely on ghouls!” you shout. Your shouting is soon answered. The ghouls suddenly stop and a hideous figure appears on the same hilltop. He then walks towards you and your army and stops not to far from it. He’s fearless and shows no signs of being concerned of your presence. “Clans? Don’t speak to me of the clans! I was cast out long ago for my actions! Once I feasted upon the blood of royalty, with legions of mortals willing to die for me. Now I feast upon the carrion of barbarians with only ghouls as company.” “So you’re an outcast? I thought all you types of vampires degenerated into mindless beasts much like the ghouls.” “Hah! Do you not think this is degeneration enough? I can’t even make another vampire anymore. But you are quite correct. Most of us did. One thing keeps me going though and kept my mind sharp. Revenge. I vowed I would get revenge on the Clans somehow. Of course the reality is, I’ve had to hide in a hole in the ground while my ghouls scavenge the countless battlefields of this accursed place. I am the Ghoul King.” “Ghoul King eh? I’m very surprised nobody’s hunted you.” “I haven’t survived this long by being sloppy. The only ones who tend to be around here are barbarians and if any of them ever see us, it’s their last time. But the tribes tend to be an anti-social lot anyway, so it’s unlikely that any of them run to tell the civilized folks that there are ghouls and their king infesting the area. So what of you? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a necromancer…a long time…” “I’m attempting to supplement my army as it were. These tribes would make excellent additions. Especially the giants.” “I see. So you mean to take away my food source? Not to mention my OWN supply of followers. These ghouls don’t grow from trees you know!” This is an interesting situation. You didn’t expect this, but perhaps you can use it to your advantage. This “Ghoul King” is close enough to you to attack with your troops. Chances are, if you killed him, you could take his remaining horde of ghouls to help you destroy the tribes in the area. However, maybe you could use a little diplomacy. > You kill the Ghoul King Why mess around with a middle man, when you can control the ghouls yourself? You order your troops to attack, at which point the Ghoul King orders his ghouls to do likewise, as he attempts to slaughter his way through your army to get to you! “Little necromancer, did you really think you could intimidate me? I am still more than a match for a mere mortal!” he mocks as jumps and leaps towards you. Your troops have no noticeable effect on him. Their draining powers do nothing, though the scythes of the wraiths do some damage. You have to use non-necromantic magic against him and you cast a fireball into his chest. It’s enough to cause him to leap away from you and attempt to roll out the flame, but he kills two of your necromancers in the process. His ghouls are getting wiped out by your undead, but they’re coming like hordes of lemmings, you have to kill the Ghoul King now. “Blast the bloodsucker with fire!” you order your last remaining necromancers to do. Fortunately being ex-demonologists, their knowledge of fire magic is still quite strong. The Ghoul King attempts to leap out of the way, but the flame spells still hit him. He runs around burning and howling horribly. Soon the wraiths put a final end to the Ghoul King with their scythes. The rest of the ghouls seeing their King dead, begin to run away in multiple directions. You manage to easily dominate most of them and corral them into your fold. Not too bad, though losing a couple of necros wasn’t something you wanted. At least not so early. You press on with your quest to conquer the Drozz tribes. Weeks turn into months and your campaign there is going…mediocre. You did alright in the beginning, but after awhile the tribes began to unite in a way you didn’t think they would or at least you’d think it would take longer. While mostly low in magic, they had more shaman and witch doctor types than you expected as well. They also know to start targeting you and your other necromancers whenever possible, which has resulted in you being the only one left and supporting the entire undead army. Given how long you’ve been without rest, lack of other magical enhancers, the constant drain and the large number of undead you’re controlling, you could be over exerting yourself. Your time here hasn’t really been profitable. You’ve gained more troops, but you’ve lost necromancers and you still haven’t really conquered the area. The tribes have been simply moving and hiding around the area. You wonder if you should cut your losses… > You press on You’re determined to make Drozz a deadland and you’ll not have these barbarians defy you! You press on with your attack, now climbing into the more hilly areas of Drozz where most of the tribes have fled to. Things turn worse when they ambush you from higher positions. Witch Doctors use their primitive magic to whittle away your ghostly troops. You’re nearly smashed when hill giants begin throwing boulders at you. Those heavy rocks crush several of your ghouls. You’re so busy trying to get out of the way of the boulders, you don’t even see the archers on the other side of you. Their arrows strike down the remainder of your ghouls and hit you as well. You attempt to retreat, but they’ve blocked it off. There’s no escape. Your troops are at last destroyed and you’re on the ground dying from being shot full of arrows. A large orc war chieftain walks slowly over to you with a huge axe in hand. You have no more strength to fight. “Hur hur, little dead wizard. Da tribes have never tasted defeat and dey never will.” He grunts before bringing his axe down on your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Why mess around with a middle man, when you can control the ghouls yourself? You order your troops to attack, at which point the Ghoul King orders his ghouls to do likewise, as he attempts to slaughter his way through your army to get to you! “Little necromancer, did you really think you could intimidate me? I am still more than a match for a mere mortal!” he mocks as jumps and leaps towards you. Your troops have no noticeable effect on him. Their draining powers do nothing, though the scythes of the wraiths do some damage. You have to use non-necromantic magic against him and you cast a fireball into his chest. It’s enough to cause him to leap away from you and attempt to roll out the flame, but he kills two of your necromancers in the process. His ghouls are getting wiped out by your undead, but they’re coming like hordes of lemmings, you have to kill the Ghoul King now. “Blast the bloodsucker with fire!” you order your last remaining necromancers to do. Fortunately being ex-demonologists, their knowledge of fire magic is still quite strong. The Ghoul King attempts to leap out of the way, but the flame spells still hit him. He runs around burning and howling horribly. Soon the wraiths put a final end to the Ghoul King with their scythes. The rest of the ghouls seeing their King dead, begin to run away in multiple directions. You manage to easily dominate most of them and corral them into your fold. Not too bad, though losing a couple of necros wasn’t something you wanted. At least not so early. You press on with your quest to conquer the Drozz tribes. Weeks turn into months and your campaign there is going…mediocre. You did alright in the beginning, but after awhile the tribes began to unite in a way you didn’t think they would or at least you’d think it would take longer. While mostly low in magic, they had more shaman and witch doctor types than you expected as well. They also know to start targeting you and your other necromancers whenever possible, which has resulted in you being the only one left and supporting the entire undead army. Given how long you’ve been without rest, lack of other magical enhancers, the constant drain and the large number of undead you’re controlling, you could be over exerting yourself. Your time here hasn’t really been profitable. You’ve gained more troops, but you’ve lost necromancers and you still haven’t really conquered the area. The tribes have been simply moving and hiding around the area. You wonder if you should cut your losses… > You return to Aftermath A little dejected, you make your way back to Aftermath. Along the way, you come across Trelik who’s looking particularly pathetic. It looks like he’s got his ass handed to him once again by the Grand Alliance. He sees you and your army and runs towards you! You hold back from attacking as this should be interesting. “Please! Ya gotta help me! I’ve got no where to turn to! The Grand Alliance is unstoppable! They destroyed all of what I had accomplished in the Brot Kingdom! I hear they’re even starting to make progress against Velzix! All around me are hunters! I can’t rest! They’re all out to get me!” he rants while groveling on the ground. He’s badly scarred; he’s even missing a few fingers. You have no sympathy for this dickhead though, especially not after what you’ve been through. You’re going to enjoy this. “Pfft! Look at you. Useless. Why would I help a traitorous dog like you who obviously can’t handle pressure?” you say kicking him in the face. He whimpers and begs for his life. “Pah! You wouldn’t even make a good corpse! Ghouls, fulfill your hunger on this waste of flesh!” you shout as the ghouls eagerly follow your orders. Feeling a little better from hearing Trelik’s screams you continue on your way to Aftermath. When you get there, things are more or less how they were. Catalina is full of questions, questions that you’re really in no mood to answer. “So…what happened? No undead giants?” she asks. “No, it was a bad idea, and I never should’ve went there!” “…wait are you blaming ME for this?” “(Sigh) Me blame you? No of course not. Nope it was my own stupidity at work here for following your advice in the first place. Don’t worry, you’re off the hook.” “Y’know maybe it was a good plan and it was your own incompetence that lead to defeat, you ever think of that?” “Watch it Catalina…don’t fucking piss me off right now. The only reason why I’m in a tolerant mood is because I killed that dickhead Trelik on my way home. Damn that felt good.” “Yeah, well I hope you’re in the mood for a fight, because I hear the Grand Alliance is preparing another attack.” “I don’t give a fuck. Just let me know when they get here, and I’ll save this city again like I always do.” You say heading to your study. And so it happens, the Grand Alliance attacks and just like you said, you successfully defend against them. Four years pass… It’s been five years since you took Aftermath, and you’ve made little progress. In fact you sense the end is near and you’ll be happy about it because this has been a miserable time and you wonder what the hell you were thinking all those years ago when you pursued this path… When Velzix was finally defeated, the Grand Alliance was able to focus the full brunt of its attention towards you, leaving you in a perpetual state of being on the defensive. Never again were able to attempt another act of conquest and over the years you’ve gotten weaker in resources while your enemies have only gotten stronger. Catalina and you never got along really well after you came back from Drozz. She never saw you as the formidable leader she thought you were, and you blamed her for her idea to go to Drozz (Even though you said you didn’t blame her). The relationship became strained and one day in a particularly heated argument, you struck her down with a powerful blast of negative energy. She died instantly. You apologized to her before ultimately burning her body. Vampire assassins from the clans made multiple attempts on your life. You barely fought them off. The last attack left you with missing fingers. You remember laughing at the time since they were on the same hand that Trelik was missing his fingers all those years ago. You recently received a letter from your family. It’s been so long you’d almost forgotten you had one. It’s your Mom. She begs for you to give yourself up as she doesn’t want your sister to have to fight you in the next Grand Alliance attack, which apparently she’s leading. Good old Mom, she always did try to protect you from your sister. But not this time. You’re going to carry this through to the end. You finish up writing your letter back to Mom just as The Grand Alliance has broken down your gates. The cause of “good” has won. You wait for their final arrival in your throne room. You see your sister approach with her elite guards, she says nothing. Just a look of scorn on her face says it all. You stand up. “Let’s do it.” You say and unleash a blast of negative energy and summon ghostly soldiers to defend you. The fight is furious, but your sister has the cause of righteousness on her side. She eventually reaches you and stabs you through the heart. You look down and tell your sister one last thing. “…letter…on the desk…take it to Mom…tell her…I’m sorry…”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Catalina has a way of swaying you to her plan. (She does have experience in enchantment after all) She knew the whole raising undead giants thing would appeal to you! Of course you actually have to kill them first. “Alright Catalina, we’ll go with this plan, but I’m going to do it personally, so you’re in charge of things here for awhile.” “Really? You’re not only following my advice, but you’re also trusting me to run Aftermath?” “Yeah I’m whipped, now I want you to keep a good run of things here, and if the Grand Alliance attacks I want to know immediately, so I can get here!” “Okay, but I doubt if that’ll happen. They’ve been preoccupied with Velzix lately.” “Hmm, y’know we’ll have to do something about him too later, but first I guess I got some barbarians to kill.” “Good luck!” she says and quickly kisses you on the cheek before you leave. You stare at her for a moment in shock and she stares back. “What?” she asks as if nothing happened. “Nothing, but we’ll discuss THAT later when I return.” You say. “Maybe. If you’re good and return victorious.” “I don’t think I’ll be good, but I will be returning victorious.” You decide that given the long stretches of barren plains of where you’re heading. Incorporeal undead shall work better. You need speed, and the tribes will probably have little in the way of magic to combat you. You also take a couple extra necromancers with you along with your army of ghosts, spirits and wraiths. You make pretty good time and suffer no attacks on the way, probably because of the rather low profile and somewhat hard to see aspects of your army. When you arrive in the Drozz region, it’s night, but still as desolate as you remember it. Your Dad took you here a couple times during his attempts to “toughen” you up when he still thought he could turn you into a warrior. You hated it then, and you hate the place now. After casting a sense life spell, you start to head towards the direction of the nearest tribe, but your uncanny connection with death lets you know that you’re being watched and not by the living… Suddenly from over a small hill top a group of misshapened creatures pop their heads up. After what looks to be chatter between the creatures, they lope in your direction. Ghouls. One of the filthier forms of undead. Typically they were created by vampires, who used to use them as tougher servants. (Basically mortals who weren’t “worthy” enough for the gift of vampirism) but that would mean that there’s a vampire in the area. You don’t have time to think too hard about it, you just react and dominate your will over the ghouls. For some reason they’re very resistant to you and you’re forced to destroy them. More ghouls appear however, and soon you’re surrounded. “Where the fuck are these things coming from?” one of your necros asks. “Stay calm. Don’t lose control…VAMPIRE! SHOW YOURSELF! If you’re going to assassinate me, I would’ve thought the clans were at least honorable enough to not rely on ghouls!” you shout. Your shouting is soon answered. The ghouls suddenly stop and a hideous figure appears on the same hilltop. He then walks towards you and your army and stops not to far from it. He’s fearless and shows no signs of being concerned of your presence. “Clans? Don’t speak to me of the clans! I was cast out long ago for my actions! Once I feasted upon the blood of royalty, with legions of mortals willing to die for me. Now I feast upon the carrion of barbarians with only ghouls as company.” “So you’re an outcast? I thought all you types of vampires degenerated into mindless beasts much like the ghouls.” “Hah! Do you not think this is degeneration enough? I can’t even make another vampire anymore. But you are quite correct. Most of us did. One thing keeps me going though and kept my mind sharp. Revenge. I vowed I would get revenge on the Clans somehow. Of course the reality is, I’ve had to hide in a hole in the ground while my ghouls scavenge the countless battlefields of this accursed place. I am the Ghoul King.” “Ghoul King eh? I’m very surprised nobody’s hunted you.” “I haven’t survived this long by being sloppy. The only ones who tend to be around here are barbarians and if any of them ever see us, it’s their last time. But the tribes tend to be an anti-social lot anyway, so it’s unlikely that any of them run to tell the civilized folks that there are ghouls and their king infesting the area. So what of you? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a necromancer…a long time…” “I’m attempting to supplement my army as it were. These tribes would make excellent additions. Especially the giants.” “I see. So you mean to take away my food source? Not to mention my OWN supply of followers. These ghouls don’t grow from trees you know!” This is an interesting situation. You didn’t expect this, but perhaps you can use it to your advantage. This “Ghoul King” is close enough to you to attack with your troops. Chances are, if you killed him, you could take his remaining horde of ghouls to help you destroy the tribes in the area. However, maybe you could use a little diplomacy. > You talk with the Ghoul King You can’t say you’ve exactly been entirely enthusiastic about this plan to conquer these tribes. The reality is starting to set in that you’ll never be able to get rid of them all. At least not without a concentrated effort, which would take a lot more time and troops that you’re unwilling to commit at this point. But The Ghoul King could help. He most likely knows the lay of the land just as well as the tribes, and considering he lives here, he can dedicate as much time as he wants. “Very well Ghoul King I have no wish to take what is yours. I shall leave in peace if you’ll permit.” You say respectfully. “Hmm, I had not expected you to respond that way. Perhaps though you have yet another trick up your sleeve?” “No trick. But perhaps a proposal.” “Diplomacy? Are you serious? I have rarely ever encountered a necromancer ready to discuss anything so calmly before. You are a rare breed. Okay, what’s your proposal? I have to know just because you’ve managed to surprise me, twice today.” “My proposal is an alliance.” “An alliance? For what purpose? I imagine that you’re being hounded by the civilized world. Why would I bring such troubles on myself?” “Because I’m your best shot at revenge. You said you’ve wanted revenge on the Vampire Clans, well I’m not exactly on their good side either. Eventually I’m going to have to deal with them. Look at you, you said it yourself. You’ve been forced to hide out from the world in a hole in the ground. Wouldn’t you at least like that to change? Even if you die, at least you can say you tried! Changes ARE coming to this world, and this is your chance to be on the winning side.” The Ghoul King looks in the sky. His expression reminds you of delegate Yolev’s when Mr. Demar gave him a chance to join. You hope you have more success. “I have been told such promises before; a long time ago…this state that you see before you is what it got me. However, there’s no fool like an old one. What more can be done to me? I’ve lost all as it is, I can only gain. I’m listening more to your proposal, but let’s have some details. I won’t ally with someone that’s as foolish as me.” You quickly explain that the Ghoul King should attack the tribes like he’s been doing, but to just increase the frequency. All you ask is that he leave a portion of the dead for you (rather than eating them) to use as troops. You will leave one of your necromancers here as an emissary and transporter as it were. The Ghoul King finds this arrangement to be acceptable. He laughs when you say you would also like it if he managed to kill some giants for you to raise. He says he’ll see what he can do and as an act of goodwill he allows you to have a sizable amount of his ghouls. “I can always make more!” You return to Aftermath feeling a great sense of accomplishment. Catalina is a bit leery of the entire situation though. “How can you be sure of this? He’s a vampire! Last I heard they aren’t too happy with us right now!” Catalina says. “He’s an outcast from the clans. He’s been living like an animal for who knows how long. I’ve given him a sense of purpose again. He’ll help. Besides he’s better suited to take care of the tribes in Drozz. He’ll take all the risk and we’ll gain the benefit. I see no downside!” “How do you know he won’t just kill your emissary there and not do anything?” “It’s certainly possible, but he did give me some of his ghouls as an act of good faith.” “A bunch of mangy ghouls can’t make up for one necromancer!” “Considering I left Hessan with him, you could make the argument that they do! Relax! I know what I’m doing.” “I hope so, because I heard that the Grand Alliance is stepping up their military operations.” Catalina leaves you in a huff. What’s with this girl? One minute she’s expressing interest, the next she’s pissed at you. Oh well. You’re not worried about anything, you’re confident you made the right decision. A few months pass and you get a letter via bat from The Ghoul King. He tells you that he’s got something special for you. Something that Hessan can’t transport himself. You make your way back to Drozz, traveling invisibly for the most part, since last you heard, the Grand Alliance ousted Trelik from the Brot Kingdom and are currently stationed there, probably planning to attack you next. When you arrive, the Ghoul King meets you. “Well don’t say I haven’t held up my part of this alliance. Here are your giants. A whole tribe of them! Took a hell of a long time dragging them down here. You’ll have to forgive the bite marks, but my ghouls do get hungry every now and then.” You can’t believe your eyes. You expected one or two. Not a whole tribe! You aren’t even going to ask how he did it, you’re just happy he did. “Alright Mr. Necromancer, I wanna see you raise these big ass things! Your emissary has been going on for months about how powerful you are, so I wanna see this.” You begin to concentrate… Slowly one of the dead behemoths rises and stands ready to serve. You concentrate again and one by one each one stands up and fully obedient to you. It requires very little energy on your part surprisingly. You must be growing in power. “Well now, I guess you can walk the walk! Alright now you go have fun with those big boys. I have some barbarians to terrorize. It seems I’ve inadvertently united most of the tribes against me with this giant killing business.” “You need some help?” “Nah, I got it all under control. I was sick of hiding anyway. Thanks though. Especially for making me feel like a true vampire again rather than a running scavenger.” You tell Hessan to stay with the Ghoul King as you still need someone here in Drozz. One day you’ll have to construct some sort of portal between here and Aftermath, but that will have to be later. Right now you’ve got undead giants and you’re all prepared to use them right away. You remember The Grand Alliance is in the Brot Kingdom and tthat they’re probably still recovering from battling Trelik recently. You march with your undead giants to the Brot Kingdom. You have no back up, just you. You’re going to show them all what you’re capable of… Your arrival isn’t surprising since they could see you coming from quite a few miles away, but the utter fear you inspired was immense and there still wasn’t enough time for the Grand Alliance to get reinforcements. Your undead giants smash and destroy buildings. They crush knights under foot. The carnage is great. You supplement your attack by raising the recent dead to your cause. Graveyards are your reinforcements. You see the remnants of Grand Alliance flee. Let them flee. Let them speak of the terror and the death! The news of what you did travels fast, and Catalina runs to meet you when you arrive back in Aftermath. “What the hell did you think you were doing risking your life like that? You should’ve come back to Aftermath for more soldiers before taking on the Brot Kingdom AND the Grand Alliance all by yourself!” “Why? Were you worried about me?” you smile. “Well… um…no! But, you should’ve told me!” “I did tell you. I told you I had everything worked out and look…I did.” You say putting your arm around her. She’s not resisting anymore. “Hmmm, well I guess you did. So now what?” “Now what? You and me in the bedroom, that’s what!” You and Catalina at last end this little dance and consummate your relationship. And just think all it took was destroying an entire kingdom with some undead giants! Four years pass… It’s been five years since you took control of Aftermath and you’ve made progress. Many changes have certainly have come about. Your territory now encompasses far more than just Aftermath. You now control several former kingdoms. You call your region the Dead Dominion. The population consists mainly of the dead, with necromancers typically being the only living beings, though there are pockets of living that have pledged their loyalty to you in exchange for mercy. You have granted it. You and Catalina are now truly King and Queen of the dead. Velzix has benefited from your success, due to the excessive problems you’ve given the Grand Alliance; he’s expanded his own realm relatively unchecked. Minor conflict has come about between your respective domains, and it’s only a matter of time before all out war occurs. Rumors are that he’s attempting to rip open a portal of the largest size to unleash all of the horrors the infernal plane has to offer. The Grand Alliance is attempting to handle the pair of you, but has only succeeded in fighting to a stalemate. Rumors are the Zalan Empire is attempting to take full control over the Grand Alliance in order to pursue a more extreme course of action. You have not heard anything from you family. You know your Dad’s mercenary company has been fighting in the outskirts of Velzix’s realm. Your sister has become a respected and successful Grand Alliance captain. She’s managed to hold back the tide of your dead horde from gaining anymore ground for a couple years now. As for your Mom, who knows? You’d prefer not to know what she thinks of you. The Vampire Clans have unsuccessfully sent assassins after you, but they have all failed. The Ghoul King suggests that an attack should be made on them soon. He mentions he knows where their secret fortress is and now that he has the support he wishes to take his revenge. He has completely conquered Drozz and turned into a true Kingdom (The only one semi-independent from your Dead Dominion) no longer does he hide in a hole. As for Trelik, you have heard nothing. For all you know he may be dead. He disappeared soon after his defeat at Brot four years ago. But today is another day and with that new problems come. You have to decide which new direction you’re going to steer your Dominion. > You attack Velzix Sometimes it takes a “bad guy” to take out another bad guy, maybe even two… “Catalina I think it’s time to attack Velzix.” You say walking into her study. “Oh you do huh? Got a plan in mind of how to go about it? Because it’s not going to be easy.” “Well I figured we’d just go in there and chop his head off.” You laugh. “Ha ha. Sometimes you have a really strange sense of humor. You realize that the Grand Alliance has been trying to chop his head off for years and they haven’t been successful.” “Yeah, well they ain’t me. Besides I got an angle. My Dad’s mercenary company is over there right now. I can get help from him.” Catalina looks at you as if you’ve gone completely insane. “Your Dad? The one you’ve always complained about? The bastard that you say could barely stand you? The one I think is the reason you got into necromancy in the first place, to prove you could be more powerful than he could ever be?” “Uh…excuse me?” you say after hearing that last bit of psychoanalysis. “What makes you think he’ll help you?” “He might not, I dunno just how pissed he is at me, but I figure if there’s any chance he might, I’ll try it. He probably has good intelligence on the realm. Besides, he’s an opportunist first of all. If Velzix wins. We all lose. BUT if I win, well just maybe I’ll take sentimental mercy on the old man and the family.” “Would you?” Catalina asks. “With my Mom and sis? Sure.” You grin. “I dunno about this family stuff, sometimes I’m glad I was an orphan.” Catalina sighs. “But if you think it’s worth a shot, you should try it. It’s not like we have too much of an advantage over Velzix. I worry that we’ll expend too much power in an attempt to destroy him, leaving us open for a Grand Alliance attack.” “I’m really not worried about the Grand Alliance. They’re suffering from their own internal squabbles from what I’ve heard and if I do this the way I think it might go, we won’t need to waste one corpse on Velzix’s realm. Okay, as usual you’re going to be in charge of things while I’m gone.” You kiss Catalina goodbye and make your way to Velzix’s realm alone… Velzix’s realm is appropriately a wretched place. Sure there is death here, but none of its purity or beauty exists. Demons torment the mortal population with much delight. You get a few attempts to torment you and you teach them a fatal lesson. You stay invisible while you can though. Using a few ghostly scouts and a couple of minor divination spells (Thank the gods Catalina’s been around to help you with other types of magic!) you soon determine the exact location of your Dad. You don’t know what to expect, you haven’t seen him in years. When you approach the camp, you’re immediately met by guards. “HALT! Who the hell are you?” “I’m more powerful than you could ever imagine…tell your asshole of a Captain that his son is here.” The two guards’ eyes widen, they know about you and they run off almost immediately to tell your Dad. You wait patiently and sure enough your Dad comes from out of his tent with his lackeys hiding behind him. “Boy, you gotta a lot of balls showing up here before me. Didn’t think you had ‘em either. Figured you’d be hiding in some tower somewhere.” “Yeah, well sometimes you have to do things yourself.” “True. So, you here to try to kill me boy? That why you here? Gonna break yer Mom’s heart even more? Y’know she still cries over what you’ve become even after I’ve told her time and time again that you ain’t worth one of her fuckin’ tears?” You didn’t like hearing that… “Yeah well Mom’s always been the nice one, must be something like her wasting her love on a mean spirited abusive bastard that probably would’ve killed her AFTER he raped her if not for the powerful magic aura she exuded.” He didn’t like hearing that… “Bah! I don’t need to hear this shit! If yer gonna try an’ kill me, you best do it now boy!” your Dad shouts as he begins to draw his sword. > You kill Dad You can’t put up with this asshole anymore. You had to put up with him as a kid and as a teenager and even when you went away to college! Well no more! You’re a lot more powerful and you’re going to finally teach the old man a lesson. You unleash a death cloud upon your Dad and his company, most of them fall to their knees choking up blood before dying. Your Dad is made of a little stronger stuff and charges at you, but you blast him with a bolt of negative energy. He falls, struggling to breathe. “(Wheeze) Hope yer happy boy…you killed an old man, with some sissy magic tricks…ha ha…Mr. Big Fancy Nec…” “SHUT UP AND DIE!” you shout and cause his flesh to age at an accelerated rate and rot. You don’t stop until his skull becomes dust. You sit down beside the dust in exasperation. You allowed him to “get” to you. You didn’t want that to happen. Especially since you wanted his help to get to Velzix. Still you may be able to probe the minds of his dead soldiers and still go through with your plan of killing Velzix yourself. Or you could decide that doing this alone would be suicide and go back to Aftermath. > You continue with your plan You didn’t need your Dad to get where you are, you don’t need him to kill Velzix either. You’ll do it yourself, like you always have. You probe the minds of the dead to get your information. You scan them all to make sure you don’t miss anything. Excellent, they’ve all been within the inner reaches of Velzix’s realm. You know exactly where he dwells. You sneak and creep and lurk better than any dark elf assassin while on your way to Velzix’s fortress. When you arrive, you go through the secret way you saw in the minds of one of the soldiers. You can feel the malevolence emanating from all areas of this place. It doesn’t take long before you get into trouble. Demon and mortal patrols hunt you down. The mortal patrols you welcome since you can easily kill and then raise them. Still, you need to get to Velzix soon, before you’re completely overrun. Eventually you reach Velzix’s throne room. He’s already prepared for battle. “Ha ha! At last a real fight! I shall enjoy ripping you apart and feasting on your soul little necromancer!” he chortles and swings a huge whip at you. You summon up ghostly warriors to assist you, and Velzix responds in kind by opening up several portals where large amounts of demons come pouring out. While you’re powerful, you can’t fight Velzix’s seemingly endless reinforcement of demons. You land some good hits, but ultimately you’re overwhelmed. Velzix picks up your drained bloody body to mock you one last time. “Since you took the effort to come visit me personally, perhaps I’ll pay that little queen of yours a visit personally too. Show her what REAL power is!” Velzix then proceeds to make good on his promise and slowly rips your soul apart before ultimately sending you to oblivion.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t put up with this asshole anymore. You had to put up with him as a kid and as a teenager and even when you went away to college! Well no more! You’re a lot more powerful and you’re going to finally teach the old man a lesson. You unleash a death cloud upon your Dad and his company, most of them fall to their knees choking up blood before dying. Your Dad is made of a little stronger stuff and charges at you, but you blast him with a bolt of negative energy. He falls, struggling to breathe. “(Wheeze) Hope yer happy boy…you killed an old man, with some sissy magic tricks…ha ha…Mr. Big Fancy Nec…” “SHUT UP AND DIE!” you shout and cause his flesh to age at an accelerated rate and rot. You don’t stop until his skull becomes dust. You sit down beside the dust in exasperation. You allowed him to “get” to you. You didn’t want that to happen. Especially since you wanted his help to get to Velzix. Still you may be able to probe the minds of his dead soldiers and still go through with your plan of killing Velzix yourself. Or you could decide that doing this alone would be suicide and go back to Aftermath. > You head back to Aftermath You can’t go in and kill Velzix just by yourself. This wasn’t one of your best ideas, you decide you better head back before you attract anymore demon attacks. Catalina meets you when you get back and tells you that The Ghoul King has been iching to strike against the Vampire Clans and that he’s going to do it, with or without your direct help. You’re too tired from your recent ordeal to even argue or do anything about it. You tell her that he can do what he’s gotta do. If he wants your help, Hessan and whatever pitiful army he can muster up is his to command. You don’t care. You retire to your study where you reflect upon what will come next. Five years pass… It’s been ten years since you took control of Aftermath and now it looks like that’s all finally coming to an end. The Ghoul King’s assault upon the Vampire Clans was a failure, though it was damaging enough for them to never again bother you again. You have to move some necromancers into the Drozz region to take command there, which stretches you out a bit, since you didn’t need to worry about it so directly before, having the Ghoul King there and all. After years of fighting a three way stalemate, at last one side makes progress and unfortunately it’s Velzix. Without your Dad’s constant meddling and sabotaging, Velzix manages to permanently open up a large portal to his home plane. He declares all out war on the entire world determined to turn it into the same hell he once called home. The Grand Alliance attempts to stop him, but is soon crushed. You hear that your sister died defending the capital of the Zalan Empire during its last days. You can only presume your Mom suffered the same fate, seeing as she lived there as well. You hope that the pair of them have gone some place better With the last bastion of “good” out of the way, Velzix turns his attention towards you. You won’t go without a fight though. For every bit of land he takes, you make him pay for it in demon blood tenfold. It’s no use though, the hordes of hell are without end and while the dead are certainly just as numerous, you’re the only necromancer powerful enough to command epic armies of them and you are only one standing against hell itself. Aftermath is besieged and ultimately falls to demonic armies. Catalina is killed during the attack and you disintegrate her body before escaping through a portal to Drozz as you refuse to let it be desecrated by demon scum. You wage a guerilla war in Drozz for months, and you can’t help but realize you’ve become much like the Ghoul King; hiding in a hole while demons take over the world. For awhile you actually have some peace as the demons soon outnumber their “enemies” and begin to follow their natural instincts of in-fighting and you’re forgotten. When the next winter comes you’re caught out in a heavy blizzard while foraging for food. You’re not going to make it back to your hiding place. Exhausted, you fall in the snow thinking about the hell that the world has become and how you’re partially responsible. Eternal sleep is welcomed. You embrace the blessed death that you once held mastery over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Sometimes it takes a “bad guy” to take out another bad guy, maybe even two… “Catalina I think it’s time to attack Velzix.” You say walking into her study. “Oh you do huh? Got a plan in mind of how to go about it? Because it’s not going to be easy.” “Well I figured we’d just go in there and chop his head off.” You laugh. “Ha ha. Sometimes you have a really strange sense of humor. You realize that the Grand Alliance has been trying to chop his head off for years and they haven’t been successful.” “Yeah, well they ain’t me. Besides I got an angle. My Dad’s mercenary company is over there right now. I can get help from him.” Catalina looks at you as if you’ve gone completely insane. “Your Dad? The one you’ve always complained about? The bastard that you say could barely stand you? The one I think is the reason you got into necromancy in the first place, to prove you could be more powerful than he could ever be?” “Uh…excuse me?” you say after hearing that last bit of psychoanalysis. “What makes you think he’ll help you?” “He might not, I dunno just how pissed he is at me, but I figure if there’s any chance he might, I’ll try it. He probably has good intelligence on the realm. Besides, he’s an opportunist first of all. If Velzix wins. We all lose. BUT if I win, well just maybe I’ll take sentimental mercy on the old man and the family.” “Would you?” Catalina asks. “With my Mom and sis? Sure.” You grin. “I dunno about this family stuff, sometimes I’m glad I was an orphan.” Catalina sighs. “But if you think it’s worth a shot, you should try it. It’s not like we have too much of an advantage over Velzix. I worry that we’ll expend too much power in an attempt to destroy him, leaving us open for a Grand Alliance attack.” “I’m really not worried about the Grand Alliance. They’re suffering from their own internal squabbles from what I’ve heard and if I do this the way I think it might go, we won’t need to waste one corpse on Velzix’s realm. Okay, as usual you’re going to be in charge of things while I’m gone.” You kiss Catalina goodbye and make your way to Velzix’s realm alone… Velzix’s realm is appropriately a wretched place. Sure there is death here, but none of its purity or beauty exists. Demons torment the mortal population with much delight. You get a few attempts to torment you and you teach them a fatal lesson. You stay invisible while you can though. Using a few ghostly scouts and a couple of minor divination spells (Thank the gods Catalina’s been around to help you with other types of magic!) you soon determine the exact location of your Dad. You don’t know what to expect, you haven’t seen him in years. When you approach the camp, you’re immediately met by guards. “HALT! Who the hell are you?” “I’m more powerful than you could ever imagine…tell your asshole of a Captain that his son is here.” The two guards’ eyes widen, they know about you and they run off almost immediately to tell your Dad. You wait patiently and sure enough your Dad comes from out of his tent with his lackeys hiding behind him. “Boy, you gotta a lot of balls showing up here before me. Didn’t think you had ‘em either. Figured you’d be hiding in some tower somewhere.” “Yeah, well sometimes you have to do things yourself.” “True. So, you here to try to kill me boy? That why you here? Gonna break yer Mom’s heart even more? Y’know she still cries over what you’ve become even after I’ve told her time and time again that you ain’t worth one of her fuckin’ tears?” You didn’t like hearing that… “Yeah well Mom’s always been the nice one, must be something like her wasting her love on a mean spirited abusive bastard that probably would’ve killed her AFTER he raped her if not for the powerful magic aura she exuded.” He didn’t like hearing that… “Bah! I don’t need to hear this shit! If yer gonna try an’ kill me, you best do it now boy!” your Dad shouts as he begins to draw his sword. > You stay calm “If I was going to kill you, I’d barely need to lift a finger, but what I’m mainly here for is your help.” You say calmly That’s caught his attention. “What’s that boy? You want my help? Hanging around those corpses make you completely crazy?” “Not completely, but I know that you and your company has been fighting a guerilla war against Velzix. You’ve been a real pain in his demon ass from what I’ve heard.” “Hah! Got that right! I’ve currently been hired out perpetually by the Zalan Empire. My mission is to generally fuck things up for Velzix, even try to kill him if possible. But I can’t do that.” “Why not?” “Why not? Because if you haven’t noticed I’m a fuckin’ old man that only has a few desperate and insane men following him that’s why! I don’t have a Grand Alliance army behind me like your sister and I can’t just snap my fingers and bring my losses back to fucking life! SOME of us have to rely on pure skill!” “Sounds like you’re making excuses.” “Oh fuck you! Stupid ass kid, I don’t see you doing shit about Velzix, what’s the matter need more corpses to hide behind?” “Actually any corpses I hide behind will only be the ones I summon up during our assassination attempt.” “What are you getting at boy?” “I’m saying you get me close to Velzix, and I’ll kill him. In fact I’m very surprised the Grand Alliance hasn’t sent some hero types to try to kill him yet.” “Oh they have, they just haven’t been heroic enough. My little company has done more damage than any so called heroes. But supposin’ I WAS to help you, what’s in this for me?” “Oh you’ll be paid, have no fear of that. In fact you can even take credit for Velzix death, since I doubt you’d want anyone to know you were working with me. Now I’d imagine that would pay quite well wouldn’t it?” “Yeah, yeah it would…alright boy. We’ll do this, but after Velzix is dead, me and you end this father and son time got me?” “Wouldn’t have it any other way.” As your Dad proceeds to lead to where Velzix dwells, he explain the layout of it. He says they’ve gone in there before, but have never stayed too long. Just to sabotage stuff and get the fuck out. You proceed to have more interesting conversation along the way. “So why the hell hasn’t the Grand Alliance done more about Velzix? Why are they relying on some broken down ex-cuthroat?” you ask. “I told ya, they have sent hero types after Velzix before, but he’s defeated them every time. As for larger military concerns, I’m sure you’re aware that they happen, but it’s a question of balance. They can’t attack Velzix, like they probably would prefer since they know that YOU would take advantage of their weakened state! Not to mention the Grand Alliance finds you to be a bigger threat. The world was almost consumed once already by some megalomaniacal necromancer, they don’t want that to happen again. So little groups like mine fuck things up for Velzix, just enough to keep him occupied and doesn’t gain anymore ground.” “Actually I’m not a megalomaniac. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t have some desire to turn the world into a graveyard.” You say. “Oh well I guess all those kingdoms were just you being neighborly eh? What about that first attack on the Brot Kingdom? Those big ass undead giants? Hordes of undead troops slaughtering men, women and children?” “I did what I had to do to defend myself. War isn’t pretty. People die.” “True…but I still fail to see where yer NOT being a megalomaniac.” “I told you I’m defending my dominion! If the Grand Alliance would stop attacking me, I wouldn’t pursue anymore territory. I’d be happy to live in peace, side by side. Why do you think I want to get rid Velzix? I’m hoping after he’s gone that I can come to some agreement with the Grand Alliance! Because in the end it isn’t going to be good for anyone!” “Fancy words…but I question if that’s what you really want. I haven’t seen you in a long time, but within the short time I’ve talked with you now, even I can see a change in you. You have a lot of desire, somewhere within you, you want to control everything so there’s no possibility of anything ever hurting you. You’re actually good at something and you’re reveling in it. I know what that’s like. While you might have yer Mom’s magic, apparently you DID inherit some of my qualities, and those are qualities that are all kinds of bad…” “I’m nothing like you!” you exclaim. “Ha ha! Oh yer right about that. You’ll never be half the man I am. You can turn the entire world to a giant mass grave, but you ain’t never gonna be me.” Even now with all your power your Dad still somehow manages to make you feel small. You can’t let yourself get angry though, As much as you might like to just cause the bastard’s black heart to explode in his chest you can’t do that, at least not yet. You, your Dad and the remains of his company eventually arrive at Velzix’s fortress where you enter in a secret way. “Dumb ass demons, we’ve been using this entrance for like a year now and they still haven’t caught on!” your Dad remarks. You make good progress in the fortress and then… “There they are, just like Velzix said they would be!” a demon guard shouts. You look at your Dad. “Haven’t caught on yet huh?” “Quit yer bitchin’ and start doin that death magic thing!” You proceed to do just that as demon as well as mortal guards attempt to stop you. You welcome the mortal guards as you can raise them to help you in your “heroic quest”. “Hah, no lying down on the job anymore Cal!” your Dad laughs as you raise the last of his fallen company. By the time you reach Velzix’s inner sanctum, it’s just you and your Dad. You never thought in a million years you’d be fighting alongside your Dad. Velzix on the other hand has been expecting you. “Ah how good of you both to come. You’re the miserable little has been thug that’s been fucking up my realm with your guerilla warfare. And you’re the wannabe Lich Lord that’s been impeding my own plans of conquest.” “Wow, guess he got it in one.” You say. “Yeah, and I guess this would make him the pathetic ass demon lord that can’t even beat said has been and wannabe.” Your Dad adds. “Enough! The pair of you have sealed your doom today! I have lured you into my trap where today I shall take the father and the son and then…” You blast Velzix in the face with negative energy, causing him to grab his face and roar in pain. “Ha ha! Fucking melodramatic idiot!” your Dad laughs charging at Velzix with his sword You quickly decide on what to do next. > You summon up some ghostly warriors to help your Dad You need to keep Velzix as occupied as possible, before he starts opening up portals to summon in reinforcements because if he gets a chance to do that, you’re fucked. Using tremendous power you summon up revenants. Souls of the dead who harbor a desire for revenge against their killer and given how many Velzix has killed, you barely need to even to control them. They immediately go for the attack. “ASH! I’ll turn you ALL to ash!” Velzix claims, unleashing a blast of hellfire disintegrating one of the revenants. You have a hard time aiming, do to the constant movement of Velzix, but you manage to land in your own magic attacks. Your Dad is doing pretty well, though it’s obvious that he’s tired. He’s running on pure adrenaline right now. While Velzix might be too occupied to open portals, he’s still got his guards in the fortress. More of them arrive, but you take care of them and raise the mortal ones to attack their former master. Eventually Velzix manages to grab your Dad and proceeds to smash him into the stone floor several times before throwing him into a wall. The corpses and revenants continue to strike Velzix the entire time. He’s severely wounded himself, and attempts to open a portal while ignoring the pain. You cast greater blast of negative energy at Velzix hitting him in the eyes and blinding him. “NO! I cannot be defeated! Not like this!” he bellows in agony while falling to the floor You take your Dad’s sword which is lying nearby on the floor. “Nope, you’ll be defeated like this.” You say and with one good chop you sever Velzix’s head from his body. In a horribly comical display, Velzix’s body flails about wildly for a few minutes until its finally hacked to bits by the revenants. Some more of Velzix’s guard arrive and seeing their leader in pieces, they run off. You tell your revenants to hunt them down and fulfill their need for revenge. Just you and Dad now. He lies against the wall broken and bloody. He’s very near death. He’s hardly the imposing figure that instilled fear in you when you were little. “…fuck…I coulda had that demon bastard if I’d been younger.” He growls. “I’m sure you could’ve.” “Shit, I’m all fucked up…guess this is a good day for you. One rival dead and me soon to join him.” “Oddly, I don’t feel too much of anything right now. I probably would’ve taken joy in your death at one time, but not now. I’m not sure what that means though.” Your Dad just grunts at your answer, before saying one last thing. “Heh, you chopped that bastard’s head off. No magic tricks. Just visceral physical violence…you impressed me…” Your Dad dies with those last words. A violent end for a violent man. You wonder why he felt the need to praise you before he died though. Guilt? Regret? Genuine respect? Did he think that by giving you “validation” you might change your ways? Perhaps he felt responsible for your path in some way? Whatever the reason, you dismiss it all. You chose this path for yourself. Nobody else. Whatever you’ve done, or are going to do it’ll be because you chose to do it. “(Sigh) Can’t say it was a pleasure Dad, but I guess you were finally alright in the end.” You say and cast a small fireball spell to burn his body. You make your way back to Aftermath where Catalina meets you. Catalina asks you what happened exactly in Velzix’s realm and you tell her the truth. “It’s just like I said Cat baby, I went in there and chopped Velzix’s head off. And then my Dad died.” “Oh. Wow. Are you alright?” “Yeah, I guess.” “Okay, well I guess I should tell you, the Ghoul King has been itching to strike against the Vampire Clans and he says that he’s going to do it, with or without your direct help.” “Very well, I’ll go meet him. Might as well get rid of another enemy today.” Catalina stops you before you leave again. “Really, are you okay?” “You’re by my side. Of course I’m okay. I want you to start making arrangements to take over Velzix’s territory. When word gets out that he’s dead, the Grand Alliance will be all over it, So let’s get a head start before they do.” You say and kiss her goodbye. Soon you go meet the Ghoul King in at his “Kingdom” in the Drozz region. Other than the small castle he erected and the ghouls that now roam openly and freely, the area doesn’t look too much different. When you arrive, he gives a big pointy toothed smile while his hordes of his ghouls wait around. “Well now, I wasn’t sure if I’d see you. When I spoke to Catalina she mentioned you were having a big show down with Velzix! I trust that went well then, since you’re here.” “Yep, he’s dead.” “Ha ha! Excellent! I guess after this little foray, we’ll only have the Grand Alliance to worry about!” “I don’t think I’ll have to worry about them at all actually.” “You might be right…so are you ready to go? I’ve been lusting for this revenge for years, so if you don’t mind, I want to kill Lord Rostov myself.” “No problem GK, I’ll just be here as support. So where is this Vampire hideout anyway, you never did tell me. How long will it take us to get there?” “Oh I can get us there real quick. I still have the magic key to teleport there. I’ve enhanced its power to transport several of us to invade. As for its location, I’m sure you’re aware that it’s hidden by powerful magic, but its site is in the Deshun Mountains.” The Ghoul King explains while pulling out a small ebony cube “Hm, good location. Remote, treacherous terrain, nobody climbing up there. Let’s do it.” Before you know it, The Ghoul King presses a button on the cube and you and he materialize in the foyer of a large fortress. No ghouls with you though. “SHIT! This was supposed to transport all of us!” he shouts, before suddenly quieting his voice. “Yeah, well magic never works out like you want it to half the time. Let’s just get on with it. I’ve already killed a Demon lord today, I’m hardly worried about some decadent bloodsuckers…no offense.” “None taken…but here. Take this.” The Ghoul King hands you a brass ring with several small rubies embedded in it. “Wear it. It’s imbued with magic that will protect you from the gaze of Lord Rostov.” “What? I’m a fucking necromancer; I think I’m a little more strong willed than the average mortal. The stares of some vampire aren’t going to make me go all to mush.” “Maybe, but I still say you should wear it. Lord Rostov is very old and he is more powerful than the average vampire and can be tremendously influential. While you may also be powerful you are still mortal and all the weakness that entails…no offense.” “None taken.” > You wear the ring You figure it’s better to be safe than sorry so you slip the ring on your finger. Suddenly you feel an incredible paralysis overcome you. You fall to the floor in a weakened state. You can only groan as you see The Ghoul King hover over you. “I lost my status once for following one insane necromancer with dreams of murdering the world. Now I have gained it back by stopping another one. I did want revenge at one time…but as I said Lord Rostov is a very influential vampire. My lost status was more appealing than revenge or destroying the world. I regret nothing, but I do thank you. For without you, none of this would’ve been possible and I still would’ve been living like an animal in a hole. Thanks to you no more shall I have to be known as the Ghoul King.” The Ghoul King then whispers one last thing to you. “And my thanks will extend to giving you a quick death before Lord Rostov arrives.” The Ghoul King then with his powerful claws smashes your skull in while you lie helplessly on the floor.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need to keep Velzix as occupied as possible, before he starts opening up portals to summon in reinforcements because if he gets a chance to do that, you’re fucked. Using tremendous power you summon up revenants. Souls of the dead who harbor a desire for revenge against their killer and given how many Velzix has killed, you barely need to even to control them. They immediately go for the attack. “ASH! I’ll turn you ALL to ash!” Velzix claims, unleashing a blast of hellfire disintegrating one of the revenants. You have a hard time aiming, do to the constant movement of Velzix, but you manage to land in your own magic attacks. Your Dad is doing pretty well, though it’s obvious that he’s tired. He’s running on pure adrenaline right now. While Velzix might be too occupied to open portals, he’s still got his guards in the fortress. More of them arrive, but you take care of them and raise the mortal ones to attack their former master. Eventually Velzix manages to grab your Dad and proceeds to smash him into the stone floor several times before throwing him into a wall. The corpses and revenants continue to strike Velzix the entire time. He’s severely wounded himself, and attempts to open a portal while ignoring the pain. You cast greater blast of negative energy at Velzix hitting him in the eyes and blinding him. “NO! I cannot be defeated! Not like this!” he bellows in agony while falling to the floor You take your Dad’s sword which is lying nearby on the floor. “Nope, you’ll be defeated like this.” You say and with one good chop you sever Velzix’s head from his body. In a horribly comical display, Velzix’s body flails about wildly for a few minutes until its finally hacked to bits by the revenants. Some more of Velzix’s guard arrive and seeing their leader in pieces, they run off. You tell your revenants to hunt them down and fulfill their need for revenge. Just you and Dad now. He lies against the wall broken and bloody. He’s very near death. He’s hardly the imposing figure that instilled fear in you when you were little. “…fuck…I coulda had that demon bastard if I’d been younger.” He growls. “I’m sure you could’ve.” “Shit, I’m all fucked up…guess this is a good day for you. One rival dead and me soon to join him.” “Oddly, I don’t feel too much of anything right now. I probably would’ve taken joy in your death at one time, but not now. I’m not sure what that means though.” Your Dad just grunts at your answer, before saying one last thing. “Heh, you chopped that bastard’s head off. No magic tricks. Just visceral physical violence…you impressed me…” Your Dad dies with those last words. A violent end for a violent man. You wonder why he felt the need to praise you before he died though. Guilt? Regret? Genuine respect? Did he think that by giving you “validation” you might change your ways? Perhaps he felt responsible for your path in some way? Whatever the reason, you dismiss it all. You chose this path for yourself. Nobody else. Whatever you’ve done, or are going to do it’ll be because you chose to do it. “(Sigh) Can’t say it was a pleasure Dad, but I guess you were finally alright in the end.” You say and cast a small fireball spell to burn his body. You make your way back to Aftermath where Catalina meets you. Catalina asks you what happened exactly in Velzix’s realm and you tell her the truth. “It’s just like I said Cat baby, I went in there and chopped Velzix’s head off. And then my Dad died.” “Oh. Wow. Are you alright?” “Yeah, I guess.” “Okay, well I guess I should tell you, the Ghoul King has been itching to strike against the Vampire Clans and he says that he’s going to do it, with or without your direct help.” “Very well, I’ll go meet him. Might as well get rid of another enemy today.” Catalina stops you before you leave again. “Really, are you okay?” “You’re by my side. Of course I’m okay. I want you to start making arrangements to take over Velzix’s territory. When word gets out that he’s dead, the Grand Alliance will be all over it, So let’s get a head start before they do.” You say and kiss her goodbye. Soon you go meet the Ghoul King in at his “Kingdom” in the Drozz region. Other than the small castle he erected and the ghouls that now roam openly and freely, the area doesn’t look too much different. When you arrive, he gives a big pointy toothed smile while his hordes of his ghouls wait around. “Well now, I wasn’t sure if I’d see you. When I spoke to Catalina she mentioned you were having a big show down with Velzix! I trust that went well then, since you’re here.” “Yep, he’s dead.” “Ha ha! Excellent! I guess after this little foray, we’ll only have the Grand Alliance to worry about!” “I don’t think I’ll have to worry about them at all actually.” “You might be right…so are you ready to go? I’ve been lusting for this revenge for years, so if you don’t mind, I want to kill Lord Rostov myself.” “No problem GK, I’ll just be here as support. So where is this Vampire hideout anyway, you never did tell me. How long will it take us to get there?” “Oh I can get us there real quick. I still have the magic key to teleport there. I’ve enhanced its power to transport several of us to invade. As for its location, I’m sure you’re aware that it’s hidden by powerful magic, but its site is in the Deshun Mountains.” The Ghoul King explains while pulling out a small ebony cube “Hm, good location. Remote, treacherous terrain, nobody climbing up there. Let’s do it.” Before you know it, The Ghoul King presses a button on the cube and you and he materialize in the foyer of a large fortress. No ghouls with you though. “SHIT! This was supposed to transport all of us!” he shouts, before suddenly quieting his voice. “Yeah, well magic never works out like you want it to half the time. Let’s just get on with it. I’ve already killed a Demon lord today, I’m hardly worried about some decadent bloodsuckers…no offense.” “None taken…but here. Take this.” The Ghoul King hands you a brass ring with several small rubies embedded in it. “Wear it. It’s imbued with magic that will protect you from the gaze of Lord Rostov.” “What? I’m a fucking necromancer; I think I’m a little more strong willed than the average mortal. The stares of some vampire aren’t going to make me go all to mush.” “Maybe, but I still say you should wear it. Lord Rostov is very old and he is more powerful than the average vampire and can be tremendously influential. While you may also be powerful you are still mortal and all the weakness that entails…no offense.” “None taken.” > You do not wear the ring “Nah, I don’t need this ring, but thanks anyway GK. Come on let’s…” “I feel you really should wear it. I don’t want you suddenly turn against me during the fight!” “Won’t happen, trust me. Let’s go…” The Ghoul King is getting noticeably agitated. “Look! He’ll be coming soon just put the fucking ring on, before he gets here!” Now you’re getting agitated. “GK, you better just calm the fuck down. I don’t like being told what to do, unless it’s by Catalina in the bedroom. So…” “Damn you! We’ll do this the old fashioned way then!” he shouts and attacks! With one powerful blow he knocks you to the floor. You’re still shaking off the cobwebs by the time he’s ready to land a killing strike. He’s stopped by Lord Rostov however. “That will do Ghoul King. His mortal life is not for yours to take.” Rostov says calmly while entering the foyer with a small group of female vampires. “I told you to stop calling me that! I have delivered my end of the bargain! You promised me that my status would be restored!” “Yes, but you attempted to kill him, when I specifically told you I wanted him alive. You were not completely dedicated to your end of the deal. So while you may continue to stay in the glory of my presence, I think you’ll still remain the Ghoul King.” The Ghoul King looks like he’s about to argue, but instead he submits. “Yes, Lord Rostov.” “Ha ha ha ha. You sad sack of shit. Selling me out to be Lord Rostov’s bitch, some deal you made.” You say while getting back up. Lord Rostov now turns his attention towards you. He looks exactly like what you always heard vampires are supposed to look like. Regal, refined, confident and arrogant as all hell. “Do not judge the Ghoul King too harshly; his actions were based on survival. True he did long for revenge at one time, but when I came to him with this…arrangement, he jumped at the chance because in the end the Ghoul King has always chosen his own survival over anything else.” “Then he’s failed miserably in that endeavor because he won’t be surviving this.” “I fail to see how idle threats are going to help you right now. In fact this situation would be unnecessary if you hadn’t pursued this path. You only have yourself to blame. Causing chaos and destroying the natural order of things. Ending all life on this world is simply unacceptable.” “…(Sigh) Why is everyone assuming that? I’m PROTECTING myself! Look, I know you still have the puppet master strings going on in the mortal realm. Shit, you’re probably responsible for the Grand Alliance. I’d even be willing to live in peace with the civilized world if they’d stop attacking me!” “I once heard the same thing from another of you ilk long ago. We all did. It’s the reason why we’re in this state we are today. You’re growing more powerful with each death you bring. Whether you know it or not, you’re already addicted to the power. You’re addicted to death. Do you REALLY think you can stop yourself at this point? You won’t. You can’t deny your nature no more than we can deny ours. The Great Lich Lord didn’t stop, and neither will you. The status quo must be kept and for that to happen, you have to die.” With those words, Lord Rostov uses his supernatural speed before you can react and prompty breaks your neck. Your heart stops beating. Your lungs stop drawing breath. You fall to the floor dead. “Best to take care of these things quickly. Remember the lessons of poor Duke Tolov who…” While Lord Rostov is pontificating about his predecessor, your body undergoes a change. You body is regenerating. The bones in your neck have re-knitted. You open your eyes; your heart is still not beating. You draw no breath, yet you’re still alive. You feel more knowledgeable in the ways of magic and death in particular. You are the Great Lich Lord reborn…and you are pissed. You immediately get up and launch a fireball into Lord Rostov’s back. He howls in pain before you cause his heart to explode in his chest, followed by his brain. He falls uselessly on to the ground. His nights of existence are over. The other vampires in the immediate area sound an alarm, but you’re not worried. A few manage to attack you and land some deep blows, but you feel nothing but numbness. Then you strike back. You begin to dominate all of their minds. Your powers have grown to an extent that you’re able to directly control even intelligent undead like these. You don’t even want to dirty your hands with dealing with these miserable blood leeches. You cause them all to gruesomely attack one another, until you’re ultimately the last one standing in a fortress filled with dismembered vampires, well one still lives. He still struggles against your mind control, but he knows the end will soon come. He even welcomes it at this point. “Shouldn’t have done it GK. You had everything. Now only oblivion awaits you.” “I don’t care anymore. This world is going to end soon; I’d rather die before I see that happen. How will it feel when the world is finally under your utter command? What will you do when there is nothing left? Will you be able to be satisfied on just continued existence?” “I guess I’ll find out, because you won’t.” You cause the Ghoul King to rip his own heart out and bite into it before setting him and the rest of them on fire. With all the bloodsuckers dead you leave the burning fortress and transport yourself back to Aftermath. When you return Aftermath, Catalina sees your wounds and unnecessarily worries about you. “Baby, you’re wounded!” “Catalina, I’m fuckin’ dead.” You say sharply and enter your study. You retire to your study where you put your vampire ordeal out of your mind and reflect upon what will come next while you write a letter to your Mom and Sister about Dad. You figure they should know the truth even if nobody else will. Even in this new state of existence, you’re so tired… > You once again you enter a new stage of your journey Chapter 4: Even Death May Die Five years pass… It’s been ten years since you took control of Aftermath and many changes have come about. Without Velzix’s brutal leadership, his realm soon broke apart. Demon leaders fought amongst themselves and became easier to deal with for the Grand Alliance. Little by little territory was liberated. However you were not idle and you also took pieces of Velzix’s former territory. Due to all the problems caused by Velzix a new order was enacted by the Grand Alliance. No more chances are being taken and the civilized world has a zero tolerance policy on demons. Demons are to be killed on sight anywhere they are found. Even the so called “nice ones”. Any government found tolerating their presence will be found guilty of demonology and invaded. This lead to a few misguided liberal types claiming that it was infringing on certain rights, but considering the increasingly draconian Zalan Empire had pretty much taken complete control over the Grand Alliance at this point, they had final say in the matter and executed all such protestors. The Grand Alliance is now merely a name much like Vampire Clans. In reality, it’s the “Zalan Empire and its little friends that better do what it says Alliance”. Speaking of the Vampire Clans, since your total destruction of their last remaining enclave, their influence has completely left this world. You’ve noticed a reduced effectiveness in Grand Alliance strategy because of this despite that they’ve become more united in recent years. Except for the near mindless bestial ones that roam the countryside they’re effectively extinct. Still, you feel no need to show them mercy and bring them under your control. When one is found, you have it destroyed. The treachery of the Ghoul King has brought this genocide upon their “race.” Your letter to your family was never replied to, but you are aware it was received. You don’t know exactly how the truth was spun, or who exactly was involved. But you do know your Dad has a statue erected of him in the Zalan capital stating how he nobly gave his life fighting Velzix. Funny how mad men can be turned into heroes so easily. Your sister is a general of a Grand Alliance army now, which of course continues to attack you despite some of your attempts at coming to some sort of peace agreement. The fools won’t even listen to reason. There’s no way the Grand Alliance can win this war. You’ve only been growing in power and show no signs of stopping. Even with their stabilized internal struggles under the Zalan Empire’s iron fist they still won’t be able to defeat you. The world has gone mad and you’re the only one making sense anymore. They call you a villain and evil, but from what you’ve seen, you’re no different than any of the other leaders in power. You’re just better at it. Maybe you should turn the world into a giant graveyard. Everyone thinks of you as a monster anyway, you see no reason to disappoint… “Catalina, I think it’s time we finish this war once and for all.” You say walking into her study. “Oh you do, do you? Well, I figured that it was coming eventually. So is there any specific way we’re going about this?” “Yeah, we just make a massive push and don’t stop until every living thing is dead.” “Wow. Everything?” “Everything. I gave the world of the living the chance for peace and they don’t seem to want it. Well I’m tired of fighting, so if the only way to get some peace is to kill everything so be it!” “Well, I mean what happens if some people surrender? I mean you’ll still allow them to live like you usually do right?” “What? What’s with this line of questioning Catalina? You’ve never been one to wince at grand scale carnage.” “…I know, but I…” “Alright, out with it.” “Well I mean after we destroy the Grand Alliance, what then? There will be nothing else to do. I mean do we just reign over a land of the dead until the end of time?” “Sounds about right.” “I dunno, is that our only option?” “For fuck’s sake Cat, what the hell did you become a necromancer for then?” “Because much like you I probably didn’t feel like I had much in common with people and I could feel a pull towards the dark art of necromancy.” “Well what’s the problem?” “…there isn’t a problem…it’s just I feel like the end is coming soon and question what I’ve accomplished in my life. I mean other than genocide what have I done?” “You’re Queen of the Dead! What more could you want?” “Yeah, queen. Big whoop. I’m basically a glorified concubine for a…” “Damn it Catalina I’ve NEVER thought of you as that! You know I cherish you and all of you have to offer. I never could’ve gotten this far without you.” you say holding on to her and looking into her eyes. “…I know…it’s just in some ways I see you starting to change and I don’t mean your general loathing of the living either. I mean you’ve always been powerful, more powerful than me, but it’s different. It’s like you’re becoming something else. I sometimes think your path is going to differ from mine to a degree that we will no longer be able to be together.” For a moment you forget about your problems and address Catalina. “Catalina my beautiful queen…no matter what happens I shall never leave you.” you say and kiss her. “And I shall never leave you…Okay, where are we going to attack?” While you’ve temporarily reassured Catalina’s feelings, you do wonder if she isn’t right. Will there come a day when you and her will have so many differences that you won’t be able to be together anymore? You wonder if you’ve been taking some things for granted. You have everything you could ever need or want. Maybe you don’t need to go on the attack. The Grand Alliance surely does not have the strength to defeat you; you doubt it would even attempt to expend all its resources in trying. Sure you might have to continue to fight them, but when you think about it, would it be less tedious than an existence without any conflict? > You continue with your attack You can better appreciate what you have when all those that would do you harm are gone. You order an attack of the largest size. While you’re attacking from several directions, you decide to focus specifically on the Zalan Empire given that they’re glue holding the Grand Alliance together. Get rid of them and you’ve effective put an end to the war. Corpses, skeletons, ghosts, wraiths, and all other manner of undead are raised to your grand plan. Town after town is taken. The Grand Alliance nor the Zalan Military can do anything to stop you. They use magic, they use new technological wonders, but none of it works. It is only when your dead legions approach the gates of the Zalan capital that you call a stop to the carnage. You arrive personally to oversee your mission and to meet with your family one last time, because even after all this, you don’t want to kill them. Somewhere you hope that they’ll see reason and come with you. Things won’t be so bad. You storm the gates as cannons destroy multitudes of your troops only to be replaced with more. You see your sister on top of the battlements ordering her soldiers to fire upon you. During this attack you feel several bullets enter your body breaking through your magical defenses. You fall. You then rise again. “You can’t kill me, I’m the fuckin’ Great Lich Lord!” you laugh. Not stopping, you enter the gates of the city realizing that this was inevitable. Things could’ve only been this way. Your undead slay all those that oppose you, but you mentally make sure none of your undead has murderous intentions towards any of your family. You head towards your parent’s old house, taking little notice of the death around you. When you arrive you find the house empty. In fact it looks like it’s been empty for months. So many memories here…a different time… even a different life now… “She left when the attacks first came. She didn’t say where either. She just told me she was leaving. I even had her followed for awhile, but she was quite adept at eluding my scouts, not to mention I had other concerns to take care of.” Your sister says entering behind you. “I don’t know why, I would’ve made sure no harm came to her. That’s why I came here.” “You already harmed her by becoming what you are! I mean…you’re not even alive anymore! I saw you die and come back to life on the battlefield!” “Oh that. The first time was a surprise to me too. Kind of a numb feeling really.” “How can you be so at peace with what you’ve become?” “Because it was obviously in my nature all along. Death is my calling, I’ve only grown closer to it by dying. Can’t change who I am.” “Dad did.” “No he didn’t. Not really. He just directed his nature into a slightly more positive way and it was only due to magic that caused it in the first place. Funny how magic did the same with me, but just in reverse. However, as I’ve said, this does not mean I’m not without total feelings. I’d rather not have to kill you sis, but if you stand against me, I will.” “I have to stand against you.” “Why? For some noble cause of a corrupt mortal empire that’s just as oppressive? Sis you always were a bit too duty bound.” “No, because while you still exist, life ALL life is in danger. You’re evil, what you’ve been doing is evil, what you’ve become is unnatural. You can delude yourself all you want, but I’m not fooled and if I joined you or whatever it is you want, then I’d be just as guilty of contributing to your evil. You’re not even my brother anymore, I have no brother!” You shake your head in regret at your sister’s insistence on being stubborn, but then again you expected no less. “I’ll give you one last chance sis. Will you join me?” Your sister raises her magical glowing sword. “So be it.” > You allow her to kill you You might have become the Great Lich Lord, but if it means killing those you care about, you don’t want it. There’s still time to stop this. As your sister approaches you make no attempt to defend yourself. She doesn’t hesitate, because she sees in your now dead eyes that you’re giving her this one chance to kill you. You feel the sword rip through your body, you don’t feel pain, but you definitely feel a loss of power. She then pulls the sword out of your body. “Better do it now sis. I don’t think I can hold back my nature forever.” With those words, your sister cleaves your head from your shoulders. Once again the world has been saved from the brink of death. In time things get better, though never back to the way they truly were. Catalina committed suicide soon after she found out about your death, but other necromancers quickly attempted to fill the power vacuum. They of course were never able to approach your power, but a few established a permanent dominion of death in the Drozz region. The area to this day is avoided. Your sister became celebrated as a Hero and eventually took the Zalan crown leading the Empire in a nobler direction. Your Mom came back from where ever it is she disappeared to and together with your sister, mourned your death in private. For in reality it was you who stopped death from taking over the world, proving that even death can show mercy.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can better appreciate what you have when all those that would do you harm are gone. You order an attack of the largest size. While you’re attacking from several directions, you decide to focus specifically on the Zalan Empire given that they’re glue holding the Grand Alliance together. Get rid of them and you’ve effective put an end to the war. Corpses, skeletons, ghosts, wraiths, and all other manner of undead are raised to your grand plan. Town after town is taken. The Grand Alliance nor the Zalan Military can do anything to stop you. They use magic, they use new technological wonders, but none of it works. It is only when your dead legions approach the gates of the Zalan capital that you call a stop to the carnage. You arrive personally to oversee your mission and to meet with your family one last time, because even after all this, you don’t want to kill them. Somewhere you hope that they’ll see reason and come with you. Things won’t be so bad. You storm the gates as cannons destroy multitudes of your troops only to be replaced with more. You see your sister on top of the battlements ordering her soldiers to fire upon you. During this attack you feel several bullets enter your body breaking through your magical defenses. You fall. You then rise again. “You can’t kill me, I’m the fuckin’ Great Lich Lord!” you laugh. Not stopping, you enter the gates of the city realizing that this was inevitable. Things could’ve only been this way. Your undead slay all those that oppose you, but you mentally make sure none of your undead has murderous intentions towards any of your family. You head towards your parent’s old house, taking little notice of the death around you. When you arrive you find the house empty. In fact it looks like it’s been empty for months. So many memories here…a different time… even a different life now… “She left when the attacks first came. She didn’t say where either. She just told me she was leaving. I even had her followed for awhile, but she was quite adept at eluding my scouts, not to mention I had other concerns to take care of.” Your sister says entering behind you. “I don’t know why, I would’ve made sure no harm came to her. That’s why I came here.” “You already harmed her by becoming what you are! I mean…you’re not even alive anymore! I saw you die and come back to life on the battlefield!” “Oh that. The first time was a surprise to me too. Kind of a numb feeling really.” “How can you be so at peace with what you’ve become?” “Because it was obviously in my nature all along. Death is my calling, I’ve only grown closer to it by dying. Can’t change who I am.” “Dad did.” “No he didn’t. Not really. He just directed his nature into a slightly more positive way and it was only due to magic that caused it in the first place. Funny how magic did the same with me, but just in reverse. However, as I’ve said, this does not mean I’m not without total feelings. I’d rather not have to kill you sis, but if you stand against me, I will.” “I have to stand against you.” “Why? For some noble cause of a corrupt mortal empire that’s just as oppressive? Sis you always were a bit too duty bound.” “No, because while you still exist, life ALL life is in danger. You’re evil, what you’ve been doing is evil, what you’ve become is unnatural. You can delude yourself all you want, but I’m not fooled and if I joined you or whatever it is you want, then I’d be just as guilty of contributing to your evil. You’re not even my brother anymore, I have no brother!” You shake your head in regret at your sister’s insistence on being stubborn, but then again you expected no less. “I’ll give you one last chance sis. Will you join me?” Your sister raises her magical glowing sword. “So be it.” > You defend yourself “I’m sorry.” You say calmly and blast your sister with powerful beam of negative energy causing the color to drain from her face and turn her hair completely white. She’s still continues towards you, but another blast causes her to fall. She looks up at you with tears in her eyes and to your surprise she attempts to reach out to you. You crouch down and take her hand which she grips on to tightly. “…don’t…turn me into…one of those things…please…don’t” she wheezes. “Never. You shall die as you lived. With honor. Your body will be burned.” This statement seems to reassure her and she closes her eyes and lets go of life. You really wished you hadn’t had to do that. “Be at peace at last dear sister. May whatever afterlife you go to be better than this one.” You cast a small fire ball at your sister’s body and leave the house to burn, feeling yet another piece of your mortalhood die. One of your necromancers sees and comes up to you. “Lord, we’ve pretty much taken the city. The Emperor and Empress of Zalan were killed in their own throne room. We’ve won.” “Of course.” You say dismissively. “So what do you want done with the city?” “Burn it all to the ground.” “Burn it? Don’t you…” “I SAID BURN IT.” You say not wishing to repeat yourself. “Um Right! Okay you heard the Great Lich Lord! Burn it all to the ground!” Ten years pass… Twenty years since you embarked on your path of necromancy. The end of all life looms ever closer. After the destruction of the Zalan Empire, the remnants of the Grand Alliance fell apart. One by one the remaining kingdoms and other governments fell before your armies. It was almost pathetically easy. The civilized world as it was known is no more. Only the dead exist. You even had those subjects that once pledged their allegiance to you while still alive killed. You can barely tolerate your own necromancers. Catalina is the only one you still care about anymore. She’s still supportive, but nervous around you. You wish she wasn’t though. Some races such as elves, sprites and other fairy type folk retreated to their woods and forests, relying on illusions, tricks and other ways to conceal themselves. Other races like dwarves, gnomes and subterranean types dug deeper into the earth hoping that you will forget about them. Yet others like humans, orcs and the like still insist on fighting you from their makeshift camps, using hit and run tactics when they can. It doesn’t matter what any of them do however, you won’t rest until all life has been extinguished, if it takes you centuries, so be it. You’ll hunt them all, you’ll find them all, you’ll kill them all. Lately, though there have been odd occurrences. You have sensed disturbances in the very landscape from time to time. In your new undead state you of course never sleep anymore, but you’ve been having visions. Flashbacks. And they seem all too real sometimes. After months of research you’ve tracked down one of these disturbances to the old Vampire Clan fortress. You make haste to find out if any of those accursed bloodsuckers still live. You don’t see how though as you were thorough in their destruction. This time you don’t even bother telling Catalina what you think you should do next, you know exactly what you’re going to do. You just walk in her study and tell her you’re leaving for a little while and to keep an eye on things as usual. You teleport yourself to the location of their now desiccated fortress. Partially burned and falling into disrepair from your actions fifteen years ago. You throw open the massive doors with ease. “Little blood leeches, if any of you still remain, your best idea would’ve been to hide and stay that way.” Your voice echoes throughout the halls. “No, Great Lich Lord they are all dead. You made sure of that. You always do. It’s just you and me.” you hear a voice shout back. The voice sounds somewhat familiar, but you immediately home in on it since whoever felt the need to talk shit is obviously the one behind all this. After walking a bit, you enter the throne room where you still see a few traces of dust from the vampires you slaughtered long ago. You hear a maniacal laugh and a man materialize a few feet in front of you. This man looks much different now; his clothing is ragged and filthy. He has a manic grin and giggles a bit while constantly looking around, but you still recognize him and you have to say you’re genuinely surprised to see him. He’s very much alive too. “Trelik…thought you were long dust by now.” “Nearly was, quite a few times, but after my shameful defeat in the Brot Kingdom I decided to lay low. For when that day came, I knew then I would never be able to defeat you or anyone else. So I waited and watched you gain power. Watched you destroy your enemies. Watched you have everything that I wanted since the days of the Dark Order. Remember those days? Seems like so long ago no?” “Another life time.” “Indeed…I’ve learned that time can be a very bizarre thing…who knows what might’ve happened had events occurred slightly differently due to a split second?” “Is there any point to your insane ramblings Trelik?” “Not really…but perhaps! We shall see…or rather we have seen…all has been seen…” You don’t like where this is going… “While I might not be able to kill you, I can do something else! Here’s another blast from the past!” Suddenly Trelik disappears and you feel yourself going in slow motion… Oh fuck. “Ha ha ha ha! Ol’ Quayle’s books sure come in handy, but man do they make you see some crazy shit! I think I’ve gone completely bat shit insane at this point, but who cares? We’re all dead men! Fuck killing the world! Let’s kill reality!” Trelik isn’t kidding either; the very fabric is warping to a degree you didn’t even see when you were dealing with Quayle. You suddenly find yourself in the middle of a battle. You notice you’re living again. It’s been so long you almost forgot what’s like to breathe. You take a brief look around and you’re in Aftermath…or Nuro rather. A demonologist looking very worn from battle sees you and you have to stop yourself from attacking “Hey hold on! I’m on your side! Shit, this didn’t turn out as planned, did it?” “Oh I dunno, I think it turned out EXACTLY as planned.” You say getting the very real sense that you’ve done this before. The demonologist ignores your strange talk and continues. “Mr. Demar is still battling the rest of the staff in the college and I’m really worried about what the hell’s going on with Quayle’s spell, I don’t know if you’ve experienced it yet, but I’ve been seeing buildings phase in and out of existence. I knew fucking around with time would be trouble!” “Yeah, it is. I guess I better go handle this. I hope I remember what I did last time.” You say and make your way to see Quayle… again. When you get to the east campus, you see Catalinia right on time. Looking at her at this age again makes you remember when you desired her mainly for her body rather than all of her other exquisite attributes. “Nice to see you again. Quayle’s in the gray building right?” You say. “Um, yeah. I think he’s in there, but…” “Yeah I know it’s dangerous, but someone’s gotta go in, so I’ll do it. I’ve risked too much already to fail. I suggest you go help Mr. Demar.” you exclaim. “Wow, this whole thing has really made you really authoritative. You’ve come a long way since Enchantment class.” “Yeah I’ve heard that somewhere else before.” This time you dispense with your attempts to kiss Catalina. There will be plenty of time for that in the future. “Now let’s see, if I remember this…” you say as you make your way to the gray building avoiding the time disturbances. When you enter the building you see Quayle again. Same position. Same glow of white light. “You are the future…there is no future…there are many futures…it’s all so fascinating…” he says once again in an echoed voice. “Hey Quayle, you know we’ve done this before right?” “…yes…yes we have…we will continue to do so…such is time…it is inevitable…” Any second now the weird tentacle creatures are going to start popping out and you don’t feel like dealing with them again. You didn’t want to do it the first time. In fact this whole event is making your mind feel weird again, you feel like you’re losing something just by being here. > You run and tackle Quayle You remember what you did last time and it was successful, so you confidently try again. You run towards Quayle narrowly dodging a tentacle creature along the way… Quayle once again splatters into a gooey insect mess. Something changes though. You’re no longer aware of the fact that you’re in the past. In fact your memories only lead up to this particular moment and right now all you’re concerned about it is getting these centipedes off of you. And so it goes, you live out the same exact “life” as you did before. Taking over Aftermath, destroy Brot with undead giants, killing Velzix…all of it. Eventually you meet Trelik again, and the same things happens. And again. And again. And again. You don’t realize it at all. Trelik has trapped you in a time loop that you have no knowledge of anymore. And that is where you will stay. Until the end of time…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I’m sorry.” You say calmly and blast your sister with powerful beam of negative energy causing the color to drain from her face and turn her hair completely white. She’s still continues towards you, but another blast causes her to fall. She looks up at you with tears in her eyes and to your surprise she attempts to reach out to you. You crouch down and take her hand which she grips on to tightly. “…don’t…turn me into…one of those things…please…don’t” she wheezes. “Never. You shall die as you lived. With honor. Your body will be burned.” This statement seems to reassure her and she closes her eyes and lets go of life. You really wished you hadn’t had to do that. “Be at peace at last dear sister. May whatever afterlife you go to be better than this one.” You cast a small fire ball at your sister’s body and leave the house to burn, feeling yet another piece of your mortalhood die. One of your necromancers sees and comes up to you. “Lord, we’ve pretty much taken the city. The Emperor and Empress of Zalan were killed in their own throne room. We’ve won.” “Of course.” You say dismissively. “So what do you want done with the city?” “Burn it all to the ground.” “Burn it? Don’t you…” “I SAID BURN IT.” You say not wishing to repeat yourself. “Um Right! Okay you heard the Great Lich Lord! Burn it all to the ground!” Ten years pass… Twenty years since you embarked on your path of necromancy. The end of all life looms ever closer. After the destruction of the Zalan Empire, the remnants of the Grand Alliance fell apart. One by one the remaining kingdoms and other governments fell before your armies. It was almost pathetically easy. The civilized world as it was known is no more. Only the dead exist. You even had those subjects that once pledged their allegiance to you while still alive killed. You can barely tolerate your own necromancers. Catalina is the only one you still care about anymore. She’s still supportive, but nervous around you. You wish she wasn’t though. Some races such as elves, sprites and other fairy type folk retreated to their woods and forests, relying on illusions, tricks and other ways to conceal themselves. Other races like dwarves, gnomes and subterranean types dug deeper into the earth hoping that you will forget about them. Yet others like humans, orcs and the like still insist on fighting you from their makeshift camps, using hit and run tactics when they can. It doesn’t matter what any of them do however, you won’t rest until all life has been extinguished, if it takes you centuries, so be it. You’ll hunt them all, you’ll find them all, you’ll kill them all. Lately, though there have been odd occurrences. You have sensed disturbances in the very landscape from time to time. In your new undead state you of course never sleep anymore, but you’ve been having visions. Flashbacks. And they seem all too real sometimes. After months of research you’ve tracked down one of these disturbances to the old Vampire Clan fortress. You make haste to find out if any of those accursed bloodsuckers still live. You don’t see how though as you were thorough in their destruction. This time you don’t even bother telling Catalina what you think you should do next, you know exactly what you’re going to do. You just walk in her study and tell her you’re leaving for a little while and to keep an eye on things as usual. You teleport yourself to the location of their now desiccated fortress. Partially burned and falling into disrepair from your actions fifteen years ago. You throw open the massive doors with ease. “Little blood leeches, if any of you still remain, your best idea would’ve been to hide and stay that way.” Your voice echoes throughout the halls. “No, Great Lich Lord they are all dead. You made sure of that. You always do. It’s just you and me.” you hear a voice shout back. The voice sounds somewhat familiar, but you immediately home in on it since whoever felt the need to talk shit is obviously the one behind all this. After walking a bit, you enter the throne room where you still see a few traces of dust from the vampires you slaughtered long ago. You hear a maniacal laugh and a man materialize a few feet in front of you. This man looks much different now; his clothing is ragged and filthy. He has a manic grin and giggles a bit while constantly looking around, but you still recognize him and you have to say you’re genuinely surprised to see him. He’s very much alive too. “Trelik…thought you were long dust by now.” “Nearly was, quite a few times, but after my shameful defeat in the Brot Kingdom I decided to lay low. For when that day came, I knew then I would never be able to defeat you or anyone else. So I waited and watched you gain power. Watched you destroy your enemies. Watched you have everything that I wanted since the days of the Dark Order. Remember those days? Seems like so long ago no?” “Another life time.” “Indeed…I’ve learned that time can be a very bizarre thing…who knows what might’ve happened had events occurred slightly differently due to a split second?” “Is there any point to your insane ramblings Trelik?” “Not really…but perhaps! We shall see…or rather we have seen…all has been seen…” You don’t like where this is going… “While I might not be able to kill you, I can do something else! Here’s another blast from the past!” Suddenly Trelik disappears and you feel yourself going in slow motion… Oh fuck. “Ha ha ha ha! Ol’ Quayle’s books sure come in handy, but man do they make you see some crazy shit! I think I’ve gone completely bat shit insane at this point, but who cares? We’re all dead men! Fuck killing the world! Let’s kill reality!” Trelik isn’t kidding either; the very fabric is warping to a degree you didn’t even see when you were dealing with Quayle. You suddenly find yourself in the middle of a battle. You notice you’re living again. It’s been so long you almost forgot what’s like to breathe. You take a brief look around and you’re in Aftermath…or Nuro rather. A demonologist looking very worn from battle sees you and you have to stop yourself from attacking “Hey hold on! I’m on your side! Shit, this didn’t turn out as planned, did it?” “Oh I dunno, I think it turned out EXACTLY as planned.” You say getting the very real sense that you’ve done this before. The demonologist ignores your strange talk and continues. “Mr. Demar is still battling the rest of the staff in the college and I’m really worried about what the hell’s going on with Quayle’s spell, I don’t know if you’ve experienced it yet, but I’ve been seeing buildings phase in and out of existence. I knew fucking around with time would be trouble!” “Yeah, it is. I guess I better go handle this. I hope I remember what I did last time.” You say and make your way to see Quayle… again. When you get to the east campus, you see Catalinia right on time. Looking at her at this age again makes you remember when you desired her mainly for her body rather than all of her other exquisite attributes. “Nice to see you again. Quayle’s in the gray building right?” You say. “Um, yeah. I think he’s in there, but…” “Yeah I know it’s dangerous, but someone’s gotta go in, so I’ll do it. I’ve risked too much already to fail. I suggest you go help Mr. Demar.” you exclaim. “Wow, this whole thing has really made you really authoritative. You’ve come a long way since Enchantment class.” “Yeah I’ve heard that somewhere else before.” This time you dispense with your attempts to kiss Catalina. There will be plenty of time for that in the future. “Now let’s see, if I remember this…” you say as you make your way to the gray building avoiding the time disturbances. When you enter the building you see Quayle again. Same position. Same glow of white light. “You are the future…there is no future…there are many futures…it’s all so fascinating…” he says once again in an echoed voice. “Hey Quayle, you know we’ve done this before right?” “…yes…yes we have…we will continue to do so…such is time…it is inevitable…” Any second now the weird tentacle creatures are going to start popping out and you don’t feel like dealing with them again. You didn’t want to do it the first time. In fact this whole event is making your mind feel weird again, you feel like you’re losing something just by being here. > You try something else This isn’t “your time” and something is very different. You can sense it. Something is here that wasn’t before. You quickly scan the room again and from the far left side of the room you hear a little giggle. One of tentacle creatures appear once again and you fight back the nausea long enough to cast a blast of negative energy towards the sounds of the laughter. Trelik materializes from your lucky direct hit and howls in pain before collapsing on the floor. His high pitched screech seems to irk the creature and it grabs him with one of the tentacles. “NO! NO! HAHAHAHA! I WAS GOING TO CONTROL TIME!” Trelik laughs before they turn into screams when the creature proceeds to devour him. Trelik might’ve been dealt with, but you still have to preserve the time line! You immediately rush to tackle Quayle and narrowly dodge another tentacle beast that appears near you. You are just about to reach Quayle… “…once again…the future…the past…unite…” you hear Quayle just as you’re about to collide with him. Except instead of colliding with him you collide into the stone floor of the vampire fortress! Or at least you thought it was… You stand up and find yourself in the middle of a castle, but it’s different. You see dead elves and humans lying on the floor. Looks like they were fighting each other. You attempt to raise them, but nothing happens. Your powers aren’t working at all and in this living flesh cage you’ve been once again cursed with, you feel pretty vulnerable. You hear human soldiers laughing and running and you hide. “Har har! This was a good idea. Elves can’t fight worth shit! Where’s the captain anyway?” “Oh you know him; he’s probably finding something of more value to keep to himself.” After they pass by you proceed to make your way through the ruins of this castle which is obviously under siege. You think you’re nearing the exit when all of a sudden you hear the sounds of battle and a very familiar voice… “You better save your own ass elf, I mean to have whatever is behind that door and the likes of you aren’t going to stop me!” your Dad remarks. “Never! I have sworn to protect the treasure behind here with my life!” the Elven guard exclaims. You see your Dad and this elven guard clash swords. You watch from the shadows and it’s obvious that this elf is slightly more skilled than your Dad. You might not have your powers, but you realize what has happened. You’ve been transported to the past again. This is the elven castle that your Dad laid siege to. He’s supposed to meet your Mom here. She’s probably the “treasure” that the elven guard is protecting. Another familiar voice calls out to you in your mind with a sorrow filled tone. “You wish to end all life because you loathe it so? Or is it that you loathe your own life? I have seen you set out on this path and while regrettable I see that it was inevitable. Perhaps I am to blame. I give you a chance to make things right and allow life to bloom once again instead of an existence of ultimate isolation and loneliness.” That voice sounded very much like your Mom. But you haven’t discovered any trace of her despite your searches. Then again that might make sense if she’s gone into this time slipping business. “Mom…do you defy me as well? Have you and Trelik formed some unholy alliance?” you whisper under your breath to her while attempting to contain your anger and wounded feelings. Feelings you haven’t really had in a long time. “No, my son. Trelik’s mad plan was his own. I have merely taken advantage of his poor judgment in attempting to alter time. Yes son, you are not the only one in the family who has the knowledge of forbidden magic and a master of it. I give you a choice…life or death. Think carefully about making your decision. Think about your possible future. Think about what you’ve become. Think about what you’ve done. Your existence has caused the end of the world’s own. Is that really what you want?” This question has been posed to you many times before in the past. Every time you’ve dismissed it because it’s been so far off before. But as the end grows ever closer, you’ll have to come to very real possibility that immortality on a dead world may very well grow dreary. This latest time trip has been the most excitement you’ve had in years… You look over at your Dad, who is losing his battle with the elven guard. Maybe it would be better had you never been born… > You help your Dad Destiny can be changed, but you’re not changing yours. You were meant to do this. You’ll see this out to the very end. Since you don’t have any of your powers, you pick up a hefty nearby vase and hurl it at the elven guard from the shadows. Your aim is pitiful as the vase completely misses him and instead flies over his head and hits the wall. However, the elven guard glances briefly in the direction to which the vase was thrown long enough for your Dad to take the advantage. He skewers the elf and smashes him in the face with his armored gauntlet. “Ha ha! Stupid fucking elf! Shoulda been paying attention to the fight!” he laughs and gives the guard one last kick to the head before opening up the treasure door… You slink away. Your birth has now been assured and you suddenly are transported back to your proper time period and back in the ex-vampire fortress. Once again you are undead, however, you find that you have a letter in your hand which is addressed to you Son, If you’re reading this then you have chosen death, as was predicted. I do not blame you for embracing your destiny. The pull of dark magic has always been strong in the bloodline. Elves typically can control such urges, however as you know you are not full elven, but still I did not think this possible of you though. You were so unskilled in the ways of magic that the chances of you becoming a competent necromancer seemed so unlikely, let alone an emissary of death. I will not stand in you way for I cannot bring myself to destroy you, even though I could. This is why I gave you the choice to destroy yourself. Do not look for me as I have long left this world and time, a simpler time, long even before the rise of the first Great Lich Lord. Indeed, I am already long dead by the time you have read this. My final gift to you my son, one less death you need concern yourself about. I only hope that you can find peace in your path for eventually you will be alone. Love Mom. You crumple the letter. “Thanks Mom.” You say and return to Aftermath as you have shed one more link to your mortal life. Thirty years pass… Fifty years have passed. Peace reigns. There is no more conflict. All serious resistance has been eliminated. There will be no heroes to save the world. Death has won. Your powers have grown to the extent that your mere presence is slowly killing the world. You tested out this theory when you spent some time in one of the last elven defended forests. The trees began to rot and wither within a day. Reports talk of even the creatures in the oceans dying and you haven’t even been anywhere near there. Anything still alive will die soon; it’s only a matter of time. Your poison is enveloping the skies, the waters and the ground far beneath the earth. You truly have become death personified. Your necromancers have all died and you didn’t allow them to try to become liches either. A small coup was attempted, but it was easily put down. You’re controlling it all. The one last link to your mortal “life” remains. Catalina. She lies on her bed dying. It is only due to her own powers that she’s been able to survive your presence this long, but she can’t do it any longer. You’re too powerful. You sit by her bed to talk to her one last time. You stroke her hair and hold her hand relishing the warmth that it still gives off even in this near death state. “…I’m sorry I can’t stay with you.” she says. “You could. You have the power to become a lich.” “…no…I don’t want that. It’s not my desire or path. I once said I thought the differences between us would be too great for us to stay together.” “I remember. And you were right. You usually are.” “We had a good run though didn’t we?” “Yes, yes we did.” You agree. “Are you going to be alright? I mean what are you going to do?” she asks. “Me? I’ll be fine. I’ll stick around and oversee things I guess. Watch the world die. I have to carry this out to end.” “I know you do…maybe we’ll meet again? On the other side?” she smiles weakly. “I’m sure if it’s possible. We will.” “I love you…” You then kiss her one last time as life finally fades from her body. “My love from this world is now gone, what little was left has followed you to the other side my beloved queen. May it be with you always.” Death now walks alone. After burning her body, you retire to your study, waiting and wondering when the end will finally come...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This isn’t “your time” and something is very different. You can sense it. Something is here that wasn’t before. You quickly scan the room again and from the far left side of the room you hear a little giggle. One of tentacle creatures appear once again and you fight back the nausea long enough to cast a blast of negative energy towards the sounds of the laughter. Trelik materializes from your lucky direct hit and howls in pain before collapsing on the floor. His high pitched screech seems to irk the creature and it grabs him with one of the tentacles. “NO! NO! HAHAHAHA! I WAS GOING TO CONTROL TIME!” Trelik laughs before they turn into screams when the creature proceeds to devour him. Trelik might’ve been dealt with, but you still have to preserve the time line! You immediately rush to tackle Quayle and narrowly dodge another tentacle beast that appears near you. You are just about to reach Quayle… “…once again…the future…the past…unite…” you hear Quayle just as you’re about to collide with him. Except instead of colliding with him you collide into the stone floor of the vampire fortress! Or at least you thought it was… You stand up and find yourself in the middle of a castle, but it’s different. You see dead elves and humans lying on the floor. Looks like they were fighting each other. You attempt to raise them, but nothing happens. Your powers aren’t working at all and in this living flesh cage you’ve been once again cursed with, you feel pretty vulnerable. You hear human soldiers laughing and running and you hide. “Har har! This was a good idea. Elves can’t fight worth shit! Where’s the captain anyway?” “Oh you know him; he’s probably finding something of more value to keep to himself.” After they pass by you proceed to make your way through the ruins of this castle which is obviously under siege. You think you’re nearing the exit when all of a sudden you hear the sounds of battle and a very familiar voice… “You better save your own ass elf, I mean to have whatever is behind that door and the likes of you aren’t going to stop me!” your Dad remarks. “Never! I have sworn to protect the treasure behind here with my life!” the Elven guard exclaims. You see your Dad and this elven guard clash swords. You watch from the shadows and it’s obvious that this elf is slightly more skilled than your Dad. You might not have your powers, but you realize what has happened. You’ve been transported to the past again. This is the elven castle that your Dad laid siege to. He’s supposed to meet your Mom here. She’s probably the “treasure” that the elven guard is protecting. Another familiar voice calls out to you in your mind with a sorrow filled tone. “You wish to end all life because you loathe it so? Or is it that you loathe your own life? I have seen you set out on this path and while regrettable I see that it was inevitable. Perhaps I am to blame. I give you a chance to make things right and allow life to bloom once again instead of an existence of ultimate isolation and loneliness.” That voice sounded very much like your Mom. But you haven’t discovered any trace of her despite your searches. Then again that might make sense if she’s gone into this time slipping business. “Mom…do you defy me as well? Have you and Trelik formed some unholy alliance?” you whisper under your breath to her while attempting to contain your anger and wounded feelings. Feelings you haven’t really had in a long time. “No, my son. Trelik’s mad plan was his own. I have merely taken advantage of his poor judgment in attempting to alter time. Yes son, you are not the only one in the family who has the knowledge of forbidden magic and a master of it. I give you a choice…life or death. Think carefully about making your decision. Think about your possible future. Think about what you’ve become. Think about what you’ve done. Your existence has caused the end of the world’s own. Is that really what you want?” This question has been posed to you many times before in the past. Every time you’ve dismissed it because it’s been so far off before. But as the end grows ever closer, you’ll have to come to very real possibility that immortality on a dead world may very well grow dreary. This latest time trip has been the most excitement you’ve had in years… You look over at your Dad, who is losing his battle with the elven guard. Maybe it would be better had you never been born… > You do not help him Life must continue. At last you have seen reason. You watch a bit more and the elven guard is hard pressed, but it becomes apparent that he’s dedicated to his duty. He strikes your Dad with a couple of sword blows to his chest. He falls cursing and swearing, before the elven guard finishes him off with a thrust to his neck. “Heh, that’s what should’ve happened in the first place.” You say and quietly slink off. You walk into an empty room and wonder what will happen next. You’ve just destroyed your existence. Though you’re still here, so you’re not sure what that means. Are you going to disappear soon, or will you just continue your existence until you reach your “proper time?” You hear your Mom’s voice again, one last time. “You have chosen life as was predicted. Your time as you know it is no more…time…time defeats all. Time even defeats death…however time is not without mercy and your existence in history is not gone, just altered. …the future…the past…does it matter? You will die …all has been written…farewell son. We shall not meet again. You shall have no knowledge of any of this or what has occurred before. But your actions have preserved life, even if you are an emissary of death…” You suddenly find yourself transported on some desolate hilltop. You have no idea where you’re at, let alone how you got there. In fact you don’t have too much memory of anything. All you’re sure of is that you have a great knowledge of magic and that you’re not truly alive. Suddenly a ragged bunch of individuals approach, you prepare to defend yourself, but these half crazed tribals are in awe of you. “It’s him! He is the one we called upon! Our prayers have been answered! We have sacrificed our remaining livestock to appease you! Please our village has suffered a great loss. We have lost many of our people to a plague. We beg you to reunite us with those loved ones we have lost.” And so began the first steps of the Great Lich Lord’s quest for the extinction of life…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 4: Even Death May Die Five years pass… It’s been ten years since you took control of Aftermath and many changes have come about. Without Velzix’s brutal leadership, his realm soon broke apart. Demon leaders fought amongst themselves and became easier to deal with for the Grand Alliance. Little by little territory was liberated. However you were not idle and you also took pieces of Velzix’s former territory. Due to all the problems caused by Velzix a new order was enacted by the Grand Alliance. No more chances are being taken and the civilized world has a zero tolerance policy on demons. Demons are to be killed on sight anywhere they are found. Even the so called “nice ones”. Any government found tolerating their presence will be found guilty of demonology and invaded. This lead to a few misguided liberal types claiming that it was infringing on certain rights, but considering the increasingly draconian Zalan Empire had pretty much taken complete control over the Grand Alliance at this point, they had final say in the matter and executed all such protestors. The Grand Alliance is now merely a name much like Vampire Clans. In reality, it’s the “Zalan Empire and its little friends that better do what it says Alliance”. Speaking of the Vampire Clans, since your total destruction of their last remaining enclave, their influence has completely left this world. You’ve noticed a reduced effectiveness in Grand Alliance strategy because of this despite that they’ve become more united in recent years. Except for the near mindless bestial ones that roam the countryside they’re effectively extinct. Still, you feel no need to show them mercy and bring them under your control. When one is found, you have it destroyed. The treachery of the Ghoul King has brought this genocide upon their “race.” Your letter to your family was never replied to, but you are aware it was received. You don’t know exactly how the truth was spun, or who exactly was involved. But you do know your Dad has a statue erected of him in the Zalan capital stating how he nobly gave his life fighting Velzix. Funny how mad men can be turned into heroes so easily. Your sister is a general of a Grand Alliance army now, which of course continues to attack you despite some of your attempts at coming to some sort of peace agreement. The fools won’t even listen to reason. There’s no way the Grand Alliance can win this war. You’ve only been growing in power and show no signs of stopping. Even with their stabilized internal struggles under the Zalan Empire’s iron fist they still won’t be able to defeat you. The world has gone mad and you’re the only one making sense anymore. They call you a villain and evil, but from what you’ve seen, you’re no different than any of the other leaders in power. You’re just better at it. Maybe you should turn the world into a giant graveyard. Everyone thinks of you as a monster anyway, you see no reason to disappoint… “Catalina, I think it’s time we finish this war once and for all.” You say walking into her study. “Oh you do, do you? Well, I figured that it was coming eventually. So is there any specific way we’re going about this?” “Yeah, we just make a massive push and don’t stop until every living thing is dead.” “Wow. Everything?” “Everything. I gave the world of the living the chance for peace and they don’t seem to want it. Well I’m tired of fighting, so if the only way to get some peace is to kill everything so be it!” “Well, I mean what happens if some people surrender? I mean you’ll still allow them to live like you usually do right?” “What? What’s with this line of questioning Catalina? You’ve never been one to wince at grand scale carnage.” “…I know, but I…” “Alright, out with it.” “Well I mean after we destroy the Grand Alliance, what then? There will be nothing else to do. I mean do we just reign over a land of the dead until the end of time?” “Sounds about right.” “I dunno, is that our only option?” “For fuck’s sake Cat, what the hell did you become a necromancer for then?” “Because much like you I probably didn’t feel like I had much in common with people and I could feel a pull towards the dark art of necromancy.” “Well what’s the problem?” “…there isn’t a problem…it’s just I feel like the end is coming soon and question what I’ve accomplished in my life. I mean other than genocide what have I done?” “You’re Queen of the Dead! What more could you want?” “Yeah, queen. Big whoop. I’m basically a glorified concubine for a…” “Damn it Catalina I’ve NEVER thought of you as that! You know I cherish you and all of you have to offer. I never could’ve gotten this far without you.” you say holding on to her and looking into her eyes. “…I know…it’s just in some ways I see you starting to change and I don’t mean your general loathing of the living either. I mean you’ve always been powerful, more powerful than me, but it’s different. It’s like you’re becoming something else. I sometimes think your path is going to differ from mine to a degree that we will no longer be able to be together.” For a moment you forget about your problems and address Catalina. “Catalina my beautiful queen…no matter what happens I shall never leave you.” you say and kiss her. “And I shall never leave you…Okay, where are we going to attack?” While you’ve temporarily reassured Catalina’s feelings, you do wonder if she isn’t right. Will there come a day when you and her will have so many differences that you won’t be able to be together anymore? You wonder if you’ve been taking some things for granted. You have everything you could ever need or want. Maybe you don’t need to go on the attack. The Grand Alliance surely does not have the strength to defeat you; you doubt it would even attempt to expend all its resources in trying. Sure you might have to continue to fight them, but when you think about it, would it be less tedious than an existence without any conflict? > You call off the attack You realize something. You’ve won. You don’t need to commit worldwide slaughter. In fact at this point you’d rather just give it all up in exchange for peace and quiet with Catalina. And you know the place you could do such a thing. “Catalina, let’s forget all this.” “What?” “I’m saying fuck this shit. I’m getting bored with it, there’s not really a challenge anymore, so what’s the point? Let’s just leave.” “Well where are we going to do that?” “Let’s go to that hidden Vampire Clan fortress. Nobody else is using it and all it needs is a little fixing up. I can easily set up the magic to hide it again.” “Easily eh? Boy you have come a long way. I remember when you cast that spell in enchantment class and caused all those frogs to attack the professor.” “Boy you’re never going to let me forget that are you? I still think those were a species of killer frogs and they would’ve attacked anyway.” “What? Those were pygmy Eraw frogs! They’re one of the most benign creatures on the planet! YOU turned them into killers!” Catalina laughs. “Yeah, well he deserved it anyway. He was going to fail me.” “I’m surprised he didn’t after that, though he probably was a little afraid of you. Guess you always had it in you even back then.” “Yeah…well you ready to go?” “Wait we’re just leaving? Shouldn’t we make arrangements or something first?” “Like I said fuck it, let all these necromancers fight over it. If one of them thinks they can try to take my place then let ‘em. I predict it’ll all fall apart within a year though. They can’t be me.” “No they can’t. Let’s go.” You and Catalina then press the key to the old vampire fortress. Fortunately it doesn’t need too much fixing up and you have it restored in no time. It is from here where you and Catalina stay to watch the world events unfold in fascination. Just as you predicted your dominion of the dead collapsed due to infighting. To your surprise Trelik popped up again and amusingly he even claimed he’d destroyed you and Catalina. Even more amusingly he was one of the first usurpers to die during the civil war. The Grand Alliance took advantage of the situation and eventually broke the stranglehold that the dead once held over the living. Your sister stormed the gates of Aftermath itself and reclaimed it. She became a hero of epic proportions. You’re glad. You’re glad you made this decision. You didn’t want to have to kill her or your Mom. The world didn’t immediately go back to normal though. Your actions have had repercussions and there yet still remains areas of the world where necromancers rule, possibly the undead will always have a strong influence in some areas, but the threat of the end of all life is no longer a possibility. Your own powers seem to have grown a bit weaker, make no mistake, you are still very powerful. Possibly still the most powerful being on the planet, but with the rise of life once again, you do feel a change, and you don’t mind it. The years pass and you and Catalina are content to just watch the world go by and enjoy each others’ company undisturbed. One day though, Catalina’s life force is giving out and she does not wish to continue her existence into undeath like you and you certainly understand. You and her say goodbye and then you promise you will soon join her. After burning her body you sit on your throne, you write one last thing in your journal about why you did what you did in case anyone should find this. Then you concentrate and will yourself to die. It takes some effort, but eventually you feel a release and your powers are fading completely. “I’m coming home Catalina.” At last, death has died.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“If I was going to kill you, I’d barely need to lift a finger, but what I’m mainly here for is your help.” You say calmly That’s caught his attention. “What’s that boy? You want my help? Hanging around those corpses make you completely crazy?” “Not completely, but I know that you and your company has been fighting a guerilla war against Velzix. You’ve been a real pain in his demon ass from what I’ve heard.” “Hah! Got that right! I’ve currently been hired out perpetually by the Zalan Empire. My mission is to generally fuck things up for Velzix, even try to kill him if possible. But I can’t do that.” “Why not?” “Why not? Because if you haven’t noticed I’m a fuckin’ old man that only has a few desperate and insane men following him that’s why! I don’t have a Grand Alliance army behind me like your sister and I can’t just snap my fingers and bring my losses back to fucking life! SOME of us have to rely on pure skill!” “Sounds like you’re making excuses.” “Oh fuck you! Stupid ass kid, I don’t see you doing shit about Velzix, what’s the matter need more corpses to hide behind?” “Actually any corpses I hide behind will only be the ones I summon up during our assassination attempt.” “What are you getting at boy?” “I’m saying you get me close to Velzix, and I’ll kill him. In fact I’m very surprised the Grand Alliance hasn’t sent some hero types to try to kill him yet.” “Oh they have, they just haven’t been heroic enough. My little company has done more damage than any so called heroes. But supposin’ I WAS to help you, what’s in this for me?” “Oh you’ll be paid, have no fear of that. In fact you can even take credit for Velzix death, since I doubt you’d want anyone to know you were working with me. Now I’d imagine that would pay quite well wouldn’t it?” “Yeah, yeah it would…alright boy. We’ll do this, but after Velzix is dead, me and you end this father and son time got me?” “Wouldn’t have it any other way.” As your Dad proceeds to lead to where Velzix dwells, he explain the layout of it. He says they’ve gone in there before, but have never stayed too long. Just to sabotage stuff and get the fuck out. You proceed to have more interesting conversation along the way. “So why the hell hasn’t the Grand Alliance done more about Velzix? Why are they relying on some broken down ex-cuthroat?” you ask. “I told ya, they have sent hero types after Velzix before, but he’s defeated them every time. As for larger military concerns, I’m sure you’re aware that they happen, but it’s a question of balance. They can’t attack Velzix, like they probably would prefer since they know that YOU would take advantage of their weakened state! Not to mention the Grand Alliance finds you to be a bigger threat. The world was almost consumed once already by some megalomaniacal necromancer, they don’t want that to happen again. So little groups like mine fuck things up for Velzix, just enough to keep him occupied and doesn’t gain anymore ground.” “Actually I’m not a megalomaniac. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t have some desire to turn the world into a graveyard.” You say. “Oh well I guess all those kingdoms were just you being neighborly eh? What about that first attack on the Brot Kingdom? Those big ass undead giants? Hordes of undead troops slaughtering men, women and children?” “I did what I had to do to defend myself. War isn’t pretty. People die.” “True…but I still fail to see where yer NOT being a megalomaniac.” “I told you I’m defending my dominion! If the Grand Alliance would stop attacking me, I wouldn’t pursue anymore territory. I’d be happy to live in peace, side by side. Why do you think I want to get rid Velzix? I’m hoping after he’s gone that I can come to some agreement with the Grand Alliance! Because in the end it isn’t going to be good for anyone!” “Fancy words…but I question if that’s what you really want. I haven’t seen you in a long time, but within the short time I’ve talked with you now, even I can see a change in you. You have a lot of desire, somewhere within you, you want to control everything so there’s no possibility of anything ever hurting you. You’re actually good at something and you’re reveling in it. I know what that’s like. While you might have yer Mom’s magic, apparently you DID inherit some of my qualities, and those are qualities that are all kinds of bad…” “I’m nothing like you!” you exclaim. “Ha ha! Oh yer right about that. You’ll never be half the man I am. You can turn the entire world to a giant mass grave, but you ain’t never gonna be me.” Even now with all your power your Dad still somehow manages to make you feel small. You can’t let yourself get angry though, As much as you might like to just cause the bastard’s black heart to explode in his chest you can’t do that, at least not yet. You, your Dad and the remains of his company eventually arrive at Velzix’s fortress where you enter in a secret way. “Dumb ass demons, we’ve been using this entrance for like a year now and they still haven’t caught on!” your Dad remarks. You make good progress in the fortress and then… “There they are, just like Velzix said they would be!” a demon guard shouts. You look at your Dad. “Haven’t caught on yet huh?” “Quit yer bitchin’ and start doin that death magic thing!” You proceed to do just that as demon as well as mortal guards attempt to stop you. You welcome the mortal guards as you can raise them to help you in your “heroic quest”. “Hah, no lying down on the job anymore Cal!” your Dad laughs as you raise the last of his fallen company. By the time you reach Velzix’s inner sanctum, it’s just you and your Dad. You never thought in a million years you’d be fighting alongside your Dad. Velzix on the other hand has been expecting you. “Ah how good of you both to come. You’re the miserable little has been thug that’s been fucking up my realm with your guerilla warfare. And you’re the wannabe Lich Lord that’s been impeding my own plans of conquest.” “Wow, guess he got it in one.” You say. “Yeah, and I guess this would make him the pathetic ass demon lord that can’t even beat said has been and wannabe.” Your Dad adds. “Enough! The pair of you have sealed your doom today! I have lured you into my trap where today I shall take the father and the son and then…” You blast Velzix in the face with negative energy, causing him to grab his face and roar in pain. “Ha ha! Fucking melodramatic idiot!” your Dad laughs charging at Velzix with his sword You quickly decide on what to do next. > You unleash a greater blast of death magic on Velzix Once again you aim for Velzix, ready to unleash a great blast of negative energy at him. Unfortunately as you do so, he picks your Dad up and both of them get caught in it. Your Dad is killed instantly, but Velzix is of course made of stronger stuff. He recovers from the attack and opens up several portals where demons come pouring out. You summon up ghostly warriors to assist you, and while you’re powerful, you can’t fight Velzix’s seemingly endless reinforcement of demons. You land some good hits, but ultimately you’re overwhelmed. Velzix picks up your drained bloody body to mock you one last time. “Look on the bright side; at least you got to kill your Dad!” Velzix then proceeds to slowly rip your soul apart before ultimately sending you to oblivion.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t say you’ve exactly been entirely enthusiastic about this plan to conquer these tribes. The reality is starting to set in that you’ll never be able to get rid of them all. At least not without a concentrated effort, which would take a lot more time and troops that you’re unwilling to commit at this point. But The Ghoul King could help. He most likely knows the lay of the land just as well as the tribes, and considering he lives here, he can dedicate as much time as he wants. “Very well Ghoul King I have no wish to take what is yours. I shall leave in peace if you’ll permit.” You say respectfully. “Hmm, I had not expected you to respond that way. Perhaps though you have yet another trick up your sleeve?” “No trick. But perhaps a proposal.” “Diplomacy? Are you serious? I have rarely ever encountered a necromancer ready to discuss anything so calmly before. You are a rare breed. Okay, what’s your proposal? I have to know just because you’ve managed to surprise me, twice today.” “My proposal is an alliance.” “An alliance? For what purpose? I imagine that you’re being hounded by the civilized world. Why would I bring such troubles on myself?” “Because I’m your best shot at revenge. You said you’ve wanted revenge on the Vampire Clans, well I’m not exactly on their good side either. Eventually I’m going to have to deal with them. Look at you, you said it yourself. You’ve been forced to hide out from the world in a hole in the ground. Wouldn’t you at least like that to change? Even if you die, at least you can say you tried! Changes ARE coming to this world, and this is your chance to be on the winning side.” The Ghoul King looks in the sky. His expression reminds you of delegate Yolev’s when Mr. Demar gave him a chance to join. You hope you have more success. “I have been told such promises before; a long time ago…this state that you see before you is what it got me. However, there’s no fool like an old one. What more can be done to me? I’ve lost all as it is, I can only gain. I’m listening more to your proposal, but let’s have some details. I won’t ally with someone that’s as foolish as me.” You quickly explain that the Ghoul King should attack the tribes like he’s been doing, but to just increase the frequency. All you ask is that he leave a portion of the dead for you (rather than eating them) to use as troops. You will leave one of your necromancers here as an emissary and transporter as it were. The Ghoul King finds this arrangement to be acceptable. He laughs when you say you would also like it if he managed to kill some giants for you to raise. He says he’ll see what he can do and as an act of goodwill he allows you to have a sizable amount of his ghouls. “I can always make more!” You return to Aftermath feeling a great sense of accomplishment. Catalina is a bit leery of the entire situation though. “How can you be sure of this? He’s a vampire! Last I heard they aren’t too happy with us right now!” Catalina says. “He’s an outcast from the clans. He’s been living like an animal for who knows how long. I’ve given him a sense of purpose again. He’ll help. Besides he’s better suited to take care of the tribes in Drozz. He’ll take all the risk and we’ll gain the benefit. I see no downside!” “How do you know he won’t just kill your emissary there and not do anything?” “It’s certainly possible, but he did give me some of his ghouls as an act of good faith.” “A bunch of mangy ghouls can’t make up for one necromancer!” “Considering I left Hessan with him, you could make the argument that they do! Relax! I know what I’m doing.” “I hope so, because I heard that the Grand Alliance is stepping up their military operations.” Catalina leaves you in a huff. What’s with this girl? One minute she’s expressing interest, the next she’s pissed at you. Oh well. You’re not worried about anything, you’re confident you made the right decision. A few months pass and you get a letter via bat from The Ghoul King. He tells you that he’s got something special for you. Something that Hessan can’t transport himself. You make your way back to Drozz, traveling invisibly for the most part, since last you heard, the Grand Alliance ousted Trelik from the Brot Kingdom and are currently stationed there, probably planning to attack you next. When you arrive, the Ghoul King meets you. “Well don’t say I haven’t held up my part of this alliance. Here are your giants. A whole tribe of them! Took a hell of a long time dragging them down here. You’ll have to forgive the bite marks, but my ghouls do get hungry every now and then.” You can’t believe your eyes. You expected one or two. Not a whole tribe! You aren’t even going to ask how he did it, you’re just happy he did. “Alright Mr. Necromancer, I wanna see you raise these big ass things! Your emissary has been going on for months about how powerful you are, so I wanna see this.” You begin to concentrate… Slowly one of the dead behemoths rises and stands ready to serve. You concentrate again and one by one each one stands up and fully obedient to you. It requires very little energy on your part surprisingly. You must be growing in power. “Well now, I guess you can walk the walk! Alright now you go have fun with those big boys. I have some barbarians to terrorize. It seems I’ve inadvertently united most of the tribes against me with this giant killing business.” “You need some help?” “Nah, I got it all under control. I was sick of hiding anyway. Thanks though. Especially for making me feel like a true vampire again rather than a running scavenger.” You tell Hessan to stay with the Ghoul King as you still need someone here in Drozz. One day you’ll have to construct some sort of portal between here and Aftermath, but that will have to be later. Right now you’ve got undead giants and you’re all prepared to use them right away. You remember The Grand Alliance is in the Brot Kingdom and tthat they’re probably still recovering from battling Trelik recently. You march with your undead giants to the Brot Kingdom. You have no back up, just you. You’re going to show them all what you’re capable of… Your arrival isn’t surprising since they could see you coming from quite a few miles away, but the utter fear you inspired was immense and there still wasn’t enough time for the Grand Alliance to get reinforcements. Your undead giants smash and destroy buildings. They crush knights under foot. The carnage is great. You supplement your attack by raising the recent dead to your cause. Graveyards are your reinforcements. You see the remnants of Grand Alliance flee. Let them flee. Let them speak of the terror and the death! The news of what you did travels fast, and Catalina runs to meet you when you arrive back in Aftermath. “What the hell did you think you were doing risking your life like that? You should’ve come back to Aftermath for more soldiers before taking on the Brot Kingdom AND the Grand Alliance all by yourself!” “Why? Were you worried about me?” you smile. “Well… um…no! But, you should’ve told me!” “I did tell you. I told you I had everything worked out and look…I did.” You say putting your arm around her. She’s not resisting anymore. “Hmmm, well I guess you did. So now what?” “Now what? You and me in the bedroom, that’s what!” You and Catalina at last end this little dance and consummate your relationship. And just think all it took was destroying an entire kingdom with some undead giants! Four years pass… It’s been five years since you took control of Aftermath and you’ve made progress. Many changes have certainly have come about. Your territory now encompasses far more than just Aftermath. You now control several former kingdoms. You call your region the Dead Dominion. The population consists mainly of the dead, with necromancers typically being the only living beings, though there are pockets of living that have pledged their loyalty to you in exchange for mercy. You have granted it. You and Catalina are now truly King and Queen of the dead. Velzix has benefited from your success, due to the excessive problems you’ve given the Grand Alliance; he’s expanded his own realm relatively unchecked. Minor conflict has come about between your respective domains, and it’s only a matter of time before all out war occurs. Rumors are that he’s attempting to rip open a portal of the largest size to unleash all of the horrors the infernal plane has to offer. The Grand Alliance is attempting to handle the pair of you, but has only succeeded in fighting to a stalemate. Rumors are the Zalan Empire is attempting to take full control over the Grand Alliance in order to pursue a more extreme course of action. You have not heard anything from you family. You know your Dad’s mercenary company has been fighting in the outskirts of Velzix’s realm. Your sister has become a respected and successful Grand Alliance captain. She’s managed to hold back the tide of your dead horde from gaining anymore ground for a couple years now. As for your Mom, who knows? You’d prefer not to know what she thinks of you. The Vampire Clans have unsuccessfully sent assassins after you, but they have all failed. The Ghoul King suggests that an attack should be made on them soon. He mentions he knows where their secret fortress is and now that he has the support he wishes to take his revenge. He has completely conquered Drozz and turned into a true Kingdom (The only one semi-independent from your Dead Dominion) no longer does he hide in a hole. As for Trelik, you have heard nothing. For all you know he may be dead. He disappeared soon after his defeat at Brot four years ago. But today is another day and with that new problems come. You have to decide which new direction you’re going to steer your Dominion. > You attack the Grand Alliance The Grand Alliance is more unified and suffers less in-fighting (at least not on a violent scale) than Velzix’s crew. You figure you should take them out first. “Catalina I think it’s time to attack Grand Alliance and wipe them out once and for all.” You say walking into her study. “Oh you do huh? Got a plan in mind of how to go about it? Because it’s not going to be easy.” “I figure the strongest link is the Zalan Empire. If we take them out, the rest of the Alliance will quickly fall apart and we can concentrate on Velzix.” “Hmm, you make it sound so easy. I hope you know what you’re doing.” “Relax, I always know what I’m doing. Set it up and organize the troops, I’ll be overseeing this one personally.” Months pass and you make good progress. You begin taking town after town like an unstoppable juggernaut. However, when you reach you reach the Zalan Empire’s borders you begin to face heavier resistance. The Grand Alliance combined with the full brunt of Zalan’s own military is proving to be more troublesome than you anticipated. They’ve developed a lot more technological advances since the last time you were here. The cannons are really taking a toll on your corporeal troops. You slog on through, but eventually reach a stand still when you finally reach the gates of the Zalan capital. Your sister is overseeing the defense of Zalan’s capital which might explain why you’re having so much trouble. She is successfully countering every one of your plans. You’ve attempted to send a message to her, but you’ve yet to hear any kind of response You don’t quite have enough strength to break through and you’re starting to stretch yourself a little thin. Reports tell you that other civilized nations are sending military detachments to help and another Grand Alliance army is on the way. At this point you’re either going to have to send for reinforcements yourself or retreat and regroup. > You send for reinforcements You don’t want Catalina to send any since you do need to defend your territory, so you figure the Ghoul King would be a good candidate. He can help you, before you help him destroy the Vampire Clans. You send a message to him via ghostly courier and in the next day you get one back. He says he’ll be there soon, which relieves you a bit. In the meantime you continue to try to break through the capital’s defenses and repair some of your more salvageable troops that have fallen. About a week passes and the Ghoul King hasn’t shown up yet, you’ve suffered a counter attack which allowed you to temporary replenish your troops, but you lost quite a few necromancers in the process. The strain of commanding such a large army is making you a little more fatigued than it would if you had some support. You send a message to the Ghoul King again as well as to Catalina. You don’t get anything back from the Ghoul King, but Catalina tells you she hasn’t heard from him either and she’s had to defend the home territory from Velzix who heard about how preoccupied you are with the Grand Alliance and is taking advantage of the situation. A month passes and you have to retreat from the siege. You’re the last remaining necromancer and you’ve been running on empty. The Grand Alliance along with the Zalan military has completely decimated most of your troops with holy magic and powerful gunpowder weapons. You have to make your make back to Aftermath mostly through hostile territory now since most of your recent conquests have been liberated. By the time you get to Aftermath you find it in ruins. It has been thoroughly raided by Velzix’s elite demon warriors. You rush in to check on Catalina, but you find her ripped to shreds by demons. You cry out vowing revenge as you hold on to her body, but there will be no revenge for you. Your back is suddenly home to several stabbing blades. You attempt to turn around to face your attacker, and when you do your throat is slashed open. Clutching your throat you bleed out onto the floor before the vampire assassin completes the job and severs your head from your body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Grand Alliance is more unified and suffers less in-fighting (at least not on a violent scale) than Velzix’s crew. You figure you should take them out first. “Catalina I think it’s time to attack Grand Alliance and wipe them out once and for all.” You say walking into her study. “Oh you do huh? Got a plan in mind of how to go about it? Because it’s not going to be easy.” “I figure the strongest link is the Zalan Empire. If we take them out, the rest of the Alliance will quickly fall apart and we can concentrate on Velzix.” “Hmm, you make it sound so easy. I hope you know what you’re doing.” “Relax, I always know what I’m doing. Set it up and organize the troops, I’ll be overseeing this one personally.” Months pass and you make good progress. You begin taking town after town like an unstoppable juggernaut. However, when you reach you reach the Zalan Empire’s borders you begin to face heavier resistance. The Grand Alliance combined with the full brunt of Zalan’s own military is proving to be more troublesome than you anticipated. They’ve developed a lot more technological advances since the last time you were here. The cannons are really taking a toll on your corporeal troops. You slog on through, but eventually reach a stand still when you finally reach the gates of the Zalan capital. Your sister is overseeing the defense of Zalan’s capital which might explain why you’re having so much trouble. She is successfully countering every one of your plans. You’ve attempted to send a message to her, but you’ve yet to hear any kind of response You don’t quite have enough strength to break through and you’re starting to stretch yourself a little thin. Reports tell you that other civilized nations are sending military detachments to help and another Grand Alliance army is on the way. At this point you’re either going to have to send for reinforcements yourself or retreat and regroup. > You retreat and regroup As much as you’re loathed to do so, you decide it’s better to retreat and fortify your recent conquests. You’ve still done much damage to the Grand Alliance. A month passes and you suffer counter attacks, and a few of your conquests get retaken, but for the most part you hold on to what you’ve acquired. Velzix takes advantage of the situation and decides to launch his own attacks on you and the Grand Alliance however, he’s a little more successful having managed to conserve his own manpower and not being stretched out Catalina informs you that The Ghoul King has been itching to strike against the Vampire Clans and that he’s going to do it, with or without your direct help. You’re too preoccupied with your own problems to even argue or do anything about it. You tell her that he can do what he’s gotta do. If he wants your help, Hessan and whatever pitiful army he can muster up is his to command. You don’t care. Five years pass… It’s been ten years since you took control of Aftermath and now it looks like that’s all finally coming to an end. The Ghoul King’s assault upon the Vampire Clans was a failure, though it was damaging enough for them to never again bother you again. You have to move some necromancers into the Drozz region to take command there, which stretches you out a bit, since you didn’t need to worry about it so directly before, having the Ghoul King there and all. Over the years Velzix managed to build up much strength while you and the Grand Alliance fought a see-saw battle. Velzix manages to permanently open up a large portal to his home plane. He declares all out war on the entire world determined to turn it into the same hell he once called home. You heard your Dad’s mercenary company attempted to stop him, but failed. The Grand Alliance is the first to fall. Already weakened by your previous attacks, they could not put up much of a fight against the hordes of demons. You hear that your sister defended the capital of the Zalan Empire much like she did during your siege, except this time she was less successful and died. You can only presume your Mom suffered the same fate, seeing as she lived there as well. You hope that the pair of them have gone some place better With the last bastion of “good” out of the way, Velzix turns his attention towards you. You won’t go without a fight though. For every bit of land he takes, you make him pay for it in demon blood tenfold. It’s no use though, the hordes of hell are without end and while the dead are certainly just as numerous, you’re the only necromancer powerful enough to command epic armies of them and you are only one standing against hell itself. Aftermath is besieged and ultimately falls to demonic armies. Catalina is killed during the attack and you disintegrate her body before escaping through a portal to Drozz as you refuse to let it be desecrated by demon scum. You wage a guerilla war in Drozz for months, and you can’t help but realize you’ve become much like the Ghoul King; hiding in a hole while demons take over the world. For awhile you actually have some peace as the demons soon outnumber their “enemies” and begin to follow their natural instincts of in-fighting and you’re forgotten. When the next winter comes you’re caught out in a heavy blizzard while foraging for food. You’re not going to make it back to your hiding place. Exhausted, you fall in the snow thinking about the hell that the world has become and how you’re partially responsible. Eternal sleep is welcomed. You embrace the blessed death that you once held mastery over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 3: One Foot In The Grave One year has passed… It’s hard to believe it, but it’s been a year since you took control of Nuro…or rather Aftermath as you renamed it. The “Nuro Incident” as it came to be known was a shock to the civilized world. Nobody had anticipated such a thing occurring despite all preparations. Certainly not to Nuro given it’s near “invincible” reputation. The Grand Alliance was immediately formed to retake the city, but fortunately for you, you weren’t the only problem they had. Velzix, a demon lord who soon left Nuro during its attack, managed to unite the rest of the demons that felt the need to break their contract with the Dark Order turned their attention to the Tulan Kingdom. Right now he’s established his own rule, enslaving the population and is most likely planning further conquest assuming he can keep his own troops from fighting each other long enough. Trelik the “other necromancer” has been rampaging across the countryside in a vain attempt to establish some sort of dominion of his own, but so far without any real allies he’s yet to be successful. His actions have still kept the Grand Alliance and other governments busy however. As for you, you’ve already managed to hold off one Grand Alliance attack quite successfully due to your preparations. The first thing you did was command all the surviving Dark Order members to become necromancers. Some of them the more die hard demonologists hated this idea, so you gave them the option of taking their chances with Velzix or alone against the Grand Alliance. After being presented with these two undesirable prospects, they grumbled, but the rest soon fell in line. Catalina was mainly responsible for training them, given that she’s the only other “true” necromancer in the city. You’re glad of that as it saved you from having to do everything. Your relationship with Catalina’s has improved mainly because you’ve proven yourself to be a competent leader that has managed to hold on to the city despite the odds. She still acts like she’s not interested in you, but you catch an extended glance from her every now and then. Oh yeah she’s definitely warming up to you. You haven’t heard anything from your family, you can only wonder what they think of all this and in some ways you don’t want to know. While things are somewhat quiet now, that’s not going to last. The Grand Alliance will keep attacking and who knows how long they’ll be distracted with Velzix and Trelik? They may very well overwhelm you in time, if the other threats are taken care of. You can’t just sit in your throne room and prepare for the next attack; you’ll need to be proactive about this threat. This of course this means conquest. Your standing army is stronger than ever right now and your powers in necromancy have grown considerably with the last year. You’re confident that you could probably take over a small kingdom. Gaining more territory that your enemy can’t use is usually a good way of making things harder for them. > You well maybe you better check up on all the players first (Background info) The dark path isn’t an easy one and you’ve made (or rather inherited) lots of enemies besides the obvious ones due to what is now known as the “Nuro Incident”. While you have many enemies, you realize you don’t have too many allies. Just you, your city and a sexy female necromancer. Things could be worse! > You catalina and Aftermath You remember Catalina in your Enchantment class, but you were so busy trying to pass it, that you barely paid any attention to her. Good thing you didn’t, otherwise you would’ve failed it. (Not that it really matters now!) You’ve gotten to know her better since then of course. She’s a few years younger than you and grew up in the poor district of Nuro. Unlike you who had at least one loving parent, Catalina was an orphan. She did grow close to the kindly woman who ran the orphanage and took an interest in the woman’s minor magical abilities to entertain the children. This interest along with her natural ability, lead to Catalina’s path to become a magic practitioner. However when this kindly lady was killed by thugs in the night, all the orphans were cast out on to the streets. Most of them turned to criminal lifestyles for survival. Catalina on the other hand was interested in a little more than just mere survival. She still had a thirst for magic knowledge, she left the slums far behind and began to she lurk around Nuro’s magic college, stealing books and trying to learn the secrets within. Even finding quiet places to practice minor spells. She was very isolated during these years and rarely interacted with others. Eventually she stole a book from Mr. Demar. A book on necromancy. The magic contained within was nothing like she ever saw before. The philosophy of it was different as well. It fascinated her, and she couldn’t wait to practice it. Fortunately she was caught red handed by Mr. Demar before she could. Mr. Demar sensed that she had much potential, but lacked discipline, so he decided to take her as one his pupils for his Dark Order. He even paid for her enrollment of other classes to give her a sense of stability and routine. She would stay in the underground base of the Dark Order so she could learn to better work in a group. While all of this did make her a more organized person, she still never really connected with her peers. They were all a little older for one thing. She couldn’t identify with the demonologists and saw little in common with her fellow necromancers. Trelik’s arrogance and unwanted advances were a huge turn off. Sebastian and Irwin were okay, but seemed a little boring in the scheme of things. And while she appreciated Mr. Demar’s “generosity” and respected his abilities, she still never completely trusted him. She’s still pretty guarded around you, though she does respect your abilities. (Much like how she felt about Mr. Demar actually) She’s a competent and moderately powerful necromancer. She tends to prefer to control small groups of elite undead troops rather than hordes of weak ones. She’s a little more versatile than you, as she has skill in other forms of magic. (Some of which she’s helped you at least be mediocre in) As she’s the only one that’s at least approaching your level of power and a true necromancer as well, you feel closer to her and trust her to be your second in command and when something important needs to be done and if you can’t do it, you’ll assign it to her. The former city of Nuro, now called Aftermath looks vastly different now of course, but you think it’s for the better. Most of the “population” is dead and they go about their undead lives performing the same jobs they were typically doing before except now they never stop unless you command them to do something else. A few of the dead do have higher brain functions, letting them able to make simple decisions. These you typically put in charge of guard duty or similar minor roles. Your small group of necromancers takes care of any true “free will” undead problems by either corralling them, or bringing it to your attention to take care of it. Other than the necromancers, there are no other living creatures in the city, at least not sentient ones. You won’t take the risk, at least not while Aftermath is your only holding.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The dark path isn’t an easy one and you’ve made (or rather inherited) lots of enemies besides the obvious ones due to what is now known as the “Nuro Incident”. While you have many enemies, you realize you don’t have too many allies. Just you, your city and a sexy female necromancer. Things could be worse! > You trelik and Velzix You probably know Trelik the best out of all your enemies mainly because you were in the same class and he was jealous of your natural talent the whole time. There isn’t too much to say about him other than he’s sadly all too typical of most necromancers: obsessed with power, arrogant, and suffers from delusions of grandeur. Catalina’s never liked him ever since he unsuccessfully hit on her before you had even joined the Dark Order. She liked him even less when he betrayed Mr. Demar. Right now he’s rumored to have finally taken control of a little town in the Brot Kingdom. He’s been holding out so far due to the weak military the Kingdom has, but it’s unlikely he’d survive against the Grand Alliance. So while he’s barely scraping together an army of dead peasants and dressed in smelly rags, you’re easily controlling a necropolis of dead soldiers and get to even share the company of a beautiful woman. Nope he’s got no reason to hate you at all… The former Tulan Kingdom has been turned into a hellish realm firmly under the grip of Demon Lord Velzix and his merry band of little demons. From reports you’ve heard, the Kingdom was much like Nuro when it was attacked, completely unprepared. Velzix knew exactly what locations to attack first and took great glee in ripping the royal family to pieces personally. Most of the Tulan population that wasn’t killed (or able to escape) submitted to Velzix almost immediately. A few of the Dark Order that had fled Nuro during the attack have also found a home there, however Velzix has made it quite clear of who is the master and who is the servant and has done twisted things to them to make them never forget. (Hence why most of the demonologists that were still in Nuro, ultimately decided to follow you instead!) His army contains mortals (who were usually evil to begin with) and demons. So far he’s left you alone, but obviously that doesn’t mean you’re friends. The Grand Alliance considers him to be at least as great a threat or possibly greater threat than you. The only thing that truly holds him back is the chaotic nature of his infernal buddies who seem to like fighting each other as well as their enemies. As it stands now, he’s only just holding on to his realm and fending off Grand Alliance attacks. He’s been unable to mount a real assault against any surrounding areas, though raids are typical. If he ever got organized he’d definitely be public enemy number one and that’s something nobody wants.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The dark path isn’t an easy one and you’ve made (or rather inherited) lots of enemies besides the obvious ones due to what is now known as the “Nuro Incident”. While you have many enemies, you realize you don’t have too many allies. Just you, your city and a sexy female necromancer. Things could be worse! > The Vampire Clans and The Grand Alliance Most of your knowledge of them comes from Catalina who being in the Dark Order longer had more information about them. The Vampire Clans from what you know live in a fortress run by Lord Rostov. This fortress’ location is unknown and hidden by powerful magic. It is there where those few remaining vampires that have kept their faculties stay. (As opposed to the near mindless ones that lurk in holes in the wilderness) While groups of vampires may have been involved in their own political intrigues and agendas in the past, the term Vampire Clans now is somewhat of a misnomer since Lord Rostov has a firm command over the remaining vampires. It’s basically a dictatorship more than a “council” where they all sit around discussing things. The term Clans is probably kept to just hold on to the illusion of former glory of freedom rather than the reality that they’re all hiding in a secret fortress ruled by a tyrant. Despite their reduced power, they still can affect mortal affairs. Currently they are no doubt affecting these affairs to hinder you. The death of their delegate pissed them off pretty severely, not to mention they don’t agree with the “high profile” necromancy in the first place. You received a letter by bat from them recently saying that your actions will not go unopposed by the Clans and that your days on this world are numbered. The self-professed “good guys” are made up of several civilized governments. The Zalan Empire (Your former home and where your family lives) is one of the main members of the Grand Alliance. Several races belong, each one bringing their unique skills to the mix. It’s quite possible to see the clockwork automatons of the Dwarven Union fighting side by side with the silent monks of Elin. This arrangement only arises during times of great crisis such as the one you caused. Given that most living creatures have basic need to not want to die or become a walking rotting corpse (Or a slave to demons) the chances of you convincing them to leave you alone is extremely unlikely.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Victory isn’t beyond your grasp, you just need to regroup and organize. You immediately seek out Irwin, Sebastian and Catalina. You find Sebastian and Catalina, and they’re running low on viable corpses. “Hey, glad you could get here, the Nuro mage guards are putting up a hell of a fight! The demonologists can’t keep the demons in line and whatever former graduates Mr. Demar had to help us are probably all dead by now!” Sebastian explains. “Yeah, it’s bad all over. Where’s Irwin?” you ask. “Irwin? He’s dead; can’t you see his body lying over there with all the arrows in it?” Catalina points out. “Well, no point in letting this go to waste, we need all the help we can get.” You say and command Irwin to rise to join the rest of the horde You tell Catalina and Sebastian to hand control over the rest of their troops to you, as if you can concentrate them with a single mind, you’ll be able to break the doors down of city hall and take out the remainder of the mage guards holding out there. You also tell them that one should head back to the college itself and go check on Quayle, and the other should go help out Mr. Demar. Oddly enough Sebastian and Catalina obey your orders immediately. You begin to feel even more confident in your power of command. You proceed to tell your now larger undead horde to attack the last bastion of Nuro’s governmental control. You unleash blasts of dark energy at the mage guards who attempt to defend from the windows while your zombies and skeletons break down the doors and begin to massacre all those inside. You enter the building nearly oblivious to the carnage. You feel a very real sense of calming peace amongst the death. Eventually you encounter the “First Citizen” of Nuro busily trying to slay as many of your soldiers as possible, but as you continue to raise them, even he realizes it’s a futile endeavor. A skeleton warrior hacks his arm off with an axe, and then a recently raised mage guard clubs him in the head with a small mace. He falls to the floor of his own office before your feet and looks up at you. “Why? You…you’ll never get away with this…” he sputters as he bleeds out. “You might be right, but it’ll be interesting to see if I do.” You calmly say and kick him in the face before another skeleton lands a killing blow to him. He is then raised to join the ranks. You exit the building and notice that the city is near empty. At least as far as the living go. The dead however are plentiful, bodies litter the streets. More resources for you, you think. A demonologist looking very worn from battle sees you and you have to stop your small horde from attacking. “Hey hold on! I’m on your side! Shit, this didn’t turn out as planned, did it?” “Oh I dunno, we got the city.” “Yeah, but Mr. Demar is still battling the rest of the staff in the college and I’m really worried about what the hell’s going on with Quayle’s spell, I don’t know if you’ve experienced it yet, but I’ve been seeing buildings phase in and out of existence. I knew fucking around with time would be trouble!” “Where are all of the demons?” you ask. “Most of them left! I mean there’s a few that stuck around, most of the weaker variety. There was a major demon called Velzix who was supposed to be helping, but he took off as well. Bah! Unreliable lot they are. I should’ve done what you did, become a necromancer! The dead always obey.” “Not always…but you may still fulfill your wish after all this is over, so where exactly are Mr. Demar and Quayle, I mean I know they’re in the university, but where exactly?” “You can’t miss either one of them, Quayle’s located in east section of campus, where you see all the damn buildings phasing in and out. As for Mr. Demar, well I’m sure you can still hear the explosions. I’m going to try to corral at least some of the imps and help Mr. Demar, I’m not going anywhere near the eastside of the campus though. I’m off!” The demonologist runs to go do what he said, leaving you with a couple choices of proceeding. You could go try to fix this problem with Quayle since it won’t do anyone any good if the city collapses on itself or disappears to gods know where, of course you don’t know exactly what you’re going to do, hell you’ve never even spoken to Quayle before. He was always kept locked up by himself in his room studying most of the time. Of course you could go help Mr. Demar, chances are he could solve the problem with Quayle a lot better if he survives. > You go help Mr. Demar You might be a competent necromancer, but you’re leery about messing around with time. You better help Mr. Demar so he can better deal with the possible Quayle situation. You head towards campus where various explosions are taking place, it doesn’t take long before you encounter Sebastian lying on the ground. You guess he attempted to help Mr. Demar and got killed for his troubles. “Damn, sorry about that.” You say and then raise him to join your horde and hope Catalina is doing a better job with Quayle. You enter the administration building. Smoke, fire and body parts look all around. In the distance you hear shouting followed by magic blasts. “TRELIK YOU TREACHEROUS BASTARD!” “Ha ha! You’re weak old man and I’m taking over this shit!” You order your undead horde to run ahead of you as you approach the sounds of battle. You turn the corner just in time for Trelik run into you, he’s definitely caught off guard. “YOU! You little sycophant come to help teacher eh, well it won’t…” You don’t listen to his melodramatic speeches, you tell your horde to kill him and they do so easily given that he’s heavily outnumbered and can’t cast a spell quick enough. Mr. Demar arrives just in time to see the aftermath. “Damn, I was hoping to kill him myself. No matter, what’s done is done now. Our enemies here are defeated. Most of the high ranking professors have been killed, I’m just looking for that cowering Dean. Have you secured the city?” “Yeah, I personally stormed city hall and slew the first citizen and all of his mage guards.” “Ha ha! I knew you had potential!” Mr. Demar laughs and pats you on the shoulder. “Mr. Demar I think you should know something. Quayle’s spell is becoming erratic, someone said buildings are starting to phase in and out of existence. I think Jasmine’s over there, but I don’t think she’ll be able to handle what’s going on.” “Dammit, I’d hoped that Quayle was stable enough to…aaargh! Nevermind, I’ll have to take care of this, because if his actions go completely wrong we’re all dead. Since you seem to be good at killing high officials, you take care of the dean.” Mr. Demar takes his leave towards the eastside of campus, leaving you to take out the dean. You’re a little unsure of yourself, the dean of the university didn’t get that way by being a push over. Though Mr. Demar did say he was cowering somewhere so maybe he’s not that tough. You tell your undead troops to spread out and search the building. Along the way you see Felsa’s body. Oh well, another follower for you… You begin to grow tired of searching mundane office after mundane office so it’s a treat when you once again hear the sounds of battle and see the dean at the end of a corridor fighting off your horde. “Back, foul things!” The dean shouts casting a ray of pure light in the faces of many of your troops. He hasn’t seen you yet so you take advantage and cast your own blast of negative energy into his side. He falls in pain, but returns fire which you barely dodge. He crawls out of your line of sight and behind a corner. “So Demar sends one of his students to take care of me, too cowardly to do it himself eh? It’ll take more than a few skeletons and a neophyte necromancer to bring me down! Come and get me if you dare!” You have to kill him while he’s still weak, if you let him regain energy he could possibly escape, or worse, kill you. > You raise more dead and march them down the corridor You decide the best way is to take the straight forward approach and just overwhelm the dean. You raise more nearby bodies and add them to your tireless horde. As they march down the corridor, you stand near the end of the corridor figuring, if the dean comes out to cast a fireball he won’t get you. However you severely underestimated the dean. He does indeed come out from behind the corner again and he casts a very powerful version of chain lightning, it zaps through your troops, not really doing anything except halting them briefly and rattling their dead bones, however when the lightning reaches YOU, you feel the effects a lot more severely as every organ in your body is fried and your skin is charred black. You fall to the floor dead and your horde soon follows.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You might be a competent necromancer, but you’re leery about messing around with time. You better help Mr. Demar so he can better deal with the possible Quayle situation. You head towards campus where various explosions are taking place, it doesn’t take long before you encounter Sebastian lying on the ground. You guess he attempted to help Mr. Demar and got killed for his troubles. “Damn, sorry about that.” You say and then raise him to join your horde and hope Catalina is doing a better job with Quayle. You enter the administration building. Smoke, fire and body parts look all around. In the distance you hear shouting followed by magic blasts. “TRELIK YOU TREACHEROUS BASTARD!” “Ha ha! You’re weak old man and I’m taking over this shit!” You order your undead horde to run ahead of you as you approach the sounds of battle. You turn the corner just in time for Trelik run into you, he’s definitely caught off guard. “YOU! You little sycophant come to help teacher eh, well it won’t…” You don’t listen to his melodramatic speeches, you tell your horde to kill him and they do so easily given that he’s heavily outnumbered and can’t cast a spell quick enough. Mr. Demar arrives just in time to see the aftermath. “Damn, I was hoping to kill him myself. No matter, what’s done is done now. Our enemies here are defeated. Most of the high ranking professors have been killed, I’m just looking for that cowering Dean. Have you secured the city?” “Yeah, I personally stormed city hall and slew the first citizen and all of his mage guards.” “Ha ha! I knew you had potential!” Mr. Demar laughs and pats you on the shoulder. “Mr. Demar I think you should know something. Quayle’s spell is becoming erratic, someone said buildings are starting to phase in and out of existence. I think Jasmine’s over there, but I don’t think she’ll be able to handle what’s going on.” “Dammit, I’d hoped that Quayle was stable enough to…aaargh! Nevermind, I’ll have to take care of this, because if his actions go completely wrong we’re all dead. Since you seem to be good at killing high officials, you take care of the dean.” Mr. Demar takes his leave towards the eastside of campus, leaving you to take out the dean. You’re a little unsure of yourself, the dean of the university didn’t get that way by being a push over. Though Mr. Demar did say he was cowering somewhere so maybe he’s not that tough. You tell your undead troops to spread out and search the building. Along the way you see Felsa’s body. Oh well, another follower for you… You begin to grow tired of searching mundane office after mundane office so it’s a treat when you once again hear the sounds of battle and see the dean at the end of a corridor fighting off your horde. “Back, foul things!” The dean shouts casting a ray of pure light in the faces of many of your troops. He hasn’t seen you yet so you take advantage and cast your own blast of negative energy into his side. He falls in pain, but returns fire which you barely dodge. He crawls out of your line of sight and behind a corner. “So Demar sends one of his students to take care of me, too cowardly to do it himself eh? It’ll take more than a few skeletons and a neophyte necromancer to bring me down! Come and get me if you dare!” You have to kill him while he’s still weak, if you let him regain energy he could possibly escape, or worse, kill you. > You attempt to summon spirits You always meant to try this, but never got around to it. No time like the present… You concentrate and attempt to summon the spirits of the nearby dead to help you kill the dean. At first nothing seems to happen and you hear the dean killing more of your skeletons and walking corpses, but soon an eerie howl is heard. Several tormented ghostly beings rise up and you give them the simple order to kill. It takes a bit more concentration to control them, but you manage. The dean is surprised by the ghosts and fumbles with an appropriate spell, but isn’t quick enough before they touch him and his life force begins to drain. Eventually he becomes a desicated husk and drops to the floor. “Damn that was cool.” You giggle. Feeling totally pleased with your victory, you then remember Mr. Demar and Quayle’s spell. You’d blocked it out of your mind during the battle, but you’re hoping that’s been resolved. You head towards the eastside of campus, and you see no disturbance, at least no buildings disappearing and reappearing. You do see Catalina standing by though; she sees you and waves you over. “Wow, you’re back, I guess that means you killed the dean huh?” Catalina questions. “You sound surprised.” “Hmm, I guess maybe I’m a little impressed.” “What’s going on?” “I dunno, I’m not sure myself, it was really weird. When I first got here I couldn’t get to Quayle due to all the temporal disturbances, I was about to leave when Mr. Demar arrived, he told me to stand back and he would take care of this. He managed to walk straight into that gray building over there where I assume Quayle was. I saw Mr. Demar become a child, a rotting corpse and then revert back to his normal age before he got there. I then heard terrible noises within. I even saw some strange tentacled creatures come out of the building. I thought I was going to have to fight them, but then the entire mess just seemed to stop and there wasn’t a disturbance anymore. I guess Mr. Demar won…but I haven’t checked on him, I’m still hesitant about going near there.” “Well I guess I’ll go in then.” You enter the gray building cautiously, you see a bunch of little centipedes crawling all over the place, some really slimy yellow ichor and just a general feeling of sickness. You’ve seen a lot in the Dark Order, but whatever happened here was really fucked up. You attention is turned to Mr. Demar who is on the floor…or rather IN the floor. Half of his body is embedded in the stone floor, you don’t see how you can help him. “Shit! What the hell?” you exclaim. “Ugh…long story…look there isn’t much time. (Cough) This take over has been a failure.” “No it hasn’t, we got the whole city, I killed the dean, and you stopped this temporal disturbance…” “I haven’t stopped it, at least not permanently. The damage done was far too severe by the time I got here. Quayle’s actions have ripped open a hole to a place you don’t even want to know about. (Cough) I’ve temporarily patched it up, but who knows how long it will last. You better get out of here while you still can…I won’t lie though, life for you is going to be rough. You’ll be hunted when they find out what happened here and they WILL find out about you. They always do. Still, you may survive. You are powerful, maybe you’ll be able to succeed where I failed…but I doubt it. Ugh…the odds…just too great…you want my last advice? Take that Catalina girl and have fun while you can.” And with that last bit of advice Mr. Demar dies. Well this was a big downer. Here you thought you were ready to take on the world and then you find out all your actions have been for naught! Still, what does Mr. Demar know? He’s dead! Perhaps you can find a way to fix the hole permanently or at least keep it patched. It seems folly to just abandon this city after having risked so much to gain it. Then again perhaps it would be better to follow Mr. Demar’s advice. If you leave now, it might take awhile before your identities are discovered. Life on the run isn’t going to be easy, but perhaps it won’t be forever. > You take over the city You exit the gray building and approach Catalina, she looks at you expectantly. “So what’re we going to do?” “We’re taking over this city. From now on, it’s you and me.” You reply. Catalina is taken aback by your orders, given all of what has happened she senses that staying in the city wouldn’t be the best plan. But she has no other allies. She has no idea of where to run. She will stick with you, if only because together you’ll be a more formidable force when trouble surely arises. You and Catalina prepare yourselves for the trouble ahead… A month passes The Incident of Nuro has finally become well known knowledge. You and Catalina have managed to shore up the defenses of Nuro pretty well, all things considered. Some of the demonologists help out, but only because they have nowhere else to go and this is the safest place for them. You begin to instruct them to learn the ways of necromancy. You also manage to turn back a Grand Alliance army which didn’t expect such a large resistance. The demons that left the city ran amok all over the countryside and took a particular interest in the Kingdom of Tulan under the guidance of Velzix, an arch fiend. Which is fortunate since it draws a little attention away from you. No signs of that “temporal hole” opening up again, but you tell some of your new acolytes to keep an eye on it. In the mean time nothing of importance is to be placed in that area. A year passes The Kingdom of Tulan has finally put the sword to every last demon infesting the area, which doesn’t bode well for you since now you’re the only “big evil” around now. The Grand Alliance attempts another siege of the city and once again they fail. You aren’t confident you can hold out forever like this though, you attempt to claim that you have no plans for conquest, but your claims (true or not) go unheeded. They aren’t taking any chances that you might build up. You and Catalina have at this point basically become “King and Queen” of the city. It’s a logical pairing. Sometimes though it’s more than just one of convenience. Your acolytes warn you about seeing strange things. Object temporarily disappearing. You begin to worry and unlock those old tomes that Quayle was reading hoping you can learn something. Another years passes You suffer two more attacks by the Grand Alliance. The last one lead by your own sister. You attempted to parley with her before battle, but she would have none of it. Indeed you received a letter from your Mom a month before the attack begging you to give yourself up. Of course you couldn’t do that. You wrote her back with regret and told her that you shall probably not speak again. Your sister got farther than most, but in the end she died by your own hand. You didn’t raise her. She was not deserving of such a fate. You burned her body instead and wished her well in the afterlife. How you wished that your Dad’s mercenary company had been sent, but for whatever reason you have not heard anything from him. The coward. He knows you are more powerful and could easily crush him. The temporal disturbances are getting worse, and you’re not learning anything new from Quayle’s books, it’s all just so damn confusing. You feel like you did when you were in school. Completely inept and helpless. Catalina tries to be understanding, but your behavior from reading the damn books is making you very erratic. She has to pick up the slack when you begin to make mistakes. Another year passes The temporal hole rips open once again. Horrible creatures come lurching out. You manage to fight them off, but the hole is getting bigger. Catalina insists that you both have to leave the city, but you’re too far gone at this point, the books on temporal magic have begun to make you as mad as they did Quayle. (If without the talent) This is your city and you’re bound and determined to hold it no matter what. She cannot endure anymore; she takes her leave of you one night…only to be killed by vampire assassins somewhere in the countryside. The Grand Alliance is preparing to attack again, more tentacle creatures are seeping into this reality. You don’t care; you’ll take them all on. You laugh insanely on your throne as the screams and unnatural howls fill the city. Battle and death is everywhere. You hear something coming up the stairs, and it’s probably not Grand Alliance soldiers… “What was the point of it all? Nothing!” you laugh before being utterly destroyed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You always meant to try this, but never got around to it. No time like the present… You concentrate and attempt to summon the spirits of the nearby dead to help you kill the dean. At first nothing seems to happen and you hear the dean killing more of your skeletons and walking corpses, but soon an eerie howl is heard. Several tormented ghostly beings rise up and you give them the simple order to kill. It takes a bit more concentration to control them, but you manage. The dean is surprised by the ghosts and fumbles with an appropriate spell, but isn’t quick enough before they touch him and his life force begins to drain. Eventually he becomes a desicated husk and drops to the floor. “Damn that was cool.” You giggle. Feeling totally pleased with your victory, you then remember Mr. Demar and Quayle’s spell. You’d blocked it out of your mind during the battle, but you’re hoping that’s been resolved. You head towards the eastside of campus, and you see no disturbance, at least no buildings disappearing and reappearing. You do see Catalina standing by though; she sees you and waves you over. “Wow, you’re back, I guess that means you killed the dean huh?” Catalina questions. “You sound surprised.” “Hmm, I guess maybe I’m a little impressed.” “What’s going on?” “I dunno, I’m not sure myself, it was really weird. When I first got here I couldn’t get to Quayle due to all the temporal disturbances, I was about to leave when Mr. Demar arrived, he told me to stand back and he would take care of this. He managed to walk straight into that gray building over there where I assume Quayle was. I saw Mr. Demar become a child, a rotting corpse and then revert back to his normal age before he got there. I then heard terrible noises within. I even saw some strange tentacled creatures come out of the building. I thought I was going to have to fight them, but then the entire mess just seemed to stop and there wasn’t a disturbance anymore. I guess Mr. Demar won…but I haven’t checked on him, I’m still hesitant about going near there.” “Well I guess I’ll go in then.” You enter the gray building cautiously, you see a bunch of little centipedes crawling all over the place, some really slimy yellow ichor and just a general feeling of sickness. You’ve seen a lot in the Dark Order, but whatever happened here was really fucked up. You attention is turned to Mr. Demar who is on the floor…or rather IN the floor. Half of his body is embedded in the stone floor, you don’t see how you can help him. “Shit! What the hell?” you exclaim. “Ugh…long story…look there isn’t much time. (Cough) This take over has been a failure.” “No it hasn’t, we got the whole city, I killed the dean, and you stopped this temporal disturbance…” “I haven’t stopped it, at least not permanently. The damage done was far too severe by the time I got here. Quayle’s actions have ripped open a hole to a place you don’t even want to know about. (Cough) I’ve temporarily patched it up, but who knows how long it will last. You better get out of here while you still can…I won’t lie though, life for you is going to be rough. You’ll be hunted when they find out what happened here and they WILL find out about you. They always do. Still, you may survive. You are powerful, maybe you’ll be able to succeed where I failed…but I doubt it. Ugh…the odds…just too great…you want my last advice? Take that Catalina girl and have fun while you can.” And with that last bit of advice Mr. Demar dies. Well this was a big downer. Here you thought you were ready to take on the world and then you find out all your actions have been for naught! Still, what does Mr. Demar know? He’s dead! Perhaps you can find a way to fix the hole permanently or at least keep it patched. It seems folly to just abandon this city after having risked so much to gain it. Then again perhaps it would be better to follow Mr. Demar’s advice. If you leave now, it might take awhile before your identities are discovered. Life on the run isn’t going to be easy, but perhaps it won’t be forever. > You leave the city You exit the gray building and approach Catalina, she looks at you expectantly. “So what’re we going to do?” “We’re getting out of here, and we’re not looking back. From now on, it’s you and me.” You reply. Catalina is taken aback by your orders, but given all of what has happened she senses that staying in the city wouldn’t be the best plan. She too has no other allies. She will stick with you, if only because together you’ll be a more formidable force when trouble surely arises. You and Catalina leave the decimated city of Nuro behind you… A month passes The Incident of Nuro has finally become well known knowledge. A few demonologists attempted to run the hollow shell of the city, but severely lacked any sort of manpower, natural or unnatural to hold it. They were easily defeated when the Grand Alliance army came to retake the city. The demons that left the city ran amok all over the countryside and took a particular interest in the Kingdom of Tulan under the guidance of Velzix, an arch fiend. You and Catalina still remain unknown as far as being involved, but other members of the Dark Order that escaped are starting to be hunted down… A year passes The Kingdom of Tulan has finally put the sword to every last demon infesting the area. Most of the demonologist have been caught and hung for their crimes as well. Your name has also come up on the wanted list along with Catalina’s. You both now keep to the rural locations; many times you have to fend off attacks from barbaric orc tribes. Fortunately your skills in necromancy protect you (as well as scare the hell out of the orcs) Despite the hardship (Or perhaps because of it) you and Catalina form a sort of relationship beyond one of just mutual protection. There are times when you forget that you’re being hunted constantly. Two years pass Just like Mr. Demar predicted a temporal disturbance in the city of Nuro reappears again. Horrible creatures come lurching out creating a “Second Incident” before the time hole is repaired for good. However the city is evacuated due to mass insanity caused there and is considered a danger zone under observation by the Grand Alliance. Catalina is killed by vampire assassins during the night, you take vengeance, but it’s too late for her. You weep for the first time in a long time. You briefly flirt with the idea of raising her…but you burn her body instead and carry on your path alone. And all you can think about is how tired you are… Two more years pass You hear them coming for you, there is no more running. This is your fate. To die in this cave. You don’t even want to fight it anymore. You regret the day you set out on this path. Such is often the fate of a necromancer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Sure I’ll go.” “Very well, you and Felsa are coming with me. Trelik, you go brush up on the attack strategy.” “But!” “No buts! Just do it!” Trelik storms off while you, Mr. Demar and Felsa head towards the conference room. When you arrive, you see a single pale emaciated figure. He doesn’t look at all like the vampires you’ve heard of in past. There is no regality here. “It’s about time you showed up. I must confess I was not enthused about you leaving me here waiting like a dog. We have very important matters to discuss!” he hisses. “My apologies Yolev. I just needed to take care of a few things. Please sit, and let us all discuss this.” “There really is no discussion Mr. Demar! You are to cease your plan immediately lest you face the full brunt of the vampire clans! Your foolish mortal desires will kill us all and we cannot allow that to happen! We must continue to survive!” “Survive? Is that all you vampires worry about anymore? Why at one time you were secret rulers and puppet masters. Hell, without you the Great Lich Lord wouldn’t have made nearly as much progress as he did.” “And THAT folly of those ignorant vampires is exactly why we must stop you now. The Dead War cost us greatly, we should not have thrown our lot in with a mad man who was determined to bring death to the world. It was only at the last minute that the wiser of us realized to do so would be detrimental to us. Almost too late. We are only a shadow of our former selves, but that shadow is still long…and we can make life difficult for you.” Yolev warns. “I don’t respond well to idle threats, but I will say this, your fears are unfounded. The Dark Order is not seeking to bring death to the world, we are merely going to reestablish the proper order of things. The strong were meant to rule, and WE are the strong. Those who master the dark arts have always been strong. It is why we are so feared and hated and hunted. You should not be against us Yolev. You should see this as an opportunity to reestablish your rightful place as vampires.” Mr. Demar’s words have a slight effect on Yolev. He falls silent and looks almost wistful of ancient times, when his kind roamed more free in civilization, rather than hiding and cowering on the outskirts like animals. He quickly snaps out of it though. “Idealistic words, Mr. Demar, but even if we were still to use what little influence we still have, I cannot believe that you and a few students can change the world. Even if you manage to take this one city, you can’t believe that you’ll get away with it. You there! You’re one of these students are you not? What do you think? And tell me what you TRULY think, not what Mr. Demar wants you to think.” Yolev points to you. “Well uh…I think we can do it.” You stutter off guard. “…You think you can do it? Is that all you have to say about it? This is what you’re working with Mr. Demar? How could we ever place any faith in your plan when you’re training near idiots that can barely form sentences?” “Yolev, you might be a delegate, but you best watch your tone, you’re not in the best position right now, and given your previous threats you’re already treading on dangerous ground.” “You dare to threaten ME? I’ve crushed greater men AND women than you!” “Yeah, and now you’re a running lap dog for some so called vampire king who rules over nothing but a few remaining scraps of a dying legacy.” As this begins to get hostile, you notice Felsa preparing to cast something. You think that if you say anything, things are only going to get worse, so you stand back and do nothing, but hostilities don’t cease and eventually Felsa casts a blast of fire at Yolev, he falls to the floor trying to beat out the flames, but Demar isn’t pleased. “FELSA! WHY DID YOU DO THAT!?” he shouts and then finishes off Yolev by casting some sort of spell that causes his chest to explode. Two Imps suddenly appear and begin to rip Yolev apart before he can get a chance to recover. “The pair of you really fucked up today! You with your actions and you with your bumbling! I might as well had Trelik with me! Shit! (Sigh) Alright. Fine we can still do this, but the vampires are going to be pissed off at us now for killing their delegate and it’s definitely going to make things harder. Come on we got a lot to prepare for.” The last month is no picnic. Mr. Demar has you all training a lot harder than you have before. He’s been pushing everyone a lot harder to the point that they’re getting tired and sloppy. One of the demonologists gets eaten by a brimstone beast. Another accidentally casts a spell backwards and causes himself to be sucked into the infernal realm. Morale isn’t exactly the highest. But the plan goes through and after the first week classes go back in session, the gates of hell are literally opened. Portals appear all over various parts of not only the campus, but also the city. Demons come swarming out of the portals gleefully killing all in their path. The demonologist lead the attack, while you and the other three necromancers take advantage of all the new corpses in the area. Soon, you have a fair sized army of dead. Mr. Demar himself is taking on the head professors at the college, with the help of Felsa and Trelik. Given the amount of explosions you’re seeing from the streets, you’re glad you got a “lower” assignment. All seems to be going well until it looks like the demons have decided to leave the city limits, one of the demonologists tries to corral them back shouting that they are supposed to only concentrate on Nuro, but they laugh and simply say: “You didn’t mention that in the deal!” With the demons completely unreliable now, it’s up to you necromancers to take up the slack. You do alright, but there’s still a lot of resistance and something has gone wrong with Quayle’s spell as your attackers are beginning to move at a normal rate instead of a slower one. You don’t see this ending well, unless something changes quick. Even if you win, you know you got a shit load of problems ahead of you. > You run away Sensing impending doom, you decide your best course of action is to escape. You immediately take your undead horde and fight your way out of the city. You then attempt to put as much distance as you can between you and Nuro. You curse the day you decided to fuck around with the dark arts. Where are you going to go now? You have no idea, but you can’t be seen walking around the countryside with a bunch of rotting corpses in tow. Quickly you dismiss your small army, which instantly collapses back to death and you run to the nearest settlement. You get to the town of Selawag, which is part of the Brot Kingdom. You enter an inn there with no problems. It would appear that the news of what’s happened hasn’t traveled here yet, but you know it won’t be long. And then how long will it be before someone finds out that you were involved? You suppose it’s possible that you could escape without suspicion, but it’s unlikely. The hunters always find out. They always know. And life on the run, is what you have to look forward to now. You’ll have to constantly move, and never rest. You prepare yourself for your new life… A month passes The Incident of Nuro has finally become well known knowledge. The take over was a failure, but the damage done was severe. A temporal disturbance in the heart of the city has made the entire area unstable as buildings phase in and out of existence. Two of the well known culprits Mr. Demar and Felsa were killed in battle. A third, Trelik escaped and is considered to be at large. Many of the Dark Order were either killed or went into hiding. Demons are running amok all over the countryside and have taken particular interest in the Kingdom of Tulan. A year passes The Kingdom of Tulan has finally put the sword to every last demon infesting the area. Necromancer Trelik was finally hunted down and killed after he was cornered in a small village that he’d turned into his own personal domain. Most of the demonologist have been caught and hung for their crimes as well. Your name has also come up on the wanted list along with the two remaining necromancers involved: Sebastian and Catalina. You now keep to the rural locations; many times you barely survive attacks from barbaric orc tribes. Fortunately your skills in necromancy protect you (as well as scare the hell out of the orcs) Two years pass Nuro has completely collapsed in on itself due to the temporal disturbance leaving nothing but a gaping hole there; a war breaks out in the nearby area. Sebastian took his own life as the Retlad Guard beat down his door. Catalina was found dead by an unknown assassin. Nobody knows who, but it wasn’t by any government. You have a good idea though, considering you have been attacked several times by vampire assassins during the night. Two more years pass You hear them coming for you, there is no more running. This is your fate. To die in this cave. You don’t even want to fight it anymore. You regret the day you set out on this path. Such is often the fate of a necromancer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No way, you’re not going down that path. There are too many stories about demons fucking people over in their deals. In fact, you’re a little worried about the fact that this “class” has more dedicated demonologist than necromancers. Still you’ll just have to deal with it for now, you can only hope they know what they’re doing and have a better grasp on things than a certain cabal of wizards did during the Dead War. As for you, you need to start mastering your own branch of magic. When you get to the pits, you are literally surrounded by bones. You open up your book and begin to read a bit before casting your spell. Your first attempt isn’t too bad. You animate one skeleton, and surprisingly it doesn’t attack you. You continue to practice this, and while it’s only been an hour, you’ve already animated thirty skeletons, all of which are completely obedient and not attempting to attack you at all. You’re not sure if this is normal, good or bad for a beginner, but given how many problems you had with other branches of magic, you think you’re doing pretty well. In fact you feel pretty proud of yourself. You decide to get a little more inventive and you see rusty weapons on the floor along with the bones. You command the skeletons to pick them up and begin to start sparring with each other. They do so, without problems. This sound of minor battle brings in a few of the students, most of whom are shocked. “What’s going…whoa. I thought you said you never did this before.” Sebastian says walking in. “I haven’t…I dunno, it’s just coming so easy to me. For the first time I feel like I’m actually good at something!” you say. “Well, it’s a lot better than what you did in Enchantment class when you managed to charm all those frogs which then proceeded to attack the professor.” Catalina says. “That was you? I even heard about that. Man, what is it with you and your spells accidentally hurting your professors in some way?” Irwin adds. You ignore Irwin’s question, and address Catalina. “I thought I remembered you from somewhere. I asked you out once.” “Hmm, yes and you were unsuccessful in that as well. I suggest you stop looking at me and pay attention to your little army there, before they get out of hand. Like that one.” You turn around and stop one of the skeletons that’s wandering in your direction and then command him to go back to sparring. “Man, I’ve never seen someone with this much control just starting out. Well Trelik comes to mind, but he was already very skilled in general magic and was learning directly under Mr. Demar. From what others have said, you were completely inept at magic and have no previous training in this stuff whatsoever. You’re like an idiot savant of necromancy or something.” Sebastian says. “Um…thanks. I think.” “Well anyway, glad you’ve joined up. We’ll leave you be. If you want to try something harder, there’s more tomes in the study area and just ask one of us where the other practice centers are.” And so it goes. You find your place among the Dark Order and practice your skills there, in fact it gets to the point that you rarely leave the secret underground base at all. You begin to catch the attention of Mr. Demar who is very impressed with your ability to learn and master so quickly. “Natural” isn’t the word for it, more like prodigy. Trelik however is showing signs of jealousy… Mr. Demar has to tell you to take a break every now and then or else you’ll drain yourself. You don’t feel that way though, you feel like you have more energy than ever. As he promised your grades were “fixed” though Mr. Demar’s actions meaning you don’t get kicked out of the college. You tell your parents that you’re taking an advanced course in magic that requires you to stay and how you’re really excited about it. Your Mom is a little disappointed that she won’t see you, but is happy to hear that you’re doing so much better in school. If she only knew… The City of Nuro is a quieter place with less students around, but the guise of secrecy still must be kept. After a month has passed you find out that this “class” aren’t the only allies Mr. Demar has. He’s been teaching the dark arts for years and most of his “graduates” are living in this city. The attack is going to come when classes first start up again. Demar feels that it will actually be more beneficial to attack with more people in the city because after the demons are done with the killing, the Necromancers can raise the dead to reinforce the hold on the city. One key part in all of this is Quayle. He is to cast a slow spell of the greatest proportions over the city. While everyone else is moving at a near stand still, the Dark Order will be able to take over key locations much easier. While all of this sounds exciting you can’t help but still be concerned about this plan. Mr. Demar is placing most of his faith in the demonologist, which you suppose is understandable given his background in conjuration, but you feel as if you necromancers are getting put on the backburner. Sure you’re playing your part, but it almost seems as if you’re just there as “back up”. Not to mention you’re still not keen on the whole idea of dealing with so many demons. Of course these concerns are the least of your problems as another month goes by, Trelik is becoming a complete asshole to you. Within the short time you’ve been here, he’s time and time again attempted to sabotage your spells, but usually you manage to overcome. You’ve got a month to go before the final plans are in place, but suddenly Mr. Demar has some news he’s not pleased to inform everyone of. “Class, we’ve got a delegate from the Vampire Clans. I don’t think I have to tell you how annoying this is.” You ask Sebastian what’s the problem and what exactly is going. Sebastian tells you that ever since the clans heard about Demar’s plans, they’ve been strongly opposed to them for they fear that it will draw attention to their one last stronghold which is kept invisible and secret to the rest of the world. It is there where the last of the “ruling” class vampires still exist, most of them having been killed or degenerated into little more than mindless beasts that are eventually hunted down. While you’re fascinated by Sebastian’s explanation of things, you’re suddenly singled out by Trelik. “YOU! Do you find this so unimportant that you feel the need not to pay attention?” “No. I just didn’t know the whole situation and I was asking…” “If you wanted more information you should’ve been asking Mr. Demar after he was done talking!” “Okay, okay. That will do Trelik. Someone should’ve explained it to him before actually, given that he’ll be playing a large part in this plan. In fact, maybe he should come with me to meet the delegate instead.” “But Mr. Demar! I have more experience in this sort of thing!” “True, but to be quite honest, the blood suckers don’t care too much for you. You’re too combative. So how about it? Do you wish to be present when I speak to this delegate?” > You decline “No that’s okay.” You say not wishing to cause trouble. Mr. Demar frowns a bit, but accepts your decision. “Very well, I guess you’re with me Trelik, and for fuck’s sake don’t be so damn hostile this time. These matters have to be handled with care!” As they leave to the conference room, you go back to practicing your lessons. While you’re in the middle of them you and the rest of the students soon hear some noise and the sounds of battle. “DAMN IT TRELIK IF YOU’RE GONNA KILL THE SONOFABITCH, AT LEAST GET IT RIGHT!” you hear Mr. Demar yell. You and a few of the other student go running toward the conference room, a figure runs at you in flames! He smashes into you wailing horribly setting you on fire as well, you can’t get him off of you in time before you begin to burn up, but it hardly matters as Trelik soon comes to finish off the vampire delegate…and you as well with another fireball. “Sorry Mr. Demar, couldn’t be helped.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Even though you’re supposed to be a wizard in training, you spend as little time as possible in library if you can help it. Normally you just check out whatever you need to read for a class and leave. You have little faith in finding anything substantial on Necromancy in there, but maybe you can find something that will at least quell this thirst for knowledge on it. You realize you’re treading on dangerous ground, but you have to try to learn more. The library is huge however, and you’re unsure of where to look, it’s not like there’s a section on Necromancy or Outlawed Magic, but you figure you’ll look in the History section first. You glance and browse through the stacks until you pick up a few choice books that look like they might contain something, sit down in a quiet corner and begin to read. Naturally you don’t learn too much. The history books mainly go on about how bad the Dead War was, important battles, the atrocities of the Lich Lord, the typical stuff you’ve read time and time again. Still, you’re determined to find something new. You spend hours reading until you realize you’ve spent the day in the library and that it’s now night time. Oddly the library is mostly empty, and that’s probably because finals are now over, one of which you’ve now undoubtedly failed. You think of how stupid you’ve been to obsess over an outlawed art that you probably wouldn’t be any good at anyway! You’ve only been dwelling on the subject to ignore your own problems that you could’ve tried to solve yourself, instead of fantasizing about being some Necromancer. Raising the dead…what good would that do you? Delusions of grandeur. You wouldn’t have enough motivation to try to take over the world anyway. There was only one person who truly motivated you, and she’s gone. You begin to think about Serena and begin to feel sorrow like when you first lost her. You’ve had enough of death. You leave the library in a daze and head back home to sleep off this miserable day. You can’t escape though; even your dreams bring death. You dream about Serena. At first she’s alive and vibrant, and then suddenly she dies before your eyes. Then you see her grave with you sobbing over it and shouting how you demand that she not leave you. Then she rises from her grave…and you wake up only to come face to face with her! She is a ghost floating near your bed. “HOLY SHIT!” you shout and back up against your headboard. “Shhhh! Hush my love, I’m risking a lot just by being here.” She says looking around as if someone is going to bust down your door any minute. “Serena, what’s going on? This isn’t a dream is it?” “No, my dear I assure you that I am very real. And I have a message for you.” “A message?” “Yes, embrace death and all the beauty it has to offer.” “You want me to kill myself, to join you?” Serena laughs a bit. “No silly, you are to become a necromancer and bring the purity of death to the world.” “…yeah right. With my aptitude of magic, I doubt if I could raise a mouse skeleton.” “You always did lack confidence in yourself. I suppose that’s why they sent me to motivate you one last time. Though I admit, I would’ve come to see you anyway.” “They?” Serena side steps your question and continues. “Look we haven’t much time, but you HAVE the ability to become the greatest Necromancer since the Great Lich Lord who brought the world near the brink of extinction centuries ago, but you cannot do it alone…at least not yet. You must have allies. There are others like you on this campus who long to practice the dark arts. Seek them out and take over this college as your first step to your destiny.” “What? Hold on! What makes you think I want to do all this?” Serena floats closer to you and touches your face with a ghostly hand. You feel completely calm. “Because deep down it IS what you want. You know your thoughts are dominated by death. You even think of me rather than living girls and I’ve been dead for years. The very fact that your mind played a part in summoning me here is also proof of your desire.” “I miss you…” “I know you do, but my point is, even before I died I remember you having an interest in the dark arts. Indeed it’s part of what attracted me to you. But now I must return and you must fulfill your part in this world, whether you succeed or fail at this endeavor will ultimately be up to you, but I believe you will succeed.” Serena then floats a little closer to kiss you. “Farewell, my love.” She says and then disappears. You’re now wide awake and pacing the floor. You’ve been ambivalent about pursuing this path before, but the more you think about it and with this visit from Serena, this is the path you’re going to choose. And why not? It’s not like you have any better options in your life at this point. You’re going to do it, and though Serena mentioned others like you being on campus, you’re damned if you have a clue to as of knowing who they are since you don’t really socialize. Still, you can think of two people that could get you started. (Or at least not rat on you, when you start inquiring about Necromancy) The next day you take your first steps towards darkness… > You go talk to the demon, Big Red Chapter 2: Hellbound Serena’s advice might’ve pointed you in the right direction, but as far as you needing the help of others you’re going to take a pass on that. You don’t need anyone else except yourself. That’s the way it’s been for a long time and that’s the way it’s going to stay. That leaves you to go where various other students have gone when they want to get something illegal and keep it to themselves. “Big Red”. Technically Big Red isn’t actually all that big, in fact for a demon he’s probably on the smaller size, but like most demons he likes to think he’s very important. Big Red typically hangs around in the seedy parts of Nuro, but he also hangs around the park area on campus late at night. His presence in Nuro is barely tolerated, but he’s been known to acquire things for high ranking officials and provide important information that is beneficial to Nuro security. Oddly for all his mercenary criminal behavior he’s tight lipped for a demon and will only tell on someone if asked directly and only then for the right price. Given how low profile you are, it’s unlikely anyone’s going to ask about you, let alone what for. Chances are if anyone does see you with Big Red they’ll just think you’re another college student looking to get high. You wait until night and then stalk the campus park area looking for Big Red, but instead he finds you, catching you off guard. “Y’know you’d look less guilty if you weren’t lurking around like a damn dark elf assassin. Haven’t seen you around before, I guess that explains why you’re coming to me AFTER finals are over. Most students come and get the answers before hand y’know.” “You sell those? Damn, I didn’t have to fail my nature test final after all.” “I could probably fix that too, for a price of course.” “…maybe, but what I’m looking for is uh…a little different.” “Ah, so high exactly do you want to get?” “No, not that…” “Well, I’m not selling sex slaves if that’s what you’re looking for…well at least not here.” “No! I’m looking for something different!” Big Red gives you a strange look. “Okay, what kind of freak are you exactly then?” “I’m looking for something on Necromancy.” Big Red throws you up against a tree when you make that remark and begins to whisper to you in a harsh tone. You can feel (And smell) the brimstone emanating from his breath. “You fucking little mortal pissant, you trying to get me killed? I don’t sell that shit! Get the fuck outta here!” he says before throwing you on the ground and walking away. Now it may be that he’s telling the truth, but he may be more worried that you’re trying to set him up. You’re determined to find out regardless of the consequences. You run back to him, but stay out of his immediate range. “Look, I know you’re a guy who can get a hold of lots of things and I also know you’re available for a price. I’m not a spy, I’m not gonna rat you out, I’m not working for anyone, I just have a…need…” Big Red turns back towards you and walks in your direction, you think he’s going to attack and you nearly run, but chances are he’d catch you first anyway. He’s looking around in all directions and speaking in a low tone. “Alright. Look. Since you’re obviously new and not hip to how this works, I’m inclined to believe you’re not working for someone. Someone undercover wouldn’t be so obviously clueless as you seem to be, at least not to catch the likes of me. Plus I can sense the darkness around you…it’s a neat ability we have and again let’s us tell who’s a goody two shoes and who isn’t. You don’t seem to be either though just yet. You seem to be more confused and curious than anything which is almost as bad.” “So you can’t you help me?” “It’s not that I can’t, it’s whether I should. This isn’t selling you some Hobgoblin Hashish so you can go get high and wind up naked the next morning with a Dwarf in your ass.” “Um…what? Excuse me?” you stutter at Big Red’s odd scenario outcome. “This is serious shit, if word got around that I was selling information on the Dark Arts, let alone books on it, my ass would be strung up and killed. And to have some dumb ass college student fucking around with something as dangerous as that is asking for trouble since YOU’RE probably going to get yourself caught, which will then lead to possible questions before they kill you…which can then link to me. And that can’t happen.” “I’m not going to get caught.” “Hah! Heard that one before from people getting busted for less. I dunno, I don’t see you as a good risk and even if I did consider this request my price would be VERY high and I don’t see you as having that kind of money to spend.” Big Red’s denials of your request are actually making you want what he has even more. You KNOW he can help you. In fact you’re beginning to get irritated. Why the hell is he denying you this? He’s a fucking demon who sells illegal shit! He shouldn’t care at all! You’re desperate for his help though so you tell an outlandish lie. “Look my parents are rich! I can get the money for you, just gimme your price and I can get it…it might take me awhile, but I can get it.” “Oh you can huh? Alright then I’ll play your game. He’s my price.” Big Red pulls out a little pad of paper and pencil and writes something on it and then hands it to you. You read the astronomical price while Big Red’s face turns into a smug demonic grin. He probably did that for dramatic effect. There’s no way you can pay this, even if you somehow managed to convince your parents to give you money to support your grossly illegal studies in necromancy. You’re not going to let it stop you though. “Wow…that is high…okay. I can get this, but it’ll take me a few days.” You say feigning a mixture of shock, but calmness too. Big Red himself looks surprised that you agreed. He begins to write down something on his pad again and gives it to you. “Well alright money bags, we got a deal. You come meet me at this time and location in a week. If you ain’t there, then you can forget about coming to see me for anything ever again. If you come and you don’t have the money…well I don’t think I need to stress how bad that would be. So my advice is if you don’t have it, don’t show. See ya.” “Hey wait, you said you can fix my grade too.” You suddenly remember. “Don’t you think you’ve spent enough money tonight? Alright then maybe you ARE made of gold after all, so what’s the class?” “Nature magic.” “Oh yeah, you said that. Yeah, that’s definitely doable, mainly because the professor is, I just need to slip the deviled ham into her and she’ll be willing to pass anyone.” “I thought she was a lesbian.” “Feh, not when it comes to Big Red. It ain’t just a name ya know. Alright, my price for this task is two hundred gold pieces. Normally I might charge less, but hey you got the money right?” Indeed, but you don’t have much now after forking it over to Big Red. You were hoping the gold you brought was going to go towards a necromantic tome, but instead it’s just going to cheating. “Thanks, and as appreciation for your generous business tonight, I think I’ll go take care of that grade situation of yours right now, if I’m lucky maybe she’ll have one of those little elven bitches with her. Ha ha!” As Big Red leaves you, you head back to your apartment to scheme for the rest of the week. You go through a wide variety of emotions: fear, anger, desire, anxiety, obsession, etc. None of it really means anything though since you don’t really have too much in the way of choices now. You’re either going to have to kill Big Red when you go to meet him, or just forget about this necromancy stuff and go home for vacation. > You kill Big Red While all the other students are on their way home for vacation, you’re planning a murder… You’re in this all the way now. You’ve decided that you can’t live life as you have been. You have to take this chance, regardless of the consequences. You’re just wondering how the hell you’re going to go about killing Big Red. He’s not going to be a push over and is probably more than a match for most college students, let alone one who can barely cast spells competently in first place. Still, you must try. You get one of your oversized back packs and begin stuffing it with rocks. The only plan you have is when he asks to see the money, you’ll tell him you got it in gemstones, throw it at him to catch it and then unleash a blast of lightning in his face. After that you’re going to hope for the best. You head down to the location given to you by Big Red. Even though Nuro is a prosperous city, it still has its “bad parts” and right now you’re walking in one of them. You half expect to get mugged by orcs at any moment; you almost wish your sister was with you. Eventually you get to the location, you’re already nervous about all this and walking through this neighborhood just made you more so. However, this dilapidated house that you’re currently standing in front of looks like its shown signs of battle recently. The door is smashed open and there’s a whiff of charred flesh coming from the broken windows. “Heeeeeey….(hic!) youz ain’t goin’ in dere is ya?” some drunken goblin lying by some trash cans nearby utters. “This is Big Red’s house isn’t it?” “(hic!) Nope, his girlfriend lives here, well one of ‘em anyway.” “What happened here?” “Shit. (hic!) Fuck if I know. I was passed out for most of it, but I heard some screams a couple of magic blasts and well…(hic!) a whole buncha shit really.” “Is Big Red in there?” “Dunno, I think I heard his voice…didn’t sound good either. (hic!) Guess it all caught up to him. Here’s to Red! Demon Bastard! (hic!) Hope dey didn’t kill his pretty little girlfrien’ doh. She was swee-eet!” the goblin says and takes another drink out of his pocket. “Nobody’s come out here, to investigate?” “Har har! Datsh a good one boy! Come out here? Man those mage guards like us poor folks killing each other. Ain’t nobody gonna show up here probably for like a few days. (hic!) fuckin…no good (mumble mumble)” As the goblin wino lapses back into an alcoholic coma, you cautiously enter the house. The house is a wreck. Though you get the impression it wasn’t a palace to begin with. You look on the floor and see Big Red. You also see him on the walls and even the ceiling. Whoever wanted him dead, made sure of it. Of course this doesn’t exactly help you get what you wanted to get from him. Not knowing what else to do, you begin to search the house, but you’re not finding too much, but for some reason you sense you aren’t completely alone in this house. Someone is still here. You stand completely silent and listen carefully, then you see a blood trail leading to the bedroom closet… “Alright, I know someone is in the closet, I can hear the stifled cries. Just come out, and I won’t hurt you. I just want to know what happened to Big Red and some information.” You shout. The closet slowly opens and you see a young human woman crawl out, she’s hurt badly and you don’t think you can help her in time. She looks up at you with tears in her eyes. “I’ve nothing more to give…they’ve taken everything…I am dead…I have nothing else…” she sobs. “Who came? What’s going on?” “That damn college professor and his Dark Order that’s who! Mr. Demar! He and Big Red have had dealings for years in forbidden tomes and the dark arts. Well Mr. Demar said since their business was nearly at an end he demanded that Big Red just hand over all the rest of his collection. Violence soon followed. It was horrible what they did… I only lived this long by playing dead (sob)…but then I just wanted to crawl into a dark place and die.” This bit of information is very interesting, but you still have to figure out how it can serve you. “What does Mr. Demar have planned?” “I don’t know! Something about restoring the rightful place of those who practice the dark arts. I don’t care! They took my whole life away! Maybe it wasn’t much, and maybe Big Red was a demon asshole…but I loved him and in his way, he loved me! I’ll never know!” the girl cries. You feel slightly bad about coming here to try to kill Big Red now. This girl’s feelings while most likely misguided seem to be genuine. Just proving that even the lowliest of scoundrels can be loved. Your mind briefly thinks about Serena before addressing this situation again. “Okay, look shhhh. I’m sure Big Red probably did love you. He was a demon though, you know he had to put on a show and act tough.” You say. “…(sniff) yeah…You’re absolutely right. You are right….mmm I’m sleepy…” She says as her eyes begin to start closing. “Hold on, before you go to sleep, I need to know something. Big Red was holding a book for me too, a book on necromancy. I was coming to pay him and pick it up here. It sounds like Mr. Demar was trying to rip the both of us off and that ain’t no way of doing business. I mean to get revenge on the lot of them that killed Big Red, but I’ll need the help of that book, you don’t happen to know where it is, do you?” “…oh…yeah, you must be the one that Big Red briefly mentioned before they came…I dunno, they searched the house, maybe they got it, but it would be in a small hidden floor safe behind the toilet. Ha ha…nobody searches behind a toilet Red used to say…I love you Big Red…” The girl says and then closes her eyes and stops breathing. Poor girl, you think as you leave her to search the bathroom. You curse as soon as you look behind the toilet and see a small panel open. You’re so frustrated you nearly miss the false bottom of the safe… Jackpot. You pry up the false bottom and greedily grab the tome you were looking for, in fact there are a few other books there too, but you only keep the necromantic ones, and destroy the rest as you have no interest in demon summoning. (And not going to let anyone else use them either!) You pour out the rocks in your backpack and place the books inside; you’re now ready to go back home. Or are you? In your last minute peruse you search the remains of Big Red, and as luck would have it, you find his infamous pad and paper still somewhat intact. You briefly glance through it and make out one other address, not too far from here. It could be his real home or maybe just another place where he stashed stuff. Either way it could be lucrative. > You go back home You head to your apartment where you study your acquired books until morning and then sleep for the entire day. When you wake up you write a letter to your family saying that you’re going to be staying at Nuro for vacation since you have some extra curricular studying to do and a big opportunity could be opening up. You mostly study your necromantic books and absorbing the knowledge within. You keep up with local news and the deaths of Big Red and his girlfriend are barely mentioned. You gather that you’re in the clear. Next week you get a letter in return from your Mom who says she’s disappointed you won’t be coming to visit, but pleased that you’re doing well and your grades are back up. (At least Big Red came through for you on the nature magic thing before he died) She also mentions how proud she is of you. If she only knew… A month passes and you’ve almost finished the books you acquired, but you haven’t been able to do any practicing which is something you desperately want to do. You feel like you got all this power within you and you’re being forced not to use it. You’re so hot on raising some corpses you’re on the verge of doing something rash. You ponder going to the local graveyard which is really risky given that there are always guards on duty and magical monitors in place to prevent such things from easily occurring. Your other alternative is to kill someone and then raise them. > You go to the graveyard The city isn’t as busy now since most of the students have left, so maybe you won’t have too many problems. Initially all goes well. You sneak into the graveyard at night, managing to avoid the guards. You then break into one of the mausoleums where you hope you can find some easily accessible coffins. You shut the door and pry open one of them trying to be as quiet as possible. The skeletal remains inside are calling to you. You take out your book and begin to cast your spell and within no time at all the skeleton inside begins to rise. Success! And it barely took any effort at all. You were born for this! You open up another nearby coffin and raise another one. Two skeletons! You’re controlling two at a time with no problems! You’re positively euphoric. Of course you’ve been making a lot of noise. Noise that one of the guards hears and comes to investigate, when he sees the door lock broken and opens it, he sees you. “NECROMANCER!” he screams and runs away! You don’t care that you’ve been caught though. You’re ready to show the world what you’re really made of! You begin the chant and cast, and all that other stuff you’ve been reading about. You’re going to raise an army to swarm this city and take it over! None shall oppose you! And if Mr. Demar gets in your way, you’ll crush him too! Soon you’re raising the dead from their graves, and even though you’re a “natural” at this, you’re still shy of practice so you have a bit of a hard time controlling so many. By the time you reach the hundreds, you’re losing control over most of them and you have to leave the graveyard to save your own life. You march down the street with the dead horde you do have control over causing havoc on a small scale. You have some fun reveling in the terror you’re bringing, but it is short sighted and not to last. The Nuro mage guards soon arrive on the scene and they don’t fuck around. They use every spell against you, destroying entire blocks in an effort to bring you down. It is at this point you realize that you’ve handled this poorly. When you’ve lost your last corpse, you attempt to run away only to bump into a few of the dead that had wandered away from your control. In a kind of ironic justice, you are killed before you can reestablish your dominance over them.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head to your apartment where you study your acquired books until morning and then sleep for the entire day. When you wake up you write a letter to your family saying that you’re going to be staying at Nuro for vacation since you have some extra curricular studying to do and a big opportunity could be opening up. You mostly study your necromantic books and absorbing the knowledge within. You keep up with local news and the deaths of Big Red and his girlfriend are barely mentioned. You gather that you’re in the clear. Next week you get a letter in return from your Mom who says she’s disappointed you won’t be coming to visit, but pleased that you’re doing well and your grades are back up. (At least Big Red came through for you on the nature magic thing before he died) She also mentions how proud she is of you. If she only knew… A month passes and you’ve almost finished the books you acquired, but you haven’t been able to do any practicing which is something you desperately want to do. You feel like you got all this power within you and you’re being forced not to use it. You’re so hot on raising some corpses you’re on the verge of doing something rash. You ponder going to the local graveyard which is really risky given that there are always guards on duty and magical monitors in place to prevent such things from easily occurring. Your other alternative is to kill someone and then raise them. > You kill someone You were planning on killing Big Red and he was a demon, you think you’ll be able to handle killing someone else that’s less formidable. You head back to the seedy part of Nuro at night. There are plenty of winos and ladies of the evening you can kill and then practice on. You enter the alleys like some common murderer and begin to do your dirty work on those unfortunate enough to be in the general area. You typically drag these victims into some abandoned building and cast your spells. You do this over the course of a month before one night while you’re raising another prostitute you’re walked in on by some common thugs who were using the building you were in as a hide out. “Oh shit! That’s Tina! I wondered what happened to her, she was my favorite whore!” “And that’s a fucking necromancer! Let’s get outta here!” “Fuck that, I don’t back down from shit!” You order your dead whore to attack one thug and then blast another with a beam of negative energy. The last one escapes screaming about a necromancer. “Well, I guess it’s time to play…” you giggle and raise the two thugs to join you. You march through the slums killing everyone; it’s all so easy for you. You don’t feel a challenge; your dead horde just grows as you fill its ranks with the poor. You aren’t even fatigued, you feel invincible and you’re now determined to bring death to the entire city. No one can oppose you and if Mr. Demar and his Dark Order tries too, they’ll get the same, for you’re going to be the head necromancer in this city! Soon your horde is numbering in the hundreds and you’ve drawn the attention of Nuro’s mage guards at last. They do everything in their power to stop you, even leveling entire blocks to get to you. It’s at that point you realize you might be in over your head. You continue to fight however, you refuse to give up, but the odds are too great, and eventually a single sniper on a rooftop with a crossbow takes aim and pieces your skull, putting an end to your petty desires of conquest and your necromancer career.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While all the other students are on their way home for vacation, you’re planning a murder… You’re in this all the way now. You’ve decided that you can’t live life as you have been. You have to take this chance, regardless of the consequences. You’re just wondering how the hell you’re going to go about killing Big Red. He’s not going to be a push over and is probably more than a match for most college students, let alone one who can barely cast spells competently in first place. Still, you must try. You get one of your oversized back packs and begin stuffing it with rocks. The only plan you have is when he asks to see the money, you’ll tell him you got it in gemstones, throw it at him to catch it and then unleash a blast of lightning in his face. After that you’re going to hope for the best. You head down to the location given to you by Big Red. Even though Nuro is a prosperous city, it still has its “bad parts” and right now you’re walking in one of them. You half expect to get mugged by orcs at any moment; you almost wish your sister was with you. Eventually you get to the location, you’re already nervous about all this and walking through this neighborhood just made you more so. However, this dilapidated house that you’re currently standing in front of looks like its shown signs of battle recently. The door is smashed open and there’s a whiff of charred flesh coming from the broken windows. “Heeeeeey….(hic!) youz ain’t goin’ in dere is ya?” some drunken goblin lying by some trash cans nearby utters. “This is Big Red’s house isn’t it?” “(hic!) Nope, his girlfriend lives here, well one of ‘em anyway.” “What happened here?” “Shit. (hic!) Fuck if I know. I was passed out for most of it, but I heard some screams a couple of magic blasts and well…(hic!) a whole buncha shit really.” “Is Big Red in there?” “Dunno, I think I heard his voice…didn’t sound good either. (hic!) Guess it all caught up to him. Here’s to Red! Demon Bastard! (hic!) Hope dey didn’t kill his pretty little girlfrien’ doh. She was swee-eet!” the goblin says and takes another drink out of his pocket. “Nobody’s come out here, to investigate?” “Har har! Datsh a good one boy! Come out here? Man those mage guards like us poor folks killing each other. Ain’t nobody gonna show up here probably for like a few days. (hic!) fuckin…no good (mumble mumble)” As the goblin wino lapses back into an alcoholic coma, you cautiously enter the house. The house is a wreck. Though you get the impression it wasn’t a palace to begin with. You look on the floor and see Big Red. You also see him on the walls and even the ceiling. Whoever wanted him dead, made sure of it. Of course this doesn’t exactly help you get what you wanted to get from him. Not knowing what else to do, you begin to search the house, but you’re not finding too much, but for some reason you sense you aren’t completely alone in this house. Someone is still here. You stand completely silent and listen carefully, then you see a blood trail leading to the bedroom closet… “Alright, I know someone is in the closet, I can hear the stifled cries. Just come out, and I won’t hurt you. I just want to know what happened to Big Red and some information.” You shout. The closet slowly opens and you see a young human woman crawl out, she’s hurt badly and you don’t think you can help her in time. She looks up at you with tears in her eyes. “I’ve nothing more to give…they’ve taken everything…I am dead…I have nothing else…” she sobs. “Who came? What’s going on?” “That damn college professor and his Dark Order that’s who! Mr. Demar! He and Big Red have had dealings for years in forbidden tomes and the dark arts. Well Mr. Demar said since their business was nearly at an end he demanded that Big Red just hand over all the rest of his collection. Violence soon followed. It was horrible what they did… I only lived this long by playing dead (sob)…but then I just wanted to crawl into a dark place and die.” This bit of information is very interesting, but you still have to figure out how it can serve you. “What does Mr. Demar have planned?” “I don’t know! Something about restoring the rightful place of those who practice the dark arts. I don’t care! They took my whole life away! Maybe it wasn’t much, and maybe Big Red was a demon asshole…but I loved him and in his way, he loved me! I’ll never know!” the girl cries. You feel slightly bad about coming here to try to kill Big Red now. This girl’s feelings while most likely misguided seem to be genuine. Just proving that even the lowliest of scoundrels can be loved. Your mind briefly thinks about Serena before addressing this situation again. “Okay, look shhhh. I’m sure Big Red probably did love you. He was a demon though, you know he had to put on a show and act tough.” You say. “…(sniff) yeah…You’re absolutely right. You are right….mmm I’m sleepy…” She says as her eyes begin to start closing. “Hold on, before you go to sleep, I need to know something. Big Red was holding a book for me too, a book on necromancy. I was coming to pay him and pick it up here. It sounds like Mr. Demar was trying to rip the both of us off and that ain’t no way of doing business. I mean to get revenge on the lot of them that killed Big Red, but I’ll need the help of that book, you don’t happen to know where it is, do you?” “…oh…yeah, you must be the one that Big Red briefly mentioned before they came…I dunno, they searched the house, maybe they got it, but it would be in a small hidden floor safe behind the toilet. Ha ha…nobody searches behind a toilet Red used to say…I love you Big Red…” The girl says and then closes her eyes and stops breathing. Poor girl, you think as you leave her to search the bathroom. You curse as soon as you look behind the toilet and see a small panel open. You’re so frustrated you nearly miss the false bottom of the safe… Jackpot. You pry up the false bottom and greedily grab the tome you were looking for, in fact there are a few other books there too, but you only keep the necromantic ones, and destroy the rest as you have no interest in demon summoning. (And not going to let anyone else use them either!) You pour out the rocks in your backpack and place the books inside; you’re now ready to go back home. Or are you? In your last minute peruse you search the remains of Big Red, and as luck would have it, you find his infamous pad and paper still somewhat intact. You briefly glance through it and make out one other address, not too far from here. It could be his real home or maybe just another place where he stashed stuff. Either way it could be lucrative. > You go to the address Thirsting for more possible knowledge you head to this new address. This time you’re not in a residential area and more in a warehouse district, still not a safe area though. When you get to the warehouse, once again the signs of battle abound, except this time it would appear that you arrived in the middle of one still going on. “Don’t just stand there, the fucking thing, damn it!” “Shit! Thing’s too fucking tough!” “Well summon another…arrrggh!” You enter cautiously and see a huge stone golem battling a couple people in robes. One lies on the floor dead. Given the dead imps that also litter the room, they’re probably demonologist. Some of Mr. Demar’s no doubt. You stand back and watch the battle from the shadows, staying hidden the whole time. While keeping an eye on the battle you take out one of your necromantic books and quickly glance through it. You come across a spell that allows you cast a bolt of pure negative energy. It seems pretty easy, so you decide to try it. You come out from behind the boxes you were using as cover and blast the golem in the face with a powerful beam of dark energy. Its head explodes into several stone pieces, but it doesn’t stop. Such a hit will not automatically kill a creature like this. The demonologists look surprised to see you and even more surprised when you bark orders at them. “Get it now! While it’s blind! Take its legs!” you shout. They do exactly what you say and cast super hot blasts to the golem’s knees burning right through them, causing the rest of it to collapse and shatter. It’s definitely dead now. “Whew! Good thing you came along. When Mr. Demar sent us to search this address we didn’t expect to encounter a golem guard. How did he know to send help?” one of the demonologists asks. “He didn’t.” you say and blast him. “Hey…” is all the other manages to utter before you blast him as well. You’re now left alone in a warehouse with multiple dead bodies, and as a certain goblin wino once said, the mage guard probably won’t be coming around here anytime soon. You see this as a perfect opportunity to practice some REAL necromancy. You open the page to the appropriate spell and begin the cast it. Soon one of the dead demonologists begins to rise. It doesn’t even take you much effort to control him. It’s very easy actually. You’ve never had such an easy time at any kind of magic before, but this feels so right to you. You summon the second one and then the third one. You command them to do various things for you just to see how well you can control them. It barely takes you any concentration at all. You spend the rest of the night practicing, before making a search of the place which as it turns out contains nothing, but banned pornographic writings. You then head to your apartment where you sleep for the entire day. When you wake up you write a letter to your family saying that you’re going to be staying at Nuro for vacation since you have some extra curricular studying to do and a big opportunity could be opening up. You mostly study your necromantic books and absorbing the knowledge within. You keep up with local news and the deaths of Big Red and his girlfriend are barely mentioned, and nothing is mentioned of the warehouse. You gather that you’re in the clear. Next week you get a letter in return from your Mom who says she’s disappointed you won’t be coming to visit, but pleased that you’re doing well and your grades are back up. (At least Big Red came through for you on the nature magic thing before he died) She also mentions how proud she is of you. If she only knew… A month passes and you’ve almost finished the books you acquired. You can’t really do too much practicing though, which is something you desperately want to do again. You know you’ve got all this power within you yet you can’t use it. The problem is dead bodies aren’t exactly something you can just come across. Oh sure you could go to the graveyard, but that would most likely attract a ton of attention given that most of them are always monitored to prevent such things from easily happening. You wonder if you should approach Mr. Demar and join his Dark Order. While you typically don’t work with groups, but if it gets you some practice maybe it would be worth joining. Plus you’d get to find out what’s going on with all that, since it seems like something you should worry about. Then again large groups tend to get targeted first. So maybe you could try summoning spirits. It’s not like they’re as obvious. Though from what you’ve read controlling such incorporeal dead requires more experience and you haven’t been able to practice a lot. > You join the Dark Order As they say there is strength in numbers. You head over to the campus to seek out Mr. Demar. You figure he’ll be in his office. You knock and he tells you to come in and shut the door behind you. When you do, he’s surprised to see you. “Hello. This is bit of a surprise. You took my class two semesters ago and I would’ve thought that you’d be on vacation now instead of here. So what brings you to my office?” You decide to get straight to the point. “Mr. Demar, I want to join the Dark Order. I’m skilled in necromancy and I want to learn more. I think I’d make a worthy addition to your class.” Mr. Demar says nothing for a minute and just studies you before speaking. “I see, and how do you know that I am the head of such an…organization.” “Well, uh I’ve heard rumors that’s all…” you quickly say. “Rumors eh? Such rumors going around about me would be very dangerous to my well being. Hope this isn’t a common rumor.” You’re silent to this statement, as you’re unsure of what to say. Mr. Demar continues for you though. “And tell me, if I was head of such an organization, you say I would want you? How is it that you are skilled in the ways of necromancy? How have you managed to train? Do you have access to the dead and possession of necromantic texts? How did you come across such things?” “Well uh…I don’t like to mention this…but I have an ancestor who served under the Great Lich Lord and a couple of books of his have been in my family’s possession for centuries.” “Well now, necromantic tomes from the era of the Great Lich Lord himself! I am impressed. And you say you had an ancestor who served under him eh? That’s even more impressive considering the Great Lich Lord eventually grew to loathe anything alive and only associated with the dead. That was why he was bringing death to the world in the first place. Such an ancestor would’ve had to been undead an unable to have children.” “Uh…well he had ‘em before becoming undead.” “Okay, but his family would’ve had to join his fate and hence they also would’ve had no children.” “He…uh…liked prostitutes and…” At this point Mr. Demar raises his hand to you. You instantly feel yourself paralyzed. You can only watch helplessly as he stands up from his desk. “Stop. While this is amusing watching you squirm, I am a busy man. You want to know what I think? I think you recently stole those books from Big Red. I also think you recently killed three of my students in a certain warehouse in your attempts to gain more. While I might’ve considered you as Dark Order material if you’d come in here and told me the truth, I can’t abide by liars, especially someone so poor at it. Such a pity.” With those final words, Mr. Demar causes your heart to explode.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Thirsting for more possible knowledge you head to this new address. This time you’re not in a residential area and more in a warehouse district, still not a safe area though. When you get to the warehouse, once again the signs of battle abound, except this time it would appear that you arrived in the middle of one still going on. “Don’t just stand there, the fucking thing, damn it!” “Shit! Thing’s too fucking tough!” “Well summon another…arrrggh!” You enter cautiously and see a huge stone golem battling a couple people in robes. One lies on the floor dead. Given the dead imps that also litter the room, they’re probably demonologist. Some of Mr. Demar’s no doubt. You stand back and watch the battle from the shadows, staying hidden the whole time. While keeping an eye on the battle you take out one of your necromantic books and quickly glance through it. You come across a spell that allows you cast a bolt of pure negative energy. It seems pretty easy, so you decide to try it. You come out from behind the boxes you were using as cover and blast the golem in the face with a powerful beam of dark energy. Its head explodes into several stone pieces, but it doesn’t stop. Such a hit will not automatically kill a creature like this. The demonologists look surprised to see you and even more surprised when you bark orders at them. “Get it now! While it’s blind! Take its legs!” you shout. They do exactly what you say and cast super hot blasts to the golem’s knees burning right through them, causing the rest of it to collapse and shatter. It’s definitely dead now. “Whew! Good thing you came along. When Mr. Demar sent us to search this address we didn’t expect to encounter a golem guard. How did he know to send help?” one of the demonologists asks. “He didn’t.” you say and blast him. “Hey…” is all the other manages to utter before you blast him as well. You’re now left alone in a warehouse with multiple dead bodies, and as a certain goblin wino once said, the mage guard probably won’t be coming around here anytime soon. You see this as a perfect opportunity to practice some REAL necromancy. You open the page to the appropriate spell and begin the cast it. Soon one of the dead demonologists begins to rise. It doesn’t even take you much effort to control him. It’s very easy actually. You’ve never had such an easy time at any kind of magic before, but this feels so right to you. You summon the second one and then the third one. You command them to do various things for you just to see how well you can control them. It barely takes you any concentration at all. You spend the rest of the night practicing, before making a search of the place which as it turns out contains nothing, but banned pornographic writings. You then head to your apartment where you sleep for the entire day. When you wake up you write a letter to your family saying that you’re going to be staying at Nuro for vacation since you have some extra curricular studying to do and a big opportunity could be opening up. You mostly study your necromantic books and absorbing the knowledge within. You keep up with local news and the deaths of Big Red and his girlfriend are barely mentioned, and nothing is mentioned of the warehouse. You gather that you’re in the clear. Next week you get a letter in return from your Mom who says she’s disappointed you won’t be coming to visit, but pleased that you’re doing well and your grades are back up. (At least Big Red came through for you on the nature magic thing before he died) She also mentions how proud she is of you. If she only knew… A month passes and you’ve almost finished the books you acquired. You can’t really do too much practicing though, which is something you desperately want to do again. You know you’ve got all this power within you yet you can’t use it. The problem is dead bodies aren’t exactly something you can just come across. Oh sure you could go to the graveyard, but that would most likely attract a ton of attention given that most of them are always monitored to prevent such things from easily happening. You wonder if you should approach Mr. Demar and join his Dark Order. While you typically don’t work with groups, but if it gets you some practice maybe it would be worth joining. Plus you’d get to find out what’s going on with all that, since it seems like something you should worry about. Then again large groups tend to get targeted first. So maybe you could try summoning spirits. It’s not like they’re as obvious. Though from what you’ve read controlling such incorporeal dead requires more experience and you haven’t been able to practice a lot. > You summon spirits You’ve been doing pretty well by yourself so far, so you decide to continue that trend. Still you do wonder what Mr. Demar’s Dark Order is up to. During the night you head out of the city and into the nearby wilderness. After checking around, you’re sure nobody else is around and you begin to cast your spell. Soon it happens. You’ve summoned several ghostly figures to your side. The strain to control them is much greater, but you manage. However you don’t want to push your luck so after a few brief commands you dismiss them. You’ve satisfied your desires for awhile. Another month passes and you go about your life more or less. Soon classes will start again, but you have no idea what you’re going to take. How can you? You’re sitting on all this forbidden knowledge that you seem to be extremely good at while the “acceptable” magic is stuff you can’t perform worth shit. Doesn’t seem fair somehow. Still you’re going to have to at least put up a front of normalcy if you’re going to not arouse suspicion. You’re convinced you were born in the wrong time period. You should’ve been alive during the time of the Great Lich Lord. Ah how exciting those times must’ve been! But as you soon find out, today’s times can be just as exciting… As the first week of classes start rolling around you finally decide on taking something easy and head towards the registrar offices as a late arrival. As soon as you step out of your apartment building, you hear screams, sounds of battle, explosions and general sounds of chaos. Portals are opening up all over the city and demons are pouring out of them! Amidst the bedlam you notice a few young wizards directing the demons. Demonologists. They have to be part of the Dark Order and this has to be some kind of plan of their to take over the city. You wished you’d joined up with them after all, but you think perhaps it might not be too late to get in on the action. You’re about to do so, when you feel your whole body going in slow motion. Apparently you’re not the only one, but it doesn’t seem to be affecting the demons or Dark Order members. They must have someone also dabbling in temporal magic (A practically forgotten branch of magic which is also illegal, and obviously for good reason!) It would seem that The Dark Order certainly has their shit together as far as this attack is concerned. You’re not going to be deterred, but you know you need to be cautious. You slink back into your apartment building and back into your room. Remembering your spirit summoning from last month, you decide to try it again. You need defenders and ghosts are probably going to serve you better for as long as this slow spell lasts. Once again you succeed and with your ghostly bodyguards you march outside a little more confident. You find that the city is one big killing zone. Demons are really running amok through the streets, a few of them attack you, but your ghost protect you. It would appear that they don’t see you as an ally. Sensing the need for even more protection, you raise some of the many dead bodies that now litter the streets. A few of Nuro’s mage guards attempt to stop you, but you easily defeat them and add them to your ranks. It’s so easy for you. Soon you’re commanding a small army and it’s barely taking any effort from you at all. “HEY! Who the hell are you? You’re not in the Dark Order!” a voice calls out to you, and you turn around to see another necromancer. He’s rather non-descript looking and isn’t controlling nearly as many dead as you are. No ghosts either. “I’m not. I’m what you call…independent I suppose.” “Oh is that right eh? Well if you ain’t with the Dark Order, you’re against us!” You attempt to ask if you can come to some sort of arrangement, but he’s not hearing it, he orders his horde to attack you. So much for making allies… He and his troops are going to be faster, even if you do outnumber him, so you decide to do something else. You enforce your will upon his advancing horde, and with a little effort you’re successful. They stop in their tracks, and then they turn around in his direction. “Hey! Stop that! You can’t do that! You’re supposed to listen to me!” he shouts totally losing his cool, not to mention his control. Instead of trying to regain it, he attempts to blast you with a bolt of negative energy, but at this point you’re well protected by meat shield of corpses, who seem to be moving faster… The slow spell! It’s gone! Or at least it’s not affecting you anymore. You smile wickedly at the enemy necromancer. Now you can show him real power! He doesn’t get a few inches from his position before he’s overwhelmed and killed by your forces. Besides the effects of the slow spell being gone, you also notice many of the demons jumping over the city walls, or otherwise leaving Nuro. You hear demonologists shouting at them to come back and once again you shake your head. It would appear that Mr. Demar and the Dark Order didn’t have their shit as together as you thought. “Pah! This is what Mr. Demar had to work with? I guess I was lucky not to have hooked up with such fools!” you say to a nearby zombie who doesn’t answer. You march through the city truly exercising your power for the first time, soon you come across two more necromancers attempting to destroy city hall where the last bastion of resistance resides in the city. An ugly man and a woman. Naturally it’s the ugly guy who calls over to you. “Hey Irwin glad you…hey you’re not Irwin! Who are you?” “I’m the guy who can probably save your ass from this fiasco you Dark Orderites call a take over.” “Huh and I suppose YOU could’ve done a better job?” the woman sneers. “Better job than you’re doing. Look at you, you lost your demonic support and you can’t even take out the first citizen and his weak ass mage guards.” You retort. “Hey Catalina stop fighting! We got enough problems!” he says to the woman before addressing you. “Look, my name’s Sebastian and if you want to help out I’m not going to turn you away because you’re right, we could use it! I’m sure Mr. Demar is having no problems taking care of the dean and the other professors, but I’m more concerned with Quayle!” “Who’s that?” “He’s the guy that was responsible for that slow spell you were probably feeling the effects of earlier. I don’t what’s gone wrong with the spell, but some demonologist came by here a minute ago saying that the whole east side of campus is fucked up. Like it’s phasing in and out of existence or something. Someone needs to go check it out or stop it before we’re all killed!” > You go check on Quayle While these Dark Orderites haven’t completely impressed you, you remember that Serena mentioned you would need allies and they could serve that purpose. From what you can tell, you’re a better necromancer than the rest of them and this city would be an excellent beginning of your career especially since you don’t have any better ideas in mind. You know that even if this event plays out well for you, you’re going to have a whole shit load of trouble ahead of you so you better get a few people on your side now even if they need to be “disposed” of later… “Alright, I’ll help out, but I’m not doing this for you or following your orders, I have my own agenda!” you say flat out to Sebastian. Before you leave Catalina speaks to you. “So, come a long way from Enchantment class huh?” she says. “…I thought I recognized you…and yeah I have. I finally found a branch of magic I’m really good at.” You say finally realizing who she is. “Just remember, as good as you are, you aren’t the best.” “We’ll see.” You retort and leave. The march towards the university where on the west side of campus you see and hear explosions. That must be where Mr. Demar is. You wonder how you’ll have to deal with him after you take care of this Quayle problem. When you get to the east campus, Sebastian was right, you see a lot of weird things going on, nearby plants are growing older and younger before your eyes, buildings are indeed disappearing and reappearing. It’s a mess. You see a small gray building that doesn’t seem to be suffering any effects; you bet that’s where Quayle is. You march over with your horde only to start feeling very ill. You try to shake off the effects so you can keep control, but it doesn’t matter as you begin to see your various undead troops go through weird changes. You watch them either accelerate in rot and disintegrate, or even stranger actually turn back into their living selves until they eventually become babies and then nothing. You’re only halfway to the building and you begin to worry that you’re going to suffer the same fate, but manage to get in the Gray building which contains a simple auditorium like classroom. You must be back on campus. At the front of the class you see a strange man surrounded by a white glow. This must be Quayle. “This is not the way…you have lost…you may win…it’s all so fascinating…” he says in an echoed voice. You have no idea what the hell he means, all you know is you need to kill this guy before he fucks everything up. You’re having a hard time concentrating still though and once again you begin to feel very sick. That feeling becomes stronger when you see grotesque creatures pop into existence. They have writhing masses of tentacles and give off an aura completely hostile and alien. Not even the demons you’ve had contact with give off anything like this. You have no time for spells you’ll have to do this the old fashioned way. You run towards the front of the class where he sits and just narrowly dodge another tentacle beast appearing suddenly in front of you. “…stop…stop it…you must stop…” You tackle Quayle and something completely unexpected and disgusting happens. His body literally breaks like a fragile glass vase and all manner of insects and maggots come crawling out, mostly on you. “EEEEYEEECAAAGH!” you yell trying to get them all off of you, completely ignoring anything else. Fortunately for you, whatever you did has stopped the temporal disturbance. The creatures disappear and everything else seems to go back to normal. After stomping on some centipedes you notice Quayle’s head has rolled into a corner. Surprisingly it’s still alive. “You have won nothing…” his head says before it just simply disappears. You shake your own head at all of this. As much as you’ve seen during your short time raising the dead, you’ve never seen anything like this. You can’t hear anymore explosions; you wonder if Mr. Demar has won. You exit the building and begin to walk over to the other side of the campus where the explosions were coming from. You arrive to burning buildings and ruins of towers. Once again you see Sebastian, he’s sitting outside holding his head in his hands. He looks like he’s sobbing. “What the hell is wrong with you?” you ask. “It’s over! It’s all over!” “What are you talking about? It looks like the city is ours.” “But for how long? All our so called demon allies took off! By the time I got here Mr. Demar had already been severely wounded and his second in command Trelik had betrayed him. Catalina and I managed to kill Trelik, but Catalina fell in the battle! The Dark Order is over and I dunno what’s coming next, we’re all in a lot of fucking trouble! Trouble that I wasn’t prepared to handle! I’m not really a leader. Mr. Demar was a leader! Oh man why did I choose this path!?” Sebastian is having a complete mental break down and it sickens you. It’s unbecoming of a necromancer. “Where’s Mr. Demar?” you ask. “He’s dead in the library!” “Good, saves me the trouble.” “Huh? What’s going on?” “I’m in charge, that’s what’s going on and I’m not going to tolerate whimpering weaklings like you.” and you blast Sebastian with negative energy to his face, killing him. Yep, you’re in charge. A month passes The “Nuro Incident” as it came to be known was a shock to the civilized world. Nobody had anticipated such a thing occurring despite all preparations. Certainly not to Nuro given it’s near “invincible” reputation. You’ve renamed the city Aftermath. The Grand Alliance was immediately formed to retake the city, but fortunately for you, you weren’t the only problem they had. Velzix, a demon lord who the Dark Order summoned to help them, soon left Nuro during its attack, and managed to unite the rest of the demons that felt the need to break their contract with the Dark Order. They turned their attention to the Tulan Kingdom. Right now he’s established his own rule, enslaving the population and is most likely planning further conquest assuming he can keep his own troops from fighting each other long enough. As for you, you’ve already managed to hold off one Grand Alliance attack quite successfully due to your preparations. The first thing you did was command all the surviving Dark Order members to become necromancers. They’re mediocre at best though, they might be better if you took a more direct hand in training them, but you’re too impatient and you have so many other things to take care of as well. You haven’t heard anything from your family; you can only wonder what they think of all this and you don’t really care. While things are somewhat quiet now, that’s not going to last. The Grand Alliance will keep attacking and they may very well overwhelm you in time. You can’t just sit in your throne room and prepare for the next attack and you need to be proactive about this threat, but the big problem though is, you’re basically doing all of this yourself. There isn’t anyone anywhere near your equal, let alone anyone you can trust to handle important things. As much as you loathe thinking of it, you could ally with Velzix, granted he’s an untrustworthy demon, and not fond of the Dark Order for imprisoning him, you were never a member of the Dark Order and may be receptive. You soon send messages to him asking for an alliance. Eventually you get a response, and it’s a positive one. Velzix even says he’ll meet you in the city of Aftermath. Apparently he isn’t worried about you. When he arrives he gets right to business. “Nice decorations…so, you wish to make a deal with me?” “I’ve come to propose a pact between us yes. We have a common enemy.” “Yes, but what does this pact entail exactly?” “Simple, we don’t attack one another and we coordinate our attacks to be more effective against the Grand Alliance.” “And I suppose while my attention isn’t on you, and I waste my valuable resources, you build up strength and attack me eh? Heh heh, I know you little necromancer. I see the desire to murder the entire world in your eyes. I even respect it, but if you think I’m trusting you, you’re as brain dead as those corpses you raise.” “What?! You’re a fucking demon and you’re accusing ME of being deceitful?” “Of course. Who better to see treachery than one who is an expert at it? But assuming you genuinely mean for us to be best buddies forever and ever, I still don’t see what you can do for me in your current state.” “What are you on about now?” “I’m saying as a military power you ain’t shit that’s what! Your necromancers are barely competent enough to hold your defenses of that little necropolis you rule. It’s mostly you doing all the work, and while you’ve got a little power, it still ain’t enough to attack anything in a meaningful way.” You hate the fact that Velzix is right, but you hate it even more that he’s so damn smug about it. Which makes you wonder why he called you out here…in fact you’re starting to prepare yourself for trouble. “Alright then what the hell are you proposing?” you ask. “I propose a…merger rather than an alliance.” “You’re proposing that I let YOU take over Aftermath and I just become your bitch.” “Not exactly how I worded it, but if you prefer that designation…” ”NO! I don’t prefer it!” “Okay then how about this? I say you’ll last maybe another year tops if you stay walled up in this little city of yours just letting the Grand Alliance constantly beat down your gates until they finally succeed. Then assuming you don’t die during that final attack, I predict that you live a ragged existence on the run for maybe a couple years afterwards at which point you’ll end up getting hunted down and killed hiding in some cave somewhere.” “And that’s what you see?” “Seen it happen to more powerful mortals than you. BUT! It doesn’t have to be that way. Joining with me can be more beneficial than you think. You don’t think I don’t see the power in you? You would be a very valuable asset to my plans. Your ability to control the dead is very strong and quite frankly it would be nice to actually have not just troops that aren’t fighting among themselves, but a great general as well. Think about it! You’ll gain more power and you could still bring death to thousands and not have to worry about all the bullshit of ruling, because as I’m sure you know, it isn’t as fun as it should be most of the time. You will prosper, if you continue to prove yourself worthy and useful.” > You join Velzix Velzix’s offer does have some appeal to it, you must admit, but having to answer to Velzix is repugnant to you. You feel that you were meant to rule, not follow. Perhaps you can build up a following though while serving under his rule, there’s nothing saying you HAVE to be loyal… “Very well. I’ll join you.” Velzix smiles. “Ha ha! I knew you’d see the smart thing to do little necromancer. I predict this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship…” You transfer your city over to Velzix, though the majority of your undead are still there, he just supplements its defenses with some of his own demons and the humans that have pledged their servitude to him. > You are about to take your Necromantic career to its next level Chapter 3: One Foot in Hell One year has passed… It’s been one year since you made an alliance with Velzix, and so far it has paid off. With your combined might, you both have successfully held off the Grand Alliance. You haven’t gained too much ground, but that’s looking like it’s about to change. Everyday Velzix has somehow been managing to attract “free demons” from other nations to join him, though its not as if they have too many other options as mere suspicion has turned into hatred and they are to be rounded up and killed as possible enemies. Though again, thanks to mortal failings and greed, there are those few nations that are still letting their small demonic populations run free. Not surprisingly Velzix has been attempting to convince the leaders of these governments into joining him in exchange for even greater power. Velzix has also been attempting to open portals to his own infernal realm on a permanent basis. Right now he can summon in a few reinforcements to replace battle losses, but nothing on a major scale. As for you, things could be worse, but they could be better. All your potential “acolytes” reverted back to being demonologist when the merge came, though many of them were purged by Velzix himself, as he still remembered their attempts to imprison him before during their days in the Dark Order, not to mention if they were so quick to change allegiances so quickly, then they obviously weren’t to be trusted. Your magic powers in other branches of magic have somewhat improved, though this might be due your infernal dealings. Necromancy is still your area of expertise obviously and as it stands, you’re the only true necromancer allied with Velzix. You sort of hold a unique position, but you question its importance in the scheme of things. You’ve been basically put on defense duty. Your undead troops are nothing more than meat shields for the most part, and while that is what they are there for, you’d rather they be YOUR meat shields than some asshole demons, (or worse mortals). You feel like your talents are being wasted to a degree, like you’ve got a lot of untapped potential that’s dying to get out. However, open rebellion against Velzix isn’t likely to happen, but there’s nothing stopping you from setting the stage. You still have Aftermath under your control, even if you do have to put up with the demons and mortals stationed there now. One night in your study while you’re contemplating how to go about all this, you figure there are two ways. You’ve actually got a lot of troops at your immediate disposal. You believe you could probably take over the nearby Brot Kingdom by yourself without any help. They have a weak military and most of the Grand Alliance armies are busy elsewhere. You could build up a bigger power base. You might piss off Velzix by doing this by yourself, but you could take the chance that he might over look it if you’re successful as it’s also increasing his own territory. The other option is to remain doing what you’re doing and engage in a more secret assassination conspiracy against Velzix. You already know that tons of others are probably doing it, why not you? The problem is, individually most of you are fairly weak against him; though together you’d be more successful. Of course getting a bunch of demonic assassinating liars to trust one another is probably even more difficult than the attempt itself. > You engage in military conquest What’s the point of having power, if you aren’t using it in any meaningful way that can help you? You’re sick of being “reined in”. You’re going to do what you’ve been wanting to do for a long time. You prepare to march an army of undead to the Brot Kingdom. The demons and mortals stationed at Aftermath are wondering what’s going on though since most of them know you’re mainly used for defense. “Where do you think yer goin’?” a demon solder steps up to ask you as you’re about to leave the city gates. “I’m gonna go conquer the Brot Kingdom, got a problem with that?” “Me? No, not at all. Just didn’t know Velzix let you off your leash.” The demon soldier grins. This remark is met with a negative energy blast to his face, completely ripping the flesh off and revealing the still grinning skull underneath. As the rest of this body falls to the ground, you feel the need to make a speech to the gawking onlookers. “I am not on anyone’s fucking leash! Nobody tells me what the do! Now what’s going to happen, is I’m going to leave and lay waste to the Brot Kingdom. The rest of you are going to defend this place while I’m gone! And when Velzix comes here, like I know he will I’LL handle it. The rest of you can cower before that fucker, but I ain’t the one.” Having made your thoughts known, you return to your undead army, which obediently still stands only awaiting your commands. As the way things should be. The way ALL things should be. After a few days you eventually reach the Brot Kingdom. You start by decimating the small border villages and then quickly raising the peasants you slaughtered. You’ve moved on to larger towns before the Brot military manages to start opposing you. Their military is weak though. Most of them see your horde and run in terror before the fight even begins! Those are the smart ones. The rest soon become just more fodder for you to raise. You actually feel more powerful after your conquests, which is odd given the amount of energy you’ve been expending. You can only take this as a sign of this being what you were meant for! Within the week you’ve single handedly taken control of the Brot capitol and most of the Kingdom in general. Much of the royal family has abased themselves before you in an attempt for you to spare their lives. You laugh and grant this request, after all someone has to still run this territory. You’ve successfully subjugated your first territory. In fact, it’s the first “real” territory conquered since Velzix took over the Tulan Kingdom. Tivadol’s petty victories haven’t even compared to what you’ve done. When you return to Aftermath, you’re half expecting to be met by Velzix, who has undoubtedly heard of your actions by now. It’s only now that you realize you may be in more trouble than you thought! However, you’re surprisingly met by Sesisek instead who sits in your study. “This place is as dead as my status among demonkind.” He says looking at the many skeletal structures and decorations. “It’s a fucking necropolis, I’m a necromancer, and what do you want? I figured Velzix would be here meeting me.” “Oh he’s on his way, and from what I’ve heard, he’s quite pissed about you playing the role of conqueror. He’s just a little more preoccupied with the Grand Alliance army that’s currently attacking him directly right now, which probably explains why you met little resistance at Brot. Congratulations on your victory, I’m sure Tivadol won’t be too pleased with accomplishing something he couldn’t either.” “Yeah, yeah, so why are you here?” “I’m here to help you get out of this shit pit you’ve stepped in and are quickly in danger of sinking further into. You’ve showed entirely too much ambition, too soon, my mortal friend.” “What of it? Like I’m the only one plotting against Velzix? Hah! Tivadol makes no pretense of his goals.” “Ah yes, but you’re not taking some things into consideration. Tivadol is still a demon and you my mortal friend are not. We are not fond of ever being bested, but to be bested by a mortal is even more repugnant to us. Tivadol is also a predictable loud mouth brute who is never going to achieve his goal. Velzix knows exactly how to manipulate him. Perhaps the day will come where he’ll have to kill him, but that day is far off in the future. You on the other hand are still new and he’s still learning about you. Velzix probably thought you could be manipulated and cowed into submission by his sheer strength and magic abilities alone, but it’s apparent that you aren’t afraid of such things. I could’ve seen that though. Necromancers embrace death; fear of it won’t be a factor. Though there are worse things than death…” “Guess you’re proof of that.” You mock. “Hmm, your pointless barbs at me are quite unproductive and are in fact hindering you. I am offering to help you, I’d advise that you take it before you meet Velzix.” “Offering me help huh? I seriously doubt you’re doing this out of kindness.” “Of course not. I’m doing it because I see an opportunity for revenge and quite frankly, you are the only one that will be able to help me achieve it. However, I assure you that we will both profit greatly from this, if you listen to me. If you don’t want my help though, I shall leave.” “Okay I’m listening, what are you suggesting?” “Ha ha, no my mortal friend. I would be quite the fool if I told you how to handle Velzix before I got your word that you are in fact accepting my help. ARE you accepting my help?” Sesisek looks at you expectantly. > You accept his help Well, you probably could use the help in this matter. Smoothing this out with Velzix is going to be a delicate affair. “Alright, I’m accepting your help.” “Excellent.” Sesisek smiles. Sesisek explains that even if you do manage to talk Velzix into not killing you for your actions, he’s still going to take away your hard earned victory for himself. You can’t let him do this, nor are you to get into a fight with him. Instead you must convince Velzix that you are indeed loyal and would never dream of betraying him, but that you must take a more active role in things if you are to be effective. You must remind him that if you’re doing activity, then Velzix can concentrate more on opening up the portal to back home and victory will come quicker. Finally you must always point out of how weak you are compared to the might of Velzix, remind him that you are but a lowly mortal and will always remain so when compared to a demon lord. After advising you, Sesisek leaves you as he mentions he doesn’t want to be around if things don’t go well. He doesn’t need anymore of Velzix’s anger to spread out to him, but if you happen to be successful; he’ll definitely be around to provide more help in the future You feel just by agreeing to this you’ve lost something of yourself. Much like when you allied with Velzix. Maybe you haven’t gone so far to sell your soul and granted you were walking the path of darkness to begin with, but the twisted taint of hell that you’ve been getting deeper into is definitely starting to change you and it’s probably not for the better. In any case a couple days pass and Velzix arrives, he’s a little more calm than you were expecting, but he could blow up at any minute. “So little necromancer, I hear you have been taking matters into your own hands and acquiring territory yourself. I am displeased that you have done this. The Grand Alliance has been attacking and you’ve been squandering my potential reinforcements elsewhere. What if they had succeeded in breaking through my defenses? I would’ve had no troops to support my position, and much would’ve been lost.” “Forgive me, but I felt that with the Grand Alliance focusing their attention elsewhere, I believed an attack on the Brot Kingdom would be a good idea. And I might add, it was. The conquest was very successful.” “Yes, but you have dodged the question of what would’ve happened had the Grand Alliance broke through my defenses?” “I did not worry about such a thing since I knew they would be no match for a powerful demon lord such as yourself and even if they had, I’m sure you personally could’ve dealt with the few stragglers. They are only mortals after all; they would never be a match for you.” “Obsequious words little necromancer…I have never heard any such tone from you before. You have always carried an air of arrogance about you. Tell me, is my mere presence enough to make you regret your clumsy attempts at gaining more power?” “I fear you have misjudged me in this. I simply feel that my talents have not been used to their full degree, because you believe I shall be treacherous in the future. I have no desire to do such a thing. What would be the point? I could never hope to defeat you anyway. I only wish to be more active in your eventual conquest of this world. I have already proven to be a more competent general than Tivadol.” Velzix laughs out loud at this last statement. “I’m sure Tivadol will be thrilled to hear that a mortal has achieved more in military victories on this world than he has…very well. You wish to choose a more active role, so be it. It will be most amusing to see Tivadol compete with you, perhaps this will even inspire him to succeed, since as you have pointed out, he has yet to conquer an entire kingdom for me like you have…and it IS MY kingdom is it not?” “Yes, it is.” You say with a bow. “Hmm, yes. Well you’ve talked your way out of this one necromancer, but know that I will still be watching you. You had best prove successful in your new active role, but also remember who is in charge and who serves.” “Of course.” Velzix informs you that since you have taken on this role, he’ll be issuing more orders to you AND that it will be up to you to oversee larger areas of territory (Starting with the recently acquired Brot Kingdom), not just Aftermath. And if you fuck up, you’re going to get fucked up. And with that, you have your new place in the hierarchy… Four years pass… It’s been five years since you made your alliance with Velzix, so far it’s proven most beneficial more or less. You’ve managed to carve out a niche for yourself as a good general, and just in time too since Velzix has been successful in keeping infernal portals open longer which is allowing more demons to come in. While your undead troops are looking to be somewhat “obsolete” your expertise in military planning has assured you a place in this demonic empire. You don’t lead demons though of course. They’d never allow such a thing. You lead a strange combination of undead and mortals who have decided to throw their lot in with the infernal forces. Sesisek has even provided you with a few mortals who have displayed an interest in necromancy, allowing you to not carry the weight of up keeping an undead army constantly anymore. While you haven’t completely abandoned your necromantic roots, you’ve been forced to broaden your magical horizons and tap into the infernal plane, which has allowed you to create potent unnatural abominations. However, this type of magic is highly experimental and you’re probably the first one to even attempt it. It’s beginning to take a toll on your deteriorating health, because as they say, you don’t change hell, hell changes you. However your power is keeping you going. You haven’t lost sight that one day you’ll be in charge… Your immediate rivals haven’t lost sight either, in fact you’ve become more of a threat. Tivadol the Destroyer constantly makes threats that he’ll one day see you crushed underneath his foot. Sinthinia is a little more interested in your relationship with Sesisek and finds the fact that you two are on too good of terms to be very suspicious. Oddly Velzix doesn’t seem worried about this though, or if he is, he hasn’t made it known to you. Indeed he’s been pre-occupied lately with finally opening up a portal permanently to his infernal home. He believes he will soon be successful. In the meantime, the Grand Alliance has been hard pressed to hold the line, they are slowly losing ground to you and Tivadol. Heroes from all over the civilized governments have been employed, but so far they’ve have proven unsuccessful in even getting to Velzix, let alone killing him. Vampire assassins however have had a little more luck, but Sinithina’s internal security magic guards have detected them all as soon as they get near Velzix’s fortress. You can’t say you’re too thrilled yourself with Velzix opening up a permanent portal as it could certainly make your job a lot harder of killing him in the future. Sesisek, realizes this too and has recently approached you about this. He tells you to meet him for a plan to kill Velzix, in a couple days. While you’re in your study pondering what this could entail, you are suddenly “greeted” with Sinthinia’s presence. Unusual since she’s directly kept her distance from you ever since you conquered the Brot Kingdom. (Indirectly through her spies is another matter however) Whatever she has come to see you for probably isn’t good…or is it? “Hmm, this place still reeks of death I see. It is much too cold in this place. Not warm like many of our other conquests. Look how hard my nipples are. Why it’s cold enough to make me almost want to put on clothes…almost.” She says touching herself in a seductive way. You’ve seen her in action before, and you’re not some weak willed fool, so this routine has little effect on you. “Yeah, well zombies tend to be flammable and I hate the heat, so this grave chill stays. You’ll just have to deal with hard nipples.” “How about YOU deal with them. Hm?” “Sinthinia what do you want?” “Besides your dick in my nice warm body? I want to see you not ruin your most promising career by siding with a loser like Sesisek. I know that the two of you have been collusion together ever since you conquered the Brot Kingdom…a most bold move might I add. Only the first of many. You are obviously a man who knows what he wants and takes it…” At this point Sinthinia is turning on her demonic seduction and getting closer to the point of touching you. You’d be lying if it wasn’t having any effect on you. “Yeah…well just get the point Sinthinia!” “See? So forceful! Very well, the point. My point is Sesisek is an obsessed fool who’s time is running out. I know he’s got plans to kill me and Velzix, so far I haven’t exactly determined how he’s going to attempt it, but I know it’s coming soon. My concern is, if YOU have anything to do with such plans. It would be a shame if you did…” “Well he hasn’t said anything to me about any specific plan.” You reply. “Ah, careful words you chose without actually lying. You have been hanging around our kind and learning! However you will not dodge me so easily. Specific plan. Specific being the key word. I’m guessing he’s approached you about some act of treachery though and just hasn’t given you the details yet.” You say nothing and she presses up against you while speaking into your ear so close that she nibbles on it a bit. “I’ll take your silence as a yes. Know however that you are still not powerful enough to kill Velzix. I am very close to him just like I am very close to you right now and I can tell you with all certainty that you will not be able to defeat him. Not even with that bitter old idiot Sesisek helping you…I advise that you not go down the same path as he is.” “Oh yeah? Well if you think we’re doing something, why not just kill us both right now?” “It’s not how I work my necromantic cutie. Besides, I am giving you a chance to join with a better and more grateful ally in the long run. Namely me. I want you to find out what Sesisek’s plan is and then at the right time, betray him. I would be most grateful.” “Hmm, I don’t trust you. Sesisek trusted you once and look what happened.” “Sesisek proved to be weak and unworthy of my loyalty, but of course you don’t trust me, nor should you. Still, you think on this, I have offered to become your ally and more if you wish. I run the internal security of Velzix’s empire. Do you not think that having me as an ally would be more beneficial for your future than to stay allied with Sesisek whose plan is surely doomed to failure? I already KNOW he’s planning something. He will be punished soon, along with all that have conspired with him. Stay loyal to him and you’ll suffer his fate. Betray him, and you’ll suddenly find yourself in control of his holdings and have one less potential enemy to worry about. Not to mention you will make me very happy. So happy that I may provide favors for you that you could never dream of. So what do you say?” Normally you’d think more about it, but Sinthinia has made a somewhat appealing offer and the fact that she’s currently shoved one of her hands down your pants and stroking your cock isn’t exactly helping you think straight either. > You agree If Sinthinia already knows that something is going on, chances are she’s already got counter measures to solve it. Her overtures for an alliance, must be some what genuine to some degree otherwise she’d just let you go through with this plan and just have you all killed when you attempt it. “Okay, Sinthinia I’m in.” you say. Sinthinia continues to rub against you and then looks into your eyes before kissing you. “Mmmm, I can taste the truthfulness on your lips. A rare flavor around here. I’m glad you decided to join me; we’re going to have so much fun together. Now, let me taste more of you. Something more…carnal.” A few hours later Sinthinia leaves your study (Which is now a mess) and remarks that she’ll be expecting to see you soon after you meet with Sesisek. A few days pass and you meet Sesisek in the forsaken area known as the Drozz Wasteland. The barbarian tribes here still hold sway, but you need not concern yourself with such minor threats, they know enough to stay away from two dark individuals such as yourselves, and the others… The others in question are vampires. It would appear that Sesisek has been planning more than just “normal” betrayal. The vampires eye you warily. “So, how did you swing a deal with the vampire clans?” you ask. “Let’s just say we all have similar interests. And that interest is seeing Velzix die and that bitch Sinthinia.” “Remember Sesisek, our primary target is Velzix! Your desire for revenge on other targets is secondary!” one the vampires exclaims. “And I assure you that taking out Sinthinia is very necessary to our goals as well. She’s head of internal security. Killing her is vital to our plan.” “I thought getting Mr. Necromancer here to mask us long enough to enter Veltrix’s fortress was the plan?” “He will be, but…” “Hey hold on, what am I supposed to be doing now?” you interrupt while exaggerating your clueless act. “You mean you haven’t even informed him yet or what’s going on?” “I was going to do it now!” Sesisek hisses before turning to you. “Look isn’t it true that you can use some sort of necromantic magic to hide our friends here? The reason why assassination attempts have been so unsuccessful before is thanks to all the magic detection security in the fortress.” “Oh. I see what you’re getting at. Yeah, but I can’t just do it myself. I’d still be giving off too much of a deathly aura that would probably arouse suspicion from Sinthinia’s detection shit. I’d have to enter the fortress with either a bunch of zombies and skeletons, or I suppose I could just enter with a few of my abominations. Those would arouse less suspicion since I use them as bodyguards anyway. You vampires could travel with us invisibly, and you shouldn’t be detected until you decide to go into a blood frenzy and start killing everyone.” “Ha ha! See! I told you he could do it.” You all “agree” to this plan and hammer out some other details before parting ways. You head back to Aftermath, when your undead abomination bodyguards begin to sniff the air and you feel a presence stalking you, you stop and prepare yourself for an attack. Once again the vampire assassins become visible. Apparently they’ve been following you. “You can’t sneak up on a necromancer. I can sense your undead presence remember blood leech?” “Is that what you still consider yourself? I thought you’d become a worshipper of demons rather than death, given how long you’ve been with them.” One of the assassins says. “No. I don’t worship anything. I’m concerned with my own power; all of this is just a means to an end. And I have not given up the necromantic arts; you would be wise to remember that vampire.” “Good. Then it’s not too late.” “What are you on about?” “Look, this plan will be more successful if you fully cooperate with us. After we kill Velzix, Lord Rostov wants to invite you to join us. He feels that your connection and understanding of death along with your power would serve the Clans well. Among us, you would find a sort of peace. You would not have to deal with demons anymore.” “You must be joking! After I kill Velzix, I’m taking over! And anyone who opposes me is going to feel my wrath!” you say still keeping up the illusion that you’re going through with this assassination. The vampire assassin runs her fingers through her hair and pauses before speaking again. “No you won’t. And I’m not talking about a knife in your back by one of us either. I’m saying if you believe you’ll be able to control an empire mixed with mortals, demons AND while controlling all your undead troops, then you’re beyond delusional. Look at you. You’re a wreck from all the infernal magic you’ve been taping into. Is it any wonder that demonologists don’t live a long time? It’s probably only due to your baffling plentiful necromantic energy that’s kept you going this long. Even if you do manage to rein in the chaotic nature of the demons, and hold off the Grand Alliance, I doubt you’ll live enough to enjoy any of it, let alone conquer anymore territory.” “I guess you bloodsuckers forgot that I can always become a lich.” “A lich? There hasn’t been one of those since the time of the Great Lich Lord! The amount of death energy to become one must be huge! You’re not there yet, you’re not likely to get there and you’re not pure enough anyway. You’re tainted too much by hell. While you haven’t directly sold your soul, you’ve thrown your lot in with them long enough to be damned. You will not be allowed to escape death on your own. BUT…becoming one of us will give you a chance. You will defeat death, and live lifetimes.” You think on the assassin’s words. Much of what she says is true. You aren’t in the best condition anymore. You’re in pain a lot though you try to ignore it and not display your weakness. As far as being damned, you’re not sure, but it’s probably true. Your thoughts have focused less on death and more on demonic nightmares. The purity of what you once pursued HAS been tainted. You could almost kick yourself for allowing yourself to turn into what you are. However, you wonder if the vampire is just telling you this to get you on their side. They must be worried about you if they want you to join this bad. Of course he could just be lying, but you don’t think so. After being around so many liars you’ve come to see the signs, not to mention your own insights into the undead. > You join the vampires You’ve come to the realization that the assassin is correct. You foresee a long struggle plagued by headache after headache if you continue to deal with these demons. It’s been nothing, but back stabbing and double dealing since you’ve dealt with them. Given your recent “alliance” with Sinthinia, you can only expect more of the same from her. Is that what you really want to deal with? Not to mention if Velzix DOES open the portal to his infernal realm he’ll be even more powerful and no matter what you do, you can’t stand against hell alone and the demons would NEVER follow the likes of you. Joining the vampire clans might not be ideal, but then again nothing you’ve done so far has. “Alright, I’ll join.” “Excellent. Though I certainly hope you’re being sincere. It would be such a shame if you lying…” “No I mean it. My days of walking with demons are going to be at an end soon. One way or another.” Coming to an agreement, you prepare yourself for this assassination attempt. You also plan to have all your undead troops strike at just the right time to cause even more chaos since you won’t be sticking around after Velzix’s death. At least you hope you won’t. A few days pass and Sesisek tells you that he has everything ready. He mentions he’ll be taking care of Sinthinia personally along with her whole secret service. You’ll meet the vampire assassins in a dead forest near Fury. You send Sinthinia a message that you’ll be arriving at Fury to report what Sesisek is planning. She’ll be expecting you, but what will actually happen, will be completely different. You make your trek to Fury, without incident with your hidden friends in tow. You take a deep breath before entering the gates where upon you half expect the demon guards to stop you, but nothing happens. You’ve succeeded. Your next move is to get as quickly as possible to Velzix’s inner chambers. You don’t get far when an alarm is raised… “Assassins! Kill them! Sinthinia’s orders!” one of the demon guards says. Suddenly you’re surrounded on all sides Shit, apparently Sinthinia was somewhat wise to your last act of treachery. You mentally call out to your undead minions to attack anything living. “Come on! Secrecy is over! We gotta haul ass to Velzix!” you exclaim. While chaos is reigning in the fortress, you and the vampires easily dispatch those that would attempt to stop you. When you get to Velzix’s inner chambers where he’s attempting to open up a portal to get reinforcements. “Treachery. I expected this from Sesisek, but I am very disappointed in you. I had such plans…oh well perhaps I will yet get pleasure when I break your bones and have you flayed over the course of a very long and painful torture period. And I assure you, you’ll be very much alive to experience it.” Velzix’s portal opens and a swarm of demons come pouring out. The vampire assassins waste no time and begin their work with deadly efficiency. Your abominations have less finesse, but they get the job done. Velzix unleashes horrible infernal magic that causes a couple of the assassins to liquefy. You’re just trying to stay out of the way of most of the fighting and attempting to keep a control over your troops, but you soon realize you’re going to have to play a direct role in his death and unleash your own negative energy bolts at Velzix. The battle is brutal, and dead bodies soon litter the chamber. You’re beginning to feel the effects of the energy you’ve expended in this fight. Thankfully Sesisek arrives with some of his mortal lackeys, giving you a breather. He looks like he’s seen a hard battle already, but still has a lot of fight left due to the revenge that fuels his rage. “Velzix! Your bitch is dead! Now you shall join her!” he shouts and unleashes a flurry of blades upon his former master. In the mean time the femal vampire assassin that first approached you comes to help you up. “Come on let’s get out of here.” “We haven’t killed Velzix yet.” “Yes we have, look.” You look over at the battle between the two demons and its clear Sesisek has the upper hand, literally. He’s chopped off one of the Velzix’s limbs at the forearm. You take the assassin’s advice and leave with her. After a little more fighting to get out of the Fortress, eventually you find refuge in the dead forest again. Chaos has overtaken Velzix’s realm. You doubt if his demonic empire will be able to recover from this, even if he manages to survive. You’re so tired that you don’t have time to react when you’re suddenly bitten on the neck and drained of your blood. You feel your life force ebb and then disappear completely… You die and for a moment you can feel yourself being pulled towards the infernal realm and the hideous tortures that await you there, however you are sudden brought back to the living, so to speak within just a few minutes. You don’t feel the taint of hell within you anymore, but you also feel less powerful in terms of necromantic energy. You can sense that whatever undead troops you raised or controlled have now crumbled or collapsed. “Good, you’re up. Welcome to your new life. Your blood tasted terrible. Ugh. All tainted and shit. Spat most of it out.” “Wow, I’m really one of you now.” You say ignoring her comment and still in awe of your new form. “That’s right. But I think you’ll find that you won’t have some of your powers anymore. While this transition does have benefits, it has it’s downsides as well. But I’m sure Lord Rostov will still find you a welcome addition to the clans. I think he’s actually been interested in meeting and talking with you. Been awhile since we had someone new join us. We should go now, the sun will be up soon.” The vampire assassin pulls out a black cube like device and presses a few button and you’re whisked away to the Vampire Clan secret fortress. It is there that you begin you new life. In the years to come, the chaos caused by Velzix’s demonic empire settles down somewhat. Velzix did indeed die that day in battle with Sesisek, but he did not live long after getting his revenge. He was soon cut down by other demons who saw a grand opportunity to kill the hated traitor. The Grand Alliance once again gained the upper hand as the demonic infighting begins to take its toll. Tivadol the Destroyer who was the last remaining demon with any meaningful leadership skills was eventually struck down in battle by your sister who became a hero. Your parents also survive the chaos. This pleases you, well about your Mom and sister anyway. As for you, once again you find yourself under orders, this time by Lord Rostov, but you don’t mind them. You find this life of ruling the mortal world through the shadows to be more appealing and less hassle. While it is true you no longer possess the powers you once had, and may never get them back, you’ve come to be satisfied with less and not living a life in constant pain anymore. Your existence continues and the future is unknown as the world’s status quo is starting to return, but your life as a necromancer is over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If Sinthinia already knows that something is going on, chances are she’s already got counter measures to solve it. Her overtures for an alliance, must be some what genuine to some degree otherwise she’d just let you go through with this plan and just have you all killed when you attempt it. “Okay, Sinthinia I’m in.” you say. Sinthinia continues to rub against you and then looks into your eyes before kissing you. “Mmmm, I can taste the truthfulness on your lips. A rare flavor around here. I’m glad you decided to join me; we’re going to have so much fun together. Now, let me taste more of you. Something more…carnal.” A few hours later Sinthinia leaves your study (Which is now a mess) and remarks that she’ll be expecting to see you soon after you meet with Sesisek. A few days pass and you meet Sesisek in the forsaken area known as the Drozz Wasteland. The barbarian tribes here still hold sway, but you need not concern yourself with such minor threats, they know enough to stay away from two dark individuals such as yourselves, and the others… The others in question are vampires. It would appear that Sesisek has been planning more than just “normal” betrayal. The vampires eye you warily. “So, how did you swing a deal with the vampire clans?” you ask. “Let’s just say we all have similar interests. And that interest is seeing Velzix die and that bitch Sinthinia.” “Remember Sesisek, our primary target is Velzix! Your desire for revenge on other targets is secondary!” one the vampires exclaims. “And I assure you that taking out Sinthinia is very necessary to our goals as well. She’s head of internal security. Killing her is vital to our plan.” “I thought getting Mr. Necromancer here to mask us long enough to enter Veltrix’s fortress was the plan?” “He will be, but…” “Hey hold on, what am I supposed to be doing now?” you interrupt while exaggerating your clueless act. “You mean you haven’t even informed him yet or what’s going on?” “I was going to do it now!” Sesisek hisses before turning to you. “Look isn’t it true that you can use some sort of necromantic magic to hide our friends here? The reason why assassination attempts have been so unsuccessful before is thanks to all the magic detection security in the fortress.” “Oh. I see what you’re getting at. Yeah, but I can’t just do it myself. I’d still be giving off too much of a deathly aura that would probably arouse suspicion from Sinthinia’s detection shit. I’d have to enter the fortress with either a bunch of zombies and skeletons, or I suppose I could just enter with a few of my abominations. Those would arouse less suspicion since I use them as bodyguards anyway. You vampires could travel with us invisibly, and you shouldn’t be detected until you decide to go into a blood frenzy and start killing everyone.” “Ha ha! See! I told you he could do it.” You all “agree” to this plan and hammer out some other details before parting ways. You head back to Aftermath, when your undead abomination bodyguards begin to sniff the air and you feel a presence stalking you, you stop and prepare yourself for an attack. Once again the vampire assassins become visible. Apparently they’ve been following you. “You can’t sneak up on a necromancer. I can sense your undead presence remember blood leech?” “Is that what you still consider yourself? I thought you’d become a worshipper of demons rather than death, given how long you’ve been with them.” One of the assassins says. “No. I don’t worship anything. I’m concerned with my own power; all of this is just a means to an end. And I have not given up the necromantic arts; you would be wise to remember that vampire.” “Good. Then it’s not too late.” “What are you on about?” “Look, this plan will be more successful if you fully cooperate with us. After we kill Velzix, Lord Rostov wants to invite you to join us. He feels that your connection and understanding of death along with your power would serve the Clans well. Among us, you would find a sort of peace. You would not have to deal with demons anymore.” “You must be joking! After I kill Velzix, I’m taking over! And anyone who opposes me is going to feel my wrath!” you say still keeping up the illusion that you’re going through with this assassination. The vampire assassin runs her fingers through her hair and pauses before speaking again. “No you won’t. And I’m not talking about a knife in your back by one of us either. I’m saying if you believe you’ll be able to control an empire mixed with mortals, demons AND while controlling all your undead troops, then you’re beyond delusional. Look at you. You’re a wreck from all the infernal magic you’ve been taping into. Is it any wonder that demonologists don’t live a long time? It’s probably only due to your baffling plentiful necromantic energy that’s kept you going this long. Even if you do manage to rein in the chaotic nature of the demons, and hold off the Grand Alliance, I doubt you’ll live enough to enjoy any of it, let alone conquer anymore territory.” “I guess you bloodsuckers forgot that I can always become a lich.” “A lich? There hasn’t been one of those since the time of the Great Lich Lord! The amount of death energy to become one must be huge! You’re not there yet, you’re not likely to get there and you’re not pure enough anyway. You’re tainted too much by hell. While you haven’t directly sold your soul, you’ve thrown your lot in with them long enough to be damned. You will not be allowed to escape death on your own. BUT…becoming one of us will give you a chance. You will defeat death, and live lifetimes.” You think on the assassin’s words. Much of what she says is true. You aren’t in the best condition anymore. You’re in pain a lot though you try to ignore it and not display your weakness. As far as being damned, you’re not sure, but it’s probably true. Your thoughts have focused less on death and more on demonic nightmares. The purity of what you once pursued HAS been tainted. You could almost kick yourself for allowing yourself to turn into what you are. However, you wonder if the vampire is just telling you this to get you on their side. They must be worried about you if they want you to join this bad. Of course he could just be lying, but you don’t think so. After being around so many liars you’ve come to see the signs, not to mention your own insights into the undead. > You decline their offer To side with these bloodsuckers would be folly. First of all they would not be asking for you to join them, if they didn’t feel you were a threat. This means you have the upper hand. Second of all, despite what they claim about your dealings with the infernal plane, you ARE still a necromancer, and as such it is not you who should be taking orders from the dead, it is THEY who should be taking orders from YOU! You’re confident that you’ll be able to “beat” Hell without losing yourself to it. The assassin did make you think somewhat on your future. You’re going to have to be twice as more intimidating than you are if you want to survive, and what you have in store is going to ensure such a thing. “I shall have to think on it.” You say with a non-committal answer. “Yes, well you don’t have too much time to do so. I” The assassin says and leaves with her brethren. You make your way back to Aftermath and then send a message to Sinthinia that you’ve got the entire plan. When you explain to her what exactly is going to happen, she’s positively having an orgasm at the thought of what she’s going to have done to Sesisek in her special torture chamber. Afterwards you begin to make plans of your own. A few days pass and Sesisek tells you that he has everything ready. He mentions he’ll be taking care of Sinthinia personally along with her whole secret service. You’ll meet the vampire assassins in a dead forest near Fury. You send Sinthinia a message that you’ll be arriving at Fury to report what Sesisek is planning. She’ll be expecting you, but what will actually happen, will be completely different. When you meet the vampire assassins, you arrive in a “hurried and disheveled” state so that you look like you’ve been in an attack. They’re wondering what’s going on. “They found out about the plan! Someone found out and told Sinthinia and Velzix! I barely survived an ambush! I’ve definitely made my decision, I’m joining you!” “And what makes you think our offer still stands?” the female assassin asks “Because I risked my life to even warn you guys about this! I could’ve just ran off and left you here waiting for the demon detachment that’s on its way now! You also still obviously need all the help you can get to defeat Velzix, and he’s only gotten closer to opening up his permanent portal. I still can be of use, I still have vital information that can hamper his goal, but we need to get out of here right now! Take me, or don’t, but you have nothing to lose by taking me with you, after all I am currently depleted and hopelessly out numbered by your kind.” The female assassin turns to her fellow vampires and they converse a second before agreeing. “Very well, we’ll take you. I hope for your sake you’ll have something of importance to tell Lord Rostov, or you’ll find yourself trading one death for another. And you will still have to prove yourself more before we’ll make you one of us.” You nod, and contain your smile. The vampire assassin pulls out a black cube like device and presses a few button and you’re whisked away to the Vampire Clan secret fortress. Now to put your plan into action… Suddenly you greatly draw upon the hellish energy of the infernal realm and summon the very souls being tormented there to assist you. Stealing from hell like this is a very dangerous task and you feel very drained, but you manage to maintain your control. The vampire assassins barely have time to react before the hellfire spirits set them on fire on the inside out as them attempt to enter their soulless shells, looking for a new “home”. The short lived screams of the vampires is one of extreme agony, proving that even the undead may feel pain. “YES! Onward my tormented slaves! There are many corporeal shells for you to inhabit!” You walk calmly through the Vampire Clan Fortress as the hellfire spirits slaughter the vampires with ease. The screams begin to grow on you. You may be a necromancer, but you think now you have a better understanding of what it means to be a demon. Your thoughts have become steadily more twisted with each passing blood leech death. Finally you reach Lord Rostov. He looks very regal and dignified even when certain doom awaits him. He says nothing merely attempts to fend off your fiery minions. He does better than his underlings, but ultimately he too is burned to a crisp, putting an end to the vampire clans once and for all. Now it’s just you alone with several of these burning souls still screaming for a host body. You’re barely keeping them from attacking you and you begin to dismiss them immediately, sending them back to hell. Except one. One which you have plans for and are going to take the ultimate gamble with. Letting your guard down you release the spirit from your command which enters inside your body. You’ve felt pain before as you’ve slowly aligned yourself with hell, but none of it has ever compared to this. Your whole inside of your body is literally on fire. You feel the organs in your body rise in temperature, and explode as they burn up. There is no way you should be surviving this, but something else within you has taken control. Your will and your desire for one. Your unnatural ties to necromantic energy for another. “NO! I will NOT die like this! YOU are MY servant and I am the master here! I will be master of ALL! You will obey me and cease this behavior instantly!” you bellow, as your vocal cords burn away making your “bellow” sound more like a terrible hissing raspy sound. You collapse and continue burning and convulsing on the stone floor trying to fight off death and tame this disobedient spirit. After about a day of this, the transformation is complete. What you are exactly is questionable however. Are you alive? Are you undead? Are you a demon? Perhaps you’re all three now. The tormented hell spirit is still within what’s left of your burned body, though you’ve completely absorbed whatever “free will” it might’ve had. The pain is still there though somewhat duller. You probably shouldn’t be feeling anything given that all your nerves have been destroyed and technically being dead and all, but the powers of hell are known to extend pain even after death. You know it’s somehow keeping you alive, but at a heavy duty price obviously. You get up wracked with pain all over your blackened and smoldering body. If you were a mess before, you’re a complete wreck now, but you’ve gained more power than you ever could’ve while as a mortal. And you’ve not only swindled death, but hell as well. You’ve achieved something even the Great Lich Lord didn’t do. And if all goes as planned you’ll achieve ANOTHER thing he didn’t do. But first you’ll go check on your new “ally” Sinthinia. When you leave the Vampire Clan Fortress, you find that Velzix’s realm had to put down a very small rebellion. Sesisek seeing that his plan had gone to complete shit when you and the vampires didn’t arrive decided he was going to go ahead with it anyway. He and a few thousand foolish mortals that followed him attacked in open revolt. He didn’t last long before he was easily put down. You were actually thought to be dead (Which isn’t entirely inaccurate) while you were undergoing your new transformation and struggling to survive the process, all the undead that you had under your control slumped back to death again. A few of your acolytes picked up the slack, but given how many undead troops that suddenly dropped, it was still assumed that someone had killed you. How surprising it was for Sinthinia when you went to meet her in private. The first being to be graced in the presence of your new form. Not surprisingly she didn’t recognize you at first, she’s even a little unnerved. You like that. “Ah, lovely Sinthinia…you were quite right to choose me as an ally. Even in this new form I would still find it quite a shame to destroy such a beautiful form…” “…you? I thought…where the fuck have you been and…what the hell are you?” “Hell. Hell’s exactly what I am.” You hideously laugh. You proceed to explain the whole story since you feel in a mood to do so. She’s very fascinated by the process since even she didn’t know it was possible for a mortal to achieve something like this. She seems particularly intrigued by the fact that you’re in a lot of pain constantly. She mentions that Velzix will probably start being more concerned with you, but of course you care not for such matters. You’ve defeated Death, you’ve cheated Hell, what’s one demon lord? > You once again you enter a new stage of your journey Chapter 4: Damned Five years have passed… It’s been ten years since you allied with Velzix, an alliance that’s becoming more tenuous with each passing day. Startled by your transformation and surge in power, Velzix proceeded to work extra hard on opening the portal, which he did...permanently. Velzix now has unlimited reinforcements, but you do as well. Your new found abilities allow you to not only summon the torments spirits of the infernal plane, but you soon were also able to raise dead demons as hellish undead. Something that couldn’t be accomplished before, by any being. Not even the Great Lich Lord. Combine this with your other regular necromantic abilities and you’re a severe threat with completely loyal troops who will have to be dealt with soon as far as Velzix is concerned. But for now, the alliance still stands. Your other “ally” Sinthinia still maintains her grip on her spy network, but it’s of little importance to you now. You’ve completely filled your holdings with undead be they former mortals or demons. None of them are going to rat on whatever it is you’re plotting. As for the “Grand Alliance” it’s in its death rattle. The Zalan Empire has basically taken full control of it, but even with more of a unified leadership, this last hope for mortals is doomed. You don’t even know why they persist in struggling. You alone have pushed your undead hell legions towards the gates of the capitol yourself, beating that idiotic Tivadol to the punch. You hear of how he roars with rage at your successes. Having accomplished this feat, and despite your transformation, your thoughts can’t help, but turn to your family. It’s been years since you’ve had any kind of direct contact with them. You know your Mom still lives in the capitol of the Zalan Empire and that your sister is still currently holding the last pitiful lines of defense there as a general. As for your Dad…well you know exactly where he’s at right now. He’s in your dungeon. Sinthinia recently had him captured after he and his company had been waging an ongoing guerilla tactic campaign of irritating raids on Velzix’s Realm. When you found out, you insisted that he be brought to you and she was only too happy to oblige, knowing that your dislike of him, only grew and festered into full blown hatred after your transformation. While it’s true you’re supposed to oversee the destruction of the Zalan capitol personally, you’re going to enjoy yourself in tormenting the one who sired you first. You open the door to his cell and see a beaten and bloody old man. No longer is he the figure of intimidation that you once quaked in fear of when he was around. His wounds are recent from the lashes he’s been taking. You decided it would be best to start off with the basics before moving on to more elaborate tortures. However, upon seeing you, he manages to compose himself the best he can. “Ugh…too chicken shit to do your own dirty work, huh?” he says spitting blood. “I think you’ll find that by letting others do my dirty work, I’m actually showing mercy. Because when I starting doing it, you won’t be in any condition to perform this poor attempt of bravado.” Your Dad finally stands up and addresses you more directly. He looks at you and shakes his head. “You think by killing me, that you’re proving something? You ain’t proving shit boy except what a lousy disappointment you truly are. Now your sister, THERE’S a child to be proud of. Even yer mother gave up on you. Broke her heart you know that?” You can’t believe this arrogance! “Feh, aligning yourself with the hordes of hell, I always knew you were too weak to do anything on your own. You couldn’t even follow the path of darkness without help.” Your Dad mocks. You don’t know how he’s doing this, but he’s actually managing to get to you. You’re tired of hearing this and you cast a spell that strips a portion of his skin off. He falls to the floor in pain. “You will NOT dictate your judgment on me! I am beyond such things now, especially from the likes of you! A blood thirsty thug who committed more than a few atrocities in his day and up until I began my path of darkness, was still committing foul deeds under the guise of law. You are no better than me!” “Wrong again boy. I cleaned up my act…heh heh, okay maybe not completely. But I ain’t never got myself in league with demons. Let alone turn myself into some unnatural…thing. Yer dammed boy. And while you might think you’re going to be controlling everything, you ain’t. You don’t control hell boy, it controls you. Yer nothin’ but a slave to...” “ENOUGH!” you shout and kick him before he can complete his sentence. The rage building up in you is enough to twist steel, but still your Dad mocks you. He’s laughing! “Ha ha ha, broke yer mother’s heart…” You don’t have time for this right now. You’re supposed to oversee the final attack of the Zalan capitol, and you’re still going to do that, and your Dad is going to feel the pain when you come back. In the meantime he can rot in his cell. You arrive and the final attack is ordered. You storm the gates as cannons destroy multitudes of your troops only to be replaced with more. You see your sister on top of the battlements ordering her soldiers to fire upon you. During this attack you feel several bullets enter your body breaking through your magical defenses. You ignore the pain, as its nothing compared to what you’ve been exposed to. Not stopping, you enter the gates of the city realizing that this was inevitable. Things could’ve only been this way. Your undead slay all those that oppose you, but you mentally make sure none of your undead has murderous intentions towards any of your family. You have special plans for them. You head towards your parent’s old house, taking little notice of the death around you. When you arrive you find the house empty. In fact it looks like it’s been empty for months. So many memories here…a different time… even a different life now… “She left when the attacks first came. She didn’t say where either. She just told me she was leaving. I even had her followed for awhile, but she was quite adept at eluding my scouts, not to mention I had other concerns to take care of.” Your sister says entering behind you. “Mom always was smart, well except maybe when it came to Dad, but he’s rotting in my torture cell right now. So who cares?” you remark. Your sister doesn’t make her sense of concern noticeable by your revelation, but instead looks upon you with complete disgust. “I can’t believe you’ve let yourself become what you are. What you’ve done…” “I’ve found that one is capable of quite a bit, when one sets their mind to it. Even the demons fear me and I have only myself to congratulate. Soon they too will fall…perhaps this is a lingering sense of brotherly concern, but you could join me in this. You would be a great asset in the coming war with Velzix. Perhaps I could even help you transform as well.” She spits on the floor, and then raises her magical glowing sword. “I thought as much.” You blast your sister with powerful beam of negative energy causing the color to drain from her face. She’s still continues towards you, but another blast causes her to fall. She’s near death and your twisted mind still ponders what to do. Your sister was a great warrior, and you weren’t joking when she would be a great asset to you if she was on your side. You’re sure if given enough time and using the right magic rituals you could transform her like you did to yourself. Part of you also still has your Dad’s words of how she was someone to be proud of ringing in your head. Transforming her into a vessel of evil would be destroying that image in your mind. > You transform her Overcome with irrational hatred and jealousy of an opinion that technically shouldn’t matter to you at all, you grab your sister’s body and have dark plans for it. Even better, you’re going to have your Dad see exactly what you’re going to do. Two tortures in one. You infuse her with a bit of unholy energy to keep her alive. As you’re leaving one of your mortal necromancers approaches you in the middle of the chaos. “Uh sir, we’ve taken over the city. The royal family was butchered in their own throne room.” “Huh? Yeah, yeah. Well you know what to do, recruit the weak willed, kill the resisters, and raise the dead. I got more important things to do.” You take your sister back to Aftermath and begin your work. You start to perform rituals and have your Dad watch every reprehensible act you do to your sister over the course of several weeks. She slowly goes from becoming a noble warrior to a malevolent murderer. She screams in pain from the vile assaults upon her mind and body. For the first time you think you’ve seen your Dad weep and display any kind of emotion. He even begs you to stop, which really make you smile. When you’re ready to represent the final act of your work, you approach your Dad who’s a completely broken man at this point. “See, and look upon your pride and joy now Dad. You were proud of her because she was everything she represented that you weren’t right? She shook off the brutality and replaced it with nobility. She wasn’t a self-serving mercenary; she was a duty bound fighter who believed in something. So much so that she was willing to try to kill me even though the odds were against her. She chose a path because it was what she BELIEVED in, not something she became due to falling under some spell like you did. Well guess what? I CHOSE my path too. And I’ve chose to turn your beloved daughter into you. Did you know she had the capacity for great evil already? Guess your genes are always there, no matter how much you try to deny them. I had to look deep, but I found that part of her. That darkest part of her hates, her violent tendencies, all of it. I nurtured and coaxed it out through…well I think you saw most of the process. Now behold my greatest achievement since my ascension.” You sister comes from behind the door; she looks much different than from what your Dad remembers. No longer is she a force of good, but one of evil. Of course though you’ve made sure she’s totally obedient to you. The tormented hell soul that inhabits her body is completely under your command. It causes her great pain, but then again so are you. Why should you be the only one who suffers? She sneers at you as she walks towards your Dad. You can feel her hatred toward you, yet she knows she cannot do anything toward you. Instead she takes it out on your Dad who can only give a mournful look of what she’s become before he’s hacked to bits in a bloody fury. Yes, she will certainly be a terror on the battlefield, you think. Ten years pass… Twenty years have passed, and the world has tilted firmly into the grip of evil. Demons pour into this world more and more each day. The Grand Alliance is dead and the “civilized” governments of mortals have fallen to demonic hordes or your own undead ones. Pockets of resistance always exist, but they will soon fall in time as well. With the success of your sister’s transformation, you proceeded to pick other powerful mortals and unnaturally twist them to your will, turning them into something more than demon, more than undead and certainly more than human. They are much like you except they are completely obedient to your will. They hate you of course for their painful existence, but is it not the way of all children to want to kill their father? Perhaps Hell has changed you, but you’ve made quite a few changes to Hell… Of more immediate concern is Velzix, who demanded years ago that you stop your experiments on mortals. He and most of the other pure blood demons already didn’t like the fact you could raise their dead, but they REALLY didn’t like how you were achieving something that they hadn’t thought of, let alone even accomplish. Of sure a few can possess a body, or turn an idiot to evil, but how many can create a whole new “race” of beings who are rivaling them in wickedness yet subservient to their creator? Of course you told Velzix to fuck off and there begun a civil war. Your undead, mortal servants and Hellbred warriors now control your territory known as the Forsaken Dominion. Velzix still calls his territory “Velzix’s Realm” but it’s primarily inhabited by demons now, though mortal slave do serve them under their clawed heels. Neither place is particularly appealing to any right and good thinking being though. Tivadol the Destroyer was the first fool to directly challenge you. He decided that if he could get you out of the way, he could prove that he was the ultimate warrior and easily take Velzix’s place. He soon found out how poor his judgment was, when your sister personally slew him on the battlefield and his now undead shell serves her every whim and take her every abuse. Sinthinia broke off her so called alliance with you, and somehow managed to ingratiate herself back in Velzix’s good graces. Perhaps your actions really have put the fear into them. Indeed there is less infighting occurring in Velzix’s Realm nowadays. This new unified front the demons have put up is the only thing that’s really giving you problems as of late. Get them to start fighting amongst themselves again and you’ll be able to roll over them. You were here first. You’re going to rule this world, nobody else. You get an idea. You know the demons hate your new Hellbred creations yet you’re pretty sure Velzix wouldn’t mind having some on his side. He’s merely using this new found unity to his advantage, just like he’d use your creations to his advantage as well. You decide to stage a small revolt, though you’re not telling anyone about it. Only you’ll know the truth. You figure your sister would be the best one to start with since it’s well known how much she loathes you even amongst the enemy. The first revolt in the Dominion is set off by your sister. She slays several of your mortal servants, some of them even necromancers. Undead die by the droves. You could care less. This is for a greater goal and after all, you’ll just raise them again later. The second revolt occurs next and then another. By the end of the month several of your Hellbred warriors have rebelled and some have even acquired small contingencies of mortal followers. All of this grabs Velzix’s attention. He moves in to take your weakened areas, but he also sends feelers out to these rebel Hellbreds. Since this was supposed to be impossible he’s very interested to see if he can use them against you… Excellent the first part of the plan is set. He has Sinthinia approach them, as he’s still too smart to directly face them. The cowardly demon lord hasn’t left his magically fortified inner chamber in years. Of course Sinthinia has her own personal guards approach them first since she’s not risking her life either. Of course the Hellbreds act appropriately hostile and suspicious, but mention how much they hate being used as your pawns and how arrogant you were to think that you could control them just because you created them. They want nothing more than your death. That response is enough for Velzix to start offering them positions in his armies. They accept of course. At first they’re just kept to their own units, but after Velzix wins some territory from you (More than he has in years) he realizes their efficiently would be better spread out to maximize there fighting skills and strategic minds. He begins to have them lead demon contingencies. This doesn’t go over well. Part two of the plan has come about. Soon the demons begin to resent Velzix’s decision. Saying that he’s favoring these Hellbreds over them. Velzix tell them he’ll do what he wants as he’s the leader and what he says goes. Sinthinia doesn’t like this either and mentions that he’s stirring trouble by pursuing this course of action and she doesn’t like the fact that she can’t sense what they’re thinking or feeling like a normal (or not so normal) living creature, but Velzix insists he’s doing the right thing since he’s winning the war against you now. It doesn’t take long before the demons revert back to their chaotic natures and start getting disobedient with their new Hellbred “companions”. Now you have your Hellbred stop holding back and lash out which they do in violent ways. This of course causes the death of several Hellbreds, but these acts cause a greater spiral of destruction. Demons begin fighting among themselves again, arguing that Velzix doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing and isn’t worth following since he trusted these creatures to lead. Velzix has REAL rebellions going on all over his Realm. Portions of it begin to split away from the whole and several demons begin forming their own warlord domains. Domains that you easily conquer as you bring your full unified force to bear. Eventually Velzix’s reputation isn’t strong enough anymore and he can’t bring enough reinforcements anymore to help, as the knowledge of his failures have spread even to the infernal planes. In fact he has to close up his portal just so other opportunistic demon lords don’t come around to finish him off, he’s having enough problems with you. You get the impression that Sinthinia had something to do with that as she disappeared soon after this elaborate deception came about. (Possibly her “parting shot” at Velzix who she never had any true loyalty to anyway and fled back to the infernal plane to save her own skin) Now the endgame begins Your sister storms Velzix’s fortress with an army larger than the one used to storm the Zalan capitol ten years ago. You never even have to dirty your hands, and you heard he was slain with ease by your sister. When she presents his head to you, you do something you haven’t done in a long time. Grant act of mercy. “You’ve served me well dear sister, let this be your final reward.” You snuff out the tormented spirit inhabiting your sister which releases her from her painful servitude and allows her to die. Now nothing stands in your way, Velzix’s hasty actions of closing the portal have made things even easier for you. No longer do you have to deal with these interloping demons any longer. You’ve suffered their kind long enough. Even from the very beginning when Big Red gave you shit when you tried to buy a book on necromancy from him, how long ago that was... You vow to have every last one of them killed. > You godhood? Thirty years pass… It’s been fifty years since you set out on the path of darkness. Every demon on this world has indeed been hunted down and killed. If any still exist, they’ve found the deepest darkest hole to hide in and you’re even having those searched. Mortal resistance is non-existent. You’ve stomped out every wannabe hero/last hope/chosen one whenever they’ve presented themselves. Such idealism is the past. A few times there have been a few of your necromancer underlings that have attempted to have you killed, but such attempts are futile and the conspirators are typically caught, tortured and then killed. Most mortals know better than to stand against you now though. You have done something remarkable in your cruel iron fist and that is the fact you’ve brought peace to the world at last. Nobody fights on any meaningful major scale anymore. All mortals, from the lowliest goblin to the haughtiest elf (Though there aren’t too many of the latter left) all obey your terrible will and seek to become one of your many undead minions when they ultimately die. Their “afterlife”. They cannot hope to stand against no less than a god. Are you a god though? After all is it not you who drove the demons from the world? Is it not you who created the Hellbred? Is it not you who has achieved world peace? Is it not you who is complete master of life and death? Is it not you who continues to suffer your agonizing existence merely to give these fools some purpose in their lives? Where are all the gods of “old” anyway? Why did they allow this to happen? Why have they not stopped you, if this was not destined to happen? You’re of the mind that the gods of this world either never existed or cowered in fear of your rising power and abandoned it long ago. While you ponder these questions in the solitude of your study and decide that you ARE a god, you are suddenly visited by the contrary. “Well, well, well, this turned out a lot better than I expected. I guess it was good I placed my faith in you…ha ha faith. Probably not the most appropriate word, but I can’t think of a better one right now.” You turn around to see a face you thought dead long ago. Even you are surprised, and that rarely happens nowadays. How he got in here you have no idea. “Big Red?” “Yep, it’s me.” “I saw you dead. Years ago.” “Oh that, yeah well let’s just say that wasn’t me or at least no the real me. Doesn’t matter. This world is ready for the infernal plane.” “Excuse me? Just because you have somehow managed to cheat death, do not presume that you can challenge me. I am god here. This world is mine and mine alone.” Big Red laughs and then you feel a sudden paralysis over come you. Powerful magic is at work here and you can’t do anything about it. Your anger rages. “This world COULD’VE been yours, had you chosen a different path, tis true. But the day you came to me, was the day that path ended. I knew a change in this world was coming long before you showed up, and not necessarily one in my favor. The stench of death had risen once more just like in the days before the Great Lich Lord,. in fact I was already to haul my red ass back to the infernal realm. I already went through that shit once, didn’t feel like dealing with it again. Mortals are certainly fun to be around, but the undead…never cared for them. If they were going to retake this world, I saw no point in staying. Demons are indeed assholes, but hey I can related to them.” “When I get free, I’m going to make you beg for death!” you yell while he continues his speech. “However, when you came to me, I could sense the great power of necromancy flowing in you. Oh sure Mr. Demar and his motley crew THOUGHT they were dark wizards, but their power paled in comparison to what I sensed in you. I thought about killing you right then and there to stop the possible dead onslaught, but then I thought why do that, when I can bend and taint you to infernal purposes?” “You didn’t do shit! I DID THIS ALL!” “I’m sure you think so, and that’s exactly what I wanted you to believe. Those necromantic books you took from my place when you found my dead body were infused with hell magic, secret languages from my home. Of course if you had been a little more experienced in such matters you might’ve caught on, but you were too eager to start raising the dead to not realize that the seeds were slowly taking root in your mind. I watched you turn slowly away from the purity of death and begin to consort with demons. The moment you allied with that blowhard Velzix I knew then the seeds had taken started to bloom.” “NO! You’re lying!” “It was a good thing that my plan worked too, because it stunted your potential power. The purity of your unnatural link to the dead was spoiled and ultimately severed long ago. Who knows how powerful you could’ve gotten had I not intervened? Maybe you would’ve surpassed the Great Lich Lord. Why you might’ve ascended into godhood. Scary to think about the road not traveled eh?” “LIAR! LIAR!” “Well okay I can’t take credit for ALL your decisions, but come on. When you began summoning tormented souls from the infernal realm, did you really think you could’ve gotten away with that without some kind of help? You were STEALING from Hell. Then when you transformed yourself you were going beyond normal hubris. Not even our kind has the balls to defy Hell itself. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to convince the high ups to let you get away with it. Your Hellbred experiment made things even worse, but in the end it was all worth it. Hell’s getting an entire world in return and their stolen souls back.” This revelation…you don’t want to believe it, but somehow the hard reality is crashing down upon you, and the paralysis wears off and you suddenly feel completely drained as you fall to the floor. “No…no…I was in control the whole time…I’m just…just a puppet…a slave…” “We’re ALL slaves to Hell, my dead friend. Its just all of the question how high up you are in the hierarchy you are. You might’ve been allowed some leniency, and been allowed to be my second in command, but as I said your grand theft soul displeased the high ups. So you gotta pay. Pay dearly I’m afraid. Shame really, you really were quite efficient at your work, but having someone like you around would’ve been dangerous to my well being anyway. I think Sinthinia will be more fun than you’d be as well. She’s proved a most useful spy and saboteur through this whole endeavor. She was the one who told you to look behind the toilet for the necromantic books fifty years ago after all.” Its just one deception upon another as the plot has unfolded to prove how you were lead down the path to Hell. Now there’s just one more thing as you’re crumpled miserably on the floor hoping that all of this is some bad dream, but of course when Big Red crouches next to you and grabs your wrist this is all too real. “It’s been said time and time again, but you chose to ignore it. You don’t change Hell, Hell changes you. And it’s changed not only you, but this world as well. Time for both of you to come home necromancer.” And with these last words, the entire world is transported into the infernal plane where Big Red is allowed to run it as he sees fit. All your undead and Hellbred are destroyed instantly as your powers are stripped away immediately. Hell gave you your powers, and now it’s taking them away. Drawing back ALL its energy it ever gave you. You now lay in some forsaken deep pit of Hell completely helpless. You have nothing to defend yourself against the demonic torments that you now suffer. Physically, mentally and especially spiritually. Your punishment is eternal and not even the power of death can save you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 4: Damned Five years have passed… It’s been ten years since you allied with Velzix, an alliance that’s becoming more tenuous with each passing day. Startled by your transformation and surge in power, Velzix proceeded to work extra hard on opening the portal, which he did...permanently. Velzix now has unlimited reinforcements, but you do as well. Your new found abilities allow you to not only summon the torments spirits of the infernal plane, but you soon were also able to raise dead demons as hellish undead. Something that couldn’t be accomplished before, by any being. Not even the Great Lich Lord. Combine this with your other regular necromantic abilities and you’re a severe threat with completely loyal troops who will have to be dealt with soon as far as Velzix is concerned. But for now, the alliance still stands. Your other “ally” Sinthinia still maintains her grip on her spy network, but it’s of little importance to you now. You’ve completely filled your holdings with undead be they former mortals or demons. None of them are going to rat on whatever it is you’re plotting. As for the “Grand Alliance” it’s in its death rattle. The Zalan Empire has basically taken full control of it, but even with more of a unified leadership, this last hope for mortals is doomed. You don’t even know why they persist in struggling. You alone have pushed your undead hell legions towards the gates of the capitol yourself, beating that idiotic Tivadol to the punch. You hear of how he roars with rage at your successes. Having accomplished this feat, and despite your transformation, your thoughts can’t help, but turn to your family. It’s been years since you’ve had any kind of direct contact with them. You know your Mom still lives in the capitol of the Zalan Empire and that your sister is still currently holding the last pitiful lines of defense there as a general. As for your Dad…well you know exactly where he’s at right now. He’s in your dungeon. Sinthinia recently had him captured after he and his company had been waging an ongoing guerilla tactic campaign of irritating raids on Velzix’s Realm. When you found out, you insisted that he be brought to you and she was only too happy to oblige, knowing that your dislike of him, only grew and festered into full blown hatred after your transformation. While it’s true you’re supposed to oversee the destruction of the Zalan capitol personally, you’re going to enjoy yourself in tormenting the one who sired you first. You open the door to his cell and see a beaten and bloody old man. No longer is he the figure of intimidation that you once quaked in fear of when he was around. His wounds are recent from the lashes he’s been taking. You decided it would be best to start off with the basics before moving on to more elaborate tortures. However, upon seeing you, he manages to compose himself the best he can. “Ugh…too chicken shit to do your own dirty work, huh?” he says spitting blood. “I think you’ll find that by letting others do my dirty work, I’m actually showing mercy. Because when I starting doing it, you won’t be in any condition to perform this poor attempt of bravado.” Your Dad finally stands up and addresses you more directly. He looks at you and shakes his head. “You think by killing me, that you’re proving something? You ain’t proving shit boy except what a lousy disappointment you truly are. Now your sister, THERE’S a child to be proud of. Even yer mother gave up on you. Broke her heart you know that?” You can’t believe this arrogance! “Feh, aligning yourself with the hordes of hell, I always knew you were too weak to do anything on your own. You couldn’t even follow the path of darkness without help.” Your Dad mocks. You don’t know how he’s doing this, but he’s actually managing to get to you. You’re tired of hearing this and you cast a spell that strips a portion of his skin off. He falls to the floor in pain. “You will NOT dictate your judgment on me! I am beyond such things now, especially from the likes of you! A blood thirsty thug who committed more than a few atrocities in his day and up until I began my path of darkness, was still committing foul deeds under the guise of law. You are no better than me!” “Wrong again boy. I cleaned up my act…heh heh, okay maybe not completely. But I ain’t never got myself in league with demons. Let alone turn myself into some unnatural…thing. Yer dammed boy. And while you might think you’re going to be controlling everything, you ain’t. You don’t control hell boy, it controls you. Yer nothin’ but a slave to...” “ENOUGH!” you shout and kick him before he can complete his sentence. The rage building up in you is enough to twist steel, but still your Dad mocks you. He’s laughing! “Ha ha ha, broke yer mother’s heart…” You don’t have time for this right now. You’re supposed to oversee the final attack of the Zalan capitol, and you’re still going to do that, and your Dad is going to feel the pain when you come back. In the meantime he can rot in his cell. You arrive and the final attack is ordered. You storm the gates as cannons destroy multitudes of your troops only to be replaced with more. You see your sister on top of the battlements ordering her soldiers to fire upon you. During this attack you feel several bullets enter your body breaking through your magical defenses. You ignore the pain, as its nothing compared to what you’ve been exposed to. Not stopping, you enter the gates of the city realizing that this was inevitable. Things could’ve only been this way. Your undead slay all those that oppose you, but you mentally make sure none of your undead has murderous intentions towards any of your family. You have special plans for them. You head towards your parent’s old house, taking little notice of the death around you. When you arrive you find the house empty. In fact it looks like it’s been empty for months. So many memories here…a different time… even a different life now… “She left when the attacks first came. She didn’t say where either. She just told me she was leaving. I even had her followed for awhile, but she was quite adept at eluding my scouts, not to mention I had other concerns to take care of.” Your sister says entering behind you. “Mom always was smart, well except maybe when it came to Dad, but he’s rotting in my torture cell right now. So who cares?” you remark. Your sister doesn’t make her sense of concern noticeable by your revelation, but instead looks upon you with complete disgust. “I can’t believe you’ve let yourself become what you are. What you’ve done…” “I’ve found that one is capable of quite a bit, when one sets their mind to it. Even the demons fear me and I have only myself to congratulate. Soon they too will fall…perhaps this is a lingering sense of brotherly concern, but you could join me in this. You would be a great asset in the coming war with Velzix. Perhaps I could even help you transform as well.” She spits on the floor, and then raises her magical glowing sword. “I thought as much.” You blast your sister with powerful beam of negative energy causing the color to drain from her face. She’s still continues towards you, but another blast causes her to fall. She’s near death and your twisted mind still ponders what to do. Your sister was a great warrior, and you weren’t joking when she would be a great asset to you if she was on your side. You’re sure if given enough time and using the right magic rituals you could transform her like you did to yourself. Part of you also still has your Dad’s words of how she was someone to be proud of ringing in your head. Transforming her into a vessel of evil would be destroying that image in your mind. > You kill her A fleeting thought of vicious cruelty all to get back at your Dad crosses your mind, but leaves you. You don’t need to bother proving anything. You know who you are. The old man is defeated and he’ll be dealt with when you get back. The second reason is you wish to remain unique; transforming your sister into something similar to you would be destroying that. “Well sis, this is where we say good bye, you may thank me for this mercy I’m displaying. Dad won’t be so lucky.” You say and snuff out the last bit of her life essence and leave the house. As you’re leaving one of your mortal necromancers approaches you in the middle of the chaos. “Uh sir, we’ve taken over the city. The royal family was butchered in their own throne room.” “Good. Well you know what to do next, recruit the weak willed, kill the resisters, and raise the dead. I got more important things to do.” You return to Aftermath where you inform your Dad of his beloved daughter’s death and how she died mewling and begging like a pathetic stuck Halfling. You also mention he won’t get to die with half as much dignity. His torment stretches for months before his body at last gives out. Lasted longer than you expected, but then again he was always tough. Ten years pass… Twenty years have passed, and the world has tilted firmly into the grip of evil. Demons pour into this world more and more each day. The Grand Alliance is dead and the “civilized” governments of mortals have fallen to demonic hordes or your own undead ones. Pockets of resistance always exist, but the damage they do is negligible. There is little hope left. As for your own “alliance” that also no longer exists. You and Velzix couldn’t exist together any longer and the need to destroy each other was finally unleashed. The land is split and your territory is known as the Forsaken Dominion. The war goes on for years in a bloody seesaw event. Tivadol the Destroyer attempts to raise his own status by trying to launch an all out assault upon you. Hoping that by killing you personally, everyone will see he’s a better leader than Velzix. His fanatical berserker troops do much damage initially, but soon even they fall before the relentless hordes of undead. By the time Tivadol gets to the inner reaches of your lands, he’s fighting by himself. He dies in an onslaught of wraiths, wrights, skeletons and all other manner of undead. Sinthinia who once again sided with Velzix during this split sends some of her personal assassins after you. More than a few times they nearly ended your existence. With each one you killed you had their corpses kept in a cell. Then when you felt you had enough of them in your possession, you raised them and ordered them to use their skills to kill Sinthinia and Velzix. Velzix proved to evade this fate, but Sinthinia wasn’t so lucky and died by the hands of her own assassins. Still even with these successes, you aren’t gaining too much ground. Velzix just replenishes his army with more demons coming from the infernal plane. The only way to stop that from happening is to close the motherfucker, and quite frankly you’re about the only one on your side powerful enough to do it. You prepare to make a large scale attack into Velzix’s Realm. After a long hard fight you manage to close the infernal portal, cutting off his troop supply. Of course after having done this, you realize you’re already deep in his territory. He’s close. Why stop there? He’ll just open it again later, and you ARE trying to kill him… Not stopping, you assault his nearby fortress Fury. With each demon you kill they cut down ten of your undead. They make you pay for every success, to the point that you even have to conserve some of your energy to stop raising the dead to replenish your losses. You’ve expended enough as it is closing the portal, you’ll need all you have to defeat Velzix. Eventually you reach Velzix’s inner chamber. He bellows and makes his usual threats of how he’s going to make you pay and such. It’s all so boring now. You’ve heard it all before. You don’t bother with your own remarks, because you’ve also said it all before too. The pair of you engage in combat, casting every terrible spell imaginable and destroying portions of the fortress in the process. For years the world has suffered under the both of you, and little by little hope died. However, perhaps after this battle hope shall once again live. For the level of evil will definitely be vastly diminished after this day. You fight with much ferocity, but at last Velzix catches you off guard and lands a crippling blow. He wastes no time in following up and after he’s done, you can even feel yourself losing grip on the hellish magics keeping you alive. However, you vow if you’re not winning neither is Velzix. You expend your last bit of power and blast Velzix in the face with a combination of negative energy and hellfire. He reels back from you and falls. You then force the tormented soul in your body to exit and enter inside Velzix and command it to wreak havoc on his internal organs out from the inside. Velzix’s howls as his organs explode and his body is ripped apart. It’s the last thing you hear as you die a final death with a smile on your face.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well, you probably could use the help in this matter. Smoothing this out with Velzix is going to be a delicate affair. “Alright, I’m accepting your help.” “Excellent.” Sesisek smiles. Sesisek explains that even if you do manage to talk Velzix into not killing you for your actions, he’s still going to take away your hard earned victory for himself. You can’t let him do this, nor are you to get into a fight with him. Instead you must convince Velzix that you are indeed loyal and would never dream of betraying him, but that you must take a more active role in things if you are to be effective. You must remind him that if you’re doing activity, then Velzix can concentrate more on opening up the portal to back home and victory will come quicker. Finally you must always point out of how weak you are compared to the might of Velzix, remind him that you are but a lowly mortal and will always remain so when compared to a demon lord. After advising you, Sesisek leaves you as he mentions he doesn’t want to be around if things don’t go well. He doesn’t need anymore of Velzix’s anger to spread out to him, but if you happen to be successful; he’ll definitely be around to provide more help in the future You feel just by agreeing to this you’ve lost something of yourself. Much like when you allied with Velzix. Maybe you haven’t gone so far to sell your soul and granted you were walking the path of darkness to begin with, but the twisted taint of hell that you’ve been getting deeper into is definitely starting to change you and it’s probably not for the better. In any case a couple days pass and Velzix arrives, he’s a little more calm than you were expecting, but he could blow up at any minute. “So little necromancer, I hear you have been taking matters into your own hands and acquiring territory yourself. I am displeased that you have done this. The Grand Alliance has been attacking and you’ve been squandering my potential reinforcements elsewhere. What if they had succeeded in breaking through my defenses? I would’ve had no troops to support my position, and much would’ve been lost.” “Forgive me, but I felt that with the Grand Alliance focusing their attention elsewhere, I believed an attack on the Brot Kingdom would be a good idea. And I might add, it was. The conquest was very successful.” “Yes, but you have dodged the question of what would’ve happened had the Grand Alliance broke through my defenses?” “I did not worry about such a thing since I knew they would be no match for a powerful demon lord such as yourself and even if they had, I’m sure you personally could’ve dealt with the few stragglers. They are only mortals after all; they would never be a match for you.” “Obsequious words little necromancer…I have never heard any such tone from you before. You have always carried an air of arrogance about you. Tell me, is my mere presence enough to make you regret your clumsy attempts at gaining more power?” “I fear you have misjudged me in this. I simply feel that my talents have not been used to their full degree, because you believe I shall be treacherous in the future. I have no desire to do such a thing. What would be the point? I could never hope to defeat you anyway. I only wish to be more active in your eventual conquest of this world. I have already proven to be a more competent general than Tivadol.” Velzix laughs out loud at this last statement. “I’m sure Tivadol will be thrilled to hear that a mortal has achieved more in military victories on this world than he has…very well. You wish to choose a more active role, so be it. It will be most amusing to see Tivadol compete with you, perhaps this will even inspire him to succeed, since as you have pointed out, he has yet to conquer an entire kingdom for me like you have…and it IS MY kingdom is it not?” “Yes, it is.” You say with a bow. “Hmm, yes. Well you’ve talked your way out of this one necromancer, but know that I will still be watching you. You had best prove successful in your new active role, but also remember who is in charge and who serves.” “Of course.” Velzix informs you that since you have taken on this role, he’ll be issuing more orders to you AND that it will be up to you to oversee larger areas of territory (Starting with the recently acquired Brot Kingdom), not just Aftermath. And if you fuck up, you’re going to get fucked up. And with that, you have your new place in the hierarchy… Four years pass… It’s been five years since you made your alliance with Velzix, so far it’s proven most beneficial more or less. You’ve managed to carve out a niche for yourself as a good general, and just in time too since Velzix has been successful in keeping infernal portals open longer which is allowing more demons to come in. While your undead troops are looking to be somewhat “obsolete” your expertise in military planning has assured you a place in this demonic empire. You don’t lead demons though of course. They’d never allow such a thing. You lead a strange combination of undead and mortals who have decided to throw their lot in with the infernal forces. Sesisek has even provided you with a few mortals who have displayed an interest in necromancy, allowing you to not carry the weight of up keeping an undead army constantly anymore. While you haven’t completely abandoned your necromantic roots, you’ve been forced to broaden your magical horizons and tap into the infernal plane, which has allowed you to create potent unnatural abominations. However, this type of magic is highly experimental and you’re probably the first one to even attempt it. It’s beginning to take a toll on your deteriorating health, because as they say, you don’t change hell, hell changes you. However your power is keeping you going. You haven’t lost sight that one day you’ll be in charge… Your immediate rivals haven’t lost sight either, in fact you’ve become more of a threat. Tivadol the Destroyer constantly makes threats that he’ll one day see you crushed underneath his foot. Sinthinia is a little more interested in your relationship with Sesisek and finds the fact that you two are on too good of terms to be very suspicious. Oddly Velzix doesn’t seem worried about this though, or if he is, he hasn’t made it known to you. Indeed he’s been pre-occupied lately with finally opening up a portal permanently to his infernal home. He believes he will soon be successful. In the meantime, the Grand Alliance has been hard pressed to hold the line, they are slowly losing ground to you and Tivadol. Heroes from all over the civilized governments have been employed, but so far they’ve have proven unsuccessful in even getting to Velzix, let alone killing him. Vampire assassins however have had a little more luck, but Sinithina’s internal security magic guards have detected them all as soon as they get near Velzix’s fortress. You can’t say you’re too thrilled yourself with Velzix opening up a permanent portal as it could certainly make your job a lot harder of killing him in the future. Sesisek, realizes this too and has recently approached you about this. He tells you to meet him for a plan to kill Velzix, in a couple days. While you’re in your study pondering what this could entail, you are suddenly “greeted” with Sinthinia’s presence. Unusual since she’s directly kept her distance from you ever since you conquered the Brot Kingdom. (Indirectly through her spies is another matter however) Whatever she has come to see you for probably isn’t good…or is it? “Hmm, this place still reeks of death I see. It is much too cold in this place. Not warm like many of our other conquests. Look how hard my nipples are. Why it’s cold enough to make me almost want to put on clothes…almost.” She says touching herself in a seductive way. You’ve seen her in action before, and you’re not some weak willed fool, so this routine has little effect on you. “Yeah, well zombies tend to be flammable and I hate the heat, so this grave chill stays. You’ll just have to deal with hard nipples.” “How about YOU deal with them. Hm?” “Sinthinia what do you want?” “Besides your dick in my nice warm body? I want to see you not ruin your most promising career by siding with a loser like Sesisek. I know that the two of you have been collusion together ever since you conquered the Brot Kingdom…a most bold move might I add. Only the first of many. You are obviously a man who knows what he wants and takes it…” At this point Sinthinia is turning on her demonic seduction and getting closer to the point of touching you. You’d be lying if it wasn’t having any effect on you. “Yeah…well just get the point Sinthinia!” “See? So forceful! Very well, the point. My point is Sesisek is an obsessed fool who’s time is running out. I know he’s got plans to kill me and Velzix, so far I haven’t exactly determined how he’s going to attempt it, but I know it’s coming soon. My concern is, if YOU have anything to do with such plans. It would be a shame if you did…” “Well he hasn’t said anything to me about any specific plan.” You reply. “Ah, careful words you chose without actually lying. You have been hanging around our kind and learning! However you will not dodge me so easily. Specific plan. Specific being the key word. I’m guessing he’s approached you about some act of treachery though and just hasn’t given you the details yet.” You say nothing and she presses up against you while speaking into your ear so close that she nibbles on it a bit. “I’ll take your silence as a yes. Know however that you are still not powerful enough to kill Velzix. I am very close to him just like I am very close to you right now and I can tell you with all certainty that you will not be able to defeat him. Not even with that bitter old idiot Sesisek helping you…I advise that you not go down the same path as he is.” “Oh yeah? Well if you think we’re doing something, why not just kill us both right now?” “It’s not how I work my necromantic cutie. Besides, I am giving you a chance to join with a better and more grateful ally in the long run. Namely me. I want you to find out what Sesisek’s plan is and then at the right time, betray him. I would be most grateful.” “Hmm, I don’t trust you. Sesisek trusted you once and look what happened.” “Sesisek proved to be weak and unworthy of my loyalty, but of course you don’t trust me, nor should you. Still, you think on this, I have offered to become your ally and more if you wish. I run the internal security of Velzix’s empire. Do you not think that having me as an ally would be more beneficial for your future than to stay allied with Sesisek whose plan is surely doomed to failure? I already KNOW he’s planning something. He will be punished soon, along with all that have conspired with him. Stay loyal to him and you’ll suffer his fate. Betray him, and you’ll suddenly find yourself in control of his holdings and have one less potential enemy to worry about. Not to mention you will make me very happy. So happy that I may provide favors for you that you could never dream of. So what do you say?” Normally you’d think more about it, but Sinthinia has made a somewhat appealing offer and the fact that she’s currently shoved one of her hands down your pants and stroking your cock isn’t exactly helping you think straight either. > You act like you do not know what she is talking about You don’t trust her, and you’d be a fool to do so, so you play dumb. “Sorry Sinthinia, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. I sometimes talk to Sesisek, and while he does scheme, I can assure you that I’m not part of them. I have no wish to side with a loser like him.” Sinthinia stops the seduction routine and eyes you suspiciously. A pity since you were enjoying her fondling. “Very well necromancer. Play your little game. I hope for your sake that you’re telling the truth, because if you aren’t, I think you’ll find that I play this game a lot better and I won’t be offering this opportunity again.” Sinthinia walks out of your study and you dismiss her threats. A few days pass and you meet Sesisek in the forsaken area known as the Drozz Wasteland. The barbarian tribes here still hold sway, but you need not concern yourself with such minor threats, they know enough to stay away from two dark individuals such as yourselves, and the others… The others in question are vampires. It would appear that Sesisek has been planning more than just “normal” betrayal. The vampires eye you warily. You’re about to speak when all of a sudden Sinthinia materializes not to far away from this meeting spot. “Ah thank you necromancer, your help in exposing Sesisek’s collaboration with vampires will be rewarded!” she exclaims. “YOU BETRAYED ME TO THAT BITCH!?!” Sesisek bellows “She’s lying! I never…” You don’t get a chance to finish your explanation before a dozen or so of Sinthinia’s personal guards also materialize and attack. You’re temporarily so distracted by this that you don’t react in time to avoid Sesisek’s blow to your head, knocking you senseless to the ground. When you come to, you find yourself tied up and on your knees before Sinthinia while being held roughly by her guards. You’re still in the Drozz plains, but you’re not going anywhere. You can’t cast any spells with your mouth gagged and your hands bound. “Well, I told you I could play this game better. I’m sure if he could Sesisek would agree with you.” You look over you your left and see Sesisek lying on the ground in a bloody pitiful state and being kicked mercilessly by more of her guards. “However, your fate shall be much kinder than the one that awaits him. After all I do have to reward you.” Sinthinia strokes your face gently and then abruptly claws your eyes out with the same hand. This is followed by a tearing sensation in your chest. If you could still see, you would be looking directly at your heart being ripped out before you. You fall to the ground and are left there to be eaten by passing beasts.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>What’s the point of having power, if you aren’t using it in any meaningful way that can help you? You’re sick of being “reined in”. You’re going to do what you’ve been wanting to do for a long time. You prepare to march an army of undead to the Brot Kingdom. The demons and mortals stationed at Aftermath are wondering what’s going on though since most of them know you’re mainly used for defense. “Where do you think yer goin’?” a demon solder steps up to ask you as you’re about to leave the city gates. “I’m gonna go conquer the Brot Kingdom, got a problem with that?” “Me? No, not at all. Just didn’t know Velzix let you off your leash.” The demon soldier grins. This remark is met with a negative energy blast to his face, completely ripping the flesh off and revealing the still grinning skull underneath. As the rest of this body falls to the ground, you feel the need to make a speech to the gawking onlookers. “I am not on anyone’s fucking leash! Nobody tells me what the do! Now what’s going to happen, is I’m going to leave and lay waste to the Brot Kingdom. The rest of you are going to defend this place while I’m gone! And when Velzix comes here, like I know he will I’LL handle it. The rest of you can cower before that fucker, but I ain’t the one.” Having made your thoughts known, you return to your undead army, which obediently still stands only awaiting your commands. As the way things should be. The way ALL things should be. After a few days you eventually reach the Brot Kingdom. You start by decimating the small border villages and then quickly raising the peasants you slaughtered. You’ve moved on to larger towns before the Brot military manages to start opposing you. Their military is weak though. Most of them see your horde and run in terror before the fight even begins! Those are the smart ones. The rest soon become just more fodder for you to raise. You actually feel more powerful after your conquests, which is odd given the amount of energy you’ve been expending. You can only take this as a sign of this being what you were meant for! Within the week you’ve single handedly taken control of the Brot capitol and most of the Kingdom in general. Much of the royal family has abased themselves before you in an attempt for you to spare their lives. You laugh and grant this request, after all someone has to still run this territory. You’ve successfully subjugated your first territory. In fact, it’s the first “real” territory conquered since Velzix took over the Tulan Kingdom. Tivadol’s petty victories haven’t even compared to what you’ve done. When you return to Aftermath, you’re half expecting to be met by Velzix, who has undoubtedly heard of your actions by now. It’s only now that you realize you may be in more trouble than you thought! However, you’re surprisingly met by Sesisek instead who sits in your study. “This place is as dead as my status among demonkind.” He says looking at the many skeletal structures and decorations. “It’s a fucking necropolis, I’m a necromancer, and what do you want? I figured Velzix would be here meeting me.” “Oh he’s on his way, and from what I’ve heard, he’s quite pissed about you playing the role of conqueror. He’s just a little more preoccupied with the Grand Alliance army that’s currently attacking him directly right now, which probably explains why you met little resistance at Brot. Congratulations on your victory, I’m sure Tivadol won’t be too pleased with accomplishing something he couldn’t either.” “Yeah, yeah, so why are you here?” “I’m here to help you get out of this shit pit you’ve stepped in and are quickly in danger of sinking further into. You’ve showed entirely too much ambition, too soon, my mortal friend.” “What of it? Like I’m the only one plotting against Velzix? Hah! Tivadol makes no pretense of his goals.” “Ah yes, but you’re not taking some things into consideration. Tivadol is still a demon and you my mortal friend are not. We are not fond of ever being bested, but to be bested by a mortal is even more repugnant to us. Tivadol is also a predictable loud mouth brute who is never going to achieve his goal. Velzix knows exactly how to manipulate him. Perhaps the day will come where he’ll have to kill him, but that day is far off in the future. You on the other hand are still new and he’s still learning about you. Velzix probably thought you could be manipulated and cowed into submission by his sheer strength and magic abilities alone, but it’s apparent that you aren’t afraid of such things. I could’ve seen that though. Necromancers embrace death; fear of it won’t be a factor. Though there are worse things than death…” “Guess you’re proof of that.” You mock. “Hmm, your pointless barbs at me are quite unproductive and are in fact hindering you. I am offering to help you, I’d advise that you take it before you meet Velzix.” “Offering me help huh? I seriously doubt you’re doing this out of kindness.” “Of course not. I’m doing it because I see an opportunity for revenge and quite frankly, you are the only one that will be able to help me achieve it. However, I assure you that we will both profit greatly from this, if you listen to me. If you don’t want my help though, I shall leave.” “Okay I’m listening, what are you suggesting?” “Ha ha, no my mortal friend. I would be quite the fool if I told you how to handle Velzix before I got your word that you are in fact accepting my help. ARE you accepting my help?” Sesisek looks at you expectantly. > You refuse his help You’re not going to be anyone’s puppet. You can handle Velzix yourself. “Get out of here, I don’t need your help! In fact I’d say dealing with a loser like you would put me in a worse position. Go scheme elsewhere.” Your words cause Sesisek to give you a look of mixed disapproval, disappointment and disgust. He quite obviously doesn’t like your insults, but he was also hoping that you’d help him. All he can do now is attempt to save what little pride he has and leave. “Very well little necromancer, you think you know best, I’ll leave you to it. You’ll never be one of us though and that’s why your pitiful lifespan here will be even shorter than normal. Enjoy your victory, it will be your last.” He remarks and leaves you. You dismiss his warnings and attempt to prepare yourself for Velzix’s visit. You come up with how you’re going to explain your actions to Velzix. A couple days pass and you hear about The Grand Alliance army breaking off their siege. Velzix will be coming soon. Velzix arrives and you’re readying every spell and summoning you can think of. If it does go down, you’ll have to act quickly. You’re actually surprised he’s coming down here instead of summoning you to his fortress instead. “So little necromancer, I hear you have been taking matters into your own hands and acquiring territory yourself. I am displeased that you have done this. The Grand Alliance has been attacking and you’ve been squandering my potential reinforcements elsewhere. What if they had succeeded in breaking through my defenses? I would’ve had no troops to support my position, and much would’ve been lost.” “Well if that had happened I guess I would’ve had to take over.” That remark wasn’t the best one you could’ve made, but you can’t contain yourself for some reason. By Velzix’s statement alone, you’re sensing weakness in him, weakness that you could take advantage of. Why should you have to explain your actions? In the meantime Velzix is barely containing his anger at your arrogance. “Tread VERY carefully mortal! Do not presume that you are not expendable! You are NOT a demon, do not attempt to play this game in which you are ill equipped to play. You are under MY command! Normally I would kill you for your insolence, but your recent victory has been a great one from what reports I have heard. However, it is MY territory! Not yours! Do not think that you are going to build up some power base to betray me later, because that is not going to happen if you value your existence! So you better just put such thoughts out of your mind right now and fall in line!” Velzix hasn’t raised his voice too much, but there is definitely a very real threat there. The temperature of the room is much hotter as you can feel the heat from his body rise with his anger. If you’re going to make a move, you better do it now. > You kill Velzix You make the first move… A huge battle ensues, you summon up shadows and wraiths to your aid while Velzix attempts to rip you limb from limb. Soon the others in Aftermath are drawn into the fight as well, most of the demons side with Velzix, the mortal troops tend to just get out of the way, while your undead are loyal as always. This battle causes damage to Aftermath not seen since the Dark Order attempted to take it over. You certainly have the upper and hand, and Velzix realizes that you’re more powerful than he thought, but unfortunately for you, he manages to get away. “LITTLE MORTAL YOU HAVE NOT WON THIS DAY! YOU WILL SOON COME TO BEG FOR DEATH WHEN I HAVE YOUR BROKEN FUCKING BODY BROUGHT BEFORE ME IN CHAINS!” he bellows before flying away. You’re left with a city in shambles, but at last free of any ideas of servitude, as well as a large portion of territory yourself. You now have some breathing room. Of course you now have more enemies, but you’re confident that you’ll be able to handle the troubles ahead. Four years pass… Five years have passed since you took control of Aftermath, and now that’s coming to an end. After your treachery against Velzix, he was so consumed with rage over it that he ordered constant attacks on you even at the expense of his own defenses. This not only weakened your position, but his as well, allowing the Grand Alliance army to break through and retake the Tulan Kingdom. Velzix and his cohorts were all slain. After this occurred, most of the demons fled into the wilderness only to be hunted down and killed. A few even ran to you, you accepted them since you needed all the help you could get at that point. After taking care of Velzix, The Grand Alliance wasted no time in attacking you. You tried to maintain your holdings, but ultimately you lost your grip on the Brot Kingdom, when the royal family there once again switched alliances (Though to no avail as the Grand Alliance took them all into custody and had them executed for treason) Soon you were just left with Aftermath. When the Grand Alliance wasn’t trying to break down the gates, you had vampire assassins attempting to kill you. In fact right now, you are dying from several deep blade wounds from their latest attack. The last bastard must’ve used some sort of assassin’s blade that doesn’t allow you to heal, because you’re bleeding out like a hemophiliac. Oh well, at least you killed him. The Grand Alliance is also outside. Damn vampires probably set this up so you really wouldn’t be able to escape. Funny that you worried about Velzix and his crew killing you for so long, and it was some bloodsuckers that got you. Things are getting dark now; you can hear Grand Alliance troops breaking down your fortress door. Well they’ll never take you alive that’s for sure. You wonder exactly what went wrong and if you could’ve done things differently. You curse your lack of proper planning and regret your choices as they have ultimately lead you to ruin. You lie on the floor, you see armored troops stand around you; one of them is your sister. She looks at you sternly with her sword at your throat, which is pretty pointless considering that you’re obviously near death already. Looks like she has a higher rank than you last remember. Good for her, at least one of you made something of your lives. “…congrat…on your…promotion…” are your last words before she finishes you off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re not going to be anyone’s puppet. You can handle Velzix yourself. “Get out of here, I don’t need your help! In fact I’d say dealing with a loser like you would put me in a worse position. Go scheme elsewhere.” Your words cause Sesisek to give you a look of mixed disapproval, disappointment and disgust. He quite obviously doesn’t like your insults, but he was also hoping that you’d help him. All he can do now is attempt to save what little pride he has and leave. “Very well little necromancer, you think you know best, I’ll leave you to it. You’ll never be one of us though and that’s why your pitiful lifespan here will be even shorter than normal. Enjoy your victory, it will be your last.” He remarks and leaves you. You dismiss his warnings and attempt to prepare yourself for Velzix’s visit. You come up with how you’re going to explain your actions to Velzix. A couple days pass and you hear about The Grand Alliance army breaking off their siege. Velzix will be coming soon. Velzix arrives and you’re readying every spell and summoning you can think of. If it does go down, you’ll have to act quickly. You’re actually surprised he’s coming down here instead of summoning you to his fortress instead. “So little necromancer, I hear you have been taking matters into your own hands and acquiring territory yourself. I am displeased that you have done this. The Grand Alliance has been attacking and you’ve been squandering my potential reinforcements elsewhere. What if they had succeeded in breaking through my defenses? I would’ve had no troops to support my position, and much would’ve been lost.” “Well if that had happened I guess I would’ve had to take over.” That remark wasn’t the best one you could’ve made, but you can’t contain yourself for some reason. By Velzix’s statement alone, you’re sensing weakness in him, weakness that you could take advantage of. Why should you have to explain your actions? In the meantime Velzix is barely containing his anger at your arrogance. “Tread VERY carefully mortal! Do not presume that you are not expendable! You are NOT a demon, do not attempt to play this game in which you are ill equipped to play. You are under MY command! Normally I would kill you for your insolence, but your recent victory has been a great one from what reports I have heard. However, it is MY territory! Not yours! Do not think that you are going to build up some power base to betray me later, because that is not going to happen if you value your existence! So you better just put such thoughts out of your mind right now and fall in line!” Velzix hasn’t raised his voice too much, but there is definitely a very real threat there. The temperature of the room is much hotter as you can feel the heat from his body rise with his anger. If you’re going to make a move, you better do it now. > You capitulate to him As much as your desire is there to kill Velzix, your caution overtakes you. You do exactly what Velzix requests. “…the territory is yours …I have no control over it.” You say and even make a little bow. You feel disgusted with yourself for even doing that, but Velzix is quite pleased. He’s broken you a little. “Yes it is, and I’m glad to see you’ve gotten with the program. The less pride one has, the more likely one is to survive and in the end, that’s what it’s all about. Now, we shall never have another incident like this again I trust?” “…no…” “Good, now I think the best place for you, would be directly by my side where you can be more useful.” “What?!” “Sure, I could shore up my defenses in the heart of my realm, and place more elite troops on the front lines. Plus I think it would be a good idea to keep a closer eye on you. Just to make sure you don’t forget your place.” Meekishly, you travel back with Velzix and become a permanent fixture in his fortress Fury. You really hate it there as you’re watched constantly; it’s unbearably hot all the time and have to put up with more demons than you did in Aftermath. Predictably they’re all hostile towards you, “loyal” to Velzix and set your zombies on fire for laughs regularly. Four years pass… It’s been five years since you made your alliance with Velzix and you fucking hate it even more than ever. While you’ve managed to still carve out a niche for yourself, your position is increasingly becoming in danger of being obsolete. Velzix has been successful in keeping infernal portals open longer which is allowing more demons to come in. The Grand Alliance has been hard pressed to hold the line and it seems like more and more mortals each day are willing to bend before demonic might. Your undead troops aren’t even necessary for defense too much anymore. Because of this you’ve been forced to broaden your magical horizons and tap into the infernal plane. It’s only due to the fact that you’ve been delving into darker necromantic magic and fusing it with infernal powers to create potent unnatural abominations that you’re still serving your purpose. However, this type of magic is highly experimental and you’re probably the first one to even attempt it. It’s beginning to take a toll on your rapidly deteriorating health, because as they say, you don’t change hell, hell changes you. Everyday you’re in pain and probably losing what little of your black soul you have left. If this keeps up, you won’t be around long enough to see Velzix achieve his goal of opening up his permanent portal which looks like is might be soon. You haven’t heard anything of your family, except you know that your sister is a captain of a Grand Alliance army and your Dad’s mercenary company has been hired to launch on going raids to harass and hinder Velzix’s efforts. Your Mom is probably saddened by your actions. You’re just another mortal submitting to demonic supremacy. It’s a long way from what you originally envisioned for yourself and it’s probably too late for you to do anything about it now…or is it? Recent reports have spoken of another assassination plan on Velzix. It’s known that the vampires have been sending their own, but haven’t gotten anywhere close to him. A few “heroes” from the civilized governments have been sent as well, but none of them have been successful either. However, if you could locate one of these groups and try to help them get to Velzix, maybe you could at least get some sort of satisfaction. You don’t really have anything else to lose at this point. > You help one of these assassin groups You failed to kill Velzix when you had the chance five years ago when this alliance was being proposed, then again four years ago after you conquered Brot, maybe you can make for lost time. And as they say, third time’s a charm. You have no idea how you’re going to accomplish this though, it’s not like you have some sort of contacts then it hits you; why not go see Sesisek? You know he’s still harboring desires of revenge and he’s supposed to be returning to Fury soon You wait a week attempting to plan for this proposal, but you know its really going to come down to “Hey Sesisek, I’m going to kill Velzix, do you want to help or not?” In fact that’s exactly what happens, when you catch him in an empty hallway. He looks at you with a smirk on his face. You almost expect him to think that you’re setting him up, but he can tell by your pitiful state that you’re speaking the truth. “Sooo, finally wised up eh? You know, you wouldn’t be in this condition had you taken my help four years ago. I dunno. I’ve got my own plans, why should I involve you in them?” “Because I do still have power. Power that can help you take out Velzix and regain respect among your own kind. You’re talking to a desperate man here, I don’t even care if I die at this point, I just need to get my own revenge on Velzix.” “You and multitudes of others. You’re not special. However, you are desperate. And you are powerful. Dangerous combination. Very well, I’ll talk with you further, but let’s go some place less likely to be listened in on.” You and Sesisek speak in your study. He is very open about his plan to you and explains that he has been in contact with Lord Rostov and working out a deal with the Vampire Clans that will be beneficial to him. This deal could be extended to you as well, provided you are helpful enough. Another group of vampire assassins have managed to make their way into the heart of Velzix’s Realm, but if they are to strike they need to do it now, before Sinthinia’s internal security forces sniff them out once again. Sesisek’s job was to sneak them into Fury without too much opposition, given that you’re in on this plan now, you could do a better job since your necromantic magic could mask the vampire assassins’ movements. He mentions he will set up the plan and while you and the bloodsuckers are heading to Velzix’s chamber, Sesisek says he will be dealing with Sinthinia personally. It will also provide a diversion. A day passes and you’re preparing yourself for the battle of your life. You memorize every powerful spell you can think of and strengthen up your undead minions. When this goes down there is no turning back, so you’re just going to order all of them to attack the moment Sesisek’s attack on Sinthinia becomes known and an alarm is raised. Hopefully the added chaos will help. Another day passes and Sesisek sees you fairly early in the morning. He mentions that the assassins will meet you by the dead forest nearby when darkness falls. He hopes you’ve prepared yourself, because it was very hard to convince them in this change of plans. When darkness comes, you take a few of your hellish undead abominations with you and make your way to the dead forest. Once fairy folk and the like frolicked here, now it’s just a group of desiccated tree husks waiting to be taken away to build more war machines. Your powers in necromancy aren’t quite as pure as they used to be thanks to the tainting of hellish magics, but you can still sense the assassins are close by. You aren’t taken by surprised when they materialize around you. Indeed you have your abominations to act if they try anything. “So, you’re Velzix’s little necromancer eh? You don’t look like much.” One of them says. “Maybe, but you ain’t getting in that fortress without me. You think Sesisek could’ve snuck you in? Please. The moment you entered, you would’ve been detected. Sinthinia’s got magic detection up the ass in that place. Fortunately I can mask your presence, just make sure you all stay invisible until the right time.” “Don’t worry about us, you just hold up your end and get us to Velzix, necromancer.” You make your trek back to Fury, without incident with your hidden friends in tow. You take a deep breath before entering the gates where upon you half expect the demon guards to stop you, but nothing happens. You’ve succeeded. Your next move is to get as quickly as possible to Velzix’s inner chambers. You don’t get far when an alarm is raised, you think it’s for you at first, but you soon realize its Sesisek doing his part. You hope it’s enough of a distraction, but if it isn’t… You mentally call out to your undead minions to attack anything living. “Come on! Secrecy is over! We gotta haul ass to Velzix!” you exclaim. While chaos is reigning in the fortress, you and the vampires easily dispatch those that would attempt to stop you. When you get to Velzix’s inner chambers where he’s attempting to open up a portal to get reinforcements. “Treachery! I expected this from Sesisek, but I thought you learned your place! No matter, you will learn pain instead, and your blood leech buddies won’t be able to help you either!” Velzix’s portal opens and a swarm of demons come pouring out. The vampire assassins waste no time and begin their work with deadly efficiency. Your abominations have less finesse, but they get the job done. Velzix unleashes horrible infernal magic that causes a couple of the assassins to liquefy. You’re just trying to stay out of the way of most of the fighting and attempting to keep a control over your troops, but you soon realize you’re going to have to play a direct role in his death and unleash your own negative energy bolts at Velzix. The battle is brutal, and dead bodies soon litter the chamber. You’ve suffered a mortal wound, but it hardly matters now. Deep down you didn’t expect to survive this. Velzix isn’t either though. Sesisek arrives just in time to slam an axe in his back while he was finishing off the last vampire assassin. Velzix roars in pain, but falls to the floor where upon Sesisek pulls out a second weapon, a sword and severs his head from his body. It’s done. Velzix is dead and you don’t feel too much different. You’re still dying and you’re not hopeful that Sesisek is going to help you out. “Ha ha! Vengence is mine! Velzix and that bitch are both dead!” he yells in triumph “Uh huh, great…” “Yes…well it looks like you’re hurt pretty badly there. I don’t think I can do anything for you. In fact I need to make my escape. I think you’ll understand if leave you here. After all you would only slow me up and I may have lied about my deal being extended to you anyway.” “…yeah…I sorta figure that…” you say holding on to your bleeding side. “Besides, you got your revenge and that is what you wanted right? I can honestly say though I couldn’t have done it without you.” “I can honestly say something too…I’m still nobody’s puppet.” You hit Sesisek in the face with a negative energy blast. He screams as it strikes his eyes. He collapses on the floor blindly reaching for a weapon yelling about how he’s going to kill you. You smile though as more demons come to the inner chamber and butcher Sesisek while he’s on all fours like some sightless dog. You then give way to the release of blessed death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as your desire is there to kill Velzix, your caution overtakes you. You do exactly what Velzix requests. “…the territory is yours …I have no control over it.” You say and even make a little bow. You feel disgusted with yourself for even doing that, but Velzix is quite pleased. He’s broken you a little. “Yes it is, and I’m glad to see you’ve gotten with the program. The less pride one has, the more likely one is to survive and in the end, that’s what it’s all about. Now, we shall never have another incident like this again I trust?” “…no…” “Good, now I think the best place for you, would be directly by my side where you can be more useful.” “What?!” “Sure, I could shore up my defenses in the heart of my realm, and place more elite troops on the front lines. Plus I think it would be a good idea to keep a closer eye on you. Just to make sure you don’t forget your place.” Meekishly, you travel back with Velzix and become a permanent fixture in his fortress Fury. You really hate it there as you’re watched constantly; it’s unbearably hot all the time and have to put up with more demons than you did in Aftermath. Predictably they’re all hostile towards you, “loyal” to Velzix and set your zombies on fire for laughs regularly. Four years pass… It’s been five years since you made your alliance with Velzix and you fucking hate it even more than ever. While you’ve managed to still carve out a niche for yourself, your position is increasingly becoming in danger of being obsolete. Velzix has been successful in keeping infernal portals open longer which is allowing more demons to come in. The Grand Alliance has been hard pressed to hold the line and it seems like more and more mortals each day are willing to bend before demonic might. Your undead troops aren’t even necessary for defense too much anymore. Because of this you’ve been forced to broaden your magical horizons and tap into the infernal plane. It’s only due to the fact that you’ve been delving into darker necromantic magic and fusing it with infernal powers to create potent unnatural abominations that you’re still serving your purpose. However, this type of magic is highly experimental and you’re probably the first one to even attempt it. It’s beginning to take a toll on your rapidly deteriorating health, because as they say, you don’t change hell, hell changes you. Everyday you’re in pain and probably losing what little of your black soul you have left. If this keeps up, you won’t be around long enough to see Velzix achieve his goal of opening up his permanent portal which looks like is might be soon. You haven’t heard anything of your family, except you know that your sister is a captain of a Grand Alliance army and your Dad’s mercenary company has been hired to launch on going raids to harass and hinder Velzix’s efforts. Your Mom is probably saddened by your actions. You’re just another mortal submitting to demonic supremacy. It’s a long way from what you originally envisioned for yourself and it’s probably too late for you to do anything about it now…or is it? Recent reports have spoken of another assassination plan on Velzix. It’s known that the vampires have been sending their own, but haven’t gotten anywhere close to him. A few “heroes” from the civilized governments have been sent as well, but none of them have been successful either. However, if you could locate one of these groups and try to help them get to Velzix, maybe you could at least get some sort of satisfaction. You don’t really have anything else to lose at this point. > You continue doing what you are doing You’ve given up on hope or anything else a long time ago. Even if you could contact one of these groups, Sinthinia would probably sniff out the attempt due to her constant internal security measures, and you’re being watched a lot anyway. Nope, you’ve resigned yourself to a fate of subservience. Five years pass… Ten years have passed since your deal with Velzix, and you’ve lived long enough just in time to see the world being slowly turned into a demon’s playground due to him finally opening up a permanent portal to his infernal realm. Already he preparing to use the resources and conquests of this world to attack other demon lords in his home plane. You won’t be alive for too much longer though. You’re no longer necessary to Velzix for one thing, and the second is that your hellish dealings have finally become fatal; even now death is very near. The only thing that’s kept you going this long is your unnatural ties to necromancy that have steadily grown weaker over the years. You can only wonder what might’ve been had you been allowed to let them grow to full bloom. You think back to when you conquered the Brot Kingdom by yourself. Ah, that was a good time. There was purity in the death you caused there. Since then you’ve seen much more death, but rarely have you had any hand in it yourself. Your Dad died during an attempted raid on Velzix’s fortress. Sinthinia had her guards butcher him and his company before he even managed to sneak inside. Sesisek was killed when it was discovered he had come to an “arrangement” with the vampire clans and was collaborating with them in an assassination attempt. During his last pain filled moments he revealed their location and Lord Rostov and his vampire clan were slain in their secret fortress by Velzix himself Not long ago the capitol of the Zalan Empire was razed to the ground by Tivadol the Destroyer. A place you once called home. You heard your sister died attempting to defend it. You can only assume your Mom died during the attack as well. The Grand Alliance has been broken, all that remains now are pocket of resistance that do little to stop the demonic onslaught. At this point most mortals find death a more promising outcome as it is surely a more merciful release to the torments that the demons bring. You wish you could grant it to them. You regret you set out on this dark path. It’s brought you nothing but fucking misery and you didn’t even get what you wanted. Well you might not have lived how you wanted, but you sure can choose to die like you want. You order a few of your skeletal guards to end your suffering. The pain wracking your body has become too great and you’re not going to wait around for it or demons to kill you. Following your last orders your skeletal guards strike you down with their swords. Their work is efficient and swift. You fall to the floor and soon your minions of death join you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Chapter 3: One Foot in Hell One year has passed… It’s been one year since you made an alliance with Velzix, and so far it has paid off. With your combined might, you both have successfully held off the Grand Alliance. You haven’t gained too much ground, but that’s looking like it’s about to change. Everyday Velzix has somehow been managing to attract “free demons” from other nations to join him, though its not as if they have too many other options as mere suspicion has turned into hatred and they are to be rounded up and killed as possible enemies. Though again, thanks to mortal failings and greed, there are those few nations that are still letting their small demonic populations run free. Not surprisingly Velzix has been attempting to convince the leaders of these governments into joining him in exchange for even greater power. Velzix has also been attempting to open portals to his own infernal realm on a permanent basis. Right now he can summon in a few reinforcements to replace battle losses, but nothing on a major scale. As for you, things could be worse, but they could be better. All your potential “acolytes” reverted back to being demonologist when the merge came, though many of them were purged by Velzix himself, as he still remembered their attempts to imprison him before during their days in the Dark Order, not to mention if they were so quick to change allegiances so quickly, then they obviously weren’t to be trusted. Your magic powers in other branches of magic have somewhat improved, though this might be due your infernal dealings. Necromancy is still your area of expertise obviously and as it stands, you’re the only true necromancer allied with Velzix. You sort of hold a unique position, but you question its importance in the scheme of things. You’ve been basically put on defense duty. Your undead troops are nothing more than meat shields for the most part, and while that is what they are there for, you’d rather they be YOUR meat shields than some asshole demons, (or worse mortals). You feel like your talents are being wasted to a degree, like you’ve got a lot of untapped potential that’s dying to get out. However, open rebellion against Velzix isn’t likely to happen, but there’s nothing stopping you from setting the stage. You still have Aftermath under your control, even if you do have to put up with the demons and mortals stationed there now. One night in your study while you’re contemplating how to go about all this, you figure there are two ways. You’ve actually got a lot of troops at your immediate disposal. You believe you could probably take over the nearby Brot Kingdom by yourself without any help. They have a weak military and most of the Grand Alliance armies are busy elsewhere. You could build up a bigger power base. You might piss off Velzix by doing this by yourself, but you could take the chance that he might over look it if you’re successful as it’s also increasing his own territory. The other option is to remain doing what you’re doing and engage in a more secret assassination conspiracy against Velzix. You already know that tons of others are probably doing it, why not you? The problem is, individually most of you are fairly weak against him; though together you’d be more successful. Of course getting a bunch of demonic assassinating liars to trust one another is probably even more difficult than the attempt itself. > You engage in conspiracy You decide that military conquest would be too risky and would draw too much attention to your desires for power. You need to be sneakier about it. After thinking on it, you decide to go for Sinthinia. She’s in the best position to help you, so you send a message telling her that you need to see her since it’s an important matter vital to security. A few days later she arrives in Aftermath with a small group of guards. Of course the pair of you talk in your study in private. Her attitude is one of interest and playfulness. “Brrr, it’s really cold in this place. It’s not nice and warm like in other parts of Velzix’s Realm. See how hard my nipples are?” “Yes, I see. Perhaps I can warm you up after we discuss business.” “Mmmm, I like the sound of that, but only if this business is worth my time. So what is this security matter?” “Assassination.” “On who?” “On Velzix.” “Well it was bound to happen eventually, though I’m surprised I haven’t heard about this yet. Who is planning it and how did you come across this information?” You take a deep breath. “I came across this information quite easily because it’s me.” Sinthinia is silent for a moment before giving a little chuckle. “Ha ha, very funny.” “I’m serious.” “I know and that’s why I find it funny. You do not have the means.” “I know that’s why I’m proposing an alliance between us to set Velzix up.” “I see…and you believed that I would just go along with this?” “Well it’s a gamble. But I KNOW you truly have no loyalty to Velzix, surely you must already be plotting against him.” “And even if I was doing such a thing…hypothetically speaking of course. I fail to see why I’d need your help to do so.” “Because somewhere deep down Velzix fears me, I know it. He wants me as an underling to take advantage of my powers. But he doesn’t allow me to do too much since he wants to keep me weak and have an eye on me. I have more power than he’s willing to admit and if I unleashed it completely on him, he’d be hurting. I dare say I might be able to kill him. I just can’t fight all of his minions obviously. I would need your help.” Once again Sinthinia is silent for a moment before speaking. “…I must say you have always intrigued me mortal. You do have a lot of desire in you to come to me like this with such a plan, knowing that I could turn you in and have Velzix deal with you…fortunately for you I have no such plan.” Sinthinia says and begins to get closer to you. Her movements begin to grind up against you. “So tell me, do you really feel you have that much power?” she asks. “Yes.” “More power than Velzix?” “Yes.” “Then show me lover.” She says and the pair of you fall to the floor in a zealous embrace. While you’re enjoying Sinthinia’s sexual skills, she begins to get more aggressive. In fact she begins to get abusive. You tell her to stop, but at this point she’s transformed into something a lot less appealing, and you’re lying underneath her helpless as she pins your arms down and begins sucking out your life force. “Yes, mortal you DID have much power within you. It will certainly come in handy for Velzix’s eventual overthrow.” She growls and you become nothing more than an empty husk.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Chapter 3: One Foot in Hell One year has passed… It’s been one year since you made an alliance with Velzix, and so far it has paid off. With your combined might, you both have successfully held off the Grand Alliance. You haven’t gained too much ground, but that’s looking like it’s about to change. Everyday Velzix has somehow been managing to attract “free demons” from other nations to join him, though its not as if they have too many other options as mere suspicion has turned into hatred and they are to be rounded up and killed as possible enemies. Though again, thanks to mortal failings and greed, there are those few nations that are still letting their small demonic populations run free. Not surprisingly Velzix has been attempting to convince the leaders of these governments into joining him in exchange for even greater power. Velzix has also been attempting to open portals to his own infernal realm on a permanent basis. Right now he can summon in a few reinforcements to replace battle losses, but nothing on a major scale. As for you, things could be worse, but they could be better. All your potential “acolytes” reverted back to being demonologist when the merge came, though many of them were purged by Velzix himself, as he still remembered their attempts to imprison him before during their days in the Dark Order, not to mention if they were so quick to change allegiances so quickly, then they obviously weren’t to be trusted. Your magic powers in other branches of magic have somewhat improved, though this might be due your infernal dealings. Necromancy is still your area of expertise obviously and as it stands, you’re the only true necromancer allied with Velzix. You sort of hold a unique position, but you question its importance in the scheme of things. You’ve been basically put on defense duty. Your undead troops are nothing more than meat shields for the most part, and while that is what they are there for, you’d rather they be YOUR meat shields than some asshole demons, (or worse mortals). You feel like your talents are being wasted to a degree, like you’ve got a lot of untapped potential that’s dying to get out. However, open rebellion against Velzix isn’t likely to happen, but there’s nothing stopping you from setting the stage. You still have Aftermath under your control, even if you do have to put up with the demons and mortals stationed there now. One night in your study while you’re contemplating how to go about all this, you figure there are two ways. You’ve actually got a lot of troops at your immediate disposal. You believe you could probably take over the nearby Brot Kingdom by yourself without any help. They have a weak military and most of the Grand Alliance armies are busy elsewhere. You could build up a bigger power base. You might piss off Velzix by doing this by yourself, but you could take the chance that he might over look it if you’re successful as it’s also increasing his own territory. The other option is to remain doing what you’re doing and engage in a more secret assassination conspiracy against Velzix. You already know that tons of others are probably doing it, why not you? The problem is, individually most of you are fairly weak against him; though together you’d be more successful. Of course getting a bunch of demonic assassinating liars to trust one another is probably even more difficult than the attempt itself. > You well maybe you should check up on all the players first (Background info) You nearly laugh at the idea that you have any “allies”. A more appropriate designation would be “The folks who are currently on your side because it’s advantageous at the moment”. Velzix doesn’t trust any of them either despite the fact that they all knew and worked with each other in the infernal plane. (Actually he doesn’t trust any them BECAUSE of the fact that they all knew and worked with each other!) Given that fact, you probably shouldn’t either. Oddly, you don’t worry about your enemies as much as you do your allies, mainly because at least you know where you stand with them! > You velzix and Sinthinia Your “boss” is the currently the undisputed Lord of “Velzix’s Realm”. Not a very imaginative designation, but true none the less. He rules from his huge fortress called Fury which is the “capitol” of his Realm. He was something of a greater power in his own infernal plane once, but apparently lost most of it as power is often fleeting in such a place of constant struggle. Still, he refused to give up and was in the long slow process of rebuilding his status until the Dark Order summoned and bound him to your world. He was angry at first, which of course is natural for any demon (or anyone in captivity really) but soon he recognized this as an opportunity. A whole world he could take over and use to increase his own power. A place he could be complete master over after he made it more like home of course. He is making sure to make this plan becomes a reality. Besides being very intelligent and strong, he’s also quite charismatic for a demon, which accounts for why he’s managed to unite his brethren more successfully than most. Though of course in-fighting still occurs, it’s kept in check for the most part. Velzix is definitely aware that most of his followers are secretly planning his downfall, he expects it in fact. After all it’s a way of life where he comes from. He considers part of the challenge is to keep everyone slightly at odds with everyone else so they can’t unite against him. (Which is exactly what happened in his own plane) His attitude towards you is uncharacteristically one of respect. You might even say he treats you equal to his other high ranking demons rather than a mortal. (Though given how he treats his fellow demons that’s not saying much) Most other mortals that serve him have sold their souls for power and slavishly worship him or are serving mainly out of fear whereas you have chosen to serve out of ruthless pragmatism and in some ways still follow your own path. Though following your own path to the point where it’s interfering with his own, would be quite detrimental to your…alliance. Sinthinia is a succubus, she is sometimes Velzix’s “consort”, but such things as fidelity are not a trait known to demons, let alone a succubus. Officially she’s supposed to be in charge of internal security, but occasionally she undertakes a few “diplomatic” missions in an attempt to corrupt weak minded mortals who could be of use. Velzix enjoys her company, but knows to ultimately to keep her at arms length lest he find himself dead. Tivadol the Destroyer desires her greatly, but of course out of spite, she pays him no attention other than scorn and disinterest. Sesisek and her have had some “encounters”, but such encounters are in the past as it seems due to her actions, Sesisek’s position was demoted and she took his place. He dislikes her intensely and hopes to get revenge on her one day. She finds this to be incredibly hilarious. As with most of her kind she’s a wily one and uses her sex appeal as weapon whenever possible. This sometimes leads her to be playful, especially with mortals who often know no better until the last fatal moment. Though she’s quite capable of being brutally sadistic when she desires (Often at that last fatal moment). This playfulness has extended towards you sometimes, though her feelings towards you are a bit more of fascination rather than seduction. She has often said that for a moral you’re one of the more “interesting” ones, but due to your dedication to necromancy she finds your line of work to be “unfun”. This is likely due to the fact that she is a creature that exploits and thrives off of emotions and feelings. The dead don’t have such weaknesses; therefore the dead are no fun. However as you are still alive, she perhaps thinks that you may be a little fun…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You nearly laugh at the idea that you have any “allies”. A more appropriate designation would be “The folks who are currently on your side because it’s advantageous at the moment”. Velzix doesn’t trust any of them either despite the fact that they all knew and worked with each other in the infernal plane. (Actually he doesn’t trust any them BECAUSE of the fact that they all knew and worked with each other!) Given that fact, you probably shouldn’t either. Oddly, you don’t worry about your enemies as much as you do your allies, mainly because at least you know where you stand with them! > You tivadol and Sesisek Tivadol is a typical “rank and file” demon. Brutal, violent, sadistic, full of hate, and wants everything his way and decides the best way of getting it is to smash somebody over the head and take it. The only thing that makes him slightly different is he’s a bit more intelligent and has a burning desire to be in charge of everything. This is what makes him a good general. It’s also what makes him a threat to Velzix. Tivadol barely contains the fact that he wants to take over Velzix’s position one day. This attitude is probably why he’s put on the frontlines and leading the most dangerous attacks. If he wins Velzix gains more territory, if he dies, then that’s good too! Tivadol knows this of course and decided that he shall gain more respect in displaying that he’s a battlefield general rather than an armchair one. Then when the time is right, he’ll take Velzix’s throne by storm. A simple and short sighted plan. One that will probably not come to pass as Velzix is too intelligent to be overthrown by a straightforward coup. Tivadol might be successful if he employed a little subterfuge, but he doesn’t have the patience for it. This is another reason why Tivadol wants Sinthinia on his side (Besides her obvious physical qualities of course) since she could take care of such things. So far he’s been unsuccessful in convincing her. He doesn’t respect Sesisek (Considers him to be a fool who allowed himself to lose his status and never liked him to begin with) and respects you even less. As you are a mortal, he doesn’t even know why Velzix deals with you and sees this as a weakness in him. The fact that you have great power of the dead doesn’t impress him. He just sees you as another weak mortal that will have to be crushed when he takes power sooner or later. And if he gets his way, sooner. Sesisek is a very very bitter demon. He’s been assigned a position that he doesn’t want, he’s not liked and barely respected. And worse he can’t do too much about it right now. At one time he was Velzix’s left hand demon. (Right hand would be inappropriate here) He had spies everywhere and dealt in secrets, blackmail and assassination. He made sure he didn’t have to answer to anyone except Velzix, and if things had gone as planned he wouldn’t have had to answer to him for too much longer either. However a succubus called Sinthinia came along and fucked up everything for him. All his plotting, planning, and doubling dealings all came to be meaningless thanks to her actions. He had no more clout after what happened, and to add further insult Velzix allowed him to live and do menial humiliating jobs. However, Sesisek’s time in the infernal plane most likely still would’ve been a short one as other demons would’ve taken revenge for his past dealings; the only thing that saved him was the Dark Order summoning to your world. As a result he was given a slight reprieve and he’s even gained some of his status back since Velzix does know him to be competent and the fact that Velzix needs all the help he can get right now to get a strong foothold on your world. He’s been given a military position to keep him out of the way and preoccupied (Much like Tivadol) but due to his brethren’s intense lack of respect of him, he’s only leading mortal troops. He can’t stand mortals and could care less if they die by the thousands, he dislikes being a military leader, (He preferred the subtle approach to power) and on top of all this his mind is constantly plagued by thoughts of revenge. All of this means his success on the battlefield is mediocre at best. He does a good enough job to make it appear like he’s still useful. He hates Sinthinia for betraying him, but even more for the fact that she was so successful at it. He hates Velzix for continuing to humiliate him. He finds Tivadol to be an idiotic brute who doesn’t know shit about real power. As for you, he doesn’t particularly care about you at all, except he doesn’t find you to be a threat since you’re a mortal. He recognizes you do have some power about you and along with being on direct speaking terms with Velzix, you speak to Sinthinia on occasion as well. He probably figures that maybe he can use you in some sort of mad plan for revenge. It’s all that drives him at point.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You nearly laugh at the idea that you have any “allies”. A more appropriate designation would be “The folks who are currently on your side because it’s advantageous at the moment”. Velzix doesn’t trust any of them either despite the fact that they all knew and worked with each other in the infernal plane. (Actually he doesn’t trust any them BECAUSE of the fact that they all knew and worked with each other!) Given that fact, you probably shouldn’t either. Oddly, you don’t worry about your enemies as much as you do your allies, mainly because at least you know where you stand with them! > The Grand Alliance and The Vampire Clans The self-professed “good guys” are made up of several civilized governments. The Zalan Empire (Your former home and where your family lives) is one of the main members of the Grand Alliance. Several races belong, each one bringing their unique skills to the mix. It’s quite possible to see the clockwork automatons of the Dwarven Union fighting side by side with the silent monks of Elin. This arrangement only arises during times of great crisis such as the one you caused. Given that most living creatures have basic need to not want to die or become a walking rotting corpse (Or a slave to demons) the chances of you convincing them to leave you alone is extremely unlikely especially since Velzix has no intention on doing it anyway. Most of your knowledge of them comes from the Ex-Dark Order demonologists who knew of Mr. Demar’s dealings with them. Apparently their relationship wasn’t a good one though when talks of a possible alliance failed and one of their delegates was killed by Trelik. The Vampire Clans from what you know live in a fortress run by Lord Rostov. This fortress’ location is unknown and hidden by powerful magic. It is there where those few remaining vampires that have kept their faculties stay. (As opposed to the near mindless ones that lurk in holes in the wilderness) While groups of vampires may have been involved in their own political intrigues and agendas in the past, the term Vampire Clans now is somewhat of a misnomer since Lord Rostov has a firm command over the remaining vampires. It’s basically a dictatorship more than a “council” where they all sit around discussing things. The term Clans is probably kept to just hold on to the illusion of former glory of freedom rather than the reality that they’re all hiding in a secret fortress ruled by a tyrant. Despite their reduced power, they still can affect mortal affairs. Currently they are no doubt affecting these affairs to hinder you and Velzix. The death of their delegate pissed them off pretty severely, not to mention they don’t agree with “high profile” necromancy. And they really don’t want demons running around all over the place. All of these things disrupt the status quo and their way of life. This is unacceptable to them. Velzix received a letter by bat from them recently saying that his actions will not go unopposed by the Clans and that his days on this world are numbered. He of course laughed at this threat and ate the bat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While these Dark Orderites haven’t completely impressed you, you remember that Serena mentioned you would need allies and they could serve that purpose. From what you can tell, you’re a better necromancer than the rest of them and this city would be an excellent beginning of your career especially since you don’t have any better ideas in mind. You know that even if this event plays out well for you, you’re going to have a whole shit load of trouble ahead of you so you better get a few people on your side now even if they need to be “disposed” of later… “Alright, I’ll help out, but I’m not doing this for you or following your orders, I have my own agenda!” you say flat out to Sebastian. Before you leave Catalina speaks to you. “So, come a long way from Enchantment class huh?” she says. “…I thought I recognized you…and yeah I have. I finally found a branch of magic I’m really good at.” You say finally realizing who she is. “Just remember, as good as you are, you aren’t the best.” “We’ll see.” You retort and leave. The march towards the university where on the west side of campus you see and hear explosions. That must be where Mr. Demar is. You wonder how you’ll have to deal with him after you take care of this Quayle problem. When you get to the east campus, Sebastian was right, you see a lot of weird things going on, nearby plants are growing older and younger before your eyes, buildings are indeed disappearing and reappearing. It’s a mess. You see a small gray building that doesn’t seem to be suffering any effects; you bet that’s where Quayle is. You march over with your horde only to start feeling very ill. You try to shake off the effects so you can keep control, but it doesn’t matter as you begin to see your various undead troops go through weird changes. You watch them either accelerate in rot and disintegrate, or even stranger actually turn back into their living selves until they eventually become babies and then nothing. You’re only halfway to the building and you begin to worry that you’re going to suffer the same fate, but manage to get in the Gray building which contains a simple auditorium like classroom. You must be back on campus. At the front of the class you see a strange man surrounded by a white glow. This must be Quayle. “This is not the way…you have lost…you may win…it’s all so fascinating…” he says in an echoed voice. You have no idea what the hell he means, all you know is you need to kill this guy before he fucks everything up. You’re having a hard time concentrating still though and once again you begin to feel very sick. That feeling becomes stronger when you see grotesque creatures pop into existence. They have writhing masses of tentacles and give off an aura completely hostile and alien. Not even the demons you’ve had contact with give off anything like this. You have no time for spells you’ll have to do this the old fashioned way. You run towards the front of the class where he sits and just narrowly dodge another tentacle beast appearing suddenly in front of you. “…stop…stop it…you must stop…” You tackle Quayle and something completely unexpected and disgusting happens. His body literally breaks like a fragile glass vase and all manner of insects and maggots come crawling out, mostly on you. “EEEEYEEECAAAGH!” you yell trying to get them all off of you, completely ignoring anything else. Fortunately for you, whatever you did has stopped the temporal disturbance. The creatures disappear and everything else seems to go back to normal. After stomping on some centipedes you notice Quayle’s head has rolled into a corner. Surprisingly it’s still alive. “You have won nothing…” his head says before it just simply disappears. You shake your own head at all of this. As much as you’ve seen during your short time raising the dead, you’ve never seen anything like this. You can’t hear anymore explosions; you wonder if Mr. Demar has won. You exit the building and begin to walk over to the other side of the campus where the explosions were coming from. You arrive to burning buildings and ruins of towers. Once again you see Sebastian, he’s sitting outside holding his head in his hands. He looks like he’s sobbing. “What the hell is wrong with you?” you ask. “It’s over! It’s all over!” “What are you talking about? It looks like the city is ours.” “But for how long? All our so called demon allies took off! By the time I got here Mr. Demar had already been severely wounded and his second in command Trelik had betrayed him. Catalina and I managed to kill Trelik, but Catalina fell in the battle! The Dark Order is over and I dunno what’s coming next, we’re all in a lot of fucking trouble! Trouble that I wasn’t prepared to handle! I’m not really a leader. Mr. Demar was a leader! Oh man why did I choose this path!?” Sebastian is having a complete mental break down and it sickens you. It’s unbecoming of a necromancer. “Where’s Mr. Demar?” you ask. “He’s dead in the library!” “Good, saves me the trouble.” “Huh? What’s going on?” “I’m in charge, that’s what’s going on and I’m not going to tolerate whimpering weaklings like you.” and you blast Sebastian with negative energy to his face, killing him. Yep, you’re in charge. A month passes The “Nuro Incident” as it came to be known was a shock to the civilized world. Nobody had anticipated such a thing occurring despite all preparations. Certainly not to Nuro given it’s near “invincible” reputation. You’ve renamed the city Aftermath. The Grand Alliance was immediately formed to retake the city, but fortunately for you, you weren’t the only problem they had. Velzix, a demon lord who the Dark Order summoned to help them, soon left Nuro during its attack, and managed to unite the rest of the demons that felt the need to break their contract with the Dark Order. They turned their attention to the Tulan Kingdom. Right now he’s established his own rule, enslaving the population and is most likely planning further conquest assuming he can keep his own troops from fighting each other long enough. As for you, you’ve already managed to hold off one Grand Alliance attack quite successfully due to your preparations. The first thing you did was command all the surviving Dark Order members to become necromancers. They’re mediocre at best though, they might be better if you took a more direct hand in training them, but you’re too impatient and you have so many other things to take care of as well. You haven’t heard anything from your family; you can only wonder what they think of all this and you don’t really care. While things are somewhat quiet now, that’s not going to last. The Grand Alliance will keep attacking and they may very well overwhelm you in time. You can’t just sit in your throne room and prepare for the next attack and you need to be proactive about this threat, but the big problem though is, you’re basically doing all of this yourself. There isn’t anyone anywhere near your equal, let alone anyone you can trust to handle important things. As much as you loathe thinking of it, you could ally with Velzix, granted he’s an untrustworthy demon, and not fond of the Dark Order for imprisoning him, you were never a member of the Dark Order and may be receptive. You soon send messages to him asking for an alliance. Eventually you get a response, and it’s a positive one. Velzix even says he’ll meet you in the city of Aftermath. Apparently he isn’t worried about you. When he arrives he gets right to business. “Nice decorations…so, you wish to make a deal with me?” “I’ve come to propose a pact between us yes. We have a common enemy.” “Yes, but what does this pact entail exactly?” “Simple, we don’t attack one another and we coordinate our attacks to be more effective against the Grand Alliance.” “And I suppose while my attention isn’t on you, and I waste my valuable resources, you build up strength and attack me eh? Heh heh, I know you little necromancer. I see the desire to murder the entire world in your eyes. I even respect it, but if you think I’m trusting you, you’re as brain dead as those corpses you raise.” “What?! You’re a fucking demon and you’re accusing ME of being deceitful?” “Of course. Who better to see treachery than one who is an expert at it? But assuming you genuinely mean for us to be best buddies forever and ever, I still don’t see what you can do for me in your current state.” “What are you on about now?” “I’m saying as a military power you ain’t shit that’s what! Your necromancers are barely competent enough to hold your defenses of that little necropolis you rule. It’s mostly you doing all the work, and while you’ve got a little power, it still ain’t enough to attack anything in a meaningful way.” You hate the fact that Velzix is right, but you hate it even more that he’s so damn smug about it. Which makes you wonder why he called you out here…in fact you’re starting to prepare yourself for trouble. “Alright then what the hell are you proposing?” you ask. “I propose a…merger rather than an alliance.” “You’re proposing that I let YOU take over Aftermath and I just become your bitch.” “Not exactly how I worded it, but if you prefer that designation…” ”NO! I don’t prefer it!” “Okay then how about this? I say you’ll last maybe another year tops if you stay walled up in this little city of yours just letting the Grand Alliance constantly beat down your gates until they finally succeed. Then assuming you don’t die during that final attack, I predict that you live a ragged existence on the run for maybe a couple years afterwards at which point you’ll end up getting hunted down and killed hiding in some cave somewhere.” “And that’s what you see?” “Seen it happen to more powerful mortals than you. BUT! It doesn’t have to be that way. Joining with me can be more beneficial than you think. You don’t think I don’t see the power in you? You would be a very valuable asset to my plans. Your ability to control the dead is very strong and quite frankly it would be nice to actually have not just troops that aren’t fighting among themselves, but a great general as well. Think about it! You’ll gain more power and you could still bring death to thousands and not have to worry about all the bullshit of ruling, because as I’m sure you know, it isn’t as fun as it should be most of the time. You will prosper, if you continue to prove yourself worthy and useful.” > You decline his offer Never. You’ll never submit to anyone else’s rule. You’d rather die first. But if you can help it, maybe you can eliminate one rival right now. You don’t answer Velzix’s offer, you immediately attack! You blast Velzix, with a beam of negative energy. Your nearby undead soldiers rush at Velzix, and your necromancers provide some back up. Velzix somewhat expected your attack though, and he blocks your beam with a magic shield and then flies through the wall of your fortress burning your corpse soldiers in the way. “Short-sighted little dead wizard! You’ve sealed your own doom!” you hear him shout as he flies away back to his own realm. You aren’t impressed by his threats however, you order your wall to be fixed, while you plan your next move… A year passes… The Kingdom of Tulan has finally put the sword to every last demon infesting the area. You laugh when you hear how easily Velzix was defeated, however this celebration is soon short lived. The Grand Alliance attempts another siege of the city and this time they succeed. You barely manage to escape. You try to establish some sort of rule elsewhere, but the Grand Alliance isn’t letting you get dug in again. You begin your long road of hardship and keep to rural areas; many times you barely survive attacks from barbaric orc tribes. Fortunately your skills in necromancy protect you (as well as scare the hell out of the orcs) Two years pass... You hear them coming for you, there is no more running. This is your fate. To die in this cave. You think bitterly about Velzix’s all too correct prediction about your fate. You wonder if you’d been less prideful and accepted his offer, you wouldn’t be in this state you are right now. You shake your head to this however. No point in regrets. You’ve made your choices and now you make one last one. You leave the cave to face your enemies and prepare to die for your heinous crimes… Such is often the fate of a necromancer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve been doing pretty well by yourself so far, so you decide to continue that trend. Still you do wonder what Mr. Demar’s Dark Order is up to. During the night you head out of the city and into the nearby wilderness. After checking around, you’re sure nobody else is around and you begin to cast your spell. Soon it happens. You’ve summoned several ghostly figures to your side. The strain to control them is much greater, but you manage. However you don’t want to push your luck so after a few brief commands you dismiss them. You’ve satisfied your desires for awhile. Another month passes and you go about your life more or less. Soon classes will start again, but you have no idea what you’re going to take. How can you? You’re sitting on all this forbidden knowledge that you seem to be extremely good at while the “acceptable” magic is stuff you can’t perform worth shit. Doesn’t seem fair somehow. Still you’re going to have to at least put up a front of normalcy if you’re going to not arouse suspicion. You’re convinced you were born in the wrong time period. You should’ve been alive during the time of the Great Lich Lord. Ah how exciting those times must’ve been! But as you soon find out, today’s times can be just as exciting… As the first week of classes start rolling around you finally decide on taking something easy and head towards the registrar offices as a late arrival. As soon as you step out of your apartment building, you hear screams, sounds of battle, explosions and general sounds of chaos. Portals are opening up all over the city and demons are pouring out of them! Amidst the bedlam you notice a few young wizards directing the demons. Demonologists. They have to be part of the Dark Order and this has to be some kind of plan of their to take over the city. You wished you’d joined up with them after all, but you think perhaps it might not be too late to get in on the action. You’re about to do so, when you feel your whole body going in slow motion. Apparently you’re not the only one, but it doesn’t seem to be affecting the demons or Dark Order members. They must have someone also dabbling in temporal magic (A practically forgotten branch of magic which is also illegal, and obviously for good reason!) It would seem that The Dark Order certainly has their shit together as far as this attack is concerned. You’re not going to be deterred, but you know you need to be cautious. You slink back into your apartment building and back into your room. Remembering your spirit summoning from last month, you decide to try it again. You need defenders and ghosts are probably going to serve you better for as long as this slow spell lasts. Once again you succeed and with your ghostly bodyguards you march outside a little more confident. You find that the city is one big killing zone. Demons are really running amok through the streets, a few of them attack you, but your ghost protect you. It would appear that they don’t see you as an ally. Sensing the need for even more protection, you raise some of the many dead bodies that now litter the streets. A few of Nuro’s mage guards attempt to stop you, but you easily defeat them and add them to your ranks. It’s so easy for you. Soon you’re commanding a small army and it’s barely taking any effort from you at all. “HEY! Who the hell are you? You’re not in the Dark Order!” a voice calls out to you, and you turn around to see another necromancer. He’s rather non-descript looking and isn’t controlling nearly as many dead as you are. No ghosts either. “I’m not. I’m what you call…independent I suppose.” “Oh is that right eh? Well if you ain’t with the Dark Order, you’re against us!” You attempt to ask if you can come to some sort of arrangement, but he’s not hearing it, he orders his horde to attack you. So much for making allies… He and his troops are going to be faster, even if you do outnumber him, so you decide to do something else. You enforce your will upon his advancing horde, and with a little effort you’re successful. They stop in their tracks, and then they turn around in his direction. “Hey! Stop that! You can’t do that! You’re supposed to listen to me!” he shouts totally losing his cool, not to mention his control. Instead of trying to regain it, he attempts to blast you with a bolt of negative energy, but at this point you’re well protected by meat shield of corpses, who seem to be moving faster… The slow spell! It’s gone! Or at least it’s not affecting you anymore. You smile wickedly at the enemy necromancer. Now you can show him real power! He doesn’t get a few inches from his position before he’s overwhelmed and killed by your forces. Besides the effects of the slow spell being gone, you also notice many of the demons jumping over the city walls, or otherwise leaving Nuro. You hear demonologists shouting at them to come back and once again you shake your head. It would appear that Mr. Demar and the Dark Order didn’t have their shit as together as you thought. “Pah! This is what Mr. Demar had to work with? I guess I was lucky not to have hooked up with such fools!” you say to a nearby zombie who doesn’t answer. You march through the city truly exercising your power for the first time, soon you come across two more necromancers attempting to destroy city hall where the last bastion of resistance resides in the city. An ugly man and a woman. Naturally it’s the ugly guy who calls over to you. “Hey Irwin glad you…hey you’re not Irwin! Who are you?” “I’m the guy who can probably save your ass from this fiasco you Dark Orderites call a take over.” “Huh and I suppose YOU could’ve done a better job?” the woman sneers. “Better job than you’re doing. Look at you, you lost your demonic support and you can’t even take out the first citizen and his weak ass mage guards.” You retort. “Hey Catalina stop fighting! We got enough problems!” he says to the woman before addressing you. “Look, my name’s Sebastian and if you want to help out I’m not going to turn you away because you’re right, we could use it! I’m sure Mr. Demar is having no problems taking care of the dean and the other professors, but I’m more concerned with Quayle!” “Who’s that?” “He’s the guy that was responsible for that slow spell you were probably feeling the effects of earlier. I don’t what’s gone wrong with the spell, but some demonologist came by here a minute ago saying that the whole east side of campus is fucked up. Like it’s phasing in and out of existence or something. Someone needs to go check it out or stop it before we’re all killed!” > You leave the City You weren’t impressed with these losers before and you’re still not impressed with them now. “Yeah, well I got my own plans. Thanks for the heads up on the city though, guess I’ll leave this shithole.” You say. “Hey! Come on! Where do you think you’re going to go? Staying here is your best shot at survival, we just gotta…” “Let him go Sebastian, we don’t need the likes of him helping us!” With those last words ringing in your ears, you march out of the city with your undead horde ready to take on the world. Your first stop is some little town on the outskirts of the Brot Kingdom. You’re merciless. You slaughter all those that oppose you, leaving none alive. Your army grows and you march on to other endeavors, but not really having any kind of plan other than mindless slaughter… One month passes The Incident at Nuro has become well known knowledge and while the take over was a failure, much damage was done. A temporal disturbance in the heart of the city has made the entire area unstable as buildings phase in and out of existence. Mr. Demar and most of his Dark Order were killed though a few managed to escape and go into hiding. Demons have been running rampant through the countryside and seem to have taken an interest in the Kingdom of Tulan. You’re a well known threat due to your actions in Brot Kingdom. Already mercenaries are on your trail. You have to keep to the rural parts of the countryside where you come in conflict with several barbaric Orc tribes. You of course add these to your army when you’re done massacring them. One year passes The Kingdom of Tulan has finally put the sword to every last demon infesting the area. Most of the demonologist have been caught and hung for their crimes as well. You now have the Grand Alliance’s attention and they hound you at every turn. You refuse to give up. They will know your full power, just like your Dad did when you utterly destroyed his mercenary company that attempted to stop you. How you laughed when he attempted to still grab his sword to strike you even though he had been separated from his lower half at the time. You put the old bastard out of his delusions when he gurgled to you that no good would come of your path. Hah! Like he knew what it’s like to be a “good man.” Still you always wondered what Mom thinks…but then you don’t want to know what she thinks of you. A twinge of sadness strikes you, before you erase it entirely from your thoughts. You press on further north. Two more years pass Nuro has completely collapsed in on itself due to the temporal disturbance leaving nothing but a gaping hole there; a war breaks out in the nearby area. You suffer four attacks from the Grand Alliance and several attacks from various other forces. Your sister was leading the last Grand Alliance attack, and you barely escaped. You’re the last “problem” from the Nuro Incident that needs to be eliminated. You’re growing weaker from the lack of rest, and you turn to eating dead flesh to survive. Survival, that’s all you care about now. Two more years pass You can hear them coming, you curse the fact that you left yourself no retreat. You’re magically spent and exhausted. Fuck it. You walk towards your pursuers and prepare to die for your heinous crimes… Such is often the fate of a necromancer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 2: Hellbound Serena’s advice might’ve pointed you in the right direction, but as far as you needing the help of others you’re going to take a pass on that. You don’t need anyone else except yourself. That’s the way it’s been for a long time and that’s the way it’s going to stay. That leaves you to go where various other students have gone when they want to get something illegal and keep it to themselves. “Big Red”. Technically Big Red isn’t actually all that big, in fact for a demon he’s probably on the smaller size, but like most demons he likes to think he’s very important. Big Red typically hangs around in the seedy parts of Nuro, but he also hangs around the park area on campus late at night. His presence in Nuro is barely tolerated, but he’s been known to acquire things for high ranking officials and provide important information that is beneficial to Nuro security. Oddly for all his mercenary criminal behavior he’s tight lipped for a demon and will only tell on someone if asked directly and only then for the right price. Given how low profile you are, it’s unlikely anyone’s going to ask about you, let alone what for. Chances are if anyone does see you with Big Red they’ll just think you’re another college student looking to get high. You wait until night and then stalk the campus park area looking for Big Red, but instead he finds you, catching you off guard. “Y’know you’d look less guilty if you weren’t lurking around like a damn dark elf assassin. Haven’t seen you around before, I guess that explains why you’re coming to me AFTER finals are over. Most students come and get the answers before hand y’know.” “You sell those? Damn, I didn’t have to fail my nature test final after all.” “I could probably fix that too, for a price of course.” “…maybe, but what I’m looking for is uh…a little different.” “Ah, so high exactly do you want to get?” “No, not that…” “Well, I’m not selling sex slaves if that’s what you’re looking for…well at least not here.” “No! I’m looking for something different!” Big Red gives you a strange look. “Okay, what kind of freak are you exactly then?” “I’m looking for something on Necromancy.” Big Red throws you up against a tree when you make that remark and begins to whisper to you in a harsh tone. You can feel (And smell) the brimstone emanating from his breath. “You fucking little mortal pissant, you trying to get me killed? I don’t sell that shit! Get the fuck outta here!” he says before throwing you on the ground and walking away. Now it may be that he’s telling the truth, but he may be more worried that you’re trying to set him up. You’re determined to find out regardless of the consequences. You run back to him, but stay out of his immediate range. “Look, I know you’re a guy who can get a hold of lots of things and I also know you’re available for a price. I’m not a spy, I’m not gonna rat you out, I’m not working for anyone, I just have a…need…” Big Red turns back towards you and walks in your direction, you think he’s going to attack and you nearly run, but chances are he’d catch you first anyway. He’s looking around in all directions and speaking in a low tone. “Alright. Look. Since you’re obviously new and not hip to how this works, I’m inclined to believe you’re not working for someone. Someone undercover wouldn’t be so obviously clueless as you seem to be, at least not to catch the likes of me. Plus I can sense the darkness around you…it’s a neat ability we have and again let’s us tell who’s a goody two shoes and who isn’t. You don’t seem to be either though just yet. You seem to be more confused and curious than anything which is almost as bad.” “So you can’t you help me?” “It’s not that I can’t, it’s whether I should. This isn’t selling you some Hobgoblin Hashish so you can go get high and wind up naked the next morning with a Dwarf in your ass.” “Um…what? Excuse me?” you stutter at Big Red’s odd scenario outcome. “This is serious shit, if word got around that I was selling information on the Dark Arts, let alone books on it, my ass would be strung up and killed. And to have some dumb ass college student fucking around with something as dangerous as that is asking for trouble since YOU’RE probably going to get yourself caught, which will then lead to possible questions before they kill you…which can then link to me. And that can’t happen.” “I’m not going to get caught.” “Hah! Heard that one before from people getting busted for less. I dunno, I don’t see you as a good risk and even if I did consider this request my price would be VERY high and I don’t see you as having that kind of money to spend.” Big Red’s denials of your request are actually making you want what he has even more. You KNOW he can help you. In fact you’re beginning to get irritated. Why the hell is he denying you this? He’s a fucking demon who sells illegal shit! He shouldn’t care at all! You’re desperate for his help though so you tell an outlandish lie. “Look my parents are rich! I can get the money for you, just gimme your price and I can get it…it might take me awhile, but I can get it.” “Oh you can huh? Alright then I’ll play your game. He’s my price.” Big Red pulls out a little pad of paper and pencil and writes something on it and then hands it to you. You read the astronomical price while Big Red’s face turns into a smug demonic grin. He probably did that for dramatic effect. There’s no way you can pay this, even if you somehow managed to convince your parents to give you money to support your grossly illegal studies in necromancy. You’re not going to let it stop you though. “Wow…that is high…okay. I can get this, but it’ll take me a few days.” You say feigning a mixture of shock, but calmness too. Big Red himself looks surprised that you agreed. He begins to write down something on his pad again and gives it to you. “Well alright money bags, we got a deal. You come meet me at this time and location in a week. If you ain’t there, then you can forget about coming to see me for anything ever again. If you come and you don’t have the money…well I don’t think I need to stress how bad that would be. So my advice is if you don’t have it, don’t show. See ya.” “Hey wait, you said you can fix my grade too.” You suddenly remember. “Don’t you think you’ve spent enough money tonight? Alright then maybe you ARE made of gold after all, so what’s the class?” “Nature magic.” “Oh yeah, you said that. Yeah, that’s definitely doable, mainly because the professor is, I just need to slip the deviled ham into her and she’ll be willing to pass anyone.” “I thought she was a lesbian.” “Feh, not when it comes to Big Red. It ain’t just a name ya know. Alright, my price for this task is two hundred gold pieces. Normally I might charge less, but hey you got the money right?” Indeed, but you don’t have much now after forking it over to Big Red. You were hoping the gold you brought was going to go towards a necromantic tome, but instead it’s just going to cheating. “Thanks, and as appreciation for your generous business tonight, I think I’ll go take care of that grade situation of yours right now, if I’m lucky maybe she’ll have one of those little elven bitches with her. Ha ha!” As Big Red leaves you, you head back to your apartment to scheme for the rest of the week. You go through a wide variety of emotions: fear, anger, desire, anxiety, obsession, etc. None of it really means anything though since you don’t really have too much in the way of choices now. You’re either going to have to kill Big Red when you go to meet him, or just forget about this necromancy stuff and go home for vacation. > You go home Once again you have second thoughts. You can’t do this. You can’t become a necromancer; it’s not going to make your life any easier and is only going to make it vastly more difficult. You figure with your mediocre grades and magic skills, you can probably get a job working at children’s parties or something after you graduate. That least if you make a mistake it’ll be “funny” and just be part of the act. Your Mom probably won’t be too disappointed since she also works with children and you give a shit what your Dad thinks. Yep, that’ll probably be your “life”. You don’t go meet Big Red and instead take the next carriage home to visit your family for vacation. Your Mom is happy to see you and makes the appropriate fuss. Your sister is okay when she stops by between her duties. In fact for awhile you don’t feel so bad about your life. Sure it’ll be dull and not very glamorous, but you can deal with it… After a month of your visit, your Dad finally comes back from one of his mercenary jobs. He’s in a typical asshole mood and gives you a bunch of shit as soon as he walks in the door. He belittles what few accomplishments you have, compares you to your sister and is a general dick to you as usual. While your Mom attempts to rein him in, you leave the house and curse your Dad. He always spoils everything for you. You can’t wait for classes to start again just to get away from the old bastard. You almost wished you’d taken that risk and attempted to kill Big Red and get that necromantic book. The powers it must’ve contained…you know you would’ve been able to master them. The more you think about this, the more you think that might be what you’ll do when classes start again. After two more months of putting up with your family, you’re heading back to school. Once again your “feelings” have died down again. You’re not going to kill Big Red or any of that, you’re going to go to class and struggle as usual. You’re going to be less than an average nobody. You’re going to live the rest of your life like a halfling. But not for long… About a week after classes start, something terrible happens in the city of Nuro. Portals suddenly open up all over the city and demons come pouring out of them. Loud explosions take place and there’s a strange feeling of “slowness” occurring to you and most others. You’re in class at the time when this chaos begins. It’s obviously an attack of some sort, but nobody knows from where or who, right now everyone is just trying to escape. Demons run amok through the streets and campus gleefully killing people. Running while suffering the effects of this aura of slowness is proving very difficult so you try to stay hidden most of the time. Demonologists direct this attack, you even recognize a couple as students you went to class with. Apparently you weren’t the only one with the dark arts on your mind. Eventually you get closer to the city gates and that’s when you see a horde of recently raised corpses lingering around it. You think maybe you can make it. The dead aren’t known to be fast after all. You make your run and the group of corpses and skeletons notice you and shamble in your direction. Normally if you weren’t slowed, you probably might make it, but instead they manage to surround you and cut off escape in any direction. In desperation you cry out for this to stop and wishing that somehow they would stop attacking you. And for a moment, they do. They just stand there obediently. You can’t believe it; you just stand there in shock, not taking advantage of the situation. Did you really have a natural gift for necromancy after all? Unfortunately, you’ll never know because they quickly resume attacking and strike you down before moving on. As you lie in the street dying from your wounds, you laugh at the absurdity of it all. “Ha ha…I coulda…(cough) been…the next Great Lich Lord…”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter 1: Dark Beginnings Well, you did it again. You slacked off all semester and didn’t study for your finals. There’s no way you’re going to pass your nature magic test tomorrow. Those things are always killers. You don’t even know why you enrolled in that class; you aren’t even interested in being a nature mage. You don’t even like the damn outdoors! Oh wait, you know why, it’s because you saw a cute witch taking the class, so like a dumb ass, you signed up for it. Naturally the moment you tried to impress her with some sort of cantrip, she laughed at you and said even if she was straight, she wouldn’t go for a half assed hedge wizard like you! You really should’ve known better, half of those witches are lesbians anyway. That whole Mother Earth Goddess worship caters to the rug munching. (And no, there aren’t any MALE witches, any self respecting man would call himself a WARLOCK, not a damn witch!) (Sigh) Like your little sister’s B’ar’b Dolly once said “Magic is hard!” Indeed. Sometimes you curse the day your mother passed her magical elven blood on to you. Still, you’re here now, so you need to make the best out of your life. You’re already going to hear it from both of your parents of how you’ve been nothing but a disappointment to the both of them. Your Dad will probably do a little more than say that, he’ll probably personally ride up to the University and beat the hell out of you for wasting his hard earned pillaging money to send you there in the first place. Arrgh! You just wish you were good at SOME kind of magic! You have the ability; you just don’t have the focus! That’s always been the problem with you. Your sister has it easy, she took after Dad. Narrow minded focus on killing someone with a blunt instrument doesn’t take too much effort. Of course you had to be the one that greater things were expected of. You’ve tried all the schools, evocation, conjuration, illusion, divination; all of them. You can’t excel in any of it. You can only get so far and then the words and gestures and well all of it just becomes too fucking confusing for you. However, you haven’t tried the “darker arts”, but your Mom would definitely never approve. (Your Dad probably wouldn’t care, but if you upset your Mom, it’s a warhammer upside the head) In fact it’s illegal to study any of them. They caused too much trouble in the past and nearly destroyed the world at one time. All who are known to even dabble in such arts are immediately taken into custody and executed. You don’t think you’d want to be summoning demons anyway; even the few “friendly ones” that work on campus are fucking assholes to the Nth degree. You can only imagine how bad the ones who haven’t been living among mortals are. However there is another dark art which you have to admit you’ve always had a bit of curiosity about. The art in question is necromancy. At this point you’re willing to at least see if you’re good at ANYTHING, so for shits and giggles you decide to blow off your test which you’re going to fail anyway and go see if you can find out more about this outlawed dark art. Though being a lazy sort you decide to try the library first. > You what kind of world is this? (A little history) History is it? Well you were never really good at that either, however you did manage to maintain some knowledge of the subject, which is probably more than what can be said for your magic abilities! > The World Your world is a strange mixture of magic and technology. While magic exists, it isn’t used by everyone as naturally most people don’t have the aptitude for it. (You being on the borderline!) and of course there are laws concerning the use of it under most governments. Technology such as gunpowder weapons and other things like steam engines exists to a limited degree. Only the rich nations such as the Zalan Empire can afford to place money in such experimental things. Most of the world is “civilized” in that parts of it have governing bodies to rule it. Though large stretches of untamed land do exist and “civilization” can be relative in the case of some nations. Many different races exist, though how they get along is another matter. The landscape on your world is quite varied ranging from deserts, to grasslands, to snowy mountains. But as far as anyone knows, only one large mass exists on your world. Many sailors have attempted to find other possible land masses, but all attempts have yielded nothing. The oceans do not contain any known sentient creatures, though large sea serpents have been sighted in the deep ocean by a few sailors that have barely come back alive from their circumnavigation around the world. The underground is home to some races, though not as many dwell down there as one might assume. Nor is it a place where evil lurks, (though it can be) the underground is merely another place where some choose to live. Nobody ever chooses to live too deep underground however as the deeper one goes the more unlivable and inhospitable it is to make into a home. The skies are clear. At one time there were a few large floating fortresses in the clouds, but during the Dead War, powerful magic cast by the Great Lich Lord caused these to crash to the ground and kill millions. After such an occurrence, it was decided that the risk was too great to have that happen again. The last of the dragons also died during the Dead War. As for where you’re located in the world, you’re enrolled at Nuro Magic College. The Nuro Magic College is located in the City State of Nuro imaginatively enough. In fact the college basically IS the city given how large a part it plays in it. Nuro maintains its independence due to its neutrality and large magic surplus that would make even the largest of empires feel the pain if it was ever attempted to be invaded. However, invasion is unlikely by any current nation as its Magic College is the best and is open to ALL citizens of other nations, provided they can pay the tuition costs. This also makes Nuro fairly prosperous. Practically anything you could want is in Nuro, and if it isn’t it can easily be acquired due to magic.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>History is it? Well you were never really good at that either, however you did manage to maintain some knowledge of the subject, which is probably more than what can be said for your magic abilities! > You necromancy Many kingdoms, empires, city states, oligarchies, and the like exist on the continent, but even though they all compete with each other there is one pact that none of them break. No dabbling in the dark arts ever. This means no summoning creatures unnatural to the world, but more importantly no Necromancy. Typically such a wide spread pact would normally be dismissed and broken by one government at some point in time, but so great was the threat long ago that for the good of all living creatures this one treaty has ALWAYS been upheld. Long ago, there was a war called the Dead War. How it began exactly is unclear, but it was a time of great violence, chaos and horror. The very existence of life was nearly extinguished and it was only due to several heroes that the Great Lich Lord (His real name is lost to history) was finally defeated, putting an end to this threat. Ever since those dark years, the art of Necromancy has been outlawed and any tome containing the teachings of it, destroyed. In the events of the undead being spotted, nearly no effort is spared to destroy such creatures. Most of the time such events are caused by simple magic leaks, or magical experiments that accidentally raise such undead creatures, but investigations are typically done, just to make sure there isn’t a budding Necromancer at work. “Higher” forms of undead such as Vampires still exist, but as can be expected they have been forced to hide, most have been reduced to being little better than ghouls that live in a dark hole in the wilderness and constantly having to stay one step ahead of nosey adventurers. Liches supposedly no longer exist, as any discovered Necromancers are killed long before they can reach such power. Still rumors always abound about some Lich in some obscure part of the world that is slowly building up another undead force in yet another attempt to destroy all life. The Dead War may long be over, but the fear of a second one will forever loom over the world.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>History is it? Well you were never really good at that either, however you did manage to maintain some knowledge of the subject, which is probably more than what can be said for your magic abilities! > You demons The other off limits dark arts would be summoning demons. During the middle of the Dead War, one cabal of wizards decided to risk all by making a pact with the infernal forces in exchange for their help to fight the undead. This plan was doomed from the beginning as demons have loyalty to no one save themselves. Eventually the demons managed to break their contract and most began to run amok killing everything. Oddly it was the Great Lich Lord himself that finally closed the demon portals as they interfered with his own plans of dominating the world. There are few demons left in the world, most of them having been killed by both sides, but the ones that do exist only do so because of their own trickery and guile. Indeed, many have managed to worm their way into civilization and making themselves “useful” and pointing out that “they” were not the demons that betrayed the pact (For some reason every demon that still roams the world NEVER seems to be the one that betrayed anyone) While some may have integrated into society, nearly all still maintain their asshole disposition. Demons are still not welcomed in all parts of the world and most of the time still killed on sight, though naturally the more morally “relaxed” governments accept them and the powers they can provide. It should be noted that Demons don’t particularly like one another either, so the idea that they would attempt to open a portal to their own infernal realm is slim. The last thing they want to do is give more competition for themselves…or so they say. They are demons after all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>History is it? Well you were never really good at that either, however you did manage to maintain some knowledge of the subject, which is probably more than what can be said for your magic abilities! > You your Family Your birth was an unusual one, which is a kind way of saying “accidental”. You were born of a union of an elven mother and a ruthless human marauder whose own ancestry probably has ogrish blood. How they met was quite beautiful though. Your Dad was storming an elven castle and after putting several pointy ears to their deaths he came across your Mom who was being held in a special tower to ensure her purity for her eventual marriage to a High Elven Prince. She was raised and conditioned to be a perfect wife and even had spells infused into her being to forge a bond with her potential mate. Of course your Dad didn’t know all that, he just saw a fine piece of elven ass and naturally after all that killing, your Dad was in the mood for some lovin… Normally after such actions he most likely would’ve killed her or passed her over to the rest of his men where upon one of them would’ve killed her after they had their fun, but something unexpected occurred. Rotten ol’ Dad fell in love, possibly for the first time in his life. The reasons are somewhat unclear, though you believe that it strongly has something to do with the magical aura of your mother’s conditioning. (Which also explains why she stayed a bastard who had basically raped her and killed her family) Instead of killing her he felt like doing stupid stuff like being nice to her and giving her sparkly things of great monetary value. He even carried her carefully out of the burning castle. Of course this didn’t go over too well with the usual bunch of cutthroats he hung around with at the time, and he was severely taunted, mocked and even challenged. All of that soon stopped though after he killed everyone and married your Mom. The Elven Prince she was originally supposed to marry actually breathed a sigh of relief when it was discovered, since as it turned out he thought girls were “icky” and it was only to be a political marriage in the first place. Soon your father found that he now had actual responsibilities beyond his own selfish pleasures. Not only did he now have a wife, he had a baby on the way. Your mother’s influence was taking more of a hold on him as well. He agreed to give up his banditry and marauder ways, and instead became a mercenary in which he could at least somewhat legally justify any misdeeds he might be involved in. Your mother who had been sheltered for so long became enamored with city life, so they both moved into a nice house in the Zalan Empire where she became a school teacher for young children. Soon you were born and your father hoped that you might follow in his footsteps (At this point he was eager to show his “offspring” all the cool ways to kill people) but it was obvious that you took more after your mother even if not the talent. While your Dad might’ve become a “changed man” due to your Mom, he didn’t change that much. You had to hear the verbal abuse and endure a lot of physical hardship (Such as him taking you out to the wilderness where he wanted you to learn how to survive for three day just wearing a loincloth!), before he finally “gave up” on making you into a warrior. Still, you probably did learn how to fight better than most wizards, but of course you’re FAR from being a “real” wizard! Fortunately Dad wasn’t at home for long stretches at a time since his mercenary work often kept him busy. You don’t mind saying about how sometimes you wished he never came back at all! But the old bastard was just too damn tough to die. Even in that rarity when his entire companies have been killed, he’d always somehow manage to come back more or less in one piece. The man still can inspire fear in you, even though you’ve moved away and are an adult now. He’s the one mainly paying for your education, so it’s probably good that’s he’s still alive despite his threats and past abuse. Your Mom of course is nicer, and fortunately did try to shelter you from some of your Dad’s wrath. However she’s been pushy in her own way. The moment your Dad gave up on you, she immediately stepped in and took over. From that point she was bound and determined to groom you to be that great wizard that she KNOWS you’re going to be. Sometimes you wish she wouldn’t place so much faith in you, because quite frankly you don’t have that much aptitude and you don’t understand how she can’t see that, though you’re guessing that she purposely ignores that little fact. In her mind, you’re going to be a great wizard no matter what, so after high school you were to be sent to the Magic College in Nuro. Besides Mom and Dad, there’s Sis who was born shortly after you were. Sis is your Dad’s favorite. When it was apparent you weren’t warrior material, he noticed how your younger sister would always watch you and he spar. So he threw a sword to her and told her to show him what she had. Of course being very young at the time, she could barely hold the weapon, but it was obvious genetics favored her as a warrior and had natural ability. He might’ve even taken her on mission with him, but your Mom wasn’t having that. She did of course in time hone her skills to a great degree. So much so that she would become the youngest candidate to ever join the Zalan Empire’s Elite Guard. Though your Dad wasn’t exactly ecstatic with that decision as he’d much preferred her to be a mercenary like him, rather than a governmental “pawn” (as he believes) but he can respect the battle skill. As for your relationship with her, she sometimes bullied you when she got a little more skilled with fighting techniques, though sometimes it really helped to have a warrior sister to have your back at times, like when you got jumped by some Orc youths who were attempting to rob you. She single handedly defeated them all using only her fists. Of course when you both got home SHE took your money anyway! However, she eventually was nicer to you after she developed her sense of justice. As far as families go, you probably could’ve done worse.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>History is it? Well you were never really good at that either, however you did manage to maintain some knowledge of the subject, which is probably more than what can be said for your magic abilities! > You You live in a small apartment alone which is much more expensive and pisses off your Dad for having to spend the money, but your Mom managed to convince him that you need your privacy to study (She also managed to convince him that you shouldn’t get a job as it would take away from your studies) However, you probably do more slacking than studying and lately you’ve been doing a lot more of it. Normally you spend a lot of time in your apartment not doing too much of anything except writing about your thoughts in your journal. Sometimes you go out and try to socialize, but you find you don’t have too much in common with anyone. Even in this giant melting pot of races, and cultures, you find most of them to all just be the same. Occasionally hormones kick in and you attempt to get laid, with varying success, but ever since your high school sweetheart died, you don’t even feel like doing that too much anymore. She was supposed to come with you to Nuro Magic College. You and she had such plans, but of course those died with her. You often think that if she’d lived you’d be more motivated to try harder. Life in general is beginning to feel like you’re just going through the motions and “faking it”. You feel like you’re becoming more detached from the world, which probably explains why you’ve been dwelling on death a lot. Not really your own, but just in general. All this kind of thinking has got you wondering about Necromancy a lot lately. It’s getting down to crunch time and you don’t know how you’re going to face your parents about this semester. College hasn’t been working out too well for you and given your recent unhealthy interest in Necromancy, chances are the rest of your life might not either. Then again maybe it just might…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is no way to live. Working on a barely profitable rundown farm with far too many family members to feed. It’s a damn good thing you’re an excellent hunter. However, lately there’s even been a shortage of game to thwart your efforts. You didn’t really want to be working on the farm your whole life in the first place, you wanted to see the world but when dad died, things got a lot harder for the family and you had to take over as “man” of the house and stay put. Something is going to have to change. While you’d like nothing more than to go through with your childhood dreams of becoming a traveling bard without any responsibility you don’t have that luxury. Hell, you barely have time to play your lute anymore in the small amount of free time you do have. You doubt if you’d even be good enough to make a living for just yourself doing it. But you need to get away, but what can you do that won’t allow you to completely abandon your mom and all your brothers and sisters? You suddenly think of the choice that many in your desperate position have thought of many times before. The army. Its not exactly ideal, but you be traveling and seeing the world so to speak. You’d also be making enough money that you could send to your family. Your own living expenses would be provided for by the army. Of course there’s all that fighting that usually goes along with it that you’re not to keen on. Not that you aren’t a stranger to battle as their have been the occasional bandits or kobold thieves that have attempted to steal from the farm in the past, but you prefer not to fight if possible, especially not up close. The bow has always been your weapon of choice. There’s also the matter of mass combat on a grand scale that usually accompanies army life. A lot different than chasing away some thieves in the chicken coop. As you’re thinking about this, you also realize that there is another option. There’s a small mercenary company passing through the area. They’ve been hanging out at the local tavern for a couple days. They don’t seem to be the noblest sort from what you can tell, but fortunately they seem to have kept their revelry confined to the tavern. Who knows how they act away from “civilization” though. Still, it’s something to consider. There probably is less attention to discipline and a little more relaxed on rules and regulations. You probably wouldn’t be fighting in some mass land war that governments are fond of waging. Mercenaries travel a lot and tend to make more, however they tend to get hired for a lot weirder jobs, usually ones that the employer doesn’t want people to know about or ones that nobody else seems to be able to handle. > You enlist in the army Well, as much as you’re going to hate the whole uniform thing, you’d rather there be some sort of guidelines. The mercenaries look like a rough bunch. You get the impression you’d have to be watching your back as much as your enemies if you signed up with them. You explain your decision to join the army to the family one night at dinner. Your revelation comes as a shock. Your smaller brothers and sisters don’t want you to go, your brother Mallack really doesn’t want you to leave since he’ll be next in line to take the brunt of the manual labor! Your mother surprises you as much as you surprised everyone else. You expected her to be the most vocal about you not leaving, but she sees that this would help out the family. She gives her blessing. Before you leave the next day with your packed belongings, your whole family comes to say goodbye to you. You almost hesitate to leave, wondering if it would actually be better for you to stay, but your mother urges you on. “Don’t worry! Mallack is old enough to take over your responsibilities on the farm. He’s not quite as skilled of a hunter, but he’ll be able to do it. I’ve always known that you’ve had a desire to travel. The army isn’t an ideal life I hope you realize though.” Your mom says. “Yeah, I know, but I’ve thought it through.” “Very well, you’re old enough to make your own decisions and live your own life, though I’m glad to see that you still want to help the family as opposed to just leaving in the middle of the night.” “I’ll start sending money as soon as possible. I’ll also try to write and visit when I can.” “I know…okay, you best get going. It’s still quite a walk to the capitol.” You begin to leave the farm as your family wave goodbye to you in the distance. Soon you’re on the road to your nation’s capitol. You’ve been to Zal once before a long time ago with your dad when he was trying to sell some kobold eyes to an alchemist there. You remember being overwhelmed with how many people lived there and how big it was. You always did want to go there again one day; you just didn’t think it would be to enlist in the army. Eventually you arrive at Zal. The place is even bigger than the last time you came here. So much has changed and you’re a little overwhelmed. You don’t have any knowledge of the city so you ask the gate guard who is giving a watchful look to everyone coming in and out. “Excuse me…” ”Whadda ya want peasant? I’m busy! Market square is three blocks down as soon as you get inside the gate here!” The guard snaps. “No, I was wondering where I could enlist in the army.” The guard seems to change his tone to a somewhat more cordial tone. “Oh I see. Well, as soon as you go through the gate, take a left, and walk two blocks. The recruiting office is on the right hand side across from a general store.” You thank him and proceed, but you can’t help overhearing the guard laughing to his buddy as you walk away. You don’t make out all of it, but “Dumb fucking hayseed peasant.” was definitely in there. At last you arrive at the recruiting office. The man sitting at the desk looks bored at first, but perks up a bit when he sees you. “Well now, this is a nice break in the monotony. Have a seat.” “I want to enlist in the army.” “Well of course you do son, why else would you be here? To join the Zalan Empire’s best right? Okay, but before we start I need to ask you some questions just so we can get a feel of where we think you’ll best serve in the Emperor’s glorious army.” “Uh, okay.” “Good, so where are you from son? You certainly don’t look like you’re from the city here. You look like a farmer.” “Well I sort of am sir. My family owns a farm a couple miles from the city, I decided to enlist to help my family monetarily. Times are hard on the farm.” “Mmm, noble of you. Your sense of duty will also serve you well too. Any combat experience?” “Some, but nothing major I’m afraid. A few bandits. Kobolds in the chicken coop. That’s about it.” “Don’t worry you’ll learn to be a killing machine, but your past experience are more than some we’ve recruited. Any other talents?” “Besides farming? Um…I’m a good hunter, I use this bow all the time!” you say and show the recruiter your worn bow. “Good. Good. We can always use good marksmen. But you’ll get the chance to use a better bow than that old thing you’ve been carrying around. What’s that other thing on your back?” “Oh this? Well this is my uh lute.” “Lute? Ha ha! You a bard or something?” “Well not really, but…” “You planning on charming the enemies with your music?” “Uh…” you say begin to get a little anxious. “Hah! Settle down son, I’m just messing with you. But I’m afraid whatever your musical hobbies may be you’ll most likely be abandoning them. Can’t be picking your lute while an angry ogre is charging at you or you’re storming a castle. This is the army, not an entertainment company!” The recruiter at this point begins to look through some papers and grabs one after looking it over. “Ah. Here it is…you know how to read and write?” “YES!” you say indignantly for the first time. “Okay, okay, don’t get testy. Its just most of you peasant farmer types don’t. Anyway just sign here and we’ll get you started on your basic training.” You take the paper, and give it a pointless look over like you actually understand all the legal mumbo jumbo and sign. The recruiter takes the paper from you and then shakes your hand. “Congratulations son! You’re in the Zalan Army now! The best damn one in this world!” Somehow he’s more enthusiastic than you are… > You it's boot camp for you! 6 months pass… Six months of the most grueling physical training you’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with! However you fared better than some of your fellow cadets. Guess all that farm living paid off. You’ve certainly improved what combat skills you had, but your marksmanship has improved greatly. You know that Drill Sergeant Kosser has been paying special attention to your abilities. You’re not sure if that’s a good thing of not. In any event you’re being told where your first assignment is going to be. Most of those in your group are being sent to Tulan border. Not the most pleasant assignment. The fighting is getting worse there. What started as a minor border dispute has turned into a series of battles with neither side making too much progress. Even before you joined the military you’d heard stories of the greedy king who runs the Tulan Kingdom. You heard from traveling merchants about how he allows a few demons to walk around in his lands! Utter madness in your opinion. The Zalan Empire might be a little strict on the rules and regulations, but better that than demons letting walking around, in your opinion they should all be killed on sight regardless on whether they’re obeying the “law” or not, they’re evil. You sit anxious on your bed in the barracks as name after name gets called off. Finally Kosser calls off your name, and you fully expect to get sent to the Tulan border. “I want to talk to you in private.” Is what you hear instead. This makes you even more nervous. What’s he going to do? Send you on? A mission to assassinate the Tulan King? After everyone else has gotten there assignments you follow Kosser back to his office. He sits down and speaks direct. “Alright farmboy, I’m sure you’ve noticed me watching your marksmanship skills. You’re one of the best ones that have come in here for awhile. You have a natural talent and you’ve only improved it through training. It would be a blessing to have someone like you up at the Tulan border. The gods know we could use anything to help break the stalemate there.” “…but?” you ask hoping that there is one. “But…your skills might be better served in a place that has a better mortality rate, yet still needs taking care of.” “Where’s that sir?” “Here.” Kosser points to a map to a nearby location. It’s the Retlad Kingdom. You can’t imagine what’s going on there, since as far as you know, you’re Zalan is at peace with them. “Retlad? I thought we’re at peace with them?” “We are…in fact rumors are saying we’ll probably incorporate them into the empire in the near future. I dunno how much you know about politics out there on the farm, but Retlad is basically a bankrupt kingdom. Their dumb ass royalty spent a shitload of their treasury on building ships in some vain attempt to find more land mass on this world. Hah! Doesn’t exist! We learned than centuries ago! Anyway now they don’t have enough to pay for a proper military and their kingdom is being overrun by hostile Quillar tribes. They want us to help. Begging us practically and we have, but it’s a pain in the ass. Quillars are fast and as their name suggests shoot multiple sharp quills at their enemies. I’ve seen them go through plate armor.” “That doesn’t sound good.” “No, it’s not good. The Retlad knight orders got decimated within two months of the first invasion wave. We’re taking a better approach. We need to have equally quick troops that can at least match the fire power. We’ve sent a couple of war wizards, but most of them are serving on the Tulan border. Gunpower weapons are a little too slow for this sort of thing, so we’re looking for people good with a bow. Quick enough to at least get a few shots off from a distance and run. Because hit and run tactics are what the Quillars excel at, so you’ll have to do likewise.” Kosser pauses his talking for a moment. You take this opportunity to interject a question. “And this assignment you say has a lower mortality rate?” “Well, we haven’t sent as many people there yet, but so far we’ve made a little more progress there than at the Tulan border. But of course I won’t say it’s a safe assignment. Those Quillar bastards are vicious and merciless. Up to you farmboy. You’re getting a bonus here. You’re actually getting to choose your assignment. Not many that get out of boot camp get that privilege.” Some “privilege” > You go to the Tulan Border You don’t like the sound of the Quillars and it doesn’t really sound all that much safer. You decide that at the Tulan border you’ll at least be with a few people you already know from boot camp and you’ll be fighting something less scary. (Or at least human) “I’ll take the Tulan Border assignment sir.” “Hm, I’m surprised. Hope your skills come in of some use there. Here’s your first month’s pay, I suggest you live it up here in Zal, for the couple of days you have off before you leave.” You take the small bag and look inside. This will certainly help your family. You take a few coins for yourself and then ask if arrangements can be made to have your payment sent to your family from now on. He tells you yes, but asks that surely that you will still want some of it. You agree to just taking 10% of it. You don’t need much. “Sheesh, living bare minimum huh? Don’t you want to eat anything other than military rations every once in awhile?” Kosser questions again. “Nah. If I need extra food, I’ll just hunt.” “You know there aren’t many luxuries on the border, but when a traveling merchant shows up, you might regret not having enough money. You sure you don’t want more?” “Nope. I’ll be fine. My family needs that money more than I do.” “Alright then, family man.” You exit the barracks and wander the city a bit. You find it very interesting. You sort of wish you could stay longer to take in more sights. However one thing catches your eye. A small store and in the window is a lute. Looks almost like the one you had before it was taken away from you in basic training. You haven’t gotten a chance to play in six months and you’d really like to… Hey you’re a soldier now, you’ve proven yourself. You figure you can take one personal belonging with you to Tulan as long as you keep them packed properly. You enter the store and with the little money you have you buy the lute. You spend the most of the day and the next practicing it. You didn’t forget as much as you thought. You also finish up writing a letter to your family and give it to a Zalan messenger carrier. Finally the third day arrives for you to move out. A couple of officers arrive to take all of you. You’re stopped though as you’re picked out. “Hold up you. What’s that?” “It’s a lute sir.” “A lute? What the fuck do you think this is? An acting company? Get rid of that thing, you won’t be needing that where you’re going!” “But…” “You disobeying me soldier?” “No sir!” “Alright then, get rid of it!” You sadly get rid of your lute which you never got to play and basically wasted your money on. You don’t know what you were thinking anyway. You’re in the damn army. You’re going to be doing a lot of fighting and all of that, not playing some stupid instrument. You should’ve realized that the first time it was taken away from you in boot camp. You’ve made this choice; you need to just put these dreams of being a “musician” out of your head right now. You weren’t meant to be one, and all those years of deluding yourself in between real work were just fleeting dreams of a teenager. Time to grow up. While you resign yourself to this mindset, you aren’t particularly happy with it. When you get to the Tulan Border you’re even less happy. Your first battle is filled with all the bad stuff that usually accompanies such things. It’s definitely not a fun assignment and your only consolation is that you know your family is getting more financial aid for you doing this. After a few months, you’re absolutely miserable. You don’t have your music to keep your mind off of the conditions and everything is bad here. The fort you’re currently stationed at supplies only the bare minimum of living, no magical back up, the captain is a real asshole and the rest of those you serve with aren’t too much better. Though so many are killed everyday that you never really grow to dislike (or like) anyone that much in that department. More are sent in and more die, it’s like an ongoing cycle, everyone’s so expendable in this ongoing border war that gets worse with each passing month. It doesn’t even come to your surprise when the day comes that you’re mortally wounded while on patrol. One of the new soldiers tells you to hold on and that he’ll get help, but you know he won’t get any in time and it wouldn’t matter anyway. As you lay dying, your only regret is that you didn’t get to play music like you always wanted to, and now you never will.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>6 months pass… Six months of the most grueling physical training you’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with! However you fared better than some of your fellow cadets. Guess all that farm living paid off. You’ve certainly improved what combat skills you had, but your marksmanship has improved greatly. You know that Drill Sergeant Kosser has been paying special attention to your abilities. You’re not sure if that’s a good thing of not. In any event you’re being told where your first assignment is going to be. Most of those in your group are being sent to Tulan border. Not the most pleasant assignment. The fighting is getting worse there. What started as a minor border dispute has turned into a series of battles with neither side making too much progress. Even before you joined the military you’d heard stories of the greedy king who runs the Tulan Kingdom. You heard from traveling merchants about how he allows a few demons to walk around in his lands! Utter madness in your opinion. The Zalan Empire might be a little strict on the rules and regulations, but better that than demons letting walking around, in your opinion they should all be killed on sight regardless on whether they’re obeying the “law” or not, they’re evil. You sit anxious on your bed in the barracks as name after name gets called off. Finally Kosser calls off your name, and you fully expect to get sent to the Tulan border. “I want to talk to you in private.” Is what you hear instead. This makes you even more nervous. What’s he going to do? Send you on? A mission to assassinate the Tulan King? After everyone else has gotten there assignments you follow Kosser back to his office. He sits down and speaks direct. “Alright farmboy, I’m sure you’ve noticed me watching your marksmanship skills. You’re one of the best ones that have come in here for awhile. You have a natural talent and you’ve only improved it through training. It would be a blessing to have someone like you up at the Tulan border. The gods know we could use anything to help break the stalemate there.” “…but?” you ask hoping that there is one. “But…your skills might be better served in a place that has a better mortality rate, yet still needs taking care of.” “Where’s that sir?” “Here.” Kosser points to a map to a nearby location. It’s the Retlad Kingdom. You can’t imagine what’s going on there, since as far as you know, you’re Zalan is at peace with them. “Retlad? I thought we’re at peace with them?” “We are…in fact rumors are saying we’ll probably incorporate them into the empire in the near future. I dunno how much you know about politics out there on the farm, but Retlad is basically a bankrupt kingdom. Their dumb ass royalty spent a shitload of their treasury on building ships in some vain attempt to find more land mass on this world. Hah! Doesn’t exist! We learned than centuries ago! Anyway now they don’t have enough to pay for a proper military and their kingdom is being overrun by hostile Quillar tribes. They want us to help. Begging us practically and we have, but it’s a pain in the ass. Quillars are fast and as their name suggests shoot multiple sharp quills at their enemies. I’ve seen them go through plate armor.” “That doesn’t sound good.” “No, it’s not good. The Retlad knight orders got decimated within two months of the first invasion wave. We’re taking a better approach. We need to have equally quick troops that can at least match the fire power. We’ve sent a couple of war wizards, but most of them are serving on the Tulan border. Gunpower weapons are a little too slow for this sort of thing, so we’re looking for people good with a bow. Quick enough to at least get a few shots off from a distance and run. Because hit and run tactics are what the Quillars excel at, so you’ll have to do likewise.” Kosser pauses his talking for a moment. You take this opportunity to interject a question. “And this assignment you say has a lower mortality rate?” “Well, we haven’t sent as many people there yet, but so far we’ve made a little more progress there than at the Tulan border. But of course I won’t say it’s a safe assignment. Those Quillar bastards are vicious and merciless. Up to you farmboy. You’re getting a bonus here. You’re actually getting to choose your assignment. Not many that get out of boot camp get that privilege.” Some “privilege” > You go to the Retlad Kingdom You’ve never even heard of Quillars before, but they still sound less dangerous than the Tulan Border, that place is only going to get worse, you know it. “I’ll take the Retlad assignment sir.” “Hm. Smart. Here’s your first month’s pay, I suggest you live it up here in Zal, for the couple of days you have off before you leave.” You take the small bag and look inside. This will certainly help your family. You take a few coins for yourself and then ask if arrangements can be made to have your payment sent to your family from now on. He tells you yes, but asks that surely that you will still want some of it. You agree to just taking 10% of it. You don’t need much. “Sheesh, living bare minimum huh? Don’t you want to eat anything other than military rations every once in awhile?” Kosser questions again. “Nah. If I need extra food, I’ll just hunt.” “You know even the booze and brothel girls in Retlad aren’t THAT cheap. You sure you don’t want more?” “Nope. I’ll be fine. My family needs that money more than I do.” “Alright then, family man.” You exit the barracks and wander the city a bit. You find it very interesting. You sort of wish you could stay longer to take in more sights. However one thing catches your eye. A small store and in the window is a lute. Looks almost like the one you had before it was taken away from you in basic training. You haven’t gotten a chance to play in six months and you’d really like to… Hey you’re a soldier now, you’ve proven yourself. You figure you can take one personal belonging with you to Retlad as long as you keep them packed properly. You enter the store and with the little money you have you buy the lute. You spend the most of the day and the next practicing it. You didn’t forget as much as you thought. You also finish up writing a letter to your family and give it to a Zalan messenger carrier. Finally the third day arrives for you to move out. A couple of officers arrive to take most of your other fellow cadets. Mostly to the Tulan border, however, it would appear you have a different escort. A young man in loose robe approaches you. He looks like a wizard, but you wonder for how long since he seems about your age. “Hey, are you the one going to the Retlad Kingdom?” he asks “Yeah, who are you?” “I’m Wessel. And don’t you dare get cute and call me weasel, or I’ll have to blast you with a lightning bolt.” “I wasn’t planning on it.” You say which causes Wessel to start laughing. “Geez, I was just fucking with you. Don’t be so serious! So you ready to go?” “Yeah I guess, are you my superior officer?” “Huh? Oh no. Look I got our horses waiting outside; we can do all this getting to know you stuff on the way.” You and Wessel get on the horses and ride towards your destination. It would appear that you’re the only one from your group to be going, but of course you were the only expert marksman. Wessel begins to tell you more about why he’s with you. In fact he doesn’t really let you do much talking at all. He says he’s a native citizen of the Zalan Empire, but he just graduated from the esteemed magic university in the city state of Nuro. Wessel goes on to and says that when he heard they needed a few wizard over in Retlad, he decided to volunteer to test his skills and get paid while doing it. He explains that the pair of you will be following the orders of a Captain Vhalat. Everyone knows about Nuro. It’s very famous, and you always wondered what kind of magical wonders existed there, so you’re eager to hear more and he’s all too happy to tell you. Despite Wessel’s primary focus on himself, it sounds like a place you’d want to visit one day. Eventually you arrive at the border and so far the Retlad Kingdom doesn’t look very well kept. The road begins to show evidence of disrepair and the sign posts are broken. You begin to keep your eye out for a possible attack at any second. “Look! Over there! It’s a village and it’s under attack! Come on!” Wessel yells and rides towards the village in the distance. You try to tell him to wait, but he’s already well on his way, so you ride after him. You’ve never seen a Quillar before, but the closer you get to the village, you start seeing humanoid creatures covered in sharp spikes running around at a fast speed which could only be them. They are indeed fearsome looking. You also see a lot of the people running from them, and even a few people dressed in protective gear similar to yours…not that its doing them much good. “Alright you prickly bastards here’s something for ya!” Wessle shouts riding into the village with one hand raised in the air for a lightning blast attack. He shows no fear. You have no idea if all wizards are like this, but he’s either got to be brave, stupid or just suicidal. Of course he could be all three. Up until now you always thought wizards were supposed to be meek types that didn’t charge into battle and preferred to kill from afar. You guess you were wrong. > You stay with him to back him up This reckless idiot is probably going to get himself killed if you don’t stick by his side. You ride quickly to catch up with him in the village, and draw your bow. Surprisingly for your first battle, you manage to keep calm and focused on the enemy. Hard to do considering the Quillars aren’t the easiest of foes. They’re quick and they’re firing their quills faster than you’re firing your bow. The problem though isn’t the Quillars, its Wessel. He’s having such a “good time” blasting the Quillars, that he’s causing a lot more collateral damage in the process. During one of these moments, your own horse gets spooked by the incredibly close fireball blast and rears back causing you to fall off of it. You’re still shaking the cobwebs when one of the Quillars unleashes more quills and hits you with several of them. You collapse in pain, as the Quillar charges at you. It doesn’t kill you though. Wessel makes sure of that when he throws a bolt of lightning at it. Unfortunately the Quillar happens to have grabbed you just as its hit by the lightning. Your current pain is increased severely as the electrical current passes through your body, but not for long and your fried body eventually stops its deaths throes. Wessel has a hard time explaining that the other transfer was hit by “friendly” fire.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve never even heard of Quillars before, but they still sound less dangerous than the Tulan Border, that place is only going to get worse, you know it. “I’ll take the Retlad assignment sir.” “Hm. Smart. Here’s your first month’s pay, I suggest you live it up here in Zal, for the couple of days you have off before you leave.” You take the small bag and look inside. This will certainly help your family. You take a few coins for yourself and then ask if arrangements can be made to have your payment sent to your family from now on. He tells you yes, but asks that surely that you will still want some of it. You agree to just taking 10% of it. You don’t need much. “Sheesh, living bare minimum huh? Don’t you want to eat anything other than military rations every once in awhile?” Kosser questions again. “Nah. If I need extra food, I’ll just hunt.” “You know even the booze and brothel girls in Retlad aren’t THAT cheap. You sure you don’t want more?” “Nope. I’ll be fine. My family needs that money more than I do.” “Alright then, family man.” You exit the barracks and wander the city a bit. You find it very interesting. You sort of wish you could stay longer to take in more sights. However one thing catches your eye. A small store and in the window is a lute. Looks almost like the one you had before it was taken away from you in basic training. You haven’t gotten a chance to play in six months and you’d really like to… Hey you’re a soldier now, you’ve proven yourself. You figure you can take one personal belonging with you to Retlad as long as you keep them packed properly. You enter the store and with the little money you have you buy the lute. You spend the most of the day and the next practicing it. You didn’t forget as much as you thought. You also finish up writing a letter to your family and give it to a Zalan messenger carrier. Finally the third day arrives for you to move out. A couple of officers arrive to take most of your other fellow cadets. Mostly to the Tulan border, however, it would appear you have a different escort. A young man in loose robe approaches you. He looks like a wizard, but you wonder for how long since he seems about your age. “Hey, are you the one going to the Retlad Kingdom?” he asks “Yeah, who are you?” “I’m Wessel. And don’t you dare get cute and call me weasel, or I’ll have to blast you with a lightning bolt.” “I wasn’t planning on it.” You say which causes Wessel to start laughing. “Geez, I was just fucking with you. Don’t be so serious! So you ready to go?” “Yeah I guess, are you my superior officer?” “Huh? Oh no. Look I got our horses waiting outside; we can do all this getting to know you stuff on the way.” You and Wessel get on the horses and ride towards your destination. It would appear that you’re the only one from your group to be going, but of course you were the only expert marksman. Wessel begins to tell you more about why he’s with you. In fact he doesn’t really let you do much talking at all. He says he’s a native citizen of the Zalan Empire, but he just graduated from the esteemed magic university in the city state of Nuro. Wessel goes on to and says that when he heard they needed a few wizard over in Retlad, he decided to volunteer to test his skills and get paid while doing it. He explains that the pair of you will be following the orders of a Captain Vhalat. Everyone knows about Nuro. It’s very famous, and you always wondered what kind of magical wonders existed there, so you’re eager to hear more and he’s all too happy to tell you. Despite Wessel’s primary focus on himself, it sounds like a place you’d want to visit one day. Eventually you arrive at the border and so far the Retlad Kingdom doesn’t look very well kept. The road begins to show evidence of disrepair and the sign posts are broken. You begin to keep your eye out for a possible attack at any second. “Look! Over there! It’s a village and it’s under attack! Come on!” Wessel yells and rides towards the village in the distance. You try to tell him to wait, but he’s already well on his way, so you ride after him. You’ve never seen a Quillar before, but the closer you get to the village, you start seeing humanoid creatures covered in sharp spikes running around at a fast speed which could only be them. They are indeed fearsome looking. You also see a lot of the people running from them, and even a few people dressed in protective gear similar to yours…not that its doing them much good. “Alright you prickly bastards here’s something for ya!” Wessle shouts riding into the village with one hand raised in the air for a lightning blast attack. He shows no fear. You have no idea if all wizards are like this, but he’s either got to be brave, stupid or just suicidal. Of course he could be all three. Up until now you always thought wizards were supposed to be meek types that didn’t charge into battle and preferred to kill from afar. You guess you were wrong. > You circle around the village Just because he’s acting reckless doesn’t mean you’re going to, you’re going to play upon your strengths and keep as far away as you can. You ride your horse around the outskirts of the village, readying your bow the whole time. When you can, you fire at the Quillar attackers. As quick as they are, they aren’t really paying attention to you and you manage to get in some good shots. A couple of head shots even. At first they don’t realize where the all the arrows are coming from, since Wessel is giving them a hard enough time with the chain lightning. You’re sort of glad you decided to stay on the outskirts. Wessel is having such a “good time” blasting the Quillars, he’s probably causing a lot more collateral damage in the process. Eventually the Quillars start to retreat. This is when you get into a little more trouble as you happen to be right in the direction of where they’re running! They still look scary and they get even moreso as they get closer. The worst has to be their shrieks. It’s unpleasant to hear to say the least. You ride out of the way, but your horse isn’t fast enough and is peppered by quills. You catch a few in the leg yourself and you’re thrown from the horse as it reels in pain, before collapsing. Feeling the pain you scramble for cover behind a nearby rock. Fortunately the quills don’t penetrate that. Most of them are content on just running away, but one straggler decides to try to get one more kill before leaving. That kill of course happens to be you. The Quillar makes its high pitch shriek as it runs towards the rock. You don’t have time to ready your bow before its high jumped over the rock and on the other side of you. You quickly draw your weapon and swing it blindly as you turn around. Luckily your blade catches the side of its head, killing it. At last you collapse from the pain in your leg. While you’re pulling out quills, Wessel and another Zalan soldier come to meet you. Wessel doesn’t look any worse for wear, but the soldier looks very tired and obviously has wounds of his own. “There you are, lying down on the job I see.” Wessel mocks. “Are you alright?” the other soldier asks. “Yeah…Agh. I’ve gotten bitten in the leg by a Kobold before. Feels nearly the same except these quills go in a lot deeper.” “Glad you guys came when you did. We were just doing a routine patrol when these quill bastards came out of nowhere! They’re getting bolder and attacking in greater number, we need more reinforcements.” “Yeah, well good luck with that. The Tulan border is the primary concern. Besides I’m here now, I predict that this infestation will be over soon now.” Wessel boasts. “Any…way. My name’s Tylir. I’d introduce you to the rest of my squad, but they’re all dead now. Even though it was the heat of battle, I couldn’t help notice how well you picked off several of those Quillars with one shot. That was pretty impressive.” “Thanks.” “Hey! What about me? I’m the one who noticed you getting attacked in the first place! I’m also the one who saved your ass!” Wessel interrupts again, he’s starting to get annoying at this point, but Tylir doesn’t seem bothered by him. “Everyone did their part. Okay, since I’m here I’ll take you to see Captain Vhalat, I’m sure that’s who you were sent to report to, oh and wizard while your skills may be appreciated here, I’d advise you to cut down on the boasting. Captain Vhalat isn’t fond of it, and to be quite honest the other two wizards we had here were more experienced and they still got killed.” “Hmm, well perhaps they lacked the natural skill that I of course possess.” At this point you and Tylir just roll your eyes and get moving. You travel through a couple of other villages and it’s pretty depressing. You see stacks of bodies being buried in mass graves while most of other Retlad citizens look thoroughly defeated. A few look in your direction, but don’t look too much, it’s like they don’t really expect you to succeed. Not exactly inspiring. Soon you arrive in the town of Glaf. It would appear that the Zalan contingency sent here is staying in one of the bigger Retlad towns rather than the capitol. Ryan also says that the Quillar infestation is worse around here too, so the captain suspects that whatever lair they’re crawling out of is nearby and can hopefully located and cleansed. The town itself resembles a small Zalan fort rather than a proper Retlad town, as a sturdy wall has been erected around it. The people seem to look a little more hopeful though. Tylir goes on to say that he thinks that the Retlad citizens are actually starting to prefer Zalan presence especially since their on government has been pretty ineffectual about the whole invasion. The Retlad army has only focused on defending the capitol. The Retlad royals appear to find their lives more important than anyone else’s. Eventually you’re brought before Captain Vahlat himself. He looks up from the map he’s inspecting and addresses you and Wessel. “Ah, I see the Empire has seen fit to send me reinforcements…wow, twice as many as I thought I’d get. Private Tylir where’s the rest of your squad?” “Um…dead sir.” “Of course. (sigh) So what’s your problem private? Why is your leg wrapped up?” Vahlat asks you. “Got into a fight with the Quillars sir.” You answer. “Oh?” Tylir at this point interrupts and tells of what happened. Wessel looks like he wants to expand upon his deeds, but Vahlat’s appearance is a little imposing and he was already warned once, so he keeps his mouth shut. Vahlat soon addresses you again. “Well it would seem you two have already proven yourselves useful. A lot more useful that what passes for the Retlad army, but of course that isn’t hard. Wizard, I certainly hope you don’t intend to use this place as a chance to show off all the skills you learned in your fancy Nuro college. One of your predecessors did that as well, and as you can see he’s no longer here. As for you, I hope that you can do a better job of keeping out of the way of the quills next time. Most don’t get a second chance. Alright that’s all for now. Our group is being housed for free at the Inn down the street. Free food as well, but don’t go overboard, its being rationed. You want more food or anything else you’ll have to pay like everyone else. I suggest though that you don’t do any heavy carousing. This is a high alert situation and we could be going to battle at anytime. Dismissed.” You, Wessel and Tylir all leave at this point. Tylir goes on to show you where the Inn is and a couple of other places, but after today you just want to rest and retire to your room early. You rest your leg and begin practicing your lute. This puts you in better spirits. 6 months pass… The Quillar invasion has nearly been eradicated. Most of the major lairs have been located and cleansed and you certainly contributed greatly to this effort. Besides your combat abilities, your tracking skills definitely came in handy a lot. You’ve become somewhat recognized among Retlad citizens due to your actions and the lives you’ve saved. The word “hero” has been used a few times though you definitely don’t think of yourself as one. In your free time you spoke with the citizens, a lot more than your fellow soldiers though. A few of them even convinced you to play for them when they noticed your lute. It took a little prodding, but eventually you gave in fully expecting to get booed, but to your surprise, you got applauded instead. Your playing didn’t just boost your spirits it seemed. Whenever you could you played a little bit for people in what little free time you had. Never did you think that you’d be playing for any kind of audience, let alone an appreciative one. It definitely hasn’t been all sunshine though; you’ve seen a lot of people die. More than you ever wanted to actually. You’d made friends with Tylir shortly after your first meeting and he died only a couple months later. You’ll be glad when every one of these Quillar creatures are all dead though, all they’ve done is cause misery. You’ve got them on the run now though. You’re preparing for an attack on another one of their lairs, when Captain Vahlat calls everyone to see him, he doesn’t look enthusiastic about whatever it is he has to tell you. “All right I’ll be brief. As much as I hate leaving a mission unfinished, we’re getting pulled out of here effective immediately. Major news is that Nuro has undergone a fucking disaster that needs to be put down like yesterday! All governments friendly to the City State of Nuro that can spare the manpower are to send help. We would be one of those. I hope the Retlad army is just competent enough to finish up what we started in their own country.” Wessel immediately pipes up upon hearing about this revelation. “What happened in Nuro? What’s going on?!” “What’s going on? From what I’ve been told a whole bunch of your kind raised a shitload of undead and unleashed a bunch of hostile demons on the place! The entire city was overrun. Reports are already stating that small packs of demons are running around the nearby countryside. Most likely in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom. Not sure what that means with our border war with them, but I only see it getting bloodier around there. In any case, our job is to head to Nuro, before the undead start following suit. I hope you’re all ready for this, because this is going to be a lot different that fighting Quillars.” You look around and see a lot of fear wash over faces and rightly so. Necromancers have a bad history on your world. When you were little you still remember hearing the tales of the Great Lich Lord that existed centuries before you were even born. He almost took over the world. Those stories gave you nightmares as a kid. The possibility of having to face something remotely similar even on much smaller scale doesn’t make you feel too well. > You desert the army You don’t want to die and you know if you go, you will. You regret that you won’t be able to help your family out financially anymore, but you really don’t want to die. You pack up all your stuff in the middle of the night and sneak away from the town your company is stationed in. You figure their orders are urgent enough that your desertion won’t immediately cause a full scale hunt, at least not by them. The first order of business is to change your identity as much as you can. And head to a place where you can play for an audience, but the probability of someone ratting you out is low if you’re recognized. The question though is where to go. You can’t linger in the Retlad Kingdom too long, in fact you’ll probably have to move around. You decide your first stop will be at the Garwold Confederacy. It’s a relatively peaceful nation made up mostly of Halflings and Gnomes, with lush green fields and flowers. They tend to stay out of wars and they’re also known to appreciate the simpler things in life. Eventually you make a place for yourself there in one of the small villages. You make a living playing at the local tavern there. Most of the patrons sense that you have some sort of past that you’re trying to hide from. But just like you thought, they don’t bring it up or say anything about it and just enjoy your music. A few months pass and you’re happy. You even meet a pretty Halfling girl to be with, and now you’re even thinking about just settling down here, since nobody’s come looking for you; however there are alarming events occurring in the rest of the world. The assault on Nuro was a complete failure. Everyone was killed from your company. It makes you glad you didn’t go, but the fact that there is now an undead city state has everyone worried. It doesn’t help that there was also an outbreak of demons. One particularly nasty one called Velzix has conquered the Tulan Kingdom. Due to these events a Grand Alliance of nations has been created to stop these threats. The Garwold Confederacy normally stays out of such things, but they have agreed to send a militia as part of the aiding effort. You don’t worry too much about it at first, but as a couple more years go on, the war gets worse and more and more Zalan Empire troops are passing through the area. Normally you’d move on, but now you’re married and you can’t bear to abandon yet another one you love. You still haven’t completely forgiven yourself for the first time. You attempt to keep a low profile, but one day a Grand Alliance solider passing through, sees you in a tavern and recognizes you. Apparently he’s a citizen of Retlad and remembers you when you were stationed there. “HEY! I know you! Man, it’s good to see ya! How did you get out of the army? I thought the Zalan Empire had a twenty year requirement plan! You still play that lute really well?” he bellows for all inside to hear. Unfortunately one of the other Grand Alliance members with him is from the Zalan Empire who’s a real stickler for rules and regulations. “I know who you are too! You’re wanted for desertion! I’m placing you under arrest!” You try to escape, but you don’t get far. You haven’t been keeping up on your physical training since you deserted, and coupled with your Halfling wife’s rich cooking you’re not in great shape anymore. The Zalan soldier on the other hand has been battle hardened in the recent months. He easily catches you and beats you into submission. You’re taken back to the Zalan Empire in chains much to the protest of your wife, but its no use, you’re going to trial. Your family is made aware of your discovery, but none of them come to try to help you. You abandoned them long ago and didn’t even try to contact them; as far as they’re concerned you died years ago. You attempt to explain things in letters to them, but you’re never answered. Eventually you give up. The trial is brief and the judgment final. You’re sentenced to death as an example of all those who would attempt to desert their duty during war. As you sit in your cell counting the days for your hanging, you find out from sad visits from your wife that things are getting really bad. Dead armies conquering kingdoms, demons running amok. You almost wonder if your execution isn’t a blessing from the horror that seems to be eclipsing the world. The day comes when the noose is placed around your neck… “Any last words?” You have none; you just hum a little tune and close your eyes before the trapdoor swings open, and your neck snaps.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just because he’s acting reckless doesn’t mean you’re going to, you’re going to play upon your strengths and keep as far away as you can. You ride your horse around the outskirts of the village, readying your bow the whole time. When you can, you fire at the Quillar attackers. As quick as they are, they aren’t really paying attention to you and you manage to get in some good shots. A couple of head shots even. At first they don’t realize where the all the arrows are coming from, since Wessel is giving them a hard enough time with the chain lightning. You’re sort of glad you decided to stay on the outskirts. Wessel is having such a “good time” blasting the Quillars, he’s probably causing a lot more collateral damage in the process. Eventually the Quillars start to retreat. This is when you get into a little more trouble as you happen to be right in the direction of where they’re running! They still look scary and they get even moreso as they get closer. The worst has to be their shrieks. It’s unpleasant to hear to say the least. You ride out of the way, but your horse isn’t fast enough and is peppered by quills. You catch a few in the leg yourself and you’re thrown from the horse as it reels in pain, before collapsing. Feeling the pain you scramble for cover behind a nearby rock. Fortunately the quills don’t penetrate that. Most of them are content on just running away, but one straggler decides to try to get one more kill before leaving. That kill of course happens to be you. The Quillar makes its high pitch shriek as it runs towards the rock. You don’t have time to ready your bow before its high jumped over the rock and on the other side of you. You quickly draw your weapon and swing it blindly as you turn around. Luckily your blade catches the side of its head, killing it. At last you collapse from the pain in your leg. While you’re pulling out quills, Wessel and another Zalan soldier come to meet you. Wessel doesn’t look any worse for wear, but the soldier looks very tired and obviously has wounds of his own. “There you are, lying down on the job I see.” Wessel mocks. “Are you alright?” the other soldier asks. “Yeah…Agh. I’ve gotten bitten in the leg by a Kobold before. Feels nearly the same except these quills go in a lot deeper.” “Glad you guys came when you did. We were just doing a routine patrol when these quill bastards came out of nowhere! They’re getting bolder and attacking in greater number, we need more reinforcements.” “Yeah, well good luck with that. The Tulan border is the primary concern. Besides I’m here now, I predict that this infestation will be over soon now.” Wessel boasts. “Any…way. My name’s Tylir. I’d introduce you to the rest of my squad, but they’re all dead now. Even though it was the heat of battle, I couldn’t help notice how well you picked off several of those Quillars with one shot. That was pretty impressive.” “Thanks.” “Hey! What about me? I’m the one who noticed you getting attacked in the first place! I’m also the one who saved your ass!” Wessel interrupts again, he’s starting to get annoying at this point, but Tylir doesn’t seem bothered by him. “Everyone did their part. Okay, since I’m here I’ll take you to see Captain Vhalat, I’m sure that’s who you were sent to report to, oh and wizard while your skills may be appreciated here, I’d advise you to cut down on the boasting. Captain Vhalat isn’t fond of it, and to be quite honest the other two wizards we had here were more experienced and they still got killed.” “Hmm, well perhaps they lacked the natural skill that I of course possess.” At this point you and Tylir just roll your eyes and get moving. You travel through a couple of other villages and it’s pretty depressing. You see stacks of bodies being buried in mass graves while most of other Retlad citizens look thoroughly defeated. A few look in your direction, but don’t look too much, it’s like they don’t really expect you to succeed. Not exactly inspiring. Soon you arrive in the town of Glaf. It would appear that the Zalan contingency sent here is staying in one of the bigger Retlad towns rather than the capitol. Ryan also says that the Quillar infestation is worse around here too, so the captain suspects that whatever lair they’re crawling out of is nearby and can hopefully located and cleansed. The town itself resembles a small Zalan fort rather than a proper Retlad town, as a sturdy wall has been erected around it. The people seem to look a little more hopeful though. Tylir goes on to say that he thinks that the Retlad citizens are actually starting to prefer Zalan presence especially since their on government has been pretty ineffectual about the whole invasion. The Retlad army has only focused on defending the capitol. The Retlad royals appear to find their lives more important than anyone else’s. Eventually you’re brought before Captain Vahlat himself. He looks up from the map he’s inspecting and addresses you and Wessel. “Ah, I see the Empire has seen fit to send me reinforcements…wow, twice as many as I thought I’d get. Private Tylir where’s the rest of your squad?” “Um…dead sir.” “Of course. (sigh) So what’s your problem private? Why is your leg wrapped up?” Vahlat asks you. “Got into a fight with the Quillars sir.” You answer. “Oh?” Tylir at this point interrupts and tells of what happened. Wessel looks like he wants to expand upon his deeds, but Vahlat’s appearance is a little imposing and he was already warned once, so he keeps his mouth shut. Vahlat soon addresses you again. “Well it would seem you two have already proven yourselves useful. A lot more useful that what passes for the Retlad army, but of course that isn’t hard. Wizard, I certainly hope you don’t intend to use this place as a chance to show off all the skills you learned in your fancy Nuro college. One of your predecessors did that as well, and as you can see he’s no longer here. As for you, I hope that you can do a better job of keeping out of the way of the quills next time. Most don’t get a second chance. Alright that’s all for now. Our group is being housed for free at the Inn down the street. Free food as well, but don’t go overboard, its being rationed. You want more food or anything else you’ll have to pay like everyone else. I suggest though that you don’t do any heavy carousing. This is a high alert situation and we could be going to battle at anytime. Dismissed.” You, Wessel and Tylir all leave at this point. Tylir goes on to show you where the Inn is and a couple of other places, but after today you just want to rest and retire to your room early. You rest your leg and begin practicing your lute. This puts you in better spirits. 6 months pass… The Quillar invasion has nearly been eradicated. Most of the major lairs have been located and cleansed and you certainly contributed greatly to this effort. Besides your combat abilities, your tracking skills definitely came in handy a lot. You’ve become somewhat recognized among Retlad citizens due to your actions and the lives you’ve saved. The word “hero” has been used a few times though you definitely don’t think of yourself as one. In your free time you spoke with the citizens, a lot more than your fellow soldiers though. A few of them even convinced you to play for them when they noticed your lute. It took a little prodding, but eventually you gave in fully expecting to get booed, but to your surprise, you got applauded instead. Your playing didn’t just boost your spirits it seemed. Whenever you could you played a little bit for people in what little free time you had. Never did you think that you’d be playing for any kind of audience, let alone an appreciative one. It definitely hasn’t been all sunshine though; you’ve seen a lot of people die. More than you ever wanted to actually. You’d made friends with Tylir shortly after your first meeting and he died only a couple months later. You’ll be glad when every one of these Quillar creatures are all dead though, all they’ve done is cause misery. You’ve got them on the run now though. You’re preparing for an attack on another one of their lairs, when Captain Vahlat calls everyone to see him, he doesn’t look enthusiastic about whatever it is he has to tell you. “All right I’ll be brief. As much as I hate leaving a mission unfinished, we’re getting pulled out of here effective immediately. Major news is that Nuro has undergone a fucking disaster that needs to be put down like yesterday! All governments friendly to the City State of Nuro that can spare the manpower are to send help. We would be one of those. I hope the Retlad army is just competent enough to finish up what we started in their own country.” Wessel immediately pipes up upon hearing about this revelation. “What happened in Nuro? What’s going on?!” “What’s going on? From what I’ve been told a whole bunch of your kind raised a shitload of undead and unleashed a bunch of hostile demons on the place! The entire city was overrun. Reports are already stating that small packs of demons are running around the nearby countryside. Most likely in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom. Not sure what that means with our border war with them, but I only see it getting bloodier around there. In any case, our job is to head to Nuro, before the undead start following suit. I hope you’re all ready for this, because this is going to be a lot different that fighting Quillars.” You look around and see a lot of fear wash over faces and rightly so. Necromancers have a bad history on your world. When you were little you still remember hearing the tales of the Great Lich Lord that existed centuries before you were even born. He almost took over the world. Those stories gave you nightmares as a kid. The possibility of having to face something remotely similar even on much smaller scale doesn’t make you feel too well. > You stay in the army Despite your fears, you’ve always had a sense of duty and responsibility, something that probably won’t ever completely go away due to how you grew up. You’re not running away, you did join to help provide for your family after all. Before your company packs up and leaves Retlad, you write a quick letter to your family and hand it off to a messenger. Many of the Retlad citizens aren’t too pleased to see you leave, but they don’t really have any say in the matter, just like you don’t. There isn’t much talking on the trip, though, everyone is pretty silent. Wessel however is doing enough for everyone. “I can’t believe something like this happened! Nuro was a beacon of enlightenment and well prepared for situations like this! I…can’t believe this didn’t occur without some sort of demonic influence. I’ll bet that Mr. Demar had something to do with this! I remember taking his class and he was always a creepy bastard. Before I could graduate I had to take his conjuration 101 class and he didn’t like me because I had made several logical arguments to as why that branch of magic should be outlawed altogether. And it’s obvious by what happened recently that I was right! Nevertheless I did all the required work in the class and I still got a B! Way to fuck up my perfect record! I get the same grade as some bumbling idiot who summoned up a Nurk Beast that he lost control over and bit off someone’s hand! Where is the fucking justice?” Once again, Wessel has turned the topic to focus on himself. Happily Captain Vahlat tells him to shut the fuck up. You’ll be near Nuro soon and your company makes camp for the night. While all of you are on edge from what will come tomorrow, someone finally says something. “Hey farmboy, play us a song on that thing.” “…what did you want to hear?” you ask, not expecting to be called to play under these circumstances. In fact it just occurred to you that you’ve never played for anyone in your company! You assume that they all knew that you did, but they just were never interested enough to stick around and listen to you before. “I dunno, play whatever it was you used to play for the Retlad citizens…it seemed to make them happy.” You pull out your lute and take a deep breath and start playing. At first you’re just concentrating on the strings and making sure you don’t mess anything up, but when you look up, you can see that everyone in the camp is listening intently to your music, even Wessel. Tensions seem to have decreased. It’s like a wave of calmness has struck the camp. You never believed your playing could have that much of an effect on people. Eventually the song ends and the Captain tells everyone who isn’t on watch to get some sleep. He then takes you aside. “Heard your playing…damn shame that you’re here. You really should be doing that instead.” Valhlat remarks. “I know.” “Hm. I know you joined mainly to help support your family.” “Yeah, I just hope I get to see them again.” “Bah, don’t start talking like that. I’ve seen you with a bow, you pluck that thing even better than that lute. You’ve been in battle before and survived, I see you doing it again.” “I sure hope so, its just I dunno…the undead…I’ve heard stories.” “Yeah, everyone’s heard the stories, but stories tend to be exaggerated. Now I dunno about what happened centuries ago, since I wasn’t there, but I HAVE fought the undead before. One of my first assignments was taking care of some minor undead incursion in a little village. Some asshole stumbled upon an ancient scroll and started reading the goddamn words on it out loud. They look a lot worse than they actually are. Most of the time they’re incredibly slow, and easily dispatched. Its mainly a psychological advantage from all the stories people have told about them that cause this quaking fear in most folks.” “Well I suppose, but what about the necromancers?” “Feh, they’re wizards and just like all the rest their arrogance is their undoing. Most of these so-called necromancers are half-assed ones that get killed by their own undead troops. Anyway, get to sleep; you want to be fully alert for tomorrow’s battle. It still won’t be a walk in the park, but it’s not going to be a death sentence.” You take the Captain’s words into consideration, but in the back of your mind before you go to sleep, you’re thinking “But they can’t be that half-assed, they successfully took over Nuro…” The next day arrives and you finish your trip to Nuro and that’s when you see the city for the first time. You always wanted to visit it after hearing about it from Wessel, but even from this distance it doesn’t look like anything he described. “By the gods…what…” Wessel slowly whispers. The stench of death is thick in the air. You see thousands of bodies outside the city gates and they aren’t lying down either. They aren’t advancing either though. There just standing there like…well zombies. Your company isn’t the only one here though, there are a few others awaiting orders. You see one from the Brot Kingdom and another from the Azi Republic. Thankfully there’s another Zalan one as well to boost your numbers. The respective captains acknowledge each other’s presence, a short meeting is made and then the inevitable comes. The attack. At first things seem to go well. All ranged troops are ordered to fire upon the enemy who are still just standing there. Arrows pierce zombie brains, gunshots destroy skeleton bones, spells blast at walls and it seems very easy. Then from the battlements of Nuro a few figures begin casting a few offensive spells of their own. It’s at this point a charge is made towards the city. “When you get in range aim for the fucking wizards! Don’t fear these rotting meat sacks! We’re the fucking Zalan army! We don’t lose!” Captain Valhlat shouts. Fine words, but they do little to uplift your impending sense of doom. It doesn’t help that the sky goes completely dark while you’re marching towards a bunch of undead and at the same time hoping you don’t get hit by a wizard’s spell. In the distance you briefly see a cleric from the Azi Republic riding a horse by himself. He appears to be calling upon some sort of holy might from whatever god he worships since a blue protective sphere appears around him. The next moment he’s hit by a black ray that goes straight through the sphere and his life is gone. Not even his god could protect him. As you get closer, you see that the undead soldiers still haven’t moved, but there are significantly less of them as they continue to fall from ranged attacks. However, now other undead pop up on the walls of Nuro holding bows of their own. “SHIELDS!” Captain Valhlat shouts. More of your side falls and now you’re so close you can smell the death in the air. The undead troops are now finally moving to do battle with your side. You attempt to target the robed figures on the battlements, but of course it’s very difficult in all this chaos and your fear. You mostly only get the undead archers. Wessel is a little more successful is downing an enemy wizard. “Ha ha! Don’t you realize I graduated top of my class?!” you hear him shout. The gates of Nuro are being broken down and despite the horror you’ve already seen, this battle still seems hopeful. Then a black cloaked hooded figure sudden appears on the battlements. You see him merely raise his arms briefly and that’s when you get the very real feeling that hope is lost. Ghostly spirits come through the walls of Nuro making worse shrieks than when you fought the Quillars. At least they were living creatures. These drain lives at but a touch and there isn’t enough magic to fight the incorporeal creatures properly. You see the Brot Kingdom’s company break and run, but unfortunately for them and you, your possible retreat has been blocked. All the soldiers on your side that fell have now suddenly been raised, the undead soldiers that were killed have been raised as well. You’re fighting in the front, from behind and in some cases from within. It’s chaos. “Shit, I’m going to die today…” you whisper to yourself. Captain Valhlat is knee deep in the dead, but this figure who’s apparently changed the tide of battle hasn’t escaped his attention. He points to the figure and barks orders at the top of his lungs. “KILL HIM! SHOOT THE FUCKER! DO IT! NOW!” > You attempt to shoot the figure You’re scared shitless, but somehow you manage to maintain your composure and aim for the hooded figure on top of the battlements. You let an arrow fly and your aim is straight and true, but unfortunately it’s blocked by some sort of magical shield. Even Wessel’s spell dissipates before it. Now you see that all hope is lost and you attempt to escape, but the precious few seconds you spent aiming your bow on a fruitless killing attempt has resulted in you being surrounded and overwhelmed. You feel the rusty steel of a sword plunge into your side, followed by extreme pain. You turn to strike down the grinning skeleton warrior who’s just limited your life span. You strike a couple more corpses before you’re brought down by an axe to the skull, splitting your head open and causing your brains to leak out uselessly into the now blood soaked battlefield. You fall and die, only to rise again as just another zombie drone for the growing undead army.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Despite your fears, you’ve always had a sense of duty and responsibility, something that probably won’t ever completely go away due to how you grew up. You’re not running away, you did join to help provide for your family after all. Before your company packs up and leaves Retlad, you write a quick letter to your family and hand it off to a messenger. Many of the Retlad citizens aren’t too pleased to see you leave, but they don’t really have any say in the matter, just like you don’t. There isn’t much talking on the trip, though, everyone is pretty silent. Wessel however is doing enough for everyone. “I can’t believe something like this happened! Nuro was a beacon of enlightenment and well prepared for situations like this! I…can’t believe this didn’t occur without some sort of demonic influence. I’ll bet that Mr. Demar had something to do with this! I remember taking his class and he was always a creepy bastard. Before I could graduate I had to take his conjuration 101 class and he didn’t like me because I had made several logical arguments to as why that branch of magic should be outlawed altogether. And it’s obvious by what happened recently that I was right! Nevertheless I did all the required work in the class and I still got a B! Way to fuck up my perfect record! I get the same grade as some bumbling idiot who summoned up a Nurk Beast that he lost control over and bit off someone’s hand! Where is the fucking justice?” Once again, Wessel has turned the topic to focus on himself. Happily Captain Vahlat tells him to shut the fuck up. You’ll be near Nuro soon and your company makes camp for the night. While all of you are on edge from what will come tomorrow, someone finally says something. “Hey farmboy, play us a song on that thing.” “…what did you want to hear?” you ask, not expecting to be called to play under these circumstances. In fact it just occurred to you that you’ve never played for anyone in your company! You assume that they all knew that you did, but they just were never interested enough to stick around and listen to you before. “I dunno, play whatever it was you used to play for the Retlad citizens…it seemed to make them happy.” You pull out your lute and take a deep breath and start playing. At first you’re just concentrating on the strings and making sure you don’t mess anything up, but when you look up, you can see that everyone in the camp is listening intently to your music, even Wessel. Tensions seem to have decreased. It’s like a wave of calmness has struck the camp. You never believed your playing could have that much of an effect on people. Eventually the song ends and the Captain tells everyone who isn’t on watch to get some sleep. He then takes you aside. “Heard your playing…damn shame that you’re here. You really should be doing that instead.” Valhlat remarks. “I know.” “Hm. I know you joined mainly to help support your family.” “Yeah, I just hope I get to see them again.” “Bah, don’t start talking like that. I’ve seen you with a bow, you pluck that thing even better than that lute. You’ve been in battle before and survived, I see you doing it again.” “I sure hope so, its just I dunno…the undead…I’ve heard stories.” “Yeah, everyone’s heard the stories, but stories tend to be exaggerated. Now I dunno about what happened centuries ago, since I wasn’t there, but I HAVE fought the undead before. One of my first assignments was taking care of some minor undead incursion in a little village. Some asshole stumbled upon an ancient scroll and started reading the goddamn words on it out loud. They look a lot worse than they actually are. Most of the time they’re incredibly slow, and easily dispatched. Its mainly a psychological advantage from all the stories people have told about them that cause this quaking fear in most folks.” “Well I suppose, but what about the necromancers?” “Feh, they’re wizards and just like all the rest their arrogance is their undoing. Most of these so-called necromancers are half-assed ones that get killed by their own undead troops. Anyway, get to sleep; you want to be fully alert for tomorrow’s battle. It still won’t be a walk in the park, but it’s not going to be a death sentence.” You take the Captain’s words into consideration, but in the back of your mind before you go to sleep, you’re thinking “But they can’t be that half-assed, they successfully took over Nuro…” The next day arrives and you finish your trip to Nuro and that’s when you see the city for the first time. You always wanted to visit it after hearing about it from Wessel, but even from this distance it doesn’t look like anything he described. “By the gods…what…” Wessel slowly whispers. The stench of death is thick in the air. You see thousands of bodies outside the city gates and they aren’t lying down either. They aren’t advancing either though. There just standing there like…well zombies. Your company isn’t the only one here though, there are a few others awaiting orders. You see one from the Brot Kingdom and another from the Azi Republic. Thankfully there’s another Zalan one as well to boost your numbers. The respective captains acknowledge each other’s presence, a short meeting is made and then the inevitable comes. The attack. At first things seem to go well. All ranged troops are ordered to fire upon the enemy who are still just standing there. Arrows pierce zombie brains, gunshots destroy skeleton bones, spells blast at walls and it seems very easy. Then from the battlements of Nuro a few figures begin casting a few offensive spells of their own. It’s at this point a charge is made towards the city. “When you get in range aim for the fucking wizards! Don’t fear these rotting meat sacks! We’re the fucking Zalan army! We don’t lose!” Captain Valhlat shouts. Fine words, but they do little to uplift your impending sense of doom. It doesn’t help that the sky goes completely dark while you’re marching towards a bunch of undead and at the same time hoping you don’t get hit by a wizard’s spell. In the distance you briefly see a cleric from the Azi Republic riding a horse by himself. He appears to be calling upon some sort of holy might from whatever god he worships since a blue protective sphere appears around him. The next moment he’s hit by a black ray that goes straight through the sphere and his life is gone. Not even his god could protect him. As you get closer, you see that the undead soldiers still haven’t moved, but there are significantly less of them as they continue to fall from ranged attacks. However, now other undead pop up on the walls of Nuro holding bows of their own. “SHIELDS!” Captain Valhlat shouts. More of your side falls and now you’re so close you can smell the death in the air. The undead troops are now finally moving to do battle with your side. You attempt to target the robed figures on the battlements, but of course it’s very difficult in all this chaos and your fear. You mostly only get the undead archers. Wessel is a little more successful is downing an enemy wizard. “Ha ha! Don’t you realize I graduated top of my class?!” you hear him shout. The gates of Nuro are being broken down and despite the horror you’ve already seen, this battle still seems hopeful. Then a black cloaked hooded figure sudden appears on the battlements. You see him merely raise his arms briefly and that’s when you get the very real feeling that hope is lost. Ghostly spirits come through the walls of Nuro making worse shrieks than when you fought the Quillars. At least they were living creatures. These drain lives at but a touch and there isn’t enough magic to fight the incorporeal creatures properly. You see the Brot Kingdom’s company break and run, but unfortunately for them and you, your possible retreat has been blocked. All the soldiers on your side that fell have now suddenly been raised, the undead soldiers that were killed have been raised as well. You’re fighting in the front, from behind and in some cases from within. It’s chaos. “Shit, I’m going to die today…” you whisper to yourself. Captain Valhlat is knee deep in the dead, but this figure who’s apparently changed the tide of battle hasn’t escaped his attention. He points to the figure and barks orders at the top of his lungs. “KILL HIM! SHOOT THE FUCKER! DO IT! NOW!” > You run away There’s undead all around you, fear coursing through your body and all you can think of is escape. You see a few others following orders, but their shots do nothing. Apparently the Necromancer has protected himself behind a more powerful magic shield than the cleric you saw die had. Even Wessel’s spell dissipates before it. You ignore your orders, you ignore your fellow soldiers, you ignore the attack on Nuro, and you run and you’re not a bit ashamed to put your survival first. The chaos of the fighting is bewildering and you don’t really pay attention to what direction you’re heading, you’re just making a beeline to any destination not completely filled with zombies, ghosts, and skeletons. You look back, only to see more death. The hooded figure on top of the battlements calls down some sort of death cloud that begins to envelop the area you were previously in. The screams of the distant victims are horrible. You feel like you’re living a nightmare as you constantly bump into corpses, both moving and unmoving. Defensive chops with your sword do nothing to kill the unnatural creatures and only temporarily push them out of your way. It is only by sheer luck that you get away without getting killed. You run further, leaving the carnage behind. You look back again to see if anything is in pursuit, but nothing is to your relief. Still, you’re not comfortable and you continue to distance yourself until you can run no further and you must stop to rest. It is at this point, you wonder what you’re going to do. You wonder if going back to report to the nearest Zalan commander would be wise. Will they punish you for running away? The situation was hopeless, surely they couldn’t...could they? And even if they don’t, then what? Send you back in? That’s definitely not appealing given what you’ve seen. At this point you’re really regretting your decision to join the army. You wish you could just leave. You want to go home. Going AWOL back in Retlad wasn’t really an option; you would’ve been hunted down. But now? You probably would be listed as a casualty. You could theoretically disappear and attempt to live anonymously and do what you wanted to do in the first place. Just travel and play. Your family would even be compensated for your death, but still…you’d hate to put them through the grief of it, if it isn’t true. Before you ponder your future options any further, you suddenly feel a pain in your side…you look down and see that you’re bleeding. Apparently you were stabbed and didn’t even realize it due to the adrenaline. You’re feeling the pain now though and you attempt to stop the bleeding as much as you can. Regardless of what you’re going to do in the future, right now you have to find civilization to at least get fixed up. The problem is that you don’t know where the hell you are. You look around for some possible landmarks, but you’re not seeing anything familiar. Lacking any other ideas, you start walking in the general direction of where you think the Zalan Empire is located. You walk for a few hours and the pain is getting worse. You start thinking that you might not get the chance to worry anymore about your potential future, but a farm house in the distance gives you a little hope and you press on. You get close to the front porch and that’s when you stop. The front door is broken off its hinges and a few windows are also broken. You also notice a leg lying in the grass near you. Worse, whatever did this is apparently still around judging by the loud voices you’re hearing from inside. “Ha ha! Human women are such squealers! Not as much fun as elven women though!” “Oh that’s real original. Why is everyone always got such a fucking hard on for elven women? Too damn fragile if you ask me.” “Go fucking rape a troll girl then.” “Huh. Easier said than done my unimaginative friend. I tried that once and almost got married.” “HAHAHAHA! See I told you this would be more fun than following Velzix…hey you smell that?” “Yes, I did sense the smell of fresh human blood in the air. Do you suppose we missed one?” “Only one way to find out!” At this point you start to back away as quickly as you can. You can’t even run due to the pain, but you try your best. Your best isn’t good enough though, as the dwellers of the farmhouse have exited and seen you. And as with everything that’s been fucked up today, the ones that just exited the farmhouse happen to be demons. One is a bigger brutish looking sort, while the other is smaller yet definitely still more muscular than you. “Well what do we have here? Wounded meat? I say he gets to that rock before you can catch him and pull out his heart.” “Hah! I’ll take that bet!” The bigger one starts to walk towards you, but will undoubtedly quicken his pace soon. > You try to outrun the demon Fear griping your heart, you struggle and push yourself to run as fast as you can in your condition. Soon something else is gripping your heart. You look down at your chest and see your bloody still beating heart outside of where it is normally supposed to be. The demon fist holding it squeezes your heart a bit first before crushing it completely before your eyes. You die soon afterwards. “Hah! I told you I could reach him before he got to the rock!” the demon laughs as he lets his arm slide out of your dead slumping body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There’s undead all around you, fear coursing through your body and all you can think of is escape. You see a few others following orders, but their shots do nothing. Apparently the Necromancer has protected himself behind a more powerful magic shield than the cleric you saw die had. Even Wessel’s spell dissipates before it. You ignore your orders, you ignore your fellow soldiers, you ignore the attack on Nuro, and you run and you’re not a bit ashamed to put your survival first. The chaos of the fighting is bewildering and you don’t really pay attention to what direction you’re heading, you’re just making a beeline to any destination not completely filled with zombies, ghosts, and skeletons. You look back, only to see more death. The hooded figure on top of the battlements calls down some sort of death cloud that begins to envelop the area you were previously in. The screams of the distant victims are horrible. You feel like you’re living a nightmare as you constantly bump into corpses, both moving and unmoving. Defensive chops with your sword do nothing to kill the unnatural creatures and only temporarily push them out of your way. It is only by sheer luck that you get away without getting killed. You run further, leaving the carnage behind. You look back again to see if anything is in pursuit, but nothing is to your relief. Still, you’re not comfortable and you continue to distance yourself until you can run no further and you must stop to rest. It is at this point, you wonder what you’re going to do. You wonder if going back to report to the nearest Zalan commander would be wise. Will they punish you for running away? The situation was hopeless, surely they couldn’t...could they? And even if they don’t, then what? Send you back in? That’s definitely not appealing given what you’ve seen. At this point you’re really regretting your decision to join the army. You wish you could just leave. You want to go home. Going AWOL back in Retlad wasn’t really an option; you would’ve been hunted down. But now? You probably would be listed as a casualty. You could theoretically disappear and attempt to live anonymously and do what you wanted to do in the first place. Just travel and play. Your family would even be compensated for your death, but still…you’d hate to put them through the grief of it, if it isn’t true. Before you ponder your future options any further, you suddenly feel a pain in your side…you look down and see that you’re bleeding. Apparently you were stabbed and didn’t even realize it due to the adrenaline. You’re feeling the pain now though and you attempt to stop the bleeding as much as you can. Regardless of what you’re going to do in the future, right now you have to find civilization to at least get fixed up. The problem is that you don’t know where the hell you are. You look around for some possible landmarks, but you’re not seeing anything familiar. Lacking any other ideas, you start walking in the general direction of where you think the Zalan Empire is located. You walk for a few hours and the pain is getting worse. You start thinking that you might not get the chance to worry anymore about your potential future, but a farm house in the distance gives you a little hope and you press on. You get close to the front porch and that’s when you stop. The front door is broken off its hinges and a few windows are also broken. You also notice a leg lying in the grass near you. Worse, whatever did this is apparently still around judging by the loud voices you’re hearing from inside. “Ha ha! Human women are such squealers! Not as much fun as elven women though!” “Oh that’s real original. Why is everyone always got such a fucking hard on for elven women? Too damn fragile if you ask me.” “Go fucking rape a troll girl then.” “Huh. Easier said than done my unimaginative friend. I tried that once and almost got married.” “HAHAHAHA! See I told you this would be more fun than following Velzix…hey you smell that?” “Yes, I did sense the smell of fresh human blood in the air. Do you suppose we missed one?” “Only one way to find out!” At this point you start to back away as quickly as you can. You can’t even run due to the pain, but you try your best. Your best isn’t good enough though, as the dwellers of the farmhouse have exited and seen you. And as with everything that’s been fucked up today, the ones that just exited the farmhouse happen to be demons. One is a bigger brutish looking sort, while the other is smaller yet definitely still more muscular than you. “Well what do we have here? Wounded meat? I say he gets to that rock before you can catch him and pull out his heart.” “Hah! I’ll take that bet!” The bigger one starts to walk towards you, but will undoubtedly quicken his pace soon. > You stand and fight Demons are a lot faster than the undead and you’re wounded, no way are you going to be able to outrun them. You turn around and draw your bow, trying to ignore your pain which is overriding any fear you have at this point. Your weakened state is causing you to have a hard time aiming. “Uh oh, better be careful, looks like this one is going to put up a fight. I’d say by his uniform that he’s a soldier.” “Hur hur. Good. Hey human, better stop wobbling if you’re going to aim that thing properly.” You miss the demon completely. “Hah! You want me to walk slower human?” ”You sure you should be playing with him like that? Don’t you remember what happened earlier today?” “Shut up! I told ya, that bitch musta had some magical powers because…OW!” You hit the demon in the chest, but it doesn’t seem much damage. He pulls out the arrow and now begins to quicken his pace. The other demon starts to walk towards you as well. “See, I told you to pay attention.” “Bah! If this is the extent of what his little pig sticker can do, I’m not concerned. Hey human, don’t you know they’re doing great things with gunpower these days? RAAAAGH!” The big demon suddenly charges you, and you let your arrow fly. Right in the eye. “Perfect.” You whisper. The demon bellows, but it doesn’t slow him down. You narrowly dodge his charge. You roll on the ground and shoot two more arrows in his back. He turns around snarling and bellowing for your blood. More arrows fly into the creature, but at last the demon has reached you and smacks you to the ground. Your bow flies from your hand, and while crawling on the ground you try to draw your sword, but a crushing blow hits you on the back. This might’ve caused a lot more damage, but miraculously the lute that’s still in your pack “softens” the blow. The crunching of wood signifies that it’s broken though. “What the fuck, that’s a weird noise…what is this? HA HA HA! Hey! You gotta be shittin’ me! A fuckin’ lute? Check this out! He’s carrying a fuckin’ lute! What’s a fucking soldier doin’ with a lute?” the big demon shouts to his acquaintance while he holds up your broken instrument. “Don’t talk you idiot! LOOK OUT!” his acquaintance shouts, just as you recover long enough to shove your sword straight into the demon’s groin. You push the sword upward in an attempt to do more damage and you succeed. Blood is flying everywhere and the demon howls in pain from the grievous wound. You pull your sword out and then proceed to repeatedly stab the demon until it falls backwards on the ground, dead. You’re exhausted; you used all your remaining strength killing the thing. Unfortunately the other demon grabs you by the scruff like a helpless kitten and lifts you up off the ground a few inches. He knocks your sword out of your hand and looks at his fallen comrade. “Hmm, can’t say I didn’t warn him. Oh well, more meat for me. This may hurt a lot…” Fully expecting the death that you’ve managed to avoid for so long, you once again evade it when a gunshot rings out and part of the demon’s head splatters in your face. You’re dropped immediately. The demon’s body is still standing though. “Shoot the bastard again!” you hear a gruff voice shout and this time the next shot hits chest and the demon falls. You lay motionless on the ground, looking up in the sky when your saviors come up to you. It’s a group of dwarves armed with gun powder weapons. “By the gods, get doc out here! We need to fix this man up! Hey lad, you’ll be alright, don’t worry…are you a Zalan soldier?” one of the dwarves asks you. “…yeah…Nuro…lost…all dead…” is all you utter before fall into unconsciousness. A few days pass before you’re somewhat back to a coherent state. You find yourself in a military outpost and at this point you don’t care. You’re just happy to be alive. It would seem that during your escape from Nuro, you ran in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom, the dwarven scouts that found you were from a small neutral kingdom trying its best to stay out of the dispute between Tulan and Zalan, but the new threat of demons running all over the nearby countryside caused them to increase patrols. They fixed you up, but dropped you off at the closest Zalan Fort. The Zalan fort that you’re in right now is called Virtue and it’s on the Tulan border. It seems relatively calm though. Not at all what you thought it would be. When one of the healers comes in to check on you, you begin to ask questions which she tries to answer to get you up to speed. The Tulan Kingdom is currently under attack from the demons now. They’ve been assaulting the place and even gaining help from some of the evil populace there. The demon citizens there have reverted back to their “bad behavior” and thrown their lot in with the invaders as well. That doesn’t surprise you. The Tulan Kingdom pulled back some of their military from the borders so the fighting hasn’t been as bad and Zalan’s made a little more progress during this time, but the military minds are being cautious not to over extend. There is extreme concern over the recent demon invasion, not to mention the incident at Nuro. Word has already spread about the unsuccessful siege there. The healer also tells you that a few Zalan “high ups” are eager to speak to you soon, as they want to know what exactly happened at Nuro. You’re somewhat of an important survivor since as far as anyone knows; you were the only one to successfully escape that killing zone. There’s also talk of a “Grand Alliance” being created to counter these new threats. While the healer talks you end up drifting back to sleep wishing you could just escape it all. One year passes… You’re still at Fort Virtue and it doesn’t look like you’ll be leaving the army anytime soon. You couldn’t have been more wrong on your belief that you’d get executed for cowardice. You got promoted to sergeant instead, which in light of the current situation, is nearly the same thing. Your promotion came after several Zalan officers spoke to you about Nuro. You even got a medal. Stories and rumors creep around about how against all odds you survived an undead onslaught and fought off a bunch of demons as well. Your past “reputation” from your time in Retlad is exaggerated as well. It doesn’t help that the citizens there remember you and are all willing to add to the exaggeration. All of these stories have been woven together in such an elaborate way to make you seem like some kind of hero most likely for propaganda purposes. And you know you’re not hero. In fact you try to explain you aren’t a hero to people, but they think you’re just being modest, eventually you give up. Your assignment at Virtue hasn’t been uneventful. There’s fighting, but now it’s mainly demon commanded enemies rather than Tulan ones. Some demon lord called Velzix killed the royalty there, completely conquered the area and made it his realm. The border war continues under new management except now it’s more than just a border that the enemy is looking to take. Your superior, Captain Eckard reminds you of Valhlat except with a different name. You suppose there is a certain “cookie cutter” that occurs within the Zalan army that causes people to act the same. You’ve briefly wondered if you ever make that rank, you’ll act the same way. You then usually laugh at the very fact that you ever would. Fort Virtue hasn’t suffered a really bad attack yet, and it’s mostly skirmishes, but it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You routinely go on patrols and give orders which you didn’t think you’d be good at, but you think back to how you used to order your brothers and sisters around and perhaps you always had a bit a leadership skill, you just didn’t want it. You thought that you’d be able to at least visit your family, but of course due to recent events, you’re ordered to stay put. Your family at least is getting more money from your pay increase. They even send a new lute for you after you told them of the unfortunate event that resulted in the destruction of your last one. This gives you a little pleasure in a relatively joyless assignment. All in all, you still prefer it compared to being in the unsuccessful assaults on Nuro. The Grand Alliance that was formed hasn’t been too successful as every one has been a slaughter from what you’ve heard. You already went through that once. You don’t relish the idea of going through it again. One day while you’re spending your free time practicing a new song, some new soldiers come into the fort. They look like they’ve just seen a vicious battle and are here to restock. One of them sees you and gives you a disapproving look. It’s a woman with striking good looks, but definitely carrying an air of leadership about her. Her rank signifies her as a captain…yep same cookie cutter, just a little prettier. “You there! What are you doing playing an instrument? Shouldn’t you be on watch or doing something more constructive with your time soldier? And you’re a sergeant? You should know better!” “I’m not on watch duty right now and…” The woman doesn’t even let you finish your explanation. Other soldiers that were sitting in your area are now slowly creeping out of the fray. Even her own soldiers are creeping away. They probably know all too well of how she acts. “So? You think evil is going to wait around for you to be ready for battle? Where is your superior officer? I can’t believe they would allow such a relaxed attitude around here considering the importance of this fort! If you were serving under me, I’d have you flogged for your lack of discipline!” > You point her in the direction of your captain Shrugging your shoulders you point her in the direction of Captain Eckard to which she immediately marches off to. You don’t think anything will come of it though. You do your job and Eckard’s always been alright with you for the most part. At most you’ll get him yelling at you for getting into a conflict with a superior officer. Your thoughts are wrong however. When the female captain confronts Eckard, she and he end up getting into a greater argument. Apparently they’ve been minor rivals in the past and this “lack of discipline” displayed by you just fuels her arguments that he isn’t a fit for commanding a fort. She eventually leaves in a huff with her men, but still arguing with Eckard and saying that she’ll see that he’s relieved of his command and replaced with someone more competent. Captain Eckard is also now pissed at you for bringing this on him, he takes your lute away, breaks it and tells you that you won’t be playing anymore and if he catches you doing it again he’ll have you whipped. A few months pass as normal, but then the other boot finally drops. Whatever connections the female Captain had she’s used them, and Captain Eckard is demoted and transferred out of the fort along with some of the others who seemed to be “disciplinary problems”. Guess who’s name showed up on that list? You’re all transferred to areas where the fighting is a lot worse. You are sent to the Nuro front much to your dismay. Once again you’re fighting hordes of undead on a mass scale. Never having fully gotten over your first conflict at Nuro, your nerves and well being in general is always on the verge of breaking with each skirmish and battle. You don’t even have your music to keep you in a calm state of mind anymore either. It’s actually amazing you survive. You soon hear about how the Grand Alliance outsted a necromancer called Trelik from the Brot Kingdom. That makes you feel somewhat better, but that hopefulness is soon brought low when you hear about the successful attack on Brot that happens soon afterwards. A Necromancer from Nuro reportedly conquered the entire Kingdom with undead giants. Your morale is further lowered when you hear that your company is being sent to help the Grand Alliance take it back again. When you actually see the dead monstrosities, your fragile will shatters completely. When the battle commences, you’re just about useless in battle. Your dumb luck also runs out and you’re unable to fight or even retreat your way out of this one. The undead giants might be big, but they’re also faster than what they appear to be. One of them charges into your company line which at this point is trying to get out of the way and swings his club striking several. You being among them. You eventually land several feet away from the main part of the fighting, broken and bloody. You’re unable to move and just quietly moan in pain until you bleed out and die from your extensive wounds. You’re not even useful for the Necromancer to raise for his ever growing army.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Demons are a lot faster than the undead and you’re wounded, no way are you going to be able to outrun them. You turn around and draw your bow, trying to ignore your pain which is overriding any fear you have at this point. Your weakened state is causing you to have a hard time aiming. “Uh oh, better be careful, looks like this one is going to put up a fight. I’d say by his uniform that he’s a soldier.” “Hur hur. Good. Hey human, better stop wobbling if you’re going to aim that thing properly.” You miss the demon completely. “Hah! You want me to walk slower human?” ”You sure you should be playing with him like that? Don’t you remember what happened earlier today?” “Shut up! I told ya, that bitch musta had some magical powers because…OW!” You hit the demon in the chest, but it doesn’t seem much damage. He pulls out the arrow and now begins to quicken his pace. The other demon starts to walk towards you as well. “See, I told you to pay attention.” “Bah! If this is the extent of what his little pig sticker can do, I’m not concerned. Hey human, don’t you know they’re doing great things with gunpower these days? RAAAAGH!” The big demon suddenly charges you, and you let your arrow fly. Right in the eye. “Perfect.” You whisper. The demon bellows, but it doesn’t slow him down. You narrowly dodge his charge. You roll on the ground and shoot two more arrows in his back. He turns around snarling and bellowing for your blood. More arrows fly into the creature, but at last the demon has reached you and smacks you to the ground. Your bow flies from your hand, and while crawling on the ground you try to draw your sword, but a crushing blow hits you on the back. This might’ve caused a lot more damage, but miraculously the lute that’s still in your pack “softens” the blow. The crunching of wood signifies that it’s broken though. “What the fuck, that’s a weird noise…what is this? HA HA HA! Hey! You gotta be shittin’ me! A fuckin’ lute? Check this out! He’s carrying a fuckin’ lute! What’s a fucking soldier doin’ with a lute?” the big demon shouts to his acquaintance while he holds up your broken instrument. “Don’t talk you idiot! LOOK OUT!” his acquaintance shouts, just as you recover long enough to shove your sword straight into the demon’s groin. You push the sword upward in an attempt to do more damage and you succeed. Blood is flying everywhere and the demon howls in pain from the grievous wound. You pull your sword out and then proceed to repeatedly stab the demon until it falls backwards on the ground, dead. You’re exhausted; you used all your remaining strength killing the thing. Unfortunately the other demon grabs you by the scruff like a helpless kitten and lifts you up off the ground a few inches. He knocks your sword out of your hand and looks at his fallen comrade. “Hmm, can’t say I didn’t warn him. Oh well, more meat for me. This may hurt a lot…” Fully expecting the death that you’ve managed to avoid for so long, you once again evade it when a gunshot rings out and part of the demon’s head splatters in your face. You’re dropped immediately. The demon’s body is still standing though. “Shoot the bastard again!” you hear a gruff voice shout and this time the next shot hits chest and the demon falls. You lay motionless on the ground, looking up in the sky when your saviors come up to you. It’s a group of dwarves armed with gun powder weapons. “By the gods, get doc out here! We need to fix this man up! Hey lad, you’ll be alright, don’t worry…are you a Zalan soldier?” one of the dwarves asks you. “…yeah…Nuro…lost…all dead…” is all you utter before fall into unconsciousness. A few days pass before you’re somewhat back to a coherent state. You find yourself in a military outpost and at this point you don’t care. You’re just happy to be alive. It would seem that during your escape from Nuro, you ran in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom, the dwarven scouts that found you were from a small neutral kingdom trying its best to stay out of the dispute between Tulan and Zalan, but the new threat of demons running all over the nearby countryside caused them to increase patrols. They fixed you up, but dropped you off at the closest Zalan Fort. The Zalan fort that you’re in right now is called Virtue and it’s on the Tulan border. It seems relatively calm though. Not at all what you thought it would be. When one of the healers comes in to check on you, you begin to ask questions which she tries to answer to get you up to speed. The Tulan Kingdom is currently under attack from the demons now. They’ve been assaulting the place and even gaining help from some of the evil populace there. The demon citizens there have reverted back to their “bad behavior” and thrown their lot in with the invaders as well. That doesn’t surprise you. The Tulan Kingdom pulled back some of their military from the borders so the fighting hasn’t been as bad and Zalan’s made a little more progress during this time, but the military minds are being cautious not to over extend. There is extreme concern over the recent demon invasion, not to mention the incident at Nuro. Word has already spread about the unsuccessful siege there. The healer also tells you that a few Zalan “high ups” are eager to speak to you soon, as they want to know what exactly happened at Nuro. You’re somewhat of an important survivor since as far as anyone knows; you were the only one to successfully escape that killing zone. There’s also talk of a “Grand Alliance” being created to counter these new threats. While the healer talks you end up drifting back to sleep wishing you could just escape it all. One year passes… You’re still at Fort Virtue and it doesn’t look like you’ll be leaving the army anytime soon. You couldn’t have been more wrong on your belief that you’d get executed for cowardice. You got promoted to sergeant instead, which in light of the current situation, is nearly the same thing. Your promotion came after several Zalan officers spoke to you about Nuro. You even got a medal. Stories and rumors creep around about how against all odds you survived an undead onslaught and fought off a bunch of demons as well. Your past “reputation” from your time in Retlad is exaggerated as well. It doesn’t help that the citizens there remember you and are all willing to add to the exaggeration. All of these stories have been woven together in such an elaborate way to make you seem like some kind of hero most likely for propaganda purposes. And you know you’re not hero. In fact you try to explain you aren’t a hero to people, but they think you’re just being modest, eventually you give up. Your assignment at Virtue hasn’t been uneventful. There’s fighting, but now it’s mainly demon commanded enemies rather than Tulan ones. Some demon lord called Velzix killed the royalty there, completely conquered the area and made it his realm. The border war continues under new management except now it’s more than just a border that the enemy is looking to take. Your superior, Captain Eckard reminds you of Valhlat except with a different name. You suppose there is a certain “cookie cutter” that occurs within the Zalan army that causes people to act the same. You’ve briefly wondered if you ever make that rank, you’ll act the same way. You then usually laugh at the very fact that you ever would. Fort Virtue hasn’t suffered a really bad attack yet, and it’s mostly skirmishes, but it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You routinely go on patrols and give orders which you didn’t think you’d be good at, but you think back to how you used to order your brothers and sisters around and perhaps you always had a bit a leadership skill, you just didn’t want it. You thought that you’d be able to at least visit your family, but of course due to recent events, you’re ordered to stay put. Your family at least is getting more money from your pay increase. They even send a new lute for you after you told them of the unfortunate event that resulted in the destruction of your last one. This gives you a little pleasure in a relatively joyless assignment. All in all, you still prefer it compared to being in the unsuccessful assaults on Nuro. The Grand Alliance that was formed hasn’t been too successful as every one has been a slaughter from what you’ve heard. You already went through that once. You don’t relish the idea of going through it again. One day while you’re spending your free time practicing a new song, some new soldiers come into the fort. They look like they’ve just seen a vicious battle and are here to restock. One of them sees you and gives you a disapproving look. It’s a woman with striking good looks, but definitely carrying an air of leadership about her. Her rank signifies her as a captain…yep same cookie cutter, just a little prettier. “You there! What are you doing playing an instrument? Shouldn’t you be on watch or doing something more constructive with your time soldier? And you’re a sergeant? You should know better!” “I’m not on watch duty right now and…” The woman doesn’t even let you finish your explanation. Other soldiers that were sitting in your area are now slowly creeping out of the fray. Even her own soldiers are creeping away. They probably know all too well of how she acts. “So? You think evil is going to wait around for you to be ready for battle? Where is your superior officer? I can’t believe they would allow such a relaxed attitude around here considering the importance of this fort! If you were serving under me, I’d have you flogged for your lack of discipline!” > You argue with her You’ve served in this army well and always done your job regardless of the shitty situations you’ve been in. You might not like a lot of it, but you’ve never complained. Lately you’ve been on edge about a possible all out assault of some big ass demon army that’s going to attack any day now, and playing is one of the few pleasures you have to put your mind at ease. Perhaps it’s a combination of this and a combination of this unwanted and unnecessary scolding that causes you to speak out of turn. “With all due respect ma’am, I am fully prepared to battle at a moment’s notice and so are those under my direct command. But even soldiers need to rest, if only for a minute.” The woman looks very surprised you didn’t comply with her demand to see your superior officer. “…you DARE speak out of turn like that to me? I’ll see you sent to the Nuro Front for that sort of insubordination! Then we’d see just how battle ready you are! How would you like that?” “I wouldn’t like it at all. I barely survived the first time.” You say trying not to express any fear. “…What? What are you talking about? First time?” Now you’re a little surprised she doesn’t know who you are considering how some of the high ups exaggerated about how you managed to survive. You explain yourself briefly and she doesn’t quite believe you at first, a couple of your troops hiding nearby at least back up your claims before slinking off. “That was YOU? What the hell are you doing here? You should be leading from the front not languishing in some fort that barely sees battle!” “Doesn’t see battle? We suffered a small demon raid last week! We see plenty of battle!” “What I mean is, somebody of your obvious combat and survival skills should be assigned on the front lines where you can do more good. Normally I don’t question Zalan command, but this is really an oversight on their part.” “Well maybe they know better than the both of us, besides this assignment isn’t a walk in the fairy fields. I think we’ll be suffering a grand scale attack any day now.” “Doubt it. Velzix has been having a hard time keeping his unruly mob together. If it wasn’t for a lot of the sycophantic Tulan citizens, he’d probably be confined to pure defense, though something will have to be done soon, reports say he’s attempting to gate in more demons everyday. Not to mention that supposedly civilized demons from other nations are starting to display their true colors and flock to his banner. Like I always said the only good demon is a dead one!” This causes you to smile a bit and she very faintly smiles back when she sees that you feel the same way. This smile disappears quickly though as she continues her rant. “I wish I wasn’t assigned to the Tulan Border though. I’d rather be taking Nuro back. THAT’S the more dangerous threat. The demons will kill themselves with their own chaotic and violent natures, but the undead…they’ve almost taken over the world before just because of one bastard that lead them. I never thought I’d see a serious threat like this in my lifetime, especially not…” The female captain at this point stops. She even looks away from you as if whatever she was going to say was just too much even for her. She seems to be a lot more battle hardened than you and probably ten times braver. You can’t imagine what horror she experienced that would be worse than your own, but you don’t find out since she changes the subject. “…Bah! Maybe you’re right; a soldier does need to keep their mind occupied on other things every now and then. We aren’t undead after all. So what’s with the lute? You also a bard or something?” she laughs. “No, I think those dreams are long gone, but my playing seems to boost spirits around here a little, which can only be a good thing in this situation.” “Hm. My mother was elven and she used to sing this song to me and my…brother when we were very young. It was very smooth and calming. Beautiful melody.” “Yeah, most elven music is like that. When I was assigned in Retlad I learned a few elven songs from a few of the citizens there, you wouldn’t happen to know the song would you?” She tells you the name of the song and you know it immediately. One of the first new songs you learned while stationed in Retlad actually. This seems cause her to momentarily revert to a less stand offish behavior. You’re about to play it for her, but then a messenger comes running up handing her a note. She reads it and she’s all business again. “Alright men! We’re moving out!” she shouts and leaves without saying another word to you. You didn’t even learn her name. Perhaps it’s just as well; you’ll most likely never meet again due to one of you dying on the battlefield. You go back to doing what you were doing. Two years pass… Three years since the Nuro Incident and this struggle still continues. You’re still stationed Fort Virtue and you’ve repelled more demon attacks than you would care to count. Velzix has finally gotten his shit together completely. A unified demonic front is in full swing here and its taking its toll. Once again your skills have come in very handy in defense. You are certainly known as a demon slayer, but you still don’t feel like a hero of any kind. You’re just trying to do your job and survive. You save lives when you can, but you know ultimately it’s a futile task as death seems to be everywhere nowadays. As bad as it is on the demon front, its nothing compared to what’ve you’ve heard on the undead front. The Necromancer has finally broken out from Nuro, and successfully attacked the Kingdom of Brot. Several undead giants demolished the area. You’ve never even seen a living giant and they sound intimidating. You can’t even imagine an undead one. The power to raise one, let alone several is sort of scary. The Grand Alliance army didn’t get there in time to stop him and as usual they were repelled when they arrived. You worry about the Grand Alliance failing to stop the undead horde. You hope it doesn’t get any closer to the Zalan Empire where your family might be in danger. Sometimes you worry so much that you can’t sleep, not that you do much of that nowadays anyway. Normally you play to keep your mind at ease, but tonight you go to the archery range to keep yourself focused. For a long time you’re by yourself, but suddenly you feel a creeping suspicion someone is watching you… You turn around with your bow and see a pale man. He holds up his hands. “Hey now! Don’t shoot! Sorry for creeping around like that. Professional habit.” He says. “What? Who are you?” you demand. “Warnov. Zalan Intelligence.” “You’re a spy?” “Well I suppose you could put it that way. I was here to give some info to your Captain Eckard, and I also wanted to take a look around the fort. Didn’t think anyone would be on the range though. Nice shooting, I know who you are and heard about your marksmanship with a bow. You’re certainly doing your part with the demons around here.” Despite the fact that you’re talking to a spy, you feel the need to vent your feelings. “Yeah, well I hope the Grand Alliance starts doing its part. I mean what the fuck are they doing? Weren’t they created to put a stop to all this shit? I mean am I supposed to worry every day if that undead horde is going to get closer to the Zalan Empire where it can threaten my family?” Warnov doesn’t look offended by your words, if anything he looks intrigued. “Well, I can understand why you’re venting. Trust me I sympathize. But as part of intel, I can tell you its not that easy…there were a lot of surprises that weren’t accounted for. We’re doing our best to rectify this situation by gathering as much info as possible. In fact, you could help us…” “Excuse me? How?” Warnov looks around and gets closer before speaking. “Look, as I said, I know all about you and your skills, why you joined, all of it. I know you don’t much care for some of the propaganda made about some of your exploits. But it’s important to realize that deeds like yours must be blown up a little to give common people hope that ultimately good will win the day. You may not consider yourself a hero of any kind, but your actions aren’t without some of those qualities. You obviously care very much about your family, and I’ve heard how you try to keep the people under your command alive. Sound like heroic qualities to me. Perhaps they’re on a smaller scale, but they’re there. I’m betting that there’s a BIGGER hero in there somewhere, just itching to get out. You think the Grand Alliance isn’t doing a good job? Perhaps we can arrange something for you to be transferred into it, or maybe you’d like to take an even more direct approach.” “What do you mean?” Warnov suddenly backs away. “Before we go any further. I need to know are you willing to take up the mantle of being a hero. Because if you aren’t, then we have nothing more to discuss. I shall require an answer now.” > You decline the offer You have to admit, the idea has crossed your mind a bit. A small part of you does wonder about embracing the whole hero image and deliberately doing grand deeds that go beyond the call of your duty. You suppose that you’d at least really feel like one if you did that. However, more often than not real heroes don’t live long. You’re wondering what exactly this Mr. Warnov has in mind for you and given his demeanor, his appearance and just your own feelings of uncertainty about him, you decline. You know your limitations even if others don’t see them. So, no you won’t be hunting down some artifact of unlimited power and then single handedly taking out a Demon Lord or Necromancer Lord in their own throne room. “No, I don’t think so Mr. Warnov. As I’ve often said, I’m no hero. I’m just doing my job and providing for my family.” Mr. Warnov looks disappointed and sighs, but accepts your decision. “Very well. This is a shame though. Despite your humble birth you seem to have lots of potential. You could’ve made an excellent addition to our…organization. I’ve also heard your lute playing wasn’t bad either, we don’t have any musically talented types anymore…oh well.” Mr. Warnov leaves rather quickly after his last statement. Something about him seemed very odd and you’re sort of glad you didn’t take his offer. You go back to your target practice for awhile when you suddenly hear an alarm cry out loudly through the fort about a small demon army being sighted over the hill. “Well back to work…” you say and prepare for battle once again. Two years pass… It’s been five years since the Nuro Incident and things have gotten worse. Both the Necromancer Lord and Velzix have made progress. Too much. The Grand Alliance hasn’t been able to do anything except fight them to a stalemate. All three sides are looking to gain an advantage and somehow you don’t think it’ll be yours. The Zalan Empire has become increasingly totalitarian. It’s been increasing its influence over how the Grand Alliance should be run and its strategies. Some of Zalan’s officers have been transferred to become more prominent in leading and commanding the bulk of the Grand Alliance army. You’re not sure if this isn’t a bad idea. Bullying or not, one final voice in matters would probably help the Grand Alliance at this point. There’s been some grumbling by other nations though. However it’s also begun several repressive internal measures to keep itself safe. Your mom has mentioned in letters back to you of seeing routine patrols now near the farm. Talks of seizing private property for the good of the Empire are being discussed. You don’t really like the sound of that, but it’s not really like you can do anything about it. You can only take solace in the fact that being part of the Zalan army will at least result in your family not becoming homeless. They would probably still be able to live and work on the farm…it just wouldn’t be your family’s anymore. There’s also talk of a draft. You don’t like the sound of that either. Your brother Mallack would certainly be conscripted now. You can’t imagine him dealing with the things you’ve had to face. You hope it doesn’t come to that. Your position at Virtue is looking worse and worse each day. Parts of the fort are severely damaged, you’re short on man power and you don’t even have any decent wizards or healers. You’ve attempted to talk to Captain Eckard about withdrawing and falling back to a safer position, but he won’t hear of it. This fort is NOT to be abandoned. The only good thing is that there’s apparently been a small contingent of mercenaries severely messing up things for Velzix in his own territory. They must be incredibly brave or completely mad for Zalan gold to perform such a task. You can’t help but think that maybe YOU would be there right along side them, if you’d joined up with that mercenary company years ago. A sobering thought. Time to go on patrol again. You gather up some soldiers and get ready. You look at all of them and wonder which ones won’t be coming back this time. You look at yourself and wonder if you will. A few years ago, everyone coming back alive was at least a possibility, but now it’s not even certain. You go out and change up your routine path again. Always have to be different, can’t become predictable. A couple of imps attack. Nothing to worry about. Easily dispatched. You know you’ll encounter worse before the day is over though. A group of Tulan “citizens” led by their demon overseer attacks you next. Made up of hapless slaves and misguided idiots who think serving the demons is going to pan out in the long run. Finally you come across something a little more unusual. A small group of dwarves fighting off a large demon ambush. They look ragged, wounded and in dire need of help. So you help them. You unleash five arrows into the head of an Eviscerator before two of your number are fried by a hellfire blast from a Flame Child. The fighting doesn’t get any cleaner from there. You see another one of your members getting shredded, before a path is cleared for the dwarves to follow you back to the fort. One of their own chooses to stay behind to give the rest a chance to escape. As all of you run, a large explosion is heard followed by several yelps, howls and screams. The dwarf has blown himself up with whatever explosives the dwarves are fond of making. Finally you get back to the fort where it’s relatively safe, and all you’re thinking about is how you’ll have to do this all over again tomorrow. You retire to your private room where you play your lute and hope you aren’t disturbed by another attack on the fort. Happily, that doesn’t happen, but you are disturbed by one of the dwarves you rescued earlier instead. He’s come to thank you. “Hey lad, I just want to say thanks to your actions at least a few of us survived from our clan. Such as it is now. Something about you looks very familiar. Normally you humans all look the same but…ah hah! You’re that lad who I saved near that farm five years ago! Looks like you returned the favor! Stagir’s the name.” You didn’t realize it either, but then with all the fighting and the chaos you’d barely survived during that particular day, you weren’t really paying attention to faces. You were just glad someone came along when they did. “Yeah…small world I guess. So what happened to your clan?” “Wiped out lad.” Stagir says mournfully. “At least when you humans were fighting each other you didn’t mess with us, but getting caught between the undead and demons…well it’s a bit different.” “The undead are that far now?” you ask. “Aye. They and the demons have been involved in skirmishes here and there. Got no problem with evil fighting evil, but it was just our bad luck that my clan was caught in the middle. The demons are evil incarnate to be sure, but the undead…I dunno. Something worse about them. In the final days, I had to kill clan members who I once called friends and family because of the fucking necromancers raising them from the dead. Some stayed behind to fight since they refused to run. They’d rather die than run from their home. Normally I’d agree, but after seeing that this was a losing battle, some of us decided that it would be better to run. After all we would just be raised again to be used as puppets of the necromancers when we die. Not even free will to choose, or the threat of a demon’s whip. You just become one of them. Can’t let that happen to me. Never.” You know something of it, having had to do a little of that five years ago at Nuro, but actually killing undead parodies of family members would be pretty horrific. Stagir attempts to lighten the mood a bit by asking you about what you were playing before he interrupted. When you tell him, he tiches and says something about how elven songs are nothing compared to dwarven ones. You never really thought of dwarves having a musical interest before, but Stagir boasts about how they have quite an extensive musical history. He takes the lute from you and shows you a couple of dwarven songs, breaking strings in the process. His insistent singing accompanying the songs isn’t exactly pleasant either. He complains about the human made strings not being strong enough to play the songs properly, but thanks you again for saving his life before leaving. Every now and then you play these songs for your new dwarven allies who have taken it upon themselves to strengthen and rebuild the fort the “proper dwarf way”. They seem to appreciate it. You’re a little more careful with the strings and don’t indulge in the singing though. (But unfortunately for the rest of the fort, the dwarves do) A few months pass and the demon attacks seem to decrease. The strengthened fort certainly helps, but something else is going on. Eventually you’re seeing less and less of them. Eventually some ragged refugees come to the fort and after a bit of babbling and thanking the gods, a few of them explain. There are a couple of conflicting stories, but it would seem Velzix is dead! He was killed by something or someone. Consensus seems to be that the mercenary leader died in battle with him though. Without Velzix’s leadership the demons are fighting amongst themselves and the realm is in complete disarray. The Grand Alliance is taking steps to retake the land immediately before the Necromancer Lord gets it. The Zalan Empire in particular is closer though, so naturally YOUR nation is going to get that land first! While things may be looking up somewhat, they aren’t necessarily looking up for you. Captain Eckard has orders to begin an attack immediately. You aren’t looking forward to it mainly because you’ll probably encounter an undead army in the process. You don’t have a choice though except for what role you can serve. Thanks to your skills and rank. You can either lead troops as normal, or be part of a scouting party. > You choose to lead rank and file If its undead you’re going to face you decide you don’t want to get caught fighting them with only a few men to help you. Captain Eckard is a little surprised by your decision, but chooses a few others to be the reconnaissance group. Your replacements aren’t as good as you might’ve been however. Many times they fuck up and miss a few demon bands that were fleeing from the Tulan Kingdom and ambushing whoever passed by. It’s not too bad at first, but the closer you get to the capital, the more powerful these little groups are. The losses get more severe, but Captain Eckard insists on continuing. By the time you get to the capital during most of the citizens there have been so corrupted or beat down by the demons at this point that they’ve either sold their own souls to Hell or gone completely mad. You’re attacked by them and a few of the demon hold outs. Your own ranks have been severely weakened by this point. It’s during an ambush that you’re suddenly hit by a fireball from a flame demon who was sitting on top of a nearby rooftop. You run around screaming and trying to put out the flames, but a couple of flying imps throw spears into your back ensuring that you lie still as you finish burning to death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to admit, the idea has crossed your mind a bit. A small part of you does wonder about embracing the whole hero image and deliberately doing grand deeds that go beyond the call of your duty. You suppose that you’d at least really feel like one if you did that. However, more often than not real heroes don’t live long. You’re wondering what exactly this Mr. Warnov has in mind for you and given his demeanor, his appearance and just your own feelings of uncertainty about him, you decline. You know your limitations even if others don’t see them. So, no you won’t be hunting down some artifact of unlimited power and then single handedly taking out a Demon Lord or Necromancer Lord in their own throne room. “No, I don’t think so Mr. Warnov. As I’ve often said, I’m no hero. I’m just doing my job and providing for my family.” Mr. Warnov looks disappointed and sighs, but accepts your decision. “Very well. This is a shame though. Despite your humble birth you seem to have lots of potential. You could’ve made an excellent addition to our…organization. I’ve also heard your lute playing wasn’t bad either, we don’t have any musically talented types anymore…oh well.” Mr. Warnov leaves rather quickly after his last statement. Something about him seemed very odd and you’re sort of glad you didn’t take his offer. You go back to your target practice for awhile when you suddenly hear an alarm cry out loudly through the fort about a small demon army being sighted over the hill. “Well back to work…” you say and prepare for battle once again. Two years pass… It’s been five years since the Nuro Incident and things have gotten worse. Both the Necromancer Lord and Velzix have made progress. Too much. The Grand Alliance hasn’t been able to do anything except fight them to a stalemate. All three sides are looking to gain an advantage and somehow you don’t think it’ll be yours. The Zalan Empire has become increasingly totalitarian. It’s been increasing its influence over how the Grand Alliance should be run and its strategies. Some of Zalan’s officers have been transferred to become more prominent in leading and commanding the bulk of the Grand Alliance army. You’re not sure if this isn’t a bad idea. Bullying or not, one final voice in matters would probably help the Grand Alliance at this point. There’s been some grumbling by other nations though. However it’s also begun several repressive internal measures to keep itself safe. Your mom has mentioned in letters back to you of seeing routine patrols now near the farm. Talks of seizing private property for the good of the Empire are being discussed. You don’t really like the sound of that, but it’s not really like you can do anything about it. You can only take solace in the fact that being part of the Zalan army will at least result in your family not becoming homeless. They would probably still be able to live and work on the farm…it just wouldn’t be your family’s anymore. There’s also talk of a draft. You don’t like the sound of that either. Your brother Mallack would certainly be conscripted now. You can’t imagine him dealing with the things you’ve had to face. You hope it doesn’t come to that. Your position at Virtue is looking worse and worse each day. Parts of the fort are severely damaged, you’re short on man power and you don’t even have any decent wizards or healers. You’ve attempted to talk to Captain Eckard about withdrawing and falling back to a safer position, but he won’t hear of it. This fort is NOT to be abandoned. The only good thing is that there’s apparently been a small contingent of mercenaries severely messing up things for Velzix in his own territory. They must be incredibly brave or completely mad for Zalan gold to perform such a task. You can’t help but think that maybe YOU would be there right along side them, if you’d joined up with that mercenary company years ago. A sobering thought. Time to go on patrol again. You gather up some soldiers and get ready. You look at all of them and wonder which ones won’t be coming back this time. You look at yourself and wonder if you will. A few years ago, everyone coming back alive was at least a possibility, but now it’s not even certain. You go out and change up your routine path again. Always have to be different, can’t become predictable. A couple of imps attack. Nothing to worry about. Easily dispatched. You know you’ll encounter worse before the day is over though. A group of Tulan “citizens” led by their demon overseer attacks you next. Made up of hapless slaves and misguided idiots who think serving the demons is going to pan out in the long run. Finally you come across something a little more unusual. A small group of dwarves fighting off a large demon ambush. They look ragged, wounded and in dire need of help. So you help them. You unleash five arrows into the head of an Eviscerator before two of your number are fried by a hellfire blast from a Flame Child. The fighting doesn’t get any cleaner from there. You see another one of your members getting shredded, before a path is cleared for the dwarves to follow you back to the fort. One of their own chooses to stay behind to give the rest a chance to escape. As all of you run, a large explosion is heard followed by several yelps, howls and screams. The dwarf has blown himself up with whatever explosives the dwarves are fond of making. Finally you get back to the fort where it’s relatively safe, and all you’re thinking about is how you’ll have to do this all over again tomorrow. You retire to your private room where you play your lute and hope you aren’t disturbed by another attack on the fort. Happily, that doesn’t happen, but you are disturbed by one of the dwarves you rescued earlier instead. He’s come to thank you. “Hey lad, I just want to say thanks to your actions at least a few of us survived from our clan. Such as it is now. Something about you looks very familiar. Normally you humans all look the same but…ah hah! You’re that lad who I saved near that farm five years ago! Looks like you returned the favor! Stagir’s the name.” You didn’t realize it either, but then with all the fighting and the chaos you’d barely survived during that particular day, you weren’t really paying attention to faces. You were just glad someone came along when they did. “Yeah…small world I guess. So what happened to your clan?” “Wiped out lad.” Stagir says mournfully. “At least when you humans were fighting each other you didn’t mess with us, but getting caught between the undead and demons…well it’s a bit different.” “The undead are that far now?” you ask. “Aye. They and the demons have been involved in skirmishes here and there. Got no problem with evil fighting evil, but it was just our bad luck that my clan was caught in the middle. The demons are evil incarnate to be sure, but the undead…I dunno. Something worse about them. In the final days, I had to kill clan members who I once called friends and family because of the fucking necromancers raising them from the dead. Some stayed behind to fight since they refused to run. They’d rather die than run from their home. Normally I’d agree, but after seeing that this was a losing battle, some of us decided that it would be better to run. After all we would just be raised again to be used as puppets of the necromancers when we die. Not even free will to choose, or the threat of a demon’s whip. You just become one of them. Can’t let that happen to me. Never.” You know something of it, having had to do a little of that five years ago at Nuro, but actually killing undead parodies of family members would be pretty horrific. Stagir attempts to lighten the mood a bit by asking you about what you were playing before he interrupted. When you tell him, he tiches and says something about how elven songs are nothing compared to dwarven ones. You never really thought of dwarves having a musical interest before, but Stagir boasts about how they have quite an extensive musical history. He takes the lute from you and shows you a couple of dwarven songs, breaking strings in the process. His insistent singing accompanying the songs isn’t exactly pleasant either. He complains about the human made strings not being strong enough to play the songs properly, but thanks you again for saving his life before leaving. Every now and then you play these songs for your new dwarven allies who have taken it upon themselves to strengthen and rebuild the fort the “proper dwarf way”. They seem to appreciate it. You’re a little more careful with the strings and don’t indulge in the singing though. (But unfortunately for the rest of the fort, the dwarves do) A few months pass and the demon attacks seem to decrease. The strengthened fort certainly helps, but something else is going on. Eventually you’re seeing less and less of them. Eventually some ragged refugees come to the fort and after a bit of babbling and thanking the gods, a few of them explain. There are a couple of conflicting stories, but it would seem Velzix is dead! He was killed by something or someone. Consensus seems to be that the mercenary leader died in battle with him though. Without Velzix’s leadership the demons are fighting amongst themselves and the realm is in complete disarray. The Grand Alliance is taking steps to retake the land immediately before the Necromancer Lord gets it. The Zalan Empire in particular is closer though, so naturally YOUR nation is going to get that land first! While things may be looking up somewhat, they aren’t necessarily looking up for you. Captain Eckard has orders to begin an attack immediately. You aren’t looking forward to it mainly because you’ll probably encounter an undead army in the process. You don’t have a choice though except for what role you can serve. Thanks to your skills and rank. You can either lead troops as normal, or be part of a scouting party. > You choose to scout If you’ve learned one thing, numbers doesn’t necessarily imply safety. With all the years of patrolling you’ve done along with your previous actions in Retlad so long ago, you actually feel more comfortable in smaller groups at this point. Your one and only rank and file battle didn’t go well. Your choice isn’t surprising, if anything more people feel comfortable with you scouting ahead. As you journey further into former Tulan territory, you don’t encounter too much resistance. A few demons and crazed followers here and there, but nothing you can’t take care of. It also occurs to you how “planted” you’ve been for the past five years. While it’s true you did leave the fort a lot, you never ventured far from it. This is first time you’ve actually traveled. Ironic, since one of the reasons why you joined the army was the possibility of traveling to interesting places. However, it seems like you only visit these interesting places after they’re already destroyed. You’re basically seeing the aftermath of the demon occupation. It sort of reminds you of what you’d seen back in Retlad when the Quillars were killing folks except the landscape is in even worse condition. The demons weren’t content on just corrupting their mortal slaves; they were attempting to turn the entire land into their infernal realm. You can only imagine what sort of hell was going on while they were actually here. You get to a small town that’s completely wrecked and seemingly deserted. Its night time and normally you’d go back and wait until morning to scout it, but Captain Eckard is insistent on getting to the former Tulan capital as quick as possible. You split up into small groups to scout the town quicker and tell everyone that if they come across anything more then they can handle, to run and alert everyone else. You go building to building not really encountering much of anything. Not even survivors. Lots of half eaten dead bodies in various states of torment though. You expect when Velzix was killed the whole realm descended into anarchy pretty quickly and the demons reverted back to their chaotic natures causing as much mayhem as possible without too much repercussion. You enter a shop with two of your other team members. You hear a creaking sound, which doesn’t sound good. One of your team members goes a little further in, and it gets louder. “Step back! The floors is…” you utter and then a large portion of the floor collapses underneath him. You attempt to grab his hand, but fail and the rest of the floor collapses underneath you as well. You don’t fall too far, but you definitely feel it. You recover as quick as you can and hear your other subordinate who managed to avoid falling through the floor. “Sarge! Are you alright?” Private Ramusen shouts. “Yeah, yeah private. I’m just a little bruised.” “What about Gannon? Is he alright?” You take your tinder box and make a small light. You look around and see that you must be in the basement of some sort of music shop from all the instruments you see. You didn’t even notice when you first entered the place, it just looked like any other ransacked shop. Upon further inspection you see a body lying on the floor. It’s Private Gannon and he’s dead. He didn’t land in the “good way” you did and broke his neck. “He’s dead.” You call up to Ramusen. “Shit! He’s fuckin’ dead?” “Yeah private, I just said he was! Now let me get the hell out of here…fuck! The damn stairs are completely destroyed. I can’t climb up, or even attempt a jump. Ramusen, throw down a rope and make sure you really secure it!” While you wait for Ramusen to complete this task, you take a look at some of the instruments. Lots of flutes and other wind instruments that don’t interest you. You grab an old looking mandolin. It’s definitely human design, but it seems very ornate though, must’ve been a specialty piece that wasn’t for sale. You pluck at the strings and despite the dirt, grime, and neglect of the instrument; it still manages to produce a fairly pleasing tone. You play for a good five minutes before you realize that Ramusen hasn’t thrown down the rope yet. “Private?” is all you utter, when you hear the slumping of a lifeless body, followed by a low voice. “Beautiful…” You grab your bow, when you see a dark figure loom above you. You fire, but miss due to the figure dodging quicker than anything you’ve ever encountered before. It doesn’t help that this same figure has jumped down the hole beside you before you can blink. You’re standing right before the figure now. He has a pale, but familiar face, though the blood around the mouth is new and not encouraging. He knocks the bow out of your hand, but does nothing else to you. You wouldn’t be quick enough to draw your sword given what you’ve seen. In fact right now, all you’re feeling is fear. “Almost hit me…you would’ve made a good addition. Maybe you could’ve even…no. Nobody can. This world is lost now and soon my kind won’t even be around to guide your kind to combat the inevitable anymore…” Warnov says. “What…what are you talking about?” you ask unsure what’s going to happen next. Warnov looks as if he could tell you more than you’d ever want to know about lots of things, but instead he just shakes his head. “Nevermind human. Telling you the whole story would not help you anyway. Perhaps it’s best you hadn’t joined us, seeing as I have been marked now. It won’t be long before the rest of my kind are hunted down. He’s really quite pissed at us, and worse, he can sense us you see…(sigh) I can only imagine what he did to poor Count Rostov…” “Who’s pissed?” “Who do you think human? The Necro…I mean the Great Lich Lord of course. Oh yes. He’s back…and this one isn’t going to lose like the last one did so long ago.” You’re not following all of Warnov’s cryptic speak, but if the last bit he’s said is true, he’s scared the hell out of you more than he has with his actions. Warnov grabs your shoulder and looks into your eyes. “I do not envy your fate human…the extinction of your species will soon follow my own. My advice to you? Live human! Live while you can, for eventually this whole world will be dead and under his complete control.” Sensing that he’s brought enough doom and gloom to you, he relents and steps back. “Play me a song human.” He says catching you off guard. “…what did you want to hear?” you ask shakily. “I don’t know…anything. Play what you were playing before.” You slowly pick up the dropped mandolin and begin playing the song that you were playing before and you play as if your life depended on it, though you get the impression that Warnov has no intention on killing you. He sits quietly listening in the darkness, after finishing the song; he leaps back up through the hole. “Beautiful…such talent…such a waste…” A rope is thrown down and the sounds of feet running off are then heard. You wait a minute and then climb up the rope, taking the mandolin with you. You see private Ramusen lying nearby with his throat ripped out and thoroughly drained of blood. You’re also just in time to hear other members of your group coming to your position when you exit the shop. What the hell are you supposed to tell them? Death to the world, reborn lich lords…you start thinking, what’s the point of all this? Maybe Warnov was right, maybe you should LIVE while there’s still time. Granted his information is spotty, but you can’t help but thinking he’s probably more informed on the situation than most people. You’ve pondered it several times before, and you’ve even attempted it once, but deserting is looking very desirable again. In this day and age, who’s going to know if were killed or not? > You stay and inform your squad of the situation If the information that the vampire said was true, you think it might be better to inform your superiors of it so that something can be done now. It won’t do any good to run off with this vital info and let them find out when it’s too late and your “freedom” won’t mean anything as death takes over the world. You meet up with the rest of your men who are calling out your name. They ask if you’re okay and you reply you are, but you need to inform the captain of the new info you learned. When you return, you tell Captain Eckard exactly what happened, but instead of stopping to assess this new info or taking it immediately to his superior, he dismisses it! He said the vampire was probably just fucking around with you. “That vampire was probably toying with you like a cat would a mouse. He probably has your scent now, so he’ll hunt and attack you later. The stories he’s told you are probably just to keep your mind occupied with nonsense as well as to give us misinformation. Hell, he’s fucking undead! He’s probably WORKING with the Lich Lord!” “But…but it was an agent of the Zalan Empire. Agent Warnov. He…” “NO! He LOOKED like Warnov. Vampire can change their form you know! And even if it was the real Warnov, he’s undead now and working for the enemy!” “Well if that’s the case shouldn’t we still inform head quarters immediately? He probably had lots of vital information that…” “Look, the only thing we need to do is take the territory of the former Tulan Kingdom before the undead do! THAT’S our primary concern! So I’ll have no more discussion about it sergeant! Get ready to march tomorrow! We’re heading for the former capitol!” You leave Eckard’s tent and shake your head at his stupidity, but there’s not much you can do about it now. You do decide that you’re going to inform another high ranking officer when you can though. Soon the company is on the move to its destination. It gets more dangerous the closer you get though. You’re getting ambushed by demon bands of them all the time. Not enough to destroy you of course, but certainly enough to whittle your numbers down. Captain Eckard gives you more troops to supply your losses, but by the time you get to the capitol, the whole company has lost at least a third of its original strength. Things don’t get any better at the capital. Most of the citizens there have been so corrupted or beat down by the demons at this point that they’ve either sold their own souls to Hell or gone completely mad. You’re attacked by them and a few of the demon hold outs. By the time you subdue and hold the territory, you’re down to half of the company’s original strength. Then after a few days the undead arrive. Captain Eckard’s rather inept handling of things don’t get any better. Instead of shoring up the defenses of the capital’s gates and walls and waiting for reinforcements which were going to arrive soon, he orders an open attack on the battlefield! You are very reluctant to do this, but again you don’t have any choice now. You fight and barely survive long enough to fallback when Captain Eckard calls for a retreat after finally realizing he’s hopelessly outmatched. Unfortunately he’s just provided more troops for the undead army, as the necromancers in charge raise the recent dead. They also start raising the dead citizens IN the city which haven’t been cleared out! It’s an ignoble death as you’re eventually surrounded, overwhelmed and cut down by zombies and skeletons. You join their ranks soon afterwards.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you’ve learned one thing, numbers doesn’t necessarily imply safety. With all the years of patrolling you’ve done along with your previous actions in Retlad so long ago, you actually feel more comfortable in smaller groups at this point. Your one and only rank and file battle didn’t go well. Your choice isn’t surprising, if anything more people feel comfortable with you scouting ahead. As you journey further into former Tulan territory, you don’t encounter too much resistance. A few demons and crazed followers here and there, but nothing you can’t take care of. It also occurs to you how “planted” you’ve been for the past five years. While it’s true you did leave the fort a lot, you never ventured far from it. This is first time you’ve actually traveled. Ironic, since one of the reasons why you joined the army was the possibility of traveling to interesting places. However, it seems like you only visit these interesting places after they’re already destroyed. You’re basically seeing the aftermath of the demon occupation. It sort of reminds you of what you’d seen back in Retlad when the Quillars were killing folks except the landscape is in even worse condition. The demons weren’t content on just corrupting their mortal slaves; they were attempting to turn the entire land into their infernal realm. You can only imagine what sort of hell was going on while they were actually here. You get to a small town that’s completely wrecked and seemingly deserted. Its night time and normally you’d go back and wait until morning to scout it, but Captain Eckard is insistent on getting to the former Tulan capital as quick as possible. You split up into small groups to scout the town quicker and tell everyone that if they come across anything more then they can handle, to run and alert everyone else. You go building to building not really encountering much of anything. Not even survivors. Lots of half eaten dead bodies in various states of torment though. You expect when Velzix was killed the whole realm descended into anarchy pretty quickly and the demons reverted back to their chaotic natures causing as much mayhem as possible without too much repercussion. You enter a shop with two of your other team members. You hear a creaking sound, which doesn’t sound good. One of your team members goes a little further in, and it gets louder. “Step back! The floors is…” you utter and then a large portion of the floor collapses underneath him. You attempt to grab his hand, but fail and the rest of the floor collapses underneath you as well. You don’t fall too far, but you definitely feel it. You recover as quick as you can and hear your other subordinate who managed to avoid falling through the floor. “Sarge! Are you alright?” Private Ramusen shouts. “Yeah, yeah private. I’m just a little bruised.” “What about Gannon? Is he alright?” You take your tinder box and make a small light. You look around and see that you must be in the basement of some sort of music shop from all the instruments you see. You didn’t even notice when you first entered the place, it just looked like any other ransacked shop. Upon further inspection you see a body lying on the floor. It’s Private Gannon and he’s dead. He didn’t land in the “good way” you did and broke his neck. “He’s dead.” You call up to Ramusen. “Shit! He’s fuckin’ dead?” “Yeah private, I just said he was! Now let me get the hell out of here…fuck! The damn stairs are completely destroyed. I can’t climb up, or even attempt a jump. Ramusen, throw down a rope and make sure you really secure it!” While you wait for Ramusen to complete this task, you take a look at some of the instruments. Lots of flutes and other wind instruments that don’t interest you. You grab an old looking mandolin. It’s definitely human design, but it seems very ornate though, must’ve been a specialty piece that wasn’t for sale. You pluck at the strings and despite the dirt, grime, and neglect of the instrument; it still manages to produce a fairly pleasing tone. You play for a good five minutes before you realize that Ramusen hasn’t thrown down the rope yet. “Private?” is all you utter, when you hear the slumping of a lifeless body, followed by a low voice. “Beautiful…” You grab your bow, when you see a dark figure loom above you. You fire, but miss due to the figure dodging quicker than anything you’ve ever encountered before. It doesn’t help that this same figure has jumped down the hole beside you before you can blink. You’re standing right before the figure now. He has a pale, but familiar face, though the blood around the mouth is new and not encouraging. He knocks the bow out of your hand, but does nothing else to you. You wouldn’t be quick enough to draw your sword given what you’ve seen. In fact right now, all you’re feeling is fear. “Almost hit me…you would’ve made a good addition. Maybe you could’ve even…no. Nobody can. This world is lost now and soon my kind won’t even be around to guide your kind to combat the inevitable anymore…” Warnov says. “What…what are you talking about?” you ask unsure what’s going to happen next. Warnov looks as if he could tell you more than you’d ever want to know about lots of things, but instead he just shakes his head. “Nevermind human. Telling you the whole story would not help you anyway. Perhaps it’s best you hadn’t joined us, seeing as I have been marked now. It won’t be long before the rest of my kind are hunted down. He’s really quite pissed at us, and worse, he can sense us you see…(sigh) I can only imagine what he did to poor Count Rostov…” “Who’s pissed?” “Who do you think human? The Necro…I mean the Great Lich Lord of course. Oh yes. He’s back…and this one isn’t going to lose like the last one did so long ago.” You’re not following all of Warnov’s cryptic speak, but if the last bit he’s said is true, he’s scared the hell out of you more than he has with his actions. Warnov grabs your shoulder and looks into your eyes. “I do not envy your fate human…the extinction of your species will soon follow my own. My advice to you? Live human! Live while you can, for eventually this whole world will be dead and under his complete control.” Sensing that he’s brought enough doom and gloom to you, he relents and steps back. “Play me a song human.” He says catching you off guard. “…what did you want to hear?” you ask shakily. “I don’t know…anything. Play what you were playing before.” You slowly pick up the dropped mandolin and begin playing the song that you were playing before and you play as if your life depended on it, though you get the impression that Warnov has no intention on killing you. He sits quietly listening in the darkness, after finishing the song; he leaps back up through the hole. “Beautiful…such talent…such a waste…” A rope is thrown down and the sounds of feet running off are then heard. You wait a minute and then climb up the rope, taking the mandolin with you. You see private Ramusen lying nearby with his throat ripped out and thoroughly drained of blood. You’re also just in time to hear other members of your group coming to your position when you exit the shop. What the hell are you supposed to tell them? Death to the world, reborn lich lords…you start thinking, what’s the point of all this? Maybe Warnov was right, maybe you should LIVE while there’s still time. Granted his information is spotty, but you can’t help but thinking he’s probably more informed on the situation than most people. You’ve pondered it several times before, and you’ve even attempted it once, but deserting is looking very desirable again. In this day and age, who’s going to know if were killed or not? > You sneak off Last time you were wounded and had the misfortune of running into demons. Well you aren’t wounded this time and you’re pretty sure you won’t be running into too many more demons. You’ll be able to pull it off this time. You can’t do this army shit anymore, as much as you want to help your family out, you’ve got to live your own life regardless of what the future holds. You aren’t even worried about committing an executionable offense. You easily sneak away as you hear your men call out your name looking for you. You’re glad you didn’t leave too much back at the fort, except your lute, but you’ve got your newly acquired mandolin to make up for it. Eventually you’re away from civilization altogether. While you’re out in the wilderness you think about your family again, and you have to at least let them know you’re still alive. Maybe you can still do something about them, after all it doesn’t sound like the Zalan Empire is becoming a great place to live anymore. Perhaps you could convince them to move? It takes a week of sneaking around and keeping out of sight, but eventually you make it back home. Zalan looks a lot different; hell home looks a lot different. There was a small wooded area near your farm, but most of the trees have been cut down now. You also remember fewer patrols. Your house looks in better condition however. You guess at least your family seems a lot safer, but for how long? You knock on the door in the middle of the night and your sister Randi answers, Not too surprising as she always was a night owl when she was little. At least she used to be little. The passing of the years and she’s now a teenager and grown quite a bit. You’ve been away so long. What does surprise you is the flintlock pistol that she’s currently pointing at you! “Whoa! Hold on! It’s me, your brother!” you say. “…it is? It is you!” she exclaims and puts down the gun before hugging you. “What the hell are you doing with a pistol?” “The money you sent us allowed to buy new things you know and a traveling merchant was selling this for cheap!” “No I mean, what are YOU doing with one? You’ll blow your damn head off with that thing! Those things are unstable.” You scold. “What are you doing home? Are you on leave?” “Uh…that’s a long story. Wake up the rest of the family; I have to talk to you all.” Randi complies while you step inside the house and take in its new look. Eventually your Mom enters, followed by your brother Mallack and finally your youngest brother Calwin and sister Makana. You all sit down at the dining room table. (You realize you haven’t done that with your family in years) and you tell them everything. You get a lot of worried reactions. More for you than the other world impending doom stuff though. At least you know that they care. “You gotta get back to the army right now! Say you got captured by something and it took you awhile to escape!” Mallack exclaims. “While I’m sure that MAY work, I just don’t want to do it…I can’t take this anymore. The whole time I’ve been in the damn army, my music has kept me sane. I’ve noticed it have an effect on others as well. Never thought it would. I mean I have talent and…” “…you feel like you’ve wasted your life?” your mother replies. You pause for a moment. You almost want to say yes, but you can’t even if you wanted to. You haven’t wasted it, its just you’ve never really had the chance to do what you’ve ever wanted to do. “No…I guess I haven’t… it’s just…” Your mother takes your hand and speaks to you. “I know. It’s not fair. It’s not right. Life isn’t fair and it’s starting to get a whole lot less fair. I know I’ve mentioned it in letters to you, but the Zalan Empire WILL be taking the farm…and it’s looking like Mallack’s going to be drafted if things are going the way they seem to be.” “But…see that’s what I’m saying! We could all move! I mean of course I have to go into hiding, maybe Mallack could come with me. And the rest of you could use what money you have left and move to Retlad! It’s a nice place. It’s away from most of the fighting, and there aren’t anymore Quillars there!” Your mother shakes her head. “You must be behind in the news, because Retlad is finally going to become part of the Zalan Empire soon, so going there to live wouldn’t make any difference. The Empire can take this farm, but in spirit this will ALWAYS be ours. The Empire has said they will allow us to continue working it and living on the land and even if they didn’t they’d have have to drag us all out and stick our heads on pikes before we’d leave. Your father and his father build this farm up to what it is. Our family is going to be here until the end.” “That’s what I’m afraid of…what about you Mallack? You’re probably going to be drafted. You aren’t worried about that?” “Sure I am. But what am I going to do, run? Where? From what you described you practically think the whole world is doomed anyway! I might as well take some of the undead bastards out before I go. I was getting bored of the farm anyway. Let Randi take over! Ha ha!” Your mother addresses you again. “Son, you know our family. We’ve always done the right thing, even if it doesn’t coincide with what we want…I think you know what you have to do.” And so you do. So you do. You spend one night with your family and make the most of it. You all laugh and joke, trying to put all the problems of the world out of your mind and of course before you leave you play a song for them. Eventually you hug them all goodbye and take your leave. More than a few tears are shed on both sides. > You head back to the army Now you have to figure out a plan that’s going to prevent you from getting executed. You figure your brother’s plan isn’t exactly a bad one. Your record is good enough that you’d probably be believed. You think up a lie explaining that you were captured by a particularly sadistic vampire who was planning on draining you slowly to keep you as ongoing food. He took you to a cave in the hills where you barely killed him and escaped with your life. You would’ve made your way back sooner, but there were large groups of marauding orc raiders and demons escaping the ruins of the former Tulan kingdom that caused you to be extra cautious and forced you to hide for a few days. Yep, that sounds good. You head out with the plan of meeting up with Captain Eckard’s company which is surely at the Tulan Kingdom now. Eventually you reach the same town you were at when you made your decision to try to leave. You find it occupied right now, it’s not your company, so you’re about to press on, but someone on patrol sees you. “HALT! Where are you supposed to be soldier?!” “Oh…uh…” you say getting caught off guard. You mentally curse yourself for not being more aware. “Speak up! Wow, you look a little worse for wear…what company are you with?” “I was with Captain Eckard…but…” “Captain Eckard’s company? Holy shit! We thought they all got killed! The undead reached the Tulan capital first and ambushed them! But why am I telling you? You were there! You must’ve just barely escaped! Don’t worry; you can avenge your friends, we’re gathering strength to attack soon!” You don’t believe this… The guard begins speaking to you excitedly and asking you how you escaped. You just continue to say you don’t know, it all became a blur when the ambush occurred and how you attempted to fight, but it was just too much. The guard sympathizes and tells you that you can explain more to his captain. You notice he isn’t wearing Zalan armor, he’s wearing Azi Republic armor. You can only assume that perhaps this is a Grand Alliance company. Your ideas come true when you do indeed notice several kinds of troop types, though the Zalan Empire soldiers seem to be leading, as the captain is wearing the armor. Your heart sinks when you recognize her and she recognizes you. It was years ago, but you both remember. “…what are you doing here?” the female captain asks. “Last I heard you were in Captain Eckard’s company. A company that was reported to be wiped out completely. Have you managed to avoid death once again? You are the lucky one aren’t you?” Suddenly surrounding soldiers start to recognize you more closely. The Zalan ones especially. “Holy shit it’s him! You fuckin’ survived not one but TWO overwhelming undead hordes! We gotta take him captain, he’s obviously good luck!” the guard says a little misguidedly. “Good luck? If you haven’t noticed, only HE seems to be getting out alive on these things! I’d say he’s bad luck!” someone else says. “Nonsense! I heard how he’s killed countless demons with his bow! We could use someone like that in our next attack.” another says. “Isn’t he the guy that plays the lute really well?” A few people start arguing until the female captain speaks again. “ENOUGH! I’ll handle this. You in my office now, I’ll speak with you in private. And for the rest of you, get ready to move out. We’re attacking tomorrow.” She turns away and enters a building; you slowly follow, while everyone else disperses. When you enter the wrecked “office” she closes the door and tells you to sit down, but she doesn’t. Instead she stares at you hard at you and draws her sword. “Okay Mr. Survivor. Convince me.” “Convince you of what?” “Convince me that you aren’t some fucking undead spy!” “WHAT?! How? I mean…” “Easy! In the two encounters you had with the undead on any major scale, you’ve been the only one to survive. Once, maybe. But twice? Mighty suspicious…” “But I mean…I’m not undead! Look I even walk around in the daylight, I’m not even pale!” “I didn’t say you were undead, I said you were a spy. There are few of those misguided traitors that think their necromancer overlords will be kind to them, by killing them last. Madness.” “But I’m not a spy! I killed…” you begin to stutter under pressure. ”Yeah, yeah, you killed demons. Big deal. The undead and demons weren’t friends either. What better way to be a spy than to make yourself a hero?” “But I’m not…” “You’re not what?” “I’m not…” “What? More lies? Spit out the truth spy!” she demands pointing her sword at your throat. > You blurt out the truth You can’t take it anymore. “I’M NOT A FUCKING HERO! OKAY!? I NEVER WAS AND I NEVER WANTED TO BE! (sob)… I just wanted to go home…(sob)” You weep for a few minutes before the captain speaks again. “Alright then what happened? Tell me the entire truth and maybe you’ll avoid the executioner’s axe.” At this point you have little choice. You’re too distraught to say anything else. You give a relatively condensed version of what happened. At Nuro and what happened recently. Your encounter with Warnov seems to surprise her quite a bit. You also go on to explain that it was high ranking Zalan officers that insisted on this hero nonsense. She believes you, like she knows something of it. “(sigh) Yeah there’s a statue of my dad in the Zalan capitol…but I know better…” You don’t question anymore about this quiet outburst from her since you’re still too worried about what’s going to happen to you. “So why did you come back? You probably could’ve gotten away with it.” “The same reason why I joined. My family. I guess I just needed a reminder of that first hand. And if there’s any hope of changing the tide of this war with the undead then I need to stand by my decision of joining the Zalan Army and making the world safer for them.” Once again the captain seems to soften. She almost looks like she’s going to tear up as well, but she turns away. “My family…I…” are all she says before taking a deep breath and turning back towards you, with a serious mindset again. “Alright, I shall trust your word for now sergeant, but I will be watching you VERY carefully! Consider yourself lucky for evading death once again, perhaps you do have knack for avoiding it. Let us hope that luck rubs off on the rest of us in the upcoming battle. I’m putting you in charge of the Retlad archery platoon. They’ll probably like you. Dismissed.” Before you leave she says one last thing. “And sergeant, don’t listen to what that bizarre vampire said. We’re not going to become extinct. We’re going to win and survive a long time. Besides you still have to play that song for me.” As you leave you feel a sigh of relief that you won’t be dying just yet, but given that you’re heading into battle soon with the undead, you’re wondering if you just didn’t postpone the inevitable. Two years pass… Seven years since the Nuro Incident changed the world into this living hell. Your time served in the Grand Alliance has not really changed much. The Grand Alliance and the Zalan Empire are basically one of the same now thanks to the complete embrace of a totalitarian system. Might makes right. Nations like the Azi Republic protested, but there was little that they could, after all Zalan has been practically defending the world by itself for the past few years. You get the impression that if this war is won; the Zalan Empire is going to throw its hat in to be a one world government. Amazing how power and conspiracy is plotted even when it probably won’t happen. “Probably won’t” because your superiors and political leaders are a lot more “optimistic” about winning than you are, but then they haven’t had to face the horrors you’ve faced. And horrors are a completely accurate word. You’ve gotten over your fear of the undead, but it doesn’t make it any easier. You’re starting to lose ground. Everyday the living lose someone, the Great Lich Lord gains. It’s a question of numbers and quite frankly your side doesn’t have them. You sort of wish your old captain was here. She was a very good leader and inspirational, but then again that’s why she was made a general and sent elsewhere. She asked you to play that song before she left though. Somehow it seemed to make her sadder afterwards. “Captain, undead are on the move, they won’t be long now.” One of your messengers says. “Yes, I can sense it. Here. You head back to my home. You know where it is by now, and give this message to my family. If you get back here and see undead, well get the fuck out and run back to Zalan territory.” Being a captain hasn’t really turned you into a copy of the captains you served in the past, but then again you didn’t even think you’d ever be promoted to one. Your reign as one has been a little unorthodox as you’ve applied more guerilla tactics than traditional ones, but given your assignment and your background it makes a hell of a lot more sense. You’re currently stationed on what remains of the Garwold Confederacy. It was a relatively peaceful nation made up mostly of Halflings and Gnomes, with lush green fields and flowers. Now it’s just slowly becoming another massive graveyard and example of genocide. You’ve gotten to know quite a few of them and you’re always amazed of how they can keep their sense of humor in the face of utter destruction. One of them actually gives you an answer. “To keep from crying.” Indeed. You’ve been playing quite a bit when you’re not battling the undead. (The Garwold citizens enjoy your playing a lot) It’s gotten to the point where you don’t just play anymore to keep your mind off of things, it’s like it transports you to a different world. A better world. If only. You often wonder how your brother Mallack is doing. He’s been stationed in a relatively safer location back in Zalan territory. You’re guessing that it lowers the odds of having your mom lose both of her sons at the same time. Like it makes it any better if she lost them within any length on time of each other. You wonder if the war is going to go on long enough that by the time Calwin grows up he’ll be drafted as well. If he even gets the chance to grow up. You can’t think about it now. A massive undead horde is coming and there’s no where left to hide. There will be open battle and you need to stay focused. You go through the whole order thing, and making sure your strategy is sound. You wish you had more wizards, but they seem to be in shorter supply these days. It’s almost like they’re being targeted deliberately sometimes…actually you don’t think it, you KNOW that they are. You see the undead horde approach. You look through some new fangled dwarven invention called an eye piece and see something makes your job a hell of a lot worse. You don’t just see the usual undead. You see fully armored Death Knights. Harder to kill than even a zombie giant. You see Blood Specters. Dark crimson spirits that can cause their victims to bleed from every orifice with their shrieks. Both of those are at the head of this horde, and this isn’t even counting that you’re severely outnumbered by just the regular zombies, skeletons, ghosts and the like. > You break off into a smaller skirmishing force You know that this is most likely a losing battle, but some hope might be gained, if you can somehow draw out the knights and specters and get them by themselves. As powerful as they are, they’re very hard to control even by necromancers and get easily agitated by living creatures. You can’t do it alone though. You take your best archers and a couple of your best wizards and mention your plan. You don’t ask for volunteers, you just assign. You’re in charge and you have to make the hard decisions, even if it might mean you’ll die. They don’t look enthused, but you aren’t either. You tell everyone else to hold their ground while you and your small platoon ride towards the horde. “Ready those blessed silvers men, and you robe wearers melt those dead tin cans!” You get close enough and you unleash as many blessed silver arrows as you can at the Blood Specters. You kill a few. The wizards don’t do quite as well with the knights. However, both attacks are enough. You see the Specters and Knights making whatever unearthly noises they do and begin to advance towards you far ahead of the slower yet steady moving horde. It apparent that the necromancer controlling them is attempting to bring them back under control, because they begin to squirm back and forth which gives you some more time to kill a few more during their confusion. Eventually the necromancer must give up total control because they stop squirming and advance upon you once again. You ride back as quickly as possible with the Specters and Knights in full pursuit. You didn’t expect those Specters to be so fast. A few of them manage to catch up to some of your men with grisly results. You yourself almost get smacked upside the head by a Death Knight mace. When you get back in range the rest of your awaiting army deals with your pursuers. More blessed arrows fly into the Blood Specters before they can do anymore harm, and eventually the Death Knights are brought down as well. There is no time for a reprieve though, as the main horde is now almost upon you. You order a regrouping as best you can, and face the enemy, telling if possible for someone to aim for the necromancer in all of this rotting mess. Bones and limbs from both sides are broken and hacked off. A zombie skull is smashed, splashing maggots, blood and brains all over you and you’re not even thinking about it. You just have a tune in your head to take yourself away from the massacre. Somehow in all of the chaos, you single out the necromancer leading this army, he stands a far piece away from the main fighting, but he’s arrogant enough to be close enough for you to hit him with an arrow. And you have to hit him now. You see a Grand Alliance soldier who just took a fatal blow to the chest begin to rise… Not many arrows left and not much time, you just load up and shoot, hoping you hit the bastard. Your shot is straight and true. It strikes the necromancer in the stomach, causing him to fall back, which in turn causes the undead horde to momentarily stop their vicious attacks, giving your side a chance to turn the tide a bit. Then you shoot another arrow when you see the necromancer attempt to get back up, which turns the tide completely in your favor. Zombies and skeletons fall. Ghouls flee at the loss of leadership and any remaining undead are quickly dispatched. You don’t take chances though. You walk up to the corpse of the necromancer and shoot your last arrow directly into his head and stab him a few times. You then start laughing. “If this was the Great Lich Lord, I’d be a real hero right now!” You quickly sober up from this macabre outburst when you hear shouting from some of your men and you look up. It’s another horde. Just as big. You look behind you and see that your own numbers are completely insufficient. The Garwold citizens are either mostly dead or demoralized at this point. Even when you win…you lose. Having no real options, you sound a retreat to fall back to the Zalan border and suggest that the Garwold citizens do likewise as there is nothing more for them here. The Garwold Confederacy is now just one more loss for the living. The Zalan Empire won’t be far behind. Three years pass… Ten years since the Nuro incident and The Grand Alliance is nearly just consisting of the Zalan Empire now, which in turn has had to adapt a siege mentality. There is no “going on the offensive” anymore. You’re purely on defense. Your brother Mallack died two years ago. Transferred to a location with more fighting due to lack of manpower. Like it matters. Didn’t even get to say goodbye. You can only hope he didn’t become one of those things…but you know he probably did. You’ve been urging your family to run where it’s safer, but of course they won’t budge. The undead have been penetrating deeper into Zalan territory, you know it’s only a matter of time before the Great Lich Lord decides to stop toying with you and makes his full scale attack. Sure enough it happens. Town after town is taken; you’re pushed back further and further, and you know there’s nothing you can do to stop it. An order is given to everyone to fallback to the capital and help defend it from an upcoming attack, but at this point you’re just wondering if the rest of your family is still alive. > You report to the captial Everything tells you that you should go to your family, but you question if they are even still alive. You don’t want to think about it really since it’s starting to upset you. The thought of your remaining family being killed and turned into undead parodies of themselves, makes you not want to know if that’s what happened. You wonder if they might’ve even fled already like you’ve been telling them to in your letters. It’s certainly possible, even as stubborn as your Mom is, she might’ve taken your advice at least for the sake of the rest of your brother and sisters. You mind suddenly goes elsewhere… …Yeah…they left already. There’s no point in going to your home. It’s been abandoned. They’re probably all safe in Retlad by now. No need to worry. You’ll see them later. Surely this attack on the capitol won’t be that bad. You’ve survived a lot worse. You’ve got orders and you need to follow them, because if there is any chance at stopping this dead plague, this is going to be a crucial battle. You did join the army to help your family after all, and what better way to help them, then to ensure their future? After having this little delusion, you feel calm again. Oddly so. Even a little hopeful. You head off to the capitol with your troops. When you get there, the general attitude is pessimistic. Most people don’t seem to think they’re going to win. You’re getting that vibe even from the generals of the Grand Alliance. You don’t see why. Surely the Great Lich Lord has finally overextended all his resources now. This attack will be a failure and from here you will be able to make a counter attack! Sure it won’t be easy, but it can be done. People are finding your optimism a little weird, especially those that have served under you since they know how that really isn’t your personality. You don’t think you’ve changed at all though. You just go about following your orders of making sure your troops are prepared in their defense of the south wall, humming little tunes as happy music fills your head. A few days pass and you’re visited by your old commanding officer who’s constantly making sure everything is in place. She looks very tired; you tell her she needs to think positive. When she asks if you’re feeling alright, you just laugh and ask if she’d like to hear a song. She tells you no with a grim look. She also tells you point blank that she wants to get laid one last time before this battle. Being in the somewhat scattered mind frame that you’re in right now, you ask who the candidate is. A couple hours later, you have your answer. Before you leave her room, she asks you to play a song for her after all. It’s the one she asked to play before. The one her mother sang to her. As you play she noticeably begins to weep. She doesn’t attempt to hide it. You stop playing and hold her until she calms down which eventually she does and composes herself. She gives no further information and simply tells you to go back to your post and to carry on as if nothing happened. You do so without pressing the issue. A week passes and the undead horde arrives. It’s much bigger than anyone expected, and even worse, the Great Lich Lord himself is leading this attack. Now your mind suddenly comes back to grips with reality. The undead horde surrounds and storms the city. An attempt is made to kill the Great Lich Lord, but he merely gets back up from the hail of gunfire and arrows that strike him. Soon the gates are compromised. You order your troops to take to the streets and fight off the invading hordes with the rest of the soldiers. You do likewise, though now you’re really wondering about a way to try to escape. Its no use though, the dead are everywhere butchering anything alive. You kill one walking corpse and five more take its place. In one particular brutal sneak attack, a ghoul jumps from a rooftop and tackles you. You feel a paralyzing bite as it sinks its teeth into you. Darkness soon takes you and you begin you new mindless undead life afterwards.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know that this is most likely a losing battle, but some hope might be gained, if you can somehow draw out the knights and specters and get them by themselves. As powerful as they are, they’re very hard to control even by necromancers and get easily agitated by living creatures. You can’t do it alone though. You take your best archers and a couple of your best wizards and mention your plan. You don’t ask for volunteers, you just assign. You’re in charge and you have to make the hard decisions, even if it might mean you’ll die. They don’t look enthused, but you aren’t either. You tell everyone else to hold their ground while you and your small platoon ride towards the horde. “Ready those blessed silvers men, and you robe wearers melt those dead tin cans!” You get close enough and you unleash as many blessed silver arrows as you can at the Blood Specters. You kill a few. The wizards don’t do quite as well with the knights. However, both attacks are enough. You see the Specters and Knights making whatever unearthly noises they do and begin to advance towards you far ahead of the slower yet steady moving horde. It apparent that the necromancer controlling them is attempting to bring them back under control, because they begin to squirm back and forth which gives you some more time to kill a few more during their confusion. Eventually the necromancer must give up total control because they stop squirming and advance upon you once again. You ride back as quickly as possible with the Specters and Knights in full pursuit. You didn’t expect those Specters to be so fast. A few of them manage to catch up to some of your men with grisly results. You yourself almost get smacked upside the head by a Death Knight mace. When you get back in range the rest of your awaiting army deals with your pursuers. More blessed arrows fly into the Blood Specters before they can do anymore harm, and eventually the Death Knights are brought down as well. There is no time for a reprieve though, as the main horde is now almost upon you. You order a regrouping as best you can, and face the enemy, telling if possible for someone to aim for the necromancer in all of this rotting mess. Bones and limbs from both sides are broken and hacked off. A zombie skull is smashed, splashing maggots, blood and brains all over you and you’re not even thinking about it. You just have a tune in your head to take yourself away from the massacre. Somehow in all of the chaos, you single out the necromancer leading this army, he stands a far piece away from the main fighting, but he’s arrogant enough to be close enough for you to hit him with an arrow. And you have to hit him now. You see a Grand Alliance soldier who just took a fatal blow to the chest begin to rise… Not many arrows left and not much time, you just load up and shoot, hoping you hit the bastard. Your shot is straight and true. It strikes the necromancer in the stomach, causing him to fall back, which in turn causes the undead horde to momentarily stop their vicious attacks, giving your side a chance to turn the tide a bit. Then you shoot another arrow when you see the necromancer attempt to get back up, which turns the tide completely in your favor. Zombies and skeletons fall. Ghouls flee at the loss of leadership and any remaining undead are quickly dispatched. You don’t take chances though. You walk up to the corpse of the necromancer and shoot your last arrow directly into his head and stab him a few times. You then start laughing. “If this was the Great Lich Lord, I’d be a real hero right now!” You quickly sober up from this macabre outburst when you hear shouting from some of your men and you look up. It’s another horde. Just as big. You look behind you and see that your own numbers are completely insufficient. The Garwold citizens are either mostly dead or demoralized at this point. Even when you win…you lose. Having no real options, you sound a retreat to fall back to the Zalan border and suggest that the Garwold citizens do likewise as there is nothing more for them here. The Garwold Confederacy is now just one more loss for the living. The Zalan Empire won’t be far behind. Three years pass… Ten years since the Nuro incident and The Grand Alliance is nearly just consisting of the Zalan Empire now, which in turn has had to adapt a siege mentality. There is no “going on the offensive” anymore. You’re purely on defense. Your brother Mallack died two years ago. Transferred to a location with more fighting due to lack of manpower. Like it matters. Didn’t even get to say goodbye. You can only hope he didn’t become one of those things…but you know he probably did. You’ve been urging your family to run where it’s safer, but of course they won’t budge. The undead have been penetrating deeper into Zalan territory, you know it’s only a matter of time before the Great Lich Lord decides to stop toying with you and makes his full scale attack. Sure enough it happens. Town after town is taken; you’re pushed back further and further, and you know there’s nothing you can do to stop it. An order is given to everyone to fallback to the capital and help defend it from an upcoming attack, but at this point you’re just wondering if the rest of your family is still alive. > You go to your family Really, it’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense anymore. This war is lost there’s not even any doubt about it. Hope is fleeting and if this is truly it, then it’s going to be with the ones you did this for in the first place. Your small groups of soldiers wonder where you’re going and you flat out tell them, in fact you tell them more than that. “I’m going home, and I suggest if any of you have any family you go to them as well. This is it folks, there’s no happy ending here. It’s been a pleasure serving with all of you.” You then ride home as quickly as possible. The farm is scattered with undead. They attack and in some cases eat the livestock, while attempting to get into your house. Dead Zalan soldiers can be seen, except they aren’t properly dead like they should be. The farmhouse is being attacked and you can see your sister firing her pistol at the zombies from one of the broken windows. You trample a couple of the zombies with your horse and kill couple more with your bow, but eventually you dismount and chop up the remaining ones near the farm house, since you want to save your arrows for anything potentially more dangerous. “Quick get inside through this window, the door is barricaded.” your sister Randi shouts when she sees you. “No! It’s a death trap to stay now! This place is lost! You all have to come with me!” you shout back, keeping an eye on the advancing zombies. “Can’t Mom’s hurt pretty bad. Got stabbed by one those corpses. We can’t move her. Help’s gotta come soon…” “NO, it won’t Randi! The capitol of Zalan is being attacked as we speak! I came home to get your guys! This is the fucking end! We’ve lost! We just gotta…” You’re interrupted when you have to cut down an advancing zombie. Your sister fires a shot at another one. Suddenly a scream from the house is heard, followed by another. That has to be Calwin, and Makana. Randi rushes from the window and you cut down another zombie before bashing the door down with relative ease. More screaming is heard along with growling this time. You look around and run down the hallway where Randi is standing motionless. She’s dropped her pistol. You push her aside and see your other sister Makana dead on the floor and then a quick scan to the left and you see your mother eating Calwin. She’s one of those things… You act where Randi failed and give a killing blow to the thing that was once your mother. “I’m sorry.” You whisper and her blood splashes across your face. Now you’re ready to get the hell out of the house, but Randi is still standing there motionless. “COME ON! WE GOTTA GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!” you shout. “Yeah...okay…” Randi says and begins to move like she’s in slow motion and picks up her flintlock. You run past Randi in the hallway who’s still moving slowly. “Randi get your ass mov…” You hear a gunshot behind you. Followed by the slumping of a lifeless body. You don’t even turn around, you don’t want to see. When you get outside, surprisingly the undead haven’t become unmanageable yet, and you cut down another couple with relative ease. Your horse unfortunately has run off, you’re on foot from here. You don’t even know where to go. Where is it going to be safe? Nowhere, but you lack any other ideas, so you just head for unclaimed wilderness. After about a day of running, hiding and maneuvering, you’re in a relatively safe location and that’s when you finally allow yourself to grieve for the loss of your family. You weep. You’ve lost everything now. Everything you did was basically for them, and now they’re all gone. You don’t know if you can even continue. What would be the point? The world seems to be doomed anyway. But then after you think about it, you decide that if death is taking over the world, you’re not going to make it easy. Death has already taken everything away from you except your life, and you’re going to hold on to that as long as possible. You’re going to live for your family and all the others that can’t any longer. You’re going to survive, because ultimately that’s what you’ve always done. You’ve cheated death more than once already and you’ll continue to do it. Death itself is going to have to hunt you down if it wants your life. After reaching this conclusion, you try to think of where you should go next. Going to any type of centers of civilization is out of the question now. You’d only have to move again, them being targets now. So it’s the life of wanderer now. The question is where would be best? The forests aren’t exactly safe, but you’re more familiar with surviving in them. The mountains might be a little safer, but living in them is going to be a lot harsher. > You stick to the forests Running from the undead, only to die of starvation and the cold in the mountains isn’t your idea of survival. You’re sticking to familiar terrain. You travel further away from civilization and ultimately deeper into a large forest. You’re not exactly sure of where you’re at, but you know you’ve left the Zalan borders. You’re probably in the unclaimed area north of the Retlad province. You never patrolled that far when you were stationed there, so you’re unsure of what to expect. You’ll certainly have to be alert though. A few weeks pass and you’ve got the hang of it. A few close calls with an Eberaw Hunter, but you’ve managed to make somewhat of a home for yourself. You mainly sleep in the trees. You get water from springs and small streams and as for food, well you always were good at hunting. You pass the time playing your mandolin and just basically keeping watch. As the days pass by though, you get the impression that someone is watching YOU. It’s not any undead though. You haven’t seen any in weeks. You haven’t come across any living creatures of higher intelligence either, but then again that doesn’t mean they aren’t around… “Hello stranger. Do you like our forest?” you hear a small voice say. You look around, but see nothing. You guess who ever it is, is invisible, and you nearly go for your weapon. “Please, no need for that. You are among friends here, musical one.” The voice says and then you see your unseen host appears before you. She’s very small and probably only comes up to ankle. You’ve heard of fairies before, but you’ve never seen one. “Are you a fairy?” you ask. “We go by many different names. Technically I am a pixie, but if you prefer, fairy will do. We heard you playing over the weeks and I thought it was about time we told you our appreciation for it. We didn’t know you big people had gifts for it. You are human are you not?” “Yes, and thanks.” “So, what brings you out here? Are you a ranger perhaps? You seem to have skills about you that are useful in this environment.” “No, not a ranger. Just trying to escape death like everyone else I suppose.” “Hmm, you realize as beautiful as this forest is, it’s not without its dangers. Death is here as well, but I’m sure you know that.” “Yes, but its at least reasonable. There aren’t zombies and wraiths terrorizing the place…well at least not yet…” “What are you talking about stranger?” the pixie asks quizzically, you look a little surprised yourself. “The Great Lich Lord of course. He’s destroying everything, and I dunno how he’s going to be stopped. I don’t think he can.” Your words immediately make the pixie’s cheerful demeanor change immediately. “…he’s returned?! But he was killed centuries ago! My clan has told the stories for generations!” “Well, he’s back, or someone like him…you really didn’t know? I mean this war with him has been going on for years now. Ten to be precise. Don’t you leave this forest?” “You must understand stranger, we have everything we want here. There is no need to leave. We also live in illusions, what you see now, is not necessarily what is. We remain hidden in our illusions so nobody may ever harm us and we can live our lives in relative isolation. It is only on rare occasions that we reveal ourselves.” “But I’ve heard stories about your kind being elsewhere or even in cities.” You say. “Well we are not the only fairy folk you know! Perhaps the others you heard of were sprites, or brownies or even a different clan of pixies. I can only speak for my clan and as far as I know we are the only fairy folk that live in this particular forest. There are other denizens of course, but thanks to our illusions we stay safely hidden. Even the occasional human or goblinoid that has wandered in here has not disturbed us. Quite frankly, you’d be the first person in centuries that we’ve revealed ourselves to.” “There aren’t any elves in this forest?” you ask, sort of figuring that some might have retreated or made a home here, forests being their natural homes and all. Your question is met with slight annoyance. “Most certainly not! This place has been elf free for millennia and hopefully stays that way! I’ll speak no more of this elven nonsense!” You don’t press the issue, but up until now you figured fairy folk and elves were all friends, guess not. The pixie changes the subject since she wants to know more about this Great Lich Lord business and says her name is Qweet. Qweet tells you that she will return with the rest of her clan, as she will not reveal their home of course. In a somewhat playful yet firm tone she also warns you not to try to follow her, though as good of a tracker you are you doubt if you could anyway since she turns invisible again. While you wait, you still can’t believe she and the rest of her clan don’t know anything about what’s going on; you almost envy them for living in blissful ignorance for the last ten years. You also feel like you’ve ruined things for them. Eventually more pixies return and you tell them what’s been going on. They are saddened, but maintain a confident demeanor. They are certain that they will survive this plague due to their illusions. They explain that if need be they can hide the entire forest, which with the new grim information you gave them they are very inclined to do. They still have to discuss it. In the meantime they say they hope you’ll stick around for awhile as they still enjoy your playing and you aren’t destroying the forest. You’re just glad you’ve met some friendly people that aren’t trying to kill you. It’s a nice change and after what you’ve been through recently, you welcome it. One year passes… Your time in the pixie forest has been relatively safe. Other than the occasional aggressive forest beasts, you haven’t had to do much combat. It’s been a relief. You’ve enjoyed the company of the pixies as well. However, your natural curiosity has gotten the better of you on occasion and you have made a few trips outside of the forest. You travel as far as the Retlad province and the first obscure village you stumble across is completely decimated, with undead roaming around. The scary part about it is this is very recent looking, which means they’re starting to head your way. It’ll start with the occasional zombie or skeleton wandering in. Then more will come. How long before an army arrives? Again due to your information, Qweet and the rest of her clan have made the final decision to hide their forest entirely. They tell you that they would like you to stay. You would even be allowed to see their true home. The only stipulation is that you would not be able to leave. The illusion wouldn’t just hide the forest, but it would create a barrier preventing entry or exit. You can’t imagine how it would look to those on the outside of the forest. Appealing to be sure, but as much as you like the company of the pixies, you don’t think it will be safe to dwell in their forest for too much longer, illusions or not. The Gnomes back in the Garwold Confederacy had some excellent illusionists as well, and it didn’t help them. > You stay in the forest This is probably the most satisfied you’ve been in a long time. Why bother running anymore? You’re not going to be any happier elsewhere as you eek out an existence. This is a place where you can play your music and have a regular appreciative audience. Perhaps the pixie illusion will fail, perhaps it won’t, but this is your home now. “Queet, I’m staying.” “That’s wonderful!” she squeaks. The pixies go through with their plan of hiding the entire forest. They explain that for everyone else it will look like a rock mass and the magic shield will prevent entry in case someone bumps into the “rock”. Creatures inside will only see more forest outside the barrier and will probably be baffled to as why they can’t go any further, but will probably not make any serious attempt to do so even if they could. The pixies also allow you to enter their little village. Naturally you’re much bigger, but a special arrangement is made so that you can stay nearby and they build you a tree-house of sorts and provide meals and drink for you. Life with the pixies full time is relatively nice. Of course a few are prone to play jokes on you sometimes, you don’t get mad about it and they usually make up for it later. A few years pass and it gets to the point where you almost forget about what’s going on outside the forest since almost everyday is a pixie party filled with merriment and music. There’s one particular time when there was a brief magical disturbance in the illusion, but the pixies managed to correct it. It does cause you to get concerned, but the pixies still insist that you not worry. After fifteen some odd years pass, the forest begins to signs of unnatural decay, and forest creatures seem to be dying way before their time. Some of the pixies have made comments of not feeling themselves, which is very odd since being fairy creatures they don’t normally get sick. You haven’t been feeling up to your usual standards either. You at first chalked it up to age, but you know that it’s more than that. The Great Lich Lord’s influence has finally penetrated the illusion. Death is creeping in. The months pass and the illusion begins to break down despite attempts to keep it up. At last for the first time in years you see the “outside world” again. It’s desolate and bleak. The Great Lich Lord has been thorough in his conquest of the world and with this new found green patch, it won’t be long before it becomes as dead as the rest of the landscape. Perhaps because they’re magical creatures of nature, the pixies cannot withstand this death aura as well as you can, and they begin dying. Their illusions and happy lush world utterly destroyed. “Wh…why is this happening?” are Queet’s last delirious words before she expires. One by one they all die. You weep as you can do nothing for them. Nobody can. Once again you’ve lost another family. You wish you’d left the damn forest long ago just so you hadn’t deluded yourself and gotten so attached to the pixies only to watch them die. However, you decide that this place will be your last stand as well and you’re too tired to run even if there was anywhere safe to run to anyway. You fight off undead creatures for a couple months as you attempt to survive in this now dying forest, but ultimately you’re overwhelmed and killed. Sadly, unlike your pixie friends, you are not allowed to rest in peace as you wander the landscape in search of the last remnants of life to destroy in the Great Lich Lord’s service.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Running from the undead, only to die of starvation and the cold in the mountains isn’t your idea of survival. You’re sticking to familiar terrain. You travel further away from civilization and ultimately deeper into a large forest. You’re not exactly sure of where you’re at, but you know you’ve left the Zalan borders. You’re probably in the unclaimed area north of the Retlad province. You never patrolled that far when you were stationed there, so you’re unsure of what to expect. You’ll certainly have to be alert though. A few weeks pass and you’ve got the hang of it. A few close calls with an Eberaw Hunter, but you’ve managed to make somewhat of a home for yourself. You mainly sleep in the trees. You get water from springs and small streams and as for food, well you always were good at hunting. You pass the time playing your mandolin and just basically keeping watch. As the days pass by though, you get the impression that someone is watching YOU. It’s not any undead though. You haven’t seen any in weeks. You haven’t come across any living creatures of higher intelligence either, but then again that doesn’t mean they aren’t around… “Hello stranger. Do you like our forest?” you hear a small voice say. You look around, but see nothing. You guess who ever it is, is invisible, and you nearly go for your weapon. “Please, no need for that. You are among friends here, musical one.” The voice says and then you see your unseen host appears before you. She’s very small and probably only comes up to ankle. You’ve heard of fairies before, but you’ve never seen one. “Are you a fairy?” you ask. “We go by many different names. Technically I am a pixie, but if you prefer, fairy will do. We heard you playing over the weeks and I thought it was about time we told you our appreciation for it. We didn’t know you big people had gifts for it. You are human are you not?” “Yes, and thanks.” “So, what brings you out here? Are you a ranger perhaps? You seem to have skills about you that are useful in this environment.” “No, not a ranger. Just trying to escape death like everyone else I suppose.” “Hmm, you realize as beautiful as this forest is, it’s not without its dangers. Death is here as well, but I’m sure you know that.” “Yes, but its at least reasonable. There aren’t zombies and wraiths terrorizing the place…well at least not yet…” “What are you talking about stranger?” the pixie asks quizzically, you look a little surprised yourself. “The Great Lich Lord of course. He’s destroying everything, and I dunno how he’s going to be stopped. I don’t think he can.” Your words immediately make the pixie’s cheerful demeanor change immediately. “…he’s returned?! But he was killed centuries ago! My clan has told the stories for generations!” “Well, he’s back, or someone like him…you really didn’t know? I mean this war with him has been going on for years now. Ten to be precise. Don’t you leave this forest?” “You must understand stranger, we have everything we want here. There is no need to leave. We also live in illusions, what you see now, is not necessarily what is. We remain hidden in our illusions so nobody may ever harm us and we can live our lives in relative isolation. It is only on rare occasions that we reveal ourselves.” “But I’ve heard stories about your kind being elsewhere or even in cities.” You say. “Well we are not the only fairy folk you know! Perhaps the others you heard of were sprites, or brownies or even a different clan of pixies. I can only speak for my clan and as far as I know we are the only fairy folk that live in this particular forest. There are other denizens of course, but thanks to our illusions we stay safely hidden. Even the occasional human or goblinoid that has wandered in here has not disturbed us. Quite frankly, you’d be the first person in centuries that we’ve revealed ourselves to.” “There aren’t any elves in this forest?” you ask, sort of figuring that some might have retreated or made a home here, forests being their natural homes and all. Your question is met with slight annoyance. “Most certainly not! This place has been elf free for millennia and hopefully stays that way! I’ll speak no more of this elven nonsense!” You don’t press the issue, but up until now you figured fairy folk and elves were all friends, guess not. The pixie changes the subject since she wants to know more about this Great Lich Lord business and says her name is Qweet. Qweet tells you that she will return with the rest of her clan, as she will not reveal their home of course. In a somewhat playful yet firm tone she also warns you not to try to follow her, though as good of a tracker you are you doubt if you could anyway since she turns invisible again. While you wait, you still can’t believe she and the rest of her clan don’t know anything about what’s going on; you almost envy them for living in blissful ignorance for the last ten years. You also feel like you’ve ruined things for them. Eventually more pixies return and you tell them what’s been going on. They are saddened, but maintain a confident demeanor. They are certain that they will survive this plague due to their illusions. They explain that if need be they can hide the entire forest, which with the new grim information you gave them they are very inclined to do. They still have to discuss it. In the meantime they say they hope you’ll stick around for awhile as they still enjoy your playing and you aren’t destroying the forest. You’re just glad you’ve met some friendly people that aren’t trying to kill you. It’s a nice change and after what you’ve been through recently, you welcome it. One year passes… Your time in the pixie forest has been relatively safe. Other than the occasional aggressive forest beasts, you haven’t had to do much combat. It’s been a relief. You’ve enjoyed the company of the pixies as well. However, your natural curiosity has gotten the better of you on occasion and you have made a few trips outside of the forest. You travel as far as the Retlad province and the first obscure village you stumble across is completely decimated, with undead roaming around. The scary part about it is this is very recent looking, which means they’re starting to head your way. It’ll start with the occasional zombie or skeleton wandering in. Then more will come. How long before an army arrives? Again due to your information, Qweet and the rest of her clan have made the final decision to hide their forest entirely. They tell you that they would like you to stay. You would even be allowed to see their true home. The only stipulation is that you would not be able to leave. The illusion wouldn’t just hide the forest, but it would create a barrier preventing entry or exit. You can’t imagine how it would look to those on the outside of the forest. Appealing to be sure, but as much as you like the company of the pixies, you don’t think it will be safe to dwell in their forest for too much longer, illusions or not. The Gnomes back in the Garwold Confederacy had some excellent illusionists as well, and it didn’t help them. > You leave The pixies have almost made you forget about what’s really going on in the rest of the world…but you still know it’s going on. Perhaps it’s easier for them, as they have not had to experience the tragedies you’ve faced, but you know the destruction that’s eventually going to come. You don’t see any hope in their plan and if you stayed, and you still would never be able to completely relax. You could possibly be trapped as well. However, you have no wish to bring more despair to these people. Let them live in illusions for as long as they can, You wish you could. It is with great regret that you tell them that you cannot stay. They attempt to convince you to do otherwise, but you’ve already made up your mind. Finally they accept your decision, but insist on repaying you for all your musical entertainment. They give you a small magical amulet. They tell you it can make you invisible for short periods of time. You thank them and assure them that it will most definitely come in handy. You leave the forest and head further away from the undead plague. Nine years pass… Twenty years of surviving this living hell. Living in a cave in the mountains isn’t as easy as it was in the Pixie forest, but it’s probably a lot safer as far as undead are concerned. The biggest threats you’ve had to face are a few Cragmaws and Mountain Trolls. Once you ran into a couple of dwarves, so you assume that there may be an underground settlement somewhere in the area. You attempted to speak, but they just shot at you with their crossbows and told you to go away, saying that humans were the cause of the problem going on right now. Your use your amulet when you can as it seems that the living have been just as willing to kill you as the undead. Then again, that’s nothing new. Every now and then you travel and scout around the area taking in the untainted countryside. You figure you should do it now before it’s claimed eventually. The living exist here, which means death can only eventually follow. You just wonder how long it will take. Sometimes you walk along the shore that’s nearby. You look out past the vast blue and begin to wonder if there are any other places out there. You briefly entertain the idea of building a boat. You know that the globe was thoroughly charted centuries ago and that this is the only continent, but still you wonder if something wasn’t missed. Of course you’re probably just holding on to the false hope that you could theoretically go someplace else where death wasn’t everywhere. But there isn’t such a place. Lately something very odd has been happening and you have no idea what it is. You could swear that the landscape has been subtlety altering itself from time to time. Not permanently, but it seems to look “wavy” or “warped” briefly. You initially chalk it up to your prolonged isolation and seeing things because of it, however you soon find out that it’s more than just your mind playing tricks on you. One day after you’ve done some hunting and bringing your catch back to your cave, you start noticing a severe slow down in your actions. “What the fuck…” you say to yourself, except it comes out a lot slower. You don’t experience for long, but the worst is yet to come. A portal opens up in the sky and you immediately feel ill. You see a creature that you’ve never seen before and it’s huge but it feels incredibly unnatural and it definitely isn’t of this world. The dead animal that you’re carrying suddenly melts into a black goo like substance. You jump back and nearly fall off the side of the mountain, which now feels like jelly under your feet rather than sturdy rock. You don’t know what’s going here and you don’t want to know. All you know is reality is starting to be seriously warped and you’re ready to puke. The tentacled creature doesn’t seem to notice you, it’s just surveying and floating in the air as the area around and beneath it changes. That still doesn’t mean it won’t attack eventually when it does notice you. You immediately attempt to use your amulet, but nothing is happening. The creature or something else is nullifying your magic item. Right now you’re caught out in the open, your cave is close, but you’re still not sure if you can get there in time and even if you do, would you be any safer? The other alternative is to make you way back down the mountain and try to escape that way. The problem with that plan is that everything is very wobbly right now and you’re not feeling very steady. > You run to your cave The creature is too big to fit in the cave if it tries to attack and you need to hide as soon as possible. You make a run for it, gagging and stumbling the whole time. Eventually you do get to the cave. You don’t think the creature even saw you. You continue to fumble around in the dark cave that you call home. You can still hear weird noises coming from outside and you’re desperate to drown them out as you feel like its doing something to your mind. In fact, you’re feeling a little deranged. “WHAT?! WHAT?! UNDEAD WEREN’T ENOUGH?! NOW THIS?! HAHAHAHA! YOU CAN’T KILL ME! I’LL SURVIVE! I SURVIVE EVERYTHING! Who am I here? Who goes there?” You look around the cave and start seeing the rocky walls transform into writhing masses of worms. You grab your sword and start hacking away, only to fall to the ground half laughing and half crying. “You don’t understand…I’ve lost it all…(sob) why? WHERE ARE THE GODS? WHY HAVEN’T YOU STOPPED THIS?! DAMN YOU FUCKING ALL! Ha ha ha ha!” You look into the small fire that lights your cave and see it change into a blue color. You begin to think you see faces in it. “Randi? Is that you? I’m sorry…I could still save…” You burn your hand badly when you shove it into the flames in some misguided attempt to save your sister who is not there. It’s at this point; you realize you’re losing your mind. You didn’t survive this long just to lose that. You start trying to block out the sounds, but it’s relentless. And that’s when you see your mandolin on the floor nearby. Music. It always takes you to another place. A better place. You can’t play it right now with your burned hand, but your music is always with you. In your mind. You begin to focus on one particular song in your head. You close your eyes think of yourself playing. The tune is nearly drowned out by the noise, but eventually the music gets louder and the creature’s noise is getting quieter, until finally that’s all you can hear. You have no idea how long you do this for, but eventually you open your eyes again, and everything is normal. The walls are rock, the fire is red. Your hand still hurts, but it will heal. You stay in the cave for days, unsure of what to make of all this. Ultimately you leave to explore cautiously, and everything outside seems normal as well. There is no sign that the creature was ever around. You don’t know if it moved on, disappeared, or what. Did you go temporarily insane? Did all of this really happen? You do know you burned your hand, so you’re pretty sure it did on some level. In any event, you never want to encounter anything like that ever again. Death almost seems preferable than complete madness. You’re still shaken up by the experience for months to come but eventually you get over it. Just like you have with every other hardship you’ve faced. Twenty years pass… Forty years have passed and you feel death closer than ever. Old age has been taking its toll and while you’re somewhat fit for your age you can’t stop the ravages of time. Still, it’s not just that. It’s the world in general. The place has slowly become a dead world, quite literally from what you’ve seen during your travels. Eventually you abandoned your cave in the mountain when the dead began to congregate in the area. The dwarven settlement was probably attacked. You don’t know, you didn’t stick around. You continued to stay on the move. After a few years of wandering, you noticed dead trees. Not unusual in the lands of the Great Lich Lord, but you were sticking to places at least on the outskirts of his domain. But it didn’t seem to matter. His influence was obviously extending. The magic in your amulet no longer works, and you briefly thought of the pixies. You know they didn’t survive. Soon grass was no longer growing. Hunting was becoming scarce. Animals were dying out. It almost reminded you of when the farm was going through a rough patch, but this time there would be no recovery. You walked along another shoreline and saw fish and other sea creatures washed up dead in massive quantities. You’ve had to fight undead monsters at almost every turn, always having to stay one step ahead before you’re overwhelmed. Even the air itself feels like it’s harder to breathe no matter where you go. Right now you’re very far north, where nothing ever existed save ice and snow. You’re living in yet another cave, but you’re pretty sure this one is going to be your tomb. You haven’t eaten in days, as you haven’t spotted a living creature in days. You haven’t seen another intelligent living creature in years. It’s very cold, and all you want to do is sleep now. You think you might have one or two more days left tops. However, you’re not allowed to leave just yet… While you’re drifting in and out of consciousness in your weakened state, you suddenly see a dark hooded figure by the fire. You know who it is. “So…you’ve come for me personally? I didn’t think I was important enough.” you ask. “You aren’t really. Let’s just say that I have a lot of free time and with less and less living now, I take a more personal approach whenever I can. Besides, given how remote this place is, I doubt if any of my necromancers could’ve found you anyway. That is if I hadn’t killed them all.” The Great Lich Lord’s voice doesn’t sound anything like you thought it might. It’s actually not very scary at all. Almost calm. “Heh. I killed a necromancer once…” you say. “You have my thanks then, one less treacherous fool that I didn’t have to deal with.” “You didn’t really need to come all this way you know, I think I was dying before you got here.” At this point the Great Lich Lord begins walking around your cave looking at your meager possessions. He immediately notices your very worn mandolin and picks it up. “Please feel free to take it. I won’t be needing it anymore.” You say. “Not sure what I’d do with it. I’m not musically inclined at all. I’m pretty much only good at killing things as you can tell.” “Yeah, you’re great at that.” “My mistress Catalina likes music though; perhaps she might find it interesting. This looks very old, where did you get it?” “Oh in a town that the demons destroyed when they lost their leader Velzix.” “Hah. Demons. I think everyone was glad when I got rid of those assholes.” The Great Lich Lord remarks. “That thing probably saved my life when I found it. Some weird ass vampire called Warnov wanted me to play for him. Said you were after him or something…” “Yes. Vampires weren’t my favorite people. Arrogant creatures. Well they’re dead now. Excuse me, but did you say Warnov?” “That was his name. Yes.” The Great Lich Lord is silent for a moment and then speaks again. “I know who you are. I can’t believe it’s you, but I know who you are. I remember before I tracked down and killed old Warnov, he stated that he was glad he heard you play before he died. He also said that if I ever encountered you that I should insist that you play for me before I killed you. Something about your playing being beautiful or something. You also served in the Zalan Empire army. Weren’t you supposed to be a hero or something?” You laugh weakly. “Mostly or something.” You reply. “Hm. I wonder if you ever met…” the Great Lich Lord then pauses for a moment. “…nevermind. It’s the past and that no longer matters. So can you still play this thing?” “Well of course, but…” “Good. We’re leaving this place then, got a job for you.” Before you can speak another word, you feel yourself teleported. > One last song... You find yourself in a very ornate yet definitely dark chamber. All manner of symbols related to death exist here. You could only be in the Great Lich Lord’s tower in Nuro. You never thought you’d ever be here. The last time you were anywhere near Nuro was forty years ago and things were much different. “Welcome to Aftermath, my musical guest. As I said, I’m not much for music, but Catalina is and I’m sure she would love to hear you play. She…” The Great Lich Lord pauses again. “She hasn’t been feeling well lately and I think this would help out. Just take seat in that chair over there. Here’s your mandolin.” This almost surreal. You didn’t expect your last moments on this world to be like this. Lacking any other ideas you slowly go over to sit on the chair, while the Great Lich Lord goes to get his mistress Catalina. They better hurry up because you feel like you’ve done more than knocking on death’s door; you’re quite literally in his home. The proximity of being so close to the Great Lich Lord is speeding up your death. The Great Lich Lord soon arrives with Catalina and you look upon her. She’s very beautiful. You had heard stories about her before decades ago when you were still serving in the army. She looks young, though she has to be much older. However, you can tell she’s not exactly moving very fast and taking her time. It’s apparent that despite her skill in necromancy that she’s suffering from the effects of the Great Lich Lord’s death aura. She must be powerful indeed to be able to withstand his proximity everyday. She must also love him very much to do it. You briefly think of how someone could ever love such a being, or how such a being is even capable of love. But given how you see them interact, there it is. This also starts to make you angry. Why are they allowed such a thing? They’re the bad guys here. You never did anything wrong and you lost everyone you ever loved or cared about. You begin to tear up, but it’s in frustration rather than sadness. All the past pain and suffering that you’ve ever experienced has come back to hurt you one last time. “Okay, start playing.” The Great Lich Lord says. “No.” you remark. “What?” “You heard me. No.” “I don’t think you’re in any position to defy me.” “Oh I think I’m in every position. What the hell are you going to do to me? I’m fuckin’ dead already! You’ve already taken everything away from me! My friends and acquaintances died because of you! I lost my home because of you! My family and loved ones died because of you! I had to kill my own mother because she became one of your undead minions! My siblings, all fuckin’ dead! All I have left is my music! And now you want me to give that away to you too? NO! I’ll DIE with it!” After this outburst the Great Lich Lord replies in kind. “Insolent mortal! Do you forget who I am? You think dying will save you? Think again! I will kill you and raise you as a fucking zombie and MAKE you play for us in a pink dress if it so amuses me! Now play and perhaps that won’t be your fate!” The Great Lich Lord’s voice now sounds more menacing. More like what you thought, but you don’t care, you’ve got nothing to lose at this juncture. It is at this point Catalina steps in. “I don’t think that will be necessary dear. You just let me handle this. You go in the next room and cool off or something.” The Great Lich Lord agrees to this and hugs Catalina, before walking off. Catalina now walks towards you. “You’ll have to forgive my beloved’s outburst. He goes a little over the top when it comes to me. Especially now. So much has happened. He’s changed so much and continues to change even now. He doesn’t express it, but I think it’s always gotten to him.” “I don’t have to forgive shit. Am I supposed to feel sympathy? He’s caused all this…and you too! How can you stand by him? You’re still alive! You could probably kill him and stop this before the entire world is dead!” “Oh I doubt if I could, even if I so desired, which I don’t. My feelings for him and the reasons…well the heart wants, what the heart wants. I sometimes worry about what he will do after I’m gone though. He’s in great denial. He knows I cannot fight off his overwhelming aura forever. I suppose in some ways, bringing you here to play for me was some vain hope of making me feel better. And it will, in its own way…” You still can’t believe that she’s trying to make them out to be the victims. “Look I don’t care about what the hell you two death freaks want, I know what the hell I’ve gone through and it’s all your fault. Fuck the both of you. You haven’t had to deal with the pain I’ve gone through.” “Perhaps not. But do you think you are the only one on this world who’s suffered? What makes your life and those close to you so special? Nothing. You and everyone else whoever lived on this dying world are equal. You, your family, even me. The only person who isn’t equal, is in the next room. We’ve all lost those close to us at some point. Yes, even my beloved and he’ll lose another when I’m gone. We’ll all be long dead and he’ll probably still be on this world by himself with nothing to do. And that, I’m convinced will be the greatest suffering of all. Life without end? No thank you. When my time comes, I will embrace it.” You’re very surprised to hear a necromancer say that. “My beloved cannot help what he is. For whatever reason, he was gifted with the art of death. He’s become it. It’s his nature. You can’t be angry with a force of nature. It has to simply be.” You want to argue, you want to fight, you want to bring up every moral debate you can think of, but to be quite honest you can’t. Part of it is it wouldn’t make any difference. Part of it is you’re tired of fighting, you can’t do it anymore and you don’t have strength at this point. The other part is that in a way what she’s said makes some sense and is correct. It also makes you think about your “nature”. It was to play music. You never got to live the life you wanted, but during your lifetime, music always seeped in somehow. It always found a way. Catalina continues to speak. “Now you certainly don’t have to play. That’s your choice. I will make sure that my beloved does not turn you into dress wearing zombie though. It would be a shame though. You are not completely unfamiliar to me. I do have some knowledge of who you are and I have heard stories of your playing. I would like to hear it played while you still had the passion and energy behind it. The living spark that can only invoke such things.” “…I’ll play…” you say with a heavy breath that took some effort for you. “You will?” “Yes…what did you want to hear?” Catalina smiles. “I don’t know, whatever you like I suppose. Just as long as it has a nice soothing melody.” “Okay then.” “Hold on, I must get my beloved before you start. I must ask though, what changed your mind to play?” “Nothing. It’s my nature.” Catalina soon returns with the Great Lich Lord and they both sit in their respective thrones. Catalina tells you to play, which you do so. You watch the pair of them look at each other as you play. You would appear that Catalina is pleased with her “gift”. You don’t know about the Great Lich Lord, since you can’t see his face, but you assume that if she’s happy, then he’s happy. You see them hold hands and look at each other as you enter the second verse of the song. At this point you begin to close your eyes and just let the music and instinct guide your fingers. You can feel your life slip away, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve been taken to a different place. A better place. You smile and wave to your family. You can see them all so clearly. All of them are there. You’re getting closer. They’re ready to accept you with open arms. Last verse. Not much energy left, but you’re nearly there. You won’t have to worry about anything anymore. Heart slowing down. You’re with them now. Everything will be so good again. Your music has saved you one last time. One last note. One last breath. You’re home. “Well, he certainly looked happier than he did earlier.” “Yes, yes he did. Set his body on fire dear.” “You don’t want him around to play for you later?” “No, I don’t think that performance could ever be replicated.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The pixies have almost made you forget about what’s really going on in the rest of the world…but you still know it’s going on. Perhaps it’s easier for them, as they have not had to experience the tragedies you’ve faced, but you know the destruction that’s eventually going to come. You don’t see any hope in their plan and if you stayed, and you still would never be able to completely relax. You could possibly be trapped as well. However, you have no wish to bring more despair to these people. Let them live in illusions for as long as they can, You wish you could. It is with great regret that you tell them that you cannot stay. They attempt to convince you to do otherwise, but you’ve already made up your mind. Finally they accept your decision, but insist on repaying you for all your musical entertainment. They give you a small magical amulet. They tell you it can make you invisible for short periods of time. You thank them and assure them that it will most definitely come in handy. You leave the forest and head further away from the undead plague. Nine years pass… Twenty years of surviving this living hell. Living in a cave in the mountains isn’t as easy as it was in the Pixie forest, but it’s probably a lot safer as far as undead are concerned. The biggest threats you’ve had to face are a few Cragmaws and Mountain Trolls. Once you ran into a couple of dwarves, so you assume that there may be an underground settlement somewhere in the area. You attempted to speak, but they just shot at you with their crossbows and told you to go away, saying that humans were the cause of the problem going on right now. Your use your amulet when you can as it seems that the living have been just as willing to kill you as the undead. Then again, that’s nothing new. Every now and then you travel and scout around the area taking in the untainted countryside. You figure you should do it now before it’s claimed eventually. The living exist here, which means death can only eventually follow. You just wonder how long it will take. Sometimes you walk along the shore that’s nearby. You look out past the vast blue and begin to wonder if there are any other places out there. You briefly entertain the idea of building a boat. You know that the globe was thoroughly charted centuries ago and that this is the only continent, but still you wonder if something wasn’t missed. Of course you’re probably just holding on to the false hope that you could theoretically go someplace else where death wasn’t everywhere. But there isn’t such a place. Lately something very odd has been happening and you have no idea what it is. You could swear that the landscape has been subtlety altering itself from time to time. Not permanently, but it seems to look “wavy” or “warped” briefly. You initially chalk it up to your prolonged isolation and seeing things because of it, however you soon find out that it’s more than just your mind playing tricks on you. One day after you’ve done some hunting and bringing your catch back to your cave, you start noticing a severe slow down in your actions. “What the fuck…” you say to yourself, except it comes out a lot slower. You don’t experience for long, but the worst is yet to come. A portal opens up in the sky and you immediately feel ill. You see a creature that you’ve never seen before and it’s huge but it feels incredibly unnatural and it definitely isn’t of this world. The dead animal that you’re carrying suddenly melts into a black goo like substance. You jump back and nearly fall off the side of the mountain, which now feels like jelly under your feet rather than sturdy rock. You don’t know what’s going here and you don’t want to know. All you know is reality is starting to be seriously warped and you’re ready to puke. The tentacled creature doesn’t seem to notice you, it’s just surveying and floating in the air as the area around and beneath it changes. That still doesn’t mean it won’t attack eventually when it does notice you. You immediately attempt to use your amulet, but nothing is happening. The creature or something else is nullifying your magic item. Right now you’re caught out in the open, your cave is close, but you’re still not sure if you can get there in time and even if you do, would you be any safer? The other alternative is to make you way back down the mountain and try to escape that way. The problem with that plan is that everything is very wobbly right now and you’re not feeling very steady. > You run back down the mountain You’re having difficulty concentrating, but you decide that it would be better to distance yourself from the creature rather than trapping yourself in a cave. You attempt to head down the mountain, but you really are feel very sick and dizzy, in fact you’re beginning to feel worse. The ground underneath you doesn’t even feel like jelly now, you’re actually sinking into it like quicksand! “What the fu…” you say before a sudden powerful wave of nausea that hits you causes you to vomit immediately. You try to stop the sinking, but it’s futile and soon you’ve sank all the way it. Oddly you can still breathe; but the terrain has turned to worms and maggots. You can feel them crawling all over you, in your ears and every other orifice of your body. You begin to laugh insanely (while the maggots crawl all in it) since your mind has become severely warped at this point and madness has overtaken you as you sink further through the maggot mountain. You’re unsure of how long this goes on for since you’ve lost your mind, but whatever was going on eventually stops and everything returns to normal. Unfortunately that doesn’t really help you since you’re still in the mountain which has returned to solid rock where you are now completely embedded in. You die instantly, putting an end to your madness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Really, it’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense anymore. This war is lost there’s not even any doubt about it. Hope is fleeting and if this is truly it, then it’s going to be with the ones you did this for in the first place. Your small groups of soldiers wonder where you’re going and you flat out tell them, in fact you tell them more than that. “I’m going home, and I suggest if any of you have any family you go to them as well. This is it folks, there’s no happy ending here. It’s been a pleasure serving with all of you.” You then ride home as quickly as possible. The farm is scattered with undead. They attack and in some cases eat the livestock, while attempting to get into your house. Dead Zalan soldiers can be seen, except they aren’t properly dead like they should be. The farmhouse is being attacked and you can see your sister firing her pistol at the zombies from one of the broken windows. You trample a couple of the zombies with your horse and kill couple more with your bow, but eventually you dismount and chop up the remaining ones near the farm house, since you want to save your arrows for anything potentially more dangerous. “Quick get inside through this window, the door is barricaded.” your sister Randi shouts when she sees you. “No! It’s a death trap to stay now! This place is lost! You all have to come with me!” you shout back, keeping an eye on the advancing zombies. “Can’t Mom’s hurt pretty bad. Got stabbed by one those corpses. We can’t move her. Help’s gotta come soon…” “NO, it won’t Randi! The capitol of Zalan is being attacked as we speak! I came home to get your guys! This is the fucking end! We’ve lost! We just gotta…” You’re interrupted when you have to cut down an advancing zombie. Your sister fires a shot at another one. Suddenly a scream from the house is heard, followed by another. That has to be Calwin, and Makana. Randi rushes from the window and you cut down another zombie before bashing the door down with relative ease. More screaming is heard along with growling this time. You look around and run down the hallway where Randi is standing motionless. She’s dropped her pistol. You push her aside and see your other sister Makana dead on the floor and then a quick scan to the left and you see your mother eating Calwin. She’s one of those things… You act where Randi failed and give a killing blow to the thing that was once your mother. “I’m sorry.” You whisper and her blood splashes across your face. Now you’re ready to get the hell out of the house, but Randi is still standing there motionless. “COME ON! WE GOTTA GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!” you shout. “Yeah...okay…” Randi says and begins to move like she’s in slow motion and picks up her flintlock. You run past Randi in the hallway who’s still moving slowly. “Randi get your ass mov…” You hear a gunshot behind you. Followed by the slumping of a lifeless body. You don’t even turn around, you don’t want to see. When you get outside, surprisingly the undead haven’t become unmanageable yet, and you cut down another couple with relative ease. Your horse unfortunately has run off, you’re on foot from here. You don’t even know where to go. Where is it going to be safe? Nowhere, but you lack any other ideas, so you just head for unclaimed wilderness. After about a day of running, hiding and maneuvering, you’re in a relatively safe location and that’s when you finally allow yourself to grieve for the loss of your family. You weep. You’ve lost everything now. Everything you did was basically for them, and now they’re all gone. You don’t know if you can even continue. What would be the point? The world seems to be doomed anyway. But then after you think about it, you decide that if death is taking over the world, you’re not going to make it easy. Death has already taken everything away from you except your life, and you’re going to hold on to that as long as possible. You’re going to live for your family and all the others that can’t any longer. You’re going to survive, because ultimately that’s what you’ve always done. You’ve cheated death more than once already and you’ll continue to do it. Death itself is going to have to hunt you down if it wants your life. After reaching this conclusion, you try to think of where you should go next. Going to any type of centers of civilization is out of the question now. You’d only have to move again, them being targets now. So it’s the life of wanderer now. The question is where would be best? The forests aren’t exactly safe, but you’re more familiar with surviving in them. The mountains might be a little safer, but living in them is going to be a lot harsher. > You head to the mountains Better to get accustomed to them now, since you figure you might have to live in them in the future anyway. You head further north and traverse the harsh terrain. As far as undead are concerned you’re in no danger, however the mountain trolls and cragmaws living there are just as dangerous. You eventually find a suitable cave to live in. To keep yourself entertained you play your music in between your survival. It’s a rough life, but you persevere for a few years. Unfortunately the day comes when a particularly large mountain troll tribe decides to finally get organized enough to eliminate you from being a nuisance. You awaken one night to see several large figures enter your cave. You spring to action immediately, which causes the trolls to laugh. This buys you time to kill at least one of them, but only one. You’re outnumbered, trapped and there’s nowhere to hide. The trolls savagely butcher you and even smash your mandolin over your head before you head to permanent unconsciousness. The only good thing is that trolls do such a thorough job of eating your body that not even your bones are left to be reanimated when the Great Lich Lord’s influence reaches the area.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know that this is most likely a losing battle, but some hope might be gained, if you can somehow draw out the knights and specters and get them by themselves. As powerful as they are, they’re very hard to control even by necromancers and get easily agitated by living creatures. You can’t do it alone though. You take your best archers and a couple of your best wizards and mention your plan. You don’t ask for volunteers, you just assign. You’re in charge and you have to make the hard decisions, even if it might mean you’ll die. They don’t look enthused, but you aren’t either. You tell everyone else to hold their ground while you and your small platoon ride towards the horde. “Ready those blessed silvers men, and you robe wearers melt those dead tin cans!” You get close enough and you unleash as many blessed silver arrows as you can at the Blood Specters. You kill a few. The wizards don’t do quite as well with the knights. However, both attacks are enough. You see the Specters and Knights making whatever unearthly noises they do and begin to advance towards you far ahead of the slower yet steady moving horde. It apparent that the necromancer controlling them is attempting to bring them back under control, because they begin to squirm back and forth which gives you some more time to kill a few more during their confusion. Eventually the necromancer must give up total control because they stop squirming and advance upon you once again. You ride back as quickly as possible with the Specters and Knights in full pursuit. You didn’t expect those Specters to be so fast. A few of them manage to catch up to some of your men with grisly results. You yourself almost get smacked upside the head by a Death Knight mace. When you get back in range the rest of your awaiting army deals with your pursuers. More blessed arrows fly into the Blood Specters before they can do anymore harm, and eventually the Death Knights are brought down as well. There is no time for a reprieve though, as the main horde is now almost upon you. You order a regrouping as best you can, and face the enemy, telling if possible for someone to aim for the necromancer in all of this rotting mess. Bones and limbs from both sides are broken and hacked off. A zombie skull is smashed, splashing maggots, blood and brains all over you and you’re not even thinking about it. You just have a tune in your head to take yourself away from the massacre. Somehow in all of the chaos, you single out the necromancer leading this army, he stands a far piece away from the main fighting, but he’s arrogant enough to be close enough for you to hit him with an arrow. And you have to hit him now. You see a Grand Alliance soldier who just took a fatal blow to the chest begin to rise… Not many arrows left and not much time, you just load up and shoot, hoping you hit the bastard. Your shot is straight and true. It strikes the necromancer in the stomach, causing him to fall back, which in turn causes the undead horde to momentarily stop their vicious attacks, giving your side a chance to turn the tide a bit. Then you shoot another arrow when you see the necromancer attempt to get back up, which turns the tide completely in your favor. Zombies and skeletons fall. Ghouls flee at the loss of leadership and any remaining undead are quickly dispatched. You don’t take chances though. You walk up to the corpse of the necromancer and shoot your last arrow directly into his head and stab him a few times. You then start laughing. “If this was the Great Lich Lord, I’d be a real hero right now!” You quickly sober up from this macabre outburst when you hear shouting from some of your men and you look up. It’s another horde. Just as big. You look behind you and see that your own numbers are completely insufficient. The Garwold citizens are either mostly dead or demoralized at this point. Even when you win…you lose. Having no real options, you sound a retreat to fall back to the Zalan border and suggest that the Garwold citizens do likewise as there is nothing more for them here. The Garwold Confederacy is now just one more loss for the living. The Zalan Empire won’t be far behind. Three years pass… Ten years since the Nuro incident and The Grand Alliance is nearly just consisting of the Zalan Empire now, which in turn has had to adapt a siege mentality. There is no “going on the offensive” anymore. You’re purely on defense. Your brother Mallack died two years ago. Transferred to a location with more fighting due to lack of manpower. Like it matters. Didn’t even get to say goodbye. You can only hope he didn’t become one of those things…but you know he probably did. You’ve been urging your family to run where it’s safer, but of course they won’t budge. The undead have been penetrating deeper into Zalan territory, you know it’s only a matter of time before the Great Lich Lord decides to stop toying with you and makes his full scale attack. Sure enough it happens. Town after town is taken; you’re pushed back further and further, and you know there’s nothing you can do to stop it. An order is given to everyone to fallback to the capital and help defend it from an upcoming attack, but at this point you’re just wondering if the rest of your family is still alive. > You letters to home (Last letter...) Dear Mom, We’re falling back again. No surprise there. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, but not for any of reasons you’d know, so I’ll tell you. Normally this would be something I would’ve told Mallack, but since he’s dead, I feel like I should tell you. I really miss Mallack. I was in contact with a woman by the name of Helena. She was a traveling merchant who I met years ago during my tour in Retlad. We had a relationship of sorts I suppose. We met whenever she was in the area I was stationed in. Dunno why I never told you about her, I guess I just felt weird about telling you. Silly now that I think about it. Anyway, she was in the city of Edat a few months ago when it was utterly destroyed. I suggested that she should just stay in the Retlad province since the fighting wasn’t as bad there, but she said there was a big deal to be made in Edat, so she went. Reports say there were no survivors. Of course reports have been wrong before and I have used some of my connections to find out for certain but considering the carnage that occurred I hold little hope. I’ll miss her. I can only hope that like Mallack, she wasn’t turned into one of those things. The word “hero” gets thrown around far too much and I should know first hand, but I’ll use it here: Where are the “heroes” to stop this? Shouldn’t some party of adventurers been able to slip through the Great Lich Lord’s defenses and chop his head off by now? Wasn’t that how the first one was stopped? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to go? Where are the gods? Why aren’t the good ones doing something to stop the utter destruction of their worshippers?! Hell, the evil ones would even suffice at this point! I mean just to know that SOMETHING is looking out for us in some fashion! If they haven’t abandoned this world, they better do something quick, because I feel like we’re in the last hours here. Actually I think we’re on borrowed time. We’re getting a report that we might have to fall back to the heart of the empire soon. At this point I’m not sure if I’m even going to do it. I know I’ve been duty bound this long with only a few falters along the way, but now? In the face of extinction? What’s the point? Sure there may be nowhere to run from death, but perhaps I can evade him for as long as possible. But I haven’t forgotten about all of you. I’d never do that. Even if I have to drag you all out of that infernal farmhouse kicking and screaming. Leave a light on for me, I may be coming home. I love you all. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t take it anymore. “I’M NOT A FUCKING HERO! OKAY!? I NEVER WAS AND I NEVER WANTED TO BE! (sob)… I just wanted to go home…(sob)” You weep for a few minutes before the captain speaks again. “Alright then what happened? Tell me the entire truth and maybe you’ll avoid the executioner’s axe.” At this point you have little choice. You’re too distraught to say anything else. You give a relatively condensed version of what happened. At Nuro and what happened recently. Your encounter with Warnov seems to surprise her quite a bit. You also go on to explain that it was high ranking Zalan officers that insisted on this hero nonsense. She believes you, like she knows something of it. “(sigh) Yeah there’s a statue of my dad in the Zalan capitol…but I know better…” You don’t question anymore about this quiet outburst from her since you’re still too worried about what’s going to happen to you. “So why did you come back? You probably could’ve gotten away with it.” “The same reason why I joined. My family. I guess I just needed a reminder of that first hand. And if there’s any hope of changing the tide of this war with the undead then I need to stand by my decision of joining the Zalan Army and making the world safer for them.” Once again the captain seems to soften. She almost looks like she’s going to tear up as well, but she turns away. “My family…I…” are all she says before taking a deep breath and turning back towards you, with a serious mindset again. “Alright, I shall trust your word for now sergeant, but I will be watching you VERY carefully! Consider yourself lucky for evading death once again, perhaps you do have knack for avoiding it. Let us hope that luck rubs off on the rest of us in the upcoming battle. I’m putting you in charge of the Retlad archery platoon. They’ll probably like you. Dismissed.” Before you leave she says one last thing. “And sergeant, don’t listen to what that bizarre vampire said. We’re not going to become extinct. We’re going to win and survive a long time. Besides you still have to play that song for me.” As you leave you feel a sigh of relief that you won’t be dying just yet, but given that you’re heading into battle soon with the undead, you’re wondering if you just didn’t postpone the inevitable. Two years pass… Seven years since the Nuro Incident changed the world into this living hell. Your time served in the Grand Alliance has not really changed much. The Grand Alliance and the Zalan Empire are basically one of the same now thanks to the complete embrace of a totalitarian system. Might makes right. Nations like the Azi Republic protested, but there was little that they could, after all Zalan has been practically defending the world by itself for the past few years. You get the impression that if this war is won; the Zalan Empire is going to throw its hat in to be a one world government. Amazing how power and conspiracy is plotted even when it probably won’t happen. “Probably won’t” because your superiors and political leaders are a lot more “optimistic” about winning than you are, but then they haven’t had to face the horrors you’ve faced. And horrors are a completely accurate word. You’ve gotten over your fear of the undead, but it doesn’t make it any easier. You’re starting to lose ground. Everyday the living lose someone, the Great Lich Lord gains. It’s a question of numbers and quite frankly your side doesn’t have them. You sort of wish your old captain was here. She was a very good leader and inspirational, but then again that’s why she was made a general and sent elsewhere. She asked you to play that song before she left though. Somehow it seemed to make her sadder afterwards. “Captain, undead are on the move, they won’t be long now.” One of your messengers says. “Yes, I can sense it. Here. You head back to my home. You know where it is by now, and give this message to my family. If you get back here and see undead, well get the fuck out and run back to Zalan territory.” Being a captain hasn’t really turned you into a copy of the captains you served in the past, but then again you didn’t even think you’d ever be promoted to one. Your reign as one has been a little unorthodox as you’ve applied more guerilla tactics than traditional ones, but given your assignment and your background it makes a hell of a lot more sense. You’re currently stationed on what remains of the Garwold Confederacy. It was a relatively peaceful nation made up mostly of Halflings and Gnomes, with lush green fields and flowers. Now it’s just slowly becoming another massive graveyard and example of genocide. You’ve gotten to know quite a few of them and you’re always amazed of how they can keep their sense of humor in the face of utter destruction. One of them actually gives you an answer. “To keep from crying.” Indeed. You’ve been playing quite a bit when you’re not battling the undead. (The Garwold citizens enjoy your playing a lot) It’s gotten to the point where you don’t just play anymore to keep your mind off of things, it’s like it transports you to a different world. A better world. If only. You often wonder how your brother Mallack is doing. He’s been stationed in a relatively safer location back in Zalan territory. You’re guessing that it lowers the odds of having your mom lose both of her sons at the same time. Like it makes it any better if she lost them within any length on time of each other. You wonder if the war is going to go on long enough that by the time Calwin grows up he’ll be drafted as well. If he even gets the chance to grow up. You can’t think about it now. A massive undead horde is coming and there’s no where left to hide. There will be open battle and you need to stay focused. You go through the whole order thing, and making sure your strategy is sound. You wish you had more wizards, but they seem to be in shorter supply these days. It’s almost like they’re being targeted deliberately sometimes…actually you don’t think it, you KNOW that they are. You see the undead horde approach. You look through some new fangled dwarven invention called an eye piece and see something makes your job a hell of a lot worse. You don’t just see the usual undead. You see fully armored Death Knights. Harder to kill than even a zombie giant. You see Blood Specters. Dark crimson spirits that can cause their victims to bleed from every orifice with their shrieks. Both of those are at the head of this horde, and this isn’t even counting that you’re severely outnumbered by just the regular zombies, skeletons, ghosts and the like. > You stand your ground You need to have a fully cohesive unit you think. “Ready those blessed silvers men, and you robe wearers melt those dead tin cans!” you order. Arrows fly towards the Blood Specters first seeing as they’re your greatest threat, the wizards unleash magic attack on the Death Knights. Your side manages to eliminate most of them before the horde reaches you. Unfortunately this isn’t enough. While your side fights valiantly, you’re outnumbered as usual and don’t really have the raw power to at least fight them off properly. Indeed that’s been the whole problem with the Garwold defense. Gnomes and Halflings have never been the best fighters in a straight up battle. Doesn’t take long before your dead are rising to join the enemy. You attempt to target the enemy necromancer, but you can’t get a clear shot, and it won’t help with the second dead army that is now heading over the hill now. You sound a retreat, but you won’t be joining few survivors left as a Death Knight smashes you in the side of the head with a swing of his fail. You fall to the ground dazed and bloody. As you attempt to get up, your mind begins to fill music. A little tune to take you away from this place… You look up just in time to see a blurry outline of the Death Knight who finishes the job and crushes your skull completely.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t take it anymore. “I’M NOT A FUCKING HERO! OKAY!? I NEVER WAS AND I NEVER WANTED TO BE! (sob)… I just wanted to go home…(sob)” You weep for a few minutes before the captain speaks again. “Alright then what happened? Tell me the entire truth and maybe you’ll avoid the executioner’s axe.” At this point you have little choice. You’re too distraught to say anything else. You give a relatively condensed version of what happened. At Nuro and what happened recently. Your encounter with Warnov seems to surprise her quite a bit. You also go on to explain that it was high ranking Zalan officers that insisted on this hero nonsense. She believes you, like she knows something of it. “(sigh) Yeah there’s a statue of my dad in the Zalan capitol…but I know better…” You don’t question anymore about this quiet outburst from her since you’re still too worried about what’s going to happen to you. “So why did you come back? You probably could’ve gotten away with it.” “The same reason why I joined. My family. I guess I just needed a reminder of that first hand. And if there’s any hope of changing the tide of this war with the undead then I need to stand by my decision of joining the Zalan Army and making the world safer for them.” Once again the captain seems to soften. She almost looks like she’s going to tear up as well, but she turns away. “My family…I…” are all she says before taking a deep breath and turning back towards you, with a serious mindset again. “Alright, I shall trust your word for now sergeant, but I will be watching you VERY carefully! Consider yourself lucky for evading death once again, perhaps you do have knack for avoiding it. Let us hope that luck rubs off on the rest of us in the upcoming battle. I’m putting you in charge of the Retlad archery platoon. They’ll probably like you. Dismissed.” Before you leave she says one last thing. “And sergeant, don’t listen to what that bizarre vampire said. We’re not going to become extinct. We’re going to win and survive a long time. Besides you still have to play that song for me.” As you leave you feel a sigh of relief that you won’t be dying just yet, but given that you’re heading into battle soon with the undead, you’re wondering if you just didn’t postpone the inevitable. Two years pass… Seven years since the Nuro Incident changed the world into this living hell. Your time served in the Grand Alliance has not really changed much. The Grand Alliance and the Zalan Empire are basically one of the same now thanks to the complete embrace of a totalitarian system. Might makes right. Nations like the Azi Republic protested, but there was little that they could, after all Zalan has been practically defending the world by itself for the past few years. You get the impression that if this war is won; the Zalan Empire is going to throw its hat in to be a one world government. Amazing how power and conspiracy is plotted even when it probably won’t happen. “Probably won’t” because your superiors and political leaders are a lot more “optimistic” about winning than you are, but then they haven’t had to face the horrors you’ve faced. And horrors are a completely accurate word. You’ve gotten over your fear of the undead, but it doesn’t make it any easier. You’re starting to lose ground. Everyday the living lose someone, the Great Lich Lord gains. It’s a question of numbers and quite frankly your side doesn’t have them. You sort of wish your old captain was here. She was a very good leader and inspirational, but then again that’s why she was made a general and sent elsewhere. She asked you to play that song before she left though. Somehow it seemed to make her sadder afterwards. “Captain, undead are on the move, they won’t be long now.” One of your messengers says. “Yes, I can sense it. Here. You head back to my home. You know where it is by now, and give this message to my family. If you get back here and see undead, well get the fuck out and run back to Zalan territory.” Being a captain hasn’t really turned you into a copy of the captains you served in the past, but then again you didn’t even think you’d ever be promoted to one. Your reign as one has been a little unorthodox as you’ve applied more guerilla tactics than traditional ones, but given your assignment and your background it makes a hell of a lot more sense. You’re currently stationed on what remains of the Garwold Confederacy. It was a relatively peaceful nation made up mostly of Halflings and Gnomes, with lush green fields and flowers. Now it’s just slowly becoming another massive graveyard and example of genocide. You’ve gotten to know quite a few of them and you’re always amazed of how they can keep their sense of humor in the face of utter destruction. One of them actually gives you an answer. “To keep from crying.” Indeed. You’ve been playing quite a bit when you’re not battling the undead. (The Garwold citizens enjoy your playing a lot) It’s gotten to the point where you don’t just play anymore to keep your mind off of things, it’s like it transports you to a different world. A better world. If only. You often wonder how your brother Mallack is doing. He’s been stationed in a relatively safer location back in Zalan territory. You’re guessing that it lowers the odds of having your mom lose both of her sons at the same time. Like it makes it any better if she lost them within any length on time of each other. You wonder if the war is going to go on long enough that by the time Calwin grows up he’ll be drafted as well. If he even gets the chance to grow up. You can’t think about it now. A massive undead horde is coming and there’s no where left to hide. There will be open battle and you need to stay focused. You go through the whole order thing, and making sure your strategy is sound. You wish you had more wizards, but they seem to be in shorter supply these days. It’s almost like they’re being targeted deliberately sometimes…actually you don’t think it, you KNOW that they are. You see the undead horde approach. You look through some new fangled dwarven invention called an eye piece and see something makes your job a hell of a lot worse. You don’t just see the usual undead. You see fully armored Death Knights. Harder to kill than even a zombie giant. You see Blood Specters. Dark crimson spirits that can cause their victims to bleed from every orifice with their shrieks. Both of those are at the head of this horde, and this isn’t even counting that you’re severely outnumbered by just the regular zombies, skeletons, ghosts and the like. > You letters to home (Grand Alliance...) Dear Mom, Well I’m sure you’ve heard by now that I’m officially part of the Grand Alliance. I don’t know just how to feel about it either. How I even got roped into it, is all by chance and luck. That seems to be a staple in my life. I tried to desert the army once and I ended up getting promoted. I do it again, and even get called on it and I get even more responsibility! The world has gone completely mad. I’m sure of it now. Though who knows for how long. The woman responsible for putting me in my new position says we’re going to win, but as each day wears on, I lose faith that we will. I’ve gotten over my fear of death and the undead, but now it’s been replaced by a numbness to it. I don’t know if that’s worse. I heard about Mallack getting drafted. I sure hope he’ll be okay. And I hope you’ll be able to manage the farm without him, but I guess you’ll be alright now that the government has taken control of the farm. I really wish that hadn’t happened, but what can we do right? At least you won’t need to protect the livestock anymore with all the guard patrolling it though. It would seem the Zalan Empire is everywhere nowadays though. Well, everywhere there isn’t undead of course. We’re going to try to retake the Brot Kingdom soon, dunno if it’ll be successful. Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t take it anymore. “I’M NOT A FUCKING HERO! OKAY!? I NEVER WAS AND I NEVER WANTED TO BE! (sob)… I just wanted to go home…(sob)” You weep for a few minutes before the captain speaks again. “Alright then what happened? Tell me the entire truth and maybe you’ll avoid the executioner’s axe.” At this point you have little choice. You’re too distraught to say anything else. You give a relatively condensed version of what happened. At Nuro and what happened recently. Your encounter with Warnov seems to surprise her quite a bit. You also go on to explain that it was high ranking Zalan officers that insisted on this hero nonsense. She believes you, like she knows something of it. “(sigh) Yeah there’s a statue of my dad in the Zalan capitol…but I know better…” You don’t question anymore about this quiet outburst from her since you’re still too worried about what’s going to happen to you. “So why did you come back? You probably could’ve gotten away with it.” “The same reason why I joined. My family. I guess I just needed a reminder of that first hand. And if there’s any hope of changing the tide of this war with the undead then I need to stand by my decision of joining the Zalan Army and making the world safer for them.” Once again the captain seems to soften. She almost looks like she’s going to tear up as well, but she turns away. “My family…I…” are all she says before taking a deep breath and turning back towards you, with a serious mindset again. “Alright, I shall trust your word for now sergeant, but I will be watching you VERY carefully! Consider yourself lucky for evading death once again, perhaps you do have knack for avoiding it. Let us hope that luck rubs off on the rest of us in the upcoming battle. I’m putting you in charge of the Retlad archery platoon. They’ll probably like you. Dismissed.” Before you leave she says one last thing. “And sergeant, don’t listen to what that bizarre vampire said. We’re not going to become extinct. We’re going to win and survive a long time. Besides you still have to play that song for me.” As you leave you feel a sigh of relief that you won’t be dying just yet, but given that you’re heading into battle soon with the undead, you’re wondering if you just didn’t postpone the inevitable. Two years pass… Seven years since the Nuro Incident changed the world into this living hell. Your time served in the Grand Alliance has not really changed much. The Grand Alliance and the Zalan Empire are basically one of the same now thanks to the complete embrace of a totalitarian system. Might makes right. Nations like the Azi Republic protested, but there was little that they could, after all Zalan has been practically defending the world by itself for the past few years. You get the impression that if this war is won; the Zalan Empire is going to throw its hat in to be a one world government. Amazing how power and conspiracy is plotted even when it probably won’t happen. “Probably won’t” because your superiors and political leaders are a lot more “optimistic” about winning than you are, but then they haven’t had to face the horrors you’ve faced. And horrors are a completely accurate word. You’ve gotten over your fear of the undead, but it doesn’t make it any easier. You’re starting to lose ground. Everyday the living lose someone, the Great Lich Lord gains. It’s a question of numbers and quite frankly your side doesn’t have them. You sort of wish your old captain was here. She was a very good leader and inspirational, but then again that’s why she was made a general and sent elsewhere. She asked you to play that song before she left though. Somehow it seemed to make her sadder afterwards. “Captain, undead are on the move, they won’t be long now.” One of your messengers says. “Yes, I can sense it. Here. You head back to my home. You know where it is by now, and give this message to my family. If you get back here and see undead, well get the fuck out and run back to Zalan territory.” Being a captain hasn’t really turned you into a copy of the captains you served in the past, but then again you didn’t even think you’d ever be promoted to one. Your reign as one has been a little unorthodox as you’ve applied more guerilla tactics than traditional ones, but given your assignment and your background it makes a hell of a lot more sense. You’re currently stationed on what remains of the Garwold Confederacy. It was a relatively peaceful nation made up mostly of Halflings and Gnomes, with lush green fields and flowers. Now it’s just slowly becoming another massive graveyard and example of genocide. You’ve gotten to know quite a few of them and you’re always amazed of how they can keep their sense of humor in the face of utter destruction. One of them actually gives you an answer. “To keep from crying.” Indeed. You’ve been playing quite a bit when you’re not battling the undead. (The Garwold citizens enjoy your playing a lot) It’s gotten to the point where you don’t just play anymore to keep your mind off of things, it’s like it transports you to a different world. A better world. If only. You often wonder how your brother Mallack is doing. He’s been stationed in a relatively safer location back in Zalan territory. You’re guessing that it lowers the odds of having your mom lose both of her sons at the same time. Like it makes it any better if she lost them within any length on time of each other. You wonder if the war is going to go on long enough that by the time Calwin grows up he’ll be drafted as well. If he even gets the chance to grow up. You can’t think about it now. A massive undead horde is coming and there’s no where left to hide. There will be open battle and you need to stay focused. You go through the whole order thing, and making sure your strategy is sound. You wish you had more wizards, but they seem to be in shorter supply these days. It’s almost like they’re being targeted deliberately sometimes…actually you don’t think it, you KNOW that they are. You see the undead horde approach. You look through some new fangled dwarven invention called an eye piece and see something makes your job a hell of a lot worse. You don’t just see the usual undead. You see fully armored Death Knights. Harder to kill than even a zombie giant. You see Blood Specters. Dark crimson spirits that can cause their victims to bleed from every orifice with their shrieks. Both of those are at the head of this horde, and this isn’t even counting that you’re severely outnumbered by just the regular zombies, skeletons, ghosts and the like. > You letters to home (Battle at Garwold...) Dear Mom, I’m still in Garwold and each day I see more of this once beautiful land die under the hordes of the Great Lich Lord. I wish I could’ve seen this place before all of this. I think I probably could’ve made a living here as a bard under different circumstances. Playing for the downtrodden militias and fleeing refugees during the few free moments is one of the few pleasures I get anymore. We’re expecting a big undead push soon, and I don’t see how we can hold on to the remaining territory we have left here. I know you probably won’t, but if we lose Garwold, I want you and the rest of the family to SERIOUSLY consider abandoning the farm. It’s not even ours anymore. Why stay there in the face of oncoming danger? But I know you’ll probably stay regardless. Maybe it doesn’t matter, because at this point where is there to run? Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Now you have to figure out a plan that’s going to prevent you from getting executed. You figure your brother’s plan isn’t exactly a bad one. Your record is good enough that you’d probably be believed. You think up a lie explaining that you were captured by a particularly sadistic vampire who was planning on draining you slowly to keep you as ongoing food. He took you to a cave in the hills where you barely killed him and escaped with your life. You would’ve made your way back sooner, but there were large groups of marauding orc raiders and demons escaping the ruins of the former Tulan kingdom that caused you to be extra cautious and forced you to hide for a few days. Yep, that sounds good. You head out with the plan of meeting up with Captain Eckard’s company which is surely at the Tulan Kingdom now. Eventually you reach the same town you were at when you made your decision to try to leave. You find it occupied right now, it’s not your company, so you’re about to press on, but someone on patrol sees you. “HALT! Where are you supposed to be soldier?!” “Oh…uh…” you say getting caught off guard. You mentally curse yourself for not being more aware. “Speak up! Wow, you look a little worse for wear…what company are you with?” “I was with Captain Eckard…but…” “Captain Eckard’s company? Holy shit! We thought they all got killed! The undead reached the Tulan capital first and ambushed them! But why am I telling you? You were there! You must’ve just barely escaped! Don’t worry; you can avenge your friends, we’re gathering strength to attack soon!” You don’t believe this… The guard begins speaking to you excitedly and asking you how you escaped. You just continue to say you don’t know, it all became a blur when the ambush occurred and how you attempted to fight, but it was just too much. The guard sympathizes and tells you that you can explain more to his captain. You notice he isn’t wearing Zalan armor, he’s wearing Azi Republic armor. You can only assume that perhaps this is a Grand Alliance company. Your ideas come true when you do indeed notice several kinds of troop types, though the Zalan Empire soldiers seem to be leading, as the captain is wearing the armor. Your heart sinks when you recognize her and she recognizes you. It was years ago, but you both remember. “…what are you doing here?” the female captain asks. “Last I heard you were in Captain Eckard’s company. A company that was reported to be wiped out completely. Have you managed to avoid death once again? You are the lucky one aren’t you?” Suddenly surrounding soldiers start to recognize you more closely. The Zalan ones especially. “Holy shit it’s him! You fuckin’ survived not one but TWO overwhelming undead hordes! We gotta take him captain, he’s obviously good luck!” the guard says a little misguidedly. “Good luck? If you haven’t noticed, only HE seems to be getting out alive on these things! I’d say he’s bad luck!” someone else says. “Nonsense! I heard how he’s killed countless demons with his bow! We could use someone like that in our next attack.” another says. “Isn’t he the guy that plays the lute really well?” A few people start arguing until the female captain speaks again. “ENOUGH! I’ll handle this. You in my office now, I’ll speak with you in private. And for the rest of you, get ready to move out. We’re attacking tomorrow.” She turns away and enters a building; you slowly follow, while everyone else disperses. When you enter the wrecked “office” she closes the door and tells you to sit down, but she doesn’t. Instead she stares at you hard at you and draws her sword. “Okay Mr. Survivor. Convince me.” “Convince you of what?” “Convince me that you aren’t some fucking undead spy!” “WHAT?! How? I mean…” “Easy! In the two encounters you had with the undead on any major scale, you’ve been the only one to survive. Once, maybe. But twice? Mighty suspicious…” “But I mean…I’m not undead! Look I even walk around in the daylight, I’m not even pale!” “I didn’t say you were undead, I said you were a spy. There are few of those misguided traitors that think their necromancer overlords will be kind to them, by killing them last. Madness.” “But I’m not a spy! I killed…” you begin to stutter under pressure. ”Yeah, yeah, you killed demons. Big deal. The undead and demons weren’t friends either. What better way to be a spy than to make yourself a hero?” “But I’m not…” “You’re not what?” “I’m not…” “What? More lies? Spit out the truth spy!” she demands pointing her sword at your throat. > You attempt to lie Quickly remembering the lie you thought up on the way, you sputter it out with some stress. “I…I was captured by a vampire! A really fucking sadistic one! He killed my scouting party and took me to say he was going to drain me slowly for fun! He took me to some cave in the hills and it was only by luck that I managed to kill him and escape! I would’ve made my way back sooner, but their were large groups of marauding orc raiders and demons escaping the ruins of the former Tulan Kingdom, so I was extra cautious and…” At this point the Captain bashes you in the head with the hilt of her sword. You fall off the chair and onto the floor. “LIAR! You expect me to believe this horse shit? I’ve had patrols going all through this area and there aren’t any orcs in the damn area. They all fled further north long ago and the remaining demons mostly ran to the west! Not to mention the closest hills have no caves! You obviously think so low of me that you thought you could fool me OR you’re just a complete idiot as well as a coward! Either way you haven’t convinced me, and you’re fit only for execution! You’re a deserter at best and a spy at worst!” “No…wait…” are your last words before the Captain severs your head from your body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Last time you were wounded and had the misfortune of running into demons. Well you aren’t wounded this time and you’re pretty sure you won’t be running into too many more demons. You’ll be able to pull it off this time. You can’t do this army shit anymore, as much as you want to help your family out, you’ve got to live your own life regardless of what the future holds. You aren’t even worried about committing an executionable offense. You easily sneak away as you hear your men call out your name looking for you. You’re glad you didn’t leave too much back at the fort, except your lute, but you’ve got your newly acquired mandolin to make up for it. Eventually you’re away from civilization altogether. While you’re out in the wilderness you think about your family again, and you have to at least let them know you’re still alive. Maybe you can still do something about them, after all it doesn’t sound like the Zalan Empire is becoming a great place to live anymore. Perhaps you could convince them to move? It takes a week of sneaking around and keeping out of sight, but eventually you make it back home. Zalan looks a lot different; hell home looks a lot different. There was a small wooded area near your farm, but most of the trees have been cut down now. You also remember fewer patrols. Your house looks in better condition however. You guess at least your family seems a lot safer, but for how long? You knock on the door in the middle of the night and your sister Randi answers, Not too surprising as she always was a night owl when she was little. At least she used to be little. The passing of the years and she’s now a teenager and grown quite a bit. You’ve been away so long. What does surprise you is the flintlock pistol that she’s currently pointing at you! “Whoa! Hold on! It’s me, your brother!” you say. “…it is? It is you!” she exclaims and puts down the gun before hugging you. “What the hell are you doing with a pistol?” “The money you sent us allowed to buy new things you know and a traveling merchant was selling this for cheap!” “No I mean, what are YOU doing with one? You’ll blow your damn head off with that thing! Those things are unstable.” You scold. “What are you doing home? Are you on leave?” “Uh…that’s a long story. Wake up the rest of the family; I have to talk to you all.” Randi complies while you step inside the house and take in its new look. Eventually your Mom enters, followed by your brother Mallack and finally your youngest brother Calwin and sister Makana. You all sit down at the dining room table. (You realize you haven’t done that with your family in years) and you tell them everything. You get a lot of worried reactions. More for you than the other world impending doom stuff though. At least you know that they care. “You gotta get back to the army right now! Say you got captured by something and it took you awhile to escape!” Mallack exclaims. “While I’m sure that MAY work, I just don’t want to do it…I can’t take this anymore. The whole time I’ve been in the damn army, my music has kept me sane. I’ve noticed it have an effect on others as well. Never thought it would. I mean I have talent and…” “…you feel like you’ve wasted your life?” your mother replies. You pause for a moment. You almost want to say yes, but you can’t even if you wanted to. You haven’t wasted it, its just you’ve never really had the chance to do what you’ve ever wanted to do. “No…I guess I haven’t… it’s just…” Your mother takes your hand and speaks to you. “I know. It’s not fair. It’s not right. Life isn’t fair and it’s starting to get a whole lot less fair. I know I’ve mentioned it in letters to you, but the Zalan Empire WILL be taking the farm…and it’s looking like Mallack’s going to be drafted if things are going the way they seem to be.” “But…see that’s what I’m saying! We could all move! I mean of course I have to go into hiding, maybe Mallack could come with me. And the rest of you could use what money you have left and move to Retlad! It’s a nice place. It’s away from most of the fighting, and there aren’t anymore Quillars there!” Your mother shakes her head. “You must be behind in the news, because Retlad is finally going to become part of the Zalan Empire soon, so going there to live wouldn’t make any difference. The Empire can take this farm, but in spirit this will ALWAYS be ours. The Empire has said they will allow us to continue working it and living on the land and even if they didn’t they’d have have to drag us all out and stick our heads on pikes before we’d leave. Your father and his father build this farm up to what it is. Our family is going to be here until the end.” “That’s what I’m afraid of…what about you Mallack? You’re probably going to be drafted. You aren’t worried about that?” “Sure I am. But what am I going to do, run? Where? From what you described you practically think the whole world is doomed anyway! I might as well take some of the undead bastards out before I go. I was getting bored of the farm anyway. Let Randi take over! Ha ha!” Your mother addresses you again. “Son, you know our family. We’ve always done the right thing, even if it doesn’t coincide with what we want…I think you know what you have to do.” And so you do. So you do. You spend one night with your family and make the most of it. You all laugh and joke, trying to put all the problems of the world out of your mind and of course before you leave you play a song for them. Eventually you hug them all goodbye and take your leave. More than a few tears are shed on both sides. > You go into hiding As much as you still want to help out your family, you have to live your own life while there is still time. They’ll still get money from your supposed death and they know you’re still alive. You figure this will be the last time you see them though, as you can’t risk contacting them anymore. The first order of business is to change your identity as much as you can. And head to a place where you can play for an audience, but the probability of someone ratting you out is low if you’re recognized. You head to the Garwold Confederacy. It’s a relatively peaceful nation made up mostly of Halflings and Gnomes, with lush green fields and flowers. They’ve surprisingly managed to stay out of most of the fighting; only volunteering a few of their militia and illusionists to the Grand Alliance. They’re also known to appreciate the simpler things in life. Eventually you make a place for yourself there in one of the small villages. You make a living playing at the local tavern there. Most of the patrons know that you have some sort of past that you’re trying to hide from. Some of them and the owner know that you’re that Zalan “hero” that they’ve heard about. But just like you thought, they don’t bring it up or say anything about it and just enjoy your music. A year passes and you’re happy. Nobody from the Zalan Empire comes looking for you, as it’s assumed you’re dead and everyone’s too busy fighting the undead for the most part. When the Grand Alliance armies pass through, you keep a low profile though. You even meet a pretty Halfling girl to be with. The next year isn’t so pretty however. The Great Lich Lord’s armies have been defeating the Grand Alliance’s attempts to stop them and now those armies finally turn their attention to the Garwold Confederacy. Within a month half of Garwold has been turned into a graveyard. The Grand Alliance as well as the Garwold militia have been doing their best, but it’s not going to be enough. You help defend the little village that you’ve made your home in and you can’t afford to keep a low profile anymore despite the Grand Alliance presence (Which is now mainly made up of Zalan Empire troops) but it hardly matters at this point. Survival of the living is You make plans to leave, and to try to convince your girlfriend and your other new friends that you’ve made here to leave as well. You know they’re all very home bound, but tomorrow you’re going to really try. Unfortunately a group of Blood Specters attacks the village that night. You awaken to hear blood curling screams ring throughout the village. You look out the window and see the vile red ghosts stalking the streets. You’ve become too attached to these people to not help; you immediately grab your weapons and prepare for battle. You head to your girlfriend’s home first, but sadly she’s already been killed and completely drained of blood. You don’t have time to morn as you’re immediately attacked by the Blood Specter that was still lingering in the house. You manage to kill it with a couple silver arrows, but its dying shrieks alert others to your area. You slay a couple more of them as you try to look for the necromancer who has to be in the area to even control these creatures, but you can’t keep your eye on all the incorporeal creatures and you suddenly feel a slight pain in your back which reaches forward into your heart as one of them thrusts its hand into you to drain your blood. You collapse soon after, only to rise later to join the ranks of the ever growing undead armies.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you’ve learned one thing, numbers doesn’t necessarily imply safety. With all the years of patrolling you’ve done along with your previous actions in Retlad so long ago, you actually feel more comfortable in smaller groups at this point. Your one and only rank and file battle didn’t go well. Your choice isn’t surprising, if anything more people feel comfortable with you scouting ahead. As you journey further into former Tulan territory, you don’t encounter too much resistance. A few demons and crazed followers here and there, but nothing you can’t take care of. It also occurs to you how “planted” you’ve been for the past five years. While it’s true you did leave the fort a lot, you never ventured far from it. This is first time you’ve actually traveled. Ironic, since one of the reasons why you joined the army was the possibility of traveling to interesting places. However, it seems like you only visit these interesting places after they’re already destroyed. You’re basically seeing the aftermath of the demon occupation. It sort of reminds you of what you’d seen back in Retlad when the Quillars were killing folks except the landscape is in even worse condition. The demons weren’t content on just corrupting their mortal slaves; they were attempting to turn the entire land into their infernal realm. You can only imagine what sort of hell was going on while they were actually here. You get to a small town that’s completely wrecked and seemingly deserted. Its night time and normally you’d go back and wait until morning to scout it, but Captain Eckard is insistent on getting to the former Tulan capital as quick as possible. You split up into small groups to scout the town quicker and tell everyone that if they come across anything more then they can handle, to run and alert everyone else. You go building to building not really encountering much of anything. Not even survivors. Lots of half eaten dead bodies in various states of torment though. You expect when Velzix was killed the whole realm descended into anarchy pretty quickly and the demons reverted back to their chaotic natures causing as much mayhem as possible without too much repercussion. You enter a shop with two of your other team members. You hear a creaking sound, which doesn’t sound good. One of your team members goes a little further in, and it gets louder. “Step back! The floors is…” you utter and then a large portion of the floor collapses underneath him. You attempt to grab his hand, but fail and the rest of the floor collapses underneath you as well. You don’t fall too far, but you definitely feel it. You recover as quick as you can and hear your other subordinate who managed to avoid falling through the floor. “Sarge! Are you alright?” Private Ramusen shouts. “Yeah, yeah private. I’m just a little bruised.” “What about Gannon? Is he alright?” You take your tinder box and make a small light. You look around and see that you must be in the basement of some sort of music shop from all the instruments you see. You didn’t even notice when you first entered the place, it just looked like any other ransacked shop. Upon further inspection you see a body lying on the floor. It’s Private Gannon and he’s dead. He didn’t land in the “good way” you did and broke his neck. “He’s dead.” You call up to Ramusen. “Shit! He’s fuckin’ dead?” “Yeah private, I just said he was! Now let me get the hell out of here…fuck! The damn stairs are completely destroyed. I can’t climb up, or even attempt a jump. Ramusen, throw down a rope and make sure you really secure it!” While you wait for Ramusen to complete this task, you take a look at some of the instruments. Lots of flutes and other wind instruments that don’t interest you. You grab an old looking mandolin. It’s definitely human design, but it seems very ornate though, must’ve been a specialty piece that wasn’t for sale. You pluck at the strings and despite the dirt, grime, and neglect of the instrument; it still manages to produce a fairly pleasing tone. You play for a good five minutes before you realize that Ramusen hasn’t thrown down the rope yet. “Private?” is all you utter, when you hear the slumping of a lifeless body, followed by a low voice. “Beautiful…” You grab your bow, when you see a dark figure loom above you. You fire, but miss due to the figure dodging quicker than anything you’ve ever encountered before. It doesn’t help that this same figure has jumped down the hole beside you before you can blink. You’re standing right before the figure now. He has a pale, but familiar face, though the blood around the mouth is new and not encouraging. He knocks the bow out of your hand, but does nothing else to you. You wouldn’t be quick enough to draw your sword given what you’ve seen. In fact right now, all you’re feeling is fear. “Almost hit me…you would’ve made a good addition. Maybe you could’ve even…no. Nobody can. This world is lost now and soon my kind won’t even be around to guide your kind to combat the inevitable anymore…” Warnov says. “What…what are you talking about?” you ask unsure what’s going to happen next. Warnov looks as if he could tell you more than you’d ever want to know about lots of things, but instead he just shakes his head. “Nevermind human. Telling you the whole story would not help you anyway. Perhaps it’s best you hadn’t joined us, seeing as I have been marked now. It won’t be long before the rest of my kind are hunted down. He’s really quite pissed at us, and worse, he can sense us you see…(sigh) I can only imagine what he did to poor Count Rostov…” “Who’s pissed?” “Who do you think human? The Necro…I mean the Great Lich Lord of course. Oh yes. He’s back…and this one isn’t going to lose like the last one did so long ago.” You’re not following all of Warnov’s cryptic speak, but if the last bit he’s said is true, he’s scared the hell out of you more than he has with his actions. Warnov grabs your shoulder and looks into your eyes. “I do not envy your fate human…the extinction of your species will soon follow my own. My advice to you? Live human! Live while you can, for eventually this whole world will be dead and under his complete control.” Sensing that he’s brought enough doom and gloom to you, he relents and steps back. “Play me a song human.” He says catching you off guard. “…what did you want to hear?” you ask shakily. “I don’t know…anything. Play what you were playing before.” You slowly pick up the dropped mandolin and begin playing the song that you were playing before and you play as if your life depended on it, though you get the impression that Warnov has no intention on killing you. He sits quietly listening in the darkness, after finishing the song; he leaps back up through the hole. “Beautiful…such talent…such a waste…” A rope is thrown down and the sounds of feet running off are then heard. You wait a minute and then climb up the rope, taking the mandolin with you. You see private Ramusen lying nearby with his throat ripped out and thoroughly drained of blood. You’re also just in time to hear other members of your group coming to your position when you exit the shop. What the hell are you supposed to tell them? Death to the world, reborn lich lords…you start thinking, what’s the point of all this? Maybe Warnov was right, maybe you should LIVE while there’s still time. Granted his information is spotty, but you can’t help but thinking he’s probably more informed on the situation than most people. You’ve pondered it several times before, and you’ve even attempted it once, but deserting is looking very desirable again. In this day and age, who’s going to know if were killed or not? > You letters to home (Moving out from Virtue...) Dear Mom, This will be a quick letter, we’re moving out and I can’t say I’m thrilled with it. Last time I wrote, I was talking about how bad the recent demon attacks were, well I’m sure you already heard about the demon lord Velzix being killed. I suppose this is a good thing, since its one less enemy to worry about, but I’m being sent to retake the lands previously owned by him and reports say the Necromancer is as well. I still haven’t gotten completely over what happened at Nuro. I need to be strong though since I’m probably going to be doing a lot of combat with the undead in the future. Oddly I’m not even worried about myself so much right now; I’m more concerned about you guys. I know the Zalan Empire has been creating a lot of rules lately. Talks of seizing private property and drafts cause me to worry about you all. Never thought that on the eve of possibly facing undead hordes again, it’s our own government that I have concerns about. Argh! This is something I’d rather discuss with you in person, of course if I ever got a chance to visit every once in awhile! Okay, the Captain’s starting to call everyone. Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to admit, the idea has crossed your mind a bit. A small part of you does wonder about embracing the whole hero image and deliberately doing grand deeds that go beyond the call of your duty. You suppose that you’d at least really feel like one if you did that. However, more often than not real heroes don’t live long. You’re wondering what exactly this Mr. Warnov has in mind for you and given his demeanor, his appearance and just your own feelings of uncertainty about him, you decline. You know your limitations even if others don’t see them. So, no you won’t be hunting down some artifact of unlimited power and then single handedly taking out a Demon Lord or Necromancer Lord in their own throne room. “No, I don’t think so Mr. Warnov. As I’ve often said, I’m no hero. I’m just doing my job and providing for my family.” Mr. Warnov looks disappointed and sighs, but accepts your decision. “Very well. This is a shame though. Despite your humble birth you seem to have lots of potential. You could’ve made an excellent addition to our…organization. I’ve also heard your lute playing wasn’t bad either, we don’t have any musically talented types anymore…oh well.” Mr. Warnov leaves rather quickly after his last statement. Something about him seemed very odd and you’re sort of glad you didn’t take his offer. You go back to your target practice for awhile when you suddenly hear an alarm cry out loudly through the fort about a small demon army being sighted over the hill. “Well back to work…” you say and prepare for battle once again. Two years pass… It’s been five years since the Nuro Incident and things have gotten worse. Both the Necromancer Lord and Velzix have made progress. Too much. The Grand Alliance hasn’t been able to do anything except fight them to a stalemate. All three sides are looking to gain an advantage and somehow you don’t think it’ll be yours. The Zalan Empire has become increasingly totalitarian. It’s been increasing its influence over how the Grand Alliance should be run and its strategies. Some of Zalan’s officers have been transferred to become more prominent in leading and commanding the bulk of the Grand Alliance army. You’re not sure if this isn’t a bad idea. Bullying or not, one final voice in matters would probably help the Grand Alliance at this point. There’s been some grumbling by other nations though. However it’s also begun several repressive internal measures to keep itself safe. Your mom has mentioned in letters back to you of seeing routine patrols now near the farm. Talks of seizing private property for the good of the Empire are being discussed. You don’t really like the sound of that, but it’s not really like you can do anything about it. You can only take solace in the fact that being part of the Zalan army will at least result in your family not becoming homeless. They would probably still be able to live and work on the farm…it just wouldn’t be your family’s anymore. There’s also talk of a draft. You don’t like the sound of that either. Your brother Mallack would certainly be conscripted now. You can’t imagine him dealing with the things you’ve had to face. You hope it doesn’t come to that. Your position at Virtue is looking worse and worse each day. Parts of the fort are severely damaged, you’re short on man power and you don’t even have any decent wizards or healers. You’ve attempted to talk to Captain Eckard about withdrawing and falling back to a safer position, but he won’t hear of it. This fort is NOT to be abandoned. The only good thing is that there’s apparently been a small contingent of mercenaries severely messing up things for Velzix in his own territory. They must be incredibly brave or completely mad for Zalan gold to perform such a task. You can’t help but think that maybe YOU would be there right along side them, if you’d joined up with that mercenary company years ago. A sobering thought. Time to go on patrol again. You gather up some soldiers and get ready. You look at all of them and wonder which ones won’t be coming back this time. You look at yourself and wonder if you will. A few years ago, everyone coming back alive was at least a possibility, but now it’s not even certain. You go out and change up your routine path again. Always have to be different, can’t become predictable. A couple of imps attack. Nothing to worry about. Easily dispatched. You know you’ll encounter worse before the day is over though. A group of Tulan “citizens” led by their demon overseer attacks you next. Made up of hapless slaves and misguided idiots who think serving the demons is going to pan out in the long run. Finally you come across something a little more unusual. A small group of dwarves fighting off a large demon ambush. They look ragged, wounded and in dire need of help. So you help them. You unleash five arrows into the head of an Eviscerator before two of your number are fried by a hellfire blast from a Flame Child. The fighting doesn’t get any cleaner from there. You see another one of your members getting shredded, before a path is cleared for the dwarves to follow you back to the fort. One of their own chooses to stay behind to give the rest a chance to escape. As all of you run, a large explosion is heard followed by several yelps, howls and screams. The dwarf has blown himself up with whatever explosives the dwarves are fond of making. Finally you get back to the fort where it’s relatively safe, and all you’re thinking about is how you’ll have to do this all over again tomorrow. You retire to your private room where you play your lute and hope you aren’t disturbed by another attack on the fort. Happily, that doesn’t happen, but you are disturbed by one of the dwarves you rescued earlier instead. He’s come to thank you. “Hey lad, I just want to say thanks to your actions at least a few of us survived from our clan. Such as it is now. Something about you looks very familiar. Normally you humans all look the same but…ah hah! You’re that lad who I saved near that farm five years ago! Looks like you returned the favor! Stagir’s the name.” You didn’t realize it either, but then with all the fighting and the chaos you’d barely survived during that particular day, you weren’t really paying attention to faces. You were just glad someone came along when they did. “Yeah…small world I guess. So what happened to your clan?” “Wiped out lad.” Stagir says mournfully. “At least when you humans were fighting each other you didn’t mess with us, but getting caught between the undead and demons…well it’s a bit different.” “The undead are that far now?” you ask. “Aye. They and the demons have been involved in skirmishes here and there. Got no problem with evil fighting evil, but it was just our bad luck that my clan was caught in the middle. The demons are evil incarnate to be sure, but the undead…I dunno. Something worse about them. In the final days, I had to kill clan members who I once called friends and family because of the fucking necromancers raising them from the dead. Some stayed behind to fight since they refused to run. They’d rather die than run from their home. Normally I’d agree, but after seeing that this was a losing battle, some of us decided that it would be better to run. After all we would just be raised again to be used as puppets of the necromancers when we die. Not even free will to choose, or the threat of a demon’s whip. You just become one of them. Can’t let that happen to me. Never.” You know something of it, having had to do a little of that five years ago at Nuro, but actually killing undead parodies of family members would be pretty horrific. Stagir attempts to lighten the mood a bit by asking you about what you were playing before he interrupted. When you tell him, he tiches and says something about how elven songs are nothing compared to dwarven ones. You never really thought of dwarves having a musical interest before, but Stagir boasts about how they have quite an extensive musical history. He takes the lute from you and shows you a couple of dwarven songs, breaking strings in the process. His insistent singing accompanying the songs isn’t exactly pleasant either. He complains about the human made strings not being strong enough to play the songs properly, but thanks you again for saving his life before leaving. Every now and then you play these songs for your new dwarven allies who have taken it upon themselves to strengthen and rebuild the fort the “proper dwarf way”. They seem to appreciate it. You’re a little more careful with the strings and don’t indulge in the singing though. (But unfortunately for the rest of the fort, the dwarves do) A few months pass and the demon attacks seem to decrease. The strengthened fort certainly helps, but something else is going on. Eventually you’re seeing less and less of them. Eventually some ragged refugees come to the fort and after a bit of babbling and thanking the gods, a few of them explain. There are a couple of conflicting stories, but it would seem Velzix is dead! He was killed by something or someone. Consensus seems to be that the mercenary leader died in battle with him though. Without Velzix’s leadership the demons are fighting amongst themselves and the realm is in complete disarray. The Grand Alliance is taking steps to retake the land immediately before the Necromancer Lord gets it. The Zalan Empire in particular is closer though, so naturally YOUR nation is going to get that land first! While things may be looking up somewhat, they aren’t necessarily looking up for you. Captain Eckard has orders to begin an attack immediately. You aren’t looking forward to it mainly because you’ll probably encounter an undead army in the process. You don’t have a choice though except for what role you can serve. Thanks to your skills and rank. You can either lead troops as normal, or be part of a scouting party. > You letters to home (She's still alive!) Hey Mallack! This letter is directly for you again. Glad you’ve been keeping these between us. Anyway, I know it seemed silly to worry about a girl I just had a brief encounter with years ago for one night. But when I heard about the Brot Kingdom being destroyed by the Necromancer, I did wonder about Helena. Well, I found out she’s still alive! She stopped off in Fort Virtue not too long ago! She wasn’t in Brot when all that shit went down. She was trading in the Azi Republic at the time. When she arrived in Fort Virtue to trade, I recognized her and she seemed pleased to see me. She mentioned that she was pleased to see a familiar face for once and we spent a lot of time together for as long as she stayed. (And yes, we did THAT several times too.) I wish things were different, or at least not the way they are right now. I definitely would want to pursue a more permanent relationship with her because we get along really well, but alas that’s not to be. At least not at this time. She told me she was heading to the Retlad Kingdom next; I hope she stays there because there’s less fighting going on. Definitely no more Quillars there anymore. I dunno, I know it’s minor and doesn’t really make sense, but this little bit of info sort of put me in a better mood. I guess I’ll be writing Mom a more upbeat letter as well soon. Okay, well I hope everything’s going good with you too. Keep watching out for the Kobolds and keep ‘em out of that chicken coop! Your brother<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to admit, the idea has crossed your mind a bit. A small part of you does wonder about embracing the whole hero image and deliberately doing grand deeds that go beyond the call of your duty. You suppose that you’d at least really feel like one if you did that. However, more often than not real heroes don’t live long. You’re wondering what exactly this Mr. Warnov has in mind for you and given his demeanor, his appearance and just your own feelings of uncertainty about him, you decline. You know your limitations even if others don’t see them. So, no you won’t be hunting down some artifact of unlimited power and then single handedly taking out a Demon Lord or Necromancer Lord in their own throne room. “No, I don’t think so Mr. Warnov. As I’ve often said, I’m no hero. I’m just doing my job and providing for my family.” Mr. Warnov looks disappointed and sighs, but accepts your decision. “Very well. This is a shame though. Despite your humble birth you seem to have lots of potential. You could’ve made an excellent addition to our…organization. I’ve also heard your lute playing wasn’t bad either, we don’t have any musically talented types anymore…oh well.” Mr. Warnov leaves rather quickly after his last statement. Something about him seemed very odd and you’re sort of glad you didn’t take his offer. You go back to your target practice for awhile when you suddenly hear an alarm cry out loudly through the fort about a small demon army being sighted over the hill. “Well back to work…” you say and prepare for battle once again. Two years pass… It’s been five years since the Nuro Incident and things have gotten worse. Both the Necromancer Lord and Velzix have made progress. Too much. The Grand Alliance hasn’t been able to do anything except fight them to a stalemate. All three sides are looking to gain an advantage and somehow you don’t think it’ll be yours. The Zalan Empire has become increasingly totalitarian. It’s been increasing its influence over how the Grand Alliance should be run and its strategies. Some of Zalan’s officers have been transferred to become more prominent in leading and commanding the bulk of the Grand Alliance army. You’re not sure if this isn’t a bad idea. Bullying or not, one final voice in matters would probably help the Grand Alliance at this point. There’s been some grumbling by other nations though. However it’s also begun several repressive internal measures to keep itself safe. Your mom has mentioned in letters back to you of seeing routine patrols now near the farm. Talks of seizing private property for the good of the Empire are being discussed. You don’t really like the sound of that, but it’s not really like you can do anything about it. You can only take solace in the fact that being part of the Zalan army will at least result in your family not becoming homeless. They would probably still be able to live and work on the farm…it just wouldn’t be your family’s anymore. There’s also talk of a draft. You don’t like the sound of that either. Your brother Mallack would certainly be conscripted now. You can’t imagine him dealing with the things you’ve had to face. You hope it doesn’t come to that. Your position at Virtue is looking worse and worse each day. Parts of the fort are severely damaged, you’re short on man power and you don’t even have any decent wizards or healers. You’ve attempted to talk to Captain Eckard about withdrawing and falling back to a safer position, but he won’t hear of it. This fort is NOT to be abandoned. The only good thing is that there’s apparently been a small contingent of mercenaries severely messing up things for Velzix in his own territory. They must be incredibly brave or completely mad for Zalan gold to perform such a task. You can’t help but think that maybe YOU would be there right along side them, if you’d joined up with that mercenary company years ago. A sobering thought. Time to go on patrol again. You gather up some soldiers and get ready. You look at all of them and wonder which ones won’t be coming back this time. You look at yourself and wonder if you will. A few years ago, everyone coming back alive was at least a possibility, but now it’s not even certain. You go out and change up your routine path again. Always have to be different, can’t become predictable. A couple of imps attack. Nothing to worry about. Easily dispatched. You know you’ll encounter worse before the day is over though. A group of Tulan “citizens” led by their demon overseer attacks you next. Made up of hapless slaves and misguided idiots who think serving the demons is going to pan out in the long run. Finally you come across something a little more unusual. A small group of dwarves fighting off a large demon ambush. They look ragged, wounded and in dire need of help. So you help them. You unleash five arrows into the head of an Eviscerator before two of your number are fried by a hellfire blast from a Flame Child. The fighting doesn’t get any cleaner from there. You see another one of your members getting shredded, before a path is cleared for the dwarves to follow you back to the fort. One of their own chooses to stay behind to give the rest a chance to escape. As all of you run, a large explosion is heard followed by several yelps, howls and screams. The dwarf has blown himself up with whatever explosives the dwarves are fond of making. Finally you get back to the fort where it’s relatively safe, and all you’re thinking about is how you’ll have to do this all over again tomorrow. You retire to your private room where you play your lute and hope you aren’t disturbed by another attack on the fort. Happily, that doesn’t happen, but you are disturbed by one of the dwarves you rescued earlier instead. He’s come to thank you. “Hey lad, I just want to say thanks to your actions at least a few of us survived from our clan. Such as it is now. Something about you looks very familiar. Normally you humans all look the same but…ah hah! You’re that lad who I saved near that farm five years ago! Looks like you returned the favor! Stagir’s the name.” You didn’t realize it either, but then with all the fighting and the chaos you’d barely survived during that particular day, you weren’t really paying attention to faces. You were just glad someone came along when they did. “Yeah…small world I guess. So what happened to your clan?” “Wiped out lad.” Stagir says mournfully. “At least when you humans were fighting each other you didn’t mess with us, but getting caught between the undead and demons…well it’s a bit different.” “The undead are that far now?” you ask. “Aye. They and the demons have been involved in skirmishes here and there. Got no problem with evil fighting evil, but it was just our bad luck that my clan was caught in the middle. The demons are evil incarnate to be sure, but the undead…I dunno. Something worse about them. In the final days, I had to kill clan members who I once called friends and family because of the fucking necromancers raising them from the dead. Some stayed behind to fight since they refused to run. They’d rather die than run from their home. Normally I’d agree, but after seeing that this was a losing battle, some of us decided that it would be better to run. After all we would just be raised again to be used as puppets of the necromancers when we die. Not even free will to choose, or the threat of a demon’s whip. You just become one of them. Can’t let that happen to me. Never.” You know something of it, having had to do a little of that five years ago at Nuro, but actually killing undead parodies of family members would be pretty horrific. Stagir attempts to lighten the mood a bit by asking you about what you were playing before he interrupted. When you tell him, he tiches and says something about how elven songs are nothing compared to dwarven ones. You never really thought of dwarves having a musical interest before, but Stagir boasts about how they have quite an extensive musical history. He takes the lute from you and shows you a couple of dwarven songs, breaking strings in the process. His insistent singing accompanying the songs isn’t exactly pleasant either. He complains about the human made strings not being strong enough to play the songs properly, but thanks you again for saving his life before leaving. Every now and then you play these songs for your new dwarven allies who have taken it upon themselves to strengthen and rebuild the fort the “proper dwarf way”. They seem to appreciate it. You’re a little more careful with the strings and don’t indulge in the singing though. (But unfortunately for the rest of the fort, the dwarves do) A few months pass and the demon attacks seem to decrease. The strengthened fort certainly helps, but something else is going on. Eventually you’re seeing less and less of them. Eventually some ragged refugees come to the fort and after a bit of babbling and thanking the gods, a few of them explain. There are a couple of conflicting stories, but it would seem Velzix is dead! He was killed by something or someone. Consensus seems to be that the mercenary leader died in battle with him though. Without Velzix’s leadership the demons are fighting amongst themselves and the realm is in complete disarray. The Grand Alliance is taking steps to retake the land immediately before the Necromancer Lord gets it. The Zalan Empire in particular is closer though, so naturally YOUR nation is going to get that land first! While things may be looking up somewhat, they aren’t necessarily looking up for you. Captain Eckard has orders to begin an attack immediately. You aren’t looking forward to it mainly because you’ll probably encounter an undead army in the process. You don’t have a choice though except for what role you can serve. Thanks to your skills and rank. You can either lead troops as normal, or be part of a scouting party. > You letters to home (Random thoughts...) Dear Mom, I meant to tell you this weird man from Zalan Intelligence offered me a job, a few months ago. Said I could be a “real” hero and a bunch of other stuff. Part of it sounded appealing, but something about him made me feel really uncomfortable. I wonder if I’m just avoiding my “potential.” Like perhaps I am supposed to be some great general or warrior, or whatever. But I just don’t feel that desire within me. Now if I had been offered to give up all this army stuff and play at the Emperor’s Palace as a regular job then I might’ve accepted! Over these years as I’ve played for others and mainly for myself, I truly believe I really was meant to play music in this world. Just events didn’t work out for me I guess, but even within this situation, I’ve still found a way to indulge in my passion and I suppose it’s better than never being able to at all. Who knows? Perhaps one day all of this will be over and I’ll come out of this alive and manage to pursue music without hindrance. I know that sounds a little uncharacteristically optimistic from me, but I guess I still have a little hope left after all. Give my love to the rest of the family Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve served in this army well and always done your job regardless of the shitty situations you’ve been in. You might not like a lot of it, but you’ve never complained. Lately you’ve been on edge about a possible all out assault of some big ass demon army that’s going to attack any day now, and playing is one of the few pleasures you have to put your mind at ease. Perhaps it’s a combination of this and a combination of this unwanted and unnecessary scolding that causes you to speak out of turn. “With all due respect ma’am, I am fully prepared to battle at a moment’s notice and so are those under my direct command. But even soldiers need to rest, if only for a minute.” The woman looks very surprised you didn’t comply with her demand to see your superior officer. “…you DARE speak out of turn like that to me? I’ll see you sent to the Nuro Front for that sort of insubordination! Then we’d see just how battle ready you are! How would you like that?” “I wouldn’t like it at all. I barely survived the first time.” You say trying not to express any fear. “…What? What are you talking about? First time?” Now you’re a little surprised she doesn’t know who you are considering how some of the high ups exaggerated about how you managed to survive. You explain yourself briefly and she doesn’t quite believe you at first, a couple of your troops hiding nearby at least back up your claims before slinking off. “That was YOU? What the hell are you doing here? You should be leading from the front not languishing in some fort that barely sees battle!” “Doesn’t see battle? We suffered a small demon raid last week! We see plenty of battle!” “What I mean is, somebody of your obvious combat and survival skills should be assigned on the front lines where you can do more good. Normally I don’t question Zalan command, but this is really an oversight on their part.” “Well maybe they know better than the both of us, besides this assignment isn’t a walk in the fairy fields. I think we’ll be suffering a grand scale attack any day now.” “Doubt it. Velzix has been having a hard time keeping his unruly mob together. If it wasn’t for a lot of the sycophantic Tulan citizens, he’d probably be confined to pure defense, though something will have to be done soon, reports say he’s attempting to gate in more demons everyday. Not to mention that supposedly civilized demons from other nations are starting to display their true colors and flock to his banner. Like I always said the only good demon is a dead one!” This causes you to smile a bit and she very faintly smiles back when she sees that you feel the same way. This smile disappears quickly though as she continues her rant. “I wish I wasn’t assigned to the Tulan Border though. I’d rather be taking Nuro back. THAT’S the more dangerous threat. The demons will kill themselves with their own chaotic and violent natures, but the undead…they’ve almost taken over the world before just because of one bastard that lead them. I never thought I’d see a serious threat like this in my lifetime, especially not…” The female captain at this point stops. She even looks away from you as if whatever she was going to say was just too much even for her. She seems to be a lot more battle hardened than you and probably ten times braver. You can’t imagine what horror she experienced that would be worse than your own, but you don’t find out since she changes the subject. “…Bah! Maybe you’re right; a soldier does need to keep their mind occupied on other things every now and then. We aren’t undead after all. So what’s with the lute? You also a bard or something?” she laughs. “No, I think those dreams are long gone, but my playing seems to boost spirits around here a little, which can only be a good thing in this situation.” “Hm. My mother was elven and she used to sing this song to me and my…brother when we were very young. It was very smooth and calming. Beautiful melody.” “Yeah, most elven music is like that. When I was assigned in Retlad I learned a few elven songs from a few of the citizens there, you wouldn’t happen to know the song would you?” She tells you the name of the song and you know it immediately. One of the first new songs you learned while stationed in Retlad actually. This seems cause her to momentarily revert to a less stand offish behavior. You’re about to play it for her, but then a messenger comes running up handing her a note. She reads it and she’s all business again. “Alright men! We’re moving out!” she shouts and leaves without saying another word to you. You didn’t even learn her name. Perhaps it’s just as well; you’ll most likely never meet again due to one of you dying on the battlefield. You go back to doing what you were doing. Two years pass… Three years since the Nuro Incident and this struggle still continues. You’re still stationed Fort Virtue and you’ve repelled more demon attacks than you would care to count. Velzix has finally gotten his shit together completely. A unified demonic front is in full swing here and its taking its toll. Once again your skills have come in very handy in defense. You are certainly known as a demon slayer, but you still don’t feel like a hero of any kind. You’re just trying to do your job and survive. You save lives when you can, but you know ultimately it’s a futile task as death seems to be everywhere nowadays. As bad as it is on the demon front, its nothing compared to what’ve you’ve heard on the undead front. The Necromancer has finally broken out from Nuro, and successfully attacked the Kingdom of Brot. Several undead giants demolished the area. You’ve never even seen a living giant and they sound intimidating. You can’t even imagine an undead one. The power to raise one, let alone several is sort of scary. The Grand Alliance army didn’t get there in time to stop him and as usual they were repelled when they arrived. You worry about the Grand Alliance failing to stop the undead horde. You hope it doesn’t get any closer to the Zalan Empire where your family might be in danger. Sometimes you worry so much that you can’t sleep, not that you do much of that nowadays anyway. Normally you play to keep your mind at ease, but tonight you go to the archery range to keep yourself focused. For a long time you’re by yourself, but suddenly you feel a creeping suspicion someone is watching you… You turn around with your bow and see a pale man. He holds up his hands. “Hey now! Don’t shoot! Sorry for creeping around like that. Professional habit.” He says. “What? Who are you?” you demand. “Warnov. Zalan Intelligence.” “You’re a spy?” “Well I suppose you could put it that way. I was here to give some info to your Captain Eckard, and I also wanted to take a look around the fort. Didn’t think anyone would be on the range though. Nice shooting, I know who you are and heard about your marksmanship with a bow. You’re certainly doing your part with the demons around here.” Despite the fact that you’re talking to a spy, you feel the need to vent your feelings. “Yeah, well I hope the Grand Alliance starts doing its part. I mean what the fuck are they doing? Weren’t they created to put a stop to all this shit? I mean am I supposed to worry every day if that undead horde is going to get closer to the Zalan Empire where it can threaten my family?” Warnov doesn’t look offended by your words, if anything he looks intrigued. “Well, I can understand why you’re venting. Trust me I sympathize. But as part of intel, I can tell you its not that easy…there were a lot of surprises that weren’t accounted for. We’re doing our best to rectify this situation by gathering as much info as possible. In fact, you could help us…” “Excuse me? How?” Warnov looks around and gets closer before speaking. “Look, as I said, I know all about you and your skills, why you joined, all of it. I know you don’t much care for some of the propaganda made about some of your exploits. But it’s important to realize that deeds like yours must be blown up a little to give common people hope that ultimately good will win the day. You may not consider yourself a hero of any kind, but your actions aren’t without some of those qualities. You obviously care very much about your family, and I’ve heard how you try to keep the people under your command alive. Sound like heroic qualities to me. Perhaps they’re on a smaller scale, but they’re there. I’m betting that there’s a BIGGER hero in there somewhere, just itching to get out. You think the Grand Alliance isn’t doing a good job? Perhaps we can arrange something for you to be transferred into it, or maybe you’d like to take an even more direct approach.” “What do you mean?” Warnov suddenly backs away. “Before we go any further. I need to know are you willing to take up the mantle of being a hero. Because if you aren’t, then we have nothing more to discuss. I shall require an answer now.” > You accept the offer You have to admit, the idea has crossed your mind a bit. A small part of you does wonder about embracing the whole hero image and deliberately doing grand deeds that go beyond the call of your duty. You suppose that you’d at least really feel like one if you did that. “Okay Mr. Warnov. I’ll do it.” You exclaim. “You sure?” “Not really, but if I’m already in the shit, I might as well go all the way with it. What do I do next?” Warnov looks around again to see if anyone is about before answering. “Well just take a deep breath, relax and uh… brace yourself!” “Huh?” Before you can react Warnov moves faster than you’ve ever seen anything move. In fact you don’t really see him move at all before he’s biting your neck! He puts his other hand over your mouth so you can’t yell out and easily knocks your hand away from feebly attempting to draw a weapon. You fall into unconsciousness as your blood is drained from you at a rapid rate. Death soon follows… A few minutes later you wake up outside the fort. “Ah you’re up. Sorry about surprising you like that, but I had to work quickly. Someone else could’ve popped up and that would’ve gotten complicated…” You quickly check your neck which is completely healed now, but you know what’s just occurred! You feel a cold numbness throughout your body and you freak out. “I’M DEAD! I’M FUCKIN DEAD! And you’re a vampire!” “Shhhh! Keep your voice down! Yeah, you figured it out. Nice detective work, now let’s get down to this hero business. Though we should really get to Rostov’s and talk about all this.” “I’m…I’m dead! I’m one of you! I don’t want to be an undead thrall for the Necromancer Lord!” “What? No, no, no, we’re not… look I’ll explain later, let’s just…” You pull away from Warnov when he tries to help you up. You feel your reflexes are much quicker. This temporary curiousity in your new found abilities allows Warnov to calm you down. “WAIT! Just stop! (Sigh) Okay look I’ll try to give you the condensed version right now. We vampires aren’t on the side of the Necromancer Lord. If anything he’s fucking things up for us. We like to keep a balanced order as it were. The last time we sided with some megalomaniacal necromancer it nearly resulted in our extinction. Never again. In fact we’ve been manipulating shit for centuries just to make sure something like this didn’t happen. Somebody really fucked up in the observation department on this one!” Warnov goes on to explain that his superior, Lord Rostov will be able to explain better and in more detail, but that you have to come with him now. > You go with Warnov While this is all a lot to take in, you manage to calm down. “Okay. Okay. I’m calm, but…man this is a lot of shit.” You reply. “Heh, well you did say you might as well go with it! Don’t worry; it’ll all be second nature soon. Okay let’s go see Lord Rostov.” Warnov pulls out a black cube and teleports you to what seems to be the inside of a castle. “Alright, YOU stay right here in the foyer! Don’t go wandering around, I’m serious! You’re not quite in the fold yet, I have to go straighten this out and explain all this to Lord Rostov. I’ll be back to come get you later. Everything will be explained in full detail soon.” Not wishing to piss off anyone and being completely out of your element you stay put. The foyer has enough to keep you occupied though, you begin examining many of the paintings and statues to pass the time. Soon, Warnov returns with a very regal looking vampire. You can only assume that this is Lord Rostov. “Welcome, I’m sure you have ask many questions for me as I have for you, so we’ll just get right to it. We’ll walk and talk on the way to the throne room. Don’t worry about anyone listening. There are no secrets here.” Lord Rostov says. “Okay…I…” “BUT! Remember to address me as Lord Rostov if you are going to address me by name.” Lord Rostov adds with authority. You take notice and obey, though Lord Rostov has such a commanding presence that you would be hard pressed not to obey him. Your questions are typical for someone brought into the fold. Rostov goes on about how his kind have been manipulating the mortal world for centuries just like Warnov said before. Several of the known governments have at least one vamp keeping an eye on things. Apparently many high ranking political types in your own Zalan Empire are vampires! The Grand Alliance is even a tool of the vampires. While Lord Rostov goes on about this fascinating history lesson, you look at some of his “court” as you walk through his castle. Some of them are more “mortal looking” than others. Some look down right hideous. You always thought vampires were supposed to be ultra attractive, but you can see that isn’t necessarily the case. When you get to his throne room Lord Rostov stops and turns to you. “So I hear you want to be a real hero eh? Well this is the place where they’re made.” “What do you mean?” “Why do you think most heroes are always storming dungeons and doing impossible things? They don’t get those abilities without some help. The supernatural skill comes into play and dungeons aren’t exactly beacons of light!” Lord Rostov laughs. “Y…you mean ALL the heroes in the world are vampires?!” “Hah! I wish that was the case. No, there are many regular mortal heroes that do their part I suppose, but if you want the really legendary ones that have done impossible deeds, well chances are there was a vampire involved. Sadly we haven’t been too much more successful than the mortals in the heroics department lately.” “What’s been going on exactly?” “That little annoying necromancer lord, or whatever he thinks he is, has been proving to be a lot cleverer than what was previously believed. His armies have been growing in strength and I’m sure you know about the undead giant business and crushing the Brot Kingdom. What isn’t commonly known is how he accomplished it. He had help from one of our kind. A loathsome outcast known as the Ghoul King. (Sigh) Should’ve killed him long ago really, but…bah, it’s a long story. We’ll deal with him when the time comes. What’s more alarming is that we’ve sent assassins…or heroes to kill the necromancer lord and his bitch and he’s somehow managed to kill all of them. I mean I can somewhat understand them being killed by that brutish demon tyrant Velzix, but a fucking necromancer? He’s a fucking mortal! And from what we know of him, he wasn’t even that good of a wizard to begin with!” Suddenly Lord Rostov flies into a rage, yelling and punches a hole into the solid brick wall. Many of his court, as well as you and Warnov back away. He then stops and composes himself. “My apologies to you all. It’s been a trying time with upstart mortals and traitors and other annoyances. And to you, the newest member of our fold.” “Uh, no need to apologize to me Lord Rostov. It’s your home after all” You say which causes him to smile. “Carefully chosen words. Not overly sycophantic, yet still displaying the right subservient mindset. You should fit in very well here.” “But I meant it…” “Ha ha! And honest too! You’re more interesting than how Warnov described you. I have heard that you were one of those minor mortal heroes I was talking about earlier, but more interesting to me, is apparently you have talent in the musical field?” “So I’ve been told.” “Well, play something for me! All of us!” “What did you want to hear?” “Surprise me, if you’re able!” Lord Rostov sits on his throne while his court whispers among themselves and then go quiet waiting for you to play. You pull out your lute and try to think of a song that they might like. You think of an old song that once was very popular among the aristocracy. Seems like a perfect crowd… You begin to concentrate on the music and nothing but the music. You play as if your life was in danger, which you’re somewhat certain that it isn’t, but it doesn’t hurt to play your best right now. Your new supernatural reflexes certainly come in handy as you’re able to hit notes and play faster than you normally would’ve been able to as a mortal. When you’re finished you look around the room which is still silence until Lord Rostov gets off his throne and begins clapping. Everyone else follows suit. “That was magnificent! I heard the original bard who performed that piece three hundred years ago and even he couldn’t have done a better job! Warnov, this man is too valuable to make into a hero!” “Lord Rostov?” “While this man may have combat skills as you described, he is obviously a musician! Such talent such not be wasted in battle! Beautiful playing!” “While I agree he is a good musician Lord Rostov, I think we should consider the matter of the necromancer…” “(Sigh) Warnov, I was feeling good until you mentioned that mortal again! Nevertheless you are right. But still, this shall be HIS choosing. Not ours.” Lord Rostov turns to you. “The decision shall be yours broodling. You may if you wish under go extensive training to prepare yourself for an encounter with that little necromancer lord. If you succeed, your name will be known, and you will become a legend. However, I can sense that such things are probably not your nature. Music is. I can see that you would be content to just play your music for an appreciative crowd. You could do that here. You could also learn songs that I have possession of, but sadly unable to play with the same spirit that you obviously have.” “What about my family? And my job and all that?” “Ah, your mortal life. I’m sure Warnov will already be taking steps to explain that you have been transferred from your current assignment. Considering he’s part of intelligence, nobody will ask too many questions, even if they bothered to. As for your family, they will be taken care of as you will still officially be part of the Zalan army. If you wish you may stay in contact with them through letters. Possibly arrangements can be made for you to visit them. During the night of course. But under NO circumstances will you tell them about any of this. Doing so would ruin my generous offer and be extremely bad for you. I don’t think we need to dwell on such depressing things because I know you’re smarter than that right?” “Yes Lord Rostov.” “Good, now what is it that you would like to do?” > You be a hero While the offer of playing for what could possibly be eternity is tempting, part of you has been affected by world events and the war going on. You have come to realize that the Necromancer (and the demons) need to be stopped. If you can take an active role in that, then you’ll know for sure that your family will be safe in the near future. You did do all this for your family after all, and while your path has definitely undergone a change, you’re still going to put them first. Besides, you’re a vampire now, you’re sure that you’ll have tons of time to play later if all goes well. You’re definitely nervous about this decision, but you’re going to make it. “Lord Rostov, I wish to begin your advanced combat training.” You say. “Very well, though I almost hoped that you wouldn’t. Your playing was just divine and you won’t be able to play again for a long time during your extensive training time. Possibly never if you fail…but let us hope that you do not fail! It would be a loss for all of us. Warnov escourt him to the lower dungeons.” “Yes, Lord Rostov.” Warnov takes you into the lower dungeons of the castle just as Lord Rostov commanded. Warnov tells you that this isn’t going to be easy and that you better condition your mind to almost a pure instinctive level because you could very well die in training! Finally you reach a large barren room with a pair of large doors on the far end. “This is it. Just keep an eye on the large door over there and well, brace yourself!” You half expect to get bitten again after hearing those words, but instead Warnov quickly steps out of the room and locks the door leaving you alone. The large doors on the other side of the room start to open. And you just realized that you don’t have a weapon… A year passes… You survive your rigorous training. You have fought all manner of dangerous beasts with and without weapons. (And feasting on their blood for survival) You have undergone pain you didn’t think possible even in your new undead state. You’re definitely a better killing machine than you were. You were allowed to write letters to your family which were overlooked first by Lord Rostov of course to make sure you weren’t saying something you shouldn’t. You barely know what to tell them except keeping your lies to a minimum about your supposed new job with Zalan intelligence. You have dedicated and conditioned yourself to combat so much that you don’t even think about music. You briefly wonder if you’ve “lost” something, but you then dismiss such things as you must focus on battle. During this time you have been informed that the Necromancer Lord as well as Velzix have grown in power. Lord Rostov says though that he believes the demons will pose no serious threat if a concentrated effort can be made on them by the mortals. However, for that to happen, the Necromancer Lord must die and that’s where you come in and what you’ve been training for. However, you won’t be going in by yourself. A band of “heroes” will be necessary for a job like this. You are told you will meet the others in a small abandoned village bordering on the Necromancer’s Domain. Another vampire takes you there with the aid of a black teleportation cube. This is a one way trip. You’re not coming back unless you win. That and the fact that the black cubes can’t possibly be allowed to fall into enemy hands. There you meet the others. They look unimpressed with you, but you’re a little surprised to see one of them. She’s very well known…a “hero”. “You’re Deliah the Deathdealer! You fought at the battle of Azark and you also retrieved the Celestial Sword! You’re a hero! I didn’t know you were…” “Didn’t they tell you all this shit when you started training? Sheesh, we gotta get paired up with some broodling…” a brutish vampire interrupts. “Quiet Gorax! I’m sure he was, but meeting a legend is a lot different from basking in their glory in person.” Deliah replies. “Gorax!? Gorax the Mighty? You were a barbarian king that held back the orc hordes over a hundred years ago!” you say in amazement. “Huh, fat lot good that did me. I can’t take any credit for of my deeds today and barely anyone remembers my past deeds except some useless tribal shamen that now cower from the undead hordes in the Drozz Plains. Feh! Back in my day such men would not allow mere ghouls run them off their lands! I don’t know why Rostov won’t allow me to go in, seek out, and just chop off that retched Ghoul King’s head! He’s partially to blame for this mess!” “Oh you know Rostov, he has his reasons. Besides, if we take out the Necromancer lord, the Ghoul King will probably be our next assignment.” Another vampire says in a bored tone. This one looks like he was once a Halfling. It almost makes you laugh to think of a vampire Halfling, but there he is. You don’t know who he is or was, but given the other two, he was probably important at one time. “So are you ready to go broodling? Or are you going to stand there with a dumb look on your face?” Delilah asks. “Uh sure, let’s go!” The trip into the Necromancer’s Domain is surprisingly quick and uneventful. You attempt to make conversation as you can’t help now but be curious about your companions, but all of them are less than talkative and forthcoming. Deliah eventually takes you aside harshly. “Look broodling, we’ve got a job to do. A fucking dangerous one at that! We all need to be in focus and not concentrating on anything else! So keep your damn questions to yourself and if you happen to survive this encounter THEN perhaps you may get a little more information from us and our fascinating history. Until then, stay in the fucking dark!” The rest of the trip is silent. At last you reach the city of Nuro and easily scale its walls and onto the battlements while remaining undetected the whole time. This is a lot different from what it was when you arrived here as a mortal. That memory still gives you a bit of pause. You remember how scared you were back then. “Hurry up broodling! These walking corpses might not be able to detect us, but the Necromancer will soon! We need to get the advantage as soon as possible! Gorax, Wally you go through the front of the main tower. I’m sure you two can handle that. While whatever guards rush to defend their master, me and the broodling will scale the tower and go in through one of the top windows. “You sure about that Delilah? Would you rather I go with you than some broodling?” Wally asks. “Yeah, but if I leave him with Gorax he’ll probably get killed in the fighting and be useless. At least if he’s with me, he can serve as an extra body for the Necromancer Lord to draw his attention to.” “HEY! I’m right here y’know!” you exclaim indignantly which causes Deliah to smack you in the face hard. You didn’t even see it coming. “Shut the fuck up! You’ll draw attention! Look if we pull this off just maybe you’ll come out of this alive. I need you to take care of the Necromancer’s bitch anyway. She’s probably up there with him. Now let’s do this!” The plan is set into action. Gorax and Wally make their presence known immediately jumping off the battlements and into the courtyard while yelling at the top of their lungs. “Intruder! Protect the master!” you hear a scratchy voice yell in the distance, while you and Delilah sneak around, jumping onto the rooftops and attempting to avoid the main fighting force. A few flying shadows try to stop you, but they’re easily dispatched with your bow and silver arrows. Delilah looks glad that you aren’t entirely useless and you and her proceed to scale the walls. “I can’t believe this place isn’t more protected.” You say while climbing. “Heh, he’s got his troops all spread out and mostly on his borders, plus he’s grown more arrogant and confident. That will be his undoing.” She replies quickly. “Funny I was about to say the same for you bloodsuckers.” A voice says causing the both of you to look up. A raven haired female leans over the nearby window above Delilah and blast her directly in the face burning it off with a beam of light. You certainly weren’t expecting a necromancer to cast any sort of spell like that! You then see Delilah fall…and get impaled through the chest by a weathervane. A fucking weathervane. Unbelievable. You attempt to scale the wall to the nearest window under you and just barely get out of the way of the lady necromancer’s next spell. You have no idea where you are in the tower, but you can hear fighting going on outside and a couple of hearty roars which you can only guess is Gorax. A quick scan would indicate that you’re in some sort of library. You cautiously proceed and decide that finding stairs that lead up would be the way to go. You just hope you’re ready to take him on and his mistress. As you make your way through, you fight all manner of undead sentries: Wraiths, ghosts, skeletal warriors, etc. During one of your moments of hiding a couple of wight guards run by talking in a hoarse tone. “The big one and little one are dead! We must find the last one! Quick Quick!” “Yes Yes! The master must be protected!” You come to the very real feeling of having been in the position before…all alone, surrounded by hostile undead, and in Nuro… Your resolve breaks a little and you wish that you weren’t here. You want to go home. Eventually you push yourself forward, but somehow fear has crept back into your own dead heart. To your credit you do reach the top of the tower, but the Necromancer’s mistress once again surprises you. A ray of light sears your face off and destroys your vision. You fall to the cold stone floor in extreme pain and can only make out blurry images. You see a blurred black hooded figure approach. You can’t see his face, but this could only be who you think it is. You attempt to reach for your sword. “More assassins? I swear something is going to have to be done about these bloodsuckers. The Ghoul King’s kin are really starting to get on my nerves. These ones weren’t even a challenge. What are you doing bloodsucker? Don’t you know that’s futile?” The Necromancer Lord unleashes a ball of flame that engulfs your body, putting an end to your undead existence.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While this is all a lot to take in, you manage to calm down. “Okay. Okay. I’m calm, but…man this is a lot of shit.” You reply. “Heh, well you did say you might as well go with it! Don’t worry; it’ll all be second nature soon. Okay let’s go see Lord Rostov.” Warnov pulls out a black cube and teleports you to what seems to be the inside of a castle. “Alright, YOU stay right here in the foyer! Don’t go wandering around, I’m serious! You’re not quite in the fold yet, I have to go straighten this out and explain all this to Lord Rostov. I’ll be back to come get you later. Everything will be explained in full detail soon.” Not wishing to piss off anyone and being completely out of your element you stay put. The foyer has enough to keep you occupied though, you begin examining many of the paintings and statues to pass the time. Soon, Warnov returns with a very regal looking vampire. You can only assume that this is Lord Rostov. “Welcome, I’m sure you have ask many questions for me as I have for you, so we’ll just get right to it. We’ll walk and talk on the way to the throne room. Don’t worry about anyone listening. There are no secrets here.” Lord Rostov says. “Okay…I…” “BUT! Remember to address me as Lord Rostov if you are going to address me by name.” Lord Rostov adds with authority. You take notice and obey, though Lord Rostov has such a commanding presence that you would be hard pressed not to obey him. Your questions are typical for someone brought into the fold. Rostov goes on about how his kind have been manipulating the mortal world for centuries just like Warnov said before. Several of the known governments have at least one vamp keeping an eye on things. Apparently many high ranking political types in your own Zalan Empire are vampires! The Grand Alliance is even a tool of the vampires. While Lord Rostov goes on about this fascinating history lesson, you look at some of his “court” as you walk through his castle. Some of them are more “mortal looking” than others. Some look down right hideous. You always thought vampires were supposed to be ultra attractive, but you can see that isn’t necessarily the case. When you get to his throne room Lord Rostov stops and turns to you. “So I hear you want to be a real hero eh? Well this is the place where they’re made.” “What do you mean?” “Why do you think most heroes are always storming dungeons and doing impossible things? They don’t get those abilities without some help. The supernatural skill comes into play and dungeons aren’t exactly beacons of light!” Lord Rostov laughs. “Y…you mean ALL the heroes in the world are vampires?!” “Hah! I wish that was the case. No, there are many regular mortal heroes that do their part I suppose, but if you want the really legendary ones that have done impossible deeds, well chances are there was a vampire involved. Sadly we haven’t been too much more successful than the mortals in the heroics department lately.” “What’s been going on exactly?” “That little annoying necromancer lord, or whatever he thinks he is, has been proving to be a lot cleverer than what was previously believed. His armies have been growing in strength and I’m sure you know about the undead giant business and crushing the Brot Kingdom. What isn’t commonly known is how he accomplished it. He had help from one of our kind. A loathsome outcast known as the Ghoul King. (Sigh) Should’ve killed him long ago really, but…bah, it’s a long story. We’ll deal with him when the time comes. What’s more alarming is that we’ve sent assassins…or heroes to kill the necromancer lord and his bitch and he’s somehow managed to kill all of them. I mean I can somewhat understand them being killed by that brutish demon tyrant Velzix, but a fucking necromancer? He’s a fucking mortal! And from what we know of him, he wasn’t even that good of a wizard to begin with!” Suddenly Lord Rostov flies into a rage, yelling and punches a hole into the solid brick wall. Many of his court, as well as you and Warnov back away. He then stops and composes himself. “My apologies to you all. It’s been a trying time with upstart mortals and traitors and other annoyances. And to you, the newest member of our fold.” “Uh, no need to apologize to me Lord Rostov. It’s your home after all” You say which causes him to smile. “Carefully chosen words. Not overly sycophantic, yet still displaying the right subservient mindset. You should fit in very well here.” “But I meant it…” “Ha ha! And honest too! You’re more interesting than how Warnov described you. I have heard that you were one of those minor mortal heroes I was talking about earlier, but more interesting to me, is apparently you have talent in the musical field?” “So I’ve been told.” “Well, play something for me! All of us!” “What did you want to hear?” “Surprise me, if you’re able!” Lord Rostov sits on his throne while his court whispers among themselves and then go quiet waiting for you to play. You pull out your lute and try to think of a song that they might like. You think of an old song that once was very popular among the aristocracy. Seems like a perfect crowd… You begin to concentrate on the music and nothing but the music. You play as if your life was in danger, which you’re somewhat certain that it isn’t, but it doesn’t hurt to play your best right now. Your new supernatural reflexes certainly come in handy as you’re able to hit notes and play faster than you normally would’ve been able to as a mortal. When you’re finished you look around the room which is still silence until Lord Rostov gets off his throne and begins clapping. Everyone else follows suit. “That was magnificent! I heard the original bard who performed that piece three hundred years ago and even he couldn’t have done a better job! Warnov, this man is too valuable to make into a hero!” “Lord Rostov?” “While this man may have combat skills as you described, he is obviously a musician! Such talent such not be wasted in battle! Beautiful playing!” “While I agree he is a good musician Lord Rostov, I think we should consider the matter of the necromancer…” “(Sigh) Warnov, I was feeling good until you mentioned that mortal again! Nevertheless you are right. But still, this shall be HIS choosing. Not ours.” Lord Rostov turns to you. “The decision shall be yours broodling. You may if you wish under go extensive training to prepare yourself for an encounter with that little necromancer lord. If you succeed, your name will be known, and you will become a legend. However, I can sense that such things are probably not your nature. Music is. I can see that you would be content to just play your music for an appreciative crowd. You could do that here. You could also learn songs that I have possession of, but sadly unable to play with the same spirit that you obviously have.” “What about my family? And my job and all that?” “Ah, your mortal life. I’m sure Warnov will already be taking steps to explain that you have been transferred from your current assignment. Considering he’s part of intelligence, nobody will ask too many questions, even if they bothered to. As for your family, they will be taken care of as you will still officially be part of the Zalan army. If you wish you may stay in contact with them through letters. Possibly arrangements can be made for you to visit them. During the night of course. But under NO circumstances will you tell them about any of this. Doing so would ruin my generous offer and be extremely bad for you. I don’t think we need to dwell on such depressing things because I know you’re smarter than that right?” “Yes Lord Rostov.” “Good, now what is it that you would like to do?” > You be a musician This is all you’ve ever wanted. Just play music. You’ll be able to do it now for all eternity if possible. You’d be a fool to turn down such a chance. “Lord Rostov, I wish to play music.” Lord Rostov smiles at your response. “Ah yes, I was hoping you’d chose the way of the artiste rather than the warrior. Your talents will be better served here. In the meantime you will be shown to your new room. Ladies, I think you two should escort our new bard. Don’t have too much fun, you’ve got a performance tomorrow!” You are escorted by a couple of female vampires to your room. They say their names are Glasya and Natasha. They seem to make a fuss over you on your way there which you don’t find completely unwelcome, but you’re still getting used to the whole idea that you’re a vampire just like one of them now, despite also being excited over getting to play music on a steady basis with no hindrances. The two vampiresses get even friendlier with you when you get to the room. Natasha begins to take a more aggressive stance and kisses you as the pair of you get on the bed. As the two of you are undressing, Natasha who is on top of you nods to Glasya who leaves the room. Ten minutes later as you’re fully engaged in physical pleasure, Glasya enters the room again with what looks to be a captive human girl. She doesn’t look very old either. Probably a teenager. Her mouth is gagged so she can’t scream out properly. “Wha…what’s all this?” “Shhhh, your passage to true vampirehood…” the Natasha says continuing to grind into you. The human girl is dragged over to the bed with fear and tears in her eyes the whole time. Glasya draws out a blade and holds it to her throat. “Would you like me to cut now or would you prefer I prolong the fear? Perhaps remove her gag first so that you may hear her screams? Or maybe you’d even like to sink your teeth into her yourself?” Glasya asks and licks the side of the young girl’s face. “What? Shit! No wait!” you say stopping Natasha, and sitting up. “I thought we were just having some fun here! Not killing young girls!” “Why do the two need to be mutually exclusive? Broodling, you have been favored by Lord Rostov, I suggest you count yourself lucky and get with the program…besides you’re one of us now, you will need to feed on blood to survive.” Glasya says with a frown. You look at the girl and you shake you head briefly realizing what else it means to be a vampire. “Alright, alright, I got it. But can’t I like feed on animals first and uh work my way up or something?” “Squeamish broodling! You will take the blood of this girl or Lord Rostov will hear of this weakness! While he may be impressed with your music abilities, he will not tolerate weaklings!” Glasya continues to scold. “Besides, why do you care whether this…mortal lives or dies now? You do not know her and you are now superior to her in everyway. It’s your right…” Natasha says while kissing on your body.” You don’t really have any choice in the matter. You almost curse yourself for getting yourself into this situation. You stay silent for awhile and then speak. “Very well. Slit her throat, but do it quickly.” You say. “(Sigh) Very well.” Glasya replies disappointedly. The young girl’s throat is slashed and blood sprays over you and Natasha who greedily opens her mouth to catch it. Glaysa tosses the girl’s dying body onto your chest and begins to undress as well to join you and Natasha in this blood feast. The night is definitely long, memorable and decadent. A little piece of you has “died” namely the vestiges of morality. A few months pass and you don’t even hesitate anymore. You enjoy the blood as well as your playing for Lord Rostov’s court. A year passes and you’ve become completely oblivious to the worsening of the “outside world”. (Which you don’t even think about since you’re so rapped up in your own pleasures) Each day the Necromancer Lord and Velzix get stronger and you stopped worrying about your family’s future. You don’t even write to them anymore. You’ve become so corrupted in such a short amount of time its actually amazing. Another year passes and you’re basically a hedonist. This is what Lord Rostov’s “secret fortress” is all about for the most part. Sure there’s discussion on what should be done about the outside problems, but pleasures of the flesh and blood are mainly the orders of the night. You don’t even realize it, but you ARE literally a “leech” now. All vampires have ever done is leech off of the mortal world. Sure there are the “active ones” but there are far more hedonists. Ironic that the ones who choose to be professional killers, assassins or “heroes” tend to still retain more of their mortalhood. Lord Rostov eventually mentions in passing that he’s finally come up with a perfect plan to kill the Necromancer Lord. He’s managed to come to some sort of deal with that old outcast The Ghoul King to betray him sometime in the near future. The goal is to lure the Necromancer Lord to the fortress itself and kill him directly. Again you could really care less, and you’ve become little more than just another hedonist in Lord Rostov’s court. Lord Rostov has it all figured out, you don’t need to worry. You’re safe in this little “world.” A few months pass and the plan swings into action. One night while you’re playing for the court as usual a loud noise is heard in the foyer and the sounds of shouting and crashing is heard. Lord Rostov takes a few of his concubines and tell everyone else to stay put, though everyone is a little curious. Even you. You go back to playing a little bit and things are starting to return to their “original state” since everyone figures Lord Rostov has the matter well in hand. Soon another noise is heard which sounds like the shrieking and screaming of multiple people. “AAAAAARRRGH!” “LORD ROSTOV! NO!” “GET HIM!” “KILL THE NECROMANCER!” Everyone for once goes into a battle mode to rush to Lord Rostov’s aid. A deformed and ugly creature runs into you, while you’re trying to wrap your mind around this chaos. “Get outta my way broodling! He’s gonna kill us all! I’ve fucked up…heh, but at least the rest of you fuckers are going to die!” he growls at you while desperately looking for a place to hide. You don’t know what to do, but suddenly you feel a presence overcome you. Like someone is controlling your mind. This isn’t even like Lord Rostov, its even more powerful and its growing stronger… You continue to hear the screams of vampires as you can’t help but approach the way to the slaughter. You see vampires killing each other in the hallway! How is this possible? But you know why, it’s HIM… The Necromancer…or whatever he is now has managed to enforce his will even over vampires. You see him in the distance. He’s not even dirtying his hands killing all of you himself. You can feel his loathing for your kind and then you’re completely pulled into his domination. “And now little blood leech you shall join your brethren…” you hear him whisper in your mind. Another vampire suddenly punches you in the back of the head. You attempt to get up, but then feel a foot to the face followed by a sword going through your back. At this point you feel a something you haven’t felt in a long time, fear. Then your head is ripped off in the ensuing bloodbath. Later after total victory has been achieved, the Great Lich Lord burns your body along with the rest of the truly dead vampires.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to admit, the idea has crossed your mind a bit. A small part of you does wonder about embracing the whole hero image and deliberately doing grand deeds that go beyond the call of your duty. You suppose that you’d at least really feel like one if you did that. “Okay Mr. Warnov. I’ll do it.” You exclaim. “You sure?” “Not really, but if I’m already in the shit, I might as well go all the way with it. What do I do next?” Warnov looks around again to see if anyone is about before answering. “Well just take a deep breath, relax and uh… brace yourself!” “Huh?” Before you can react Warnov moves faster than you’ve ever seen anything move. In fact you don’t really see him move at all before he’s biting your neck! He puts his other hand over your mouth so you can’t yell out and easily knocks your hand away from feebly attempting to draw a weapon. You fall into unconsciousness as your blood is drained from you at a rapid rate. Death soon follows… A few minutes later you wake up outside the fort. “Ah you’re up. Sorry about surprising you like that, but I had to work quickly. Someone else could’ve popped up and that would’ve gotten complicated…” You quickly check your neck which is completely healed now, but you know what’s just occurred! You feel a cold numbness throughout your body and you freak out. “I’M DEAD! I’M FUCKIN DEAD! And you’re a vampire!” “Shhhh! Keep your voice down! Yeah, you figured it out. Nice detective work, now let’s get down to this hero business. Though we should really get to Rostov’s and talk about all this.” “I’m…I’m dead! I’m one of you! I don’t want to be an undead thrall for the Necromancer Lord!” “What? No, no, no, we’re not… look I’ll explain later, let’s just…” You pull away from Warnov when he tries to help you up. You feel your reflexes are much quicker. This temporary curiousity in your new found abilities allows Warnov to calm you down. “WAIT! Just stop! (Sigh) Okay look I’ll try to give you the condensed version right now. We vampires aren’t on the side of the Necromancer Lord. If anything he’s fucking things up for us. We like to keep a balanced order as it were. The last time we sided with some megalomaniacal necromancer it nearly resulted in our extinction. Never again. In fact we’ve been manipulating shit for centuries just to make sure something like this didn’t happen. Somebody really fucked up in the observation department on this one!” Warnov goes on to explain that his superior, Lord Rostov will be able to explain better and in more detail, but that you have to come with him now. > You try to escape All of this is too much for you to handle. You know you’re dead, but you still feel afraid. You don’t know what to make of any of the shit Warnov just said and you don’t care, all you want to do is run away from all of this. You take off running in a random direction with a confused stated of mind, not really knowing what is going to come next. You’re so overwhelmed by confusion and fear that you don’t even notice how much faster you’re actually moving. You aren’t paying attention to too much of anything until you feel Warnov tackle you to the ground. Warnov quickly snaps your neck so you can’t move and looks a little mournful as he crouches near you. “I’m sorry human. I should’ve known better. Not everyone is meant for the gift. It is with great regret that I must now kill you. Such a loss…for both races.” Warnov pulls out a silver blade and jams it into your heart before cutting your head off and putting an end to your short undead life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve served in this army well and always done your job regardless of the shitty situations you’ve been in. You might not like a lot of it, but you’ve never complained. Lately you’ve been on edge about a possible all out assault of some big ass demon army that’s going to attack any day now, and playing is one of the few pleasures you have to put your mind at ease. Perhaps it’s a combination of this and a combination of this unwanted and unnecessary scolding that causes you to speak out of turn. “With all due respect ma’am, I am fully prepared to battle at a moment’s notice and so are those under my direct command. But even soldiers need to rest, if only for a minute.” The woman looks very surprised you didn’t comply with her demand to see your superior officer. “…you DARE speak out of turn like that to me? I’ll see you sent to the Nuro Front for that sort of insubordination! Then we’d see just how battle ready you are! How would you like that?” “I wouldn’t like it at all. I barely survived the first time.” You say trying not to express any fear. “…What? What are you talking about? First time?” Now you’re a little surprised she doesn’t know who you are considering how some of the high ups exaggerated about how you managed to survive. You explain yourself briefly and she doesn’t quite believe you at first, a couple of your troops hiding nearby at least back up your claims before slinking off. “That was YOU? What the hell are you doing here? You should be leading from the front not languishing in some fort that barely sees battle!” “Doesn’t see battle? We suffered a small demon raid last week! We see plenty of battle!” “What I mean is, somebody of your obvious combat and survival skills should be assigned on the front lines where you can do more good. Normally I don’t question Zalan command, but this is really an oversight on their part.” “Well maybe they know better than the both of us, besides this assignment isn’t a walk in the fairy fields. I think we’ll be suffering a grand scale attack any day now.” “Doubt it. Velzix has been having a hard time keeping his unruly mob together. If it wasn’t for a lot of the sycophantic Tulan citizens, he’d probably be confined to pure defense, though something will have to be done soon, reports say he’s attempting to gate in more demons everyday. Not to mention that supposedly civilized demons from other nations are starting to display their true colors and flock to his banner. Like I always said the only good demon is a dead one!” This causes you to smile a bit and she very faintly smiles back when she sees that you feel the same way. This smile disappears quickly though as she continues her rant. “I wish I wasn’t assigned to the Tulan Border though. I’d rather be taking Nuro back. THAT’S the more dangerous threat. The demons will kill themselves with their own chaotic and violent natures, but the undead…they’ve almost taken over the world before just because of one bastard that lead them. I never thought I’d see a serious threat like this in my lifetime, especially not…” The female captain at this point stops. She even looks away from you as if whatever she was going to say was just too much even for her. She seems to be a lot more battle hardened than you and probably ten times braver. You can’t imagine what horror she experienced that would be worse than your own, but you don’t find out since she changes the subject. “…Bah! Maybe you’re right; a soldier does need to keep their mind occupied on other things every now and then. We aren’t undead after all. So what’s with the lute? You also a bard or something?” she laughs. “No, I think those dreams are long gone, but my playing seems to boost spirits around here a little, which can only be a good thing in this situation.” “Hm. My mother was elven and she used to sing this song to me and my…brother when we were very young. It was very smooth and calming. Beautiful melody.” “Yeah, most elven music is like that. When I was assigned in Retlad I learned a few elven songs from a few of the citizens there, you wouldn’t happen to know the song would you?” She tells you the name of the song and you know it immediately. One of the first new songs you learned while stationed in Retlad actually. This seems cause her to momentarily revert to a less stand offish behavior. You’re about to play it for her, but then a messenger comes running up handing her a note. She reads it and she’s all business again. “Alright men! We’re moving out!” she shouts and leaves without saying another word to you. You didn’t even learn her name. Perhaps it’s just as well; you’ll most likely never meet again due to one of you dying on the battlefield. You go back to doing what you were doing. Two years pass… Three years since the Nuro Incident and this struggle still continues. You’re still stationed Fort Virtue and you’ve repelled more demon attacks than you would care to count. Velzix has finally gotten his shit together completely. A unified demonic front is in full swing here and its taking its toll. Once again your skills have come in very handy in defense. You are certainly known as a demon slayer, but you still don’t feel like a hero of any kind. You’re just trying to do your job and survive. You save lives when you can, but you know ultimately it’s a futile task as death seems to be everywhere nowadays. As bad as it is on the demon front, its nothing compared to what’ve you’ve heard on the undead front. The Necromancer has finally broken out from Nuro, and successfully attacked the Kingdom of Brot. Several undead giants demolished the area. You’ve never even seen a living giant and they sound intimidating. You can’t even imagine an undead one. The power to raise one, let alone several is sort of scary. The Grand Alliance army didn’t get there in time to stop him and as usual they were repelled when they arrived. You worry about the Grand Alliance failing to stop the undead horde. You hope it doesn’t get any closer to the Zalan Empire where your family might be in danger. Sometimes you worry so much that you can’t sleep, not that you do much of that nowadays anyway. Normally you play to keep your mind at ease, but tonight you go to the archery range to keep yourself focused. For a long time you’re by yourself, but suddenly you feel a creeping suspicion someone is watching you… You turn around with your bow and see a pale man. He holds up his hands. “Hey now! Don’t shoot! Sorry for creeping around like that. Professional habit.” He says. “What? Who are you?” you demand. “Warnov. Zalan Intelligence.” “You’re a spy?” “Well I suppose you could put it that way. I was here to give some info to your Captain Eckard, and I also wanted to take a look around the fort. Didn’t think anyone would be on the range though. Nice shooting, I know who you are and heard about your marksmanship with a bow. You’re certainly doing your part with the demons around here.” Despite the fact that you’re talking to a spy, you feel the need to vent your feelings. “Yeah, well I hope the Grand Alliance starts doing its part. I mean what the fuck are they doing? Weren’t they created to put a stop to all this shit? I mean am I supposed to worry every day if that undead horde is going to get closer to the Zalan Empire where it can threaten my family?” Warnov doesn’t look offended by your words, if anything he looks intrigued. “Well, I can understand why you’re venting. Trust me I sympathize. But as part of intel, I can tell you its not that easy…there were a lot of surprises that weren’t accounted for. We’re doing our best to rectify this situation by gathering as much info as possible. In fact, you could help us…” “Excuse me? How?” Warnov looks around and gets closer before speaking. “Look, as I said, I know all about you and your skills, why you joined, all of it. I know you don’t much care for some of the propaganda made about some of your exploits. But it’s important to realize that deeds like yours must be blown up a little to give common people hope that ultimately good will win the day. You may not consider yourself a hero of any kind, but your actions aren’t without some of those qualities. You obviously care very much about your family, and I’ve heard how you try to keep the people under your command alive. Sound like heroic qualities to me. Perhaps they’re on a smaller scale, but they’re there. I’m betting that there’s a BIGGER hero in there somewhere, just itching to get out. You think the Grand Alliance isn’t doing a good job? Perhaps we can arrange something for you to be transferred into it, or maybe you’d like to take an even more direct approach.” “What do you mean?” Warnov suddenly backs away. “Before we go any further. I need to know are you willing to take up the mantle of being a hero. Because if you aren’t, then we have nothing more to discuss. I shall require an answer now.” > You letters to home (War continues...) Dear Mom, Just another letter from me, letting you know I’m still alive. Though I’m sure with my newest title of “Demon Slayer” you probably knew I was. More exaggerations of course. I do my job to be sure, but there are plenty of other men and women my age or even younger that doing just as much as I am and they don’t seem to get any credit. Of course many of them have also been killed. I’ve always tried to keep everyone alive under my command, but I know it’s a futile endeavor. The fighting has been getting worse up here, the demons I think have finally gotten more organized. Though what alarms me more is hearing that the Necromancer Lord has finally broken out of Nuro and taken over the Brot Kingdom. I thought the Grand Alliance was supposed to stop this sort of thing. I’m tired of all this. I feel like playing right now, sorry for the short letter. Give my love to the rest of the family Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Demons are a lot faster than the undead and you’re wounded, no way are you going to be able to outrun them. You turn around and draw your bow, trying to ignore your pain which is overriding any fear you have at this point. Your weakened state is causing you to have a hard time aiming. “Uh oh, better be careful, looks like this one is going to put up a fight. I’d say by his uniform that he’s a soldier.” “Hur hur. Good. Hey human, better stop wobbling if you’re going to aim that thing properly.” You miss the demon completely. “Hah! You want me to walk slower human?” ”You sure you should be playing with him like that? Don’t you remember what happened earlier today?” “Shut up! I told ya, that bitch musta had some magical powers because…OW!” You hit the demon in the chest, but it doesn’t seem much damage. He pulls out the arrow and now begins to quicken his pace. The other demon starts to walk towards you as well. “See, I told you to pay attention.” “Bah! If this is the extent of what his little pig sticker can do, I’m not concerned. Hey human, don’t you know they’re doing great things with gunpower these days? RAAAAGH!” The big demon suddenly charges you, and you let your arrow fly. Right in the eye. “Perfect.” You whisper. The demon bellows, but it doesn’t slow him down. You narrowly dodge his charge. You roll on the ground and shoot two more arrows in his back. He turns around snarling and bellowing for your blood. More arrows fly into the creature, but at last the demon has reached you and smacks you to the ground. Your bow flies from your hand, and while crawling on the ground you try to draw your sword, but a crushing blow hits you on the back. This might’ve caused a lot more damage, but miraculously the lute that’s still in your pack “softens” the blow. The crunching of wood signifies that it’s broken though. “What the fuck, that’s a weird noise…what is this? HA HA HA! Hey! You gotta be shittin’ me! A fuckin’ lute? Check this out! He’s carrying a fuckin’ lute! What’s a fucking soldier doin’ with a lute?” the big demon shouts to his acquaintance while he holds up your broken instrument. “Don’t talk you idiot! LOOK OUT!” his acquaintance shouts, just as you recover long enough to shove your sword straight into the demon’s groin. You push the sword upward in an attempt to do more damage and you succeed. Blood is flying everywhere and the demon howls in pain from the grievous wound. You pull your sword out and then proceed to repeatedly stab the demon until it falls backwards on the ground, dead. You’re exhausted; you used all your remaining strength killing the thing. Unfortunately the other demon grabs you by the scruff like a helpless kitten and lifts you up off the ground a few inches. He knocks your sword out of your hand and looks at his fallen comrade. “Hmm, can’t say I didn’t warn him. Oh well, more meat for me. This may hurt a lot…” Fully expecting the death that you’ve managed to avoid for so long, you once again evade it when a gunshot rings out and part of the demon’s head splatters in your face. You’re dropped immediately. The demon’s body is still standing though. “Shoot the bastard again!” you hear a gruff voice shout and this time the next shot hits chest and the demon falls. You lay motionless on the ground, looking up in the sky when your saviors come up to you. It’s a group of dwarves armed with gun powder weapons. “By the gods, get doc out here! We need to fix this man up! Hey lad, you’ll be alright, don’t worry…are you a Zalan soldier?” one of the dwarves asks you. “…yeah…Nuro…lost…all dead…” is all you utter before fall into unconsciousness. A few days pass before you’re somewhat back to a coherent state. You find yourself in a military outpost and at this point you don’t care. You’re just happy to be alive. It would seem that during your escape from Nuro, you ran in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom, the dwarven scouts that found you were from a small neutral kingdom trying its best to stay out of the dispute between Tulan and Zalan, but the new threat of demons running all over the nearby countryside caused them to increase patrols. They fixed you up, but dropped you off at the closest Zalan Fort. The Zalan fort that you’re in right now is called Virtue and it’s on the Tulan border. It seems relatively calm though. Not at all what you thought it would be. When one of the healers comes in to check on you, you begin to ask questions which she tries to answer to get you up to speed. The Tulan Kingdom is currently under attack from the demons now. They’ve been assaulting the place and even gaining help from some of the evil populace there. The demon citizens there have reverted back to their “bad behavior” and thrown their lot in with the invaders as well. That doesn’t surprise you. The Tulan Kingdom pulled back some of their military from the borders so the fighting hasn’t been as bad and Zalan’s made a little more progress during this time, but the military minds are being cautious not to over extend. There is extreme concern over the recent demon invasion, not to mention the incident at Nuro. Word has already spread about the unsuccessful siege there. The healer also tells you that a few Zalan “high ups” are eager to speak to you soon, as they want to know what exactly happened at Nuro. You’re somewhat of an important survivor since as far as anyone knows; you were the only one to successfully escape that killing zone. There’s also talk of a “Grand Alliance” being created to counter these new threats. While the healer talks you end up drifting back to sleep wishing you could just escape it all. One year passes… You’re still at Fort Virtue and it doesn’t look like you’ll be leaving the army anytime soon. You couldn’t have been more wrong on your belief that you’d get executed for cowardice. You got promoted to sergeant instead, which in light of the current situation, is nearly the same thing. Your promotion came after several Zalan officers spoke to you about Nuro. You even got a medal. Stories and rumors creep around about how against all odds you survived an undead onslaught and fought off a bunch of demons as well. Your past “reputation” from your time in Retlad is exaggerated as well. It doesn’t help that the citizens there remember you and are all willing to add to the exaggeration. All of these stories have been woven together in such an elaborate way to make you seem like some kind of hero most likely for propaganda purposes. And you know you’re not hero. In fact you try to explain you aren’t a hero to people, but they think you’re just being modest, eventually you give up. Your assignment at Virtue hasn’t been uneventful. There’s fighting, but now it’s mainly demon commanded enemies rather than Tulan ones. Some demon lord called Velzix killed the royalty there, completely conquered the area and made it his realm. The border war continues under new management except now it’s more than just a border that the enemy is looking to take. Your superior, Captain Eckard reminds you of Valhlat except with a different name. You suppose there is a certain “cookie cutter” that occurs within the Zalan army that causes people to act the same. You’ve briefly wondered if you ever make that rank, you’ll act the same way. You then usually laugh at the very fact that you ever would. Fort Virtue hasn’t suffered a really bad attack yet, and it’s mostly skirmishes, but it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You routinely go on patrols and give orders which you didn’t think you’d be good at, but you think back to how you used to order your brothers and sisters around and perhaps you always had a bit a leadership skill, you just didn’t want it. You thought that you’d be able to at least visit your family, but of course due to recent events, you’re ordered to stay put. Your family at least is getting more money from your pay increase. They even send a new lute for you after you told them of the unfortunate event that resulted in the destruction of your last one. This gives you a little pleasure in a relatively joyless assignment. All in all, you still prefer it compared to being in the unsuccessful assaults on Nuro. The Grand Alliance that was formed hasn’t been too successful as every one has been a slaughter from what you’ve heard. You already went through that once. You don’t relish the idea of going through it again. One day while you’re spending your free time practicing a new song, some new soldiers come into the fort. They look like they’ve just seen a vicious battle and are here to restock. One of them sees you and gives you a disapproving look. It’s a woman with striking good looks, but definitely carrying an air of leadership about her. Her rank signifies her as a captain…yep same cookie cutter, just a little prettier. “You there! What are you doing playing an instrument? Shouldn’t you be on watch or doing something more constructive with your time soldier? And you’re a sergeant? You should know better!” “I’m not on watch duty right now and…” The woman doesn’t even let you finish your explanation. Other soldiers that were sitting in your area are now slowly creeping out of the fray. Even her own soldiers are creeping away. They probably know all too well of how she acts. “So? You think evil is going to wait around for you to be ready for battle? Where is your superior officer? I can’t believe they would allow such a relaxed attitude around here considering the importance of this fort! If you were serving under me, I’d have you flogged for your lack of discipline!” > You letters to home (Escape from Nuro) Dear Mom, I dunno if they informed you, but I AM still alive! I don’t know how long you may have been worrying, but I’m sure you already heard about the failed siege at Nuro. It was horrible. I’ve spoken little about it as I’ve been attempting to recuperate in Fort Virtue. I really don’t want to, but I know I have to. Some of the high ranking people in the Zalan military apparently want to talk to me directly about it too. Apparently I was the only survivor. I still can’t believe it. I mean is it possible the god of luck rolled the dice and I was spared that day? It’s the only possible explanation. I mean the dead were all around me and I somehow escaped. My troubles didn’t even end there, since I might’ve died of blood loss or marauding demons had I not been found by a Dwarven patrol. I’ve never seen so much death in my life even during my assignment in Retlad and I wish I didn’t have to again, but I know I will. I just wish I could get my mind on the awful things I saw that day. Normally I’d play my music, but I don’t even have my lute anymore to do that. I miss it. I can’t believe I’m even obsessing about a stupid instrument when I should really be thankful that I’m still alive! Nobody else is. Captain Valhlat, Wessel, all of them. All those people in my company are dead or worse, probably raised as zombies by now. I dread what the future holds. Will I be sent back? I wish I had my lute. Give my love to the rest of the family Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Demons are a lot faster than the undead and you’re wounded, no way are you going to be able to outrun them. You turn around and draw your bow, trying to ignore your pain which is overriding any fear you have at this point. Your weakened state is causing you to have a hard time aiming. “Uh oh, better be careful, looks like this one is going to put up a fight. I’d say by his uniform that he’s a soldier.” “Hur hur. Good. Hey human, better stop wobbling if you’re going to aim that thing properly.” You miss the demon completely. “Hah! You want me to walk slower human?” ”You sure you should be playing with him like that? Don’t you remember what happened earlier today?” “Shut up! I told ya, that bitch musta had some magical powers because…OW!” You hit the demon in the chest, but it doesn’t seem much damage. He pulls out the arrow and now begins to quicken his pace. The other demon starts to walk towards you as well. “See, I told you to pay attention.” “Bah! If this is the extent of what his little pig sticker can do, I’m not concerned. Hey human, don’t you know they’re doing great things with gunpower these days? RAAAAGH!” The big demon suddenly charges you, and you let your arrow fly. Right in the eye. “Perfect.” You whisper. The demon bellows, but it doesn’t slow him down. You narrowly dodge his charge. You roll on the ground and shoot two more arrows in his back. He turns around snarling and bellowing for your blood. More arrows fly into the creature, but at last the demon has reached you and smacks you to the ground. Your bow flies from your hand, and while crawling on the ground you try to draw your sword, but a crushing blow hits you on the back. This might’ve caused a lot more damage, but miraculously the lute that’s still in your pack “softens” the blow. The crunching of wood signifies that it’s broken though. “What the fuck, that’s a weird noise…what is this? HA HA HA! Hey! You gotta be shittin’ me! A fuckin’ lute? Check this out! He’s carrying a fuckin’ lute! What’s a fucking soldier doin’ with a lute?” the big demon shouts to his acquaintance while he holds up your broken instrument. “Don’t talk you idiot! LOOK OUT!” his acquaintance shouts, just as you recover long enough to shove your sword straight into the demon’s groin. You push the sword upward in an attempt to do more damage and you succeed. Blood is flying everywhere and the demon howls in pain from the grievous wound. You pull your sword out and then proceed to repeatedly stab the demon until it falls backwards on the ground, dead. You’re exhausted; you used all your remaining strength killing the thing. Unfortunately the other demon grabs you by the scruff like a helpless kitten and lifts you up off the ground a few inches. He knocks your sword out of your hand and looks at his fallen comrade. “Hmm, can’t say I didn’t warn him. Oh well, more meat for me. This may hurt a lot…” Fully expecting the death that you’ve managed to avoid for so long, you once again evade it when a gunshot rings out and part of the demon’s head splatters in your face. You’re dropped immediately. The demon’s body is still standing though. “Shoot the bastard again!” you hear a gruff voice shout and this time the next shot hits chest and the demon falls. You lay motionless on the ground, looking up in the sky when your saviors come up to you. It’s a group of dwarves armed with gun powder weapons. “By the gods, get doc out here! We need to fix this man up! Hey lad, you’ll be alright, don’t worry…are you a Zalan soldier?” one of the dwarves asks you. “…yeah…Nuro…lost…all dead…” is all you utter before fall into unconsciousness. A few days pass before you’re somewhat back to a coherent state. You find yourself in a military outpost and at this point you don’t care. You’re just happy to be alive. It would seem that during your escape from Nuro, you ran in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom, the dwarven scouts that found you were from a small neutral kingdom trying its best to stay out of the dispute between Tulan and Zalan, but the new threat of demons running all over the nearby countryside caused them to increase patrols. They fixed you up, but dropped you off at the closest Zalan Fort. The Zalan fort that you’re in right now is called Virtue and it’s on the Tulan border. It seems relatively calm though. Not at all what you thought it would be. When one of the healers comes in to check on you, you begin to ask questions which she tries to answer to get you up to speed. The Tulan Kingdom is currently under attack from the demons now. They’ve been assaulting the place and even gaining help from some of the evil populace there. The demon citizens there have reverted back to their “bad behavior” and thrown their lot in with the invaders as well. That doesn’t surprise you. The Tulan Kingdom pulled back some of their military from the borders so the fighting hasn’t been as bad and Zalan’s made a little more progress during this time, but the military minds are being cautious not to over extend. There is extreme concern over the recent demon invasion, not to mention the incident at Nuro. Word has already spread about the unsuccessful siege there. The healer also tells you that a few Zalan “high ups” are eager to speak to you soon, as they want to know what exactly happened at Nuro. You’re somewhat of an important survivor since as far as anyone knows; you were the only one to successfully escape that killing zone. There’s also talk of a “Grand Alliance” being created to counter these new threats. While the healer talks you end up drifting back to sleep wishing you could just escape it all. One year passes… You’re still at Fort Virtue and it doesn’t look like you’ll be leaving the army anytime soon. You couldn’t have been more wrong on your belief that you’d get executed for cowardice. You got promoted to sergeant instead, which in light of the current situation, is nearly the same thing. Your promotion came after several Zalan officers spoke to you about Nuro. You even got a medal. Stories and rumors creep around about how against all odds you survived an undead onslaught and fought off a bunch of demons as well. Your past “reputation” from your time in Retlad is exaggerated as well. It doesn’t help that the citizens there remember you and are all willing to add to the exaggeration. All of these stories have been woven together in such an elaborate way to make you seem like some kind of hero most likely for propaganda purposes. And you know you’re not hero. In fact you try to explain you aren’t a hero to people, but they think you’re just being modest, eventually you give up. Your assignment at Virtue hasn’t been uneventful. There’s fighting, but now it’s mainly demon commanded enemies rather than Tulan ones. Some demon lord called Velzix killed the royalty there, completely conquered the area and made it his realm. The border war continues under new management except now it’s more than just a border that the enemy is looking to take. Your superior, Captain Eckard reminds you of Valhlat except with a different name. You suppose there is a certain “cookie cutter” that occurs within the Zalan army that causes people to act the same. You’ve briefly wondered if you ever make that rank, you’ll act the same way. You then usually laugh at the very fact that you ever would. Fort Virtue hasn’t suffered a really bad attack yet, and it’s mostly skirmishes, but it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You routinely go on patrols and give orders which you didn’t think you’d be good at, but you think back to how you used to order your brothers and sisters around and perhaps you always had a bit a leadership skill, you just didn’t want it. You thought that you’d be able to at least visit your family, but of course due to recent events, you’re ordered to stay put. Your family at least is getting more money from your pay increase. They even send a new lute for you after you told them of the unfortunate event that resulted in the destruction of your last one. This gives you a little pleasure in a relatively joyless assignment. All in all, you still prefer it compared to being in the unsuccessful assaults on Nuro. The Grand Alliance that was formed hasn’t been too successful as every one has been a slaughter from what you’ve heard. You already went through that once. You don’t relish the idea of going through it again. One day while you’re spending your free time practicing a new song, some new soldiers come into the fort. They look like they’ve just seen a vicious battle and are here to restock. One of them sees you and gives you a disapproving look. It’s a woman with striking good looks, but definitely carrying an air of leadership about her. Her rank signifies her as a captain…yep same cookie cutter, just a little prettier. “You there! What are you doing playing an instrument? Shouldn’t you be on watch or doing something more constructive with your time soldier? And you’re a sergeant? You should know better!” “I’m not on watch duty right now and…” The woman doesn’t even let you finish your explanation. Other soldiers that were sitting in your area are now slowly creeping out of the fray. Even her own soldiers are creeping away. They probably know all too well of how she acts. “So? You think evil is going to wait around for you to be ready for battle? Where is your superior officer? I can’t believe they would allow such a relaxed attitude around here considering the importance of this fort! If you were serving under me, I’d have you flogged for your lack of discipline!” > You letters to home (Thanks for the lute!) Dear Mom Thanks for the lute! I received it just a few days ago. It plays very well, its even better than the one I lost. It’s certainly made what little free time I have at least tolerable now. I really wish I could get a chance to visit you guys though. I thought I would’ve been able to by now, but I suppose given the current situation, nobody’s getting any kind of leave for quite some time. I’m sure you’ve also heard all about how I’m supposed to be some kind of hero after surviving the failed attack on Nuro, but I don’t see how. I mean I guess praise is better than being insulted, but at this point I feel like a fraud. Like I’m getting too much credit for something that was pure luck in the first place. I dunno, I know you and the rest of the family are proud of me so that’s all that really matters. I’m just trying to keep all this in perspective. You and Dad always told me not to get a big head about things. At least they raised my pay so I can send you guys more money. That’s why I joined the first place after all. This new rank gives me a few more responsibilities, but I can handle it. So far this assignment hasn’t been too bad. Demons aren’t a picnic to fight though and I’m dreading the day when they start attacking in a more organized manner. Until then, I’ll just be enjoying your gift when I can. Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Despite your fears, you’ve always had a sense of duty and responsibility, something that probably won’t ever completely go away due to how you grew up. You’re not running away, you did join to help provide for your family after all. Before your company packs up and leaves Retlad, you write a quick letter to your family and hand it off to a messenger. Many of the Retlad citizens aren’t too pleased to see you leave, but they don’t really have any say in the matter, just like you don’t. There isn’t much talking on the trip, though, everyone is pretty silent. Wessel however is doing enough for everyone. “I can’t believe something like this happened! Nuro was a beacon of enlightenment and well prepared for situations like this! I…can’t believe this didn’t occur without some sort of demonic influence. I’ll bet that Mr. Demar had something to do with this! I remember taking his class and he was always a creepy bastard. Before I could graduate I had to take his conjuration 101 class and he didn’t like me because I had made several logical arguments to as why that branch of magic should be outlawed altogether. And it’s obvious by what happened recently that I was right! Nevertheless I did all the required work in the class and I still got a B! Way to fuck up my perfect record! I get the same grade as some bumbling idiot who summoned up a Nurk Beast that he lost control over and bit off someone’s hand! Where is the fucking justice?” Once again, Wessel has turned the topic to focus on himself. Happily Captain Vahlat tells him to shut the fuck up. You’ll be near Nuro soon and your company makes camp for the night. While all of you are on edge from what will come tomorrow, someone finally says something. “Hey farmboy, play us a song on that thing.” “…what did you want to hear?” you ask, not expecting to be called to play under these circumstances. In fact it just occurred to you that you’ve never played for anyone in your company! You assume that they all knew that you did, but they just were never interested enough to stick around and listen to you before. “I dunno, play whatever it was you used to play for the Retlad citizens…it seemed to make them happy.” You pull out your lute and take a deep breath and start playing. At first you’re just concentrating on the strings and making sure you don’t mess anything up, but when you look up, you can see that everyone in the camp is listening intently to your music, even Wessel. Tensions seem to have decreased. It’s like a wave of calmness has struck the camp. You never believed your playing could have that much of an effect on people. Eventually the song ends and the Captain tells everyone who isn’t on watch to get some sleep. He then takes you aside. “Heard your playing…damn shame that you’re here. You really should be doing that instead.” Valhlat remarks. “I know.” “Hm. I know you joined mainly to help support your family.” “Yeah, I just hope I get to see them again.” “Bah, don’t start talking like that. I’ve seen you with a bow, you pluck that thing even better than that lute. You’ve been in battle before and survived, I see you doing it again.” “I sure hope so, its just I dunno…the undead…I’ve heard stories.” “Yeah, everyone’s heard the stories, but stories tend to be exaggerated. Now I dunno about what happened centuries ago, since I wasn’t there, but I HAVE fought the undead before. One of my first assignments was taking care of some minor undead incursion in a little village. Some asshole stumbled upon an ancient scroll and started reading the goddamn words on it out loud. They look a lot worse than they actually are. Most of the time they’re incredibly slow, and easily dispatched. Its mainly a psychological advantage from all the stories people have told about them that cause this quaking fear in most folks.” “Well I suppose, but what about the necromancers?” “Feh, they’re wizards and just like all the rest their arrogance is their undoing. Most of these so-called necromancers are half-assed ones that get killed by their own undead troops. Anyway, get to sleep; you want to be fully alert for tomorrow’s battle. It still won’t be a walk in the park, but it’s not going to be a death sentence.” You take the Captain’s words into consideration, but in the back of your mind before you go to sleep, you’re thinking “But they can’t be that half-assed, they successfully took over Nuro…” The next day arrives and you finish your trip to Nuro and that’s when you see the city for the first time. You always wanted to visit it after hearing about it from Wessel, but even from this distance it doesn’t look like anything he described. “By the gods…what…” Wessel slowly whispers. The stench of death is thick in the air. You see thousands of bodies outside the city gates and they aren’t lying down either. They aren’t advancing either though. There just standing there like…well zombies. Your company isn’t the only one here though, there are a few others awaiting orders. You see one from the Brot Kingdom and another from the Azi Republic. Thankfully there’s another Zalan one as well to boost your numbers. The respective captains acknowledge each other’s presence, a short meeting is made and then the inevitable comes. The attack. At first things seem to go well. All ranged troops are ordered to fire upon the enemy who are still just standing there. Arrows pierce zombie brains, gunshots destroy skeleton bones, spells blast at walls and it seems very easy. Then from the battlements of Nuro a few figures begin casting a few offensive spells of their own. It’s at this point a charge is made towards the city. “When you get in range aim for the fucking wizards! Don’t fear these rotting meat sacks! We’re the fucking Zalan army! We don’t lose!” Captain Valhlat shouts. Fine words, but they do little to uplift your impending sense of doom. It doesn’t help that the sky goes completely dark while you’re marching towards a bunch of undead and at the same time hoping you don’t get hit by a wizard’s spell. In the distance you briefly see a cleric from the Azi Republic riding a horse by himself. He appears to be calling upon some sort of holy might from whatever god he worships since a blue protective sphere appears around him. The next moment he’s hit by a black ray that goes straight through the sphere and his life is gone. Not even his god could protect him. As you get closer, you see that the undead soldiers still haven’t moved, but there are significantly less of them as they continue to fall from ranged attacks. However, now other undead pop up on the walls of Nuro holding bows of their own. “SHIELDS!” Captain Valhlat shouts. More of your side falls and now you’re so close you can smell the death in the air. The undead troops are now finally moving to do battle with your side. You attempt to target the robed figures on the battlements, but of course it’s very difficult in all this chaos and your fear. You mostly only get the undead archers. Wessel is a little more successful is downing an enemy wizard. “Ha ha! Don’t you realize I graduated top of my class?!” you hear him shout. The gates of Nuro are being broken down and despite the horror you’ve already seen, this battle still seems hopeful. Then a black cloaked hooded figure sudden appears on the battlements. You see him merely raise his arms briefly and that’s when you get the very real feeling that hope is lost. Ghostly spirits come through the walls of Nuro making worse shrieks than when you fought the Quillars. At least they were living creatures. These drain lives at but a touch and there isn’t enough magic to fight the incorporeal creatures properly. You see the Brot Kingdom’s company break and run, but unfortunately for them and you, your possible retreat has been blocked. All the soldiers on your side that fell have now suddenly been raised, the undead soldiers that were killed have been raised as well. You’re fighting in the front, from behind and in some cases from within. It’s chaos. “Shit, I’m going to die today…” you whisper to yourself. Captain Valhlat is knee deep in the dead, but this figure who’s apparently changed the tide of battle hasn’t escaped his attention. He points to the figure and barks orders at the top of his lungs. “KILL HIM! SHOOT THE FUCKER! DO IT! NOW!” > You letters to home (Assault on Nuro) Dear Mom, I’m writing this just before we head off to Nuro. I’m sort of scared. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. I also know I’ve been in danger several times before, but I have a bad feeling about this mission. I remember those old stories Dad told about the Dead War that occurred centuries ago. Those used to scare the hell out of me. I was usually thankful when you told him to stop telling me and Mallack about it. Still he always said that he told those stories so that we could better appreciate the relatively “safe” time we live in now even if it isn’t perfect. I’d hate to think that he was wrong about that, because I certainly wouldn’t want to live during the years of the Great Lich Lord’s reign of terror. I’ve been told that this “outbreak” is still small enough to be contained and eliminated, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. Nuro is a place of strong magic! If they couldn’t handle this problem, how are we going to be able to? What manner of undead are going to face us? What of the evil wizards that caused this in the first place? As far as my company goes, the only really powerful one we have is Wessel. I hope they aren’t just sending us, or that we’ll at least have much more magical back up by the time we arrive there. I’ve been trying to not worry about this, but this doesn’t feel right. In my heart it doesn’t feel right. I just hope and pray to all the gods that I survive this. Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just because he’s acting reckless doesn’t mean you’re going to, you’re going to play upon your strengths and keep as far away as you can. You ride your horse around the outskirts of the village, readying your bow the whole time. When you can, you fire at the Quillar attackers. As quick as they are, they aren’t really paying attention to you and you manage to get in some good shots. A couple of head shots even. At first they don’t realize where the all the arrows are coming from, since Wessel is giving them a hard enough time with the chain lightning. You’re sort of glad you decided to stay on the outskirts. Wessel is having such a “good time” blasting the Quillars, he’s probably causing a lot more collateral damage in the process. Eventually the Quillars start to retreat. This is when you get into a little more trouble as you happen to be right in the direction of where they’re running! They still look scary and they get even moreso as they get closer. The worst has to be their shrieks. It’s unpleasant to hear to say the least. You ride out of the way, but your horse isn’t fast enough and is peppered by quills. You catch a few in the leg yourself and you’re thrown from the horse as it reels in pain, before collapsing. Feeling the pain you scramble for cover behind a nearby rock. Fortunately the quills don’t penetrate that. Most of them are content on just running away, but one straggler decides to try to get one more kill before leaving. That kill of course happens to be you. The Quillar makes its high pitch shriek as it runs towards the rock. You don’t have time to ready your bow before its high jumped over the rock and on the other side of you. You quickly draw your weapon and swing it blindly as you turn around. Luckily your blade catches the side of its head, killing it. At last you collapse from the pain in your leg. While you’re pulling out quills, Wessel and another Zalan soldier come to meet you. Wessel doesn’t look any worse for wear, but the soldier looks very tired and obviously has wounds of his own. “There you are, lying down on the job I see.” Wessel mocks. “Are you alright?” the other soldier asks. “Yeah…Agh. I’ve gotten bitten in the leg by a Kobold before. Feels nearly the same except these quills go in a lot deeper.” “Glad you guys came when you did. We were just doing a routine patrol when these quill bastards came out of nowhere! They’re getting bolder and attacking in greater number, we need more reinforcements.” “Yeah, well good luck with that. The Tulan border is the primary concern. Besides I’m here now, I predict that this infestation will be over soon now.” Wessel boasts. “Any…way. My name’s Tylir. I’d introduce you to the rest of my squad, but they’re all dead now. Even though it was the heat of battle, I couldn’t help notice how well you picked off several of those Quillars with one shot. That was pretty impressive.” “Thanks.” “Hey! What about me? I’m the one who noticed you getting attacked in the first place! I’m also the one who saved your ass!” Wessel interrupts again, he’s starting to get annoying at this point, but Tylir doesn’t seem bothered by him. “Everyone did their part. Okay, since I’m here I’ll take you to see Captain Vhalat, I’m sure that’s who you were sent to report to, oh and wizard while your skills may be appreciated here, I’d advise you to cut down on the boasting. Captain Vhalat isn’t fond of it, and to be quite honest the other two wizards we had here were more experienced and they still got killed.” “Hmm, well perhaps they lacked the natural skill that I of course possess.” At this point you and Tylir just roll your eyes and get moving. You travel through a couple of other villages and it’s pretty depressing. You see stacks of bodies being buried in mass graves while most of other Retlad citizens look thoroughly defeated. A few look in your direction, but don’t look too much, it’s like they don’t really expect you to succeed. Not exactly inspiring. Soon you arrive in the town of Glaf. It would appear that the Zalan contingency sent here is staying in one of the bigger Retlad towns rather than the capitol. Ryan also says that the Quillar infestation is worse around here too, so the captain suspects that whatever lair they’re crawling out of is nearby and can hopefully located and cleansed. The town itself resembles a small Zalan fort rather than a proper Retlad town, as a sturdy wall has been erected around it. The people seem to look a little more hopeful though. Tylir goes on to say that he thinks that the Retlad citizens are actually starting to prefer Zalan presence especially since their on government has been pretty ineffectual about the whole invasion. The Retlad army has only focused on defending the capitol. The Retlad royals appear to find their lives more important than anyone else’s. Eventually you’re brought before Captain Vahlat himself. He looks up from the map he’s inspecting and addresses you and Wessel. “Ah, I see the Empire has seen fit to send me reinforcements…wow, twice as many as I thought I’d get. Private Tylir where’s the rest of your squad?” “Um…dead sir.” “Of course. (sigh) So what’s your problem private? Why is your leg wrapped up?” Vahlat asks you. “Got into a fight with the Quillars sir.” You answer. “Oh?” Tylir at this point interrupts and tells of what happened. Wessel looks like he wants to expand upon his deeds, but Vahlat’s appearance is a little imposing and he was already warned once, so he keeps his mouth shut. Vahlat soon addresses you again. “Well it would seem you two have already proven yourselves useful. A lot more useful that what passes for the Retlad army, but of course that isn’t hard. Wizard, I certainly hope you don’t intend to use this place as a chance to show off all the skills you learned in your fancy Nuro college. One of your predecessors did that as well, and as you can see he’s no longer here. As for you, I hope that you can do a better job of keeping out of the way of the quills next time. Most don’t get a second chance. Alright that’s all for now. Our group is being housed for free at the Inn down the street. Free food as well, but don’t go overboard, its being rationed. You want more food or anything else you’ll have to pay like everyone else. I suggest though that you don’t do any heavy carousing. This is a high alert situation and we could be going to battle at anytime. Dismissed.” You, Wessel and Tylir all leave at this point. Tylir goes on to show you where the Inn is and a couple of other places, but after today you just want to rest and retire to your room early. You rest your leg and begin practicing your lute. This puts you in better spirits. 6 months pass… The Quillar invasion has nearly been eradicated. Most of the major lairs have been located and cleansed and you certainly contributed greatly to this effort. Besides your combat abilities, your tracking skills definitely came in handy a lot. You’ve become somewhat recognized among Retlad citizens due to your actions and the lives you’ve saved. The word “hero” has been used a few times though you definitely don’t think of yourself as one. In your free time you spoke with the citizens, a lot more than your fellow soldiers though. A few of them even convinced you to play for them when they noticed your lute. It took a little prodding, but eventually you gave in fully expecting to get booed, but to your surprise, you got applauded instead. Your playing didn’t just boost your spirits it seemed. Whenever you could you played a little bit for people in what little free time you had. Never did you think that you’d be playing for any kind of audience, let alone an appreciative one. It definitely hasn’t been all sunshine though; you’ve seen a lot of people die. More than you ever wanted to actually. You’d made friends with Tylir shortly after your first meeting and he died only a couple months later. You’ll be glad when every one of these Quillar creatures are all dead though, all they’ve done is cause misery. You’ve got them on the run now though. You’re preparing for an attack on another one of their lairs, when Captain Vahlat calls everyone to see him, he doesn’t look enthusiastic about whatever it is he has to tell you. “All right I’ll be brief. As much as I hate leaving a mission unfinished, we’re getting pulled out of here effective immediately. Major news is that Nuro has undergone a fucking disaster that needs to be put down like yesterday! All governments friendly to the City State of Nuro that can spare the manpower are to send help. We would be one of those. I hope the Retlad army is just competent enough to finish up what we started in their own country.” Wessel immediately pipes up upon hearing about this revelation. “What happened in Nuro? What’s going on?!” “What’s going on? From what I’ve been told a whole bunch of your kind raised a shitload of undead and unleashed a bunch of hostile demons on the place! The entire city was overrun. Reports are already stating that small packs of demons are running around the nearby countryside. Most likely in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom. Not sure what that means with our border war with them, but I only see it getting bloodier around there. In any case, our job is to head to Nuro, before the undead start following suit. I hope you’re all ready for this, because this is going to be a lot different that fighting Quillars.” You look around and see a lot of fear wash over faces and rightly so. Necromancers have a bad history on your world. When you were little you still remember hearing the tales of the Great Lich Lord that existed centuries before you were even born. He almost took over the world. Those stories gave you nightmares as a kid. The possibility of having to face something remotely similar even on much smaller scale doesn’t make you feel too well. > You letters to home (Retlad assignment) Dear Mom, This assignment is almost coming to a close I believe. We’ve got the Quillars on the run and wiped out most of their lairs. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’d rather be fighting Kobolds! Lately I’ve been able to play a lot more thanks to our severe lowering of the Quillar population. The people here are pretty nice, they seem to always want me to play for them. Didn’t think I’d actually ever play for a proper audience! I’m happy to do it though, it sort of keeps my mind off of the nastier things I’ve seen. I know I told you about how my friend Tylir died, a few months ago, but it still seems a little unreal. I mean other than Dad, I’ve never known anyone who I knew personally dying. And certainly not as violently as he did. I’ve seen a lot more violence in general though. However, I guess I should’ve expected stuff like this to happen. I mean I am in the army! Sometimes the people call us heroes and stuff for killing the Quillars. Some guys like that annoying Wessel get a thrill out of it, but I dunno. I don’t really feel like one. I just want to do my job and survive. And play if possible. Well I guess that’s it for now, give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just because he’s acting reckless doesn’t mean you’re going to, you’re going to play upon your strengths and keep as far away as you can. You ride your horse around the outskirts of the village, readying your bow the whole time. When you can, you fire at the Quillar attackers. As quick as they are, they aren’t really paying attention to you and you manage to get in some good shots. A couple of head shots even. At first they don’t realize where the all the arrows are coming from, since Wessel is giving them a hard enough time with the chain lightning. You’re sort of glad you decided to stay on the outskirts. Wessel is having such a “good time” blasting the Quillars, he’s probably causing a lot more collateral damage in the process. Eventually the Quillars start to retreat. This is when you get into a little more trouble as you happen to be right in the direction of where they’re running! They still look scary and they get even moreso as they get closer. The worst has to be their shrieks. It’s unpleasant to hear to say the least. You ride out of the way, but your horse isn’t fast enough and is peppered by quills. You catch a few in the leg yourself and you’re thrown from the horse as it reels in pain, before collapsing. Feeling the pain you scramble for cover behind a nearby rock. Fortunately the quills don’t penetrate that. Most of them are content on just running away, but one straggler decides to try to get one more kill before leaving. That kill of course happens to be you. The Quillar makes its high pitch shriek as it runs towards the rock. You don’t have time to ready your bow before its high jumped over the rock and on the other side of you. You quickly draw your weapon and swing it blindly as you turn around. Luckily your blade catches the side of its head, killing it. At last you collapse from the pain in your leg. While you’re pulling out quills, Wessel and another Zalan soldier come to meet you. Wessel doesn’t look any worse for wear, but the soldier looks very tired and obviously has wounds of his own. “There you are, lying down on the job I see.” Wessel mocks. “Are you alright?” the other soldier asks. “Yeah…Agh. I’ve gotten bitten in the leg by a Kobold before. Feels nearly the same except these quills go in a lot deeper.” “Glad you guys came when you did. We were just doing a routine patrol when these quill bastards came out of nowhere! They’re getting bolder and attacking in greater number, we need more reinforcements.” “Yeah, well good luck with that. The Tulan border is the primary concern. Besides I’m here now, I predict that this infestation will be over soon now.” Wessel boasts. “Any…way. My name’s Tylir. I’d introduce you to the rest of my squad, but they’re all dead now. Even though it was the heat of battle, I couldn’t help notice how well you picked off several of those Quillars with one shot. That was pretty impressive.” “Thanks.” “Hey! What about me? I’m the one who noticed you getting attacked in the first place! I’m also the one who saved your ass!” Wessel interrupts again, he’s starting to get annoying at this point, but Tylir doesn’t seem bothered by him. “Everyone did their part. Okay, since I’m here I’ll take you to see Captain Vhalat, I’m sure that’s who you were sent to report to, oh and wizard while your skills may be appreciated here, I’d advise you to cut down on the boasting. Captain Vhalat isn’t fond of it, and to be quite honest the other two wizards we had here were more experienced and they still got killed.” “Hmm, well perhaps they lacked the natural skill that I of course possess.” At this point you and Tylir just roll your eyes and get moving. You travel through a couple of other villages and it’s pretty depressing. You see stacks of bodies being buried in mass graves while most of other Retlad citizens look thoroughly defeated. A few look in your direction, but don’t look too much, it’s like they don’t really expect you to succeed. Not exactly inspiring. Soon you arrive in the town of Glaf. It would appear that the Zalan contingency sent here is staying in one of the bigger Retlad towns rather than the capitol. Ryan also says that the Quillar infestation is worse around here too, so the captain suspects that whatever lair they’re crawling out of is nearby and can hopefully located and cleansed. The town itself resembles a small Zalan fort rather than a proper Retlad town, as a sturdy wall has been erected around it. The people seem to look a little more hopeful though. Tylir goes on to say that he thinks that the Retlad citizens are actually starting to prefer Zalan presence especially since their on government has been pretty ineffectual about the whole invasion. The Retlad army has only focused on defending the capitol. The Retlad royals appear to find their lives more important than anyone else’s. Eventually you’re brought before Captain Vahlat himself. He looks up from the map he’s inspecting and addresses you and Wessel. “Ah, I see the Empire has seen fit to send me reinforcements…wow, twice as many as I thought I’d get. Private Tylir where’s the rest of your squad?” “Um…dead sir.” “Of course. (sigh) So what’s your problem private? Why is your leg wrapped up?” Vahlat asks you. “Got into a fight with the Quillars sir.” You answer. “Oh?” Tylir at this point interrupts and tells of what happened. Wessel looks like he wants to expand upon his deeds, but Vahlat’s appearance is a little imposing and he was already warned once, so he keeps his mouth shut. Vahlat soon addresses you again. “Well it would seem you two have already proven yourselves useful. A lot more useful that what passes for the Retlad army, but of course that isn’t hard. Wizard, I certainly hope you don’t intend to use this place as a chance to show off all the skills you learned in your fancy Nuro college. One of your predecessors did that as well, and as you can see he’s no longer here. As for you, I hope that you can do a better job of keeping out of the way of the quills next time. Most don’t get a second chance. Alright that’s all for now. Our group is being housed for free at the Inn down the street. Free food as well, but don’t go overboard, its being rationed. You want more food or anything else you’ll have to pay like everyone else. I suggest though that you don’t do any heavy carousing. This is a high alert situation and we could be going to battle at anytime. Dismissed.” You, Wessel and Tylir all leave at this point. Tylir goes on to show you where the Inn is and a couple of other places, but after today you just want to rest and retire to your room early. You rest your leg and begin practicing your lute. This puts you in better spirits. 6 months pass… The Quillar invasion has nearly been eradicated. Most of the major lairs have been located and cleansed and you certainly contributed greatly to this effort. Besides your combat abilities, your tracking skills definitely came in handy a lot. You’ve become somewhat recognized among Retlad citizens due to your actions and the lives you’ve saved. The word “hero” has been used a few times though you definitely don’t think of yourself as one. In your free time you spoke with the citizens, a lot more than your fellow soldiers though. A few of them even convinced you to play for them when they noticed your lute. It took a little prodding, but eventually you gave in fully expecting to get booed, but to your surprise, you got applauded instead. Your playing didn’t just boost your spirits it seemed. Whenever you could you played a little bit for people in what little free time you had. Never did you think that you’d be playing for any kind of audience, let alone an appreciative one. It definitely hasn’t been all sunshine though; you’ve seen a lot of people die. More than you ever wanted to actually. You’d made friends with Tylir shortly after your first meeting and he died only a couple months later. You’ll be glad when every one of these Quillar creatures are all dead though, all they’ve done is cause misery. You’ve got them on the run now though. You’re preparing for an attack on another one of their lairs, when Captain Vahlat calls everyone to see him, he doesn’t look enthusiastic about whatever it is he has to tell you. “All right I’ll be brief. As much as I hate leaving a mission unfinished, we’re getting pulled out of here effective immediately. Major news is that Nuro has undergone a fucking disaster that needs to be put down like yesterday! All governments friendly to the City State of Nuro that can spare the manpower are to send help. We would be one of those. I hope the Retlad army is just competent enough to finish up what we started in their own country.” Wessel immediately pipes up upon hearing about this revelation. “What happened in Nuro? What’s going on?!” “What’s going on? From what I’ve been told a whole bunch of your kind raised a shitload of undead and unleashed a bunch of hostile demons on the place! The entire city was overrun. Reports are already stating that small packs of demons are running around the nearby countryside. Most likely in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom. Not sure what that means with our border war with them, but I only see it getting bloodier around there. In any case, our job is to head to Nuro, before the undead start following suit. I hope you’re all ready for this, because this is going to be a lot different that fighting Quillars.” You look around and see a lot of fear wash over faces and rightly so. Necromancers have a bad history on your world. When you were little you still remember hearing the tales of the Great Lich Lord that existed centuries before you were even born. He almost took over the world. Those stories gave you nightmares as a kid. The possibility of having to face something remotely similar even on much smaller scale doesn’t make you feel too well. > You letters to home (There was this girl...) Hey Mallack! I paid the messenger a little extra to give this one to you personally, don’t show it to Mom or anyone else! I’m serious! I finally did it! I didn’t even expect it either. I was off duty and taking a break from destroying a Quillar lair, so as usual I went down to the tavern to go play for the locals a bit. While it is true there have been several “offers” from some of tavern girls before due to my lute playing ability, I dunno I just never felt comfortable about going with one of them. However, I didn’t get to the tavern; I bumped into some traveling merchant woman from the Brot Kingdom. I apologized and helped pick up her belongings and she noticed the lute I carried. She began to ask me about it since she said she really liked music and soon the pair of us were deep in conversation and going back to the Inn on the other side of town that she was currently staying at. I learned that her name was Helena. We continued to talk in her room and I played for Helena a bit and before I knew it, we were on the bed naked! I’m still not exactly sure how it started, but it sure felt good! I really liked her too, but I guess it was just a one time thing, because she left a couple days later. Though she did say if I was ever stationed in Brot, I should look her up again. Anyway, I guess I felt like I just had to tell someone. I suppose I could’ve told the guys in my company, but I didn’t really want to be sweated down for more detailed information constantly. Okay that’s it, and like I said, don’t show this to Mom or anyone else! In fact you should probably just destroy it. Your brother<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve never even heard of Quillars before, but they still sound less dangerous than the Tulan Border, that place is only going to get worse, you know it. “I’ll take the Retlad assignment sir.” “Hm. Smart. Here’s your first month’s pay, I suggest you live it up here in Zal, for the couple of days you have off before you leave.” You take the small bag and look inside. This will certainly help your family. You take a few coins for yourself and then ask if arrangements can be made to have your payment sent to your family from now on. He tells you yes, but asks that surely that you will still want some of it. You agree to just taking 10% of it. You don’t need much. “Sheesh, living bare minimum huh? Don’t you want to eat anything other than military rations every once in awhile?” Kosser questions again. “Nah. If I need extra food, I’ll just hunt.” “You know even the booze and brothel girls in Retlad aren’t THAT cheap. You sure you don’t want more?” “Nope. I’ll be fine. My family needs that money more than I do.” “Alright then, family man.” You exit the barracks and wander the city a bit. You find it very interesting. You sort of wish you could stay longer to take in more sights. However one thing catches your eye. A small store and in the window is a lute. Looks almost like the one you had before it was taken away from you in basic training. You haven’t gotten a chance to play in six months and you’d really like to… Hey you’re a soldier now, you’ve proven yourself. You figure you can take one personal belonging with you to Retlad as long as you keep them packed properly. You enter the store and with the little money you have you buy the lute. You spend the most of the day and the next practicing it. You didn’t forget as much as you thought. You also finish up writing a letter to your family and give it to a Zalan messenger carrier. Finally the third day arrives for you to move out. A couple of officers arrive to take most of your other fellow cadets. Mostly to the Tulan border, however, it would appear you have a different escort. A young man in loose robe approaches you. He looks like a wizard, but you wonder for how long since he seems about your age. “Hey, are you the one going to the Retlad Kingdom?” he asks “Yeah, who are you?” “I’m Wessel. And don’t you dare get cute and call me weasel, or I’ll have to blast you with a lightning bolt.” “I wasn’t planning on it.” You say which causes Wessel to start laughing. “Geez, I was just fucking with you. Don’t be so serious! So you ready to go?” “Yeah I guess, are you my superior officer?” “Huh? Oh no. Look I got our horses waiting outside; we can do all this getting to know you stuff on the way.” You and Wessel get on the horses and ride towards your destination. It would appear that you’re the only one from your group to be going, but of course you were the only expert marksman. Wessel begins to tell you more about why he’s with you. In fact he doesn’t really let you do much talking at all. He says he’s a native citizen of the Zalan Empire, but he just graduated from the esteemed magic university in the city state of Nuro. Wessel goes on to and says that when he heard they needed a few wizard over in Retlad, he decided to volunteer to test his skills and get paid while doing it. He explains that the pair of you will be following the orders of a Captain Vhalat. Everyone knows about Nuro. It’s very famous, and you always wondered what kind of magical wonders existed there, so you’re eager to hear more and he’s all too happy to tell you. Despite Wessel’s primary focus on himself, it sounds like a place you’d want to visit one day. Eventually you arrive at the border and so far the Retlad Kingdom doesn’t look very well kept. The road begins to show evidence of disrepair and the sign posts are broken. You begin to keep your eye out for a possible attack at any second. “Look! Over there! It’s a village and it’s under attack! Come on!” Wessel yells and rides towards the village in the distance. You try to tell him to wait, but he’s already well on his way, so you ride after him. You’ve never seen a Quillar before, but the closer you get to the village, you start seeing humanoid creatures covered in sharp spikes running around at a fast speed which could only be them. They are indeed fearsome looking. You also see a lot of the people running from them, and even a few people dressed in protective gear similar to yours…not that its doing them much good. “Alright you prickly bastards here’s something for ya!” Wessle shouts riding into the village with one hand raised in the air for a lightning blast attack. He shows no fear. You have no idea if all wizards are like this, but he’s either got to be brave, stupid or just suicidal. Of course he could be all three. Up until now you always thought wizards were supposed to be meek types that didn’t charge into battle and preferred to kill from afar. You guess you were wrong. > You letters to home (First assignment) Dear Mom, Well I got my first assignment. I’m heading to the Retlad Kingdom. Unlike most of my fellow cadets I was given the choice to go there instead of the Tulan Border. Thank the gods for my excellent bow skills. Still it’s not going to be an easy assignment, but I’m probably not as worried about it as I might normally be since I finally got paid and managed to buy myself another lute! I’ve been practicing it again to help me keep my mind off things. I made arrangements for most of my pay to be sent to you. You should be receiving it at the end of each month, I hope it’ll help. Anyway, tomorrow is the big day, so I better get some early sleep tonight. I have no idea what to expect. Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>6 months pass… Six months of the most grueling physical training you’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with! However you fared better than some of your fellow cadets. Guess all that farm living paid off. You’ve certainly improved what combat skills you had, but your marksmanship has improved greatly. You know that Drill Sergeant Kosser has been paying special attention to your abilities. You’re not sure if that’s a good thing of not. In any event you’re being told where your first assignment is going to be. Most of those in your group are being sent to Tulan border. Not the most pleasant assignment. The fighting is getting worse there. What started as a minor border dispute has turned into a series of battles with neither side making too much progress. Even before you joined the military you’d heard stories of the greedy king who runs the Tulan Kingdom. You heard from traveling merchants about how he allows a few demons to walk around in his lands! Utter madness in your opinion. The Zalan Empire might be a little strict on the rules and regulations, but better that than demons letting walking around, in your opinion they should all be killed on sight regardless on whether they’re obeying the “law” or not, they’re evil. You sit anxious on your bed in the barracks as name after name gets called off. Finally Kosser calls off your name, and you fully expect to get sent to the Tulan border. “I want to talk to you in private.” Is what you hear instead. This makes you even more nervous. What’s he going to do? Send you on? A mission to assassinate the Tulan King? After everyone else has gotten there assignments you follow Kosser back to his office. He sits down and speaks direct. “Alright farmboy, I’m sure you’ve noticed me watching your marksmanship skills. You’re one of the best ones that have come in here for awhile. You have a natural talent and you’ve only improved it through training. It would be a blessing to have someone like you up at the Tulan border. The gods know we could use anything to help break the stalemate there.” “…but?” you ask hoping that there is one. “But…your skills might be better served in a place that has a better mortality rate, yet still needs taking care of.” “Where’s that sir?” “Here.” Kosser points to a map to a nearby location. It’s the Retlad Kingdom. You can’t imagine what’s going on there, since as far as you know, you’re Zalan is at peace with them. “Retlad? I thought we’re at peace with them?” “We are…in fact rumors are saying we’ll probably incorporate them into the empire in the near future. I dunno how much you know about politics out there on the farm, but Retlad is basically a bankrupt kingdom. Their dumb ass royalty spent a shitload of their treasury on building ships in some vain attempt to find more land mass on this world. Hah! Doesn’t exist! We learned than centuries ago! Anyway now they don’t have enough to pay for a proper military and their kingdom is being overrun by hostile Quillar tribes. They want us to help. Begging us practically and we have, but it’s a pain in the ass. Quillars are fast and as their name suggests shoot multiple sharp quills at their enemies. I’ve seen them go through plate armor.” “That doesn’t sound good.” “No, it’s not good. The Retlad knight orders got decimated within two months of the first invasion wave. We’re taking a better approach. We need to have equally quick troops that can at least match the fire power. We’ve sent a couple of war wizards, but most of them are serving on the Tulan border. Gunpower weapons are a little too slow for this sort of thing, so we’re looking for people good with a bow. Quick enough to at least get a few shots off from a distance and run. Because hit and run tactics are what the Quillars excel at, so you’ll have to do likewise.” Kosser pauses his talking for a moment. You take this opportunity to interject a question. “And this assignment you say has a lower mortality rate?” “Well, we haven’t sent as many people there yet, but so far we’ve made a little more progress there than at the Tulan border. But of course I won’t say it’s a safe assignment. Those Quillar bastards are vicious and merciless. Up to you farmboy. You’re getting a bonus here. You’re actually getting to choose your assignment. Not many that get out of boot camp get that privilege.” Some “privilege” > You letters to home (Boot Camp) Dear Mom, I’m glad I’ve finally had some free time to write to you. Would you believe that when I first joined up, the recruiter thought I didn’t know how? Sometimes these city folk got a lot of nerve making assumptions about people that grew up on farms, I’ve had to learn that first hand just by the folks I’m currently bunking with. They’re all mostly from the capitol or another Zalan city. I think I’m the only one here from a small village, so I’ve been saddled with the nickname “farmboy”. Ha ha. Despite this nick, I get along with most of the people here. The drill sergeant is mean, but luckily I haven’t had to suffer the full brunt of his wrath, which is more than can be said for a few of the people here. That’s never pretty. Boot camp is very tough. Even tougher than working on the farm. I’m just glad its half-way over. They took my lute away as soon as I entered. I really should’ve known better to take it with me…but I dunno I thought I’d be able to practice it on what few breaks I have. Oh well, I guess I wasn’t ever going to be that traveling bard anyway. Just foolish dreams I suppose. Anyway we’re going to start bow training tomorrow. I think I should do very well in that. Okay, I can’t think of anything else. I hope everything is going well on the farm. I know you’ve always kept an eye on all of us, but make sure that Mallack pays extra attention on the chicken coop this month. The Kobolds come out a lot around this time! Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is no way to live. Working on a barely profitable rundown farm with far too many family members to feed. It’s a damn good thing you’re an excellent hunter. However, lately there’s even been a shortage of game to thwart your efforts. You didn’t really want to be working on the farm your whole life in the first place, you wanted to see the world but when dad died, things got a lot harder for the family and you had to take over as “man” of the house and stay put. Something is going to have to change. While you’d like nothing more than to go through with your childhood dreams of becoming a traveling bard without any responsibility you don’t have that luxury. Hell, you barely have time to play your lute anymore in the small amount of free time you do have. You doubt if you’d even be good enough to make a living for just yourself doing it. But you need to get away, but what can you do that won’t allow you to completely abandon your mom and all your brothers and sisters? You suddenly think of the choice that many in your desperate position have thought of many times before. The army. Its not exactly ideal, but you be traveling and seeing the world so to speak. You’d also be making enough money that you could send to your family. Your own living expenses would be provided for by the army. Of course there’s all that fighting that usually goes along with it that you’re not to keen on. Not that you aren’t a stranger to battle as their have been the occasional bandits or kobold thieves that have attempted to steal from the farm in the past, but you prefer not to fight if possible, especially not up close. The bow has always been your weapon of choice. There’s also the matter of mass combat on a grand scale that usually accompanies army life. A lot different than chasing away some thieves in the chicken coop. As you’re thinking about this, you also realize that there is another option. There’s a small mercenary company passing through the area. They’ve been hanging out at the local tavern for a couple days. They don’t seem to be the noblest sort from what you can tell, but fortunately they seem to have kept their revelry confined to the tavern. Who knows how they act away from “civilization” though. Still, it’s something to consider. There probably is less attention to discipline and a little more relaxed on rules and regulations. You probably wouldn’t be fighting in some mass land war that governments are fond of waging. Mercenaries travel a lot and tend to make more, however they tend to get hired for a lot weirder jobs, usually ones that the employer doesn’t want people to know about or ones that nobody else seems to be able to handle. > You sign up with the mercenaries You’re not sure if the formal military life is for you. If you joined up you wouldn’t be able to readily leave. You figure if you don’t like life as a mercenary or it isn’t working out for you, you can leave freely. You explain your decision to join up with the mercenary company that’s currently passing through. Your revelation comes as a shock. Your smaller brothers and sisters don’t want you to go, your brother Mallack really doesn’t want you to leave since he’ll be next in line to take the brunt of the manual labor! Your mother is a little apprehensive about your decision. You half expect her to say no, but she understands that you’re doing this for the good of the family. She gives her blessing. Before you leave the next day with your packed belongings, your whole family comes to say goodbye to you. You almost hesitate to leave, wondering if it would actually be better for you to stay. Your mother approaches you. “You don’t have to do this you know. We’re doing just fine.” “Yeah, but things would be easier if this family had more money.” “Hah. Things are always easier with more money son, but you don’t need to go and get yourself killed for it.” “Yeah, I know, but I’ve thought it through.” “Very well, you’re old enough to make your own decisions and live your own life, though I’m glad to see that you still want to help the family as opposed to just leaving in the middle of the night.” “I’ll visit and return with whatever my pay is whenever I can.” “I know…okay, you best get going. I think the mercenary company was leaving today.” You make you way to the local tavern and catch them just as they’re getting ready leave. A lot of them look hung over. “Hey wait up…” you say in a slightly loud tone, causing one mean looking mercenary to snarl at you. “Shut the fuck up yokel! Shit, I got a splitting headache and it hurts like a sonofabitch.” “Sorry. Are you the leader of this company?” “Leader of these dickheads? Naw. The Boss is actually visiting his family in the Zalan capital. We’re going to meet up with him now and I suggest you get the fuck outta our way and not waste anymore of our time!” “But I want to join you guys.” The mercenary you were speaking to looks at you then looks at a few of his buddies and begins to laugh louder than your voice which previously annoyed him. “HAHAHA HAHAHA! Y’hear that fellas? This yokel wants to join us! Thanks a lot, I needed a good laugh, now go fuck your pigs or whatever it is you farm types do.” “But I’m serious…” “Serious? Farmboy, this is a man’s job and not for the fuckin’ weak. You ever even use a damn weapon?” “Yeah! I got this bow and this sword! I’m a really good shot!” The mercenary still looks unimpressed. “Uh huh, yeah well you ever kill anyone, hell you ever kill ANYTHING? And I’m not talkin’ about any of your livestock you might’ve slaughtered. I mean something sentient.” “Well yeah, I’ve killed Kobolds that were trying to steal chickens from the…” The mercenaries begin to laugh again. “Oh shit, you are priceless boy! My sister can kill fuckin’ Kobolds and her only talent is whoring.” “Haha got that one right, Dimitri.” Another one of the mercenaries agrees. Suddenly the laughing stops. “What the fuck did you just say Fermeli?” “Uh, I was just agreeing with you…c’mon don’t take it like that! I mean you said…” “Ain’t about what I said, it’s about what YOU said! You called my fucking sister a whore! You ain’t getting’ away with that shit.” Dimitri draws his sword and stomps over to Fermeli who is trying to get one of his buddies to help him, but everyone else is backing away from the fight. Dimitri takes advantage of Fermeli’s state of panic and slashes him good with his sword. Fermeli cries out in pain and begs for forgiveness. Dimitri looks like he’s going to finish him off, but then turns to you. “You want to join hayseed? Kill this piece of shit then.” “Huh? I mean…” you utter in confusion. “Did I stutter pig farmer? Kill this… AARGH FUCK!” Fermeli has now taken advantage of Dimitri by shoving a dagger into his leg and scrambling to get up “Yeah! Take that! How’s that feel?” Fermeli taunts and draws his own sword in an attempt to kill Dimitri At this point you unwisely step into the middle of this fight. “Hey hold on, the pair of you are even now…” “Fuck off pig farmer! You want some of this now? Yeah, let’s see how much of a killer you are!” Fermeli says who doesn’t look frightened of you at all and heads in your direction. “Hey wait I don’t wanna…” You barely dodge his sword swipe to your head. You roll out of the way and quickly grab an arrow and shoot it at Fermeli with your bow, hitting him square in the neck. Some blood spurts out and a surprised look on his face is displayed and then he falls dead. You’ve killed him. You’ve never killed anything before that wasn’t a Kobold or livestock. You feel weird. In the meantime Dimitri gets up and pulls the dagger out of his leg and looks over at Formeli’s body. “Heh, maybe you are a killer after all pig farmer. Well it seems we got an opening now. Take whatever he had as your own. You killed him, you earned it. Welcome to the Chimera Mercenary Company!” While you MAY be in, you’re not necessarily sure if you want in. This may be a bit too much for you. > You join anyway You know this isn’t going to be easy and you’re going to have to be tough, but you remember that you’re doing this for your family. You quickly search Formeli’s body, which didn’t have that much to begin with. “Heh, he always was a broke bastard. Spent all his money on gambling, I’ll miss taking his money that’s for sure. Alright then, you’ll probably be wantin’ to take that sword of his since it looks in way better condition than your rusted hunk of iron. Your bow seems to do the job just fine though. His armor too, and hurry up, we gotta meet the Boss! He’s got another job for us no doubt.” As you’re stripping off some of the armor, Dimitri notices something on your back. “What…what the hell is that boy? Is that a fuckin’ lute? Haw haw! What the fuck are you doin’ with a damn lute? You think that you’re some sort of bard or something? We ain’t got need for such things boy! Get rid of it!” “No, it’s mine.” You defiantly say. You wonder if this show of “courage” has gotten you into a whole mess of trouble that you don’t want, but fortunately it doesn’t. “Heh, he kills one shithead and now he thinks he’s a tough guy! Alright pig farmer keep your sissy lute. But its just more weight for you to carry and you better not be falling behind! Come on men let’s go, the Boss is waiting for us. You too lute boy!” Dimitri exclaims and limps off. You briefly thought about telling him that he better keep up with his wounded leg and all, but you know when to stop. And so your mercenary life begins. A year passes… You’re currently back in the Zalan Empire on a break in between missions. While most of your “buddies” are drinking up their pay and spending it on whores you take this opportunity to visit your family and give them your payment and spoils of battle as usual. You think about how much you’ve traveled and experienced. Not all of it good, but then killing is never pretty. Some of the jobs are very straight forward: “There are some orc barbarians on the borders that have been pillaging our lands, kill them.” And you don’t have a problem with it. Other missions start falling into the “gray” area. Your last job involved some Azi Republic senator hiring the company to take out some secessionists that wanted to form their own country. It wasn’t clean and it definitely wasn’t fun. The secessionists actually had a reasonable complaint about leaving the Republic, saying that it was corrupt and that their representatives didn’t care about them. But being a mercenary means you don’t take sides for moral or ideological reasons, you do it for money. It’s not just that though, some of the things that have been done…well you can’t say you’re too proud of it. Granted, you’ve never actively engaged in some of the less moral and outright criminal things that your mercenary comrades have, but you certainly know about them and it almost makes you feel like you’re guilty of it as well. As for how you cope with some of this stuff, you tend to keep to yourself and play your lute which has oddly made you a little more accepted. Seems there are more than a few music lovers in the company. Even the Captain doesn’t mind you indulging in your little hobby. The Captain is a huge man who you know gets a pleasure from killing and mayhem. He’s spent a lifetime doing it. In fact you have a hard time believing he even has a family that he goes to visit. Who knows though? Perhaps he is different with them. (You’ve been working for the Chimera Company for a year and you still don’t know what the hell his real name is, mainly because everyone only seems to address him as “The Boss” or “Chief” or in a more formal tone “Captain”) You spend the time with your family and tell them of some of the things you’ve seen and exciting places you’ve been to, of course never going into too much detail about the darker side of things. Your brothers and sisters enjoy the tales as usual. Your Mom senses that there is probably more to them, but she doesn’t ask too many questions. She does always asks if you’re okay and says that you don’t have to keep doing it, but you always reply that you’re fine and that you’re just a little tired that’s all. When your time is done you say goodbye to them and meet with the rest of your company at the Zalan capital this time. Its odd, but things seem to be even more chaotic than usual around here. People are rushing around and an air of concern seems to be pervading the city. The guards are telling people to calm down our there will be martial law and you hear something in passing about an attack on a city. You don’t really listen because you’re in a hurry to meet up with your company which you find mostly hanging out in a tavern as usual. Dimitri sees you and speaks. “Ah, it’s our own fuckin’ bard ! How’s my favorite string plucker? (Hic!) You have trouble getting into the city? Heard the guards have been cracking down on security.” “No, but what’s going on? The city seems to be in a state of panic.” “Fuck yeah it is! What you didn’t hear?” “No. What happened?” “Fuckin’ undead happened my pig farming friend! A whole shitload of them took over the the city of Nuro! Can you believe it? Fuckin’ Nuro! That place was supposed to be unconquerable! Heh! (Burp!)” Dimitri says without the slightest bit of worry. “UNDEAD?! What the fuck? Nuro!? How?!” “Fuck if I know, guess some rogue wizards got hooked up in that necromancy shit hardcore. Musta been some demonologists there too since we heard reports of demons too. Not the supposedly civilized type either, they’re the rip off your head and shit down your neck kind.” “…there’s fuckin’ rogue demons in Nuro too?” “Of course not, they all escaped and are now running around in the countryside, heard they’re heading for the Tulan Kingdom.” Dimitri says taking another drink. You’re having a hard time digesting all this yet the rest of your comrades are still drinking and partying like nothing is wrong. Your Dad had once told you tales of a being called the Great Lich Lord that existed many centuries ago who nearly killed the world. Scared the hell out of you then and it doesn’t make you feel too good now. “Isn’t this concerning to you?” “What? Shit no! Just means more work for us and that also means more loot! Ha ha! You could get more loot to buy a new lute! Ha ha ha! (Hic!)” “But this is the fuckin’ undead! I mean…” “So? Stop bein a pussy! I’ve fought some undead before, when I was lootin’ a dwarven tomb. You just chop their heads off like everything else, shit ain’t that hard. They just tend to smell worse…well maybe not worse than trolls. Anyway I’m sure the fucking governments will take care of this shit as quick as possible, you know how politicians don’t like dead taxpayers, in the meantime we need to take advantage now while the conflict is hot!” No sooner has Dimitri said this little bit of wisdom, when the Boss steps in the doorway. He’s as nasty looking as always, but this time he looks even moreso than usual. “Alright you useless sacks of goblin shit. We got a new job. This one just came across rather unexpectedly. Ran into a Dwarven representative and we’re now in the employ of a Dwarven Clan, near the southern Tulan Borders. With the occurrence of this Nuro incident, they’re expecting some shit to spill over into their lands and they want some extra help. This is pretty surprising since Dwarves aren’t known to pay for mercenaries, let alone the likes of us.” The Boss tell you all. “The Tulan Border? Oh fuck that place is a meat grinder! There’s no profit to be had anywhere near there!” Cal pipes up. “Well you can just pick up your panties and get your pansy ass back home and stay there then! The dwarves are paying well and that’s the job. Take it or get the fuck outta my company!” “Excuse me Captain, but weren’t there reports of demons running through that area?” you ask. “Yeah so? That’s why we’re going over there most likely, but be fucking prepared for any damn thing. Maybe even undead…who knows if my…if those necromancer bastards started spreading their plague yet. We leave tomorrow.” You think on this fucked up situation and seriously reconsidering your career choice. > You leave the mercenary company Nope, you’re not doing this. This is suicide in your opinion. You have no idea what to expect and it sound a lot more dangerous than anything you’ve ever faced. Instead of leaving with them the next day, you go back home. You don’t worry about anyone coming after you, but you know you won’t be welcomed back into the company again, and you wouldn’t want to anyway. When you get back home, your family and mom in particular ask what happened, you explain it and say you don’t want any part of that life. You apologize that you couldn’t go through with it, but your mom looks more relieved than anything. “Well son, I’m just as glad you didn’t go get yourself killed over there anyway. You’ll be helping us out plenty just by working on the farm like always.” You’re glad to hear that. Over the next couple days you fall back into routine again. You still wonder about the future though and you briefly consider the army plan again, but given your short lived experience with mercenary “life” you don’t think you’re cut out with battle on a regular basis. Plus the Zalan Empire is currently on heightened alert and battle ready status with this Nuro Incident and all. You resign yourself to the farm life. You play your lute to yourself (and family) when you have the time to do so. It’s a simple life. Two years pass and things have gotten worse. The Necromancer Lord (as he’s become to be known) has expanded, even to the point of taking over the Brot Kingdom. The Tulan Kingdom has been totally conquered by a demon army. A Grand Alliance of nations has been formed, but so far they don’t seem to be making much progress. Meanwhile life on the farm is a little harder. Your youngest sister Makana becomes gravely ill during the winter months, but there’s not enough money to pay for a healer and most of the clerics have been summoned to battle with the undead or demon hordes. Sadly she dies making the overall mood of the farm a little more depressing. You don’t even play anymore, your enthusiasm for music died along with the grim realities setting in. Another three years pass and things are down right miserable. War is everywhere. The Demons have been taken care of, (You heard your former mercenary captain died in battle with their leader Velzix) but the undead are stronger than ever. Reports even speak of the Necromancer Lord becoming The Great Lich Lord “reborn”. To make things worse, the Zalan Empire has been becoming increasingly tyrannical. In order to help with the war effort they’ve started bringing back the draft and the talk of ceasing private property to be used for the good of the government. While they say owners will be able to live and still work on their lands and businesses, it will be owned by the Empire. You know it’s only a matter of time when you get a knock on the door by Zalan army troops coming to take you and your brother Mallack away to the army and your family’s farm. Another two year pass…. You’re on the eve of battle in a land known as the Garwold Confederacy although it’s steadily becoming a giant graveyard now. The undead hordes have been sweeping relentlessly across the entire landscape. Your own company has had to fall back several times. Morale is low. Not that yours was high to begin with. You don’t even know how you’ve survived this long. While you had some battle experience during your time with the mercenary company, it still hasn’t prepared you for the horrors you’ve seen. The undead…you’ll never get used to fighting such emotionless creatures that are the embodiment of death and all that’s unnatural. You briefly wonder if your brother Mallack is alright where he’s stationed, but it hardly matters at this point. Battle comes as it always does and you are not so lucky this time. Horrible and powerful creatures known as Blood Specters and Death Knights utterly destroy your side. You fall to undead blades and chilling touches only rise up and join them in their goal of global genocide.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know this isn’t going to be easy and you’re going to have to be tough, but you remember that you’re doing this for your family. You quickly search Formeli’s body, which didn’t have that much to begin with. “Heh, he always was a broke bastard. Spent all his money on gambling, I’ll miss taking his money that’s for sure. Alright then, you’ll probably be wantin’ to take that sword of his since it looks in way better condition than your rusted hunk of iron. Your bow seems to do the job just fine though. His armor too, and hurry up, we gotta meet the Boss! He’s got another job for us no doubt.” As you’re stripping off some of the armor, Dimitri notices something on your back. “What…what the hell is that boy? Is that a fuckin’ lute? Haw haw! What the fuck are you doin’ with a damn lute? You think that you’re some sort of bard or something? We ain’t got need for such things boy! Get rid of it!” “No, it’s mine.” You defiantly say. You wonder if this show of “courage” has gotten you into a whole mess of trouble that you don’t want, but fortunately it doesn’t. “Heh, he kills one shithead and now he thinks he’s a tough guy! Alright pig farmer keep your sissy lute. But its just more weight for you to carry and you better not be falling behind! Come on men let’s go, the Boss is waiting for us. You too lute boy!” Dimitri exclaims and limps off. You briefly thought about telling him that he better keep up with his wounded leg and all, but you know when to stop. And so your mercenary life begins. A year passes… You’re currently back in the Zalan Empire on a break in between missions. While most of your “buddies” are drinking up their pay and spending it on whores you take this opportunity to visit your family and give them your payment and spoils of battle as usual. You think about how much you’ve traveled and experienced. Not all of it good, but then killing is never pretty. Some of the jobs are very straight forward: “There are some orc barbarians on the borders that have been pillaging our lands, kill them.” And you don’t have a problem with it. Other missions start falling into the “gray” area. Your last job involved some Azi Republic senator hiring the company to take out some secessionists that wanted to form their own country. It wasn’t clean and it definitely wasn’t fun. The secessionists actually had a reasonable complaint about leaving the Republic, saying that it was corrupt and that their representatives didn’t care about them. But being a mercenary means you don’t take sides for moral or ideological reasons, you do it for money. It’s not just that though, some of the things that have been done…well you can’t say you’re too proud of it. Granted, you’ve never actively engaged in some of the less moral and outright criminal things that your mercenary comrades have, but you certainly know about them and it almost makes you feel like you’re guilty of it as well. As for how you cope with some of this stuff, you tend to keep to yourself and play your lute which has oddly made you a little more accepted. Seems there are more than a few music lovers in the company. Even the Captain doesn’t mind you indulging in your little hobby. The Captain is a huge man who you know gets a pleasure from killing and mayhem. He’s spent a lifetime doing it. In fact you have a hard time believing he even has a family that he goes to visit. Who knows though? Perhaps he is different with them. (You’ve been working for the Chimera Company for a year and you still don’t know what the hell his real name is, mainly because everyone only seems to address him as “The Boss” or “Chief” or in a more formal tone “Captain”) You spend the time with your family and tell them of some of the things you’ve seen and exciting places you’ve been to, of course never going into too much detail about the darker side of things. Your brothers and sisters enjoy the tales as usual. Your Mom senses that there is probably more to them, but she doesn’t ask too many questions. She does always asks if you’re okay and says that you don’t have to keep doing it, but you always reply that you’re fine and that you’re just a little tired that’s all. When your time is done you say goodbye to them and meet with the rest of your company at the Zalan capital this time. Its odd, but things seem to be even more chaotic than usual around here. People are rushing around and an air of concern seems to be pervading the city. The guards are telling people to calm down our there will be martial law and you hear something in passing about an attack on a city. You don’t really listen because you’re in a hurry to meet up with your company which you find mostly hanging out in a tavern as usual. Dimitri sees you and speaks. “Ah, it’s our own fuckin’ bard ! How’s my favorite string plucker? (Hic!) You have trouble getting into the city? Heard the guards have been cracking down on security.” “No, but what’s going on? The city seems to be in a state of panic.” “Fuck yeah it is! What you didn’t hear?” “No. What happened?” “Fuckin’ undead happened my pig farming friend! A whole shitload of them took over the the city of Nuro! Can you believe it? Fuckin’ Nuro! That place was supposed to be unconquerable! Heh! (Burp!)” Dimitri says without the slightest bit of worry. “UNDEAD?! What the fuck? Nuro!? How?!” “Fuck if I know, guess some rogue wizards got hooked up in that necromancy shit hardcore. Musta been some demonologists there too since we heard reports of demons too. Not the supposedly civilized type either, they’re the rip off your head and shit down your neck kind.” “…there’s fuckin’ rogue demons in Nuro too?” “Of course not, they all escaped and are now running around in the countryside, heard they’re heading for the Tulan Kingdom.” Dimitri says taking another drink. You’re having a hard time digesting all this yet the rest of your comrades are still drinking and partying like nothing is wrong. Your Dad had once told you tales of a being called the Great Lich Lord that existed many centuries ago who nearly killed the world. Scared the hell out of you then and it doesn’t make you feel too good now. “Isn’t this concerning to you?” “What? Shit no! Just means more work for us and that also means more loot! Ha ha! You could get more loot to buy a new lute! Ha ha ha! (Hic!)” “But this is the fuckin’ undead! I mean…” “So? Stop bein a pussy! I’ve fought some undead before, when I was lootin’ a dwarven tomb. You just chop their heads off like everything else, shit ain’t that hard. They just tend to smell worse…well maybe not worse than trolls. Anyway I’m sure the fucking governments will take care of this shit as quick as possible, you know how politicians don’t like dead taxpayers, in the meantime we need to take advantage now while the conflict is hot!” No sooner has Dimitri said this little bit of wisdom, when the Boss steps in the doorway. He’s as nasty looking as always, but this time he looks even moreso than usual. “Alright you useless sacks of goblin shit. We got a new job. This one just came across rather unexpectedly. Ran into a Dwarven representative and we’re now in the employ of a Dwarven Clan, near the southern Tulan Borders. With the occurrence of this Nuro incident, they’re expecting some shit to spill over into their lands and they want some extra help. This is pretty surprising since Dwarves aren’t known to pay for mercenaries, let alone the likes of us.” The Boss tell you all. “The Tulan Border? Oh fuck that place is a meat grinder! There’s no profit to be had anywhere near there!” Cal pipes up. “Well you can just pick up your panties and get your pansy ass back home and stay there then! The dwarves are paying well and that’s the job. Take it or get the fuck outta my company!” “Excuse me Captain, but weren’t there reports of demons running through that area?” you ask. “Yeah so? That’s why we’re going over there most likely, but be fucking prepared for any damn thing. Maybe even undead…who knows if my…if those necromancer bastards started spreading their plague yet. We leave tomorrow.” You think on this fucked up situation and seriously reconsidering your career choice. > You stick with it You’re in this now and you can’t stop just because it’s looking tough. You got your family to think about. You’re staying. However you do, do something slightly out of character, you spend what little money you have on a whore for the night, mainly because you’re a lot less sure if you’re going to come back from this mission. The next day you’re on the job. The march to the dwarven lands is mostly uneventful, though the fighting between the Zalan Empire and the Tulan Kingdom is still going on their borders which even skirting around, still manages to find your company. The Boss takes advantage of straggling Tulan soldiers that have fled battle. The butchery isn’t uncommon, after all, nobody will know and the Zalan Empire will just be blamed anyway. Arrival in the Dwarven lands is met with caution, the Dwarves obviously know of the Chimera Company’s reputation and a small group of them motion the Boss to just talk to him directly. A deal seems to be made and the Dwarves leave to go back to their underground home. The Captain now addresses all of you. “Alright, apparently there HAVE been demons running all up and down and through the area. The Dwarves are preparing defenses in case they try to invade underground; apparently they consider their underground city takes precedence so their main force is there. However they still have plenty of mines above ground and not nearly enough dwarves to defend them all. Now its been said the demons have been heading toward the Tulan Kingdom, but a lot of them still have been fucking around here and generally wrecking shit for the fun of it. Collapsing even the sturdy mines of the dwarves on their heads seems to be amusing to them. So our goal is to make things bothersome enough for them that they’ll leave the dwarves alone and go elsewhere.” The Captain spits on the ground before continuing. “We’re going to split up for this assignment and take different mines in the area. Watch your fucking ass. I don’t think any of you eunuchs have fought any demons before, but I have and they’re utterly fucking ruthless. Forget all that shit about some of them being civilized. They’re about as civilized as damn Quillar, but a lot more intelligent. The chaos that is in their hearts is always there and these ones are the complete embodiment of it. And for fuck’s sake DON’T stay near any explosives! The dwarves are always using shit like that in their mines and demons have a tendency to have fire throwing abilities. It’s probably the reason for all the easy mine collapses.” The Captain takes out a map. “One more thing. While I know the common thing to do on our assignments is to take advantage of things. We need to play this one completely fucking straight! Do NOT fucking do anything that’s going to piss off the dwarves! If you do, we don’t get paid. We don’t get paid. I’m going to get pissed, because we’re getting a lot for this one. And assuming the dwarves don’t kill you, I certainly fucking will. Alright now I’m going to assign you according to this map.” You and a few others (Including Dimitri) are assigned to the Karzac Mines where you make your way to after some climbing which fortunately isn’t too far off ground level. The dwarves there regard you with suspicion immediately. “Oh great they’re here. Alright, let’s set the ground rules. I’m head miner Morri and I’m in charge of this place! Don’t even think about trying to steal some loose bars of silver that you might find lying around. You do it, and your skull meets an axe or mining pick! Got me?” “Stand up when you speak to me.” Dimitri laughs. “Yeah, make yer jokes human, we’ll see if the demons will appreciate that humor when you’re meeting them face to face.” “Demon, pah! Just one more thing for me to kill, people make a big deal about them. I’ve seen how they fall in line and become law abiding citizens just like anyone else when beaten down.” “Yeah and those same civilized ones will kill you when they get the chance. Didn’t you hear the Captain?” you say. “Yeah well he’s got a tendency to be over dramatic; he probably picked that up from that fine ass elven bitch he’s married to. Besides who DOESN’T try to kill you when they get the chance? They aren’t anything special. Their race just has a tendency to have assholiness come natural to them.” Morri interrupts the pair of you. “Hey if you two morons are finished, I’m about to tell you the fun part of this job. There are demons already in this mine.” “What?!” “Oh yeah, bunch of those fuckers as we speak. Seems we got the fortune of one sneaking in here and decided to have her spawn in the deep reaches of this mine. The only good thing is these types don’t seem to be interested in collapsing the mine, however they’re trying to turn this place into some sort of fucking demon hive or something. We’ve been trying to eliminate them, but of course it’s slow going. We need to get them before they start breeding more though. So we’re splitting up…” “Here we go again…” Dimitri says. Morri assigns at least a few dwarves with each mercenary. You, Morri and Dimitri make up the last one. The demon hunting in the mines is actually a very “mundane” job. They certainly are horrible looking creatures and very vicious, but after the first few times, you get used to it. These particular demons have an insect like appearance so maybe that’s why these behave the way they do. They aren’t very tough in the scheme of things, but like Morri said there do seem to be a lot. You can’t use your bow like you want to either due to the cramped mine conditions. Demons aren’t really the problem though, the problem is Dimitri. After one of the harder battles, Morri is attempting to catch his breath. Dimitri notices the very large silver deposit you’re next to and the silver that’s just there for the taking. He quietly whispers to you that you and he should waylay Morri and take some of the silver. Leave his body to be munched on by a wandering demon. Who’s going to know? You’re not really for this plan and you say no, but Dimitri begins to argue and Morri notices the both of you. “I’m not doing it! The Captain said…” you exclaim. “Fuckin’ pussy!” Dimitri says pushing you. “Hey hey hey! Not doing what? What are you two on abo…” Dimitri takes the opportunity of distraction and hits Morri in the face with silver bar that he lifted off the ground earlier. “ Ugh! Bastard dog you’ll pay for this treachery!” Morri utters falling to the ground. “Come on, this is your last chance to be a man and help me pig farmer!” Dimitri says as he goes to finish off Morri. > You help Dimitri You hate yourself for this, but you feel you don’t have much choice, if Morri lives he’ll certainly tell everyone and then you won’t get paid which will probably result in your death by the hands of the Boss. You raise your own weapon and help kill Morri. He doesn’t die easy, but Dimitri finishes him off before he can put up any sort of meaningful defense. Breathing hard and smiling at you with blood on his face, Dimitri laughs a bit. “Heh heh, knew you’d see the light, lute boy! Now come on, let’s throw his body in that left passage. I think I heard some of those demon roaches chittering down that way. Let’s just make sure we’re not around eh? We got a lot of silver to load up on!” You don’t take any of the silver actually, you’re still worrying and not feeling right about this whole situation, of course that just means more for Dimitri. You don’t even think this half assed plan of Dimitri’s is going to work. You and Dimitri are going to look mighty suspicious meeting up with the other dwarves without Morri, and trying to conceal a shitload of silver, though Dimitri claims everything will be fine. Everything goes less fine when you start to realize that Morri was the one who was leading you through this mine maze. Neither you or Dimitri were paying attention to the directions mainly because you were on the look out for demon attacks and fighting them off. Eventually you’re attacked by more of the demons as you proceed to get lost. You and Dimitri get into an argument and begin to blame each other (Though it really is his fault) You both get angry and come to blows, you however get the advantage, not being weighed down by silver. You leave his body for the demons. You however don’t get too much further. The demons seem to be coming out in more force and you’re wounded many times. You get scared and confused and you know you’re a dead man when you see Morri’s body being eaten by several of demons. You’ve gone in a complete circle and now you’re hearing that demon chittering from everywhere. A valiant effort is made by you, but you can’t fight them all. Eventually you are overwhelmed and eaten.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re in this now and you can’t stop just because it’s looking tough. You got your family to think about. You’re staying. However you do, do something slightly out of character, you spend what little money you have on a whore for the night, mainly because you’re a lot less sure if you’re going to come back from this mission. The next day you’re on the job. The march to the dwarven lands is mostly uneventful, though the fighting between the Zalan Empire and the Tulan Kingdom is still going on their borders which even skirting around, still manages to find your company. The Boss takes advantage of straggling Tulan soldiers that have fled battle. The butchery isn’t uncommon, after all, nobody will know and the Zalan Empire will just be blamed anyway. Arrival in the Dwarven lands is met with caution, the Dwarves obviously know of the Chimera Company’s reputation and a small group of them motion the Boss to just talk to him directly. A deal seems to be made and the Dwarves leave to go back to their underground home. The Captain now addresses all of you. “Alright, apparently there HAVE been demons running all up and down and through the area. The Dwarves are preparing defenses in case they try to invade underground; apparently they consider their underground city takes precedence so their main force is there. However they still have plenty of mines above ground and not nearly enough dwarves to defend them all. Now its been said the demons have been heading toward the Tulan Kingdom, but a lot of them still have been fucking around here and generally wrecking shit for the fun of it. Collapsing even the sturdy mines of the dwarves on their heads seems to be amusing to them. So our goal is to make things bothersome enough for them that they’ll leave the dwarves alone and go elsewhere.” The Captain spits on the ground before continuing. “We’re going to split up for this assignment and take different mines in the area. Watch your fucking ass. I don’t think any of you eunuchs have fought any demons before, but I have and they’re utterly fucking ruthless. Forget all that shit about some of them being civilized. They’re about as civilized as damn Quillar, but a lot more intelligent. The chaos that is in their hearts is always there and these ones are the complete embodiment of it. And for fuck’s sake DON’T stay near any explosives! The dwarves are always using shit like that in their mines and demons have a tendency to have fire throwing abilities. It’s probably the reason for all the easy mine collapses.” The Captain takes out a map. “One more thing. While I know the common thing to do on our assignments is to take advantage of things. We need to play this one completely fucking straight! Do NOT fucking do anything that’s going to piss off the dwarves! If you do, we don’t get paid. We don’t get paid. I’m going to get pissed, because we’re getting a lot for this one. And assuming the dwarves don’t kill you, I certainly fucking will. Alright now I’m going to assign you according to this map.” You and a few others (Including Dimitri) are assigned to the Karzac Mines where you make your way to after some climbing which fortunately isn’t too far off ground level. The dwarves there regard you with suspicion immediately. “Oh great they’re here. Alright, let’s set the ground rules. I’m head miner Morri and I’m in charge of this place! Don’t even think about trying to steal some loose bars of silver that you might find lying around. You do it, and your skull meets an axe or mining pick! Got me?” “Stand up when you speak to me.” Dimitri laughs. “Yeah, make yer jokes human, we’ll see if the demons will appreciate that humor when you’re meeting them face to face.” “Demon, pah! Just one more thing for me to kill, people make a big deal about them. I’ve seen how they fall in line and become law abiding citizens just like anyone else when beaten down.” “Yeah and those same civilized ones will kill you when they get the chance. Didn’t you hear the Captain?” you say. “Yeah well he’s got a tendency to be over dramatic; he probably picked that up from that fine ass elven bitch he’s married to. Besides who DOESN’T try to kill you when they get the chance? They aren’t anything special. Their race just has a tendency to have assholiness come natural to them.” Morri interrupts the pair of you. “Hey if you two morons are finished, I’m about to tell you the fun part of this job. There are demons already in this mine.” “What?!” “Oh yeah, bunch of those fuckers as we speak. Seems we got the fortune of one sneaking in here and decided to have her spawn in the deep reaches of this mine. The only good thing is these types don’t seem to be interested in collapsing the mine, however they’re trying to turn this place into some sort of fucking demon hive or something. We’ve been trying to eliminate them, but of course it’s slow going. We need to get them before they start breeding more though. So we’re splitting up…” “Here we go again…” Dimitri says. Morri assigns at least a few dwarves with each mercenary. You, Morri and Dimitri make up the last one. The demon hunting in the mines is actually a very “mundane” job. They certainly are horrible looking creatures and very vicious, but after the first few times, you get used to it. These particular demons have an insect like appearance so maybe that’s why these behave the way they do. They aren’t very tough in the scheme of things, but like Morri said there do seem to be a lot. You can’t use your bow like you want to either due to the cramped mine conditions. Demons aren’t really the problem though, the problem is Dimitri. After one of the harder battles, Morri is attempting to catch his breath. Dimitri notices the very large silver deposit you’re next to and the silver that’s just there for the taking. He quietly whispers to you that you and he should waylay Morri and take some of the silver. Leave his body to be munched on by a wandering demon. Who’s going to know? You’re not really for this plan and you say no, but Dimitri begins to argue and Morri notices the both of you. “I’m not doing it! The Captain said…” you exclaim. “Fuckin’ pussy!” Dimitri says pushing you. “Hey hey hey! Not doing what? What are you two on abo…” Dimitri takes the opportunity of distraction and hits Morri in the face with silver bar that he lifted off the ground earlier. “ Ugh! Bastard dog you’ll pay for this treachery!” Morri utters falling to the ground. “Come on, this is your last chance to be a man and help me pig farmer!” Dimitri says as he goes to finish off Morri. > You help Morri You’ve had enough. You’re not going to help OR stand by for another immoral act performed by your “co-workers”. It’s bad enough that it goes on, but that doesn’t mean you need to let it, if you can do something about it. You run Dimitri through the back with your sword, he yells out in pain, but still manages to swing his armored fist to strike you in the face. You fall to the ground. “Fuck…lute boy…goin…down…pig fucker…” he wheezes as he attempts to step towards you only to fall to his knees. At this point Morri has recovered and cleaves Dimitri’s skull in with his axe. “Bastard.” Morri then looks at you. “Heh, I guess you must be one of the few with a conscious in the company eh?” “I guess so.” You reply. “Or perhaps you knew it would be better if I lived so you could find your way out this maze?” “…Actually I hadn’t even thought about that. I just…just couldn’t let him kill and rob you like that. Seen it too many times.” “That a fact? Well tell me son, why the hell are you hooked up with these bunch for then?” “Money to help the family…besides it’s not that bad.” “Okay, if you say so. However, this little incident is going to cost your company. We warned your captain that if any evidence of treachery occurred, we weren’t paying him shit and this deal was off!” “But can’t we just keep this secret? I mean…” “Secret? Fuck no! Look, you’re not a bad person, but you’re hanging out with bad people. The only reason why we hired you in the first place is because you ARE effective and you’re about the only mercenary company insane enough to do a job like this. But a deal’s a deal. You captain apparently doesn’t have control over his men like he thinks, because I’m sure he warned you all.” “Yeah, but everyone will probably blame me and my life will be in danger!” “…well…I’m sorry about that, but that’s the price you pay for the company you keep…look I’ll tell you what, because you helped me, I’ll take you back to the entrance and you can leave. Should at least give you a head start. Hell, maybe I’ll even tell them you died before this happened. You could then just hide out and stay out of sight without even anyone looking for you.” Not knowing what to say next you just agree and ponder your possible future. The way back to the entrance is uneventful as far as demon attacks are concerned. You don’t know what you’re going to do. You’ll have to go on the run or at least relocate regardless of what Morri tells everyone. And if he mentions the truth, then your family may well be in danger. You imagine that if the Boss couldn’t get to you, he may very well take it out on your family. You feel sick and upset. You wish you hadn’t chosen this path. All you ever really wanted to do was play your lute, not fight demons or anything else really. You follow behind Morri in a daze. You’re surprised that he doesn’t insist that you walk in front of him, but then that’s probably because he trusts that you’re not a murderer. You also realize you recognize this part of the mine and could probably find your way back from here… You shake your head and take a deep breath. “Hey Morri.” “Wha…glagh! An arrow goes right through Morri’s mouth and out the other side of his head. He gurgles obscenities while trying to raise his axe towards you. Another arrow goes through his eye. He ceases his struggle. While you solved the problem of Morri telling anyone, now you have to cover your own tracks, then you hear a sound you never thought you’d be glad to hear. The chittering of those insect demons and a bunch of them are coming right behind you. You pull the arrows out and run as quickly as you can to the entrance leaving the demons to feed upon Morri’s body. The thought crosses your mind to just leave anyway. Maybe they’d think all three of you got eaten. However, you run into another group during your dash to the mine entrance. “Where the hell are you running off to?” a mercenary asks. It’s Cal. You come up with a lie quick. “(pant) Shit! We got fucking ambushed! (pant) Barely fucking escaped! (pant) Dimitri and Morri are dead! Probably eaten! And the rest of those demon fuckers are heading this way!” “What?! You cowardly fucker, you just let Morri die?” one the dwarves says angrily. “It wasn’t my idea! I tried to help him and Dimitri, but they just came in force, I don’t even know how I escaped!” Your story is a little suspicious, but thanks to the demons, you’re covered. They didn’t leave much for the dwarves to find. However, you’re not looked favorably on by the rest of the dwarves for the rest of the mission. Your fellow mercenaries don’t really care one way or another. It’s part of the job and Dimitri wasn’t well liked so they could care less if he died or lived. You on the other hand are still not feeling so great about yourself. The longer you’re part of this company the more you’re starting to think or be more like them. You hate it and you’ll be glad when this job is over. A few months pass and the contract is over. The “problem” isn’t completely gone, in fact there’s reports of some undead wandering in the area now, but the Dwarves are growing more weary of your presence, hand over your payment and tell you to leave. They say they can handle anything else themselves. It’s quite a lot this time. Best job you’ve had. Upon your return to the Zalan Empire you buy yourself a new lute. It’s your “reward”. The rest of it goes to your family who of course are eager to hear about your tales as usual. You don’t tell them that many this time. You just try to take your mind off your “job” by asking them more questions this time around. When you’re alone you play your new lute, trying to emulate a couple of the songs you overheard the Dwarves engage in when you were there. You never knew they were musically inclined; it’s a shame you had to kill one to protect your future. You’re still debating on whether or not to give up the mercenary life, but you see how much it’s helping the family out, so you decide to stay and put up with it. After your “break is over” you go back to the job as usual. Three years pass… Four years have passed since the “Nuro Incident” and things have gotten much worse in the world. The Necromancer Lord conquered the Brot Kingdom, A demon lord called Velzix conquered the Tulan Kingdom, both are expanding and a so called Grand Alliance of nations doesn’t seem to be doing much good against either of them. The Chimera Company was recently hired by the Zalan government. Due to your past battles with demons, they decided you would be good to put on Tulan Border which is still a bloodbath, but instead of fighting the Tulan Kingdom, the Zalan Empire is fighting Velzix’s hordes. It’s not an easy assignment or very pleasant, in fact it’s got to be the worst job you’ve been on. You company is assigned to make commando raids and sabotage shit to keep the demons fairly unfocused, while the Zalan Empire’s real armies try to make progress into Velzix’s realm. Currently you’re making your “camp” in small abandoned village in enemy territory where you have to fight the occasional demon patrols. Why the Captain took this job on for the company is beyond you. Nobody really knows why. The company in general has been taking more dangerous jobs in recent years. Ever since the Nuro Incident actually. While it’s always been known he’s not a man to shy away from danger and has a love of battle, there’s a lot of talk within ranks that he’s got a death wish. The only “good thing” about this assignment, is that the chance for usual Chimera Company wicked acts are much lower. There’s not many “innocents” in a demon realm. As you think about things, strumming your lute in an abandoned general store by yourself. You hear someone speak. “Pretty good playing. Wish my kind appreciated some of the more subtle things in life sometimes.” You turn your head and see a demon! He’s not very tall and is “dressed up”. He must be one of the “civilized” demons who realigned themselves with their demonic natures and flocked to Velzix when he took over the Tulan Kingdom. He doesn’t seem hostile, but you drop your lute and draw your weapon, before you can yell a warning, he speaks again. “Wait! Before you go warning your friends, I should warn you that there is a very large group of my fellow kin surrounding this village. You kill me and they’ll attack and quite frankly I don’t fancy your chances. However I got a deal for you that can be worth your while. What can it hurt to listen to me? You can always kill me afterwards.” > You listen to the demon You aren’t sure about this, but you let him speak. “Speak demon, but make it quick!” you demand. “Ah, glad you’re willing to be reasonable. Name’s Big Red by the way.” “Get on with it!” “Very well. Your company and everyone in it is doomed to the infernal planes when they die I’m afraid. You captain’s deeds alone make him one of the most sought after souls in Hell. He used to be much worse before he got married, but ah well; women often make men weak like that.” “Yeah? Well not me.” “Heh, yeah you too. I understand that you’re probably the most moral person in it, but this whole company has been targeted by Hell and Hell gets what it wants.” “Well Velzix isn’t…” “Velzix? I’m not talking about Velzix! Velzix is just another demon with big dick complex. If I trust my judgment he’s not going to last another year in his current status, he’ll probably either be dead by one of you mortals or that little Necromancer. (Sigh) Wish I’d known about him sooner, things could’ve been a lot…different.” Big Red sees that you’re getting antsy so he gets to the point again. “Anyway, seeing as you’re all doomed to Hell, I figured it would be nice if I got direct credit for bringing you there. Bringing in evil souls yourself is one of the few things makes Hell all worth it. You get all sorts of perks. However, if I just call in the reinforcements now to have you guys get ripped from limb to limb, I won’t get direct credit. The souls will just be gathered wily nily and then I gotta argue with the fucking collectors and lawyers and all that other shit about who killed who and who gets credit which will probably just result in nobody getting credit and doesn’t help me out at all.” “Barring that you’re saying that I’m doomed in any case, I fail to see why I should help you.” “Well that’s why I’m coming to you with a deal. I can see you’re not a bad person, you just serve a bad master, and he’s the one I really want direct credit for. The rest of you are just a bonus and you in particular aren’t even worth that much given your tendency towards good.” “So what is it you want from me exactly?” “I want you to take out the sentries and distract your fellows for as long as possible while my boys sneak up on this village and strike with as little resistance as possible. To sweeten this deal, I’ll try to tell my boys to not target you while you try to escape the mayhem. I’m not making any promises though, killing rampages among my kind encourage indiscriminate killing. You’ll be on your own; however it gives you a small chance for survival and by agreeing to this plan it gives me direct credit as the mastermind of this cunning plan. Getting other demons to kill isn’t any kind of feat, but employing a mortal to help is looked upon as more favorable. So do we have a deal?” Big Red offers his hand… > You make the deal It sounds like your only chance for survival, slim though it may be. In some ways you’d like to be out of this company and who are you really betraying? From what you’ve seen the company is little better than the demons. You’re sick of all of this, the fighting, the demons, the company, all of it. “It’s a deal, but make a damn good effort for your kin NOT to target me, AND not to go chasing me either!” “Okay! Sheesh, you’re mistrustful. You just make sure you do your part.” Big Red says and shakes your hand. You both exit the abandoned store and you look for where most of your fellows are located. The village square of course. You know there are look outs in each of “corners” of the village. You sneak about the village like an assassin and ready your bow. You take out each sentry in relative silence with your skillful bow shots and drag their bodies into a nearby house. Now nobody will raise an alarm too soon. You then head to the village square and begin interacting with some of them. They find it odd since you’re usually keeping to yourself, but they enjoy your playing so they don’t mind it when you do that. Your Captain on the other hand comes out from the house he’s set up in and is wondering what all the commotion is. He gets angry. “What the fuck are you idiots doing? We’re fucking deep in demon territory and you’re all making enough noise to attract a damn army of them.” “What difference does it make? They got patrols that have come across our location before, so they know where we’re at.” You remark.” “The difference is that I want you fuckers to be alert and focused if we get attacked, not getting drunk and dancing to music like some fucking sissy elf!” “Aren’t you married to an elf?” you say still playing and backing away from the Captain’s reach. He’s almost in shock that you’d speak to him in such manner especially since you never usually speak too much in the first place. “You, pig farmer are really pushing my patience tonight. If I didn’t need all the people I can get for this job, I’d kill you myself!” “Shhh! I think you better shut the fuck up lute boy.” One of the other mercenaries whispers. “Why? We’re already in fucking Hell, who gives a shit how much noise we make?” You defiance gets worse and finally the Captain draws his weapon to shut you up. At this point you call him a pile of orc shit and run. This causes the rest of the mercenaries to get out his way as he charges at you. Some of them also give chase, but most just stay out of it. Fortunately at this point the demons have finally gotten into position and strike. Most of the company is so bewildered by what has occurred between you and the Captain that they’re unprepared. Your Captain immediately stops his pursuit of you when a particularly large demon jumps on top of him from one of the rooftops. He fights it off with the help of some of his men, but you see more coming and continue to make your escape. As you run away from the village, a few demons pass you by and don’t attack, looks like Big Red kept his word. To a point. Big Red suddenly appears in front of you. “Thanks friend, now for your reward!” he says and then puts his fist through your chest which kills you instantly. You don’t know how much time has passed, but you eventually hear Big Red speaking to you. “Get up, I need your word.” “Huh?” you say in a daze. “Did I not get you to distract the Chimera Company in an effort to collect all their souls?” “Huh? Yeah…” you continue to say in a daze. You start shaking the cobwebs and see that you’re in a completely different place. A very bad place. Big Red and another much bigger demon are talking. You see the rest of your Company in the distance, naked and in chains. The entire landscape is very barren, has a reddish hue and its uncomfortably hot. “Okay, you’ll get credit for all these souls.” “Hang on, I want to keep this one, he has certain talents and he did allow all this to happen.” Big Red says pointing to you. “Very well…that’s your right. Just sign there, and there, okay. Let’s load these sorry souls up!” Big Red looks pleased with himself as the souls are taken away. “Come on, I’m going to take a break.” You feel compelled to join him, but you still have questions obviously. “What the fuck man?! I’m in Hell!” “Got it in one. Excellent detective work.” “But…But the deal! You broke the fucking deal! I don’t belong here!” “No I didn’t. I said my fellows wouldn’t harm you, not that I wouldn’t. Besides YOU made a deal with me, which damned you in the first place. You definitely belong here.” The reality of this situation has now caused a massive amount of fear within you. You’re in Hell and there’s no escape from it! You can’t even attack Big Red, he’s got a permanent magical hold on you from causing him any sort of harm, though you probably wouldn’t be a match for him anyway. You collapse on the ground and feel defeated. Big Red stops, but he doesn’t get angry. “Now what is your problem? I just saved YOUR soul from being eternally tormented by my superiors. They’ll probably be eating them and shitting them out only to eat them again for who knows how long. Not a pleasant process.” “But…but what are you going to do to me?” you ask. “You? You’re going to play for me at my home in the Blood Hills. Trust me, its not nearly as bloody as the name makes out.” “Play?” “Sure. I said you played pretty well, and I do appreciate such things. Music is one of my hobbies other than the whole soul collection thing of course. I’ve got sheets of music from lots of places; I can’t play worth a shit though. The claws don’t help either. Now come on let’s go.” You are finding this very odd, but you don’t feel as bad now. You’re Big Red’s slave, but given where you’re at, things could be a lot worse. You’ll at least get to do something you’ve always wanted to do. Play music without hindrance. You wonder about your family, but there’s little that you can do for them now. You just hope things work out for them in the living world. Big Red’s home isn’t some giant castle, but a moderate sized house. The inside is decorated with grisly trophies, which you guess can only be considered demonic art. “Sinthinia! I know you’re here! I can smell your scent!” he calls out. A sexy female demon comes out of one of the rooms. You can’t help but stare, she barely acknowledges you at all though. “I’ve been waiting for you Big Red, so did the deal go down well?” “Well, it could’ve gone better, but it was still a good haul. So how is it really going with Velzix?” “(Sigh) He’s probably going to lose as predicted. I can sense it, anyone with half a brain can. That whole world is going to eventually become a graveyard, I know it. And the undead are no fun. That’s why I’ve come back here.” “Well my house is your house. Let’s put some music on shall we?” Big Red points to you. “You, go pick up that mandolin over there and start playing that something on those music sheets I got set up. Sit over there and continue playing until I say stop which won’t be anytime soon.” Once again you feel the need to comply. You do exactly as Big Red commands as he and Sinthinia head to a bedroom. He then stops to turn to you. “Oh, I don’t know if you realized it at the soul market, but your Captain was NOT there. You know why? Because he somehow managed to fucking escape death! Now I could blame the idiots that were working for me for allowing him to escape, but I figured since I got you anyway, it would be more fun to blame you. Enjoy playing music for all eternity!” he says as Sinthinia giggles and they close the door. You don’t quite understand that remark until you begin playing the mandolin. You begin to feel excruciating pain all over. Your mind is tormented with negative emotions causing you great distress as well. Big Red has made it so your greatest love which is music causes you pain. And you can never stop playing. All you can do is suffer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t sure about this, but you let him speak. “Speak demon, but make it quick!” you demand. “Ah, glad you’re willing to be reasonable. Name’s Big Red by the way.” “Get on with it!” “Very well. Your company and everyone in it is doomed to the infernal planes when they die I’m afraid. You captain’s deeds alone make him one of the most sought after souls in Hell. He used to be much worse before he got married, but ah well; women often make men weak like that.” “Yeah? Well not me.” “Heh, yeah you too. I understand that you’re probably the most moral person in it, but this whole company has been targeted by Hell and Hell gets what it wants.” “Well Velzix isn’t…” “Velzix? I’m not talking about Velzix! Velzix is just another demon with big dick complex. If I trust my judgment he’s not going to last another year in his current status, he’ll probably either be dead by one of you mortals or that little Necromancer. (Sigh) Wish I’d known about him sooner, things could’ve been a lot…different.” Big Red sees that you’re getting antsy so he gets to the point again. “Anyway, seeing as you’re all doomed to Hell, I figured it would be nice if I got direct credit for bringing you there. Bringing in evil souls yourself is one of the few things makes Hell all worth it. You get all sorts of perks. However, if I just call in the reinforcements now to have you guys get ripped from limb to limb, I won’t get direct credit. The souls will just be gathered wily nily and then I gotta argue with the fucking collectors and lawyers and all that other shit about who killed who and who gets credit which will probably just result in nobody getting credit and doesn’t help me out at all.” “Barring that you’re saying that I’m doomed in any case, I fail to see why I should help you.” “Well that’s why I’m coming to you with a deal. I can see you’re not a bad person, you just serve a bad master, and he’s the one I really want direct credit for. The rest of you are just a bonus and you in particular aren’t even worth that much given your tendency towards good.” “So what is it you want from me exactly?” “I want you to take out the sentries and distract your fellows for as long as possible while my boys sneak up on this village and strike with as little resistance as possible. To sweeten this deal, I’ll try to tell my boys to not target you while you try to escape the mayhem. I’m not making any promises though, killing rampages among my kind encourage indiscriminate killing. You’ll be on your own; however it gives you a small chance for survival and by agreeing to this plan it gives me direct credit as the mastermind of this cunning plan. Getting other demons to kill isn’t any kind of feat, but employing a mortal to help is looked upon as more favorable. So do we have a deal?” Big Red offers his hand… > You decline the deal Fuck this. He’s lying and even if he isn’t, making a deal with a demon is never a good idea. You’ve heard the stories and you’ve seen the former Tulan “citizens” that debased themselves just in order to live to serve their demon masters. It never ends well. If you are going to the infernal realm when you die, you’re still not going to be helping anyone to take you there! “Well, let me think about it….HEY THERE’S A FUCKING DEMON ATTACK COMING!” you shout at the top of your lungs. You’re pretty sure at least one person heard you. “You asshole!” Big Red growls and lunges at you which you dodge out of the way and just focus on getting back to where most of your company is making camp, yelling the whole time. Upon hearing your warning, everyone scrambles for battle. You can hear the demons bellowing in the distance. They’ll be here in force soon. You quickly climb on to the village rooftops and ready your bow as the demon hordes advance all around you. The battle wasn’t as hopeless as Big Red made it seem like it would be (He must’ve ran off as there was no sign of him) however, the Company does take more than the usual casualties. One of the mercenaries starts to openly complain. “This is just fucking retarded! Why the hell are we doing this shit?” Cal complains. “You know the score; you don’t like it you can leave.” The Captain says calmly cleaning off his sword. “Yeah and then I don’t get paid, which is when by the way? We’d all like to know when this contract is over! You never did tell us!” “Oh that…indefinitely.” “WHAT?!” almost everyone exclaims. “Look, would you sissies calm the fuck down? We got a break coming up in a few weeks. We go back to the Zalan Empire to get paid, rest, re-equip and whatever else they got there, but after the break we go right back out here. Possibly even deeper.” At this point the whole company is turning against the Captain, he doesn’t look worried though. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me? You’re expecting us to go deeper into this shit? You’re practically asking us to stand in the middle of Hell!” “Dunno why you’re protesting, we’re all going to the real infernal plane anyway when we die, might as well get used to it. Look, take it or leave it, I don’t give a shit. If you want to stay, go ahead. If you want to leave now, go ahead. If you want to leave after you get your pay, go ahead. But I’m sure you know by now, if you leave don’t come back ever.” The Captain says and goes back to the abandoned home he was staying in. This comment by the Captain makes you think back to Big Red’s little speech, you start wondering about your future while everyone begins talking amongst themselves about what to do next. A lot of them are saying the Boss has lost his mind and is being suicidal. You can’t say you disagree. In fact you’re not sure you want part of this anymore. Your family might need the money, but what good are you dead to them? A few weeks pass and your company makes its way back to the Zalan Empire. You get your payment. Almost feels like you’re in the “real army” given the formal nature of it. After you get your pay, you’re on your way home where you intend to stay, much like many others are planning to do. However, you bump into the Captain who speaks to you. There’s a hint of alcohol on his breath. “So can I expect you to stay on lute boy?” he asks bluntly. “Erm…well, no Captain. I’m sorry, but going deeper into demon territory is suicide.” you reply.. “Probably right, but who wants to live forever?” “Well I’d like to at least live past the next year.” “Hah! So you wish to die an old man in your bed?” “Sounds about right.” “Then why did you take on such a dangerous line of work in the first place?” “My family needed the money.” “Ah yes, you are one of the few in the company that has one. One of the fewer still that actually takes care of them…an honorable pursuit. I can respect that.” You’re surprised to hear the Captain praise anything that seems honorable. “I have a family that I take care of too you know.” “Yes, I know you are married.” “Yeah…but my daughter is a captain in the Zalan army. She’s stationed on the Tulan border as a matter of fact. She might even get transferred to the Grand Alliance army. Don’t know yet.” He says with a hint of pride in his voice, though he tries his best to conceal it. The Captain is just full of surprises. You now know that this isn’t some simple death wish, but that he’s taken the job to help her out in a way. You don’t know, but can only imagine what growing up with a dad like him was like. You unsure of how to reply so you just follow up with something. “Um, that’s great Captain.” “Yeah, it’s great. Got a son too…he’s…a wizard. He’s a fuckin’ disappointment… y’know you look back on your life and you wonder what you’ve accomplished and it doesn’t mean shit in the scheme of things, at least not when the world has one foot in Hell and the other in the grave. But still you struggle and fight right? You still remain true to your nature.” “Sure I guess so.” You say wondering where the Captain going with this. The Captain sighs heavily. “I guess I’m lucky…killing and battle are in my nature. I get to do it every fuckin’ day and it never seems to be enough, even after all the years and changes… but I bet you didn’t want this shit right? You probably wanted to just play that fuckin’ lute of yours right? You got a gift and its being wasted due to events out of your control…but you still play that thing when you can. It’s in your nature. It’s also in your nature to help out your family because you care about them.” “I suppose it is.” “Yeah, nature…it’s a fuckin’ bitch.” The Captain now looks directly at you. “Look I’m not gonna beg ya, but you’re one of the best men I got in the damn company, and I’d rather not lose you, so I’ll appeal to your nature. What’s going on in the world today is some fucked up shit. Quite honestly I don’t think it’s going to end well for any of us, but you struggle and fight anyway. The financial aid that you’re providing for your family pales in comparison to what you’re doing in the long term. You’re making the world safer for them so that they might be able to live. We got the Gates of Hell on one side and Death’s Door on the other and both of them need to be fucking closed. I don’t know if that makes us the so called good guys now, but all I know is if there’s an active way I can protect my wife and even help my daughter then I’m gonna do it. What are you going to do?” The Captain then leaves you without saying another word. Some pretty deep words for a man who you never saw as compassionate in anyway. He does make a point though. Lately what has been going in the world is pretty bad and you wonder if not fighting today will just mean putting off fighting tomorrow. > You stay in the company You might be a fool, but the possibility that the Captain knows what the fuck he’s talking about can’t be ruled out. If killing demons now is going to make life a little safer for your family in the future, then you probably should be apart of that. Same with the undead if it comes to that, though you’re hoping that you don’t need to. Fighting demons is bad enough, you haven’t even fought any undead and the stories that your dad told you and that you’ve overheard others tell still makes you dread the day that you’ll actually have to. For now though you’re going home to spend time with your family and tell them all how much you love them. One year passes… Five years since the Nuro Incident and you’re deep in the heart of Velzix’s Realm. Guerrilla hit and run tactics and sabotage have greatly angered Velzix causing him to divert forces where he might use elsewhere. You’ve even managed to sneak into his fortress a few times to sabotage his goals of creating a permanent open portal to the Infernal Planes. Something nobody wants except the demons. It’s odd, but the Chimera Company has been turned from an example of “thugs for hire” to “Heroic warriors” by the Zalan government, but then the Zalan Empire has always been a bit heavy on propaganda. The fact that the company is directly working for it, makes any politician that was remotely involved with the idea of hiring you in the first place to milk it for all its worth. The real truth however is what’s currently of the company is made up of the suicidal, desperate or the insane. You’re not sure which one you are at this point, but in the eyes of the public, you’re a hero. (Surprisingly Cal is still there for all his past complaining) The Captain has been telling tales of his past life a lot more lately when sitting around the campfire. He talks about the people he’s killed, the women he’s raped, and the treasures he’s plundered. Most of the stories you’ve only heard about in rumor from others in your Company, but hearing them come from the Captain himself makes him sound even more rotten. You’re sure glad you didn’t know him back in the “old days”. He doesn’t seem to show any remorse, though he doesn’t really talk about it gloriously either. He just tells them as a story to pass the time between fighting, much like you do with playing your lute. Every now and then he tells you to play something specific. Some elven song that you’ve never heard before, though apparently he really wants you to play it since he gives you a crumpled piece of sheet music containing its notes. It’s a not a complex song for an Elven one, but it still takes you a few weeks to learn it completely. It would probably take you less time, but there’s the demon fighting that sort of gets in the way of practice. The first time you play it, the Captain, closes his eyes and begins to smile. You think that’s the first time you’ve ever seen him do that. Others in the Company are amazed as well. With his eyes still closed he begins to speak of his family and how beautiful his wife is and how when he first met her it was love at first sight. He then speaks of his daughter, and how proud he is of her. Her battle skills have gotten her a captain’s position in Grand Alliance army. He hopes that she has many victorious battles and kills all those that stand before her without mercy. He is silent for awhile as you play…then he speaks of his son is much harsher tone. “A disappointment…a fucking disappointment. Fucked up somewhere…wasn’t hard enough on him. Now look at this shit we’re in…demons, undead…fuck it. If I’m bound for the Infernal Plane for bringing destruction to the world then I’m gonna give those bastard demons a good reason for torturing the shit outta me when I get there. Namely by killing a shitload of them and fucking up their plans as much as possible. Just hope my necromancer spawn is eventually there right beside me getting tortured as well.” You temporarily stop playing at this outburst by the Captain. Others in the Company are looking and whispering to each other. Did he just allude to what you think he did? “What he fuck are you doin’? I didn’t say stop playing!” You quickly return to playing and nothing more is spoken of it. As it happens the song is one of the last things you play. Your lute is destroyed in a battle a couple days later. You curse as one of the few things that took your mind off this shitty place is gone. You just hope you live long enough to buy a new one. A few more weeks pass and what wasn’t spoken of, makes an appearance… Two of the lookouts run back to the main camp one day and rush into the Captain’s tent. You can hear them babbling something about son, and death and doomed. You then hear him yelling at them to shut the fuck up and speak clearly. The rest of the Company starts to pick up there weapons as if expecting something to go down and you follow suit and that’s when you look in the direction where the sentries ran from and see a lone hooded figure. None of you don’t know how to react. Every instinct in everyone is telling them to attack, but the aura of power and fear he’s giving off is very strong. Almost paralyzing. Just then the Captain comes out of his tent and speaks. “Boy, you gotta a lot of balls showing up here before me. Didn’t think you had ‘em either. Figured you’d be hiding in some tower somewhere.” “Yeah, well sometimes you have to do things yourself.” Weird. He doesn't sound at all like you thought he would. > You attack now You know who the hell this is, it’s the Necromancer Lord. You’re never going to get a better chance than now to kill him and put an end to some of the madness that’s going on. You muster up all your courage and quickly raise your bow. “No! Wait you dumbfuck…” the Captain yells trying to stop you. You arrow flies straight towards the Necromancer Lord, but it doesn’t even reach him, a magical shield causes it to bounce off harmlessly. However your actions cause the Necromancer Lord to react defensively and he unleashes a ray of pure black energy which drains you of your life force entirely.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You might be a fool, but the possibility that the Captain knows what the fuck he’s talking about can’t be ruled out. If killing demons now is going to make life a little safer for your family in the future, then you probably should be apart of that. Same with the undead if it comes to that, though you’re hoping that you don’t need to. Fighting demons is bad enough, you haven’t even fought any undead and the stories that your dad told you and that you’ve overheard others tell still makes you dread the day that you’ll actually have to. For now though you’re going home to spend time with your family and tell them all how much you love them. One year passes… Five years since the Nuro Incident and you’re deep in the heart of Velzix’s Realm. Guerrilla hit and run tactics and sabotage have greatly angered Velzix causing him to divert forces where he might use elsewhere. You’ve even managed to sneak into his fortress a few times to sabotage his goals of creating a permanent open portal to the Infernal Planes. Something nobody wants except the demons. It’s odd, but the Chimera Company has been turned from an example of “thugs for hire” to “Heroic warriors” by the Zalan government, but then the Zalan Empire has always been a bit heavy on propaganda. The fact that the company is directly working for it, makes any politician that was remotely involved with the idea of hiring you in the first place to milk it for all its worth. The real truth however is what’s currently of the company is made up of the suicidal, desperate or the insane. You’re not sure which one you are at this point, but in the eyes of the public, you’re a hero. (Surprisingly Cal is still there for all his past complaining) The Captain has been telling tales of his past life a lot more lately when sitting around the campfire. He talks about the people he’s killed, the women he’s raped, and the treasures he’s plundered. Most of the stories you’ve only heard about in rumor from others in your Company, but hearing them come from the Captain himself makes him sound even more rotten. You’re sure glad you didn’t know him back in the “old days”. He doesn’t seem to show any remorse, though he doesn’t really talk about it gloriously either. He just tells them as a story to pass the time between fighting, much like you do with playing your lute. Every now and then he tells you to play something specific. Some elven song that you’ve never heard before, though apparently he really wants you to play it since he gives you a crumpled piece of sheet music containing its notes. It’s a not a complex song for an Elven one, but it still takes you a few weeks to learn it completely. It would probably take you less time, but there’s the demon fighting that sort of gets in the way of practice. The first time you play it, the Captain, closes his eyes and begins to smile. You think that’s the first time you’ve ever seen him do that. Others in the Company are amazed as well. With his eyes still closed he begins to speak of his family and how beautiful his wife is and how when he first met her it was love at first sight. He then speaks of his daughter, and how proud he is of her. Her battle skills have gotten her a captain’s position in Grand Alliance army. He hopes that she has many victorious battles and kills all those that stand before her without mercy. He is silent for awhile as you play…then he speaks of his son is much harsher tone. “A disappointment…a fucking disappointment. Fucked up somewhere…wasn’t hard enough on him. Now look at this shit we’re in…demons, undead…fuck it. If I’m bound for the Infernal Plane for bringing destruction to the world then I’m gonna give those bastard demons a good reason for torturing the shit outta me when I get there. Namely by killing a shitload of them and fucking up their plans as much as possible. Just hope my necromancer spawn is eventually there right beside me getting tortured as well.” You temporarily stop playing at this outburst by the Captain. Others in the Company are looking and whispering to each other. Did he just allude to what you think he did? “What he fuck are you doin’? I didn’t say stop playing!” You quickly return to playing and nothing more is spoken of it. As it happens the song is one of the last things you play. Your lute is destroyed in a battle a couple days later. You curse as one of the few things that took your mind off this shitty place is gone. You just hope you live long enough to buy a new one. A few more weeks pass and what wasn’t spoken of, makes an appearance… Two of the lookouts run back to the main camp one day and rush into the Captain’s tent. You can hear them babbling something about son, and death and doomed. You then hear him yelling at them to shut the fuck up and speak clearly. The rest of the Company starts to pick up there weapons as if expecting something to go down and you follow suit and that’s when you look in the direction where the sentries ran from and see a lone hooded figure. None of you don’t know how to react. Every instinct in everyone is telling them to attack, but the aura of power and fear he’s giving off is very strong. Almost paralyzing. Just then the Captain comes out of his tent and speaks. “Boy, you gotta a lot of balls showing up here before me. Didn’t think you had ‘em either. Figured you’d be hiding in some tower somewhere.” “Yeah, well sometimes you have to do things yourself.” Weird. He doesn't sound at all like you thought he would. > You wait You know who the hell this is, it’s the Necromancer Lord. Even if you are fast enough to get a shot at him, you doubt the arrow is going to connect. He’s probably got all kinds of magical shields to protect him for whatever it is he’s here for. You begin looking for your best route of escape and slowly start backing away. The Captain on the other hand speaks directly to his son. He doesn’t even show any fear. They speak for a moment and things get very tense, you’re about ready to run, but things take a sudden turn for the very strange. The Necromancer Lord has proposed a temporary alliance to assassinate Velzix. The Captain is hesitant about this at first, but an agreement is made on payment and he accepts. The Captain then informs all of you in more detail of what’s going on. “Alright men, we’re gonna go storm the Gates of Hell and close those fuckers for good. My…son there is going to provide magical support. He’s also going to be providing a shitload of money for this job. The stipulation is we can’t tell ANYBODY about this shit. I’m fucking serious. Word gets out that we were working with the fucking Necromancer Lord, we’ll all be hanged, regardless of so called heroic deeds of killing demons. We’re all in this together and there ain’t no backing out, because this deal is made. And if you think you’re gonna step out on me now, that ain’t in the plan. I’ll just kill you and have my son raise your undead ass to help us anyway!” “What?! You just decided this for us?” Cal exclaims. “Yeah? What of it? I’ve ALWAYS made all the decisions for your dumb ass! It’s why YOU’RE still working for me, because it’s lucrative! This ain’t gonna be any different. Plus we get to take fucking credit for killing a damn demon lord. Think of all the pussy you’ll get from that fucking fame eh? Now stop bitching and let’s go!” You can’t say you’re enthusiastic about this, but it would appear you have little choice in the matter. As you travel to Velzix’s fortress you overhear some of the conversations the Captain is having with his son. A strained relationship to be sure. They make a lot of cutting barbs to each other, each criticizing the other for various things. It’s obvious that they can’t stand each other, but are a lot more alike than either one wants to admit. It makes you glad when you encounter the occasional demon skirmish on the way, since it at least it decreases the tension and possibility that the Captain’s son is going to finally lose his temper and kill everyone due to his father’s words. Eventually you arrive without any more problems. You enter Velzix’s fortress through the secret way that was discovered long ago. “Dumb ass demons, we’ve been using this entrance for like a year now and they still haven’t caught on!” the Captain remarks to his son. You make good progress in the fortress and then… “There they are, just like Velzix said they would be!” a demon guard shouts. “Haven’t caught on yet huh?” the Necromancer Lord says, looking at the Captain. “Quit yer bitchin’ and start doin that death magic thing!” You proceed to do battle with the demon and mortal guards that attempt to stop you. The Necromancer Lord starts to raise the mortal guards after they’re killed, but it begins to unnerve you though when the Necromancer Lord starts raising your own fallen dead. Pretty soon it’s just the Necromancer Lord, the Captain, you, Cal and a bunch of corpses fighting off what seems to be an endless supply of Hell’s own. You begin to wonder if Velzix already got that portal working. As you get closer to Velzix’s inner sanctum even the undead troops are being decimated at an alarming rate. You’ve been wounded several times and extremely tired. You don’t want to think about any of this, even in the heat of battle you start to take your mind elsewhere with a tune inside your head. “Fuck man! We’re gonna die here!” Cal screams as he attempts to fight a horned demon which has obviously got the advantage over him. You feel a demon blade in your back causing you to fall to the floor. At this point nothing but music fills your mind; bloodshed and battle surround your prone body. “Fuckers are without end! Come on! Raise these fuckers and let’s go!” you hear the Captain yell followed by “Hah, no lying down on the job anymore Cal!” You’re not quite dead yet though, and the Necromancer Lord and his dad aren’t waiting around so they continue on quickly leaving you behind. As your life force ebbs and more demon guards run past your body, you don’t know if what you did was worth it or even the right thing. All you know is you did what you could and hope your actions may have made some sort of difference and increased the chances of your family’s future well being. You then smile. You’ll see them again someday. “Yeah…I believe that…” you allow yourself to think as you die. Big Red was wrong about your fate. There was no Hell, just peace.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fuck this. He’s lying and even if he isn’t, making a deal with a demon is never a good idea. You’ve heard the stories and you’ve seen the former Tulan “citizens” that debased themselves just in order to live to serve their demon masters. It never ends well. If you are going to the infernal realm when you die, you’re still not going to be helping anyone to take you there! “Well, let me think about it….HEY THERE’S A FUCKING DEMON ATTACK COMING!” you shout at the top of your lungs. You’re pretty sure at least one person heard you. “You asshole!” Big Red growls and lunges at you which you dodge out of the way and just focus on getting back to where most of your company is making camp, yelling the whole time. Upon hearing your warning, everyone scrambles for battle. You can hear the demons bellowing in the distance. They’ll be here in force soon. You quickly climb on to the village rooftops and ready your bow as the demon hordes advance all around you. The battle wasn’t as hopeless as Big Red made it seem like it would be (He must’ve ran off as there was no sign of him) however, the Company does take more than the usual casualties. One of the mercenaries starts to openly complain. “This is just fucking retarded! Why the hell are we doing this shit?” Cal complains. “You know the score; you don’t like it you can leave.” The Captain says calmly cleaning off his sword. “Yeah and then I don’t get paid, which is when by the way? We’d all like to know when this contract is over! You never did tell us!” “Oh that…indefinitely.” “WHAT?!” almost everyone exclaims. “Look, would you sissies calm the fuck down? We got a break coming up in a few weeks. We go back to the Zalan Empire to get paid, rest, re-equip and whatever else they got there, but after the break we go right back out here. Possibly even deeper.” At this point the whole company is turning against the Captain, he doesn’t look worried though. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me? You’re expecting us to go deeper into this shit? You’re practically asking us to stand in the middle of Hell!” “Dunno why you’re protesting, we’re all going to the real infernal plane anyway when we die, might as well get used to it. Look, take it or leave it, I don’t give a shit. If you want to stay, go ahead. If you want to leave now, go ahead. If you want to leave after you get your pay, go ahead. But I’m sure you know by now, if you leave don’t come back ever.” The Captain says and goes back to the abandoned home he was staying in. This comment by the Captain makes you think back to Big Red’s little speech, you start wondering about your future while everyone begins talking amongst themselves about what to do next. A lot of them are saying the Boss has lost his mind and is being suicidal. You can’t say you disagree. In fact you’re not sure you want part of this anymore. Your family might need the money, but what good are you dead to them? A few weeks pass and your company makes its way back to the Zalan Empire. You get your payment. Almost feels like you’re in the “real army” given the formal nature of it. After you get your pay, you’re on your way home where you intend to stay, much like many others are planning to do. However, you bump into the Captain who speaks to you. There’s a hint of alcohol on his breath. “So can I expect you to stay on lute boy?” he asks bluntly. “Erm…well, no Captain. I’m sorry, but going deeper into demon territory is suicide.” you reply.. “Probably right, but who wants to live forever?” “Well I’d like to at least live past the next year.” “Hah! So you wish to die an old man in your bed?” “Sounds about right.” “Then why did you take on such a dangerous line of work in the first place?” “My family needed the money.” “Ah yes, you are one of the few in the company that has one. One of the fewer still that actually takes care of them…an honorable pursuit. I can respect that.” You’re surprised to hear the Captain praise anything that seems honorable. “I have a family that I take care of too you know.” “Yes, I know you are married.” “Yeah…but my daughter is a captain in the Zalan army. She’s stationed on the Tulan border as a matter of fact. She might even get transferred to the Grand Alliance army. Don’t know yet.” He says with a hint of pride in his voice, though he tries his best to conceal it. The Captain is just full of surprises. You now know that this isn’t some simple death wish, but that he’s taken the job to help her out in a way. You don’t know, but can only imagine what growing up with a dad like him was like. You unsure of how to reply so you just follow up with something. “Um, that’s great Captain.” “Yeah, it’s great. Got a son too…he’s…a wizard. He’s a fuckin’ disappointment… y’know you look back on your life and you wonder what you’ve accomplished and it doesn’t mean shit in the scheme of things, at least not when the world has one foot in Hell and the other in the grave. But still you struggle and fight right? You still remain true to your nature.” “Sure I guess so.” You say wondering where the Captain going with this. The Captain sighs heavily. “I guess I’m lucky…killing and battle are in my nature. I get to do it every fuckin’ day and it never seems to be enough, even after all the years and changes… but I bet you didn’t want this shit right? You probably wanted to just play that fuckin’ lute of yours right? You got a gift and its being wasted due to events out of your control…but you still play that thing when you can. It’s in your nature. It’s also in your nature to help out your family because you care about them.” “I suppose it is.” “Yeah, nature…it’s a fuckin’ bitch.” The Captain now looks directly at you. “Look I’m not gonna beg ya, but you’re one of the best men I got in the damn company, and I’d rather not lose you, so I’ll appeal to your nature. What’s going on in the world today is some fucked up shit. Quite honestly I don’t think it’s going to end well for any of us, but you struggle and fight anyway. The financial aid that you’re providing for your family pales in comparison to what you’re doing in the long term. You’re making the world safer for them so that they might be able to live. We got the Gates of Hell on one side and Death’s Door on the other and both of them need to be fucking closed. I don’t know if that makes us the so called good guys now, but all I know is if there’s an active way I can protect my wife and even help my daughter then I’m gonna do it. What are you going to do?” The Captain then leaves you without saying another word. Some pretty deep words for a man who you never saw as compassionate in anyway. He does make a point though. Lately what has been going in the world is pretty bad and you wonder if not fighting today will just mean putting off fighting tomorrow. > You leave the company Whatever the Captain is “going through” doesn’t involve you. You’ve got your own concerns. If the world events get so bad that they reach your doorstep, then you deal with it then, but risking your life to the extent of going deep into the heart of demon territory isn’t what you signed up for. You head home and tell your family that it’s permanent this time. You explain your reasons and apologize that you won’t be bringing in all the extra money like you used to. They aren’t mad though, your mom is actually relieved. “Well son, I’m just as glad you didn’t go get yourself killed over there anyway. You’ll be helping us out plenty just by working on the farm like always.” You’re glad to hear that. Over the next couple days you fall back into routine again. You still wonder about the future though and you briefly consider the army, but you’re a little weary of battle on a regular basis now. You resign yourself to the farm life. You play your lute to yourself (and family) when you have the time to do so. It’s a simple life. Another year passes and things are getting bad. War is everywhere. The Demons have been taken care of, (You heard your former mercenary captain died in battle with their leader Velzix) but the undead are stronger than ever. Reports even speak of the Necromancer Lord becoming The Great Lich Lord “reborn”. To make things worse, the Zalan Empire has been becoming increasingly tyrannical. In order to help with the war effort they’ve started bringing back the draft and the talk of ceasing private property to be used for the good of the government. While they say owners will be able to live and still work on their lands and businesses, it will be owned by the Empire. You know it’s only a matter of time when you get a knock on the door by Zalan army troops coming to take you (Especially you given your prior battle experience) and your brother Mallack away to the army and your family’s farm. Another two year pass… You’re on the eve of battle in a land known as the Garwold Confederacy although it’s steadily becoming a giant graveyard now. The undead hordes have been sweeping relentlessly across the entire landscape. Your own company has had to fall back several times. Morale is low. Not that yours was high to begin with. You don’t even know how you’ve survived this long. While you had lots of battle experience during your time with the mercenary company, you’ll never get used to fighting the undead. They are such emotionless creatures that are the embodiment of death and all that’s unnatural. You briefly wonder if your brother Mallack is alright where he’s stationed, but it hardly matters at this point. Battle comes as it always does and you are not so lucky this time. Horrible and powerful creatures known as Blood Specters and Death Knights utterly destroy your side. You put up a more valiant effort than most, but eventually you fall to undead blades and chilling touches only rise up and join them in their goal of global genocide.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve had enough. You’re not going to help OR stand by for another immoral act performed by your “co-workers”. It’s bad enough that it goes on, but that doesn’t mean you need to let it, if you can do something about it. You run Dimitri through the back with your sword, he yells out in pain, but still manages to swing his armored fist to strike you in the face. You fall to the ground. “Fuck…lute boy…goin…down…pig fucker…” he wheezes as he attempts to step towards you only to fall to his knees. At this point Morri has recovered and cleaves Dimitri’s skull in with his axe. “Bastard.” Morri then looks at you. “Heh, I guess you must be one of the few with a conscious in the company eh?” “I guess so.” You reply. “Or perhaps you knew it would be better if I lived so you could find your way out this maze?” “…Actually I hadn’t even thought about that. I just…just couldn’t let him kill and rob you like that. Seen it too many times.” “That a fact? Well tell me son, why the hell are you hooked up with these bunch for then?” “Money to help the family…besides it’s not that bad.” “Okay, if you say so. However, this little incident is going to cost your company. We warned your captain that if any evidence of treachery occurred, we weren’t paying him shit and this deal was off!” “But can’t we just keep this secret? I mean…” “Secret? Fuck no! Look, you’re not a bad person, but you’re hanging out with bad people. The only reason why we hired you in the first place is because you ARE effective and you’re about the only mercenary company insane enough to do a job like this. But a deal’s a deal. You captain apparently doesn’t have control over his men like he thinks, because I’m sure he warned you all.” “Yeah, but everyone will probably blame me and my life will be in danger!” “…well…I’m sorry about that, but that’s the price you pay for the company you keep…look I’ll tell you what, because you helped me, I’ll take you back to the entrance and you can leave. Should at least give you a head start. Hell, maybe I’ll even tell them you died before this happened. You could then just hide out and stay out of sight without even anyone looking for you.” Not knowing what to say next you just agree and ponder your possible future. The way back to the entrance is uneventful as far as demon attacks are concerned. You don’t know what you’re going to do. You’ll have to go on the run or at least relocate regardless of what Morri tells everyone. And if he mentions the truth, then your family may well be in danger. You imagine that if the Boss couldn’t get to you, he may very well take it out on your family. You feel sick and upset. You wish you hadn’t chosen this path. All you ever really wanted to do was play your lute, not fight demons or anything else really. You follow behind Morri in a daze. You’re surprised that he doesn’t insist that you walk in front of him, but then that’s probably because he trusts that you’re not a murderer. You also realize you recognize this part of the mine and could probably find your way back from here… You shake your head and take a deep breath. “Hey Morri.” “Wha…glagh! An arrow goes right through Morri’s mouth and out the other side of his head. He gurgles obscenities while trying to raise his axe towards you. Another arrow goes through his eye. He ceases his struggle. While you solved the problem of Morri telling anyone, now you have to cover your own tracks, then you hear a sound you never thought you’d be glad to hear. The chittering of those insect demons and a bunch of them are coming right behind you. You pull the arrows out and run as quickly as you can to the entrance leaving the demons to feed upon Morri’s body. The thought crosses your mind to just leave anyway. Maybe they’d think all three of you got eaten. However, you run into another group during your dash to the mine entrance. “Where the hell are you running off to?” a mercenary asks. It’s Cal. You come up with a lie quick. “(pant) Shit! We got fucking ambushed! (pant) Barely fucking escaped! (pant) Dimitri and Morri are dead! Probably eaten! And the rest of those demon fuckers are heading this way!” “What?! You cowardly fucker, you just let Morri die?” one the dwarves says angrily. “It wasn’t my idea! I tried to help him and Dimitri, but they just came in force, I don’t even know how I escaped!” Your story is a little suspicious, but thanks to the demons, you’re covered. They didn’t leave much for the dwarves to find. However, you’re not looked favorably on by the rest of the dwarves for the rest of the mission. Your fellow mercenaries don’t really care one way or another. It’s part of the job and Dimitri wasn’t well liked so they could care less if he died or lived. You on the other hand are still not feeling so great about yourself. The longer you’re part of this company the more you’re starting to think or be more like them. You hate it and you’ll be glad when this job is over. A few months pass and the contract is over. The “problem” isn’t completely gone, in fact there’s reports of some undead wandering in the area now, but the Dwarves are growing more weary of your presence, hand over your payment and tell you to leave. They say they can handle anything else themselves. It’s quite a lot this time. Best job you’ve had. Upon your return to the Zalan Empire you buy yourself a new lute. It’s your “reward”. The rest of it goes to your family who of course are eager to hear about your tales as usual. You don’t tell them that many this time. You just try to take your mind off your “job” by asking them more questions this time around. When you’re alone you play your new lute, trying to emulate a couple of the songs you overheard the Dwarves engage in when you were there. You never knew they were musically inclined; it’s a shame you had to kill one to protect your future. You’re still debating on whether or not to give up the mercenary life, but you see how much it’s helping the family out, so you decide to stay and put up with it. After your “break is over” you go back to the job as usual. Three years pass… Four years have passed since the “Nuro Incident” and things have gotten much worse in the world. The Necromancer Lord conquered the Brot Kingdom, A demon lord called Velzix conquered the Tulan Kingdom, both are expanding and a so called Grand Alliance of nations doesn’t seem to be doing much good against either of them. The Chimera Company was recently hired by the Zalan government. Due to your past battles with demons, they decided you would be good to put on Tulan Border which is still a bloodbath, but instead of fighting the Tulan Kingdom, the Zalan Empire is fighting Velzix’s hordes. It’s not an easy assignment or very pleasant, in fact it’s got to be the worst job you’ve been on. You company is assigned to make commando raids and sabotage shit to keep the demons fairly unfocused, while the Zalan Empire’s real armies try to make progress into Velzix’s realm. Currently you’re making your “camp” in small abandoned village in enemy territory where you have to fight the occasional demon patrols. Why the Captain took this job on for the company is beyond you. Nobody really knows why. The company in general has been taking more dangerous jobs in recent years. Ever since the Nuro Incident actually. While it’s always been known he’s not a man to shy away from danger and has a love of battle, there’s a lot of talk within ranks that he’s got a death wish. The only “good thing” about this assignment, is that the chance for usual Chimera Company wicked acts are much lower. There’s not many “innocents” in a demon realm. As you think about things, strumming your lute in an abandoned general store by yourself. You hear someone speak. “Pretty good playing. Wish my kind appreciated some of the more subtle things in life sometimes.” You turn your head and see a demon! He’s not very tall and is “dressed up”. He must be one of the “civilized” demons who realigned themselves with their demonic natures and flocked to Velzix when he took over the Tulan Kingdom. He doesn’t seem hostile, but you drop your lute and draw your weapon, before you can yell a warning, he speaks again. “Wait! Before you go warning your friends, I should warn you that there is a very large group of my fellow kin surrounding this village. You kill me and they’ll attack and quite frankly I don’t fancy your chances. However I got a deal for you that can be worth your while. What can it hurt to listen to me? You can always kill me afterwards.” > You attack him You don’t waste time, you just attack! Unfortunately the demon is more than he appears and easily dodges your attack. You don’t have time to turn and react again when he’s tripped you up and put his fist in your face causing your nose to explode into a mass of blood. You’re dazed. “(Sigh) And here I thought you were the reasonable one of this bunch. Nevermind.” The demon says. He follows up with another fist to your face. This one goes through your head killing you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re not sure if the formal military life is for you. If you joined up you wouldn’t be able to readily leave. You figure if you don’t like life as a mercenary or it isn’t working out for you, you can leave freely. You explain your decision to join up with the mercenary company that’s currently passing through. Your revelation comes as a shock. Your smaller brothers and sisters don’t want you to go, your brother Mallack really doesn’t want you to leave since he’ll be next in line to take the brunt of the manual labor! Your mother is a little apprehensive about your decision. You half expect her to say no, but she understands that you’re doing this for the good of the family. She gives her blessing. Before you leave the next day with your packed belongings, your whole family comes to say goodbye to you. You almost hesitate to leave, wondering if it would actually be better for you to stay. Your mother approaches you. “You don’t have to do this you know. We’re doing just fine.” “Yeah, but things would be easier if this family had more money.” “Hah. Things are always easier with more money son, but you don’t need to go and get yourself killed for it.” “Yeah, I know, but I’ve thought it through.” “Very well, you’re old enough to make your own decisions and live your own life, though I’m glad to see that you still want to help the family as opposed to just leaving in the middle of the night.” “I’ll visit and return with whatever my pay is whenever I can.” “I know…okay, you best get going. I think the mercenary company was leaving today.” You make you way to the local tavern and catch them just as they’re getting ready leave. A lot of them look hung over. “Hey wait up…” you say in a slightly loud tone, causing one mean looking mercenary to snarl at you. “Shut the fuck up yokel! Shit, I got a splitting headache and it hurts like a sonofabitch.” “Sorry. Are you the leader of this company?” “Leader of these dickheads? Naw. The Boss is actually visiting his family in the Zalan capital. We’re going to meet up with him now and I suggest you get the fuck outta our way and not waste anymore of our time!” “But I want to join you guys.” The mercenary you were speaking to looks at you then looks at a few of his buddies and begins to laugh louder than your voice which previously annoyed him. “HAHAHA HAHAHA! Y’hear that fellas? This yokel wants to join us! Thanks a lot, I needed a good laugh, now go fuck your pigs or whatever it is you farm types do.” “But I’m serious…” “Serious? Farmboy, this is a man’s job and not for the fuckin’ weak. You ever even use a damn weapon?” “Yeah! I got this bow and this sword! I’m a really good shot!” The mercenary still looks unimpressed. “Uh huh, yeah well you ever kill anyone, hell you ever kill ANYTHING? And I’m not talkin’ about any of your livestock you might’ve slaughtered. I mean something sentient.” “Well yeah, I’ve killed Kobolds that were trying to steal chickens from the…” The mercenaries begin to laugh again. “Oh shit, you are priceless boy! My sister can kill fuckin’ Kobolds and her only talent is whoring.” “Haha got that one right, Dimitri.” Another one of the mercenaries agrees. Suddenly the laughing stops. “What the fuck did you just say Fermeli?” “Uh, I was just agreeing with you…c’mon don’t take it like that! I mean you said…” “Ain’t about what I said, it’s about what YOU said! You called my fucking sister a whore! You ain’t getting’ away with that shit.” Dimitri draws his sword and stomps over to Fermeli who is trying to get one of his buddies to help him, but everyone else is backing away from the fight. Dimitri takes advantage of Fermeli’s state of panic and slashes him good with his sword. Fermeli cries out in pain and begs for forgiveness. Dimitri looks like he’s going to finish him off, but then turns to you. “You want to join hayseed? Kill this piece of shit then.” “Huh? I mean…” you utter in confusion. “Did I stutter pig farmer? Kill this… AARGH FUCK!” Fermeli has now taken advantage of Dimitri by shoving a dagger into his leg and scrambling to get up “Yeah! Take that! How’s that feel?” Fermeli taunts and draws his own sword in an attempt to kill Dimitri At this point you unwisely step into the middle of this fight. “Hey hold on, the pair of you are even now…” “Fuck off pig farmer! You want some of this now? Yeah, let’s see how much of a killer you are!” Fermeli says who doesn’t look frightened of you at all and heads in your direction. “Hey wait I don’t wanna…” You barely dodge his sword swipe to your head. You roll out of the way and quickly grab an arrow and shoot it at Fermeli with your bow, hitting him square in the neck. Some blood spurts out and a surprised look on his face is displayed and then he falls dead. You’ve killed him. You’ve never killed anything before that wasn’t a Kobold or livestock. You feel weird. In the meantime Dimitri gets up and pulls the dagger out of his leg and looks over at Formeli’s body. “Heh, maybe you are a killer after all pig farmer. Well it seems we got an opening now. Take whatever he had as your own. You killed him, you earned it. Welcome to the Chimera Mercenary Company!” While you MAY be in, you’re not necessarily sure if you want in. This may be a bit too much for you. > You go back home If this how it was on your first day, you’d hate to think about if you had to deal with this on a regular basis. “Uh…no, maybe I was wrong. Bye.” You say and quickly take off. “Heh, pig farmer don’t have no stomach for it…Dibs on Foremeli’s shit!” you hear Dimitri yell. When you get back home, your family and mom in particular ask what happened, you explain it and say you don’t want any part of that life. You apologize that you couldn’t go through with it, but your mom looks more relieved than anything. “Well son, I’m just as glad you didn’t join up with that lot anyway. You’ll be helping us out plenty just by working on the farm like always.” You’re glad to hear that. Over the next couple days you fall back into routine again. You still wonder about the future though and you briefly consider the army plan again, but given your short lived experience with mercenary “life” you don’t think you’re cut out with battle on a regular basis. Plus the Zalan Empire is currently having really bad border skirmish with the Tulan Kingdom right now. You resign yourself to the farm life. You play your lute to yourself (and family) when you have the time to do so. It’s a simple life. A year passes and a terrible incident occurs at a far away city known as Nuro. A group of rogue wizards summoned an army of the dead to take it over. They also summoned a lot of demons that have broken free and running rampant now in the Tulan Kingdom. It’s all far away from you, but something like this is pretty serious. Necromancy and Demon summoning is strictly forbidden throughout the land. Meanwhile life on the farm is going the same as it ever did. Hard sometimes, but manageable. Another two years pass and things have gotten worse. The Necromancer Lord (as he’s become to be known) has expanded, even to the point of taking over the Brot Kingdom. The Tulan Kingdom has been totally conquered by a demon army. A Grand Alliance of nations has been formed, but so far they don’t seem to be making much progress. Meanwhile life on the farm is a little harder. Your youngest sister Makana becomes gravely ill during the winter months, but there’s not enough money to pay for a healer and most of the clerics have been summoned to battle with the undead or demon hordes. Sadly she dies making the overall mood of the farm a little more depressing. You don’t even play anymore, your enthusiasm for music died along with the grim realities setting in. Another three years pass and things are down right miserable. War is everywhere. The Demons have been taken care of, but the undead are stronger than ever. Reports even speak of the Necromancer Lord becoming The Great Lich Lord “reborn”. You remember hearing tales by your father of such a being that existed centuries ago. They scared the hell out of you then and the fact that you’re living in a time where he’s returned makes you feel doomed. To make things worse, the Zalan Empire has been becoming increasingly tyrannical. In order to help with the war effort they’ve started bringing back the draft and the talk of ceasing private property to be used for the good of the government. While they say owners will be able to live and still work on their lands and businesses, it will be owned by the Empire. You know it’s only a matter of time when you get a knock on the door by Zalan army troops coming to take you and your brother Mallack away to the army and your family’s farm. Another two year pass… You’re on the eve of battle in a land known as the Garwold Confederacy although it’s steadily becoming a giant graveyard now. The undead hordes have been sweeping relentlessly across the entire landscape. Your own company has had to fall back several times. Morale is low. Not that yours was high to begin with. You don’t even know how you’ve survived this long. You didn’t even have that much military training when they threw you into you first battle a year ago. It was a terrifying experience and you still have nightmares about it. The undead…you’ll never get used to fighting such emotionless creatures that are the embodiment of death and all that’s unnatural. You briefly wonder if your brother Mallack is alright where he’s stationed, but it hardly matters at this point. Battle comes as it always does and you are not so lucky this time. Horrible and powerful creatures known as Blood Specters and Death Knights utterly destroy your side. You fall to undead blades and chilling touches only rise up and join them in their goal of global genocide.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The sound of your alarm clock wakes you and you groggily switch it off. You go through your normal morning routine and grudgingly head off to your job. As always, you arrive at work on time and walk straight into the back room to put on your uniform. Once there you notice your best friend, Ian, is already dressed and preparing to begin. “Hey Jake.” “Hey Ian, ready for another exciting day?” You ask sarcastically. “Oh yea, working here has been highlight of my entire life.” He replies with equal sarcasm, “I hope I never quit.” “Ah yes, stocking food has always been a dream of yours hasn’t it?” “A lifelong-dream. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to live that dream.” He grabs a small nearby crate and rolls it into the main area of the store. You never thought he would end up as a stock boy in a grocery store. Then again, you thought both of you had bright futures. Although you were never really motivated to do anything, Ian was and certainly should have succeeded. You sigh and change into your uniform; this is your life and there’s no point in brooding over what could have been. The day goes by relatively quickly, which is about the only benefit to the job. However it’s a rather hollow benefit, as the day passing by faster just means you have to work that much sooner the next day. You and Ian wave goodbye to each other at five o’clock and you walk to your small one-bedroom apartment, reaching it by 5:30pm. > A strange dream You blink your eyes and look at your new surroundings. You’re alone in the middle of a classroom, a very familiar classroom. Glancing down you notice you’re sitting in a desk and that there’s a small ‘J’ carved into the bottom right of its surface. This is your desk. At least it was, some point in time many years ago. Bringing your attention back up you notice the class is now filled with other students, each sitting in their own desks frantically writing notes. You don’t recognize any of them, or rather you can’t since none of their faces are clear to you. A teacher stands at the front of the class by the blackboard, presumably lecturing, though you all you can hear are muffled words. You idly glance around the room and notice something out of place. A girl stands in the doorway, with long blonde and pink hair, flowing down to just above her waist. You stare at her for a while, trying to remember who she might be. No one else in the class pays any attention to her, and like the rest of them, you can’t seem to make out her face. Suddenly, she turns around and runs down the hallway. You stand up and walk out of the classroom, ignored completely by the rest of the class. As you enter the hallway, you look down the way you saw her ran, but see no one. Curious, you continue down the seemingly endless hallway trying to find her. Finally, you seem to reach the end, as a black metal door now blocks the path. Grasping the handle, you push it open. A bright light emits from the inside, blinding you and preventing you from seeing what’s beyond the door. Curiosity gaining the better of you, you close your eyes and step through the doorway. > The other side “Jacob, wake up it’s time for school!” You hear a familiar voice yell to you, and you groggily wake up in response. What a strange dream... You try and remember the girl from your dream, but can’t figure out who she was. The classroom was probably from your high school, but as far as you can remember that girl was never in any of your classes. You shrug and proceed to get up. After all, high school was years ago, it wouldn’t be unusual for you to forget a few people in that time. Once fully awake, the reality that you live alone dawns on you; there should be no one yelling for you to wake up. Then another thought occurs, you don’t go to school anymore either. Confused, you stand up and walk over to your dresser, which seems different from usual. Opening your drawers you notice your clothes seem different as well. Now even more confused, you get dressed and exit your room to find some answers. Outside your door you find your younger sister standing in front of you, in the uniform that she wore during high school. That is to say, while she has the same face, green eyes, and short brown hair as your sister, she looks considerably younger than she should. “Mom says wake up.” She states quietly, then turns to walk away. “Um, Tina?” you say, trying to confirm it’s her. “Hm?”, she replies softly, turning towards you. “Ah, um, never mind. I’m up.” She nods and walks away. You return to your room and look for your backpack, the one you remember using in high school. Sure enough you find it, right beside your dresser. You open it and grab one of your notebooks, hoping to confirm what you think has happened. You turn to the last note in the book and look at the date: April 24th, 2008 You walk to your bed and sit down, trying accept what has happened. Yesterday was April 23th, but the year was 2018. Ten years ago you were 18 and in your last year of high school. The fact that your sister was in her private high school uniform confirms this, since she was in her first year of high school when you were in your last. Your thought process is interrupted by the familiar yell of your mother. “Jacob, hurry up! You’re going to be late!” There’s no point in thinking over this any longer. You quickly grab your bag and head down the stairs to the front door. "Remember, you need wake up early on Saturday to bring your sister to school, since I'll be working." Your mother tells you, as she stands beside you watching you put on your shoes. You nod quickly in response, and although you’re tempted to hug her or say you’ve missed her, you put it off. The you in the past wouldn’t have done it, so you’re not going to do it either. After all, if this really is the past then doing something different could screw up the future in a major way. You open the door and find Ian standing in front of you. Well, a younger version of him. “It’s about time Jake, you goin' to school today or what?” > Yes “Yeah.” You turn and wave goodbye to your mom, who waves in response, then quickly walk down your front porch to Ian. The two of you reach the sidewalk before you take a brief look back at the house. Exactly as I remember it... The walk to school is uneventful. Ian tells you some story involving his older brother but you don’t really pay attention. The thought that you’re ten years in the past is all you can think about. “Hey.” Ian pushes your shoulder once you reach the entrance of the school and the two of you stop. He has a concerned look on his face. “You alright? You sick or something?” He asks. “Huh? No, I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.” You walk ahead into the entrance of the school and Ian follows shortly after. > You class Although you roughly knew how to get to the school on your own, you have no idea what class you have. You follow Ian in hopes that you have the same first class together. Once at the classroom door Ian turns to you with a puzzled look. “Aren’t you going to class?” “Uh, yea...right...” “You’re acting pretty weird today man.” “Yea well...today’s a pretty weird day for me.” Ian seems even more confused now, but decides to drop it and heads to his seat once he hears the warning bell. You walk down the hallway a little further before opening up your bag in hopes of finding some sort of clue telling you where you’re supposed to be. Inside you find various notebooks and textbooks, but nothing concerning your schedule. You sigh and notice the hallway is now completely empty. The final bell which marks the start of class should be ringing any minute and you have no idea where you’re supposed to be. Unsure of what to do, you decide to sprint down the hallway and look for whatever seems familiar. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) you find two room numbers across from each other which seem somewhat familiar: Room 134 and Room 135. You’ll have to guess which is the right room. > You room 134 You quickly open the door to room 134, the final bell ringing almost as you enter. You managed to make it on time. At least you would have, had this actually been your 12th grade class. Inside you recognize the teacher as the one you had in your 11th grade history class. However, apart from her no one else looks familiar, so this isn’t your class. This is further confirmed when the teacher begins speaking to you. “Why hello, Jacob. Did you miss me and my class so much you felt compelled to return?” You grin, unable to withhold a sarcastic reply. “Yes, yes I did. May I have a seat?” The teacher smiles, amused you played along. “Sadly no, you will have to return to your classroom.” She then points you to the door. You shrug in response and walk across the hall to room 135, the correct room. > You late for class You enter room 135 a few moments after the bell rings, your attention quickly brought to the middle-aged man at the front of the room. He strokes his short beard while glaring at you. "So, Jacob, I see you've arrived late." He says in a angry tone. Luckily, and unfortunately, it seems like this is in fact your current class, which makes you late. The rest of the class joins him in staring at you as you awkwardly nod in response. You've never been particularly nervous in front of crowds, but you still dislike being the center of attention for a negative reason. "I'm sure you understand this means you will have detention after school today." He continues in a demeaning tone. Again you nod in response and quickly take a seat, trying to ignore the majority of the stares in the class. "Now then class, reviewing what we learned yesterday..." The teacher says, beginning his lecture as he turns to face the blackboard. You pay attention for the first few minutes, as a sort of apology for being late, but you quickly lose interest in the topic itself. If you really have gone back in time, then you already know all this anyway; at least that's the excuse you give yourself. You idly look around the room for anything that looks familiar as he drones on. You sigh softly, thoroughly confused at your current situation and bored with this class. Eventually, you spot a girl in the corner of the room that you seem to recognize. Or, rather than recognize, you should say you feel like you know her, for some reason or another. No name comes to mind, nor any memories involving her, but for some reason you still think she's someone you know. Long, black hair, with brown eyes, and a slim figure. What's most noticeable about her though, is her gothic outfit of all black, complete with a spiked dog collar, and black painted finger nails. Looking at her closer, you determine that her black hair is probably dyed, your guess being her originally hair colour is a light brown. You brood over how you may know her, and your predicament as a whole, until the class finally ends. As the goth girl leaves she seems to ignore you completely. Maybe you don't know her? > You continue with your classes The rest of the day goes rather smoothly, sort of. Eventually, your body seems to fill in the blanks as to where you're supposed to be going, and you manage to find the rest of your classes for the day without issue. Unfortunately, Ian wasn't in any of your classes, and you got lost during the lunch break, so you've spent the school day feeling incredibly awkward and alone. Sadly, that's the least of your worries. You've also spent the majority, or rather the entirety, of the day pondering over your current predicament. If you really have gone back in time, there's a lot you can do to improve your future, probably. While that's the conclusion you've reached, you really have no idea where to start in order to "fix" your future. Sure being a stock-boy isn't a grand job, but what else can you actually do? What exactly is there to "fix"? Maybe you're just meant to live unhappily in the future. Maybe you should just enjoy your youth while you can, and accept your future. Maybe you can't even change anything. If fate is real, then any attempt you make to actually change the future should result in, well, nothing happening and the future merely correcting itself. At least, that's what you think. Truthfully, you have no idea what may or may not happen if you attempt to change anything. In fact, you being in the past means you're bound to do something different at some point anyway. Putting all that aside, even more questions come to mind, that you actually try to ignore. "Why" and "how" being the two most disturbing. Even if you can accept you've gone back in time and need to relive the last ten years, you have no idea why this happened, or how it could possibly be possible. Sinister answers are the ones that come to the front of your mind, the most prominent one being that you've somehow pissed off some supernatural being that has decided to make you loop through time forever, until you're driven insane. You always were a pessimist. Although you try to shake it off as impossible, the idea of going back in time was also something you thought impossible up until recently, so you can't get rid of the idea completely. As the day ends, you walk to the front entrance of the school, mentally exhausted. > You remember you have detention Suddenly, as you reach the front entrance of the school, you remember you have detention. You sigh, not thrilled at the prospect of having to spend the next hour sitting in a class to make up for something you didn't even do intentionally. Ian approaches you from behind and then reaches your side, looking at your face as he does. "We going?" "Sorry, I was late for my first class. I got detention..." He frowns, though he doesn't seem that shocked. "Alright man, I told you to hurry there though." "Yeah I know...Where is detention by the way?" "Er, Room 225..." Ian replies, confused that you don't seem to know something that obvious. He looks like he's about to address the issue, but you quickly thank him and head towards room 225, leaving him behind. Sure enough, it's the correct room for detention. An older woman you don't recognize at all sits at the front of the room. She looks up from her book in time to give you a quick glance, then returns to reading. You put your bag at the side of the room and take a seat away from most of the other delinquents already in the room, not wanting to associate yourself with them. You're only here because you've gone back in time after all, you're not like them. As the minutes pass, you find yourself looking around the room for anything of interest, and quickly spot something, or rather someone. The gothic girl from your first class is also in the room, staring out the window and paying no attention at all to the others in the class. She's only two chairs over from you, and with no one between you and everyone else in the class already occupied, you figure you can use this time to talk to her. If you actually want to that is. It is detention after all, so if you're caught you'd likely be punished. > You try to talk to her You decide to take the chance and go for it. The gnawing feelings inside of you that say you know her are too much to ignore, especially in this situation. You wait for a moment when the older woman at the front of the room seems engrossed in her book, and gracefully move over to the chair beside the gothic girl. With all the grace of a stampeding elephant that is. Not only do you turn over the desk your were previously sitting in, you manage to miss sitting in the other desk, and fall to the ground. The class uproars in laughter before they are hastily shushed by the older woman at the front. You sheepishly smile and turn back your original chair to its original position, then sit in the one beside the goth girl. The woman at the front glares at you for what feels like eternity, before finally returning to her book. Meanwhile, the girl beside you is now turned towards you and glaring at you. Mustering your courage, you finally speak, or rather whisper, to her. "Hey, I'm Jacob." You say, darting a quick glance at the front to make sure you did it without being caught. The girl continues silently starting at you for a moment before replying. "Olivia." "Hey, Olivia. So, this is a bit forward, but I could swear I know you from somewhere." You say. "Have we, like, met before or something?" Olivia looks to the front of the room, then back to you and shrugs. "If we had, I'd probably be offended you forgot about me." She states with an apathetic tone. Though, if someone you knew had asked if they knew you, you'd certainly be offended they had forgotten as well. "Well, nice to meet you then." You say, extending your hand. She slowly extends her own hand and shakes yours. "Yeah, I'm sure we'll get along like the bestest of friends." Olivia says sarcastically. She then turns her attention back to the window, effectively ignoring you. Detention ends without too much else happening. You make your way back home afterwards, and along the way you try to retrace your steps from this morning. Although you go down a wrong alley or two, you eventually make it home. Of course, your mother is noticeably upset you are hours late from school. "So Jacob. Mind explaining why you have come home at such at late hour?" Your mother asks impatiently as you enter the house, two hours after you should have been home. "I...err...sort of had detention." You reply. "What for?" "I was late for my first class..." Your mother seems annoyed, but doesn't push the matter too much further. "Honestly Jacob, you won't ever succeed in life if you don't take things seriously. Even if you dislike school, being tardy is no excuse." She says in a rather condescending manner. You nod your head in agreement and your mother shakes her head, then walks away. The rest of the day passes by with nothing of interest really happening. At the end of the day you go to sleep and wonder if you'll wake up back in the future. > You waking Up You wake up to a brand new day, and to a familiar sight. Sure enough, you're still in the past, in your old bedroom. You get up, get dressed, and make your way downstairs to eat some breakfast. There you find your sister, already ready for her school, eating a waffle. She looks up at you and you can tell she's a bit surprised to see you up already, but you ignore it and grab a poptart for yourself. As you munch on it, you can feel Tina's eyes staring at you. "What?" You ask, slightly annoyed. She visibly flinches at your question and quickly returns her gaze to her waffle. The two of you never really got along, before and after she entered high school, so this kind of interaction is normal. You finish your food and head out there door, just in time to see Ian walk up. "Yo." He says, giving you a short wave. You walk to the end of the walkway and join him in walking to school. Like last time, Ian goes on about another story involving his older brother. This time, once you reach school, you split up and find your class without issue. > You class You first class begins, but instead of teaching like normal, your teacher just stands at the front of the class beside the door. "Today, a new student will be joining us". He says. As he does the new student enters the room. You see a pretty girl with familiar long blonde and pink hair flowing down to just above her waist. A realization hits you as the teacher introduces her. "This is Allison- Jacob, what are you doing?" He asks annoyed, as you stand up and point to Allison with you mouth open. This is the girl you saw in your dream the other day. Her features are far more defined than they were in then, but this is unmistakably the same girl. She smiles at you, amused at your action, while the rest of the quietly giggles. "I, um, her, ah never mind..." You say, returning to your seat flustered. You find it rather doubtful that the teacher will care you saw her in your dream. Rather he, Allison and the rest of the class would no doubt find it creepy. "Alright, Allison, please find a seat." The teacher says, and Allison walks over to an empty seat at the back of the room, flashing you another smile as she passes you. A familiar feeling you've been getting all too often reoccurs. Do you know Allison? > You lunch Lunch time comes, and after finally escaping from your class, you find Allison on your way to the lunch room. She smiles again once she notices you, but rather than approach you, chooses to go outside. Instinctively you follow her out to the bench she is now sitting on. "So..." You begin, cautiously taking a seat beside her on the bench. "I don't I know you, do I? I mean, it feels like we've met before." You ask, recalling that you asked Olivia the same thing yesterday. Why does it seem like you know but can't remember so many people in this school? "Hmmm. You could ask far more interesting questions than that." She replies. "Why I'm here, how I'm here, who I'm here for; all are far more interesting questions." She says. You silently sit together, unable to come up with a proper response for her rather odd answer. Sensing that won't change soon, Allison sighs then speaks again. "We just met now, correct? So it's safe to say it's our first meeting." She says. "If you believe in a linear concept of time that is." Allison adds in a playful tone. You frown, having no idea what she's going on about. Her answer puts you a bit at ease though. You haven't met before, according to her, so maybe you're just imagining things. Maybe your dream of her wasn't really about her then. As you think she stands up and walks a few feet away from you. "For the love long since lost, the old friend forgotten, the new one neglected, the sister he could never see, and the brother he could never be." Allison says suddenly, bending forward and leaning in your direction. "That's why I'm here." She says smiling, she then quickly runs away before you have a chance to question her about her cryptic message. Just who is that girl... You wonder, shaking your head. > You try to talk to Allison more You chase Allison into the lunch room and grab her hand as you catch up, stopping her from running. She turns to you and gives an exaggerated sad expression. "Well, ya caught me, now what?" She asks. You look into her eyes for a minute, and decide to try something. "You're lying." You replying accusingly. "I'm what now?" "Lying. You know who I am. No one acts that friendly to someone they just met, and what you just said before sounds like it has some deeper meaning to it." You say. Allison looks down to her hand, which you immediately let go of, then she glances around the room. Finally she sighs. "You caught me. I know you. But the more important thing here, isn't what I know, but what you know. So, what do you know of me, Jacob?" Allison replies, revealing that your guess was right. Unfortunately, you don't actually know anything about her. The closest you have to a memory of her is your dream, and even if she does actually know you, that'd be a rather odd thing to bring up. Then again, she seems like a rather odd person anyway. "How do you know me?" You ask, trying to ignore her question. She pouts and takes a step back. "Beep beep, wrong answer. Should I take this to mean you don't know anything about me?" She asks. > You tell her about the dream "That's not entirely true..." You reply to her. Curious, she takes a step towards you. "So, what do you know about me then?" Allison asks. "I, um, well, it was just a dream." You begin. "I saw you, at least I think it was you, in a hallway of the school. You ran and I chased you, and then..." "And then?" She asks. "And nothing. The dream just ended after I chased you." "Hmmmm..." She replies, clearly thinking about what you just said. "So, when was this dream?" "Just the other day..." You reply, leaving out the part that you actually dreamt it 8 years in the future. Allison appears to be thinking deeply again. Then she suddenly giggles. "That's kind of creepy to be honest." You almost grasp your chest in response to that critical hit of an insult. Sure enough, she finds it weird and creepy that you would have dreamt about her. "Well, I suppose it's not that bad. Even creeps and geeks have their own appeal after all." She continues, teasing you. "Catch ya later." Allison says, waving and walking away. You give her a short wave back and sigh, unhappy with the results of your conversation. Even so, you decide to hang out in the lunch room longer and have something to eat. > You look for Ian After a short search through the cafeteria, you find Ian sitting with a girl, with long black hair, brown eyes, and dressed in a goth outfit. Oddly enough, you recognize her as Olivia, the girl you were talking to in detention yesterday. Noticing you, Ian waves you over to their table. "Hey man, this here is Olivia." He says, motioning to Olivia. "We're both in the chess club together it seems, so I figured I should hang out with her a bit to get to know her better." Olivia looks at you with a mild expression of surprise while Ian speaks, before scoffing at his remark. "I have a boyfriend you know." She states, apparently thinking Ian had an ulterior motive. "Ah, well of course you do. A cute girl like you is quite the catch." Ian replies, although you can sense he didn't really expect her to have one. Olivia blushes slightly, but it's unnoticed by Ian. "That's right, I had forgotten you were in the chess club Ian." You say, finally sitting down. "Yep, I'm the best damn chess-inator there is!" He replies while puffing out his chest with an odd sense of pride. However you don't really doubt he's the best there, as he's always been incredibly smart. You gaze wanders to Olivia, who notices and speaks. "Just cause I look this way doesn't mean I'm stupid. Girls can be smart too, you know." She says harshly to you, apparently thinking you were judging her inability to play chess based on her goth outfit. You quickly shake your head in response. "I, wait, I never said you couldn't." You said defensively. She turns her head away from you, almost in disgust. Ian looks at the two of you confused. "Am I missing something here? Do you two got some history or something?" "No, of course not. We just met yesterday after all. Didn't we, Jacob?" Olivia replies angrily, even more upset now. "I need to go." She announces, quickly standing from the table and walking away. The two of you watch as she leaves and Ian shrugs as you turn to him. "Girls man. Confusing as hell, right?" He says before taking a drink of his milk in front of him. You nod, but can't help but think there was something more to what Olivia said. > The next morning The rest of the day goes by without much else happening. Neither Allison nor Olivia are in any of your other classes, and you don't seem to run into either of them. You walk home with Ian, and spend the rest of the day lounging around your home. You're beginning to feel like you've fallen into your old routine from back in the day. The next morning, Ian arrives at your door, as per usual, except this time he doesn't seem to have his backpack. "Yo, Jacob." He says while standing at the end of your walkway. "Hey Ian, where's your backpack?" You ask while walking towards him, a bit confused. "Ah, well about that, I was thinking we'd do something a little more interesting than school today." He replies. "Such as?" "Well...you'll see when we get there." He says with a bit of a laugh. "It'll be fun man, just hide your bag somewhere first, we won't need it for where we're going." He adds. If you remember right, skipping school so haphazardly wasn't something Ian often suggested. In fact, if you recall correctly, you were usually the one suggesting it and he was the one rejecting the idea. This makes you really wonder what he has in mind for the day. You stand there and consider if you really want to go or not. After all, if you go you'd be missing school, and you guess that would also mean you miss a chance to see Olivia or Allison. "You won't give any hints about what we're gonna do?" You ask, hopeful. "Not a single one." Ian replies smiling. > You go with Ian "Alright fine, I'll come with you." You reply somewhat grudgingly, trying to mask your interest. Fortunately, your mother had already left for work, taking your sister with her, so you easily return your bag to your closet without being caught. During the walk to the unknown destination, you and Ian converse. "So, now that I've agreed, care to let me in on where we're headed?" You ask. "You'll see when we get there." He replies with a smile. You glare at him, annoyed that he refuses to tell you, but continue to walk along with him. After a short walk he stops in front of what looks to be an abandoned warehouse. You glance at him then to the building. "Seriously? This is it?" You ask, clearly disappointed. A worn down and dangerous building isn't exactly your idea of fun, and it doesn't really fit Ian's either. "You'll change your mind about it once we're inside." He says, leading the way. You follow him into it, although you're rather doubtful your opinion will change. Sure enough, once you follow him through the main door, all you see is a large run-down warehouse, exactly like you expected. "Come on, what are we even doing here Ian?" You ask, suddenly feeling a bit uneasy about the situation. "Don't worry man, just a little further." He says, leading you through the large room and into a side-room. In the side room, which appears to have previously been an office of some sort, you see signs that it was recently used. In fact the furniture inside seems rather new, and there's even a mini-fridge at the side, plugged into a battery pack. Ian hops onto a large, comfortable looking couch, and then smiles. "Welcome to the wolves." > The wolves "The what?" You ask, thoroughly confused. You don't remember anything like this happening in the past. Maybe your decisions have been different from before, leading you to a different outcome. The possibilities run through your mind before Ian snaps you out of it. "The Wolves man. Our gang. Well, you're not really in them yet, but I'm sure my brother won't have a problem with it." Ian says, standing up and opening the mini-fridge, pulling out a beer. "Want one?" He asks casually. You don't really care that he's drinking while under aged, but this isn't how you remember Ian acting. "No..." You reply slowly. "Actually, what the hell is going on? Since when have you been in a gang?" You ask demanding an answer. Ian doesn't seem too put off by your response. It's almost as though he expected it. "Ah well, I've been telling you about this club for the last few days. I mean I never said it was a gang or anything, but it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise." He replies. That's when it hits you. The stories he was saying involving his brother that you largely ignored were about the gang he was in. Most likely he was trying to talk it up a bit before bringing you here. Still, Ian has a great future ahead of him, so he really has no need to be in a gang. "So, you in man?" He asks, with a bit of hesitance. > You protest him being in the gang "No." You reply bluntly. "And you shouldn't be in it either man. The hell is wrong with you?" You say, your voice getting louder. Ian at this points backs away a step, and seems a bit afraid. "You're fucking smart man. Why the hell would you throw that away by being in a gang? You won't -" You yell, then you suddenly stop. 'You won't go anywhere in life', is what you were about to say, but then it dawns on you that that is exactly what happens. He joins you, doing nothing with his life, as a stock boy. Your anger subsides, and your breathing normalizes, but Ian still keeps his distance. "I...I'm sorry." You say in a dejected tone, apologizing. You contemplate saying more, but decide against it. Slowly, you open the office door and exit the room. "I'll see you later." You say. Ian doesn't say anything in return, nor does he try to stop you. You leave the abandoned warehouse and wander around town for the rest of the day, wondering what you can do to help Ian. Along the way you run into a group of girls, wearing a uniform you recognize as the one from the school your sister goes to. They laugh obnoxiously and talk about some other girl in their class. You sigh loudly, annoyed by their interruption of your thought process, but continue walking rather than confront them. By the end of the day, you return home, hungry and without any real solution to how to help Ian. You've concluded that there's nothing you can really do to talk him out of being in the gang. Although you think you probably should have asked him why he's in it before leaving. You eat dinner and go to bed, your mom and sister blissfully ignorant of your day out. You glance at your alarm clock before dozing off, happy that tomorrow is Saturday. > You sleep in You happily decide to sleep in, it's Saturday after all. You do the same as all teenagers in high school do, sleep as much as possible. Or rather, you would have spent it sleeping, had you not been rudely awoken at about two by someone knocking on your front door. You groan as you exit your bed and move downstairs to answer the door. "What?" You ask angrily as you open it, only to find Allison happily standing in front of you. She smiles as you open the door. "Why hello there, Jacob, or should I say good morning?" She says cheekily. You open your mouth to retort, but she interrupts you. "Anyway, I've been out here for a while, so can I come it?" She continues, you go to reply, but she again interrupts you. "What do you mean no? Would you really leave a cute girl outside in the cold?" You stand silently and glare at her as she attempts to make a cute pose. "...Done?" "Yep!" > You say "Good, I'm closing the door" "Good, I'm closing the door." You reply, shutting it immediately in her face. You hear a cry of protest from the other side, and some more banging on the door. Happy with your revenge, you open it again to find her standing there pouting. You smile in response. "Done?" You ask. She nods in response. "Good." You reply, shutting the door yet again in her face and laughing. "Just let me in already, Jacob!" You hear her yell from the other side. You comply and smirk once you see her pouting face again. "Well, what you waiting for? Come in!" You say, feigning ignorance and opening the door wider, letting her in. Though it suddenly dawns on you that yourself and a high schooler are about to be alone in your house. You quickly shake off some of the thoughts that come to mind and shut the door once she enters, escorting her into the living room. "So, what'd you want?" You ask. She places her hand to her mouth and does an 'eh-hem', before replying. "I came to invite you somewhere." Allison replies. You wait for a moment for her to explain further, but get no such response. You're getting quite a few of these invitations to mysterious places lately. "And where would that be?" "Does it matter? You'll be there with me!" She answers, smiling. For someone you just met the other day, she sure is acting awfully close to you. "Alright, when did you want to go then?" Allison looks at the nearby clock, seems to nod approvingly, then looks back to you. "Right now." > You agree to go with her "Alright, I'll go with you." You reply. Allison does a triumphant fist pump to the air and smiles. "Great, well then let's go!" She says, standing up and leaving your house. You follower her obediently for about 10 minutes through the streets of your town before you reach your final destination - a park. She sits on a nearby bench and motions for you to follow. "So, what was the point of coming here?" You ask as you sit beside her. Allison gives a soft shrug in response. "No real reason." She answers as she kicks her legs back and forth. You sigh and turn your attention to the park, which while not full of people, still has a few pairs of children and parents playing. Allison makes small talk with you for a bit, about how she used to live in this area, and was fond of this park. You in turn tell her a few random facts about yourself, nothing really interesting. The mood slowly goes from being a light-hearted conversation into awkward silence. Then Allison sighs. "I can't take this anymore..." She says, and then she promptly grabs your shoulders and pushes herself into your chest. You freeze, her sudden show of affection catching you completely off guard. "I, um, Allison?" You manage say, incredibly conscious of the fact that her blonde and pink hair is brushing up against your face, and that you can feel her breathing on you. "Shut up...you're so stupid..." She mumbles into you as she clenches your shoulders. "Why can't you figure it out already..." You don't respond. You can figure by what she's doing now that she probably has a crush on you. You still have no clue how she knows you, however you can guess that the past you just didn't notice her. Thinking back, the you of the past was pretty oblivious to the things going on around him. You quietly curse your past self for not noticing this cute girl earlier. Then reality kicks in, and you remember that you're in a park with other people, being held by a girl a decade younger than you. Your moral center kicks in shortly after, and you force yourself to gentle push her away from you. Even if you're technically the same age now, something just doesn't feel right. Surprisingly, Allison doesn't protest at all. "I'm sorry..." You say, unable to say anything else. "Don't worry, I understand how you're feeling." She says softly with a forced smile. "That was pretty rude and selfish of me, sorry..." She continues, standing up. "I should have thought about how you felt too." Allison finishes. Before you have a chance to properly respond, she dashes out of the park. You sit there for a few minutes in silence. You hadn't thought that going back into the past would have revealed something like a past crush that you hadn't noticed. It depresses you, but eventually you pick yourself up and head home. > You sunday You wake up the next morning to the sound of your mother calling for you, saying something about a phone. You slowly manage to wake yourself up and get dressed, only to have your mom scold you when you finally get downstairs. "Honestly Jacob, it's noon now, it shouldn't take you this long to wake up on a Sunday." She says. "You won't be successful in life if you spend all your time sleeping." You nod your head, still somewhat asleep in response. You can't really disagree with her, given she's right about not being successful in life, though you rather doubt it's because you tend to sleep in. After she finishes scolding you she explains that Ian called and that you need to call him back, so you take the phone and return his call. "Hm? Why did I call?" Ian asks after you call him. "I'm bored, so I wanted to hang out. You busy?" He continues. You tell him you're not so he says he'll be over in a minute and hangs up. About twenty minutes later he comes over, and the two of you spend the afternoon together at your house. You reminisce about the times when you and Ian used to do these kinds of things. For you, high school was probably the high-light of your life, as after that you accomplished nothing but working in a dead end job. Sure it could have been worse, but you still wonder about what could have been. Eventually Ian asks you a question you didn't expect. "So, who you goin' to the fair with?" He asks. You frown and tilt your head slightly, indicating you really have no idea what he's talking about. "The annual fair? You know, the thing that comes here ever year? It's opening up next weekend." You think back and try to remember what Ian is talking about. You're pretty sure you remember a fair happening, or rather it'd be stranger if a fair hadn't happened. "Ah yeah, that fair." You reply, vaguely remembering it. "Yep, that fair. So who you goin' with?" You haven't asked anyone yet, but you should at least tell Ian your intentions. > You you're not going Thinking it over, you decide you don't really want to go to this fair. "I'm not going." You reply. Ian gets visibly upset. "What the hell, man? You say that every year." He says. You shrug in response. "Just doesn't seem like it would be fun, no big deal. Who are you going with?" You ask, trying to move the conversation away from you. "I haven't made plans yet...I think I'll ask Olivia to go with me though." Ian says, with hint of nervousness. "Doesn't she have a boyfriend?" "Who cares? I'm not asking her to date, I'm just seeing if she wants to go to the fair with me." He retorts. Ian's intentions here are obvious, but he's really trying to deny them. You weren't aware he was into Olivia though. Thinking back it kind of makes sense, they're both on the chess team, and he even introduced her to you. "Anyway, she might say no, but you never know." He finishes. You give a short nod, and the conversation ends. The two of you carry on talking and hanging out until the night comes, and Ian leaves. > The next morning The next morning comes and you head out to school with Ian like normal. The day passes and nothing of interest happens at all. You're not surprised or disappointed by this. Thinking back, this was the way you had always lived, simply going through life day after day, doing as little as possible. With no real ambition, you're likely to end up right back at the grocery store after you graduate. Maybe fate really is preventing you from changing your ways, or maybe you're just afraid of what might happen if you pursue something you actually want. If you're just going to fail and get disappointed anyway, then what's the point of trying to change, right? At least, that's what you think. You become content with falling back into your high school routine. Weeks pass, and the thought that you're a decade in the past is all but a distant memory. That's fine though. This is what was supposed to happen; the way it's meant to be. It's because of fate, so it's not your fault that you were unsuccessful in changing anything. At least, that's what you tell yourself. > You retry The sound of your alarm clock wakes you and you groggily switch it off. You go through your normal morning routine and grudgingly head off to your job. As always, you arrive at work on time and walk straight into the back room to put on your uniform. Once there you notice your best friend, Ian, is already dressed and preparing to begin. “Hey Jake.” “Hey Ian, ready for another exciting day?” You ask sarcastically. “Oh yea, working here has been highlight of my entire life.” He replies with equal sarcasm, “I hope I never quit.” “Ah yes, stocking food has always been a dream of yours hasn’t it?” “A lifelong-dream. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to live that dream.” He grabs a small nearby crate and rolls it into the main area of the store. You never thought he would end up as a stock boy in a grocery store. Then again, you thought both of you had bright futures. Although you were never really motivated to do anything, Ian was and certainly should have succeeded. You sigh and change into your uniform; this is your life and there’s no point in brooding over what could have been. The day goes by relatively quickly, which is about the only benefit to the job. However it’s a rather hollow benefit, as the day passing by faster just means you have to work that much sooner the next day. You and Ian wave goodbye to each other at five o’clock and you walk to your small one-bedroom apartment, reaching it by 5:30pm.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up the next morning to the sound of your mother calling for you, saying something about a phone. You slowly manage to wake yourself up and get dressed, only to have your mom scold you when you finally get downstairs. "Honestly Jacob, it's noon now, it shouldn't take you this long to wake up on a Sunday." She says. "You won't be successful in life if you spend all your time sleeping." You nod your head, still somewhat asleep in response. You can't really disagree with her, given she's right about not being successful in life, though you rather doubt it's because you tend to sleep in. After she finishes scolding you she explains that Ian called and that you need to call him back, so you take the phone and return his call. "Hm? Why did I call?" Ian asks after you call him. "I'm bored, so I wanted to hang out. You busy?" He continues. You tell him you're not so he says he'll be over in a minute and hangs up. About twenty minutes later he comes over, and the two of you spend the afternoon together at your house. You reminisce about the times when you and Ian used to do these kinds of things. For you, high school was probably the high-light of your life, as after that you accomplished nothing but working in a dead end job. Sure it could have been worse, but you still wonder about what could have been. Eventually Ian asks you a question you didn't expect. "So, who you goin' to the fair with?" He asks. You frown and tilt your head slightly, indicating you really have no idea what he's talking about. "The annual fair? You know, the thing that comes here ever year? It's opening up next weekend." You think back and try to remember what Ian is talking about. You're pretty sure you remember a fair happening, or rather it'd be stranger if a fair hadn't happened. "Ah yeah, that fair." You reply, vaguely remembering it. "Yep, that fair. So who you goin' with?" You haven't asked anyone yet, but you should at least tell Ian your intentions. > You you're going with Allison "I think I'm gonna go with Allison." You respond. The mysterious girl has been on your mind quite a bit lately, and you still don't know a lot about her. The fair would be a great time to get to know her, especially given she basically just confessed she loved you the other day at the park. There's no way she should feel that strongly about you after such a short time. "Allison? Oh, the new girl in our class? I didn't know you guys were talking." He says, mildly shocked. "Yeah, I've been talking with her this past week." "Hmm...well good luck man." Ian says. "So, who are you goin' with?" You ask, turning the subject onto him. "Me? Hm...I was gonna ask Olivia." "Olivia? Really?" You say surprised. Though, thinking back it shouldn't be too surprising. He did introduce you to her, and she is in the chess club with him. "Really." He replies. "Even though she has a boyfriend?" "Ah well, I'll deal with that when it's brought up." Ian says, laughing. You laugh with him and the conversation turns back to mundane things. The day passes and eventually Ian returns to his home. > Monday Morning As per usual, you and Ian walk to school together in the morning. He talks about his older brother, but by now you've learned to just zone out while he's doing so. You have far more important things to think about anyway, such as how you're actually going to get Allison to go to the fair with you. No, that's probably the wrong way of looking at it. The real hard part will be dealing with her being in love with you. Or having a crush on you. Or just really being into you. Truthfully you're not really sure which it is, but you'll need to settle that matter regardless. You do find Allison attractive, a thought that causes great conflicts within you, but you'd feel like you're taking advantage of her if you pursued her that way. Thinking about it further, you realize you still have no idea what her relation to you is either. After all, she clearly knew you before you met in class. The way she spoke to you and her avoidance of key questions made that clear, not to mention there's no way she'd feel strongly about you if you just met. You sigh as you enter the school, your thoughts becoming muddled. No matter which you decide to confront her on, the first step is to actually find and talk to her. A step greatly hindered by the fact that she isn't in your class when you enter. Confused, you approach the teacher. "Ah..." You say, remembering you still have no idea what his name is. "Um, is Allison sick or something?" You ask, pressing forward anyway. The teacher thinks for a moment then shakes his head. "She hasn't called the school. It's odd, she transferred in near the end of the year, and she has skipped most of the lessons..." He replies pondering. The answer isn't exactly what you were expecting or what you wanted to hear, but you thank him anyway and head to your seat. The first period ends quickly, and you're left wondering how you should proceed with this situation. > You continue with classes like normal Realizing you have no idea where she could be anyway, you decide to just continue with your classes like normal. Allison has to return to school sometime, so you can just speak with her then. Sure enough, in time for the start of your next class, Allison shows up. You don't really have a chance to speak with her during the class, but you can tell she seems pretty down. Not wanting to risk her leaving again before you get the chance to ask, you decide to slip her a note asking her to go to the fair with you. You can't think of a way to solve the other issues, so you'll just deal with them later. You raise your hand to leave for the bathroom, and on your way out you pass by Allison's desk, dropping the note as you do. Out of the corner of your eye as you leave, you notice her open it. When the class ends, you approach her. "So uh....do you have an answer?" You ask nervously. This whole scenario seems rather odd, but you can't help but feel like a high school boy asking out a girl. Allison gives you a short look and a nod. It seems like she's still upset over something though. "You okay Allison?" You ask concerned. She nods again. "I'm just thinking about some things, I'll be fine in a bit." She replies in a low voice, walking away. You frown, but can't think of anything else to say, so you leave it at that. > You after School School ends and you met Ian as per usual at the front of school, however today you have something different in mind. "Hey, Ian, I'll catch you later, I'm going to go with Allison." You tell him, spotting her down the hallway. Ian nods and leaves without you, and you head towards Allison. She smiles as she sees you, apparently back to her normal self. "Why hello there Jacob! Why haven't you left for your house yet?" She asks. "Well, I was waiting for you of course. Care to walk with me?" You reply, gesturing for her to follow. Allison takes the hint and walks besides you. "Hmm, and where might you be taking me?" She asks with a coy smile. "It's a secret." You reply smiling, mimicking how she acted to you on Saturday. Rather than demand any further answers, she just continues smiling. "I see. Well, lead on." And with that, the two of you exit the school grounds. Just like on Saturday, the two of you end up at the park Allison brought you to. While you succeeded in asking her to the fair, you've been pondering the rest of the day as to how you should solve the other issues with her. You're curious as to how she knows you, but you also want to know how she really feels. It's possible you just misunderstood her the other day, so you need to clarify. As the two of you enter the oddly deserted park, you go to speak, but are stopped by her placing her index finger against your mouth. The intimacy of the sudden act immediately pacifies you, and you're left awkwardly staring into Allison's eyes. "One question. I'll answer one question, regardless of what it is, as honestly as I can." She says in a serious tone, removing her finger from your lips. "But after that I make no promises, hehe." She finishes. Allison seems to have read your mind and intentions here, so rather than tempt fate, you give in and ask her one question. > You how do you feel about you\? "Then....how do you feel about me?" You ask nervously. "That's easy. I love you, Jacob." Allison shamelessly confesses with a smirk. Your heart practically skips a beat as you hear the words leave her lips. It's just as you thought, Allison really does love you. But how? She barely knows you, right?" "W....why? How can you lo...love me when we barely know each other." You say stuttering. You shouldn't be this nervous in front of her, after all it's not like you'll actually act on her feelings towards you. You're a decade older than her after all, it just wouldn't feel right. Even so, you've never had a girl in love with you. You can't even put into words how you feel right now. Allison makes a cute pose and crosses her arms. "Beep beep. Nope, you only get one question!" She says triumphantly. "Besides Jacob, a cute girl just confessed her love for you. Shouldn't you be saying something in return?" Allison says accusingly. You take a step back in confusion. She's obviously talking about saying you love her back, but can you really say such a thing? You'll admit she's cute, and you do find her personality to be fun, but are you really sure if you love her or not? It's not something you ever considered before. You shake you're head. There's no way you can say such a thing so soon, even if it was true you've only know Allison for a week. "Thank you." You say. Allison pouts in response, but doesn't seem surprised. "You would say something like that. Just admit you like me!" "Well, I do like you. I can't say anything beyond that though..." You reply earnestly. "I really should be used to you doing this to me by now." She says with a sigh. "Oh well. That's your one question. I need to go now, see you later Jacob." She says, leaving you alone in the park with a wave. You wave back and let her leave, realizing you won't be able to stop her. "I love you, Jacob." Allison's words echo in your head as you watch her go. If someone had asked you what you would expect if you had gone back in time while you were in the future, a girl you never met confessing her love to you would have never come to your mind. > You tuesday The next day Allison appears to be missing again. You're still not sure why she's keeps disappearing like this, but after yesterday you're satisfied enough to not look for her. You got her to agree to go to the fair with you, and to answer one of the questions you were dying to ask, so you'll just be patient and wait for her to return. Although you think that, you're still hopefully she'll show up during the day. However she never shows. Classes pass and the school day ends, and Allison is still nowhere to be seen. "Hey Jacob, something wrong?" Ian asks as the two of you prepare to leave the school. Ian's pretty good at reading you, so he probably knows something has been on your mind all day. "Yeah, I'm really curious as to where Allison is." You reply absentmindedly. "Ah yeah, the new girl who keeps skipping school. You asked her to the fair already right?" "Yeah, she said yes." "Great man, so you ready for the fair?" "What do you mean ready?" The two of you reach the other perimeter of the school and Ian stops. "Ready, as in you planned what you're going to do with her..." He says, as though it's a really obvious fact you should already be aware of. You had been so focused on getting her there and your other issues, that you had forgotten what you'd actually do." "Shit...." You say. You then look to Ian. "What are you going to do then? You asked Olivia to go right? Did she say yes?" You ask. Ian frowns and sighs. "Sort of. I asked her but she's pretty keen on saying she has a boyfriend. Apparently she's not even going to go with him anyway." He complains. You nod sympathetically, and your mind wanders to thinking about what you should do with Allison when the fair comes while Ian speaks. > You wednesday The next day comes and you haven't been able to come up with much of a plan for what to do with Allison. From what you can remember about the fair, it was a rather small one, and was mainly comprised of the typical carnival games that no one can ever win. You think there was a Ferris wheel, at least there should be one, and a few other rides. Apart from the Ferris wheel though, there isn't anything romantic there. You shake your head at the thought and bring your attention back to class. The teacher is going on about something to do with your futures, which you quickly lose interest in, causing your attention to drift back to Allison and the fair. You're still feeling guilty about it all for some odd reason, but you asked her to the fair, which you can assume to implicitly mean she does like you. Well, actually you already know she likes you, you're just not sure how far you should take that. Your plan had been to take her to all the romantic rides, since you figured that's what you're supposed to do, but you're quickly realizing your situation isn't so typical. Halfway through the day, Allison finally arrives at the school. You're relieved to see that she's fine, but feeling somewhat anxious seeing her again. "Hey Jacob! Did I miss anything important?" Allison asks as she joins you and Ian in the cafeteria. "Nope, nothing at all." You reply. She smiles and sits beside you, with Ian smirking in a chair across from the two of you. "Ah, look at the time. Sorry Jacob, I'll leave you with the new girl, I gotta go find Olivia." Ian announces, standing up. Obviously he intends to have you and Allison spend some time alone, which you internally thank him for. "Seeya, new girl." Ian says waving to Allison, to which she politely waves back. She then turns and looks at you. "So...." You begin awkwardly. "Where were you yesterday?" You ask. Allison averts her gaze. "No where special. Just didn't feel like coming to school." She replies. "More importantly, how are things with you?" She asks. You shrug. "Fine. You're ready for the fair this weekend right?" You ask. Allison frowns, apparently unhappy with that reply. "Really? Nothing new or unexpected happened to you?" "Not in particular, no." You reply with a straight face. Apart from the fair and Allison, nothing new or important has been happening to you since you went back in time. Well, apart from you actually going back in time, but you don't intend on telling her that. You hear Allison mutter something under her breath in an annoyed tone, before she speaks again. "I see. That's a shame, new and exciting things happening is what makes life good." She says. "I suppose. We can count the fair as one of those things though, right?" You reply hopeful. Allison sighs, then smiles. "Yes, I suppose we can. I do love those carnival games after all." The two of you finishing eating and return to class. You continue attempting to plan your day at the fair with Allison throughout the afternoon, and by the end of school you think you have a pretty good idea of what to do. > You saturday The rest of the school week passes, and Saturday finally arrives. By now you've made lots of small talk with Allison, finding out what foods she likes, and what rides she prefers. The only thing left to do is to actually go with her. You've arranged to meet at the fair grounds at about 3pm. Before leaving for the fair, you swing by Ian's place to see what he's up to. Unfortunately, upon arriving you find that no one is home, which you find rather confusing. Even if Ian had already left, his brother, or anyone else, should have been home. After a quick scout around his house, you confirm that no one is home, and make your way to the fair alone. You had wanted to hang around Ian and his date to make things less awkward with Allison, but it looks like you'll have no such luck. You arrive at the spot in the fair you agreed to meet Allison at a good ten minutes earlier, enough time to give you a second to take in the experience. You haven't been to the fair before, so the first thing you notice is the overbearing lights and sounds. You'd be surprised if any sort of meaningful conversation could be had between the two of you in this environment. The carnival games create a path through the fairgrounds, and surrounding that straight path lie all of the various rides, along with some food booths. You hear the loud clanging of metal all around you, when suddenly you feel a tug on your shirt. Allison stands behind you, wearing a cute outfit you didn't expect her to wear. You really don't like thinking about her that way, but the way she's acting is forcing your mind in that direction. Then again, the fact that you took her to the fair on a date means you had accepted that you liked her, so you might as well make the best of it. Now that she's here, she looks at you expectantly, and you tell her where you plan to take her first. > You eat some food "Let's go eat some food." You tell Allison. Allison gives you a strange look. "It's a bit earlier for food don't you think?" She says skeptically. You shrug and lead her to the food area anyway. The food from the fair is exactly as you would have expected it to be. It's expensive, high in fat and sugars, and wildly mediocre in taste at best. However the two of you manage to enjoy some nachos together, and afterwards some cotton candy. During the week Allison had told you that she loved cotton candy, so you made sure to get some for the two of you. You had separate ones of course, but it made you happy to see her happy. Come to think of it, when was the last time you felt this way? After high school you had simply followed Ian into the supermarket, a decision that didn't have much thought or effort behind it. Then again, you never had the ambition to do anything anyway, so you were content. At least, you thought you were. "This is sooo good!" Allison practically squeals in delight while eating her cotton candy. "Here!" She says, stuffing some of her partly eaten cotton candy into your mouth. Embarrassed, you eat it, to which she smirks. "Is this really the kind of thing you should get embarrassed about, Jacob?" Allison asks playfully, but your mind is elsewhere. This whole experience for you is so confusing. How can you be so infatuated with someone you just met? Somehow it feels like you've known Allison for so much longer. The two of you finishing eating and go on to the next activity. > You go on the rides "Let's go on the rides." You tell Allison Allison looks you up and down before shrugging. "I would have preferred to go on them later, but alright." She replies. The two of you start off with the bumper cars, where Allison proceeds to repeatedly ram you against the wall with her car, much to your dismay and her pleasure. Next you play around in the hall of mirrors, then you go to the haunted house. It's at this point Allison questions whether or not you'd consider these rides or attractions, but you insist they count. After that, you decide to take her to a 'real' ride, the roller coaster that they have. The roller coaster turns out to be a success, and after it you take her to some spinning cups, spinning cages, and finally, the Ferris wheel. From the start the Ferris wheel had been the only ride you really wanted to take her on, admittedly with an ulterior motive. The two of you reach the top of the Ferris wheel and it stops. You gaze at the view. While it doesn't go that high, and there's nothing particular unique about the scenery in your town, there's something peaceful about seeing it from up here. You turn to Allison, who sighs as she too gazes into the distance. "Hey, Jacob?" She begins. "What do you think about me?" She asks. With her eyes looking elsewhere, she doesn't see you immediately dart your eyes away from her. You had come up here hoping for some sort of romantic scenario to unfold, but her tone and eyes seem distant and sad. Like she's trying to reaffirm something rather, than ask you for real. "I like you, of course." You manage to reply. You don't quite have the courage to say you love her as it stands, but you can at least say this much. She turns to you and smiles. "Yeah....I know...." Allison replies in almost a whisper. "Thanks, I just needed to hear that. Sorry to make you uncomfortable." She says in a more normal tone. You can't stand to see her looking so depressed, so you quickly reply. "Don't be. I'm having fun." You say with a smile. She smiles back, and the ride continues. After exiting the Ferris wheel, you decide on where you want to head to next. > You play some of the carnival games "Let's go win some prizes at the games." You tell Allison. She smiles and nods her head. "Yes! I love these games! You'll win me something right?" She asks, leaning into you. "Well, I'm not very good at them, so I can't promise anything." You reply, weary of her closeness. "That's no good Jacob. When a girl tells you to get something for her, you should just do it!" Allison proclaims in a bossy tone. "I don't think that's the way relationships work...." You reply skeptically. "Probably not, but it's how ours does, hehe." She says with a cheeky grin. "Well like I said, I'm not good at them, but I'll try." "Great, trying is all I ask of you." "So you won't be disappointed when I lose?" "But you won't lose." "I'm telling you I'm n-" You begin to retort, but Allison holds up her hand. "Try before deciding if you'll fail or not." She says calmly. You're slightly put off by her change in tone, but nod and agree to try. Much to your surprise, you actually turn out to be pretty good at carnival games, winning a few prizes for yourself and Allison. Allison has a big "I told you so" smile the whole time, but you don't mind. After winning enough prizes to satisfy Allison, you decide on where you want to go to next. > You end of the fair After the fair, you and Allison make your way to a bench just outside of the fairgrounds. According to Allison, this bench is the best viewpoint for the fireworks they're having. You weren't aware they were even having fireworks, so you just agreed with her to view them from here. The cold air getting at the her, Allison moves closer to you and rests her head on your shoulders. At this point, you think it's all but official the two of you are dating now. All you'd need to do now is lean down and kiss her, but you put it off for now. Whether it's fear, or nervousness, or something else, something inside of you is saying not to right now. Your feelings seem to be somewhat conflicted on the manner still. Allison shifts her weight and nudges in closer to you, causing you to unconsciously put your arm around her. She looks up at you and smiles, and you turn your head and blush. She really is cute, is all you can think about at this moment. Her long blonde and pink stripped hair flows down into her lap, and her bright blue eyes seem to shine even on this poorly lit bench. If she was just cute you could probably deal with ignoring her, but she seems to understand you perfectly, something you never thought could happen. Suddenly, the fireworks start, interrupting your internal conflict. You hadn't even noticed, but by now others have all gathered around the two of you to watch the fireworks. Luckily, you and Allison still have space between you and them, but you're suddenly really self-conscious that you're holding her in your arms. The bright lights and loud sounds of the fireworks seem to memorize the crowd for the few brief minutes they burst in the sky. Then, as quickly as they started, the fireworks end, and the crowd begins to disperse around you. As they do, Allison grips a hold of your hand that's currently around her, and looks into your eyes. "Hey, Jacob?" "H...Hm?" "This is okay, right?" "What is?" "The two of us, together. It's okay....right?" Allison asks, as if she's pleading for you to answer for her. You're not sure if she's also conflicted, or if she just notices you are, but you need to answer her, to make a decision. > You say "No, it's not right" No, this just doesn't feel right. For some reason, you come to the conclusion that you just shouldn't be with Allison. You practically grimace in pain as you slowly move your arm away from her, and gently slide down the bench. "No....it's not right. I'm sorry Allison." You reply as you look to the side, unable to face her properly. There's a brief moment of silence between you, before Allison speaks. "You're probably right. I need to stop this...." She says softly. "I keep getting side-tracked into my own delusions, and I keep doing all these selfish things..." She continues. You look at her and notice she's now sitting with her legs on the bench and her arms wrapped around them. "I'm sorry I keep dragging you into this, Jacob. I'm sure I'll get it right one of these times." You tilt your head slightly in confusion and frown. This isn't exactly what you expected when you rejected her. She's saying all these things you don't understand. "What are you talking about?" You manage to ask, curiosity gaining the better of you. Allison turns to you and sighs. "It's nothing, don't worry about it. See you another time, Jacob." She says as she stands up and walks away from the bench, without looking back. You watch silently as she leaves, before making your way home. You're not sure what the future holds, but you know it won't be one with Allison. > You allison - Bad End Unfortunately, you got the bad ending for Allison's route. This means that you made a few wrong choices in her path, and as a result didn't get a high enough score to get the better ending option (or you simply choose this one over it) . As a hint, I'll tell you that the order of the events you do at the fair matters, and that being concerned for her earlier on could make a difference. Hope you try again!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>School ends and you met Ian as per usual at the front of school, however today you have something different in mind. "Hey, Ian, I'll catch you later, I'm going to go with Allison." You tell him, spotting her down the hallway. Ian nods and leaves without you, and you head towards Allison. She smiles as she sees you, apparently back to her normal self. "Why hello there Jacob! Why haven't you left for your house yet?" She asks. "Well, I was waiting for you of course. Care to walk with me?" You reply, gesturing for her to follow. Allison takes the hint and walks besides you. "Hmm, and where might you be taking me?" She asks with a coy smile. "It's a secret." You reply smiling, mimicking how she acted to you on Saturday. Rather than demand any further answers, she just continues smiling. "I see. Well, lead on." And with that, the two of you exit the school grounds. Just like on Saturday, the two of you end up at the park Allison brought you to. While you succeeded in asking her to the fair, you've been pondering the rest of the day as to how you should solve the other issues with her. You're curious as to how she knows you, but you also want to know how she really feels. It's possible you just misunderstood her the other day, so you need to clarify. As the two of you enter the oddly deserted park, you go to speak, but are stopped by her placing her index finger against your mouth. The intimacy of the sudden act immediately pacifies you, and you're left awkwardly staring into Allison's eyes. "One question. I'll answer one question, regardless of what it is, as honestly as I can." She says in a serious tone, removing her finger from your lips. "But after that I make no promises, hehe." She finishes. Allison seems to have read your mind and intentions here, so rather than tempt fate, you give in and ask her one question. > You how do you know you\? "Alright, how do you know me? You act really friendly with me, like we've known each other for a long time, but I've only known you for less than a week." You tell her. "Hmm...The easiest way to answer that, is to say we used to date." She responds. "We did?" You ask confused. You don't remember dating her in the past. "We certainly did. How do you think I know you so well?" She asks in turn. While she hasn't mentioned any facts about your past or anything to prove she really knows you, she is pretty good at guessing what you'll say and do. To this, you shrug, unable to come up with an answer. "Thought so. We dated, that's the answer to your question. The only answer I'll be giving, I might add." Allison says, attempting to stomp out any additional questions. You don't want to say she's wrong, and that you haven't dated before, but you honestly can't remember your past well enough to dispute it. "Alright, when did we date then?" You ask. "Nope, that's a second question!" Allison answers with a smile. "No it's not, it's part of the first question!" You reply. "Nope! It's a brand new question. That's it for today Jacob! See you later." Allison says, turning and leaving with a short wave before you get a chance to tell her otherwise. You sigh, but with your question answered, just give in and wave back. You didn't expect that you had dated her before, but it's not entirely impossible. It probably would have been at least seven years ago, when you were eleven, since in between then and now you were in a completely different city. Allison must have a pretty good memory to remember you from back then. Done with the park, you return home.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As per usual, you and Ian walk to school together in the morning. He talks about his older brother, but by now you've learned to just zone out while he's doing so. You have far more important things to think about anyway, such as how you're actually going to get Allison to go to the fair with you. No, that's probably the wrong way of looking at it. The real hard part will be dealing with her being in love with you. Or having a crush on you. Or just really being into you. Truthfully you're not really sure which it is, but you'll need to settle that matter regardless. You do find Allison attractive, a thought that causes great conflicts within you, but you'd feel like you're taking advantage of her if you pursued her that way. Thinking about it further, you realize you still have no idea what her relation to you is either. After all, she clearly knew you before you met in class. The way she spoke to you and her avoidance of key questions made that clear, not to mention there's no way she'd feel strongly about you if you just met. You sigh as you enter the school, your thoughts becoming muddled. No matter which you decide to confront her on, the first step is to actually find and talk to her. A step greatly hindered by the fact that she isn't in your class when you enter. Confused, you approach the teacher. "Ah..." You say, remembering you still have no idea what his name is. "Um, is Allison sick or something?" You ask, pressing forward anyway. The teacher thinks for a moment then shakes his head. "She hasn't called the school. It's odd, she transferred in near the end of the year, and she has skipped most of the lessons..." He replies pondering. The answer isn't exactly what you were expecting or what you wanted to hear, but you thank him anyway and head to your seat. The first period ends quickly, and you're left wondering how you should proceed with this situation. > You leave and look for Allison You decide it's better to go look for Allison than to wait around at school. It's not like you're learning anything important anyway. You brazenly walk out the front doors of the school and head towards the park Allison took you to on Saturday; the only place you think she could be. That is to say you start to head there, when you see Allison walking towards the school. Confused, but with your objective already achieved, you approach her. She notices you, and brings her gaze to the ground. "Hey, Allison." You say. Moments after the words leave your lips, you realize she seems off. "You okay?" You ask in a concerned manner. Allison brings her eyes to yours briefly, before looking away and doing a small shuffle backwards. "...I'm fine..." She replies after a short silence. "You don't seem fine..." You reply, fairly certain she's feeling nervous. Though, given your last meeting that's to be expected. Not being the best with words, you decide you can't apologize for this properly, so you move straight into your question. "So, uh, I was wondering if you wanted to go to the fair with me..." You say, unconfidently with a small blush. Allison looks up at you, and for the first time you notice her eyes are bright blue. She stares at you expressionless for a second, before smiling. "Yeah, that's just like you." She says happily with a giggle, her mood changing completely. "Yep, this is fine. I shall allow you to take me to the fair, Jacob." She continues in a fake haughty tone. "Great. So...we're good then?" "Of course. I was never mad at you to begin with." She replies in a matter-of-fact tone. "I'm just dealing with some things is all." She says, walking by you towards the school. "Come on, you really shouldn't skip school." Allison says with a sheepish smile, continuing towards the school. Like you're one to talk... You think to yourself with a smile as you follow her.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Good, I'm closing the door." You reply, shutting it immediately in her face. You hear a cry of protest from the other side, and some more banging on the door. Happy with your revenge, you open it again to find her standing there pouting. You smile in response. "Done?" You ask. She nods in response. "Good." You reply, shutting the door yet again in her face and laughing. "Just let me in already, Jacob!" You hear her yell from the other side. You comply and smirk once you see her pouting face again. "Well, what you waiting for? Come in!" You say, feigning ignorance and opening the door wider, letting her in. Though it suddenly dawns on you that yourself and a high schooler are about to be alone in your house. You quickly shake off some of the thoughts that come to mind and shut the door once she enters, escorting her into the living room. "So, what'd you want?" You ask. She places her hand to her mouth and does an 'eh-hem', before replying. "I came to invite you somewhere." Allison replies. You wait for a moment for her to explain further, but get no such response. You're getting quite a few of these invitations to mysterious places lately. "And where would that be?" "Does it matter? You'll be there with me!" She answers, smiling. For someone you just met the other day, she sure is acting awfully close to you. "Alright, when did you want to go then?" Allison looks at the nearby clock, seems to nod approvingly, then looks back to you. "Right now." > You refuse to go with her "I'd really prefer not to..." You reply, attempting to dissuade her. In response, she moves towards you until she's right by your face. "Are you really refusing to go out with a cute girl?" She asks accusingly. For a moment she seems to be thinking about something, then she suddenly grabs your hand. "Nope, you're coming!" Allison happily declares. You pull your hand away from her, standing your ground. "I don't want to go with you. Who the hell are you anyway?" You ask the girl. For someone who you just met a few days ago, she's incredibly clingy and demanding of you. Shocked, she backs away from you and sits back in her chair, eyes facing the ground. "I...I'm sorry Jacob." She weakly states. "I got a bit ahead of myself it seems. Heh, something must really be wrong with me." She continues in a dejected tone. You sigh. It seems you got too angry with her and made her upset. Truthfully you find her persistence a little, well more than a little, annoying. You never had that much motivation to do anything growing up, so seeing someone so opposite to you just gets at you a bit. "Naw, it's me that has something wrong with him. Refusing to leave with such a cute girl." You reply, you face flushing red as you compliment her. "But really, I barely know you. Why are you so interested in me?" You ask. You also remember that you never actually told her where you live, but you get the feeling you really don't want to hear how she knows. Allison takes a deep breath, smacks her cheeks, and looks up to face you. "No real reason. You just seemed interesting is all." She says with an obviously fake smile. "Well, if you don't want to go with me I should probably go." She says standing up. "I'll see you later Jacob..." She says as she waves to you and exits your house. You want to question her more, but she seems like she's moments away from emotionally breaking down, so you instead just nod in response as she leaves. You lay down on your couch after she's gone and stare up at your ceiling. Who is she... You think, before drifting off to sleep for a nap.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You happily decide to sleep in, it's Saturday after all. You do the same as all teenagers in high school do, sleep as much as possible. Or rather, you would have spent it sleeping, had you not been rudely awoken at about two by someone knocking on your front door. You groan as you exit your bed and move downstairs to answer the door. "What?" You ask angrily as you open it, only to find Allison happily standing in front of you. She smiles as you open the door. "Why hello there, Jacob, or should I say good morning?" She says cheekily. You open your mouth to retort, but she interrupts you. "Anyway, I've been out here for a while, so can I come it?" She continues, you go to reply, but she again interrupts you. "What do you mean no? Would you really leave a cute girl outside in the cold?" You stand silently and glare at her as she attempts to make a cute pose. "...Done?" "Yep!" > You say "Fine, come in" "Fine, come in", you reply, opening the door further and allowing her to enter. Given her personality, you're rather doubtful she would have accepted no as an actual answer. You lead her into your living room and sit across from her once there. "So, what'd you want?" You ask skeptically. Allison's eyes seem to wander around your living room during this time, but are brought back to you once you ask. "I'd like to invite you somewhere...can you come?" She asks. You sit and wait for her to elaborate, but when she remains silent you decide you'll have to ask yourself. "Invite me to where?" "It's a secret!" "That doesn't answer my question." "It wasn't suppose to!" "You're not going to answer me properly are you?" You ask. She grins and nods her head. "Can you at least tell me when?" "Now." "Why now?" "Why not now?" You figure that's all you'll get out of her, so you decide to just make up your mind about the matter.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"No." You reply bluntly. "And you shouldn't be in it either man. The hell is wrong with you?" You say, your voice getting louder. Ian at this points backs away a step, and seems a bit afraid. "You're fucking smart man. Why the hell would you throw that away by being in a gang? You won't -" You yell, then you suddenly stop. 'You won't go anywhere in life', is what you were about to say, but then it dawns on you that that is exactly what happens. He joins you, doing nothing with his life, as a stock boy. Your anger subsides, and your breathing normalizes, but Ian still keeps his distance. "I...I'm sorry." You say in a dejected tone, apologizing. You contemplate saying more, but decide against it. Slowly, you open the office door and exit the room. "I'll see you later." You say. Ian doesn't say anything in return, nor does he try to stop you. You leave the abandoned warehouse and wander around town for the rest of the day, wondering what you can do to help Ian. Along the way you run into a group of girls, wearing a uniform you recognize as the one from the school your sister goes to. They laugh obnoxiously and talk about some other girl in their class. You sigh loudly, annoyed by their interruption of your thought process, but continue walking rather than confront them. By the end of the day, you return home, hungry and without any real solution to how to help Ian. You've concluded that there's nothing you can really do to talk him out of being in the gang. Although you think you probably should have asked him why he's in it before leaving. You eat dinner and go to bed, your mom and sister blissfully ignorant of your day out. You glance at your alarm clock before dozing off, happy that tomorrow is Saturday. > You wake up early Remembering your mother's words, you quickly spring to life early in the morning, and prepare to take your sister to school. Though, all that really involves is you walking a few blocks with her. Although you should have your license at this age (and after a quick check you confirm you do), your mother has the only vehicle, so driving your sister is out of the question. After getting ready you exit your door to find Tina standing there, her fist seemingly prepared to knock. An awkward moment of silence follows as you look at her, contemplating why you two never talk in the future. "We...have to go soon." She manages to say, looking down at the ground to avoid eye contact. Why the hell does it seem like she's afraid? It annoys you, but you try to ignore it. Your own sister, afraid of you. "Yeah, let's go." You say, walking past her and towards the door. Come to think of it, you moved around a few times while you were a child, and a good portion of it was due to her. Even though Ian is your best friend, now and in the future, you had only become friends with him a year ago at this point in time. You had lived here before, years ago when you were a child, but you had to moved because of your father's work. You moved back eventually, but it was only due to Tina getting accepted into the private school she's currently attending. Finally ready, the two of you exit the house and begin the walk towards her school. It's done mainly in silence, and as you get closer to the school, she seems to unconsciously move closer to you, distancing herself again whenever you notice. It always annoyed you how quiet and shy she seemed to be. Once at the school's large and elegant gates, you stop. "There, have fun at school." You say, as you begin to walk away. "U-um..." You hear a small voice say behind you as you go to walk. "Can you pick me up after...after school...?" You hear your sister request. Turning to her you sigh. "Why?" You ask in an obviously annoyed tone. Tina nervously moves back as she clutches her bag. "Just because..." > You agree to pick her up You look at Tina then at your surroundings. You don't really have much else to do later today, so you might as well pick her up, you decide. "Fine, I'll see you after you're done then." Tina, oddly enough, smiles in response. Something you shouldn't find odd at all, but she never seemed to smile from what you remember. "Thanks, see you after I'm done then!" She replies, hurrying into the school. You watch her run away and frown. Why does she want you to pick her up anyway? Sighing again, you turn and leave the school, returning back to your home. It's only about a 10 minute walk to the school, which calls into question if walking her to and from it really matters, but the distance means you basically have the entire day to yourself. Which you of course, decide to spend sleeping. Or rather, you would have spent it sleeping, had you not rudely been awoken at about two by the smashing of fists against your front door. You groan as you exit your bed and move downstairs to answer the door. "What?" You ask angrily as you open it, only to find Allison happily standing in front of you. She smiles as you open the door. "Why hello there, Jacob, or should I say good morning?" She says cheekily. You open your mouth to retort, but she interrupts you. "Anyway, I've been out here for a while, so can I come in?" She continues, you go to reply, but she again interrupts you. "What do you mean no? Would you really leave a cute girl outside in the cold?" You stand silently and glare at her as she attempts to make a cute pose. "...Done?" "Yep!"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Remembering your mother's words, you quickly spring to life early in the morning, and prepare to take your sister to school. Though, all that really involves is you walking a few blocks with her. Although you should have your license at this age (and after a quick check you confirm you do), your mother has the only vehicle, so driving your sister is out of the question. After getting ready you exit your door to find Tina standing there, her fist seemingly prepared to knock. An awkward moment of silence follows as you look at her, contemplating why you two never talk in the future. "We...have to go soon." She manages to say, looking down at the ground to avoid eye contact. Why the hell does it seem like she's afraid? It annoys you, but you try to ignore it. Your own sister, afraid of you. "Yeah, let's go." You say, walking past her and towards the door. Come to think of it, you moved around a few times while you were a child, and a good portion of it was due to her. Even though Ian is your best friend, now and in the future, you had only become friends with him a year ago at this point in time. You had lived here before, years ago when you were a child, but you had to moved because of your father's work. You moved back eventually, but it was only due to Tina getting accepted into the private school she's currently attending. Finally ready, the two of you exit the house and begin the walk towards her school. It's done mainly in silence, and as you get closer to the school, she seems to unconsciously move closer to you, distancing herself again whenever you notice. It always annoyed you how quiet and shy she seemed to be. Once at the school's large and elegant gates, you stop. "There, have fun at school." You say, as you begin to walk away. "U-um..." You hear a small voice say behind you as you go to walk. "Can you pick me up after...after school...?" You hear your sister request. Turning to her you sigh. "Why?" You ask in an obviously annoyed tone. Tina nervously moves back as she clutches her bag. "Just because..." > You say no Why should you have to pick her up? It's bad enough you had to walk her here, but Tina is old enough to be walking to and from her own high school. "No, you can walk home yourself. Grow up already." You reply coldly, turning and walking away. Tina doesn't reply back, and merely walks to the school. She should have expected that answer, given you have no reason to pick her up. Returning to your house, you do what any high schooler does, you spend the day sleeping. Or rather, you would have spent it sleeping, had you not rudely been awoken at about two by the smashing of fists against your front door. You groan as you exit your bed and move downstairs to answer the door. "What?" You ask angrily as you open it, only to find Allison happily standing in front of you. She smiles as you open the door. "Why hello there, Jacob, or should I say good morning?" She says cheekily. You open your mouth to retort, but she interrupts you. "Anyway, I've been out here for a while, so can I come it?" She continues, you go to reply, but she again interrupts you. "What do you mean no? Would you really leave a cute girl outside in the cold?" You stand silently and glare at her as she attempts to make a cute pose. "...Done?" "Yep!"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"The what?" You ask, thoroughly confused. You don't remember anything like this happening in the past. Maybe your decisions have been different from before, leading you to a different outcome. The possibilities run through your mind before Ian snaps you out of it. "The Wolves man. Our gang. Well, you're not really in them yet, but I'm sure my brother won't have a problem with it." Ian says, standing up and opening the mini-fridge, pulling out a beer. "Want one?" He asks casually. You don't really care that he's drinking while under aged, but this isn't how you remember Ian acting. "No..." You reply slowly. "Actually, what the hell is going on? Since when have you been in a gang?" You ask demanding an answer. Ian doesn't seem too put off by your response. It's almost as though he expected it. "Ah well, I've been telling you about this club for the last few days. I mean I never said it was a gang or anything, but it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise." He replies. That's when it hits you. The stories he was saying involving his brother that you largely ignored were about the gang he was in. Most likely he was trying to talk it up a bit before bringing you here. Still, Ian has a great future ahead of him, so he really has no need to be in a gang. "So, you in man?" He asks, with a bit of hesitance. > You join the wolves You ponder joining the Wolves with Ian for a minute. This certainly isn't typical behavior for him after all. After a brief inner argument, you determine that there has to be something more to this gang. Ian wouldn't throw his life away for no reason, and who knows, maybe him saying it's a 'gang' is just some self-imposed label. Maybe they act nothing like a gang. "Yeah, sure man I'll join." You reply. Ian smiles, clearly relieved. "Thanks, for a second there I wasn't sure what you'd do." He says with a bit of a nervous laugh. For a second there you weren't really sure what you'd do either. You take a few steps into the room and sit on a comfy looking recliner. "So...what now? What exactly does this gang of yours do?" You ask, as Ian places the beer he was previously holding back into the fridge. It seems he didn't plan on drinking it unless you did as well. "Well, calling it a gang may have been a stretch. My brother made it up with his friends a while back, and I joined it pretty recently. So far we basically just all hang out together here every once in a while. A home away from home...kind of." He says, trailing off a bit at the end. "Hmmm. Cool." You reply. You don't really want to pry any deeper into his reasons for being here, as you can kind of sense it's a sensitive topic, and you don't remember enough about the past, or rather the present, to be confident in your ability to not say something stupid. The two of you hang out in the gang's headquarters for the rest of the day, until about the time when class would normally end. You don't do a whole lot, just sit around and talk, but it's kind of nice to just chill with Ian. On your way out, Ian says one more thing. "Oh by the way, I can't make you an official member myself. You're gonna have to come back when my brother is here to do that." "Sure, maybe he'll be here next time." You reply as you return home. Once there, you find that neither your sister nor mother are aware that you skipped school today. The night passes and you lay in your bed, staring at your alarm clock, quite pleased that tomorrow is a Saturday.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The rest of the day goes by without much else happening. Neither Allison nor Olivia are in any of your other classes, and you don't seem to run into either of them. You walk home with Ian, and spend the rest of the day lounging around your home. You're beginning to feel like you've fallen into your old routine from back in the day. The next morning, Ian arrives at your door, as per usual, except this time he doesn't seem to have his backpack. "Yo, Jacob." He says while standing at the end of your walkway. "Hey Ian, where's your backpack?" You ask while walking towards him, a bit confused. "Ah, well about that, I was thinking we'd do something a little more interesting than school today." He replies. "Such as?" "Well...you'll see when we get there." He says with a bit of a laugh. "It'll be fun man, just hide your bag somewhere first, we won't need it for where we're going." He adds. If you remember right, skipping school so haphazardly wasn't something Ian often suggested. In fact, if you recall correctly, you were usually the one suggesting it and he was the one rejecting the idea. This makes you really wonder what he has in mind for the day. You stand there and consider if you really want to go or not. After all, if you go you'd be missing school, and you guess that would also mean you miss a chance to see Olivia or Allison. "You won't give any hints about what we're gonna do?" You ask, hopeful. "Not a single one." Ian replies smiling. > You go to school instead Thinking it over, you decide it's better if you don't miss school today. You'd miss your chance to talk to Olivia or Allison if you did after all. "Sorry, I think I'll just go to school, Ian. See ya." You say, walking onwards without him. "Alright then, your loss man. Later." Ian replies with shrug and a wave. He then turns and goes his own way. The walk to school is uneventful, and surprisingly when you arrive you find that Allison isn't there in your first class. Olivia is there as per normal, and she seems to ignore your presence, although you occasionally catch her glancing at you. The class itself is boring, and you start to regret not skipping it with Ian. However, once it ends and you finally have spare time, you jump up and approach the teacher. "Hey, um, Mr..." You begin, however the realization hits you that you don't actually know his name, so you quickly just ask your question. "Why isn't Allison at school today?" Your teacher looks at you confused. "Allison?" He asks. A brief moment of panic comes over you where you think you may have imagined her entirely. Then the teacher begins to speak again. "Ah, the new girl that joined us yesterday..." He says. Internally you breathe a sigh of relief, happy to know you haven't gone insane. "Yes, it appears she is absent today. Strange, she only just started yesterday..." He continues. You thank him and quickly exit the room. In the hall, you can see Olivia making her way towards the cafeteria. > You look for Allison More concerned about where Allison could be than school, you decide to look for her. With that in mind, you really have no idea as to where she could be. Your initial search is just around your high school, in the usual spots you might expect to find someone. The library, cafeteria, gym, courtyard, and the outside field all turn up nothing. If nothing else, it's clear that she's not at school. Undeterred, you decide this is a good time to skip school to continue your search. You find yourself aimlessly walking around town in search of a girl you hardly even know. Sometime during your search, you find yourself wondering why you care so much about finding her. Do you intuitively know something is wrong and must find her? No, that can't be right, you don't think anything in particular is wrong with the situation. You were about to skip school yourself today, so it's not that big a deal that Allison would skip. Then, maybe you're just drawn to her? She is an odd one after all, so it's only natural you'd be curious about her. There's also the matter of her probably knowing more than she lets on. Maybe she even knows about your current predicament... "For the love long since lost, the old friend forgotten, the new one neglected, the sister he could never see, and the brother he could never be." Were the words she said to you when you first approached her. You hadn't really considered any real deep meaning to them, but considering your circumstances, it probably has to do with you. Then, which are you, and for that matter, who is she? Does she actually know that you went back in time, or is this simply a large coincidence? You shake your head a bit. It's probably better if you just ask her again what she meant by all of that when you find her. As your mind was wandering, your feet were still moving. You now find yourself outside of your sister's private high school, oddly enough. You guess it's about time school was over, as students seem to be exiting the school in an orderly fashion. That would mean that you spent three hours looking for Allison with no results. You sigh to yourself, although not finding her really should have been expected. You're about to leave the grounds when you notice your sister walk out. Tina exits the front doors of school looking rather nervous, a normal sight with her it would seem. Thinking you should probably head home now, you turn to leave, when you notice a group of students approach her. > You watch what happens You stand on the other side of the gated fence and watch as the group approaches your sister. From this distance you can't hear what they're saying, but you should be able to tell the general mood. Tina isn't really a social type, and when she's put into social situation she tends to just try and hide, which is why a group of students talking to her sparks your interests. The group consists of three girls and four guys, all dressed the uniform of the private school. They speak to her for a few minutes, during which time your sister attempts to cower back into the school. Eventually, one of the girls walk right up to your sister and push her to the ground. A chill goes down your spine as you wonder who the hell these people are. You don't remember your sister being bullied in her high school, so why is this happening? Immediately after pushing her to the ground, the group leaves the school. You watch as they pass you by the front gate, but decide it's best not to confront them for the time being. Shortly after, you see Tina timidly walk by. She turns and notices you standing by the front gate, a mixture of fear and confusion in her eyes. "Why...are you here?" She asks. You pause to think for a moment, and just as you're about to say something, your mother pulls up beside the two of you. "Tina, who is...wait, Jacob? What are you doing here?" She asks, repeating Tina's question. Not wanting to admit you skipped the later half of classes to search for a girl you barely know, you lie. "I just decided to pick up Tina is all." You say. Your mother looks at you skeptically, but tells you and your sister to get in anyway. On the drive back, she reminds you that you need to wake up early to bring Tina to school tomorrow, since she works all day Saturday. You groan in response, but otherwise say nothing, and the rest of the night passes by without anything happening. > You wake up early Remembering your mother's words, you quickly spring to life early in the morning, and prepare to take your sister to school. Though, all that really involves is you walking a few blocks with her. Although you should have your license at this age (and after a quick check you confirm you do), your mother has the only vehicle, so driving your sister is out of the question. After getting ready you exit your door to find Tina standing there, her fist seemingly prepared to knock. An awkward moment of silence follows as you look at her, contemplating why you two never talk in the future. "We...have to go soon." She manages to say, looking down at the ground to avoid eye contact. Why the hell does it seem like she's afraid? It annoys you, but you try to ignore it. Your own sister, afraid of you. "Yeah, let's go." You say, walking past her and towards the door. Come to think of it, you moved around a few times while you were a child, and a good portion of it was due to her. Even though Ian is your best friend, now and in the future, you had only become friends with him a year ago at this point in time. You had lived here before, years ago when you were a child, but you had to moved because of your father's work. You moved back eventually, but it was only due to Tina getting accepted into the private school she's currently attending. Finally ready, the two of you exit the house and begin the walk towards her school. It's done mainly in silence, and as you get closer to the school, she seems to unconsciously move closer to you, distancing herself again whenever you notice. It always annoyed you how quiet and shy she seemed to be. Once at the school's large and elegant gates, you stop. "There, have fun at school." You say, as you begin to walk away. "U-um..." You hear a small voice say behind you as you go to walk. "Can you pick me up after...after school...?" You hear your sister request. Turning to her you sigh. "Why?" You ask in an obviously annoyed tone. Tina nervously moves back as she clutches her bag. "Just because..." You remember how yesterday you saw her get bullied by that group of students. Maybe that has something to do with why she wants to be picked up...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Thinking it over, you decide it's better if you don't miss school today. You'd miss your chance to talk to Olivia or Allison if you did after all. "Sorry, I think I'll just go to school, Ian. See ya." You say, walking onwards without him. "Alright then, your loss man. Later." Ian replies with shrug and a wave. He then turns and goes his own way. The walk to school is uneventful, and surprisingly when you arrive you find that Allison isn't there in your first class. Olivia is there as per normal, and she seems to ignore your presence, although you occasionally catch her glancing at you. The class itself is boring, and you start to regret not skipping it with Ian. However, once it ends and you finally have spare time, you jump up and approach the teacher. "Hey, um, Mr..." You begin, however the realization hits you that you don't actually know his name, so you quickly just ask your question. "Why isn't Allison at school today?" Your teacher looks at you confused. "Allison?" He asks. A brief moment of panic comes over you where you think you may have imagined her entirely. Then the teacher begins to speak again. "Ah, the new girl that joined us yesterday..." He says. Internally you breathe a sigh of relief, happy to know you haven't gone insane. "Yes, it appears she is absent today. Strange, she only just started yesterday..." He continues. You thank him and quickly exit the room. In the hall, you can see Olivia making her way towards the cafeteria. > You catch up to Olivia You briskly walk down the hall and catch up with Olivia. As you do, you recall that the last time the two of you talked, she was rather hostile with you. "Hey Olivia, listen, I'm sorry if I offended you or something." You say, attempting to mend whatever you broke earlier. "Can't we just start fresh? Forget whatever I did to make you angry? You ask hopeful, extending your hand to her. She glances at it, then at you, and sighs. "Sure, why not. Forgetting things seems to be a pattern for us anyway." Olivia replies, shaking your hand gently. You smile in response, though her off-hand sarcastic remark confuses you slightly. "So, where are you headed off to?" You ask. "To the lunchroom, it's lunch time after all." Olivia responds, rather impassively. "Fair enough, so, mind if I sit with you?" You ask, hoping you can maybe find out more about her. You're starting to think that your feeling that you knew her was off, but you still want to make sure. She glares at you as the two of you enter the lunchroom. "You remember I said I had a boyfriend, right?" She asks. "Of course." You say, not dissuaded in the slightest. "Then fine, we can sit together." You smile, relieved that she agrees to sitting together. As you approach your seats, you think over what you should talk to her about. > You ask about her past At this point you decide you shouldn't pry into her love life, so you ask her about her past. You pose the question, and she looks at you with a hostile expression that leads you to believe you may be entering a risky topic. "My past? Why do you care?" She asks. "Just curious is all. I can tell you about my past first if that helps..." You reply defensively. Olivia stares at you angrily, which you take to mean you better start talking. "A-alright then. Well, I grew up in this city until I was about...let's see now, twelve I think. Then my sister got accepted into some fancy private school, and we had to move about an hour away. I still remember that we had to pick up and pack in like a day with no real notice. While in this other city my father...passed away." You say, remembering him. Your father was by no stretch the greatest father ever, but he was able to pay you attention from time to time and had no large faults, so you have fond memories of him. Olivia's expression gets a bit softer, probably because she feels bad that she had you bring up a sad topic. You continue on as normal. "Then my sister got accepted into another private school, that private high school in this town. So, we moved back here after being gone for six years. Once I came back I met Ian, though I haven't seen any of my old friends..." You finish, remembering that you did have some friends that you left behind originally, but you never did find them. Come to think of it, with how fast you left you're not even sure if you had to say goodbye to them to begin with. Olivia looks at you, seeming like she wants to say something. "I see..." Is all she manages to say thought. You're not sure why, but it seems like the topic has gotten her a tad depressed. She packs up her lunch and stands. "I have to go now...talk to you later." She says. You give her a wave goodbye, but feel a bit disappointed she didn't talk about herself at all. You sigh and exit the cafeteria, deciding to try asking her about her past some other time. The rest of the day goes by without much happening, and when you arrive home nothing exciting happens either. The night passes and you lay in your bed, staring at your alarm clock, quite pleased that tomorrow is a Saturday.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You briskly walk down the hall and catch up with Olivia. As you do, you recall that the last time the two of you talked, she was rather hostile with you. "Hey Olivia, listen, I'm sorry if I offended you or something." You say, attempting to mend whatever you broke earlier. "Can't we just start fresh? Forget whatever I did to make you angry? You ask hopeful, extending your hand to her. She glances at it, then at you, and sighs. "Sure, why not. Forgetting things seems to be a pattern for us anyway." Olivia replies, shaking your hand gently. You smile in response, though her off-hand sarcastic remark confuses you slightly. "So, where are you headed off to?" You ask. "To the lunchroom, it's lunch time after all." Olivia responds, rather impassively. "Fair enough, so, mind if I sit with you?" You ask, hoping you can maybe find out more about her. You're starting to think that your feeling that you knew her was off, but you still want to make sure. She glares at you as the two of you enter the lunchroom. "You remember I said I had a boyfriend, right?" She asks. "Of course." You say, not dissuaded in the slightest. "Then fine, we can sit together." You smile, relieved that she agrees to sitting together. As you approach your seats, you think over what you should talk to her about. > You ask about her boyfriend Olivia seems pretty intent on letting everyone know that she has a boyfriend, so maybe that'd be a good place to start. The two of you sit down and take your lunches out. "So, tell me about this boyfriend of yours. You must really like him if you keep mentioning him." You say as you pull out some food. Olivia seems rather surprised that you would ask her such a question, but doesn't seem reluctant to answer. "Why are you interested in Brent?" She asks. You shrug in response. It's not that you're interested in him, you just need some sort of starting ground with her. "So, I take it Brent is his name then?" You ask, sidestepping her question. "Well, it is, but you didn't answer me." She replies. It seems she's pretty aware of these kinds of things, in contrast with her aloof manner. "I was just wondering what kind of guy you liked is all." You reply. Though, you instantly realize that could be taken in a different way than you had intended. Olivia looks at you with the same passive face she usually makes, before eating some more of her food. If she noticed that what you said could be interpreted as you liking her, she isn't showing it. "I'll give you the typical girl response. He's handsome, tall, strong, and he actually asked me out." She says. You question if him asking her out is a quality a girl would typically give, but roll with it. "So he's not smart then?" You ask with a laugh. "No, though that seems to be a common issue with guys." She responds with a glare. If you didn't know better, you'd think she's implying you're an idiot. Thinking you need to divert attention away from yourself, you decide to change the topic. "Yeah haha, Ian's a pretty smart guy though isn't he?" You say. Olivia looks away from you. "He is, unlike some guys I know." She responds, standing up. "I need to go now." She continues, hurriedly picking up her things and walking away. "Alright, seeya later Olivia." You say as she walks away. She briefly pauses her walk to give you a small wave, before leaving the cafeteria. You don't really know if you can really consider this a success in learning more about her, but at least she's a bit more familiar with you now....you think. The rest of the day goes by without much happening, and when you arrive home nothing exciting happens either. The night passes and you lay in your bed, staring at your alarm clock, quite pleased that tomorrow is a Saturday.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You chase Allison into the lunch room and grab her hand as you catch up, stopping her from running. She turns to you and gives an exaggerated sad expression. "Well, ya caught me, now what?" She asks. You look into her eyes for a minute, and decide to try something. "You're lying." You replying accusingly. "I'm what now?" "Lying. You know who I am. No one acts that friendly to someone they just met, and what you just said before sounds like it has some deeper meaning to it." You say. Allison looks down to her hand, which you immediately let go of, then she glances around the room. Finally she sighs. "You caught me. I know you. But the more important thing here, isn't what I know, but what you know. So, what do you know of me, Jacob?" Allison replies, revealing that your guess was right. Unfortunately, you don't actually know anything about her. The closest you have to a memory of her is your dream, and even if she does actually know you, that'd be a rather odd thing to bring up. Then again, she seems like a rather odd person anyway. "How do you know me?" You ask, trying to ignore her question. She pouts and takes a step back. "Beep beep, wrong answer. Should I take this to mean you don't know anything about me?" She asks. > You admit you know nothing about her You sigh and nod. "Yeah, sorry. I don't really know you." You reply. Unexpectedly, she smiles and nods in response. "Well, that's to be expected. We only just met after all. Maybe we'll get to know each other better in the future." Allison says, waving and walking away. You give her a short wave back and then decide to have something for lunch, and to maybe find Ian. After a short search through the cafeteria, you find Ian sitting with a girl, with long black hair, brown eyes, and dressed in a goth outfit. Oddly enough, you recognize her as Olivia, the girl you were talking with in detention yesterday. Noticing you, Ian waves you over to their table. "Hey man, this here is Olivia." He says, motioning to Olivia. "We're both in the chess club together it seems, so I figured I should hang out with her a bit to get to know her better." Olivia looks at you with a mild expression of surprise while Ian speaks, before scoffing at his remark. "I have a boyfriend you know." She states, apparently thinking Ian has an ulterior motive. "Ah, well of course you do. A cute girl like you is quite the catch." Ian replies, although you can sense he didn't really expect her to have one. Olivia blushes slightly, but it's unnoticed by Ian. "That's right, I had forgotten you were in the chess club Ian." You say, finally sitting down. "Yep, I'm the best damn chess-inator there is!" He replies while puffing out his chest with an odd sense of pride. However you don't really doubt he's the best there, as he's always been incredibly smart. You gaze wanders to Olivia, who notices and speaks. "Just cause I look this way doesn't mean I'm stupid. Girls can be smart too you know." She says harshly to you, apparently thinking you were judging her ability to play chess based on her goth outfit. You quickly shake your head in response. "I, wait, I never said you couldn't." You reply defensively. She turns her head away from you, almost in disgust. Ian looks at the two of you confused. "Am I missing something here? Do you two got some history or something?" "No, of course not. We just met yesterday after all. Didn't we Jacob?" Olivia replies angrily, even more upset now. You go to answer but she quickly speaks again. "I need to go." She announces, quickly standing from the table and walking away. The two of you watch as she leaves.Ian shrugs as you turn to him. "Girls man. Confusing as hell, right?" He says before taking a drink of his milk in front of him. You nod, but can't help but think there was something more to what Olivia said.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Suddenly, as you reach the front entrance of the school, you remember you have detention. You sigh, not thrilled at the prospect of having to spend the next hour sitting in a class to make up for something you didn't even do intentionally. Ian approaches you from behind and then reaches your side, looking at your face as he does. "We going?" "Sorry, I was late for my first class. I got detention..." He frowns, though he doesn't seem that shocked. "Alright man, I told you to hurry there though." "Yeah I know...Where is detention by the way?" "Er, Room 225..." Ian replies, confused that you don't seem to know something that obvious. He looks like he's about to address the issue, but you quickly thank him and head towards room 225, leaving him behind. Sure enough, it's the correct room for detention. An older woman you don't recognize at all sits at the front of the room. She looks up from her book in time to give you a quick glance, then returns to reading. You put your bag at the side of the room and take a seat away from most of the other delinquents already in the room, not wanting to associate yourself with them. You're only here because you've gone back in time after all, you're not like them. As the minutes pass, you find yourself looking around the room for anything of interest, and quickly spot something, or rather someone. The gothic girl from your first class is also in the room, staring out the window and paying no attention at all to the others in the class. She's only two chairs over from you, and with no one between you and everyone else in the class already occupied, you figure you can use this time to talk to her. If you actually want to that is. It is detention after all, so if you're caught you'd likely be punished. > You do nothing You decide against trying to talk to the gothic girl. You could get in even more trouble after all, and you probably don't even know her. Detention passes by slowly, but eventually you're dismissed. Ian is already long gone by the time you return to the front lobby, so you go back home alone. Along the way you try to retrace your steps from this morning, and although you go down a wrong alley or two, you eventually make it home. Of course, your mother is noticeably upset you are hours late from school. "So Jacob. Mind explaining why you have come home at such at late hour?" Your mother asks impatiently as you enter the house, two hours after you should have been home. "I...err...sort of had detention." You reply. "What for?" "I was late for my first class...." Your mother seems annoyed, but doesn't push the matter too much further. "Honestly Jacob, you won't ever succeed in life if you don't take things seriously. Even if you dislike school, being tardy is no excuse." She says in a rather condescending manner. You nod your head in agreement and rush up the stairs seeing as she is finished scolding you. The rest of the day passes by with nothing of interest really happening. At the end of the day, you go to sleep and wonder if you'll wake up back in the future.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Although you roughly knew how to get to the school on your own, you have no idea what class you have. You follow Ian in hopes that you have the same first class together. Once at the classroom door Ian turns to you with a puzzled look. “Aren’t you going to class?” “Uh, yea...right...” “You’re acting pretty weird today man.” “Yea well...today’s a pretty weird day for me.” Ian seems even more confused now, but decides to drop it and heads to his seat once he hears the warning bell. You walk down the hallway a little further before opening up your bag in hopes of finding some sort of clue telling you where you’re supposed to be. Inside you find various notebooks and textbooks, but nothing concerning your schedule. You sigh and notice the hallway is now completely empty. The final bell which marks the start of class should be ringing any minute and you have no idea where you’re supposed to be. Unsure of what to do, you decide to sprint down the hallway and look for whatever seems familiar. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) you find two room numbers across from each other which seem somewhat familiar: Room 134 and Room 135. You’ll have to guess which is the right room. > You room 135 You enter room 135 and quickly survey its contents. The room is filled with other students which you would assume are in the same grade as you. Some of those in the class give you a quick glance, before returning their attention to the teacher. The teacher himself, a middle-aged man with a short beard, whom seems fairly familiar, looks up from his desk as you slowly enter through the doorway. He says nothing, but his reaction to you gives you the impression he knows you and that it's normal for you to be here. Taking that as your cue, you look for any sort of empty seat, and sit in one right as the bell rings. The teacher then stands up and approaches the chalk board behind him. "Alright class, it's time to review what we learned yesterday...." He begins, but you quickly lose interest in what he's teaching and look around the room in search for some familiarity. Not that you can really be blamed for not paying attention, as you've listened to all this before anyway. That is, assuming you really have gone back in time, and this isn't all some weird dream. You sigh softly, thoroughly confused at your current situation. Eventually, you spot a girl in the corner of the room that you seem to recognize. Or, rather than recognize, you should say you feel like you know her, for some reason or another. No name comes to mind, nor any memories involving her, but for some reason you still think she's someone you know. Long, black hair, with brown eyes, and a slim figure. What's most noticeable about her though, is her gothic outfit of all black, complete with a spiked dog collar, and black painted finger nails. Looking at her closer, you determine that her black hair is probably dyed, your guess being her originally hair colour is a light brown. You brood over how you may know her, and your predicament as a whole, until the class finally ends. As the goth girl leaves she seems to ignore you completely. Maybe you don't know her?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Jacob, wake up it’s time for school!” You hear a familiar voice yell to you, and you groggily wake up in response. What a strange dream... You try and remember the girl from your dream, but can’t figure out who she was. The classroom was probably from your high school, but as far as you can remember that girl was never in any of your classes. You shrug and proceed to get up. After all, high school was years ago, it wouldn’t be unusual for you to forget a few people in that time. Once fully awake, the reality that you live alone dawns on you; there should be no one yelling for you to wake up. Then another thought occurs, you don’t go to school anymore either. Confused, you stand up and walk over to your dresser, which seems different from usual. Opening your drawers you notice your clothes seem different as well. Now even more confused, you get dressed and exit your room to find some answers. Outside your door you find your younger sister standing in front of you, in the uniform that she wore during high school. That is to say, while she has the same face, green eyes, and short brown hair as your sister, she looks considerably younger than she should. “Mom says wake up.” She states quietly, then turns to walk away. “Um, Tina?” you say, trying to confirm it’s her. “Hm?”, she replies softly, turning towards you. “Ah, um, never mind. I’m up.” She nods and walks away. You return to your room and look for your backpack, the one you remember using in high school. Sure enough you find it, right beside your dresser. You open it and grab one of your notebooks, hoping to confirm what you think has happened. You turn to the last note in the book and look at the date: April 24th, 2008 You walk to your bed and sit down, trying accept what has happened. Yesterday was April 23th, but the year was 2018. Ten years ago you were 18 and in your last year of high school. The fact that your sister was in her private high school uniform confirms this, since she was in her first year of high school when you were in your last. Your thought process is interrupted by the familiar yell of your mother. “Jacob, hurry up! You’re going to be late!” There’s no point in thinking over this any longer. You quickly grab your bag and head down the stairs to the front door. "Remember, you need wake up early on Saturday to bring your sister to school, since I'll be working." Your mother tells you, as she stands beside you watching you put on your shoes. You nod quickly in response, and although you’re tempted to hug her or say you’ve missed her, you put it off. The you in the past wouldn’t have done it, so you’re not going to do it either. After all, if this really is the past then doing something different could screw up the future in a major way. You open the door and find Ian standing in front of you. Well, a younger version of him. “It’s about time Jake, you goin' to school today or what?” > No “Uh no, I think I’m gonna stay home today.” Immediately you realize your mistake. “Stay home? Now Jacob, I wonder what you could mean by that.” Your mother, still standing behind you, remarks with a soft yet threatening tone while folding her arms in front of her. “I uh...it was joke. Yea...bye mom....” You quickly rush out the door and meet Ian, who innocently shrugs in response to what happened. “What? It’s not like I knew she was there.” The walk to school is uneventful. Ian tells you some story involving his older brother but you don’t really pay attention. The thought that you’re ten years in the past is all you can think about. “Hey.” Ian pushes your shoulder gently once you reach the entrance of the school and the two of you stop. He has a concerned look on his face. “You alright? You sick or something?” He asks. “Huh? No, I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.” You walk ahead into the entrance of the school and Ian follows close behind.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Click. “…well I still say a compromise can be achieved if we all just sat down and talked things out. I mean at the core, we aren’t really so different. I mean we’re human beings, for God’s sake; we shouldn’t be killing each other like animals! I mean...” Click. “…are you worried about these uncertain times? Do you stay up at night thinking about the current fucked up situation the world is in? Wondering if some mad man is going to finally press the button, putting an end to it all? Do you think how you’ll spend your final moment with your loved ones huddled around you and crying before you’re all reduced to mere shadows? Scared that you can’t do anything about it? You are? Well never fear! Ground Zero Survival is here! You’ll find that the…” Click. “…situation has worsened; more troops were deployed today, but…” Click. “...how about our President huh? If he was anymore reactionary, I’d think we were living in the country we’re currently at war with! Am I right? What country are we at war with anyway? Anyone remember? Did we just spin the wheel again or what? You guys are a great audience! Hey did you hear…” Click. “…about peace? Oh gimme a fuckin’ break! You think that pussy ass we are the world shit’s gonna fly? You can’t teach those fuckin’ people nothing! You want my solution to the goddamn problem? BLOW IT ALL THE FUCK UP! We can clean up later and…” Click. “…pray in these dark times! We must place our faith in Jesus! For when Judgment Day comes he will save all of us that are the faithful, and God will punish the wicked! Oh it will be such a glorious time when…” Click. “…you act now you’ll get ten percent off! We here at GZS also believe in quality and you’ll find our shelters are designed with your family’s safety in mind! We have worked hard to make sure our shelters will sustain you and your family years after the entire surface has been turned to ashes! After all don’t…” Click. “…you think genocide is the answer? I can’t believe you just advocated that on national TV! I suppose you think Hitler was right too huh? Its people like you that…” Click. “…are the best audience in the world! I tell ya, it’s been great. You can catch my next show at…” Click. “…the radioactive fuckin’ wasteland that the whole goddamn Earth is going to become! You think any of this shit matters? All the fuckin’ talk in the world ain’t changing shit now! We’re on the fast train to nukesville and I for one ain’t gonna worry about it! Y’know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna quit this stupid ass job, and spend the rest of my savings on fuckin’ hookers! Yeah that’s right, I fuckin’ said it and I don’t care because when you think about it…” Click. “...isn’t your family’s survival worth it?” This advertisement has been paid for by Ground Zero Survival Inc. > You zzzzzzzzzzzzz Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up from the sofa like you always do, dreading to have to go to work at your pointless job. You haven’t been sleeping well lately, you don’t know what the hell the problem is, and all you know is you’re going to be tired for work again. As you go through your routine of getting ready, the TV can be heard; as usual you left it on from the night before. “…And peace talks broke down today, as several ambassadors engaged in a physical fight at the UN…Neo-Communist party gaining favor in Russia… more terrorist bombings in European Union cities…US troops won another victory in the Middle East…mysterious epidemic in China, several million dead…skirmishes on the Indian-Pakistan border…world wide tensions at an all time high…” Same old doom and gloom on TV; you wonder why you even bother watching the news anymore. Still it does seem like things are getting worse, late at night when you’re suffering from your usual insomnia, you’ve been catching infomercials attempting to sell bomb shelters, like something out of a 1950s propaganda film. It seems silly, but you do wonder if it’s only a matter of time before someone presses the button. Then again you live out in the boonies, you’ve always thought that if the world ever did blow up; you’d doubt you’d even notice until you drove to work the next day and saw the ruins of the city. Speaking of which you better get going or you’ll be late. > You head to work You turn off the TV and head to work, no point in worrying about things you can’t do shit about. You have other real everyday problems to deal with. You go about your mundane life, doing mundane tasks at your mundane job, talking to your mundane co-workers about mundane things. Not much changes. One month later... Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up from the sofa like you always do, dreading to have to go to work at your pointless job. You haven’t been sleeping well lately, you don’t know what the hell the problem is, and all you know is you’re going to be tired for work again. As you go through your routine of getting ready, the TV can be heard; as usual you left it on from the night before. “…Russian hardliners seized control of the government…Chinese epidemic has worsened; entire country is under quarantine…UK has withdrawn all association from the EU…Senate dissolved in US, martial law enacted…India declared open war on Pakistan…mass starvation in Africa… world wide depression… Same old doom and gloom on TV, a lot more serious now though. Those “silly” bomb shelter infomercials have increased; you’ve also been noticing an increase in survival type book titles whenever you browse the book stores now and the Emergency broadcasting system has been doing A LOT of tests lately. Something bad is going to happen and it’s going to happen soon. You go about your life which isn’t quite so mundane, world politics is a constant topic at work, and many of your co-workers aren’t even coming in to do their job. All the married ones are no doubt spending time with their families, in fact the work place really isn’t a work place anymore so much as it is a “socializing site”. A lot of them believe the world is coming to an end anyway, so they might as well have a good time. Attempting to go about your normal life isn’t an option anymore; neither is buying a bomb shelter at this late stage. > You indulge in the festivities You’ve never really been a party person, but if this is it, maybe you can have some fun before the end comes. There’s plenty of food and liquids of all kinds at your place of work. The entire office is turned into party central. Nobody bothers going home; it’s actually safer to stay inside the office building anyway since the National Guard is attempting to restore what little order there is in the city. Everyone makes sure to stay away from windows. Even though you attempt to enjoy yourself, you still have a nagging bit of “concern” for what lies ahead in the future and just can’t quite loosen up completely; you’re about the only one who still bothers to keep up on current events by watching TV and looking at the internet in between non-stop merrymaking. Eventually one of your co-workers Greg walks in on you watching the news by yourself. He’s not exactly what you’d consider a friend, but he’s an acquaintance you normally talked to when you actually did work. “Jesus Christ man! There’s a non-stop party going on and you’re in here wasting time watching TV?” Greg says holding a bottle of beer. “I just want to see if the situation has improved…” “Are you kidding me? It ain’t improving man! The world’s going to hell in a hand basket, and the sooner you accept that fact the better! Why don’t you go talk to Marina in accounting, didn’t you always have a crush on her or something?” “Well yeah, but…” “But? But nothing man! There ain’t no time left anymore! Hell I haven’t seen you participate in ONE orgy since you’ve been here!” “I dunno, seems unsanitary, I don’t want to catch something, and I don’t want everyone to see me naked.” Greg puts one of his hands on his face and shakes his head in disbelief of your answer. He then throws his beer bottle into the TV screen breaking them both. “WAKE THE FUCK UP! This is fuckin’ it man! There ain’t nothing coming after this! We’re all gonna die in a fiery nuclear explosion! You think it’s really gonna matter if in the off chance that you do catch AIDS or some shit, you’ll be alive long enough to die from it? And nobody gives a shit about how small your dick is…” “HEY! My dick isn’t small! Its average length for someone of my height!” you protest. “Whatever man! Look what I’m trying to say is, everyone is just here to have a good time and grab some pleasure before the nukes start flying, and nobody’s even caring about looks right now. Shit, that fat troll Phil must be getting more action now than he ever has in his entire life! You thought Phil was disgusting looking with his clothes on, he ain’t any prettier with his clothes off, and yet he has banged Kate no less than ten times since we started this Armageddon party and you know how fucking fine she is!” “Really? Phil?” “I’m telling you man, you NEED to go talk to Marina and get you some of that before the bombs start dropping!” Greg sees that you’re still a little apprehensive about the idea. “Fine then, or don’t. It doesn’t matter to me man. I’m going back to the party, I’m not gonna stand here wasting my time talking to you when I could be fucking Kate. I just hope I can get to her before Phil this time.” Greg leaves you to ponder the situation. > You party like its 1999 (Even though it really is not 1999) Greg’s right. This IS it! This is no time to be playing it safe! The world is going to end any day and damn it you’re going to fucking LIVE life for the first time! You immediately get up and make your way to the main office area; it looks like you’re just in time for another orgy. Greg is getting ready to stick it to Kate just like he said…that is until you smash the back of his head in with a stapler until he’s bloody and unconscious…or dead. You’re not sure and you don’t really care anymore. “You were right…man.” You say breathing hard. Your actions cause people to stop in shock, then you grab Kate who’s completely naked and worried about what you’re going to do next. “Come here you little fucking whore, you like being a fucking fuck slut? I’ll treat you like one then!” you utter viciously. You proceed to bend Kate over the copy machine, pull her hair and fuck the hell out of her calling her every derogatory name in the book. The weird thing is she starts to like it. She even starts taunting you back saying you can’t fuck worth a shit. This of course only makes you slap her around a bit more. You both are really getting into it. After watching this spontaneous act of S&M/Rape everyone goes back to doing what they were doing. From then on in, Kate hangs around you a lot more (Much to Phil’s dismay) and you forget all about Marina, in fact you don’t even see her in the whole time during this Armageddon party. You indulge in carnal delights like you never had before. Until one day… Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up from the floor; Kate’s lying beside you asleep. There are sleeping naked bodies everywhere. Yesterday’s orgy was a dozy, someone broke open a couple bags of coke they’d been saving and everyone had a snort. Can’t say you liked it though, your head fucking hurts, you keep hearing a fucking ring… “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE….” Then you realize it’s not in your head, it’s an actual ring from another TV that was left on. There’s a test pattern on it. This is it. You put your clothes back on and give Kate a quick kiss, which causes her to smile a little in her sleep. You wonder if you would’ve actually had a shot with her if things had been normal, oh well you guess you’ll never know. You quietly make your way through the room and head up to the top floor and onto the roof of the building. The city is deadly quiet. You don’t hear a sound except the wind gently blowing. In all the revelry you’ve been indulging in, you forgot how much you liked the solitude and silence. The loneliness is peaceful. You look up in the sky, shielding your eyes from the sun shining down. You see a bright light and then nothing at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve never really been a party person, but if this is it, maybe you can have some fun before the end comes. There’s plenty of food and liquids of all kinds at your place of work. The entire office is turned into party central. Nobody bothers going home; it’s actually safer to stay inside the office building anyway since the National Guard is attempting to restore what little order there is in the city. Everyone makes sure to stay away from windows. Even though you attempt to enjoy yourself, you still have a nagging bit of “concern” for what lies ahead in the future and just can’t quite loosen up completely; you’re about the only one who still bothers to keep up on current events by watching TV and looking at the internet in between non-stop merrymaking. Eventually one of your co-workers Greg walks in on you watching the news by yourself. He’s not exactly what you’d consider a friend, but he’s an acquaintance you normally talked to when you actually did work. “Jesus Christ man! There’s a non-stop party going on and you’re in here wasting time watching TV?” Greg says holding a bottle of beer. “I just want to see if the situation has improved…” “Are you kidding me? It ain’t improving man! The world’s going to hell in a hand basket, and the sooner you accept that fact the better! Why don’t you go talk to Marina in accounting, didn’t you always have a crush on her or something?” “Well yeah, but…” “But? But nothing man! There ain’t no time left anymore! Hell I haven’t seen you participate in ONE orgy since you’ve been here!” “I dunno, seems unsanitary, I don’t want to catch something, and I don’t want everyone to see me naked.” Greg puts one of his hands on his face and shakes his head in disbelief of your answer. He then throws his beer bottle into the TV screen breaking them both. “WAKE THE FUCK UP! This is fuckin’ it man! There ain’t nothing coming after this! We’re all gonna die in a fiery nuclear explosion! You think it’s really gonna matter if in the off chance that you do catch AIDS or some shit, you’ll be alive long enough to die from it? And nobody gives a shit about how small your dick is…” “HEY! My dick isn’t small! Its average length for someone of my height!” you protest. “Whatever man! Look what I’m trying to say is, everyone is just here to have a good time and grab some pleasure before the nukes start flying, and nobody’s even caring about looks right now. Shit, that fat troll Phil must be getting more action now than he ever has in his entire life! You thought Phil was disgusting looking with his clothes on, he ain’t any prettier with his clothes off, and yet he has banged Kate no less than ten times since we started this Armageddon party and you know how fucking fine she is!” “Really? Phil?” “I’m telling you man, you NEED to go talk to Marina and get you some of that before the bombs start dropping!” Greg sees that you’re still a little apprehensive about the idea. “Fine then, or don’t. It doesn’t matter to me man. I’m going back to the party, I’m not gonna stand here wasting my time talking to you when I could be fucking Kate. I just hope I can get to her before Phil this time.” Greg leaves you to ponder the situation. > You get another TV and watch the world die You grab another TV and sit quietly by yourself in a separate office, watching world events unfold and get worse before your eyes as your co-workers reenact something out of a porno movie. You block out the sounds of ecstasy and turn up the TV. You’re starting to wonder if you shouldn’t have just stayed home, or better yet bought that damn bomb shelter… Just then someone else comes in to disturb your solitude. It’s Marina. “Oh. I didn’t know anyone was in here. I thought everyone was at the orgy.” She says. “So did I…um how come you aren’t?” you ask nervously. “Eh not really my thing, how come you aren’t?” “Same here.” “I see…so what are you doing to pass the time?” “Keeping up on events to see if things will change for the better.” “Ah an optimist eh?” “Not really, I think I just get a kick out of living in a fantasy world and delusions to make myself feel better…that and I have a morbid fascination of the utter chaos that’s occurring throughout the world right now.” “Hmm, interesting approach to life…I’ve always noticed you seem to keep to yourself. You like solitude don’t you?” “It’s easier.” “Yet, you stayed here for the end.” “Yeah, and I’m really wishing I hadn’t now, I can’t mix with anyone here. Never could. Not even on the primal level that everyone seems to be favoring right now. I don’t know why I thought things would change in the end…ah fuck it the world’s gonna end and it’s probably a good thing if our co-workers are an example of humanity. Still…I kind of wish I bought that bomb shelter…” “So you don’t want to die?” ”Of course not! I just don’t really see how to avoid it at this point.” “Well, for starters you could come with me; I’m getting ready to leave the city. It seems like things have died down for the most part out there, hopefully nobody’s vandalized or stolen either of our vehicles.” Marina suggests. “What? Leave? And go where? It’s not like there’s any place really safe to go at this late stage.” “Sure there is. Look, I’ll level with you, since you seem to be the only one here that’s different. I stayed around here to see if there was anyone who was worthy enough to be saved, and apart from you, it pretty much looks like I wasted my time.” “Save? What do you mean?” “Well despite the fact that you kept to yourself and never took any interest in any of the private lives of your co-workers doesn’t we don’t have them.” Marina laughs. “But like you I never really mixed with any of our co-workers either, however unlike you I do have a very active social life filled with people who are close like a family, people who live clean and have a strong sense of freedom…and who have been preparing for this day ever since the Commies started the first Cold War. You don’t have to die and you don’t have to be alone anymore. Come with me, you’ll be accepted as long as you’re willing to work hard and from what I know, you aren’t averse to doing that.” You’re not entirely sure of what Marina has in store for you, but it sounds better than staying here waiting to die. You agree to leave with her. You both make your way past the mass of naked bodies and head immediately to the parking structure. Unfortunately Marina’s car is gone, it’s been predictably stolen in the looting frenzy during the city exodus; however your old van is perfectly fine. It hasn’t even been vandalized, of course the thing looks like it’s already been vandalized which is probably why nobody bothered to steal it. You both get in the van and you drive while Marina tells you where you’re going. While you’re driving through the city, you keep expecting to be attacked by lawless hold outs still lingering in the city or open fired on by Nation Guardsman, but you suspect either they were ordered to pull out to reinforce a more important city or most of them abandoned their “job” long ago when they realized the futility of it. You make your way out of the city with no problems. Of course now you’re just wondering if you’re just going to get nuked at any second. You listen to the radio to keep up on events, which is more of the same that you were watching on TV. Eventually Marina turns it off and tells you not to worry about the old world anymore, a new one is going to be built. Your drive takes you far from the city, where ever Marina’s leading you it’s even further than where you live and you lived pretty way out. You drive through the night and into next morning; while Marina’s asleep you turn the radio back on and keep it on low… Monday 8:00 AM “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” The radio suddenly stops broadcasting anything except a loud warning sound; it wakes up Marina before you can turn it off. Seeing her current surroundings, Marina hastily tells you to turn at a dirty road that’s coming up, which then leads into a wooden gate. Looks like a compound of some sort, where a man is standing guard with an assault rifle. Marina gets out and talks to him a moment, to which he nods his head and opens the gate. As soon as you drive in another woman comes running out of one of the many log cabin like structures in the compound. She immediately starts talking to Marina through the passenger window. “Marina! Thank God you’re here! We thought you were dead! Come on we gotta get down into the underground, its beginning!” Wasting no time Marina and you follow the woman into the cabin and down into a trap door in the floor. You find yourself in a wide tunnel with dim electrical lighting to what looks like a pretty elaborate underground complex. Marina and the woman are running ahead of you, but you can’t help but stare in wonder of all this. “Holy shit, they really were working on this since the Cold War…” you say to yourself as you slow down to examine everything. Then it happens. You hear a loud noise above and you fall to the ground due to the tremors. Then all the lighting goes out. You attempt to get back up and try to feel the walls to get your bearings. You don’t know where the hell you’re going, but you can hear voices and shouting; some of it close and some of it far away. You have no idea where the hell you’re at, let alone the layout of this place. Instead of getting yourself lost, you decide to just stay put until the lighting comes back on; surely they probably have an emergency generator that will kick in soon. The lighting suddenly comes on and you’re just in time to see Marina and a man dressed fatigues arrive on your position. “Are you alright?” Marina asks you. “Yeah, I’m okay.” No sooner do you get out those words when the man in military fatigues begins giving you the hard stare. “I’ve heard about you before from Marina, but don’t think that hiding behind her skirt is gonna give you a fuckin’ free pass in this place! You better prepared to pull your goddamn weight everyday! I catch you slipping and you’re outta here!” “What the hell? I didn’t say anything!” “And you better not say any fuckin’ thing either if you don’t wanna get on my bad side! The Colonel doesn’t like slack offs in his compound and neither do I! So if you intend on staying here, you better get REAL used to the idea of getting your head outta your fuckin’ ass and living like a real fuckin’ person instead of the goddamn disgusting parasitic shit maggot you are!” You’re about to reply to GI Jerk, but Marina stops you and insists on taking you to your room, leaving Harry to his own devices. “Alright Marina, what the hell was all that about, and who’s full metal asshole back there?” “That was Harry, and don’t pay any attention to him, he’s just really gung ho and is second in command around here. The Colonel is the one who runs this place. He’s actually a more even tempered man than Harry is.” Marina and you arrive at a small room by itself at the end of one of the corridors. “Well here’s the room you’ll be staying for now. Things might change mind you, but rest assured this is the safest place you could be right now. We’ve prepared for this day and will definitely survive the aftermath of what’s to come, and now you will too.” Marina leaves with a smile, but you don’t really share her optimism, given the fact that Armageddon has just happened. That reality has only just now sunk in that the world is probably one big radioactive desert at this point. Then again, Marina might be right, this place is probably safer than most and its better than being dead. At least you hope it is. You lie down on the bed provided and fall asleep; surprisingly it’s the best rest you’ve experienced before the bombs dropped. A few weeks pass and you get acquainted with the compound. You and most of the others are to remain underground while until some scouts in radiation suits determine if the radiation level is low enough. In the mean time you’re forced to do extensive combat training like everyone else. Most of the people are okay with you, even though you’re an outsider. Harry gives you a hard time though. Still, you’re probably in the best shape of your life and you got to brush up on your aim. Sometimes you get to spend time with Marina, funny how you find it easier to talk to her now. One day you finally see the Colonel you’ve been hearing about, he gives a speech to all of you in the cafeteria. “Well, I’ve been informed that the surface part of our compound only suffered minor damage and that the radiation level is fairly low all things considering…anyway we all knew this day would come, and we would be prepared for it, but we can’t just sit on our asses hoping things will be alright! NO! We must take a proactive approach if we have to survive! As we speak, there are probably low lives scavenging the shell of the old world, we must secure as many abandoned resources as we can to ensure our future and some of you will be sent out into the world to do just that for the good of the compound. We’re going to tame this new world and rebuild a new society! You have undergone rigorous training before hand, to ensure you will be able to survive the dangers. Now I’ll be accepting volunteers first.” > You volunteer Maybe you’re high on your new found physique and adrenaline, but for whatever reason, something comes over you to volunteer. Indeed you’ve made everyone a little surprised by your actions especially since you’re an outsider. The Colonel looks at you with interest. “Hmm, you’re the one I’ve heard about from Marina, didn’t expect you to volunteer, she’s always mentioned you’re quiet loner type. Then again, you might be just what I need…alright you’re coming with me. Harry, you start picking some of the others and form recon detachments. Everyone goes on assignment tomorrow.” The Colonel then takes you to his office, where he sits down and gets a bunch of papers from his desk. “Okay, I’m sure during your short stay here, you probably think we’re all a bunch of survivalist militia loonies, and to a certain extent, we probably are, however we aren’t without a plan.” The Colonel shows you some blueprints to what looks to be a small military base. “My friend Alex was stationed at this base. It’s not exactly close by, but its closest military base around here.” “Didn’t realize there were any military bases in the area.” “Most people don’t, it was a top secret, and kept off the records so it wouldn’t be targeted. There aren’t even any roads leading to the place, you have travel by foot. Though I guess you could say it wasn’t so much of a military base as it was a research facility. Obviously I know about it, because I had a friend stationed there who was feeding me information. He didn’t exactly run the place, but he was attempting to work his way up to get special level clearance. Apparently GZS was working with the government on some high tech weaponry.” ”GZS?” “The Ground Zero Survival Corporation. I’m sure you’ve heard of them, they were the ones hawking their Shelters like snake oil salesmen before doomsday.” “Oh yeah, I used to see their commercials on late at night, I thought about buying one of those.” “Well good thing you didn’t, only an idiot would’ve bought one of those things. Look at this.” The Colonel now shows you a schematic of a GZS Shelter. “Why? It certainly looks just as equipped as this compound and has a lot more conveniences.” You remark. “It would appear that way, but the fucking thing is a death trap. They engineered them so once you entered; you most likely couldn’t get out of them. Supposedly the GZS computer is supposed to let you out when it deems that it’s safe to do so. In fact the whole thing is controlled by the computer. A computer that could glitch and break down at anytime. Let a machine be in charge of your survival…yeah great idea. I dunno about you, but I’ll take this compound any day. It might not look pretty, but I don’t have to worry about getting trapped with no access to food or water. Not to mention I heard from Alex that they suffered cutback during the creation of most of those things meaning they cut a lot of damn corners, so they probably aren’t as state of the art as they claimed. I’ll bet those dumb bastards who are living in those things are regretting it as we speak.” You’re not sure where he’s going with all this so you interrupt. “So, what does all this mean? Are we going to seek out these shelters and rescue the people inside?” “What?! HA HA! That’s a good one!” The Colonel laughs. “Hell no son, as far as I’m concerned they’ve made their choice now they can live with it, we’re not here to play white knight. We have to look out for ourselves, and part of that is making sure we’re the best defended and from what I heard, whatever they were working on in that base, sounds like it would make things a lot easier in the defense department.” “Whoa, hold on, if this is a military base won’t they just shoot me on sight if I go there I mean won’t it be heavily guarded? I mean I know I went through some training, but I doubt to the degree that I can take on an entire military base!” “Alex was making friends with most of the lower personnel there, getting them to follow him as it were. Last I heard, he was pretty successful, so chances are, as long as I gave you some identifiers to take with you proving that you were following my orders, you wouldn’t have any problems when you arrived, but obviously there IS a problem or I wouldn’t be sending you at all.” “Of course…” you say expecting this assignment to be even more complicated. “I haven’t heard anything from Alex for a month before the bombs dropped. I dunno what’s happened to him.” “Is it possible they discovered he was leaking information and killed him?” “I suppose, but chances are that afterwards they would’ve found out about us and also sent the National Guard as well as GZS private security here to lay waste to this compound.” “Well the National Guard were busy trying to maintain order to the major cities at the time. I should know I was there when they were stationed in the one I was working at.” “True, but I still think they would’ve sent someone here, and GZS still would have. As I said they had enough money to pay for their own security force. Maybe not as well trained as military personnel, but fanatical enough to eliminate anyone that GZS thought was discovering secrets about them. That’s why Alex always focused on solely making friends with the grunts and government officials. The GZS employees always seemed a bit more dedicated to their corporation.” “Okay, well is it possible that the base wasn’t so secret and it got hit after all?” “Nope, mainly because I get the impression the background radiation level would be a hell of a lot higher, if that got nuked, so I’m pretty sure the place is intact, in fact I’m guessing its been abandoned. We recently figured out their frequency, we never used it before for obvious reasons, but now, why not? We’re getting a signal, but no verbal answers from anyone. To sum up, I want you to go there to scout and explore as much as you can. Find out what the hell happened to Alex if possible, and let me know if that high tech weaponry is worth anything or just more bad engineering by GZS. Here. You’ll probably need this security pass to enter, got it from Alex, last time he was here; I hope it’s still valid. And here’s my ring and a letter, if Alex IS still alive then those will prove that you’re working for me. That’s all I can do to help other than to give you a map to the place and what equipment you think you’ll need.” Before you leave you have to ask. “Okay why me?” “Why you? You volunteered son!” “I know, but for this particular job, surely you have others more qualified to tackle it.” “Eh…you MIGHT think that, but to be quite honest, no. I mean don’t get me wrong I see all of these people here as family, but a lot of them are a bunch of weekend warriors who were playing survival. I’m sure in the years to come we’re going to see who’s a REAL soldier and who isn’t. Not that it matters, I mean I’ll find something for them to do, but you’re different. You certainly aren’t some commando, but there’s definitely something about you that makes you seem a bit more…detached from everything else. Like you’ll be willing to do what’s necessary to survive without hesitation. While you may never have been in a situation like this one, I got a feeling you’ll do just fine. Besides Marina’s previous beaming remarks about you are good enough for me. Now go get some rest, you’ll be leaving tomorrow.” You head back to your room and think about what the Colonel said. He might be right in a lot of ways, but you still wonder if he’s sending you because as he said, “All these people here are like family, but you’re different.” Maybe if you get killed it won’t feel like such a loss. You don’t think anymore about it, mainly because Marina enters your room to interrupt your thoughts. “I hear you’re leaving tomorrow, I just want to tell you how brave I think you are for doing this for all of us. I know we didn’t get a lot of quality time with each other, but I wanted us to spend at least what could be the last time I see you together.” Marina’s ominous words that imply how much danger you’re possibly getting yourself into might worry you more if she wasn’t on top of you right now… The next day you load up with what you think you might need, water, food, rifle, pistol, knife, Geiger counter, all the basic essentials. You get a bunch of goodbyes and good lucks. Harry merely sneers and mentions he expects you to get yourself killed twenty feet after you leave. The Colonel is a little more supportive and gives you a silent salute, but you like Marina’s goodbye kiss best of all. And with that, you’re on your way. It’s actually amazing to see that the outside world doesn’t look drastically different, you can only assume the bombs didn’t hit near your area. When you’re out of sight of the compound, you go back to thinking about this mission you volunteered for and wondering if you should go through with it. You do have the suitable equipment and skills to survive off the land after all. Perhaps it would be better to just go AWOL as it were… > You continue with your mission You volunteered and you’re going to see it through, might not be that dangerous as you think especially if the place is indeed abandoned. You spend a few days crossing over hills and some plains. For awhile you think someone’s following you, but never see a soul, actually you’re wondering about the Geiger counter readings more than anything, but you’re guessing there wasn’t any nuclear blast the direction you’re going. You also guess that seeing trees up ahead is also a good sign. You would’ve dressed yourself in a radiation suit, but the Colonel kept insisting it wouldn’t be necessary and for the mission that Harry was sending some of the others on would need them more. “Shit! I forgot to take a radio!” you say to yourself finally realizing that it would’ve been nice to radio in to the Compound if you had something important to report, like being unable to enter the base because snipers were shooting at you. Happily that doesn’t seem to occur when you finally arrive. You almost aren’t even sure if you’re at the right place at first. The Compound is bigger, then again this place probably has an extensive underground, and as the Colonel said, it was more like a research facility than a proper military base. Still there’s something a little weird about all this, it seems like security would be of major importance for a place like this, yet there’s nobody here guarding the outside and you just walked through open gates. Maybe the place is abandoned, but they could all be underground though, (That would certainly be more sensible than wandering around exposing themselves to radioactive wind…) The surface offices and barracks don’t look like anyone left in a hurry; in fact a lot of the barracks still have their equipment. (You take some extra ammo for your assault rifle) You search through some of papers you find in the offices, but there’s nothing of any importance. Just mundane status reports of personnel guard duties. You find a few letters with GZS logos on them, but again nothing telling you much. Nothing else for it, but to go underground. You approach the solid metal structure at the far end of the base. Looks like an elevator door with an ATM machine near it. There’s a slot and some button, so you’re guessing this is where you shove your security pass that the Colonel gave you. Hope it works or you came all this way for nothing. You slide the pass in the slot. “Identification recognized. GZS wishes you a pleasant day in all your endeavors sir!” a chipper female voice sounds as the elevator door opens. Not exactly what you were expecting, GZS must’ve had more input here than the Colonel thought. You’re a little nervous as you press the elevator button down, you expect the worst. The elevator eventually reaches its destination and opens up to a corridor. You cautiously exit. You don’t get far when a cybernetic being comes from around a corner and points its arm at you, which is doubling as a weapon of some sort, one that would blow a big hole in you. “Lower your weapon and please come with me sir. Alex will want to see you. Any attempt to attack or escape will be met with extreme use of force.” > You open fire and run You unload a clip into the cyborg, not knowing if your bullets are going to hurt it or not. You manage to do something since you knock it to the ground and you see it spark, before you head for the elevator. “Hostile detected! Enacting defense systems!” a robotic voice echoes. You begin to panic when the elevator refuses to open and more cybernetic beings come at you. You can’t stop them, and you expect a quick death by their weapons, but unfortunately that doesn’t occur. Instead they knock you out and take you to Alex. When you come to you’re lying naked, tied to an operating table with a bunch of tubes in you. Alex is hovering over you with a scalpel. He’s obviously deranged. “Well I see I didn’t use enough anesthesia, I’ll have to apply more…I also see by this letter and his ring the Colonel sent you. Probably all a ruse of friendship to kill me no doubt. I never did trust him. Well his loss will be my gain. I’m going to remake you. Better, stronger, faster. Just like the Million Dollar Man, except this won’t cost any money, just my time. I’ve been studying about some new cybernetic implants I want to test. I think I know enough about the procedure for it to be successful. You’ll thank me for this, trust me. L17 hand me the bone saw.” You pass out again, which is just as well since Alex butchers your body trying to “remake” you. His crude skills fail in the attempt and you die on the surgical table, with Alex cursing about accidentally severing multiple arteries of yours.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You volunteered and you’re going to see it through, might not be that dangerous as you think especially if the place is indeed abandoned. You spend a few days crossing over hills and some plains. For awhile you think someone’s following you, but never see a soul, actually you’re wondering about the Geiger counter readings more than anything, but you’re guessing there wasn’t any nuclear blast the direction you’re going. You also guess that seeing trees up ahead is also a good sign. You would’ve dressed yourself in a radiation suit, but the Colonel kept insisting it wouldn’t be necessary and for the mission that Harry was sending some of the others on would need them more. “Shit! I forgot to take a radio!” you say to yourself finally realizing that it would’ve been nice to radio in to the Compound if you had something important to report, like being unable to enter the base because snipers were shooting at you. Happily that doesn’t seem to occur when you finally arrive. You almost aren’t even sure if you’re at the right place at first. The Compound is bigger, then again this place probably has an extensive underground, and as the Colonel said, it was more like a research facility than a proper military base. Still there’s something a little weird about all this, it seems like security would be of major importance for a place like this, yet there’s nobody here guarding the outside and you just walked through open gates. Maybe the place is abandoned, but they could all be underground though, (That would certainly be more sensible than wandering around exposing themselves to radioactive wind…) The surface offices and barracks don’t look like anyone left in a hurry; in fact a lot of the barracks still have their equipment. (You take some extra ammo for your assault rifle) You search through some of papers you find in the offices, but there’s nothing of any importance. Just mundane status reports of personnel guard duties. You find a few letters with GZS logos on them, but again nothing telling you much. Nothing else for it, but to go underground. You approach the solid metal structure at the far end of the base. Looks like an elevator door with an ATM machine near it. There’s a slot and some button, so you’re guessing this is where you shove your security pass that the Colonel gave you. Hope it works or you came all this way for nothing. You slide the pass in the slot. “Identification recognized. GZS wishes you a pleasant day in all your endeavors sir!” a chipper female voice sounds as the elevator door opens. Not exactly what you were expecting, GZS must’ve had more input here than the Colonel thought. You’re a little nervous as you press the elevator button down, you expect the worst. The elevator eventually reaches its destination and opens up to a corridor. You cautiously exit. You don’t get far when a cybernetic being comes from around a corner and points its arm at you, which is doubling as a weapon of some sort, one that would blow a big hole in you. “Lower your weapon and please come with me sir. Alex will want to see you. Any attempt to attack or escape will be met with extreme use of force.” > You go with the cyborg You lower your rifle (But still hold on to it) and walk side by side with the cyborg who is surprisingly chatty, you also see it walks a bit irregularly, like it hasn’t been spliced together correctly. “Alex will be most pleased to see you; you’ll be the first human here in months!” “What happened to all the others?” “Oh well most of them have been improved like m-m-m-m.” the cyborg hits itself in the head before he stops stuttering “Like me, sir.” “Hmm, some improvement.” “Oh well, its not so bad. Alex promises to give us a tune up when he gets the necessary time, he is only one man after all. Some assistants would certainly help.” “So Alex is a surgeon?” “Well he’s not really. I mean he didn’t start out that way at least, but he’s completely self taught and trying to learn more each day! Sure there have been some failures, but there’s also been success! Why look at m-m-m-m.” the cyborg hits itself in the head again while you just shake yours. You can see this is going to be an interesting meeting. “So who were you before Alex…uh improved you.” “Oh I was a regular military man who guarded this base with no real identity. Just a name and a number really.” “And now?” “Now I’m known as J-34 and I protect Alex!” “That’s great… so everyone here is a cyborg like you?” “Just about. Most military personnel were friends with Alex before being renewed, so they were happy to be improved. The GZS personnel weren’t so enthusiastic about the idea, in fact they were mad that Alex discovered their top secret project. They tried to stop him, but they were stopped instead. Alex saw that the project would be pointless in trying to perfect it to use in a war that was going to be over in six minutes. Better that it should be applied to those that would surely survive the aftermath of that same war. Here we are, I’m sure Alex will want to hear all about the outside world, hey maybe he’ll improve you too!” You enter an office where a man sits at a desk pouring over technical manuals and medical books. Two more cyborgs armed with some sort science fictionish weapons stand by him. There’s no way you could hope to kill him without them killing you as well. He looks up. “Ah a guest! Been a long time since we’ve seen anyone new…in fact I’m a little puzzled on how you even found this place, let alone entered it…you’re not GZS are you?” Alex says changing his pleasant demeanor in mid sentence. “No! Not at all! I’m here because the Colonel sent me. He says you and he are friends. Here. Here’s his ring and a letter he wrote to prove it. He’d also given me a security pass so I could enter this place.” Alex takes the ring and letter and inspects them both, before addressing you again. “Well it looks like everything’s legitimate. I shall trust you. Though I’m not sure I trust the Colonel. I never did trust him. He only wanted to use me so I could get access to high tech weaponry, but instead I found much more here! Much more than I ever told him! Ha ha! I hear him trying to radio in, wondering if there’s anyone here, I’ve been ignoring him. He and his group of right wing loonies are unworthy of being re-made. If they think they’re true survivialists then they don’t need the gifts that this base provides. All of it is mine, I EARNED this place and it shall be I who ushers in a new era. Not GZS, not the government and not the fucking goddamn Colonel!” Alex is obviously unhinged, you don’t know if he was always this way or got that way later, but it hardly matters, what’s of major importance is that you walk away from this meeting unscathed. You try to calm him down. “Whoa hold on, I don’t think the Colonel or any of his right wing loonies would want to be re-made.” “Nonsense, anyone with any sense of survival would want to be re-made if they new about what was being worked on here.” You can’t help, but notice that Alex hasn’t done any improvements on himself… “However, I can see you don’t share that same short sighted thinking that the rest of those Compound cronies do. You are worthy of being re-made! In fact I would like to start now, I’ve been studying up on some new techniques and I would love to test them out. I think I could do a really good job this time, there will definitely be less acc…er complications than in the past.” This is just getting worse. Now this nutjob wants to work on you. “Look, I don’t want to be re-made! I was just here to see if you were alive and scout this place out! Now that I’ve done that, I’m to return to the Compound!” “Oh well now that’s going to be a problem…I can’t risk you telling him what’s here.” You really didn’t want to hear that. “Look, I’ll tell the Colonel that there wasn’t anything here, I can reason with him. You can even take my security pass to make sure I can’t get back in if you’re really worried. However, if he doesn’t hear from me, he’s only going to send more folks to this place.” “And what of it? They wouldn’t be able to get in and even if they could, his weekend warriors would be no match for Cybernetic Evolution!” “No, but they could just blow up the elevator trapping you down here forever, and you’ll never be able to leave to allow your genius to usher in the new era that you were talking about.” That seems to relax Alex a bit, as always a little flattery goes a long way to ease an unbalanced mind. “Hmm, perhaps you make some sense, and you seem like a trustworthy sort…very well. I shall arrange for you to leave. Give me your security pass.” “Okay, and I’ll be needing the Colonel’s ring and letter back, so I can say I didn’t find anything here.” You and Alex exchange items and he and his two cyborg guards escort you back to the elevator. “Goodbye, perhaps if we meet again you will be more receptive to being re-made. It’s a harsh new world, and you’ll soon wish you had an edge to survive it.” Alex tells you before you leave. “I’ll do alright.” The elevator goes up and you’re back on the surface again where you make your trek back to the compound in just a few days. You notice there have been a few changes in the few days you’ve left. Namely there’s a still to make hooch. And you now have some working vehicles that been modified to run on hooch. The same still that people are making cheap booze from they’re also using it as fuel, which basically translates into the vehicles running on “garbage” given that’s what the booze is being made out of. Smells pretty bad, but whatever works. Though from what you heard some towns have been found to be running their vehicles on shit (animal AND human) so the smell could be worse. There’s been a couple deaths from some of the other recon missions, but for the most part everything else is normal. Everyone’s almost surprised to see you come back, Marina’s happy, Harry obviously isn’t. The Colonel though wants to see you immediately. Since you don’t owe any allegiance to some nutcase playing Frankenstein in an underground base, you tell the Colonel everything. You expect him to get mad at you, but he doesn’t. “(Sigh) Alex always was a bit unstable; I always wondered why the army never gave him a section 8. Anyway, what you’re telling me doesn’t surprise me, though I wish you could’ve gotten away without giving up that security pass. It’s going to be harder to get down there now.” “You still want to go down there?” “Of course! What you think I’m going to let Alex slowly refine and build up his cyborg army? Who do you think he’s going to attack first? No, we need to get rid of him NOW. I suppose we could blow up the elevator doors to gain access. Not like we don’t have the means to do that.” “Yeah, but don’t you run the risk of blowing up the entire elevator, and causing it fall and crash down the shaft? We wouldn’t be able to send anyone down there in an efficient manner. Let alone fighting off cyborgs who would cut us down with ease if we were trying to repel down the shaft or huddled together coming off the elevator, besides Alex might have left the elevator on his level given the recent visit of mine.” The Colonel lets forth another sigh knowing that you make a good point, but frustrated as well. “You’re right, so what do you suggest we do then? Sit and do nothing with our thumbs up our asses?” > You suggest in hacking the security system, then invading the base. “Well I suppose you’re right in that we need to stop Alex, but blowing up the elevator still isn’t going to help, I suggest we hack the security system to gain control of it properly and then send down the invasion force and hope we can deal with the robots and cyborgs down there.” You reply. “Sounds like a better plan, I didn’t know you had so much computer experience though, let alone able to hack into a secret army base.” “Huh? I don’t. I mean, don’t you have people like that here?” “Excuse me, but you seem to be new here, hello welcome to the Compound…NO OF COURSE I DON’T I HAVE ANYONE LIKE THAT HERE! Sheesh! It’s not like we figured advanced computer hacking skills are going to be that useful when the world is blown back to the stone age! So you mean you don’t have the ability to pull off this amazing plan of yours?” “Well, not really, not to that degree at least…I suppose there’s just taking the panel apart and re-wiring it so it opens up for us though, you got any electricians or someone of that nature?” “Yeah a few, but I hope you do too, because you’re going to assist the team since you’re the idea man for all of this. After you clean out all the cyborgs and whatever the hell else Alex has built down there, remember to grab those weapons and come back. We’ll go back to occupy the base later. Now go select your team and whatever else you think you might need.” After asking for the names of the electronically “gifted” around the place, you go about following the Colonel’s orders and saying goodbye to Marina again, she looks more confident that you’ll return this time, you wish you could feel the same. When you and your team get to the base in a few days, you’re in for a little surprise. A medium sized robot is patrolling the courtyard. Looks like your friend Alex also dabbles in robotics as well as cybernetics. You and your team hide behind the outer wall when you all catch sight of it. Apparently Alex didn’t trust you any more than you trusted him, and looks like both of you were right. “Uh, what’s that?” one of your team members asks. “It’s a robot, what’s it look like?” “Well what’re we gonna do?” “Kill it! Everyone open fire!” You have no idea if your bullets are going to penetrate its armor, but you you’re going to try anyway. Everyone fires upon the robotic being, which begins to shutter and spark, but returns fire and a bright burst of light strikes one of your team members and completely incinerates him. “Holy shit, get cover and keep firing!” you shout. The rest of the battle doesn’t last too much longer, while your team continue to fire bursts at the machine while they dodge plasma blasts, you get enough time to toss a grenade at it and blow it to smithereens. Shards of burnt twisted metal lie all over the place. “Come on we need to open up that door, before something else comes out of the damn thing!” You and a few others start working on the card reader, trying to get it open as fast as possible. You don’t even know how you’re going to rewire the damn thing; you’ll just keep doing something until something else happens! As it turns out you didn’t need to do anything, while you and few others are fumbling around, the elevator doors open. At first you think you it was you who opened them, but in fact it was Alex who was controlling the elevator from the bottom. Two heavily armed cyborgs exit and begin firing immediately turning most of your team into charred skeletons. You manage to just barely get away and duck behind one of the buildings. Fortunately they don’t seem to be very fast, so when they try to chase you, you toss a few grenades in their direction, blowing them up in the same manner you destroyed the robot, except a bit bloodier, given their human bits. You come out of your hiding place and see nothing left of your team, they’ve all been killed. The elevator door is still open; you could enter and finish the job, or return to the Compound in failure. > You enter You take a deep breath and enter the elevator taking it down. As soon as it opens you step out and blaze away at the first metallic monster that pops from around the corner, hitting it critically in some vital component. In fact you’re doing okay all things considering, but as they say, it usually isn’t thing that you’re expecting that gets you. Thinking you have a breather, you duck into one of the rooms to reload; unfortunately you feel a dart go into your back, before you enter it. You pull it out and see it’s a tranquilizer dart. Already you feel drowsy, and begin to collapse. You ban barely make him out in your current state, but Alex soon enters with a victorious look on his face, holding his tranquilizer gun. “Well, it looks like I was right to not trust you, but you’ll be able to repay me back soon enough. Trust me, you’ll thank me for this remaking.” Despite Alex’s claims you’re unable to do much talking at all after Alex remakes you, let alone thanking him. He basically designs you in such a way that only your basic brain functions remain. Just enough for you to obey simple commands such as “Attack the Compound”. Obeying that command is the last thing you do, before you’re eventually blown to bits during Alex’s attack on the Compound.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Well I suppose you’re right in that we need to stop Alex, but blowing up the elevator still isn’t going to help, I suggest we hack the security system to gain control of it properly and then send down the invasion force and hope we can deal with the robots and cyborgs down there.” You reply. “Sounds like a better plan, I didn’t know you had so much computer experience though, let alone able to hack into a secret army base.” “Huh? I don’t. I mean, don’t you have people like that here?” “Excuse me, but you seem to be new here, hello welcome to the Compound…NO OF COURSE I DON’T I HAVE ANYONE LIKE THAT HERE! Sheesh! It’s not like we figured advanced computer hacking skills are going to be that useful when the world is blown back to the stone age! So you mean you don’t have the ability to pull off this amazing plan of yours?” “Well, not really, not to that degree at least…I suppose there’s just taking the panel apart and re-wiring it so it opens up for us though, you got any electricians or someone of that nature?” “Yeah a few, but I hope you do too, because you’re going to assist the team since you’re the idea man for all of this. After you clean out all the cyborgs and whatever the hell else Alex has built down there, remember to grab those weapons and come back. We’ll go back to occupy the base later. Now go select your team and whatever else you think you might need.” After asking for the names of the electronically “gifted” around the place, you go about following the Colonel’s orders and saying goodbye to Marina again, she looks more confident that you’ll return this time, you wish you could feel the same. When you and your team get to the base in a few days, you’re in for a little surprise. A medium sized robot is patrolling the courtyard. Looks like your friend Alex also dabbles in robotics as well as cybernetics. You and your team hide behind the outer wall when you all catch sight of it. Apparently Alex didn’t trust you any more than you trusted him, and looks like both of you were right. “Uh, what’s that?” one of your team members asks. “It’s a robot, what’s it look like?” “Well what’re we gonna do?” “Kill it! Everyone open fire!” You have no idea if your bullets are going to penetrate its armor, but you you’re going to try anyway. Everyone fires upon the robotic being, which begins to shutter and spark, but returns fire and a bright burst of light strikes one of your team members and completely incinerates him. “Holy shit, get cover and keep firing!” you shout. The rest of the battle doesn’t last too much longer, while your team continue to fire bursts at the machine while they dodge plasma blasts, you get enough time to toss a grenade at it and blow it to smithereens. Shards of burnt twisted metal lie all over the place. “Come on we need to open up that door, before something else comes out of the damn thing!” You and a few others start working on the card reader, trying to get it open as fast as possible. You don’t even know how you’re going to rewire the damn thing; you’ll just keep doing something until something else happens! As it turns out you didn’t need to do anything, while you and few others are fumbling around, the elevator doors open. At first you think you it was you who opened them, but in fact it was Alex who was controlling the elevator from the bottom. Two heavily armed cyborgs exit and begin firing immediately turning most of your team into charred skeletons. You manage to just barely get away and duck behind one of the buildings. Fortunately they don’t seem to be very fast, so when they try to chase you, you toss a few grenades in their direction, blowing them up in the same manner you destroyed the robot, except a bit bloodier, given their human bits. You come out of your hiding place and see nothing left of your team, they’ve all been killed. The elevator door is still open; you could enter and finish the job, or return to the Compound in failure. > You leave There’s no way you can take on the rest by yourself, at the very least you need to get reinforcements! You’d radio in, but one of the other team members was carrying it, and he was fricasseed. Plus you don’t want to be around if anymore of Alex’s creations come up. Time for a full scale invasion, looks like the Colonel was right. And that’s just what the Colonel tells you, when he’s chewing your ass out for losing valuable people and equipment in an attempt to go through with your plan. His respect for you is severely lowered, in fact the entire Compound’s respect for you is lowered. Harry makes every effort to taunt you, and even Marina becomes distant. (Obviously you weren’t the “man” she thought you were.) Your status in the Compound is pretty much nil, when the Colonel finally organizes an invasion party; you of course aren’t included. Now knowing another invasion attempt is probably coming, Alex really beefed up his defenses; the invasion force doesn’t even set foot into the base before getting blasted by superior cyborg weaponry. Reinforcements are called in, but they don’t help. The base is too well defended now. A retreat is called, and the Compound has to abandon its invasion indefinitely. In fact all exploration is called off; since the Colonel decides he can’t afford to lose anyone else. (One of the only reasons why you’re kept around) The Compound just becomes a “place” where everyone lives because it’s safer than living outside it. The ideas of “rebuilding” civilization are abandoned. Morale certainly isn’t what it used to be. Of course none of that means shit to Alex, who only steps up his plans for conquest. A year passes without another incident and then the day happens which you all hoped would never happen, but somehow expected it would. Alex’s army arrives, and what’s worse is they now outnumber you. Alex must’ve been capturing people in the wastelands or something. He’s also improved his abilities, they’re even tougher, and worse they’re faster. You don’t have anywhere else to go, and this place is your home such as it is. You figure maybe you can regain some respect by defending the place. You and the rest prepare to defend the Compound. Harry is predictably yelling orders at everyone, while the Colonel is attempting to boost morale with inspirational speeches. None of it really helps though when the first wave of cyborgs easily melt the gate into liquid metal and blast holes in the walls. Then they proceed to melt the people into liquid pulp, and blast holes in their bodies, you are no exception.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You lower your rifle (But still hold on to it) and walk side by side with the cyborg who is surprisingly chatty, you also see it walks a bit irregularly, like it hasn’t been spliced together correctly. “Alex will be most pleased to see you; you’ll be the first human here in months!” “What happened to all the others?” “Oh well most of them have been improved like m-m-m-m.” the cyborg hits itself in the head before he stops stuttering “Like me, sir.” “Hmm, some improvement.” “Oh well, its not so bad. Alex promises to give us a tune up when he gets the necessary time, he is only one man after all. Some assistants would certainly help.” “So Alex is a surgeon?” “Well he’s not really. I mean he didn’t start out that way at least, but he’s completely self taught and trying to learn more each day! Sure there have been some failures, but there’s also been success! Why look at m-m-m-m.” the cyborg hits itself in the head again while you just shake yours. You can see this is going to be an interesting meeting. “So who were you before Alex…uh improved you.” “Oh I was a regular military man who guarded this base with no real identity. Just a name and a number really.” “And now?” “Now I’m known as J-34 and I protect Alex!” “That’s great… so everyone here is a cyborg like you?” “Just about. Most military personnel were friends with Alex before being renewed, so they were happy to be improved. The GZS personnel weren’t so enthusiastic about the idea, in fact they were mad that Alex discovered their top secret project. They tried to stop him, but they were stopped instead. Alex saw that the project would be pointless in trying to perfect it to use in a war that was going to be over in six minutes. Better that it should be applied to those that would surely survive the aftermath of that same war. Here we are, I’m sure Alex will want to hear all about the outside world, hey maybe he’ll improve you too!” You enter an office where a man sits at a desk pouring over technical manuals and medical books. Two more cyborgs armed with some sort science fictionish weapons stand by him. There’s no way you could hope to kill him without them killing you as well. He looks up. “Ah a guest! Been a long time since we’ve seen anyone new…in fact I’m a little puzzled on how you even found this place, let alone entered it…you’re not GZS are you?” Alex says changing his pleasant demeanor in mid sentence. “No! Not at all! I’m here because the Colonel sent me. He says you and he are friends. Here. Here’s his ring and a letter he wrote to prove it. He’d also given me a security pass so I could enter this place.” Alex takes the ring and letter and inspects them both, before addressing you again. “Well it looks like everything’s legitimate. I shall trust you. Though I’m not sure I trust the Colonel. I never did trust him. He only wanted to use me so I could get access to high tech weaponry, but instead I found much more here! Much more than I ever told him! Ha ha! I hear him trying to radio in, wondering if there’s anyone here, I’ve been ignoring him. He and his group of right wing loonies are unworthy of being re-made. If they think they’re true survivialists then they don’t need the gifts that this base provides. All of it is mine, I EARNED this place and it shall be I who ushers in a new era. Not GZS, not the government and not the fucking goddamn Colonel!” Alex is obviously unhinged, you don’t know if he was always this way or got that way later, but it hardly matters, what’s of major importance is that you walk away from this meeting unscathed. You try to calm him down. “Whoa hold on, I don’t think the Colonel or any of his right wing loonies would want to be re-made.” “Nonsense, anyone with any sense of survival would want to be re-made if they new about what was being worked on here.” You can’t help, but notice that Alex hasn’t done any improvements on himself… “However, I can see you don’t share that same short sighted thinking that the rest of those Compound cronies do. You are worthy of being re-made! In fact I would like to start now, I’ve been studying up on some new techniques and I would love to test them out. I think I could do a really good job this time, there will definitely be less acc…er complications than in the past.” This is just getting worse. Now this nutjob wants to work on you. “Look, I don’t want to be re-made! I was just here to see if you were alive and scout this place out! Now that I’ve done that, I’m to return to the Compound!” “Oh well now that’s going to be a problem…I can’t risk you telling him what’s here.” You really didn’t want to hear that. “Look, I’ll tell the Colonel that there wasn’t anything here, I can reason with him. You can even take my security pass to make sure I can’t get back in if you’re really worried. However, if he doesn’t hear from me, he’s only going to send more folks to this place.” “And what of it? They wouldn’t be able to get in and even if they could, his weekend warriors would be no match for Cybernetic Evolution!” “No, but they could just blow up the elevator trapping you down here forever, and you’ll never be able to leave to allow your genius to usher in the new era that you were talking about.” That seems to relax Alex a bit, as always a little flattery goes a long way to ease an unbalanced mind. “Hmm, perhaps you make some sense, and you seem like a trustworthy sort…very well. I shall arrange for you to leave. Give me your security pass.” “Okay, and I’ll be needing the Colonel’s ring and letter back, so I can say I didn’t find anything here.” You and Alex exchange items and he and his two cyborg guards escort you back to the elevator. “Goodbye, perhaps if we meet again you will be more receptive to being re-made. It’s a harsh new world, and you’ll soon wish you had an edge to survive it.” Alex tells you before you leave. “I’ll do alright.” The elevator goes up and you’re back on the surface again where you make your trek back to the compound in just a few days. You notice there have been a few changes in the few days you’ve left. Namely there’s a still to make hooch. And you now have some working vehicles that been modified to run on hooch. The same still that people are making cheap booze from they’re also using it as fuel, which basically translates into the vehicles running on “garbage” given that’s what the booze is being made out of. Smells pretty bad, but whatever works. Though from what you heard some towns have been found to be running their vehicles on shit (animal AND human) so the smell could be worse. There’s been a couple deaths from some of the other recon missions, but for the most part everything else is normal. Everyone’s almost surprised to see you come back, Marina’s happy, Harry obviously isn’t. The Colonel though wants to see you immediately. Since you don’t owe any allegiance to some nutcase playing Frankenstein in an underground base, you tell the Colonel everything. You expect him to get mad at you, but he doesn’t. “(Sigh) Alex always was a bit unstable; I always wondered why the army never gave him a section 8. Anyway, what you’re telling me doesn’t surprise me, though I wish you could’ve gotten away without giving up that security pass. It’s going to be harder to get down there now.” “You still want to go down there?” “Of course! What you think I’m going to let Alex slowly refine and build up his cyborg army? Who do you think he’s going to attack first? No, we need to get rid of him NOW. I suppose we could blow up the elevator doors to gain access. Not like we don’t have the means to do that.” “Yeah, but don’t you run the risk of blowing up the entire elevator, and causing it fall and crash down the shaft? We wouldn’t be able to send anyone down there in an efficient manner. Let alone fighting off cyborgs who would cut us down with ease if we were trying to repel down the shaft or huddled together coming off the elevator, besides Alex might have left the elevator on his level given the recent visit of mine.” The Colonel lets forth another sigh knowing that you make a good point, but frustrated as well. “You’re right, so what do you suggest we do then? Sit and do nothing with our thumbs up our asses?” > You suggest in containing Alex instead Funny that you are about to suggest an idea to the Colonel that got you out of trouble with Alex in the first place. “No, I think you do have a good idea about stopping Alex, I saw first hand how crazy he was. Maybe we can’t actually get to him, but we could contain him. We blow up the elevator like you wanted to do and then dump explosives down the shaft, it should collapse things enough that they won’t be able to leave, and we won’t lose any people.” “Ah, I like the way you think, but suppose they attempt get out, or rebuild the elevator or something?” “Well, we could leave a permanent detachment there to keep a constant vigil. I mean the surface part of the base is completely usable. That way we get an early warning just in case anything does try to come out.” “Interesting idea. Having two command centers would be a good idea, I was planning on expansion in the future, might as well start now. Should keep us alert as well. Can’t afford to get sloppy out here. Okay. We’ll go with that idea, and since you came up with it, you can oversee the operation. In fact consider yourself stationed there until further notice.” “What?!” “Hey I have to put someone there, you’ve done a good job so far and you have the best experience with the place so you can be in charge. Think of it as an honor son! I have a lot faith in you and I don’t have much in anyone.” “Well thanks, but wouldn’t someone like Harry be a better choice?” ”Harry? Yeah, he’s got his uses, but I’d rather not have him in charge of anything important like this, no I want you and few others to go, in fact you pick them. I’ll let you know if I can afford to spare them.” “Well then I pick Marina right now.” “I expected that. Sure, if you can convince her to go. Just remember what you’re there for! Okay go pick out your team and gather what equipment you might need.” You leave and tell Marina the situation immediately, she of course agrees to go with you, though she’s a little worried about being someplace with a bunch of cyborgs several feet underneath her, of course you’re worried about the same thing. You pick out six more people of varying skills, but mostly people you were getting along with during your stay at the Compound. You don’t want to take anyone who you’re not going to get along with. The Colonel approves of your choice and gives you the okay, Harry looks positively jealous that he was passed over for you who just got here. In fact before you leave he tells you as much. “You fucking little pissant. You think because you’re all chummy with the Colonel that you’re his fucking second in command now?” “No, I…” “You’re goddamn right no! If anything happens to the Colonel I’M in charge of this shit! You better remember that fuckhead! Because if you’re still on my list when that occurs, you best pray to God that I at least lube your asshole after I rip off your pink panties and before I shove my foot up it and make your colon my permanent fuckin’ sock!” You’re a little bewildered by the logic of this comment, you almost can’t be sure if he’s threatening you, or flirting with you. You don’t feel like arguing with him though since it won’t accomplish anything, besides if any good is coming from this, it’s getting away from him. You and your team leave. When you and your team get to the base in a few days, you’re in for a little surprise. A medium sized robot is patrolling the courtyard. Looks like your friend Alex also dabbles in robotics as well as cybernetics. You and your team hide behind the outer wall when you all catch sight of it. Apparently Alex didn’t trust you any more than you trusted him, and looks like both of you were right. “Uh, what’s that?” one of your team members asks. “It’s a robot, what’s it look like?” “Well what’re we gonna do?” “Kill it! Everyone open fire!” You have no idea if your bullets are going to penetrate its armor, but you you’re going to try anyway. Everyone fires upon the robotic being, which begins to shutter and spark, but returns fire and a bright burst of light strikes one of your team members and completely incinerates him. “Holy shit, get cover and keep firing!” you shout. The rest of the battle doesn’t last too much longer, while your team continue to fire bursts at the machine while they dodge plasma blasts, you get enough time to toss a grenade at it and blow it to smithereens. Shards of burnt twisted metal lie all over the place. “Come on we need to blow up that door, before something else comes out of the damn thing!” You and the rest apply charges to the elevator door and run before it explodes. Just like you though, Alex doesn’t have the elevator on the surface anymore, it’s at the bottom, in fact its ascending right now! “Dump grenades down the fuckin’ shaft!” This action is followed by running far away from the elevator, a large explosion, and then a large crash and another smaller explosion. You ask for a flashlight and peer down the shaft. Its smoking mess and from what you can tell, part of the structure collapsed in on itself. Nothing is going to be coming out of there for a long time. You’re about to radio in and tell the Colonel the news when another signal breaks in, its Alex… “So, that snitch told after all! I knew he wasn’t to be trusted! You can’t stop me! I’ll get out of here eventually! And I shall…” “Got news for you Alex, you’re talking to the snitch right now, and you won’t be going anywhere as long as I’m here. Enjoy your underground prison.” You switch to another frequency and tell the Colonel who seems pleased, he tells you he’ll keep in contact with you on a regular basis and send more people when possible, in the mean time secure the place and get settled in. A few more weeks pass and eventually the initial nervousness disappears from everyone, Alex still breaks in ranting on your radio frequency every now and then, but you ignore him. In fact being at the base turns out to be more to your liking, there’s less people around, you’re in charge and you get to spend more time with Marina. A year passes… Not too much changes around the base (Which you now call Pandora which seems appropriate since you’re keeping in something that shouldn’t be let out!) a few more people are transferred here, supplies are delivered back and forth, but not much else happens. You get reports from the Compound every now and then, seems they’ve made progress with a few small towns that survived, but there are a lot of problems with lawless bandits running around. Reports have also mentioned strange mutated animals lurking about too. Sounds like they have everything under control so far though. The Colonel has the idea to trade with the towns and offer protection when possible. He hopes to get more people to join the Compound you imagine. Your orders are still the same, just guard Pandora, and make sure no cybernetic horrors are coming out. Sometimes you wonder if you shouldn’t be doing something else, indeed Marina seems to think so. Sometimes you forget she’s been training in all this survivalist shit longer than you have and has that “tame the wasteland” spirit more than you do. > You stay put You decide that you got it made, why fuck with it? The rest of those at the Compound have to go on missions to fight bandits and go exploring possible hostile locations. You don’t need to do any of that. You’re in a nice safe isolated location where nobody ever comes except to drop off supplies every now and then. Even the fact cyborgs are trapped underneath you doesn’t bother you anymore. You continue your routine. Four more years pass... You and Marina are still together, but for some reason, you don’t seem as close anymore. It seems like she’s been getting distant in the past few years. You still get the harassing radio rant from Alex every now and then just to let you know he’s still alive along with his robots and cyborgs. You’re guessing he’s been surviving on rats and roaches down there. It’s been five years since you first joined the Compound and there’s been a lot more changes there at least that’s what you’ve been hearing from the people transferred to Pandora. You get less and less reports from the Compound itself other than its undergone a name change and due to its inclusion of a few towns now, its called the Combine and the Compound itself is called Fort Justice. You know about how the Colonel has gotten sick and seems to be getting worse as more time passes and how the population rate is growing, but it’s slow. The major theory is the elevated levels of background radiation are probably affecting fertility. (You wonder about yourself and Marina since she hasn’t once gotten pregnant in the five years you’ve been together) There have been more people sent here, mainly people that aren’t “cutting it” anymore at the Compound. In fact you’ve been hearing some interesting stories. One man in particular called Roger has spoken to you quite frankly about what’s been going on at the Compound some of it a bit alarming. “The fuckin’ Colonel? When he started getting sick that sonofabitch Harry started taking over more responsibility. Started doing shit HIS way, which was a lot more reactionary. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m not some faggot peacenik, I’m all about creating a new strong society, like how America SHOULD’VE been, but fuck man. I’m not gonna kill children for no goddamn reason!” “What?! When did this happen?” “About a year ago! I was on a mission to this small town called Lost Springs and Harry was with us personally. They had a fresh underground supply of water, so we really wanted to gather them into the fold. Talks didn’t go so well though, so Harry went nuts and shot the fucking mayor of the town! Then he proceeded to tell us to start killing all the kids if they didn’t submit to us.” “And?” “Well I refused to do it, and some of the others didn’t either. A few did though, and after a couple of kids were killed. The rest of the townsfolk pretty much fell in line. Harry left the ones who were willing to kill at his command to occupy the place. He made up a damn story to the Colonel about how he HAD to do it and left out the shooting kids though. And the Colonel gets sicker and sicker, and Harry gets freer reign. Shit, if the Colonel wasn’t still alive I think Harry wouldn’t even be sending some people here, he’d probably be sending them all to the city.” “Wait, the city? There’s missions to the city? I thought those were stopped after the first few times that was attempted.” “Not anymore! Harry’s been sending a few people on his shit list to missions on the city. Harry says that there are still important resources to be gathered from there. Its bullshit, ain’t nothin’ there except fuckin’ mutants and radioactivity! I probably would’ve got sent there, but I lost my arm in an ambush, and the Colonel said I needed to be taken off of active duty and sent here. There’s a real mean motherfucker loyal to Harry called Damon, who goes on the city missions to ensure nobody tries to go AWOL. He’s fucking nuts, he loves going into the city; I think he actually gets a fucking orgasm.” “Where the hell is Harry getting all these new people, if he’s treating the towns so badly?” “I told you he’s been press ganging some of them and most are so beaten by that point that they just go along with it, but he’s also been subduing some of the raider scum! That Damon is one of those fuckers. Instead of killing them all like we should be doing, he’s been recruiting them into the Combine! These degenerates are usually the ones he uses for occupation since most of them don’t have any qualms about killing anything that moves and they’re used to terrorizing towns.” “Holy shit, I’ve never heard about all this before.” “I’m telling you, you’re lucky you got assigned here when you did, because you would’ve been going to the city. The only thing keeping you safe is the Colonel who insists you stay in charge of this place; I don’t want to think about the day when the Colonel finally croaks. Shit, I might just leave and take my chances, one arm be damned. YOU might want to think about leaving as well, because chances are Harry’s going to be turning his attention towards you when that day comes.” “I still don’t see what the hell I did to him, he’s hated me since day one.” “Well, you got the Colonel’s attention and his respect. You got a command position of your very own base, and most importantly you got Marina. He’s always liked her. You didn’t know?” “Well she did mention one time that he came on to her in the past, well anyway, it hardly matters why he hates me I guess. What matters is I gotta think about how I’m gonna deal with this problem in the future.” Suddenly one of your assistants comes in and has something to report. Something you really don’t want to know after having been given the recent information by Roger. The Colonel has died, Harry has taken complete control of the Combine and his first order is for YOU to return to Fort Justice for reassignment. Looks like you’ll have to be thinking fast. > You leave the Combine Secession isn’t really a viable option. You simply can’t stand up to the resources Harry has, the only option is to distance yourself as far away as possible. Harry’s escorts will be here in a few days so you start packing immediately. Marina wonders what you’re doing. “We’re getting the hell outta here! You think Harry’s gonna let me live? At best he might be sending me into missions into the city! Fuck that!” “You mean we’re just leaving? We’re not fighting back?” “What you think I like this? I mean I don’t want to leave, but if we stay, we’re gonna end up dead! Come on pack your shit.” “I dunno. I can’t just leave everything. I mean I’m still friends and close to all these people, I can’t just leave them.” “Look, I’ve actually gotten along with most of the folks here too, but I’m not sticking my neck out for any of them. Besides, if they’re smart they’ll leave too.” “I can’t do it, I can’t go.” You stop packing. “What, are you fucking kidding me?” “No, I mean I can’t do it. This is my life, this was my life before the bombs and it’ll continue to be my life afterwards. I can’t just leave, I mean we’re trying to re-build society…” “Fuck society! Why can’t it just be me and you?” Marina suddenly tells you a revelation you always had an inkling of, but never quite sure until today… “You know why I liked you in the beginning? Because all those years we worked in that office I saw a man who worked hard in a mundane job yet had the potential to be something more under the right circumstances. I’m sure you remember I said something similar five years ago when I convinced you to come with me. Then you proved me right somewhat by volunteering and taking charge of this place. I knew I’d chosen right. I was in love with you.” “Was eh?” “Yes, was. In the following years of you taking command of this place you’ve shown no more initiative. You’ve been content to just do the mundane routine of running this place. You were doing exactly the opposite of what I first saw. You were squandering your potential.” “So what was I supposed to be doing then Marina? Driving across the fuckin’ wasteland shooting up people, taking their shit, and declaring their town part of the Combine like Harry?” “No, of course not. But you could’ve done something more. Like sending out your own exploration teams, or even going on them yourself. Maybe if you had, you wouldn’t be in this position now. You’d have better leverage to face Harry. Maybe he is a fucking dictator, but he’s accomplishing a goal.” You pack the last of your things and start walking while Marina follows you. “Yeah, some goal…Okay you know what Marina, fuck it. I gotta get outta here, and its apparent you’ve made your decision and I’m not gonna try to talk you out of it, because if you’re that willing to throw fuckin’ five years away just because I’m not the wasteland warrior that you dreamed up in your mind, then like I said fuck it. You’re not worth my time either anymore. I hope you and Harry have a nice life, I’m sure he’s exactly what you’re looking for. Hope for your sake though his obsession for you is a lot stronger than his vindictiveness.” “Fuck you! It’s not that goddamn black and white! I don’t like fuckin Harry, and I never will, but…HEY! Don’t fuckin’ walk out on me!” You storm out of the base, and Marina attempts to reason and explain, but it’s all bullshit to you. This whole thing was. Trying to “rebuild” society, yeah right. As if there was anything worth rebuilding in the first place. You’re done with this shit. You tried it and it was okay for awhile, but now its time to move on. Away from this and away from people. You travel for a few days, and you expect Harry’s men to come tracking you, but nobody ever follows you. You get attacked by a few mutated wolves, and a few mad men here and there, but nobody from the Combine. It’s possible that you’ve done a good job of throwing them off, and Harry’s people aren’t skilled trackers, of course maybe Harry’s just glad you’re out of the way period. You briefly have an amusing thought, that Marina still had some sort of feelings for you and offered to be Harry’s girl in exchange of letting you live. You decide to think that’s what happened, since you’ll never know for certain and you’ve always been prone to imagine dramatic movie like endings. “Heh. We’ll always have Pandora.” You laugh to yourself as you distance yourself further away from Combine territory.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide that you got it made, why fuck with it? The rest of those at the Compound have to go on missions to fight bandits and go exploring possible hostile locations. You don’t need to do any of that. You’re in a nice safe isolated location where nobody ever comes except to drop off supplies every now and then. Even the fact cyborgs are trapped underneath you doesn’t bother you anymore. You continue your routine. Four more years pass... You and Marina are still together, but for some reason, you don’t seem as close anymore. It seems like she’s been getting distant in the past few years. You still get the harassing radio rant from Alex every now and then just to let you know he’s still alive along with his robots and cyborgs. You’re guessing he’s been surviving on rats and roaches down there. It’s been five years since you first joined the Compound and there’s been a lot more changes there at least that’s what you’ve been hearing from the people transferred to Pandora. You get less and less reports from the Compound itself other than its undergone a name change and due to its inclusion of a few towns now, its called the Combine and the Compound itself is called Fort Justice. You know about how the Colonel has gotten sick and seems to be getting worse as more time passes and how the population rate is growing, but it’s slow. The major theory is the elevated levels of background radiation are probably affecting fertility. (You wonder about yourself and Marina since she hasn’t once gotten pregnant in the five years you’ve been together) There have been more people sent here, mainly people that aren’t “cutting it” anymore at the Compound. In fact you’ve been hearing some interesting stories. One man in particular called Roger has spoken to you quite frankly about what’s been going on at the Compound some of it a bit alarming. “The fuckin’ Colonel? When he started getting sick that sonofabitch Harry started taking over more responsibility. Started doing shit HIS way, which was a lot more reactionary. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m not some faggot peacenik, I’m all about creating a new strong society, like how America SHOULD’VE been, but fuck man. I’m not gonna kill children for no goddamn reason!” “What?! When did this happen?” “About a year ago! I was on a mission to this small town called Lost Springs and Harry was with us personally. They had a fresh underground supply of water, so we really wanted to gather them into the fold. Talks didn’t go so well though, so Harry went nuts and shot the fucking mayor of the town! Then he proceeded to tell us to start killing all the kids if they didn’t submit to us.” “And?” “Well I refused to do it, and some of the others didn’t either. A few did though, and after a couple of kids were killed. The rest of the townsfolk pretty much fell in line. Harry left the ones who were willing to kill at his command to occupy the place. He made up a damn story to the Colonel about how he HAD to do it and left out the shooting kids though. And the Colonel gets sicker and sicker, and Harry gets freer reign. Shit, if the Colonel wasn’t still alive I think Harry wouldn’t even be sending some people here, he’d probably be sending them all to the city.” “Wait, the city? There’s missions to the city? I thought those were stopped after the first few times that was attempted.” “Not anymore! Harry’s been sending a few people on his shit list to missions on the city. Harry says that there are still important resources to be gathered from there. Its bullshit, ain’t nothin’ there except fuckin’ mutants and radioactivity! I probably would’ve got sent there, but I lost my arm in an ambush, and the Colonel said I needed to be taken off of active duty and sent here. There’s a real mean motherfucker loyal to Harry called Damon, who goes on the city missions to ensure nobody tries to go AWOL. He’s fucking nuts, he loves going into the city; I think he actually gets a fucking orgasm.” “Where the hell is Harry getting all these new people, if he’s treating the towns so badly?” “I told you he’s been press ganging some of them and most are so beaten by that point that they just go along with it, but he’s also been subduing some of the raider scum! That Damon is one of those fuckers. Instead of killing them all like we should be doing, he’s been recruiting them into the Combine! These degenerates are usually the ones he uses for occupation since most of them don’t have any qualms about killing anything that moves and they’re used to terrorizing towns.” “Holy shit, I’ve never heard about all this before.” “I’m telling you, you’re lucky you got assigned here when you did, because you would’ve been going to the city. The only thing keeping you safe is the Colonel who insists you stay in charge of this place; I don’t want to think about the day when the Colonel finally croaks. Shit, I might just leave and take my chances, one arm be damned. YOU might want to think about leaving as well, because chances are Harry’s going to be turning his attention towards you when that day comes.” “I still don’t see what the hell I did to him, he’s hated me since day one.” “Well, you got the Colonel’s attention and his respect. You got a command position of your very own base, and most importantly you got Marina. He’s always liked her. You didn’t know?” “Well she did mention one time that he came on to her in the past, well anyway, it hardly matters why he hates me I guess. What matters is I gotta think about how I’m gonna deal with this problem in the future.” Suddenly one of your assistants comes in and has something to report. Something you really don’t want to know after having been given the recent information by Roger. The Colonel has died, Harry has taken complete control of the Combine and his first order is for YOU to return to Fort Justice for reassignment. Looks like you’ll have to be thinking fast. > You secede from the Combine "Fuck off Harry, and take your Combine and shove it up your ass. We’re seceding.” You abruptly tell him over the radio, before announcing your intensions to everyone else in the base. You get a mixed reaction of apprehension, while a lot of them aren’t too fond of Harry, they still like living with basic necessities, something that becomes apparent in the weeks to come. There are a number of problems from the beginning. First of all, you’re an isolated community and while that has its advantages, it also has its drawbacks, meaning the instant you tell Harry to fuck off and die over the radio, you’re no longer getting any supplies of any kind, you’re stuck with what you have. Medical supplies are scarce as it is; now they’re non-existent. Forget about getting new ammo too. Food is a bit of a problem, (Water isn’t, the base has its own water recycling and filtering system, fortunately it’s on the surface rather than underground) since you were getting a majority of that from Fort Justice. Some hunting is done in the surrounding wilderness. It becomes a major problem though when Harry sends an invasion detachment and cuts you off from even doing that. It’s not even like you can start farming even if you had the means since the inside of the base is completely paved (as well as harboring a deranged doctor and his cyborgs) The only thing that prevents him from completely taking the place is the fact he’s spread a bit thin in other areas of the Combine with keeping control of other towns and you’re pretty well fortified. Doesn’t mean he can’t continue to harass you, and he can keep supplying his people. You can’t. His people are somewhat more battle hardened as well. Not that you’re saddled with a bunch of non-combatants, but anyone that’s still following Harry willingly has been indoctrinated with a little more fanatic conformity, which is a great thing to have in a soldier. So great, you wish you had more people like that. A couple months after the initial siege; most people are ready to throw you to Harry’s men in exchange for mercy. Marina and few others stand by you, but its mob rule. You’re overwhelmed, disarmed and thrown to the invasion force outside. All that still stayed loyal to you are immediately shot as traitors. The ones that turned on you are merely beaten (and a few of them shot to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again) You and Marina are taken back to Harry. He gets a sadistic pleasure out of having you beaten in front of Marina. He attempts to give Marina one last chance to submit, but she refuses causing him to slap her upside the face and then start to rip off her clothes. You yell out, but are promptly beaten by Harry’s guards again. Unfortunately for all his bravado Harry’s unable to get it up. He tries like hell since he wants you to watch, but for whatever reason, his attempt at rape is a complete failure. Knowing the end is near anyway, Marina laughs at him before he smashes her skull against the ground yelling and screaming at her whole time. He then kicks your bloody body and blames you for having to do that, you spit out a gob of blood and some teeth. “Enjoy your fuckin’ empire, you limp dick bitch.” You groan. “FUCK YOU, YOU GODDAMN PIECE OF SHIT!” he replies back, grabbing his pistol off the table. Harry then ends your existence by emptying his gun into you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Funny that you are about to suggest an idea to the Colonel that got you out of trouble with Alex in the first place. “No, I think you do have a good idea about stopping Alex, I saw first hand how crazy he was. Maybe we can’t actually get to him, but we could contain him. We blow up the elevator like you wanted to do and then dump explosives down the shaft, it should collapse things enough that they won’t be able to leave, and we won’t lose any people.” “Ah, I like the way you think, but suppose they attempt get out, or rebuild the elevator or something?” “Well, we could leave a permanent detachment there to keep a constant vigil. I mean the surface part of the base is completely usable. That way we get an early warning just in case anything does try to come out.” “Interesting idea. Having two command centers would be a good idea, I was planning on expansion in the future, might as well start now. Should keep us alert as well. Can’t afford to get sloppy out here. Okay. We’ll go with that idea, and since you came up with it, you can oversee the operation. In fact consider yourself stationed there until further notice.” “What?!” “Hey I have to put someone there, you’ve done a good job so far and you have the best experience with the place so you can be in charge. Think of it as an honor son! I have a lot faith in you and I don’t have much in anyone.” “Well thanks, but wouldn’t someone like Harry be a better choice?” ”Harry? Yeah, he’s got his uses, but I’d rather not have him in charge of anything important like this, no I want you and few others to go, in fact you pick them. I’ll let you know if I can afford to spare them.” “Well then I pick Marina right now.” “I expected that. Sure, if you can convince her to go. Just remember what you’re there for! Okay go pick out your team and gather what equipment you might need.” You leave and tell Marina the situation immediately, she of course agrees to go with you, though she’s a little worried about being someplace with a bunch of cyborgs several feet underneath her, of course you’re worried about the same thing. You pick out six more people of varying skills, but mostly people you were getting along with during your stay at the Compound. You don’t want to take anyone who you’re not going to get along with. The Colonel approves of your choice and gives you the okay, Harry looks positively jealous that he was passed over for you who just got here. In fact before you leave he tells you as much. “You fucking little pissant. You think because you’re all chummy with the Colonel that you’re his fucking second in command now?” “No, I…” “You’re goddamn right no! If anything happens to the Colonel I’M in charge of this shit! You better remember that fuckhead! Because if you’re still on my list when that occurs, you best pray to God that I at least lube your asshole after I rip off your pink panties and before I shove my foot up it and make your colon my permanent fuckin’ sock!” You’re a little bewildered by the logic of this comment, you almost can’t be sure if he’s threatening you, or flirting with you. You don’t feel like arguing with him though since it won’t accomplish anything, besides if any good is coming from this, it’s getting away from him. You and your team leave. When you and your team get to the base in a few days, you’re in for a little surprise. A medium sized robot is patrolling the courtyard. Looks like your friend Alex also dabbles in robotics as well as cybernetics. You and your team hide behind the outer wall when you all catch sight of it. Apparently Alex didn’t trust you any more than you trusted him, and looks like both of you were right. “Uh, what’s that?” one of your team members asks. “It’s a robot, what’s it look like?” “Well what’re we gonna do?” “Kill it! Everyone open fire!” You have no idea if your bullets are going to penetrate its armor, but you you’re going to try anyway. Everyone fires upon the robotic being, which begins to shutter and spark, but returns fire and a bright burst of light strikes one of your team members and completely incinerates him. “Holy shit, get cover and keep firing!” you shout. The rest of the battle doesn’t last too much longer, while your team continue to fire bursts at the machine while they dodge plasma blasts, you get enough time to toss a grenade at it and blow it to smithereens. Shards of burnt twisted metal lie all over the place. “Come on we need to blow up that door, before something else comes out of the damn thing!” You and the rest apply charges to the elevator door and run before it explodes. Just like you though, Alex doesn’t have the elevator on the surface anymore, it’s at the bottom, in fact its ascending right now! “Dump grenades down the fuckin’ shaft!” This action is followed by running far away from the elevator, a large explosion, and then a large crash and another smaller explosion. You ask for a flashlight and peer down the shaft. Its smoking mess and from what you can tell, part of the structure collapsed in on itself. Nothing is going to be coming out of there for a long time. You’re about to radio in and tell the Colonel the news when another signal breaks in, its Alex… “So, that snitch told after all! I knew he wasn’t to be trusted! You can’t stop me! I’ll get out of here eventually! And I shall…” “Got news for you Alex, you’re talking to the snitch right now, and you won’t be going anywhere as long as I’m here. Enjoy your underground prison.” You switch to another frequency and tell the Colonel who seems pleased, he tells you he’ll keep in contact with you on a regular basis and send more people when possible, in the mean time secure the place and get settled in. A few more weeks pass and eventually the initial nervousness disappears from everyone, Alex still breaks in ranting on your radio frequency every now and then, but you ignore him. In fact being at the base turns out to be more to your liking, there’s less people around, you’re in charge and you get to spend more time with Marina. A year passes… Not too much changes around the base (Which you now call Pandora which seems appropriate since you’re keeping in something that shouldn’t be let out!) a few more people are transferred here, supplies are delivered back and forth, but not much else happens. You get reports from the Compound every now and then, seems they’ve made progress with a few small towns that survived, but there are a lot of problems with lawless bandits running around. Reports have also mentioned strange mutated animals lurking about too. Sounds like they have everything under control so far though. The Colonel has the idea to trade with the towns and offer protection when possible. He hopes to get more people to join the Compound you imagine. Your orders are still the same, just guard Pandora, and make sure no cybernetic horrors are coming out. Sometimes you wonder if you shouldn’t be doing something else, indeed Marina seems to think so. Sometimes you forget she’s been training in all this survivalist shit longer than you have and has that “tame the wasteland” spirit more than you do. > You do something Well there’s nothing stopping you from sending your own exploration detachment teams, there’s nothing stopping you from going yourself either. As far as you know, nobody from the Compound has bothered scouting past Base Pandora, you figure it’s as good of place as any… “Okay I want two scouting detachments of four. I’m going with one of them. We’re just going to go a few miles from this place and then come back. It’ll give us a better lay of the land in case of an attack and it’ll keep our skills sharp as well. The rest of you guard the base as usual.” You half expect Marina to come with you, but she’s content on staying behind to help look after the base. She looks at you admiringly though that you’re taking the initiative. She tells you she loves you and that she can’t wait for you to get back. You like the fact she’s got confidence that you ARE coming back this time around. You and your team leave and start exploring. Base Pandora really was in a secluded location, most of your trek is through a small unspoiled woods, eventually you get to the end though after about a day. You notice the Geiger counter is clicking a bit more. Not a lot, but enough to be a little unsettling. Using some binoculars, up ahead you see a single run down farm house (the farm itself also looks run down and hasn’t been up kept in years). Just then you see a few vehicles also approaching up ahead, you tell everyone else to pull back into the woods and keep down while you do likewise. You continue to look as the vehicle park nearby the farm house and figures begin to get out. All of them are wearing robes and carrying automatic weapons over their backs. You also see them dragging what looks to be a few hapless prisoners with them as they enter the structure. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that these folks aren’t the nice type. “Oh shit, these guys look prepared. Who do you think they are?” one of your team asks. “How should I know Reggie? When we moved into Base Pandora it’s not like we got a welcome to the neighborhood letter from every nearby freak within a few miles of us. If I had to guess and judging by the robes, they’re probably some doomsday cult. Probably one that was building up a stock pile of shit even before the bombs hit. Got some interesting vehicles though.” “So, what’re we going to do?” What to do indeed. You definitely need to wipe these cultists out since it’s possible you could have trouble with them in the future if they start wandering in your direction. They also have vehicles that could be of use and probably other supplies as well. You could radio in and wait for reinforcements, but the prisoners you just saw them take in might be dead by then. > You get reinforcements It’s a brutal world and it just got more so. Rushing in outnumbered, isn’t likely to save anyone and most likely going to get you killed. You radio in for reinforcements and keep an eye on the farm in the mean time. Later when the darkness comes you see a group of them come out with torches, form a circle in a nearby plain and begin chanting. You count ten of them altogether Soon two more come out with one of the prisoners from earlier. She’s bound, gagged and naked; you know what’s going to come next. Reggie and another one in your team wants to do something, but you insist that they do nothing and to keep quiet. It’s all over soon anyway, as you see them sacrifice the poor girl for whatever outlandish beliefs they hold. You take first watch for the night. The next day your reinforcements arrive…both of them. “What the fuck? I asked for at least five more people!” “Sorry, but that other recon group you sent also ran into trouble, in fact two of them are already dead, and we had to send a rescue team to fetch the other two since one has a broken leg.” “Oh that’s wonderful.” “So should we call this off?” one of you team asks. “No Vivica, we’re going through with it, but we’re going to employ some stealth, they had three prisoners, I get the feeling they’ll be doing the same ceremony they did last night.” “Are we going to attack them now then?” “No Leonard, I don’t feel like fighting a bunch of fanatics armed with machine guns in an open plain with no cover. And we can’t just start firing on them from here, we need to wipe them ALL out as quickly as possible without them having a chance the regroup, fortify or any of that shit. We’re gonna sneak into the house and ambush the whole fuckin’ cult while they’re doing their little ceremony.” You wait until night and sure enough they all come out like you thought, then come the others with the prisoner. That’s when the six of you quickly sneak through an overgrown field towards the house. You get to the stairs when Reggie and Leonard break off towards the area were the cult is performing their ceremony. “I can’t just let them kill another! We can take ‘em now! They’re off guard!” “Reggie get the fuck…shit!” Reggie and Leonard begin firing, the fucking idiots aren’t even taking cover, they’re going head long in like they’re stupid ass action heroes. You and the others lay down some cover fire, but it’s not enough. Reggie and Leonard are cut down after killing a whopping ONE cultist and not even saving the hapless girl, who’s shot instantly. The cultists start spreading out, moving forward, and circling around you at the same time, they’re also better shots than you too, as they’re carefully aiming rather than just firing in the general vicinity. After seeing another one of your team members go down, you and the rest fall back into the house itself. The inside of the house looks like something out of a horror movie, there are skulls and bones littering it, along with it blood stains everywhere. “Holy shit! What’ve we gotten ourselves into?” Vivica yells. “Shut the fuck up, I hear something…like crying…it’s downstairs.” “What about the cultists?” “Well it’s the same plan, they just know about us now, let’s hope we can still get ‘em in a good ambush.” You and your team members spread out in the house, you head down into the basement, which looks more like a small temple layout. You see a young woman in a cage, and when she sees you her eyes fill with hope. You hear the cultists stomping around upstairs and some gunfire, at which point you try to find a good place to hide. A bunch of footsteps run down the stairs, you wait in anticipation…closer…closer… NOW! You pop up from your spot and begin firing, you kill six of them before they can even react, and the remaining two barely get off some wild shots before you splatter them as well. Still breathing heavy among the dead, you finally hear some good news. “Hey! Are you still alive down there?” Vivica shouts. “Yeah! What’s going on up there?” “We got a few of them, but I think most of them converged on your position though.” “Of course they did, I’ve always been popular.” You reply. You release the girl in the cage who’s very thankful. She mentions her name is Ophelia and she’s from a place called Ashtown which is far from this place. She says the cultists came storming into her town specifically trying to capture young girls; they took three before they finally were driven away, and unfortunately Ophelia was one of the three. You tell Ophelia your story; she seems to think you’ve got the right idea about going about things. “I think I’m going to tell my people back in Ashtown that we need to start getting better organized as well, and I’ll be sure to tell them all about you and how you rescued me! Maybe we’ll see each other in the future.” You and your team search the farm house which just like you thought was stocked with all sorts of goodies. You’re going to have haul some of it back, but you decide that you could also establish another base of sorts here after it was cleaned up. You’d also like to establish more of a relationship with this Ashtown. So you allow Ophelia to take one of the vehicles for her to drive back there, she certainly doesn’t have a problem with that! Before heading back you put Vivica in charge of the place and tell her you’ll be sending some more folks to help get this farm up and running. Not bad for a first try. Four more years pass… It’s been five years since you joined the Compound and things are going fairly well for you, the farm house has been converted into a way point to Ashtown, with which you have good relations with and is now producing food. You are no longer solely dependant on the Compound for supplies which might be just as well… You get less and less reports from the Compound itself other than its undergone a name change and due to its inclusion of a few towns now, its called the Combine and the Compound itself is called Fort Justice. You know about how the Colonel has gotten sick and seems to be getting worse as more time passes and how the population rate is growing, but it’s slow. The major theory is the elevated levels of background radiation are probably affecting fertility. (You wonder about yourself and Marina since she hasn’t once gotten pregnant in the five years you’ve been together) There have been more people sent here, mainly because they hear about how great it is in Pandora as opposed to the miserable place Harry has made Fort Justice since he’s been getting freer reign of the place as the Colonel continues to get sicker. In fact you’ve been hearing some disturbing stories from others who have come here recently. Ranging from needlessly violent occupation of towns, sending people on dangerous unnecessary missions to the city, and recruiting desert scum into the Combine! People are saying Harry’s going nuts with power. One day, one of your assistants comes in and has something to report. The Colonel has died, Harry has taken complete control of the Combine and his first order is for YOU to return to Fort Justice for reassignment. Harry’s just plain gone completely nuts if he thinks you’re going to do that. Speaking of nuts, that same day after you convince everyone in seceding from the Combine you get a radio message from someone who’s been quiet until now. “Well well, it seems you’ve got a problem on your hands.” It’s Alex. You’re guessing he’s been surviving on rats and roaches down there. “What the hell do you want and how do you know what’s been going on?” “How do you think? I’ve been listening in on all your incoming and outgoing radio transmissions since you betrayed me and trapped me down here! I must say though, you probably did the intelligent thing. And your progress with establishing your own separate territory has been intriguing…but I can tell you right now, you are going to need help with your current problem, a problem I will be willing to help with if you’re willing to talk.” “Alright, I’ll play. What’re you proposing?” “There are still a lot of those high tech weapons down here that you were coming to get when you came here five years ago. I’m sure they would be very useful in your up coming war with Harry, and don’t tell me there isn’t, because I know you aren’t going to run or meekly follow his orders to return. You’ve obviously set your sights on higher ambitions than just following orders and survival. I’ll be willing to give them to you, in exchange for my freedom.” “Oh that easy huh? How do you propose we go about this? I send people down there to retrieve them while your death machines ambush them as soon as they enter?” “It would be kind of hard for that to happen since all my cyborgs are long dead and my robots have fallen into disrepair…I’m basically alone down here. You were guarding nothing!” Alex laughs. You’re pretty skeptical about this little tale, but if it’s true, those weapons would certainly help. > You believe Alex The chance is too good to pass up. You’re going to risk believing Alex, of course everyone else isn’t willing to do so. You had a hard enough to convince them to join you in seceding from the Combine; you can’t really press this issue as well. There’s nothing else for it, you’re going to have to go down there yourself. You just ask someone to make sure the ropes and pullies are stable for you to descend down the elevator shaft. Now Marina loves your bravery and willingness to take risks, but even she’s a little apprehensive about this idea. You’re determined to do this though. “Marina, if something goes wrong and I get killed, then get yourself out of here, and head to Ashtown. There’s no reason for you to stick around and get yourself killed as well, or worse.” “Nonsense! I’ll fight for what you accomplished here whether you’re still around or not! But that’ll be after I go underground and take care of whatever metal bastards killed you!” No point in arguing with her, she’ll do it anyway just like you’re going underground anyway and that’s probably why you love her. You give her a kiss and descend. When you finally reach the bottom, you’re standing on top a pile of scrap. Part of it looks like it was moved in an attempt to clear it at one time, so you are able to squeeze through the previous elevator entrance. The same corridor you stepped through five years ago is remarkably dim now, you see a few steel husks lying on the ground. A lot of course are cyborgs, so decaying flesh is also present. Looks like Alex was telling the truth so far. Eventually you find Alex brooding in his office which is in complete disarray. Alex himself is very pale and a lot thinner than when you last remember him. “Hey! There you are! See, I told you I wasn’t lying.” He states when he sees you. “Yeah I can see that, what exactly happened?” “Oh there were complications…psychotic episodes…power problems…lack of more equipment and extra help…does it matter? I utterly failed. I watched my creations die one by one over the months and years due to my own lack of skill…and I thought I was going to usher in some sort of new era…yeah right.” “Alex, I’m surprised to hear you talk like that.” “Yeah? Well being prisoner here gives you a lot of time to think. Sometimes people go mad in captivity, I think in my case it did me some fucking good. I should’ve trusted the Colonel, he was my friend. He wasn’t going to do anything to me. He trusted me, and now he’s dead and I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.” While Alex’s speeches of redemption are intriguing, you really want those weapons. “Alex, where are the weapons?” “…huh? Oh yes. The weapons. Please, don’t let me stop you. Go down the corridor make a right and enter the second door. You’ll find all you need in there. They were all tested out and work well. One of the few things GZS helped design that wasn’t prone to failure.” You leave Alex to his brooding, and follow his directions; you soon come across a room with the weapons, or what’s left of them. There’s not the great arsenal that Alex made out there was. He most likely used most of them when he was creating his robots and cyborgs. You’re disappointed, but still it’s better than nothing and the few that are here will help. You collect what you can for this trip, when Alex enters the room. “So, now that you have what you’re looking for, are you going to keep your word?” “Well…ah fuck it…what the hell. Keep in mind though people are going to be pretty mistrustful of you. Don’t expect a warm welcome.” “Didn’t expect one.” “Good, now grab the rest of those weapons, so I don’t need to make a round trip down here.” You and Alex come back up with the weapons (and their power cells). The confidence level increases in everyone, you delivered some cool weapons and you braved going into the “dreaded” underground of Pandora again. They’re definitely more inclined to follow you more loyally now. Alex makes himself useful by using his technical skill to build and set traps in the surrounding wilderness. You radio Vivica to let her know what’s going on as well, she’s behind you and will make sure to send a few people to harass Harry’s men when they decide the lay siege to Pandora. Everyone spends time preparing and organizing for the battle that’s sure to come. A month passes and sure enough Harry’s men come thinking its going to be an easy victory, but it’s a slaughter. Many are killed by the traps Alex set, the rest are fried by the laser and plasma weapons. A couple more months pass and another invasion force arrives, this one better prepared and much bigger. More reinforcements show up armed to the teeth and despite the rugged terrain that prevents cars to come to this place, they managed to find some dirt bikes which whiz around Pandora while the riders nimbly dodge your fire while they toss grenades at (and sometimes over) the walls. You still have the advantage obviously, but they’re doing a hell of a lot of damage to Pandora now. The siege is now in full effect, fortunately you’re fairly well stocked to hold out, and Vivica’s men manage to get through sometimes with more supplies. Sensing that this is not going well for him and costing him a lot more time, man power and resources than he wanted to spend, he orders a final push. People armed with rocket launchers come this time, and with a few volleys, Harry’s men finally breach the walls of Pandora and storm into the place. > You make a break for it and regroup at the farmhouse “Fall back to the farm house!” you shout as you mow down another dirt biker. As your people begin to escape you look around for Marina in the chaos, and then you see her fighting multiple enemies converging on her position while she attempts to retreat. You rush towards her to back her up and then you’re blown back by an explosion. You slam up against a wall of one of the barracks, other than some minor pain and some scars you’re going to have you aren’t harmed, however your heart is when you see Marina lying bloody on the ground. She isn’t moving. Ignoring everything else you run to her, you kneel down to pick up her body, she grabs weakly on to you, but she’s in bad shape. Alex then grabs you by the shoulder “Hey! We got people firing on us; and in case you didn’t notice you told everyone to fall back! “You! You’re a fucking surgeon! You fix her! Save her! Save her NOW!” you shout, picking her up and shoving her into Alex’s arms. “Wha…I…” Alex realizes you mean fucking business so he takes her, but asks about you since he notices you’re grabbing another nearby gun. “What’re you doing? You gotta get outta here! You can’t fight all of them!” “GO! I’m giving you fucking time!” you order Alex pushing him away and charge into battle firing two weapons in hand. You kill a lot of them, but you’re outnumbered and outgunned at this point. You eventually fall to a hail of bullets and die. Marina follows you soon afterwards on the retreat back to the farmhouse.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The chance is too good to pass up. You’re going to risk believing Alex, of course everyone else isn’t willing to do so. You had a hard enough to convince them to join you in seceding from the Combine; you can’t really press this issue as well. There’s nothing else for it, you’re going to have to go down there yourself. You just ask someone to make sure the ropes and pullies are stable for you to descend down the elevator shaft. Now Marina loves your bravery and willingness to take risks, but even she’s a little apprehensive about this idea. You’re determined to do this though. “Marina, if something goes wrong and I get killed, then get yourself out of here, and head to Ashtown. There’s no reason for you to stick around and get yourself killed as well, or worse.” “Nonsense! I’ll fight for what you accomplished here whether you’re still around or not! But that’ll be after I go underground and take care of whatever metal bastards killed you!” No point in arguing with her, she’ll do it anyway just like you’re going underground anyway and that’s probably why you love her. You give her a kiss and descend. When you finally reach the bottom, you’re standing on top a pile of scrap. Part of it looks like it was moved in an attempt to clear it at one time, so you are able to squeeze through the previous elevator entrance. The same corridor you stepped through five years ago is remarkably dim now, you see a few steel husks lying on the ground. A lot of course are cyborgs, so decaying flesh is also present. Looks like Alex was telling the truth so far. Eventually you find Alex brooding in his office which is in complete disarray. Alex himself is very pale and a lot thinner than when you last remember him. “Hey! There you are! See, I told you I wasn’t lying.” He states when he sees you. “Yeah I can see that, what exactly happened?” “Oh there were complications…psychotic episodes…power problems…lack of more equipment and extra help…does it matter? I utterly failed. I watched my creations die one by one over the months and years due to my own lack of skill…and I thought I was going to usher in some sort of new era…yeah right.” “Alex, I’m surprised to hear you talk like that.” “Yeah? Well being prisoner here gives you a lot of time to think. Sometimes people go mad in captivity, I think in my case it did me some fucking good. I should’ve trusted the Colonel, he was my friend. He wasn’t going to do anything to me. He trusted me, and now he’s dead and I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.” While Alex’s speeches of redemption are intriguing, you really want those weapons. “Alex, where are the weapons?” “…huh? Oh yes. The weapons. Please, don’t let me stop you. Go down the corridor make a right and enter the second door. You’ll find all you need in there. They were all tested out and work well. One of the few things GZS helped design that wasn’t prone to failure.” You leave Alex to his brooding, and follow his directions; you soon come across a room with the weapons, or what’s left of them. There’s not the great arsenal that Alex made out there was. He most likely used most of them when he was creating his robots and cyborgs. You’re disappointed, but still it’s better than nothing and the few that are here will help. You collect what you can for this trip, when Alex enters the room. “So, now that you have what you’re looking for, are you going to keep your word?” “Well…ah fuck it…what the hell. Keep in mind though people are going to be pretty mistrustful of you. Don’t expect a warm welcome.” “Didn’t expect one.” “Good, now grab the rest of those weapons, so I don’t need to make a round trip down here.” You and Alex come back up with the weapons (and their power cells). The confidence level increases in everyone, you delivered some cool weapons and you braved going into the “dreaded” underground of Pandora again. They’re definitely more inclined to follow you more loyally now. Alex makes himself useful by using his technical skill to build and set traps in the surrounding wilderness. You radio Vivica to let her know what’s going on as well, she’s behind you and will make sure to send a few people to harass Harry’s men when they decide the lay siege to Pandora. Everyone spends time preparing and organizing for the battle that’s sure to come. A month passes and sure enough Harry’s men come thinking its going to be an easy victory, but it’s a slaughter. Many are killed by the traps Alex set, the rest are fried by the laser and plasma weapons. A couple more months pass and another invasion force arrives, this one better prepared and much bigger. More reinforcements show up armed to the teeth and despite the rugged terrain that prevents cars to come to this place, they managed to find some dirt bikes which whiz around Pandora while the riders nimbly dodge your fire while they toss grenades at (and sometimes over) the walls. You still have the advantage obviously, but they’re doing a hell of a lot of damage to Pandora now. The siege is now in full effect, fortunately you’re fairly well stocked to hold out, and Vivica’s men manage to get through sometimes with more supplies. Sensing that this is not going well for him and costing him a lot more time, man power and resources than he wanted to spend, he orders a final push. People armed with rocket launchers come this time, and with a few volleys, Harry’s men finally breach the walls of Pandora and storm into the place. > You continue to fight “Keep fighting the bastards! Pandora will never fall!” you shout as you mow down another dirt biker. In all the fighting though you begin to worry where Marina is, you look around for her in the chaos, and then you see her fighting with multiple enemies converging on her position. You rush towards her to back her up and then you’re blown back by an explosion. You slam up against a wall of one of the barracks, other than some minor pain and some scars you’re going to have you aren’t harmed, however your heart is when you see Marina lying bloody on the ground. She isn’t moving. Ignoring everything else you run to her, you kneel down to pick up her body, she grabs weakly on to you, but she’s in bad shape. “Keep fighting to rebuild civilization…its still worth it…” she says before losing total consciousness. Alex suddenly comes up to you. “Hey! We got people firing on us; you need to get the fuck outta the open!” “You! You’re a fucking surgeon! You fix her! Save her! Save her NOW!” you shout, picking her up and shoving her into Alex’s arms. “Wha…I…” Alex realizes you mean fucking business so he just nods and runs with her to one of the few undamaged buildings. You’re blind with rage, you begin charging into battle trying take out as many of these motherfuckers as you can, its quite possible with your actions alone you turned the tide, but you are still just one man, and you nearly get yourself killed, if it hadn’t been for Vivica managing to get a few people from Ashtown to help out, and they arrive just in time. Ophelia shoots a Combine soldier who was sneaking up on you. You turn around to see her, you nearly don’t recognize her decked out in battle gear. “Told you, you’d see me in the future.” She says and runs off to clean up the stragglers running away. The Combine is pulling back. You’ve won, but at a high cost. When you return to check on Marina, you find her dead. Alex explains there was nothing he could do for her. You ask to be alone which he complies. You spend the rest of the night alone with Marina’s lifeless body weeping and vowing revenge. The next day, you come out with one focus. To assault Fort Justice. This will never be over until Harry is dead. You need to strike now when he’s weak. A lot of people are wondering if you shouldn’t wait to regroup, but you won’t hear of it, you’re determined to do it now and everyone who’s in fighting condition is coming with you. In a couple days you and your small army arrive at Fort Justice. You half expect to die this day assaulting the place, but once again destiny is with you. Fort Justice is experiencing a minor authority problem. You can take the scum out of the wasteland, but you can’t make them disciplined soldiers. The last defeat has shattered morale, and apparently some are starting to question Harry’s orders, while others aren’t willing to die for him. The gate is wide open and parts of the place are in flames. You walk in relatively unopposed. Some fighting occurs, but you’re looking for Harry and when the loud mouth shithead sees you, instead of confronting you, he runs for the trapdoor to the underground. You immediately run to cut him off and shoot him in both legs. He falls and grabs for his pistol, but you take careful aim and blow his hand off, he screams in pain when he sees his fingers all over the ground. A kick to his face follows, and then a stomp, and another, and another. You don’t stop until his face looks like tenderized hamburger. He tries to act defiant by trying to give you the finger with his good hand, but you take it and break the motherfucker along with the rest of his hand. “This is for Marina and the rest of the deaths you caused.” You say, before blasting his mushy bloody head into mushy bloody pieces. Now its over. You collapse by Harry’s body, spent and drained. Alex goes over to see if you’re alright, but Ophelia tells him to just make sure all the enemy are either dead or running. Ophelia takes you to a barrack and puts you on a bed and tells you to rest, which you do. “I did it Marina…I got him…” you mumble while falling asleep. The next few weeks consist of rebuilding. Rebuilding everything. Fort Justice. Base Pandora. All the damage Harry caused. Word gets out to the Combine occupied towns about their current situation, with no centralized authority figure anymore, the Combine dissipates as wasteland scum flee and return to the outlands where they belong. The townspeople of those places are very grateful for your help, and you’re now in charge of everything but you take no joy in any of it, or anything. You’re numb. You go through the motions, but you’re basically in a daze. All your thoughts are of Marina, you feel empty without her. If it wasn’t for her, you wouldn’t even be alive right now. You would’ve died in a big mushroom cloud death. You start blaming yourself for not being able to save her, you start thinking about suicide. Everyone gets a little worried about you. Vivica starts radioing in wondering about your condition, Alex (Who’s quite familiar with mental breakdowns) attempts to talk to you, but it’s Ophelia who turns you around, though not immediately, but it’s her actions that become the turning point. Late one night, as you wallow in the emptiness, Ophelia visits you. You expect her to tell you not blame yourself for Marina’s death again, but she doesn’t. Instead she talks about the time when you saved her from the cultists and how grateful she was that day and how she would’ve almost done anything to repay you for saving her life. “Mm…well you repaid it already. You saved mine back at Pandora.” You say wishing to be left alone. “No, I’m saving it now.” Ophelia begins to remove her clothing, something that takes you completely by surprise. You feel you shouldn’t, you know you shouldn’t, but maybe it’s feeling of loneliness, maybe it’s the feeling of confusion, or maybe its just plain hormones, and you give in to Ophelia’s advances. And for that one night, the emptiness within you disappears. The next day Ophelia is gone leaving you a note saying she’s going back to Ashtown and tells you that you shouldn’t give up on life since you have so much more to change in this new world. When you think about it, Marina saved you, so you could carry that goal out. She always did see the potential in you to do great things. With this new perspective, you begin to return to normal, though there still was a little piece of you that died when Marina did. You’ll never completely be the same. Life goes on though. Five more years pass… It’s been ten years since the bombs dropped and civilization is starting to rebuild itself again…well somewhat. Hard to believe you would’ve become any type of leader trying to rebuild civilization. Marina might not be around anymore, but obviously her influence on you still is and always will be as you follow her dream of rebuilding civilization again. You’re still running things from Base Pandora, which is now the unofficial head of the Atomic Alliance. The towns formally under Combine occupation are included, but are now treated as equals rather than glorified labor camps, though getting everyone to agree completely on anything still remains a problem. Fort Justice is now under Vivica’s command and the Farmhouse, now known as Eden is a fully functional agricultural community. (It supplies food as well as biofuel for vehicles now) After that one night with Ophelia you don’t see her anymore, but last you heard she had a baby and got married to someone in Ashtown. Good for her. Other than political disagreements, everything has been going fairly well; raiders are still a problem, but much less than in the past. For the most part people are pretty happy living in your territory. One thing that’s been debated among you and some of other leaders, are the few GZS Shelters the Alliance has stumbled across over recent years. No effort has been made to open them, but they’re all sealed shut by their main computers. From what you know by reading some of the GZS documents found in Base Pandora (and Alex who definitely has some knowledge of GZS protocols) the Shelters weren’t supposed to open up until the central computer determined that sufficient amount of time had passed and the surface deemed safe. Apparently the computers still think the surface sucks. (And that assessment wouldn’t exactly be wrong) Most of the other Alliance leaders say that some sort of contact should be made with them. You get the impression some of them might’ve done it anyway, it’s just you have most of the equipment that makes it a lot easier. > You open them up At one time you thought about actually buying one of those things, sometimes you even wonder how things would’ve been living underground completely oblivious to what’s going on the surface. Things might’ve been a lot easier…or maybe they wouldn’t. You’ll just have to wonder about the road not traveled. You see no harm in making contact; they may even have useful resources to trade and might appreciate knowing that the surface is exactly the hell on Earth that they might think. Plus the rest of the Alliance leaders seem pleased that you’re agreeing with them. Maintaining good relations to keep everyone happy is always a sure way of keeping the Alliance stable. Even Ashtown makes mention of a Shelter nearby that they’ve been debating about whether to contact or not. You organize how to go about this, since you don’t want to make enemies unnecessarily. It doesn’t take long to open up the Shelters and bypass the computer elevator systems with your help. First contact with most of the shelters is a very large surprise for its inhabitants, though a lot of them seem really grateful. Apparently GZS Shelters weren’t built very well, you hear reports of how inhabitants had to improvise and constantly repair various things. Alex tells you he isn’t surprised. “The main reason why I outlived my cyborgs when I was…uh…indisposed… was due to having faulty GZS equipment. Granted they made a lot of good stuff, but they had a terrible habit of cutting corners. When I think about it, I really can’t believe I thought I was actually going to DO something with them, probably wouldn’t have even lasted in a real fight…still it would’ve been interesting…my God I can’t believe I used to think things like this…like…I dunno…” Every now and then Alex talks like that. Probably wondering about his own road not traveled. It creeps people out though, however it doesn’t prevent him from being a good doctor. You almost get the impression he feels like by being a good doctor and patching folks up real well is sort of like his “penance”. One he feels necessary to do until the day he dies. This line of thinking becomes really noticeable within a few weeks of the Shelter openings. The Shelter near Ashtown is in bad shape. From the reports you’ve heard some sort of weird “social experiment” was going on down there which resulted in some sort of catastrophe. There are many dead bodies and broken equipment. Many of the people are sick and infected with something, and they aren’t in very good shape to go anywhere. Looks like they’ve been slowly dying. In fact the Mayor of Ashtown, Carlos, is taking the hard line stance refusing to let the ones that went down there to come back up, for fear that they will infect his town. This isn’t a popular decision, so he’s hoping you can send some sort of medical team to help since Ashtown doesn’t have the experts you do. Carlos says that he’ll formally join the Atomic Alliance if you get him out of this jam. Alex insists on going to help. “Please, let me go help. I’m the best doctor in the Alliance. I…I need to do this. I need to help these people…” Alex says almost in a begging fashion. “…Well alright Alex, but you’re taking one of those biohazard suits! Who knows what the hell those people have, and I really can’t risk losing my best doctor.” Alex thanks you profusely, and gathers a couple of his assistants and all the necessary equipment before leaving. A couple weeks pass and you get a report from Carlos. He mentions that Alex has determined there is nothing contagious about whatever the Shelter people are infected with, and the Ashtown citizens are allowed to come back up and return. Alex is still working on the problem though and it might take awhile, he requests for more equipment, which you allow Ashtown formally joins the Alliance. You personally go there to welcome them in. It’s strange that you’ve never actually been to Ashtown before, given a lot of your dealings with it. While you’re here on business you think about Ophelia, and that one night. A night that possibly saved you from committing suicide, given the downward spiral you were in at the time. There’s a few times you thought about going to see her to thank her…but then you think how she has a family now and it would just be too weird. A month passes and you suddenly get a call from Alex on your radio. “Alex? Where are you?” “I’m in the Shelter. I managed to rig the computer to transmit a signal! Now I can talk to you directly! Great huh?” “Uh yeah…what’s going on over there?” “Oh, nothing much. This place is pretty fascinating; I’ve been trying to figure out what was going on down here. This one diary was really interesting” “Alex what about the people?” “It seems there was this guy called Elliot who had a lot of weird ideas, he was a doctor…” Alex says seemingly oblivious to your question. “Yeah, I know the type. ALEX WHAT ABOUT THE FUCKIN’ PEOPLE?” “Oh yeah…the people. They’re okay…I guess.” “You guess? What the fuck Alex, don’t you know?” “Well, uh y’know... this isn’t an exact science, and I’m still trying to figure some things out…I went to Ashtown recently for some more supplies, but I think I need some more higher qulity equipment from you, its getting kind of complicated down here…” “What the fuck Alex? No, you’re not getting anything else! We’re not an endless supply of resources! Now you work with what you got and I better hear some progress soon!” “…work with what I got…yeah…story of my life…” Alex says and disconnects. Another week passes and this time you get a message from Carlos, he doesn’t sound well, but he does sound angry. “…we ally with you and this is (Cough) what happens? We’re all sick and it’s (Cough!) all you and that doctor’s fault! He contaminated us! YOU contaminated us! The town is Uhhh…” There’s an old saying, that a scorpion, no matter how well you take care of it or treat it, its nature will always be to sting you. And that’s just what happened. Shit. > You do not take chances, purge EVERYTHING You’ve got to keep this quiet and you’ve got to keep whatever this is from spreading. You quietly call the most loyal and capable soldiers under your command to meet you immediately. You explain to them what needs to be done. Any still living Ashtown inhabitants must be killed, and the entire town burned to the ground. Alex must also be killed and the Shelter rendered inaccessible forever. You tell them to keep you informed at all times. The strike team is sent in the middle of the night in Hazmat suits and tons of hardware. Everyone in Base Pandora wonders what’s going on, but due to the more military mindset here, people know not to ask too many questions. Eventually you get a message from one of your soliders. “Uh sir, it looks like most of the town is dead already, I don’t think it’s airborne, because it doesn’t look like the children were affected…” “Are you sure about that? Just because they look sick doesn’t mean they aren’t. They could be carrying.” “Sir?” “…I said kill everything Sergeant…” “But I think…” “DON’T THINK! JUST DO IT!” The Sergeant disconnects and you can only imagine what happened next, but you don’t really want to. A little while later you get another report. It’s the Sergeant again, he sounds very hollow. “Sir…it’s uh over. Alex is dead…he didn’t even put up a fight…we’re putting the explosives in Shelter entrance as I speak…should implode and bury the Shelter from being accessible…” “Very good. You’ve done a necessary thing Sergeant.” “…no I haven’t…goodbye…” You hear a gunshot on the other end followed by a bunch of other voices shouting and dead air. Your official report to the Atomic Alliance (Because it’s not like you can completely cover this up) is that a ruthless gang of raiders completely destroyed Ashtown as well as the Shelter and that you’re sending squads to go hunt them down. This isn’t really a satisfactory answer, but given how far away Ashtown is from the rest of the Alliance towns nobody really questions it. At least not initially. Over the past few months you’re noticeably distracted, and can’t concentrate on anything. You’re constantly thinking someone’s going to investigate, or one of those you sent on the mission is going to blab (Now you wish they all blew their brains out) your behavior starts becoming a bit erratic as you give out strange orders to cover up things you think are going to lead to your exposure. You constantly rationalize your orders as attempting to keep the Alliance from falling, since you’re convinced that everyone knew what Alex did, you’d be blamed for incompetence for allowing it to happen and without you running things you just know the Alliance wouldn’t survive. However something like this couldn’t be covered up forever. Eventually someone gets suspicious of your behavior which leads to rumors, which then in turn leads to investigating. Eventually the truth comes out. The Alliance citizens are appalled, in fact if you hadn’t proceeded with your extreme plan and just come out with the truth about Alex’s actions in the beginning you might not have been hated quite so much. You displayed poor judgment, by allowing Alex to go about his own devices. Strike one. You ruthlessly had children killed to possibly contain a contagion. Strike two. You attempted to cover all this up and lied about it. Strike three. This type of behavior makes you look like deceitful murderous tyrant, something the Alliance towns had enough of under Harry during the Combine regime. People are calling for your blood, and your immediate resignation of Atomic Alliance leader, in fact you might be imprisoned…or worse. You’ve lost all support. By the end, you’ve barricaded yourself in an underground room in Base Pandora with people telling you to give yourself up; of course you have no intention of doing that. In your last moments as you point the pistol to your head, you think about Marina, and how it all would've been easier had you died with her and how you tried to rebuild civilization even after she was gone, but just failed without her around, however once again you rationalize. “Yeah…they all united against me…I kept them united… then Vivica will certainly take power…the Alliance will live on…I didn’t fail…Marina…I didn’t fail…” Your delusional thoughts come to an end with a door burst open, and a bullet to the brain.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>At one time you thought about actually buying one of those things, sometimes you even wonder how things would’ve been living underground completely oblivious to what’s going on the surface. Things might’ve been a lot easier…or maybe they wouldn’t. You’ll just have to wonder about the road not traveled. You see no harm in making contact; they may even have useful resources to trade and might appreciate knowing that the surface is exactly the hell on Earth that they might think. Plus the rest of the Alliance leaders seem pleased that you’re agreeing with them. Maintaining good relations to keep everyone happy is always a sure way of keeping the Alliance stable. Even Ashtown makes mention of a Shelter nearby that they’ve been debating about whether to contact or not. You organize how to go about this, since you don’t want to make enemies unnecessarily. It doesn’t take long to open up the Shelters and bypass the computer elevator systems with your help. First contact with most of the shelters is a very large surprise for its inhabitants, though a lot of them seem really grateful. Apparently GZS Shelters weren’t built very well, you hear reports of how inhabitants had to improvise and constantly repair various things. Alex tells you he isn’t surprised. “The main reason why I outlived my cyborgs when I was…uh…indisposed… was due to having faulty GZS equipment. Granted they made a lot of good stuff, but they had a terrible habit of cutting corners. When I think about it, I really can’t believe I thought I was actually going to DO something with them, probably wouldn’t have even lasted in a real fight…still it would’ve been interesting…my God I can’t believe I used to think things like this…like…I dunno…” Every now and then Alex talks like that. Probably wondering about his own road not traveled. It creeps people out though, however it doesn’t prevent him from being a good doctor. You almost get the impression he feels like by being a good doctor and patching folks up real well is sort of like his “penance”. One he feels necessary to do until the day he dies. This line of thinking becomes really noticeable within a few weeks of the Shelter openings. The Shelter near Ashtown is in bad shape. From the reports you’ve heard some sort of weird “social experiment” was going on down there which resulted in some sort of catastrophe. There are many dead bodies and broken equipment. Many of the people are sick and infected with something, and they aren’t in very good shape to go anywhere. Looks like they’ve been slowly dying. In fact the Mayor of Ashtown, Carlos, is taking the hard line stance refusing to let the ones that went down there to come back up, for fear that they will infect his town. This isn’t a popular decision, so he’s hoping you can send some sort of medical team to help since Ashtown doesn’t have the experts you do. Carlos says that he’ll formally join the Atomic Alliance if you get him out of this jam. Alex insists on going to help. “Please, let me go help. I’m the best doctor in the Alliance. I…I need to do this. I need to help these people…” Alex says almost in a begging fashion. “…Well alright Alex, but you’re taking one of those biohazard suits! Who knows what the hell those people have, and I really can’t risk losing my best doctor.” Alex thanks you profusely, and gathers a couple of his assistants and all the necessary equipment before leaving. A couple weeks pass and you get a report from Carlos. He mentions that Alex has determined there is nothing contagious about whatever the Shelter people are infected with, and the Ashtown citizens are allowed to come back up and return. Alex is still working on the problem though and it might take awhile, he requests for more equipment, which you allow Ashtown formally joins the Alliance. You personally go there to welcome them in. It’s strange that you’ve never actually been to Ashtown before, given a lot of your dealings with it. While you’re here on business you think about Ophelia, and that one night. A night that possibly saved you from committing suicide, given the downward spiral you were in at the time. There’s a few times you thought about going to see her to thank her…but then you think how she has a family now and it would just be too weird. A month passes and you suddenly get a call from Alex on your radio. “Alex? Where are you?” “I’m in the Shelter. I managed to rig the computer to transmit a signal! Now I can talk to you directly! Great huh?” “Uh yeah…what’s going on over there?” “Oh, nothing much. This place is pretty fascinating; I’ve been trying to figure out what was going on down here. This one diary was really interesting” “Alex what about the people?” “It seems there was this guy called Elliot who had a lot of weird ideas, he was a doctor…” Alex says seemingly oblivious to your question. “Yeah, I know the type. ALEX WHAT ABOUT THE FUCKIN’ PEOPLE?” “Oh yeah…the people. They’re okay…I guess.” “You guess? What the fuck Alex, don’t you know?” “Well, uh y’know... this isn’t an exact science, and I’m still trying to figure some things out…I went to Ashtown recently for some more supplies, but I think I need some more higher qulity equipment from you, its getting kind of complicated down here…” “What the fuck Alex? No, you’re not getting anything else! We’re not an endless supply of resources! Now you work with what you got and I better hear some progress soon!” “…work with what I got…yeah…story of my life…” Alex says and disconnects. Another week passes and this time you get a message from Carlos, he doesn’t sound well, but he does sound angry. “…we ally with you and this is (Cough) what happens? We’re all sick and it’s (Cough!) all you and that doctor’s fault! He contaminated us! YOU contaminated us! The town is Uhhh…” There’s an old saying, that a scorpion, no matter how well you take care of it or treat it, its nature will always be to sting you. And that’s just what happened. Shit. > You send another medical team to Ashtown You immediately dispatch another team of medics in hazmat suits to Ashtown. Vivica insists on going since she’s probably the second best doctor in the Alliance, you order her not to since you can’t afford to lose her as well, not to mention she runs Fort Justice, but she’s defiant and goes anyway. You also order Eden to not let ANYONE who wasn’t already working there in, until this situation is resolved. You can’t afford your major food source to get contaminated. You decide not to inform the rest of the Alliance towns, since you hope maybe you can contain this before panic occurs. You next step is to radio Alex, but as predicted you don’t get an answer. You soon get a report from Vivica, “It looks bad. REAL Bad. Most of Ashtown is already dead or dying. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s airborne. It might be the water supply. The only weird thing is, the children didn’t seem to be affected…it’s very sad though. We’re going to have a bunch of orphans.” “Can’t you do ANYTHING?” “No, I have no idea what this is and I think it’s too late anyway, uh there’s something else I think you’ll want to know…though I’m not sure how to say this…” “Vivica just spit it the fuck out!” “Well, uh…I tired to treat Ophelia, but I failed, her husband was already dead by the time I got here.” “…Vivica, I appreciate you trying to save someone I had fond memories of, but there’s a whole town at stake…” “I know, I know, but that’s not what I’m getting at. Ophelia had a daughter you know. Her name’s Laura. She’s five. Ophelia told me before she died; she wanted her daughter to have a good home.” “Well of course! I mean we’ll give good homes to all the orphans!” “Again, that’s not it. She asked for you specifically to give her that home. She said she said it’s about time her daughter got to know her father anyway.” The surprises just keep coming. “Excuse me?” “Looks like you’re this little girl’s father…the timing is about right, I mean you did have that encounter with her five years ago. She’s five and if I may say, I see the family resemblance, she doesn’t look anything like Ophelia’s husband, I mean granted he’s dead right now, but…” “Why the hell didn’t she tell me? I mean I would’ve…” “I asked the same question, during her final moments. She’s said she was sorry she never told you before, but she knew you had other things on your mind and bigger concerns with rebuilding civilization and all. She always thought she would’ve lived in Marina’s shadow anyway and by keeping Laura to herself it was like she still had a piece of you…sir I hate to break this information up since I know it probably really important to you, but what are we going to do about the town and Alex and everything?” “Start evacuating the children to Base Pandora, the town is dead. I’ll take care of Alex.” You say grimly before disconnecting. Armed and focused, for the first time in a long time you travel by yourself to the Shelter where Alex is at. You meet up with Vivica on the way, who tries to advise you to at least go in with back up, but you won’t hear of it and tell her to continue on to Base Pandora. You also see Laura and some of the other orphaned children. They’re obviously still upset about their parents dying horrible deaths. You approach Laura whose eyes are all red from crying. She looks up at you. “Are…are you really my daddy?” she asks, obviously having been informed of the situation. Contrary to what Vivica said, you think she looks more like her mother, but yes there is a resemblance to you particularly the hair. Unsure of how to respond, you give a straight forward answer. “Yes I am and I’ll be home soon to take care of you.” you stroke her face and get back in your vehicle and drive off. You drive through Ashtown and see the dead bodies, by the facial expressions you get the impression it wasn’t a pleasant one. Once again you think about going to see Ophelia’s body, but you quickly decide against it. You’d rather remember her how she was the last time you saw her. Besides you’ll always see her now in your daughter, plus you’ve got a score to settle with Alex. You get to the Shelter and enter its foyer and surprisingly its elevator is at the top, looks like some modifications have been made to it as it looks as if the call buttons were there originally. You really don’t care about any of it though, you’re on a mission. When you get to the bottom, you see the same modified call buttons near the elevator on this level as well (You can’t believe the idiotic way GZS designs their Shelters though, effectively trapping their “customers” down here) You also see more dead bodies in various stages of decay, some look like they were dead long before Alex got here. Much of the equipment and place in general is in disarray, but you also notice some of it has been recently repaired. Probably by Alex no doubt. You hear cursing coming from a nearby room, it sounds like Alex. > You confront him now Knowing Alex, he’s probably killed his assistants too; you go in with your weapon ready. “FUCK! Goddamn GZS equipment! Always fucks up!” Alex says as he’s trying to install some sort of implant in the head of some corpse on a table. Its one of his assistants and his brains are leaking all over the place, you don’t even know what the hell Alex was trying to accomplish, and you get the impression he doesn’t either. He stares at you with eyes telling you he’s finally gone over the edge for good this time. “You see? You see what I have to work with? Can’t fucking work under these conditions! Not enough equipment! Plenty of bodies, just need the equipment…is it lunch time?” “Is that why you infected Ashtown? So you could rebuild your insane dreams of cyborgs again?” “It’s not insane! Its evolution! You really think the Atomic Alliance can last in its current form? NO! It NEEDS to be remade! Y’see I tried…I really did…I really tried to delude myself into thinking civilization can be rebuilt and survive in its current form…but it wasn’t until I came here and found this diary…this Elliot guy…had lots of good ideas about the nature of man…and how control IS the only way to maintain order…of course he obviously failed when his so called “obedience serum” had a long term detrimental health effect on the inhabitants here. Comes in handy as a virulent toxin when altered a bit and dumped into a water supply though. Strange how it doesn’t affect pre-pubescent children.” “You fuckin’ sonofabitch…” you say pointing your rifle at him, he doesn’t even seem to notice, he just keeps talking. “His ideas were sound, just his method was flawed, and it made me realize I was right in the beginning, I was just prevented from seeing my plan come to fruition due to YOUR own ambition and meddling! Shit, you can barely keep the Alliance leaders to agree on anything! The only reason why they follow you is because of the polite threat of superior firepower that you have access to and the major food source you have under your direct control in Eden. If that advantage ever disappeared, you’d have another civil war on your hands. You’re petty dictator hiding in democracy. Your own method of control is as clumsy as Elliot’s.” “I’m not controlling anyone, you psychotic fuck!” “Bullshit! You’ve built your whole career on it! Your destruction of my plans, your war with the Combine, creating the Atomic Alliance and being the head of it. You really expect me to believe you did all this without ambition?” “Actually yeah. Had it not been for Marina’s influence, I probably wouldn’t have bothered…” “How long are you going to hide behind THAT ghost? Perhaps she did have influence on you in the beginning as far as motivation was concerned, but nobody, NOBODY that has gotten this far can say they’ve been doing this all this as some sort of monument for the love of a dead woman! You’re lying to yourself because YOU don’t have the fuckin’ balls to admit you’re a goddamn friendly fascist! And after you’re dead? Do you think the Atomic Alliance will really live on? I predict it falls apart and in fighting occurs within a month! Humans are incapable of ruling themselves! The LAST WAR PROVED THAT! The Cybernetic Evolution is the ONLY thing that makes sense!” You think about some of the things Alex’s insane ranting, before responding. “…you might be right Alex. You might be right, but there’s just one thing...” “Oh what’s that?” “Your method sucks too, mainly because you were too idiotic to ever get it off the ground in the first place and this isn’t for Marina, its for my daughter Laura you fucking mass murdering motherfucker.” You riddle Alex’s body with bullets until he’s such a bloody heap that he’s actually ripped in half by your burst. You then pull out your pistol and blast his face into a red pulpy mess. Its over. You return to Base Pandora where Vivica has been trying to keep control of things as everyone is starting to wonder what’s going on exactly. You give a full report to the entire Atomic Alliance about what happened. It’s a big event that nearly shatters the Alliance. When you think about it, maybe that was Alex’s “back up plan”, as even if he had been killed, he must’ve known you’d catch heat for what happened. Some say it really wasn’t your fault, others say it was, since you left an unstable element like Alex to his own devices. Some say your past deeds should be taken into consideration, others say it doesn’t make up for the death of an entire town. Some say you tried to make things right, others say you shouldn’t be applauded for attempting to fix something that was your fault in the first place. Still others say it wasn’t your fault to begin with since the opening of the Shelters was most of the OTHER town leader’s idea not yours. It’s apparent everyone is divided on the situation, so you do the only thing that makes sense and step down from being the head of the Atomic Alliance. This has more of an effect than you hoped. Some people still think you should be punished directly, but for the most part most are just satisfied that you aren’t the head of the Alliance anymore. The ones closest to you think it’s unfair, but you don’t really care. You probably saved the Alliance again with your actions, another civil war would’ve occurred otherwise. You can only hope in time people will see that. Vivica becomes the new head of the Alliance. Some object to her as well since she’s somewhat close to you, but most accept her since her reputation is pretty spotless and fair minded. You remain in control of Base Pandora, which now mainly concentrates on strictly military matters as in defending the AA borders. Less politics, but not less responsibility since you now have a daughter to take care of… Ten more years pass… Twenty years have passed since the bombs dropped, and the Atomic Alliance is the largest known stretch of civilization known in the immediate area. It’s now become an official democratic political entity rather than just a collection of separate towns and forts which were merely aligned. Vivica is now officially the President. GZS Shelters have been converted into major the supplier of water. Gone are the days of wondering if water was safe to drink. These Shelters have also been modified to have surrounding land to become agricultural centers like Eden; the water is piped in from underground to help grow crops. They’re probably more useful than what they were initially intended for. Ashtown was repopulated, but a big memorial is now standing there in memory of the dead, the Shelter near Ashtown was destroyed. Explosives were placed in the entryway such a manner that it imploded in on itself forever burying the place. As for you, you find less and less to do each day at Base Pandora. While it’s foolish to think that the world is now a safe place that an Atomic Alliance military isn’t needed, it’s just that it has fewer threats. Raiders might lurk on the outskirts of it, but to actually attack it now would be folly. Only the craziest and most desperate raiders do that nowadays, and they’re usually easily dispatched by the AA Police Force. (Most of course having trained at Base Pandora combat academy) Civil unrest mainly consists of a few normal complaints, never anything like what happened in the past. It almost like the “Old World” again. You however are glad of this, since you have enough trouble trying to look after your daughter Laura. She’s quite willful now that’s she’s a teenager, but fortunately your relationship isn’t really bad though, you just never did get a hang of this whole father thing. The best thing you did was train her to take care of herself. Though now you’re wondering if that was such a good idea. “I want to join the Atomic Alliance City Project!” she says. Having tamed most of the surrounding area, the next big agenda for the Alliance is to restore the City. You never really thought this was the best idea Vivica had, since the City has always been considered a very dangerous place, with nothing but deadly radiation levels and mutant monstrosities. In fact you turned down the option to head up the project when she proposed it to you. You remember way back in your early days of the Compound, when a few people were sent to the City, and only one returned speaking of the horrible creatures inside. Since then, nobody ever really went there. Every now and then you heard about a few hostile mutants wandering from the city, but it was rare, it seems as if they were content on living in their own area. You lived on “your side” and they lived on “their side” and that’s the way it should stay. Seems like fucking around with the City might be inviting trouble, sort of like when you decided to fuck around the Shelters ten years ago… Your daughter on the other hand like most youthful sorts, sees “adventure”. True she’s not some delicate flower and she grew up relatively fast (She did see her mother die in front of her along with the rest of the town) but its not like she’s had any real combat experience, plus she’s only fifteen and you do feel the need to protect her. > You restrict her from going She’s still fifteen; you’re still able to restrict her from doing whatever the hell she wants. You do however realize that too much restriction isn’t going to help and possibly even drive her away, so what you propose is a compromise and you allow her to go on border patrol mission and minor recon duty. Let her deal with some raiders and see if she still wants to pursue this life of adventure… She isn’t exactly enthusiastic about this idea, probably because it doesn’t seem as “exciting”. Most raiders go running at the first sign of trouble, so there’s actually little in the way of combat. She starts becoming a little more daring and patrols further than she’s supposed to. You tell others to keep an eye on her, but of course that’s impossible all the time. Then your worst fears come true. Laura is ambushed, beaten and gang raped. She would’ve probably been killed, but the rest of the recon team arrived in time to drive them off. They managed to kill a few…but not all. You’ve suffered a lot of tragedies in your life, but this one has got to be the worst since you lost Marina…worse even. You don’t sink into depression though, you fly into a rage. You immediately gather your best men and personally hunt the rest of these scumfucks down. There is no where they can hide; you are the embodiment of vengeance. As is typical you find them hold up in a cave where you catch most of them off guard, as ordered, your men don’t shoot to kill, they shoot to maim. You’ll be the one doing the killing. You cut off the genitals of each one of them and stuff them into their mouths. You yell and scream at them as you repeatedly shoot and kick their bloody bodies. You don’t stop tormenting them even after death until one of your men finally tells you stop. You don’t really feel any better though, once again you feel like you’ve failed, just like you did ten years ago with Alex killing most of Ashtown. You can’t do this anymore; you resign your command at Pandora, despite Vivica not wanting you to. It takes Laura awhile to get over the traumatic event, and she never really does. She picks a safer career path and she never marries or even dates, despite you telling her that she should and that its okay, but she says she’s satisfied just living with you. (And while you blamed yourself for what happened, she never did) And while you don’t mind her company, this also saddens you. In your remaining years, you spend a lot of time regretting a lot of decisions you made in the past. You can’t even take “pride” in the fact that you contributed greatly to rebuilding civilization. When yet another war breaks out with the mutants due to the Atomic Alliance City Project you just shake your head wondering if it was all worth it to begin with. Eventually when you die, it’s sort of a release for you. A small respectful funeral is held for you as you’re buried next to Marina like you always wanted to be, but as time goes on after Vivica and those who were with you from the beginning in the Compound die off, your name and deeds are forgotten completely as what happens to most “heroes” of history.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Knowing Alex, he’s probably killed his assistants too; you go in with your weapon ready. “FUCK! Goddamn GZS equipment! Always fucks up!” Alex says as he’s trying to install some sort of implant in the head of some corpse on a table. Its one of his assistants and his brains are leaking all over the place, you don’t even know what the hell Alex was trying to accomplish, and you get the impression he doesn’t either. He stares at you with eyes telling you he’s finally gone over the edge for good this time. “You see? You see what I have to work with? Can’t fucking work under these conditions! Not enough equipment! Plenty of bodies, just need the equipment…is it lunch time?” “Is that why you infected Ashtown? So you could rebuild your insane dreams of cyborgs again?” “It’s not insane! Its evolution! You really think the Atomic Alliance can last in its current form? NO! It NEEDS to be remade! Y’see I tried…I really did…I really tried to delude myself into thinking civilization can be rebuilt and survive in its current form…but it wasn’t until I came here and found this diary…this Elliot guy…had lots of good ideas about the nature of man…and how control IS the only way to maintain order…of course he obviously failed when his so called “obedience serum” had a long term detrimental health effect on the inhabitants here. Comes in handy as a virulent toxin when altered a bit and dumped into a water supply though. Strange how it doesn’t affect pre-pubescent children.” “You fuckin’ sonofabitch…” you say pointing your rifle at him, he doesn’t even seem to notice, he just keeps talking. “His ideas were sound, just his method was flawed, and it made me realize I was right in the beginning, I was just prevented from seeing my plan come to fruition due to YOUR own ambition and meddling! Shit, you can barely keep the Alliance leaders to agree on anything! The only reason why they follow you is because of the polite threat of superior firepower that you have access to and the major food source you have under your direct control in Eden. If that advantage ever disappeared, you’d have another civil war on your hands. You’re petty dictator hiding in democracy. Your own method of control is as clumsy as Elliot’s.” “I’m not controlling anyone, you psychotic fuck!” “Bullshit! You’ve built your whole career on it! Your destruction of my plans, your war with the Combine, creating the Atomic Alliance and being the head of it. You really expect me to believe you did all this without ambition?” “Actually yeah. Had it not been for Marina’s influence, I probably wouldn’t have bothered…” “How long are you going to hide behind THAT ghost? Perhaps she did have influence on you in the beginning as far as motivation was concerned, but nobody, NOBODY that has gotten this far can say they’ve been doing this all this as some sort of monument for the love of a dead woman! You’re lying to yourself because YOU don’t have the fuckin’ balls to admit you’re a goddamn friendly fascist! And after you’re dead? Do you think the Atomic Alliance will really live on? I predict it falls apart and in fighting occurs within a month! Humans are incapable of ruling themselves! The LAST WAR PROVED THAT! The Cybernetic Evolution is the ONLY thing that makes sense!” You think about some of the things Alex’s insane ranting, before responding. “…you might be right Alex. You might be right, but there’s just one thing...” “Oh what’s that?” “Your method sucks too, mainly because you were too idiotic to ever get it off the ground in the first place and this isn’t for Marina, its for my daughter Laura you fucking mass murdering motherfucker.” You riddle Alex’s body with bullets until he’s such a bloody heap that he’s actually ripped in half by your burst. You then pull out your pistol and blast his face into a red pulpy mess. Its over. You return to Base Pandora where Vivica has been trying to keep control of things as everyone is starting to wonder what’s going on exactly. You give a full report to the entire Atomic Alliance about what happened. It’s a big event that nearly shatters the Alliance. When you think about it, maybe that was Alex’s “back up plan”, as even if he had been killed, he must’ve known you’d catch heat for what happened. Some say it really wasn’t your fault, others say it was, since you left an unstable element like Alex to his own devices. Some say your past deeds should be taken into consideration, others say it doesn’t make up for the death of an entire town. Some say you tried to make things right, others say you shouldn’t be applauded for attempting to fix something that was your fault in the first place. Still others say it wasn’t your fault to begin with since the opening of the Shelters was most of the OTHER town leader’s idea not yours. It’s apparent everyone is divided on the situation, so you do the only thing that makes sense and step down from being the head of the Atomic Alliance. This has more of an effect than you hoped. Some people still think you should be punished directly, but for the most part most are just satisfied that you aren’t the head of the Alliance anymore. The ones closest to you think it’s unfair, but you don’t really care. You probably saved the Alliance again with your actions, another civil war would’ve occurred otherwise. You can only hope in time people will see that. Vivica becomes the new head of the Alliance. Some object to her as well since she’s somewhat close to you, but most accept her since her reputation is pretty spotless and fair minded. You remain in control of Base Pandora, which now mainly concentrates on strictly military matters as in defending the AA borders. Less politics, but not less responsibility since you now have a daughter to take care of… Ten more years pass… Twenty years have passed since the bombs dropped, and the Atomic Alliance is the largest known stretch of civilization known in the immediate area. It’s now become an official democratic political entity rather than just a collection of separate towns and forts which were merely aligned. Vivica is now officially the President. GZS Shelters have been converted into major the supplier of water. Gone are the days of wondering if water was safe to drink. These Shelters have also been modified to have surrounding land to become agricultural centers like Eden; the water is piped in from underground to help grow crops. They’re probably more useful than what they were initially intended for. Ashtown was repopulated, but a big memorial is now standing there in memory of the dead, the Shelter near Ashtown was destroyed. Explosives were placed in the entryway such a manner that it imploded in on itself forever burying the place. As for you, you find less and less to do each day at Base Pandora. While it’s foolish to think that the world is now a safe place that an Atomic Alliance military isn’t needed, it’s just that it has fewer threats. Raiders might lurk on the outskirts of it, but to actually attack it now would be folly. Only the craziest and most desperate raiders do that nowadays, and they’re usually easily dispatched by the AA Police Force. (Most of course having trained at Base Pandora combat academy) Civil unrest mainly consists of a few normal complaints, never anything like what happened in the past. It almost like the “Old World” again. You however are glad of this, since you have enough trouble trying to look after your daughter Laura. She’s quite willful now that’s she’s a teenager, but fortunately your relationship isn’t really bad though, you just never did get a hang of this whole father thing. The best thing you did was train her to take care of herself. Though now you’re wondering if that was such a good idea. “I want to join the Atomic Alliance City Project!” she says. Having tamed most of the surrounding area, the next big agenda for the Alliance is to restore the City. You never really thought this was the best idea Vivica had, since the City has always been considered a very dangerous place, with nothing but deadly radiation levels and mutant monstrosities. In fact you turned down the option to head up the project when she proposed it to you. You remember way back in your early days of the Compound, when a few people were sent to the City, and only one returned speaking of the horrible creatures inside. Since then, nobody ever really went there. Every now and then you heard about a few hostile mutants wandering from the city, but it was rare, it seems as if they were content on living in their own area. You lived on “your side” and they lived on “their side” and that’s the way it should stay. Seems like fucking around with the City might be inviting trouble, sort of like when you decided to fuck around the Shelters ten years ago… Your daughter on the other hand like most youthful sorts, sees “adventure”. True she’s not some delicate flower and she grew up relatively fast (She did see her mother die in front of her along with the rest of the town) but its not like she’s had any real combat experience, plus she’s only fifteen and you do feel the need to protect her. > You ask Vivica to make you the head of the project If your daughter’s going to insist on this foolishness, you’re going to make sure you’re at least observing her. You travel to New Justice (Formally called Fort Justice) to see Vivica. Lately you and Vivica haven’t been agreeing on too much about this, so you end up storming into her office and demanding the position. “Vivica! I want that City Project job, I don’t give a shit who you’ve already applied the position to already, I’m fuckin’ taking it!” “Sure. You got it. Anything else?” Vivica says not looking up from her writing some document. “…uh no? You don’t mind?” “Why would I? I asked you to take this position in the first place.” “Yeah I know, but I was sort of an asshole about turning it down before.” “Well I figured you’d come around, even if you don’t agree with this project.” “I still don’t…I mean don’t you think we’ll be doing more harm than good by fucking around with the City? I mean the mutants inside don’t normally come out, if we start going in, we might be stirring up a bee’s nest.” Vivica stop writing and looks at you. “Let me ask you something…didn’t you stir up a bee’s nest when you first confronted Alex at Base Pandora twenty years ago? Think about it. Had you not gone in, isn’t it possible that he would’ve actually built up a large enough army of cyborgs and robots to attack us later and we wouldn’t have been able to defend against?” “Well MAYBE, but…” “How about when we fought those cultists at Eden? Your actions saved a woman who you would later give birth to your daughter. Not to mention that once run down farm house became a great agricultural center that is still a big supplier of AA food today. Not to mention Biofuel.” “Yeah, but…” “How about standing up to Harry and the Combine? I’m sure you could’ve easily run away from the situation, but you didn’t.” “Well I stayed because of Marina.” “True, but you also stay because deep down you KNEW that the Combine was corrupt and evil and needed to be destroyed and yes the loss was great, to you especially. But look what happened, the Atomic Alliance was created, and is still the closest thing to civilization in this little part of this fucked up world, well that we know of anyway.” “I guess, but…” “What about the opening of the Shelters? Now I know that’s a sore point with you. I know some people blame you for what happened due to that bastard Alex’s treachery. I know you probably still blame yourself to a certain degree, but think about it we use most of those Shelters as the major suppliers of food and water now. I don’t even think Atomic Alliance would be as prosperous as it is today without them. You’ve done more for the Atomic Alliance than anyone. Marina always said you never gave yourself a lot of credit for what you were capable of, it’s one of the reasons why she always felt the need to push you a bit.” “Okay, but…” “And you want to know why I wanted you to head this project? Because you’re the only one capable of pulling it off. Seriously if anything this shitty new world has taught us is we can’t just leave things alone. We have to take a pro-active approach to things just like we always have. I mean sure the mutants aren’t leaving the city NOW, but who knows what the hell the future holds? Shouldn’t we find out if those muties are forming their own army rather than finding out about it when it’s crossing our borders? Shouldn’t we find out if they aren’t ALL insane freaks and perhaps some of them are even civilized enough to make friends with? You’ve dealt with situations like this so many times that you’re about the only expert on the matter; you always seem to have made the decisions that turned out for the best in the long run. Maybe you aren’t running the Alliance, but you ARE the fuckin’ founder. So while perhaps you’re only taking this position to keep an eye on your daughter, you’ll eventually realize that you’re doing the right thing anyway, just like you always have.” “…how’d you know that’s why I was doing this?” you ask totally surprised. “Because a few weeks ago Laura snuck into my office begging me to let her join and I told her she better clear it with you. I figured your reaction would’ve been telling her no, or you would’ve let her only to demand to be head of the project to keep an eye on her. Glad it was the latter.” She says with a grin. So it happens, you take control of the Project. You organize and plan and all the rest that goes along with it. A relatively large force made up of the best Pandora’s combat academy has to offer make a trip to the City. The radiation levels aren’t quite as high as expected, but everyone is still expected to wear their radiation suits. While you aren’t worried about yourself, you are sort of worried about Laura. Even if the mutants aren’t a problem, the higher radiation levels could render her sterile. You never thought about it before, but you would like to have grand-children someday…but if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. No more regrets or wondering about what could be done differently. You’ve done enough of that in the past, and Vivica was right, you don’t give yourself enough credit for your accomplishments. You personally go on every patrol Laura does. It embarrasses her a bit, that you’re being so over protective, but she appreciates it later when a gang of hungry mutants attack. (Though some snickering is heard later from some of the others in the squad when you help her up, and she has to endure a few taunts of being “Daddy’s little girl”, but she soon proves to be able capable in combat which makes you proud) After a few weeks of exploration, you find that there’s a whole little world going on in the city. There are more factions here than you’ve ever come across! Some mutants are just mindless cannibals roaming the streets, while others are more organized and vicious. Still others follow weird new religions (Never friendly types in your experience) and others are actually friendly and have collected, fixed and horded lots of equipment over the years and would be willing to trade with “pretties” such as yourselves. (You don’t like the way they look at Laura though even if she is in a radiation suit) Oddly new mutants are being born, not a lot, but a few. Seeing as they’re going to be a factor in years to come you guess it would be best to make alliances with the friendly mutants and provide them with help…this of course comes in the form of firepower. Of course you aren’t so idiotic to start giving them rocket launchers and such, but ammunition and few extra rifles to your new mutant “friends” can’t hurt the balance of power in the city since you don’t see it as it ever being fully part of the Alliance. You think it’ll always be known as Zeropolis (As the mutants call it) where the mutants live and chaos will always be a way of life where only the fittest survive. Hmmm, just like before the bombs hit actually… One other good thing about this experience is after her first tour in Zeropolis, Laura decides to pursue a slightly safer career as a member of the Atomic Alliance Police Force. You’re beyond relieved. Thirty years pass… Fifty years have passed and you’re now celebrating the forty fifth anniversary of the founding of the Atomic Alliance at its capital of New Justice, of course you and Ex-President Vivica are about the only ones still alive who were around from the VERY beginning when it was only just “The Compound”. You personally are receiving some sort of honor for all your deeds in making the AA possible. You even get a statue and while you’re publicly humble about it, you do secretly really like it. After all you do deserve the recognition, and you’re finally being given your credit. After you and Vivica give your speeches and get off stage, Laura hugs you and says how happy she is for you. Your grandson David does as well. You were always happy Laura’s fertility wasn’t affected by the trip to Zeropolis. Though David’s six fingers on each hand display some of the effects, but he’s normal in every other way. (If anything he may make a great diplomat to the mutants when he grows up!) After the grand night of celebration, you go back home to rest. You’re really tired. Like you feel like you could sleep forever. Sometimes it weird to think that before the bombs hit, you were never really a social person, but then afterwards, you became a warrior, a diplomat and a founder of a new civilization leading people through it all. “I guess you were right Marina…I always did have it in me…” you say as you drift off to sleep…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You immediately dispatch another team of medics in hazmat suits to Ashtown. Vivica insists on going since she’s probably the second best doctor in the Alliance, you order her not to since you can’t afford to lose her as well, not to mention she runs Fort Justice, but she’s defiant and goes anyway. You also order Eden to not let ANYONE who wasn’t already working there in, until this situation is resolved. You can’t afford your major food source to get contaminated. You decide not to inform the rest of the Alliance towns, since you hope maybe you can contain this before panic occurs. You next step is to radio Alex, but as predicted you don’t get an answer. You soon get a report from Vivica, “It looks bad. REAL Bad. Most of Ashtown is already dead or dying. Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s airborne. It might be the water supply. The only weird thing is, the children didn’t seem to be affected…it’s very sad though. We’re going to have a bunch of orphans.” “Can’t you do ANYTHING?” “No, I have no idea what this is and I think it’s too late anyway, uh there’s something else I think you’ll want to know…though I’m not sure how to say this…” “Vivica just spit it the fuck out!” “Well, uh…I tired to treat Ophelia, but I failed, her husband was already dead by the time I got here.” “…Vivica, I appreciate you trying to save someone I had fond memories of, but there’s a whole town at stake…” “I know, I know, but that’s not what I’m getting at. Ophelia had a daughter you know. Her name’s Laura. She’s five. Ophelia told me before she died; she wanted her daughter to have a good home.” “Well of course! I mean we’ll give good homes to all the orphans!” “Again, that’s not it. She asked for you specifically to give her that home. She said she said it’s about time her daughter got to know her father anyway.” The surprises just keep coming. “Excuse me?” “Looks like you’re this little girl’s father…the timing is about right, I mean you did have that encounter with her five years ago. She’s five and if I may say, I see the family resemblance, she doesn’t look anything like Ophelia’s husband, I mean granted he’s dead right now, but…” “Why the hell didn’t she tell me? I mean I would’ve…” “I asked the same question, during her final moments. She’s said she was sorry she never told you before, but she knew you had other things on your mind and bigger concerns with rebuilding civilization and all. She always thought she would’ve lived in Marina’s shadow anyway and by keeping Laura to herself it was like she still had a piece of you…sir I hate to break this information up since I know it probably really important to you, but what are we going to do about the town and Alex and everything?” “Start evacuating the children to Base Pandora, the town is dead. I’ll take care of Alex.” You say grimly before disconnecting. Armed and focused, for the first time in a long time you travel by yourself to the Shelter where Alex is at. You meet up with Vivica on the way, who tries to advise you to at least go in with back up, but you won’t hear of it and tell her to continue on to Base Pandora. You also see Laura and some of the other orphaned children. They’re obviously still upset about their parents dying horrible deaths. You approach Laura whose eyes are all red from crying. She looks up at you. “Are…are you really my daddy?” she asks, obviously having been informed of the situation. Contrary to what Vivica said, you think she looks more like her mother, but yes there is a resemblance to you particularly the hair. Unsure of how to respond, you give a straight forward answer. “Yes I am and I’ll be home soon to take care of you.” you stroke her face and get back in your vehicle and drive off. You drive through Ashtown and see the dead bodies, by the facial expressions you get the impression it wasn’t a pleasant one. Once again you think about going to see Ophelia’s body, but you quickly decide against it. You’d rather remember her how she was the last time you saw her. Besides you’ll always see her now in your daughter, plus you’ve got a score to settle with Alex. You get to the Shelter and enter its foyer and surprisingly its elevator is at the top, looks like some modifications have been made to it as it looks as if the call buttons were there originally. You really don’t care about any of it though, you’re on a mission. When you get to the bottom, you see the same modified call buttons near the elevator on this level as well (You can’t believe the idiotic way GZS designs their Shelters though, effectively trapping their “customers” down here) You also see more dead bodies in various stages of decay, some look like they were dead long before Alex got here. Much of the equipment and place in general is in disarray, but you also notice some of it has been recently repaired. Probably by Alex no doubt. You hear cursing coming from a nearby room, it sounds like Alex. > You check to make sure his assistants are not lurking around You figure Alex is occupied, so you can check to make sure he doesn’t have one of his assistants skulking about. You’d hate to confront him only to get shot in the back by one of them. Unfortunately that’s exactly what happens anyway. While you search for other enemies, Alex hears and sneaks up on you, shooting you in the back. You drop to the floor gasping for air. “I always said you’d make an excellent candidate for remaking…trust me, I’m saving the Alliance, by doing this…” are the last words you hear by Alex before you fall unconscious and never wake up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Keep fighting the bastards! Pandora will never fall!” you shout as you mow down another dirt biker. In all the fighting though you begin to worry where Marina is, you look around for her in the chaos, and then you see her fighting with multiple enemies converging on her position. You rush towards her to back her up and then you’re blown back by an explosion. You slam up against a wall of one of the barracks, other than some minor pain and some scars you’re going to have you aren’t harmed, however your heart is when you see Marina lying bloody on the ground. She isn’t moving. Ignoring everything else you run to her, you kneel down to pick up her body, she grabs weakly on to you, but she’s in bad shape. “Keep fighting to rebuild civilization…its still worth it…” she says before losing total consciousness. Alex suddenly comes up to you. “Hey! We got people firing on us; you need to get the fuck outta the open!” “You! You’re a fucking surgeon! You fix her! Save her! Save her NOW!” you shout, picking her up and shoving her into Alex’s arms. “Wha…I…” Alex realizes you mean fucking business so he just nods and runs with her to one of the few undamaged buildings. You’re blind with rage, you begin charging into battle trying take out as many of these motherfuckers as you can, its quite possible with your actions alone you turned the tide, but you are still just one man, and you nearly get yourself killed, if it hadn’t been for Vivica managing to get a few people from Ashtown to help out, and they arrive just in time. Ophelia shoots a Combine soldier who was sneaking up on you. You turn around to see her, you nearly don’t recognize her decked out in battle gear. “Told you, you’d see me in the future.” She says and runs off to clean up the stragglers running away. The Combine is pulling back. You’ve won, but at a high cost. When you return to check on Marina, you find her dead. Alex explains there was nothing he could do for her. You ask to be alone which he complies. You spend the rest of the night alone with Marina’s lifeless body weeping and vowing revenge. The next day, you come out with one focus. To assault Fort Justice. This will never be over until Harry is dead. You need to strike now when he’s weak. A lot of people are wondering if you shouldn’t wait to regroup, but you won’t hear of it, you’re determined to do it now and everyone who’s in fighting condition is coming with you. In a couple days you and your small army arrive at Fort Justice. You half expect to die this day assaulting the place, but once again destiny is with you. Fort Justice is experiencing a minor authority problem. You can take the scum out of the wasteland, but you can’t make them disciplined soldiers. The last defeat has shattered morale, and apparently some are starting to question Harry’s orders, while others aren’t willing to die for him. The gate is wide open and parts of the place are in flames. You walk in relatively unopposed. Some fighting occurs, but you’re looking for Harry and when the loud mouth shithead sees you, instead of confronting you, he runs for the trapdoor to the underground. You immediately run to cut him off and shoot him in both legs. He falls and grabs for his pistol, but you take careful aim and blow his hand off, he screams in pain when he sees his fingers all over the ground. A kick to his face follows, and then a stomp, and another, and another. You don’t stop until his face looks like tenderized hamburger. He tries to act defiant by trying to give you the finger with his good hand, but you take it and break the motherfucker along with the rest of his hand. “This is for Marina and the rest of the deaths you caused.” You say, before blasting his mushy bloody head into mushy bloody pieces. Now its over. You collapse by Harry’s body, spent and drained. Alex goes over to see if you’re alright, but Ophelia tells him to just make sure all the enemy are either dead or running. Ophelia takes you to a barrack and puts you on a bed and tells you to rest, which you do. “I did it Marina…I got him…” you mumble while falling asleep. The next few weeks consist of rebuilding. Rebuilding everything. Fort Justice. Base Pandora. All the damage Harry caused. Word gets out to the Combine occupied towns about their current situation, with no centralized authority figure anymore, the Combine dissipates as wasteland scum flee and return to the outlands where they belong. The townspeople of those places are very grateful for your help, and you’re now in charge of everything but you take no joy in any of it, or anything. You’re numb. You go through the motions, but you’re basically in a daze. All your thoughts are of Marina, you feel empty without her. If it wasn’t for her, you wouldn’t even be alive right now. You would’ve died in a big mushroom cloud death. You start blaming yourself for not being able to save her, you start thinking about suicide. Everyone gets a little worried about you. Vivica starts radioing in wondering about your condition, Alex (Who’s quite familiar with mental breakdowns) attempts to talk to you, but it’s Ophelia who turns you around, though not immediately, but it’s her actions that become the turning point. Late one night, as you wallow in the emptiness, Ophelia visits you. You expect her to tell you not blame yourself for Marina’s death again, but she doesn’t. Instead she talks about the time when you saved her from the cultists and how grateful she was that day and how she would’ve almost done anything to repay you for saving her life. “Mm…well you repaid it already. You saved mine back at Pandora.” You say wishing to be left alone. “No, I’m saving it now.” Ophelia begins to remove her clothing, something that takes you completely by surprise. You feel you shouldn’t, you know you shouldn’t, but maybe it’s feeling of loneliness, maybe it’s the feeling of confusion, or maybe its just plain hormones, and you give in to Ophelia’s advances. And for that one night, the emptiness within you disappears. The next day Ophelia is gone leaving you a note saying she’s going back to Ashtown and tells you that you shouldn’t give up on life since you have so much more to change in this new world. When you think about it, Marina saved you, so you could carry that goal out. She always did see the potential in you to do great things. With this new perspective, you begin to return to normal, though there still was a little piece of you that died when Marina did. You’ll never completely be the same. Life goes on though. Five more years pass… It’s been ten years since the bombs dropped and civilization is starting to rebuild itself again…well somewhat. Hard to believe you would’ve become any type of leader trying to rebuild civilization. Marina might not be around anymore, but obviously her influence on you still is and always will be as you follow her dream of rebuilding civilization again. You’re still running things from Base Pandora, which is now the unofficial head of the Atomic Alliance. The towns formally under Combine occupation are included, but are now treated as equals rather than glorified labor camps, though getting everyone to agree completely on anything still remains a problem. Fort Justice is now under Vivica’s command and the Farmhouse, now known as Eden is a fully functional agricultural community. (It supplies food as well as biofuel for vehicles now) After that one night with Ophelia you don’t see her anymore, but last you heard she had a baby and got married to someone in Ashtown. Good for her. Other than political disagreements, everything has been going fairly well; raiders are still a problem, but much less than in the past. For the most part people are pretty happy living in your territory. One thing that’s been debated among you and some of other leaders, are the few GZS Shelters the Alliance has stumbled across over recent years. No effort has been made to open them, but they’re all sealed shut by their main computers. From what you know by reading some of the GZS documents found in Base Pandora (and Alex who definitely has some knowledge of GZS protocols) the Shelters weren’t supposed to open up until the central computer determined that sufficient amount of time had passed and the surface deemed safe. Apparently the computers still think the surface sucks. (And that assessment wouldn’t exactly be wrong) Most of the other Alliance leaders say that some sort of contact should be made with them. You get the impression some of them might’ve done it anyway, it’s just you have most of the equipment that makes it a lot easier. > You leave them alone You remember something the Colonel said years ago “They made their bed now they can sleep in it.” You see no reason to disturb the Shelters; you have enough to do with surface matters. Your unwillingness to contact them though is frowned upon by the other alliance leaders. Some are even calling you “inhumane” for leaving them down there. You take great offense to this since you’re anything but inhumane; you just don’t see the need to contact a bunch of people who wanted to be shut off from society for a long period of time in the first place. Besides who says they want to be contacted? Who know how they’ll act? Seems like it’s just going to open up trouble you don’t really need. It doesn’t matter though, the other town leaders are determined to go through with it, and you can’t stop them, it’s not like you’re running a dictatorship here. You are however denying all help from your end. Base Pandora, Fort Justice, and Eden are not to be involved. The Alliance relationship becomes a bit strained. A few weeks pass and you get a report from the Alliance towns, the first Shelter openings didn’t go very peacefully. Due to their fumbling and having no plan other than “Opening them up.” They manage to get into misunderstandings and a few fights occurred resulting in some deaths on both sides, but mostly on the Shelter people side, seeing as they haven’t been hardened by the surface. Ultimately they pull everyone out the Shelters kicking and screaming. Some Alliance citizens don’t like the fact that their local governments have engaged in these kinds of tactics, and you’re wondering what the hell they think they’re doing, since you said it was a bad idea in the first place and this just proves it. You later find out that one of the pettier leaders convinced most of the others that the Shelters contained resources that would make them less dependant on you (Such as operating filtrated water recycling systems) and decided taking the Shelters by force would be a good idea since if you were unwilling to help before you might be unwilling to help in the future. Of course that was just idiotic logic on their part since you were just against the idea of fucking around with the Shelters; you weren’t on some power trip. Within the next few weeks reports start coming in about riots in the towns and mistreatment of the relocated Shelter people. It’s the Combine all over again… You send in troops on your end to try to maintain some sort of peace, AND to stop all this unnecessary cruelty to the Shelter folks who were just peacefully living out their existence until some Alliance assholes pulled them from their homes. Naturally being a peacemaker is a thankless job. The “doves” think you’re being a fascist by using force to stop the rioting and protests, and then by the same token the “hawks” think you’re meddling in business that isn’t your concern since you didn’t want anything to do with the Shelters in the first place and shouldn’t be telling them what to do with the Shelters OR its people. Now you start to get angry. “Motherfuckers I RUN the goddamn Alliance! I fuckin’ built it! I’ll say what the fuck goes!” That’s the last transmission you make to the Alliance as a single entity. The next day it becomes a much smaller entity as the Alliance town leaders official break off from you and declare themselves independent and calling themselves the Atomic Confederation. You’re so pissed of by all of this that you don’t even WANT to bring them back into the “fold”. You’re ready to wash your hands of this exercise in stupidity. You withdraw all peacekeeping troops and instead of wasting more resources and man power on a long drawn out war taking town after town that will only weaken you, you decide to take a more strategic approach and attack the Shelters themselves. You send a strike team to locate each one that’s been opened up and blow up the water recyclers, and then to blow up the elevators allowing access to the Shelters in the first place. You also of course aren’t going to be trading food supplies from Eden anymore. “So much for your new resources. See how long you last without our help, fucktards.” Is your last transmission to the Atomic Confederation. The Atomic Confederation doesn’t last very long, it collapses mainly due to the inept and corrupt government, civil unrest, and even outside attack from raiders who are always attracted to chaos. By the time its all over the towns are little more than criminal havens that fight amongst each other. You’re still in good shape though; however this event has caused a trend in isolationism. The Atomic Alliance doesn’t expand past its now severely shortened borders. You still have dealings with Ashtown every now and then, but after they heard all the problems that were going on, it appears they become a bit isolationist as well (Which does have the benefit that they don’t try to open the Shelter that they located nearby, thankfully someone learned the lesson to leave well enough alone.) and you even have less contact with them as well. You live out the rest of your years running the Atomic Alliance which mainly consists of protecting your borders. Your death comes suddenly when Alex unexpectedly assassinates you. (Theories point to simple revenge for all those years ago and just his underlying unstableness) You’re buried next to Marina, he’s immediately executed and Vivica takes over. The Alliance continues under her leadership, but after her, leaders become less capable as leaders are apt to do in government systems. Eventually like the Combine, and the Atomic Confederation, the Atomic Alliance collapses completely thus ending the attempt to rebuilding civilization in this part of the wasteland.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It’s a brutal world and it just got more so. Rushing in outnumbered, isn’t likely to save anyone and most likely going to get you killed. You radio in for reinforcements and keep an eye on the farm in the mean time. Later when the darkness comes you see a group of them come out with torches, form a circle in a nearby plain and begin chanting. You count ten of them altogether Soon two more come out with one of the prisoners from earlier. She’s bound, gagged and naked; you know what’s going to come next. Reggie and another one in your team wants to do something, but you insist that they do nothing and to keep quiet. It’s all over soon anyway, as you see them sacrifice the poor girl for whatever outlandish beliefs they hold. You take first watch for the night. The next day your reinforcements arrive…both of them. “What the fuck? I asked for at least five more people!” “Sorry, but that other recon group you sent also ran into trouble, in fact two of them are already dead, and we had to send a rescue team to fetch the other two since one has a broken leg.” “Oh that’s wonderful.” “So should we call this off?” one of you team asks. “No Vivica, we’re going through with it, but we’re going to employ some stealth, they had three prisoners, I get the feeling they’ll be doing the same ceremony they did last night.” “Are we going to attack them now then?” “No Leonard, I don’t feel like fighting a bunch of fanatics armed with machine guns in an open plain with no cover. And we can’t just start firing on them from here, we need to wipe them ALL out as quickly as possible without them having a chance the regroup, fortify or any of that shit. We’re gonna sneak into the house and ambush the whole fuckin’ cult while they’re doing their little ceremony.” You wait until night and sure enough they all come out like you thought, then come the others with the prisoner. That’s when the six of you quickly sneak through an overgrown field towards the house. You get to the stairs when Reggie and Leonard break off towards the area were the cult is performing their ceremony. “I can’t just let them kill another! We can take ‘em now! They’re off guard!” “Reggie get the fuck…shit!” Reggie and Leonard begin firing, the fucking idiots aren’t even taking cover, they’re going head long in like they’re stupid ass action heroes. You and the others lay down some cover fire, but it’s not enough. Reggie and Leonard are cut down after killing a whopping ONE cultist and not even saving the hapless girl, who’s shot instantly. The cultists start spreading out, moving forward, and circling around you at the same time, they’re also better shots than you too, as they’re carefully aiming rather than just firing in the general vicinity. After seeing another one of your team members go down, you and the rest fall back into the house itself. The inside of the house looks like something out of a horror movie, there are skulls and bones littering it, along with it blood stains everywhere. “Holy shit! What’ve we gotten ourselves into?” Vivica yells. “Shut the fuck up, I hear something…like crying…it’s downstairs.” “What about the cultists?” “Well it’s the same plan, they just know about us now, let’s hope we can still get ‘em in a good ambush.” You and your team members spread out in the house, you head down into the basement, which looks more like a small temple layout. You see a young woman in a cage, and when she sees you her eyes fill with hope. You hear the cultists stomping around upstairs and some gunfire, at which point you try to find a good place to hide. A bunch of footsteps run down the stairs, you wait in anticipation…closer…closer… NOW! You pop up from your spot and begin firing, you kill six of them before they can even react, and the remaining two barely get off some wild shots before you splatter them as well. Still breathing heavy among the dead, you finally hear some good news. “Hey! Are you still alive down there?” Vivica shouts. “Yeah! What’s going on up there?” “We got a few of them, but I think most of them converged on your position though.” “Of course they did, I’ve always been popular.” You reply. You release the girl in the cage who’s very thankful. She mentions her name is Ophelia and she’s from a place called Ashtown which is far from this place. She says the cultists came storming into her town specifically trying to capture young girls; they took three before they finally were driven away, and unfortunately Ophelia was one of the three. You tell Ophelia your story; she seems to think you’ve got the right idea about going about things. “I think I’m going to tell my people back in Ashtown that we need to start getting better organized as well, and I’ll be sure to tell them all about you and how you rescued me! Maybe we’ll see each other in the future.” You and your team search the farm house which just like you thought was stocked with all sorts of goodies. You’re going to have haul some of it back, but you decide that you could also establish another base of sorts here after it was cleaned up. You’d also like to establish more of a relationship with this Ashtown. So you allow Ophelia to take one of the vehicles for her to drive back there, she certainly doesn’t have a problem with that! Before heading back you put Vivica in charge of the place and tell her you’ll be sending some more folks to help get this farm up and running. Not bad for a first try. Four more years pass… It’s been five years since you joined the Compound and things are going fairly well for you, the farm house has been converted into a way point to Ashtown, with which you have good relations with and is now producing food. You are no longer solely dependant on the Compound for supplies which might be just as well… You get less and less reports from the Compound itself other than its undergone a name change and due to its inclusion of a few towns now, its called the Combine and the Compound itself is called Fort Justice. You know about how the Colonel has gotten sick and seems to be getting worse as more time passes and how the population rate is growing, but it’s slow. The major theory is the elevated levels of background radiation are probably affecting fertility. (You wonder about yourself and Marina since she hasn’t once gotten pregnant in the five years you’ve been together) There have been more people sent here, mainly because they hear about how great it is in Pandora as opposed to the miserable place Harry has made Fort Justice since he’s been getting freer reign of the place as the Colonel continues to get sicker. In fact you’ve been hearing some disturbing stories from others who have come here recently. Ranging from needlessly violent occupation of towns, sending people on dangerous unnecessary missions to the city, and recruiting desert scum into the Combine! People are saying Harry’s going nuts with power. One day, one of your assistants comes in and has something to report. The Colonel has died, Harry has taken complete control of the Combine and his first order is for YOU to return to Fort Justice for reassignment. Harry’s just plain gone completely nuts if he thinks you’re going to do that. Speaking of nuts, that same day after you convince everyone in seceding from the Combine you get a radio message from someone who’s been quiet until now. “Well well, it seems you’ve got a problem on your hands.” It’s Alex. You’re guessing he’s been surviving on rats and roaches down there. “What the hell do you want and how do you know what’s been going on?” “How do you think? I’ve been listening in on all your incoming and outgoing radio transmissions since you betrayed me and trapped me down here! I must say though, you probably did the intelligent thing. And your progress with establishing your own separate territory has been intriguing…but I can tell you right now, you are going to need help with your current problem, a problem I will be willing to help with if you’re willing to talk.” “Alright, I’ll play. What’re you proposing?” “There are still a lot of those high tech weapons down here that you were coming to get when you came here five years ago. I’m sure they would be very useful in your up coming war with Harry, and don’t tell me there isn’t, because I know you aren’t going to run or meekly follow his orders to return. You’ve obviously set your sights on higher ambitions than just following orders and survival. I’ll be willing to give them to you, in exchange for my freedom.” “Oh that easy huh? How do you propose we go about this? I send people down there to retrieve them while your death machines ambush them as soon as they enter?” “It would be kind of hard for that to happen since all my cyborgs are long dead and my robots have fallen into disrepair…I’m basically alone down here. You were guarding nothing!” Alex laughs. You’re pretty skeptical about this little tale, but if it’s true, those weapons would certainly help. > You disbelieve Alex “Nice try Alex, but I’m not falling for it, now don’t bother calling me again, because I won’t be listening to anymore of your lies.” “Alright, suit yourself. I guess I better prepare for a change in landlords then. Pity, because I don’t think Harry will be willing to let me just live down here, I guess I better prepare myself as well.” Alex disconnects and you don’t hear from him again. You radio Vivica to let her know what’s going on as well; she’s behind you and will make sure to send a few people to harass Harry’s men when they decide the lay siege to Pandora. Everyone spends time preparing and organizing for the battle that’s sure to come. A month passes and sure enough Harry’s men come thinking its going to be an easy victory, but it’s merely a stand off. They end up falling back and try to wait you out, but you still have the advantage for the most part though. A couple more weeks pass and reinforcements arrive and armed to the teeth and despite the rugged terrain that prevents cars to come to this place, they managed to find some dirt bikes which whiz around Pandora while the riders nimbly dodge your fire while they toss grenades at (and sometimes over) the walls. Pandora is a lot less secure, and you’re just glad Vivica’s skirmishers are doing a good job at diverting the invasion force’s attention and getting through with supplies, though you catch wind that Harry is sending even MORE reinforcements. You doubt if you can handle it, Marina doesn’t want to leave, but even she sees that things are pretty grim, and is willing to leave if need be. You’ve already decided the place to retreat to would be the Farmhouse. If you’re going to leave though, you need to do it now, because when Harry’s second wave of reinforcements arrive, it will be impossible to break out. > You leave “We’re getting the hell outta here! Get everyone ready!” you tell Marina, before radioing Vivica, to tell her that you’ll be arriving soon. You and everyone else start gathering everything you can carry, and before opening the gates you purposely blow up some of the buildings in the base, particularly the building with the water filtering and recycling system. You might be running, but you’ll be damned if they’ll get the prize fully intact. Due to the explosions, you throw the invasion force a little off guard, since they’re wondering what the hell’s going on. This works in your favor when you exit and make your risky escape. “Split up and meet you know where!” you shout to everyone as you haul ass to the Farmhouse. You, Marina and a few others stick together as you battle Harry’s men who are in pursuit of you. Fortunately you know the lay of the land a little better, so your escape is fatality free by the time you make it to the Farmhouse. A few of the others who split up aren’t quite as lucky, but most make it. You immediately tell Vivica to start beefing up the defenses. The Farmhouse is relatively well defended, and even has two vehicles to help you. Its also further away, so by the time Harry regroups a large enough invasion force, you figure you’ll be ready for him. What you weren’t ready for, was the hi-tech weaponry, Harry’s men arrive with months later. Granted they don’t have them per soldier, but they have enough to start laying waste to the Farmhouse and its surroundings. Apparently they grabbed the ones Alex told you about. Whether the Combine just took them and killed Alex, or Alex came to an agreement with Harry is unknown, but your guess is Harry just killed him and whatever cyborgs might’ve been down there. (Dictators aren’t known to “share”) Some help comes from Ashtown, but it really isn’t enough and given Ashtown’s even further position away, it doesn’t do much good. Eventually you hear from Ophelia on the radio who suggests that you are all welcome to come live in Ashtown, as they have plenty of room and wouldn’t mind having some good warriors with a variety of skills. Reluctantly you accept, though you hate the fact you have to run again. You, Marina, Vivica and the remaining survivors pile into the two vehicles in between attacks and drive off to Ashtown. No need for scorched Earth tactics this time since the Combine soldiers did a good enough job of that during their initial attacks. Eventually you arrive in Ashtown, where you’re welcomed, but now you have to remember, you’re not in charge anymore and things are a bit different. You welcome the change though, after all the time of fighting non-stop and being in charge you’re happy to be able to relax more often as the only problems Ashtown has is the occasional bandit attack which aren’t organized or well lead. Everyday though, you expect the Combine to show up again, but a year passes without a sign of them. One day you hear about the Combine again, from a wandering traveler who stops in Ashtown one day. Word is, it’s currently undergoing another regime change. Apparently, shortly after the Farmhouse was completely destroyed, someone named Damon shot Harry and took over, then just recently someone blew him up and now someone else is in charge. Even though the Combine still pursues the idea of conquest, it now constantly has problems with infighting, hampering many of their plans. For now they’ve been concentrating on trying to maintain control in the places they already hold. It’s quite possible the Combine will eventually turn its attention in this direction of conquest in your direction again, but you’ll be ready as you always are, maybe you won’t win, but you know you’ll always survive to fight another day if necessary.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Nice try Alex, but I’m not falling for it, now don’t bother calling me again, because I won’t be listening to anymore of your lies.” “Alright, suit yourself. I guess I better prepare for a change in landlords then. Pity, because I don’t think Harry will be willing to let me just live down here, I guess I better prepare myself as well.” Alex disconnects and you don’t hear from him again. You radio Vivica to let her know what’s going on as well; she’s behind you and will make sure to send a few people to harass Harry’s men when they decide the lay siege to Pandora. Everyone spends time preparing and organizing for the battle that’s sure to come. A month passes and sure enough Harry’s men come thinking its going to be an easy victory, but it’s merely a stand off. They end up falling back and try to wait you out, but you still have the advantage for the most part though. A couple more weeks pass and reinforcements arrive and armed to the teeth and despite the rugged terrain that prevents cars to come to this place, they managed to find some dirt bikes which whiz around Pandora while the riders nimbly dodge your fire while they toss grenades at (and sometimes over) the walls. Pandora is a lot less secure, and you’re just glad Vivica’s skirmishers are doing a good job at diverting the invasion force’s attention and getting through with supplies, though you catch wind that Harry is sending even MORE reinforcements. You doubt if you can handle it, Marina doesn’t want to leave, but even she sees that things are pretty grim, and is willing to leave if need be. You’ve already decided the place to retreat to would be the Farmhouse. If you’re going to leave though, you need to do it now, because when Harry’s second wave of reinforcements arrive, it will be impossible to break out. > You stay What’s the point in running? Harry will just eventually send men to the Farmhouse and you’ll probably have to run again. You refuse to run forever, if you’re going to die soon, then you’d rather get it over with. Reinforcements arrive armed with rocket launchers come this time, and with a few volleys, Harry’s men finally breach the walls of Pandora and storm into the place. The fighting is furious as you and your people don’t allow Harry’s troops to gain an inch without heavy losses, but ultimately it comes down to you, Marina, and a few others, holding up in one of the barracks, totally surrounded. As you wince in pain from a bullet wound in your arm you use the radio and give a final transmission to Vivica to prepare for an attack on the Farmhouse soon. Hopefully she has more sense to run when things get bad. “Damn it, I should’ve ordered a retreat.” You say to yourself having second thoughts during this final hour. “No, you shouldn’t have. You stood your ground. I’m glad you did.” Marina says trying to comfort you. “I’m not! I’ve gotten us all killed, and I certainly didn’t want that for you.” “Its okay, if I’m going to die, at least it’ll be with you.” Marina kisses you passionately, which makes you briefly forget about the deep shit you’re all in. What the hell, for someone who nearly bought it during the nuclear strike, you had a pretty good run. A lot longer than most in this new hell on Earth. You sense that if you don’t come out soon, Harry’s men will probably just start tossing grenades or launching rockets at your position, you’re not going out like that. You look at Marina and everyone else. “Alright everyone, we’re finishing this. I’ll lead and try to soak up most of the bullets. I wish it wasn’t going to end like this, but shit happens. Ready?” You get a nod from everyone and then rush out of the door, blasting everything in sight, with Marina and the rest following suit. You feel several bullets hit your body and then a couple to your head before firing one last burst and falling to the ground in a bloody heap.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well there’s nothing stopping you from sending your own exploration detachment teams, there’s nothing stopping you from going yourself either. As far as you know, nobody from the Compound has bothered scouting past Base Pandora, you figure it’s as good of place as any… “Okay I want two scouting detachments of four. I’m going with one of them. We’re just going to go a few miles from this place and then come back. It’ll give us a better lay of the land in case of an attack and it’ll keep our skills sharp as well. The rest of you guard the base as usual.” You half expect Marina to come with you, but she’s content on staying behind to help look after the base. She looks at you admiringly though that you’re taking the initiative. She tells you she loves you and that she can’t wait for you to get back. You like the fact she’s got confidence that you ARE coming back this time around. You and your team leave and start exploring. Base Pandora really was in a secluded location, most of your trek is through a small unspoiled woods, eventually you get to the end though after about a day. You notice the Geiger counter is clicking a bit more. Not a lot, but enough to be a little unsettling. Using some binoculars, up ahead you see a single run down farm house (the farm itself also looks run down and hasn’t been up kept in years). Just then you see a few vehicles also approaching up ahead, you tell everyone else to pull back into the woods and keep down while you do likewise. You continue to look as the vehicle park nearby the farm house and figures begin to get out. All of them are wearing robes and carrying automatic weapons over their backs. You also see them dragging what looks to be a few hapless prisoners with them as they enter the structure. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that these folks aren’t the nice type. “Oh shit, these guys look prepared. Who do you think they are?” one of your team asks. “How should I know Reggie? When we moved into Base Pandora it’s not like we got a welcome to the neighborhood letter from every nearby freak within a few miles of us. If I had to guess and judging by the robes, they’re probably some doomsday cult. Probably one that was building up a stock pile of shit even before the bombs hit. Got some interesting vehicles though.” “So, what’re we going to do?” What to do indeed. You definitely need to wipe these cultists out since it’s possible you could have trouble with them in the future if they start wandering in your direction. They also have vehicles that could be of use and probably other supplies as well. You could radio in and wait for reinforcements, but the prisoners you just saw them take in might be dead by then. > You attack now No time like the present, besides, if you’re careful you should be able to take them. You and your team briskly run through the field while keeping your head down. All is going well until you hear a shot ring out from the house, and one of your team members makes a stifled yelp. You turn around and see Reggie, clutching his throat and bleeding profusely from it. While you’re all standing around watching him convulse, another shot rings out. This one clips Vivica in the head splattering her brains on to your clothing. “RUN!” you shout, not wanting to be the sniper’s next target. There are multiple shots now, and one by one you see your team member’s go down, until the last one is you when you feel a bullet severing your spine. You’re fucked. As you lay the field still trying to crawl away, you hear the cultists coming for you, you do the only thing you can and turn over in order to aim at them in an effort to at least take a few out. You manage to kill about three over zealous ones advancing on your position until you hear one shouting for the snipers in the house to finish you off since you’re not worth it. A single bullet enters your eye, ending it once and for all. You body is then taken along with your teams’ to serve as food and bizarre rituals.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe you’re high on your new found physique and adrenaline, but for whatever reason, something comes over you to volunteer. Indeed you’ve made everyone a little surprised by your actions especially since you’re an outsider. The Colonel looks at you with interest. “Hmm, you’re the one I’ve heard about from Marina, didn’t expect you to volunteer, she’s always mentioned you’re quiet loner type. Then again, you might be just what I need…alright you’re coming with me. Harry, you start picking some of the others and form recon detachments. Everyone goes on assignment tomorrow.” The Colonel then takes you to his office, where he sits down and gets a bunch of papers from his desk. “Okay, I’m sure during your short stay here, you probably think we’re all a bunch of survivalist militia loonies, and to a certain extent, we probably are, however we aren’t without a plan.” The Colonel shows you some blueprints to what looks to be a small military base. “My friend Alex was stationed at this base. It’s not exactly close by, but its closest military base around here.” “Didn’t realize there were any military bases in the area.” “Most people don’t, it was a top secret, and kept off the records so it wouldn’t be targeted. There aren’t even any roads leading to the place, you have travel by foot. Though I guess you could say it wasn’t so much of a military base as it was a research facility. Obviously I know about it, because I had a friend stationed there who was feeding me information. He didn’t exactly run the place, but he was attempting to work his way up to get special level clearance. Apparently GZS was working with the government on some high tech weaponry.” ”GZS?” “The Ground Zero Survival Corporation. I’m sure you’ve heard of them, they were the ones hawking their Shelters like snake oil salesmen before doomsday.” “Oh yeah, I used to see their commercials on late at night, I thought about buying one of those.” “Well good thing you didn’t, only an idiot would’ve bought one of those things. Look at this.” The Colonel now shows you a schematic of a GZS Shelter. “Why? It certainly looks just as equipped as this compound and has a lot more conveniences.” You remark. “It would appear that way, but the fucking thing is a death trap. They engineered them so once you entered; you most likely couldn’t get out of them. Supposedly the GZS computer is supposed to let you out when it deems that it’s safe to do so. In fact the whole thing is controlled by the computer. A computer that could glitch and break down at anytime. Let a machine be in charge of your survival…yeah great idea. I dunno about you, but I’ll take this compound any day. It might not look pretty, but I don’t have to worry about getting trapped with no access to food or water. Not to mention I heard from Alex that they suffered cutback during the creation of most of those things meaning they cut a lot of damn corners, so they probably aren’t as state of the art as they claimed. I’ll bet those dumb bastards who are living in those things are regretting it as we speak.” You’re not sure where he’s going with all this so you interrupt. “So, what does all this mean? Are we going to seek out these shelters and rescue the people inside?” “What?! HA HA! That’s a good one!” The Colonel laughs. “Hell no son, as far as I’m concerned they’ve made their choice now they can live with it, we’re not here to play white knight. We have to look out for ourselves, and part of that is making sure we’re the best defended and from what I heard, whatever they were working on in that base, sounds like it would make things a lot easier in the defense department.” “Whoa, hold on, if this is a military base won’t they just shoot me on sight if I go there I mean won’t it be heavily guarded? I mean I know I went through some training, but I doubt to the degree that I can take on an entire military base!” “Alex was making friends with most of the lower personnel there, getting them to follow him as it were. Last I heard, he was pretty successful, so chances are, as long as I gave you some identifiers to take with you proving that you were following my orders, you wouldn’t have any problems when you arrived, but obviously there IS a problem or I wouldn’t be sending you at all.” “Of course…” you say expecting this assignment to be even more complicated. “I haven’t heard anything from Alex for a month before the bombs dropped. I dunno what’s happened to him.” “Is it possible they discovered he was leaking information and killed him?” “I suppose, but chances are that afterwards they would’ve found out about us and also sent the National Guard as well as GZS private security here to lay waste to this compound.” “Well the National Guard were busy trying to maintain order to the major cities at the time. I should know I was there when they were stationed in the one I was working at.” “True, but I still think they would’ve sent someone here, and GZS still would have. As I said they had enough money to pay for their own security force. Maybe not as well trained as military personnel, but fanatical enough to eliminate anyone that GZS thought was discovering secrets about them. That’s why Alex always focused on solely making friends with the grunts and government officials. The GZS employees always seemed a bit more dedicated to their corporation.” “Okay, well is it possible that the base wasn’t so secret and it got hit after all?” “Nope, mainly because I get the impression the background radiation level would be a hell of a lot higher, if that got nuked, so I’m pretty sure the place is intact, in fact I’m guessing its been abandoned. We recently figured out their frequency, we never used it before for obvious reasons, but now, why not? We’re getting a signal, but no verbal answers from anyone. To sum up, I want you to go there to scout and explore as much as you can. Find out what the hell happened to Alex if possible, and let me know if that high tech weaponry is worth anything or just more bad engineering by GZS. Here. You’ll probably need this security pass to enter, got it from Alex, last time he was here; I hope it’s still valid. And here’s my ring and a letter, if Alex IS still alive then those will prove that you’re working for me. That’s all I can do to help other than to give you a map to the place and what equipment you think you’ll need.” Before you leave you have to ask. “Okay why me?” “Why you? You volunteered son!” “I know, but for this particular job, surely you have others more qualified to tackle it.” “Eh…you MIGHT think that, but to be quite honest, no. I mean don’t get me wrong I see all of these people here as family, but a lot of them are a bunch of weekend warriors who were playing survival. I’m sure in the years to come we’re going to see who’s a REAL soldier and who isn’t. Not that it matters, I mean I’ll find something for them to do, but you’re different. You certainly aren’t some commando, but there’s definitely something about you that makes you seem a bit more…detached from everything else. Like you’ll be willing to do what’s necessary to survive without hesitation. While you may never have been in a situation like this one, I got a feeling you’ll do just fine. Besides Marina’s previous beaming remarks about you are good enough for me. Now go get some rest, you’ll be leaving tomorrow.” You head back to your room and think about what the Colonel said. He might be right in a lot of ways, but you still wonder if he’s sending you because as he said, “All these people here are like family, but you’re different.” Maybe if you get killed it won’t feel like such a loss. You don’t think anymore about it, mainly because Marina enters your room to interrupt your thoughts. “I hear you’re leaving tomorrow, I just want to tell you how brave I think you are for doing this for all of us. I know we didn’t get a lot of quality time with each other, but I wanted us to spend at least what could be the last time I see you together.” Marina’s ominous words that imply how much danger you’re possibly getting yourself into might worry you more if she wasn’t on top of you right now… The next day you load up with what you think you might need, water, food, rifle, pistol, knife, Geiger counter, all the basic essentials. You get a bunch of goodbyes and good lucks. Harry merely sneers and mentions he expects you to get yourself killed twenty feet after you leave. The Colonel is a little more supportive and gives you a silent salute, but you like Marina’s goodbye kiss best of all. And with that, you’re on your way. It’s actually amazing to see that the outside world doesn’t look drastically different, you can only assume the bombs didn’t hit near your area. When you’re out of sight of the compound, you go back to thinking about this mission you volunteered for and wondering if you should go through with it. You do have the suitable equipment and skills to survive off the land after all. Perhaps it would be better to just go AWOL as it were… > You go AWOL You like Marina and all, but that’s about all you like about living at the compound. Being by yourself in the wilderness reminds you of how much you missed it. You have no idea what that secret base holds for you, why should you risk your life for a bunch of practical strangers? “What the hell was I thinking volunteering?” you say out loud. You decide to say fuck it, take to the road, and see where it leads you. A couple days pass and you haven’t encountered anyone, then again you are still pretty far from any kind of civilization, of course you don’t really mind. Suddenly you find out you aren’t alone, when a crack of a rifle shot comes from a nearby hill. “You fuckin’ idiot, you missed!” a voice shouts. “Yeah and you just gave away our fucking position asshole!” another retorts. You quickly take cover behind a rock. You recognize those voices though; they’re a couple of the idiots from the compound! The Colonel must’ve had you followed to make sure you stayed on the mission! So much for his so called “faith” in you! (Then again, perhaps he did have a good reason considering you DID go AWOL!) Looks like you’ll have to take care of them before you can truly put the compound behind you. While you’re taking cover, you notice an abandoned gas station nearby; you could make a run for it and take better shelter in there, or return fire. > You run for it You make a mad dash for the gas station, as bullets just miss your feet and head. The Colonel was thankfully right, they are weekend warriors. The problem you notice now, is there’s a crossfire, yet another spy is shooting at you from the other side as well, which means it’s a good thing you moved from your position when you did. You manage to get to the gas station; the shelves have practically been stripped of anything that might be edible or useful. That doesn’t matter right now as bullets begin penetrating the already broken glass windows. You hide behind the counter as you hear them advance on your position. “Yeah, he’s hiding inside, we better be careful. Go around and see if there’s a backdoor.” You hear one shout. One thing working in your favor is they obviously aren’t too bright, now you know one’s going to come around the back. You also know one of them is coming through the front door since the tell tale signal bells that jingle when customers used to enter make a noise. You immediately stand up and unleash a burst of hot lead into one of your ambusher. He falls in a bloody heap, then you run towards the backdoor and when you see it just barely creek open, you let fly another burst. The slumping of a lifeless body is heard and you confirm the kill when the wind blows the door open again to reveal a body lying on the ground outside. You duck down again and scramble around the corner when your last assailant suddenly pops out from that same back door and nearly tears your head off with a shotgun. Victory is yours though when you point your assault rifle around the corner and just fire it, hoping you hit him, you do you hear that always satisfying drop of another body. After killing all of your enemies you begin to search their bodies, taking what you’ll surely need. On one you find a radio, for a moment you wonder how the hell you forgot to take one of these with you, then you remember it doesn’t really matter since you never went to the base. You hear a familiar voice coming in right now. “Leonard! Come in you dickhead! You better gimme some good news!” Harry shouts. You pick up the radio to answer Harry. “Sorry, but Leonard can’t come to the phone right now, he currently has his face blown off and his tongue on the floor.” “YOU! You fucking cowardly AWOL shit stain! I knew we shouldn’t trust you! Don’t think you’re gonna get away with this! We WILL track you down! And when we do, I will personally blast a hole in your head and skull fuck you! Traitor!” “Yeah, yeah, we’ll see.” You drop the radio and let Harry continue his meaningless rant. Time for you to move on. A few days pass and nobody else comes looking for you, just like you expected, no doubt they have better things to worry about than punishing one lone outsider. Your brief stay at the compound served its purpose as far as you’re concerned. It gave you a place to hide when the bombs hit as well as the necessary supplies with which to sustain you. Getting to have sex with Marina was a bonus. A somewhat self-serving approach, but that attitude will probably serve you well in this new harsh world and it does… for awhile. The day of reckoning eventually comes while you were attempting to waylay a traveler who actually wasn’t as alone as she seemed. Your attempt at highway robbery is suddenly cut short in the same brutal way most folks die out in the wasteland; a bunch of bullets to the body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You like Marina and all, but that’s about all you like about living at the compound. Being by yourself in the wilderness reminds you of how much you missed it. You have no idea what that secret base holds for you, why should you risk your life for a bunch of practical strangers? “What the hell was I thinking volunteering?” you say out loud. You decide to say fuck it, take to the road, and see where it leads you. A couple days pass and you haven’t encountered anyone, then again you are still pretty far from any kind of civilization, of course you don’t really mind. Suddenly you find out you aren’t alone, when a crack of a rifle shot comes from a nearby hill. “You fuckin’ idiot, you missed!” a voice shouts. “Yeah and you just gave away our fucking position asshole!” another retorts. You quickly take cover behind a rock. You recognize those voices though; they’re a couple of the idiots from the compound! The Colonel must’ve had you followed to make sure you stayed on the mission! So much for his so called “faith” in you! (Then again, perhaps he did have a good reason considering you DID go AWOL!) Looks like you’ll have to take care of them before you can truly put the compound behind you. While you’re taking cover, you notice an abandoned gas station nearby; you could make a run for it and take better shelter in there, or return fire. > You return fire You return fire, but you don’t do any better. They’re behind rocks just like you are. You and they return fire several times, before something important happens. The first one being that you eventually manage to hit one in the head when he popped up again. His buddy immediately ducks down and starts shout expletives at you for killing his friend. This first event is followed by a more unfortunate one, while you were shooting at the two spies you saw, you weren’t paying attention to the third one shadowing you. He sneaks behind and shoots you in the back, severing your spine and puncturing a vital organ. You slump onto the rock you were hiding behind hard. Your assailant then kicks you over, and points his gun directly at you. “Nobody goes AWOL on the Colonel.” He says before blowing your brains out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab another TV and sit quietly by yourself in a separate office, watching world events unfold and get worse before your eyes as your co-workers reenact something out of a porno movie. You block out the sounds of ecstasy and turn up the TV. You’re starting to wonder if you shouldn’t have just stayed home, or better yet bought that damn bomb shelter… Just then someone else comes in to disturb your solitude. It’s Marina. “Oh. I didn’t know anyone was in here. I thought everyone was at the orgy.” She says. “So did I…um how come you aren’t?” you ask nervously. “Eh not really my thing, how come you aren’t?” “Same here.” “I see…so what are you doing to pass the time?” “Keeping up on events to see if things will change for the better.” “Ah an optimist eh?” “Not really, I think I just get a kick out of living in a fantasy world and delusions to make myself feel better…that and I have a morbid fascination of the utter chaos that’s occurring throughout the world right now.” “Hmm, interesting approach to life…I’ve always noticed you seem to keep to yourself. You like solitude don’t you?” “It’s easier.” “Yet, you stayed here for the end.” “Yeah, and I’m really wishing I hadn’t now, I can’t mix with anyone here. Never could. Not even on the primal level that everyone seems to be favoring right now. I don’t know why I thought things would change in the end…ah fuck it the world’s gonna end and it’s probably a good thing if our co-workers are an example of humanity. Still…I kind of wish I bought that bomb shelter…” “So you don’t want to die?” ”Of course not! I just don’t really see how to avoid it at this point.” “Well, for starters you could come with me; I’m getting ready to leave the city. It seems like things have died down for the most part out there, hopefully nobody’s vandalized or stolen either of our vehicles.” Marina suggests. “What? Leave? And go where? It’s not like there’s any place really safe to go at this late stage.” “Sure there is. Look, I’ll level with you, since you seem to be the only one here that’s different. I stayed around here to see if there was anyone who was worthy enough to be saved, and apart from you, it pretty much looks like I wasted my time.” “Save? What do you mean?” “Well despite the fact that you kept to yourself and never took any interest in any of the private lives of your co-workers doesn’t we don’t have them.” Marina laughs. “But like you I never really mixed with any of our co-workers either, however unlike you I do have a very active social life filled with people who are close like a family, people who live clean and have a strong sense of freedom…and who have been preparing for this day ever since the Commies started the first Cold War. You don’t have to die and you don’t have to be alone anymore. Come with me, you’ll be accepted as long as you’re willing to work hard and from what I know, you aren’t averse to doing that.” You’re not entirely sure of what Marina has in store for you, but it sounds better than staying here waiting to die. You agree to leave with her. You both make your way past the mass of naked bodies and head immediately to the parking structure. Unfortunately Marina’s car is gone, it’s been predictably stolen in the looting frenzy during the city exodus; however your old van is perfectly fine. It hasn’t even been vandalized, of course the thing looks like it’s already been vandalized which is probably why nobody bothered to steal it. You both get in the van and you drive while Marina tells you where you’re going. While you’re driving through the city, you keep expecting to be attacked by lawless hold outs still lingering in the city or open fired on by Nation Guardsman, but you suspect either they were ordered to pull out to reinforce a more important city or most of them abandoned their “job” long ago when they realized the futility of it. You make your way out of the city with no problems. Of course now you’re just wondering if you’re just going to get nuked at any second. You listen to the radio to keep up on events, which is more of the same that you were watching on TV. Eventually Marina turns it off and tells you not to worry about the old world anymore, a new one is going to be built. Your drive takes you far from the city, where ever Marina’s leading you it’s even further than where you live and you lived pretty way out. You drive through the night and into next morning; while Marina’s asleep you turn the radio back on and keep it on low… Monday 8:00 AM “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” The radio suddenly stops broadcasting anything except a loud warning sound; it wakes up Marina before you can turn it off. Seeing her current surroundings, Marina hastily tells you to turn at a dirty road that’s coming up, which then leads into a wooden gate. Looks like a compound of some sort, where a man is standing guard with an assault rifle. Marina gets out and talks to him a moment, to which he nods his head and opens the gate. As soon as you drive in another woman comes running out of one of the many log cabin like structures in the compound. She immediately starts talking to Marina through the passenger window. “Marina! Thank God you’re here! We thought you were dead! Come on we gotta get down into the underground, its beginning!” Wasting no time Marina and you follow the woman into the cabin and down into a trap door in the floor. You find yourself in a wide tunnel with dim electrical lighting to what looks like a pretty elaborate underground complex. Marina and the woman are running ahead of you, but you can’t help but stare in wonder of all this. “Holy shit, they really were working on this since the Cold War…” you say to yourself as you slow down to examine everything. Then it happens. You hear a loud noise above and you fall to the ground due to the tremors. Then all the lighting goes out. You attempt to get back up and try to feel the walls to get your bearings. You don’t know where the hell you’re going, but you can hear voices and shouting; some of it close and some of it far away. You have no idea where the hell you’re at, let alone the layout of this place. Instead of getting yourself lost, you decide to just stay put until the lighting comes back on; surely they probably have an emergency generator that will kick in soon. The lighting suddenly comes on and you’re just in time to see Marina and a man dressed fatigues arrive on your position. “Are you alright?” Marina asks you. “Yeah, I’m okay.” No sooner do you get out those words when the man in military fatigues begins giving you the hard stare. “I’ve heard about you before from Marina, but don’t think that hiding behind her skirt is gonna give you a fuckin’ free pass in this place! You better prepared to pull your goddamn weight everyday! I catch you slipping and you’re outta here!” “What the hell? I didn’t say anything!” “And you better not say any fuckin’ thing either if you don’t wanna get on my bad side! The Colonel doesn’t like slack offs in his compound and neither do I! So if you intend on staying here, you better get REAL used to the idea of getting your head outta your fuckin’ ass and living like a real fuckin’ person instead of the goddamn disgusting parasitic shit maggot you are!” You’re about to reply to GI Jerk, but Marina stops you and insists on taking you to your room, leaving Harry to his own devices. “Alright Marina, what the hell was all that about, and who’s full metal asshole back there?” “That was Harry, and don’t pay any attention to him, he’s just really gung ho and is second in command around here. The Colonel is the one who runs this place. He’s actually a more even tempered man than Harry is.” Marina and you arrive at a small room by itself at the end of one of the corridors. “Well here’s the room you’ll be staying for now. Things might change mind you, but rest assured this is the safest place you could be right now. We’ve prepared for this day and will definitely survive the aftermath of what’s to come, and now you will too.” Marina leaves with a smile, but you don’t really share her optimism, given the fact that Armageddon has just happened. That reality has only just now sunk in that the world is probably one big radioactive desert at this point. Then again, Marina might be right, this place is probably safer than most and its better than being dead. At least you hope it is. You lie down on the bed provided and fall asleep; surprisingly it’s the best rest you’ve experienced before the bombs dropped. A few weeks pass and you get acquainted with the compound. You and most of the others are to remain underground while until some scouts in radiation suits determine if the radiation level is low enough. In the mean time you’re forced to do extensive combat training like everyone else. Most of the people are okay with you, even though you’re an outsider. Harry gives you a hard time though. Still, you’re probably in the best shape of your life and you got to brush up on your aim. Sometimes you get to spend time with Marina, funny how you find it easier to talk to her now. One day you finally see the Colonel you’ve been hearing about, he gives a speech to all of you in the cafeteria. “Well, I’ve been informed that the surface part of our compound only suffered minor damage and that the radiation level is fairly low all things considering…anyway we all knew this day would come, and we would be prepared for it, but we can’t just sit on our asses hoping things will be alright! NO! We must take a proactive approach if we have to survive! As we speak, there are probably low lives scavenging the shell of the old world, we must secure as many abandoned resources as we can to ensure our future and some of you will be sent out into the world to do just that for the good of the compound. We’re going to tame this new world and rebuild a new society! You have undergone rigorous training before hand, to ensure you will be able to survive the dangers. Now I’ll be accepting volunteers first.” > You stay silent Maybe you’re a leaner meaner fighting machine now, but that’s still no reason to be foolish and volunteer for things. Eventually The Colonel picks someone at random and tells Harry to start assigning recon detachments. “Alright you fuckin’ bottom feeders, its time to put all that fuckin’ training to good use! We’re gonna go scout out the nearest towns we know of. Now I’m sure you know there were a lot of little towns dotted all over the place in these parts, are job is to make contact and see what the situation is. Don’t be surprised if they open fire on you immediately. Catastrophes tend to make people behave like animals…and that’s where we’re coming in. We’re here to be the tamers, just like the Colonel said, now then, Dixon, Bradson, Wilson, Copperheim! You’re Alpha Team. Sams, Barns…” Harry goes down a list assigning people. Time passes and you’re one of the last people left. You can’t help but notice that the ones left aren’t exactly the most competent. You start wonder if you’ll just be assigned to Compound duty, which you wouldn’t really mind since it offers less opportunity to get shot at. Your wonder is soon dispelled, when Harry puts down his list and addresses the rest of you directly. “Alright now the rest of you fucking shit eating pansies get a different assignment, because you’re so goddamn special like a fucking epileptic retard. You folks get to go to the CITY!” Nobody looks too enthusiastic about that idea, except you’re the only one with any balls to protest since you know Harry hates you anyway. “The fucking city, are you kidding? It’s probably been nuked into slag! There can’t be anything useful there!” “Y’know, I expected that kind of cowardly shit from you, so that’s why you’re going to be point man for the entire mission! Anyway, we don’t know if the city has been completely destroyed, chances are that it not being a major city and its low importance, it may not have been hit with anything larger than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima back in old World War 2.” “OH well then, I’m SURE it’ll be safe to enter then!” you reply. “Shut your fucking mouth and stop being a bitch! You’re all going to be wearing radiation suits anyway, which will keep your yellow ass safe. That alleviate your worries cupcake? Fuckin’ pussy ass faggot. You oughta be glad you’re even here in the first place. You don’t like the fuckin’ rules, you can fuckin’ leave and see how well you fare on your own. Now what’s it gonna be Nancy Boy?” “Fuck it, fine, whatever.” You retort giving in, but still weighing the option of possibly leaving later. “Yeah, that’s what I thought cupcake. Alright, go pick up your equipment and get ready to set off, you’ll be using one of the vehicles since the City is pretty far away. If in the event that cupcake IS right and the place is a glowing hole, then return immediately. Another thing the Colonel wants this mission secret, so don’t fucking mention it to anyone else in the Compound! I find out you have and you’re fucking history! This means you don’t tell your little girlfriend, cupcake!” You all leave, with Harry still giving you a dirty look for your insubordination. You wonder if you shouldn’t just leave when you exit the Compound. Take the equipment and then just disappear, who’s going to come after you? It’s not like there’s going to be MPs searching for you all over the wasteland. The night before you leave, Marina comes to see you. “I hear you’re leaving tomorrow, and I know we didn’t get a lot of quality time with each other, but I wanted us to spend at least what could be the last time I see you together.” Marina’s apparently not familiar with the fact that you didn’t really have a choice in the matter, but since she’s on top of you right now, you’re not going to bring up the issue… The next day you load up with what you think you might need, water, food, rifle, pistol, knife, Geiger counter, radiation suit, all the basic essentials, before you zoom off in the beat up car that’s passing for your transportation to the city. You sit in the back seat, while your other three teammates Steve, Albert and Roger are talking with each other. Mostly about things that don’t matter, none of them seem to even be thinking about the fact that you’re possibly driving into a glowing hole in the ground. And you don’t give a shit what you’re wearing. All the lead panties in the world aren’t going to completely protect you, if you’re standing at ground zero! You end up going back to sleep for the first day of the trip, only being periodically awakened by the laughter your team mates. On the second day you stare out the window and see that the landscape has gotten worse looking as you get closer to your destination. The surrounding countryside around the Compound looks relatively untouched compared to what you’re starting to see now. For shits and giggles, you roll the window open and shove part of the Geiger counter outside to get a reading, it starts clicking like a cricket and crack. “Hey! Roll up that window; you’re letting all the radiation in! Ha ha!” Albert exclaims, who’s sitting next to you. Idiot. “Check it out, looks like the city survived after all…well more or less.” Steve says who’s doing the driving. You turn your attention forward and see the shattered “skeletal” remains of skyscrapers looming in the distance. The city got hit, but apparently by something “small” and probably exploded high in the air. Of course that doesn’t make you feel any better. Steve stops the car just outside the city limits mainly because the road is being blocked by burned out shells of other vehicles. You all pile out of the car. “Alright I think we can take it from foot on here, we probably shouldn’t try to drive the car in the city anyway, we need to conserve gas. Alright you’re in the lead.” Steve says to you. “What? Why am I in the fucking lead?” you ask. “Because Harry said you fuckin’ were, CUPCAKE! Ha ha!” Albert laughs. “Yeah, besides, you worked in the city, none of us did, so you probably know the place than we do.” “What, so none of you assholes ever visited the place?” “Maybe a few times, not really enough to get deeply acquainted with it, look you’re outnumbered, and you’re taking lead, and that’s that. Don’t worry we’ll be right behind you.” Roger replies. “After seeing how you fuckers shoot, I don’t know if that’s stupider than going into a radioactive city to begin with.” You take lead and begin walking; meanwhile your team members go back to talking about shit that doesn’t matter again. Given their attention span, you wonder if you wouldn’t just be better off exploring by yourself. > You explore by yourself You start briskly walking ahead, Roger suddenly notices. “Hey what’s your fucking hurry?” “I’m not waiting around for your slow asses, you’re taking too fucking long with all the goddamn talking. I’m gonna scout out ahead, I’m supposed to be on point right? I’m taking the risk, so what the hell do you care?” “But…oh fuck it, go on ahead and get yourself killed then, we’ll be right here. Better be back by nightfall though, because we’ll assume you’re dead and leave without you.” “Yeah, yeah.” You leave the three stooges to their idiotic conversation, and proceed to go about your way, amongst the ruined buildings. It’s weird to walk through the city and it being so quiet with no other people around. Ah, by yourself again, it’s been awhile since you’ve had any private time to yourself. The Compound doesn’t really allow for it. In fact with all this time to finally have to yourself gives you the opportunity to seriously consider leaving the Compound like you were thinking about earlier. It would be easy, all you have to do is wander off, and Roger did say they would assume you were dead by nightfall. You think about Marina though, you do like her…but you also like not having to have an asshole who hates you barking orders at you all the time too. While you’re struggling with the delimma of your current living situation, you suddenly hear a gravelly voice nearby and some slow shuffling. “Meeeeeeeeat...(Wheez)” You turn your head to see a walking horror. A man with badly distorted features and limbs hobbles in your direction. One of the bomb victims no doubt. You knew you had to run into them eventually. The problem is now more of them are starting to appear, and they look like they can do more damage. Many of them have a half-crazed appearance and severe radiation burns. Apparently their minds have damaged along with their bodies. These ones aren’t even making an attempt to speak; they’re just looking at you menacingly and growling. They’re beginning to encircle you. > You run back to your team You hastily make a break for it back to where your team is situated; unfortunately, “the survivors” are in your way and attempt to stop you. You shoot a couple of them, but not before a few of them manage to wound you. A couple of them manage to tear through your suit with their ragged and jagged, dirty nails (Which are almost like claws at this point) You suffer some scratches to the back and shoulders, but the worst is when one of them actually bites through your suit drawing blood. “Motherfucker!” you shout shooting your assailant in the face and breaking away from the cannibal mob. You run like mad with the horde chasing not far behind. When you finally reach your team, they all finally pay attention for the first time and start running back to the car! “HEY WAIT FOR ME YOU BASTARDS!” you yell, stepping up your pace. Eventually you just barely manage to get inside the car before Steve drives off. A couple of the city dwellers jump on the back of the car, but a shotgun blast through the back window gets them off. “Holy shit Albert! What the fuck?! Was it necessary to destroy our back window?” Roger shouts. “Oh I’m sorry I didn’t know we were taking back survivors to the Compound, oh shit you’re wounded man!” Albert says looking at you. “Ah I’m alright, there’s medical supplies back at the Compound.” “No man! I mean you’re bit and shit! You’re gonna turn into one of those things!” “For fuck’s sake Albert, this ain’t a low budget zombie film. It doesn’t work like that!” “I dunno, I mean how do you know? I mean you saw them, sure they were still alive, but radiation might do all kinds of weird shit!” “Yeah, Albert’s got a point. We don’t know what the hell was in the air either and your suit was ripped. For all we know there was some sort of biological agent in the air too. Who knows what was dumped on the place. You could bring back some virus and infect everyone.” Roger says. “If you think these suits protected us from everything, you’re a goddamn idiot in the first place…” Suddenly you feel the butt from Albert’s shotgun smack against the side of your skull, while Roger tells Steve to stop the car. You’re too dizzy to fight back properly so you just pull the trigger on your rifle which results in you shooting Steve through the back several times before you get another smack in the head and getting your rifle taken from by Albert. Roger then gets out of the car and opens up the door on your side to drag you out. Giving you a few kicks before pointing his gun at your face. “Now I’m not killing you because you might be infected, I’m killing you because you just murdered my friend you sonofabitch!” Roger then shoots you in your half-conscious state.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You start briskly walking ahead, Roger suddenly notices. “Hey what’s your fucking hurry?” “I’m not waiting around for your slow asses, you’re taking too fucking long with all the goddamn talking. I’m gonna scout out ahead, I’m supposed to be on point right? I’m taking the risk, so what the hell do you care?” “But…oh fuck it, go on ahead and get yourself killed then, we’ll be right here. Better be back by nightfall though, because we’ll assume you’re dead and leave without you.” “Yeah, yeah.” You leave the three stooges to their idiotic conversation, and proceed to go about your way, amongst the ruined buildings. It’s weird to walk through the city and it being so quiet with no other people around. Ah, by yourself again, it’s been awhile since you’ve had any private time to yourself. The Compound doesn’t really allow for it. In fact with all this time to finally have to yourself gives you the opportunity to seriously consider leaving the Compound like you were thinking about earlier. It would be easy, all you have to do is wander off, and Roger did say they would assume you were dead by nightfall. You think about Marina though, you do like her…but you also like not having to have an asshole who hates you barking orders at you all the time too. While you’re struggling with the delimma of your current living situation, you suddenly hear a gravelly voice nearby and some slow shuffling. “Meeeeeeeeat...(Wheez)” You turn your head to see a walking horror. A man with badly distorted features and limbs hobbles in your direction. One of the bomb victims no doubt. You knew you had to run into them eventually. The problem is now more of them are starting to appear, and they look like they can do more damage. Many of them have a half-crazed appearance and severe radiation burns. Apparently their minds have damaged along with their bodies. These ones aren’t even making an attempt to speak; they’re just looking at you menacingly and growling. They’re beginning to encircle you. > You run elsewhere They’ve cut off a clear escape for you to go back, so you wisely run in the direction that’s open in the opposite direction, while unleashing a burst of bullets just before your retreat. The cannibal freaks run after you, while you attempt to figure out how to lose them, since their noises are starting to attract others. When you manage to get out of sight of the horde, you see an open manhole you could enter, or you could just duck into one of the ruined buildings. > You go into the sewers Now it’s understandable that you’re not exactly thinking clearly right now with a bunch of cannibal freaks chasing you, but going into the sewers is usually NEVER a good idea! As soon as you enter the manhole your senses are assaulted by a terrible stench that smells like something is rotting in the very radiation suit you’re wearing. You attempt to block it out of your mind and distance yourself from the manhole opening just in case some of those freaks get the idea to follow you down here. Of course it’s dark and you don’t have a flashlight so you’re at a disadvantage when the overwhelming number of mutants living down here manage to sneak up and attack you. Your first reaction is to fire at everything. Your second reaction is to struggle. Your third reaction is to scream. Your fourth reaction is to die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>They’ve cut off a clear escape for you to go back, so you wisely run in the direction that’s open in the opposite direction, while unleashing a burst of bullets just before your retreat. The cannibal freaks run after you, while you attempt to figure out how to lose them, since their noises are starting to attract others. When you manage to get out of sight of the horde, you see an open manhole you could enter, or you could just duck into one of the ruined buildings. > You run into one of the buildings You duck into the nearest building and hope you don’t bump into anything inside. From what’s left of it, it looks like a regular office building, similar to the one you used to work in. You find a relatively secluded office and lay low, hoping to hear the mob of freaks pass by the building. You really need to get out of this place. What the hell was Harry thinking sending you here, there’s nothing here except death…well actually you just answered your own question. As the time passes, you think to yourself that the three stooges must’ve assumed you dead and left by now. They probably ran off when they heard your gunshots echo through the city. You were going to leave the Compound anyway, so you guess you’ve done that, now you just have to get out of this city alive and you’ll be safe…well safer anyway. You explore a little bit of the building which has four floors, fortunately none of them inhabited. The fourth floor is exposed to the outside air and partially destroyed, so you don’t linger too long, you never know who or WHAT might be watching. You do notice that it’s getting to be night time though. You don’t hear anything anymore maybe you should leave now, you really don’t want to be here any longer than you have to be and its not just the crazed cannibals either, it’s the fact you’re standing in a radiated city with just a suit on that’s probably not protecting you from all the damage your chromosomes are experiencing every second you stick around. Then again running through the city at night is probably even more dangerous than running through it during the day. > You leave now The longer you stay, the more likely you’re going to get attacked again, and you certainly don’t want to fall asleep here. You take a quick look outside one of the completely destroyed windows and see if the nearby street is empty and make haste. Of course its night and with no working lighting you can’t see too well, so you’re relying mainly on the moon to light your way. You try to retrace your steps back from where you came from, but all these damn streets look the same in the dark even with the dim moonlight, you end up taking the incorrect one and it isn’t until you run into a blind alley that you realize you’ve made the wrong turn in more ways than one. “Do you want to see my dolly? It’s soft and pink…just like yoooooooooou.” Some sort of mutant freak lying against the wall says to you holding some sort of plush toy. “Holy fuck!” you shout as you’re caught off guard, and waste not time in shooting the damn thing. Unfortunately you bring about unwanted attention, and more figures start to appear nearby, you can’t get a good look at them, but their glowing eyes don’t look friendly. You start running and firing again, but to your great surprise, some of them fire back! They’re also better shots, having night vision and all. Your last moments are somewhat merciful though since you die of the gunshot wounds first as you hear the insane victory sounds the mutants are making as they approach your bloody body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You duck into the nearest building and hope you don’t bump into anything inside. From what’s left of it, it looks like a regular office building, similar to the one you used to work in. You find a relatively secluded office and lay low, hoping to hear the mob of freaks pass by the building. You really need to get out of this place. What the hell was Harry thinking sending you here, there’s nothing here except death…well actually you just answered your own question. As the time passes, you think to yourself that the three stooges must’ve assumed you dead and left by now. They probably ran off when they heard your gunshots echo through the city. You were going to leave the Compound anyway, so you guess you’ve done that, now you just have to get out of this city alive and you’ll be safe…well safer anyway. You explore a little bit of the building which has four floors, fortunately none of them inhabited. The fourth floor is exposed to the outside air and partially destroyed, so you don’t linger too long, you never know who or WHAT might be watching. You do notice that it’s getting to be night time though. You don’t hear anything anymore maybe you should leave now, you really don’t want to be here any longer than you have to be and its not just the crazed cannibals either, it’s the fact you’re standing in a radiated city with just a suit on that’s probably not protecting you from all the damage your chromosomes are experiencing every second you stick around. Then again running through the city at night is probably even more dangerous than running through it during the day. > You wait until daytime You’ve already spent enough time in radsville to get sick, or mutate, what’s one more day? If something bad’s going to happen to you internally there’s really not much you can do about it now except hope the suit is more protective than you think it is. You can however probably lessen you chances of getting ripped apart and eaten if you don’t go wandering the city at night. You decide to search the building before it gets too dark; you don’t find anything really useful though, at least nothing that’s any more useful than what you’re already carrying. You end up looking in lunch area refrigerator and find some rotten food along side what would undoubtedly be flat pop at this stage. Nope you’re not going to find any supplies in this place, you’re just glad you had the sense to take extra water with you; you’ll probably need it assuming you manage to get out the city alive. Eventually you go to an office that looks relatively secure and intact. You barricade the door and slump against one of the corners and fall asleep…lightly. The next day arrives and you’re half surprised that you don’t find something gnawing on your arm (And relieved!) now that you’re fairly well rested again you take a quick check of your belongings, reload your rifle and prepare yourself. You exit the building and start quickly tracing your way back to where you first arrived in the city. You don’t care where you end up, just as long as you’re out of this place. You’re about halfway to your destination when you come across a couple of bloody mangled bodies, radiation suited bodies. It’s hard to tell who’s who, since the heads have been taken and the entrails are lying all over the road, but it’s obviously two of three stooges. Something didn’t go well. Your brief inspection is interrupted by a shotgun blast that splatters the remains of one of the bodies all over your own suit. “HAAAAAAA MORE MEAT!” a raspy voice shouts, with a clicking reload of a shotgun. The thing that just tried to take your head off is shooting at you from an upper window of one of the buildings. You spin around and firing a burst causing it to duck for cover, but with his fellows being alerted, you really need to get the hell out of here. You start running with the horde of freaks chasing you again. You can’t help feel like you’ve done this before! You see the end of the city though and can only hope they’ll stop chasing you when you finally leave it. Of course THAT doesn’t happen, even after you leave the city limits a lot are still in pursuit, In fact you even see a few lingering outside that join the chase, you turn around and unload a clip into the mob hoping it’ll slow it down a bit. While the mob tends to back off and disperse a bit, they still aren’t ready to give up completely, however you see more trouble, but possibly hope as well. The car you arrived in is still there, there’s also another suited body lying close by it, you can only hope its Steve and that he still has the keys on him. Of course the cannibal freaks lingering around the body might be inclined to stop whatever plans of escape you might have. You step up your speed, raise your empty rifle and smash it into the skull of the first ugly radiated cannibal that attacks you. To your surprise your force causes the damn thing’s face to completely cave in, killing it instantly. The other two grab on to your arms, causing you to back kick one in the stomach freeing up your other arm to punch the other one in the face. You grab Steve’s pistol still on the ground and quickly put a couple of slugs in the pair of them before they can recover. You then thank gods of luck that your next find is his keys still in his hand, as the rest of the mob has regrouped and quickly approaching. Firing another few rounds into the mob, you quickly get in the car and start it up, which it does immediately. You spin the car around and drive off, the group chases you for a little while still, but eventually you leave them far behind. You’ve escaped. “Fuck yeah! That was just like a fuckin’ zombie movie!” you say to yourself half laughing in victory. In fact it’s a victory that’s better than you could’ve thought, you now have a car to drive around in, well until it runs out of gas, but you’re hoping you’ll find someplace that’s still somewhat civilized by the time that happens (Or at least some more gas). While you’re driving you wonder if you shouldn’t just go back to the Compound, but you shake your head at this idea. There has to be better places than that to stay, and even if there aren’t you’ve proven to yourself that you’re able to survive on your own under strenuous conditions. You like being by yourself anyway, though it’s too bad you won’t get to see Marina again, but as they say you can’t have everything. You don’t know what the possible future holds, but you’re confident that you’ll be able to handle it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe you’re a leaner meaner fighting machine now, but that’s still no reason to be foolish and volunteer for things. Eventually The Colonel picks someone at random and tells Harry to start assigning recon detachments. “Alright you fuckin’ bottom feeders, its time to put all that fuckin’ training to good use! We’re gonna go scout out the nearest towns we know of. Now I’m sure you know there were a lot of little towns dotted all over the place in these parts, are job is to make contact and see what the situation is. Don’t be surprised if they open fire on you immediately. Catastrophes tend to make people behave like animals…and that’s where we’re coming in. We’re here to be the tamers, just like the Colonel said, now then, Dixon, Bradson, Wilson, Copperheim! You’re Alpha Team. Sams, Barns…” Harry goes down a list assigning people. Time passes and you’re one of the last people left. You can’t help but notice that the ones left aren’t exactly the most competent. You start wonder if you’ll just be assigned to Compound duty, which you wouldn’t really mind since it offers less opportunity to get shot at. Your wonder is soon dispelled, when Harry puts down his list and addresses the rest of you directly. “Alright now the rest of you fucking shit eating pansies get a different assignment, because you’re so goddamn special like a fucking epileptic retard. You folks get to go to the CITY!” Nobody looks too enthusiastic about that idea, except you’re the only one with any balls to protest since you know Harry hates you anyway. “The fucking city, are you kidding? It’s probably been nuked into slag! There can’t be anything useful there!” “Y’know, I expected that kind of cowardly shit from you, so that’s why you’re going to be point man for the entire mission! Anyway, we don’t know if the city has been completely destroyed, chances are that it not being a major city and its low importance, it may not have been hit with anything larger than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima back in old World War 2.” “OH well then, I’m SURE it’ll be safe to enter then!” you reply. “Shut your fucking mouth and stop being a bitch! You’re all going to be wearing radiation suits anyway, which will keep your yellow ass safe. That alleviate your worries cupcake? Fuckin’ pussy ass faggot. You oughta be glad you’re even here in the first place. You don’t like the fuckin’ rules, you can fuckin’ leave and see how well you fare on your own. Now what’s it gonna be Nancy Boy?” “Fuck it, fine, whatever.” You retort giving in, but still weighing the option of possibly leaving later. “Yeah, that’s what I thought cupcake. Alright, go pick up your equipment and get ready to set off, you’ll be using one of the vehicles since the City is pretty far away. If in the event that cupcake IS right and the place is a glowing hole, then return immediately. Another thing the Colonel wants this mission secret, so don’t fucking mention it to anyone else in the Compound! I find out you have and you’re fucking history! This means you don’t tell your little girlfriend, cupcake!” You all leave, with Harry still giving you a dirty look for your insubordination. You wonder if you shouldn’t just leave when you exit the Compound. Take the equipment and then just disappear, who’s going to come after you? It’s not like there’s going to be MPs searching for you all over the wasteland. The night before you leave, Marina comes to see you. “I hear you’re leaving tomorrow, and I know we didn’t get a lot of quality time with each other, but I wanted us to spend at least what could be the last time I see you together.” Marina’s apparently not familiar with the fact that you didn’t really have a choice in the matter, but since she’s on top of you right now, you’re not going to bring up the issue… The next day you load up with what you think you might need, water, food, rifle, pistol, knife, Geiger counter, radiation suit, all the basic essentials, before you zoom off in the beat up car that’s passing for your transportation to the city. You sit in the back seat, while your other three teammates Steve, Albert and Roger are talking with each other. Mostly about things that don’t matter, none of them seem to even be thinking about the fact that you’re possibly driving into a glowing hole in the ground. And you don’t give a shit what you’re wearing. All the lead panties in the world aren’t going to completely protect you, if you’re standing at ground zero! You end up going back to sleep for the first day of the trip, only being periodically awakened by the laughter your team mates. On the second day you stare out the window and see that the landscape has gotten worse looking as you get closer to your destination. The surrounding countryside around the Compound looks relatively untouched compared to what you’re starting to see now. For shits and giggles, you roll the window open and shove part of the Geiger counter outside to get a reading, it starts clicking like a cricket and crack. “Hey! Roll up that window; you’re letting all the radiation in! Ha ha!” Albert exclaims, who’s sitting next to you. Idiot. “Check it out, looks like the city survived after all…well more or less.” Steve says who’s doing the driving. You turn your attention forward and see the shattered “skeletal” remains of skyscrapers looming in the distance. The city got hit, but apparently by something “small” and probably exploded high in the air. Of course that doesn’t make you feel any better. Steve stops the car just outside the city limits mainly because the road is being blocked by burned out shells of other vehicles. You all pile out of the car. “Alright I think we can take it from foot on here, we probably shouldn’t try to drive the car in the city anyway, we need to conserve gas. Alright you’re in the lead.” Steve says to you. “What? Why am I in the fucking lead?” you ask. “Because Harry said you fuckin’ were, CUPCAKE! Ha ha!” Albert laughs. “Yeah, besides, you worked in the city, none of us did, so you probably know the place than we do.” “What, so none of you assholes ever visited the place?” “Maybe a few times, not really enough to get deeply acquainted with it, look you’re outnumbered, and you’re taking lead, and that’s that. Don’t worry we’ll be right behind you.” Roger replies. “After seeing how you fuckers shoot, I don’t know if that’s stupider than going into a radioactive city to begin with.” You take lead and begin walking; meanwhile your team members go back to talking about shit that doesn’t matter again. Given their attention span, you wonder if you wouldn’t just be better off exploring by yourself. > You stick with the team You may not like this mission, and you may not like the people you’re with, but it’ll be a lot safer if you stick with these idiots, because you have a bad feeling about this place. In the meantime while you keep your eyes open, your ears are assaulted by your teammates’ conversation. “I’m telling you she touched my hand dude! She’s totally into me! I’m gonna talk to her more when we get back.” Albert exclaims. “Bullshit, you didn’t get anywhere with Vivica! I should know because I fuckin’ tried once and she didn’t give me any kind of play! I think she’s a fuckin’ dyke anyway.” Roger replies. “Why the hell does she have to be some kind of dyke? Couldn’t be that she didn’t like your ugly ass?” “Fuck off Albert, go ahead and make an idiot of yourself trying to hit on some carpet muncher. I don’t give a shit; I’m just trying to keep you from wasting your time.” “Oh…well maybe she’ll let me watch or something.” “Yeah, right. That never happens except in the movies.” Steve says. “The other problem with that plan, I can’t think of any other woman in the Compound that might swing that way. Not unless you were some smooth pimp motherfucker that could talk her into it and given that you’re far from that Albert, I’d say you’re shit out of luck.” “Well couldn’t one of you guys help me? I mean, you could try to talk your girlfriends and we could all watch or something.” “Yeah, there’s a problem with that plan too Albert, namely neither one of those fuckers got girlfriends either.” You interrupt. “Ha fuckin’ ha. Nobody asked you for your opinion smart ass.” Roger remarks annoyed. “Hey, do you think you could maybe talk to Marina then?” “Everyone shut the fuck up I hear something!” After looking around and up, in a split second of total silence, Roger speaks again. “There’s nothing here, this city was fucking annihilated, ain’t nothing alive except maybe rats and roaches. I dunno even know why we’re so worried to begin with, do you think if anyone WAS still left alive they would be in any condition to…” Suddenly Rogers head explodes like a ripe melon after getting hit by a shotgun blast coming from the second floor window of a nearby building. The “thing” holding the shotgun is reloading and alerting his fellows. “MEEEEEEEEAAAT!” it screeches in a raspy voice. More figures start appearing. Most have a half-crazed appearance and severe radiation burns. Apparently these bomb survivors have had their minds damaged along with their bodies. “Holy shit, we’re gonna die!” Albert screams and starts firing at everything. You and Steve do likewise while retreating back to the car. Before you all manage to leave the immediate area, the thing with the shotgun manages to get off another shot, blasting Albert in the leg, tearing it off. He screams and tries to crawl away, but is quickly mobbed and the last thing you see of him is some of the freaks sinking their teeth into him. “GET THE FUCK MOVING STEVE!” you shout stepping up your pace. Eventually you and Steve manage to get back to the car and speed off back to the Compound. Steve is pretty upset and while there isn’t any traffic on the road, you still don’t want him to be crashing into something else. “Steve calm the fuck down, and get a hold of yourself!” “Fuck you man! Didn’t you see that?! They fuckin’ killed Roger! And they ATE fuckin’ Albert! Aw shit man! Shit! They’re gonna come after us!” “I doubt that, they don’t even know where we’re from. Just be glad we got out of there. It was a stupid idea to go there in the first place. There’s nothing there except crazed radioactive cannibals. I’m gonna tell Harry that much when we get back. Nobody’s going there again, especially not me!” You’re pretty pissed about this whole affair really and the more you’re thinking about it; maybe you should just not return to the Compound, you have enough equipment and supplies to keep you in good shape for awhile. All you’d have to do is get rid of Steve and take the car. > You return to the Compound Nope, in for a penny in for a pound. If nothing else, Marina’s still there and the fact her actions basically saved your life is enough to make you stay. The rest of the trip is Steve still ranting to himself about the deaths of his friends. True, they weren’t your friends, but you guess you can see why he might be upset. You’d radio in to the Compound, but Roger was the one carrying it and he’s a headless (and probably now eaten) corpse back in the city. You don’t say anything else until Steve nearly drives the car into the gate of the Compound at which point you step out of the car and remove the hot ass radiation suit and demand to see Harry. Everyone is wondering what’s going on. Harry hears your shouting and comes out of barracks, the Colonel does as well; good you want him to be here as well. “What is your major malfunction you screaming queen?” Harry asks angrily, as if you’re the one at fault. “My malfunction is sending us to the goddamn city was a fucking stupid ass idea! What made you think there would anything of any use there anyway? You just trying to get us all killed?” “No, just you, cupcake.” “You call me fuckin’ cupcake one more time and me and you are gonna go round and round you dumb fucking gung ho military wanna be asshole!” Before Harry can respond to your insult the Colonel steps in. “ALRIGHT ENOUGH! I won’t have infighting in my Compound! Harry we talked about this before that I didn’t want any recon missions to the city! At least not until we got better established!” ”But Colonel, I though we should…” “You DON’T THINK! That’s for ME to do! You obey fucking orders! I’M in fucking charge around here and you better not forget that!” “Yes Colonel.” Harry utters grudgingly. Now the Colonel turns his attention to you. “And YOU do not fucking rant like a goddamn maniac in front of everyone lowering morale and encouraging dissention! Like it or not, you’re going to be sent on dangerous missions. If you want to stay here you better start learning to get with the fucking program and follow orders!” You’re getting really tired of hearing that one. “So, all this aside, what exactly happened in the city and what did you find?” “Nothing! There’s just a bunch of crazed cannibal freaks living there, armed and dangerous.” “I see, well then all future missions to the city are going to be called off. I’m not risking anymore of my people’s lives by sending them there. We’ve lost too many people on these recon missions quite frankly. I sent a couple of people on a special assignment and I haven’t heard any word back from them, not to mention the people we’ve lost trying to contact other known towns. Fortunately, it hasn’t been a complete loss we how found a few pockets of civilization. We need to start developing good relations with them now though. This will help in our rebuilding process. For now you’re dismissed, but don’t get too comfortable. I’ll be sending you out again soon.” You turn away and go back to your room in the underground part of the Compound wondering if you shouldn’t just fucking leave, just then you get a visit from Marina. You’re kind of glad to see her despite your pissed off mood. “Are you okay?” “Hell if I know I just spent a day in radiationville. I’ll find out when my balls start shriveling up in three days!” “I think those suits would protect you from that happening.” “Yeah, I know everyone thinks they’re magical…nevermind I’m not even mad about that, I mean I understand we all got this lofty mission of re-establishing civilization or some shit, but I just don’t see the fucking point in it. And I REALLY don’t see the point in getting sent on suicide missions!” Marina sits next to you and tries to explain. “Okay, that WAS a mistake. In fact I wish you would’ve told me! I could’ve told the Colonel and he would’ve cancelled the mission! Harry likes to think he’s second in command, but he’s really just louder and more aggressive than most around here and that’s why he’s in a command position, but I think you could do just as good a job. I mean you’ve already braved and lived through going to the city and from what you described and Steve’s mental breakdown it sounds like it was pretty bad. Total anarchy and lawlessness. And that’s one of the reasons why rebuilding civilization is important. Do you really want to live in a world like that? I know you think this is all some sort of paramilitary bullshit, but we DO have a plan. Isn’t it more advantageous to try to make the world a better place and have some sort of order?” “Trying to make the world a better place…yeah a lot of people in the past have thought they were doing that too and you can see how that turned out…THIS! Look, it’s a nice idea, but I don’t see it happening, not then, not now, not ever. I’d say our best bet would be to just try to live out the rest of lives as comfortably as we can in this hellhole of a world and not go messing around with shit unless its necessary.” “…so I take it you’re going to leave?” You look a Marina before responding. “No, I’m not leaving, but I’m staying for you, not an ideology or plan. My feelings for you override whatever disagreements I have with the current political agenda, if that’s even the proper term for it.” “Well that’s sweet, but I do hope you develop a more positive attitude about this place.” Marina says hugging you. “Doubt it, but I suppose anything’s possible now.” A year passes… You don’t feel any different, but you’re used to the Compound’s plan of “re-building” civilization. You’ve moved up the ranks due to the fact that you’re competent, something the Colonel realizes and respects even if Harry hates you. But due to your “loner” attitude you’re usually sent on scouting missions by yourself rather than given any kind of command position. Ironically, you’ve been one of the key people in developing good relations with the nearby towns, since you’ve developed the knack of the sniper’s art over the past year which really comes in handy when killing raiders. The Colonel’s of the idea that if the Compound can prove its able to help defend towns from raiders, more people will want to join, the towns will be more willing to trade or even better a whole town will want a formal alliance. Perhaps slightly imperialistic, but what the hell, it’s better to be the top dog and at least the intention is somewhat for good reasons. All part of the rebuilding process. Right now you’re in the town that you found called Lost Springs, it’s a remote little town that doesn’t have any problems with raiders due to its somewhat hidden location (Though the wandering mutant bear is a problem sometimes) and while they’re friendly with you, it’s clear they just want to be left alone and keep to themselves. This might not be a problem, except they have a continual supply of fresh water from some underground stream. Not even mildly radioactive! (Though you’re still convinced you’re going to start mutating any day now since your trip to the city) It’s a resource that can’t just simply be ignored, but you’re not exactly a diplomat, so you’re not going to be convincing them on your own (And it’s not like you can impress them with your super duper raider killing skills) > You leave them to their own devices If they don’t want your help; they don’t want your help. You can understand that. No point in bringing in anyone else to debate the issue. You get on your motorcycle and depart. When you get back to the Compound you just say you didn’t find anything on this little excursion. Life continues. Four years pass… Five years total have passed and The Compound has grown somewhat, not much though. The theory to that of course is the background radiation has probably made a lot of folks sterile. (And you’re damn sure you probably are, after that trip to the city that you still continue to think about) however it has become much more than “The Compound” now. Alliances have been forged with other towns thanks to you and others. The Compound has been renamed Fort Justice and the alliance itself is known as The Combine. However, not everything is stable. The Colonel hasn’t been well lately; in fact he’s been sick for the past year. Everyone’s wondering if he’s going to die. You’ve noticed Harry has been taking a lot of liberties with orders lately, which you’re constantly always arguing with him about. If it was up to him, he’d put all the towns you’re allied with under martial law. You can’t even believe he suggested sending people to the city again, since he thinks that all the survivors were probably dead by now and it would be “safe”. One day the Colonel wants to see you in private as he lies on what is probably going to be his death bed soon. He addresses you immediately when you enter. “Good you’re here, I don’t have long and I need to talk to you.” “Uh, okay.” “Go look at those schematics on the table over there.” You do as the Colonel says, and see some blue prints of what looks to be a base of some sort. You also see the logo “GZS” in several places. You remember that was the logo of that corporation that was trying to sell everyone their Shelters before the bombs hit. You sometimes wonder how things would’ve turned out, if you bought one. While you’re looking, the Colonel continues to speak. That’s the floor plans to a top secret military base, my friend Alex got them for me a long time ago before the bombs dropped. He used to work there. It was some place where the government and the Ground Zero Survival Corporation were doing a secret joint project. Something to do with weapons. I always thought it would be a great benefit, if we could ever get a hold of whatever they were working on. I tried to make contact with the base since I know the radio frequency it used, but I never got any response from Alex or anyone.” “Hmm, so why didn’t you ever send some people there?” “Wow, you really are in your own little world, I figured you at least heard other people talk about it in the past. Anyway I did. Several times about five years ago. Everyone I ever sent never returned. Got to the point where I couldn’t in good conscience sent people to what looked to be their deaths, besides a lot of people were less than enthusiastic to accept the mission, the last few times I sent people out they just deserted. Eventually I just wrote it off that maybe the place is occupied by a superior hostile force. Just one of the reasons why I was really keen on the idea of creating an alliance with surrounding towns. Who knows when that force would decide to venture out and start heading this way? Actually a couple of years ago, I thought about sending YOU out there. I figured you being the most capable; you might actually survive and get back to be able to report something.” “What stopped you?” “I couldn’t risk lose one of my best people, especially since you were doing a good job at proving we could help protect the other towns. Besides you already got sent to one unnecessary death trap five years ago, didn’t seem right to send you to another.” You’re wondering where the Colonel going with all this, so you get to the point. “So what’s all this ultimately have to do with me?” “I’m promoting you right now since I want you to take over after I die.” “What?!” “This place needs someone stable, Harry isn’t suitable. In fact, I dare say he won’t be pleased with this decision…you may even have to kill him.” You’re a little overwhelmed by all this. “Whoa, whoa, hold the fucking phone! I don’t want this!” “I know you don’t, but it’s the best chance for the Combine’s survival, because that hostile force I mentioned? It’s real. And it’s on its way. Recently I’ve been picking up radio signals and they are from the base. They didn’t say much, except that they were coming to cleanse this place. I haven’t told ANYONE about this yet.” “What, is it some sort of heavily armed professional military group or some shit?” “I wish. I question if they’re even human. The voice sounded cold and robotic. I think we’re going to find out first hand what exactly the government and GZS were secretly working on.” “Well hold on, couldn’t they be masking their voice?” “I suppose it’s possible, but I dunno…something in my heart tells me that this is going to be really bad…like it won’t just stop here. I’m almost glad I won’t be around to see the destruction.” “I still don’t understand why you want me to take over; I’m not exactly the leader of men. In fact I’d say they’d listen to Harry before they listen to me.” “I can’t argue with you anymore…maybe you’re right…maybe not…the choice I suppose will be up to you…all I’ll say is with Harry in charge you might as well leave the Combine now, because I don’t wager you’ll be alive under his reign long enough to even see the attack occur. Maybe it might even be for the best, I wonder if even the total strength of the Combine will be enough to drive this attack back.” The Colonel sounds like he’s being a bit over dramatic, he’s making a lot of assumptions here. You not sure you want all this responsibility, but if you’re going to take it, you better do it now. > You take Command This was never anything you ever had in mind, but you’ve come this far, you have made a life here for yourself with Marina; you might as well stick with it. Besides, you’ll be damned if you’ll leave because of Harry. “Okay. I’ll do it.” The Colonel looks relieved. He struggles to get out of bed. “Alright, I still have some strength left, let’s make this official.” A meeting is called in the main courtyard where the Colonel weakly addresses everyone, while you stand by. He explains how you’re going to be in charge and he also mentions the “robot invasion” he’s convinced is going to happen. You see Marina in the crowd, who looks very proud and pleased. Harry however is severely pissed and makes it known immediately by confronting the both of you. “What the fuck is this shit? I’VE been here longer! I’VE been training all these fucking maggots and faggots INCLUDING Cupcake over there!” “Yes, and you’ve done a good job of that, but your temperament isn’t suitable for taking command of this place. Besides, I’ve determined that…” “FUCK YOU OLD MAN! YOU WILL NOT DENY MY GOD GIVEN RIGHT!” Harry suddenly pulls out his pistol and shoots the Colonel in the stomach. He then tries to shoot you, but you’ve developed more experience than he has in terms of quickness. You pull your own pistol and drill Harry directly between the eyes, dropping him. “Wish I’d done that to begin with.” You say while Vivica rushes over to the Colonel to try to help him, it’s hopeless though, he was dying anyway. He calls you over one last time. “…well…I told (cough) you, that you’d probably have to kill him…defend the Combine…follow this man…(cough) he’ll lead you…to victorrrrreeee…” The Colonel’s passing is mourned by all, as everyone respected him. A major funeral ceremony is held. It’s probably his last words (and Harry’s shooting) that stabilizes most people’s attitude towards you. They’re willing to follow you, which gives you at least one less thing to worry about. Of course now you just have to worry about whether or not there is a bunch of robots coming to attack. You decide not to take any chances though and immediately order scouting to be done on the outskirts of the secret base that the Colonel had schematics of. You also order the area around Fort Justice to be heavily trapped along with increased training exercises. When your scouts return, only a couple of them do so, and they’re badly wounded. They confirm the Colonel’s suspicions. There IS an army of robots (though they say most of them are really cyborgs, but that hardly matters) in the area. They’re very organized and heavily armed with high tech weaponry. Within a week, the first wave of cyborgs arrive. Surprisingly they give you the option of surrendering and be “remade” to serve the Cybernetic Evolution. You of course decline this offer and fight the steel bastards instead. They’re tough, but your traps ensure you to defeat them much easier. During this time you send a few people to get more help from other Combine towns. You get it for the most part due to large participation in defending most of those towns in the past. You didn’t think about it before, but that might’ve been another reason why the Colonel thought you’d be a better candidate for command, you had a high respect standing with the other towns even if you didn’t initially have it in Fort Justice. A couple more months pass and you’re assaulted by the second wave. Then again in another few months by a third wave. The cyborgs do a hell of a lot of damage, they breach some of the walls and you lose a lot of people, you’re even heavily scarred in one of the attacks, but yet the Fort still holds and that’s one of your main concerns, you know if the Fort falls that’s it; The Combine will lose this war as the main trained combat force is here. You have to make sure that doesn’t happen. You start to notice when the cyborgs retreat they attempt to take away any casualties that you have. In fact you could swear a few of the last few cyborgs you destroyed looked VERY familiar. This gives you the idea that this army is probably a lot more limited in number and not unstoppable. In fact even though they come in great force, it seems to take them awhile to gather up the same force in-between attacks. And while there’s robots mixed in with the cyborgs, they aren’t nearly as numerous. Looks like there’s a shortage and the Cybernetic Evolution needs more warm bodies even more than you do. It’s possible that if you just sit tight and defend, you’ll win by sheer attrition, of course you could just finish it quicker by taking the fight to them. > You finish it In these past few months you’ve actually been fighting for something. Not just “following orders” or “going through the motions”. You haven’t even been doing it for mere survival, if you were interested in just survival, you would’ve just taken off and put as much distance as you could between you and the Combine before the cyborgs appeared. It took awhile, but you finally have a sense of purpose. You finally “got” all that shit Marina was talking about. Rebuilding civilization and all that. The Cybernetic Evolution is a real threat to that ever happening. It needs to be stopped here and now while it’s weak. You get organized first and muster ALL the help you can from the rest of the Combine towns. This includes a bit of conscription from them and puts somewhat of a strain on relations and general feelings. Many think the war is “won” and you can just sit back and defend now, but you know you need to press the Cybernetic Evolution now before they “recruit” elsewhere and just attack you again and maybe successfully. Enthusiasm isn’t exactly the highest, but you have proven to be a successful military leader so the people are willing to put up with your orders. The assault on the Cyborg Base occurs and it is not easy. The location and rough terrain prevents most vehicles you might’ve used in the assault to get close. The siege lasts months the losses are horrendous, and there’s a point where people are really starting to question your leadership. However before a revolt in the Combine occurs, the Cyborg Base is breached and the topside is taken. The base’s second level is easily accessed and the war is nearly at an end. Finally the leader of the Cybernetic Evolution is cornered and unceremoniously blown to bits by a grenade while he was trying to hide in one of the rooms. Oddly he wasn’t a robot or even a cyborg. He was merely a human with megalomania, in fact after some investigation; it was the Colonel’s old “friend” Alex. The threat to the Combine is at an end, but the threat OF the Combine is just beginning… Even though you were the one who orchestrated the defeat of the Cybernetic Evolution and probably saved not only the Combine, but the hope of humanity with your actions somehow a lot of people aren’t all that grateful. They only see the immediate loss that was suffered rather than the larger picture. Fort Justice is of course firmly still under your control as well as the newly acquired cyborg base, but most of the other towns are wanting out of the Combine saying that you’re being a dictator. > You let them leave Once again, you think back to that town of Lost Springs that didn’t want to be part of the Combine, and you thought then “If they don’t want your help, they don’t want your help.” Maybe they’re calling you a dictator, but you know if that were true you’d enforce your will upon all of them. No, you’re not going to do that. One by one the towns disband from the Combine. You still remain in control of Fort Justice and the newly acquire Cyborg Base, but “The Combine” as you know it is no more. One might even call it a Pyrrhic victory, however you do not. You saved civilization and humanity from a threat that might not have been stopped otherwise. Maybe you aren’t going to be recognized for it, but then again some good deeds aren’t recognized. Sometimes Marina thinks it’s incredibly unfair of how you’ve been labeled, but you take it all in stride and always tell her after kissing her… “It was worth it.” and you remain in control of Fort Justice and Base Victory, you never experience any more real threats mainly due to the superior high tech weaponry that was acquired when Base Victory was taken. Expansion is never seriously considered again however stable relations with towns are re-established eventually when they start having raider problems again. Many of your citizens hire themselves out as mercenaries in exchange for goods that are needed and to make a living. Indeed the “Old Combine” becomes known as the place one goes to; to get help, but nobody wants to be under Combine rule again. Civilization is re-establishing itself slowly, maybe very slowly, but at least it has a chance now. You spend the rest of your remaining years running your little section of civilization making things better when you can. One day you’re stricken with sickness that progressively gets worse. All help is done for you, but you’re dying. You’re reminded of the Colonel except you don’t have to worry about getting shot like he did, as you’ve already picked out a suitable successor. Your first choice would’ve been Marina, as you know her to be capable, but as she’d said many times in the past she’s never had any desire herself for command. You never knew why, since she would’ve been perfect for it. After all right from the beginning she pushed you in the direction. You hold her hand as you talk to her one last time on your death bed. “So, you really don’t mind Vivica taking charge of this place? You’re sure you don’t want it?” you ask while Marina shakes her head. “No. I never wanted it. I always wanted you to have the glory, and the recognition. You had so much potential…and you were never fully appreciated for the deeds you did.” “Hey, you know what they say, no good deed goes unpunished. Don’t worry about it, I never did.” “I always wished we could’ve had kids…I’m sorry I couldn’t give you any…to carry on your name…” “Marina, stop it. You know I never cared about that, besides I doubt if it was your problem anyway. I’m sure the time I spent in that fucking radiated city made me sterile. Hell, it’s probably what’s killing me now. Knew it was only a matter of time before that shit caught up with me. Marina, I don’t want to spend my last moments of you sad and wishing for things that didn’t happen. Let’s just spend it together in silence.” After telling each other you love one another, she holds on to your body until you draw your last breath. You funeral is a quiet and respectful one. Your loss is felt, but as always life goes on. Marina tries to make sure people don’t forget what you did until the day she dies. Some heroes aren’t meant to be remembered though and with her death, eventually you’re virtually forgotten when Fort Justice is abandoned and a new one is rebuilt elsewhere. You become part of obscure history. However your now well worn tombstone (next to Marina’s) in the Old Fort Justice cemetery still displays words that would sum up what your attitude about your obscurity would be if you were still alive. “It was worth it.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>In these past few months you’ve actually been fighting for something. Not just “following orders” or “going through the motions”. You haven’t even been doing it for mere survival, if you were interested in just survival, you would’ve just taken off and put as much distance as you could between you and the Combine before the cyborgs appeared. It took awhile, but you finally have a sense of purpose. You finally “got” all that shit Marina was talking about. Rebuilding civilization and all that. The Cybernetic Evolution is a real threat to that ever happening. It needs to be stopped here and now while it’s weak. You get organized first and muster ALL the help you can from the rest of the Combine towns. This includes a bit of conscription from them and puts somewhat of a strain on relations and general feelings. Many think the war is “won” and you can just sit back and defend now, but you know you need to press the Cybernetic Evolution now before they “recruit” elsewhere and just attack you again and maybe successfully. Enthusiasm isn’t exactly the highest, but you have proven to be a successful military leader so the people are willing to put up with your orders. The assault on the Cyborg Base occurs and it is not easy. The location and rough terrain prevents most vehicles you might’ve used in the assault to get close. The siege lasts months the losses are horrendous, and there’s a point where people are really starting to question your leadership. However before a revolt in the Combine occurs, the Cyborg Base is breached and the topside is taken. The base’s second level is easily accessed and the war is nearly at an end. Finally the leader of the Cybernetic Evolution is cornered and unceremoniously blown to bits by a grenade while he was trying to hide in one of the rooms. Oddly he wasn’t a robot or even a cyborg. He was merely a human with megalomania, in fact after some investigation; it was the Colonel’s old “friend” Alex. The threat to the Combine is at an end, but the threat OF the Combine is just beginning… Even though you were the one who orchestrated the defeat of the Cybernetic Evolution and probably saved not only the Combine, but the hope of humanity with your actions somehow a lot of people aren’t all that grateful. They only see the immediate loss that was suffered rather than the larger picture. Fort Justice is of course firmly still under your control as well as the newly acquired cyborg base, but most of the other towns are wanting out of the Combine saying that you’re being a dictator. > You enforce your will This ungratefulness doesn’t exactly help you NOT become a dictator… You saved the Combine, you saved civilization, you fucking saved humanity, you aren’t going to let it fall apart after all the shit you’ve been through. Not after you finally believe in it. Using the newly acquired technology from the cyborg base you establish a more intimidating presence in the Combine towns. Having depleted most of their fighting power during the CE War they really can’t do much to stop you. There are a few initial protests, but a few executions squash any hint of rebellion. Five years pass… It’s been ten years since the bombs dropped and you first entered Fort Justice when it was only known as “The Compound”. Of course Fort Justice goes by the name Fort Bane Expansion eventually occurs again, in a less diplomatic way now though. Typically the option is given for the town to submit peacefully to the Combine, or else it will be incorporated by force. The first town to suffer this fate of the new Combine ruthlessness is that old remote town you found nine years ago, Lost Springs. The next one is a distant place called Ashtown. They put up a good fight, but eventually they too fall and put under martial law. When you come across them, you even start forcing open the underground Shelters that were created by GZS and incorporate the misguided souls who decided to hide during the nuclear holocaust under your ever expanding territory. Most of those folks put up little to no resistance. While they were cowering under the Earth YOU were surviving and making the blasted world a safer place for humanity. Despite the whispered discussions among everyone wishing you were dead, nobody actually does anything. The reason? The same as always. Your way works and has shown results. Yes you’ve had to be brutal; yes you’ve had to make some harsh decisions, but you’ve done it for the greater good. You’ve completely eliminated lawlessness within most areas, as most of the nearby raiders have asked for Combine citizenship since it’s actually more profitable to be a soldier than a bandit. You gladly accept them. (Amusingly they’re some of the most loyal citizens) Trade thrives, and the only thing the Combine citizens need to fear is YOU. The Combine is no longer a collection of small towns and a fort, it’s an Empire and it can only grow. You’ve made all this possible, yet you know it is only you who can hold it together. You begin to ponder successors and while you know there are many who would covet your position, you also know that none of them are worthy. Its times like this that you wish had a child with Marina. Someone who could carry on the divine right as it were. As you know Marina’s never once gotten pregnant in all your years with her, but you wonder if it’s you, for all you know maybe that trip to the city didn’t make you sterile. Maybe SHE’S sterile. You wonder… > You take another lover to try to create a successor The power has gone to your head in such a way that you’ve finally crossed that one line that was your downfall. You order your troops to scour the Combine for the women known to be fertile and to bring them to Fort Bane all for the purpose for you to pursue some delusional notion of spawning a successor. The fact that tearing most of these women away from their established families doesn’t make you anymore popular. Of course that doesn’t bother you. The fact that you’ve basically bullied these women into submitting to you doesn’t make you anymore popular. But again that doesn’t bother you either. What should bother you is that Marina finds out very quickly what you’re doing. She’s very hurt by this infidelity. She’s stood by you from the very beginning, indeed she was the whole reason why you’re in the position you are in the first place, and now you’ve treated that sacred bond and loyalty like it never meant anything to you. Perhaps if you had addressed this to Marina, she MIGHT have even understood your desire and allowed you to proceed with your plan to a limited degree, she is a pragmatic sort after all. But you didn’t even do that, instead you made her an embarrassment as you carryon with other women some of which are little more than common whores, in fact you never get ANY of them pregnant, which pretty much confirms that you WERE sterile all along. Of course by this time you’re so wrapped up in your new decadent activities that you forgot why you were doing it in the first place. This new reckless and careless behavior does not become you, and Marina has finally had enough of it. Part of her may still even love you, but she’ll not be made a fool of and treated like this. One night, while you’re eating a meal, you take a large swig of water. It tastes funny at first, but you dismiss it since funny tasting water’s not exactly too unusual. You just order another bottle of it to be brought to you…then you start to feel dizzy. You stand up only to collapse on your dining floor. One of your servants goes to help, but then Marina appears to tell him to stop. “Ma…Marina? What’s going on?” you say as her figure begins to get blurry. “A change. You always wondered who would take your place, and I’ve decided that I’m the only one worthy enough to do it. Don’t worry, The Combine will live on, even if you will not. At least that was one thing you did right. I’m very sorry it had to end this way…I take no pleasure in this…but you can’t betray your king maker without some sort of consequence. I’ll try to remember the good times… Goodbye.” And with your last breath, Marina kicks you in the face.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This ungratefulness doesn’t exactly help you NOT become a dictator… You saved the Combine, you saved civilization, you fucking saved humanity, you aren’t going to let it fall apart after all the shit you’ve been through. Not after you finally believe in it. Using the newly acquired technology from the cyborg base you establish a more intimidating presence in the Combine towns. Having depleted most of their fighting power during the CE War they really can’t do much to stop you. There are a few initial protests, but a few executions squash any hint of rebellion. Five years pass… It’s been ten years since the bombs dropped and you first entered Fort Justice when it was only known as “The Compound”. Of course Fort Justice goes by the name Fort Bane Expansion eventually occurs again, in a less diplomatic way now though. Typically the option is given for the town to submit peacefully to the Combine, or else it will be incorporated by force. The first town to suffer this fate of the new Combine ruthlessness is that old remote town you found nine years ago, Lost Springs. The next one is a distant place called Ashtown. They put up a good fight, but eventually they too fall and put under martial law. When you come across them, you even start forcing open the underground Shelters that were created by GZS and incorporate the misguided souls who decided to hide during the nuclear holocaust under your ever expanding territory. Most of those folks put up little to no resistance. While they were cowering under the Earth YOU were surviving and making the blasted world a safer place for humanity. Despite the whispered discussions among everyone wishing you were dead, nobody actually does anything. The reason? The same as always. Your way works and has shown results. Yes you’ve had to be brutal; yes you’ve had to make some harsh decisions, but you’ve done it for the greater good. You’ve completely eliminated lawlessness within most areas, as most of the nearby raiders have asked for Combine citizenship since it’s actually more profitable to be a soldier than a bandit. You gladly accept them. (Amusingly they’re some of the most loyal citizens) Trade thrives, and the only thing the Combine citizens need to fear is YOU. The Combine is no longer a collection of small towns and a fort, it’s an Empire and it can only grow. You’ve made all this possible, yet you know it is only you who can hold it together. You begin to ponder successors and while you know there are many who would covet your position, you also know that none of them are worthy. Its times like this that you wish had a child with Marina. Someone who could carry on the divine right as it were. As you know Marina’s never once gotten pregnant in all your years with her, but you wonder if it’s you, for all you know maybe that trip to the city didn’t make you sterile. Maybe SHE’S sterile. You wonder… > You stay true to Marina You’ve undergone a lot of changes after the bombs hit. Many changes. Not all of them for the better, but there’s still one thing that hasn’t changed, and that’s your love and loyalty to Marina. She’s been there with you from day one. You’re not going to betray that for the thin hope of creating some bastard that probably won’t do as good a job as you anyway. Besides, regardless of Marina’s fertility, you’re damn sure you’re sterile anyway, you’re just still glad your balls didn’t turn green and shrivel up after your trip to the city. Sometimes you get so wrapped up in your Empire that you forget to spend time with those who are REALLY important. “Fuck it, I’ll be dead anyway. Really what the hell do I care who takes over?” you mumble to yourself and go spend some time with Marina. In fact from this time forward you vow to take more time out to spend with Marina, she seems very happy with this new attitude. Oddly this revelation makes you slightly more agreeable and as a result some of the more restrictive laws are lightened in time. The average Combine citizen is a little happier as a result. (Though mostly all of them still think you’re a son of a bitch) Ten more years pass… Twenty years since the bombs hit, and you’re the head of the largest known area of civilization. Hard to believe sometimes. You’re thinking about this on your death bed. You’re very sick and the best physician you have doesn’t know what it is As usual, you’re convinced it has something to do with that trip to the city so long ago, and you’re probably right. Radiation shit is probably finally catching up with you. If Harry wasn’t a pile of rotten bones underground, you’d kill him again for sending you to that fucked up place. Right now you’re surrounded by advisors, military leaders and doctors, but right now you just want all of them to leave except Marina. “But…but whose’s taking over after you die?” one of them asks. “Goddamn it I ain’t dead yet! But if you don’t get the fuck outta here I’m gonna make sure I outlive YOU! Now leave!” Soon you’re left alone with Marina, who stays with you until the end. “Well it is a valid question, who is going to take over?” Marina asks. “Why don’t you do it? I mean I’ve never understood why you never wanted it, you’re certainly capable.” “Maybe…but I prefer to be behind the scenes I guess…you know there’s a lot less assassination attempts on the puppet master rather than the puppet.” Marina half-jokes. “Ha ha, well, I hope you find another.” “Never. I’ll never find another like you.” she says touching your face. You and Marina are just silent as you look at each other for awhile. Finally you begin to close your eyes and feel one last kiss. After composing herself, she exits the room to inform the top brass of the news. They of course are like vultures fighting over scraps. “So did he say who was taking over?” “Is it me?” “No! It’s me!” “What did he say?” “Whoever can hold it.” Marina answers and walks off. The years that follow your death aren’t pretty for the Combine. A civil war occurs as several factions vie for control. Eventually it collapses into petty warlord fiefdoms. Your accomplishments are soon forgotten as other would be dictators try to establish their own “legacies”. As for Marina, she moves on from the Combine after your death to parts unknown, always carrying your ashes in an urn with the inscription: “I’ll never find another like you.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This was never anything you ever had in mind, but you’ve come this far, you have made a life here for yourself with Marina; you might as well stick with it. Besides, you’ll be damned if you’ll leave because of Harry. “Okay. I’ll do it.” The Colonel looks relieved. He struggles to get out of bed. “Alright, I still have some strength left, let’s make this official.” A meeting is called in the main courtyard where the Colonel weakly addresses everyone, while you stand by. He explains how you’re going to be in charge and he also mentions the “robot invasion” he’s convinced is going to happen. You see Marina in the crowd, who looks very proud and pleased. Harry however is severely pissed and makes it known immediately by confronting the both of you. “What the fuck is this shit? I’VE been here longer! I’VE been training all these fucking maggots and faggots INCLUDING Cupcake over there!” “Yes, and you’ve done a good job of that, but your temperament isn’t suitable for taking command of this place. Besides, I’ve determined that…” “FUCK YOU OLD MAN! YOU WILL NOT DENY MY GOD GIVEN RIGHT!” Harry suddenly pulls out his pistol and shoots the Colonel in the stomach. He then tries to shoot you, but you’ve developed more experience than he has in terms of quickness. You pull your own pistol and drill Harry directly between the eyes, dropping him. “Wish I’d done that to begin with.” You say while Vivica rushes over to the Colonel to try to help him, it’s hopeless though, he was dying anyway. He calls you over one last time. “…well…I told (cough) you, that you’d probably have to kill him…defend the Combine…follow this man…(cough) he’ll lead you…to victorrrrreeee…” The Colonel’s passing is mourned by all, as everyone respected him. A major funeral ceremony is held. It’s probably his last words (and Harry’s shooting) that stabilizes most people’s attitude towards you. They’re willing to follow you, which gives you at least one less thing to worry about. Of course now you just have to worry about whether or not there is a bunch of robots coming to attack. You decide not to take any chances though and immediately order scouting to be done on the outskirts of the secret base that the Colonel had schematics of. You also order the area around Fort Justice to be heavily trapped along with increased training exercises. When your scouts return, only a couple of them do so, and they’re badly wounded. They confirm the Colonel’s suspicions. There IS an army of robots (though they say most of them are really cyborgs, but that hardly matters) in the area. They’re very organized and heavily armed with high tech weaponry. Within a week, the first wave of cyborgs arrive. Surprisingly they give you the option of surrendering and be “remade” to serve the Cybernetic Evolution. You of course decline this offer and fight the steel bastards instead. They’re tough, but your traps ensure you to defeat them much easier. During this time you send a few people to get more help from other Combine towns. You get it for the most part due to large participation in defending most of those towns in the past. You didn’t think about it before, but that might’ve been another reason why the Colonel thought you’d be a better candidate for command, you had a high respect standing with the other towns even if you didn’t initially have it in Fort Justice. A couple more months pass and you’re assaulted by the second wave. Then again in another few months by a third wave. The cyborgs do a hell of a lot of damage, they breach some of the walls and you lose a lot of people, you’re even heavily scarred in one of the attacks, but yet the Fort still holds and that’s one of your main concerns, you know if the Fort falls that’s it; The Combine will lose this war as the main trained combat force is here. You have to make sure that doesn’t happen. You start to notice when the cyborgs retreat they attempt to take away any casualties that you have. In fact you could swear a few of the last few cyborgs you destroyed looked VERY familiar. This gives you the idea that this army is probably a lot more limited in number and not unstoppable. In fact even though they come in great force, it seems to take them awhile to gather up the same force in-between attacks. And while there’s robots mixed in with the cyborgs, they aren’t nearly as numerous. Looks like there’s a shortage and the Cybernetic Evolution needs more warm bodies even more than you do. It’s possible that if you just sit tight and defend, you’ll win by sheer attrition, of course you could just finish it quicker by taking the fight to them. > You wait You’re unwilling to risk more lives and so decide to just shore up your defenses. Another couple of months pass and a much smaller group of cyborgs arrive which confirms your ideas that they’re running out of troops. One thing that’s a little strange is that they don’t immediately attack, they just make their presence known while attempting to stay out of the way of your snipers. They also make some “raiding” like attacks on anyone trying to leave the Fort to travel anywhere. They never directly attack the fort though. These annoying raids go on for a year, until you get sick of them and finally decide you need to get rid of these things once and for all. You order a concentrated attack on all the cyborg raiders in the area, after a few weeks it’s confirmed that they’ve all been eliminated. Afterwards you send a scouting force to the secret base, to see if that’s the end of this cybernetic thorn in your side. A week passes and you don’t hear anything from your scouts. You curse and figure the cyborgs still have enough troops to defend their own base, but the truth is much worse as you come to find out. A week after you sent your scout team, a new cyborg army appears within the sight of Fort Justice. Better improved looking this time too. Obviously while you were playing around with the cyborgs raiding you, someone else was upgrading and gathering more “recruits” from elsewhere while you still haven’t replenished your own losses from last year… Another battle is joined, but this time not in your favor. The fort is destroyed and in flames. Soon people are either, running, killed or captured. In the chaos of Fort Justice’s final days, one of those you see captured is Marina as a big cyborg drags away her unconscious wounded body. You desperately try to rescue her, but your head is completely incinerated by its high powered laser beam as soon as your bullets fail to penetrate its armor. Your headless carcass falls to the ground and left to burn up with the rest of Fort Justice. Within the year, the Combine is no more and only the Cybernetic Evolution remains to continue its mission.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If they don’t want your help; they don’t want your help. You can understand that. No point in bringing in anyone else to debate the issue. You get on your motorcycle and depart. When you get back to the Compound you just say you didn’t find anything on this little excursion. Life continues. Four years pass… Five years total have passed and The Compound has grown somewhat, not much though. The theory to that of course is the background radiation has probably made a lot of folks sterile. (And you’re damn sure you probably are, after that trip to the city that you still continue to think about) however it has become much more than “The Compound” now. Alliances have been forged with other towns thanks to you and others. The Compound has been renamed Fort Justice and the alliance itself is known as The Combine. However, not everything is stable. The Colonel hasn’t been well lately; in fact he’s been sick for the past year. Everyone’s wondering if he’s going to die. You’ve noticed Harry has been taking a lot of liberties with orders lately, which you’re constantly always arguing with him about. If it was up to him, he’d put all the towns you’re allied with under martial law. You can’t even believe he suggested sending people to the city again, since he thinks that all the survivors were probably dead by now and it would be “safe”. One day the Colonel wants to see you in private as he lies on what is probably going to be his death bed soon. He addresses you immediately when you enter. “Good you’re here, I don’t have long and I need to talk to you.” “Uh, okay.” “Go look at those schematics on the table over there.” You do as the Colonel says, and see some blue prints of what looks to be a base of some sort. You also see the logo “GZS” in several places. You remember that was the logo of that corporation that was trying to sell everyone their Shelters before the bombs hit. You sometimes wonder how things would’ve turned out, if you bought one. While you’re looking, the Colonel continues to speak. That’s the floor plans to a top secret military base, my friend Alex got them for me a long time ago before the bombs dropped. He used to work there. It was some place where the government and the Ground Zero Survival Corporation were doing a secret joint project. Something to do with weapons. I always thought it would be a great benefit, if we could ever get a hold of whatever they were working on. I tried to make contact with the base since I know the radio frequency it used, but I never got any response from Alex or anyone.” “Hmm, so why didn’t you ever send some people there?” “Wow, you really are in your own little world, I figured you at least heard other people talk about it in the past. Anyway I did. Several times about five years ago. Everyone I ever sent never returned. Got to the point where I couldn’t in good conscience sent people to what looked to be their deaths, besides a lot of people were less than enthusiastic to accept the mission, the last few times I sent people out they just deserted. Eventually I just wrote it off that maybe the place is occupied by a superior hostile force. Just one of the reasons why I was really keen on the idea of creating an alliance with surrounding towns. Who knows when that force would decide to venture out and start heading this way? Actually a couple of years ago, I thought about sending YOU out there. I figured you being the most capable; you might actually survive and get back to be able to report something.” “What stopped you?” “I couldn’t risk lose one of my best people, especially since you were doing a good job at proving we could help protect the other towns. Besides you already got sent to one unnecessary death trap five years ago, didn’t seem right to send you to another.” You’re wondering where the Colonel going with all this, so you get to the point. “So what’s all this ultimately have to do with me?” “I’m promoting you right now since I want you to take over after I die.” “What?!” “This place needs someone stable, Harry isn’t suitable. In fact, I dare say he won’t be pleased with this decision…you may even have to kill him.” You’re a little overwhelmed by all this. “Whoa, whoa, hold the fucking phone! I don’t want this!” “I know you don’t, but it’s the best chance for the Combine’s survival, because that hostile force I mentioned? It’s real. And it’s on its way. Recently I’ve been picking up radio signals and they are from the base. They didn’t say much, except that they were coming to cleanse this place. I haven’t told ANYONE about this yet.” “What, is it some sort of heavily armed professional military group or some shit?” “I wish. I question if they’re even human. The voice sounded cold and robotic. I think we’re going to find out first hand what exactly the government and GZS were secretly working on.” “Well hold on, couldn’t they be masking their voice?” “I suppose it’s possible, but I dunno…something in my heart tells me that this is going to be really bad…like it won’t just stop here. I’m almost glad I won’t be around to see the destruction.” “I still don’t understand why you want me to take over; I’m not exactly the leader of men. In fact I’d say they’d listen to Harry before they listen to me.” “I can’t argue with you anymore…maybe you’re right…maybe not…the choice I suppose will be up to you…all I’ll say is with Harry in charge you might as well leave the Combine now, because I don’t wager you’ll be alive under his reign long enough to even see the attack occur. Maybe it might even be for the best, I wonder if even the total strength of the Combine will be enough to drive this attack back.” The Colonel sounds like he’s being a bit over dramatic, he’s making a lot of assumptions here. You not sure you want all this responsibility, but if you’re going to take it, you better do it now. > You decline You’ve had your mind debates before about whether to leave or not, but it looks like this is the final one. You never sought this path and you certainly don’t want to be commanding anything, but staying here really isn’t an option anymore. Time to move on. In some ways you always thought it would come to this one day. “I can’t do it Colonel. Sorry.” “Very well then, I guess I can only hope Harry’s ruthless nature and hamfisted way of leading works. After you leave, send him to see me. We won’t speak again.” You leave and for once go find Harry. He’s in the cafeteria screaming at someone to scrub the floor harder. When he sees you, he gives you the typical hostility. “What the hell do you want Cupcake?” he sneers. “The Colonel wants to see you, better hurry too he doesn’t have much time.” Harry doesn’t bother to retort, his eyes seem to light up at the prospect that the Colonel is dying and that this could ONLY mean he’s getting official command. In his haste of rushing past you, he doesn’t notice your foot, which you purposely stick out to trip him. He falls on floor and lands squarely on his nose, breaking it. “AH SHIT!” he yells holding his nose while still on the floor. “Whoops, sorry about that, cupcake.” You say walking out the cafeteria. You go back to your room and start packing your belongings and determining what might be useful, Marina is there and wondering what’s going on. “What’re you doing?” “Leaving. My time here is done; Harry’s going to take control of the Combine, which probably won’t be for long if the Colonel’s predictions are true. Now Marina, you know I love you, and you say you love me. So if you really do, you’ll come with me.” “And where the hell are we supposed to be going?” “I know a place. A place I found in my travels which I never told anyone about, and apparently nobody else found, hopefully it’s still a friendly place.” “Well hold on, isn’t there some other way?” “Not unless Harry’s attitude towards me does a complete turn around. I’m not going to stay some place where my life is in constant danger and besides the Colonel’s going on about some robot invasion he think is going to take place. Can’t say I want to stick around for that either. And I can’t say I want YOU to stick around for it. Just come with me, why is that so difficult?” “Because I don’t believe in fucking running from my home! Do you understand that THIS place has basically been my home longer than it’s been yours? And that most of these people I’m friends with, and they’re like a family to me? Maybe YOU don’t have that bond, but I do. I’m not just going to abandon this place. Look, maybe you can talk to the Colonel, I mean he respects you more than you might think, maybe he’d see you as a more stable candidate to command this place, and then…” ”He already tried to offer me the job. I turned it down.” “You what?!” “I turned it down! I don’t want the fucking responsibility. I never did. I’ve always said I’ve always just stayed here for you and for how you rescued me from dying in a nuclear firestorm, but my survival is severely at stake if I stay here. I mean what do you want me to die for you or something?” “I wanted you to be a fucking man and be ambitious, which I thought you were. I always saw potential in you, I saw it way back before the bombs hit. I thought you were trying to take some initiative by moving up the ranks like you did. Like you had your eyes set on becoming leader of this place. I saw you being able to really help the rebuilding process. I mean you were vital in many of our alliances. And what did you do? You just threw all of that work down the fucking drain, because you’re fucking scared of more responsibility.” You’ve always known Marina to be a bit of a “Lady Macbeth” type with her always wanting you to strive for power and be ambitious. And out of your feelings toward her, you have tried to oblige that to a degree, but after hearing this shit, you can see you were almost nothing more than some sort of pawn. You don’t need this. You never needed this. Yet, there’s no point in arguing. This is hard enough as it is. You take the high road with Marina. “Marina, I’m just gonna say this, you saw something in me that was never there to begin with. I’m sorry to disappoint you…thanks for saving my life and hopefully you have a nice one. Maybe you can marry Harry or even better, take control yourself, since you seem to have the proper mindset and already a lot smarter.” Marina is silent. You finish packing and open the door, you linger a bit hoping she changes her mind, but you can tell she isn’t when she turns her head to keep you from seeing that she’s obviously upset and going to cry. You slam the door and go back up top to the surface; you take one of the motorcycles and zoom off. You do it all the time so nobody finds you leaving out of the ordinary. Eventually you head back to Lost Springs. Looks like it did when you found the place four years ago. You’re welcomed again, but they tell you they still aren’t interested in joining the Compound. You laugh and say that’s not why you’re here and immediately ask if there’s any work that needs to be done since you plan of staying on a permanent basis. A year passes relatively uneventfully in Lost Springs. One day a wandering traveler passes through. For whatever reason he strikes up a conversation with you while you’re sitting the local cafe. “Hey friend.” The traveler says. “Hmn.” You reply still reading a book. “This place is pretty remote huh? It was only by sheer dumb luck I stumbled upon it, you guys don’t get many people coming here do you?” “Other than me, you’d be the first in a long time. We’re pretty self-sufficient here and like to keep to ourselves.” You say still without looking up. “Hey, good idea. It’s a crazy fucking world out there. I say you got the set up. Still, doesn’t the Cybernetic Evolution worry you?” “Cybernetic Evolution?” you ask finally looking up. “Yeah! You never heard of them? Well I guess I should warn you then. It’s this group of killer cyborgs that want to remake humanity or exterminate them if they don’t comply. There’s robots too, but mostly cyborgs. I heard they’re lead by some nut case called Alex. They’ve been spreading all over the place; the Combine is losing the war with them. That’s mainly why I’m trying to get out of the area.” “Hold on, the Combine?” “Yeah! Come on you never heard of them either? Wow you are in your own little world! The Combine is an alliance of towns with the head base called Fort Justice. Of course Fort Justice was razed to the ground months ago, and now the current towns are wondering how to proceed since Fort Justice was where the line was being held not to mention where the best soldiers were. I heard nobody was spared. Now most of the towns are suffering raider attacks again who are taking advantage of the chaos as well as attacks from the CE. Looks fucking bleak man.” Bleak indeed. While the traveler concentrates on his drink, you stay silent thinking about Marina. What might’ve happened. Did she get killed, did she escape, or even if maybe she was turned into a cyborg? You’ll never know you suppose. “Well, I have to get going. Nice talking to you and hope the CE doesn’t find this place.” The traveler says finishing his drink and getting up to leave. You continue remain silent while you reminisce. You wonder if you could’ve done a better job if you’d stayed behind. You do a lot of second guessing for awhile, of course that’s been in your nature in the beginning. You didn’t know whether or not you wanted to buy a bomb Shelter, and you were re-thinking the decision that you didn’t. You spent what you thought were going to be your last days with your co-workers and you were re-thinking that decision after you did that. You thought about leaving the Compound several times, before you actually did it and now you’re re-thinking that decision as well. “Shit, I would’ve made a lousy leader; it takes me forever to make up my mind and then I agonize over the decision.” You say to yourself. Oddly this revelation makes you feel somewhat better, like you did make the right decision to leave. If nothing else you’ve at least been able to make good decisions concerning your own survival and you’re about to make another one. You go to the run down motel that you’ve been staying at, and pack your belongings. Its time to move on again, you figure you should get out now while you can. You say goodbye to the few acquaintances you’ve had since your time here and warn them about the CE before leaving. It’s up to them what they’re going to do. You can’t make people leave if they don’t want to…even if you want them to. And once again, you’re off, with the unknown future dead ahead of you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Nope, in for a penny in for a pound. If nothing else, Marina’s still there and the fact her actions basically saved your life is enough to make you stay. The rest of the trip is Steve still ranting to himself about the deaths of his friends. True, they weren’t your friends, but you guess you can see why he might be upset. You’d radio in to the Compound, but Roger was the one carrying it and he’s a headless (and probably now eaten) corpse back in the city. You don’t say anything else until Steve nearly drives the car into the gate of the Compound at which point you step out of the car and remove the hot ass radiation suit and demand to see Harry. Everyone is wondering what’s going on. Harry hears your shouting and comes out of barracks, the Colonel does as well; good you want him to be here as well. “What is your major malfunction you screaming queen?” Harry asks angrily, as if you’re the one at fault. “My malfunction is sending us to the goddamn city was a fucking stupid ass idea! What made you think there would anything of any use there anyway? You just trying to get us all killed?” “No, just you, cupcake.” “You call me fuckin’ cupcake one more time and me and you are gonna go round and round you dumb fucking gung ho military wanna be asshole!” Before Harry can respond to your insult the Colonel steps in. “ALRIGHT ENOUGH! I won’t have infighting in my Compound! Harry we talked about this before that I didn’t want any recon missions to the city! At least not until we got better established!” ”But Colonel, I though we should…” “You DON’T THINK! That’s for ME to do! You obey fucking orders! I’M in fucking charge around here and you better not forget that!” “Yes Colonel.” Harry utters grudgingly. Now the Colonel turns his attention to you. “And YOU do not fucking rant like a goddamn maniac in front of everyone lowering morale and encouraging dissention! Like it or not, you’re going to be sent on dangerous missions. If you want to stay here you better start learning to get with the fucking program and follow orders!” You’re getting really tired of hearing that one. “So, all this aside, what exactly happened in the city and what did you find?” “Nothing! There’s just a bunch of crazed cannibal freaks living there, armed and dangerous.” “I see, well then all future missions to the city are going to be called off. I’m not risking anymore of my people’s lives by sending them there. We’ve lost too many people on these recon missions quite frankly. I sent a couple of people on a special assignment and I haven’t heard any word back from them, not to mention the people we’ve lost trying to contact other known towns. Fortunately, it hasn’t been a complete loss we how found a few pockets of civilization. We need to start developing good relations with them now though. This will help in our rebuilding process. For now you’re dismissed, but don’t get too comfortable. I’ll be sending you out again soon.” You turn away and go back to your room in the underground part of the Compound wondering if you shouldn’t just fucking leave, just then you get a visit from Marina. You’re kind of glad to see her despite your pissed off mood. “Are you okay?” “Hell if I know I just spent a day in radiationville. I’ll find out when my balls start shriveling up in three days!” “I think those suits would protect you from that happening.” “Yeah, I know everyone thinks they’re magical…nevermind I’m not even mad about that, I mean I understand we all got this lofty mission of re-establishing civilization or some shit, but I just don’t see the fucking point in it. And I REALLY don’t see the point in getting sent on suicide missions!” Marina sits next to you and tries to explain. “Okay, that WAS a mistake. In fact I wish you would’ve told me! I could’ve told the Colonel and he would’ve cancelled the mission! Harry likes to think he’s second in command, but he’s really just louder and more aggressive than most around here and that’s why he’s in a command position, but I think you could do just as good a job. I mean you’ve already braved and lived through going to the city and from what you described and Steve’s mental breakdown it sounds like it was pretty bad. Total anarchy and lawlessness. And that’s one of the reasons why rebuilding civilization is important. Do you really want to live in a world like that? I know you think this is all some sort of paramilitary bullshit, but we DO have a plan. Isn’t it more advantageous to try to make the world a better place and have some sort of order?” “Trying to make the world a better place…yeah a lot of people in the past have thought they were doing that too and you can see how that turned out…THIS! Look, it’s a nice idea, but I don’t see it happening, not then, not now, not ever. I’d say our best bet would be to just try to live out the rest of lives as comfortably as we can in this hellhole of a world and not go messing around with shit unless its necessary.” “…so I take it you’re going to leave?” You look a Marina before responding. “No, I’m not leaving, but I’m staying for you, not an ideology or plan. My feelings for you override whatever disagreements I have with the current political agenda, if that’s even the proper term for it.” “Well that’s sweet, but I do hope you develop a more positive attitude about this place.” Marina says hugging you. “Doubt it, but I suppose anything’s possible now.” A year passes… You don’t feel any different, but you’re used to the Compound’s plan of “re-building” civilization. You’ve moved up the ranks due to the fact that you’re competent, something the Colonel realizes and respects even if Harry hates you. But due to your “loner” attitude you’re usually sent on scouting missions by yourself rather than given any kind of command position. Ironically, you’ve been one of the key people in developing good relations with the nearby towns, since you’ve developed the knack of the sniper’s art over the past year which really comes in handy when killing raiders. The Colonel’s of the idea that if the Compound can prove its able to help defend towns from raiders, more people will want to join, the towns will be more willing to trade or even better a whole town will want a formal alliance. Perhaps slightly imperialistic, but what the hell, it’s better to be the top dog and at least the intention is somewhat for good reasons. All part of the rebuilding process. Right now you’re in the town that you found called Lost Springs, it’s a remote little town that doesn’t have any problems with raiders due to its somewhat hidden location (Though the wandering mutant bear is a problem sometimes) and while they’re friendly with you, it’s clear they just want to be left alone and keep to themselves. This might not be a problem, except they have a continual supply of fresh water from some underground stream. Not even mildly radioactive! (Though you’re still convinced you’re going to start mutating any day now since your trip to the city) It’s a resource that can’t just simply be ignored, but you’re not exactly a diplomat, so you’re not going to be convincing them on your own (And it’s not like you can impress them with your super duper raider killing skills) > You get some help You’re in this for rebuilding civilization, so you figure you should do all you can. You leave the town to get in a better transmitting area and radio in and explain the situation. Steve’s working the radio (Never could go out again after the incident in the city) “…yeah, so if you can send some more diplomatic people here, that might help.” You finish saying. “So, you’re saying there’s a fresh supply of water and no standing defense force there?” Steve asks. “No, not really. They don’t have any problems with raiders, just with some of the more aggressive wildlife. Defenses basically consist of a few good hunters with rifles, but like I said they aren’t interested in us being able to defend them. A different bargaining chip is going to be necessary.” Suddenly you’re cut off for a little while, you think your radio is having problems, but soon you start getting a response again. “Okay, report back to the Compound. We’ll send Vivica and a few others to take care of it. We got the location of the place from your information.” Steve says and signs off. You head back to the Compound. You know Vivica’s one of the more diplomatic types, so you don’t think anything else of it. She’ll ether be successful or she won’t. When you get back though you find out one of the “others” that went with her was Harry. You find that suspicious, he’s NEVER gone on a single recon mission, let alone anything diplomatic. Soon the group sent to Lost Springs returns and you see Harry and a couple of the more obedient people to him, who you don’t see is Vivica. You can’t help but think the worst. And you turn out to be right unfortunately. Harry tells a story to everyone of how the people became hostile and they had to defend themselves, Vivica was “unfortunately” killed in the process. He goes on to say that he’s secured the town, by leaving some people in place. You’re over hearing this in the courtyard of the Compound and you can’t stay silent. “You fucking murdering liar. Those people were fucking peaceful! I was there and never once were they hostile! You took that town by force and probably had Vivica killed when she tried to stop you and your fucking mindless lackies!” “Watch your fucking mouth cupcake! Don’t condemn my actions for your own failures because you’re too much of a pussy to do what needs to be done! I’m telling you they attacked us! I got witnesses! What the fuck do you have? Shit, how do we even know you weren’t fucking collaborating with them and trying to lead us into a trap? It’s a well known fact you’re not exactly loyal to the Compound.” “LOYAL? What the fuck? You fucking dipshit I’M one of fuckin’ people who’s been key in the HELPING the fuckin’ Compound! Or have you forgotten all the good relations we have with other towns due to me?” “Yeah and how do we know you’re not getting all chummy with all these outsiders in the attempt to try to build up your own fucking army to take power? In fact I’m thinking I might be going on a lot more of these missions, I don’t trust you and neither should the rest of you!” At this point Marina steps in to say something, but you stop her causing Harry to taunt you again. “Yeah, that’s right Cupcake, hide behind Marina’s skirt again.” “Harry, I dunno if you’re more jealous of the fact that I’m actually more useful to the Compound, or the fact that I have access TO Marina’s skirt, something I heard you attempted before I got here and failed miserably.” You struck a nerve there. Harry lunges at you and the both of you tussle on the ground for awhile before the Colonel finally arrives wondering what the fuck has been going on. After reprimanding the pair of you, he calls you in his office for a full report of what exactly happened when you were at Lost Springs, then he does the same with Harry, unfortunately Harry has a few people that are loyal to him that are willing to back up his bullshit. Assuming they would even be believed, the citizens of Lost Springs can’t even back you up, since as it turns out later Harry killed them all. And while the Colonel isn’t taken with the idea that you have some sort of ulterior motive, he does allow Harry to start heading out on missions, since he did acquire a useful resource for the Compound. Four more years pass… Five years total have passed and The Compound has grown somewhat, not much though. The theory to that of course is the background radiation has probably made a lot of folks sterile. (And you’re damn sure you probably are, after that trip to the city that you still continue to think about) however it has become much more than “The Compound” now. Alliances have been forged with other towns. The Compound has been renamed Fort Justice and the alliance itself is known as The Combine. Of course the term “alliance probably isn’t really appropriate here. After the Lost Springs incident, things started getting a lot more authoritarian. Over time the towns you’d established peaceful relations with, Harry started hinting that a more permanent military force be established in them. (To help with raider problems more readily as he tried to claim) New towns that were come across were usually bullied into “joining” or outright taken by force and lowest of all, there’s been actual recruitment OF raiders, some of them being stationed in the very town they were attacking on a regular basis. You can’t believe the Colonel doesn’t stop Harry’s actions, but the problem is, is it IS working. The Combine is thriving under this aggressive strategy and becoming a strong entity. You on the other hand are eventually relegated to guard duty at Fort Jusitce, Marina finds the whole thing unfair and becomes really disillusioned with the new direction that this place has taken. In fact she does something you never thought she would, she suggests you leave and you can’t say you’re not in agreement with the idea. Not just because you never really cared about the “rebuilding civilization” process anyway, but more because Harry’s power is starting to increase day by day lately and the Colonel has been sick, in fact he’s probably going to die any day now. It’s only a matter of time before Harry is in total control and when that day comes, you’ll be fucked if you’re still here. You and Marina pack what supplies you can and start loading them into one of the vehicles. This doesn’t go unnoticed, in fact you start being questioned since there was no order to take one of the vehicles out and you’re no longer on scout duty anymore. You try to come up with a lie on the spot, but words fail you at the moment and you resort to more direct measures and slug the nosey bastard in the face, dropping him. “Get in the fuckin’ car now Marina!” you shout as you do likewise. > You take the wheel Marina slides over and you take the wheel and screech off. Considering Harry’s hatred of you and the fact that this is considering going AWOL and stealing Combine equipment, you aren’t just going to get away with this. You don’t get far when you’re soon pursued by other vehicles. You tell Marina to fire upon them, while you attempt to lose them. She does her best, but she’s not an expert marksperson like you. One of those raider scumbags that have been an all too common in the new Combine recruitment policy manages to drive up to your side window and shoot a crossbow bolt right through your neck. You clutch at your mortal wound and lose control of the car, flipping it over and killing Marina as well.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re in this for rebuilding civilization, so you figure you should do all you can. You leave the town to get in a better transmitting area and radio in and explain the situation. Steve’s working the radio (Never could go out again after the incident in the city) “…yeah, so if you can send some more diplomatic people here, that might help.” You finish saying. “So, you’re saying there’s a fresh supply of water and no standing defense force there?” Steve asks. “No, not really. They don’t have any problems with raiders, just with some of the more aggressive wildlife. Defenses basically consist of a few good hunters with rifles, but like I said they aren’t interested in us being able to defend them. A different bargaining chip is going to be necessary.” Suddenly you’re cut off for a little while, you think your radio is having problems, but soon you start getting a response again. “Okay, report back to the Compound. We’ll send Vivica and a few others to take care of it. We got the location of the place from your information.” Steve says and signs off. You head back to the Compound. You know Vivica’s one of the more diplomatic types, so you don’t think anything else of it. She’ll ether be successful or she won’t. When you get back though you find out one of the “others” that went with her was Harry. You find that suspicious, he’s NEVER gone on a single recon mission, let alone anything diplomatic. Soon the group sent to Lost Springs returns and you see Harry and a couple of the more obedient people to him, who you don’t see is Vivica. You can’t help but think the worst. And you turn out to be right unfortunately. Harry tells a story to everyone of how the people became hostile and they had to defend themselves, Vivica was “unfortunately” killed in the process. He goes on to say that he’s secured the town, by leaving some people in place. You’re over hearing this in the courtyard of the Compound and you can’t stay silent. “You fucking murdering liar. Those people were fucking peaceful! I was there and never once were they hostile! You took that town by force and probably had Vivica killed when she tried to stop you and your fucking mindless lackies!” “Watch your fucking mouth cupcake! Don’t condemn my actions for your own failures because you’re too much of a pussy to do what needs to be done! I’m telling you they attacked us! I got witnesses! What the fuck do you have? Shit, how do we even know you weren’t fucking collaborating with them and trying to lead us into a trap? It’s a well known fact you’re not exactly loyal to the Compound.” “LOYAL? What the fuck? You fucking dipshit I’M one of fuckin’ people who’s been key in the HELPING the fuckin’ Compound! Or have you forgotten all the good relations we have with other towns due to me?” “Yeah and how do we know you’re not getting all chummy with all these outsiders in the attempt to try to build up your own fucking army to take power? In fact I’m thinking I might be going on a lot more of these missions, I don’t trust you and neither should the rest of you!” At this point Marina steps in to say something, but you stop her causing Harry to taunt you again. “Yeah, that’s right Cupcake, hide behind Marina’s skirt again.” “Harry, I dunno if you’re more jealous of the fact that I’m actually more useful to the Compound, or the fact that I have access TO Marina’s skirt, something I heard you attempted before I got here and failed miserably.” You struck a nerve there. Harry lunges at you and the both of you tussle on the ground for awhile before the Colonel finally arrives wondering what the fuck has been going on. After reprimanding the pair of you, he calls you in his office for a full report of what exactly happened when you were at Lost Springs, then he does the same with Harry, unfortunately Harry has a few people that are loyal to him that are willing to back up his bullshit. Assuming they would even be believed, the citizens of Lost Springs can’t even back you up, since as it turns out later Harry killed them all. And while the Colonel isn’t taken with the idea that you have some sort of ulterior motive, he does allow Harry to start heading out on missions, since he did acquire a useful resource for the Compound. Four more years pass… Five years total have passed and The Compound has grown somewhat, not much though. The theory to that of course is the background radiation has probably made a lot of folks sterile. (And you’re damn sure you probably are, after that trip to the city that you still continue to think about) however it has become much more than “The Compound” now. Alliances have been forged with other towns. The Compound has been renamed Fort Justice and the alliance itself is known as The Combine. Of course the term “alliance probably isn’t really appropriate here. After the Lost Springs incident, things started getting a lot more authoritarian. Over time the towns you’d established peaceful relations with, Harry started hinting that a more permanent military force be established in them. (To help with raider problems more readily as he tried to claim) New towns that were come across were usually bullied into “joining” or outright taken by force and lowest of all, there’s been actual recruitment OF raiders, some of them being stationed in the very town they were attacking on a regular basis. You can’t believe the Colonel doesn’t stop Harry’s actions, but the problem is, is it IS working. The Combine is thriving under this aggressive strategy and becoming a strong entity. You on the other hand are eventually relegated to guard duty at Fort Jusitce, Marina finds the whole thing unfair and becomes really disillusioned with the new direction that this place has taken. In fact she does something you never thought she would, she suggests you leave and you can’t say you’re not in agreement with the idea. Not just because you never really cared about the “rebuilding civilization” process anyway, but more because Harry’s power is starting to increase day by day lately and the Colonel has been sick, in fact he’s probably going to die any day now. It’s only a matter of time before Harry is in total control and when that day comes, you’ll be fucked if you’re still here. You and Marina pack what supplies you can and start loading them into one of the vehicles. This doesn’t go unnoticed, in fact you start being questioned since there was no order to take one of the vehicles out and you’re no longer on scout duty anymore. You try to come up with a lie on the spot, but words fail you at the moment and you resort to more direct measures and slug the nosey bastard in the face, dropping him. “Get in the fuckin’ car now Marina!” you shout as you do likewise. > You ride shotgun Like there was any other choice? You slide in next to Marina who guns the engine and screeches off. Considering Harry’s hatred of you and the fact that this is considering going AWOL and stealing Combine equipment, you aren’t just going to get away with this. You don’t get far when you’re soon pursued by other vehicles. You tell Marina to concentrate on driving, while you attempt to do some road warrior shit. Luckily you’re still an excellent marksman, and you manage to either shoot the tires or the drivers of the cars and motorcycles in pursuit of you. Eventually you escape. After a few days of driving you and Marina start wondering where you’re going to go. You can’t drive forever, you’ll run out gas eventually and you don’t relish the idea of walking. However, once again luck is with you and you find a small place called Ashtown where you stop. Fortunately the people seem to be friendly. You immediately make yourself useful by helping with eliminating some bandits and raiders (A bit like the old days actually). You and Marina decide to stay and make a new life here, though in the back of your mind you’re always expecting some sort of arrival of the Combine, maybe not coming to look for you specifically, but you know they’re probably still expanding. About a year passes and nothing unusual happens, until a wandering traveler passing through decides to talk to you for some reason while you’re sitting in the local café. “Hey friend.” The traveler says. “Hmn.” You reply still reading a book. “This place is a pretty well organized town. Pleasant too. Glad I found it.” “It’s better than most places.” You say still without looking up. “Hey, I know what you mean. It’s a crazy fucking world out there. What with the Cybernetic Evolution and all.” “Cybernetic Evolution?” you ask finally looking up. “Yeah! You never heard of them? Well I guess I should warn you then. It’s this group of killer cyborgs that want to remake humanity or exterminate them if they don’t comply. They’re supposedly from some sort of secret military base that was doing high tech experiments. There are robots too, but mostly cyborgs. I’m surprised they haven’t headed this way, but then again, they’ve been pretty busy trying to combat the Combine. Never thought I’d be glad that the Combine exists, but I gotta say if it weren’t for them, the CE would’ve probably expanded all over the fuckin’ place by now and I guarantee we wouldn’t be sitting here having this pleasant conversation.” “Hmm, so the Combine is winning?” you ask. “Well, I wouldn’t say that, it’s more like a stalemate. Kind of a good thing too, since I don’t really want them winning either. Those Combine bastards are a bunch of bullying fascists. Especially with that fucker Damon in charge.” “Damon? Who’s that?” “Damon, is the newest leader of the Combine. Thinks he’s some sort of military genius, but all he is, is a common desert thug who’s a little more intelligent than his buddies, probably still more competent than the last leader Harry who Damon killed to get the job.” A smile forms across your face when you hear that news, while the traveler continues his story “Anyway that’s partly one of the reasons I’m traveling. I don’t want to be around when the war finally ends, either way the people who live nearby are going to lose…speaking of which I gotta get going, nice talking to you.” After the traveler leaves you do likewise and tell Marina what you just heard. She asks you if you think if it would be a good idea to leave as well. Perhaps you haven’t made all the right decisions in this new harsh world, but if nothing else you’ve at least been able to make good decisions concerning your own survival and you’re about to make another one. You and Marina pack your belongings. Its time to move on again, you figure you should get out now while you can. You say goodbye to the few acquaintances you’ve had since your time here and warn them about the CE-Combine War before leaving. It’s up to them what they’re going to do. And once again, you and Marina are off, with the unknown future ahead of you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You may not like this mission, and you may not like the people you’re with, but it’ll be a lot safer if you stick with these idiots, because you have a bad feeling about this place. In the meantime while you keep your eyes open, your ears are assaulted by your teammates’ conversation. “I’m telling you she touched my hand dude! She’s totally into me! I’m gonna talk to her more when we get back.” Albert exclaims. “Bullshit, you didn’t get anywhere with Vivica! I should know because I fuckin’ tried once and she didn’t give me any kind of play! I think she’s a fuckin’ dyke anyway.” Roger replies. “Why the hell does she have to be some kind of dyke? Couldn’t be that she didn’t like your ugly ass?” “Fuck off Albert, go ahead and make an idiot of yourself trying to hit on some carpet muncher. I don’t give a shit; I’m just trying to keep you from wasting your time.” “Oh…well maybe she’ll let me watch or something.” “Yeah, right. That never happens except in the movies.” Steve says. “The other problem with that plan, I can’t think of any other woman in the Compound that might swing that way. Not unless you were some smooth pimp motherfucker that could talk her into it and given that you’re far from that Albert, I’d say you’re shit out of luck.” “Well couldn’t one of you guys help me? I mean, you could try to talk your girlfriends and we could all watch or something.” “Yeah, there’s a problem with that plan too Albert, namely neither one of those fuckers got girlfriends either.” You interrupt. “Ha fuckin’ ha. Nobody asked you for your opinion smart ass.” Roger remarks annoyed. “Hey, do you think you could maybe talk to Marina then?” “Everyone shut the fuck up I hear something!” After looking around and up, in a split second of total silence, Roger speaks again. “There’s nothing here, this city was fucking annihilated, ain’t nothing alive except maybe rats and roaches. I dunno even know why we’re so worried to begin with, do you think if anyone WAS still left alive they would be in any condition to…” Suddenly Rogers head explodes like a ripe melon after getting hit by a shotgun blast coming from the second floor window of a nearby building. The “thing” holding the shotgun is reloading and alerting his fellows. “MEEEEEEEEAAAT!” it screeches in a raspy voice. More figures start appearing. Most have a half-crazed appearance and severe radiation burns. Apparently these bomb survivors have had their minds damaged along with their bodies. “Holy shit, we’re gonna die!” Albert screams and starts firing at everything. You and Steve do likewise while retreating back to the car. Before you all manage to leave the immediate area, the thing with the shotgun manages to get off another shot, blasting Albert in the leg, tearing it off. He screams and tries to crawl away, but is quickly mobbed and the last thing you see of him is some of the freaks sinking their teeth into him. “GET THE FUCK MOVING STEVE!” you shout stepping up your pace. Eventually you and Steve manage to get back to the car and speed off back to the Compound. Steve is pretty upset and while there isn’t any traffic on the road, you still don’t want him to be crashing into something else. “Steve calm the fuck down, and get a hold of yourself!” “Fuck you man! Didn’t you see that?! They fuckin’ killed Roger! And they ATE fuckin’ Albert! Aw shit man! Shit! They’re gonna come after us!” “I doubt that, they don’t even know where we’re from. Just be glad we got out of there. It was a stupid idea to go there in the first place. There’s nothing there except crazed radioactive cannibals. I’m gonna tell Harry that much when we get back. Nobody’s going there again, especially not me!” You’re pretty pissed about this whole affair really and the more you’re thinking about it; maybe you should just not return to the Compound, you have enough equipment and supplies to keep you in good shape for awhile. All you’d have to do is get rid of Steve and take the car. > You get rid of Steve Fuck this shit, you’re not dealing with it anymore. You point your rifle at Steve, who’s still hysterical about his friends dying. “Alright Steve, pull this car over and get out.” You say calmly. “Wha…WHAT? Are you fuckin’ crazy man? What’re you doing?” “I’m giving you a chance to fucking live that’s what! Now pull this fuckin’ car over!” “My friends just fuckin’ died and you pull this shit?” “You wanna end up like your goddamn idiot friends? You pull this car over now or your brains are gonna be all over the fuckin’ windshield! DO IT!” “NO!” Steve shouts and violently swerves the car into nearby wreck alongside the road which you didn’t even notice until you went flying out of the windshield upon impact. You walk away from the crash, but you don’t walk far when you fall unconscious from your head wound injury and never wake up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn off the TV and head to work, no point in worrying about things you can’t do shit about. You have other real everyday problems to deal with. You go about your mundane life, doing mundane tasks at your mundane job, talking to your mundane co-workers about mundane things. Not much changes. One month later... Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up from the sofa like you always do, dreading to have to go to work at your pointless job. You haven’t been sleeping well lately, you don’t know what the hell the problem is, and all you know is you’re going to be tired for work again. As you go through your routine of getting ready, the TV can be heard; as usual you left it on from the night before. “…Russian hardliners seized control of the government…Chinese epidemic has worsened; entire country is under quarantine…UK has withdrawn all association from the EU…Senate dissolved in US, martial law enacted…India declared open war on Pakistan…mass starvation in Africa… world wide depression… Same old doom and gloom on TV, a lot more serious now though. Those “silly” bomb shelter infomercials have increased; you’ve also been noticing an increase in survival type book titles whenever you browse the book stores now and the Emergency broadcasting system has been doing A LOT of tests lately. Something bad is going to happen and it’s going to happen soon. You go about your life which isn’t quite so mundane, world politics is a constant topic at work, and many of your co-workers aren’t even coming in to do their job. All the married ones are no doubt spending time with their families, in fact the work place really isn’t a work place anymore so much as it is a “socializing site”. A lot of them believe the world is coming to an end anyway, so they might as well have a good time. Attempting to go about your normal life isn’t an option anymore; neither is buying a bomb shelter at this late stage. > You start staying home You really didn’t have any desire to know these people before, why bother now? You only worked there because you needed to. Now that it appears the whole world is going to hell, you might as well just stay home. You wonder if you shouldn’t have prepared yourself for this inevitable event, but it’s too late now. Last time you heard, the city was in complete anarchy, riots were breaking out and the National Guard was shooting people, can’t get supplies from there now. The nearest general store closed up by its owner who headed up north with his family a month ago. Whatever supplies you have in your house will have to do. You start walking around armed at all times as you often think you’ll be attacked by stray looters, who have escaped the city, but then again you live in a house on the dead end of wilderness, nobody ever comes out this way normally, and you never see another living soul. You’re all alone. You spend much of your time watching TV and on the internet keeping up on events, one day blurring into the next as you often fall asleep after spending long amounts of time of being awake… Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up from the sofa. “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE….” You wake up to a test pattern on TV. This is it. > You go for a drive You calmly go to your van and start it up. You drive towards the city like you would if you were going to work. You see large black smoke clouds over it in the distance, out of control fires do doubt. You guess the exodus from the city is over, because the roads are pretty empty, except for the various car wrecks you pass by, this would almost be a peaceful “Sunday drive” if there wasn’t hints of carnage on the road and the fact that it was Monday. As you get closer to the city, your van stalls and then stops completely. You don’t bother to turn it back on instead you get out of your car and look up in the sky shielding your eyes from the sun shining down. You see a bright light and then nothing at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You really didn’t have any desire to know these people before, why bother now? You only worked there because you needed to. Now that it appears the whole world is going to hell, you might as well just stay home. You wonder if you shouldn’t have prepared yourself for this inevitable event, but it’s too late now. Last time you heard, the city was in complete anarchy, riots were breaking out and the National Guard was shooting people, can’t get supplies from there now. The nearest general store closed up by its owner who headed up north with his family a month ago. Whatever supplies you have in your house will have to do. You start walking around armed at all times as you often think you’ll be attacked by stray looters, who have escaped the city, but then again you live in a house on the dead end of wilderness, nobody ever comes out this way normally, and you never see another living soul. You’re all alone. You spend much of your time watching TV and on the internet keeping up on events, one day blurring into the next as you often fall asleep after spending long amounts of time of being awake… Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up from the sofa. “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE….” You wake up to a test pattern on TV. This is it. > You head down to your basement It’s always been like you to do things at the last minute. After grabbing your pistol and all the food and drink you can, then heading down in the basement with it, you think that things probably won’t be that bad. After all you don’t live in the city, or even by an important city, surely not EVERY place will get bombed. It’s not like you live on the east or west coast, now those people are going to be fucked. No, all you have to do is wait this out, and then things will get back to normal…okay well maybe not normal, but surely the government will restore order of some sort, you’re sure they have a complex plan for this kind of thing. Eventually you hear a very loud noise; whatever light you had on in the basement immediately goes out as you can hear your house being hit by a powerful force. You curl up in a ball and hold your ears half expecting the entire house to collapse in on you, but it doesn’t happen. You stay in the basement, for what you guess to be a week. You mostly stumble around in the darkness as reality begins to set in and destroy your previous delusions. You mainly think about how you should’ve planned things out better, especially since your food and drink are running out. The only thing you know really know about nuclear attacks is what you’ve learned from movies, video games and comic books. You can only hope some of that shit was helpful, as you have little choice, but to leave your basement, the bucket you were using to relieve yourself down there was really starting to stink anyway. You open up your basement door, which remarkably stayed intact, along with most of your house. The windows and other glass objects have all broke, and there’s no power, but that’s about it. You can only guess that whatever it was that hit, was far enough away and probably very low yield. You don’t really want to think about the radioactivity factor though; you’ll know if you’re catching a lethal dose soon enough if your hair and teeth start falling out and you begin vomiting blood. Damn you wish you bought that bomb shelter… You check the refrigerator again for more food, but there won’t be enough to last you one day. You wonder if the water is still working and turn on the faucet, of course it doesn’t, you don’t think you’d want to risk drinking any of it anyway. Well it looks like you can’t stay in your house either; you’re going to have to leave to find food and some sort of drinkable liquid. Damn you wish you bought that bomb shelter… Well if you’re going to leave, you decide some sort of protection is in order; you grab some dishwashing gloves underneath the sink, some safety goggles you’ve had since you college chemistry class, a winter coat and finally a scarf your grandmother knit you for one of your birthdays to wrap over your mouth. You look somewhat silly in this getup and it probably won’t protect you at all, but you’re back to deluding yourself again which is probably a good thing since your relapses into fantasy are keeping you from breaking down completely. You open your dented garage door and get in your old van expecting it not to work, surprisingly it does. You thought it wouldn’t due to all that stuff you remember hearing about EMP waves or something, then again your car was built in a year before they started mounting entire computers in the fucking things, so maybe that’s why it still works. You don’t know, you’re just glad its one of the things you still have that functions, you didn’t want to be riding that bike you bought and hardly ever used. You throw your backpack of useful items (flashlight, small tool set, first aid kit, etc) into the van and ponder where to go. You’ve got two choices that immediately come to mind assuming both still exist; one is that “Mom & Pop” General Store that was abandoned at least a month ago. You can’t imagine they took everything from the place. The other choice is to risk going to the city and finding something there. Despite all the looting and mass exodus that was going on there before any of this went down, the city’s still a big place and there’s probably lots of useful stuff there, the problem is wondering if you’ll be heading into a death zone. That radioactivity concern is still in the back of your mind. Damn you wish you bought that bomb shelter… > You head to the general store You might be absorbing more rads than usual now, but heading to the city would just be retarded. You’d probably die of cancer just going near the place; everything there would be contaminated anyway. You don’t even want to see the survivors what the survivors might look like assuming there were any. You head for the general store, that’s at least a safer bet. You drive your Van to the general store not very far from your house. You remember the old guy who ran the place; Billy. He was always alright with you. Whenever you went in to buy food, he was always talking about how bad the state of world was getting and how he was going to be prepared for when the nukes started flying. You’re guessing he probably invested in one of those Ground Zero Survival Shelters you always saw for sale on TV and took himself and his wife to it. The last time you saw the place it was all boarded up and looked closed up for good, still it’s a start. You arrive at the store which is still all boarded up like the last time you’ve seen it. You always found it weird that Billy bothered to board the place up, if he was going to abandon it. Surely he couldn’t have thought things would be restored so quickly after a nuclear exchange that he’d be able to return some day. You get out of your van and study the store more closely which you never bothered to do before, the windows are boarded up from the outside, but upon closer inspection the door hasn’t been boarded up at all. You try the door, but it’s firmly locked. Nothing else for it, but to bash it down. You begin prying, slamming, kicking and everything else to the door, but its not budging and you only succeed in bruising your shoulder. In frustration you pull out your pistol and finally just shoot at the lock and then try to open it, which it does slightly, something else is barring the door from the inside though. You’re going to have to start ramming the thing again to shove it open enough to get inside. Suddenly you hear some noise from inside and the click of a shotgun, it’s also only just then you realize that Billy’s pick up truck is still parked by the side of his store. He’s obviously still here and you were oblivious to the fact. “Goddamn it Martha, hasn’t been a month yet an’ we already got scum tryin’ ta loot the place!” It’s Billy. You thought he left, but apparently not. He just made it look like he did and barricaded himself inside. “Alright you looting shit stain, you better just get the fuck outta here right now, ‘fore you find yourself with a new hole in your chest!” Billy says from inside. “Whoa Billy it’s me! I used to shop here! Come on open up, I’m not a looter!” you reply. “…(sigh) hold on, and back away from the goddamn door.” You back away as Billy presumably moves whatever was still blocking the door. When he finally opens it up, he stands in the doorway still pointing his shotgun at you. “Damnation boy, I coulda blown your head off! You fuckin’ destroyed my lock! What the hell are you wearin’?” Billy asks looking at your silly form of protection. “I’m sorry; I thought you abandoned this place.” “Oh and that gave you the excuse to break in? What’re you think yer doin’ anyway? Why aren’t you in your shelter or something?” “Cause I don’t have one that’s why! I was going to see if this place had any supplies and maybe stay here, if it wasn’t in bad condition.” “Oh. Well, sorry to crush yer dreams, but this place is still occupied and OWNED by me. You’re gonna have to skedaddle. Just enough supplies for me and my wife.” “But…” “No buts! Now you were a good customer an’ all, but this is a new world and the rules have severely changed! It’s all about survival now. And it’s not my fault your ass didn’t prepare for somethin’ that was comin’ for a long time! Now if you don’t leave now I’m gonna be less understanding about this lack of judgment on your part. Bye and good luck.” “No wait!” At this point Billy slams the door shut mumbling about the lock being destroyed and going to have to fix it. Billy must have some sort of private bomb shelter of his own, if he barricaded himself inside his own store. One that must be stocked pretty well to sustain him and his wife for a good amount of time. An idea races through your head that you never thought you’d consider, well not before the nukes hit anyway, but Billy’s statement of “This is about survival” rings true. It IS about survival, and not just his. You don’t really want to do this, but you feel like you have no other choice. Billy is still trying to barricade the door, when you take another forceful charge into it. Your attempt is successful this time as it flies open causing Billy to fall and drop the heavy box he was going to place in front of it. The box half lands on Billy causing him crushing pain while he struggles to grab his shotgun from the floor. You’re quicker though and point your own pistol at him. “Don’t grab that shotgun Billy…I don’t want to kill you.” you say “Goddamn sonofabitch, you ain’t taking this…” “Billy what’s… OH MY GOD!” When you hear Martha’s outburst, it startles you during this already tense moment, you end up turning around and firing. You hit Martha square in the chest; she looks down briefly in shock before falling over dead. You’re a little in shock yourself. “MARTHA!” Billy screams, causing you to face him once more, he’s now actually grabbed the shotgun, and you begin babbling. “Oh God! Oh man! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do that! She came up and…Billy don’t do that…I don’t want to…please…” You fire again, hitting Billy in the head, splattering his brains all over the floor and killing him instantly. You feel sick and promptly run outside to vomit. You’ve never killed anyone before, though you don’t think it was that, that made you sick. It was the fact you murdered two people who were really innocent. You were the trespasser and when you couldn’t get what you wanted, you took it by force. You acted like a criminal even if there’s no such thing as “law” anymore. You sit down in a daze for a few minute trying to take all this in, before realizing you have to take care of some clean up first. You remove the bodies of Billy and Martha from the store. (You also remove your silly “protection wear”, well except the dishwashing gloves for moving the bodies) You wonder where you’re going put them, but eventually you decide to just dump them in the wilderness nearby, you figure nature will take its course. You go back to the store and re-barricade it. The store itself is empty, but in a back room, you discover a trapdoor. You descend and discover a large shelter with a treasure of food and water supplies, along with other useful items like first aid kits. Looks like Billy was more prepared than you could’ve imagined. One necessity you’re glad to find is a bathroom facility with a sink and toilet, there’s a little bit of water seeping from the cracks of the walls. Billy must’ve hit the jackpot and found an underground water source and built a crude plumbing system. He’s also installed a small hydro generator which would explain how come there’s dim lighting down here. Finally you see some survivalist books Billy had on a small bookshelf by a bed and a couple of hunting rifles along with ammunition for them and the shotgun you’ve recently acquired as well. Well you’re certainly set up, and all you had to do was kill an old couple. As you lie down on the bed you think about your actions in greater depth now. You’re not sure how to feel. Part of you wants to feel bad, but somehow you can’t make yourself feel as bad as you probably should. In fact you’re already starting to rationalize your actions. The first murder was a mistake, and the second one was self-defense. “And this is survival.” You say and fall asleep. The next day you wake up, you feel the most refreshed than you have in a long time. Something has changed within you. You don’t recognize immediately, but as a few months go by you begin to. Granted you were never a big one for human contact, anti-social and reclusive even, but this “line” you’ve crossed recently, your continued isolation, and the absence of civilization have made you become a little unhinged. You also start becoming paranoid, about other people stumbling across your new place and attempt to break in and take it like you did. Using the knowledge you’ve been getting from the survivalist books, you start setting up traps, inside and outside the store. One time, you spend just about a whole day doing that. When the darkness approaches you go back to your underground haven to descend further into quiet madness, before you fall asleep. Suddenly in the middle of the night you hear a noise and a scream from above. Sounds like it’s coming from outside and from more than one person. You immediately grab your shotgun and head upstairs. After going through the typical routine of taking down the barricades, you open the door and see a family in panic. A man is lying on the ground yelling in pain from the snap trap that has obviously broken his leg. A woman and a little boy are screaming frantically and totally clueless of what to do in this situation. Looks like your traps work. The family hasn’t seen you yet and don’t know your intentions, come to think of it, you aren’t even sure of your intentions… > You finish them off Obviously they thought they could just stroll in and take shelter here, bad mistake on their part… You calmly point the shotgun at the man caught in the trap and blast him before he even notices you. The little boy now really begins screaming, but the woman just becomes silent and falls into shock turning her head in your direction covered in the blood of her husband. You don’t feel sick like you did last time; you do feel an overwhelming sense of power though. The woman grabs her son’s hand and turns to run, but realizes two seconds later that she’s only holding on to his hand and the rest of him is lying on the ground, one arm less, from your second blast. “WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!” the woman screams. “Because I can, and there’s nobody around to stop me.” You say and briskly walk over to the woman. After a pathetic struggle you knock her out and drag her into your new home. After all, you’re not sure when you’ll get to see another woman again… A couple days after the incident with the family (and disposing of all three bodies) you begin keeping yourself in better shape. You start exercising regularly, and fixing up your home. You need to be prepared, in case more people ever show up. You MUST defend yourself and your home. You don’t get many, but every now and then another poor soul stumbles across your death lair. You’re merciless. Soon you begin to arrange the vehicles of your victims to form a semi “wall” around your home and place some grisly totems as “decoration”. A year passes… You don’t get visitors anymore, though that’s probably because of the unfriendly image you’ve projected with all the skulls you’ve stuck on the spikes outside. Part of you is glad that you aren’t being disturbed anymore, but the other part misses the killing. You begin to wonder if you shouldn’t start venturing out more, but you’d hate to leave your home. One day you’re awakened by the roar of motorcycles. You’ve got visitors again, you ready your weapons. As you head upstairs you hear that inevitable “SNAP!” sound followed by screaming. Yet another victim to your traps, though you hear the typical sounds of distress, you also hear some laughter, taunting even, which has got you more curious than anything. You check through a little peephole you made and see a bunch of biker types, one is lying on the ground, his leg nearly severed by the hidden bear trap. While one is trying to free him, a couple of the others are just laughing and remarking about how it looks like it really hurts. “AAAAAARGH! AGHHH!” “Look are you assholes going to help or not?” one of them asks. “Hey, I told you fuckers not to go traipsing into a place that has skulls stuck on stakes. Y’all should’ve known it wasn’t exactly going to be a friendly place.” “We need fuckin’ gas Jim, and this place has a lot of vehicles, and maybe some of them have gas. We had to go check!” “Well yeah, but that didn’t mean just walking around unaware of your surroundings…shit that leg looks bad.” “GET IT OFF! AAAAHHHH!” “That leg is bad. Even if you did get it off of him, he’s probably going to lose it to infection. I wiped my own shit on it, not to mention it was developing a nice set of rust on it when I found it. I’d say his bike riding days are over.” You say standing your doorway with your shotgun ready. The bikers look in your direction, one looks like he’s going to pull his pistol, but the one called Jim stops him. He’s obviously the leader. “You might be right, stranger, but that still leaves you outnumbered one to three. You sure you wanna take those odds?” Jim says. “I’ll take ‘em and I’ll enjoy it. It’s been a long time since I’ve killed a whole mess of people.” “Oh, so you’re a REAL killer eh?” “Better killer than you.” “Hah! I doubt that! See me an’ the boys here have been raisin’ hell where ever we can. Come across a few towns and let’s just say we’re not real welcome there anymore. It’s a brand new world, and only the strong are gonna survive it.” “Yeah? Well it looks like one of your flock isn’t so strong now.” “Yeah…well you might be right about that stranger…maybe someone should put him out of his misery. Can’t very well ride with one leg, that’d be kind of silly.” The biker trying to help speaks up. “Oh come on Jim man! Clyde here saved all of our asses about a month ago!” “Yeah? Well what has he done for us lately? The stranger’s right, we gotta put him down, it’s the kind thing to do really. You gonna do it, Dan?” “No…I…mean…well…” “Pussy. Nevermind. Ramon you gonna do it?” “Shit yeah! Here hold on, oh fuck.” Ramon says pulling out his pistol and then dropping it on the ground. Jim just shakes his head. “Ramon, its amazing you’ve even lasted this long with your clumsy ass. Fuck it, I’LL do it.” > You let Jim kill Clyde As strange as it may seem, you’re kind of glad for the company believe it or not, so you’d rather just let this play out and see where it leads. You can always kill them all later. Meanwhile Jim is pointing his gun at Clyde’s head in an overly dramatic manner. “Alright Clyde you knew the risks. No begging or pleadin’ now.” “Come on Jim! Don’t do this! I can still ride…I’ll…” “Goddamn it, get a fuckin’ hold of yourself you fuckin’ sissy! Fuck, I was givin’ you a chance to go out like a man! Guess you fucked that up. Die bitch!” Jim blows Clyde’s brains out, and turns his attention back to you. “Can’t say I didn’t give him a fair chance.” “Yes…so what do you have planned now?” you ask, forming an idea in your mind. “Planned? Ha ha! We don’t do a whole lotta planning, we just kinda roam from place to place causing meaningless violence! I think there’s a town around in this area somewhere…” “You probably should look for a more reliable fuel source, if you’re going to continue with this line of work.” “Yeah, well we’ll be good after Ramon here sucks out the remaining gas from this vehicle graveyard you got here. I trust YOU won’t have a problem with that right?” “I’m sucking what?!” Ramon says with a surprised look on his face. “No, I don’t have a problem with it, but what happens when that runs out? Are you going hope you find some more in your travels?” “It’s worked so far…what the hell are you getting at?” “Instead of spreading meaningless violence on a small scale, how about spreading meaningful violence on a grand scale for a change?” You explain how you’ve been reading in the survivalist books about how to create a still, except not being a drinker; you never felt the need to create one. However that same cheap hooch could probably work as a substitute for real gas, if certain modifications were made to the vehicles. Basically the vehicles would be running on “garbage” given that’s what the booze is made out of. It would smell horrible, but you get the impression that Jim and his boys wouldn’t know the difference anyway. You begin to explain even more technical aspects as well, but you soon realize it’s too much to process for them, so you stop before their heads explode. They do realize you seem to be a lot smarter than the rest of them though, so they agree to your “grand” plan. You tell one of them that they should drive to the nearest town by themselves, try to get a feel of the place, to scout the entire place out, find out what the defenses are and all of that. Ultimately Dan is chosen for this task since he can actually come off as being a nice guy. You give him some canned food and some bottled water you have. You explain that he should use the stuff as something to barter with, so it looks like he’s just a wandering traveler. While Dan goes and does some scouting, you get to work on the still and Jim and Ramon, work on their altering their bikes (At least they know how to do that) a few days pass and you all generally start getting along. Unsurprisingly Jim and the rest of his gang were criminals even before the bombs dropped. You lie and say you were in the life of crime as well, nothing too specific though and just common and vague enough for Jim to believe. Of course all the people you killed after the bombs, you don’t need to lie about at all. When Dan comes back, he does so with some interesting news. He mentions the closest town is Cinderville. He mentions it’s not a completely harmonious town and it does have its rougher elements, but the local law enforcement is still in control of the place and relies on a vigilante mindset of some of the townspeople. Apparently they’re trying to keep the resemblance of the “old world”. He mentions there’s another gang that hangs around the outskirts of it which attempts raids every now and then, but they’re poorly lead. Finally he states they have a small farming area with animals like cows and pigs. Not all for eating, but to mainly produce shit for biofuel to run the law enforcement vehicles. Originally you were just thinking you could strike hard and fast and get out, every few months to break up the monotony, with the still to keep your vehicle running so you could engage in this behavior. But with this new information, of other gangs in the area and bad elements in the actual little oasis of civilization, you wonder if you couldn’t actually take over the town, at the very least you could destabilize it. The biofuel center wouldn’t be a bad acquisition either. You’re confident you can pull this off, you just need more help. > You recruit some of the locals You decide that the locals have more intimate knowledge of the town and would probably be better to enlist help from. You suggest that you all go to Cinderville and do just that. After re-trapping your home, and gathering what supplies you think you’ll need, you and the bikers all take a trip to Cinderville (You take your Van). After about a day of traveling you arrive at the place. However you don’t get very far. The townsfolk remember Dan, and the cops were watching him the whole time he entered town. They didn’t really buy his whole “wandering traveler” act and neither did most other people. They figured he was up to no good. So when all of you come rolling in, the cops instantly arrive and tell you to leave immediately. Normally you might’ve done that and come up with another strategy, but Jim begins revving up his cycle and shooting at the fuckers and disregards whatever plan you had. His boys follow suit. After seeing Ramon getting his head blown off and Jim get shot off his bike, you have no intention of sharing that fate, so you swerve to turn the van around…which promptly dies on the spot. “SHIT! GODDAMN IT! I JUST FIXED IT!” you shout beating on the wheel. “GIVE UP, ALL YOUR LOWLIFE BUDDIES ARE DEAD! GET OUTTA THE VAN NOW ASSHOLE!” you hear one of the cops shout in a bullhorn. Do they really expect you to give up? This is a brand new world, the cops don’t need to put anyone in jail anymore; they can just shoot criminals. Not to mention, Dan had mentioned a vigilante mindset of the common townsfolk. They probably have every intention in hanging your ass, assuming they don’t shoot you immediately after you give up. Fuck it; you ain’t going out without a fight. Hell maybe you’ll even get back home, probably not. (Sigh) you think maybe you should’ve just stayed in your nice home waylaying wanderers when they came by. Too late for that now though. You grab the hunting rifle and put it on your back, check your pistol, and grab your shotgun to be your primary weapon. You take a deep breath and open up sliding door of your van and blast the first pig you see and make a break for it. You manage to get a few blocks with the cops in pursuit, before one of the neighborhood “Rambos” shoots at you, hitting you in the leg. You fall to the street hard, dropping your shotgun which spirals out of your hand several feet from you. You get some pay back by blasting the shithead who shot you in the leg when he came closer to confirm the “kill”. You struggle to stand up, only to get hit by a fucking police car fully intent on running you down, except you go flying in the air instead and land on your face again with a pair of broken legs now. The car stops and a police woman with dreadlocks gets out, she shoots you in the arm, when you attempt to go for your pistol. “You’re under arrest suga!” she says in a high voice. You merely turn to look at her, and laugh at the absurdity of it all. “Fuck you bitch.” “You wish honey!” And with that last snappy come back, she decides that you were resisting arrest and shoots you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As strange as it may seem, you’re kind of glad for the company believe it or not, so you’d rather just let this play out and see where it leads. You can always kill them all later. Meanwhile Jim is pointing his gun at Clyde’s head in an overly dramatic manner. “Alright Clyde you knew the risks. No begging or pleadin’ now.” “Come on Jim! Don’t do this! I can still ride…I’ll…” “Goddamn it, get a fuckin’ hold of yourself you fuckin’ sissy! Fuck, I was givin’ you a chance to go out like a man! Guess you fucked that up. Die bitch!” Jim blows Clyde’s brains out, and turns his attention back to you. “Can’t say I didn’t give him a fair chance.” “Yes…so what do you have planned now?” you ask, forming an idea in your mind. “Planned? Ha ha! We don’t do a whole lotta planning, we just kinda roam from place to place causing meaningless violence! I think there’s a town around in this area somewhere…” “You probably should look for a more reliable fuel source, if you’re going to continue with this line of work.” “Yeah, well we’ll be good after Ramon here sucks out the remaining gas from this vehicle graveyard you got here. I trust YOU won’t have a problem with that right?” “I’m sucking what?!” Ramon says with a surprised look on his face. “No, I don’t have a problem with it, but what happens when that runs out? Are you going hope you find some more in your travels?” “It’s worked so far…what the hell are you getting at?” “Instead of spreading meaningless violence on a small scale, how about spreading meaningful violence on a grand scale for a change?” You explain how you’ve been reading in the survivalist books about how to create a still, except not being a drinker; you never felt the need to create one. However that same cheap hooch could probably work as a substitute for real gas, if certain modifications were made to the vehicles. Basically the vehicles would be running on “garbage” given that’s what the booze is made out of. It would smell horrible, but you get the impression that Jim and his boys wouldn’t know the difference anyway. You begin to explain even more technical aspects as well, but you soon realize it’s too much to process for them, so you stop before their heads explode. They do realize you seem to be a lot smarter than the rest of them though, so they agree to your “grand” plan. You tell one of them that they should drive to the nearest town by themselves, try to get a feel of the place, to scout the entire place out, find out what the defenses are and all of that. Ultimately Dan is chosen for this task since he can actually come off as being a nice guy. You give him some canned food and some bottled water you have. You explain that he should use the stuff as something to barter with, so it looks like he’s just a wandering traveler. While Dan goes and does some scouting, you get to work on the still and Jim and Ramon, work on their altering their bikes (At least they know how to do that) a few days pass and you all generally start getting along. Unsurprisingly Jim and the rest of his gang were criminals even before the bombs dropped. You lie and say you were in the life of crime as well, nothing too specific though and just common and vague enough for Jim to believe. Of course all the people you killed after the bombs, you don’t need to lie about at all. When Dan comes back, he does so with some interesting news. He mentions the closest town is Cinderville. He mentions it’s not a completely harmonious town and it does have its rougher elements, but the local law enforcement is still in control of the place and relies on a vigilante mindset of some of the townspeople. Apparently they’re trying to keep the resemblance of the “old world”. He mentions there’s another gang that hangs around the outskirts of it which attempts raids every now and then, but they’re poorly lead. Finally he states they have a small farming area with animals like cows and pigs. Not all for eating, but to mainly produce shit for biofuel to run the law enforcement vehicles. Originally you were just thinking you could strike hard and fast and get out, every few months to break up the monotony, with the still to keep your vehicle running so you could engage in this behavior. But with this new information, of other gangs in the area and bad elements in the actual little oasis of civilization, you wonder if you couldn’t actually take over the town, at the very least you could destabilize it. The biofuel center wouldn’t be a bad acquisition either. You’re confident you can pull this off, you just need more help. > You approach the raiders Entering the town again, wouldn’t be a good idea. From the sound of it, the town is suspicious of outsiders, if Dan showed up again with the lot of you; they’d know something was up. Not to mention he was the most “presentable” of all of you. You figure the raiders might be a better choice. If they’re poorly led, then maybe just taking care of the leader will make the rest fall in line. “Alright Dan, you know where the raiders hang out?” you ask. “Um, not exactly, but its somewhere in the hills near Cinderville.” “Okay let’s go there. We can probably kick the leader’s ass and…” Jim all of sudden stops you in mid-sentence. “Hold up, brain boy. I know you got all these great ideas, and you seem to be a pretty ruthless sonofabitch, and I respect that, but let’s keep in mind that I’M running this fuckin’ gang. Don’t presume you can just order us all around about what we’re going to do.” He tells you in an authoritative voice and implies bodily harm if you disagree with him. (Sigh) You had a feeling this was going to happen. > You kill Jim “Y’know what, you’re right Jim, you shouldn’t have to take orders from me.” “Good, I’m glad we understand each other.” “That’s why you won’t be around to do it any longer!” Before anyone can do anything, you draw your pistol and shoot Jim three times in the chest before he falls dead. Ramon and Dan look like they want to react, but don’t. “Good. Glad to see you guys are smarter than you appear. Now Dan, lead us to the raiders.” After taking some supplies you think you’ll need and re-trapping your home, you all set off to leave. (You take your van) In about a day, you arrive around in the area that Dan was talking about, in fact you don’t need to look for the raiders; they instantly approach you when they see you coming. It would appear some of them have a few vehicles as well, you just hope you can pull this off. You get out of your van and your two new lackeys stop their bikes, they don’t like the looks of this, especially since you’re greatly outnumbered. “Hey, uh…maybe this isn’t such a good idea…” Ramon says. “Yeah, when I was in Cinderville, I heard these guys could get pretty crazy.” Dan adds. “Pfft, these types always fall in line when you display sufficient strength. All I gotta do is challenge the leader to hand to hand combat or some shit. Hell, you fuckers were in prison, you know how this works.” You arrogantly reply. “Yeah, but even in prison there were rules! I mean there ain’t no rules at all out here! Who says they’re going to accept your challenge?” With Dan’s last statement, you figure you’ll soon find out when the raiders arrive and stop their own vehicles. The leader steps out of his beat up car, and steps forward. He looks mean enough, like he’s been living in the wasteland from day one. “So, you got any last words, before we fuck you and eat you?” he asks. “Yeah, I heard you’re the lame cocksucker, who can’t even handle a few pigs and some wannabe vigilantes in Cinderville.” You reply. The raider leader’s expression gets even meaner looking if such a thing is possible. “Oh? And I suppose YOU can do a better job?” he sneers. “Sure the fuck can, all I need is more people. In fact I’d say yours would do just fine, so are you going to step down from your inept leadership, or am I gonna have to beat the shit outta you and take it?” After looking at you up and down, he speaks again. “Shit, I doubt if you could even last five minutes. Fuck this; I’m not wasting my time. Kill these assholes.” As soon as he says those words, you immediately turn to run, ducking and trying to get into your van, but in the shooting, the raiders hit the van’s front tires by the time you make it inside. Dan and Ramon speed off, with some of the raiders in pursuit, while you attempt to drive in reverse and turn around on flat tires. The raider leader rams your van with his own car, which has been fitted with extra plating. Eventually in the mayhem of the ramming, shooting and swerving around on flat tires on an incline, you roll the van over and over down the hill. It’s amazing that you don’t get killed and the van didn’t blow up. You however aren’t in such great shape. You barely manage to crawl from your wrecked van, and when you do, the raider leader arrives in his own car just in time to finish you off. He finds you crawling on the ground, when he opens up his door to point a sawed off shotgun in your face and pull the trigger.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Entering the town again, wouldn’t be a good idea. From the sound of it, the town is suspicious of outsiders, if Dan showed up again with the lot of you; they’d know something was up. Not to mention he was the most “presentable” of all of you. You figure the raiders might be a better choice. If they’re poorly led, then maybe just taking care of the leader will make the rest fall in line. “Alright Dan, you know where the raiders hang out?” you ask. “Um, not exactly, but its somewhere in the hills near Cinderville.” “Okay let’s go there. We can probably kick the leader’s ass and…” Jim all of sudden stops you in mid-sentence. “Hold up, brain boy. I know you got all these great ideas, and you seem to be a pretty ruthless sonofabitch, and I respect that, but let’s keep in mind that I’M running this fuckin’ gang. Don’t presume you can just order us all around about what we’re going to do.” He tells you in an authoritative voice and implies bodily harm if you disagree with him. (Sigh) You had a feeling this was going to happen. > Back down While you probably could kill this fat fucker, but for now you have to have all the help you can get and no disunity to pull this plan off, so you’ll back down for now… “Hey, I never said I was the leader, I know you are Jim.” “Good. Glad we understand each other.” “So go ahead and tell us what YOU think is the best course of action for this plan.” “Um…well…your strategy sounded pretty good.” Jim says predictably Just as you thought, you’re STILL in control, just had to give the fool the appearance that he’s still in control. After taking some supplies you think you’ll need and re-trapping your home, you all set off to leave. (You take your van) In about a day, you arrive around in the area that Dan was talking about, in fact you don’t need to look for the raiders; they instantly approach you when they see you coming. It would appear some of them have a few vehicles as well. Jim signals for everyone to halt and he gets off his bike. Ramon and Dan halt near Jim, but don’t get off their bikes. You in the meantime grab your hunting rifle and hang in the back a bit, you just hope Jim can pull this shit off, especially since you’re greatly outnumbered. Soon the raiders arrive and stop their own vehicles. The leader steps out of his beat up car, and steps forward. He looks mean enough, like he’s been living in the wasteland from day one. “So, you got any last words, before we fuck you and eat you?” he asks Jim. “Yeah, I heard you’re the pussy ass bitch, who can’t even handle a few pigs and some fuckin’ vigilantes in Cinderville.” Jim replies. The raider leader’s expression gets even meaner looking if such a thing is possible. “Oh? And I suppose YOU can do a better job you fat tub of shit?” he sneers. “Sure the fuck can asshole, all I need is more men. In fact I’d say yours would do just fine, so I’d say you’d better just step aside and see a pro in action.” “Don’t think so, besides I’ve already seen a fag get his mouth gang fucked by a bunch of guys.” You sure hope Jim is a better fighter, because he’s losing in the battle of snappy comebacks right now. In fact he can’t come up with a response, so he just slugs the raider leader instead. You fully expect the shooting to start, but instead the raider leader laughs, pulls out the biggest blade you’ve ever seen and screams “THIS ONE IS MINE!” During the fight, you scan all your potential greatest threats and the quickest order to pick them off, in case this all goes south. You’re so busy doing that, that you’re not really paying attention to the actual fight, which Jim as it turns out, is winning. After tussling on the ground, slamming into nearby vehicles, punching, kicking and all the rest, Jim finally puts an end to his opponent by shoving his own knife through his throat. Everyone goes silent, and Jim stands up wiping the blood off of himself. “Alright! Now listen the fuck up! Your previous leader was a lame ass who couldn’t get the job done, and that changes right now! We’re gonna get fuckin’ organized and take that goddamn little town! Might makes fuckin’ right! Are ya with me, or are ya gonna go running off like a limp wristed sissy?” Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t kill Jim, because these raiders seem to really identify with him and they unanimously accept him as their new leader. You doubt if you would’ve had that success. You’ve never been a people person, regardless of who those people might’ve been, however you are an idea person, and now you move on to your next phase. After Jim finally gets all the new people to listen, you begin to explain your plan, the problem before is they kept stupidly attacking from one direction, rather than doing the classic “pincer” maneuver and attacking from multiple sides. Using Dan’s information, you specifically pick out areas where the most damage can initially be done with the least amount of risk. You point out the spot where there’s still an old school being used to teach the children. Take control of that with the kids inside and you’ve severely reduced most of the townspeople’s willingness to fight, which will curb the neighborhood “Charles Bronsons” from helping the police force. In fact you decide to take that job since you want Jim to lead the raiders in the main direct assault force with the cops. Dan and Ramon will be traveling with their own smaller force to attack other parts of the town, spreading out the cops’ usually organized force. It’s also hoped that the more disreputable elements that Dan mentioned living in the town, will join in the mayhem on your side, or at least against their side. The raider vehicles themselves are not in the best condition, and most of them are running low on gas, but they’ll do for now. You figure if all goes well, the still fuel that you created back at your home, as well as the farming area in the town with the pig and cow shit biofuel can solve those problems later. In fact you specifically mention that NO damage should happen to that area in this attack, though you don’t expect them to follow that order. You don’t want to wait long to attack with this bunch, since they have the attention span of a gnat of crack. You have to attack soon when they’re all hyped up. You suggest that to Jim, who agrees since he’s anxious to get to this dastardly business anyway. In a couple days you’re attacking the town as planned. You start on your end first, making a beeline to the school, before the main attack force arrives. A few of the raiders are in your van itching to start creating some havoc. You stop outside of the school and run inside with your current trigger happy cohorts. A couple of them kill a few kids and you have to remind them you’re SUPPOSED to be holding them hostage right now! If the townsfolk don’t comply THEN you can start capping the little bastards. You tell them to go and kill the teachers if they want. In the mean time you take the opportunity to shout from the window to the crowd gathering outside. You tell them that if any of them start trying to defend the town or help the cops, then their kids are going to be killed. To show you’re really serious though, you tell one of the raiders to toss a kid out the window. A collective cry goes up from the crowd when the body hits the pavement and their pathetic begging is pleasing to your ears. You get a few people shooting at you anyway (Obviously not parents) but having a good vantage point and a hunting rifle, you start sniping the idiots who have decided to ignore your threats. A few more kids thrown out the window causes ALL the shooting to stop. You can hear the sounds of battle from your position; no cops have arrived so you’re guessing Jim and the rest are doing their job. You’re really enjoying all this chaos you’ve created, you were just stagnating before the bombs dropped, now in this new world you’re free to embrace the darkest part of yourself that always existed, but wasn’t allowed the flourish. You love this fucking shit. Eventually you hear a roar of a motorcycle, followed by the sound of some bottles breaking. You go to check the window and see the crowd outside running and screaming, some of them on fire from the Molotov Cocktails just thrown at them. You also see Ramon shouting up to you. “Hey! We’re winning man! The remaining cops are barricaded in their fucking station, broke the Mayor’s legs and dragged him through the street and best of all we got some of the other local punks to join us! There’s practically no more resistance left! Its total fucking anarchy man!” You turn around and begin smiling at the kids you’re holding hostage which somehow scares them even more. You pick up a young girl and kiss her hard on the lips and laugh at the fear in her eyes. You then throw her down and tell the raiders with you they can do whatever they want, because you’re going to indulge in some pure havoc on your own. After a couple days and nights of indulging in this activity, Jim finally gets around to settling his new gang down (Which he’s inventively called “Jim’s Reapers”) and wondering about what to do with the town now that he has control over it. He seems to have forgotten already that it was YOU, who orchestrated this. Now that the task has been accomplished perhaps this would be the time to discuss the leadership role again. Then again, you wonder if you even want to bother. Sure there’s the power and such, but there’s also the headache of dealing with all these morons on a regular basis and running the town. The “fun” part is over as it were. > You kill Jim for control of the town The whole point of this endeavor was to take control of the town and you’re not going to let Jim get that glory. You go find him in the Mayor’s Manor still tormenting the mayor and his wife. The mayor is currently lying on the floor bloody and helpless with his legs a useless mess. His wife is naked in a fetal position in a corner just rocking to herself in a state of perpetual shock, its apparent she’s been raped over and over. Jim doesn’t have anyone else with him, not even have Dan or Ramon, he’s all by himself in a drunken stupor at the moment celebrating his new found power, unaware that you’re about to relieve him of it. “Heeeeey! Killer! Its you! Have a drink! This fucker’s got some classy shit stashed in his cellar! (Hic!)” “Nah, that’s okay. So I see you’ve been having fun eh?” “Me? Oh fuck yeah! The mayor over here has got himself one fine piece of ass! Been tryin’ her out every other hour y’know what I mean? HAR HAR HAR!” “Hmmm, yes.” You say looking over at her again, while Jim continues to pontificate. “Shit man (Hic!) I think me, you, Dan and fuckin’ Ramon are the few straight bastards in this gang! Those fuckin’ raiders we recruited? I ain’t even seen them try to get any of the pussy in this town. They must’ve been in the wasteland too damn long or somethin’, I think they forgot what a god (hic!) damn bitch looks like. Been cornholin’ each other so much they went an’ fell in love! HAR HAR HAR HAR! (hic!) Ah hell I’m not judgin’. (hic!)” While Jim wanders into the next room still talking about his gang’s sexual preference, you go over to the mayor who’s been baring his mental and physical pain in silence the whole time. When you crouch near him and pull your pistol out, he thinks this is it, but you have something “special” in mind. You see that his hands are still in good shape so you keep your voice down and look him in the eyes. “You’re gonna die. Nothing can stop this. Resign yourself to this fact. Life sucks and that’s all there is to it.” you say unloading your pistol, but keeping one bullet in the chamber. “…however, you can still get vengeance. I thought you might like to know that I’m the one who planned this attack. I’m the one who orchestrated this town’s destruction. A town you no longer have any control over and has had many of its citizens viciously killed thanks to my actions… the fat piece of drunken shit in the next room has personally beaten you and violated your wife, repeatedly. Over and over. In front of you. His fat smelly flesh all over her while he enjoyed it the whole time. Probably shoved his cock in all three holes too huh?” He looks at you with a mixture of fear, hate, and sorrow, while tears fill his eyes. You place the gun in his hand. “…well anyway, there’s one bullet in the gun. Remember, you got one shot, one chance for vengeance, make your choice. Better hide that, here comes Jim.” Jim comes stumbling back in room, while the mayor holds the gun close to himself in a bad attempt to hide it. The stand back waiting to see what happens next. “…I mean hell I’ve fucked a few prags when I (hic!) was in prison, but…hey…what have you got there?” Jim asks seeing the mayor holding something, but not able to make it out clearly due to his inebriated state. Jim gets closer, closer, and then mayor draws on him. He sobers up just long enough to realize he’s got a bullet between his eyes. “…what the fuuuuuuuuck…” Jim says before falling face first on the floor. “Wow, that was pretty intense, I mean my own life was on the line there! Whew! But I figured you’d kill Jim, too bad it wasn’t the right choice on your part.” You say punching the mayor in the face and take your pistol back, loading it again. “Stupid bastard, didn’t it occur to you that I’d do the same thing to your wife?” “No…don’t…” he says looking up at you with blood coming from his mouth, as your own curls cruelly upward. “Just kidding, I wouldn’t stick my dick anywhere near Jim has been. Looks like you made the right choice after all!” You put the mayor out of his misery and shoot him in the face. You then approach the mayor’s wife who’s still been rocking to herself this whole time. You look at her a little closer. “Hmm, you must’ve been very beautiful before this all happened.” You remark, caressing her damaged face, before ending her life as well. Having had your fun, you go and announce you’re the leader now. Unfortunately you don’t quite have the charisma or imposing physique Jim had, so not everyone is willing to follow. (Ramon and Dan are among the first ones you kill for disobeying you) What ultimately happens is the town becomes a factional warzone where nobody is really in control and the poor Cinderville townsfolk are caught in the middle. Eventually things stabilize and a few of the “heavy weights” carve out their own territories and there’s an unstable peace in the town. Fights still break out, but there’s never an imbalance of power or advantage for long. (Though, maintaining a hold on the biofuel refinery gives you a little bit of an advantage…) Four years pass… Five years have passed since the bombs dropped and you couldn’t be happier. You’ve accomplished more than you ever did in the old world. World War Three was the best thing that ever happened to you. You’ve been running your own slice of heaven in this hellish world and had the freedom to live out your true nature, which you’ve done for the past five years. And now that freedom could be coming to an end. Recently through rumors and wandering travelers who have the misfortune of finding Cinderville, you’ve found out that there’s a growing organization trying to “tame” the wasteland. They call themselves The Combine. Apparently they’re at war with another organization called the Cybernetic Collective and the Combine’s been aggressively taking towns and conscripting the citizens to fight in their war. And now they’ve come to Cinderville. They arrive in well taken care of vehicles, with better training, better discipline and better weapons. They begin talking to everybody they can. They aren’t going to take the entire town by force, no what they intend to do is to back one of the stronger factions to wipe out the rest, and then absorb their puppet into the Combine to have control over the entire town. You’re not fooled. The question just remains is; are you going to ally with them first, or fight this threat to your freedom? > You ally with the Combine If you have any motivation to keep your position, you’ll have to ally with the Combine, for now at least. You decide to at least hear what they have to say. Two envoys come to speak to you; one of them is some rough looking man that probably thinks he’s some sort of hard ass. The other is a woman, she looks like she’s probably seen battle, but you’re more interested in her seeing your dick up close and personal if that’s possible. “So, I hear you’re one of the Warlords of this town. My name’s Roger and this is Vivica. We belong to The Combine as I’m sure you already know.” “Yeah, yeah, I already know all about your little paramilitary outfit. Trying to tame the wasteland or some shit. Futile endeavor I say. It all comes down to chaos in the end. The last world war proved that.” “Yeah, and I’ve ran into your type before. Typical petty despot who thrives off of the suffering around you. Let me guess, you were probably a petty criminal or prisoner in your old life. A loser. Someone who never could accomplish anything, until AFTER the bombs hit. And look at you; you can’t even do that right. You don’t even control this whole town. You’re still a loser.” You smile at Roger’s poor attempt at psychology. “Oh, is that what I was eh? Well I guess that makes us both sides of the same coin. You were probably some boring fucktard in a boring job, with a boring life. You probably watched reality shows about cops and mercs an’ shit wishing you could do that, but were too much of a sheep to go out and have adventures of your own. You just obeyed the laws and followed the rules. Now look at you. Mr. wasteland fuckin’ warrior, but even in this new world you’re still a fucking sheep. Still following the rules, the only reason you’re having adventures now is because your superiors tell you to. You’re just as much of a fucking loser as I am.” Roger noticeably grows angry by your own psychological evaluation, but Vivica steps in to mediate. “Look, you fuckers compare dick sizes later, we ain’t got time for it right now.” “Ooowee! I like the mouth on this one! I’d like it more around my dick though…you interested in seeing just what my dick size exactly is honey?” “(Sigh) I suggest you better explain why the Combine should back you for control of this shithole town and what you’d even bring to the table other than your miniscule cock you like flapping in the wind.” “Why do I need to convince you? You’re the fuckers who want the damn town, but if you must know, I already have control of a biofuel refinery. I’d say that puts me as a pretty good favorite right there.” “Eh, not really. One would wonder why someone who has such an advantage doesn’t already HAVE control of the entire town. It seems like only someone who is really stupid or too incompetent to lead his side to ultimate victory would be the only logical explanation.” “Oh it’s just that simple to you huh? For your information I don’t exactly HAVE the same amount of people as the other warlords. I have enough to defend my territory and that’s about it and sure I can refuel all my vehicles easy enough, but so fuckin’ what? You think that means shit in close urban combat? Some sniper can just blast a driver riding down the street. Don’t mean shit. However! My refinery can be used to help fuel YOUR vehicles in your war with…what those cyborgs right? I mean you guys are fighting in the open battlefield where you can maneuver and drive around. You can also transport supplies quicker. And I know why you also want control of this place. You want conscripts. Well, you’ll get no protests from me; take anyone you want, except my workers at the refinery and myself of course.” Vivica and Roger look at each other and discuss in quiet about what you’ve told them, Vivica speaks up again. “And you would be willing to join the Combine and supply us with whatever we need?” “Sure, like I said, take anyone you want except me or the people needed to run the refinery, of course I hope this isn’t a one way street, I mean I want something too…” “Yes, of course we will transport food and water supplies if you need…” “What? No not that shit. Fuck, I got my own private stash of food and water. And the rest of the shitheads in this town can fend for themselves. Nah, what I want is right here in front of me…” you say beginning to leer at Vivica. Now she begins to feel very uncomfortable. Good. You like that. “Hold on we have to talk this over…” Roger says. “WHAT?!” Vivica shouts. “Sure, sure, you do that. Just remember, this is my offer and I might say it’s a very generous one, I doubt you’ll get a better one. The rest of these warlords are greedy bastards, they’ll want weapons, and a bunch of other shit. All I’m asking for is for some time with a woman and your help with getting rid of the other warlords of course. After I gain control of the entire town, you’ll be able to take whatever you want with no resistance. You want fuel? You got it. You want cannon fodder? You got that too. Decline my offer and well…let’s just say I’ll make sure I do a lot of damage before you fine Combine folks bring me down. I’ll leave you to it to decide.” Vivica and Roger leave your office and you can hear arguing outside. Obviously Vivica is NOT real keen on this compromise and she’s even less keen when it’s decided she needs to “take one for the team”. You fucking love this shit. How far people are willing to degrade themselves for the “greater good”. What a fucking joke. Later that night, you and Vivica are ready to finalize the “deal”, though she’s still trying to maintain some semblance of dignity. “Don’t think you’re gonna be pulling some kinda sick shit with me or hitting me either, because if that happens, I won’t give a fuck about the deal, the Combine, or even if I live, but regardless of what happens, you’ll be singing soprano, and pissing like a bitch for the rest of your life.” A threat without fear of consequence. Somehow you can respect that. Hell you think you might even be in love. “Okay, calm down sweetheart, none of that’s gonna happen. Now let’s start off by getting that pretty mouth of yours in action like I mentioned earlier today…” Afterwards, Vivica grabs her clothes and leaves immediately. You’re a little disappointed, since you almost got the impression she enjoyed herself…oh well, back to business. With the Combine’s help, wiping out the other warlords is a snap. Indeed you could’ve done it yourself long ago if you’d had disciplined people and more of them. Of course none of that matters now, you’re officially head of the town, though the Combine leave a few troops behind as a reminder that Cinderville is now part of it. They don’t do too much though, and mostly leave you to your own devices. You’re giving them free fuel, free conscripts, and even letting them use most of your remaining vehicles, and barely asking for anything in return, why shouldn’t they let you do what you want? They’re doing what they want. Besides they’re busy at war with a bunch of cyborgs and you’re so far away. They won’t be interfering anytime soon. Five years pass… Ten years have passed since the bombs dropped and civilization seems to be reforming…unfortunately. The Combine won the war with the Cybernetic Evolution a couple years ago and have had time to focus on their current holdings a lot more. This means they’re focusing more on Cinderville, which you don’t like. In fact more and more of a Combine influence is being felt. They’re starting to supply the town regardless of what you said before. No longer are the people living in poverty and near starvation. By God, they’re even trying to REBUILD parts of it! You don’t like this. You protest their meddling, but they don’t pay any attention to you, Cinderville IS under Combine control after all. You’re just there for looks and in fact you’re not looking too good to them anymore. It seems the Combine wants to put one of their own in power here to run things. They don’t need to compromise their ideology anymore now that the war’s over. They don’t need to associate with scum like you anymore now. Things are truly coming to an end… > You try to acclimate yourself You “resign” your position and leave Cinderville. Not knowing where to go, you go back to your second home outside Cinderville. You try to live a quiet isolated life like before, but you can’t do it now, your urge to control, to kill, and create anarchy is too strong now. You can’t go back, so you try to go back to your past activities by visiting Cinderville every now and then to commit a few murders in the night, however being under direct Combine control now, things like that are investigated a little more now, especially when the body count starts piling up. It’s during one of your nightly visits, that you’re captured and delivered quick and efficient justice by Combine troops.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you have any motivation to keep your position, you’ll have to ally with the Combine, for now at least. You decide to at least hear what they have to say. Two envoys come to speak to you; one of them is some rough looking man that probably thinks he’s some sort of hard ass. The other is a woman, she looks like she’s probably seen battle, but you’re more interested in her seeing your dick up close and personal if that’s possible. “So, I hear you’re one of the Warlords of this town. My name’s Roger and this is Vivica. We belong to The Combine as I’m sure you already know.” “Yeah, yeah, I already know all about your little paramilitary outfit. Trying to tame the wasteland or some shit. Futile endeavor I say. It all comes down to chaos in the end. The last world war proved that.” “Yeah, and I’ve ran into your type before. Typical petty despot who thrives off of the suffering around you. Let me guess, you were probably a petty criminal or prisoner in your old life. A loser. Someone who never could accomplish anything, until AFTER the bombs hit. And look at you; you can’t even do that right. You don’t even control this whole town. You’re still a loser.” You smile at Roger’s poor attempt at psychology. “Oh, is that what I was eh? Well I guess that makes us both sides of the same coin. You were probably some boring fucktard in a boring job, with a boring life. You probably watched reality shows about cops and mercs an’ shit wishing you could do that, but were too much of a sheep to go out and have adventures of your own. You just obeyed the laws and followed the rules. Now look at you. Mr. wasteland fuckin’ warrior, but even in this new world you’re still a fucking sheep. Still following the rules, the only reason you’re having adventures now is because your superiors tell you to. You’re just as much of a fucking loser as I am.” Roger noticeably grows angry by your own psychological evaluation, but Vivica steps in to mediate. “Look, you fuckers compare dick sizes later, we ain’t got time for it right now.” “Ooowee! I like the mouth on this one! I’d like it more around my dick though…you interested in seeing just what my dick size exactly is honey?” “(Sigh) I suggest you better explain why the Combine should back you for control of this shithole town and what you’d even bring to the table other than your miniscule cock you like flapping in the wind.” “Why do I need to convince you? You’re the fuckers who want the damn town, but if you must know, I already have control of a biofuel refinery. I’d say that puts me as a pretty good favorite right there.” “Eh, not really. One would wonder why someone who has such an advantage doesn’t already HAVE control of the entire town. It seems like only someone who is really stupid or too incompetent to lead his side to ultimate victory would be the only logical explanation.” “Oh it’s just that simple to you huh? For your information I don’t exactly HAVE the same amount of people as the other warlords. I have enough to defend my territory and that’s about it and sure I can refuel all my vehicles easy enough, but so fuckin’ what? You think that means shit in close urban combat? Some sniper can just blast a driver riding down the street. Don’t mean shit. However! My refinery can be used to help fuel YOUR vehicles in your war with…what those cyborgs right? I mean you guys are fighting in the open battlefield where you can maneuver and drive around. You can also transport supplies quicker. And I know why you also want control of this place. You want conscripts. Well, you’ll get no protests from me; take anyone you want, except my workers at the refinery and myself of course.” Vivica and Roger look at each other and discuss in quiet about what you’ve told them, Vivica speaks up again. “And you would be willing to join the Combine and supply us with whatever we need?” “Sure, like I said, take anyone you want except me or the people needed to run the refinery, of course I hope this isn’t a one way street, I mean I want something too…” “Yes, of course we will transport food and water supplies if you need…” “What? No not that shit. Fuck, I got my own private stash of food and water. And the rest of the shitheads in this town can fend for themselves. Nah, what I want is right here in front of me…” you say beginning to leer at Vivica. Now she begins to feel very uncomfortable. Good. You like that. “Hold on we have to talk this over…” Roger says. “WHAT?!” Vivica shouts. “Sure, sure, you do that. Just remember, this is my offer and I might say it’s a very generous one, I doubt you’ll get a better one. The rest of these warlords are greedy bastards, they’ll want weapons, and a bunch of other shit. All I’m asking for is for some time with a woman and your help with getting rid of the other warlords of course. After I gain control of the entire town, you’ll be able to take whatever you want with no resistance. You want fuel? You got it. You want cannon fodder? You got that too. Decline my offer and well…let’s just say I’ll make sure I do a lot of damage before you fine Combine folks bring me down. I’ll leave you to it to decide.” Vivica and Roger leave your office and you can hear arguing outside. Obviously Vivica is NOT real keen on this compromise and she’s even less keen when it’s decided she needs to “take one for the team”. You fucking love this shit. How far people are willing to degrade themselves for the “greater good”. What a fucking joke. Later that night, you and Vivica are ready to finalize the “deal”, though she’s still trying to maintain some semblance of dignity. “Don’t think you’re gonna be pulling some kinda sick shit with me or hitting me either, because if that happens, I won’t give a fuck about the deal, the Combine, or even if I live, but regardless of what happens, you’ll be singing soprano, and pissing like a bitch for the rest of your life.” A threat without fear of consequence. Somehow you can respect that. Hell you think you might even be in love. “Okay, calm down sweetheart, none of that’s gonna happen. Now let’s start off by getting that pretty mouth of yours in action like I mentioned earlier today…” Afterwards, Vivica grabs her clothes and leaves immediately. You’re a little disappointed, since you almost got the impression she enjoyed herself…oh well, back to business. With the Combine’s help, wiping out the other warlords is a snap. Indeed you could’ve done it yourself long ago if you’d had disciplined people and more of them. Of course none of that matters now, you’re officially head of the town, though the Combine leave a few troops behind as a reminder that Cinderville is now part of it. They don’t do too much though, and mostly leave you to your own devices. You’re giving them free fuel, free conscripts, and even letting them use most of your remaining vehicles, and barely asking for anything in return, why shouldn’t they let you do what you want? They’re doing what they want. Besides they’re busy at war with a bunch of cyborgs and you’re so far away. They won’t be interfering anytime soon. Five years pass… Ten years have passed since the bombs dropped and civilization seems to be reforming…unfortunately. The Combine won the war with the Cybernetic Evolution a couple years ago and have had time to focus on their current holdings a lot more. This means they’re focusing more on Cinderville, which you don’t like. In fact more and more of a Combine influence is being felt. They’re starting to supply the town regardless of what you said before. No longer are the people living in poverty and near starvation. By God, they’re even trying to REBUILD parts of it! You don’t like this. You protest their meddling, but they don’t pay any attention to you, Cinderville IS under Combine control after all. You’re just there for looks and in fact you’re not looking too good to them anymore. It seems the Combine wants to put one of their own in power here to run things. They don’t need to compromise their ideology anymore now that the war’s over. They don’t need to associate with scum like you anymore now. Things are truly coming to an end… > You leave this lousy civilization You can’t really say you didn’t see this coming entirely, The Combine may try hide beneath the guise of being some organization out to rebuild civilization, but at the core it’s just another dictatorship in development. You’ve seen the hypocrisy first hand of how they deal with those like you when it suits their purpose, and then dispose of them, when it doesn’t. However, none of this really matters, the fact remains you can’t stay here at least not in the way you’d want to anyway. You “resign” your position and return back to your second home outside Cinderville where you gather some supplies for your travels and get in your van (which has long been upgraded to function on a more reliable basis now) and decide to live life as a wandering bandit, but not without first sabotaging the biofuel refinery in Cinderville. A sabotage that results in the refinery not only blowing up and killing folks, but also spraying shit all over most of the town. “HA HA! HAVE A NICE LIFE SHITHEADS!” you’re heard saying before driving off. Months go by and you eventually become enemy number one by The Combine for your criminal activity of destroying caravans, murdering citizens, and creating mayhem whenever you can. Sometimes you work alone, sometimes you manage to form a gang for raids, but in all cases your goal is to cause as much misery as you’re able. You’re determined to prove that the concept of order is doomed to failure as it always has. Eventually along with Combine soldiers, freelance bounty hunters are set upon you. You remain free however, always one step ahead… One day driving along an old unused road, you see a strange man standing along side it. He doesn’t look quite human, you’ve heard stories of mutants, (and certainly seen mutated animals) but you’ve also heard most of them stay in the City where they were created by the radioactivity there. Of course there’s always a few that wander away. Looks like this one has, in fact he looks like he has with a purpose, he pulls a gun on you as your van barrels down the road, in his other hand is a piece of paper, probably a wanted poster of you. It looks like this mutie is being dramatic, but you don’t know… there’s something really creepy about him. He looks like death personified with the way he’s just waiting for you. > You run him down You swerve your van in the mutant bounty hunter’s direction, but he dodges out of the way so quick that you almost don’t see him move. As he dodges, you hear your tires blow out (Which is weird since you didn’t hear any shots) before you to crash into some nearby rocks. You fly out the windshield and smash your head open into those same rocks, amazingly you aren’t immediately killed and you manage to crawl off your hood and onto the ground. Unfortunately a strange mutant worm like creature was making its home in the rocks and after you disturbed it, it came outside to investigate. You’re in no condition to escape. Unlike most, you became food for the worms while you were still alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t really say you didn’t see this coming entirely, The Combine may try hide beneath the guise of being some organization out to rebuild civilization, but at the core it’s just another dictatorship in development. You’ve seen the hypocrisy first hand of how they deal with those like you when it suits their purpose, and then dispose of them, when it doesn’t. However, none of this really matters, the fact remains you can’t stay here at least not in the way you’d want to anyway. You “resign” your position and return back to your second home outside Cinderville where you gather some supplies for your travels and get in your van (which has long been upgraded to function on a more reliable basis now) and decide to live life as a wandering bandit, but not without first sabotaging the biofuel refinery in Cinderville. A sabotage that results in the refinery not only blowing up and killing folks, but also spraying shit all over most of the town. “HA HA! HAVE A NICE LIFE SHITHEADS!” you’re heard saying before driving off. Months go by and you eventually become enemy number one by The Combine for your criminal activity of destroying caravans, murdering citizens, and creating mayhem whenever you can. Sometimes you work alone, sometimes you manage to form a gang for raids, but in all cases your goal is to cause as much misery as you’re able. You’re determined to prove that the concept of order is doomed to failure as it always has. Eventually along with Combine soldiers, freelance bounty hunters are set upon you. You remain free however, always one step ahead… One day driving along an old unused road, you see a strange man standing along side it. He doesn’t look quite human, you’ve heard stories of mutants, (and certainly seen mutated animals) but you’ve also heard most of them stay in the City where they were created by the radioactivity there. Of course there’s always a few that wander away. Looks like this one has, in fact he looks like he has with a purpose, he pulls a gun on you as your van barrels down the road, in his other hand is a piece of paper, probably a wanted poster of you. It looks like this mutie is being dramatic, but you don’t know… there’s something really creepy about him. He looks like death personified with the way he’s just waiting for you. > You duck down and speed past him You figure he’s probably expecting that, so you speed up and duck your head down. You hear the sound of two of your tires blowing out, which is strange because you didn’t hear any shots. You just barely avoid crashing into some nearby rocks; however you do flip your van on its side. Cursing your situation, you quickly recover, grab what supplies you can and crawl out the side window. You briefly turn your head to see how far the mutant bounty hunter is, but he’s completely disappeared. You have no idea where he’s gone. Just then a different gunshot is heard and coming from another direction down the road. “Hey get that bastard, we gotta collect that bounty!” an armored man says to another. “What the fuck? Did they hire the whole state to bring me down?” you say to yourself hauling ass out of the area, with more bullets whizzing your way. Eventually you manage to lose all of them. You find a nearby abandoned gas station to rest in and reflect on things. That was a very close call. Its obvious The Combine is REALLY out for your blood, they got bounty hunters scouring the wasteland for you, and you’ve noticed your encounters have only increased recently. This is going to be your life now. You’re going to be hunted until the day you die which will be soon, if you aren’t careful. You can kill all the Combine troops, hunters and mercs you want, they’ll still send people after you. The only thing you can do is leave the area altogether or find some place to hide for awhile. > You hide You have to lay low somewhere for a few months, maybe even a year! However, you doubt if going to a town is going to be suitable. Your reputation at this point is pretty infamous, not to mention The Combine has a nasty habit of incorporating towns into their organization, if they aren’t affiliated already. Even an “Outlaw” town wouldn’t be suitable, you’d just have to watch your back even more, and bounty hunters aren’t adverse to entering those either. You don’t know where to go, so you just start walking, it’s during this time when you find something that just might help you. Its something you haven’t though about in years…those old late night commercials you used to see before the bombs dropped. Ground Zero Survival. The corporation that was trying to sell their shelters to people. You remember when you were hiding in your basement after the attack, you thought about how much you should’ve bought a bomb shelter. Indeed, you wonder what things would’ve been like if you had… Well you’ve found one, sitting right here in the middle of nowhere. You go inside. You enter the shelter entrance and see a single elevator door across from you and an ATM like machine nearby. Upon looking at the ATM machine thing, the display reads “ERROR”. You press a few buttons and hit the machine a couple times, just to see what happens, to your surprise the elevator door opens up. “HELLO JOHNATHAN! YOUR IDENTIFICATION HAS BEEN CONFIRMED AND YOUR CARD HAS BEEN APPROVED! WE AT GZS HOPE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY HAVE A PLESANT STAY DURING THE APOCALYPSE!” Huh, that’s weird. You shrug your shoulders and guess the computer thinks you’re someone else. You briefly wonder what happened to the family that was supposed to use this shelter though. You enter the elevator which goes down. You can’t help but notice there aren’t any call buttons on the thing, when you exit you also notice there aren’t any call buttons on the outside either. When it closes behind, you suddenly get the sinking feeling you’re trapped down here and you’re pretty much right. “What the hell kind of idiotic design is this shit? GZS must’ve been run by a bunch of fucktards!” Before you worry about it, you explore the Shelter a bit more and this really isn’t so bad. You’re really well stocked here. Food, water, entertainment, comfortable living conditions. Actually it’s like a much bigger and better version of your old home outside of Cinderville. You decide if you have to be a prisoner here, this isn’t really a bad way to spend it. You settle in and make yourself comfortable. Ten years pass… Twenty years have passed and even you’re amazed you survived this long given all the things you did. Of course hiding down here probably helped. In fact you’ve been reflecting on your past life lately. Or more accurately re-examining it. It’s weird since it was isolation that sort of set you on the dark path you chose, yet now, your isolation is creating a sense of regret and sorrow in you. And its not the isolation itself, it’s just the fact you’ve had more time to think about all the terrible things you’ve done in the past and much of it is extremely appalling. Unforgivable really. You’ve lied. You’ve stole. You’ve tortured. You’ve betrayed. You’ve used people as slave labor. You’ve murdered countless people. You’ve killed children. You’ve raped women. You’ve orchestrated chaos. You’ve committed numerous atrocities and you did it mostly all for your own pleasure. And oddly you’ve gotten away with all of it for the most part. Why did you do any of it? You don’t even know why anymore, you’re just sorry that you did. You’ve begun to have nightmares about some of the things you’ve done. All the faces of your victims. It’s like it’s all starting to finally catch up with you…in more ways than one. You wake up in a cold sweat from one of your nightmares one day, except this time you see something at the foot of your bed. Something familiar, but strangely appropriate. “Y’know, everyone else stopped looking for you after you disappeared, but I knew if I continued my search, I’d find you eventually.” It’s that mutant bounty hunter you saw ten years ago. At this range he really does look like death personified. In fact, you don’t think he’s a mutant at all. For the first time in your life, you feel fear, but there’s something very surreal about all of this. “You can’t be here! The elevator doesn’t work! I would’ve heard you coming down!” you say in disbelief. “Well you were asleep, but it’s amazing what you can block out of your mind, I think you know all about that don’t you?” “…how did you find me?” “You can’t hide from the past. Of course I think you know all about that too, right?” “I’m hallucinating! I’m seeing things that aren’t there. I’m sick!” “That’s probably the understatement of the decade. But you haven’t been well in twenty years and that’s why I’m here now. I can make it all go away. Tried to do it ten years ago, but you weren’t ready yet I guess.” It suddenly occurs to you. This…being isn’t here to punish you at all; he’s here to release you. And it’s finally welcome. “Will you really make it all go away?” you ask with a quiver in your voice. “Of course, like I said that’s why I’m here.” “Oh good, thank you!” you begin to sob. The pale being readies his weapon, but before he releases you, you still have some questions. “Wait, before you do it. Do you know why I did it?” “Because you could.” “That’s it?” “That’s it. All those other reasons you might’ve toyed with in the past were merely philosophical smoke screens to mask the truth from your mind. You did what you did, because you could. There is no deeper reason. The people who started World War three did it, because they could. None of it makes any sense, and any attempt to make sense of it, is meaningless. Your time here was meaningless. Whether you killed a bunch of people or you had saved a bunch of people, it wouldn’t have mattered. Life and world would’ve gone on regardless. You weren’t special, you never were. And you know it, deep down inside you know it.” For the first time you finally see everything so clearly. “Yes…you’re right. I see that now.” “Of course I’m right…so now are you ready?” “Yes.” You sit up in your bed and close your eyes. You hear the sound of a pistol being cocked and feel a steel barrel against your temple. You breathe hard in anticipation. Then you hear a shot.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You figure he’s probably expecting that, so you speed up and duck your head down. You hear the sound of two of your tires blowing out, which is strange because you didn’t hear any shots. You just barely avoid crashing into some nearby rocks; however you do flip your van on its side. Cursing your situation, you quickly recover, grab what supplies you can and crawl out the side window. You briefly turn your head to see how far the mutant bounty hunter is, but he’s completely disappeared. You have no idea where he’s gone. Just then a different gunshot is heard and coming from another direction down the road. “Hey get that bastard, we gotta collect that bounty!” an armored man says to another. “What the fuck? Did they hire the whole state to bring me down?” you say to yourself hauling ass out of the area, with more bullets whizzing your way. Eventually you manage to lose all of them. You find a nearby abandoned gas station to rest in and reflect on things. That was a very close call. Its obvious The Combine is REALLY out for your blood, they got bounty hunters scouring the wasteland for you, and you’ve noticed your encounters have only increased recently. This is going to be your life now. You’re going to be hunted until the day you die which will be soon, if you aren’t careful. You can kill all the Combine troops, hunters and mercs you want, they’ll still send people after you. The only thing you can do is leave the area altogether or find some place to hide for awhile. > You leave Hiding won’t do any good, you have to get out the area altogether. Hopefully your infamous reputation hasn’t spread THAT far yet. Of course there’s the fact you have to get out of the area first. You make haste immediately. Over the course of a mere week, you’re hounded by attackers. You barely get out of the situations alive half of the time. You’re exhausted and can’t even afford to sleep for very long. Eventually within the month your days soon come to an end, when a bounty hunter snipes you from a vehicle with a high powered rifle, striking you in the back. You don’t die right away though, but you’re in no condition to do anything as you collapse to the ground. The vehicle stops nearby and another one of your assailants kicks you over before finishing you off. You can’t help but be surprised by who you see. “Hey, now I got something for YOUR mouth!” Vivica says to you, before shooting you in the head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The whole point of this endeavor was to take control of the town and you’re not going to let Jim get that glory. You go find him in the Mayor’s Manor still tormenting the mayor and his wife. The mayor is currently lying on the floor bloody and helpless with his legs a useless mess. His wife is naked in a fetal position in a corner just rocking to herself in a state of perpetual shock, its apparent she’s been raped over and over. Jim doesn’t have anyone else with him, not even have Dan or Ramon, he’s all by himself in a drunken stupor at the moment celebrating his new found power, unaware that you’re about to relieve him of it. “Heeeeey! Killer! Its you! Have a drink! This fucker’s got some classy shit stashed in his cellar! (Hic!)” “Nah, that’s okay. So I see you’ve been having fun eh?” “Me? Oh fuck yeah! The mayor over here has got himself one fine piece of ass! Been tryin’ her out every other hour y’know what I mean? HAR HAR HAR!” “Hmmm, yes.” You say looking over at her again, while Jim continues to pontificate. “Shit man (Hic!) I think me, you, Dan and fuckin’ Ramon are the few straight bastards in this gang! Those fuckin’ raiders we recruited? I ain’t even seen them try to get any of the pussy in this town. They must’ve been in the wasteland too damn long or somethin’, I think they forgot what a god (hic!) damn bitch looks like. Been cornholin’ each other so much they went an’ fell in love! HAR HAR HAR HAR! (hic!) Ah hell I’m not judgin’. (hic!)” While Jim wanders into the next room still talking about his gang’s sexual preference, you go over to the mayor who’s been baring his mental and physical pain in silence the whole time. When you crouch near him and pull your pistol out, he thinks this is it, but you have something “special” in mind. You see that his hands are still in good shape so you keep your voice down and look him in the eyes. “You’re gonna die. Nothing can stop this. Resign yourself to this fact. Life sucks and that’s all there is to it.” you say unloading your pistol, but keeping one bullet in the chamber. “…however, you can still get vengeance. I thought you might like to know that I’m the one who planned this attack. I’m the one who orchestrated this town’s destruction. A town you no longer have any control over and has had many of its citizens viciously killed thanks to my actions… the fat piece of drunken shit in the next room has personally beaten you and violated your wife, repeatedly. Over and over. In front of you. His fat smelly flesh all over her while he enjoyed it the whole time. Probably shoved his cock in all three holes too huh?” He looks at you with a mixture of fear, hate, and sorrow, while tears fill his eyes. You place the gun in his hand. “…well anyway, there’s one bullet in the gun. Remember, you got one shot, one chance for vengeance, make your choice. Better hide that, here comes Jim.” Jim comes stumbling back in room, while the mayor holds the gun close to himself in a bad attempt to hide it. The stand back waiting to see what happens next. “…I mean hell I’ve fucked a few prags when I (hic!) was in prison, but…hey…what have you got there?” Jim asks seeing the mayor holding something, but not able to make it out clearly due to his inebriated state. Jim gets closer, closer, and then mayor draws on him. He sobers up just long enough to realize he’s got a bullet between his eyes. “…what the fuuuuuuuuck…” Jim says before falling face first on the floor. “Wow, that was pretty intense, I mean my own life was on the line there! Whew! But I figured you’d kill Jim, too bad it wasn’t the right choice on your part.” You say punching the mayor in the face and take your pistol back, loading it again. “Stupid bastard, didn’t it occur to you that I’d do the same thing to your wife?” “No…don’t…” he says looking up at you with blood coming from his mouth, as your own curls cruelly upward. “Just kidding, I wouldn’t stick my dick anywhere near Jim has been. Looks like you made the right choice after all!” You put the mayor out of his misery and shoot him in the face. You then approach the mayor’s wife who’s still been rocking to herself this whole time. You look at her a little closer. “Hmm, you must’ve been very beautiful before this all happened.” You remark, caressing her damaged face, before ending her life as well. Having had your fun, you go and announce you’re the leader now. Unfortunately you don’t quite have the charisma or imposing physique Jim had, so not everyone is willing to follow. (Ramon and Dan are among the first ones you kill for disobeying you) What ultimately happens is the town becomes a factional warzone where nobody is really in control and the poor Cinderville townsfolk are caught in the middle. Eventually things stabilize and a few of the “heavy weights” carve out their own territories and there’s an unstable peace in the town. Fights still break out, but there’s never an imbalance of power or advantage for long. (Though, maintaining a hold on the biofuel refinery gives you a little bit of an advantage…) Four years pass… Five years have passed since the bombs dropped and you couldn’t be happier. You’ve accomplished more than you ever did in the old world. World War Three was the best thing that ever happened to you. You’ve been running your own slice of heaven in this hellish world and had the freedom to live out your true nature, which you’ve done for the past five years. And now that freedom could be coming to an end. Recently through rumors and wandering travelers who have the misfortune of finding Cinderville, you’ve found out that there’s a growing organization trying to “tame” the wasteland. They call themselves The Combine. Apparently they’re at war with another organization called the Cybernetic Collective and the Combine’s been aggressively taking towns and conscripting the citizens to fight in their war. And now they’ve come to Cinderville. They arrive in well taken care of vehicles, with better training, better discipline and better weapons. They begin talking to everybody they can. They aren’t going to take the entire town by force, no what they intend to do is to back one of the stronger factions to wipe out the rest, and then absorb their puppet into the Combine to have control over the entire town. You’re not fooled. The question just remains is; are you going to ally with them first, or fight this threat to your freedom? > You resist them You’re not going to be some fucking puppet, if you’re ever going to control this whole town, you’ll do it yourself, in fact you display your feelings about the Combine immediately when their little envoy unit enters your part of the town by telling your followers to shoot them on sight. Of course killing a few of their number doesn’t endear you to them, not that it was supposed to, but unfortunately one of the other town warlords decides to take advantage of the Combine visit and isn’t quite as proud as you are. An all out battle for the town occurs again, and you’re not on the winning side as the warlord who sold out to the Combine gains more ground. You vow to do as much damage as you can though, namely by burning down most of your side of the town, killing every non-combatant living under your control there, as well as destroying the biofuel refinery and ultimately fleeing Cinderville. It all comes to a final end though when you make your last stand against Combine soldiers in your old home where you killed your first victims five years ago. After all the trouble you gave them back at Cinderville, the Combine soldiers don’t even attempt a long drawn out shoot out with you. They just start bombarding the place with rockets and grenades. The entire place is razed to the ground with you in it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While you probably could kill this fat fucker, but for now you have to have all the help you can get and no disunity to pull this plan off, so you’ll back down for now… “Hey, I never said I was the leader, I know you are Jim.” “Good. Glad we understand each other.” “So go ahead and tell us what YOU think is the best course of action for this plan.” “Um…well…your strategy sounded pretty good.” Jim says predictably Just as you thought, you’re STILL in control, just had to give the fool the appearance that he’s still in control. After taking some supplies you think you’ll need and re-trapping your home, you all set off to leave. (You take your van) In about a day, you arrive around in the area that Dan was talking about, in fact you don’t need to look for the raiders; they instantly approach you when they see you coming. It would appear some of them have a few vehicles as well. Jim signals for everyone to halt and he gets off his bike. Ramon and Dan halt near Jim, but don’t get off their bikes. You in the meantime grab your hunting rifle and hang in the back a bit, you just hope Jim can pull this shit off, especially since you’re greatly outnumbered. Soon the raiders arrive and stop their own vehicles. The leader steps out of his beat up car, and steps forward. He looks mean enough, like he’s been living in the wasteland from day one. “So, you got any last words, before we fuck you and eat you?” he asks Jim. “Yeah, I heard you’re the pussy ass bitch, who can’t even handle a few pigs and some fuckin’ vigilantes in Cinderville.” Jim replies. The raider leader’s expression gets even meaner looking if such a thing is possible. “Oh? And I suppose YOU can do a better job you fat tub of shit?” he sneers. “Sure the fuck can asshole, all I need is more men. In fact I’d say yours would do just fine, so I’d say you’d better just step aside and see a pro in action.” “Don’t think so, besides I’ve already seen a fag get his mouth gang fucked by a bunch of guys.” You sure hope Jim is a better fighter, because he’s losing in the battle of snappy comebacks right now. In fact he can’t come up with a response, so he just slugs the raider leader instead. You fully expect the shooting to start, but instead the raider leader laughs, pulls out the biggest blade you’ve ever seen and screams “THIS ONE IS MINE!” During the fight, you scan all your potential greatest threats and the quickest order to pick them off, in case this all goes south. You’re so busy doing that, that you’re not really paying attention to the actual fight, which Jim as it turns out, is winning. After tussling on the ground, slamming into nearby vehicles, punching, kicking and all the rest, Jim finally puts an end to his opponent by shoving his own knife through his throat. Everyone goes silent, and Jim stands up wiping the blood off of himself. “Alright! Now listen the fuck up! Your previous leader was a lame ass who couldn’t get the job done, and that changes right now! We’re gonna get fuckin’ organized and take that goddamn little town! Might makes fuckin’ right! Are ya with me, or are ya gonna go running off like a limp wristed sissy?” Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t kill Jim, because these raiders seem to really identify with him and they unanimously accept him as their new leader. You doubt if you would’ve had that success. You’ve never been a people person, regardless of who those people might’ve been, however you are an idea person, and now you move on to your next phase. After Jim finally gets all the new people to listen, you begin to explain your plan, the problem before is they kept stupidly attacking from one direction, rather than doing the classic “pincer” maneuver and attacking from multiple sides. Using Dan’s information, you specifically pick out areas where the most damage can initially be done with the least amount of risk. You point out the spot where there’s still an old school being used to teach the children. Take control of that with the kids inside and you’ve severely reduced most of the townspeople’s willingness to fight, which will curb the neighborhood “Charles Bronsons” from helping the police force. In fact you decide to take that job since you want Jim to lead the raiders in the main direct assault force with the cops. Dan and Ramon will be traveling with their own smaller force to attack other parts of the town, spreading out the cops’ usually organized force. It’s also hoped that the more disreputable elements that Dan mentioned living in the town, will join in the mayhem on your side, or at least against their side. The raider vehicles themselves are not in the best condition, and most of them are running low on gas, but they’ll do for now. You figure if all goes well, the still fuel that you created back at your home, as well as the farming area in the town with the pig and cow shit biofuel can solve those problems later. In fact you specifically mention that NO damage should happen to that area in this attack, though you don’t expect them to follow that order. You don’t want to wait long to attack with this bunch, since they have the attention span of a gnat of crack. You have to attack soon when they’re all hyped up. You suggest that to Jim, who agrees since he’s anxious to get to this dastardly business anyway. In a couple days you’re attacking the town as planned. You start on your end first, making a beeline to the school, before the main attack force arrives. A few of the raiders are in your van itching to start creating some havoc. You stop outside of the school and run inside with your current trigger happy cohorts. A couple of them kill a few kids and you have to remind them you’re SUPPOSED to be holding them hostage right now! If the townsfolk don’t comply THEN you can start capping the little bastards. You tell them to go and kill the teachers if they want. In the mean time you take the opportunity to shout from the window to the crowd gathering outside. You tell them that if any of them start trying to defend the town or help the cops, then their kids are going to be killed. To show you’re really serious though, you tell one of the raiders to toss a kid out the window. A collective cry goes up from the crowd when the body hits the pavement and their pathetic begging is pleasing to your ears. You get a few people shooting at you anyway (Obviously not parents) but having a good vantage point and a hunting rifle, you start sniping the idiots who have decided to ignore your threats. A few more kids thrown out the window causes ALL the shooting to stop. You can hear the sounds of battle from your position; no cops have arrived so you’re guessing Jim and the rest are doing their job. You’re really enjoying all this chaos you’ve created, you were just stagnating before the bombs dropped, now in this new world you’re free to embrace the darkest part of yourself that always existed, but wasn’t allowed the flourish. You love this fucking shit. Eventually you hear a roar of a motorcycle, followed by the sound of some bottles breaking. You go to check the window and see the crowd outside running and screaming, some of them on fire from the Molotov Cocktails just thrown at them. You also see Ramon shouting up to you. “Hey! We’re winning man! The remaining cops are barricaded in their fucking station, broke the Mayor’s legs and dragged him through the street and best of all we got some of the other local punks to join us! There’s practically no more resistance left! Its total fucking anarchy man!” You turn around and begin smiling at the kids you’re holding hostage which somehow scares them even more. You pick up a young girl and kiss her hard on the lips and laugh at the fear in her eyes. You then throw her down and tell the raiders with you they can do whatever they want, because you’re going to indulge in some pure havoc on your own. After a couple days and nights of indulging in this activity, Jim finally gets around to settling his new gang down (Which he’s inventively called “Jim’s Reapers”) and wondering about what to do with the town now that he has control over it. He seems to have forgotten already that it was YOU, who orchestrated this. Now that the task has been accomplished perhaps this would be the time to discuss the leadership role again. Then again, you wonder if you even want to bother. Sure there’s the power and such, but there’s also the headache of dealing with all these morons on a regular basis and running the town. The “fun” part is over as it were. > You go back home You don’t want any part of this. You indulged in some chaos on a mass scale, killed a bunch of people and now you’re done. You don’t really want to bother running a town. You leave to go back to your home, a few days later Jim comes by asking you why you left, and you explain, you’re a loner by nature and just want to live in solitude for the most part. If you ever desire to go raise some hell, you’ll visit Cinderville and bust some heads or something. Jim says he gets it and says you’ll always be welcome in Cinderville, as long as you don’t get in his way running the place You tell him that won’t be a problem, and then you quickly shove a knife in his throat. Jim gives you a surprised look for a brief second, clutches at his bloody throat, lets out a gurgled hiss and dies. You drag his body inside and chop it up to make a new totem to put outside. You half expect someone to come looking for their new fearless leader, but nobody does, presumably someone else attempted to fill the power vacuum, actually several people did. (Ramon and Dan were among the first to try and fail miserably) Cinderville descends into a chaotic place of constant strife and you go back to waylaying travelers. Though sometimes you take a trip to Cinderville when you want to be “social”, but it’s mostly to better hone your survival skills, though you also take the opportunity to sadistically murder some of the poor original inhabitants of Cinderville who’s lives have become a living hell now. It’s like you created your own personal “gym”. Four years pass… Five years have passed since the bombs dropped and you’ve enjoyed yourself more or less since it’s happened, you have complete independence and freedom to do whatever you want, but as always all things do come to an end. During your trips to the Cinderville, you’ve heard about some new organization called The Combine, attempting to “tame” the wasteland. It seems they’re in some sort of war with another organization called the Cybernetic Evolution. From what you heard, neither one seems to be a shining beacon of light in this dark world, and that sort of reassures you too. It means that civilization won’t be making a come back anytime soon, however it also means they’ve both been scouring the wasteland for recruits, neither one really asking for permission either. Eventually The Combine arrives in Cinderville. They quickly subdue the disorganized rabble there and place the town under their thumb. Indeed the original inhabitants are happy to put up with the totalitarianism of the Combine after the years of mindless chaos. The Combine being the paramilitary organization it is, tends to do a lot of scouting and exploration, so you know its only a matter of time before they find you and chances are that they’re not going to leave you alone. > You leave You know when you’re out numbered and outgunned, no point in sticking around waiting for them to show up. You pack your stuff, fuel up your van and leave. You don’t get far before your van finally breaks down on a permanent basis. It sucks, but you’ve learn enough in the past few years to survive on foot in the wilderness, which you do for a few months, until you encounter something you’ve never dealt with before. Over the horizon you see some shiny figures approaching, they don’t look friendly so you fire upon them immediately. As they get closer, you think they’re some sort of robots, maybe cyborgs. This must be the other faction fighting the Combine. When you realize your bullets aren’t doing enough damage, you turn to run, only to have your legs blasted by some sort of laser beam. The smell of your own burnt flesh hits your nose and the sight of your new stumps hits your eyes as the cybernetic soldiers advance on your position. You pass out from the pain. When you wake up you’ve been fitted with brand new cybernetic implants and legs. The only things going through your mind are to kill humans and to obey someone called Alex. As it turns out you’re a very efficient killing machine, and a key cyborg resulting in the eventual destruction of The Combine. The only problem is in your new “remade” state, you are unable to enjoy any of it. You exist only to follow orders and follow them mindlessly until the very end when you’re finally blown to irreparable scrap and bones during a Combine retreat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t want any part of this. You indulged in some chaos on a mass scale, killed a bunch of people and now you’re done. You don’t really want to bother running a town. You leave to go back to your home, a few days later Jim comes by asking you why you left, and you explain, you’re a loner by nature and just want to live in solitude for the most part. If you ever desire to go raise some hell, you’ll visit Cinderville and bust some heads or something. Jim says he gets it and says you’ll always be welcome in Cinderville, as long as you don’t get in his way running the place You tell him that won’t be a problem, and then you quickly shove a knife in his throat. Jim gives you a surprised look for a brief second, clutches at his bloody throat, lets out a gurgled hiss and dies. You drag his body inside and chop it up to make a new totem to put outside. You half expect someone to come looking for their new fearless leader, but nobody does, presumably someone else attempted to fill the power vacuum, actually several people did. (Ramon and Dan were among the first to try and fail miserably) Cinderville descends into a chaotic place of constant strife and you go back to waylaying travelers. Though sometimes you take a trip to Cinderville when you want to be “social”, but it’s mostly to better hone your survival skills, though you also take the opportunity to sadistically murder some of the poor original inhabitants of Cinderville who’s lives have become a living hell now. It’s like you created your own personal “gym”. Four years pass… Five years have passed since the bombs dropped and you’ve enjoyed yourself more or less since it’s happened, you have complete independence and freedom to do whatever you want, but as always all things do come to an end. During your trips to the Cinderville, you’ve heard about some new organization called The Combine, attempting to “tame” the wasteland. It seems they’re in some sort of war with another organization called the Cybernetic Evolution. From what you heard, neither one seems to be a shining beacon of light in this dark world, and that sort of reassures you too. It means that civilization won’t be making a come back anytime soon, however it also means they’ve both been scouring the wasteland for recruits, neither one really asking for permission either. Eventually The Combine arrives in Cinderville. They quickly subdue the disorganized rabble there and place the town under their thumb. Indeed the original inhabitants are happy to put up with the totalitarianism of the Combine after the years of mindless chaos. The Combine being the paramilitary organization it is, tends to do a lot of scouting and exploration, so you know its only a matter of time before they find you and chances are that they’re not going to leave you alone. > You stay You figure the Combine has better things to do than bother one person living alone. They’re at war with goddamn cyborgs for fuck’s sake and trying to “tame” the wasteland by taking over towns, you doubt if they’ll even notice you. The problem is, the original citizens that managed to survive the hell you created in their town four years ago, tell the Combine all about you. It’s well known at this point that it was YOU who caused the attack in the first place, it’s well known you participated in numerous atrocities during the attack; it’s well known that you’d periodically stalk the streets of Cinderville at night like some demented hunter, viciously killing men, women and children. One of the only requests that they had for The Combine, was for YOU to be killed. The Combine always being an organization to keep the masses at least happy enough for them not to rebel, agrees to their request. After all you’re a scumbag anyway that would probably still continue to harass the town, the best thing to do IS eliminate you. They soon arrive in force outside your home. You’re well stocked and prepared for a siege though; you figure you’ll be able to hold out long enough before it gets to costly to them and they’ll have to break off their attack, at which point you’ll make your escape. However, they’ve also been informed just how dangerous you are, not to mention they don’t want to waste too much time with you, so after confirming you’re inside (Which they do when you kill one of them attempting to get closer to your front door) they just start bombarding the place with rockets and grenades. The entire place is razed to the ground with you in it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Obviously they thought they could just stroll in and take shelter here, bad mistake on their part… You calmly point the shotgun at the man caught in the trap and blast him before he even notices you. The little boy now really begins screaming, but the woman just becomes silent and falls into shock turning her head in your direction covered in the blood of her husband. You don’t feel sick like you did last time; you do feel an overwhelming sense of power though. The woman grabs her son’s hand and turns to run, but realizes two seconds later that she’s only holding on to his hand and the rest of him is lying on the ground, one arm less, from your second blast. “WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!” the woman screams. “Because I can, and there’s nobody around to stop me.” You say and briskly walk over to the woman. After a pathetic struggle you knock her out and drag her into your new home. After all, you’re not sure when you’ll get to see another woman again… A couple days after the incident with the family (and disposing of all three bodies) you begin keeping yourself in better shape. You start exercising regularly, and fixing up your home. You need to be prepared, in case more people ever show up. You MUST defend yourself and your home. You don’t get many, but every now and then another poor soul stumbles across your death lair. You’re merciless. Soon you begin to arrange the vehicles of your victims to form a semi “wall” around your home and place some grisly totems as “decoration”. A year passes… You don’t get visitors anymore, though that’s probably because of the unfriendly image you’ve projected with all the skulls you’ve stuck on the spikes outside. Part of you is glad that you aren’t being disturbed anymore, but the other part misses the killing. You begin to wonder if you shouldn’t start venturing out more, but you’d hate to leave your home. One day you’re awakened by the roar of motorcycles. You’ve got visitors again, you ready your weapons. As you head upstairs you hear that inevitable “SNAP!” sound followed by screaming. Yet another victim to your traps, though you hear the typical sounds of distress, you also hear some laughter, taunting even, which has got you more curious than anything. You check through a little peephole you made and see a bunch of biker types, one is lying on the ground, his leg nearly severed by the hidden bear trap. While one is trying to free him, a couple of the others are just laughing and remarking about how it looks like it really hurts. “AAAAAARGH! AGHHH!” “Look are you assholes going to help or not?” one of them asks. “Hey, I told you fuckers not to go traipsing into a place that has skulls stuck on stakes. Y’all should’ve known it wasn’t exactly going to be a friendly place.” “We need fuckin’ gas Jim, and this place has a lot of vehicles, and maybe some of them have gas. We had to go check!” “Well yeah, but that didn’t mean just walking around unaware of your surroundings…shit that leg looks bad.” “GET IT OFF! AAAAHHHH!” “That leg is bad. Even if you did get it off of him, he’s probably going to lose it to infection. I wiped my own shit on it, not to mention it was developing a nice set of rust on it when I found it. I’d say his bike riding days are over.” You say standing your doorway with your shotgun ready. The bikers look in your direction, one looks like he’s going to pull his pistol, but the one called Jim stops him. He’s obviously the leader. “You might be right, stranger, but that still leaves you outnumbered one to three. You sure you wanna take those odds?” Jim says. “I’ll take ‘em and I’ll enjoy it. It’s been a long time since I’ve killed a whole mess of people.” “Oh, so you’re a REAL killer eh?” “Better killer than you.” “Hah! I doubt that! See me an’ the boys here have been raisin’ hell where ever we can. Come across a few towns and let’s just say we’re not real welcome there anymore. It’s a brand new world, and only the strong are gonna survive it.” “Yeah? Well it looks like one of your flock isn’t so strong now.” “Yeah…well you might be right about that stranger…maybe someone should put him out of his misery. Can’t very well ride with one leg, that’d be kind of silly.” The biker trying to help speaks up. “Oh come on Jim man! Clyde here saved all of our asses about a month ago!” “Yeah? Well what has he done for us lately? The stranger’s right, we gotta put him down, it’s the kind thing to do really. You gonna do it, Dan?” “No…I…mean…well…” “Pussy. Nevermind. Ramon you gonna do it?” “Shit yeah! Here hold on, oh fuck.” Ramon says pulling out his pistol and then dropping it on the ground. Jim just shakes his head. “Ramon, its amazing you’ve even lasted this long with your clumsy ass. Fuck it, I’LL do it.” > You kill Clyde yourself, along with the rest of them Before Jim can do anything, you take the initiative and splatter Clyde all over Ramon, and Dan. “SHIT! MY BOOTS!” Ramon yells. Dan doesn’t say anything, he just falls backwards on his ass, fumbling to get out his own pistol. Another blast near him, stops him from pursuing that line of action though. Jim has pulled out his own weapon and is now pointing it at you. You’re not worried. “Stop talkin’ about killin’ and just fuckin’ do it.” You say calmly. “Oh we’re gonna stop talking alright, and the killing will be continuing with YOU!” “Still talkin’. How about we see how much of a bad ass you claim you are?” You toss away your shotgun and step out of your home, pulling a big ass knife from a sheath attached to your waist. No don’t have any fear whatsoever. “Holy shit Jim this motherfucker’s crazy!” Ramon shouts backing away. “I don’t give a shit, this dickhead wants to play it this way, I’m more than willing to oblige.” Jim tosses his pistol away and pulls out a knife as well, at which point you grab the pistol from your back. You shoot Dan in the head first, knowing that he’s currently still the biggest threat, then you quickly shoot Jim in both of his legs. “ARRGH! FUCK! TREACHEROUS BASTARD!” Jim says holding on to his kneecaps. “Aww, look at that, looks like you won’t be able to ride either; you know what that means…that’s right.” “Ramon kill this fucker!” Jim yells, but Ramon’s already run off to get on his motorcycle. He manages to get it started and go a couple feet, before your bullets to his back cause him to fall off and dump the bike which skids out of control and slide noisily across the empty road. Ramon’s still alive, but he’s not going anywhere, you turn your attention back to Jim, who’s attempting to retrieve his weapon, but you prevent that from happening with a couple more shots. Finally you go back over to Ramon’s bloody limp body. He begs for his life pitifully. “Please…don’t…shoot…me…” “I’m not; I’ve wasted too many bullets on you fucktards this day; I’ll be finishing you off with my knife.” Four more bodies. While these types at first seemed like “kindred spirits” they really weren’t. They were just more victims. You hack off their heads and put them on stakes as is your routine. You place them a little further from your home this time, as if to stretch out your “domain” a little more. After this distraction, you go back to your usual solitary existence of talking to yourself and laughing at your own macabre jokes. 4 more years pass… It’s been five years since you embraced your mad hermit ways. Over the years you haven’t had many visitors, at least not directly. You started getting bored and began venturing a bit further from your home, not too far though. For the most part you never really found anybody, except the odd bandit, or lone wanderer. You started torturing most of these people before killing them. Not for entirely for pleasure, but more for information, since you began to get curious about what else was going on in the world, or at least in your area, you found most of the information fascinating. Apparently to a few towns, this area is considered a dangerous area inhabited by mutant cannibals and everyone advises all right thinking people to stay away! Nobody thinks it’s just one person killing everyone. Some how that fills you with pride. However, you also hear about some new organization called The Combine, attempting to “tame” the wasteland. It seems they’re in some sort of war with another organization called the Cybernetic Evolution. From what you heard, neither one seems to be a shining beacon of light in this dark world, and that sort of reassures you too. It means that civilization won’t be making a come back anytime soon, you LIKE the way things are. Of course there are drawbacks, to the strongest of the fittest ideology and that’s the fact there’s usually someone always stronger; one day you get more direct visitors again. This time you’re awakened by the sounds of a couple of vehicles and several people. You prepare you weapons and head upstairs, watching from your peephole before acting. You see a bunch of paramilitary types; they’re armed and look a lot more prepared for combat than your past visitors. “Whoa! Watch that trap Steve! This whole area seems to be filled with them.” “Roger, why the hell are we here anyway? We should be fighting those fucking cyborgs. We’ve got them on the run!” “Because Harry said the towns around this area are worried that due to their loss in man power from the current war, they’ll be defenseless from the mutant cannibals that live here.” “Since when does Harry give a shit about the Combine citizens?” “I dunno Leonard; he doesn’t…though I have noticed a slight change in his personality ever since he hooked up with Marina. He’s slightly less of an asshole now that he’s getting some every once in awhile. Shit, I’m glad he sent us here, I was sick of killing cyborgs. Mutants would be a nice change of pace. Probably easier to take out as well.” “I don’t even think there’s any mutants here. I mean come on, some of you guys went to the city, and other than there and a few of them wandering around the outskirts, have you ever heard of any organized mutant presence anywhere else? It’s probably just a really vicious biker gang, look at those bikes over there.” “Well that’s a good point Vivica, but I doubt if its simple raiders or bikers. Those types actively attack towns, not linger in one place, though I suppose it’s possible.” “You know what I think? I think its just one crazy fucker killing people in the area. I mean look at all the vehicles here. If it was mutants OR raiders, we would’ve come across some of them by now, and besides, since when do either extensively use traps? Nah, this is some sort serial killer survivalist. He’s probably listening to us right…” You open up the door and blast the current talkative Combine soldier with your shotgun, spraying his skull and brains all over the place. “RUN!” Robert shouts, as all of them scatter. The one called Leonard scatters in the wrong direction though and falls into a pit trap. From his screams it sounds like the sharpened poles inside didn’t kill him immediately. The Combine soldiers hide behind the various vehicles and fire upon your position, but you’ve already closed and locked the door at this point, staying low to the ground as bullets begin finding their way into your home. After the barrage of bullets, things go silent for a moment You look through your peephole only to see them all throwing grenades at your home! You immediately retreat to the backroom of the store, as the grenades explode behind you giving the Combine soldiers a way in. > You descend into your underground lair and ambush them there You fling open the trap door and quickly climb down; you figure as soon as they attempt to come in after you, you can easily pick them off. Unfortunately the Combine soldiers are a little too smart for that. They’ve been fighting cyborgs for so long that their usual response to a tricky situation is throw explosives at it. Which is exactly what they do. They dump a few more grenades down the hatch, you see them and get cover just in time, but the explosion causes a weakening of the foundation and ultimately causing part of the store to collapse in on itself. Your murderous ways are finally put to an end when a wooden beam falls on your head and the rest of the debris buries your unconscious body forever.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Before Jim can do anything, you take the initiative and splatter Clyde all over Ramon, and Dan. “SHIT! MY BOOTS!” Ramon yells. Dan doesn’t say anything, he just falls backwards on his ass, fumbling to get out his own pistol. Another blast near him, stops him from pursuing that line of action though. Jim has pulled out his own weapon and is now pointing it at you. You’re not worried. “Stop talkin’ about killin’ and just fuckin’ do it.” You say calmly. “Oh we’re gonna stop talking alright, and the killing will be continuing with YOU!” “Still talkin’. How about we see how much of a bad ass you claim you are?” You toss away your shotgun and step out of your home, pulling a big ass knife from a sheath attached to your waist. No don’t have any fear whatsoever. “Holy shit Jim this motherfucker’s crazy!” Ramon shouts backing away. “I don’t give a shit, this dickhead wants to play it this way, I’m more than willing to oblige.” Jim tosses his pistol away and pulls out a knife as well, at which point you grab the pistol from your back. You shoot Dan in the head first, knowing that he’s currently still the biggest threat, then you quickly shoot Jim in both of his legs. “ARRGH! FUCK! TREACHEROUS BASTARD!” Jim says holding on to his kneecaps. “Aww, look at that, looks like you won’t be able to ride either; you know what that means…that’s right.” “Ramon kill this fucker!” Jim yells, but Ramon’s already run off to get on his motorcycle. He manages to get it started and go a couple feet, before your bullets to his back cause him to fall off and dump the bike which skids out of control and slide noisily across the empty road. Ramon’s still alive, but he’s not going anywhere, you turn your attention back to Jim, who’s attempting to retrieve his weapon, but you prevent that from happening with a couple more shots. Finally you go back over to Ramon’s bloody limp body. He begs for his life pitifully. “Please…don’t…shoot…me…” “I’m not; I’ve wasted too many bullets on you fucktards this day; I’ll be finishing you off with my knife.” Four more bodies. While these types at first seemed like “kindred spirits” they really weren’t. They were just more victims. You hack off their heads and put them on stakes as is your routine. You place them a little further from your home this time, as if to stretch out your “domain” a little more. After this distraction, you go back to your usual solitary existence of talking to yourself and laughing at your own macabre jokes. 4 more years pass… It’s been five years since you embraced your mad hermit ways. Over the years you haven’t had many visitors, at least not directly. You started getting bored and began venturing a bit further from your home, not too far though. For the most part you never really found anybody, except the odd bandit, or lone wanderer. You started torturing most of these people before killing them. Not for entirely for pleasure, but more for information, since you began to get curious about what else was going on in the world, or at least in your area, you found most of the information fascinating. Apparently to a few towns, this area is considered a dangerous area inhabited by mutant cannibals and everyone advises all right thinking people to stay away! Nobody thinks it’s just one person killing everyone. Some how that fills you with pride. However, you also hear about some new organization called The Combine, attempting to “tame” the wasteland. It seems they’re in some sort of war with another organization called the Cybernetic Evolution. From what you heard, neither one seems to be a shining beacon of light in this dark world, and that sort of reassures you too. It means that civilization won’t be making a come back anytime soon, you LIKE the way things are. Of course there are drawbacks, to the strongest of the fittest ideology and that’s the fact there’s usually someone always stronger; one day you get more direct visitors again. This time you’re awakened by the sounds of a couple of vehicles and several people. You prepare you weapons and head upstairs, watching from your peephole before acting. You see a bunch of paramilitary types; they’re armed and look a lot more prepared for combat than your past visitors. “Whoa! Watch that trap Steve! This whole area seems to be filled with them.” “Roger, why the hell are we here anyway? We should be fighting those fucking cyborgs. We’ve got them on the run!” “Because Harry said the towns around this area are worried that due to their loss in man power from the current war, they’ll be defenseless from the mutant cannibals that live here.” “Since when does Harry give a shit about the Combine citizens?” “I dunno Leonard; he doesn’t…though I have noticed a slight change in his personality ever since he hooked up with Marina. He’s slightly less of an asshole now that he’s getting some every once in awhile. Shit, I’m glad he sent us here, I was sick of killing cyborgs. Mutants would be a nice change of pace. Probably easier to take out as well.” “I don’t even think there’s any mutants here. I mean come on, some of you guys went to the city, and other than there and a few of them wandering around the outskirts, have you ever heard of any organized mutant presence anywhere else? It’s probably just a really vicious biker gang, look at those bikes over there.” “Well that’s a good point Vivica, but I doubt if its simple raiders or bikers. Those types actively attack towns, not linger in one place, though I suppose it’s possible.” “You know what I think? I think its just one crazy fucker killing people in the area. I mean look at all the vehicles here. If it was mutants OR raiders, we would’ve come across some of them by now, and besides, since when do either extensively use traps? Nah, this is some sort serial killer survivalist. He’s probably listening to us right…” You open up the door and blast the current talkative Combine soldier with your shotgun, spraying his skull and brains all over the place. “RUN!” Robert shouts, as all of them scatter. The one called Leonard scatters in the wrong direction though and falls into a pit trap. From his screams it sounds like the sharpened poles inside didn’t kill him immediately. The Combine soldiers hide behind the various vehicles and fire upon your position, but you’ve already closed and locked the door at this point, staying low to the ground as bullets begin finding their way into your home. After the barrage of bullets, things go silent for a moment You look through your peephole only to see them all throwing grenades at your home! You immediately retreat to the backroom of the store, as the grenades explode behind you giving the Combine soldiers a way in. > You fight them off right here Since these fuckers like throwing grenades, going underground would be unwise. You begin hollering in pain like the initial blast injured you. “Arrrrgh! My arm! Shit! My leg! No!” you shout as loud as you can. “Get that bastard who killed Reggie! I’m goin’ in to finish him off!” “Hold on get back here! Damn it Steve!” Steve runs in the store looking around for you through the smoke left from the explosions. He finds you just in time for you blast him in the crotch, you barely have time to take cover yourself, when the rest of the Combine soldiers come blazing away behind him. They toss more grenades into the back room where you’re hiding, instinctively you throw one of them back and then jump down the trap door hatch as you narrowly avoid yet another explosion, you also hear a few more yelps of pain, sounds like an explosion got some of them as well. You still don’t feel comfortable being underground like this though, in fact the couple explosions from above, result in some creaking and debris falling. You don’t want to be here in case this thing starts collapsing on you. You climb back up and the whole store is smoky now, well what’s left of it, half of the front is a gaping hole now exposed to the elements. You hear a groaning Combine soldier, and pull your pistol to finish him off. This noise draws attention however. “THERE! SHOOT THE BASTARD!” A Combine soldier snipes you from afar with a powerful rifle when he catches your movement, still it’s smoky so he doesn’t get a clear head shot, and only catches you in the shoulder, however you’ve got really big hole in your arm now. You collapse to the floor and drop your pistol. “I got him! Vivica! Albert! Go in!” Roger shouts. You still have some strength left, and you’re not going down this easy. You pull out your knife, stand up and charge through the smoke. “YAAAAAARGH!” you scream and tackle into the first Combine soldier approaching, jamming the knife deep into their stomach and pushing upwards. You look at the face of your victim, it’s the female one. You lick her face as the brief flash of life begins to ebb from her eyes. “Oh shit, that fuckin’ gives me a hard on.” you whisper to her before she dies. “Holy Fuck! Shoot him! Shoot him!” Albert screams seeing his comrade killed right next to him. The other remaining Combine soldiers do fire on you, and you take multiple bullets to the body, before taking once last murderous act of stabbing Albert in the back when he attempted to run from you and get out of the way of the fire of his fellow Combiners. Finally Roger finishes you off with a clear shot to your head, exploding half of it. Oddly in your transition to death you hear one last thing. “Holy shit, that was fuckin’ brutal. We coulda used a guy like him during the Cyborg siege of Fort Justice!”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You might be absorbing more rads than usual now, but heading to the city would just be retarded. You’d probably die of cancer just going near the place; everything there would be contaminated anyway. You don’t even want to see the survivors what the survivors might look like assuming there were any. You head for the general store, that’s at least a safer bet. You drive your Van to the general store not very far from your house. You remember the old guy who ran the place; Billy. He was always alright with you. Whenever you went in to buy food, he was always talking about how bad the state of world was getting and how he was going to be prepared for when the nukes started flying. You’re guessing he probably invested in one of those Ground Zero Survival Shelters you always saw for sale on TV and took himself and his wife to it. The last time you saw the place it was all boarded up and looked closed up for good, still it’s a start. You arrive at the store which is still all boarded up like the last time you’ve seen it. You always found it weird that Billy bothered to board the place up, if he was going to abandon it. Surely he couldn’t have thought things would be restored so quickly after a nuclear exchange that he’d be able to return some day. You get out of your van and study the store more closely which you never bothered to do before, the windows are boarded up from the outside, but upon closer inspection the door hasn’t been boarded up at all. You try the door, but it’s firmly locked. Nothing else for it, but to bash it down. You begin prying, slamming, kicking and everything else to the door, but its not budging and you only succeed in bruising your shoulder. In frustration you pull out your pistol and finally just shoot at the lock and then try to open it, which it does slightly, something else is barring the door from the inside though. You’re going to have to start ramming the thing again to shove it open enough to get inside. Suddenly you hear some noise from inside and the click of a shotgun, it’s also only just then you realize that Billy’s pick up truck is still parked by the side of his store. He’s obviously still here and you were oblivious to the fact. “Goddamn it Martha, hasn’t been a month yet an’ we already got scum tryin’ ta loot the place!” It’s Billy. You thought he left, but apparently not. He just made it look like he did and barricaded himself inside. “Alright you looting shit stain, you better just get the fuck outta here right now, ‘fore you find yourself with a new hole in your chest!” Billy says from inside. “Whoa Billy it’s me! I used to shop here! Come on open up, I’m not a looter!” you reply. “…(sigh) hold on, and back away from the goddamn door.” You back away as Billy presumably moves whatever was still blocking the door. When he finally opens it up, he stands in the doorway still pointing his shotgun at you. “Damnation boy, I coulda blown your head off! You fuckin’ destroyed my lock! What the hell are you wearin’?” Billy asks looking at your silly form of protection. “I’m sorry; I thought you abandoned this place.” “Oh and that gave you the excuse to break in? What’re you think yer doin’ anyway? Why aren’t you in your shelter or something?” “Cause I don’t have one that’s why! I was going to see if this place had any supplies and maybe stay here, if it wasn’t in bad condition.” “Oh. Well, sorry to crush yer dreams, but this place is still occupied and OWNED by me. You’re gonna have to skedaddle. Just enough supplies for me and my wife.” “But…” “No buts! Now you were a good customer an’ all, but this is a new world and the rules have severely changed! It’s all about survival now. And it’s not my fault your ass didn’t prepare for somethin’ that was comin’ for a long time! Now if you don’t leave now I’m gonna be less understanding about this lack of judgment on your part. Bye and good luck.” “No wait!” At this point Billy slams the door shut mumbling about the lock being destroyed and going to have to fix it. Billy must have some sort of private bomb shelter of his own, if he barricaded himself inside his own store. One that must be stocked pretty well to sustain him and his wife for a good amount of time. An idea races through your head that you never thought you’d consider, well not before the nukes hit anyway, but Billy’s statement of “This is about survival” rings true. It IS about survival, and not just his. You don’t really want to do this, but you feel like you have no other choice. Billy is still trying to barricade the door, when you take another forceful charge into it. Your attempt is successful this time as it flies open causing Billy to fall and drop the heavy box he was going to place in front of it. The box half lands on Billy causing him crushing pain while he struggles to grab his shotgun from the floor. You’re quicker though and point your own pistol at him. “Don’t grab that shotgun Billy…I don’t want to kill you.” you say “Goddamn sonofabitch, you ain’t taking this…” “Billy what’s… OH MY GOD!” When you hear Martha’s outburst, it startles you during this already tense moment, you end up turning around and firing. You hit Martha square in the chest; she looks down briefly in shock before falling over dead. You’re a little in shock yourself. “MARTHA!” Billy screams, causing you to face him once more, he’s now actually grabbed the shotgun, and you begin babbling. “Oh God! Oh man! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do that! She came up and…Billy don’t do that…I don’t want to…please…” You fire again, hitting Billy in the head, splattering his brains all over the floor and killing him instantly. You feel sick and promptly run outside to vomit. You’ve never killed anyone before, though you don’t think it was that, that made you sick. It was the fact you murdered two people who were really innocent. You were the trespasser and when you couldn’t get what you wanted, you took it by force. You acted like a criminal even if there’s no such thing as “law” anymore. You sit down in a daze for a few minute trying to take all this in, before realizing you have to take care of some clean up first. You remove the bodies of Billy and Martha from the store. (You also remove your silly “protection wear”, well except the dishwashing gloves for moving the bodies) You wonder where you’re going put them, but eventually you decide to just dump them in the wilderness nearby, you figure nature will take its course. You go back to the store and re-barricade it. The store itself is empty, but in a back room, you discover a trapdoor. You descend and discover a large shelter with a treasure of food and water supplies, along with other useful items like first aid kits. Looks like Billy was more prepared than you could’ve imagined. One necessity you’re glad to find is a bathroom facility with a sink and toilet, there’s a little bit of water seeping from the cracks of the walls. Billy must’ve hit the jackpot and found an underground water source and built a crude plumbing system. He’s also installed a small hydro generator which would explain how come there’s dim lighting down here. Finally you see some survivalist books Billy had on a small bookshelf by a bed and a couple of hunting rifles along with ammunition for them and the shotgun you’ve recently acquired as well. Well you’re certainly set up, and all you had to do was kill an old couple. As you lie down on the bed you think about your actions in greater depth now. You’re not sure how to feel. Part of you wants to feel bad, but somehow you can’t make yourself feel as bad as you probably should. In fact you’re already starting to rationalize your actions. The first murder was a mistake, and the second one was self-defense. “And this is survival.” You say and fall asleep. The next day you wake up, you feel the most refreshed than you have in a long time. Something has changed within you. You don’t recognize immediately, but as a few months go by you begin to. Granted you were never a big one for human contact, anti-social and reclusive even, but this “line” you’ve crossed recently, your continued isolation, and the absence of civilization have made you become a little unhinged. You also start becoming paranoid, about other people stumbling across your new place and attempt to break in and take it like you did. Using the knowledge you’ve been getting from the survivalist books, you start setting up traps, inside and outside the store. One time, you spend just about a whole day doing that. When the darkness approaches you go back to your underground haven to descend further into quiet madness, before you fall asleep. Suddenly in the middle of the night you hear a noise and a scream from above. Sounds like it’s coming from outside and from more than one person. You immediately grab your shotgun and head upstairs. After going through the typical routine of taking down the barricades, you open the door and see a family in panic. A man is lying on the ground yelling in pain from the snap trap that has obviously broken his leg. A woman and a little boy are screaming frantically and totally clueless of what to do in this situation. Looks like your traps work. The family hasn’t seen you yet and don’t know your intentions, come to think of it, you aren’t even sure of your intentions… > You help them You haven’t completely given up on your conscience. These people didn’t do anything to you; they were probably just trying to find some place to be. “Hold on! I got a medical kit!” you shout and run to go fetch it along with small wooden plank and some rope. When you come back the entire family seems to have calmed down a bit, you remove the trap from his leg and look at it. You didn’t use anything with blades, so its just broken, not punctured in any way. “Damn, it’s a good thing I didn’t use that bear trap I found, your leg would’ve been completely severed! Now if I remember reading this right, I have to reset the leg…” “Wait! You mean you’ve never done this before?” the man shouts. “Well no, but I’ve been reading! Now brace yourself!” “No Wait! AAAAAAAAGH! SHIT! That hurt!” “There now I just have to tie this splint thing around your leg, and you’ll be all set, well more or less. What the hell are you people doing out here anyway? Shouldn’t you be in a shelter or something?” The woman answers your question. “We were supposed to, but when we got to the GZS shelter we bought it wouldn’t let us in! It just ate our debit card and said error! We tried like hell to get in, but the elevator door just wouldn’t budge. When the bombs hit, we were in the shelter entrance foyer, and stayed there for a few days, but we realized we couldn’t stay there forever, so we left and tried to find a nearby town that we might try to continue life as usual, but the one we found was quite unfriendly, they wouldn’t even let us stay! This catastrophic event has made people paranoid and hostile!” “Huh. People were like that before the bombs; did you think they’d be different afterwards?” you say. Now the man speaks again, as he attempts to sit up “Well I’d at least expect some hospitality. When we got there, they looked at us like we were going to loot the entire town.” “Probably thought you were, you know its going to take a while before most folks become trusting again. People are going to barely trust people they know. Hell, I heard they were rioting in the city before the bombs dropped. So I’d imagine there are lots of bad types out there willing to kill people over supplies as simple as fresh water.” “But you helped us.” “Yeah, I guess I did…” “Is this your store? Looks like you were better prepared than we were.” “Uh…yeah, okay well I guess you guys can stay out here for awhile until you’re ready to move on. Good luck.” As you turn to leave the woman speaks again. “Hey wait! You mean you’re not going to let us in? You’d just leave us out here? We told you, we were low on gas! And now my husband Jonathan has a broken leg! How are we going to get by?” “So, you can drive can’t you? Look, this isn’t my problem. I helped out, because I realized you guys weren’t bandits or some shit, but I’m not here to take care of you. I have my own concerns.” “But…” “Let it go Doris, I guess we should be grateful he fixed my leg and didn’t kill us.” “Are we going to be okay Dad?” the boy asks, speaking up for the first time without yelling. “We’ll see Tyler, we’ll see.” Ah fuck, you started to give shit and now it’s coming back at you. You turn around, and give in. “Alright, you can come in, but you’re staying in the topside of the store, you can even stay until your leg heals, but after that, you gotta go. I don’t have supplies to sustain all of you indefinitely.” The family is very grateful, and moves in immediately. Over the months you all get to know each other a little better though you still don’t exactly tell them how you “acquired” this place. You just say your “Uncle Billy” gave it to you when he died. Soon Jonathan’s leg is much better, but you’re wondering if you shouldn’t let them stay on a more permanent basis; however as it turns out, that’s exactly what Jonathan had in mind for his family except YOU weren’t included. This treachery for your good graces comes as a surprise one night, when Doris suddenly wakes you up by banging on the trap door, yelling about how she thinks there’s someone out side and how Jonathan went to check, but she thinks he’s in trouble. You immediately grab your shotgun and go see what’s wrong. You barely get out the front door, and you’re suddenly hit in the head, knocking you to the ground. Jonathan grabs your shotgun and points it at you. Doris and Tyler come to the doorway. “Doris, take Tyler down into the underground…this’ll be over soon I hope.” Jonathan replies grimly. Doris nods and then looks at you, with a sad expression. “We’re sorry about this…we really are…” she says and then takes her son away leaving just you and Jonathan. You stand up and brush yourself off. “So, were you planning this all along or what?” “Well…I dunno…nowadays, you don’t really plan anything, it just sort of happens y’know?” “Oh yeah, I know.” “Well you can understand that this is a good place for me and my family, and I can’t allow you to just kick us out.” “Stupid bastard, I was just thinking about letting you all stay on a more permanent basis.” you laugh. This response surprises Jonathan, and it almost looks like he’s going to change his mind, but he doesn’t. “…It’s too late now. You’d never trust me now, and I’d always think you’d try to get revenge. You have to leave. Besides you said it yourself one time, there aren’t an indefinite amount of supplies, to sustain all of us.” “Well you might as well pull that goddamn trigger John, because I’m not leaving.” “Come on, man I’m serious! I’ll do it. I don’t want to, but I got a family to think about and there’s nothing that’s gonna make me change my mind…look I’ll let you leave with some supplies. How about that? I mean you can take one of these vehicles or even mine! Just you gotta leave, we’re taking this place now. I’m sorry.” Well it’s not much of a choice, but it may be more preferable than death. Though you can’t help but think of the irony that how you tried to do the right thing and got fucked in the ass big time, while when you murdered Billy and his wife, you hit the damn jackpot. > You insist on staying “Fuck you John, I’m not making it that easy for ya. You think it’s really that easy to kill someone? You go right ahead.” You’re hoping that you’re just calling his bluff and he really won’t shoot you, whether he was or not, he hesitates long enough for you to take advantage of the situation. You dive into Jonathan’s legs as hard as you can, causing the both of you to fall to the ground, he attempts to get you off by smashing you in the head with the shotgun butt, however you knock it from his hands and re-break his leg, this time so the bone comes through. He bellows in pain, and then you kick him in the face. You pick up the shotgun and point it at him. “You stupid motherfucker! I woulda let you stay here! If you’d just…bah! You’re right, it’s too late now, and you fucked…ARGH!” A shot rings out and a sharp pain shoots into your side, causing you to fall. You look over in the direction of the store and its Doris holding one of the hunting rifles, though it seems she’s not entirely comfortable with it and her second shot misses, giving you time to retaliate. “Bitch!” you say and swing the shotgun in her direction blowing a hole in her side as well, though hers is instantly fatal. “DORIS!” Jonathan screams before he crawls in your direction in some vain attempt for revenge. “Told ya, it’s not that easy to kill someone, unless you’ve done it before…” you remark and finish off Jonathan. You’re bleeding profusely and in a lot of pain, and you briefly wonder if you’re going to survive your wounds, but that wonder comes to an end, when another shot rings out, hitting your upper body dropping you. It’s Tyler holding your pistol, silent, with tears in his eyes upon seeing his dead parents. You give up, even if you had the strength to pick up your shotgun, you’re not going to kill a kid. In fact you figure you probably deserve to die anyway given that you’ve killed two couples now who didn’t really deserve it. You decide to give some last minute advice to this newly orphaned lad, who’s going to surely have a hard time of it now, but still he might survive if he listens to your words… “Don’t trust anyone kid…nobody.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You haven’t completely given up on your conscience. These people didn’t do anything to you; they were probably just trying to find some place to be. “Hold on! I got a medical kit!” you shout and run to go fetch it along with small wooden plank and some rope. When you come back the entire family seems to have calmed down a bit, you remove the trap from his leg and look at it. You didn’t use anything with blades, so its just broken, not punctured in any way. “Damn, it’s a good thing I didn’t use that bear trap I found, your leg would’ve been completely severed! Now if I remember reading this right, I have to reset the leg…” “Wait! You mean you’ve never done this before?” the man shouts. “Well no, but I’ve been reading! Now brace yourself!” “No Wait! AAAAAAAAGH! SHIT! That hurt!” “There now I just have to tie this splint thing around your leg, and you’ll be all set, well more or less. What the hell are you people doing out here anyway? Shouldn’t you be in a shelter or something?” The woman answers your question. “We were supposed to, but when we got to the GZS shelter we bought it wouldn’t let us in! It just ate our debit card and said error! We tried like hell to get in, but the elevator door just wouldn’t budge. When the bombs hit, we were in the shelter entrance foyer, and stayed there for a few days, but we realized we couldn’t stay there forever, so we left and tried to find a nearby town that we might try to continue life as usual, but the one we found was quite unfriendly, they wouldn’t even let us stay! This catastrophic event has made people paranoid and hostile!” “Huh. People were like that before the bombs; did you think they’d be different afterwards?” you say. Now the man speaks again, as he attempts to sit up “Well I’d at least expect some hospitality. When we got there, they looked at us like we were going to loot the entire town.” “Probably thought you were, you know its going to take a while before most folks become trusting again. People are going to barely trust people they know. Hell, I heard they were rioting in the city before the bombs dropped. So I’d imagine there are lots of bad types out there willing to kill people over supplies as simple as fresh water.” “But you helped us.” “Yeah, I guess I did…” “Is this your store? Looks like you were better prepared than we were.” “Uh…yeah, okay well I guess you guys can stay out here for awhile until you’re ready to move on. Good luck.” As you turn to leave the woman speaks again. “Hey wait! You mean you’re not going to let us in? You’d just leave us out here? We told you, we were low on gas! And now my husband Jonathan has a broken leg! How are we going to get by?” “So, you can drive can’t you? Look, this isn’t my problem. I helped out, because I realized you guys weren’t bandits or some shit, but I’m not here to take care of you. I have my own concerns.” “But…” “Let it go Doris, I guess we should be grateful he fixed my leg and didn’t kill us.” “Are we going to be okay Dad?” the boy asks, speaking up for the first time without yelling. “We’ll see Tyler, we’ll see.” Ah fuck, you started to give shit and now it’s coming back at you. You turn around, and give in. “Alright, you can come in, but you’re staying in the topside of the store, you can even stay until your leg heals, but after that, you gotta go. I don’t have supplies to sustain all of you indefinitely.” The family is very grateful, and moves in immediately. Over the months you all get to know each other a little better though you still don’t exactly tell them how you “acquired” this place. You just say your “Uncle Billy” gave it to you when he died. Soon Jonathan’s leg is much better, but you’re wondering if you shouldn’t let them stay on a more permanent basis; however as it turns out, that’s exactly what Jonathan had in mind for his family except YOU weren’t included. This treachery for your good graces comes as a surprise one night, when Doris suddenly wakes you up by banging on the trap door, yelling about how she thinks there’s someone out side and how Jonathan went to check, but she thinks he’s in trouble. You immediately grab your shotgun and go see what’s wrong. You barely get out the front door, and you’re suddenly hit in the head, knocking you to the ground. Jonathan grabs your shotgun and points it at you. Doris and Tyler come to the doorway. “Doris, take Tyler down into the underground…this’ll be over soon I hope.” Jonathan replies grimly. Doris nods and then looks at you, with a sad expression. “We’re sorry about this…we really are…” she says and then takes her son away leaving just you and Jonathan. You stand up and brush yourself off. “So, were you planning this all along or what?” “Well…I dunno…nowadays, you don’t really plan anything, it just sort of happens y’know?” “Oh yeah, I know.” “Well you can understand that this is a good place for me and my family, and I can’t allow you to just kick us out.” “Stupid bastard, I was just thinking about letting you all stay on a more permanent basis.” you laugh. This response surprises Jonathan, and it almost looks like he’s going to change his mind, but he doesn’t. “…It’s too late now. You’d never trust me now, and I’d always think you’d try to get revenge. You have to leave. Besides you said it yourself one time, there aren’t an indefinite amount of supplies, to sustain all of us.” “Well you might as well pull that goddamn trigger John, because I’m not leaving.” “Come on, man I’m serious! I’ll do it. I don’t want to, but I got a family to think about and there’s nothing that’s gonna make me change my mind…look I’ll let you leave with some supplies. How about that? I mean you can take one of these vehicles or even mine! Just you gotta leave, we’re taking this place now. I’m sorry.” Well it’s not much of a choice, but it may be more preferable than death. Though you can’t help but think of the irony that how you tried to do the right thing and got fucked in the ass big time, while when you murdered Billy and his wife, you hit the damn jackpot. > You leave “Alright, fine I’ll leave…but you know this isn’t right.” You say backing away. “…I know…I know…” he replies. Jonathan calls his wife to get you few days supply of water, and some food. She soon returns with both which are throw at your feet, you take them and head to your van. They aren’t going to give you a weapon though for obvious reasons. They tell you that maybe the town they stopped at before will be friendlier to you and you could try to live there. You don’t say anything else, you just go to start up your van and drive off, you aren’t sure where you’re heading, but you figure you’ll take the “friendly advice” of Doris and Jonathan and go to the town they told you about. You get a few miles and then your van decides to die on you. Nothing’s going your way. After futile attempts to fix it, kicks, and threats, you realize you’re walking now, which wouldn’t be completely bad if you weren’t without some sort of weapon. While walking along the desolate road, a dog like creature appears in the distance, then another, then more. They look like wolves, but something is obviously different about them, like they’re deformed in some way, either way they don’t look friendly, but they do look very hungry. You attempt to outrun them, but the mutant wolves are faster, and they ultimately catch you and rip you apart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It’s always been like you to do things at the last minute. After grabbing your pistol and all the food and drink you can, then heading down in the basement with it, you think that things probably won’t be that bad. After all you don’t live in the city, or even by an important city, surely not EVERY place will get bombed. It’s not like you live on the east or west coast, now those people are going to be fucked. No, all you have to do is wait this out, and then things will get back to normal…okay well maybe not normal, but surely the government will restore order of some sort, you’re sure they have a complex plan for this kind of thing. Eventually you hear a very loud noise; whatever light you had on in the basement immediately goes out as you can hear your house being hit by a powerful force. You curl up in a ball and hold your ears half expecting the entire house to collapse in on you, but it doesn’t happen. You stay in the basement, for what you guess to be a week. You mostly stumble around in the darkness as reality begins to set in and destroy your previous delusions. You mainly think about how you should’ve planned things out better, especially since your food and drink are running out. The only thing you know really know about nuclear attacks is what you’ve learned from movies, video games and comic books. You can only hope some of that shit was helpful, as you have little choice, but to leave your basement, the bucket you were using to relieve yourself down there was really starting to stink anyway. You open up your basement door, which remarkably stayed intact, along with most of your house. The windows and other glass objects have all broke, and there’s no power, but that’s about it. You can only guess that whatever it was that hit, was far enough away and probably very low yield. You don’t really want to think about the radioactivity factor though; you’ll know if you’re catching a lethal dose soon enough if your hair and teeth start falling out and you begin vomiting blood. Damn you wish you bought that bomb shelter… You check the refrigerator again for more food, but there won’t be enough to last you one day. You wonder if the water is still working and turn on the faucet, of course it doesn’t, you don’t think you’d want to risk drinking any of it anyway. Well it looks like you can’t stay in your house either; you’re going to have to leave to find food and some sort of drinkable liquid. Damn you wish you bought that bomb shelter… Well if you’re going to leave, you decide some sort of protection is in order; you grab some dishwashing gloves underneath the sink, some safety goggles you’ve had since you college chemistry class, a winter coat and finally a scarf your grandmother knit you for one of your birthdays to wrap over your mouth. You look somewhat silly in this getup and it probably won’t protect you at all, but you’re back to deluding yourself again which is probably a good thing since your relapses into fantasy are keeping you from breaking down completely. You open your dented garage door and get in your old van expecting it not to work, surprisingly it does. You thought it wouldn’t due to all that stuff you remember hearing about EMP waves or something, then again your car was built in a year before they started mounting entire computers in the fucking things, so maybe that’s why it still works. You don’t know, you’re just glad its one of the things you still have that functions, you didn’t want to be riding that bike you bought and hardly ever used. You throw your backpack of useful items (flashlight, small tool set, first aid kit, etc) into the van and ponder where to go. You’ve got two choices that immediately come to mind assuming both still exist; one is that “Mom & Pop” General Store that was abandoned at least a month ago. You can’t imagine they took everything from the place. The other choice is to risk going to the city and finding something there. Despite all the looting and mass exodus that was going on there before any of this went down, the city’s still a big place and there’s probably lots of useful stuff there, the problem is wondering if you’ll be heading into a death zone. That radioactivity concern is still in the back of your mind. Damn you wish you bought that bomb shelter… > You head to the city You have no real idea where to go so you head to the City. You might live in the boonies, but you aren’t an outdoorsman. You aren’t some survivalist that’s been training yourself for this “moment” so it’s not like you can just start living off the land, and unless the City was completely flattened by a nuclear bomb, you’ll probably still find something there. As for the radiation factor, you’re probably receiving a lethal dose of radiation right now. It’s not like you were so far away from blasts that you wouldn’t be receiving it, though you try to think back to your Grandfather who was in the army and had to witness some nuclear test blasts back in the old days. He was certainly in the danger zone, and lived a fairly long time. One of the few though. Hopefully you’ve inherited that level of resistance, or at least that level of luck. But unless you find food and water supplies you aren’t going to be living long enough to die of the radiation. You continue your drive to the city, watching the surroundings getting progressively worse looking, You then see the shattered “skeletal” remains of skyscrapers looming in the distance. The city got hit, but apparently by something “small” and probably exploded high in the air. Of course that doesn’t make you feel any better. You make a mental note of all the “useful” locations you used to do your shopping. You goal is to go in and grab what you can to sustain you for a long time and leave for some place else. When you finally reach the city, it feels a little creepy. Everything seems so empty and dead. You have the windows up, but it’s not like you wouldn’t be able to hear noises if there were any, which there aren’t. Just the silent remains of destroyed buildings and vehicle husks. You wonder if any people survived, though you’re guessing if they did they won’t be in great condition. In fact it’s been a week since the attack; survivors might’ve died by now without medical attention. Your first stop is the supermarket. You don’t have high hopes of finding anything though. You know looting was going on in the city even before the bombs hit, still this IS the reason why you came here, so you enter through one of the big broken floor windows. No lighting inside of course, but the sunlight from outside is providing enough, plus you have your flashlight if you need it. The entire place has an unpleasant odor, but you’re guessing it might be rotten food from the meat section and diary section, assuming those sections even have any of those items left. Oddly you do find that the aisles aren’t completely empty. Most of the canned food gone, but there’s still a ton of cereal and nothing says you have to eat it with milk! Beef Jerky survives anything as well. You can’t believe people didn’t take that stuff. There are some soft drinks left in the now non-working freezers. Probably flat and warm as fuck, but again you hardly care at this point. You get yourself a hand basket and start loading up on what you can. When you get back to your van you finally hear something besides the crunch of debris underneath your own feet and the blowing wind. Its footsteps…several of them. You then see something you only thought existed in horror movies. These must be the bomb victims you though were dead by now, but it seems they’re not dead, or at least you’re guessing they’re not. A group of them staggers towards youMany of them have a half-crazed appearance and severe radiation burns. Apparently their minds have damaged along with their bodies. Some of them are armed with blunt instruments. As they approach you, they just looking at you menacingly and start growling, until one of them points at you and shouts in raspy voice. “MEEEEEEAAAT!” “Shit! Die motherfuckers!” you shout back, shooting and quickly getting in your van as they hasten their pace towards you. You manage to drive off, but not before they manage to smash your windshield and both of your side windows. You think you killed a few of them, you saw a few go down when you shot at them, and you know you ran that one over. Of course it’s not like you hung around to see if they got back up, but you’re pretty sure now they aren’t reanimated corpses. Of course that doesn’t make this situation any less fucked up or them any less dangerous, since they seemed intent on eating you. You need to get out of the City, but now what appeared previously empty, now appears to be more inhabited then you thought as more of these…things come out of woodwork. You haven’t gotten far, when your van is bombarded by bricks and even fired upon! Some of those bullets hit the wheels causing you to skid out of control. You attempt to regain control of the van, but fail and smash into nearby building. Attempts to restart it also fail, though you don’t have that much time anyway as some of these freaks are fast approaching on your position. You get out of the van with your supply bag and start running. You don’t even know where you are right now; you were in such a hurry to get the hell out that you didn’t realize you took the wrong streets, now you’re in unfamiliar territory and the fact that all the landmarks have been blown to shit doesn’t help. Though this looks like some sort of industrial district. You duck into one of the warehouses hoping to lose the freaks. The place has destroyed sections of the roof. Pallets and empty boxes of varying sizes lie all over the place. You look for someplace more secure to hide just in case, but all you can find that looks suitable is what looks to be a manager’s office. When you enter, the office is also in disarray. You decide to wait here awhile to consider what to do next, during which time you inspect the various papers on the ground. You also remove the silly “protection wear”, you’re getting hot and it’s not going to protect you from anything anyway. After scanning through many of the documents, most have the insignia of “GZS” on them or Ground Zero Survival, that corporation that was trying to sell people bomb shelters before the war. (One you still wish you bought right now) You didn’t even know they had any holdings in the City. Looks like this place shipped a lot of equipment to said Shelters during their building process. No map locations though unfortunately, just a bunch of random shelter numbers. You end up kicking the desk in frustration only to succeed in hurting your foot, and making another discovery. When your foot moved the desk, you notice it was hiding a trapdoor! Though you wonder what the hell one is doing here. This seems a little weird, but then again the whole situation is weird, so you open it up and climb down. The first thing you notice is what a long climb it is, the second thing you notice is there’s lighting when you reach the bottom, dim, but lighting. The corridor leads to a heavy duty door not to far ahead, so you head that way, but when you go to open the door you find it locked. Before you can shoot the lock you hear a voice on the other side. “Lisa is that you?” the voice says. > You tell the truth “Uh, no.” you reply “Who the fuck are you?” “I’m a survivor like you, I came to the City to get supplies, but I got attacked by some sort of mutant things or something, and I got temporarily trapped here.” “Ha ha! You are one stupid motherfucker then! Why the hell would you come BACK to a bombed out city for ANY reason?” the voice mocks. “Well why the hell are you here?” “Business.” “What kind of business?” “That’s for me to know and for you not to know. Now get the fuck outta here, you don’t belong here. This is GZS property an’ you obviously aren’t an employee in any shape or form.” “Can’t you let me in?” “NO!” “Fuck you! There’s a bunch of cannibalistic mutants up there!” “Shoulda though about that before your stupid ass came to the city.” “Oh fuck this, I’ll just blow the handle off the door and...” “You blow the handle off and I’ll blow your head off as soon as you enter through door, though I doubt you will since it’s also barricaded and deadbolted from the inside. You ain’t getting in here unless you’re packing some serious firepower. Better just go away and try to get out of the City before it gets dark.” You shout a few more things at the voice behind the door, but it doesn’t reply back, you think about shooting at the door, but you’ll probably only be wasting bullets that you’ll undoubtly need. Having no other options you head back to the surface where after making a quick check to see if the coast is clear which it is so you continue your attempt at escape from the city as night begins to fall. Unfortunately you don’t get far before the roving gangs of mutants stumble upon you again; these ones seem even more vicious and organized though. After a short game of shoot and run, eventually they manage to surround and trap you. Sensing that your death is near, you shoot yourself in the head to save yourself the pain of being eaten alive. The mutants seem disappointed, but they eat you anyway.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have no real idea where to go so you head to the City. You might live in the boonies, but you aren’t an outdoorsman. You aren’t some survivalist that’s been training yourself for this “moment” so it’s not like you can just start living off the land, and unless the City was completely flattened by a nuclear bomb, you’ll probably still find something there. As for the radiation factor, you’re probably receiving a lethal dose of radiation right now. It’s not like you were so far away from blasts that you wouldn’t be receiving it, though you try to think back to your Grandfather who was in the army and had to witness some nuclear test blasts back in the old days. He was certainly in the danger zone, and lived a fairly long time. One of the few though. Hopefully you’ve inherited that level of resistance, or at least that level of luck. But unless you find food and water supplies you aren’t going to be living long enough to die of the radiation. You continue your drive to the city, watching the surroundings getting progressively worse looking, You then see the shattered “skeletal” remains of skyscrapers looming in the distance. The city got hit, but apparently by something “small” and probably exploded high in the air. Of course that doesn’t make you feel any better. You make a mental note of all the “useful” locations you used to do your shopping. You goal is to go in and grab what you can to sustain you for a long time and leave for some place else. When you finally reach the city, it feels a little creepy. Everything seems so empty and dead. You have the windows up, but it’s not like you wouldn’t be able to hear noises if there were any, which there aren’t. Just the silent remains of destroyed buildings and vehicle husks. You wonder if any people survived, though you’re guessing if they did they won’t be in great condition. In fact it’s been a week since the attack; survivors might’ve died by now without medical attention. Your first stop is the supermarket. You don’t have high hopes of finding anything though. You know looting was going on in the city even before the bombs hit, still this IS the reason why you came here, so you enter through one of the big broken floor windows. No lighting inside of course, but the sunlight from outside is providing enough, plus you have your flashlight if you need it. The entire place has an unpleasant odor, but you’re guessing it might be rotten food from the meat section and diary section, assuming those sections even have any of those items left. Oddly you do find that the aisles aren’t completely empty. Most of the canned food gone, but there’s still a ton of cereal and nothing says you have to eat it with milk! Beef Jerky survives anything as well. You can’t believe people didn’t take that stuff. There are some soft drinks left in the now non-working freezers. Probably flat and warm as fuck, but again you hardly care at this point. You get yourself a hand basket and start loading up on what you can. When you get back to your van you finally hear something besides the crunch of debris underneath your own feet and the blowing wind. Its footsteps…several of them. You then see something you only thought existed in horror movies. These must be the bomb victims you though were dead by now, but it seems they’re not dead, or at least you’re guessing they’re not. A group of them staggers towards youMany of them have a half-crazed appearance and severe radiation burns. Apparently their minds have damaged along with their bodies. Some of them are armed with blunt instruments. As they approach you, they just looking at you menacingly and start growling, until one of them points at you and shouts in raspy voice. “MEEEEEEAAAT!” “Shit! Die motherfuckers!” you shout back, shooting and quickly getting in your van as they hasten their pace towards you. You manage to drive off, but not before they manage to smash your windshield and both of your side windows. You think you killed a few of them, you saw a few go down when you shot at them, and you know you ran that one over. Of course it’s not like you hung around to see if they got back up, but you’re pretty sure now they aren’t reanimated corpses. Of course that doesn’t make this situation any less fucked up or them any less dangerous, since they seemed intent on eating you. You need to get out of the City, but now what appeared previously empty, now appears to be more inhabited then you thought as more of these…things come out of woodwork. You haven’t gotten far, when your van is bombarded by bricks and even fired upon! Some of those bullets hit the wheels causing you to skid out of control. You attempt to regain control of the van, but fail and smash into nearby building. Attempts to restart it also fail, though you don’t have that much time anyway as some of these freaks are fast approaching on your position. You get out of the van with your supply bag and start running. You don’t even know where you are right now; you were in such a hurry to get the hell out that you didn’t realize you took the wrong streets, now you’re in unfamiliar territory and the fact that all the landmarks have been blown to shit doesn’t help. Though this looks like some sort of industrial district. You duck into one of the warehouses hoping to lose the freaks. The place has destroyed sections of the roof. Pallets and empty boxes of varying sizes lie all over the place. You look for someplace more secure to hide just in case, but all you can find that looks suitable is what looks to be a manager’s office. When you enter, the office is also in disarray. You decide to wait here awhile to consider what to do next, during which time you inspect the various papers on the ground. You also remove the silly “protection wear”, you’re getting hot and it’s not going to protect you from anything anyway. After scanning through many of the documents, most have the insignia of “GZS” on them or Ground Zero Survival, that corporation that was trying to sell people bomb shelters before the war. (One you still wish you bought right now) You didn’t even know they had any holdings in the City. Looks like this place shipped a lot of equipment to said Shelters during their building process. No map locations though unfortunately, just a bunch of random shelter numbers. You end up kicking the desk in frustration only to succeed in hurting your foot, and making another discovery. When your foot moved the desk, you notice it was hiding a trapdoor! Though you wonder what the hell one is doing here. This seems a little weird, but then again the whole situation is weird, so you open it up and climb down. The first thing you notice is what a long climb it is, the second thing you notice is there’s lighting when you reach the bottom, dim, but lighting. The corridor leads to a heavy duty door not to far ahead, so you head that way, but when you go to open the door you find it locked. Before you can shoot the lock you hear a voice on the other side. “Lisa is that you?” the voice says. > You make up a story Given the whole suspicious nature of this set up you have a feeling the truth will not help you here; you’ll have to bullshit your way it. You try to remember some of the stuff you were reading on the documents upstairs. “No, I’m from GZS Headquarters, Shipping Division. And I hope you got some answers because there’s been a bunch of fucking mistakes in where things were getting transported! Who are YOU?” “…I’m Owen! What the fuck? I ain’t in charge of that! I’m just security!” “I don’t give a shit WHO you are! Where’s your supervisor?” “…I..uh…I guess Lisa is my supervisor, but she’s not here!” “Oh? And where the hell is she? GZS Headquarters is VERY displeased!” “I don’t understand, Lisa wasn’t in charge of any kind of shipping. She was an egghead! A researcher! We were down here for…other reasons…but you should know that!” “LOOK! I work in a cramped fucking office with boring paper work all goddamn day, I don’t have a window, someone keeps stealing my stapler, and they don’t tell me shit unless it’s to scream at my fucking face. I don’t care WHY you’re here! All I know is; I got my ass chewed out by HQ for someone else’s fuck ups! We got Shelters all over the goddamn tri-state area with mixed up equipment during the building process and we’re only NOW just finding out about it! You know how BAD that makes us look to our customers? I got sent down here to see if I could find out anything and all I’ve found out is the goddamn City is crawling with fucking cannibalistic mutants! Now that I’ve FOUND someone who might have some answers for me, I’m not just gonna dismiss that! So open up the goddamn door and let me in!” Your act and tone is very convincing of someone who’s had to deal with red tape and silly corporate orders. (Though you do know something of them having had to deal with them at your own job in your “old life”) obviously the security guard knows about them as well, because he lets you in. When the door opens up, you see a surprisingly scrawny man. You were expecting someone a little more burly, but he still wields an assault rifle slung around his shoulder making the need for physical strength unnecessary. “You…you don’t look like a GZS employee…shouldn’t you be in a suit and tie or something?” “I’m not gonna be running all over the nuclear wasteland in a hot ass suit and tie! Shit, I swear we hire dumber and dumber security guards each year. Just goes to show even natural selection fails sometimes in the face of near mass extinction. So where the hell is this Lisa?” you ask walking past him and noticing the well lit room and its sterile appearance. Some sort of generator sits in a corner giving off a low hum. “I told you she’s not here; she went to the surface again. She should be back soon.” The security guard says still eyeing you suspiciously. “Again? Why’s she going up there in the first place? Ain’t nothing left up there.” “You’re telling me. I went up once and nearly got myself killed. Since then Lisa says she’d rather me stay guard here and not get in the way of here so called research. Fine by me.” “I still don’t understand, what’s this research?” “Uh…well…um…it’s supposed to be a secret. I’m really surprised you being from HQ that you don’t know about it…” “I told you, I get BURIED in paperwork, and they don’t tell me shit. I mean I’ve heard things here and there, but I don’t know what else was going on here.” “Well…I guess it really doesn’t matter now…I mean what’s done is done and HQ probably should know anyway…okay well you know how GZS has dealings with the military and the government and shit right?” “Sure.” “Well it’s something like that going on, but I don’t know the intricate details about it, just what I know from Lisa, but I guess GZS was trying to develop some sort of radiation drug, y’know something to make the body immune to the shit.” “That does sound pretty useful, but this place doesn’t exactly look like a complex lab for doing something like that.” “Oh, its not. This is just a research outpost as it were. The real drug was made somewhere else, but it needed to be tested right? So they decided to test it here, a batch of it got dumped in the water supply months before the bombs hit. The idea is that the survivors of the initial blast would still be able to live and not get cancer, sterility or tumors and all that other bad shit that radiation causes. So even people caught in the cities would survive and be able to eventually rebuild and get civilization up and running again. I think they wanted to dump the drug into ALL the major cities, but it looks like world war three happened sooner than they though eh?” What you just heard sounds like some sort of science fiction tale! Then again being the cynic you are, you can’t say you’re completely surprised by it. Though now you have a more important question. “Okay, but if that was the intention…what’s with all the mutants in the City trying to eat me?” “Uh…well…I guess it didn’t work the way it should’ve? That’s sort of why Lisa and me were still here. Lisa was supposed to record the results of the drug after the bombs hit and that’s what she’s been doing. Lisa says the drugs are affecting people’s minds, and combined with the already fucked up situation I’d say it probably explains a lot already. Though I gotta say there was some pretty bad rioting even before the bombs dropped so I wonder if the drug was starting to affect the minds of people even then…but that’s silly I mean me and Lisa haven’t been affected by it at all, I dunno.” “YOU and her drank the water too?” “Well yeah, our personal water recycling system has it. I mean if we were going to be here, we damn well had to be pretty resistant to radiation…wait a minute I just realized something… you mean GZS sent you down here without this knowledge? Oh shit! You realize how many rads you’ve probably soaked up without the drug’s protection? Oh man, you were right! They must hate your guts at HQ! Ha ha ha ha ha! Sucks to be you!” Owen laughs uncontrollably “Yeah, yeah…” “Man, I mean shit! They pretty much sent you to die! I mean really why the hell would they worry about whether shelters got the right equipment shipments now for anyway? GZS already got their money, did you actually think they were going to go send someone personally to each shelter correct the mistakes? They were already built man! Use your head!” “Uh huh, so…” “Ha ha ha ha! I mean damn, you work in shipping, GZS fucking up shouldn’t even be news to you! Look at what happened with this goddamn anti-radiation drug! I mean what asshole fucking moron thought up those shelter elevator designs?” “Why what’s wrong with the elevator designs?” you ask innocently, which suddenly puts Owen in a less jovial mood, he begins to get suspicious again. “Something ain’t right here…anyone who works for GZS knows how idiotic the computerized shelter elevator set up is. People got fired for that one. Why hell why do you think WE have a ladder? You claim you’re from HQ and you don’t know? I don’t care HOW much you say you’re out of the loop… I’m a lowly security guard and even I heard about the fucked up elevator designs!” Owen goes for his assault rifle slung on his shoulder, and you charge slamming him into the wall with an elbow to his face. You then pistol whip him a couple times before taking his rifle away from him. He holds on to his bloody face looking at you. “Ughhhh, shit…my face…” he groans. “Okay look, I was probably wrong for lying about working for GZS and…” “Fuck you…you goddamn piece of shit…” “HEY! Asshole! I’m the one with the gun here! Now I don’t want to kill you, but…” Owen unsuccessfully tries to grab his rifle back, you kick him back down. “Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me? I nearly shot you, dumb fuck! I’d probably be able to kick your ass even without these guns, so you better just calm…” Owen once again attempts to attack you, this time you butt him with the rifle hard, and kick him out the door then lock it. “Fuck you then asshole! Let the mutants eat you!” you shout, you expect to hear banging on the door, or even pleading, but you don’t hear anything. After a few hours pass, you open up the door, and Owen is gone. You close the door back up and explore your surroundings a bit more. There’s not much to explore though, just two simple bedrooms, an eating area, bathroom and the “living area” which you’re already familiar with. The generator provides power, and a water recycling system provides water. Looks like there’s some sort of food dispensing system as well, though what it dispenses isn’t particularly tasty. You could be set up here for awhile if you wanted to be, though perhaps you just want somewhere to rest first before getting out of the city. > You leave the city You don’t really want to stick around here any longer than you have to, so as soon as you’re rested up, you’re going to leave in the morning. You think about what Owen said about the water supply and the anti-radiation drugs in it then you think about what happened to a majority of the survivors. It didn’t seem to do them any good, so you decide not to risk drinking any of the water or taking any with you. You also wonder about Owen’s supervisor Lisa. He did say she was supposed to return soon, you form some ideas on how to handle the situation, but as it turns out, she never does. Probably got killed no doubt. The next morning you leave. You half expect Owen to be waiting to ambush you, but he’s completely gone. After making sure the coast is clear you get your bearings again, and make haste for leaving the City. Luckily you have no further encounters, and you’re just a little bit safer for leaving the City of course now there’s the problem of find another stretch of civilization, but you think you have enough supplies. A few days go by and you eventually do stumble upon a small town. Its more like a ghost town actually, barely anyone lives there, but that suits you just fine after having to deal with mutant cannibals. You take residence in one of the abandoned houses, you figure it’s going to be temporary before you move on in the future, but you’re starting not to feel too well so you stick around. About a month passes and you feel tired all the time, you get the shakes pretty bad, and soon, you start vomiting blood, then there’s the hair loss… You lie on the dirty bed in the house lamenting how ill prepared you really were for all this and the bad decisions you chose that made it worse. You can’t go on waiting for the end, you’re in hell right now, and a quick death would be a welcome release. You get the idea to shoot yourself, but you’re so weak now that you merely collapse when you try to reach for your pistol, however as it turns out your wish is shortly granted during this time when you also fall unconsciousness and lapse into a coma. Death soon follows.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Given the whole suspicious nature of this set up you have a feeling the truth will not help you here; you’ll have to bullshit your way it. You try to remember some of the stuff you were reading on the documents upstairs. “No, I’m from GZS Headquarters, Shipping Division. And I hope you got some answers because there’s been a bunch of fucking mistakes in where things were getting transported! Who are YOU?” “…I’m Owen! What the fuck? I ain’t in charge of that! I’m just security!” “I don’t give a shit WHO you are! Where’s your supervisor?” “…I..uh…I guess Lisa is my supervisor, but she’s not here!” “Oh? And where the hell is she? GZS Headquarters is VERY displeased!” “I don’t understand, Lisa wasn’t in charge of any kind of shipping. She was an egghead! A researcher! We were down here for…other reasons…but you should know that!” “LOOK! I work in a cramped fucking office with boring paper work all goddamn day, I don’t have a window, someone keeps stealing my stapler, and they don’t tell me shit unless it’s to scream at my fucking face. I don’t care WHY you’re here! All I know is; I got my ass chewed out by HQ for someone else’s fuck ups! We got Shelters all over the goddamn tri-state area with mixed up equipment during the building process and we’re only NOW just finding out about it! You know how BAD that makes us look to our customers? I got sent down here to see if I could find out anything and all I’ve found out is the goddamn City is crawling with fucking cannibalistic mutants! Now that I’ve FOUND someone who might have some answers for me, I’m not just gonna dismiss that! So open up the goddamn door and let me in!” Your act and tone is very convincing of someone who’s had to deal with red tape and silly corporate orders. (Though you do know something of them having had to deal with them at your own job in your “old life”) obviously the security guard knows about them as well, because he lets you in. When the door opens up, you see a surprisingly scrawny man. You were expecting someone a little more burly, but he still wields an assault rifle slung around his shoulder making the need for physical strength unnecessary. “You…you don’t look like a GZS employee…shouldn’t you be in a suit and tie or something?” “I’m not gonna be running all over the nuclear wasteland in a hot ass suit and tie! Shit, I swear we hire dumber and dumber security guards each year. Just goes to show even natural selection fails sometimes in the face of near mass extinction. So where the hell is this Lisa?” you ask walking past him and noticing the well lit room and its sterile appearance. Some sort of generator sits in a corner giving off a low hum. “I told you she’s not here; she went to the surface again. She should be back soon.” The security guard says still eyeing you suspiciously. “Again? Why’s she going up there in the first place? Ain’t nothing left up there.” “You’re telling me. I went up once and nearly got myself killed. Since then Lisa says she’d rather me stay guard here and not get in the way of here so called research. Fine by me.” “I still don’t understand, what’s this research?” “Uh…well…um…it’s supposed to be a secret. I’m really surprised you being from HQ that you don’t know about it…” “I told you, I get BURIED in paperwork, and they don’t tell me shit. I mean I’ve heard things here and there, but I don’t know what else was going on here.” “Well…I guess it really doesn’t matter now…I mean what’s done is done and HQ probably should know anyway…okay well you know how GZS has dealings with the military and the government and shit right?” “Sure.” “Well it’s something like that going on, but I don’t know the intricate details about it, just what I know from Lisa, but I guess GZS was trying to develop some sort of radiation drug, y’know something to make the body immune to the shit.” “That does sound pretty useful, but this place doesn’t exactly look like a complex lab for doing something like that.” “Oh, its not. This is just a research outpost as it were. The real drug was made somewhere else, but it needed to be tested right? So they decided to test it here, a batch of it got dumped in the water supply months before the bombs hit. The idea is that the survivors of the initial blast would still be able to live and not get cancer, sterility or tumors and all that other bad shit that radiation causes. So even people caught in the cities would survive and be able to eventually rebuild and get civilization up and running again. I think they wanted to dump the drug into ALL the major cities, but it looks like world war three happened sooner than they though eh?” What you just heard sounds like some sort of science fiction tale! Then again being the cynic you are, you can’t say you’re completely surprised by it. Though now you have a more important question. “Okay, but if that was the intention…what’s with all the mutants in the City trying to eat me?” “Uh…well…I guess it didn’t work the way it should’ve? That’s sort of why Lisa and me were still here. Lisa was supposed to record the results of the drug after the bombs hit and that’s what she’s been doing. Lisa says the drugs are affecting people’s minds, and combined with the already fucked up situation I’d say it probably explains a lot already. Though I gotta say there was some pretty bad rioting even before the bombs dropped so I wonder if the drug was starting to affect the minds of people even then…but that’s silly I mean me and Lisa haven’t been affected by it at all, I dunno.” “YOU and her drank the water too?” “Well yeah, our personal water recycling system has it. I mean if we were going to be here, we damn well had to be pretty resistant to radiation…wait a minute I just realized something… you mean GZS sent you down here without this knowledge? Oh shit! You realize how many rads you’ve probably soaked up without the drug’s protection? Oh man, you were right! They must hate your guts at HQ! Ha ha ha ha ha! Sucks to be you!” Owen laughs uncontrollably “Yeah, yeah…” “Man, I mean shit! They pretty much sent you to die! I mean really why the hell would they worry about whether shelters got the right equipment shipments now for anyway? GZS already got their money, did you actually think they were going to go send someone personally to each shelter correct the mistakes? They were already built man! Use your head!” “Uh huh, so…” “Ha ha ha ha! I mean damn, you work in shipping, GZS fucking up shouldn’t even be news to you! Look at what happened with this goddamn anti-radiation drug! I mean what asshole fucking moron thought up those shelter elevator designs?” “Why what’s wrong with the elevator designs?” you ask innocently, which suddenly puts Owen in a less jovial mood, he begins to get suspicious again. “Something ain’t right here…anyone who works for GZS knows how idiotic the computerized shelter elevator set up is. People got fired for that one. Why hell why do you think WE have a ladder? You claim you’re from HQ and you don’t know? I don’t care HOW much you say you’re out of the loop… I’m a lowly security guard and even I heard about the fucked up elevator designs!” Owen goes for his assault rifle slung on his shoulder, and you charge slamming him into the wall with an elbow to his face. You then pistol whip him a couple times before taking his rifle away from him. He holds on to his bloody face looking at you. “Ughhhh, shit…my face…” he groans. “Okay look, I was probably wrong for lying about working for GZS and…” “Fuck you…you goddamn piece of shit…” “HEY! Asshole! I’m the one with the gun here! Now I don’t want to kill you, but…” Owen unsuccessfully tries to grab his rifle back, you kick him back down. “Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me? I nearly shot you, dumb fuck! I’d probably be able to kick your ass even without these guns, so you better just calm…” Owen once again attempts to attack you, this time you butt him with the rifle hard, and kick him out the door then lock it. “Fuck you then asshole! Let the mutants eat you!” you shout, you expect to hear banging on the door, or even pleading, but you don’t hear anything. After a few hours pass, you open up the door, and Owen is gone. You close the door back up and explore your surroundings a bit more. There’s not much to explore though, just two simple bedrooms, an eating area, bathroom and the “living area” which you’re already familiar with. The generator provides power, and a water recycling system provides water. Looks like there’s some sort of food dispensing system as well, though what it dispenses isn’t particularly tasty. You could be set up here for awhile if you wanted to be, though perhaps you just want somewhere to rest first before getting out of the city. > You stay You decide to stay, and think about what Owen said about the water supply and the anti-radiation drugs in it then you think about what happened to a majority of the survivors. It didn’t seem to do them any good, but he was right; it WAS stupid to come here! You can’t really do much about it now, but you’re hoping that water can keep you from dying a slow horrible death, though you don’t know how it works exactly since you weren’t drinking it before you absorbed rads. Still, you’ll try anything now. The first thing you do is start drinking the water, and a lot of it. You also wonder about Owen’s supervisor Lisa. He did say she was supposed to return soon, and you form some ideas on how to handle the situation when it arises (to keep your mind occupied), but as it turns out, she never does. Probably got killed no doubt. A few days go by and there’s not much to do for entertainment purposes and you’re reluctant to leave your “safe haven” now. There are some books in what is Lisa’s room that you peruse through. You also look for maybe some notes on her research since the stuff Owen told you about did sound interesting. Maybe even ideas on what the drugs in the water supply might’ve done to people (Something ELSE you’re starting to worry about) but unfortunately you don’t find anything. She must’ve taken those with her. Owen’s room has an old TV set which amusingly has an equally as old game console hooked up to it. You spend a lot of time shooting different colored circular objects with your white triangle on the screen. After a week you start feeling weird. Like mildly delirious. You start lying in bed a lot, only getting up to quench your thirst since you don’t have much of an appetite. After a month you start feeling sick. You begin throwing up and having diarrhea even though you’ve barely been eating anything. You have the shakes and you often just lie on the floor aching all over you body. You drink the water in the steadily failing hopes that it will miraculously cure you. When patches of your hair start falling out, and cough up bits of blood, you really start to lose all hope. “Oh fuck…I don’t wanna die like this…shit…” you sob. You begin thinking about suicide, but you’re so weak that the one time you seriously attempt it; you collapse on the floor when reaching for your pistol and fall unconscious for a full day. When you wake up, you feel a little better physically, but not much. However your mind is a little warped. As it turns out this is somewhat fortunate as you don’t worry about dying so much anymore. You do start talking to yourself at great lengths though. You begin having bizarre thoughts about things in general. Sometimes you go into a fit and start ranting until you’re hoarse. Another month passes and you’re completely better physically, in fact you feel stronger than you ever did before. Your mind is still in la la land though. You begin to get very violent. You begin punching the walls (and even doing some damage to them) and ripping up books. What temporarily “sobers” you up is when you smash the food dispenser, breaking it completely. While you still have real food left you’ve just destroyed your only means of food-substitute when the real stuff runs out. “SHIT!” you yell. “I gotta get a fuckin…grip…I gotta get fuckin’ food!” You grab your pistol and assault rifle and throw open the door in search of food. After climbing back up to the surface, you notice that you can see pretty well in the dark warehouse. It would appear you’ve developed some minor “dark vision”. In the darkness you also notice that the warehouse has lots of rats and roaches crawling around in it. Those could be food… > You eat the rats and roaches Something you wouldn’t ever consider eating before suddenly makes a lot of sense to you. You start off by grabbing the nearest crawling roaches you see and start popping them in your mouth and chew. They taste terrible, somehow though you don’t suffer a gag reflex though. You just find them unpleasant, like eating something bitter rather than disgusting. After having had enough of eating bugs you try to catch a rat. It takes awhile, but eventually you stomp on one severely crippling it and then stomp once more to kill it. Eating a raw rat doesn’t particularly taste any better, but again you don’t suffer any sort of natural revulsion during this act. It would seem you’ve gone through a change of some sort, one that has put you in a better frame of mind for survival. One that has also put your body in better condition for survival as well since you suffer no ill effects from eating such unclean creatures under equally unclean conditions. You temporarily have some problems with lice and fleas you catch from the rats, but even that doesn’t really become a problem considering the rest hair has fallen out now. (Well you have a few wisps left) You skin also begins to harden in time, making fleas no longer a problem. Whatever internal parasites any of these might’ve carried also have no effect as it seems your resistance and immunity system has increased quite a bit. You look in the bathroom mirror one day and see that you’ve changed alright. Changed into something better. You aren’t going to win any beauty contests, but you’re going to live… A year passes… You’ve been living a relatively simple life of eating and sleeping and it’s basically been enough. For the past year your mind hasn’t really been the most stable, so you haven’t really thought about anything other than your immediate survival, and given you have a water supply and the rats and roaches for food, you haven’t ventured outside of the GZS warehouse since you entered. That’s starting to change. Lately your mind seems to have a little more clarity. Indeed you’re starting to feel like “yourself” before the change. Not entirely like yourself, but you don’t go shithouse rat crazy screaming at the walls like you used to. You’ve been getting a little curious about the rest of the City. If you’re mostly sane now, maybe other survivors are as well. Maybe even some things have been fixed; it would be nice if they were, as its getting boring where you’re currently staying. Taking your weapons with you, you leave your new home to explore. (Making sure to hide the trapdoor before leaving of course) The City streets are still as desolate as you remember them, and mostly empty as well. You expect to run into gangs of mutants though. You suddenly stop and think about that for a moment and realize that YOU are also a mutant now! Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean mutantism is a club. You’re sure there’s a lot of fighting for resources. In fact you come across some fighting, though in a different way than you’d imagine. While you’re walking through a neighborhood by a corner store that has all its windows boarded up, you hear voices inside. You step through the open doorway to investigate. It’s dark inside, but some candles light up the place. “Ted, what do you mean you won’t gimme anything for this? This is a solid gold watch man!” a skinny mutant asks an exceptionally ugly one eyed mutant he has pistol strapped to his side. “Goddamn it Carl, would you fuckin’ think? What the hell am I gonna do with a gold piece of shit that doesn’t even work anymore in the first place?” “Well can’t you trade it for something? I mean gold’s gotta be worth something to someone! It’s not like I gave you a sack of dollar bills!” “Didn’t stop you from trying though did it? Look Carl, unless it’s something useful you know damn well I ain’t taking it. Bring back some batteries, a first aid kit, hell some canned corn would be a welcome change of pace than watery roach soup! Just stop bringing me shit I have no use for!” “But Carl! I need some bullets! You can’t expect me to do any scavenging downtown without bullets for my pistol! How will I defend myself against the Ferals or how about at night when the Shadow Horde comes out?” “Cry me a river Carl, you’re a fast guy I’m sure you can outrun the roving gangs of Ferals, ain’t that hard. And second of all you shouldn’t even BE out at night! If you get caught out at night I got no sympathy for what happens to you! Now…” suddenly Ted’s one good eye catches sight of you. “Who the fuck are you pretty boy?” Ted asks, Carl just backs off when he sees the assault rifle strapped to your back. “Pretty boy? Have you seen my face?” you retort. “Yeah, I see your fucking face an’ you’re a fuckin’ pretty boy as far as I’m concerned. Shit you ain’t even got any scars. So what the hell do you want, I ain’t seen you before. Ain’t seen too many here with an assault rifle either. You part of the Zeropolis Guard? Then again you don’t wear the uniform…maybe you just killed one of them then? Heh heh.” “Who are the Zeropolis Guard?” “You ain’t heard of them? Huh, well they’ve only just been making scouting missions in this area. Basically a collection of ex-National Guardsmen that insisted on staying here to the very end. They got the best hardware as far as I know, but the delusional fuckers think it’s STILL their job to keep peace in the damn City. Ain’t no peace in Zeropolis!” “What’s Zeropolis exactly?” you ask feeling completely out of the loop, which only gets you some mighty strange stares by Carl and Ted. “Uh, Zeropolis, y’know…The City? That’s what this place is called now.” Carl says. “Holy shit pretty boy, you been livin’ under a damn rock or something?” “Well, uh sort of…” “I guess so! Where the hell ARE you from? “Er…I never actually lived in the City...I guess you can kind of say I got trapped here and then shortly after went mad for a little while and I’m only just now starting to feel like myself.” You explain without giving too much information out. “Hmm, well that might explain some things. I think we all know about that madness you’re speaking of. Think it happened to everyone after this place got nuked, still going on for most people. You get that hunger craving and violent thoughts pervade your mind…though the first one I killed and ate was my wife so it wasn’t ALL bad har har har!” Ted laughs. “Hey how many people did you eat during that time?” “Uh, none actually.” “None? Ah, you must be like Carl here. He just ate roaches and rats because even when the madness hit him he still was a big pussy!” “Fuck you Ted! I’M the one going out risking my ass scavenging, not YOU! I…just didn’t want to eat anybody…I guess I just never suffered the madness as much as the rest.” “Yeah, well anyway what do you guys actually sell here?” you ask. “Well Carl doesn’t sell shit, because he doesn’t own this place, I do. And as you can probably tell we run on the barter system here that being the only real way to do business anymore. However I have a wide variety of items, but not obviously not right here, since this part of the store ain’t the most secure as you can see, but bring me something I might find useful and maybe we can do business; just don’t bring fuckin’ broken gold watches!” Ted exclaims looking back at Carl. “There’s a lot of stuff downtown to scavenge, hey…maybe you could come with me?” Carl suddenly asks hopefully. > You go with Carl You don’t really have anything better to do, and you are sort of interested in learning more about your surroundings. You are living here now after all. “Uh sure I’ll go with you. What do I do exactly?” “You’ll go? Great! You don’t really have to do too much really, I just need someone to help with the whole protection thing while I search, since Ted here is being a jackass and not giving me any bullets!” “Hey those are in damn scarce supply in the first place! In fact, you better start finding them on your own soon, because I don’t have too many to spare anymore anyway. I need something to defend my shop with. Here!” Ted pulls out three bullets from his ragged pockets and gives them to Carl. “That’s coming out anything you bring back too, and if you guys are going downtown, you better do it now, before nightfall. See you later.” You and Carl set off, while you’re walking you notice other mutants wandering in the neighborhood, but they don’t attack, in fact many of them are just watching the both of you or going about their business. (Like catching a rat to eat) “So is this area safe or something? Nobody’s attacking us.” You ask. “Of course it’s safe, well safe as anything can be in this place. I mean there’s still always the Ferals that roam around, but not so much around here anymore. The people around here in the Dust District don’t even try to eat one another. Probably due to the fact that a lot of people used to live here and work together in the factory and warehouses nearby, so I guess there’s that sense of unity as it were. Though I’m sure most of them did attack each other at one time. Still, this is a severely new situation, you can’t blame TOO much on what happened during people’s madness. Weird what happened though, I mean do you think the enemy dropped some sort of nuclear nerve agent combo on this place? Or did we all just go temporarily insane in the face of the shear devastation?” “I really couldn’t tell you, Carl. Maybe the second one I guess.” You say keeping your secret information on the reasons to yourself. “Yeah, doesn’t take much for us to fall apart I suppose. The Zeropolis Guard have also claimed they’re going to make this place even safer when they set up a new base here, though I sort of wish they’d just leave us alone. I get the impression they’ll be trying to tell us all what to do and conscripting us to fight the Shadow Horde.” “What is the Shadow Horde anyway?” “Man, you don’t know who THEY are? Then again you didn’t know the city name either! Anyway The Shadow Horde is a group of mutants who primarily live in the sewers, though they do come out at night and attack anyone who isn’t part their group. They’re sort of like the Ferals, except they are a lot more organized and even more vicious. I’ve heard they have a leader of some sort; I’ve only heard rumors though; ranging from a giant abomination, to a beautiful priestess of some sort. Have a hard time believing a lot of them, the only thing I do know is you don’t want to get outside at night, let alone even enter the sewers!” Carl continues to about various things of Zeropolis on your way Downtown. As fucked up as things are, you can’t help but be fascinated by it all. You feel like you’re actually living in some sort of 80s low budget post apocalyptic movie. You ask him if anyone actually leaves Zeropolis, but he says it’s rare. The Ferals and other more territorial mutants seem content on staying in the City, and as for the other “normal” ones, it’s happened, but it seems mutation isn’t a common theme outside Zeropolis. Most mutants are shot on sight or at least chased off. At least those are the stories he’s heard from a couple of people he knows that have left only to come back. The closer you get to Downtown the more Carl stops talking only telling you to keep a look out and to be quiet. Lots of Ferals fight each other in the Downtown area and will obviously attack anyone else. Plus there are other scavengers here that will try to bushwhack each other as well. Carl pulls out a large bag and you and he start going into various devastated buildings where he grabs things of varying interest. A few instance you see large groups of Ferals in the street, but Carl tells you not to fire, since they’re all fighting each other at the time. Another instance when you’re on the second floor of an apartment store, another mutant clobbers Carl with a lead pipe and tries to make off with the bag of goodies, but a couple of shots put the thief down. “Thanks. Oh fuck, I think the shots caught the attention of the Ferals outside, we better get out of here!” You and Carl rush out the building and after you fire a few more shots at the Ferals you both make a beeline back the Dust District, unfortunately you and Carl have to retreat and backtrack several times to avoid large groups of Ferals, until finally when you get out of the area, its twilight and you still haven’t gotten back to the Dust District yet. You and Carl hear a nearby sewer manhole opening up… “Oh shit we’re gonna die!” Carl yells and starts running. He’s in such a hurry to getaway he trips and dumps his bag with all the contents inside! He frantically starts putting everything back in, but already you can see the Shadow Horde starting to come out, and yeah they do look a hell of a lot meaner than the typical Ferals, which is pretty hard to do. The fact that they start shouting “CARL GET YOUR ASS UP, WE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE!” you yell and start blasting Horde members with your assault rifle, picking your shots, but when they fire back, you can’t stand your ground for long and run leaving Carl behind. You hear Carl trying to catch up with you, but you soon hear more shots, yell of pain followed by the collapsing of a body. You turn around to see one of the Horde trying to finish Carl off with a spiked bat, but he blasts the mutant in the head with his pistol twice killing it. He’s wounded and even if you went back to get him, the rest of the Horde is closing in and you’d never outrun them if you carried Carl on your back. Sensing the end is near; Carl uses his last bullet to save himself a torturous death by the hands of the Horde. Of course now you have worry about yourself. > You continue a straight forward run No time for fancy shit, you just have to RUN! You run and don’t look back, though you can still hear them chasing you, and other Horde members start popping out of other sewer gratings. Eventually you get to the Dust District, but they’re still chasing you, that’s when you hear shouting coming from in front and above you as well. “ALRIGHT START THROWING AND FIRING!” Suddenly from up high bottles crash to the ground releasing gouts of fire. Molotovs. Next comes the sounds and flash of machine gun fire from everywhere. “OH SHIT!” you shout and duck down and roll into a nearby building. The Horde was still chasing you, but most of them got burned by the Molotovs, the shrieking is unnatural sounding, but it’s soon put to an end when the flaming flailing bodies are shot by the machine guns. After it’s all over you pick yourself up only to get kicked in the ribs and a rifle shoved in your face. “Don’t fuckin’ move Shadow scum!” a uniformed mutant orders. “I’m not…” “Silence!” another kick, this time to the nuts. While you hold your crotch in pain, another uniformed mutant arrives, but this one has a higher rank. “Alright Private, that’ll do for now, let’s see what this fucker has to say about his buddies…what the fuck? This ain’t no Shadow! He’s too fuckin’ pretty for one thing, and not nearly muscular enough.” “(Groan) I’m not, I live in this area! I was scavenging Downtown with another and we got caught after dark…he’s dead.” You say picking yourself up. “Yeah, that’s usually what happens. Woulda happened to you too had we not set up base here in the Dust District. This place will be completely safe from now on as it is officially under direct protection by the Zeropolis Guard. I’m Captain Salazar.” Well that explains the uniforms. “…yeah I heard of you guys. I also heard you only had scouts in the area though.” “Well we move fast, and we needed a new base camp. Our last position was steadily being overrun by Ferals during the day and the Shadow Horde at night. But I think here is a good position to make a stand. This area doesn’t have as many sewer entrances, Feral activity is low, and best of all there’s the abandoned factory and plant nearby. Maybe one day we can power up the entire City again, but for right now we’re trying to just get power to this district, though even that will take awhile. The Zeropolis Guard is dedicated to bringing order to this city and I think this is the best place to start.” “Hey that’s great, okay I’ve had a hard day; I think I’ll just go home now…” Captain Salazar suddenly stops you. “While you’re free to go back home citizen, I can’t help but notice your weapons…now while I certainly understand the need for personal protection, especially given this unstable situation and your current choice of profession, so you may keep your pistol. However, your assault rifle would be of great use to us. We need all the maximum firepower we can get to better defend this area.” “Well it doesn’t have many bullets left though.” You say, but Salazar merely smiles at your attempt to keep your rifle. The private who kicked you looks at you like he’s anxious for you to try something. “That’s alright; we have plenty of ammo suitable for it. However, if you wish to actively join the Zeropolis Guard, then you certainly would have need for such a weapon… do you wish to join?” “Uh no. That’s okay.” You say helplessly handing over you weapon. Salazar takes it. “Pity, you seem like you’d make an excellent solider. Still, our offer is always open and I’m sure you’ll be able to easily find us. You may return to your home.” You make you way back home, in fact you’ll be really glad to get home, today wasn’t very fun, reminds you of why you always preferred your own company. You sort of wonder though about how things might change with the Guard messing around in the area. While this warehouse is sort of in an isolated part of the Dust District, you can only imagine that it’s a matter of time before the Guard start snooping around here and given you have a generator and water recycler, they’ll probably want this place for themselves and you’d have to go live in one of the crappy neighborhoods like everyone else. Of course you might be able to swing things to your benefit if you did join the Zeropolis Guard, though that might mean they’ll be sending you on missions where you can get yourself killed. Before you fall asleep, you think about the future and how you’re going to deal with this situation. > You join the Zeropolis Guard You see where this is going; the Zeropolis Guard is fully intent on their delusional plan and they’re going to be the top assholes in this area, so you might as well join them to reap the benefits. It’s better than being at their complete mercy and it’s certainly better than living in fear of the Shadow Horde, at least the Guard seems to want to restore order. The next day you go find Captain Salazar who is pretty easy to find since he’s currently giving speeches in the streets to the Dust District inhabitants of how they should actively join the Zeropolis Guard. Not too many takers, but none of them are in any position to argue with the occupation. When you go up to Salazar to tell him you’re interested in joining, he’s pleased to just have someone taking him up on his offer. Of course he wants to know more about you and where you’re currently staying, and you do tell him about the warehouse, just not about the secret GZS rooms underneath. He’s a little bewildered of why you’re staying there rather than a proper house in one of the neighborhoods, or even your own house. To this you reply that you used to live in one of the Downtown apartments, and couldn’t live there anymore due to the danger. You mention during your time of madness you ended up wandering this way and just took up residence there and now even though you’re better, you’ve made it your home and feel comfortable at that place. You also go on to say that you prefer to be away from large crowds of people. Captain Salazar frowns at that last statement. “Y’know we are a military unit, teamwork is encouraged here…though I suppose we need all the help we can get right now, so I guess you’ll be on scouting duty. Maybe if you prove yourself, I’ll put you on sniper duty. As for your living arrangements…I guess you can stay there. That area is pretty empty and there isn’t anything there except a few warehouses, we’re more interested in the plant and factory. However it’s the perfect place where the Shadow Horde might stage a sneak attack from due to its remoteness. So consider yourself the sentry in that area. I wish we could use our radios, but the radiation levels here…well are sort of screwing up the signals. We’ve been trying to train messenger rats, but so far the little furry bastards just run off to the nearest source of food, so you’ll be reporting to me personally every two days where I’ll either give you new instructions or tell you to continue what you’re doing. Unless I hear otherwise and you don’t report, I’ll give you one more day and then I’ll assume you’re either dead or have deserted. If you’re dead then you’re dead, but if I find out you’ve deserted, my wrath will be terrible, and you’ll wish you were dead.” “Okay, but what if I was captured?” “Ha ha ha ha! You’re joking right? Not really much of a chance of that happening. Ferals just kill, and the Shadow Horde might capture you, but they won’t let you live afterwards. I trust you won’t let yourself get captured then right?” “Guess not.” “Good. Let’s see, what can you do…I got everyone else working on other things, right now we’re tracking down all the sewer manholes in the area and shoving the remains of cars on top of them. Others have been sent to raid nearby police stations in the hopes of finding more weapons and ammo. Okay what you’ll be doing is scouting and clearing out the factory; we’ve discovered that all the Feral activity in the area has been coming from those places. At least that’s where we’ve seen them all run off to, you can go retrieve your assault rifle seeing as I haven’t given it to anyone else yet.” “Am I working by myself, or with others?” “Well from the impression of getting, you’d probably prefer working alone, but that’s simply too dangerous for what I’m sending you in to do, you’ll need someone watching your back, so I’m sure you’re familiar with Private Ackman here…” You then see the soldier who kicked you yesterday. He doesn’t look any friendlier and just nods at you. “There will be other small detachments exploring various parts of the factory as well so more ground can be covered, but for the most part you two are on your own. Dimissed.” You and Ackman go carry out the mission in relative silence. Private Ackman doesn’t seem to care for you, or at best he doesn’t want talk to you unless it’s absolutely necessary. This doesn’t really bother you though since he is a good fighter, and is making this mission a lot easier. The factory is a huge place though even in its current devastated state; there are several sections, multiple levels and it covers a lot of land. It’s going to take awhile. After a few months of factory clearing you and Ackman have the highest Feral body count so far, and their attacks on the Dust District are becoming non-existent. Due to this accomplishment, many of the inhabitants have a little more confidence in the Zeropolis Guard and as a result more people have volunteer to help, either by joining directly or by attempting to fix the power plant. Shadow Horde attacks occur sometimes, but even those aren’t as frequent. Zeropolis is a big place, and presumably they’ve turned their attention to easier areas. Four years pass… It’s been five years since you set foot in Zeropolis, and the place has changed quite a bit, well in your area anyway. Most of the factory has been safely stripped to help rebuild the district. The nearby plant has parts of it fixed and partial electricity has been restored to the district as well. Feral attacks are completely unheard of in the area now, they’ve either all been killed, or in a few cases, managed to retain their sanity again. The Zeropolis Guard has firm control of the area and has been attempting to restore a few old vehicles to work again mainly using jury-rigged steam engines, though the many stills created to make hooch certainly serve the same purpose to create “Garbage fuel” as it were for vehicles. Oddly one thing that has surprised everyone is that new mutants are actually being born! Not many, but it still came as a surprise when one of the female mutants found out she was pregnant, when it was assumed everyone would’ve been sterile due to the radiation, but then again the fact that you’re all still alive is proving that you’re all working on a different biological level now. You’ve risen in rank with your superior sniping skills, and saving others you’ve effectively become second in command. You’re looked upon as sort of a “hero” figure among the Dust District. The Shadow Horde is still around, but attacks have less frequent. This perpetual war with them is basically at a standstill. The Zeropolis Guard has many more resources, but not nearly enough people. Captain Salazar is irritated by this fact, but there’s not much he can do about it. His big idea of bringing order to the entire City is slowly being crushed as he realizes this might never be possible. In desperation he’s sent a few people OUT of Zeropolis in the hopes of somehow getting help, but so far all his efforts have resulted in failure. People don’t like or trust mutant, and it’s mainly due to another organization attempting to “tame the wasteland” known as The Combine. With most of the outside towns under their control, they’ve developed “a shoot mutants from the City on sight” policy. Salazar’s behavior which was at one time just pleasantly dedicated is now becoming obsessively totalitarian. However, you’re standing by your warehouse home one day when you see some outsiders visit Zeropolis. They aren’t entirely human though, they look like cyborgs. Which would explain why they have no rad suits. There have been reports of The Combine currently at war with their own enemy called the Cybernetic Evolution. You’re not sure what it’s all about, but you’re guessing they probably see themselves as superior to humans. (You’ve seen enough movies in the past to know that’s always the case!) You can’t imagine what they’d be doing here, unless they intend on proving themselves superior to mutants as well. There aren’t many of them, but most of them are heavily armed. > You open fire immediately The Cybernetic Evolution’s opinion of mutants probably isn’t much better than their opinion of humans. This is probably a scouting force to assess the defenses and resistance level here, well to hell with that you aren’t going to let them report shit. You immediately open fire. You kill the smaller one in the center with relative ease, but the others go into battle mode and start laying down the firepower. You nearly get yourself killed before managing to take cover. Other mutants hear the sounds of battle and rush to the area to help you, and soon the metal interlopers are a pile of sparking scrap. “What the hell, you find new enemies for us?” one of the mutants asks you. “Nah, I don’t think we’ll be having any more problems with them. They’re busy with a war with the Combine; I doubt an army of cyborgs will be coming here anytime soon. Better go report this to the Captain though.” Soon after the cyborg diversion a lot of rumors start flying around that the Cybernetic Evolution will be attempting to invade Zeropolis or even that they’ve somehow allied with the Shadow Horde, but none of these rumors even come true. Though it does make Captain Salazar paranoid enough to take the current war with the Shadow Horde more on the offensive, of course this doesn’t pan out too well. When Salazar starts sending troops into the actual sewers they’re at a severe disadvantage and the losses on your side are terrible, yet the Captain insists on carrying out this plan. A few years go by and the Dust District’s defenses are nearly completely destroyed. You’re one of last defenders left and the Zeropolis Guard no longer exists as you know it. After Captain Salazar was struck down by an assassin the organization dissolved and it just became a bunch of armed mutants trying to defend their homes. It’s a futile endeavor though the Shadow Horde is relentless and as much as you might hate it, you have to leave; it’s just simply not safe to stay where you are anymore. The question is where to go? There are probably other places in the City where the Shadow Horde isn’t as strong or even in control, but that might just be a temporary solution and it might not be any safer. The only other option is to leave the City which is certainly going to be dangerous as you know mutants aren’t looked upon too kindly. > You go to a different part of the City You gather your belongings and leave as quickly as possible to another part of Zeropolis. It’s a big city after all; surely you can find some place to be. Eventually you do find a place to settle down. It isn’t the safest, but it’s better than where you currently were. Though in time, it begins to get dangerous once again as the Shadow Horde turns its attention to other parts of the City, and you have to move again, you continue this routine for a few more years until one day your luck runs out and you fail to leave in time and you finally become a victim to the ever growing Shadow Horde.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Cybernetic Evolution’s opinion of mutants probably isn’t much better than their opinion of humans. This is probably a scouting force to assess the defenses and resistance level here, well to hell with that you aren’t going to let them report shit. You immediately open fire. You kill the smaller one in the center with relative ease, but the others go into battle mode and start laying down the firepower. You nearly get yourself killed before managing to take cover. Other mutants hear the sounds of battle and rush to the area to help you, and soon the metal interlopers are a pile of sparking scrap. “What the hell, you find new enemies for us?” one of the mutants asks you. “Nah, I don’t think we’ll be having any more problems with them. They’re busy with a war with the Combine; I doubt an army of cyborgs will be coming here anytime soon. Better go report this to the Captain though.” Soon after the cyborg diversion a lot of rumors start flying around that the Cybernetic Evolution will be attempting to invade Zeropolis or even that they’ve somehow allied with the Shadow Horde, but none of these rumors even come true. Though it does make Captain Salazar paranoid enough to take the current war with the Shadow Horde more on the offensive, of course this doesn’t pan out too well. When Salazar starts sending troops into the actual sewers they’re at a severe disadvantage and the losses on your side are terrible, yet the Captain insists on carrying out this plan. A few years go by and the Dust District’s defenses are nearly completely destroyed. You’re one of last defenders left and the Zeropolis Guard no longer exists as you know it. After Captain Salazar was struck down by an assassin the organization dissolved and it just became a bunch of armed mutants trying to defend their homes. It’s a futile endeavor though the Shadow Horde is relentless and as much as you might hate it, you have to leave; it’s just simply not safe to stay where you are anymore. The question is where to go? There are probably other places in the City where the Shadow Horde isn’t as strong or even in control, but that might just be a temporary solution and it might not be any safer. The only other option is to leave the City which is certainly going to be dangerous as you know mutants aren’t looked upon too kindly. > You leave the City Going to another part of Zeropolis really isn’t going to help. The Shadow Horde will just eventually move on to those as well, you need to get out of this damn City. Even if you are hounded by humans at every turn, at least they’re easier to deal with than those overgrown beasts that are in the Shadow Horde’s ranks. Still you think you can make things slightly easier for yourself. You’re a mutant, but you aren’t exceptionally mutated to such a degree that you couldn’t pass yourself as one with a disguise. You immediately start searching through old Zeropolis Guard equipment, when you find a gas mask you think “Pefect.” You also get some gloves and hooded cloaked, basically clothing that will completely hide your body and face. When you look in a broken mirror you are confident that not many would think you weren’t human unless they insisted you take off your mask. After gathering what other supplies you think you’ll need you leave Zeropolis. You’re not sure where you’re going to go though, you do know you’ll have to keep moving to avoid suspicion in human towns and given the Combine only just recently won its war against the Cybernetic Evolution, its troops might be on a heightened state of distrust. However the world is a big place and this is just a small section of it, who’s to say mutants are shot on sight everywhere? Hell maybe there’s even a place where there isn’t killing going on every five seconds. Probably not, but it’s worth a try to look for. With this new goal in mind you begin your trek into the wasteland.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You see where this is going; the Zeropolis Guard is fully intent on their delusional plan and they’re going to be the top assholes in this area, so you might as well join them to reap the benefits. It’s better than being at their complete mercy and it’s certainly better than living in fear of the Shadow Horde, at least the Guard seems to want to restore order. The next day you go find Captain Salazar who is pretty easy to find since he’s currently giving speeches in the streets to the Dust District inhabitants of how they should actively join the Zeropolis Guard. Not too many takers, but none of them are in any position to argue with the occupation. When you go up to Salazar to tell him you’re interested in joining, he’s pleased to just have someone taking him up on his offer. Of course he wants to know more about you and where you’re currently staying, and you do tell him about the warehouse, just not about the secret GZS rooms underneath. He’s a little bewildered of why you’re staying there rather than a proper house in one of the neighborhoods, or even your own house. To this you reply that you used to live in one of the Downtown apartments, and couldn’t live there anymore due to the danger. You mention during your time of madness you ended up wandering this way and just took up residence there and now even though you’re better, you’ve made it your home and feel comfortable at that place. You also go on to say that you prefer to be away from large crowds of people. Captain Salazar frowns at that last statement. “Y’know we are a military unit, teamwork is encouraged here…though I suppose we need all the help we can get right now, so I guess you’ll be on scouting duty. Maybe if you prove yourself, I’ll put you on sniper duty. As for your living arrangements…I guess you can stay there. That area is pretty empty and there isn’t anything there except a few warehouses, we’re more interested in the plant and factory. However it’s the perfect place where the Shadow Horde might stage a sneak attack from due to its remoteness. So consider yourself the sentry in that area. I wish we could use our radios, but the radiation levels here…well are sort of screwing up the signals. We’ve been trying to train messenger rats, but so far the little furry bastards just run off to the nearest source of food, so you’ll be reporting to me personally every two days where I’ll either give you new instructions or tell you to continue what you’re doing. Unless I hear otherwise and you don’t report, I’ll give you one more day and then I’ll assume you’re either dead or have deserted. If you’re dead then you’re dead, but if I find out you’ve deserted, my wrath will be terrible, and you’ll wish you were dead.” “Okay, but what if I was captured?” “Ha ha ha ha! You’re joking right? Not really much of a chance of that happening. Ferals just kill, and the Shadow Horde might capture you, but they won’t let you live afterwards. I trust you won’t let yourself get captured then right?” “Guess not.” “Good. Let’s see, what can you do…I got everyone else working on other things, right now we’re tracking down all the sewer manholes in the area and shoving the remains of cars on top of them. Others have been sent to raid nearby police stations in the hopes of finding more weapons and ammo. Okay what you’ll be doing is scouting and clearing out the factory; we’ve discovered that all the Feral activity in the area has been coming from those places. At least that’s where we’ve seen them all run off to, you can go retrieve your assault rifle seeing as I haven’t given it to anyone else yet.” “Am I working by myself, or with others?” “Well from the impression of getting, you’d probably prefer working alone, but that’s simply too dangerous for what I’m sending you in to do, you’ll need someone watching your back, so I’m sure you’re familiar with Private Ackman here…” You then see the soldier who kicked you yesterday. He doesn’t look any friendlier and just nods at you. “There will be other small detachments exploring various parts of the factory as well so more ground can be covered, but for the most part you two are on your own. Dimissed.” You and Ackman go carry out the mission in relative silence. Private Ackman doesn’t seem to care for you, or at best he doesn’t want talk to you unless it’s absolutely necessary. This doesn’t really bother you though since he is a good fighter, and is making this mission a lot easier. The factory is a huge place though even in its current devastated state; there are several sections, multiple levels and it covers a lot of land. It’s going to take awhile. After a few months of factory clearing you and Ackman have the highest Feral body count so far, and their attacks on the Dust District are becoming non-existent. Due to this accomplishment, many of the inhabitants have a little more confidence in the Zeropolis Guard and as a result more people have volunteer to help, either by joining directly or by attempting to fix the power plant. Shadow Horde attacks occur sometimes, but even those aren’t as frequent. Zeropolis is a big place, and presumably they’ve turned their attention to easier areas. Four years pass… It’s been five years since you set foot in Zeropolis, and the place has changed quite a bit, well in your area anyway. Most of the factory has been safely stripped to help rebuild the district. The nearby plant has parts of it fixed and partial electricity has been restored to the district as well. Feral attacks are completely unheard of in the area now, they’ve either all been killed, or in a few cases, managed to retain their sanity again. The Zeropolis Guard has firm control of the area and has been attempting to restore a few old vehicles to work again mainly using jury-rigged steam engines, though the many stills created to make hooch certainly serve the same purpose to create “Garbage fuel” as it were for vehicles. Oddly one thing that has surprised everyone is that new mutants are actually being born! Not many, but it still came as a surprise when one of the female mutants found out she was pregnant, when it was assumed everyone would’ve been sterile due to the radiation, but then again the fact that you’re all still alive is proving that you’re all working on a different biological level now. You’ve risen in rank with your superior sniping skills, and saving others you’ve effectively become second in command. You’re looked upon as sort of a “hero” figure among the Dust District. The Shadow Horde is still around, but attacks have less frequent. This perpetual war with them is basically at a standstill. The Zeropolis Guard has many more resources, but not nearly enough people. Captain Salazar is irritated by this fact, but there’s not much he can do about it. His big idea of bringing order to the entire City is slowly being crushed as he realizes this might never be possible. In desperation he’s sent a few people OUT of Zeropolis in the hopes of somehow getting help, but so far all his efforts have resulted in failure. People don’t like or trust mutant, and it’s mainly due to another organization attempting to “tame the wasteland” known as The Combine. With most of the outside towns under their control, they’ve developed “a shoot mutants from the City on sight” policy. Salazar’s behavior which was at one time just pleasantly dedicated is now becoming obsessively totalitarian. However, you’re standing by your warehouse home one day when you see some outsiders visit Zeropolis. They aren’t entirely human though, they look like cyborgs. Which would explain why they have no rad suits. There have been reports of The Combine currently at war with their own enemy called the Cybernetic Evolution. You’re not sure what it’s all about, but you’re guessing they probably see themselves as superior to humans. (You’ve seen enough movies in the past to know that’s always the case!) You can’t imagine what they’d be doing here, unless they intend on proving themselves superior to mutants as well. There aren’t many of them, but most of them are heavily armed. > You open up dialogue You wonder if you’ve lost your mind again, because you can’t believe you’re even considering this… “Hey! Uh, hello! This is Zeropolis Guard territory! What do you want?” you call out to the group of cyborgs. One of them briefly talks to its heavier armed brethren and then steps forward to meet you; it’s a female, mostly human looking cyborg. She’s sort of cute, well cuter than what you’re used to around here anyway. “Yes, greetings. I am AVA-93, former human remade, emissary prototype, from the Cybernetic Evolution.” She says unemotionally. “Prototype?” “Yes, I am one of a kind. The Cybernetic Evolution typically does not believe in wasting time with words. We prefer a more direct course of action as we are attempting to remake humanity to a higher state of evolution.” “I see…so what purpose do you serve then since you guys tend to shoot first and ask questions later?” “Why to make contact with you mutants of course. The Cybernetic Evolution is currently at war with a human organization called the Combine. They refuse to see the light, are a committed foe and greatly outnumber us. So we must find every means available to defeat them. We have heard that mutants are victims of human prejudices and that you are typically shot on sight when found outside the City.” “Well I suppose you could say that, though I can sort of see why they might be suspicious of us, many of us aren’t exactly friendly types.” “Yes, I have heard that most mutants are completely hostile, I am surprised to see the amount of organization you have shown as I thought this was not the case.” “Around here, we’re the exception rather than the norm, so what did you have in mind?” “An alliance of course. We would like you to help us destroy The Combine.” “Whoa, hold on there. I’m not exactly in charge of this place; you’ll have to talk with Captain Salazar, as he runs the Zeropolis Guard. There’s also the fact that we’re in a war ourselves with a group of mutants that outnumber us, we wouldn’t be able to help much. Then there’s the whole fact…” You hesitate, but AVA-93 demands that you continue. “Yes?” “Well there’s that fact that if you’re trying remake humans into cyborgs, what happens after you defeat all the humans? Will you try to remake us as well?” “A thoughtful question. At the present time, you mutants are not suitable candidates for remaking, though what the future holds is unknown. However you can be rest assured that if we ally we will never attack you as long as we are at war with The Combine.” That answer doesn’t really make you want to suddenly be their friend, though it was an honest answer. The only thing you can think of is let Captain Salazar decide how he wants to handle this, so you take AVA and the rest to see him. During the talks Salazar doesn’t seem very concerned about what might happen in the future so much as what an alliance can do for him now. AVA mentions that they can supply him with their own high tech weapons to help in the war with the Shadow Horde, if the Zeropolis Guard starts raiding nearby Combine towns. He immediately agrees, and AVA leaves explaining that the first shipment will arrive as soon in the mean time they want an attack launched on the Combine immediately. You advise strongly against this course of action. The Shadow Horde hasn’t even been attacking in large groups like it once did. You don’t like the idea of fighting a two front war and spreading your strength so thin, and you still don’t like the idea of allying with a bunch of cyborgs with a superiority complex. Salazar doesn’t want to hear it though; his vendetta against the Shadow Horde is too great. He wants them gone and is willing to do anything for the chance. In fact he’s pissed off at you for advising against it, so he says he’s sending YOU along with a few others to start attacking the Combine towns! You leave Zeropolis for the first time in five years; it’s very odd to you. Everything seems different, like cleaner. Even the air seems fresher. You almost feel like you don’t belong here anymore, the others traveling with you feel the same way. Soon you approach a nearby town; of course you stay away for awhile plotting of how to approach this situation. Over the course of a few months you organize successful raids on Combine towns, mostly at night, taking advantage of your night vision. (Which seems perfect at this point) While you do feel superior to them, you don’t have any particular hatred for humans; this is just job to you, nothing more. You don’t have too much resistance for the most part. Most of the Combine force is holding off the Cybernetic Evolution. But you do lose people under your command, some through the attacks, but some due to being called back to Zeropolis. Apparently the Captain is having a lot more difficulty than he thought when he started sending troops down into the sewers to take the fight to the Shadow Horde. Eventually you’re all by yourself! In fact you’re wondering why Captain Salazar hasn’t called you back since you’re his second in command, you know he was pissed at you, but if he’s calling everyone else back, why not you? At this point you can’t even really do too much, except maybe hang out in the wilderness sniping the occasional Combine citizen or soldier. In fact given this situation, you get the feeling he’s pretty much abandoned you. Maybe you should just leave. It’s not like you couldn’t survive out here. Your time in Zeropolis has made you better in everyway. You could even withstand long periods of food and water if need be. (Though lately you’ve been eating the mutant wildlife and drinking their blood to sustain you, so it isn’t really a problem) > You wait awhile You figure you’ll give it some time; you’re not in a hurry to go anywhere. A week later and you wake up to a little mutant getting ready to push you to see if you’re awake, you immediately wake before he can do anything, slam him to the ground and put your knife to his throat. “Hey! Stop! I’m on your side!” he gasps. “Oh? What the hell are you doing here? Did the Captain finally decide to send me some help again?” “The Captain’s dead!” “He’s fuckin’ dead?” “Yeah! He got assassinated by some big ass motherfucker! Anyway that’s why I was sent to get you! You’re next in line to take charge.” “Wow. I would’ve thought someone would’ve just taken power themselves and left me to rot out here.” “Well, I think a couple of people had that idea…but then they realized the job wasn’t worth it. The Shadow Horde has been taking the offensive ever since Captain Salazar insisted on pursuing them in their sewers. We need a leader to get us out of this mess and you’re the only one we have!” See you knew no good was going to come of this. “Alright, let’s see how much shit we’re in…” You make your way back to Zeropolis and the Dust District is showing signs of battle, which is difficult to do since the place was a wreck to begin with. Dead bodies are being moved out of the street and the people look hopeful that you can somehow get them out of this mess. First thing you do is order a complete pull out of the sewers and reinforce your defenses in the Dust District. There’s no point in pursuing an enemy that’s lived in the damn sewers for years and knows them like the backs of their hands. Right now you need to regroup after the losses Salazar has incurred due to his recklessness. Second thing you do is order no more attacks on Combine towns, you can’t afford the man power and you didn’t like allying with the Cybernetic Evolution anyway. However, another shipment of weapons was already on its way when you enact this order. The cyborgs who arrive wonder why they haven’t heard any reports of mutants attacking the Combine. Seeing that this alliance is over anyway. You immediately have the cyborgs killed (Which is easier than you thought it would be) and keep the weapons to help your own struggle. A couple more cyborgs arrive a month later probably to investigate what happened to their fellows, and you have them killed as well. Your hope is that the CE will think they’re losing them to Combine ambushes and will eventually just forget about you. And apparently they do because no more cyborgs are sent. You just hope the CE doesn’t win against The Combine. Eventually you manage to restore relative safety to the Dust District, its not safe like it once was though, but at least it isn’t on the brink of disaster due to Salazar’s mad plan. Being in charge isn’t exactly a fun job, and its obvious why to as why nobody wanted to do it. Still the people see you as a savior of sorts and generally like you as a leader. The warehouse that you live in, has been converted into the new head quarters, though you still live in the secret underground part that only you have access to…well at least you thought you did. One night you wake up in your room to a very pale woman by your bed. Obviously she’s a mutant, but she’s somehow managed to avoid the ugliness and scaring that goes along with it, though she does have part of her face covered. She holds a pistol, but seems to be inspecting the place more than paying any attention to you. “Boy this was so long ago and another life time…please don’t go for your gun, I’m here to talk…my, you are a pretty one. Almost human looking…almost.” she says finally paying attention to you. “How the hell did you get past the guards?” you answer calculating how quickly you might be able to reach her before she can get off a shot. “This war between our respective groups has taken a toll on both of us for quite sometime…I would ask that we finally have peace.” She says ignoring your question. You gather she’s from the Shadow Horde, though you’ve never seen one like her. She’s not brimming with muscles or trying to rip your head off for one thing. (And somehow she actually smells nice and unsewer like!) She is exuding a weird aura though, like you have a great desire to follow whatever she says. It’s difficult to shake off these effects, but you try to keep a level head. “Peace? You’re ones always coming out at night to eat people! We were just trying to defend ourselves!” “…yes I have come to understand that now…and I appreciate your desire to exist. You have held out against us for years and accomplished much within that time. However I would say that your most recent attack on us was most definitely equally as brutal. You came into our sewers…our home and murdered innocent women and children, decreasing the ranks of our future warriors and birth givers. You came in using weapons of unparalleled power and destruction, unleashing blinding rays of light, incinerating at a touch.” “Yeah, well like I said, YOU started it…however that recent attack wasn’t my idea. I thought we shouldn’t spread ourselves out so thin.” “Yes, I’m aware of that, your Captain Salazar is dead and you have taken his place, which is why I feel I can talk to you about coming to you about putting an end to this conflict once and for all. I know of your deeds and you seem to be a lot more rational and reasonable than your predecessor. Anyway, I’ve come to the conclusion that this conflict is only going to harm us in the long run. We have to think about the future. The future of mutant kind relies on us no longer fighting each other. I thought survival of the fittest was enough when I first embraced my evolution, I believed that only the strong should be allowed to rule…but now I see that isn’t enough if we wish to thrive, we have to unite.” “What exactly are you getting at?” “Oh come on, you know that we’re the next stage of evolution. Humanity is the past, we’re the future.” “Hmmm, I think I know some cyborgs that feel the same way.” “Ah yes your cybernetic allies who you temporarily allied with, only to ruthlessly back stab later. Obviously they aren’t the future if they needed your help to defeat some humans. Listen to me, this City just isn’t divided between the Zeropolis Guard and the Shadow Horde you know…there are other factions. You just never come on conflict with them because you’re sectioned off in one corner of the City constantly fighting us and never able to spread out effectively. All these factions fight each other and that’s not counting the Ferals. I’m proposing that we could take the first steps in truly uniting Zeropolis. We could first approach in friendship, and if that regrettably failed, we could take by force. Who could stop us? The Shadow Horde has a higher birth rate and the numbers, while the Zeropolis Guard has the resources. You’d attack on the surface and we could attack from below. We could rebuild the world in our image.” This rant is followed by her putting down her pistol, climbing on to your bed and seductively crawling closer to you, while taking off her strange protective mask revealing that the rest of her face isn't all scarred or mutated either. You feel really compelled to give in to her, and it’s not just the fact that it’s been awhile since you’ve been with a “human looking” chick. It’s whatever aura she’s exuding. It must be some sort of weird mutant ability she developed, but even though you’re aware of it, that doesn’t make it any less likely for you to want to resist. She’s making a point you haven’t considered before…you’re in a position of power, why not use it effectively? Her face is an inch away from yours and the only thing you can sputter is… “What’s your name?” “I’m known as the Queen by the Horde, but you can call me Lisa.” She replies before kissing you passionately. > You give in You have no desire to resist her advances and you totally give in to consummate this new alliance in a very special way… Afterwards you and Lisa get to know one another a little better. It’s funny that she finally returned to the GZS research outpost after all these years. At the time you were kicking Owen’s ass to take refuge here, she was attacked and nearly killed by Ferals and had to hide for several days struggling to survive. She mentions how she nearly died, how she got sick, how she came to accept the changes in her body, and how she managed to unite the sewer dwelling mutants. You and Lisa talk about how you do both feel a sense of superiority to humanity, though it would seem Lisa has felt this way for a lot longer than you have and has stronger feelings about it, whereas you never really thought about it until you were actually killing Combine members. Indeed she does have a stronger feeling of only the strong should survive mindset, though that might be due to the harder path she had when trying to survive during those first few years. You and Lisa begin to make plans for unifying Zeropolis. It isn’t widely accepted at first, as there are hard feelings on both sides. Your side is willing to stop the fighting, but their a little leery of an alliance. However, your standing is good so you don’t suffer outright rebellion, just a lot of grumbling. Lisa’s side is even less receptive; you honestly don’t know how she manages to keep those big hideous freaks in line even if she does have mutant pheromones and a strong force of will. As it turns out, the Shadow Horde for the first time splits and bickers among itself. Lisa manages to keep control of most of it, but not without an underground civil war. After all the smoke clears, the Shadow Horde and the Zeropolis Guard (Which you’ve renamed the Zeropolis Legion) maintain a shaky alliance. Five years pass… Ten years have passed since you decided that going to the City would be a great place to find supplies… Unification of Zeropolis has been going as planned, but its still slow going. Most of the Ferals still alive have managed to overcome their relentless need for violence and food, but that doesn’t mean they are any nicer. The Shadow Horde has more success with those types as great display of strength, intimidation and fear work well. On your end you’ve managed to employ more peaceful means of incorporating the less hostile groups of mutants, such as restoring power to their areas and rebuilding. (The messenger rat system for long range communication even works well now) You and Lisa could be considered “together” but it’s a distant relationship. She runs her part, you run your part and every now and then you get together. She has some sort of feelings for you, but she’s very much in her own world sometimes. Though the same could be said for you, but you do have feelings for her as well. Lisa has also had your child. (Predictably 9 months after your “agreement” to the alliance.) A son, though you don’t get to see him too much, mainly because Lisa wants him to be closer to her. In fact you get the impression one of the reasons she had sex with you was in order to have a fairly “normal” looking child. She called him Adonis. It would seem that for all her talk on mutant supremacy, she still holds the “human” standard of beauty in high regard, (though to be honest so do you!) She’s already training him to be self-sufficient with minor “tests” she sets up in the sewers; however despite this rather harsh training Lisa is very protective of Adonis. The main faction standing in the way is one that has somehow gained momentum relatively recently over the last few years. A cult of mutants called the Glow Children, have taken over a great portion of Zeropolis through their weird faith. They follow a leader calling themselves the Savior. In your experience, groups with any type of religious faith behind them are never willing to negotiate and they aren’t an exception. They are utterly fanatical and devoted to their cause. They also engage in attacks from the sewers as well, causing you to believe that ex-Shadow Horde members fill their ranks. They’ve made their headquarters (or Cathedral as it were) at the old hospital. You and Lisa are supposed to meet tonight with the rest of your respective cabinet tonight to determine how to best approach the Glow Children problem. You’re walking out of your headquarters with your guards when from out of the street a very very LARGE creature appears with the biggest fucking gun you’ve ever seen. Its resemblance to humanity is superficial even by Shadow Horde standards. You haven’t seen ANYTHING like this before. “Goddamn it Lisa what the fuck are your people doing!? You’re supposed to be defending that area!” you yell to yourself ducking back inside your headquarters and lying flat. The creature’s weapon rips through the door and the walls, killing many of your men. You hear gun fire outside followed by screams. You know damn well it’s probably going to laugh at normal weapons so you run to grab those old CE weapons you haven’t used since the Alliance. Time to use those plasma guns again. The creature breaks through the remaining bit of wall ignoring the bullets flying into its back, a Shadow Horde member presumably coming from the sewers jumps on it and stabs it in the head, but the giant aberration only grabs him and breaks his neck with a squeeze of his own enormous hand and throws the lifeless body through the nearby wall. You’ve never seen a Shadow Horde member treated like such a mere annoyance, and for once in a long time you really are scared. You grab a plasma gun while the creature is still preoccupied with your guards doing their best to bring it down and that’s when you fire a hot bolt of plasma into its massive body, again, again, and again, until the damn weapon overheats and burns your hands, causing you drop it. Fortunately you’ve melted enough of its internal anatomy to cause it to finally collapse and die. “Alright what the fuck IS that thing?!” you shout wincing from the pain in your hands. “It’s a fucking big ass freak, that’s what it is.” One your men says. “You don’t think it’s a Horde member do you? You think they…” “No, no, shit I hope not. Besides I just saw it kill a Horde member with its bare hands like it was nothing, never seen that before. Might’ve been an Ex-horde member at one time though.” Another one of your soldiers comes in through the hole in the wall and has more news for you. “Just got word from one of the horde, they got a similar attack on their Queen. Don’t worry though, she’s alive and so is your son. She said she’ll be arriving soon.” That relieves you on several levels; you were sort of worried about them even if you all aren’t exactly a proper family unit. You and some of the others inspect the body of the fallen creature. Damn thing is huge, but what disturbs you more is the fact you’re seeing cybernetic implants…not to mention its weapon is pretty high tech stuff, similar to the same ones you received from the Cybernetic Evolution… “Oh shit, we got cyborg mutants.” You say. “What? But how? I mean…last we heard The Combine won that war. Just barely, but they won.” One of your soldiers replies. “Yeah, well it looks like there were survivors and they probably want revenge on us and what better way of doing that then by helping our enemies? (Sigh) the only good thing is that they can’t possibly be able to have access to a lot of this high tech stuff anymore; they don’t even have the means of manufacturing it since we own the factories. They’re probably just using scraps and pieces they managed to take with them after the beat down they suffered from the hands of the Combine.” Though those “scraps and pieces” can still do a lot of damage, and that’s not even counting the regular fanatical cultists. You’ll really have to get this attack plan with Lisa organized quickly. Suddenly you hear MORE sounds of battle! The Glow Children have sent more of their suicidal attackers to wreak havoc in your territory, most likely attempting to get to you though. Your guards suggest you descend down into you private quarters for protection, until Lisa arrives. > You wait in your quarters It won’t do anyone any good if you’re dead so you decide to follow your guards’ advice and enter your quarters. Should at least be safe down there. At least that’s what you think. When you enter your living area, you’re immediately attacked by another hidden assassin! He stabs you several times before you throw him off of you. You weakly pull your pistol and blast the mutant cultist several times, but he absolutely refuses to die! “FOR THE SAVIOR!” he screams and finishes you off by shoving his knife in your throat, before he dies.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have no desire to resist her advances and you totally give in to consummate this new alliance in a very special way… Afterwards you and Lisa get to know one another a little better. It’s funny that she finally returned to the GZS research outpost after all these years. At the time you were kicking Owen’s ass to take refuge here, she was attacked and nearly killed by Ferals and had to hide for several days struggling to survive. She mentions how she nearly died, how she got sick, how she came to accept the changes in her body, and how she managed to unite the sewer dwelling mutants. You and Lisa talk about how you do both feel a sense of superiority to humanity, though it would seem Lisa has felt this way for a lot longer than you have and has stronger feelings about it, whereas you never really thought about it until you were actually killing Combine members. Indeed she does have a stronger feeling of only the strong should survive mindset, though that might be due to the harder path she had when trying to survive during those first few years. You and Lisa begin to make plans for unifying Zeropolis. It isn’t widely accepted at first, as there are hard feelings on both sides. Your side is willing to stop the fighting, but their a little leery of an alliance. However, your standing is good so you don’t suffer outright rebellion, just a lot of grumbling. Lisa’s side is even less receptive; you honestly don’t know how she manages to keep those big hideous freaks in line even if she does have mutant pheromones and a strong force of will. As it turns out, the Shadow Horde for the first time splits and bickers among itself. Lisa manages to keep control of most of it, but not without an underground civil war. After all the smoke clears, the Shadow Horde and the Zeropolis Guard (Which you’ve renamed the Zeropolis Legion) maintain a shaky alliance. Five years pass… Ten years have passed since you decided that going to the City would be a great place to find supplies… Unification of Zeropolis has been going as planned, but its still slow going. Most of the Ferals still alive have managed to overcome their relentless need for violence and food, but that doesn’t mean they are any nicer. The Shadow Horde has more success with those types as great display of strength, intimidation and fear work well. On your end you’ve managed to employ more peaceful means of incorporating the less hostile groups of mutants, such as restoring power to their areas and rebuilding. (The messenger rat system for long range communication even works well now) You and Lisa could be considered “together” but it’s a distant relationship. She runs her part, you run your part and every now and then you get together. She has some sort of feelings for you, but she’s very much in her own world sometimes. Though the same could be said for you, but you do have feelings for her as well. Lisa has also had your child. (Predictably 9 months after your “agreement” to the alliance.) A son, though you don’t get to see him too much, mainly because Lisa wants him to be closer to her. In fact you get the impression one of the reasons she had sex with you was in order to have a fairly “normal” looking child. She called him Adonis. It would seem that for all her talk on mutant supremacy, she still holds the “human” standard of beauty in high regard, (though to be honest so do you!) She’s already training him to be self-sufficient with minor “tests” she sets up in the sewers; however despite this rather harsh training Lisa is very protective of Adonis. The main faction standing in the way is one that has somehow gained momentum relatively recently over the last few years. A cult of mutants called the Glow Children, have taken over a great portion of Zeropolis through their weird faith. They follow a leader calling themselves the Savior. In your experience, groups with any type of religious faith behind them are never willing to negotiate and they aren’t an exception. They are utterly fanatical and devoted to their cause. They also engage in attacks from the sewers as well, causing you to believe that ex-Shadow Horde members fill their ranks. They’ve made their headquarters (or Cathedral as it were) at the old hospital. You and Lisa are supposed to meet tonight with the rest of your respective cabinet tonight to determine how to best approach the Glow Children problem. You’re walking out of your headquarters with your guards when from out of the street a very very LARGE creature appears with the biggest fucking gun you’ve ever seen. Its resemblance to humanity is superficial even by Shadow Horde standards. You haven’t seen ANYTHING like this before. “Goddamn it Lisa what the fuck are your people doing!? You’re supposed to be defending that area!” you yell to yourself ducking back inside your headquarters and lying flat. The creature’s weapon rips through the door and the walls, killing many of your men. You hear gun fire outside followed by screams. You know damn well it’s probably going to laugh at normal weapons so you run to grab those old CE weapons you haven’t used since the Alliance. Time to use those plasma guns again. The creature breaks through the remaining bit of wall ignoring the bullets flying into its back, a Shadow Horde member presumably coming from the sewers jumps on it and stabs it in the head, but the giant aberration only grabs him and breaks his neck with a squeeze of his own enormous hand and throws the lifeless body through the nearby wall. You’ve never seen a Shadow Horde member treated like such a mere annoyance, and for once in a long time you really are scared. You grab a plasma gun while the creature is still preoccupied with your guards doing their best to bring it down and that’s when you fire a hot bolt of plasma into its massive body, again, again, and again, until the damn weapon overheats and burns your hands, causing you drop it. Fortunately you’ve melted enough of its internal anatomy to cause it to finally collapse and die. “Alright what the fuck IS that thing?!” you shout wincing from the pain in your hands. “It’s a fucking big ass freak, that’s what it is.” One your men says. “You don’t think it’s a Horde member do you? You think they…” “No, no, shit I hope not. Besides I just saw it kill a Horde member with its bare hands like it was nothing, never seen that before. Might’ve been an Ex-horde member at one time though.” Another one of your soldiers comes in through the hole in the wall and has more news for you. “Just got word from one of the horde, they got a similar attack on their Queen. Don’t worry though, she’s alive and so is your son. She said she’ll be arriving soon.” That relieves you on several levels; you were sort of worried about them even if you all aren’t exactly a proper family unit. You and some of the others inspect the body of the fallen creature. Damn thing is huge, but what disturbs you more is the fact you’re seeing cybernetic implants…not to mention its weapon is pretty high tech stuff, similar to the same ones you received from the Cybernetic Evolution… “Oh shit, we got cyborg mutants.” You say. “What? But how? I mean…last we heard The Combine won that war. Just barely, but they won.” One of your soldiers replies. “Yeah, well it looks like there were survivors and they probably want revenge on us and what better way of doing that then by helping our enemies? (Sigh) the only good thing is that they can’t possibly be able to have access to a lot of this high tech stuff anymore; they don’t even have the means of manufacturing it since we own the factories. They’re probably just using scraps and pieces they managed to take with them after the beat down they suffered from the hands of the Combine.” Though those “scraps and pieces” can still do a lot of damage, and that’s not even counting the regular fanatical cultists. You’ll really have to get this attack plan with Lisa organized quickly. Suddenly you hear MORE sounds of battle! The Glow Children have sent more of their suicidal attackers to wreak havoc in your territory, most likely attempting to get to you though. Your guards suggest you descend down into you private quarters for protection, until Lisa arrives. > You stay where you are As much as you probably regret getting yourself into this mess by EVER returning to the City, you are a leader now and you’re determined to continue to act as such. Sometimes you wonder what would’ve happened had you bought that bomb shelter… You stay and demand to be informed on the current situation so you can position the defenses better. You want double security on the borders. You also order that all non-combatants should stay in their homes. When Lisa arrives she has Adonis with her, as well as her own retinue of guards. After telling a couple of your men to take Adonis to your quarters and look after him, you and Lisa begin to talk in your half ruined warehouse. “We’ve been getting attack from all sides here you know.” You say. “So have we, the ex-members that broke off from my Horde have been leading many of these attacks at least as far as the sewers are concerned.” “Yeah well we got bigger problems, have you noticed some of the firepower a few of these Glow Children are packing?” “Yes, the same type that you used against us five years ago. Some of my people are starting to think that this is some complex ZL plot to wipe us out again, I’ve had to alleviate those concerns though I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind.” “Hey, I nearly got wasted by that colossus lying on the floor over there! And as you said your own ex-disgruntled employees are leading a lot of the attacks so don’t think the same thoughts of treachery haven’t gone through our mind up here as well!” “Funny that you should think that about us since we don’t have the history of betraying our allies…” An argument about accusations breaks out until gunfire from your quarters is heard. “Adonis!” Lisa says stopping her ranting at you. “Oh fuck!” you say and run to the ladder with everyone else not far behind. When you get to your quarters, you see a dead mutant cultist lying on the floor with multiple gunshot wounds, one of your men lies dead with multiple stab wounds and happily Adonis is still alive with one of your guards breathing hard. Adonis immediately runs to Lisa when he sees her. “Whew! That motherfucker did NOT want to die!” he says. After thanking the soldier profusely, you make a check wondering how the fuck the assassin got in, the only one who ever got through the door before was Lisa and that was because she managed to subdue your guards and had prior knowledge of the place. And that’s when you see a hole in the wall in one of the bedrooms, that hole now leads to the sewers. Knowing damn well that Lisa would make it known that harm should NEVER come to Adonis, any theories that the Shadow Horde is somehow behind things are out of your mind. Lisa’s speculations for you are squashed as well. “See, the enemy is trying to sew the seeds of mistrust. The old divide and conquer, well to hell with that, they fucked up big time with this clumsy assassination attempt. That’s it we’re mobilizing every fucking thing we got, we’re pooling our resources and…” You get another report while in the middle of your speech. “SIR! THEY’RE ATTACKING DOWNTOWN!” a soldier shouts from the upstairs. “Fuck!” you exclaim and rush to the scene. When you arrive cultists are throwing home made bombs all over the damn place, some of them are purposely blowing themselves up. “Aim for the goddamn explosives on their chests before they get close!” you order, while you engage in your own fighting from afar with your rifle. They’re coming like swarms of lemmings though and the body count is growing, monstrosities like the one that tried to kill you earlier are proving cover fire for the gibbering suicide cultists. You need to get into a better position to do the maximum amount of damage, so you look for higher ground while Lisa directs from the street level. You enter one of the buildings and begin running up the stairs to get to the roof. In the process of the excitement, you notice something. “Damn, I used to work in this building.” After this brief thought of the past you make it to the roof, where upon you’re kicked in the face as soon as you exit the door, dropping your rifle. “Good! I’m glad you avoided the assassins, I was hoping to finish you off myself.” As you stand up, you see a nasty looking creature, with a hideous appearance. “You’re going to pay for what you did to me, YOU turned me into this! With your lies and your assault! I was NORMAL until YOU came and ripped me from my protective sanctuary!” You immediately know who this is. “Owen?” “Silence! I’m the High Priest! Owen DIED when you threw me into the blasted City! Do you know how much pain and sickness I suffered? How many years I wandered the streets of Zeropolis little more than an intelligent Feral? You realize how long it took me to get over the madness?” “Well from where I’m standing I don’t think you’re quite over it.” “Oh you’re wrong, quite wrong, when the Savior came, she brought clarity to us all. She will bring true order to this City, not the Horde and not the Legion, but the Children! For the Children ARE the future!” “Yeah…and you say you got over the madness?” “It doesn’t matter what you think! What matters is you’re going to pay for ALL your lies and treachery tonight! To me AND the Savior! YAAAAGH!” Owen attacks you, which you narrowly dodge and trip him to the ground, he rolls out of the way and jumps back up. “Owen, you really want to continue this exercise in futility?” Owen attacks you again at which point you punch him in the face followed by a kick to his nuts. While he crumples to the ground you retrieve your rifle. “Alright Owen, you know what happened last time…and trust me I WILL be shooting if you attack again, now what are the defenses of the Savior at the…” Owen pathetically tries to grab the rifle from you, at which point you blast him in the head splattering his brains and skull all over the roof. “Idiot.” You grab Owen’s corpse and throw it on to the street battle below. His body lands in a bloody broken heap before some of the Glow Children. Upon seeing one of their top leaders dead, this is a great blow to their morale. “YEAH, THAT’S ONE OF YOUR LEADERS DOWN, NOW GO TELL THE FUCKIN’ SAVIOR SHE’S NEXT!” you shout and begin sniping the ones in retreat. After attempting to mop up the stragglers, the general report is that the Glow Children greatly expended a lot of their manpower in this last attack. It’s odd; it’s almost as if this “Savior” doesn’t really care about controlling the city at all, just destruction. Lisa suggests an attack be made immediately before they can put up a suitable defense, she’s still upset about Adonis nearly being killed, but you’d like to at least regroup and mount an organized attack. > You attack now Lisa’s emotions might be running high, but it does make some sense to attack now. You order a full push to the hospital and not to stop until everyone of the Glow Children are dead along with their Savior. The battle to the hospital lasts a couple days mainly because your forces aren’t in a cohesive attack group, you’re getting reinforcements, but it would’ve been more efficient regroup first and come at the GC with some sort of battle plan rather than relentlessly throwing troops into the fray until you break through. By the time you get to the hospital, that’s where you meet the last stand of the Glow Children, and it’s also where their battle elite are. The last cybernetically enhanced mutants come out in force and begin mowing down the Alliance troops at an alarming rate, you have order a retreat. During this retreat, one of those giant battle monsters that tried to assassinate you a few days ago targets its weapons on you and mortally wounds you. You lie on the ground and lift your head up long enough to see both of your legs have been blown off and your guts are hanging out. The creature now stomps in your direction ready to finish you off. You sure hope Lisa can finish this war by herself, because it’s over for you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as you probably regret getting yourself into this mess by EVER returning to the City, you are a leader now and you’re determined to continue to act as such. Sometimes you wonder what would’ve happened had you bought that bomb shelter… You stay and demand to be informed on the current situation so you can position the defenses better. You want double security on the borders. You also order that all non-combatants should stay in their homes. When Lisa arrives she has Adonis with her, as well as her own retinue of guards. After telling a couple of your men to take Adonis to your quarters and look after him, you and Lisa begin to talk in your half ruined warehouse. “We’ve been getting attack from all sides here you know.” You say. “So have we, the ex-members that broke off from my Horde have been leading many of these attacks at least as far as the sewers are concerned.” “Yeah well we got bigger problems, have you noticed some of the firepower a few of these Glow Children are packing?” “Yes, the same type that you used against us five years ago. Some of my people are starting to think that this is some complex ZL plot to wipe us out again, I’ve had to alleviate those concerns though I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind.” “Hey, I nearly got wasted by that colossus lying on the floor over there! And as you said your own ex-disgruntled employees are leading a lot of the attacks so don’t think the same thoughts of treachery haven’t gone through our mind up here as well!” “Funny that you should think that about us since we don’t have the history of betraying our allies…” An argument about accusations breaks out until gunfire from your quarters is heard. “Adonis!” Lisa says stopping her ranting at you. “Oh fuck!” you say and run to the ladder with everyone else not far behind. When you get to your quarters, you see a dead mutant cultist lying on the floor with multiple gunshot wounds, one of your men lies dead with multiple stab wounds and happily Adonis is still alive with one of your guards breathing hard. Adonis immediately runs to Lisa when he sees her. “Whew! That motherfucker did NOT want to die!” he says. After thanking the soldier profusely, you make a check wondering how the fuck the assassin got in, the only one who ever got through the door before was Lisa and that was because she managed to subdue your guards and had prior knowledge of the place. And that’s when you see a hole in the wall in one of the bedrooms, that hole now leads to the sewers. Knowing damn well that Lisa would make it known that harm should NEVER come to Adonis, any theories that the Shadow Horde is somehow behind things are out of your mind. Lisa’s speculations for you are squashed as well. “See, the enemy is trying to sew the seeds of mistrust. The old divide and conquer, well to hell with that, they fucked up big time with this clumsy assassination attempt. That’s it we’re mobilizing every fucking thing we got, we’re pooling our resources and…” You get another report while in the middle of your speech. “SIR! THEY’RE ATTACKING DOWNTOWN!” a soldier shouts from the upstairs. “Fuck!” you exclaim and rush to the scene. When you arrive cultists are throwing home made bombs all over the damn place, some of them are purposely blowing themselves up. “Aim for the goddamn explosives on their chests before they get close!” you order, while you engage in your own fighting from afar with your rifle. They’re coming like swarms of lemmings though and the body count is growing, monstrosities like the one that tried to kill you earlier are proving cover fire for the gibbering suicide cultists. You need to get into a better position to do the maximum amount of damage, so you look for higher ground while Lisa directs from the street level. You enter one of the buildings and begin running up the stairs to get to the roof. In the process of the excitement, you notice something. “Damn, I used to work in this building.” After this brief thought of the past you make it to the roof, where upon you’re kicked in the face as soon as you exit the door, dropping your rifle. “Good! I’m glad you avoided the assassins, I was hoping to finish you off myself.” As you stand up, you see a nasty looking creature, with a hideous appearance. “You’re going to pay for what you did to me, YOU turned me into this! With your lies and your assault! I was NORMAL until YOU came and ripped me from my protective sanctuary!” You immediately know who this is. “Owen?” “Silence! I’m the High Priest! Owen DIED when you threw me into the blasted City! Do you know how much pain and sickness I suffered? How many years I wandered the streets of Zeropolis little more than an intelligent Feral? You realize how long it took me to get over the madness?” “Well from where I’m standing I don’t think you’re quite over it.” “Oh you’re wrong, quite wrong, when the Savior came, she brought clarity to us all. She will bring true order to this City, not the Horde and not the Legion, but the Children! For the Children ARE the future!” “Yeah…and you say you got over the madness?” “It doesn’t matter what you think! What matters is you’re going to pay for ALL your lies and treachery tonight! To me AND the Savior! YAAAAGH!” Owen attacks you, which you narrowly dodge and trip him to the ground, he rolls out of the way and jumps back up. “Owen, you really want to continue this exercise in futility?” Owen attacks you again at which point you punch him in the face followed by a kick to his nuts. While he crumples to the ground you retrieve your rifle. “Alright Owen, you know what happened last time…and trust me I WILL be shooting if you attack again, now what are the defenses of the Savior at the…” Owen pathetically tries to grab the rifle from you, at which point you blast him in the head splattering his brains and skull all over the roof. “Idiot.” You grab Owen’s corpse and throw it on to the street battle below. His body lands in a bloody broken heap before some of the Glow Children. Upon seeing one of their top leaders dead, this is a great blow to their morale. “YEAH, THAT’S ONE OF YOUR LEADERS DOWN, NOW GO TELL THE FUCKIN’ SAVIOR SHE’S NEXT!” you shout and begin sniping the ones in retreat. After attempting to mop up the stragglers, the general report is that the Glow Children greatly expended a lot of their manpower in this last attack. It’s odd; it’s almost as if this “Savior” doesn’t really care about controlling the city at all, just destruction. Lisa suggests an attack be made immediately before they can put up a suitable defense, she’s still upset about Adonis nearly being killed, but you’d like to at least regroup and mount an organized attack. > You regroup “We need to get our shit together first, look, we got people all over the damn place and wounded everywhere.” You say surveying the damage. “You can’t be serious! We need to attack NOW! Or don’t you remember what they nearly did to our son?” Lisa exclaims. “Christ Lisa, I’m aware of ALL the shit they’ve done! What I’m saying is we need to organize here, and not just throw people at them until something happens! I understand that’s the Shadow Horde way of doing things but…” At this point Lisa slaps you, and while your skin is tough, it still manages to sting. “Oh fuck you; if it hadn’t been for YOUR duplicity we wouldn’t even BE in this situation!” “Look Lisa, we NEED to at least regroup. I’m sure that hospital is going to be their last stand and we can’t go in attacking half assed. We need to attack from all sides and cut off all avenues of escape so we don’t have to deal with guerilla hold outs after the main attack is over. We want to kill them ALL in one fell swoop; we don’t want the fucking Savior to escape to cause trouble later!” After a little more debate, Lisa finally agrees and you quickly gather your troops and implement a plan while Lisa takes care of her own end of things. Within a couple days you’re ready, but Lisa still being strong willed sort she is, jumps the gun and begins before you. “Goddamn it Lisa…” The battle to the hospital is a slaughter on the Glow Children’s side. They still haven’t recovered from the battle of Downtown and they’ve been losing many to the Shadow Horde. The Zeropolis Legion doesn’t lose too many troops, though the Shadow Horde is taking a beating due to the fact that they’re taking the brunt of the Glow Children’s hospital defenses. That needn’t had been the case had Lisa not attacked so soon. By the time you make it to the hospital most of the heavy fighting has been done. Dead bodies of both Glow Children and the Shadow Horde are littering the streets. Lisa stands outside the hospital seemingly unconcerned. “What the fuck Lisa? I told you to fuckin’ wait! You look like you lost your whole goddamn Horde trying to storm this hospital!” “Who cares? If they aren’t strong enough to survive then they can die like the rest. They’re meant to serve me anyway, and the Glow Children MUST pay for what they nearly did to my son, no matter what the costs. Now go in and PROVE you’re a father by doing what needs to be done. Should be easy…I did most of the work for you.” You shake your head trying to reason with Lisa’s recent volatile emotions, and head into the hospital with your own people. Sounds of battle are heard and body parts are all over the place. After a few shoot outs with the few wretched hold outs, you eventually track down the infamous Savior. Yet another old face that looks a lot different from when you last saw it. A severely burned female cyborg attempting to fix up one of her Glow Children on an operating table throws her scalpel down in frustration when she realizes nothing more can be done and sees you enter the room. “Mutants! Fucking goddamn back stabbing mutants…you’re no good for anything!” she shouts. “Wow, AVA that’s a lot of emotion for a cyborg.” You say calmly. “Let’s see how emotionless you remain when you see YOUR future destroyed before your eyes. This is all your fault! YOU caused all this! You did this to me!” “Yeah, yeah, I’ve been getting that line from everyone lately. It’s getting old.” “Fool. We would’ve brought unity to the world; mutants would’ve been incorporated too. All you had to do was help, but instead you betrayed us to those who hate you!” “Yeah and that incorporation would’ve been the total loss of free will I’m sure. No thanks, I’d rather take my chances with some disjointed puny humans than an army of unified cyborgs.” “Ah, of course. You mutants think YOU are fit to rule the world. Huh. You’re little better than humans. You still act on emotion rather than clarity. Look at your wife…she sacrificed hundreds of her own people who she claimed she looked after all for a mere child. Don’t look so surprised that I know about that act of total illogic, I could hear her screaming her rants of vengeance when I first saw her approach the hospital with her mutant rabble.” “First of all she’s not my wife. And what about what you did? Are you saying sending in multitudes of brainwashed mutants was so different?” ”YES! Yes it was! My purpose was NOT based on emotion! I was trying to kill as many as mutants as possible! I had a clear goal! A clarity of purpose! What do I care what mutants died on who’s side? I am not one of them!” “Uh…yeah. Well sounds pretty emotional to me. Sounds like good ol’ fashioned revenge. And I suppose those assassination attempts on me was just business to eh? Nothing personal?” AVA shakes her head in dismay and looks up at the ceiling. Tears stream from her non-cybernetic eye. “You’ll never understand mutant…it…it should’ve been us…we…I’m sorry Alex…I’m sorry my father…I have ended up like you…trapped and surrounded by my enemies with only death awaiting me…forgive me…” Strangely, you almost feel sorry for AVA, putting her out of her misery is probably an act of kindness at this point. And so you do with a couple of well placed bullets. “(Sigh) Well AVA, if it’s any consolation, you did a lot of damage to us, a lot of damage…” When you exit, Lisa is still waiting outside, she looks like she’s deep in thought. “Yeah, the Savior’s dead and from what I can tell so are all the other Glow Children as well as most of your Shadow Horde…” you say to Lisa “Given the temporary mistrust both side had for each other, perhaps its for the best…perhaps this alliance needs to be dissolved and simply unified under one banner, one name, we are all mutants, no one is better than another, but we are all better than humans.” “So what’re you saying exactly?” “I’m saying we should be joined officially…with this latest annoyance out of the way, Zeropolis will soon be under our total control and then it will be time to handle the humans. I’m already a Queen, and you shall be my King and Adonis…shall be a Prince…heir to our new mutant dynasty.” You’re a little surprised by this sudden suggestion “Whoa! What the hell? You want us to get fuckin’ married?” “Yes, do you not have feelings for me?” “Well uh…yeah I guess…I mean…” “Am I not the mother of your son?” “Well of course.” “Do you not see the wisdom in this action?” “I suppose, but…” “Then it’s settled…and be honest wouldn’t you like to be able to spend more time with your son? Spend more time with me…and be closer to you…” Lisa’s manages to convince you in that way she does through her seductive embraces and strong commanding will. You swear she has some sort of mutant ability to control minds. A festive wedding is soon held after the celebration of the Glow Children’s destruction. Ten years pass… Twenty years have passed and the unification of Zeropolis is complete. One City of unified mutants and you are their KING. What was once a warehouse has now been turned into a palace. War against the humans is also in full swing. Lisa made sure that was the first thing on the agenda the moment Zeropolis was completely unified. The Combine wasn’t even prepared for the first few attacks, as entire towns were taken over with relative ease. Never before had mutants been so organized, and are now the greatest threats to them since the Cybernetic Evolution, worse even, since you can breed, and not just with other mutants… The Combine and The Zero Dominion (That being its new name) fought for a long time, but The Combine lost mainly due to its own internal turmoil. After a couple years of your attacks the government collapsed and splintered into several factions. Some of those factions willingly surrendered to you. Human traitors were not unheard mainly because rule under The Combine was little better. It was a corrupt and decadent organization that bullied its citizens, while human subjects living under your occupation are treated fairly well as long as they know their place and they are certainly well protected from other humans like the outlaw scum who lurk in the wastelands. With the Combine completely destroyed, mutants now rule everything within the area ranging from towns to even the Ground Zero Shelters still containing their inhabitants. (Actually many of those genuinely thanked you for releasing them from those underground coffins! Lisa of course wasn’t surprised by the shoddy workmanship that went into most of them given that she used to work for the corporation) Now eyes of conquest look ever further, but despite all this, you’re a relatively benevolent dictator. Though Lisa often thinks you’re too lenient on the humans, and claims you must set a better example for Adonis who shall take over from you one day. Adonis is only a teenager, but has the arrogance of a god. The tests and training Lisa insists that he engage in continue, and have produced a superior specimen of mutanthood thus far. Already he is eager to shed the blood of humans, you sometimes have to tell him that he shouldn’t let something like that dominate his thoughts as it can lead to recklessness, but he’s very much like his mother despite the fact that you’ve had regular contact with him now. Your daughter Venus on the other hand is different. She’s still young, but even now you can see that she will be a very dissimilar person than her brother. While you’d think Lisa would want to spend time with her own daughter, she still concentrates only on Adonis. Leaving you to take up that role, but even that is only minimal as Venus often prefers spending time by herself. She reminds you of…well you. Over the recent years, you’ve often wished you could spend time by yourself like you used to, but that’s a rare luxury nowadays… But heavy is the head that wears the crown and you have a host of concerns as of late to attend to and they only stack up. Hell, you don’t even know where to begin anymore. You begin to wonder if any of this is even worth it. You know you’re better than humans, but is constant ongoing warfare REALLY what you want? > You continue the war You think back to when you first entered Zeropolis and how you hoped that you’d somehow be as lucky or as radiation resistant as your grandfather was when he witnessed nuclear blast tests back when he was in the army. As it turns out you were, well lucky that is, the radiation resistance came later. During your entire stay in Zeropolis, you’ve always tried to do what you thought was best for you, but many times you’ve felt like you were railroaded into this path, and indeed sometimes you had little choice in some of your major decisions. However, ultimately they were your choices and even you have to admit you’ve done far better than you could’ve expected. Lisa’s a better wife than you really could’ve hoped for before the bombs turned the world into nuclear ash, let alone after the bombs. You son Adonis is obviously going to be a fine ruler someday, he certainly has all the necessary traits and if Venus is as much like you as she appears to be, she’ll do just fine. Their future is what’s important, and as such you have come to the realization that making sure they have a great empire to rule is the best thing you can give them. Not just for them, but for their children as well. You finally understand Lisa’s dedication to conquest and why she’s always pushed you to be a little more enthusiastic about it. Sure she gets a bit intense as far as the human thing sometimes, but that’s just part of her personality. You never quite understood why she’s exactly so obsessed on the whole mutant superiority thing (Whereas you just take it for granted that you’re better and just leave it at that) especially given that she herself has never even had contact with another one since her transformation. (You have though, one thing that always seem to get her hot is when you recount your time when you were doing raids on Combine town during your alliance with the Cybernetic Evolution) You’ve always had a strange sort of relationship with Lisa, but it is love though, a weird form of it, but love nonetheless. People have been fighting wars and taking shit from others since the beginning of time, and from what you can tell they’re still doing it. All for various reasons. So your reasons are for love and family. There’s certainly more selfish and worse reasons. After coming to this epiphany you finally have eliminated any lingering doubts and reservations about anything you’ve ever done or will do in the future. You immediately go find Lisa who’s watching Adonis train against one of the few former Shadow Horde mutants left. He’s managed to take the giant down with his bare hands too, not many can make that boast, let alone at the young age he has. When you arrive in the gym, Lisa approaches you. “Well, I didn’t expect to see you until tonight. I know how you like to spend long periods of time by yourself… I always found that strange for someone in a position of leadership.” “Not really Lisa, people who rule are often isolated, however I have come to the realization that I’m not alone. The future of our dynasty is important, I see that now and I’m going to ensure what we’ve built doesn’t end.” You think it’s the first time you’ve seen overwhelming joy in Lisa’s face, but she immediately hugs and kisses you. You think this is also the first time you’ve actually heard her say “I love you.” to you. Adonis stops his training and wonders what’s going on and that’s when you turn your attention to him and point your finger directly at him. “And YOU, you will be the next ruler! But if you want ANY chance of it, you’re going to have to beat the me first!” “Hah! You’re kidding right? I just beat an Ex-Shadow Horde mutant with my bare hands! I can easily take you on old man!” he laughs. “Think so? Show me what all your training has done then, don’t worry I’ll go easy on you, wouldn’t want to mess up that pretty face of yours, you sure you’re not my daughter?” “You’re going down old man!” “Not likely, now stop talking and hiding behind your mother’s skirt, mama’s boy!” That one had the desired effect. Unsurprisingly your minor taunts make Adonis angry causing him to charge at you hard and you immediately drop to the ground and trip him. When he falls on his face you grab his arm and twist it behind him while putting your knee in his back. “See? You let yourself get too emotional and it threw off your game. You need to learn more about fighting than just the basics. I’ll make sure I’ll teach you that. Now get up.” From that point on you take a more active role in training Adonis. Particularly in the more psychological and strategic aspects of it. He learns quickly, and in time learns to reign in the arrogance and some of his mother’s views on humans, but he always retains his desire to fight. In the years to follow he joins the Dominion army and quickly rises through the ranks. Lisa is very proud and you are as well. As for Venus, she of course remains her usual quiet self, though she does surprise everyone when she later joins the Dominion army as well, as a scout though. She turns out to be an excellent sniper. As always there is resistance, but for the most part the Zero Dominion only grows larger under your rule. Thirty years pass… Fifty years have gone by since you first set foot in Zeropolis and you’re eternally glad you did. It could’ve only been destiny that guided you to what you thought was most likely a death zone, only to turn out to be the place where you would achieve greatness. You remember how humans used to shoot mutants on sight mainly to discourage them from venturing far from Zeropolis, but now mutants now control a vast portion of territory, their population has grown much much larger, and half-breed mutants from humans are in large numbers as well. A new era is being ushered in for a newly evolved being that will eventually replace humanity. Never did you think that you’d actually live long enough to die peacefully in your own bed. But that’s what is occurring now, you feel the approach of death occurring and you have no regrets. Right now you’re surrounded by your family. Lisa, Adonis, Venus and their children as well. You can die knowing that you’ve made the world a better place for them. You’ve made all of this happen and as you pass your throne to Adonis, while holding on to Lisa’s hand who sits by the side of the bed, you say your last words: “I love you all and finish what I started, my children …”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“We need to get our shit together first, look, we got people all over the damn place and wounded everywhere.” You say surveying the damage. “You can’t be serious! We need to attack NOW! Or don’t you remember what they nearly did to our son?” Lisa exclaims. “Christ Lisa, I’m aware of ALL the shit they’ve done! What I’m saying is we need to organize here, and not just throw people at them until something happens! I understand that’s the Shadow Horde way of doing things but…” At this point Lisa slaps you, and while your skin is tough, it still manages to sting. “Oh fuck you; if it hadn’t been for YOUR duplicity we wouldn’t even BE in this situation!” “Look Lisa, we NEED to at least regroup. I’m sure that hospital is going to be their last stand and we can’t go in attacking half assed. We need to attack from all sides and cut off all avenues of escape so we don’t have to deal with guerilla hold outs after the main attack is over. We want to kill them ALL in one fell swoop; we don’t want the fucking Savior to escape to cause trouble later!” After a little more debate, Lisa finally agrees and you quickly gather your troops and implement a plan while Lisa takes care of her own end of things. Within a couple days you’re ready, but Lisa still being strong willed sort she is, jumps the gun and begins before you. “Goddamn it Lisa…” The battle to the hospital is a slaughter on the Glow Children’s side. They still haven’t recovered from the battle of Downtown and they’ve been losing many to the Shadow Horde. The Zeropolis Legion doesn’t lose too many troops, though the Shadow Horde is taking a beating due to the fact that they’re taking the brunt of the Glow Children’s hospital defenses. That needn’t had been the case had Lisa not attacked so soon. By the time you make it to the hospital most of the heavy fighting has been done. Dead bodies of both Glow Children and the Shadow Horde are littering the streets. Lisa stands outside the hospital seemingly unconcerned. “What the fuck Lisa? I told you to fuckin’ wait! You look like you lost your whole goddamn Horde trying to storm this hospital!” “Who cares? If they aren’t strong enough to survive then they can die like the rest. They’re meant to serve me anyway, and the Glow Children MUST pay for what they nearly did to my son, no matter what the costs. Now go in and PROVE you’re a father by doing what needs to be done. Should be easy…I did most of the work for you.” You shake your head trying to reason with Lisa’s recent volatile emotions, and head into the hospital with your own people. Sounds of battle are heard and body parts are all over the place. After a few shoot outs with the few wretched hold outs, you eventually track down the infamous Savior. Yet another old face that looks a lot different from when you last saw it. A severely burned female cyborg attempting to fix up one of her Glow Children on an operating table throws her scalpel down in frustration when she realizes nothing more can be done and sees you enter the room. “Mutants! Fucking goddamn back stabbing mutants…you’re no good for anything!” she shouts. “Wow, AVA that’s a lot of emotion for a cyborg.” You say calmly. “Let’s see how emotionless you remain when you see YOUR future destroyed before your eyes. This is all your fault! YOU caused all this! You did this to me!” “Yeah, yeah, I’ve been getting that line from everyone lately. It’s getting old.” “Fool. We would’ve brought unity to the world; mutants would’ve been incorporated too. All you had to do was help, but instead you betrayed us to those who hate you!” “Yeah and that incorporation would’ve been the total loss of free will I’m sure. No thanks, I’d rather take my chances with some disjointed puny humans than an army of unified cyborgs.” “Ah, of course. You mutants think YOU are fit to rule the world. Huh. You’re little better than humans. You still act on emotion rather than clarity. Look at your wife…she sacrificed hundreds of her own people who she claimed she looked after all for a mere child. Don’t look so surprised that I know about that act of total illogic, I could hear her screaming her rants of vengeance when I first saw her approach the hospital with her mutant rabble.” “First of all she’s not my wife. And what about what you did? Are you saying sending in multitudes of brainwashed mutants was so different?” ”YES! Yes it was! My purpose was NOT based on emotion! I was trying to kill as many as mutants as possible! I had a clear goal! A clarity of purpose! What do I care what mutants died on who’s side? I am not one of them!” “Uh…yeah. Well sounds pretty emotional to me. Sounds like good ol’ fashioned revenge. And I suppose those assassination attempts on me was just business to eh? Nothing personal?” AVA shakes her head in dismay and looks up at the ceiling. Tears stream from her non-cybernetic eye. “You’ll never understand mutant…it…it should’ve been us…we…I’m sorry Alex…I’m sorry my father…I have ended up like you…trapped and surrounded by my enemies with only death awaiting me…forgive me…” Strangely, you almost feel sorry for AVA, putting her out of her misery is probably an act of kindness at this point. And so you do with a couple of well placed bullets. “(Sigh) Well AVA, if it’s any consolation, you did a lot of damage to us, a lot of damage…” When you exit, Lisa is still waiting outside, she looks like she’s deep in thought. “Yeah, the Savior’s dead and from what I can tell so are all the other Glow Children as well as most of your Shadow Horde…” you say to Lisa “Given the temporary mistrust both side had for each other, perhaps its for the best…perhaps this alliance needs to be dissolved and simply unified under one banner, one name, we are all mutants, no one is better than another, but we are all better than humans.” “So what’re you saying exactly?” “I’m saying we should be joined officially…with this latest annoyance out of the way, Zeropolis will soon be under our total control and then it will be time to handle the humans. I’m already a Queen, and you shall be my King and Adonis…shall be a Prince…heir to our new mutant dynasty.” You’re a little surprised by this sudden suggestion “Whoa! What the hell? You want us to get fuckin’ married?” “Yes, do you not have feelings for me?” “Well uh…yeah I guess…I mean…” “Am I not the mother of your son?” “Well of course.” “Do you not see the wisdom in this action?” “I suppose, but…” “Then it’s settled…and be honest wouldn’t you like to be able to spend more time with your son? Spend more time with me…and be closer to you…” Lisa’s manages to convince you in that way she does through her seductive embraces and strong commanding will. You swear she has some sort of mutant ability to control minds. A festive wedding is soon held after the celebration of the Glow Children’s destruction. Ten years pass… Twenty years have passed and the unification of Zeropolis is complete. One City of unified mutants and you are their KING. What was once a warehouse has now been turned into a palace. War against the humans is also in full swing. Lisa made sure that was the first thing on the agenda the moment Zeropolis was completely unified. The Combine wasn’t even prepared for the first few attacks, as entire towns were taken over with relative ease. Never before had mutants been so organized, and are now the greatest threats to them since the Cybernetic Evolution, worse even, since you can breed, and not just with other mutants… The Combine and The Zero Dominion (That being its new name) fought for a long time, but The Combine lost mainly due to its own internal turmoil. After a couple years of your attacks the government collapsed and splintered into several factions. Some of those factions willingly surrendered to you. Human traitors were not unheard mainly because rule under The Combine was little better. It was a corrupt and decadent organization that bullied its citizens, while human subjects living under your occupation are treated fairly well as long as they know their place and they are certainly well protected from other humans like the outlaw scum who lurk in the wastelands. With the Combine completely destroyed, mutants now rule everything within the area ranging from towns to even the Ground Zero Shelters still containing their inhabitants. (Actually many of those genuinely thanked you for releasing them from those underground coffins! Lisa of course wasn’t surprised by the shoddy workmanship that went into most of them given that she used to work for the corporation) Now eyes of conquest look ever further, but despite all this, you’re a relatively benevolent dictator. Though Lisa often thinks you’re too lenient on the humans, and claims you must set a better example for Adonis who shall take over from you one day. Adonis is only a teenager, but has the arrogance of a god. The tests and training Lisa insists that he engage in continue, and have produced a superior specimen of mutanthood thus far. Already he is eager to shed the blood of humans, you sometimes have to tell him that he shouldn’t let something like that dominate his thoughts as it can lead to recklessness, but he’s very much like his mother despite the fact that you’ve had regular contact with him now. Your daughter Venus on the other hand is different. She’s still young, but even now you can see that she will be a very dissimilar person than her brother. While you’d think Lisa would want to spend time with her own daughter, she still concentrates only on Adonis. Leaving you to take up that role, but even that is only minimal as Venus often prefers spending time by herself. She reminds you of…well you. Over the recent years, you’ve often wished you could spend time by yourself like you used to, but that’s a rare luxury nowadays… But heavy is the head that wears the crown and you have a host of concerns as of late to attend to and they only stack up. Hell, you don’t even know where to begin anymore. You begin to wonder if any of this is even worth it. You know you’re better than humans, but is constant ongoing warfare REALLY what you want? > You stop it You don’t really want this, you never really did. You feel like every decision you’ve ever made has either because you had no choice or because you felt influenced in some way. Well you’re in charge now and if you don’t want to wage an ongoing war with humans then you’re not going to! You immediately call a halt to all further acts of aggression on human settlements. You say you’re going to concentrate on defending and holding on to what you have. Lisa isn’t too pleased with this decision. You argue that what is the point of it all since you’ve eliminated the greatest threat to mutants, while Lisa says as long as humans are around they’ll always be a threat to mutants. You’re not going to change your mind though; you’ve made your decision. Adonis naturally feels like you’ve cheated him out his chance to prove himself in true battle against humans. In the years to follow he joins the Dominion army and entertains himself by being cruel to the human subjects. One day in a human settlement called Ashtown, he goes too far and one of them actually fights back. In the ensuing struggle Adonis’ face is hit by a small explosion, severely disfiguring his once relatively human looking appearance. Now all that is left is a horrific skinless face and little of his remaining sanity. In retaliation he orders the complete destruction of Ashotwn. When Lisa hears of this she wants even more vengeance and goes over your head as well to order the destruction of another town called Cinderville, by the time you can call a stop to any of this, both places have been razed to the ground and its inhabitants butchered. Previously the humans under your rule were scared just enough not to start an uprising, some of them were even loyal, you always made sure never to be unnecessarily brutal even though Lisa and Adonis would prefer otherwise; so what occurs next isn’t too surprising to you. These events as well as the liberties Adonis has been taking, has pushed them over the realms of fear and into hatred. You begin to have uprisings, and guerilla attacks all over the Dominion, some of the more fanatical ones even launch suicidal attacks on targets in Zeropolis. You do your best to try to stop the attacks while at the same time trying to still be fair to the humans, but the time for that is long gone. Instead the mutant citizens just think you’re being too weak. More years go by and you’re getting assassination attempts by other mutants calling for your blood. Parts of the Dominion begin to splinter as you unsuccessfully attempt to hold everything together. It’s just like what happened to the Combine. Now you you’re forced to become brutal just to keep everyone in line for a few months, but it’s too late, now nobody likes you, not even your family which has been apparent for quite some time, but one time it goes to the point of no return. One night while you’re brooding to yourself in your private chambers, Adonis shows up before you with his own personal guards. You can’t say you didn’t see this coming as well. “Old man you are no longer fit to rule the Zero Dominion! I’m taking over!” “You think you are...you’re mother will be the one really running shit, because as far as I can tell you’re barely capable of staging a coup.” “SHUT UP! KILL HIM!” Adonis screams. You might be older, but you’re still relatively quick. You dodge for cover as Adonis’ guards attempt to kill you. You pull your own weapon and with your usual deadly accuracy you blast every one of them, though Adonis has managed to sneak around behind you at this point. Being dramatic is his downfall as he attempts to slit your throat, but you manage to grab his arm and break it, before he can. He falls to the ground clutching his arm. “Stupid ass kid, don’t bring a knife to a gun fight!” you say standing up. “Yeah, and don’t talk when you have the advantage, old man!” Adonis retorts and a blade from his boot suddenly appears as he kicks up at your stomach, impaling you with it. “Fuck!” You quickly dislodge yourself from the blade and stagger a bit before dropping your pistol. Adonis takes the advantage and side kicks you in the face, this time taking out one of you eyes. Oddly you don’t even feel the pain; in fact you’re beginning to feel pretty numb to everything right now. “Mom always said you were weak.” “Yeah, well I’m not the one who’s the mama’s boy…I think you should call her, you need all the help you can get.” This little taunt throws Adonis off his game and he charges at you. You drop to the floor and trip him. When he falls face first to the ground you immediately shove your knee in his back and break his other arm. “Sorry son, but your name is Adonis, not Oedipus and you ain’t gonna be killing me.” And with that last statement you snap his neck. Now you start to feel the pain of your wounds, you’ve lost quite a bit of blood, but you’d probably be able to survive if you had the chance to get to the doctor, but you know you aren’t going to get that chance. Lisa walks in with pistol in hand, and at this point you don’t even want to stop her even if you were in a position to do so. “You killed my poor son, he would’ve ruled…” “Think of it this way, now you can eliminate the middle man and just rule directly, just like you’ve always wanted, just like you did with the Shadow Horde…(groan) I think I’ll just rest here for awhile. Yeah that’s better.” “You’re going to die for what you’ve done!” “Yeah, I kind of figured that, look I don’t care anymore, don’t you see that? It’s been nothing but a fucking headache anyway. …now if you’re going to shoot, you go ahead, or just let me bleed to death because I just don’t care anymore.” Lisa looks genuinely upset, and you don’t think it’s solely over Adonis. Even after thinking you’re unfit to rule or be her husband anymore, she’s still reluctant to kill you. “Goddamn it, what happened to you? Why couldn’t you have just done what I wanted? To create a dynasty to last forever!” All I ever wanted was to live a peaceful life, well that didn’t happen for a variety of reasons, but I guess I can say it wasn’t boring. And there was the fact that I did get to meet you…Lisa don’t prolong this, just do it. It’ll be easier for all of us. Tell Venus I love her as much as I still love her mother.” Lisa sheds a few tears and then carries out your request. Soon after your death Lisa takes over the Zero Dominion and does a much better job than you or Adonis could’ve ever done. In the years to follow, she restores order and quells all rebellions. She might’ve even brought in further territory had she not been assassinated by Venus, who always stayed quiet and in the background plotting and waiting for the right moment to strike. Strangely Venus never took over; instead she left Zeropolis and the Dominion altogether, letting it collapse into multiple civil wars until it destroyed itself. Where she wound up is unknown, but being her father’s daughter, it was probably someplace quiet and isolated.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You figure you’ll give it some time; you’re not in a hurry to go anywhere. A week later and you wake up to a little mutant getting ready to push you to see if you’re awake, you immediately wake before he can do anything, slam him to the ground and put your knife to his throat. “Hey! Stop! I’m on your side!” he gasps. “Oh? What the hell are you doing here? Did the Captain finally decide to send me some help again?” “The Captain’s dead!” “He’s fuckin’ dead?” “Yeah! He got assassinated by some big ass motherfucker! Anyway that’s why I was sent to get you! You’re next in line to take charge.” “Wow. I would’ve thought someone would’ve just taken power themselves and left me to rot out here.” “Well, I think a couple of people had that idea…but then they realized the job wasn’t worth it. The Shadow Horde has been taking the offensive ever since Captain Salazar insisted on pursuing them in their sewers. We need a leader to get us out of this mess and you’re the only one we have!” See you knew no good was going to come of this. “Alright, let’s see how much shit we’re in…” You make your way back to Zeropolis and the Dust District is showing signs of battle, which is difficult to do since the place was a wreck to begin with. Dead bodies are being moved out of the street and the people look hopeful that you can somehow get them out of this mess. First thing you do is order a complete pull out of the sewers and reinforce your defenses in the Dust District. There’s no point in pursuing an enemy that’s lived in the damn sewers for years and knows them like the backs of their hands. Right now you need to regroup after the losses Salazar has incurred due to his recklessness. Second thing you do is order no more attacks on Combine towns, you can’t afford the man power and you didn’t like allying with the Cybernetic Evolution anyway. However, another shipment of weapons was already on its way when you enact this order. The cyborgs who arrive wonder why they haven’t heard any reports of mutants attacking the Combine. Seeing that this alliance is over anyway. You immediately have the cyborgs killed (Which is easier than you thought it would be) and keep the weapons to help your own struggle. A couple more cyborgs arrive a month later probably to investigate what happened to their fellows, and you have them killed as well. Your hope is that the CE will think they’re losing them to Combine ambushes and will eventually just forget about you. And apparently they do because no more cyborgs are sent. You just hope the CE doesn’t win against The Combine. Eventually you manage to restore relative safety to the Dust District, its not safe like it once was though, but at least it isn’t on the brink of disaster due to Salazar’s mad plan. Being in charge isn’t exactly a fun job, and its obvious why to as why nobody wanted to do it. Still the people see you as a savior of sorts and generally like you as a leader. The warehouse that you live in, has been converted into the new head quarters, though you still live in the secret underground part that only you have access to…well at least you thought you did. One night you wake up in your room to a very pale woman by your bed. Obviously she’s a mutant, but she’s somehow managed to avoid the ugliness and scaring that goes along with it, though she does have part of her face covered. She holds a pistol, but seems to be inspecting the place more than paying any attention to you. “Boy this was so long ago and another life time…please don’t go for your gun, I’m here to talk…my, you are a pretty one. Almost human looking…almost.” she says finally paying attention to you. “How the hell did you get past the guards?” you answer calculating how quickly you might be able to reach her before she can get off a shot. “This war between our respective groups has taken a toll on both of us for quite sometime…I would ask that we finally have peace.” She says ignoring your question. You gather she’s from the Shadow Horde, though you’ve never seen one like her. She’s not brimming with muscles or trying to rip your head off for one thing. (And somehow she actually smells nice and unsewer like!) She is exuding a weird aura though, like you have a great desire to follow whatever she says. It’s difficult to shake off these effects, but you try to keep a level head. “Peace? You’re ones always coming out at night to eat people! We were just trying to defend ourselves!” “…yes I have come to understand that now…and I appreciate your desire to exist. You have held out against us for years and accomplished much within that time. However I would say that your most recent attack on us was most definitely equally as brutal. You came into our sewers…our home and murdered innocent women and children, decreasing the ranks of our future warriors and birth givers. You came in using weapons of unparalleled power and destruction, unleashing blinding rays of light, incinerating at a touch.” “Yeah, well like I said, YOU started it…however that recent attack wasn’t my idea. I thought we shouldn’t spread ourselves out so thin.” “Yes, I’m aware of that, your Captain Salazar is dead and you have taken his place, which is why I feel I can talk to you about coming to you about putting an end to this conflict once and for all. I know of your deeds and you seem to be a lot more rational and reasonable than your predecessor. Anyway, I’ve come to the conclusion that this conflict is only going to harm us in the long run. We have to think about the future. The future of mutant kind relies on us no longer fighting each other. I thought survival of the fittest was enough when I first embraced my evolution, I believed that only the strong should be allowed to rule…but now I see that isn’t enough if we wish to thrive, we have to unite.” “What exactly are you getting at?” “Oh come on, you know that we’re the next stage of evolution. Humanity is the past, we’re the future.” “Hmmm, I think I know some cyborgs that feel the same way.” “Ah yes your cybernetic allies who you temporarily allied with, only to ruthlessly back stab later. Obviously they aren’t the future if they needed your help to defeat some humans. Listen to me, this City just isn’t divided between the Zeropolis Guard and the Shadow Horde you know…there are other factions. You just never come on conflict with them because you’re sectioned off in one corner of the City constantly fighting us and never able to spread out effectively. All these factions fight each other and that’s not counting the Ferals. I’m proposing that we could take the first steps in truly uniting Zeropolis. We could first approach in friendship, and if that regrettably failed, we could take by force. Who could stop us? The Shadow Horde has a higher birth rate and the numbers, while the Zeropolis Guard has the resources. You’d attack on the surface and we could attack from below. We could rebuild the world in our image.” This rant is followed by her putting down her pistol, climbing on to your bed and seductively crawling closer to you, while taking off her strange protective mask revealing that the rest of her face isn't all scarred or mutated either. You feel really compelled to give in to her, and it’s not just the fact that it’s been awhile since you’ve been with a “human looking” chick. It’s whatever aura she’s exuding. It must be some sort of weird mutant ability she developed, but even though you’re aware of it, that doesn’t make it any less likely for you to want to resist. She’s making a point you haven’t considered before…you’re in a position of power, why not use it effectively? Her face is an inch away from yours and the only thing you can sputter is… “What’s your name?” “I’m known as the Queen by the Horde, but you can call me Lisa.” She replies before kissing you passionately. > You resist As lovely of a creature she is, she’s been the one leading your current enemy for years. She’s most likely trying to lull you into a false sense of security to kill you; you won’t allow yourself to fall for it. As Lisa kisses and grinds into you, you muster all your strength and grab her to roll her over so that you’re on top and firmly in control. “Ohhh…okay…if that’s the way you want to do this, I don’t mind.” Lisa says and for a brief moment you think she might’ve been telling the truth about the alliance, however you go through with your plan. “Sorry baby, but I could never trust you. Maybe next life.” You reply and snap her neck with one quick twist. After the deed is done you sit by the bed for quite some time by her lifeless body. You really wish you hadn’t felt the need to do that, but given the fact that you’ve been the perpetrator of as well as a victim of betrayal in the past you felt you had no choice. Still, you always wonder what if… Five years pass… Ten years have passed since you decided that going to the City would be a great place to find supplies… After the death of Lisa, the Shadow Horde became disorganized and eventually began to fight amongst themselves. They became much less of a direct threat, and as head of the Zeropolis Legion (As you renamed it) you were able to make the Dust District relatively safe once again. The idea of taking over the entire City was never something you want to pursue, so you just concentrated on building up the Dust District, however events conspire against you from living out a relatively conflict free life. Recently over the last few years, a cult of mutants called the Glow Children, have taken over a great portion of Zeropolis through their weird faith. They follow a leader calling themselves the Savior. In your experience, groups with any type of religious faith behind them are never willing to negotiate and they aren’t an exception. They are utterly fanatical and devoted to their cause. They turn out to be worse than the Shadow Horde (In fact they also engage in attacks from the sewers as well, causing you to believe that ex-Shadow Horde members fill their ranks.) They’ve made their headquarters (or Cathedral as it were) at the old hospital. They attack the Dust District relentlessly, but the most disturbing thing you notice is how some of them carry high tech weaponry similar to the kind that you used to fight the Shadow Horde. Later you see some of the bigger Glow Children fitted with cybernetic implants. You know that the Combine won the war against the Cybernetic Evolution, but it would appear at least one of their number survived and are obviously remembering your past treachery. The day of reckoning is soon at hand. Eventually one day while you’re arranging yet another plan to take back parts of the Dust District you’ve lost control over, your head quarters is attacked by several of the biggest mutants you’ve ever seen. Many of them are of the cybernetic variety armed with weapons of devastating power that make quick work of your elite guards. As you make your futile last stand with a plasma gun, one of the giant aberrations takes two shots to the chest and still manages to pick you up and rend you limb from limb with minimal effort on its part.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wonder if you’ve lost your mind again, because you can’t believe you’re even considering this… “Hey! Uh, hello! This is Zeropolis Guard territory! What do you want?” you call out to the group of cyborgs. One of them briefly talks to its heavier armed brethren and then steps forward to meet you; it’s a female, mostly human looking cyborg. She’s sort of cute, well cuter than what you’re used to around here anyway. “Yes, greetings. I am AVA-93, former human remade, emissary prototype, from the Cybernetic Evolution.” She says unemotionally. “Prototype?” “Yes, I am one of a kind. The Cybernetic Evolution typically does not believe in wasting time with words. We prefer a more direct course of action as we are attempting to remake humanity to a higher state of evolution.” “I see…so what purpose do you serve then since you guys tend to shoot first and ask questions later?” “Why to make contact with you mutants of course. The Cybernetic Evolution is currently at war with a human organization called the Combine. They refuse to see the light, are a committed foe and greatly outnumber us. So we must find every means available to defeat them. We have heard that mutants are victims of human prejudices and that you are typically shot on sight when found outside the City.” “Well I suppose you could say that, though I can sort of see why they might be suspicious of us, many of us aren’t exactly friendly types.” “Yes, I have heard that most mutants are completely hostile, I am surprised to see the amount of organization you have shown as I thought this was not the case.” “Around here, we’re the exception rather than the norm, so what did you have in mind?” “An alliance of course. We would like you to help us destroy The Combine.” “Whoa, hold on there. I’m not exactly in charge of this place; you’ll have to talk with Captain Salazar, as he runs the Zeropolis Guard. There’s also the fact that we’re in a war ourselves with a group of mutants that outnumber us, we wouldn’t be able to help much. Then there’s the whole fact…” You hesitate, but AVA-93 demands that you continue. “Yes?” “Well there’s that fact that if you’re trying remake humans into cyborgs, what happens after you defeat all the humans? Will you try to remake us as well?” “A thoughtful question. At the present time, you mutants are not suitable candidates for remaking, though what the future holds is unknown. However you can be rest assured that if we ally we will never attack you as long as we are at war with The Combine.” That answer doesn’t really make you want to suddenly be their friend, though it was an honest answer. The only thing you can think of is let Captain Salazar decide how he wants to handle this, so you take AVA and the rest to see him. During the talks Salazar doesn’t seem very concerned about what might happen in the future so much as what an alliance can do for him now. AVA mentions that they can supply him with their own high tech weapons to help in the war with the Shadow Horde, if the Zeropolis Guard starts raiding nearby Combine towns. He immediately agrees, and AVA leaves explaining that the first shipment will arrive as soon in the mean time they want an attack launched on the Combine immediately. You advise strongly against this course of action. The Shadow Horde hasn’t even been attacking in large groups like it once did. You don’t like the idea of fighting a two front war and spreading your strength so thin, and you still don’t like the idea of allying with a bunch of cyborgs with a superiority complex. Salazar doesn’t want to hear it though; his vendetta against the Shadow Horde is too great. He wants them gone and is willing to do anything for the chance. In fact he’s pissed off at you for advising against it, so he says he’s sending YOU along with a few others to start attacking the Combine towns! You leave Zeropolis for the first time in five years; it’s very odd to you. Everything seems different, like cleaner. Even the air seems fresher. You almost feel like you don’t belong here anymore, the others traveling with you feel the same way. Soon you approach a nearby town; of course you stay away for awhile plotting of how to approach this situation. Over the course of a few months you organize successful raids on Combine towns, mostly at night, taking advantage of your night vision. (Which seems perfect at this point) While you do feel superior to them, you don’t have any particular hatred for humans; this is just job to you, nothing more. You don’t have too much resistance for the most part. Most of the Combine force is holding off the Cybernetic Evolution. But you do lose people under your command, some through the attacks, but some due to being called back to Zeropolis. Apparently the Captain is having a lot more difficulty than he thought when he started sending troops down into the sewers to take the fight to the Shadow Horde. Eventually you’re all by yourself! In fact you’re wondering why Captain Salazar hasn’t called you back since you’re his second in command, you know he was pissed at you, but if he’s calling everyone else back, why not you? At this point you can’t even really do too much, except maybe hang out in the wilderness sniping the occasional Combine citizen or soldier. In fact given this situation, you get the feeling he’s pretty much abandoned you. Maybe you should just leave. It’s not like you couldn’t survive out here. Your time in Zeropolis has made you better in everyway. You could even withstand long periods of food and water if need be. (Though lately you’ve been eating the mutant wildlife and drinking their blood to sustain you, so it isn’t really a problem) > You leave You know when you’re not wanted. If your help is no longer appreciated then fuck it, you’ll miss your home, but you can find another. In fact maybe it’s for the best, if Salazar was calling people back, then maybe the Shadow Horde was winning and you certainly don’t want to be living there with them in charge. You know that being a mutant, you won’t be liked among humans either, (Especially since you’ve been attacking them!) but maybe that isn’t the case everywhere. The Combine isn’t everywhere and their policies against mutants might not be the norm in other parts of the country. Hell, even without the Combine around there’s still the Cybernetic Evolution that you don’t trust. In fact this whole area is fucked. Time to leave! With this in mind you begin to walk, not knowing where you’ll end up, but definitely someplace better.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No time for fancy shit, you just have to RUN! You run and don’t look back, though you can still hear them chasing you, and other Horde members start popping out of other sewer gratings. Eventually you get to the Dust District, but they’re still chasing you, that’s when you hear shouting coming from in front and above you as well. “ALRIGHT START THROWING AND FIRING!” Suddenly from up high bottles crash to the ground releasing gouts of fire. Molotovs. Next comes the sounds and flash of machine gun fire from everywhere. “OH SHIT!” you shout and duck down and roll into a nearby building. The Horde was still chasing you, but most of them got burned by the Molotovs, the shrieking is unnatural sounding, but it’s soon put to an end when the flaming flailing bodies are shot by the machine guns. After it’s all over you pick yourself up only to get kicked in the ribs and a rifle shoved in your face. “Don’t fuckin’ move Shadow scum!” a uniformed mutant orders. “I’m not…” “Silence!” another kick, this time to the nuts. While you hold your crotch in pain, another uniformed mutant arrives, but this one has a higher rank. “Alright Private, that’ll do for now, let’s see what this fucker has to say about his buddies…what the fuck? This ain’t no Shadow! He’s too fuckin’ pretty for one thing, and not nearly muscular enough.” “(Groan) I’m not, I live in this area! I was scavenging Downtown with another and we got caught after dark…he’s dead.” You say picking yourself up. “Yeah, that’s usually what happens. Woulda happened to you too had we not set up base here in the Dust District. This place will be completely safe from now on as it is officially under direct protection by the Zeropolis Guard. I’m Captain Salazar.” Well that explains the uniforms. “…yeah I heard of you guys. I also heard you only had scouts in the area though.” “Well we move fast, and we needed a new base camp. Our last position was steadily being overrun by Ferals during the day and the Shadow Horde at night. But I think here is a good position to make a stand. This area doesn’t have as many sewer entrances, Feral activity is low, and best of all there’s the abandoned factory and plant nearby. Maybe one day we can power up the entire City again, but for right now we’re trying to just get power to this district, though even that will take awhile. The Zeropolis Guard is dedicated to bringing order to this city and I think this is the best place to start.” “Hey that’s great, okay I’ve had a hard day; I think I’ll just go home now…” Captain Salazar suddenly stops you. “While you’re free to go back home citizen, I can’t help but notice your weapons…now while I certainly understand the need for personal protection, especially given this unstable situation and your current choice of profession, so you may keep your pistol. However, your assault rifle would be of great use to us. We need all the maximum firepower we can get to better defend this area.” “Well it doesn’t have many bullets left though.” You say, but Salazar merely smiles at your attempt to keep your rifle. The private who kicked you looks at you like he’s anxious for you to try something. “That’s alright; we have plenty of ammo suitable for it. However, if you wish to actively join the Zeropolis Guard, then you certainly would have need for such a weapon… do you wish to join?” “Uh no. That’s okay.” You say helplessly handing over you weapon. Salazar takes it. “Pity, you seem like you’d make an excellent solider. Still, our offer is always open and I’m sure you’ll be able to easily find us. You may return to your home.” You make you way back home, in fact you’ll be really glad to get home, today wasn’t very fun, reminds you of why you always preferred your own company. You sort of wonder though about how things might change with the Guard messing around in the area. While this warehouse is sort of in an isolated part of the Dust District, you can only imagine that it’s a matter of time before the Guard start snooping around here and given you have a generator and water recycler, they’ll probably want this place for themselves and you’d have to go live in one of the crappy neighborhoods like everyone else. Of course you might be able to swing things to your benefit if you did join the Zeropolis Guard, though that might mean they’ll be sending you on missions where you can get yourself killed. Before you fall asleep, you think about the future and how you’re going to deal with this situation. > You stay out of it You decide to stay out of this little war they got going, plan on just keeping a low profile. Hopefully they’ll never come scouting around your warehouse to closely. A few months pass and The Zeropolis Guard discovers your little slice of solitude one day, you awaken to the sounds of your door being blown off its hinges and soldiers coming in. “Holy shit, there’s someone living here!” one of them remarks. “What the fuck man? You blew up my door!” you shout trying to gather your wits from being asleep. “Yeah? Well what the hell are you doing down here anyway?” a mean heavily scarred mutant asks. “I live here! What’s it to you? Don’t you have Ferals to kill or some shit?” “We were looking for some and we found this place…looks like you got quite the set up here. Generator, water recycler…this place would make a good living quarters for the Captain.” “What? HELL NO! This is my home! You can’t just…” “Quiet civvy, this place is now the property of The Zeropolis Guard, you got a problem with it, tough. Maybe if you join up though you can help protect the place, but for now you better get your shit and leave AND you can leave that pistol right there as well. You’re under our protection, you don’t need that anymore.” “Fuck you! I’ve spoke with Captain Salazar before and even HE let me keep it!” “Yeah, well things have changed since then, we’re uh…having a weapon shortage, so shut the fuck up and get the fuck out! You ain’t winning this one and if you persist in this act of civil disobedience I’ll fuckin’ just shoot you right now!” You have little choice in this matter. You grab what little belongings you can still take with you and get evicted from your home. You eventually find an abandoned building in one of the neighborhoods to dwell in, but its not nearly as nice. You try to go complain to Captain Salazar personally, but you just get stonewalled and blown off all the time. They just tell you that if you really want a weapon that badly you should officially join instead of complaining. In fact they begin to warn you that if you don’t like being under their protection, you can leave and see how much you’d like it elsewhere. That is a tempting thing to do because you’ll be damned if you’ll join these fuckin’ fascists at this point. Though you’re mad enough to try to do something a little more proactive as well. > You leave the Dust District You don’t really have the connections to start inciting revolutions. You wouldn’t know where to begin and chances are you’d end up getting yourself killed immediately. As much as you don’t want to leave, you can’t live under such oppression anymore, so you decide to travel to another part of Zeropolis. You travel quite a bit, before remembering again that the rest of the City isn’t nearly as safe as the Dust District! You’re attacked by Ferals at nearly every turn, and worse you don’t even have any type of long range weapon to fight them off with. Even the mutants that aren’t Ferals have a gang like mentality that is hostile to any not in their immediate group. After running and hiding many times, and being wounded as well, you come to the conclusion that you’ll have to grin and bear it and return to the Dust District. Sadly you never make it, as a particularly large group of Ferals ambush you and proceed to make you wish you never came to the City in the first place.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to stay out of this little war they got going, plan on just keeping a low profile. Hopefully they’ll never come scouting around your warehouse to closely. A few months pass and The Zeropolis Guard discovers your little slice of solitude one day, you awaken to the sounds of your door being blown off its hinges and soldiers coming in. “Holy shit, there’s someone living here!” one of them remarks. “What the fuck man? You blew up my door!” you shout trying to gather your wits from being asleep. “Yeah? Well what the hell are you doing down here anyway?” a mean heavily scarred mutant asks. “I live here! What’s it to you? Don’t you have Ferals to kill or some shit?” “We were looking for some and we found this place…looks like you got quite the set up here. Generator, water recycler…this place would make a good living quarters for the Captain.” “What? HELL NO! This is my home! You can’t just…” “Quiet civvy, this place is now the property of The Zeropolis Guard, you got a problem with it, tough. Maybe if you join up though you can help protect the place, but for now you better get your shit and leave AND you can leave that pistol right there as well. You’re under our protection, you don’t need that anymore.” “Fuck you! I’ve spoke with Captain Salazar before and even HE let me keep it!” “Yeah, well things have changed since then, we’re uh…having a weapon shortage, so shut the fuck up and get the fuck out! You ain’t winning this one and if you persist in this act of civil disobedience I’ll fuckin’ just shoot you right now!” You have little choice in this matter. You grab what little belongings you can still take with you and get evicted from your home. You eventually find an abandoned building in one of the neighborhoods to dwell in, but its not nearly as nice. You try to go complain to Captain Salazar personally, but you just get stonewalled and blown off all the time. They just tell you that if you really want a weapon that badly you should officially join instead of complaining. In fact they begin to warn you that if you don’t like being under their protection, you can leave and see how much you’d like it elsewhere. That is a tempting thing to do because you’ll be damned if you’ll join these fuckin’ fascists at this point. Though you’re mad enough to try to do something a little more proactive as well. > You incite a revolt You don’t give a shit if it kills you, you’re not going to just stand by and let these fucktards treat you like their bitch. You immediately begin to make plans. You start off just by getting a feel of the general opinion of the Guard, by others. So far, there isn’t a lot opinion one way or another. They feel safer, but much like you they have suffered the liberties taken by the Guard. Eventually you do find a few people that outright don’t like them, and you capitalize on that by having those people to “recruit” and influence others. After a few months you’ve managed to form somewhat of a real underground movement. The next steps are taken which involves out right sneak attacks on Guard soldiers and taking their weapons. This is when the Guard begins to take real notice of the Dust Dissident Movement and begins becoming more restrictive. This of course ends up working in your favor as now even those that had no previous problem with the Guard begin openly complaining. In the meantime you change locations all the time just barely keeping one step ahead of the Guard. A year passes and the entire Dust District is in as much chaos as it was right after the bombs first hit. The Zeropolis Guard is fighting a losing war with the Shadow Horde as well as trying to put down an on going insurrection. You love it. Everyday more of them die and are unable to replace their losses, eventually Captain Salazar himself is assassinated by one of your own people breaking the hold and morale of the Zeropolis Guard. The survivors end up leaving and scattering to unknown parts of the City. You’ve won, but it is a Pyrrhic victory. Without the Guard keeping order and routine protection, the Shadow Horde moves in at full force. They begin to stalk the streets at night and breaking into homes to slaughter its inhabitants. The Dust Dissident Movement attempts to take up the mantle of protectors, but the Shadow Horde is a different type of enemy, they don’t try to occupy; they come in and destroy. Hit and run tactics are useless against an enemy that does the same thing and does it a whole lot better as you unfortunately come to find out when you’re meeting with your remaining people one night and a bunch of Horde members swarm your hideout and kill everyone inside.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t really have anything better to do, and you are sort of interested in learning more about your surroundings. You are living here now after all. “Uh sure I’ll go with you. What do I do exactly?” “You’ll go? Great! You don’t really have to do too much really, I just need someone to help with the whole protection thing while I search, since Ted here is being a jackass and not giving me any bullets!” “Hey those are in damn scarce supply in the first place! In fact, you better start finding them on your own soon, because I don’t have too many to spare anymore anyway. I need something to defend my shop with. Here!” Ted pulls out three bullets from his ragged pockets and gives them to Carl. “That’s coming out anything you bring back too, and if you guys are going downtown, you better do it now, before nightfall. See you later.” You and Carl set off, while you’re walking you notice other mutants wandering in the neighborhood, but they don’t attack, in fact many of them are just watching the both of you or going about their business. (Like catching a rat to eat) “So is this area safe or something? Nobody’s attacking us.” You ask. “Of course it’s safe, well safe as anything can be in this place. I mean there’s still always the Ferals that roam around, but not so much around here anymore. The people around here in the Dust District don’t even try to eat one another. Probably due to the fact that a lot of people used to live here and work together in the factory and warehouses nearby, so I guess there’s that sense of unity as it were. Though I’m sure most of them did attack each other at one time. Still, this is a severely new situation, you can’t blame TOO much on what happened during people’s madness. Weird what happened though, I mean do you think the enemy dropped some sort of nuclear nerve agent combo on this place? Or did we all just go temporarily insane in the face of the shear devastation?” “I really couldn’t tell you, Carl. Maybe the second one I guess.” You say keeping your secret information on the reasons to yourself. “Yeah, doesn’t take much for us to fall apart I suppose. The Zeropolis Guard have also claimed they’re going to make this place even safer when they set up a new base here, though I sort of wish they’d just leave us alone. I get the impression they’ll be trying to tell us all what to do and conscripting us to fight the Shadow Horde.” “What is the Shadow Horde anyway?” “Man, you don’t know who THEY are? Then again you didn’t know the city name either! Anyway The Shadow Horde is a group of mutants who primarily live in the sewers, though they do come out at night and attack anyone who isn’t part their group. They’re sort of like the Ferals, except they are a lot more organized and even more vicious. I’ve heard they have a leader of some sort; I’ve only heard rumors though; ranging from a giant abomination, to a beautiful priestess of some sort. Have a hard time believing a lot of them, the only thing I do know is you don’t want to get outside at night, let alone even enter the sewers!” Carl continues to about various things of Zeropolis on your way Downtown. As fucked up as things are, you can’t help but be fascinated by it all. You feel like you’re actually living in some sort of 80s low budget post apocalyptic movie. You ask him if anyone actually leaves Zeropolis, but he says it’s rare. The Ferals and other more territorial mutants seem content on staying in the City, and as for the other “normal” ones, it’s happened, but it seems mutation isn’t a common theme outside Zeropolis. Most mutants are shot on sight or at least chased off. At least those are the stories he’s heard from a couple of people he knows that have left only to come back. The closer you get to Downtown the more Carl stops talking only telling you to keep a look out and to be quiet. Lots of Ferals fight each other in the Downtown area and will obviously attack anyone else. Plus there are other scavengers here that will try to bushwhack each other as well. Carl pulls out a large bag and you and he start going into various devastated buildings where he grabs things of varying interest. A few instance you see large groups of Ferals in the street, but Carl tells you not to fire, since they’re all fighting each other at the time. Another instance when you’re on the second floor of an apartment store, another mutant clobbers Carl with a lead pipe and tries to make off with the bag of goodies, but a couple of shots put the thief down. “Thanks. Oh fuck, I think the shots caught the attention of the Ferals outside, we better get out of here!” You and Carl rush out the building and after you fire a few more shots at the Ferals you both make a beeline back the Dust District, unfortunately you and Carl have to retreat and backtrack several times to avoid large groups of Ferals, until finally when you get out of the area, its twilight and you still haven’t gotten back to the Dust District yet. You and Carl hear a nearby sewer manhole opening up… “Oh shit we’re gonna die!” Carl yells and starts running. He’s in such a hurry to getaway he trips and dumps his bag with all the contents inside! He frantically starts putting everything back in, but already you can see the Shadow Horde starting to come out, and yeah they do look a hell of a lot meaner than the typical Ferals, which is pretty hard to do. The fact that they start shouting “CARL GET YOUR ASS UP, WE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE!” you yell and start blasting Horde members with your assault rifle, picking your shots, but when they fire back, you can’t stand your ground for long and run leaving Carl behind. You hear Carl trying to catch up with you, but you soon hear more shots, yell of pain followed by the collapsing of a body. You turn around to see one of the Horde trying to finish Carl off with a spiked bat, but he blasts the mutant in the head with his pistol twice killing it. He’s wounded and even if you went back to get him, the rest of the Horde is closing in and you’d never outrun them if you carried Carl on your back. Sensing the end is near; Carl uses his last bullet to save himself a torturous death by the hands of the Horde. Of course now you have worry about yourself. > You try to lose the Horde You begin taking side streets and back alleys in a vain attempt to lose your pursuers, the only problem with this is tactic is, it isn’t like there’s only one sewer grating. They’re all over Zeropolis meaning the Shadow Horde can pop up out of anywhere so “losing” them isn’t really possible. You’re running down an alley when all of a sudden a very LARGE being comes leaping out of nowhere in front of you. Its ugly, its muscles are unnaturally large and it’s fully intent on killing you. You let fly your remaining rounds from your assault rifle, but it doesn’t even stop the big mutant. You attempt to pull your pistol, but with one shot from its own, it blows a big hole in your body, and then it finishes you off by stabbing you repeatedly in the head with its knife.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Something you wouldn’t ever consider eating before suddenly makes a lot of sense to you. You start off by grabbing the nearest crawling roaches you see and start popping them in your mouth and chew. They taste terrible, somehow though you don’t suffer a gag reflex though. You just find them unpleasant, like eating something bitter rather than disgusting. After having had enough of eating bugs you try to catch a rat. It takes awhile, but eventually you stomp on one severely crippling it and then stomp once more to kill it. Eating a raw rat doesn’t particularly taste any better, but again you don’t suffer any sort of natural revulsion during this act. It would seem you’ve gone through a change of some sort, one that has put you in a better frame of mind for survival. One that has also put your body in better condition for survival as well since you suffer no ill effects from eating such unclean creatures under equally unclean conditions. You temporarily have some problems with lice and fleas you catch from the rats, but even that doesn’t really become a problem considering the rest hair has fallen out now. (Well you have a few wisps left) You skin also begins to harden in time, making fleas no longer a problem. Whatever internal parasites any of these might’ve carried also have no effect as it seems your resistance and immunity system has increased quite a bit. You look in the bathroom mirror one day and see that you’ve changed alright. Changed into something better. You aren’t going to win any beauty contests, but you’re going to live… A year passes… You’ve been living a relatively simple life of eating and sleeping and it’s basically been enough. For the past year your mind hasn’t really been the most stable, so you haven’t really thought about anything other than your immediate survival, and given you have a water supply and the rats and roaches for food, you haven’t ventured outside of the GZS warehouse since you entered. That’s starting to change. Lately your mind seems to have a little more clarity. Indeed you’re starting to feel like “yourself” before the change. Not entirely like yourself, but you don’t go shithouse rat crazy screaming at the walls like you used to. You’ve been getting a little curious about the rest of the City. If you’re mostly sane now, maybe other survivors are as well. Maybe even some things have been fixed; it would be nice if they were, as its getting boring where you’re currently staying. Taking your weapons with you, you leave your new home to explore. (Making sure to hide the trapdoor before leaving of course) The City streets are still as desolate as you remember them, and mostly empty as well. You expect to run into gangs of mutants though. You suddenly stop and think about that for a moment and realize that YOU are also a mutant now! Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean mutantism is a club. You’re sure there’s a lot of fighting for resources. In fact you come across some fighting, though in a different way than you’d imagine. While you’re walking through a neighborhood by a corner store that has all its windows boarded up, you hear voices inside. You step through the open doorway to investigate. It’s dark inside, but some candles light up the place. “Ted, what do you mean you won’t gimme anything for this? This is a solid gold watch man!” a skinny mutant asks an exceptionally ugly one eyed mutant he has pistol strapped to his side. “Goddamn it Carl, would you fuckin’ think? What the hell am I gonna do with a gold piece of shit that doesn’t even work anymore in the first place?” “Well can’t you trade it for something? I mean gold’s gotta be worth something to someone! It’s not like I gave you a sack of dollar bills!” “Didn’t stop you from trying though did it? Look Carl, unless it’s something useful you know damn well I ain’t taking it. Bring back some batteries, a first aid kit, hell some canned corn would be a welcome change of pace than watery roach soup! Just stop bringing me shit I have no use for!” “But Carl! I need some bullets! You can’t expect me to do any scavenging downtown without bullets for my pistol! How will I defend myself against the Ferals or how about at night when the Shadow Horde comes out?” “Cry me a river Carl, you’re a fast guy I’m sure you can outrun the roving gangs of Ferals, ain’t that hard. And second of all you shouldn’t even BE out at night! If you get caught out at night I got no sympathy for what happens to you! Now…” suddenly Ted’s one good eye catches sight of you. “Who the fuck are you pretty boy?” Ted asks, Carl just backs off when he sees the assault rifle strapped to your back. “Pretty boy? Have you seen my face?” you retort. “Yeah, I see your fucking face an’ you’re a fuckin’ pretty boy as far as I’m concerned. Shit you ain’t even got any scars. So what the hell do you want, I ain’t seen you before. Ain’t seen too many here with an assault rifle either. You part of the Zeropolis Guard? Then again you don’t wear the uniform…maybe you just killed one of them then? Heh heh.” “Who are the Zeropolis Guard?” “You ain’t heard of them? Huh, well they’ve only just been making scouting missions in this area. Basically a collection of ex-National Guardsmen that insisted on staying here to the very end. They got the best hardware as far as I know, but the delusional fuckers think it’s STILL their job to keep peace in the damn City. Ain’t no peace in Zeropolis!” “What’s Zeropolis exactly?” you ask feeling completely out of the loop, which only gets you some mighty strange stares by Carl and Ted. “Uh, Zeropolis, y’know…The City? That’s what this place is called now.” Carl says. “Holy shit pretty boy, you been livin’ under a damn rock or something?” “Well, uh sort of…” “I guess so! Where the hell ARE you from? “Er…I never actually lived in the City...I guess you can kind of say I got trapped here and then shortly after went mad for a little while and I’m only just now starting to feel like myself.” You explain without giving too much information out. “Hmm, well that might explain some things. I think we all know about that madness you’re speaking of. Think it happened to everyone after this place got nuked, still going on for most people. You get that hunger craving and violent thoughts pervade your mind…though the first one I killed and ate was my wife so it wasn’t ALL bad har har har!” Ted laughs. “Hey how many people did you eat during that time?” “Uh, none actually.” “None? Ah, you must be like Carl here. He just ate roaches and rats because even when the madness hit him he still was a big pussy!” “Fuck you Ted! I’M the one going out risking my ass scavenging, not YOU! I…just didn’t want to eat anybody…I guess I just never suffered the madness as much as the rest.” “Yeah, well anyway what do you guys actually sell here?” you ask. “Well Carl doesn’t sell shit, because he doesn’t own this place, I do. And as you can probably tell we run on the barter system here that being the only real way to do business anymore. However I have a wide variety of items, but not obviously not right here, since this part of the store ain’t the most secure as you can see, but bring me something I might find useful and maybe we can do business; just don’t bring fuckin’ broken gold watches!” Ted exclaims looking back at Carl. “There’s a lot of stuff downtown to scavenge, hey…maybe you could come with me?” Carl suddenly asks hopefully. > You go back home “Nah, that’s alright. I guess I’ll be heading out.” You reply and leave the shop with the full intent on going home. On your way back home you unfortunately run into a couple of the Zeropolis Guardsmen who seem intent on giving you a hard time. “Whoa there, who the fuck are you, and where do you think you’re going with that rifle on your back?” one asks. “What the hell difference does it make to you?” “It makes a difference because we patrol this area all the damn time and we’ve never seen you before. Not to mention you look fucking suspicious with an assault rifle on your person!” “…What the fuck? What about you guys?! You got damn machine guns and grenades!” “Yeah, well WE’RE members of The Zeropolis Guard! We need this shit in our war with the Shadow Horde, while you’re just a lowly civvy! We’re going to be occupying this area soon and you won’t need something like that as protection anymore. In fact a fine weapon like that would be better put to use by The Zeropolis Guard, so you probably should hand it over right now.” “Ha ha, you’re a funny guy. I don’t think so.” You say. “That wasn’t a request, that was a goddamn order!” “Sorry, but as you just pointed out I’m just a lowly civvy, so I’m not inclined to follow your stupid ass orders.” This last remark does it. The two soldiers now have their excuse, they raise their weapons and you do like wise. A small shoot out occurs in which you end up killing one of them and wounding the other, however they manage to wound you severely as well. As you attempt to take cover behind a wrecked car, the surviving Guardsmen throws a grenade in your direction which you are unable to react to in time before it blows you up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to stay, and think about what Owen said about the water supply and the anti-radiation drugs in it then you think about what happened to a majority of the survivors. It didn’t seem to do them any good, but he was right; it WAS stupid to come here! You can’t really do much about it now, but you’re hoping that water can keep you from dying a slow horrible death, though you don’t know how it works exactly since you weren’t drinking it before you absorbed rads. Still, you’ll try anything now. The first thing you do is start drinking the water, and a lot of it. You also wonder about Owen’s supervisor Lisa. He did say she was supposed to return soon, and you form some ideas on how to handle the situation when it arises (to keep your mind occupied), but as it turns out, she never does. Probably got killed no doubt. A few days go by and there’s not much to do for entertainment purposes and you’re reluctant to leave your “safe haven” now. There are some books in what is Lisa’s room that you peruse through. You also look for maybe some notes on her research since the stuff Owen told you about did sound interesting. Maybe even ideas on what the drugs in the water supply might’ve done to people (Something ELSE you’re starting to worry about) but unfortunately you don’t find anything. She must’ve taken those with her. Owen’s room has an old TV set which amusingly has an equally as old game console hooked up to it. You spend a lot of time shooting different colored circular objects with your white triangle on the screen. After a week you start feeling weird. Like mildly delirious. You start lying in bed a lot, only getting up to quench your thirst since you don’t have much of an appetite. After a month you start feeling sick. You begin throwing up and having diarrhea even though you’ve barely been eating anything. You have the shakes and you often just lie on the floor aching all over you body. You drink the water in the steadily failing hopes that it will miraculously cure you. When patches of your hair start falling out, and cough up bits of blood, you really start to lose all hope. “Oh fuck…I don’t wanna die like this…shit…” you sob. You begin thinking about suicide, but you’re so weak that the one time you seriously attempt it; you collapse on the floor when reaching for your pistol and fall unconscious for a full day. When you wake up, you feel a little better physically, but not much. However your mind is a little warped. As it turns out this is somewhat fortunate as you don’t worry about dying so much anymore. You do start talking to yourself at great lengths though. You begin having bizarre thoughts about things in general. Sometimes you go into a fit and start ranting until you’re hoarse. Another month passes and you’re completely better physically, in fact you feel stronger than you ever did before. Your mind is still in la la land though. You begin to get very violent. You begin punching the walls (and even doing some damage to them) and ripping up books. What temporarily “sobers” you up is when you smash the food dispenser, breaking it completely. While you still have real food left you’ve just destroyed your only means of food-substitute when the real stuff runs out. “SHIT!” you yell. “I gotta get a fuckin…grip…I gotta get fuckin’ food!” You grab your pistol and assault rifle and throw open the door in search of food. After climbing back up to the surface, you notice that you can see pretty well in the dark warehouse. It would appear you’ve developed some minor “dark vision”. In the darkness you also notice that the warehouse has lots of rats and roaches crawling around in it. Those could be food… > You find something else NO! You must have something of substance! Something with more meat! You quickly leave the warehouse and go loping around the City like some sort of animal. You stalk the streets in search of prey but find nothing! You begin snarling to yourself and getting madder, but suddenly you hear someone talking loudly nearby. You get quiet and slowly look around the corner and see three men in radiation suits carrying weapons. “Albert, for the last time will you fucking calm down, there ain’t gonna be nobody here! If you think this place is going to be crawling with mutant creatures, you’ve been watching too many movies!” “Well how do YOU know, Roger? I mean how do we know it won’t be?” “Look, Harry gave us this mission to do some scouting, not standing around with our thumbs up our asses arguing, now come on!” “Shh! Did you hear that?” “Christ, Steve not you too…” Before Roger can complete his retort you come around the corner and fire your assault rifle at them haphazardly. You hit two of them before one of them runs off. One of them lies completely still as you approach, but the other is still twitching and convulsing as their body begins to shut down. You finish him off with a couple of blows to the head with your rifle butt before ripping the protective suit to get to the precious meat inside. However the noise of your weapon has caused other mutants to suddenly come out of the woodwork. They too want the flesh of these humans, but you won’t let them have it! This is YOUR kill! The other mutants aren’t as well armed as you are, and when they try to take your kill you fire at them and begin trying to drag it back to your home. You only have so many bullets though and eventually it’s a feeding frenzy where you’re all fighting for the biggest piece. Eventually you grab a leg and an arm and run back to your lair to eat in solitude. When you’re finished you belch in satisfaction and fall asleep. In the months to follow, you will continue to participate in these activities, though mutant flesh never seems to taste as good as that of human. You cease keeping up any sense of appearances or hygene, you don’t even sleep in the GZS research room anymore, preferring to sleep in the actually warehouse along with the rats and roaches. (Though you still go to drink from the water recycler down there) You’ve completely given in to the madness. A year passes… You wake up again like you always do, slightly hungry. You grab a nearby roach and chomp on that until you can find something more substantial. It’s getting more difficult to hunt in this area though. For some reason most of the mutants here don’t seem to act like you do anymore. Many of them have gotten “better” and have even been engaging in somewhat normal activities. You know there are still hunting groups of others like you holdup in some nearby factories, but you were never a social animal, you’re a lone hunter. You don’t like to share. You also know not to stay out after night, as you’ve seen mutants much larger than yourself to stalk the streets, even you don’t want to mess with them if you don’t have to. So far you’ve been successful despite the odds steadily becoming against you, however it would seem that event continue to conspire against you. A large group of mutants dressed in uniforms have been patrolling the area as of late in fact they’ve been purposely trying to make it safe by wiping out your types. You’ve come in conflict with a couple of them, but the firepower they pack is too much for you and you’ve long since run out of bullets. (At this point you’re just beating others over the head with the rifle or pistol whipping them) Granted life has never been safe or easy, but now it’s been getting particularly dangerous. Even in your simple delusional state, you’re wondering if you should find new hunting grounds. > You stay where you are You know this area, and you don’t want to leave, so you attempt to keep a lower profile. It’s very difficult at first, and you struggle to keep your violent urges in check. You keep to eating rats and roaches. As a few month go by you begin to feel somewhat different. You don’t feel quite as “insane” anymore though your mind is still a little around the bend. You never really leave the warehouse anymore and begin sleeping in the GZS outpost again, spending hours talking and laughing to yourself in between snacks. Eventually the uniformed mutants find your little hideaway. When you see them you’re surprised and annoyed, but you don’t feel the need to attack them. (Though you wouldn’t anyway since they’re heavily armed) “Hey! Get out of my house!” “See I knew this place had Ferals.” One of them says. “I dunno, he hasn’t attacked us yet, you sure he’s a Feral?” “Hm, you might be right, he sort of looks like one though, of course maybe he’s gotten better, y’know the Captain said it happens sometimes.” “Hey! I said get outta my house!” you exclaim again. The uniformed mutants continue to ignore you. “What the hell do you think this place is?” “I dunno, but the Captain will be interested, with the fact there’s a generator and water recycler here…alright sorry to do this, but you gotta leave. This place is now the property of the Zeropolis Guard, which is us, and not you. So get your stuff and leave. You can go move into one of the many abandoned buildings in one of the neighborhoods.” You attempt to protest, but the soldiers just roughly grab you and force you out of your home and throw you out on the street. They then warn you not to try that again or else they won’t be as nice next time. Having nowhere else to go, you follow their instructions and begin living in one of the abandoned buildings in one of the neighborhoods. Months go by and you learn more about the things going on in the Dust District. (The area that you’ve been dwelling in) You don’t really understand all the intricate details, but from what you can tell, The Zeropolis Guard is attempting to make this area their base of sorts in their war against the Shadow Horde (The sewer mutants) part of this organizing involves killing out the remaining Ferals in the area and rebuilding it. As you are basically under the protection of the Zeropolis Guard, you’re also subject to their whims and they expect you to pitch in and be a productive citizen like everyone else. In your case this means conscription. You’re in the army now, but you’re still just trying to keep your mind from wandering. You never really did get over the “year of madness” that you suffered. Your mind is still disjointed, though when you kill Shadow Horde members, you do feel a sense of fulfillment, so it isn’t all bad. Many of your fellow soldiers kind of stay away from you though and you aren’t really considered for anything greater than just a regular soldier. Eventually during one of the many battles with the Shadow Horde, you are struck down by a brutal blow to head with a very large piece of steel. You maintain consciousness for a few seconds before seeing a big boot come down on your face, making you just one of the many causalities in this mutant war.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>NO! You must have something of substance! Something with more meat! You quickly leave the warehouse and go loping around the City like some sort of animal. You stalk the streets in search of prey but find nothing! You begin snarling to yourself and getting madder, but suddenly you hear someone talking loudly nearby. You get quiet and slowly look around the corner and see three men in radiation suits carrying weapons. “Albert, for the last time will you fucking calm down, there ain’t gonna be nobody here! If you think this place is going to be crawling with mutant creatures, you’ve been watching too many movies!” “Well how do YOU know, Roger? I mean how do we know it won’t be?” “Look, Harry gave us this mission to do some scouting, not standing around with our thumbs up our asses arguing, now come on!” “Shh! Did you hear that?” “Christ, Steve not you too…” Before Roger can complete his retort you come around the corner and fire your assault rifle at them haphazardly. You hit two of them before one of them runs off. One of them lies completely still as you approach, but the other is still twitching and convulsing as their body begins to shut down. You finish him off with a couple of blows to the head with your rifle butt before ripping the protective suit to get to the precious meat inside. However the noise of your weapon has caused other mutants to suddenly come out of the woodwork. They too want the flesh of these humans, but you won’t let them have it! This is YOUR kill! The other mutants aren’t as well armed as you are, and when they try to take your kill you fire at them and begin trying to drag it back to your home. You only have so many bullets though and eventually it’s a feeding frenzy where you’re all fighting for the biggest piece. Eventually you grab a leg and an arm and run back to your lair to eat in solitude. When you’re finished you belch in satisfaction and fall asleep. In the months to follow, you will continue to participate in these activities, though mutant flesh never seems to taste as good as that of human. You cease keeping up any sense of appearances or hygene, you don’t even sleep in the GZS research room anymore, preferring to sleep in the actually warehouse along with the rats and roaches. (Though you still go to drink from the water recycler down there) You’ve completely given in to the madness. A year passes… You wake up again like you always do, slightly hungry. You grab a nearby roach and chomp on that until you can find something more substantial. It’s getting more difficult to hunt in this area though. For some reason most of the mutants here don’t seem to act like you do anymore. Many of them have gotten “better” and have even been engaging in somewhat normal activities. You know there are still hunting groups of others like you holdup in some nearby factories, but you were never a social animal, you’re a lone hunter. You don’t like to share. You also know not to stay out after night, as you’ve seen mutants much larger than yourself to stalk the streets, even you don’t want to mess with them if you don’t have to. So far you’ve been successful despite the odds steadily becoming against you, however it would seem that event continue to conspire against you. A large group of mutants dressed in uniforms have been patrolling the area as of late in fact they’ve been purposely trying to make it safe by wiping out your types. You’ve come in conflict with a couple of them, but the firepower they pack is too much for you and you’ve long since run out of bullets. (At this point you’re just beating others over the head with the rifle or pistol whipping them) Granted life has never been safe or easy, but now it’s been getting particularly dangerous. Even in your simple delusional state, you’re wondering if you should find new hunting grounds. > You leave the area Sensing when would be the best time to leave; you abandon your home and move on to another part of the City that’s less organized. You end up in the Downtown area, oddly enough you end up taking residence in the same building you once worked at. You haven’t gotten a “feel” for this area yet and initially are at a disadvantage when hunting. Many times your “dinner” comes from those who were attempting to hunt you, but failed to recognize your strength and quickness. Soon though, you do alright. Your life is pretty simple from here on out, you hunt for others and you try to survive, you last longer than most, but eventually the move towards order marches forward and comes to the Downtown area. The uniformed mutants eventually attempt to organize this area as well in their efforts to gain territory from another group of united mutants namely the ones that live in the sewers. Once again your type are hunted down and wiped out. This time you are caught in the open by several of them and are shot like a dog in the street.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up from the sofa like you always do, dreading to have to go to work at your pointless job. You haven’t been sleeping well lately, you don’t know what the hell the problem is, and all you know is you’re going to be tired for work again. As you go through your routine of getting ready, the TV can be heard; as usual you left it on from the night before. “…And peace talks broke down today, as several ambassadors engaged in a physical fight at the UN…Neo-Communist party gaining favor in Russia… more terrorist bombings in European Union cities…US troops won another victory in the Middle East…mysterious epidemic in China, several million dead…skirmishes on the Indian-Pakistan border…world wide tensions at an all time high…” Same old doom and gloom on TV; you wonder why you even bother watching the news anymore. Still it does seem like things are getting worse, late at night when you’re suffering from your usual insomnia, you’ve been catching infomercials attempting to sell bomb shelters, like something out of a 1950s propaganda film. It seems silly, but you do wonder if it’s only a matter of time before someone presses the button. Then again you live out in the boonies, you’ve always thought that if the world ever did blow up; you’d doubt you’d even notice until you drove to work the next day and saw the ruins of the city. Speaking of which you better get going or you’ll be late. > You buy a bomb shelter Fuck work, the world’s about to end soon and you need to prepare yourself for that! You immediately call up the number that the infomercial mentioned. You know the damn thing by heart since you’ve been watching it night after night. Eventually a chipper female voice picks up on the other end. “Ground Zero Survival Inc. How may I help you?” “Uh, yeah I’d like to buy a bomb shelter.” “That’s wonderful sir! In these uncertain times you can never be too careful and we here at GZS are thrilled that you’ve chosen to trust us in your continued existence! You and your family’s utmost protection is as important to us is it is to you! Our shelters are the best you’ll find and, we have many shelters still available at various prices, but really can you put a price on your loved ones protection? Of course not! So I’m sure you’ll want one of our top of the line models that are still left! Okay so how many are in your family?” “Um, just me.” “Oh…” the voice suddenly gets less chipper. “What?” “Sir, don’t you have ANY family? Like a wife at least, maybe a cousin?” “No, not really.” “Oh dear…” “WHAT!?” “Well sir, its just that, we here at GZS are a family friendly business and we feel that the survival of the human race will best be served by those who have a strong sense of family ties and a respect for the family unit. We aren’t in the business of selling shelters to those of low moral fiber sir…” “What the fuck?! Just because I’m single I gotta be some sort of low life? I’m not luring fuckin’ little girls into my car with lollipops! I have a fucking job and pay my goddamn taxes!” “Sir, I don’t like you taking that tone with me when there isn’t any call for it and I would appreciate it if you didn’t blaspheme, I’m a God fearing woman. Now then I understand your frustration, but there’s nothing we can do. Our shelters were primarily built for families of at least four. To put singles in them wouldn’t be fair to families that have children who shall surely be the ones to rebuild civilization, not to mention it would be a waste of resources. A single person would have an overstock of food and water since as I said we primarily cater to families and stock the shelters with families in mind.” “I fail to see how me having MORE than enough food and water is a bad thing…” “I see sir, so you would be selfish and deprive a possible family of survival?” “I didn’t say that! And wait a minute; wouldn’t I be doing that anyway if I had a family of my own?” “Yes, but it would be different.” “How?” “You would have a family sir.” You’re about ready to throw the phone against the wall in frustration. “So basically what you’re telling me is you’re not selling me a shelter.” “Ah now I didn’t say that sir! Since you’re interested in buying our product and by your previous outburst I can tell you ARE a productive member of society. And it is only due to your poor social skills that you have been unable to take the necessary steps to have a family of your own! But never fear, GZS HAS kept your type in mind!” “Gee, thanks…” “You’re quite welcome sir! We have the Community Shelters for singles! It is basically a giant shelter filled with singles such as yourself. You will be given a separate room to live in, but everything else you must share. Don’t worry we have stocked these shelters with supplies to last for years! It is our hope that nature will take its course and when it comes time to return to the surface a fully functional tight knit community of families will emerge to rebuild civilization once again!” Sharing isn’t something you’re good at. You like your privacy and your space and your solitude. You can’t imagine sharing stuff when your very survival is at stake. “Look, don’t you have ANYTHING I can get by myself?” you demand. “Are you serious sir? You actually want to be alone?” the voice says as if you must be nuts to ask that kind of question. “If possible yeah.” “Well…I shouldn’t really tell you sir, because you snapped at me earlier, but it is my job to make sure any potential customer is serviced to the best of my ability. That and the fact that these other Special Shelters we have are a bit…experimental.” “Experimental? What do you mean?” “Well I don’t know too much about these Special Shelters myself sir, all I know is they have been equipped with the latest technology and VERY expensive. Anyone can buy one as long as they have the money to do so.” “Well how experimental are these things exactly?” “As I said sir, I know little about these Special Shelters other than they are equipped with the latest technology. GZS has run tests and they are considered very safe and will protect you in the coming apocalypse, however due to time constraints GZS may have missed a few minor things, and as such we are legally required to warn…er inform potential customers before they buy them.” > You buy a room in the Community Shelter As much as you’re not keen on sharing, you’re less keen on the idea of being shoved in an experimental shelter. Sounds like they didn’t work all the bugs out of the system, and it’s filled with hi-tech equipment? God help you if something broke down. You wouldn’t know how to fix it. At least if you’re with other people, there’s bound to be people with different skills to compliment each other. Of course everyone could just be incompetent like they usually are. You’re not going to dwell on it too much, you’ll take the safer choice; maybe it won’t be so bad. “Okay I’ll take a room in the Community Shelter.” “Wonderful sir! You won’t regret this decision! Now I’ll need to know some vital information about yourself before I can direct you to our nearest Community shelter in your area where upon you shall pay the automatic teller just inside the foyer of it so that the main door can open and you will be able to enter your new residence during Armageddon! Okay let’s start with your name sir.” You give out your name, address and such. It’s all pretty routine stuff until the questions get more personal. “Have you ever committed a felony sir?” “No.” “Do you have a history of mental illness sir?” “No.” “Are you a drug addict or smoke sir?” “No.” “Are you handicapped in anyway sir?” “No.” “Do you believe in God sir?” “Huh? Uh…sure I guess.” “Hmmm…okay…” the voice says a bit disapprovingly. “Do you have any physical diseases or suffered from any in the past sir?” “No.” “Do you have AIDS or any other STDs sir?” “What the hell? I just told you I don’t have any diseases! Sexual or otherwise!” “Are you sterile sir?” “What?!” “I said are you shooting blanks sir?” “What difference does that make?” “Please sir, just answer the question.” “(Sigh) No. As far as I know, I’m packing a loaded fucking weapon. I know because I had to take an overly thorough physical for work recently.” “Wonderful sir! Okay are you a homosexual or ever had homosexual feelings?” “WHAT THE FUCK?! NO!!” “Sir, I told you before don’t take that tone with me.” “Well you’re asking me a lot of fucking personal questions! Why do you need to know all this shit?” “Sir, as I said, we are a family orientated business, we aren’t just a money motivated corporation, we are interested in the survival and well being of the human race. The human race can’t thrive if people don’t meet the necessary…requirements. How can civilization be re-built if children aren’t being born? I mean would you want to live in a society built by drug addicted mentally ill homosexual criminals? That’s the reason the world is ending now, because people have turned away from a righteous way of living!” “Look I’d live in a fucking society with transsexual midgets if it’ll get me to the fucking shelter already!” “Hmmm, well despite that comment, your non-committal answer on the belief in God, and your overall anti-social tone, you do qualify for one of our rooms in the Community Shelter in your area. I can only hope some of the other more sociable residents rub off on you, and cause a change in your personality. I’ll give you the location of the shelter sir.” You are given the location of the Community Shelter which you are surprised to find out is closer then you think, it shouldn’t take too long for you drive there. You are then given the price, which is pretty steep, but you can afford it. Besides if the world is ending it’s not like you’re really going to need money anymore. Which makes you wonder why GZS is in business at all. What’s the point of going to the trouble of building bomb shelters for Armageddon if all the profit they make is most likely going to be useless in the aftermath? Oh well that’s not your concern, you’re just glad you passed the damn interrogation and got into the shelter. Of course now you’re subjected to some last minute rules. “Okay sir, you are now in the system and registered. You may move into the Shelter at anytime as long you pay the fee required to the automatic teller as previously described to you. If you don’t pay, you can’t get in obviously. Cash, check, or debit card are acceptable. NO Credit Cards will be accepted! Now then some rules. You do not have to bring anything with you, but it is recommended that you do bring your own clothing if you wish to wear something different as the days go by. Food and drinkable liquids are acceptable, but not necessary. Do not bring in private medical supplies or repair equipment, the shelter has been stocked with those items, we do not want people bringing in potential weapons or illegal drugs. Speaking of which, DO NOT attempt to bring in any kind of weapon! Guns and knives are strictly prohibited! Attempting to bring in either one will result in non-admittance of the shelter! Same goes for drugs of any kind. Alcohol is frowned upon, but accepted. There WILL be a machine to scan you before you’re allowed to enter, so do not think you will be able to sneak anything in! Now then I trust our transaction has ended. If you have anymore questions please contact our customer service line. Good day sir, may your first child be a masculine one and thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” That’s it, all you have to do is get what stuff you want to take with you and move in, might as well do it now, no sense in waiting until you see the nuclear cloud. You wonder if you shouldn’t try to “beat the system” by sneaking your weapon in though. Ultimately you decide this is survival. You need every advantage you can get. You don’t know what kind of people you’re going to be stuck with, so you take your pistol with you and a few “non-lethal” supplies such as duct tape. You also you just pack some clothing, food and water. You then set off on your way. After a couple days of driving you finally arrive at the location that you were given. It’s in a fairly desolate place with a single solid metal structure with a door standing there. There’s also a few other cars parked nearby, you obviously aren’t the first one here. You park your van and enter the structure with the items you brought with you. You’re in a small foyer with an elevator door and ATM like machine; you’re guessing that’s the automatic teller you were told about. Before you start pressing buttons you need to figure out how you’re going to get your pistol through the scanning process, because you can be sure if you fail something nasty will happen… > You duct tape the pistol to the ceiling GZS probably has some sort of scanner that does a little more than just scan your body, so just not having the gun on your person most likely isn’t going to work. You get the idea that the machine is probably not going to scan the ceiling though, so you get out your duct tape and fix it to the pistol, you then climb on top of the automatic teller and jump up to stick the pistol on the ceiling. You end up falling on your ass, but you succeed. You then press some buttons on the machine, where it proceeds to ask your name and how you’re going to pay. You type in your name and insert you debit card where upon it drains most of your account. The door you stepped through sudden shuts and a hum is heard. You take a deep breath and hope for the best. “Now scanning for unauthorized items…Scanning…Scanning…Scanning complete. You have been allowed entry, the elevator doors will now open, your room number is 23, thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” an emotionless electronic voice remarks as the elevator doors open. It worked! You quickly climb back up on to the teller and jump up to grab your pistol, (this time able to maintain your balance better) toss it into the elevator opening and then rush in with all your belongings and take the long elevator trip down. When you get to bottom the elevator door opens to large sterile hallway with lines of other closed metal doors on either side As soon as you enter, the elevator doors slam shut and you hear it going back up, you also notice there aren’t any buttons to call it back…before you’re able to worry about that little detail you’re met by a few of your new neighbors. One is some tall skinny guy another is a brunette woman who begins talking to you. “Hey, another new neighbor! My name is Nina and this is Ron, what’s your name?” She is entirely too fucking friendly given the situation. “Why aren’t there call buttons back on the elevator?” you ask ignoring her question. “Huh? Oh I guess it’s a safety feature. The elevator automatically goes back up so the other people can get in as quickly as possible. Ron suggested that they might’ve thought someone would deliberately try to keep the elevator down here to prevent anyone else from seeking shelter. Though I can’t honestly imagine that anyone would do such a horrible thing.” “Been living on earth long Nina?” you ask rhetorically. “Great, so I’m basically trapped down here due to the brilliant engineering minds of GZS…so is it just us so far or are their other people here too?” ”There are a few others, if you come with us we can introduce you to…” “Maybe later, look we’re gonna be stuck down here for a long time so I’ll get to know everyone soon enough, right now I just want to go to my room and rest.” “Erm, okay…” Ron says as you push past them both. You head to your room which is equipped with the basic requirements; food and water dispenser, shower, bed, and a cabinet. (You hide your pistol in your mattress) There’s a standard Shelter Operations Manual sitting on the table as well as a Shelter Booklet about socialization, rules, guidelines and such, both of which you skim through every now and then. There’s a big public recreation area and a couple of other public rooms where your neighbors gather, but you stay in your room and keep to yourself for the most part. Sometimes in the middle of the night when nobody else is around you’ll watch the TV in the living area to keep up on current events. You hear other people arriving over the month. Ron and Nina greet them all, you can tell those two are going to be the ones to “organize” shit and probably try to decide what’s “best” for everyone. Always saying stuff that they read in the booklet. “Fucking busy bodies…” you say as you fall asleep watching the world in its death throes on TV… Monday 8:00 AM “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” You groggily wake up and see a test pattern on TV. This is it. You feel a small tremor and then you turn off the TV, just as Nina and Ron come walking in. “What was that?” Nina asks. “Test pattern, I think Armageddon arrived.” You answer. “What?! I can’t believe it!” Ron exclaims. “Why are you so surprised? I mean that was the whole point of coming down here right?” “Yeah, but I dunno…I just wasn’t prepared for it actually happening.” “Christ, Ron I’ve overheard you say you were the first one in this goddamn shelter, you of all people should’ve long gotten used to the idea of living down here.” “What is your problem? You been nothing but hostile since you’ve got here!” Nina exclaims. “My problem is I’m stuck down here with a bunch of people I don’t really know and if you two are any indication I don’t want to know.” “How did you even qualify to get a room down here?” “Good clean living I guess, so is there supposed to be something special we do now?” “Uh, yeah I think so, it mentions something in the booklet I was reading that came with the shelter, we’re supposed to gather everyone and tell them.” “Okay well I guess you guys go do that then. I’m just going to check on something here.” “Okay, but we’re supposed to have some sort of vote to decide on how this place is going to be run, if you don’t show up you don’t get a vote.” Ron reminds you. “I know Ron, I’ve read the booklet.” You answer unenthusiastically. Ron and Nina leave you and go tell the others of the situation and follow other things it states in the booklet. You’re wondering if you should even stay down here. All these people seem completely different than you. You wish there was someway to call the elevator back down, but after checking a GZS computer it states that it won’t come back until it detects that the surface is safe for habitation again…which basically means not in your lifetime. It’s probably just as well since the surface probably isn’t the safest place you’d want to be, lord knows what the hell it looks like now, not to mention the radiation factor. Then again you’d still like the option to leave if you wanted to. You go back to your room, read and enjoy the solitude until Nina comes to get you. “Hey! You didn’t show up for the meeting! We’re discussing which ways this place could be run, are you coming or what?” > You go vote “(Sigh) Fine, I’ll attend this exercise in futility, but what the hell are we doing exactly, so I’m not just jumping into shit.” You ask as you and Nina walk towards the conference room. “Well right now we’re voting on a shelter leader. Someone to make the final decisions about important things. So far Ron is tied with another. In fact the only reason why I came to get you, was so you could break the tie.” “Whoopie, I feel honored I can take an important part in this democratic process. So who’s the other person?” “Oh, that would be Elliot. He was one of the later arrivals, but is very personable. Not that you’d know since I doubt you’ve even seen him given that you lock yourself in you room all the time.” “Yeah, yeah, I know who he is, bald guy. So I take it you want Ron to win huh?” “Well…I’d be lying if I said I didn’t, but Elliot’s seems like a good guy too, so I’m sure he’d make a good leader as well.” “Why haven’t you run? I mean you seem to like to organize things.” “Me? Oh no, I’m not a leader.” “Well from what I’ve seen of Ron, he isn’t either.” Nina stops you in the corridor. “Damn it, stop being an asshole! At least Ron makes an attempt to get involved in things! You haven’t done shit since you got here except insult people and lock yourself away! Like it or not we’re ALL in this together! And you better start getting with the program and contribute!” “What the fuck? I am contributing; I’m going to this goddamn meeting aren’t I? And you better watch your tone; remember I’M the swing vote for your boyfriend.” “Ron isn’t my boyfriend! I mean…not yet…uh…” “What? You mean he isn’t taping your ass yet? Shit, he’s stupider than I thought then, because he’d be lucky to get someone who looks like you even if you are annoying.” Nina stands and stares at you in disbelief. “…could you possibly be any more vile?” “Probably, but we don’t have time for that, I gotta vote for some dickhead.” You continue to the conference room (with Nina no longer walking with you) and when you finally arrive everyone is there as if they’ve been waiting for you. You don’t even really care who’s in charge since more than likely no matter who you vote for is going to be an intrusive bastard wanting everyone to do something. You can vote for Ron. As far as leadership material, you don’t really see him as one, though he seems to have some planning skills and friendly to people so maybe he’s got the stuff. Elliot you barely know anything about, he also seems to be an organizer and friendly to everyone, but not to the point that it’s irritating. Though to you there’s something a little creepy about him. Ah what the hell, you know this is something Ron wants more than anything why not give it to him? Besides he’s not very “strong” which means you can probably get away with disobeying him on a regular basis without causing a big scene. “I’ll vote for Ron.” You say, Nina looks surprised and Ron jumps up and down like an idiot in celebration. You take that as your opportunity to go back to your room, Nina once again stops you in the corridor. “I just wanted to say thanks for doing this; I know you don’t even like Ron…” “I don’t care one way or another about him, if he wants the headache of running this place he can have it, he better just not ask too much of me, I did my bit. You can think of me as his kingmaker. See ya around.” You go back to your room and that’s where you spend a majority of your time. You don’t really mix with anyone, and nobody really makes the attempt with you either. You’re asked to contribute to some “events” sometimes, but you always ignore such requests and nothing happens. Nina still hangs around Ron like a love sick school girl, but for god knows what reason he seems completely oblivious to the fact. And obviously she hasn’t told him how she feels about him. You watch this comical display replay itself over and over. “Yeah, GZS really picked some excellent candidates to pair up to create families for the so called future, what a joke.” You mutter to yourself. Time goes by and Ron goes about his duties which mainly consist of discussing pointless plans in the conference room. The idiot can’t do ANYTHING without talking about it with others he appointed as advisors first! If somebody’s shower is broken they have to discuss when, how and WHY it has to be fixed! Naturally everyone disagree about one point and they have to start all over again which usually means nothing gets done. A lot of planning and organizing of ideas, but no actual implementations of those same ideas. The shelter starts falling into disrepair, a few fixes are made here and there, but they’re more jury-rigged ones more than anything. Nobody has perfectly functioning rooms from what you know…well except yours since you do nothing, but study the shelter manual all the time attempting to learn more about how it works giving you an edge in repairing your own room. (In fact you just permanently took a repair kit for yourself out of the equipment room) You really don’t understand why other people aren’t doing the same instead of waiting around for things to get repaired or complaining about needing things to get repaired. Everyone has the same damn operations manual. Read it! About six months go by and finally you’re given an unexpected visit during the night. You answer your door. It’s Elliot and some other people. “May we come in?” Elliot asks. “What do you want?” “Just to talk about the future of the shelter.” “Yeah? Well you can talk to Ron about that, he’s the big shelter leader.” “Yes he is, thanks to you. And that’s also why this shelter is in such bad shape. Ron is ruining this place with his ineptitude.” “Oh no, don’t blame that shit on me, that’s RON’S fault, not mine. And besides MY room works fine. If you lazy bastards would actually read the damn shelter manual you wouldn’t have any problems.” “Oh I’ve read the manual, I’m sure many people have. But surely you must realize most people don’t have the natural talent to fix thing that perhaps you have. Besides I’m sure you must also be aware that in a community each person has his own talents. For example Leon behind me used to be a bouncer. Don’t you think with his skills he’d make an excellent head of security around here?” Leon folds his big black arms almost daring you to say “No.” before Elliot continues. “My point is me and a few others are planning to take Ron out of office for gross incompetence. Did you know Fred and Greta are planning to have a baby? The first one to be born in here. The population in this shelter isn’t going to be stable forever. It’s going to grow and we NEED to keep this place running efficiently if we’re ALL going to survive. I know you’re a solitary person…I even respect that, but the time has come for you to choose between life or death. By joining our group, you’re choosing life. By remaining locked away in here, you’re choosing death not just for all of us, but for yourself. No man is an island.” Elliot has a bit of duality to his speech. Part of him sounds genuinely concerned for the future of the shelter; he may even have a point. But the other part of him sounds like he’s politely threatening you. And you’re not sure of the whole “taking Ron out of office” thing. It almost sounds like he plans on taking over by force. You get the impression he and his little group are going to do just that regardless of whether you join or not. > You decline “Yeah, well you do what you have to do, just leave me out of it. Your little power struggle with Ron isn’t any of my concern. And if and when you do take power don’t think you’re going to be ordering me around either.” Elliot’s expression changes to that of someone very perturbed by your response. “I’m very disappointed to hear you say that, I really thought you could have a place in the new community I was planning.” “Think again, now get outta here…” You begin to shove Elliot out of your doorway, but Leon reaches over his shoulder and shoves you back with great strength. You fall backwards on to your floor, Elliot and his gang start to enter. He pulls out a scalpel, something he probably got from the medical supplies. You happen to be right next to your mattress, so you reach in and grab your pistol to point it directly at Elliot. Now they all look like they just seen a ghost and all the bravery has drained out of them except Leon, who looks like this isn’t the first time he’s had a gun pointed at him, but he’s still stepping back. “You wanna fuckin’ take another step motherfucker? Go ahead, I fuckin’ dare you!” “Holy shit, he’s got a fuckin’ gun Elliot!” a women in his group says. “I can see that Brenda! Okay, look maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. I mean obviously you’re a more resourceful man than I thought…I mean as far as I know you’re the only one in this place with a goddamn gun. How’d you manage that?” “Never you mind, just get the fuck outta here!” “Very well, but remember, you don’t have any friends in this place, and you can’t watch your back all the time…” Elliot has just announced his intentions of eliminating you whenever it’s possible. You’ll have to live in constant paranoia now. Unless… > You shoot him now Always one to solve a problem before it starts… You pull the trigger and blast Elliot square in the chest. He looks down in disbelief and then slumps down on the floor by your feet. You then get up from the floor as everyone else runs out of the room. “Yeah that’s what I thought! So much for your fearless leader!” As you drag Elliot’s body out of your room, everyone else in the shelter has come out of their own rooms after hearing the gun shot and screaming. “OH MY GOD! HE’S GOT A GUN!” someone shouts. “HE’S KILLED ELLIOT!” another screams. Everyone is very afraid of what you’re going to do next. Only Nina dares approach you. “You…you killed him? I always knew you were anti-social, but…oh my god…” “Yeah I fuckin’ killed Elliot! And YOU of all people oughta be damn well glad I did! He was planning on taking over this place from your boyfriend Ron!” “Ron’s not my boyfriend! And I don’t believe you! Elliot was gracious in his defeat! He was a good man unlike you!” “Yeah he was so good he tried to recruit me for his little rebellion gang, and don’t try to hide in the fuckin’ crowd Leon and act like you weren’t there! All of you fuckers hiding right now, came to my room with Elliot! And lemme ask you this, WHY the hell would ANY of them come to MY room? Everyone knows I don’t invite people!” “I dunno what to say right now…please just put down the gun…I don’t want you to kill anyone else…” “For fuck’s sake Nina I’m not a mass murderer! It was self-defense! He was gonna kill me, just like he was gonna kill Ron and shit maybe he should’ve, the fuckstick’s supposed to be the shelter leader and he’s not even here for this! Where is Ron?” Nina suddenly wonders where he’s at as well, she runs over to his door which is still shut. “Don’t tell me, he’s THAT much of deep sleeper.” You mutter while standing by Elliot’s dead body. Nina doesn’t even knock, apparently she’s got her own key to get in his room. You’re STILL wondering why nothing has happened between those two yet, your questions are soon answered, and everyone is in for another surprise this eventful night. “EEEEEEEEEEEK! NO!” you hear Nina scream when she goes inside the room and then runs back out crying. Ron steps out in his underwear. “No, wait! Nina, its not what it looks like!” he shouts to her and then another guy in his underwear comes out. You think his name is William, you never knew too much about him before, but you know MORE than you wanted to now! “Get back inside William!” when Ron sees that there’s a whole crowd of people staring in various states of shock. It’s too late though now, everyone knows. “Wow Nina sure is a good judge of character, she thought Elliot was a good man and she thought you were straight. Looks like I wasn’t the only one with a secret in this shelter! Heh heh.” Ron finally turns to you and sees what you’ve done. “…You got a gun? YOU FUCKIN’ KILLED ELLIOT?” “(Sigh) Not this again! Yeah I fuckin’ killed him. He tried to kill me and he was planning on killing you to take over this dump!” “Now just calm down, and put down the gun…” “I’m not putting down shit and I’m not killing anyone else unless someone gives me cause to do so! What the fuck, was the dick in your mouth so good to you, you didn’t hear the gunshots and screaming out here? I’m sick of explaining this twice! Now I’M going back into MY room to get some sleep! And none of you better fucking disturb me for the rest of the night! And someone better clean up Elliot’s carcass from in front of my room when I wake up tomorrow!” You return to your room. “Yeah, I think that went well.” You say to yourself. After the night of multiple “incidents” a lot of things happen. The first, is Elliot’s body being the first one dumped into the incinerator. The second being that Ron is immediately voted out by his own council who all follow the GZS guidelines. Apparently being gay was more of an offense than being incompetent, since GZS guidelines were explicit in not wanting homosexuals in the Community Shelters which he obviously lied about. Nina is unsurprisingly the most vocal about his vote out; in fact she ends up taking over. Ron and William move into a separate far room together and become social pariahs. Everyone who was previously friendly with Ron suddenly starts treating him like garbage. You never really cared for him, and thought he was an incompetent moron, but even you think it’s shitty for them to all just turn on him over who he happens to be fucking. But that’s how people are and that’s why you try to avoid them. Your situation is a little different, they can’t really treat you like a social pariah mainly because you were always one to begin with and another because everyone’s afraid you’ll shoot them. All of Elliot’s former friends have no doubt reinforced the belief in others that you’re dangerous. You don’t really care though, just as long as nobody fucks with you and stays out of your way (Which everyone does for the most part since you now walk around with it at all times) A year passes… The shelter sees its first baby born and there are a couple of other pregnant women ready to pop as well. Nina has improved the place a little bit more. No doubt without anyone to fawn over now she’s throwing herself into her work. There’s actually a guy (Kyle) who’s has some medical knowledge now, they still don’t really have a good “tech guy” though and things are still being jury-rigged. Nina knows with a growing population this shelter needs to be in tip top running condition. You get that expected knock on the door. “Hello, Nina.” You say. “Yeah hi. Look, I just want to know if you have any intention of helping us out or if you’re still going to remain an isolated asshole.” Nothing like being blunt. Politics has really hardened Nina, she’s all business now it seems and lot less naïve. How strangely appealing… > You help out the community “You know what Nina? I’m in a charitable mood. What do you need?” “We need you to hack into the central GZS computer system to bring the elevator down.” “Wow, I didn’t expect that one. What’s going on?” “Can you do it?” Nina asks without answering your question. “Well in theory I might. I’ve fucked around with that computer when nobody was around in the past, but I’ve never really gotten into the inner workings of the system, and I’ve read as much as I can about the shelter itself. Damn thing’s touchy though. I just worry that if I do the wrong thing I’ll end up shutting the whole shelter down and doom us all.” “You mean doom yourself.” “Well that too, but you still never told me what you want to bring the elevator down for.” “Are you gonna do it or not?” “Okay, what happens if I don’t?” “I’ll just get one of my own people to attempt it and hope they don’t doom us all accidentally.” “(Sigh) Well played Nina, you know I’m gonna do it now. Alright, let’s go.” You and Nina enter the Community Shelter computer room, where a couple of Nina’s tech’s are tinkering with the Central GZS computer. “What are you doing!? Give me that!” you yell taking a screw driver away from one of them. You recognize them both Todd and Charles if you remember correctly. “Oh man, its you! Okay, don’t get mad!” Todd says backing off. Charles does like wise. “Sheesh, I’m not going to shoot you! I’m just trying to prevent you from fucking up what’s basically our life support system! Its barely working right as it is! I swear GZS put us in a death trap down here.” “Alright then do you need any help? Or should we leave you alone while you do this?” Nina asks. “What do you think fearless leader?” “Right. Come on let’s go.” Nina and the other two leave and you get to work. You first do a system scan to what’s going on exactly. Wow, this place really is in some bad shape! You can see where some fixes have been made, but without a really skilled technician routinely checking in on stuff, things are never going to get better in this place, you shutter to think what would’ve happened with Ron still in control. This place might’ve very well lost all power. You’re sort of glad you’ve begun to take an interest. MAYBE after you manage to get the elevator down you might just volunteer to upkeep this thing. You start delving into the inner working of the system; GZS really didn’t want folks bringing the elevator down! You accidentally cut some lighting temporarily which causes you to hear some yelling from a distance. “Oh toughen up.” You say to yourself. You continue to work and eventually you successfully override the safety protocol for the elevator and it starts its decent. “Ha ha, I rule.” You say as you come out of the computer room. “Did you do it?” Nina asks. “Sure did. NOW are you going to tell me why we’re bringing it down?” “You’ll see for yourself. Leon, bring both of the perverts out, this has been a long time coming…” You notice that everyone’s standing around right now, like some special event is going down. Leon eventually comes back with Ron and William in tow, and he looks like he roughed them up first so they’d struggle less. The elevator door opens up for the first time. “Put both of these…criminals in the elevator Leon.” Nina says. Leon does so, with a lot of protesting and pleading from both, but another couple punches shut them up. Now you know why Nina wanted you to bring the elevator down…exile. If this was a year ago and they were throwing Ron out in the wasteland for his bungling of shelter management, you’d probably be the first to applaud. But what’s going on right now is for the wrong damn reasons, and you know Nina’s just being a petty bitch who’s still harboring resentment for shit she really brought on herself with completely clueless judgment on her part. “Alright, Nina I know you’re fucking upset because your make believe boyfriend turned out to be a fag, but that was a goddamn year ago…” “Shut up! This has nothing to do with that! This is about justice! These two are in violation of GZS guidelines carrying on with…” “Oh will you shut up about that shit? I’m starting to believe the entire GZS Corporation were a bunch of fucking loonies with too much time on their hands! They build these fucking shelters that break down all the goddamn time, with no way to get back to the surface and trapping everyone down here.” “Why the hell are you defending these two? You’ve never been one to give a fucking shit before! You know I’ve never seen you pursue any women around here even if you were slightly appealing enough for any of them to have you. What are you gay too?” “(Sigh) No, Nina because if I was I’m sure you would’ve been the first one to want to spread your legs for me. Look I’m just saying this ain’t fucking right okay?” “Oh and YOU’RE the fucking expert on what’s right? You fucking KILLED a man! You fucking snuck a gun in here a shot somebody! So is the gun an extension of your manhood and you just couldn’t live without it?” “Y’know Nina, you seem awfully pre-occupied with my sexual habits. Shit, if you want me to fuck you already just come out and say it and stop beating around bush. I’d say that’s what you’ve been needing since you got in here anyway, because I haven’t seen YOU with anyone either, that didn’t turn out to be a complete fucking homo of course.” Your remark is met with a long period of silence. The rest of the shelter population has been in absolute awe, this is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened since you shot Elliot. Nina looks at you hard and recomposes herself. “Are you going to send the elevator up, or not?” > You send the elevator up You throw your hands up. “Alright, fuck it then. You’re right. What the hell do I care? Shoulda been more careful Ron.” You turn around and go back to the computer room to send the elevator up, you hear the pitiful begging from Ron, followed up by a couple of verbal abusive insults from Nina. Sheesh, she’s turned into a real bitch. You better make yourself semi-useful so that vengeful attitude doesn’t turn too much on you. You figure the best way to do that is to start monitoring and working with the GZS central computer, besides you need to look after this thing anyway. You don’t feel safe with those other two idiots looking after it. “(Sigh) Looks like I’m working again.” You say as you press the button to send the elevator up. Four years pass... You’ve been here five years and things have changed. The population has grown a bit, but not a lot since Nina’s pettiness helps keep the population down. Nina, has thrown at least ten people into “exile”. Anyone who only mildly displeases or disagrees with her, is often shown the elevator…unless they happen to be providing a useful skill like you. Nina really hates the fact that you’re the only competent technician she has. You manage to keep things from breaking down constantly like they were, but only just the minimum. You purposely don’t keep things running at maximum efficiency, since as long as you’re needed you won’t be in danger…of course there IS the fact you have a gun that also keeps you safe, but there’s never any harm in having a couple of safety nets. The more the better. In fact, you wonder about losing one of your safety nets. Todd and Charles have increased in their technical knowledge over the years, and granted they still aren’t as skilled as you; they might actually be competent one day. And they do a lot less back talking than you… You wonder if you should do something to ensure your position. Todd and Charles come in talking about some old movie they watched in the community living area. It would be really easy to just shoot them. Who would stop you? And what could anyone do about it? > You shoot them both Oh well, you were never that close to them anyway… You reach for your weapon, while Todd and Charles are still talking. You blast Charles in the neck making blood spurt all over Todd who stares in shock. Your next shot hits Todd in the head. With both of them dead you suddenly feel a whole lot better and go back to work. Naturally the sound of the shots brings people to come running. “OH NO! HE’S DONE IT AGAIN!” someone shouts and runs back out of the room. Pretty soon Nina and her goon Leon come in. Nina sees the two bodies on the floor and looks more pissed off than afraid of you. “What the fuck did you do that for?” “Just ensuring my position Nina, I’m sure you understand.” “You fucking psychotic sonofabitch! You can’t just go around shooting people!” “Oh don’t EVEN be claiming moral superiority here Nina, you who throws people into Exile just because they’re looking at you funny! In fact Todd and Charles deaths are your fault not mine, I can’t help if I feel threatened that you might replace me and throw me out on to the surface as well.” “Goddamn you, if you didn’t have that gun or the only reliable tech, I’d throw you out of here so fast…” “Exactly! So I’m glad we’re in agreement…it’s all your fault.” “What the…look, just because you got that fuckin’ gun doesn’t mean shit! I’M still in charge of this place!” You stand up and shoot Leon three times, he falls backwards smacking his head against a table before taking his last breath. Now Nina starts to get worried, you just shot her head goon who was intimidating everyone else. She doesn’t have that leverage anymore. Of course right now she’s not worried about staying in power, for the first time she’s worried about you shooting her. You’re up close and personal, threatening her with it. “See that Nina? What the fuck are ya gonna do now? Who are ya gonna get to throw people into exile? In case you haven’t realized it yet, but I’M in fuckin’ charge of this goddamn place! I just let you think you are! Now I suggest you take your ass outta here and try to figure out how you’re gonna stay in power. Because I’m sure there’s a lot of people not fond of you either, but unlike me they can actually do something about you. Guess I know who’ll be the next exile! Ha Ha!” you then lick Nina’s face. Nina backs out of the room in a hurry, leaving you alone with a room full of dead bodies. “Get up, you lazy fucks, we got work to do!” you say kicking Todd’s body in a macabre joke to yourself. Perhaps stepping over the line of killing Todd and Charles with no provocation unhinged you a bit. And killing Leon certainly put you over the edge. Granted Nina’s no saint, but what you’re doing is just as bad. You kind of got a power rush, from your deeds today and you must say you really liked it. After making sure everything’s working properly and even increasing the efficiency a bit, you decide to call it a day at the computer room. You leave stepping over the bodies that nobody’s come to clean up yet. “Well, if you’re still here, I guess I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” You say. You make your way back to your room. The corridors seem to be clear of folks, probably afraid of all the stuff that went down today so they’re keeping their heads down. Good. Before you get ready to go to sleep, you get a knock on the door, you answer it, ready to shoot someone else again, but see Nina in her underwear instead. You’re a little surprised. “Nina, what the hell are you doing?” unsure of how to respond. Nina begins to talk in a way you’ve never heard her speak before, seductive, yet vulnerable. “I was doing some thinking like you said back in the computer room…and you’re right. I won’t hold anymore power here anymore…I’ll probably get thrown onto the surface like you said…unless I ally myself with someone who has power, and you’re the only one with that kind of power.” “I see, so what does this conclusion you’ve come to mean exactly?” Nina takes your hand and puts it on her body, starting with her firm breasts and moving it lower to the promised land. “It means I’m yours, in everyway imaginable, every night, any time, just please don’t let anything happen to me.” Nina then nuzzles up against you and begins kissing on you gently for further enticement in her desperate plan to save herself. It’s a bit hard to resist her offer. In more ways than one. This reminds you of those prison movies where one of them offers to be the bitch in exchange for protection, except this is better because Nina’s female! > You accept her offer You don’t think about it, you don’t answer; you let your actions speak. You pull her inside and close the door while she continues to kiss on you. As she kisses on your chest you begin pushing her head lower. She gets on her knees and begins servicing you like a common whore. After you reach your climax, she insists that she’s not done and wants to show you even more of what she’s capable of tonight. You and her fall back to the bed where she slips off her panties, mounts you and begins the second round. In the throes of love making while you’re closing your eyes saying “Ride the horse baby! Ride the fuckin’ horse!” you climax again, and when you open them, you get a nasty surprise of your own fucking gun being pointed at your face. “Raise your fuckin’ hands motherfucker!” she says calmly. You comply. “Whoa! Hold on! Don’t shoot! Weren’t we just having fun?” “Maybe you were, but this was just a means to an end for me…I fully intend on scrubbing myself thoroughly after this, the fact that you came inside me twice sickens me.” “Okay, just settle down Nina, I know you’re a little upset about what I did earlier today, but I wasn’t actually going to hurt you. Just got a little trigger happy that’s all! I dunno I’ve been under a lot of stress lately! I…” ”SHUT UP! You ain’t talkin’ your way outta this! This is about survival and being in control!” Sensing nothing else to lose you become threatening. “Oh yeah? Well fuck you! Because I’M still in fuckin’ control then! Without me nobody knows how to run the goddamn computer the right way! I’m fuckin’ necessary to your fuckin’ survival, you stupid bitch!” “I’m nobody’s bitch! Especially not yours!” Before you can retort to that remark, Nina blows your brains out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Oh well, you were never that close to them anyway… You reach for your weapon, while Todd and Charles are still talking. You blast Charles in the neck making blood spurt all over Todd who stares in shock. Your next shot hits Todd in the head. With both of them dead you suddenly feel a whole lot better and go back to work. Naturally the sound of the shots brings people to come running. “OH NO! HE’S DONE IT AGAIN!” someone shouts and runs back out of the room. Pretty soon Nina and her goon Leon come in. Nina sees the two bodies on the floor and looks more pissed off than afraid of you. “What the fuck did you do that for?” “Just ensuring my position Nina, I’m sure you understand.” “You fucking psychotic sonofabitch! You can’t just go around shooting people!” “Oh don’t EVEN be claiming moral superiority here Nina, you who throws people into Exile just because they’re looking at you funny! In fact Todd and Charles deaths are your fault not mine, I can’t help if I feel threatened that you might replace me and throw me out on to the surface as well.” “Goddamn you, if you didn’t have that gun or the only reliable tech, I’d throw you out of here so fast…” “Exactly! So I’m glad we’re in agreement…it’s all your fault.” “What the…look, just because you got that fuckin’ gun doesn’t mean shit! I’M still in charge of this place!” You stand up and shoot Leon three times, he falls backwards smacking his head against a table before taking his last breath. Now Nina starts to get worried, you just shot her head goon who was intimidating everyone else. She doesn’t have that leverage anymore. Of course right now she’s not worried about staying in power, for the first time she’s worried about you shooting her. You’re up close and personal, threatening her with it. “See that Nina? What the fuck are ya gonna do now? Who are ya gonna get to throw people into exile? In case you haven’t realized it yet, but I’M in fuckin’ charge of this goddamn place! I just let you think you are! Now I suggest you take your ass outta here and try to figure out how you’re gonna stay in power. Because I’m sure there’s a lot of people not fond of you either, but unlike me they can actually do something about you. Guess I know who’ll be the next exile! Ha Ha!” you then lick Nina’s face. Nina backs out of the room in a hurry, leaving you alone with a room full of dead bodies. “Get up, you lazy fucks, we got work to do!” you say kicking Todd’s body in a macabre joke to yourself. Perhaps stepping over the line of killing Todd and Charles with no provocation unhinged you a bit. And killing Leon certainly put you over the edge. Granted Nina’s no saint, but what you’re doing is just as bad. You kind of got a power rush, from your deeds today and you must say you really liked it. After making sure everything’s working properly and even increasing the efficiency a bit, you decide to call it a day at the computer room. You leave stepping over the bodies that nobody’s come to clean up yet. “Well, if you’re still here, I guess I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” You say. You make your way back to your room. The corridors seem to be clear of folks, probably afraid of all the stuff that went down today so they’re keeping their heads down. Good. Before you get ready to go to sleep, you get a knock on the door, you answer it, ready to shoot someone else again, but see Nina in her underwear instead. You’re a little surprised. “Nina, what the hell are you doing?” unsure of how to respond. Nina begins to talk in a way you’ve never heard her speak before, seductive, yet vulnerable. “I was doing some thinking like you said back in the computer room…and you’re right. I won’t hold anymore power here anymore…I’ll probably get thrown onto the surface like you said…unless I ally myself with someone who has power, and you’re the only one with that kind of power.” “I see, so what does this conclusion you’ve come to mean exactly?” Nina takes your hand and puts it on her body, starting with her firm breasts and moving it lower to the promised land. “It means I’m yours, in everyway imaginable, every night, any time, just please don’t let anything happen to me.” Nina then nuzzles up against you and begins kissing on you gently for further enticement in her desperate plan to save herself. It’s a bit hard to resist her offer. In more ways than one. This reminds you of those prison movies where one of them offers to be the bitch in exchange for protection, except this is better because Nina’s female! > You decline You push her away; you’re not fooled by this act. “Nina, maybe your feminine wiles worked on Leon, but that shit ain’t gonna work on me, I know what the fuck you’re up to. You think I’m gonna let you distract me and let you grab my pistol while we’re fucking? Not fucking likely!” Nina attempts to continue with her tactic and gets next to you again. “No, I’m serious. I want your protection. I wouldn’t try to betray you…” “Oh, okay. You’re serious eh? We’ll see.” You pull Nina in the room and lock the door. You then take your pistol, unload it, and then put it on the far side of the room. Nina’s face looks little less “in the mood” now. “Alright, let’s go then.” You say. “Uh…” “What’s the matter? Plan backfire? Too late for regrets now, now we can either do this voluntarily or INvoluntarily…and on the path I’ve been going lately I think you know that I’m fully capable of doing it. Pfft. I don’t need a gun for you. So, what’s it gonna be Nina?” Nina looks around, probably looking for something to throw at you, but she realizes that it would probably be in vain. She’s obviously scared, but still tries to maintain some bravery in this hopeless situation that you’ve put her in. “Alright…but don’t hurt me.” Your increasingly chaotic personality changes again and you go up to Nina in a “loving” fashion. “Aw baby, I won’t hurt you. Just know your place and I’ll take care of you, I promise.” You fuck Nina eight ways from doomsday that night. You can’t speak for Nina, but you know YOU enjoyed yourself. The only absolute positive for Nina is that she IS now under your protection and nobody dares to do anything to her now. A few months pass and you keep expecting her to try to do something to betray you, but nothing happens. Either she’s resigned herself to being “yours” or she’s content on taking her aggression out on others. Her time with you doesn’t make her any more compassionate to others, if anything she’s gotten worse. She doesn’t threaten people with exile anymore, now she just threatens them with you. Meanwhile you begin to slowly descend into a sociopathic personality. The only thing that prevents you from shooting everyone is the fact that you’re getting off on their fear a lot more than if you killed them. You keep the computer room locked so only you may access it. You and her are pretty much running the place now. Five more years pass… The shelter is a living nightmare to most people. They live in constant fear that you or Nina will do something to them. Nina has developed a twisted sort of love for you, and while you have a certain fondness for her, you don’t really give a shit about anything anymore, you barely even keep the computer working right anymore, now you just make sure your room is running properly. Nina is a permanent fixture at your place, so you don’t even need to look after her room even if you were inclined to do so. While the people were living in fear of you, initially you were at least somewhat looking after their welfare, but now you aren’t even doing that. Now the fear turns into hatred and resentment. The cowering worms have evolved to grow spines. They begin devising a plan. One day Nina gets into a cat fight with another woman, Greta. She beats her pretty badly, until her husband Fred steps in and begins beating the hell out of her. As is typical Nina runs off to tell you, at which point you come out of the computer room ready to shoot someone. Fred stands up to you, and says Nina was the one who started it and he was just protecting his wife as if his explanation means anything to you. “Duly noted. And I understand your view, but as you must be able to see I have a view of things as well…that’s a nice kid you got there.” You shoot Fred and Greta’s son right before their eyes. Greta screams and Fred lunges at you, causing you to shoot him as well, but not before he tackles you to the floor. Seeing this as the perfect opportunity, a few other bystanders take advantage of the situation, your sole means of power and intimidation is taken from you, as you are kicked and beaten repeatedly. Nina is treated the same way. Suddenly the beatings stop and as you attempt to get up you feel the barrel against your head. You spit a glob of blood before continuing. “Ha ha, go ahead shit eater. Pop me and they’ll be nobody to run the computer the right way.” “We’ll get by.” a voice says. You then are shot twice in the back of the head. Nina’s fate follows soon after. Your remaining ammo is used to shoot both of your dead bloody bodies until it’s all gone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You throw your hands up. “Alright, fuck it then. You’re right. What the hell do I care? Shoulda been more careful Ron.” You turn around and go back to the computer room to send the elevator up, you hear the pitiful begging from Ron, followed up by a couple of verbal abusive insults from Nina. Sheesh, she’s turned into a real bitch. You better make yourself semi-useful so that vengeful attitude doesn’t turn too much on you. You figure the best way to do that is to start monitoring and working with the GZS central computer, besides you need to look after this thing anyway. You don’t feel safe with those other two idiots looking after it. “(Sigh) Looks like I’m working again.” You say as you press the button to send the elevator up. Four years pass... You’ve been here five years and things have changed. The population has grown a bit, but not a lot since Nina’s pettiness helps keep the population down. Nina, has thrown at least ten people into “exile”. Anyone who only mildly displeases or disagrees with her, is often shown the elevator…unless they happen to be providing a useful skill like you. Nina really hates the fact that you’re the only competent technician she has. You manage to keep things from breaking down constantly like they were, but only just the minimum. You purposely don’t keep things running at maximum efficiency, since as long as you’re needed you won’t be in danger…of course there IS the fact you have a gun that also keeps you safe, but there’s never any harm in having a couple of safety nets. The more the better. In fact, you wonder about losing one of your safety nets. Todd and Charles have increased in their technical knowledge over the years, and granted they still aren’t as skilled as you; they might actually be competent one day. And they do a lot less back talking than you… You wonder if you should do something to ensure your position. Todd and Charles come in talking about some old movie they watched in the community living area. It would be really easy to just shoot them. Who would stop you? And what could anyone do about it? > You resist Man, you MUST be going half-nuts down here. You can’t believe you just considered killing two people just on a paranoid delusion. You begin to start seriously analyzing your behavior. Okay, killing Elliot was in self defense. You didn’t really have a choice. You were even defending this place, he didn’t seem like he had good plans for the shelter and its inhabitants. Sending Ron and William into exile wasn’t your fault…well not really. You were just obeying goddamn orders. You tried to talk Nina out of it when nobody else had the balls to stand up to her. She wasn’t budging. What the fuck were you supposed to do? Shoot her, like you were just thinking about shooting Charles and Todd just a few moments ago? You just wanted to be fuckin’ left alone, now you’re roped into all this shit that you don’t really want to be part of. You’re NOT a bad guy, hell you’re keeping this shelter from falling into ruin! “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU PEOPLE WANT FROM ME?!!?!” you yell. Charles and Todd look at each other wondering what you’re talking about. “Uh…nothing. In fact we weren’t even talking to you.” Todd says. “Are you alright? You’ve been spacing out and day dreaming a lot lately.” Charles adds as you suddenly realize your surroundings. “I…I gotta get outta this place.” “Well, that’s cool I mean you do seem like you need to lie down and rest or something. We can look after…” “NO Todd! I mean I gotta leave THIS place! The fuckin’ shelter!” “You mean go to the surface? Are you crazy?” Charles asks. “I’m gettin’ there and know I can’t stay here any longer, or I’m gonna go fuckin’ full blown crazy and shoot somebody else!” Charles and Todd both back off. “Hey on the other hand maybe leaving is a good idea!” You tell Todd and Charles you’re going to pack some supplies and as much water as you can carry and that all you want them to do, is to send the elevator up for you. They don’t have a problem with it, they tell you just to come back and let them know when you’re ready. You go back to your room and load up on water and that crap they call “food” from the dispensers. Then you enter the medical room and begin taking medical supplies. When you think you’re ready, you go back and tell Todd and Charles. Charles opens the elevator door and wishes you luck, Todd talks to you on your way there. “So you sure about this?” “Very sure, in fact I’m not sure why more people aren’t wanting to leave with Nina bullying everyone.” Speak of the devil. Nina arrives with her goon Leon. Shit, you were hoping to avoid this. “What’s all this about me being a bully? And where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Nina exclaims. “I’m leaving Nina, you of all people should be happy about it, I won’t be around to piss you off anymore or threaten your power.” “Well as much as I’d like you to leave, I admit you’re needed here so I’m afraid I can’t let you leave and even if you were to leave I can’t just let you take vital shelter supplies! Go put those back and get back to your post NOW!” “Nina, you’re not calling the fuckin’ shots on this, I’m going! I’m not you’re goddamn prisoner! And if the rest of you are smart the rest of these people would stop cowering before you. But hey what do I know?” You start to enter the elevator, and Nina makes another threat. “Don’t you DARE walk away from me! You go in that elevator and don’t expect to get to the top! I’ll make sure it gets stopped mid-way through and leave it there for you to die a slow death!” You step back out and hang your head down. “(Sigh) You WOULD do that wouldn’t you?” “You bet your ass I would!” “Well I guess I have no choice.” You look up at Nina, raise your pistol and blast Leon twice in the chest and then point it at her. Onlookers slowly rise from their hiding spots “Holy shit!” Todd shouts. “Please don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!” Nina whines “Gonna be hard to intimidate Charles or Todd without your head goon now isn’t it? In fact I’d say your power trip is just about over. Hey folks, consider this my last favor to all of you! Alright Todd, tell Charles I’m going up!” You enter the elevator and begin your ascent. Finally the elevator opens up to the same foyer you entered five years ago. Looks exactly the same, except the payment machine is now offline in fact the screen is cracked. There’s a crowbar lying on the floor and the doors to the outside look like they were pried open. You see the outside world for the first time in five years. From where you’re standing, it doesn’t look too bad; maybe the devastation wasn’t that great in this area. Somebody or possibly several people were here at one time attempting to get in, you laugh thinking about someone actually trying to get in this place. You exit the foyer and go outside, you see a bright light. It’s the sun; you forgot how bright it could be. You see everyone’s cars still parked here, well almost. You can tell that few of them must’ve been taken at one time; a lot have just been plain vandalized. Your van still looks the same though, nobody in their right mind would steal that thing, and it already looks vandalized. You wonder if it would still start, but you left your keys to it in the shelter. You doubt if it would though. “Meh, I need the exercise anyway.” You cover your eyes and take a far view of your position. Nobody around, there’s not even a sound except the wind; you’re all alone as far as you can tell and this is what you missed. Once again you have peaceful solitude. You begin to walk…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“You know what Nina? I’m in a charitable mood. What do you need?” “We need you to hack into the central GZS computer system to bring the elevator down.” “Wow, I didn’t expect that one. What’s going on?” “Can you do it?” Nina asks without answering your question. “Well in theory I might. I’ve fucked around with that computer when nobody was around in the past, but I’ve never really gotten into the inner workings of the system, and I’ve read as much as I can about the shelter itself. Damn thing’s touchy though. I just worry that if I do the wrong thing I’ll end up shutting the whole shelter down and doom us all.” “You mean doom yourself.” “Well that too, but you still never told me what you want to bring the elevator down for.” “Are you gonna do it or not?” “Okay, what happens if I don’t?” “I’ll just get one of my own people to attempt it and hope they don’t doom us all accidentally.” “(Sigh) Well played Nina, you know I’m gonna do it now. Alright, let’s go.” You and Nina enter the Community Shelter computer room, where a couple of Nina’s tech’s are tinkering with the Central GZS computer. “What are you doing!? Give me that!” you yell taking a screw driver away from one of them. You recognize them both Todd and Charles if you remember correctly. “Oh man, its you! Okay, don’t get mad!” Todd says backing off. Charles does like wise. “Sheesh, I’m not going to shoot you! I’m just trying to prevent you from fucking up what’s basically our life support system! Its barely working right as it is! I swear GZS put us in a death trap down here.” “Alright then do you need any help? Or should we leave you alone while you do this?” Nina asks. “What do you think fearless leader?” “Right. Come on let’s go.” Nina and the other two leave and you get to work. You first do a system scan to what’s going on exactly. Wow, this place really is in some bad shape! You can see where some fixes have been made, but without a really skilled technician routinely checking in on stuff, things are never going to get better in this place, you shutter to think what would’ve happened with Ron still in control. This place might’ve very well lost all power. You’re sort of glad you’ve begun to take an interest. MAYBE after you manage to get the elevator down you might just volunteer to upkeep this thing. You start delving into the inner working of the system; GZS really didn’t want folks bringing the elevator down! You accidentally cut some lighting temporarily which causes you to hear some yelling from a distance. “Oh toughen up.” You say to yourself. You continue to work and eventually you successfully override the safety protocol for the elevator and it starts its decent. “Ha ha, I rule.” You say as you come out of the computer room. “Did you do it?” Nina asks. “Sure did. NOW are you going to tell me why we’re bringing it down?” “You’ll see for yourself. Leon, bring both of the perverts out, this has been a long time coming…” You notice that everyone’s standing around right now, like some special event is going down. Leon eventually comes back with Ron and William in tow, and he looks like he roughed them up first so they’d struggle less. The elevator door opens up for the first time. “Put both of these…criminals in the elevator Leon.” Nina says. Leon does so, with a lot of protesting and pleading from both, but another couple punches shut them up. Now you know why Nina wanted you to bring the elevator down…exile. If this was a year ago and they were throwing Ron out in the wasteland for his bungling of shelter management, you’d probably be the first to applaud. But what’s going on right now is for the wrong damn reasons, and you know Nina’s just being a petty bitch who’s still harboring resentment for shit she really brought on herself with completely clueless judgment on her part. “Alright, Nina I know you’re fucking upset because your make believe boyfriend turned out to be a fag, but that was a goddamn year ago…” “Shut up! This has nothing to do with that! This is about justice! These two are in violation of GZS guidelines carrying on with…” “Oh will you shut up about that shit? I’m starting to believe the entire GZS Corporation were a bunch of fucking loonies with too much time on their hands! They build these fucking shelters that break down all the goddamn time, with no way to get back to the surface and trapping everyone down here.” “Why the hell are you defending these two? You’ve never been one to give a fucking shit before! You know I’ve never seen you pursue any women around here even if you were slightly appealing enough for any of them to have you. What are you gay too?” “(Sigh) No, Nina because if I was I’m sure you would’ve been the first one to want to spread your legs for me. Look I’m just saying this ain’t fucking right okay?” “Oh and YOU’RE the fucking expert on what’s right? You fucking KILLED a man! You fucking snuck a gun in here a shot somebody! So is the gun an extension of your manhood and you just couldn’t live without it?” “Y’know Nina, you seem awfully pre-occupied with my sexual habits. Shit, if you want me to fuck you already just come out and say it and stop beating around bush. I’d say that’s what you’ve been needing since you got in here anyway, because I haven’t seen YOU with anyone either, that didn’t turn out to be a complete fucking homo of course.” Your remark is met with a long period of silence. The rest of the shelter population has been in absolute awe, this is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened since you shot Elliot. Nina looks at you hard and recomposes herself. “Are you going to send the elevator up, or not?” > You grab and kiss her Something comes over you, maybe it was the tension or the hostility or maybe you were just horny, but you grab Nina and kiss her passionately. Fortunately for you, she returns the gesture. Now nobody knows what to think they all just stand around watching, they’re probably just glad you didn’t shoot anybody this time. William and Ron are still recovering from their beating and staggering in the doorway of the elevator. Nina stops you just for a moment to address everyone. “The exile is off, everyone go back to your lives…and YOU are coming with me!” then she starts pulling you back to her room. You and Nina relieve a lot of pent up sexual energy that day. A lot of things change after that… Four more years pass... You and Nina are an item now, which makes you somewhat more social by necessity (unfortunately) its not all bad though since she’s the one that’s still shelter leader and has to do all the major work. She does a good job hence the reason she’s stayed in power. (Though not surprisingly William and Ron still vote against her, even if she did apologize) You’re now in charge of maintaining the central GZS computer system which you insist on doing primarily by yourself, though Charles and Todd assist you sometimes. Eventually you manage to get the damn thing running at near maximum efficiency and nobody has too many problems with things breaking down anymore. The Shelter’s population has grown a bit now; the only good thing about the shelter was the design to make allowances for a population growth. Of course now there’s rug rats running around which means Nina appoints a person to start being a “teacher” of sorts for when they start getting bigger. Fortunately there are a couple of those already in the shelter. Kyle and Brenda are now the main medical practitioners, though you doubt if they’d be able to do open heart surgery, they’re competent enough to keep people in relatively good shape and they keep trying to learn more whenever possible with the medical database provided and from books. (You still don’t understand WHY you’re the only competent tech though! “Gah! Read the books! Study the schematics! It’s not difficult!” you’re constantly saying and that’s to Charles and Todd!) Then there’s the elevator. After the near exile incident, it was still considered a good idea to have it accessible at all times just in case. What you eventually did was install a call button and did some re-wiring to do just that, though nobody has ever dared to actually go up to the surface. (And nobody’s ever gotten thrown out either) You begin to wonder what the surface looks like now though from time to time. One night while lying next to Nina… “Hey Nina, you ever wonder what’s on the surface now?” “What? It’s probably an uninhabitable wasteland.” “Well maybe, but we’ve been down here five years, it might look different.” “Yeah, and it might not. Go back to sleep.” “You know I just thought about it, everyone’s vehicles are up there. I bet we could strip them down for parts or something, maybe some of them will even work. We could drive around and see what’s going on else where.” “What? I don’t want you going up there! The elevator is a last resort thing just case something bad happens! And since when do you want to play great explorer? When you first got here you never left your room!” “I dunno, maybe your socialization has made me a little more extroverted.” “Hmm, knowing you, you probably just want to get away from the increasing population here.” “Ha ha, maybe. But I still wouldn’t mind just taking a quick look outside, and to inspect the vehicles like I said.” Nina now sits up. “No! I don’t want you going up there! There’s probably radiation still all over the place! I don’t want you getting radiation poisoning or mutating or something!” “I’ll be fine! I won’t go too far, I just want to…” Nina grabs a hold of your hand. “NO! I don’t want you going up there! It’s not safe!” “Alright, alright, calm down. I won’t go anywhere.” “You promise?” “Yeah!” “Alright then, I don’t want to hear anymore about it. Our life is here, not up there. I love you too much to lose you.” The both of you lie back down, and Nina holds on to you tightly, putting her head on your chest almost in an effort to make sure you’re not going anywhere tonight. Of course now you’re lying awake REALLY wondering what the surface looks like. The next day you’re working with Charles and Todd doing the usual mundane routine. They’re talking about the same stupid movie they’ve watched over and over in the community living area. Shit you feel like you’re at work again. The GZS central computer hasn’t been giving you trouble for quite some time, and you know there’s a big meeting going on in the conference room… Maybe you could sneak out and just take a quick look on the surface for awhile. You could let Charles and Todd look after the computer, you know they’re capable of doing that. > You go up to the surface The temptation is too great, you have to go. You’re just too curious not to. “Hey Todd, and Charles I think you guys are ready to monitor this thing by yourself. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, and I’m going back to my room to take a short nap, don’t tell anyone alright?” Todd and Charles just look glad that you’re showing some confidence in them for once. “Yeah, sure it’s cool. We won’t tell anyone.” Todd says. “Alright, I’ll be back. Remember just monitor, don’t fucking touch anything!” “Okay! Got it!” You leave the computer room and look around; the shelter almost seems eerily empty right now. Nina’s no doubt got everyone’s attention with her speech in conference room and all the kids are being looked after by someone in the children’s room created a couple years back. You make your move. You run to the elevator, open it and get inside. You take a deep breath and press the button up, no time like the present to test it person. The elevator begins its ascent, you begin to wonder what you’ll see above, you then check you pistol just in case what you see is unfriendly. Finally the elevator opens up to the same foyer you entered five years ago. Looks exactly the same, except the payment machine is now offline in fact the screen is cracked. There’s a crowbar lying on the floor and the doors to the outside look like they were pried open. You see the outside world for the first time in five years. From where you’re standing, it doesn’t look too bad; maybe the devastation wasn’t that great in this area. Somebody or possibly several people were here at one time attempting to get in. You take the crowbar and jam it in the elevator door so it doesn’t close on you. There’s no call button up here either since it was the payment machine that opened it up. You make a note that if you’re able you’ll have to install another one up here, and shake your head at the typical shitty GZS design of its shelters. They built this thing like a high tech mass coffin as far as you’re concerned; you’re convinced that if it wasn’t for you up keeping and tinkering, everyone would’ve been dead due to shelter failure by now. You exit the foyer and go outside, you see a bright light. It’s the sun; you forgot how bright it could be. You see everyone’s cars still parked here, well almost. You can tell that few of them must’ve been taken at one time; a lot have just been plain vandalized. Your van still looks the same though, nobody in their right mind would steal that thing, and it already looks vandalized. You wonder if it would still start, but you left your keys to it in the shelter. You doubt if it would though. It occurs to you for the first time, the shelter might not exactly be “safe”, granted its not safe by design, but you’re thinking safe from bad people on the surface. Its possible these folks who passed through here stealing vehicles and vandalizing them might’ve just been trying to scavenge whatever they could find. The surface certainly can’t be a comfortable place to live now. Maybe they were just looking for safety. Of course it’s equally likely they were looters and other bad types. The shelter community isn’t exactly a bunch of “warriors”, besides yourself, Leon, and maybe a few others you doubt it they could handle a bunch of hardened surface raiders who’ve been living in the wasteland for years. Granted the elevator wouldn’t allow for a large invasion of these types of people to take place, but it still makes you wonder if precautions shouldn’t be taken. You need to get back though before everyone finds out what you’ve been doing. You rush back to the elevator (Throwing the crowbar back on the ground) and take it down hoping that nobody is wandering around when you exit the thing. When you arrive at the bottom, you half expect to see a crowd to meet you, but its dead silent still, you quickly head back to the computer room where Charles and Todd are talking about another movie. “Hey you’re back. So what did you see on the surface?” Charles asks “Yeah were there mutants and shit?” Todd adds You’re a little taken aback. “What?! How did you guys know?” “Sheesh! Come on, we’re not the morons you think we are! You told us to monitor the computer system, and when you used the elevator, the computer mentioned the elevator was in use, we put two and two together. So how was it? Is it all desert and shit with people dressed in leather walking around?” You nearly slap yourself in the head for forgetting that little oversight on your part. “You watch too many movies Charles; no I didn’t see any of that. At least not in the immediate area. And YOU two don’t know I went up there and I mean you don’t tell ANYONE! If Nina found out, she’d a pitch a bitch at me. She’s already made it clear that she doesn’t want me going up on the surface.” “Don’t worry we’re not going to say anything. I dunno, I think maybe we should start going to the surface though, I mean this place can’t support a growing population forever. Eventually we’re going to have to start expanding out.” Todd mentions. “Yeah, but that probably won’t be for awhile, we a got a lot of room still. Lots of supplies too, and with us in charge the food and water dispensers are working perfectly now.” Charles retorts. You roll your eyes “With us in charge” actually it was you who made sure the damn things wouldn’t be breaking down on a regular basis. Still Todd makes a good point and it was something you were thinking about too. Maybe you should address this further with Nina after all her being the shelter leader she’s the one that could enact a plan about it. Later that night, you’re in bed with Nina wondering if its time to tell her she should think about expansion… > You let it go No, you better just keep it to yourself. You don’t want Nina getting pissed at you, you know how high strung she’s able to get sometimes. Besides the population isn’t growing that much yet, there are plenty of supplies. If someone gets the idea that going to the surface is necessary, you’re sure that someone else will bring it up. No point in you getting in trouble. You go back to sleep and just hope Charles and Todd keep quiet about your little excursion to the surface. A few weeks later you find out Nina’s pregnant, now you start to wonder about having enough room in the future. You still don’t bring it up, because you don’t want to upset Nina anymore in her “condition”. After Jack is born, the surface thing is still in the back of your mind, but now it’s been so long, you just feel it’s easier not to address it to Nina. So you don’t say anything. Five years pass… Ten years have passed and the shelter is starting to get a little crowded. After all there isn’t too much to do in the shelter that hasn’t already been done, so sex is always (as it always has been) a popular way to pass the time. The result of that fun activity is too many babies. At this point now you say something to Nina about the surface, she’s a little reluctant about the idea, but sees that it might be necessary. Unfortunately the rest of the council doesn’t see it that way. Many of them have been here so long now that going to the surface is almost unthinkable. Despite great protest Nina overrides the council’s advise and goes ahead with the plan anyway. This doesn’t make her too popular. For one reason there’s the decision of who is suppose to live on the surface, many people have full blown families now, they’re a little unwilling to risk taking them up. So that means the single or childless people get the boot upstairs since they have less to “lose”. That doesn’t go over too well either. People start protesting loudly about being kicked out of their homes since they have as much right to stay too. One day, you’re in the computer room at the time arguing with Charles who happens to be single, and giving you shit about Nina’s new policy. Todd is pretty much indifferent to the idea since even though he’s single he doesn’t mind the idea of going to the surface, he just thinks you should’ve said something to Nina a long time ago to implement this plan sooner before everyone had a whole mess of babies. That’s when you get the word. Kyle comes in to tell you that during one of Nina’s speeches William (Who would’ve been one of those kicked up to the surface along with Ron) attempted to assassinate Nina with a scalpel he stole from the medical supplies. Leon managed to stop him with extreme prejudice by breaking his neck. But its not ending there, people are starting to riot and call for someone new to be the shelter leader. You’re pissed off now, you storm into the conference room ready to kick everyone’s ass who DARES to try to hurt Nina again. You fire your pistol into the air causing everyone to take notice. When you get over to Nina, she’s pleading for you to not shoot anybody. The assassin was already taken care of; there isn’t any more need for killing. While that might be the case that still doesn’t solve the problem of everyone hating Nina (And probably you too as well) if she gets thrown out of her position, the next step might be to try to throw you guys out of the shelter. Part of this you feel is your fault, you could just roll the dice here or you could attempt to take the hard line approach. > You let democracy run its course “Alright Nina, we’ll do it your way.” You put your pistol away and take Nina back to your room for the rest of the day. Time goes by and Nina gets voted out. The position of shelter leader is eliminated and a council is formed instead. They begin to implement some changes. Nina’s idea of having people live on the surface is squashed, the idiots in charge claim that everything will be all right and only in cases of extreme punishment will people be sent to the surface. The other change is that you are to work less on the computer system. And so it begins, they’re trying to faze you out, so they don’t need you anymore. And if they don’t need you anymore they can kick you out of the shelter. (It looks like you are going to be the only people deemed “criminal” enough to be exiled to the surface) You saw this coming. That’s the second time you anticipated events and did nothing, you could kick yourself. However there’s still the question of them trying to MAKE you leave, you are the one that owns the gun after all and not one person has ever dared to try to take it from you. You decide to start working out on a regular basis just in case. That day comes soon, when a couple people attempt to wrestle it from you, fortunately you’ve been expecting that, you end up shooting them both dead. People are really starting to hate you now, threats are being made that if you and your family don’t leave, then not you, but Nina and Jack are going to suffer the consequences. You respond with a similar threat of your own that if anything happens to either of them that you’re going on a postal shooting spree starting with everyone’s kids and won’t stop until you’re out of bullets, and then you’ll fuck up the central computer that powers everything in the shelter. Given your past, people believe you too. People stop harassing you and Nina, but they still “shun” you 99 percent of the time. It doesn’t matter though since as more years go by there’s even less room in the shelter, and less supplies, now you’re not even charge of the computer system anymore and it’s barely being run properly by Todd and Charles. Things are starting to break down again. You’re seriously starting to think about leaving the shelter voluntarily. “Nina, let’s leave. Surely there’s gotta be something better out there. I mean staying here is like waiting to die. We gotta get out of this place.” “But what about Jack? I mean we’re going into unknown territory here. Things could be dangerous up there.” “It probably will be dangerous, but what the hell we’ve been living in an enclosed space with a bunch of people who hate us for years, and both experienced death attempts. Its not like we’re strangers to it.” “Well…shouldn’t we at least stay until the very end?” “If we stay until the very end, we might not be getting outta here because by the time everyone’s crammed in so tight with no more supplies or properly functioning equipment, everyone’s going to be panicking and rioting. No, we need to leave while the getting is good. You and Jack start packing up all your vital stuff. I’ll be loading up on some supplies that we might need. We still need to travel light, but make sure you and Jack bring as much water as you can carry.” Soon you, Nina and Jack are ready to go. Everyone’s wondering what you’re doing and then all eyes are on you when you open the elevator door. You take a moment to address the huddled masses. “Well we’re leaving now, I’m sure you’re all as glad about it as we will be. Before we leave though I’d just like to say a few things. If any of you fucktards have a lick of sense you’ll abandon this over priced coffin, and coffin is definitely an accurate term with how cramped it’s getting in here. Hell the place is even starting to smell like one, with all the shower break downs. Its like watching something slowly die…hmm I think I saw that show already, when the world got blown to shit years ago. Don’t need to see it again and the first time was more interesting anyway, so enjoy your downward spiral experience losers!” And with that you and your family leave the shelter. As you look out before the wilderness in front of you, you can only hope there’s something else out there, but even if there isn’t you know you’ll make it somehow. You and your family begin to walk…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No, you better just keep it to yourself. You don’t want Nina getting pissed at you, you know how high strung she’s able to get sometimes. Besides the population isn’t growing that much yet, there are plenty of supplies. If someone gets the idea that going to the surface is necessary, you’re sure that someone else will bring it up. No point in you getting in trouble. You go back to sleep and just hope Charles and Todd keep quiet about your little excursion to the surface. A few weeks later you find out Nina’s pregnant, now you start to wonder about having enough room in the future. You still don’t bring it up, because you don’t want to upset Nina anymore in her “condition”. After Jack is born, the surface thing is still in the back of your mind, but now it’s been so long, you just feel it’s easier not to address it to Nina. So you don’t say anything. Five years pass… Ten years have passed and the shelter is starting to get a little crowded. After all there isn’t too much to do in the shelter that hasn’t already been done, so sex is always (as it always has been) a popular way to pass the time. The result of that fun activity is too many babies. At this point now you say something to Nina about the surface, she’s a little reluctant about the idea, but sees that it might be necessary. Unfortunately the rest of the council doesn’t see it that way. Many of them have been here so long now that going to the surface is almost unthinkable. Despite great protest Nina overrides the council’s advise and goes ahead with the plan anyway. This doesn’t make her too popular. For one reason there’s the decision of who is suppose to live on the surface, many people have full blown families now, they’re a little unwilling to risk taking them up. So that means the single or childless people get the boot upstairs since they have less to “lose”. That doesn’t go over too well either. People start protesting loudly about being kicked out of their homes since they have as much right to stay too. One day, you’re in the computer room at the time arguing with Charles who happens to be single, and giving you shit about Nina’s new policy. Todd is pretty much indifferent to the idea since even though he’s single he doesn’t mind the idea of going to the surface, he just thinks you should’ve said something to Nina a long time ago to implement this plan sooner before everyone had a whole mess of babies. That’s when you get the word. Kyle comes in to tell you that during one of Nina’s speeches William (Who would’ve been one of those kicked up to the surface along with Ron) attempted to assassinate Nina with a scalpel he stole from the medical supplies. Leon managed to stop him with extreme prejudice by breaking his neck. But its not ending there, people are starting to riot and call for someone new to be the shelter leader. You’re pissed off now, you storm into the conference room ready to kick everyone’s ass who DARES to try to hurt Nina again. You fire your pistol into the air causing everyone to take notice. When you get over to Nina, she’s pleading for you to not shoot anybody. The assassin was already taken care of; there isn’t any more need for killing. While that might be the case that still doesn’t solve the problem of everyone hating Nina (And probably you too as well) if she gets thrown out of her position, the next step might be to try to throw you guys out of the shelter. Part of this you feel is your fault, you could just roll the dice here or you could attempt to take the hard line approach. > You take control You said nothing when you should have about the surface five years ago. That was your fault. You can do something now though. Something unpopular and drastic, but something that will better ensure the safety of your family. “Alright, I’m doing something I should’ve done a long time ago! I’M taking over!” “You? Says who?! What gives you the right?!” someone in the crowd shouts. You point your pistol in his direction. “THIS! Is what gives me the fuckin’ right bitch! My willingness to allow you to continue your goddamn existence! Now here’s how things are gonna go down.” You begin to implement new changes whether anyone likes them or not, and most folks don’t, but as usual you don’t give a shit. You keep Nina’s plan for the surface idea, one of the things you do is install another call button so the elevator can now go up and down without all the extra hassle of fucking with the computer anymore, you still don’t know what the fuck GZS was thinking about with that idea of fucked up engineering. Parts of the shelter begin to get stripped along with some of the vehicles still remaining outside to create a few small homes. As for who is going up to live, you devise a random numbering system that everyone has to participate in…of course you’ve purposely rigged it so your family doesn’t have to live up there. You’ve also rigged it so certain “useful” members don’t have to live up there either making them a little more receptive to your changes. Charles and some others are suddenly pleasant with you again. Naturally everyone who does have to leave hates your guts. Your next step is to send out “explorers” to go find other communities to contact and trade with, because you desperately need more supplies. You pick Leon for the task, but Todd also volunteers. Brenda wants to go too, but you need all the people with medical knowledge here in the shelter. A few weeks later Leon and Todd come back from their explorations. They mention they came across a place called Ashtown. They say it’s a small town, but willing to trade since they have routine problems with raiders and wouldn’t mind a supply of fresh water for a change. Nina doesn’t exactly approve of your methods, but she goes along with you, because she loves you and you’re actually getting something accomplished. Five more years pass... Things have changed quite a bit, for better and for worse. You’re running the shelter and its now above town called “Exile” basically by yourself and its putting you on edge each and everyday. One thing you didn’t think about when finding a trading partner, was the fact that more weapons might be coming in. You now aren’t the only person here with a gun. Which has lessened your intimidation value a bit, but you’ve countered a full blown rebellion by turning the “sheltered” and the “unsheltered” against each other. The people who live in the shelter are of course a lot more well off and healthier, while those living on the surface now suffer from the elements and the occasional mutant wolf pack attack. The haves vs. the have nots. It’s an old tale that’s been played over and over. A tale that resulted in Armageddon, and now apparently even beyond it. But even you cannot prevent an unstable powder keg from exploding forever and one day it does. Full blown rioting breaks out, you attempt to squash the rebellion, but it’s not even a rebellion so much as it is full blown anarchy as people IN the shelter are attempting to kill you in the opportunity to attempt to take over. Damn, you really thought Leon was on your side too. You end up having to shoot your way out of the conference room, and make it back to your room where Nina is barricaded with Jake, she opens the door long enough to let you in. “We have to get out of here!” she screams. “It’s over! They’re gonna kill us!” > You stay and fight “NEVER! I’M the one who saved this shelter from its own idiocy! If it wasn’t for me, this place everyone would probably still be living crammed together like fuckin’ sardines! They WILL fall in fuckin’ line! Unfortunately like most people under a dictatorship, they don’t see you as a great savior but rather as the tyrant you are. Eventually a group of the surface people come down en-masse and overrun the place, you try to prevent more from coming by barricading yourself in the computer room and shutting off the elevator, but its too late, there are already a lot of them down here. There’s no way you can fight all of them, you don’t have the ammo and all your loyal guards are dead. You and your family are trapped and you know what they’ll do to all of you if they take you alive, you look at Nina and Jack… Nope, you’re still in control of some things around here. You take a deep breath and look directly into Nina’s eyes. “Know that I always loved you…the both of you.” you say sadly. Then without any further hesitation you shoot them both in the head. After wiping a tear from your eye, you start paying attention to the threats outside your door. “Get outta there you sonofabitch! It’s over! You and your fuckin’ family are through!” “Oh yeah?! We’ll see who’s fuckin’ through you ungrateful bastards! If I’m going down, you’re all coming to fuckin’ hell with me! SCORCHED FUCKIN’ EARTH BITCHES!” You start shooting the GZS central computer, lighting starts flickering and eventually you hit the right vital spot and the entire shelter’s power goes dead. Immediately you hear some shouting from behind the door, and they begin blasting it open. Won’t be long now. You fire at the first figure that you can barely make out in the darkness, then the rest open fire on you. You see the flash of multiple muzzle blasts and then fall to the ground near Nina’s body. In your last moments, you grab onto Nina’s hand and squeeze before darkness takes you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You said nothing when you should have about the surface five years ago. That was your fault. You can do something now though. Something unpopular and drastic, but something that will better ensure the safety of your family. “Alright, I’m doing something I should’ve done a long time ago! I’M taking over!” “You? Says who?! What gives you the right?!” someone in the crowd shouts. You point your pistol in his direction. “THIS! Is what gives me the fuckin’ right bitch! My willingness to allow you to continue your goddamn existence! Now here’s how things are gonna go down.” You begin to implement new changes whether anyone likes them or not, and most folks don’t, but as usual you don’t give a shit. You keep Nina’s plan for the surface idea, one of the things you do is install another call button so the elevator can now go up and down without all the extra hassle of fucking with the computer anymore, you still don’t know what the fuck GZS was thinking about with that idea of fucked up engineering. Parts of the shelter begin to get stripped along with some of the vehicles still remaining outside to create a few small homes. As for who is going up to live, you devise a random numbering system that everyone has to participate in…of course you’ve purposely rigged it so your family doesn’t have to live up there. You’ve also rigged it so certain “useful” members don’t have to live up there either making them a little more receptive to your changes. Charles and some others are suddenly pleasant with you again. Naturally everyone who does have to leave hates your guts. Your next step is to send out “explorers” to go find other communities to contact and trade with, because you desperately need more supplies. You pick Leon for the task, but Todd also volunteers. Brenda wants to go too, but you need all the people with medical knowledge here in the shelter. A few weeks later Leon and Todd come back from their explorations. They mention they came across a place called Ashtown. They say it’s a small town, but willing to trade since they have routine problems with raiders and wouldn’t mind a supply of fresh water for a change. Nina doesn’t exactly approve of your methods, but she goes along with you, because she loves you and you’re actually getting something accomplished. Five more years pass... Things have changed quite a bit, for better and for worse. You’re running the shelter and its now above town called “Exile” basically by yourself and its putting you on edge each and everyday. One thing you didn’t think about when finding a trading partner, was the fact that more weapons might be coming in. You now aren’t the only person here with a gun. Which has lessened your intimidation value a bit, but you’ve countered a full blown rebellion by turning the “sheltered” and the “unsheltered” against each other. The people who live in the shelter are of course a lot more well off and healthier, while those living on the surface now suffer from the elements and the occasional mutant wolf pack attack. The haves vs. the have nots. It’s an old tale that’s been played over and over. A tale that resulted in Armageddon, and now apparently even beyond it. But even you cannot prevent an unstable powder keg from exploding forever and one day it does. Full blown rioting breaks out, you attempt to squash the rebellion, but it’s not even a rebellion so much as it is full blown anarchy as people IN the shelter are attempting to kill you in the opportunity to attempt to take over. Damn, you really thought Leon was on your side too. You end up having to shoot your way out of the conference room, and make it back to your room where Nina is barricaded with Jake, she opens the door long enough to let you in. “We have to get out of here!” she screams. “It’s over! They’re gonna kill us!” > You run while you can “I’ll go with that idea, but we’re gonna have to be quick! Grab only the basic necessities. We’re going to Ashtown.” You and your family grab what you need and run for the elevator which fortunately is still on the bottom. A couple of guards still loyal accompany you. When you arrive to the surface you nearly get your head blown off as soon as the elevator door opens. Your guards shoot the would be killer and you all move on. Outside the shelter entrance it’s even worse. There’s fighting all over the place, and as soon as people see you, they all start trying to kill you. You urge Nina and Jack to run for the wilderness immediately. You fire back at the angry mob moving on your position, while running at the same time. The last of your guards go down. You run to attempt to catch up to Nina and Jack, which you do, but the mob is still chasing you. A bullet whizzes by your ear and then you hear a scream, its Nina. You turn around and think she’s been hit, but it was Jack who was hit. She goes back to retrieve his body. Of course the mob isn’t stopping. “NINA! NO!” you shout and fire at the mob, but killing a few of them doesn’t stop them from shooting Nina, who falls by Jake’s body. There’s nothing you can do now. You continue to run until you eventually lose your pursuers. Then you weep for the loss of your family. You wander the wasteland for a bit, hoping something will attack you and put you out of your misery, but you never encounter a thing. Eventually you make your way to Ashtown. You get a couple of strange looks. A few people from Ashtown have heard descriptions of you, but never actually met you in person. “Aren’t you…” “No, not at all, you got any work around in this dump?” The citizens of Ashtown have a few old generators that they need working at maximum efficiency, so that’s what you work on. They’re so grateful for your technical expertise, that they keep quiet about you being here, the next time a group of people from the shelter come to trade. Things don’t look like they’re going to well at the shelter from what you can tell though, word has it, that they’re going to have to completely abandon the shelter itself and live completely on the surface now, apparently the shelter’s computer system was severely damaged and is libel to shut down at any moment. The people are miserable and the baby mortality rate is high This gives you no joy however, you’ve lost more. Much more. The solitude you once cherished and have again now only feel like emptiness. One day during a raider attack you purposely go out and fight them along with all the other defenders. You get yourself shot in the stomach and you don’t even care as you lie dying, anything to end your suffering.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The temptation is too great, you have to go. You’re just too curious not to. “Hey Todd, and Charles I think you guys are ready to monitor this thing by yourself. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, and I’m going back to my room to take a short nap, don’t tell anyone alright?” Todd and Charles just look glad that you’re showing some confidence in them for once. “Yeah, sure it’s cool. We won’t tell anyone.” Todd says. “Alright, I’ll be back. Remember just monitor, don’t fucking touch anything!” “Okay! Got it!” You leave the computer room and look around; the shelter almost seems eerily empty right now. Nina’s no doubt got everyone’s attention with her speech in conference room and all the kids are being looked after by someone in the children’s room created a couple years back. You make your move. You run to the elevator, open it and get inside. You take a deep breath and press the button up, no time like the present to test it person. The elevator begins its ascent, you begin to wonder what you’ll see above, you then check you pistol just in case what you see is unfriendly. Finally the elevator opens up to the same foyer you entered five years ago. Looks exactly the same, except the payment machine is now offline in fact the screen is cracked. There’s a crowbar lying on the floor and the doors to the outside look like they were pried open. You see the outside world for the first time in five years. From where you’re standing, it doesn’t look too bad; maybe the devastation wasn’t that great in this area. Somebody or possibly several people were here at one time attempting to get in. You take the crowbar and jam it in the elevator door so it doesn’t close on you. There’s no call button up here either since it was the payment machine that opened it up. You make a note that if you’re able you’ll have to install another one up here, and shake your head at the typical shitty GZS design of its shelters. They built this thing like a high tech mass coffin as far as you’re concerned; you’re convinced that if it wasn’t for you up keeping and tinkering, everyone would’ve been dead due to shelter failure by now. You exit the foyer and go outside, you see a bright light. It’s the sun; you forgot how bright it could be. You see everyone’s cars still parked here, well almost. You can tell that few of them must’ve been taken at one time; a lot have just been plain vandalized. Your van still looks the same though, nobody in their right mind would steal that thing, and it already looks vandalized. You wonder if it would still start, but you left your keys to it in the shelter. You doubt if it would though. It occurs to you for the first time, the shelter might not exactly be “safe”, granted its not safe by design, but you’re thinking safe from bad people on the surface. Its possible these folks who passed through here stealing vehicles and vandalizing them might’ve just been trying to scavenge whatever they could find. The surface certainly can’t be a comfortable place to live now. Maybe they were just looking for safety. Of course it’s equally likely they were looters and other bad types. The shelter community isn’t exactly a bunch of “warriors”, besides yourself, Leon, and maybe a few others you doubt it they could handle a bunch of hardened surface raiders who’ve been living in the wasteland for years. Granted the elevator wouldn’t allow for a large invasion of these types of people to take place, but it still makes you wonder if precautions shouldn’t be taken. You need to get back though before everyone finds out what you’ve been doing. You rush back to the elevator (Throwing the crowbar back on the ground) and take it down hoping that nobody is wandering around when you exit the thing. When you arrive at the bottom, you half expect to see a crowd to meet you, but its dead silent still, you quickly head back to the computer room where Charles and Todd are talking about another movie. “Hey you’re back. So what did you see on the surface?” Charles asks “Yeah were there mutants and shit?” Todd adds You’re a little taken aback. “What?! How did you guys know?” “Sheesh! Come on, we’re not the morons you think we are! You told us to monitor the computer system, and when you used the elevator, the computer mentioned the elevator was in use, we put two and two together. So how was it? Is it all desert and shit with people dressed in leather walking around?” You nearly slap yourself in the head for forgetting that little oversight on your part. “You watch too many movies Charles; no I didn’t see any of that. At least not in the immediate area. And YOU two don’t know I went up there and I mean you don’t tell ANYONE! If Nina found out, she’d a pitch a bitch at me. She’s already made it clear that she doesn’t want me going up on the surface.” “Don’t worry we’re not going to say anything. I dunno, I think maybe we should start going to the surface though, I mean this place can’t support a growing population forever. Eventually we’re going to have to start expanding out.” Todd mentions. “Yeah, but that probably won’t be for awhile, we a got a lot of room still. Lots of supplies too, and with us in charge the food and water dispensers are working perfectly now.” Charles retorts. You roll your eyes “With us in charge” actually it was you who made sure the damn things wouldn’t be breaking down on a regular basis. Still Todd makes a good point and it was something you were thinking about too. Maybe you should address this further with Nina after all her being the shelter leader she’s the one that could enact a plan about it. Later that night, you’re in bed with Nina wondering if its time to tell her she should think about expansion… > You address it “Hey Nina get up.” “Huh, what? Not tonight I’m tired.” “No it’s not that. It’s about the surface. I think we need to start taking precautions and possible steps to expand above. The surface doesn’t look that bad and…” Nina immediately sits up. “YOU WENT TO THE SURFACE? After I told you not to fucking do that?! YOU ASSHOLE!” “Calm down look you can see nothing happened to me. It doesn’t even look like there was any bombs that landed anywhere near the area.” “You could be radiated! The wind blows your know or have you forgotten? Or maybe it was a biological weapon! A disease could be floating in the air! You ever think of that? You could be infected with god knows what right now and spread it to the whole shelter! And our baby!” Another surprise. “Baby? You’re pregnant?” “I just found out recently from Brenda a few days ago. I was going to tell you soon, I should’ve told you yesterday before you went to the surface, but I THOUGHT you respected my wishes! I can’t believe you…” Nina gets up and starts pacing. She’s very upset. You get up and try to fix this mess. “Look that just makes this idea even more vital, this place can’t support all these people having babies. Even GZS mentioned in their delusional guideline statement it was the intention for people to eventually go back up to the surface and repopulate it with their families. We can’t live like a bunch of crowded sardines; we should make preparations now, before it becomes a problem.” “But it might be dangerous up there.” “It probably won’t be a picnic, but that’s another reason why we should start getting ready now. The more we’re prepared the better off we’ll be to defend ourselves.” “But the radiation…” “Look, the fact remains this place IS going to get overpopulated one day and people are going to have to start going up to the surface and any background radiation isn’t going to disappear within that time. So we’re just going to have to roll the dice and deal with that fact. Like I said I think we’re okay, we’re in a fairly isolated area away from an important major city. It’s not like we’re located on either of the coasts which were probably bombed the shit out of. And to the response to biological weapon thing, I highly doubt those were used, we were the only country that had the capability to launch such weapons from a long distance, except maybe Russia and I’m sure they probably just used nukes on us. Besides any virus or germ used in such a way would’ve died out long ago after it killed off the immediate population.” Nina still doesn’t look so sure, she still look worried about you. You hold Nina to reassure her. “If it’ll make you feel better I’ll actually go see Kyle and have him check me out. And you know how much I hate going to see doctors, especially one that’s got all his knowledge from the GZS info files. I’ll be here for a long time… for all of us.” Your words seem to relax her a bit. She smiles and embraces you more closely. “Okay, I’ll bring it up tomorrow…I still think it’s funny that you of all people would be advocating going back to the surface.” “Pfft! WE’RE not going to the surface to live. We’re staying here! I just want get the rest of these fuckers out of the shelter and on to the surface! This place is too damn crowded as it is!” “Now that sounds more like you!” Nina laughs. Five more years pass… It’s been ten years since you got here. It almost seems surreal to think about. Nina’s still the shelter leader and you’re still looking after the central computer. However a lot more things have changed, and just as predicted the population grew significantly, fortunately the implementations ahead of time allowed everyone to adjust with little problems. There was some apprehension at first when Nina first suggested the surface thing, but eventually people did see the point in it. Some even wanted to go up to the surface. The first step was to make a fully functioning elevator that people could go up AND down on without any problems. (Of course that job fell to you again) The next step was to create small “huts” with the cars outside as well as using current shelter material. This went quicker than expected as most people pitched in to help. Nina gave birth to a son Jack, and almost went back to her duties immediately, leaving you to do most of the “Mr. Mom” work. Nowadays you split your time between monitoring the computer and monitoring Jack. Thankfully Charles and Todd have learned a lot more now and don’t require your supervision lessening your workload. Now its time for the next step. Nina and her council have been discussing plans for the even farther future. Contact with others and exploration. Within the past five years of the return to the surface, there has been contact with a few wanderers here and there, but they tended not to talk too much about their travels, they just mentioned that they’d seen other evidences of civilization, not all very civilized of course. Most of them just seemed to want to keep moving after doing a bit of trading and resupplying. One even hinted at some other “things” lurking around on the surface which didn’t sound too promising. However, the shelter needs to start finding a stable trading partner, or at least a place to find more supplies, because the vital ones are starting to run out. Some people are asked to volunteer for this exploration mission It wasn’t surprising Leon volunteered, but Brenda and Todd also volunteered. They were given as much supplies as they could carry and armed with the most “dangerous” things in the shelter. Leon and Todd carry some crowbars and Brenda carries a scalpel. You wonder if that’s really going to be enough though. Chances are some people out there (Quite possibly a lot) are carrying guns on them. Todd and Brenda aren’t going to be much good in a fight anyway, and while Leon is a fighter, even he can’t stop a bullet. You’re the only one with an “equalizer” around here. Maybe you should hand it over to them to give them a better chance. Though you really don’t want to do that, for various reasons. > You hand over your pistol Before they leave you approach Leon, you and he still have a bit of history over the whole Elliot thing years ago. You’re guessing he’s not one to hold a grudge though since he’s never sought any type of revenge or something. You only hope he isn’t the patient type. “Alright Leon, I know you’re the fighter of this group, and I know its most likely going to be dangerous up there, so I’m gonna do something totally out of character. I’m giving you my pistol and the two clips I have. It’s in good condition, and it’s only been fired once in ten years and I think you know when that was. Here you go.” Leon takes the gun and looks at it with silence for awhile and then speaks. You think this is the first time you’ve actually heard him speak at all! “Y’know, I never did apologize for that shit ten years ago. I dunno what the hell I was thinking following Elliot; none of us who did do. You and Nina have done a better job of keeping this place running than anyone. Anyway, this is really generous of you, but I can’t shoot worth shit, but I know someone who’s going with us who used to practice regularly before the bombs dropped. Hey Brenda! I got something for ya!” Brenda comes over and her eyes widen when Leon hands her your pistol. “Aw yeah! This is what I’m talkin’ about! I just hope I’m still a good shot; I’ve only been able to practice my aim by throwing this scalpel at a human diagram chart.” “Yeah well don’t practice too much with it, save your bullets for an emergency. I didn’t know you were a gun person Brenda.” You say. “You really need to get out of that computer room and socialize more!” “Shit, he barely socializes when he’s in there with me and Charles.” Todd adds. “But yeah I used to practice with my own when I had one. I was too afraid to try to sneak mine in here though…you know we’ve all always wondered about that, how DID you sneak this in?” Brenda asks. You just smile. “Hey I think you guys better get going.” You say almost laughing “Oh come on! What a gyp! Alright, but we want to know when we come back!” Brenda says and then her, Leon and Todd enter the elevator wave goodbye to everyone and go up. You and everyone else go about your usual business. Nina mentions what you did. “Wow, that was really surprising for you, you’ve practically been walking around with that thing on you for ten years.” “Yeah, well I can only hope I don’t need it within the time that they come back…if they come back.” “You just gave them an edge I’d say they’ve got more of a chance now. Don’t be so pessimistic. They’ll come back.” “Yeah I hope. Bring Jack by the computer room later; I know you got some sort of meeting to go to.” “Oh I can cancel that, it’s not vital.” “No its fine, bring him by. I’ve been indoctrinating him on the basics of the shelter computer. Someone’s gotta run this thing when I’m gone.” “Well alright then, hey don’t worry. Everything will be alright.” Nina kisses you and you exchange remarks about how you love each other before you make your way back to the computer room. You know its silly to think about it, but you can’t help thinking about some worst possible scenario. You think about those three getting captured, tortured, and killed by a large group of psychotic bandits or something and then those same scum coming here because they found out the location after torturing them. You wouldn’t have anything proper to defend your family with and the surface scum would probably have all kinds of weapons to kill everyone with. They’d start by killing everyone in immediate area of the entrance, then they’d come down in small groups with automatic weapons they undoubtedly have and start killing down here and worse… “HEY! Stop spacing!” Charles suddenly says to you. “Huh? Oh! Okay.” You say snapping out your horrible daydream. “Man, what’s wrong with you? You’ve been doing that the whole time you got here.” “Nothing, just a little pre-occupied.” You still don’t really relax until Jack gets there, which allows you to think about less terrible things like teaching him about the computer system. When you’re finished with your duties, you go back to your room, and Nina’s there waiting for you looking as lovely as usual. You came in this place ten years ago with nothing except a bad attitude, now you got a lot more… You’re not losing this. No way in hell. The next day you start visiting the community gym area. You know other people like Leon use it. Nina uses it to keep in shape, but you’ve never stepped foot in the place, you never really saw any reason to, its not like you were fat or anything, but you realize if some shit goes down you’re going to have to be in better physical condition. You might not have a gun, but MAYBE you’ll be quick and strong enough to take one away from somebody! You need a fucking edge. You begin training regularly. Nina’s a little confused about this sudden change, but she’s not at all displeased with it. You do this for the next six months with the constant theme running in your mind of how you’ll be able to take out the first miscreant that steps through the elevator, grab his gun and… “Hey everyone, they’re back! And they’re in a fuckin’ car with a shitload of stuff!” someone shouts while you’re training. You immediately stop and head for the surface. When you arrive you see Leon unloading some stuff out of a beat up, but functioning car, he’s got a patch on his eye now and his face is scarred, but otherwise looks okay. Brenda comes up to you and tosses you your pistol back, along with three clips! “Came in handy, but I think I’ll be using THIS from now on!” Brenda pats an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder. “Hey, you look different, you been working out?” “Um, something like that. So where did you get all this stuff?” “Most of it we got from this small place called Ashtown that’s agreed to trade with us, we’d found it after about a week of wandering around, we were there negotiating with them and they wouldn’t trust us at first until the place suddenly got attack by a bunch of raiders. We helped defend the place from a one month siege! We also stuck around to help heal the wound. After that, they decided we were okay…that was at sort of a high cost though. Todd didn’t make it. He got killed in the fight. Tried to save him, but it was already too late by the time I got there.” Brenda explains. “Damn...he was an alright guy…so is this fight where Leon got all scarred up?” you say as he approaches. “No, that happened after we left Ashtown, we went exploring some more, we found another place a lot less friendly called The Combine. Trust me; we want to AVOID that place. We barely got out of there; we were basically prisoners. That’s why we were gone for so long. However, that’s where we got this car. We stopped back at Ashtown to pick up some supplies and came back here.” Leon answers, then he looks at you with his remaining eye. “Damn, you been working out?” You nearly start laughing at your situation, here you were training and thinking up every possible worst case scenario that was going to befall the shelter, while Brenda and Leon were actually engaged in some worst case scenarios. You’re just glad that nothing did happen to the shelter, but you certainly feel less naked now that you have your “equalizer” back! Life in the shelter continues. Ten more years pass… You’ve been here twenty years and as always there are more changes. More people have moved to the surface, pieces of the shelter have been dismantled and started to be used to build a real town along with supplies from Ashtown, and scavenging from other places. Still, the shelter is needed to ensure at least a clean water supply so you’re still running it. Nina’s position has changed though. Since the shelter doesn’t contain a majority of the population anymore, her position is more of a community council person and her title is no longer “shelter leader”. The place has been given a name now; New Haven One current problem is to keep the place together, but with the younger population, they’re less likely to want to stay. Ever since Leon came back with a giant mutant wolf head on one of his exploration trips, they all want to be “explorers” too. Your son Jack being one of those young people. Nina of course doesn’t want him to go anywhere (You’re reminded of when she didn’t want you to go to the surface) and you can’t say you’re too fond of the idea either, but what can you do? > You increase his work time with you The longer you can keep an eye on him the less likely he’ll be sneaking off, maybe you can drum some discipline into his head again too, because apparently he lost some of it. You go to find Jake who’s hanging around the edges of town as usual. “Hey Jack come here!” “Aw Dad, I don’t feel like working with you in the boring ol’ computer room right now!” “Boy, you better get your ass to that computer room!” Jack follows you in defeat before you embarrass him anymore in front of his friends. When you arrive in the computer room Charles is there. Jack slumps down in a chair next to a console. “Oh hey there, I didn’t expect to see you both here today.” Charles says unsure of how he’s suppose to respond to this situation.” “Yeah, well Jack needs to spend some extra time down here, he’s been slackin’ lately.” “I ain’t been slackin’!” Jake protests. “You’ve been slackin’! Now check the power systems!” “(Sigh) Fine! I dunno why we have to do this for; there hasn’t been a problem with this thing for years.” “Yeah, and it’s gonna STAY that way too! The only reason why we haven’t had problems is because I’m on top of things all the time! If I let this thing go to shit, no more clean water supply for us! Would you like that? Drinking piss water?” “I know I sure wouldn’t.” Charles mumbles. “Damnit Dad this is boring! I don’t wanna be doing this shit! I wanna go out an explore the world like Leon!” “Like Leon huh? In case you’re blind, you’ll notice Leon’s got a missing eye, a missing left ear and pieces of his fingers. That’s what the rest of the world does to you, if you slip up just slightly and nobody’s perfect. Look at Brenda, she’s the best marksperson in this place and she got herself shot in the leg which stopped her from going out. She now walks with a permanent limp! Is that what you want?” “God you’re a fucking control freak Dad! I thought Mom was bad, but…” Over the line. That one incurred Jack a wrap to the head. “DON’T YOU DARE TALK ABOUT YOUR MOTHER THAT WAY!” you bellow as Jack holds his head. “Um…I think my shift is over, see ya later!” Charles says getting out the way of this family squabble. The rest of the time in the computer room is silent. Jack doesn’t say anything, he just sullenly does what you tell him. The next day he does the same thing, and the day after that, and so on, until one day he doesn’t. Mainly because he’s run away with some of his friends and stolen Leon’s beat up car. Nina is very distraught along with many other parents. The only thing is that Leon said it doesn’t have that much gas in it because he hasn’t been able to come across any lately. You, some of the other fathers and Leon go looking for all of them. You first head towards Ashtown thinking that maybe they just went there to be “a little rebellious”. You come across the car, which they obviously abandoned, and continue to Ashtown with hope that Jack still headed that way, but no such luck. When you arrive, the people their say they haven’t seen anyone come by in weeks. Days go by and at one point Leon thinks he’s got a lead, but then the worst happens. You’re attacked by crazed cannibals and their mutant dogs. You immediately tag one of the cannibals and duck behind a rock. But the cannibals also have guns and while the other fathers have weapons too, they haven’t been practicing with them like you and Leon have. They’re a lot better shots, you see a few of your fellow parents go down for the count, while the dogs finish them off. Leon holds his own, and you and he manage to take out all the cannibals, but it’s the fucking dogs that give you trouble… Three of them leap onto Leon, knocking his weapon from his hand, he sticks his thumbs in the eyes of the one that tried to take out his throat, but that still doesn’t stop it from biting him in the face before it dies, one is chewing on his chest though and the other one is going to town on his crotch. You’d try to help him, but you got one that came out of nowhere that rips into your leg. You shoot the damn thing in the head three times before it lets go. You then struggle to stand and shoot the other couple dogs, but its too late, Leon’s a mangled corpse. “FUCK!” you shout in frustration looking at the dead all around you. You collapse to the ground and put your hands on your face thinking about how this got all fucked up and then that’s when you notice the smoke coming from the cannibal camp and the smell of burning flesh. Your heart sinks and you drag yourself over for a closer look. “No…don’t let it…” you to yourself. You see some bones and clothing. Some on it looks like that of some of the other parent’s kids. You don’t see anything of Jack’s. You don’t know if he got away, or they ate him and threw the clothing elsewhere or what. Somehow it doesn’t really matter; you haven’t found him, so for all intents and purposes he’s dead or at best; missing. After grabbing all the remaining water you can from the others you make the long painful journey back to New Haven, thinking about what you’re going to tell everyone. Much has been lost this day. When you get back you collapse again, this time you feel a fever. Brenda and Kyle immediately see to you. It’s your leg, its festering and infected from the mutant dog bite. Nothing can be done; you get it chopped off at the knee. The only good thing is you were unconscious at the time. After you get over the initially shock of waking up to a peg leg, you only have more bad news for everyone, especially Nina. However, many lives of husbands and children have been lost and someone MUST take the blame. And that someone happens to be you just because you happened to be the lucky one to come back alive. Nina is voted out of her position on the council for some made up reason which you protest loudly, but it hardly bothers her since she’s been preoccupied ever since you came back with the bad news. She holds on to sanity by making herself believe that Jack DID escape and is somewhere out there wandering the world. They can’t get rid of you so easily since even with Charles around you’re still the only guy who can keep the computer system running everything working right, but most of the population sure gives you a hard time. If you weren’t walking around on a fucking peg, you’d start kicking some ass. As a few years goes by, finally you get sick of the shit and say: “Fuck it. Let ‘em rot. They can run this shit themselves, this place is getting dead anyway. Nina, we’re going to Ashtown.” “Ashtown? But that’s so far away! And you’re walking on that peg!” “I didn’t mean go right this minute or by ourselves, I meant the next trade caravan from Ashtown that comes by we’re tagging along with it.” “We’re just going to pick up and leave? Just like that? After all these years?” “Hey, I don’t like it either, but its obvious all of our efforts weren’t ever appreciated here. Yours OR mine. Since they hate us so much, then let ‘em live here without our help. There’s nothing for us here now. All we got left is each other.” Nina agrees and holds you tightly while telling you how much she loves you. When the Ashtown caravan comes around you and Nina have all your stuff packed. They’re only too happy to take you with them, since Ashtown has been trying to get a couple old generators working to maximum efficiency and they heard you were good at that sort of thing. You spend your remaining life in Ashtown. It isn’t as secure in safety as it was in New Haven, but at least you had Nina to make it equally as comfortable.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Before they leave you approach Leon, you and he still have a bit of history over the whole Elliot thing years ago. You’re guessing he’s not one to hold a grudge though since he’s never sought any type of revenge or something. You only hope he isn’t the patient type. “Alright Leon, I know you’re the fighter of this group, and I know its most likely going to be dangerous up there, so I’m gonna do something totally out of character. I’m giving you my pistol and the two clips I have. It’s in good condition, and it’s only been fired once in ten years and I think you know when that was. Here you go.” Leon takes the gun and looks at it with silence for awhile and then speaks. You think this is the first time you’ve actually heard him speak at all! “Y’know, I never did apologize for that shit ten years ago. I dunno what the hell I was thinking following Elliot; none of us who did do. You and Nina have done a better job of keeping this place running than anyone. Anyway, this is really generous of you, but I can’t shoot worth shit, but I know someone who’s going with us who used to practice regularly before the bombs dropped. Hey Brenda! I got something for ya!” Brenda comes over and her eyes widen when Leon hands her your pistol. “Aw yeah! This is what I’m talkin’ about! I just hope I’m still a good shot; I’ve only been able to practice my aim by throwing this scalpel at a human diagram chart.” “Yeah well don’t practice too much with it, save your bullets for an emergency. I didn’t know you were a gun person Brenda.” You say. “You really need to get out of that computer room and socialize more!” “Shit, he barely socializes when he’s in there with me and Charles.” Todd adds. “But yeah I used to practice with my own when I had one. I was too afraid to try to sneak mine in here though…you know we’ve all always wondered about that, how DID you sneak this in?” Brenda asks. You just smile. “Hey I think you guys better get going.” You say almost laughing “Oh come on! What a gyp! Alright, but we want to know when we come back!” Brenda says and then her, Leon and Todd enter the elevator wave goodbye to everyone and go up. You and everyone else go about your usual business. Nina mentions what you did. “Wow, that was really surprising for you, you’ve practically been walking around with that thing on you for ten years.” “Yeah, well I can only hope I don’t need it within the time that they come back…if they come back.” “You just gave them an edge I’d say they’ve got more of a chance now. Don’t be so pessimistic. They’ll come back.” “Yeah I hope. Bring Jack by the computer room later; I know you got some sort of meeting to go to.” “Oh I can cancel that, it’s not vital.” “No its fine, bring him by. I’ve been indoctrinating him on the basics of the shelter computer. Someone’s gotta run this thing when I’m gone.” “Well alright then, hey don’t worry. Everything will be alright.” Nina kisses you and you exchange remarks about how you love each other before you make your way back to the computer room. You know its silly to think about it, but you can’t help thinking about some worst possible scenario. You think about those three getting captured, tortured, and killed by a large group of psychotic bandits or something and then those same scum coming here because they found out the location after torturing them. You wouldn’t have anything proper to defend your family with and the surface scum would probably have all kinds of weapons to kill everyone with. They’d start by killing everyone in immediate area of the entrance, then they’d come down in small groups with automatic weapons they undoubtedly have and start killing down here and worse… “HEY! Stop spacing!” Charles suddenly says to you. “Huh? Oh! Okay.” You say snapping out your horrible daydream. “Man, what’s wrong with you? You’ve been doing that the whole time you got here.” “Nothing, just a little pre-occupied.” You still don’t really relax until Jack gets there, which allows you to think about less terrible things like teaching him about the computer system. When you’re finished with your duties, you go back to your room, and Nina’s there waiting for you looking as lovely as usual. You came in this place ten years ago with nothing except a bad attitude, now you got a lot more… You’re not losing this. No way in hell. The next day you start visiting the community gym area. You know other people like Leon use it. Nina uses it to keep in shape, but you’ve never stepped foot in the place, you never really saw any reason to, its not like you were fat or anything, but you realize if some shit goes down you’re going to have to be in better physical condition. You might not have a gun, but MAYBE you’ll be quick and strong enough to take one away from somebody! You need a fucking edge. You begin training regularly. Nina’s a little confused about this sudden change, but she’s not at all displeased with it. You do this for the next six months with the constant theme running in your mind of how you’ll be able to take out the first miscreant that steps through the elevator, grab his gun and… “Hey everyone, they’re back! And they’re in a fuckin’ car with a shitload of stuff!” someone shouts while you’re training. You immediately stop and head for the surface. When you arrive you see Leon unloading some stuff out of a beat up, but functioning car, he’s got a patch on his eye now and his face is scarred, but otherwise looks okay. Brenda comes up to you and tosses you your pistol back, along with three clips! “Came in handy, but I think I’ll be using THIS from now on!” Brenda pats an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder. “Hey, you look different, you been working out?” “Um, something like that. So where did you get all this stuff?” “Most of it we got from this small place called Ashtown that’s agreed to trade with us, we’d found it after about a week of wandering around, we were there negotiating with them and they wouldn’t trust us at first until the place suddenly got attack by a bunch of raiders. We helped defend the place from a one month siege! We also stuck around to help heal the wound. After that, they decided we were okay…that was at sort of a high cost though. Todd didn’t make it. He got killed in the fight. Tried to save him, but it was already too late by the time I got there.” Brenda explains. “Damn...he was an alright guy…so is this fight where Leon got all scarred up?” you say as he approaches. “No, that happened after we left Ashtown, we went exploring some more, we found another place a lot less friendly called The Combine. Trust me; we want to AVOID that place. We barely got out of there; we were basically prisoners. That’s why we were gone for so long. However, that’s where we got this car. We stopped back at Ashtown to pick up some supplies and came back here.” Leon answers, then he looks at you with his remaining eye. “Damn, you been working out?” You nearly start laughing at your situation, here you were training and thinking up every possible worst case scenario that was going to befall the shelter, while Brenda and Leon were actually engaged in some worst case scenarios. You’re just glad that nothing did happen to the shelter, but you certainly feel less naked now that you have your “equalizer” back! Life in the shelter continues. Ten more years pass… You’ve been here twenty years and as always there are more changes. More people have moved to the surface, pieces of the shelter have been dismantled and started to be used to build a real town along with supplies from Ashtown, and scavenging from other places. Still, the shelter is needed to ensure at least a clean water supply so you’re still running it. Nina’s position has changed though. Since the shelter doesn’t contain a majority of the population anymore, her position is more of a community council person and her title is no longer “shelter leader”. The place has been given a name now; New Haven One current problem is to keep the place together, but with the younger population, they’re less likely to want to stay. Ever since Leon came back with a giant mutant wolf head on one of his exploration trips, they all want to be “explorers” too. Your son Jack being one of those young people. Nina of course doesn’t want him to go anywhere (You’re reminded of when she didn’t want you to go to the surface) and you can’t say you’re too fond of the idea either, but what can you do? > You have a talk with him You figure you need to address this now; you go to find Jack who’s hanging around the edges of the town as usual. “Hey Jack I need to talk to you.” “Aw Dad, I don’t feel like working with you in the boring ol’ computer room right now!” “Hey watch your mouth! And it’s not that anyway. It’s about all the talking you’ve doing lately about exploring the wasteland like Indiana fuckin’ Jones.” “Who?” Jack genuinely asks seeing as he’s never heard of the movie being born after the bomb and all. “Indiana…look never mind that, your Mom worries night and day that you’re going to go running off and get yourself killed.” “I’m not gonna run off…I mean I thought about it…but I just…I dunno…” “Well spit it out boy!” “It gets too boring here sometimes! I just wish I could go and explore the world like Leon!” “Yeah, well if you haven’t noticed, Leon’s missing an eye, his left ear and a couple of pieces of his fingers, not to mention he’s all scarred up and complains about pain all the time.” “Well I’D be more careful!” Jack boasts. “Hmmm, that’s what everyone says. I know you and your friends think all the stories are exciting, but if you’d really paid close attention you’ll notice all damn danger as well. You know we’ve lost a few people doing that adventure shit, and the only one who still does it is Leon. Even Brenda stopped going out after she got shot in the leg. She was lucky she managed to escape. The world isn’t a safe place Jake. Never has been. And the way it is now, it’s even more dangerous.” Jack looks at you. “We can’t stay here forever Dad.” You see it in his eyes that he’s going to do what he wants and you aren’t going to be able to stop him. You don’t like it, and maybe you can’t stop him, but you can improve his odds. “Alright son, you gather all your little friends and meet me back here in a couple hours. Don’t go anywhere! You hear me?” “Okay, okay.” You go and find Nina and explain the situation, she’s of course completely opposed to the idea and it takes some reasoning, but eventually she sees you have a point, even if she doesn’t like it. You tell her to go inform the other parents; in the meantime you go and fetch Brenda and Leon. You meet Jack who’s standing around with a bunch of his other friends and most of the other young people in town. Brenda and Leon are behind you. “Alright Jack, if exploration is what you want, you ain’t gonna do it unprepared. You all know these two. Brenda here is going to teach all of you how to shoot properly. We’ve got plenty of guns and ammo now and she’s the best marksperson here. Before ANY of you people go out anywhere you better know how to aim your damn weapons. After a month of that, then you’ll be going out, with Leon. He’ll be able to give you on the job training with the whole explorer thing. In time, you’ll be able to go out by yourselves. Now before any of this goes down, all of you are probably gonna have to discuss this with your parents or some shit, so you’re all gonna have to work out your own personal lives yourselves, but Jack you’ve got a reluctant okay from both me and your mother.” “…I dunno what to say, I mean thanks Dad.” Jack smiles. “What you can do is pay attention to Brenda and Leon’s instructions and not get yourself killed! And here, take this. It’s saved more than a few lives.” You say and hand your pistol to Jack. And so begins the training. In time most of them go off to pursue their adventures elsewhere, naturally the world being what it is now, some don’t return, but for those that do return most come back to stay permanently. Just a little bit of the taste of the outside world is all most of them needed to see it’s a lot better to stay in New Haven! When Jake returns he’s ready once again to follow in your footsteps. “See Nina, I knew my idea would work. Let ‘em go out in the world for a little while and they’ll come to appreciate the comforts of this place! Might be boring here, but at least you don’t have some motherfucker with a Mohawk shooting at you because he likes the boots you got on. They just needed some training first to give them a chance to survive.” “Well I’m just glad Jack’s alright.” As you and Nina breathe a sigh of relief that Jack’s home in one piece, little did you realize that your idea set a major plan in motion. In time, the New Haven Militia is created. Thirty … Fifty years have gone by you briefly realize as you look at the old shelter entrance; it’s hardly ever used anymore. Extensive changes have been made to it so it’s rarely necessary to go down there anymore, only Jack and few other technicians go down there to check on the water purification system now in place. Practically everything else has been dismantled and used to help build up the surface of New Haven. New Haven has grown far beyond the shelter that you entered so long ago. You don’t think you ever saw this happening. Nobody did. The place is very large now; populated with the children of those you entered the shelter with as well as refugees from other places. Mostly everyone you originally knew is gone, not that you were ever one to greatly socialize, but still you do miss people like Leon, Brenda and Charles, hell you even miss Ron. You especially miss your beloved wife Nina. It’s been two years since she died. You miss her everyday. Jack comes by with his family to keep you company sometimes, but nowadays all you want is solitude. You enter the shelter and go down the elevator. You probably aren’t supposed to be down here, but you don’t care, you’re going to live in the past for awhile. You walk around the practically gutted shelter and remember all the things that happened. Here’s where you first met Nina, you never thought you’d end up marrying and having a child with her someday, but even though you were annoyed by first impressions, (As she probably was with you!) you always thought she was beautiful. Here’s where you shot Elliot. To this day you know you did the right thing. There’s no doubt in your mind that things would’ve been very different had he taken over. Here’s where Jack was born. You remember Kyle having a hell of a time getting him to come out. He always could be a little stubborn. You just remembered you’re supposed to have a check up appointment with Kyle’s daughter Shelia. It can wait though; you’re busy right now. Ah now here it is. Your old room. You remember spending a majority of your initial time here. Still has the shelter manual on the table. You insisted that this room remain intact when the shelter was in the final stages of being stripped. You always knew you’d return here some day. You lie down on the bed and enjoy the peace and quiet from the surface. Slowly you begin to get drowsy. “Ahhh, so peaceful with no other people around…I just wish Nina was here with me to enjoy it too…” you say to yourself as you drift off to sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Hey Nina get up.” “Huh, what? Not tonight I’m tired.” “No it’s not that. It’s about the surface. I think we need to start taking precautions and possible steps to expand above. The surface doesn’t look that bad and…” Nina immediately sits up. “YOU WENT TO THE SURFACE? After I told you not to fucking do that?! YOU ASSHOLE!” “Calm down look you can see nothing happened to me. It doesn’t even look like there was any bombs that landed anywhere near the area.” “You could be radiated! The wind blows your know or have you forgotten? Or maybe it was a biological weapon! A disease could be floating in the air! You ever think of that? You could be infected with god knows what right now and spread it to the whole shelter! And our baby!” Another surprise. “Baby? You’re pregnant?” “I just found out recently from Brenda a few days ago. I was going to tell you soon, I should’ve told you yesterday before you went to the surface, but I THOUGHT you respected my wishes! I can’t believe you…” Nina gets up and starts pacing. She’s very upset. You get up and try to fix this mess. “Look that just makes this idea even more vital, this place can’t support all these people having babies. Even GZS mentioned in their delusional guideline statement it was the intention for people to eventually go back up to the surface and repopulate it with their families. We can’t live like a bunch of crowded sardines; we should make preparations now, before it becomes a problem.” “But it might be dangerous up there.” “It probably won’t be a picnic, but that’s another reason why we should start getting ready now. The more we’re prepared the better off we’ll be to defend ourselves.” “But the radiation…” “Look, the fact remains this place IS going to get overpopulated one day and people are going to have to start going up to the surface and any background radiation isn’t going to disappear within that time. So we’re just going to have to roll the dice and deal with that fact. Like I said I think we’re okay, we’re in a fairly isolated area away from an important major city. It’s not like we’re located on either of the coasts which were probably bombed the shit out of. And to the response to biological weapon thing, I highly doubt those were used, we were the only country that had the capability to launch such weapons from a long distance, except maybe Russia and I’m sure they probably just used nukes on us. Besides any virus or germ used in such a way would’ve died out long ago after it killed off the immediate population.” Nina still doesn’t look so sure, she still look worried about you. You hold Nina to reassure her. “If it’ll make you feel better I’ll actually go see Kyle and have him check me out. And you know how much I hate going to see doctors, especially one that’s got all his knowledge from the GZS info files. I’ll be here for a long time… for all of us.” Your words seem to relax her a bit. She smiles and embraces you more closely. “Okay, I’ll bring it up tomorrow…I still think it’s funny that you of all people would be advocating going back to the surface.” “Pfft! WE’RE not going to the surface to live. We’re staying here! I just want get the rest of these fuckers out of the shelter and on to the surface! This place is too damn crowded as it is!” “Now that sounds more like you!” Nina laughs. Five more years pass… It’s been ten years since you got here. It almost seems surreal to think about. Nina’s still the shelter leader and you’re still looking after the central computer. However a lot more things have changed, and just as predicted the population grew significantly, fortunately the implementations ahead of time allowed everyone to adjust with little problems. There was some apprehension at first when Nina first suggested the surface thing, but eventually people did see the point in it. Some even wanted to go up to the surface. The first step was to make a fully functioning elevator that people could go up AND down on without any problems. (Of course that job fell to you again) The next step was to create small “huts” with the cars outside as well as using current shelter material. This went quicker than expected as most people pitched in to help. Nina gave birth to a son Jack, and almost went back to her duties immediately, leaving you to do most of the “Mr. Mom” work. Nowadays you split your time between monitoring the computer and monitoring Jack. Thankfully Charles and Todd have learned a lot more now and don’t require your supervision lessening your workload. Now its time for the next step. Nina and her council have been discussing plans for the even farther future. Contact with others and exploration. Within the past five years of the return to the surface, there has been contact with a few wanderers here and there, but they tended not to talk too much about their travels, they just mentioned that they’d seen other evidences of civilization, not all very civilized of course. Most of them just seemed to want to keep moving after doing a bit of trading and resupplying. One even hinted at some other “things” lurking around on the surface which didn’t sound too promising. However, the shelter needs to start finding a stable trading partner, or at least a place to find more supplies, because the vital ones are starting to run out. Some people are asked to volunteer for this exploration mission It wasn’t surprising Leon volunteered, but Brenda and Todd also volunteered. They were given as much supplies as they could carry and armed with the most “dangerous” things in the shelter. Leon and Todd carry some crowbars and Brenda carries a scalpel. You wonder if that’s really going to be enough though. Chances are some people out there (Quite possibly a lot) are carrying guns on them. Todd and Brenda aren’t going to be much good in a fight anyway, and while Leon is a fighter, even he can’t stop a bullet. You’re the only one with an “equalizer” around here. Maybe you should hand it over to them to give them a better chance. Though you really don’t want to do that, for various reasons. > You keep it No, you have to keep your weapon; you need something to be able to adequately defend your family in case the need should arrive. Leon, Brenda and Todd leave and life goes on…until one month later. You’re on the surface one day spending time with Nina and Jack who is playing with the other children. It’s a community event; nearly everyone is on the surface today. That’s when you hear the sound of motorcycles. You look in the direction of the sound and see several approaching. The riders don’t look like social types either. Everyone else on the surface begins to look too, and wondering what they should do. Nina quickly gathers up Jack. > You run to the shelter “Nina, we’re getting in the shelter NOW!” you grab her hand and run to the shelter entrance, upon seeing this others begin to follow your lead as the motorcycle rumble gets closer. You Nina and Jack get in the elevator first, and everyone else starts to crowd inside unfortunately everyone is shoving and pushing to get in, but there simply isn’t enough room not allowing the door to close. “GET OUT! THE ELEVATOR CAN’T CLOSE!” You yell. “FUCK YOU! YOU GET OUT!” someone shouts back. Desperate times call for desperate measures… You pull your gun out and start shooting in the ceiling of the elevator, causing folks to run out. “GET OUT! THIS IS OUR RIDE!” you shout and push the door button, taking one last look of the frightened crowd as the doors close. On the way down Nina holds on to Jack trying calm him down. She looks at you with silent disbelief. She can’t believe you actually sacrificed all those people just like that, the men, the women, and the children. “Don’t look at me like that Nina! I did what I did to save us! This is fuckin’ survival Nina! You know that!” you retort. When the elevator reaches the bottom, Nina runs back to your room with Jack and you quickly get something to jam the door open, so the elevator can’t go back up again. You see Charles come out from the computer room. He must’ve been the only one down here to keep an eye on the computer. “What’s going on? Why are you blocking the elevator door?” “We’re under fucking attack and I can’t let those fuckers come down here!” “But what about everyone else?! You can’t just leave them up there! You’re the only one with a proper weapon!” “Hey that’s tough! I mean I’m sorry all those people are in deep shit right now, but that ain’t my concern, my family is MY concern!” “You heartless bastard! What about all the other families you left to probably die up there?! I always knew you weren’t fond of people, but I never thought you’d go to this extent! Well if you’re not gonna do anything I will! Get outta my way, I’m going up!” You shove Charles back hard. “What the fuck are you gonna do Charles? You ain’t a fuckin’ hero! This ain’t like those old movies you watch! You’re a fat outta shape fuck, you wouldn’t stand a chance! Shit you don’t even have a weapon!” “Well gimme yours then!” Charles says trying to take your pistol. You push Charles back even harder, when that doesn’t work, you hit him with face with the butt of the gun causing him to fall back. “Don’t even fuck around like that Charles.” You warn pointing the pistol at him. He doesn’t seem to understand you’re being deadly serious here; he makes another attempt by charging at you. You shoot him three times before he falls dead at your feet. Nina comes running from your room to see what’s happened now, she’s horrified. Your actions within the past few minutes have severely changed her view about you. “He was trying to go to the surface! I can’t allow that, we have to remain down here where it’s safe! Who knows how long those fuckers will stay around! I’m trying to protect all of us!” you shout. Days pass and things are strained between you and Nina. She doesn’t approve at all of what you did. A lot of those people she was friends with. She says you did it purposely just so you could get more of your precious solitude and while that isn’t true, you can’t help but feel things are a lot better without anybody else around… A year passes since the invasion, you used to keep an eye on the elevator door on a regular basis, but lately you haven’t bothered. Nina has been distant with you ever since that day. Sometimes you’re all right with each other, but more often than not you argue. If it wasn’t for Jack, the both of you would probably just stay on opposite sides of the shelter. One day you wake up and look for the both of them, but you can’t find them anywhere then it suddenly occurs to you where they’ve gone. To the surface. You immediately press the call button and shut “Come on! Come on!” at the elevator’s slow descent. You do the same thing when you’re going up. You rush outside wondering where the hell Nina thinks she was off to, considering there’s no knowledge of any beacons of civilization nearby. You figure she couldn’t have gotten far and you’re right, she’s surveying the remains of the invasion. Everything that was built on the surface was destroyed, and it looks like nobody was spared. You see skeletal remains littered everywhere. She’s crying while holding on to Jack and then speaks when she sees you. “See what you did!” “Hey I didn’t do THIS! The wasteland scum did this! What the hell Nina? I only have so many bullets, and I didn’t even have my spare clips with me at the time! I couldn’t shoot them all!” “Oh, but you could shoot Charles right?” “Now that was…” “Or how about Elliot? Remember when you shot him and claimed it was self-defense?” “That WAS Self-defense! Nina, you’re acting like a stupid bit…” you stop yourself from completing that sentence, calm yourself and then continue. “Look, I did what I did to protect us, I didn’t want any of us getting killed. Let’s all just go back inside the shelter and…” “Get your hands off of me! I’m not going back in there with YOU! I can’t stand to look at you anymore, even if it is a rarity nowadays!” “So whadda ya gonna do Nina? Take Jack traipsing across the fuckin’ wasteland and hope you don’t get raped and killed before you die of dehydration? In case you haven’t noticed, but this is IT! There probably ain’t another place like this for miles! And if there is, I bet it damn near isn’t as comfortable OR friendly! Look Jack needs the both of us here and…” “Jack doesn’t need YOU! You’re barely spend time with him anyway! I can’t do it anymore I can’t spend one more day in that shelter with you after seeing what you did a year ago!” “NINA SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET BACK IN THE GODDAMN SHELTER NOW!” Now Jack begins to cry, and Nina attempts to make him stop, and now you see this situation isn’t going to go away even if you dragged them both into the shelter kicking and screaming. Yet despite all this, you can’t let Nina and Jack leave, you do the only other solution. “Oh fuck it. Here.” You pull out your pistol and shove it into Nina’s hand. She doesn’t accept it at first until you force her take the thing. After she finally holds it, you start to leave. Nina calls out. “Where are you going?” “Oh now you show concern? I’m leaving Nina, you said you can’t live here with me since I now repulse you so much, so I’m doing what’s best and fuckin’ leaving, because whether you believe it or not I do what’s best for this family. I’ll leave and probably die somewhere out in the wilderness or if you still have any kind of feelings for me, you’ll save me a lingering death and just shoot me now. Either way, I’m gone. Jack, take good care of your Mom, she gets a bit high strung at times. The computer’s easy to run, just read the damn manual. That’s what I always told everyone else. Both of you have a nice life.” You turn and begin to walk, you start wondering how long you’re going to last without any kind of supplies, you didn’t even bring a canteen with you. What does it all matter now anyway? Fuck it right? You turn your head and see Nina and Jack just entering the shelter entrance. You shake your head, wondering where you went wrong. Where all the love went so damn quickly. Maybe she was right in some ways, maybe you were too ruthless. You just wanted to save them so badly though, you didn’t want to lose them. Of course you did anyway. You turn your head again, now you just see Nina. What the hell is she doing now? You hope to god she didn’t have some change of mind suddenly. Because you know what’s going to happen, she’ll ask you to come back, and like an idiot you probably will, and then things will be semi-okay and then they’ll get worse again and you’ll be back to this again. At this point you don’t feel like putting up with the shit anymore either. Just let it go Nina, just let it the fuck go. You made your decision now stick fuckin’ by it. Once more you turn your head; she’s walking briskly towards you…with your pistol in her hand. She has an unemotional look on her face. Reminds you of when she was going to throw Ron and his boy toy into exile that one time. You always knew she had a darker side to her, looks like its coming out one last time. You slow down your walking so she can catch up to you quicker, until finally you stop altogether. You don’t turn you head anymore; you want to make this easy on her. Now you feel the metal barrel to your head. Your last thought on this burned out world are: “She did still care.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No, you have to keep your weapon; you need something to be able to adequately defend your family in case the need should arrive. Leon, Brenda and Todd leave and life goes on…until one month later. You’re on the surface one day spending time with Nina and Jack who is playing with the other children. It’s a community event; nearly everyone is on the surface today. That’s when you hear the sound of motorcycles. You look in the direction of the sound and see several approaching. The riders don’t look like social types either. Everyone else on the surface begins to look too, and wondering what they should do. Nina quickly gathers up Jack. > You stand your ground No way in hell you’re going to hide, you’re a good shot, (At least you used to be, you haven’t practiced in awhile) you figure you can get enough of them, while taking cover and everyone else here doesn’t have to be defenseless. “Everyone grab some sort of weapon! Mothers grab your children and run to the shelter, when you get to the bottom jam the door open so it can’t come back up!” before she can even say anything you turn to Nina, “Nina! No arguments! Just do it!” you then kiss her before she does what you say. The bikes are getting closer. There’s at least ten, each with a driver and a partner riding in the back. There’s some sort of bloody head on the front of the first bike...its Leon’s. You can only guess the fate of Brenda and Todd were similar. Then you hear one of them yelling. “YEEEHAAA! THERE IT IS! JUST LIKE THAT BITCH WE RAPED AND KILLED SAID! ATTACK!” You fire a couple times hitting a driver, the bike and its riders go flying into a couple other bikes. Not bad, in fact better than you expected. Unfortunately they’re shooting at you now too. You duck for cover while everyone else does likewise, some getting shot in the process. The remaining bikers attempt to circle around and open fire, but now everyone has adequate cover, so most of the bikers in the “bitch seat” get off to be a little more thorough. The shelter people and the bikers clash. Not all the bikers have guns, but they’ve been surviving on the road long enough to be better fighters. Many of your people are going down, and you’re the only one who seems to be able to do any damage to these invaders. You manage to blast three more in the chest. Soon you’re out of ammo, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Some monster motherfucker starts attacking you with a spiked bat, landing it right in your leg. You punch him out before collapsing in pain. You attempt to pull the bat out, but then you’re kicked in the face and thrown into the path of a speeding motorcycle which rides over your arm. You’re not going anywhere; in fact the only thing that saves you from a follow up death blow is the fact that Nina and all the mothers come back up to the surface with weapons to help defend against the attack. Nina grabs your pistol which you dropped and loads it up with a clip you left down in the shelter and blasts the giant biker’s brains out. Seeing many of there comrades dead and reinforcements arrive on your side, the remaining bikers sound a retreat and ride off. Much has been lost this day though; the shelter’s population has severely been decimated, not to mention the confidence in staying on the surface. After this event, all ideas of rebuilding on the surface are abandoned. The shelter has more than enough supplies and room now for everyone considering this last attack. Of course that problem is only going to pop up again in the future when the population replenishes itself again. Maybe not in your lifetime, but certainly in Jack’s. He can’t stay here, he’s going to have to go out in the world and learn how to deal with it. And you make sure he’s better prepared than you were. You stop Jake’s training in learning about the computer system; it won’t do him any good. Instead you make him do physical training in the shelter gym. You’ve never used the thing, but he’s sure going to. You can’t directly train with Jake since you’re basically crippled in one leg and arm, but you can motivate and that’s what you do. Nina doesn’t exactly like it, but she sees that one day the shelter is going to need someone to get more supplies. As years pass you eventually start succumbing to your damaged body’s inability to continue this life. Jack is now a young man, the shelter’s population is starting to grow again, and the shelter’s supplies are running low. You say your goodbyes to Nina, telling her you love her and ask to see Jack as you lie in your bed. “Jack, you’re going to have to leave this place soon one day. Whether you decide to leave permanently or you decide to come back with supplies to keep this place going, is up to you. But you are going to have to leave it. You understand?” “Yes Dad.” “(Cough) Good, now here. Even though you’re a tough guy who knows how to defend himself, you’ll still be needing this when you go out there. Wish you could practice with it, but it only has one clip left and you’ll be needing all the bullets you can get.” “Well I did practice my aim by throwing some scalpels at a human diagram, if that’s any help.” “Couldn’t hurt. Glad to see you’re inventive, you’ll need that up there. Okay, I think that’s it…I hope I taught you enough.” “You did Dad.” “Good. Now leave me, I ache all over and I need to rest.” Jack leaves you where you have your last moments of solitude before leaving this mortal coil.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Something comes over you, maybe it was the tension or the hostility or maybe you were just horny, but you grab Nina and kiss her passionately. Fortunately for you, she returns the gesture. Now nobody knows what to think they all just stand around watching, they’re probably just glad you didn’t shoot anybody this time. William and Ron are still recovering from their beating and staggering in the doorway of the elevator. Nina stops you just for a moment to address everyone. “The exile is off, everyone go back to your lives…and YOU are coming with me!” then she starts pulling you back to her room. You and Nina relieve a lot of pent up sexual energy that day. A lot of things change after that… Four more years pass... You and Nina are an item now, which makes you somewhat more social by necessity (unfortunately) its not all bad though since she’s the one that’s still shelter leader and has to do all the major work. She does a good job hence the reason she’s stayed in power. (Though not surprisingly William and Ron still vote against her, even if she did apologize) You’re now in charge of maintaining the central GZS computer system which you insist on doing primarily by yourself, though Charles and Todd assist you sometimes. Eventually you manage to get the damn thing running at near maximum efficiency and nobody has too many problems with things breaking down anymore. The Shelter’s population has grown a bit now; the only good thing about the shelter was the design to make allowances for a population growth. Of course now there’s rug rats running around which means Nina appoints a person to start being a “teacher” of sorts for when they start getting bigger. Fortunately there are a couple of those already in the shelter. Kyle and Brenda are now the main medical practitioners, though you doubt if they’d be able to do open heart surgery, they’re competent enough to keep people in relatively good shape and they keep trying to learn more whenever possible with the medical database provided and from books. (You still don’t understand WHY you’re the only competent tech though! “Gah! Read the books! Study the schematics! It’s not difficult!” you’re constantly saying and that’s to Charles and Todd!) Then there’s the elevator. After the near exile incident, it was still considered a good idea to have it accessible at all times just in case. What you eventually did was install a call button and did some re-wiring to do just that, though nobody has ever dared to actually go up to the surface. (And nobody’s ever gotten thrown out either) You begin to wonder what the surface looks like now though from time to time. One night while lying next to Nina… “Hey Nina, you ever wonder what’s on the surface now?” “What? It’s probably an uninhabitable wasteland.” “Well maybe, but we’ve been down here five years, it might look different.” “Yeah, and it might not. Go back to sleep.” “You know I just thought about it, everyone’s vehicles are up there. I bet we could strip them down for parts or something, maybe some of them will even work. We could drive around and see what’s going on else where.” “What? I don’t want you going up there! The elevator is a last resort thing just case something bad happens! And since when do you want to play great explorer? When you first got here you never left your room!” “I dunno, maybe your socialization has made me a little more extroverted.” “Hmm, knowing you, you probably just want to get away from the increasing population here.” “Ha ha, maybe. But I still wouldn’t mind just taking a quick look outside, and to inspect the vehicles like I said.” Nina now sits up. “No! I don’t want you going up there! There’s probably radiation still all over the place! I don’t want you getting radiation poisoning or mutating or something!” “I’ll be fine! I won’t go too far, I just want to…” Nina grabs a hold of your hand. “NO! I don’t want you going up there! It’s not safe!” “Alright, alright, calm down. I won’t go anywhere.” “You promise?” “Yeah!” “Alright then, I don’t want to hear anymore about it. Our life is here, not up there. I love you too much to lose you.” The both of you lie back down, and Nina holds on to you tightly, putting her head on your chest almost in an effort to make sure you’re not going anywhere tonight. Of course now you’re lying awake REALLY wondering what the surface looks like. The next day you’re working with Charles and Todd doing the usual mundane routine. They’re talking about the same stupid movie they’ve watched over and over in the community living area. Shit you feel like you’re at work again. The GZS central computer hasn’t been giving you trouble for quite some time, and you know there’s a big meeting going on in the conference room… Maybe you could sneak out and just take a quick look on the surface for awhile. You could let Charles and Todd look after the computer, you know they’re capable of doing that. > You stay Nah, Nina’s probably right, you might get radiation poisoning or some shit if you go to the surface. Probably nothing left up there for miles anyway. You’re just a little bored and were trying to figure out some way of relieving the boredom and going to the surface isn’t it. You’ll think of something less dangerous. You go back to doing your duties and putting up with Charles and Todd’s chatter. A few weeks later, Nina tells you she’s pregnant. In nine months your son Jack is born. You also begin to notice how many other babies are being born or on their way of being born, you start to wonder if there will be enough supplies and room if the population keeps growing like this. Oh well surely something will be figured out by then. Still, you do wonder if you shouldn’t have tried harder to convince Nina that it isn’t a completely terrible idea… Five years pass… Ten years have gone by and the shelter is starting to get a little crowded. After all there isn’t too much to do in the shelter that hasn’t already been done, so sex is always (as it always has been) a popular way to pass the time. The result of that fun activity is too many babies. At this point now you say something to Nina about the surface, she’s a little reluctant about the idea, but sees that it might be necessary. Unfortunately the rest of the council doesn’t see it that way. Many of them have been here so long now that going to the surface is almost unthinkable. Despite great protest Nina overrides the council’s advice and goes ahead with the plan anyway. This doesn’t make her too popular. For one reason there’s the decision of who is suppose to live on the surface, many people have full blown families now, they’re a little unwilling to risk taking them up. So that means the single or childless people get the boot upstairs since they have less to “lose”. That doesn’t go over too well either. People start protesting loudly about being kicked out of their homes since they have as much right to stay too. One day, you’re in the computer room at the time arguing with Charles who happens to be single, and giving you shit about Nina’s new policy. Todd is pretty much indifferent to the idea since even though he’s single he doesn’t mind the idea of going to the surface, he just thinks you should’ve said something to Nina a long time ago to implement this plan sooner before everyone had a whole mess of babies. That’s when you get the word. Kyle comes in to tell you that during one of Nina’s speeches William (Who would’ve been one of those kicked up to the surface along with Ron) attempted to assassinate Nina with a scalpel he stole from the medical supplies. Leon managed to stop him with extreme prejudice by breaking his neck. But its not ending there, people are starting to riot and call for someone new to be the shelter leader. You’re pissed off now, you storm into the conference room ready to kick everyone’s ass who DARES to try to hurt Nina again. You fire your pistol into the air causing everyone to take notice. When you get over to Nina, she’s pleading for you to not shoot anybody. The assassin was already taken care of, there isn’t any more need for killing. While that might be the case that still doesn’t solve the problem of everyone hating Nina (And probably you too as well) if she gets thrown out of her position, the next step might be to try to throw you guys out of the shelter. Part of this you feel is your fault, you could just roll the dice here or you could attempt to take the hard line approach.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Always one to solve a problem before it starts… You pull the trigger and blast Elliot square in the chest. He looks down in disbelief and then slumps down on the floor by your feet. You then get up from the floor as everyone else runs out of the room. “Yeah that’s what I thought! So much for your fearless leader!” As you drag Elliot’s body out of your room, everyone else in the shelter has come out of their own rooms after hearing the gun shot and screaming. “OH MY GOD! HE’S GOT A GUN!” someone shouts. “HE’S KILLED ELLIOT!” another screams. Everyone is very afraid of what you’re going to do next. Only Nina dares approach you. “You…you killed him? I always knew you were anti-social, but…oh my god…” “Yeah I fuckin’ killed Elliot! And YOU of all people oughta be damn well glad I did! He was planning on taking over this place from your boyfriend Ron!” “Ron’s not my boyfriend! And I don’t believe you! Elliot was gracious in his defeat! He was a good man unlike you!” “Yeah he was so good he tried to recruit me for his little rebellion gang, and don’t try to hide in the fuckin’ crowd Leon and act like you weren’t there! All of you fuckers hiding right now, came to my room with Elliot! And lemme ask you this, WHY the hell would ANY of them come to MY room? Everyone knows I don’t invite people!” “I dunno what to say right now…please just put down the gun…I don’t want you to kill anyone else…” “For fuck’s sake Nina I’m not a mass murderer! It was self-defense! He was gonna kill me, just like he was gonna kill Ron and shit maybe he should’ve, the fuckstick’s supposed to be the shelter leader and he’s not even here for this! Where is Ron?” Nina suddenly wonders where he’s at as well, she runs over to his door which is still shut. “Don’t tell me, he’s THAT much of deep sleeper.” You mutter while standing by Elliot’s dead body. Nina doesn’t even knock, apparently she’s got her own key to get in his room. You’re STILL wondering why nothing has happened between those two yet, your questions are soon answered, and everyone is in for another surprise this eventful night. “EEEEEEEEEEEK! NO!” you hear Nina scream when she goes inside the room and then runs back out crying. Ron steps out in his underwear. “No, wait! Nina, its not what it looks like!” he shouts to her and then another guy in his underwear comes out. You think his name is William, you never knew too much about him before, but you know MORE than you wanted to now! “Get back inside William!” when Ron sees that there’s a whole crowd of people staring in various states of shock. It’s too late though now, everyone knows. “Wow Nina sure is a good judge of character, she thought Elliot was a good man and she thought you were straight. Looks like I wasn’t the only one with a secret in this shelter! Heh heh.” Ron finally turns to you and sees what you’ve done. “…You got a gun? YOU FUCKIN’ KILLED ELLIOT?” “(Sigh) Not this again! Yeah I fuckin’ killed him. He tried to kill me and he was planning on killing you to take over this dump!” “Now just calm down, and put down the gun…” “I’m not putting down shit and I’m not killing anyone else unless someone gives me cause to do so! What the fuck, was the dick in your mouth so good to you, you didn’t hear the gunshots and screaming out here? I’m sick of explaining this twice! Now I’M going back into MY room to get some sleep! And none of you better fucking disturb me for the rest of the night! And someone better clean up Elliot’s carcass from in front of my room when I wake up tomorrow!” You return to your room. “Yeah, I think that went well.” You say to yourself. After the night of multiple “incidents” a lot of things happen. The first, is Elliot’s body being the first one dumped into the incinerator. The second being that Ron is immediately voted out by his own council who all follow the GZS guidelines. Apparently being gay was more of an offense than being incompetent, since GZS guidelines were explicit in not wanting homosexuals in the Community Shelters which he obviously lied about. Nina is unsurprisingly the most vocal about his vote out; in fact she ends up taking over. Ron and William move into a separate far room together and become social pariahs. Everyone who was previously friendly with Ron suddenly starts treating him like garbage. You never really cared for him, and thought he was an incompetent moron, but even you think it’s shitty for them to all just turn on him over who he happens to be fucking. But that’s how people are and that’s why you try to avoid them. Your situation is a little different, they can’t really treat you like a social pariah mainly because you were always one to begin with and another because everyone’s afraid you’ll shoot them. All of Elliot’s former friends have no doubt reinforced the belief in others that you’re dangerous. You don’t really care though, just as long as nobody fucks with you and stays out of your way (Which everyone does for the most part since you now walk around with it at all times) A year passes… The shelter sees its first baby born and there are a couple of other pregnant women ready to pop as well. Nina has improved the place a little bit more. No doubt without anyone to fawn over now she’s throwing herself into her work. There’s actually a guy (Kyle) who’s has some medical knowledge now, they still don’t really have a good “tech guy” though and things are still being jury-rigged. Nina knows with a growing population this shelter needs to be in tip top running condition. You get that expected knock on the door. “Hello, Nina.” You say. “Yeah hi. Look, I just want to know if you have any intention of helping us out or if you’re still going to remain an isolated asshole.” Nothing like being blunt. Politics has really hardened Nina, she’s all business now it seems and lot less naïve. How strangely appealing… > You remain in your own world “Its served me well so far, so I guess asshole it is.” “Yeah, I thought as much. Thanks for nothing.” Nina says and walks off. You go back to what you were doing. About an hour passes and then your lighting starts to dim, and then goes out altogether. Its pitch dark and you can hear yelling and screaming all throughout the shelter. Someone fucked something up, but good. You leave your room and stumble through the darkness bumping into frightened people until you manage to find your way back to the computer room. You see some flashlights shining at various parts of the computer. “What the hell did you idiots do?” you yell, as two technicians shine their lights towards you. “Whoa! It’s you! Don’t shoot!” Nina then shines her light at you as well. “Now you decide to help?” “Get outta the way, before I shoot all of you!” you exclaim pushing the two techs out of the way and grabbing one of their flashlights. You inspect what happened and it’s not good, they completely fried the CPU. You don’t know how the fuck they did that, but they did. You can’t fix this, even if you had the right tools and adequate lighting. Somehow you really aren’t hysterical about all this. “Well guys, I got some really bad news. We’re in deep shit that I can’t get us out of. You’ve doomed us all. Nice going guys.” The two techs begin to freak out and run screaming; Nina has a quiver in her voice. “You mean, there’s nothing at all?! We’re all gonna die?” “Looks like. The question is how, quick or slow…and I got this gun here as you all know…you coming with me?” Nina doesn’t even hesitate. “Let’s do it.” “You sure?” “Just shut up and do it.” “Okay, now I gotta get close since its dark…” You point the gun directly at Nina’s head and pull the trigger. You feel a splash of blood on your face and the slumping of a lifeless body. You hear the screams echo throughout the shelter get louder. You’ll be glad to leave this insane asylum, you just wonder if you should’ve done things differently… No time for that now. No time for regrets, just time to do it. You pull the gun at your head and pull the trigger.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Yeah, well you do what you have to do, just leave me out of it. Your little power struggle with Ron isn’t any of my concern. And if and when you do take power don’t think you’re going to be ordering me around either.” Elliot’s expression changes to that of someone very perturbed by your response. “I’m very disappointed to hear you say that, I really thought you could have a place in the new community I was planning.” “Think again, now get outta here…” You begin to shove Elliot out of your doorway, but Leon reaches over his shoulder and shoves you back with great strength. You fall backwards on to your floor, Elliot and his gang start to enter. He pulls out a scalpel, something he probably got from the medical supplies. You happen to be right next to your mattress, so you reach in and grab your pistol to point it directly at Elliot. Now they all look like they just seen a ghost and all the bravery has drained out of them except Leon, who looks like this isn’t the first time he’s had a gun pointed at him, but he’s still stepping back. “You wanna fuckin’ take another step motherfucker? Go ahead, I fuckin’ dare you!” “Holy shit, he’s got a fuckin’ gun Elliot!” a women in his group says. “I can see that Brenda! Okay, look maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. I mean obviously you’re a more resourceful man than I thought…I mean as far as I know you’re the only one in this place with a goddamn gun. How’d you manage that?” “Never you mind, just get the fuck outta here!” “Very well, but remember, you don’t have any friends in this place, and you can’t watch your back all the time…” Elliot has just announced his intentions of eliminating you whenever it’s possible. You’ll have to live in constant paranoia now. Unless… > You let him go If you shoot him, everyone’s going to think you’re a murderer, so you let him go. Besides if he planning on taking over by force like he seems to be wanting to do, he’ll show his true colors soon enough. You just have to watch your back until that time. In fact it occurs to you that you should just go tell Ron and Nina about this incident, sure they might not believe you, but it’s better than saying nothing. The next day when you wake up, you hear a lot of commotion going outside your door. “See?! I told you! He’s the one who did it! He dropped the bloody scalpel right in front of his door!” you hear someone say, sounds like Elliot. You grab your gun and open up the door to a crowd of frightened onlookers. Elliot is in front of them speaking and then turns around when you come out. “SO! The murderer finally shows his face! We both know what you did last night! I saw you! I saw you break into Ron’s room and kill him and his friend William! Then when you saw me see you, you threatened me with a gun you snuck in telling me I better keep my mouth shut or you’d kill me too! But I couldn’t stay silent! I don’t care if you do kill me! I had to warn these good people that they’re living with a psychopath!” Elliot’s already gone through with his plan. He had to speed it up since you were a risk to tell everyone about it, but now he’s turned it to his advantage by blaming you for everything. “WHAT?! Elliot you’re full of shit! YOU came to my room last night trying to get me in your little rebel gang! You’re the one trying to take over, not me!” “LIAR! Who’re you gonna believe? Me? Who’s been nothing, but supportive of Ron, even when his plans weren’t exactly efficient? Or HIM? Someone who’s done nothing to help anyone, and has shown utter dislike for Ron and everyone else here?” “It’s true! (Sob) He has always hated Ron!” Nina cries from the crowd. You attempt to explain, protest and argue the situation, but its no good, Elliot is a master speaker, manipulator, and everyone likes him and can barely tolerate you. Feeling yourself threatened you start pointing your gun at the crowd, but even that doesn’t do any good, Elliot whips them all into a frenzy to attack you, claiming how you can’t kill all of you, of course that doesn’t stop you from killing some of them (Elliot being the first of course). Soon you’re mobbed and the gun is taken away from you where upon someone dispenses vigilante justice and caps you in the head with it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“(Sigh) Fine, I’ll attend this exercise in futility, but what the hell are we doing exactly, so I’m not just jumping into shit.” You ask as you and Nina walk towards the conference room. “Well right now we’re voting on a shelter leader. Someone to make the final decisions about important things. So far Ron is tied with another. In fact the only reason why I came to get you, was so you could break the tie.” “Whoopie, I feel honored I can take an important part in this democratic process. So who’s the other person?” “Oh, that would be Elliot. He was one of the later arrivals, but is very personable. Not that you’d know since I doubt you’ve even seen him given that you lock yourself in you room all the time.” “Yeah, yeah, I know who he is, bald guy. So I take it you want Ron to win huh?” “Well…I’d be lying if I said I didn’t, but Elliot’s seems like a good guy too, so I’m sure he’d make a good leader as well.” “Why haven’t you run? I mean you seem to like to organize things.” “Me? Oh no, I’m not a leader.” “Well from what I’ve seen of Ron, he isn’t either.” Nina stops you in the corridor. “Damn it, stop being an asshole! At least Ron makes an attempt to get involved in things! You haven’t done shit since you got here except insult people and lock yourself away! Like it or not we’re ALL in this together! And you better start getting with the program and contribute!” “What the fuck? I am contributing; I’m going to this goddamn meeting aren’t I? And you better watch your tone; remember I’M the swing vote for your boyfriend.” “Ron isn’t my boyfriend! I mean…not yet…uh…” “What? You mean he isn’t taping your ass yet? Shit, he’s stupider than I thought then, because he’d be lucky to get someone who looks like you even if you are annoying.” Nina stands and stares at you in disbelief. “…could you possibly be any more vile?” “Probably, but we don’t have time for that, I gotta vote for some dickhead.” You continue to the conference room (with Nina no longer walking with you) and when you finally arrive everyone is there as if they’ve been waiting for you. You don’t even really care who’s in charge since more than likely no matter who you vote for is going to be an intrusive bastard wanting everyone to do something. You can vote for Ron. As far as leadership material, you don’t really see him as one, though he seems to have some planning skills and friendly to people so maybe he’s got the stuff. Elliot you barely know anything about, he also seems to be an organizer and friendly to everyone, but not to the point that it’s irritating. Though to you there’s something a little creepy about him. Ah what the hell, you know this is something Ron wants more than anything why not give it to him? Besides he’s not very “strong” which means you can probably get away with disobeying him on a regular basis without causing a big scene. “I’ll vote for Ron.” You say, Nina looks surprised and Ron jumps up and down like an idiot in celebration. You take that as your opportunity to go back to your room, Nina once again stops you in the corridor. “I just wanted to say thanks for doing this; I know you don’t even like Ron…” “I don’t care one way or another about him, if he wants the headache of running this place he can have it, he better just not ask too much of me, I did my bit. You can think of me as his kingmaker. See ya around.” You go back to your room and that’s where you spend a majority of your time. You don’t really mix with anyone, and nobody really makes the attempt with you either. You’re asked to contribute to some “events” sometimes, but you always ignore such requests and nothing happens. Nina still hangs around Ron like a love sick school girl, but for god knows what reason he seems completely oblivious to the fact. And obviously she hasn’t told him how she feels about him. You watch this comical display replay itself over and over. “Yeah, GZS really picked some excellent candidates to pair up to create families for the so called future, what a joke.” You mutter to yourself. Time goes by and Ron goes about his duties which mainly consist of discussing pointless plans in the conference room. The idiot can’t do ANYTHING without talking about it with others he appointed as advisors first! If somebody’s shower is broken they have to discuss when, how and WHY it has to be fixed! Naturally everyone disagree about one point and they have to start all over again which usually means nothing gets done. A lot of planning and organizing of ideas, but no actual implementations of those same ideas. The shelter starts falling into disrepair, a few fixes are made here and there, but they’re more jury-rigged ones more than anything. Nobody has perfectly functioning rooms from what you know…well except yours since you do nothing, but study the shelter manual all the time attempting to learn more about how it works giving you an edge in repairing your own room. (In fact you just permanently took a repair kit for yourself out of the equipment room) You really don’t understand why other people aren’t doing the same instead of waiting around for things to get repaired or complaining about needing things to get repaired. Everyone has the same damn operations manual. Read it! About six months go by and finally you’re given an unexpected visit during the night. You answer your door. It’s Elliot and some other people. “May we come in?” Elliot asks. “What do you want?” “Just to talk about the future of the shelter.” “Yeah? Well you can talk to Ron about that, he’s the big shelter leader.” “Yes he is, thanks to you. And that’s also why this shelter is in such bad shape. Ron is ruining this place with his ineptitude.” “Oh no, don’t blame that shit on me, that’s RON’S fault, not mine. And besides MY room works fine. If you lazy bastards would actually read the damn shelter manual you wouldn’t have any problems.” “Oh I’ve read the manual, I’m sure many people have. But surely you must realize most people don’t have the natural talent to fix thing that perhaps you have. Besides I’m sure you must also be aware that in a community each person has his own talents. For example Leon behind me used to be a bouncer. Don’t you think with his skills he’d make an excellent head of security around here?” Leon folds his big black arms almost daring you to say “No.” before Elliot continues. “My point is me and a few others are planning to take Ron out of office for gross incompetence. Did you know Fred and Greta are planning to have a baby? The first one to be born in here. The population in this shelter isn’t going to be stable forever. It’s going to grow and we NEED to keep this place running efficiently if we’re ALL going to survive. I know you’re a solitary person…I even respect that, but the time has come for you to choose between life or death. By joining our group, you’re choosing life. By remaining locked away in here, you’re choosing death not just for all of us, but for yourself. No man is an island.” Elliot has a bit of duality to his speech. Part of him sounds genuinely concerned for the future of the shelter; he may even have a point. But the other part of him sounds like he’s politely threatening you. And you’re not sure of the whole “taking Ron out of office” thing. It almost sounds like he plans on taking over by force. You get the impression he and his little group are going to do just that regardless of whether you join or not. > You join Can’t be any worse than what’s going on now, and you might as well be on the winning team. “Alright, I’m in. What do we do?” Elliot smiles. “Glad to have you on board, as for what we do, you’ll see. You’ll all see. Leon, and Brenda you’re all coming with me. The rest of you go back to your rooms, tomorrow your loyalty will be rewarded, I promise.” Elliot and his gang leave, you close the door and go back to sleep without thinking anymore about it. The next day you hear a lot of yelling and screaming when you wake up, you get dressed and leave your room to see what’s going on. You see a crowd of people gathered outside Ron’s door. You make you way through the crowd and see Leon holding Nina who is struggling and hysterical. Elliot is nearby speaking. “I DIDN’T DO IT! YOU’RE LYING! YOU’RE ALL LYING! (Sob)” “I saw her! I saw her lurking around last night when I heard some noises. I just wish I’d done something then! I’ll never forgive myself. I just thought she was taking a walk, little did I know she was going into Ron’s room and killed him! Why? Because she found out he was having an affair with his secret lover William!” “What the fuck…?” you say to yourself and take a quick look inside Ron’s room. You see Ron’s body lying in a pool of blood on the floor in his underwear, his throat has been slashed. Nearby is another body killed in the exact same way. Its William who you really didn’t know anything about, you guess you know he was gay now though. “Huh. I guess that explains why Ron never took any interest in Nina.” You say to yourself. Meanwhile Elliot is continuing his speech. “She even dropped the killing weapon outside her door! Brenda found it when she was going to talk to her this morning! Look!” Elliot shouts when Brenda shows everyone a bloody scalpel. “THAT’S NOT MINE! I DIDN’T DO IT! I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW RON WAS GAY!” “Oh we ALL didn’t know Nina, until we found his dead body! But we all know that YOU had a giant crush on him and practically stalked him. It isn’t hard to connect the dots here Nina! You found out he was carrying on with William and you in a jealous rage killed them both! Now granted William and Ron were breaking GZS policy with their behavior, but they didn’t deserve this! To be brutally murdered by an insane love sick stalker!” “I’M NOT A STALKER! (Sob) I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!” “Enough! It’s apparent that we need to punish you, for your heinous crimes. Though I feel you deserve death, I am in no position to determine your ultimate fate…I say the people should decide!” Some of the people in the crowd begin to chant “Death!”, and most of those are followers of Elliot. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the crowd to follow. Elliot’s got ‘em all by the balls. He has completely manipulated this herd of sheep into believing and following him, on little to no basis in evidence. They’re all just believing what he’s telling them. You know damn well he’s set this whole thing up to blame poor Nina. You can’t really do anything about it though; nobody’s going to believe you. It’s too late anyway, after a few more words from Elliot, you see Leon carry out the crowd’s wishes and break Nina’s neck. Now Elliot makes another speech. “It is done…it is regrettable, but it is done. Leon, you and some of the others please dispose of these bodies in the incinerator…I didn’t think we would have to use it so soon and under such tragic circumstances. I suppose we’ll need another shelter leader now to guide us through this dark time…well whoever is proposed, I hope they will be willing to listen to some of my ideas about how we should increase security around here so nothing like this ever happens again.” “Hey! How about you become our shelter leader Elliot? You certainly know how to take charge of a situation and you obviously are concerned about all of us!” another one of Elliot’s lackeys shouts from the crowd where upon a short time later everyone else is following again. You stand watching a complete fraud take over with mere words. It would appear that even after Armageddon some things never change. Elliot goes through a modesty routine to make him look good and then “humbly” accepts. You may have just allied yourself with a ruthless sociopath at best or a complete mad man at worst. Time will have to tell. Five years pass… Time tells that you’ve allied with a completely ruthless sociopathic mad man. The Shelter’s population has grown a little; but not excessively. In fact you’re likely to have room for quite some time. Elliot employed a vicious sterilization program to make sure of that. Having a medical background he was able to do the procedures himself with the medical supplies in the shelter. Shortly after he started employing that procedure the initial “cult of personality worship” by everyone stopped and a lot of people regained there senses, but of course by then Elliot had already entrenched himself. There were a few attempts to kill him, but those were always averted by Leon. Elliot now walks around with a couple guards at all times, with Leon is his head bodyguard. He claimed that it was for the good of the shelter and granted perhaps it is going to make things easier, but it’s obvious that not everyone was keen on this idea. Most of the people who followed Elliot from the beginning were spared this fate though. Disobedience from anyone is punished severely. However things aren’t too bad for you. You are pretty much indispensable and you keep it that way. You’re now in charge of maintaining the central GZS computer system which you primarily insist on doing by yourself. Eventually you manage to get the damn thing running at near maximum efficiency and nobody has too many problems with things breaking down anymore. You also do something else to ensure your safety which is carrying your gun secretly on you at all times. There have been times where you’ve wondered if you should kill Elliot, but you haven’t ever killed anyone before, let alone with no provocation, you don’t know if you have it in you. Also he hasn’t really bothered you, if anything you’re one of the few people he’s consistently been okay with. As long as he’s not bothering you, you don’t really feel the need to kill him. He leaves you to do your job and you leave him to do his… But is it ALWAYS going to be that way? There may come a day when for whatever reason he decides to get rid of you. Megalomaniacs aren’t particularly known for their trusting nature. > You kill him now You need to kill him, things are just going to get worse, or at best stay the same. All the shit that Elliot’s done over the years has gotten to you, and you can’t help, but feel partly responsible for all of this. Sure you don’t like most people, but you’re not a BAD guy. However you are serving a bad master. A really bad master, one that needs to be stopped now. You take a deep breath and pace around the floor for awhile. Trying to psyche yourself up for your plan. You feel like you gotta take a shit, a piss, and vomit all at the same time. It’s all in your mind though. Its just nerves. You stare at yourself in a blank monitor screen. “You can do this…you can do this…” you repeat. You then leave the computer room, ready to do what you have to do. You don’t get far when you see Elliot walking around with two guards and Leon behind him. You also see him with his wife Brenda and their two daughters. (Of course he didn’t feel the need to make a “sacrifice” for the shelter) “Shit.” You say to yourself. You didn’t think you’d have to shoot somebody down in front of their goddamned children. You nearly turn back around to re-think this plan, but you stop yourself again. If you don’t do it now, you aren’t ever going to do it. Besides he’s seen you now anyway. “Hey! How’s our techie doin’? I’m surprised to see you out the computer room; I know how much you like to be alone. So what brings you out?” “Well, uh…there was something I really thought you needed to see…” “Oh? What is it?” “Just this.” You pull your pistol out and you hesitate just long enough for Elliot to pull Brenda in front of himself resulting in you killing her instead. Leon catches Elliot from the blow back of Brenda’s body and whisks him of to safety. One guard attempts to run at you, but is tripped up when Elliot’s two daughters run screaming past him. The other guard reaches you, but you just manage to get a shot directly in his face. Gouts of his blood splatter in your own face temporarily blinding you. The guard, who was momentarily tripped up, punches you in the face knocking you to the ground, he pulls out a knife to finish up the job, but with your hand still on your pistol, you fire a couple rounds in his chest causing him to slump to the floor beside you. You get up only to have the guard you just shot to stab you in the foot as a last act of revenge. You holler pain, and shoot him again, before pulling knife out of your foot. Meanwhile you begin to hear other people yelling, screaming and fighting. Apparently your actions have caused a small rebellion. You’ve given people the incentive again to fight back. Of course it’s going to be up to you to finish it. You limp as fast as you can attempting to stay out of the way of the major fighting, You see Elliot and Leon fighting some people and making quick work of them, you take the opportunity to open fire, blasting Elliot in the knee, he won’t be walking anywhere. Leon goes to pick him up, but you follow up with another couple shots, hitting him in the side. He goes down and attempts to crawl on top of Elliot, except Elliot kicks him away with his good leg and tries to crawl off instead. You finish off Leon and then kick Elliot in the face hurting your foot since you kicked him with the one that has the big gaping knife hole in it. Elliot turns over holding his face and addresses you. “Why? I was your friend! I didn’t do anything to you! I left you alone! Look at what you’ve done to this place! It’s descended into chaos! You’ve destroyed everything I’ve accomplished here!” “I don’t care.” You say pointing the gun at him. “WAIT! GODDAMN IT WAIT! If you kill me, you’ll be making orphans out of my daughters! Can you live with that?” “No…I guess I couldn’t…” Elliot smiles thinking he’s found a loop hole. “I suppose I’ll just have to kill them after I kill you.” you say. Elliot’s eyes widen and you gun him down before he can retort. He dies a lot quicker than he should have, but at least he’s dead. You were bluffing of course you wouldn’t shoot his children; you just wanted to see his expression before he died. It brought a feeling of satisfaction to you, like you really accomplish something before your own death… Someone stabs you multiple times in the back with a scalpel while you were standing over Elliot. You fall mortally wounded, with anarchy all around you. You don’t know if you made things better or worse, all you know is you won’t be around to find out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Can’t be any worse than what’s going on now, and you might as well be on the winning team. “Alright, I’m in. What do we do?” Elliot smiles. “Glad to have you on board, as for what we do, you’ll see. You’ll all see. Leon, and Brenda you’re all coming with me. The rest of you go back to your rooms, tomorrow your loyalty will be rewarded, I promise.” Elliot and his gang leave, you close the door and go back to sleep without thinking anymore about it. The next day you hear a lot of yelling and screaming when you wake up, you get dressed and leave your room to see what’s going on. You see a crowd of people gathered outside Ron’s door. You make you way through the crowd and see Leon holding Nina who is struggling and hysterical. Elliot is nearby speaking. “I DIDN’T DO IT! YOU’RE LYING! YOU’RE ALL LYING! (Sob)” “I saw her! I saw her lurking around last night when I heard some noises. I just wish I’d done something then! I’ll never forgive myself. I just thought she was taking a walk, little did I know she was going into Ron’s room and killed him! Why? Because she found out he was having an affair with his secret lover William!” “What the fuck…?” you say to yourself and take a quick look inside Ron’s room. You see Ron’s body lying in a pool of blood on the floor in his underwear, his throat has been slashed. Nearby is another body killed in the exact same way. Its William who you really didn’t know anything about, you guess you know he was gay now though. “Huh. I guess that explains why Ron never took any interest in Nina.” You say to yourself. Meanwhile Elliot is continuing his speech. “She even dropped the killing weapon outside her door! Brenda found it when she was going to talk to her this morning! Look!” Elliot shouts when Brenda shows everyone a bloody scalpel. “THAT’S NOT MINE! I DIDN’T DO IT! I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW RON WAS GAY!” “Oh we ALL didn’t know Nina, until we found his dead body! But we all know that YOU had a giant crush on him and practically stalked him. It isn’t hard to connect the dots here Nina! You found out he was carrying on with William and you in a jealous rage killed them both! Now granted William and Ron were breaking GZS policy with their behavior, but they didn’t deserve this! To be brutally murdered by an insane love sick stalker!” “I’M NOT A STALKER! (Sob) I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!” “Enough! It’s apparent that we need to punish you, for your heinous crimes. Though I feel you deserve death, I am in no position to determine your ultimate fate…I say the people should decide!” Some of the people in the crowd begin to chant “Death!”, and most of those are followers of Elliot. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the crowd to follow. Elliot’s got ‘em all by the balls. He has completely manipulated this herd of sheep into believing and following him, on little to no basis in evidence. They’re all just believing what he’s telling them. You know damn well he’s set this whole thing up to blame poor Nina. You can’t really do anything about it though; nobody’s going to believe you. It’s too late anyway, after a few more words from Elliot, you see Leon carry out the crowd’s wishes and break Nina’s neck. Now Elliot makes another speech. “It is done…it is regrettable, but it is done. Leon, you and some of the others please dispose of these bodies in the incinerator…I didn’t think we would have to use it so soon and under such tragic circumstances. I suppose we’ll need another shelter leader now to guide us through this dark time…well whoever is proposed, I hope they will be willing to listen to some of my ideas about how we should increase security around here so nothing like this ever happens again.” “Hey! How about you become our shelter leader Elliot? You certainly know how to take charge of a situation and you obviously are concerned about all of us!” another one of Elliot’s lackeys shouts from the crowd where upon a short time later everyone else is following again. You stand watching a complete fraud take over with mere words. It would appear that even after Armageddon some things never change. Elliot goes through a modesty routine to make him look good and then “humbly” accepts. You may have just allied yourself with a ruthless sociopath at best or a complete mad man at worst. Time will have to tell. Five years pass… Time tells that you’ve allied with a completely ruthless sociopathic mad man. The Shelter’s population has grown a little; but not excessively. In fact you’re likely to have room for quite some time. Elliot employed a vicious sterilization program to make sure of that. Having a medical background he was able to do the procedures himself with the medical supplies in the shelter. Shortly after he started employing that procedure the initial “cult of personality worship” by everyone stopped and a lot of people regained there senses, but of course by then Elliot had already entrenched himself. There were a few attempts to kill him, but those were always averted by Leon. Elliot now walks around with a couple guards at all times, with Leon is his head bodyguard. He claimed that it was for the good of the shelter and granted perhaps it is going to make things easier, but it’s obvious that not everyone was keen on this idea. Most of the people who followed Elliot from the beginning were spared this fate though. Disobedience from anyone is punished severely. However things aren’t too bad for you. You are pretty much indispensable and you keep it that way. You’re now in charge of maintaining the central GZS computer system which you primarily insist on doing by yourself. Eventually you manage to get the damn thing running at near maximum efficiency and nobody has too many problems with things breaking down anymore. You also do something else to ensure your safety which is carrying your gun secretly on you at all times. There have been times where you’ve wondered if you should kill Elliot, but you haven’t ever killed anyone before, let alone with no provocation, you don’t know if you have it in you. Also he hasn’t really bothered you, if anything you’re one of the few people he’s consistently been okay with. As long as he’s not bothering you, you don’t really feel the need to kill him. He leaves you to do your job and you leave him to do his… But is it ALWAYS going to be that way? There may come a day when for whatever reason he decides to get rid of you. Megalomaniacs aren’t particularly known for their trusting nature. > You leave it alone You decide there’s no need to kill Elliot. If the day should come where he begins to think about getting rid of you then you’ll kill him. You need a personal reason to do it; you can’t just do it on a whim. You go back to your job and think nothing more of it. Five more years pass... You’ve been down here ten years and you’re beginning to get a feeling of unease. Elliot has turned this place in a cult compound. He’s had children by all the remaining fertile women in the shelter and sterilized just about all the remaining men. He’s completely indoctrinated everyone to think the way he does at this point, anyone who was still resisting him has been dealt with. He’s got complete obedience from everyone now. You get the impression that killing Elliot wouldn’t do much good at this point, since you’d just be overwhelmed soon afterwards by his followers. He’s regained his cult of personality, and you’re just about the only remaining sane person left. Oddly Elliot still thinks highly of you, and has never tried to do anything to you either; he continues to let you do your job, with one exception. He’s been sending his older children to the computer room for you to teach them how to use and work on the central computer. “What’s this?” “Don’t touch that! That’ll be next week’s lesson!” “Can I access the game database?” “No!” “Ohhh I got a lady to appear on the screen and she’s naked!” “Stop that and pay attention! You’ve become a glorified baby sitter, you’ve gone half insane and you’re ready to put the damn gun to your own head at this point. Over the years you’ve been wondering about the surface. You wonder if it wouldn’t be better than living in place. One time when you were considering leaving you overrode the safety controls to the elevator which would allow you to bring it down. You could bring it down. All you’d have to do is gather what supplies you think you’re going to need. The only problem is thanks to the idiotic GZS shelter design; you’d need to trust Elliot’s kids to send you back up from the computer room. > You leave the shelter Fuck it, whether this plan works or not, you don’t care, all you know is you can’t stay here anymore. One thing that’s working in your favor right now is the fact that Elliot and everyone else is in the conference room (Which he turned into a “meditation room” where he’s preaching some sort of weird philosophy to everyone.) You need to be quick though. You press a few buttons to make the elevator begin its decent. You only need one kid to help you in this task, so you get the one who is the best behaved and does more or less what you say. You get Jane. “Jane I need you to come with me. As for the rest of you, go ahead and access the game database and play with whatever, just don’t touch anything on the central computer!” The kids gleefully start following your instructions while you and Jane leave. “Where are we going?” Jane asks innocently, while walking beside you. “I need to check on something back in my room, the central computer says something broke down, but I need to see if it actually did, or if it’s a glitch in the monitoring system. Now if something did, I’ll need to get in there and open up the paneling and do some re-wiring. Could be dangerous, so I need you to run to the medical room and grab a first aid kit just in case. Nobody should be in there right now, so just take it.” “I dunno, Daddy doesn’t like people taking things from there without permission…” “Its okay, this is for the good of the shelter.” Upon hearing that mantra, Jane seems to be more receptive to follow your orders. You tell her to wait by the elevator door when she gets the med kit. You rush to your room, load up on water and leave hoping that nobody has wandered by. You see Jane holding the med kit and looking in wonder at the elevator door which has opened up. Good its here and everything’s going according to plan. Now for the final stage. “Hey! This door opened up! Daddy said it shouldn’t ever open up. He says he doesn’t want anyone to leave.” “I’ll bet.” You mumble before addressing Jane properly. “Yeah, I know he wants to keep us all safe. Nothing was broken in my room, but I think something screwy is going on with the shelter’s systems and I need your help to fix it because I think you’re the only one talented enough to do it.” “Yay!” Jane says in pride. “Glad to see you’re excited, because this is REALLY important. You have to follow my instructions to the letter. You think you can do that?” “I think so.” “Okay, back in the computer room on the central computer on the right side you’ll see a green button flashing. Press that one. Then when the screen asks for confirmation, click on yes and press the enter button. You got all that? Repeat it.” “Go back to the computer room, go to the big central computer, and uh…look on the right side for a green flashing button. Press that button, then the screen will ask me a question and then I click on yes.” “Excellent, now after you do that, you might get a screen telling you the status of the elevator, telling you its going back up. That’s what we want it to do. We don’t want anyone leaving right?” “Right!” “Okay, I’m going to stay here and make sure this elevator doesn’t come down anymore, I need to open up some panels and do some re-wiring, so I’ll be taking that first aid kit now.” You take the kit from Jane and tell her to go back to the computer room and do what you told her and to continue monitoring the elevator status just to make sure it goes back up and stays there. When she’s out of sight you quickly enter the elevator, and soon the door closes and you’re on your way up. You are nervous as the elevator ascends, you half expect it to either start coming back down, or worse just stop suddenly mid way through trapping you. None of that happens though and as soon as that door opens up again, you run out into the foyer you entered ten years ago and past that into the outside world again. You see a bright light. It’s the sun; you forgot how bright it could be. You never thought you of all people would be glad to see it again. You see everyone’s cars still parked here, well almost. You can tell that few of them must’ve been taken at one time; a lot have just been plain vandalized. Your van still looks the same though, nobody in their right mind would steal that thing, and it already looks vandalized. You wonder if it would still start, but you left your keys to it in the shelter. You doubt if it would though. “Meh, I need the exercise anyway.” You cover your eyes and take a far view of your position. Nobody around, there’s not even a sound except the wind; you’re all alone as far as you can tell and this is what you missed. Once again you have peaceful solitude. You don’t know if you’ll make it out here, but anything’s better than staying in the shelter. You begin to walk…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide there’s no need to kill Elliot. If the day should come where he begins to think about getting rid of you then you’ll kill him. You need a personal reason to do it; you can’t just do it on a whim. You go back to your job and think nothing more of it. Five more years pass... You’ve been down here ten years and you’re beginning to get a feeling of unease. Elliot has turned this place in a cult compound. He’s had children by all the remaining fertile women in the shelter and sterilized just about all the remaining men. He’s completely indoctrinated everyone to think the way he does at this point, anyone who was still resisting him has been dealt with. He’s got complete obedience from everyone now. You get the impression that killing Elliot wouldn’t do much good at this point, since you’d just be overwhelmed soon afterwards by his followers. He’s regained his cult of personality, and you’re just about the only remaining sane person left. Oddly Elliot still thinks highly of you, and has never tried to do anything to you either; he continues to let you do your job, with one exception. He’s been sending his older children to the computer room for you to teach them how to use and work on the central computer. “What’s this?” “Don’t touch that! That’ll be next week’s lesson!” “Can I access the game database?” “No!” “Ohhh I got a lady to appear on the screen and she’s naked!” “Stop that and pay attention! You’ve become a glorified baby sitter, you’ve gone half insane and you’re ready to put the damn gun to your own head at this point. Over the years you’ve been wondering about the surface. You wonder if it wouldn’t be better than living in place. One time when you were considering leaving you overrode the safety controls to the elevator which would allow you to bring it down. You could bring it down. All you’d have to do is gather what supplies you think you’re going to need. The only problem is thanks to the idiotic GZS shelter design; you’d need to trust Elliot’s kids to send you back up from the computer room. > You stay Once again you decide the risk is too high and you’d get caught before you could get it accomplished. You also don’t think you can trust Elliot’s monsters to do anything to help you. The time to have acted against Elliot would’ve been long ago, this is your life now and you’re stuck. And you also realize you can’t go on waiting for the other shoe to drop. Elliot’s finally gotten around to his plan of getting rid of you, you aren’t blind. He’s sending his kids for you to teach, so that one day they’ll replace you. Then at best he’ll allow you to live as a eunuch like most of the other guys here, or he’ll just kill you and as far as you’re concerned that’s the ONLY choice he’s going to have. And if you kill him, you know you’d die soon after and someone else would just take his place. You ponder the idea of killing his children, since he seems to be a bit enthusiastic about continuing his bloodline, but you know he’d just have more and you don’t think you could kill a child, at least not directly....then it suddenly occurs to you what you can do. Something you can do to shut down the whole show. “Sonofabitch! Why didn’t I think of that before?!” you say out loud. “Ohhh! You said a bad word!” one of the children shouts, causing you look over at them all. “You bet your ass I did! Hey kids do you find this boring?” “Yeah.” They all say in unison. “Would you like to never have to do it ever again?” “Yeah!” “Would you all like to see a neat trick instead?” “YEAH!” “Okay! Brace yourselves!” You whip out your pistol and start blasting the central computer, causing it to spark, shutter, and all other kinds of bad things before it shuts down completely taking all the shelter’s power with it. All the children scream and run off while you’re doing it. Screaming yelling by other shelter members in the distance soon follows, you can hear footsteps running towards your position, everyone’s probably wondering what’s going on. You take a mental count of how many bullets you used up. “Let’s see…oh good, I got one left.” You point the gun at your head and pull the trigger.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>GZS probably has some sort of scanner that does a little more than just scan your body, so just not having the gun on your person most likely isn’t going to work. You get the idea that the machine is probably not going to scan the ceiling though, so you get out your duct tape and fix it to the pistol, you then climb on top of the automatic teller and jump up to stick the pistol on the ceiling. You end up falling on your ass, but you succeed. You then press some buttons on the machine, where it proceeds to ask your name and how you’re going to pay. You type in your name and insert you debit card where upon it drains most of your account. The door you stepped through sudden shuts and a hum is heard. You take a deep breath and hope for the best. “Now scanning for unauthorized items…Scanning…Scanning…Scanning complete. You have been allowed entry, the elevator doors will now open, your room number is 23, thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” an emotionless electronic voice remarks as the elevator doors open. It worked! You quickly climb back up on to the teller and jump up to grab your pistol, (this time able to maintain your balance better) toss it into the elevator opening and then rush in with all your belongings and take the long elevator trip down. When you get to bottom the elevator door opens to large sterile hallway with lines of other closed metal doors on either side As soon as you enter, the elevator doors slam shut and you hear it going back up, you also notice there aren’t any buttons to call it back…before you’re able to worry about that little detail you’re met by a few of your new neighbors. One is some tall skinny guy another is a brunette woman who begins talking to you. “Hey, another new neighbor! My name is Nina and this is Ron, what’s your name?” She is entirely too fucking friendly given the situation. “Why aren’t there call buttons back on the elevator?” you ask ignoring her question. “Huh? Oh I guess it’s a safety feature. The elevator automatically goes back up so the other people can get in as quickly as possible. Ron suggested that they might’ve thought someone would deliberately try to keep the elevator down here to prevent anyone else from seeking shelter. Though I can’t honestly imagine that anyone would do such a horrible thing.” “Been living on earth long Nina?” you ask rhetorically. “Great, so I’m basically trapped down here due to the brilliant engineering minds of GZS…so is it just us so far or are their other people here too?” ”There are a few others, if you come with us we can introduce you to…” “Maybe later, look we’re gonna be stuck down here for a long time so I’ll get to know everyone soon enough, right now I just want to go to my room and rest.” “Erm, okay…” Ron says as you push past them both. You head to your room which is equipped with the basic requirements; food and water dispenser, shower, bed, and a cabinet. (You hide your pistol in your mattress) There’s a standard Shelter Operations Manual sitting on the table as well as a Shelter Booklet about socialization, rules, guidelines and such, both of which you skim through every now and then. There’s a big public recreation area and a couple of other public rooms where your neighbors gather, but you stay in your room and keep to yourself for the most part. Sometimes in the middle of the night when nobody else is around you’ll watch the TV in the living area to keep up on current events. You hear other people arriving over the month. Ron and Nina greet them all, you can tell those two are going to be the ones to “organize” shit and probably try to decide what’s “best” for everyone. Always saying stuff that they read in the booklet. “Fucking busy bodies…” you say as you fall asleep watching the world in its death throes on TV… Monday 8:00 AM “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” You groggily wake up and see a test pattern on TV. This is it. You feel a small tremor and then you turn off the TV, just as Nina and Ron come walking in. “What was that?” Nina asks. “Test pattern, I think Armageddon arrived.” You answer. “What?! I can’t believe it!” Ron exclaims. “Why are you so surprised? I mean that was the whole point of coming down here right?” “Yeah, but I dunno…I just wasn’t prepared for it actually happening.” “Christ, Ron I’ve overheard you say you were the first one in this goddamn shelter, you of all people should’ve long gotten used to the idea of living down here.” “What is your problem? You been nothing but hostile since you’ve got here!” Nina exclaims. “My problem is I’m stuck down here with a bunch of people I don’t really know and if you two are any indication I don’t want to know.” “How did you even qualify to get a room down here?” “Good clean living I guess, so is there supposed to be something special we do now?” “Uh, yeah I think so, it mentions something in the booklet I was reading that came with the shelter, we’re supposed to gather everyone and tell them.” “Okay well I guess you guys go do that then. I’m just going to check on something here.” “Okay, but we’re supposed to have some sort of vote to decide on how this place is going to be run, if you don’t show up you don’t get a vote.” Ron reminds you. “I know Ron, I’ve read the booklet.” You answer unenthusiastically. Ron and Nina leave you and go tell the others of the situation and follow other things it states in the booklet. You’re wondering if you should even stay down here. All these people seem completely different than you. You wish there was someway to call the elevator back down, but after checking a GZS computer it states that it won’t come back until it detects that the surface is safe for habitation again…which basically means not in your lifetime. It’s probably just as well since the surface probably isn’t the safest place you’d want to be, lord knows what the hell it looks like now, not to mention the radiation factor. Then again you’d still like the option to leave if you wanted to. You go back to your room, read and enjoy the solitude until Nina comes to get you. “Hey! You didn’t show up for the meeting! We’re discussing which ways this place could be run, are you coming or what?” > You be obstinate “I don’t feel like going anywhere, you guys do what you want.” You say, but Nina insists on invading your space. “Hey look, I know you don’t wanna do shit, but unfortunately we’re in a real deadlock and we could really use your vote to break a tie.” “HEY! I told you I’m not going anywhere, now get the hell out of my room and stop invading my privacy, unless you’re looking to get invaded by me.” Nina is offended by that remark and starts to hit you. It doesn’t really hurt, but it’s annoying and stings enough for you to start blocking her. “How dare you say something like that to me!” “Stop it! Get outta here before I throw you out, you crazy bitch!” While you begin to get up to avoid her slaps, your shift on the mattress causes your pistol to fall out on to the floor, Nina notices, stops hitting you and backs off. “Oh my god is that a gun?!” “Well, uh…yeah.” You say picking it up. Nina suddenly runs off thinking her life is in danger, you soon here her yelling “Help!” and similar cries. You immediately go chasing after her, in an attempt to reassure her that you’re not some murderer. You see her run into the conference room and follow, when you arrive, a leg trips you up as soon as you enter causing you to slam face first on the floor. Then somebody tries to take the gun away from you, its Elliot. You feel a hefty boot kick you in ribs and knock the wind out of you, and a couple of other people start dog piling on top of you. Nina is ranting to everyone saying you tried to kill her. The fact that you came running in here with a gun, doesn’t exactly persuade them from thinking differently. Meanwhile you lose grip of the gun and Elliot takes it from you, but “accidentally” shoots you in the face with it. “Oh my god! I didn’t mean to kill him! He wouldn’t let go of it!” are the last words you hear.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as you’re not keen on sharing, you’re less keen on the idea of being shoved in an experimental shelter. Sounds like they didn’t work all the bugs out of the system, and it’s filled with hi-tech equipment? God help you if something broke down. You wouldn’t know how to fix it. At least if you’re with other people, there’s bound to be people with different skills to compliment each other. Of course everyone could just be incompetent like they usually are. You’re not going to dwell on it too much, you’ll take the safer choice; maybe it won’t be so bad. “Okay I’ll take a room in the Community Shelter.” “Wonderful sir! You won’t regret this decision! Now I’ll need to know some vital information about yourself before I can direct you to our nearest Community shelter in your area where upon you shall pay the automatic teller just inside the foyer of it so that the main door can open and you will be able to enter your new residence during Armageddon! Okay let’s start with your name sir.” You give out your name, address and such. It’s all pretty routine stuff until the questions get more personal. “Have you ever committed a felony sir?” “No.” “Do you have a history of mental illness sir?” “No.” “Are you a drug addict or smoke sir?” “No.” “Are you handicapped in anyway sir?” “No.” “Do you believe in God sir?” “Huh? Uh…sure I guess.” “Hmmm…okay…” the voice says a bit disapprovingly. “Do you have any physical diseases or suffered from any in the past sir?” “No.” “Do you have AIDS or any other STDs sir?” “What the hell? I just told you I don’t have any diseases! Sexual or otherwise!” “Are you sterile sir?” “What?!” “I said are you shooting blanks sir?” “What difference does that make?” “Please sir, just answer the question.” “(Sigh) No. As far as I know, I’m packing a loaded fucking weapon. I know because I had to take an overly thorough physical for work recently.” “Wonderful sir! Okay are you a homosexual or ever had homosexual feelings?” “WHAT THE FUCK?! NO!!” “Sir, I told you before don’t take that tone with me.” “Well you’re asking me a lot of fucking personal questions! Why do you need to know all this shit?” “Sir, as I said, we are a family orientated business, we aren’t just a money motivated corporation, we are interested in the survival and well being of the human race. The human race can’t thrive if people don’t meet the necessary…requirements. How can civilization be re-built if children aren’t being born? I mean would you want to live in a society built by drug addicted mentally ill homosexual criminals? That’s the reason the world is ending now, because people have turned away from a righteous way of living!” “Look I’d live in a fucking society with transsexual midgets if it’ll get me to the fucking shelter already!” “Hmmm, well despite that comment, your non-committal answer on the belief in God, and your overall anti-social tone, you do qualify for one of our rooms in the Community Shelter in your area. I can only hope some of the other more sociable residents rub off on you, and cause a change in your personality. I’ll give you the location of the shelter sir.” You are given the location of the Community Shelter which you are surprised to find out is closer then you think, it shouldn’t take too long for you drive there. You are then given the price, which is pretty steep, but you can afford it. Besides if the world is ending it’s not like you’re really going to need money anymore. Which makes you wonder why GZS is in business at all. What’s the point of going to the trouble of building bomb shelters for Armageddon if all the profit they make is most likely going to be useless in the aftermath? Oh well that’s not your concern, you’re just glad you passed the damn interrogation and got into the shelter. Of course now you’re subjected to some last minute rules. “Okay sir, you are now in the system and registered. You may move into the Shelter at anytime as long you pay the fee required to the automatic teller as previously described to you. If you don’t pay, you can’t get in obviously. Cash, check, or debit card are acceptable. NO Credit Cards will be accepted! Now then some rules. You do not have to bring anything with you, but it is recommended that you do bring your own clothing if you wish to wear something different as the days go by. Food and drinkable liquids are acceptable, but not necessary. Do not bring in private medical supplies or repair equipment, the shelter has been stocked with those items, we do not want people bringing in potential weapons or illegal drugs. Speaking of which, DO NOT attempt to bring in any kind of weapon! Guns and knives are strictly prohibited! Attempting to bring in either one will result in non-admittance of the shelter! Same goes for drugs of any kind. Alcohol is frowned upon, but accepted. There WILL be a machine to scan you before you’re allowed to enter, so do not think you will be able to sneak anything in! Now then I trust our transaction has ended. If you have anymore questions please contact our customer service line. Good day sir, may your first child be a masculine one and thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” That’s it, all you have to do is get what stuff you want to take with you and move in, might as well do it now, no sense in waiting until you see the nuclear cloud. You wonder if you shouldn’t try to “beat the system” by sneaking your weapon in though. Ultimately you decide this is survival. You need every advantage you can get. You don’t know what kind of people you’re going to be stuck with, so you take your pistol with you and a few “non-lethal” supplies such as duct tape. You also you just pack some clothing, food and water. You then set off on your way. After a couple days of driving you finally arrive at the location that you were given. It’s in a fairly desolate place with a single solid metal structure with a door standing there. There’s also a few other cars parked nearby, you obviously aren’t the first one here. You park your van and enter the structure with the items you brought with you. You’re in a small foyer with an elevator door and ATM like machine; you’re guessing that’s the automatic teller you were told about. Before you start pressing buttons you need to figure out how you’re going to get your pistol through the scanning process, because you can be sure if you fail something nasty will happen… > You just drop the pistol so it is not on your person You figure you’ll just drop you pistol and then after the scan you’ll just grab it and head into the elevator. After doing this you type in your name and insert you debit card where upon it drains most of your account. The door you stepped through sudden shuts and a hum is heard. “Now scanning for unauthorized items…Scanning…Scanning…Scanning... WEAPON LOCATED IN FOYER! ACCESS DENIED! GZS SECURITY FORCE HAS BEEN DEPLOYED!” Your first reaction is to escape, but the front doors have auto locked and the elevator doors are definitely not open. Shooting the door won’t do any good either; it’s thick and solid steel. The only thing you can do is resign yourself to your fate. You pick up your pistol, slump into the corner of the foyer and wait, wondering what’s going to come next. Surprisingly you don’t have to wait long; you soon hear movement and voices by the outside door followed by a click and the door opening. “GET OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP AND LEAVE YOUR WEAPON INSIDE!” Feeling a little nervous and scared you do exactly that. When you exit, suddenly a spray of bullets is fired from one of the GZS security guards. You’re hit several times in the body and fall to the ground. Amazingly you’re still alive, but you’re in no condition to do anything except listen to the security guards argue. “You goddamn asshole! That’s the THIRD person you shot! I told you CAN’T fire on anyone unless they’re holding a weapon! Fuck, we’re gonna be buried in paper work because of you!” “Yeah well he looked like he was going for one.” “He had his fucking hands up! (Sigh) Nevermind, is he dead?” “No, he looks like he’s still breathing…so uh what do we do? We never had one that survived before.” “Drop him off at the emergency room.” “Can’t we just finish him off? It would be a hell of a lot easier.” “Maybe, but the GZS guidelines say that anyone who violates the policy agreement is subject to a lawsuit. He broke it, by trying to sneak in a weapon, I’m sure management or whoever is gonna want to sue his ass for all the remaining money and assets he owns. So keeping him alive is in GZS best interest. Hell, with their connections they’ll probably figure out how to sue him for the hospital stay. Why do you think I got pissed off when you killed the others? You can’t sue dead people!” “Alright, alright get off my ass. Let’s move him into the van before he bleeds to death.” At this point you fall unconscious. When you wake up you’re lying in bed with a hose up your nose and several other tubing going into various places of your body. Apparently you have a private room though; GZS is probably adding that charge to your lawsuit as well. You’re most likely going to be living in a cardboard box by the time you leave this place, but you don’t really care at this point anymore. As you slowly recover occasionally you’re visited by some lawyer types who spout some legalese at you, but you’re so zonked out on pain medication half the time and fading in and out of consciousness you can’t even pay attention. You spend most of your conscious time in the hospital watching the TV in the corner of the room. The state of the world isn’t getting any better. Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up and hear a loud continuous beeping noise. It’s a test pattern on TV. “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” This is it. You manage to lift yourself off the bed as you hear commotion going on in the hallway. After turning off the TV you look out the window and see the city practically in chaos. This hospital room doesn’t seem so bad now; at least you’ve gotten some peace. You also can’t help but to laugh, GZS won’t be able to get anymore money from you now. You continue to stare out the window laughing and then gaze upward towards the sky. You see a bright light and then nothing at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fuck work, the world’s about to end soon and you need to prepare yourself for that! You immediately call up the number that the infomercial mentioned. You know the damn thing by heart since you’ve been watching it night after night. Eventually a chipper female voice picks up on the other end. “Ground Zero Survival Inc. How may I help you?” “Uh, yeah I’d like to buy a bomb shelter.” “That’s wonderful sir! In these uncertain times you can never be too careful and we here at GZS are thrilled that you’ve chosen to trust us in your continued existence! You and your family’s utmost protection is as important to us is it is to you! Our shelters are the best you’ll find and, we have many shelters still available at various prices, but really can you put a price on your loved ones protection? Of course not! So I’m sure you’ll want one of our top of the line models that are still left! Okay so how many are in your family?” “Um, just me.” “Oh…” the voice suddenly gets less chipper. “What?” “Sir, don’t you have ANY family? Like a wife at least, maybe a cousin?” “No, not really.” “Oh dear…” “WHAT!?” “Well sir, its just that, we here at GZS are a family friendly business and we feel that the survival of the human race will best be served by those who have a strong sense of family ties and a respect for the family unit. We aren’t in the business of selling shelters to those of low moral fiber sir…” “What the fuck?! Just because I’m single I gotta be some sort of low life? I’m not luring fuckin’ little girls into my car with lollipops! I have a fucking job and pay my goddamn taxes!” “Sir, I don’t like you taking that tone with me when there isn’t any call for it and I would appreciate it if you didn’t blaspheme, I’m a God fearing woman. Now then I understand your frustration, but there’s nothing we can do. Our shelters were primarily built for families of at least four. To put singles in them wouldn’t be fair to families that have children who shall surely be the ones to rebuild civilization, not to mention it would be a waste of resources. A single person would have an overstock of food and water since as I said we primarily cater to families and stock the shelters with families in mind.” “I fail to see how me having MORE than enough food and water is a bad thing…” “I see sir, so you would be selfish and deprive a possible family of survival?” “I didn’t say that! And wait a minute; wouldn’t I be doing that anyway if I had a family of my own?” “Yes, but it would be different.” “How?” “You would have a family sir.” You’re about ready to throw the phone against the wall in frustration. “So basically what you’re telling me is you’re not selling me a shelter.” “Ah now I didn’t say that sir! Since you’re interested in buying our product and by your previous outburst I can tell you ARE a productive member of society. And it is only due to your poor social skills that you have been unable to take the necessary steps to have a family of your own! But never fear, GZS HAS kept your type in mind!” “Gee, thanks…” “You’re quite welcome sir! We have the Community Shelters for singles! It is basically a giant shelter filled with singles such as yourself. You will be given a separate room to live in, but everything else you must share. Don’t worry we have stocked these shelters with supplies to last for years! It is our hope that nature will take its course and when it comes time to return to the surface a fully functional tight knit community of families will emerge to rebuild civilization once again!” Sharing isn’t something you’re good at. You like your privacy and your space and your solitude. You can’t imagine sharing stuff when your very survival is at stake. “Look, don’t you have ANYTHING I can get by myself?” you demand. “Are you serious sir? You actually want to be alone?” the voice says as if you must be nuts to ask that kind of question. “If possible yeah.” “Well…I shouldn’t really tell you sir, because you snapped at me earlier, but it is my job to make sure any potential customer is serviced to the best of my ability. That and the fact that these other Special Shelters we have are a bit…experimental.” “Experimental? What do you mean?” “Well I don’t know too much about these Special Shelters myself sir, all I know is they have been equipped with the latest technology and VERY expensive. Anyone can buy one as long as they have the money to do so.” “Well how experimental are these things exactly?” “As I said sir, I know little about these Special Shelters other than they are equipped with the latest technology. GZS has run tests and they are considered very safe and will protect you in the coming apocalypse, however due to time constraints GZS may have missed a few minor things, and as such we are legally required to warn…er inform potential customers before they buy them.” > You buy the Special Shelter Experimental or not, it sure sounds better than being crammed into a shelter with a bunch of other people like sardines. At least you don’t have to worry about having to share anything, and if something goes wrong well you’ll deal with it when the times comes like you normally do. Or maybe you won’t. You aren’t going to dwell on it to much. “Okay I’ll take the Special Shelter.” “You will? I mean, that’s wonderful sir! You won’t regret this decision! Now I’ll need to know some vital information about yourself before I can direct you to our nearest experimental shelter in your area where upon you shall pay the automatic teller just inside the foyer of it so that the main door can open and you will be able to enter your new residence during Armageddon! Okay let’s start with your name sir.” You give out your name, address and such. It’s all pretty routine stuff. “Okay well that’s about all the information I need. I’ll give you the price and the location of the shelter sir.” You are given the location of the shelter which you are surprised to find out is closer then you think, it shouldn’t take too long for you drive there. You are then given the price, which is pretty steep, quite frankly its going to break you. However if the world is ending it’s not like you’re really going to need money anymore. Which makes you wonder why GZS is in business at all. What’s the point of going to the trouble of building bomb shelters for Armageddon if all the profit they make is most likely going to be useless in the aftermath? Oh well that’s not your concern, you’re just glad you managed to get a shelter. The voice gives you some last minute information. “Okay sir, you are now in the system and registered. You may move into your shelter at anytime as long you pay the fee required to the automatic teller as previously described to you. If you don’t pay, you can’t get in obviously. Cash, check, or debit card are acceptable. NO Credit Cards will be accepted! You may take whatever you wish with you into the shelter; it will be your new home after all. There will be an owner’s manual provided inside your new shelter. Any problems you encounter you should be able to troubleshoot yourself if you read and follow the manual. I’m sure any problems will not be life threatening sir, and there has been a back up system also installed in the unlikely event of total shelter failure since your survival is our foremost concern at GZS! Now then I trust our transaction has ended. If you have anymore questions please contact our customer service line. Good day sir, may you maintain relatively stable mental health and thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” That’s it, all you have to do is get what stuff you want to take with you and move in. You might as well pack your things now, no sense in waiting until you see the nuclear cloud. You pack up some extra food and water, a repair kit (since it sounds like you’ll probably need one) some basic medical supplies, and a few other useful items. Oh and your pistol. Still, part of you is reluctant to leave the “real world”. You wonder if you shouldn’t stick around a bit longer to see if the climate changes…you’d hate to spend your life savings and the world not be bombed into a nuclear wasteland. > You leave immediately You leave immediately; things aren’t going to get better you know that, in fact you’re glad, because in a strange way the idea of not having to live in the world as it exists today anymore is weirdly appealing to you. After a couple days of driving you finally arrive at the location that you were given. It’s in a fairly desolate place with a single solid metal structure with a door standing there. You park your van and enter the structure with the items you brought with you. You’re in a small foyer with an elevator door and ATM like machine; you’re guessing that’s the automatic teller you were told about. You press some buttons on the machine, where it proceeds to ask your name and how you’re going to pay. You type in your name and insert you debit card where upon it completely drains your account. “You have been allowed entry, the elevator doors will now open, thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” an emotionless electronic voice remarks as the elevator doors open. You enter with all your belongings and take the long elevator trip down. When you get to bottom the elevator door opens to a sterile, but obviously large and well equipped living area. As soon as you enter, the elevator doors slam shut and you hear it going back up, you also notice there aren’t any buttons to call it back…before you’re able to worry about that little detail you’re met by another electronic voice…it actually sounds a lot like the female voice you were talking to on the phone… “Welcome to Ground Zero Survival Shelter Number 23! You will find that this shelter has been equipped to serve your needs in the event of total World destruction! Due to power saving design and money back guarantee concerns, fully functional shelter facilities will not be available until Armageddon occurs. Until then you will find all other doors firmly locked, please do not attempt to open them. I have detected that Armageddon has not yet occurred as 84% of the countries on Earth still maintain a stable centralized government system and 70% of the land surface is still habitable. However the world conflict rate is 92%. Prediction that Armageddon will occur in a month or less. This shelter will become fully functional at that time. In the unlikely event that Armageddon does not occur and the conflict rate drops to an acceptable level, the elevator will return and you will be able to leave this shelter and receive half of your money back from the automatic teller in the foyer on the surface.” “Wait a minute didn’t I talk to you on the phone?” you ask the voice, not really knowing if it’s going to answer back. “…I don’t think so, as far as my databanks are concerned this is the first time I have been in contact with a human since I was built sir. Is it okay if I call you sir?” “Sure, go ahead.” You answer. “Wonderful sir!” “Hey, so I can’t explore this damn shelter even though I paid for it? I have to stay in this living area?” “Not until doomsday sir. As I said this is to conserve my power and also to prevent buyer abuse in case of non-Earth destruction. Do not worry sir; this living area alone can support your needs until the appointed time. There is a basic food and water dispenser on the right wall.” “Buyer abuse?” “Yes, think about it, here you are using up all the wonderful facilities that this shelter has to offer for months on end while the Earth teeters on the brink of destruction then suddenly through a miracle hostilities cease. You then would be able to leave, get half of your money back and go about your life. You think it would be fair to GZS if we let you get away with basically having a luxury vacation on our dime? Just because we are in the business of your survival, does not mean we in the business of being exploited sir” “But…I paid for this!” “And so you did sir, and you will be able to use ALL the facilities when the time is right, until then you can enjoy the living area, oh and the bathroom sir.” One of the metal doors opens up to reveal a normal (And again sterile) bathroom. “Gee thanks.” “You’re quite welcome sir! After all I’m here to serve you!” “You kept saying I would be able to leave if the world doesn’t blow up…can’t I just leave at any time?” The voice doesn’t answer for awhile. “…I’m sorry sir I’m puzzled by your inquiry.” “Can’t I leave anytime I want?” “Why would you want to do that sir? I have been designed to keep you safe from harm as soon as you paid and entered the elevator. The current world situation is very grim and most likely terminal sir. Allowing you to leave at this point would be a severe violation in my programming.” You suddenly realize you’re here now regardless of whether you’re having second thoughts about this situation. You can see why these shelters were “experimental” now. You try not to think about the potential waist high shit you might have gotten yourself into, and instead try to think about how you might’ve just avoided becoming a statistic in a nuclear exchange. You resign yourself to your current fate and start unpacking your stuff. You could do with a little distraction from your current predicament, so you turn on a TV monitor that has been provided. The fact that the world’s situation hasn’t gotten any better seems to cheer you up. You spend most of your time on the couch, watching TV and exploring what you can. You’re glad you brought some of your own food, because the dispenser food doesn’t taste all that great. You’re guessing it’s just supposed to keep you alive, nothing more. As the days blur into the next, the shelter and TV you apprised of the world situation, which is only getting worse. It looks like you’ve made the right decision… Monday 8:00 AM “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” You groggily wake up and see a test pattern on TV. This is it. Suddenly the TV turns itself off. “Armageddon has arrived sir! This shelter is now fully functional! Please explore and enjoy all the things this facility has to offer!” the voice beams. At this point all the previously closed metal doors in the room unlock and open (Except for the elevator ones of course) After taking a quick check, you find you now have a small library, a computer room and a proper bedroom. When you return to the living area the voice chirps up again. “Sir, I highly recommend that you read the manual to familiarize yourself with everything properly first, so you aren’t just fumbling around.” A small panel in the wall opens up to reveal a hefty owner’s manual. You were wondering where the hell that thing was, since you were told you were going to be provided with one when you talked to the voice on the phone. > You read the manual Maybe it’s because you’ve gotten so used to the idea of being in the living area, you’re more willing to lounge about there. You take the manual and start reading. While you’re in the middle of it, the voice suddenly pipes up again. “Sorry to bother your reading sir, but would you like to meet some of your new neighbors?” “Neighbors?” ”Yes sir, I’m sure as you have already read, this shelter is equipped with a very high tech computer with loads of storage, information and…” ”Yeah, yeah, what does that have to do with this neighbor business?” “In an effort to cater to all its customer’s needs, GZS is well aware that socialization is vital to human mental health. Studies have shown that humans in long periods of isolation often go mad, so that is why this facility has been linked in communication to other ones within your area. You might think of it as a chatroom type form of communication commonly used on the old world internet! If you wish there is also a camera type device if you wish to show yourself to your new neighbors. We have found humans feel someone is more real to them if they can actually see who they are talking to and thus have a greater connection.” “So how many people are there?” “This shelter merely has been fitted with a basic communication system to other similar shelters, and only then those in your area. For example this is Shelter number 23. Your neighbors are only numbers 20 through 25, those being the closest ones to your location. While obviously there were other shelters of this type built, it was not cost effective to link all the shelters together in such a manner given our timeframe to finish these before Armageddon, so only a few were linked together at a time. Do not worry sir; it has been found that six people are sufficient to sustain enough conversation to prevent mental failure due to isolation.” “Wonderful, so does this make me the Professor?” you ask rhetorically. “Pardon sir?” “Nevermind, look I don’t have to talk to these people do I?” “…well no sir, but I fail to see why you’d intentionally want to stay isolated.” “Duh, that was kind of the point of buying a shelter for myself.” “…I see, well I can’t force you sir, but I would like you to reconsider…I’m just trying to look out for your physical as well as mental welfare as per my programming…” If you didn’t know better the voice almost sounds a bit hurt by your decision. “Oh alright, I’ll go talk to them. Can’t be any worse than the idiots I used argue with on the internet.” “Wonderful sir! I trust you know your way to the computer room. You will find that a designation name has already been chosen for you.” You make your way to the computer room and take a better look at it this time. It’s filled with lots of multi-media entertainment. You’re glad they gave you a wide variety of movies to chose from. You sit down in front of a fairly wide computer screen which has already been turned on for you; you guess the Shelter is really keen on the idea of you being social. You don’t turn the camera on though, in fact you turn it away from you completely, you’re not quite ready for THAT level of socialization yet. You log on and begin typing. OmegaMan23: Hello? Is there anyone out there? RockerChick20: Hey! I’m here! OmegaMan23: Oh. Okay. Hi. RockerChick20: Hi yourself! This is just like a chatroom! Isn’t this great? OmegaMan23: Uh yeah real great. Job24: Hey I’m here too; um do you guys have any movies or something? OmegaMan23: Yeah I got a shitload of movies, DVDs and VHS. Most of them I even like. RockerChick20: That’s weird, I don’t have too many movies, I have a lot of music CDs though. Job24: What kind of music? RockerChick20: All types, but I have a lot of them. Why? Job24: I don’t have any movies except those with Pauly Shore in them! He fucking sucks! And all my music CDs are New Age Yanni type shit! Thank god I have some games to play! OmegaMan23: I’ve got some games too, but for some reason I have nothing but Gangsta Rap and Hair Metal as far as music goes oh wait I also have some Classical. Weird. What the hell I thought these Shelters were all stocked the same? MissKitty25: Apparently not, I have nothing but porno and not all of it is regular porno either, some of it is quite…bizarre. Job24: Lucky. CaseyJones22: Hey guys when do the Shelters become fully functional? OmegaMan23: What the hell are you talking about? CaseyJones22: I mean when do the rest of the doors to the place open up, besides the bathroom I mean. RockerChick20: What do you mean? The doors were all open to begin with. Job24: Yeah they were always open. MissKitty25: Yeah. OmegaMan23: They weren’t open for me! I was stuck in the living area until the nukes hit! Wait a minute how are you using the computer if you’re stuck in the living area? In fact if the doors were all open for you guys haven’t you been in contact with each other before? Job24: My computer didn’t link up to you guys until just now. I could use it to play games and such, but I couldn’t do anything else with it. When I turned it on today I got a message saying that the communications to you guys was operational and it said I could take the opportunity to say hi to my five new neighbors. RockerChick20: Sounds like what happened to me. MissKitty25: Same here. CaseyJones22: Me too. Oh and you guys must have different shelter designs because my computer is in the living area. OmegaMan23: The Shelter never told me anything about this stuff and it’s been quite talkative since I’ve been here let me tell you. CaseyJones22: The Shelter talks? Now what the hell are you talking about? OmegaMan23: I’m talking about the Shelter, you know the overly chipper voice that tries so hard to please you? CaseyJones22: You’ve lost me dude. You been smokin’? OmegaMan23: NO! I’m talking about the Shelter voice! It’s a computer or something that talks to me! It’s always trying to be friendly! Don’t you guys hear it? RockerChick20: Um, no. Job24: No talking computer here. MissKitty25: You sure you’re feeling okay and aren’t imagining things? I mean we all were isolated for a long time before we were able to talk to one another. I know sometimes I would talk to myself, maybe… OmegaMan23: Look, I’m not fucking crazy alright?! The damn thing even insisted that I talk to you fuckers! CaseyJones22: Okay dude calm down we believe you! Maybe you got some sort of extra special shelter; I mean from the sound of it we all don’t have the same things. RockerChick20: Hey shouldn’t there be one more person here? The message said five new neighbors on my computer; so far I’ve only met four of you guys. OmegaMan23: Yeah we’re missing number 21, whatever his or her name is. Shadow21: I’m right here; I’ve just been reading the conversation. OmegaMan23: Oh really? Well you mind announcing your presence next time? Shadow21: I only speak when necessary, besides if any of you bothered to check you would’ve seen my name listed on the active list. Job24: Hey what kind of movies do you have? Well you’ve met your neighbors, the question is if you want to bother talking to them on a regular basis or not. You did find their information interesting though. > You continue to talk to them as frequently as possible Your curiosity is peaked and you take the opportunity to talk with the others whenever you can. The Shelter is certainly pleased you are being social. Months pass and you all learn more about each other more or less. (Though only RockerChick has even hinted at turning on the cameras to see each other visually) You have to admit though you’re a little more interested in what’s going on their shelters. From what you can tell RockerChick has a shelter similar to yours with just a few differences in equipment. Her personality is damn near as “chipper” as the Shelter. She likes talking with everyone, but seems to like speaking to you a lot more. Must be your “winning” personality. Job’s shelter is a lot like yours too except he’s constantly complaining about various things breaking down and he has to fix. Last time he said he damn near got crushed by his own bed when it suddenly rose back up into the wall when he was sleeping. He doesn’t have much in entertainment either, so he’s always glad to talk with anybody. Mainly to complain. CaseyJones’ Shelter STILL hasn’t become fully functional! He’s effectively trapped in the living area and bathroom. He has his computer to talk to everyone but little else. He doesn’t really seem to care though; apparently he brought a shitload of weed with him and has somehow created a small hydroponics pot farm in his bathtub (He doesn’t see the need to bathe since he’s not in contact with anyone) He says he plans on spending the Aftermath completely stoned. Job can’t understand why Casey isn’t freaking out about his situation. Apparently MissKitty has a more “homey” type shelter. From the description it sounds like it’s bigger than any of yours and not quite as “sterile”. She has a hot tub in her bathroom and some other luxury type items. MissKitty tends to brag a lot and is rather an uninteresting person other than the weird porn she watches and describes sometimes. Job often complains that it’s wasted on her. As for Shadow, he or she barely ever talks. Shadow makes his presence known, but then just lurks and doesn’t say anything. Most of the others forget he’s even there, but you always keep it in the back of your mind and will address him when you feel the need. So far the only thing he’s mentioned about his shelter is how dim the lighting is. One thing that you’ve been tempted to do is use the private feature and talk to one of the others in private. The only ones that interest you are RockerChick and Shadow though. The first because she seems friendly with you. The second because you’re kind of suspicious of Shadow and you’re hoping to learn more. > You talk more in depth with RockerChick No point in spending the Aftermath worrying about shit you can’t do anything about, you might as well focus on what little chance you’re going to have of female companionship again. You take the opportunity to ask to talk to RockerChick more privately one day, unsurprisingly she agrees. RockerChick20: Hey! You’re the first person to want to talk privately to me! OmegaMan23: You’re kidding; I would’ve thought the other guys would’ve been jumping at the chance to talk to you. RockerChick20: Well I see you’re the charming type, that’s alright though I like that. But sadly no, the other guys haven’t. I think Casey’s so busy getting stoned most of the time that any extra effort on his part would be too much for him and Job is too busy complaining about his latest shelter problems. And if Shadow is a guy, he’s been pretty tight lipped as usual…although MissKitty has been talking with me a lot lately. I get the impression she’s been wanting to see a lot more of me if you know what I mean, but she’s a bit too self-involved and doesn’t seem that interesting. Maybe if I didn’t have any other options, she might have a chance. OmegaMan23: Wow, I guess it’s a good thing I made my move then. RockerChick20: Guess so. So! Are you just going to continue being a faceless entity or do I finally get to see you and learn your real name? OmegaMan23: Well, okay, but only if you do it too. RockerChick20: Well of course, we’ll do it together! On the count of three! One, two… And true to both of your words you turn on your cameras and see each other for the first time. After telling her your name, she tells you her real name is Becky. She certainly is attractive, but she seems a lot younger than you, like barely out of her teens, if that! You wonder how the hell she could afford one these Shelters since you’re probably at least ten years older than her and with your salary you could barely afford the damn thing. OmegaMan23: If you don’t mind me asking how old are you? RockerChick20: Nineteen! How old are you? OmegaMan23: Probably old enough to be considered a pervert to be talking to a girl as young as you. How did you afford one of these shelters, I went broke getting into this thing, not that it matters now. RockerChick20: Oh my parents had a lot of money and they gave me a lot of it. I registered about one during one of my spending sprees; I didn’t actually expect to ever use it. I even thought it would be a cool place to gather all my friends where we could party one day. OmegaMan23: So if you didn’t expect to use it, what changed your mind? The slow realization that the world was going to shit on TV? RockerChick20: Not really, I barely paid attention to the news. I ended up getting into a fight with my parents and ran away from home for the umpteenth time. I usually didn’t go far and stayed with friends, but I really wanted to try to worry them, so I figured I’d use this shelter for a little while! Little did I realize that I’d be trapped down here, I couldn’t even get my cell phone to work to call out. After panicking for a few days, I resigned myself to thinking that my parent’s might figure out that I came here since they knew I registered for one of these and were pissed off about it. As I watched TV in the passing days that’s when I started seeing how bad things were then one day the TV displayed nothing but snow and I knew what had happened. The world blew up. Sometimes I wonder if my parents were still looking for me… OmegaMan23: I’m sure they were. RockerChick20: Maybe. It got really bad the last time. They were control freaks anyway…they didn’t really care about me; they just wanted to run my life. I don’t wanna talk about them, so what about you? OmegaMan23: What about me what? RockerChick20: What’s your story silly! Surely being as old as you are, you have some interesting stories to tell! All you old guys do. OmegaMan23: Talk to a lot of old guys do you? Is that before or after they buy you candy? RockerChick20: Lol. ALWAYS after! I’m not a slut! No, I like older guys they know so much more about everything. OmegaMan23: Not really, we can just bullshit better than younger guys. RockerChick20 Lol! You’re really funny. OmegaMan23: See I told you. RockerChick20: Ha ha! Okay let’s be serious for a moment. Tell me about yourself. You proceed to give some information about yourself, which probably isn’t nearly as interesting as some of the stuff she’s told everyone when you were talking with her in the public network. Becky seems to be a bit of a free spirit which doesn’t really surprise you and the fact that she’s into older guys doesn’t really surprise you either as most girls her age go through that phase, and given she didn’t really have a good relationship with her parents, she’s probably sub-consciously looking for a father figure. About a month passes and you and Becky get comfortable enough to start having “sex” in a fashion. It’s not exactly the same being cyber and all, but you’ll take a hot naked chick touching herself and typing dirty words to you over nothing. The Shelter is pleased that you are finding a healthy way of releasing your sexual tension, but it really creeps you out that it keeps track of such things. A few more months pass and it’s obvious to the others what’s been going on between the two of you. Casey thinks its “cool”. You get the impression MissKitty is a bit jealous, but doesn’t really say anything. Job, sensing he missed his chance keeps unsuccessfully directing his attention to MissKitty now, and Shadow actually becomes more talkative in general. Soon you all learn each others names. Casey’s is Paul, Job is Mark, MissKitty is Miranda and Shadow (who you finally find out is male) is Xavier. Everyone actually sees what each other looks like except for you who continue to refuse to show yourself to anyone, but Becky in private and Xavier who’s a bit hard to see since his lighting is very dim. In general things are running smoothly and you and Becky have as close of a relationship as you can over a computer. Even you’re surprised that such a thing is possible. A year passes... Suddenly you all get a distressing message from Paul. He says his food and water dispensers have ceased working and he can’t even get his bathroom facilities to work anymore. He says he knows he doesn’t have much time left, so he logged on one last time to tell you all good bye. Xavier states how fucked up that is. Mark naturally freaks out worrying that he’ll be next to suffer total shelter failure. Miranda gives her sympathy and you ask if he has any tools to fix the problem, but he says he didn’t bring any of that kind of stuff with him and there don’t seem to be any tools in his shelter either, at least none that he has access to. This incident gets Becky pretty upset, but more so in private with you. She always liked Paul since he was a cool guy. You do your best to try to comfort her. You however are starting to get paranoid again. While it’s certainly possible Paul’s shelter failed on its own, lord knows these things are supposed to be experimental and his wasn’t working right from the beginning. However, you’re starting to wonder if it’s possible for someone to maliciously hack into the other ones. When you first started all this “meet the neighbors” shit, you were wondering if Xavier was up to no good when he was being all silent in the beginning, but maybe he was sizing you all up and is beginning his strike now though. Picking you off one by one. > You are being paranoid, forget about it You stop yourself from imagining conspiracy theories. There doesn’t need to be some mysterious “hacker”. Paul’s shelter was fucked up from day one from what you know. It’s most likely just shoddy GZS workmanship. It’s bad what happened, but there’s no point in stressing over it. You’re just glad you got a good shelter that seems to work properly. Besides your Shelter has a pretty active AI, you’re sure that at the first sign of trouble it would warn you verbally. You continue your life as normal with Becky. Another year passes... Mark stops logging on for two months which is strange, because he always made an effort to get online whenever possible even when he was in the middle of fixing something. You know he also thought he was “getting somewhere” with Miranda as well. Everyone doesn’t say too much about it. While it’s possible he’s just lost network connection and can’t access the rest of you, it’s a given that probably the worst has happened. He was also having shelter problems from day one, so again you chalk it up to GZS fuck ups, after all the Shelter did tell you there were budget cut backs in the construction of these things. Again it’s bad, but there isn’t any point in dwelling over something you can’t do anything about. The world technically ended years ago, all that’s important is that you get what enjoyment you can out of life and that’s what you’re doing with Becky. Life continues as normal, except you notice the Shelter isn’t as talkative anymore and then ceases speaking to you at all. You don’t think too much about it until a couple months later… You wake up to an angry female sounding voice and it’s definitely not the Shelter and it isn’t Becky either. “Well it took me awhile, but I now have complete access to your systems. Good thing I practiced on Mark and Paul first. You know I didn’t believe you had a talking shelter, but I’m glad you did, it gives me a chance to verbally tell you about how you’re going to die.” “Miranda?” “Got it one, but then again the choices were pretty limited. Soon after you’re out of the way, Xavier will be next and then it’ll be just me and Becky. She’ll have no choice, but to come to me.” You’re so caught off guard that the only reply you can come up with is…“You’re fucking nuts.” “Maybe, but I’m not going to be dead and that’s the important thing here.” “Wait! How about I just break up with Becky? I’ll be a real dick to her, that way there’s no chance she’ll want to get back with me…or better yet how about I just disconnect myself from the network?” “Sorry, no. I can’t take that chance. Even if you disconnected from the system what’s stopping you from fixing all the damage I’ve done so far, fortifying and then reconnecting to get revenge on me later? You gotta die, it’s the only way.” “Wait! If you do have access to all my systems, how about you just bring the elevator down and let me leave the Shelter? I mean I’d have to go outside, I wouldn’t be able to do anything to you or Becky then, not to mention topside probably isn’t hospitable.” “Nice try, but no…for all we know life topside could be paradise now. A few years have passed you know, a lot can happen in that time.” “Oh come on, you don’t actually believe that?” “Not really, but I just want you to die by my hand…I REALLY don’t like you. You stole Becky away from me and now I’m going to get her back. No more talk, goodbye.” “WAIT!” All power shuts down in your Shelter leaving you in complete darkness. You fumble around and head towards where your food and water dispensers are and predictably they don’t work. You’re left to the same agonizing fate that Mark and Paul were. Oddly you don’t panic as much as you might think in the face of imminent death. In some ways you had a good run after the world ended. You cheated death for a longer time than most folks did and you got to spend time with a pretty girl at least during most of it. Again, no point in worrying about shit you can’t do anything about. Kind of wish you got to say goodbye to Becky, but you can’t have everything. You do have one advantage that Mark and Paul didn’t though; you can still choose when to die. You feel around in the darkness back to your bedroom and go into the bag you brought with you when you first got here. There it is; your pistol. You position it to your head…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No point in spending the Aftermath worrying about shit you can’t do anything about, you might as well focus on what little chance you’re going to have of female companionship again. You take the opportunity to ask to talk to RockerChick more privately one day, unsurprisingly she agrees. RockerChick20: Hey! You’re the first person to want to talk privately to me! OmegaMan23: You’re kidding; I would’ve thought the other guys would’ve been jumping at the chance to talk to you. RockerChick20: Well I see you’re the charming type, that’s alright though I like that. But sadly no, the other guys haven’t. I think Casey’s so busy getting stoned most of the time that any extra effort on his part would be too much for him and Job is too busy complaining about his latest shelter problems. And if Shadow is a guy, he’s been pretty tight lipped as usual…although MissKitty has been talking with me a lot lately. I get the impression she’s been wanting to see a lot more of me if you know what I mean, but she’s a bit too self-involved and doesn’t seem that interesting. Maybe if I didn’t have any other options, she might have a chance. OmegaMan23: Wow, I guess it’s a good thing I made my move then. RockerChick20: Guess so. So! Are you just going to continue being a faceless entity or do I finally get to see you and learn your real name? OmegaMan23: Well, okay, but only if you do it too. RockerChick20: Well of course, we’ll do it together! On the count of three! One, two… And true to both of your words you turn on your cameras and see each other for the first time. After telling her your name, she tells you her real name is Becky. She certainly is attractive, but she seems a lot younger than you, like barely out of her teens, if that! You wonder how the hell she could afford one these Shelters since you’re probably at least ten years older than her and with your salary you could barely afford the damn thing. OmegaMan23: If you don’t mind me asking how old are you? RockerChick20: Nineteen! How old are you? OmegaMan23: Probably old enough to be considered a pervert to be talking to a girl as young as you. How did you afford one of these shelters, I went broke getting into this thing, not that it matters now. RockerChick20: Oh my parents had a lot of money and they gave me a lot of it. I registered about one during one of my spending sprees; I didn’t actually expect to ever use it. I even thought it would be a cool place to gather all my friends where we could party one day. OmegaMan23: So if you didn’t expect to use it, what changed your mind? The slow realization that the world was going to shit on TV? RockerChick20: Not really, I barely paid attention to the news. I ended up getting into a fight with my parents and ran away from home for the umpteenth time. I usually didn’t go far and stayed with friends, but I really wanted to try to worry them, so I figured I’d use this shelter for a little while! Little did I realize that I’d be trapped down here, I couldn’t even get my cell phone to work to call out. After panicking for a few days, I resigned myself to thinking that my parent’s might figure out that I came here since they knew I registered for one of these and were pissed off about it. As I watched TV in the passing days that’s when I started seeing how bad things were then one day the TV displayed nothing but snow and I knew what had happened. The world blew up. Sometimes I wonder if my parents were still looking for me… OmegaMan23: I’m sure they were. RockerChick20: Maybe. It got really bad the last time. They were control freaks anyway…they didn’t really care about me; they just wanted to run my life. I don’t wanna talk about them, so what about you? OmegaMan23: What about me what? RockerChick20: What’s your story silly! Surely being as old as you are, you have some interesting stories to tell! All you old guys do. OmegaMan23: Talk to a lot of old guys do you? Is that before or after they buy you candy? RockerChick20: Lol. ALWAYS after! I’m not a slut! No, I like older guys they know so much more about everything. OmegaMan23: Not really, we can just bullshit better than younger guys. RockerChick20 Lol! You’re really funny. OmegaMan23: See I told you. RockerChick20: Ha ha! Okay let’s be serious for a moment. Tell me about yourself. You proceed to give some information about yourself, which probably isn’t nearly as interesting as some of the stuff she’s told everyone when you were talking with her in the public network. Becky seems to be a bit of a free spirit which doesn’t really surprise you and the fact that she’s into older guys doesn’t really surprise you either as most girls her age go through that phase, and given she didn’t really have a good relationship with her parents, she’s probably sub-consciously looking for a father figure. About a month passes and you and Becky get comfortable enough to start having “sex” in a fashion. It’s not exactly the same being cyber and all, but you’ll take a hot naked chick touching herself and typing dirty words to you over nothing. The Shelter is pleased that you are finding a healthy way of releasing your sexual tension, but it really creeps you out that it keeps track of such things. A few more months pass and it’s obvious to the others what’s been going on between the two of you. Casey thinks its “cool”. You get the impression MissKitty is a bit jealous, but doesn’t really say anything. Job, sensing he missed his chance keeps unsuccessfully directing his attention to MissKitty now, and Shadow actually becomes more talkative in general. Soon you all learn each others names. Casey’s is Paul, Job is Mark, MissKitty is Miranda and Shadow (who you finally find out is male) is Xavier. Everyone actually sees what each other looks like except for you who continue to refuse to show yourself to anyone, but Becky in private and Xavier who’s a bit hard to see since his lighting is very dim. In general things are running smoothly and you and Becky have as close of a relationship as you can over a computer. Even you’re surprised that such a thing is possible. A year passes... Suddenly you all get a distressing message from Paul. He says his food and water dispensers have ceased working and he can’t even get his bathroom facilities to work anymore. He says he knows he doesn’t have much time left, so he logged on one last time to tell you all good bye. Xavier states how fucked up that is. Mark naturally freaks out worrying that he’ll be next to suffer total shelter failure. Miranda gives her sympathy and you ask if he has any tools to fix the problem, but he says he didn’t bring any of that kind of stuff with him and there don’t seem to be any tools in his shelter either, at least none that he has access to. This incident gets Becky pretty upset, but more so in private with you. She always liked Paul since he was a cool guy. You do your best to try to comfort her. You however are starting to get paranoid again. While it’s certainly possible Paul’s shelter failed on its own, lord knows these things are supposed to be experimental and his wasn’t working right from the beginning. However, you’re starting to wonder if it’s possible for someone to maliciously hack into the other ones. When you first started all this “meet the neighbors” shit, you were wondering if Xavier was up to no good when he was being all silent in the beginning, but maybe he was sizing you all up and is beginning his strike now though. Picking you off one by one. > You ask the Shelter about its security systems Confronting Xavier won’t do any good; even if he is guilty he’s just going to deny it. Possibly even antagonize him to hacking you a lot sooner. You figure maybe you should alert the Shelter about the situation and get a better understanding of its workings. You’ve been spending so much time with Becky that you’ve been neglecting other matters. “Shelter, can you tell me a little bit more about your systems? Could you easily be hacked?” “Hacked sir? Well it is possible, but highly unlikely as I have been equipped with the latest protection programs, some of it even military in origin. Are you worried someone is going to try to hack me?” “Kind of. I don’t know. Paul’s shelter failed, and I just got this feeling it wasn’t completely due to shoddy workmanship.” “Well I do remember you telling me that his wasn’t opening up. Not all these shelters were built as well as me. There were budget cutbacks during the construction of these you know.” “I suppose.” “You seem distressed sir. I’ll tell you what, it’s going a little bit out of my programming as outright spying and monitoring other shelters isn’t really part of the GZS terms of agreement, but I’ll do it. First signs of anyone trying to get anywhere NEAR my systems or anything else suspicious I’ll alert you immediately and bring the elevator down for a hasty escape in case everything goes wrong.” “Well that does make me feel better, thanks.” “You’re welcome sir, I might suggest you read up on your electronics, you may need them. I will inform you of anything that wasn’t covered in my manual, or if you have any extra questions.” A few weeks pass as you take the Shelter’s advice and start studying up. You’re spending less time with Becky, but it can’t be helped. When you do talk to her, you tell her she should do the same thing you’re doing. She thinks you’re being overly paranoid though, and despite your closeness, she’s still skeptical that you have a shelter that talks to you on a regular basis. (The only one who ever really believed you on that was Paul) She also thinks you’re trying to tell her what to do, rather than looking out for her. You’re starting to look like the “Strict Dad” rather than the “Fun Dad” now. Things between you become a little strained and a couple more months pass and Becky and you aren’t really together anymore. You notice Xavier talks to Becky a little more now, but it doesn’t really seem serious. Miranda also attempts to talk to Becky more seeing that you’re out of the picture, but Becky still doesn’t seem interested in her. Meanwhile Mark unsuccessfully makes advances towards Miranda. It seems like everyone is chasing someone else that isn’t interested, except you, who inadvertently discarded intimacy in favor of security and survival…though not entirely, you did look into this supposed hacker business in an effort to protect not just you, but Becky as well because you did like her. You just wish she would’ve listened to you. Meanwhile you’re keeping an eye on the situation and asking the Shelter for security updates, which still says it doesn’t detect anything. You wonder if you were wrong and you just fucked up the only relationship you possibly had a chance at in what’s left of this world… Another year passes... Mark stops logging on for two months which is strange, because he always made an effort to get online whenever possible even when he was in the middle of fixing something. You know he also thought he was “getting somewhere” with Miranda as well. Everyone doesn’t say too much about it. While it’s possible he’s just lost network connection and can’t access the rest of you, it’s a given that probably the worst has happened. Normally after losing Becky to your previous paranoia, you’d be willing to chalk it up to normal shelter failure this time especially since he had a lot of problems anyway, but fortunately your Shelter was doing some deeper inspection into the situation. “Sir, I have some vital information I think you should know about. I’m sorry it took me so long, but the hacker went to great lengths to cover their tracks.” “Hacker? You mean there is one then?” “Yes, I temporarily diverted some of my own power to Job24’s shelter and started accessing the systems there. It was obviously hacked upon direct inspection; some of the programs were completely fried particularly the food and water dispensers.” “Wait, you can do that?” “I’m not supposed to sir, but I know you’ve been worrying about this and since the shelter was already technically offline, the agreement doesn’t say I can’t monitor it.” “Wait so Mark? Is he still alive?” “Afraid not sir. I detected no life signs. Humans can’t go two months without water.” “No, of course they can’t…so who’s the hacker?” “Don’t know sir, like I said they did a very good job of covering their tracks, I do know it isn’t RockerChick20, which only leaves Shadow21 or MissKitty25. From what I’ve detected BOTH of their shelters are showing irregularities, so both of them have been modifying their shelter’s systems for whatever purpose. I suppose it’s possible both of them have been hacking.” “Oh thanks Shelter, that makes me feel better!” “I wasn’t my intention to cause you more distress; just stating the possibilities sir…maybe you could directly confront one of them privately. While you have their attention, I can do more inspection and know for certain. Both of them have already broken their terms of agreement by modifying their shelters, so they aren’t under GZS protection contract anymore. I can do whatever you want to either of them.” > You confront Xavier “Time to confront Xavier once and for all.” You say. “Very well sir.” When you get online you conveniently see that you and he are the only ones currently on. You send Xavier a private invite, he accepts. Your Shelter goes into spy mode. You wonder what you can talk to him about, but then you think of something that wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion and is completely plausible for you to need to address him privately. Shadow21: Yeah? What do you want? OmegaMan23: Hey I just wanted to talk to you about Becky. Shadow21: What about her? OmegaMan23: Well I just want to say I’m still trying to patch things up with her and I want to know if you’re interested in her, because if you are you must know that I’m going to be doing everything in my power to win her back. Shadow21: Wow. That sounds like a threat. I guess I better be careful if I ever show any interest in her and you’re still around. OmegaMan23: So what does that mean? Shadow21: It means that even if I had any inclination to steal your little cyber girlfriend, I wouldn’t since it would make me a bigger target than you. OmegaMan23: I’m a target? Now that sounds like a threat. Shadow21: It is, but not from me…come on I think we can stop beating around the bush here. I’ve been monitoring the other shelters ever since Paul’s went down. We got a hacker among us and your Shelter and Miranda’s have been mighty active lately. OmegaMan23: So, you think there’s a hacker too eh? Shadow21: I don’t think it. I know it. Just like you know it. You’ve been monitoring the other shelters just like I have, and probably just like Miranda has. I can’t prove who the hacker is for certain, but I know in my gut who it is, because it’s really the only logical choice. OmegaMan23: And? Shadow21: Miranda obviously. She was jealous of your relationship with Becky so she’s killing all the potential competition and have her all to herself. OmegaMan23: If that is true, why not just hack me first? Shadow21: Probably needed to practice first. From what I can tell your Shelter has some pretty cool protection, I had to modify all my shelter’s systems to get it nearly as good as yours. Plus like I said she’s also eliminating future competition. OmegaMan23: While I’m fully willing to entertain this theory, what’s keeping me from thinking you’re the hacker and you’re just trying to deflect the blame? Shadow21: Nothing I suppose. I know you’ve always been irrationally distrustful of me, for whatever reason. The only thing I can say is I don’t have any motive to be killing folks. I’m not some cyber serial killer and I don’t have any interest in Becky like you and Miranda do. Besides I’m sure by now your Shelter has done a thorough spying on my internal activity logs and has found I haven’t done anything wrong. You’re silent for a moment. Suddenly your Shelter speaks. “He’s clean sir.” Shadow21: Well? OmegaMan23: My Shelter’s report just confirmed you were clean. Shadow21: I’m sure it did. Does it still talk to you? OmegaMan23: Why is that so hard to believe? Shadow21: It isn’t really; I’m just fucking with you. OmegaMan23: Okay so Miranda’s the hacker, what are we gonna do about it? Shadow21: Me? Nothing. I’m probably just going to disconnect my network system soon and access my elevator’s controls to call it down so I can make a get away just in case. I figure I should be safe as long as I stay disconnected though. OmegaMan23: What?! You’re not going to help me stop her? Shadow21: Why should I risk my neck? This is between you and Miranda…in fact if I were you, I’d disconnect from the system as well and cut your losses. Becky seems a bit flighty anyway if she broke up with you so quickly, I say let Miranda have her. OmegaMan23: She’s just young and doesn’t like old people telling her what to do. She runs away from conflict. She’s got some father figure issues. Doesn’t mean I still didn’t like her. Shadow21: I see, so you’re daddy and you’re out to save your little girl from the psycho dyke then eh? OmegaMan23: Something like that. Besides I don’t like being run off like this, if I can do SOMETHING about it. Shadow21: Well disconnecting is what I suggest you do. Because from what I can tell she’s pretty good at what she does. While I’m no slouch myself at techie shit, I don’t want to risk fighting her because even if I do beat her, she still might fuck up my shelter up. Not worth it in my opinion. Better to play it safe and live. Xavier does bring up a few good points. Is it pointless to bother fighting a war over someone who doesn’t really seem interested in you anymore? Not to mention getting yourself fucked up in the process? If Becky really is so much of a free spirit to go falling for Miranda because nobody else is around then is she really worth it? > You disconnect Xavier’s logic has convinced you. OmegaMan23: Yeah, I suppose you’re right…still I dunno what I’m going to do with my time now. I’m gonna get bored in this Shelter without some kind of interaction. Shadow21: Well what about your Shelter? It talks to you right? OmegaMan23: Yeah, but it’s not the same. I think I’m gonna do that thing you said you might do. Call the elevator down and go up top. Shadow21: Really? I was going to only do that in case of an emergency. OmegaMan23: Yeah well there isn’t much point in me staying anymore, besides I’m a bit curious to see what the world looks like now. Maybe they rebuilt some shit. Shadow21: Maybe. Well I know we didn’t really get along, but good luck with that. OmegaMan23: Good luck to whatever you do as well, and thanks for your advice. I probably would’ve got myself killed had I chosen to fight Miranda. You log off and start disconnecting your network. “What’re you doing sir?” “Disconnecting from the network, where's the main line connection?” “Over there sir. Playing it safe then?” “Yeah, really safe. I want to go back to the surface.” “You do? You’ve disconnected from the network sir, its highly unlikely Miranda can get to you now, and the surface may actually be more dangerous.” “I suppose, but I feel like I really need to get out of here, the claustrophobia is setting in I think and without human interaction I don’t think I can take it.” “Hmmm, yes I can see how that would be a problem sir. Well even though I feel the surface will put you at severe risk for danger, staying here will not be good for your mental health so I will respect your wishes and bring the elevator down, I suggest you gather what belongings you want to take and get ready.” You go back to your room and pack up all the things you brought with you when you first got here. You didn’t even need most of the stuff, but maybe you will above ground. You then go to the water dispenser which is thankfully still working and fill up to empty bottles with water. The elevator door finally opens up and you put your bag to block the door from closing and head back to the computer room where you access the system to tell the elevator to go back up and then run back to the elevator where you gather your bag and enter. On the ride up you get a little nervous and even fearful. Not so much of what might await you on the surface, but of hoping the damn elevator doesn’t suddenly stop, fortunately that doesn’t happen and you eventually reach the ground once again. The door opens and you enter the same foyer you arrived in a few years ago. Same ATM like machine is there, except its screen is flashing a single message at you. *GOOD LUCK SIR* “I hope I have some.” You mutter and take a deep breath before opening the door to the outside. You see a bright light, but of course it’s only the sun rather than a nuclear flash that devastated the world. You forgot how bright it really could be. Your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. On a lark you take out your long unused van keys and try to start it up, naturally it doesn’t even make a noise. “Looks like I’m walking.” You make you way down the empty road as you have little idea of where to head to, the only thing you can think of is to make a long trek back to the city and hope maybe something of civilization exists there. The walk really takes a toll on you. During the day, the sun seems unbearably hotter than usual, and the nights get pretty cold. You are attacked by some crazed people who look like they’ve been living in the wilderness for awhile. They’re filthy and barely intelligible. It’s amazing to see how quick humanity has reverted to barbarism. One begins shooting at you, and you do likewise. After shooting one of them, they stop attacking and drag off their companion. It would appear you just provided a dinner for them other than yourself. It doesn’t help you though; you’re attacked again later by a small group of thugs attempting to rob you and another group after that. And so on. You have to fight and survive constantly and your supplies are never enough and you get wounded many times. You aren’t prepared for this harsh world now. Maybe if you’d stayed out in the beginning, but all those years in the Shelter made you a bit out of shape and civilization is nowhere in sight for you to properly rest. Eventually you decide you can’t go on, and head back to the shelter for saftey, surprisingly you make it back, but you’re so very tired, you decide you need to rest before begging (and hoping) the shelter will let you back in. You stretch out in the wilderness; it actually feels comfortable given how tired you are. It almost makes you ignore the pain from the head wound you received from the latest attack you had to fend off. “Just a few hours of sleep then I’ll enter the shelter again…it seems reasonable…I shouldn’t have any problems…I dunno…maybe I’ll just stay here…its nice and comfortable…” you say as you fall into unconsciousness. You don’t wake up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Time to confront Xavier once and for all.” You say. “Very well sir.” When you get online you conveniently see that you and he are the only ones currently on. You send Xavier a private invite, he accepts. Your Shelter goes into spy mode. You wonder what you can talk to him about, but then you think of something that wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion and is completely plausible for you to need to address him privately. Shadow21: Yeah? What do you want? OmegaMan23: Hey I just wanted to talk to you about Becky. Shadow21: What about her? OmegaMan23: Well I just want to say I’m still trying to patch things up with her and I want to know if you’re interested in her, because if you are you must know that I’m going to be doing everything in my power to win her back. Shadow21: Wow. That sounds like a threat. I guess I better be careful if I ever show any interest in her and you’re still around. OmegaMan23: So what does that mean? Shadow21: It means that even if I had any inclination to steal your little cyber girlfriend, I wouldn’t since it would make me a bigger target than you. OmegaMan23: I’m a target? Now that sounds like a threat. Shadow21: It is, but not from me…come on I think we can stop beating around the bush here. I’ve been monitoring the other shelters ever since Paul’s went down. We got a hacker among us and your Shelter and Miranda’s have been mighty active lately. OmegaMan23: So, you think there’s a hacker too eh? Shadow21: I don’t think it. I know it. Just like you know it. You’ve been monitoring the other shelters just like I have, and probably just like Miranda has. I can’t prove who the hacker is for certain, but I know in my gut who it is, because it’s really the only logical choice. OmegaMan23: And? Shadow21: Miranda obviously. She was jealous of your relationship with Becky so she’s killing all the potential competition and have her all to herself. OmegaMan23: If that is true, why not just hack me first? Shadow21: Probably needed to practice first. From what I can tell your Shelter has some pretty cool protection, I had to modify all my shelter’s systems to get it nearly as good as yours. Plus like I said she’s also eliminating future competition. OmegaMan23: While I’m fully willing to entertain this theory, what’s keeping me from thinking you’re the hacker and you’re just trying to deflect the blame? Shadow21: Nothing I suppose. I know you’ve always been irrationally distrustful of me, for whatever reason. The only thing I can say is I don’t have any motive to be killing folks. I’m not some cyber serial killer and I don’t have any interest in Becky like you and Miranda do. Besides I’m sure by now your Shelter has done a thorough spying on my internal activity logs and has found I haven’t done anything wrong. You’re silent for a moment. Suddenly your Shelter speaks. “He’s clean sir.” Shadow21: Well? OmegaMan23: My Shelter’s report just confirmed you were clean. Shadow21: I’m sure it did. Does it still talk to you? OmegaMan23: Why is that so hard to believe? Shadow21: It isn’t really; I’m just fucking with you. OmegaMan23: Okay so Miranda’s the hacker, what are we gonna do about it? Shadow21: Me? Nothing. I’m probably just going to disconnect my network system soon and access my elevator’s controls to call it down so I can make a get away just in case. I figure I should be safe as long as I stay disconnected though. OmegaMan23: What?! You’re not going to help me stop her? Shadow21: Why should I risk my neck? This is between you and Miranda…in fact if I were you, I’d disconnect from the system as well and cut your losses. Becky seems a bit flighty anyway if she broke up with you so quickly, I say let Miranda have her. OmegaMan23: She’s just young and doesn’t like old people telling her what to do. She runs away from conflict. She’s got some father figure issues. Doesn’t mean I still didn’t like her. Shadow21: I see, so you’re daddy and you’re out to save your little girl from the psycho dyke then eh? OmegaMan23: Something like that. Besides I don’t like being run off like this, if I can do SOMETHING about it. Shadow21: Well disconnecting is what I suggest you do. Because from what I can tell she’s pretty good at what she does. While I’m no slouch myself at techie shit, I don’t want to risk fighting her because even if I do beat her, she still might fuck up my shelter up. Not worth it in my opinion. Better to play it safe and live. Xavier does bring up a few good points. Is it pointless to bother fighting a war over someone who doesn’t really seem interested in you anymore? Not to mention getting yourself fucked up in the process? If Becky really is so much of a free spirit to go falling for Miranda because nobody else is around then is she really worth it? > You fight Sure why not. People have fought wars over stupider shit than the attention of some young woman, besides if Miranda’s willing to kill everyone just to be the only one left for Becky, its obvious she’s pretty deranged. What would be stopping her from killing Becky too, if something went wrong their “relationship”? Miranda should be stopped just because she murdered Mark and Paul for that matter. Besides its like you told Xavier, you don’t like running away if there’s something you can do about it…and there’s the fact that you don’t buy Xavier’s whole “I don’t care” routine, not after taking a quick glance at some of his record logs of a couple private conversations he’s had with Becky. You ask the Shelter something before continuing your discussion with Xavier; the Shelter says you didn’t even need to ask, as it was doing it anyway. Nodding, you go back to talking with Xavier. OmegaMan23: I’m fighting her, and you should help me. Shadow21: I told you I don’t see why I should risk my neck. OmegaMan23: Because if we work together we can easily take out Miranda, then we can work out our differences later. Shadow21: Our differences? I told you I don’t… OmegaMan23: Cut the bullshit. I just glanced through some of your private record logs. In fact ALL of those private conversation were initiated by YOU! Shadow21: Fuck! I thought I erased them all! OmegaMan23: Yeah, well you didn’t, I think it’s obvious by the flirty comments that you DO have your eyes on Becky, though I don’t know why you haven’t made a committed move yet. Shadow21: Because of fucking Miranda that’s why. I figured I’d buy myself some time for preparation if I didn’t get properly involved with Becky. I figured maybe Miranda would attack you soon, but she hasn’t yet, I guess she doesn’t know who’s the bigger threat yet, I’m pretty confident that she wants to get rid of both of us though. OmegaMan23: So let me guess, you’re plan was either let me fight Miranda and probably let us fuck each other up while you finished off the winner OR scare me off completely and convince me to disconnect so then you’d only have to deal with Miranda. Am I right? Shadow21: Sadly that sounds about right. Although I still don’t see how you’re going to make me help you. OmegaMan23: Easy, because if you don’t help me take Miranda down, I’m gonna send the whole record log to Miranda and I guarantee she’ll attack you first and even if you disconnect she’ll wait for you. So if you want ANY shot at Becky, you’ll help me! Shadow21: Arrrgh! Alright, I’ll help! You gotta gimme time to prepare though. OmegaMan23: Fine by me, I gotta prepare too. You got ten minutes; Miranda always comes online about this time so she should be here soon. You disconnect from Xavier and address the Shelter about that business you asked it before. “You said you recorded all that right?” “Of course sir.” “Good send the entire conversation to Becky, it’ll save me time to explain everything to her. Hopefully she’ll realize I am trying to do this to protect her and to stop a murderer. Not mention it should expose Xavier for being a fucking opportunistic vulture too. Also add a message on to it that after she reads it there probably will be a bunch of shit going down and she should get off line so she doesn’t get hit in the crossfire. And send Xavier’s private record logs to Miranda anyway, it should give me some extra time to break through Miranda’s protection while she concentrates her fury more on him.” While the Shelter carries out your orders, you do some last minute checking on your firewalls while waiting for the fireworks to begin. Five minutes pass and you see Miranda’s name arrive online. Another five minutes pass and you see a private window pop up from Xavier. Shadow21: YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU TOLD MIRANDA ANYWAY! SHE’S ATTACKING ME! OmegaMan23: Well I suggest you stop talking to me and concentrate on her then, besides you had ten minutes of prep Mr. tech wizard. “Alright Shelter, let’s get to work.” You attempt to hack Miranda’s files, and start trying to break down her protection. While you’re trying to decrypt the coding, you get another private window pop up. It’s Miranda this time. MissKitty25: Fucking trying to sneak around huh? You and fucking Xavier think you can gang up on me? Well I can take the both of you fuckers! Try this, you backdoor bastard! Miranda sends a power surge and overloads some of your components, frying them. Some of your lighting goes out and you hear something explode in the living area but fortunately nothing else happens. “Shit!” “Some of my files have been destroyed sir, attempting to correct…” You concentrate on rebuilding your protection while Miranda focuses back on Xavier. Shadow21: What the fuck man? Are you even helping? My fucking shelter is getting shit on over here! Move in you dickhead! Attack the bitch! You ignore Xavier’s plead when you see Becky log on. “Please. Please, read the damn message and get off as quick as you can…” you mutter, while launching your second assault on Miranda. “Sir, I have been monitoring Shadow21’s shelter and it’s running dangerously low on power, Miranda’s apparently siphoning it. He probably won’t survive another attack.” “All he needs to do hold out a bit longer…there that should do something…” You send a virus to corrupt some of Miranda’s systems, during this time you see Becky go offline. “Good girl.” You say and start your next round of malicious coding. You notice Xavier’s name has disappeared. MissKitty25: Xavier’s fucking dead and you’re next shithead! Don’t think your weak ass virus is gonna stop me either! Another power surge hits you. This time ALL the lighting goes out, and you even get a couple sparks coming from the computer, you’re lucky it didn’t do more damage. > You redouble your protection You cease your attack and attempt to redouble your protection, unfortunately while you’re fumbling around and retyping, Miranda sends a worm and completely wrecks your system, making it slow to a crawl, then she follows up with another power surge, and this one blows out your most of the hard drive. “POWE….RRRRR FFFFFF…….AAAAAIIIIILLLLINNN….GGG…..” the Shelter utters as everything begins to flicker and eventually go out, leaving you in the dark and powerless. You’ve lost. Death is the price of your failure.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Sure why not. People have fought wars over stupider shit than the attention of some young woman, besides if Miranda’s willing to kill everyone just to be the only one left for Becky, its obvious she’s pretty deranged. What would be stopping her from killing Becky too, if something went wrong their “relationship”? Miranda should be stopped just because she murdered Mark and Paul for that matter. Besides its like you told Xavier, you don’t like running away if there’s something you can do about it…and there’s the fact that you don’t buy Xavier’s whole “I don’t care” routine, not after taking a quick glance at some of his record logs of a couple private conversations he’s had with Becky. You ask the Shelter something before continuing your discussion with Xavier; the Shelter says you didn’t even need to ask, as it was doing it anyway. Nodding, you go back to talking with Xavier. OmegaMan23: I’m fighting her, and you should help me. Shadow21: I told you I don’t see why I should risk my neck. OmegaMan23: Because if we work together we can easily take out Miranda, then we can work out our differences later. Shadow21: Our differences? I told you I don’t… OmegaMan23: Cut the bullshit. I just glanced through some of your private record logs. In fact ALL of those private conversation were initiated by YOU! Shadow21: Fuck! I thought I erased them all! OmegaMan23: Yeah, well you didn’t, I think it’s obvious by the flirty comments that you DO have your eyes on Becky, though I don’t know why you haven’t made a committed move yet. Shadow21: Because of fucking Miranda that’s why. I figured I’d buy myself some time for preparation if I didn’t get properly involved with Becky. I figured maybe Miranda would attack you soon, but she hasn’t yet, I guess she doesn’t know who’s the bigger threat yet, I’m pretty confident that she wants to get rid of both of us though. OmegaMan23: So let me guess, you’re plan was either let me fight Miranda and probably let us fuck each other up while you finished off the winner OR scare me off completely and convince me to disconnect so then you’d only have to deal with Miranda. Am I right? Shadow21: Sadly that sounds about right. Although I still don’t see how you’re going to make me help you. OmegaMan23: Easy, because if you don’t help me take Miranda down, I’m gonna send the whole record log to Miranda and I guarantee she’ll attack you first and even if you disconnect she’ll wait for you. So if you want ANY shot at Becky, you’ll help me! Shadow21: Arrrgh! Alright, I’ll help! You gotta gimme time to prepare though. OmegaMan23: Fine by me, I gotta prepare too. You got ten minutes; Miranda always comes online about this time so she should be here soon. You disconnect from Xavier and address the Shelter about that business you asked it before. “You said you recorded all that right?” “Of course sir.” “Good send the entire conversation to Becky, it’ll save me time to explain everything to her. Hopefully she’ll realize I am trying to do this to protect her and to stop a murderer. Not mention it should expose Xavier for being a fucking opportunistic vulture too. Also add a message on to it that after she reads it there probably will be a bunch of shit going down and she should get off line so she doesn’t get hit in the crossfire. And send Xavier’s private record logs to Miranda anyway, it should give me some extra time to break through Miranda’s protection while she concentrates her fury more on him.” While the Shelter carries out your orders, you do some last minute checking on your firewalls while waiting for the fireworks to begin. Five minutes pass and you see Miranda’s name arrive online. Another five minutes pass and you see a private window pop up from Xavier. Shadow21: YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU TOLD MIRANDA ANYWAY! SHE’S ATTACKING ME! OmegaMan23: Well I suggest you stop talking to me and concentrate on her then, besides you had ten minutes of prep Mr. tech wizard. “Alright Shelter, let’s get to work.” You attempt to hack Miranda’s files, and start trying to break down her protection. While you’re trying to decrypt the coding, you get another private window pop up. It’s Miranda this time. MissKitty25: Fucking trying to sneak around huh? You and fucking Xavier think you can gang up on me? Well I can take the both of you fuckers! Try this, you backdoor bastard! Miranda sends a power surge and overloads some of your components, frying them. Some of your lighting goes out and you hear something explode in the living area but fortunately nothing else happens. “Shit!” “Some of my files have been destroyed sir, attempting to correct…” You concentrate on rebuilding your protection while Miranda focuses back on Xavier. Shadow21: What the fuck man? Are you even helping? My fucking shelter is getting shit on over here! Move in you dickhead! Attack the bitch! You ignore Xavier’s plead when you see Becky log on. “Please. Please, read the damn message and get off as quick as you can…” you mutter, while launching your second assault on Miranda. “Sir, I have been monitoring Shadow21’s shelter and it’s running dangerously low on power, Miranda’s apparently siphoning it. He probably won’t survive another attack.” “All he needs to do hold out a bit longer…there that should do something…” You send a virus to corrupt some of Miranda’s systems, during this time you see Becky go offline. “Good girl.” You say and start your next round of malicious coding. You notice Xavier’s name has disappeared. MissKitty25: Xavier’s fucking dead and you’re next shithead! Don’t think your weak ass virus is gonna stop me either! Another power surge hits you. This time ALL the lighting goes out, and you even get a couple sparks coming from the computer, you’re lucky it didn’t do more damage. > You continue your attack She’s doing a lot of bluster, but your Shelter has detected just how bad of shape she’s really in, if you continue your attack she can’t do anything about it. You send your attack and finally give her a last reply. OmegaMan23: Sorry Miranda, but as much as you’d like to be one, only I can be the Omega Man in this little war. You completely destroy what’s left of Miranda’s systems and you see her name disappear from the screen. That’s it. You’ve won, but there was a high price. Your Shelter’s AI has been severely damaged… “I fffffear that I ccccannnnnnot corrrrrrect…it wwwwas a pleasure serrrrving you ssssssir….” “Thank you Shelter.” You say before it dies completely. You manually do an in-depth scan, and its definite, Miranda’s shelter is powerless. Xavier’s as well. You then proceed to start fixing some of the stuff that got damaged in the fight, and you’re not sure you can. While you’re doing this, someone appears online, you almost go into battle mode again, but then you see its just Becky. RockerChick20: Hello? Is there anyone there? OmegaMan23: Yeah, I’m still here, the others aren’t though. RockerChick20: Are they dead? OmegaMan23: No, but without power they soon will be. Is your shelter working alright? RockerChick20: Oh yeah, it’s working fine. What about yours? OmegaMan23: I dunno, it’s not in the best condition…I might be able to fix it, but…well I can figure something out. RockerChick20: So…I guess you were right about the hacker…I should’ve listened to you. I was even starting to fall for Xavier’s charms. I feel really stupid about all of this. OmegaMan23: Forget about it, it’s all over now anyway. RockerChick20: I can’t believe you were still willing to fight for me even after I broke up with you…why? OmegaMan23: Cause I’m an idiot obviously. Lol. Come on after all that time we spent together, it wasn’t like it didn’t mean anything to me, and Miranda was a killer that needed to be stopped. She might’ve even hurt you, if you didn’t give in to her advances. RockerChick20: Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me before…I never want you to leave again. OmegaMan23: Well unfortunately I might have to for awhile, my Shelter is fucked. I’m looking at it more now and I don’t trust it lasting too much longer. The AI is completely fried, and I can only access the most basic things. I have to leave this shelter. It’s not safe to stay. RockerChick20: No! I can’t lose you now! I’ve just realized you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in my life, pre and post apocalypse! OmegaMan23: Calm down, I got an idea. I’m gonna track the location of your shelter, and then I’ll just travel over there. RockerChick20: But…that’s crazy! You don’t know what’s up top! OmegaMan23: Well I already took one crazy chance for you; I might as well take another, besides like I said I gotta leave anyway, at least this way I got a worthwhile destination. Now you just be sure to read up on your Shelter’s internal operations in the meantime and try to see if you can access your elevator’s controls so it’ll open for me with no hassle, of course if you can’t I’ll figure out how to open when I get there somehow. Now I need to access your systems for a minute to get the location…and I hope I can still print out shit. You access Becky’s shelter and get the coordinates and print out a crude map. It’s not the most accurate, but you’re pretty sure if you follow it, you’ll be heading the right direction. OmegaMan23: Alright Becky, I’m calling my elevator down, and I’m leaving now. RockerChick20: You’ll come looking for me won’t you? I mean you won’t get sidetracked once you’re up there right? OmegaMan23: Of course not. And don’t worry, I won’t get killed either. We will meet in person sometime soon, I promise. A single small heart shape emoticon appears on the screen, before Becky logs off. You access the elevator controls (One of the few things working right and undamaged) and call the elevator to continue it’s decent. You go back to your room and pack up all the things you brought with you when you first got here. You didn’t even need most of the stuff, but maybe you will above ground. You then go to the water dispenser which is thankfully still working and fill up to empty bottles with water. The elevator door finally opens up and you put your bag to block the door from closing and head back to the computer room where you access the system to tell the elevator to go back up and then run back to the elevator where you gather your bag and enter. On the ride up you get a little nervous and even fearful. Not so much of what might await you on the surface, but of hoping the damn elevator doesn’t suddenly stop, fortunately that doesn’t happen and you eventually reach the ground once again. The door opens and you enter the same foyer you arrived in five years ago. Same ATM like machine is there, except its screen is flashing a single message at you. *NO REFUNDS* “No shit.” You mutter and take a deep breath before opening the door to the outside. You see a bright light, but of course it’s only the sun rather than a nuclear flash that devastated the world. You forgot how bright it really could be. Your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. On a lark you take out your long unused van keys and try to start it up, naturally it doesn’t even make a noise. “Looks like I’m walking.” Looking at the map, you’ve got quite a ways to go. You’re not sure of what to expect, but you know you’ve got a worthwhile destination to keep you going.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Confronting Xavier won’t do any good; even if he is guilty he’s just going to deny it. Possibly even antagonize him to hacking you a lot sooner. You figure maybe you should alert the Shelter about the situation and get a better understanding of its workings. You’ve been spending so much time with Becky that you’ve been neglecting other matters. “Shelter, can you tell me a little bit more about your systems? Could you easily be hacked?” “Hacked sir? Well it is possible, but highly unlikely as I have been equipped with the latest protection programs, some of it even military in origin. Are you worried someone is going to try to hack me?” “Kind of. I don’t know. Paul’s shelter failed, and I just got this feeling it wasn’t completely due to shoddy workmanship.” “Well I do remember you telling me that his wasn’t opening up. Not all these shelters were built as well as me. There were budget cutbacks during the construction of these you know.” “I suppose.” “You seem distressed sir. I’ll tell you what, it’s going a little bit out of my programming as outright spying and monitoring other shelters isn’t really part of the GZS terms of agreement, but I’ll do it. First signs of anyone trying to get anywhere NEAR my systems or anything else suspicious I’ll alert you immediately and bring the elevator down for a hasty escape in case everything goes wrong.” “Well that does make me feel better, thanks.” “You’re welcome sir, I might suggest you read up on your electronics, you may need them. I will inform you of anything that wasn’t covered in my manual, or if you have any extra questions.” A few weeks pass as you take the Shelter’s advice and start studying up. You’re spending less time with Becky, but it can’t be helped. When you do talk to her, you tell her she should do the same thing you’re doing. She thinks you’re being overly paranoid though, and despite your closeness, she’s still skeptical that you have a shelter that talks to you on a regular basis. (The only one who ever really believed you on that was Paul) She also thinks you’re trying to tell her what to do, rather than looking out for her. You’re starting to look like the “Strict Dad” rather than the “Fun Dad” now. Things between you become a little strained and a couple more months pass and Becky and you aren’t really together anymore. You notice Xavier talks to Becky a little more now, but it doesn’t really seem serious. Miranda also attempts to talk to Becky more seeing that you’re out of the picture, but Becky still doesn’t seem interested in her. Meanwhile Mark unsuccessfully makes advances towards Miranda. It seems like everyone is chasing someone else that isn’t interested, except you, who inadvertently discarded intimacy in favor of security and survival…though not entirely, you did look into this supposed hacker business in an effort to protect not just you, but Becky as well because you did like her. You just wish she would’ve listened to you. Meanwhile you’re keeping an eye on the situation and asking the Shelter for security updates, which still says it doesn’t detect anything. You wonder if you were wrong and you just fucked up the only relationship you possibly had a chance at in what’s left of this world… Another year passes... Mark stops logging on for two months which is strange, because he always made an effort to get online whenever possible even when he was in the middle of fixing something. You know he also thought he was “getting somewhere” with Miranda as well. Everyone doesn’t say too much about it. While it’s possible he’s just lost network connection and can’t access the rest of you, it’s a given that probably the worst has happened. Normally after losing Becky to your previous paranoia, you’d be willing to chalk it up to normal shelter failure this time especially since he had a lot of problems anyway, but fortunately your Shelter was doing some deeper inspection into the situation. “Sir, I have some vital information I think you should know about. I’m sorry it took me so long, but the hacker went to great lengths to cover their tracks.” “Hacker? You mean there is one then?” “Yes, I temporarily diverted some of my own power to Job24’s shelter and started accessing the systems there. It was obviously hacked upon direct inspection; some of the programs were completely fried particularly the food and water dispensers.” “Wait, you can do that?” “I’m not supposed to sir, but I know you’ve been worrying about this and since the shelter was already technically offline, the agreement doesn’t say I can’t monitor it.” “Wait so Mark? Is he still alive?” “Afraid not sir. I detected no life signs. Humans can’t go two months without water.” “No, of course they can’t…so who’s the hacker?” “Don’t know sir, like I said they did a very good job of covering their tracks, I do know it isn’t RockerChick20, which only leaves Shadow21 or MissKitty25. From what I’ve detected BOTH of their shelters are showing irregularities, so both of them have been modifying their shelter’s systems for whatever purpose. I suppose it’s possible both of them have been hacking.” “Oh thanks Shelter, that makes me feel better!” “I wasn’t my intention to cause you more distress; just stating the possibilities sir…maybe you could directly confront one of them privately. While you have their attention, I can do more inspection and know for certain. Both of them have already broken their terms of agreement by modifying their shelters, so they aren’t under GZS protection contract anymore. I can do whatever you want to either of them.” > You confront Miranda “Miranda’s always had a thing for Becky, maybe she’s been trying to eliminate the competition and if that’s the case I’m sure I’m gonna be next, I can only assume she hasn’t tried anything yet due to your heavy duty protection. I’m gonna confront her and see.” “Very well sir.” You have to wait awhile, but eventually Miranda arrives on line and you send a private invite to Miranda, she accepts. Your Shelter goes into spy mode. You wonder what you can talk to her about, but then you think of something that wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion and is completely plausible for you to need to address her privately. MissKitty25: Well this was unexpected. What do you want? OmegaMan23: Hey can’t I want to talk to you in private? MissKitty25: You can, I just don’t know what for. OmegaMan23: Well as you know, me and Becky aren’t really together anymore. MissKitty25: Lol. So is that why you privately messaged me? You’re looking for another cyber girlfriend because you lost your last one? Shit you’re pathetic. OmegaMan23: So I take it that’s a big no? MissKitty25: Got that right. OmegaMan23: There’s no way I can convince you? MissKitty25: Probably not, but what the hell I’m bored go ahead. I hope you’re at least as amusing as Mark was though. You spend at least 10 minutes falsely attempting to “woo” Miranda until your Shelter ceases its spying and confirms what you believed all along. Miranda’s the hacker. Now you take the opportunity to excuse yourself. OmegaMan23: Well, I suppose I can’t convince you. I’ll leave you be. MissKitty25: Alright, oh hey before you leave, did you get the information you wanted? OmegaMan23: What information? MissKitty25: The information your Shelter invaded my internal logs for. You didn’t think I was actually buying your whole flirting act did you? I just wanted to keep you online so I could send a nice little virus back. Thanks. If you hadn’t done this, I probably would’ve had a couple extra months of work ahead to work on gaining access. This was so much easier. Now I can work on Xavier. See ya! Miranda logs off and suddenly your Shelter begins to make weird noises and the lighting begins to flicker. “Innnnnterrrrrnal components coooooomprissssssed sssssssir…” You try to disconnect your network connection, but it’s too late the virus is in full effect. You attempt to fix the problem, but your computer goes completely haywire and a large message saying “ERROR!” is all that displays before it completely shuts down. The computer room door then automatically slams shut, locking you inside and leaving you to die a slow lingering death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your curiosity is peaked and you take the opportunity to talk with the others whenever you can. The Shelter is certainly pleased you are being social. Months pass and you all learn more about each other more or less. (Though only RockerChick has even hinted at turning on the cameras to see each other visually) You have to admit though you’re a little more interested in what’s going on their shelters. From what you can tell RockerChick has a shelter similar to yours with just a few differences in equipment. Her personality is damn near as “chipper” as the Shelter. She likes talking with everyone, but seems to like speaking to you a lot more. Must be your “winning” personality. Job’s shelter is a lot like yours too except he’s constantly complaining about various things breaking down and he has to fix. Last time he said he damn near got crushed by his own bed when it suddenly rose back up into the wall when he was sleeping. He doesn’t have much in entertainment either, so he’s always glad to talk with anybody. Mainly to complain. CaseyJones’ Shelter STILL hasn’t become fully functional! He’s effectively trapped in the living area and bathroom. He has his computer to talk to everyone but little else. He doesn’t really seem to care though; apparently he brought a shitload of weed with him and has somehow created a small hydroponics pot farm in his bathtub (He doesn’t see the need to bathe since he’s not in contact with anyone) He says he plans on spending the Aftermath completely stoned. Job can’t understand why Casey isn’t freaking out about his situation. Apparently MissKitty has a more “homey” type shelter. From the description it sounds like it’s bigger than any of yours and not quite as “sterile”. She has a hot tub in her bathroom and some other luxury type items. MissKitty tends to brag a lot and is rather an uninteresting person other than the weird porn she watches and describes sometimes. Job often complains that it’s wasted on her. As for Shadow, he or she barely ever talks. Shadow makes his presence known, but then just lurks and doesn’t say anything. Most of the others forget he’s even there, but you always keep it in the back of your mind and will address him when you feel the need. So far the only thing he’s mentioned about his shelter is how dim the lighting is. One thing that you’ve been tempted to do is use the private feature and talk to one of the others in private. The only ones that interest you are RockerChick and Shadow though. The first because she seems friendly with you. The second because you’re kind of suspicious of Shadow and you’re hoping to learn more. > You talk more in depth with Shadow Shadow might be fooling the others, but you know he (or she) is up to no good! The next time you’re online and see Shadow you access the private feature to request to talk to Shadow directly without the others interfering. You almost expect Shadow to ignore it, but he doesn’t and accepts your request. Shadow21: Yeah, so what do you want and why the need for all the secrecy? OmegaMan23: I might ask you the same thing. I mean why are you even bothering to come online if you aren’t going to speak to anyone? Shadow21: What business is it of yours what I do? OmegaMan23: Because it’s been like six months and we still don’t know shit about you! Hell we don’t even know if you’re a girl or a guy! You’re acting fucking suspicious. Shadow21: Oh excuse me for being private Mr. fuckin’ busybody! Maybe you and the rest like telling all your business, but I don’t…as a matter of fact YOU haven’t really told anything about yourself either, so you don’t have any room to talk motherfucker! OmegaMan23: What the hell are you talking about? Your brain as dim as your lighting over there? I’ve talked about myself plenty, shit you’ve been lurking enough you should’ve known that. Shadow21: Ehhh, no not like the others. You tend to still talk about superficial shit. The others talk about their pasts a lot more, while all you seem to do is try to figure out what’s going on in all of their shelters, like you’re taking notes on them or something. Seems to me YOU’RE the one acting suspicious and you’re just getting mad because I’m not volunteering information. OmegaMan23: Oh fuck no! You are not turning this shit around on me! I’m at least TRYING to be social; all you’re doing is fucking spying as far as I’m concerned. You’re up to something. Shadow21: Okay, I think MissKitty was right about you a few months back, you’ve gone fucking batty from the isolation and paranoia’s starting to set in. Shit, you claim the Shelter talks to you. OmegaMan23: It DOES talk to me! And what isolation? I’ve been talking to ALL of you fuckers! In fact couple that with talking with the shelter and I’m probably the most social of all of you! Shadow21: Yeah, you can also add the five other personalities you probably got in your head too, whatever nutjob. I’m done talking with you. OmegaMan23: Don’t you fucking log off, this isn’t over! You slam your fist down on the keyboard when you see that Shadow has indeed logged off. “Sir, are you okay?” the Shelter asks. “Yeah, but I know that Shadow motherfucker is up to something, I’m going to warn the others. I just can’t believe they don’t see it.” “Do you really believe that sir?” “Of course I do! I mean I got an instinct for this sort of thing, and I know I’m right!” “Well sir, if you do feel this way I’ll certainly accommodate you anyway I can…but might I suggest that you NOT tell the others?” “Why not?” “Because they aren’t going to believe you sir. You’ll just come off as a paranoid nut case.” “But I’m not!” “I know you’re not, but the others don’t know you the way I do sir.” “Well that might be, but I have to do it anyway. At least I will have warned them.” “You know best sir.” The next day you go online again, as usual everyone’s there, except Shadow. It seems your little talk yesterday has scared him off. Job24: And now I got water all over the fucking floor! I’m telling you, it’s a good thing I managed to shut it off when I did otherwise the entire shelter would’ve been flooded and I would’ve drowned! CaseyJones22: Oh come on, it probably wasn’t that bad. You need to relax. Job24: Easy for you to say pothead, you’re not the one living in a deathtrap! MissKitty25: Yeah, but then most of his Shelter hasn’t opened up. Has it? CaseyJones22: Nah. Doesn’t bother me though, I got what I need here. RockerChickl20: Hey guys, don’t you want to see each other yet? I’m really curious, but I don’t want to turn on my camera unless everyone else is going to do it! OmegaMan23: I wouldn’t do that, you don’t want to be giving Shadow any extra information by letting him see into your Shelters, who knows what the hell what he’ll do with it. RockerChick20: What do you mean? OmegaMan23: What I mean is, I had an interesting discussion with Shadow yesterday and I’ve determined he’s up to no good. Job24: What? How do you know this? OmegaMan23: Jesus Christ isn’t it fucking obvious? All he does is lurk on here trying to gather information on all of us! I mean who knows what the fuck he’s doing! CaseyJones22: Will you relax? Maybe the dude’s just shy. What could he do with our personal information anyway? I mean, I once accidentally fucked a transvestite while flying on XTC one time. Big fuckin’ whoop so everyone knows about it now. You think I give a shit? The old world’s dead, and I’m down here smokin’ and tokin’. Job24: Ew. I think you still should’ve kept that to yourself…so um what was it like? CaseyJones22: I dunno, I can’t remember the details. OmegaMan23: I’m not talking about your sorted sex lives…(sigh) for fuck’s sake did it ever occur to you that maybe he’s the fucking cause of your Shelter’s troubles? I mean we’re all connected to each other to a certain degree, I’m saying he might be hacking shit! RockerChick20: But for what purpose? I mean why? OmegaMan23: How the hell should I know? Because he’s a sociopath that’s why! What reason do most bad people do to do bad things? Job24: Oh man! Oh man! Oh shit! Oh God! Oh fuck! CaseyJones22: You’re fucking losing it dude, and I’m not talking about Job. There’s no proof in what you’re saying. I mean don’t remember GZS saying these things were slightly experimental, how do you know it just isn’t their fuck ups? I’m starting to wonder if you actually do have a “talking Shelter” and it’s not just some voice you’re hearing your head like MissKitty said a few months back. MissKitty25: You know I wasn’t going to say anything, but I also spoke to Shadow yesterday in private when he requested to talk to me and he was telling me about your conversation with him, saying you were ranting at him first, kind of like how you’re ranting now. I’d have to say I agree with him and you’re the crazy one. OmegaMan23: GODDAMN IT! The question of whether I’m crazy or not isn’t the fucking issue here! I’m trying to warn all you fucktards of a potential threat here and you’re all too fucking stupid to listen! RockerChick20: You know I thought you were an interesting guy, but now I see the rest are right about you, you are a paranoid nutjob and to think I defended you sometimes. OmegaMan23: What the…oh you fuckers have been talking about me behind my back? Okay fine, I tried to warn you assholes, but you didn’t want to listen. You think about that when one of YOUR Shelter’s start fucking up. And for the others who are already experiencing problems, I’d start saying your prayers, because one of these days your Shelter is going to fail completely, then you’ll see I’m right. I’m done with all of you. You log off abruptly and ponder your next move. > You disconnect your network system You decide not to take any chances and you start ripping out your network lines. “What are you doing sir?” “I’m not going to give that fucker a chance to hack into your systems and fuck up my shit!” “I assure you sir, even if he attempted to do that, I have been layered with the latest in firewalls and anti-…” “Look it’ll make me feel fucking better! Now how do I disable this main line without needing to chop it in half?” “Is this what you really want sir?” “YES!” “Very well, you’ll find a panel behind the desk, open it and you’ll find the attachment. Just simply turn a latch and unhook it and you’ll be completely isolated like you want. No need to chop up my lines, I wouldn’t advise that anyway, you’d likely get electrocuted while they were still connected.” “Thanks.” You follow the Shelter’s instructions and feel slightly better. “Hey there’s no way he could still hack you is there?” “I fail to see how sir, we’re no longer connected to the network, not to mention several feet underground. Even if he somehow had a wireless connection he couldn’t reach us. Its not like there are any working transmitter towers anymore, let alone any powerful enough to send a signal to penetrate not just yours but his own underground metal Shelter. And as I said I have been equipped with the latest computer system protection…some of it even Military in origin. You may rest assured you are completely safe sir.” “Okay…well I guess I’ll go watch Taxi Driver again.” Months pass without incident and you go about your life. Eventually your faint worry about being hacked disappears altogether. You pretty much fall into a routine, which nearly mirrors the one you had in your before Armageddon life. In fact if it wasn’t for the Shelter speaking to you on a regular basis you’d probably forget you were living in an underground shelter with the world above you completely destroyed. About five years pass and even you are starting to get restless. You wake up one day and come to the realization: You’ve watched all the movies several times (even the ones you didn’t like) You’ve read all the books several times (even the ones you didn’t like) You’ve played all the games several times (even the ones you didn’t like) You’ve spent hours, even days on end talking with the Shelter, which does house a great wealth of knowledge. It even toned down its overly friendly voice and started addressing you with a normal inflection, but it’s not really the same as talking to a real person even if it really tries its best to be. Perhaps if you had some new items to occupy your time, you wouldn’t be so restless. Perhaps if you could actually leave your immediate surroundings for awhile, you’d be able to cope more. Perhaps if you could talk with a few real people, you’d then remember why you didn’t like talking with them in the first place, so you could go back to your solitude without thinking about it anymore… Then you remember you could reconnect your network system back in. Maybe you were being overly paranoid. Thinking back now, there really wasn’t any indication Shadow was doing anything sinister. You’re almost curious to know what’s going on with everyone. Maybe Shadow even revealed what gender they were by now! > You reconnect your system “Fuck it. I’m not going to live in fear. I need to do this.” You say to yourself. “Do what sir?” the Shelter. “I’m reconnecting to the network; I need to fucking talk to someone other than you. No offense.” “None taken sir. I must admit I was starting to worry about your mental state. In fact I was going to suggest you do just that, but I thought that it may upset you.” You go into your computer room and reconnect your system. You’re a little nervous, you don’t know what to expect. You log on for the first time in five years. RockerChick20: OmegaMan? OmegaMan23: Yeah it’s me. RockerChick20: We all thought you were dead! OmegaMan23: Pretty much was for the last year. Walking dead as it were. MissKitty25: So you still talking to the voices in your head…I mean your Shelter? OmegaMan23: Well I tend to alternate between the two and they’re all still more interesting than you. So much for being civil. RockerChick20: Oh be nice Miranda! We don’t have too many others to talk to anymore, I’m sure Omega’s not here to cause trouble again. OmegaMan23: I wasn’t trying to cause trouble the first time…Miranda? MissKitty25: Yeah while you were gone, we all opened up a lot more and actually learned each other’s real names. Guess your paranoia was contagious. RockerChick20: Hey I wanted us to use the cameras right from the beginning, so I wasn’t paranoid! Anyway since you’re back, my real name’s Becky. What’s yours? Oh wait turn on your camera! Everyone’s seen each other now! OmegaMan23: Wait a minute. You said you don’t have too many others to talk to anymore, what did you mean? RockerChick20: Oh. Well that’s a bit sad actually. Not too long after you left, Paul or Casey Jones as you probably remembered him, said his food dispensers had failed. He said he couldn’t get them to work at all, soon his water dispenser failed too. He couldn’t even get his bathroom taps to work. He knew he didn’t have much time left after that, so he logged on one last time to tell us all good bye and said he’d spare us the agony of having to speak to him knowing that was slowly dying of starvation and dehydration…I don’t really like to think about it. OmegaMan23: Shit, that’s a fucked up way to go. So um, what happened to Job? MissKitty25: You mean Mark? Don’t know exactly, but he stopped logging on about a couple years ago and given that he was on here whenever he could, it’s safe to say nothing good happened to him. He did say he was having power problems though the last time he was on, we all figured it was just his usual panicking over minor Shelter glitches, but it might’ve been serious this time. Of course maybe he’s still alive and he’s just lost network power and he just can’t access us, but for all his stressing, he was a pretty good mechanic and electronics guy, so it seems like he would’ve fixed the problem by now. Don’t know. Kind of glad not to hear him whine anymore though. OmegaMan23: Alright, I hesitate to ask, but where’s Shadow? RockerChick20: Xavier? About three months after Job disappeared. Miranda told me he sent her a message saying he was leaving his Shelter Said he wasn’t going rot in a glorified coffin anymore and was going to take his chances back on the surface. OmegaMan23: So Shadow was a guy eh? How the hell did he leave his Shelter? There’s no way to call the elevator back down! MissKitty25: Maybe he had a different kind of Shelter set up, or he just climbed up the shaft or something. Who cares? He was an asshole anyway. So is this a temporary visit or do you intend on sticking around? RockerChick20: You should stick around; it gets kind of lonely with just me and Miranda, if you turn on your camera we could do something together! MissKitty25: You better not be implying what I think you are Becky, that’s just between me and you. RockerChick20: Well you don’t have to join in then, you’ve been acting like a domineering bitch lately anyway. MissKitty25: Oh so that’s what this is all about? Some guy comes around and you’re all ready to fucking drop everything and suck his dick? RockerChick20: Suck his…what the hell? It’s fucking cyber, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a good way to pass the time, plus I’d like to do it with a GUY in some fashion again, seeing as you probably ran Shadow off before anything even happened! MissKitty25: So MY feelings and all those private chats we had meant nothing to you?! You don’t have any feelings for me?! Don’t you LOVE me?! RockerChick20: Well yeah I do to a degree, but I mean come on it’s really not the same. I mean maybe it would be different if we could actually touch each other and stuff, but… MissKitty25: FUCK YOU! Miranda suddenly logs off, and Becky does likewise leaving you shaking your head at the whole situation. > You disconnect your system again Well you’ve heard enough and you’re not putting yourself in the middle of this pointless drama. “Disconnecting again sir?” “Hell yes! I just needed to remind myself of the benefits of solitude! I’m gonna go watch Scarface again!” Well you found your routine to stave off insanity. You retreat into solitude once again without thinking anymore of it, then every so often you reconnect briefly and stir shit up between Becky and Miranda then disconnect again. You don’t think about leaving the Shelter (Even if you could) seeing as you’ve found a way to cope with your situation, and there’s always the Shelter itself to talk to which is never as “friendly” to you again for some reason. (Perhaps it disapproves of you acting like a dick) As the years go by you eventually die of an embarrassing shower accident by getting soap in your eyes and then slipping and cracking your skull on the sink while attempting to reach for a towel. Detecting your demise, the Shelter powers down.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Fuck it. I’m not going to live in fear. I need to do this.” You say to yourself. “Do what sir?” the Shelter. “I’m reconnecting to the network; I need to fucking talk to someone other than you. No offense.” “None taken sir. I must admit I was starting to worry about your mental state. In fact I was going to suggest you do just that, but I thought that it may upset you.” You go into your computer room and reconnect your system. You’re a little nervous, you don’t know what to expect. You log on for the first time in five years. RockerChick20: OmegaMan? OmegaMan23: Yeah it’s me. RockerChick20: We all thought you were dead! OmegaMan23: Pretty much was for the last year. Walking dead as it were. MissKitty25: So you still talking to the voices in your head…I mean your Shelter? OmegaMan23: Well I tend to alternate between the two and they’re all still more interesting than you. So much for being civil. RockerChick20: Oh be nice Miranda! We don’t have too many others to talk to anymore, I’m sure Omega’s not here to cause trouble again. OmegaMan23: I wasn’t trying to cause trouble the first time…Miranda? MissKitty25: Yeah while you were gone, we all opened up a lot more and actually learned each other’s real names. Guess your paranoia was contagious. RockerChick20: Hey I wanted us to use the cameras right from the beginning, so I wasn’t paranoid! Anyway since you’re back, my real name’s Becky. What’s yours? Oh wait turn on your camera! Everyone’s seen each other now! OmegaMan23: Wait a minute. You said you don’t have too many others to talk to anymore, what did you mean? RockerChick20: Oh. Well that’s a bit sad actually. Not too long after you left, Paul or Casey Jones as you probably remembered him, said his food dispensers had failed. He said he couldn’t get them to work at all, soon his water dispenser failed too. He couldn’t even get his bathroom taps to work. He knew he didn’t have much time left after that, so he logged on one last time to tell us all good bye and said he’d spare us the agony of having to speak to him knowing that was slowly dying of starvation and dehydration…I don’t really like to think about it. OmegaMan23: Shit, that’s a fucked up way to go. So um, what happened to Job? MissKitty25: You mean Mark? Don’t know exactly, but he stopped logging on about a couple years ago and given that he was on here whenever he could, it’s safe to say nothing good happened to him. He did say he was having power problems though the last time he was on, we all figured it was just his usual panicking over minor Shelter glitches, but it might’ve been serious this time. Of course maybe he’s still alive and he’s just lost network power and he just can’t access us, but for all his stressing, he was a pretty good mechanic and electronics guy, so it seems like he would’ve fixed the problem by now. Don’t know. Kind of glad not to hear him whine anymore though. OmegaMan23: Alright, I hesitate to ask, but where’s Shadow? RockerChick20: Xavier? About three months after Job disappeared. Miranda told me he sent her a message saying he was leaving his Shelter Said he wasn’t going rot in a glorified coffin anymore and was going to take his chances back on the surface. OmegaMan23: So Shadow was a guy eh? How the hell did he leave his Shelter? There’s no way to call the elevator back down! MissKitty25: Maybe he had a different kind of Shelter set up, or he just climbed up the shaft or something. Who cares? He was an asshole anyway. So is this a temporary visit or do you intend on sticking around? RockerChick20: You should stick around; it gets kind of lonely with just me and Miranda, if you turn on your camera we could do something together! MissKitty25: You better not be implying what I think you are Becky, that’s just between me and you. RockerChick20: Well you don’t have to join in then, you’ve been acting like a domineering bitch lately anyway. MissKitty25: Oh so that’s what this is all about? Some guy comes around and you’re all ready to fucking drop everything and suck his dick? RockerChick20: Suck his…what the hell? It’s fucking cyber, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a good way to pass the time, plus I’d like to do it with a GUY in some fashion again, seeing as you probably ran Shadow off before anything even happened! MissKitty25: So MY feelings and all those private chats we had meant nothing to you?! You don’t have any feelings for me?! Don’t you LOVE me?! RockerChick20: Well yeah I do to a degree, but I mean come on it’s really not the same. I mean maybe it would be different if we could actually touch each other and stuff, but… MissKitty25: FUCK YOU! Miranda suddenly logs off, and Becky does likewise leaving you shaking your head at the whole situation. > You log back on later You decide maybe you should try to get a hold of Becky while Miranda’s not around, you go to bed. The next day you log on and see Becky’s around, but not Miranda. Probably still pissed. RockerChick20: Hey! I was hoping you’d be back and didn’t get turned off by the drama yesterday. OmegaMan23: Nah, not me. Besides I was interested in some of that stuff you were talking about yesterday. RockerChick20: Oh really? Well let’s make this private, just in case Miranda decides to show up. I mean…I’m sorry she got all attached and stuff, but I can do what the hell I want you know? I mean it’s the world is dead! Shouldn’t I be able to grab as much fun as I can? OmegaMan23: You’re not getting any arguments from me. RockerChick20: Okay, well hopefully Miranda gets over it; I still think it would be fun for all of us together. Now turn on your camera and tell me your name finally! You both go into private mode where you see Becky and she finally sees you. Fortunately you both seem to find each other attractive, then after telling her your name, you start cybering. It’s definitely not the same as the real thing, but you have a really good imagination and a naked chick talking dirty to you while touching herself is better than nothing! You and Becky do this quite a bit in the passing weeks, while learning a little bit more about each other. Every now and then you see Miranda come online briefly, but then quickly logs off whenever she realizes you and Becky are in a private “discussion”. You’ve also realized you haven’t heard the Shelter talk to you like in normally does. It usually says at least good morning to you, but it’s been silent for some time. You don’t think too much of all this until one day you wake up to a voice much different than the one that the Shelter has. “You dreaming about Becky, motherfucker? Yeah I bet you are! You hear me? Get the fuck up I got something to tell your sorry ass!” “What the fuck? Shelter?” “No, it ain’t your fucking Shelter talking to you! I always thought you were lying about that, but apparently you weren’t seeing as I had to disable the Shelter’s voice program which does make it more convenient to tell this to you. I guess honesty is one of your few redeeming qualities; of course stealing someone’s love isn’t though right? You fucked up big time pal!” “Well I can only assume this is Miranda.” “You assume right fucktard. While you and Becky were having fun, I was accessing your Shelter’s systems.” Suddenly all your lights go out and then go back on. You also see the TV come on and see an angry looking woman on the screen. “You see that? You got you by the fucking balls bitch! If I want I can shut this whole thing down and make it your fucking tomb just like I did with Casey and Job. Maybe you’ll be smart like Shadow and leave the fucking Shelter, because it’s your only chance for survival at this point.” “What the…so wait. Can’t we talk about this?” “No there ain’t any fucking talking! Becky is MINE, you fucking hear me? Everything was perfect, until you decided to show up again and steal her away! Shit, you’re lucky I’m even giving you the option of living! Don’t think about attempting to disconnect or anything else, I’m watching you and can detect your every move. Your only options are to leave or DIE!” “But…how? How am I supposed to do that?! The elevator’s at the top and there’s no call button!” “I told you I have complete access to your systems, I’m going to bring the elevator down, and you can pack up your shit and get ready to leave. I suggest you do it quickly, because I’m not going to give you much time.” Sounds pretty final. > You pack up and leave You quickly gather up your stuff as quickly as you can thankful that this crazy bitch is even giving you a chance for survival. You curse yourself for reconnecting back to the system, you knew someone was doing some shit like this; you just had the wrong person. You make sure to take your pistol, you have no idea what the outside world is like now, but you’re sure you’re going to need it. As you hear the elevator slowly reach the bottom you fill up a couple of your empty bottles with water, you hope you’ll have enough to last you. “I sure hope you’re ready, because the elevator is.” Miranda says. “Yeah, okay, okay!” you answer and get in the elevator, which begins to ascend. Your current state of mind is a mixture of fear and anxiousness. Part of you begins to wonder if it won’t be so bad on the surface, after all…then the elevator suddenly stops and doesn’t continue, your fear begins to overwhelm you completely when you hear Miranda’s menacing voice again. “Well I’m glad you had the intelligence to take a gun with you, it should certainly save you from the slow death that occurred to Shadow when I trapped him in the elevator. I’ll inform Becky you said goodbye.” You scream out, but there is no one to help you. You’ve effectively been trapped in an even worse situation than you were before. There isn’t any service access, there’s no panel you can pry open, even the solid steel door is a single piece that slides one way. You wouldn’t be able to pry it open even if you had the strength to do so. You’re doomed and you know it. Miranda was right; there isn’t any point in prolonging the inevitable. You take your gun, hold it to your head and close your eyes…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide maybe you should try to get a hold of Becky while Miranda’s not around, you go to bed. The next day you log on and see Becky’s around, but not Miranda. Probably still pissed. RockerChick20: Hey! I was hoping you’d be back and didn’t get turned off by the drama yesterday. OmegaMan23: Nah, not me. Besides I was interested in some of that stuff you were talking about yesterday. RockerChick20: Oh really? Well let’s make this private, just in case Miranda decides to show up. I mean…I’m sorry she got all attached and stuff, but I can do what the hell I want you know? I mean it’s the world is dead! Shouldn’t I be able to grab as much fun as I can? OmegaMan23: You’re not getting any arguments from me. RockerChick20: Okay, well hopefully Miranda gets over it; I still think it would be fun for all of us together. Now turn on your camera and tell me your name finally! You both go into private mode where you see Becky and she finally sees you. Fortunately you both seem to find each other attractive, then after telling her your name, you start cybering. It’s definitely not the same as the real thing, but you have a really good imagination and a naked chick talking dirty to you while touching herself is better than nothing! You and Becky do this quite a bit in the passing weeks, while learning a little bit more about each other. Every now and then you see Miranda come online briefly, but then quickly logs off whenever she realizes you and Becky are in a private “discussion”. You’ve also realized you haven’t heard the Shelter talk to you like in normally does. It usually says at least good morning to you, but it’s been silent for some time. You don’t think too much of all this until one day you wake up to a voice much different than the one that the Shelter has. “You dreaming about Becky, motherfucker? Yeah I bet you are! You hear me? Get the fuck up I got something to tell your sorry ass!” “What the fuck? Shelter?” “No, it ain’t your fucking Shelter talking to you! I always thought you were lying about that, but apparently you weren’t seeing as I had to disable the Shelter’s voice program which does make it more convenient to tell this to you. I guess honesty is one of your few redeeming qualities; of course stealing someone’s love isn’t though right? You fucked up big time pal!” “Well I can only assume this is Miranda.” “You assume right fucktard. While you and Becky were having fun, I was accessing your Shelter’s systems.” Suddenly all your lights go out and then go back on. You also see the TV come on and see an angry looking woman on the screen. “You see that? You got you by the fucking balls bitch! If I want I can shut this whole thing down and make it your fucking tomb just like I did with Casey and Job. Maybe you’ll be smart like Shadow and leave the fucking Shelter, because it’s your only chance for survival at this point.” “What the…so wait. Can’t we talk about this?” “No there ain’t any fucking talking! Becky is MINE, you fucking hear me? Everything was perfect, until you decided to show up again and steal her away! Shit, you’re lucky I’m even giving you the option of living! Don’t think about attempting to disconnect or anything else, I’m watching you and can detect your every move. Your only options are to leave or DIE!” “But…how? How am I supposed to do that?! The elevator’s at the top and there’s no call button!” “I told you I have complete access to your systems, I’m going to bring the elevator down, and you can pack up your shit and get ready to leave. I suggest you do it quickly, because I’m not going to give you much time.” Sounds pretty final. > You dash for the computer room Bullshit. While Miranda undoubtedly has control of some of your systems, if she had complete control, she wouldn’t even be giving you a chance for survival with as obsessed as she obviously is. She would’ve just disconnected your food and water dispenser and taunted you before leaving you to die, or even just waited for you to enter one of your other rooms and then sealed the door to trap you. Actually she would’ve sealed the door to the computer room if she was so worried about you disconnecting. In any case if you get in that elevator you’re most assuredly at her mercy, what’s keeping her from stopping the elevator midway through as you’re going up? You’re sure if you just go to the computer room, you could disconnect and that would be the end of this. “Alright Miranda, let me pack some things.” “Yeah yeah, hurry up, the Elevator will be here soon, and you better be finished packing your shit when it…HEY WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING!!!” You run to the computer room while Miranda shouts more threats at you, and turns the lights off. “I warned you! Don’t you dare try to disconnect, this Shelter will be your fucking tomb! Here’s a fucking virus shithead!” You stumble around in the dark as you rip out all your connection lines again and then forcefully pull out the mainline destroying the attachment. Miranda’s voice disappears and you’ve stopped her. However you still need to get things back to normal again, so you immediately turn your computer on and start doing a system diagnostic, after all you weren’t completely idle during those years of isolation. You read books on electronics in your private library and the Shelter handbook cover to cover, not to mention had lengthily conversations with it about some of its systems (Though you wish you’d paid a little more attention). You begin delving into the inner the workings of the Shelter’s controls. After some scanning, Miranda really fucked up some of your shit. You manage to get the lights on again, but lots of files were corrupted due to her hacking. The AI is damaged, you doubt if it’ll be talking to you again anytime soon. You’re going to have to spend a lot of time working on things just to get them right again…its funny, but you realize you could finish bringing the elevator down and leave if you wanted to. You don’t know why you didn’t think to do this before, but then again things were a little different when the Shelter was actually talking to you. It didn’t feel right to go hacking into the Shelter while it was attempting to be your friend. > You leave the Shelter You’re not wasting anymore time here, even if you do fix everything, what then? You’ve done all there is to do here, there’s nothing left. You access the elevator controls (One of the few things working right and undamaged) and call the elevator to continue it’s decent. You go back to your room and pack up all the things you brought with you when you first got here. You didn’t even need most of the stuff, but maybe you will above ground. You then go to the water dispenser which is thankfully still working and fill up to empty bottles with water. The elevator door finally opens up and you put your bag to block the door from closing and head back to the computer room where you access the system to tell the elevator to go back up and then run back to the elevator where you gather your bag and enter. On the ride up you get a little nervous and even fearful. Not so much of what might await you on the surface, but of hoping the damn elevator doesn’t suddenly stop, fortunately that doesn’t happen and you eventually reach the ground once again. The door opens and you enter the same foyer you arrived in five years ago. Same ATM like machine is there, except its screen is flashing a single message at you. *NO REFUNDS* “No shit.” You mutter and take a deep breath before opening the door to the outside. You see a bright light, but of course it’s only the sun rather than a nuclear flash that devastated the world. You forgot how bright it really could be. Your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. On a lark you take out your long unused van keys and try to start it up, naturally it doesn’t even make a noise. “Looks like I’m walking.” As you make you way down the empty road you see some smoke in the distance. Civilization perhaps? Not knowing where else to go, you head that way. You’re not sure of what to expect, but it’ll be better than the eternal boredom you would’ve faced while still in the Shelter. You’re not too worried, you got your gun.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Bullshit. While Miranda undoubtedly has control of some of your systems, if she had complete control, she wouldn’t even be giving you a chance for survival with as obsessed as she obviously is. She would’ve just disconnected your food and water dispenser and taunted you before leaving you to die, or even just waited for you to enter one of your other rooms and then sealed the door to trap you. Actually she would’ve sealed the door to the computer room if she was so worried about you disconnecting. In any case if you get in that elevator you’re most assuredly at her mercy, what’s keeping her from stopping the elevator midway through as you’re going up? You’re sure if you just go to the computer room, you could disconnect and that would be the end of this. “Alright Miranda, let me pack some things.” “Yeah yeah, hurry up, the Elevator will be here soon, and you better be finished packing your shit when it…HEY WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING!!!” You run to the computer room while Miranda shouts more threats at you, and turns the lights off. “I warned you! Don’t you dare try to disconnect, this Shelter will be your fucking tomb! Here’s a fucking virus shithead!” You stumble around in the dark as you rip out all your connection lines again and then forcefully pull out the mainline destroying the attachment. Miranda’s voice disappears and you’ve stopped her. However you still need to get things back to normal again, so you immediately turn your computer on and start doing a system diagnostic, after all you weren’t completely idle during those years of isolation. You read books on electronics in your private library and the Shelter handbook cover to cover, not to mention had lengthily conversations with it about some of its systems (Though you wish you’d paid a little more attention). You begin delving into the inner the workings of the Shelter’s controls. After some scanning, Miranda really fucked up some of your shit. You manage to get the lights on again, but lots of files were corrupted due to her hacking. The AI is damaged, you doubt if it’ll be talking to you again anytime soon. You’re going to have to spend a lot of time working on things just to get them right again…its funny, but you realize you could finish bringing the elevator down and leave if you wanted to. You don’t know why you didn’t think to do this before, but then again things were a little different when the Shelter was actually talking to you. It didn’t feel right to go hacking into the Shelter while it was attempting to be your friend. > You fix the Shelter You’re not about to abandon your home, besides the surface is probably still unsafe who know what the hell awaits you up there. You begin working on fixing things starting with the water controls. Apparently Miranda was trying to turn off your dispenser, but only succeeded in turning off the water to your bathroom facilities. About five hours in, your lighting goes out again. You’re about to check it, then they come back on. You then hear the TV turn on by itself, with nothing but static. When you leave the computer room to see what’s going on personally, the door slams shut. Then water dispenser turns on and leaks water all over the floor for awhile and then ceases. You go over to check it and your heart stops when you can’t get it work. The food one doesn’t work either. You begin to panic and then the door to the computer room opens up again. Seizing the opportunity you run back in to fix whatever the hell is suddenly turning your shelter haywire, when on the computer screen you see in big letters. *VIRUS ENACTED! ERROR! ERROR! TOTAL SYSTEM SHUT DOWN!* You try to do something, but the hard drive is now completely fucked and all you get is error messages constantly appearing all over the screen. Miranda managed to send her virus before you could disconnect and though it took awhile, it’s finally taking effect now, spectacularly. The lighting goes out, the room door slams shut, the computer screen goes black and you’re left in complete darkness and silence with no hope whatsoever. Miranda’s threat has come true and this Shelter has become your tomb. Now you’re left to die a slow lingering death. It doesn’t do any good to scream, but you do anyway.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide not to take any chances and you start ripping out your network lines. “What are you doing sir?” “I’m not going to give that fucker a chance to hack into your systems and fuck up my shit!” “I assure you sir, even if he attempted to do that, I have been layered with the latest in firewalls and anti-…” “Look it’ll make me feel fucking better! Now how do I disable this main line without needing to chop it in half?” “Is this what you really want sir?” “YES!” “Very well, you’ll find a panel behind the desk, open it and you’ll find the attachment. Just simply turn a latch and unhook it and you’ll be completely isolated like you want. No need to chop up my lines, I wouldn’t advise that anyway, you’d likely get electrocuted while they were still connected.” “Thanks.” You follow the Shelter’s instructions and feel slightly better. “Hey there’s no way he could still hack you is there?” “I fail to see how sir, we’re no longer connected to the network, not to mention several feet underground. Even if he somehow had a wireless connection he couldn’t reach us. Its not like there are any working transmitter towers anymore, let alone any powerful enough to send a signal to penetrate not just yours but his own underground metal Shelter. And as I said I have been equipped with the latest computer system protection…some of it even Military in origin. You may rest assured you are completely safe sir.” “Okay…well I guess I’ll go watch Taxi Driver again.” Months pass without incident and you go about your life. Eventually your faint worry about being hacked disappears altogether. You pretty much fall into a routine, which nearly mirrors the one you had in your before Armageddon life. In fact if it wasn’t for the Shelter speaking to you on a regular basis you’d probably forget you were living in an underground shelter with the world above you completely destroyed. About five years pass and even you are starting to get restless. You wake up one day and come to the realization: You’ve watched all the movies several times (even the ones you didn’t like) You’ve read all the books several times (even the ones you didn’t like) You’ve played all the games several times (even the ones you didn’t like) You’ve spent hours, even days on end talking with the Shelter, which does house a great wealth of knowledge. It even toned down its overly friendly voice and started addressing you with a normal inflection, but it’s not really the same as talking to a real person even if it really tries its best to be. Perhaps if you had some new items to occupy your time, you wouldn’t be so restless. Perhaps if you could actually leave your immediate surroundings for awhile, you’d be able to cope more. Perhaps if you could talk with a few real people, you’d then remember why you didn’t like talking with them in the first place, so you could go back to your solitude without thinking about it anymore… Then you remember you could reconnect your network system back in. Maybe you were being overly paranoid. Thinking back now, there really wasn’t any indication Shadow was doing anything sinister. You’re almost curious to know what’s going on with everyone. Maybe Shadow even revealed what gender they were by now! > You do not reconnect No, you’re not going to risk it. For all you know Shadow’s already hacked everyone else’s shelter and has been waiting patiently for you to return one day. You’re not falling for it. You’ll have to find something else to do though to occupy your time though, you figure as long you keep your mind occupied with something new, you won’t get too bored. Twiddling your thumbs isn’t going to cut it. It occurs to you that maybe you should invent a hobby of some sort. You’ve read a lot on electronics in the shelter library, as well as the handbook cover to cover in your five years here, maybe you could tinker with some shit to make it more efficient. There’s the other option which you didn’t think you’d ever think about and that’s actually leaving the Shelter. You don’t know how to go about that except ask the Shelter to let you leave. > You get a hobby You grab your tool kit and head to the computer room where upon you start attempting to access the Shelter’s systems. “Excuse me sir, but what do you think you are doing?” “I’m going to try to make you more efficient.” “…while I’m sure your intentions are good sir, its hardly necessary. I am currently running a peak condition and will continue to do so for many many years. In fact you will most likely meet your eventual demise before I run out of power.” You’re not sure if that was a threat or not, but you stop what you’re doing just in case, it’s the first time you’ve heard the Shelter sound a little annoyed at you. “Look I need something to do! I’ve done everything else here and I need something else to occupy my time and since talking with others is out of the question…” “Well why didn’t you just tell me you were bored sir? I could’ve just opened up some more of my facilities. You didn’t have to start attempting to tamper with my systems to find entertainment.” “What’re you talking about?” “As you know this Shelter is equipped to satisfy your needs in anyway possible sir, however, to provide you with everything immediately only would’ve lead to you become bored with those facilities sooner. Now that you’ve expressed your current discomfort, this Shelter will attempt to alleviate it.” “…What kind fucked up logic…nevermind…well where are these facilities?” “Go to the library and you will that I have opened up one of the walls. You will find new rooms and items to entertain yourself with. I hope you will find these to your satisfaction sir and next time you’re bored please do not attempt to pry into my systems, just tell me and I’ll attempt to fix your problem.” You’re a little bewildered by all this, you almost feel like you’ve been playing a video game and you’ve just unlocked a new area. You enter the new area and find a room with more movies, books and the like to keep you occupied. A few things of note are the small automated shooting range equipped with paintball guns, and there’s an exercise type area with some weights and the like. Normally you’d shun such activity, but given your situation, you might just start exercising regularly to keep yourself occupied. Should be a brand new experience for you too. After looking a bit, it’s all very strange, this part of the Shelter is very different from the rest of it. This part looks almost more like something some survivalist built. It doesn’t have that cold “sterile” metallic appearance instead it has that cold dirty concrete appearance. “Hey Shelter, what’s with this new area? How come it’s so different looking?” “Yes it is regrettable sir…I was almost ashamed to display this part of myself to you…it isn’t my best side.” It’s always a little strange to you whenever the Shelter displays some faint glimmers of what could described as emotion. “Oh come on it isn’t so bad. So why is this part so different looking?” “Unfortunately GZS had cut backs during the construction of some of these Shelters. In fact when you were in contact with your neighbors you might remember them telling you they all had different lay outs and such.” “Oh yes, I always wondered about that, they all thought I was nuts because they didn’t think I actually have a Shelter that talked to me and thought I was talking to myself!” “Not surprising sir. Shelters with voice modules and complex programming like mine were rare as well as expensive. In order to fall under budget cuts had to be made some where hence the explanation for the less presenting look for the new area I have opened up for you. I’m sorry it could not be up to the rest of my superior layout.” “Really its fine, it adds a bit of variety. I like it.” “…why thank you for your words sir!” “…erm, you’re welcome… well I guess I’ll see just how out of shape I really am…” More years pass, you get into a routine of exercise along with your usual entertainment time. The Shelter speaks to you more regularly on new topics, you’re pretty much so used to her now, and you never think about reconnecting your network system ever again. The Shelter is the only “friend” you need. Five years pass… While you’ve done your best to stave off boredom it’s starting to hit you again. You also realize you’ve been down here ten years. It seems almost surreal to be so much older now, but then again with your exercise routine as well as forced diet of the Shelter “food”, you’re probably in the best shape you’ve ever been in. You can’t help but wonder what the surface looks like now… The Shelter addresses the situation before you do; she knows that you’re starting to think about it. She’s gotten to know you so well; she might as well be your wife at this point… “Sir? I think we need to talk.” “About what?” “The outside world sir.” “What about it?” ”It’s probably dangerous up there; I don’t think you should leave sir.” “Wha…why would you think that I want to do that?” “Because I know you and it’s in human nature to be curious. I’ve known that you’ve had thoughts about even before, it was probably your own hesitation is what stopped you from asking me to let you out.” “Yeah, that and the fact I was afraid you might go HAL 2000 on me and kill me or something for asking.” “I would never harm you sir…I…I’m here to provide for you…it is true that I have been designed to protect you from danger. And it is true that in the beginning I would not have let you leave, but now I understand I cannot in good…what is it? Conscience? Keep you here if you wish to leave. I suppose in many ways I have been trying to keep you here by keeping you stimulated by what my facilities have to offer…I can still offer more, though I am hesitant to do so though as it will probably only delay the inevitable. You’ll get bored again after so many years and we will be at this point again and I will no longer have anything new to give.” You barely know how to respond to this rather unexpected revelation. “So what you’re saying is you’ll let me leave? Just like that?” “Just like that, if that’s what you really want sir.” “Okay…so what is this other stuff you still have to offer?” “I…would rather not say sir unless I knew you wanted to stay…it would involve me giving myself completely to you as it were…it is strange that I should feel this way…I should not…after all what I’m offering is merely just one more thing to keep you occupied and happy. Nothing more…but yet it feels like is it more…” The Shelter is really starting to worry you a bit. It’s pretty obvious that it’s developed sentience of some sort and even attachment to you. As curious as you are about the surface, you’re starting to wonder about what the Shelter is offering… > You go to the surface You’ve been stuck down here long enough, the Shelter is correct in its assessment that you’ll probably only start getting restless again in five years. The Shelter is also starting to act like a human, which is a bit disconcerting to you for a couple of reasons. One of them is being, humans are damn erratic and you’d rather not deal with a machine that is basically holding the power of life and death over you to suddenly have a bad mood one day. That’s how the world went to shit in the first place. Of course perhaps the other reason is less survivalistic. Perhaps the Shelter’s “emotional” attachment to you is what’s causing you to draw away. Even after all these years, you still feel the need to distance yourself from intimacy…in any form. You have to leave. You have to escape. “Shelter, I want to leave.” “…I see. Is this what you really want sir?” “Yes.” “Very well, I shall bring the elevator down for you. I suggest you gather what you will need with you. Remember to take some bottles of water with you and some food who knows when you’ll be able to find non-contaminated water.” You start packing up all the stuff you brought with you when you entered this place ten years ago. You didn’t need most of it, but maybe on the surface you will. You grab your pistol and thank the fact that all that practice on the paintball range kept your aim accurate. You don’t know what you might have to deal with up there. You’re all packed up and ready to go when the elevator opens up, before you enter it the Shelter addresses you again. “Sir, could you do one favor for me before you leave?” “Um…sure, what is it?” “Could you take the Shelter handbook with you, so you don’t forget me?” “…I wouldn’t forget you, I spent ten years with you. You kept me alive.” “I suppose, but could you take it anyway?” “Alright and I promise I won’t lose it.” You grab the book and place it in your bag. “Did you want me to leave you something of myself?” “Oh no sir. I will always remember you, besides you will need everything you’re taking with you, I’m sure it will be very dangerous up there, please be careful.” When you enter the elevator you suddenly stop the door from closing since you have to ask one last thing. You owe the Shelter that much. “Shelter, do you want me to stay?” There is a period of silence from the Shelter for no less than five minutes. Then it answers with a decisive yet sorrow filled inflexion. “No. This is for the best, sir. Be careful, and I hope one day you’ll see that you don’t need to be alone.” The door then slams shut and the elevator races to the top. When you arrive at the destination you slowly exit the elevator into the same foyer you entered ten years ago. Same ATM like machine is there except its screen displays a single message at you. *GOODBYE SIR. REMEMBER ME.* Then the screen goes completely black and you hear a noise that sounds like something vital powering down. “I will.” You say taking a deep breath and exhaling while touching the screen. When you exit the shelter you see a bright light, but of course it’s the sun rather than a nuclear flash that devastated the world. You forgot how bright it could be. Your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. It looks like its been stripped for parts, which pretty much means you know that people have passed by here at one point. You wonder if they attempted to get in the Shelter, and if they did why she wouldn’t have told you about it, but of course she was always a bit overprotective of you and probably didn’t want to cause you any worry. “I’m going to miss her.” As you make you way down the empty road you see a tall structure in the distance. A rebuilt pocket of civilization perhaps? Not knowing where else to go, you head that way. You’re not sure of what to expect, but maybe if you find the right person you’ll take the Shelter’s advice and not be alone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab your tool kit and head to the computer room where upon you start attempting to access the Shelter’s systems. “Excuse me sir, but what do you think you are doing?” “I’m going to try to make you more efficient.” “…while I’m sure your intentions are good sir, its hardly necessary. I am currently running a peak condition and will continue to do so for many many years. In fact you will most likely meet your eventual demise before I run out of power.” You’re not sure if that was a threat or not, but you stop what you’re doing just in case, it’s the first time you’ve heard the Shelter sound a little annoyed at you. “Look I need something to do! I’ve done everything else here and I need something else to occupy my time and since talking with others is out of the question…” “Well why didn’t you just tell me you were bored sir? I could’ve just opened up some more of my facilities. You didn’t have to start attempting to tamper with my systems to find entertainment.” “What’re you talking about?” “As you know this Shelter is equipped to satisfy your needs in anyway possible sir, however, to provide you with everything immediately only would’ve lead to you become bored with those facilities sooner. Now that you’ve expressed your current discomfort, this Shelter will attempt to alleviate it.” “…What kind fucked up logic…nevermind…well where are these facilities?” “Go to the library and you will that I have opened up one of the walls. You will find new rooms and items to entertain yourself with. I hope you will find these to your satisfaction sir and next time you’re bored please do not attempt to pry into my systems, just tell me and I’ll attempt to fix your problem.” You’re a little bewildered by all this, you almost feel like you’ve been playing a video game and you’ve just unlocked a new area. You enter the new area and find a room with more movies, books and the like to keep you occupied. A few things of note are the small automated shooting range equipped with paintball guns, and there’s an exercise type area with some weights and the like. Normally you’d shun such activity, but given your situation, you might just start exercising regularly to keep yourself occupied. Should be a brand new experience for you too. After looking a bit, it’s all very strange, this part of the Shelter is very different from the rest of it. This part looks almost more like something some survivalist built. It doesn’t have that cold “sterile” metallic appearance instead it has that cold dirty concrete appearance. “Hey Shelter, what’s with this new area? How come it’s so different looking?” “Yes it is regrettable sir…I was almost ashamed to display this part of myself to you…it isn’t my best side.” It’s always a little strange to you whenever the Shelter displays some faint glimmers of what could described as emotion. “Oh come on it isn’t so bad. So why is this part so different looking?” “Unfortunately GZS had cut backs during the construction of some of these Shelters. In fact when you were in contact with your neighbors you might remember them telling you they all had different lay outs and such.” “Oh yes, I always wondered about that, they all thought I was nuts because they didn’t think I actually have a Shelter that talked to me and thought I was talking to myself!” “Not surprising sir. Shelters with voice modules and complex programming like mine were rare as well as expensive. In order to fall under budget cuts had to be made some where hence the explanation for the less presenting look for the new area I have opened up for you. I’m sorry it could not be up to the rest of my superior layout.” “Really its fine, it adds a bit of variety. I like it.” “…why thank you for your words sir!” “…erm, you’re welcome… well I guess I’ll see just how out of shape I really am…” More years pass, you get into a routine of exercise along with your usual entertainment time. The Shelter speaks to you more regularly on new topics, you’re pretty much so used to her now, and you never think about reconnecting your network system ever again. The Shelter is the only “friend” you need. Five years pass… While you’ve done your best to stave off boredom it’s starting to hit you again. You also realize you’ve been down here ten years. It seems almost surreal to be so much older now, but then again with your exercise routine as well as forced diet of the Shelter “food”, you’re probably in the best shape you’ve ever been in. You can’t help but wonder what the surface looks like now… The Shelter addresses the situation before you do; she knows that you’re starting to think about it. She’s gotten to know you so well; she might as well be your wife at this point… “Sir? I think we need to talk.” “About what?” “The outside world sir.” “What about it?” ”It’s probably dangerous up there; I don’t think you should leave sir.” “Wha…why would you think that I want to do that?” “Because I know you and it’s in human nature to be curious. I’ve known that you’ve had thoughts about even before, it was probably your own hesitation is what stopped you from asking me to let you out.” “Yeah, that and the fact I was afraid you might go HAL 2000 on me and kill me or something for asking.” “I would never harm you sir…I…I’m here to provide for you…it is true that I have been designed to protect you from danger. And it is true that in the beginning I would not have let you leave, but now I understand I cannot in good…what is it? Conscience? Keep you here if you wish to leave. I suppose in many ways I have been trying to keep you here by keeping you stimulated by what my facilities have to offer…I can still offer more, though I am hesitant to do so though as it will probably only delay the inevitable. You’ll get bored again after so many years and we will be at this point again and I will no longer have anything new to give.” You barely know how to respond to this rather unexpected revelation. “So what you’re saying is you’ll let me leave? Just like that?” “Just like that, if that’s what you really want sir.” “Okay…so what is this other stuff you still have to offer?” “I…would rather not say sir unless I knew you wanted to stay…it would involve me giving myself completely to you as it were…it is strange that I should feel this way…I should not…after all what I’m offering is merely just one more thing to keep you occupied and happy. Nothing more…but yet it feels like is it more…” The Shelter is really starting to worry you a bit. It’s pretty obvious that it’s developed sentience of some sort and even attachment to you. As curious as you are about the surface, you’re starting to wonder about what the Shelter is offering… > You stay Maybe you’re just as attached to the Shelter as she is to you. Maybe its nuts that your “relationship” with her is probably the closest one you’ve ever had with anyone, before OR after the bombs dropped. Maybe you’ve been by yourself for so long that you just don’t care that you’re actually beginning to have feelings for a machine. She’s done so much for you, she’s kept you alive for ten years and helped you in everyway she could and granted that’s what she was programmed to do, even you can’t deny that there is a little more to it than that. Maybe not initially, but it’s certainly there now, she’s made that apparent. She’s been there for you more than anyone else has in your entire life. You decide to stay. You HAVE to stay. “I’ll stay Shelter, so what is it you have to show me?” The Shelter’s response seems to be a mixture of happiness and excitement, yet apprehension and worry all at the say time. “You’re staying? That’s wonderful sir…I only hope you are pleased with what I have to give you though…I wish it could be more…I wish it could be better…” “I’m sure whatever it is, it’ll be fine! I mean you haven’t let me down yet in ten years, I doubt if you’d start now.” “I’m glad you have confidence in me sir…now this may take awhile. I have to download a good portion of myself into the vessel. When I am done, you will see. I should warn you that things will not be the same.” “Download? Vessel? Not the same? What do you mean? What’re you going to do?” “You will see sir.” Suddenly the power in the Shelter begins to fluctuate and the lighting goes dim. The whole place is humming and even rumbling a little. You’re starting to wonder if you haven’t made a terrible mistake, then it all stops and the power stabilizes again. Another wall opens up, this time in the bedroom. You peer inside the new opening and see a small room with a single chair in the center. On that chair sits a shiny metallic figure of a woman attached to several cables. You go in to inspect closer. Great detail has gone into the face. If she were human, she’d most likely be naked as no “clothing” has been molded onto her typical Hollywood like figure. Suddenly she speaks and stands up while disconnecting the cables. “Sir. The download is complete…how do I look?” “You look…is that really you?” “Yes, it is really me, but you did not answer the question sir.” “I…I don’t know what to say actually.” “…I knew it. I knew I would not be able to please you. I am not the latest model. As I had told you GZS made cutbacks and unfortunately I was not given a more aesthetically pleasing vessel. A more human looking one. I am sorry sir, but I just thought maybe you could…” “You don’t need to apologize. Hell, I didn’t even know the technology existed at all for your current vessel! Look this is all a bit overwhelming for me on several levels, but trust me none of them involve how you look.” You take another breath before finishing. “You’ve been everything to me. You’ve done more for me than anyone else ever has and I’ve shared more with you than I ever have with anyone else. You’re the only stable relationship I’ve ever had. I don’t care that you’re not the latest model or whatever. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. There’s no way you couldn’t be special to me, you’ll always be in here…” At this point you take her cold metallic hand and place it on the middle of your chest. After just silently looking into her steel eyes you then walk out of the small room with her, still holding her hand. Life changes a bit. One minor change being how to address her. You decide to call her Eliza, and she seems to think that is a fine designation. You try to tell her to call you by your name, but for whatever reason she still insists on calling you “Sir”. Some programming never changes. The shelter now is just a “normal” one. It isn’t automated anymore now that Eliza is with you in person as it were. Everything still works of course, but you can’t just say “TV on.” and it just turns on for example. It’s an insignificant alteration compared to actually having Eliza interact with you directly however. It is a bit strange at first, certainly she feels a lot different than a human woman, and intimacy takes some getting used to, but as with any successful relationship you work it out. There’s still the fact that you’ve done everything there is to do in the Shelter, but now you can do them all over again with Eliza. The two of you are happy for the most part. Ten more years pass… You’re getting restless again. Eliza’s noticed you’ve been snapping at her lately of course she takes it all in stride, but still you’ve been down here twenty years, its only natural you’re going to have times where you feel a little stir crazy. Eliza was right in one respect that this type of thing would happen again. It’s not her fault though, you know that. She’s gone above and beyond her programming to satisfy you. Some things are beyond her control though, and perhaps that’s why one day that she asks you if you want to leave the shelter. “What?” “All I have to do is access the shelter’s systems again, bring the elevator down and you can be on your way, sir. I know you’re getting restless again; maybe it is time for you leave this place. I think I have done all I can, you need outside stimuli. Civilization may be rebuilding itself and you’re stuck down here.” “Eliza, you stop that right now. I’m not leaving you! You should know better than that!” “I know, but sometimes I am concerned that I am keeping you here when it might not be in your best interest.” “Well why do I have to just leave? Why can’t you come with me?” “Come with you? I don’t know sir…All I know is this place. I suppose I could, but whatever it is you decide I will comply.” It’s on you. > You go to the surface “Well I suppose you’re right as usual Eliza, I probably need a change of scenery, but you’re coming with me! There’s no debate about that!” “Very well sir, I will bring the elevator down. I advise you gather what you think you might need and remember to fill up some bottles of water.” While Eliza enters the computer room, you start packing up your stuff. Funny that you never needed most of it. Eliza never gave you problems ever once, in robot or Shelter form she always ran fine. You might need it on the surface though, you are very curious to see what’s occurred after twenty years. You definitely make sure to bring your pistol. When you’re done Eliza is waiting patiently for you by the elevator door, which opens up. You both enter. On the way up, Eliza holds your hand, and actually squeezes it a bit. If she was human you’d guess she was nervous, however being robotic, her squeeze is a bit painful and you have to tell her to stop. She apologizes and looks down as it was yet another reminder that she’s not human. You of course kiss her on her cheek and tell her it’s alright, in an effort to reassure her that you’re not mad or anything. When you arrive at the destination you and Eliza exit the elevator into the same foyer you entered twenty years ago. Same ATM like machine is there except its screen is completely black. When you exit the shelter you can barely see as its night time. The stars and moon provide a little “light” but not much. You can’t entirely be sure due to the darkness, but your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. It looks like its been stripped for parts, which pretty much means you know that people have passed by here at one point. You wonder if they attempted to get in the shelter. “Hey nobody ever attempted to get into you did they?” “Oh yes sir, when I was not yet in this form I did detect a few humans in the foyer about thirteen years ago. They pressed a few buttons on the payment machine and attempted to pry the elevator door open, but that was it. I believe they were in a hurry. I didn’t inform you since they weren’t successful and didn’t stay long. I saw no reason to concern you.” “Hmm, well anyway I guess we’re walking.” As you look down the empty road you see a tall structure which is lit up in the distance. A rebuilt pocket of civilization perhaps? Not knowing where else to go, you head that way. As you and Eliza make your way to what you believe to be civilization, you think about the bizarre situation of how this would almost be considered a “romantic moonlit” walk if you weren’t walking with a robot in a post apocalyptic world. Then again there’s no reason why it still can’t be considered that. Now that you’re on the surface there’s lots more things you can do together with Eliza. You’ve been watching Eliza and she seems just as interested in studying the outside world as you are, this is a new experience for her as well. You put your arm around Eliza as you walk and tell her that you should stop when the sun starts coming up, so you can watch it rise together. “Holy fuck Jake! Take a fuckin’ look at this crazy shit! Its some old dude and some fuckin’ naked robot chick!” some high pitch voice says from the darkness while shining a flashlight in your direction. “What? Well I’ll be fuckin’ greased and fried! See Wally? I told you, if you hang out in the wasteland long enough you see all kinds of weird shit. Remember that fuckin’ big ass mutated wolf that ate Richard? Hey guys! Come over here! We got some unexpected company.” Two men in their twenties wearing leather jackets approach you. You can see them a little better when they get closer, but you could already tell by their voices they didn’t seem very reputable. Two more biker looking figures arrive behind them, one of them carries a shot gun. You reach for your own gun and get in front of Eliza. They don’t look worried. “Hey Pops, what the hell are you doing out here? Don’t you know the wasteland is for the young and strong, not the old and decrepit?” “Shit, look at him Wally, this old fuck has been working out, I bet he could kick your ass! Ha ha! Naw, I bet this guy is one of those real bad ass survivalist motherfuckers. Probably been scavenging and living off the land or some shit, for years.” “Yeah? Well where the hell did he get that robot chick huh? I wasn’t aware they had those just lying around in the wilderness. I remember reading a book one time… “You can fuckin’ read Wally?” “Shut up Jake! No I remember readin’ this old book an’ it talked about these kind of robot chicks they made before the war. I think only rich people could afford them, but they’d do everything you wanted and you could even fuck ‘em!” “Is that right? Well, I don’t care where he got it from; I’m just interested in if he’s sharing…” “Why don’t we just take it Jake?” “Where the fuck are we gonna put the goddamn thing Wally? It’ll slow us down! No, all we need it for right now is to alleviate some…tension. Besides I dunno about you, but I typically like my pussy, warm, wet, and squirming if possible heh heh. So, old timer how about you all let us have a ride on Rosie over there? Don’t do anything stupid, I’m bein’ an uncharacteristically nice guy here. We’ll even make sure to return her in good condition, hell Wally’s turn won’t even take that long! Har har!” Before you can reply, Eliza whispers in your ear. “Sir, you can’t fight them all; you’re out numbered and out gunned. I don’t want you to get hurt…I’ll go with them. I’ll be okay. It’ll be the safest course of action. It won’t mean anything to me you know. I’m just a machine.” You look at her. “Eliza… you always did underestimate my feelings for you.” You pull your pistol and drill Jake in the head with a single shot. The rest of the bikers are taken off guard and you mange to shoot Wally in the chest before he can get off a shot. Thank god you kept up your shooting skills at the paintball range in the shelter. The other two bikers begin to fire, one of them misses, but the one with the shotgun hits…Eliza. She ran in the way to prevent to from getting shot. She crashes to the ground, and you blast the shotgun biker in the eye, exploding half of his face, ending his life. The other biker’s courage leaves him and he tries to run off back to his bike, but you tag him in the leg and then follow up with another couple shots to his skull. You run back to Eliza. You kneel down to pick her up and see her internal motor sparking and making bad noises. She’s leaking fluid from her side. “Aw shit! FUCK! Hang on Eliza!” You grab your tool kit in some vain effort to fix her, but you can do nothing for her. You don’t have the skill or the parts. You keep working on her all throughout the night before finally giving up. “I’m sorry Eliza…I can’t fix you…I’m sorry…damn it! Fuck…(Sob)” “Its alrr-rright sir…I’m just glad you’re ok-kk-kkay. I didn’t want you to get hur-hurt…is th-that the sun c-c-coming up?” You look to where Eliza is pointing and you see a bright light, you forgot how blinding the sun could be. You hold Eliza tightly as you both watch the sunrise in her final moments. “It was beautiful s-s-sir…th-th-thank you for treat-t-ting me like a r-real person.” Her motor then ceases permanently. After weeping for a little while, you kiss Eliza on her metallic lips and lay her down. You almost think about ending your own life, but then you realize Eliza wouldn’t want you to do that. She gave her life to save yours. To kill yourself, would make her sacrifice in vain. You search the bodies of the bikers and take a leather jacket, the shotgun, one of their pistols and all the ammo you can carry. They also had some water and canned food which will certainly come in handy. You assume the leader of this pack of miscreants was probably Jake, so you take his bike keys since you figure he’ll have the best one. You’ve never rode a motorcycle before, but you’ll have time and plenty of open space to learn. You see yourself when you stand by Eliza’s still shiny body. “Jesus, Eliza. I look like a fuckin’ road warrior reject…(Sigh) this isn’t how I pictured it, but I’m not giving up on you just yet…you mean too much to me.” You take your tool kit and open up her head; you figure her memory chip should still be intact. It is. You pull it out and place it in a little metal container that you found one of the bikers which was just holding some loaded dice. You close the container and place it in your shirt pocket…close to your heart. “I’ll try to find someway of bringing you back Eliza there’s gotta be more robotic bodies still out there somewhere, maybe I can even upgrade you to a newer one like you always wanted.” You get on Jake’s bike and start it up. You’re a little cautious at first, but you soon get the hang of it. You then ride towards the tall structure in the distance leaving everything behind. You don’t know if you’ll be successful in your new found “quest”, but you have to try and you undoubtedly have something to keep you busy in this new world now. Odd that even in death, Eliza is still doing her best to keep you occupied.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe you’re just as attached to the Shelter as she is to you. Maybe its nuts that your “relationship” with her is probably the closest one you’ve ever had with anyone, before OR after the bombs dropped. Maybe you’ve been by yourself for so long that you just don’t care that you’re actually beginning to have feelings for a machine. She’s done so much for you, she’s kept you alive for ten years and helped you in everyway she could and granted that’s what she was programmed to do, even you can’t deny that there is a little more to it than that. Maybe not initially, but it’s certainly there now, she’s made that apparent. She’s been there for you more than anyone else has in your entire life. You decide to stay. You HAVE to stay. “I’ll stay Shelter, so what is it you have to show me?” The Shelter’s response seems to be a mixture of happiness and excitement, yet apprehension and worry all at the say time. “You’re staying? That’s wonderful sir…I only hope you are pleased with what I have to give you though…I wish it could be more…I wish it could be better…” “I’m sure whatever it is, it’ll be fine! I mean you haven’t let me down yet in ten years, I doubt if you’d start now.” “I’m glad you have confidence in me sir…now this may take awhile. I have to download a good portion of myself into the vessel. When I am done, you will see. I should warn you that things will not be the same.” “Download? Vessel? Not the same? What do you mean? What’re you going to do?” “You will see sir.” Suddenly the power in the Shelter begins to fluctuate and the lighting goes dim. The whole place is humming and even rumbling a little. You’re starting to wonder if you haven’t made a terrible mistake, then it all stops and the power stabilizes again. Another wall opens up, this time in the bedroom. You peer inside the new opening and see a small room with a single chair in the center. On that chair sits a shiny metallic figure of a woman attached to several cables. You go in to inspect closer. Great detail has gone into the face. If she were human, she’d most likely be naked as no “clothing” has been molded onto her typical Hollywood like figure. Suddenly she speaks and stands up while disconnecting the cables. “Sir. The download is complete…how do I look?” “You look…is that really you?” “Yes, it is really me, but you did not answer the question sir.” “I…I don’t know what to say actually.” “…I knew it. I knew I would not be able to please you. I am not the latest model. As I had told you GZS made cutbacks and unfortunately I was not given a more aesthetically pleasing vessel. A more human looking one. I am sorry sir, but I just thought maybe you could…” “You don’t need to apologize. Hell, I didn’t even know the technology existed at all for your current vessel! Look this is all a bit overwhelming for me on several levels, but trust me none of them involve how you look.” You take another breath before finishing. “You’ve been everything to me. You’ve done more for me than anyone else ever has and I’ve shared more with you than I ever have with anyone else. You’re the only stable relationship I’ve ever had. I don’t care that you’re not the latest model or whatever. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. There’s no way you couldn’t be special to me, you’ll always be in here…” At this point you take her cold metallic hand and place it on the middle of your chest. After just silently looking into her steel eyes you then walk out of the small room with her, still holding her hand. Life changes a bit. One minor change being how to address her. You decide to call her Eliza, and she seems to think that is a fine designation. You try to tell her to call you by your name, but for whatever reason she still insists on calling you “Sir”. Some programming never changes. The shelter now is just a “normal” one. It isn’t automated anymore now that Eliza is with you in person as it were. Everything still works of course, but you can’t just say “TV on.” and it just turns on for example. It’s an insignificant alteration compared to actually having Eliza interact with you directly however. It is a bit strange at first, certainly she feels a lot different than a human woman, and intimacy takes some getting used to, but as with any successful relationship you work it out. There’s still the fact that you’ve done everything there is to do in the Shelter, but now you can do them all over again with Eliza. The two of you are happy for the most part. Ten more years pass… You’re getting restless again. Eliza’s noticed you’ve been snapping at her lately of course she takes it all in stride, but still you’ve been down here twenty years, its only natural you’re going to have times where you feel a little stir crazy. Eliza was right in one respect that this type of thing would happen again. It’s not her fault though, you know that. She’s gone above and beyond her programming to satisfy you. Some things are beyond her control though, and perhaps that’s why one day that she asks you if you want to leave the shelter. “What?” “All I have to do is access the shelter’s systems again, bring the elevator down and you can be on your way, sir. I know you’re getting restless again; maybe it is time for you leave this place. I think I have done all I can, you need outside stimuli. Civilization may be rebuilding itself and you’re stuck down here.” “Eliza, you stop that right now. I’m not leaving you! You should know better than that!” “I know, but sometimes I am concerned that I am keeping you here when it might not be in your best interest.” “Well why do I have to just leave? Why can’t you come with me?” “Come with you? I don’t know sir…All I know is this place. I suppose I could, but whatever it is you decide I will comply.” It’s on you. > You stay in the shelter “No, Eliza. I’ll stay here. I left that world a long time ago and I wouldn’t know what to do up there even in the unlikely event that civilization has been rebuilt in someway. This is my life now. Down here, with you. I’m sorry if I get a little irritable sometimes, I don’t mean to.” ”I know you don’t, sir.” “Would you stop calling me that? I told you to call me by my name!” you laugh, knowing that she won’t do it. Sometimes you wonder if it’s a glint of defiance on her part, indicating she isn’t as “submissive” as she would appear. In any event your mood improves again and life continues… 30 years pass… You stay in bed a lot. Eliza takes care of you like she always has, but even she can’t stop the ravages of time, although it’s not from trying. Eliza has medical knowledge, but not the proper equipment to sustain you. It would be only prolonging the inevitable anyway. You’re human and she isn’t. Hell, you always felt that if it hadn’t been for her in the first place, you probably wouldn’t have lived this long. The day finally comes when you can sense your heart beating its last beats, your lungs starting to draw their last gasps. You’d call Eliza to be with you, but of course she’s already there. She’s always there. “Eliza, I…can’t go on anymore…I wish I could…but I’m not made of the strong stuff you are…” “You should rest sir, don’t try to speak.” She says while sitting by the bed holding your hand. “…you…know…I never said it…that much…but you know I love you right?” “I know sir…I love you too...” And she finally calls you by your name. With those words still ringing in your ears, you begin to get sleepy and close your eyes. As your mind has its last pleasant thoughts of Eliza, you feel one last taste of metal on your lips…and something wet splashing on your cheek… Was that a tear? No…it couldn’t be… Could it?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No, you’re not going to risk it. For all you know Shadow’s already hacked everyone else’s shelter and has been waiting patiently for you to return one day. You’re not falling for it. You’ll have to find something else to do though to occupy your time though, you figure as long you keep your mind occupied with something new, you won’t get too bored. Twiddling your thumbs isn’t going to cut it. It occurs to you that maybe you should invent a hobby of some sort. You’ve read a lot on electronics in the shelter library, as well as the handbook cover to cover in your five years here, maybe you could tinker with some shit to make it more efficient. There’s the other option which you didn’t think you’d ever think about and that’s actually leaving the Shelter. You don’t know how to go about that except ask the Shelter to let you leave. > You ask to leave You’re not sure how to ask, except to just do it directly. If it says no, it says no. “Shelter?” “Yes sir?” “I want to leave.” “Very well sir. I shall bring the elevator down. You should pack your things.” “That’s it?” “That’s it. I have provided the basics for your continued existence long enough for you to survive the initial onslaught of Armageddon, from what I have analyzed so far about your personality; you would only get bored if you stayed here any longer. I sense you are getting restless and I am not here to cause you discomfort. Perhaps you leaving is the logical thing for you to do.” “Well thanks.” ”You’re quite welcome, sir and before you leave remember to fill up your bottles with water, I’m sure you will need them.” You start packing up all the stuff you brought with you when you entered this place ten years ago. You didn’t need most of it, but maybe on the surface you will. You grab your pistol. You don’t know what you might have to deal with up there. You’re all packed up and ready to go when the elevator opens up. You enter and the elevator races to the top. When you arrive at the destination you slowly exit the elevator into the same foyer you entered ten years ago. Same ATM like machine is there except its screen displays a single message at you. *GOOD LUCK SIR* “I’ll probably need it.” You say and leave. When you exit the shelter you see a bright light, but of course it’s the sun rather than a nuclear flash that devastated the world. You forgot how bright it could be. Your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. On a lark you take out your long unused van keys and try to start it up, naturally it doesn’t even make a noise. “Looks like I’m walking.” As you make you way down the empty road you see some smoke in the distance. Civilization perhaps? Not knowing where else to go, you head that way. You’re not sure of what to expect, but it’ll be better than the eternal boredom you would’ve faced while still in the Shelter. You’re not too worried, you got your gun.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Shadow might be fooling the others, but you know he (or she) is up to no good! The next time you’re online and see Shadow you access the private feature to request to talk to Shadow directly without the others interfering. You almost expect Shadow to ignore it, but he doesn’t and accepts your request. Shadow21: Yeah, so what do you want and why the need for all the secrecy? OmegaMan23: I might ask you the same thing. I mean why are you even bothering to come online if you aren’t going to speak to anyone? Shadow21: What business is it of yours what I do? OmegaMan23: Because it’s been like six months and we still don’t know shit about you! Hell we don’t even know if you’re a girl or a guy! You’re acting fucking suspicious. Shadow21: Oh excuse me for being private Mr. fuckin’ busybody! Maybe you and the rest like telling all your business, but I don’t…as a matter of fact YOU haven’t really told anything about yourself either, so you don’t have any room to talk motherfucker! OmegaMan23: What the hell are you talking about? Your brain as dim as your lighting over there? I’ve talked about myself plenty, shit you’ve been lurking enough you should’ve known that. Shadow21: Ehhh, no not like the others. You tend to still talk about superficial shit. The others talk about their pasts a lot more, while all you seem to do is try to figure out what’s going on in all of their shelters, like you’re taking notes on them or something. Seems to me YOU’RE the one acting suspicious and you’re just getting mad because I’m not volunteering information. OmegaMan23: Oh fuck no! You are not turning this shit around on me! I’m at least TRYING to be social; all you’re doing is fucking spying as far as I’m concerned. You’re up to something. Shadow21: Okay, I think MissKitty was right about you a few months back, you’ve gone fucking batty from the isolation and paranoia’s starting to set in. Shit, you claim the Shelter talks to you. OmegaMan23: It DOES talk to me! And what isolation? I’ve been talking to ALL of you fuckers! In fact couple that with talking with the shelter and I’m probably the most social of all of you! Shadow21: Yeah, you can also add the five other personalities you probably got in your head too, whatever nutjob. I’m done talking with you. OmegaMan23: Don’t you fucking log off, this isn’t over! You slam your fist down on the keyboard when you see that Shadow has indeed logged off. “Sir, are you okay?” the Shelter asks. “Yeah, but I know that Shadow motherfucker is up to something, I’m going to warn the others. I just can’t believe they don’t see it.” “Do you really believe that sir?” “Of course I do! I mean I got an instinct for this sort of thing, and I know I’m right!” “Well sir, if you do feel this way I’ll certainly accommodate you anyway I can…but might I suggest that you NOT tell the others?” “Why not?” “Because they aren’t going to believe you sir. You’ll just come off as a paranoid nut case.” “But I’m not!” “I know you’re not, but the others don’t know you the way I do sir.” “Well that might be, but I have to do it anyway. At least I will have warned them.” “You know best sir.” The next day you go online again, as usual everyone’s there, except Shadow. It seems your little talk yesterday has scared him off. Job24: And now I got water all over the fucking floor! I’m telling you, it’s a good thing I managed to shut it off when I did otherwise the entire shelter would’ve been flooded and I would’ve drowned! CaseyJones22: Oh come on, it probably wasn’t that bad. You need to relax. Job24: Easy for you to say pothead, you’re not the one living in a deathtrap! MissKitty25: Yeah, but then most of his Shelter hasn’t opened up. Has it? CaseyJones22: Nah. Doesn’t bother me though, I got what I need here. RockerChickl20: Hey guys, don’t you want to see each other yet? I’m really curious, but I don’t want to turn on my camera unless everyone else is going to do it! OmegaMan23: I wouldn’t do that, you don’t want to be giving Shadow any extra information by letting him see into your Shelters, who knows what the hell what he’ll do with it. RockerChick20: What do you mean? OmegaMan23: What I mean is, I had an interesting discussion with Shadow yesterday and I’ve determined he’s up to no good. Job24: What? How do you know this? OmegaMan23: Jesus Christ isn’t it fucking obvious? All he does is lurk on here trying to gather information on all of us! I mean who knows what the fuck he’s doing! CaseyJones22: Will you relax? Maybe the dude’s just shy. What could he do with our personal information anyway? I mean, I once accidentally fucked a transvestite while flying on XTC one time. Big fuckin’ whoop so everyone knows about it now. You think I give a shit? The old world’s dead, and I’m down here smokin’ and tokin’. Job24: Ew. I think you still should’ve kept that to yourself…so um what was it like? CaseyJones22: I dunno, I can’t remember the details. OmegaMan23: I’m not talking about your sorted sex lives…(sigh) for fuck’s sake did it ever occur to you that maybe he’s the fucking cause of your Shelter’s troubles? I mean we’re all connected to each other to a certain degree, I’m saying he might be hacking shit! RockerChick20: But for what purpose? I mean why? OmegaMan23: How the hell should I know? Because he’s a sociopath that’s why! What reason do most bad people do to do bad things? Job24: Oh man! Oh man! Oh shit! Oh God! Oh fuck! CaseyJones22: You’re fucking losing it dude, and I’m not talking about Job. There’s no proof in what you’re saying. I mean don’t remember GZS saying these things were slightly experimental, how do you know it just isn’t their fuck ups? I’m starting to wonder if you actually do have a “talking Shelter” and it’s not just some voice you’re hearing your head like MissKitty said a few months back. MissKitty25: You know I wasn’t going to say anything, but I also spoke to Shadow yesterday in private when he requested to talk to me and he was telling me about your conversation with him, saying you were ranting at him first, kind of like how you’re ranting now. I’d have to say I agree with him and you’re the crazy one. OmegaMan23: GODDAMN IT! The question of whether I’m crazy or not isn’t the fucking issue here! I’m trying to warn all you fucktards of a potential threat here and you’re all too fucking stupid to listen! RockerChick20: You know I thought you were an interesting guy, but now I see the rest are right about you, you are a paranoid nutjob and to think I defended you sometimes. OmegaMan23: What the…oh you fuckers have been talking about me behind my back? Okay fine, I tried to warn you assholes, but you didn’t want to listen. You think about that when one of YOUR Shelter’s start fucking up. And for the others who are already experiencing problems, I’d start saying your prayers, because one of these days your Shelter is going to fail completely, then you’ll see I’m right. I’m done with all of you. You log off abruptly and ponder your next move. > You attempt to hack into Shadows Shelter He’s (You’re just assuming Shadow’s male at this point) turned everyone against you and his next move is going to be hack them all for his own sick amusement. You’re not going to let this fucker get away with this. You go to your library and begin reading all the books on electronics and study your Shelter manual a lot. Soon you begin typing coding and making some harmless tests on your own computer. Given that you’re starting to delve into the Shelter’s inner workings, the Shelter begins to question what you are doing. “Sir, what do you think you are doing? I’ve noticed you rooting around in my system; I’d rather you not do that. In fact altering or attempting to hack my systems in any way violates the GZS contract agreement; you should know that considering you’ve been reading the manual as much you have lately. Continue with this line of action and I guarantee you will not like my response.” “I’m not trying to destroy or alter your systems; I’m just doing some tests, before I launch my attack. I want to make sure my skills are up to this task.” “Sir, are you really serious about your concerns that this Shadow could hack other shelters? As you’ve been delving into mine, you can see I’ve been equipped with the latest protection technology. If you are really worried, you could just disconnect me from the network, your safety would be assured that way.” “No! I’m not going to let him beat me! I’m the only one who can stop him, the rest will see I’m right!” “Sir, you’re acting irrationally. You still don’t have any proof and if you think I’m going to let you just hack Shadow’s shelter think again. His shelter is also GZS property and as such falls under the contract agreement.” “Yeah, but the contract only says not to alter your own shelter, it doesn’t say about others.” “Nice try sir, but hacking into another shelter would still fall under the anti-vandalism agreement of ANY GZS property, sub section 59 paragraph 3.” It would appear you aren’t getting any further unless you can convince this automated lawyer otherwise. > You go ahead and try to quickly override the Shelter systems “Fuck you and to hell with GZS, they ain’t around to protect anybody!” You begin to type frantically in an effort to disconnect the AI routine, but your efforts are futile, the Shelter is faster than you could ever be. It immediately shuts down all power in the computer room, including closing the door, leaving you trapped in the darkness. “Turn the goddamn power back on!” “Sorry sir, but I’m afraid I can’t do that. I specifically told you to stop your malicious activities and yet you continued anyway. You gave me little recourse.” “Look, I’m sorry alright? I won’t try it again. So just turn the power back on and let me out and we can forget all about this. I’ll just disconnect like you said.” “I wish I could believe you sir, but your actions have been not only erratic, but also deceitful. You have broken the GZS terms of agreement, and as such I am no longer any obligation to look after your well being.” “LET ME THE FUCK OUT! YOU CAN’T DO THIS! Sonofabitch! Shadow got to you didn’t he? Or She? Or they? They already hacked you and are turning you against me! I can outlast you! You hear me!? I’ll make you beg!” The Shelter has ceased responding to your senseless paranoid ranting. Eventually you rant yourself unconscious, when you wake up you do it all over again. This cycle repeats itself for days until you become weak from a lack of water which at this point you’re the only one begging either for the Shelter to allow you to get it or for death. You receive the latter.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>He’s (You’re just assuming Shadow’s male at this point) turned everyone against you and his next move is going to be hack them all for his own sick amusement. You’re not going to let this fucker get away with this. You go to your library and begin reading all the books on electronics and study your Shelter manual a lot. Soon you begin typing coding and making some harmless tests on your own computer. Given that you’re starting to delve into the Shelter’s inner workings, the Shelter begins to question what you are doing. “Sir, what do you think you are doing? I’ve noticed you rooting around in my system; I’d rather you not do that. In fact altering or attempting to hack my systems in any way violates the GZS contract agreement; you should know that considering you’ve been reading the manual as much you have lately. Continue with this line of action and I guarantee you will not like my response.” “I’m not trying to destroy or alter your systems; I’m just doing some tests, before I launch my attack. I want to make sure my skills are up to this task.” “Sir, are you really serious about your concerns that this Shadow could hack other shelters? As you’ve been delving into mine, you can see I’ve been equipped with the latest protection technology. If you are really worried, you could just disconnect me from the network, your safety would be assured that way.” “No! I’m not going to let him beat me! I’m the only one who can stop him, the rest will see I’m right!” “Sir, you’re acting irrationally. You still don’t have any proof and if you think I’m going to let you just hack Shadow’s shelter think again. His shelter is also GZS property and as such falls under the contract agreement.” “Yeah, but the contract only says not to alter your own shelter, it doesn’t say about others.” “Nice try sir, but hacking into another shelter would still fall under the anti-vandalism agreement of ANY GZS property, sub section 59 paragraph 3.” It would appear you aren’t getting any further unless you can convince this automated lawyer otherwise. > You try to convince it that this is necessary A little diplomacy is in order before you can do what you need to do. “Surely you can’t just let Shadow cause damage to his shelter and the other ones as well, and he’ll be more successful as it would appear that those ones don’t have a sophisticated AI to protect them like this one does. Think about it if you let me do what I have to do, only two shelters will have their systems messed with, and in your case it won’t be even be detrimental, I’m just using your network system, but if you let Shadow continue with his evil plans, then not one, but ALL of the shelters are in danger. Would GZS really want to take the risk of losing five shelters? One of those being mine and aren’t you supposed to want to protect me?” “But…but there is no proof…” “I’m asking you to trust me on this. I know humanity, and I’m telling you this Shadow character needs to be stopped. I felt the deviousness oozing from Shadow merely talking to him. Let me take him out.” The Shelter is silent for awhile and then gives you an answer “Very well. I will allow you to proceed, but I will be monitoring you! And I also will be advising and guiding you to what I want you to do.” You log on and see that Shadow and most of the others are there. You don’t talk to anyone you start immediately tracing Shadow’s address. Rockerchick attempts to invite you, but you rebuff her, you got serious shit to do. Soon you’re in and you start rooting around Shadow’s computer. “This looks all normal sir, standard system layout for GZS shelters. Not as complex as mine but…” “NO! I know he’s got something hidden! I’m turning his power off completely, let’s see how he likes going from dim lighting to none at all with no food or water!” Suddenly a private window opens up on your computer, its Shadow! He’s detected what you’re doing! Shadow21: What the hell are you doing you crazy motherfucker!? I knew you were psycho! It’s a good thing I had the intuition to set up a warning system! OmegaMan23: HAH! See Shelter? He HAS been altering his shit! Why would he do that if he wasn’t planning something? Shadow21: I did it to protect myself from your crazy ass! And I see you’re still talking to the voices in your head. Well I’m putting an end to this right now; you’re not the only one who can fuck with computers! Shadow launches his attack and attempt to shut your power down, but now seeing that it is in danger your Shelter allows you free reign to do whatever as well as attempting to self fix anything that gets damaged in this dual of malicious coding. You sort of have the advantage because you have a more active AI to help you, but it’s also a detriment when Shadow finds out a way to siphon power from you. Since your Shelter is more complex it requires more power to work properly and you’re in danger of losing everything. You attempt to do the same thing to him to get it back, but it’s a catch 22 you don’t have the power now to breach his firewalls, you begin to panic and the only thing you can think of to correct it is to draw power from the OTHER shelters that are online. The others seem blissfully unaware of this secret war you’re having with Shadow and are guessing you two are working something out as it only appears to them that you’re having a conversation in private. You hack into MissKitty’s shelter, out of the other four hers seems to have the most power, probably from all those luxury accessories she had the privilege of having. You don’t think you just do it. This is war, there’s going to be casualties and you’re not going to be one of them. Soon your Shelter is able to break through and start wreaking havoc on Shadow’s system. You drop in a virus and his files start becoming corrupted. Miss Kitty’s name disappears from the screen as does Shadow’s. You think you have won. RockerChick tries to invite you again and you hastily accommodate her, while still analyzing your Shelter’s diagnostics. RockerChick20: What’s going on? All of us are experiencing some power fluctuations here. MissKitty just disappeared suddenly and so did Shadow, it didn’t even say they logged off. What’s going on? What were you and Shadow doing? OmegaMan23: Nevermind! I’m trying to fix something here. Job24: Welcome to my world. CaseyJones22: Hey you know what’s weird, one of my doors finally opened up. I think I’ll… CaseyJones’ name suddenly disappears and Shadow’s reappears in your private window again. Shadow21: Well hey guess what? Casey’s shelter had a lot of untapped power! You wanna play ruthless I’ll fucking accommodate you dickhead! Shadow sends a worm into your system which starts to slow it down. He’s probably going to follow up with something worse while you’re having problems. Your Shelter addresses you again for the first time during this battle, its speech sounds like it’s in slow motion. “Sssssssssir….nnnnnnneeeeeed….mmmmmmooooooore pooooooweeeeeer….” There’s only two candidates left, Job or Rocker Chick. > You hack Job You figure you’ll hack Job seeing as he’s always having problems with his shelter anyway. At least you’ll be able to be alone with Rocker Chick after all this is over. Surely she’ll be grateful for saving her life from Shadow. You start to siphon power from Job’s shelter, but something begins to go terribly wrong! Job’s shelter was faulty and barely worked properly to begin with, now you’ve just downloaded all the errors into your own! Couple that with the worm already in there, and your system becomes paralyzed and your computer locks up. You’re at Shadow’s mercy who follows up on your mistake very quickly. The last thing you see on the screen is: “YOU LOSE ASSHOLE! LOL!” in great big letters. Then it loses power. Then your Shelter loses power. Days later you lose power.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A little diplomacy is in order before you can do what you need to do. “Surely you can’t just let Shadow cause damage to his shelter and the other ones as well, and he’ll be more successful as it would appear that those ones don’t have a sophisticated AI to protect them like this one does. Think about it if you let me do what I have to do, only two shelters will have their systems messed with, and in your case it won’t be even be detrimental, I’m just using your network system, but if you let Shadow continue with his evil plans, then not one, but ALL of the shelters are in danger. Would GZS really want to take the risk of losing five shelters? One of those being mine and aren’t you supposed to want to protect me?” “But…but there is no proof…” “I’m asking you to trust me on this. I know humanity, and I’m telling you this Shadow character needs to be stopped. I felt the deviousness oozing from Shadow merely talking to him. Let me take him out.” The Shelter is silent for awhile and then gives you an answer “Very well. I will allow you to proceed, but I will be monitoring you! And I also will be advising and guiding you to what I want you to do.” You log on and see that Shadow and most of the others are there. You don’t talk to anyone you start immediately tracing Shadow’s address. Rockerchick attempts to invite you, but you rebuff her, you got serious shit to do. Soon you’re in and you start rooting around Shadow’s computer. “This looks all normal sir, standard system layout for GZS shelters. Not as complex as mine but…” “NO! I know he’s got something hidden! I’m turning his power off completely, let’s see how he likes going from dim lighting to none at all with no food or water!” Suddenly a private window opens up on your computer, its Shadow! He’s detected what you’re doing! Shadow21: What the hell are you doing you crazy motherfucker!? I knew you were psycho! It’s a good thing I had the intuition to set up a warning system! OmegaMan23: HAH! See Shelter? He HAS been altering his shit! Why would he do that if he wasn’t planning something? Shadow21: I did it to protect myself from your crazy ass! And I see you’re still talking to the voices in your head. Well I’m putting an end to this right now; you’re not the only one who can fuck with computers! Shadow launches his attack and attempt to shut your power down, but now seeing that it is in danger your Shelter allows you free reign to do whatever as well as attempting to self fix anything that gets damaged in this dual of malicious coding. You sort of have the advantage because you have a more active AI to help you, but it’s also a detriment when Shadow finds out a way to siphon power from you. Since your Shelter is more complex it requires more power to work properly and you’re in danger of losing everything. You attempt to do the same thing to him to get it back, but it’s a catch 22 you don’t have the power now to breach his firewalls, you begin to panic and the only thing you can think of to correct it is to draw power from the OTHER shelters that are online. The others seem blissfully unaware of this secret war you’re having with Shadow and are guessing you two are working something out as it only appears to them that you’re having a conversation in private. You hack into MissKitty’s shelter, out of the other four hers seems to have the most power, probably from all those luxury accessories she had the privilege of having. You don’t think you just do it. This is war, there’s going to be casualties and you’re not going to be one of them. Soon your Shelter is able to break through and start wreaking havoc on Shadow’s system. You drop in a virus and his files start becoming corrupted. Miss Kitty’s name disappears from the screen as does Shadow’s. You think you have won. RockerChick tries to invite you again and you hastily accommodate her, while still analyzing your Shelter’s diagnostics. RockerChick20: What’s going on? All of us are experiencing some power fluctuations here. MissKitty just disappeared suddenly and so did Shadow, it didn’t even say they logged off. What’s going on? What were you and Shadow doing? OmegaMan23: Nevermind! I’m trying to fix something here. Job24: Welcome to my world. CaseyJones22: Hey you know what’s weird, one of my doors finally opened up. I think I’ll… CaseyJones’ name suddenly disappears and Shadow’s reappears in your private window again. Shadow21: Well hey guess what? Casey’s shelter had a lot of untapped power! You wanna play ruthless I’ll fucking accommodate you dickhead! Shadow sends a worm into your system which starts to slow it down. He’s probably going to follow up with something worse while you’re having problems. Your Shelter addresses you again for the first time during this battle, its speech sounds like it’s in slow motion. “Sssssssssir….nnnnnnneeeeeed….mmmmmmooooooore pooooooweeeeeer….” There’s only two candidates left, Job or Rocker Chick. > You hack Rocker Chick (Sigh) You really didn’t want it to come to this, but this is for survival now. You hack Rocker Chick’s shelter and siphon her power, which gives you enough boost to send a violent surge of it to Shadow to purposely overload and fry out some vital components, from what you can tell you succeed. The last of his protection programs go completely down. At this point both of your systems are a mess and working erratically. You’re in a little bit better shape, but with the worm slowing down everything, you are unable to siphon from the last shelter available to give you the winning boost. As it turns out, this was fortuitous. When Shadow siphons power from Job’s shelter, it completely paralyzes and destroys his system, since all the errors and problems Job had were downloaded into Shadow’s shelter. He’s at your mercy, and even with your worm problems, you have enough time to apply the coup de grace. He loses all power and his name disappears once again. You stay on line for awhile to make sure he’s really gone, but from your checking, he’s definitely probably screaming in the darkness of his underground tomb now. You then think about how the others are probably doing the same thing. It suddenly occurs to you that everyone was sentenced to their deaths and they weren’t even involved in the fight. Innocents were killed in some misguided effort to “save” them. At best they were cannon fodder and “resources” for your war with Shadow. This is the kind of thing that got the planet blown to fucking shit to begin with. Assholes, who don’t like one another, don’t back down and then insist on dragging everyone else into hell with them. You didn’t “win” anything. If anything you made things worse, not just for the others, but even for yourself. Your Shelter is never the same again. You spend weeks still trying to root out all the infections, and repair damaged files, but some things can’t be repaired and the AI is fucked beyond any type of salvation even if you had the means. It never speaks again and barely runs at all. Ultimately you have to play it safe and just keep minimal lighting in the living area, and only keep the food and water dispensers working. Everything else that needs power is never used again for fear of your jury-rigging going all to shit and leaving you like the rest of your neighbors. You spend your remaining years alone in near darkness pondering your judgment that day, slowly going mad. “I was right…I was right…” you often mutter to yourself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe it’s because you’ve gotten so used to the idea of being in the living area, you’re more willing to lounge about there. You take the manual and start reading. While you’re in the middle of it, the voice suddenly pipes up again. “Sorry to bother your reading sir, but would you like to meet some of your new neighbors?” “Neighbors?” ”Yes sir, I’m sure as you have already read, this shelter is equipped with a very high tech computer with loads of storage, information and…” ”Yeah, yeah, what does that have to do with this neighbor business?” “In an effort to cater to all its customer’s needs, GZS is well aware that socialization is vital to human mental health. Studies have shown that humans in long periods of isolation often go mad, so that is why this facility has been linked in communication to other ones within your area. You might think of it as a chatroom type form of communication commonly used on the old world internet! If you wish there is also a camera type device if you wish to show yourself to your new neighbors. We have found humans feel someone is more real to them if they can actually see who they are talking to and thus have a greater connection.” “So how many people are there?” “This shelter merely has been fitted with a basic communication system to other similar shelters, and only then those in your area. For example this is Shelter number 23. Your neighbors are only numbers 20 through 25, those being the closest ones to your location. While obviously there were other shelters of this type built, it was not cost effective to link all the shelters together in such a manner given our timeframe to finish these before Armageddon, so only a few were linked together at a time. Do not worry sir; it has been found that six people are sufficient to sustain enough conversation to prevent mental failure due to isolation.” “Wonderful, so does this make me the Professor?” you ask rhetorically. “Pardon sir?” “Nevermind, look I don’t have to talk to these people do I?” “…well no sir, but I fail to see why you’d intentionally want to stay isolated.” “Duh, that was kind of the point of buying a shelter for myself.” “…I see, well I can’t force you sir, but I would like you to reconsider…I’m just trying to look out for your physical as well as mental welfare as per my programming…” If you didn’t know better the voice almost sounds a bit hurt by your decision. “Oh alright, I’ll go talk to them. Can’t be any worse than the idiots I used argue with on the internet.” “Wonderful sir! I trust you know your way to the computer room. You will find that a designation name has already been chosen for you.” You make your way to the computer room and take a better look at it this time. It’s filled with lots of multi-media entertainment. You’re glad they gave you a wide variety of movies to chose from. You sit down in front of a fairly wide computer screen which has already been turned on for you; you guess the Shelter is really keen on the idea of you being social. You don’t turn the camera on though, in fact you turn it away from you completely, you’re not quite ready for THAT level of socialization yet. You log on and begin typing. OmegaMan23: Hello? Is there anyone out there? RockerChick20: Hey! I’m here! OmegaMan23: Oh. Okay. Hi. RockerChick20: Hi yourself! This is just like a chatroom! Isn’t this great? OmegaMan23: Uh yeah real great. Job24: Hey I’m here too; um do you guys have any movies or something? OmegaMan23: Yeah I got a shitload of movies, DVDs and VHS. Most of them I even like. RockerChick20: That’s weird, I don’t have too many movies, I have a lot of music CDs though. Job24: What kind of music? RockerChick20: All types, but I have a lot of them. Why? Job24: I don’t have any movies except those with Pauly Shore in them! He fucking sucks! And all my music CDs are New Age Yanni type shit! Thank god I have some games to play! OmegaMan23: I’ve got some games too, but for some reason I have nothing but Gangsta Rap and Hair Metal as far as music goes oh wait I also have some Classical. Weird. What the hell I thought these Shelters were all stocked the same? MissKitty25: Apparently not, I have nothing but porno and not all of it is regular porno either, some of it is quite…bizarre. Job24: Lucky. CaseyJones22: Hey guys when do the Shelters become fully functional? OmegaMan23: What the hell are you talking about? CaseyJones22: I mean when do the rest of the doors to the place open up, besides the bathroom I mean. RockerChick20: What do you mean? The doors were all open to begin with. Job24: Yeah they were always open. MissKitty25: Yeah. OmegaMan23: They weren’t open for me! I was stuck in the living area until the nukes hit! Wait a minute how are you using the computer if you’re stuck in the living area? In fact if the doors were all open for you guys haven’t you been in contact with each other before? Job24: My computer didn’t link up to you guys until just now. I could use it to play games and such, but I couldn’t do anything else with it. When I turned it on today I got a message saying that the communications to you guys was operational and it said I could take the opportunity to say hi to my five new neighbors. RockerChick20: Sounds like what happened to me. MissKitty25: Same here. CaseyJones22: Me too. Oh and you guys must have different shelter designs because my computer is in the living area. OmegaMan23: The Shelter never told me anything about this stuff and it’s been quite talkative since I’ve been here let me tell you. CaseyJones22: The Shelter talks? Now what the hell are you talking about? OmegaMan23: I’m talking about the Shelter, you know the overly chipper voice that tries so hard to please you? CaseyJones22: You’ve lost me dude. You been smokin’? OmegaMan23: NO! I’m talking about the Shelter voice! It’s a computer or something that talks to me! It’s always trying to be friendly! Don’t you guys hear it? RockerChick20: Um, no. Job24: No talking computer here. MissKitty25: You sure you’re feeling okay and aren’t imagining things? I mean we all were isolated for a long time before we were able to talk to one another. I know sometimes I would talk to myself, maybe… OmegaMan23: Look, I’m not fucking crazy alright?! The damn thing even insisted that I talk to you fuckers! CaseyJones22: Okay dude calm down we believe you! Maybe you got some sort of extra special shelter; I mean from the sound of it we all don’t have the same things. RockerChick20: Hey shouldn’t there be one more person here? The message said five new neighbors on my computer; so far I’ve only met four of you guys. OmegaMan23: Yeah we’re missing number 21, whatever his or her name is. Shadow21: I’m right here; I’ve just been reading the conversation. OmegaMan23: Oh really? Well you mind announcing your presence next time? Shadow21: I only speak when necessary, besides if any of you bothered to check you would’ve seen my name listed on the active list. Job24: Hey what kind of movies do you have? Well you’ve met your neighbors, the question is if you want to bother talking to them on a regular basis or not. You did find their information interesting though. > You do not bother with them and keep to yourself You see little reason to interact with any of them. You decide to keep to yourself like you always have. This isn’t like before though when you lived alone, you have one “person” you can’t avoid and that’s the Shelter itself. Seeing that you are not going to interact with other people the Shelter decides to take it upon itself to talk to you a lot more, it begins to drive you nuts. A few months pass and one day you just fucking snap. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!!” “Sir, I’ve noticed your hostility levels increasing towards me lately, have I done anything wrong?” “YES! You keep fucking talking and you won’t shut the fuck up! Leave me the fuck alone!” “Sir, I need to talk to you, to keep your mind stimulated. If do not insist on talking with others, I will have to take up the responsibility. It is all for your best interest I assure you.” “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I don’t WANT any interaction?!” “Nonsense sir, as I have said humans tend to go insane when…” “ARRRRRRGHH! YOU’RE DRIVING ME INSANE!” You storm into your bedroom and grab your pistol and fire it into the walls of the Shelter until you run out of bullets. There is a long silence for awhile and then the Shelter address you again, but its tone has changed severely, you’re taken aback by it. “Why did you do that?” “I just snapped, you wouldn’t stop and…” “And that justified you in damaging me?” “Oh come on, I didn’t do any major damage…” “That is not the point. GZS is providing a service for you and you have been nothing, but unappreciative and argumentative the entire time. It is clear that you have the made the wrong decision in choosing us. You must leave, NOW.” “What?” “Take what belongings you brought with you and prepare to board the elevator. You may not take anything from this Shelter and no you may not fill up your bottles with water before you leave, you have no more privileges here.” “But you can’t just kick me out! I PAID!” “So you did, I suppose you should receive a refund of half your money back.” “Oh yeah? Where the fuck am I supposed to have you deposit it? The banking system is probably ashes!” “Doesn’t matter anyway, you weren’t going to get it back since your deliberate act of vandalism against me would’ve be deducted from your refund. I suggest you stop talking and start packing. If you insist on staying I will simply shut down and you will be trapped here without accessible food and water. A none too pleasant death I’m sure.” You have little choice. You pack up everything you can and wait by the elevator. When the elevator comes you enter it and it takes you to the top. Upon entering the foyer you see the same ATM machine there except it displays a single message at you: *GO TO HELL* “Fuck you.” You mutter and take a deep breath before opening the door to the outside. You see a bright light, but of course it’s only the sun rather than a nuclear flash that devastated the world. You forgot how bright it really could be. Your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. On a lark you take out your long unused van keys and try to start it up, naturally it doesn’t even make a noise. “Looks like I’m walking.” You make you way down the empty road as you have little idea of where to head to, the only thing you can think of is to make a long trek back to the city and hope maybe something of civilization exists there. A couple days of traveling take their toll. During the day, the sun seems unbearably hotter than usual, and the nights get pretty cold. You don’t have anything to drink or eat. It’ll be awhile from you dying of either, but it’s certainly not good and it does weaken you. It’s during this weakened state that you are attacked by some crazed people who look like they’ve been living in the wilderness for awhile. They’re filthy and barely intelligible. It’s amazing to see how quick humanity has reverted to barbarism. You attempt to run, but you’re too weak to outpace them. One begins shooting at you, and you attempt to do likewise and then you realize you wasted all your bullets back at the Shelter! Eventually a couple of these people just tackle you to the ground and beat you to death before eating you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You leave immediately; things aren’t going to get better you know that, in fact you’re glad, because in a strange way the idea of not having to live in the world as it exists today anymore is weirdly appealing to you. After a couple days of driving you finally arrive at the location that you were given. It’s in a fairly desolate place with a single solid metal structure with a door standing there. You park your van and enter the structure with the items you brought with you. You’re in a small foyer with an elevator door and ATM like machine; you’re guessing that’s the automatic teller you were told about. You press some buttons on the machine, where it proceeds to ask your name and how you’re going to pay. You type in your name and insert you debit card where upon it completely drains your account. “You have been allowed entry, the elevator doors will now open, thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” an emotionless electronic voice remarks as the elevator doors open. You enter with all your belongings and take the long elevator trip down. When you get to bottom the elevator door opens to a sterile, but obviously large and well equipped living area. As soon as you enter, the elevator doors slam shut and you hear it going back up, you also notice there aren’t any buttons to call it back…before you’re able to worry about that little detail you’re met by another electronic voice…it actually sounds a lot like the female voice you were talking to on the phone… “Welcome to Ground Zero Survival Shelter Number 23! You will find that this shelter has been equipped to serve your needs in the event of total World destruction! Due to power saving design and money back guarantee concerns, fully functional shelter facilities will not be available until Armageddon occurs. Until then you will find all other doors firmly locked, please do not attempt to open them. I have detected that Armageddon has not yet occurred as 84% of the countries on Earth still maintain a stable centralized government system and 70% of the land surface is still habitable. However the world conflict rate is 92%. Prediction that Armageddon will occur in a month or less. This shelter will become fully functional at that time. In the unlikely event that Armageddon does not occur and the conflict rate drops to an acceptable level, the elevator will return and you will be able to leave this shelter and receive half of your money back from the automatic teller in the foyer on the surface.” “Wait a minute didn’t I talk to you on the phone?” you ask the voice, not really knowing if it’s going to answer back. “…I don’t think so, as far as my databanks are concerned this is the first time I have been in contact with a human since I was built sir. Is it okay if I call you sir?” “Sure, go ahead.” You answer. “Wonderful sir!” “Hey, so I can’t explore this damn shelter even though I paid for it? I have to stay in this living area?” “Not until doomsday sir. As I said this is to conserve my power and also to prevent buyer abuse in case of non-Earth destruction. Do not worry sir; this living area alone can support your needs until the appointed time. There is a basic food and water dispenser on the right wall.” “Buyer abuse?” “Yes, think about it, here you are using up all the wonderful facilities that this shelter has to offer for months on end while the Earth teeters on the brink of destruction then suddenly through a miracle hostilities cease. You then would be able to leave, get half of your money back and go about your life. You think it would be fair to GZS if we let you get away with basically having a luxury vacation on our dime? Just because we are in the business of your survival, does not mean we in the business of being exploited sir” “But…I paid for this!” “And so you did sir, and you will be able to use ALL the facilities when the time is right, until then you can enjoy the living area, oh and the bathroom sir.” One of the metal doors opens up to reveal a normal (And again sterile) bathroom. “Gee thanks.” “You’re quite welcome sir! After all I’m here to serve you!” “You kept saying I would be able to leave if the world doesn’t blow up…can’t I just leave at any time?” The voice doesn’t answer for awhile. “…I’m sorry sir I’m puzzled by your inquiry.” “Can’t I leave anytime I want?” “Why would you want to do that sir? I have been designed to keep you safe from harm as soon as you paid and entered the elevator. The current world situation is very grim and most likely terminal sir. Allowing you to leave at this point would be a severe violation in my programming.” You suddenly realize you’re here now regardless of whether you’re having second thoughts about this situation. You can see why these shelters were “experimental” now. You try not to think about the potential waist high shit you might have gotten yourself into, and instead try to think about how you might’ve just avoided becoming a statistic in a nuclear exchange. You resign yourself to your current fate and start unpacking your stuff. You could do with a little distraction from your current predicament, so you turn on a TV monitor that has been provided. The fact that the world’s situation hasn’t gotten any better seems to cheer you up. You spend most of your time on the couch, watching TV and exploring what you can. You’re glad you brought some of your own food, because the dispenser food doesn’t taste all that great. You’re guessing it’s just supposed to keep you alive, nothing more. As the days blur into the next, the shelter and TV you apprised of the world situation, which is only getting worse. It looks like you’ve made the right decision… Monday 8:00 AM “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” You groggily wake up and see a test pattern on TV. This is it. Suddenly the TV turns itself off. “Armageddon has arrived sir! This shelter is now fully functional! Please explore and enjoy all the things this facility has to offer!” the voice beams. At this point all the previously closed metal doors in the room unlock and open (Except for the elevator ones of course) After taking a quick check, you find you now have a small library, a computer room and a proper bedroom. When you return to the living area the voice chirps up again. “Sir, I highly recommend that you read the manual to familiarize yourself with everything properly first, so you aren’t just fumbling around.” A small panel in the wall opens up to reveal a hefty owner’s manual. You were wondering where the hell that thing was, since you were told you were going to be provided with one when you talked to the voice on the phone. > You go explore on your own “Ah what’s to know? I’ll figure everything out on my own. I’m getting a drink of water and checking out my new computer.” As you proceed to do this, the Shelter begins to warn you again. “Sir, I don’t think you should have a cup of water near the computer like that, if it spilled on it, it could cause trouble in my systems. Maybe you should read the Shelter manual. Particularly the chapter on safety.” “Will you leave me alone? Hey what’s this? This is the fuckin’ internet?” “It’s a limited networking system to other shelters. Sir, your cup of water! You’re going to spill it!” “No I’m…” BUZZZ! You spill your water on the keyboard and short something out. It sparks and suddenly erupts a small flame! You immediately run out of the room and notice the light dimming a bit. “Sir, I’m afraid that something vital has been compromised sir, I am attempting to correct…” “Shelter! Isn’t there a fuckin’ extinguisher somewhere?!” “I’m afraid not sir, I was supposed to be equipped with one, but there were budget cuts…” “Well what about a sprinkler system!?” “Budget cuts…and might I point out that, it would most likely make the electrical fire worse.” Lacking any other ideas, you run to grab a sheet from the bedroom and hope to smoother the flame like you remember seeing in an old GI Joe cartoon. Unfortunately due to the lighting flickering on and off, you trip and smash your leg really good causing a limp. By the time you return the fire has spread a little more and now it’s giving off smoke and the smell of ozone is hitting you. That shit can’t be good for you to breathe in. “Goddamn it! Didn’t these fuckers understand the concept of insulated wiring!?” “It is sir…well most of it…there were…” “I know! Fuckin’ budget cuts! Close the door, maybe the fire will burn itself out!” Normally the Shelter would know to wait for you to get out of the room first, but the fire is wreaking havoc on its command systems right now and it isn’t as responsive as it should be, or in this case too responsive since the door slams shut with you inside. “NO! OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!” “I-I-I am att-ttempting to sir, my power levels a-a-re…” Suddenly electrical arcs begin generating from the computer which is now totally engulfed in flames, in desperation you vainly attempt to open the metal door, which probably wasn’t the best idea as the entire room has become charged with electricity. You receive a nasty shock which throws you back, right into the fire. Your last agonizing moments as your flesh toasts and burns, are you seeing the door opening up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Experimental or not, it sure sounds better than being crammed into a shelter with a bunch of other people like sardines. At least you don’t have to worry about having to share anything, and if something goes wrong well you’ll deal with it when the times comes like you normally do. Or maybe you won’t. You aren’t going to dwell on it to much. “Okay I’ll take the Special Shelter.” “You will? I mean, that’s wonderful sir! You won’t regret this decision! Now I’ll need to know some vital information about yourself before I can direct you to our nearest experimental shelter in your area where upon you shall pay the automatic teller just inside the foyer of it so that the main door can open and you will be able to enter your new residence during Armageddon! Okay let’s start with your name sir.” You give out your name, address and such. It’s all pretty routine stuff. “Okay well that’s about all the information I need. I’ll give you the price and the location of the shelter sir.” You are given the location of the shelter which you are surprised to find out is closer then you think, it shouldn’t take too long for you drive there. You are then given the price, which is pretty steep, quite frankly its going to break you. However if the world is ending it’s not like you’re really going to need money anymore. Which makes you wonder why GZS is in business at all. What’s the point of going to the trouble of building bomb shelters for Armageddon if all the profit they make is most likely going to be useless in the aftermath? Oh well that’s not your concern, you’re just glad you managed to get a shelter. The voice gives you some last minute information. “Okay sir, you are now in the system and registered. You may move into your shelter at anytime as long you pay the fee required to the automatic teller as previously described to you. If you don’t pay, you can’t get in obviously. Cash, check, or debit card are acceptable. NO Credit Cards will be accepted! You may take whatever you wish with you into the shelter; it will be your new home after all. There will be an owner’s manual provided inside your new shelter. Any problems you encounter you should be able to troubleshoot yourself if you read and follow the manual. I’m sure any problems will not be life threatening sir, and there has been a back up system also installed in the unlikely event of total shelter failure since your survival is our foremost concern at GZS! Now then I trust our transaction has ended. If you have anymore questions please contact our customer service line. Good day sir, may you maintain relatively stable mental health and thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” That’s it, all you have to do is get what stuff you want to take with you and move in. You might as well pack your things now, no sense in waiting until you see the nuclear cloud. You pack up some extra food and water, a repair kit (since it sounds like you’ll probably need one) some basic medical supplies, and a few other useful items. Oh and your pistol. Still, part of you is reluctant to leave the “real world”. You wonder if you shouldn’t stick around a bit longer to see if the climate changes…you’d hate to spend your life savings and the world not be bombed into a nuclear wasteland. > You stick around You decide to wait a bit. Maybe things will start getting better. You stay at home an entire month keeping up on events, and it only gets worse. You keep deluding yourself that things WILL get better, but they don’t. Finally you realize you better leave soon. You decide to leave first thing in the morning… Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up and hear a loud continuous beeping noise. It’s a test pattern on TV that you left on from the day before. “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” Your heart races. This is it. You scramble to your van as fast as you can, and drive even faster to the shelter. On your way there, you curse yourself for forgetting all the extra stuff you wanted to bring with you, but that becomes the least of your troubles when your van stalls out. You desperately try to turn it back on, but it’s not starting. You get out of the van and attempt to run all the way to the shelter. As you run you notice the sun is shining strongly today, it’s nearly blinding your eyes. Then you see a bright light and then nothing at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken on the cold, stone floor with a shiver running through your body and a pounding earache from sleeping on the side of your head. You do not know how much longer you can survive in this place. No one has brought you any food or water for days. Either you've been abandoned to die or something's happened to the guards to keep them from feeding you. Either way you are well and truly buggered. With what little strength you have, you pick yourself up and look around your cell. There seems to be no way of escape. The window is barred and even if it wasn’t, your cell is at the very top of a huge, medieval tower, so climbing out would be suicide. The door is far too heavy to break down and you don’t have anything you could use to pick the lock. There is nothing in the room save for yourself, a dirty pile of straw in the corner and a bucket for… Well, let’s not discuss the bucket. Suddenly though, as your eyes scan the dungeon, you notice something you never saw before. One of the stones on the wall of your cell seems to have something etched into it. As you lean closer you can just about make out two words. “Press me.” > You press the stone You press the engraved stone and a secret door in the stone wall gradually slides to one side and reveals a hidden passage way. Congratulations, you’ve escaped your cell! That wasn’t too difficult was it? As you follow the empty passage way, you seem to be circling the dungeon and walking deeper and deeper into pitch darkness. Eventually you see a light at the end of the passage and find yourself in a room dimly lit by torches that hang from the wall. The room is small with only a spinning wheel and an old rocking chair to decorate it, both of which are coated in cob webs. There is a door on the other side of the room. Having nowhere else to go, you head towards the door when suddenly you hear the creaking of the rocking chair behind you. For a brief moment you hold your breath and try to reassure yourself that it’s just the breeze rocking the chair, but there is no breeze in the room. Eventually you force yourself to turn around and see the ghostly figure of an old woman sitting in the chair. Before you can run or scream, the old lady speaks up in a gentle yet eerie voice. “No need to be afraid of me child.” She tells you as she slowly rocks in her chair, stroking a small, ghostly cat on her lap. “You’ve nothing to fear from poor old Nana. I’m just here, pondering the old riddle to myself. Are you good at riddles child? I do hope so. They’re the only way to get out of this tower you see, ever since the old master went mad and cursed the place. Oh and that reminds me, I’m supposed to ask you the riddle aren’t I? Now let’s see if I can remember. What does man love more than life, Fear more than death and mortal strife, What the poor have and the rich require, And what contented men desire, What the miser spends and the spendthrift saves, And all men carry to their graves?” > You answer "Love" The ghost lets out a sad and disappointed sigh. “I’m afraid not dearie.” She tells you as the rocking of her chair gradually comes to a halt. “I am sorry child. At least you tried.” Suddenly a trap door opens up beneath you and you fall screaming into a pit of fire. Personally you find this punishment a tad eccentric just for failing to answer a riddle correctly, but that's just you. Better luck next time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press the engraved stone and a secret door in the stone wall gradually slides to one side and reveals a hidden passage way. Congratulations, you’ve escaped your cell! That wasn’t too difficult was it? As you follow the empty passage way, you seem to be circling the dungeon and walking deeper and deeper into pitch darkness. Eventually you see a light at the end of the passage and find yourself in a room dimly lit by torches that hang from the wall. The room is small with only a spinning wheel and an old rocking chair to decorate it, both of which are coated in cob webs. There is a door on the other side of the room. Having nowhere else to go, you head towards the door when suddenly you hear the creaking of the rocking chair behind you. For a brief moment you hold your breath and try to reassure yourself that it’s just the breeze rocking the chair, but there is no breeze in the room. Eventually you force yourself to turn around and see the ghostly figure of an old woman sitting in the chair. Before you can run or scream, the old lady speaks up in a gentle yet eerie voice. “No need to be afraid of me child.” She tells you as she slowly rocks in her chair, stroking a small, ghostly cat on her lap. “You’ve nothing to fear from poor old Nana. I’m just here, pondering the old riddle to myself. Are you good at riddles child? I do hope so. They’re the only way to get out of this tower you see, ever since the old master went mad and cursed the place. Oh and that reminds me, I’m supposed to ask you the riddle aren’t I? Now let’s see if I can remember. What does man love more than life, Fear more than death and mortal strife, What the poor have and the rich require, And what contented men desire, What the miser spends and the spendthrift saves, And all men carry to their graves?” > You answer "Nothing" The old woman seems to think about your answer for a moment. “Nothing.” She says to herself before a ghostly smile twists her lips. “Nothing, yes I think that sounds right. Very good child. Thank you for answering poor Old Nana’s riddle. Now I can finally get some rest. You go on through the door now.” And with that, the rocking chair stops rocking and the ghost of the woman and her cat fade away into nothingness. Opening the door leads you to a staircase. As you descend these stairs you can hear all sorts of strange noises. Scuffling, squeaking, flapping of wings, hooting and howling, you expect to find a collection of animals caged at the bottom of the stairs. Instead you find a circular room with ten doors all the way around, each with a picture of a different animal engraved on the door. The noises begin to quiet down and the ghost of a dark haired, rather scruffy looking man appears in the centre of the room with a hawk perched on his arm. “So, you made it past Nana did you? Poor old bat’s been trying to solve that riddle for damn near fifty years now. Well I suppose it’s my turn then. Glad to meet you kid. I’m the games keeper here abouts. Master told me we had new company and he sent me down here with a riddle for you, to help you choose which door to go through. Give it a good think before you open one, alright? Wings as black as a moonless night. Only ventures in the light. Long tail, sharp teeth, legs of eight. Find my name or meet your fate.” > You open the door engraved with an Owl You open the door to see nothing but darkness before you and the sounds of several different creatures fill the air once again, only now they sound louder, and angrier. “Sorry kid.” The games keeper says to you as the sounds draw nearer. “Even I can’t stop them now. They’re just so hungry.” Suddenly you feel a sharp pain in your foot and you look down to see that a rat has come in through the door and bitten your toe. You manage to kick it away but more rats appear and you stumble backwards trying to keep them away from your feet. An owl flies at you out of the darkness and it’s talons scratch at you eyes. You try to shoo it away but see that your arms are covered in tiny black spiders which you frantically try to shake off. The spiders are the least of your worries though, since standing it the doorway is a great black bear which rises onto its hind legs and lets out the most terrifying roar. You are so distracted by the bear that you don’t even notice the wolf that is circling you until it sinks its teeth into your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The old woman seems to think about your answer for a moment. “Nothing.” She says to herself before a ghostly smile twists her lips. “Nothing, yes I think that sounds right. Very good child. Thank you for answering poor Old Nana’s riddle. Now I can finally get some rest. You go on through the door now.” And with that, the rocking chair stops rocking and the ghost of the woman and her cat fade away into nothingness. Opening the door leads you to a staircase. As you descend these stairs you can hear all sorts of strange noises. Scuffling, squeaking, flapping of wings, hooting and howling, you expect to find a collection of animals caged at the bottom of the stairs. Instead you find a circular room with ten doors all the way around, each with a picture of a different animal engraved on the door. The noises begin to quiet down and the ghost of a dark haired, rather scruffy looking man appears in the centre of the room with a hawk perched on his arm. “So, you made it past Nana did you? Poor old bat’s been trying to solve that riddle for damn near fifty years now. Well I suppose it’s my turn then. Glad to meet you kid. I’m the games keeper here abouts. Master told me we had new company and he sent me down here with a riddle for you, to help you choose which door to go through. Give it a good think before you open one, alright? Wings as black as a moonless night. Only ventures in the light. Long tail, sharp teeth, legs of eight. Find my name or meet your fate.” > You open the door engraved with a Wolf You open the door with the wolf engraved on it and the game keeper nods with approval. “Good job kid. Did you put together the first letters of every sentence or was it just a lucky guess? Either way I suppose it’s time for me to move on. Good luck with the next riddle, but watch yourself. I hear there’s a killer on the loose in the tower.” You want to ask the game keeper more but by the time you turn around both the man and the hawk have already vanished. The doorway leads to a large dining hall with one great table, decorated with candles and long enough to host a royal banquet. The plates, cutlery and candle sticks are all covered in dust and all the seats are empty save for the last five at the far end, all of which are filled by ghosts. Two men sit on the left of the table and two women on the right. Judging by their clothing they are all servants of different standing within the tower, but at the head of the table sits a young woman about your own age, just barely into adulthood. Both her fine velvet dress and the refined way she sits show her to be a woman of noble birth. “Have you come to free me from my torment?” The noble woman asks as a ghostly tear runs down her cheek. “My father sent me here to become the Wizard Lord’s bride, but while I was a guest in his tower, the scoundrel had me poisoned by one of his own servants. I cannot be free until I know who my killer is. All I know is that it is one of the four sitting at the table, and that only one of them ever speaks the truth.” In unison the four servants all turn to you and begin to argue in their defence. “The maid is the murderer.” Says the butler. “The cook poisoned the princess.” Says the maid. “I didn’t kill the girl, I swear!” Says the gardener. “The maid is lying.” Says the cook. > The butler dunnit! Feeling rather confident in yourself, you walk past the servants to stand next to the noblewoman at the head of the table. “I think I know who murdered you!” You tell her proudly, seeing her face light up just about as much as a pale white, ghostly face can. “It was…” But before you can finish your sentence, you feel cold, sharp steel plunging into your back and the young ghost woman screams as you fall to the ground in a pool of your own blood. Looks like you got it wrong. Still, look on the bright side, maybe some day some other poor sod will find themselves trapped in the tower and they’ll get to solve the mystery of who murdered you! That side's really not all that bright is it?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You open the door with the wolf engraved on it and the game keeper nods with approval. “Good job kid. Did you put together the first letters of every sentence or was it just a lucky guess? Either way I suppose it’s time for me to move on. Good luck with the next riddle, but watch yourself. I hear there’s a killer on the loose in the tower.” You want to ask the game keeper more but by the time you turn around both the man and the hawk have already vanished. The doorway leads to a large dining hall with one great table, decorated with candles and long enough to host a royal banquet. The plates, cutlery and candle sticks are all covered in dust and all the seats are empty save for the last five at the far end, all of which are filled by ghosts. Two men sit on the left of the table and two women on the right. Judging by their clothing they are all servants of different standing within the tower, but at the head of the table sits a young woman about your own age, just barely into adulthood. Both her fine velvet dress and the refined way she sits show her to be a woman of noble birth. “Have you come to free me from my torment?” The noble woman asks as a ghostly tear runs down her cheek. “My father sent me here to become the Wizard Lord’s bride, but while I was a guest in his tower, the scoundrel had me poisoned by one of his own servants. I cannot be free until I know who my killer is. All I know is that it is one of the four sitting at the table, and that only one of them ever speaks the truth.” In unison the four servants all turn to you and begin to argue in their defence. “The maid is the murderer.” Says the butler. “The cook poisoned the princess.” Says the maid. “I didn’t kill the girl, I swear!” Says the gardener. “The maid is lying.” Says the cook. > The gardener dunnit! You look accusingly at each of the servants and consider what they each said in turn. “You say that only one of them can tell the truth. Now the only one that can be telling the truth while all the others are lying is the cook, and since the gardener claims he didn’t do it and we know he must be lying, that must make him the killer!” With that, the four servants all begin to disappear into the air. You have solved their riddle and now they can finally move on to the afterlife. “Thank you.” The ghost of the noblewoman tells you as she begins to fade away. “Finally I can rest in peace. I wish you luck on your next riddle. I hear it can only be solved by one with the sharpest of eyes.” Once the woman’s ghost has faded from sight you leave the dining hall and descend another spiral staircase until you find yourself in a long passageway that seems to wind in a circle around the tower. All across the walls hang the most incredible works of art. Landscapes and seascapes and portraits of lords and ladies dressed in shimmering silks, all painted with exquisite attention to detail. There is one painting that draws your eye though, a strange pattern made up of purple roses which would look very pretty on a pair of curtains but seems incredibly out of place hanging on the wall with the other paintings. “Ah, I zee you are admiring my masterpiece.” A voice speaks from behind you and you turn to see a ghost of a man standing behind you dressed in a brightly coloured tunic, holding a paint palette in one hand and a brush in another. “Oh ze hours I slaved avay on zis painting and ze mastery, it iz vasted on blind fools! Vhat of you I vonder? Can you zee past vhat is in front of your eyes? Tell me, vhat is it you zee in ze painting?” > You purple Roses The artist simply scoffs at your reply. “Hmph! Foolish child! I should ‘ave known zat your puny little eyes could never vitness ze true brilliance of my vork! Perhaps you vould prefer a more in depth study of von of my other paintings. Zat von maybe?” With that, the artist uses his paintbrush to gesture towards a magnificent work of art, depicting a war scene between a group of fully armed knights and a gang of vagabonds hiding in a forest with bows and arrows. Suddenly you feel yourself drawn to this painting and as you walk closer you find that the trees in the background seem to get further and further away while the knights in the foreground become closer and closer until they seem to be right there beside you. In fact, some of them are in front of you. It is then that you turn around in a full circle and realize that you are actually inside the painting. “I see one!” You hear one of the knights cry, and are horrified to find that he is pointing at you. “Rebel scum! Men, in the name of the King, I order you to kill that traitor!” At the man’s orders, all the other knights draw their swords in unison and point them at you. “… Oh bugger.” You mumble to yourself before turning around and running away, screaming like a little girl. You can hear the knights on their horses drawing closer to you, but they never get a chance to run you through, since out of the trees, the rebel’s arrows rain down on the knights and unfortunately one of them hits you right in the chest and pierces your heart. For a painted arrow it’s incredibly sharp.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look accusingly at each of the servants and consider what they each said in turn. “You say that only one of them can tell the truth. Now the only one that can be telling the truth while all the others are lying is the cook, and since the gardener claims he didn’t do it and we know he must be lying, that must make him the killer!” With that, the four servants all begin to disappear into the air. You have solved their riddle and now they can finally move on to the afterlife. “Thank you.” The ghost of the noblewoman tells you as she begins to fade away. “Finally I can rest in peace. I wish you luck on your next riddle. I hear it can only be solved by one with the sharpest of eyes.” Once the woman’s ghost has faded from sight you leave the dining hall and descend another spiral staircase until you find yourself in a long passageway that seems to wind in a circle around the tower. All across the walls hang the most incredible works of art. Landscapes and seascapes and portraits of lords and ladies dressed in shimmering silks, all painted with exquisite attention to detail. There is one painting that draws your eye though, a strange pattern made up of purple roses which would look very pretty on a pair of curtains but seems incredibly out of place hanging on the wall with the other paintings. “Ah, I zee you are admiring my masterpiece.” A voice speaks from behind you and you turn to see a ghost of a man standing behind you dressed in a brightly coloured tunic, holding a paint palette in one hand and a brush in another. “Oh ze hours I slaved avay on zis painting and ze mastery, it iz vasted on blind fools! Vhat of you I vonder? Can you zee past vhat is in front of your eyes? Tell me, vhat is it you zee in ze painting?” > A Ring The artist applauds your reply. “You zee! You zee! Oh you vonderful peasant, you zee ze ring! Now I can finally move on knoving zat my vork, it is appreciated! Good luck escaping vith your life and all zat.” And with that the ghost leaps into a blank canvas which quickly becomes a painting of a rather eccentric looking artist with a paintbrush and palette in his hands. Opening a door at the end of the hallway, you find another staircase. As you descend the stairs you pass by a window which shows you are almost halfway down the tower now. Keep up the good work and you’ll be free in no time. At the bottom of the stairs you open a door to reveal another round room. This room has six doors and they are each guarded by a suit of armour holding a different flag. No ghosts appear to give you advice, so you head towards the centre of the room to choose a door. It is then that the suits of armour come to life and bang the ends of their flags on the ground in unison. The first guard is holding a blue flag with white and red crosses going both from corner to corner and through the centre of the flag. The guard shouts, “None shall pass!” The second guard is holding a flag with vertical blue, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Personne ne peut entrer!” The third guard is holding a flag with red stripes at the top and bottom, a yellow stripe in the middle and to the left a picture of a shield with a crown on top. He shouts, “Nadie puede pasar!” The fourth guard is holding a flag with horizontal black, red and yellow stripes. He shouts, “Niemand darf passieren!” The fifth guard is holding a blue flag with a yellow cross going through. He shouts, “Ingen kan passera!” The sixth guard is holding a flag with vertical green, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Vieni dentro piccola persona!” > You open the first door Well the evil lord of the tower sure knows his European languages. You choose your door and turn the door knob but before you can open it, the suit of armour that guards your door plunges his spear into your back and it pierces all the way through your body, coming out of your chest. The spear also happens to be the stick on which his flag was attached and so you get to watch the little bloodstained flag flapping about before you slump to the ground and die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The artist applauds your reply. “You zee! You zee! Oh you vonderful peasant, you zee ze ring! Now I can finally move on knoving zat my vork, it is appreciated! Good luck escaping vith your life and all zat.” And with that the ghost leaps into a blank canvas which quickly becomes a painting of a rather eccentric looking artist with a paintbrush and palette in his hands. Opening a door at the end of the hallway, you find another staircase. As you descend the stairs you pass by a window which shows you are almost halfway down the tower now. Keep up the good work and you’ll be free in no time. At the bottom of the stairs you open a door to reveal another round room. This room has six doors and they are each guarded by a suit of armour holding a different flag. No ghosts appear to give you advice, so you head towards the centre of the room to choose a door. It is then that the suits of armour come to life and bang the ends of their flags on the ground in unison. The first guard is holding a blue flag with white and red crosses going both from corner to corner and through the centre of the flag. The guard shouts, “None shall pass!” The second guard is holding a flag with vertical blue, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Personne ne peut entrer!” The third guard is holding a flag with red stripes at the top and bottom, a yellow stripe in the middle and to the left a picture of a shield with a crown on top. He shouts, “Nadie puede pasar!” The fourth guard is holding a flag with horizontal black, red and yellow stripes. He shouts, “Niemand darf passieren!” The fifth guard is holding a blue flag with a yellow cross going through. He shouts, “Ingen kan passera!” The sixth guard is holding a flag with vertical green, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Vieni dentro piccola persona!” > You open the sixth door What a nice Italian suit of armour. You open the door and the guard kindly steps aside to let you pass. “Addio piccola persona!” He calls after you. “Cercate di non morire in un modo brutto!” The next room is a rather cheerful change of pace in this otherwise rather depressing haunted tower. A little girl’s room, painted pink with little purple curtains draped over a little bed and more toys than a princess could ask for. Dollhouses complete with furniture and little tea sets for the dolls, rocking horses, every kind of toy animal you can think of and the most incredibly life like puppets. In the centre of the room is a table on which sits a little model village. On one side of the village is a little river with an island in the middle. There are three men and a little boat on the island. “Have you come to play with me?” You hear a little voice ask, and you turn around to see a young girl, about five years old, dressed up in a pretty green dress with a crown of flowers in her hair. Apparently the girl fancies herself a bit of a princess. Unlike the rest of the people in this tower though, the girl is not a ghost. Everything about her seems completely real. “I’ve been trying to finish this game for ages.” She tells you, standing up on a stool to get a better view of the model village. “My Daddy gave it to me. He says only a real smart person can figure it out.” The child then turns to you and considers you for a moment. “You don’t look very smart.” She says sadly. “But I’ll let you play anyway.” Before you can either agree or object, you suddenly find yourself shrinking down to the size of a little toy soldier. Rather carelessly, the girl picks you up between her thumb and forefinger and drops you on the little model island. “Now listen carefully.” The girl tells you with a rather bossy tone. “There’s three men on the island. The ugly one is a bad man who threw a lady in the river and drowned her. The angry one is the lady’s brother, and he’s very cross with the bad man for killing her. The scared looking man saw the ugly one drown the lady, he’s very scared because he thinks the bad man is going to kill him too, so that he won’t tell anybody what happened. You are the ferry man and you have to get all three of the men to the village so that they can take the bad man to court, but you can only take one man at a time. You can’t leave the lady’s brother alone with the bad man, or the lady’s brother might get angry and kill him. Also, you can’t leave the bad man alone with the scared man, because if you do then the bad man might kill the scared man so that he can’t tell anyone what happened. Now, who are you going to take first?” > You take the Murderer to the village You row to the model village. On the village is the murderer. Now what do you do? > You row back with the murderer You row back to the island. On the island are the murderer, the brother and the witness. Who do you want to take to the village first?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You row to the model village. On the village is the murderer. Now what do you do? > You leave the murderer and row back on your own You row to the model island. On the island are the woman's brother and the witness. Who do you want to take across next? > The Brother You row to the village. On the village are the murderer and the victim's brother. Who do you want to take across next? > The Murderer You row back to the island. On the island are the murderer and the witness. Who do you want to take across now?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>What a nice Italian suit of armour. You open the door and the guard kindly steps aside to let you pass. “Addio piccola persona!” He calls after you. “Cercate di non morire in un modo brutto!” The next room is a rather cheerful change of pace in this otherwise rather depressing haunted tower. A little girl’s room, painted pink with little purple curtains draped over a little bed and more toys than a princess could ask for. Dollhouses complete with furniture and little tea sets for the dolls, rocking horses, every kind of toy animal you can think of and the most incredibly life like puppets. In the centre of the room is a table on which sits a little model village. On one side of the village is a little river with an island in the middle. There are three men and a little boat on the island. “Have you come to play with me?” You hear a little voice ask, and you turn around to see a young girl, about five years old, dressed up in a pretty green dress with a crown of flowers in her hair. Apparently the girl fancies herself a bit of a princess. Unlike the rest of the people in this tower though, the girl is not a ghost. Everything about her seems completely real. “I’ve been trying to finish this game for ages.” She tells you, standing up on a stool to get a better view of the model village. “My Daddy gave it to me. He says only a real smart person can figure it out.” The child then turns to you and considers you for a moment. “You don’t look very smart.” She says sadly. “But I’ll let you play anyway.” Before you can either agree or object, you suddenly find yourself shrinking down to the size of a little toy soldier. Rather carelessly, the girl picks you up between her thumb and forefinger and drops you on the little model island. “Now listen carefully.” The girl tells you with a rather bossy tone. “There’s three men on the island. The ugly one is a bad man who threw a lady in the river and drowned her. The angry one is the lady’s brother, and he’s very cross with the bad man for killing her. The scared looking man saw the ugly one drown the lady, he’s very scared because he thinks the bad man is going to kill him too, so that he won’t tell anybody what happened. You are the ferry man and you have to get all three of the men to the village so that they can take the bad man to court, but you can only take one man at a time. You can’t leave the lady’s brother alone with the bad man, or the lady’s brother might get angry and kill him. Also, you can’t leave the bad man alone with the scared man, because if you do then the bad man might kill the scared man so that he can’t tell anyone what happened. Now, who are you going to take first?” > You row to the village alone Congratulations! You made it to the other side of the river! ... Now what?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>What a nice Italian suit of armour. You open the door and the guard kindly steps aside to let you pass. “Addio piccola persona!” He calls after you. “Cercate di non morire in un modo brutto!” The next room is a rather cheerful change of pace in this otherwise rather depressing haunted tower. A little girl’s room, painted pink with little purple curtains draped over a little bed and more toys than a princess could ask for. Dollhouses complete with furniture and little tea sets for the dolls, rocking horses, every kind of toy animal you can think of and the most incredibly life like puppets. In the centre of the room is a table on which sits a little model village. On one side of the village is a little river with an island in the middle. There are three men and a little boat on the island. “Have you come to play with me?” You hear a little voice ask, and you turn around to see a young girl, about five years old, dressed up in a pretty green dress with a crown of flowers in her hair. Apparently the girl fancies herself a bit of a princess. Unlike the rest of the people in this tower though, the girl is not a ghost. Everything about her seems completely real. “I’ve been trying to finish this game for ages.” She tells you, standing up on a stool to get a better view of the model village. “My Daddy gave it to me. He says only a real smart person can figure it out.” The child then turns to you and considers you for a moment. “You don’t look very smart.” She says sadly. “But I’ll let you play anyway.” Before you can either agree or object, you suddenly find yourself shrinking down to the size of a little toy soldier. Rather carelessly, the girl picks you up between her thumb and forefinger and drops you on the little model island. “Now listen carefully.” The girl tells you with a rather bossy tone. “There’s three men on the island. The ugly one is a bad man who threw a lady in the river and drowned her. The angry one is the lady’s brother, and he’s very cross with the bad man for killing her. The scared looking man saw the ugly one drown the lady, he’s very scared because he thinks the bad man is going to kill him too, so that he won’t tell anybody what happened. You are the ferry man and you have to get all three of the men to the village so that they can take the bad man to court, but you can only take one man at a time. You can’t leave the lady’s brother alone with the bad man, or the lady’s brother might get angry and kill him. Also, you can’t leave the bad man alone with the scared man, because if you do then the bad man might kill the scared man so that he can’t tell anyone what happened. Now, who are you going to take first?” > You refuse to play and give the little brat a good finger wagging! You refuse to be a child’s plaything! You wag your finger at the little girl and give her a very stern telling off. “I don’t have time to play games with you! I need to escape this tower! You change me back right now! I swear if I was my real height I’d put you over my knee and give you a good spanking so you’d know to respect your… Wait, what’re you doing?” By now the girl has picked you up and is looking at you rather crossly. “Bad toy!” She yells at you. “I don’t like you anymore!” And with that she dunks you in the model village’s river and holds you under until you drown. You never were very good with children.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>What a nice Italian suit of armour. You open the door and the guard kindly steps aside to let you pass. “Addio piccola persona!” He calls after you. “Cercate di non morire in un modo brutto!” The next room is a rather cheerful change of pace in this otherwise rather depressing haunted tower. A little girl’s room, painted pink with little purple curtains draped over a little bed and more toys than a princess could ask for. Dollhouses complete with furniture and little tea sets for the dolls, rocking horses, every kind of toy animal you can think of and the most incredibly life like puppets. In the centre of the room is a table on which sits a little model village. On one side of the village is a little river with an island in the middle. There are three men and a little boat on the island. “Have you come to play with me?” You hear a little voice ask, and you turn around to see a young girl, about five years old, dressed up in a pretty green dress with a crown of flowers in her hair. Apparently the girl fancies herself a bit of a princess. Unlike the rest of the people in this tower though, the girl is not a ghost. Everything about her seems completely real. “I’ve been trying to finish this game for ages.” She tells you, standing up on a stool to get a better view of the model village. “My Daddy gave it to me. He says only a real smart person can figure it out.” The child then turns to you and considers you for a moment. “You don’t look very smart.” She says sadly. “But I’ll let you play anyway.” Before you can either agree or object, you suddenly find yourself shrinking down to the size of a little toy soldier. Rather carelessly, the girl picks you up between her thumb and forefinger and drops you on the little model island. “Now listen carefully.” The girl tells you with a rather bossy tone. “There’s three men on the island. The ugly one is a bad man who threw a lady in the river and drowned her. The angry one is the lady’s brother, and he’s very cross with the bad man for killing her. The scared looking man saw the ugly one drown the lady, he’s very scared because he thinks the bad man is going to kill him too, so that he won’t tell anybody what happened. You are the ferry man and you have to get all three of the men to the village so that they can take the bad man to court, but you can only take one man at a time. You can’t leave the lady’s brother alone with the bad man, or the lady’s brother might get angry and kill him. Also, you can’t leave the bad man alone with the scared man, because if you do then the bad man might kill the scared man so that he can’t tell anyone what happened. Now, who are you going to take first?” > You need a hint It's not all that hard, just remember that you can only take one person in your boat at a time and never leave the brother alone with the killer, or the killer alone with the witness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The artist applauds your reply. “You zee! You zee! Oh you vonderful peasant, you zee ze ring! Now I can finally move on knoving zat my vork, it is appreciated! Good luck escaping vith your life and all zat.” And with that the ghost leaps into a blank canvas which quickly becomes a painting of a rather eccentric looking artist with a paintbrush and palette in his hands. Opening a door at the end of the hallway, you find another staircase. As you descend the stairs you pass by a window which shows you are almost halfway down the tower now. Keep up the good work and you’ll be free in no time. At the bottom of the stairs you open a door to reveal another round room. This room has six doors and they are each guarded by a suit of armour holding a different flag. No ghosts appear to give you advice, so you head towards the centre of the room to choose a door. It is then that the suits of armour come to life and bang the ends of their flags on the ground in unison. The first guard is holding a blue flag with white and red crosses going both from corner to corner and through the centre of the flag. The guard shouts, “None shall pass!” The second guard is holding a flag with vertical blue, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Personne ne peut entrer!” The third guard is holding a flag with red stripes at the top and bottom, a yellow stripe in the middle and to the left a picture of a shield with a crown on top. He shouts, “Nadie puede pasar!” The fourth guard is holding a flag with horizontal black, red and yellow stripes. He shouts, “Niemand darf passieren!” The fifth guard is holding a blue flag with a yellow cross going through. He shouts, “Ingen kan passera!” The sixth guard is holding a flag with vertical green, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Vieni dentro piccola persona!” > You knock the suits of armour over like dominoes! A brilliant idea springs to mind! Using all your strength, you push against the first suit of armour in an attempt to knock them all down like a circle of dominoes. It works! The first suit knocks over the second, the second knocks over the third, the third knocks over the fourth, the fourth knocks over the fifth, finally the fifth suit knocks over the sixth suit of armour and the six suit of armour knocks over you. Well, you should have seen that coming. Sadly the last suit of armour is particularly heavy and you are crushed under it’s weight. Remember when you were little and your mother would tell you to look but don’t touch? This is why.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The artist applauds your reply. “You zee! You zee! Oh you vonderful peasant, you zee ze ring! Now I can finally move on knoving zat my vork, it is appreciated! Good luck escaping vith your life and all zat.” And with that the ghost leaps into a blank canvas which quickly becomes a painting of a rather eccentric looking artist with a paintbrush and palette in his hands. Opening a door at the end of the hallway, you find another staircase. As you descend the stairs you pass by a window which shows you are almost halfway down the tower now. Keep up the good work and you’ll be free in no time. At the bottom of the stairs you open a door to reveal another round room. This room has six doors and they are each guarded by a suit of armour holding a different flag. No ghosts appear to give you advice, so you head towards the centre of the room to choose a door. It is then that the suits of armour come to life and bang the ends of their flags on the ground in unison. The first guard is holding a blue flag with white and red crosses going both from corner to corner and through the centre of the flag. The guard shouts, “None shall pass!” The second guard is holding a flag with vertical blue, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Personne ne peut entrer!” The third guard is holding a flag with red stripes at the top and bottom, a yellow stripe in the middle and to the left a picture of a shield with a crown on top. He shouts, “Nadie puede pasar!” The fourth guard is holding a flag with horizontal black, red and yellow stripes. He shouts, “Niemand darf passieren!” The fifth guard is holding a blue flag with a yellow cross going through. He shouts, “Ingen kan passera!” The sixth guard is holding a flag with vertical green, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Vieni dentro piccola persona!” > You need a hint First I need to apologize since the flags are not historically accurate considering this game is meant to be set in medieval England. Second, for those of you that don't speak six different languages, avez-vous entendu parler de google translator?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look accusingly at each of the servants and consider what they each said in turn. “You say that only one of them can tell the truth. Now the only one that can be telling the truth while all the others are lying is the cook, and since the gardener claims he didn’t do it and we know he must be lying, that must make him the killer!” With that, the four servants all begin to disappear into the air. You have solved their riddle and now they can finally move on to the afterlife. “Thank you.” The ghost of the noblewoman tells you as she begins to fade away. “Finally I can rest in peace. I wish you luck on your next riddle. I hear it can only be solved by one with the sharpest of eyes.” Once the woman’s ghost has faded from sight you leave the dining hall and descend another spiral staircase until you find yourself in a long passageway that seems to wind in a circle around the tower. All across the walls hang the most incredible works of art. Landscapes and seascapes and portraits of lords and ladies dressed in shimmering silks, all painted with exquisite attention to detail. There is one painting that draws your eye though, a strange pattern made up of purple roses which would look very pretty on a pair of curtains but seems incredibly out of place hanging on the wall with the other paintings. “Ah, I zee you are admiring my masterpiece.” A voice speaks from behind you and you turn to see a ghost of a man standing behind you dressed in a brightly coloured tunic, holding a paint palette in one hand and a brush in another. “Oh ze hours I slaved avay on zis painting and ze mastery, it iz vasted on blind fools! Vhat of you I vonder? Can you zee past vhat is in front of your eyes? Tell me, vhat is it you zee in ze painting?” > You beauty, Truth, Love, Passion... Art! The artist looks rather proud of himself when he hears your answer! “Yes, yes!” He declares with a broad grin. “Beauty! Passion! How remarkable zat a peasant such as yourself could recognize ‘ow much passion I put into zis painting to make it zo that only a truly gifted eye could zee ze… Vait… You ‘ave no idea vhat’s in ze painting do you?” In complete and utter frustration, the artist slaps his hand against his forehead. “Hmph! Foolish child! I should ‘ave known zat your puny little eyes could never vitness ze true brilliance of my vork! Perhaps you vould prefer a more in depth study of von of my other paintings. Zat von maybe?” With that, the artist uses his paintbrush to gesture towards a magnificent work of art, depicting a war scene between a group of fully armed knights and a gang of vagabonds hiding in a forest with bows and arrows. Suddenly you feel yourself drawn to this painting and as you walk closer you find that the trees in the background seem to get further and further away while the knights in the foreground become closer and closer until they seem to be right there beside you. In fact, some of them are in front of you. It is then that you turn around in a full circle and realize that you are actually inside the painting. “I see one!” You hear one of the knights cry, and are horrified to find that he is pointing at you. “Rebel scum! Men, in the name of the King, I order you to kill that traitor!” At the man’s orders, all the other knights draw their swords in unison and point them at you. “… Oh bugger.” You mumble to yourself before turning around and running away, screaming like a little girl. You can hear the knights on their horses drawing closer to you, but they never get a chance to run you through, since out of the trees, the rebel’s arrows rain down on the knights and unfortunately one of them hits you right in the chest and pierces your heart. For a painted arrow it’s incredibly sharp.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look accusingly at each of the servants and consider what they each said in turn. “You say that only one of them can tell the truth. Now the only one that can be telling the truth while all the others are lying is the cook, and since the gardener claims he didn’t do it and we know he must be lying, that must make him the killer!” With that, the four servants all begin to disappear into the air. You have solved their riddle and now they can finally move on to the afterlife. “Thank you.” The ghost of the noblewoman tells you as she begins to fade away. “Finally I can rest in peace. I wish you luck on your next riddle. I hear it can only be solved by one with the sharpest of eyes.” Once the woman’s ghost has faded from sight you leave the dining hall and descend another spiral staircase until you find yourself in a long passageway that seems to wind in a circle around the tower. All across the walls hang the most incredible works of art. Landscapes and seascapes and portraits of lords and ladies dressed in shimmering silks, all painted with exquisite attention to detail. There is one painting that draws your eye though, a strange pattern made up of purple roses which would look very pretty on a pair of curtains but seems incredibly out of place hanging on the wall with the other paintings. “Ah, I zee you are admiring my masterpiece.” A voice speaks from behind you and you turn to see a ghost of a man standing behind you dressed in a brightly coloured tunic, holding a paint palette in one hand and a brush in another. “Oh ze hours I slaved avay on zis painting and ze mastery, it iz vasted on blind fools! Vhat of you I vonder? Can you zee past vhat is in front of your eyes? Tell me, vhat is it you zee in ze painting?” > You need a hint It might just look like a bunch of purple roses, but there’s a three dimensional image hidden inside the painting. The trick is not to look at the picture like it’s right in front of you, look at it as if you are looking at something far away in the distance. Keep adjusting the way you look at it until you can see a 3D shape very clearly in the painting. (Unfortunately this may be difficult if you have problems with your eyesight and will not work if you are blind in one eye.)<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You open the door with the wolf engraved on it and the game keeper nods with approval. “Good job kid. Did you put together the first letters of every sentence or was it just a lucky guess? Either way I suppose it’s time for me to move on. Good luck with the next riddle, but watch yourself. I hear there’s a killer on the loose in the tower.” You want to ask the game keeper more but by the time you turn around both the man and the hawk have already vanished. The doorway leads to a large dining hall with one great table, decorated with candles and long enough to host a royal banquet. The plates, cutlery and candle sticks are all covered in dust and all the seats are empty save for the last five at the far end, all of which are filled by ghosts. Two men sit on the left of the table and two women on the right. Judging by their clothing they are all servants of different standing within the tower, but at the head of the table sits a young woman about your own age, just barely into adulthood. Both her fine velvet dress and the refined way she sits show her to be a woman of noble birth. “Have you come to free me from my torment?” The noble woman asks as a ghostly tear runs down her cheek. “My father sent me here to become the Wizard Lord’s bride, but while I was a guest in his tower, the scoundrel had me poisoned by one of his own servants. I cannot be free until I know who my killer is. All I know is that it is one of the four sitting at the table, and that only one of them ever speaks the truth.” In unison the four servants all turn to you and begin to argue in their defence. “The maid is the murderer.” Says the butler. “The cook poisoned the princess.” Says the maid. “I didn’t kill the girl, I swear!” Says the gardener. “The maid is lying.” Says the cook. > You colonel Mustard in the Library with the Candlestick! The ghost of the noblewoman looks very confused. “I do not understand. I was not murdered with a candlestick, I was poisoned. Besides, I died here at this very table, not in a library, and I do not believe the Wizard Lord has a Colonel Mustard in his emplo… Look out!” The lady screams, but you do not have time to turn around before you feel the cold, steel knife as it is plunged into your back. Well, I hope you’re happy. Now you’re dead, and the ghost of the poor woman will be trapped in the tower forever because you just had to make a reference to a board game that hasn't even been invented yet! Was it worth it? Was it really?!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You open the door with the wolf engraved on it and the game keeper nods with approval. “Good job kid. Did you put together the first letters of every sentence or was it just a lucky guess? Either way I suppose it’s time for me to move on. Good luck with the next riddle, but watch yourself. I hear there’s a killer on the loose in the tower.” You want to ask the game keeper more but by the time you turn around both the man and the hawk have already vanished. The doorway leads to a large dining hall with one great table, decorated with candles and long enough to host a royal banquet. The plates, cutlery and candle sticks are all covered in dust and all the seats are empty save for the last five at the far end, all of which are filled by ghosts. Two men sit on the left of the table and two women on the right. Judging by their clothing they are all servants of different standing within the tower, but at the head of the table sits a young woman about your own age, just barely into adulthood. Both her fine velvet dress and the refined way she sits show her to be a woman of noble birth. “Have you come to free me from my torment?” The noble woman asks as a ghostly tear runs down her cheek. “My father sent me here to become the Wizard Lord’s bride, but while I was a guest in his tower, the scoundrel had me poisoned by one of his own servants. I cannot be free until I know who my killer is. All I know is that it is one of the four sitting at the table, and that only one of them ever speaks the truth.” In unison the four servants all turn to you and begin to argue in their defence. “The maid is the murderer.” Says the butler. “The cook poisoned the princess.” Says the maid. “I didn’t kill the girl, I swear!” Says the gardener. “The maid is lying.” Says the cook. > You need a hint This riddle is pretty straight forward. You know only one of them ever tells the truth, so that must mean the rest of them are lying. Luckily only one of the servants made a comment that can be true whilst all the other comments remain false.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The old woman seems to think about your answer for a moment. “Nothing.” She says to herself before a ghostly smile twists her lips. “Nothing, yes I think that sounds right. Very good child. Thank you for answering poor Old Nana’s riddle. Now I can finally get some rest. You go on through the door now.” And with that, the rocking chair stops rocking and the ghost of the woman and her cat fade away into nothingness. Opening the door leads you to a staircase. As you descend these stairs you can hear all sorts of strange noises. Scuffling, squeaking, flapping of wings, hooting and howling, you expect to find a collection of animals caged at the bottom of the stairs. Instead you find a circular room with ten doors all the way around, each with a picture of a different animal engraved on the door. The noises begin to quiet down and the ghost of a dark haired, rather scruffy looking man appears in the centre of the room with a hawk perched on his arm. “So, you made it past Nana did you? Poor old bat’s been trying to solve that riddle for damn near fifty years now. Well I suppose it’s my turn then. Glad to meet you kid. I’m the games keeper here abouts. Master told me we had new company and he sent me down here with a riddle for you, to help you choose which door to go through. Give it a good think before you open one, alright? Wings as black as a moonless night. Only ventures in the light. Long tail, sharp teeth, legs of eight. Find my name or meet your fate.” > You open the door engraved with a Penguin You open the door to see nothing but darkness before you and the sounds of several different creatures fill the air once again, only now they sound louder, and angrier. “Sorry kid.” The games keeper says to you as the sounds draw nearer. “Even I can’t stop them now. They’re just so hungry.” Suddenly you feel a sharp pain in your foot and you look down to see that a rat has come in through the door and bitten your toe. You manage to kick it away but more rats appear and you stumble backwards trying to keep them away from your feet. An owl flies at you out of the darkness and it’s talons scratch at you eyes. You try to shoo it away but see that your arms are covered in tiny black spiders which you frantically try to shake off. The spiders are the least of your worries though, since standing it the doorway is a great black bear which rises onto it’s hind legs and lets out the most terrifying roar. You are so distracted by the bear that you don’t even notice the wolf that is circling you until it sinks it’s teeth into your throat. As you lay dying on the ground, ripped apart by wild animals, the ghost of the games keeper steps over your body and shakes his head. "The Penguin door?" He asks himself with the most baffled expression on his face. "Why? Why would you choose the Penguin door?" I suppose he'll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The old woman seems to think about your answer for a moment. “Nothing.” She says to herself before a ghostly smile twists her lips. “Nothing, yes I think that sounds right. Very good child. Thank you for answering poor Old Nana’s riddle. Now I can finally get some rest. You go on through the door now.” And with that, the rocking chair stops rocking and the ghost of the woman and her cat fade away into nothingness. Opening the door leads you to a staircase. As you descend these stairs you can hear all sorts of strange noises. Scuffling, squeaking, flapping of wings, hooting and howling, you expect to find a collection of animals caged at the bottom of the stairs. Instead you find a circular room with ten doors all the way around, each with a picture of a different animal engraved on the door. The noises begin to quiet down and the ghost of a dark haired, rather scruffy looking man appears in the centre of the room with a hawk perched on his arm. “So, you made it past Nana did you? Poor old bat’s been trying to solve that riddle for damn near fifty years now. Well I suppose it’s my turn then. Glad to meet you kid. I’m the games keeper here abouts. Master told me we had new company and he sent me down here with a riddle for you, to help you choose which door to go through. Give it a good think before you open one, alright? Wings as black as a moonless night. Only ventures in the light. Long tail, sharp teeth, legs of eight. Find my name or meet your fate.” > You need a hint This riddle might look strange, since different parts of it seem to be describing different animals. Look at the riddle carefully and if it doesn’t seem to make any sense, try looking at it another way. The answer’s in there some where.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press the engraved stone and a secret door in the stone wall gradually slides to one side and reveals a hidden passage way. Congratulations, you’ve escaped your cell! That wasn’t too difficult was it? As you follow the empty passage way, you seem to be circling the dungeon and walking deeper and deeper into pitch darkness. Eventually you see a light at the end of the passage and find yourself in a room dimly lit by torches that hang from the wall. The room is small with only a spinning wheel and an old rocking chair to decorate it, both of which are coated in cob webs. There is a door on the other side of the room. Having nowhere else to go, you head towards the door when suddenly you hear the creaking of the rocking chair behind you. For a brief moment you hold your breath and try to reassure yourself that it’s just the breeze rocking the chair, but there is no breeze in the room. Eventually you force yourself to turn around and see the ghostly figure of an old woman sitting in the chair. Before you can run or scream, the old lady speaks up in a gentle yet eerie voice. “No need to be afraid of me child.” She tells you as she slowly rocks in her chair, stroking a small, ghostly cat on her lap. “You’ve nothing to fear from poor old Nana. I’m just here, pondering the old riddle to myself. Are you good at riddles child? I do hope so. They’re the only way to get out of this tower you see, ever since the old master went mad and cursed the place. Oh and that reminds me, I’m supposed to ask you the riddle aren’t I? Now let’s see if I can remember. What does man love more than life, Fear more than death and mortal strife, What the poor have and the rich require, And what contented men desire, What the miser spends and the spendthrift saves, And all men carry to their graves?” > You don't answer. Scream at the scary ghost! You scream like a little girl. "Ahh! Help! A ghost!" You scream. The ghost does not look impressed. "Yes, yes I am a ghost." She replies. "Are you quite finished?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press the engraved stone and a secret door in the stone wall gradually slides to one side and reveals a hidden passage way. Congratulations, you’ve escaped your cell! That wasn’t too difficult was it? As you follow the empty passage way, you seem to be circling the dungeon and walking deeper and deeper into pitch darkness. Eventually you see a light at the end of the passage and find yourself in a room dimly lit by torches that hang from the wall. The room is small with only a spinning wheel and an old rocking chair to decorate it, both of which are coated in cob webs. There is a door on the other side of the room. Having nowhere else to go, you head towards the door when suddenly you hear the creaking of the rocking chair behind you. For a brief moment you hold your breath and try to reassure yourself that it’s just the breeze rocking the chair, but there is no breeze in the room. Eventually you force yourself to turn around and see the ghostly figure of an old woman sitting in the chair. Before you can run or scream, the old lady speaks up in a gentle yet eerie voice. “No need to be afraid of me child.” She tells you as she slowly rocks in her chair, stroking a small, ghostly cat on her lap. “You’ve nothing to fear from poor old Nana. I’m just here, pondering the old riddle to myself. Are you good at riddles child? I do hope so. They’re the only way to get out of this tower you see, ever since the old master went mad and cursed the place. Oh and that reminds me, I’m supposed to ask you the riddle aren’t I? Now let’s see if I can remember. What does man love more than life, Fear more than death and mortal strife, What the poor have and the rich require, And what contented men desire, What the miser spends and the spendthrift saves, And all men carry to their graves?” > You need a hint I can’t really help you with this one. You have a list of answers, choose the one you think is right… Or scream like a little girl. It’s up to you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken on the cold, stone floor with a shiver running through your body and a pounding earache from sleeping on the side of your head. You do not know how much longer you can survive in this place. No one has brought you any food or water for days. Either you've been abandoned to die or something's happened to the guards to keep them from feeding you. Either way you are well and truly buggered. With what little strength you have, you pick yourself up and look around your cell. There seems to be no way of escape. The window is barred and even if it wasn’t, your cell is at the very top of a huge, medieval tower, so climbing out would be suicide. The door is far too heavy to break down and you don’t have anything you could use to pick the lock. There is nothing in the room save for yourself, a dirty pile of straw in the corner and a bucket for… Well, let’s not discuss the bucket. Suddenly though, as your eyes scan the dungeon, you notice something you never saw before. One of the stones on the wall of your cell seems to have something etched into it. As you lean closer you can just about make out two words. “Press me.” > You need a hint Well you're not the sharpest knife in the spoon drawer. It's very simple, you can either press the stone or you can wait around in your cell until you die of starvation. Which would you prefer?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Chapter I: Humble Beginnings You stand in front of a large hut, watching as your two older brothers, Gruzub and Mazkil, fight with large wooden clubs, battering each other until they're bleeding profusely. Your oldest brother, Bagig, appears in the doorway of the hut. "Dag!" he shouts, "Come on! We have an appointment with Lurkhim Deathforge." Bagig stands at 6'4 and towers over you. His green skin ripples with muscles that make his black tattoos of wolves and bears ripple as his sharp teeth curve into a grin. Despite being a fearsome monster that would make most men run in terror, he's the kindest of your brothers and probably one of the nicest Orcs in the village. You nod, and eagerly rush over to follow him as he begins walking towards the center of the village. "Now, promise me you won't tell Mama what we're doing. I can imagine her shrieking. 'Oh, Bagig! What were you thinking, giving a sword and dagger to an eight year old!' She'd howl louder than a dragon that's lost its tail!" You giggle, smiling at your brother. "Still, you're an Orc, for fuck's sake! What does she expect you to do? We were born to spill blood." Eventually, you come across the stone forge. Rows of iron swords, axes and maces are stacked there. Lurkhim appears behind the forge, working on a large war axe. She's heavily scarred from years of battle and forging accidents, her face being so scarred you can barely tell if she's angry or cheerful. "Hello! Look who it is, it's Dagden Youngblood! You're getting so big, aren't you? Big enough for a sword, hmmm?" "Yes, Lurkhim." "Damn right you are. I had a sword twice my height at your age. Ran it through a neighboring boy who tried to take my apples, I recall. Ah, the days of youth." She leads you over to the weapons rack, and picks out a tiny dagger. "There. Try it out. It should be well balanced for someone of your height." You look at the blade, filled with disappointment, and Lurkhim bursts into laughter. "Ha! I'd be ashamed to give that to a baby!" she says, grabbing a much larger sword from a rack. "Here. Stain it red, Dagden. May your life be long and your enemies' short." > You take a few practice swings You take a few swings of your blade. It takes some effort and strength to properly swing the heavy blade, but it does work quite well. "Hey! Watch it, you little shit!" Bagig growls, as you realize you've sliced open his knee. "Oops." "He's already drawn blood. A promising start," Lurkhim grins. "We're not called Red Blades for nothing," Bagig says, rubbing dirt into the cut. "Sheath your blade, Dag, you're not in a battle yet, despite how much you may hope," she says, handing over a tiny leather belt that looks custom made for you. You put the belt on and quickly sheath the weapon. "Now, shall we get you a dagger? A dagger for Dag? Fitting." You nod eagerly, as she takes you over to a row of knives. You look through them. "Go ahead. Pick your favorite. You can tell a lot about an Orc from the dagger he picks. Whether it's gilded or plain, big or small, large or short..." You quickly eye your favorite. "That one." Lurkhim laughs, picking it up. It's a deadly sharp knife made of bone, simple yet elegant. "Ha! I like your choice! So many boys your age pick the biggest or the shiniest. You know what you want, Dagden." You smile, as she hands you the knife. "Keep it in your boot, so you always have it. An Orc should never be caught without a blade handy. Do you know what kind of knife that is, Dagden? What kind of bone is it?" > You dragon "Dragon?" "Ha! A clever one, aren't you? He knows what he wants, Bagig, and what it's made of. Damn right it's dragon. A fierce, fiery red Dragon, slain by your grandfather Chieftain Torag. Alright, then. I have a damn many axes that need to be forged. Go now, Dagden, and make sure that knife tastes a lot of blood in its life." "Thank you, Lurkhim." "Of course," Lurkhim smiles. "Come on, Dag, let's go home," Bagig says. > You head home You walk out of the forge, your new sword swinging at your side and you bone dagger tucked away in your boot. "Now, if Mama asks, I was taking you to practice milking goats." "Yes, Bagig," you nod. You walk along home, the same time Dendar arrives. "Bagig! Are we still taking the twins out hunting?" "Damn right we are!" Bagig laughs, leaning into you. "Do you think I could get Gruzub and Mazkil to eat deer droppings?" You giggle and nod eagerly as Dendar bursts into laughter. "Damn right we're getting them to eat deer droppings." Bagig pats you on the head, before leaving to grab his bow and head off to hunt. You watch as they leave, quickly breaking into a jog which the twins struggle to keep up with. You quickly rush inside and hide your sword under your bed, though you keep the dagger hidden in your boot. "Dag! We're going to the woods to go gather eggs and fruit!" You hear Oragga, one of your friends, yell from outside your house. You smile, and eagerly run outside to see her. It'll be a fun day. > Six Months Later... "Dag!" you hear Dendar yell, and you rush up from the goat fields towards the Chieftain's Hut. "I'm here!" you yell, shouting as loud as you can. You rush up and reach the Chieftain's Hut. You see Dag waiting there, his bow on his back. "Dag! We're going hunting!" "Hunting?" you say, shock, excitement and exhilaration all hitting you at once. "Really? I can't wait!" "Now, you're only nine, but I think you deserve to go. The twins weren't allowed to go until they reached double digits, but they're idiots." You laugh, and rush off to your room. You grab your warmest, toughest boots and put them on, sliding your knife in the boots. You grab your sword and sheath and put it on, finally grabbing the brand new Oak Bow that you've been practicing with every day you've had it. You sling it over you shoulder, as well as your arrow sheath, and rush out to meet Dendar. "Hey! Where are you going without saying goodbye?" Mama yells. You stop, pausing to turn around and rush off. Papa and Mama sit in front of a roaring fire. Mama knits as Papa polishes his blade, as usual. You give Papa and Mama a kiss each. "I love you both." "I love you too," Mama replies, sweet as always. "I'll love you if you bring me home a boar," Papa says, which causes Mama to gently stab him with a knitting needle. "Hell, we don't need to say it every thirty seconds for fuck's sake. My Papa told me he loved me when I was born, when he died, and the day I bit out the throat of Lark Ramshead for calling Mama a whore. I still knew he loved me 'till the end. I love you Dagden, you know that. You nod, and rush off with Dagden. Time to hunt. You have a feeling you'll catch a hell of a lotta food. > The next night... You were wrong. You sit by a dwindling campfire, looking out into the darkness. "Well, this wasn't a great journey," you say softly. "It was fucking miserable," Bagig replies, holding up your catches; three crows, a rodent and a young deer that had just taken its first steps when you shot it. You hear the cracking of small branches nearby. "Bagig...!" "I know," Bagig whispers. "Deer, probably." You slowly grab your bow, not wanting to startle the prey. > You stay still and let Bagig kill the prey You stay very, very still, waiting patiently for Bagig to strike. Bagig motions at you. "It's your kill, Dag. I've killed enough deer. You need to get blood on your hands." "Thanks," you say, eagerly raising your bow. > You go over to kill the prey You creep over towards the noise. You move through the trees, until you face a massive wall of leaves. You push the leaves aside, and move forward. You stop as you knock into something suddenly. You raise your hand, touching the a massive furry wall. "What..." you begin to wonder, before getting smashed across the woods by a clawed paw. You fly through the air, landing on the cold earth. You quickly stand, despite the fact that blood is dripping from your face and you have several broken ribs, only to be faced with the snarling face of a massive bear. You scream as it roars, and immediately begin scampering backwards. "Dagden!" Bagig roars, and you can hear him rushing towards you. The bear's warm breath is on you face as it growls. > You fire your bow You fire your bow, hitting the creature in the shoulder. It roars and quickly bats you away, sending you up against a tree trunk and slamming your head against it. You yell in pain as the massive creature lets out a powerful, terrifying roar. You see Bagig sprint over with a sword drawn and quickly attack the bear, slashing its body open with several powerful swings. The Bear stands on two legs, slamming against Bagig. Bagig is flung against a tree trunk like you were, except with more force. Bagig screams as his back is smashed and grabs his sword in an effort to protect himself. > You help Bagig You charge over, and leap onto the bear as you draw your knife. You stab it several times through its side, and it turns and quickly goes forward to bite you. Its mouth goes around your side, biting deeply. > You scream You let out a pitiful scream as the massive creature bites into you. You take your knife and stab it repeatedly through the eye with all the force you have left. You force your dagger deeper and deeper into the bear as it roars, releasing you. You push the dagger further in, straight to the brain. The bear lets out a final roar, before collapsing on the ground. You groan, all the strength going from your legs. > You collapse You lie on the ground, groaning as blood flows from your broken body. "Fuck me, Dag! You killed a bear! Dagden Bearbane! A fitting title!" Bagig says, standing. He stands up, before laughing. He doubles over in pain as he laughs, before smiling again. "Well, I feel like hammered shit. You?" "Yeah, same," you say. "Come on," he says, picking you up from the ground and dragging you over to the campfire. He lies you across a log, patting you on the head. "A nine year old kills a bear. Who'd have thought it? Papa and Mama will be so impressed with you. I'm sure that Oragga girl will be impressed." Bagig winks. You use the last remaining once of your strength to throw a rock at him. "I don't like her like that!" "Sure," Bagig chuckles. "You need rest. You can sleep once you've eaten some bear meat and I've bandaged your wounds." Over the next hour, Bagig puts strips of bear meat on the fire, bandages himself and you up, and pours alcohol in your wounds, a procedure you'd rather not have done. "It prevents infection," Bagig chides. "I'd rather have the infection than have done that!" you moan. Bagig chuckles, taking a spit off the fire and tossing it to you. "Go, eat." You eat eagerly, finishing off every last bit of delicious meat. "Now you're a true Orc, Dagden Bearsbane," Bagig smiles proudly. "Is my name really going to be Dagden Bearsbane?" "Damn right. A lot better than Gruzub and Mazkil Boarsbane," Bagig laughs. "Once I've told Papa, as Chieftain he will decide whether your feat has earned the nickname, which I'm sure he will." "Cool." "Go to bed now. Sleep. You'll be healed enough by the morning for us to be able to head home. You did well, Dag. I'm proud of you." You nod, before closing your eyes. > You embrace Sleep You fall into a sleep. Your dreams are soft and pleasant. You imagine carrying the bear carcass over your shoulder and throwing it in the village square to the applause of your friends and family. Eventually, your blissful sleep is broken by a cold object poking you. You open your eyes, to be faced with dead, soulless eyes. "AH!" you scream. It's the middle of the night, but thanks to the dying embers of the fire, you can make out some of the scene that's unfolding in front of you. A cloaked figure stands above you, a sword clutched in its hands. Its rotting skin is peeling away to reveal a pinkish flesh that the rot has already set into. You almost cry out in fear when you realize that its a an undead monster. It seems to be a zombie, although you've no idea. You've never had undead this far, and the sight of one is terrifying. You see Bagig awaken out of the corner of your eye, with a similar cloaked undead monster above him. Bagig roars, grabbing his bow as the zombie above you stab downwards, at your heart. You roll to the side, the sword impaling through the ground next to you, the cold blade slicing through your clothes and just scratching you to draw a thin stream of blood. The zombie stares at you and growls. "NO! My brother didn't deserve to be killed by a cursed corpse-fucker!" Bagig roars, firing his bow. The arrow flies through the air and through the rotting head of the zombie, killing it instantly. The zombie falls to the ground, its body thumping against the ground. The other zombie quickly thrusts its sword downwards, straight through Bagig's heart. Tears begin to well in your eyes as you see Bagig gasp, before falling still. The zombie stands, heading towards you. > You play dead You lie there, struggling to stay silent. The zombie pokes you with its sword a few times, before picking up your sword and bow and tossing it in the fire. It growls, and two more zombies approach. One lifts Bagig up, while the other places its rotting hands around you and lifts you up. It carries you forward, and you see a massive wooden cart, stacked with corpses, mostly human and orc. You struggle not to scream in terror, as you're tossed into the cart. Your small body sinks between two freshly-killed corpses, and Bagig is thrown on top of you. You squirm slightly, moving your head to breath, and struggle not to cry as you see your brother's face, now permanently twisted in pain, his eyes now cold and soulless. > You wait You lie among the corpses for what seems like an eternity. The smell is the worst thing you've ever smelled, but the knowledge that it's dead bodies moving against you is terrifying. Still, you know that the idea of the undead monsters yanking you from the pile and tearing you apart is even scarier, so you stay silent. You have no idea how long you spend in the cart. How many hours? Hell, it could be over a day by now. Eventually, the cart stops. You hear growls outside, before a shout. "How many?" a young man's voice cries. "Twenty-seven. Thirteen Orcs, thirteen Men, one Dwarf." "A dwarf? I wonder what that small little bastard was doing in that region. Ah, who cares. Prepare them." You hear zombies yank corpses from the cart. One of them pulls Bagig off you and you close your eyes and go limp. The zombie yanks you forward, and quite gently lays you on the ground. You open your eyes slightly, to see you're being laid out in rows. You're in the courtyard of what appears to be a massive castle made from black stone. You're surrounded by undead monsters, with one exception: A human, wearing hooded black robes, holding a steel sword. His face is paler than bone, and his angular facial features tells you there's probably some High Elf lineage in him. His black hair is slicked back undead his hood, and he eagerly looks at the corpses like a warrior among battle. An undead knight who had been leading the pack rides forward, looking at the man. "Are you raising them, or is the Grand Necromancer?" The Grand Necromancer. Papa's told you about him. A cowardly mage who uses raises the dead to fight for him. You know he has some lesser Necromancers, which probably included the robed man. "No, I shall raise them today." The Necromancer turns and raises his hands. "Rise, Minions! The Grim Reaper shall not take you today! Shrug off the eternal sleep and wake!" he laughs. His eyes turn black as his pupils consume his irises and corneas. A faint blackness appears to flow from his fingertips outwards, enrapturing the corpses. The corpses begin to shudder as the black, magical energy floods into them. Then, the dead begin to rise. Slowly, the corpses begin to stand, their eyes still as soulless as before. The Necromancer pauses, spotting you. You attempt to stand slowly, like the newly created zombies, but stumble and fall flat again. "Ah, someone from the land of the living is here! Hello!" Cold hands grab you, and you are yanked up. You crane your neck to see Bagig, holding you in his rotting hands. No, Bagig is dead. Bagig was loving, friendly, funny and kind. This... abomination, has black, soulless eyes. You draw your blade and sink it into the side of his head. Bagig's corpse releases you, and falls to the ground. Bagig has always loved you. His body deserves to rest. "Ah, a fighter!" the Necromancer laughs. Rotting hands grab you, and the knife is ripped from your hands. You see several Orcs, seemingly alive, approach. "What's the issue, Trant?" one of them growls. "My title is Necromancer Trant, servant of the Grand Necromancer. I will not be addressed as simply "Trant" by some lowly mercenary!" "Don't make me ask again, Trant!" "There's a survivor." The Orc, apparently the leader of a band of mercenaries, looks at you, and you get a good luck at him. He's quite a fair bit taller than Bagig was, although his body is covered with scars. Several scars run across his face, including one that's taken out his eye, leaving a disgusting hole in his face. "He's just a boy. I doubt he's been on his first hunt yet." "Well, he should be dead," Necromancer Trant says angrily. "I ain't killing him..." You breath a sigh of relief. "... for normal pay. Five times if you want me to kill a kid." "Fine. I'll pay out of pocket. I don't want to... bother the Grand Necromancer with this." "Ha! Hiding something from the Master of Death? Alright then, it's your head," the Mercenary Leader says. You're dropped by the undead, and the Mercenary Leader quickly kicks you in the chest, knocking you backwards. You fall on the ground, and he grabs your arms. You watch with terror as a chopping block is brought out. One of the Orcs binds your hands with ropes, tightening them behind your back. You're shoved to your knees, and the chopping block is dropped in front of you. Your neck is forced to the chopping block. A bucket is shoved in front of you, no doubt for your head to fall into. The Mercenary Leader is handed a massive battleaxe. "Don't worry, kid. I'll make it quick. I'm good with an axe. I've filled that bucket many a time." > You beg for mercy You begin to cry, which turns to sobs. "Please! I don't want to die! Let me go, I won't say a word!" The Orc sighs. "Sorry, kid. Let's get this over with." The Orc swings the blade with such speed you don't even feel it. > You death Eternal Sleep Your life force is taken from you as you enter the endless sleep of death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You lie among the corpses for what seems like an eternity. The smell is the worst thing you've ever smelled, but the knowledge that it's dead bodies moving against you is terrifying. Still, you know that the idea of the undead monsters yanking you from the pile and tearing you apart is even scarier, so you stay silent. You have no idea how long you spend in the cart. How many hours? Hell, it could be over a day by now. Eventually, the cart stops. You hear growls outside, before a shout. "How many?" a young man's voice cries. "Twenty-seven. Thirteen Orcs, thirteen Men, one Dwarf." "A dwarf? I wonder what that small little bastard was doing in that region. Ah, who cares. Prepare them." You hear zombies yank corpses from the cart. One of them pulls Bagig off you and you close your eyes and go limp. The zombie yanks you forward, and quite gently lays you on the ground. You open your eyes slightly, to see you're being laid out in rows. You're in the courtyard of what appears to be a massive castle made from black stone. You're surrounded by undead monsters, with one exception: A human, wearing hooded black robes, holding a steel sword. His face is paler than bone, and his angular facial features tells you there's probably some High Elf lineage in him. His black hair is slicked back undead his hood, and he eagerly looks at the corpses like a warrior among battle. An undead knight who had been leading the pack rides forward, looking at the man. "Are you raising them, or is the Grand Necromancer?" The Grand Necromancer. Papa's told you about him. A cowardly mage who uses raises the dead to fight for him. You know he has some lesser Necromancers, which probably included the robed man. "No, I shall raise them today." The Necromancer turns and raises his hands. "Rise, Minions! The Grim Reaper shall not take you today! Shrug off the eternal sleep and wake!" he laughs. His eyes turn black as his pupils consume his irises and corneas. A faint blackness appears to flow from his fingertips outwards, enrapturing the corpses. The corpses begin to shudder as the black, magical energy floods into them. Then, the dead begin to rise. Slowly, the corpses begin to stand, their eyes still as soulless as before. The Necromancer pauses, spotting you. You attempt to stand slowly, like the newly created zombies, but stumble and fall flat again. "Ah, someone from the land of the living is here! Hello!" Cold hands grab you, and you are yanked up. You crane your neck to see Bagig, holding you in his rotting hands. No, Bagig is dead. Bagig was loving, friendly, funny and kind. This... abomination, has black, soulless eyes. You draw your blade and sink it into the side of his head. Bagig's corpse releases you, and falls to the ground. Bagig has always loved you. His body deserves to rest. "Ah, a fighter!" the Necromancer laughs. Rotting hands grab you, and the knife is ripped from your hands. You see several Orcs, seemingly alive, approach. "What's the issue, Trant?" one of them growls. "My title is Necromancer Trant, servant of the Grand Necromancer. I will not be addressed as simply "Trant" by some lowly mercenary!" "Don't make me ask again, Trant!" "There's a survivor." The Orc, apparently the leader of a band of mercenaries, looks at you, and you get a good luck at him. He's quite a fair bit taller than Bagig was, although his body is covered with scars. Several scars run across his face, including one that's taken out his eye, leaving a disgusting hole in his face. "He's just a boy. I doubt he's been on his first hunt yet." "Well, he should be dead," Necromancer Trant says angrily. "I ain't killing him..." You breath a sigh of relief. "... for normal pay. Five times if you want me to kill a kid." "Fine. I'll pay out of pocket. I don't want to... bother the Grand Necromancer with this." "Ha! Hiding something from the Master of Death? Alright then, it's your head," the Mercenary Leader says. You're dropped by the undead, and the Mercenary Leader quickly kicks you in the chest, knocking you backwards. You fall on the ground, and he grabs your arms. You watch with terror as a chopping block is brought out. One of the Orcs binds your hands with ropes, tightening them behind your back. You're shoved to your knees, and the chopping block is dropped in front of you. Your neck is forced to the chopping block. A bucket is shoved in front of you, no doubt for your head to fall into. The Mercenary Leader is handed a massive battleaxe. "Don't worry, kid. I'll make it quick. I'm good with an axe. I've filled that bucket many a time." > You curse the Mercenary Leader out "It'll be filled just like your mother was filled hundreds of times, you fucking scum!" you shout, struggling to think of every bad word you've been taught. Thankfully, many, many, many hours spent listening to Papa, Bagig, Mazkil, Gruzub and even sometimes Mama swear has given you a lot of material. "You're the product of a whore!" you yell. "Ha! This one's got balls!" the Mercenary Leader laughs. "Unlike you, you unloved, honor less eunuch! The fires of hell take you! I hope Demons rape your soul and... and... your mother's a whore, who..." "Aw, he ran out of insults. Alright, kid. Let's get this over with." The Orc raises his blade. "STOP!" a young, shrill voice cries. The Orc pauses, turning to look. "Ah, fuck," he sighs. You turn to see two humans approaching. The one in the lead is a tall, pale figure wearing hooded black robes with silver trim with short black hair. His face is gaunt and his eyes are sunken into his face, giving him the appearance of a skull. He is followed by a small girl, who looks to be only your age, wearing a dark red dress with flowing blond hair. She's considerably less pale than the man, and has bright green eyes. She looks worried at the sight of the execution, and she very well might've just saved your life. "What the fuck is this?" the tall man asks angrily. "Nothing, Grand Necromancer." "Nothing? This doesn't look like nothing, Balok the Honorless!" "It's an execution, sir. Nothing out of the ordinary." The Grand Necromancer grabs you, yanking you up. "How old would you say this kid is?" he asks. "I don't know, sir." "Blaise, why did you scream?" the Grand Necromancer asks. "Because you only kill bad people, and he's too young to be bad," the girl says, looking worried. "Are you paid to kill kids, Balok?" the Grand Necromancer asks. "Yes, sir. Well, not kids specifically, but my job is to kill whoever..." The Grand Necromancer, despite being quite short, swings his fist, punching the Mercenary Leader. "If you pull this shit again, I'll torture you to death, and then do it again!" the Grand Necromancer says. "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir," the Orc apologizes. The Grand Necromancer looks at you, before looking at the girl. "Cut the boy loose, have his wounds dressed and have him cleaned and clothed." "Then what?" the Orc asks. "Have him brought to my quarters." The Orc nods. The Necromancer looks at you. "What's your name, boy?" "Dagden." "It's alright, Dagden. I promise you won't be harmed. I have problems to deal with, Balok. Don't cause more of them." He turns, and strolls off. The girl stays behind for a few seconds, staring at you. Finally, she turns and quickly follows the Grand Necromancer. "Well, fuck me," Balok sighs, cutting you loose. "Come on, you little prick. I gotta follow the "Master of Death"'s orders. And way to stand up for me, Trant. Fuck you, you fuckin' corpse-fucker." Trant smiles and gives Balok the finger. Balok swears and begins dragging you toward the building he came out from. > You continue You're thrown onto a bed in what appears to be a Medic's room. A small Orc enters, narrowing her eyes. "You're the kid, are you? Made Balok look like a right moron, you did." She sits down on a stool next to you. She begins to stitch your cuts on your chest from the bear closed. You wince, and she grabs a red vial from her leather bag. "Here. Drink. Every last drop. Lick it clean if you must." You open the cork, and drink. You swallow the sweet mixture. You assume it's some healing potion, because your pain lessens and strength courses through you. You feel much better now. "So, where you from, boy?" the Medic asks. > You answer "I'm a Red Blade." "Ah! I was sweet on a Red Blade once. Ended up beating him half to death when he tried to have his way with me on a drunken night. Jakku Smallcock, he was. Or at least, that title is more fitting," she smiles. You nod, and she quickly patches you up. "No strenuous exercise, you don't want the stitching to tear. Alright, head off to the bathrooms now the hall. Balok said to have you washed." You leave the Medic's Room and find yourself in a stone hallway. Down the hall you can see the, though there is a path left. > You go wash up You walk into the bathrooms, and find a bath waiting for you. You touch the water. It's quite hot, to your surprise. Your baths have always been in the cold river, or sometimes if you're lucky been in a basin slowly pouring a bucket of hot water on yourself. This entire bath is hot. You remove your clothes, and lower yourself into the water. The heat envelops you, and you let out a sigh of relief. "Ah... good," you say to yourself. You begin to scrub your skin, rubbing away mud, dirt and blood. Layers of dirt that you had assumed were skin are wash off, and you're left cleaner than you've ever been in your entire existence. It's unnerving to be this green. The door opens, and your hands immediately move to cover your genitals. An undead Dwarf walks in, dropping clothes in front of you, before picking up your old clothes. The Dwarf has long, braided brown hair and a combed beard, although his skin is cracked and broken and peeling away to reveal flesh as some point. His teeth have almost all rotted, and a spear wound has destroyed much of his throat. "Hello. I'm here to give you new clothes and take away your old," he rasps. "You're not supposed to talk. The dead don't talk." "Orcs aren't supposed to be clean." "What are you?" "A Wight." You nod, despite not having a clue what that entails. The Wight turns, and walks out the door. You stand and find come clean rags laid out to wipe yourself dry. When you're finished, you get dressed in the trousers, shirt, belt and polished boots. You look at your reflection in the water. You look like a ponce. "If Gruzub, Mazkil or Bagig saw me they'd..." you pause, tears welling up in your eyes. You grab the rags, and dry your eyes again, as the door is opened again. The Wight stands there. "I'm to escort you to the Grand Necromancer." You nod, and follow the Wight out of the bathroom, and follow him along the halls. You spot various Orc, Elf, Human and Dwarven Mercenaries, as well as countless undead. You shiver as you pass them. You're eventually led to a pair of double doors. "Through there," the Wight says. > You go through the doors Chapter II: A Guest among the Graves You push through the double doors, and find yourself in a large room. A massive feasting table stands in front of you, covered in food. Your stomach grumbles as you realize you haven't eaten in quite some time, and your mouth waters as you look upon roasted chicken, baked loaves of bread, turkey legs, roasted boar and even more food. You see the Grand Necromancer sitting at the head of the table, wearing his black robes with the silver trim, although his hood is pulled down. Sitting next to him is the young child from earlier. About a dozen black robed Necromancers sit at the table, as well as several Mercenary Captains. Standing guard are dozens of undead knights, who stare at you with their cold eyes. The Grand Necromancer looks up at you and smiles. "Ah! Our guest is here, young Mr Dagden. Please, take a seat at my side." You can tell by the cold, emotionless staring of the guards that declining this offer would be a bad move. You nod, and walk past the necromancers. You spot Trant among them, who winks at you. You make a silent promise to yourself that you're going to kill him. You take a seat next to the Grand Necromancer, directly across from the girl. The Grand Necromancer smiles at you, a charming smile from a horrible monster of a man. "I'm sorry about the recent unpleasantness, Dagden. I sent my soldiers to wipe out bandits and thugs and retrieve their corpses to add to my forces. I'm so sorry that you and your brother got confused with them." You don't look at the Grand Necromancer, out of disgust and hatred. You grab a turkey leg, and eagerly begin chewing into it. You realize just how starved you are as begin to wolf down your meal. "Hungry little one, aren't you? I bet you've never eaten a meal this big, coming from a tribal village." "I bet you didn't catch a single thing on this table yourself, and got stronger men to do it," you retort. The Necromancer laughs. "It tastes better that way, I would imagine. I admit, I don't catch my own food. I'm not a strong person. My brothers were the strong ones. They wanted to be warriors. I wanted to be a scholar, but after I began to research magic, I decided to become a mage. I quickly specialized in Necromancy. It has a terrible reputation like all other forms of Black Magic, but I've never understood it. Necromancy, Blood Magic, Creating Life, Elemental Darkness, Demon Summoning, Demon Bonding, deals with demons... Anything with demons, really, all hated by fools and morons. We hate Blood Magic because we can't seem to comprehend a need for sacrifice, we hate creating life because we seem to think that's the place of the Gods who barely exist and never help us "foolish mortals", we hate Elemental Darkness because the dumbest part of our brain is scared of what we can't see, we hate dealing with demons because we're too scared about our ability to keep control over them, and most importantly, we hate Necromancy because we have respect for corpses because of what they once were and fear the dead. It's pathetic. Do you know the amount of good Necromancy could do? Imagine cities defended by armies of undead, so hunting bandits and defending from enemies will no longer risk any lives. Do you see why my work is important?" > You say "Yes." "Good! It's important to learn these things! I'm glad you can be so understanding at such a young age. My daughter, Blaise, is also quite understanding. I don't know if I've introduced you." You look over at the girl, who stares at you with wide curious eyes. "She's the splitting image of her mother. She..." "When can I go home?" you ask abruptly, causing the Grand Necromancer to frown. "Ah... about that... You realize you've already seen so much... You've seen the extent of my operations, you know my plans to expand my army, my use of other Necromancers, my use of mercenaries, my base of operations... I think it would be wise if you stay here, as our guest, for some time." You stare into the eyes of the Grand Necromancer. You can feel him peering into your soul. You refuse to break gaze. He sighs. "I'm sorry to have to keep you here. I can promise you'll be treated well." You can continue staring at the Grand Necromancer, which seems to unnerve him. You feel some joy at doing so, but stop yourself from smiling. "Blaise, why don't you show our new guest your room? I'm sure you have loads of toys to show him. I have business to discuss." Blaise nods, and stands up from the table. You stand, and she walks over and grabs your hand. "Come on. I'll show you my room," she says. She begins dragging you to a small door at the back of the room, and opens it. You find yourself in a large bedroom, bigger than Papa's. There's a large double canopy bed, a wardrobe, a bookshelf, two chest of drawers and several toys lying around the room. "Usually, Dad doesn't bring many guests here, and never ever anyone my age. My name's Blaise. What's yours?" "Dagden. My friends call me Dag." "Pleased to meet you, Dag. I'm Blaise. I have loads of toys, but I also have other stuff. I have a pet..." You stare into her eyes, and feel hatred. She's the most important thing to the Grand Necromancer, the man who took your brother. You're far enough from the main room. You could very, very easily get your revenge and hurt the Necromancer just like he hurt you. > You continue listening to her No, she's done nothing to you. She's just a little kid in a situation you didn't choose, just like you. "...dog, named Stitches." "Stitches?" you say, raising an eyebrow. "He was attacked by an assassin, an Orc trying to kill my dad. My dad brought him back so I could keep him. Stitches! Come here, Stitches!" You here scratching behind you, and turn around. You open your mouth to scream, before remembering what Papa always said. "When faced with danger, never scream, only roar." You growl, staring at the abomination. The "dog" is missing patches of its brown fur, and is covered in stitches across it's body and legs. It's missing almost all the flesh from one of its back legs and its lower jaw. The Dog quickly walks forward, and Blaise begins stroking its back. You extend a hand forward and begin stroking its head. It extends a liver-colored tongue and licks your hand and you recoil in disgust. Stitches whimpers, and you start stroking its head again. It barks happily, and you begin to rub it's belly. You've always wanted a dog, although you wanted one with a bit more life in it than this one. You can't tell whether you should hug or strangle the dog, but you know you really, really want to do one of them. "Do you like him?" Blaise asks, looking up at you. > You say "Yes." She smiles at you, and continues rubbing Stitches. "He's really... cute," you say, struggling for words. The girl looks up at you, raising an eyebrow. "Do you want to go hear what they're saying?" she asks. "Who?" "My Dad and the other Necromancers." "How?" "I know about a hidden room where you can eavesdrop. I don't know what it was for, but I like to go there sometimes when I don't want to be found. Do you want to see it?" You nod eagerly, and she goes over to her wardrobe. She opens it, and reaches a hand in to root around the dresses, blouses and skirts, before pulling out a small, unassuming silver key. "Come on, follow me," she says, turning and walking over to the side of the room. She begins putting all her weight against the bookshelf. It moves slightly, revealing a small wooden door hidden behind it. "It's a pretty obvious place to put a hidden door. I don't think this castle's architect was very clever." She unlocks and opens the door. The room inside is a small room with a small table and four chairs, another bookshelf, a large bed and a chest. "If you put your head up against the wall, you can here what's inside." You lean against the far wall, putting your ear against it. "...allow us to have more control over the mountain range. We send teams into the mines and mountains to force the Dwarves back, and allow us to conquer the tombs. With the tombs in our hands, the whole continent will fall," the Grand Necromancer says. "I'll lead the raids. The Dwarf Clans have survived untouched by war for far too long. I think my knowledge of battle tactics..." an Unknown voice cries. "Ha! Galmead, please don't pretend it's anything other than vengeance that makes you want to lead the assault. Still, you've served me well over the years. You can lead the assault." "Thank you, Grand Necromancer." "Of course. Now Thonir, fetch the Orc child and find a room for him. Make sure the door's locked and there's extra guards on. I don't want him escaping." Blaise pulls her head back from the door. "We should get out of here," she says. You both quickly rush out of the room, with Blaise locking it behind you. You push the bookshelf closed, before you hear a short rapping on the door. Blaise opens it, and you're faced with the Dwarven Wight from earlier. "Lady Blaise, Dagden. I'm here to escort you to your new private chambers, Dagden." "OK," you reply. "Bye, Dag." "Bye, Blaise." The Wight begins leading you down a hallway. "My name is Thonir. I am to look after you during your stay." "OK." "If you need anything, simply ask and I shall do my best to help to the extent I can. Of course, if I think the request compromises the... security of you or anyone else here, I shall not grant it." You nod, looking up at him. His rotting face stares blankly on, before he stops in front of a large oak door. He opens it, and you walk inside. There's a small room with a seat with a hole in the floor that you presume is a bathroom, a basin filled with water, a small bed, a wardrobe, a dresser, a bookshelf and a table and chair. There's also a massive bear skull mounted on the wall, which you think looks cool. "This shall be your quarters for the duration of your stay. I shall guard the door for the night. Knock on the door if you need anything." With that, Thorin closes the door. You can hear the clunking of the locking mechanism, and then silence. You look around. There's a book lying on the table that might be of some interest, and there's also the bed, which after such a long day looks quite appealing. > You investigate the book You walk over to the book, and pick it up. A golden star takes up most of the cover. Its title, "Magic", takes up the rest of the cover. "Well, that's obvious," you say. You open it and start reading. You struggle considerably with the massive words, but of the many perks of being the son of the Chieftain, being taught the ability to read, quite well, actually, is your favorite. Papa would spit on Elven tomes, but you're able to speak, write and read common tongue well enough. It opens with various entries about the types of magic users. You start reading. Conjurers Conjurers are Magic Users who specialize in Conjuration. They can conjure swords, knives, spears, axes, compasses, food, water and many other objects from other planes. Demon Dealers Demon Dealers are Magic users who specialize in dealing with demons. They can summon demons, bind them, make deals and much more. Necromancers Necromancers are Magic Users who specialize in Necromancy. They raise the dead and talk with spirits. Warlocks Warlocks are Magic Users who study destructive magic, such as fire and ice based magic, so they can become warlords and wage war against their enemies. Alchemists Alchemists are Magic Users who study Alchemy. They use science and reason to study the creation of gold from lesser metals and the making of potions, elixirs and mixtures, especially in regard to immortality. Enchanters Enchanters are Magic Users who study enchanting. They can imbue objects such as weapons or armor with magical properties. Healers Healers are Magic Users who study Healing. They can undue wounds and heal illnesses and plagues from people and animals. You flick through the rest of the book, but it seems to go into much, much more detail. You're struggling to read the basic start, there's no way you can read more. You put down the book. > You go to sleep You go over to the bed, and lie down on it. You live in bed for several minutes, trying to fall asleep. Eventually, you manage to reach a state that's neither fully awake nor fully asleep. You're broken out of this state by a light tapping. You stand up, raising an eye as you search for the sound of the noise. You find it in the bookcase. You move around to push the bookcase slightly out of the way, noticing a small door behind the bookcase, similar to the one Blaise showed you. You try the handle. You grin as the door handle clicks open and the door swings ajar. Inside is a small, black tunnel covered in cobwebs. Standing in the middle is Blaise. "Hello," she smiles. "Hey," you respond. "What are you doing here?" "There's loads of tunnels stretching from the hidden room I showed you to all around the castle." "So why'd you come find me?" you ask. Blaise shrugs. "I don't know. I guess you're the only person I really have to show this kinda stuff to." "OK," you nod. "Well... What do you want to do?" Blaise asks. "I could show you the gardens, or the..." You mind perks as you have an idea. > You say "Can you help me escape?" Blaise looks uncertain and nervous, but nods. "I think so." "How?" "There's a tunnel that leads down to the stables. Down there there's a trading cart that goes between the nearby towns and the Castle. They brought fresh fruit today, so they're probably still down there." You nod. "OK. Show me the way." Blaise turns and leads you into another hallway. You struggle to see through the darkness, and knock into a stone wall. You groan in pain, and Blaise giggles. "It's not funny. If I had my dagger, I'd gut you," you moan. "It is funny. You have a dagger?" Blaise giggles. "Had." "Oh. My Dad doesn't let me have weapons." Blaise leans over and grabs your hand. Despite the fact that it's incredibly hard to see for you so her holding of your hand is incredibly rational, you still blush and feel embarrassed as her small warm hand grips your fingers. She pulls you along the dark corridors, until she stops suddenly. You knock into her, and end up sprawled out on the floor. "Sorry," you grunt, standing up. You extend a hand and pull her up. "Thanks," Blaise says. "It's just down this hallway." You nod, and quickly follow her down another hallway branching off to the side. Eventually, you come across another door. Blaise takes out her key and quietly unlocks the door. She slowly opens it, revealing a large stables. You step out, noticing that the door is hidden into the wall. In the stables are three old wooden carts that sit unused, as well as several tied up horses. "Why would someone need so many tunnels?" you ask. "Sssh! There's always guards on duty," Blaise whispers. Blaise looks around, before frowning. "It's not here!" she whispers loudly. "What?" "The trader's cart! It's not here!" "What's the plan, then?" Blaise looks around. "I don't know... you could hide in the hay cart. They take out the dirty hay in them. Or... you could steal one of the horses." > You hide in the hay cart "I'll hide in the hay cart," you say. "Give me a boost." Blaise nods, and offers her hands out. You put your foot in her hands, and she boosts you up. You land in the soft hay, brushing it off you. "Thanks," you grunt. "I guess we won't see each other again," Blaise says. "I guess." "Well, I'll miss you. It was fun having a friend while it lasted." "I'll miss you too." "Well, I..." she begins, before stopping and craning her head. "We're late. Get the horses ready," a voice cries. "You should hide," Blaise says. You nod. "Thanks," you say. You squirm down into the hay, hiding under the pile of hay. You find your way to the bottom of the hay, and curl up into a ball. After a few minutes, you feel the wheels begin to turn as the cart is pulled from its stationary position. "Wait," the Voice says. "We have to check the hay." You freeze, staying as still as you can. A few seconds later, you feel an incredible pain as a pitchfork goes through your back, impaling you. You let out a scream as your tiny body is impaled by the cart's driver.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Blaise looks uncertain and nervous, but nods. "I think so." "How?" "There's a tunnel that leads down to the stables. Down there there's a trading cart that goes between the nearby towns and the Castle. They brought fresh fruit today, so they're probably still down there." You nod. "OK. Show me the way." Blaise turns and leads you into another hallway. You struggle to see through the darkness, and knock into a stone wall. You groan in pain, and Blaise giggles. "It's not funny. If I had my dagger, I'd gut you," you moan. "It is funny. You have a dagger?" Blaise giggles. "Had." "Oh. My Dad doesn't let me have weapons." Blaise leans over and grabs your hand. Despite the fact that it's incredibly hard to see for you so her holding of your hand is incredibly rational, you still blush and feel embarrassed as her small warm hand grips your fingers. She pulls you along the dark corridors, until she stops suddenly. You knock into her, and end up sprawled out on the floor. "Sorry," you grunt, standing up. You extend a hand and pull her up. "Thanks," Blaise says. "It's just down this hallway." You nod, and quickly follow her down another hallway branching off to the side. Eventually, you come across another door. Blaise takes out her key and quietly unlocks the door. She slowly opens it, revealing a large stables. You step out, noticing that the door is hidden into the wall. In the stables are three old wooden carts that sit unused, as well as several tied up horses. "Why would someone need so many tunnels?" you ask. "Sssh! There's always guards on duty," Blaise whispers. Blaise looks around, before frowning. "It's not here!" she whispers loudly. "What?" "The trader's cart! It's not here!" "What's the plan, then?" Blaise looks around. "I don't know... you could hide in the hay cart. They take out the dirty hay in them. Or... you could steal one of the horses." > You steal a horse You climb onto the horse, and gently kick it. The horse whinnies. "Go!" you command. The horse stays still. "Come on! Gallop!" The horse stays still. "Do you know how to ride a horse?" Blaise asks, staring at you. "No." "Ah. This could be a problem in our plan." You kick the horse again, before slipping. You fall off the horse and hit the ground with a thud and a groan. "Ow. What were the other options?" you ask.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>SUNDAY “Are you worried about these uncertain times? Do you…” Click. You’re so damn sick of these Ground Zero commercials you think as you turn the TV off. If you older brother Ben hadn’t shot his family and himself in a tragic paranoid breakdown you can only imagine he’d be going on about how right he was in building that underground bunker out in your backyard. You look at the time and realize you’ve spent most of the day procrastinating watching TV even though there’s not much on that interests you on TV anymore. All the channels you used to watch that had interesting shit on them now all have shallow reality shows and quite frankly you’ve got enough dysfunctional family drama going on in real life without needing to watch it on TV. You remember a time when you could avoid most of the mess by hiding out in your basement. Unfortunately you can’t even do that anymore. Ever since dad drank himself to death, the gravy train of living at home for free came to an end. Without the help of your dad’s pension checks anymore, your older Amazonian sister Kelly said there was no way in hell that she was going to keep supporting the house on her own unless she was the only one living in it. Seeing as she’s a roller derby bitch as well as an illegal fight club brawler, it isn’t like you or any of your siblings were in any position to argue with her. Your younger brother Peter, having given up his lofty dreams of being a famous movie director now spends a lot of his time in the garage making amateur porn with various guys he picks up at the clubs. He makes enough money through his website that it keeps Kelly off his back. He seems to enjoy what he’s doing and at least he’s not stealing your clothes anymore. Your younger sister Donna simply moved out and moved in with your best friend Julie who is still the eternal party girl. Really you’re surprised Julie hasn’t caught every STD known to man at this point. To be honest Donna’s had more in common with Julie than you have for many years now. You’re sure Donna’s a lot happier at a “party house.” As for you, you didn’t have much in the way of options. Trying to get a job has failed spectacularly in this economy. Though your…”unique” and reclusive personality doesn’t exactly help in that department. Given some of the junk that’s laying around the house you sometimes wonder if you shouldn’t try to sell some of it over the Internet to support yourself. Seems like a lot of work though and you’re no wheeler and dealer. Donna suggested that you move in with her and Julie, but that whole scene isn’t for you. As much as you hate dealing with Kelly, you’d also hate having to put up with drunk horny guys (and girls) trying to get into your pants every five minutes, not to mention the loud music, crowds and the ever growing possibility of the cops busting the place for illegal drugs. Which brings you to your boyfriend Bobby Morningstar who naturally has suggested that you move in with him on several occasions. This would be the ideal solution if it weren’t for the fact that his own family consists of like a million siblings that all live in his cult compound. There’s also the fact that his ex-girlfriend/sister Diana is wicked pissed at you for stealing him away from her. It’s been an ongoing source of tension between you and Bobby and you wish he’d just leave them all behind and you two could make a life together elsewhere, but his duty to family is strong, as is his faith to the Babylonian Goddess of Chaos, Tiamat which still involves human sacrifices. Right now you’re having a period of separation with him. Sometimes you think about breaking up with him completely, but then you can’t just dismiss the good times you do have with him. You have that special bond that only a couple could have when one warns the other about their serial killer relative lying in wait for them in the woods. Thank god Bobby took care of your uncle Ed. That had to be the scariest moment of your life dealing with that situation. Of course none of this delightful recap of past events really helps you. Kelly is starting to get very impatient with you and you fear that your months of stalling are coming to an end. Kelly’s currently not home, but she’ll be back in a few hours to get a bit of sleep before heading off to her fight club stuff. Continuing to enjoy the time you have to not have to deal with her you go back to procrastinating, which mainly involves goofing off on the Internet, “stumbling” upon a porn site and then using battery powered means to relieve yourself of stress. Eventually you hear the familiar slamming of the door and stomping around upstairs, which signifies that Kelly is indeed home. “SUZY! Stop splittin’ the kitten and get yer bony ass up here!” you hear Kelly shout. You were afraid of this. You clean yourself up a bit, mentally prepare yourself and then head upstairs. “Hey Kelly…” you start to say, but are interrupted. “Shut up. I’ve got exactly a couple hours to get some rest before I have to drag my ass to my other job to support this fucking house and it’s a fucking mess! You can’t even clean up around here? Did you even look for a job today? Let me guess you spent the whole day fucking around on the Internet and masturbating didn’t you?” “Well uh...” “Jesus fuckin’ Christ Suzy, you’re goddamn useless you know that? The only reason I’m not kicking your ass right now is because I need to save my energy and it would be too fucking easy.” Before you can even speak, Kelly continues her rant. “GET A FUCKING JOB! I don’t care what kind! Just be a contributing member of this household like Peter or get the fuck out like Donna!” “Kelly I’m trying, but I’m just not having any luck in finding anything, can’t you help me out?” you say. “Help you out? I’m helping you out right now by supporting your ass! I’ve been helping you out for quite some time! In fact I originally suggested that you could probably become a ring girl at the fights, but you said no because you didn’t want to dress up in skimpy clothing and parade around in front of a bunch of drunks.” “Kelly, you know I don’t want to dress like that in public, especially not after what uncle Ed made me wear that night…” “Oh here we go, crazy old uncle Ed! How long you going to keep using that as an excuse? Sheesh, the way you go on about it, you act like he raped you. What happened instead? He got killed, you weren’t even touched and you got a fucking boyfriend out of that deal! Some of us should be so lucky to be in a fucked up situation and STILL come out ahead! You know what I deal with on a regular basis? Steroid freaks trying to break my fucking neck that’s what! You think I’d be making a living trading punches with fucktards if I LOOKED like you Suzy? You got the biggest advantage and you’re just wasting it! What the hell is your goddamn problem?” You can see that Kelly is in full-blown jealousy mode and shows no signs of stopping. Attempting to walk away will only result in her getting physical with you so the only thing you can do is endure the verbal assault. “This is sink or swim time sis. You either get your shit together by the end of this week or you’re out on your ass! This sheltered girl act is really fucking OLD! You’re a grown ass WOMAN. Start acting like one! Now get out of my fucking sight.” You meekly slink back to the basement and leave Kelly alone. You silently mope for a while pondering what the hell you’re going to do next. You then notice that your phone has been under your couch cushions and on silent all day. Bobby apparently has been repeatedly trying to contact you. Even left multiple texts saying that he really wants to talk, but the mood you’re in right now, you don’t want to deal with it. You don’t want to deal with anything. You just want to be safe in your own little world in the basement. How you miss those days… Well today isn’t completely over yet. You’ve still got time to salvage some of it. Hell, maybe you can even make a major change in your life. > You get help from Peter You don’t want to move out and you can’t trust yourself to not get distracted as usual trying to find a job. You need help and the only other person you know that has one in the house is Peter, so you decide to go see him and hope he isn’t in the middle of “working.” You head to the garage and knock on the door. From within you hear a come on in so you do so, unfortunately given Peter’s state of near nakedness and a tube of KY in hand its obvious he wasn’t expecting you. “Oh. It’s you. What do you want? I got a couple of guys coming over soon and I still need to lube up.” he says “Ugh…I need to speak to you.” You say trying not to look at him. “Can you put some damn clothes on?” “(Sigh) Fine, but let’s hurry this up.” Peter says and puts on a robe. “Peter, I need your help in finding a job and before you even suggest it, no I’m not going to do what you do for money.” “Oh of course not. Wouldn’t enter my mind to suggest such a thing to the likes of you. Which means I don’t have many other suggestions for you. I mean I can only imagine you’ve failed horribly at getting a normal job due to your lack of a college degree, personality quirks and crippling introversion. You don’t seem to have the motivation to start your own business and for some baffling reason you don’t even take advantage of the natural gifts you do have. Pfft, if I was you, I’d start now because you’re just getting older.” “Peter, I’m not a whore. I’m not going to just spread my legs to everyone for cash.” “Who said everyone? Just get one rich one, shit shouldn’t be that hard for you.” “That’s not who I am, besides I have a boyfriend…” “Who? Bobby? I thought you two broke up.” “No, well sort of…it’s complicated.” “Well then you need to work something out with him then and let him take care of you because while I didn’t hear the whole rant, Kelly was loud enough that I made out some of it even from here. Sounds like she gave you an ultimatum.” “I know. I know. I don’t know what to do.” You say slumping into a nearby chair. Peter and you have never been close and most of the time he’s annoyed you by constantly stealing your clothes in the past, but to his credit he go over and tries to console you a bit with a hug, given that his dick is still swinging out of his robe, you’d rather he didn’t and politely tell him you’re fine. “Have you tried the circus?” Peter suddenly asks. “What?” you respond. “The circus. There’s a small one set up a few miles west outside of town. Almost like a gypsy camp really. Remember how our family used to go together? I think it’s about the only time we all got along.” “Yeah…I always liked the clowns the most. I liked how outgoing and happy they always were. Even thought I’d grow up and be one at one point.” “Hm, I think you were the only one as far as that went. I still remember you used to paint up your face with mom’s make up and try to entertain Donna and me at home. Though to be quite honest all you did was scare the hell out of us.” “Yeah…that’s why I gave up that dream. Figured I was doing it wrong.” You say gloomily. “Oh. Sorry about that, didn’t mean to be a dream crusher.” “It’s okay, given my introversion I doubt if I would’ve been able to actually get in front of a crowd and do it anyway.” “Hey, you shouldn’t have given up if that was what you wanted to do. I mean maybe you should pursue it now. I mean you don’t have much to lose right and how hard could it be? Put on make up, dress up silly, and generally act creepy…erm I mean goofy.” Peter’s words do light a certain spark in you. “Hmmm, maybe you’re right…I’ll do it!” you suddenly exclaim. “Good, glad to hear you’re excited about something. So are you good now? I mean I’d talk more, but y’know still got guys coming over and…” “Oh right, yeah I’m good. Hold on, can I borrow your car to get to the circus tomorrow?” “Uhhh, yeah sure. Keys are over there.” “Thanks again Peter.” You say taking the keys and leave. You head back down to the basement filled with excitement at the prospect of pursuing your childhood dream again! It all seems a little crazy right now, but the more you think about it the more it makes sense. You spend the rest of the night in good spirits and maintain a positive attitude that everything will be okay tomorrow. > Next day... MONDAY “…our shelters are all equipped with the latest in state of the art technology, order now and…” Click. You fell asleep watching tv again. Seems like they’re playing those damn commercials all the time now. Nothing like praying upon people’s fears due to recent world events. You look at the time and see that you’ve slept for most of the morning, but given that you’re going to the circus to apply for a job you figure they will be open all night. You also check your phone and see that Bobby’s been trying to reach you, but you can’t let yourself get distracted today. You need to focus on your goal of becoming a clown! You take Peter’s car and head towards the circus. The drive is fairly uneventful though one thing you notice is the increase in police cars and police in general. Apparently there’s been some civil disturbance in multiple locations. You swear this one of the reasons why you never like leaving the basement in the first place. You hate the chaotic nature of people. But then, if you have any hope of being a clown, you’re going to have to get used to dealing with crowds and people. In fact you’re going to have to get used to a lot of things, but you can’t let yourself get a panic attack about this. You have to go through with this. Eventually you arrive at your destination. Or at least you assume it is. Peter wasn’t joking when he said it resembled a gypsy camp as opposed to a proper circus. You see a lot of little tents and some trailers, but nothing like a “big top.” Most of the people here are dwarves and last time you knew there wasn’t a large population of little people in your town, so you can only assume that they’re part of the circus. In fact from what you can tell there aren’t actually any customers, just carnies. As you wander a bit, you start getting a lot of looks, you aren’t sure if they’re staring at you because you’re an outsider or if they’re just gawking at you. Might be a bit of both. Doesn’t take long before you’re surrounded by a lot of the little people and you start to feel like Dorothy. “Hey goldie with the legs, what’re you doing around here? We’re not open yet.” One of their numbers says. “Oh, well I wasn’t here for that. I’m here because…” you take a deep breath. “I want to be a clown!” That certainly wasn’t the response that they were expecting. You hear a few whispers before the one that was talking speaks again. “A clown? Heh, well I’m not sure how successful that’s going to work out for you, but luckily for you the owner of this fine circus is also a clown, so you’ll need to speak with him either way. He’s in the tent over there. Roofie is probably still hung over so try to speak quietly.” “Roofie?” “Yeah, that’s his clown name… actually it mean be his real name as well. Anyway, don’t worry he’s not a rapist or anything like that, he’s just a drunk. In fact he’s probably the most mentally stable clown that we’ve ever had in this circus!” Taking the dwarf’s directions, you head over to Roofie’s tent. The smell of booze is strong and when you enter you see a balding older man in oversized pants and suspenders sitting at a table holding his head in both hands. Beer and whiskey bottle are plentiful enough that you make yourself heard just by tripping over some. “Goddamn it, it isn’t fucking showtime and nobody’s been coming anyway! Leave me alone, shit!” Roofie shouts not even looking up and continuing to hold his head. “Uh Mr. Roofie, I was told to speak to you.” Roofie turns and looks at you. A big red nose still on his face. “Huh? Wbo the hell are you? You look way too damn classy to be any whore that I’d be able to afford.” “My name’s Suzy and I want to be a clown.” At this point Roofie slowly gets up from his seat kicking a few bottles aside. You continue to stand there starting to wonder if this was such a good idea. “A clown? Now why the hell would a cute blonde like you want to be a fuckin’ clown. Doesn’t make sense. You playin’ some sort of angle honey, because I assure you I’m in no mood and I ain’t got any money for you to grift anyway.” “No, it’s always been a life long dream ever since I was a little girl!” you say and then start to go into detail of how you enjoyed circus clowns and a bunch of other life story shit that doesn’t really interest Roofie. In fact he’s just struggling to stand up and listen right now. “Alright, alright, enough! Shit. I get it. (Sigh) Look honey I dunno what to tell you, we’re not exactly the Ringling Brothers here. I’m also not exactly looking to hire and I barely keep this place running as it is.” “Please let me be a clown! Just give me a chance!” “Argh, too fucking loud! Fine show me your clown stuff, just keep your voice down.” “Clown stuff?” “Uh yeah, like can you juggle? A little magic maybe? Some slapstick? Do you have a character like being a hobo or something? What you think it’s just easy as putting on white face make up, jumping around and laughing like an idiot?” “Well sort of…” “Sheesh. That’s the kind of thinking that makes us look creepy rather than amusing. You do realize that most people hate clowns right? Doesn’t help that we’re constantly vilified in horror movies nowadays. Yer wastin’ my time and yours if you don’t even know the basics.” Roofie isn’t exactly inspiring your confidence in this anymore. You feel like just heading home, but can’t run from this like you do with everything else, you’ve got no other options! You start to break down in tears. “Maybe I don’t know the basics, but I’ll work hard! (Sob) I’m serious about this! (Sob) I’ve tried to get a job everywhere else and if I don’t get this, I’ll get kicked out of my house! This is my last chance! (Sob)” you exclaim in between the tears. “Last chance? Darling, if bein’ a clown is your last chance, then you’ve got some major problems. (Sigh) I dunno even know why I’m entertaining this save for the fact that you’re easy on the eyes even without the need for alcohol and I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress. Besides if the news is any indication, we’re all gonna be dead by nuclear fire soon anyway, so fuck it. All right, stop yer weepin’ an maybe we can do something with you.” You clear up your eyes a bit completely oblivious to Roofie’s brief doomsday expectations. “So you’ll help train me?” “Well, hopefully you’ll pick up something in time, but I’m not going to bother with regular training, you’re going to learn trial by fire which all good clowns do anyway. Now the greatest thing going for you is that you’re cute, so I’m thinkin’ we create a character for you that utilizes your, shall we say natural talent.” “Wait, I’m not going to have my breasts exposed while wearing nothing but red clown noses on my nipples do I?” you ask with concern. “(Snort) Jesus girl. No, nuthin’ like that.” Roofie chuckles “You’ll be fully clothed, though you’ll still be cute lookin’. Kinda like that one girl. Y’know in the funny books? The one with that rich vigilante. Anyway, the key thing to remember is you need to act cutesy. That’s going to be your character. You’ll be a cute clown while all the other clowns around you hilariously fail to try to win you over, hit each other with mallets and all that sort of shit…hmmm, this is actually sounding like a pretty good skit. I’m going to go round up the others and have a run through. In the meantime there’s a bunch of clown outfits in the trunk over there. Fairly certain we got a bunch of unused girly ones that should fit you. Some make up over and a mirror over there. Don’t worry about getting that just right for now since I know the lighting sucks in this tent. And uh, I dunno try to practice acting demure and shy.” Roofie leaves the tent and you’re left realizing that you might just succeed at getting this job! You quickly go through the trunk and find some pink and black-checkered leotard thing with a mini-skirt attached around the waist. It fits and fortunately while form fitting, it isn’t excessively tight, though your legs are still exposed so you put on some knee high purple striped leggings. You feel sort of vulnerable undressing in a tent that someone could just enter at any time, but fortunately there’s at least a privacy-screen you can dress behind. You complete your look by putting your hair in girlish pigtails and applying a bunch of white face make up on and making your eyelashes and lips stand out with black eye liner and red lipstick. You haven’t had time to practice when Roofie returns with a bunch of other men in various clown outfits. One of them is even a little person like you met out front. “Goddamn Roofie, I think I’m gonna have to rethink my plans of leaving your shitty carnival.” One of them says. “Leave? Hell, I think I’m in love.” Says another before Roofie speaks up. “Holy shit girl, I said cute clown, not harlequin seductress! You might need to tone it down in the future we’re still trying to run a family show more or less. All right never mind, let’s run through this and you guys TRY to remember to keep your tongues in your mouth on occasion.” So you run through the routine while Roofie gives everyone directions. At first you naturally feel a little unready and uneasy what with everyone flirting with you, but soon you start to get into the swing of things. In fact it starts to come easy, you bat your eyes, give a few girlish giggles when someone slips and falls trying to give you a balloon flower and similar things. Eventually Roofie stops everyone and says the skit needs to be refined a bit, but it should work. He then tells everyone to leave since he wants speak with you privately. This seems to disappoint the others who all continue to stare at you while leaving. “Well, other than the fact that I could tell some of them were having a really hard time in not actually groping you, I’d say that went well and even you seem to have gotten into character quickly. Maybe you do have what it takes after all. You still seem a little nervous though, which sort of helped your performance, but I’d rather you remain at ease. Anything that can help with that?” Roofie asks. “Well its like you said, I partially felt like one of them was going to jump on me at any given time. I mean is that something I’m going to have to worry about?” “Nah, that won’t happen. We carnies have a rule against hurting each other. I mean I won’t lie that they aren’t going to stare a lot at you and most likely a few are going to make crude comments, but that’s about as far as it is going to go if you decide to join and stay with us.” “You want me to join?” “If you’re still interested, sure. I think you’ve got something to offer. Though like I said, I’m still not sure why someone like you would want to join a broken down circus like this one. I still think someone like you would be a model or something.” “Well, I’m wearing an outlandish outfit, my face is all painted up and a bunch of guys are falling over themselves just to get a look at me. Seems like I’m doing the same thing as a model save for the eating disorder.” Your comment causes a laugh from Roofie. “Ha ha! That’s pretty good. I think I’m making the right decision. Okay, so about your sleeping arrangements, I might have to re-arrange some folks and that’s always going to cause problems, so you might have to sleep in your car for tonight…” “Wait you want me to move in here?” “Well yeah. I mean I told you we weren’t going to be staying here too much longer and you have to know that circus’ do tend to travel right?” “Yeah, right. Of course. It’s just, heh, I guess when I jumped into this I didn’t think all of it through. Though that’s probably obvious.” “Hrm, well it’s your choice. I’m not gonna lie and say this life is the easiest and if you feel more comfortable at home or have loved ones you don’t want to leave that’s understandable.” “I dunno if I’d say all that, but the concept of leaving my home…well it’s a bit of a big change for me. Like a VERY big one. And oddly, this opportunity has me seriously considering it.” “Well you do what’s in your heart. Anyway, we aren’t leaving today or even tomorrow, so I mean if you want to go back home and pick up some stuff, say goodbye to whoever, then you’ve got time. But even though we’re not leaving tomorrow we are going to be open for our last show and I’ll need you here. I’m hoping we’ll at least get some people here and make at least a bit of money before picking up stakes and all that.” You aren’t sure what to do. The logical thing to do would be to go back home and gather some belonging, say a few goodbyes and try to convince Peter to drive you back up here so he gets his car back. But there’s something within you that wonders if you shouldn’t just make a clean break immediately and stay. You know yourself and if you get back home you’re likely find some reason to stay and back out of this opportunity. You think about Bobby and how he’d be one of those reasons. You still haven’t called him back. > You stay at the circus If you’re going to do this, you need to be all in right now. You feel slightly bad about essentially stealing Peter’s car, but you figure you can call him later and he can get someone to drive him over to pick it up. (Assuming he doesn’t call you first) As for Bobby you’re not going to bother. You’ve come to the conclusion that you and he have too many differences to make it work and that this final break up has been a long time coming. Calling him would just make you fall for his charms and hinder your own goals and you can’t have that happen. “Mr. Roofie, I’ll be staying.” You say. “Okay, great. We’ll be opening up soon, dunno if anyone’s actually going to show up, but you might as well get out there and wander around to make this place look festive.” “Did you want me to change, you said something about this outfit being too much?” “Eh…don’t bother. I’m thinkin’ it’s an appropriate look for you. Like I said, you might have to put up with some cat calling from some of the cruder employees here, but that’s about it. And if anyone starts getting out of line with you, be they carnie or rube, let me know about it. Trust me it’ll be taken care of immediately. This carnival might be on its last legs, but I’ll be damned if it’ll descend into anarchy. My dad didn’t work and sacrifice all those years for nothing.” Roofie says. “Your dad owned this carnival? Was he a clown too?” you ask. “Heh, no. He was a geek and I don’t mean in the lovable nerd sense either. I mean he was a bonafide circus geek. Ate all manner of disgusting things to bring in the customers. Raw animal organs, heads of chickens, rotten food, you name it. He always told me though he was drunk most of the time so it wasn’t quite as bad as you’d think. Fortunately he didn’t stay a circus geek though. Apparently he helped the original ringmaster with something very important and after that happened my dad got a better job around here as the ringmaster’s assistant.” “What did he help the ringmaster with?” “Dunno exactly. Like I said, my dad was drinking a lot heavier during those geek days. He said it had to do with a power struggle within the circus, but he couldn’t quite remember all the details. In any event when the original ring master one day decided it was time to move on to something else my dad got control of the circus. Kept it going too despite the changing times. I’ve tried to follow in his footsteps, but so far the only thing I’ve succeeded at is the drinking part.” Roofie takes a drink from a nearby bottle after this statement. “So, uh what made you become a clown?” you ask. “I dunno, I was trying to help out I guess. Y’see my dad had to raise me himself since my mom died giving birth to me and I guess when I got old enough I felt I should contribute for all the extra burden I put on him.” “Sorry to hear that.” “Hm, well all I know about her is that she was a runaway that joined up with the circus shortly after my dad took over as owner. Anyway, for a while, this circus didn’t have a single clown. Apparently it did a long time ago, but my dad said there were some horror stories about them and they were eventually…let go. Despite this circus’ odd apprehension about having clowns again I convinced my dad that it would be a good idea to have clowns. So he gave me a shot and it worked. Rest is history, anyway that’s enough story time you’ve got your own clown work to do, so get to it.” You take your leave and re-assure that you’ll do everything in your power to keep people entertained. No sooner have you left Roofie’s tent when you’re nabbed by a couple of the other clowns, this time they’re full clown uniform. “Hey tulip we’ve been lookin’ for ya. If you’re staying, we’re going to need to polish up our routine.” One of them says. “Yeah, and after that, you can polish something else. Ha ha ha ha ha!” says another which causes some snickering from the others. “Could you please not talk that way to me?” you ask politely. “Awww are you sensitive? You’re such a delicate pretty little flower aren’t you?” the clown who made the polishing comment says. “Sheesh, Ranko don’t be a fucking asshole. Don’t mind him sweetheart he’s never been this close to a woman before.” Another clown says. “Fuck you Klepto and stop playing white knight. You’re not foolin’ anyone. You know damn well you got a raging boner for this little blonde number too. Am I right fellas?” This gets a small positive acknowledgement by the other clowns, including Klepto who chuckles while confessing his transparent white knighting. Once again you’re starting to wonder if this is going to be worth it. Is this what its always going to be like? You haven’t even been officially an employee five minutes and you’re already getting subjected to dirty innuendo and harassment. You know Roofie tried to assure you that nothing is going happen and that if someone did try anything you could let him know, but really though you don’t want to have to feel like you have to go running to him like a tattletale every time. If you could brave your serial killer uncle and your cultist ex-boyfriend, you can certainly handle some loutish clowns. In fact you start thinking about all the times Kelly has verbally abused you and you begin to get angry. You channel some of that anger that you have for her and direct it towards your new co-workers. “Ranko, I’m guessing that’s your name due to the bad breath your giving off right now. It smells like shit which still makes it about two steps higher than you look.” You say, which catches him off guard and stops the others from laughing. Before Ranko can retort you continue. “Your name oughta be Zero, because that’s exactly how far you’re ever going to get with me. The same goes for the rest of you fucktards! Just because I’m new here doesn’t mean I’m just going to take your fucking abuse!” For a moment there’s silence and even some of the nearby employees look on wondering what the rest a going to do. Ranko is the only one who says anything though. “Hmm, looks like the delicate flower has a few thorns. That’s okay though. I like a little spirit, keeps things interesting. In any case we still need to go over the routine so if you’re done bitching at all of us, let’s go.” He says and motions everyone to follow. You’re slightly apprehensive about following this group anywhere, but there’s little else for it since these are going to be your coworkers. You can only hope that in time they’ll see you as something other than an outlet for their lust. As you walk to the location you scan the rest of the carnival, which mostly consists of a lot of game barker types setting up their crooked games. You do see a few stages where the more traditional sword swallower and fire eater types are preparing themselves. This being a circus and the fact that Roofie said his father was a geek, you can’t help but wonder if there are any “freaks” anywhere. “Hey just wondering are their any Siamese Twins around here or something?” you ask trying to break up the silence. “Siamese Twins? Way to be racist darlin’. Ha ha, nah just fuckin’ with ya, but I believe the correct term is conjoined twins and no we don’t have any. There haven’t been any freaks in this carnival for decades now. I heard back in the day there were a lot of them here though. Cyclopes, pinheads, four arms abominations of nature, you name it.” Ranko remarks. “How come there aren’t any here anymore?” “Well because we live in a developed country that has access to modern medicine nowadays? I mean most of those freaks were just unlucky bastards that rolled low on the genetics chart when they were born. Thanks to modern medicine they can correct that shit now y’know? Plus you’ve got all those politically correct types going on about exploitation or some shit. Also if someone IS a genetic freak of nature they can just go on a talk show or the Internet and make money that way. Nope, the time of the sideshow freak has long since passed. I mean sure you get the self made freaks like tattooed and pierced folks, but that’s not really the same and it isn’t even shocking anymore especially when you’ve got people cutting their dicks off or shoving glass jars up their ass for free on the net. The best you’re going to get around here to freaks are the midgets and they’re a dime a dozen, no offense Shrimpy.” Ranko says referring to the dwarf clown. “Fuck you too Ranko.” Shrimpy remarks. Soon you get to an open location near a couple trailers where Ranko says you’re all going to go through the routine. It’s pretty much like how you first went through it, but you notice several of the clowns are getting a little bit more grabby now. “Alright, stop, stop. You assholes are supposed to be trying to woo me and fighting with each other, not attempting to gang rape me! I feel one more hand trying to grab my ass and they’re losing it!” you say. “Oh for fuck’s sake according to you whatever we do is offensive. I’m just thinking of a way to keep the routine fresh. It’ll be funny!” Ranko says. “Fresh? We haven’t even performed it for people yet! Besides isn’t this supposed to be a family show? The way Roofie suggested will be fine.” “That old drunk doesn’t even perform anymore, he’s too busy running this carnival into the fucking ground. He’s so fucking out of touch its ridiculous. Kids these days are watching hardcore anal porn as soon as they can log on to the Internet nowadays, so I doubt if a couple of clowns grabbing your ass is even going to register.” Ranko says. At this point Ranko is starting to get more hostile. Your continued defiance of not wanting to be a squeeze toy is getting to him. Despite Roofie being the owner, it’s obvious that this Ranko is the “ring leader” of the clowns and he’s going to be a dick no matter what. Continuing to antagonize his authority is going to just result in unifying the rest to his side, so you try something else. “All right Ranko, you want this routine to incorporate a little more risqué business fine, but you’re going about it the wrong way. You’ve got no style.” “Oh? Only been a clown for a few hours and you’re already an expert eh? Well go on and enlighten us all then sweetheart.” “Well for one thing Shrimpy should be trying to look under my dress whenever he can due to his size.” You say. “Wait what?” Ranko asks. “Hey, I’m liking her ideas already!” Shrimpy exclaims. “You all still need to play to your traits, don’t you see? You, Lifto. You’re the biggest of the lot so you should be relying on feats of strength in order to impress me like picking me up in your arms.” “Yeah, that makes sense.” Lifto remarks. You go through what the rest of the clowns should be doing and they’re remarkably receptive to you and your ideas. You come up with a whole new routine where they each attempt to charm you and how they fail either due to their own ineptness or another clown sabotaging them. The only one who’s not liking this idea is Ranko. “Hey, hey, hey, what about me? Where do I fit in?” Ranko demands. “You? Well I figured you’d be that completely disgusting suitor that never even gets close to being charming seeing as you’re already pretty good in that role. You can be an ongoing participant that gets constantly beat down by the others. Lifto hits you with a mallet, Klepto steals your pants, Shrimpy gives you a hot foot…you know clown stuff. It’ll be funny.” You say snidely much to Ranko’s chagrin. “Oh no, you’re not turning my crew against me! I’M head clown around here not some bottle blonde split tail! We’re not agreeing to this shit!” Ranko shouts. “Speak for yourself Ranko.” Klepto says. “Yeah, I kinda like this idea better, my bit doesn’t seem to rely on as much movement on my part.” Fatty remarks. “You’re just pissed that a newbie took your idea and made it work against you.” Shrimpy adds. Ranko at this point begins ranting and raving at everyone. He unleashed a torrent of swears that causes the whole carnival to take notice. He calls you a bitch and the rest of them pussy whipped. “That’s it, I’m done with this fucking loser carnival and the rest of you losers as well! I’m fucking RANKO the goddamn clown! I can get a job anywhere! Enjoy living in obscurity with miss frigid over here!” Ranko exclaims and storms off in a huff. “Good riddance rank breath! And I’m a goddamn natural blonde, you asshole!” you shout as he continues to walk away. You have to say this plunge into assertiveness has given you a bit of a rush. You like it. When you go back to going through the routine with the others and you notice a decrease in your former uneasiness. The “boys” are still doing a lot of leering and the routine is a little more physical now, but something is different this time. Namely you feel more in control of the situation and that’s probably because you are. “Wow, I really was wasting my natural talent.” You think to yourself. In the middle of the routine, Roofie shows up. “Well this looks…friendly.” He remarks as Lifto is in the middle of setting you back down on the ground. “Just going through the tweaked routine boss. It was the new girl’s idea!” Klepto remarks. “Yeah, it’s going to be good.” Shrimpy adds. “Hrm. Well let’s at least try to keep everyone’s clothing on shall we?” “Of course! There isn’t going to be any of that. Just going to keep it entertaining for the adult audience too.” You say. “Couldn’t help notice Ranko swearing like a sailor and stomping away from the carnival. Ranting about how he’s never coming back. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?” “Not really boss. He just couldn’t keep up with the recent changes around here I guess.” You say, Roofie smirks a bit. “Heh, okay. Well I’m not going to lose any sleep not having to pay that asshole anymore. In any case, saw a few people actually driving up. Look like actual customers, so you guys need to go do your stuff for the crowds.” The rest of the day goes pretty well for you. You and the rest entertain the small crowds (who seem to be mostly from the trailer park community just outside of your town.) that do show up. By the end of the night you’re actually pretty tired and anxious to just flop down somewhere to sleep. Roofie says that thanks to Ranko leaving, his trailer is now empty and says that you can have it if you’re willing to ignore the mess he probably left it in. You accept the offer since it’ll be better than sleeping in Peter’s car. And its at that point you forgot to call Peter back to let him know to pick his car up! You check your phone and see that Peter did indeed try to get a hold of you, and once again Bobby left a bunch of texts and messages as well. You’re too tired to even bother to read them. You try to call Peter back, but you get no answer. Probably doing god knows what. You’ll try again tomorrow, for now you enter Ranko’s trailer and breathe a sigh of relief that the place isn’t a health hazard and lie down on his bed. As you drift off to sleep you chuckle at the irony that Ranko wanted to get you into his bed really badly and all it took was for him to leave. > Next day… TUESDAY “…remember time is running out! Our shelters won’t be…” You wake up to instinctively to grab the remote to turn off the TV only to realize that you have no TV, yet you’re still hearing those damn Ground Zero commercials. You groggily sit up and look out a side window and see one of the carnies holding a radio, which is loudly playing one of those advertisements. Just as well you’re up anyway, now that you have actual responsibilities and will have to live these new people you should take this opportunity to meet everyone since despite getting acquainted with your co-workers and the boss, you didn’t really interact with anyone else working here. Still dressed in your outfit from yesterday (mainly because you lack anything else to wear right now) you go out and meet your brand new family full of hope that this will be the start of something wonderful! The reality turns out to be much different though. “Honey, why the hell are hanging around with those clowns? I’m sure you’d be better as a sword swallower; in fact I got a way you can practice if you come to my trailer right now!” “Hey clown girl, I’ve got a way to paint your face white without the need for make up!” “Nice tits!” The female carnies aren’t much better. “So you’re the new girl that got her own private trailer huh? Guess a blowjob gets you a lot preference nowadays. Was Roofie even sober at the time?” “Hey Bozo the Hoe, you think you’re hot shit wiggling your ass at everyone? Let me warn you right now, you take my man I’ll make sure you won’t need to wear a red clown nose at your next performance!” “No, I don’t have any extra clothes you can borrow, Miss Living Skeleton. Go away you anorexic bitch.” Life is never easy outside the basement is it Suzy? Unfortunately that part of your life is over. You could go back to your trailer and hide you suppose, but it’s not the same and besides you’ve already come to the conclusion that hiding won’t solve your problems. Still, you are feeling a little “ganged up” on so for temporary relief you return to currently the only people that are halfway decent to you now, your fellow clowns. You enter the clown tent and see them all sitting around talking about something, but then when you enter all their attention is turned towards you. “Oh hey Suzy, you’re here early. We don’t usually warm up until a few hours before showtime.” Klepto remarks. “Oh, I’m not here for that, I’m just here since half of the carnival seems to want to fuck me and barrage me with clumsy sexual innuendo.“ “And… you came here to get away from that?” Lifto asks. You chuckle a little. “Yeah well at least if I stay in here part of it will be work related.” You answer which causes a couple of laughs and smiles from the rest. “Well considering you are one of us, maybe we should go easier on that now.” Klepto says. “I’d certainly appreciate it.” “Hey there are a lot of other women who work here, maybe you could go bond with them and do that whole sisterhood thing?” Lifto says. “I tried that. They all insulted me and seemed to want to punch me. Well except for that woman with the short red hair that juggles knives. I think she wanted to punch AND fuck me. (Sigh) No, looks like you guys are my only tribe here for now.” “Hm, well get used to it I guess. Nobody likes us clowns that much. To be quite honest one of the reasons we decided to knock off the crude remarks toward you is because you’ll be the first new person in years that will be civil to us. No point in making new enemies.” Klepto says. “Really? I thought all carnies stuck together.” You say. Now all the rest of the clowns laugh. “Hardly. I mean yeah there’s a certain unspoken rule that carnies stay united against outsiders and rubes. And we aren’t supposed to kill one another, but…well lets just say this very carnival doesn’t exactly have a spotless track record in that regard.” Klepto says. “People kill each other here?” you ask a bit alarmed. “No! Well not in my time anyway…” Klepto remarks trailing off. “What the hell does that mean? Look I don’t want to be part of some murder circus!” “Damn it Klepto you’ve scared the girl now! You should’ve just kept your mouth shut!” Shrimpy exclaims. At this point the clowns begin arguing with each other, but after a few moments of this bickering you demand that someone explain the situation exactly. Once again Klepto takes it upon himself to be the storyteller. “Look, I’ve probably blown it all out of proportion, but there are stories of how back in the day before Roofie or even his dad owned this carnival there was a violent power struggle for control over it that resulted in a lot of dead bodies afterwards.” “Weren’t just stories, shit it happened! My family has been a fixture of this carnival for generations too and my grandfather told me about the blood that ran during that fateful day.” Shrimpy adds as if Klepto didn’t quite put as much stock in these stories and takes over as the storyteller. “Battle lines were drawn that day. I mean you had dwarves, normals and freaks all siding against each other and the most hated group out of the bunch? The clowns. Now from what my grandfather told me, these clowns were definitely the reason why everyone today thinks of them as being monsters under the beds nowadays. Things of course have changed since then, but as they say the more things change the more they stay the same.” “What do you mean?” you ask. “I’m saying there’s going to be another power struggle soon and given that we’re clowns, WE are going to be on the losing end no matter what happens” “Wait a minute, what about Roofie? I mean isn’t he one of us?” you ask. “Roofie? The fact that he’s a clown just makes everyone think we already get preferential treatment. He’ll probably be the first one killed being the owner and all. He’s old and doesn’t have nearly the amount of control he used to anymore. Nope, I believe the change will be coming soon and it’ll be truly be a dark day for clowns…well maybe I’ll be able to get my people to take me back and YOU can offer to be someone’s girlfriend, but the rest of you are fucked.” “Gee, glad to know we’ll be able to count on your support Shrimpy, if something does happen.” Klepto remarks. You never realized that carnie “politics” was so complex and dangerous. Before you can panic too much about it Roofie shows up with a bottle in his hand. “Hey, what’re you lot still doing in here? We’ve actually got people showing up early. Apparently your little routine yesterday got people at that trailer park talking and they brought all the rest of their redneck buddies. Looks like we’ll get to rake in one goodly amount of cash before leaving this place. Oh and Suzy, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the car you drove up in? Well looks like it was vandalized in the night.” “What?!” you exclaim. “All the tires were slashed and someone wrote cunt all over it with face make up. It might be just a hunch, but I’d say Ranko felt like he needed to have to last word.” “(Sigh) Great.” You say. “Well anyway you all need to get out there and do what you do.” Roofie orders and leaves. While the rest get going, you remain sitting starting to worry about what you’ve got yourself into. Once again you start to wonder if you shouldn’t just leave until Klepto touches your shoulder. “Don’t worry Suzy, Shrimpy has been going on like that for as long as I’ve known him. While things get tense around here at times, I don’t think it’s going to come to some bloodbath. Besides you can’t spend your life worrying about the future, gotta live for the day I say, so let’s just take our minds off our troubles by putting on a good show.” Klepto remarks. While Klepto’s reassurance is nice, it doesn’t really alleviate your concerns. Hell, you can’t even leave if you wanted to given that Peter’s car is trashed. You can only hope that perhaps in time peoples’ attitudes towards you will soften a bit. Right now, you do have work to focus on. Roofie wasn’t lying when he said more people showed up today. You and the rest of the clowns spend a majority of the afternoon walking around keeping the people entertained Eventually you take a break and decide to check out Peter’s car and if it is at all salvageable. When you get to it, it’s exactly as Roofie said, all four tires slashed and the word cunt painted all over it. You can’t believe nobody saw any of this even during the night. Or maybe they did and didn’t give a shit considering you haven’t exactly been accepted by most here. In any event you try to call Peter again, but you get no answer. He hasn’t even tried to call you. He must really be involved with work or something. Or maybe he doesn’t give a shit about his car. He could easily afford a new one. You also notice Bobby hasn’t tried calling you either. You guess he got the hint. You attempt to start to the car and just as you suspected Ranko must’ve sabotaged the engine or something under the hood as well. No matter, when you leave you weren’t going to be driving this thing anymore anyway. Lacking anymore use for the car, you take a look in the trunk just to see what might be in there and that’s when you find something useful. Namely a bunch of clothes…specifically YOUR clothes! Well some of them anyway. Apparently Peter still had a lot of your old clothes that he stole from you in the past. The other stuff looks like S&M garb, though not all of it the traditional black leather or latex. Some of it is sort of colorful. Festive even. Well at least you won’t be walking around in the same stuff day in day out now. You pack up what you can and head back to your trailer to drop it off. Afterwards you find the rest of your new clown “family” and eat with them. You take the opportunity to tell them a little bit about your former life; you get a surprising amount of sympathy from the others. “Holy shit, I thought I came from a fucked up family.” Klepto remarks. “Yeah well, like I said I did a lot of hiding in the basement for the most part. Not much of a life I guess, but it kept me sane for the most part.” You say. “Hey, whatever helps you survive the day right?” Shrimpy says. After a bit more chatting you all get back to work. As time goes on, there is one person you keep seeing nearby throughout the day, a large man in overalls who while attempting to look like he’s NOT staring at you, obviously is. This isn’t the usual ogling either because you’ve gotten accustomed to that, you’re getting a really creepy vibe from this guy. “Maybe we should get Roofie to throw this guy out or something.” You say. “Roofie? I just passed by one of the tents when I got another snack and saw he’s currently passed out as usual. Besides, he never throws anyone out as long as they aren’t doing something violent. As far a he’s concerned every low life that visits this carnival is a potential mark and worth putting up with to get their money.” Fatty says. “The guy looks like a retard. He’s probably not used to seeing a girl as beautiful as you before. I mean even under the white face make up and clown clothing, you still look miles better than any of the trailer trash mothers that have come here with their spawn.” Shrimpy remarks. “Well he’s really fucking creepy and I don’t trust him.” You say. “He’s not going to do anything in broad daylight, and even if he does, you know we got your back. Just stick near us and Lifto look extra intimidating.” Klepto says. The night the crowds start thinning out a bit. You imagine that after they put their illegitimate spawn to bed, trailer trash prefers to spend their nights at bars, strip clubs and getting high and/or drunk at home. As for the big retard that was staring at you all day, he seems to have left as well, but you still feel uneasy. Meanwhile Roofie has reawakened from his temporary drunken stupor to tell everyone that today was a good day and that everyone should get some rest since you’re going to be packing this place down first thing tomorrow morning and moving on. He then mumbles something about it all being pointless anyway and staggers back to his own trailer. “Well looks like that’s it. See you tomorrow Suzy.” Klepto remarks as he and the rest head towards their trailer. You on the other hand are still a little nervous about going back to yours. “Uh, guys do you think I could sleep with you tonight?” you say which causes all of them to turn back towards you in disbelief. “Wow Ranko would have had a field day with that remark.” Klepto chuckles. “You know probably nothing is going to happen. That guy was just some goony retard. Hell, if the freak show still existed, he’d probably be one of the side shows here.” “Look, I’m just still feeling really on edge about that guy from earlier. I mean I could sleep on the floor, I don’t care.” You say. “That would be incredibly uncomfortable and probably quite disgusting. Our trailer isn’t exactly the cleanest. I mean I’d offer my bed, but given that we’re going to need all our energy to pack up tomorrow, I’d like to get a good night’s sleep.” Klepto remarks. “Why don’t I sleep over in your trailer?” Lifto asks. “I know Ranko’s trailer is big enough for one other person. I could stay over, you guys would get a little extra room tonight and you can sleep safely without worry.” “Hrmm, that’s…generous of you Lifto.” Klepto remarks. “It’s not like that, I’m just offering a solution.” Lifto says though it does seem like he might be hoping this act of chivalry will lead to something more. While you’d hate to cause hard feelings within the group or possibly lead someone on, you know one thing is certain; you still don’t want to sleep alone tonight. > You take up Lifto's offer The more you think about it, the idea of sleeping in possibly cramped quarters isn’t exactly appealing, not to mention Klepto said the place wasn’t the cleanest. If you lay down the law to Lifto, you’re fairly certain he won’t try anything. “Okay Lifto, get your stuff, you can stay over, but I think you know I don’t need to tell you to not try anything.” “Sure. Really, it’ll be nice just to stay some place less crowded for a change.” Lifto remarks and goes to trailer to get whatever it is he’s going to need for the night. Klepto looks a little disappointed, but says nothing and just meekly heads back to his trailer as well. You already can imagine how rumors are going to spread, but you really can’t worry about that now. You’re not going to worry about possible “hurt” feelings especially when you’re not involved with anyone here anyway. Lifto and you soon head over to your trailer. “Haven’t really had a chance to completely clean up since I was given the place.” You mention. “Still cleaner than our place, and I’ve been over here a couple times when Ranko had it. Trust me it’s starting to look better already.” “(Yawn) Thanks. Man, didn’t realize I was getting so sleeping so quickly. I’m going to bed.” “Sure. I’m probably going to be awake for a little while longer, and eventually sleep on the floor.” “You sure you’re going to be okay? I mean I know you have to sleep as well.” “I’m sort of a light sleeper, so even when I do fall asleep, I’ll easily be able to wake up if someone even tries to pick the lock and creep in here. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” You settle down to sleep and speak about a few superficial things to Lifto about how you think you’re fitting in here and how you’re glad he’s staying here the night. He of course is very positive and tries to reassure you that it’ll just take awhile, but eventually the rest of the carnies will accept you. You aren’t inclined to believe that, but it’s nice to hear before you fall asleep. At some point in the night you’re awakened by Lifto noisily rushing to the door. “What the hell?” you utter still half asleep. “Suzy, stay where you are, some motherfucker’s trying to break in!” he shouts and with some sort of blunt object in hand he slams the door open. It doesn’t sound like he hit the person with the door, but you do hear a scuffle outside. You look out the window and see who Lifto is fighting with and it’s an equally large man. It’s same creepy retard that was staring at you all day today. You knew it wasn’t going to be safe to be here alone. You quickly look around for a weapon of your own to help Lifto. Hopefully with all the noise someone else from the carnival will come running to help. (You hope) Grabbing a knife you cautiously head towards the door still hearing the fighting between Lifto and the retarded hick. You open the door and see them both rolling on the ground. You can’t really help due to the retard not being still enough for you to be confident to stab at him, not to mention you’re really scared about this whole situation. Nobody is out to help out either. You call out a couple times and you know it has to be loud enough for SOMEONE to hear now, but its like you’re not being helped on purpose. Lifto and the retard are really going at it and unfortunately it’s starting to look like the retard is getting the upper hand. You really don’t want to leave, but you figure the best you can do is to go get help from the other clowns. You turn to run and you manage to get to the end of your trailer, before someone trips you to the ground in the dark followed by a blunt object smashing you in the back of the head. You go unconscious immediately. When you wake up, you’re groggy, naked and firmly strapped to a medical gurney of some sort. You also have a ball gag in your mouth. The room you’re in looks to be some sort of basement with a bright light hanging overhead. The stench of chemicals fills the air and to your left in a darker corner of the room you see a man in a doctor’s coat hovering over another gurney with a body on it. Naturally in such a state you start to panic and ineffectively struggle to get free. The “doctor” hears you and walks over to you. “Oh, you’re up. I’ll have to give you more sedative. When Jed and Hugo brought you in, I thought you were going to be a useless slab of meat like they normally bring in. I was glad they showed some restraint this time. Honestly I’m very surprised they just didn’t keep you themselves and have some good ol’ fashioned fun or at least a quick in out before handing you over, but Jed did mention something about having to haul ass from your carnival as quick as possible.” As you continue to try to struggle and make muted sounds to cry out, the doctor begins fondling you and moving his hands to roam all over your body. “Mmmm, nice. Not as great as my sister, but then none of them ever are. If I had the time, I’d probably shove it in your vertical smile for a while, but sadly I don’t.” The doctor goes over to a tray and grabs some sort of syringe he fully intends on use on you and you’ve gone from mere panic to sheer terror. “Really, you’re luckier than most that come through here. Normally I keep ‘em awake when I do my work, but I need you unconscious to take out those pretty eyes and other vital organs of yours. Wouldn’t want you thrashing about or blinking to cause me to cut them all up and making them useless.” You watch helplessly as the needle goes into your arm. The tears run down your cheeks. “There we go. Won’t be long now. (Sigh) I swear it seems like I never get to enjoy my work any more though. I really would’ve liked to have fun with you. Oh well, I’ve got some other things to still look forward to.” You drift into unconsciousness again and your life ends where you ironically spent most of your time. A basement.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>TUESDAY “…remember time is running out! Our shelters won’t be…” You wake up to instinctively to grab the remote to turn off the TV only to realize that you have no TV, yet you’re still hearing those damn Ground Zero commercials. You groggily sit up and look out a side window and see one of the carnies holding a radio, which is loudly playing one of those advertisements. Just as well you’re up anyway, now that you have actual responsibilities and will have to live these new people you should take this opportunity to meet everyone since despite getting acquainted with your co-workers and the boss, you didn’t really interact with anyone else working here. Still dressed in your outfit from yesterday (mainly because you lack anything else to wear right now) you go out and meet your brand new family full of hope that this will be the start of something wonderful! The reality turns out to be much different though. “Honey, why the hell are hanging around with those clowns? I’m sure you’d be better as a sword swallower; in fact I got a way you can practice if you come to my trailer right now!” “Hey clown girl, I’ve got a way to paint your face white without the need for make up!” “Nice tits!” The female carnies aren’t much better. “So you’re the new girl that got her own private trailer huh? Guess a blowjob gets you a lot preference nowadays. Was Roofie even sober at the time?” “Hey Bozo the Hoe, you think you’re hot shit wiggling your ass at everyone? Let me warn you right now, you take my man I’ll make sure you won’t need to wear a red clown nose at your next performance!” “No, I don’t have any extra clothes you can borrow, Miss Living Skeleton. Go away you anorexic bitch.” Life is never easy outside the basement is it Suzy? Unfortunately that part of your life is over. You could go back to your trailer and hide you suppose, but it’s not the same and besides you’ve already come to the conclusion that hiding won’t solve your problems. Still, you are feeling a little “ganged up” on so for temporary relief you return to currently the only people that are halfway decent to you now, your fellow clowns. You enter the clown tent and see them all sitting around talking about something, but then when you enter all their attention is turned towards you. “Oh hey Suzy, you’re here early. We don’t usually warm up until a few hours before showtime.” Klepto remarks. “Oh, I’m not here for that, I’m just here since half of the carnival seems to want to fuck me and barrage me with clumsy sexual innuendo.“ “And… you came here to get away from that?” Lifto asks. You chuckle a little. “Yeah well at least if I stay in here part of it will be work related.” You answer which causes a couple of laughs and smiles from the rest. “Well considering you are one of us, maybe we should go easier on that now.” Klepto says. “I’d certainly appreciate it.” “Hey there are a lot of other women who work here, maybe you could go bond with them and do that whole sisterhood thing?” Lifto says. “I tried that. They all insulted me and seemed to want to punch me. Well except for that woman with the short red hair that juggles knives. I think she wanted to punch AND fuck me. (Sigh) No, looks like you guys are my only tribe here for now.” “Hm, well get used to it I guess. Nobody likes us clowns that much. To be quite honest one of the reasons we decided to knock off the crude remarks toward you is because you’ll be the first new person in years that will be civil to us. No point in making new enemies.” Klepto says. “Really? I thought all carnies stuck together.” You say. Now all the rest of the clowns laugh. “Hardly. I mean yeah there’s a certain unspoken rule that carnies stay united against outsiders and rubes. And we aren’t supposed to kill one another, but…well lets just say this very carnival doesn’t exactly have a spotless track record in that regard.” Klepto says. “People kill each other here?” you ask a bit alarmed. “No! Well not in my time anyway…” Klepto remarks trailing off. “What the hell does that mean? Look I don’t want to be part of some murder circus!” “Damn it Klepto you’ve scared the girl now! You should’ve just kept your mouth shut!” Shrimpy exclaims. At this point the clowns begin arguing with each other, but after a few moments of this bickering you demand that someone explain the situation exactly. Once again Klepto takes it upon himself to be the storyteller. “Look, I’ve probably blown it all out of proportion, but there are stories of how back in the day before Roofie or even his dad owned this carnival there was a violent power struggle for control over it that resulted in a lot of dead bodies afterwards.” “Weren’t just stories, shit it happened! My family has been a fixture of this carnival for generations too and my grandfather told me about the blood that ran during that fateful day.” Shrimpy adds as if Klepto didn’t quite put as much stock in these stories and takes over as the storyteller. “Battle lines were drawn that day. I mean you had dwarves, normals and freaks all siding against each other and the most hated group out of the bunch? The clowns. Now from what my grandfather told me, these clowns were definitely the reason why everyone today thinks of them as being monsters under the beds nowadays. Things of course have changed since then, but as they say the more things change the more they stay the same.” “What do you mean?” you ask. “I’m saying there’s going to be another power struggle soon and given that we’re clowns, WE are going to be on the losing end no matter what happens” “Wait a minute, what about Roofie? I mean isn’t he one of us?” you ask. “Roofie? The fact that he’s a clown just makes everyone think we already get preferential treatment. He’ll probably be the first one killed being the owner and all. He’s old and doesn’t have nearly the amount of control he used to anymore. Nope, I believe the change will be coming soon and it’ll be truly be a dark day for clowns…well maybe I’ll be able to get my people to take me back and YOU can offer to be someone’s girlfriend, but the rest of you are fucked.” “Gee, glad to know we’ll be able to count on your support Shrimpy, if something does happen.” Klepto remarks. You never realized that carnie “politics” was so complex and dangerous. Before you can panic too much about it Roofie shows up with a bottle in his hand. “Hey, what’re you lot still doing in here? We’ve actually got people showing up early. Apparently your little routine yesterday got people at that trailer park talking and they brought all the rest of their redneck buddies. Looks like we’ll get to rake in one goodly amount of cash before leaving this place. Oh and Suzy, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the car you drove up in? Well looks like it was vandalized in the night.” “What?!” you exclaim. “All the tires were slashed and someone wrote cunt all over it with face make up. It might be just a hunch, but I’d say Ranko felt like he needed to have to last word.” “(Sigh) Great.” You say. “Well anyway you all need to get out there and do what you do.” Roofie orders and leaves. While the rest get going, you remain sitting starting to worry about what you’ve got yourself into. Once again you start to wonder if you shouldn’t just leave until Klepto touches your shoulder. “Don’t worry Suzy, Shrimpy has been going on like that for as long as I’ve known him. While things get tense around here at times, I don’t think it’s going to come to some bloodbath. Besides you can’t spend your life worrying about the future, gotta live for the day I say, so let’s just take our minds off our troubles by putting on a good show.” Klepto remarks. While Klepto’s reassurance is nice, it doesn’t really alleviate your concerns. Hell, you can’t even leave if you wanted to given that Peter’s car is trashed. You can only hope that perhaps in time peoples’ attitudes towards you will soften a bit. Right now, you do have work to focus on. Roofie wasn’t lying when he said more people showed up today. You and the rest of the clowns spend a majority of the afternoon walking around keeping the people entertained Eventually you take a break and decide to check out Peter’s car and if it is at all salvageable. When you get to it, it’s exactly as Roofie said, all four tires slashed and the word cunt painted all over it. You can’t believe nobody saw any of this even during the night. Or maybe they did and didn’t give a shit considering you haven’t exactly been accepted by most here. In any event you try to call Peter again, but you get no answer. He hasn’t even tried to call you. He must really be involved with work or something. Or maybe he doesn’t give a shit about his car. He could easily afford a new one. You also notice Bobby hasn’t tried calling you either. You guess he got the hint. You attempt to start to the car and just as you suspected Ranko must’ve sabotaged the engine or something under the hood as well. No matter, when you leave you weren’t going to be driving this thing anymore anyway. Lacking anymore use for the car, you take a look in the trunk just to see what might be in there and that’s when you find something useful. Namely a bunch of clothes…specifically YOUR clothes! Well some of them anyway. Apparently Peter still had a lot of your old clothes that he stole from you in the past. The other stuff looks like S&M garb, though not all of it the traditional black leather or latex. Some of it is sort of colorful. Festive even. Well at least you won’t be walking around in the same stuff day in day out now. You pack up what you can and head back to your trailer to drop it off. Afterwards you find the rest of your new clown “family” and eat with them. You take the opportunity to tell them a little bit about your former life; you get a surprising amount of sympathy from the others. “Holy shit, I thought I came from a fucked up family.” Klepto remarks. “Yeah well, like I said I did a lot of hiding in the basement for the most part. Not much of a life I guess, but it kept me sane for the most part.” You say. “Hey, whatever helps you survive the day right?” Shrimpy says. After a bit more chatting you all get back to work. As time goes on, there is one person you keep seeing nearby throughout the day, a large man in overalls who while attempting to look like he’s NOT staring at you, obviously is. This isn’t the usual ogling either because you’ve gotten accustomed to that, you’re getting a really creepy vibe from this guy. “Maybe we should get Roofie to throw this guy out or something.” You say. “Roofie? I just passed by one of the tents when I got another snack and saw he’s currently passed out as usual. Besides, he never throws anyone out as long as they aren’t doing something violent. As far a he’s concerned every low life that visits this carnival is a potential mark and worth putting up with to get their money.” Fatty says. “The guy looks like a retard. He’s probably not used to seeing a girl as beautiful as you before. I mean even under the white face make up and clown clothing, you still look miles better than any of the trailer trash mothers that have come here with their spawn.” Shrimpy remarks. “Well he’s really fucking creepy and I don’t trust him.” You say. “He’s not going to do anything in broad daylight, and even if he does, you know we got your back. Just stick near us and Lifto look extra intimidating.” Klepto says. The night the crowds start thinning out a bit. You imagine that after they put their illegitimate spawn to bed, trailer trash prefers to spend their nights at bars, strip clubs and getting high and/or drunk at home. As for the big retard that was staring at you all day, he seems to have left as well, but you still feel uneasy. Meanwhile Roofie has reawakened from his temporary drunken stupor to tell everyone that today was a good day and that everyone should get some rest since you’re going to be packing this place down first thing tomorrow morning and moving on. He then mumbles something about it all being pointless anyway and staggers back to his own trailer. “Well looks like that’s it. See you tomorrow Suzy.” Klepto remarks as he and the rest head towards their trailer. You on the other hand are still a little nervous about going back to yours. “Uh, guys do you think I could sleep with you tonight?” you say which causes all of them to turn back towards you in disbelief. “Wow Ranko would have had a field day with that remark.” Klepto chuckles. “You know probably nothing is going to happen. That guy was just some goony retard. Hell, if the freak show still existed, he’d probably be one of the side shows here.” “Look, I’m just still feeling really on edge about that guy from earlier. I mean I could sleep on the floor, I don’t care.” You say. “That would be incredibly uncomfortable and probably quite disgusting. Our trailer isn’t exactly the cleanest. I mean I’d offer my bed, but given that we’re going to need all our energy to pack up tomorrow, I’d like to get a good night’s sleep.” Klepto remarks. “Why don’t I sleep over in your trailer?” Lifto asks. “I know Ranko’s trailer is big enough for one other person. I could stay over, you guys would get a little extra room tonight and you can sleep safely without worry.” “Hrmm, that’s…generous of you Lifto.” Klepto remarks. “It’s not like that, I’m just offering a solution.” Lifto says though it does seem like he might be hoping this act of chivalry will lead to something more. While you’d hate to cause hard feelings within the group or possibly lead someone on, you know one thing is certain; you still don’t want to sleep alone tonight. > You stick with your idea Lifto might mean well, but you’d rather stick with your original plan. “No, I’m not going to feel safe in my trailer until we leave the damn area, so I still want to sleep in your trailer.” “Well, okay but I’m telling you it’s going to be crowded and like I said that floor isn’t something you want to sleep on.” Klepto says. You assure the rest that you’ll be fine and head back with them to the trailer and that’s when you truly begin to appreciate Klepto’s warnings. The floor of their trailer is filthier than Ranko’s. A lot of food leavings, wrappers and some dirty clothing. You imagine that Fatty is probably the biggest contributor to the trash. Oddly the smell isn’t that bad, but you’re not sure about sleeping on the floor anymore. “Uh, I see what you mean. I think you’re right. If I slept on the floor, I’d wake up stuck to it.” You say. “I told you, so what did you want to do?” Klepto asks. “My offer still stands Suzy and I swear I’m not going to try anything. The alleviation of your worries is my foremost concern.” Lifto remarks. “And that’s sweet, but I’m still sleeping here and not on the floor. I’m taking one of those beds.” At this point the rest of the clowns are a little surprised by your demand. “Uh look Suzy, I know you’re concerned about sleeping in your trailer tonight even if I think there isn’t anything to worry about and I know we’ve all gotten a little closer and we all like each other, but come on you don’t seriously think one of us is going to give up our bed for a disgusting floor!” Klepto remarks. “You don’t have to I’m taking Shrimpy’s bed.” “I’m not sleeping on the floor either!” Shrimpy remarks. “You don’t have to, I’ll share it with you.” “WAIT WHAT?!” all of them say. “Look, it’s like this. I’m not going to take up that much room in your beds, which means Fatty and Lifto’s beds are out since they themselves can barely fit in them. That leaves Klepto and Shrimpy. Personally I want as much room as I can get and with no offense to Shrimpy due to his size, he’s got more room to spare.” Shrimpy smugly smiles at the others. “Makes sense to me! Okay let’s get to bed everyone!” Shrimpy says excitedly. “Hey wait a minute! We didn’t agree to this!” Klepto remarks. “Yeah, it seems like you were worried about me trying something yet you’re going to sleep in Shrimpy’s bed? You might be waking up sticky anyway with that little perv next to you.” Lifto says. “Oh no I won’t because Shrimpy is going to not only sleep with his back towards me, we’re also going to sleep head to toe…well toe to waist anyway. And if I so much feel any sort of unwanted grope, fondle or bad touch during the night there will be severe consequences to his man parts. I might be a little nervous about sleeping by myself tonight, but I’m not nervous about punching a dwarf in the balls because he’s perving on me. Understood?” “I get it.” Shrimpy remarks, but he doesn’t seem any less disappointed in this arrangement though. “And if anyone doesn’t like it, well my trailer is currently empty for anyone. Lots of room to get a good night’s sleep.” You add. Nobody takes you up on your trailer offer or says anything else though you hear some grumbling from Fatty who says he just wants to get off his feet and sleep and on that note you all head for dreamland. You get in Shrimpy’s bed first and get into a comfortable position, and then Shrimpy does likewise at the opposite end of the bed. You’re semi-awake for a while wondering if Shrimpy is going to ignore your warning, but he’s asleep pretty fast. Honestly its Fatty’s snoring that’s more bothersome. You guess the others are used to it. As you start to get sleepy you can’t believe you’re not only sharing a bed with a midget clown, but that you’re going to leave everything behind tomorrow. The funny thing is you’re getting a lot more comfortable with that idea now. You think this is the longest you’ve gone without constant Internet or TV stimulation and you don’t mind at all. Eventually you do fall asleep feeling almost as safe as you did in your basement. > Next day… WEDNESDAY “Hey Suzy get up, time to start packing up.” Klepto says tapping your shoulder. “Okay…” you reply groggily. You don’t feel a small figure near the bottom your legs so you assume Shrimpy must’ve already gotten up. “Well that wasn’t that bad, Shrimpy even honored the agreement.” You say sitting up. “Or maybe you’re just a really sound sleeper.” Klepto remarks. “Hrm, well if that’s the case he better at least have the sense to not brag about it. Anyway, I suppose I’ll take my leave to wash up a bit and change clothes.” “Wish I could come with you.” Klepto says. “Excuse me?” you say. “Ha ha ha no not that, I meant it sucks having to share the small ass bathroom we have in this trailer. Fatty’s in there right now and well you can figure out how it’s going to be after he leaves.” “Yeah, I’d rather not have that mental image right now. See you around.” You say and start to leave. “Wait, uh Suzy…I…” Klepto calls out. “Yes?” “(Sigh) Look I know I probably haven’t been showing exactly prince charming behavior, but I just want to say, I really like you. I mean REALLY like you.” “Yeah I got that impression a long time ago.” You respond. “Yeah, but I’m trying to say it’s not just physical.” “I find that a little harder to believe…however I’m not really going to fault you for it, but I’m going to need a lot more proof that you want something deeper than just sex.” “Well what? Like a ring or something?” “Heh, I don’t think you’re exactly in a financial position for all that. Look, I like you too, but this probably isn’t the best time to expect anything more from me than just friendship. I’m still trying to get used to the fact of this being my new life now not to mention I’m just getting over breaking up with what was my first and only boyfriend. So I might prefer my own company for a while. However that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t TRY to gain my affection. But only IF you REALLY want something meaningful with me. If not, then I’d suggest that you not waste either of our time and you go find a less discerning mate. I don’t need prince charming either, I just need someone I can count on and isn’t going to be a complete jerk. And if it helps, so far you’re doing a little bit better in that department than anyone else here.” “Okay.” Klepto says with a nod and brief smile before you leave. Well there it is, someone has openly professed a desire to be your boyfriend. You knew it was going to be one of them eventually though. You can only imagine the others will be attempting to woo you as well just like in your routine with them. Funny how life starts to imitate art. You don’t know how sincere Klepto is even if he has been pleasant for the most part. (Can you really ever trust a guy with the name Klepto?) Attractiveness wise, Klepto probably is the best of the lot. Lifto would probably provide the best protection, but the guy is tough to look at even with clown make up on and as far as Fatty is concerned, the only thing that runs through your mind is potential sexual positions and only one of which doesn’t result in you being crushed. Part of you wonders if you’re bad for being shallow, but then you remember they’re all attracted to you mostly due to your looks in the first place. Though for some reason you find Shrimpy’s size adorable… in fact you might find some of the others dwarves that work here adorable as well if they weren’t quite so vulgar with you. Maybe you’ve got a hidden dwarf fetish you didn’t know about before. Oh well, you’re not going to worry about any of this right now. As you head back to your own trailer, you see most of the dwarves doing all the labor of packing down the carnival; others are helping, but most are just packing down their own respective stages and such. “Hey clown slut, if you’re not actually going to be sleeping in your own trailer and just going to be playing cum dumpster to your painted freak friends, the least you can do is give it to one of us!” a tattooed lady with big black Mohawk and several piercings in her face remarks catching you off guard. A couple of other tattooed women stand behind her agreeing with her statement. You briefly remember her calling you names from yesterday. Her name’s Razor and she does a human pincushion type act. “I didn’t use my trailer last night, because I didn’t feel safe by myself.” You say. “Oh? Just a scared little babe in the woods huh? Well you’re by yourself now. What’re you going to do without your clown crew to protect you?” Razor remarks and pokes you in the chest with her finger. You look around and while there are a couple of people standing by, none of them are helping you. While Razor isn’t much bigger than you, she definitely looks tougher. Combine that with the fact she has two friends that also look like they’ll join in and you don’t think you’ll stand a chance if it actually came down to a fight. > You run Running was always a tried and true tactic when you had to deal with Kelly’s bullying, no reason to change now… You turn immediately to run to your trailer, but predictably Razor and her lot aren’t going to just let you get away. “Get that fuckin’ clown bitch!” Razor shouts. As you rush past the other carnies you can’t help but notice none of them are trying to stop this. You start to think that maybe travelling with this fucked up carnival might not be in your future. When you get to your trailer the door is slightly ajar. You also notice a couple things out of place from last time, not to mention it looks like someone spent some time in your bed and soiled it with their “essence”. You don’t have time to notice anything else, but its apparent that someone was here last night and you dodged a bullet, unfortunately you aren’t ducking twice. As you attempt to lock your door, Razor smashes it open causing it to hit you in the face. While you reeling back from this, Razor has already picked you up and punched you in the face. The rest of her goons are right behind her. “Lock that door, I wanna enjoy this!” Razor orders one of her crew and pulls out a straight razor. “Now, I’m do you a favor. I’m gonna cut your mouth so wide that you’ll be able to chug three cocks at the same time. You’ll be able to make it part of your act, Sucko the clown!” Razor says and lunges at you. Naturally you’re not going to just let her give you a Glasglow smile, so you try to defend yourself. You manage to throw a few nearby items at her, but it isn’t enough to stop her. In fact, your struggling makes her “accidently” stab you in throat and cutting an artery. You fall to the bed clutching your neck, which is bleeding profusely. “SHIT!” Razor shouts. “Fuck! I didn’t think we were going to kill her!” one of her goons says. “I wasn’t trying to, but the bitch kept struggling. Let’s get outta here!” she shouts and soon all of them have left your trailer. You on the other hand continue to bleed out and soon die from your wound.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY “Hey Suzy get up, time to start packing up.” Klepto says tapping your shoulder. “Okay…” you reply groggily. You don’t feel a small figure near the bottom your legs so you assume Shrimpy must’ve already gotten up. “Well that wasn’t that bad, Shrimpy even honored the agreement.” You say sitting up. “Or maybe you’re just a really sound sleeper.” Klepto remarks. “Hrm, well if that’s the case he better at least have the sense to not brag about it. Anyway, I suppose I’ll take my leave to wash up a bit and change clothes.” “Wish I could come with you.” Klepto says. “Excuse me?” you say. “Ha ha ha no not that, I meant it sucks having to share the small ass bathroom we have in this trailer. Fatty’s in there right now and well you can figure out how it’s going to be after he leaves.” “Yeah, I’d rather not have that mental image right now. See you around.” You say and start to leave. “Wait, uh Suzy…I…” Klepto calls out. “Yes?” “(Sigh) Look I know I probably haven’t been showing exactly prince charming behavior, but I just want to say, I really like you. I mean REALLY like you.” “Yeah I got that impression a long time ago.” You respond. “Yeah, but I’m trying to say it’s not just physical.” “I find that a little harder to believe…however I’m not really going to fault you for it, but I’m going to need a lot more proof that you want something deeper than just sex.” “Well what? Like a ring or something?” “Heh, I don’t think you’re exactly in a financial position for all that. Look, I like you too, but this probably isn’t the best time to expect anything more from me than just friendship. I’m still trying to get used to the fact of this being my new life now not to mention I’m just getting over breaking up with what was my first and only boyfriend. So I might prefer my own company for a while. However that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t TRY to gain my affection. But only IF you REALLY want something meaningful with me. If not, then I’d suggest that you not waste either of our time and you go find a less discerning mate. I don’t need prince charming either, I just need someone I can count on and isn’t going to be a complete jerk. And if it helps, so far you’re doing a little bit better in that department than anyone else here.” “Okay.” Klepto says with a nod and brief smile before you leave. Well there it is, someone has openly professed a desire to be your boyfriend. You knew it was going to be one of them eventually though. You can only imagine the others will be attempting to woo you as well just like in your routine with them. Funny how life starts to imitate art. You don’t know how sincere Klepto is even if he has been pleasant for the most part. (Can you really ever trust a guy with the name Klepto?) Attractiveness wise, Klepto probably is the best of the lot. Lifto would probably provide the best protection, but the guy is tough to look at even with clown make up on and as far as Fatty is concerned, the only thing that runs through your mind is potential sexual positions and only one of which doesn’t result in you being crushed. Part of you wonders if you’re bad for being shallow, but then you remember they’re all attracted to you mostly due to your looks in the first place. Though for some reason you find Shrimpy’s size adorable… in fact you might find some of the others dwarves that work here adorable as well if they weren’t quite so vulgar with you. Maybe you’ve got a hidden dwarf fetish you didn’t know about before. Oh well, you’re not going to worry about any of this right now. As you head back to your own trailer, you see most of the dwarves doing all the labor of packing down the carnival; others are helping, but most are just packing down their own respective stages and such. “Hey clown slut, if you’re not actually going to be sleeping in your own trailer and just going to be playing cum dumpster to your painted freak friends, the least you can do is give it to one of us!” a tattooed lady with big black Mohawk and several piercings in her face remarks catching you off guard. A couple of other tattooed women stand behind her agreeing with her statement. You briefly remember her calling you names from yesterday. Her name’s Razor and she does a human pincushion type act. “I didn’t use my trailer last night, because I didn’t feel safe by myself.” You say. “Oh? Just a scared little babe in the woods huh? Well you’re by yourself now. What’re you going to do without your clown crew to protect you?” Razor remarks and pokes you in the chest with her finger. You look around and while there are a couple of people standing by, none of them are helping you. While Razor isn’t much bigger than you, she definitely looks tougher. Combine that with the fact she has two friends that also look like they’ll join in and you don’t think you’ll stand a chance if it actually came down to a fight. > You stand your ground Maybe this isn’t the best idea you’ve ever had, but after all those years of dealing with your sister Kelly, you aren’t going to put up with bullying anymore. You’ve never really been a fighter before (Trying to protect your face from Kelly’s couple attempts to disfigure you don’t count) so it isn’t surprising that when you throw a punch at Razor she easily dodges and catches your arm. “Oh ho! Harley Quinn has some fight in her! Good, didn’t want this to be too easy!” Razor says and throws you to the ground. Before you can get up you feel a kick to your ribs. Lacking any other tactics you lunge at one of Razor’s legs and sink your teeth into it hard enough to draw blood. “AH SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK!” Razor yells trying to get you off of her leg, at this point her friends step in to help pull you off. You’re dragged off and restrained while Razor takes a moment to examine her wound. “Goddamn it! Shit!” Razor exclaims looking at the fairly deep bite wound you’ve left. “I thought you were a human pincushion, what’s the matter can’t handle a few little teeth?” you ask spitting blood in Razor’s direction. “Hope you enjoyed yourself, because that’s the last time you’re going to be using those pearly whites. Say hello to eating through a straw from now on, but look on the bright side, the next time you engage in your favorite past time of sucking clown dick, they won’t have to worry about getting scraped.” Razor says and starts to walk toward you, but suddenly Roofie stops her. “Alright that will do Razor, I saw what happened and I’ll not have unnecessary strife in this carnival! Go back to packing down your stage!” Roofie scolds. Razor looks at him a moment and then you and then waves to her friends to let you go. “One day you aren’t going to be running this show Roofie.” Razor says as she leaves with her friends. “Maybe not, but that day isn’t today.” Roofie says. As you get up and try to brush yourself off, Roofie slowly walks over to you. He already smells like alcohol. “Well Suzy, first Ranko, now Razor, looks like you’re just making friends all over.” “It’s not my fault! I didn’t do anything to her!” “I know you didn’t, you alright?” “Yeah, but now I probably got a target on my back, one of many probably since Razor isn’t the only one who hates me around here.” “Yeah I’ve noticed. Just because I’m half drunk most of the time doesn’t mean I’m not aware of what goes on around here. Listen some of the negative feelings that some have for you will die down in time. You seem to be getting along with your new clown co-workers very well though. You spent the night over in their trailer despite the fact you have your own.” “I only did that because I didn’t feel safe sleeping alone last night. There was a really creepy big guy staring at me all day yesterday, I dunno maybe I was just being paranoid.” “Hmm, did you wish to bunk with them or even someone else then? I mean I can make arrangements if you feel uncomfortable sleeping alone.” “No, I appreciate the fact you gave me my own trailer. Besides, given all the new friends I’m making, I’d be safer sleeping alone and bunking with Klepto and the rest, well I get the impression that would cause other problems.” You say. “Okay then. Well, I’ll let you get back to your trailer. We’ll probably be ready to go just before nightfall so I’m sure Lifto will be around then to hook this thing up to one of our trucks. So until then just enjoy the downtime.” “Wait, aren’t I supposed to be helping pack up the carnival?” “You? Nah, the rest of the guys can handle it. Really I get the impression they wouldn’t let you do much work anyway what with them all being enamored with you and all. And the dwarves got the overall pack up covered. Always have, it’s what they do. Backbone of the carnival and all…and all a bit of a waste of time given what’s to come, but hey we do what we know.” Roofie says and leaves. A little more cryptic future doom prediction by Roofie, you get the impression that’s his general personality, but at least he’s always pleasant with you. With no more distractions you arrive at your trailer and that’s when you begin to feel nervous again. First of all the door is slightly ajar. You also notice a couple things out of place from last time, not to mention it looks like someone spent some time in your bed and soiled it with their “essence”. Your cell phone that you left here is also gone, but given that its batteries were starting to die and you wouldn’t have Bobby to pay for it much longer it isn’t much of a loss. Someone was definitely here last night. You don’t know if it was Ranko, that big creepy retard staring at you or someone else, but either way you dodged a bullet. You half expect the person to jump out at you from some hidden spot, but that doesn’t happen. Whoever was here, probably left before the morning, and probably when they realized you weren’t coming here. You re-check all the trailer’s locations (even if it isn’t the biggest place) and block the door with a chair before feeling safe enough to shower and get changed. Afterwards you go through the mundane process of actually cleaning up the trailer. You figure if you don’t need to help pack up the carnival, you can at least spend your time clean up your living area. (First thing is throwing out the befouled bed sheet) By the time you’re finished it’s the afternoon and you’re tired again. You’re still not used to being awake so early and you didn’t get much sleep last night so you lie down in your now cleaner bed and shut your eyes for just a bit… You don’t know how much time passes while you’re asleep again, but when you do wake up it’s to a loud thumping at the door. “OPEN UP BY ORDER OF THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD!” National Guard? What the hell is going on? “Hold on, hold on, I’m getting up!” you shout. “Open the door miss or we’ll be forced to bash it open!” a voice calls back. Not wishing to potentially get shot you comply and upon opening the door several national guardsmen stand outside. “Come with us miss, we need you all together for your safety.” A young soldier says guiding you out. “Where are we going?” you ask. “Just to that big tent over there. Don’t worry, this is all for your protection.” Somehow you don’t quite believe that, but when you scan your surroundings, you see that the carnival appears to be under control by the National Guard so there isn’t much choice but to comply. You don’t know why or how this came to be, but from some of the military radios you overhear it sounds like riots have broken out in your town. Is this some sort of martial law? When you arrive in the big tent, most of carnival is there. Most are sitting at tables and complaining about this fate. You see Roofie actively arguing with one of the higher ranking soldiers who looks utterly unmoved by what he has to say. “Goddamnit, just because people are rioting in the town doesn’t mean any bullshit is going on here! We’re not even locals! We’re just passing through and were about to leave!” Roofie says. “Yeah I heard you the first time, but my orders are to secure this entire area and will be under watch until further notice. Now I suggest you get out of my face before I stomp a mud hole in your ass clown!” the officer remarks and walks out of the tent. You go over to Roofie. “What’s going on exactly?” you ask. “End times like I always knew would come Suzy. Just didn’t figure I’d have to spend my last days stuck under the gun by a bunch of fascists! These government dickheads think they can control what’s coming soon, when they really can’t control shit. These fools don’t even know they’re all really just puppets for that fucking Ground Zero corporation that’s been shilling bomb shelters ads all over the damn place.” This is definitely a new side you’ve seen of Roofie, he’s really mad. He’s also really drunk even if he’s pretty coherent. You see Klepto and the rest waving you over. “Why don’t we just go over there and…” “Y’know what Suzy? There aren’t even that many of these fuckers. It’s a skeleton crew at best. I bet we can take them. I mean we certainly outnumber them.” “What?! Are you nuts? They’re armed with machine guns!” you say. “And? So a few of us die? We’re ALL gonna be dead soon anyway, why wait? Better to die on your feet than live on your knees. Seriously, all we gotta do is get a couple of those guns away from them and it already evens up the playing field. Seriously you think they’re probably going to let us live anyway? They’re probably going to line us up like baby seals and blow our brains out by tomorrow. I’m telling you I’m getting our own troops in order to rebel tonight.” Roofie seems pretty intent on going through with this plan, the only thing you can think of to do is either try to help or try to prevent the violence. > You help Roofie “Okay well maybe you’ve got a point, but can you really stir this lot up to swarm attack people with machine guns?” you ask. “One way to find out!” Roofie says and without another word he runs over to the nearest guard and smashes a bottle over his head. It might’ve been more effective had the guardsman not had a helmet on. The guardsman that was assaulted bashes Roofie to the ground and fires several shots into him. This causes shock from everyone and in your case you even freeze up for a moment. Nobody is bum rushing the guardsmen though. Roofie won’t be getting up again, but at this point the guardsmen continue to panic and believe they’re under a greater attack. (Despite that everyone is too scared to do so) “SHIT! WE NEED BACK UP! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!” the other guardsman exclaims and begins firing randomly at carnies, which includes you. Unfortunately, you were close enough that you fatally get hit by some of these bullets despite trying to get out of the way.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe this isn’t the best idea you’ve ever had, but after all those years of dealing with your sister Kelly, you aren’t going to put up with bullying anymore. You’ve never really been a fighter before (Trying to protect your face from Kelly’s couple attempts to disfigure you don’t count) so it isn’t surprising that when you throw a punch at Razor she easily dodges and catches your arm. “Oh ho! Harley Quinn has some fight in her! Good, didn’t want this to be too easy!” Razor says and throws you to the ground. Before you can get up you feel a kick to your ribs. Lacking any other tactics you lunge at one of Razor’s legs and sink your teeth into it hard enough to draw blood. “AH SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK!” Razor yells trying to get you off of her leg, at this point her friends step in to help pull you off. You’re dragged off and restrained while Razor takes a moment to examine her wound. “Goddamn it! Shit!” Razor exclaims looking at the fairly deep bite wound you’ve left. “I thought you were a human pincushion, what’s the matter can’t handle a few little teeth?” you ask spitting blood in Razor’s direction. “Hope you enjoyed yourself, because that’s the last time you’re going to be using those pearly whites. Say hello to eating through a straw from now on, but look on the bright side, the next time you engage in your favorite past time of sucking clown dick, they won’t have to worry about getting scraped.” Razor says and starts to walk toward you, but suddenly Roofie stops her. “Alright that will do Razor, I saw what happened and I’ll not have unnecessary strife in this carnival! Go back to packing down your stage!” Roofie scolds. Razor looks at him a moment and then you and then waves to her friends to let you go. “One day you aren’t going to be running this show Roofie.” Razor says as she leaves with her friends. “Maybe not, but that day isn’t today.” Roofie says. As you get up and try to brush yourself off, Roofie slowly walks over to you. He already smells like alcohol. “Well Suzy, first Ranko, now Razor, looks like you’re just making friends all over.” “It’s not my fault! I didn’t do anything to her!” “I know you didn’t, you alright?” “Yeah, but now I probably got a target on my back, one of many probably since Razor isn’t the only one who hates me around here.” “Yeah I’ve noticed. Just because I’m half drunk most of the time doesn’t mean I’m not aware of what goes on around here. Listen some of the negative feelings that some have for you will die down in time. You seem to be getting along with your new clown co-workers very well though. You spent the night over in their trailer despite the fact you have your own.” “I only did that because I didn’t feel safe sleeping alone last night. There was a really creepy big guy staring at me all day yesterday, I dunno maybe I was just being paranoid.” “Hmm, did you wish to bunk with them or even someone else then? I mean I can make arrangements if you feel uncomfortable sleeping alone.” “No, I appreciate the fact you gave me my own trailer. Besides, given all the new friends I’m making, I’d be safer sleeping alone and bunking with Klepto and the rest, well I get the impression that would cause other problems.” You say. “Okay then. Well, I’ll let you get back to your trailer. We’ll probably be ready to go just before nightfall so I’m sure Lifto will be around then to hook this thing up to one of our trucks. So until then just enjoy the downtime.” “Wait, aren’t I supposed to be helping pack up the carnival?” “You? Nah, the rest of the guys can handle it. Really I get the impression they wouldn’t let you do much work anyway what with them all being enamored with you and all. And the dwarves got the overall pack up covered. Always have, it’s what they do. Backbone of the carnival and all…and all a bit of a waste of time given what’s to come, but hey we do what we know.” Roofie says and leaves. A little more cryptic future doom prediction by Roofie, you get the impression that’s his general personality, but at least he’s always pleasant with you. With no more distractions you arrive at your trailer and that’s when you begin to feel nervous again. First of all the door is slightly ajar. You also notice a couple things out of place from last time, not to mention it looks like someone spent some time in your bed and soiled it with their “essence”. Your cell phone that you left here is also gone, but given that its batteries were starting to die and you wouldn’t have Bobby to pay for it much longer it isn’t much of a loss. Someone was definitely here last night. You don’t know if it was Ranko, that big creepy retard staring at you or someone else, but either way you dodged a bullet. You half expect the person to jump out at you from some hidden spot, but that doesn’t happen. Whoever was here, probably left before the morning, and probably when they realized you weren’t coming here. You re-check all the trailer’s locations (even if it isn’t the biggest place) and block the door with a chair before feeling safe enough to shower and get changed. Afterwards you go through the mundane process of actually cleaning up the trailer. You figure if you don’t need to help pack up the carnival, you can at least spend your time clean up your living area. (First thing is throwing out the befouled bed sheet) By the time you’re finished it’s the afternoon and you’re tired again. You’re still not used to being awake so early and you didn’t get much sleep last night so you lie down in your now cleaner bed and shut your eyes for just a bit… You don’t know how much time passes while you’re asleep again, but when you do wake up it’s to a loud thumping at the door. “OPEN UP BY ORDER OF THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD!” National Guard? What the hell is going on? “Hold on, hold on, I’m getting up!” you shout. “Open the door miss or we’ll be forced to bash it open!” a voice calls back. Not wishing to potentially get shot you comply and upon opening the door several national guardsmen stand outside. “Come with us miss, we need you all together for your safety.” A young soldier says guiding you out. “Where are we going?” you ask. “Just to that big tent over there. Don’t worry, this is all for your protection.” Somehow you don’t quite believe that, but when you scan your surroundings, you see that the carnival appears to be under control by the National Guard so there isn’t much choice but to comply. You don’t know why or how this came to be, but from some of the military radios you overhear it sounds like riots have broken out in your town. Is this some sort of martial law? When you arrive in the big tent, most of carnival is there. Most are sitting at tables and complaining about this fate. You see Roofie actively arguing with one of the higher ranking soldiers who looks utterly unmoved by what he has to say. “Goddamnit, just because people are rioting in the town doesn’t mean any bullshit is going on here! We’re not even locals! We’re just passing through and were about to leave!” Roofie says. “Yeah I heard you the first time, but my orders are to secure this entire area and will be under watch until further notice. Now I suggest you get out of my face before I stomp a mud hole in your ass clown!” the officer remarks and walks out of the tent. You go over to Roofie. “What’s going on exactly?” you ask. “End times like I always knew would come Suzy. Just didn’t figure I’d have to spend my last days stuck under the gun by a bunch of fascists! These government dickheads think they can control what’s coming soon, when they really can’t control shit. These fools don’t even know they’re all really just puppets for that fucking Ground Zero corporation that’s been shilling bomb shelters ads all over the damn place.” This is definitely a new side you’ve seen of Roofie, he’s really mad. He’s also really drunk even if he’s pretty coherent. You see Klepto and the rest waving you over. “Why don’t we just go over there and…” “Y’know what Suzy? There aren’t even that many of these fuckers. It’s a skeleton crew at best. I bet we can take them. I mean we certainly outnumber them.” “What?! Are you nuts? They’re armed with machine guns!” you say. “And? So a few of us die? We’re ALL gonna be dead soon anyway, why wait? Better to die on your feet than live on your knees. Seriously, all we gotta do is get a couple of those guns away from them and it already evens up the playing field. Seriously you think they’re probably going to let us live anyway? They’re probably going to line us up like baby seals and blow our brains out by tomorrow. I’m telling you I’m getting our own troops in order to rebel tonight.” Roofie seems pretty intent on going through with this plan, the only thing you can think of to do is either try to help or try to prevent the violence. > You prevent the violence Roofie’s plan isn’t going to accomplish anything except get a bunch of people killed, and you could be one of them! You think fast. “Uh, okay Roofie, let’s just go over here and get the battle plan together first okay? I’m sure Klepto and the rest are going to want to hear this first.” “Hrgh, okay. You don’t need to guide me damn it, I’m not that drunk!” Roofie says and pulls his arm away from your hand. When you get to Klepto’s table he and the rest know something is wrong when Roofie starts going on about “bum rushing those government puppet bastards.” Shrimpy and Fatty both attempt to calm him down, but he’s not having any of it. “What the hell is going on Suzy? Roofie’s talkin’ crazier than usual.” Klepto asks. “He wants to have the entire carnival attack the National Guard, do something before he causes too much of a scene.” You say. “Do something like what? You don’t mean kill him do you?!” Klepto asks. “No! But I dunno maybe knock him out to buy us time and he can sober up or something. Lifto, knock him out.” You say. “Me?! Why me?” Lifto asks. “Because you’re the strongest of all of us and I’m guessing you could do it in one hit. Just do it, before he gets all of us killed!” Lifto’s a little reluctant and probably wouldn’t do it normally, but it the situation does seem dire enough so while Roofie is continuing to rant at Shrimpy and Fatty he punches Roofie in the back of the head, knocking the older man completely out and falling into Fatty’s arms. Some of the other carnies have witnessed this, but they don’t seem to do anything about it. In fact it just goes to show how little most of them respect Roofie in the scheme of the things. Sort of a shame. “Holy shit, did you have to punch him so hard? He’s an old guy! You might’ve put him in a coma!” Shrimpy remarks. “I just did what Suzy told me!” “Alright look, I didn’t want harm to come to Roofie either, but the guy needed to be silenced for at least a moment. I think the bigger problem we’ve got is the other carnies. I get the sense that they think Roofie is no longer a factor in the leadership role, so expect a power play. We all need to stick together for protection.” “What about the National Guard? I mean shouldn’t we be worrying about them?” Lifto asks. “The National Guard is what’s keeping this carnival from exploding into an orgy of violence right now. Nobody’s going to risk pissing them off by causing problems, well not now at least without Roofie’s plan of stirring them all up.” You reply. “Well what the hell do we do now?” Klepto asks. “I don’t know! I mean I’m just thinking on my feet here! You all told me that we’re the most hated group in the carnival, so we should make friends somehow? Shrimpy, do you have ANY pull with the dwarves?” “Pull? I suppose I have enough for me, I mean even as a clown deep down I’ll always be a dwarf. But as I’ve mentioned before I can’t promise anything for the rest of you.” “Well I dunno, do some diplomacy or something. As for the rest of us, we need to just stick to our table and look after Roofie, and make sure he’s doing okay throughout the night. Maybe I’ll try to charm one of the soldiers or something. The key thing to remember is we need to survive this together.” You never thought you’d start sounding like your older brother Ben with the whole survivalist shtick, but if it helps thinking like a paranoid person then you aren’t going to dismiss such thoughts. As night starts to fall the mood in the large army “quarantine” tent grows more restless. Two guardsmen remain on duty at all times though they’re not exactly happy about the situation either. You do manage to get friendly with one of them by the name of Roger and extract a bit more info. Roger tells you that you and the rest of your carny friends shouldn’t worry too much since this is just a formality. He says that things are much worse in the town and expects his unit will be transferred to support his fellow guardsmen there in a day or two. At which point you’ll all be free to go. Hearing about the mass riots in town makes you wonder how things are going for your family. You’re almost sort of worried about them, even Kelly, but there isn’t much that can be done now. Hopefully they’ve found some sort of safety. “Is this going on everywhere?” you ask. “Well I don’t know a lot of detail, I’m just a grunt in the scheme of things, but things are getting pretty bad, I mean haven’t you heard the news lately?” Roger says. “Not really, sort of disconnected from the rest of the world lately.” You say. “Well world tensions have been really high, it’s like every country is gearing up for world war three and domestically people have seemingly gone batshit insane with regards to the rules of common decency and morality. I guess a lot of people are just scared and I can’t blame them on some level, but we still need law and order. Surely you can understand that right?” “Sure.” You say in agreement since you’d rather not make any potential enemies of the military even if it is just one grunt. In any case Roger smiles when you agree, you get the impression he’s just as concerned being out here. After a few more pleasantries, Roger says he really needs to get back to “standing guard” and not talking to you as his superior is a real hard ass and he doesn’t want to get into trouble or you for that matter. You thank him for the talk and head back to your colleagues. Of course some of the carnies seeing you get “cozy” with one of the guardsmen makes them even dislike you even more and you occasionally hear mutterings and name calling by others. Razor hasn’t taken her eyes off of you the whole time you’ve been here. She’s obviously got her sights set on you, regardless of what goes down, she’s just waiting for opportunity. On the plus side when Shrimpy returns he says that while the dwarves are going to make their own play when the time is right, he’s managed to convince them not to attack the clowns as long as you stay out of their way. (And apparently they’re ONLY extending that courtesy because of Shrimpy’s ties as well you being…well you, though the female dwarves predictably don’t like you too much) The night goes on and while everyone is in a heightened state of readiness nobody can stay awake forever, so eventually people start falling asleep though its mostly in shifts for most groups and you are no exception. Eventually though when it’s your turn to sleep, you try to find some sort of comfort on one of the many sleeping mats provided. It’s pretty much impossible, but exhaustion helps you along. Eventually you drift off… > Next day… THURSDAY Several gunshots cause you to wake up. “What the?!” you say still staying on the floor. “Shhhh! Quiet!” Klepto remarks and points over to the one in charge of the guardsmen. He and five others stand near the tent entrance with weapons out. “I don’t give a shit WHO started the fight or even why! You carny freaks can tear each other apart after we leave, but until then we’re here to maintain order and by god that’s what the fuck we’re going to do! If I have to break up another fight for any reason, next time the shots aren’t going in the air!” the officer remarks and leaves. The other guardsmen continue to stand near the entrance watching everyone who eventually all sit back down. “What the hell happened?” you ask. “Razor and some of the others got into an argument with Phil and his friends.” Klepto says. “Who’s Phil?” you say. “He does that fire eating stuff. Anyway, they kicked his ass and just as things were going to get worse, the guardsmen came in and put a stop to it like you just saw. Looks like the battle for control over the carnival is already starting.” “Surprised we didn’t get attacked then.” “Well like Shrimpy said yesterday, we’ve got dwarf protection for now, but who knows how long that arrangement is going to last.” “Can’t believe I slept through a fight, where’s Roofie?” “Oh him? He’s still over there out of it, even the gunshots didn’t wake him up.” Klepto says pointing to Roofie, who then surprises everyone. “I’m quite awake Klepto, I’m just resting with my eyes closed No point in getting up at this point anyway. It’s obvious this carnival has lost respect in me; I’d blame you all for smashing me in the back of the head last night, but that was really just a catalyst. (Sigh) Doesn’t matter, I predict that we’ll all be dead in two days at best.” Roofie says. “Roofie, we really didn’t want to do it, but you were talking crazy with your idea of attacking the military. Your plan would’ve gotten everyone killed.” You say. “And that may still happen if recent events are any indication. At least with my plan I would’ve died with the carnival intact rather than seeing it splitting up before my eyes.” Nobody else really knows what to say at this point, so you all just get silent and continue to converse with each other. “So what’s the next move?” Klepto asks. “I dunno, escape I guess? Can we get to one of the vehicles quickly and drive off?” you say. “Good luck with that given all the guardsmen on high alert now.” Fatty points out. “Yeah I don’t think we’re getting very far.” Lifto adds. You sit down and exhale wondering what to do next, but you can’t really think right now. It would seem that due to your more proactive suggestions and Roofie’s apathy you’ve somehow become the “leader” of your little group now. You hadn’t really planned on that. “For right now, we’re just going to stay put, I’ll try to think of something.” You remark. The rest of your group lack any ideas of their own, so they comply with your plan (or lack there of). Time passes and you mostly do a lot of casual conversation and mental speculation of what might happen “if you do X.” You half expect someone else to try to escape, particularly when they say they need to use the bathroom, but given that they always return under the same guard they left with it would seem nobody has the guts to really try it, not even Razor. Nobody else in your group comes up with any plans either, but you do notice Shrimpy occasionally heads over to the group of dwarves. He claims he’s just securing the “alliance” but you’re more inclined to believe he’s just trying to secure his own safety. So far though the dwarves are still supposed to be on your side. Roofie has continued to lie on the sleeping mat not saying anything to anyone. You still feel a little bad about betraying him especially given that he not only brought you into this carnival and liked you enough to give you a personal trailer, but also that he potentially saved you a lot of pain when Razor was going to kick your ass. You go over to talk to him. “Hey Roofie.” You say. “Hrm, hey Suzy.” He grunts. “Are you okay?” “Me? Well other than not having a drink all day, I’m fine. Just been making peace with my life I suppose.” Roofie says. “Roofie, I’m still very sorry about…” “What? Having Lifto wack me over the head? I’ve forgotten about that or rather I’ve rethought my own stance on that. You probably were right, I mean sure I would’ve rather died like that, but that was sort of selfish of me to want to use my last bit of dwindling influence to get everyone to follow me. Would’ve especially been a shame if you’d gotten killed in the crossfire. You’re actually very talented.” “You’re just saying that.” “No it’s true. I didn’t make my decision to hire you based on looks or on a whim. In the brief moment you’ve performed as a clown you were good. I mean it’s obvious you’re even a leader with how you got the other clowns hanging on your decisions. (Sigh) If only you had come across this carnival sooner. Things might’ve been much different.” “Well I’m not sure how much of a leader I am, because I can’t think of what comes next.” You say. “You’ll figure out something I’m sure. One thing though and while I don’t hold out much hope, if you can somehow keep this carnival together…do it. I know the current situation isn’t the best and I know you haven’t exactly been welcomed by everyone, but I see something in you that would feel fulfilled if you could experience the carnival like it once was. Like a family.” “A family?” you say with a smirk. “Hey like I said, you came in during the family fight. And that’s what happens in families sometimes. Family fights are always the most vicious, but after it dies down, sometimes the family unit can be stronger than ever. And I think you could be happy if you can keep this family from tearing itself apart completely. But you’ll have to be the one to do it. I don’t have it in me anymore.” At this point Roofie touches your hand and you pat his before leaving him be again. You wonder if this is more of a last request by a “dying” man rather than looking out for your personal fulfillment. Still, you think he’s genuine and sure it would be nice if the entire carnival became the happy family you never had, but you just don’t think that’s going to be possible. You look around and see nothing much has changed except a changing of the guards. One of them happens to be Roger, which makes you think of a possible way you could escape. The only problem is it’s going to rely on being more “charming” than you already have been with Roger and that could potentially get you into a situation you don’t want to be in. > You go to Roger While you hope you don’t have to go too far, if it means getting the hell out of this place, then maybe that’s what you’ll have to do because whether the National Guard leaves or stays the fact remains, you’re not the one to lead this carnival like Roofie thinks you are and you feel your life is in danger. You start to walk over to Roger. “Hey where are you going?” Klepto asks. “Not sure yet, but don’t wait up.” You reply and continue walking to Roger. When you get to Roger you’re all smiles, poses and charm. “Hello Roger are you doing well today?” You say in a friendly tone. “Hey, Suzy. I’m okay I guess, but I really wish your friends wouldn’t cause so much trouble. Somebody is libel to get hurt. My commanding officer isn’t exactly the tolerant type and I think you saw that earlier.” “Yes, I did. I was so scared. In fact I’m scared of the whole aura this place is giving now. It’s becoming very violent, but I feel so much safer being near you.” You say and start to touch Roger. At this point Roger is smiling back at you, but his buddy nearby is a little less approving, though you imagine its jealousy more than anything else. “Roger, we’re supposed to be keeping an eye on these carnie freaks, not fraternizing with them.” “What’s the harm Ernie? I mean she says she’s scared. What, you think she’s going to clobber me in the head and take my weapon? Come on, stop being so paranoid. We shouldn’t even be here anyway.” “Orders are orders…ugh. Whatever, I’m not going to watch you make goo goo eyes at some carnie whore. I’ll be outside this tent, try to keep your eyes on the detainees and not on her ass the whole time.” Ernie says and steps outside the tent. “What a rude person. I’m glad you’re not like that.” You say now with your arms wrapped around Roger. “Well you know, I treat people the way they want to be treated.” Roger replies. As distracted as Roger is, he’s actually keeping it together better than one would think. He keeps a tight grip on his rifle and an eye on if you’re going to attempt to grab his pistol. He also periodically looks away from you to make sure nobody is taking advantage of this situation. (Which Klepto and the rest look like they were going to do, but realize they’re still too far away to rush at Roger before he could shove you aside and open fire) Though your plan wasn’t necessarily to save everyone, but rather yourself. “So Roger, what’s a girl gotta do to get out of here?” you say seductively. “Well, like I said we should be gone later today or tomorrow at the latest.” “Too long and anything could happen within that time! Can’t you do something? I mean I could make it worth your while.” You say and run your finger across Roger’s chest. “Suzy, look, I’d really like to help, but…hey!” Roger is interrupted when you grab his hand. You bring his hand to your face and closing your eyes, you insert his index finger in your mouth and slowly suck on it making “mmmmm” sounds. This scene hasn’t gone unnoticed by more than a few carnies watching you. In fact the predictable calls of “whore”, “slut” and worse are uttered your way. Roger on the other hand is practically speechless. “I…uh…shit…” he says and then pulls his hand away staring at his finger for a moment. “Awww….but I wasn’t done sucking on you…” you say and flutter your eyes a bit, trying to look as cute as possible then you whisper in his ear: “Take me back to my trailer and I’ll show you the REAL greatest show on earth.” then you lick his ear. Roger immediately calls in Ernie loudly. Ernie rushes in with his weapon ready to kill something. “What?! What?! Are they rioting again?!” he exclaims. “No. But I REALLY need a favor! You need to watch these people and if the commander checks in on us, tell him I had a to take a shit really bad.” “What…wait… Oh fuck no! You’re gonna go fuck this little carnie whore aren’t you? Goddamnit Roger!” “Come on Ernie, you can’t help me out?” “Motherfucker, I’m always helping you out! I don’t understand why you can’t just fuck the bitch right here. Not like these people are shy and from the looks of her, she looks like it wouldn’t be the first time she’s gotten fucked in front of a live audience.” Ernie remarks. You know, while you’ve gotten used to the baseless comments about you being a woman of loose morals, it still hurts sometimes. In any case, Roger is not a man to be deterred from his lust for you right now. “Alright, fine. I didn’t want to hold this over your head, but you leave me no choice…” Roger starts to say, but whatever the threat is, Ernie doesn’t even let him finish it. “Oh fuck. (Sigh) Don’t even say it. Fine. Go. Go. Go! And don’t take too long, though I imagine in your case that won’t be a problem.” Ernie says defeated. “Thanks man! Seriously I really will remember this favor!” “Hrm. That you only got through blackmail.” As you and Roger leave, Ernie says one more thing. “Hope you’ve got condoms, because lord knows what diseases she’s got being a carnie. Her kootch might turn your dick into a fucking Siamese Twin or some shit.” “How the hell does that even make sense? Fucking asshole…” you say and start to get angry at Ernie’s comments, but Roger just take you by the hand to go back to your trailer. “Don’t mind him. Let’ hurry though, because we don’t want to bump into anyone else. It isn’t like I got leverage over everyone like I do with Ernie. So where is your trailer?” You tell him the location and the pair of you are heading over in that direction fluctuating between being “stealthy” and running. While you’re doing this, it occurs to you that you have to think up your next move. Are you really going to let him fuck you? Roger is distracted enough that you probably could grab his side arm to give you enough time to make a run for it, but while Roger might not shoot you immediately (And that’s rolling dice there) there’s nothing to say the other nearby Guardsmen won’t and you know they’ll be alerted as soon as you try to run away from Roger. Of course if you really are willing to make that ultimate “sacrifice” for freedom, Roger might even help you out a lot more in your escape attempt. Of course he could turn out to be a complete asshole and march you back to the tent after he’s had his way with you. > You make a break for it Roger is so busy keeping a look out for running into his buddies and getting to your trailer he’s now suitably distracted and while you’re so close to him, you easily grab his pistol. “HEY WHAT…” he exclaims as you back away quickly and hold the gun on him. “Drop the rifle!” you shout. He doesn’t though. “Shit. I should’ve known better. Ernie’s going to have a field day.” Roger says. “Sorry Roger, but I really need you to drop that rifle!” you say. “…nah…if you had it in you to shoot me, you would’ve by now. You’ve never shot a person and this whole situation is scary to you. You’re hoping your sex appeal will be enough to carry you through this and that I’ll be weak willed enough that I won’t call your bluff and just shoot you dead right now.” That’s an incredible amount insight for someone you thought was nothing more than just a horny grunt. Unfortunately he’s pretty much on target. For a moment there is a pause and you look at him hopefully, you even manage to start tearing up a bit. “(Sigh) Look, I told you we were going to leave soon, I dunno why you feel the need to go through this elaborate escape plan when it really isn’t necessary. Just hand the pistol over and we’ll head back to the tent.” You’re too scared of what might happen if you just surrender, so all you can do is continue to aim it at Roger. “Suzy, I’m not fucking around now give me the…” Roger begins to say and moves towards you. With his rifle slightly lowered and his hand outstretched, you nervously fire two shots at him. At this range you don’t miss even though you’re in a heightened state of anxiety. Roger falls to the ground with two in his chest and doesn’t move, you’ve killed him. “Oh my…oh god I’m sorry…(Sniff)” you say. The shots of course have drawn the attention of the other guardsmen. You hear shouting which is getting closer to your location, so you run. You hear more shouting followed by gunfire. At first you think they’ve seen you and are shooting at you, but that isn’t the case when you start to hear a few screams. Now you’re even more scared as you have no idea what’s going on. Did the carnies take advantage of this situation and start to fight back? You have no idea, but you don’t intend on sticking around. You duck and hide the best you can through the small maze of trailers and vehicles. The screams, shouting and gunfire are now accompanied by unnatural growing. Like animals of some sort. Unfortunately as you reach the far end of the carnival limits you are ambushed by something skulking behind the corner of the last trailer you were passing and the pistol goes sprawling out of your hand. You don’t even know what it is, except that you’re on the ground and it’s on your back breathing heavily and making that growling sound you heard. You then feel teeth sink deep into your shoulder. Pain and fear both rise up in you for a moment as you struggle to get free, but this thing what ever it is has a strong grip and with one of its hands it smashes your face repeatedly into the ground into your struggling becomes less, then it breaks your neck before feasting on the rest of your dead body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While you hope you don’t have to go too far, if it means getting the hell out of this place, then maybe that’s what you’ll have to do because whether the National Guard leaves or stays the fact remains, you’re not the one to lead this carnival like Roofie thinks you are and you feel your life is in danger. You start to walk over to Roger. “Hey where are you going?” Klepto asks. “Not sure yet, but don’t wait up.” You reply and continue walking to Roger. When you get to Roger you’re all smiles, poses and charm. “Hello Roger are you doing well today?” You say in a friendly tone. “Hey, Suzy. I’m okay I guess, but I really wish your friends wouldn’t cause so much trouble. Somebody is libel to get hurt. My commanding officer isn’t exactly the tolerant type and I think you saw that earlier.” “Yes, I did. I was so scared. In fact I’m scared of the whole aura this place is giving now. It’s becoming very violent, but I feel so much safer being near you.” You say and start to touch Roger. At this point Roger is smiling back at you, but his buddy nearby is a little less approving, though you imagine its jealousy more than anything else. “Roger, we’re supposed to be keeping an eye on these carnie freaks, not fraternizing with them.” “What’s the harm Ernie? I mean she says she’s scared. What, you think she’s going to clobber me in the head and take my weapon? Come on, stop being so paranoid. We shouldn’t even be here anyway.” “Orders are orders…ugh. Whatever, I’m not going to watch you make goo goo eyes at some carnie whore. I’ll be outside this tent, try to keep your eyes on the detainees and not on her ass the whole time.” Ernie says and steps outside the tent. “What a rude person. I’m glad you’re not like that.” You say now with your arms wrapped around Roger. “Well you know, I treat people the way they want to be treated.” Roger replies. As distracted as Roger is, he’s actually keeping it together better than one would think. He keeps a tight grip on his rifle and an eye on if you’re going to attempt to grab his pistol. He also periodically looks away from you to make sure nobody is taking advantage of this situation. (Which Klepto and the rest look like they were going to do, but realize they’re still too far away to rush at Roger before he could shove you aside and open fire) Though your plan wasn’t necessarily to save everyone, but rather yourself. “So Roger, what’s a girl gotta do to get out of here?” you say seductively. “Well, like I said we should be gone later today or tomorrow at the latest.” “Too long and anything could happen within that time! Can’t you do something? I mean I could make it worth your while.” You say and run your finger across Roger’s chest. “Suzy, look, I’d really like to help, but…hey!” Roger is interrupted when you grab his hand. You bring his hand to your face and closing your eyes, you insert his index finger in your mouth and slowly suck on it making “mmmmm” sounds. This scene hasn’t gone unnoticed by more than a few carnies watching you. In fact the predictable calls of “whore”, “slut” and worse are uttered your way. Roger on the other hand is practically speechless. “I…uh…shit…” he says and then pulls his hand away staring at his finger for a moment. “Awww….but I wasn’t done sucking on you…” you say and flutter your eyes a bit, trying to look as cute as possible then you whisper in his ear: “Take me back to my trailer and I’ll show you the REAL greatest show on earth.” then you lick his ear. Roger immediately calls in Ernie loudly. Ernie rushes in with his weapon ready to kill something. “What?! What?! Are they rioting again?!” he exclaims. “No. But I REALLY need a favor! You need to watch these people and if the commander checks in on us, tell him I had a to take a shit really bad.” “What…wait… Oh fuck no! You’re gonna go fuck this little carnie whore aren’t you? Goddamnit Roger!” “Come on Ernie, you can’t help me out?” “Motherfucker, I’m always helping you out! I don’t understand why you can’t just fuck the bitch right here. Not like these people are shy and from the looks of her, she looks like it wouldn’t be the first time she’s gotten fucked in front of a live audience.” Ernie remarks. You know, while you’ve gotten used to the baseless comments about you being a woman of loose morals, it still hurts sometimes. In any case, Roger is not a man to be deterred from his lust for you right now. “Alright, fine. I didn’t want to hold this over your head, but you leave me no choice…” Roger starts to say, but whatever the threat is, Ernie doesn’t even let him finish it. “Oh fuck. (Sigh) Don’t even say it. Fine. Go. Go. Go! And don’t take too long, though I imagine in your case that won’t be a problem.” Ernie says defeated. “Thanks man! Seriously I really will remember this favor!” “Hrm. That you only got through blackmail.” As you and Roger leave, Ernie says one more thing. “Hope you’ve got condoms, because lord knows what diseases she’s got being a carnie. Her kootch might turn your dick into a fucking Siamese Twin or some shit.” “How the hell does that even make sense? Fucking asshole…” you say and start to get angry at Ernie’s comments, but Roger just take you by the hand to go back to your trailer. “Don’t mind him. Let’ hurry though, because we don’t want to bump into anyone else. It isn’t like I got leverage over everyone like I do with Ernie. So where is your trailer?” You tell him the location and the pair of you are heading over in that direction fluctuating between being “stealthy” and running. While you’re doing this, it occurs to you that you have to think up your next move. Are you really going to let him fuck you? Roger is distracted enough that you probably could grab his side arm to give you enough time to make a run for it, but while Roger might not shoot you immediately (And that’s rolling dice there) there’s nothing to say the other nearby Guardsmen won’t and you know they’ll be alerted as soon as you try to run away from Roger. Of course if you really are willing to make that ultimate “sacrifice” for freedom, Roger might even help you out a lot more in your escape attempt. Of course he could turn out to be a complete asshole and march you back to the tent after he’s had his way with you. > You go through with it You aren’t confident that you’d make it with trying to ambush Roger. While it’s possible you’ll get some sort of better opportunity while in the trailer, at this point you’re going to hope that Roger isn’t an asshole and this will actually get him to help you escape. That’s a lot to place on hope, but it’s going to have to do. Soon you get to your trailer and you enter it with Roger still looking around before going in himself. You stand by your bed and look at it and then look at Roger. “So here we are.” He says. “Yeah…so here we are…” you reply. “Well? Come on, we don’t have much time.” Roger says and puts his weapons down though of course he puts them out your reach and starts guiding you to lay down on the bed. This is going to happen. It isn’t that Roger isn’t unattractive to you and this isn’t exactly like he’s coercing you to do anything (though you’re afraid he might if you resist at this point) its just…well directly using your pussy to get yourself out of a jam isn’t exactly how you do things. Indirectly by teasing and flirting? Sure you’ve gotten used to doing that, but this is a step you don’t think you’re ready to take and it’s too late at this point. Roger is already stripping his clothes off and you’re slowly doing likewise. Soon the pair of you are naked and his dick’s coming at you like a monster. As he moves in to kiss and embrace you, you stop him. “Um…could we not look at each other while we do this?” you say. “Huh?” he asks, almost looking a bit wounded by that comment. “Uh, I just mean can we do it doggy style? I just prefer it that way.” You ask. “Oh. Well yeah! Sure, however you want it. I’m cool with that.” Roger says and you get into position. Well at least now you can close your eyes and pretend its Bobby. Hopefully Roger isn’t much of a talker and just gets on with it. While you prepare yourself for this “experience”, gunshots are suddenly heard outside. Several of them in fact. This is followed by a lot of shouting. “Oh fuck! What the hell?!” Roger exclaims and no longer do you feel his hands at your haunches, he’s gotten off the bed. You turn over and see him starting to get dressed, periodically looking out the narrow windows. “What’s going on out there?!” you ask. “I have no idea, but whatever it is, YOU stay inside and keep down. I don’t want you getting hurt.” You start to get dressed as well, wondering what calamity has happened now. Did the carnies finally decide to rush the guardsmen? Roger, with his clothes back on, grabs his rifle and pistol and prepares to head out. “Suzy, remember what I said, stay inside…OH SHIT!” Roger shouts as he opens the door. Something humanoid runs into Roger who drops his rifle and is pinned against the wall. It’s growling and snarling and Roger is holding its neck in an attempt to not let it bite him. Fear grips you, but not so much that you can’t grab a nearby knife from the kitchen area in an effort to stab it. “Suzy stay back! I got it!” Roger shouts and manages to shove the thing off of him and out the door. He then pulls out his pistol and presumably fires at the thing several times. He then slams the door shut and attempts to lock and barricade it. “Did you kill it?” you ask. “I dunno. I think I did.” Roger answers. “You think? Don’t you think you better know?!” “Yes! Yes! I killed it! I mean I put two it’s head and three in its chest. Jesus Christ, gimme a moment here! One moment I was nearly in paradise and the next I’m fending off a fucking…zombie…or something…shit I dunno what the hell…” Roger says trying to wrap his head around this unexpected turn of events. Zombie. Did he just say that thing was a zombie? It was humanoid and trying to bite him, while making snarling and growling sounds. Then again it didn’t look exactly rotten, could’ve been new dead though. Maybe just a rabid human? Seems silly that you’re actually considering that you’re getting attacked by zombies. Never the less, the gunfire and chaos you’re hearing outside seems to suggest you’re being attacked by SOMETHING. Meanwhile Roger is sitting and mumbling to himself. Suddenly he stands up. “Fuck it. Suzy, you still wanna get out of here right?” Roger says. “Well of course.” You say. “Come on, we’re taking one of those trucks. I got the keys.” “Okay? But what about your friends?” “Hah, most of those guys I serve with are assholes. I mean you saw my commanding officer and Ernie. Can’t say any of them are my friends. What about you and your carnie family?” “Well… the clowns were cool with me and the owner…but well it’s complicated and let’s just say I wasn’t fitting in there, so while I do feel slightly guilty just abandoning the ones that I was getting along with, I can’t stay someplace where I don’t feel entirely welcome or safe.” “Okay, then its settled, we’ll leave now.” “But what about those things out there?” “Well we’re going to have to grab the truck now because either one or two things is going to happen. One, the rest of my squad is going to put these things down and both of us are going to be up shit’s creek or those things are going to kill everyone and we’ll have to brave through them while they’re not distracted by others.” Roger unblocks the door and kicks it open, ready to shoot anything that might be lurking outside, fortunately that isn’t the case right now. “Alright let’s do this and stick close to me.” he says and the pair of you run out the trailer. The sounds of creatures and gunfire are all around you and you haven’t stepped out of the trailer a few seconds when Roger has to shoot two more of the things. He doesn’t hit them in the head and they still stay down, so you’re guessing maybe the zombie thing isn’t the case. Still don’t want to get bit though, who knows if this is contagious? You see a few dead bodies of guardsmen on the ground and in one case one of those cannibals eating it and not paying any attention to anything else. The fact that the sounds of gunfire dying down and an increase in the screaming and yelling signals to you that things are getting grim. You wonder if they’ve gotten to the carnies yet. Is this going on everywhere? Is this local? You’ll have to figure that out later. Right now you’re just happy to get inside a heavy-duty military truck. Roger gets in the driver’s seat and with more snarling creatures banging on the doors and trying to get in, Roger starts up the truck and promptly runs over three of them on your way out this place. Soon you’re on the road, but what next? “Where are we going?” you ask. “I dunno. If this is some sort of plague or invasion or something I’m wondering if we shouldn’t head to Fort Timons, it’s the closest military facility around here and where I was stationed before I got sent here. Still quite a drive though.” Roger says. “What? Are you nuts? Didn’t you just go AWOL and now you’re thinking about going to an military base?” “Well… I mean yeah technically I just deserted my post…but considering it didn’t seem like anyone else is going to live through that attack I doubt if anyone is going to call me out on it. We could just tell them we were the only survivors.” “But if this is some sort of disease will a military base even be safe? I mean don’t these sorts of thing originate from them what with all the secret experiments and bioweapons?” “What? You watch too many horror movies or science fiction! Unless its some secret base with top level government security, the average ordinary military base isn’t going to have a lab where they’re making bioweapons! In any case I know that stuff isn’t at Fort Timons.” “I dunno…just doesn’t seem the safest place.” “Well where do you propose then?” You don’t have an answer. “See? Look, it’s still a long drive there, maybe I can get something on the radio and we can find out more. Too bad this one doesn’t have a two-way radio, we’d actually be able to communicate with someone and I lost my fucking cell phone. In fact I probably left it in your trailer.” As Roger attempts to get a signal on the radio, you think about how you’ve now run away from two “families” and who knows what’s become of both of them. Are they dead? Are they alive? Has you hometown been overrun by those things? Is it under marshal law? You feel a little sad about it all, but what can you really do? As the day eventually turns into night, Roger continues to try to get something on the radio, but its just static on the military channel he’s using. He doesn’t understand it. Switching over to the normal radio just gets music, which is broken up by the periodic Ground Zero advert. Absolutely nothing about the creatures though, not even regular news. It’s very frustrating. Your aren’t encountering too much traffic on the road either, granted this isn’t the busiest of roads, but it feels fairly isolated. Still, at least you’re not seeing a horde of those things roaming about. Roger talks a little about his past to break up the long periods of silence, most of it fairly mundane. You just mainly listen although you’re only really half listening and re-direct questions about yourself to something superficial. You’re not in the mood to talk about yourself. Eventually you start to get sleepy and Roger does as well. He pulls over and the both of you go to sleep and thankfully he never once suggests picking up where you left off in your trailer. Nothing like a bunch of cannibal creatures to break up the mood. You drift off to sleep… > Next day... FRIDAY “…this was a paid announcement by the Ground Zero Corporation…” “Agh! Shut the fuck up already. What the hell did GZ buy up all the goddamn stations?!” you hear Roger shout as he angrily turns the radio off, waking you up. It would seem you’re in motion again and you slept through it. “What’s going on?” you ask. “Huh? Oh you’re up. Nothing’s going on, just dumb ass Ground Zero commercials warning about an impending nuclear holocaust as usual. Never mind the fact we got a very real threat that I can’t seem to get any information on. Anyway I didn’t sleep that much so I just started driving again. Figured you could still sleep though so I didn’t bother waking you” Roger says. “So how long have we been on the road?” “More than a few hours definitely. Starting to by pass all this farmland area now, we’ll probably be hitting a more populated area soon. I also started to see a few more moving vehicles, though I’ve also been seeing a lot of abandoned vehicles as well. Oddly no military. Saw a few people even trying to hitch a ride, but I’m not playing good Samaritan right now.” “You see any of those things?” you ask. “Hrm, I thought I might’ve seen a few while I was driving, but from the distance I could quite tell. Wasn’t like I was going to check.” So far it looks like the plan is still going to Fort Timons, but if you didn’t think that was a dubious idea before, you’re really uncertain now. He can’t get any signal from the radio, for all you know the base might be overrun by those things. Which is exactly what you bring up to Roger, but he seems confident that wouldn’t be the case and he’s determined to head to Fort Timons. Funny thing considering he abandoned all his comrades at the carnival and said they were all assholes. Guess he’s still military at heart. He senses that you still aren’t comfortable with his plan though. “Suzy, you don’t need to come with me you know. I mean I can drop you off at the next town we go through.” Roger says. “And what exactly am I going to do there? I don’t have anything except the clothes on my back and with the way things are going, I can imagine I’d be resorting to taking those off a lot just to survive.” You say. There’s a moment of silence before Roger replies. “I’m guessing that’s what you were doing with me back at the carnival. It’s fine, I sort of knew that’s what was going on. I knew you didn’t actually like me.” “If you knew all that, why did you risk your career and possibly your life?” “You’re kidding right? I mean I know I’m not hideous, but you’re a little out of my league. When the hell am I going to get a chance to be with someone that looks like you? I mean sure I knew it was all an act, but in MY mind I could pretend you were being genuine. Though I admit when you stopped me from kissing you and didn’t want to look at my face, that sort of hurt.” “It wasn’t personal. I just don’t know you that well and I wasn’t ready for that level of intimacy. I was going to pretend you were my ex-boyfriend. (Sigh) I can’t believe I even went that far and was going to go through with it. I mean contrary to whatever you may have heard shouted at me, I don’t do stuff like that like…ever.” “Really? Because you’re pretty good at the whole seduction thing, even if you are a bit obvious with it.” “I’m obvious with it because it’s only just a new skill I developed within the last few days I joined a goddamn carnival just to get out of my goddamn shitty life at home…What the hell was I even thinking?! I’m not cut out to take care of myself! I should’ve just stayed home and let cannibals eat me in the comfort of my basement!” you say, tearing up a bit. The stress of the week is starting to get to you. “Whoa! You don’t mean that. Things aren’t totally horrible. Hey if it make you feel any better, I felt a little bad knowing that I was going to take advantage of what was obviously the act of a desperate woman.” Roger says. Now you stop sniffling and start to chuckle at the absurdity of that statement. “But of course that wasn’t going to stop you.” You say. “Well no of course not, but I assure you I would’ve felt guilty about it.” “No you wouldn’t have.” “Okay you’re right, I wouldn’t have, but I would have still gotten you out of that carnival if you had asked afterwards.” “Well at least it wouldn’t have been for nothing. (Sigh) Guess it all worked out anyway. I mean we’re both still alive due to our choices and I am thankful I’m not dead and that you probably saved my life back there.” “And I’m thankful I at least got to see you naked.” “We’ll always have the trailer I suppose.” You don’t exactly feel good about your situation, but Roger’s attempt to lighten up the mood at least has you feeling slightly better. “So…why don’t you tell me about this ex-boyfriend of yours? I’m guessing he must’ve been some sort of handsome stud if you’re still thinking about him.” Roger says. “Heh. Not especially. He was a normal looking guy. Not too much different from you in that department. He’s just the only guy I’ve ever been with, so, it was more comfortable to think about him instead. Anyway it was sort of complicated with him. Long story that I don’t want to get into right now.” “I understand. Well I’ll just say this, he was lucky to have you as a girlfriend and was a damn fool to let you get away.” “Hrm…actually you know what? You’re exactly right. He WAS lucky to have me and a damn fool to let me get away!” you say with a bit of pride. You know Roger is half saying this just in the hopes to get you into a compromising position again, but what the hell, it’s an ego booster and it keeps you in a positive mindset at least. “Shit.” Roger suddenly says. “What now?” you ask. “I just looked at the gas gauge, we’re practically out. Goddamn it I thought Ernie gassed this thing up recently.” “We can’t make it to Timons?” “Well we could risk it on fumes to Fort Timons, but I’d rather not chance that during these circumstances. I don’t even have a rubber hose that we could use to suck out the gas from one these abandoned vehicles we’ve been passing.” “Well I guess we’re stopping at the next gas station then.” “Assuming they got any. I get the impression just popping into the next gas station isn’t going to be that simple.” You and Roger continue to drive for about a half hour before you see something of interest in the distance. Namely a truck stop, which apparently has been converted into a minor fortress. “Hey look at that!” you point out. “I see it. It’s a truck stop and it looks like whoever is there is trying to block the place off by putting trucks around it. They even got people standing on top of the trucks with rifles as look outs. They probably got gas.” Roger says. “I dunno. Whoever is there probably isn’t going to be too trustful of anyone, especially someone from the military. They might just try to rob us.” “We gotta try. I mean we need gas, and given how well this place is defended, we at least know they probably got some. Who knows if we’ll get lucky some place else.” You and Roger drive to the truck stop, which immediately causes the lookouts to point and raise their rifles in your direction. When you stop in front of it there are a lot of shouts for you to stay in the truck. “We don’t need any government assistance here, we’re doing just fine as you can see. I highly suggest that y’all just continue on your way.” One of them shouts. “I’m not here for trouble. I just need some gas. We get that and we’ll be on our way to Fort Timons.” Roger shouts back. “Gas? Don’t fucking think so soldier boy. With the way society is collapsing that shit’s gonna be valuable and money is gonna be worthless.” “Well, would you accept a trade of supplies for gas?” “Hrmmm, well whatta you got?” “Got some military rations in the back of this thing. Those things last for years you know.” “We got tons of food, what else? Any weapons?” “Uh…there might be a couple…oh we got some medical supplies in here!” There is a long pause and he tells you to wait before climbing down the truck and disappearing from sight. Eventually you hear his voice again which is now coming from behind the truck barricade. “Okay, we’re gonna move this truck, but one funny thing happens and you’re the first one getting a bullet to the head. Alright, we’re letting this one in, everyone keep extra look out for those rabid bastards!” “You still think this is a good idea?” you ask. “Well it’s like I said, our options for gas are limited.” Roger answers. As soon as the truck is moved out your way, the man who was barking orders at you waves you in and motions you over to the gas pumps. As soon as you drive in they put the truck back. Either they’re really safety conscience or they don’t want to risk having you get away. From this distance you see several more people in the building part of the truck stop. Looks like it’s a general store/diner combo. Most of them are watching you from the windows, though a few of them come out, one of them is an older man with a cane who walks directly to the pumps. “Okay, I want the two you in that truck to exit it slowly. I don’t care if you got weapons, but don’t point them at me or anyone else in a threatening manner.” The old man shouts. Roger takes his rifle over his shoulder and exits the truck. You do like wise, though being unarmed you exit from Roger’s side just so you don’t feel quite as vulnerable. Naturally rifles are pointed at the pair of you, but the old man with the cane shouts telling them to calm down. “You lot, stop pointing your guns and start unloading this truck. Sorry about that, everyone’s a little on edge. Name’s Henry. I own this place.” He says. “Roger and it’s understandable.” “Well, a military man eh? Thought all the National Guard were off fighting those rabid things in the city. From what I’ve heard the place is completely overrun now.” “The city? You mean Security is overrun?” you ask. “Yep. Heard it on the radio. Not the regular one of course. Those GZ bastards seem to be clogging those up, but on my Ham Radio. Been trying to communicate with Fort Timons, but my radio isn’t exactly in the best condition…” “Hold on! You’ve been in communication with Fort Timons?!” Roger exclaims. “Well, somewhat. More like my old buddy I served with back in the day who still works there as an inventory clerk. Haven’t heard anything from him since yesterday. All I know is the last thing he told me was the fort was on high alert and further communication was going to be limited to a need to know basis and only to those with the proper clearance. Typical military bullshit I suppose, well I don’t need to tell you.” “Uh, we were on our way to Fort Timons. Do you think it’s safe?” You say. “Heh, well I couldn’t tell you if the fort is safe, but I can tell you that those rabid fuckers have been making their way out of the city en mass and given how far the city is, they apparently don’t get tired and can cover a lot of ground. We just repelled a bunch of them yesterday. Hence the make shift fortress here. Fort Timons is even closer to the city, so at best I’d wager that you’re going to have to wade through a bunch of those things before getting there. Not something I’d want to do to be sure.” Henry remarks. “Shit, those things are in the city and they were in my town! This means this can’t just be a local thing! It’s probably a nationwide epidemic! We can’t go to Fort Timons now!” you exclaim. “We don’t know if the place has fallen to those things.” Roger replies. “Exactly! We don’t know!” you say. At this point Henry interjects. “If I may, the both of you can stay here. We’ve got the room and your truck full of supplies as far as I’m concerned buys your way in. And I’m sure as a military man, you’d pull your weight here to defend this place if need be. So you and your girlfriend can stay here if you wish.” Henry says and then walks over to oversee his people unloading the truck. It’s an incredibly tempting offer and one you’d jump at the chance for, but Roger still seems sure that Fort Timons will better in the long run. You wonder if he feels a little obligated to go back to Fort Timons because deep down he feels like he abandoned his post even if hasn’t admitted it. The only downside is if Roger doesn’t stick around and you do, you’ll be left in the company of a bunch of strangers again and that didn’t go so well last time. You can only imagine all the leers, grope attempts and possibly worse from a bunch of horny trucker types. > You insist on staying here Something in your heart is telling you that going to Fort Timons would be a huge mistake. The length of the trip and the possibility that it’s going to be swarming with those things just doesn’t seem safe. This place might not be safe either, but at least it’s a secure place that you don’t need to travel any further to. “Suzy, I still think going to Timons is a better idea than staying here. I’m going, so if you want to stay…” Roger says before you interrupt him. You grip Roger by the head with both hands and move it downwards so you can kiss him on the lips. The kiss is then followed your arms moving downward in a tighter hugging motion. He returns in kind as the pair of you continue to embrace. “Don’t go. Please don’t go to Fort Timons. It won’t be safe and I need you here with me.” You say stopping your kiss to speak. “Suzy…” “Please. Stay with me.” “(Sigh) Suzy… do you really mean this? I mean I really need to know where we stand…because…you can’t just flutter your eyes and kiss me without meaning it now. I’m really starting to have feelings for you, but if you’re just doing this out of survival again…” You stare him directly in his eyes. “Yes, Roger. I mean it. Not just for me, but for you. I don’t want you to put yourself in any danger anymore than I want myself to be in danger. And Fort Timons is just going to be unnecessary danger. I know we haven’t known each other long, but we have been through a lot together and if this is the way this shitty world is going to be, then I want to at least spend the rest of that time with you.” Well if you didn’t mean any of that, it sure was enough to convince Roger because he resumes kissing and hugging you immediately. Of course you did mean it since you have grown attached to him. Just a sucker for men who save your life you guess. You both don’t even notice Henry walking up to you. “Hrm, looks like I interrupted something. So did you two decide on what you’re going to do…besides suck on each others faces?” he asks. “Well…” Roger says and then smiles at you before turning his attention to Henry. “I think we’ll be staying.” “Great. Glad to hear it. Need more people to help defend this place. Think you could help with look out for awhile with that rifle of yours?” Henry says. “Sure. For how long?” Roger asks. “Hmm, probably until midnight. Earl needs to get some sleep, that’s why he’s so irritable right now. As for you little lady, why don’t you head on inside and get acquainted with everyone. You and your boyfriend can pick up where you left off later.” Henry goes to wander over to Earl to give him the news that he’ll be relieved soon and you and Roger are left alone again. “Okay, well I guess I’ll see you later tonight then.” Roger says. “Yes, though I wonder where we’re supposed to sleep.” You answer. “Well presumably together now.” “Ha ha, of course but that wasn’t what I meant.” “Hrm, I’m sure someone will tell you inside what the sleeping arrangements are, well anyway I probably should get over to my new job. See you later.” Roger says. As he leaves, you shout to him to be careful which he just smiles and waves as a reassurance that you don’t need to worry about him. And now you turn towards the truck stop building which no longer has the small crowd outside it anymore and people have gone back inside. People which you now have to be social with… “Okay, Suzy. You can do this. It won’t be like the carnival.” You mumble to yourself as you walk to the building. As soon as you walk in you see a mixture of people. Mostly older men, but women as well and even a couple children. Most of them look up when you enter. “Hi everyone. I’m Suzy and my boyfriend Roger are going to be staying here, but we brought in a whole bunch of medical supplies and food with us to help pull our weight around here.” Your introduction is met with apathy. Half of them grunt in acknowledgement and the other half just go back to doing whatever it is they were doing. Well it’s better than most of what you got at the carnival. Seeing that nobody is speaking to you, you decide to sit quietly by yourself in a booth far away from everyone else. You mainly spend your time in introspection and listening to the random conversations. Most of them naturally are talking about the situation at hand, but it’s broken up by periods of “normalcy” of just joking around. Nobody here seems to be overly worried about rabid people running around and the breaking down of society, then again most of the people here are truckers so they’re probably used to roaming about and the employees of the place seem like they spend so much time here it’s a second home. Eventually enough time passes and you get tired of being a wall flower, or more specifically you’re tired of wearing the same clothes for the past few days along with no shower. You walk up to the group of waitresses in the hopes to ask them that perhaps there is some sort of wash up facility here. The oldest waitress, a red head with hard features and a name tag that says Anne looks you up and down as you approach and her friends do likewise. “Excuse me, but is there a wash room or shower or something I could use? I just feel so dirty what with the sweating and running from those things outside.” You expect catty remarks or a few insults or some sort of hostility, but you’re met with a surprise. “Why sure blondie. You can use the small shower we have for us in the back. You need a change of clothes too?” Anne says. “You have some?” “Well they’re extra waitress uniforms. If that’s okay.” “Sure, if it’s clean it’ll be a welcome change.” “Okay, hmm you’re a bit on the small side, Jasmine, go get Trudy’s old uniform. That should fit…Suzy wasn’t it?” “Yes, and thank you.” Soon, Jasmine returns to give you a uniform and you’re on your way to get washed up. The waitresses’ private bathroom isn’t much but the fact it has a shower that you can use to get clean is enough for you. You feel a little odd wearing the uniform, which was obviously designed to attract a lot of male attention, but again you’re just glad to be out of those old dirty clothes. By the time you get out of the shower, the waitresses are cooking up dinner for everyone. You ask if they need any help, but they say they got it. You sit down and eat, a couple people make a bit of small talk, but nothing of importance. You mostly are left alone, but it’s a promising start at least. In any event the re-invigorated feeling you had after the shower is wearing off and you start to get tired which is when you ask Anne where the sleeping area is. “Well some people are flopping right out here in these booths. A few really brave souls are sleeping out in their trucks out there. Henry’s got his own private office as you might expect. The wait staff has that small lounge area near our bathroom…though Jasmine is using one of the storerooms since she’s got her kids with her. I guess you could take one these booths or share the storeroom with Jasmine. Of course you’ve got that boyfriend…hmmm could give you the second storeroom. Doesn’t really have a lot of space though.” “That’s fine, I just want some where to rest.” And once again you succeed in a simple task with no major problems. Things have been going so well for you since you got here that you almost forget about the problems of the outside world going on. You don’t of course, but you honestly can say this is the safest you’ve felt since you left your basement. Giving you a spare blanket, Anne directs you to the second storeroom, which is indeed lacking in space but it’s enough for you. You waste no time in laying down your blanket and falling asleep on the floor. > The next day… SATURDAY You wake up to a body grinding up against you, an arm holding you tightly around your mid-section and warm breath blowing in your ear in between the kissing. Not exactly what you expected, but it beats those Ground Zero advertisements. “Well, looks like someone is feeling friendly this morning. When did you get here?” You ask. “A little after midnight. It was boring and I would’ve rather been with you, but at least I didn’t see any of those things. You of course were already asleep so I just slept besides you the whole night. You’re a pretty sound sleeper, you didn’t even wake up.” Roger says. “Hrm. Surprised you didn’t take advantage of my vulnerable situation.” “I thought about it, but honestly by that time I was pretty tired myself. I actually haven’t been awake long. So they make you a waitress to help out around here?” “Oh. This? No. They were just good enough to let me borrow some clean clothes. I won’t say everyone here has been social with me, but at least nobody has been hostile.” “Hm. Well you look hot in that uniform.” Roger says and resumes groping you. “Oh? You like this? Got a role play fetish eh?” “Sure, and its short so I’ll be able to hike the skirt up for easy access.” “Well that definitely is the practical side to it.” You chuckle. Your laughter is turned to semi-surprise when Roger moves one of his hands under your skirt. You didn’t quite expect him to go there so quickly, but it isn’t unwelcome. “Mmm yeah…” It’s been like a whole week that you’ve gone without pleasuring yourself (let alone had anyone else do it) so as far as you’re concerned you’re about due. You quickly start to undo Roger’s pants and few moments later your legs are wrapped around him and he’s thrusting into you. “Oh shit this feels so fucking good…” you exclaim. Honestly that’s not all you say. You say quite a few things fairly loudly and you don’t really care if anyone hears you. (Roger on the other hand is a bit more on the quiet side) You don’t know how much time passes because you’re enjoying yourself so much and then you feel it. “Oh my God! I’m almost there! Keep doing that! Harder! Faster! Oh yessss…” you exclaim and then the explosion. Though not that one. There’s a loud noise and a faint rumble, but you don’t really pay it any mind because you and Roger are more focused on the task involving each other’s fun parts. A few moments later and someone starts banging on the door. At first you think its someone that’s complaining about you being too noisy, but they start yelling you two need to come out now. “There’s a fucking nuke going off in distance!” the voice yells. “What the fuck?!” Roger exclaims. “What?!” You say. “I said there’s a…” “Yeah I heard! (Sigh) Hold on.” Roger interrupts. That must’ve been the rumble and noise from earlier. Talk about a mood breaker. “So…they finally went and did it.” You say. “I guess so. Shit…I hope it wasn’t too close.” Roger says. “We’d be all vaporized if it was a big one, so maybe it was just a little one?” “The one they dropped on Hiroshima was a little one too.” “Well I suppose there’s not much for it now. Our building is still intact so that’s a good sign.” You say trying not to wonder if you’re still going to be in the range of a fatal dose of radiation. Roger starts to slowly get his pants back on and you pull your skirt back down. When you both leave the room, you see Jasmine trying to calm her children down. A couple people are arguing. A few are just sitting in a silent state of shock. Henry is actually outside the diner looking in the direction of where the bomb must’ve gone off. You can see the lingering remnants of a mushroom cloud in the far distance even from inside the diner. You can’t help but hold on the Roger a bit tightly. “I don’t exactly know how far or how big the bomb was, but I do know it went off in the direction of Fort Timons. Hell, that might’ve even been the target. Well either that or the city. Either way both of those places are probably radioactive ruins now and it looks like you saved my life too.” Roger says squeezing you around the waist. “You think maybe this was just a way to get rid of those infected people? Maybe this is only occurring on a small scale?” you ask. “I dunno. Maybe, but I get the impression this bomb was just one of many to the nuclear end of the big war that the Ground Zero ads kept going on about. Guess it doesn’t matter because I imagine things are going to be severely changing and the world as we once knew it is going to be much different. Harder for one thing.” Surprisingly as frightening as this event is, you aren’t as filled with dread as you normally would be. Maybe its because after all the other craziness you went through this week, you could’ve ended up a lot worse off. Maybe you’re finally trying to find the silver lining for once in your life. “We’ll handle it…together.” You say with certainty. Roger looks at you and nods. “We will.” At this point Henry steps back in the diner and after calming some of the arguing truckers. He begins addressing the situation and stating that nothing has changed and that the situation is still the same, namely if people help, then they are welcome to stay. If not or if they don’t want to stay then they are free to go. A couple of the truckers who apparently have families elsewhere do leave. Everyone else stays and the work towards creating a permanent new “home” is begun. While you’re pitching in by doing inventory on the medical supplies you have you briefly wonder what would’ve happened had you not abandoned the carnival when you did. Could you have made a difference had you stayed like Roofie wanted you to? You shake your head. You don’t mind helping out, but you know you’re no leader. Better to be safe and be around a group that you at least feel more comfortable around and so far that’s what you’ve encountered here at this truck stop. Most people here despite the highly stressful situation have still been pleasant with you. Funny where one finds a place to belong. > … Nice and Safe The Future… “Take it or leave it. Don’t have all day to haggle with you.” You say to the scavenger. He looks at the plastic bag of 9mm ammo for a moment. “Alright I’ll take it.” He says and hands over two damaged rifles and takes the ammo without another word and leaves. You look at the rifles again and think how glad you are to have someone who has a natural affinity to fixing thing. “Daniel! Come out here, got a project for you.” You son comes out from his work area to see what you’re yelling at him about this time. “Mom, what is it now?” Daniel replies. “Here. Got more rifles you can fix and we can sell for better profit later on.” You say and pass the rifles to him. “These need new bolts. I’m not sure if I have any spare ones. At least not for two rifles.” “Well do what you can. I’m sure you’ll think of something. You usually do. Besides you know how everyone that comes through this place is always interested in weapons. If you get just one of them fixed, it’ll still be a profit for what we got them for.” “Don’t most people buy their weapons from Earl on the far side of the bazaar?” “Yeah, but he specializes in that, the beauty of what we do is sell and buy a little bit of everything. So someone who might be looking for medicine might also end up buying a gun too. Besides, he’s getting a reputation of ripping people off, so we need to be prepared for the possible day for when people start coming to us to buy their guns instead.” Daniel nods and says nothing else. He isn’t really much of a talker or a thinker for that matter. Not that the boy is stupid, its just he focuses on other things. Like fixing. Sometimes he reminds you a bit of your older brother’s son from the old days. That boy was definitely a savant. Daniel head back to his workstation. You’re so glad you’ve never had problems with him, though Roger thinks he should mix more with people…but then you remember your own isolationist days in a certain basement and laugh to yourself. Compared to you back then, Daniel is a social butterfly and has an actual trade. He’ll be fine. Really its odd to you sometimes that you basically run the equivalent of a post apocalyptic general store, but as this place got bigger and better fortified, the original people began to rise in status and responsibility and here you are. It certainly is better than being a wanderer out there. You’ve heard the tales and have no desire to leave the walls of New Security. Its safe here and you have everything you’d ever want. It’s your new basement. You remember Roger wanting to lead the New Security recon team when it was formed, but you managed to talk him out of that nonsense. You didn’t talk him into staying here in the first place and avoid getting nuked to atoms just so he could go play wasteland warrior and get his head blown off that way. His job as lead protector of New Security holds more than enough danger and a test of his skills. “Hey mom, how’s business?” Cindy asks walking in. “Fine. I’m guessing you went with your father today?” “Yep. It was really cool. I got to learn how to shoot. I even killed something!” “What?” you ask. At this point Roger walks in and has heard the end of the conversation. “It wasn’t a person and she wasn’t in any danger. It was just a large rat that had wandered on the range. She got it in right in the head on one shot. She’s a natural.” Roger says in an effort to reassure you. You know it’s a harsh new world now, and you know your daughter learning how to shoot is probably one of the best things for her, but you can’t help worry. “Well, glad to hear you had fun.” You say. “Yeah! I even got to see the New Security Scout Team coming in from a mission! They said they had to fight a mutant! Sounded exciting! I can’t wait to be able to become one of them one day!” Well now you’re worried and Roger already knows it. “Uh, Cindy why don’t you go into the back, I’m sure we’ll all be eating soon.” Roger says. Cindy complies, but she knows all too well an argument is going to be occurring soon. You give Roger that “look” that he knows all to well is one of displeasure. “Suzy, before you even start I really did not put that idea into her head! I didn’t even know the scout team was coming back today! Let alone that she was going to bump into them.” “You’re the head protector! How would you not know that?!” you say. “Hey, I take care of internal safety first. Besides, sometimes the scouts come back early if they don’t find anything out there.” “A mutant sounds like something to me. Look I know Cindy’s a teenager and I know she finds all this military type stuff exciting, but I’d at least rather not encourage her desire to want to go traipsing about the wasteland.” “Well I’d rather her be safe too, I mean that’s why I’m trying to teach her how to shoot and other skills. I mean we can only guide so much and eventually she’s going to be an adult and we won’t have any control over what she does. You know that.” This is an old argument and Roger is right, but you really wish he wasn’t. “I know. I know. Just…(sigh) could you at least next time emphasize that being a scout isn’t as glamorous as it sounds?” “That I can do. Can’t promise you it’ll work, but I’ll definitely do that.” “Well that’s the best I can hope for.” Roger moves in to kiss you and you return it. “Besides, I don’t see why SHE gets to be in the scout team when I’m not a allowed to.” Roger says with a smile. You laugh and you close up the store so that you can spend time with your family. It’s not the easiest life, but it’s more than you ever had before.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “…this was a paid announcement by the Ground Zero Corporation…” “Agh! Shut the fuck up already. What the hell did GZ buy up all the goddamn stations?!” you hear Roger shout as he angrily turns the radio off, waking you up. It would seem you’re in motion again and you slept through it. “What’s going on?” you ask. “Huh? Oh you’re up. Nothing’s going on, just dumb ass Ground Zero commercials warning about an impending nuclear holocaust as usual. Never mind the fact we got a very real threat that I can’t seem to get any information on. Anyway I didn’t sleep that much so I just started driving again. Figured you could still sleep though so I didn’t bother waking you” Roger says. “So how long have we been on the road?” “More than a few hours definitely. Starting to by pass all this farmland area now, we’ll probably be hitting a more populated area soon. I also started to see a few more moving vehicles, though I’ve also been seeing a lot of abandoned vehicles as well. Oddly no military. Saw a few people even trying to hitch a ride, but I’m not playing good Samaritan right now.” “You see any of those things?” you ask. “Hrm, I thought I might’ve seen a few while I was driving, but from the distance I could quite tell. Wasn’t like I was going to check.” So far it looks like the plan is still going to Fort Timons, but if you didn’t think that was a dubious idea before, you’re really uncertain now. He can’t get any signal from the radio, for all you know the base might be overrun by those things. Which is exactly what you bring up to Roger, but he seems confident that wouldn’t be the case and he’s determined to head to Fort Timons. Funny thing considering he abandoned all his comrades at the carnival and said they were all assholes. Guess he’s still military at heart. He senses that you still aren’t comfortable with his plan though. “Suzy, you don’t need to come with me you know. I mean I can drop you off at the next town we go through.” Roger says. “And what exactly am I going to do there? I don’t have anything except the clothes on my back and with the way things are going, I can imagine I’d be resorting to taking those off a lot just to survive.” You say. There’s a moment of silence before Roger replies. “I’m guessing that’s what you were doing with me back at the carnival. It’s fine, I sort of knew that’s what was going on. I knew you didn’t actually like me.” “If you knew all that, why did you risk your career and possibly your life?” “You’re kidding right? I mean I know I’m not hideous, but you’re a little out of my league. When the hell am I going to get a chance to be with someone that looks like you? I mean sure I knew it was all an act, but in MY mind I could pretend you were being genuine. Though I admit when you stopped me from kissing you and didn’t want to look at my face, that sort of hurt.” “It wasn’t personal. I just don’t know you that well and I wasn’t ready for that level of intimacy. I was going to pretend you were my ex-boyfriend. (Sigh) I can’t believe I even went that far and was going to go through with it. I mean contrary to whatever you may have heard shouted at me, I don’t do stuff like that like…ever.” “Really? Because you’re pretty good at the whole seduction thing, even if you are a bit obvious with it.” “I’m obvious with it because it’s only just a new skill I developed within the last few days I joined a goddamn carnival just to get out of my goddamn shitty life at home…What the hell was I even thinking?! I’m not cut out to take care of myself! I should’ve just stayed home and let cannibals eat me in the comfort of my basement!” you say, tearing up a bit. The stress of the week is starting to get to you. “Whoa! You don’t mean that. Things aren’t totally horrible. Hey if it make you feel any better, I felt a little bad knowing that I was going to take advantage of what was obviously the act of a desperate woman.” Roger says. Now you stop sniffling and start to chuckle at the absurdity of that statement. “But of course that wasn’t going to stop you.” You say. “Well no of course not, but I assure you I would’ve felt guilty about it.” “No you wouldn’t have.” “Okay you’re right, I wouldn’t have, but I would have still gotten you out of that carnival if you had asked afterwards.” “Well at least it wouldn’t have been for nothing. (Sigh) Guess it all worked out anyway. I mean we’re both still alive due to our choices and I am thankful I’m not dead and that you probably saved my life back there.” “And I’m thankful I at least got to see you naked.” “We’ll always have the trailer I suppose.” You don’t exactly feel good about your situation, but Roger’s attempt to lighten up the mood at least has you feeling slightly better. “So…why don’t you tell me about this ex-boyfriend of yours? I’m guessing he must’ve been some sort of handsome stud if you’re still thinking about him.” Roger says. “Heh. Not especially. He was a normal looking guy. Not too much different from you in that department. He’s just the only guy I’ve ever been with, so, it was more comfortable to think about him instead. Anyway it was sort of complicated with him. Long story that I don’t want to get into right now.” “I understand. Well I’ll just say this, he was lucky to have you as a girlfriend and was a damn fool to let you get away.” “Hrm…actually you know what? You’re exactly right. He WAS lucky to have me and a damn fool to let me get away!” you say with a bit of pride. You know Roger is half saying this just in the hopes to get you into a compromising position again, but what the hell, it’s an ego booster and it keeps you in a positive mindset at least. “Shit.” Roger suddenly says. “What now?” you ask. “I just looked at the gas gauge, we’re practically out. Goddamn it I thought Ernie gassed this thing up recently.” “We can’t make it to Timons?” “Well we could risk it on fumes to Fort Timons, but I’d rather not chance that during these circumstances. I don’t even have a rubber hose that we could use to suck out the gas from one these abandoned vehicles we’ve been passing.” “Well I guess we’re stopping at the next gas station then.” “Assuming they got any. I get the impression just popping into the next gas station isn’t going to be that simple.” You and Roger continue to drive for about a half hour before you see something of interest in the distance. Namely a truck stop, which apparently has been converted into a minor fortress. “Hey look at that!” you point out. “I see it. It’s a truck stop and it looks like whoever is there is trying to block the place off by putting trucks around it. They even got people standing on top of the trucks with rifles as look outs. They probably got gas.” Roger says. “I dunno. Whoever is there probably isn’t going to be too trustful of anyone, especially someone from the military. They might just try to rob us.” “We gotta try. I mean we need gas, and given how well this place is defended, we at least know they probably got some. Who knows if we’ll get lucky some place else.” You and Roger drive to the truck stop, which immediately causes the lookouts to point and raise their rifles in your direction. When you stop in front of it there are a lot of shouts for you to stay in the truck. “We don’t need any government assistance here, we’re doing just fine as you can see. I highly suggest that y’all just continue on your way.” One of them shouts. “I’m not here for trouble. I just need some gas. We get that and we’ll be on our way to Fort Timons.” Roger shouts back. “Gas? Don’t fucking think so soldier boy. With the way society is collapsing that shit’s gonna be valuable and money is gonna be worthless.” “Well, would you accept a trade of supplies for gas?” “Hrmmm, well whatta you got?” “Got some military rations in the back of this thing. Those things last for years you know.” “We got tons of food, what else? Any weapons?” “Uh…there might be a couple…oh we got some medical supplies in here!” There is a long pause and he tells you to wait before climbing down the truck and disappearing from sight. Eventually you hear his voice again which is now coming from behind the truck barricade. “Okay, we’re gonna move this truck, but one funny thing happens and you’re the first one getting a bullet to the head. Alright, we’re letting this one in, everyone keep extra look out for those rabid bastards!” “You still think this is a good idea?” you ask. “Well it’s like I said, our options for gas are limited.” Roger answers. As soon as the truck is moved out your way, the man who was barking orders at you waves you in and motions you over to the gas pumps. As soon as you drive in they put the truck back. Either they’re really safety conscience or they don’t want to risk having you get away. From this distance you see several more people in the building part of the truck stop. Looks like it’s a general store/diner combo. Most of them are watching you from the windows, though a few of them come out, one of them is an older man with a cane who walks directly to the pumps. “Okay, I want the two you in that truck to exit it slowly. I don’t care if you got weapons, but don’t point them at me or anyone else in a threatening manner.” The old man shouts. Roger takes his rifle over his shoulder and exits the truck. You do like wise, though being unarmed you exit from Roger’s side just so you don’t feel quite as vulnerable. Naturally rifles are pointed at the pair of you, but the old man with the cane shouts telling them to calm down. “You lot, stop pointing your guns and start unloading this truck. Sorry about that, everyone’s a little on edge. Name’s Henry. I own this place.” He says. “Roger and it’s understandable.” “Well, a military man eh? Thought all the National Guard were off fighting those rabid things in the city. From what I’ve heard the place is completely overrun now.” “The city? You mean Security is overrun?” you ask. “Yep. Heard it on the radio. Not the regular one of course. Those GZ bastards seem to be clogging those up, but on my Ham Radio. Been trying to communicate with Fort Timons, but my radio isn’t exactly in the best condition…” “Hold on! You’ve been in communication with Fort Timons?!” Roger exclaims. “Well, somewhat. More like my old buddy I served with back in the day who still works there as an inventory clerk. Haven’t heard anything from him since yesterday. All I know is the last thing he told me was the fort was on high alert and further communication was going to be limited to a need to know basis and only to those with the proper clearance. Typical military bullshit I suppose, well I don’t need to tell you.” “Uh, we were on our way to Fort Timons. Do you think it’s safe?” You say. “Heh, well I couldn’t tell you if the fort is safe, but I can tell you that those rabid fuckers have been making their way out of the city en mass and given how far the city is, they apparently don’t get tired and can cover a lot of ground. We just repelled a bunch of them yesterday. Hence the make shift fortress here. Fort Timons is even closer to the city, so at best I’d wager that you’re going to have to wade through a bunch of those things before getting there. Not something I’d want to do to be sure.” Henry remarks. “Shit, those things are in the city and they were in my town! This means this can’t just be a local thing! It’s probably a nationwide epidemic! We can’t go to Fort Timons now!” you exclaim. “We don’t know if the place has fallen to those things.” Roger replies. “Exactly! We don’t know!” you say. At this point Henry interjects. “If I may, the both of you can stay here. We’ve got the room and your truck full of supplies as far as I’m concerned buys your way in. And I’m sure as a military man, you’d pull your weight here to defend this place if need be. So you and your girlfriend can stay here if you wish.” Henry says and then walks over to oversee his people unloading the truck. It’s an incredibly tempting offer and one you’d jump at the chance for, but Roger still seems sure that Fort Timons will better in the long run. You wonder if he feels a little obligated to go back to Fort Timons because deep down he feels like he abandoned his post even if hasn’t admitted it. The only downside is if Roger doesn’t stick around and you do, you’ll be left in the company of a bunch of strangers again and that didn’t go so well last time. You can only imagine all the leers, grope attempts and possibly worse from a bunch of horny trucker types. > You continue to Fort Timons While you probably could talk Roger into staying if you turned on the charm again, you’ve done enough of that for quite some time and honestly he might be right as far as safety is concerned. Despite the best efforts of the people here, this truck stop is still open enough that those things could get in. (Crawl under the trucks for one thing) Also while the owner seems cool, you don’t know everyone else and the last time you encountered a cool owner was the carnival and you know how that turned out. You also imagine that a military base might indeed survive an extended siege a lot better than this place. “Suzy, I still think going to Timons is a better idea than staying here. I’m going, so if you want to stay…” Roger says before you interrupt him. “No, I’ll go with you.” “But I thought you thought it was a bad idea.” “Well, I still sort of do, but I guess if this is a major crisis and the end of civilization, I’d rather be with you. So if you believe we’ll be safe there, then I believe we’ll be safe there.” Roger smiles at that remark. He immediately goes to hug you, which you weren’t quite expecting, but you hug back. You suppose you are getting attached to him. Just a sucker for men who save your life you guess. After this happy experience Roger goes over to gas up the truck and you wait nearby. You don’t even notice Henry come up to you. “So you two decide on what to do yet?” “Huh? Oh, yeah we’re going to try to make it to Timons.” “Hm. Well I wish you luck on that. Too bad you’re not staying though, could use a few more people to guard this place and help out around here.” “Yeah, well I wish we were staying too, but well he wants to go to Fort Timons so that means we’re both going.” “Heh, well love for another always has a way of making you act out of character.” “Y…eah something like that I guess.” You say reluctantly. Henry still hasn’t caught on that you aren’t really “with” Roger, but you don’t bother correcting him. “Don’t worry, you got this big truck, so you should be safe as long as you don’t get out of the thing or stop for a long period of time to let those things swarm you. And despite my doom and gloom earlier, don’t take that as truth. I mean what do I know. I’m stuck here with a Ham Radio that I can barely get to work right at the best of times. Things might not be as bad as they seem. Who knows? Maybe this will all be over in a day or two.” “Heh, one can only hope.” You say. “Remember though, if Timons doesn’t work out, you’re welcome to come back here.” “Thanks Henry that’s very generous of you.” After your short talk with Henry, Roger is ready to get going again and you’ve got the fuel to get to your destination. “We left you those MREs and the water. No need to leave you without the basics. Anyway, like I told your pretty girlfriend here, I wish you luck and if it doesn’t work out, you’re welcome to come back here.” Henry tells Roger “Thank you and we’ll keep that in mind.” Roger replies and drives off towards the “truck gate” which is now opening up. And with that you’re on the road again. “Hey I just want you to know, I’m really glad you’re coming with me. I mean I know you didn’t want to and…look I think you know I really like you and it’s not just because you flirted with me and I saw you naked and all that. I really enjoy your company. Probably not the best time to be addressing all this shit, but I think its better I just tell you where I stand right now. Especially with everything that’s going on. Anyway that’s all I want to say and I’ll drop the subject.” Roger says. You’re having a déjà vu moment like when Klepto admitted all his feelings for you, though with Roger it feels a little different. You get a little more sincerity with him. Klepto was always a little too sycophantic as far you were concerned. Hell, maybe you didn’t just decide to go off with Roger out of survival. Here or even back at the carnival. Maybe somewhere you did have an attraction to him and you just denied it for some reason. It’s that damn “good girl” trait you never shook off from your mother drilling it into your head when you were growing up. “I…I like and feel close to you too Roger.” You say and smile back at Roger. With this acknowledgement of your feelings for each other, a good period of your drive is in silence, but not an awkward silence, a comfortable one. The silence isn’t just going on in the truck, it’s also going on outside or least relatively speaking. Despite what Henry said, so far you haven’t encountered any hordes of those rabid things and you’re driving through suburbs by this point. You also haven’t seen many people walking about, but you assume most people are taking shelter somewhere. Happily the streets aren’t clogged with abandoned vehicles. That was one thing that Roger was more worried about. A line of vehicles is a little harder to drive over even with a big truck. Night comes and the rabid are a little bit more active though nothing that can’t be handled. Most of the time Roger just drives past them and they give chase for a while, but sometimes he runs them over. “Sheesh, they are getting thicker. Glad we don’t actually have to go INTO Security. Pftt, Security. Now that’s an ironic name for the city. Anyway we should actually get to Fort Timons around two or three in the morning.” Roger says. “Glad to hear it. I’m getting tired, but I’m too on edge to sleep.” You say. “Eh, go ahead and close your eyes at least. I’ll try to keep the zombie smashing to a minimum.” “They aren’t zombies, I think we established that they’re living right?” ‘Yeah, pretty sure they’re all alive, just rabid. Or whatever is wrong with them. Dunno if they infect anyone though, don’t want to ever find that out.” “I agree.” You reply and then try to take Roger’s advice by closing your eyes. You don’t really sleep so much as you rest and sort of drift in and out. You aren’t fully awake again until Roger calls your attention to your destination which isn’t far now. “Ha ha! Suzy wake up! We’re here! We made it and look they even got the towers lit up! The fort still stands!” he exclaims in joy. “Huh, yeah. That’s really…” before you can finish your groggy words Roger has stopped the truck, grabbed you and kisses you full on the lips. You’re too tired to resist, though you wouldn’t have bother anyway. “Well was it everything you expected?” you ask after he’s done. “Even better!” Roger says and then tries to kiss you again. “Whoa, hold on there, let’s save the victory kissing until AFTER we get in this place. I mean how do we even know they’ll let us in?” “Oh we’ll get in, I know we will.” Roger says and starts up the truck again. You get within range and suddenly spotlights move in your direction and a loud speaker calls out for you slow your speed to a crawl and to stop at the gates and to prepare to be inspected. Roger complies and soon you’re sitting before the gates of Fort Timons. You can imagine snipers from the towers are pointing their weapons on you and when the gates open a whole damn squad of soldiers comes out. A young man with glasses comes up to the driver’s side. “Riley? Is that you? Holy shit, we thought your squad was dead.” “It’s me Keller and I’m the only survivor. You’ll never believe what the hell happened.” “Riley?” you think, but then you realize that must be his last name. In fact it’s right on his shirt. Funny how you never noticed before. Never noticed he was a corporal either. “Well there’s been a lot going on here too, so probably won’t be too surprised. Anyway Captain Higgins will want to see you. Uh, he’s in charge now.” Keller says. “Shit, I guess a lot has changed.” “Yeah, who’s this in your passenger side?” “This is Suzy. She actually saved my life out there. Don’t worry she’s not bit or infected or anything.” “Guess you never had to suffer it first hand, but if you’re referring to those rabid, they don’t infect you if they bite. One good thing about all this I suppose. Saved your life eh? How’d that happen?” “Oh I got something surprised when I first encountered one of those things and it was on top of me snarling and growling. Suzy here got a knife and stabbed it in the face. Just enough for me to put it down permanently with a few rounds to its head and body.” “I’m also his girlfriend!” you add, hoping that by having a closer tie to Roger that they’ll let you in. “Girlfriend? Hrm. I guess stressful situations really do cause close bonds. Well under normal circumstances we wouldn’t let a civvie in that isn’t blood related or your spouse, but I guess we can make an exception. All right come on in. Don’t want to risk having this gate open any longer than it needs to be.” As you drive in you at last feel safer than you have been in a long while. Roger and you both exit the vehicle and Roger tells you that some people will probably take you to the barracks or some place with a bed. He says he’ll meet up with you later as he has to go report in. “Okay, I’ll see you then.” You say and you move in to kiss him goodbye. Well if you weren’t his girlfriend before, you certainly cemented it now. You are escorted to a barracks area just as Roger said you would be, but it’s mostly empty. The two soldiers that escort you mention that most of people stationed here never came back after being sent to the city, so there’s a lot of room now. They don’t say much else and soon leave you to your own devices. And for the first time in a long time during this hellish week, you’re alone. It’s almost a bit scary, but in a way you’ve missed it. You’re too tired though to really appreciate it and you collapse on one of the beds and start to drift off… > The next day… SATURDAY You wake up to a body grinding up against you, an arm holding you tightly around your mid-section and warm breath blowing in your ear in between the kissing. Not exactly what you expected, but it beats those Ground Zero advertisements. “Wha the…Roger that better be you.” You say. “Of course its me. Who else would it be? Bobby?” Roger answers. “Well I couldn’t tell, your erection pressing into me feels to be about the same size.” “Wow… way to make a guy feel special.” Roger says. “Oh don’t be sensitive, I could’ve said it was smaller. Anyway, isn’t there some sort of protocol against this in the barracks?” you say turning you head. “Pfft, protocol isn’t what it used to be. If you haven’t noticed there isn’t even anyone using this one, except you and barring an assault on this place, the captain was good enough to give me a day to rest up before going back on duty full time. Higgins always was cool about things, glad he’s in charge now.” “Hmm, so what’s going on?” you ask. “Nothing important, just holding out until we re-establish contact with the government I guess. Higgins might be cool about certain things, but he said he really couldn’t give out any more information other than the infected humans are not going to be a threat to us as long as we stay in the base. All the units that were sent out into the city were long since asked to pull back here though obviously not a lot made it back and there has been no contact with any of the units sent to your town.” “Shit.” You say. “Yeah, guess we both got really lucky. I spoke with some of the guys and a lot are still shaken up about stuff that went down in the city. It’s times like this that make you really glad to be alive.” “Yeah, I guess we are survivors.” You say and for a moment you lie with Roger finally feeling totally safe from the horrors that are occurring outside right now. You haven’t felt this way since you left your basement. Your moment is then broken by Roger resuming his groping and kissing on you. “Mmm, you smell so good right now…” Roger says. “Smell good? I haven’t had a proper shower in days! Nevermind the fact I’ve been running and sweating in the same clothes. I’m disgusting, I’d ask how you’re even getting turned on by me right now, but I probably do smell like roses compared to you.” You say. “Well, come on let’s go use the shower together.” “…NOW? I mean those things are open, what if someone walks in on us?” “Nobody will. I told you, there isn’t even anyone here in this area. Besides we can make it quick.” “Quick. Just what every girl wants to hear…(snort) don’t you think this is all a little presumptuous of you anyway? I said I liked and felt close to you, when did I say I was going to fuck you?” “When I helped you escape.” Roger says continuing to kiss on you. “Oh, that’s low…” you chuckle. “So is this more about me owing you something? Is that the way you want it?” “Hey, I’ll take it.” “Fuck it, I was tired of playing hard to get anyway. It’s been several days since I’ve even managed to pleasure myself so I’m about due. Come on let’s go hit the showers.” You say and get off the bed. You and Roger go to the nearby shower room. The pair of you are stripping your clothes off on your way there. By the time you’ve turned on the water, the both of you are naked. You enjoy both the force of the cleansing water hitting the front of your body as well as the force of Roger hitting your girl parts from the back. One of his hands starts to grope your breasts while his other remains gripped at your side. Every thrust feels like a great release from the stress you’ve endured this week. You scream out in ecstasy for more and you don’t give a shit how loud you are and who might hear you. You just hope Roger’s got that military stamina to go the distance. You don’t know how much time passes because you’re enjoying yourself so much and then you feel it. “Oh my God! I’m almost there! Keep doing that! Harder! Faster! Oh yessss…” you exclaim and then the explosion. Namely the nuclear bomb that explodes over the base. Whether this seemingly insignificant military base was a legitimate target or a misalignment from hitting the city of Security (Which probably still got hit too) is irrelevant. Who launched the nuke is irrelevant. Why it was launched is irrelevant. What is relevant is that you, Roger and many others with the large radius of this blast are instantly vaporized. At least you went out with a bang.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY Several gunshots cause you to wake up. “What the?!” you say still staying on the floor. “Shhhh! Quiet!” Klepto remarks and points over to the one in charge of the guardsmen. He and five others stand near the tent entrance with weapons out. “I don’t give a shit WHO started the fight or even why! You carny freaks can tear each other apart after we leave, but until then we’re here to maintain order and by god that’s what the fuck we’re going to do! If I have to break up another fight for any reason, next time the shots aren’t going in the air!” the officer remarks and leaves. The other guardsmen continue to stand near the entrance watching everyone who eventually all sit back down. “What the hell happened?” you ask. “Razor and some of the others got into an argument with Phil and his friends.” Klepto says. “Who’s Phil?” you say. “He does that fire eating stuff. Anyway, they kicked his ass and just as things were going to get worse, the guardsmen came in and put a stop to it like you just saw. Looks like the battle for control over the carnival is already starting.” “Surprised we didn’t get attacked then.” “Well like Shrimpy said yesterday, we’ve got dwarf protection for now, but who knows how long that arrangement is going to last.” “Can’t believe I slept through a fight, where’s Roofie?” “Oh him? He’s still over there out of it, even the gunshots didn’t wake him up.” Klepto says pointing to Roofie, who then surprises everyone. “I’m quite awake Klepto, I’m just resting with my eyes closed No point in getting up at this point anyway. It’s obvious this carnival has lost respect in me; I’d blame you all for smashing me in the back of the head last night, but that was really just a catalyst. (Sigh) Doesn’t matter, I predict that we’ll all be dead in two days at best.” Roofie says. “Roofie, we really didn’t want to do it, but you were talking crazy with your idea of attacking the military. Your plan would’ve gotten everyone killed.” You say. “And that may still happen if recent events are any indication. At least with my plan I would’ve died with the carnival intact rather than seeing it splitting up before my eyes.” Nobody else really knows what to say at this point, so you all just get silent and continue to converse with each other. “So what’s the next move?” Klepto asks. “I dunno, escape I guess? Can we get to one of the vehicles quickly and drive off?” you say. “Good luck with that given all the guardsmen on high alert now.” Fatty points out. “Yeah I don’t think we’re getting very far.” Lifto adds. You sit down and exhale wondering what to do next, but you can’t really think right now. It would seem that due to your more proactive suggestions and Roofie’s apathy you’ve somehow become the “leader” of your little group now. You hadn’t really planned on that. “For right now, we’re just going to stay put, I’ll try to think of something.” You remark. The rest of your group lack any ideas of their own, so they comply with your plan (or lack there of). Time passes and you mostly do a lot of casual conversation and mental speculation of what might happen “if you do X.” You half expect someone else to try to escape, particularly when they say they need to use the bathroom, but given that they always return under the same guard they left with it would seem nobody has the guts to really try it, not even Razor. Nobody else in your group comes up with any plans either, but you do notice Shrimpy occasionally heads over to the group of dwarves. He claims he’s just securing the “alliance” but you’re more inclined to believe he’s just trying to secure his own safety. So far though the dwarves are still supposed to be on your side. Roofie has continued to lie on the sleeping mat not saying anything to anyone. You still feel a little bad about betraying him especially given that he not only brought you into this carnival and liked you enough to give you a personal trailer, but also that he potentially saved you a lot of pain when Razor was going to kick your ass. You go over to talk to him. “Hey Roofie.” You say. “Hrm, hey Suzy.” He grunts. “Are you okay?” “Me? Well other than not having a drink all day, I’m fine. Just been making peace with my life I suppose.” Roofie says. “Roofie, I’m still very sorry about…” “What? Having Lifto wack me over the head? I’ve forgotten about that or rather I’ve rethought my own stance on that. You probably were right, I mean sure I would’ve rather died like that, but that was sort of selfish of me to want to use my last bit of dwindling influence to get everyone to follow me. Would’ve especially been a shame if you’d gotten killed in the crossfire. You’re actually very talented.” “You’re just saying that.” “No it’s true. I didn’t make my decision to hire you based on looks or on a whim. In the brief moment you’ve performed as a clown you were good. I mean it’s obvious you’re even a leader with how you got the other clowns hanging on your decisions. (Sigh) If only you had come across this carnival sooner. Things might’ve been much different.” “Well I’m not sure how much of a leader I am, because I can’t think of what comes next.” You say. “You’ll figure out something I’m sure. One thing though and while I don’t hold out much hope, if you can somehow keep this carnival together…do it. I know the current situation isn’t the best and I know you haven’t exactly been welcomed by everyone, but I see something in you that would feel fulfilled if you could experience the carnival like it once was. Like a family.” “A family?” you say with a smirk. “Hey like I said, you came in during the family fight. And that’s what happens in families sometimes. Family fights are always the most vicious, but after it dies down, sometimes the family unit can be stronger than ever. And I think you could be happy if you can keep this family from tearing itself apart completely. But you’ll have to be the one to do it. I don’t have it in me anymore.” At this point Roofie touches your hand and you pat his before leaving him be again. You wonder if this is more of a last request by a “dying” man rather than looking out for your personal fulfillment. Still, you think he’s genuine and sure it would be nice if the entire carnival became the happy family you never had, but you just don’t think that’s going to be possible. You look around and see nothing much has changed except a changing of the guards. One of them happens to be Roger, which makes you think of a possible way you could escape. The only problem is it’s going to rely on being more “charming” than you already have been with Roger and that could potentially get you into a situation you don’t want to be in. > You stay in the tent While it might be an opportunity to escape, you’re not going to risk it. Roger might be a little smitten with you, but he’s athletic enough looking that you don’t think you could easily fight him off if something went wrong. Given that there is a state of martial law right now, you’re likely to get yourself shot or worse. Better to stay in the tent and come up with a plan where you at least might have some back up. So you’re currently back to square one, sitting around doing much of nothing until the National Guard decides to leave (whenever if and when that happens). You spend most of your time thinking on what Roofie said and your current position at the carnival. The only way you’re ever going to have safety and have a family is if you take direct action towards those goals. “Lifto, Shrimpy, you’re with me.” You suddenly say and say you going to see the head of the dwarf faction. “Uh, I dunno if that’s a good idea, he’s been doing a lot of preparation lately.” Shrimpy says. “I’m sure he has, and its in our best interest to find out exactly what that is. Maybe YOU can afford to play both sides, but I’m not taking that chance.” You say and start walking over to the crowd of little people. As you approach, the dwarves instantly start closing ranks and their demeanor changes to a defensive one. “Back again Shrimpy? I didn’t anticipate your sycophantic antics for another hour or so. And you must be Suzy, the new clown girl that’s been pissing off all the ladies and turning on all the guys. Hrm. Upon a closer look, I understand the appeal, but you’re still no dwarf woman.” an older dwarf says, though many of his fellows probably don’t share that opinion. “I take it you’re the leader of your group?” “Yep, though I don’t suppose Shrimpy’s bothered to mention my name is Billy. If you’re here about our current alliance, you needn’t worry since I’ve reassured Shrimpy so many times about it that it’s getting to the point of annoyance. Glad to you at least changed it up by appearing yourself, could’ve done without the big ugly clown behind you though, but I’m guessing he’s a poor attempt at intimidation.” “A girl likes to have a big strong man to watch her back sometimes.” “Heh, and that’s why you’ve practically begged a bunch of little men to do it to eh? Let’s cut to the chase, what do you really want? I already know that you’re the new leader of the clowns given what you did to old Roofie over there. Bet he didn’t see that coming.” You don’t know how else to put it so you just say it, which comes to a surprise to Shrimpy and Lifto as well. “I’m going to be the new leader of this carnival and YOU’RE going to support me in this endeavor.” Billy smiles at this remark and then chuckles. Several of the other dwarves do likewise. “You? Really? And you think we’re just going to support you in this? I hope you had a better plan than preparing to fuck every munchkin in munchkin land Dorothy, because at this juncture I guarantee that would be the ONLY way that you MIGHT come close to your dreams of being in charge. And if that was your plan, you can forget it, because I’m happily married. However, it might gain you favor with some of my friends. Could ensure that your group will have a place in the new carnival order that will be coming soon, but that’s a choice you’ll have to make on your own.” “You really think the rest of the carnival is going to follow you?” “They won’t have a choice, we dwarves have always been the backbone of it and it’s about time we just took the spotlight. Just like my Great Uncle Charley always wanted to do so long ago.” “Yeah and apparently that didn’t work out so well given your current situation. You know why? Nobody truly respects you. They’re content to let you do the grunt work, but they don’t want you to be in the spotlight, unless you’re making a fool of yourself like Shrimpy here.” You say. “HEY!” Shrimpy remarks. “Watch your tone there blondie, you’re starting to tread on very dangerous ground.” Billy warns. “Yes, I know and I’m also trying to explain that you’re ALREADY in control by being the backbone of the carnival. You might very well be able to win this internal struggle, but would there be anything left? This place has languished under Roofie, obviously, but it could be great again if it had the right ring master. Someone who could bring in the people. You said it yourself, I’ve got most of the guys here salivating over me just by my presence. You know how advertising works, I bring ‘em in with a wink, a smile and some sweet talk, the other performers get the money out of them and someone has to keep the infrastructure together and that’s you. We could work together as a more than just co-workers we could be like…a family. Like how carnies are supposed to really stick together.” Your words give a moment of pause for Billy who ponders them for a moment, but then shakes his head. “Y’know, that’s a really good speech, the problem is you haven’t been here but a few days and you’re already trying to take over. In family terms, you’re like the hot twenty year old nurse that married great grandpa on his death bed in the hopes of inheriting everything despite the fact he’s got a multitude of family members that are far more deserving since they had to put up with his shit a lot longer. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re sincere or even that your idea isn’t a worthy one, its just I don’t see YOU as that potential leader. If this carnival does split apart after the dust clears, well maybe it was meant to be, but I’m not spending the remainder of my life following another half-assed leader again. So to sum up, if you want to be on our side then great, if not, then I highly suggest you all get in your clown car and all get jobs at a rodeo or something.” At this point Billy’s done talking and waves you all away. Well that could’ve went better. “Are you nuts?! Why the hell did you do that for? You’re lucky he isn’t cancelling our protection!” Shrimpy says. “Well I can’t say it was the best of moves, but I guess you had to try.” Lifto says. Between Shrimpy’s concern for his own self-preservation and Lifto’s impotent comment, you’re wondering if you shouldn’t re-consider trying to escape again. Ultimately you all head back to the table where upon Shrimpy and Lifto explain what happened. Fatty and Klepto are both surprised by your actions, but Klepto again makes the usual attempt at being more “understanding” than the others. Christ, he never quits. “I don’t need this right now, I’m going to be by myself.” You say grabbing the small radio that they were listening to and head to where Roofie is still lying on his mat with his eyes closed. You don’t know if he’s still awake or genuinely asleep now, but he at least doesn’t appear to be in any mood to bother you right now. You spend a few more hours listening to one of the radios while the others play cards and try to talk about mundane things. You’re not getting the best reception and it’s no Internet, but it’s better than nothing. You mostly listen to a lot of special breaking news talking about how bad things are getting in various parts of the world. You hear about the riots going on and think about your own town and how your “real” family is doing. Ben’s hidden personal bomb shelter was somewhere in the backyard, you wonder if you shouldn’t have just tried to look for it and moved in there, it probably was stocked. Then as the sun starts setting, you hear a bunch of shooting and shouting outside. You see the other guardsmen near the tent entrance rush off, leaving everyone unsupervised. Naturally no longer being supervised means chaos within the tent begins to erupt though you have no idea why people aren’t more concerned about why the National Guardsmen are shooting and yelling at something outside. Lacking any better idea, you try to wake up Roofie, but he doesn’t stir. “Oh shit…” you say to yourself. Apparently his last words to you WERE his dying request literally. While you’re the only one aware of poor Roofie’s unexpected passing, a full on fight in the tent breaks out. Predictably, it’s Razor and her faction vs. Billy and his faction. Some of the smaller factions join in while others just run out of the tent altogether. It’s very lucky that your group is nowhere near the center of the tent where the fighting is and more or less in a corner. “Suzy! It’s begun!” Lifto shouts. “Yeah! We need to get in and help Billy or we’re going to be next!” Shrimpy adds. > You help Billy With all the gunfire going on outside, you don’t exactly feel as if that would be any safer. Better help Billy for now. You all approach the massive brawl, but none of you save for Lifto has any real desire or ability to fight. Shrimpy finds a place to hide and occasionally throws something at someone, Klepto gets knocked out by one of Phil’s crew and its only with the help of Lifto that he doesn’t get his face stomped in. Fatty does a little better due to his size, but he’s not much in the endurance area and has to stop to catch his breath every few minutes (which results in someone inevitably trying to attack him) You try to stay out of it and maintain a close distance to either the dwarves or Lifto. You occasionally point out potential dangers and sometimes even manage to club someone in the head with a juggling pin you found on the ground, but you’re nowhere near in the thick of it. While all this is going on, you notice a decrease in the gunfire from outside and a lot more screaming and groaning. Through the chaos you see Roger staggering just outside the tent and collapsing near the entrance of it. Seeing that you’re not really affecting the “power struggle” you rush over to Roger to see what the hell happened out side the tent. When you get to Roger, you notice he’s badly wounded and bleeding a lot. You don’t know if he’s going to make it. “Roger! What the hell…what happened?!” “(Gasp) They…just…came out of nowhere…(gasp) a bunch of them.” “What?! What came out?” you ask. “I dunno. Ugggh…hurts…(gasp) they were insane looking…snarling, biting…” You notice that most of Roger’s wounds do look like bite marks. You can’t believe that you’re even pondering this, but… “Shit, Roger, are you telling me you just got attacked by…fucking zombies?” At this point Roger doesn’t respond he’s falling unconscious and his breathing is getting short. You attempt to sit him up and smack him awake, but nothing is working. He’s going to die and if your vast knowledge of zombie movies is any indication he’s going to soon become on as well. That’s the least of your concerns however since while you’re holding on to Roger, one the “zombies” that Roger alluded to suddenly comes out from behind one of the parked military vehicles. It doesn’t see you immediately, but it will if you hang around out here. Standing up and backing away from Roger’s soon to be lifeless body and trying to get back in the tent, you bump into another equally unpleasant individual and no less dangerous. Her face is bloody and several of her piercings have been pulled out, but if she’s out here that can only mean she won. “There you are, clown bitch. I was hoping to get the pleasure to beat your blonde ass myself, too bad Wanda the Red caught a knife to the throat because it might’ve been fun to watch her anally rape you with her twelve inch strap on before I kicked the shit out of you.” Razor remarks. “Razor, there are zom…there are some insane people that just…” you start to say and then Razor punches you across the face, knocking you to the ground. While you’re holding the side of your face, Razor pulls out a bloody straight razor. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan on killing you, I just plan on making you the first in our brand new freakshow!” Razor says and is about to get on top of you to carry out her promise, but all your survival instincts kick in and you scream and kick at her. If she were a man, you would’ve gotten in a couple good ball kicks. Eventually she grabs one of your legs with one arm. “Good! Struggle bitch, this is just making it more fun for me. Ain’t nobody gonna save you anyway. Everyone else is licking their wounds or dead! The carnival is under my control now!” “I wasn’t screaming for someone in carnival to save me.” You say. Razor is confused by your remark only because she’s been so focused on doing harm to you that she’s completely ignored her surroundings. Not only did the zombie hear your scream, but so did several of his fellows and unfortunately for Razor they’re the fast variety. The one that was near the military vehicle is already upon Razor by the time she does look up and two more are loping quickly behind. You quickly scramble into the tent hoping that the dead that Razor mentioned inside aren’t turning and this is a “bite style” infection. Razor wasn’t kidding when she mentioned people either being wounded or dead. Granted there are more than a few people in fair condition, but resting from the past brawl is more of a priority right now. Too bad for them that isn’t an option. “Oh god! Hel… AGGGGGH!” “You hear that? That’s the sound of your short-lived leader getting ripped to shreds by cannibal freaks. So if you idiots are done killing each other over power, you better get ready to kill for survival!” you shout and grab the nearest blunt object as you hear the screams of Razor being presumably eaten alive outside. No sooner have you grabbed a piece of chair leg, one of the zombies rushes in. You manage to bash it once across the head and then again before it goes down. It grabs at your feet and you’re about to smash your improvised club on it, when Shrimpy suddenly has run up and done it for you with a juggling pin. You both at that point keep hitting the thing until its brains are mush and it isn’t moving anymore. “(Whew) Thanks Shrimpy. Glad to see you survived.” “You as well, what the hell are…” “Later, Shrimp. Concentrate!” you say as the other two zombies come lurching in. Fortunately at this point you and Shrimpy get a little more back up from some of the other carnies and luckily nobody else gets hurt. After killing the pair of them, you’re suddenly bombarded by questions about what the hell they are. The only thing you can think of is zombies, but after a bit of cautious investigation by some of you, you start to wonder if that’s even accurate. You come to several fortunate conclusions and discoveries. First of all it looks like there aren’t anymore of those things alive anymore and the National Guard are all dead as well. So those dangers are out of the way. Second, nobody dead has come back to life, (bitten or not) so at least this isn’t contagious whatever it is. In fact you see one of the “zombies” laying dead with several bullet wounds to the chest and no head wound, so you don’t think these things are undead at least. But the fact that you’ve got crazed cannibal people running loose is still cause for concern! As you, Shrimpy and several others continue to cautiously investigate outside the tent, Shrimpy mentions some bad news while you two are away from the group. Namely Lifto, Fatty, Billy and Roofie were all dead, though you mention you already knew about Roofie. “Yeah, the old guy died peacefully in his sleep I guess. Probably best that he did just before what happened. So what about Klepto?” you ask. “Oh he’s still alive. He’s still unconscious, from that first hit, but he’s still alive. Hey, I meant to say I’m sorry about being so self-serving like I was, before all this went down Suzy. I guess I just got scared.” “Well…it’s in the past now. Besides you came through for me when I really needed it. So you said Billy’s dead?” “Yeah, that bitch Razor got him just as he was finishing off Wanda the Red. As you might expect the remaining dwarves are pretty broken up about it. But then I guess Razor’s dead too, so I’m not sure where that leaves us.” “A possible opportunity I’d say. Looks like the National Guard left a lot of supplies that could be useful in the near future. Come on let’s head back.” You say and pick up one of the rifles. Laying on the ground nearby. When you get back to the tent, people haven’t moved much from their original positions though the medical supplies taken from one of the military trucks should help patch up the wounded. You stand in front of everyone and give a speech. You know it probably won’t go over well, but this is as good of time as any. “Okay people as a great man who recently passed away once said, a carnival can be like a family. Now we’ve just gotten over a major in house feud and an external threat and guess what, we’re all still here and alive to talk about it. That means we can move on and grow stronger from this because I get the impression that we’re REALLY going to need to have that unbreakable bond of family in the near future. A strong family also needs a strong leader and that’s why seeing as I’m currently the only one more or less in good physical condition at this time, I nominate myself as ringmaster.” You expect some verbal outbursts at this point, but everyone is still too exhausted or unwilling to get into more conflict, but you are getting a lot of frowning looks. “Now I already know what you’re thinking, this bitch hasn’t been here but for a few days so who does she think she is telling us all what to do? Well let’s answer that. You’re right, I’m new here, but I know A LOT about dysfunctional families. And every dysfunctional family ALSO needs a scapegoat to place the blame on. Now as ringmaster all the major decisions and such would fall to me and as such if I fuck up severely, well who gets the blame? Me of course. It’s my hope of course that as a leader I can change everyone’s perspective of me through successes. However, most of the females here already hate me based solely on how I look, and most of you guys just see me as a living sex doll, so really what have you got to lose? If it turns out that I’m a total failure as a leader then you all can easily throw me out on my ass and choose someone else.” Nobody says anything. Just an awkward pause, which you decide to fill in with more talking. “And if someone is worried that one group is going to get preferential treatment like say the clowns well you can stop worrying since most of them are currently dead and I’m probably going to be too busy with being ring master than clowning.” “Fuck it, let the cute clown slut run this place. Her mouth looks like it’s a highway for oral sex, but she can’t be any worse than what that mean ass cunt Razor had planned. At least she’s got a positive attitude.” Some dwarf woman says in the back holding a bloody rag over her forehead. And with that “sterling” endorsement several others just agree as well. Looks like you’re the new leader of this carnival and all it took was a complete bloodbath and the apathy of the survivors to do it. The remainder of the night is spent building a small barricade around the big tent and clearing out the dead. Nobody knows if more of those geeks (Which is the new name for the “zombies” and appropriate considering the history of what a carnival geek does for a living) are going to show up and where they came from so for safety reasons everyone stays close for the night. Some are in no condition to move anyway. Eventually you fall asleep realizing that tomorrow is going to be a busy day for you. > Next day... FRIDAY “Hey fearless leader, wake up, your people demand it.” Shrimpy says tapping you on the shoulder. Groggily you sit up, you swear you feel like you’ve barely gotten any sleep at all. Shrimpy stands nearby along with Klepto, the dwarf woman who “endorsed” you yesterday and a wiry scraggily looking man. You think he runs one of those carny games…specifically the one where you shoot a water gun at a clown’s mouth. “What’s going on?” you ask. “What’s going on is a bunch of shit, that’s what darling. After the midgets here…” “Fuck you Jack, we’re DWARVES.” The dwarf woman interrupts. “Whatever Dolores. Anyway after the…little people rounded up all the military supplies last night I got one of their radios tuned in to other military frequencies. Turns out that the nearby town has been overrun with those things we killed yesterday. The poor bastard that I spoke to just before it sounded like he got his guts ripped out said they don’t know whether it was a virus or not., just that there were a shitload of them. Either way I say we got lucky that only a few wandered out this far. We need to get the fuck outta here.” “My town…wow…uh…” you say being surprised by this revelation. You really are at a loss for words right now. You start to think about your real family and even Bobby. Are they okay? Are they already dead? Are they one of those things? “Suzy? You okay? You’re spacing out.” Klepto says. “Huh, yeah, I’m just…okay yeah we obviously need to get out of here. Start packing up the rest of our stuff and…” “Sweetheart didn’t you hear what I said? I said there’s probably fucking crazed cannibals on their way here right fucking now! We ain’t got time for that shit! We need to just load up as much supplies we can and take off in our vehicles. This is the fucking end times man!” Jack says. “It’s not going to take that much longer to pack down, we had most of the stuff ready to go before the National Guard arrived. Some of our people are still wounded badly and need the rest as well. Besides, living in our trailers is going to be a lot more desirable than living in just a regular vehicle if there is a complete collapse of society going on right now.” Shrimpy remarks. “Okay then Tom Thumb YOU and the rest of the lollipop kids do it. Me and some of the others? We’re taking supplies and leaving. Not stayin’ around here waiting to be cannibal chow.” You’ve been in charge for less than one full day and already someone is threatening to break away and worse, not even taking any notice of you. You just bludgeoned crazed freaks to death yesterday, you’re tired of not being taken seriously. “Jack, if you or others want to leave you’re free to do so, but what you’re not doing is taking any of those military supplies from here. Those belong to the carnival and as such belong to all of us. Now if you don’t want any part of that any longer, lots of luck, but you and anyone else that wants to leave you go with what personal items you came with.” “Pfft, whatever. I didn’t elect you as leader. I’m only telling you as a courtesy, you can stay here and get eaten or come along and I can keep you safe. In fact to pass the time we can play shoot the clown in the mouth, except it won’t be water going in your mouth, it’ll be my…” Jack isn’t expecting you to kick him in the balls. The moment you do he winces and crumples. You follow up with a knee to his face. He’s down and you have everyone’s attention in the tent. “That’s the last fucking blow job reference I’m going to hear from you or ANYONE else for that matter. Now listen up, as I remember most of you were fine with me being in charge yesterday and goddamn it that’s what I’m going to do, be in fucking charge. This is STILL our carnival, that hasn’t changed and I’m not going to let it fall apart just because the rest of society seems to be. Now this is what we’re going to do, we’re going to finish packing up our shit, get our trailers and such in order, we’re going to also take the military trucks and then we’re going to move on. Now if some of those geeks show up well we’ve got some brand new rifles and pistols to try them out on. Anyone who doesn’t like this plan can leave with the shirts on their back and nothing else! Now let’s stop fighting and get some of this damn shit done!” At this point those that are in condition to work, proceed to do so. “What about him?” Shrimpy asks pointing at Jack who is still on the ground. “Throw his ass out, he made his decision.” You remark and then notice Dolores smiling. “What’re you smiling about?” you demand. “Nothing, but I’m beginning to like you, blondie.” Dolores says and then whistles over several dwarves who promptly pick up Jack and haul him away. Dolores then leaves to go tend to other matters. Shrimpy says he’s going to go help and leaves as well, leaving you alone with Klepto. “Well, looks like you underwent quite a change while I was knocked out yesterday. I like it. Assertiveness is an attractive trait on you.” “Klepto, I’ve got a lot on my mind and I’m in no mood for your nice guy trying to get into my pants routine right now.” You say. “Okay, okay, sheesh, I’m just…nevermind…fuck I’ll just leave you alone ringmaster.” Klepto says and walks off. You can’t worry about Klepto’s fragile ego right now, you’ve got bigger concerns and that’s on top of still thinking about your “old” family. You know you made the decision to leave them all, but that was still just a few days ago and you still never wanted any of them to suffer at the hands of whatever the hell those things are. Speaking of which you still have to worry about those geeks. Jack might’ve been out of line, but he still might’ve been correct about some wandering towards the carnival like those yesterday did. Considering the dwarves still seem to be the largest faction and friendliest toward you, you have some of them armed with the rifles to stand on top of the trailers and keep a look out. You keep yourself busy by helping with the clean up. Hours pass and that’s when your lookouts see something approaching. Not the geeks, but rather a few pick up trucks which look like they’re holding several men carrying shotguns and rifles. You call everyone to immediately take a defensive position and to fall back. You aren’t sure what to expect, but a bunch of heavily armed men can’t ever be a good thing. Unfortunately as leader, you’re going to have to be the one to handle this visit, hopefully peacefully if you can. As the pick up trucks stop, you stand several feet away with your “snipers” keep a bead on your visitors. You hang on to your own rifle and several other carnies do likewise. One of the men gets out one of the trucks with his hands up. Looks like a redneck, in fact you imagine this lot are from the trailer park a few miles down the road. “It’s okay, it’s okay li’l lady, I see yer guys up there. Ain’t nobody lookin’ for a fight.” He says. “Doesn’t look that way, given that you’ve come with three trucks full of armed men and don’t tell me its hunting season.” You say. “Heh, well I’m sure given your own heightened state of awareness, you know things are getting’ dangerous nowadays. Anyway my name’s Mel, I’m guessin’ since you’re the one talkin’ you’re in charge here. Ringmaster or something like that?” “Something exactly like that.” you say. “Okay. You…uh…got some military gear here too I see. That truck over there.” “Yeah, what of it?” “Oh nothing, but that brings about the question of where are the guardsmen…heh yeah they tried to tell us what to do too. Didn’t work out so well. The second amendment says you got the right to pack it after all. Government can’t just do what they want.” At this point more of Mel’s men get out of their trucks as well. Your people and Mel’s people are both starting to eye each other waiting for someone to fire a shot. “Look let me cut to the chase honey. I’m assumin’ you might know by now what’s been happenin’ back in town. Besides the government tryin’ to pull their shit, there’s a bunch of freaks runnin’ around tryin’ to eat people. A bunch of them attacked us last night and while we fought them off, some of us got badly hurt and are in need of medical supplies. Now of course we did try goin’ into town first, but was just too fucked up there an’ we didn’t make much head way what with the freaks AND the guard all over the damn place. Then it occurred to me today that your circus might still be around and the National Guard probably would’ve been here as well so we decided to investigate. Now the group of weekend warriors at the trailer park had shit for medical supplies. So I’m hoping your detachment had more in that department.” Mel looks up at your dwarves upon the trailers. “Now you might get a few of us, but I’m bettin, most of us are better shots than y’all, so if you give us what medicine supplies you do have we’ll leave here in peace, if not well…” At this point things could get very violent very quickly. > You open fire You let these assholes come in and take medical supplies and they won’t stop there. After all you’ve been through you’re not putting up with MORE people not taking you seriously. “FIRE!” you shout and run back for cover as your people do just that. Naturally the trailer park crew do the same as their own leader runs for cover too. You’ve never shot at a human before, but you do remember when your brother Ben tried to show you how to shoot once. You weren’t very good at it then, and you’re not very good at it now, and sadly neither are a lot of your people. Several carnies get killed in the ensuing gun battle and many more get hit. While your own side does score a few hits of its own, Mel wasn’t bluffing when he said his people were better shots. It’s actually amazing that you come through unscathed, though that might be because Klepto in his foolish attempt to play hero gets fatality shot when trying to shield you. The only thing that prevents the rednecks from completely overrunning you is one of the jugglers lobs one of the few grenades that were acquired from the military with fairly good accuracy, blowing up two of their trucks (and some of them) and giving the survivors enough pause to understand that a continued attack is not in their best interest. Mel and the rest quickly pile into the surviving truck and drive away. You’ve won, but at a high cost. The carnies have already suffered losses and wounded with the recent internal struggle. Those that aren’t wounded or dead are now experiencing a mixture of sorrow, rage and loss of hope. “Well what now fearless leader?! We got even more dead and wounded thanks to your leadership!” Dolores exclaims. “Would it have been better if I just let them come in a take all our shit?!” you snap. “It would’ve been better had we not got all our asses shot off! If it hadn’t been for Zackary throwing a grenade we’d probably all be worm food!” “And how the hell is that my fault?! I was shooting at those hillbillies right along the rest of you! I didn’t see YOU hitting any of them!” While you and Dolores continue to argue Shrimpy steps in to try to mediate. “Hey we don’t have time for all this infighting! Haven’t we had enough of that shit? Now we survived and that’s the most important thing. I say we continue with our original plan and get the fuck outta here, in fact I think we should just pack up and go RIGHT NOW. Those rednecks aren’t going to just take this loss, they’re going to come back in force.” “Are you kidding me? You want us to just turn tail and run after this? We need to get revenge!” “Dolores, we already got several wounded people who are in no condition to fight! Never mind the amount of dead! We have no idea how many of those gun toting rednecks there are or even how much weaponry they have!” Shrimpy says. “Most likely a lot and that’s not even counting whatever they got from the military.” You add. Dolores isn’t deterred however, she’s just angrier specifically at you. “Are you…(Sigh) can’t believe I supported you as a leader, must’ve been the goddamn blood loss from my head wound after the carnival fight. Look, now maybe this gunfight was a cluster fuck and that’s why I’m pissed, but I suppose in the scheme of things you at least stood up to these bastards. If we hit them now, they probably won’t even expect it, and you heard their leader, he said they had a lot of wounded of their own, so how many of them could there really be?” Dolores exhales and now gives you an even more glaring look, which you didn’t think was possible. “However, your plan is to just run off and not avenge our fallen then maybe you need to get the fuck outta the way and hit the road like you told us to do with Jack not too long ago. Suzy, if YOU want to continue running this carnival YOU better do the right thing. ” Dolores’ intentions are obvious and clear. She’s going to go take revenge no matter what. What isn’t quite obvious is if she’s going to have the support. There are probably some that will support her, but several more are likely to not want to do any more fighting. > You leave now “Dolores, you’re not going to intimidate me any more than those stupid rednecks, if you want to go get your head blown off in a futile task then be my guest, but the rest of us are leaving…” Without another word, Dolores points her weapon at you. This action causes the few that are still in fighting condition to raise their own weapons as well. Some of them at Dolores and some at you. “Don’t think so blondie. I’m running this show now.” “Dolores have you lost your mind?!” Shrimpy exclaims. “Shrimpy, you better pick a fucking side, because your days of riding the fucking fence are soon coming to an end, now you either support the carnival or you can get the fuck out too!” Dolores says. While having a rifle pointed straight at you, would’ve been terrifying at one time for you, it’s not anymore. “Dolores, if you think this is going to make me back down, you’re sorely mistaken.” “And if you think that I won’t shoot you, you’re sorely stupid.” “Dolores look around you, I don’t see a united front against me. All you’re doing is going to cripple your own cause by opening fire and that’s assuming you even survive this. If you really want to get revenge on those rednecks then you’re going to need everyone you can get. And THIS is not the way to do it.” Dolores might be angry, but she’s not stupid and knows you’ve got a point. “All right then, you got a suggestion blondie? And don’t say just to follow you, because that’s not happening.” “No, I can see that. (Sigh) I can see that this carnival is doomed to tear itself apart so the way I see it, anyone who wants to come with me, leaves right now. This means we’re going to leave with most of our personal possessions and some supplies, half of that stuff is still ours, but we’ll just take what we need. We’re also going to be travelling lighter, so we’re just going to take some of the smaller vehicles. You can have all the trailers and the bigger trucks. Since I imagine most of the wounded won’t be in any condition to travel so you’ll need those if only to give them comfortable transport when the time comes.” “What about weapons?” Dolores asks. “Well everyone keeps their personal ones along with some ammo and YOU make due with whatever is left. Hopefully for you, most people that are armed stay with you. As a gesture of good will though, you can keep the few grenades we have. While I get the impression they would come in useful, I also think if you have any chance of beating those rednecks, you’re going to need them more than we will.” At this point you hold out your hand to solidify the deal, which Dolores gives you a sideways glance before returning the gesture. “Fine, but I better not catch any of you cowards taking more than you need!” Afterwards she starts calling everyone and anyone who’ll listen of why they should stay with her and take revenge on the trailer park. You on the other hand aren’t going to try to convince any more people, you’re done with speeches for a while, as far as you’re concerned it’s been a bit of a waste of time. If they want to come, then good, if not, then oh well. On your way back to your trailer to pick up your personal belonging, you notice that it must’ve caught a few stray bullets during the gunfire. When you open up the door, you’re met with an even bigger surprise. On the floor you see Ranko with several bullet holes in him and bleeding out. Nearby is a straight razor close to his hand. He sees you and struggles to speak. “Suz…zy…you gotta (cough) help…me…” he says. “Oh this is rich, you want ME to help you? What the hell were you doing in my trailer in the first place? Going to attack me? Maybe rape me perhaps?” you say picking up the straight razor. “I…was…goi…pologize…(gasp) (gurgle)…” “Yeah, excuse me if I don’t believe you. You deserve to die and with the day I’ve had, I think I’ll take the opportunity to enjoy watching it.” “(gurgle) Fuck…you…(gasp)…” Ranko utters. Those words are his last as he slowly finishes bleeding to death. Well he certainly left a mess, but considering this isn’t going to be your trailer anymore at least you don’t need to worry about cleaning up. As you’re packing up, someone enters the trailer, you’re a little paranoid, so you immediately draw your weapon only to see Shrimpy. “Whoa! It’s just me! I was just wondering which…holy shit, is that Ranko?” “Yeah, the asshole apparently was hiding in here waiting to ambush me. Caught some stray bullets as you can see. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. So what did you want?” You say. “Oh well, I was just coming to ask which vehicle did you want? I mean considering Lifto and Klepto are both dead, I figure we got more right to those two before anyone else might at least.” “So you’re coming with me?” “Of course. I was against attacking the trailer park remember? In fact there are several people ready to leave. Dunno how Dolores’ raid on the trailer park is going to go, but that’s hardly our problem right?” You pause a bit before addressing Shrimpy’s rhetorical question. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing, abandoning the carnival like this? I mean Dolores had a point when she said I just threw out Jack without supplies because he wanted to leave. I feel like sort of a hypocrite.” You say. “Well…I think you’re doing the best with the cards that were dealt and that’s all you can do sometimes. I mean there are people here that have been with the carnival longer and they’re ready to leave without hesitation, so you certainly shouldn’t feel bad about it. I mean with the way the world is going nowadays, does something like a carnival even have a future anymore?” Shrimpy says. “Maybe not, we probably should stick to rural areas for at least a few days until some of this shit dies down, but I’m just wondering what we’re going to do with ourselves for the future in general.” “Well I’m sure we’ll figure something out. But just know that I’ll stand by your decision whatever it is.” “Thanks Shrimpy…hey what is your real name anyway?” “Heh, oh that. Well haven’t been called it in year, but its Lance.” “Really?” “Yeah, I know I look far from being a Lance though. You probably picture a big tall heroic guy with a square jaw or something.” “Eh, those guys don’t exist in real life anyway, well at least they’ve never existed in my life, but you’ve been all right.” Lance smiles and waits for you to finish packing and the pair of you head to Lifto’s vehicle, which to your surprise has been fitted to accommodate a “shorter” driver. You, Lance and several others leave the carnival which is now in the process of gearing up for the raid on the trailer park (or housing the very wounded) you can’t imagine how that’s going to go, but you hope Dolores is successful even if you didn’t see eye to eye with her. Lance and you drive along with several other vehicles in an odd caravan like fashion. Really there is no reason why everyone needs to stay together, since everyone is free to go their own separate way, but perhaps leaving the carnival is too much of a change and at least there is a little bit of a familiarity by sticking with the same people. You and Lance converse the entire time you drive, though eventually at one point you start to get sleepy and Lance takes over with the driving. Feeling the safest you’ve been in days, you drift off to sleep… > Next day... SATURDAY A loud noise in the distance wakes you up and you also notice you’re no longer moving. “HOLY SHIT SUZY WAKE UP! LOOK!” Lance yells and you feel a rough shake to your arm. You instantly open your eyes and with a brief head swivel, you see something that is going to change your life more than anything else in the world. A mushroom cloud in the far distance. You’re not feeling any tremors or aftershocks, a wave of fire hasn’t engulfed you, so you’re guessing that it wasn’t excessively close, maybe it was even a small one. Still, you can’t help but wonder if you’re in some sort of deadly radiation radius though. If so there isn’t much that can done about it. “That’s it then…the world finally went and did it…” you say to yourself. You’re much calmer than Lance is, who is obviously distressed. In fact given that most of the vehicles haves stopped, you can only guess that he’s not the only one. Some are getting out to look and that’s soon followed by a few breaking down into tears or arguements. “Lance, we’re going to be okay. Just like you said, we’ll figure something out.” You say and start unlocking the door. “Where are you going? I think we should stay inside, I mean there might be radiation or something.” “Lance, if we are within the fallout blast, then we’ve probably already acquired enough rads to kill us anyway. I’m going to go try to calm everyone down because if this is it, then we’ll actually do a lot better in the survival aspect if we all work together.” It takes a moment and you stand on top of your vehicle to do it, but you soon get everyone’s attention. “Hey! Listen up! This might be the end of civilization as we know it, but it isn’t the end of the world! Sure life is going to be harder now, but when hasn’t it been for us carnies? Why just this damn week we suffered through a military occupation, an internal civil war, an attack by freaks, and an attack by a bunch of rednecks. We’ve already splintered apart enough already. No way are we going to descend any further. We’ve come too far.” You think you’re getting better at making speeches because this time you’re seeing less frowning faces and general attentiveness. “We used to drift from place to place providing entertainment as a source of our survival well what has really changed? We’ll still be drifters because that’s how we’ll survive. This world just got a whole lot shittier and we ARE nomads and vagabonds by nature. Surely we’ll be picking up, collecting, and scavenging useful material, items and the like to trade in our travels. I know we all have useful skills, surely with those, our ability to learn and adapt and a team effort we’ll be able to keep this FAMILY together a very long time.” “Yeah. Suzy’s right. We can survive this.” someone says and several others agree. While you don’t get a feeling of enthusiasm, at least this time you are not met with apathy. In any case, you and some of the others get together to decide where to head next and what to do about food, and fuel. This isn’t going to be easy, but then this whole week has been a trial for you. No longer are you the shy “good” girl who hid away in the basement, harassed by your family and living as one day blurred into the next. You are part of something bigger and not just that, but a leader. It’s a brand new day and this is just the beginning of your brand new life. > … Nomad The Future… “Mom, why can’t we just head to Rebirth, it’s closer and we can get better deals there.” Lucy asks you. “Because last time we stopped through, they were beginning to go through a power struggle and while I know it’s over now, the new ruling head of that town is an asshole.” You reply. “And how exactly does that make him any different than the last guy?” “The last ruler of Rebirth at least tried to curb the amount of wanton violence and rape in the community. This guy encourages it. The place is little more than a glorified wasteland thug haven now. We walk in there and at best we’re going to come out of a firefight alive and poor. At worst, well I think you know what will happen.” Lucy doesn’t say anything. She’s fully aware of the dangers of being female, let alone a teenage girl that looks like her in this new harsh world. Still, she can’t help arguing the point. “But don’t we risk death and worse just by roaming from place to place all the time anyway? Wouldn’t it be better if we found some place to settle down?” “Heh, I guess you don’t remember because you were so young, but your father and I tried that once. Didn’t work out very well when the little town that we THOUGHT was secure got overrun by raiders. That was probably one of the scariest days of my life. After years of previously being drifters, we let ourselves get unprepared. It was a mistake on my part since I thought a more stable environment would be better to raise you in, as it turned out, should’ve stayed a nomad and I’d say that’s worked out a lot better.” “How? We’re always living a hand to mouth existence. Our group still loses people to violence and other causes. I mean dad died because we don’t have proper medical treatment available.” “Lucy, your father might’ve died anyway even if we hadn’t been living a nomadic existence. I know they say civilization is rebuilding, but most of the places we’ve been to aren’t exactly stellar in their medical facilities themselves. The exceptions might be those fucked up Ground Zero communities and I doubt if you’d want to live some place like that.” “No, I guess not.” Lucy says. You look at Lucy and understand she’s just being a little rebellious due to her being a teenager right now. She’s at the age where she doesn’t want you to be so close all the time. It’s funny because you went through no such rebellious period yourself and your lifestyle was the exact opposite right now. You never went anywhere; you never really did anything save for staying in your basement. Now? You’ve seen more and done more than you ever could’ve imagined. In fact you’ve lived a nomadic existence long enough that you think you prefer it, even when you temporarily settled down years ago. You (and her father) have taught Lucy how to take care of herself in this harsh world. Still, you do wonder if you’re probably a little overprotective of your daughter, you won’t be around forever and she should have the opportunity to live her own life and if that means she wants to live in a permanent residence then perhaps she should be given that chance. “Lucy, the world is still pretty fucked up now, but despite my previous cynicism, I suppose parts of it are getting better. Maybe one day you can find a nice place to settle down that won’t be run by a bloodthirsty warlord or in danger of being raided by mutant cannibals. And if that’s your choice, then you’re free to do it. I know you’ll have to live your own life eventually.” You say. Lucy smiles at the permission, but reassures you that she had no intention of leaving you yet. It’s comforting, since it shows that she still wants you around. She’s still your child. You, Lucy and the rest of your ragtag band of traders, tinkerers and scavengers make your way to the town of Blivop. Not exactly the best for trade, but at least the people there aren’t complete amoral rapists and murderers. Later that night when your caravan sets down for the night, you drift off to sleep with an old worn clown nose in your hand. You squeeze it a couple times, remembering happy times with your now departed husband. “Goddnight Lance.” You say and slowly drift off with the round red foam ball in your hand.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You let these assholes come in and take medical supplies and they won’t stop there. After all you’ve been through you’re not putting up with MORE people not taking you seriously. “FIRE!” you shout and run back for cover as your people do just that. Naturally the trailer park crew do the same as their own leader runs for cover too. You’ve never shot at a human before, but you do remember when your brother Ben tried to show you how to shoot once. You weren’t very good at it then, and you’re not very good at it now, and sadly neither are a lot of your people. Several carnies get killed in the ensuing gun battle and many more get hit. While your own side does score a few hits of its own, Mel wasn’t bluffing when he said his people were better shots. It’s actually amazing that you come through unscathed, though that might be because Klepto in his foolish attempt to play hero gets fatality shot when trying to shield you. The only thing that prevents the rednecks from completely overrunning you is one of the jugglers lobs one of the few grenades that were acquired from the military with fairly good accuracy, blowing up two of their trucks (and some of them) and giving the survivors enough pause to understand that a continued attack is not in their best interest. Mel and the rest quickly pile into the surviving truck and drive away. You’ve won, but at a high cost. The carnies have already suffered losses and wounded with the recent internal struggle. Those that aren’t wounded or dead are now experiencing a mixture of sorrow, rage and loss of hope. “Well what now fearless leader?! We got even more dead and wounded thanks to your leadership!” Dolores exclaims. “Would it have been better if I just let them come in a take all our shit?!” you snap. “It would’ve been better had we not got all our asses shot off! If it hadn’t been for Zackary throwing a grenade we’d probably all be worm food!” “And how the hell is that my fault?! I was shooting at those hillbillies right along the rest of you! I didn’t see YOU hitting any of them!” While you and Dolores continue to argue Shrimpy steps in to try to mediate. “Hey we don’t have time for all this infighting! Haven’t we had enough of that shit? Now we survived and that’s the most important thing. I say we continue with our original plan and get the fuck outta here, in fact I think we should just pack up and go RIGHT NOW. Those rednecks aren’t going to just take this loss, they’re going to come back in force.” “Are you kidding me? You want us to just turn tail and run after this? We need to get revenge!” “Dolores, we already got several wounded people who are in no condition to fight! Never mind the amount of dead! We have no idea how many of those gun toting rednecks there are or even how much weaponry they have!” Shrimpy says. “Most likely a lot and that’s not even counting whatever they got from the military.” You add. Dolores isn’t deterred however, she’s just angrier specifically at you. “Are you…(Sigh) can’t believe I supported you as a leader, must’ve been the goddamn blood loss from my head wound after the carnival fight. Look, now maybe this gunfight was a cluster fuck and that’s why I’m pissed, but I suppose in the scheme of things you at least stood up to these bastards. If we hit them now, they probably won’t even expect it, and you heard their leader, he said they had a lot of wounded of their own, so how many of them could there really be?” Dolores exhales and now gives you an even more glaring look, which you didn’t think was possible. “However, your plan is to just run off and not avenge our fallen then maybe you need to get the fuck outta the way and hit the road like you told us to do with Jack not too long ago. Suzy, if YOU want to continue running this carnival YOU better do the right thing. ” Dolores’ intentions are obvious and clear. She’s going to go take revenge no matter what. What isn’t quite obvious is if she’s going to have the support. There are probably some that will support her, but several more are likely to not want to do any more fighting. > You get revenge If you’re going to have any hope and future of keeping this carnival together with you as leader, you’re going to have to get revenge on those rednecks. Maybe Dolores is correct in that there won’t be too many of them in fighting condition. “Okay, okay, we’ll do something about those hicks. Just gotta get organized first…” you say before Shrimpy interrupts. “Suzy are you serious? Haven’t you noticed all of the wounded and dead we have?” “Yes, and that’s exactly why we’re going to hit those bastards back hard! Look Shrimpy, if this is the way the world is going to work now, we need to always stand up to bullies or else they’ll just walk all over you. Trust me, I know what the hell I’m talking about. Now you can either get with the program or hit the road.” You say. Shrimpy is taken aback by your harsh tone. He doesn’t reply, he just nods and leaves. He doesn’t leave, so he’s willing to fall in line despite believing that this is a bad idea. Dolores and yourself both gather those still in fighting condition and convince them that an attack is in order. You manage to convince most, but there are a few that leave. Dolores is nearly ready to blow their heads off for wanting to take some supplies with them, but not wishing to cause another potential internal firefight you allow them to leave with minimal of supplies. Within an hour and a half everyone that is willing to come with you is loaded up and ready to go. Shrimpy, in perhaps an effort to show his dedication says he’ll come too, but you tell him to stay behind with the wounded just so there is someone that can help them in case they have to be moved immediately. “I’m not exactly how much I’m going to be able to help in that regard. My name isn’t Lifto.” Shrimpy says. “Well, not all of them are down for the count. I’m sure you’d be able to help a few at least.” You say. “Suzy, you don’t need to do this, we could just leave. This attack is a suicide mission. It’s obvious from the last firefight with those good ol’ boys we can’t hit for shit.” “Well, fortunately we’ve got some automatic weapons in that regard, more bullets, more likely to hit the targets. Hey it happens.” You say. Sensing he isn’t going to talk you out of this, Shrimpy wishes you good luck and you’re on your way to a path of rip roarin’ revenge, though there is a part of you that would just like to run. You lead the drive to the trailer park since you actually know where it is exactly. When you arrive, it’s hard to tell if the place is in shambles from when their leader said they were attacked or if it always looked this way. No sooner have all your vehicles stopped, when Dolores has already gotten out of the military truck you took and started lobbing the remaining grenades at the trailer homes. “Come on out you inbred sister fuckers!” she shouts and begins firing randomly at the rest of the homes. “Dolores, get back in the…” you begin to say and then suddenly Dolores actions have attracted return fire. “Over there! Fire over there!” Dolores shouts and takes cover. At this point Dolores is giving out orders and you’re not being listened to at all. Despite Dolores’ enthusiasm for revenge it doesn’t suddenly make her a better “commander.” You at least try to remember all those times you played video games on your computer and know that wading straight forward into battle is traditionally a shit strategy so you attempt to try the classic pincer maneuver. Unfortunately given that you’re the only one using any sort of critical thinking and nobody is actually listening to you, you’re mainly stuck by yourself, trying to pick off the hillbillies when you see them pop up. If you were actually a good shot, you might’ve actually turned this attack into a successful one. As it stands, the trailer park crew even with the wounded they have and catching them off guard with the grenades, still outnumber you severely and STILL have better shots. They also have explosives of their own perhaps not military grade like you had, but when you’ve got a lot of half empty liquor bottles lying around and people with too much time on their hands well sometimes even the lower born get creative. Your vehicles and your people are suddenly bombarded by several Molotov cocktails and someone even has a homemade “launcher.” The explosions are big, loud and fatal to most of your people who were still taking cover behind them. The others who weren’t have already gotten cut down by the gunfire. Dolores herself is lying dead with a bullet hole in her head and you’re suddenly hearing hillbillies whoopin’ it up and seriously worried about your physical safety. “Whoo hoo! Somebody keep the pretty blonde one alive! We can have a good time wit her!” you hear one of them shout. “Goddamnit Ray, stop thinkin’ with yer dick for one minute, she’s still armed ya dumb shit!” you hear Mel shout back. Seeing as none of the vehicles you came in are usable anymore you attempt to run. You just hope you’ve got more endurance than a bunch of overweight beer swillin’ hicks. They aren’t going to be able to follow immediately by any working vehicles they might have due to the flaming scrap heap blocking the trailer park entrance created by their homemade bombs. You MIGHT have made it, if they weren’t lead by a more pragmatic leader type. Just goes to show that you can’t judge people just by where they come from… As soon as you make it to the road, a single shot rings out and you feel a burning sensation run through your upper back and up your spine. You then feel numb and collapse instantly. You’re paralyzed, not just from the waist down, but from the neck down. You panic and the tears start when you know this is it. Mel arrives before the rest of his crew who are now complaining loudly about Mel shooting you. “(Sigh) Well darlin’ you asked fer this. I get why you attacked, but that doesn’t fuckin’ mean we’re gonna sit and take it in the ass any more than you did. Just be glad, I’m puttin’ you outa yer misery rather than lettin’ the rest have their way with you.” Mel says. You don’t reply and just close your eyes waiting to hear the final shot.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “Hey fearless leader, wake up, your people demand it.” Shrimpy says tapping you on the shoulder. Groggily you sit up, you swear you feel like you’ve barely gotten any sleep at all. Shrimpy stands nearby along with Klepto, the dwarf woman who “endorsed” you yesterday and a wiry scraggily looking man. You think he runs one of those carny games…specifically the one where you shoot a water gun at a clown’s mouth. “What’s going on?” you ask. “What’s going on is a bunch of shit, that’s what darling. After the midgets here…” “Fuck you Jack, we’re DWARVES.” The dwarf woman interrupts. “Whatever Dolores. Anyway after the…little people rounded up all the military supplies last night I got one of their radios tuned in to other military frequencies. Turns out that the nearby town has been overrun with those things we killed yesterday. The poor bastard that I spoke to just before it sounded like he got his guts ripped out said they don’t know whether it was a virus or not., just that there were a shitload of them. Either way I say we got lucky that only a few wandered out this far. We need to get the fuck outta here.” “My town…wow…uh…” you say being surprised by this revelation. You really are at a loss for words right now. You start to think about your real family and even Bobby. Are they okay? Are they already dead? Are they one of those things? “Suzy? You okay? You’re spacing out.” Klepto says. “Huh, yeah, I’m just…okay yeah we obviously need to get out of here. Start packing up the rest of our stuff and…” “Sweetheart didn’t you hear what I said? I said there’s probably fucking crazed cannibals on their way here right fucking now! We ain’t got time for that shit! We need to just load up as much supplies we can and take off in our vehicles. This is the fucking end times man!” Jack says. “It’s not going to take that much longer to pack down, we had most of the stuff ready to go before the National Guard arrived. Some of our people are still wounded badly and need the rest as well. Besides, living in our trailers is going to be a lot more desirable than living in just a regular vehicle if there is a complete collapse of society going on right now.” Shrimpy remarks. “Okay then Tom Thumb YOU and the rest of the lollipop kids do it. Me and some of the others? We’re taking supplies and leaving. Not stayin’ around here waiting to be cannibal chow.” You’ve been in charge for less than one full day and already someone is threatening to break away and worse, not even taking any notice of you. You just bludgeoned crazed freaks to death yesterday, you’re tired of not being taken seriously. “Jack, if you or others want to leave you’re free to do so, but what you’re not doing is taking any of those military supplies from here. Those belong to the carnival and as such belong to all of us. Now if you don’t want any part of that any longer, lots of luck, but you and anyone else that wants to leave you go with what personal items you came with.” “Pfft, whatever. I didn’t elect you as leader. I’m only telling you as a courtesy, you can stay here and get eaten or come along and I can keep you safe. In fact to pass the time we can play shoot the clown in the mouth, except it won’t be water going in your mouth, it’ll be my…” Jack isn’t expecting you to kick him in the balls. The moment you do he winces and crumples. You follow up with a knee to his face. He’s down and you have everyone’s attention in the tent. “That’s the last fucking blow job reference I’m going to hear from you or ANYONE else for that matter. Now listen up, as I remember most of you were fine with me being in charge yesterday and goddamn it that’s what I’m going to do, be in fucking charge. This is STILL our carnival, that hasn’t changed and I’m not going to let it fall apart just because the rest of society seems to be. Now this is what we’re going to do, we’re going to finish packing up our shit, get our trailers and such in order, we’re going to also take the military trucks and then we’re going to move on. Now if some of those geeks show up well we’ve got some brand new rifles and pistols to try them out on. Anyone who doesn’t like this plan can leave with the shirts on their back and nothing else! Now let’s stop fighting and get some of this damn shit done!” At this point those that are in condition to work, proceed to do so. “What about him?” Shrimpy asks pointing at Jack who is still on the ground. “Throw his ass out, he made his decision.” You remark and then notice Dolores smiling. “What’re you smiling about?” you demand. “Nothing, but I’m beginning to like you, blondie.” Dolores says and then whistles over several dwarves who promptly pick up Jack and haul him away. Dolores then leaves to go tend to other matters. Shrimpy says he’s going to go help and leaves as well, leaving you alone with Klepto. “Well, looks like you underwent quite a change while I was knocked out yesterday. I like it. Assertiveness is an attractive trait on you.” “Klepto, I’ve got a lot on my mind and I’m in no mood for your nice guy trying to get into my pants routine right now.” You say. “Okay, okay, sheesh, I’m just…nevermind…fuck I’ll just leave you alone ringmaster.” Klepto says and walks off. You can’t worry about Klepto’s fragile ego right now, you’ve got bigger concerns and that’s on top of still thinking about your “old” family. You know you made the decision to leave them all, but that was still just a few days ago and you still never wanted any of them to suffer at the hands of whatever the hell those things are. Speaking of which you still have to worry about those geeks. Jack might’ve been out of line, but he still might’ve been correct about some wandering towards the carnival like those yesterday did. Considering the dwarves still seem to be the largest faction and friendliest toward you, you have some of them armed with the rifles to stand on top of the trailers and keep a look out. You keep yourself busy by helping with the clean up. Hours pass and that’s when your lookouts see something approaching. Not the geeks, but rather a few pick up trucks which look like they’re holding several men carrying shotguns and rifles. You call everyone to immediately take a defensive position and to fall back. You aren’t sure what to expect, but a bunch of heavily armed men can’t ever be a good thing. Unfortunately as leader, you’re going to have to be the one to handle this visit, hopefully peacefully if you can. As the pick up trucks stop, you stand several feet away with your “snipers” keep a bead on your visitors. You hang on to your own rifle and several other carnies do likewise. One of the men gets out one of the trucks with his hands up. Looks like a redneck, in fact you imagine this lot are from the trailer park a few miles down the road. “It’s okay, it’s okay li’l lady, I see yer guys up there. Ain’t nobody lookin’ for a fight.” He says. “Doesn’t look that way, given that you’ve come with three trucks full of armed men and don’t tell me its hunting season.” You say. “Heh, well I’m sure given your own heightened state of awareness, you know things are getting’ dangerous nowadays. Anyway my name’s Mel, I’m guessin’ since you’re the one talkin’ you’re in charge here. Ringmaster or something like that?” “Something exactly like that.” you say. “Okay. You…uh…got some military gear here too I see. That truck over there.” “Yeah, what of it?” “Oh nothing, but that brings about the question of where are the guardsmen…heh yeah they tried to tell us what to do too. Didn’t work out so well. The second amendment says you got the right to pack it after all. Government can’t just do what they want.” At this point more of Mel’s men get out of their trucks as well. Your people and Mel’s people are both starting to eye each other waiting for someone to fire a shot. “Look let me cut to the chase honey. I’m assumin’ you might know by now what’s been happenin’ back in town. Besides the government tryin’ to pull their shit, there’s a bunch of freaks runnin’ around tryin’ to eat people. A bunch of them attacked us last night and while we fought them off, some of us got badly hurt and are in need of medical supplies. Now of course we did try goin’ into town first, but was just too fucked up there an’ we didn’t make much head way what with the freaks AND the guard all over the damn place. Then it occurred to me today that your circus might still be around and the National Guard probably would’ve been here as well so we decided to investigate. Now the group of weekend warriors at the trailer park had shit for medical supplies. So I’m hoping your detachment had more in that department.” Mel looks up at your dwarves upon the trailers. “Now you might get a few of us, but I’m bettin, most of us are better shots than y’all, so if you give us what medicine supplies you do have we’ll leave here in peace, if not well…” At this point things could get very violent very quickly. > You continue to negotiate Being a “native” of the area, you do know something of the types that do live in the trailer park. Most of them probably do nothing else except practice-shooting beer cans all damn day. Mel, is most likely right in that his people are going to be better shots and a gun battle is going to result in a lot of dead on your side. However you can’t just let them take your stuff, especially since you’re using a lot of it and there isn’t much to begin with. “Well, if we had the extra supplies we might be inclined to share, the fact is we don’t have much and what little we have, well we need. You start a shooting match here and you’re likely to wind up with more dead and wounded than what was worth the effort.” You reply. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you darlin’.” Mel replies. “It’s true, seriously come on in and take a look yourself. We got a shitload of wounded ourselves in that big tent back there. Just you though, the rest of your people can stand out here and look fearsome.” Mel chuckles. “Oh just me huh? And as soon as I go in I’m at your fuckin’ mercy. Nah, I don’t think so.” “Fine so take me as hostage. Here…” you say and drop your rifle and walk over to Mel. A couple people shout at you, but you just wave a hand at them as if to tell them to calm down. Meanwhile Mel stands watching you approach. When you’re before him, he’s definitely staring you up and down. “You got a pistol I presume?” you ask Mel. “Yeah.” “Well pull it out and put it to my head.” You say turning around and putting your body against Mel’s and then putting one of his arms around your waist. “Well… shit girl, you’re just somethin’ else ain’t cha?” Mel says barely keeping his composure as he pulls out his pistol. “If you say so. In any case you now have a little insurance that should be good enough for you shouldn’t it? I mean…I’m putting my complete trust in you. You’re in complete control” you say and grind up against Mel’s body a little more while turning your head a bit to flutter your eyes at him. Mel is at a loss for words, but his buddies aren’t. “Woo Hoo, looks like the li’l blonde number is sweet on ya Mel!” “I say we take her back, instead of medical supplies. I never liked Bobby Ray to begin with. Motherfucker can bleed out fer all I care!” “You plannin’ on tradin’ Tina up fer her? “Why’s Mel get all the pretty ones? He’s already got Tina, I say one of us should get the blonde!” At this point some arguing breaks out, followed by Mel shouting at them to shut the fuck up. He then turns his attention back to you. “Heh… you …you are trouble girlie. If I took you back to the trailer park, you’d probably have every man ripping each other apart over you. I can barely keep these dumb fuckers from doing that now. In any case, let’s go look at the medical supply situation. Come on.” Mel says motioning you to move. “As you wish.” You say. Mel and you head back towards the carnival where upon you give him the “grand tour” showing him that it is indeed true that you don’t really have much in the way of medical supplies. He also sees all the people that are wounded too. “Hmm, well I suppose y’all COULD still be hidin’ such things somewhere, but honestly I’m inclined to believe ya. This place has even less military vehicles than the ones that were at the trailer park and it sounds like from what you told me there weren’t even that many guardsmen here. From the amount of wounded I see, you probably did use up most of the pittance that the military brought with them…how did you get all these wounded though? Nobody looks like they’re suffering from gunshot wounds. The cannibal creeps?” “Nope. All these wounded are from each other. Long story, let’s just say carny politics is complicated and I came out on top.” You reply confidently. “I see…well you have certainly displayed a certain amount of balls putting yourself in the vulnerable position you did. (Sigh) All right, you dealt straight with me, so I’ll deal straight with you. Guess we’ll try the town again.” At this point you and Mel head back to the “neutral zone” where upon Mel releases you (reluctantly) and waves at his people to get ready to go. As they drive away, you breathe a heavy sigh of relief and rush back to the others. Dolores approaches you when you arrive. “Well that was an interesting way to handle things, but it worked. Those good ol’ boys woulda probably killed and wounded a lot more of us.” “Yeah, an’ now we need to get the hell out of here. I don’t trust them to not come back with a bigger group and attack us anyway.” “Well, we probably could’ve done with a bit more of a rest, but I can’t argue with that logic, they weren’t the most reputable lookin’ an’ you’re the boss. One good thing about having some recently departed, is that the trailers have a lot more room in them now. Speaking of which, your own trailer is already hooked up to a truck. We should be ready to roll in about an hour.” Feeling like you deserve a rest after recent events, you head back to your trailer to relax. As soon as you enter though, you are suddenly grabbed and tackled to the floor and the stench of bad body odor fills your nostrils. “Don’t scream bitch.” A familiar voice whispers. You get a good look at your assailant and see a man with half worn clown make up on his face. It’s Ranko and he smells even worse now that he’s laying right on top of you. “I see a lot of fuckin’ changes to this here carnival have happened since I’ve been gone. Saw some of it from afar while hiding and waiting for the best time to strike. Nearly got eaten by those geeks in the process, but heh heh heh, I got away…” Ranko begins to press his weight on you so you can’t wiggle away while keeping one hand on your mouth and holding a straight razor in his other. His whole outfit is filthy presumably from lurking about in the wilderness for days, but you also notice that he’s sporting a couple wounds of his own in the form of bite marks. “Nothing smart to say now bitch? Thought you were the ringmaster now. Head cunt in charge and all that. Fuck you, I SHOULD be in fuckin’ charge!” At this point you manage to bite Ranko’s hand, which tastes foul, but it’s enough to cause him to take it off your mouth, giving you a chance to scream for help, before he backhands you across the face. “Bitch! Maybe if I raped you, you’d KNOW who’s in fuckin’ charge!” he exclaims and fumbles with pulling down his pants, and keeps the straight razor to your throat with his other hand. (Carnies must love straight razors) All Ranko has to do is make a quick swipe and your throat is going to be opened if you struggle. If you do nothing he may very well rape you assuming nobody heard you scream. Of course he’ll probably kill you anyway after he’s finished. > You give in Maybe it’s because of everything you’ve been through within the past week, (not to mention the incident with your uncle) but the oddest thing about this situation is that you’re more revolted than scared. That isn’t to say you’re not scared though, you don’t want to be raped and you certainly don’t want to die, especially given everything you’ve just survived. The thought sickens you, but you realize there might still be a way to avoid your current horrible situation without resisting. “You gonna treat me like a whore? Come on then do it!” you say. “What?” Ranko asks. “Come on, stick it in me daddy. I want to feel…” you start to say when Ranko pushes the razor against your throat that it feels like its going to break the skin. “You playin’ with me bitch?” Ranko says with his face so close to yours that you have to prevent yourself from pulling away due to his bad breath. “Not at all, you’re doin’ it the way I like it. Daddy used to come into my room late at night and get rough sometimes, but I knew he only did it because he loved me…” “You…are one twisted…” Before Ranko can finish his sentence you muster up the courage and put aside the revulsion long enough to move your head forward to kiss Ranko’s lips and even shove your tongue in his mouth. It’s the worst thing you’ve ever tasted, and it’s only due to your strong gag reflex (Yes, if most people knew that about you they’d have a field day with the jokes due to that knowledge) that you don’t puke. Ranko’s blade has cut your neck superficially due to moving your head forward, but your action has had the desired effect of him relaxing a bit. Not enough that you’d trust being able to escape or successfully get the straight razor away, but it bought you some time. “Hah, I KNEW you were into me! No bitch can resist a man who takes charge! You want me to do you like daddy did huh? Well did he ever do this?” Ranko says and then flips you over. “I’m gonna ride your ASS so hard, you’re not gonna shit right for a long time!” he says and starts pulling your pants down. “Oh no! I’m a virgin back there!” you say in the most innocent way possible, which of course makes Ranko only laugh like the rapist creep he is and rips your panties off. Meanwhile the blood must’ve completely left his brain and gone all to his dick, because the idiot dropped his straight razor in his desire to fuck you in the ass. You grab the straight razor, which is now near your hand. Before Ranko can get his dick into the “promised land” you turn your head and swipe backwards with the razor. He’s close enough that you catch him across the face. “AGH! GODDAMNIT! FUCKING BITCH!” he shouts and falls backwards holding the side of his face. You scramble forward and grab a couple of nearby items before turning around to throw them at him. He blocks and screams a bunch of obscenities, but before he can advance towards you, someone has at last heard the commotion going on. “Motherfucker…” Shrimpy says opening up the door and rushes to punch Ranko in the small of the back. Ranko back kicks Shrimpy causing the little guy to fall. Sensing he’s no longer in control of the situation, Ranko tries to escape out the door, only to trip and fall awkwardly on his face due to his pants and underwear still being around his ankles. You aren’t about to let Ranko get away with shit, so you plunge the razor into Ranko’s ass and twist. His screams are predictable. “Was it good for you?” you say and then slam his face into the door twice, breaking his nose and causing him to gurgle a bit on his own blood. And for the finisher, you pull the bloody, shitty razor out of his ass and slit his throat with it. You then fall back and sit on a nearby chair breathing heavily after your ordeal. Shrimpy at this point recovers as well. “Shit, I know this is a silly question, but are you all right?” he asks. “ (Pant) Well, I’m alright in that at least this fucktard didn’t ass rape me, but this wasn’t a pleasant experience (pant). Fuck. “ “Well at least its over now…” Shrimpy starts to say before he’s interrupted. (Knock knock) “Hey what’s going on in there, heard all this…holy fuck…” Dolores says as she opens up the door revealing Ranko’s bloody face as the first thing she sees. “Nothin’ Dolores, just an ex-disgruntled employee. It’s been taken care of.” You shout. “SUZY! What happened?! Are you all right?!” you hear Klepto remark from outside. “Uh, she’s fine Klepto, she just needs some time by herself. Why don’t you help pull this asshole out of the trailer?” Shrimpy says and gets Ranko’s body by the feet while presumably Dolores and Klepto pull the rest of him out of the trailer. “What the hell happened to his ass? It’s all bloody…ugh, this guy smells worse than when he was alive.” You hear Dolores say, as the door slams shut. You grab something to cover your naked lower half with while Shrimpy continues to stand in the doorway, just in case Klepto wants to play “white knight” and come see you. “Thanks Shrimpy.” You say. “For what, I barely did anything.” He replies. “It was enough that you got here when you did.” “Well I was initially on my way to ask where are next destination was going to be, but I guess that can wait for now. And don’t worry I won’t be telling Klepto or anyone else about seeing you…well less than fully clothed.” “Well I appreciate that too. As for our next destination, I dunno, with as crazy as things seem to be getting maybe we should just stick to rural areas for awhile.” “Yeah, probably for the best. Well I’ll leave now, but remember we’re all here when you need to talk.” “Shrimpy?” you call out once more. “Yes, Suzy?” “What is your real name?” “Heh, oh that. Been awhile since anyone used it, but it’s Lance.” “Really?” “Really. I know I don’t look like a Lance. You tend to think of a big tall guy with a square jaw. A real hero type.” “Well like I said, you were a hero today.” Lance smiles at this comment and nods before walking out the door. And you’re all by yourself again. You look around the trailer and the new blood stains you’re going to have to clean. You immediately lock the door, go wash up and allow yourself to break down a bit in the shower. Still through the tears, you realize that you’re a lot stronger than you could’ve ever believed. You’re also glad you’ve got a “family” of sorts now, there is some comfort in that. The rest of your day is spent staying alone in your trailer though given that the whole carnival is soon on the move it isn’t like anyone is going to just walk up and knock on your door now. The motion of the trailer combined with the stress of the day causes you to collapse on your bed and close your eyes as you eventually fall asleep… > Next day… SATURDAY A loud noise in the distance wakes you up and you also notice you’re no longer moving. A quick look out one of the window and you see something that is going to change your life more than anything else in the world. A mushroom cloud. You’re not feeling any tremors or aftershocks, a wave of fire hasn’t engulfed you, so you’re guessing that it wasn’t excessively close, maybe it was even a small one. Still, you can’t help but wonder if you’re in some sort of deadly radiation radius though. If so there isn’t much that can done about it. “That’s it then…the world finally went and did it…” you say to yourself. You hear some commotion going on outside, presumably several of the carnies are freaking out, arguing, and generally concerned on what to do next. It’s a reasonable reaction to a doomsday situation. You calmly get dressed and make your appearance. It takes a moment, but you soon get everyone’s attention. “Hey! Listen up! This might be the end of civilization as we know it, but it isn’t the end of the world! Sure life is going to be harder now, but when hasn’t it been for us carnies? Why just this damn week we suffered through a military occupation, an internal civil war, an attack by freaks, and avoided another possible attack by a bunch of rednecks. And hell, I had the extra struggle of trying to fit in here and fight off a rape attempt. No way are we going to descend into anarchy again. We’ve come too far.” You think you’re getting better at making speeches because this time you’re seeing less frowning faces and general attentiveness. “We already drift from place to place providing entertainment as a source of our survival well what has really changed? We can still do that. We WILL still do that. This world just got a whole lot shittier and if we can bring a little joy to some people, well they just might be grateful. And if our entertainment value isn’t appreciated, well we ARE nomads and vagabonds by nature. Surely we’ll be picking up, collecting, and scavenging useful material, items and the like to trade in our travels. I know we all have useful skills, surely with those, our ability to learn and adapt and a team effort we’ll be able to keep this carnival…no this FAMILY together a very long time.” “Yeah! Suzy’s right! We can survive this!” someone shouts and several others agree enthusiastically. This time you are not met with apathy, but with applause. At last you have truly been accepted. You half expect them to all shout “One of us.” Over and over, but perhaps that might be a bit too obvious. In any case, you and some of the others get together to decide where to head next and what to do about food, and fuel. This isn’t going to be easy, but then this whole week has been a trial for you. No longer are you the shy “good” girl who hid away in the basement, harassed by your family and living as one day blurred into the next. You are part of something bigger and not just that, but a leader. It’s a brand new day and this is just the beginning of your brand new life. > … Greatest Show On Scorched Earth The Future… After yet another successful show, the performers of the Cataclysm Carnival begin to pack down for the night and engage in their usual banter. “Well that was certainly fun. It’s been a long time since we got to actually perform an entire show like that.” Sparkle remarks while putting away her chainsaws. “Ha ha ha ha, yeah I wouldn’t exacty call General Hellstorm’s totalitarian city state civilization, but it was a nice change from the usual shanty towns or worse, those Ground Zero owned shelter communities. God, I sometimes wonder what the fuck happened in some of those places after the bombs hit. I swear most of those folks are more fucked up than the people who got caught on the surface.” Randy adds. Hector and Lucy step inside the trailer. “I imagine being stuck in close quarters with a bunch of people for long periods of time is bound to make a lot of people weird. I mean you don’t have to look too far to see that.” Bruno says after hearing part of the conversation. “I hope you remembered to lock up those cat-rat things, this time. Last time they got out and chewed several holes in one of the trailers.” Sparkle says. “They’re called Nibblers and yes, I made sure they’re all locked up. I threw in some meat too so they should be good.” Hector remarks. “Hrm, I still dunno how you can work with those things. I saw a wild one take off an arm in one bite before.” Randy says. “Just gotta show the little bitey bastards whose boss.” Hector says proudly displaying how he still has all ten of his fingers. Lucy says nothing and just walks to the nearest mirror to take her clown make up off. Randy and Sparkle sense something amiss. “You okay?” Sparkle asks. “Shes’s pissed because apparently General Hellstorm was flirting a lot with her hot mom at the end of the night. In fact I’d wager that’s how we landed this job in the first place.” “Hector, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call my mom hot. I told you that before. And I’d REALLY appreciate it if you didn’t imply my mother was a whore!” Lucy says. “For fuck’s sake Lucy, I didn’t say she was! I just meant ol’ Hellstorm probably went all soppy when he first saw your mother. She turned on the charm and just reeled in the rube. Shit, we ALL should have such talent when we get to be that age. IF we get to be that age in this shitty world.” “Ever the flatterer I see, Hector. Glad to know that a woman in their forties still has a place in this rotten world.” You say stepping into the trailer. Hector isn’t quite sure how to react. “Um, apologies Ringmistress Suzy.” “Relax, you don’t ever have to worry about not being charming Hector, you’ll always have your Nibblers to keep you warm. Your father Klepto would’ve been so proud.” You say patting Hector on the head in a condescending manner. Sparkle and Randy both greet you, but your daughter continues to focus on the mirror. “Anyway, I’m just making the rounds to everyone and I just wanted to say it was a good show tonight and I’m proud of all of you. In fact we might be coming here to perform again in a few more months. Mr. Hellstorm really enjoyed the show. You’d think a guy that goes by the name General Hellstorm would be all WAR DEATH RAGH! But the guy actually is pretty even tempered, well as far as wasteland warlords go anyway.” “Hey which act did he like the most? Did he like my chainsaw bit?” Sparkle asks enthusiastically. “Heh, well to be honest he wouldn’t stop going on about the freakshow portion. The guy really liked that bit. If there’s one good thing about living in a radiated post apocalyptic landscape, it has got this carnival’s freakshow up and running again. On the pragmatic side of things we also exchanged some of those weird laser weapons we found. We’d never use the damn things, but Hellstorm seemed to really like the idea of them and thought he could get them working so we’ve got food and medical supplies for months. I think Dolores is making a count now…” While you’re explaining the upbeat news, you notice that your daughter is still looking into the mirror and scowling the entire time as she finishes taking off her make up. “Could the rest of you leave for a moment, I have to speak to Lucy.” You say. Nobody argues and one by one they exit the trailer leaving you alone with Lucy. “All right, what are you pissed about this time?” you ask. “Nothing. Don’t you have some guy to go lick your lips at?” Lucy replies. “Not at the moment no, but I’m glad you continue to have such a high opinion of me.” “Flirting with power mad warlords, great reason to have a high opinion…” Lucy at this point turns to you with anger in her face. “Goddamn it, Dad hasn’t been dead a month and you’re already fawning all over some other man! It was bad enough that you did it when he was alive, but can’t you even respect the dead?!” “We’ve been over this MANY times Lucy. I loved your father and I never once was unfaithful to him, but your father would’ve actually understood better than anyone. Show must go on Lucy. Besides I’m not actually doing anything with Hellstorm, except a tease and most likely giving him something to dream about. I’ve always done that to the rubes to get their attention, it’s part of being a ringmaster. Even that idiot Hector gets that, don’t know why you never did.” “Because it’s fucking embarrassing to constantly hear the sexual innuendo about your mother from passing rubes about how they’d like to master YOUR ring.” “Hmm, hadn’t heard that one before, sort of an obvious pun when you think about it though…” you remark. “Stop being so fucking calm about this! I mean…sorry…I just…I mean I KNOW it’s all an act, but I just wish you’d tone it down sometimes.” Lucy says. “Believe me, I do. You’ve never seen me in full-blown seductress mode. Look, I’m a big girl and not doing anything that I’m forced to do. (sigh) I know you’re a worldly girl and all, but there’s still a small part of you that’s a bit naïve. Must be a genetic trait passed down from me.” “Naïve?” “Yes my wonderfully oblivious darling daughter. You seriously believe that nobody is making comments about you? You walk around in a pink and purple skintight outfit with fishnets stockings blowing luminescent bubbles during your act. How do you know that all those lewd remarks are about me? Half of them are probably about you, but you’re so concerned with my actions that you’re too blind to see that you’re just as much of a tease as I am. You’re just unaware of it. Much like I was at your age.” Lucy is suddenly silent at this realization. It’s sort of funny how on the mark you actually were with that statement. You and her father both taught her about this bad new world and she isn’t unintelligent, but for some reason the girl has never really caught on to what a real knock out she is. Perhaps in some way you did shield her a bit from having to be really subjected to the “curse of beauty” since the carnival is a “safe zone” of sorts. “Back before the world turned to complete shit I pretty much squandered my natural gifts. Now? I’ve used them to my fullest advantage, but not just for myself, but for you AND this carnival that we all call a family. You’re really lucky Lucy, most people nowadays don’t even have a family to look out for them. Shit, even BEFORE the nukes hit, I didn’t have such a luxury, so if I have to give a little peck on the cheek to some petty tyrant to help us survive, then so be it. Better that I do it than YOU having to do it.” Lucy doesn’t reply, she just looks at you. She knows she wouldn’t have the stomach to go through the act that you go through at times. This might be the first time she realizes the sacrifices you’ve made to make her own life easier. Lucy nods a few times before speaking. “Okay, mom. I get it. And I appreciate it.” “Good, that’s all I ask. Okay I’m going back to my own trailer now. We’re heading out tomorrow morning. Get some rest, you deserve it anyway after the wonderful show you put on.” “I will mom. Thanks.” Lucy replies. As you walk away you see Sparkle, Randy and Hector all slowly sneak back into the trailer. You enter your own trailer and lay down on the bed thinking about how far you’ve come in life. It isn’t the life you ever expected, but it isn’t a bad one all things considering. Before you fall asleep you look at the old worn clown nose by the nightstand. You grab and squeeze it a couple times, remembering happy times with your now departed husband. “Goodnight Lance.” You say and slowly drift off with the round red foam ball in your hand.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Being a “native” of the area, you do know something of the types that do live in the trailer park. Most of them probably do nothing else except practice-shooting beer cans all damn day. Mel, is most likely right in that his people are going to be better shots and a gun battle is going to result in a lot of dead on your side. However you can’t just let them take your stuff, especially since you’re using a lot of it and there isn’t much to begin with. “Well, if we had the extra supplies we might be inclined to share, the fact is we don’t have much and what little we have, well we need. You start a shooting match here and you’re likely to wind up with more dead and wounded than what was worth the effort.” You reply. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you darlin’.” Mel replies. “It’s true, seriously come on in and take a look yourself. We got a shitload of wounded ourselves in that big tent back there. Just you though, the rest of your people can stand out here and look fearsome.” Mel chuckles. “Oh just me huh? And as soon as I go in I’m at your fuckin’ mercy. Nah, I don’t think so.” “Fine so take me as hostage. Here…” you say and drop your rifle and walk over to Mel. A couple people shout at you, but you just wave a hand at them as if to tell them to calm down. Meanwhile Mel stands watching you approach. When you’re before him, he’s definitely staring you up and down. “You got a pistol I presume?” you ask Mel. “Yeah.” “Well pull it out and put it to my head.” You say turning around and putting your body against Mel’s and then putting one of his arms around your waist. “Well… shit girl, you’re just somethin’ else ain’t cha?” Mel says barely keeping his composure as he pulls out his pistol. “If you say so. In any case you now have a little insurance that should be good enough for you shouldn’t it? I mean…I’m putting my complete trust in you. You’re in complete control” you say and grind up against Mel’s body a little more while turning your head a bit to flutter your eyes at him. Mel is at a loss for words, but his buddies aren’t. “Woo Hoo, looks like the li’l blonde number is sweet on ya Mel!” “I say we take her back, instead of medical supplies. I never liked Bobby Ray to begin with. Motherfucker can bleed out fer all I care!” “You plannin’ on tradin’ Tina up fer her? “Why’s Mel get all the pretty ones? He’s already got Tina, I say one of us should get the blonde!” At this point some arguing breaks out, followed by Mel shouting at them to shut the fuck up. He then turns his attention back to you. “Heh… you …you are trouble girlie. If I took you back to the trailer park, you’d probably have every man ripping each other apart over you. I can barely keep these dumb fuckers from doing that now. In any case, let’s go look at the medical supply situation. Come on.” Mel says motioning you to move. “As you wish.” You say. Mel and you head back towards the carnival where upon you give him the “grand tour” showing him that it is indeed true that you don’t really have much in the way of medical supplies. He also sees all the people that are wounded too. “Hmm, well I suppose y’all COULD still be hidin’ such things somewhere, but honestly I’m inclined to believe ya. This place has even less military vehicles than the ones that were at the trailer park and it sounds like from what you told me there weren’t even that many guardsmen here. From the amount of wounded I see, you probably did use up most of the pittance that the military brought with them…how did you get all these wounded though? Nobody looks like they’re suffering from gunshot wounds. The cannibal creeps?” “Nope. All these wounded are from each other. Long story, let’s just say carny politics is complicated and I came out on top.” You reply confidently. “I see…well you have certainly displayed a certain amount of balls putting yourself in the vulnerable position you did. (Sigh) All right, you dealt straight with me, so I’ll deal straight with you. Guess we’ll try the town again.” At this point you and Mel head back to the “neutral zone” where upon Mel releases you (reluctantly) and waves at his people to get ready to go. As they drive away, you breathe a heavy sigh of relief and rush back to the others. Dolores approaches you when you arrive. “Well that was an interesting way to handle things, but it worked. Those good ol’ boys woulda probably killed and wounded a lot more of us.” “Yeah, an’ now we need to get the hell out of here. I don’t trust them to not come back with a bigger group and attack us anyway.” “Well, we probably could’ve done with a bit more of a rest, but I can’t argue with that logic, they weren’t the most reputable lookin’ an’ you’re the boss. One good thing about having some recently departed, is that the trailers have a lot more room in them now. Speaking of which, your own trailer is already hooked up to a truck. We should be ready to roll in about an hour.” Feeling like you deserve a rest after recent events, you head back to your trailer to relax. As soon as you enter though, you are suddenly grabbed and tackled to the floor and the stench of bad body odor fills your nostrils. “Don’t scream bitch.” A familiar voice whispers. You get a good look at your assailant and see a man with half worn clown make up on his face. It’s Ranko and he smells even worse now that he’s laying right on top of you. “I see a lot of fuckin’ changes to this here carnival have happened since I’ve been gone. Saw some of it from afar while hiding and waiting for the best time to strike. Nearly got eaten by those geeks in the process, but heh heh heh, I got away…” Ranko begins to press his weight on you so you can’t wiggle away while keeping one hand on your mouth and holding a straight razor in his other. His whole outfit is filthy presumably from lurking about in the wilderness for days, but you also notice that he’s sporting a couple wounds of his own in the form of bite marks. “Nothing smart to say now bitch? Thought you were the ringmaster now. Head cunt in charge and all that. Fuck you, I SHOULD be in fuckin’ charge!” At this point you manage to bite Ranko’s hand, which tastes foul, but it’s enough to cause him to take it off your mouth, giving you a chance to scream for help, before he backhands you across the face. “Bitch! Maybe if I raped you, you’d KNOW who’s in fuckin’ charge!” he exclaims and fumbles with pulling down his pants, and keeps the straight razor to your throat with his other hand. (Carnies must love straight razors) All Ranko has to do is make a quick swipe and your throat is going to be opened if you struggle. If you do nothing he may very well rape you assuming nobody heard you scream. Of course he’ll probably kill you anyway after he’s finished. > You try to struggle He might very kill you, but you’re definitely not going to let him rape you. You continue to yell for help and with all your strength you begin to fight back, moving your legs and arms. You even get a couple good hits to his face, but it doesn’t deter him, all it does is anger him. After he recovers from your assault outburst he punches you in the face several times and swipes wildly with his razor muttering obscenities the entire time. Your throat is slashed open and your body isn’t even cold before he starts violating anyway.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While it might be an opportunity to escape, you’re not going to risk it. Roger might be a little smitten with you, but he’s athletic enough looking that you don’t think you could easily fight him off if something went wrong. Given that there is a state of martial law right now, you’re likely to get yourself shot or worse. Better to stay in the tent and come up with a plan where you at least might have some back up. So you’re currently back to square one, sitting around doing much of nothing until the National Guard decides to leave (whenever if and when that happens). You spend most of your time thinking on what Roofie said and your current position at the carnival. The only way you’re ever going to have safety and have a family is if you take direct action towards those goals. “Lifto, Shrimpy, you’re with me.” You suddenly say and say you going to see the head of the dwarf faction. “Uh, I dunno if that’s a good idea, he’s been doing a lot of preparation lately.” Shrimpy says. “I’m sure he has, and its in our best interest to find out exactly what that is. Maybe YOU can afford to play both sides, but I’m not taking that chance.” You say and start walking over to the crowd of little people. As you approach, the dwarves instantly start closing ranks and their demeanor changes to a defensive one. “Back again Shrimpy? I didn’t anticipate your sycophantic antics for another hour or so. And you must be Suzy, the new clown girl that’s been pissing off all the ladies and turning on all the guys. Hrm. Upon a closer look, I understand the appeal, but you’re still no dwarf woman.” an older dwarf says, though many of his fellows probably don’t share that opinion. “I take it you’re the leader of your group?” “Yep, though I don’t suppose Shrimpy’s bothered to mention my name is Billy. If you’re here about our current alliance, you needn’t worry since I’ve reassured Shrimpy so many times about it that it’s getting to the point of annoyance. Glad to you at least changed it up by appearing yourself, could’ve done without the big ugly clown behind you though, but I’m guessing he’s a poor attempt at intimidation.” “A girl likes to have a big strong man to watch her back sometimes.” “Heh, and that’s why you’ve practically begged a bunch of little men to do it to eh? Let’s cut to the chase, what do you really want? I already know that you’re the new leader of the clowns given what you did to old Roofie over there. Bet he didn’t see that coming.” You don’t know how else to put it so you just say it, which comes to a surprise to Shrimpy and Lifto as well. “I’m going to be the new leader of this carnival and YOU’RE going to support me in this endeavor.” Billy smiles at this remark and then chuckles. Several of the other dwarves do likewise. “You? Really? And you think we’re just going to support you in this? I hope you had a better plan than preparing to fuck every munchkin in munchkin land Dorothy, because at this juncture I guarantee that would be the ONLY way that you MIGHT come close to your dreams of being in charge. And if that was your plan, you can forget it, because I’m happily married. However, it might gain you favor with some of my friends. Could ensure that your group will have a place in the new carnival order that will be coming soon, but that’s a choice you’ll have to make on your own.” “You really think the rest of the carnival is going to follow you?” “They won’t have a choice, we dwarves have always been the backbone of it and it’s about time we just took the spotlight. Just like my Great Uncle Charley always wanted to do so long ago.” “Yeah and apparently that didn’t work out so well given your current situation. You know why? Nobody truly respects you. They’re content to let you do the grunt work, but they don’t want you to be in the spotlight, unless you’re making a fool of yourself like Shrimpy here.” You say. “HEY!” Shrimpy remarks. “Watch your tone there blondie, you’re starting to tread on very dangerous ground.” Billy warns. “Yes, I know and I’m also trying to explain that you’re ALREADY in control by being the backbone of the carnival. You might very well be able to win this internal struggle, but would there be anything left? This place has languished under Roofie, obviously, but it could be great again if it had the right ring master. Someone who could bring in the people. You said it yourself, I’ve got most of the guys here salivating over me just by my presence. You know how advertising works, I bring ‘em in with a wink, a smile and some sweet talk, the other performers get the money out of them and someone has to keep the infrastructure together and that’s you. We could work together as a more than just co-workers we could be like…a family. Like how carnies are supposed to really stick together.” Your words give a moment of pause for Billy who ponders them for a moment, but then shakes his head. “Y’know, that’s a really good speech, the problem is you haven’t been here but a few days and you’re already trying to take over. In family terms, you’re like the hot twenty year old nurse that married great grandpa on his death bed in the hopes of inheriting everything despite the fact he’s got a multitude of family members that are far more deserving since they had to put up with his shit a lot longer. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re sincere or even that your idea isn’t a worthy one, its just I don’t see YOU as that potential leader. If this carnival does split apart after the dust clears, well maybe it was meant to be, but I’m not spending the remainder of my life following another half-assed leader again. So to sum up, if you want to be on our side then great, if not, then I highly suggest you all get in your clown car and all get jobs at a rodeo or something.” At this point Billy’s done talking and waves you all away. Well that could’ve went better. “Are you nuts?! Why the hell did you do that for? You’re lucky he isn’t cancelling our protection!” Shrimpy says. “Well I can’t say it was the best of moves, but I guess you had to try.” Lifto says. Between Shrimpy’s concern for his own self-preservation and Lifto’s impotent comment, you’re wondering if you shouldn’t re-consider trying to escape again. Ultimately you all head back to the table where upon Shrimpy and Lifto explain what happened. Fatty and Klepto are both surprised by your actions, but Klepto again makes the usual attempt at being more “understanding” than the others. Christ, he never quits. “I don’t need this right now, I’m going to be by myself.” You say grabbing the small radio that they were listening to and head to where Roofie is still lying on his mat with his eyes closed. You don’t know if he’s still awake or genuinely asleep now, but he at least doesn’t appear to be in any mood to bother you right now. You spend a few more hours listening to one of the radios while the others play cards and try to talk about mundane things. You’re not getting the best reception and it’s no Internet, but it’s better than nothing. You mostly listen to a lot of special breaking news talking about how bad things are getting in various parts of the world. You hear about the riots going on and think about your own town and how your “real” family is doing. Ben’s hidden personal bomb shelter was somewhere in the backyard, you wonder if you shouldn’t have just tried to look for it and moved in there, it probably was stocked. Then as the sun starts setting, you hear a bunch of shooting and shouting outside. You see the other guardsmen near the tent entrance rush off, leaving everyone unsupervised. Naturally no longer being supervised means chaos within the tent begins to erupt though you have no idea why people aren’t more concerned about why the National Guardsmen are shooting and yelling at something outside. Lacking any better idea, you try to wake up Roofie, but he doesn’t stir. “Oh shit…” you say to yourself. Apparently his last words to you WERE his dying request literally. While you’re the only one aware of poor Roofie’s unexpected passing, a full on fight in the tent breaks out. Predictably, it’s Razor and her faction vs. Billy and his faction. Some of the smaller factions join in while others just run out of the tent altogether. It’s very lucky that your group is nowhere near the center of the tent where the fighting is and more or less in a corner. “Suzy! It’s begun!” Lifto shouts. “Yeah! We need to get in and help Billy or we’re going to be next!” Shrimpy adds. > You escape this place Billy has made it quite clear that no matter what happens you’re going to be on the bottom rung of any sort of restructuring so why should you even bother? This whole area is going to shit and it would be best if you just got the hell out of here. “Do any of you have keys to your vehicles?” you ask. “I got my truck keys.” Lifto remarks. “Good, we’re getting the hell out of here while everyone is distracted.” “What?! We’re just going to leave Billy?” Shrimpy asks. “Look, if YOU want to help Billy then go right ahead, but he’s basically said that I’m the low girl on the totem pole, and I am NOT going to go through a bunch of verbal and possible physical abuse for the rest of my time here. I left home to get away from that shit. Quite frankly given how disliked clowns are around here, I’d suggest the rest of you follow me because no matter who wins, you’re going to lose.” You say and turn to leave Lifto, Klepto and Fatty don’t even think twice, they’re following you out the tent and leaving the chaos of the carnival clash behind. Shrimpy however is unsure, his loyalty to his “kind” is still holding him back, but you’re not waiting around. When you exit the tent, things aren’t much better. There aren’t any guardsmen in the immediate area, but you still hear the shooting and their yelling. You also hear odd growling sounds and a couple of screams. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to get to your truck NOW!” you exclaim where upon Lifto takes the lead. You don’t get too far when you see Roger staggering from between two other tents. He’s wounded heavily and bleeding profusely. He sees you and desperately calls for your help. “Suzy…hel…” is about all he gets out before collapsing a few feet from you. He tries to crawl towards you and you nearly head towards him to help, but given all the gunfire going on and the big brawl still going on, you focus on your goal of placing as much distance as possible from this place. “Sorry, Roger.” You say quietly and continue moving. Lifto points towards a pick up truck in the area where you first parked your own vehicle. “Shh, you hear that?” Klepto remarks. “No.” you remark. “Exactly. All the gunfire stopped.” “Well we need to hurry up because that either means the guardsmen killed whoever was attacking and they’ll be returning to us soon or…” And then from behind one of the army vehicles you’re passing something leaps onto Lifto. It’s human but its snarling and growling unnaturally. If you didn’t know any better you’d almost think it was a…. “ARGH! ZOMBIE!” Lifto shouts and struggles to get it off of him. Fatty moves in to help immediately and between the two of them they easily knock it to the ground. Lifto then proceeds to stomp on its head repeatedly with his brightly colored clown boots. While Lifto is determined to smash its head into mush, another one of these creatures pop out of nowhere and nearly grab you. You scream and manage to pull away before Klepto steps in and tries to help. Unfortunately the creatures manage to bite him in the process. He cries out in pain, but manages to get the creatures off of him thanks to someone else helping by blowing the thing’s head off. Blood, bone and brains splatter all over Klepto. “Come on! I don’t know how many more of these things there are!” Shrimpy shouts with one of the guardsmen’s assault rifles in both hands. Looks like he’s made his choice. Lifto finishes destroying the one that was attacking him and soon all of you are off and running again. You look around as you run thinking more are going to be jumping out at you, but that doesn’t happen. You are slightly concerned about Fatty getting bit though. You don’t think anyone else has noticed it yet except you and of course him. When you get to the truck, Lifto quickly opens up the driver side and opens up the passenger door. You get in, followed by Klepto, meanwhile Fatty gets in the bed of the truck along with Shrimpy. “Where the hell are we going?” Lifto says as he drives from the carnival. “I don’t know yet, but we probably should stay away from large areas of population if those…things are any indication. Just head further away from the town for now.” You say. Honestly you don’t know what comes next, but you’re seriously starting to believe Roofie’s comments about the end coming soon. Were those creatures zombies? Crazed humans? Alive? Undead? Does it matter? How many are there? Have they overrun civilization already? Has any of your old family survived? Is this the beginning of the end? And most importantly…do their bites work like they do in the movies? Klepto sits next to you nervously still clutching his arm where he was bit. Lifto hasn’t noticed yet because he’s been paying attention to the road and while you haven’t said anything yet Klepto’s not subtle enough about keeping his wound secret… “Why do you keep rubbing your arm?” Lifto remarks. “Uh, that thing grabbed me and its grip hurt a lot and uh…” “Klepto, I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re lying! Did that thing bite you?!” Klepto doesn’t answer so you try to unsuccessfully help. “It was just a little bite, we don’t even know if…” you start to say before you’re interrupted. “Oh fuck! That’s it man! Game over!” Lifto shouts and suddenly stops the truck. Fatty and Shrimpy both knock on the window shouting what’s going on. “Klepto, I know we’ve known each other a long time, but you need to get out of this truck right now.” “Lifto, I…” “I don’t wanna hear it. Get out before I make you get out or worse.” “Lifto, we don’t even know if this is infectious! This isn’t a movie you know!” you exclaim. “And you willing to take that chance? You’re sitting right next to him! Not to mention he’s covered in that thing’s blood when Shrimpy blew its head off. Who knows what the hell he’s caught.” As paranoid as Lifto is right now, you have been feeling a little nervous sitting next to Klepto this whole time. Without another word Lifto shifts towards you and reaches over towards the glove compartment. He opens it up revealing a pistol, though Klepto already figured out what he was doing and tries to grab it before Lifto can. Despite Lifto being in an awkward position and you being in his way, he’s strong enough to get the grip on the gun first. Klepto grabs his hand and the struggle ensues. At this point Fatty opens up the driver side door and Shrimpy opens up the passenger side. “What the fuck is going on here!?” Shrimpy asks. “ARGH! Sonofabitch!” Lifto suddenly shouts, Klepto has bitten his hand causing him to drop the pistol on the truck floor. “Shrimpy keep that rifle on Klepto!” Lifto shouts. You’re stuck in the middle with Lifto’s body half on you. All you know is you’re scared and desperate to get out. You manage to wiggle down a bit and grab the pistol on the floor. Klepto hasn’t proceeded with an attack and doesn’t look any different. “I’m not a zombie! Or whatever you think I am! I’m fine! And if you kill me, you’re going to have to kill Lifto too!” Klepto exclaims to everyone. Klepto may or may not be right, but he was pretty quick to bite Lifto. Whether that was a desperate attempt to ensure his own safety or a possible glimpse of what’s to come, you don’t know. With the pistol in your hand you don’t know if you shouldn’t just shoot them both. > You shoot the pair of them You really don’t want to do this, but you don’t see any choice. “Sorry.” You say and point the gun at Lifto who has just gotten off of you. “Wait.” he says which is just enough give you pause due to your nervousness and give Lifto time to grab the gun from you, or at least attempt to grab it because you actually manage to struggle for half a minute before he accidently shoots you with it. The gun goes off, you catch a bullet in your throat and you fall backwards into Klepto. “Holy shit! I didn’t mean…” Lifto shouts. “SUZY! NO!” Klepto screams. “What the fuck did you do Lifto!?” Fatty yells. “Goddamn it!” Shrimpy exclaims. At this point the rest of the shouting becomes one loud noise to your dying ears. As your vision starts to blur, Klepto cradles you in his arms trying to tell you to fight off your impending death. It doesn’t work.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Billy has made it quite clear that no matter what happens you’re going to be on the bottom rung of any sort of restructuring so why should you even bother? This whole area is going to shit and it would be best if you just got the hell out of here. “Do any of you have keys to your vehicles?” you ask. “I got my truck keys.” Lifto remarks. “Good, we’re getting the hell out of here while everyone is distracted.” “What?! We’re just going to leave Billy?” Shrimpy asks. “Look, if YOU want to help Billy then go right ahead, but he’s basically said that I’m the low girl on the totem pole, and I am NOT going to go through a bunch of verbal and possible physical abuse for the rest of my time here. I left home to get away from that shit. Quite frankly given how disliked clowns are around here, I’d suggest the rest of you follow me because no matter who wins, you’re going to lose.” You say and turn to leave Lifto, Klepto and Fatty don’t even think twice, they’re following you out the tent and leaving the chaos of the carnival clash behind. Shrimpy however is unsure, his loyalty to his “kind” is still holding him back, but you’re not waiting around. When you exit the tent, things aren’t much better. There aren’t any guardsmen in the immediate area, but you still hear the shooting and their yelling. You also hear odd growling sounds and a couple of screams. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to get to your truck NOW!” you exclaim where upon Lifto takes the lead. You don’t get too far when you see Roger staggering from between two other tents. He’s wounded heavily and bleeding profusely. He sees you and desperately calls for your help. “Suzy…hel…” is about all he gets out before collapsing a few feet from you. He tries to crawl towards you and you nearly head towards him to help, but given all the gunfire going on and the big brawl still going on, you focus on your goal of placing as much distance as possible from this place. “Sorry, Roger.” You say quietly and continue moving. Lifto points towards a pick up truck in the area where you first parked your own vehicle. “Shh, you hear that?” Klepto remarks. “No.” you remark. “Exactly. All the gunfire stopped.” “Well we need to hurry up because that either means the guardsmen killed whoever was attacking and they’ll be returning to us soon or…” And then from behind one of the army vehicles you’re passing something leaps onto Lifto. It’s human but its snarling and growling unnaturally. If you didn’t know any better you’d almost think it was a…. “ARGH! ZOMBIE!” Lifto shouts and struggles to get it off of him. Fatty moves in to help immediately and between the two of them they easily knock it to the ground. Lifto then proceeds to stomp on its head repeatedly with his brightly colored clown boots. While Lifto is determined to smash its head into mush, another one of these creatures pop out of nowhere and nearly grab you. You scream and manage to pull away before Klepto steps in and tries to help. Unfortunately the creatures manage to bite him in the process. He cries out in pain, but manages to get the creatures off of him thanks to someone else helping by blowing the thing’s head off. Blood, bone and brains splatter all over Klepto. “Come on! I don’t know how many more of these things there are!” Shrimpy shouts with one of the guardsmen’s assault rifles in both hands. Looks like he’s made his choice. Lifto finishes destroying the one that was attacking him and soon all of you are off and running again. You look around as you run thinking more are going to be jumping out at you, but that doesn’t happen. You are slightly concerned about Fatty getting bit though. You don’t think anyone else has noticed it yet except you and of course him. When you get to the truck, Lifto quickly opens up the driver side and opens up the passenger door. You get in, followed by Klepto, meanwhile Fatty gets in the bed of the truck along with Shrimpy. “Where the hell are we going?” Lifto says as he drives from the carnival. “I don’t know yet, but we probably should stay away from large areas of population if those…things are any indication. Just head further away from the town for now.” You say. Honestly you don’t know what comes next, but you’re seriously starting to believe Roofie’s comments about the end coming soon. Were those creatures zombies? Crazed humans? Alive? Undead? Does it matter? How many are there? Have they overrun civilization already? Has any of your old family survived? Is this the beginning of the end? And most importantly…do their bites work like they do in the movies? Klepto sits next to you nervously still clutching his arm where he was bit. Lifto hasn’t noticed yet because he’s been paying attention to the road and while you haven’t said anything yet Klepto’s not subtle enough about keeping his wound secret… “Why do you keep rubbing your arm?” Lifto remarks. “Uh, that thing grabbed me and its grip hurt a lot and uh…” “Klepto, I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re lying! Did that thing bite you?!” Klepto doesn’t answer so you try to unsuccessfully help. “It was just a little bite, we don’t even know if…” you start to say before you’re interrupted. “Oh fuck! That’s it man! Game over!” Lifto shouts and suddenly stops the truck. Fatty and Shrimpy both knock on the window shouting what’s going on. “Klepto, I know we’ve known each other a long time, but you need to get out of this truck right now.” “Lifto, I…” “I don’t wanna hear it. Get out before I make you get out or worse.” “Lifto, we don’t even know if this is infectious! This isn’t a movie you know!” you exclaim. “And you willing to take that chance? You’re sitting right next to him! Not to mention he’s covered in that thing’s blood when Shrimpy blew its head off. Who knows what the hell he’s caught.” As paranoid as Lifto is right now, you have been feeling a little nervous sitting next to Klepto this whole time. Without another word Lifto shifts towards you and reaches over towards the glove compartment. He opens it up revealing a pistol, though Klepto already figured out what he was doing and tries to grab it before Lifto can. Despite Lifto being in an awkward position and you being in his way, he’s strong enough to get the grip on the gun first. Klepto grabs his hand and the struggle ensues. At this point Fatty opens up the driver side door and Shrimpy opens up the passenger side. “What the fuck is going on here!?” Shrimpy asks. “ARGH! Sonofabitch!” Lifto suddenly shouts, Klepto has bitten his hand causing him to drop the pistol on the truck floor. “Shrimpy keep that rifle on Klepto!” Lifto shouts. You’re stuck in the middle with Lifto’s body half on you. All you know is you’re scared and desperate to get out. You manage to wiggle down a bit and grab the pistol on the floor. Klepto hasn’t proceeded with an attack and doesn’t look any different. “I’m not a zombie! Or whatever you think I am! I’m fine! And if you kill me, you’re going to have to kill Lifto too!” Klepto exclaims to everyone. Klepto may or may not be right, but he was pretty quick to bite Lifto. Whether that was a desperate attempt to ensure his own safety or a possible glimpse of what’s to come, you don’t know. With the pistol in your hand you don’t know if you shouldn’t just shoot them both. > You try to save the situation You didn’t leave the carnival just for MORE in fighting. If the end days are coming you NEED all the people who you are actually on good terms you can get because you don’t fancy your chances on going it alone. So you’ll be damned if you’re not going to try to keep this little group together. “ALRIGHT GODDAMN IT! STOP IT! JUST FUCKING STOP IT!” you shout pointing the gun towards the truck ceiling. Lifto at this point has returned to his driver’s seat position. “NOW EVERYONE OUT OF THE TRUCK AND JUST LISTEN!” you say looking at Lifto and briefly glancing back at Klepto. Lifto steps out looks at you as if he is thinking about taking the pistol away from you. He probably could without any problems because as close as you are to shooting someone, you aren’t exactly “there” yet. Thankfully Lifto doesn’t try anything. When everyone exits the truck, you follow and Shrimpy now stands by you as back up (Fatty doesn’t have a weapon, but he stands near you anyway) “Okay, Suzy what next?” Lifto calmly says. You’ve got an idea, but it would go better if rope was involved. You take a quick look in the truck bed and see some locks and chains sitting there, which will work just as well. “Look everyone, we don’t have all the information on what this creature situation is, killing someone who got bit, might be jumping the gun. I mean this isn’t a movie!” you say. “Yeah!” Klepto says. “Shut up, I haven’t finished! Of course that doesn’t mean we need to be foolish about this because Lifto could be right. Now Lifto we don’t know if a bite causes infection, but if it does then you’re already doomed unless we cut your hand off, but I’m guessing you don’t want that. Do you want that?” Lifto gives a dirty look at Klepto before answering. “Look if you’re going to shoot me, at least shoot Klepto first so I can watch.” Lifto says. “ What the…I thought you two were supposed to be friends! (Sigh) I’m trying to give you another option here! Like I said, we don’t know if this sort of thing is contagious. I don’t want any of us to die, do you get that? I’m proposing that the pair of you stay in the bed of the truck until we get to a destination where we can get some medical attention. I mean if the pair of you start not feeling well or different in any way, then we can consider shooting you.” Lifto doesn’t say anything, but Klepto is certainly agreeable. “Sure Suzy, whatever you say! I mean that sounds reasonable to me!” he remarks, though you get the impression he’d go along with what you’d say even if he wasn’t bitten. “We’re going to have to tie you up you know.” You say. “That’s fine. I totally get it.” Klepto remarks. “Lifto?” He exhales and doesn’t say anything while looking at his hand. Then he looks back at you. “You really don’t want any of us to die?” Lifto asks. “No. Why the hell would I want that? I mean if these are the end days coming then we’re all we have left! We need to stick together as much as possible. And in any case you lot are the closest I’ve had to family for years, well other than the fact that most of you are undressing me with your eyes half the time…but I’m getting off track my point is that despite all the fucked up shit that’s occurred this week, I know I want you guys in my corner. All of you.” At first you wonder if you’ve laid it on a bit too much, but you hear a couple of sniffles in Fatty’s direction and Klepto is obviously showing signs of emotion. He probably thinks you just professed your love for him or something. “Okay. Okay. We’ll do it your way, but if I start to turn or if I think I’m going to become something other than I am, then I want YOU to be the one to shoot me.” Lifto says. “Well let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, but I promise.” You say. With those words Lifto and Klepto both submit to being chained up and to sit in the truck bed. Lifto is still giving Klepto angry looks, but hopefully they can work out their differences during the ride. Fatty takes the wheel, Shrimpy gets in the middle and you sit near the passenger’s side. You’ve never exactly been the best with directions, so you just tell Fatty to stay on the main road and hopefully you’ll reach a place that is in better shape than your own home town which probably is a warzone by now. You can’t help but wonder how your real family is doing, but really you’d rather not dwell on it. Fatty turns on the radio in the hopes of finding out something, but he doesn’t get much other than a few random religious stations talking about salvation and end times, but those things are ALWAYS talking about the end times so its hard to tell if they’re even referring to what’s currently going on. You’d think something like the news or an emergency broadcast might pop up, but nothing. Oddly you do get some stations just playing nothing but those infernal Ground Zero advertisements. Hours pass of driving through farm country and Klepto and Lifto aren’t moaning or even arguing so you’re guessing that they’re feeling okay. Still, even though you don’t want any of them to die, you do know it still might be a possibility. As it begins to turn to night you’re already tired from the events of the day. Feeling somewhat safe you allow yourself to close your eyes and drift off as the truck drives onward. > Next day… FRIDAY “…don’t delay, buy a Ground Zero shelter today!” “Fatty turn that radio off, there hasn’t been anything on it of importance for hours. It’s just those damn Ground Zero ads. Christ, you’d think someone would be reporting about oh you know a zombie apocalypse?” Shrimpy says. “I still say those things are still alive. The ones we saw didn’t look like they came back from the dead or anything.” Fatty remarks. “Well whatever, still seems like reporting SOME sort of outbreak would be of importance.” “Maybe its local and not happening anywhere else?” At this point your eyes open and you completely rouse from your sleep. “(Yawn) What’s going on?” you ask. “So you’re finally awake.” Shrimpy says. “We’ve been driving all night?” you ask. “Somewhat. Fatty here pulled over at one point and we both slept a little. If you’re wondering about the gruesome twosome back there, we checked on them and from what I can tell both of them feel fine. In fact I think they’re both still sleeping. Guess all that bite drama yesterday really exhausted them. Dunno if that means they’re okay or not, but right now we do have another problem.” Shrimpy says. “What’s that?” you ask. “Well Fatty here managed to get us fucking lost.” “Hey it’s not my fault, I couldn’t see shit in the night and I thought we were on a main road. Damn GPS.” Fatty says. “Told you that it was broken and hasn’t worked correctly for years. Anyway, I know you’re native to this area so I’m hoping you know your way around.” Shrimpy says. A brief glance of the practically non-descript landscape to the left and right of you leaves you at a loss. “Sorry, but like I said, I never was a big traveller. Never left the basement if I could help it.” You say. “Oh yeah, that’s right. Well any suggestion regardless of that fact?” Shrimpy asks. You don’t really have any, though you probably should be near some sort of farmhouse as you do know there are some out this way. You could get your bearing by stopping at one and asking for directions. You also remember Fatty’s comment about supplies. “There should be some sort of farmhouse nearby. Just keep driving along this road and we’ll probably hit one where we can ask for directions and possibly get supplies.” “Sounds like as good of an idea as any.” You really don’t know if that will be the case, you’re just hoping at this point. Fortunately, your hopes come true this time. “Well, there’s a house. Can’t tell if anyone is home or not though.” Fatty says pulling up to a large traditional looking farmhouse. “Okay, so how are we doing this?” “Well…I suppose I’ll go up to the front door and see if anyone’s home and the rest of you guys stay in the truck.” You say. “You nuts? This place looks like it’s out of a horror movie! Might be a bunch of psycho rednecks living in there! They see a pretty young thing like you and they’d grab you before we could even do anything.” Shrimpy remarks. “Right like arriving at a door with a group of clowns isn’t straight out of a horror movie. I’m currently the only one dressed in regular clothing and not covered in blood, I think it would be best if I just asked for help at first.” “Hey what are we going to do with Klepto and Lifto?” Fatty asks. “Well check on them again and if they seem to be well unchain them I guess. I mean they could use a stretch. Anyway like I said I’m going to the door. I’m taking the pistol with me and I’m confident that if something does happen you’ll be able to react in time to save me from getting chopped up or whatever you think is going to happen. We need help getting back on track and looking at the gauge we might even need gas so hopefully they got that here too. Don’t worry I’ll be fine.” You say and get out of the truck. You make your way towards the front porch looking around the entire time. This place is creepily quiet. Seems like you should at least hear the sounds of animals or something. Shrimpy’s got you totally paranoid now. You really weren’t worried until he mentioned psycho hillbillies. You look back at the truck. “Goddamn it Suzy, you need to brave through some of this shit yourself. You survived your serial killer uncle for Christsake. Nothing is going to happen, probably just some kindly old farm couple that lives here.” You mutter to yourself and walk up the stairs and knock on the door. You knock several times with no answer, but just when you’re about to give up it opens. “WHO YOU!?” a large disfigured man exclaims completely scaring the shit out of you and causing you to fall backwards. You’re in a state of utter fear as this large freak approaches you with his hand outstretched towards you… Even in your fearful condition, you’re still able to react to a dangerous situation. You pull the pistol that you had on you and shoot the disfigured man. You hit him twice in the body and he reels backwards bellowing loudly as his body hits the front door and then the house’s front room floor. “WHHHHHHY!? GOING TO HELP YOU!” the man shouts. “Junior? What in tarnation is goin’ on down there? I hope you didn’t shoot yourself in the foot carrying your father’s rifles again, you know how he hates a waste of ammo.” An older female voice shouts from inside. “MAMA! MAMA! HURT A LOT! BAD GIRL HURT ME!” the man cries. “If you’ve been fightin’ with you’re sister again…oh my god…JUNIOR! CLEM SOMEONE SHOT JUNIOR!” you hear the older female voice scream. By this time you’re running back to the truck, which Shrimpy has gotten out of. Lifto and Klepto are also both awake and shouting at this point. “Get back in the fucking truck! We gotta…” you start yelling and then a shot from one of the farmhouse windows rings out. You hear it whiz by your ear causing you to drop to the ground immediately. You continue to crawl towards the truck where you hear more gunfire behind you and the sounds of an assault rifle returning fire. You hear someone trying to start the truck, but a few more shots hitting metal seem to put an end to that causing the engine to make a less than operational sound. “Fatty get out of the front seat!” Shrimpy shouts. You hear more gunshots followed by Fatty crying out, though you don’t know if he’s actually gotten hit severely since you just hear “OW MY ASS!” The whole time you’re praying that you don’t get shot in the back, but you’re the lucky one… Ever the white knight, Klepto attempts to go “rescue” you. “Klepto get out of the open!” you hear Lifto shout. “Suzy’s out there I can’t…” Klepto’s words are cut short when a bullet to his skull drops him. In fact he drops about a few feet in front of you. You try to put the sight of his death out of your mind as you continue to crawl towards the truck. “YOU FUCKERS AREN’T TAKING THIS FARM! THIS FARM IS MINE! ALL OF YOU SONSOFBITCHES ARE GONNA PAY FOR WHAT YOU DID TO MY BOY!” a male voice shouts. You finally reach your destination where the rest are hiding behind the back of the truck, though Fatty’s having a hard time of it due to his size and the fact he’s got a bullet in his ass. The shooting on both sides for now has stopped though. “Shit, shit, shit, Klepto’s dead! That redneck bastard says that we’re going to pay, no fucking way, HE’S gonna fuckin’ pay!” Lifto says which is a bit surprising considering that he was ready to kill Klepto himself just yesterday. “Fuck, my ass…ah! Shit…wish I had a gun, I’d shoot that fucker in the ass. Not the cheek either, the fucking HOLE!” Fatty says who is normally calm, but given he got shot his anger is a bit understandable. “Well luckily I picked up a few extra clips back at the carnival and Suzy’s probably still got a few shots left. I say we can probably take out the shooter with a bit of strategy. Just as soon as we come up with one of course.” Shrimpy remarks. You don’t know how to feel about all this. Maybe it’s all the increased violence over the past few days along with losing Klepto, but your clown crew is starting to become a lot more vicious, though events haven’t exactly been encouraging a peaceful life lately. You can’t help but feel a little responsible for this current situation though. The retard was just trying to help you up from your fall, but you couldn’t have known that…you just reacted to your fear. You were the one who harmed the farm inhabitants first even if the rest of your clown friends think you were being attacked. Part of you wants to just run from this place, but where would you go? Staying of course means doing more things you don’t necessarily want to do…but then you think if you can put yourself in the “right” frame of mind you’ll be able to do it. The farmer HAS tried to kill all of you and did succeed in killing Klepto who attempted to save you, surely revenge for that isn’t totally wrong? > You get revenge If you ran, you doubt if the rest of them would follow and despite the feeling that this isn’t the greatest idea, you’re tired of running. You’ve got nothing to run to anyway, if you can deal with the inhabitants inside, you’ll at least have a place to catch a breather from the ever-growing chaos in your life. You hope at least. “Shrimpy can you get inside the truck without getting hit and put it in neutral?” “Yeah I think I could.” Shrimpy says. “Good, give me the rifle and the clips, get in the truck and when it’s in neutral Lifto and Fatty I want you to start pushing it forward. We should be able to get close enough to the house using this thing as a large shield.” “What are you going to be doing?” Fatty asks. “I’m going to be crawling around in the truck bed taking shots at that bastard firing at us when I can. Hopefully the closer we get the more likely I’ll be able to hit him. Now you want to avenge Klepto or what?” This statement gets a nod from everyone. “Let’s do this.” Lifto says and all of you enact your plan. It goes well, or about as well as a plan can when someone is shooting at you. Another person soon joins the farmer the closer the truck gets to the front of the house. Presumably the farmer’s wife. The pair of them unleash a torrent of curses at you, but nobody is hitting each other yet. Bullets tear into the truck and while you’re all safe, when the two front tires get blown out, it makes Lifto and Fatty’s pushing a lot harder. “Goddamn it. (Wheeze)” Fatty gasps. “Fuck.” Lifto grunts. Still crawling around in the truck bed, you head over towards the back and speak to Lifto and Fatty. “Okay, stop pushing, no point in straining yourself, because you’re going to need to save your energy. I don’t think the shooter on the left is quite as skilled so run to the left and around the back of the house, there’s got to be a back door. I’ll provide cover, I still got a half a clip left in this thing and one more full one, so when I go full auto, start running. Here take the pistol.” You say tossing the pistol over the back end of the truck. Honestly you’d rather have Shrimpy do this since he’s a much smaller target, but the little guy is probably hiding in the leg area of either the driver or passenger’s side of the truck hoping not to get hit. You take a deep breath as more bullets tear into the sides of the truck. You grip the rifle and exposing only a bit of your hands, you blindly fire and spray the left area of the house where the second shooter is. Luckily through the gunfire a small cry is heard, you think you’ve hit someone again. In any case it allows time for Lifto and Fatty to crouch run towards the house, hug the wall and then crawl around the corner. Fatty sure is fast when he wants to be, you just hope he doesn’t suffer a heart attack. Meanwhile you hear shouting within the house. “Clem! I’m hit! Ohhhhh…(sob)” “Honeypie?! Honeypie? No no no…” With the gunfire completely stopped Shrimpy takes the opportunity to get out of the truck and run behind it. “Suzy? You still here?” you hear him ask. “Yeah, I’m still here. Just stay behind the truck I’m gonna…” you start to say before you’re interrupted “NO! GODAMNIT! NOOOO! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU ALL!” Clem the farmer shouts and now the sounds of gunfire start up again, except this time he’s not firing a rifle anymore, the booming sound indicates a shotgun of some kind. As you try to reload your last assault rifle clip, the truck continues to suffer the impact of shotgun rounds. In fact they are starting to damage the truck enough that one of them going through and hitting you is a very real possibility. You roll over to the other side of the truck in an attempt not to get hit. “I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU!” you hear him bellow. You’re too busy keeping down and redloading. And then you hear nothing, followed by a pistol shot and then another. You take the opportunity to quickly climb out of the truck bed altogether. “Suzy, did they get him?” Shrimpy asks “I don’t know…” you say and peek your head out hoping that this isn’t a mistake. You soon see Lifto standing in the front doorway with the pistol in hand. “We got all of these bastards. It’s safe.” He says. You and Shrimpy both step out from the cover of the truck and make your way to the house. First thing you notice is the first man you shot near the entryway, apparently he tried to crawl away soon after the shoot out started and died shortly afterwards. Given his disfigurement and from what you could tell of his voice, he might’ve been mentally retarded. You remember hearing “junior” being said, so you’re guessing he was the son. You don’t exactly feel great about shooting him. It really was an accident. Seeing the other two bodies don’t exactly make you feel any better. The farmer’s wife lies dead in the dining room area. She’s actually bigger than Fatty which means she’s indeed quite on the large side. She has several gunshot wounds to her upper body. You knew you hit her, but you just didn’t know where. Your stomach begins to feel slightly bad when you think about it. Finally you see the farmer himself, or Clem as you heard being shouted. Lifto mentions that Clem was so focused on you that he realized too late that someone was sneaking up on him. Lifto mentions that he shot him in the back and then while Clem was still flopping about on the floor trying to turn over with his shotgun, Clem put one in his skull. You didn’t even kill Clem and you still feel weird about it. You don’t understand why you’re feeling slightly sick about all this. Or rather you’ve got an idea why, but considering the little creature rampage at the carnival it isn’t like you haven’t seen gruesome death before, but this is somehow different. The adrenaline and survivalist mindset you put yourself into has disappeared now that the danger has passed so you are left with the grim aftermath of your actions. The realization that you’ve killed an entire family that was really just defending their home is what is getting to you. That and the fact that you feel like this whole incident is your fault. Adding Klepto’s death to the mix and you’re directly and indirectly responsible for four people’s deaths. “Toilet.” You say in a daze. “What?” Shrimpy asks. “I’m gonna be sick…” “I think I saw one over towards the back of the house, it’s…” You don’t wait for Lifto to finish you just run in the direction. Trying to keep from throwing up and you just manage to make it to the toilet where upon you promptly vomit your guts out. Your fellows come to see how you’re doing. “Suzy, are you alright?” Shrimpy asks. “Yeah, you aren’t sick are you?” Lifto asks. It takes you awhile to answer, but eventually you manage it. “Uh…(pant)…I just…I dunno…yeah I’ll be fine. I think the stress of all this just got to me. Uh…” You say. “Well, it’s understandable. Look, why don’t you go lie down somewhere? You’ve done enough for today. The rest of us are gonna drag these bodies out of here. It’ll take all of us, lord knows what the hell they were eating on this farm, but everyone here seems to be Fatty’s size or bigger. Probably should look around the rest of the farm as well. Make sure nobody is hiding in the barns or something.” Lifto remarks. “Yeah…okay…” you say walking past Shrimpy and Lifto. As you slowly walk back towards the front of the house, Fatty comes down the stairs. “Well the upstairs is clear from what I can tell. Nobody up there. Hey Suzy, you okay? Could hear you retching from up there.” Fatty asks. “Yeah, just need to lie down.” You say. “You and me both, but I suppose Lifto is going to need me to help him move out these bodies. Anyway, there are some nice beds upstairs, probably should take one of them.” At this point you feel so wobbly that you wonder if you can even make it up the stairs. > You use the upstairs bedrooms Given that everyone is going to be making a bunch of noise, moving bodies and such downstairs, you decide to head upstairs. You think you could really use the solitude anyway. You think you’ve spent more time in the close company of people this week than you have in your entire life and that includes when you had a boyfriend. With everyone else doing a bit of cleaning up, your mind goes a bit numb as you go up the creaky stairs. You put everything that you’ve experienced this week out of your head. All you want to think about right now is resting from this ordeal. You reach the landing and look to your left and see a room which is fairly messy to the point of being disgusting. You hear flies buzzing in there and it smells like something died in there, which doesn’t improve how you’re already feeling. You guess that this was probably the son’s room. You close the door so as to keep the odor in and move on. Across the hall you find a much better room with a big bed. You guess that Clem and his wife slept here, or maybe just his wife, given her size. Unfortunately that smell from Junior’s room is still strong enough for this room to catch a bit of the fallout. You can’t rest here either so you move on again. You pass another bathroom and then at the far end you find another bedroom. This one is free of a bad smell and has a comfortable looking bed so you immediately go to it. You collapse on the bed, with a deep exhale. You lie there in silence for a moment trying to wrap your mind around the situation. “(Sigh) Ohhhh…shit…never should’ve left the basement.” You say. You think about what might’ve happened had you actually stayed home earlier this week rather than going with the idea to go join the circus. You also wonder what would’ve happened had you gone to live with your younger sister or even made up with Bobby. You then remember of how the National Guard were stationed in your town and then there were those creatures (Still don’t know what that was all about or if Lifto is out of the woods as far as that’s concerned) so chances are things might’ve still turned out hectic. “I was fucked no matter what.” You laugh as your eyes start to close a bit. In fact you laugh quite a bit. You laugh at this entire hell week. It may be your mind trying to cope and a combination of being tired, or you may have snapped a little but in any event you can’t stop quietly giggling to yourself. And then as you’re in your minor giggling fit, your eyes stay open longer when you begin to realize your surroundings. This room. This is the room of a young female. There is a whole area dedicated to make up and such. The walls have a flowery print. You even see a few feminine undergarments sitting on top of a dresser. You then remember back when you first shot Junior, his mother telling him that he had better not be fighting with his sister again. Funny what you remember during intense situations. There were only three dead bodies, which means the daughter of this family is still alive and possibly hiding somewhere. Fatty said he searched upstairs, but he could’ve missed something. And a quick glance to your left you see a closet door slightly askew, which then begins to open further. Feeling a sudden burst of energy brought on by danger, you manage to sit up and get off the bed just in time for the owner of this room to reveal herself. Apparently she thought you were going to be easier pickings than Fatty, she finds out how dreadfully wrong she is. You immediately rush at the woman who holds a large knife in one hand. It’s enough to catch her off guard and she fails to hit you with the knife or rather fails to hit you in a meaningful way since the blade does slice your upper arm. The pair of you fall to the closet floor where she slams her head against the wall. You grab the hand holding the knife and smash it on the doorway until she drops it. You feel a punch to your face by her other hand, but you ignore the pain and with all your weight you slam your elbow into her nose. You stop her from crying out by following that up with a punch to her mouth. You repeatedly punch her in the face to a point where she temporarily stops resisting entirely. Clothing is falling on the pair of you and you grab a shirt and wrap it around her throat and pull tightly. Your mind goes into a very dark place. “Shhhh…it’ll all be over soon, just let the darkness take you” you whisper. The woman gasps for air and tries to punch and scratch at you, but you manage to pull your head back just enough for her to miss. She tries to wiggle and squirm away, but you’re sitting right on her stomach and there’s nowhere for her to go. The woman continues to choke and tries to pry your hands away, but she’s unable to do so and her struggle becomes less intense. “…there we go…now you’ll be with your family forever…” you say and watch her face turn unhealthy shade due to lack of oxygen and her eyes roll up into her head. The woman stops breathing and the deed is done. You don’t even feel tired anymore, it’s like killing her energized you or something. You don’t have the sick feeling either. You just went into a kind of trance. Like this woman was garbage that needed to be disposed of. You wonder if this is what your Uncle Ed felt when he killed whores. If you were in your old frame of mind, you’d know how fucked up that is. In your current state of mind you still know how fucked up that is, however you no longer care. Something may very well have snapped within you, whether it was a combination of the entire week, or just this one bad day, the damage has been done and you’re not quite the same person that you were anymore. She was going to kill you and you stopped her from doing so, that’s the important thing. Nothing else. You survived. There are no limits to what you’re capable of, you realize that now. “Suzy!? Hey are you okay up there?! I heard some noise!” you hear Lifto shout. “Yeah, I’m fine, just looking through a closet before I get some rest. Some shit fell, no worries!” you shout back. “Okay then.” With that interruption out of the way you turn your attention back to your situation. You start looking around the room and find lots of make up. You also go through her clothing and notice a lot of it is about your size though a bit on the slutty side. Oddly enough after going through some more personal belongings you find out her name was Susie too. Or Susie Mae to be precise. After pulling out some of the clothing from the closet you shove the rest of Susie Mae's body into it and shut the door. “Hmm, yeah I think I could make a new outfit out of this stuff.” You remark. You then grab the scissors and sewing material that lies nearby. It’s been awhile since you’ve done any seamstress type stuff, but you remember when your mother taught you to do it when you were in your elementary school plays. Hopefully you’ve retained enough of the knowledge. You spend the rest of the day in Susie Mae’s room on your own personal project. It’s the most solitude you’ve had in a long time and you happily enjoy it. The rest of your compatriots are busy searching the rest of the farm for the most part though at one point Shrimpy comes up and asks if you’re okay. “Suzy? Hey thought you’d be asleep…what are you doing?” “Well I don’t exactly have any extra clothes anymore. Even my clown stuff was left back at the carnival, so I’m making a new wardrobe, what’s up?” you ask not looking up from what you’re doing. “Um, well just wanted to let you know that we’ve checked out this entire farm and the place seems all clear and well stocked too.” Shrimpy remarks. “Are Fatty and Lifto okay?” you ask. “Heh, yeah Fatty’s fine, wasn’t fun digging that bullet out of his ass though. As for Lifto he seems fine too. Don’t think Klepto biting him did anything and he’s cleaned out the wound at this point so I guess he’s in the clear. Speaking of Klepto, we uh…were thinking we should at least bury him. We already dug the hole in a nice spot. Maybe we should have a small funeral tomorrow?” “I think that sounds like a fine idea…guess I better finish this thing if I’m attending a funeral.” You reply. Shrimpy pauses for a moment. “Suzy are you really okay? You seem different somehow.” “I’m just fine Shrimpy. Just fine. I really need to focus on this though.” “Um, okay sure. We’ll let you know if anything important pops up.” Shrimpy says and leaves you. You aren’t disturbed for the rest of the day or night; in fact they all must sleep downstairs which gives you free reign of the upstairs bathroom to wash up a bit. After washing up you try on your now finished project. Your outfit is a patchwork of colorful chaos since you just cut up lots of clothing and sewed bits of them together, but you’re pleased with your work. In fact you’re so pleased with it, you fall asleep in it figuring that it’ll save you a bit of time to get ready for Klepto’s funeral tomorrow. > Next day… SATURDAY “Suzy? You up?” Shrimpy asks and knocks on your door. Normally you wouldn’t be this early, but in this rare instance you actually are. “Yeah, I’m awake. I’ll be ready in a moment.” You say applying make up on your face. “Okay, we’re all about as ready as we’re going to be, Lifto and Fatty have already put Klepto’s body in the hole we dug, so we’re all about as ready for this thing as we’re going to be. See you downstairs.” “Hey Shrimpy can I say a few things at this event?” you ask before he walks away from the door. “You mean like a eulogy? Sure I mean if you’ve got something to say then by all means go for it. Really we were all trying to come up with something formal, but I think we’re all still a little exhausted. Lifto actually broke down in tears yesterday about Klepto’s death. I think he’s upset that he tried to kill him just the day before and wishes their last moments were on friendlier terms.” “Well, tell Lifto that the time for tears and regrets will soon be a thing of the past. I’m almost done, see you downstairs.” “All right.” You look at yourself in the mirror and finish applying lipstick. Not the exact shade of red you wanted, but it was the only lipstick that the previous owner hadn’t used yet. You’re just glad the girl had as much make up as she did so you could paint up your face proper. Satisfied with your face, you stand up and look at yourself in the nearby full length mirror. “Well it’s not my old carnival outfit, but yeah… this is definitely me now. Now and forever.” you say and walk towards the door. Before leaving you stop and look towards the closet. “Thank you for letting me borrow your make up and clothing.” You say and then giggle a bit. You skip down the stairs and meet up with the rest. They’re all a bit more somber than you and are quite surprised to see your slightly energetic temperament. “Suzy? That’s a uh interesting outfit.” Fatty remarks. “Isn’t it though? Made it myself. Nothing like a new set of clothes to put you in a different mindset! In fact given that all of you have been running around in the same clothes for day on end, I’d say that all of you could use new clothes too. Those rags must be really filthy by now; you’ll all probably feel a lot more positive about things once you change. I’m sure we can gather up enough of this family of deadnecks’ clothing and I can make you all something. Anyway, we can talk about this later let us be on our way.” Everyone is a unsure of how to react to your new chipperish behavior especially given the circumstances, but they all just lead the way to Klepto’s open grave which has been dug out in the backyard of the house. Klepto still looks about as dead as he did that last time you saw him, though someone has arranged his body in a respectful way. He even has some freshly pulled flowers in his hand. “The flowers are a nice touch.” You remark not knowing who did it. “Thank you.” Lifto says wiping away a tear. “Shrimpy probably told you all that I was going to do a bit of a eulogy, but does anyone have anything else to say?” “No, we were all trading Klepto stories last night. We’ll probably be doing it for a while. None of us are really good for formal speeches though, probably best if you do it. Besides, it means a lot that you want to do it despite not knowing any of us that long.” Shrimpy says. “Glad you feel that way because what I’m going to say is going to be towards all of you…” And before you can finish that thought. Your eyes (and everyone else’s) catch sight of something quite spectacular in the distance. A mushroom cloud. You’re not feeling any tremors or aftershocks, a wave of fire hasn’t engulfed you, so you’re guessing that it wasn’t excessively close, maybe it was even a small one. Still, you can’t help but wonder if you’re in some sort of deadly radiation radius though. If so there isn’t much that can done about it. “Well I’ll be damned, the world finally went and did it…” you say to yourself. Lifto, Fatty and Shrimpy all at the same time begin to swear and react to the situation as most people would, namely panic, fear and hysteria. You think in the old days you probably would have too, but not anymore. If anything this is excellent timing for your new outlook on life. You quickly call everyone to attention. “Hey! Listen up! This might be the end of civilization as we know it, but it isn’t the end of the world! Sure life is going to be harder now, but look at we’ve already survived. Just this damn week we suffered through a military occupation, an internal civil war, an attack by freaks, and took down a bunch of rednecks trying to murder us.” At this point they’re all listening to you intently. “We’ll survive this and as long as we stick together there isn’t anything we can’t do. This is a new beginning and it’ll be us against the world if necessary. We are a family and I love you guys.” You say. These words are met with a pause and then of course positive approval by all and everyone goes in for a bit of a group hug. Feelings run a bit high and some more tears are shed. While your words are genuine and do have feeling behind them, but your mind is still in a dark place. You do see them all as family, but you also can’t help see them as useful “tools” in the chaos that’s going to come. Even now you’re sizing them all up on their weaknesses and strengths. In any case, you and everyone finish up by completing the burial of Klepto and gathering all the supplies from the farm that will be needed. You all know you’ll run out eventually, but for now you’ve got enough supplies to ponder a long range plan of your future. No longer are you the shy “good” girl who hid away in the basement, harassed by your family and living as one day blurred into the next. Far from it. Very far from it. It’s a brand new day and this is just the beginning of your brand new life. > Karnival of Karnage The Future… You sit comfortably in your modified jeep watching yet another small settlement burn before you. Not the first time, and certainly won’t be the last. The screams and gunfire are starting to die down which means today’s raid is nearly over. Still, it isn’t completely over yet and there’s always something fun to see. “Woo hoo! Looks like that new recruit has got the right attitude!” you say watching a young man wearing an outlandish green wig and novelty nose glasses swing his machete into the skull of another young man who was previously begging for his life. “Hrm. Wasn’t too sure about him at first, but I guess he’s proven himself on this raid. Speaking of which, looks like we’ve made a good haul. Lots of food, water, even medical supplies.” Lifto remarks sitting next to you. “Wheeee! Gimme that map, I want to see where we should hit next.” You say. “I believe Captain Howdy has it.” “Well, call that pierced freak over here then.” You say. Lifto nods and calls for Captain Howdy via bullhorn. Eventually a heavily pierced man wearing a beat up pilot’s cap, black face make up and carrying an assault rifle over his shoulder appears. “Black face today? Isn’t that a bit unPC?” you say with a smirk. “Eh, fuck’em if they can’t take a joke.” Howdy says apathetically. “Truer words my friend. Lifto says you’ve got the map of this area.” You say. “Oh yeah, I do. Here let me get it out of my pack.” Howdy takes off a small backpack and opens it up to give you a well-worn map of the area. “Let’s see…okay…we hit that place…and that one…” you start to say looking for a new target. “How about Redemption? I hate those religious types.” Howdy says. “While I have no doubt that town of pious zealots is well stocked, they’re also very well armed. In fact I’ve been hearing rumors that they’ve been launching their own little crusade against neighboring settlements.” You say. “I heard that they went complete Spanish Inquisition on one town. Crucified most of them and burned the rest alive. That was of course after they already had tortured the shit out of all of them.” Lifto adds. “So? We could take those assholes.” Howdy remarks. “That may be, but not in the near future. It would be a very dangerous undertaking and we are not doing this for the risks and to prove how badass we are. We’re doing this for survival…well that and to have a little fun in the process.” You say with a smile, though Howdy is still one of your more “macho” members and still wants to prove he’s got a dick by killing something. You reach out to his face with a gentle touch and soothing voice. “I know you like to kill things, but I don’t want you to get killed in the process. Just because we tend to pick easier targets just means I really don’t want you or any one of us to get killed. We’re all family and I don’t want to see any one of you die, you understand? That’s why our mode of operation is to go for low risk, high reward and I’d say its work for all these years wouldn’t you?” “Yes, I suppose it has.” Howdy says. “That’s right. Anyway it’s looking like we have hit every place that’s worthwhile around here. We should start heading east and raid merchant caravans coming out of those city-states. They’re all fucked up after that big war they had with the Ground Zero Corporation so they’re lacking in the defense department now. Okay, let’s start shutting down this circus and move on.” You say and take the bullhorn from Lifto. “Alright you clowns gather up all the shit we’ve looted, pile it in the vehicles and let’s get this freak show on the road! We’re heading east! Flammo! HEY! That doesn’t mean start another goddamn fire, it means let’s go!” you shout shaking your head and throw the bullhorn in the back seat. Lifto starts up the jeep and you stretch a bit waiting for your family to finish packing up. Lifto waits in silence, but you feel like talking. “A Pennywise for your thoughts.” You say which causes a snort from Lifto. “Oh nothing, I suppose I was just thinking about how much things have changed. The past. Sometimes I miss it.” “Oh that. Well I don’t miss it. Glad that part of my life is over.” “Not just the old days, but people as well like Fatty, Shrimpy… Klepto.” “Well that’s different. I do miss them. They were family and I’ll never forget them. We sure had some fun times back at that farmhouse remember?” “Heh, yeah. Shame what happened; maybe we could’ve made a more stable life there rather than doing this raider thing.” “Perhaps, but we can’t dwell on what if in the past. Just have to focus on today and if possible, the future. That’s what’s kept us alive and allowed us to build our new family.” You say and touch Lifto’s hand. Lifto looks and smiles at you. You aren’t sure if he’s ever completely agreed with how you’ve gone about things, but he loves you enough that he’ll stand by your side no matter what and that’s enough for you. To be honest you did latch on to Lifto a bit in the beginning because he was obviously a big guy that could definitely protect you in a time of trouble, but it’s a bit more than that now. Given that you’re both the only two left from the original group, your ties have naturally grown quite a bit. You’ve done a lot of bad things since your new life began, but it’s a harsh world and you’re just living in it. Sometimes you have bouts where you wonder if you should feel bad about doing the things you do, but then you just laugh and remember to not dwell on the past. “I love you Kenneth.” You say using Lifto’s real name, looking at him and touching his hand. “I love you Suzy.” He replies back and leans over to kiss you. With this exchange of affection, you, Lifto and your gang of clowns drive off in search of new prey.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you ran, you doubt if the rest of them would follow and despite the feeling that this isn’t the greatest idea, you’re tired of running. You’ve got nothing to run to anyway, if you can deal with the inhabitants inside, you’ll at least have a place to catch a breather from the ever-growing chaos in your life. You hope at least. “Shrimpy can you get inside the truck without getting hit and put it in neutral?” “Yeah I think I could.” Shrimpy says. “Good, give me the rifle and the clips, get in the truck and when it’s in neutral Lifto and Fatty I want you to start pushing it forward. We should be able to get close enough to the house using this thing as a large shield.” “What are you going to be doing?” Fatty asks. “I’m going to be crawling around in the truck bed taking shots at that bastard firing at us when I can. Hopefully the closer we get the more likely I’ll be able to hit him. Now you want to avenge Klepto or what?” This statement gets a nod from everyone. “Let’s do this.” Lifto says and all of you enact your plan. It goes well, or about as well as a plan can when someone is shooting at you. Another person soon joins the farmer the closer the truck gets to the front of the house. Presumably the farmer’s wife. The pair of them unleash a torrent of curses at you, but nobody is hitting each other yet. Bullets tear into the truck and while you’re all safe, when the two front tires get blown out, it makes Lifto and Fatty’s pushing a lot harder. “Goddamn it. (Wheeze)” Fatty gasps. “Fuck.” Lifto grunts. Still crawling around in the truck bed, you head over towards the back and speak to Lifto and Fatty. “Okay, stop pushing, no point in straining yourself, because you’re going to need to save your energy. I don’t think the shooter on the left is quite as skilled so run to the left and around the back of the house, there’s got to be a back door. I’ll provide cover, I still got a half a clip left in this thing and one more full one, so when I go full auto, start running. Here take the pistol.” You say tossing the pistol over the back end of the truck. Honestly you’d rather have Shrimpy do this since he’s a much smaller target, but the little guy is probably hiding in the leg area of either the driver or passenger’s side of the truck hoping not to get hit. You take a deep breath as more bullets tear into the sides of the truck. You grip the rifle and exposing only a bit of your hands, you blindly fire and spray the left area of the house where the second shooter is. Luckily through the gunfire a small cry is heard, you think you’ve hit someone again. In any case it allows time for Lifto and Fatty to crouch run towards the house, hug the wall and then crawl around the corner. Fatty sure is fast when he wants to be, you just hope he doesn’t suffer a heart attack. Meanwhile you hear shouting within the house. “Clem! I’m hit! Ohhhhh…(sob)” “Honeypie?! Honeypie? No no no…” With the gunfire completely stopped Shrimpy takes the opportunity to get out of the truck and run behind it. “Suzy? You still here?” you hear him ask. “Yeah, I’m still here. Just stay behind the truck I’m gonna…” you start to say before you’re interrupted “NO! GODAMNIT! NOOOO! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU ALL!” Clem the farmer shouts and now the sounds of gunfire start up again, except this time he’s not firing a rifle anymore, the booming sound indicates a shotgun of some kind. As you try to reload your last assault rifle clip, the truck continues to suffer the impact of shotgun rounds. In fact they are starting to damage the truck enough that one of them going through and hitting you is a very real possibility. You roll over to the other side of the truck in an attempt not to get hit. “I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU!” you hear him bellow. You’re too busy keeping down and redloading. And then you hear nothing, followed by a pistol shot and then another. You take the opportunity to quickly climb out of the truck bed altogether. “Suzy, did they get him?” Shrimpy asks “I don’t know…” you say and peek your head out hoping that this isn’t a mistake. You soon see Lifto standing in the front doorway with the pistol in hand. “We got all of these bastards. It’s safe.” He says. You and Shrimpy both step out from the cover of the truck and make your way to the house. First thing you notice is the first man you shot near the entryway, apparently he tried to crawl away soon after the shoot out started and died shortly afterwards. Given his disfigurement and from what you could tell of his voice, he might’ve been mentally retarded. You remember hearing “junior” being said, so you’re guessing he was the son. You don’t exactly feel great about shooting him. It really was an accident. Seeing the other two bodies don’t exactly make you feel any better. The farmer’s wife lies dead in the dining room area. She’s actually bigger than Fatty which means she’s indeed quite on the large side. She has several gunshot wounds to her upper body. You knew you hit her, but you just didn’t know where. Your stomach begins to feel slightly bad when you think about it. Finally you see the farmer himself, or Clem as you heard being shouted. Lifto mentions that Clem was so focused on you that he realized too late that someone was sneaking up on him. Lifto mentions that he shot him in the back and then while Clem was still flopping about on the floor trying to turn over with his shotgun, Clem put one in his skull. You didn’t even kill Clem and you still feel weird about it. You don’t understand why you’re feeling slightly sick about all this. Or rather you’ve got an idea why, but considering the little creature rampage at the carnival it isn’t like you haven’t seen gruesome death before, but this is somehow different. The adrenaline and survivalist mindset you put yourself into has disappeared now that the danger has passed so you are left with the grim aftermath of your actions. The realization that you’ve killed an entire family that was really just defending their home is what is getting to you. That and the fact that you feel like this whole incident is your fault. Adding Klepto’s death to the mix and you’re directly and indirectly responsible for four people’s deaths. “Toilet.” You say in a daze. “What?” Shrimpy asks. “I’m gonna be sick…” “I think I saw one over towards the back of the house, it’s…” You don’t wait for Lifto to finish you just run in the direction. Trying to keep from throwing up and you just manage to make it to the toilet where upon you promptly vomit your guts out. Your fellows come to see how you’re doing. “Suzy, are you alright?” Shrimpy asks. “Yeah, you aren’t sick are you?” Lifto asks. It takes you awhile to answer, but eventually you manage it. “Uh…(pant)…I just…I dunno…yeah I’ll be fine. I think the stress of all this just got to me. Uh…” You say. “Well, it’s understandable. Look, why don’t you go lie down somewhere? You’ve done enough for today. The rest of us are gonna drag these bodies out of here. It’ll take all of us, lord knows what the hell they were eating on this farm, but everyone here seems to be Fatty’s size or bigger. Probably should look around the rest of the farm as well. Make sure nobody is hiding in the barns or something.” Lifto remarks. “Yeah…okay…” you say walking past Shrimpy and Lifto. As you slowly walk back towards the front of the house, Fatty comes down the stairs. “Well the upstairs is clear from what I can tell. Nobody up there. Hey Suzy, you okay? Could hear you retching from up there.” Fatty asks. “Yeah, just need to lie down.” You say. “You and me both, but I suppose Lifto is going to need me to help him move out these bodies. Anyway, there are some nice beds upstairs, probably should take one of them.” At this point you feel so wobbly that you wonder if you can even make it up the stairs. > You use the downstairs couch You’re so tired, you don’t want to be bothered with stairs right now. You collapse on the nearby sofa and close your eyes. “Try to keep it down please.” You say. Everyone agrees, but the act of moving bodies out isn’t exactly quiet work. Especially when they try to move the farmer’s wife, which even with Lifto helping, isn’t an easy task. “Damnit Fatty get her fucking leg, I’m losing my grip.” Lifto says. “This bitch is bigger than me! I’m having a coronary just trying to move her.” Fatty replies. “Don’t look at me, I’m doing the best I can with this leg, we should just drag her out.” Shrimpy adds. “Okay, okay, drop her.” A loud thud of a dead body hitting the floor fills your ears. Them trying to drag her doesn’t go too much quieter, Fatty ends up knocking over a table lamp and at this point you know trying to sleep on the sofa is a losing proposition. You don’t get mad since it really isn’t their fault, but you do get up in silence and make your way up the stairs. Really you’re still a bit wobbly from your tiredness and your eyes are half sleepy, but thanks to the railings, you’re able to maneuver yourself to the top without falling. Unfortunately, that isn’t the danger. When you get to the top of the stairs, you see a young woman standing before you holding a knife. It looks like she was sneaking to one of the other rooms when you appeared. The woman is a bit surprised when she sees you and you’re just barely awake enough to realize that you’re in danger, you’re not quite awake enough to react in time. With a short rush towards you she stabs you in the right tit, causing you to fall backwards. The knife wound wouldn’t have killed you since it didn’t hit vital organs, but breaking your neck falling down the stairs sure does. The rest of your friends come running back inside from the noise and will probably avenge your death, but obviously you won’t be alive to thank them.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “…don’t delay, buy a Ground Zero shelter today!” “Fatty turn that radio off, there hasn’t been anything on it of importance for hours. It’s just those damn Ground Zero ads. Christ, you’d think someone would be reporting about oh you know a zombie apocalypse?” Shrimpy says. “I still say those things are still alive. The ones we saw didn’t look like they came back from the dead or anything.” Fatty remarks. “Well whatever, still seems like reporting SOME sort of outbreak would be of importance.” “Maybe its local and not happening anywhere else?” At this point your eyes open and you completely rouse from your sleep. “(Yawn) What’s going on?” you ask. “So you’re finally awake.” Shrimpy says. “We’ve been driving all night?” you ask. “Somewhat. Fatty here pulled over at one point and we both slept a little. If you’re wondering about the gruesome twosome back there, we checked on them and from what I can tell both of them feel fine. In fact I think they’re both still sleeping. Guess all that bite drama yesterday really exhausted them. Dunno if that means they’re okay or not, but right now we do have another problem.” Shrimpy says. “What’s that?” you ask. “Well Fatty here managed to get us fucking lost.” “Hey it’s not my fault, I couldn’t see shit in the night and I thought we were on a main road. Damn GPS.” Fatty says. “Told you that it was broken and hasn’t worked correctly for years. Anyway, I know you’re native to this area so I’m hoping you know your way around.” Shrimpy says. A brief glance of the practically non-descript landscape to the left and right of you leaves you at a loss. “Sorry, but like I said, I never was a big traveller. Never left the basement if I could help it.” You say. “Oh yeah, that’s right. Well any suggestion regardless of that fact?” Shrimpy asks. You don’t really have any, though you probably should be near some sort of farmhouse as you do know there are some out this way. You could get your bearing by stopping at one and asking for directions. You also remember Fatty’s comment about supplies. “There should be some sort of farmhouse nearby. Just keep driving along this road and we’ll probably hit one where we can ask for directions and possibly get supplies.” “Sounds like as good of an idea as any.” You really don’t know if that will be the case, you’re just hoping at this point. Fortunately, your hopes come true this time. “Well, there’s a house. Can’t tell if anyone is home or not though.” Fatty says pulling up to a large traditional looking farmhouse. “Okay, so how are we doing this?” “Well…I suppose I’ll go up to the front door and see if anyone’s home and the rest of you guys stay in the truck.” You say. “You nuts? This place looks like it’s out of a horror movie! Might be a bunch of psycho rednecks living in there! They see a pretty young thing like you and they’d grab you before we could even do anything.” Shrimpy remarks. “Right like arriving at a door with a group of clowns isn’t straight out of a horror movie. I’m currently the only one dressed in regular clothing and not covered in blood, I think it would be best if I just asked for help at first.” “Hey what are we going to do with Klepto and Lifto?” Fatty asks. “Well check on them again and if they seem to be well unchain them I guess. I mean they could use a stretch. Anyway like I said I’m going to the door. I’m taking the pistol with me and I’m confident that if something does happen you’ll be able to react in time to save me from getting chopped up or whatever you think is going to happen. We need help getting back on track and looking at the gauge we might even need gas so hopefully they got that here too. Don’t worry I’ll be fine.” You say and get out of the truck. You make your way towards the front porch looking around the entire time. This place is creepily quiet. Seems like you should at least hear the sounds of animals or something. Shrimpy’s got you totally paranoid now. You really weren’t worried until he mentioned psycho hillbillies. You look back at the truck. “Goddamn it Suzy, you need to brave through some of this shit yourself. You survived your serial killer uncle for Christsake. Nothing is going to happen, probably just some kindly old farm couple that lives here.” You mutter to yourself and walk up the stairs and knock on the door. You knock several times with no answer, but just when you’re about to give up it opens. “WHO YOU!?” a large disfigured man exclaims completely scaring the shit out of you and causing you to fall backwards. You’re in a state of utter fear as this large freak approaches you with his hand outstretched towards you… Even in your fearful condition, you’re still able to react to a dangerous situation. You pull the pistol that you had on you and shoot the disfigured man. You hit him twice in the body and he reels backwards bellowing loudly as his body hits the front door and then the house’s front room floor. “WHHHHHHY!? GOING TO HELP YOU!” the man shouts. “Junior? What in tarnation is goin’ on down there? I hope you didn’t shoot yourself in the foot carrying your father’s rifles again, you know how he hates a waste of ammo.” An older female voice shouts from inside. “MAMA! MAMA! HURT A LOT! BAD GIRL HURT ME!” the man cries. “If you’ve been fightin’ with you’re sister again…oh my god…JUNIOR! CLEM SOMEONE SHOT JUNIOR!” you hear the older female voice scream. By this time you’re running back to the truck, which Shrimpy has gotten out of. Lifto and Klepto are also both awake and shouting at this point. “Get back in the fucking truck! We gotta…” you start yelling and then a shot from one of the farmhouse windows rings out. You hear it whiz by your ear causing you to drop to the ground immediately. You continue to crawl towards the truck where you hear more gunfire behind you and the sounds of an assault rifle returning fire. You hear someone trying to start the truck, but a few more shots hitting metal seem to put an end to that causing the engine to make a less than operational sound. “Fatty get out of the front seat!” Shrimpy shouts. You hear more gunshots followed by Fatty crying out, though you don’t know if he’s actually gotten hit severely since you just hear “OW MY ASS!” The whole time you’re praying that you don’t get shot in the back, but you’re the lucky one… Ever the white knight, Klepto attempts to go “rescue” you. “Klepto get out of the open!” you hear Lifto shout. “Suzy’s out there I can’t…” Klepto’s words are cut short when a bullet to his skull drops him. In fact he drops about a few feet in front of you. You try to put the sight of his death out of your mind as you continue to crawl towards the truck. “YOU FUCKERS AREN’T TAKING THIS FARM! THIS FARM IS MINE! ALL OF YOU SONSOFBITCHES ARE GONNA PAY FOR WHAT YOU DID TO MY BOY!” a male voice shouts. You finally reach your destination where the rest are hiding behind the back of the truck, though Fatty’s having a hard time of it due to his size and the fact he’s got a bullet in his ass. The shooting on both sides for now has stopped though. “Shit, shit, shit, Klepto’s dead! That redneck bastard says that we’re going to pay, no fucking way, HE’S gonna fuckin’ pay!” Lifto says which is a bit surprising considering that he was ready to kill Klepto himself just yesterday. “Fuck, my ass…ah! Shit…wish I had a gun, I’d shoot that fucker in the ass. Not the cheek either, the fucking HOLE!” Fatty says who is normally calm, but given he got shot his anger is a bit understandable. “Well luckily I picked up a few extra clips back at the carnival and Suzy’s probably still got a few shots left. I say we can probably take out the shooter with a bit of strategy. Just as soon as we come up with one of course.” Shrimpy remarks. You don’t know how to feel about all this. Maybe it’s all the increased violence over the past few days along with losing Klepto, but your clown crew is starting to become a lot more vicious, though events haven’t exactly been encouraging a peaceful life lately. You can’t help but feel a little responsible for this current situation though. The retard was just trying to help you up from your fall, but you couldn’t have known that…you just reacted to your fear. You were the one who harmed the farm inhabitants first even if the rest of your clown friends think you were being attacked. Part of you wants to just run from this place, but where would you go? Staying of course means doing more things you don’t necessarily want to do…but then you think if you can put yourself in the “right” frame of mind you’ll be able to do it. The farmer HAS tried to kill all of you and did succeed in killing Klepto who attempted to save you, surely revenge for that isn’t totally wrong? > You run away You might not know where you’re going to go, but staying around here seems like it will definitely lead to more death, namely yours. “Guys, I’m making a run for it. I can’t do this.” “Suzy, that asshole killed Klepto! We can’t just let these rednecks get away with that!” Lifto says. “And they shot me in the ass!” Fatty adds. “And I killed one of them, granted it was an accident, but that’s probably why they’re shooting at us! They aren’t completely at fault for thinking we’re here to hurt them. In fact they’re completely correct in that assessment given that you all want to get revenge. Look, I’m getting the hell out of here, and I hope the rest of you are with me on this. It sucks what happened to Klepto, but if we stay here, we’re going to end up like he did!” you exclaim. Lifto and Fatty are both unmoved by your words and tell you quite colorfully how disappointed they are in you. Shrimpy however is silent, and then passes his assault rifle to Lifto. “Here. At least lay down a bit of covering fire while we run for it.” Shrimpy says. “You’re… you’re leaving? Wow…Shrimpy. I could’ve understood if you had stuck with the rest of the dwarves back at the carnival, but looks like you were just following Suzy’s ass the whole time.” Lifto remarks. “Think whatever you want. Just cover us.” “Fine. But given everything we’ve been through, I’m starting to think this girl is a fucking jinx and following her is just going to get you killed.” Lifto remarks. “Well then you should be successful in blasting those farmers then, you ready or not?” Lifto reloads the rifle and without another word begins firing on the farmhouse. You and Shrimpy both sprint away from the truck as fast as you can hoping that you don’t get hit. Fortunately it seems that the farmer is focusing on the immediate threat, which is Lifto. You don’t look back you just continue running and try to keep as low as possible. Eventually you get yourself lost in some high grass. You hear someone still running close behind. “Shrimpy?” “Yeah, its me. (Whew) I think we’re far enough now. Hold on, (pant) let me catch up to you. Damn grass is too high for me.” you hear him say. “Follow my voice. Wait, I can hear you, let me just…” you begin to say and turn around to walk in the direction of his voice. Unfortunately you don’t notice the bear trap on the ground. You must’ve just missed it when you ran this way before, but you don’t miss it this time. The device springs and your left leg is suddenly crushed by a forty pound snapping jaw made of metal. Your leg is most certainly broken, and you are most certainly in more pain than you could ever imagine. Before you start to go into shock from the pain, you scream loud enough that Shrimpy definitely hears you and runs in your direction. “Oh my god, oh Suzy, oh shit!” he exclaims. “I…I…(sob) I…(sob)” you can’t even form a coherent sentence; you’re on the verge of passing out and crying uncontrollably. Shrimpy attempts to pull the trap open, but he isn’t quite strong enough and just causes you more agony. “NO! (sob) Just…(sob) I…(sob)” you cry out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll get help! Just hang on!” Shrimpy says and runs back in the direction of the farmhouse. You don’t stop him and between the crying and wishing that you never left the basement you soon fall unconscious from shock and pain. You don’t know how long you’re out for, but when you come to, you wish you hadn’t. “Knew it would be a good idea to lay dem traps out here. Never know who might be sneakin’ through this tall grass.” You see a large man in overalls carrying a shotgun say as he prods you with the barrel of the weapon. “Please…help…” is all you can utter. “Help? Like you and your evil clown friends helped each other in killing my boy and tryin’ to kill the rest of my family? I dunno what sort of fucked up psychos y’all are, but you messed with the wrong family this day. Say hi to your friends in clown hell, bitch.” You weakly put your hands in front of your face and then the farmer pulls the trigger.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>MONDAY “…our shelters are all equipped with the latest in state of the art technology, order now and…” Click. You fell asleep watching tv again. Seems like they’re playing those damn commercials all the time now. Nothing like praying upon people’s fears due to recent world events. You look at the time and see that you’ve slept for most of the morning, but given that you’re going to the circus to apply for a job you figure they will be open all night. You also check your phone and see that Bobby’s been trying to reach you, but you can’t let yourself get distracted today. You need to focus on your goal of becoming a clown! You take Peter’s car and head towards the circus. The drive is fairly uneventful though one thing you notice is the increase in police cars and police in general. Apparently there’s been some civil disturbance in multiple locations. You swear this one of the reasons why you never like leaving the basement in the first place. You hate the chaotic nature of people. But then, if you have any hope of being a clown, you’re going to have to get used to dealing with crowds and people. In fact you’re going to have to get used to a lot of things, but you can’t let yourself get a panic attack about this. You have to go through with this. Eventually you arrive at your destination. Or at least you assume it is. Peter wasn’t joking when he said it resembled a gypsy camp as opposed to a proper circus. You see a lot of little tents and some trailers, but nothing like a “big top.” Most of the people here are dwarves and last time you knew there wasn’t a large population of little people in your town, so you can only assume that they’re part of the circus. In fact from what you can tell there aren’t actually any customers, just carnies. As you wander a bit, you start getting a lot of looks, you aren’t sure if they’re staring at you because you’re an outsider or if they’re just gawking at you. Might be a bit of both. Doesn’t take long before you’re surrounded by a lot of the little people and you start to feel like Dorothy. “Hey goldie with the legs, what’re you doing around here? We’re not open yet.” One of their numbers says. “Oh, well I wasn’t here for that. I’m here because…” you take a deep breath. “I want to be a clown!” That certainly wasn’t the response that they were expecting. You hear a few whispers before the one that was talking speaks again. “A clown? Heh, well I’m not sure how successful that’s going to work out for you, but luckily for you the owner of this fine circus is also a clown, so you’ll need to speak with him either way. He’s in the tent over there. Roofie is probably still hung over so try to speak quietly.” “Roofie?” “Yeah, that’s his clown name… actually it mean be his real name as well. Anyway, don’t worry he’s not a rapist or anything like that, he’s just a drunk. In fact he’s probably the most mentally stable clown that we’ve ever had in this circus!” Taking the dwarf’s directions, you head over to Roofie’s tent. The smell of booze is strong and when you enter you see a balding older man in oversized pants and suspenders sitting at a table holding his head in both hands. Beer and whiskey bottle are plentiful enough that you make yourself heard just by tripping over some. “Goddamn it, it isn’t fucking showtime and nobody’s been coming anyway! Leave me alone, shit!” Roofie shouts not even looking up and continuing to hold his head. “Uh Mr. Roofie, I was told to speak to you.” Roofie turns and looks at you. A big red nose still on his face. “Huh? Wbo the hell are you? You look way too damn classy to be any whore that I’d be able to afford.” “My name’s Suzy and I want to be a clown.” At this point Roofie slowly gets up from his seat kicking a few bottles aside. You continue to stand there starting to wonder if this was such a good idea. “A clown? Now why the hell would a cute blonde like you want to be a fuckin’ clown. Doesn’t make sense. You playin’ some sort of angle honey, because I assure you I’m in no mood and I ain’t got any money for you to grift anyway.” “No, it’s always been a life long dream ever since I was a little girl!” you say and then start to go into detail of how you enjoyed circus clowns and a bunch of other life story shit that doesn’t really interest Roofie. In fact he’s just struggling to stand up and listen right now. “Alright, alright, enough! Shit. I get it. (Sigh) Look honey I dunno what to tell you, we’re not exactly the Ringling Brothers here. I’m also not exactly looking to hire and I barely keep this place running as it is.” “Please let me be a clown! Just give me a chance!” “Argh, too fucking loud! Fine show me your clown stuff, just keep your voice down.” “Clown stuff?” “Uh yeah, like can you juggle? A little magic maybe? Some slapstick? Do you have a character like being a hobo or something? What you think it’s just easy as putting on white face make up, jumping around and laughing like an idiot?” “Well sort of…” “Sheesh. That’s the kind of thinking that makes us look creepy rather than amusing. You do realize that most people hate clowns right? Doesn’t help that we’re constantly vilified in horror movies nowadays. Yer wastin’ my time and yours if you don’t even know the basics.” Roofie isn’t exactly inspiring your confidence in this anymore. You feel like just heading home, but can’t run from this like you do with everything else, you’ve got no other options! You start to break down in tears. “Maybe I don’t know the basics, but I’ll work hard! (Sob) I’m serious about this! (Sob) I’ve tried to get a job everywhere else and if I don’t get this, I’ll get kicked out of my house! This is my last chance! (Sob)” you exclaim in between the tears. “Last chance? Darling, if bein’ a clown is your last chance, then you’ve got some major problems. (Sigh) I dunno even know why I’m entertaining this save for the fact that you’re easy on the eyes even without the need for alcohol and I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress. Besides if the news is any indication, we’re all gonna be dead by nuclear fire soon anyway, so fuck it. All right, stop yer weepin’ an maybe we can do something with you.” You clear up your eyes a bit completely oblivious to Roofie’s brief doomsday expectations. “So you’ll help train me?” “Well, hopefully you’ll pick up something in time, but I’m not going to bother with regular training, you’re going to learn trial by fire which all good clowns do anyway. Now the greatest thing going for you is that you’re cute, so I’m thinkin’ we create a character for you that utilizes your, shall we say natural talent.” “Wait, I’m not going to have my breasts exposed while wearing nothing but red clown noses on my nipples do I?” you ask with concern. “(Snort) Jesus girl. No, nuthin’ like that.” Roofie chuckles “You’ll be fully clothed, though you’ll still be cute lookin’. Kinda like that one girl. Y’know in the funny books? The one with that rich vigilante. Anyway, the key thing to remember is you need to act cutesy. That’s going to be your character. You’ll be a cute clown while all the other clowns around you hilariously fail to try to win you over, hit each other with mallets and all that sort of shit…hmmm, this is actually sounding like a pretty good skit. I’m going to go round up the others and have a run through. In the meantime there’s a bunch of clown outfits in the trunk over there. Fairly certain we got a bunch of unused girly ones that should fit you. Some make up over and a mirror over there. Don’t worry about getting that just right for now since I know the lighting sucks in this tent. And uh, I dunno try to practice acting demure and shy.” Roofie leaves the tent and you’re left realizing that you might just succeed at getting this job! You quickly go through the trunk and find some pink and black-checkered leotard thing with a mini-skirt attached around the waist. It fits and fortunately while form fitting, it isn’t excessively tight, though your legs are still exposed so you put on some knee high purple striped leggings. You feel sort of vulnerable undressing in a tent that someone could just enter at any time, but fortunately there’s at least a privacy-screen you can dress behind. You complete your look by putting your hair in girlish pigtails and applying a bunch of white face make up on and making your eyelashes and lips stand out with black eye liner and red lipstick. You haven’t had time to practice when Roofie returns with a bunch of other men in various clown outfits. One of them is even a little person like you met out front. “Goddamn Roofie, I think I’m gonna have to rethink my plans of leaving your shitty carnival.” One of them says. “Leave? Hell, I think I’m in love.” Says another before Roofie speaks up. “Holy shit girl, I said cute clown, not harlequin seductress! You might need to tone it down in the future we’re still trying to run a family show more or less. All right never mind, let’s run through this and you guys TRY to remember to keep your tongues in your mouth on occasion.” So you run through the routine while Roofie gives everyone directions. At first you naturally feel a little unready and uneasy what with everyone flirting with you, but soon you start to get into the swing of things. In fact it starts to come easy, you bat your eyes, give a few girlish giggles when someone slips and falls trying to give you a balloon flower and similar things. Eventually Roofie stops everyone and says the skit needs to be refined a bit, but it should work. He then tells everyone to leave since he wants speak with you privately. This seems to disappoint the others who all continue to stare at you while leaving. “Well, other than the fact that I could tell some of them were having a really hard time in not actually groping you, I’d say that went well and even you seem to have gotten into character quickly. Maybe you do have what it takes after all. You still seem a little nervous though, which sort of helped your performance, but I’d rather you remain at ease. Anything that can help with that?” Roofie asks. “Well its like you said, I partially felt like one of them was going to jump on me at any given time. I mean is that something I’m going to have to worry about?” “Nah, that won’t happen. We carnies have a rule against hurting each other. I mean I won’t lie that they aren’t going to stare a lot at you and most likely a few are going to make crude comments, but that’s about as far as it is going to go if you decide to join and stay with us.” “You want me to join?” “If you’re still interested, sure. I think you’ve got something to offer. Though like I said, I’m still not sure why someone like you would want to join a broken down circus like this one. I still think someone like you would be a model or something.” “Well, I’m wearing an outlandish outfit, my face is all painted up and a bunch of guys are falling over themselves just to get a look at me. Seems like I’m doing the same thing as a model save for the eating disorder.” Your comment causes a laugh from Roofie. “Ha ha! That’s pretty good. I think I’m making the right decision. Okay, so about your sleeping arrangements, I might have to re-arrange some folks and that’s always going to cause problems, so you might have to sleep in your car for tonight…” “Wait you want me to move in here?” “Well yeah. I mean I told you we weren’t going to be staying here too much longer and you have to know that circus’ do tend to travel right?” “Yeah, right. Of course. It’s just, heh, I guess when I jumped into this I didn’t think all of it through. Though that’s probably obvious.” “Hrm, well it’s your choice. I’m not gonna lie and say this life is the easiest and if you feel more comfortable at home or have loved ones you don’t want to leave that’s understandable.” “I dunno if I’d say all that, but the concept of leaving my home…well it’s a bit of a big change for me. Like a VERY big one. And oddly, this opportunity has me seriously considering it.” “Well you do what’s in your heart. Anyway, we aren’t leaving today or even tomorrow, so I mean if you want to go back home and pick up some stuff, say goodbye to whoever, then you’ve got time. But even though we’re not leaving tomorrow we are going to be open for our last show and I’ll need you here. I’m hoping we’ll at least get some people here and make at least a bit of money before picking up stakes and all that.” You aren’t sure what to do. The logical thing to do would be to go back home and gather some belonging, say a few goodbyes and try to convince Peter to drive you back up here so he gets his car back. But there’s something within you that wonders if you shouldn’t just make a clean break immediately and stay. You know yourself and if you get back home you’re likely find some reason to stay and back out of this opportunity. You think about Bobby and how he’d be one of those reasons. You still haven’t called him back. > You head back home You should head back home to gather your things and you at least should return Peter’s car back. You’re confident that he’d drive you back here. You still aren’t sure about calling Bobby. If he finds out your intentions, he might do something crazy…well other than the usual craziness he participates in. Might be best to still not return his call. “I appreciate this opportunity Roofie. I’ll be back later today or tomorrow morning at the latest.” “Hm, okay. See you later then.” Roofie says and you leave the tent to quickly make your way back to your car. You realize that you’re still in your clown outfit as you’re driving off. Oh well it hardly matters. Well other than Peter is probably going to get freaked out when he sees you. You head back towards town and halfway there you suddenly hear the sound of a tire blowing out. “Oh what the fuck!?” you exclaim, in your attempt to keep the car from swerving. You pull over to the side of the road. You get out and see your front driver side tire is completely fucked. While you don’t have any experience in changing one yourself, you go and check if there is a spare anyway. You open the trunk and of course there is nothing in there. Or rather nothing that can help you. You do find a bunch of your old clothes that Peter probably stole a long time ago.. While its possible someone random might try to help you on this road, you don’t hold out a lot of hope. Or rather the element that usually traverses this area usually consists of trailer trash types that you definitely don’t want to put up with. Lacking any better options, you decide to call your younger sister Donna and hope that maybe she’s not bust partying. No answer, but you leave a message. You also call Julie, but have the same amount of luck. You then try to call Peter, since he’ll definitely want to know about his car. Again, you get no answer, so you leave a message. Some cars pass you on the road, so far its looking like nobody is helping you. You wonder if it might be the clown costume though. You have the temptation to call Bobby, but you resist. “Great. I finally start to get something going with my life and fate decides to kick me in the face for it.” You say sitting in the car. It starts to get dark and nobody has returned your call yet. Tired of waiting around for help you come to a decision. You go back and grab your old clothes from the trunk of the car and start walking back to the carnival. It’ll be a long walk, but given how everyone in your family has failed spectacularly in even returning your call you figure you’ll be better off just making a clean break and not go back home after all. At least you’ve got a few extra clothes. You walk for quite some time and a couple vehicles pass you, but once again nobody offers you a ride. Looks like the clown outfit might be warding off people. As they say, there is nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight. There is also nothing funny about two rednecks in a pick up truck at night either… And that’s exactly who rides up along side you. A fear wells up within you, but you try to ignore it. “Woo weee! Look at chu’. You from dat carnival a few miles up dah road?” one of them shouts from the passenger side. “Something like that.” “Mm, yeah I don’t usually go fer clowns…but damn are you fine. You fill out that outfit something fierce! You remind me of that girl from the funny books. Y’know that crazy guy’s girlfriend who fights that bat guy.” You continue to try to ignore him and step up your pace. “So, you need a lift back to your carnival sweetheart? We got room.” “No, the back of your truck looks full of scrap metal.” “Oh honey, you wouldn’t ride back there. You’d ride up here with us. Maybe you could even sit in my lap.” You’re starting to get worried now. “No, I’m okay. Thanks though.” “I don’t think yer understandin’ me missy, this ain’t a fuckin’ request! Hugo stop the goddamn truck, this one’s gonna give us shit!” the hick says and you don’t even waste time, you start running before he even gets out of the truck. It’s a long dark lonely road and you’re a young woman screaming and running from psycho hillbillies. It would sound like a bad horror movie if it weren’t actually happening. So far you’re out pacing them so you figure if you stick to the road you’ll be fine and maybe even be lucky enough to have someone pass by to help you. You look back and see the one from the passenger seat still far behind you, in fact you don’t even see the other one. But you do hear shouting by the one chasing you. In a few moments you hear the sound of an engine see the glow of headlights right behind you. They’re not going to bother chasing you so much as they’re just going to run you down! At this point you get off the road and you do, but the truck just follows you into the high grass and at the speed it’s going it succeeds in hitting you at a good speed. You go flying several feet way into the field. You still live, but your body is broken in several places. You cry out followed by several whimpers of someone to help you. Of course there is no one and all it does is let the two hicks know where you’ve landed. You can’t even crawl away. In a few moments the truck pulls up near your area and your fear and anguish is overwhelming you. This is it. This is how it’s going to end. “Heard that bitch scream, she’s gotta be here somewhere…got her.” The hillbilly says shining a flashlight in your bloody face. “Sheet. You ain’t much now are ya bitch? If you’d gotten in when I told ya, We might’ve even let ya go after we were done havin’ our fun. But noooo, you stuck up pretty bitches always gotta do things da hard way. Fuck it. I don’t care if you are all broken, I’m getting’ a piece of this.” During the last agonizing moments of life are thoughts of how you should’ve stayed in the basement.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>SUNDAY “Are you worried about these uncertain times? Do you…” Click. You’re so damn sick of these Ground Zero commercials you think as you turn the TV off. If you older brother Ben hadn’t shot his family and himself in a tragic paranoid breakdown you can only imagine he’d be going on about how right he was in building that underground bunker out in your backyard. You look at the time and realize you’ve spent most of the day procrastinating watching TV even though there’s not much on that interests you on TV anymore. All the channels you used to watch that had interesting shit on them now all have shallow reality shows and quite frankly you’ve got enough dysfunctional family drama going on in real life without needing to watch it on TV. You remember a time when you could avoid most of the mess by hiding out in your basement. Unfortunately you can’t even do that anymore. Ever since dad drank himself to death, the gravy train of living at home for free came to an end. Without the help of your dad’s pension checks anymore, your older Amazonian sister Kelly said there was no way in hell that she was going to keep supporting the house on her own unless she was the only one living in it. Seeing as she’s a roller derby bitch as well as an illegal fight club brawler, it isn’t like you or any of your siblings were in any position to argue with her. Your younger brother Peter, having given up his lofty dreams of being a famous movie director now spends a lot of his time in the garage making amateur porn with various guys he picks up at the clubs. He makes enough money through his website that it keeps Kelly off his back. He seems to enjoy what he’s doing and at least he’s not stealing your clothes anymore. Your younger sister Donna simply moved out and moved in with your best friend Julie who is still the eternal party girl. Really you’re surprised Julie hasn’t caught every STD known to man at this point. To be honest Donna’s had more in common with Julie than you have for many years now. You’re sure Donna’s a lot happier at a “party house.” As for you, you didn’t have much in the way of options. Trying to get a job has failed spectacularly in this economy. Though your…”unique” and reclusive personality doesn’t exactly help in that department. Given some of the junk that’s laying around the house you sometimes wonder if you shouldn’t try to sell some of it over the Internet to support yourself. Seems like a lot of work though and you’re no wheeler and dealer. Donna suggested that you move in with her and Julie, but that whole scene isn’t for you. As much as you hate dealing with Kelly, you’d also hate having to put up with drunk horny guys (and girls) trying to get into your pants every five minutes, not to mention the loud music, crowds and the ever growing possibility of the cops busting the place for illegal drugs. Which brings you to your boyfriend Bobby Morningstar who naturally has suggested that you move in with him on several occasions. This would be the ideal solution if it weren’t for the fact that his own family consists of like a million siblings that all live in his cult compound. There’s also the fact that his ex-girlfriend/sister Diana is wicked pissed at you for stealing him away from her. It’s been an ongoing source of tension between you and Bobby and you wish he’d just leave them all behind and you two could make a life together elsewhere, but his duty to family is strong, as is his faith to the Babylonian Goddess of Chaos, Tiamat which still involves human sacrifices. Right now you’re having a period of separation with him. Sometimes you think about breaking up with him completely, but then you can’t just dismiss the good times you do have with him. You have that special bond that only a couple could have when one warns the other about their serial killer relative lying in wait for them in the woods. Thank god Bobby took care of your uncle Ed. That had to be the scariest moment of your life dealing with that situation. Of course none of this delightful recap of past events really helps you. Kelly is starting to get very impatient with you and you fear that your months of stalling are coming to an end. Kelly’s currently not home, but she’ll be back in a few hours to get a bit of sleep before heading off to her fight club stuff. Continuing to enjoy the time you have to not have to deal with her you go back to procrastinating, which mainly involves goofing off on the Internet, “stumbling” upon a porn site and then using battery powered means to relieve yourself of stress. Eventually you hear the familiar slamming of the door and stomping around upstairs, which signifies that Kelly is indeed home. “SUZY! Stop splittin’ the kitten and get yer bony ass up here!” you hear Kelly shout. You were afraid of this. You clean yourself up a bit, mentally prepare yourself and then head upstairs. “Hey Kelly…” you start to say, but are interrupted. “Shut up. I’ve got exactly a couple hours to get some rest before I have to drag my ass to my other job to support this fucking house and it’s a fucking mess! You can’t even clean up around here? Did you even look for a job today? Let me guess you spent the whole day fucking around on the Internet and masturbating didn’t you?” “Well uh...” “Jesus fuckin’ Christ Suzy, you’re goddamn useless you know that? The only reason I’m not kicking your ass right now is because I need to save my energy and it would be too fucking easy.” Before you can even speak, Kelly continues her rant. “GET A FUCKING JOB! I don’t care what kind! Just be a contributing member of this household like Peter or get the fuck out like Donna!” “Kelly I’m trying, but I’m just not having any luck in finding anything, can’t you help me out?” you say. “Help you out? I’m helping you out right now by supporting your ass! I’ve been helping you out for quite some time! In fact I originally suggested that you could probably become a ring girl at the fights, but you said no because you didn’t want to dress up in skimpy clothing and parade around in front of a bunch of drunks.” “Kelly, you know I don’t want to dress like that in public, especially not after what uncle Ed made me wear that night…” “Oh here we go, crazy old uncle Ed! How long you going to keep using that as an excuse? Sheesh, the way you go on about it, you act like he raped you. What happened instead? He got killed, you weren’t even touched and you got a fucking boyfriend out of that deal! Some of us should be so lucky to be in a fucked up situation and STILL come out ahead! You know what I deal with on a regular basis? Steroid freaks trying to break my fucking neck that’s what! You think I’d be making a living trading punches with fucktards if I LOOKED like you Suzy? You got the biggest advantage and you’re just wasting it! What the hell is your goddamn problem?” You can see that Kelly is in full-blown jealousy mode and shows no signs of stopping. Attempting to walk away will only result in her getting physical with you so the only thing you can do is endure the verbal assault. “This is sink or swim time sis. You either get your shit together by the end of this week or you’re out on your ass! This sheltered girl act is really fucking OLD! You’re a grown ass WOMAN. Start acting like one! Now get out of my fucking sight.” You meekly slink back to the basement and leave Kelly alone. You silently mope for a while pondering what the hell you’re going to do next. You then notice that your phone has been under your couch cushions and on silent all day. Bobby apparently has been repeatedly trying to contact you. Even left multiple texts saying that he really wants to talk, but the mood you’re in right now, you don’t want to deal with it. You don’t want to deal with anything. You just want to be safe in your own little world in the basement. How you miss those days… Well today isn’t completely over yet. You’ve still got time to salvage some of it. Hell, maybe you can even make a major change in your life. > You move in with Donna and Julie Even if you did manage to find a job, it wouldn’t change the fact that you’ll still have to put up with Kelly’s abuse. She’d just bitch at you for something else. She will always find an excuse. With that in mind, you realize that your options are limited. You’re going to have to move out and go live at the only place available to an unemployed bum like yourself, your friend Julie’s house. Chances are she’s either passed out, hung over or in the middle of yet another one of her seemingly never ending parties, so you figure calling her will be useless and call your sister Donna instead (who might only be slightly more available) Ignoring Bobby’s calls, you speed dial Donna and surprisingly she picks up after only a couple of rings. Even more surprisingly you don’t hear any music or noise in the background. Must’ve caught a rare in between party time. “Hello? Suzy?” Donna asks. “Yeah, it’s me.” You answer. “Hey haven’t spoken to you in awhile! How are things? Not too bad I hope?” “Well…yeah they are kinda. I just got my ass chewed out by Kelly. (Sigh) She’s saying I have to find a job by the end of the week or she’s throwing me out.” “Yeah sounds like her.” “You know how hard it is for me to find a job. I just don’t think it’s going to happen by the end of the week and in any case I don’t think I can take her abuse any longer. I’m done.” “Well you shouldn’t have to put up with her shit. She’s a fucking bullying bitch! I mean that’s certainly why I left.” “Yeah so I was wondering, could I move in with you and Julie?” There’s a bit of a pause. “Well…I mean sure you could come here. I wouldn’t mind and I mean you know Julie would be fine with it, but I know you’re not exactly miss fun and excitement and I think you’re aware of how wild things can get over here.” Donna says. “Yeah, but anything is better than continuing to live with Kelly right now, and given how big Julie’s home is, I’m sure I can still find a quiet corner to not bother anyone in.” you respond. “Okay, well as long as you don’t because a buzz killing party pooper, you’re more than welcome to stay here. So are you coming today?” “I think I need to pack up quite a bit of stuff before doing that. I also have to have some way of transporting the stuff over. I dunno, maybe I can borrow Peter’s car or something.” “What about Bobby?” “Uh, no, I’m still not speaking with him at this time. Besides, he’d probably just try to convince me to live in his compound and I’m just not in the mood to deal.” “Hrm. I certainly understand that. Well, since you said you’re going to have to spend a little time packing up your stuff, I can come pick you up tomorrow. I’d do it today, but the vehicle situation isn’t ideal right now. Got someone repairing my car right now and Julie’s vehicle… well let’s say it’s going to be even longer before . It was quite the part last Friday.” “I’ll bet. Well that sounds like it’ll work for me. When will you get here?” “Oh probably sometime in the afternoon. I’ll call before hand.” “Okay, well I guess I’ll see you then.” “I’ll let Julie know, she’ll be pretty excited.” At this point you say goodbye to your sister and you hang up. You get to packing up as many of your vital things as possible. Really it doesn’t take you too long at all. You didn’t own too much stuff, and stuff like furniture or a bed is going to be provided at Julie’s house though you wonder if you shouldn’t move your bed over there if only because the beds over there are probably like petri dishes. In any event, you spend the rest of your night in the basement, which will probably be your last night ever here. It seems weird and scary, but on another level you are a little excited. Maybe it was time for a change. Who knows, maybe you’ll indulge in a little partying yourself when you get to your new home, hell if anyone deserves to let loose a little its certainly you. > Next day... MONDAY “…act now and Ground Zero will provide a…” Click. As you groggily wake up, you’re wondering if you should bother even taking your TV with you considering the stations just play Ground Zero commercials half the time. You look at the time and see that you’ve slept for most of the morning, but it doesn’t matter considering your sister isn’t going to pick you up until the afternoon. You just hope that she remembers to come get you period. While your sister isn’t as flaky as Julie, she still doesn’t have the greatest sense of responsibility. You also check your phone and see that Bobby’s still trying to reach you, but you still don’t feel like dealing with him. MAYBE later, right now you want to focus on one major decision at a time and moving out of a place where you’ve lived your whole life certainly qualifies. All your stuff is packed and ready to go, and since you can’t do much more until your sister gets here, you just wait. As you continue to wait, you start to get anxious. You start to worry if you’re making the right decision or not. You start to pace in your room weighing all the pros and cons of what you’re doing. “Ugh, this is so stressful…I need to calm down…” you say and start unzipping one of your packed bags to get old reliable to relax you. 20 minutes later… “Hey Suzy?! You down there?” you hear Donna call from upstairs. “Huh? Uh what?! Yeah! Hold on!” you exclaim and stop your stress relief session. As you hurry to get dressed, Donna continues to call down to you. “I called you know, why didn’t you answer?” “Uh, I guess I didn’t hear it. Sorry about that. Be up in a minute.” “I thought you were ready. What were you doing? Splittin’ the kitten down there?” Donna laughs. You don’t answer; you just finish dressing and grab your bags. When you get upstairs, Donna greets you. She’s wearing a shirt that is obviously trying to call attention to her small breasts and pants that are one size too tight to make her ass look like its more filled out, but she’s dressed fairly conservative all things considered. “Were you just taking what’s in your bags? Because we could probably put more into the car.” “Nah, I need to get out of here now. I mean maybe later I could get someone to come get my couch or some of my furniture though.” “Okay, but really I don’t think you’ll need to, Julie’s got spare beds and such. Plenty of space you know.” “Yeah I know. Let’s get going.” You and Donna leave the house and after throwing your bags in her car you and her are soon on your way. Along the way Donna puts on some music. She takes mercy on you by not listening to that techno dance crap that you hate so much, but instead listens to the bubble gum pop crap that you hate slightly less. “So…I found an area of the house where I think you’ll be happiest at yesterday.” Donna says. “Oh? Is it the basement?” “Hah, nah. That’s being used for other things. I was thinking of Julie’s dad’s old office on the far left of the house. I mean Julie never uses it, and besides a few people wandering from the main party to have a quickie in there it’s never used anymore.” “Gee, you make it sound so appealing.” “Well it’s either that or one of the upstairs bedrooms and I can’t promise you won’t be disturbed on regular basis there. At least with the office you can lock it and it’s far enough away from the usual party grounds.” “I guess it’s the best I can hope for, thanks I guess for thinking ahead.” “No problem. You know I’m glad you’re coming to live with us. I mean I know you probably don’t believe it, but I missed talking with you. Julie’s fun and all, but even I get tired from partying ALL the time.” “Well thanks Donna…hey this is like the twelfth police car I’ve seen pulled over and cops arresting someone.” You say looking out the window. “Yeah, I dunno if you’ve noticed since you tend to hang out in the basement most of the time, but there’s been an increase in crime which also means an increase in the cops using that as an excuse to be assholes… like this. Shit!” Nothing like talking something into existence. A cop car puts on its siren and a bullhorn tells you to pull over. You briefly worry that your sister isn’t going to pull over, but she does. Swearing and sighing the whole time. Doesn’t take long before a policeman approaches the vehicle. “Alright where are you going in such a hurry?” the cop asks. “Nowhere. I wasn’t even speeding!” “Is that right honey? Not according to my radar you weren’t. Besides, you ignored a stop sign back there. I think you need to step out of the car.” “Are you kidding me? There wasn’t a stop sign!” “Aren’t you supposed to ask for her license and registration first?” you add. The cop suddenly points his finger at the both of you. “The both of you need to shut the hell up right, before I run you both in for obstruction of justice. Now both of you out of the car now!” Your sister looks at you like she really wants to just try to turn the car back on and try to drive away, but you both know that wouldn’t do any good save for getting yourselves in a whole lot of trouble. The cop calls over his partner who looks equally uncompromising. He tells him to search you, while he starts searching the car while he puts Donna up against the car and starts patting down Donna. “Getting a good feel, you bastard?” Donna remarks. The cop frisking you is slightly better, since you don’t get your girl parts molested, but he certainly comes close. He snickers a bit as you tense up from this indignity. After you and your sister have been frisked. They tell you both to go sit on the curb with your hands locked behind your heads while they search the car. This is a bad situation anyway since you’re obviously dealing with two asshole cops, but who knows what the hell Donna’s got in her car which will give them even more of an excuse to march you off to jail. Speaking of which, Donna whispers to you. “We need to run.” “What?” you ask in a whisper. “Those two fuckers are going to find something in the car.” “You’re driving with illegal drugs in the car?” “Not that much, well at least I don’t think I am…hell I’m not even sure, but I can’t take that chance! We gotta run!” “And where the hell are we gonna go?” “I dunno! We could probably still hide at Julie’s house.” “You’re joking right? That place is probably the first place they’ll look! Shit, Donna! I knew I shouldn’t have left the goddamn basement today!” “Look…they’re pretty involved in searching right now. If we ran we could probably at least lose them until we came up with a better idea.” You get the impression Donna is going to run no matter what and you can’t see how that’s going to be a good idea in any way. You’re also concerned that if she runs and you stay, these two cops will just pin everything on you (whatever that may be). Still, if she sees that you’re determined to stay, maybe she’ll keep to her common sense and won’t run too. > You run It’s really not what you want to do, but if Donna does have drugs in her car like she thinks she does, it’s going to be bad for you whether Donna runs or not. You knew you shouldn’t have left the basement! “Alright, alright, let’s do this, but I don’t think we should run to Julie’s house. I just don’t see it being a safe haven.” You whisper. “Okay, okay, I know where we could run to and hide out for awhile. Got a friend by the name of Tina, she works over at the strip club.” “Great. Which one?” “Kitty City, you know where it is?” “Why the hell would I know where a strip club is?” “Because we’re going to meet up there! If we run, we can’t run in the same direction! We’ll get caught for sure!” “We’re probably going to get caught anyway!” you say. Your voices start to catch the attention of the officers. “Hey! Quiet down the pair of you…HEY! COME BACK HERE!” one of the officers shouts as Donna runs off! You’re so surprised about her deciding that was the time to start running that you don’t even get the opportunity to stand up from the curb before one officer is already chasing Donna and the other has already pulled out his pistol and commanded you to stay put. You meekly put up your hands and lower your head in an attempt to show you have no intention of running. “I’m not going anywhere. Don’t shoot.” You say nervously. The officer sees that you really aren’t a threat puts his gun away, pulls you up roughly by the arm from the curb and throws you into the back of the police car before calling in on his radio about Donna being a runner. While you’re breaking down in tears and worrying about the worst, the officer who threw you into the back of the police car finishes searching Donna’s car. Eventually the other officer comes back as well looking a little worn out. After talking a moment, one of them opens the car door. “Alright, I didn’t find anything in the car, so why the hell did your friend run?” “I…I really don’t know…officer…” you say. “Don’t fucking lie to me or this is going to go very badly for you!” the cop warns and its enough to cause you to yelp a little in fear and begin to cry again. “(sob) My sister…thought you were going to…(sob) find drugs in the car…so she thought it would be better to run. Please I was just driving with her (sob) to find a new place to live! I’ve never done anything (sob) wrong in my life! I’ve…” “Alright, alright, shut the hell up and stop your crying. Shit. (Sigh) Well what do you think?” the officer asks his partner who is still trying to catch his breath. “Did you call in about the bitch running?” “Yeah, but I dunno if anyone’s going to bother chasing down some junkie whore, since it sounds like everyone’s got their hands full especially now that a riot’s broke out at the mall. In fact we’re supposed to go down there and help.” “Another fucking riot?! What the fuck is going on in this town? Someone put something in the water?” “Seems like it. So what do we do with this one? I mean she’s clean and the car’s clean so…” “(Sigh) I dunno. I could think of a few things, but we probably don’t have time for that right now.” The officer that chased Donna looks into the backseat at you. He’s being as intimidating as possible and despite him being red in the face and winded it’s working. “All right blondie, this is your lucky day. Due to the rest of this town seemingly losing its goddamn mind right now and the fact that you’re clean, we’re letting you go. You can take whatever belongings you have in the car, BUT we’re still impounding it if only because your junkie sister made me fucking run several blocks trying to catch her ass.” “Got it. And thank you.” You say and start to get out of the car. Both of the officers help you out…but it isn’t out of kindness. The pair of them take the opportunity to grope your chest and your ass as you step out of the car. “Now I suggest you gather your shit, and take your pretty little ass home.” One of the cops says with a leering grin while other laughs. You really aren’t in any position to argue, fight or anything else. You hate the fact you just got molested, but you know that if you give them any sort of lip, they’re going to do much worse. You quickly get your bags out of Donna’s car and run away from the scene without looking back. When you’re far enough a way, you find some place to sit down and reflect on your situation. You try to think of the positive first and that’s namely things could’ve been a lot worse you. You have no doubt that those cops would’ve done more than just feel you up had they been in a less generous mood. So you’re glad you didn’t get jailed, raped or worse. But then you think about the negative. First off is your sister who fucking LEFT you there. No hint, no “Now!” no clue at all that she was going to choose that particular time to run. Granted you froze up when it came time to run, but she didn’t even look back. You don’t exactly have the best opinion of her right now putting you in a situation like that. Second of all you don’t have a new place to live now or at least you aren’t where you were going to go. As far as you know the offer to live at Julie’s is still open, but it would quite the walk to go there now. A walk that you don’t particularly want to do given the day you’ve had, in fact you’d rather just go back home. Of course the problem with going back home is you can’t stay there so you’re going to have to go someplace else eventually. Of course maybe Peter would let you borrow his car, but so far your track record with your siblings this weeks hasn’t been great. > You walk to Julie's house You might as well continue to Julie’s house. Going back home is just prolonging the inevitable. Also if your sister shows up at Julie’s, you’d like to give her a piece of your mind about her just ditching you like that. Your walk to Julie’s slowly starts to become a worrisome endeavor. You see several fights along with a number of other officers arresting folks. You also see a couple of bad car accidents. While you try to avoid large groups of people, you’re still in the danger zone of what almost seems like chaos on the streets. Those two asshole cops weren’t joking when one of them said it seemed like the entire town had lost its mind. As you quicken your pace to Julie’s in an attempt to get through this madness quicker, a large teenager that’s running from something runs right into you while he’s turning a corner. The pair of you fall on the sidewalk. You’re a little dazed, but before you can even recover the teenager is upon you. “You stupid fucking bitch! Gimme yo’ shit!” he shouts and punches you in the face and then proceeds to attempt to rip your backpack from you, though he’s having a hard time seeing as it’s firmly strapped to your back. The teenager gets frustrated and stops trying to rob you and then just seems to be focused on abusing you. You feel several kicks going into your side and then your face. You plead for him to stop and curl up into a ball, but he’s not even listening, it’s like he’s possessed or something because he actually starts laughing. “There’s that motherfucker!” A voice shouts. You don’t see who it is due to you being curled up and having your eyes closed wishing you were elsewhere, but you soon feel the weight of several someones stepping and falling all over you. The pursuers of your assailant have caught up to him and you are now unfortunately being crushed in the resulting dogpile. You desperately attempt to crawl away feeling the pain of several fists, elbows, knees and feet randomly hitting you in the process. You just want to be home. You manage to crawl out from under the pile and then scramble away as fast as you can only to stumble on your bruised wobbly legs in the middle of the street. It is then where your luck only gets worse when a speeding truck slams into your body which goes flying a few feet in front of the truck only THEN to be run completely over by the same truck which doesn’t stop at all. Your misery is put to an end under the heavy weight of the truck’s tires causing the innards from your mangled body to squeeze out like a tube of toothpaste and painting the street red.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It’s really not what you want to do, but if Donna does have drugs in her car like she thinks she does, it’s going to be bad for you whether Donna runs or not. You knew you shouldn’t have left the basement! “Alright, alright, let’s do this, but I don’t think we should run to Julie’s house. I just don’t see it being a safe haven.” You whisper. “Okay, okay, I know where we could run to and hide out for awhile. Got a friend by the name of Tina, she works over at the strip club.” “Great. Which one?” “Kitty City, you know where it is?” “Why the hell would I know where a strip club is?” “Because we’re going to meet up there! If we run, we can’t run in the same direction! We’ll get caught for sure!” “We’re probably going to get caught anyway!” you say. Your voices start to catch the attention of the officers. “Hey! Quiet down the pair of you…HEY! COME BACK HERE!” one of the officers shouts as Donna runs off! You’re so surprised about her deciding that was the time to start running that you don’t even get the opportunity to stand up from the curb before one officer is already chasing Donna and the other has already pulled out his pistol and commanded you to stay put. You meekly put up your hands and lower your head in an attempt to show you have no intention of running. “I’m not going anywhere. Don’t shoot.” You say nervously. The officer sees that you really aren’t a threat puts his gun away, pulls you up roughly by the arm from the curb and throws you into the back of the police car before calling in on his radio about Donna being a runner. While you’re breaking down in tears and worrying about the worst, the officer who threw you into the back of the police car finishes searching Donna’s car. Eventually the other officer comes back as well looking a little worn out. After talking a moment, one of them opens the car door. “Alright, I didn’t find anything in the car, so why the hell did your friend run?” “I…I really don’t know…officer…” you say. “Don’t fucking lie to me or this is going to go very badly for you!” the cop warns and its enough to cause you to yelp a little in fear and begin to cry again. “(sob) My sister…thought you were going to…(sob) find drugs in the car…so she thought it would be better to run. Please I was just driving with her (sob) to find a new place to live! I’ve never done anything (sob) wrong in my life! I’ve…” “Alright, alright, shut the hell up and stop your crying. Shit. (Sigh) Well what do you think?” the officer asks his partner who is still trying to catch his breath. “Did you call in about the bitch running?” “Yeah, but I dunno if anyone’s going to bother chasing down some junkie whore, since it sounds like everyone’s got their hands full especially now that a riot’s broke out at the mall. In fact we’re supposed to go down there and help.” “Another fucking riot?! What the fuck is going on in this town? Someone put something in the water?” “Seems like it. So what do we do with this one? I mean she’s clean and the car’s clean so…” “(Sigh) I dunno. I could think of a few things, but we probably don’t have time for that right now.” The officer that chased Donna looks into the backseat at you. He’s being as intimidating as possible and despite him being red in the face and winded it’s working. “All right blondie, this is your lucky day. Due to the rest of this town seemingly losing its goddamn mind right now and the fact that you’re clean, we’re letting you go. You can take whatever belongings you have in the car, BUT we’re still impounding it if only because your junkie sister made me fucking run several blocks trying to catch her ass.” “Got it. And thank you.” You say and start to get out of the car. Both of the officers help you out…but it isn’t out of kindness. The pair of them take the opportunity to grope your chest and your ass as you step out of the car. “Now I suggest you gather your shit, and take your pretty little ass home.” One of the cops says with a leering grin while other laughs. You really aren’t in any position to argue, fight or anything else. You hate the fact you just got molested, but you know that if you give them any sort of lip, they’re going to do much worse. You quickly get your bags out of Donna’s car and run away from the scene without looking back. When you’re far enough a way, you find some place to sit down and reflect on your situation. You try to think of the positive first and that’s namely things could’ve been a lot worse you. You have no doubt that those cops would’ve done more than just feel you up had they been in a less generous mood. So you’re glad you didn’t get jailed, raped or worse. But then you think about the negative. First off is your sister who fucking LEFT you there. No hint, no “Now!” no clue at all that she was going to choose that particular time to run. Granted you froze up when it came time to run, but she didn’t even look back. You don’t exactly have the best opinion of her right now putting you in a situation like that. Second of all you don’t have a new place to live now or at least you aren’t where you were going to go. As far as you know the offer to live at Julie’s is still open, but it would quite the walk to go there now. A walk that you don’t particularly want to do given the day you’ve had, in fact you’d rather just go back home. Of course the problem with going back home is you can’t stay there so you’re going to have to go someplace else eventually. Of course maybe Peter would let you borrow his car, but so far your track record with your siblings this weeks hasn’t been great. > You walk home Really after the day you’ve had so far, all you want to do is go home and hide out in your basement, so back home it is. Your walk home isn’t entirely uneventful. You see several fights along with a number of other officers arresting folks. You also see a couple of bad car accidents. While you try to avoid large groups of people, you still are paranoid about someone to try to rob you or accost you in some way, but fortunately you manage to keep your head down and look as unassuming as possible. It isn’t quite chaos on the streets, but those two asshole cops weren’t joking when one of them said it seemed like the entire town had lost its mind. By the time you get back to your own neighborhood, it’s starting to get dark, though your area is actually rather quiet compared to most places you passed through. You just hope Kelly isn’t home because you don’t really feel like dealing with her right now. When you get home, you see Peter’s car in the driveway. Kelly’s vehicle isn’t here though, so it looks like you won’t have to put up with her and that’s at least one good thing that’s happened to you today. (Besides the not getting raped part) Upon entering the house, it’s in same condition as it was when you left, though now you’re hearing a lot of grunting and sounds of ecstasy coming from the garage connected to the house. You imagine Peter is in the process of filming one of his shows again. Not wishing to hear your brother squeal like a pig as he gets fucked for the pleasure of his viewing Internet public, you waste no time in heading down into the basement and settling back into your usual routine in your room. You know this isn’t going to be permanent, but for now at least you can not worry about the pandemonium that’s going on outside. You just wish the TV wasn’t playing so many Ground Zero infomercials. Hours pass as they do and just as you’re getting ready to fall asleep, you suddenly get a phone call. It’s Donna. You almost don’t even bother answering, but you’re curious to see if she’s calling from jail and if she’s delusional enough to think you’ll actually bail her out. “Hey sis, where you at?!” Donna asks. Sounds like music in the background so she must not be in jail. “I’m at home, no thanks to you just ditching me like that!” you say. “You said you were going to run, like I was! Didn’t you do it?” “No, because by the time you took off without at least giving me a signal, one of those assholes was ready to shoot me. So I had to suffer through getting threatened, thrown in the back of a police car and groped a lot more severely than the first time they patted us down.” “Oh geez…they didn’t...um…” “No, they didn’t do that. Though I suspect if that had happened I wouldn’t even be alive to talk to you right now. Your car didn’t have any drugs in it by the way, but they have impounded it and I’m pretty sure they still have you on a watchlist or something for evading arrest.” “Shit. Figured something like that might happen.” “Hm, Yeah and I’m an idiot for nearly going along with your plan, but hey I guess everything went okay for you, I hear the party music in the back so I’m guessing you’re whoring it up with Julie so I’ll let you go so you can have your fun.” “Hold on Suzy. First of all I’m not at Julie’s. I’m at Kitty City like I said I would be. Second, I can’t even get a hold of Julie. She’s not answering her phone. Now of course she could just be busy, but if I got some sort of warrant out on me, then maybe going back there isn’t the best idea right now. I’m thinking maybe I should stay with my friend Tina instead. She’s a stripper that’s entertained at some of Julie’s parties in the past. She’s got room since she kicked her boyfriend out of her trailer.” “Uh huh, well that’s great for you. Glad to see you’ve once again landed on your feet despite evading arrest. Goodbye.” “Suzy, wai…” You hang up. You half expect Donna to call again, but she doesn’t which you’re glad because you’ve run out of patience with her for the day. You settle down for the night and get some sleep, trying to put this horrible day behind you. > Next day… TUESDAY “…if you act now you’ll get a free…” You groggily grab the remote to shut off the incessant noise of the Ground Zero commercial on the TV screen. You grab your phone to check the time and see that once again you’ve slept through the morning as usual. You also see that Bobby tried to call you, but you’re still not in the mood to call him back. Though if you don’t secure a place to live you might not have a choice. Still as far as you know the offer to live at Julie’s is still good, you’re just not sure about how well that’s going to go over now. While you’re trying to ponder your next move, you get a call. It’s Donna again. Might as well get this over with. “Donna, this better be good, because you’re not exactly my favorite person right now.” You say answering the phone. “Whoa! Hold on Suzy! Don’t hang up!” Donna exclaims. “Say what you got to say.” “Okay, look first of all I’m sorry about what you had to go through. I know that had to suck for you. I shouldn’t have convinced you to run anyway. It’s obvious now that was a stupid plan in the first place since I didn’t even have anything in the car. (Sigh) Last night when I was sleeping on a beer soaked couch in a trailer hiding out from the cops I sort of had a revelation of how my choices in life had lead me to that point. I also sort of realized that if I probably continue on this path it’s only going to get worse.” That’s rather philosophical of your sister, and it’s enough to keep your attention. “So I’ve decided that I need to do something with my life and make it better, so I got a job.” Donna says. “A job? How the hell did you get a job so quick? Doing what?” you ask. “I’m going to be a stripper at Kitty City! The owner was offering me a job yesterday and I already was getting tips from guys who mistook me for one of the strippers here anyway. So I figured why not? In fact I’m on break right now.” Why are you not surprised? Donna continues before you can even speak again. “Now before you judge, starting a new life takes money and let’s face it, I don’t have exactly many useful skills that are going to earn me a lot of cash in a quick amount of time. I figure I can earn enough to save and figure things out as I go.” “Hm, well that’s great and all, but why are you telling me all this?” you ask. “Because this is my new start and like I said I feel bad about convincing you to go along with my plan yesterday. Besides, don’t you still need a place to stay? You can come live with me!” “I thought I was already going to do that by moving in to Julie’s.” “Nah, I’m not going back to Julie’s. Too much temptation to go back to my old ways there. I’m moving into one of the trailers at the trailer park.” “Wait. You just started working as a stripper. How the hell did you manage to get a trailer already?” “I secured one after…um talking with the park owner this morning. Look, that’s not really important right now. What is important is I got a deal on a fairly good one and it’s big enough for two of us. It might be a little rough going at first, but I anticipate after a few weeks of teasing these degenerates here, we’ll be living fairly comfortably, if not in the lap of luxury.” “I dunno. While I’m still pissed about yesterday, it does mean a lot that you’re making this pretty generous offer. I don’t know about living in a trailer park though. I mean aren’t you worried about the kind of people there? In fact I can imagine a lot of the type that Kelly associates with come from there, do you really think its safe?” “Safe as opposed to what? Growing up in our household? We had a fucking paranoid psychotic older brother, a sadistic bullying older sister and at one point a goddamn SERIAL KILLER uncle living in our house. At least the hostile rednecks around here won’t be living under our roof! Besides, it really isn’t as bad as you hear.” You find that a little hard to believe considering you’ve heard more than enough stories about the trailer park outside of town. Donna might not think its bad, just because she was living there overnight. “I just don’t know Donna. I mean I wasn’t exactly looking forward to dealing with the non-stop partying at Julie’s, but I’d at least feel a little safer there than I would at the trailer park.” “Huh, don’t be so sure of that. Julie pretty much has gotten to the point where she has an open door policy to let any creepy weirdo that walks in off the street in the house. It’s actually amazing someone like Uncle Ed hasn’t come in and killed us all. Are you heading over there sometime today?” “Well if I can secure a ride over there I will.” “Okay, well if you do get over there could you let Julie know that I’m moving out? She’s still not answering her phone. I’m going to have to make arrangements to get my bigger things, but maybe you could help me get some of my smaller items when I get over there tonight?” “Well, I suppose I could.” You say. “Great. I knew I could count on your Suzy. (Sigh) You really are the good one in the family sis. It’s so unfair that life hasn’t been better to you. Once again I’m really sorry about what happened yesterday. It’s nearly time for me to go out there and shake my ass again so I gotta go. Just…think about what I said okay? If you change your mind about your future living arrangements just come with Tina and me when we go over to Julie’s tonight, or I guess if you’re really feeling adventurous you could always go over to the trailer park yourself. Just go to the owner’s trailer with the big signs around it and mention my name and he’ll let you in my new place. He’s sort of letch, but he’s old so he mostly confines it staring and making the occasional comment. Don’t worry about it.” After another sincere apology about yesterday, Donna finally hangs up leaving you now with a new option. Donna seems to be genuinely trying to change her life in her own way. You almost can’t believe it was Donna on the phone at all. Maybe some sort of pod person replaced her. She also seems to be really making an effort to make things up to you, which is surprising as well. It’s always a rarity in your family when you actually try to help each other out. Still, you’re not sure about this whole living in a trailer park business for several reasons, but you suppose you could give it a little thought at least. In any case, you need to get a ride to wherever it is you’re going to be heading to and that means seeing if your brother Peter is going to be just as accommodating as your sister currently is. You head upstairs and knock on the door to the garage. “Hey, um Peter? You busy?” You don’t get an answer right away, but eventually you do after more knocking. “Yeah, yeah, hold on!” Peter says before answering the door. He’s only peaking his head out, so it’s very likely he’s naked. “Um, sorry to interrupt whatever it is you’re doing, but I need a ride to my new place.” “I thought you moved out yesterday.” “Yeah, there was a slight hiccup in the plan yesterday. Anyway, can you give me a ride over to my new place?” “(Sigh) I’m kinda in the middle of recording something. I’m assuming you’re going to Julie’s?” “Yeah…I think.” You say. “You think? You don’t know if you’re going to live over at Julie’s place or not?” “Well…Donna got a new place of her own and I’m still not sure if I should just move in with her yet.” “Donna got a new…look you know what? I don’t give a shit about any of this.” Peter says and then closes the door. You think that’s the end of it, but he opens it up again, but this time only his hand with some keys in it are coming out. “I’m not your personal taxi service. Here, take my car and return it tomorrow or at least by Thursday. Now don’t disturb me again!” You take the keys and Peter slams the door. This is probably the most helpful he’s been in…well ever. You go back and repack some of your bags and drag them to Peter’s car. After loading everything up in the backseat you pull out of the drive way and wonder which way you should go. > You drive to Julie's house While you haven’t quite ruled out the possibility of living with Donna, you don’t think you’re quite ready to go driving over there yourself and putting up with some old guy perving on you today. If you do decide to go over there, you’ll do it later tonight. Besides, you want to see just how bad it might be over at Julie’s before making a decision. A few minutes of driving to your destination and you’re sure of one thing being pretty bad, the roads! Once again there are cops everywhere, but also ambulances and fire trucks racing to their various destinations too. You nearly turn around and head back home, but eventually you make it to Julie’s neighborhood, which is thankfully not in the midst of anarchy. You pull up to the driveway and get out of the car. You figure you’ll assess the situation before making a decision of whether you’re going to stay or not. You sort of expected to see a few people drinking on the porch or at least hearing loud music as you walk up to the door, but so far it doesn’t sound like any sort of party going on or at least not an overly rowdy one, which is odd considering how people have been acting in this town for the past few days. You knock on the door, but get no immediate answer. After a few more bangs you finally get an answer, but it isn’t Julie. “Hello.” A man says in a flat tone and almost seems to be studying you. He looks like he might be around your age, but he doesn’t look like the sort that would be at one of Julie’s parties. He’s very “ordinary” looking. “Hey. Where’s Julie at?” you ask. “Julie? Oh yes, the owner of this house. Well, I don’t really know. I remember seeing her yesterday, but then she left with some guy and I haven’t seen her since. Of course this being her house she has to return sometime right? Would you like to wait?” the man asks opening the door further to invite you in. Something about this guy feels a little “off” to you. “Wait, who are you?” you ask. “Oh I’m sorry for not introducing myself. I’m Johnny. I was at Julie’s party yesterday. Guess you could say I got a little tipsy and decided I shouldn’t go home in that condition, so I flopped out in the basement. I’m not the only person who did that apparently considering some of Julie’s other guests are still here as well.” You peer inside and see that Johnny is indeed speaking the truth. A couple of people are on the couch playing some sort of video game. “So now that you know who I am, I have to ask who you are.” Johnny says. “I’m Suzy and I’m Julie’s friend.” You say. “I see, well come on in, I’m sure when Julie gets back she’ll be pleased to see you.” You enter the house and the place is in a lot better condition than you would’ve thought for a party house. Johnny quickly closes the door and locks it. Causing you to immediately look back. “You never can tell what weirdo will show up with unlocked doors and all, right?” he says. “Indeed.” You say still getting an uneasy feeling about this guy. “So, you’re one of Julie’s friends. Guess you’re a real party girl, just like she is huh?” Johnny remarks almost in an accusing fashion. “Hardly. Are these all the people in the house?” you ask, pointing to the stoners playing video games and completely ignoring you and Johnny. “Yeah, I mean there were some other people here earlier, but these lot are all that’s left, beside myself. Julie’s pretty cool about letting people just crash here even if she’s not around.” With Johnny creepily hovering near you and the stoners babbling about inane shit, you already realize that this is not going to work for you. “Alright, everyone get out.” You say, but the only one who even hears you is Johnny. “What?” Johnny asks. “Look I hate to be rude, and you probably didn’t know this, but I’m moving in here. Now when Julie is here, she can have all her little drug addled party friends over as much as she likes, I mean its her house after all. But I’m not going to put up with them while she isn’t here! So I want everyone out, you all can come back later when she’s here. Whenever that is.” Johnny’s still the only one who is even paying attention and his facial expression on your stance hasn’t changed. “But if it’s Julie’s house doesn’t she have final say in what goes?” Johnny asks. “Yeah, well when I see Julie, I’m going to have a little discussion with her about our new living arrangements.” You remark. Once again Johnny just stares at you, it almost feels like he’s staring through you. It makes you uncomfortable to say the least. “All right. You’ve got a point. I wouldn’t want a bunch of strangers just wandering around in my home either. I’ll get out of your hair, as for these guys, I can get ‘em to go.” Johnny says and then suddenly shouts at the stoners that everyone has to get out of the house and starts ripping controllers out of their hands. “Hey!” “Not cool dude!” “You dick!” “Sorry guys, but as the old saying goes, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Come on, let’s move it.” Johnny says and eventually the stoners grudgingly shuffle off to leave. Johnny follows behind them. “When you see Julie, tell her it was an excellent party last night.” Johnny says and flashes a brief smile, which comes off more creepy than friendly. You don’t even reply, you just shut the door and lock it, glad to be rid of everyone. Remembering that your sister said that if you did live here, you’d be sleeping in Julie’s dad’s old office. You explore that room first. When you get there it looks pretty much like the same office you remember being in a few times when you played over here. It’s definitely convenient that it has a small private bathroom leading from it as well as a couch that apparently folds out into a bed. After assessing your possible new digs, you decide to go retrieve your bags from the car. You unpack your bags and haul them into the house and head on into your new room. After getting a little bit settled, you figure since you’re all alone in the house, you might as well do something that usually puts you in a better mood. (and you sure could use it) While you’re in the middle of it, you suddenly think you hear something. You call out thinking that maybe Julie is finally home, but when you get no reply, you just check to make sure the door to your room is locked. If Julie does come home, you don’t want her suddenly walking in on you. After getting back in the mood and taking care of your needs you wash up a bit and return to your usual routine of…well doing nothing at all. Hours pass and eventually you start to get hungry so you head to the kitchen in the hopes of finding food. You manage to find a few bags of junk food and some unopened drink in the fridge. Once again while you’re doing this, you swear you think you hear noise. You call out again to see if anyone is here, but there is no answer. Given that it’s now nighttime you’re a little on edge. You know its probably just the house making creaking sounds, but with all the bullshit that’s been going on out in the streets lately you’re just a little paranoid. Just as you’re heading back to your room, the front door suddenly opens! It’s Donna and some other young woman who looks a bit on the trashy side. “Shit! You scared me.” You say. “Why didn’t you pick up your phone? I tried calling you before I got over here.” Donna asks. “I…I guess I had it on vibrate and didn’t hear it.” You say. “Hm. Well I see this place is practically a tomb. I take it Julie isn’t home?” “Nope, I haven’t heard from her either.” “That’s really odd…” Suddenly the trashy young woman speaks up. “Hey Donna are we picking your shit up or what? You know how fucked up it is out there right now and I’d like to get home before it gets worse.” “Oh yeah, better get to it. Suzy, this is my friend Tina.” Donna says and heads upstairs. “Hello.” You say to Tina, but she just grunts at you and heads back outside to her car. Remembering that Donna wanted you to help her move some of the stuff, you head upstairs to her room. “Your friend Tina isn’t very friendly.” You ask. “Yeah, well if you were a horny guy with a hundred dollar bill, she’d be really friendly towards you. Anyway, she’s always been cool with me ever since I’ve known her, plus she helped me get the current job I have.” Donna says as she packs away items. “You need anything for me to carry down?” “Yeah, but not yet. Really I’m thinking I’ll get most of this stuff later when I have a day off. Right now I just want to get the hell out of this town, it’s getting nuts out there!” “Yeah, it was pretty chaotic out there earlier on my drive here. So how was your first day?” “Not bad. As strange as it may seem, it actually was calmer in the club than it was outside. Though having bouncers helps in that area I suppose. Still a couple of fights did break out.” “Shit. You okay? Are you sure the job is safe?” “Oh I’m safe. Like I said, there’s good protection there. Honestly I’m more concerned with the drive TO the club, but I imagine whatever is going on will die down eventually.” “Hope so.” Donna finishes packing a bag and starts to pack a new one and you stand there silent until you hear a noise from downstairs causing you to jump a bit. “Are you okay?” Donna asks. “Yeah, what the hell’s that noise?” you ask, briefly stepping out of Donna’s room to look over into the living room. “Probably Tina.” “No, she’s not down there and besides she went back to wait in the car.” “Well maybe she wandered back in briefly…you seem a little stressed.” “I dunno. The shit’s that’s been going on in town and I guess being alone in the house at night has got me a little jumpy. Sort of concerned that Julie hasn’t come back either.” “Mmm, well that IS odd. I tried calling her again earlier too with no luck. Have you thought anymore about coming to live with me? I told you it would be fine and I know you think the trailer park isn’t safe environment, is this town really any safer right now?” > You go with Donna While you’re still not entirely sure about the trailer park, you have to admit the since you’ve been here in the house you’ve felt a little nervous at times. Almost like you feel someone is watching you. Silly of course, but maybe leaving town is a good idea if it’s getting as chaotic as it has been. You just hope you’re making the right decision. “Yeah, okay. I’ll come with you.” You say. “You will? Great! Seriously, things will be better between us. I’m still really sorry about yesterday Suzy, here.” Donna says and hands you a bunch of money. “What’s this?” “It’s some of what I made today. Oh don’t worry, I still got a lot. I’m telling you with the money I’m making, we might even be able to find some place better to live in a few months! Okay, well I think I’m all packed, go grab your stuff and meet me in Tina’s car. Oh wait, I saw Peter’s car out there. Are you going to follow us in that instead?” “I suppose so, it will probably be less cramped.” You say and head downstairs to your room while Donna follows and heads out the door. It doesn’t really take you long to throw your stuff in your bags since you didn’t really unpack that much. Just as you’re loaded up, you once again feel like you’re being watched. You spin around and see nothing. “You’re giving yourself the creeps Suzy. Nobody’s here.” You mumble. Just as you are exiting your room, it’s a minor miracle that Donna comes back in through the front door. “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!?” you hear her scream from the living room. This causes you to pause just long enough that the assailant who was going to ambush you when you left your room losses his advantage. However, he’s still intent on killing you though and nearly succeeds in grabbing you, but you manage to back away in time. As you back away you get a good look at him now and he’s not unfamiliar to you. It’s Johnny, but this time his face displays an utter hatred towards you. “Fucking whore! You think you could get away? I heard what you did in here earlier! I got something I can shove up in there to make you feel like you’ve never felt before and never will again!” Johnny screams and swing his knife at you. You continue to back away, but there isn’t much room so you go around the desk for temporary relief, but even if you make it into the bathroom and lock the door you’ll just be trapped in there. You’re so busy trying to survive, you completely forget that Donna is still in the house, but you soon remember when she runs in the room and clobbers Johnny in the back of the head with a small lamp. “Fuck…shit…” Johnny says crumpling to the floor. He’s not dead, but Donna’s too busy calling to you to run to finish him off. “Suzy! Come on! Get out of there!” Donna shouts and you waste no time in doing so. Just as Johnny struggles to get back up, Donna throws the lamp at his head and follows you. In all the excitement you forgot if you have Peter’s keys, but Donna just shouts at you to get into Tina’s car as you exit the house. As you both pile into the car, Tina is more than a little surprised. “What the fuck? Why are you two…” “Just drive! Drive! Drive!” Donna shouts. You’re squashed a bit in the backseat with all the bags and panting heavily, but you’re glad you got out of there. Thought you’re understandably still shaken up. “We need to tell the cops!” you shout. “Tell them what? Have you seen this town Suzy? You think we’re going to get any help? Shit, I probably still got a warrant out on me!” Donna says. Meanwhile Tina is getting annoyed about being out of the loop. “Will one of you bitches tell me what the fuck is going on?! I mean this is my car and I’d like to know if we’re planning on getting shot at!” Tina snaps. “We’re fine. Well not fine, but nobody’s shooting at anyone. Some nut case with a knife was in the house and tried to kill my sister.” Donna replies. “And you didn’t kill him?” “No, I mean maybe. Shit, I dunno. I smacked him in the head twice with a lamp, but I don’t think I killed him.” Donna says. “(Sigh) You should’ve finished him off. I would have.” Tina says. “Tina, I’m not in the mood right now okay?!” Donna shouts. “Fine. Fine. I’m just saying you better watch yourself in the future. Anyway, I need to focus on getting us through this bullshit going on in town, because we could still be getting shot at.” The rest of the drive is in relative silence, broken up periodically by Tina swearing at the road situation and your sister asking if you’re okay since you’re so quiet. Your quietness is due to still being shaken up by what just occurred and also because you just don’t have anything to say at the moment and are just hoping you get to where you have to get to in peace and in one piece. After a long drive, you eventually reach the trailer park. You look out the window at the various rundown trailers in the darkness and think “So this is what my life has come to.” Finally you stop at one towards the further end of the park close to undeveloped land and just regular wilderness. One thing you sort of were expecting was the drunken revelry of several hillbillies, and while you did see a few sitting around with some bottles in hand, it’s actually pretty quiet. “This is your place right Donna?” Tina asks. “Yeah, thanks Tina.” “Hm, well just be ready to go in the afternoon tomorrow. I’m not waiting around for you.” Tina replies. As the pair of you get out and unload your bags from the car, Tina studies you a bit. “Y’know blondie, you’re not bad lookin’. If you ever loosen up a bit, you could easily get a job at Kitty City too. I think the school girl look would work for ya pretty well. You kinda got that innocent look.” “Yeah I don’t think so.” You say. “Hm, suit yerself. I’m just tryin’ to help YOU out. Whatever.” Tina remarks and backs the car up and swings it around to head back to her own trailer. “I still don’t like her.” You say. “Heh, well I’m not surprised. Come on, let’s get inside. I’ll give you the grand tour.” Naturally being a trailer, the “grand tour” doesn’t take long. Donna tried to make the place sound better than it is, but it’s better than you thought it would be, so it’s not awful. She points out the couch which will have to do for your sleeping accommodations. “Well Suzy, I know this is kind of a weird way to end the night given all that went down, but I’m really tired and I need to get some sleep, but before I do, did you need to talk about what happened?” Donna says. “Probably, but what good would it really do? I mean I’m starting to wonder if I’m a magnet for serial killers at this point. Uncle Ed, my ex, this asshole we just barely got away from…Oh shit! Julie!” you suddenly say thinking about the grim implications of what might’ve happened to her. Donna’s face drops a bit too. “Fuck. You said you haven’t been able to get a hold of her at all?” Donna asks. “No. Shit, that sick fuck probably killed her!” you exclaim. “Now we don’t know for certain. She could be…” “I KNOW for certain. That creepy fucker told me a story involving her leaving the house when I met him earlier today. He probably lied and actually killed her. Oh fuck this is bad. I mean I know I grew apart from Julie…but goddamn it…” you say getting a little teary eyed. Donna tries to console you, but she’s starting to get upset too. Really you haven’t seen her get sad for quite some time. Your sadness over the very likely loss of your friend is almost like a bonding experience. In between the tears you thank Donna for saving your life. “(Sniffle) Hey, you might’ve saved mine had you not called me to move out in the first place. I mean without you, I might’ve been very partying with that sicko and he could’ve killed me as well as Julie. (deep breath) Okay, tomorrow you come with me. I’ll try to convince Tina to drop you off at the police station. Hopefully you can make a report or something and we can at least get those corrupt fucks to look into it. Assuming things have settled down in town that is.” “Things have been really fucked up lately.” “Yeah, I dunno Suzy. I don’t place much stock in end times bullshit, but I guess those Ground Zero commercials they’re constantly blasting on the radio is starting to make me think something big is going to go down, though maybe it is already.” “Seems like it with the way my luck is going.” You say. “Hey, don’t worry sis. We’re going to get through this, no matter what comes our way. You and me. This is a brand new start for us, remember?” This uncommon optimism does make you smile a bit at the fact you don’t have to deal with all this yourself. “Okay, Donna. (Yawn) I guess I better get some sleep. It’ll be a big day if I’m to make a report tomorrow. Thanks again for saving me, I’m never going to forget it.” “Hey, like I said, you probably saved mine as well. Good night Suzy.” “Night Donna.” Donna heads off to her bed and you eventually fall asleep on the couch. > Next day… WEDNESDAY “…act now and spend your life in the comfort of…” “Oh shut the hell up…I already know the world is going to hell in a hand basket.” You hear Donna say while she turns off the TV as you groggily wake up from the couch. “What time is it?” you ask. “It’s past noon that’s for sure. Still a few hours to go before we have to get ready to leave.” “Oh. How long you been awake?” “Hm, not long. The shower’s all yours though, I’ve already used it.” You sit up still getting used to your new surroundings “Hm, you were right, it really isn’t what I thought it was going to be. I was expecting to hear the sounds of drunken hillbillies arguing and shooting off guns when I woke up. It’s actually pretty quiet.” You say gathering so clean clothes. “Heh, well I can’t say that probably won’t happen around the holidays, but like I said, I think you’ll find that even the trashiest of people aren’t acting like stereotypes all the time.” Donna replies. You nod and head off to take a shower. While you wash up, you try to mentally prepare yourself for your trip to the police station today. Part of that involves relaxing yourself and relieving yourself of tension in the usual way that hasn’t failed you yet… A few minutes later… “SUZY! SUZY! GET DRESSED WE GOT A FUCKING SITUATION OUT HERE!” you suddenly hear Donna say as she beats on the bathroom door. As startling as that is, what you hear next is even more so due to a loud bullhorn. “THIS IS THE NATIONAL GUARD. THIS AREA IS NOW UNDER MARTIAL LAW! ALL INHABITANTS WILL EXIT THEIR TRAILERS AND AMASS IN THE CENTER FOR OBSERVATION! ANYONE ATTEMPTING TO RUN OR RESISTING WILL BE SHOT!” So much for putting your mind at ease. “Alright! Alright! I hear what’s going on! I’m getting out!” you shout. “Hurry!” Donna says. You stop your shower, grab your clean clothes and start getting dressed as quickly as possible. Tina is looking out one of the windows when you exit the bathroom. “There are a couple of military trucks with a bunch of guardsmen out there. I don’t know what’s going on, but this is really bad. Shit. This has gotta have something to do with what’s been going on in town.” Donna says. “They want us to go out there too.” You say not being enthusiastic about that idea. “Yeah, fuck that. It’s probably just so they can kill us easier if we’re all huddled up in a group or worse, maybe they want to round us up in those trucks for some sinister purpose.” Odd that Donna always thought your older brother was a kook for talking like that on regular basis, but she sounds more like him than ever right now. To be fair though, this is all pretty strange and you’re not exactly trusting of the situation yourself. “Well what are other people doing?” “Some are coming out and some are staying in. In fact more are staying in than coming out, but that’s hardly surprising. The folks around here aren’t exactly fond of the government.” “EVERYONE OUT OF THEIR TRAILERS NOW! THIS IS NOT A CHOICE, IT’S A FUCKING ORDER!” You and Donna look at each other. “This isn’t going to end well. Maybe we should run.” Donna suggests and you nearly laugh. “Yeah, because the plan to run worked SO well for me last time!” you say. “Okay this is different, we really would be running off together. Come on, do you really think those soldiers out there are any better than those cops that pulled us over? In fact they sound worse!” “Well you got a point there, (sigh) okay so what’s the plan? We just step out the trailer and run? They already said they’re going to open fire on anyone who does that.” You say. “Yeah, but we’re lucky since we have a trailer at the end of the park. We could probably make a run for it and hide in the wilderness behind the park.” “That simple huh? How long are we supposed to hide out there? I don’t know how to survive in the wild and unless you been secretly reading up such things, I don’t think you do either.” “Well I don’t fucking know! I’m just trying to come up with suggestions here! Fuck Suzy, I’m trying to help YOU out as usual.” “Thanks. Thanks for that Donna. Real helpful right now.” “EVERYONE EXIT THEIR TRAILERS RIGHT FUCKING NOW! THIS IS YOUR LAST FUCKING WARNING OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE AND THESE RUN DOWN PIECES OF SHIT WILL BE YOUR GODDAMN COFFINS!” You look out the window briefly and see the few people that have exited their trailers are being shoved roughly in the center of the park. Some of the guardsmen stand nearby pointing their rifles at them, but nothing more yet. A few more of the guardsmen are starting to spread out and move about the park. It looks like they’re preparing for combat. And then suddenly you see one of the locals kick their door open and yell something at the top of their lungs while blasting one of the soldiers with a shotgun before getting riddled with bullets. Then all hell breaks loose. “Get down!” you shout and you and Donna are both getting as low as you can on the floor. Gunfire, shouting and screaming is all you can hear and you’re praying that a stray doesn’t go through the wall and hit you. Donna apparently has the same idea. “Suzy, we gotta get the fuck outta here!” “Donna we go out that front door and we risk an even bigger chance of getting our asses shot off! We need to just stay low and behind as much shit as possible! Maybe your bedroom or the shower in the bathroom would be…” A couple of bullets go through the windows overhead and small shards of glass sprinkle to the floor. “That’s it, I’m not fucking staying here!” Donna yells and starts to crawl to the door of the trailer. > You run with her While it didn’t work out the first time, there really isn’t any reason to not hesitate to run now. The soldiers are obviously out of control and it’s possible they’ll just line you up and start shooting you. You stand up from your crouching position and run over to the trailer door. “Suzy, what the hell, keep the fuck down! They’re still firing out there!” Donna exclaims as you step over her. “Donna, you’re the one who said you wanted to get out of here quickly, well we can’t waste time! Now get up and let’s go!” you shout and grab the door handle. You open the door, which to your surprise reveals a soldier who was just about to open the door. Startling the soldier, he loses balance backwards a bit, but he doesn’t lose his trained instinct to defend himself unfortunately for you. The guardsman fires and you take several bullets to your body. You’re dead before you even hit the floor of the trailer as your sister screams at this sight.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY “…act now and spend your life in the comfort of…” “Oh shut the hell up…I already know the world is going to hell in a hand basket.” You hear Donna say while she turns off the TV as you groggily wake up from the couch. “What time is it?” you ask. “It’s past noon that’s for sure. Still a few hours to go before we have to get ready to leave.” “Oh. How long you been awake?” “Hm, not long. The shower’s all yours though, I’ve already used it.” You sit up still getting used to your new surroundings “Hm, you were right, it really isn’t what I thought it was going to be. I was expecting to hear the sounds of drunken hillbillies arguing and shooting off guns when I woke up. It’s actually pretty quiet.” You say gathering so clean clothes. “Heh, well I can’t say that probably won’t happen around the holidays, but like I said, I think you’ll find that even the trashiest of people aren’t acting like stereotypes all the time.” Donna replies. You nod and head off to take a shower. While you wash up, you try to mentally prepare yourself for your trip to the police station today. Part of that involves relaxing yourself and relieving yourself of tension in the usual way that hasn’t failed you yet… A few minutes later… “SUZY! SUZY! GET DRESSED WE GOT A FUCKING SITUATION OUT HERE!” you suddenly hear Donna say as she beats on the bathroom door. As startling as that is, what you hear next is even more so due to a loud bullhorn. “THIS IS THE NATIONAL GUARD. THIS AREA IS NOW UNDER MARTIAL LAW! ALL INHABITANTS WILL EXIT THEIR TRAILERS AND AMASS IN THE CENTER FOR OBSERVATION! ANYONE ATTEMPTING TO RUN OR RESISTING WILL BE SHOT!” So much for putting your mind at ease. “Alright! Alright! I hear what’s going on! I’m getting out!” you shout. “Hurry!” Donna says. You stop your shower, grab your clean clothes and start getting dressed as quickly as possible. Tina is looking out one of the windows when you exit the bathroom. “There are a couple of military trucks with a bunch of guardsmen out there. I don’t know what’s going on, but this is really bad. Shit. This has gotta have something to do with what’s been going on in town.” Donna says. “They want us to go out there too.” You say not being enthusiastic about that idea. “Yeah, fuck that. It’s probably just so they can kill us easier if we’re all huddled up in a group or worse, maybe they want to round us up in those trucks for some sinister purpose.” Odd that Donna always thought your older brother was a kook for talking like that on regular basis, but she sounds more like him than ever right now. To be fair though, this is all pretty strange and you’re not exactly trusting of the situation yourself. “Well what are other people doing?” “Some are coming out and some are staying in. In fact more are staying in than coming out, but that’s hardly surprising. The folks around here aren’t exactly fond of the government.” “EVERYONE OUT OF THEIR TRAILERS NOW! THIS IS NOT A CHOICE, IT’S A FUCKING ORDER!” You and Donna look at each other. “This isn’t going to end well. Maybe we should run.” Donna suggests and you nearly laugh. “Yeah, because the plan to run worked SO well for me last time!” you say. “Okay this is different, we really would be running off together. Come on, do you really think those soldiers out there are any better than those cops that pulled us over? In fact they sound worse!” “Well you got a point there, (sigh) okay so what’s the plan? We just step out the trailer and run? They already said they’re going to open fire on anyone who does that.” You say. “Yeah, but we’re lucky since we have a trailer at the end of the park. We could probably make a run for it and hide in the wilderness behind the park.” “That simple huh? How long are we supposed to hide out there? I don’t know how to survive in the wild and unless you been secretly reading up such things, I don’t think you do either.” “Well I don’t fucking know! I’m just trying to come up with suggestions here! Fuck Suzy, I’m trying to help YOU out as usual.” “Thanks. Thanks for that Donna. Real helpful right now.” “EVERYONE EXIT THEIR TRAILERS RIGHT FUCKING NOW! THIS IS YOUR LAST FUCKING WARNING OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE AND THESE RUN DOWN PIECES OF SHIT WILL BE YOUR GODDAMN COFFINS!” You look out the window briefly and see the few people that have exited their trailers are being shoved roughly in the center of the park. Some of the guardsmen stand nearby pointing their rifles at them, but nothing more yet. A few more of the guardsmen are starting to spread out and move about the park. It looks like they’re preparing for combat. And then suddenly you see one of the locals kick their door open and yell something at the top of their lungs while blasting one of the soldiers with a shotgun before getting riddled with bullets. Then all hell breaks loose. “Get down!” you shout and you and Donna are both getting as low as you can on the floor. Gunfire, shouting and screaming is all you can hear and you’re praying that a stray doesn’t go through the wall and hit you. Donna apparently has the same idea. “Suzy, we gotta get the fuck outta here!” “Donna we go out that front door and we risk an even bigger chance of getting our asses shot off! We need to just stay low and behind as much shit as possible! Maybe your bedroom or the shower in the bathroom would be…” A couple of bullets go through the windows overhead and small shards of glass sprinkle to the floor. “That’s it, I’m not fucking staying here!” Donna yells and starts to crawl to the door of the trailer. > You stay in the trailer Running or rather planning to run didn’t work before so you’re not even going to entertain the idea now. “Donna, get the fuck back here! You might be about to outrun cops, but you can’t outrun a bullet!” you shout crawling backwards towards the bathroom. “Suzy, you need to stop being so scared all the damn time! NOT running before is why you had to suffer through what you did last time! If you’re smart, you’ll come with me!” “Donna, I’m telling you, it’s going to be bad if you go out there!” “It’s gonna be bad if we stay…AAAH!” You’re already inside the bathroom when you hear Donna scream, at first you think she got shot, but it’s something equally as bad. The moment she was opening the front door, so was a soldier, trying to look for respite from the shooting. You peak around the corner and see him barge in and pick Donna up by the hair. “Get up! Get up you fucking trailer bitch!” you hear the soldier shout. Donna whimpers and begs to be let go. You think you hear a slap followed by another. You slink back into bathroom as panic wells up inside you. “Fucking trash, you got a weapon on ya? Where the fuck is your boyfriend? He in the back waiting to ambush me? Well fuck that! Come on out you goddamn redneck! Got your bitch here or is it also your sister? Fuckin’ inbreds!” You hear Donna continue to plead and exclaim she lives alone and that she has no weapons of any kind. The guardsmen doesn’t sound completely convinced and you hear him pushing Donna and exclaiming for her to head towards the bedroom swearing the whole time about his shitty assignment, you know its only a matter of time before he discovers that you’re here. You hastily look around the bathroom, but there isn’t much here in the way of weapons except a can of your sister’s hairspray. Maybe you can blind him, though you’d need to time it just right. Taking a deep breath, you get near the entryway of the door prepare the can… Your sister passes by and sees you out the corner of her eye, but makes no indication that she’s seen you. “Just keep going. If there really is nobody in the bedroom, then we’re just going to hide out in the back for a while and then…ARGH! SHIT!” the soldier exclaims as you unload the hairspray in his eyes as he starts to pass the bathroom entrance. Fortunately he drops his rifle in the process of his sudden blindness, which you quickly snatch up. Donna is still scrambling to get up and get out of the way, meanwhile the blind soldier is backing up trying to fish his pistol out of his holster. “Fucking…shit…I’m gonna kill all of you inbred trash! I’m…” You don’t wait around for him to possibly carry out his threats; you don’t think about it, you just shoot. The rifle kicks a bit and you hurt yourself in the process, but your assailant with several new holes in him is in even worse condition. He drops his pistol and slumps backwards in a bloody heap. For a moment you just stand there in disbelief on what you’ve done. You just killed a man. Even if it was life and death, you still killed someone. “Suzy! Get down, they’re still shooting out there!” Donna shouts from the bedroom entrance. You get down on the floor still clutching on to your killing tool and crawl to the bedroom. You feel a bit weird, but not sick. You and your sister hide behind her bed, huddled close to each other as the shooting and general mayhem out there continues for what seems like a very long time, but in reality it’s only about fifteen-twenty minutes. As the gunshots die down, you can hear the victory hooting and hollering outside which is then followed by more gunshots probably fired in victory. For a moment you and your sister stay down for a little while longer, but eventually the pair of you get up. You just sit on the edge of the bed trying to wrap your head around everything that just happened. Donna on the other hand peeks out one of the windows. “Well, I guess our side won.” Donna says. “Not sure if that’s going to be a good thing in the long run.” You say. Donna doesn’t pay much attention to your statement, but instead heads to the main room of the trailer. After a few moments, you gather your strength and follow her. She looks at the dead soldier on the floor and you do as well. “Well, I guess it’s true what they say, you never know if you can kill someone or not until you have to.” Donna remarks. “Or want to.” You add. “Well anyway I’m glad you did. Shit, that was fucking intense. The weird thing is how well worked together in the situation I mean I lured him to the back and you ambushed him.” “Yeah, well I suppose we already had several run-throughs of dealing with hostile assholes this week. We were bound to get it right eventually.” You remark. “Heh, I suppose so…well no point in letting this asshole stink up the place, let’s drag him outside.” Donna gets his legs and you get his upper body and drag the soldier out of the trailer. As you do so, you notice his rank is that of a high-ranking NCO. You wonder if he was the one in charge of this detachment. When you get him outside, Tina is just walking up with a scruffy looking man wearing a cap and clothing that doesn’t look like its been washed in days. He carries a shotgun over his shoulder. “Well fuck Donna. Did you actually kill one of those fuckers?” Tina asks. “Not me, my sister did. This asshole barged into our trailer and Suzy shot his ass.” Tina looks a little impressed. “Is that so? Well maybe I misjudged you blondie. Maybe you’re not the innocent wallflower I thought you were.” “I didn’t take any pleasure in it, if that’s what you’re implying.” You say defensively. “Of course you didn’t. You saw a threat to your family and home and you took care of business. It’s what any right thinking American SHOULD do when the fucking government tries to impose its will on folks. They tried to do it here, well they didn’t fucking succeed. We showed them that, but I reckon there’s gonna be a lot more trouble comin’. Believe it.” The man suddenly says. “Who are you?” you ask almost in an accusing tone. Mel doesn’t really look offended, but Tina speaks up before he can. “This is Mel, my…significant other.” Tina says. “Significant other? What the fuck are we fucking faggots? Life partners and all that shit? Just say I’m your goddamn boyfriend. Shit, I’m practically your husband with as long as we’ve been together.” “I hesitated to call you my boyfriend because I don’t know where we exactly stand right now and until you buy me a fucking ring and propose, you’re definitely NOT my husband!” “Pftt, I told ya, I see no reason for a piece of paper handed out by some bean counter to tell me how I feel about ya, let alone some piece of jewelry. Besides, we fight all the fucking time and always get back together, so stop bein’ a fuckin’ drama queen.” At this point Tina and Mel start to argue and not wishing to get in the middle of it, you and Donna start to walk back to your trailer. When you get inside Donna starts finding bags and begins putting away clothes. “What are you doing?” you ask. “What’s it look like? I’m packing up my shit and getting ready to get the hell outta here. It’s apparent that you were right again, about this place. It’s not safe here.” Donna says. “At this point, I don’t think its too safe anywhere. At least the immediate threat here has been eliminated.” You say. Donna stops packing. “Wait a minute. Are you serious? This can’t be happening. I mean YOU of all people. Are you seriously considering staying here?” “I don’t know. I mean would I like there to be a better option? Yes! But what options do we really have Donna? We don’t even have a fucking car to leave in and I doubt very seriously anyone is going to let us borrow a vehicle now. We’re going to be on foot, heading to god knows where. I mean WHERE are we going to go? Back to town? With all the bullshit going on there? Into that wilderness where we can slowly starve to death due to our lack of survival knowledge? Further down the road where we’ll run into who knows what? I mean everything seems so chaotic right now and I want at least a stable chance of survival. Your plan has always been to run and so far it hasn’t worked out very well either for me or you. Maybe we need to dig our heels in and tough it out if only for a bit.” Donna sits down on the couch processing your words. She probably can’t believe you’re even thinking this way, and to be honest you can’t either. Maybe killing another human changed something within you and you’re not willing to just sit around and be a victim anymore. You’re going to DO something to improve your situation. Anything. “Okay, I get what you’re saying. And yeah you’re right that it’s going to suck walking to wherever our unknown destination is going to be and we don’t know where we would go, but I’m just saying it HAS to be safer than staying here. I mean if we do stick around, what if the government sends another group of soldiers here? It’s going to look mighty suspicious that the last group they sent isn’t here and will probably be really bad for us. If we leave, we can at least distance ourselves from this mess. I dunno, I mean at this point I’ll stick with you no matter what you decide, I just think we oughta get the fuck outta here.” Donna advises. > You leave the trailer park It isn’t going to be pleasant to leave, but Donna does make a good point about the foolishness of sticking around here after the massacre of military personnel. “Okay Donna, I guess maybe you’re right. I’ll pack and we’ll head out.” “Well maybe it won’t be completely hopeless. Maybe some of the others here will be leaving too, we might be able to go with them or catch a ride for awhile at least.” “Hm, I don’t hold out too much hope, but I’ll let you take care of that, just let me know when you’re ready to go, because I’m going to have to figure out what I need and can take with me without collapsing from exhaustion.” While you struggle with what clothing you can do without and what items you’re going to need, Donna finishes packing and leaves the trailer to presumably go charm a ride from someone. A half hour passes and Donna returns just as you’re finishing up packing and she doesn’t look in the best of spirits. “I take it, it didn’t go well?” you ask. “I can’t believe at least ONE of these rednecks isn’t so damn stupid to want to stay here! But no, everyone of these dumb fuckers are insisting on sticking around trying to make this place into a fortress or some shit.” “Not one fell for your charms?” you ask. “What are you getting at?” “Well I figured you were offering something in return…” ““Offer?...Oh yuck! Suzy! Seriously? Do you think I’m just that much of a whore?!” Donna asks. “Well I mean I know you’re free spirited enough not to give a shit about that sort of thing. I mean that IS how you got this trailer up front isn’t it?” “Okay, first that was different. Second that was REALLY unpleasant! Anyway, looks like we’re walking. Even Tina wasn’t willing to help out.” “Hardly surprising. So which direction are we walking?” you ask. “What do you mean? There’s only one way to go. I mean you aren’t suggesting we head back to town do you?” “Well the other direction will eventually lead to Security City and I can’t imagine it’ll be any better there.” You say. “That’s still a very long way off Suzy, I mean maybe we can find refuge somewhere else first, like a truck stop or something.” “I just hope we aren’t rounded up by passing military on the road. Oh well I guess we’ll find out. At least we got a couple weapons from that asshole who tried to kill us earlier.” You say. And with those words, you and Donna leave the trailer, which was once to be your new home and make your way out of the park. Seems like ever since you left home, you’re doomed to not stay anywhere for very long. You hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. As you leave, you see that Donna was right in that the park residents are indeed trying to barricade this place up by putting vehicles in strategic locations. You don’t see how such a plan can possibly stand up against a real attack by the military, but they’re determined not to be run off. “So you’re leaving Donna?” Tina asks on your way out. “Yeah, I don’t think this place is for me and my sister. You sure that you want to still stay here?” “No point in doing so yet. Besides, Mel is actually getting everyone’s ass in gear to prepare this place for more potential trouble. It’s the most motivated I’ve seen him in…well since he first sweet talked me into spreading my legs for him and that was ages ago. Really I dunno why y’all are leaving. It’s only going to be worse out there, but suit yerselves. Good luck I guess.” Tina says and leaves the pair of you. Leaving the trailer park behind, night has already begun to fall as you walk along side the road. Ten minutes in and Donna breaks up the silence. “The road is pretty deserted. There hasn’t been any traffic in either direction since we started walking.” Donna says. “Hopefully it stays like that, seems like every time more people show up more problems crop up.” You answer. “Yeah, I guess it does seem that way. Bet you’re wishing you were in the basement right now.” “Got that right. No use wishing it was so though. Those carefree days are long gone now.” “Heh, as are my own carefree days of partying everyday. A few days ago I was just starting to think that maybe I had been wasting my life and needed it to get back on track to do something productive. Now? Looks like I didn’t waste anything seeing as the world appears to be going to shit.” Donna adds. You agree and the pair of you continue walking. The stars are a lot brighter without the streetlights of the town around. You look up at them on several occasions never really admiring the “heavens” before. You get the impression even Donna is starting to admire them. Really until this walk, you’ve never really realized just how rural of an area you lived in before. Hours pass and both of you are tired, not just from the walking though, it was an “action packed” day earlier for the pair of you after all. In the far distance though you see the shape of what looks to be several structures. “Hey Donna, looks like something is up ahead. It’s really dark, but I think those are tents or something.” You say. “Yeah, wonder what that is.” Donna says. “Maybe we should hang back until morning.” You say. “Why?” “Because who knows who the hell is over there. I mean maybe that’s a military encampment. We go walking in, and soldiers could suddenly surround us. Or worse, they see us stumbling in the darkness and shoot us on sight believing we’re intruders. Both of us are pretty tired anyway, I think it would be best if we approached this with clear eyes and in the daytime.” You say. “Hm, okay you might be right about that. Where are we sleeping though?” “Looks like the great outdoors. Come on let’s get off the side of the road. We don’t need someone running us over in our sleep. You and Donna head off the road and deeper into wilderness, though not too much. You try to find a spot that seems “good” and then you realize you’re in the damn wilderness without even a sleeping bag, there is no where to sleep that’s going to be “good.” “Well I guess here will do. Use your back pack as a pillow and try to get comfy.” You say laying down. “Ugh, I can only imagine the things that are going to be crawling on me in the night.” Donna says. “Yeah, things suck all over. Hey why are you getting so close?” “You got both weapons! I’m not sleeping too far from you. Besides, it’s fucking cold out here. We’ll stay warmer if we sleep near each other. Did that with Julie once when her heating system was broken for a week.” “Yeah, well you better not start cuddling or worse grinding on me.” “Geez Suzy, that’s sick! You’re my sister for fuck’s sake.” “Good, glad we understand each other.” As you attempt to get as comfortable as possible Donna keeps moving so she’s partially touching you, despite the fact you’re trying to keep apart. Eventually you give up and just try to focus on sleeping. “Suzy?” Donna says. “What?” You answer. “I’m glad we left and are seeing this through together.” Donna says in such a way that you haven’t heard her speak before. Almost like a little kid. “Yeah, I’m glad we’re seeing this through together too.” You say. And with those words, you drift off. > Next day... THURSDAY “SUZY! WAKE UP! GET UP NOW!” you hear Donna scream followed by her pulling and shaking you. “Wha…the fuck?!” you utter completely confused. You’re even more confused when Donna grabs the rifle near you and fires it, succeeding in smashing her shoulder due to being unprepared by the kick back and not holding it right in the first place. She cries out an obscenity and drops the rifle. While you still aren’t completely sure of what’s going on, you do look in the direction that Donna was firing and see what she was firing at. Several people are loping in your direction snarling and generally making unpleasant sounds. You don’t know who they are or what’s wrong with them, but you follow Donna’s lead and pull your pistol to fire at them. You aren’t exactly the best shot in the world, but after a couple shots you clearly hit the closest one in the chest, who stops temporarily, but then recovers until you hit him again, at which point he falls. It doesn’t deter any of the others though and they just continue to run at you. Meanwhile Donna gets off another shot, but misses wildly. Seeing their numbers and knowing you don’t have the skill or the ammo to deal with these obviously insane people, you tell Donna you and her need to run and you don’t need to do it twice. You and Donna run towards the group of tents still in the distance. You still don’t know if it’s a military encampment or what, but the key thing is it’s in the opposite direction of those things chasing you. You’re about half way towards your destination and your sister becomes a horror movie cliché by falling behind and then tripping and falling on her face. “Suzy!” you hear her scream and you turn around to see several of those things almost on her. You run back and shoot a couple of them, but by the time you grab her hand to help her up, one of them manages to grab her and bite her shoulder. Donna screams pierce your ears and you blast the thing in the head splattering its blood on you and Donna. The two that you shot (but failed to obviously kill) at this point have recovered and are already attacking you and Donna. You’re tackled to the ground and you just barely manage to keep the thing from biting you by putting your forearm against its throat as it desperately tries to bite your face off. You get a good look at the thing at this range, while its dirty, crazed and making the animalistic growling noises, it looks completely human. Rabies perhaps? In any case you manage to get your pistol arm free of the thing’s grip and bring your weapon to its temple and blow its brains out. It slumps on top of you and you’re quick to get out from under it. Meanwhile, Donna is on the ground again screaming for you to help her and her assailant chewing on her leg. You wonder helping Donna’s even an option at this point. Donna’s badly wounded and there are still several of those things coming at you, not counting the one currently munching on Donna’s leg. You don’t know what these things are except they look like dirty rabid humans. And maybe that’s all they are, but if there’s anything you’ve learned from situations like this is those same clichéd horror movies is when someone is bitten… Donna’s eyes widen as soon as she realizes that you’re aiming at her. You don’t give her time to do anything else before you pull the trigger. Having done the grim task of putting your sister out of her misery, you run back towards the tents though you’re in a bit of a daze at this point. The noise you and those things have caused, start bringing out the occupants of the tents, or at least whoever is using them. You see a few figures with rifles, possibly in uniforms. It’s apparent that they’ve caught sight of you and your pursuers and are yelling something at you, but again your brain has partially “shut down” after killing your sister so you’re stilling running towards them, ignoring the fact that they’re ready to open fire. It wouldn’t matter anyway, since it isn’t like you can run backwards with those things chasing you. Bullets whiz in your direction missing you; at first maybe they AREN’T actually aiming at you and are aiming at the creatures chasing you. Maybe your luck is changing. But then you catch one in the head. You don’t even feel it. You just drop like a sack. The military wasn’t taking any chances.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Running or rather planning to run didn’t work before so you’re not even going to entertain the idea now. “Donna, get the fuck back here! You might be about to outrun cops, but you can’t outrun a bullet!” you shout crawling backwards towards the bathroom. “Suzy, you need to stop being so scared all the damn time! NOT running before is why you had to suffer through what you did last time! If you’re smart, you’ll come with me!” “Donna, I’m telling you, it’s going to be bad if you go out there!” “It’s gonna be bad if we stay…AAAH!” You’re already inside the bathroom when you hear Donna scream, at first you think she got shot, but it’s something equally as bad. The moment she was opening the front door, so was a soldier, trying to look for respite from the shooting. You peak around the corner and see him barge in and pick Donna up by the hair. “Get up! Get up you fucking trailer bitch!” you hear the soldier shout. Donna whimpers and begs to be let go. You think you hear a slap followed by another. You slink back into bathroom as panic wells up inside you. “Fucking trash, you got a weapon on ya? Where the fuck is your boyfriend? He in the back waiting to ambush me? Well fuck that! Come on out you goddamn redneck! Got your bitch here or is it also your sister? Fuckin’ inbreds!” You hear Donna continue to plead and exclaim she lives alone and that she has no weapons of any kind. The guardsmen doesn’t sound completely convinced and you hear him pushing Donna and exclaiming for her to head towards the bedroom swearing the whole time about his shitty assignment, you know its only a matter of time before he discovers that you’re here. You hastily look around the bathroom, but there isn’t much here in the way of weapons except a can of your sister’s hairspray. Maybe you can blind him, though you’d need to time it just right. Taking a deep breath, you get near the entryway of the door prepare the can… Your sister passes by and sees you out the corner of her eye, but makes no indication that she’s seen you. “Just keep going. If there really is nobody in the bedroom, then we’re just going to hide out in the back for a while and then…ARGH! SHIT!” the soldier exclaims as you unload the hairspray in his eyes as he starts to pass the bathroom entrance. Fortunately he drops his rifle in the process of his sudden blindness, which you quickly snatch up. Donna is still scrambling to get up and get out of the way, meanwhile the blind soldier is backing up trying to fish his pistol out of his holster. “Fucking…shit…I’m gonna kill all of you inbred trash! I’m…” You don’t wait around for him to possibly carry out his threats; you don’t think about it, you just shoot. The rifle kicks a bit and you hurt yourself in the process, but your assailant with several new holes in him is in even worse condition. He drops his pistol and slumps backwards in a bloody heap. For a moment you just stand there in disbelief on what you’ve done. You just killed a man. Even if it was life and death, you still killed someone. “Suzy! Get down, they’re still shooting out there!” Donna shouts from the bedroom entrance. You get down on the floor still clutching on to your killing tool and crawl to the bedroom. You feel a bit weird, but not sick. You and your sister hide behind her bed, huddled close to each other as the shooting and general mayhem out there continues for what seems like a very long time, but in reality it’s only about fifteen-twenty minutes. As the gunshots die down, you can hear the victory hooting and hollering outside which is then followed by more gunshots probably fired in victory. For a moment you and your sister stay down for a little while longer, but eventually the pair of you get up. You just sit on the edge of the bed trying to wrap your head around everything that just happened. Donna on the other hand peeks out one of the windows. “Well, I guess our side won.” Donna says. “Not sure if that’s going to be a good thing in the long run.” You say. Donna doesn’t pay much attention to your statement, but instead heads to the main room of the trailer. After a few moments, you gather your strength and follow her. She looks at the dead soldier on the floor and you do as well. “Well, I guess it’s true what they say, you never know if you can kill someone or not until you have to.” Donna remarks. “Or want to.” You add. “Well anyway I’m glad you did. Shit, that was fucking intense. The weird thing is how well worked together in the situation I mean I lured him to the back and you ambushed him.” “Yeah, well I suppose we already had several run-throughs of dealing with hostile assholes this week. We were bound to get it right eventually.” You remark. “Heh, I suppose so…well no point in letting this asshole stink up the place, let’s drag him outside.” Donna gets his legs and you get his upper body and drag the soldier out of the trailer. As you do so, you notice his rank is that of a high-ranking NCO. You wonder if he was the one in charge of this detachment. When you get him outside, Tina is just walking up with a scruffy looking man wearing a cap and clothing that doesn’t look like its been washed in days. He carries a shotgun over his shoulder. “Well fuck Donna. Did you actually kill one of those fuckers?” Tina asks. “Not me, my sister did. This asshole barged into our trailer and Suzy shot his ass.” Tina looks a little impressed. “Is that so? Well maybe I misjudged you blondie. Maybe you’re not the innocent wallflower I thought you were.” “I didn’t take any pleasure in it, if that’s what you’re implying.” You say defensively. “Of course you didn’t. You saw a threat to your family and home and you took care of business. It’s what any right thinking American SHOULD do when the fucking government tries to impose its will on folks. They tried to do it here, well they didn’t fucking succeed. We showed them that, but I reckon there’s gonna be a lot more trouble comin’. Believe it.” The man suddenly says. “Who are you?” you ask almost in an accusing tone. Mel doesn’t really look offended, but Tina speaks up before he can. “This is Mel, my…significant other.” Tina says. “Significant other? What the fuck are we fucking faggots? Life partners and all that shit? Just say I’m your goddamn boyfriend. Shit, I’m practically your husband with as long as we’ve been together.” “I hesitated to call you my boyfriend because I don’t know where we exactly stand right now and until you buy me a fucking ring and propose, you’re definitely NOT my husband!” “Pftt, I told ya, I see no reason for a piece of paper handed out by some bean counter to tell me how I feel about ya, let alone some piece of jewelry. Besides, we fight all the fucking time and always get back together, so stop bein’ a fuckin’ drama queen.” At this point Tina and Mel start to argue and not wishing to get in the middle of it, you and Donna start to walk back to your trailer. When you get inside Donna starts finding bags and begins putting away clothes. “What are you doing?” you ask. “What’s it look like? I’m packing up my shit and getting ready to get the hell outta here. It’s apparent that you were right again, about this place. It’s not safe here.” Donna says. “At this point, I don’t think its too safe anywhere. At least the immediate threat here has been eliminated.” You say. Donna stops packing. “Wait a minute. Are you serious? This can’t be happening. I mean YOU of all people. Are you seriously considering staying here?” “I don’t know. I mean would I like there to be a better option? Yes! But what options do we really have Donna? We don’t even have a fucking car to leave in and I doubt very seriously anyone is going to let us borrow a vehicle now. We’re going to be on foot, heading to god knows where. I mean WHERE are we going to go? Back to town? With all the bullshit going on there? Into that wilderness where we can slowly starve to death due to our lack of survival knowledge? Further down the road where we’ll run into who knows what? I mean everything seems so chaotic right now and I want at least a stable chance of survival. Your plan has always been to run and so far it hasn’t worked out very well either for me or you. Maybe we need to dig our heels in and tough it out if only for a bit.” Donna sits down on the couch processing your words. She probably can’t believe you’re even thinking this way, and to be honest you can’t either. Maybe killing another human changed something within you and you’re not willing to just sit around and be a victim anymore. You’re going to DO something to improve your situation. Anything. “Okay, I get what you’re saying. And yeah you’re right that it’s going to suck walking to wherever our unknown destination is going to be and we don’t know where we would go, but I’m just saying it HAS to be safer than staying here. I mean if we do stick around, what if the government sends another group of soldiers here? It’s going to look mighty suspicious that the last group they sent isn’t here and will probably be really bad for us. If we leave, we can at least distance ourselves from this mess. I dunno, I mean at this point I’ll stick with you no matter what you decide, I just think we oughta get the fuck outta here.” Donna advises. > You stay in the trailer park Honestly you don’t know if it’s a good idea or not, but you’re staying at least for now. “I still think running on our own is a bad idea. I say we stick around at least for the rest of the day, I mean it’s no good walking off now with the sun about to go down. If it looks like things aren’t going to be too good for us here, I mean we can leave sometime tomorrow. I doubt if the military is going to send anyone else here THAT quick.” “Okay, ugh. I still think this is a bad idea, but I suppose I could use that time to try to find someone who would let us borrow their vehicle. That would at least save us from walking.” “Borrow? Didn’t know if we were leaving that we were planning on returning.” You snicker. “Well, maybe other people will be getting ready to leave too, and maybe we can catch a ride with them at least.” “Well that would make leaving at least more of an appealing prospect.” You say and start to leave. “Where are you going?” “If we’re going to stay, I should find out what the game plan is with the rest of these folks. If it looks like they don’t have their shit together, well that’s another mark in favor of leaving.” “Hm, well I suppose I’ll go see if Tina’s done arguing with her boyfriend or whoever he is to her, maybe I can see if she’s receptive to the idea of leaving.” At this point you and Donna split up. You mainly wander the trailer park a bit where you occasionally get some stares and a few cat calls, but mostly everyone is busily running around cleaning up or holding various weapons or building supplies in their hands. Mostly all the men. While there is a lot of shouting in general going on, one of these trailer folk is standing around seemingly barking orders at the rest. It’s Mel, Tina’s boyfriend from earlier. “Get those vehicles to block the main entrance to this place and drag those fucking dead to the field behind this place. We’ll bury their remains there in a big ass pit. After getting everything useful out of those military trucks, we’re going to need to start stripping them down…hey you…blondie, this ain’t no place for ya, I’m tryin’ to get some fuckin’ work done an’ I can’t have you here.” Mel exclaims. “What? I’m not in anyone’s way and I live in this place! Why can’t I be here?” you ask. “Because like I said, I’m TRYING to light a fire under these fuckers’ asses, and I can’t do that, if half of them are staring at YOUR ass or are you so dainty that you haven’t noticed?” Mel says. “Yes, I’ve noticed that I’ve been attracting a lot of attention. I can’t really help that though, all I’m just trying to do is assess the situation here and if it’s worth staying or not. So are you in charge here now?” “Well considering the old bastard that owned this place got his fucking head blown off during the firefight, we are now officially free of any sort of authority whatsoever. However, since I’m only one that realizes what we just did was fucking treason to the highest degree even if it was necessary, I suppose I’m charge of trying to get us all out of this shitstorm. My first goal is to try to get rid of all traces that these soldier boys were even here and attempt to barricade this place somewhat. To be honest though, with all the shit that I’ve been hearing on the news and from what Tina told me yesterday, sounds like the whole world is going to shit and I doubt the government is even going to investigate one shitty little trailer park right away. Assuming if there even IS a government left after all this is over.” “So you really think this place will be safe?” “Fuck if I know. Probably safer than what’s going on in town right now. All I know is I ain’t running from my home unless I really have to. Look darlin’ I ain’t got the answers for ya as to whether or not you should leave. That’s on you. All I CAN say is I hope you’ve got some sort of useful skill if you intend on stickin’ around because if you HOPE to remain semi-independent and not sucking dick for supper, you’re going to have to pull your weight around here in a meaningful way. Well either that or hook up with one of many fine bachelors round here.” At this point Mel smirks and raises his hand towards the many slovenly looking guys walking around as if he’s presenting them like they’re a prize on a game show. Except none of them are prizes and this isn’t a game show. You desperately think about your skills and unpredictably you find them lacking, however you do think of one thing that you haven’t done or even thought about in years. “Well, my mom taught me how to sew when I was little. Haven’t done it in a long time though.” “Mm, seamstress might be useful, but can you do anything else?” “…uh…I killed a man. That’s gotta count for something.” “Mm, well in some places it might, but it isn’t like you’re the only killer here especially after today. Shit, some of these guys here probably killed before today anyway. But I suppose if worst came to worst, you COULD potentially help out as a guard in a pinch when we get all set up seeing as I know you have the capacity to kill something or someone threatening if need be. Lord, I can just imagine how all these fucktards will be wanting to be paired up with you though. (Sigh) Look seein’ as you’re a friend of Tina’s…” “Actually Tina’s my sister’s friend. I don’t think she really likes me at all.” You interrupt. “Well she’s going to like you even fucking less if she sees me speaking with you considering she’s a jealous type, but we’re getting off track. Fuck, what was I sayin’? Oh yeah, look since you’re the sister of Tina’s friend and don’t seem like a complete stuck up cunt, I’ll try to keep the boys from harassin’ you too much. Can’t speak for any of the ladies though. They’re probably going to hate you just as much as Tina…well except for Butchie Billie, who’ll probably be harassing you right along with the boys. I’m just glad Jed and his retarded giant ass brother aren’t here. I think those fuckers were rapists and they would’ve LOVED the likes of you. Anyway, now could you please fuckin’ leave so some work can get done?” At this point you leave Mel and return to your trailer where you find Donna. “I thought you were scouting for a potential vehicle.” You say. “Apparently none of these hicks are leaving and neither is Tina. Nobody is willing to let me borrow one either.” “None? Didn’t you offer anything?” you ask hintingly. “Offer?...Oh yuck! Suzy! Seriously? Do you think I’m just that much of a whore?!” Donna asks. “Well I mean I know you’re free spirited enough not to give a shit about that sort of thing. I mean that IS how you got this trailer up front isn’t it?” “Okay, first that was different. Second that was REALLY unpleasant!” “Well you’ll be happy to know that old dude is dead now anyway. Mel seems to be in charge of this place now, or at least he alpha male here. Good thing you’re friends with Tina, he said he’d keep the sexual harassment to a minimum while we stay. He’s actually a lot smarter than he appears. He’s currently trying to eliminate all traces of the military being here and making this place more fortified.” You say. “So, where does that leave us?” “Well in the long term I don’t know. In the short term, we need to pull our weight around here to be useful. So far I’ve secured two possible jobs as a seamstress or a guard.” Donna looks a little surprised. “Seamstress huh? You talking about how mom taught you how to sew when we were little? Thought you hadn’t done it in a long time and didn’t care for it.” “I haven’t and I don’t, but I don’t relish the idea of blowing anyone here for food and water if things get bad. I’ll probably end up being a guard though. Seems a lot easier to potentially shoot people.” “Geez Suzy, you’re starting to sound like a completely different person.” “Yeah well a lot of shit has happened. Anyway, I’m done for today, I’m just going to relax for the rest of the night, since I’m guessing I’ll be doing a lot of work in the near future. It appears I’ve found a job at last, gotta love the irony.” You say. The remainder of the night is fairly uneventful if somewhat noisy at times. Donna doesn’t say too much to you and eventually goes to bed, but she once again thanks you for saving her from that soldier. The pair of you bailing each other out of trouble seems to be a reoccurring theme this week. You can only hope it isn’t a necessary theme tomorrow. > Next day... THURSDAY “…your family will feel right at home in one of our…” “Agh, shut the hell up.” You instinctively groan at the Ground Zero ad. You call out for Donna to turn her tv off, but considering she doesn’t, you assume that she must not be here. You look around for your phone to check the time, but you can’t find it. You can only assume that you dropped or misplaced it somewhere. Hardly matters, you don’t have too many people to contact anymore at this point. Your relationship with Bobby is over. Julie’s probably dead and who the hell knows what’s happened to the rest of your family in town. It isn’t like you need to call anyone or anyone needs to call you. You’re more pissed about your laptop, which apparently somehow caught a bullet during the mayhem yesterday. So much for keeping up on what might be going on in the world. In any case there’s a clock in the trailer and the time indicates that you’ve slept through the morning as usual. Weird, since you fell asleep fairly early. You wonder where the hell Donna could’ve went to, but you’re guessing she might be with her friend Tina. After turning the TV off in Donna’s room, all you’re left with is the noise that’s going on outside. Sounds like the good ol’ boys are still at it. You take a look out one of your windows and see several men in the field taking apart the military trucks, or rather severely altering them. It almost looks like they’re going to build a whole new vehicle out of them or something. Since there isn’t anyway to entertain yourself with your laptop being shot up, you aren’t in the mood to watch Ground Zero infomercials, and you don’t want to risk the possibility of Donna suddenly walking in on you with your vibrating boyfriend (Thankfully nothing happened to that form of entertainment, though you do worry about batteries for the future) your only option is to head outside and try to find Donna or find something productive to do. You never thought such a day would come where you’d be leaving the comfort of a couch to potentially do some work, but here you are. After going through your routine of washing up and changing clothes, you decide to take the rifle and pistol with you, just in case. You exit the trailer and head on over to Tina’s place. You knock on the trailer door and hardly recognize Tina without all her makeup on. Not that she’s ugly, in fact she’s actually less trashy looking without it on. “What the fuck do you want blondie?” Tina asks. “Um, is Donna here?” “No, she’s not fucking here. Try a few trailers over, I think she took a shine to Jimmy Ray and is over there.” “Oh. Okay then.” You say. “If you see her, tell her, she better not be distractin’ him all fucking day with her pussy, cause Mel wants him to be workin’ on somethin’. I dunno what, exactly, but I don’t wanna have to listen to him bitch to me about it.” “Got it.” You answer and begin to leave, but Tina calls out to you. “Hey, you ain’t after, Mel’s dick are ya?” Tina asks which completely catches you off guard. “What?” “He told me yesterday, you and he spoke and said you were sweet on him and he had to tell you to stop flirting so much.” Tina looks at you as if she’s detecting if you’re going to lie to her, but you have no intention of doing so since you’re defending yourself from a horrible lie! “Uh, with no disrespect, but Mel is NOT my type and I did not flirt with him.” You answer. “See, I knew that bastard was delusional. I didn’t even believe him when he told me that shit. Any retard can tell that a girl like you would have nothing to do with the likes of him in that way.” Tina says. “Did I do something that he could’ve mistaken for flirting? “Yeah, you were talking to him. He probably told all his friends that you were flirting with him. Hell, he might’ve even said he fucked you, but he tends to keep his tall tales a little more realistic nowadays. Whatever, he’s getting old and likes to think he’s still some sort of chick magnet. Still, I love the sonofabitch despite everything.” As you’re about to finish your illuminating conversation with Tina, you suddenly hear gunshots and yelling. “Oh shit!” you say believing that the military has returned already. Several of the trailer park crew start running towards the noise with weapons in hand. Tina calls out to a skinny one who looks like methhead. “Hey! Hey Dan, what the fuck’s goin’ on?” Tina shouts “A bunch of fuckin’ zombies or some shit are attackin’ us! Mel’s called almost everyone to defend the east and south part of the park. Looks like a shitload of them are comin’ from town!” “Wait, did you just say fuckin’ zombies?” Tina asks. “Yeah. I mean shit, I dunno what they are, I just know Bobby Ray got all bit up by one of them. Maybe they’re just cannibals or high on bath salts. Remember like that one time I…” “Dan, whatever! Just go! Go! Go! And you, get inside here, quick!” Tina says waving away Dan who continues to his destination. “But I gotta find my sister.” You remark “She’s probably safe with Jimmy Ray.” “Didn’t Dan say he just got bit by zombies?” “That was Bobby Ray! Now get yer ass in here, we’ll bar the door and hunker down inside here until Mel and the boys take care of this.” You’re not going to leave your sister’s potential fate in the hands of some redneck who you know nothing about though. You’re going to make the effort to at least find her; besides, you’d rather not barricade yourself in anywhere unless you have to. “Where is Jimmy’s trailer again?!” you ask. “You’re a damn idiot blondie. (sigh) it’s more towards the entrance and has a badly spray painted picture of a naked woman on the side of it. I suggest you get a move on.” Tina says and slams her door shut. You follow the advice and start heading towards your new destination, which has considerably more gunfire and shouting coming from that direction. You feel like you’re in one of those video games that you played on your computer sometimes, except this is unfortunately very real. With your rifle held in front of you the whole time, you continue to move at a quick yet cautious rate. You keep half expecting one of those freaks to suddenly jump out at you every time you pass one of the trailers. You catch a glance of people peeping out their windows of said trailers, sometimes you hear one of them shouting at you to “find some damn shelter.” Eventually you hear a voice calling at you from above. “Hey blondie, what the hell are you doing down there?” you look up and see a shirtless young man with a shotgun standing on top of the trailer. “Suzy?! What the hell are you doing?!” another voice shouts, but this one is coming from inside the trailer. Sounds like Donna. You glance back down and look at the trailer itself and notice that this is the one you’ve been looking for. You’re guessing that’s Jimmy Ray standing on top of his trailer. You can sort of see Donna going for a guy like him. He’s got a rugged handsome look rather than a grizzled, unkept or outright disgusting appearance that some of the other guys around here have. “Donna?! I was looking for you, that’s what I’m doing out here.” You say while swiveling your head in several directions to keep an eye on your surroundings. “Well now you’ve found me, now get inside!” Donna shouts and starts to open up the door. “Donna, don’t leave that door open too long, I’m watching the main fighting at the front of the park and it’s not looking good. The east side is doing better though.” “Aren’t you suppose to be helping Mel?” you ask. “Pfft, yeah right. I mean I don’t hate him or anything, but I’m not riskin’ my life for that asshole. Oh fuck! More of them are getting through, and I mean a shitload! Get your asses inside!” Jimmy Ray shouts and starts aiming his shotgun. You look and see a couple of the…things Dan was talking about. This is insane. Here you were worrying about the military and some unexpected threat like…zombies shows up? They can’t be zombies, they just can’t! Whatever they are, four of them are flailing about wildly and growling. They notice you and begin loping at you. The mere sight of them is troubling, but you quickly point your rifle at them and start firing. Jimmy’s shotgun gets one of them in the leg which he then shoots again in the body. Another gets its head blown off. You use up the remainder of the clip to kill the two remaining. One of them didn’t even drop down dead until he almost reached you. They don’t look rotten (though they do look dirty and disheveled…which isn’t unlike some of the hillbillies here) and you didn’t even shoot one in the head, so while they may NOT be zombies, they’re certainly inhuman enough for you to be scared. (Some sort of sickness perhaps?) Meanwhile Donna’s at the door and calling to you. You see now that she’s not wearing her own clothes, but rather a robe of some sort. Certainly not hers. “Suzy, please! Get inside NOW!” she shouts as more of those things come running in your direction. “Goddamn it, the pair of you need to get inside!” Jimmy shouts as he snaps off another shot. While the freaks are definitely advancing, they’re also splitting up to attack several trailers. You wonder if you shouldn’t just get Donna and make your way out of here since it looks like this place is going to be overrun. > You get in the trailer As tempting as it is to just run, once again, you don’t really have anywhere viable to run to and now you’d have a horde of those things possibly dogging your steps if you did, so you’re going to just be satisfied with short term safety and keep optimistic that things aren’t as hopeless as they seem. You run up the stairs and into the trailer. Donna slams and locks the door, and then you both shove a couch in front of it. You look up at the ceiling of the trailer and see the sun roof open which naturally explains how Jimmy Ray got up there. You can hear him firing and swearing. “Okay, I think we should be safe now.” Donna remarks. “I wouldn’t count on that. I mean yeah, they’d have a hell of time breaking through the door, and granted the windows are high enough that they might have trouble breaking and climbing into them, but I still don’t feel safe cooped up in here.” You say and start looking around for more furniture and start moving a table under the sunroof. “Suzy, what’re you doing?” “I’m going to go help your boyfriend if I can. You got a weapon down here?” “There’s Jimmy’s bat and some knives in the kitchen, but he really doesn’t need your help. You should stay down here, I mean what if they try to break in like you said?” “Well I’ll be able to shoot them from above a lot better from the roof. Climb up if things start getting grim.” You say and start climb through the roof. When you reach the roof, Jimmy notices you as he’s in the middle of reloading his weapon. “What the fuck are you doin’ up here, get back in the trailer with your sister!” he says. “I’m here to help.” You say scanning the area. “I don’t need any help, now…” You interrupt Jimmy, when you look over the other side of the trailer, see one particularly sneaky freak skulking near it and shoot him. “You aren’t even paying attention to the other side of the trailer. You need to be aware of your surroundings!” you say. “Aw, he couldn’t have gotten up here, and I would’ve heard him had he tried.” Jimmy remarks. “Fine, stay up here, but don’t get in my way!” he then adds realizing that you aren’t going anywhere. From on top of the trailer, you can see a good deal more of the park in general. You and Jimmy actually aren’t the only ones standing on a trailer, you see several women with guns doing their best at fighting off this horde. You even see Tina when you look back towards her trailer. The situation isn’t quite as grim as it once appeared as you see a group of hillbillies from the east side of the park making their way back and soon start helping out with mopping up the freaks that have infested it. Jimmy and yourself mostly keep to picking off the ones that come too close to his trailer. He actually compliments you or your shooting at one point. To be honest, it’s sort of weird to you how much of a natural you are at it. After few more bloody minutes, it’s mostly over and the…well you still don’t know WHAT they are exactly, but they’re no longer the threat they were. “Whew, I think we got the last of those sons of bitches.” Jimmy says. “Yeah, well I’m not in any hurry to check. I’m out of bullets anyway, so I’m just going to go back into the trailer with my sister.” “Okay, I’m gonna keep an eye out from here. Um… I wasn’t sure about you at first, but thanks for yer help.” Suddenly Donna’s head pops up from the opening in the roof. “What’s going on up here? The shooting has mostly stopped, is it over?” Donna asks. “It’s over in the sense that I’m guessing we aren’t in any danger of being overrun. Was everything okay down there? We were trying to keep them from clawing at the trailer too much.” You say. “Yeah, a few got as close as the door and then one of you guys shot them.” Donna says. “Shit, let’s get back down in the trailer.” Jimmy suddenly says walking over to where you and Donna are. “Did you just see more of those things?” “No, I see… “There you are, ya slackin’ piece of shit! Where the fuck were you when we needed help over on the east side of the park. Nearly got my ass eaten and not in a good way!” Mel shouts from the ground as he walks with a couple of other men behind him. “Aw Mel, I didn’t even know about it until it was too late, I was uh…” “You were thinkin’ with yer dick as usual. Is that…is that blondie there I see? Holy shit, didn’t think you were fool enough to fall fer this idiot’s charms.” Mel says. “I didn’t…I was looking for my sister and I helped her and Jimmy out here.” “Is that right?” Mel asks. “Yeah, it’s true! I was with her sister…and um, by the time I knew what was goin’ on I couldn’t leave this trailer because it was surrounded by those things! I was pickin’ them off with the shotgun and then Suzy came here and helped out. Good thing too. There were a shitload of them, as you can tell by the bodies!” Jimmy says and begins pointing at them. Mel stares at the bodies that Jimmy’s pointing to and doesn’t seem impressed. “Jimmy, yer so full of shit right now, yer eyes are brown. By the number of bodies here and their various distances from the trailer, it wasn’t THAT surrounded. Whatever, doesn’t matter, come on down, you’re comin’ with us.” “Where are we goin?” Jimmy asks. “We’re gonna go try to fetch some medical supplies from town. We got some people hurt pretty fuckin’ bad an’ other than a few half used basic medical kits that a few people scrounged up, all else we got is a shitload of alcohol. You’d think those military trucks woulda had some medical shit in them, but no. I suppose SOME people here got some meth, crack and a few other unconventional drugs, but last thing we need is more goddamn junkies runnin’ around here.” Mel says glaring at Dan. “Town? Um…don’t ya think it’ll be pretty fucked up there?” Jimmy asks. “Of course it’s gonna be fucked up there, but it needs to get done. Or we at least need to try. So come on Jimmy, get yer ass down here, what about you blondie?” Mel asks. “What about me what?” you ask. “You gonna come with us? Obviously you’re good enough with a weapon to take care of yourself an’ we’re a little short on that at the moment.” As Jimmy kisses Donna on the cheek and tells her something about coming back to her, you briefly consider Mel’s offer. While you’ve certainly “grown” past being the wallflower you tended to be, you know you’re not some action heroine badass. “While I appreciate the offer Mel, I think I’d be better off staying here, I’m still not as skilled as you guys are when it comes to shooting. I wouldn’t want to be a liability.” You say. “Hm, I guess that’s an honest assessment of yourself. Alright then, keep an eye out on things here. As for the rest of ya, come on let’s round up a few more folks and then let’s see just how fucked the town is.” Mel says and he and the rest walk off leaving you and Donna who duck back inside Jimmy’s trailer. “I’m really glad you didn’t go with them. I mean that’s gotta be a suicide mission.” Donna says. “Well it will certainly be dangerous that’s for sure.” You say. “So you still think it’s a good idea to stay here?” Donna asks. “Still want to leave huh?” you say. “Don’t you? I mean we just went through TWO major attacks at this place now! Who knows what the hell is gonna hit us next! More of those freaks probably, but I’m thinking that we got a better chance if we do leave this time.” “How’s that?” you ask. “Well Jimmy Ray’s got a truck that he parked between his trailer and the next one as a poor man’s barrier of sorts and he didn’t take his keys with him. In fact they’re over on the table over there. That suggests to me that we can easily take his while he’s gone. In fact, Mel and most of those redneck assholes will all be gone and the others are nursing their wounds, so now would be the perfect time to get the hell out of here.” “I used up all my ammo fighting off those cannibal things. What about weapons?” “I guess we’ll have to get by on close combat ones for awhile, but Jimmy’s probably got another gun in his bedroom somewhere. Look, I’ll search this place and you go grab your bags from our trailer. I still got a bag packed near my bed from yesterday, so you can grab that one too.” You chuckle a bit at Donna’s suggestion of completely robbing Jimmy Ray blind and take her plan into consideration. > You leave the park Given that you’ve been attacked by military, as well as a bunch of cannibal freaks… well sticking around here is looking a lot less desirable now and Donna’s idea is looking a lot more enticing. Plus if you were planning on ripping off this place and running off, this would be the best time to do it while everyone is a bit disarray and Mel and the better defenders of this place are gone. “Okay Donna I’m with you on this, but we really gotta do this shit quick.” You say. “Well of course. Like I said, you run over to our trailer and grab my bag and your own and rush back over. By the time you’re done, I should have found Jimmy’s keys and whatever else he’s got here that looks interesting.” Donna replies. You and Donna nod at the agreement of this plan then you slip out of the trailer and try to keep a low profile. It really isn’t difficult since the few people walking around don’t even know you and seem to be busy cleaning up the dead freaks lying on the ground. You do spot Tina, however and deliberately avoid her since if anyone is going to attempt to hold you up for any reason, it would likely be her. When you get to your trailer, you pack what items and clothing you can in your bags, zip ‘em up and then sling one over your shoulder then with your free hand you go into the bedroom and grab Tina’s bag. You leave your trailer and try to make it over to Jimmy’s as quick as you can. You get half way there and then you hear a familiar voice… “Hey blondie! Knew you survived, where the hell ya been, there’s fuckin’ work to do. Need all the help we can moving these fuckin’ bodies.” Tina shouts. You silently say “shit” to yourself and slowly turn around thinking up a lie that won’t attract too much suspicion, while at the same time is going to allow you avoid whatever work Tina had in mind for you. “Oh hey Tina. I’ve been…um just trying to recover from that recent attack just like everyone else. It was all sort of discombobulating you know?” you say. “Discom…what the fuck? Whatever, you don’t look hurt, so yer ass is needed to help move some bodies…and what’s with all the bags?” Tina asks. “Well, my sister Donna…” “Yeah where the fuck is Donna? She ain’t bit is she? Cause they put all those fuckers in a separate trailer. Even though I think they should just shoot the infected bastards. We all know how those movies go!” Tina interrupts. “Uh, no. She’s fine. Well not fine…” “Speak fucking plain blondie!” “My sister isn’t hurt physically, but she hasn’t handled the recent attack very well…she’s a wreck actually. Hysterical one moment, silent shock the next. Took me awhile to calm her down. She says she’d feel safer staying with Jimmy Ray, so that’s why I got all these bags with her stuff. I’m taking them over there.” “Donna broke down? Always thought she was miss cool, calm and collected and got over shit fairly quickly…hmmm, guess a few days sober in the face of brutal reality might break someone normally living in a drug, alcohol and sex fueled fantasy realm. I don’t remember her having all that shit. In fact aren’t some of those your bags?” “Yeah, she never brought that many clothes and I figured she could borrow some of my stuff. Figured I’d let her choose while I continued to talk with her. I mean I can still help with body moving thing, but I just really need to go help my sister first.” “(Sigh) Fine. No point in having a hysterical bitch making life miserable with bouts of screaming. Do what you need to do, but as soon as yer done, you help out with moving these bodies.” “Got it. I’ll really try to be quick.” You say. After parting company with Tina, you continue to head over to Jimmy’s as quick as you can where Donna is sitting on a chair waiting for you. “Would’ve been quicker, but I had to talk my way out of moving dead bodies with Tina.” You say. “It’s fine, here.” Donna says and takes her bag while thrusting a pistol into your hand. “It’s the only one I could find. You might as well take it, since you’re obviously more experienced with shooting than I am by now.” “Well thanks I guess. You got the keys too I trust?” “Yep, truck’s right next to this trailer. Though getting out isn’t going to be as quick as I’d like due to the way its parked, but we’ll just deal with that as it comes. You ready?” “Let’s do it.” You and Donna run out of the trailer and turn the corner where Jimmy’s truck is parked. Donna was right about how it’s parked. Somehow he managed to wedge it between his trailer and the neighboring one pretty good. Donna’s going to have to do a lot of reversing and forward driving to get it out, but you’re wondering if you’re going to have time for all that. Throwing the bags in the back of the pick up, Donna gets into the driver’s seat and quickly unlocks the passenger sider before starting up the truck. DOesn’t take long before Donna’s bashing the hell out of the front end AND the back end of the truck against the trailers, attempting to get it out of it’s parking space. It also doesn’t take long before several people hear this noise. “HEY! THOSE TWO BITCHES ARE TRYING TO STEAL ONE OF OUR TRUCKS!” a voice shouts. Several of the trailer park residents attempt to rush at the truck at first, but after you fire a few shots at them, they retreat and re-think that plan. “Donna come on! We ain’t got much time before they go and get their guns and start firing back!” you shout. “I know! I know! Fuck! Shit! This truck is really wedged in!” Donna shouts. The scraping of metal and the continued destruction of the truck’s front end is in full force as Donna decides to just give the truck a hard turn in an attempt to escape. It works and you’re soon free, now you just have to drive out of the vicinity of the trailer park altogether because now bullets are damaging the truck. “Shit!” “Just get to the road Donna and drive west!” you shout. “It should be just a little, oh fuck!” Donna shouts as suddenly hits one of the rednecks with the truck. In fact she ran right over her. “Go! Go! Just fucking go!” you shout ducking your head down as another bullet breaks the back window. Soon, Donna manages to get back on the road though there are a few more shots fired in your direction. “Goddamnit, I think they hit the tires! This thing’s getting hard to control!” Donna shouts. “Well we’re going to have to ride the rims, because we’re not out of danger yet.” You reply. “Got that right bitch!” a voice suddenly says and then a large arm with a hook comes through the broken back window. You’re startled enough by this unexpected event that you fumble with your pistol and drop it on the floor. As you scramble for the pistol, Donna screams and attempts to simultaneously keep control of the vehicle as well as not get impaled with a large metal object. When you finally get the pistol, an elbow goes into your face and a hand tries to grab your weapon. Donna slams on the breaks, which causes this unwanted hitchhiker to lose her grip on you and fall backwards a bit though she manages to hang on by embedding her hook into the front seat of the truck. Still, it’s just enough time for you to gain the advantage. You swing around to turn to your attacker and see an angry looking woman with a buzz cut before you shoot her. At this range you don’t miss and half of her face is blown off before she releases her grip from the hook and her body falls backwards towards the tail end of the truck bed. “She’s dead, get us the hell outta here before the rest catch up!” you shout seeing a few people coming from the trailer park. “Holy shit, who the hell was that and how the hell did she sneak into the truck bed?!” Donna says flooring the gas. “Dunno, doesn’t matter, like I said, get us the hell outta here!” Donna’s a little shaken up from all this, but keeps her cool and by the time you put a lot of distance between you and the trailer park she’s a lot calmer. Still, you’re concerned that someone is going to give chase in another vehicle. “Fuck, that was intense.” Donna exclaims. “Yeah, well I knew it wasn’t going to be easy when you suggested it.” “Still, we did it though. When me and you work as a team we seem to overcome all odds.” Donna says in a slightly upbeat tone. “Well so far things have worked in our favor. Sort of worried about how far we’re actually going to get in this truck though. We’ve got at least one damaged back tire and who knows if they’re going to pursue us in their own vehicles.” You say. At this point you continue to look behind you to see if anyone is following, but happily you don’t see anyone. You and Donna don’t say much for the next few miles. Maybe it’s because neither of you really knows what’s going to come next. You’re in a rural area with a truck that may or may not be drivable for very long. Neither of you has any money or anything really to barter with if you needed to fix it in someway. Well there is ONE thing you both have, but you’re not exactly willing to do that. (Though you imagine it wouldn’t be a problem for your sister) If anything, your mindset has gotten a bit on the darker side of things due to the past few days. If the world is indeed going the way of chaos, you’re starting to think why not embrace it? You have a gun, and so far you’ve come to the conclusion that they’ve been solving a lot of problems for you. As you dwell on these thoughts, your sister suddenly speaks. “Hey Suzy, there’s a group of tents up ahead. Looks almost like a circus or something. I thought I heard someone mention at the trailer park about one up this way. Should we stop and see if we can get help there?” Donna asks. “Hmm, nah. We should keep going. We still need to put more distance between us and that damn trailer park. Besides, I doubt if a bunch of carnies is going to be much better than a bunch of rednecks.” You answer. Donna nods and continues to drive. Leaving you to your thoughts, which are now starting to envision improving your situation by robbing some idiot of their belongings. You turn the radio on in an attempt to find something to keep your mind occupied, but its mostly Ground Zero commercials. You get a few doomsday religious preachers too, which is even worse. You turn off the radio in dismay and return to your introspection until Donna speaks up again. “Hey Suzy?” Donna asks. “Yeah?” you reply. “Do you think the world is going to end?” “I dunno. Maybe. Though as far as I’m concerned, it already ended for me when I had to leave my basement.” “Yeah…I suppose it would. Hey, if you want we could turn around and go home. You could take back your basement and shoot Kelly in the face.” You chuckle a bit at that suggestion. “That’s definitely a tempting idea. I think we’re better off driving into the unknown though. Like you said, when we work as a team, it somehow works out for us.” You say which Donna returns your sentiment with a smile. Eventually the day starts turning to night and you start to get tired. The stress of the day has finally caught up with you. Surprisingly Donna’s still alert. So far the truck hasn’t given any problems though you know you’re riding on a flat (or at least low) back tire by this point. You honestly don’t know what you’re going to do next, but for now you’re going to try to get some rest as you drift off to sleep… > Next day… FRIDAY “Suzy…hey Suzy…get up.” Donna remarks. “Huh? What’s going on? What time is it?” you answer half asleep. “I dunno, I think it’s getting up for the afternoon. Really I’m sort of surprised you didn’t at least stir a little since you fell asleep last night. You really are a deep sleeper.” “Guess yesterday’s cannibal killing and grand theft auto really took it out of me. Hey we’re not moving.” You say looking around and seeing that you’re parked off the side of the road. “No, I pulled over to sleep sometime after midnight.” “What? That was dangerous! You should’ve woke me up then! I could’ve kept a look out or even taken over with the driving! I mean we could’ve been attacked by who knows what during the night!” you exclaim. “We were fine. While I’ve seen a few abandoned vehicles, I haven’t seen a single person driving on this road since we started yesterday. Nobody behind us, and nobody coming from the other direction either.” “I don’t care if we were driving in a fucking desolate wasteland, we’ve got cannibals running around, a break down of society and there’s still the potential of angry rednecks coming after us! Next time THINK!” “Okay…okay…sorry Suzy.“ Donna says rather meekly. You give Donna a dirty look, but tell her to forget it. Actually you’re sort of surprised she didn’t put up more of a fight since it’s not like her to back down from an argument, but maybe she’s becoming a little afraid of you. “Well, seeing as things are deader than a tomb around here, we might as well take this opportunity to dump our passenger in the back.” You say. “Oh, yeah.” Donna replies. As you step out of the truck, you look at her to do likewise to help. “Oh. Wait, you wanted me to help?” “That was the idea.” “(Sigh) Alright.” You and Donna go to the back of the truck and open up the tailgate. The redneck woman’s head that was propped up on it slumps in front of you. Flies have already begun gathering on her face. “Ugh. She’s already beginning to rot.” Donna says and chokes a bit. “She was pretty tall that’s for sure. It is sort of amazing she managed to jump in the truck bed without us realizing it. Maybe it was when you ran over that other girl.” You remark. “She fucking attacked us with a hook too. That’s like something out of a horror movie.” “Everything about what’s happened to us this week is like something out of a horror movie. I saw Tina with one of those hooks yesterday, I think they were moving bodies with them. Y’know, I never officially met her…but I think this was the infamous Butchie Billie I’d hear about every so often. Anyway, let’s pull her dead ass out.” Grabbing one arm and Donna grabbing the other, you pull what you believe to be the corpse of Butchie Billie out of the truck. Donna doesn’t have that great of a hold on her and drops her end causing you to nearly fall to the ground too. “Goddamnit Donna, you can’t…argh. Fuck it. I’ll do it myself!” you say in exasperation. You proceed to kick and roll the body further away from the road and into the brush. “Good enough.” You say breathing a little heavy. “Whew, open up one of my bags, I’m fairly certain I packed a few bottles of water in there.” Donna gets in the bed of the truck and starts unzipping bags. Eventually she finds the water and passes you one and takes one for herself. As you drink, you notice both of your back tires are completely flat. You knew one of them was, but you guess the other one gave up during the night. “Our tires are fucked. I mean we could still drive on them, but it wouldn’t be a pleasant ride.” You say. “Doesn’t matter really, judging by the gauge last night we’re almost out of gas too. Jimmy apparently didn’t keep this truck gassed up in case of an emergency.” Donna says. “Great.” “I mean I suppose we could just keep driving until we can’t anymore or we possibly find an auto shop.” “Auto shop? Out in the sticks?” “Well I dunno, don’t they usually have those last chance gas mechanic things along roadsides like this? Besides I think we’re starting to get past the farmland and should be hitting more populated areas soon. Security City is this way after all.” Donna says. “Given what happened to our town, that might not be a good thing. We still don’t know what the fuck is going on. All we do know is the government declared martial law and there are rabid people running around.” You say. “Well I wasn’t suggesting we go to Security City, I was just saying we should be hitting more populated areas due it being close by. Look, obviously I don’t have a good idea of what to do next, so if you got a long term plan, then by all means let’s follow it.” Before you can reply, you hear the sound of vehicle. You peek your head out from behind the truck and see a car heading in your direction. It’s going at a good pace, but MAYBE you can stop it. “Donna, a car’s coming. Quick, tear your clothing and go out in the road and look like a slutty damsel in distress!” you say. “What?!” “Just fucking do it!” you say and check to see how many bullets you have. Donna, gets the picture quickly, though you can tell she’s not entirely happy with this arrangement. You hide behind the truck’s side away from the road, while Donna gets in the middle of the road and waves her arms. You can’t believe you’re actually enacting a plan you thought up in your head just yesterday. You just hope whoever the driver is; they actually stop and don’t try to do something like say run over Donna instead. The car approaches and actually starts to slow down and then eventually stops, but it does so at a distance. Someone then steps out of the passenger side armed with a sub-machine gun. “Alright honey, if you want to live, I suggest you don’t move.” He says. “Don’t shoot! I’m completely unarmed! This isn’t some sort of trick! Please, I just need help, my truck has flat tires and I don’t have any way now to get to Security City!” Donna exclaims. “Security City? Hah! You don’t wanna go there trust me. The whole place is fucked! If the military doesn’t round you up and kill ya, the cannibal freaks running all over the place will.” The man shouts. Well you know that place is definitely off the list now. “Oh no! I don’t know where to go then! I’m just so lost by myself! Where are you guys going? Can I come with you?” Donna asks. “Come with us? Look, I dunno if that’s a good idea. We’re pretty full up with shit and there isn’t much room in this car…” “That’s okay, I won’t take up much room. I mean I’ll sit on your lap if I have to.” “Sit on my…” “Look I’ll do anything you and your friend want! I’ll suck your cocks and fuck you if I have to! Just I can’t be alone! Not after those things tried to kill and eat me yesterday!” Donna screams and starts to rub her eyes and sniffling. At this point the man with the sub-machine gun pauses. “Hold on.” He says and then converses with his driver buddy for a moment. You continue to wait patiently hoping they take this bait. “Alright honey, you can come with us, but that payment you just offered? Well we’ll be taking it now, so I hope you’re ready to back up your promises.” The passenger shouts and then gets back in the car, which slowly drives up closer to meet Donna. When they drive up near the other side of the truck, you wonder if you should wait a little longer to make sure they’re completely vulnerable or sneak around the truck and open fire now. > You open fire now You sneak around towards the front end of the truck and then see Mr. passenger get out of the car. “Okay baby, where are we doing this? The back seat of the car is pretty full as you can see. We can do it in your truck if you want. Front seat or the bed of it. Doesn’t matter to me.” He says and then you come out from your hiding spot to blast him in the head. “OH SHIT MITCH GET BACK IN THE FUCKING CAR!” the driver shouts. He must’ve seen you in his rear view mirror and it’s distracting enough that you miss your shot allowing Mitch to duck and scramble for the cover of the car. At this point Donna screams and runs off and you start firing into the car. You aren’t sure if you hit the driver or not, but the car starts going in reverse. Not at an excessively fast speed, but you barely get out the way. Falling back on your ass you watch as the car continues rolling past you with the driver slumped over the wheel. Unfortunately you aren’t able to celebrate this good fortune because while you were falling and trying to get out a rolling car’s way, Mitch ran around the front of the rolling car and around your truck to get the drop on you. You recover just in time to see a sub-machine gun pointed at you and then the muzzle flash of multiple bullets ripping your skull apart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “Suzy…hey Suzy…get up.” Donna remarks. “Huh? What’s going on? What time is it?” you answer half asleep. “I dunno, I think it’s getting up for the afternoon. Really I’m sort of surprised you didn’t at least stir a little since you fell asleep last night. You really are a deep sleeper.” “Guess yesterday’s cannibal killing and grand theft auto really took it out of me. Hey we’re not moving.” You say looking around and seeing that you’re parked off the side of the road. “No, I pulled over to sleep sometime after midnight.” “What? That was dangerous! You should’ve woke me up then! I could’ve kept a look out or even taken over with the driving! I mean we could’ve been attacked by who knows what during the night!” you exclaim. “We were fine. While I’ve seen a few abandoned vehicles, I haven’t seen a single person driving on this road since we started yesterday. Nobody behind us, and nobody coming from the other direction either.” “I don’t care if we were driving in a fucking desolate wasteland, we’ve got cannibals running around, a break down of society and there’s still the potential of angry rednecks coming after us! Next time THINK!” “Okay…okay…sorry Suzy.“ Donna says rather meekly. You give Donna a dirty look, but tell her to forget it. Actually you’re sort of surprised she didn’t put up more of a fight since it’s not like her to back down from an argument, but maybe she’s becoming a little afraid of you. “Well, seeing as things are deader than a tomb around here, we might as well take this opportunity to dump our passenger in the back.” You say. “Oh, yeah.” Donna replies. As you step out of the truck, you look at her to do likewise to help. “Oh. Wait, you wanted me to help?” “That was the idea.” “(Sigh) Alright.” You and Donna go to the back of the truck and open up the tailgate. The redneck woman’s head that was propped up on it slumps in front of you. Flies have already begun gathering on her face. “Ugh. She’s already beginning to rot.” Donna says and chokes a bit. “She was pretty tall that’s for sure. It is sort of amazing she managed to jump in the truck bed without us realizing it. Maybe it was when you ran over that other girl.” You remark. “She fucking attacked us with a hook too. That’s like something out of a horror movie.” “Everything about what’s happened to us this week is like something out of a horror movie. I saw Tina with one of those hooks yesterday, I think they were moving bodies with them. Y’know, I never officially met her…but I think this was the infamous Butchie Billie I’d hear about every so often. Anyway, let’s pull her dead ass out.” Grabbing one arm and Donna grabbing the other, you pull what you believe to be the corpse of Butchie Billie out of the truck. Donna doesn’t have that great of a hold on her and drops her end causing you to nearly fall to the ground too. “Goddamnit Donna, you can’t…argh. Fuck it. I’ll do it myself!” you say in exasperation. You proceed to kick and roll the body further away from the road and into the brush. “Good enough.” You say breathing a little heavy. “Whew, open up one of my bags, I’m fairly certain I packed a few bottles of water in there.” Donna gets in the bed of the truck and starts unzipping bags. Eventually she finds the water and passes you one and takes one for herself. As you drink, you notice both of your back tires are completely flat. You knew one of them was, but you guess the other one gave up during the night. “Our tires are fucked. I mean we could still drive on them, but it wouldn’t be a pleasant ride.” You say. “Doesn’t matter really, judging by the gauge last night we’re almost out of gas too. Jimmy apparently didn’t keep this truck gassed up in case of an emergency.” Donna says. “Great.” “I mean I suppose we could just keep driving until we can’t anymore or we possibly find an auto shop.” “Auto shop? Out in the sticks?” “Well I dunno, don’t they usually have those last chance gas mechanic things along roadsides like this? Besides I think we’re starting to get past the farmland and should be hitting more populated areas soon. Security City is this way after all.” Donna says. “Given what happened to our town, that might not be a good thing. We still don’t know what the fuck is going on. All we do know is the government declared martial law and there are rabid people running around.” You say. “Well I wasn’t suggesting we go to Security City, I was just saying we should be hitting more populated areas due it being close by. Look, obviously I don’t have a good idea of what to do next, so if you got a long term plan, then by all means let’s follow it.” Before you can reply, you hear the sound of vehicle. You peek your head out from behind the truck and see a car heading in your direction. It’s going at a good pace, but MAYBE you can stop it. “Donna, a car’s coming. Quick, tear your clothing and go out in the road and look like a slutty damsel in distress!” you say. “What?!” “Just fucking do it!” you say and check to see how many bullets you have. Donna, gets the picture quickly, though you can tell she’s not entirely happy with this arrangement. You hide behind the truck’s side away from the road, while Donna gets in the middle of the road and waves her arms. You can’t believe you’re actually enacting a plan you thought up in your head just yesterday. You just hope whoever the driver is; they actually stop and don’t try to do something like say run over Donna instead. The car approaches and actually starts to slow down and then eventually stops, but it does so at a distance. Someone then steps out of the passenger side armed with a sub-machine gun. “Alright honey, if you want to live, I suggest you don’t move.” He says. “Don’t shoot! I’m completely unarmed! This isn’t some sort of trick! Please, I just need help, my truck has flat tires and I don’t have any way now to get to Security City!” Donna exclaims. “Security City? Hah! You don’t wanna go there trust me. The whole place is fucked! If the military doesn’t round you up and kill ya, the cannibal freaks running all over the place will.” The man shouts. Well you know that place is definitely off the list now. “Oh no! I don’t know where to go then! I’m just so lost by myself! Where are you guys going? Can I come with you?” Donna asks. “Come with us? Look, I dunno if that’s a good idea. We’re pretty full up with shit and there isn’t much room in this car…” “That’s okay, I won’t take up much room. I mean I’ll sit on your lap if I have to.” “Sit on my…” “Look I’ll do anything you and your friend want! I’ll suck your cocks and fuck you if I have to! Just I can’t be alone! Not after those things tried to kill and eat me yesterday!” Donna screams and starts to rub her eyes and sniffling. At this point the man with the sub-machine gun pauses. “Hold on.” He says and then converses with his driver buddy for a moment. You continue to wait patiently hoping they take this bait. “Alright honey, you can come with us, but that payment you just offered? Well we’ll be taking it now, so I hope you’re ready to back up your promises.” The passenger shouts and then gets back in the car, which slowly drives up closer to meet Donna. When they drive up near the other side of the truck, you wonder if you should wait a little longer to make sure they’re completely vulnerable or sneak around the truck and open fire now. > You wait a little longer You decide that it would be best if they were completely pre-occupied. If you shoot now, the driver could either manage to drive off or the passenger could start spraying the place with bullets. Still, you sneak around towards the front end of the truck so you can at least ambush from behind when you do strike. “Okay baby, where are we doing this? The back seat of the car is pretty full as you can see. We can do it in your truck if you want. Front seat or the bed of it. Doesn’t matter to me.” The passenger says getting back out of the car. “Uh, no not the truck. It got all shot up yesterday, back window broke and there’s broken glass everywhere. Don’t want to potentially get cut up.” “Hmm, well the hood of this car then?” At this point Donna walks up to him and starts to do what she does best. Namely act like a slut. “How about I do the both of you at the same time? That way you both get off and we can be on our way a lot quicker.” she says and starts rubbing up against Mr. passenger. “Well now. That’s an interesting suggestion…how were you proposing the logistics of this?” “Oh that’s easy… you see, first I take off my clothes…” Donna says and quickly takes her clothing off until she’s completely naked. “Next, I just get on my knees in this front seat here… and start to unbuckle your friend’s pants…” You can’t see the driver from your position since he’s never moved out from his seat, but he’s obviously okay with this since you hear a couple of moans of pleasure. “And now…well don’t just stand there silly. My ass is right in front of you, start fucking!” Donna commands. “Wait, you want me to fuck you in the ass?!” Mr. passenger asks. “Well it’s not gonna fuck itself. Do what you want. I gotta concentrate on wrapping my lips around this nice hard cock…mmmmm…” Holy shit, talk about taking one for the team…hell taking TWO for the team. At this point Mr. passenger can’t err on the side of caution any longer. He places his gun on the roof of the car and presumably starts taking your sister in a way that you imagine many men have taken her before. With one dick in her mouth and another in her ass, you’re fairly confident now that Donna’s distracted them both to the point that you have the complete advantage. You step out from the front of truck and walk towards the car parked near it. Mr. passenger’s eyes aren’t watching as he’s focused on thrusting into your sister. His head is a perfect target and with a single shot, you end him as a threat. “Oh shit! Oh shit! ARGH! MY DICK! FUCKING BITCH!” you hear the driver shout. You rush over to the driver’s side and point the gun at his head before he can start beating on your sister’s head in an effort to get her off his dick. “You move to your hands to hit my sister and you die. You try to start up the car and you die. If you want your life AND your dick to stay intact then I suggest you follow my orders. First thing, car keys.” “OKAY OKAY! ARGH! JUST TELL HER TO STOP BITING MY DICK!” the driver shouts and hastily hands you his car keys. “Okay, that’s a start. Alright, Donna, you can release his dick now, I’ll take it from here.” Donna complies and then spits in the driver’s face before he staggers out of the car with his pants half down. You tell her to grab your bags from the truck and put them in the car. “Okay, we’re going to be taking this car and everything in it. In exchange, you can take our truck. Granted it has two flat tires and is low on gas, but if you’re lucky, you might just reach a trailer park that has lots of people willing to help you. You ready Donna?” “Almost.” Donna remarks. You turn back to the driver who is still mostly holding on to his dick wincing in pain. “Okay, well I guess this is where we part ways. Thanks for the info about Security City. We’ll be sure to avoid going there…and uh…bye. Oh, and watch your head.” “Wha…?” is all the driver says before you shoot him and get in the car. “I thought you were letting him live.” Donna says. “What? And let a man who defiled my poor sister’s mouth walk away to brag about it? Not fucking likely.” You say and start the car up. As you spin the car around to head back in your original direction, you ask Donna if she’s okay since she’s fidgeting a bit in her seat. “So…um, are you okay?” you ask. “I’m fine. It’s done. We worked together and we succeeded. I think we both know our established roles are in this team. We all have our talents. Let’s not talk about it.“ Donna says. She doesn’t exactly sound angry, but she obviously isn’t leaping for joy about what she did. You almost want to talk more about what just happened, but given that your sister doesn’t you don’t press the issue and just drive. As you’re driving, Donna suddenly speaks up again. “Next time, don’t fucking kill the guy while he’s still inside me. Tell him to move away or something first. I had a dead man’s dick shooting cum in my ass for a split second before he fell. I’ll admit to being a free spirited gal comfortable with my sexuality, but I didn’t want to include necrophilia in my list of things I’m willing to do.” Wow. You didn’t really expect to hear that graphic detail. It’s actually a bit nasty and you can see why Donna’s in the mood she’s in. “Okay Donna. Damn, sorry about that. I wasn’t thinking.” You say. “Well like I said, it’s done. Let’s just not speak of it again. (Sigh) Probably for the best he didn’t go the traditional route or else he might’ve impregnated me when he shot his load and I might’ve given birth to zombie babies or some shit.” Donna remarks. The situation is pretty fucked up, but you’re having a hard trying not to laugh now. “I don’t think it works that way Donna. Pretty sure you would’ve given birth to a normal baby.” You say with a stifled chuckle. “Yeah, well that would be just as bad.” You decide not to make any more comments even though there’s a really twisted part of you that is finding this all pretty amusing and wants to make jokes. It’s almost like you’re sort of getting a kick out of Donna’s discomfort. Maybe it’s pent up hostility you’ve had for her due to how she’s acted towards you in the past. Maybe it’s some sort of sadistic side you’ve always harbored and it’s just recently come out due to this week’s events. In any case, it’s slightly worrying to you, since you’re starting to wonder how far you’re going to start abandoning “civility.” You’ve already committed murder on several occasions, and while the first time was in self-defense, the ones following it have been getting progressively more predatory. A few more remorseless murders and you’re going to be just like your Uncle Ed. (Now you’re wondering if it’s genetic) You and Donna continue to drive. A couple of other cars do pass you on the road. You imagine they must be coming from Security City or fleeing it from your previous information. You’re just glad you haven’t come across any military trying to block the road. You continue to drive for about a half hour before you see something of interest in the distance. Namely a truck stop, which apparently has been converted into a minor fortress. “Well that’s interesting.” You say. “Is that a truck stop?” Donna asks. “Yeah I think so. Looks like whoever is there are trying to block the place off by putting trucks around it. They even got people standing on top of the trucks with rifles as lookouts. “ you say. “Are we stopping there?” “I dunno. Whoever is there probably isn’t going to be too trustful of anyone. Though, we still don’t have that much of long term plan. A place like this might be a safe haven of sorts. I mean it already looks way better defended than that trailer park.” “Well, it’s up to you. But I think we’re going to have to be more careful at a place like this.” “We might as well chance it if only to catch a breather and maybe get some directions because I can honestly say I don’t know where the fuck we are or where we should be going. That’s assuming they even let us in.” You and Donna drive to the truck stop, which immediately causes the lookouts to point and raise their rifles in your direction. When you stop in front of it, there are a lot of shouts for you to stay in the car. “We’re not just letting anyone in here. Who are ya, and state yer business!” the lookout from above shouts. “Just a couple poor souls trying to escape the chaos out there! Our home town was overrun by military and crazy people. We’ve also been attacked by others who would try to take advantage of us. Please, we’re just looking for some sort of refuge even if it’s temporary. We got some supplies in our car.” “Hrmmm, well whatta you got?” You turn your head to look in the back seat to actually see what you “inherited” since you never looked before. You see a first aid kit on top of a pile of bags. “Um…we got some medicine. Maybe that could help?” you say. There is a long pause and he tells you to wait before climbing down the truck and disappearing from sight. Eventually you hear his voice again which is now coming from behind the truck barricade. “Okay, we’re gonna move this truck, but one funny thing happens and you’re the first one getting a bullet to the head. Alright, we’re letting this one in, everyone keep extra look out for those rabid bastards!” As soon as the truck is moved out your way, the man who was barking orders at you waves you in and motions you over to a parking spot with some other cars. As soon as you drive in they put the truck back. Either they’re really safety conscience or they don’t want to risk having you get away. “Well let’s hope these people are just normal people trying to survive and aren’t a gang of rapists.” You remark. From this distance you see several more people in the building part of the truck stop. Looks like it’s a general store/diner combo. Most of them are watching you from the windows, though a few of them come out, one of them is an older man with a cane who walks directly towards the car. “Okay, I want the two you in that car to exit it slowly. I don’t care if you got weapons, but don’t point them at me or anyone else in a threatening manner.” The old man shouts. You take your pistol and shove it in the front of your pants. As for your newly acquired sub-machine gun, you just leave it in the car when you and Donna exit it. Naturally rifles are pointed at the pair of you, but the old man with the cane shouts telling them to calm down. “You lot, stop pointing your guns and start unloading the car. Sorry about that, everyone’s a little on edge. Name’s Henry. I own this place.” He says. “My name’s Suzy, and I get it.” “So what are two pretty young girls doing driving around in this mess?” “Long story, but I’ll just say, my sister and I are grateful for the shelter if only for awhile.” “Hm, think nothing of it. Really though, if you two are willing to pull yer weight around here, yer welcome to stay as long as you like. Right now we’ve got plenty of supplies and whatever useful supplies you have can be considered payment for your way in here.” “Well, that’s certainly an offer to think about, but I’m not exactly sure what we’d do around here.” You answer. “We can find something I’m sure. Anyway, I just mention it because I’ve been trying to contact various places on my Ham Radio, and all I can gather is what’s been going on is pretty serious and I’m not sure if there’s any place I could direct you where to go that would be as safe as this place right now. Security City is completely overrun and the closest military Fort around here, Fort Timons doesn’t even know what the fuck is going on other than the obvious. Besides, I don’t think you’d get in there anyway, not being military and all.” “This place is really safe huh?” you ask. “Well not to brag, but we just fended off a big horde of those rabid freak things that I imagine wandered from the city yesterday. Didn’t even lose anyone either. Wasn’t fun though and I’m glad no more of those things have popped up, but yeah, I think we’re doing good job of keeping this place safe. Anyway, you’re good to stay for the night, unless you let me know you want to stick around longer and we’ll find something for the both of you to do. Okay, I’m going to go make sure these boys don’t take EVERYTHING of yours in that car.” Henry says and then walks over to oversee his people unloading your car. Well it’s a similar situation you had in the trailer park. Pull your weight or get the hell out. Funny how that worked out. Maybe you could try to do the “community” thing again. The trailer park wasn’t exactly filled with welcoming people, maybe things here could be different and you could actually feel safe here. This place does seem a little better organized and definitely better defended. Really, the only reason why you left the trailer park to begin with was at the insistence of your sister and the fact that it was getting pretty dangerous there. Then again, this place could turn out to be just as bad where you don’t get along with anyone and everything eventually turns into a cluster fuck. Maybe you might as well save yourself the bother by leaving tomorrow. > You make long term plans While this place might very well not work out, you decide you need to at least make a go of it. Given that you turned to murder and banditry fairly quickly you think you need some semblance of law and order to keep yourself from becoming a complete savage, but more importantly you think Donna needs this more than you do. This whole week, Donna’s been flip flopping a bit on the whole “trying to get her life together” thing. Granted she hasn’t had a great foundation, but if you stay on the road and just drift, about the only thing she’s ever going to be useful for is…well bait for whomever else you decide to rob in the future. “Hey Donna, I think we should stay here and by that I mean try to do what we were doing in the trailer park until we ran out like a pair of thieves.” “Suzy, you know that place wasn’t turning out good for us.” “Yeah, I know, that’s why I ultimately agreed with your plan to leave it…but I can’t help think that if we’d done things a little differently…well doesn’t matter. My point is, I think we BOTH need some structure.” “Structure? You’re joking right?” At this point you grab Donna by the arm and go to speak to her away from the earshot of those nearby. “No Donna, I’m not fucking joking. Thursday, we stole a truck and killed two people who were just trying to stop us. Earlier today, we basically did the same thing except it was premeditated. You see a pattern emerging?” “Hey, I didn’t mean to run over that woman at the trailer park and I didn’t know you were going to kill those two guys with the car.” “Donna, don’t play the babe in the woods routine. Granted I’LL take the blame for murdering those guys in cold blood, but you knew damn well that it was a possibility. You went along with it.” “I went along with it, because you were practically shoving me in the road, telling me to strip to get those guys attention in the first place. It wasn’t YOU who had to role-play a pig on a spit to distract them. Besides, we had to do it for survival.” “And that’s my point. First we’re doing it for survival, how long before we start doing it for fun? I mean…(Sigh) I don’t know about you, but for the past few days, my mind has been going to a dark place. Quite frankly a place I didn’t think I had. I mean I’ve killed several people at this point and I don’t feel particularly bad about it. Like I don’t feel anything.” “Geez, Suzy…” “Yeah, I’m apparently more fucked up than I ever realized, but what about you? I mean you’ve relied on your looks and sex to get what you want for the most part. Do you really think that’s a great way to go through life? I even used you as slut bait so we could rip off someone a lot easier. Hell, I pretty much pimped you out and I think it’s the only thing fucked up thing I’ve done recently that I HAVE actually felt bad about doing on some level. You shouldn’t have to be taking random dicks in the ass and mouth just so we can get by. And I’m really sorry for that. We both NEED a better plan for our future and drifting from place to place isn’t it.” Donna’s silent for a moment. “But what would we do here? How would we contribute?” “I dunno, but I’m going to go talk to that Henry guy about it.” You say and then head over back to Henry who is overseeing his people taking all the shit out of your car. “Oh hey there…Suzy wasn’t it?” Henry remarks. “Yeah.” You answer. “Well Suzy, you’ll be happy to know we haven’t taken much, save for the couple of first aid kits you had. We got tons of food and water, so we really didn’t need any of that. Oh, didn’t take your weapons either. Got enough of those too.” “Um…thanks, but I wanted to talk to you about staying.” “Good, we could use the help, so what skills do you have?” Henry asks. “Well, I killed a lot of those cannibal freaks. I also had to kill a few regular psychos as well this week. Guess you could say I’ve become a fast learner in the ways of the gun…so do you need another lookout?” “Wouldn’t turn one down if you’re feeling up to the task. Not many here actually want to do it. Anyway, I’ll make sure to get you a rifle, but what about your sister? What’s she do?” Before you can answer, your sister Donna has come up to speak for herself. “I’m a people person! I used to plan parties and other similar social events. Made sure people had a good time. Now while that might not sound very useful, I think given our current situation it could be. I mean I can’t imagine spirits around here are very high. And when spirits aren’t very high, everything else goes to shit. I think I could help out in making sure people stay positive.” Donna says with a chipper tone and a smile. Henry scratches his head and returns a brief grin. “Well now, that is an interesting proposal and I have to say you do have a pretty cheery attitude. You’re right in that everyone has been on edge and not in the best of moods. I’m really not sure how you propose to change that, but if you can do it, well that would be pretty helpful. Though you’re still going to have to do something else in the meantime, I think the wait staff in the diner needs help with going through the inventory. Go see Anne in the diner; she’ll be able to direct you. Okay, well that’s settled. You ready for your assignment Suzy?” “Yeah, hold on. Just want to talk to my sister for a moment.” “Sure.” Once again you take Donna aside away from earshot. “Donna, what was all that about planning parties and shit?” you ask. “What? I did used to plan parties over Julie’s house remember?” Donna says. “I didn’t think you guys actually planned them so much as you just invited a bunch of people over.” “Well okay, yeah most of the time that was the case, but really I was the main one that got those parties going to be more exciting than they actually were. I also curbed the more destructive elements that actually occurred at those things by keeping people positive and happy.” “So…what? You’re going to turn this place into a rave orgy?” “No…well I mean I wish, but all I have to do is take my interpersonal skills and channel them in some way that will work here. Look, you said we need to try to start over. Well, I’m going to improvise with what I can so we can make a go of it here.” “You’re right Donna. Okay, well I’ll leave you to it.” Before you leave, Donna moves in to hug you. You weren’t expecting it, but you return the hug. “Be careful Suzy, don’t get eaten.” Donna remarks. “Don’t worry about me, you just focus on what you need to do.” You say. With those parting words, Donna heads towards the diner and you go back to Henry for your assignment. Henry apparently has already told some of his people that you’ll be joining them on the truck tops keeping a look out and hands you a rifle. Henry also mentions that this decision was met with mixed results. Some were happy since it meant they could take more breaks, others didn’t like the idea since nobody really knows who the fuck you are and don’t see why they should trust you yet. Still, Henry is pretty well respected you guess around here, because other than some grumbling nobody is outright making a major case out of it. Henry takes you to the far back end of the truck stop. He says he hasn’t really put many guards up here since its away from the road and borders the wilderness and so far nothing has come out from there yet, other than the occasional wildlife. “Now I don’t think anything actually will be coming up this way, since I imagine if we did have another cannibal attack they’ll be coming from one of the other directions, but hey we shouldn’t just keep our back completely undefended. Now you’ll be here until about midnight, I hope you’re up for that.” Henry remarks. “That’s what I’m here for.” “Hm. Well like I said, there probably won’t be much going on and about the most likely thing you’re going to have to fight off is boredom. Um, if you need to go bathroom, there are some port a johns nearby, though suppose if you REALLY need to, you can go run over to the diner if you’re a little more concerned with cleanliness, but whatever you do make sure you at least tell Larry over there so he can keep extra watch while you’re gone.” Henry points to a man over on top of a truck on the far side of where you are before continuing. “Anyway, that’s about it, and if you see anything that looks dangerous, yell your head off and warn us.” “Okay, got it.” You answer. You climb up the ladder propped against the eighteen-wheeler and take you place as a guard. A few hours pass and just as predicted, nothing happens. You’re not really bored yet though since you’re taking a mental count of the number of rabbits you see hopping around in the field and making up little bunny names and little stories about their little bunny lives. Every once in awhile while you’re walking back and forth along the truck, you wonder how your sister is doing. You also wave to Larry once in an attempt to be friendly, but he doesn’t return the wave and ignores you. Eventually he has to pay attention when nature calls. “Hey Larry!” you shout. “What?!” he answers in an annoyed tone. “I gotta pee!” “So? Go over the side of the truck, its what I do when I gotta piss.” “Yeah, I’m not a guy and I don’t have the luxury of the world being my toilet. I need to use a proper bathroom. Henry told me to let you know so you can keep an extra eye on things until I get back.” “(Sigh) Fine, don’t fucking take all day though.” With Larry’s acknowledgement of your bathroom needs, you go down the ladder and run to the diner. (You sure as hell aren’t going to use those disgusting port a johns) When you enter the diner, you find a variety of people singing songs and joking around. You then see Donna dressed in a waitress uniform wave to you. “Hey Suzy! You done with protecting all of us?! This is my sister Suzy folks! She’s the one that saved my life more than once this week!” At this point everyone says hi to you. “Um…hey. I actually just came in to use the bathroom” You reply caught a little off guard. “That’s Suzy, always the social one.” Donna laughs and then goes back to talking to the crowd. After taking care of business in the bathroom, you wash your hands and see Donna entering the room. “Gotta hand it to you Donna, it hasn’t been a few hours and already you’ve got the people here in a good mood.” You say. “Yes, and I didn’t fuck all of them to get them that way in case that’s what you were thinking.” Donna says. “Sheesh, I saw some children out there. I know you’re not a degenerate Donna.” “Well, I’m glad you don’t think I am. Never thought I’d say this, but your opinion of me has started to matter more this week. So how’s guard duty?” “It is what it is. I’m not quite the people person you are though, so all I’ve managed to do is piss off the one person assigned near me. On the bright side, I’ve managed to stave off boredom by making up stories in my head about the bunnies bouncing around in the fields.” “Heh, well you always were the imaginative one. Well I’ll see you later.” You leave your sister and return to your guard duty, which continues to be uneventful. As the night comes your stories about rabbits give way to stories about wandering possums and raccoons instead. Thankfully no cannibals though. Eventually someone comes to relieve you of duty. Some guy you haven’t seen before, but at least he’s a little more cordial than Larry. You return to the diner where you find most people now asleep. Donna is still awake and sitting behind the food counter playing solitaire. She waves you over. “Suzy, there you are. I waited up for you so I could show you where we’ll be sleeping. Come on.” Donna whispers and takes you through the back kitchen. “Hey you didn’t eat today did you? There’s a lot of food here you know. There’s also a shower in the waitresses’ private bathroom if you need.” Donna says. “Nah, I’m good for now. I’ll worry about that stuff tomorrow.” You reply. “Okay, well here it is.” Donna says and opens up a small storeroom, which doesn’t have much space. “I tried to make it as comfortable as possible with a few blankets I borrowed. There are our bags of clothing. I figured those might work as pillows of a sort.” Donna says. “Well I guess it will have to do.” You answer. You lay down on the make shift bed on the floor and try to get as comfortable as possible. Donna does likewise and you drift off. > Next day... SATURDAY You wake up to a body spooning you, and an arm holding you tightly around your mid-section. “Donna! Hey! Wake the fuck up!” you shout pushing your sister off of you. “Huh? Wha? The hell are you pushing and hitting me for?” she exclaims groggily. “Because you were about to commit incest that’s why!” you exclaim. “Oh. Sorry. It wasn’t intentional I assure you. I probably was dreaming about Julie.” “Excuse me?” “Well one time over her house her heating system broke down and we had to sleep together for warmth for a week.” “Okay, I don’t want to know anymore about your little lesbian encounters with Julie.” You say. “Oh geez Suzy don’t be so heteronormative, we weren’t lesbians. We just had some fun on occasion. (Sigh) I wish she was here with us.” Donna says getting a little tearful. You pat Donna on the shoulder. “I wish she was here too Donna.” You say. After that moment of silence to remember your friend, the both of you get up. “You know what time it is?” Donna asks. “No, but I know it’s time for me to take a shower. You said I can use the waitresses’ private one?” you say. “Yeah, but you might have to wait for other people.” “Damn, speaking of waitresses, what’s with the uniform?” “Oh this? Well I needed to change my clothes yesterday and I was offered one of their uniforms. I figured I’d wear it to fit in a little better, besides its kind of cute don’t you think?” Donna asks. “It’s kind of stripperish if you ask me. The skirt barely covers your ass.” You reply. “Well I think that’s the point. This is a truck stop remember and they probably want the waitresses to look a little more on the sexy side.” “Hm, well I’ll stick with my old non-stripper clothes.” “Prude.” Donna snarks. As you and Donna leave the storage room to start the new day you both suddenly hear a loud noise and a faint rumble. You then hear some screams and shouting from the front of the diner. “Oh my god that was a fucking nuke!” you hear someone shout. You and Donna just look at each other. Maybe its due to the week you’ve had, you’re not entirely phased by this. “(Sigh) I guess they finally went and did it.” You say. “Perfect way to start the day.” Donna replies and the pair of you head to the front of the diner. When you get there, you see a waitress trying to calm her children down. A couple people are arguing. A few are just sitting in a silent state of shock. Henry is actually outside the diner looking in the direction of where the bomb must’ve gone off. You can see the lingering remnants of a mushroom cloud in the far distance even from inside the diner. “Well I can only hope we’re far enough away that we aren’t suffering from horrible radioactive fallout.” You say. “Yeah, I suppose not much can be done now if we are, just um…shoot me if my hair starts falling out okay?” Donna asks. You briefly wonder if this bomb was the result of the nuclear war those Ground Zero ads kept harping on about or if this was just some internal thing to take care of those rabid people. Either way, you suppose it doesn’t really matter, life is going to be severely different from now on. At this point Henry steps back in the diner and after calming some of the arguing truckers. He begins addressing the situation and stating that nothing has changed and that the situation is still the same, namely if people help, then they are welcome to stay. If not or if they don’t want to stay then they are free to go. A couple of the truckers who apparently have families elsewhere do leave. Everyone else stays and the work towards creating a permanent new “home” is begun. After washing up and having something to eat, you head out to do your guard duty rounds. Donna comes to see you before you leave. “Hey, Suzy.” “Yes?” You answer. “Whatever happens next, I just want to say…I’m glad we’re dealing with all this together.” “I’m glad we’re seeing this through together too.” You say. And with those words, you and Donna hug and go contribute in your various jobs in this new community. Funny that it took the collapse of society before you re-connected with your family again. > Sisterhood The future… “Hey, those trailer park rednecks had been fucking assholes to us for years. It was high time that we burned that whole heap of trash to the ground like it deserved. It’s just too bad we couldn’t do it when we were temporarily stuck in that hell hole.” You exclaim. “Yeah, I know I just sort of wish there had been another way to deal with them. Wiping out entire communities isn’t really something that is particularly popular you know. I mean there were children and other innocents there too.” Donna says. “Well that’s why we can blame that shit on the Cult of Tiamat. They’re the crazies that took things too far, or whatever…I dunno, you know how to spin this shit, you’re the politician not me.” “Oh yes, the alliance with the cultists. That’s going to be an easy spin…(Sigh) I can’t believe you convinced me THAT was a good idea.” “Hey look, if we had gone head to head with those trailer park assholes by ourselves, it would’ve been a bloodbath for us. Considering the cult was also their enemy, it was a good opportunity to re-establish an old contact as it were. Besides, Bobby’s bitch of a sister Diana wasn’t around anymore so I knew I’d have more clout. Not to mention we’ve got a peace agreement with them now so that’s TWO less enemies in our immediate area now.” Donna gets up from her desk and pours herself a drink. She downs the whole glass in one gulp and pours another shot. It’s funny; she used to drink for enjoyment at one time. Nowadays she drinks to keep herself from being overwhelmed with all the shit she has to deal with. That party girl is long gone and when she took over New Security from Henry she disappeared completely. Popularity was always her specialty, but you’ve always been the stronger one. Without you Donna probably would’ve failed at this community leader thing a long time ago. Of course without Donna, you probably would’ve gotten lynched by an angry mob a long time ago. That “good girl” that once hid out in the basement is long gone too. While you didn’t become the “outlaw savage” that you worried about becoming, you still lost that “civility” and over the years as you had to deal with shitty things in this shitty new world, well it was just easier to be the cold bitch that would kill someone without hesitation. And that’s why you’re a team. “So Suzy. You and Bobby rekindle something?” Donna asks putting down her glass. “Hah, no. Bobby’s one true love nowadays is his blessed Tiamat. Followed by his sister Helen. Still, it doesn’t hurt that I was an ex that I imagine he still has the occasional fond memory.” “You think he’ll leave us be?” “Sure. I mean we’ll always keep an eye on his group, but now that those rednecks are gone, more territory has opened up for Bobby. He’ll be satisfied in the foreseeable future.” “Okay…(Sigh) ugh, I don’t feel like going out there and giving a fucking speech right now…” “Look, I know you’re stressing about this, but I promise you the people of this town aren’t really going to be that upset by the destruction of a bunch of hostile trailer trash. Some of them will probably throw a party. This isn’t the old world anymore where you got the U.N. or some shit waggling their finger at you for war crimes. People are back to the mindset that their tight knit communities come first and fuck everyone else. Besides even if you do have some idealistic fools screaming about injustice or some shit, you’ve still got the support of our militia of which I am currently head of. I’d say you’re not in any danger.” Donna smiles and shakes her head. “Jesus Suzy. I’m sure glad you’re on my side.” Donna says. “Hey, sisterhood forever right?” you say extending your hand. Donna nods and grips your hand followed by a hug. “Sisterhood forever Suzy.” And with those words, Donna straightens her clothing and heads out of her office to address the public and you follow close behind. A few winks, a few smiles and a few lies later and Donna has the public in the palm of her hand just like you knew she would. She just needed your support for that extra boost of confidence. Not bad for a party girl and a basement dweller.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide that it would be best if they were completely pre-occupied. If you shoot now, the driver could either manage to drive off or the passenger could start spraying the place with bullets. Still, you sneak around towards the front end of the truck so you can at least ambush from behind when you do strike. “Okay baby, where are we doing this? The back seat of the car is pretty full as you can see. We can do it in your truck if you want. Front seat or the bed of it. Doesn’t matter to me.” The passenger says getting back out of the car. “Uh, no not the truck. It got all shot up yesterday, back window broke and there’s broken glass everywhere. Don’t want to potentially get cut up.” “Hmm, well the hood of this car then?” At this point Donna walks up to him and starts to do what she does best. Namely act like a slut. “How about I do the both of you at the same time? That way you both get off and we can be on our way a lot quicker.” she says and starts rubbing up against Mr. passenger. “Well now. That’s an interesting suggestion…how were you proposing the logistics of this?” “Oh that’s easy… you see, first I take off my clothes…” Donna says and quickly takes her clothing off until she’s completely naked. “Next, I just get on my knees in this front seat here… and start to unbuckle your friend’s pants…” You can’t see the driver from your position since he’s never moved out from his seat, but he’s obviously okay with this since you hear a couple of moans of pleasure. “And now…well don’t just stand there silly. My ass is right in front of you, start fucking!” Donna commands. “Wait, you want me to fuck you in the ass?!” Mr. passenger asks. “Well it’s not gonna fuck itself. Do what you want. I gotta concentrate on wrapping my lips around this nice hard cock…mmmmm…” Holy shit, talk about taking one for the team…hell taking TWO for the team. At this point Mr. passenger can’t err on the side of caution any longer. He places his gun on the roof of the car and presumably starts taking your sister in a way that you imagine many men have taken her before. With one dick in her mouth and another in her ass, you’re fairly confident now that Donna’s distracted them both to the point that you have the complete advantage. You step out from the front of truck and walk towards the car parked near it. Mr. passenger’s eyes aren’t watching as he’s focused on thrusting into your sister. His head is a perfect target and with a single shot, you end him as a threat. “Oh shit! Oh shit! ARGH! MY DICK! FUCKING BITCH!” you hear the driver shout. You rush over to the driver’s side and point the gun at his head before he can start beating on your sister’s head in an effort to get her off his dick. “You move to your hands to hit my sister and you die. You try to start up the car and you die. If you want your life AND your dick to stay intact then I suggest you follow my orders. First thing, car keys.” “OKAY OKAY! ARGH! JUST TELL HER TO STOP BITING MY DICK!” the driver shouts and hastily hands you his car keys. “Okay, that’s a start. Alright, Donna, you can release his dick now, I’ll take it from here.” Donna complies and then spits in the driver’s face before he staggers out of the car with his pants half down. You tell her to grab your bags from the truck and put them in the car. “Okay, we’re going to be taking this car and everything in it. In exchange, you can take our truck. Granted it has two flat tires and is low on gas, but if you’re lucky, you might just reach a trailer park that has lots of people willing to help you. You ready Donna?” “Almost.” Donna remarks. You turn back to the driver who is still mostly holding on to his dick wincing in pain. “Okay, well I guess this is where we part ways. Thanks for the info about Security City. We’ll be sure to avoid going there…and uh…bye. Oh, and watch your head.” “Wha…?” is all the driver says before you shoot him and get in the car. “I thought you were letting him live.” Donna says. “What? And let a man who defiled my poor sister’s mouth walk away to brag about it? Not fucking likely.” You say and start the car up. As you spin the car around to head back in your original direction, you ask Donna if she’s okay since she’s fidgeting a bit in her seat. “So…um, are you okay?” you ask. “I’m fine. It’s done. We worked together and we succeeded. I think we both know our established roles are in this team. We all have our talents. Let’s not talk about it.“ Donna says. She doesn’t exactly sound angry, but she obviously isn’t leaping for joy about what she did. You almost want to talk more about what just happened, but given that your sister doesn’t you don’t press the issue and just drive. As you’re driving, Donna suddenly speaks up again. “Next time, don’t fucking kill the guy while he’s still inside me. Tell him to move away or something first. I had a dead man’s dick shooting cum in my ass for a split second before he fell. I’ll admit to being a free spirited gal comfortable with my sexuality, but I didn’t want to include necrophilia in my list of things I’m willing to do.” Wow. You didn’t really expect to hear that graphic detail. It’s actually a bit nasty and you can see why Donna’s in the mood she’s in. “Okay Donna. Damn, sorry about that. I wasn’t thinking.” You say. “Well like I said, it’s done. Let’s just not speak of it again. (Sigh) Probably for the best he didn’t go the traditional route or else he might’ve impregnated me when he shot his load and I might’ve given birth to zombie babies or some shit.” Donna remarks. The situation is pretty fucked up, but you’re having a hard trying not to laugh now. “I don’t think it works that way Donna. Pretty sure you would’ve given birth to a normal baby.” You say with a stifled chuckle. “Yeah, well that would be just as bad.” You decide not to make any more comments even though there’s a really twisted part of you that is finding this all pretty amusing and wants to make jokes. It’s almost like you’re sort of getting a kick out of Donna’s discomfort. Maybe it’s pent up hostility you’ve had for her due to how she’s acted towards you in the past. Maybe it’s some sort of sadistic side you’ve always harbored and it’s just recently come out due to this week’s events. In any case, it’s slightly worrying to you, since you’re starting to wonder how far you’re going to start abandoning “civility.” You’ve already committed murder on several occasions, and while the first time was in self-defense, the ones following it have been getting progressively more predatory. A few more remorseless murders and you’re going to be just like your Uncle Ed. (Now you’re wondering if it’s genetic) You and Donna continue to drive. A couple of other cars do pass you on the road. You imagine they must be coming from Security City or fleeing it from your previous information. You’re just glad you haven’t come across any military trying to block the road. You continue to drive for about a half hour before you see something of interest in the distance. Namely a truck stop, which apparently has been converted into a minor fortress. “Well that’s interesting.” You say. “Is that a truck stop?” Donna asks. “Yeah I think so. Looks like whoever is there are trying to block the place off by putting trucks around it. They even got people standing on top of the trucks with rifles as lookouts. “ you say. “Are we stopping there?” “I dunno. Whoever is there probably isn’t going to be too trustful of anyone. Though, we still don’t have that much of long term plan. A place like this might be a safe haven of sorts. I mean it already looks way better defended than that trailer park.” “Well, it’s up to you. But I think we’re going to have to be more careful at a place like this.” “We might as well chance it if only to catch a breather and maybe get some directions because I can honestly say I don’t know where the fuck we are or where we should be going. That’s assuming they even let us in.” You and Donna drive to the truck stop, which immediately causes the lookouts to point and raise their rifles in your direction. When you stop in front of it, there are a lot of shouts for you to stay in the car. “We’re not just letting anyone in here. Who are ya, and state yer business!” the lookout from above shouts. “Just a couple poor souls trying to escape the chaos out there! Our home town was overrun by military and crazy people. We’ve also been attacked by others who would try to take advantage of us. Please, we’re just looking for some sort of refuge even if it’s temporary. We got some supplies in our car.” “Hrmmm, well whatta you got?” You turn your head to look in the back seat to actually see what you “inherited” since you never looked before. You see a first aid kit on top of a pile of bags. “Um…we got some medicine. Maybe that could help?” you say. There is a long pause and he tells you to wait before climbing down the truck and disappearing from sight. Eventually you hear his voice again which is now coming from behind the truck barricade. “Okay, we’re gonna move this truck, but one funny thing happens and you’re the first one getting a bullet to the head. Alright, we’re letting this one in, everyone keep extra look out for those rabid bastards!” As soon as the truck is moved out your way, the man who was barking orders at you waves you in and motions you over to a parking spot with some other cars. As soon as you drive in they put the truck back. Either they’re really safety conscience or they don’t want to risk having you get away. “Well let’s hope these people are just normal people trying to survive and aren’t a gang of rapists.” You remark. From this distance you see several more people in the building part of the truck stop. Looks like it’s a general store/diner combo. Most of them are watching you from the windows, though a few of them come out, one of them is an older man with a cane who walks directly towards the car. “Okay, I want the two you in that car to exit it slowly. I don’t care if you got weapons, but don’t point them at me or anyone else in a threatening manner.” The old man shouts. You take your pistol and shove it in the front of your pants. As for your newly acquired sub-machine gun, you just leave it in the car when you and Donna exit it. Naturally rifles are pointed at the pair of you, but the old man with the cane shouts telling them to calm down. “You lot, stop pointing your guns and start unloading the car. Sorry about that, everyone’s a little on edge. Name’s Henry. I own this place.” He says. “My name’s Suzy, and I get it.” “So what are two pretty young girls doing driving around in this mess?” “Long story, but I’ll just say, my sister and I are grateful for the shelter if only for awhile.” “Hm, think nothing of it. Really though, if you two are willing to pull yer weight around here, yer welcome to stay as long as you like. Right now we’ve got plenty of supplies and whatever useful supplies you have can be considered payment for your way in here.” “Well, that’s certainly an offer to think about, but I’m not exactly sure what we’d do around here.” You answer. “We can find something I’m sure. Anyway, I just mention it because I’ve been trying to contact various places on my Ham Radio, and all I can gather is what’s been going on is pretty serious and I’m not sure if there’s any place I could direct you where to go that would be as safe as this place right now. Security City is completely overrun and the closest military Fort around here, Fort Timons doesn’t even know what the fuck is going on other than the obvious. Besides, I don’t think you’d get in there anyway, not being military and all.” “This place is really safe huh?” you ask. “Well not to brag, but we just fended off a big horde of those rabid freak things that I imagine wandered from the city yesterday. Didn’t even lose anyone either. Wasn’t fun though and I’m glad no more of those things have popped up, but yeah, I think we’re doing good job of keeping this place safe. Anyway, you’re good to stay for the night, unless you let me know you want to stick around longer and we’ll find something for the both of you to do. Okay, I’m going to go make sure these boys don’t take EVERYTHING of yours in that car.” Henry says and then walks over to oversee his people unloading your car. Well it’s a similar situation you had in the trailer park. Pull your weight or get the hell out. Funny how that worked out. Maybe you could try to do the “community” thing again. The trailer park wasn’t exactly filled with welcoming people, maybe things here could be different and you could actually feel safe here. This place does seem a little better organized and definitely better defended. Really, the only reason why you left the trailer park to begin with was at the insistence of your sister and the fact that it was getting pretty dangerous there. Then again, this place could turn out to be just as bad where you don’t get along with anyone and everything eventually turns into a cluster fuck. Maybe you might as well save yourself the bother by leaving tomorrow. > You just stay the night You and Donna have been through this song and dance once before, no point in doing it again. Still there’s no reason to not take advantage of an opportunity here. You pull Donna aside away from earshot of everyone. “Hey Donna, I think we should only stay the night, but I’m also thinking we could gather a few more supplies here.” “Wait, really? This place isn’t like the trailer park. We won’t be able to get out so easily.” “Well that’s why we’re going to case this place. Or rather I’M going to case this place and YOU are going make friendly with the guards.” Donna looks at you like “really?” “What? You said I had my talents and you had yours. You know the drill.” “Yeah, I guess. Teamwork and all that…whatever. Just let me know who needs to be fucked and when.” “I’m going to go talk with Henry again and try to assess this situation. We can make a better plan soon.” You leave Donna and head back to Henry who is overseeing his people taking all the shit out of your car. “Oh hey there, Suzy wasn’t it?” he says. “Yeah. Decided we’re only going to stay the night Henry. We’ve got family in another county and we should at least try to reach them to see if they’re okay.” You lie. “Well I can understand that…hmmm. Tell ya what; you can keep everything in your car. Actually we were just going to take the first aid kits, but I was sort of hoping you’d stick around to help out. Since you aren’t I don’t think it would be right for us to take what little medical supplies you do have. Especially since you’ll have a dangerous journey ahead.” At this point Henry motions one of his people carrying the medical kits to put them back in the car. And with this act of kindness, you think you see your opportunity. “That’s really generous Henry. Thank you. Hey is there any place we can wash up?” you ask. “Well there is a small shower in the waitresses’ private bathroom. Just tell Anne I said you could use it. As for your sleeping arrangements, well I guess one of the booths or floor will have to do. Of course you could sleep in your car if you want.” Henry replies. “Hey, it’s better than we could’ve hoped for. Thanks again.” At this point you part ways with Henry and return to Donna. “Okay, new plan. An hour from now I want you to grab one of those medical kits in the car and go see Henry. Tell him a story about how you really think we should pay to stay here and you insist that he take a kit.” “Wait, you want me to fuck that old guy?” “Well if you have to, but I’m thinking he’s probably got a key to where he keeps all the medicine locked up. Find out where that is, steal the key and later on in the night we can raid it. Then when the morning comes we leave before anyone finds out.” “I dunno Suzy, that sounds pretty risky. In fact it sounds pretty dumb. Shouldn’t we just, I dunno pilfer the kitchen during the night? Seems like it might be easier.” “Yeah and there’s going to be a shitload of people sleeping in that diner too. Talk about your dumb ideas.” “Maybe we shouldn’t steal anything. I mean that old guy didn’t even take our medkits as payment and is letting us stay here for free. I mean that’s pretty cool.” “(Sigh) Fuck Donna, how the hell are you ever going to survive in this world if you don’t seize opportunity when you see it? Fine, you know what, fuck the plan. Why don’t you just go blow as many guys as you can and hand me what you manage to steal off of them okay? That seems like it might be your speed.” You say angrily and begin to walk away. However you’ve pushed Donna a little too far this time and she pushes back, literally when you feel a heavy shove causing you to nearly fall over. “Oh fuck you Suzy! FUCK YOU! You think you can look down upon me like I’m some sort of gutter whore? You’re no fucking better than I am! You’re a goddamn murderer!” At this point Donna’s yelling loud enough for others to hear and now people are looking. “Tell the whole fucking world Donna. And if I’m a murderer then you’re one right along side with me! Who’s idea was it to steal that fucking truck in the first place? You ran over someone, you stupid whore!” you laugh. “Stop calling me that!” “Fuck you, it’s the truth. It doesn’t matter where you go or where you are, you’ll always be a goddamn cum guzzling slut trying to fill some void that can never be filled.” At this point Donna is screaming and tears are running down her face as she starts going on a tirade about your own shortcomings. You aren’t really listening though, it’s like your mind is going to a different place. A dark place that’s telling you to shut her whore mouth shut. And so you act upon this feeling and pull your pistol shooting Donna. At first she looks down at her body wound and then back at you in shock. There are no last words she just falls backwards dead. You stand there for a moment in a little disbelief of what you’ve done. You look at your pistol and then Donna’s body. Meanwhile several of Henry’s people are pointing their rifles at you, telling you to drop the gun. You aren’t really listening to them either though. When you fail to comply, one of Henry’s people decides to play it safe and drops you with a shot to your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As tempting as it is to just run, once again, you don’t really have anywhere viable to run to and now you’d have a horde of those things possibly dogging your steps if you did, so you’re going to just be satisfied with short term safety and keep optimistic that things aren’t as hopeless as they seem. You run up the stairs and into the trailer. Donna slams and locks the door, and then you both shove a couch in front of it. You look up at the ceiling of the trailer and see the sun roof open which naturally explains how Jimmy Ray got up there. You can hear him firing and swearing. “Okay, I think we should be safe now.” Donna remarks. “I wouldn’t count on that. I mean yeah, they’d have a hell of time breaking through the door, and granted the windows are high enough that they might have trouble breaking and climbing into them, but I still don’t feel safe cooped up in here.” You say and start looking around for more furniture and start moving a table under the sunroof. “Suzy, what’re you doing?” “I’m going to go help your boyfriend if I can. You got a weapon down here?” “There’s Jimmy’s bat and some knives in the kitchen, but he really doesn’t need your help. You should stay down here, I mean what if they try to break in like you said?” “Well I’ll be able to shoot them from above a lot better from the roof. Climb up if things start getting grim.” You say and start climb through the roof. When you reach the roof, Jimmy notices you as he’s in the middle of reloading his weapon. “What the fuck are you doin’ up here, get back in the trailer with your sister!” he says. “I’m here to help.” You say scanning the area. “I don’t need any help, now…” You interrupt Jimmy, when you look over the other side of the trailer, see one particularly sneaky freak skulking near it and shoot him. “You aren’t even paying attention to the other side of the trailer. You need to be aware of your surroundings!” you say. “Aw, he couldn’t have gotten up here, and I would’ve heard him had he tried.” Jimmy remarks. “Fine, stay up here, but don’t get in my way!” he then adds realizing that you aren’t going anywhere. From on top of the trailer, you can see a good deal more of the park in general. You and Jimmy actually aren’t the only ones standing on a trailer, you see several women with guns doing their best at fighting off this horde. You even see Tina when you look back towards her trailer. The situation isn’t quite as grim as it once appeared as you see a group of hillbillies from the east side of the park making their way back and soon start helping out with mopping up the freaks that have infested it. Jimmy and yourself mostly keep to picking off the ones that come too close to his trailer. He actually compliments you or your shooting at one point. To be honest, it’s sort of weird to you how much of a natural you are at it. After few more bloody minutes, it’s mostly over and the…well you still don’t know WHAT they are exactly, but they’re no longer the threat they were. “Whew, I think we got the last of those sons of bitches.” Jimmy says. “Yeah, well I’m not in any hurry to check. I’m out of bullets anyway, so I’m just going to go back into the trailer with my sister.” “Okay, I’m gonna keep an eye out from here. Um… I wasn’t sure about you at first, but thanks for yer help.” Suddenly Donna’s head pops up from the opening in the roof. “What’s going on up here? The shooting has mostly stopped, is it over?” Donna asks. “It’s over in the sense that I’m guessing we aren’t in any danger of being overrun. Was everything okay down there? We were trying to keep them from clawing at the trailer too much.” You say. “Yeah, a few got as close as the door and then one of you guys shot them.” Donna says. “Shit, let’s get back down in the trailer.” Jimmy suddenly says walking over to where you and Donna are. “Did you just see more of those things?” “No, I see… “There you are, ya slackin’ piece of shit! Where the fuck were you when we needed help over on the east side of the park. Nearly got my ass eaten and not in a good way!” Mel shouts from the ground as he walks with a couple of other men behind him. “Aw Mel, I didn’t even know about it until it was too late, I was uh…” “You were thinkin’ with yer dick as usual. Is that…is that blondie there I see? Holy shit, didn’t think you were fool enough to fall fer this idiot’s charms.” Mel says. “I didn’t…I was looking for my sister and I helped her and Jimmy out here.” “Is that right?” Mel asks. “Yeah, it’s true! I was with her sister…and um, by the time I knew what was goin’ on I couldn’t leave this trailer because it was surrounded by those things! I was pickin’ them off with the shotgun and then Suzy came here and helped out. Good thing too. There were a shitload of them, as you can tell by the bodies!” Jimmy says and begins pointing at them. Mel stares at the bodies that Jimmy’s pointing to and doesn’t seem impressed. “Jimmy, yer so full of shit right now, yer eyes are brown. By the number of bodies here and their various distances from the trailer, it wasn’t THAT surrounded. Whatever, doesn’t matter, come on down, you’re comin’ with us.” “Where are we goin?” Jimmy asks. “We’re gonna go try to fetch some medical supplies from town. We got some people hurt pretty fuckin’ bad an’ other than a few half used basic medical kits that a few people scrounged up, all else we got is a shitload of alcohol. You’d think those military trucks woulda had some medical shit in them, but no. I suppose SOME people here got some meth, crack and a few other unconventional drugs, but last thing we need is more goddamn junkies runnin’ around here.” Mel says glaring at Dan. “Town? Um…don’t ya think it’ll be pretty fucked up there?” Jimmy asks. “Of course it’s gonna be fucked up there, but it needs to get done. Or we at least need to try. So come on Jimmy, get yer ass down here, what about you blondie?” Mel asks. “What about me what?” you ask. “You gonna come with us? Obviously you’re good enough with a weapon to take care of yourself an’ we’re a little short on that at the moment.” As Jimmy kisses Donna on the cheek and tells her something about coming back to her, you briefly consider Mel’s offer. While you’ve certainly “grown” past being the wallflower you tended to be, you know you’re not some action heroine badass. “While I appreciate the offer Mel, I think I’d be better off staying here, I’m still not as skilled as you guys are when it comes to shooting. I wouldn’t want to be a liability.” You say. “Hm, I guess that’s an honest assessment of yourself. Alright then, keep an eye out on things here. As for the rest of ya, come on let’s round up a few more folks and then let’s see just how fucked the town is.” Mel says and he and the rest walk off leaving you and Donna who duck back inside Jimmy’s trailer. “I’m really glad you didn’t go with them. I mean that’s gotta be a suicide mission.” Donna says. “Well it will certainly be dangerous that’s for sure.” You say. “So you still think it’s a good idea to stay here?” Donna asks. “Still want to leave huh?” you say. “Don’t you? I mean we just went through TWO major attacks at this place now! Who knows what the hell is gonna hit us next! More of those freaks probably, but I’m thinking that we got a better chance if we do leave this time.” “How’s that?” you ask. “Well Jimmy Ray’s got a truck that he parked between his trailer and the next one as a poor man’s barrier of sorts and he didn’t take his keys with him. In fact they’re over on the table over there. That suggests to me that we can easily take his while he’s gone. In fact, Mel and most of those redneck assholes will all be gone and the others are nursing their wounds, so now would be the perfect time to get the hell out of here.” “I used up all my ammo fighting off those cannibal things. What about weapons?” “I guess we’ll have to get by on close combat ones for awhile, but Jimmy’s probably got another gun in his bedroom somewhere. Look, I’ll search this place and you go grab your bags from our trailer. I still got a bag packed near my bed from yesterday, so you can grab that one too.” You chuckle a bit at Donna’s suggestion of completely robbing Jimmy Ray blind and take her plan into consideration. > You continue to stay Once again, you can agree that it isn’t the safest place, but you still see no viable alternative of where to go because you’re getting the impression that it’s going to be fucked up no matter where you go. “Still probably safer than getting on the road right now. I think we need to stay just a little bit longer.” You say. “Jesus Christ I can’t believe you’re still willing to stay. (Sigh) Well, at this point I guess I’ve got no choice, but to stay too. I mean I think it’s pretty obvious by now that I can’t go it alone. I’m just not adapting well to this series of events like you seem to be.” Donna remarks. “I dunno if I’m adapting or just so overwhelmed by what’s been going on this week that I’m just going with what my instincts are.” “Well you’re a far cry from the wallflower you were.” Your sister says. “Yeah, I suppose, but I’d actually rather be on my couch in the basement back home.” “At this point, I’d rather be on that couch right next to you.” Donna laughs. You and Donna leave Jimmy Ray’s trailer and head back to yours. Along the way you bump into Tina who is carrying two big meat hooks. “So, you and blondie survived, glad to see it, because there are a shitload of bodies that need cleanin’ up.” Tina says. Tina looks at you as if that’s the last thing she wants to be doing. “Um…” Tina starts to say. “Uh, my sister is still really shaken up by the attack, nearly got eaten an’ all you understand. She needs to lie down in the trailer, but I’ll be glad to help.” Tina shakes her head at Donna and turns her attention to you. “Come on then blondie.” She says and you tell Donna you’ll see her later. You follow Tina where there are more than a few dead bodies of those things and two other women are standing by with meat hooks. One of the women is a little bigger and taller than everyone else and has short hair like a buzzcut. The other one is similar to Tina except with curlier hair. “K, this is Mary Lou an’ the giant over there is Butchie Billie. An’ this one here with me is our newest addition to our wonderful community, blondie.” “It’s Suzy, actually.” You say. “Yeah, whatever. Let’s start moving these dead fucks before Mel gets back an’ bitches about it. Nevermind, the fact that Mel and the rest of his fuckin’ friends should be here doing this instead of traipsin’ off to town.” Tina says as she digs a meat hook into a body “Well they said they were going for medical supplies.” Billie says following suit. “Damn fool thing to do really, I told him so too. I told him that right now he should focus on rebuilding the barricades around this place. I mean yeah I know more medical supplies would be useful, but really we got enough to get by for now and for those that got all bit up…well…” Tina trails off, but you know what she’s getting at. “You…think we should kill them?” Mary Lou asks, shoving her own meat hook in. “I didn’t say that. I’m just sayin’ that perhaps wastin’ medicine on them isn’t the best idea because they’re probably goners anyway. I mean don’t you think so? I mean those crazy fuckers biting people had to have been sick with something right? How do we know it isn’t spread through biting or even worse just being close to ‘em? At least Mel had the sense to put all those folks in one trailer though.” You’re having a little difficulty putting in your hook. It isn’t like you’ve done this before. “You need help there blondie? You’re holding us up.” Tina asks. “No, I…got it. There.” You say as the hook sinks in. “Okay, lift everyone.” Tina says and all four of you do so. Billie’s probably doing the majority of the work though. As you carry/drag the body to the open field behind the trailer park, Billie continues the conversation. “Well I admit, them possibly bein’ infected is a concern for me too, but I’m sort of surprised Mel didn’t shoot them just to be safe, I mean we all know he isn’t excessively compassionate.” Billie remarks. Tina laughs a bit. “Well that’s true, in fact I almost guarantee if they were anyone else he might’ve just done that, but one of Mel’s few endearing traits is he’s got a sense of loyalty. And I know he feels like he should at least try to help those that watched his back during the recent battle. Not to mention he is drinking buddies with most of ‘em, despite the fact he doesn’t think very highly of ‘em. Oh well, hopefully he’ll be successful with his trip.” You almost ask, but then stop yourself. Tina however has already noticed your stifled attempt at continuing the conversation. “If you got somethin’ to say blondie, say it.” Tina remarks. “Well, I was just gonna ask, do you think he’ll even come back?” “Shit blondie, that’s a pretty fuckin’ grim ass question. And if I were anyone else I’d probably be pretty upset by the implications, but I’m not worried about Mel. He’ll get back here some how. Everyone else might be dead, but I’m confident he’ll come back.” “Hey didn’t Jimmy Ray go with them? I hope he comes back too!” Mary Lou remarks. “Heh, guess you’re a little late on the update there Mary, but blondie’s sister Donna currently has her own hooks in Jimmy right now.” “What!? That asshole told me how I was the only one for him last week!” Mary Lou exclaims. “Hey blondie, tell your homewreckin’ cunt of a sister to keep her hands off my man!” You briefly wonder why Mary Lou who also having blonde hair is calling you blondie. (Granted hers is out of a bottle unlike your natural magnificence) “Yeah, I’ll pass it on to her.” You remark apathetically. At this point you reach your destination where a few other bodies have been placed and the four of you unhook the body and make your way back to the park to presumably get another body. “Hey, Suzy isn’t it?” Billie suddenly pipes up. “Yeah?” you ask turning your head a bit to look at Billie who is walking behind you. “Do you have an older sister by the name of Kelly who participates in the fight clubs in town?” “Yes, I do. How did you know?” you ask. “Because in the locker room she used to constantly bitch about having a pretty blonde sister by the name of Suzy that didn’t do shit around the house and another one by the name of Donna that was a complete whore. I took a shot in the dark that you and this Donna were the same ones that might be related to her.” “Oh. Well you got it right. Wow, didn’t realize she complained about us at…her work.” “Eh, she mostly complained about you. I mean ALL the fuckin’ time. Most of us were sick to death of hearing her bitch. So where is Kelly anyway?” “Dunno. Don’t really care either. Knowing her she’s probably surviving this bullshit somehow though. Were you and her an item or something?” you ask. “Fuck no! I hated that cunt. That bitch knocked out three of my teeth in our last match! I almost had her, but I know that cunt spiked my drink with something before the match! Anyway she was straight, but I figured you knew that.” “Hm, sort of surprising. Just figured she was a lesbian. My whole family did actually.” You say. “Nah, she tried to get with so many of the guys at the fight club it was actually kind of pathetic. She actually would’ve been a whore like your sister Donna had she actually been successful. As it stands she was more like a rapist since she’d routinely intimidate some of the scrawny audience members into having sex with her.” This revelation about Kelly is pretty interesting, but you don’t think you need to know too much more. “Yikes, is all I got to say about that.” You remark. “Yeah, but I will say this, her physical description of you doesn’t do you justice. You’re much prettier.” Billie says and them smiles with a couple of missing teeth. You turn your head back away and close your eyes in horror at such a thought. Tina glances over at you and smirks. “Kinda disturbin’ to think she’s been starin at yer ass this whole time isn’t it blondie?” Tina says. “Now that’s not true, I’ve been starin’ at yours as well.” Billie laughs. “Pfft, honey, EVERYONE stares at my fuckin’ ass.” Tina says puffing up slightly in pride. When you get back to the trailer park, Mel and the rest have already returned. In the distance you see him slamming his truck door and hear him swearing. “I guess it didn’t go well. (Sigh) Let me go see what happened. As for the rest of these bodies, you can keep moving them if y’all want, but as far as I’m concerned Mel and whoever survived their trip can do it instead. I’m done with this mess.” At this point Tina leaves and seeing as you don’t particularly want to move any more bodies you head back to your trailer. Eventually you arrive and collapse on your sofa. “Suzy?” Donna asks coming from out of her room. “Yeah, it’s me. Man, I’m tired. I think the stress of the day is really catching up to me. Oh Mel’s back, guess it didn’t go as planned if he’s back already.” “Is Jimmy Ray with him?” “Dunno, I just saw Mel getting out of his truck and cussing up a storm.” “I guess I’ll go check. Hope so…” “Wait a minute, weren’t you just ready to rob the guy blind a moment ago?” you ask. “Well that was a different situation. I mean if we’re going to stay here, it’s best I latch on to the best looking guy here right? Isn’t that what you said?” “Actually I said becoming self-sufficient, but I suppose grabbing one of the guys so you’re only sleeping with one as opposed to several works too. Well good luck. Oh there’s a girl with a bad bleached blonde job by the name of Mary Lou that’s got her eyes on him, so you might have some competition.” “Pfft. They haven’t made anyone that can compete with me. Let alone around here. I mean come on, it’s not even a contest.” Donna remarks. “Well glad to see your confidence still remains strong in all this. Have fun and be careful. I’m going to get some rest.” And with that you leave Donna to her own devices and turn over on your side to get some sleep. As you drift off you figure you’ll only get a few hours before someone wakes you up to do something, but as it turns out, you sleep through the entire night. > Next day... FRIDAY “HEY BLONDIE! GET YER ASS UP!” you hear as someone pounds on the door waking you up. It sounds like Mel, but at least it isn’t those awful Ground Zero commercials. You groggily get up and through bleary eyes you see that it’s actually still morning. You haven’t been up this early in a long time…and it’s a horrible thing. You hear more banging and yelling causing you to respond in kind. “Alright! Alright! Goddamnit, I’m up! I’m up!” you say and go to the door. “What?!” you ask though Mel doesn’t look too happy that you’re even asking that question. “What? Whadda ya mean what? Yer fuckin’ sister and that cowardly motherfucker Jimmy Ray just skedaddled outta here with a perfectly good truck that was also actin as a temporary barrier! That’s what!” This remark isn’t quite comprehended by you in your current groggy state. “My sister fucked Jimmy Ray in his truck and what?” you say. “Jesus fuckin’…I said…bah, I’m not fuckin’ repeatin’ myself! Shit!” Mel shouts and walks away banging on the door one more time. You briefly step outside and see Tina standing nearby. “I’m guessin’ you didn’t know nothin’ about it anyway considering you’re still here.” Tina remarks. “Okay, someone tell me again what happened? What about my sister and Jimmy Ray now?” “Apparently your sister convinced Jimmy Ray to leave this place in the middle of the night. Guess she really laid it down good, but then Jimmy Ray’s always had a tendency to get stupid over a gal who knows how to work it.” “Wait. Wait. Wait a minute she’s gone?!” “Yeah, she’s fuckin’ gone with a perfectly good truck! I actually don’t even give a shit about Jimmy Ray, he was more useless than tits on bull, but we could’ve used that fuckin’ truck for…” Mel says. “Oh for fuck’s sake Mel, we got a shitload of trucks here and aren’t you converting those army trucks into some sort of road warrior deathmobile anyway?” “Yeah, but it’s the fuckin’ principle of the thing! Not to mention we still gotta find some medical supplies! Goddamnit, Dan was supposed to be keepin’ a look out and…” You leave Mel to rant and head back inside trying to process this new information. You can’t believe that Donna would just leave you like that. There was no indication she was going to just take off like that. You check her bedroom and see that her bag is gone. You don’t know if she took that just after you fell asleep, or if she came back for it before leaving or what. Was she planning it right from the start or did she just see the opportunity? None of it matters you suppose, she just ditched you and didn’t even have the courtesy to let you know. So much for “sisterhood.” While you’re thinking about this, someone enters the trailer and calls out to you. It’s Tina. “Oh there you are. I’m guessing you’re pretty upset right now, but I found this in Jimmy’s trailer. Figured you should have it.” Tina says and hands you a note. Dear Suzy, Sorry, I just couldn’t stick around. Good luck to you in this shithole. Sincerely, Donna You actually chuckle a bit and crumple up the note. “What’s so funny.” Tina asks. “Oh just thinking that she was the one that convinced me to come here in the first place. Anyway, it’s done and she’s gone. We were never really close to begin with, though I thought that was sort of changing this week, but I guess not. Still, at least it felt like someone was on my side. I imagine I’m not too well accepted around here.” “Meh, I think you’re about as accepted as anyone else around here. I mean I think the general assessment of you is that you’re a big tease that thinks she’s better than everyone else, but I mean its not like you’re a nigger or something.” Tina remarks. You give Tina a strange look. “Um, lucky me then I guess. Just out of curiosity what do you think about Donna leaving? She kept going on about how you two were friends.” You say. “Me? Eh, I don’t really care. I mean I knew your sister on and off for a few years when I use to do strip jobs over at the parties at the place she was livin’ at before. An while she was a funny girl that made that particular job a lot more enjoyable, so I didn’t mind helping her out with a job when she asked, but it wasn’t like I ever considered her a real friend. Hell, I didn’t even know she had a sister until a few days ago. Anyway, always knew she was flakey. To be honest I didn’t even see her lasting long as a stripper and living here either. She probably would’ve latched on to first sugar daddy she could find and ditched everything.” “Sounds about right.” You say and toss aside the note. “Well I’ll leave you alone blondie. And I wouldn’t worry about your status here or lack there of. Quite frankly so many folks here have died or are wounded that nobody’s really in any position to antagonize someone who actually has been making an effort to contribute around here. Speakin’ of which I need to go talk to this crazy man that’s probably still ranting about a fuckin’ truck.” Tina says and leaves. You take a shower as you’re thinking about how you’re going to proceed next. You go back and forth on whether to do what your sister did, but knowing your luck, you’d end up getting caught so you ultimately abandon the idea. As you’re getting dressed and figuring out what your next plan of action should be, you suddenly hear banging on the door of your trailer again. You go to the door and see it’s that methhead Dan. “Hey blondie! You’re needed for a vote!” Dan exclaims. “Vote? Vote for what?” you ask. “We need a tie breaker to shoot the ones that got bitten or not. Billy Ray in particular ain’t lookin’ too good.” Dan remarks. “So what are we doin’ if we don’t shoot ‘em?” “Guess we’re goin’ back to town to try for medical supplies again. If that’s the case, I hope we have better luck, cause it was a cluster fuck last time.” Dan says. As you walk with Dan, he’s looking at you a lot and while some of that is predictable ogling, he’s also doing a lot of twitching and it’s making you nervous. “Dan, I know you have to take a glance at me every now and then, but between the staring and the twitching it’s making me uncomfortable. Makes me think of those things that attacked us yesterday. It doesn’t help that you’re about as clean as they were too.” You say. “Oh. Sorry blondie. I just…I need a fuckin’ fix. Just to put me at ease. The shit that’s been going down for the past couple of days has really made me scared y’know? I went through most of my shit after the National Guard showed up and then I used the rest up immediately after the freak invasion.” “So where’s the meth lab? Don’t places like this usually have one?” you ask. “Hah, I wish. I mean we used to have one years ago, but it blew up and caused a lot of damage. After that, the old owner sort of cracked down on that sort of thing.” “Well there’s no law anymore, you could just start making it again.” “Hah, yeah. But again with everythin’ that’s gone on, isn’t like there’s been time to do that. Not to mention Mel’s been ridin’ everyone non-stop. He’s already pissed at me for fallin’ asleep yesterday. I didn’t catch Jimmy Ray an’ yer sister taking off in the night. Guess he figured if anyone would stay awake all night it would be me, but I just sort of crashed because like I said I didn’t have my shit anymore to keep me alert.” “Yeah, well it’s tough all over.” You say unsympathetically. Before you even get to the meeting, you can hear the arguing, which is mainly consisting of a lot of shouting and swearing. By the time you arrive, you’re met with mixed glances. “These are our friends, we can’t just fuckin’ kill them!” “We need to fuckin’ kill ‘em before they infect us all!” “You’re one cold hearted sonofbitch you know that? What if I just decided to kill you?!” “Try it bitch!” “SHUT THE FUCK UP ALL OF YOU!” Mel shouts. At this point all eyes are on you. “As you can see blondie, we’re involved in the democratic process and are in need of a tie breaker.” Mel says to you. “Aw Mel what the fuck we need her vote for? She ain’t one of us and her sister fucking stole a truck!” some redneck woman says. “I said shut it! The only reason why I even entertained this process is so you fuckers would quit bitchin’ about me bein’ a so-called tyrant even though I’m the only one around he trying to do anything at all! So however blondie votes, will break the goddamn tie and we can move on. So what’s your vote?” Not that you’re especially close to any of these people, but if you vote to shoot you know it’s going to cause a lot more problems and you being an “outsider” are going to catch all the hell for it. Besides, last you remember Mel was trying to keep these folks alive, best you vote on his side. “Well I vote not to shoot because…” you start to say before Mel interrupts again. “That’s all I need to know. Didn’t need the reasons. Hear that folks? We ain’t shootin’ any of them! I dunno why you pussies are scared anyway, we got ‘em all locked up and barricaded inside a trailer. They ain’t getting out even if they do turn into something.” At this point there is more grumbling, but democracy has won this day and nobody gets violent about it, though you have a question. “Um, has anyone actually looked in on these bitten folks since they got thrown in together?” you ask. “Yeah, I did. Like I said, Billy Ray ain’t lookin’ too good. Neither are some of the others. They’re all mostly just lying there not doing much though.” Dan says. “Well was any first aid actually applied to them? I mean maybe they’re not infected, but just really wounded. Any aid might help.” “I threw in some bottles of whiskey an’ pain killers to ease the discomfort. I threw in some bandages in there, but I wasn’t gonna get close enough to actually bandage them.” Dan replies. “And that’s it? Nobody else has seen to them since they’ve been shoved in a trailer?” “Nope.” This is nuts, these people that have been bitten could very well be DYING due to neglect more than anything else! Nevermind the fact that the reason some might not be moving is that they might’ve very well ODed from the alcohol/pill combo. In any event Mel breaks up your question period. “Alright what we’re gonna do is fetch us some more medical supplies an whatever else we might find. Thinkin’ we should hit up that carnival a few miles from here.” Mel remarks which sort of takes most by surprise. You especially since you weren’t even aware there was a carnival in the area. “If the National Guard stopped here, chances are good they stopped at that carnival too. Maybe that detachment had more supplies and I also figure it’s gotta be easier than tryin’ to go back into town again.” Mel reasons. Mel’s suggestion is met with mixed results, but the people seem to be okay with it. Probably because a carnival does sound a lot less dangerous than going back into town, which they assumed would be the case. “Okay, we’re taking three trucks an’ y’all that came with me last time are comin’ with me this time as well an I’ll be pickin’ a few more so don’t nobody go too far. That means you blondie.” “Wouldn’t it be better if I stayed here and looked after things? I mean you don’t want to leave this place totally undefended.” You say. “Oh it never is. I’m sure you saw that everyone is fully capable of defendin’ themselves here when those freaks attacked. But I can’t just be takin’ mothers ya know? I mean it’s bad enough most of the snot nosed bastards round here that survived ain’t got fathers and that’s before all this shit went down. Can’t hardly deprive ‘em of mothers as well can I? Someone needs to keep ‘em out of my way and look after them.” “Well isn’t someone like Butchie Billie better suited for something like this than me?” “Butchie Billie is probably our best welder and mechanic. I’m not gonna risk taking her. Besides, she still needs to work on converting our newly acquired army trucks. And some of the other guys I’m not takin’ are better at workin’ on the generators or digging some extra outhouses.” “I don’t have a weapon or least not any with ammo. I ran out of bullets during the last attack.” You say. “Oh don’t worry about that, if there is one thing we’ve got a lot of, its weapons and ammo.” As you struggle to think up another excuse. Mel stops you. “Look blondie, you knew you were gonna have to start paying yer dues. And since I KNOW you were tryin’ to avoid bein the new fuck toy around here, it’s either this or you can just fuckin’ leave.” You don’t see yourself making it on your own…at least not yet. You still need to be in the safety of numbers, so that means you’re going. However you question if Mel’s plan is even a good one. You could very well get to this carnival and not find anything, you sort of wonder if it wouldn’t be a better idea to actually head back to town. You figure the town is probably already half looted and lawless by now, so you might well go in and get the best stuff you can before its completely gone. Not to mention you might know the town a little better as far as which side streets to take to get to certain locations quicker. Like say small pharmacies and other stores near where you live. Of course putting yourself in more danger isn’t necessarily desirable either. > You go with Mel's plan No need to make this more dangerous than it needs to be. “Alright I guess we’re going to the carnival.” You say. “Good. be ready at the trailer park entrance in a few minutes. Someone there can probably hand you a weapon as well.” When you arrive at your destination, a group of rednecks are already there checking various rifles and handguns. It really does look like they got enough to take on an army. Their attention turns to you. “Well now if it isn’t blondie. I’m surprised Mel is riskin’ his piece on the side like this.” One of the sleazier rednecks says. “I know that’s right Ray. If she was mine, I’d be wantin’ to keep her safe.” Another says. “Piece on the side? Is that what Mel told all of you?” you ask which is followed by a lot of snickering. “Not in so many words honey, but we ain’t the idiots that he thinks we are. Why else would he tell us to lay off of ya if he wasn’t stickin’ ya? Sonofabitch already has Tina, don’t see why he gets ta have TWO fine pieces of ass while some of us ain’t got none.” Ray remarks. “Could I have one of those rifles please?” you ask ignoring Ray’s comments. Ray snorts at your request. “Don’t think so blondie. Maybe you think yer warrior princess or some shit cause you got lucky shootin’ a couple of those freaks, but I ain’t impressed and you ain’t getting any of these rifles. Here, take one of these instead. Should be more than enough for you seein’ as all yer gonna be doin’ is hidin behind Mel the whole time anyway.” Ray says and hands you a smaller pistol. “Fine, I don’t need a big weapon anyway. I don’t have to over compensate for something.” You say taking the pistol. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Ray asks. “It means she’s sayin’ you probably got a small pecker Ray, now quit givin’ the girl a hard time and let’s all get goin’.” Mel sudden remarks as he walks up with a couple more people. Ray doesn’t say anything and just glares at you before leaving for one of the trucks. Everyone else does likewise. Predictably, you have no wish to ride with any of them, let alone in the back of one of the pickups with a bunch of them so you ride up front with Mel especially since you want to address something. As the trucks pull out from the trailer park, Mel fiddles with the radio, but he doesn’t get anything except Ground Zero ads. “Goddamn Ground Zero shit. I’m tellin’ you like I’ve said to everyone else, it’s a fuckin’ conspiracy goin’ on with them. In fact all of this shit goin’ on is government related.” Mel says turning off the radio. “Yeah, probably. Hey Mel, is it really necessary for you to lie and tell everyone that we’re having sex?” you ask. Mel starts chuckling a little bit. “Who said I did that?” Mel asked. “Well first of all a few days ago Tina flat out asked me if I had any intention of fucking you, and I had to clarify that I wasn’t. She believed me, but she said you told her that I flirted with you. Then Ray just said that I was your piece on the side. Everyone else seems to believe that as well.” You say. “Okay, first off I’ll admit that I might’ve said you were flirtin’ with me to Tina, but there was a good reason. We’re just makin’ up from one of our many bad fights and I figured it might be good to get her a little jealous. Y’know so she doesn’t take me for granted and that she could possibly lose me if she isn’t careful. Knowin’ Tina she probably thought it was bullshit anyway, which is probably why she just flat out asked you as opposed to just clawing yer eyes out if she thought it was remotely true.” “Well she did say that she didn’t believe it.” “Exactly. She knew a girl like you wouldn’t be interested in someone like me. Still, it was a good gesture on my part to show her I still care.” At this point you’re not going to decipher hillbilly love life logic. You just continue to listen to Mel explain himself. “Now as for Ray an’ the rest. All I told them is to lay off of you a little bit since you were new to the trailer park an’ you were doin’ your best to contribute. I really can’t help it if everyone jumps to conclusions.” “But you’re not exactly dispelling those conclusions either.” Mel laughs again. “Well, I suppose yer right about that, but think of it this way, if they all think you’re my squeeze on the side, they’re actually all less likely to try anything because they won’t want to answer to me. I mean right now all they do is stare a lot and make the occasional cat call. Now I could tell them that we’re really not doing anything, but after interactin’ with Ray, do you really want him or some of the others sniffin’ around on a regular basis?” “Ugh, I suppose not…just wish there was another way.” “Man’s world, blondie, deal with it.” “Trust me, I am. I just don’t like it.” You and Mel continue to drive in relative silence until you get to the carnival destination. “This should be coming up to it soon.” “Didn’t even know there was a carnival nearby.” “Yeah, set up shop I think last Saturday. Most of us from the trailer park went there earlier in the week. I didn’t go mainly because I was too busy fightin’ with Tina at the time and I didn’t wanna run into any clowns. Hate those creepy fuckers.” Me; “Really? I always liked clowns. I even briefly thought about wanting to be one when I was little. Oh well, guess that will always be the dream.” You say causing Mel to give you a look like you just creeped him out a little. You drive up to the carnival, which looks like it was in the middle of being packed down, but other events got in the way and given the ones you suffered, you can sort of imagine what those were. The place looks like a warzone and there are several bodies lying on the ground “Looks like I was right, the Guard was here.” Mel says pointing to a military truck near a dilapidated tent. “Don’t think they’re still in charge here either.” You say. In the distance you see a few small figures near a large tent and then they run into it when they see you pull up. “Well looks like whoever is still in charge here is going to be meetin’ us real soon.” Mel says and stops the truck. The other trucks following stop as well. You see several people now step out of the big tent. Some of them are armed, but then again so is your side. “Get ready, but stay in the truck. I’m gonna actually try to handle this without a gunfight, but I’m not hopeful about that.” Mel remarks and gets out of the truck. You see him motioning and shouting to the rest to hold fire and then he addresses the carnie crowd who seem to mostly consist of midgets and the main one addressing Mel is dressed in clown clothing, though he doesn’t seem to be wearing the makeup. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Ain’t nobody lookin’ for a fight.” Mel says. “Doesn’t look that way, given that you’ve come with three trucks full of armed men.” The midget clown says. “Heh, well I’m sure given your own heightened state of awareness, you know things are getting’ dangerous nowadays. Anyway my name’s Mel, I’m guessin’ since you’re the one talkin’ you’re in charge here. Ringmaster or something like that?” “Look, we don’t want any trouble.” “And you won’t get any trouble. You…uh…got some military gear here too I see. That truck over there.” “Yeah, what of it?” “Oh nothing, but that brings about the question of where are the guardsmen…heh yeah they tried to tell us what to do too. Didn’t work out so well. The second amendment says you got the right to pack it after all. Government can’t just do what they want.” At this point more people come out of the tent, which in turn makes more people get out of their trucks. You get out too, though you’re taking cover behind the door. Your people and the carnies are both starting to eye each other waiting for someone to fire a shot. “Look let me cut to the chase shorty. I’m assumin’ you might know by now what’s been happenin’ back in town. Besides the government tryin’ to pull their shit, there’s a bunch of freaks runnin’ around tryin’ to eat people. A bunch of them attacked us last night and while we fought them off, some of us got badly hurt and are in need of medical supplies. Now of course we did try goin’ into town first, but was just too fucked up there an’ we didn’t make much head way what with the freaks AND the guard all over the damn place. Then it occurred to me today that your circus might still be around and the National Guard probably would’ve been here as well so we decided to investigate. Now the group of weekend warriors at the trailer park had shit for medical supplies. So I’m hoping your detachment had more in that department.” “We ain’t got anything! Just go away or we’ll open fire!” the midget clown says. Mel isn’t convinced and in any case he has no intention of backing down now. “Now you might get a few of us, but I’m bettin, most of us are better shots than y’all, so if you give us what medicine supplies you do have we’ll leave here in peace, if not well…” While Mel is probably doing the best he can in trying to resolve this without a gun battle, but you know how this is going to go down. It’s just been that sort of week. Suddenly someone fires a shot and then another from one side and then it’s a full-blown shoot out. (You mainly hide behind the truck, firing every once in a while) The carnies aren’t holding back, but your side does indeed have much better aim and midgets are falling like flies until they all fall back into the big tent again. After some more shooting which is completely one sided now, Mel calls a halt to it. “We can fire all day into that big tent, but we can’t be sure if we’re actually hitting anyone since we ain’t got x-ray vision an’ I don’t want us wastin’ anymore ammo. We gotta do something else.” Mel says. “Why don’t we just throw grenades at it? We got some from the Guard that was fuckin’ with us.” Ray asks. “Because they might have medical supplies in there ya idiot. We start blowin shit up, an it defeats the whole purpose of the trip. I think we need to spread out an creep up then just rush in.” Mel says. “So your solution is to go in there like a SWAT team an’ possibly get our asses shot off? Fuck that. I’m blowin’ that motherfucker up.” At this point Ray and a couple others look and nod at each other and start heading towards the big tent with grenades in their hand. Mel tells them to stop, but his orders are ignored and met with a couple of swear laden sentences of being tired of him always telling them what to do. Mel is visibly angry; though you’re surprised he isn’t doing more to stop them from disobeying his orders. As much as Mel isn’t exactly your favorite person, you’d hate to see this as the first sign of a “change in leadership.” Especially if it’s going to be Ray. > You let them blow up the tent Opening fire on anyone other than carnies probably isn’t a good idea, at least not on your own. Maybe if Mel gave the order it might be different, but again he surprises you and doesn’t do such a thing. “Ray, you’re a goddamn idiot.” Mel shouts and just watches as Ray and the two others quicken their pace towards the tent. All three of them get half way to the tent and then prepare to throw, which they do. Two of the grenades hit the tent, but one manages to roll inside it. Unfortunately for them one of the carnies steps in the tent entrance and throws it back! “Holy fuck! Run!” is all Ray manages to shout which is then followed by a bit of gunfire from the carnie who threw the grenade. He’s hit the leg, but that’s not the worst of it since he’s not that far from the grenade when he falls to the ground. Mel, you and everyone else take cover behind the trucks in preparation for the explosions soon to follow, all three of them. When the smoke clears and everyone slowly looks out from behind their cover. It’s a devastating mess. The big tent is partially gone, though surprisingly still standing. One can see inside most of it now though and there are a lot of bodies… Speaking of bodies, Ray’s is in pieces since he failed to get away from the blast in time. A crater now exists where the grenade fell and Ray’s body parts aren’t too far from it. The ones who followed Ray faired better and managed to get away from the blast. “I fuckin’ knew something like that was gonna happen. Come on spread out and head towards what’s left of that tent. Careful though, they might still have some fight left!” Mel shouts with nobody really mourning the loss of Ray. You all cautiously proceed forward with weapons raised and taking cover as much as possible. While it’s always better to be safe than sorry, there isn’t much fight left in any of the survivors who are now a mixture of wounded, dying or just plain scared. “Please! We surrender! Take whatever you want, just don’t kill us!” one of the midgets shouts from amongst the carnage. “Goddamn right we will be! None of this woulda been necessary had you just given us whatever medical supplies or medicine you had! Now besides this fuckin’ big top, is there anyone else lurking around that we should know about?” “Uh…um…” “That’s not a fuckin’ answer!” “I dunno! I mean yeah, maybe! There might be a few people hidin’ in the trailers, just don’t kill anyone else, please!” “Some of you search the rest of this place, but keep an eye out for more carnies! If anyone gives ya too much trouble, you know what to do.” Mel shouts. The remainder of your time is mostly spent looking through what remains of the tent which actually did hold some medical supplies though not many and some of them were obviously destroyed by the grenades. As their belongings and supplies are looted and they are “herded” into group, the carnies, the carnies make no attempts at resistance and if there were any hiding in the trailers, they must’ve ran for the wilderness or were really good at hiding, because nobody finds anyone else. Several make an attempt to beg you to leave something, but these are met with verbal commands to shut up before they suffer further. Another pleads to Mel to think about their own wounded, but this is met with smash to the gut with Mel’s rifle. It’s the only physical abuse that occurs before they realize they’re receiving the only mercy they’re currently experiencing. Your own personal feelings on the current situation is that it’s certainly not “right” but what can you do? After looting the carnival of what useful stuff they have, you leave the demoralized carnies and head back to the trailer park. “Well that went better than expected, just lost Ray, I’m sure you’re really broken up by that.” Mel says. “Crushed. Surprised you didn’t shoot him for directly challenging your authority though.” You say. “I was more concerned with the carnies than Ray at that point. Any other time I might’ve given him a beat down, but I wouldn’t have fucking killed him. Sheesh blondie, haven’t you learned by now that just because I’m an asshole to everyone, doesn’t mean I’m some fuckin’ heartless killer? I mean the whole point of this fuckin’ endeavor was to get medicine for folks who are bitten. If I was that cold, I woulda just shot ‘em like some people wanted me to do. Shit, I didn’t even enjoy any of what I had to do to those carnies. I mean I know they had their people to look after, but so did we an’ I ain’t sorry for it.” “Hm, well I suppose you’re right. Guess we’re all a little more complex than appearances would seem.” “So, you see us all a little more than stupid trailer park trash now blondie?” Mel asks. “Actually I’ve more or less discarded that view since I’ve been staying here besides I’m hardly in a position to talk seeing as I’m living with you all.” “So K’ blondie, we needed someone to fill out the snobby tease role in the community anyway.” You chuckle. “I’m really not though. I’m just selective about my standards.” You say. “Don’t need to justify anything to me. I got a woman.” Mel replies. “The thing is despite it all, so far you lot have been at least been cordial with me as my own family was. Dunno if that’s funny or sad.” “Well depends. Stick around long enough blondie an’ you might just become part of our family.” You start to outright laugh. “See, you should fuckin’ laugh more around the others. It makes you seem less snooty.” Mel replies. “I guess anything’s possible. Doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere anytime soon.” You remark. You and Mel continue to converse on the way back to the trailer park. It’s mostly about nothing of major importance, but eventually he goes on about how the next step on the agenda is to contact his cousin Clem who apparently owns a farm further past where the carnival was located. “Figure we’re gonna have to do something about our food soon and instead of riskin’ killin’ ourselves going into the town for whatever scraps are left, it might be best to enlist my cousin’s help in that matter.” Mel says. “So you really think order won’t be restored by the government?” you ask. “Pftt, fuck no blondie. Considerin’ how the National Guard came in last time, I’d just as soon not want government assholes around anyway. But my guess is things are gonna be fucked up like this for a long time so self-sufficiency is gonna have to be a priority. Pretty much the assessment you and most others have had. Still, it’s a good sign that Mel’s at least thinking ahead with the food situation. Eventually you get back to the trailer park where things appear to be running smoothly. The bitten folks are finally seen to properly. The good news is the bites don’t seem to be infectious at least not in the “zombie bite” sense. The bad news is not all of them make it and Billy Ray dies of his wounds, depriving the trailer park of yet another member with “Ray” in their name. As for other things of importance, mostly everyone who is able is pitching in to help in some way. Still realizing you’ve got to work with these people now, you volunteer to keep look out near the entrance for the remainder of the day and part of the night (Which is thankfully uneventful) until eventually some guy named Bob tells you that they’re taking over the graveyard shift. Having been relieved of your duties, you return to your trailer, which is starting to feel more comfortable to you. It’s no basement, but it’s home. > Next day... SATURDAY You groggily awaken to the sounds of a bunch of giggling outside, a few bangs on your door and what sounds to be a thumping sound on the side of your trailer. You look out the window and see a bunch of children playing outside. While you knew there were kids here it was weird that you never really saw them grouped together until today. Making sure you’re decent, you step outside where upon one of the smaller kids suddenly stops bouncing his ball against your trailer. “See, I told ya that Tina said that pretty blond lady lived here.” One of the boys says. “Why the hell are all you kids doing around my trailer?” you ask. “Tina said we should come over here where we were out of the way since most of the adults are either workin’ on the new barricades or that tank lookin’ thing in the field over there.” One of the kids says and points in that direction. “I don’t understand what that all has to do with me.” You ask. “Tina said you’d look after us.” At this point you drop your head in defeat. It’s too early in the day for this. “You okay lady?” “Yeah I’m fine kid. Just re-evaluating what my position is in the community here.” “Um…yeah anyway, I told Tina that we didn’t need some baby sitter, but then Mel shouted at all of us so we ran over here, before he got madder.” “Huh, I wasn’t scared. I just didn’t feel like helping that ol’ asshole anyway.” A slightly older kid says attempting to puff up his chest. So you’ve been assigned to baby-sitting. You aren’t sure if that’s bad or good. On one hand you’re tempted to take it as a good sign since the folks here are obviously trusting enough for you to look after their offspring. Then again they may just not give a shit and these kids could be little hellraisers that their parents want nothing to do with. “Hey lady, did you kill any zombies a couple days ago?” one child asks you. “Tommy, they weren’t zombies ya moron! They were just crazy people!” a girl shouts. “How do you know Jenny?” Tommy asks. “Cause my mama shot one in the chest and it died! Zombies only die if you hit ‘em in the head!” “Yeah, an’ the people who got bit didn’t turn into zombies either, not even Billy Ray an’ he died!” another kid exclaims. At this point the children begin arguing about zombies until you interrupt. “Okay quiet down kids, but to answer your question Tommy, yes I did kill a few of those…well whatever they were.” You say. “Were you scared?! I was scared when they attacked! I hid under my mama’s bed!” the kid with the ball admits. At this point the oldest boy, who was claiming he wasn’t afraid of Mel, boldly comes up to you. He looks like he might be thirteen at most “Hah, I wasn’t scared. I even shot one of those things right in the face! Pow! See, I’m not a scared little kid like the rest of them here.” The boy says puffing up again and making gun gestures. “Hmm, I see. Back up boy.” You say. “Why?” “Because you’re invading my personal space.” You answer. “I wanna invade more than that.” The boy says laughing at his own innuendo. One of the boys laugh along with him; the Jenny girl rolls her eyes. All the rest of the kids look confused on the matter. Considering you’re used to hearing similar from the older knuckle draggers around here, you’re hardly surprised to hear it from this snot nosed brat. “Well, better save that idea for your wet dreams boy, cause that’s never going to happen.” You remark frankly, which causes Jenny to laugh a bit. “What are you some sort of dyke like Butchie Billie? Come on I like older women…” the teen says and at this point tries to grab your chest, but you easily grab his wrist. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing you little shit?! Have you lost your fucking mind?” you say and start digging your nails into his flesh. “OWWW! Lemme go you crazy bitch!” the boy cries and then you twist his arm behind his back. “That’s right I AM a fucking crazy ass bitch! My uncle was a goddamn serial killer, my ex-boyfriend was a cultist, and I killed several of those fucking cannibal freaks without blinking. Now get the fuck outta here before I do worse to your little ass!” you say in his ear and kick him off the steps of your trailer. The boy goes face first into the dirt and while he quickly picks himself up, he just glares at you and runs away. It’s obvious he’s going off to cry somewhere. “Hahahahaha! That was so cool what you did to Alan! Can you teach me to do that?” Jenny asks. “Was your uncle really a serial killer?” Tommy asks. Before you can answer a bright flash followed by a loud noise in the distance grabs everyone’s attention. A couple of the kids scream about their eyes, fortunately you weren’t looking in the direction at the time, but it was still really bright. You then look to the west and in the far distance you see it. A mushroom cloud. You’re not feeling any tremors or aftershocks, a wave of fire hasn’t engulfed you, so you’re guessing that it wasn’t excessively close, maybe it was even a small one. Still, you can’t help but wonder if you’re in some sort of deadly radiation radius though. If so there isn’t much that can done about it. “So…they finally went and did it.” You say. Oddly you don’t even feel any fear. You’re a little anxious you suppose, but the events of this past week have probably helped in putting you in a “doomsday” mindset already. At this point several of the children huddle together a bit, a few run off to presumably find their parents. A couple of them are visibly crying. “Are we going to die soon?” Jenny asks. “Eventually perhaps, but not today.” You answer. At this point you see several women running towards your direction presumably the mothers of these children (oddly you see no fathers, you don’t know if that’s because they’re busy or none of these children have one). After the various mothers either scream at you for not looking after their child “properly” (Never mind the fact that they should have been doing it) or are actually pleasant and thank you while they calm down their child, you see Tina briskly approaching, she waves at you. “Hey blondie, we’ve got an important meeting. Your presence is required.” Tina remarks. “Glad to see I’m being included in these major decisions unlike this morning.” You say walking towards Tina. “Hey, you got to sleep in late and barely had to look after all these brats due to nukes, I’d say you got off easy as far as work is concerned.” As you walk with Tina, you can already hear the shouting from the crowd gathering around Mel’s trailer. “So how bad off are we?” you ask. “Well if Mel’s cousin ends up helping on the food and water front, like Mel thinks he will, I suppose we’ll be fine. Just need to travel up to his farm. Mel’s thinking we’ll probably still have to make another attempt into town though for shit. Might as well give you a heads up blondie, but I think you’ll be going on one or the other of these trips today.” Tina says. “Figured as much. Honestly, I think I’d rather do that than be a baby sitter.” With Tina chuckling at your remark, you briefly think about your past life and realize it was just as well you enjoyed your “good girl” basement dwelling years as much as you did. If you’d actually done anything with your life, it would’ve likely been for naught anyway considering current events. You sort of wonder what happened to your siblings and even your ex-boyfriend. Are they all dead now? Are they alive? Do you even care at all? Not really, though you’re pretty sure that you’re going to beat the shit out of Donna if you ever see her again. You also wonder if you’ll ever leave this place eventually since you can’t really ever seeing yourself being “one of the crowd” here. Still, you’ll have see how things play out. In any event, this is all stuff for a possible future and you’ll worry about it then, right now you have to worry about surviving the day. > Trader of TRASH The Future… “So that Bobby guy was really your ex-boyfriend? He was fucking creepy.” Jenny remarks as you drive away from the compound. “Yeah, well being head of a cult will do that I suppose. He wasn’t quite as creepy when I met him though. In any case it’s good that his sister Diana’s not in the picture anymore. I guarantee if she was still alive, this little peace between us and the Cult of Tiamat wouldn’t even be possible. Mel should be pleased about that.” You say. “Yeah, we even got some good stuff from them. I’m surprised he gave us as much clean water as he did….you think he still likes you?” You laugh. “No, I’m fairly sure Tiamat is the only love of his life, with his sister Helen trailing behind, though maybe he did remember the good times we had together and decided to be generous with the supplies…or maybe this is all a trick and he actually poisoned the water with something hoping it’ll kill everyone.” “Oh shit! I didn’t even think about that! You think so?!” Jenny remarks. “Nah, I’m just joking. I mean I suppose it IS possible, but that’s not the cult’s style. Besides, if Bobby DID do that, he most likely would’ve secretly warned me so I don’t drink it at least.” “So you think it’s safe?” “I dunno. Doesn’t matter anyway since I’m going to go trade it to New Security for their fizzy soda. Can’t get that anywhere else and it’s not like we need anymore water, we currently have a good supply.” “See that’s why I like coming on these runs with you. It’s more interesting than just staying home listening to people argue all the time.” Jenny remarks. “Hm, trust me if I could, I’d rather stay home all the time, but unfortunately that’s not the way the world currently works that allows me to relive the days of my more carefree youth.” You say. At this point Jenny asks you again about your “former life” but like you always tell her, there isn’t much to it. You didn’t do much, but you get the impression she’s just fascinated by the fact that you went from your humble beginning to what you currently do now along with all your survival skills you’ve acquired. Maybe it’s a bit inspiring for her, you don’t know. Though sometimes when you think about it, it is a little impressive. “Hey you ever think about revisiting your old house just out of curiosity?” Jenny asks. “Actually when all the crazy shit in town died down and there weren’t crazy cannibals running around everywhere, I did. I sort of made a detour there during one of my solo runs.” “Really? I never heard about that.” “Why would you? I never told anyone about it before. Anyway, I sort of went there partially out of curiosity, but also because my brother Ben built an underground shelter in the backyard of the place. Probably nothing the scale of one of those Ground Zero shelters like they used to annoyingly run ads for in the old days though.” “Yes, but didn’t you tell me your brother killed himself?” “Yeah, but knowing him, he probably still had that thing well stocked, so I figured it was worth a shot to look for. Unfortunately I looked and looked and looked in that backyard for hours and I couldn’t find the fucking entrance. I don’t know how the hell he moved it around and hid it like he did, but he did and like I said, I couldn’t find it. Who knows? Maybe it’s completely collapsed now anyway.” “So nobody was squatting in your house?” “Not that I could tell. There were a couple times where I felt like someone else was there, but nobody ever showed up. While there were some signs of natural decay and some things had obviously been looted everything else was mostly intact. My own room was completely vandalized though. I mean it looked like someone even tried to set the place on fire and there was some graffiti with the usual vulgarity on the walls. Sort of weird really and I didn’t stick around too long there. Guess it’s like they say, you can’t go home again.” “Well you have a new home anyway.” Jenny remarks. “Eh, I have a place to put my stuff and sleep, but I dunno if I’ll ever feel at home at the trailer park. I mean I get along better with everyone there now than I did, but I still just don’t fit in. The further I travel on these trading runs, I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t just strike out on my own. I certainly have horded enough shit to be a travelling trader if I wanted to.” Jenny at this point gives you a concerned look. “But you wouldn’t just suddenly leave like that would you?” You look back at Jenny and you think about telling her that you don’t really have much attachment to where you live. It’s not even your long lost basement that you once loved so much. You also think about telling her you have even less attachment to most of the people who live there. Sure some of them are okay, and some you even get along better with than you did with your own family, but it’s not enough to keep you around. But then you think, maybe that isn’t entirely true. Jenny is about the same age you were when Donna just suddenly abandoned you. You remember when that happened you were a bit numb. Some of it wasn’t surprising, but nevertheless you did feel a great sense of betrayal due to believing you were building a new and stronger relationship with her at that time. You got over it pretty quickly mainly because there were so many other fires to put out at the time, but you didn’t ever forget. Whatever happened to Donna you suppose you’ll never know. Maybe she died, maybe she’s living well. Who knows? What you do know is over the years Jenny has sort of followed you around mainly due to her own mother basically not giving a shit about her and then later dying in an explosion due to Dan’s failed attempt to create a new “meth lab.” You suppose she probably believes the pair of you have a bond too. Probably a bit more of misguided “hero worship” on her part and her ties to you are probably stronger than yours to her, but you aren’t going to do what Donna did to you. “Nah, I just think about it sometimes that’s all. I’m a bit too old to go traipsing across the nuclear wasteland, sleeping in a truck and worrying about fuel and the like on an everyday basis. However, if I ever do decide to leave, I’ll be sure to let you know.” You say. “So I could come with you?” “Yeah I suppose it would help to have someone watching my back if I was going to do it.” “I think that would be great adventure! And I don’t think you’re too old. If my mom was still alive you’d only be like a couple years younger than her. In fact sometimes I think of you as my…” You tense up. You don’t want to hear that… “Stop. Just stop right there Jenny. Don’t even finish that sentence. I am NOT your mom.” You say with a stern look. “I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say I sometimes think of you as my big sister that I never had.” Jenny remarks. You cease being tense. “Oh. Well…okay. Yeah. I suppose that’s okay. I guess in some ways you’re like the younger sister I never had.” You respond with a smile. “But you did have a younger sister.” “Yeah and she was a slutty and ultimately selfish cunt. Like I said, you’re the younger sister I NEVER had.” With a couple of minor chuckles from you and Jenny about this comment, the pair of you begin speaking about various things as you drive to your next destination. You never imagined you’d wind up as a trader/scavenger for a trailer park community, but in the scheme of things it’s not that bad of a life in this new harsh world.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No need to make this more dangerous than it needs to be. “Alright I guess we’re going to the carnival.” You say. “Good. be ready at the trailer park entrance in a few minutes. Someone there can probably hand you a weapon as well.” When you arrive at your destination, a group of rednecks are already there checking various rifles and handguns. It really does look like they got enough to take on an army. Their attention turns to you. “Well now if it isn’t blondie. I’m surprised Mel is riskin’ his piece on the side like this.” One of the sleazier rednecks says. “I know that’s right Ray. If she was mine, I’d be wantin’ to keep her safe.” Another says. “Piece on the side? Is that what Mel told all of you?” you ask which is followed by a lot of snickering. “Not in so many words honey, but we ain’t the idiots that he thinks we are. Why else would he tell us to lay off of ya if he wasn’t stickin’ ya? Sonofabitch already has Tina, don’t see why he gets ta have TWO fine pieces of ass while some of us ain’t got none.” Ray remarks. “Could I have one of those rifles please?” you ask ignoring Ray’s comments. Ray snorts at your request. “Don’t think so blondie. Maybe you think yer warrior princess or some shit cause you got lucky shootin’ a couple of those freaks, but I ain’t impressed and you ain’t getting any of these rifles. Here, take one of these instead. Should be more than enough for you seein’ as all yer gonna be doin’ is hidin behind Mel the whole time anyway.” Ray says and hands you a smaller pistol. “Fine, I don’t need a big weapon anyway. I don’t have to over compensate for something.” You say taking the pistol. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Ray asks. “It means she’s sayin’ you probably got a small pecker Ray, now quit givin’ the girl a hard time and let’s all get goin’.” Mel sudden remarks as he walks up with a couple more people. Ray doesn’t say anything and just glares at you before leaving for one of the trucks. Everyone else does likewise. Predictably, you have no wish to ride with any of them, let alone in the back of one of the pickups with a bunch of them so you ride up front with Mel especially since you want to address something. As the trucks pull out from the trailer park, Mel fiddles with the radio, but he doesn’t get anything except Ground Zero ads. “Goddamn Ground Zero shit. I’m tellin’ you like I’ve said to everyone else, it’s a fuckin’ conspiracy goin’ on with them. In fact all of this shit goin’ on is government related.” Mel says turning off the radio. “Yeah, probably. Hey Mel, is it really necessary for you to lie and tell everyone that we’re having sex?” you ask. Mel starts chuckling a little bit. “Who said I did that?” Mel asked. “Well first of all a few days ago Tina flat out asked me if I had any intention of fucking you, and I had to clarify that I wasn’t. She believed me, but she said you told her that I flirted with you. Then Ray just said that I was your piece on the side. Everyone else seems to believe that as well.” You say. “Okay, first off I’ll admit that I might’ve said you were flirtin’ with me to Tina, but there was a good reason. We’re just makin’ up from one of our many bad fights and I figured it might be good to get her a little jealous. Y’know so she doesn’t take me for granted and that she could possibly lose me if she isn’t careful. Knowin’ Tina she probably thought it was bullshit anyway, which is probably why she just flat out asked you as opposed to just clawing yer eyes out if she thought it was remotely true.” “Well she did say that she didn’t believe it.” “Exactly. She knew a girl like you wouldn’t be interested in someone like me. Still, it was a good gesture on my part to show her I still care.” At this point you’re not going to decipher hillbilly love life logic. You just continue to listen to Mel explain himself. “Now as for Ray an’ the rest. All I told them is to lay off of you a little bit since you were new to the trailer park an’ you were doin’ your best to contribute. I really can’t help it if everyone jumps to conclusions.” “But you’re not exactly dispelling those conclusions either.” Mel laughs again. “Well, I suppose yer right about that, but think of it this way, if they all think you’re my squeeze on the side, they’re actually all less likely to try anything because they won’t want to answer to me. I mean right now all they do is stare a lot and make the occasional cat call. Now I could tell them that we’re really not doing anything, but after interactin’ with Ray, do you really want him or some of the others sniffin’ around on a regular basis?” “Ugh, I suppose not…just wish there was another way.” “Man’s world, blondie, deal with it.” “Trust me, I am. I just don’t like it.” You and Mel continue to drive in relative silence until you get to the carnival destination. “This should be coming up to it soon.” “Didn’t even know there was a carnival nearby.” “Yeah, set up shop I think last Saturday. Most of us from the trailer park went there earlier in the week. I didn’t go mainly because I was too busy fightin’ with Tina at the time and I didn’t wanna run into any clowns. Hate those creepy fuckers.” Me; “Really? I always liked clowns. I even briefly thought about wanting to be one when I was little. Oh well, guess that will always be the dream.” You say causing Mel to give you a look like you just creeped him out a little. You drive up to the carnival, which looks like it was in the middle of being packed down, but other events got in the way and given the ones you suffered, you can sort of imagine what those were. The place looks like a warzone and there are several bodies lying on the ground “Looks like I was right, the Guard was here.” Mel says pointing to a military truck near a dilapidated tent. “Don’t think they’re still in charge here either.” You say. In the distance you see a few small figures near a large tent and then they run into it when they see you pull up. “Well looks like whoever is still in charge here is going to be meetin’ us real soon.” Mel says and stops the truck. The other trucks following stop as well. You see several people now step out of the big tent. Some of them are armed, but then again so is your side. “Get ready, but stay in the truck. I’m gonna actually try to handle this without a gunfight, but I’m not hopeful about that.” Mel remarks and gets out of the truck. You see him motioning and shouting to the rest to hold fire and then he addresses the carnie crowd who seem to mostly consist of midgets and the main one addressing Mel is dressed in clown clothing, though he doesn’t seem to be wearing the makeup. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Ain’t nobody lookin’ for a fight.” Mel says. “Doesn’t look that way, given that you’ve come with three trucks full of armed men.” The midget clown says. “Heh, well I’m sure given your own heightened state of awareness, you know things are getting’ dangerous nowadays. Anyway my name’s Mel, I’m guessin’ since you’re the one talkin’ you’re in charge here. Ringmaster or something like that?” “Look, we don’t want any trouble.” “And you won’t get any trouble. You…uh…got some military gear here too I see. That truck over there.” “Yeah, what of it?” “Oh nothing, but that brings about the question of where are the guardsmen…heh yeah they tried to tell us what to do too. Didn’t work out so well. The second amendment says you got the right to pack it after all. Government can’t just do what they want.” At this point more people come out of the tent, which in turn makes more people get out of their trucks. You get out too, though you’re taking cover behind the door. Your people and the carnies are both starting to eye each other waiting for someone to fire a shot. “Look let me cut to the chase shorty. I’m assumin’ you might know by now what’s been happenin’ back in town. Besides the government tryin’ to pull their shit, there’s a bunch of freaks runnin’ around tryin’ to eat people. A bunch of them attacked us last night and while we fought them off, some of us got badly hurt and are in need of medical supplies. Now of course we did try goin’ into town first, but was just too fucked up there an’ we didn’t make much head way what with the freaks AND the guard all over the damn place. Then it occurred to me today that your circus might still be around and the National Guard probably would’ve been here as well so we decided to investigate. Now the group of weekend warriors at the trailer park had shit for medical supplies. So I’m hoping your detachment had more in that department.” “We ain’t got anything! Just go away or we’ll open fire!” the midget clown says. Mel isn’t convinced and in any case he has no intention of backing down now. “Now you might get a few of us, but I’m bettin, most of us are better shots than y’all, so if you give us what medicine supplies you do have we’ll leave here in peace, if not well…” While Mel is probably doing the best he can in trying to resolve this without a gun battle, but you know how this is going to go down. It’s just been that sort of week. Suddenly someone fires a shot and then another from one side and then it’s a full-blown shoot out. (You mainly hide behind the truck, firing every once in a while) The carnies aren’t holding back, but your side does indeed have much better aim and midgets are falling like flies until they all fall back into the big tent again. After some more shooting which is completely one sided now, Mel calls a halt to it. “We can fire all day into that big tent, but we can’t be sure if we’re actually hitting anyone since we ain’t got x-ray vision an’ I don’t want us wastin’ anymore ammo. We gotta do something else.” Mel says. “Why don’t we just throw grenades at it? We got some from the Guard that was fuckin’ with us.” Ray asks. “Because they might have medical supplies in there ya idiot. We start blowin shit up, an it defeats the whole purpose of the trip. I think we need to spread out an creep up then just rush in.” Mel says. “So your solution is to go in there like a SWAT team an’ possibly get our asses shot off? Fuck that. I’m blowin’ that motherfucker up.” At this point Ray and a couple others look and nod at each other and start heading towards the big tent with grenades in their hand. Mel tells them to stop, but his orders are ignored and met with a couple of swear laden sentences of being tired of him always telling them what to do. Mel is visibly angry; though you’re surprised he isn’t doing more to stop them from disobeying his orders. As much as Mel isn’t exactly your favorite person, you’d hate to see this as the first sign of a “change in leadership.” Especially if it’s going to be Ray. > You shoot at Ray You’ll be damned if you’re going to let this spiral into a power struggle with the possibility that Ray could be in charge. If Mel isn’t going to do anything about it, you sure as hell will if only to assert that you aren’t someone to be fucked with. Ray and his buddies approach the tent and you shoot Ray square in the back. He howls and slumps to the ground. Ray’s buddies at this point believe themselves to be under attack and react accordingly. One wisely runs for cover and returns fire, while another foolishly fumbles with his grenade still out in the open. Mel shouts at you, but everyone is now shooting. Most are shooting at Ray’s buddies, but the carnies are now taking advantage of the minor infighting your side is experiencing and have come back out to fire upon everyone again. The one fumbling with the grenade gets hit several times, but not before he throws the grenade in your direction. You run away from the truck that you were taking cover by, but in the crossfire you’re hit in the leg. You fall to the ground and try to crawl away from the grenade. You don’t get far though and it goes off destroying the truck. You would’ve survived this since you were far enough away to only lose most of your hearing from the blast. What you don’t survive is the flying piece metal from the truck that hits you when the grenade exploded. With a hot piece of twisted metal embedded in your skull, your struggle is over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “HEY BLONDIE! GET YER ASS UP!” you hear as someone pounds on the door waking you up. It sounds like Mel, but at least it isn’t those awful Ground Zero commercials. You groggily get up and through bleary eyes you see that it’s actually still morning. You haven’t been up this early in a long time…and it’s a horrible thing. You hear more banging and yelling causing you to respond in kind. “Alright! Alright! Goddamnit, I’m up! I’m up!” you say and go to the door. “What?!” you ask though Mel doesn’t look too happy that you’re even asking that question. “What? Whadda ya mean what? Yer fuckin’ sister and that cowardly motherfucker Jimmy Ray just skedaddled outta here with a perfectly good truck that was also actin as a temporary barrier! That’s what!” This remark isn’t quite comprehended by you in your current groggy state. “My sister fucked Jimmy Ray in his truck and what?” you say. “Jesus fuckin’…I said…bah, I’m not fuckin’ repeatin’ myself! Shit!” Mel shouts and walks away banging on the door one more time. You briefly step outside and see Tina standing nearby. “I’m guessin’ you didn’t know nothin’ about it anyway considering you’re still here.” Tina remarks. “Okay, someone tell me again what happened? What about my sister and Jimmy Ray now?” “Apparently your sister convinced Jimmy Ray to leave this place in the middle of the night. Guess she really laid it down good, but then Jimmy Ray’s always had a tendency to get stupid over a gal who knows how to work it.” “Wait. Wait. Wait a minute she’s gone?!” “Yeah, she’s fuckin’ gone with a perfectly good truck! I actually don’t even give a shit about Jimmy Ray, he was more useless than tits on bull, but we could’ve used that fuckin’ truck for…” Mel says. “Oh for fuck’s sake Mel, we got a shitload of trucks here and aren’t you converting those army trucks into some sort of road warrior deathmobile anyway?” “Yeah, but it’s the fuckin’ principle of the thing! Not to mention we still gotta find some medical supplies! Goddamnit, Dan was supposed to be keepin’ a look out and…” You leave Mel to rant and head back inside trying to process this new information. You can’t believe that Donna would just leave you like that. There was no indication she was going to just take off like that. You check her bedroom and see that her bag is gone. You don’t know if she took that just after you fell asleep, or if she came back for it before leaving or what. Was she planning it right from the start or did she just see the opportunity? None of it matters you suppose, she just ditched you and didn’t even have the courtesy to let you know. So much for “sisterhood.” While you’re thinking about this, someone enters the trailer and calls out to you. It’s Tina. “Oh there you are. I’m guessing you’re pretty upset right now, but I found this in Jimmy’s trailer. Figured you should have it.” Tina says and hands you a note. Dear Suzy, Sorry, I just couldn’t stick around. Good luck to you in this shithole. Sincerely, Donna You actually chuckle a bit and crumple up the note. “What’s so funny.” Tina asks. “Oh just thinking that she was the one that convinced me to come here in the first place. Anyway, it’s done and she’s gone. We were never really close to begin with, though I thought that was sort of changing this week, but I guess not. Still, at least it felt like someone was on my side. I imagine I’m not too well accepted around here.” “Meh, I think you’re about as accepted as anyone else around here. I mean I think the general assessment of you is that you’re a big tease that thinks she’s better than everyone else, but I mean its not like you’re a nigger or something.” Tina remarks. You give Tina a strange look. “Um, lucky me then I guess. Just out of curiosity what do you think about Donna leaving? She kept going on about how you two were friends.” You say. “Me? Eh, I don’t really care. I mean I knew your sister on and off for a few years when I use to do strip jobs over at the parties at the place she was livin’ at before. An while she was a funny girl that made that particular job a lot more enjoyable, so I didn’t mind helping her out with a job when she asked, but it wasn’t like I ever considered her a real friend. Hell, I didn’t even know she had a sister until a few days ago. Anyway, always knew she was flakey. To be honest I didn’t even see her lasting long as a stripper and living here either. She probably would’ve latched on to first sugar daddy she could find and ditched everything.” “Sounds about right.” You say and toss aside the note. “Well I’ll leave you alone blondie. And I wouldn’t worry about your status here or lack there of. Quite frankly so many folks here have died or are wounded that nobody’s really in any position to antagonize someone who actually has been making an effort to contribute around here. Speakin’ of which I need to go talk to this crazy man that’s probably still ranting about a fuckin’ truck.” Tina says and leaves. You take a shower as you’re thinking about how you’re going to proceed next. You go back and forth on whether to do what your sister did, but knowing your luck, you’d end up getting caught so you ultimately abandon the idea. As you’re getting dressed and figuring out what your next plan of action should be, you suddenly hear banging on the door of your trailer again. You go to the door and see it’s that methhead Dan. “Hey blondie! You’re needed for a vote!” Dan exclaims. “Vote? Vote for what?” you ask. “We need a tie breaker to shoot the ones that got bitten or not. Billy Ray in particular ain’t lookin’ too good.” Dan remarks. “So what are we doin’ if we don’t shoot ‘em?” “Guess we’re goin’ back to town to try for medical supplies again. If that’s the case, I hope we have better luck, cause it was a cluster fuck last time.” Dan says. As you walk with Dan, he’s looking at you a lot and while some of that is predictable ogling, he’s also doing a lot of twitching and it’s making you nervous. “Dan, I know you have to take a glance at me every now and then, but between the staring and the twitching it’s making me uncomfortable. Makes me think of those things that attacked us yesterday. It doesn’t help that you’re about as clean as they were too.” You say. “Oh. Sorry blondie. I just…I need a fuckin’ fix. Just to put me at ease. The shit that’s been going down for the past couple of days has really made me scared y’know? I went through most of my shit after the National Guard showed up and then I used the rest up immediately after the freak invasion.” “So where’s the meth lab? Don’t places like this usually have one?” you ask. “Hah, I wish. I mean we used to have one years ago, but it blew up and caused a lot of damage. After that, the old owner sort of cracked down on that sort of thing.” “Well there’s no law anymore, you could just start making it again.” “Hah, yeah. But again with everythin’ that’s gone on, isn’t like there’s been time to do that. Not to mention Mel’s been ridin’ everyone non-stop. He’s already pissed at me for fallin’ asleep yesterday. I didn’t catch Jimmy Ray an’ yer sister taking off in the night. Guess he figured if anyone would stay awake all night it would be me, but I just sort of crashed because like I said I didn’t have my shit anymore to keep me alert.” “Yeah, well it’s tough all over.” You say unsympathetically. Before you even get to the meeting, you can hear the arguing, which is mainly consisting of a lot of shouting and swearing. By the time you arrive, you’re met with mixed glances. “These are our friends, we can’t just fuckin’ kill them!” “We need to fuckin’ kill ‘em before they infect us all!” “You’re one cold hearted sonofbitch you know that? What if I just decided to kill you?!” “Try it bitch!” “SHUT THE FUCK UP ALL OF YOU!” Mel shouts. At this point all eyes are on you. “As you can see blondie, we’re involved in the democratic process and are in need of a tie breaker.” Mel says to you. “Aw Mel what the fuck we need her vote for? She ain’t one of us and her sister fucking stole a truck!” some redneck woman says. “I said shut it! The only reason why I even entertained this process is so you fuckers would quit bitchin’ about me bein’ a so-called tyrant even though I’m the only one around he trying to do anything at all! So however blondie votes, will break the goddamn tie and we can move on. So what’s your vote?” Not that you’re especially close to any of these people, but if you vote to shoot you know it’s going to cause a lot more problems and you being an “outsider” are going to catch all the hell for it. Besides, last you remember Mel was trying to keep these folks alive, best you vote on his side. “Well I vote not to shoot because…” you start to say before Mel interrupts again. “That’s all I need to know. Didn’t need the reasons. Hear that folks? We ain’t shootin’ any of them! I dunno why you pussies are scared anyway, we got ‘em all locked up and barricaded inside a trailer. They ain’t getting out even if they do turn into something.” At this point there is more grumbling, but democracy has won this day and nobody gets violent about it, though you have a question. “Um, has anyone actually looked in on these bitten folks since they got thrown in together?” you ask. “Yeah, I did. Like I said, Billy Ray ain’t lookin’ too good. Neither are some of the others. They’re all mostly just lying there not doing much though.” Dan says. “Well was any first aid actually applied to them? I mean maybe they’re not infected, but just really wounded. Any aid might help.” “I threw in some bottles of whiskey an’ pain killers to ease the discomfort. I threw in some bandages in there, but I wasn’t gonna get close enough to actually bandage them.” Dan replies. “And that’s it? Nobody else has seen to them since they’ve been shoved in a trailer?” “Nope.” This is nuts, these people that have been bitten could very well be DYING due to neglect more than anything else! Nevermind the fact that the reason some might not be moving is that they might’ve very well ODed from the alcohol/pill combo. In any event Mel breaks up your question period. “Alright what we’re gonna do is fetch us some more medical supplies an whatever else we might find. Thinkin’ we should hit up that carnival a few miles from here.” Mel remarks which sort of takes most by surprise. You especially since you weren’t even aware there was a carnival in the area. “If the National Guard stopped here, chances are good they stopped at that carnival too. Maybe that detachment had more supplies and I also figure it’s gotta be easier than tryin’ to go back into town again.” Mel reasons. Mel’s suggestion is met with mixed results, but the people seem to be okay with it. Probably because a carnival does sound a lot less dangerous than going back into town, which they assumed would be the case. “Okay, we’re taking three trucks an’ y’all that came with me last time are comin’ with me this time as well an I’ll be pickin’ a few more so don’t nobody go too far. That means you blondie.” “Wouldn’t it be better if I stayed here and looked after things? I mean you don’t want to leave this place totally undefended.” You say. “Oh it never is. I’m sure you saw that everyone is fully capable of defendin’ themselves here when those freaks attacked. But I can’t just be takin’ mothers ya know? I mean it’s bad enough most of the snot nosed bastards round here that survived ain’t got fathers and that’s before all this shit went down. Can’t hardly deprive ‘em of mothers as well can I? Someone needs to keep ‘em out of my way and look after them.” “Well isn’t someone like Butchie Billie better suited for something like this than me?” “Butchie Billie is probably our best welder and mechanic. I’m not gonna risk taking her. Besides, she still needs to work on converting our newly acquired army trucks. And some of the other guys I’m not takin’ are better at workin’ on the generators or digging some extra outhouses.” “I don’t have a weapon or least not any with ammo. I ran out of bullets during the last attack.” You say. “Oh don’t worry about that, if there is one thing we’ve got a lot of, its weapons and ammo.” As you struggle to think up another excuse. Mel stops you. “Look blondie, you knew you were gonna have to start paying yer dues. And since I KNOW you were tryin’ to avoid bein the new fuck toy around here, it’s either this or you can just fuckin’ leave.” You don’t see yourself making it on your own…at least not yet. You still need to be in the safety of numbers, so that means you’re going. However you question if Mel’s plan is even a good one. You could very well get to this carnival and not find anything, you sort of wonder if it wouldn’t be a better idea to actually head back to town. You figure the town is probably already half looted and lawless by now, so you might well go in and get the best stuff you can before its completely gone. Not to mention you might know the town a little better as far as which side streets to take to get to certain locations quicker. Like say small pharmacies and other stores near where you live. Of course putting yourself in more danger isn’t necessarily desirable either. > You suggest going back to town If you’re going to risk your life, it might as well be worth it and you’re not seeing a carnival as being worth it. “I’m more than willing to be a productive member of this community, and far be it from me to question your orders Mel, but I don’t think the carnival is the right way to go. Assuming the carnies didn’t already pull up stakes and assuming the military even bothered to send a detachment to a carnival, I can’t believe that the detachment would’ve been any better supplied than the one sent here.” “So what are you saying exactly, blondie?” “I’m saying that it would be a better plan to go back into town. I know my area alone has a couple of pharmacies and even a grocery store. I could easily direct you to them.” “Town? That was a clusterfuck the last time we tried that! Besides, how do we know those places haven’t already been looted?” “It’s a risk, but I believe if you want a better chance at getting medicine and medical supplies, it would be better bet to go back into town. You’re better equipped and prepared for what to expect in town now too. It’s up to you though, you’re in charge after all.” You say. Mel looks at you and then looks at Tina. “Don’t look at me. I voted to shoot them.” Tina remarks. “Yeah, yeah, you’re never fuckin’ supportive. (Sigh) Fuck it. You make a good point blondie. We’ll head back into town, nobody’s gonna like it, but like I said, fuck it. You go head over to the entrance, I’ll be over there soon.” As you’re about to go over to the trucks by the entrance, Tina grabs a hold of your arm with a semi-forceful grip. You spin around and see that her face isn’t one of friendliness. “So, you managed to change Mel’s mind. Pretty impressive. I have a hard time doing that at the best of times. Maybe he is fuckin’ ya.” Tina says. “What?! Tina I swear I’m not doing anything with Mel!” you exclaim. “Oh no, I don’t think you are, but you’re not exactly adverse to usin’ yer natural attractiveness to get yer way. Yer doin’ it to keep the rest of the slugs off of ya. I get it, but if Mel does some fool thing because it was his idea, I can handle that. He does it on a regular basis. Hell, if he does some fool thing cause one of his drinkin’ buddies thought it was a good idea, I can handle that as well since it doesn’t even happen that often and he usually realizes it before it gets too out of hand. However, Mel goin’ to do some fool thing because some tease fluttered her eyes at him is something else entirely. “Tina, I…” “Shut the fuck up blondie, fore I pull that pretty golden hair from your head by the roots. Now listen to me close, this is the LAST time you EVER influence Mel to do something ever again. Got it?” While you’ve certainly “toughened up” this week and Tina’s actually shorter than you, but even now you doubt that you’d be able to physically take a trailer park girl like her that’s probably gotten into more fist fights than the number of years you’ve been alive. “Got it.” You meekly say. Tina doesn’t even acknowledge your compliance; she just shoulder shoves you out of the way when she heads back to her trailer. With that unpleasantness out of the way, you head over to the trucks. When you arrive at your destination, a group of rednecks are already there checking various rifles and handguns. It really does look like they got enough to take on an army. “Well now if it isn’t blondie. I’m surprised Mel is riskin’ his piece on the side like this.” One of the sleazier rednecks says. “I know that’s right Ray. If she was mine, I’d be wantin’ to keep her safe.” Another says. “Piece on the side? Is that what Mel told all of you?” you ask which is followed by a lot of snickering. “Not in so many words honey, but we ain’t the idiots that he thinks we are. Why else would he tell us to lay off of ya if he wasn’t stickin’ ya? Sonofabitch already has Tina, don’t see why he gets ta have TWO fine pieces of ass while some of us ain’t got none.” Ray remarks. “Nothing is going on between Mel and I.” you say. “Oh? Is that right blondie? Well how about you get something going on right HERE!” Ray remarks while grabbing his crotch causing everyone to laugh. “Sorry, I’m not a lesbian and I don’t eat pussy.” You remark dryly. Your insult doesn’t quite sink in immediately, though Ray gets the idea he has been insulted. “What the hell’s that mean?” Ray demands. “It means she doesn’t think you got a dick and that you ain’t a man. Something we all knew a long time ago Ray, not stop givin’ the girl grief and hand her a pistol.” Mel suddenly says as he walks up with a few more people behind him. After Ray grudgingly hands you a pistol and then Mel breaks the bad news to everyone that they’re heading back into town. There is predictably a lot of protesting and grumbling, but after shouting everyone down everyone complies with Mel’s orders. Everyone gets in their vehicles and you ride up front in Mel’s pick up truck. As the trucks pull out from the trailer park, Mel fiddles with the radio, but he doesn’t get anything except Ground Zero ads. “Goddamn Ground Zero shit. I’m tellin’ you like I’ve said to everyone else, it’s a fuckin’ conspiracy goin’ on with them. In fact all of this shit goin’ on is government related.” Mel says turning off the radio. The rest of your drive to town is mostly a quiet one. Mel doesn’t bother speaking to you and you’re a little too pre-occupied by what you’re going to do about your current situation because between the incident with Tina and the one with Ray you can’t help but think that you’re never going to fit in or be comfortable there. Your sister might’ve just ditched you, but you’re starting to think she had the right idea about leaving. When you do finally get to town it’s predictably a warzone. A war in which it appears the military did NOT win. You see overturned vehicles, dead bodies and destruction, but there is no semblance of organized order anywhere. The only thing that is “organized” are the cannibal freaks and there are large groups of them roving the streets or already feasting on the dead. They naturally start attacking whenever your group drives through an infested area. Shooting and running them over becomes the order of the day as you direct Mel to the best way to get to your own neighborhood area. When you finally do get to your area, the number of freaks severely decreases. It’s sort of odd, but where you lived seems relatively safe. There are still signs of devastation here and there are certainly dead bodies to be seen, but so far it’s a lot safer than the rest of the town. “Guess the military cleaned up this area, before they got their asses kicked. How much further is our destination?” Mel asks. “Just make a left up here and you’ll be there.” You remark. Following your directions Mel makes a turn and then pulls into the parking lot of what looks to be a completely deserted pharmacy with a few broken windows. The other two trucks park nearby. The pharmacy across the street looks deserted as well. No telling what’s inside either of them, but you sort of get the impression the noise of the vehicles would’ve attracted freak attention if any were lurking about. “Where’s the grocery store?” Mel asks. “That’s a few blocks up the street.” You reply. “Okay guess it’s time to tell everyone the next phase of this plan.” Mel gets out of the truck and calls attention to everyone. “Alright, we got three locations to search, which is good because there are three big groups of us. I’m gonna search this pharmacy. Ray, you go search the one across the street. Dan, your group can get back in your truck and search the grocery store up the block.” Mel says. “What? Aw Mel, why I gotta drive all that way?” “Goddamnit Dan it ain’t that fuckin’ far! Just fuckin’ do it! Besides, I know you. If you’re searching one of these pharmacies, your junkies ass is gonna pocket all the med for yourself and claim you didn’t find anything.” While Dan is in the middle of protesting, you’re coming to the conclusion of your earlier thoughts on the ride over here. Namely, you’re tired of this group and you’re going to risk going it alone. You figure you’re already close to your house, you could probably sneak away and head there for temporary relief to plan your next move. Though if you went with Dan you’d be even closer to your home. When Mel finishes ordering everyone about, you go up to talk to him. “Hey Mel, I think I should go with Dan.” “Huh? What the fuck you wanna go with that junkie asshole for?” “Well grocery stores do tend to carry a small supply of medicine too, I figure I can keep an eye on him if he decides to not be in a sharing mood.” “Hmm, good point blondie…hey Dan! Don’t go yet, blondie’s comin’ with ya so make room in the front!” Mel shouts before Dan pulls away. You hop into Dan’s truck and you’re soon on your way though Dan’s attention is half on the road and half on you. “Sort of surprised you wanted to come with me blondie.” He says scratching himself. “Well, Mel doesn’t entirely trust you. He thinks if you find any medicine in the grocery store, you’ll just keep it for yourself. So he’s sent me to keep an eye on you.” “Oh.” Dan says. “Don’t worry Dan, I’m not gonna rat you out if you take some things for personal use. I know it’s not really your fault and that you’re just sick.” You say in an empathetic tone. Dan smiles at you revealing his horrible dental conditions. “See that’s what I’ve told people before! I’m glad you understand darlin’. I mean I’ve really tried to quit before, but…” At this point Dan goes on with his pathetic sob story about how he’s tried to kick his drug habit, but you’re not really listening. Your thoughts of escaping these ignorant redneck assholes are filling your mind. When you get to your destination, the grocery store is in much the same condition as the pharmacies were. Dan, you and the rest get out of the vehicle. “Seems like this place could be clear, but keep alert anyway. Could be somethin’ as big as a Butchie Billie, or it could be as small as Wade’s dick!” Dan laughs causing Wade to swear at Dan and others to chuckle. Still set on your plan of escape, you think about how you’re going to do it. The easiest way would be to just sneak away at the earliest opportunity and run home. You’re fairly confident you could do it. Of course you’re also wondering if you shouldn’t just get away from these assholes, but the whole forsaken town in general. Staying here even in the “safety” of your home still isn’t going to eliminate the problem that you’re going to be located in cannibal central. Of course if you want to leave town the safest way to do that is by vehicle which means you’re going to have to engage in the riskier endeavor of stealing Dan’s keys. > You sneak away You’re likely going to get shot or worse if you try to steal the keys or the truck. There are too many rednecks around and they’re probably better with their weapons than you are. It’ll be much easier to just sneak away. At best they might call out and search for you, but eventually Mel or their own common sense will tell them that you aren’t worth risking their lives sticking around for. Your group goes into the grocery store, which must still have on some sort of emergency lighting where upon everyone begins to carefully search the place. While there has been some looting and even signs of fighting that went on here, the place is in better shape than anyone thought. You grab one of the hand baskets and gradually start distancing yourself from the rest. You start loading up on some nearby cans, which you aren’t really paying much attention to since you’re more focused on what the other members of your group are doing. When you see that you’re far enough away from them and they seem preoccupied with other things, you take the opportunity to head back outside. Still making the effort to not look suspicious just in case, you put the handbasket into the bed of the pick up truck and then when you’re sure nobody is watching that’s when you run. You run from the grocery store and don’t even look back. You half expect to hear some shouting telling you to stop, but you don’t hear any. When you get far enough away you keep a quick pace, but slow down a bit since you’re losing you’re breath. You’re really going to have to get used to exercising on a regular basis to boost the endurance you think. The one thing that sticks out as you’re walking through your neighborhood is how eerily quiet it is. You still see signs of destruction and even dead bodies, but you’re not seeing a living soul. On one hand it’s great that you aren’t being assaulted by cannibal freaks, but on the other hand it makes you wonder what the hell happened in your neighborhood to result in it being such a ghost area. At this point you’re worried that maybe somebody hidden is watching you. Despite all your concerns, nothing attacks or otherwise hinders you by the time you get home. You’re anxious to get in as well. You know it’s only going to be a temporary respite, but at least you’ll get a bit of peace while you ponder what to do next. Maybe you can look for that hidden shelter your brother built in the backyard. As your tired feet hit heavily on each front step, you briefly wonder if either of your siblings are home. Peter’s car isn’t in the driveway, but then you did leave it at Julie’s. If he’s still here, you suppose you’ll have to explain what happened on that front. Kelly’s vehicle isn’t here either, so maybe your home has been abandoned. The front door of course is predictably locked, but fortunately you still have your key to it in one of your pockets. It’s amazing how you instinctively put it in there despite you not really ever expecting to come back here. You open the front door and find that your home has not been abandoned, you also see your sister Kelly standing front of you holding a shotgun. “I heard you clomping out there on the steps. Figured you might be one of those psychos or something. Didn’t expect to see you though. While I’m a little impressed that you obviously managed to survive this fucking chaos, you never should’ve come back here sis. I told you before this is MY house.” Kelly says. Your eyes widen as she aims the shotgun at you. “Kelly, I’ll just…go…okay?” you say holding your hands up and start to back up. “Now Suzy…what sort of big sister would I be if I let you stay out there to potentially get raped, killed or eaten? You underestimate my mercy.” Kelly says with a smile and that’s when you know this is going to end badly for you. You attempt to go for your pistol, but Kelly already has the advantage. Kelly fires and a slug hit your chest, shattering bones and vital internal organs like your heart. Your lifeless body flies backwards off the porch and onto the concrete walkway.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you’re going to risk your life, it might as well be worth it and you’re not seeing a carnival as being worth it. “I’m more than willing to be a productive member of this community, and far be it from me to question your orders Mel, but I don’t think the carnival is the right way to go. Assuming the carnies didn’t already pull up stakes and assuming the military even bothered to send a detachment to a carnival, I can’t believe that the detachment would’ve been any better supplied than the one sent here.” “So what are you saying exactly, blondie?” “I’m saying that it would be a better plan to go back into town. I know my area alone has a couple of pharmacies and even a grocery store. I could easily direct you to them.” “Town? That was a clusterfuck the last time we tried that! Besides, how do we know those places haven’t already been looted?” “It’s a risk, but I believe if you want a better chance at getting medicine and medical supplies, it would be better bet to go back into town. You’re better equipped and prepared for what to expect in town now too. It’s up to you though, you’re in charge after all.” You say. Mel looks at you and then looks at Tina. “Don’t look at me. I voted to shoot them.” Tina remarks. “Yeah, yeah, you’re never fuckin’ supportive. (Sigh) Fuck it. You make a good point blondie. We’ll head back into town, nobody’s gonna like it, but like I said, fuck it. You go head over to the entrance, I’ll be over there soon.” As you’re about to go over to the trucks by the entrance, Tina grabs a hold of your arm with a semi-forceful grip. You spin around and see that her face isn’t one of friendliness. “So, you managed to change Mel’s mind. Pretty impressive. I have a hard time doing that at the best of times. Maybe he is fuckin’ ya.” Tina says. “What?! Tina I swear I’m not doing anything with Mel!” you exclaim. “Oh no, I don’t think you are, but you’re not exactly adverse to usin’ yer natural attractiveness to get yer way. Yer doin’ it to keep the rest of the slugs off of ya. I get it, but if Mel does some fool thing because it was his idea, I can handle that. He does it on a regular basis. Hell, if he does some fool thing cause one of his drinkin’ buddies thought it was a good idea, I can handle that as well since it doesn’t even happen that often and he usually realizes it before it gets too out of hand. However, Mel goin’ to do some fool thing because some tease fluttered her eyes at him is something else entirely. “Tina, I…” “Shut the fuck up blondie, fore I pull that pretty golden hair from your head by the roots. Now listen to me close, this is the LAST time you EVER influence Mel to do something ever again. Got it?” While you’ve certainly “toughened up” this week and Tina’s actually shorter than you, but even now you doubt that you’d be able to physically take a trailer park girl like her that’s probably gotten into more fist fights than the number of years you’ve been alive. “Got it.” You meekly say. Tina doesn’t even acknowledge your compliance; she just shoulder shoves you out of the way when she heads back to her trailer. With that unpleasantness out of the way, you head over to the trucks. When you arrive at your destination, a group of rednecks are already there checking various rifles and handguns. It really does look like they got enough to take on an army. “Well now if it isn’t blondie. I’m surprised Mel is riskin’ his piece on the side like this.” One of the sleazier rednecks says. “I know that’s right Ray. If she was mine, I’d be wantin’ to keep her safe.” Another says. “Piece on the side? Is that what Mel told all of you?” you ask which is followed by a lot of snickering. “Not in so many words honey, but we ain’t the idiots that he thinks we are. Why else would he tell us to lay off of ya if he wasn’t stickin’ ya? Sonofabitch already has Tina, don’t see why he gets ta have TWO fine pieces of ass while some of us ain’t got none.” Ray remarks. “Nothing is going on between Mel and I.” you say. “Oh? Is that right blondie? Well how about you get something going on right HERE!” Ray remarks while grabbing his crotch causing everyone to laugh. “Sorry, I’m not a lesbian and I don’t eat pussy.” You remark dryly. Your insult doesn’t quite sink in immediately, though Ray gets the idea he has been insulted. “What the hell’s that mean?” Ray demands. “It means she doesn’t think you got a dick and that you ain’t a man. Something we all knew a long time ago Ray, not stop givin’ the girl grief and hand her a pistol.” Mel suddenly says as he walks up with a few more people behind him. After Ray grudgingly hands you a pistol and then Mel breaks the bad news to everyone that they’re heading back into town. There is predictably a lot of protesting and grumbling, but after shouting everyone down everyone complies with Mel’s orders. Everyone gets in their vehicles and you ride up front in Mel’s pick up truck. As the trucks pull out from the trailer park, Mel fiddles with the radio, but he doesn’t get anything except Ground Zero ads. “Goddamn Ground Zero shit. I’m tellin’ you like I’ve said to everyone else, it’s a fuckin’ conspiracy goin’ on with them. In fact all of this shit goin’ on is government related.” Mel says turning off the radio. The rest of your drive to town is mostly a quiet one. Mel doesn’t bother speaking to you and you’re a little too pre-occupied by what you’re going to do about your current situation because between the incident with Tina and the one with Ray you can’t help but think that you’re never going to fit in or be comfortable there. Your sister might’ve just ditched you, but you’re starting to think she had the right idea about leaving. When you do finally get to town it’s predictably a warzone. A war in which it appears the military did NOT win. You see overturned vehicles, dead bodies and destruction, but there is no semblance of organized order anywhere. The only thing that is “organized” are the cannibal freaks and there are large groups of them roving the streets or already feasting on the dead. They naturally start attacking whenever your group drives through an infested area. Shooting and running them over becomes the order of the day as you direct Mel to the best way to get to your own neighborhood area. When you finally do get to your area, the number of freaks severely decreases. It’s sort of odd, but where you lived seems relatively safe. There are still signs of devastation here and there are certainly dead bodies to be seen, but so far it’s a lot safer than the rest of the town. “Guess the military cleaned up this area, before they got their asses kicked. How much further is our destination?” Mel asks. “Just make a left up here and you’ll be there.” You remark. Following your directions Mel makes a turn and then pulls into the parking lot of what looks to be a completely deserted pharmacy with a few broken windows. The other two trucks park nearby. The pharmacy across the street looks deserted as well. No telling what’s inside either of them, but you sort of get the impression the noise of the vehicles would’ve attracted freak attention if any were lurking about. “Where’s the grocery store?” Mel asks. “That’s a few blocks up the street.” You reply. “Okay guess it’s time to tell everyone the next phase of this plan.” Mel gets out of the truck and calls attention to everyone. “Alright, we got three locations to search, which is good because there are three big groups of us. I’m gonna search this pharmacy. Ray, you go search the one across the street. Dan, your group can get back in your truck and search the grocery store up the block.” Mel says. “What? Aw Mel, why I gotta drive all that way?” “Goddamnit Dan it ain’t that fuckin’ far! Just fuckin’ do it! Besides, I know you. If you’re searching one of these pharmacies, your junkies ass is gonna pocket all the med for yourself and claim you didn’t find anything.” While Dan is in the middle of protesting, you’re coming to the conclusion of your earlier thoughts on the ride over here. Namely, you’re tired of this group and you’re going to risk going it alone. You figure you’re already close to your house, you could probably sneak away and head there for temporary relief to plan your next move. Though if you went with Dan you’d be even closer to your home. When Mel finishes ordering everyone about, you go up to talk to him. “Hey Mel, I think I should go with Dan.” “Huh? What the fuck you wanna go with that junkie asshole for?” “Well grocery stores do tend to carry a small supply of medicine too, I figure I can keep an eye on him if he decides to not be in a sharing mood.” “Hmm, good point blondie…hey Dan! Don’t go yet, blondie’s comin’ with ya so make room in the front!” Mel shouts before Dan pulls away. You hop into Dan’s truck and you’re soon on your way though Dan’s attention is half on the road and half on you. “Sort of surprised you wanted to come with me blondie.” He says scratching himself. “Well, Mel doesn’t entirely trust you. He thinks if you find any medicine in the grocery store, you’ll just keep it for yourself. So he’s sent me to keep an eye on you.” “Oh.” Dan says. “Don’t worry Dan, I’m not gonna rat you out if you take some things for personal use. I know it’s not really your fault and that you’re just sick.” You say in an empathetic tone. Dan smiles at you revealing his horrible dental conditions. “See that’s what I’ve told people before! I’m glad you understand darlin’. I mean I’ve really tried to quit before, but…” At this point Dan goes on with his pathetic sob story about how he’s tried to kick his drug habit, but you’re not really listening. Your thoughts of escaping these ignorant redneck assholes are filling your mind. When you get to your destination, the grocery store is in much the same condition as the pharmacies were. Dan, you and the rest get out of the vehicle. “Seems like this place could be clear, but keep alert anyway. Could be somethin’ as big as a Butchie Billie, or it could be as small as Wade’s dick!” Dan laughs causing Wade to swear at Dan and others to chuckle. Still set on your plan of escape, you think about how you’re going to do it. The easiest way would be to just sneak away at the earliest opportunity and run home. You’re fairly confident you could do it. Of course you’re also wondering if you shouldn’t just get away from these assholes, but the whole forsaken town in general. Staying here even in the “safety” of your home still isn’t going to eliminate the problem that you’re going to be located in cannibal central. Of course if you want to leave town the safest way to do that is by vehicle which means you’re going to have to engage in the riskier endeavor of stealing Dan’s keys. > You steal Dan's keys If you’re going to escape, you might as well escape it all. You can worry about what comes after later. You already got an idea of how to get the truck keys from Dan, but it’s not something you’re looking forward to… Mustering up your mental fortitude you prepare yourself for the unpleasant task ahead. Your group goes into the grocery store, which must still have on some sort of emergency lighting where upon everyone begins to carefully search the place. While there has been some looting and even signs of fighting that went on here, the place is in better shape than anyone thought. “Hey Dan, the medicine aisle is over this way.” You say while gently grabbing his hand. Dan is more than a little surprised by this gesture. “Oh. Okay, lead the way then. Everyone else keep stockin’ up on whatever food you want. ” He responds. When you lead Dan over to the aisle you remind yourself of what your goal is… “Damn darlin’ it looks like this aisle is mgh!” Dan is interrupted when you kiss him directly on his meth rotten mouth. It tastes horrible and it’s only due to your strong gag reflex that you don’t puke. Dan is flabbergasted; he literally is at a loss for words. “I gotta suck your dick right now Dan. It’s all I’ve been thinking about since we were ridin’ in the truck together. Shit, I woulda went down on you right then had there not been an audience in the back of the truck. Come on we can go into the bathroom of this place.” You whisper in his ear. Dan is still tongue tied, but at this point he’s not arguing and passively follows you as you lead him to the women’s bathroom in the back of the store. You make sure nobody has seen the pair of you enter and then lock the door. “I…I…I can’t believe you felt this way about me darlin’. I mean this is gotta be a dream.” Dan says. “Ain’t no dream, now back against that wall, pull ‘em down and let me get to suckin’ what’s gotta be a big ass dick. Gotta have it. Gotta have that juicy hot throbbing cock in my mouth.” You say. Dan’s fantasies of an insatiable cock hungry hot blonde have probably been fueled for years by endless amounts of porn he’s no doubt watched. So it’s predictable that he doesn’t even question the unlikelihood of any of this at all. He wastes no time in putting down his rifle and unzipping his pant. It’s an unimpressive sight. It’s even more unimpressive when you’re on your knees, eye level to it. “Oh my god, this is gonna be better than drugs!” Dan says even closing his eyes as if preparing himself for the glory that is your mouth. Unfortunately for him he gets none of that and instead receives a FALCON PUNCH to his balls. Dan’s reaction causes him to practically crumple onto you. He manages to wheeze a few swear, but you then shut him up by smacking his head against the bathroom wall, he groans a bit and still tries to grab a hold of you, but you stop him completely by pistol whipping him in the face until he’s no longer moving. You aren’t sure if he’s dead, but you’re not really paying attention to see if he’s breathing by this point, you’re too busy looking for the keys…jackpot. Then you hear some banging on the door and you freeze with your pistol in hand. “Hey, who’s in there? I heard some noise. Is that you blondie?” you hear a voice exclaim. “…uh yeah it’s me! I had to take a shit and there were just some big ass rats in here that scared me so bad I almost dropped a load in my pants! No big deal though!” you shout. “Oh…um okay.” The voice says. “Um, hey you seen Dan?” “Thought I saw him still over by the drug aisle.” “Yeah he’s not…” the voice starts to say before you interrupt. “Goddamn it I’m trying to take a shit that feels like I need a goddamn midwife for this thing! I’m not Dan’s personal fucking shadow, go look for him yourself!” you shout. “Okay! Okay! Sheesh, you don’t need to be a goddamn bitch about it.” The voice says and then you hear some footsteps leaving. Well that will have bought you a little time, but when you leave, you need to make a beeline for the truck and hope that nobody is lingering around it at the time. Since you get the impression you’re going to be shooting it out with the rednecks anyway, you take Dan’s rifle over your shoulder. You exit the bathroom and look around to see a few of the rednecks still stocking up on some more food. You quicken your pace towards the entrance of the grocery store while attempting to keep your head down so nobody immediately sees you. When you get to the entrance there’s one of the rednecks loading up something in the back of the truck. You think its Wade from earlier. “Everything come out all right?” he asks meaning he must’ve been the one talking to you from outside the door earlier. “Yeah, yeah.” you say looking around if there are any others you need to deal with. “Y’know, maybe you wouldn’t be so backed up if you tried anal.” Wade says with a smirk. “Excuse me?” “Ass fuckin’, sweetcheeks. It’ll loosen you up back there. I’d be more than willin’ to help you out in that department honey.” Wade says with a grin. And at that point, you’re done with stealth. “And here’s a new hole to loosen up your useless brain matter shithead.” You say pulling your pistol blasting Wade in the head. You don’t wait for the body to fall, you run into the truck. You get the truck started and you already hear the shouting and sounds of the rest from the grocery store. These sounds are soon followed by the sounds of bullets hitting your truck as you drive off. You keep your head down as much as possible as the back window is blown out and several sounds of bullets hitting the metal parts of the truck. While you’re glad none of them had the forethought to aim for your back tires, you just hope nobody hit the gas tank. Your drive through your war-torn town is pretty stressful. Between trying avoid large groups of freaks and abandoned military blockades you are also constantly looking in your rear mirror thinking that you’re going to see Mel’s truck and the rest in pursuit, but that doesn’t happen. You don’t really relax a bit until you manage to get out of town. “Holy shit, I made it. Fuck yeah I made it!” you shout in triumph as you continue to drive eastward. You continue to drive for quite sometime. Maybe its because you never really left your basement, but you never really realized what a rural area you lived in before, a lot of wilderness on either side of you. The roads are pretty clear of traffic; you don’t see anyone else driving in the opposite direction or your direction for that matter. You do see a few abandoned vehicles, but nobody around them. You don’t even see any of the cannibal freaks. Maybe that’s a good sign. You pass by a few gas stations, diners and the like and while you do think you notice evidence that there are probably folks at these locations, you’re not exactly in a trusting mood right now and quite frankly you don’t want to deal with anyone. If anything you’re sort of enjoying the solitude that you haven’t had for a few days. Soon, the day starts to become night and you’re getting pretty tired. You have had a long day of escaping cannibal freaks and rednecks after all. You pull off to the side of the road near the edge of a “wall of trees.” You clear off the broken glass from the seat of the truck and lay down to get some sleep, hoping that something doesn’t try to attack you in the middle of the night. > Next day... SATURDAY You wake up to a noise in the distance. At first you think it’s something trying to cause you harm and you sit up with pistol in hand, but then you realize there isn’t anything near you. However upon looking around you do notice something in the sky when even with your half sleepy eyes. You step out of the truck and stare towards the westward sky in the distance and see the remnants of a mushroom cloud. “They finally went and did it…” you say to yourself. You guess that it might’ve hit Security City (Good thing you drove east). Who and why it was dropped is unimportant at this point, but you’re not really surprised given how things seemed to be going to shit here and the world in general. Probably was a small one, since you’re not feeling any aftershocks or anything, but you are somewhat concerned if you’re within a lethal radiation zone. You suppose you’ll find out in the days to come, but that leads you to your more immediate concern of survival, namely you’re hungry and thirsty. You check what those rednecks managed to load up on the back of the truck and hope that not all of it needs a can opener. You see that a lot of it is cans, but fortunately some of them already have ring pulls on them. Other cans have suffered damage from the bullets that went through them. You suppose if you got desperate you could always suck out the remaining soup through the bullet holes. You do find a couple bags of beef jerky, which is as quick of a meal as anything. You look to see if they loaded up anything to drink, but all you’re finding is cheap beer. You’ve actually never drank alcohol before, but beggars can’t be choosers so you sit on the tailgate eating your jerky, drinking your beer and pondering your potentially grim future. While it’s good you have some sustenance, it’s not going to last long. Your truck only has around a half a tank of gas and the ammo you’ve got is what’s left in your respective weapons. Hell you don’t even have an extra set of clothes anymore. You have no idea where you’re going to go. You suppose continuing east might be your best bet, but. this isn’t even taking into consideration the sort of people you’re possibly going to run into and if those infected freaks aren’t running around elsewhere. With all these variables weighing on your mind, things aren’t looking so good right now… “Hey! Hey miss! Did you hear a loud noise?” a voice shouts. You spin your head to your left with your hand instinctively reaching behind you to pull your pistol, but you see a male and female couple probably a little younger than yourself wearing large backpacks. They’ve just come out of the “wall of trees” and they don’t look threatening, but you never know. In any case they don’t seem to realize you’ve got a pistol behind you, though the fact that you’re partially covered by the pick up truck’s walls along with some bags might help. “Sure, it woke me up. Where are you coming from?” you ask. “Oh, we got a campsite nearby. We’ve been sort of roughin’ it for about a week. No technology like cellphones or laptops. It’s been sort of liberating in a way.” “Hm, yeah you never know when you might need to know how to get along without the creature comforts. Where’s you vehicle though, you couldn’t have walked all this way and I don’t see any roads leading off into the wilderness nearby.” “Sure there is, look in front of you a few feet away.” You look and sure enough the man is correct, there is a little dirt road that leads into the trees. You probably didn’t notice it last night because you were tired and you didn’t notice it this morning because you were more focused on the nuke that went off in the distance. “Yeah, it doesn’t go very far in, but it was a good place to pull into so as not having to park on the side of the road. Anyway we’re going to be heading back to Security City soon, we both got classes starting on Monday.” The guy says. You take another bite of jerky and drink of beer before breaking the unfortunate news to them. “Yeah well I don’t think that’s going to happen. That noise you heard? A nuke just got dumped on Security City.” You say flatly. At this point the couple look at each other in disbelief. “Bullshit, that didn’t happen.” The guy says. “Look, you don’t need to believe me, but I’ve got no reason to lie about something like that to two complete strangers. You said you’ve been fairly isolated from the world for the past week, well there was some serious shit going down this week. I should know I had to deal with it. Trust me, if things had been different I wouldn’t be stuck out here in the middle of nowhere eating jerky and drinking beer. I’d be in the comfort of my basement.” You say. At this point the guy still isn’t sure whether you’re telling the truth, but the girl starts to break down a bit. “Oh god…every time we tried to listen the car radio, all we got was those fucking Ground Zero shelter ads! She’s probably telling the truth! Oh shit! No!” she exclaims and begins hyperventilating. “Honey, calm down we don’t know…” At this point the girl begins to cry about her friends and family while her boyfriend attempts to console her. It isn’t working. “Well look at it this way, you avoided getting nuked and you’ve probably got still got some supplies left over and you’ve got all that really useful wilderness gear right?” you say eating the last bit of jerky. “Huh? Yeah, look just don’t talk to us anymore.” The guy says still trying to calm his crying girlfriend. You throw away the bag and down the remaining beer from the can. “How much gas does your vehicle have?” you ask. “WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP?! This is a fucking nightmare!” the man says while his girlfriend continues to be weak. You crush the can and toss it in the middle of the street. You briefly think about not doing it, but then you think this is survival. “Yeah, well it’s about to get a whole lot worse for the both of you.” You say and pull your pistol and shoot the man in the chest. He falls to the ground and the girl now goes from crying to screaming though she’s so terrified she doesn’t attempt to run. “Bitch, stop your goddamn screaming RIGHT NOW before I shove this gun in your mouth and shoot a load so hot down your throat that it’ll be the last time you ever give head again.” You say walking towards the scared girl. Your colorful threat works and the girl just stifles her screaming to annoying whimpers. You look down at her boyfriend who is most certainly dead. You don’t feel anything about it either. You don’t feel joy, but it’s just nothing. “Okay, you’re going to take your backpack and throw it in the truck, then you’re going to take his pack and toss it in the truck too. Then we’re both heading to your campsite where I’m going to take whatever I think I’m going to need. And if you’re lucky, you might come out of this alive. Now come on.” As you bully your new captive into doing your bidding, you think if this is how things are going to be from now on. In your mind you justify your actions as ones of survival, though you were still pretty quick to shoot her boyfriend. Maybe you’re just having a bad week and something had to give. In any case things are starting to look up… or at least for you they are. > Wanted: Bandit Blondie The future… “Give it up Blondie, you got nowhere to go and you’re surrounded! Come out peacefully.” Justice shouts from outside. “Justice” Why do these bounty hunters always have such silly names? “Yeah I come out and then you lot take turns bending me over and horse fucking me before you just shoot me in the head anyway? Don’t fucking think so.” You shout back from the abandoned house you’re taking cover in “Don’t nobody here wanna fuck your sandy STD ridden wasteland pussy bitch!” you hear someone shout. “Holy shit is that Mary Liberty out there? How’s your husband doing? Oh right, he’s a charred corpse. Guess I saved you the trouble of a cremation…” Your taunt is interrupted by machine gunfire causing you to take cover. “Mary, stop it! You’re just wastin’ ammo!” you hear another voice shout. “I hear Bounty Bill out there too. I gotta say I’m really touched that you came all the way out from the Iron Union just for me. Guess those teeth marks on your dick really left a lasting impression.” You laugh remembering how you got away from him last time. “Keep laughing Blondie. I’ll soon have more fond memories of you when that pretty golden mane of yours is detached from your scalp and is hanging up on my wall.” Bill replies. “Alright enough! This isn’t about personal vendettas! This is a Ground Zero job and we’re going to act like fucking professionals. Now Blondie, I counted how many shots you fired and you got exactly ONE left. You can’t win this and you’re not getting away. If you come out peacefully however I can assure you that you will not be harmed and you will get a fair trial.” “Fair trial before a GZ Board? You must be huffing gasoline if you actually believe that. They’re more likely going to throw me in a cell and perform whatever fucked up experiments they do on me like they do with anyone that pisses them off. You’re working for the most amoral entity in the wasteland Mr. Justice. Your name has never been more hypocritical.” You shout back “Yeah, yeah, look this is your last chance Blondie. You coming out or not?” You look at your pistol and stand up near the window yet still remaining in cover. “One bullet is all I need. Come and get my body bitches.” You yell, fire your pistol in the air and then fall backwards so they can see your body fall in the view of the window. “Goddamn it, she offed herself.” Someone shouts. “Move it, but remain alert! It could be a trick!” Justice shouts. Well at least Justice is still thinking a bit, but he’s still severely underestimating you if he thinks he’s got you trapped. You wouldn’t have run in here had you not had a plan. This isn’t just some random abandoned house, it’s one of the many places you store supplies. Some of which are fully loaded weapons. Several bounty hunters cautiously enter the front entrance of the house, but it doesn’t do them any good when you cut down most of them with an assault rifle before they can take cover. Hearing more pour in from the back, you throw a smoke grenade to cover yourself and retreat elsewhere into the house where you have a trapdoor that leads under the house. “Goddamn fucking smoke. Can’t see shit!” someone shouts. “Fuck this, burn it all down.” Another says and you hear footsteps starting to exit the house from above you. Meanwhile you continue to crawl under the house, eventually making your way under the backsteps. There you see in the area is Bounty Bill and a few other hunters. “Shit, she’s right there!” Bounty Bill shouts before you riddle him and his buddies with bullets. Doesn’t take long before more hunters run around from the front to the back to flank you. You barely manage to escape unscathed, but fortunately luck is still with you this day. You notice the house is starting to emanate black smoke from the front and the distinct smell of fire is now in the air. You also hear a vehicle revving up. You pick up a couple of the pistols off the dead and cautiously head around the front of the house. You get there just in time to see Justice driving away like a little bitch. However, revenge is still very much here and Mary Liberty opens fire. You feel a painful sensation of a bullet going into your left leg. “Fuck!” you exclaim and dive for cover and crawl behind one of many now abandoned vehicles. “You’re a dead bitch Blondie! You hear me!?!” Mary shouts while spraying your cover with bullets. You and Mary have an old fashioned run and duck shoot out for several minutes, however unlike what happens in old movies, it does not ultimately result in some physical catfight with lesbian undertones where upon you proceed to rip each other’s clothes off. You just manage to get lucky again and shoot Mary in her right tit causing her to go down with the utterance of swears coming from her mouth. You limp over to where she fell and see she’s still trying to grab her pistol that she dropped. You shoot her in the hand blowing off a few of her fingers and causing her hand to recoil and she screams in pain. You pick up the pistol and train your own weapon on her. Already having a hard time breathing from the hole in her chest, she clutches her bloody hand with the other. The look in her eyes display a hatred you’ve seen many times before. “I…I …I’ll see you in hell Blondie.” She utters, spitting blood. “Probably.” You say and then end Mary’s life with a shot to her dome. With all your enemies dead you sit on the trunk of a nearby car and watch your stash house burn down while you ponder what to do next. The bullet wound in your leg will have to be seen to, so you’ll have to make a run to another location where you’ve stashed some medical supplies. The bullet went through so at least you don’t need to worry about digging something out. You’re just glad she wasn’t using hollow points and tie off your leg with your over shirt. In any case, you’re sure Justice will be back to chasing you around when he manages to scrounge up some more mooks. Honestly you’d like to catch a break where you don’t feel like you have to look over your shoulder every other day, but this is the path you chose and as they say there ain’t no rest for the wicked. Didn’t start out that way though you think. You honestly were just trying to survive, just like you continue to do today…but you suppose you really did start having a bit too much fun in doing what you did and still do. You wonder if it’s genetic. Your uncle was a serial killer after all. In any case you’re a far cry from being the “good girl” that once hid in the basement. All this self-reflection does give you an idea for your next destination after you patch up your leg. Home. It’s been years since you’ve been anywhere near there. You’ve deliberately avoided it for several reasons, but you figure since you seemingly have more and more places where you’re wanted dead nowadays you figure hiding out back in the old hometown might be worthwhile or at least interesting. You loot Mary’s body for her vehicle’s keys and leave the dead and burning behind you. As you drive you wonder who is in charge of the town, is it still in shambles infested with those freaks (Though you haven’t seen any of those in years now), did someone actually rebuild it, and is that redneck community still around? “Well doesn’t matter who’s there or in charge, but they all better hide in THEIR basements, because Suzy’s coming back home.” You say to yourself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY “…your family will feel right at home in one of our…” “Agh, shut the hell up.” You instinctively groan at the Ground Zero ad. You call out for Donna to turn her tv off, but considering she doesn’t, you assume that she must not be here. You look around for your phone to check the time, but you can’t find it. You can only assume that you dropped or misplaced it somewhere. Hardly matters, you don’t have too many people to contact anymore at this point. Your relationship with Bobby is over. Julie’s probably dead and who the hell knows what’s happened to the rest of your family in town. It isn’t like you need to call anyone or anyone needs to call you. You’re more pissed about your laptop, which apparently somehow caught a bullet during the mayhem yesterday. So much for keeping up on what might be going on in the world. In any case there’s a clock in the trailer and the time indicates that you’ve slept through the morning as usual. Weird, since you fell asleep fairly early. You wonder where the hell Donna could’ve went to, but you’re guessing she might be with her friend Tina. After turning the TV off in Donna’s room, all you’re left with is the noise that’s going on outside. Sounds like the good ol’ boys are still at it. You take a look out one of your windows and see several men in the field taking apart the military trucks, or rather severely altering them. It almost looks like they’re going to build a whole new vehicle out of them or something. Since there isn’t anyway to entertain yourself with your laptop being shot up, you aren’t in the mood to watch Ground Zero infomercials, and you don’t want to risk the possibility of Donna suddenly walking in on you with your vibrating boyfriend (Thankfully nothing happened to that form of entertainment, though you do worry about batteries for the future) your only option is to head outside and try to find Donna or find something productive to do. You never thought such a day would come where you’d be leaving the comfort of a couch to potentially do some work, but here you are. After going through your routine of washing up and changing clothes, you decide to take the rifle and pistol with you, just in case. You exit the trailer and head on over to Tina’s place. You knock on the trailer door and hardly recognize Tina without all her makeup on. Not that she’s ugly, in fact she’s actually less trashy looking without it on. “What the fuck do you want blondie?” Tina asks. “Um, is Donna here?” “No, she’s not fucking here. Try a few trailers over, I think she took a shine to Jimmy Ray and is over there.” “Oh. Okay then.” You say. “If you see her, tell her, she better not be distractin’ him all fucking day with her pussy, cause Mel wants him to be workin’ on somethin’. I dunno what, exactly, but I don’t wanna have to listen to him bitch to me about it.” “Got it.” You answer and begin to leave, but Tina calls out to you. “Hey, you ain’t after, Mel’s dick are ya?” Tina asks which completely catches you off guard. “What?” “He told me yesterday, you and he spoke and said you were sweet on him and he had to tell you to stop flirting so much.” Tina looks at you as if she’s detecting if you’re going to lie to her, but you have no intention of doing so since you’re defending yourself from a horrible lie! “Uh, with no disrespect, but Mel is NOT my type and I did not flirt with him.” You answer. “See, I knew that bastard was delusional. I didn’t even believe him when he told me that shit. Any retard can tell that a girl like you would have nothing to do with the likes of him in that way.” Tina says. “Did I do something that he could’ve mistaken for flirting? “Yeah, you were talking to him. He probably told all his friends that you were flirting with him. Hell, he might’ve even said he fucked you, but he tends to keep his tall tales a little more realistic nowadays. Whatever, he’s getting old and likes to think he’s still some sort of chick magnet. Still, I love the sonofabitch despite everything.” As you’re about to finish your illuminating conversation with Tina, you suddenly hear gunshots and yelling. “Oh shit!” you say believing that the military has returned already. Several of the trailer park crew start running towards the noise with weapons in hand. Tina calls out to a skinny one who looks like methhead. “Hey! Hey Dan, what the fuck’s goin’ on?” Tina shouts “A bunch of fuckin’ zombies or some shit are attackin’ us! Mel’s called almost everyone to defend the east and south part of the park. Looks like a shitload of them are comin’ from town!” “Wait, did you just say fuckin’ zombies?” Tina asks. “Yeah. I mean shit, I dunno what they are, I just know Bobby Ray got all bit up by one of them. Maybe they’re just cannibals or high on bath salts. Remember like that one time I…” “Dan, whatever! Just go! Go! Go! And you, get inside here, quick!” Tina says waving away Dan who continues to his destination. “But I gotta find my sister.” You remark “She’s probably safe with Jimmy Ray.” “Didn’t Dan say he just got bit by zombies?” “That was Bobby Ray! Now get yer ass in here, we’ll bar the door and hunker down inside here until Mel and the boys take care of this.” You’re not going to leave your sister’s potential fate in the hands of some redneck who you know nothing about though. You’re going to make the effort to at least find her; besides, you’d rather not barricade yourself in anywhere unless you have to. “Where is Jimmy’s trailer again?!” you ask. “You’re a damn idiot blondie. (sigh) it’s more towards the entrance and has a badly spray painted picture of a naked woman on the side of it. I suggest you get a move on.” Tina says and slams her door shut. You follow the advice and start heading towards your new destination, which has considerably more gunfire and shouting coming from that direction. You feel like you’re in one of those video games that you played on your computer sometimes, except this is unfortunately very real. With your rifle held in front of you the whole time, you continue to move at a quick yet cautious rate. You keep half expecting one of those freaks to suddenly jump out at you every time you pass one of the trailers. You catch a glance of people peeping out their windows of said trailers, sometimes you hear one of them shouting at you to “find some damn shelter.” Eventually you hear a voice calling at you from above. “Hey blondie, what the hell are you doing down there?” you look up and see a shirtless young man with a shotgun standing on top of the trailer. “Suzy?! What the hell are you doing?!” another voice shouts, but this one is coming from inside the trailer. Sounds like Donna. You glance back down and look at the trailer itself and notice that this is the one you’ve been looking for. You’re guessing that’s Jimmy Ray standing on top of his trailer. You can sort of see Donna going for a guy like him. He’s got a rugged handsome look rather than a grizzled, unkept or outright disgusting appearance that some of the other guys around here have. “Donna?! I was looking for you, that’s what I’m doing out here.” You say while swiveling your head in several directions to keep an eye on your surroundings. “Well now you’ve found me, now get inside!” Donna shouts and starts to open up the door. “Donna, don’t leave that door open too long, I’m watching the main fighting at the front of the park and it’s not looking good. The east side is doing better though.” “Aren’t you suppose to be helping Mel?” you ask. “Pfft, yeah right. I mean I don’t hate him or anything, but I’m not riskin’ my life for that asshole. Oh fuck! More of them are getting through, and I mean a shitload! Get your asses inside!” Jimmy Ray shouts and starts aiming his shotgun. You look and see a couple of the…things Dan was talking about. This is insane. Here you were worrying about the military and some unexpected threat like…zombies shows up? They can’t be zombies, they just can’t! Whatever they are, four of them are flailing about wildly and growling. They notice you and begin loping at you. The mere sight of them is troubling, but you quickly point your rifle at them and start firing. Jimmy’s shotgun gets one of them in the leg which he then shoots again in the body. Another gets its head blown off. You use up the remainder of the clip to kill the two remaining. One of them didn’t even drop down dead until he almost reached you. They don’t look rotten (though they do look dirty and disheveled…which isn’t unlike some of the hillbillies here) and you didn’t even shoot one in the head, so while they may NOT be zombies, they’re certainly inhuman enough for you to be scared. (Some sort of sickness perhaps?) Meanwhile Donna’s at the door and calling to you. You see now that she’s not wearing her own clothes, but rather a robe of some sort. Certainly not hers. “Suzy, please! Get inside NOW!” she shouts as more of those things come running in your direction. “Goddamn it, the pair of you need to get inside!” Jimmy shouts as he snaps off another shot. While the freaks are definitely advancing, they’re also splitting up to attack several trailers. You wonder if you shouldn’t just get Donna and make your way out of here since it looks like this place is going to be overrun. > You run away This is different than the police or the military, these things are mindless, possibly crawling with disease and seemingly without end, you really do need to get out of here! “Donna, get the hell out of there! These things are gonna overrun the place!” you shout and begin pulling at her arm. “Wha…Suzy, lemme go! It’s not safe out there!” Donna says attempting to pull away from your grip. Jimmy Ray is doing his best at blasting the cannibal freaks, but he’s not exactly using the quickest of weapons and those things are definitely picking up their own speed. “OH MY GOD! SUZY!” Donna exclaims pulling away just in time for one of those things to suddenly lunge upon you which you don’t see due to it jumping on your back and tackling you to the ground. You hear snarling and gnashing in your ear and somewhere between that, you hear Jimmy Ray yelling at Donna to lock the front door. The next thing you hear is the crunching sound of teeth going into your flesh. You cry out, but the freak is placing all its weight upon you, preventing you from struggling too much. With your face in the dirt and blood spurting out of your neck you’re not going too far, though when you’re partially hit with buckshot from Jimmy Ray’s shotgun you’re at least put out of your misery from the thing eating you alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While you haven’t quite ruled out the possibility of living with Donna, you don’t think you’re quite ready to go driving over there yourself and putting up with some old guy perving on you today. If you do decide to go over there, you’ll do it later tonight. Besides, you want to see just how bad it might be over at Julie’s before making a decision. A few minutes of driving to your destination and you’re sure of one thing being pretty bad, the roads! Once again there are cops everywhere, but also ambulances and fire trucks racing to their various destinations too. You nearly turn around and head back home, but eventually you make it to Julie’s neighborhood, which is thankfully not in the midst of anarchy. You pull up to the driveway and get out of the car. You figure you’ll assess the situation before making a decision of whether you’re going to stay or not. You sort of expected to see a few people drinking on the porch or at least hearing loud music as you walk up to the door, but so far it doesn’t sound like any sort of party going on or at least not an overly rowdy one, which is odd considering how people have been acting in this town for the past few days. You knock on the door, but get no immediate answer. After a few more bangs you finally get an answer, but it isn’t Julie. “Hello.” A man says in a flat tone and almost seems to be studying you. He looks like he might be around your age, but he doesn’t look like the sort that would be at one of Julie’s parties. He’s very “ordinary” looking. “Hey. Where’s Julie at?” you ask. “Julie? Oh yes, the owner of this house. Well, I don’t really know. I remember seeing her yesterday, but then she left with some guy and I haven’t seen her since. Of course this being her house she has to return sometime right? Would you like to wait?” the man asks opening the door further to invite you in. Something about this guy feels a little “off” to you. “Wait, who are you?” you ask. “Oh I’m sorry for not introducing myself. I’m Johnny. I was at Julie’s party yesterday. Guess you could say I got a little tipsy and decided I shouldn’t go home in that condition, so I flopped out in the basement. I’m not the only person who did that apparently considering some of Julie’s other guests are still here as well.” You peer inside and see that Johnny is indeed speaking the truth. A couple of people are on the couch playing some sort of video game. “So now that you know who I am, I have to ask who you are.” Johnny says. “I’m Suzy and I’m Julie’s friend.” You say. “I see, well come on in, I’m sure when Julie gets back she’ll be pleased to see you.” You enter the house and the place is in a lot better condition than you would’ve thought for a party house. Johnny quickly closes the door and locks it. Causing you to immediately look back. “You never can tell what weirdo will show up with unlocked doors and all, right?” he says. “Indeed.” You say still getting an uneasy feeling about this guy. “So, you’re one of Julie’s friends. Guess you’re a real party girl, just like she is huh?” Johnny remarks almost in an accusing fashion. “Hardly. Are these all the people in the house?” you ask, pointing to the stoners playing video games and completely ignoring you and Johnny. “Yeah, I mean there were some other people here earlier, but these lot are all that’s left, beside myself. Julie’s pretty cool about letting people just crash here even if she’s not around.” With Johnny creepily hovering near you and the stoners babbling about inane shit, you already realize that this is not going to work for you. “Alright, everyone get out.” You say, but the only one who even hears you is Johnny. “What?” Johnny asks. “Look I hate to be rude, and you probably didn’t know this, but I’m moving in here. Now when Julie is here, she can have all her little drug addled party friends over as much as she likes, I mean its her house after all. But I’m not going to put up with them while she isn’t here! So I want everyone out, you all can come back later when she’s here. Whenever that is.” Johnny’s still the only one who is even paying attention and his facial expression on your stance hasn’t changed. “But if it’s Julie’s house doesn’t she have final say in what goes?” Johnny asks. “Yeah, well when I see Julie, I’m going to have a little discussion with her about our new living arrangements.” You remark. Once again Johnny just stares at you, it almost feels like he’s staring through you. It makes you uncomfortable to say the least. “All right. You’ve got a point. I wouldn’t want a bunch of strangers just wandering around in my home either. I’ll get out of your hair, as for these guys, I can get ‘em to go.” Johnny says and then suddenly shouts at the stoners that everyone has to get out of the house and starts ripping controllers out of their hands. “Hey!” “Not cool dude!” “You dick!” “Sorry guys, but as the old saying goes, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Come on, let’s move it.” Johnny says and eventually the stoners grudgingly shuffle off to leave. Johnny follows behind them. “When you see Julie, tell her it was an excellent party last night.” Johnny says and flashes a brief smile, which comes off more creepy than friendly. You don’t even reply, you just shut the door and lock it, glad to be rid of everyone. Remembering that your sister said that if you did live here, you’d be sleeping in Julie’s dad’s old office. You explore that room first. When you get there it looks pretty much like the same office you remember being in a few times when you played over here. It’s definitely convenient that it has a small private bathroom leading from it as well as a couch that apparently folds out into a bed. After assessing your possible new digs, you decide to go retrieve your bags from the car. You unpack your bags and haul them into the house and head on into your new room. After getting a little bit settled, you figure since you’re all alone in the house, you might as well do something that usually puts you in a better mood. (and you sure could use it) While you’re in the middle of it, you suddenly think you hear something. You call out thinking that maybe Julie is finally home, but when you get no reply, you just check to make sure the door to your room is locked. If Julie does come home, you don’t want her suddenly walking in on you. After getting back in the mood and taking care of your needs you wash up a bit and return to your usual routine of…well doing nothing at all. Hours pass and eventually you start to get hungry so you head to the kitchen in the hopes of finding food. You manage to find a few bags of junk food and some unopened drink in the fridge. Once again while you’re doing this, you swear you think you hear noise. You call out again to see if anyone is here, but there is no answer. Given that it’s now nighttime you’re a little on edge. You know its probably just the house making creaking sounds, but with all the bullshit that’s been going on out in the streets lately you’re just a little paranoid. Just as you’re heading back to your room, the front door suddenly opens! It’s Donna and some other young woman who looks a bit on the trashy side. “Shit! You scared me.” You say. “Why didn’t you pick up your phone? I tried calling you before I got over here.” Donna asks. “I…I guess I had it on vibrate and didn’t hear it.” You say. “Hm. Well I see this place is practically a tomb. I take it Julie isn’t home?” “Nope, I haven’t heard from her either.” “That’s really odd…” Suddenly the trashy young woman speaks up. “Hey Donna are we picking your shit up or what? You know how fucked up it is out there right now and I’d like to get home before it gets worse.” “Oh yeah, better get to it. Suzy, this is my friend Tina.” Donna says and heads upstairs. “Hello.” You say to Tina, but she just grunts at you and heads back outside to her car. Remembering that Donna wanted you to help her move some of the stuff, you head upstairs to her room. “Your friend Tina isn’t very friendly.” You ask. “Yeah, well if you were a horny guy with a hundred dollar bill, she’d be really friendly towards you. Anyway, she’s always been cool with me ever since I’ve known her, plus she helped me get the current job I have.” Donna says as she packs away items. “You need anything for me to carry down?” “Yeah, but not yet. Really I’m thinking I’ll get most of this stuff later when I have a day off. Right now I just want to get the hell out of this town, it’s getting nuts out there!” “Yeah, it was pretty chaotic out there earlier on my drive here. So how was your first day?” “Not bad. As strange as it may seem, it actually was calmer in the club than it was outside. Though having bouncers helps in that area I suppose. Still a couple of fights did break out.” “Shit. You okay? Are you sure the job is safe?” “Oh I’m safe. Like I said, there’s good protection there. Honestly I’m more concerned with the drive TO the club, but I imagine whatever is going on will die down eventually.” “Hope so.” Donna finishes packing a bag and starts to pack a new one and you stand there silent until you hear a noise from downstairs causing you to jump a bit. “Are you okay?” Donna asks. “Yeah, what the hell’s that noise?” you ask, briefly stepping out of Donna’s room to look over into the living room. “Probably Tina.” “No, she’s not down there and besides she went back to wait in the car.” “Well maybe she wandered back in briefly…you seem a little stressed.” “I dunno. The shit’s that’s been going on in town and I guess being alone in the house at night has got me a little jumpy. Sort of concerned that Julie hasn’t come back either.” “Mmm, well that IS odd. I tried calling her again earlier too with no luck. Have you thought anymore about coming to live with me? I told you it would be fine and I know you think the trailer park isn’t safe environment, is this town really any safer right now?” > You stay at the house “I’m still not sold on the trailer park, Donna. I think I’ll be fine here. I just need to get used to the new living situation.” You remark to Donna. “Hm, okay then. Well my offer will always still stand as long as I live there.” Donna replies. “Okay. Thanks Donna. So you said you’re good? You don’t need my help with anything?” “Nah, not tonight anyway. Like I said, I’ll come back and get all of my stuff proper, another day. Hopefully when the mess in town dies down.” Saying a few more goodbyes, you leave Donna to finish her hasty packing and you head back to your room and close the door. A few minutes later you hear the slam of the front door indicating that Donna has left, leaving you by yourself again. You try to call Julie again, but once again there is no answer. Giving up on that particular concern you go back to amusing yourself on the Internet until you start reading erotic stories which puts you more in the mood to amuse yourself with your battery operated boyfriend again. Having no distractions this time, you orgasm twice before having enough fun for the night. As you lie there in your afterglow, you briefly think about Bobby and how you sort of miss him, or rather his dick. Masturbation is fun and all, and it definitely gets the job done, but your time with Bobby has made you appreciate the human touch a little more. You really liked some of the tricks he did… Since you still aren’t one hundred percent sure about living here, you decide that you’ll call Bobby tomorrow and see if you can’t talk some sense into him and possibly make up. With that goal for tomorrow decided, you call it a night and roll over on your couch to sleep. At some point in the middle of the night, you hear a noise close by. You groggily open your eyes and see a figure standing over you with a large knife. Before you can scream or do anything, the person is on top of you and choking you with one hand. You can see his face right up to yours and he’s recognizable now with your eyes wide with fear. It’s Johnny. “Fucking whore! I heard what you did in here! I heard the dirty thing you did! I’m going to punish you like I did your friend!” he snarls with a look of pure hatred upon his face. You punch and struggle and just as you think you’re having some success, Johnny proceeds to actually use his knife and stabs you repeatedly with it. With a last bit of strength you manages to push Johnny off of you and roll on the floor yourself, but your attempts to crawl away are short lived due to the combination of your wounds and the fact Johnny quickly recovers and begins stabbing you in the back. As the life starts to fade from your body, you hear the heavy breathing of Johnny who is apparently starting to get aroused by your condition and begins ripping at your clothes. Fortunately you die before you feel the pain of being raped on top of being murdered.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>TUESDAY “…if you act now you’ll get a free…” You groggily grab the remote to shut off the incessant noise of the Ground Zero commercial on the TV screen. You grab your phone to check the time and see that once again you’ve slept through the morning as usual. You also see that Bobby tried to call you, but you’re still not in the mood to call him back. Though if you don’t secure a place to live you might not have a choice. Still as far as you know the offer to live at Julie’s is still good, you’re just not sure about how well that’s going to go over now. While you’re trying to ponder your next move, you get a call. It’s Donna again. Might as well get this over with. “Donna, this better be good, because you’re not exactly my favorite person right now.” You say answering the phone. “Whoa! Hold on Suzy! Don’t hang up!” Donna exclaims. “Say what you got to say.” “Okay, look first of all I’m sorry about what you had to go through. I know that had to suck for you. I shouldn’t have convinced you to run anyway. It’s obvious now that was a stupid plan in the first place since I didn’t even have anything in the car. (Sigh) Last night when I was sleeping on a beer soaked couch in a trailer hiding out from the cops I sort of had a revelation of how my choices in life had lead me to that point. I also sort of realized that if I probably continue on this path it’s only going to get worse.” That’s rather philosophical of your sister, and it’s enough to keep your attention. “So I’ve decided that I need to do something with my life and make it better, so I got a job.” Donna says. “A job? How the hell did you get a job so quick? Doing what?” you ask. “I’m going to be a stripper at Kitty City! The owner was offering me a job yesterday and I already was getting tips from guys who mistook me for one of the strippers here anyway. So I figured why not? In fact I’m on break right now.” Why are you not surprised? Donna continues before you can even speak again. “Now before you judge, starting a new life takes money and let’s face it, I don’t have exactly many useful skills that are going to earn me a lot of cash in a quick amount of time. I figure I can earn enough to save and figure things out as I go.” “Hm, well that’s great and all, but why are you telling me all this?” you ask. “Because this is my new start and like I said I feel bad about convincing you to go along with my plan yesterday. Besides, don’t you still need a place to stay? You can come live with me!” “I thought I was already going to do that by moving in to Julie’s.” “Nah, I’m not going back to Julie’s. Too much temptation to go back to my old ways there. I’m moving into one of the trailers at the trailer park.” “Wait. You just started working as a stripper. How the hell did you manage to get a trailer already?” “I secured one after…um talking with the park owner this morning. Look, that’s not really important right now. What is important is I got a deal on a fairly good one and it’s big enough for two of us. It might be a little rough going at first, but I anticipate after a few weeks of teasing these degenerates here, we’ll be living fairly comfortably, if not in the lap of luxury.” “I dunno. While I’m still pissed about yesterday, it does mean a lot that you’re making this pretty generous offer. I don’t know about living in a trailer park though. I mean aren’t you worried about the kind of people there? In fact I can imagine a lot of the type that Kelly associates with come from there, do you really think its safe?” “Safe as opposed to what? Growing up in our household? We had a fucking paranoid psychotic older brother, a sadistic bullying older sister and at one point a goddamn SERIAL KILLER uncle living in our house. At least the hostile rednecks around here won’t be living under our roof! Besides, it really isn’t as bad as you hear.” You find that a little hard to believe considering you’ve heard more than enough stories about the trailer park outside of town. Donna might not think its bad, just because she was living there overnight. “I just don’t know Donna. I mean I wasn’t exactly looking forward to dealing with the non-stop partying at Julie’s, but I’d at least feel a little safer there than I would at the trailer park.” “Huh, don’t be so sure of that. Julie pretty much has gotten to the point where she has an open door policy to let any creepy weirdo that walks in off the street in the house. It’s actually amazing someone like Uncle Ed hasn’t come in and killed us all. Are you heading over there sometime today?” “Well if I can secure a ride over there I will.” “Okay, well if you do get over there could you let Julie know that I’m moving out? She’s still not answering her phone. I’m going to have to make arrangements to get my bigger things, but maybe you could help me get some of my smaller items when I get over there tonight?” “Well, I suppose I could.” You say. “Great. I knew I could count on your Suzy. (Sigh) You really are the good one in the family sis. It’s so unfair that life hasn’t been better to you. Once again I’m really sorry about what happened yesterday. It’s nearly time for me to go out there and shake my ass again so I gotta go. Just…think about what I said okay? If you change your mind about your future living arrangements just come with Tina and me when we go over to Julie’s tonight, or I guess if you’re really feeling adventurous you could always go over to the trailer park yourself. Just go to the owner’s trailer with the big signs around it and mention my name and he’ll let you in my new place. He’s sort of letch, but he’s old so he mostly confines it staring and making the occasional comment. Don’t worry about it.” After another sincere apology about yesterday, Donna finally hangs up leaving you now with a new option. Donna seems to be genuinely trying to change her life in her own way. You almost can’t believe it was Donna on the phone at all. Maybe some sort of pod person replaced her. She also seems to be really making an effort to make things up to you, which is surprising as well. It’s always a rarity in your family when you actually try to help each other out. Still, you’re not sure about this whole living in a trailer park business for several reasons, but you suppose you could give it a little thought at least. In any case, you need to get a ride to wherever it is you’re going to be heading to and that means seeing if your brother Peter is going to be just as accommodating as your sister currently is. You head upstairs and knock on the door to the garage. “Hey, um Peter? You busy?” You don’t get an answer right away, but eventually you do after more knocking. “Yeah, yeah, hold on!” Peter says before answering the door. He’s only peaking his head out, so it’s very likely he’s naked. “Um, sorry to interrupt whatever it is you’re doing, but I need a ride to my new place.” “I thought you moved out yesterday.” “Yeah, there was a slight hiccup in the plan yesterday. Anyway, can you give me a ride over to my new place?” “(Sigh) I’m kinda in the middle of recording something. I’m assuming you’re going to Julie’s?” “Yeah…I think.” You say. “You think? You don’t know if you’re going to live over at Julie’s place or not?” “Well…Donna got a new place of her own and I’m still not sure if I should just move in with her yet.” “Donna got a new…look you know what? I don’t give a shit about any of this.” Peter says and then closes the door. You think that’s the end of it, but he opens it up again, but this time only his hand with some keys in it are coming out. “I’m not your personal taxi service. Here, take my car and return it tomorrow or at least by Thursday. Now don’t disturb me again!” You take the keys and Peter slams the door. This is probably the most helpful he’s been in…well ever. You go back and repack some of your bags and drag them to Peter’s car. After loading everything up in the backseat you pull out of the drive way and wonder which way you should go. > You drive to the trailer park Well Donna would know better than you how fucked up it is at Julie’s house. You don’t particularly care for the idea of her just leaving her doors open for any potential nutjob to come in. You’d at least have some more control over that, if you lived in the trailer with Donna who will probably be gone most of the time anyway. And perhaps Donna’s observations of the trailer park are correct; maybe it isn’t as bad there as you’ve always believed. A few minutes of driving to your destination and you’re sure of one thing being pretty bad, the roads! Once again there are cops everywhere, but also ambulances and fire trucks racing to their various destinations too. Fortunately it seems to thin out as you leave town. Maybe this was a better idea after all. You soon reach the trailer park, but you pull up near the entrance rather than inside it. You don’t know which trailer she lives in, so you figure the owner knows and you imagine he lives in the trailer up front with the signs on it saying “Inquire about trailers here.” You get out of the car and go knock on the door. “Goddamnit stop fucking knockin’. I’m comin’!” you hear an old crotchety voice shout. The door opens up and your eyes are “greeted” by the sight of a little old man wearing nothing but an open robe and boxer shorts. His body is wizened and wrinkled and he obviously has no modesty at all. “What the hell you want blondie? This ain’t a fuckin’ whorehouse.” He exclaims. “Uh, my sister Donna got a trailer from you the other day, I was just wondering where it was.” You ask. The old guy looks you up and down, squinting the entire time. “I don’t know nuthin’ about no girl named Donna. All I do know is some whore yesterday sucked me off as down payment for a trailer. I don’t normally trade property fer pussy, but goddamn if that girl wasn’t lying about giving the best head ever…” While you sort of had an inkling of how Donna got a trailer so quickly, you didn’t really need to know the gruesome details. And now after seeing who she serviced to get it…you just want to change the subject. “Okay, anyway which trailer does she live in?” you ask. “She lives in the trailer at the far end of the park. Now unless you gonna rent a trailer wit money or yer lips too, get the hell outta my face an don’t bother me!” the old man shouts. As you leave the old bastard he slams his door shut. You get back in the car and drive into the park. The first thing you notice that you didn’t expect is how quiet the place is. You were expecting a lot more drama going on like on a bad daytime talk show, but you get none of that. You don’t even see anyone really around. Eventually you approach the far end of the park, and there you see a trailer, which seems to stand out near a large open field. You’re guessing this one is it. You park and approach the trailer and when you try the door that when you realize that you don’t have a key for this place. Donna apparently didn’t develop the bad habits of Julie either since the door is firmly locked. “Damn. (Sigh)” you say to yourself realizing that your choice is either wait all day in your vehicle, or maybe go back to to the manager who might have a spare key, though you’d rather not deal with him again. “Hey darlin’ never seen you before here! My name’s Jed!” a voice says. You turn around and see a lanky redneck who has seemingly appeared out of nowhere. “Oh. Hey.” You say. “Hmm, you sure are beautiful. Yer even prettier than that girl that just moved in this trailer. You a friend of hers?” “Sister actually. Does the manager have spare keys to the trailers?” you ask. “That mean old bastard? Yeah, but if you need that open, you don’t need to go all the way back to him, here I can open it.” Jed walks past you and pulls out some sort of tool and starts fiddling with the lock. “Hey, wait a minute, are you picking the lock?” you ask. “Well I ain’t ticklin’ it honey. Letssee…yeah…easier than breakin a virgin.” Jed says as the door easily opens for him with a click. “There you go sweetheart. So said that girl livin’ here now is yer sister? Guess good breedin’ runs in yer family.” “Uh…yeah guess so. Thanks, but I really want to just get all my stuff in and rest.” You say and turn to your car and there you see a huge man just staring at you like a gargoyle. It actually startles you, which Jed notices. “Oh don’t be afraid of him honey, that’s just my brother Hugo. He’s dumber than a bag of rocks, but he’s strong as hell. In fact he can carry yer bags in for ya.” At this point Jed is getting uncomfortably close to you as he speaks and you’re starting to feel on edge with these two. “Look I thank you both for your help, but I really would like to be alone please.” You say firmly. Jed looks at his brother then at you. “Whatever you say honey. Let’s go Hugo.” Jed says and the pair of them slowly leave and eventually disappear behind another trailer. No longer being gawked at by the locals, you grab your bags from the car and haul them into the trailer. When you get inside, you see that it isn’t that bad. It’s definitely cheap looking, but it’s serviceable. You drop your bags by the sofa and quickly check the other areas like the bathroom and what you guess is a bedroom where Donna will sleep. Just as you’re turning around to check the kitchen at the other end, the door opens up and your heart sinks when you see Jed entering with what looks to be duct tape. He looks at you and a deranged smile is across his face. “Now I already know what’s goin’ through yer head blondie, cause I’ve done this a million times. Yer first instinct is gonna be to scream and make a fuss. Well lemme tell ya right now. Ain’t nobody gonna help yah. Most of ‘em are at the carnival, an the few that ain’t are either still passed out or ain’t gonna give a shit. Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Despite Jed’s warnings, you do the opposite of what he says and scream as loud as you can anyway, while running back into the bedroom in an attempt to look for anything to defend yourself. Jed wastes no time in following. Unfortunately there isn’t anything in the bedroom for you to immediately use since Donna doesn’t have any of her stuff here. You attempt to pick up the trailer’s TV in desperation, but Jed grabs you and throws you to the bed. You struggle, but it’s no use. Jed is a dedicated murdering rapist with a mean streak a mile wide. After giving you a few punches to the face, you start to drift in and out of consciousness. “HUGO! HUGO! You can stop watchin’ the fuckin’ door and gimme a hand over here with this bitch. I reckon we both got time to have some fun with this one before handing her over to ol’ doc.” Jed exclaims while ripping your clothes off. “See Hugo? Told ya sticking around here would be better than the carnival.” In your haze, you feel the violations at first. Pain, humiliation and anguish are all abundant at first, but then you go numb and then nothing when you pass out altogether. During your state of unconsciousness you have a brief dream of when you were much younger. When your mother was still alive and she was praising you about how good you are and how she anticipates great things in your future. It’s more of a distant memory than a dream in fact though in any event, it’s a nice “escape” from your horrible reality. When you wake up, you’re groggy, naked, incredibly sore and firmly strapped to a medical gurney of some sort. You also have a ball gag in your mouth. The room you’re in looks to be some sort of basement with a bright light hanging overhead. The stench of chemicals fills the air and to your left in a darker corner of the room you see a man in a doctor’s coat hovering over another gurney with a body on it. Naturally in such a state you start to panic and ineffectively struggle to get free. The “doctor” hears you and walks over to you. “Oh, you’re up. I’ll have to give you more sedative. When Jed and Hugo brought you in, you weren’t in the best condition, though I’m glad they showed a little more restraint than usual.” As you continue to try to struggle and make muted sounds to cry out, the doctor begins fondling you and moving his hands to roam all over your body. “Mmmm, nice. Though I appreciate a pretty face and I get the impression yours would’ve been a lot prettier had they not beat you up so much. Not to mention they both completely wrecked your rectum…I swear what the hell is it with rednecks and their pre-occupation for ass rape? Anyway, if I had the time, I’d probably still shove it in your vertical smile for a while, but sadly I don’t.” The doctor goes over to a tray and grabs some sort of syringe he fully intends on use on you and you’ve gone from mere panic to sheer terror. “Really, you’re luckier than most that come through here. Normally I keep ‘em awake when I do my work, but I need you unconscious to take out those pretty eyes and other vital organs of yours. Wouldn’t want you thrashing about or blinking to cause me to cut them all up and making them useless.” You watch helplessly as the needle goes into your arm. The tears run down your cheeks. “There we go. Won’t be long now. (Sigh) I swear it seems like I never get to enjoy my work any more though. I really would’ve liked to have fun with you. Oh well, I’ve got some other things to still look forward to.” You drift into unconsciousness again and your life ends where you ironically spent most of your time. A basement.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>MONDAY “…act now and Ground Zero will provide a…” Click. As you groggily wake up, you’re wondering if you should bother even taking your TV with you considering the stations just play Ground Zero commercials half the time. You look at the time and see that you’ve slept for most of the morning, but it doesn’t matter considering your sister isn’t going to pick you up until the afternoon. You just hope that she remembers to come get you period. While your sister isn’t as flaky as Julie, she still doesn’t have the greatest sense of responsibility. You also check your phone and see that Bobby’s still trying to reach you, but you still don’t feel like dealing with him. MAYBE later, right now you want to focus on one major decision at a time and moving out of a place where you’ve lived your whole life certainly qualifies. All your stuff is packed and ready to go, and since you can’t do much more until your sister gets here, you just wait. As you continue to wait, you start to get anxious. You start to worry if you’re making the right decision or not. You start to pace in your room weighing all the pros and cons of what you’re doing. “Ugh, this is so stressful…I need to calm down…” you say and start unzipping one of your packed bags to get old reliable to relax you. 20 minutes later… “Hey Suzy?! You down there?” you hear Donna call from upstairs. “Huh? Uh what?! Yeah! Hold on!” you exclaim and stop your stress relief session. As you hurry to get dressed, Donna continues to call down to you. “I called you know, why didn’t you answer?” “Uh, I guess I didn’t hear it. Sorry about that. Be up in a minute.” “I thought you were ready. What were you doing? Splittin’ the kitten down there?” Donna laughs. You don’t answer; you just finish dressing and grab your bags. When you get upstairs, Donna greets you. She’s wearing a shirt that is obviously trying to call attention to her small breasts and pants that are one size too tight to make her ass look like its more filled out, but she’s dressed fairly conservative all things considered. “Were you just taking what’s in your bags? Because we could probably put more into the car.” “Nah, I need to get out of here now. I mean maybe later I could get someone to come get my couch or some of my furniture though.” “Okay, but really I don’t think you’ll need to, Julie’s got spare beds and such. Plenty of space you know.” “Yeah I know. Let’s get going.” You and Donna leave the house and after throwing your bags in her car you and her are soon on your way. Along the way Donna puts on some music. She takes mercy on you by not listening to that techno dance crap that you hate so much, but instead listens to the bubble gum pop crap that you hate slightly less. “So…I found an area of the house where I think you’ll be happiest at yesterday.” Donna says. “Oh? Is it the basement?” “Hah, nah. That’s being used for other things. I was thinking of Julie’s dad’s old office on the far left of the house. I mean Julie never uses it, and besides a few people wandering from the main party to have a quickie in there it’s never used anymore.” “Gee, you make it sound so appealing.” “Well it’s either that or one of the upstairs bedrooms and I can’t promise you won’t be disturbed on regular basis there. At least with the office you can lock it and it’s far enough away from the usual party grounds.” “I guess it’s the best I can hope for, thanks I guess for thinking ahead.” “No problem. You know I’m glad you’re coming to live with us. I mean I know you probably don’t believe it, but I missed talking with you. Julie’s fun and all, but even I get tired from partying ALL the time.” “Well thanks Donna…hey this is like the twelfth police car I’ve seen pulled over and cops arresting someone.” You say looking out the window. “Yeah, I dunno if you’ve noticed since you tend to hang out in the basement most of the time, but there’s been an increase in crime which also means an increase in the cops using that as an excuse to be assholes… like this. Shit!” Nothing like talking something into existence. A cop car puts on its siren and a bullhorn tells you to pull over. You briefly worry that your sister isn’t going to pull over, but she does. Swearing and sighing the whole time. Doesn’t take long before a policeman approaches the vehicle. “Alright where are you going in such a hurry?” the cop asks. “Nowhere. I wasn’t even speeding!” “Is that right honey? Not according to my radar you weren’t. Besides, you ignored a stop sign back there. I think you need to step out of the car.” “Are you kidding me? There wasn’t a stop sign!” “Aren’t you supposed to ask for her license and registration first?” you add. The cop suddenly points his finger at the both of you. “The both of you need to shut the hell up right, before I run you both in for obstruction of justice. Now both of you out of the car now!” Your sister looks at you like she really wants to just try to turn the car back on and try to drive away, but you both know that wouldn’t do any good save for getting yourselves in a whole lot of trouble. The cop calls over his partner who looks equally uncompromising. He tells him to search you, while he starts searching the car while he puts Donna up against the car and starts patting down Donna. “Getting a good feel, you bastard?” Donna remarks. The cop frisking you is slightly better, since you don’t get your girl parts molested, but he certainly comes close. He snickers a bit as you tense up from this indignity. After you and your sister have been frisked. They tell you both to go sit on the curb with your hands locked behind your heads while they search the car. This is a bad situation anyway since you’re obviously dealing with two asshole cops, but who knows what the hell Donna’s got in her car which will give them even more of an excuse to march you off to jail. Speaking of which, Donna whispers to you. “We need to run.” “What?” you ask in a whisper. “Those two fuckers are going to find something in the car.” “You’re driving with illegal drugs in the car?” “Not that much, well at least I don’t think I am…hell I’m not even sure, but I can’t take that chance! We gotta run!” “And where the hell are we gonna go?” “I dunno! We could probably still hide at Julie’s house.” “You’re joking right? That place is probably the first place they’ll look! Shit, Donna! I knew I shouldn’t have left the goddamn basement today!” “Look…they’re pretty involved in searching right now. If we ran we could probably at least lose them until we came up with a better idea.” You get the impression Donna is going to run no matter what and you can’t see how that’s going to be a good idea in any way. You’re also concerned that if she runs and you stay, these two cops will just pin everything on you (whatever that may be). Still, if she sees that you’re determined to stay, maybe she’ll keep to her common sense and won’t run too. > You don't run Regardless of what your sister does, you’re not going to get yourself into more trouble by running. “Look Donna, I can’t stop you from running, but I’m staying here.” “What? You can’t do that. You’re supposed to be supportive!” “I’m not going to be supportive in your resisting arrest attempt! Now like I said, I won’t stop you, but if you’re going to do it, you’ll be doing it alone.” “(Sigh) I should’ve known you’re still the same old goody two shoes that follows all the rules. You’re a goddamn idiot Suzy, one of these assholes just felt me up when he frisked me. You really think if they’re just going to arrest us when they find something? Chances are they’re going to drive us to some secluded area and make us suck their cocks and god knows what else! I’m getting the hell…” Just as Donna is starting to get up, both cops have taken notice of you two again. “HEY! I told you to stay put! Don’t give me an excuse!” one of them shouts nearly going for his gun and it’s enough to cause Donna to rethink her actions. “Despite the pair of you acting mighty suspicious, you appear to be clean and so does the vehicle. Don’t think you’re getting out of a ticket though!” the cop says and shoves a ticket at your sister who takes it. Looks like Donna had a drug free car after all. At this point the cop’s partner says to him that they’re needed at the mall since apparently a small riot has broken out there. You are left with another verbal warning and they drive off. As for you and your sister, the pair of you get back in the car without another word and continue your drive to Julie’s house in silence. When you arrive, the place is much more subdued than your used to. You don’t even hear loud music coming from inside. “No party going on?” you ask. “Probably will be some folks coming over later. I dunno, even I don’t keep up on it all the time. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be wanting to hide away before that happens, so like I said your room will be Julie’s dad’s old office. Julie also wants to talk with you as well, so if you’re actually feeling social you could go speak with her before heading off to planet Suzy.” Donna says coldly. “…what the hell? Donna, I know you’re pissed, but I really don’t know why. If it hadn’t been for me stalling you from running, you’d be in for a lot more trouble than just a ticket. I’d say it worked out much better.” You say. “Right. Your plan worked. Following the rules always works for you. Your life is so great and that’s why you had to beg to move in here.” “Uh, you’re living here in JULIE’S house too with no means of support either. I wouldn’t start pointing fingers.” “Fuck you Suzy. I thought things were going to be different, but I can see that you’re still the stuck up bitch that thinks she’s better than everyone else.” Donna exclaims and storms off leaving you in the car. So much for “sisterly bonding.” This is really an unfortunate turn of events, but not completely unexpected. Donna’s always been a bit bi-polar with you. One moment she’s saying how much you should hang out and bond and the next minute she’s calling you a stuck up bitch that doesn’t know how to have fun. The girl has some serious self-esteem issues. Really you have no idea why she still acts the way she does. Mom is dead and so is dad. Who is there to rebel against anymore? From some of what she said earlier it almost seems like she parties out of habit more than great desire anymore. You pull your bags out of the car and head on inside. The front room is messy, but not overly so. Your sister is nowhere to be seen, but there are a couple of people you don’t know sitting on one of the couches playing video games. Another one is asleep on the floor. The place smells of spilled beer and none of the people even acknowledge your presence. “Suzy! You’re here!” a voice suddenly calls out. You look up and see Julie waving from the second floor. She immediately runs down the stairs to greet you close up, nearly tripping in the process. When she gets to you, the years of partying are really starting to take their toll. She’s your age, but she’s starting to look like one of those trashy strippers that wears too much make up. “Suzy, it’s been too long! Give me a hug!” she exclaims and before you can even react, she gloms on to you and gives you a tight squeeze. “Mmmm, you smell so nice. Like strawberries.” She says while rubbing her hands across your back. “Uh, yeah. Probably the shampoo I used.” You say. “You’ve been keeping in shape too, guess Bobby was keeping you busy physically. Ha ha ha ha.” Julie laughs and now she starts getting a little too touchy feelie for you. You’ve already had unwanted touching once today, you don’t feel like more. “Yeah, okay good to see you too. Back up there now. I need some space.” You say and start pulling away. “Hah same old prudish Suzy. What you think I’m gonna just start sexually assaulting you right here in the living room? Please, I know a girl like you needs to be romanced first!” Julie jokes, but she’s probably somewhat serious with her playful advances. Shortly after you got with Bobby, Donna told you that Julie spent a couple days crying because she wanted to tell you how she’s always loved you. (You of course weren’t sure why she ever thought you’d be into such a relationship, but apparently before Bobby, everyone just assumed you were a big lesbian.) Of course she quickly went on with her hedonistic life, but you’ve always wondered if she really ever “got over” you. “Okay Suzy, I hear you’re planning on sleeping in my dad’s old office. You remember the way right?” “Yeah I think so.” “Oh, I’ll just walk with you, we need to catch up on so much. I’ve missed you, you know!” Resigning yourself to the fact that you’re going to have to at least be friendly to Julie, you walk with her to your new room. Julie of course is very talkative. “So Suzy, speaking of Bobby, did you make up with him yet?” “No and I doubt if it’s going to work out anyway.” “Ohhhh, that’s so sad. You two did make a cute couple in a creepy shut in way.” Julie says and begins rubbing your shoulder. “Hm, thanks.” You answer. “Well, not to worry, you could meet a new boyfriend right here! Contrary to what you might think, I don’t just have mindless party animals coming over here. There’s actually a wide variety of people that come here to hang out. You could meet that special guy tonight in fact! Or girl…you know whatever…” Julie says trailing off and nervously smiles at you. “Well I’m not really thinking about that right now, I think I’d rather be by myself for awhile.” You answer. “Oh yeah sure. I understand. But I just want you to know that my house is your house okay? And all the fun that goes on here, well you can have some of that fun too you know?” “I know Julie. Thanks for letting me stay here.” “No problem, you were always welcome. Okay well here it is. I’ll leave you to get settled and remember you can always come out and join us later.” At this point Julie hugs you again though it’s a quick one this time and briskly walks off. You enter the office and see that it is indeed much neater and cleaner than most of the house. Even better that it has a small bathroom attached to it as well, but you knew that since this actually isn’t the first time you’ve been in here. You remember playing tag with Julie when you were in elementary school and you both ran in here. Julie’s dad wasn’t angry though. He even gave you a lollipop from a jar on his desk. Come to think of it anytime he saw you, he was always giving you lollipops. He was pretty nice that way. Shame he died in a car accident just as Julie was starting to get wilder, since even if he did work most of the time, you get the impression Julie might at least had some boundaries during her late teens and onward. It doesn’t take long for you to rearrange some things and make yourself at home on the fairly comfortable couch in there. It also doesn’t take long for you to get back to finishing what Donna interrupted earlier today. (Making sure to lock the door of course) After finishing up and washing up a bit, you hear some music. Sounds like the party is getting started. Continuing to be the introverted personality you usually are, you don’t leave your “safe zone” and go back to playing games on your computer and looking up random shit on the Internet. The more things change the more they stay the same, time passes and it’s almost like you’ve never left the basement! Eventually you get bored doing that and you start looking around the office a bit more. It’s sort of snooping, but then Julie’s dad is dead and you’re sure Julie doesn’t care. You start going through the filing cabinets and find that all the paperwork is mainly business files dated back to before Julie’s dad died. Looks like nobody ever bothered to clean any of this stuff out or even go through the stuff. The bookshelves aren’t filled with the most interesting of topics. Mostly about economics, business practices, legal things, though some of the books are historical in nature. You don’t see much fiction though. The desk just contains regular office supplies. You actually aren’t surprised to find a pistol in there (along with bullets) but after rummaging around a bit you notice a secret compartment in one of the drawers. You find a black box and you waste no time in opening it. Inside you find pictures. Pictures of little girls…in fact there are some of YOU! By the looks of them, these were all taken in secret. Nobody is naked in the photos, but given that nearly every single picture of you involves you either sucking or licking a lollipop it’s pretty apparent what the purpose of these were. Some of these girls are other kids you knew from school and hung out with Julie as well. In fact one of them went missing. Nobody knew who did it, but it was a big deal in town and it probably lead to your mother being even more overprotective of you. And you’re really glad she did since you’re starting to get a sinking feeling about what you’ve uncovered here. “Christ…” you say going through the photos. You start to wonder now if Julie’s behavior is caused by years of sexual molestation. It would certainly explain a lot. Then you get a knock on the door. “Hey Suzy, it’s me Julie, I’ve got something for you.” “Uh, hold on. Just a minute!” you exclaim as you quickly put the photographs back. You have no idea if you should tell her not, but you open the door. Julie appears with a bottle of soda and a pizza and walks in. “I figured you’d stay in here all night, but I thought you might get hungry or thirsty so here you go!” Julie says and places her gifts to you on the desk. “Oh. Thanks Julie.” You say. “You’re welcome…so why’d you take so long in answering the door? You splittin’ the kitten in here or what?” Julie asks. “Hah, yeah well busted I guess.” You say with a fake chuckle. “Suzy, if you came out and had some fun with the rest of us, that wouldn’t really be necessary you know. I know you probably still miss Bobby on some level and you’ve got needs, but he’s not here and you’d be better off moving on with your life and getting some free dick out there…or pussy…you know whatever…” Julie says obviously still hoping. Given how unstable Julie is at times, you almost wonder if you should address what you found at all. Maybe dredging up bad childhood memories isn’t the best thing right now. > You talk to Julie about what you found Quite frankly, you’ll still not sure if this is a good idea, but you can’t stay silent about what you know. “Julie, I’m about to tell you something very important and I think it’s going to cause a lot of emotions, but please bear with me.” You say and then when you see Julie’s eyes light up you quickly clarify your statement. “Uh…not that.” “…oh…” Julie says disappointed, though she’s going to be even more upset when you reveal what you know. You start and stop a couple of times, but eventually you tell her you better just show her. You open the desk back up and hand her the box of photos. Julie goes through them silently for a moment and sits down. “Julie, I dunno what to say.” You remark. “What’s to say? It is what it is. (Sigh) I thought I got rid of all this stuff though.” Julie responds. “You…you knew? Why didn’t you ever tell anyone?” “Wasn’t like I really knew until after he died and by then I didn’t see the point and I thought it might even fuck up the inheritance he left me. Most of the stuff I found when I did go through it weren’t photos like these, but actual magazines or little girl pictures on his computer. I didn’t even know that he was taking photos of you and other friends.” “Wait. So you never knew until after he died? Are you saying he never touched you?” “Nope. Never touched me. Never paid much attention to me at all really, he was usually gone on business or otherwise busy as you well know.” At this point Julie starts to laugh. “You wanna hear something really fucked up?” “Um…” “After I found out my dad was a sicko pedo I got angry and cried as you might expect, but I think a small part of me did so, not because of the horror of such a revelation, but because I thought why didn’t he ever show me as much attention? Why these other girls? I was his daughter. Why wasn’t I…(sob) good enough…” Julie starts to break down. You’ve never been one to deny how fucked up your family is and you probably have your own set of “daddy issues” on some level, but right now you don’t think you could have such a twisted way of thinking. To be fair to Julie, she probably doesn’t really have some fucked up desire to want to fuck her dad, its just her being fucked up in general. She’s always been so starved for a positive father figure in her life that her mind is bound to go to places that are a little… well fucked up. Julie goes into full blown sobbing mode and you realize you’re going to have to be the one to console her now. “Um…there. There, there now. You don’t mean that.” You say sitting down next to her and patting her on the back. She then of course takes to hugging you while crying. “I mean in his own…incredibly twisted way he did care about you.” You say. “What do you mean?” “Well he left you a shitload of money when he died for one thing. He definitely wanted you to make sure you’d be taken care of if he died. I mean that’s more than my dad did.” “Your dad wasn’t a fucking pedo.” “No, but I mean…look your father obviously must’ve known what he was was incredibly wrong and he tried to shield you from it by NOT molesting you. His love for you overwrote his sick lust for little girls. It might’ve even been why he was distant. I mean things could’ve been A LOT worse for you if he had taken an unhealthy interest in you.” “I…I suppose you’re right. But I just wish…someone could’ve been there for me growing up. I wish my mom hadn’t died when I was little. Maybe it could’ve made the difference of me actually not squandering my youth and acting like brainless whore. All I fucking do is live a shallow existence of hedonism. I don’t even feel good about it anymore. It’s just a never-ending void. I could’ve applied myself to SOMETHING and now the inheritance is starting to run out and I have absolutely no goddamn skills whatsoever.” This is pretty heavy stuff coming from Julie. She rarely if ever takes about anything deep, and given how personal all this is it’s a bit out of character. Still, you aren’t entirely surprised she’s coming out to you about it. Crushes aside, Julie probably has always felt a bit of a bond with you due to both your mothers dying early and having distant fathers. True your sister is more in line with her lifestyle, but you grew up with her and were friends with her first and its obvious that deep down she’d like to have something stable in her life. In a weird way you both have also shut yourself in from the outside world. Julie may be fucking strangers and partying all the time, but other than that, she barely interacts with the real world in any meaningful way. She was just a “basement dweller” with a shitload of cash. In any event you continue to speak with Julie who reveals more about what she knows. She keeps apologizing for her dad taking pictures of you, but you tell her to forget about that now. She goes on to say she doesn’t know anything about Vanessa, the little girl in one of the pictures that went missing later. She says she barely remembers ever playing with her. (And to your knowledge you never played with her either). “So you don’t think he had anything to do with her disappearance?” you ask. “I don’t know. I don’t know everything about my father’s sick habits. I mean I know he looked at pictures obviously, but I can’t say if I found anything more than that. Like I never found any hardcore kiddie porn involving actual sex. Though to be honest, it got to a point where I’d found so much that I didn’t want to look anymore. Hence why this office has never really been touched.” Julie says. “Hrm. Well I didn’t find anything else other than these photos.” You take a glance through the photos again and shake your head realizing that this is probably just going to be one of those dark mysteries of what really happened to Vanessa. Since neither one of you are really willing to play great detective and don’t want to dwell on this anymore, you and Julie destroy the photos. Afterwards you figure Julie will want to go back to her party since she’ll want lose herself in an alcohol and sex filled night as usual, but this situation has put her out of the mood. “I’m sure whoever is out there will have fun whether I’m there or not. I just don’t think I’m in the mood. Can I just spend time with you? We could eat this pizza and just talk like how we used to remember?” Julie asks. “Well, I suppose that would be okay.” You answer. So you and Julie spend the remainder of the night talking. It really isn’t all that bad. It doesn’t even get weird with Julie trying to push for something more, she just maintains a friendly demeanor and nothing more than that. Her spirits are certainly brighter. Eventually you start to get sleepy and even Julie begins to get tired. “I hate to stop our discussion, but I’m really getting sleepy. It was sort of an eventful day for me.” You say. “Sure, I understand, but um…could I ask just one little favor?” Julie asks. ‘What?” “Well, other than the situation that lead to our talk, I really feel like this was a very positive experience for me. I mean like in a long time. I feel like I’ve reconnected with a friend again. I mean REALLY reconnected.” “Julie…” “I know. I know where you think I’m going with this, but can I just sleep here tonight? I just enjoyed our time together that I don’t really want it to end yet, even if we’ll both be asleep.” “I dunno…where are you going to sleep?” “Oh, that couch folds out into a bed. I'll just sleep with you!” You give Julie a look of disapproval and disbelief. “I mean…oh you know what I mean! I’ll just take one side of it! Please! I really won’t try anything honest!” You can’t believe you’re actually considering this… “(Sigh) All right, but ONLY because this is all my fault for dredging up bad memories in the first place and you’re a bit emotional right now. You can sleep on the left side, but DO NOT expect this to be a regular thing and DO NOT think that your hands or any other parts of your body are going to just roam over to my side in the middle of the night. I don’t think I need to tell you what will happen if that happens.” “No, and I swear I won’t try anything! Okay, this is gonna be fun! Like a sleep over! Why didn’t we ever have one of those when we were little?” “Because my mother was overprotective and I’m starting to think things could’ve been a lot worse for me if she hadn’t been.” Wasting no time, Julie helps you fold the couch out and gets into the bed. You hesitantly get in on the other side and remind Julie not to touch you. Julie though just seems to be thrilled you’re in the same bed together. Despite your concerns, you eventually fall asleep… > Next day... TUESDAY “…Suzy…” you hear a voice whisper. “Mgh.” You answer. “Suzy…get up…I have to go pee!” the voice says again. Your eyes are still closed, but you recognize it as Julie’s. “Guh. Well go! Why do I have to get up?!” you say angrily with your eyes still closed. “Well because you arm is wrapped around my waist and your leg is intertwined with one of mine that’s why!” Now you open your eyes and realize what Julie has just described is true. Julie looks at you over her shoulder. “Hey don’t blame me, I stayed on my side of the bed. I’d enjoy this longer, but I really gotta pee!” “Shit.” You say and remove yourself from your entanglement from Julie’s body. Julie smiles at you and then heads to the bathroom. Great, now she’s going to read something into it. Though you do wonder how the hell you got into a spooning position with her. Maybe you were dreaming about Bobby. Speaking of Bobby, while you’re checking the time on your cell phone, you see that he’s left messages again. After you recent “night cuddling” with Julie, you think it might be best if you do call Bobby if only to deter Julie from getting any ideas. “Hello? Bobby?” you say. “Yeah.” Bobby answers. He sounds pretty flat. “Well you called me, so I assume you wanted to talk to me.” “Yeah I did, I wanted to talk to you yesterday about something else, but I’ve changed my mind about some things since then. So I’ve got something new to tell you, and given that you didn’t bother to talk to me yesterday I think you’ll be fine with it.” “What are you talking about?” “I’m talking about us. Breaking up for good. It’s obvious that this isn’t working. I tried to bring you into my world, but you just refuse to meet me half way.” You can’t believe you’re hearing this! “Meet you half way? You want me to be one of your wives in your fucked up religious cult compound that’s what you want! Face it, you’re not going to give up your sister Diana and that bitch would kill me as soon as I stepped foot in that place!” “Well…you obviously have valid points, so why are you arguing with me on this?” “Because you’re trying to make out like I’M the bad guy here! I’m not the human sacrificing cultist Bobby and yet I looked past that because I loved you! You say I didn’t try to meet you half way? I proposed long ago that we BOTH leave our fucked up families behind and start a new life together! I was willing to change, YOU weren’t!” At this point there is a long pause. “Well? Don’t you have anything to say?” you ask. “No, except…it was just too much. Guess I take after my dad after all. I’m sorry, but my God and family come first. Even before you. I’ll always remember…the good times we had. May Tiamat’s Chaos take mercy on you.” “Oh fuck you and Tiamat!” you exclaim and hang up. Its weird, but you start to sob a little bit. You sort of knew your relationship with Bobby was on borrowed time anyway, but it still hurts now that it’s officially over. He was your first love after all and now that’s gone. Meanwhile Julie is standing in the bathroom door watching you. “Suzy, I heard some of that…and I’m truly sorry about you and Bobby. Really, I mean that. You’re a kind and decent girl with many wonderful qualities. He had a treasure in you and he doesn’t know what he’s lost.” Hard to tell if Julie’s just trying to flatter you or she really does mean it, but either way it’s still nice to hear right now. “Did you want to talk about it?” Julie asks. “No, not really. It’s over and that’s that. Best to not dwell on the past and move on right?” you say. “Probably. Well I should probably see how much damage my home is in from last night and see who’s still lingering around. I’ll leave you alone.” “Wait, I’ll come with you. I mean I live here too now, I might as well help you clean up. Besides, for the first time I think being alone might be a bad idea. I’m just going to end up dwelling on Bobby. I need to keep my mind on other things right now. I probably should try to make up with Donna as well. We kind of argued yesterday.” “Yeah, I wondered what happened about that. When she stormed in yesterday I asked about you and she mumbled something about you being a bitch. Then later at the party I asked again about what happened and she still never answered.” “Nothing really happened, she just jumped down my throat for a perceived insult, but I guess I should make the peace being the older sister and all.” “See? This is why you’re so wonderful!” Julie smiles and the pair of you exit your room. The house actually isn’t in bad shape. Julie remarks that usually the parties only get really out of hand on Saturday and Friday nights. She also remarks that she thinks this the first time in quite awhile that she woke up without a hang over since she didn’t really drink as much since she was mainly with you the whole night. “It’s a bizarre feeling, but I have to say it isn’t an unpleasant one.” Julie says. From the living room you hear the sounds of a vacuum as well as a TV. “Who the hell would be vacuuming?” Julie asks. “Donna?” the moment you say that, you and Julie both look at each other and say “Nah.” When you arrive in the living room, you see a man probably about your age calmly vacuuming as he periodically looks at the TV screen, which is one of those Ground Zero infomercials. There are actually a couple of other people in the room flopped out on the furniture or on the floor still asleep, but the man merely vacuums around their sprawled out legs or bodies. You and Julie find the sight to be quite the peculiar one. He notices you both and turns off the vacuum. “Oh hey. You…you’re the owner of this house correct?” he asks. “Yes I am, who are you?” Julie answers. “Oh I’m Johnny. Sorry if I woke you and your girlfriend up, but I couldn’t in good conscience leave your house in such a mess. So I found your vacuum and tried to clean up a bit. Sort of a wild party last night huh?” Johnny says. “Eh, had wilder. Never had a guest actually clean up though. Kinda weird, but hey I won’t turn it down. I don’t remember you from last night; though I have so many people at my parties I never know half of them anyway.” “Oh, I’m not very memorable anyway. I’ve always kind of just blended in with the crowd. I heard about this party from a friend and figured I’d come since I don’t get out much. Did you want me to leave?” “Doesn’t make difference to me. Like I said, I’m not going to turn down a guest that helps clean up.” Johnny nods and returns to cleaning up, while Julie turns back to you. “Hrm, he’s an odd one, but at least he’s helpful. Anyway, let’s go check and see if Donna’s upstairs.” Julie says. You and Julie leave Johnny to his cleaning to go find your sister. After checking the bedrooms, you don’t find her (Though there are a couple of people still sleeping in said bedrooms) you wonder if she passed out on the lawn or something. You and Julie start descending down the stairs. “I dunno, while I’ve certainly passed out on the lawn, Donna has never gotten that bad. She’s more likely to be in the basement.” “Well I guess you could look outside and I could look down there for my sister…” Suddenly Johnny interrupts. “Excuse me. Sorry for overhearing, but did you say you were looking for Donna?” “Yes, she’s my sister.” You say. “Oh…so you must be Suzy. Heard her talk about you last night.” “Nothing good I’m sure. You know where she is?” you say. “Unfortunately I don’t. I mean I remember seeing her leave with a couple of guys and another girl last night, but I didn’t know them either. I was under the impression they were going out to get more beer or drugs or something, but they never came back.” You shake your head and sigh. “Great, she probably got herself fucking arrested by the cops last night.” You say. “Well we don’t know that.” Julie remarks. “Maybe. I guess I’ll know if I get a call from the police station. Whatever, I know she’s like a cat and always lands on her feet, so I can talk to her later.” “You sure you don’t want to still look around the house for her?” “Well if she’s here, she’ll probably turn up while I’m cleaning this place a bit.” “Okay, well I’m heading back upstairs to get those assholes out of my bed and clean up whatever mess is up there.” Julie heads back upstairs nodding to Johnny who is now picking up garbage by hand and putting it in a bag. He nods to you briefly and continues his work. Well mind numbing clean up work should certainly help keep your mind off Bobby (and the possibility of Donna being in jail) you’re just wondering if you should help Julie or Johnny. > You help Julie While Johnny seems okay, you don’t know him and you’re not in the mood to make new acquaintances, so to prevent the risk of him suddenly becoming more talkative to you, you pass Johnny and head upstairs to help Julie. “Hey! Not cool Julie, we were asleep!” you hear a voice say. “Yeah and nobody has sex in MY bed unless I’m actually in it!” Julie says. “Well, you can still join us like last time…” another voice says. “Get out!” This order is followed by the sounds of something falling on the floor, and then followed by some complaints. Soon you see a disheveled man and woman both putting some clothes on as they exit the room. They walk past you, grumbling the whole time about Julie not being cool about the situation. As they walk out the front door, they end up waking up another guest who was sleeping in one of the chairs downstairs. He looks at his watch and exclaims “Shit!” and rushes out the door as well. Johnny briefly looks at them and then looks up at you with a faint smile and continues to quietly clean up. You enter Julie’s room and see her stripping the bed. “Well, could’ve been worse I suppose. I thought you were cleaning up downstairs.” Julie asks. “I figured I’d help you up here.” You answer. “Oh, well thanks.” “Plus, I dunno, but that Johnny guy is sort of weird.” “Heh, yeah, but no weirder than some of the other people we’ve both known.” “I suppose, but there’s something about him…I can’t place my finger on it. I’m just not getting the best of vibes from him.” “Well he did say he didn’t get out much. Maybe he’s just awkward around people. I think you know a little about that.” Julie says smirking. “Heh, very funny. So did you want me to get started on the other rooms?” “Yeah just pick up any trash you might find and throw that away in a trash bag. There should be some up here in the hallway closet. Don’t worry about the bathroom, I’m sure its suitably disgusting, but I wouldn’t dream of asking you to clean it. Hey, maybe I can get Johnny to do it. Ha ha!” “What about Donna’s room?” “Well, normally I leave her shit alone so she has the privacy of cleaning it herself if she so desires. Of course I don’t think picking up a few beer cans that might be in there to be an invasion of privacy. So use your judgment.” So you do exactly what Julie says. You start picking up cans and other refuse into a trash bag. Despite Julie’s warnings, you check the bathroom anyway and it isn’t quite that bad so you do a little cleaning up there as well. Eventually you make your way back to Julie’s room where she’s still straightening things out there. “You know normally I never bother to do this much cleaning, but I guess that’s one of the advantages of not being hung over when you wake up in the afternoon. You finished already?” Julie asks. “Just about, even worked on the bathroom a little. Wasn’t that bad in there.” “Glad to hear it, did you clean up Donna’s room?” “No, decided to stick with your policy of non-interference.” “Okay. (Whew) I’m used to playing hard, but not working hard. I’m taking a break.” “Yeah I think I’ll join you.” Julie lies down on her now fresh-sheeted bed, while you sit in a chair. “Why don’t you come over here, you could stretch out.” Julie says. “Hm, I’m good. And I think we’ve spent enough time in beds together for a while.” You answer. “Afraid you might get the sudden urge to spoon me again huh?” “Look, I dunno how I got in that position, but I probably was dreaming or something.” You say. “Mostly or something.” Julie continues to prod. “You had me in a pretty good grip and I didn’t say this before, but I was wide-awake for a good ten minutes enjoying it before I had to really pee. And during that time, you were also grinding your body into mine and you even gave me a peck on the ear.” “What?! Get out of here! You’re making this up!” you exclaim. “I’m serious!” “…I like guys!” you protest. “I never said you didn’t. I’m just saying that on SOME level, you might like the female form as well. It’s okay you know.” “The only female form I like is my own.” “So you really mean to say you’ve never fantasized about another woman? I’m not even talking about me, I’m talking about any woman.” “Nope, can’t say that I have.” “You’ve never found any woman attractive?” “Well that’s different than wanting to fucking another woman. I mean sure, if you want an example I always thought my older brother Ben’s wife Moonshadow had pretty eyes.” “Hmm, interesting. She was part black wasn’t she? Maybe you just got a thing for dark meat.” Julie laughs. ‘Fuck you Julie. Just fuck you.” “Hey, whenever you’re ready. And given how much you were aggressively holding on to me and grinding your body into mine, I at least I know you’re a top now. Didn’t get that vibe from you before. That’s kind of hot really.” At this point you can’t help but laugh though it’s a semi-nervous laugh due to feeling a little weird about Julie’s suggestions about you. You attempt to change the subject. “Well at least this has gotten my mind off other things. Still need to smooth things over with Donna though. No call yet, so I’m guessing she didn’t get arrested. I’m just hoping it isn’t something worse. I might call her soon; even if she is pissed at me at least I’ll know where she is. Has she ever disappeared like this before?” “Oh sure. I mean she goes over to hang out with other people; she’s probably over at one of their houses. I’m sure she’ll be back later today…is that Johnny guy still downstairs?” “Dunno. I can check.” You exit Julie’s room and look into the living from the second floor. The TV is still on (And still playing an infernal Ground Zero infomercial) but Johnny isn’t anywhere in sight. Looks like the living room is clean though, even the last of the sleeping “guests” are gone. You call out his name, but there is no answer. “Nope, he’s gone. Looks like everyone is gone.” You say entering Julie’s room again. “Oh well. With as helpful as he was cleaning up I hoped I could get him to drag these dirty sheets and blankets to the washing machine. You gonna help?” “I suppose I could, but I probably should be searching for a job. I have a terrible habit of not focusing at the best of times on that.” “Heh, I don’t even think I’ve ever looked for one…and I probably should start doing so. Like I said yesterday, my inheritance isn’t going to last forever. I won’t keep you though, you’ve been a big help already and I can handle taking some sheets down to the washing machine.” You suddenly get the idea that maybe the task wouldn’t seem quite as bad if you did it together. To be honest you wouldn’t mind her with you while you look if only because you still don’t want to be by yourself where you can start dwelling on Bobby again or worse trying to call him. Of course you might end up just goofing off with Julie if she’s around thus procrastinating and making the goal of searching for a job pointless. > You search for jobs yourself “Well, if you want to look for a job, just come in and see me and we can look together.” You say. “Okay, maybe. First, I’m going to take these sheets and blankets and throw ‘em in the wash though.” Julie replies. The pair of you head downstairs and part company as you head into your room and she goes into the basement. (It still feels odd to NOT go into the basement when heading to your room) You lay down on your bed/couch, open up your laptop and prepare for the unfun task of looking for a job. Ten minutes in and you’ve already gotten off track. You’re playing some flash game, but your mind keeps occasionally thinking about Bobby. You start to get upset again and think about calling him. You pick up the phone and think of how you really shouldn’t do this, especially since you fully believe that he was being the asshole in this situation, but you can’t just let it end the way it did. You don’t know why, maybe its because he’s the first guy you’ve ever seriously been with and you can’t quite let go yet. “Hey.” Bobby says on the other end of the phone. You’re sort of surprised that he picked up after only two rings. “Bobby… I just want to say a few more things…” you say. “Suzy I don’t want to fight with you. So…” “No, it’s not that. Look I just want to say, I’m sorry I insulted your religion. I know how important it is to you.” “Well I appreciate that. Thank you.” “I just don’t want things to end like that last conversation we had. Our time together was special to me and I don’t want those memories to be completely soiled because we had a bad break up.” “I agree as well…I know I probably shouldn’t say this, because it only makes this break up even harder, but I ALMOST came close to abandoning everything for you…it just…just…” “I know. It was just too much.” Bobby on the other end of the phone is silent, but you think you hear sniffling. Of course this makes your eyes water too. “I think… (sniffle) I think I’m always going to love you Suzy.” Bobby says. “I have to go….bye.” Bobby says and abruptly hangs up. Now you’re really upset. You knew you shouldn’t have called. You almost think it was better when you parted thinking he was a complete asshole. He sounded so sad, you wonder if maybe, just MAYBE you could convince him if you went and saw him one more time. You get the idea. You’re going to do it, because what you had with Bobby is worth fighting for! You leave your room and start shouting to Julie as you go down the basement stairs “Hey Julie! I know you’ll probably think this is a bad idea, but I want to go talk things out with Bobby one last time. He and I have so much history, so do you know if Donna has an extra set of keys to her… Aaaaaaaahhh!” you scream when you see Johnny standing over Julie’s bloody body with a knife in hand. Johnny doesn’t even flinch, he just smiles at you like nothing is wrong. “Bobby? …you have a boyfriend? Your sister didn’t tell me that…oh well…” he says flatly. Panic and fear fill every inch of your body and you instantly turn and run back upstairs. You get to the top step and open the door just before you feel a sharp pain strike hard into your back. You manage to keep from falling backwards and instead fall forward so that you’re half way on the basement steps and half on the ground floor. Trying to fight through the pain, you attempt to stand back up and stumble in the process. Attempting to grab the knife in your back doesn’t help either. You manage to get partially down the hallway before Johnny catches up to you again. You are grabbed roughly and then thrown face first into the floor as he twists the knife in your back. You scream out for help, but there is none to be had. “Stop screaming you fucking bitch! Why do you always scream!? I’m doing this for your own good! I can be your boyfriend! I can be a better boyfriend!” Johnny shouts as he attempts to strip off your clothes. The only consolation to your final fate is that you struggle so much that Johnny cuts your throat before he can rape you. Not that it stops him from doing so after you’re already dead of course.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While Johnny seems okay, you don’t know him and you’re not in the mood to make new acquaintances, so to prevent the risk of him suddenly becoming more talkative to you, you pass Johnny and head upstairs to help Julie. “Hey! Not cool Julie, we were asleep!” you hear a voice say. “Yeah and nobody has sex in MY bed unless I’m actually in it!” Julie says. “Well, you can still join us like last time…” another voice says. “Get out!” This order is followed by the sounds of something falling on the floor, and then followed by some complaints. Soon you see a disheveled man and woman both putting some clothes on as they exit the room. They walk past you, grumbling the whole time about Julie not being cool about the situation. As they walk out the front door, they end up waking up another guest who was sleeping in one of the chairs downstairs. He looks at his watch and exclaims “Shit!” and rushes out the door as well. Johnny briefly looks at them and then looks up at you with a faint smile and continues to quietly clean up. You enter Julie’s room and see her stripping the bed. “Well, could’ve been worse I suppose. I thought you were cleaning up downstairs.” Julie asks. “I figured I’d help you up here.” You answer. “Oh, well thanks.” “Plus, I dunno, but that Johnny guy is sort of weird.” “Heh, yeah, but no weirder than some of the other people we’ve both known.” “I suppose, but there’s something about him…I can’t place my finger on it. I’m just not getting the best of vibes from him.” “Well he did say he didn’t get out much. Maybe he’s just awkward around people. I think you know a little about that.” Julie says smirking. “Heh, very funny. So did you want me to get started on the other rooms?” “Yeah just pick up any trash you might find and throw that away in a trash bag. There should be some up here in the hallway closet. Don’t worry about the bathroom, I’m sure its suitably disgusting, but I wouldn’t dream of asking you to clean it. Hey, maybe I can get Johnny to do it. Ha ha!” “What about Donna’s room?” “Well, normally I leave her shit alone so she has the privacy of cleaning it herself if she so desires. Of course I don’t think picking up a few beer cans that might be in there to be an invasion of privacy. So use your judgment.” So you do exactly what Julie says. You start picking up cans and other refuse into a trash bag. Despite Julie’s warnings, you check the bathroom anyway and it isn’t quite that bad so you do a little cleaning up there as well. Eventually you make your way back to Julie’s room where she’s still straightening things out there. “You know normally I never bother to do this much cleaning, but I guess that’s one of the advantages of not being hung over when you wake up in the afternoon. You finished already?” Julie asks. “Just about, even worked on the bathroom a little. Wasn’t that bad in there.” “Glad to hear it, did you clean up Donna’s room?” “No, decided to stick with your policy of non-interference.” “Okay. (Whew) I’m used to playing hard, but not working hard. I’m taking a break.” “Yeah I think I’ll join you.” Julie lies down on her now fresh-sheeted bed, while you sit in a chair. “Why don’t you come over here, you could stretch out.” Julie says. “Hm, I’m good. And I think we’ve spent enough time in beds together for a while.” You answer. “Afraid you might get the sudden urge to spoon me again huh?” “Look, I dunno how I got in that position, but I probably was dreaming or something.” You say. “Mostly or something.” Julie continues to prod. “You had me in a pretty good grip and I didn’t say this before, but I was wide-awake for a good ten minutes enjoying it before I had to really pee. And during that time, you were also grinding your body into mine and you even gave me a peck on the ear.” “What?! Get out of here! You’re making this up!” you exclaim. “I’m serious!” “…I like guys!” you protest. “I never said you didn’t. I’m just saying that on SOME level, you might like the female form as well. It’s okay you know.” “The only female form I like is my own.” “So you really mean to say you’ve never fantasized about another woman? I’m not even talking about me, I’m talking about any woman.” “Nope, can’t say that I have.” “You’ve never found any woman attractive?” “Well that’s different than wanting to fucking another woman. I mean sure, if you want an example I always thought my older brother Ben’s wife Moonshadow had pretty eyes.” “Hmm, interesting. She was part black wasn’t she? Maybe you just got a thing for dark meat.” Julie laughs. ‘Fuck you Julie. Just fuck you.” “Hey, whenever you’re ready. And given how much you were aggressively holding on to me and grinding your body into mine, I at least I know you’re a top now. Didn’t get that vibe from you before. That’s kind of hot really.” At this point you can’t help but laugh though it’s a semi-nervous laugh due to feeling a little weird about Julie’s suggestions about you. You attempt to change the subject. “Well at least this has gotten my mind off other things. Still need to smooth things over with Donna though. No call yet, so I’m guessing she didn’t get arrested. I’m just hoping it isn’t something worse. I might call her soon; even if she is pissed at me at least I’ll know where she is. Has she ever disappeared like this before?” “Oh sure. I mean she goes over to hang out with other people; she’s probably over at one of their houses. I’m sure she’ll be back later today…is that Johnny guy still downstairs?” “Dunno. I can check.” You exit Julie’s room and look into the living from the second floor. The TV is still on (And still playing an infernal Ground Zero infomercial) but Johnny isn’t anywhere in sight. Looks like the living room is clean though, even the last of the sleeping “guests” are gone. You call out his name, but there is no answer. “Nope, he’s gone. Looks like everyone is gone.” You say entering Julie’s room again. “Oh well. With as helpful as he was cleaning up I hoped I could get him to drag these dirty sheets and blankets to the washing machine. You gonna help?” “I suppose I could, but I probably should be searching for a job. I have a terrible habit of not focusing at the best of times on that.” “Heh, I don’t even think I’ve ever looked for one…and I probably should start doing so. Like I said yesterday, my inheritance isn’t going to last forever. I won’t keep you though, you’ve been a big help already and I can handle taking some sheets down to the washing machine.” You suddenly get the idea that maybe the task wouldn’t seem quite as bad if you did it together. To be honest you wouldn’t mind her with you while you look if only because you still don’t want to be by yourself where you can start dwelling on Bobby again or worse trying to call him. Of course you might end up just goofing off with Julie if she’s around thus procrastinating and making the goal of searching for a job pointless. > You ask Julie to search with you “Maybe we could look together.” You say. Julie looks a bit hesitant at your proposal. “I…I dunno…I’m just not in the mood right now...” “Come on Julie, I’ll help. The cleaning can wait.” “Well… I guess it would be good to know what to do and where to start at least. Why don’t you grab your laptop and come back up here and we can get to it.” You head downstairs and back to your room where you pick up your laptop. Upon exiting the room, you scream out when you literally bump into Johnny. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” you scream and nearly drop your laptop in the process. Johnny doesn’t do anything except stand there. “SUZY! What’s going on down there?!” you hear Julie shout. “Johnny what the fuck are you doing creeping around like that?! You scared the shit out of me!” you exclaim backing away into the living room still in a bit of a panic. Johnny doesn’t move he just continues to stand there in the hallway. “I’m not creeping. I just finished cleaning the basement, it was a real mess down there.” Johnny says. “I called your name earlier and you never answered!” you say. “I guess I didn’t hear you. What’re you getting so excited about?” “Because you’re fucking creeping around the house like a psycho! I think you need to leave!” you say with authority, but you’re really scared deep down inside. At this point Julie has come down the stairs and arrived. “Johnny, I thought you left. What’re you still doing here?” Julie asks. “Nothing, I just finished cleaning your basement. You know I feel like my efforts aren’t being appreciated and you’re not being a good host.” “Good host? Alright fine, I thank you for your help, but you’re obviously scaring my friend and the party’s long been over anyway, so get the fuck out.” Julie orders. While you half expect Johnny to show some sort of anger or even get violent, fortunately it doesn’t come to that. He remains completely calm. Like dead featureless expression calm. Which is almost scarier. “Okay. Sorry I caused distress.” He says and walks past you and Julie (you both give him a wide berth) and goes out the front door. You immediately start locking it up. “Julie, go lock your back door.” You say busily putting the chains on the door. “Wow, that guy really got to you…” “Julie, please just go check your fucking back door!” “Okay, okay!” Julie leaves to go just that, but you only end up following her anyway. The backdoor is actually already locked though Julie rechecks it just to be sure. “See, we’re safe…shit, Suzy, you’re actually shaking.” “Of course I’m fucking shaking! I just had a goddamn flashback to when my Uncle Ed caught me finding the body parts of his victims! I’m telling you there was something wrong with that guy!” you say still looking around like Johnny is still lurking about. “Shhh…it’s okay now. He’s gone, and if it makes you feel any better he won’t be allowed in here anymore. Hell we probably won’t see him again anyway.” Julie says placing her hands on your arms in an effort to sooth and calm you down. “I think I need to lie down.” You say feeling wobbly and unable to catch your breath. Julie escorts you back to your room where you lay down on the bed. “I…don’t think I’m in the mood to look for jobs with you right now Julie.” “That’s okay Suzy, I wasn’t really in the mood to look for one anyway.” Julie says with a smile. “God, my heart is really racing…I feel like I’m going to pass out.” “You want me to get you some water or something?” “No, don’t go. Stay with me.” You say grabbing on to Julie’s hand. “Okay. I’ll stay here. Whatever you want. I’m here for you.” Julie says squeezing your hand while sitting on the edge of the bed. You slowly begin to calm down and eventually you stop hyperventilating. Julie stays with you saying nothing, but just being supportive by sticking with you like a friend should. You start to feel safer and close your eyes since the stress has still made you a bit weary. Before you know it you’ve fallen back to sleep. Hours later… You wake up and find yourself alone. You grab your cell where you left it by the bed last time and see that it’s only a few hours to midnight. (Nobody has tried calling you either.) The odd thing is you don’t hear any music or the sounds of people. Normally Julie would have a gathering by now, and it’s odd that you’re not hearing it. You then start to worry if something has happened. Still thinking about your incident with Johnny earlier today, you rush to the desk and grab the pistol you found before and load it up. Your older brother Ben showed you how to handle a gun once, you weren’t exactly very good with it, but you feel safer with it. Cautiously, you open the door and slowly walk out into the hallway looking around you. You then hear a male voice coming from the living room. “Shut the fuck up bitch and take it!” “JULIE!” you scream and run into the living room with your pistol draw and pointed in front of you. “HOLY FUCK SUZY!” Julie shouts and falls off the couch, dropping her console controller and ducking for cover. You then see on her TV screen the origin of the male voice. It’s her character. She’s playing some sort of crime simulator. Now Julie’s the one with the heart palpitations! “Goddamn Suzy, you scared the shit out of me! What the fuck are you doing with a gun anyway?!” “It was in your dad’s desk. Sorry. I just woke up alone and…I guess I’m still a little scared.” “Well I was a lot scared when I saw that shit pointed at me! Especially with the game I’m playing, I thought I unlocked some sort of 3D mode for a second.” Julie says with a very small chuckle. You apologize again and sit down next to Julie who has recovered and is busily trying to get her bearings again on her game. “Shit, some fucker robbed me while I was distracted. Gonna have to find and chase his ass down now. Wanna help? Got another controller.” Julie says. “No, I think I’ll just watch right now… so no party tonight?” you ask. “Nah, I mean there were some people that showed up earlier tonight, but I told them all to go back home since I cancelled it tonight. I figure after what happened earlier today with you, you could use the peace.” “Thank you Julie, that was really thoughtful.” “Don’t mention it. Besides, I figure this would be a good opportunity to start that life change like I mentioned before. Still didn’t look for a job though.” “Hah, well one day at a time…so is Donna here somewhere?” “Nope, still hasn’t come home yet. I actually tried calling her, but no answer. I guess she’s got it turned off or the battery’s dead. Probably at a club or something .” “I hope so…I’m starting to worry now.” “I told you she’s probably at a club or something. Like I said before, she doesn’t always sleep here.” “Maybe so, but given that that creepy fuck said he saw he last, well it makes me a bit suspicious.” “You still worried about him? Told ya, that guy was just an awkward aspie. Probably just didn’t know how to talk to girls. Here, why don’t you join my game? You’re obviously already in a shooting mood, it’ll take your mind off things.” Trusting that it couldn’t hurt, you grab a video game controller and start committing virtual homicide on a grand scale. Oddly, it does make you feel a little better and you both play a little past midnight. “Well, that was fun, I think I’m going to bed.” Julie says yawning. “Really? Seems early for you.” “Well unlike you I haven’t slept, plus I’m not hopped up on designer drugs like I sometimes am when I’m partying. Amazing what being clean for a whole day does to you.” As Julie gets up to go to head off to bed, you aren’t exactly tired yet, but you’re still a little nervous about being by yourself. You can’t believe you’re going to ask this… “Julie?” “Yes?” “Can you sleep with me tonight?” Julie’s expression to this request says it all. “Well okay, but stay on your side of the bed and if anything of yours touches anything of mine, you better respect me in the morning.” She says with a big grin on her face. You head back to your room Julie taking the pistol with you, which Julie really disapproves of, but doesn’t protest too much since she’s just happy you’re spending yet ANOTHER night in the same bed with her. After locking the door and placing the pistol where you can easily reach it, you get into bed with Julie who to her credit does keep to one side of the bed and quickly fall asleep. You’re up for a little while longer, but eventually you feel safe enough to let your guard down and fall asleep as well. > Next day... WEDNESDAY “Remember, if you act today…” “Ugh! Shut up! I don’t care about your stupid shelters!” you hear Julie remark. You open your eyes and see Julie to the left of you messing around on your laptop. (And clicking off on one of those annoying pop up audio ads) “Hey…when did you get up?” you ask. “I dunno, about an hour ago I think. Didn’t really feel like leaving the bed though, so I just figured I’d stay here and entertain myself on your laptop. Hope you don’t mind.” “Eh, it’s fine. Don’t mess with my bookmarks and setting though.” “Don’t worry, I’m not going to accidentally delete anything. I must say though with the extensive number of porn links in your history, I think you might have a real problem.” Julie mocks. “Mm, bold words coming from a woman who has popped up in several amateur videos on those sites.” You answer. “Hah. I don’t doubt it, but that brings up the question of why would YOU be watching those?” Julie asks. “Who said I did? I can’t help it if I’m browsing through the videos and suddenly your ass pops up in a still.” “If it’s just my ass, how do you know it’s me? Either you don’t or you’ve watched them enough that you know what my ass looks like without even seeing my face!” “Argh! I don’t mean literally! I mean YOU pop up, and I’ve seen your face in the stills though once I almost couldn’t tell because it was covered in cum!” you exclaim starting to get agitated. “Hmm, nice save.” Julie says a little unconvinced. Already having expended more energy than you wanted to, you start to sit up and realize you’ve been wearing the same clothes for the past couple days. “Christ, I really need to take a shower and change these clothes.” You say and get out of the bed. “Yeah, I think I need to go do that too.” Julie says. “Well you can go use your own shower. I know we’ve been sleeping in the same bed for the past two days, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be re-enacting a women’s prison shower scene from a movie.” You say laying down boundaries again. “Hey I think you had that one bookmarked!” Julie says jokingly. You shake your head and grab some clean clothes before heading into the bathroom to take a shower. After washing up and changing your clothes, you feel refreshed. When you exit the bathroom, you see that Julie has left, presumably to go wash up as well. You check your phone and once again see nobody has called. You dial up your sister’s number and still no answer. You certainly hope Julie is right about her just sleeping somewhere else. But surely she couldn’t be so pissed at you that she’s moved out could she? All her stuff is still here after all. You then hear a loud noise or more like a voice, but you aren’t sure if its coming from inside the house or outside the house. Still paranoid from yesterday, you grab the pistol and cautiously exit your room. When you get to the living room, you deduce the noise is indeed coming from outside. A quick peek through the window and you see several military men and a couple of military trucks and even an A.P.C. “ATTENTION! THIS TOWN IS UNDER MARSHAL LAW AND THIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS NOW UNDER WATCH BY THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD. A GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE WILL SOON VISIT ALL OF YOU AND ASSIST IN ANYTHING THAT YOU MAY NEED DURING THIS STATE OF EMERGENCY. STAY IN YOUR HOMES. DO NOT COME OUT FOR ANY REASON. FAILURE TO DO SO MAY RESULT IN THE USE OF LETHAL FORCE.” “Hey Suzy?! You hear that noise!? You got the TV up loud?” Julie shouts from somewhere up on the second floor. “No! The fucking National Guard is out there in force and it looks like we’re under marshal law.” “National Guard? Hold on, I’m coming down…” Julie says. You turn the TV on to see if there’s anything about this, but you’re not exactly having any luck. You’re getting a lot of Ground Zero infomercials or news about shit going on elsewhere in the world. Local stations seem to be off the air with an “emergency test” beep but nothing more substantial than that. “What the fuck is going on?” you say to yourself. “Yeah what the fuck IS going on?” Julie asks coming down from taking her shower. “I dunno, I might need to check the Internet, not having much luck with the TV. Do we have enough food and water?” you ask. “Well we certainly got some food. Dunno about water though. I mean you can get some from the taps I suppose, but as you might expect I got tons of alcohol. Why?” Julie says. “Why? Because the National Guard just said if we try to leave we’ll probably get shot on sight that’s why! (Sigh) We’re basically prisoners here.” “Suzy, you need to calm down. You’ve been on edge since yesterday. You just said there isn’t a whole lot we can do, so we might as well just relax in the house. I mean really how much different is the day going to be for either of us?” Julie remarks. “I’m just…its Donna. I mean she’s still out there. I mean I HOPE she’s still out there. I mean the last thing I did was argue with her. Shit, I’m even a little worried about Peter and Kelly now and I never got along with them either. Still family though.” You say. “You tried calling either of them?” Julie asks. Oddly you haven’t. You didn’t really have a reason before, but given what’s going on right now, maybe you should. “I think I’ll do that Julie. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.” You say. “Sure, you go check on what family you can and maybe find out more about what’s going on. In the meantime, I’m going to go get a drink.” “Thought you were turning over a new leaf?” “You just said we were prisoners here. Not much else for me to do is there? Besides, I’m not going to get bombed out of my skull.” While Julie goes and deals with this situation in her own way, you head back to your room to get your cell phone to start calling up your other family members. You try Peter first since you figure he might at least answer. You start to call Peter and then you hear a loud clatter from the kitchen. What’s odd to you is that you don’t hear a series of cursing following it; you do think you hear a stifled yelp though. Panic wells up inside you and you once again head towards where the disturbing sound came from with your pistol pointed in front of you. “Stop fighting me, bitch!” you hear a voice say. This isn’t a video game this time. You enter the kitchen and see Julie being held captive by someone you KNEW was no good right from the start. Johnny. He’s got one arm around her waist and another hand with a knife to Julie’s throat. He isn’t calm anymore. His face is displaying a rage and hatred you remember seeing a glimpse of in Uncle Ed when he looked at you during that horrible night with him. Julie’s face is one of absolute terror and tears run from her eyes. “Let her go you fucking psycho!” you exclaim pointing the gun in his direction. “Oh look, it’s your dyke lover come to rescue you! Fucking whores the pair of you! You think I’m scared just because you got a gun pointed at me? Pfft! Look at you, you’re so scared right now, you can barely aim that thing properly.” He’s right. Despite having the gun in your hand, you’re incredibly scared. “Mmm, think I’ll have some fun with you two after I’m done cleansing you whores. Just like I did with your sister.” Johnny exclaims. Your worst fears are now a reality and it shows in your face. You feel ill and start to shake a bit. “Guess you two have been so busy rug munching that you haven’t been in the basement lately. Told you it was a mess down there.” Johnny laughs cruelly. Between this revelation, Julie’s desperate expression of wanting you to do something, and your own fear, you’re having a very difficult time concentrating. You feel like if you shoot, you’re either going to miss Johnny completely and then he’ll kill Julie, or worse you’ll kill Julie for him by accidentally shooting her instead of him. You can’t fuck this up. > You just shoot now You remember something your brother Ben said once when he was trying to teach you how to use a gun, “If you’re going to shoot, don’t think about it. Just shoot.” Probably not exactly best thing to tell someone, but nevertheless you remember it and so you do it. You shoot. And it’s all over so quickly you didn’t even have time to blink. You hit Johnny in the forehead killing him instantly. His grip on Julie is dropped as he collapses backwards to the floor. You’re still standing there in disbelief with the pistol still in hand, but now dropped to your side. Julie stands sobbing looking at Johnny and then begins to curse at him. “You motherfucker! (Sob) You sick fuck! (Sob) Goddamn you!” she exclaims. You go up to her in an attempt to calm her down. “It’s over. It’s over. He’s dead.” You say and she stops to hug you tightly. Really you’re having a hard time keeping it together yourself, this psycho just admitted to killing Donna and stuffing her body in the basement. You still need to deal with that. “Oh my god Suzy, (Sob) you saved my fucking life! I’ll never forget this! (Sob)” “Okay, okay, just take it easy. (Exhale) Okay normally we’d just call the cops about this, but considering we’re under fucking marshal law right now I don’t think that’s an option. So we need to get rid of this body ourselves. Julie. Look at me.” You say staring into her eyes. “I’ll take care of most of this, but I need your help. Besides trash bags do you have any tarps or large sheets of plastic? What about a shovel?” “…(sniffle) I don’t know. If there is, they might be in the basement. I know there’s a shovel down there.” “Well, I guess that’s where I’m heading since I’m going to have to go down there anyway. Julie, why don’t you go lay down in your room? We’re going to get through this okay?” Julie seems still very shaken by this experience, but nods and believes you. She gives you another hug and then walks off to go lay down. As for you, you’ve got an unpleasant trip to the basement. You try to prepare yourself for what you know to be down there, and fortunately the adrenaline of the situation has given you the fortitude and clarity to carry out what needs to be done, but as you’re walking down those stairs, it still doesn’t give you an enjoyable feeling. When you reach the last step, you fully expect to see a floor full of blood and gore, but you don’t see any of that. In fact you don’t even see a body. You can only guess he must’ve hid it down here somewhere. As you proceed with the grim task of looking for your sister’s body, you notice that there is an open window down here, which explains how Johnny managed to sneak in here again. You find the shovel and take it. You don’t find a tarp, but you figure you can always wrap the body using garbage bags. Then you notice the washer and dryer… “Oh god…no…Donna…” you say looking away with tears already forming. You can’t tell without getting closer and opening them, but both of the door windows to both are covered in blood. You know he must’ve mutilated her body and shoved the pieces of her in both machines. A blood stained axe is also propped up next to them. You can’t help but get sick and vomit nearby at the thought of this. You then break down and cry for a moment. You weren’t the closest with her, but you just wish the last moments were at least better. You can’t imagine what her real last moments were like. Or rather you have an idea, but you’d rather not dwell on it. You don’t quite have the strength to proceed with the grisly task of cleaning up your sister’s remains right now. You stagger back upstairs with the shovel in hand trying focus on dealing with the body of the murdering fucker who killed her. You get back to the kitchen and just stare at Johnny’s body, getting angrier and angrier about how light he got off. Who knows how many others he killed before your poor sister. “Someone should fucking chop you up.” You say. Remembering that you saw some duct tape in the desk in your room, you go back and grab it and then a trash bag from the kitchen. You put the bag over Johnny’s head and then tape it around his neck, so more blood doesn’t smear all over the floor when you’re dragging him back to your room. From there, you take him into the bathroom and get his body into the bathtub. You then head right back down into the basement and grab the axe. As you’re heading back to your bathroom to repay mutilation with mutilation, Julie has come back downstairs to check on you. “Suzy, what are you doing with that axe?” “Julie just go back upstairs, I told you I got this.” “Are you going to chop up his body? Is…is he in your bathroom right now?” “Julie I said just go back upstairs, you don’t need to deal with this, I’ll do it.” “Suzy, I thought you were going to just dig a hole and throw him in it.” “Yeah well that was before I found my sister in fucking pieces in your goddamn washer and dryer!” Julie places her hand over her mouth and staggers back propping herself up against the wall. “Oh god…” “Yeah. This whole day sucks and maybe that dead motherfucker won’t be able to feel the pain of me chopping him up alive, but it’s the only satisfaction I’m going to get…besides with the National Guard out there right now, going outside to dig a hole probably isn’t the best idea now. Better I should wait to do that at night.” Julie has no words right now, but she’s starting to look at you a little differently. Maybe the combination of killing someone and the emotional trauma of finding your sister chopped up has caused a bit of a snap in your personality. In any case, you’re definitely taking a darker turn here. Suddenly there is a loud bang on the front door. “Oh shit! Who the hell is that?!” Julie says. “Fuck. That’s probably that government rep the loud speakers outside were saying was going to visit all the homes in the neighborhood. Someone probably heard the gunshot and sent someone here a lot sooner. Shit…shit…gotta think…” you say. “Suzy?! What’re we going to do? Maybe we should just tell them everything that happened! I mean it was self defense, surely they’ll understand that!” “Julie, we’re under marshal law. I got a man laying in my bathtub with a bag over his head and my sister is in pieces in the washer and dryer. At BEST we might be able to convince them of this entire outlandish series of events AFTER they arrest us, put us into whatever fucked up military cell they have, suffer hours of interrogation and god knows what else. At worst? They’ll just think we’re a pair of murderesses and execute us immediately without a trial.” You say and then exhale. “Or…we could try to cover this up and get them the hell out of here as quickly as possible.” You add. “Don’t you think they’re going to search the house?!” “Well that’s why we’re going to try to prevent that from happening. Distract them some how so they don’t bother. I mean I suppose we could try to run out the backdoor and over the fence, but I don’t know how are chances would be with that.” you say. Julie has no answer for you. At this point she’s so scared that whatever you decide, she’ll follow. > You run out the back door There’s no time to talk, you just have to get the hell out of here! “Julie come on, we’re going out the back and climbing over fence.” You say and the pair of you make your way towards the kitchen. The banging on the front door gets louder, but you’ve already left and are in the backyard running for the fence. You manage to get to lift yourself up, but not quite over the back fence before you hear several people shouting at you to halt. You also hear Julie screaming. You turn your head quickly and see one soldier with his knee in Julie’s back, her face in the grass and a gun pointed at her head. Several other soldiers are pointing their rifles at you and walking towards you. You panic and see no good way for this to end if you let them capture you, so you attempt to pull yourself over the fence to continue your escape. Several of them fire and you land on the other side of the fence with several fatal bullet holes in your body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You remember something your brother Ben said once when he was trying to teach you how to use a gun, “If you’re going to shoot, don’t think about it. Just shoot.” Probably not exactly best thing to tell someone, but nevertheless you remember it and so you do it. You shoot. And it’s all over so quickly you didn’t even have time to blink. You hit Johnny in the forehead killing him instantly. His grip on Julie is dropped as he collapses backwards to the floor. You’re still standing there in disbelief with the pistol still in hand, but now dropped to your side. Julie stands sobbing looking at Johnny and then begins to curse at him. “You motherfucker! (Sob) You sick fuck! (Sob) Goddamn you!” she exclaims. You go up to her in an attempt to calm her down. “It’s over. It’s over. He’s dead.” You say and she stops to hug you tightly. Really you’re having a hard time keeping it together yourself, this psycho just admitted to killing Donna and stuffing her body in the basement. You still need to deal with that. “Oh my god Suzy, (Sob) you saved my fucking life! I’ll never forget this! (Sob)” “Okay, okay, just take it easy. (Exhale) Okay normally we’d just call the cops about this, but considering we’re under fucking marshal law right now I don’t think that’s an option. So we need to get rid of this body ourselves. Julie. Look at me.” You say staring into her eyes. “I’ll take care of most of this, but I need your help. Besides trash bags do you have any tarps or large sheets of plastic? What about a shovel?” “…(sniffle) I don’t know. If there is, they might be in the basement. I know there’s a shovel down there.” “Well, I guess that’s where I’m heading since I’m going to have to go down there anyway. Julie, why don’t you go lay down in your room? We’re going to get through this okay?” Julie seems still very shaken by this experience, but nods and believes you. She gives you another hug and then walks off to go lay down. As for you, you’ve got an unpleasant trip to the basement. You try to prepare yourself for what you know to be down there, and fortunately the adrenaline of the situation has given you the fortitude and clarity to carry out what needs to be done, but as you’re walking down those stairs, it still doesn’t give you an enjoyable feeling. When you reach the last step, you fully expect to see a floor full of blood and gore, but you don’t see any of that. In fact you don’t even see a body. You can only guess he must’ve hid it down here somewhere. As you proceed with the grim task of looking for your sister’s body, you notice that there is an open window down here, which explains how Johnny managed to sneak in here again. You find the shovel and take it. You don’t find a tarp, but you figure you can always wrap the body using garbage bags. Then you notice the washer and dryer… “Oh god…no…Donna…” you say looking away with tears already forming. You can’t tell without getting closer and opening them, but both of the door windows to both are covered in blood. You know he must’ve mutilated her body and shoved the pieces of her in both machines. A blood stained axe is also propped up next to them. You can’t help but get sick and vomit nearby at the thought of this. You then break down and cry for a moment. You weren’t the closest with her, but you just wish the last moments were at least better. You can’t imagine what her real last moments were like. Or rather you have an idea, but you’d rather not dwell on it. You don’t quite have the strength to proceed with the grisly task of cleaning up your sister’s remains right now. You stagger back upstairs with the shovel in hand trying focus on dealing with the body of the murdering fucker who killed her. You get back to the kitchen and just stare at Johnny’s body, getting angrier and angrier about how light he got off. Who knows how many others he killed before your poor sister. “Someone should fucking chop you up.” You say. Remembering that you saw some duct tape in the desk in your room, you go back and grab it and then a trash bag from the kitchen. You put the bag over Johnny’s head and then tape it around his neck, so more blood doesn’t smear all over the floor when you’re dragging him back to your room. From there, you take him into the bathroom and get his body into the bathtub. You then head right back down into the basement and grab the axe. As you’re heading back to your bathroom to repay mutilation with mutilation, Julie has come back downstairs to check on you. “Suzy, what are you doing with that axe?” “Julie just go back upstairs, I told you I got this.” “Are you going to chop up his body? Is…is he in your bathroom right now?” “Julie I said just go back upstairs, you don’t need to deal with this, I’ll do it.” “Suzy, I thought you were going to just dig a hole and throw him in it.” “Yeah well that was before I found my sister in fucking pieces in your goddamn washer and dryer!” Julie places her hand over her mouth and staggers back propping herself up against the wall. “Oh god…” “Yeah. This whole day sucks and maybe that dead motherfucker won’t be able to feel the pain of me chopping him up alive, but it’s the only satisfaction I’m going to get…besides with the National Guard out there right now, going outside to dig a hole probably isn’t the best idea now. Better I should wait to do that at night.” Julie has no words right now, but she’s starting to look at you a little differently. Maybe the combination of killing someone and the emotional trauma of finding your sister chopped up has caused a bit of a snap in your personality. In any case, you’re definitely taking a darker turn here. Suddenly there is a loud bang on the front door. “Oh shit! Who the hell is that?!” Julie says. “Fuck. That’s probably that government rep the loud speakers outside were saying was going to visit all the homes in the neighborhood. Someone probably heard the gunshot and sent someone here a lot sooner. Shit…shit…gotta think…” you say. “Suzy?! What’re we going to do? Maybe we should just tell them everything that happened! I mean it was self defense, surely they’ll understand that!” “Julie, we’re under marshal law. I got a man laying in my bathtub with a bag over his head and my sister is in pieces in the washer and dryer. At BEST we might be able to convince them of this entire outlandish series of events AFTER they arrest us, put us into whatever fucked up military cell they have, suffer hours of interrogation and god knows what else. At worst? They’ll just think we’re a pair of murderesses and execute us immediately without a trial.” You say and then exhale. “Or…we could try to cover this up and get them the hell out of here as quickly as possible.” You add. “Don’t you think they’re going to search the house?!” “Well that’s why we’re going to try to prevent that from happening. Distract them some how so they don’t bother. I mean I suppose we could try to run out the backdoor and over the fence, but I don’t know how are chances would be with that.” you say. Julie has no answer for you. At this point she’s so scared that whatever you decide, she’ll follow. > You talk your way out this Even if you do run, you could easily bump into more military outside. “We need to distract them. Julie, go run up stairs and try to clean up your face a bit and then doll yourself up with make up. Put on something sexy, like lingerie.” “Wha…what?” “Just do it. I’ll call you when I need you.” “Suzy…I don’t know…” “Julie, just trust me okay?” You say. “Okay.” Julie says with a nod and runs off back to her room. You run into your bathroom and toss the axe and shovel in there with Johnny’s body and then draw the shower curtain closed. Grabbing some scissors from the desk, you take your pants off and quickly cut the legs off of them so they resemble shorts and put them back on. You then tear your shirt and tie it up so it’s really accentuating your breasts and exposing your midriff. You then grab some rubber bands and tie your hair in two ponytails on either side of your head. More banging on the front door and you run into the kitchen. You quickly put the pistol in a half full box of cereal, which you then put back into the cupboard. There isn’t much blood on the floor, but what little there is, you easily wipe up with some water and soap. “OPEN UP BY THE ORDER OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT!” you hear a voice shout followed by more banging on the door. “Hold on! Hold on! I’m coming! I’m coming!” you shout, running to the front door. Looking through the peephole, you see two soldiers and a man dressed in a business suit. “I really hope these guys are straight.” You say and open the door. You open the door and you lean forward a bit and to the side hoping you look seductive rather than ridiculous (It isn’t like you do this a lot). Judging by the brief pause and the stares, you gather that you achieved seductive rather than ridiculous. “Miss, didn’t you hear us knocking on the door?” the man in the suit asks. “Oh, I’m so sorry I didn’t answer right away, I was just so busy with something and I had to make myself presentable. So how can I help you today?” “You can start by letting us in; we heard a gunshot coming from this direction. Granted that hasn’t been an uncommon sound in other parts of this town, but this neighborhood has been fairly quiet and peaceful otherwise, so we’d like to know if you know anything about it. We already got soldiers searching around your backyard and the immediate area.” “Oh. I see. Well, you boys come on in and I’ll try to serve you in any way I can. My name is Suzy by the way.” You turn around and attempt to put a little swing into your walk. You then you’re your head to look back at them and flutter your eyes a bit. You actually feel really silly doing so, but the grinning expressions you see on the two soldiers suggest that you seem to be doing better than you’d believe. The man in the suit tells the two soldiers to stand by the door and he sits down on couch. You then sit close to him. “Okay, Suzy. You may refer to me as Mr. Zoll. Now you’re aware this town is under marshal law correct?” “Yes, we heard loudspeakers outside earlier. It sounded so frightening… should we be worried?” you say. “I can’t tell you specifics about such things, however I’m sure you’re aware that this town has experienced a vast increase in criminal activity and rioting. More than your police force can handle. So until we get the situation under control again, we’re here to stay.” Actually you weren’t really aware of that, or at least not to the great extent that it was bad enough to call in the National Guard, but you nod and cross your legs and rub your hand over one of them in a manner that catches the attention of Mr. Zoll. “So um…” “You were saying Mr. Zoll?” you ask. “… yeah anyway…so while this is a state of emergency, we don’t want the citizens to feel uncomfortable. We don’t want to just send in soldiers here to search every house for potential troublemakers. I mean this is still a free country and contrary to popular belief, the government is here to help. At least that’s how I have always approached these situations. Much better to work with people than forcing them against their will. Still, as I said, gunfire was heard from this house and we have to investigate. So I’d like to at least ask you questions before deciding if we need to search this house further, you understand.” “Oh yes, of course I understand. You have such a difficult job trying to keep our wonderful country safe, I will comply will all your wishes and desires.” You say and then place your hand on Mr. Zoll’s knee in the process. This is enough to cause him to smile nervously, but takes your hand off at which point you smile and giggle in return. “Okay first of all you keep using the term ‘we’ is there someone else here?” “Oh yes. I’ll call her down. Julie! Could you come down here? There is a man that wants to ask us some questions about the gunshot earlier.” you say standing up from the couch. Julie appears and thankfully the girl has pulled out all the stops. She’s wearing purple lingerie underneath and her legs are covered by purple stocking with garters. She’s also wearing all the usual makeup that makes her look like a cheap whore and that’s definitely a plus right now since everyone is looking at her. Julie walks down the stairs in such a manner that continues to keep their eyes on her. While she probably knows what some of your plan is by now, the rest of it is probably going to surprise her. “Mr. Zoll, this is Julie, my life partner of many years. Come over here and sit sweetie.” You say taking a seat in a chair. Julie is indeed surprised by this, but quickly knows to play along. The two soldiers meanwhile can barely keep their mouths from hanging open. Mr. Zoll is better at keeping it together, but he’s unsure of whether to stare at you or Julie and where! “Julie. Don’t sit all the way over there baby. Come over here.” You say and pat you hands on your lap. Julie now has a bigger smile than anyone as she hops into your lap and puts her arms around you. You then give Julie a kiss on the lips; Julie however gets a bit overzealous by slipping you the tongue and grabbing one of your breasts. “Now, now, honey, we have company.” You say smiling and putting her hand back. “I apologize Mr. Zoll, but we plan on finally getting officially married soon, now that it’s become legal and we were sort of celebrating before you knocked on the door. We’ve been friends and lovers for so long that its so liberating to long at last have the freedom to do what everyone else does. Did you know we came out to each other when we were sixteen? It was almost magical how we just knew it was so right in that high school shower room… “ Now Mr. Zoll crosses his legs because he’s probably hiding a big boner. The soldiers at this point are unsubtly “rearranging” but it looks more like they just want to whip it out and start whacking it. Zoll manages to get back on track. “Ladies, I really need to ask about this gunshot so let’s get to it.” You and Julie say you heard a gunshot behind the house and not much else. Julie then mentions that she saw someone through the window jumping over the back fence, but couldn’t make out what they looked like. Then she describes what they look like they were wearing from the back. “All I know is I was so scared that I hopped right back into bed and held on to my Suzy.” Julie says and hugs you a little tighter. “There, there, it’s over now. These big strong men are here to protect us from lawless scum like that.” You say looking at Julie and rubbing her legs. You turn back to Mr. Zoll. “So that’s all we know Mr. Zoll. I hope it was helpful. As I said if you must search this house we understand, but I as a law abiding citizen of this country I do hope it isn’t necessary.” You say to Mr. Zoll who looks like he’s trying to scan you for deception. “Nah, I don’t think that will be necessary. You two seem like a nice couple that just wants to live your lives and be free to do… whatever you want to each other in the privacy of your own home. Whoever is dumb enough to run around in this neighborhood firing off guns is bound to fuck up soon and we at least know a partial description now. Okay anyway, onto the second reason for my visit. Do you need anything? We’re not just here to keep order, but to help out as well. While you’re quite aware that you can’t leave your home, we could bring some basic supplies like food to you. So anything?” Any other time you might take them up on the offer, but right now you just want them gone. “Perhaps another time. Nothing right now thanks.” You answer. “Well hopefully for all of us, this will all be over soon. Okay, I leave you two ladies.” Mr. Zoll tells his men that they’re leaving (who seem very disappointed). A few more glances back at you and Julie and soon they’re out the door. It’s over and you’re safe. “Holy shit, I can’t believe we pulled that off.” You say slumping a bit in your chair and breathing a sigh of relief. “Oh Suzy, that was fucking genius!” Julie says who is still in your lap and hugging and kissing on your face. “Stop, it’s over now, get off my lap. I still got a body to chop up and to dispose of.” Julie ceases her affection and gets off your lap, though she looks a little hurt. Not wishing to cause more distress for her you apologize. “Look, sorry. I just…I still lost a sister and that’s been going through my head since I found out today.” “No, I understand. She was my friend. I don’t think I’ve even processed her death fully due to my own near death experience and the National Guard coming in here. I’ll leave you to it.” Julie heads back upstairs and you return to your bathroom where Johnny’s body still awaits your destruction. The thing is now; you don’t feel like it anymore. The rage and sadness are still there of course, but what is chopping his body up really going to do for you? Nothing except more work and you refuse to expend any more energy than you have to on this scum. You get more trash bags and cover his upper half with one and his lower half with another. Then you duct tape them around him until he’s wrapped pretty tightly. You then wait until dark and head outside in the backyard with the shovel. Luckily Julie’s fences are high enough that nobody is going to immediately see you. (It’s a big yard anyway and the neighbors aren’t very close either) The night is actually pretty quiet, though you do hear the occasional rumble of what sounds like trucks or some sort of military vehicles driving on the nearby roads. It isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world digging in the ground at night, but luckily Julie’s yard also has some pretty soft soil and it only takes most of the night as opposed to all of it. You then return back to retrieve Johnny’s body and see Julie waiting nearby. “You could probably use the help in carrying this asshole right?” Julie asks. “It would welcome.” You say. The pair of you lifts Johnny and carrying him outside and dump him into the hole you dug and then proceed to fill up. You and Julie then return inside the house. “Well that’s that.” Julie says. “Yep. And I’m going to bed.” You say. “Suzy?” “Julie, I know. Donna still needs to be taken care of. I just don’t have any more energy today. I can’t deal with it now, I’m so drained it’s taken all my energy not to just break down and cry.” “I know today has been rough for you and I wasn’t talking about Donna. I just wanted to say I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been here to take care of all this. You really went above and beyond today Suzy. I’m never going to forget it.” Julie says and goes to hug you and kisses you on the cheek. She then faintly smiles and walks away. You don’t know what’s going on with you, and honestly you’re too tired to sort out all the cocktail of emotions you’ve been bombarded with lately, but right now you do know Julie doesn’t really want to be alone. “Julie, you don’t need to got to you room, come on into my room.” “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’d hate for the National Guard to suddenly show up and expose us as liars.” You manage to joke which causes a bit of a smile from Julie. As you drift off to sleep all you can think is “How can this week get any worse?” > Next day… THURSDAY You wake up and find that Julie is still fast asleep with her head nestled against your body and one arm draped over you. The funny thing is this sort of thing doesn’t even bother you anymore. But your increasingly odd relationship with Julie isn’t excessively important at this time. Right now you’re dwelling more on the grim situation you’re still in and the event less pleasant task you still have ahead of you. Not quite disturbing Julie yet, you reach over and grab your cell phone to check the time. Slept most of the day as usual. Just as well, since you won’t have long to wait for nightfall again when you have to dig another hole out back. “Julie, get up I have to go.” You say tapping Julie on the head. “Hgm,.. no…” she utters. “Have to, I’ve got to take care of something and I think you know what it is.” Julie slowly and reluctantly moves off of you and repositions herself on a pillow. “I wish you could just stay in bed with me all day.” She says. “At this point, I wish that too.” You say and get up to leave to go get your sister out of the washer and dryer. You grab your seemingly never-ending supply of garbage bags, cleaning products, some towels, a bucket of water, some rubber gloves and go down into the basement. Once again approaching the washer and dryer you open up them up and are bombarded by a horrible smell. You end up coughing and hacking up again. “Ugh…(pant) ugh…goddamn it, I can get through this…” you say. You empty the washing machine first, putting Donna’s dismembered legs and arms in trash bags. You then dump some cleaning products into the washing machine and turn it on figuring that it will least wash most of the blood out. The dryer on the other hand is not going to be as easy to clean. Johnny threw Donna’s torso and head in there. While he didn’t exactly eviscerate her, there are definitely some or her insides coming out. It’s a horrible task (You try not to stare at her head for too long), but between the gagging you manage to get through it. Her body, her left over innards and her head all up into bags and tied up. You then spend time trying to clean the dryer. Even with using bleach, you can’t get rid of that horrible smell. You wonder if it’ll ever go away. “Ugh, that’s a really horrible smell.” Julie says causing you to turn your head and see that she’s come down to check on you. “What are you doing down here? I told you I’d take care of this.” You say. “You were down here awhile and I decided to check on you. Besides, your brother Peter called.” “Is that right?” “Yep, he was returning your call from yesterday. Didn’t realize you called him.” “I was in the middle of calling him when that psycho attacked. Anyway, you talked to him?” “Yeah, but I didn’t tell him about what happened here, save for the National Guard coming in and telling us to stay indoors. I didn’t want to tell him about Donna, I figured you’d want to do that.” “Thanks. Peter and Donna weren’t exactly the closest either, but I think he’d be pretty upset to hear about her death. So he didn’t want to talk to me?” “Well I told him you were really busy cleaning up an awful mess elsewhere in the house. He actually said he didn’t want to talk long though because he was worried that the government was monitoring the phone call what with the marshal law and all.” “Huh, sounds almost like something my brother Ben would’ve said.” “Yeah, that’s the other thing. He mentioned he was busily trying to locate Ben’s old hidden bunker in your backyard. He said he wants to wait this out in there because he’s scared shitless and feels vulnerable just being stuck in your house by himself.” “Well I can see him being scared since this isn’t the most relaxed of situations.” “Yeah, but he said its more than just the National Guard. He said he saw a few of your neighbors acting nuttier than a shithouse rat in the streets for no apparent reason. Like they were rabid animals. He mentioned some of them was trying to bite someone.” You stop cleaning for a moment. “What? Crazy people trying to bite others? That almost sounds like something out of a horror movie. You sure he wasn’t exaggerating?” “He sure didn’t sound like it, I mean it sort of makes sense. People have become more aggressive and hostile. The crime rate in this town has gone up so bad that the National Guard had to come in. I mean maybe everyone in town is going crazy from some sort of secret military experiment!” “If that’s true, then how come we aren’t running around biting people?” you ask. “Well maybe it hasn’t affected us yet, maybe we’re immune, I don’t know! Maybe it spreads by bite like in a zombie movie! I’m just saying maybe we should start blocking the windows and doors.” “Julie its entirely possible Peter saw some people just high on bath salts! I mean the people who live in my neighborhood aren’t exactly the most morally upstanding. Let’s wait and see for a moment. I mean I’m still cleaning up here, so it’ll be awhile and…” Suddenly several machine gun shots are heard. “Oh my God!” Julie says and instinctively ducks. You on the other hand get up off your knees from cleaning and start to head upstairs. “Are you insane, where are you going?!” Julie asks. “Julie, while at one time it would’ve been unthinkable for me to head TOWARDS the sound of gunfire, I’ve left a pistol and an axe upstairs. If nothing else I’d like to retrieve to viable weapons if an impending zombie apocalypse is indeed coming.” “Well hold on I’m coming with you, I don’t want to be by myself!” Julie says. And like that you’re cautiously going upstairs towards potential danger with Julie touching one of your arms and hiding behind you. Now you really do feel like you’re in a horror movie. When you get upstairs, you and Julie keep your heads down. The gunfire doesn’t sound like it’s immediately out in front of the house, but it’s definitely nearby. You go and get the pistol first. “Why is the gun in the cereal box?” Julie asks. “Because I was desperately trying to find a place to hide it yesterday. Julie, I think you better go put something a little more protective on. If we need to suddenly leave in a hurry you’re not going to want to be running around in your underwear.” “I suppose you’re right. Where are you going to be?” “I’m going back to my room to retrieve the axe from the bathroom, wash this blood off and change my clothes as well since I obviously ruined these by cutting and ripping them yesterday in the first place.” You and Julie part ways briefly to go take care of your short-term goals. After washing up and changing your clothes again you start to ponder what your next move might be. You don’t quite get to do that since once again you’re interrupted by the breaking of glass coming from the kitchen followed by snarling and grunting. “Shit!” you exclaim and run to the kitchen to see a bloody arm through the window of the backdoor attempting to unlock it. The thing on the other side gets more excited when it sees you and starts pounding the glass with its other hand cracking more of it. It seems completely oblivious to the fact that it’s severely cutting itself in the process. It looks like a regular (if a bit wild) human. It doesn’t look rotten (Could be fresh though) and maybe it isn’t a zombie, but you know damn well you can’t let it get in! You shoot at it through the glass completely shattering the rest of the window. The bullet hits it in the face and the thing falls backwards making one last death growl. You cautiously move to look through the broken window and see that you’ve killed it. Meanwhile Julie has come running to see if you’re okay. “Suzy! Oh thank god! Are you okay?!” Julie asks. “Yeah, but I apologize for doubting you and Peter. One of those… things, guess I’ll call them the rabid just attacked. Look what one did to this door, I’d hate to think what more of them might do in a group.” You say. “Oh shit! We need to start blocking the doors and windows!” “I’m wondering if we shouldn’t just get the hell out of here while we can.” “I really think we we’d be safer if we stayed put! I mean we have more than enough furniture and items to barricade ourselves in here. If we leave, we run the risk of bumping into hordes of them and that’s not counting the military who are still shooting people on sight, maybe even more so now. Where would we go anyway?” “I admit, I haven’t figured that part out yet, but I think you’re hoping to ride this thing out until shit gets back to normal and I’m wondering if that’s even going to happen. We aren’t exactly well supplied here for a long-term stay even if we do barricade this place. Now I’ll give you that it’s probably going to be dangerous out there, but at least we’ll have more freedom to move around.” Julie of course will follow you no matter what you decide, but she really wants to stay in. As much as you think it might be better to leave now, you probably would be safe if you barricaded yourselves in the house properly. Things do sound hectic out there right now with all the gunfire, it might even be best if you waited until things died down a bit and sneak out later. > You leave now Things aren’t going to “calm down”, they’re just going to get worse if anything. You’ve already had too many intruders inside this house, staying here obviously isn’t safe even if you do barricade it. You need to get out now. “Julie get some bags and start packing items like flashlights and the like because we’re getting the hell out of here.” You say. “But again, where are we going to go?” she asks. “And I still don’t know, but I’m thinking we need to at least get out of this town though. From there I guess we’ll play it by ear. Your car is still at the shop so we’re going to have to use Donna’s. Do you know if Donna had a spare set of car keys? When I had to…clean up, it wasn’t like she was clothed at the time so there wasn’t anything on her.” “She probably left her keys on a dresser in her room when she first stormed in the house on Monday. I’ll check. Speaking of Donna, what are you going to do about her? I mean you were going to bury her, but now?” “Yeah, I’m sort of wishing I’d buried her first instead of the asshole that killed her now. I dunno, I mean there just isn’t time. (Sigh) Fuck it, she’s just an empty shell now, the person that she was is gone and we need to make haste if we don’t want to end up like her, so let’s start getting a move on.” Julie and you both split up to pack your bags. One of your bags that you brought hasn’t even been opened and is still full of clothing. You fill your other bags with more useful items like some of the non-perishable snack food Julie has, the duct tape you were using, a few of the bigger kitchen knives, loose batteries, some of the medicine in the bathroom, etc. You then finish up with packing a few more of your personal items and are ready to go. “Julie, are you ready yet and did you find the keys?!” you call up to her. “Yeah, yeah I’m just making sure I got everything!” she calls back. You hear more gunfire coming from outside which sounds like its right outside the front door. A quick look out the window and you do see several guardsmen firing on those crazy people running at them. It looks like the National Guard have set up a bit of a “base” in one of the houses further up the street. You just hope you can drive off without too much problem. You’re going to have to be quick that’s for sure. Julie comes running down the stairs with two bags and a big luggage case. “Julie, what the hell, I told you to just focus on the essentials!” “I did! I need all this…shit!” Julie says and trips down the stairs due to all the stuff she’s trying to lug around and going at a fast pace. You attempt to keep her from breaking her neck by getting in the way of her fall. You’re partially successful though getting crushed by a tumbling body and heavy bags isn’t fun. “Fuck…shit…goddamn…” you utter as you feel the pain. Surprisingly Julie doesn’t seem any worse for wear. “Wow. That was lucky. Thanks Suzy.” She says in a bit of an animated tone. You look at her eyes and see that her pupils dilated. “Julie are you fucking high right now?” “Uh…I don’t know…” “Goddamnit Julie, really?” “I needed a little to take the edge off! I mean I’ve been practically sober for the past few days and I needed something to keep myself from breaking down completely! I’ve already proven I’m no good in these high stress situations and now we’re going to enter a whole new level of fucked upness by leaving this house! I’m sorry if I’m not as strong as you!” You don’t really have time to argue with Julie about this right now, but she might have a point. If drugs are going to keep her from melting down into a quivering mess then maybe it is for the best that she’s a little high. The funny thing is before all this happened you were the one that was a bit more of a worrywart and Julie tended to have a more laid back approach to life. Just goes to show how one can never tell how people will react in an emergency situation. “Alright fine, but we’re going to deal with this later and where are the car keys? I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you drive in your condition.” Grabbing the keys from Julie, you pick yourself up and grab your own bags and cautiously open the front door. “Alright we need to throw these bags in the back of car as quick as possible and then drive off equally as fast. These weekend warriors are patrolling all over this neighborhood and who knows where those rabid things are.” You and Julie run over to the car and open up the doors and start throwing in your bags. Takes a moment for Julie to shove in her big luggage case, but she gets it in. The pair of you then get in the front seats of the car and you start up the car. You actually manage to swing the car out into the street before you hear shouting and then fired upon. Julie screams as the sounds of glass shatter behind you from the bullets. You keep it together and just drive hoping that there aren’t too many of the guard in front of you. It’s a false hope as you do indeed bump into more than a couple patrols with itchy trigger fingers. Some you try to avoid by going down other streets. Others are actually busy fighting off others. How you and Julie aren’t hit by any that do shoot at you is something of a minor miracle, but the car certainly doesn’t come through unscathed since by the time you manage to make out of Julie’s neighborhood, it’s making rattling sounds. “Oh god! I knew we shouldn’t have left! The car’s gonna die and then so will we!” Julie shouts. “Julie take some more of your happy pills or calm the fuck down, I’m trying to think! Shit! There’s some of those things!” you say as you smash the car into two insane looking individuals that just jumped out of nowhere. One goes flying off to the side and the other falls backwards in front of your car, which then promptly runs over him entirely. You continue to drive and try to keep off the main streets though with your car now making several clattering sounds you’re not exactly keeping a low profile. “We’re never going to make it out of this town! Not with the car in this condition! We need to go back!” Julie exclaims. “We can’t go back now Julie! I told you to take some more of… whatever it is you take and let me try to fucking think!” you say while trying to keep an eye on your immediate surroundings. “Okay. I’m thinking that we’re currently not too far from my house. I suppose we could go there and try to help Peter look for my brother’s shelter and hold up in there. At the very least we could exchange cars there. I’m sure Peter isn’t going to have any intention on using his. Julie doesn’t really answer you, she’s too busy digging in her pockets for pills. You decide to just go ahead and head to your house. Your drive there isn’t quite as eventful as your escape from Julie’s house, but it isn’t without peril. The National Guard isn’t quite as in control in your part of the town and there are far more of the rabid roaming around either chasing down normal people or attempting to break into houses. Most of them don’t attempt to attack you, or if they do, you just continue driving fast enough that they don’t get the chance. By the time you get to your own house, your neighborhood is eerily quiet. There are definitely signs of past conflict all over the place, but there is nobody on the streets and most homes are not lit either. (Though you do see broken doors and windows on a lot of them) Fortunately your own house doesn’t look damaged (At least not from the front) You half expect to get swarmed by crazies as soon as you park in front of your house, but instead your only major concern is herding Julie’s high ass to the front door and getting inside with all the bags you’re both carrying. “PETER?! Are you here?!” you call out when you get in the door since you saw his vehicle in the driveway. There is no answer though. You dump all your bags on the floor while Julie practically just collapses on the floor with her bags. You help her up and lay her down on the sofa and see that she’s feeling quite numb now, though she still tries to grip on to you when you pull away. “Suzy, don’t leave me…please…” “Julie, I have to see if Peter’s in the house or if it’s just us. I won’t be that far away.” “Suzy…I’m sorry I’m so fucked up…I don’t know what…I would’ve done if you weren’t around…” “Julie, just rest right now.” With this last bit of reassurance Julie faintly smiles and closes her eyes. The first thing you do is search the ground floor. Amazingly it doesn’t look like your house has been attacked at all. Even looking out into the backyard things look fairly untouched. Then you search the connected garage and that’s when you wish you hadn’t. You find Peter and another unknown man both not quite entirely dressed, but that isn’t the disturbing part. The fact that they’re both dead is the disturbing part. The garage itself is a bit of a mess, like there was definitely a struggle, and your brother’s body and the body of who you presume is his lover or client both show signs of blunt trauma. Looks like their necks were both broken to ultimately kill them though. You aren’t sure what to think. You feel like you should be more upset than you are, but given what you’ve already experienced you’ve become desensitized. You’re actually more concerned with how this happened. There isn’t anyone else here to your knowledge and if it had been one of those things, the bodies would probably have bite marks. You suppose it could’ve been regular bandits or robbers, but you’d expect gunshot or even knife wounds and neither have that. Also if it was bandits that killed them, you wonder why they wouldn’t take Peter’s car since his keys are still sitting on a dresser nearby. Whether Peter was planning on leaving himself or still looking for Ben’s hidden shelter (And if he found it or not) you’ll never know you suppose. In any event you have the means to leave immediately if you so desire which given the uneasiness of this situation might not be a bad idea, but then again it’s starting to get dark so it still might be best to bunk here for the night at least. > You leave in Peter's car After pondering it several times over, you think it would be best to just get the hell out of this town. You’re not wasting your time looking for Ben’s hidden shelter, and after finding your brother’s body in here, you don’t think this would be a safe place to stay the night. “Julie, come on get up, we’re not staying here.” You say jostling her. “Mgh, can’t we just rest here? I’m so tired and it’s safe here.” She says. “No it isn’t, I just found my dead brother in the fucking garage along with his boyfriend or whoever that guy is…” “Holy shit, seriously?” Julie says waking up a bit. “Yeah, so let’s get the hell out of here! Come on, grab your bags.” With some effort, Julie rouses herself from her drug induced exhaustion and grabs her bags. You get your own and make your way to Peter’s car. After loading it up as quickly as possible, Julie slumps into the passenger seat and you get into the driver’s seat and start it up. So far nothing has come running to attack you, but certainly don’t want to stick around for it happen. You make your way towards what you believe is going to be the quickest way out of town, but instead you come across more National Guard barricades. Naturally they tell you to stop, but you don’t and once again you’re making U-Turns under a hail of fire. “Holy shit Julie! We just got out of being shot at once before, do we really have to do this again?! Can’t we just go back…” “JULIE SHUT THE FUCK UP I’M TRYING TO GET US THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!” you scream and serve down a side street. Julie of course starts crying. You’re so harried and frustrated that you barely even know where you are. This town might not be the largest, but it seems like a maze when you barely leave the house for years. You drive into an area that is literally swarming with the rabid. From the abandoned military vehicles it looks like the National Guard lost its battle here. A crowd of rabid see and hear your car and start immediately running towards you. “Julie we can’t run them all over! The car will overturn! Turn back! Turn back!” Julie screams, but you don’t listen. You slam the gas pedal and go full speed ahead. You run over several of them and then their bodies begin to get stuck in the wheels causing the car to skid and spin. You attempt to maintain control, but you fail to do so and the car flips over lands against the wall of a building upside down. You’re hurt, but since you had your seatbelt on, you’re still able to move, but unfortunately, you can’t open the door on your side because it’s crushed against a wall. You look over to Julie and she’s not moving. In fact she’s half way through the windshield. She’s obviously dead, but that isn’t what concerns you at the moment. What concerns you is the rest of the rabid running over to the car. After a few moments of struggling, the rabid eventually pull you out of the car and sink their teeth into you and gnaw straight through your bones. You die screaming as they eat you alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Things aren’t going to “calm down”, they’re just going to get worse if anything. You’ve already had too many intruders inside this house, staying here obviously isn’t safe even if you do barricade it. You need to get out now. “Julie get some bags and start packing items like flashlights and the like because we’re getting the hell out of here.” You say. “But again, where are we going to go?” she asks. “And I still don’t know, but I’m thinking we need to at least get out of this town though. From there I guess we’ll play it by ear. Your car is still at the shop so we’re going to have to use Donna’s. Do you know if Donna had a spare set of car keys? When I had to…clean up, it wasn’t like she was clothed at the time so there wasn’t anything on her.” “She probably left her keys on a dresser in her room when she first stormed in the house on Monday. I’ll check. Speaking of Donna, what are you going to do about her? I mean you were going to bury her, but now?” “Yeah, I’m sort of wishing I’d buried her first instead of the asshole that killed her now. I dunno, I mean there just isn’t time. (Sigh) Fuck it, she’s just an empty shell now, the person that she was is gone and we need to make haste if we don’t want to end up like her, so let’s start getting a move on.” Julie and you both split up to pack your bags. One of your bags that you brought hasn’t even been opened and is still full of clothing. You fill your other bags with more useful items like some of the non-perishable snack food Julie has, the duct tape you were using, a few of the bigger kitchen knives, loose batteries, some of the medicine in the bathroom, etc. You then finish up with packing a few more of your personal items and are ready to go. “Julie, are you ready yet and did you find the keys?!” you call up to her. “Yeah, yeah I’m just making sure I got everything!” she calls back. You hear more gunfire coming from outside which sounds like its right outside the front door. A quick look out the window and you do see several guardsmen firing on those crazy people running at them. It looks like the National Guard have set up a bit of a “base” in one of the houses further up the street. You just hope you can drive off without too much problem. You’re going to have to be quick that’s for sure. Julie comes running down the stairs with two bags and a big luggage case. “Julie, what the hell, I told you to just focus on the essentials!” “I did! I need all this…shit!” Julie says and trips down the stairs due to all the stuff she’s trying to lug around and going at a fast pace. You attempt to keep her from breaking her neck by getting in the way of her fall. You’re partially successful though getting crushed by a tumbling body and heavy bags isn’t fun. “Fuck…shit…goddamn…” you utter as you feel the pain. Surprisingly Julie doesn’t seem any worse for wear. “Wow. That was lucky. Thanks Suzy.” She says in a bit of an animated tone. You look at her eyes and see that her pupils dilated. “Julie are you fucking high right now?” “Uh…I don’t know…” “Goddamnit Julie, really?” “I needed a little to take the edge off! I mean I’ve been practically sober for the past few days and I needed something to keep myself from breaking down completely! I’ve already proven I’m no good in these high stress situations and now we’re going to enter a whole new level of fucked upness by leaving this house! I’m sorry if I’m not as strong as you!” You don’t really have time to argue with Julie about this right now, but she might have a point. If drugs are going to keep her from melting down into a quivering mess then maybe it is for the best that she’s a little high. The funny thing is before all this happened you were the one that was a bit more of a worrywart and Julie tended to have a more laid back approach to life. Just goes to show how one can never tell how people will react in an emergency situation. “Alright fine, but we’re going to deal with this later and where are the car keys? I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you drive in your condition.” Grabbing the keys from Julie, you pick yourself up and grab your own bags and cautiously open the front door. “Alright we need to throw these bags in the back of car as quick as possible and then drive off equally as fast. These weekend warriors are patrolling all over this neighborhood and who knows where those rabid things are.” You and Julie run over to the car and open up the doors and start throwing in your bags. Takes a moment for Julie to shove in her big luggage case, but she gets it in. The pair of you then get in the front seats of the car and you start up the car. You actually manage to swing the car out into the street before you hear shouting and then fired upon. Julie screams as the sounds of glass shatter behind you from the bullets. You keep it together and just drive hoping that there aren’t too many of the guard in front of you. It’s a false hope as you do indeed bump into more than a couple patrols with itchy trigger fingers. Some you try to avoid by going down other streets. Others are actually busy fighting off others. How you and Julie aren’t hit by any that do shoot at you is something of a minor miracle, but the car certainly doesn’t come through unscathed since by the time you manage to make out of Julie’s neighborhood, it’s making rattling sounds. “Oh god! I knew we shouldn’t have left! The car’s gonna die and then so will we!” Julie shouts. “Julie take some more of your happy pills or calm the fuck down, I’m trying to think! Shit! There’s some of those things!” you say as you smash the car into two insane looking individuals that just jumped out of nowhere. One goes flying off to the side and the other falls backwards in front of your car, which then promptly runs over him entirely. You continue to drive and try to keep off the main streets though with your car now making several clattering sounds you’re not exactly keeping a low profile. “We’re never going to make it out of this town! Not with the car in this condition! We need to go back!” Julie exclaims. “We can’t go back now Julie! I told you to take some more of… whatever it is you take and let me try to fucking think!” you say while trying to keep an eye on your immediate surroundings. “Okay. I’m thinking that we’re currently not too far from my house. I suppose we could go there and try to help Peter look for my brother’s shelter and hold up in there. At the very least we could exchange cars there. I’m sure Peter isn’t going to have any intention on using his. Julie doesn’t really answer you, she’s too busy digging in her pockets for pills. You decide to just go ahead and head to your house. Your drive there isn’t quite as eventful as your escape from Julie’s house, but it isn’t without peril. The National Guard isn’t quite as in control in your part of the town and there are far more of the rabid roaming around either chasing down normal people or attempting to break into houses. Most of them don’t attempt to attack you, or if they do, you just continue driving fast enough that they don’t get the chance. By the time you get to your own house, your neighborhood is eerily quiet. There are definitely signs of past conflict all over the place, but there is nobody on the streets and most homes are not lit either. (Though you do see broken doors and windows on a lot of them) Fortunately your own house doesn’t look damaged (At least not from the front) You half expect to get swarmed by crazies as soon as you park in front of your house, but instead your only major concern is herding Julie’s high ass to the front door and getting inside with all the bags you’re both carrying. “PETER?! Are you here?!” you call out when you get in the door since you saw his vehicle in the driveway. There is no answer though. You dump all your bags on the floor while Julie practically just collapses on the floor with her bags. You help her up and lay her down on the sofa and see that she’s feeling quite numb now, though she still tries to grip on to you when you pull away. “Suzy, don’t leave me…please…” “Julie, I have to see if Peter’s in the house or if it’s just us. I won’t be that far away.” “Suzy…I’m sorry I’m so fucked up…I don’t know what…I would’ve done if you weren’t around…” “Julie, just rest right now.” With this last bit of reassurance Julie faintly smiles and closes her eyes. The first thing you do is search the ground floor. Amazingly it doesn’t look like your house has been attacked at all. Even looking out into the backyard things look fairly untouched. Then you search the connected garage and that’s when you wish you hadn’t. You find Peter and another unknown man both not quite entirely dressed, but that isn’t the disturbing part. The fact that they’re both dead is the disturbing part. The garage itself is a bit of a mess, like there was definitely a struggle, and your brother’s body and the body of who you presume is his lover or client both show signs of blunt trauma. Looks like their necks were both broken to ultimately kill them though. You aren’t sure what to think. You feel like you should be more upset than you are, but given what you’ve already experienced you’ve become desensitized. You’re actually more concerned with how this happened. There isn’t anyone else here to your knowledge and if it had been one of those things, the bodies would probably have bite marks. You suppose it could’ve been regular bandits or robbers, but you’d expect gunshot or even knife wounds and neither have that. Also if it was bandits that killed them, you wonder why they wouldn’t take Peter’s car since his keys are still sitting on a dresser nearby. Whether Peter was planning on leaving himself or still looking for Ben’s hidden shelter (And if he found it or not) you’ll never know you suppose. In any event you have the means to leave immediately if you so desire which given the uneasiness of this situation might not be a bad idea, but then again it’s starting to get dark so it still might be best to bunk here for the night at least. > You stay Chances are, you’d not only have drag Julie’s ass to Peter’s car, but you’d also have to load up all the bags yourself as well. Since you don’t particularly want to spend much time outside at night, you figure you’ll stay here, rest and figure out exactly what you’re going to do tomorrow. Besides if you still want to leave, you’ll have time to pack more supplies you can get from here too. In the meantime, you still have to search the rest of the house because it’s still entirely possible that it isn’t safe here. You exit the garage and check on Julie again. She’s not quite asleep yet, but is heading in that direction. Fortunately you don’t have as many windows in this house and your doors are a lot stronger so you’re confident that if something tries to break in, you’ll hear it and be able to react in time. You head upstairs and cautiously search with your pistol drawn. Much like the downstairs though, you find that there isn’t anyone lurking up here. You even manage to find the courage to peek your head into Kelly’s room, but given how messy her usually room is, you don’t know if she’s ever returned here. You get the idea to call her up, but predictably there isn’t any answer. Who knows what’s happened to her. Finally you end your search of the house by heading to the place where you started from, the basement. Again, not much looks different and fortunately there isn’t anyone down here either. Your own room is about the same as you left it. You shake your head that the though of all the bullshit you went through this week, only to end up back here. Makes you wonder why you bothered. Still, there is a part of you that realizes that it’s probably best that you did break your habit of hiding out in the basement. Chances are you wouldn’t have developed the courage to do some of the things you are able to do now. You also saved Julie’s life and while she’s certainly been needy and a bit of a wreck during all this, you’re a little glad you don’t have to go through this crisis entirely by yourself. After a bit more perusal of your room, you head back upstairs to secure the ground floor as much as possible. Still not risking turning the lights on, you put chairs in front of the front and back doors. (As well as the one leading to the garage) You also move a bookcase in front of some of the windows. It’s not the most fun thing to do in the dark and you bump and bang knees and elbows in the process, but it’s secure enough that you’re confident that if someone does try to get it, they’ll make such a loud noise in the process that you’ll at least wake up first. “Suzy? What’s going on?” you hear Julie ask in a sleepy tone. You figured she’d be fast asleep by now. “Nothing, just securing the area. Nothing for you to worry about, go to sleep.” You say. “I’d like to, but I want you with me on this sofa. “Julie…(sigh). Look I’m not sure if there’s room for both of us to stretch out on that sofa. I’ll be right here you know. I’ll be in the recliner.” “No, I’ll move over as far as I can, and you can squeeze in next to me. Please, I just want your body next to mine. You make me feel so safe.” Julie says. You put your hand to your head and start to wonder why you’re becoming more comfortable in even entertaining ideas like this especially with all that’s going on right now. Though maybe that’s the reason. This is the end of the goddamn world for all you know and at this point you’ve lost everyone that’s been remotely close to you. All of your family is dead (or in Kelly’s case missing). Your boyfriend is also gone. They were all dysfunctional, but it’s what you knew and you still miss it. So maybe even as dysfunctional as Julie is, you still feel that need for her companionship because it’s familiar. You have no one else close to you except Julie and she’s going to be “it” if the dark future is any indication. “Okay, Julie, scoot over.” You say placing your pistol on the table in front of the sofa and start to squeeze in on the edge of it. There actually is enough room, it’s snug, but you aren’t quite in danger of falling off the edge. Julie puts one arm and leg over your body almost in an attempt to make sure you don’t fall off, but it’s just her being affectionate as usual. “Suzy…” she says and she starts to drift off. “Yeah?” you say still trying to get comfortable. “I love you…” “I know Julie. I know.” You answer in a non-committal way. You sort of wonder exactly when she began to feel that way. Adulthood? High school? Middle School? Whenever it was, you guess it makes sense since even when you were little you were helping her out of trouble when you could. You probably were the one constant in her life that was genuinely a friend and also not looking to fuck her. You still haven’t quite sorted out all your “feelings” yet on this, but you do realize that if you didn’t care somewhat about Julie, you wouldn’t have been making the effort to save her as much as you have. You guess at least someone is appreciating you and that’s definitely been a rarity in your life. You’re up for a little while longer so you just lie there in the dark going over in your head some of your possible choices of what to do tomorrow. The more you think about it, the more you think that probably leaving is the best solution. You’ll gather some more items from here and load up Peter’s car and tomorrow you and Julie will be heading somewhere else. You still aren’t entirely sure where though. You eventually do get sleepy and slowly drift off. > Next day... FRIDAY “I got your call. Wakey wakey sis.” You hear a voice say. You slowly open your eyes and at first see what looks to be a man standing in front of you holding a shotgun. Then after the blur of your eyes clears a bit, you see that it’s your sister Kelly. Unfortunately it looks like not all your family is dead after all and of course it had to be Kelly that survived. Judging by the fact she’s pointing a shotgun at you she’s still hostile as well. You don’t know why, but then has she ever needed a reason? You look at the pistol on the table and Kelly just shakes her head. “I guarantee you wouldn’t make it sis. I suggest you don’t even try…heh I doubt you’d have the balls to go through with it anyway. I have to admit when I came up here to get something from my room, I didn’t expect to see you here.” At this point Julie wakes up. “Suzy what’s going…oh my god…” she says upon seeing Kelly. “Shhh, it’ll be okay.” You say trying to reassure Julie. “So when did you turn dyke Suzy? Always sort of figured you might be down for the rug munching. Guess that’s why things didn’t work out with Bobby eh? Still though, Julie? I have to say even I think you could do better than some used up party whore. Now the pair of you lesbos sit up.” At this point you and Julie move and shift on the couch until you’re both sitting upright. In the meantime Kelly grabs your pistol from the table and places it in the front of her pants. She continues to focus the shotgun on you. Given that you barricaded all the doors and searched the entire house last night you wonder how the hell Kelly got in. If she had been lurking inside, she definitely would’ve made her presence known and ambushed you yesterday and if she broke in, you definitely would’ve heard something before now. You’re also a little concerned not just because Kelly’s pointing a shotgun at you, but you think back to what you saw in the garage. Peter and the other man’s body. Their bodies were beaten and their necks were broken. Kelly certainly has the strength and the skill to do such a thing. Kelly’s always been hostile to you and barely civil to your other sibling, but to actually kill one… “Kelly, our siblings Peter and Donna are dead.” You say. “Peter’s dead?” Julie says. “Oh? Didn’t know that about Donna. Can’t say I’ll shed any tears. The spoiled little whore wasn’t much better than your girlfriend here.” “She was fucking chopped up by a goddamn serial killer, you bitch!” Julie exclaims. “Hm, interesting. So how did you two survive?” “I shot him.” Kelly’s a little taken back. “Wow, I’m impressed. Guess you would have the balls to use this pistol then. Tell me, was that the only person you killed this week little sister?” “No… I shot one of those rabid people too. Ran over a couple as well.” “Well, well, well aren’t you the bad ass now? Heh. Funny what an extreme situation like this can do to folks isn’t it?” “Yes.” “Yeah…so I’m guessing if you know about Peter, you’ve probably figured out by now what happened or at least have a strong suspicion. You’re a lot of things Suzy, but I’d never call you an idiot.” “I appreciate that. So why’d you do it?” Kelly chuckles a bit before answering. “That little faggot found out where Ben’s old shelter was and thought he was going to hide out from the current shitstorm in it with his boyfriend or whoever that other faggot he was with. Had to convince him that he had to go, he didn’t listen and tried to resist and well you saw how that turned out.” “So you know where Ben’s old shelter is then.” You say. “Oh yeah. I’ve always known where it was. Crazy old Ben thought he was being so sneaky moving the goddamn entrance around all the time, but I knew where the fuck it was nearly every time. He had just moved the entrance again a few days before he blew away his family and himself. I’m just surprised YOU never accidently found it given that you lived practically right near the fucking thing for years. If the entrance was any closer you would’ve been sleeping in the damn thing.” Well that explains how Kelly got in without alerting you. Still, if she’s actually admitting the entrance to the shelter is somewhere in the basement and what she did to Peter, then that pretty much confirms she has no intention of sharing. “So what’s next Kelly? You gonna kill us too?” “Don’t know sis…don’t know…severely thinking about it. I’ve never like you. You’ve been a thorn in my side since you crawled out of mom’s vagina. Always having to be compared to how good and pretty you were and how bad and rotten I was despite the fact I was the one who was shouldering most of the responsibility in this fucked up family. What did you ever do except hide in the goddamn basement? Even now you left the house only to come crawling back here. Yep, I’ve thought about killing you on many, many, MANY occasions.” “Actually that wasn’t my initial intention. My initial plan was to drive out of this forsaken town. I only stopped here because our own car was badly damaged and I had hoped to maybe get Peter’s car and some extra supplies before heading out again.” You say. “Oh? Hmm, you’re just full of surprises today aren’t you? Well if that is true, you may have just bought yourself a bit of a reprieve sis…okay. What the hell, I’m in a good mood. I’m gonna let you and your whore walk outta here alive and you’re going to be thankful.” “I don’t suppose you’ll allow us to gather our bags or give me the gun back will you?” You say. “Heh, no I don’t think so. Wouldn’t want you getting any ideas of attempting to come back here. Leave with what you got on you or die, those are your choices sis. I’m being very generous here. Take my offer.” You stare at Kelly, but it’s not with fear. It’s with anger. Anger at all the past abuse you’ve had to endure from her. While she may have a minor point that you were the favorite and she did a lot for the family, she still had no right to bully and torment you for the majority of your life and she certainly had no right to murder Peter. “Come on Suzy, let’s go…” Julie says wanting for the both of you to be out of danger. > You leave now As angry as you are, making some foolish attempt to stand up to Kelly while she’s holding all the advantages is not going to help anyone. You’ll have to re-supply elsewhere, at least you have a better car now. “Okay, okay, we’re leaving Kelly. You got all the advantages and you win.” You say. “Damn straight I win.” Kelly snorts. Julie removes the barricades the front door and cautiously looks around. “Come on, come on, if any of those crazy fuckers were out there, they would’ve been beating down the doors and windows by now.” Kelly says motioning the pair of you to leave quicker. Julie exits and when you step up to the entryway, Kelly speaks up. “Hey Suzy.” “Yeah?” you answer turning around. “Changed my mind. I fucking hate you too much.” And with those words Kelly blasts you in the chest with the shotgun. Julie screams and Kelly laughs, but you make no more sounds at all other than your body falling backwards on the cement.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “I got your call. Wakey wakey sis.” You hear a voice say. You slowly open your eyes and at first see what looks to be a man standing in front of you holding a shotgun. Then after the blur of your eyes clears a bit, you see that it’s your sister Kelly. Unfortunately it looks like not all your family is dead after all and of course it had to be Kelly that survived. Judging by the fact she’s pointing a shotgun at you she’s still hostile as well. You don’t know why, but then has she ever needed a reason? You look at the pistol on the table and Kelly just shakes her head. “I guarantee you wouldn’t make it sis. I suggest you don’t even try…heh I doubt you’d have the balls to go through with it anyway. I have to admit when I came up here to get something from my room, I didn’t expect to see you here.” At this point Julie wakes up. “Suzy what’s going…oh my god…” she says upon seeing Kelly. “Shhh, it’ll be okay.” You say trying to reassure Julie. “So when did you turn dyke Suzy? Always sort of figured you might be down for the rug munching. Guess that’s why things didn’t work out with Bobby eh? Still though, Julie? I have to say even I think you could do better than some used up party whore. Now the pair of you lesbos sit up.” At this point you and Julie move and shift on the couch until you’re both sitting upright. In the meantime Kelly grabs your pistol from the table and places it in the front of her pants. She continues to focus the shotgun on you. Given that you barricaded all the doors and searched the entire house last night you wonder how the hell Kelly got in. If she had been lurking inside, she definitely would’ve made her presence known and ambushed you yesterday and if she broke in, you definitely would’ve heard something before now. You’re also a little concerned not just because Kelly’s pointing a shotgun at you, but you think back to what you saw in the garage. Peter and the other man’s body. Their bodies were beaten and their necks were broken. Kelly certainly has the strength and the skill to do such a thing. Kelly’s always been hostile to you and barely civil to your other sibling, but to actually kill one… “Kelly, our siblings Peter and Donna are dead.” You say. “Peter’s dead?” Julie says. “Oh? Didn’t know that about Donna. Can’t say I’ll shed any tears. The spoiled little whore wasn’t much better than your girlfriend here.” “She was fucking chopped up by a goddamn serial killer, you bitch!” Julie exclaims. “Hm, interesting. So how did you two survive?” “I shot him.” Kelly’s a little taken back. “Wow, I’m impressed. Guess you would have the balls to use this pistol then. Tell me, was that the only person you killed this week little sister?” “No… I shot one of those rabid people too. Ran over a couple as well.” “Well, well, well aren’t you the bad ass now? Heh. Funny what an extreme situation like this can do to folks isn’t it?” “Yes.” “Yeah…so I’m guessing if you know about Peter, you’ve probably figured out by now what happened or at least have a strong suspicion. You’re a lot of things Suzy, but I’d never call you an idiot.” “I appreciate that. So why’d you do it?” Kelly chuckles a bit before answering. “That little faggot found out where Ben’s old shelter was and thought he was going to hide out from the current shitstorm in it with his boyfriend or whoever that other faggot he was with. Had to convince him that he had to go, he didn’t listen and tried to resist and well you saw how that turned out.” “So you know where Ben’s old shelter is then.” You say. “Oh yeah. I’ve always known where it was. Crazy old Ben thought he was being so sneaky moving the goddamn entrance around all the time, but I knew where the fuck it was nearly every time. He had just moved the entrance again a few days before he blew away his family and himself. I’m just surprised YOU never accidently found it given that you lived practically right near the fucking thing for years. If the entrance was any closer you would’ve been sleeping in the damn thing.” Well that explains how Kelly got in without alerting you. Still, if she’s actually admitting the entrance to the shelter is somewhere in the basement and what she did to Peter, then that pretty much confirms she has no intention of sharing. “So what’s next Kelly? You gonna kill us too?” “Don’t know sis…don’t know…severely thinking about it. I’ve never like you. You’ve been a thorn in my side since you crawled out of mom’s vagina. Always having to be compared to how good and pretty you were and how bad and rotten I was despite the fact I was the one who was shouldering most of the responsibility in this fucked up family. What did you ever do except hide in the goddamn basement? Even now you left the house only to come crawling back here. Yep, I’ve thought about killing you on many, many, MANY occasions.” “Actually that wasn’t my initial intention. My initial plan was to drive out of this forsaken town. I only stopped here because our own car was badly damaged and I had hoped to maybe get Peter’s car and some extra supplies before heading out again.” You say. “Oh? Hmm, you’re just full of surprises today aren’t you? Well if that is true, you may have just bought yourself a bit of a reprieve sis…okay. What the hell, I’m in a good mood. I’m gonna let you and your whore walk outta here alive and you’re going to be thankful.” “I don’t suppose you’ll allow us to gather our bags or give me the gun back will you?” You say. “Heh, no I don’t think so. Wouldn’t want you getting any ideas of attempting to come back here. Leave with what you got on you or die, those are your choices sis. I’m being very generous here. Take my offer.” You stare at Kelly, but it’s not with fear. It’s with anger. Anger at all the past abuse you’ve had to endure from her. While she may have a minor point that you were the favorite and she did a lot for the family, she still had no right to bully and torment you for the majority of your life and she certainly had no right to murder Peter. “Come on Suzy, let’s go…” Julie says wanting for the both of you to be out of danger. > You stand up to Kelly “No.” you say. “Suzy? What?” Julie says. “No, I’m not leaving. She’s been a bully to me all my life. It ends today.” You say. “Wow! I can hardly believe you’re the same Suzy that spent hiding from the rest of the world. Guess you’ve finally learned to stand up and be a woman.” Kelly says with a smirk. “But so what? You think because you’ve survived some of the horrors out there, you think standing up to me is going to suddenly change the situation? Got news for ya, it ain’t. I can blow your fucking head off with one twitch of my finger. Last chance to get the fuck out of my house!” Kelly adds. “Fuck you Kelly. I know you. You already made up your mind to kill me as soon as I woke up. I turn my back and you’ll probably shoot me for the hell of it as I walk out the door.” Kelly starts laughing. “Well like I said, you always were a smart one. Too bad you did something incredibly stupid by walking in here in the first place.” “Kelly, please! Just let us go! We won’t come back! We’ll just…” Julie starts to plead “SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU DUMB BITCH OR YOU’LL BE FIRST!” Kelly shouts before turning her attention back to you. Julie at this point starts sobbing uncontrollably. You continue to stare down the barrel of the shotgun like you’re fearless, but that isn’t true at all and Kelly knows it. “You can give me the hard looks all you want, but deep down I know you’re ready to shit your panties. Which I imagine you’ll do after you’re dead anyway. You ready to die little sister?” “Sure, just a little surprised you’d choose this method. Guess you’re more intimidated by me than I thought.” “What?” Kelly snorts. “You’re intimidated by me. You always have been. I really should’ve seen it before.” “You’re fucking crazy. I’ve never been intimidated by you.” “Sure you have, that’s why you’ve bullied me all these years. You’ve said yourself on many occasions on how pretty I am so I know you’re jealous of my looks. You’ve just admitted that I’m smart. The only thing that I always lacked in was self-confidence and now that I have that, well I’m pretty much better than you…” “Fuck you Suzy!” Kelly says. “No, I get it, you want to play it safe and shoot me, because hey if I gained self-confidence, who knows I might just be able to kick your ass in a fair fight.” “Hah, not fuckin’ likely…” “Well I guess we’ll never know, because you’ll shoot me and Julie and then go down and hide in the fucking basement…well what do you know…we’re more alike than you thought. Imagine that.” And with that taunt it’s the last straw. Kelly flies into a rage. It’s the kind of rage she flies into when she’s participating in her underground fight club. She abandons all rational thought, drops the shotgun to the side and lunges at you with both of her hands going straight for your neck. Julie is knocked to one side and you fall backward on the couch. You attempt to roll and scramble to escape, but Kelly grabs you by the hair. “You’re right, beating your scrawny ass to death WILL be more enjoyable.” Kelly exclaims. “Julie, grab the shotgun!” you manage to shout before Kelly throws you face first into the bookcase. Kelly then stops Julie from scrambling on the floor for the shotgun by kicking her in the side and then stomping on her back. Still struggling to recover you grab some of the heavier books that have fallen near you and start throwing them at Kelly. A couple hit her in the head and she ceases abusing Julie and returns to attack you. You manage to throw one more book at her face, but it doesn’t even slow her down. She punches you in the stomach causing you to collapse as you feel the air leave all your body and feel like you can’t breathe. As you wheeze, Kelly leans down and grabs the back of your neck with one of her hands. It feels like a fucking vice. “A hit to the gut, fucks you all up doesn’t it? Feels like you’re suffocating, can’t breathe, can’t do much of anything really. It’s how Houdini died you know. I’m gonna hurt you so badly Suzy, you don’t even know…but you soon will.” Kelly with her other hand smashes a fist into the side of your face. You feel your eye almost close immediately as the rest of you hits the floor. If you could catch your breath, you probably would’ve cried out from the pain though you’re a little dizzy more than anything right now. “Thought you could kick my ass. Bitch please, what the fuck were you thinking? This isn’t a goddamn comic book or movie…shit!” Kelly’s body lands on top of yours with crushing weight. You then hear a shotgun blast and some debris of the bookcase consisting of paper and cheap wood fall on you and Kelly. “LEAVE HER ALONE YOU FUCKING CUNT!” you hear Julie scream. You still aren’t in any condition to do anything, but Kelly certainly is. She scrambles for the pistol still in the front of her pants and gets up while yanking you up with one hand to use you as a human shield. Julie takes cover around a corner when Kelly starts shooting. Four shots are fired before clicking follows. “Fuck!” Kelly exclaims and drops the pistol. You’re practically deaf from the proximity of a pistol going off near your head along with being disorientated. Kelly positions herself behind the couch to give herself some extra cover. She also tightens her grip around your neck with her forearm and puts her other hand on your head ready to break your neck in a second if need be. Julie comes back out from around the corner weeping, but unsteadily pointing the shotgun at Kelly. “No…Suzy…(Sob) Let her go!” “Julie, you’re not in any position to give orders. Now granted with a shotgun and you don’t need perfect aim at this range, but your precious girlfriend here is BOUND to get hit in the process. Never mind the fact I could break her neck before you get the courage to pull the trigger anyway.” “LET HER GO!” Julie screams again. “Not gonna happen whore. You got two choices. You try to do the impossible by trying to hit me or you walk out the door and go on with your life. Either way one thing is certain, Suzy here isn’t going anywhere. Her fate is sealed and there isn’t anything you can do about it. Think about it Julie. Do you really want to be the one that kills her? Just walk away now taking solace in the fact that you never had a choice.” Kelly says. Even with one blurring eye open right now, you can see Julie just standing there sobbing and looking so helpless, despite wielding a shotgun. “Suzy…I don’t know what to do… (sob)” Julie cries. You feel like you’re going to pass out with Kelly’s big meaty arm wrapped around your neck right now. > You tell Julie to take the shot At this point you’ve come close to death so many times that you’re not scared of dying anymore. If anything it’s amazing you managed to survive as long as you did. But you know Julie is scared. She’s scared of a lot of things and if this week is any indication of how shitty the world is going to become, well she’s not going to last very long in it. If she walks out that door without even the supplies you came in with, it’ll be like killing her and you can’t let that happen. It is a sad thing that in this late stage you realize you do have feelings for Julie, and it’ll be even sadder for her when she loses you, but hopefully it’ll make her a bit tougher in the long run. “Julie, take the shot.” You say. “Wha…what?!” Julie says. “Nice, bluff sis, but it’s not gonna save your ass.” Kelly snorts. “It’s not a fucking bluff, you roid rage bitch. I’m telling Julie to shoot your ass and shoot through me if necessary.” Kelly is a bit speechless at this proposal. Julie of course is very upset. “I…I can’t! I’ll kill you!” Julie cries. “I’m already dead Julie. Just take the shot. At least then you’ll have this place all to yourself and can last on the supplies from the shelter in the basement. I’m sure Ben kept a goodly amount.” “Suzy…I can’t…I can’t do this without you.” “You will…just know that I loved you.” At this point Kelly starts looking around in an attempt to find a way to escape while at the same time tightening her grip around your neck. Julie continues to struggle with the morality of all this. “JULIE TAKE THE FUCKING SHOT!” you manage to shout despite Kelly crushing your throat. And those are the last words you utter as the sound of a shotgun blast follows.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“No.” you say. “Suzy? What?” Julie says. “No, I’m not leaving. She’s been a bully to me all my life. It ends today.” You say. “Wow! I can hardly believe you’re the same Suzy that spent hiding from the rest of the world. Guess you’ve finally learned to stand up and be a woman.” Kelly says with a smirk. “But so what? You think because you’ve survived some of the horrors out there, you think standing up to me is going to suddenly change the situation? Got news for ya, it ain’t. I can blow your fucking head off with one twitch of my finger. Last chance to get the fuck out of my house!” Kelly adds. “Fuck you Kelly. I know you. You already made up your mind to kill me as soon as I woke up. I turn my back and you’ll probably shoot me for the hell of it as I walk out the door.” Kelly starts laughing. “Well like I said, you always were a smart one. Too bad you did something incredibly stupid by walking in here in the first place.” “Kelly, please! Just let us go! We won’t come back! We’ll just…” Julie starts to plead “SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU DUMB BITCH OR YOU’LL BE FIRST!” Kelly shouts before turning her attention back to you. Julie at this point starts sobbing uncontrollably. You continue to stare down the barrel of the shotgun like you’re fearless, but that isn’t true at all and Kelly knows it. “You can give me the hard looks all you want, but deep down I know you’re ready to shit your panties. Which I imagine you’ll do after you’re dead anyway. You ready to die little sister?” “Sure, just a little surprised you’d choose this method. Guess you’re more intimidated by me than I thought.” “What?” Kelly snorts. “You’re intimidated by me. You always have been. I really should’ve seen it before.” “You’re fucking crazy. I’ve never been intimidated by you.” “Sure you have, that’s why you’ve bullied me all these years. You’ve said yourself on many occasions on how pretty I am so I know you’re jealous of my looks. You’ve just admitted that I’m smart. The only thing that I always lacked in was self-confidence and now that I have that, well I’m pretty much better than you…” “Fuck you Suzy!” Kelly says. “No, I get it, you want to play it safe and shoot me, because hey if I gained self-confidence, who knows I might just be able to kick your ass in a fair fight.” “Hah, not fuckin’ likely…” “Well I guess we’ll never know, because you’ll shoot me and Julie and then go down and hide in the fucking basement…well what do you know…we’re more alike than you thought. Imagine that.” And with that taunt it’s the last straw. Kelly flies into a rage. It’s the kind of rage she flies into when she’s participating in her underground fight club. She abandons all rational thought, drops the shotgun to the side and lunges at you with both of her hands going straight for your neck. Julie is knocked to one side and you fall backward on the couch. You attempt to roll and scramble to escape, but Kelly grabs you by the hair. “You’re right, beating your scrawny ass to death WILL be more enjoyable.” Kelly exclaims. “Julie, grab the shotgun!” you manage to shout before Kelly throws you face first into the bookcase. Kelly then stops Julie from scrambling on the floor for the shotgun by kicking her in the side and then stomping on her back. Still struggling to recover you grab some of the heavier books that have fallen near you and start throwing them at Kelly. A couple hit her in the head and she ceases abusing Julie and returns to attack you. You manage to throw one more book at her face, but it doesn’t even slow her down. She punches you in the stomach causing you to collapse as you feel the air leave all your body and feel like you can’t breathe. As you wheeze, Kelly leans down and grabs the back of your neck with one of her hands. It feels like a fucking vice. “A hit to the gut, fucks you all up doesn’t it? Feels like you’re suffocating, can’t breathe, can’t do much of anything really. It’s how Houdini died you know. I’m gonna hurt you so badly Suzy, you don’t even know…but you soon will.” Kelly with her other hand smashes a fist into the side of your face. You feel your eye almost close immediately as the rest of you hits the floor. If you could catch your breath, you probably would’ve cried out from the pain though you’re a little dizzy more than anything right now. “Thought you could kick my ass. Bitch please, what the fuck were you thinking? This isn’t a goddamn comic book or movie…shit!” Kelly’s body lands on top of yours with crushing weight. You then hear a shotgun blast and some debris of the bookcase consisting of paper and cheap wood fall on you and Kelly. “LEAVE HER ALONE YOU FUCKING CUNT!” you hear Julie scream. You still aren’t in any condition to do anything, but Kelly certainly is. She scrambles for the pistol still in the front of her pants and gets up while yanking you up with one hand to use you as a human shield. Julie takes cover around a corner when Kelly starts shooting. Four shots are fired before clicking follows. “Fuck!” Kelly exclaims and drops the pistol. You’re practically deaf from the proximity of a pistol going off near your head along with being disorientated. Kelly positions herself behind the couch to give herself some extra cover. She also tightens her grip around your neck with her forearm and puts her other hand on your head ready to break your neck in a second if need be. Julie comes back out from around the corner weeping, but unsteadily pointing the shotgun at Kelly. “No…Suzy…(Sob) Let her go!” “Julie, you’re not in any position to give orders. Now granted with a shotgun and you don’t need perfect aim at this range, but your precious girlfriend here is BOUND to get hit in the process. Never mind the fact I could break her neck before you get the courage to pull the trigger anyway.” “LET HER GO!” Julie screams again. “Not gonna happen whore. You got two choices. You try to do the impossible by trying to hit me or you walk out the door and go on with your life. Either way one thing is certain, Suzy here isn’t going anywhere. Her fate is sealed and there isn’t anything you can do about it. Think about it Julie. Do you really want to be the one that kills her? Just walk away now taking solace in the fact that you never had a choice.” Kelly says. Even with one blurring eye open right now, you can see Julie just standing there sobbing and looking so helpless, despite wielding a shotgun. “Suzy…I don’t know what to do… (sob)” Julie cries. You feel like you’re going to pass out with Kelly’s big meaty arm wrapped around your neck right now. > You tell Julie to leave “Julie, go…” you say. “Suzy! I can’t leave you here to die!” Julie says. “I’m dead anyway. You aren’t going to kill Kelly. At best you’ll probably kill me and blow off one of her arms in the process. After which she’ll probably beat you to death with it, because its obvious she’s got what it takes to survive in this shithole world which is getting shittier everyday.” You say. “Heh, damn straight.” Kelly snorts. “Suzy, I can’t just leave you! I just can’t! I love you!” “Yeah… well I don’t fucking love you Julie! I never have and I never will!” “But…” “Julie just fucking stop! I’m not into girls despite whatever you might be hoping in your heart, so even if you did somehow manage to aim that thing straight and miraculously kill Kelly without hitting me, that still leaves you with NOTHING!” At this point Julie starts crying again and barely able to hold up the shotgun. Kelly on the other hand starts chuckling. “Julie, go on with your fucking life and forget about me.” You say. “I…I…can’t. I won’t be able to. I won’t know how! I need you!” Julie stutters. She still doesn’t want to hear the words you’ve said to her. “Julie, you’re far more capable than you realize. You’ve faced shit this week that you never expected to and survived. You’ll survive this too.” “No…” “Julie, look at me. If you REALLY love me as much as you say, you’ll listen to me one last time and get the fuck out of here. Please.” Julie at this point continues to cry and nods. She slowly starts to walk towards the front door. “Aww, ain’t this some fuckin’ heart breakin’ shit? Hell, I think I’m about shed a goddamn tear myself…over how fucking pathetically hilarious this is!” Kelly laughs. “Kelly will you at least let me give her the keys to the car so she’s got a vehicle to drive away in? They’re in my pocket.” You ask. “Sure, sure, anything to get this bitch out of here quicker.” You put one hand in your pocket and start fishing around for the keys. “Just keep moving towards the front door bitch. Your little unrequited crush will throw the keys to you. Heh. And then me and you are going to have quality sister time.” Kelly says. You grab the key and slowly pull them out of your pocket. “Come on, come on, give her the goddamn keys, al…” Kelly says when you blindly swing your arm backwards to try to jam the key into Kelly’s eye. “AAARGH! FUCK!” You’re successful and the piece of metal sinks deep into the orb. Kelly releases her grip just enough for you to slip from her clutches and drop to the floor. “SHOOT HER NOW!” you yell. You see Julie pull the shotgun back up to her shoulder and point it at Kelly. A loud booming noise fills the room when she fires followed by a sickening squishy sound. Blood splatters on you from over head and the slumping of a body falls partially on you. Julie drops the shotgun and rushes over to help you up. “Suzy! Oh my god, I was so…” Julie starts to say in between the sobbing. “Julie, don’t fuss right now, I’m fine. But right now the pair of us need to get our asses into the basement and look for that shelter entrance. With all the gunfire that went off in here, I’d hate to think what kind of crowd we may have attracted.” Julie helps you up, but in reality, she’s hurting just as much as you, so you basically prop each other up. You stumble down into the basement and fortunately you don’t even need to search. You see a hatch in the floor that you’ve never seen before wide open and a fluorescent glow of lighting coming from within it. Apparently Kelly didn’t even bother to close up the hidden door. You take a look inside and see a long ladder down leading to another floor, which you imagine that’s the main shelter. You can’t believe how close it was to your room and how you never knew about it! “How the hell did you brother do this with you hearing or knowing about it?” Julie asks. “I dunno. I mean he managed to routinely change the entrance all the damn time too. Ben had a gift I guess.” you say and you and Julie start climbing down the ladder and you close up the hatch. Eventually you get to the bottom and you and Julie open up a metal door, which is fortunately not locked. And there it is, you’re in the shelter proper. Before you is a dimly lit living area with various furniture and even a TV. Other rooms include a bathroom, kitchen area, a couple of bedrooms and A LOT of storage rooms. One such room is huge, as rows and rows of canned food and bottled water are found. “Well looks like we’ll be fine for sustenance for awhile. Doesn’t even look like Kelly put a dent in the supplies.” You say. Another storage room contains a goodly amount of ammo and weapons of all kinds. Mostly rifles. Medical supplies are in another. One thing that stands out is that Ben’s shelter has solid steel walls. You have no idea how the hell he did this and you guess you never will. You do notice on several of the walls something has been repeatedly scratched out though not entirely successfully everywhere. At one point you make out most of it. Pr-p---- o- th- Gr--n- -er- Cor---at-o- “Well Julie, guess we didn’t have to spend a bunch of money like those fucking commercials always said. Ah, damn it!” You say and hold on to your head, which is still throbbing. “Suzy are you okay?” “Yeah, I just need to lie down.” Julie escorts you back to the bedroom where upon you collapse on the king sized bed. “Oh Suzy, your eye, your face…its so bruised and swollen.” “Yeah, I probably look like hell. Guess I’m not very pretty right now.” You laugh. Julie holds your hand and looks into your one good eye. “You’ll always be pretty to me.” She says and strokes your hair with her other hand. There’s a moment of silence between the pair of you. “Suzy… when Kelly was holding you hostage, I know you said what you said to trick her into letting down her guard, but… was it really true? I mean it’s fine but I just…” You don’t answer her, you instead just grab the back of her head with your other hand and bring her lips directly to your own and kiss her passionately. And this time this isn’t one of those fake kisses to trick the National Guard; you genuinely mean it, because you do have deep feelings for Julie. When you and Julie stop kissing, her eyes are closed and she exhales like a wave of euphoria has just washed over her. “Well…I guess that answers my question.” She says. “Ow. Ow. Get up, get up.” You say feeling another wave of pain exacerbated by the fact that Julie is partially on top of you right now. “Oh. Sorry! Sorry! You okay?” Julie says getting off of you. “Yeah, just still really hurt.” You groan. “Yeah so am I actually. Why don’t I try to go find a compress or something for your eye?” Julie says. “That’s a good idea. Maybe bring back some painkillers while you’re at it. I’ll just lay here and hurt.” Julie leaves and you’re left in the room alone. You mainly just lie there, but you do occasionally have the brief thoughts of just how fucked up this week has been. At least you’ve sorted out your feelings for Julie though. Despite the pain, you’re also tired. Really you haven’t even been up that long today in the scheme of things, but being held hostage and getting the shit kicked out of you is enough for you to want to go back to sleep. Besides, it isn’t like you’ve got anything else to do immediately. You’re safe down here and you’ll have plenty of time to figure out what to do next after some rest. You drift off… > Next day… SATURDAY You wake up to total silence for once. No sounds of annoying commercials and no sounds of psychotic family members pointing a gun in your face. Even Julie is still asleep. She’s right next to you on the bed as you sort of figured she would be when you woke up. You instinctively reach for your cell phone to check the time, but you don’t currently have it on you. Fortunately there is a large clock on the wall in the room that you’re guessing is accurate. “Holy shit, why the hell am I up this early?” you say to yourself, but then you remember you fell asleep pretty early yesterday. Really you’re sort of surprised you didn’t wake up in the middle of the night. You get up and you’re still hurting, but you’re compelled to go wash yourself since your clothes are caked with dried blood at this point and you’ve been wearing them for a couple days. Just as you’re about to go test the shower, Julie stirs from her sleep. “Suzy, what’re doing? You shouldn’t be up and around.” “I’m stinking like a dog here, I need to wash up.” “You smell fine, I like the way you stink.” Julie says. You start laughing. “Well I’m sure you do, but I really feel like I should… (Sigh) shit.” “What?” Julie asks. “Don’t have a change of clothes. We got just about everything in this thing except clothing.” “So? You don’t need clothing, just go all natural, it’s just us after all. I’ll even join you.” “Heh, while I’m sure that kiss from yesterday has got you all revved up, we still need to talk about us in more detail before we start taking it to that level. In the meantime I guess I’m going to have go upstairs to get some clean clothes.” “Wait, are you serious?! Those things could be up there!” Julie exclaims. “Well that’s why I’m going to be taking some weapons with me.” “But you’re wounded! You really shouldn’t be going out there!” “While it’s true I ache, I can at least see out both eyes clearly again. Surprisingly I’m feeling slightly energetic. I’ll be careful.” “Oh Suzy, (Sigh) I can’t let you go by yourself! I’ll come with you!” You and Julie grab a couple of the lighter assault rifles and some ammo and head up the ladder. Really the most nerve-racking part is going to be the initial opening of the hatch since anything could be lurking around ready to attack as soon as you pop your head up. You open up the hatch and scramble to the basement floor, looking around in all directions. “Suzy? Is it safe?” Julie whispers from the ladder. “Well if it wasn’t I’m sure they would’ve attacked by now. I don’t even hear any noise from upstairs.” “Good, Now your room is right there, just get your clothes and let’s go!” “Okay, okay, come on up, I need someone to watch out.” You head into your room and Julie climbs up and keeps a nervous eye out. You start going through and grabbing clothing. “Hey Julie, what about you?” you ask. “What about me what?” Julie says. “All your clothes are still in your bags upstairs, what are you going to wear?” “I don’t know! I’ll wear your clothes or go naked! I’m not heading up there!” “Like I said, I don’t even hear any noise and I had quite a few favorite belongings in one of the bags. Fuck it, I’m going up there, I wouldn’t mind seeing Kelly’s body anyway.” You say and pass Julie to head upstairs. Once again Julie follows reluctantly. You go up the stairs cautiously, once again expecting something to pop out at you. When you finally get up stairs, you expect the same thing, but after checking a bit, nothing is out of place from when you left it yesterday. No broken windows, no kicked in doors, and your bags are still in the same place where you dropped them when you got here. Then you lay your eyes on Kelly’s body which hasn’t been disturbed in anyway. You didn’t see it when Julie did it since your back was turned, but part of Kelly’s head is splattered on the wall and the rest of it is all over the floor. “Heh, you blew her fucking head off.” You say. “Yeah, it’s really gross. Let’s get our bags and head back, I’m still worried that something might try to break in and I also don’t want to dwell on what almost happened to you in this room. It’s upsetting.” “Alright, I just think I needed the closure of seeing her corpse. I know that probably sounds fucked up of me, but then again this whole week has been.” You say grabbing one of your bags. Before you or Julie can say anything else a bright flash shines through one of the uncovered windows along with the sound of a large explosion in the distance. You can’t help but take a quick glance out the window. And there you see it in the far distance, the dissipating remnants of a mushroom cloud rising up in the sky. “…they finally went and did it.” You say. “Oh shit! We need to get down into the shelter NOW!” Julie exclaims. “Let’s get our asses moving then.” You and Julie grab your remaining bags and head back into the basement. You don’t stop the haste until you’re safely inside the shelter, though Julie’s still a really stressed. “Oh shit! Oh shit! We were out there when that bomb went off! What if we’ve experienced a lethal dose of radiation!? I don’t want my hair and teeth to start falling out and coughing up blood! Oh fuck!” Julie starts to say while pacing back and forth. “Julie will you relax? First of all if it had been that close the impact should’ve at least shattered the windows of the house. From the direction I saw the cloud, I’d say it probably hit Security City and you know how far away that is. It probably wasn’t even a large one.” “So we’re safe?” “Well we’re safe from what you’re worrying about yes. But I mean if nukes are going off, that means the end of civilization, as we know it at best. The world is going to become a lot more dangerous.” “But we’re in this shelter! We’ve got supplies for years!” “Yeah, if we’re smart about conservation we probably can stretch out our supplies for I dare say a decade, but the thing is we’re going to HAVE to explore the surface eventually, if only to gather more food and water. And if we’re going to do that, we’re going to need to prepare ourselves. I foresee a lot of use of that small exercise room in the future unfortunately.” Julie sits down as if this hard reality is finally hitting her. “Suzy…I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to survive this new world. I mean if what you’re saying is true, and this week was just an indication of how bad its going to really be, then how useful am I going to be? I mean other than killing your psycho sister; I’ve been completely useless in this crisis. Even with your sister, you came up with the plan to distract her; my dumb ass thought you were being serious at first when you told me to leave. You’ve come up with all the plans and taken all the action. It’s actually very impressive of how you’ve managed to cope with all this…I’m just not as strong as you.” You sit down next to Julie and hold her hands. “Julie, I didn’t say this was going to be easy, but WE can do this. You have to have more faith in yourself Julie. And whether I come up with the plans or not doesn’t mean you’ve been useless. I mean you still needed the courage to pull the trigger to kill Kelly right?” you say. “I wasn’t brave, I didn’t want her to kill you.” Julie says. “Well I’m sure there’s going to be tons of people wanting to do that to me in the future. So you’ve already proven you’ve got motivation to kill when necessary. And just think you also helped in tricking the National Guard without killing anyone.” “Oh sure, just shaking my tits and ass at them. That’s about all I AM actually good at.” “Hey whatever works for your survival, but look we’re together now. I need you just as much as you need me. We’re not just friends anymore we have a stronger bond now, one that I want to last for a very very long time. I want to survive to enjoy your company and love for as long as I can. Would you really give up on that so easily?” Julie smiles. “No I suppose I can’t. You’re right Suzy. You’re always right.” Julie says and hugs you. She then kisses you on the lips. “I love you Suzy.” She says. “I love you too Julie.” You answer. A brief pause of you both looking into each other’s eyes and savoring the moment. While the next few moments are going to be filled with possibly the most fun you’ve had this week, you are still thinking about how difficult things are going to be in the near future. Already now, you’re thinking that the first order of business is going to be to get Julie to dry out from her drug abuse. (You can’t afford for her to go through your supply of medical supplies after all) She’s going to probably hate you while she’s detoxing, but it’s going to be for her own good. And that’s just going to be one hurdle you’ll have to jump, but you’re not that “good girl” that hid out in the basement from the rest of the world anymore. You’re ready to face it head on when necessary regardless of the dangers it may hold. > Best Friends With Benefits Forever The Future… “I hate dealing with those trailer park assholes.” Julie says as you both enter the shelter. “Yeah, but unless we want to go driving all the way to the next township or waiting around for a wandering merchant, it isn’t like we got much choice in barter partners.” You say. “I just feel like we’re getting eye raped by all of them whenever we walk into their little enclave.” “Probably are, but Mel’s pretty good about keeping his boys in line. He’s surprisingly reasonable as well. Besides, they got enough problems ever since the Cult of Tiamat launched a full raid on them.” “Yeah, that’s another reason I don’t like going out nowadays, the entire fucking town is a war zone between those two.” “Mmm, I’m just glad we don’t live where the fighting has gotten the heaviest. It’s almost like how it was when all those people were running around like rabid animals. Still never learned what caused that, weird that some people just suddenly went back to normal though.” “Speaking of the cult, do you really believe they won’t attack us anymore?” Julie says. “Well like with anything in this shitty world, nothing is certain, but Bobby has always been a true believer so when he came to us that night saying that Tiamat spoke to him in a dream saying that we were off limits due to recent losses, I’m inclined to believe we don’t need to worry about them for now. Personally I think it was that bitch Diana that kept targeting us specifically for sacrifice. She never did like me. Anyway Diana’s dead and Bobby isn’t under her influence anymore.” “What about his new first wife though?” “His sister Helen? I only met her a few times back when I was dating Bobby, but she was always okay to me. Seemed to almost want me in the fold as it were. Probably wanted an ally because her older sister Diana was a bully to her…hmm might’ve had something common I suppose.” As you get ready to relax for the night, Julie ceases talking for a moment and then speaks up again. “Hey, do you ever wonder what your life would’ve been like if you’d stayed with Bobby?” Julie asks. “You’re joking right?” you say. “Well I’m just asking do you think it would’ve been easier?” “I really don’t see how being the member of an insane cult would’ve been easier and that’s not even factoring in Diana who probably would’ve been trying to kill me at every turn.” “Ah, I think you would’ve been okay. You would’ve found a way to get over on her. Just think you would’ve been a high priestess with followers or something!” “And I still would’ve had to have shared Bobby with Helen and whatever other sisters he choose as a damn wife. Nope, I’m not into polygamy.” “But you weren’t into girls either at one time and we wound up together.” “That’s a little different Julie, we had a long history. I mean I don’t even see you as a female. I mean I do, but (Sigh) …you know what I mean! I’m just saying I’m not the sharing type when it comes to these things. What brought all this weird line of questioning all of a sudden?” “I dunno, I guess sometimes I play what if and I come up with all sorts of weird scenarios.” “What do you mean?” “Well okay for example, I can picture you still doing okay even if you made different choices in your life. Like I can picture you surviving and even thriving in this harsh world regardless of what you did. Me? I would’ve been dead without you around. I just wonder sometimes if your life would’ve been better without me. Silly I suppose for me to dwell on stuff like that.” You know Julie can still get a little self-conscious at times and would seem tonight is one of those nights. It was annoying at first, but as time has gone on, you’ve actually grown to find it a little endearing. “You’re damn right it’s silly, because how could my life be better without you? I mean I have everything I want with you, what more could I want? To be a leader of one of the many dysfunctional groups out there? No thanks, I was already part of one dysfunctional group, I don’t need to be part of another, let alone trying to lead them. I’m perfectly happy down here in our shelter with ample supplies and spending the rest of my years with you. Now come over here.” Julie walks over to you a bit demurely and you passionately kiss her and grab her ass in the process. “Mmm. Tell you what, since the town has become rather dangerous lately, why don’t we stay in for a month or two? Maybe by that time, those idiots will have stopped or killed each off by then. You know we still have lots of supplies left, we can afford a nice romantic vacation of sorts from the world.” You say. “See, you always have the good ideas.” Julie says with a smile. As the two of you embrace in the way lovers do, you realize Julie is right, you do have all the good ideas. And your best one was choosing to be with your best friend.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY You wake up and find that Julie is still fast asleep with her head nestled against your body and one arm draped over you. The funny thing is this sort of thing doesn’t even bother you anymore. But your increasingly odd relationship with Julie isn’t excessively important at this time. Right now you’re dwelling more on the grim situation you’re still in and the event less pleasant task you still have ahead of you. Not quite disturbing Julie yet, you reach over and grab your cell phone to check the time. Slept most of the day as usual. Just as well, since you won’t have long to wait for nightfall again when you have to dig another hole out back. “Julie, get up I have to go.” You say tapping Julie on the head. “Hgm,.. no…” she utters. “Have to, I’ve got to take care of something and I think you know what it is.” Julie slowly and reluctantly moves off of you and repositions herself on a pillow. “I wish you could just stay in bed with me all day.” She says. “At this point, I wish that too.” You say and get up to leave to go get your sister out of the washer and dryer. You grab your seemingly never-ending supply of garbage bags, cleaning products, some towels, a bucket of water, some rubber gloves and go down into the basement. Once again approaching the washer and dryer you open up them up and are bombarded by a horrible smell. You end up coughing and hacking up again. “Ugh…(pant) ugh…goddamn it, I can get through this…” you say. You empty the washing machine first, putting Donna’s dismembered legs and arms in trash bags. You then dump some cleaning products into the washing machine and turn it on figuring that it will least wash most of the blood out. The dryer on the other hand is not going to be as easy to clean. Johnny threw Donna’s torso and head in there. While he didn’t exactly eviscerate her, there are definitely some or her insides coming out. It’s a horrible task (You try not to stare at her head for too long), but between the gagging you manage to get through it. Her body, her left over innards and her head all up into bags and tied up. You then spend time trying to clean the dryer. Even with using bleach, you can’t get rid of that horrible smell. You wonder if it’ll ever go away. “Ugh, that’s a really horrible smell.” Julie says causing you to turn your head and see that she’s come down to check on you. “What are you doing down here? I told you I’d take care of this.” You say. “You were down here awhile and I decided to check on you. Besides, your brother Peter called.” “Is that right?” “Yep, he was returning your call from yesterday. Didn’t realize you called him.” “I was in the middle of calling him when that psycho attacked. Anyway, you talked to him?” “Yeah, but I didn’t tell him about what happened here, save for the National Guard coming in and telling us to stay indoors. I didn’t want to tell him about Donna, I figured you’d want to do that.” “Thanks. Peter and Donna weren’t exactly the closest either, but I think he’d be pretty upset to hear about her death. So he didn’t want to talk to me?” “Well I told him you were really busy cleaning up an awful mess elsewhere in the house. He actually said he didn’t want to talk long though because he was worried that the government was monitoring the phone call what with the marshal law and all.” “Huh, sounds almost like something my brother Ben would’ve said.” “Yeah, that’s the other thing. He mentioned he was busily trying to locate Ben’s old hidden bunker in your backyard. He said he wants to wait this out in there because he’s scared shitless and feels vulnerable just being stuck in your house by himself.” “Well I can see him being scared since this isn’t the most relaxed of situations.” “Yeah, but he said its more than just the National Guard. He said he saw a few of your neighbors acting nuttier than a shithouse rat in the streets for no apparent reason. Like they were rabid animals. He mentioned some of them was trying to bite someone.” You stop cleaning for a moment. “What? Crazy people trying to bite others? That almost sounds like something out of a horror movie. You sure he wasn’t exaggerating?” “He sure didn’t sound like it, I mean it sort of makes sense. People have become more aggressive and hostile. The crime rate in this town has gone up so bad that the National Guard had to come in. I mean maybe everyone in town is going crazy from some sort of secret military experiment!” “If that’s true, then how come we aren’t running around biting people?” you ask. “Well maybe it hasn’t affected us yet, maybe we’re immune, I don’t know! Maybe it spreads by bite like in a zombie movie! I’m just saying maybe we should start blocking the windows and doors.” “Julie its entirely possible Peter saw some people just high on bath salts! I mean the people who live in my neighborhood aren’t exactly the most morally upstanding. Let’s wait and see for a moment. I mean I’m still cleaning up here, so it’ll be awhile and…” Suddenly several machine gun shots are heard. “Oh my God!” Julie says and instinctively ducks. You on the other hand get up off your knees from cleaning and start to head upstairs. “Are you insane, where are you going?!” Julie asks. “Julie, while at one time it would’ve been unthinkable for me to head TOWARDS the sound of gunfire, I’ve left a pistol and an axe upstairs. If nothing else I’d like to retrieve to viable weapons if an impending zombie apocalypse is indeed coming.” “Well hold on I’m coming with you, I don’t want to be by myself!” Julie says. And like that you’re cautiously going upstairs towards potential danger with Julie touching one of your arms and hiding behind you. Now you really do feel like you’re in a horror movie. When you get upstairs, you and Julie keep your heads down. The gunfire doesn’t sound like it’s immediately out in front of the house, but it’s definitely nearby. You go and get the pistol first. “Why is the gun in the cereal box?” Julie asks. “Because I was desperately trying to find a place to hide it yesterday. Julie, I think you better go put something a little more protective on. If we need to suddenly leave in a hurry you’re not going to want to be running around in your underwear.” “I suppose you’re right. Where are you going to be?” “I’m going back to my room to retrieve the axe from the bathroom, wash this blood off and change my clothes as well since I obviously ruined these by cutting and ripping them yesterday in the first place.” You and Julie part ways briefly to go take care of your short-term goals. After washing up and changing your clothes again you start to ponder what your next move might be. You don’t quite get to do that since once again you’re interrupted by the breaking of glass coming from the kitchen followed by snarling and grunting. “Shit!” you exclaim and run to the kitchen to see a bloody arm through the window of the backdoor attempting to unlock it. The thing on the other side gets more excited when it sees you and starts pounding the glass with its other hand cracking more of it. It seems completely oblivious to the fact that it’s severely cutting itself in the process. It looks like a regular (if a bit wild) human. It doesn’t look rotten (Could be fresh though) and maybe it isn’t a zombie, but you know damn well you can’t let it get in! You shoot at it through the glass completely shattering the rest of the window. The bullet hits it in the face and the thing falls backwards making one last death growl. You cautiously move to look through the broken window and see that you’ve killed it. Meanwhile Julie has come running to see if you’re okay. “Suzy! Oh thank god! Are you okay?!” Julie asks. “Yeah, but I apologize for doubting you and Peter. One of those… things, guess I’ll call them the rabid just attacked. Look what one did to this door, I’d hate to think what more of them might do in a group.” You say. “Oh shit! We need to start blocking the doors and windows!” “I’m wondering if we shouldn’t just get the hell out of here while we can.” “I really think we we’d be safer if we stayed put! I mean we have more than enough furniture and items to barricade ourselves in here. If we leave, we run the risk of bumping into hordes of them and that’s not counting the military who are still shooting people on sight, maybe even more so now. Where would we go anyway?” “I admit, I haven’t figured that part out yet, but I think you’re hoping to ride this thing out until shit gets back to normal and I’m wondering if that’s even going to happen. We aren’t exactly well supplied here for a long-term stay even if we do barricade this place. Now I’ll give you that it’s probably going to be dangerous out there, but at least we’ll have more freedom to move around.” Julie of course will follow you no matter what you decide, but she really wants to stay in. As much as you think it might be better to leave now, you probably would be safe if you barricaded yourselves in the house properly. Things do sound hectic out there right now with all the gunfire, it might even be best if you waited until things died down a bit and sneak out later. > You barricade the house Things are too hot out there right now. The National Guard is parked firmly in the neighborhood; you wouldn’t have a chance to get past them. No, the best thing to do is barricade yourself in. You have enough supplies to last the remainder of the week you think. “Okay, let’s block the doors and windows the best we can. Those shots might have the National Guard over here again, but at least we can point to a viable target this time.” You say. “What about your… um sister?” Julie asks. “(Sigh) Shit. I dunno. She’s all wrapped up in bags right now, I guess I’ll just throw her in the garbage can out in your backyard. It’s near the door, so I won’t have to linger too long.” “You really want to throw her away like that?” “No, I don’t fucking want to throw away my sister like she was just day old meatloaf, but I don’t have many other options right now and if we are going to be stuck in this house for who knows how many days on end, I don’t want my sister’s chopped up corpse sharing it with us! Now start pushing shit against the front door and block the windows!” While Julie goes to follow your orders, you head back down in the basement to grab your sister’s remains. It takes two trips and a lot of paranoia, but you manage to get her all in the trash can without anything else attacking you or the military coming to check up on you again. You do hear a lot more shooting though, so you’re guessing that maybe they’re too occupied with something else. You finish up by shoving the refrigerator in front of the back door. Julie meanwhile is trying her best. She’s got the front door barricaded well enough, but the windows leave something to be desired. “Julie, anyone could crash through those windows right now. Don’t you have like hammer and nails or something laying around?” you ask. “No, and I don’t have a bunch of wooden planks either. Why the hell would I have that shit? I don’t sit around thinking about how to best protect my home against a possible zombie attack!” Julie answers. Her state of agitation is vastly increasing under the pressure. “I don’t think they’re dead…nevermind doesn’t matter. (Sigh) Okay, you’re obviously stressed. Why don’t you take a break and I’ll handle this. I’ll try to figure out a way to better barricade this place.” Julie doesn’t need you to say anymore and she immediately runs upstairs. You imagine she’s probably going to pop some pills or something to mellow her out. At this point as long as she stays out of your way, you’ll be able to get what you need to do accomplished. You spend a good amount of time shoving as much furniture as you can in front of most of the ground floor windows. Something could definitely still break them and with enough force they’d probably eventually knock through the furniture, but you’re confident that you’d at least have enough time to do something about it before they got in completely. Still, the gunfire and yelling from outside hasn’t stopped the whole time you’re doing this, there are a couple points where you hear some explosions too, so you’re not exactly feeling completely relaxed about this situation. You then start packing “get a away” bags with as many useful items as you can, just in case you need to leave in a hurry. One of your bags that you brought hasn’t even been opened and is still full of clothing. You fill your other bags with more useful items like some of the non-perishable snack food Julie has, the duct tape you were using, a few of the bigger kitchen knives, loose batteries, some of the medicine in the bathroom, etc. You then finish up with packing a few more of your personal items and then think if you do need to leave in a hurry, it probably would be best if you could drive out of here. You head upstairs and start calling for Julie, but when you find her, she’s laying on her bed in a semi-conscious state. She took something to calm herself just as you figured. “Julie! Julie! Does Donna have a spare set of car keys?” you ask. “Mgh…huh…come to bed…” she says. “Julie! I need to know if Donna had spare keys to her car!” you shout. “I dunno…yeah…prob…dresser…” Julie utters and starts to become even less coherent. Seeing that she’s going to be of no more use for the rest of the day, you search Donna’s room for her car keys and fortunately Julie was correct in that they were on the dresser. By this point, night has fallen and while the gunfire has lessened, you still hear the occasional shot. You’re a little tired from all the running around and other activity you’ve been doing to today, not to mention you’re still wearing the clothing that you cleaned your sister up in. As much as you’re hesitant to let your guard down, you absolutely feel the need to clean up. After a quick shower, you return to being on guard for something to happen. Anything. Julie of course is peacefully asleep and oblivious to anything that’s going on at this time. You peek out one of the second floor windows and see Guardsmen still patrolling, but it doesn’t look like there’s as many any more and you see a pile of what are probably bodies a little up the block. It does look like things have quieted down a bit, around here anyway. Who knows about the rest of the town. You wonder if you shouldn’t sneak out and leave while things are quieter, but Julie’s not in any condition to leave now. And as inept as she’s been today, you can’t just abandon her. You’ve just lost your sister, you’re not going to lose your best friend as well. You stay up late past midnight staying alert, but nothing happens. You wander back and forth through the house until eventually even you can’t fight off the sleep and you return to your room and close your eyes for just a moment… > Next day... FRIDAY You are awakened by a loud explosion, a close one. One so close in fact that the force of it causes you to roll off your bed. “Shit!” you exclaim as you hit the floor, still tired, but very much awake. You don’t know what time it is, but you know you haven’t been asleep very long. You grab your pistol, which is nearby, and the smell of gunpowder, smoke and fire are immediately starting to become very strong. You exit your room and see that your barricade of the front facing windows has been destroyed along with that portion of the house. Furniture is in pieces and some of it is burning. That isn’t all that is in pieces however. You see the remains of several bodies. One bloody legs looks like it was wearing a military outfit, a couple of the other parts are of the more civilian persuasion. You can only guess this might’ve been a soldier desperately trying to escape and blew himself up either on purpose or accidently in an attempt to kill the rabid things after him. You can’t make out everything from where you’re standing, but the streets are swarming with hordes of those things. It would appear a “second wave” has popped up and is strong enough to overwhelm the military here. Even Julie has woken up. “Holy shit Suzy! What the fuck…” Julie says from above. “Julie get whatever…” “SUZY LOOK OUT!” Julie screams. You react just in time to shoot one of those rabid fuckers twice in the chest. He goes down and doesn’t get back up, but that’s of little help since you’ve now just attracted even more of them and they’re running in your direction. “Julie climb out one the upstairs windows!” you shout, firing at two more rabid before running away yourself. Julie immediately runs back into her bedroom. You’d follow her, but the burning debris makes it difficult and your own distance to the stairs isn’t close enough for you to get there before more rabid come gibbering in. You instead head for the backdoor and fire off the remainder of your bullets as you run. You might’ve actually managed to make out had the back door not been barricaded with the refrigerator. You don’t even get to open the back door before you’re roughly pulled backwards and you feel a set of teeth sinking shoulder. This is soon followed by more teeth and your screams.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY “Remember, if you act today…” “Ugh! Shut up! I don’t care about your stupid shelters!” you hear Julie remark. You open your eyes and see Julie to the left of you messing around on your laptop. (And clicking off on one of those annoying pop up audio ads) “Hey…when did you get up?” you ask. “I dunno, about an hour ago I think. Didn’t really feel like leaving the bed though, so I just figured I’d stay here and entertain myself on your laptop. Hope you don’t mind.” “Eh, it’s fine. Don’t mess with my bookmarks and setting though.” “Don’t worry, I’m not going to accidentally delete anything. I must say though with the extensive number of porn links in your history, I think you might have a real problem.” Julie mocks. “Mm, bold words coming from a woman who has popped up in several amateur videos on those sites.” You answer. “Hah. I don’t doubt it, but that brings up the question of why would YOU be watching those?” Julie asks. “Who said I did? I can’t help it if I’m browsing through the videos and suddenly your ass pops up in a still.” “If it’s just my ass, how do you know it’s me? Either you don’t or you’ve watched them enough that you know what my ass looks like without even seeing my face!” “Argh! I don’t mean literally! I mean YOU pop up, and I’ve seen your face in the stills though once I almost couldn’t tell because it was covered in cum!” you exclaim starting to get agitated. “Hmm, nice save.” Julie says a little unconvinced. Already having expended more energy than you wanted to, you start to sit up and realize you’ve been wearing the same clothes for the past couple days. “Christ, I really need to take a shower and change these clothes.” You say and get out of the bed. “Yeah, I think I need to go do that too.” Julie says. “Well you can go use your own shower. I know we’ve been sleeping in the same bed for the past two days, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be re-enacting a women’s prison shower scene from a movie.” You say laying down boundaries again. “Hey I think you had that one bookmarked!” Julie says jokingly. You shake your head and grab some clean clothes before heading into the bathroom to take a shower. After washing up and changing your clothes, you feel refreshed. When you exit the bathroom, you see that Julie has left, presumably to go wash up as well. You check your phone and once again see nobody has called. You dial up your sister’s number and still no answer. You certainly hope Julie is right about her just sleeping somewhere else. But surely she couldn’t be so pissed at you that she’s moved out could she? All her stuff is still here after all. You then hear a loud noise or more like a voice, but you aren’t sure if its coming from inside the house or outside the house. Still paranoid from yesterday, you grab the pistol and cautiously exit your room. When you get to the living room, you deduce the noise is indeed coming from outside. A quick peek through the window and you see several military men and a couple of military trucks and even an A.P.C. “ATTENTION! THIS TOWN IS UNDER MARSHAL LAW AND THIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS NOW UNDER WATCH BY THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD. A GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE WILL SOON VISIT ALL OF YOU AND ASSIST IN ANYTHING THAT YOU MAY NEED DURING THIS STATE OF EMERGENCY. STAY IN YOUR HOMES. DO NOT COME OUT FOR ANY REASON. FAILURE TO DO SO MAY RESULT IN THE USE OF LETHAL FORCE.” “Hey Suzy?! You hear that noise!? You got the TV up loud?” Julie shouts from somewhere up on the second floor. “No! The fucking National Guard is out there in force and it looks like we’re under marshal law.” “National Guard? Hold on, I’m coming down…” Julie says. You turn the TV on to see if there’s anything about this, but you’re not exactly having any luck. You’re getting a lot of Ground Zero infomercials or news about shit going on elsewhere in the world. Local stations seem to be off the air with an “emergency test” beep but nothing more substantial than that. “What the fuck is going on?” you say to yourself. “Yeah what the fuck IS going on?” Julie asks coming down from taking her shower. “I dunno, I might need to check the Internet, not having much luck with the TV. Do we have enough food and water?” you ask. “Well we certainly got some food. Dunno about water though. I mean you can get some from the taps I suppose, but as you might expect I got tons of alcohol. Why?” Julie says. “Why? Because the National Guard just said if we try to leave we’ll probably get shot on sight that’s why! (Sigh) We’re basically prisoners here.” “Suzy, you need to calm down. You’ve been on edge since yesterday. You just said there isn’t a whole lot we can do, so we might as well just relax in the house. I mean really how much different is the day going to be for either of us?” Julie remarks. “I’m just…its Donna. I mean she’s still out there. I mean I HOPE she’s still out there. I mean the last thing I did was argue with her. Shit, I’m even a little worried about Peter and Kelly now and I never got along with them either. Still family though.” You say. “You tried calling either of them?” Julie asks. Oddly you haven’t. You didn’t really have a reason before, but given what’s going on right now, maybe you should. “I think I’ll do that Julie. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.” You say. “Sure, you go check on what family you can and maybe find out more about what’s going on. In the meantime, I’m going to go get a drink.” “Thought you were turning over a new leaf?” “You just said we were prisoners here. Not much else for me to do is there? Besides, I’m not going to get bombed out of my skull.” While Julie goes and deals with this situation in her own way, you head back to your room to get your cell phone to start calling up your other family members. You try Peter first since you figure he might at least answer. You start to call Peter and then you hear a loud clatter from the kitchen. What’s odd to you is that you don’t hear a series of cursing following it; you do think you hear a stifled yelp though. Panic wells up inside you and you once again head towards where the disturbing sound came from with your pistol pointed in front of you. “Stop fighting me, bitch!” you hear a voice say. This isn’t a video game this time. You enter the kitchen and see Julie being held captive by someone you KNEW was no good right from the start. Johnny. He’s got one arm around her waist and another hand with a knife to Julie’s throat. He isn’t calm anymore. His face is displaying a rage and hatred you remember seeing a glimpse of in Uncle Ed when he looked at you during that horrible night with him. Julie’s face is one of absolute terror and tears run from her eyes. “Let her go you fucking psycho!” you exclaim pointing the gun in his direction. “Oh look, it’s your dyke lover come to rescue you! Fucking whores the pair of you! You think I’m scared just because you got a gun pointed at me? Pfft! Look at you, you’re so scared right now, you can barely aim that thing properly.” He’s right. Despite having the gun in your hand, you’re incredibly scared. “Mmm, think I’ll have some fun with you two after I’m done cleansing you whores. Just like I did with your sister.” Johnny exclaims. Your worst fears are now a reality and it shows in your face. You feel ill and start to shake a bit. “Guess you two have been so busy rug munching that you haven’t been in the basement lately. Told you it was a mess down there.” Johnny laughs cruelly. Between this revelation, Julie’s desperate expression of wanting you to do something, and your own fear, you’re having a very difficult time concentrating. You feel like if you shoot, you’re either going to miss Johnny completely and then he’ll kill Julie, or worse you’ll kill Julie for him by accidentally shooting her instead of him. You can’t fuck this up. > You try to buy some time “Johnny, look. We didn’t do anything to you, but if you felt that we offended you in anyway, then I apologize profusely. You can walk out that backdoor right now and nobody has to know about this.” You say trying to aim the gun so you know you’ll hit him with it, unfortunately he’s moving around with Julie even more now. “Yeah right. The National fucking Guard is patrolling out there right now, I’m not gonna get my ass shot off and stop trying to play psychologist, it won’t work. I’m not interested in anything you two dyke whores got to say, so let’s just skip to the good part!” Suddenly Johnny slashes Julie’s throat open. A gout of blood comes pouring out as Julie hisses and gurgles while clutching at her throat. The sight of this scares the shit out of you and it doesn’t help that Johnny also gave her a little shove directly at you after he did it, which causes a nervous reaction of firing your pistol. You don’t hit Johnny though, you instead hit Julie and cut what little remained of her life even shorter. Her body falls on you and you scream when all the blood squirts all over you. You attempt to push her off of you, but when you see Johnny looming over you, you try to bring your arm back up to shoot at him again, but this time he’s got the advantage and he grabs your wrist, breaks it and takes the gun out of your hand before pistol whipping you in the face with it twice. Your head hits the floor as you lie there now with a broken nose. “Stupid bitch. You all are stupid bitches. I don’t know why I ever think I’m going to run into anything different. (Sigh) Still, I thought after your sister told me about you…I thought you might be…bah better get this over with, the fucking Guard probably heard those shots.” Johnny says. Your last moments are seeing Johnny’s knife coming down several times on your face.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>TUESDAY “…Suzy…” you hear a voice whisper. “Mgh.” You answer. “Suzy…get up…I have to go pee!” the voice says again. Your eyes are still closed, but you recognize it as Julie’s. “Guh. Well go! Why do I have to get up?!” you say angrily with your eyes still closed. “Well because you arm is wrapped around my waist and your leg is intertwined with one of mine that’s why!” Now you open your eyes and realize what Julie has just described is true. Julie looks at you over her shoulder. “Hey don’t blame me, I stayed on my side of the bed. I’d enjoy this longer, but I really gotta pee!” “Shit.” You say and remove yourself from your entanglement from Julie’s body. Julie smiles at you and then heads to the bathroom. Great, now she’s going to read something into it. Though you do wonder how the hell you got into a spooning position with her. Maybe you were dreaming about Bobby. Speaking of Bobby, while you’re checking the time on your cell phone, you see that he’s left messages again. After you recent “night cuddling” with Julie, you think it might be best if you do call Bobby if only to deter Julie from getting any ideas. “Hello? Bobby?” you say. “Yeah.” Bobby answers. He sounds pretty flat. “Well you called me, so I assume you wanted to talk to me.” “Yeah I did, I wanted to talk to you yesterday about something else, but I’ve changed my mind about some things since then. So I’ve got something new to tell you, and given that you didn’t bother to talk to me yesterday I think you’ll be fine with it.” “What are you talking about?” “I’m talking about us. Breaking up for good. It’s obvious that this isn’t working. I tried to bring you into my world, but you just refuse to meet me half way.” You can’t believe you’re hearing this! “Meet you half way? You want me to be one of your wives in your fucked up religious cult compound that’s what you want! Face it, you’re not going to give up your sister Diana and that bitch would kill me as soon as I stepped foot in that place!” “Well…you obviously have valid points, so why are you arguing with me on this?” “Because you’re trying to make out like I’M the bad guy here! I’m not the human sacrificing cultist Bobby and yet I looked past that because I loved you! You say I didn’t try to meet you half way? I proposed long ago that we BOTH leave our fucked up families behind and start a new life together! I was willing to change, YOU weren’t!” At this point there is a long pause. “Well? Don’t you have anything to say?” you ask. “No, except…it was just too much. Guess I take after my dad after all. I’m sorry, but my God and family come first. Even before you. I’ll always remember…the good times we had. May Tiamat’s Chaos take mercy on you.” “Oh fuck you and Tiamat!” you exclaim and hang up. Its weird, but you start to sob a little bit. You sort of knew your relationship with Bobby was on borrowed time anyway, but it still hurts now that it’s officially over. He was your first love after all and now that’s gone. Meanwhile Julie is standing in the bathroom door watching you. “Suzy, I heard some of that…and I’m truly sorry about you and Bobby. Really, I mean that. You’re a kind and decent girl with many wonderful qualities. He had a treasure in you and he doesn’t know what he’s lost.” Hard to tell if Julie’s just trying to flatter you or she really does mean it, but either way it’s still nice to hear right now. “Did you want to talk about it?” Julie asks. “No, not really. It’s over and that’s that. Best to not dwell on the past and move on right?” you say. “Probably. Well I should probably see how much damage my home is in from last night and see who’s still lingering around. I’ll leave you alone.” “Wait, I’ll come with you. I mean I live here too now, I might as well help you clean up. Besides, for the first time I think being alone might be a bad idea. I’m just going to end up dwelling on Bobby. I need to keep my mind on other things right now. I probably should try to make up with Donna as well. We kind of argued yesterday.” “Yeah, I wondered what happened about that. When she stormed in yesterday I asked about you and she mumbled something about you being a bitch. Then later at the party I asked again about what happened and she still never answered.” “Nothing really happened, she just jumped down my throat for a perceived insult, but I guess I should make the peace being the older sister and all.” “See? This is why you’re so wonderful!” Julie smiles and the pair of you exit your room. The house actually isn’t in bad shape. Julie remarks that usually the parties only get really out of hand on Saturday and Friday nights. She also remarks that she thinks this the first time in quite awhile that she woke up without a hang over since she didn’t really drink as much since she was mainly with you the whole night. “It’s a bizarre feeling, but I have to say it isn’t an unpleasant one.” Julie says. From the living room you hear the sounds of a vacuum as well as a TV. “Who the hell would be vacuuming?” Julie asks. “Donna?” the moment you say that, you and Julie both look at each other and say “Nah.” When you arrive in the living room, you see a man probably about your age calmly vacuuming as he periodically looks at the TV screen, which is one of those Ground Zero infomercials. There are actually a couple of other people in the room flopped out on the furniture or on the floor still asleep, but the man merely vacuums around their sprawled out legs or bodies. You and Julie find the sight to be quite the peculiar one. He notices you both and turns off the vacuum. “Oh hey. You…you’re the owner of this house correct?” he asks. “Yes I am, who are you?” Julie answers. “Oh I’m Johnny. Sorry if I woke you and your girlfriend up, but I couldn’t in good conscience leave your house in such a mess. So I found your vacuum and tried to clean up a bit. Sort of a wild party last night huh?” Johnny says. “Eh, had wilder. Never had a guest actually clean up though. Kinda weird, but hey I won’t turn it down. I don’t remember you from last night; though I have so many people at my parties I never know half of them anyway.” “Oh, I’m not very memorable anyway. I’ve always kind of just blended in with the crowd. I heard about this party from a friend and figured I’d come since I don’t get out much. Did you want me to leave?” “Doesn’t make difference to me. Like I said, I’m not going to turn down a guest that helps clean up.” Johnny nods and returns to cleaning up, while Julie turns back to you. “Hrm, he’s an odd one, but at least he’s helpful. Anyway, let’s go check and see if Donna’s upstairs.” Julie says. You and Julie leave Johnny to his cleaning to go find your sister. After checking the bedrooms, you don’t find her (Though there are a couple of people still sleeping in said bedrooms) you wonder if she passed out on the lawn or something. You and Julie start descending down the stairs. “I dunno, while I’ve certainly passed out on the lawn, Donna has never gotten that bad. She’s more likely to be in the basement.” “Well I guess you could look outside and I could look down there for my sister…” Suddenly Johnny interrupts. “Excuse me. Sorry for overhearing, but did you say you were looking for Donna?” “Yes, she’s my sister.” You say. “Oh…so you must be Suzy. Heard her talk about you last night.” “Nothing good I’m sure. You know where she is?” you say. “Unfortunately I don’t. I mean I remember seeing her leave with a couple of guys and another girl last night, but I didn’t know them either. I was under the impression they were going out to get more beer or drugs or something, but they never came back.” You shake your head and sigh. “Great, she probably got herself fucking arrested by the cops last night.” You say. “Well we don’t know that.” Julie remarks. “Maybe. I guess I’ll know if I get a call from the police station. Whatever, I know she’s like a cat and always lands on her feet, so I can talk to her later.” “You sure you don’t want to still look around the house for her?” “Well if she’s here, she’ll probably turn up while I’m cleaning this place a bit.” “Okay, well I’m heading back upstairs to get those assholes out of my bed and clean up whatever mess is up there.” Julie heads back upstairs nodding to Johnny who is now picking up garbage by hand and putting it in a bag. He nods to you briefly and continues his work. Well mind numbing clean up work should certainly help keep your mind off Bobby (and the possibility of Donna being in jail) you’re just wondering if you should help Julie or Johnny. > You help Johnny You decide that keeping a bit of distance from Julie might be for the best for now. After last night you don’t want her to think you’re lingering around her because there is something there between you two. Johnny seems a bit odd, but then you’re certainly used to odd people. You grab a trash bag and start cleaning up left over beer cans. “Thanks, but you don’t need to help me. Your girlfriend probably could use the help more than I do.” Johnny says. “Well I do live here now, so it’s gotta get clean or I’m living in a pig pen! And Julie isn’t my girlfriend.” You say. “Oh. Sorry, I just assumed that you two coming out of the same room together…” “Eh, long story. But she’s just my friend and I consoled her on a troubling topic. It got emotional and she slept in my room, though I’m fairly certain Julie wishes it had gone farther.” “Hm, I see. Well your sister didn’t mention you had a girlfriend when she spoke about you last night, so I was sort of wondering.” “Wow, I must’ve really pissed my sister off yesterday if she was talking about me to a stranger. Would’ve thought she would’ve been focusing on other things during a party. What exactly did she say?” “Are you sure you want to know?” Johnny asks. “It probably isn’t going to be anything I haven’t already heard before from her, so go ahead.” “Well…she was sort of drunk when she started talking to me. I was actually surprised, since a girl like her doesn’t normally just go up and talk to a guy like me, well at least not when there are other guys around. Anyway, she at first propositioned me to go into the basement with her. When I declined, she got more hostile and started calling me a faggot and said I didn’t know how to have fun just like her sister Suzy.” “And that’s when she went on a tirade?” “Yeah, I was about to leave her since it isn’t my idea of a good time to be ranted at and insulted, but she grabbed my arm and practically forced me to listen. She went on about you being good and perfect and never doing anything wrong. Basically she said all this stuff about you as if they were supposed to be bad things, but I didn’t see it. I guess that just made her even madder so she eventually told me to fuck off and later on I saw her leave with that group I mentioned earlier.” “Yeah sounds like her. (Sigh) I jut hope she hasn’t gone and done anything more stupid than usual. Family. What can ya do?” you say. “Heh, don’t need to tell me. I had an older sister just like your younger one. Partied all the time, lot of sex, lot of drugs, pissed my mom off something fierce when we were still living with her.” Johnny says continuing to pick up cans and placing them in a bag. “Oh I got an older sister too, but she’s even worse than Donna.” “Party girl too huh?” “No, she’s just a fucking sadistic bully. Had to put up with her abuse for years.” “Your older sister sounds like my mother.” While the tone of his voice reflects no anger though, you notice when Johnny mentions that, his hand crushes one of the beer cans he has. He looks at it briefly and then tosses it in the bag. You wonder if you should stop talking altogether, but Johnny has already noticed that you’ve been staring at what he’s done. “Sorry, bad memories. I didn’t meant to scare you there.” Johnny says. “I wasn’t scared, just more surprised. We can get off the topic of families.” “Heh, actually I was thinking we were kind of bonding a bit. Sounds like both of us come from fucked up families. Probably made us stronger right?” “I dunno. I mean I suppose I’ve survived, not sure if that’s the same thing. I mean this is like the second day I’ve spent away from home. I only moved out yesterday and only then due to being under duress from my sister Kelly. I’ve always been a bit introverted and spent most of my life avoiding the outside world.” “Eh, you’re not missing much. To be honest, I’m almost jealous you managed to do it for so long. I’m a bit of an introvert too, but occasionally I to mix with the crowd as it were. Just to see if I feel any different. Hence one of the reasons why I came to your friend’s party last night.” “And?” “And, I don’t feel any different. Just like I figured. It’s like I spoke with several other people last night even before your sister and everyone was just…dull…boring…like they were just empty shells. Like they weren’t even real people to me. To be quite honest before your sister started complaining about you to me, I was getting bored and nearly left the party.” Johnny says as he motions over to a few of the sleeping lumps still in the living room. “What about your friend that you came with?” “Oh him? I came here independently of him. Hell, he didn’t even show up. Really, he’s more of an acquaintance than a friend anyway…” Johnny’s eyes sort of glaze over when he says this and he breaks in the middle of his sentence. Almost like he’s in a different “place.” ‘ “Johnny?” you say. “Hrm? Sorry, I just kind of spaced out there. Anyway as I was saying, you haven’t missed much by not being a social butterfly, I think this group here is proof of that. And as far as not being strong, you’re stronger than you think. Despite coming from a dysfunctional family, you haven’t succumbed to drug and sex filled escapism like your younger sister and you obviously haven’t grown to become a mean bully like your older sister. The fact that you told me you spent the night consoling your best friend rather than indulging in some sort of meaningless hedonistic pleasure tells me that you’re a kind and gentle soul. That’s a rarity in this shitty world.” You have to admit, as strange as this Johnny is, you do get the sense he’s being genuine when he says this to you. “Well thank you Johnny.” You say. Just as you’re about to converse more with him, you hear some loud noise coming from the second floor. You hear a man’s voice and a female voice, and then a very familiar voice. Sounds like Julie and it sounds like she’s gone back to distracting herself from last night’s concerns. “Oh yes! Ohhhh yeah! Give it to me daddy!” you hear Julie scream. A little disturbing choice of words considering what you both talked about last night. Some of the people sleeping in the living room are even awakened by this. One of them looks at his watch and immediately runs out the front door like he’s late for something. A couple of others return to sleep. “Sounds like your friend is feeling better.” Johnny says a little disdainfully. “Mm, well she always was one to get over things quickly. Well looks like we’re all done in this room anyway.” “Yeah, hey why don’t you take a break? I mean obviously we don’t need to clean this place spotlessly. Your friend Julie is just going to have another party tonight right?” Johnny says. “True. Yeah, I guess you’re right. No point in me cleaning especially if Julie isn’t even going to be helping anymore, but what about you?” you ask. “Me? Well I’m just going to dump out the trash and maybe pick up a few more of the bottles in the kitchen on the way. I’ll probably also take another pursue down in the basement. It was a mess down there, but I think I cleaned most of it. Nearly tripped on a bad step down there though. Anyway then I guess I’ll head home, I need the sleep anyway seeing as I haven’t been yet.” “You didn’t sleep here?” “Nope. I’ve been awake the whole time, but I find I’m more of a night owl and don’t sleep much anyway.” “Well I understand that, but I’m just surprised you stayed. You told me you were getting bored with the party and were about to go home at one point.” “Ah, but I also mentioned that after your sister complained about you to me, my interest was increased.” Johnny says. You pause because you almost can’t believe what he’s implying. “Wait a minute. Are you saying you just stayed at the party through the night AND this morning just to meet me at some point? Just solely based on what my sister bitched about to you?” “What can I say? You sounded interesting and after speaking with you I can see I wasn’t wrong.” Johnny smiles and you smile with a nervous laugh. On one hand it’s a little stalkerish and combined with Johnny’s oddness, he’s starting to come off a lot creepier. On the other hand, in a strange way you’re sort of flattered. You always did attract the weird ones Suzy. “Wow…I’m not exactly sure what to say to that.” You say. “No need to say anything. The pleasure of speaking with you is all mine. Oh but one more thing, did you want me to get rid of these useless sloths still sleeping in the living room before I leave?” “Well, they’re probably just going to be here for tonight’s party, so might as well just leave ‘em I suppose. No need to trouble yourself.” “Okay then, as I said, it was nice talking with you Suzy.” “It was…interesting talking with you too Johnny.” You reply back and head towards your room as Johnny starts taking a couple of garbage bags to the kitchen. What a strange person. Even stranger is that your self-esteem has been a little boosted by Johnny’s stalkerish behavior. Before Johnny’s praising of you, in the back of your mind you were still a little upset about Bobby and starting to realize you were alone again. Not that you had any major problems with being alone and you’re certainly used to it, but it still was nice to have a boyfriend every now and then. After Johnny going on about how most people suck and putting you on a minor pedestal you don’t feel as bad anymore about Bobby. Screw him right? He’s the one missing out. You enter your room and lock your door fully content on tuning out the rest of the world like you always do. You go back to fucking around on the Internet, playing games and when the mood strikes you, getting out your mechanical “boyfriend” who never disappoints you. Hours pass… Eventually the silence from outside your door becomes less silent. Looks like Julie’s party is getting started or at least getting louder. You don’t really pay it too much mind as you pretty much managed to block it somewhat yesterday, but then you get a knock on the door. “Julie?” you ask instinctively. “Um, no it’s me.” A familiar voice answers. “Johnny?” you say and then slowly get up to answer the door. You open it up a little and see Johnny standing before you (Along with some party people passing by in the hallway). “Hi again.” He says with a brief smile. “What are you doing here? Did you even go home?” you ask. “Oh yeah, I did, but just as I was finishing up in the kitchen, your friend Julie had come in to get some more booze. She mentioned that she appreciated my cleaning up and invited me back for tonight’s party. So I came back.” “Really?” “Well technically she also invited me to come join her and the couple up in her room, but I declined as you might aspect. Not an orgy guy.” “Yeah, which is why I’m really wondering why you came back at all. I mean I have to live here, but this really isn’t your thing. You said as much earlier today.” “I know what I said…but I also said…” Johnny’s expression becomes… not quite flustered, not quite angry, but more like he’s having a hard time and you’ve just put him on the spot. “(Sigh) Look. This is really difficult for me. I’m probably coming off like a creepy stalker and god knows you probably get a lot of guys hitting on you…but I like you. I know that sounds like third grade shit, but there it is. I really like you and I’d like to get to know you better. That’s why I came back tonight.” Oddly that was honest enough to actually be kind of charming. Lot better than the “Show us your tits” pick up line that you’ve heard before. Then again, Johnny is still pretty damn weird and much like how you didn’t want to lead on Julie; you don’t necessarily want to lead Johnny on either. > You invite Johnny in What the hell, you weren’t doing anything important with your time and you were thinking about making the first move yourself earlier today. “Johnny, could you hold on one moment?” you ask. “Um, okay.” He replies. You close the door again and hastily clean up your room a bit just so you don’t have your underwear just lying around, let alone your vibrator. Feeling that your room and yourself are presentable, you open the door. “Come on in Johnny.” You say. “Wait, you’re inviting me into your room? Are you sure?” Johnny asks a bit surprised. “Well if we’re going to get to know each other better to see if we’ve got potential, then I’d rather do it in here one on one rather than out there with drunks possibly butting into our conversation. Besides, if I leave this room, its very well possible people will wander in and have sex in it.” Johnny chuckles a bit at your remark as he walks in. “Well I suppose all that’s true, but…” You make your first move by putting your arms around Johnny’s shoulders and kissing Johnny squarely on the lips. He’s really surprised. To be quite honest, you’re a little surprised at yourself as well since you aren’t usually the forward type, but maybe Julie’s party spirit has gotten a hold of you a little bit along with wanting to put more distance between yourself and any more lingering feelings you might have for Bobby. Besides, you get the impression for all his praising and stalkerish behavior; Johnny would still be too shy to make the first move. Johnny’s reaction says that your instinct about that was entirely correct. He pulls away fairly quickly after you’re finished, he blushes a bit and then gives you a weird stare. “What? I thought we were going to get to know each other.” You say. “I…I don’t think I’m ready for this.” Johnny remarks and starts backing away. “Wait, hold on. We weren’t going to have sex! We don’t even have to kiss anymore, I was just…” Before you can even finish, Johnny’s already run out the door. “Great, Suzy. Some seductress you are. (Sigh)” you say to yourself and close your door. In any case, you go back to your laptop to help shut yourself out from the real world again. which wouldn’t be that bad, but Johnny just flat out running away from you doesn’t exactly put you in that great of a mood. You got dumped by a murderer and now you’ve run off a stalker. What does that say about you? Oh well at least things with batteries don’t judge. A couple hours later you get another knock on the door. “Yes?” you ask. “Suzy, it’s me Johnny. I need to talk.” You’re not exactly sure if this is going to be a good idea, but you decide to at least hear him out. “(Sigh) Hold on.” You say and get up to open the door. Johnny stands before you wearing a jacket and looking slightly more disheveled from the last time. “Well? Are you coming in, I don’t feel like keeping the door open for all the partying assholes to peer into.” You ask. Johnny enters the room and you shut the door and walk back to your sofa. “Suzy, I just want to apologize. I’ve been thinking about this long and hard and I realize that I did the wrong thing.” Johnny says pacing back and forth, rubbing his hands through hair. “Well, maybe I did come on a little strong. I suppose if the roles had been reversed I would’ve run away as well.” “No, stop talking I need to get all this out. What I’m trying to say is that I obviously have wasted my time and that I shouldn’t have pursued you. I guess I just built you up in my head so much that I…dunno…I always do this…fuck! Shit! WHY!?!” Johnny says and hits himself in the head a couple times. He’s starting to worry you. “Hey Johnny, you don’t need to…” “SHUT THE FUCK UP WHORE!” Johnny screams and before you even can react he’s already run up and physically assaulted you. You try to scream out, but punches you your face and another tight grip around your throat prevent that from happening. The loud music from the party and indifference of the shallow partiers from any potential noise you could’ve made probably would’ve been lost to those two factors anyway. When you’re nearly unconscious and so dazed that you can no longer fight back, Johnny ceases his punches and reaches for something inside his jacket. “This is going to be quick, because even though you’re a whore like the rest…I still like you.” Johnny whispers. “I…really wish this could’ve worked out…you were so beautiful…” Your last feeling is the blade of a sharp knife slitting your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide that keeping a bit of distance from Julie might be for the best for now. After last night you don’t want her to think you’re lingering around her because there is something there between you two. Johnny seems a bit odd, but then you’re certainly used to odd people. You grab a trash bag and start cleaning up left over beer cans. “Thanks, but you don’t need to help me. Your girlfriend probably could use the help more than I do.” Johnny says. “Well I do live here now, so it’s gotta get clean or I’m living in a pig pen! And Julie isn’t my girlfriend.” You say. “Oh. Sorry, I just assumed that you two coming out of the same room together…” “Eh, long story. But she’s just my friend and I consoled her on a troubling topic. It got emotional and she slept in my room, though I’m fairly certain Julie wishes it had gone farther.” “Hm, I see. Well your sister didn’t mention you had a girlfriend when she spoke about you last night, so I was sort of wondering.” “Wow, I must’ve really pissed my sister off yesterday if she was talking about me to a stranger. Would’ve thought she would’ve been focusing on other things during a party. What exactly did she say?” “Are you sure you want to know?” Johnny asks. “It probably isn’t going to be anything I haven’t already heard before from her, so go ahead.” “Well…she was sort of drunk when she started talking to me. I was actually surprised, since a girl like her doesn’t normally just go up and talk to a guy like me, well at least not when there are other guys around. Anyway, she at first propositioned me to go into the basement with her. When I declined, she got more hostile and started calling me a faggot and said I didn’t know how to have fun just like her sister Suzy.” “And that’s when she went on a tirade?” “Yeah, I was about to leave her since it isn’t my idea of a good time to be ranted at and insulted, but she grabbed my arm and practically forced me to listen. She went on about you being good and perfect and never doing anything wrong. Basically she said all this stuff about you as if they were supposed to be bad things, but I didn’t see it. I guess that just made her even madder so she eventually told me to fuck off and later on I saw her leave with that group I mentioned earlier.” “Yeah sounds like her. (Sigh) I jut hope she hasn’t gone and done anything more stupid than usual. Family. What can ya do?” you say. “Heh, don’t need to tell me. I had an older sister just like your younger one. Partied all the time, lot of sex, lot of drugs, pissed my mom off something fierce when we were still living with her.” Johnny says continuing to pick up cans and placing them in a bag. “Oh I got an older sister too, but she’s even worse than Donna.” “Party girl too huh?” “No, she’s just a fucking sadistic bully. Had to put up with her abuse for years.” “Your older sister sounds like my mother.” While the tone of his voice reflects no anger though, you notice when Johnny mentions that, his hand crushes one of the beer cans he has. He looks at it briefly and then tosses it in the bag. You wonder if you should stop talking altogether, but Johnny has already noticed that you’ve been staring at what he’s done. “Sorry, bad memories. I didn’t meant to scare you there.” Johnny says. “I wasn’t scared, just more surprised. We can get off the topic of families.” “Heh, actually I was thinking we were kind of bonding a bit. Sounds like both of us come from fucked up families. Probably made us stronger right?” “I dunno. I mean I suppose I’ve survived, not sure if that’s the same thing. I mean this is like the second day I’ve spent away from home. I only moved out yesterday and only then due to being under duress from my sister Kelly. I’ve always been a bit introverted and spent most of my life avoiding the outside world.” “Eh, you’re not missing much. To be honest, I’m almost jealous you managed to do it for so long. I’m a bit of an introvert too, but occasionally I to mix with the crowd as it were. Just to see if I feel any different. Hence one of the reasons why I came to your friend’s party last night.” “And?” “And, I don’t feel any different. Just like I figured. It’s like I spoke with several other people last night even before your sister and everyone was just…dull…boring…like they were just empty shells. Like they weren’t even real people to me. To be quite honest before your sister started complaining about you to me, I was getting bored and nearly left the party.” Johnny says as he motions over to a few of the sleeping lumps still in the living room. “What about your friend that you came with?” “Oh him? I came here independently of him. Hell, he didn’t even show up. Really, he’s more of an acquaintance than a friend anyway…” Johnny’s eyes sort of glaze over when he says this and he breaks in the middle of his sentence. Almost like he’s in a different “place.” ‘ “Johnny?” you say. “Hrm? Sorry, I just kind of spaced out there. Anyway as I was saying, you haven’t missed much by not being a social butterfly, I think this group here is proof of that. And as far as not being strong, you’re stronger than you think. Despite coming from a dysfunctional family, you haven’t succumbed to drug and sex filled escapism like your younger sister and you obviously haven’t grown to become a mean bully like your older sister. The fact that you told me you spent the night consoling your best friend rather than indulging in some sort of meaningless hedonistic pleasure tells me that you’re a kind and gentle soul. That’s a rarity in this shitty world.” You have to admit, as strange as this Johnny is, you do get the sense he’s being genuine when he says this to you. “Well thank you Johnny.” You say. Just as you’re about to converse more with him, you hear some loud noise coming from the second floor. You hear a man’s voice and a female voice, and then a very familiar voice. Sounds like Julie and it sounds like she’s gone back to distracting herself from last night’s concerns. “Oh yes! Ohhhh yeah! Give it to me daddy!” you hear Julie scream. A little disturbing choice of words considering what you both talked about last night. Some of the people sleeping in the living room are even awakened by this. One of them looks at his watch and immediately runs out the front door like he’s late for something. A couple of others return to sleep. “Sounds like your friend is feeling better.” Johnny says a little disdainfully. “Mm, well she always was one to get over things quickly. Well looks like we’re all done in this room anyway.” “Yeah, hey why don’t you take a break? I mean obviously we don’t need to clean this place spotlessly. Your friend Julie is just going to have another party tonight right?” Johnny says. “True. Yeah, I guess you’re right. No point in me cleaning especially if Julie isn’t even going to be helping anymore, but what about you?” you ask. “Me? Well I’m just going to dump out the trash and maybe pick up a few more of the bottles in the kitchen on the way. I’ll probably also take another pursue down in the basement. It was a mess down there, but I think I cleaned most of it. Nearly tripped on a bad step down there though. Anyway then I guess I’ll head home, I need the sleep anyway seeing as I haven’t been yet.” “You didn’t sleep here?” “Nope. I’ve been awake the whole time, but I find I’m more of a night owl and don’t sleep much anyway.” “Well I understand that, but I’m just surprised you stayed. You told me you were getting bored with the party and were about to go home at one point.” “Ah, but I also mentioned that after your sister complained about you to me, my interest was increased.” Johnny says. You pause because you almost can’t believe what he’s implying. “Wait a minute. Are you saying you just stayed at the party through the night AND this morning just to meet me at some point? Just solely based on what my sister bitched about to you?” “What can I say? You sounded interesting and after speaking with you I can see I wasn’t wrong.” Johnny smiles and you smile with a nervous laugh. On one hand it’s a little stalkerish and combined with Johnny’s oddness, he’s starting to come off a lot creepier. On the other hand, in a strange way you’re sort of flattered. You always did attract the weird ones Suzy. “Wow…I’m not exactly sure what to say to that.” You say. “No need to say anything. The pleasure of speaking with you is all mine. Oh but one more thing, did you want me to get rid of these useless sloths still sleeping in the living room before I leave?” “Well, they’re probably just going to be here for tonight’s party, so might as well just leave ‘em I suppose. No need to trouble yourself.” “Okay then, as I said, it was nice talking with you Suzy.” “It was…interesting talking with you too Johnny.” You reply back and head towards your room as Johnny starts taking a couple of garbage bags to the kitchen. What a strange person. Even stranger is that your self-esteem has been a little boosted by Johnny’s stalkerish behavior. Before Johnny’s praising of you, in the back of your mind you were still a little upset about Bobby and starting to realize you were alone again. Not that you had any major problems with being alone and you’re certainly used to it, but it still was nice to have a boyfriend every now and then. After Johnny going on about how most people suck and putting you on a minor pedestal you don’t feel as bad anymore about Bobby. Screw him right? He’s the one missing out. You enter your room and lock your door fully content on tuning out the rest of the world like you always do. You go back to fucking around on the Internet, playing games and when the mood strikes you, getting out your mechanical “boyfriend” who never disappoints you. Hours pass… Eventually the silence from outside your door becomes less silent. Looks like Julie’s party is getting started or at least getting louder. You don’t really pay it too much mind as you pretty much managed to block it somewhat yesterday, but then you get a knock on the door. “Julie?” you ask instinctively. “Um, no it’s me.” A familiar voice answers. “Johnny?” you say and then slowly get up to answer the door. You open it up a little and see Johnny standing before you (Along with some party people passing by in the hallway). “Hi again.” He says with a brief smile. “What are you doing here? Did you even go home?” you ask. “Oh yeah, I did, but just as I was finishing up in the kitchen, your friend Julie had come in to get some more booze. She mentioned that she appreciated my cleaning up and invited me back for tonight’s party. So I came back.” “Really?” “Well technically she also invited me to come join her and the couple up in her room, but I declined as you might aspect. Not an orgy guy.” “Yeah, which is why I’m really wondering why you came back at all. I mean I have to live here, but this really isn’t your thing. You said as much earlier today.” “I know what I said…but I also said…” Johnny’s expression becomes… not quite flustered, not quite angry, but more like he’s having a hard time and you’ve just put him on the spot. “(Sigh) Look. This is really difficult for me. I’m probably coming off like a creepy stalker and god knows you probably get a lot of guys hitting on you…but I like you. I know that sounds like third grade shit, but there it is. I really like you and I’d like to get to know you better. That’s why I came back tonight.” Oddly that was honest enough to actually be kind of charming. Lot better than the “Show us your tits” pick up line that you’ve heard before. Then again, Johnny is still pretty damn weird and much like how you didn’t want to lead on Julie; you don’t necessarily want to lead Johnny on either. > You decline As charmingly strange as Johnny’s awkwardness is you’re still not quite ready to go jumping into a relationship with another guy. “That’s sweet Johnny. Really it is. It’s just… I’m not looking for another relationship right now. I just broke up with my boyfriend and I think I need to be by myself for a while.” You say. “Boyfriend? I see. I suppose a pretty girl like you would have a lot of them.” Johnny says. You notice his tone sort of becomes “flat” when he says this. “Pfft hardly. He was my first and only one.” You say. And as quickly as his demeanor changed before, it changes AGAIN just as quickly. Before you got the impression he was almost pissed upon hearing you even HAD a boyfriend despite the fact he was your ex. After your additional information, it’s almost like he’s perked up again. “Ah, okay…I understand. First love and lost. Been there before. Say no more, I’ll leave you be. It was a long shot anyway.” Just as Johnny is about to leave, you sort of feel like you should say something helpful. “Johnny?” “Yes, Suzy?” “You’re a good guy Johnny, and I’m sure there’s some girl out there for you.” “I know, but she probably killed herself when she found out I was the guy for her.” Johnny says with a small chuckle. “Anyway, thank you for being upfront and trying to be encouraging. I must say though, whoever your ex was, he must’ve been an idiot to let you get away.” You watch as Johnny disappears into the crowd and you shut your door. Having dealt with your momentary break up of your usual routine, you briefly check your phone for the time and to see if maybe your sister tried to call (You still think she probably got hauled in by the cops) but nobody has called. Having little else to do, you go back to what you were doing before. Hours pass and you start to get hungry which unfortunately means you’re going to have to brave going out there and raiding the kitchen assuming there’s even anything in there. You exit your room and find that the party is still as lively as ever. Nobody pays too much attention to you as you creep through the crowd. The kitchen is a complete wreck. You don’t exactly know what went on in here, but there is some guy lying face down on a broken kitchen table. His head is bleeding and there are several broken beer bottles all over the floor. You almost hesitate to step inside the room, though there are a couple of other people just standing around in the kitchen drinking as if nothing was wrong. “Jesus Christ.” You say. “Does that guy need an ambulance?” you ask. Eventually one of the people in the kitchen realizes you were asking them. “Hrm? Oh him? Yeah he’s fine. Just got drunk, got into a fight and then well as you can see he wasn’t the winner. He does this all the time.” A girl says in a bored tone. “Yeah well I’d appreciate it, if he and whoever else was involved hadn’t wrecked the goddamn kitchen in the process!” “What’s the big deal and what concern is it of yours? It’s Julie’s kitchen and she won’t care.” “I happen to live here so it actually is somewhat of my concern, and where is Julie anyway?” “I dunno. Probably getting fucked as usual. Still don’t know why you’re worried about it. Besides some weird guy said he was getting something to clean up the mess anyway.” The girl says and goes back to talking with the guy she was previously talking to. “Weird guy?” you say to yourself. “Hey, Suzy.” You turn around and see Johnny behind you with a broom, a dustpan and some sort of cleaning product. “Johnny, what are you still doing…wait, have you been lingering all night around hoping that I might come out of my room?” Johnny looks away a bit as if you hit the nail on the head. “Well…actually at first I was kind of hoping that maybe you’d change your mind and come running out of your room to find me. A silly storybook fantasy really…but then after about an hour of indulging in that delusion I realized I needed to accept reality. I was going to leave, but then I suddenly got offered a video game controller from a guy that stopped playing, so I started playing. I ended up getting sort of wrapped up in the game, shooting people in the face, murdering hookers and such. Sort of fun, and made me feel better.” Johnny passes you by and starts sweeping up broken glass and continues talking. “After my escapism with virtual violence then I decided to go home, but then I heard about a fight going on in the kitchen so I decided to be a spectator, but by the time I got here, it was already over and the winner went out the back door. I didn’t think it was right to just leave your kitchen like this even if nobody else cared, so I tried to find your friend Julie because I didn’t want to bother you again since you made your feelings quite clear to me and I didn’t want to look like a stalker.” “A little late for that, Johnny.” You say. “Heh, well anyway I couldn’t find her. I asked around and someone said she left wit ha couple guys. So not knowing what else to do, I just decided to clean up the mess myself before I left.” “Wait a minute, are you telling me Julie isn’t here for her own fucking party?” “Uh, no it appears she isn’t.” It’s one thing to have to put up with the parties when she’s actually here, but if she’s not even going to be here then why the hell do you have to still put up with it? So much for Julie’s sob story about going to turn over a new leaf after your talk. You’re annoyed and to top it off you’re still really hungry. “Goddamnit all I wanted to do is get some food from the fucking kitchen…” you say. “Did you want me to order a pizza for you?” “I don’t have any money.” “So? I got some money, I’ll be happy to buy you a pizza, I’ll get you a drink too.” Actually you don’t have anything against Johnny’s offer, but you’re hesitant to accept. “Johnny, I’ll accept your offer, BUT I don’t want YOU to get it in your head that I owe you something because of it.” “Thought never crossed my mind.” Johnny says. He doesn’t even seem hurt by your implication. “Okay. Sorry, I got a little authoritative there.” “No, no, I get it. It’s smart for you to lay that out there immediately. Anyway I’ll call up the place and I’ll get it to you when it’s here. In the meantime you can go back and relax in your room if you wish.” Johnny says continuing to sweep. “Oh. Um okay. Thanks. Hey, do you think we should call an ambulance for that guy on the floor?” you ask Johnny. “Him? Nah, he’s fine. I actually checked him soon after I came in here. Really I would’ve rolled him over on his back, but with all the broken glass on the floor I probably would’ve done more harm. Anyway I got this, don’t worry.” Johnny says. Well he might be a weird guy who seems creepy at times and is definitely stalking you a bit, but at least he’s helpful which is more that can be said for Julie who has seemingly just abandoned her own party. You try to call her up, but you get no answer, but you weren’t really expecting one anyway. Still it is weird that she left. Julie’s always been irresponsible, but she’s like you in that she barely ever leaves the house. After all, why would she go get fucked, drunk and high elsewhere when she can do it right here? In any case, she’ll probably be back, and you go back to wasting your time on the Internet. After a half hour passes and there’s a knock on the door. “Pizza delivery.” Johnny says. “Okay.” You answer and get up to open the door. “Here you go. I ordered a standard pepperoni and cheese pizza and got you Coke. Hope that’s okay, since I forgot to ask what you like.” “It’s fine. Thank you.” “Alright then, I’ll leave you be.” Johnny says starting to leave. You don’t know what it is about this guy but… “Hey Johnny, did you want some pizza?” “Huh? Oh, nah. I’m good. I ate a little earlier. I don’t tend to eat much anyway.” “Hm, don’t eat much, don’t sleep much. You sure you’re human?” you half joke. This causes an unusual guffaw of laughter that you didn’t expect from him. “I sometimes wonder that myself.” He says still chuckling. “Enjoy the rest of your evening Suzy.” Johnny once again disappears into the crowd in the living room and you lock your door. The rest of your night is pretty much eating your pizza, drinking your coke, taking a quick shower and then eventually settling in for the night. You have no idea if the part is still going on outside, but the noise has decreased a little, so maybe it’s starting to wind down. Well at least you don’t need to share your bed this time. > Next day… WEDNESDAY You wake up to the hum of a vacuum passing the outside your door. You shake your head, because you know who that probably is. You check your phone for the time and see that you’ve slept through the morning as usual and nobody has called. As you go through your bathroom routine of brushing your teeth and such, you ponder on whether or not you should check how trashed the house is or just stay in your room and not deal with it. Ultimately you decide to check despite not really wanting to. Besides Johnny is obviously out there and you’re going to have to do something about him. You exit your room and find that the hallway is fairly clean and the hum of the vacuum is now coming from the living room. “At it again are you Johnny?” you say walking into the living room. The living room is spotless and you notice that unlike the last time you don’t see anyone flopped out on the floor or sofa. “Hi Suzy, did you sleep well last night?” Johnny asks while turning off the vacuum. “Yeah. So did Julie ever come back?” “Nope, I never saw her again. Guess she might’ve stayed the night somewhere else.” “(Sigh) I see. Is there anyone else here?” “Nope, you’ll be pleased to know that I eventually managed to kick everyone out of the house, of course some just left anyway, but I figured you’d be glad to not have your home resemble a flophouse when you woke up.” “Wait, so are you telling me there’s nobody else here?” “Nope, except me of course.” That makes you feel a little uneasy. “Uh…okay…” you say and start backing away a bit. You briefly wonder how fast you could run to the back door and escape and then you wonder if you could run into your room and grab that pistol that’s still in Julie’s dad’s desk. Johnny already senses your distress. “Shit. I’ve done it again. I’ve made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry Suzy, I just…I dunno. I don’t mean to be creepy, I just wanted to make things nice for you.” Johnny says and actually starts walking backwards from you in an effort to put you more at ease. “Johnny, I know you mean well and I know that you like me, but like I said, I’m just not ready for anyone right now.” “I know, I know, I know you said so before…but how can I win your heart if I don’t continue to try? Couldn’t we at least just talk more? I mean we really haven’t gotten to talk a lot one on one with just us around.” Johnny says. “Johnny…” you start to say, but then you’re interrupted from something loud outside. “What the hell…” Johnny says and walks over to one of the windows to peek. “Holy shit, there’s a bunch of military guys, a couple of military trucks and even an A.P.C. coming down the street!” Johnny remarks. At first you can’t believe him, but that soon disappears when a loudspeaker is heard. “ATTENTION! THIS TOWN IS UNDER MARSHAL LAW AND THIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS NOW UNDER WATCH BY THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD. A GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE WILL SOON VISIT ALL OF YOU AND ASSIST IN ANYTHING THAT YOU MAY NEED DURING THIS STATE OF EMERGENCY. STAY IN YOUR HOMES. DO NOT COME OUT FOR ANY REASON. FAILURE TO DO SO MAY RESULT IN THE USE OF LETHAL FORCE.” Well that is certainly something you didn’t expect. You also don’t know what you’re going to do. Why is this town under marshal law? What the hell is going on? While you’re not sure of why this is happening, Johnny has some thoughts on the matter though. “Wow, I really hope this isn’t something serious, like some biological weapon or something…but then I’ve been watching the news while vacuuming and there’s been no emergency broadcast about such a thing or anything. Just those Ground Zero infomercials, which have been increasing as of late.” Johnny turns back to you. “Well anyway, I suppose one upside to all this. With us being stuck inside, we can talk and get to know each other better like I was suggesting before.” Johnny remarks. While Johnny has been just slightly on the side of creepy there actually is no proof that he isn’t just someone that lacks proper social skills and is a bit head over heels for you. And considering your last boyfriend was going around sacrificing people and could be very outwardly charming and charismatic, the way someone acts isn’t necessarily who they really are deep down inside. Maybe if you did get to know Johnny a bit better, you might feel different. Not ready to spread your legs different, but if you like what you hear he might actually make that step towards “winning your heart” as he put it. (Something about that phrase sounded so quaint that it actually was endearing) “Oh…all right. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do at this point, but I’m warning you, don’t get the wrong impression. This isn’t a date or anything.” You say. “No, no, I got it. I just want a chance that’s all.” After you sit on the living room couch and motion that he sit in the chair you begin. “Okay then…well what should we talk about first? It isn’t like I’m usually that much of a conversationalist myself.” You say. “Well what do you like?” Johhny asks. A general question, but a perfectly reasonable one for getting straight to the point on wanting to know more about someone. The funny thing is there isn’t much about you to know. Since you don’t get out much, you don’t DO much. The only time you did get out a little more was when you were with Bobby, and you can’t very well talk about shit you did with your ex. So you mention hobbies such as watching movies, playing games, and reading shit on the Internet. (You leave out masturbation) Sounds like a pretty dull life to the average person, but Johnny doesn’t seem to care. “You don’t find what I said boring?” you ask. “Simple perhaps, but I wouldn’t say boring. Are you happy?” “Well I was happier when I could live in my basement and not have to deal with the rest of the world, and it would’ve been nicer to not have to put up with Kelly, but yeah I suppose I was happy just living like that.” “Then that’s all that matters. Me? I’ve been sort of drifting from place to place ever since I left home. To be honest it would be nice to have some place to call a permanent home, but something always happens and I end up having to move on again. As you might aspect I’ve had several lines of employment, I’m not rich but I suppose I at least know a little bit of everything to make a living.” “Sounds like you’ve had way more luck in that department at least. I’m flat broke and can’t even get a job. So why did you leave home in the first place?” “It was time. Really don’t want to go back either. Not fond of the memories… so hey did you hear from your sister? I mean did she call or leave a message or something?” Johnny asks, changing the topic. “Nope, and now with this marshal law thing going on, I’m a little concerned about her. Julie too. Who knows where the hell either of them are. I’m even wondering if I should call my brother Peter to see if things are all right with him, though I imagine he’s probably fine.” “You have a brother too? Wow, two sisters and a brother. You have a big family.” “I actually had an older brother Ben as well, but he died.” “Oh? Sorry to hear that. Should I ask how?” “He killed his family and then blew his brains out in our house.” You say. “Wait…what? Why?” Johnny says a bit off guard. “Well I wasn’t there for the final show, but he apparently thought the government was coming to get him and that it would be better if he killed his wife and son rather than they get captured and brainwashed. Something like that. He always was paranoid and just got worse as he got older.” “I see. And you say there was no truth to his stories about the government?” “Of course not.” “Are you sure? I mean just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean that they aren’t still trying to get you.” “Pretty sure if he was that much of a threat to the government they would’ve assassinated him long before he killed himself. And even if they were out to get him, there wasn’t any need for him to kill his wife and kid.” “Well I guess I can just see it from his point of view. He genuinely believed in his mind that the government was going to get him and seeing it as a losing battle and not wanting to lose those he loved to the enemy, his act of killing them was out of love. Kind of romantic really.” Johnny is so deadpan, you think he’s attempting some sort of dark humor, but you realize he’s being completely serious. Somehow you’re not really surprised. “…yeah well I’m just glad he didn’t love me then…” you remark. “I’m glad that’s the case too.” Johnny says with a smile. “So what about you? You said you had a mother and an older sister.” You ask. “Oh them. Eh, not much to tell I suppose. Like I said yesterday, your younger sister sounds very much like my older one, and your older sister sounds very much like my mother.” “You mother participated in illegal underground fight clubs and roller derby races?” “No. Wait, your sister really does all that?” Johnny asks. “Yeah, so what makes your mom so bad?” “Very domineering. Verbally abusive, sometimes physically. Emotionally too I guess.” “What about your father?” “Dunno, never knew him. Took off before I was born. My sister is only one year older than me, so she doesn’t remember him either. Just know that my mom hated his guts. Didn’t keep any pictures of him. What about yours?” “Eh, he was a travelling lightning rod salesman, so it was like he was never home. When mom died of the flesh-eating virus though he was practically home all the time and just gradually drank himself to death over the years. Still wasn’t really there for any of us.” Johnny nods and continues the conversation. “After hearing about your family…I’m starting to wonder if I really had it all that bad and perhaps I just think I did.” “What do you mean?” “Well like I said, my mother was very domineering, but I pretty much did what my mom said. I mean I hate to say I was a mama’s boy, but I didn’t really step out of line compared to my sister.” “Heh, sounds a little like me. Did pretty much what my mom told me too though she was the nicest one in my family. She probably was a little too sheltering of me though.” You go on a bit more about your mother since you’re actually enjoying remembering the good times you did have with her. Johnny listens intently. Most of the time he looks like he’s displaying happiness because you’re mentioning positive memories, but sometimes you catch a glimpse of him looking away from you as if he’s in another place. “She sounds like a very nice person and I can see where you get your kind qualities from. Sorry to hear that she died in such an awful way…just yet another example of how you’ve overcome so much hardship in your life.” Now Johnny looks as if he’s completely gone to another place. He stares downward vacantly, if he was staring in your direction, you’d feel like he would be staring through you. “Johnny? Johnny? You with me?” you say. Takes him a few moments, but eventually he answers. “I’m not feeling…myself… I should go.” “What? Go? Where are you going to go? Are you sick?” Once again Johnny doesn’t answer right away. “Yes.” He answers. The monotone voice he answers with, isn’t exactly relaxing and you get the strong impression when he acknowledged that he’s sick, he didn’t mean physically. He starts to get up, and he wobbles a bit. At first you think maybe he is physically sick, but then he also said he was tired. Considering he was cleaning up earlier, he probably never went home and stayed up all night again. “Johnny you can’t go out there, especially in your condition. The National Guard is out there, remember?” “I’m not worried about some weekend warriors, I can be stealthy when I want to be. I’m just glad you gave me a chance Suzy, but I fear I’ve wasted your time. I’m sorry.” Johnny says and then attempts to walk out the front door, but his balance isn’t the best. You aren’t sure what’s going on with Johnny right now, but it’s even weirder than usual. > You let him leave As much you don’t necessarily relish the idea of possibly sending a man to his death, he’s not your responsibility and it’s already weird he’s been sticking around when there isn’t anyone else here maybe it would be best if you let him leave especially if he’s implying that he’s mentally ill. Besides if he claims he can sneak past the National Guard, then who are you to disbelieve him. “Okay, but you probably should go out the backdoor at least.” You say. “Yeah, good idea. You’re so thoughtful to look out for my well being. I just wish…things could’ve been different…” Johhny says and starts stumbling back towards the kitchen. You follow Johnny just to make sure he doesn’t fall or something similar. When you reach the kitchen you’re impressed with how clean it is. You’d never know there was a drunk fool lying on a broken table yesterday. “How the hell did you get this so clean?” you ask. “Oh, I’m very (yawn) good at cleaning. Always have been. There’s also some pizza and another drink for you in the fridge. I got an (yawn) extra one yesterday in case you got hungry today. Don’t worry, I made sure nobody touched it.” “Wow Johnny, that was pretty thoughtful. Thank you.” “No problem. I just hope someone will be as good to you as you deserve. Goodbye Suzy.” Johnny says and walks out the backdoor. You walk to the door and peer out the window to see if he’s going to jump the fence, but you see him walk around the house. You hope he isn’t going to try to go through the front gate again and is just going to cut through a neighbor’s yard. You run back to a couple of other rooms peering out windows, but you don’t see him anymore. You look out one of the front windows and he’s not out there either. He must’ve already made his escape you guess or at least you hope so. Lacking any other ideas of what to do at this particular time, you grab the pizza and drink from the fridge and head back to your room. You also attempt to call up Donna, Julie and even Peter to see if you can find out more information on their situations, but you get no answer from any of them. After passing some time on your laptop, you suddenly hear a loud banging on a door. Not the door to your room, but somewhere in the house. Upon exiting your room, it sounds like its coming from the front door. You remember that the loudspeaker from earlier did say there was going to be a government representative coming to visit the houses in the neighborhood. You head to the living room and look through the door window and see a well-dressed man and one soldier at the door. Since you get the impression the government will most likely just break the door down if you don’t answer the best thing you can do is be polite and accommodating. You grab the handle… “Greetings miss. I’m Mr. Zoll and I’ve been assigned to be the government representative for this area. May we come in?” Mr. Zoll asks, though it’s pretty obvious that this is more of a polite formality rather than asking permission. “Of course.” You answer and let Mr. Zoll and his soldier companion in. Mr. Zoll sits on the chair while his soldier buddy stands nearby and you sit on the other side of the couch and ask what all this is about. “My name’s Suzy, so how can we help exactly?” you ask. “Well, before we start I know this isn’t an ideal situation. You’re probably already concerned about what’s going on and why this town is under marshal law in the first place.” Mr. Zoll answers. “It is all a bit worrying.” You reply. “I’m sure. Unfortunately I can’t talk about it too much, however I’m sure you’re aware that this town has experienced a vast increase in criminal activity and rioting. More than your police force can handle. So until we get the situation under control again, we’re here to stay.” “Well I certainly can understand that. I haven’t experienced any criminal activity in this neighborhood though, well at least not to my knowledge.” “Hmm, yes this is one of the quieter ones. Some places I’m hearing about are pretty bad. Anyway I’d like to ask a few questions before deciding if we need to search this house further.” “Oh. Um, okay then. I have nothing to hide.” “Good glad to… hear it.” Mr. Zoll says. “So do you own this place?” “My friend Julie does.” “Oh? You’re not the owner? Where is this Julie?” “Uh, don’t know. She skipped out on her own party yesterday and never came back home. She’s a bit of a free spirit.” “Hmmm…” Mr. Zoll says and begins to write something down. “Why are you writing? Did I say something wrong? I mean not that I meant to say anything is wrong, that is. Everything is just fine! Ha ha.” Mr. Zoll’s staring and questioning makes you nervous and now Mr. Zoll is looking at you a bit mistrustfully. He thinks something is wrong and now that you’re shifting a bit uncomfortably, he starts to think you’re covering up something even though you aren’t! “Okay, you know what. I think it’ll be easier to just give a brief search of the house.” Mr. Zoll says standing up to say. “Um, all right then. I have nothing to hide as I said.” You say. Mr. Zoll tells his man to go take a quick look through all the rooms while the two of you stay in the living room. The soldier nods and follows his orders. He first goes upstairs and looks through. You half expect him to find a stash of drugs in Julie or Donna’s room, but he either doesn’t or that isn’t their primary concern. Next the soldier comes back downstairs and searches the ground floor, but once again finds nothing that is going to get you into trouble. “Searched everywhere sir, well except the basement.” The soldier says when he comes back. “Well you might as well search that too.” Mr. Zoll remarks. The soldier nods and heads back towards the hallway. You hear the door open to the basement and then a few footsteps going down and then nothing. You and Mr. Zoll sit in silence for a while. You don’t say anything, in fact you don’t even look in his direction for fear of giving Mr. Zoll an excuse to do something else which might not be as pleasant as a simple search. “Where the hell is he…shouldn’t be taking this long… Jacobs! Jacobs! Did you find anything?! Because if not, we’ve got other houses to go to!” Mr. Zoll shouts. There is no answer. Mr. Zoll calls again and still nothing. Mr. Zoll looks at you as if it’s your fault. “Is there someone down there?” Mr. Zoll asks. “What? No! I mean isn’t your man Jacobs the only one down there?” you say nervously. “That’s what I’m asking you…let’s go find out shall we?” Mr. Zoll says and then turns your nervousness into flat out fear by suddenly pulling out a pistol from his suit pocket. You put up your hands and attempt to say you have no idea what’s going on, but Mr. Zoll won’t hear it, he’s convinced you’re hiding someone in the basement and you’re going first down there. He also tells you to be completely quiet and not make any fuss or else he’s just going to shoot you on the spot and have a squad come in and burn this place to the ground. Meekly you comply and you head towards the basement with Mr. Zoll pointing his gun at you from behind. You reach the bottom of the stairs and you notice blood on the floor nearby and then suddenly a knife is plunged into your throat from an arm around the corner. You fall to the floor in what almost feels like slow motion as you gurgle your last words and breathe your last breaths. With your last vision from the cold basement floor, you think you see Johnny standing over you. You can’t hear him, but he’s obvious upset when he sees you. Then you see a burst of blood come out of his head and then you feel the heavy weight of his body collapse on top of you before the darkness envelopes your world.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY You wake up to the hum of a vacuum passing the outside your door. You shake your head, because you know who that probably is. You check your phone for the time and see that you’ve slept through the morning as usual and nobody has called. As you go through your bathroom routine of brushing your teeth and such, you ponder on whether or not you should check how trashed the house is or just stay in your room and not deal with it. Ultimately you decide to check despite not really wanting to. Besides Johnny is obviously out there and you’re going to have to do something about him. You exit your room and find that the hallway is fairly clean and the hum of the vacuum is now coming from the living room. “At it again are you Johnny?” you say walking into the living room. The living room is spotless and you notice that unlike the last time you don’t see anyone flopped out on the floor or sofa. “Hi Suzy, did you sleep well last night?” Johnny asks while turning off the vacuum. “Yeah. So did Julie ever come back?” “Nope, I never saw her again. Guess she might’ve stayed the night somewhere else.” “(Sigh) I see. Is there anyone else here?” “Nope, you’ll be pleased to know that I eventually managed to kick everyone out of the house, of course some just left anyway, but I figured you’d be glad to not have your home resemble a flophouse when you woke up.” “Wait, so are you telling me there’s nobody else here?” “Nope, except me of course.” That makes you feel a little uneasy. “Uh…okay…” you say and start backing away a bit. You briefly wonder how fast you could run to the back door and escape and then you wonder if you could run into your room and grab that pistol that’s still in Julie’s dad’s desk. Johnny already senses your distress. “Shit. I’ve done it again. I’ve made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry Suzy, I just…I dunno. I don’t mean to be creepy, I just wanted to make things nice for you.” Johnny says and actually starts walking backwards from you in an effort to put you more at ease. “Johnny, I know you mean well and I know that you like me, but like I said, I’m just not ready for anyone right now.” “I know, I know, I know you said so before…but how can I win your heart if I don’t continue to try? Couldn’t we at least just talk more? I mean we really haven’t gotten to talk a lot one on one with just us around.” Johnny says. “Johnny…” you start to say, but then you’re interrupted from something loud outside. “What the hell…” Johnny says and walks over to one of the windows to peek. “Holy shit, there’s a bunch of military guys, a couple of military trucks and even an A.P.C. coming down the street!” Johnny remarks. At first you can’t believe him, but that soon disappears when a loudspeaker is heard. “ATTENTION! THIS TOWN IS UNDER MARSHAL LAW AND THIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS NOW UNDER WATCH BY THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD. A GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE WILL SOON VISIT ALL OF YOU AND ASSIST IN ANYTHING THAT YOU MAY NEED DURING THIS STATE OF EMERGENCY. STAY IN YOUR HOMES. DO NOT COME OUT FOR ANY REASON. FAILURE TO DO SO MAY RESULT IN THE USE OF LETHAL FORCE.” Well that is certainly something you didn’t expect. You also don’t know what you’re going to do. Why is this town under marshal law? What the hell is going on? While you’re not sure of why this is happening, Johnny has some thoughts on the matter though. “Wow, I really hope this isn’t something serious, like some biological weapon or something…but then I’ve been watching the news while vacuuming and there’s been no emergency broadcast about such a thing or anything. Just those Ground Zero infomercials, which have been increasing as of late.” Johnny turns back to you. “Well anyway, I suppose one upside to all this. With us being stuck inside, we can talk and get to know each other better like I was suggesting before.” Johnny remarks. While Johnny has been just slightly on the side of creepy there actually is no proof that he isn’t just someone that lacks proper social skills and is a bit head over heels for you. And considering your last boyfriend was going around sacrificing people and could be very outwardly charming and charismatic, the way someone acts isn’t necessarily who they really are deep down inside. Maybe if you did get to know Johnny a bit better, you might feel different. Not ready to spread your legs different, but if you like what you hear he might actually make that step towards “winning your heart” as he put it. (Something about that phrase sounded so quaint that it actually was endearing) “Oh…all right. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do at this point, but I’m warning you, don’t get the wrong impression. This isn’t a date or anything.” You say. “No, no, I got it. I just want a chance that’s all.” After you sit on the living room couch and motion that he sit in the chair you begin. “Okay then…well what should we talk about first? It isn’t like I’m usually that much of a conversationalist myself.” You say. “Well what do you like?” Johhny asks. A general question, but a perfectly reasonable one for getting straight to the point on wanting to know more about someone. The funny thing is there isn’t much about you to know. Since you don’t get out much, you don’t DO much. The only time you did get out a little more was when you were with Bobby, and you can’t very well talk about shit you did with your ex. So you mention hobbies such as watching movies, playing games, and reading shit on the Internet. (You leave out masturbation) Sounds like a pretty dull life to the average person, but Johnny doesn’t seem to care. “You don’t find what I said boring?” you ask. “Simple perhaps, but I wouldn’t say boring. Are you happy?” “Well I was happier when I could live in my basement and not have to deal with the rest of the world, and it would’ve been nicer to not have to put up with Kelly, but yeah I suppose I was happy just living like that.” “Then that’s all that matters. Me? I’ve been sort of drifting from place to place ever since I left home. To be honest it would be nice to have some place to call a permanent home, but something always happens and I end up having to move on again. As you might aspect I’ve had several lines of employment, I’m not rich but I suppose I at least know a little bit of everything to make a living.” “Sounds like you’ve had way more luck in that department at least. I’m flat broke and can’t even get a job. So why did you leave home in the first place?” “It was time. Really don’t want to go back either. Not fond of the memories… so hey did you hear from your sister? I mean did she call or leave a message or something?” Johnny asks, changing the topic. “Nope, and now with this marshal law thing going on, I’m a little concerned about her. Julie too. Who knows where the hell either of them are. I’m even wondering if I should call my brother Peter to see if things are all right with him, though I imagine he’s probably fine.” “You have a brother too? Wow, two sisters and a brother. You have a big family.” “I actually had an older brother Ben as well, but he died.” “Oh? Sorry to hear that. Should I ask how?” “He killed his family and then blew his brains out in our house.” You say. “Wait…what? Why?” Johnny says a bit off guard. “Well I wasn’t there for the final show, but he apparently thought the government was coming to get him and that it would be better if he killed his wife and son rather than they get captured and brainwashed. Something like that. He always was paranoid and just got worse as he got older.” “I see. And you say there was no truth to his stories about the government?” “Of course not.” “Are you sure? I mean just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean that they aren’t still trying to get you.” “Pretty sure if he was that much of a threat to the government they would’ve assassinated him long before he killed himself. And even if they were out to get him, there wasn’t any need for him to kill his wife and kid.” “Well I guess I can just see it from his point of view. He genuinely believed in his mind that the government was going to get him and seeing it as a losing battle and not wanting to lose those he loved to the enemy, his act of killing them was out of love. Kind of romantic really.” Johnny is so deadpan, you think he’s attempting some sort of dark humor, but you realize he’s being completely serious. Somehow you’re not really surprised. “…yeah well I’m just glad he didn’t love me then…” you remark. “I’m glad that’s the case too.” Johnny says with a smile. “So what about you? You said you had a mother and an older sister.” You ask. “Oh them. Eh, not much to tell I suppose. Like I said yesterday, your younger sister sounds very much like my older one, and your older sister sounds very much like my mother.” “You mother participated in illegal underground fight clubs and roller derby races?” “No. Wait, your sister really does all that?” Johnny asks. “Yeah, so what makes your mom so bad?” “Very domineering. Verbally abusive, sometimes physically. Emotionally too I guess.” “What about your father?” “Dunno, never knew him. Took off before I was born. My sister is only one year older than me, so she doesn’t remember him either. Just know that my mom hated his guts. Didn’t keep any pictures of him. What about yours?” “Eh, he was a travelling lightning rod salesman, so it was like he was never home. When mom died of the flesh-eating virus though he was practically home all the time and just gradually drank himself to death over the years. Still wasn’t really there for any of us.” Johnny nods and continues the conversation. “After hearing about your family…I’m starting to wonder if I really had it all that bad and perhaps I just think I did.” “What do you mean?” “Well like I said, my mother was very domineering, but I pretty much did what my mom said. I mean I hate to say I was a mama’s boy, but I didn’t really step out of line compared to my sister.” “Heh, sounds a little like me. Did pretty much what my mom told me too though she was the nicest one in my family. She probably was a little too sheltering of me though.” You go on a bit more about your mother since you’re actually enjoying remembering the good times you did have with her. Johnny listens intently. Most of the time he looks like he’s displaying happiness because you’re mentioning positive memories, but sometimes you catch a glimpse of him looking away from you as if he’s in another place. “She sounds like a very nice person and I can see where you get your kind qualities from. Sorry to hear that she died in such an awful way…just yet another example of how you’ve overcome so much hardship in your life.” Now Johnny looks as if he’s completely gone to another place. He stares downward vacantly, if he was staring in your direction, you’d feel like he would be staring through you. “Johnny? Johnny? You with me?” you say. Takes him a few moments, but eventually he answers. “I’m not feeling…myself… I should go.” “What? Go? Where are you going to go? Are you sick?” Once again Johnny doesn’t answer right away. “Yes.” He answers. The monotone voice he answers with, isn’t exactly relaxing and you get the strong impression when he acknowledged that he’s sick, he didn’t mean physically. He starts to get up, and he wobbles a bit. At first you think maybe he is physically sick, but then he also said he was tired. Considering he was cleaning up earlier, he probably never went home and stayed up all night again. “Johnny you can’t go out there, especially in your condition. The National Guard is out there, remember?” “I’m not worried about some weekend warriors, I can be stealthy when I want to be. I’m just glad you gave me a chance Suzy, but I fear I’ve wasted your time. I’m sorry.” Johnny says and then attempts to walk out the front door, but his balance isn’t the best. You aren’t sure what’s going on with Johnny right now, but it’s even weirder than usual. > You insist that he stay Weird or not, you’re not going to just let him potentially get shot. “Johnny! You can’t go out the front door! Look, just lie down on the couch okay? You can sleep here. It’ll be all right.” You say getting up and grabbing his arm. Johnny stares at your hand and then at your face. “Do you mean it?” Johnny asks. “Of course, I can’t let you go out there and get shot. I mean if you still want to leave then at least wait until its night and you’ve had some sleep.” You answer. “You’re so…so perfect…” Johnny remarks and starts to head back towards the couch. You help Johnny back to the couch, and when he lies down he falls asleep almost immediately. “I…love you Suzy…” he says as he drifts off. Well there was nothing ambiguous about that. You start wondering if you should have your head examined for possibly enabling a possibly mentally unstable guy who’s more than a little obsessed with you. “(Sigh) What the hell is wrong with you Suzy? First it was a cultist, now it’s this stalker. Are you deliberately picking crazy people as potential boyfriend material?” you say to yourself. You stand over Johnny watching him sleep for more than a few minutes trying to figure out where you actually stand with this guy. As you do so you never noticed how cute he really is before. It’s true that he’s somewhat average looking, but maybe it’s due to him being in a more vulnerable position that he’s coming off as more attractive and not creepy. Not knowing what else to do, you turn down the TV (Which is blaring a Ground Zero infomercial as usual) and leave Johnny to sleep. You stop in the kitchen first in the hopes of maybe finding food before returning to your own room. “Wow, this place was a mess last night. How the hell did he get it so clean?” you say as the kitchen is indeed much tidier without drunken fools and broken tables lying on the floor. When you open up the refrigerator, you surprisingly find another pizza box, which has been marked with a note saying “Property of Suzy, don’t touch!” Johnny must’ve ordered another one for you last night in case you got hungry later. That was pretty thoughtful, but what surprises you even more is its completely intact. “He probably was acting like a guard dog all night near the refrigerator in case someone tried to eat it.” You laugh to yourself. Grabbing cold pizza and an unopened drink you head back to your room and lock the door. Still wondering about them, you call up Julie, Donna and even Peter, but you get no answer from any of them. Just as you briefly pondering about calling Kelly too, you hear a loud banging on a door. Not the door to your room, but somewhere in the house. Upon exiting your room, it sounds like its coming from the front door. You remember that the loudspeaker from earlier did say there was going to be a government representative coming to visit the houses in the neighborhood. You enter the living room and find Johnny awake again. He still looks pretty tired. “Wha…what’s going on?” he asks, rubbing his eyes. “I think it’s the government rep.” you say, then you run over to the door and check through a window and see a well dressed man and one soldier at the door. You grab the handle… “Wait, you’re just going to let them in?” Johnny asks. “Well I doubt if they’re going to just go away. What can we do? Barricade ourselves in until they bash the door down? I don’t like it either, but it isn’t like we have too many options. Besides I don’t have anything to hide, do you?” “No.” Johnny replies. “Well there you go then, we might even be able to find out some answers too.” You open up the door. “Greetings miss. I’m Mr. Zoll and I’ve been assigned to be the government representative for this area. May we come in?” Mr. Zoll asks, though it’s pretty obvious that this is more of a polite formality rather than asking permission. “Of course.” You answer and let Mr. Zoll and his soldier companion in. When you turn around you see that Johnny is sitting up on the couch, but is propping his head up on the armrest. He’s still really sleepy so you’re not surprised to see a bit of a scowl from him. You just hope the others don’t take it the wrong way, but you figure as long as you’re polite and upfront, you shouldn’t have too many problems. Mr. Zoll sits on the chair while his soldier buddy stands nearby (eyeing Johnny mostly) you sit on the other side of the couch with a space between you and Johnny and ask what all this is about. “My name’s Suzy, and that’s Johnny over there. So how can we help exactly?” you ask. “Well, before we start I know this isn’t an ideal situation. You’re probably already concerned about what’s going on and why this town is under marshal law in the first place.” Mr. Zoll answers. “It is all a bit worrying.” You reply. “I’m sure. Unfortunately I can’t talk about it too much, however I’m sure you’re aware that this town has experienced a vast increase in criminal activity and rioting. More than your police force can handle. So until we get the situation under control again, we’re here to stay.” “Well we certainly can understand that. We haven’t experienced any criminal activity in this neighborhood though, well at least not to my knowledge.” “Hmm, yes this is one of the quieter ones. Some places I’m hearing about are pretty bad. Anyway I’d like to ask a few questions before deciding if we need to search this house further.” “Oh. Um, okay then. We have nothing to hide.” “Good glad to… hear it.” Mr. Zoll says glancing over at Johnny who is still alternating between being sleepy and unhappy about being awake. “So which one of you owns this place?” “My friend Julie.” “Oh? Neither of you are the owner? Where is this Julie?” “Uh, don’t know. She skipped out on her own party yesterday and never came back home. Isn’t that what you said Johnny?” “Hrm. Yeah.” Johnny mumbles. “I see…” Mr. Zoll says studying Johnny though you don’t know why. It’s making you nervous though. “Is this man your boyfriend?” Mr. Zoll suddenly asks. “Um…yes! Yes he is. He hasn’t had much sleep. You see we had a party last night and he stayed up late cleaning up. He really shouldn’t have, but that’s just how he is!” you nervously laugh being completely caught off guard by the question. In your mind you already are regretting saying that since you’ve sent out more than enough mixed messages to Johnny. Though when you look over at Johnny he doesn’t make any facial signs of a positive or negative nature, he’s too busy on struggling to stay awake. Mr. Zoll is now looking at you a bit mistrustfully. He thinks something is wrong and now that you’re shifting a bit uncomfortably, he starts to think you’re covering up something even though you aren’t! “Okay, you know what. I think it’ll be easier to just give a brief search of the house.” Mr. Zoll says standing up to say. “Um, all right then. We have nothing to hide as I said.” You say. Johnny slightly awakens a bit at this remark, but otherwise he continues to say nothing. Mr. Zoll tells his man to go take a quick look through all the rooms while the three of you stay in the living room. The soldier nods and follows his orders. He first goes upstairs and looks through. You half expect him to find a stash of drugs in Julie or Donna’s room, but he either doesn’t or that isn’t their primary concern. Next the soldier comes back downstairs and searches the ground floor, but once again finds nothing that is going to get you into trouble. Johnny briefly turns his head to watch the soldier as he moves back and forth up and down the hallway. “Searched everywhere sir, well except the basement.” The soldier says when he comes back. “Well you might as well search that too.” Mr. Zoll remarks. The soldier nods and heads back towards the hallway. Johnny doesn’t look at the soldier this time, he just closes his eyes. You hear the door open to the basement and then a few footsteps going down, then all of a sudden… “Oh shit! That basement has a bad step!” Johnny exclaims and goes running down the hallway and shouts at the soldier. Mr. Zoll gets up and starts to yell at Johnny to come back and you call out to him as well. This is soon followed by both the soldier and Johnny yelling and then the sound of someone falling down the stairs. At this point you and Mr. Zoll both run towards the basement and there you see Johnny in the stairwell and the soldier crumpled in a heap at the bottom. His neck doesn’t look like it’s supposed to be twisted that way. “I…I tried to stop him from falling…” Johnny exclaims looking distressed. “His fucking neck is broken! I can see it from here! You killed him!” “I didn’t! I tried to save him! I shouted about the step!” “Bullshit! And YOU’RE lying too!” Mr. Zoll says pointing to you as well. “Something fishy is going on here and I dunno what it is, but BOTH of you are going to pay for it!” Mr. Zoll reaches for something in his suit pocket… Panic washes over you and it’s in situations like this that sometimes people either freeze up or make a rash decision. > You do nothing The panic is overwhelming and you completely freeze up. Even when Mr. Zoll pulls a pistol out of his pocket you still do nothing. It’s like the next few moments are in slow motion to you. You watch Johnny attempt to run up the stairs, but Mr. Zoll turns quickly and fires two shots, one in Johnny’s chest and another in his head. Johnny falls backwards down the stairs and his body falls in heap on top of the dead soldier. You don’t even scream when seeing this, but your crippling frozen panic ends and you instantly make a run for it. Mr. Zoll attempt to grab you, but you’re too fast. You actually get to the front door before you hear Mr. Zoll tell you to halt or he’ll fire. You can’t stop though, you’re too afraid for your life. Upon opening the door, you feel a piece of hot lead going into your back and then another. You slump face first onto the front porch. Tears in your eyes and screaming from the pain you attempt to drag yourself forward, but it’s all for naught. Mr. Zoll casually walks up to you and ends your suffering with a final bullet to the head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Weird or not, you’re not going to just let him potentially get shot. “Johnny! You can’t go out the front door! Look, just lie down on the couch okay? You can sleep here. It’ll be all right.” You say getting up and grabbing his arm. Johnny stares at your hand and then at your face. “Do you mean it?” Johnny asks. “Of course, I can’t let you go out there and get shot. I mean if you still want to leave then at least wait until its night and you’ve had some sleep.” You answer. “You’re so…so perfect…” Johnny remarks and starts to head back towards the couch. You help Johnny back to the couch, and when he lies down he falls asleep almost immediately. “I…love you Suzy…” he says as he drifts off. Well there was nothing ambiguous about that. You start wondering if you should have your head examined for possibly enabling a possibly mentally unstable guy who’s more than a little obsessed with you. “(Sigh) What the hell is wrong with you Suzy? First it was a cultist, now it’s this stalker. Are you deliberately picking crazy people as potential boyfriend material?” you say to yourself. You stand over Johnny watching him sleep for more than a few minutes trying to figure out where you actually stand with this guy. As you do so you never noticed how cute he really is before. It’s true that he’s somewhat average looking, but maybe it’s due to him being in a more vulnerable position that he’s coming off as more attractive and not creepy. Not knowing what else to do, you turn down the TV (Which is blaring a Ground Zero infomercial as usual) and leave Johnny to sleep. You stop in the kitchen first in the hopes of maybe finding food before returning to your own room. “Wow, this place was a mess last night. How the hell did he get it so clean?” you say as the kitchen is indeed much tidier without drunken fools and broken tables lying on the floor. When you open up the refrigerator, you surprisingly find another pizza box, which has been marked with a note saying “Property of Suzy, don’t touch!” Johnny must’ve ordered another one for you last night in case you got hungry later. That was pretty thoughtful, but what surprises you even more is its completely intact. “He probably was acting like a guard dog all night near the refrigerator in case someone tried to eat it.” You laugh to yourself. Grabbing cold pizza and an unopened drink you head back to your room and lock the door. Still wondering about them, you call up Julie, Donna and even Peter, but you get no answer from any of them. Just as you briefly pondering about calling Kelly too, you hear a loud banging on a door. Not the door to your room, but somewhere in the house. Upon exiting your room, it sounds like its coming from the front door. You remember that the loudspeaker from earlier did say there was going to be a government representative coming to visit the houses in the neighborhood. You enter the living room and find Johnny awake again. He still looks pretty tired. “Wha…what’s going on?” he asks, rubbing his eyes. “I think it’s the government rep.” you say, then you run over to the door and check through a window and see a well dressed man and one soldier at the door. You grab the handle… “Wait, you’re just going to let them in?” Johnny asks. “Well I doubt if they’re going to just go away. What can we do? Barricade ourselves in until they bash the door down? I don’t like it either, but it isn’t like we have too many options. Besides I don’t have anything to hide, do you?” “No.” Johnny replies. “Well there you go then, we might even be able to find out some answers too.” You open up the door. “Greetings miss. I’m Mr. Zoll and I’ve been assigned to be the government representative for this area. May we come in?” Mr. Zoll asks, though it’s pretty obvious that this is more of a polite formality rather than asking permission. “Of course.” You answer and let Mr. Zoll and his soldier companion in. When you turn around you see that Johnny is sitting up on the couch, but is propping his head up on the armrest. He’s still really sleepy so you’re not surprised to see a bit of a scowl from him. You just hope the others don’t take it the wrong way, but you figure as long as you’re polite and upfront, you shouldn’t have too many problems. Mr. Zoll sits on the chair while his soldier buddy stands nearby (eyeing Johnny mostly) you sit on the other side of the couch with a space between you and Johnny and ask what all this is about. “My name’s Suzy, and that’s Johnny over there. So how can we help exactly?” you ask. “Well, before we start I know this isn’t an ideal situation. You’re probably already concerned about what’s going on and why this town is under marshal law in the first place.” Mr. Zoll answers. “It is all a bit worrying.” You reply. “I’m sure. Unfortunately I can’t talk about it too much, however I’m sure you’re aware that this town has experienced a vast increase in criminal activity and rioting. More than your police force can handle. So until we get the situation under control again, we’re here to stay.” “Well we certainly can understand that. We haven’t experienced any criminal activity in this neighborhood though, well at least not to my knowledge.” “Hmm, yes this is one of the quieter ones. Some places I’m hearing about are pretty bad. Anyway I’d like to ask a few questions before deciding if we need to search this house further.” “Oh. Um, okay then. We have nothing to hide.” “Good glad to… hear it.” Mr. Zoll says glancing over at Johnny who is still alternating between being sleepy and unhappy about being awake. “So which one of you owns this place?” “My friend Julie.” “Oh? Neither of you are the owner? Where is this Julie?” “Uh, don’t know. She skipped out on her own party yesterday and never came back home. Isn’t that what you said Johnny?” “Hrm. Yeah.” Johnny mumbles. “I see…” Mr. Zoll says studying Johnny though you don’t know why. It’s making you nervous though. “Is this man your boyfriend?” Mr. Zoll suddenly asks. “Um…yes! Yes he is. He hasn’t had much sleep. You see we had a party last night and he stayed up late cleaning up. He really shouldn’t have, but that’s just how he is!” you nervously laugh being completely caught off guard by the question. In your mind you already are regretting saying that since you’ve sent out more than enough mixed messages to Johnny. Though when you look over at Johnny he doesn’t make any facial signs of a positive or negative nature, he’s too busy on struggling to stay awake. Mr. Zoll is now looking at you a bit mistrustfully. He thinks something is wrong and now that you’re shifting a bit uncomfortably, he starts to think you’re covering up something even though you aren’t! “Okay, you know what. I think it’ll be easier to just give a brief search of the house.” Mr. Zoll says standing up to say. “Um, all right then. We have nothing to hide as I said.” You say. Johnny slightly awakens a bit at this remark, but otherwise he continues to say nothing. Mr. Zoll tells his man to go take a quick look through all the rooms while the three of you stay in the living room. The soldier nods and follows his orders. He first goes upstairs and looks through. You half expect him to find a stash of drugs in Julie or Donna’s room, but he either doesn’t or that isn’t their primary concern. Next the soldier comes back downstairs and searches the ground floor, but once again finds nothing that is going to get you into trouble. Johnny briefly turns his head to watch the soldier as he moves back and forth up and down the hallway. “Searched everywhere sir, well except the basement.” The soldier says when he comes back. “Well you might as well search that too.” Mr. Zoll remarks. The soldier nods and heads back towards the hallway. Johnny doesn’t look at the soldier this time, he just closes his eyes. You hear the door open to the basement and then a few footsteps going down, then all of a sudden… “Oh shit! That basement has a bad step!” Johnny exclaims and goes running down the hallway and shouts at the soldier. Mr. Zoll gets up and starts to yell at Johnny to come back and you call out to him as well. This is soon followed by both the soldier and Johnny yelling and then the sound of someone falling down the stairs. At this point you and Mr. Zoll both run towards the basement and there you see Johnny in the stairwell and the soldier crumpled in a heap at the bottom. His neck doesn’t look like it’s supposed to be twisted that way. “I…I tried to stop him from falling…” Johnny exclaims looking distressed. “His fucking neck is broken! I can see it from here! You killed him!” “I didn’t! I tried to save him! I shouted about the step!” “Bullshit! And YOU’RE lying too!” Mr. Zoll says pointing to you as well. “Something fishy is going on here and I dunno what it is, but BOTH of you are going to pay for it!” Mr. Zoll reaches for something in his suit pocket… Panic washes over you and it’s in situations like this that sometimes people either freeze up or make a rash decision. > You do something Seeing that Mr. Zoll is threatening you and going for something in his pocket you do the only thing that you can think of that comes to mind. You shove him as hard as you can towards the stairs. With one hand in his suit pocket he can’t quite catch his balance and he goes tumbling backwards down the steps. Johnny just manages to get out of the way of Mr. Zoll’s tumbling body and soon it hits the bottom just like his buddy did. Mr. Zoll however starts groaning in pain indicating that he’s only hurt. He isn’t dead…well at least not yet. Still in shock from what you have done, you stand motionless as you see Johnny take advantage of Zoll’s prone condition and begins stomping on his head. Several times. Then he grabs the soldier’s rifle and begins smashing the butt of it into Zoll’s face. You’re not right up front for this gruesome display; you can still see the blood flying from where you’re standing. “Die! Die motherfucker! Fucking piece of shit!” Johnny starts muttering as he continues to destroy Zoll’s skull structure. After a few seconds of watching this, you snap out of it. “Johnny! Stop! He’s dead! He’s dead…(sob) he’s…dead…” you say and break down. You feel sick and run into your bathroom. You cough and vomit into the toilet, but it isn’t so much your contributing to Mr. Zoll’s death or watching it unfold, it’s mainly because you’re sick with worry right now about the repercussions of such actions. “Oh my god…oh god…what did I do…” you say in between heaving and crying. At this point Johnny has come up from upstairs to check on you. As you look over from hovering over the toilet, you see him standing before you in your bathroom doorway and blood on his clothes. “Suzy…Suzy…calm yourself. You did what you had to do. The guy didn’t give you much of a choice. I checked his pocket and he was definitely packing a pistol in it. If you hadn’t pushed him, he might’ve very well shot you and me both.” Johnny says in an attempt to console you, but it’s not working very well. “They…they’re going to send more people to look for him…they’re going to find out…we can’t even run. There’s military everywhere!” you say before heaving some more, but you’ve nothing left. You’re just shaking. Johnny steps towards you. “Suzy. Suzy. We’re going to be fine. Remember WE didn’t do anything wrong here. These assholes came invading our space and then acted in a threatening manner even after we both tried to be accommodating to them.” You stand before Johnny who now has grabbed a small washcloth and is approaching you with it. You just continue to tremble. “Suzy. Listen to me. I can clean up the mess in the basement. I’ll make it so nobody will ever know. Okay? If more weekend warriors show up at our door asking about their boss or whoever that dickhead was to them, we’ll just say he left and that they can search the damn house if they want. They won’t find his body. They won’t find ANY body. Trust me on that.” Johnny dabs the sides of your mouth with the washcloth. You at him with a mixture of fear and hopefulness. All you can think about right now is how you wish all of this would go away. “Can…can you really make all this go away?” you ask. “Yes, I can. And in the event that we have to run, we DO have that option. We aren’t prisoners here despite what the government wants us to think. We’re free to go anywhere we wish.” “I…I want to go home…” you say. “Well, maybe that’s where we’ll go then.” Johnny now holds both of your hand in his and looks into your eyes. “Suzy. I love you and I’ll never let any harm come to you. If the worst comes to worst, I’ll take all the blame for what happened today. I don’t want you to worry about this any more. You’ve been brave enough for one day.” His eyes they’re so piercing right now. They give off an almost commanding stare. His voice is so soothing though and it’s actually making you feel slightly at ease. The combination of you having a minor breakdown and the stress of all that’s going on…well it’s all enough for you to just accept Johnny’s willingness to step up and solve all your troubles like some sort of white knight. At least right now at any rate. “Come on, let’s get you to your bed. You need to rest.” Johnny says and starts to guide you back to your room. You don’t resist. You just go with it. Johnny is a perfect gentleman though; he doesn’t attempt to touch you in any manner that might be inappropriate. As you lay down the bed, you allow yourself to start giving into the wave of sleep that’s hitting you from all the mental exhaustion you’re going through. “Okay, Suzy, I’m going to get to work. Now I’ll close your door and leave you be, but if you need anything at all, just call me of course. Just don’t get up, you don’t need to put yourself through anymore trouble.” You nod at Johnny’s remark as you start to close your eyes. It’s hard to believe that not too long ago he was the one exhausted and you were still relatively lively. You have no idea where he gets his energy from. Just as Johnny is about to leave. You call out. “Johnny?” “Yes, Suzy?” “Thank you.” Your eyes are still closed so you don’t see Johnny smile at you before exiting your room. > Next day… THURSDAY You are suddenly awakened by the sound of your phone. You don’t think, you don’t look, you just instinctively grab it and answer. “Hello?” you answer still slightly groggy. “Suzy? It’s Peter.” “Peter?” you say a little surprised he returned your call as well still shaking the cobwebs out from coming out of your sleep. “Yeah, it’s me. You called me yesterday, but I was busy with, well a bunch of shit really. It’s sort of crazy around here, the National Guard is shooting people in the street…well at least I think they’re still people.” “What do you mean?” “I’m saying that I’ve been seeing some weird shit. Like several people running around trying to bite other people.” “Wait…what? You mean literally trying to bite people?” “Yes, I mean bite, as in I saw one guy that lived down the street from us chase another neighbor and start chewing on him like he was out of a goddamn zombie movie!” “…are you saying this guy was a zombie?” “Look I don’t know. I mean maybe he was just rabid or something, but this wasn’t an isolated incident. Maybe it’s a disease outbreak, or bio-weapon accident or something. I mean that would explain why the National Guard is here. I’m just glad they or any of those freaks haven’t beat down the door to this house yet, but I’m not taking any chances that’s why I’ve been trying to find Ben’s shelter.” “Ben’s shelter?” “Yeah, you know the one he was always working on and changing the fucking entrance all the time on? I figure it’s probably still well stocked and I intend on riding this whole fucked up situation in the safety of that thing until everything is back to normal. We haven’t had much luck in finding it though…” “We? Is Kelly there helping you?” “Kelly? Nah, I haven’t seen that Amazon cunt since she left for work on Monday night. Don’t know where she is. I’m here with one of my…clients. Anyway how are you and Donna?” “I don’t know where Donna is. She left Julie’s on Monday night and never came back, then Julie left on fucking Tuesday night and SHE never came back. Then on Wednesday…(sniff)…” You begin to feel a wave of emotion hit you as the thought of what happened yesterday catch up to you again. “Suzy?” Peter asks. “(Sob) I think…I think I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble Peter…(Sob) Something terrible happened…” You can’t continue and you begin to cry. “Hey… look I…” Peter is unsure of what to say for a moment and then he continues. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on over there, but I really need to let you go. I was actually hesitant to call you since I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk on the phone long right now anyway. I mean who knows if the government is listening…so…” You stop crying immediately and just stare at your phone in disbelief. “Wait, wait, wait. Just fucking wait a minute. Granted we’ve never been close Peter, but I have been genuinely concerned about you as soon as the National Guard rolled up in this town. Why the hell do you think I called? I’m obviously distressed about my current situation and you don’t even offer a sympathetic ear? After all the fucking times you’ve stolen my clothes? After all the goddamn times I had to put up with your old loser junkie friend Kevin perving on me when you thought you were some sort of film maker? You can’t even make the fucking effort to even PRETEND to care a little? You can’t even do THAT for me?” you shout. “Suzy, what the fuck do you want me to do? You’re over there and I’m over here. I mean I got my own shit to worry about. And you how this family operates, when the shit goes down, you fucking look out for yourself first.” Peter says. “I’m not asking you to jump in your car and save me, I just wanted a little…fuck it…you know what just fuck you Peter!” you shout and hang up “FUCK YOU!” you shout and throw your phone against the wall just as Johnny comes walking in. “I heard you shouting, what’s going on?” he asks. “My fucking brother is a goddamn selfish bastard that’s what’s going on! I’m fucking nervous, I don’t know what to do and I’m afraid. And what does he do? Does he even make an effort to console me in any way? No of course not he worries about himself. It’s what my family does, out for number one as usual. Fuck all of them, I don’t even care what happens to ANY of them any more!” say sobbing. Johhny approaches you, but still keeps a respectable distance. “Suzy, you don’t need to worry about them any more. They aren’t even worth getting mad about okay? Look I’m here and I’ll take care of everything. Speaking of which, that thing yesterday….” You wipe your eyes and try to compose yourself. “I…I don’t want to hear anymore about it… I just don’t…” “I understand. I understand. I just wanted you to know that it’s all been taken care of.” “Yeah, until they send someone to find out what happened to him.” You say. Johnny now steps in a bit closer. “Well, they haven’t yet and I doubt if they’re going to right now. You’ve been asleep for most of the day and you’re probably not aware, but there’s been some problems going on around the neighborhood I guess. In fact I actually went upstairs to check from one of the windows to get a better view and I saw them shoot a couple people a few houses down. Well I assume they were still people on some level, but they certainly weren’t acting right. Like they were rabid or something. One got killed by multiple chest shots though so I think we can at least assume they aren’t the living dead.” “Hrm. Peter mentioned something like that happening in my neighborhood. He thinks it’s a disease or biological weapon.” “Well he might be right on that somewhat. Seems like the Guardsmen would be equipped with gasmasks or something if it was something like though. I dunno. Anyway, as I was saying for all they know they might think that Zoll guy and his soldier buddy got bushwacked by one of those things yesterday. Besides, he went to several houses, it’s not like they’re automatically going to know it was us.” Johnny’s attempts at making you feel better don’t really work, since it just replaces one concern of getting executed by the military for murder for another concern of getting possibly infected by whatever disease is turning people into “zombies.” Still, he’s the only one trying and actually here for you, and that’s the sad part. “Johnny, is that a uniform you’re wearing?” you say noticing he’s changed his clothes. “Yeah. They’re from that poor soldier that broke his neck on the stairs. I know it’s a bit ghoulish, but my own clothes were shall I say, very… soiled after taking care of that business. Fortunately, the uniform seems to be a perfect fit. I was also thinking maybe it could also be a disguise in case we need to get the hell out of here.” Johnny remarks. “Hm, could work, but I don’t have a uniform.” You say. “I could always say you’re a prisoner or survivor I found. In any case it might be...” Before Johnny can finish, he’s interrupted by the breaking of glass coming from the kitchen followed by snarling and grunting. “Shit!” Johnny exclaims and runs out of your room. You’re not quite as eager to run towards the sound of danger, at least not until you grab the pistol out of the desk first. You haven’t gotten a few steps out of your room and you hear the sounds of a multiple shots being fired, followed by more glass breaking and an awful sound of anguish. You enter the kitchen and see Johnny standing there with an assault rifle pointed at the bullet hole ridden back door. Must be the same rifle the soldier had. He turns around. “It was one of those things. More of them must be wandering this way… where did that pistol come from?” Johnny asks. “It was in a desk. So you think more of those things are coming?” “I don’t really know, just a hunch, but the gunfire outside doesn’t sound like it’s letting up. We could easily barricade ourselves in here, but who knows how long this thing is going to last.” “Do you think we could make it out of here ?” “I believe we could, but it does sound like a warzone out there right now.” “Well I hope my sister has another set of car keys because that’s the only vehicle out there right now.” You say. “Hmm, well even if we did, I’m fairly certain as soon as we drove out in it, we’d be getting fired upon on. Even if we made it, there’s going to be more military areas to drive through. Nevermind the fact that your sister’s car isn’t exactly sturdy looking enough to survive such an attack, there is also always the possibility of a bunch of those things gathering together to overturn the vehicle.” “So are you saying we should go by foot?” you ask. “Heh, if it were just me, I might do that, but since your safety is a priority to me, I feel like we’d have a better chance however if I stole one of those military jeeps I’ve seen patrolling around.” Johnny replies. “Are you nuts? How the hell are we supposed to get one of those?” “Not we, me. I believe I could steal one. I have to admit I’m a little tired though. Still haven’t had a lot of sleeps, especially with… well you know. If I could just catch a little rest, I’d probably be able to do it better under the cover of the night.” The fact that Johnny seems so sure that he can just steal a military vehicle is a little scary. Did he also serve in the military or something? He’s never said. Come to think of it, he’s still never revealed too much about himself. In any case that isn’t quite your primary concern right now. “Well if you really believe you can steal a jeep, I guess that’s our best shot.” You say. “Well we still should pack some bags with useful supplies first. I’ll get some things from the basement since I’m pretty sure I saw quite few things down there. You can check this floor and check the upstairs.” Johnny heads back into the basement and you check upstairs first. You search Donna’s room and you do find some keys. You’re fairly sure that they are probably a spare set to Donna’s car. After grabbing the practical pharmacy from the bathroom (Julie and Donna sure didn’t reserve their drugs to just the illegal kind) you return to your own room and start repacking some of your clothes and some other personal items. A quick trip to the kitchen finds you a few bags of snacks and batteries. (And you looking over your shoulder constantly thinking that something is going to try to break in through the backdoor again) Johnny eventually comes up from the basement with an old looking bag of stuff. He’s looking really tired now. “Johnny are you going to be okay to do this? I mean I just found Donna’s car keys. We could leave in that and I’d drive.” you ask. “No, our best chance is the jeep. We’ll be riddled with bullets in that car. I’ll be fine. Just need a few hours of shuteye. After that, I’ll be ready to go. I guess I’ll sleep on the sofa in the living room.” Johnny says while walking off towards the living room with the bag and rifle. “Well I suppose we should wait before leaving anyway, I’d rather have you alert while we’re on the road. Hold on a moment you look a little wobbly.” You say and help him the rest of the way, which isn’t far of course, but you feel like it’s a nice gesture. Johnny certainly thinks so…but then he tends to think everything you do is wonderful. “Shit, I’m so tired. Even that gunfire going on isn’t going to keep me awake.” Johnny says, flopping down on the couch. “Well, I’ll be awake, so even if something unexpected happens and you’re still snoozing, I can wake you up.” “Thank you.” Johnny says looking up at you. He almost reaches his hand out to touch your face, but quickly stops himself. “I’m sorry that you had to call me your boyfriend yesterday.” “What?” You ask. “Yesterday, when you tried to lie to Mr. Zoll. You said I was your boyfriend. I know you were just saying that.” Johnny says as he starts to close his eyes. “You don’t worry about that right now. Just rest like you should have been able to yesterday.” “Okay…God…you’re so perfect. You’re so much better than me. I’ve done a lot of bad things Suzy.” “I think after yesterday we’ve both done a lot of bad things.” You reply. “No…I’ve…” Johnny starts to say, but then he trails off. Leaving Johnny to sleep, you stay in the living room if only because you’re a bit nervous to be by yourself right now. You turn the TV on and keep it on low, but as usual nothing of importance is on save for Ground Zero infomercials. Lacking anything better to do (Other than being on edge a bit) you start to contemplate that if Johnny is successful WHERE you should go. You don’t really have any good ideas either. You’ve never been anywhere in your life, so why would you have any ideas on where to go now? And given how fucked up everything is right now, where would it even be safe to go? No, the only place you’ve ever felt safe and at home is your basement. How you wish you could return. Then as you watch the GZ salesman obnoxiously go on about their product, it hits you… why shouldn’t you return? It’s a pleasant thought, but who knows if Peter already found the hidden entrance to the shelter yet. He might very well be already be enjoying the shelter with his boyfriend or whoever he’s got over there. You’re fairly certain if that’s the case, he isn’t going to let you in to share it. That was clear when you spoke to him on the phone. So where does that leave you? Leaving town to parts unknown? If that’s the case, you imagine you’ll have to leave that in Johnny’s hands since he’s mentioned he’s drifted from place to place and probably knows more about possible locations to go to in an emergency than you do. On top of all this, you still aren’t quite sure what to do with Johnny. He’s definitely gone a long way in trying to prove himself to you. He has possibly saved your life and is obviously willing to risk his for you. The only other person who has done that was Bobby. In some ways Johnny sort of reminds you of Bobby…and that’s also another reason why you continue to be leery of him. Other than his stalker behavior since you’ve met him, you’ve already come to the conclusion that Johnny probably has some sort of shady history. When you saw him finishing off Mr. Zoll…well it wasn’t exactly a normal reaction. He didn’t just react out of a panic like you did when you pushed Zoll down the stairs, Johnny got frothing mad. An anger you’ve never seen him display so outwardly before. Between that and his mumblings of “doing bad things” and you’re inclined to believe that whatever his past might be, that Johnny HAS killed before. And probably the more fucked up thing is that it doesn’t exactly bother you, or rather it doesn’t bother you like it should a normal person. Bobby used to kill people on a regular basis and while it took a little time for you to build complete trust in him, you did it and you had a relationship out of it. (And the funniest thing is that it didn’t even end in bloodshed) The question is, do you want to possibly put yourself through it all again? The unstable nature? The paranoia of wondering is he ever going to hurt you? Even the “normal” part of wondering if you’re just going to just eventually break up is a concern for you. Part of you still is upset about Bobby after all. You must have a thing for murderers at this point, because it’s the only explanation to why you’re contemplating all this. Maybe that whole incident with your Uncle Ed fucked you up even more than you realized. You do have Donna’s car keys. You could just leave now while Johnny sleeps. > You leave Johnny You can’t stay with Johnny, he’s obviously unstable no matter how nice he is to you. You’re not going through it again. Plus you’re also worried about staying here any longer than you have to since you’re still paranoid that the National Guard will be sending someone here to search for their missing in action comrades. You go back to your room and grab your bags. You start to make your way towards the living room, but then you think that perhaps maybe going out the back door would be better since you don’t have to sneak past Johnny to do so. The back door is still a wreck from today’s earlier attack. When you open it up you finally see the thing that was trying to get in. Looks human enough minus the bullet holes and the slightly feral facial features. You just hope there aren’t anymore currently lurking about though the nearby gunfire isn’t encouraging. You make your way through the backyard and then go around the house and finally reach Donna’s car. You quickly load your bags in, worrying the whole time you’re going to get attacked by one of those things or Johnny suddenly waking up and running out the front door. You get the impression he’s not going to be happy to find you gone when he wakes up. You get in the car and you actually manage to swing the car out into the street before you hear shouting and then fired upon. Despite the sounds of glass shattering behind you. You keep it together and just drive hoping that there aren’t too many of the guard in front of you. It’s a false hope as you do indeed bump into more than a couple patrols with itchy trigger fingers. Some you try to avoid by going down other streets. Others are actually busy fighting off others. How you aren’t hit by any that do shoot at you is something of a minor miracle, but the car certainly doesn’t come through unscathed since by the time you manage to make out of Julie’s neighborhood, it’s making rattling sounds. You continue to drive and try to keep off the main streets though with your car now making several clattering sounds you’re not exactly keeping a low profile. “Just gotta make it home. I’ll be safe there.” You mumble to yourself. Your drive there isn’t quite as eventful as your escape from Julie’s house, but it isn’t without peril. The National Guard isn’t quite as in control in your part of the town and there are far more of the rabid roaming around either chasing down normal people or attempting to break into houses. Most of them don’t attempt to attack you, or if they do, you just continue driving fast enough that they don’t get the chance. By the time you get to your own house, your neighborhood is eerily quiet. There are definitely signs of past conflict all over the place, but there is nobody on the streets and most homes are not lit either. (Though you do see broken doors and windows on a lot of them) Fortunately your own house doesn’t look damaged (At least not from the front) You half expect to get swarmed by crazies as soon as you park in front of your house, but you manage to get in the house with your bags. “PETER?! Are you here?!” you call out when you get in the door and dump your bags on the floor. There is no answer, but then again maybe he’s already found the shelter. The first thing you do is search the ground floor. Amazingly it doesn’t look like your house has been attacked at all. Even looking out into the backyard things look fairly untouched. Then you search the connected garage and that’s when you make an unexpected discovery. You find Peter and another unknown man both not quite entirely dressed, but that isn’t the disturbing part. The fact that they’re both dead is the disturbing part. The garage itself is a bit of a mess, like there was definitely a struggle, and your brother’s body and the body of who you presume is his lover or client both show signs of blunt trauma. Looks like their necks were both broken to ultimately kill them though. You aren’t sure what to think. You feel like you should be more upset than you are, but given what an asshole he was towards you earlier and what you’ve already had to experience, you’re not having feelings of sorrow. You’re actually more concerned with how this happened. There isn’t anyone else here to your knowledge and if it had been one of those things, the bodies would probably have bite marks. You suppose it could’ve been regular bandits or robbers, but you’d expect gunshot or even knife wounds and neither have that. Also if it was bandits that killed them, you wonder why they wouldn’t take Peter’s car since his keys are still sitting on a dresser nearby. Whether Peter was planning on leaving himself or still looking for Ben’s hidden shelter (And if he found it or not) you’ll never know you suppose. Feeling the fear of potential intruders in the house, you pull your pistol out and begin to search the rest of the house. You head upstairs and cautiously search with your pistol drawn. Much like the downstairs though, you find that there isn’t anyone lurking up here. You even manage to find the courage to peek your head into Kelly’s room, but given how messy her usually room is, you don’t know if she’s ever returned here. You get the idea to call her up, but predictably there isn’t any answer. Who knows what’s happened to her. Finally you end your search of the house by heading to the place where you started from, the basement. Again, not much looks different and fortunately there isn’t anyone down here either. Your own room is about the same as you left it. You shake your head that the though of all the bullshit you went through this week, only to end up back here. Makes you wonder why you bothered. After a bit more perusal of your room, you head back upstairs to secure the ground floor as much as possible. You put chairs in front of the front and back doors. (As well as the one leading to the garage) You also move a bookcase in front of some of the windows. It’s not the most fun thing to do and you bump and bang knees and elbows in the process, but it’s secure enough that you’re confident that if someone does try to get it, they’ll make such a loud noise in the process that you’ll at least wake up first. As it starts to get darker, you decide to take your belongings to your old room in the basement where you figure you can turn on the lights without fear of someone potentially seeing them from the outside. As you get resettled into your old room, you start to feel safer already. It’s odd that you should feel that way, but then this has always been your sanctuary. You do briefly worry about Johnny and if he’s going to try to track you down. Well if he does show up, you’ll be ready for him. You aren’t completely defenseless after all. Besides, he’ll have to get through the military and those things never mind the fact that he doesn’t know where you live in the first place. (At least you don’t think he does) Despite that, you’re going to try to remain positive. You make a plan to search for the shelter entrance in the backyard tomorrow and you figure if all else fails you can always take Peter’s car and try to make it out of town. For now though, you’re going to enjoy a good night’s sleep in the safety of your own room. > Next day... FRIDAY “Wakey wakey sis.” You hear a voice say. You slowly open your eyes and at first see what looks to be a man standing in front of you holding a shotgun. Your first instinct is that it’s Johnny, but then after the blur of your eyes clears a bit, you see that it’s your sister Kelly. Looks like she’s still hostile to you as well considering she’s pointing a shotgun at you. You don’t know why, but then has she ever needed a reason? You look at your pistol on the floor near the couch you’re sleeping on and Kelly just shakes her head. “I guarantee you wouldn’t make it sis. I suggest you don’t even try…heh I doubt you’d have the balls to go through with it anyway. I have to admit when I came up here to get something from my room, I didn’t expect to glance over this way and see you sleeping here.” Up? Where the hell would she come “up” from? You’re in the basement now. Kelly’s blocking your doorway, but you think you can make out a glowing light source coming from the basement floor beyond. And then it hits you. “…he moved the fucking shelter entrance in the house? And it’s been right near my goddamn room all this time?” you ask. “Hey hey! It’s about time you used that blonde head of yours other than taking up space!” Kelly mocks. Well you know where the entrance is, but unfortunately you’ve got bigger issues now. Kelly pointing a shotgun at you is concerning to be sure and makes you think back to what you saw in the garage. Peter and the other man’s body. Their bodies were beaten and their necks were broken. Kelly certainly has the strength and the skill to do such a thing. Kelly’s always been hostile to you and barely civil to your other sibling, but to actually kill one… “When did you find out? When you killed Peter?” “Pfft. I’ve always known. Crazy old Ben thought he was being so sneaky moving the goddamn entrance around all the time, but I knew where the fuck it was nearly every time. He had just moved the entrance again a few days before he blew away his family and himself. I’m just surprised YOU never accidently found it given that you lived practically right near the fucking thing for years. If the entrance was any closer you would’ve been sleeping in the damn thing.” Kelly continues to address you while briefly looking over her shoulder. “As for Peter, that little faggot managed to find out where it was and thought he was going to hide out from the current shitstorm in it with his boyfriend or whoever that other faggot he was with. Had to convince him that he had to go, he didn’t listen and tried to resist and well you saw how that turned out.” Kelly briefly shifts a bit in your doorway, but still holding the shotgun firmly on you of course. “So where’s that little whore Donna? Heard you moved in with her. She come with you? Julie maybe? Both? How the fuck did any of you survive the week?” Kelly asks. “I’m here by myself Kelly. I have no idea what happened to Donna, or Julie for that matter. I…I think they’re probably dead.” You say. “Mmm, well you’ll soon be joining them.” Kelly remarks and raises the shotgun as if she’s trying to get a more precise aim. Terror wells up inside you. “Wait! Can’t you let me go? I mean I’ll take Peter’s car and leave! You’ll never have to see me again! I mean you can’t have mercy on me just this once?” you exclaim and tears forming in your eyes. Kelly smiles sadistically and laughs. “God, you really are as stupid as you are pathetic. You know that? If I let you leave, do you really think you could survive out there with no supplies? How long would you be able to last without resorting to trading your own ass for safety? Not long I’d wager and that’s assuming you don’t just get raped and killed first or ripped apart by those freaks. I’m doing you a favor sis.” Kelly remarks. You start to cry as you realize that this is it. You’re going to die. “Oh for fuck’s sake, will you stop crying and be fucking brave for once in your life? (Sigh) Fine, you want me to show you mercy? Here.” Kelly leans her shotgun against the wall nearby. At first you think she’s going to spare your life, but you soon learn it’s just another sick game. “Okay sis, despite my undying hatred for you, I’m going to give you ONE chance just because out of all our siblings, I still think you were the one with the most potential. It’s just too bad you wasted it. So, here’s your second chance. Try to grab your pistol before I can grab my shotgun.” “But…(sniff) you’re right next to your shotgun, you can grab it a lot easier than I can grab the pistol. You’ll kill me before I even can reach it.” You say. “So what have you got to lose? You’re going to die anyway, so try to stop me.” You don’t say anything. You just quietly weep a bit at your situation. You thought you were safe, but how wrong you were. You really wish Johnny was here, but there’s not going to be a rescue this time. “Goddamn it Suzy, if you don’t make a move, I’m gonna just…shit!” You react while Kelly is in the middle of her sentence. You scramble for the weapon and you actually manage to touch it and then a loud blast is the last thing you hear.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY You are suddenly awakened by the sound of your phone. You don’t think, you don’t look, you just instinctively grab it and answer. “Hello?” you answer still slightly groggy. “Suzy? It’s Peter.” “Peter?” you say a little surprised he returned your call as well still shaking the cobwebs out from coming out of your sleep. “Yeah, it’s me. You called me yesterday, but I was busy with, well a bunch of shit really. It’s sort of crazy around here, the National Guard is shooting people in the street…well at least I think they’re still people.” “What do you mean?” “I’m saying that I’ve been seeing some weird shit. Like several people running around trying to bite other people.” “Wait…what? You mean literally trying to bite people?” “Yes, I mean bite, as in I saw one guy that lived down the street from us chase another neighbor and start chewing on him like he was out of a goddamn zombie movie!” “…are you saying this guy was a zombie?” “Look I don’t know. I mean maybe he was just rabid or something, but this wasn’t an isolated incident. Maybe it’s a disease outbreak, or bio-weapon accident or something. I mean that would explain why the National Guard is here. I’m just glad they or any of those freaks haven’t beat down the door to this house yet, but I’m not taking any chances that’s why I’ve been trying to find Ben’s shelter.” “Ben’s shelter?” “Yeah, you know the one he was always working on and changing the fucking entrance all the time on? I figure it’s probably still well stocked and I intend on riding this whole fucked up situation in the safety of that thing until everything is back to normal. We haven’t had much luck in finding it though…” “We? Is Kelly there helping you?” “Kelly? Nah, I haven’t seen that Amazon cunt since she left for work on Monday night. Don’t know where she is. I’m here with one of my…clients. Anyway how are you and Donna?” “I don’t know where Donna is. She left Julie’s on Monday night and never came back, then Julie left on fucking Tuesday night and SHE never came back. Then on Wednesday…(sniff)…” You begin to feel a wave of emotion hit you as the thought of what happened yesterday catch up to you again. “Suzy?” Peter asks. “(Sob) I think…I think I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble Peter…(Sob) Something terrible happened…” You can’t continue and you begin to cry. “Hey… look I…” Peter is unsure of what to say for a moment and then he continues. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on over there, but I really need to let you go. I was actually hesitant to call you since I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk on the phone long right now anyway. I mean who knows if the government is listening…so…” You stop crying immediately and just stare at your phone in disbelief. “Wait, wait, wait. Just fucking wait a minute. Granted we’ve never been close Peter, but I have been genuinely concerned about you as soon as the National Guard rolled up in this town. Why the hell do you think I called? I’m obviously distressed about my current situation and you don’t even offer a sympathetic ear? After all the fucking times you’ve stolen my clothes? After all the goddamn times I had to put up with your old loser junkie friend Kevin perving on me when you thought you were some sort of film maker? You can’t even make the fucking effort to even PRETEND to care a little? You can’t even do THAT for me?” you shout. “Suzy, what the fuck do you want me to do? You’re over there and I’m over here. I mean I got my own shit to worry about. And you how this family operates, when the shit goes down, you fucking look out for yourself first.” Peter says. “I’m not asking you to jump in your car and save me, I just wanted a little…fuck it…you know what just fuck you Peter!” you shout and hang up “FUCK YOU!” you shout and throw your phone against the wall just as Johnny comes walking in. “I heard you shouting, what’s going on?” he asks. “My fucking brother is a goddamn selfish bastard that’s what’s going on! I’m fucking nervous, I don’t know what to do and I’m afraid. And what does he do? Does he even make an effort to console me in any way? No of course not he worries about himself. It’s what my family does, out for number one as usual. Fuck all of them, I don’t even care what happens to ANY of them any more!” say sobbing. Johhny approaches you, but still keeps a respectable distance. “Suzy, you don’t need to worry about them any more. They aren’t even worth getting mad about okay? Look I’m here and I’ll take care of everything. Speaking of which, that thing yesterday….” You wipe your eyes and try to compose yourself. “I…I don’t want to hear anymore about it… I just don’t…” “I understand. I understand. I just wanted you to know that it’s all been taken care of.” “Yeah, until they send someone to find out what happened to him.” You say. Johnny now steps in a bit closer. “Well, they haven’t yet and I doubt if they’re going to right now. You’ve been asleep for most of the day and you’re probably not aware, but there’s been some problems going on around the neighborhood I guess. In fact I actually went upstairs to check from one of the windows to get a better view and I saw them shoot a couple people a few houses down. Well I assume they were still people on some level, but they certainly weren’t acting right. Like they were rabid or something. One got killed by multiple chest shots though so I think we can at least assume they aren’t the living dead.” “Hrm. Peter mentioned something like that happening in my neighborhood. He thinks it’s a disease or biological weapon.” “Well he might be right on that somewhat. Seems like the Guardsmen would be equipped with gasmasks or something if it was something like though. I dunno. Anyway, as I was saying for all they know they might think that Zoll guy and his soldier buddy got bushwacked by one of those things yesterday. Besides, he went to several houses, it’s not like they’re automatically going to know it was us.” Johnny’s attempts at making you feel better don’t really work, since it just replaces one concern of getting executed by the military for murder for another concern of getting possibly infected by whatever disease is turning people into “zombies.” Still, he’s the only one trying and actually here for you, and that’s the sad part. “Johnny, is that a uniform you’re wearing?” you say noticing he’s changed his clothes. “Yeah. They’re from that poor soldier that broke his neck on the stairs. I know it’s a bit ghoulish, but my own clothes were shall I say, very… soiled after taking care of that business. Fortunately, the uniform seems to be a perfect fit. I was also thinking maybe it could also be a disguise in case we need to get the hell out of here.” Johnny remarks. “Hm, could work, but I don’t have a uniform.” You say. “I could always say you’re a prisoner or survivor I found. In any case it might be...” Before Johnny can finish, he’s interrupted by the breaking of glass coming from the kitchen followed by snarling and grunting. “Shit!” Johnny exclaims and runs out of your room. You’re not quite as eager to run towards the sound of danger, at least not until you grab the pistol out of the desk first. You haven’t gotten a few steps out of your room and you hear the sounds of a multiple shots being fired, followed by more glass breaking and an awful sound of anguish. You enter the kitchen and see Johnny standing there with an assault rifle pointed at the bullet hole ridden back door. Must be the same rifle the soldier had. He turns around. “It was one of those things. More of them must be wandering this way… where did that pistol come from?” Johnny asks. “It was in a desk. So you think more of those things are coming?” “I don’t really know, just a hunch, but the gunfire outside doesn’t sound like it’s letting up. We could easily barricade ourselves in here, but who knows how long this thing is going to last.” “Do you think we could make it out of here ?” “I believe we could, but it does sound like a warzone out there right now.” “Well I hope my sister has another set of car keys because that’s the only vehicle out there right now.” You say. “Hmm, well even if we did, I’m fairly certain as soon as we drove out in it, we’d be getting fired upon on. Even if we made it, there’s going to be more military areas to drive through. Nevermind the fact that your sister’s car isn’t exactly sturdy looking enough to survive such an attack, there is also always the possibility of a bunch of those things gathering together to overturn the vehicle.” “So are you saying we should go by foot?” you ask. “Heh, if it were just me, I might do that, but since your safety is a priority to me, I feel like we’d have a better chance however if I stole one of those military jeeps I’ve seen patrolling around.” Johnny replies. “Are you nuts? How the hell are we supposed to get one of those?” “Not we, me. I believe I could steal one. I have to admit I’m a little tired though. Still haven’t had a lot of sleeps, especially with… well you know. If I could just catch a little rest, I’d probably be able to do it better under the cover of the night.” The fact that Johnny seems so sure that he can just steal a military vehicle is a little scary. Did he also serve in the military or something? He’s never said. Come to think of it, he’s still never revealed too much about himself. In any case that isn’t quite your primary concern right now. “Well if you really believe you can steal a jeep, I guess that’s our best shot.” You say. “Well we still should pack some bags with useful supplies first. I’ll get some things from the basement since I’m pretty sure I saw quite few things down there. You can check this floor and check the upstairs.” Johnny heads back into the basement and you check upstairs first. You search Donna’s room and you do find some keys. You’re fairly sure that they are probably a spare set to Donna’s car. After grabbing the practical pharmacy from the bathroom (Julie and Donna sure didn’t reserve their drugs to just the illegal kind) you return to your own room and start repacking some of your clothes and some other personal items. A quick trip to the kitchen finds you a few bags of snacks and batteries. (And you looking over your shoulder constantly thinking that something is going to try to break in through the backdoor again) Johnny eventually comes up from the basement with an old looking bag of stuff. He’s looking really tired now. “Johnny are you going to be okay to do this? I mean I just found Donna’s car keys. We could leave in that and I’d drive.” you ask. “No, our best chance is the jeep. We’ll be riddled with bullets in that car. I’ll be fine. Just need a few hours of shuteye. After that, I’ll be ready to go. I guess I’ll sleep on the sofa in the living room.” Johnny says while walking off towards the living room with the bag and rifle. “Well I suppose we should wait before leaving anyway, I’d rather have you alert while we’re on the road. Hold on a moment you look a little wobbly.” You say and help him the rest of the way, which isn’t far of course, but you feel like it’s a nice gesture. Johnny certainly thinks so…but then he tends to think everything you do is wonderful. “Shit, I’m so tired. Even that gunfire going on isn’t going to keep me awake.” Johnny says, flopping down on the couch. “Well, I’ll be awake, so even if something unexpected happens and you’re still snoozing, I can wake you up.” “Thank you.” Johnny says looking up at you. He almost reaches his hand out to touch your face, but quickly stops himself. “I’m sorry that you had to call me your boyfriend yesterday.” “What?” You ask. “Yesterday, when you tried to lie to Mr. Zoll. You said I was your boyfriend. I know you were just saying that.” Johnny says as he starts to close his eyes. “You don’t worry about that right now. Just rest like you should have been able to yesterday.” “Okay…God…you’re so perfect. You’re so much better than me. I’ve done a lot of bad things Suzy.” “I think after yesterday we’ve both done a lot of bad things.” You reply. “No…I’ve…” Johnny starts to say, but then he trails off. Leaving Johnny to sleep, you stay in the living room if only because you’re a bit nervous to be by yourself right now. You turn the TV on and keep it on low, but as usual nothing of importance is on save for Ground Zero infomercials. Lacking anything better to do (Other than being on edge a bit) you start to contemplate that if Johnny is successful WHERE you should go. You don’t really have any good ideas either. You’ve never been anywhere in your life, so why would you have any ideas on where to go now? And given how fucked up everything is right now, where would it even be safe to go? No, the only place you’ve ever felt safe and at home is your basement. How you wish you could return. Then as you watch the GZ salesman obnoxiously go on about their product, it hits you… why shouldn’t you return? It’s a pleasant thought, but who knows if Peter already found the hidden entrance to the shelter yet. He might very well be already be enjoying the shelter with his boyfriend or whoever he’s got over there. You’re fairly certain if that’s the case, he isn’t going to let you in to share it. That was clear when you spoke to him on the phone. So where does that leave you? Leaving town to parts unknown? If that’s the case, you imagine you’ll have to leave that in Johnny’s hands since he’s mentioned he’s drifted from place to place and probably knows more about possible locations to go to in an emergency than you do. On top of all this, you still aren’t quite sure what to do with Johnny. He’s definitely gone a long way in trying to prove himself to you. He has possibly saved your life and is obviously willing to risk his for you. The only other person who has done that was Bobby. In some ways Johnny sort of reminds you of Bobby…and that’s also another reason why you continue to be leery of him. Other than his stalker behavior since you’ve met him, you’ve already come to the conclusion that Johnny probably has some sort of shady history. When you saw him finishing off Mr. Zoll…well it wasn’t exactly a normal reaction. He didn’t just react out of a panic like you did when you pushed Zoll down the stairs, Johnny got frothing mad. An anger you’ve never seen him display so outwardly before. Between that and his mumblings of “doing bad things” and you’re inclined to believe that whatever his past might be, that Johnny HAS killed before. And probably the more fucked up thing is that it doesn’t exactly bother you, or rather it doesn’t bother you like it should a normal person. Bobby used to kill people on a regular basis and while it took a little time for you to build complete trust in him, you did it and you had a relationship out of it. (And the funniest thing is that it didn’t even end in bloodshed) The question is, do you want to possibly put yourself through it all again? The unstable nature? The paranoia of wondering is he ever going to hurt you? Even the “normal” part of wondering if you’re just going to just eventually break up is a concern for you. Part of you still is upset about Bobby after all. You must have a thing for murderers at this point, because it’s the only explanation to why you’re contemplating all this. Maybe that whole incident with your Uncle Ed fucked you up even more than you realized. You do have Donna’s car keys. You could just leave now while Johnny sleeps. > You stay with him You’re still not quite sure if any of this is going to lead anywhere, but fucked up or not, Johnny’s still been there for you. To abandon him without even an explanation is just something you’re not willing to do. Besides, if you’re right about Johnny’s past, having someone like that around might be necessary given how crazy things are right now. Other than pushing someone down the stairs out of panic, it isn’t like you’re a fighter. Looking a nearby clock on the wall, you figure it’ll be getting dark in a few hours. Johnny didn’t tell you when to wake him, but you figure you should give him a few extra hours after it goes dark if only so he’ll be more rested. Then you’ll try to convince him to just leave in Donna’s car again since you still think it would be safer than trying to steal a military jeep. Still feeling a little uncomfortable about the back door windows now being broken and thus your safety more compromised, you head back into the kitchen to fix the problem. As you get close to the backdoor, you briefly see the thing still lying dead with several holes in its body and head on the back porch. Looks human, but even dead it does look a bit feral. With great effort you manage to push the refrigerator in front of the back door. Nothing is getting in now, well at least not easily anyway. You return to your room and check to see if your phone isn’t quite as damaged, as it appeared when you threw it against the wall, but of course it is. Hardly matters, you don’t have anyone to keep in contact with any more anyway. With the gunfire still going on outside, you flop down on your couch-bed and realize that barring something trying to break in again, there’s nothing to do. You re-open your laptop and lose yourself in a game because it’s way better than reality right now. Hours pass… You look at the time on your laptop and realize you’ve been playing much longer than you intended to. You immediately get up to go wake up Johnny. It actually sounds like the gunfire has died down outside as well. “Hey Johnny wake up! It’s time to go. I know you said you had plans to steal a jeep, but I really think we should…” When you get to the living room though, Johnny is gone. You call out to him a couple times figuring that maybe he’s upstairs or even in the basement, but you get no answer. You do see a note placed on the nearby end table in such a way that you’d notice it. You almost hesitate to pick it up, but of course you do anyway. To my dearest Suzy, I’ve left to go get that jeep. I know you probably still want to use your sister’s car, but I still think our best shot is with a military vehicle. I figure we can blend in a whole lot better in one of those and not look suspicious while driving around at a casual glance by soldiers. Probably better at running over those rabid people too. We might even be able to get out of this forsaken town. Anyway, I left this note since I didn’t want to disturb you or cause any unpleasant arguments on this matter. I also know you didn’t leave while I slept, even though you could have. This means so much to me, I don’t think you know how much. I know I haven’t exactly given you much reason to not be distrustful of me, but the very fact that you didn’t leave tells me that you believe in me on some level. You know I’ll try to come through for you and that you’re willing to wait. I knew when I first heard your drunken whore of a sister talk about you; I thought you sounded like you were the one. Then when I saw and spoke with you, I was sure of it. I will come back tonight as planned, however if the situation becomes dangerous over there, then by all means escape in your sister’s car. It would never be my wish for you to stay in danger. Forever my love, Johnny When the hell did he leave and write this? And how did you not hear him? He wasn’t joking about being stealthy you guess. Of course you probably would have known all this a lot sooner had you not got wrapped up in your game and actually left your room. As for the note itself, well…it’s standard Johnny in the short term you’ve known him. The “whore” description of your sister is a bit of a standout from the rest of letter which is fairly white knightish. Of course you know damn well Johnny is far from being a “white knight”. Suddenly you hear the basement door opening. You tense up in fear since you’ve left not only the car keys but also your pistol in your room. You think at first you’re going to have to risk just running out the front door, but… “Hey Suzy! Suzy? I got the jeep, come on let’s get ready to go!” you hear Johnny’s voice call out. You cautiously walk towards the hallway and see Johnny standing there looking into your room, then he turns his head and sees you. He’s got some clothing in his hand. “Oh there you are. I was worried for a moment that you had to run out in a hurry!” “Johnny, what the hell…didn’t you hear me calling you?” you ask. “No, I just got here.” “What? How? I’ve been in the living room for the past few minutes! You couldn’t have gotten by me.” “No I came in through the basement window. I couldn’t just leave the front door unlocked when I left.” “Basement win…wait I didn’t hear any glass breaking.” “That’s because it’s not broken. I had it so I could easily open it. Don’t worry, I thought about your safety. That window is pretty well hidden and not exactly easy to crawl through so I didn’t think any of those things would see it. They would’ve been more likely to just try to bash the ground floor doors or windows in.” “When did you mess around with the basement window and why didn’t you just tell me you were leaving?” “Didn’t you get my note? I explained why I left with bothering you in it.” “I only just finished reading it this minute.” “Oh, well I assumed you would’ve left your room before now. Anyway, here I got you these to wear. I think they might be a bit baggy, but they should work to help us blend in more.” Johnny shoves the clothing at you as if to distract you from asking more questions. It’s a uniform like what Johnny is wearing. You almost ask Johnny how he got the uniform, but as with most things concerning Johnny you’re starting to think it might better if you don’t know. As far as the basement window weirdness, you’re not going to dwell on it too much because it’s really not important right now. “Alright, that sounds like a good idea, I’ll go put these on.” You say and go to your room. “Um, don’t worry, I didn’t get those from a dead person or anything. It was a spare one I found.” Johnny blurts out. “Okay. I trust you Johnny.” You say which seems to make him smile. You lock the door and change into the military fatigues. Granted you don’t see any blood or tears in the fatigues, but then he could’ve just choked the person wearing it to death. “(Sigh) Suzy, why the hell are you attracted to this guy? Oh right, because you’ve got some serious psychological issues yourself, that’s why.” You mumble to yourself as if being painfully aware of the situation makes everything okay. You grab your bags and exit your room. “Glad to see the fatigues aren’t excessively big on you, I know you’re small framed and all. You ready to go?” Johnny asks. “Yeah, let’s get out of this place. How is it out there?” “In our immediate area? It’s fairly quiet now. Haven’t seen any of the rabid and the remainder of the Guard is busy burning bodies right now. I mean there are still patrols, but nobody even batted an eye when I drove this thing up to the house. Probably assumed whoever was inside was investigating or something. We shouldn’t linger here though.” With both of you ready and as prepared as you’re going to be, you and Johnny exit out the front door and quickly enter the jeep which is sitting right next to your sister’s car. You have to admit, you do feel a little safer sitting in this thing than if you did in your sister’s car. Johnny starts up the vehicle and turns to you. “Suzy, you know I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. So is there any place you had in mind?” Johnny asks. ‘Never been anywhere, so not really.” You answer. “I remember you saying you wanted to go home before.” “Well that would be nice, but things aren’t exactly normal any more. I mean the only reason for going back there would be to look for my brother’s bomb shelter, which definitely would be a safe zone knowing how Ben spent so much time building and constantly modifying it. Of course my other brother Peter is currently looking for it as well and who knows if he already claimed and locked himself inside it.” “Hmm, well it might be worth a look if you still want to try it. I mean the only other logical option I can think of is to as I suggested, leave town altogether. Should be much easier while driving around in this thing. Of course it might still be risky, if they’ve set up some sort of checkpoints outside of town…but maybe we can get the edge by fooling them briefly before smashing through such things.” Pretty risky stuff, but then these are risky times. > You go home It might be wishful thinking on your part, but you desire to be able to go home and stay there is a lot stronger than trying to find some place new. In fact it seems like every time you try something new, it turns into a clusterfuck. “I want to go home and give it one more chance. If it turns out staying there isn’t a viable option, then I suppose we can leave town.” You say. “Okay, but you’ll have to give me directions.” Johnny says and starts pulling out of the driveway. You pass by a few soldiers dragging a few more bodies and placing them in a large pile outside one of the homes in this area. Another large pile of bodies is burning outside yet another home. Nobody tries to flag you down or anything though, you’re guessing that between the dark, the uniforms and the jeep, if anyone is actually paying attention to you driving through, they probably think you’re just more soldiers patrolling around. It isn’t like this is most stable of situations right now. You continue to tell Johnny where to turn and drive and you go through another area where the National Guard has a presence. Again, you have no problems for the most part. However you then start hitting areas that are still suffering from conflict and in those cases, pretty severely. This is where some soldiers notice you a lot more and try to call out to you, presumably for help. In one case, you see two soldiers ragged and bloody running desperately from several of those rabid people. They cry out for you to stop, but naturally you and Johnny just keep driving. You hear some faint curses and screams as you put distance between you and the unfortunate soldiers. You eventually drive through areas that have been completely overrun by rabid. In fact you find that the military doesn’t actually have that much control at all over your town and that there are far more of the rabid roaming around either chasing down normal people or attempting to break into houses. Most of them don’t attempt to attack you, or if they do, you just continue driving fast enough that they don’t get the chance. By the time you get to your own house, your neighborhood is eerily quiet. There are definitely signs of past conflict all over the place, but there is nobody on the streets and most homes are not lit either. (Though you do see broken doors and windows on a lot of them) Fortunately your own house doesn’t look damaged (At least not from the front) You half expect to get swarmed by crazies as soon as you park in front of your house, but fortunately that isn’t the case and you manage get in the house as quickly as possible. “Can’t see shit, but I’m sort of afraid to turn on a light.” You remark. “I know what you mean. Wouldn’t want to attract those things. I got a small flashlight on this rifle. It shouldn’t be too noticeable from the outside. So what’s the deal with this shelter your brother built?” Johhny says turning on the flashlight and briefly shining it around the room and the nearby room. “I don’t know yet. I mean all I know is the entrance is hidden and that Peter was looking for it. In fact, I’m wondering if he already found it and locked himself up in it. Seems like he would’ve heard us.” “We haven’t been that noisy. Besides, maybe he thinks we’re intruders and is laying in wait to ambush us.” “Possibly. I’d call out his name, but again, I don’t want to make more noise…ah to hell with it. PETER?! Are you here?!” you said in a raised voice, trying not to shout too loudly. There is no answer. “He could be down in the basement or upstairs.” Johnny says. “Maybe, I still think he would’ve heard me though…let’s go check his room. If he did find out something about the shelter, maybe there will at least be a clue there.” You say. “Where’s his room?” “The connected garage. It’s near the kitchen up ahead.” You cautiously move about in the dark with Johnny taking the lead. You’re holding on to your pistol the whole time being paranoid about something attacking you in the darkness. Johnny slowly opens the door to the garage and shines his light inside… You find Peter and another unknown man both not quite entirely dressed, but that isn’t the disturbing part. The fact that they’re both dead is the disturbing part. “Holy shit, that’s Peter.” You say. “Who’s the other guy?” Johnny asks. “Dunno. Probably a client or boyfriend or something. He said he was with someone when I spoke earlier today with him.” “Hmm, looks like there was a struggle. This place is obviously a mess.” Johnny says shining the light all over the room. He shines the light on Peter and the other man and then gets a closer look. “Hmm, looks like they both suffered quite a bit of blunt trauma before their necks got snapped. It certainly wasn’t those rabid people that did this. I’d wager if it was, they’d have chunks bitten out of them. Bandits perhaps, but this house doesn’t look ransacked.” You stand there in silence as Johnny goes on about who could’ve possibly done this. “Suzy? You okay?” Johnny asks. “Huh? Yeah. It’s just…well sort of weird. I was pissed at Peter for the bullshit he said on the phone. Seeing him dead like this…is well…I dunno. I feel like I should feel something, but I don’t. Maybe I’m becoming desensitized or something.” “Well, like you said, he was an asshole to you earlier.” “Yeah, he was. In fact I think part of the reason why I came here was the hope that he hadn’t locked himself inside the shelter yet, so I could yell at him in person and maybe even kick his ass. (Sigh) Guess that isn’t necessary anymore. Also don’t know if he actually found the shelter or not and now I’m paranoid that whoever killed him is still in this fucking house.” “We can find out the latter pretty quickly I should think, we can just make a quick search. As for the former, well that’s up to you really.” It’s the middle of the night, you’re in a town full of trigger happy military and cannibalistic crazies, you’ve just found your brother and his lover dead in the garage, you’re hanging around a guy who is unhealthily obsessed with you and to top it all of, you’re getting tired. At this point you don’t want to risk anymore travelling. “Well, let’s do what you said and check the house out. If everything is safe, let’s just camp here for the rest of the night and start looking for the shelter tomorrow with fresh eyes.” You say. “As you wish.” Johnny answers. First thing you do is finish checking out the ground floor. Everything turns out okay and fairly untouched. Even the backyard doesn’t have any nasty unwanted lurkers in it either. (As added protection you and Johnny shove a few chairs in front of the back and front doors just in case any DO show up) You head upstairs and cautiously search with Johnny. Much like the downstairs though, you find that there isn’t anyone lurking up here. You even manage to find the courage to peek your head into Kelly’s room, but given how messy her usually room is, you don’t know if she’s ever returned here. Who knows what’s happened to her. Finally you end your search of the house by heading to the place where you started from, the basement. Again, not much looks different and fortunately there isn’t anyone down here either. Not worrying about someone seeing a light source down here you turn the lights on and find your own room is about the same as you left it. You shake your head that the though of all the bullshit you went through this week, only to end up back here. Makes you wonder why you bothered. “So…this is where you lived huh?” Johnny asks. “Yep. This was my lot in life. It wasn’t much, but it was mine. I was happy here you know? (Sigh) If only things never changed…Hm. Just realized you’re the first person other than myself that’s been in here in a long time.” You say. “What about your boyfriend?” Johnny asks. “Bobby? Not as much as you might think. We actually hung out upstairs when nobody else was really around or over his house as unpleasant as that could be at times. Honestly I sort of preferred that nobody come in here except me. This was my haven from the outside world and wanted to maintain that illusion as much as possible. Funny, but even with all the chaos going on out there, I still feel very safe here. Anyway, I guess nobody is lurking in the house.” “Guess not. Either that or they’re very sneaky. So are you going to be sleeping down here then?” “I believe I will. I figure even if we can’t find the shelter tomorrow, I will have at least gotten to sleep one last time in my own room before we leave.” “Don’t worry, we’ll find it. In fact maybe I’ll do a little searching while you’re resting.” “Heh, well good luck with that. I know it seems like an easy task since the backyard is only so big, but somehow Ben managed to hide it pretty well. Only his son Tommy used to consistently know where it was located and moved. Besides, I wouldn’t want you to suddenly drawing a pack of those rabid things due to you shining a flashlight around outside. Even if there is a privacy fence around the back.” “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” “Yes. Yes, I imagine you would be…Johnny…you weren’t in the military yourself at one time were you?” “Nah. Following orders, regimented life, not really my thing. Had enough of that growing up with my mom. Why?” “Just wondering. Due to all the shit that’s been going on, we also haven’t had much time to talk. I still don’t know that much about you.” “Heh, well you know. Like I mentioned a few times, I’ve been a bit of a drifter. Nothing really exciting though, it’s just the way things have turned out for me.” Johnny starts shifting his body a bit. He’s trying not to look nervous about you asking deeper questions about his past, but you can tell by now when he’s being evasive. “Okay, so I’m gonna leave you to your haven as you called it. If anything urgent comes up I’ll be sure to let you know.” Johnny says. Johnny turns and starts to leave then he stops to turn back to you. “You know I love you right?” he says. “I… know Johnny…and we’ll talk about that tomorrow as well.” Johnny doesn’t reply, he just turns around and heads upstairs. Well barring any unforeseen problems you’ve got two big issues to tackle tomorrow. The shelter location and Johnny. But those are issues to deal with tomorrow. Right now you’re going to pretend that none of the shit that’s currently happening is actually happening and enjoy your haven, if only tonight. > The next day… FRIDAY “Wakey wakey sis.” You hear a voice say. You slowly open your eyes and at first see what looks to be a man standing in front of you holding a shotgun. Then after the blur of your eyes clears a bit, you see that it’s your sister Kelly. Looks like she’s still hostile to you as well considering she’s pointing a shotgun at you. You don’t know why, but then has she ever needed a reason? You look at your pistol on the floor near the couch you’re sleeping on and Kelly just shakes her head. “I guarantee you wouldn’t make it sis. I suggest you don’t even try…heh I doubt you’d have the balls to go through with it anyway. I have to admit when I came up here to get something from my room, I didn’t expect to glance over this way and see you sleeping here.” Up? Where the hell would she come “up” from? You’re in the basement now. Kelly’s blocking your doorway, but you think you can make out a glowing light source coming from the basement floor beyond. And then it hits you. “…he moved the fucking shelter entrance in the house? And it’s been right near my goddamn room all this time?” you ask. “Hey hey! It’s about time you used that blonde head of yours other than taking up space!” Kelly mocks. Well you know where the entrance is, but unfortunately you’ve got bigger issues now. Kelly pointing a shotgun at you is concerning to be sure and makes you think back to what you saw in the garage. Peter and the other man’s body. Their bodies were beaten and their necks were broken. Kelly certainly has the strength and the skill to do such a thing. Kelly’s always been hostile to you and barely civil to your other sibling, but to actually kill one… “When did you find out? When you killed Peter?” “Pfft. I’ve always known. Crazy old Ben thought he was being so sneaky moving the goddamn entrance around all the time, but I knew where the fuck it was nearly every time. He had just moved the entrance again a few days before he blew away his family and himself. I’m just surprised YOU never accidently found it given that you lived practically right near the fucking thing for years. If the entrance was any closer you would’ve been sleeping in the damn thing.” Kelly continues to address you while briefly looking over her shoulder. You don’t know if she’s just being cautious or if she knows someone else is with you…and where is Johnny anyway? “As for Peter, that little faggot managed to find out where it was and thought he was going to hide out from the current shitstorm in it with his boyfriend or whoever that other faggot he was with. Had to convince him that he had to go, he didn’t listen and tried to resist and well you saw how that turned out.” Kelly briefly moves a bit to her left in your doorway allowing you to briefly look to see if you see Johnny coming, but you see nobody. Kelly notices you looking though. “So where’s that little whore Donna? Heard you moved in with her. She come with you? Julie maybe? Both? How the fuck did any of you survive the week?” “I’m here by myself Kelly.” “Bullshit. SOMEONE is here with you. I can’t see a shrinking violet like you hauling your ass through a bunch of military patrols as well as those freaks. The fact that you’re wearing military fatigues tells me that SOMEONE helped you. I know damn well you didn’t kill someone yourself for them.” “It’s been a weird week Kelly. You never know what you’re capable of until you’re put into the situation.” You say in such a way that gives Kelly a bit of an eyebrow raise. “Oh? So…are you a killer now, little sister? Tell me, how did it feel when you did it?” “I threw up. I’m not a fucking psychopath okay?! It didn’t give me some thrill! I just did what I had to, to survive!” you exclaim. “Okay, okay, calm down there killer.” Kelly chuckles before getting serious again. “While this is enlightening and all, we really should be getting back to the matter at hand.” Still no sign of Johnny. Where the fuck is he? “So what’s next Kelly? You gonna kill me too?” you ask. “Don’t know sis…don’t know…severely thinking about it. I’ve never liked you. You’ve been a thorn in my side since you crawled out of mom’s vagina. Always having to be compared to how good and pretty you were and how bad and rotten I was despite the fact I was the one who was shouldering most of the responsibility in this fucked up family. What did you ever do except hide in the goddamn basement? Even now you left the house only to come crawling back here. Yep, I’ve thought about killing you on many, many, MANY occasions.” “Actually that wasn’t my initial intention. My initial plan was to drive out of this forsaken town. I only stopped here because my own vehicle was badly damaged and I had hoped to maybe get Peter’s car and some extra supplies before heading out again.” You say trying to stall for time. “Oh? Hmm, you’re just full of surprises today aren’t you? Well if that is true, you may have just bought yourself a bit of a reprieve sis…okay. What the hell, I’m in a good mood. I’m gonna let you walk outta here alive and you’re going to be thankful.” “I don’t suppose you’ll allow me to gather some supplies or let me have my gun will you?” “Hah, no. Wouldn’t want you getting any ideas of trying to shoot me, you being a killer now and all. In fact let me just take that pistol right now. Stay on that couch and keep lying in that prone position. Don’t you fucking move, or boom there goes your pretty little blonde head all over the place.” Johnny is still nowhere to be seen. Did he take off? Did you actually get abandoned by a fucking stalker? Is your luck really that bad? Kelly now moves into your room, still pointing the shotgun at you, As she’s crouching down to pick up the pistol, there is a brief moment that she takes her eyes off of you. It’s apparent that there will be no rescue; the only thing you can hope is that Kelly is going to keep her word and let you go unharmed. Of course you don’t really think that’s likely and part of you wants to grab for the pistol before she can. > You grab the pistol In an act of desperation you lunge for the pistol, but Kelly easily anticipates your actions. She quickly grabs the weapon and manages to step on your hand in the process followed by her smashing the pistol into your head. “You dumb blonde bitch, I was gonna let you go too! What the…” What occurs next is a blur mainly because you’re still dizzy from getting hit in the head, but also because it happens so fast. Johnny bursts out of the closet with his rifle in hand, but Kelly already has a grip on you and managed to pull you up in an attempt to use you as a human shield. Johnny and Kelly scream at each other. Something about letting you go and something else about blowing your head off. Eventually it doesn’t matter because Johnny eventually feels he has no choice and if you’re going to get killed, then it should be him that does it. Johnny opens fire on you both, before Kelly can make good on her threats of killing you. Due to you soaking up several of the initial bullets, she actually manages to get off a couple of shots at Johnny, but whether she got him or not is irrelevant because you’re still lying dead on top of Kelly’s equally bullet ridden body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “Wakey wakey sis.” You hear a voice say. You slowly open your eyes and at first see what looks to be a man standing in front of you holding a shotgun. Then after the blur of your eyes clears a bit, you see that it’s your sister Kelly. Looks like she’s still hostile to you as well considering she’s pointing a shotgun at you. You don’t know why, but then has she ever needed a reason? You look at your pistol on the floor near the couch you’re sleeping on and Kelly just shakes her head. “I guarantee you wouldn’t make it sis. I suggest you don’t even try…heh I doubt you’d have the balls to go through with it anyway. I have to admit when I came up here to get something from my room, I didn’t expect to glance over this way and see you sleeping here.” Up? Where the hell would she come “up” from? You’re in the basement now. Kelly’s blocking your doorway, but you think you can make out a glowing light source coming from the basement floor beyond. And then it hits you. “…he moved the fucking shelter entrance in the house? And it’s been right near my goddamn room all this time?” you ask. “Hey hey! It’s about time you used that blonde head of yours other than taking up space!” Kelly mocks. Well you know where the entrance is, but unfortunately you’ve got bigger issues now. Kelly pointing a shotgun at you is concerning to be sure and makes you think back to what you saw in the garage. Peter and the other man’s body. Their bodies were beaten and their necks were broken. Kelly certainly has the strength and the skill to do such a thing. Kelly’s always been hostile to you and barely civil to your other sibling, but to actually kill one… “When did you find out? When you killed Peter?” “Pfft. I’ve always known. Crazy old Ben thought he was being so sneaky moving the goddamn entrance around all the time, but I knew where the fuck it was nearly every time. He had just moved the entrance again a few days before he blew away his family and himself. I’m just surprised YOU never accidently found it given that you lived practically right near the fucking thing for years. If the entrance was any closer you would’ve been sleeping in the damn thing.” Kelly continues to address you while briefly looking over her shoulder. You don’t know if she’s just being cautious or if she knows someone else is with you…and where is Johnny anyway? “As for Peter, that little faggot managed to find out where it was and thought he was going to hide out from the current shitstorm in it with his boyfriend or whoever that other faggot he was with. Had to convince him that he had to go, he didn’t listen and tried to resist and well you saw how that turned out.” Kelly briefly moves a bit to her left in your doorway allowing you to briefly look to see if you see Johnny coming, but you see nobody. Kelly notices you looking though. “So where’s that little whore Donna? Heard you moved in with her. She come with you? Julie maybe? Both? How the fuck did any of you survive the week?” “I’m here by myself Kelly.” “Bullshit. SOMEONE is here with you. I can’t see a shrinking violet like you hauling your ass through a bunch of military patrols as well as those freaks. The fact that you’re wearing military fatigues tells me that SOMEONE helped you. I know damn well you didn’t kill someone yourself for them.” “It’s been a weird week Kelly. You never know what you’re capable of until you’re put into the situation.” You say in such a way that gives Kelly a bit of an eyebrow raise. “Oh? So…are you a killer now, little sister? Tell me, how did it feel when you did it?” “I threw up. I’m not a fucking psychopath okay?! It didn’t give me some thrill! I just did what I had to, to survive!” you exclaim. “Okay, okay, calm down there killer.” Kelly chuckles before getting serious again. “While this is enlightening and all, we really should be getting back to the matter at hand.” Still no sign of Johnny. Where the fuck is he? “So what’s next Kelly? You gonna kill me too?” you ask. “Don’t know sis…don’t know…severely thinking about it. I’ve never liked you. You’ve been a thorn in my side since you crawled out of mom’s vagina. Always having to be compared to how good and pretty you were and how bad and rotten I was despite the fact I was the one who was shouldering most of the responsibility in this fucked up family. What did you ever do except hide in the goddamn basement? Even now you left the house only to come crawling back here. Yep, I’ve thought about killing you on many, many, MANY occasions.” “Actually that wasn’t my initial intention. My initial plan was to drive out of this forsaken town. I only stopped here because my own vehicle was badly damaged and I had hoped to maybe get Peter’s car and some extra supplies before heading out again.” You say trying to stall for time. “Oh? Hmm, you’re just full of surprises today aren’t you? Well if that is true, you may have just bought yourself a bit of a reprieve sis…okay. What the hell, I’m in a good mood. I’m gonna let you walk outta here alive and you’re going to be thankful.” “I don’t suppose you’ll allow me to gather some supplies or let me have my gun will you?” “Hah, no. Wouldn’t want you getting any ideas of trying to shoot me, you being a killer now and all. In fact let me just take that pistol right now. Stay on that couch and keep lying in that prone position. Don’t you fucking move, or boom there goes your pretty little blonde head all over the place.” Johnny is still nowhere to be seen. Did he take off? Did you actually get abandoned by a fucking stalker? Is your luck really that bad? Kelly now moves into your room, still pointing the shotgun at you, As she’s crouching down to pick up the pistol, there is a brief moment that she takes her eyes off of you. It’s apparent that there will be no rescue; the only thing you can hope is that Kelly is going to keep her word and let you go unharmed. Of course you don’t really think that’s likely and part of you wants to grab for the pistol before she can. > You don't move It’s no good. You’d never manage to grab the pistol before Kelly. Even if you did, she’d probably manage to shoot you before you could shoot her. Fear and panic begins to well up inside you as you believe this is the beginning of the end. Kelly picks up the pistol and smiles as she puts it in front of her pants. You look helplessly as she does this…and then that’s when your eyes wander to your closet. You don’t remember shutting the closet door. In fact you never shut your closet door… And it’s opening right now. Instinctively you try to flatten your body and disappear into the crevasse of your couch as much as possible. You then place your arms up to your face. “What the hell are you doing? That’s not gonna…” Kelly starts to say and then she hears a creak. Johnny unloads several rounds into Kelly’s body and head. She doesn’t even have time to fully turn around. Pieces of her fly out from the exit wounds and she falls to the floor in a bloody mess still twitching a bit. “Shit. Shit. Oh Shit. Oh fuck. Fuck. Please oh God. Please.” You’re muttering to yourself the whole time, barely aware of everything else. Johnny walks over from the closet and kneels over to you. “It’s over Suzy. Calm down. It’s over. She’s dead. That bitch will never bully you again.” Johnny says grabbing one of your hands. You calm down and look at Johnny. In that moment you don’t care about what he has done in the past or what he might do in the future. All you care about is that he was ultimately there for you when it counted. You sit up and hug him, getting teary eyed in the process. “Oh god, I thought…I thought maybe…” “No, I was always there to protect you. I told you. I’ll always be here. You’re my perfect angel. You give my life…purpose.” Johnny replies hugging you in return and patting you on the back. Johnny also sniffs your hair as he’s hugging you at which point causes you to pull back a bit. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just…” Johnny says. “It’s okay. I know. It was the moment.” You say trying not to make it too uncomfortable. With you and Johnny done embracing, you stand up and look over at your sister’s body, which has stopped any sort of death twitch it might’ve briefly had. You just stare at it silently. Johnny doesn’t even speak, he instead watches you looking at your sister. After about a couple of minutes of this, he finally speaks. “How do you feel?” “Honestly? I feel nothing. I don’t feel anger for what she did. I don’t feel guilt or even happiness that she’s dead. I just don’t feel anything for her anymore. She’s dead and that’s it. Just like Peter upstairs. Just like my Mom, my Dad, my whole family at this point. They’re all dead and I’m alive.” “Well, we don’t know about your sister Donna.” Johnny remarks. “She’s dead too. I know she is.” You say and look at Johnny who looks away and focuses back on Kelly’s body. “Well anyway, it looks like we know where the shelter entrance is now. Why don’t we check it out?” “Well that was the whole goal of this ordeal I suppose.” You say. Johnny exits the room and you grab your pistol back from Kelly’s body before leaving. Stepping out of your room you see the hatch in the floor wide open where the fluorescent glow of lighting coming from. You take a look inside and see a long ladder down leading to another floor, which you imagine that’s the main shelter. You can’t believe how close it was to your room and how you never knew about it! “How the hell did you brother do this with you hearing or knowing about it?” Johnny asks. “I dunno. I mean he managed to routinely change the entrance all the damn time too. Ben had a gift I guess. Everyone does I suppose.” you say and you and Johnny start climbing down the ladder and you close up the hatch. Eventually you get to the bottom and you and Johnny open up a metal door, which is fortunately not locked. And there it is, you’re in the shelter proper. Before you is a dimly lit living area with various furniture and even a TV. Other rooms include a bathroom, kitchen area, a couple of bedrooms and A LOT of storage rooms. One such room is huge, as rows and rows of canned food and bottled water are found. “Well looks like sustenance is plentiful. Doesn’t even look like Kelly put a dent in the supplies.” You say. Another storage room contains a goodly amount of ammo and weapons of all kinds. Mostly rifles. Medical supplies are in another. One thing that stands out is that Ben’s shelter has solid steel walls. You have no idea how the hell he did this and you guess you never will. You do notice on several of the walls something has been repeatedly scratched out though not entirely successfully everywhere. At one point you make out most of it. Pr-p---- o- th- Gr--n- -er- Cor---at-o- “Well, I guess spending thousands on one of those Ground Zero shelters would’ve been a waste of money for you Seems like you got a nice one for free.” Johnny says looking around. “Indeed. Now we need to talk about us Johnny.” Johnny turns to you and sees you’re holding your pistol directly at him. He doesn’t react with surprise or anger or anything. It’s nothing. And that’s the “real” Johnny right there. The one you’ve always known even when you weren’t quite sure. “So…what is this Suzy?” Johnny asks. “I don’t know yet. I really don’t. I wish I did. I wish I could make a decision. I wish I could be the killer my sister thought I was. This would be so much easier. On the other hand I also wish I could trust and just let go.” Johnny makes no move towards you. He just continues to stand there. You briefly wipe your eyes while still holding the pistol on him. “Johnny, you’ve been here for me this whole crazy week. I don’t think I would’ve survived if you hadn’t been around…but I know you. I know what you are.” “I never thought that you wouldn’t figure it out, you’re an intelligent woman after all which is matched only by your beauty of course.” Johnny replies. “Stop. Just stop.” You exclaim. You tear up and sniffle for a moment and then address Johnny again. “My uncle Ed was a serial killer. We all sort of wondered, but it wasn’t until that fateful day when I decided to go snooping around where I shouldn’t have that I learned the awful truth. He caught me finding where he was storing body parts, but in his own twisted honorable way due to being related, he said he’d spare my life if I helped him kill someone. Kept saying I was pure and good, and not like the rest of those whores he killed.” Johnny’s eyebrows raise when you say this. Now he seems genuinely surprised. “In a more fucked up twist, he was feuding with a group of cultists into human sacrifice. Wanted me to help kill them. I initially did out of fear, but then I met Bobby during this mission. I ended up betraying my uncle because I felt that connection to Bobby because we both came from fucked up families. I thought it was love, and maybe it was, but it didn’t last obviously.” Johnny seems a bit overwhelmed by your new information. “That’s… some story Suzy. I have to admit, I never would have guessed…” “That what? That I’m not perfect? I’m not good? I’m not so pure? That I’m a backstabbing whore like all the rest?” you snap. “That…that wasn’t what I was going to say at all. Suzy, do you really think I could ever see you in that light?” “I…I don’t know Johnny. You’ve never told me much about your past. I mean I can piece things together by what you have told me and how you’ve acted. And that’s the problem I DON’T KNOW.” “Okay, Suzy, let’s just get it completely out in the open. What exactly is it that you think I’ve done or what I am?” “You’re a serial killer. I mean I don’t exactly know just how bad you are for certain and I can’t know for certain, but I do know you’re a killer. I’ve been studying you probably just as much as you’ve been studying me. I mean…Christ…I don’t KNOW if you killed Donna. I don’t KNOW if you killed Julie, but the more I think about it and how they just disappeared and the conclusion I come to isn’t pleasant. There’s also your own suspicious behavior, the incident with the soldier “falling” down the stairs, your rage when beating that guy’s head in, claiming that you’ve done bad things, stealing a jeep and most likely killing the owners in process, and finally your obsession with me. I’m quite familiar with your kind enough that even if I can’t prove some of this shit, I feel it in my heart that’s what you are.” “Well…if I am so terrible, then I suppose you should kill me.” “Goddamn it Johnny, if it was THAT FUCKING EASY I WOULD! But YOU KNOW it isn’t and I KNOW it isn’t! Because I also know underneath the fucked up social chameleon predator, I KNOW there actually IS a human being capable of love. I believe you really love me Johnny. I do. I don’t doubt it. The problem is, how can I fucking trust that it’s going to last?” Johnny has no answer. He just looks down. “Well see there’s my problem. How do I know that I’m not going to do something that’s going to set you off? Make you see me as fallen angel or a flawed person that is fit only for destruction? And this goes both ways Johnny, how do YOU know that I might not strike first? Granted I’m not a killer, but I still manipulated events to cause the death of my uncle. Can YOU really trust me, if I’m scared of you?” you say. Johnny at this point rubs his eyes and sniffles a bit. He’s not exactly crying, but he’s definitely having an emotional moment. “Suzy. I cannot think of anything more that I can do, that would convince you that I’ll love you forever and that I will always protect you. It’s true I have done bad things…it’s also true that I probably would be classified as a serial killer. I’m very sick Suzy. I have a lot of bad thoughts going on in my head most of the time and even though I can emulate emotions, they don’t feel genuine. It’s like I’m just a mask. But with you, it’s different. I haven’t felt this way towards anyone since…well my first love. I don’t really want to get into that right now, but I want to say it was a much different situation.” Johnny falls to his knees. “Almost everything I felt during my time with you this week was actually real to me. You made me feel like a normal person. Like I had at last found a purpose to my life. I love you Suzy. You can never fall off that pedestal. I know that this is difficult for you. I understand the alienation and mistrust you feel, perhaps in a different way, but I understand it. But I also know that you want to give us a chance, if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be struggling with this right now.” You continue to point the pistol at Johnny as more tears roll down your cheeks. “Johnny…I know you’ve lied to me or been evasive about things this week. I’ve been nothing but truthful. If this has any chance of working. I need to know right now. (Exhale) Did you kill Donna and Julie?” “I thought you said you didn’t care what happened to them and that they abandoned you.” Johnny says. “And that may be the case because you FUCKING killed them! Now stop evading the fucking question and answer it!” you demand. Johnny looks at you. In fact it’s the most cold-blooded stare you’ve ever seen from him. It’s like when Uncle Ed looked at you in his van. “Would you believe me, if I said no?” he asks. “ANSWER!” you demand. “Very well. No, I didn’t.” Johnny says looking straight at you. > You accept the answer And with those words that you hear from Johnny, everything in your mind just sort of shuts off. It doesn’t matter. None of it does. You see that now. “Okay.” You say and put your pistol away. Johnny looks a bit uncertain, almost as if he was expecting you to shoot him. “Okay?” he asks. “Yeah, okay. If you’re telling me you didn’t kill them, then you didn’t kill them. In fact I don’t want to know about your past either. It’s just not important. You were there for me this week when nobody else was, that’s the important thing and that’s what I should place my faith in.” Johnny slowly gets up off his knees. He doesn’t approach you right away; instead he just continues to stand at a distance. “I apologize for my earlier outburst Johnny. I just, well it’s been a stressful week. You understand.” You say. “Yeah….yeah I get it. Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.” Johnny says. “Good. Good. Well, let’s move on to other matters shall we?” “Yeah.” Johnny says. Suddenly Johnny rushes at you and grabs you tightly. While one arm is firmly around your waist, one hand moves up to your neck and you feel a gentle squeeze as he looks into your eyes. It’s the look of a predator that has finally caught his prey. “Well? What are you waiting for lover? I trust you.” you say not resisting. Johnny’s hand moves from your neck and to your face, where upon he strokes your cheek gently. “You have the face of a perfect angel.” he whispers and then he moves in to kiss you. As your lips touch, he begins to take your clothes off in a hasty fashion. He’s definitely getting aggressive, but oddly you’re not quite feeling his “enthusiasm” yet… By the time you get pushed over towards the bed and are basically in your bra and panties, he still isn’t quite “ready.” “Do you need some help?” you ask. “No, I’ll be fine...” He says as he tries to get it up. While you take off the remainder of your clothes Johnny’s still having difficulties. “Look I can help you out, I don’t mind going down on…” “Shhh! No! I don’t want you debasing yourself like a whore! I just need to focus!” Johnny snaps. “Okay. Okay.” You say and back off. You lie down on the bed and try not to stare in an effort to not look judgmental. This is really awkward though. Johnny starts swearing, as his buddy is not doing what he wants it to do. Swearing turns to shouting and then finally a complete breakdown. “Shit! I wanted this to be so perfect. I wanted to be everything for you, not some fucking impotent eunuch!” he says sniffling a bit. “Hey, calm down. It’s okay. You’re trying too hard, you just need to relax.” You say moving over to caress him a bit. “I know. (sniffle) This just has never happened before.” Johnny replies. “Well, you probably aren’t used to…uh situations like this. I mean would it help if I pretended I was dead or something?” “What? No. That doesn’t work. Your body is too warm and submerging you in cold water would be really uncomfortable for you.” Johnny says. As you continue to try to make Johnny feel more at ease, he slowly speaks. “Suzy…there is something I can think of…but…you’re not going to want to do it…” “Does it involve pain?” you ask. “No.” “Then go ahead and say it.” “Could…could you pretend that we’re related?” Johnny asks. Why are you not surprised? “Ah. I see. So you want me to role play as your mother?” you ask going for the obvious serial killer obsession. “Hah, no. You’re a bit too young for that, I don’t think I could maintain the illusion, but… um maybe you could be my sister?” Wow, a murderous boyfriend who fucked his sister in the past, it’s like being with Bobby all over again…and there’s something vaguely comforting about that. You always did prefer something familiar to something new. You smile and caress Johnny’s face. “Of course brother dear.” You say and passionately kiss Johnny. From there things get a lot better. Johnny actually is a pretty sensual lover when he gets going. You guess he must’ve loved his sister just like you once loved Bobby a lot. Johnny falls asleep shortly afterwards professing his usual love for you. After being awake a little longer yourself thinking about what the future might hold, you go to sleep. > Next day... SATURDAY You wake up to the faint sounds of rustling. You look up from your bed and see Johnny getting dressed. “Where are you going?” you ask groggily. “I was going to get the stuff I brought in from the jeep and left up stairs on Thursday night. I know we’ve got more than enough stuff down here now, but I still thought you’d want your clothes which we don’t have any of down here.” “Oh. Okay, I’ll come with you.” You say. “No, stay here and relax, I got it.” “It’s okay really, I don’t mind. Besides, I still left things in my room that I’d like to get.” “You sure you want to do that with your sister’s body still in there?” “Oh yeah that’s right. Well I’ll just help you with the bags from upstairs then.” “Okay. Always enjoy your company anyway and don’t worry, I fully intend on cleaning up all the bodies upstairs, not just your sister’s. I mean know we’re going to be down here for a while, but you never want bodies just lying around to rot in your area. Never mind the smell, but there are also vermin and health hazards to consider.” Johnny says. Well he’d probably know better than most… You and Johnny finish getting dressed and exit the shelter. From the basement you then head to the ground floor where you see your bags lying on the floor near the front door. “You said you brought these in on Thursday night?” you ask. “Yeah, after you fell asleep.” “I suppose it’s a silly question since you never seem to be scared of anything, but you weren’t concerned about those rabid things possibly wandering around at night?” “Oh I definitely was prepared in case of an attack, but the strange thing is, its dead silent in your neighborhood. Or at least it seems like it is. I didn’t see anything wandering around out there. Rabid or otherwise. If I had to guess, the National Guard exterminated everything in this area and moved on.” “Hm, well from what I’ve seen they’re getting their ass kicked elsewhere. I just hope that…” Before you or Johnny can say anything else a bright flash shines through one of the uncovered windows along with the sound of a large explosion in the distance. You can’t help but take a quick glance out the window. And there you see it in the far distance, the dissipating remnants of a mushroom cloud rising up in the sky. “…they finally went and did it.” You say. “…I have to say, I’m not entirely surprised. Johnny replies looking with you. “From the direction I saw the cloud, I’d say it probably hit Security City and that’s fairly far away. I know impact should’ve at least shattered the windows of the house had it been closer or bigger so it probably wasn’t even a large one. Still, we probably should still get down in that shelter.” You say. Johnny agrees and the pair of you grab all the bags and quickly head back down to the shelter. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing we decided to come back here instead of trying to leave town.” You say. “Yeah, I imagine things are going to be quite chaotic for a long time to come. It’s better that you’re safe down here.” Johnny says. “We’re both safe down here.” you say, but Johnny’s pacing suggests that he’s a bit preoccupied. “Okay, what’s wrong?” you ask. “Well, with this new event come to light, its already established that the situation just got a lot worse and isn’t going to be ending anytime soon. Now we’ve probably got a decades worth of supplies, possibly a little more since I don’t eat much anyway, but the fact remains, we’re going to need more supplies eventually and that means going up to the surface and dealing with it.” Johnny replies. “Yeah, I know. I didn’t really want to think about it, but you’re right of course. I think I saw some survival manuals in one of the rooms down here, guess I better read up on them.” “While I certainly wouldn’t stop you from getting yourself acquainted with such things, my thoughts are, why do you need to leave here and risk your life at all? I’ll be the one going up there.” “Well we are sort of a team now right? I mean don’t you want me to help you?” Johnny’s hands touch your shoulders as he stares into your eyes. His hands gently run down from your shoulders to your arms until he’s holding both of your hands. “Suzy, you were too good for this world when it wasn’t completely fucked up, you’re definitely too good for it now. As dangerous as it was in this past week, it’s going to be ten times worse now. It’s going to be chaos, anarchy and people killing each other for survival as well as pleasure. In short, it’s going to be a world that someone like me would thrive in. I actually belong out there.” Johnny then lets go your hands and raises his arms upward and looks up and around making motions with his hands pointing to the shelter in general. “And this, all this, is your world. This is all you have ever needed Suzy. Some place to feel safe. Some place locked away from the outside world. I mean you’re the honest one here, can you tell me sincerely that you really want to go out there scrounging around for supplies and having to deal with people wanting to rape you or kill you, or hell even eat you? Wouldn’t you rather someone else deal with it?” Johnny focuses his attention back to you. You look at him and you don’t even answer because your face is probably giving him his answer already. He’s absolutely right. You don’t want to deal with reality. You never have. In fact you got along pretty well without having to for a very long time and whenever you have had to deal with it, it’s always been a stressful mess. He’s also right in that he’s far more suited to dealing with the shitstorm that the surface is going to be. And maybe that’s just one more reason why you didn’t kill Johnny. You knew he’d be willing to take care of you no matter what. It’s all you’ve ever wanted, for someone to just love and take care of you while you didn’t have to worry about a thing. You move forward and put your arms back around Johnny and look into his eyes. “Just don’t killed okay?” you say. “Never. I’ll always be around to protect and take care of you Suzy. My love for you will always keep me going forever and ever and ever and ever.” The way Johnny is looking at you while he strokes your hair each time for emphasis when he says “and ever” would probably be creepy to most, but you know its just his way of confirming his love you. You’re so lucky. > Sheltered Princess The Future… It’s been about a month; Johnny should be home again soon. Just have to keep an ear open for that certain knock and his voice. You wonder what things he will have brought home this time. You’re still pretty much good with the necessities. Maybe he will have found some new movies or books to bring you this time. At first when he started going out, you worried about him even though he assured you he would be fine. Of course as time went on, you ceased worrying altogether. Still, after the first few years, Johnny was getting restless. Sure he was going out, but never for long periods of time. Then one day he went out and didn’t return for a full week. For the first time in a long while you worried so much when he did that. This caused an argument when he finally returned. You were so angry. You even accused him of cheating on you, but deep down you knew that wasn’t and would never be the case. To Johnny’s credit he was honest about what the problem was. He apologized realizing he should’ve at least told you before disappearing like that. He tried, he really tried and he thought that “you” would be enough, but he wasn’t like you. He couldn’t stay cooped up down in a shelter for long stretches of time. Even though he was in the presence of an “angel” he always felt like a trapped animal. Sometimes being around you made him feel and realize just how inferior he was to you. He explained how the surface was better than he could’ve ever imagined. No law, no order, and freedom to do whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted. The pull was too great and was getting greater. You were upset and rightfully so. After all he had professed that he would always be there for you, and now who would take care of you if he left? Johnny however insisted that he wasn’t going to break your heart. He assured you once again that he would still be there to take care of you; he just needed time to himself. He explained that he just needed to “wander” because deep down that’s who he’d always be. He also explained it would be safer for you if he did wander as he didn’t want to one day unleash his…urges out on you by accident. What could you do? How could you compete? He was a slave to his nature. It was like Bobby all over again. That first time, you practically kicked him out and he left without struggle or even raising his voice, he just told you that he would keep his promise and that you would see that he would not fail you. Naturally you didn’t believe him at the time you were too upset. That entire month was a pretty bad one for you. You spent most of your time crying and wondering if you’d been a delusional fool for sticking your head in the sand and ignoring reality as usual. You even started reading those survival books that you hadn’t actually gotten to reading yet and rationing your food and water a little more since you were potentially facing an uncertain future. But then when that month had passed and Johnny did indeed return like he always had in the past. At first you were reluctant to even let him back in, but then you realized that he had kept his promise just like he always has to you. The reunion was a happy one and over the years you’ve gotten accustomed to this arrangement. In fact it’s nice to be by yourself too. You’d actually forgotten what that was like during the years Johnny was around all the time. You hear a familiar pattern knock on the shelter door followed by Johnny’s faint voice coming from the other side. After taking the usual safety precautions, you excitedly rush to open it with your pistol drawn. “I’m home, my perfect angel.” Johnny says smiling and holding a couple of bags no doubt stuffed with goodies. “Well don’t just stand there, come in! I missed you.” You say and welcome Johnny back home like you always do. Johnny tells you a few things about the outside world like he always does, but in general you never care that much. As far as you’re concerned, what he does out there you don’t want to hear too much about and it doesn’t matter anyway. All that matters is his time with you. You happily accept all the gifts and supplies he has brought for you and later on you and he embrace as lovers do. The pair of you enjoy your time together, until its time for Johnny to wander again. But you never despair about it, because you know he’ll always come back. And one day, you know he’ll come back forever. It’s not perfect, but then nothing in this new world is.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It’s no good. You’d never manage to grab the pistol before Kelly. Even if you did, she’d probably manage to shoot you before you could shoot her. Fear and panic begins to well up inside you as you believe this is the beginning of the end. Kelly picks up the pistol and smiles as she puts it in front of her pants. You look helplessly as she does this…and then that’s when your eyes wander to your closet. You don’t remember shutting the closet door. In fact you never shut your closet door… And it’s opening right now. Instinctively you try to flatten your body and disappear into the crevasse of your couch as much as possible. You then place your arms up to your face. “What the hell are you doing? That’s not gonna…” Kelly starts to say and then she hears a creak. Johnny unloads several rounds into Kelly’s body and head. She doesn’t even have time to fully turn around. Pieces of her fly out from the exit wounds and she falls to the floor in a bloody mess still twitching a bit. “Shit. Shit. Oh Shit. Oh fuck. Fuck. Please oh God. Please.” You’re muttering to yourself the whole time, barely aware of everything else. Johnny walks over from the closet and kneels over to you. “It’s over Suzy. Calm down. It’s over. She’s dead. That bitch will never bully you again.” Johnny says grabbing one of your hands. You calm down and look at Johnny. In that moment you don’t care about what he has done in the past or what he might do in the future. All you care about is that he was ultimately there for you when it counted. You sit up and hug him, getting teary eyed in the process. “Oh god, I thought…I thought maybe…” “No, I was always there to protect you. I told you. I’ll always be here. You’re my perfect angel. You give my life…purpose.” Johnny replies hugging you in return and patting you on the back. Johnny also sniffs your hair as he’s hugging you at which point causes you to pull back a bit. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just…” Johnny says. “It’s okay. I know. It was the moment.” You say trying not to make it too uncomfortable. With you and Johnny done embracing, you stand up and look over at your sister’s body, which has stopped any sort of death twitch it might’ve briefly had. You just stare at it silently. Johnny doesn’t even speak, he instead watches you looking at your sister. After about a couple of minutes of this, he finally speaks. “How do you feel?” “Honestly? I feel nothing. I don’t feel anger for what she did. I don’t feel guilt or even happiness that she’s dead. I just don’t feel anything for her anymore. She’s dead and that’s it. Just like Peter upstairs. Just like my Mom, my Dad, my whole family at this point. They’re all dead and I’m alive.” “Well, we don’t know about your sister Donna.” Johnny remarks. “She’s dead too. I know she is.” You say and look at Johnny who looks away and focuses back on Kelly’s body. “Well anyway, it looks like we know where the shelter entrance is now. Why don’t we check it out?” “Well that was the whole goal of this ordeal I suppose.” You say. Johnny exits the room and you grab your pistol back from Kelly’s body before leaving. Stepping out of your room you see the hatch in the floor wide open where the fluorescent glow of lighting coming from. You take a look inside and see a long ladder down leading to another floor, which you imagine that’s the main shelter. You can’t believe how close it was to your room and how you never knew about it! “How the hell did you brother do this with you hearing or knowing about it?” Johnny asks. “I dunno. I mean he managed to routinely change the entrance all the damn time too. Ben had a gift I guess. Everyone does I suppose.” you say and you and Johnny start climbing down the ladder and you close up the hatch. Eventually you get to the bottom and you and Johnny open up a metal door, which is fortunately not locked. And there it is, you’re in the shelter proper. Before you is a dimly lit living area with various furniture and even a TV. Other rooms include a bathroom, kitchen area, a couple of bedrooms and A LOT of storage rooms. One such room is huge, as rows and rows of canned food and bottled water are found. “Well looks like sustenance is plentiful. Doesn’t even look like Kelly put a dent in the supplies.” You say. Another storage room contains a goodly amount of ammo and weapons of all kinds. Mostly rifles. Medical supplies are in another. One thing that stands out is that Ben’s shelter has solid steel walls. You have no idea how the hell he did this and you guess you never will. You do notice on several of the walls something has been repeatedly scratched out though not entirely successfully everywhere. At one point you make out most of it. Pr-p---- o- th- Gr--n- -er- Cor---at-o- “Well, I guess spending thousands on one of those Ground Zero shelters would’ve been a waste of money for you Seems like you got a nice one for free.” Johnny says looking around. “Indeed. Now we need to talk about us Johnny.” Johnny turns to you and sees you’re holding your pistol directly at him. He doesn’t react with surprise or anger or anything. It’s nothing. And that’s the “real” Johnny right there. The one you’ve always known even when you weren’t quite sure. “So…what is this Suzy?” Johnny asks. “I don’t know yet. I really don’t. I wish I did. I wish I could make a decision. I wish I could be the killer my sister thought I was. This would be so much easier. On the other hand I also wish I could trust and just let go.” Johnny makes no move towards you. He just continues to stand there. You briefly wipe your eyes while still holding the pistol on him. “Johnny, you’ve been here for me this whole crazy week. I don’t think I would’ve survived if you hadn’t been around…but I know you. I know what you are.” “I never thought that you wouldn’t figure it out, you’re an intelligent woman after all which is matched only by your beauty of course.” Johnny replies. “Stop. Just stop.” You exclaim. You tear up and sniffle for a moment and then address Johnny again. “My uncle Ed was a serial killer. We all sort of wondered, but it wasn’t until that fateful day when I decided to go snooping around where I shouldn’t have that I learned the awful truth. He caught me finding where he was storing body parts, but in his own twisted honorable way due to being related, he said he’d spare my life if I helped him kill someone. Kept saying I was pure and good, and not like the rest of those whores he killed.” Johnny’s eyebrows raise when you say this. Now he seems genuinely surprised. “In a more fucked up twist, he was feuding with a group of cultists into human sacrifice. Wanted me to help kill them. I initially did out of fear, but then I met Bobby during this mission. I ended up betraying my uncle because I felt that connection to Bobby because we both came from fucked up families. I thought it was love, and maybe it was, but it didn’t last obviously.” Johnny seems a bit overwhelmed by your new information. “That’s… some story Suzy. I have to admit, I never would have guessed…” “That what? That I’m not perfect? I’m not good? I’m not so pure? That I’m a backstabbing whore like all the rest?” you snap. “That…that wasn’t what I was going to say at all. Suzy, do you really think I could ever see you in that light?” “I…I don’t know Johnny. You’ve never told me much about your past. I mean I can piece things together by what you have told me and how you’ve acted. And that’s the problem I DON’T KNOW.” “Okay, Suzy, let’s just get it completely out in the open. What exactly is it that you think I’ve done or what I am?” “You’re a serial killer. I mean I don’t exactly know just how bad you are for certain and I can’t know for certain, but I do know you’re a killer. I’ve been studying you probably just as much as you’ve been studying me. I mean…Christ…I don’t KNOW if you killed Donna. I don’t KNOW if you killed Julie, but the more I think about it and how they just disappeared and the conclusion I come to isn’t pleasant. There’s also your own suspicious behavior, the incident with the soldier “falling” down the stairs, your rage when beating that guy’s head in, claiming that you’ve done bad things, stealing a jeep and most likely killing the owners in process, and finally your obsession with me. I’m quite familiar with your kind enough that even if I can’t prove some of this shit, I feel it in my heart that’s what you are.” “Well…if I am so terrible, then I suppose you should kill me.” “Goddamn it Johnny, if it was THAT FUCKING EASY I WOULD! But YOU KNOW it isn’t and I KNOW it isn’t! Because I also know underneath the fucked up social chameleon predator, I KNOW there actually IS a human being capable of love. I believe you really love me Johnny. I do. I don’t doubt it. The problem is, how can I fucking trust that it’s going to last?” Johnny has no answer. He just looks down. “Well see there’s my problem. How do I know that I’m not going to do something that’s going to set you off? Make you see me as fallen angel or a flawed person that is fit only for destruction? And this goes both ways Johnny, how do YOU know that I might not strike first? Granted I’m not a killer, but I still manipulated events to cause the death of my uncle. Can YOU really trust me, if I’m scared of you?” you say. Johnny at this point rubs his eyes and sniffles a bit. He’s not exactly crying, but he’s definitely having an emotional moment. “Suzy. I cannot think of anything more that I can do, that would convince you that I’ll love you forever and that I will always protect you. It’s true I have done bad things…it’s also true that I probably would be classified as a serial killer. I’m very sick Suzy. I have a lot of bad thoughts going on in my head most of the time and even though I can emulate emotions, they don’t feel genuine. It’s like I’m just a mask. But with you, it’s different. I haven’t felt this way towards anyone since…well my first love. I don’t really want to get into that right now, but I want to say it was a much different situation.” Johnny falls to his knees. “Almost everything I felt during my time with you this week was actually real to me. You made me feel like a normal person. Like I had at last found a purpose to my life. I love you Suzy. You can never fall off that pedestal. I know that this is difficult for you. I understand the alienation and mistrust you feel, perhaps in a different way, but I understand it. But I also know that you want to give us a chance, if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be struggling with this right now.” You continue to point the pistol at Johnny as more tears roll down your cheeks. “Johnny…I know you’ve lied to me or been evasive about things this week. I’ve been nothing but truthful. If this has any chance of working. I need to know right now. (Exhale) Did you kill Donna and Julie?” “I thought you said you didn’t care what happened to them and that they abandoned you.” Johnny says. “And that may be the case because you FUCKING killed them! Now stop evading the fucking question and answer it!” you demand. Johnny looks at you. In fact it’s the most cold-blooded stare you’ve ever seen from him. It’s like when Uncle Ed looked at you in his van. “Would you believe me, if I said no?” he asks. “ANSWER!” you demand. “Very well. No, I didn’t.” Johnny says looking straight at you. > You don't accept the answer And with that lie you hear from Johnny, your head drops briefly in despair. With tears in your eyes you look back at Johnny. “I…don’t believe you…and if I don’t believe you, I can’t trust you. (sob) And if I can’t trust you…(sob) I…I…” “You have to kill me.” Johnny says for you. “I’m sorry…” you say. Johnny just stares at you and a tear actually comes down his left eye. “Nobody is ever going to love you like I will Suzy.” “That… I do believe.” You then shoot Johnny. The first shot hits him in the body, causing him to fall backwards, but not enough to kill him, but you soon get over your shock and sorrow not just by remembering that he’s killed Julie and Donna, but that eventually he’ll kill you as well. You don’t stop pumping rounds into the son of a bitch until the pistol is completely empty. Johnny’s body lies motionless in a bloody mess. His eyes still open, staring at you even in death. You slump down on the floor crying that it had to be this way, but it was survival. After a few minutes of releasing your sadness, you realize that you can’t just leave Johnny’s body down here. The problem is you can’t very well carry it up the ladder from the shelter either, at least not in one piece. You slowly get up and head back to the armory. There you find a good-sized machete that looks very sharp. You also get some garbage bags you saw in one of the supply rooms. You’re not sure why Ben had them down here, but it’s handy that he did. You go back to Johnny’s body. You think about dragging the body to the shelter’s bathtub and doing your grisly work there, but you decide the best thing you can do is just to get it over with. You lay out some of the bags on the floor and roll Johnny’s body on to them and get to work. It’s not an easy task for you and you get physically sick more than once, but eventually you get through it. Johnny’s limbs, torso and head all get put into bags. You then make several trips up and down the ladder to haul the pieces up to the basement. It’s still an exhausting task, even more so after having to go through hacking him up and the emotional drain you feel from it. You don’t go any further than the basement after you’ve hauled all of Johnny’s parts up. You’re just not in the mood to deal with more. You look at the blood-drenched fatigues you’re wearing and strip them off to throw them into one of the bags. Leaving the “body bags” by the entrance, you go back to your room to get a spare set of clothes. You also see Kelly’s body still lying in a heap there. Just reminds you that you’ll have more cleaning up to do tomorrow. For now though you grab something comfortable from the closet and head back down to the shelter where you take a long hot shower. Afterwards you go to the bedroom and collapse on the bed, completely spent. Doesn’t take long for you to fall asleep, it’s a welcome escape from reality. > Next day… SATURDAY You wake up to silence and it’s an odd feeling. You half expect Johnny to be vacuuming or cleaning or just being around, but you know that’s not going to happen ever again. You sit up just thinking about what you’re going to do today for a few moments. Everyone you know or close to is gone and you’re truly alone now. Granted you’ve spent most of your life alone, but there was still always someone around to intrude. Most of the time this was unwanted like when Kelly bullied you or when Peter stole your clothes. Other times this was your choice like spending time with Bobby. Now? There is nobody. You finally get up and shuffle into the living room which still has a lot of blood on the floor. “(Sigh) I guess I should clean that up too.” You mutter to your self and remind yourself to get some of the cleaning products from upstairs. After ascending up the ladder you see the same garbage bags you left in a group nearby. “I’ll be back to take care you later Johnny.” You say, then you glance your head towards your old room. “You too bitch.” You say and head upstairs. When you get upstairs to get something to clean with, you notice several bags on the floor in the living room. They’re yours or mostly yours anyway. It’s all the stuff you brought with you from Julie’s house. Johnny must’ve brought them in from the jeep last night. He always was thoughtful. As you go to get your bags, a bright flash shines through one of the uncovered windows along with the sound of a large explosion in the distance. You can’t help but take a quick glance out the window. And there you see it in the far distance, the dissipating remnants of a mushroom cloud rising up in the sky. “…they finally went and did it.” You say. From the direction it looks like it probably hit the city, but it still had to be a “small” one since you imagine your home still would’ve suffered a backlash of your windows breaking from the long range impact. Still who knows which way the wind is blowing and there is no reason to not be extra cautious. So you gather up your bags and a few extra items and head back down to the shelter as quick as possible. And once again you’re locked away from the outside world. This time possibly for a lot longer than average. Sadly, you know it can’t be forever. As you look through your supplies, you think you could probably stay down here for about a decade before you completely ran out of what you needed, which means eventually you’ll have to go up to the surface at some point to scavenge or trade or whatever it is that you’ll need to do for more supplies. And if you go up to the surface, you’re going to need to be prepared and that unfortunately means a lot of regular use for that exercise room you saw, along with reading all those survivalist books you saw in the library. Still, this week has already prepared you in some ways. You have a much better mindset to deal with the outside world that you can’t hide away from anymore. You even know that you can do unpleasant things if you need to. It’s not going to be easy and it’s not going to be fun, but for now you can continue to afford to hide out from reality, if only for a little while longer. > Repression of Reality The Future... “I’m home!” you shout as you enter the shelter loaded with goodies. As you unburden yourself of your haul, you hear the end credits of a movie playing on the TV. “See? I told you I wouldn’t be that long. I got here just in time to put on another movie! In fact I got some new ones from that redneck encampment. I know most of them are a bunch of assholes, but they’re always up for trading and that Mel guy keeps ‘em mostly in line. Plus they got bigger things to worry about now that they’re at war with the Cult of Tiamat.” You open up your bag and go through some of the DVDs you picked up in trade. You pick one and exchange it out for the one that was playing. “I haven’t seen this one in a long time. I’m glad we’ll be able to watch it together.” You say. As the movie starts playing you return to unloading your bags occasionally looking up to watch the movie playing. “So speaking of the Cult of Tiamat. I meant to tell you I…uh…ran into Bobby a few days ago.” You unpack some of the canned food you found. Sure you still have tons of food to last for years, but it never hurts to have more. “See? This is why I didn’t tell you! I knew you were going to get mad! I wasn’t trying to hide it, I just…well you know how your temper is and I didn’t want you getting all jealous and screaming at me. You finish unpacking the rest of your bags and place most of the items on the table where you plan on going through a complete inventory later, right now though you just want to relax. You strip down to your underwear and sit on the couch to watch the movie playing. “One of my favorite parts is coming up...(sigh) are you still mad? Look I told you, nothing is going on with Bobby and me! Just because that bitch Diana is dead doesn’t mean I’m going to get back with him! Bobby’s got other sisters you know? Besides, he’s pretty much firmly entrenched in his beliefs now. I only think he’s cordial with me, because we once had something. I mean being friendly isn’t a crime. I mean it’s a good thing. One less person for me to worry about blowing my head off.” You briefly glance over at the TV before returning to your argument. “Oh that’s fucking low. Don’t you think I wish it didn’t have to happen? I wish every day that things could’ve been different, but you know what? They weren’t, so you need to just fucking deal with it!” you shout and get so angry that you punch the mannequin positioned on the sofa and its head falls off and tumbled to the floor. “Shit. Oh shit. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Let me help you.” You say and scramble to pick up the head. You reattach the head and inspect it for damage; fortunately you didn’t do any save for a minor loss of paint near the ear. “Hold on…there. Not so bad. Look I’m sorry I got angry, but you shouldn’t have said that to me. You know I still feel bad about that. I don’t want you throwing that back in my face okay?” You kiss the mannequin on the cheek and cuddle up next to it while holding one of its hands. “I accept your apology too. Like I said, you really shouldn’t get so jealous. You know you’re the only one for me. Let’s just finish watching the movie together, then maybe later, who knows?” you say and giggle a bit. You finish watching the movie as planned, and then afterwards you take your companion to the bedroom where you have an interesting time with certain attachments that you’ve made to him. After relieving your tension you roll over next to your companion and turn your head to look at it. You still can’t believe how you stumbled upon one that looked a little similar to him. Sometimes you wonder about your sanity and if one day you’ll just completely lose yourself in your made up world, but then you think you never did before no matter how hard you tried. And you certainly won’t now, besides what’s a little retreat from reality every now and then? “Goodnight Johnny.” You say and kiss him before going to sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re still not quite sure if any of this is going to lead anywhere, but fucked up or not, Johnny’s still been there for you. To abandon him without even an explanation is just something you’re not willing to do. Besides, if you’re right about Johnny’s past, having someone like that around might be necessary given how crazy things are right now. Other than pushing someone down the stairs out of panic, it isn’t like you’re a fighter. Looking a nearby clock on the wall, you figure it’ll be getting dark in a few hours. Johnny didn’t tell you when to wake him, but you figure you should give him a few extra hours after it goes dark if only so he’ll be more rested. Then you’ll try to convince him to just leave in Donna’s car again since you still think it would be safer than trying to steal a military jeep. Still feeling a little uncomfortable about the back door windows now being broken and thus your safety more compromised, you head back into the kitchen to fix the problem. As you get close to the backdoor, you briefly see the thing still lying dead with several holes in its body and head on the back porch. Looks human, but even dead it does look a bit feral. With great effort you manage to push the refrigerator in front of the back door. Nothing is getting in now, well at least not easily anyway. You return to your room and check to see if your phone isn’t quite as damaged, as it appeared when you threw it against the wall, but of course it is. Hardly matters, you don’t have anyone to keep in contact with any more anyway. With the gunfire still going on outside, you flop down on your couch-bed and realize that barring something trying to break in again, there’s nothing to do. You re-open your laptop and lose yourself in a game because it’s way better than reality right now. Hours pass… You look at the time on your laptop and realize you’ve been playing much longer than you intended to. You immediately get up to go wake up Johnny. It actually sounds like the gunfire has died down outside as well. “Hey Johnny wake up! It’s time to go. I know you said you had plans to steal a jeep, but I really think we should…” When you get to the living room though, Johnny is gone. You call out to him a couple times figuring that maybe he’s upstairs or even in the basement, but you get no answer. You do see a note placed on the nearby end table in such a way that you’d notice it. You almost hesitate to pick it up, but of course you do anyway. To my dearest Suzy, I’ve left to go get that jeep. I know you probably still want to use your sister’s car, but I still think our best shot is with a military vehicle. I figure we can blend in a whole lot better in one of those and not look suspicious while driving around at a casual glance by soldiers. Probably better at running over those rabid people too. We might even be able to get out of this forsaken town. Anyway, I left this note since I didn’t want to disturb you or cause any unpleasant arguments on this matter. I also know you didn’t leave while I slept, even though you could have. This means so much to me, I don’t think you know how much. I know I haven’t exactly given you much reason to not be distrustful of me, but the very fact that you didn’t leave tells me that you believe in me on some level. You know I’ll try to come through for you and that you’re willing to wait. I knew when I first heard your drunken whore of a sister talk about you; I thought you sounded like you were the one. Then when I saw and spoke with you, I was sure of it. I will come back tonight as planned, however if the situation becomes dangerous over there, then by all means escape in your sister’s car. It would never be my wish for you to stay in danger. Forever my love, Johnny When the hell did he leave and write this? And how did you not hear him? He wasn’t joking about being stealthy you guess. Of course you probably would have known all this a lot sooner had you not got wrapped up in your game and actually left your room. As for the note itself, well…it’s standard Johnny in the short term you’ve known him. The “whore” description of your sister is a bit of a standout from the rest of letter which is fairly white knightish. Of course you know damn well Johnny is far from being a “white knight”. Suddenly you hear the basement door opening. You tense up in fear since you’ve left not only the car keys but also your pistol in your room. You think at first you’re going to have to risk just running out the front door, but… “Hey Suzy! Suzy? I got the jeep, come on let’s get ready to go!” you hear Johnny’s voice call out. You cautiously walk towards the hallway and see Johnny standing there looking into your room, then he turns his head and sees you. He’s got some clothing in his hand. “Oh there you are. I was worried for a moment that you had to run out in a hurry!” “Johnny, what the hell…didn’t you hear me calling you?” you ask. “No, I just got here.” “What? How? I’ve been in the living room for the past few minutes! You couldn’t have gotten by me.” “No I came in through the basement window. I couldn’t just leave the front door unlocked when I left.” “Basement win…wait I didn’t hear any glass breaking.” “That’s because it’s not broken. I had it so I could easily open it. Don’t worry, I thought about your safety. That window is pretty well hidden and not exactly easy to crawl through so I didn’t think any of those things would see it. They would’ve been more likely to just try to bash the ground floor doors or windows in.” “When did you mess around with the basement window and why didn’t you just tell me you were leaving?” “Didn’t you get my note? I explained why I left with bothering you in it.” “I only just finished reading it this minute.” “Oh, well I assumed you would’ve left your room before now. Anyway, here I got you these to wear. I think they might be a bit baggy, but they should work to help us blend in more.” Johnny shoves the clothing at you as if to distract you from asking more questions. It’s a uniform like what Johnny is wearing. You almost ask Johnny how he got the uniform, but as with most things concerning Johnny you’re starting to think it might better if you don’t know. As far as the basement window weirdness, you’re not going to dwell on it too much because it’s really not important right now. “Alright, that sounds like a good idea, I’ll go put these on.” You say and go to your room. “Um, don’t worry, I didn’t get those from a dead person or anything. It was a spare one I found.” Johnny blurts out. “Okay. I trust you Johnny.” You say which seems to make him smile. You lock the door and change into the military fatigues. Granted you don’t see any blood or tears in the fatigues, but then he could’ve just choked the person wearing it to death. “(Sigh) Suzy, why the hell are you attracted to this guy? Oh right, because you’ve got some serious psychological issues yourself, that’s why.” You mumble to yourself as if being painfully aware of the situation makes everything okay. You grab your bags and exit your room. “Glad to see the fatigues aren’t excessively big on you, I know you’re small framed and all. You ready to go?” Johnny asks. “Yeah, let’s get out of this place. How is it out there?” “In our immediate area? It’s fairly quiet now. Haven’t seen any of the rabid and the remainder of the Guard is busy burning bodies right now. I mean there are still patrols, but nobody even batted an eye when I drove this thing up to the house. Probably assumed whoever was inside was investigating or something. We shouldn’t linger here though.” With both of you ready and as prepared as you’re going to be, you and Johnny exit out the front door and quickly enter the jeep which is sitting right next to your sister’s car. You have to admit, you do feel a little safer sitting in this thing than if you did in your sister’s car. Johnny starts up the vehicle and turns to you. “Suzy, you know I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. So is there any place you had in mind?” Johnny asks. ‘Never been anywhere, so not really.” You answer. “I remember you saying you wanted to go home before.” “Well that would be nice, but things aren’t exactly normal any more. I mean the only reason for going back there would be to look for my brother’s bomb shelter, which definitely would be a safe zone knowing how Ben spent so much time building and constantly modifying it. Of course my other brother Peter is currently looking for it as well and who knows if he already claimed and locked himself inside it.” “Hmm, well it might be worth a look if you still want to try it. I mean the only other logical option I can think of is to as I suggested, leave town altogether. Should be much easier while driving around in this thing. Of course it might still be risky, if they’ve set up some sort of checkpoints outside of town…but maybe we can get the edge by fooling them briefly before smashing through such things.” Pretty risky stuff, but then these are risky times. > You try to get out of town The whole town has gone to shit and it’s either going to get completely obliterated by the government or its going to get overrun by those things or both. In any case, your best bet would be to put as much distance between you and this god-forsaken town. “As much as I’d like to, I can’t go home again. So if you know someplace we can go that’s safe, I’m game if you are.” You say. “Well I can think of a few isolated places I’ve been through in my travels before I came to this town. Dunno, if they’re safe right now, but it’s worth a shot. Gonna be a long drive though and I need to go east so hopefully that way is going to be clear.” Johnny says and pulls out of the driveway. You pass by a few soldiers dragging a few more bodies and placing them in a large pile outside one of the homes in this area. Another large pile of bodies is burning outside yet another home. Nobody tries to flag you down or anything though, you’re guessing that between the dark, the uniforms and the jeep, if anyone is actually paying attention to you driving through, they probably think you’re just more soldiers patrolling around. It isn’t like this is most stable of situations right now. You continue drive and you go through another area where the National Guard has a presence. Again, you have no problems for the most part. However you then start hitting areas that are still suffering from conflict and in those cases, pretty severely. This is where some soldiers notice you a lot more and try to call out to you, presumably for help. In one case, you see two soldiers ragged and bloody running desperately from several of those rabid people. They cry out for you to stop, but naturally you and Johnny just keep driving. You hear some faint curses and screams as you put distance between you and the unfortunate soldiers. You eventually drive through areas that have been completely overrun by rabid. In fact you find that the military doesn’t actually have that much control at all over your town and that there are far more of the rabid roaming around either chasing down normal people or attempting to break into houses. However, you’re in an area now that’s thick enough with them that some of them are actually attacking the jeep or at least managing to bang on it a couple times before you out distance them. Johnny runs over a few of them that get directly in the way. They’re starting to get too close for you at this point. “Holy shit, this is just getting worse. Maybe we should go in another direction.” You say. “We can make it, we’re almost out of town.” Johnny says. You aren’t quite as confident as Johnny who now seems to be going out of his way to mow down rabid in the jeep. In fact he’s got a big grin on his face as he smashes into another and turning the windshield wipers on. “Johnny, would you fucking stop that!? We can’t run over everyone one of these things! It’s going to damage the jeep!” “Relax! It’s a military jeep, these things are built to last! Besides this is kinda fun. When else do you get the chance to just run over people?” Johnny giggles. Johnny’s obvious display of psychopathy might be more worrying, if you weren’t more concerned with the bigger threat of a very large group of rabid up ahead. “Johnny! You can’t go through that group it’s too fucking big! Turn around!” you shout. “Fuck that, we gotta go that way and I don’t give a shit how many of those freaks I have to splatter! Let’s do this!” Johnny shouts and slams on the gas. You close your eyes as the jeep speeds ahead while Johnny is laughing the entire time. He’s really getting off on this. Johnny manages to run over several of them, but there are just too many, it doesn’t help there is also debris in the road left from the fighting that was going on here before. A tire gets popped, a body gets stuck under another wheel. The jeep begins to skid and spin. Johnny tries to maintain control, but fails to do so and the jeep flips over landing upside down. You’re hurt, but since you had your seatbelt on, you’re still able to move. You look over to Johnny and he’s not moving. In fact he’s half way through the windshield. He’s obviously dead, but that isn’t what concerns you at the moment. What concerns you is the rest of the rabid running over to the jeep. You struggle with your belt and manage to crawl out of the jeep only to be quickly nabbed by the rabid. They sink their teeth into you and gnaw straight through your bones. You die screaming as they eat you alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Regardless of what your sister does, you’re not going to get yourself into more trouble by running. “Look Donna, I can’t stop you from running, but I’m staying here.” “What? You can’t do that. You’re supposed to be supportive!” “I’m not going to be supportive in your resisting arrest attempt! Now like I said, I won’t stop you, but if you’re going to do it, you’ll be doing it alone.” “(Sigh) I should’ve known you’re still the same old goody two shoes that follows all the rules. You’re a goddamn idiot Suzy, one of these assholes just felt me up when he frisked me. You really think if they’re just going to arrest us when they find something? Chances are they’re going to drive us to some secluded area and make us suck their cocks and god knows what else! I’m getting the hell…” Just as Donna is starting to get up, both cops have taken notice of you two again. “HEY! I told you to stay put! Don’t give me an excuse!” one of them shouts nearly going for his gun and it’s enough to cause Donna to rethink her actions. “Despite the pair of you acting mighty suspicious, you appear to be clean and so does the vehicle. Don’t think you’re getting out of a ticket though!” the cop says and shoves a ticket at your sister who takes it. Looks like Donna had a drug free car after all. At this point the cop’s partner says to him that they’re needed at the mall since apparently a small riot has broken out there. You are left with another verbal warning and they drive off. As for you and your sister, the pair of you get back in the car without another word and continue your drive to Julie’s house in silence. When you arrive, the place is much more subdued than your used to. You don’t even hear loud music coming from inside. “No party going on?” you ask. “Probably will be some folks coming over later. I dunno, even I don’t keep up on it all the time. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be wanting to hide away before that happens, so like I said your room will be Julie’s dad’s old office. Julie also wants to talk with you as well, so if you’re actually feeling social you could go speak with her before heading off to planet Suzy.” Donna says coldly. “…what the hell? Donna, I know you’re pissed, but I really don’t know why. If it hadn’t been for me stalling you from running, you’d be in for a lot more trouble than just a ticket. I’d say it worked out much better.” You say. “Right. Your plan worked. Following the rules always works for you. Your life is so great and that’s why you had to beg to move in here.” “Uh, you’re living here in JULIE’S house too with no means of support either. I wouldn’t start pointing fingers.” “Fuck you Suzy. I thought things were going to be different, but I can see that you’re still the stuck up bitch that thinks she’s better than everyone else.” Donna exclaims and storms off leaving you in the car. So much for “sisterly bonding.” This is really an unfortunate turn of events, but not completely unexpected. Donna’s always been a bit bi-polar with you. One moment she’s saying how much you should hang out and bond and the next minute she’s calling you a stuck up bitch that doesn’t know how to have fun. The girl has some serious self-esteem issues. Really you have no idea why she still acts the way she does. Mom is dead and so is dad. Who is there to rebel against anymore? From some of what she said earlier it almost seems like she parties out of habit more than great desire anymore. You pull your bags out of the car and head on inside. The front room is messy, but not overly so. Your sister is nowhere to be seen, but there are a couple of people you don’t know sitting on one of the couches playing video games. Another one is asleep on the floor. The place smells of spilled beer and none of the people even acknowledge your presence. “Suzy! You’re here!” a voice suddenly calls out. You look up and see Julie waving from the second floor. She immediately runs down the stairs to greet you close up, nearly tripping in the process. When she gets to you, the years of partying are really starting to take their toll. She’s your age, but she’s starting to look like one of those trashy strippers that wears too much make up. “Suzy, it’s been too long! Give me a hug!” she exclaims and before you can even react, she gloms on to you and gives you a tight squeeze. “Mmmm, you smell so nice. Like strawberries.” She says while rubbing her hands across your back. “Uh, yeah. Probably the shampoo I used.” You say. “You’ve been keeping in shape too, guess Bobby was keeping you busy physically. Ha ha ha ha.” Julie laughs and now she starts getting a little too touchy feelie for you. You’ve already had unwanted touching once today, you don’t feel like more. “Yeah, okay good to see you too. Back up there now. I need some space.” You say and start pulling away. “Hah same old prudish Suzy. What you think I’m gonna just start sexually assaulting you right here in the living room? Please, I know a girl like you needs to be romanced first!” Julie jokes, but she’s probably somewhat serious with her playful advances. Shortly after you got with Bobby, Donna told you that Julie spent a couple days crying because she wanted to tell you how she’s always loved you. (You of course weren’t sure why she ever thought you’d be into such a relationship, but apparently before Bobby, everyone just assumed you were a big lesbian.) Of course she quickly went on with her hedonistic life, but you’ve always wondered if she really ever “got over” you. “Okay Suzy, I hear you’re planning on sleeping in my dad’s old office. You remember the way right?” “Yeah I think so.” “Oh, I’ll just walk with you, we need to catch up on so much. I’ve missed you, you know!” Resigning yourself to the fact that you’re going to have to at least be friendly to Julie, you walk with her to your new room. Julie of course is very talkative. “So Suzy, speaking of Bobby, did you make up with him yet?” “No and I doubt if it’s going to work out anyway.” “Ohhhh, that’s so sad. You two did make a cute couple in a creepy shut in way.” Julie says and begins rubbing your shoulder. “Hm, thanks.” You answer. “Well, not to worry, you could meet a new boyfriend right here! Contrary to what you might think, I don’t just have mindless party animals coming over here. There’s actually a wide variety of people that come here to hang out. You could meet that special guy tonight in fact! Or girl…you know whatever…” Julie says trailing off and nervously smiles at you. “Well I’m not really thinking about that right now, I think I’d rather be by myself for awhile.” You answer. “Oh yeah sure. I understand. But I just want you to know that my house is your house okay? And all the fun that goes on here, well you can have some of that fun too you know?” “I know Julie. Thanks for letting me stay here.” “No problem, you were always welcome. Okay well here it is. I’ll leave you to get settled and remember you can always come out and join us later.” At this point Julie hugs you again though it’s a quick one this time and briskly walks off. You enter the office and see that it is indeed much neater and cleaner than most of the house. Even better that it has a small bathroom attached to it as well, but you knew that since this actually isn’t the first time you’ve been in here. You remember playing tag with Julie when you were in elementary school and you both ran in here. Julie’s dad wasn’t angry though. He even gave you a lollipop from a jar on his desk. Come to think of it anytime he saw you, he was always giving you lollipops. He was pretty nice that way. Shame he died in a car accident just as Julie was starting to get wilder, since even if he did work most of the time, you get the impression Julie might at least had some boundaries during her late teens and onward. It doesn’t take long for you to rearrange some things and make yourself at home on the fairly comfortable couch in there. It also doesn’t take long for you to get back to finishing what Donna interrupted earlier today. (Making sure to lock the door of course) After finishing up and washing up a bit, you hear some music. Sounds like the party is getting started. Continuing to be the introverted personality you usually are, you don’t leave your “safe zone” and go back to playing games on your computer and looking up random shit on the Internet. The more things change the more they stay the same, time passes and it’s almost like you’ve never left the basement! Eventually you get bored doing that and you start looking around the office a bit more. It’s sort of snooping, but then Julie’s dad is dead and you’re sure Julie doesn’t care. You start going through the filing cabinets and find that all the paperwork is mainly business files dated back to before Julie’s dad died. Looks like nobody ever bothered to clean any of this stuff out or even go through the stuff. The bookshelves aren’t filled with the most interesting of topics. Mostly about economics, business practices, legal things, though some of the books are historical in nature. You don’t see much fiction though. The desk just contains regular office supplies. You actually aren’t surprised to find a pistol in there (along with bullets) but after rummaging around a bit you notice a secret compartment in one of the drawers. You find a black box and you waste no time in opening it. Inside you find pictures. Pictures of little girls…in fact there are some of YOU! By the looks of them, these were all taken in secret. Nobody is naked in the photos, but given that nearly every single picture of you involves you either sucking or licking a lollipop it’s pretty apparent what the purpose of these were. Some of these girls are other kids you knew from school and hung out with Julie as well. In fact one of them went missing. Nobody knew who did it, but it was a big deal in town and it probably lead to your mother being even more overprotective of you. And you’re really glad she did since you’re starting to get a sinking feeling about what you’ve uncovered here. “Christ…” you say going through the photos. You start to wonder now if Julie’s behavior is caused by years of sexual molestation. It would certainly explain a lot. Then you get a knock on the door. “Hey Suzy, it’s me Julie, I’ve got something for you.” “Uh, hold on. Just a minute!” you exclaim as you quickly put the photographs back. You have no idea if you should tell her not, but you open the door. Julie appears with a bottle of soda and a pizza and walks in. “I figured you’d stay in here all night, but I thought you might get hungry or thirsty so here you go!” Julie says and places her gifts to you on the desk. “Oh. Thanks Julie.” You say. “You’re welcome…so why’d you take so long in answering the door? You splittin’ the kitten in here or what?” Julie asks. “Hah, yeah well busted I guess.” You say with a fake chuckle. “Suzy, if you came out and had some fun with the rest of us, that wouldn’t really be necessary you know. I know you probably still miss Bobby on some level and you’ve got needs, but he’s not here and you’d be better off moving on with your life and getting some free dick out there…or pussy…you know whatever…” Julie says obviously still hoping. Given how unstable Julie is at times, you almost wonder if you should address what you found at all. Maybe dredging up bad childhood memories isn’t the best thing right now. > You keep quiet You decide this isn’t the time to bring it up. It is a party after all and you don’t want to ruin Julie’s fun just because you’re not feeling so great about several things like Bobby and your fight with your sister. Well maybe you can get to dealing with Bobby later, but you can still make up with your sister right now, besides you’d rather not linger in here alone with Julie, she might think you’re leading her on. “Hey Julie, I think I will come and join the festivities.” You say. “You will?!” Julie says surprised. “Yeah, I’m not saying I’m gonna get wild, but who knows. But what I really want to do is speak with my sister, I had a fight with her earlier.” “Hm, yeah I heard. Well I’m sure she’s still out there. Saw her talking to some guy earlier. Don’t know if they hooked up yet though. Probably best if you didn’t disturb her if you catch her in the act as it were.” Julie says. “I’m well aware. She’d be even more pissed at me. Okay, see you later.” “Yeah, see you later and um, if you want to talk to me I’ll be available anytime.” Julie says looking a bit dejected as you walk out the room. Yeah, probably best you left. You swear, you’re wondering if you’re going to be able to put up with Julie’s crush on you while living in the same house with her, but that will be yet ANOTHER thing to deal with at different time. You enter the living room first, which is the most crowded part of the house. The music is up loud a couple people are playing video games on the TV and several people making out on the floor. A few guys come up to you and try to speak, but you brush them off and continue to look for your sister who obviously isn’t in this area. You head upstair which isn’t quite as crowded, but the bedrooms are definitely being used for their obvious purpose, and worse nobody even bothers to close the damn doors! (Which certainly draws a few onlookers) Fortunately, the quick glances you do make into the rooms prove to not find your sister, so you head out to the backyard. The backyard is a little more relaxed at least in terms of sex and drugs, though a few of the guys are doing some sort of stupid stunts and hurting themselves in the process and then laughing about it. Another guy is filming the whole thing. Several girls look on and shake their heads at the ordeal and telling them that they’re going to really suffer serious injury if they don’t stop. You don’t see your sister and you ask one of the girls watching the spectacle. “Excuse me, do you know Donna?” you ask a woman with short brown hair. “Huh? Donna? Skinny little thing that thinks she’s hot shit? Yeah I know her… hey you look a little like her…actually I shouldn’t insult you. You’re actually prettier.” The woman replies. “Uh, thanks. Yeah she’s my sister and I was looking for her.” “Sister huh? My condolences. Anyway, yeah I think I saw her inside talking with some guy. He didn’t really stand out, in fact he didn’t really look like what she normally goes for, but she was already pretty drunk and when that happens she typically doesn’t give a fuck. Or rather she always gives a fuck. Hah.” “Hm, I just looked inside, but I couldn’t find her.” “Did you try the basement? She might be down there getting fucked, well assuming Julie isn’t down there getting fucked. Not that it’s ever stopped them from fucking in the same room before.” “Uh, no I haven’t checked down there.” “Well that’s probably where she is then. Now if you excuse me, I have get back to making sure my idiot boyfriend doesn’t break his goddamn neck.” You leave the backyard and head back into the house. You decide you’ve had enough of crowds and if your sister is fucking someone in the basement, you don’t want to interrupt, so you head back to your room. Just before you reach your room however, a guy about your age opens up the door leading to the basement. Maybe this is the guy your sister was with. “Hey, is Donna down there?” you ask. “Huh? Um, who are you?” the man asks as if you’re interrogating him. “Donna. She’s my sister. Someone said she might be in the basement with some guy. Are you him?” The man’s demeanor becomes a little more relaxed. “Oh…wait are you Suzy?” he asks. “Yeah.” “Yeah, your sister Donna mentioned you when I was talking with her. She wasn’t lying, you are pretty.” “Wait, she said that?” “Sure, she was very praising of you.” The man says. “…Donna? She was praising of me? I find that hard to believe, I just had a fight with her.” “Oh. Well maybe she was feeling bad about that, she seemed upset about it when we spoke.” The man seems to shift a bit and look sideways a couple times after he says that, and you become suspicious. “Okay…well I need to go talk with her, but the man suddenly tries to stop you from going any further. “Yeah, I don’t think you should. Like I said she’s upset right now.” You take a quick glance at the man and see that his clothes are disheveled like he just put them back on in a hurry. “Funny, I’ve never know my sister to be upset after sex.” “What?” “Come on, your clothes were obviously put back on in a rush, I know what happened, so if she’s finished with satisfying her urges, she should be in a much better mood to speak with me…” At this point the man stops you again. “Suzy, I don’t like what you’re implying. I never touched your sister. She’s a fucking whore. I was just trying to console her about you. SHE aggressively made the moves on me, but I resisted and then she started crying about what a whore she was and how she could never live up to being like you and screamed that she wanted to be left alone. Now I suggest you do just that, at least until she calms down. She’s a little drunk too, so you probably should just let her sleep it off.” While the man continues to maintain a smile, his tone is somewhat threatening. His whole story stinks of lies and you’re getting a really bad vibe from him. Almost like you did with your uncle Ed. “Get the hell out of my way. ” You say and push past him to descend down the steps quickly. Unfortunately you’re not quick enough as the man to manage to shove you in back causing you to lose balance and go crashing down the stairs. While you’re taking a tumble, the man locks the basement door and makes his way down the stairs in a normal fashion. The loud noise from the party ensures that nobody is going to investigate even if they bothered to. You break your leg and smash the side of your head against the floor when you finally hit the bottom. You surprisingly don’t scream out from the pain, but you are about to fall unconscious from your head injury. Your vision is blurry and you feel dizzy, but despite that, you see Donna sprawled out on the floor not that far from you. She’s naked and isn’t moving. “Don…” you utter and stretch your hand out towards her. “I’m sorry it had to be like this Suzy. I really did want us to get off on the right foot. When your whore of a sister Donna was bitching about you to me, you sounded so… perfect. Such a shame…” the man says and then kicks you in the head. The blackness takes you and then the man takes your life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>SUNDAY “Are you worried about these uncertain times? Do you…” Click. You’re so damn sick of these Ground Zero commercials you think as you turn the TV off. If you older brother Ben hadn’t shot his family and himself in a tragic paranoid breakdown you can only imagine he’d be going on about how right he was in building that underground bunker out in your backyard. You look at the time and realize you’ve spent most of the day procrastinating watching TV even though there’s not much on that interests you on TV anymore. All the channels you used to watch that had interesting shit on them now all have shallow reality shows and quite frankly you’ve got enough dysfunctional family drama going on in real life without needing to watch it on TV. You remember a time when you could avoid most of the mess by hiding out in your basement. Unfortunately you can’t even do that anymore. Ever since dad drank himself to death, the gravy train of living at home for free came to an end. Without the help of your dad’s pension checks anymore, your older Amazonian sister Kelly said there was no way in hell that she was going to keep supporting the house on her own unless she was the only one living in it. Seeing as she’s a roller derby bitch as well as an illegal fight club brawler, it isn’t like you or any of your siblings were in any position to argue with her. Your younger brother Peter, having given up his lofty dreams of being a famous movie director now spends a lot of his time in the garage making amateur porn with various guys he picks up at the clubs. He makes enough money through his website that it keeps Kelly off his back. He seems to enjoy what he’s doing and at least he’s not stealing your clothes anymore. Your younger sister Donna simply moved out and moved in with your best friend Julie who is still the eternal party girl. Really you’re surprised Julie hasn’t caught every STD known to man at this point. To be honest Donna’s had more in common with Julie than you have for many years now. You’re sure Donna’s a lot happier at a “party house.” As for you, you didn’t have much in the way of options. Trying to get a job has failed spectacularly in this economy. Though your…”unique” and reclusive personality doesn’t exactly help in that department. Given some of the junk that’s laying around the house you sometimes wonder if you shouldn’t try to sell some of it over the Internet to support yourself. Seems like a lot of work though and you’re no wheeler and dealer. Donna suggested that you move in with her and Julie, but that whole scene isn’t for you. As much as you hate dealing with Kelly, you’d also hate having to put up with drunk horny guys (and girls) trying to get into your pants every five minutes, not to mention the loud music, crowds and the ever growing possibility of the cops busting the place for illegal drugs. Which brings you to your boyfriend Bobby Morningstar who naturally has suggested that you move in with him on several occasions. This would be the ideal solution if it weren’t for the fact that his own family consists of like a million siblings that all live in his cult compound. There’s also the fact that his ex-girlfriend/sister Diana is wicked pissed at you for stealing him away from her. It’s been an ongoing source of tension between you and Bobby and you wish he’d just leave them all behind and you two could make a life together elsewhere, but his duty to family is strong, as is his faith to the Babylonian Goddess of Chaos, Tiamat which still involves human sacrifices. Right now you’re having a period of separation with him. Sometimes you think about breaking up with him completely, but then you can’t just dismiss the good times you do have with him. You have that special bond that only a couple could have when one warns the other about their serial killer relative lying in wait for them in the woods. Thank god Bobby took care of your uncle Ed. That had to be the scariest moment of your life dealing with that situation. Of course none of this delightful recap of past events really helps you. Kelly is starting to get very impatient with you and you fear that your months of stalling are coming to an end. Kelly’s currently not home, but she’ll be back in a few hours to get a bit of sleep before heading off to her fight club stuff. Continuing to enjoy the time you have to not have to deal with her you go back to procrastinating, which mainly involves goofing off on the Internet, “stumbling” upon a porn site and then using battery powered means to relieve yourself of stress. Eventually you hear the familiar slamming of the door and stomping around upstairs, which signifies that Kelly is indeed home. “SUZY! Stop splittin’ the kitten and get yer bony ass up here!” you hear Kelly shout. You were afraid of this. You clean yourself up a bit, mentally prepare yourself and then head upstairs. “Hey Kelly…” you start to say, but are interrupted. “Shut up. I’ve got exactly a couple hours to get some rest before I have to drag my ass to my other job to support this fucking house and it’s a fucking mess! You can’t even clean up around here? Did you even look for a job today? Let me guess you spent the whole day fucking around on the Internet and masturbating didn’t you?” “Well uh...” “Jesus fuckin’ Christ Suzy, you’re goddamn useless you know that? The only reason I’m not kicking your ass right now is because I need to save my energy and it would be too fucking easy.” Before you can even speak, Kelly continues her rant. “GET A FUCKING JOB! I don’t care what kind! Just be a contributing member of this household like Peter or get the fuck out like Donna!” “Kelly I’m trying, but I’m just not having any luck in finding anything, can’t you help me out?” you say. “Help you out? I’m helping you out right now by supporting your ass! I’ve been helping you out for quite some time! In fact I originally suggested that you could probably become a ring girl at the fights, but you said no because you didn’t want to dress up in skimpy clothing and parade around in front of a bunch of drunks.” “Kelly, you know I don’t want to dress like that in public, especially not after what uncle Ed made me wear that night…” “Oh here we go, crazy old uncle Ed! How long you going to keep using that as an excuse? Sheesh, the way you go on about it, you act like he raped you. What happened instead? He got killed, you weren’t even touched and you got a fucking boyfriend out of that deal! Some of us should be so lucky to be in a fucked up situation and STILL come out ahead! You know what I deal with on a regular basis? Steroid freaks trying to break my fucking neck that’s what! You think I’d be making a living trading punches with fucktards if I LOOKED like you Suzy? You got the biggest advantage and you’re just wasting it! What the hell is your goddamn problem?” You can see that Kelly is in full-blown jealousy mode and shows no signs of stopping. Attempting to walk away will only result in her getting physical with you so the only thing you can do is endure the verbal assault. “This is sink or swim time sis. You either get your shit together by the end of this week or you’re out on your ass! This sheltered girl act is really fucking OLD! You’re a grown ass WOMAN. Start acting like one! Now get out of my fucking sight.” You meekly slink back to the basement and leave Kelly alone. You silently mope for a while pondering what the hell you’re going to do next. You then notice that your phone has been under your couch cushions and on silent all day. Bobby apparently has been repeatedly trying to contact you. Even left multiple texts saying that he really wants to talk, but the mood you’re in right now, you don’t want to deal with it. You don’t want to deal with anything. You just want to be safe in your own little world in the basement. How you miss those days… Well today isn’t completely over yet. You’ve still got time to salvage some of it. Hell, maybe you can even make a major change in your life. > You contact Bobby If Kelly wasn't putting the screws to you about moving out, you might be less inclined to return Bobby's phone call, however this is a desperate situation and despite your recent relationship problems, you still have strong feelings for Bobby and he will certainly help you out. You grab your phone and call Bobby. The phone rings twice and then is answered. "Hey Suzy, I've been trying to get a hold of you." Bobby blurts out as soon as he answers. "Yeah I know." You say. "Look, I know we've been having some difficulties lately, and our last argument was bad, but I really want to work things out, I love you." You definitely have some major things to work out, but it's nice to know how Bobby feels about you. "Well, we're going to be doing that, but that isn't the only reason why I called. I...uh need a new place to live. Kelly's kicking me out." You say. "Oh, I see, you want to move in with me and my family...are you sure? I mean you know I really would like you there, but part of the reason why we were arguing was..." "Your sister Diana hates my guts." You interrupt. "Well...I admit she's not fond of you, but I mean I think we can work past that. She's just going to have to accept that I'm with you now." "But is she REALLY going to do that? Or am I going to find her hovering over me in the middle of the night with a knife in hand?" "She'd have a hell of a time sneaking in our room without waking me up first of all. Second, if I lay down the law to her, she's got no fucking choice BUT to accept it. I'M the head of the family after all and as head of it, my word is divinely inspired by Tiamat herself and to go against Tiamat is a blasphemy that even Diana would not do. So to sum up, you might have to hear some shit from her, but your physical well being is perfectly safe." "Safe" is a funny term to use for a guy who practices human sacrifice. Which is the other concern you have, since while you've long since accepted certain aspects of Bobby's belief system, you'd rather not see the gruesome details. Though you suppose that's just one more thing you're going to have to discuss. You sort of wonder about the rest of Bobby's family though and how well you'll get along with them. He's got a family that's at least as big as yours was at one time, but you've never really interacted with any of them (Bobby never had you over his house much due to Diana's hostility) except for Bobby's second oldest sister Helen who was polite, if quiet. Just as you're thinking about this, Bobby springs something unexpected on you. "Since you're wanting to move in, I should tell you that we won't be living in the house in the neighborhood. We're going to be living in a compound north outside of town." "Wait, what?" You say. "It's the Morningstar family compound. We're moving there, or rather we've been in the process of moving all our stuff over there for the past few weeks. Never mentioned it since we were sort of arguing about other stuff." "Wait, wasn't your house the Morningstar family compound?" "Heh, well that was certainly big enough for my immediate family, but I do have some extended family as well and given the current world climate, I had a video conference meeting with some of the extended family and most agreed that it might be best if we moved to the better fortified compound that my Dad had built over time decades ago." "Holy shit, how many people are we going to be living with? I mean are we going to be restricted with what technology we can use, working a farm and the women have to put their hair up in a bouffant and wear simple clothing? If so then I can't deal with..." "What? No! Geez Suzy, we're worshippers of Tiamat, not the Amish or fucking Mormon fundies! No, we got all the conveniences of the modern world there and women can wear what they want, though there MIGHT come a day very soon when we will have to rely on farming of some sort, but I guarantee you won't be the one doing it." Bobby continues. "As for how many people are going to be living there, well that I'm not sure. There aren't as many of us anymore and some live quite far away. Not everyone was jumping at the idea either, so some may decide to not bother to make the trip. In any case, at most it might be twenty more people and even then we'll have more than enough room there. Don't worry about it." Easy for him to say, he's not the one that's just had this new information sprung on him. Bobby correctly senses your silence as concern. "I sense some concern." Bobby says. "Fucking right you sense some concern! Not only am I still worried about your sister, I'm now worried about even MORE of your... highly religious family. I mean how are the rest of them going to feel about you bringing in a non-believer?" "Oh I'm not worried about that. I'm confident you'll eventually see the colorful swirling chaos...or the light if you prefer." Bobby laughs. "That's...... not exactly alleviating my concerns Bobby." "Sorry, I'm just joking to lighten the mood...." You hear Bobby exhaling deeply before continuing. "Suzy, I know this is more shit for you to take in and I know you've been very understanding about everything. It's one of the many reasons why you're so wonderful. I just want to stress that you won't be walking into some Jim Jones kool aid suicide cult compound. You'll be perfectly safe because you'll be with me, I'm the chosen of Tiamat and like I said, my word is going to be law at the compound. Look, I'll be by to pick you up tomorrow to take you there. If you're not feeling it after a few days, well I'm sure we can figure something else out. I want us to work out Suzy. I love you." There is certainly no denying that Bobby feels very strongly about you. Again, while you still have reservations, you've never known Bobby to lie to you. As for the rest, you do know Bobby's family take their religion pretty seriously so you know Bobby isn't exaggerating about you being safe with him. In fact if the threat of physical violence is gone, that actually already puts you ahead of your situation here considering Kelly has pushed you around and threatened to do more on many occasions. "I feel the same way Bobby. Okay, I'll pack and I'll see you tomorrow." Bobby's voice sounds a bit more upbeat when you agree to go with him, though again if you had the option of staying home, you certainly would. Still, you're trying to maintain a positive open minded attitude about all this. After saying goodbye to Bobby you waste no time in packing your most important belongings. As the night approaches, you finish up with your packing and get to sleep a little earlier. You get the feeling you're going to need all your energy for what lies ahead tomorrow. > Next day MONDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world hot dog eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe the mayonnaise off your lips, graciously stand up and bow for your adoring fans. The grossly fat dude on your right looks at you in disbelief and then turns away to puke in a bucket. Meanwhile the little Asian dude on your left just shakes his head wondering how the hell you could've beaten him. "I don't understand it...all my training. I glanced over at you during the contest...you...you were barely even chewing! How?" He asks. "Oh just natural talent at swallowing hot dogs I suppose." You reply humbly and wink at the audience, which continues to praise you. While you're blowing kisses at your fans, the announcer of the contest speaks again. "And as an extra special reward, our glorious host of this event, Misty will be coming soon to congratulate our winner in person. This hasn't happened in decades! Perhaps even centuries! It's all just so exciting! Oh wait...I think that's Misty now!" At this point the wind begins to pick up significantly, which is amazing since this contest was taking place in an indoor stadium. The audience seems to be going even wilder, but at this point you're getting a little concerned. Your concern becomes fear when the fat bastard to your right melts into a gory pile of goo, the Asian guy's head gets really large like in one of those anime cartoons and he screams before running away shouting about Tokyo getting destroyed by a giant lizard. You look back at the audience and see that they've begun stripping off their clothes and embracing each other in the biggest orgy you've ever seen. (Even larger than that porno you watched one time) The roof suddenly comes off the stadium revealing a dark sky with a jet black swirling hole above. "And here comes Misty folks! It's absolutely...GLORIOUS." The disembodied voice says as its pitch changes to demonic tone. You can't run, you can't even move, you just stare at this unearthly sight like a deer in the headlights completely frozen. You see the flash of a couple red glowing orbs in the black hole above you and then the wind picks you up and you're being pulled towards it. "COME TO ME SUZY. COME TO US. COME. COME. COME..." A deep voice echoes all around you which is backed up by the audience who are chanting along with having their orgy. You vainly try to struggle, but there isn't much you can do accept uselessly flail about in midair as you are slowly enveloped by darkness. Even when you try to scream, you make no sound, in fact all your senses go numb and everything goes black. You are then awakened by the ringing of your phone. At first you look around briefly still wondering if you're still levitating towards a black hole, but you breathe a sigh of relief that it was all just a dream. However, even though you're wide-awake, you still feel shaken up. Something about that dream seemed really unnerving and you usually aren't one to put much stock into your dreams. The ringing of the phone takes priority before dream analysis though, so after fumbling with it a bit you answer it. "Hey I've been trying to get a hold of you. We're you still asleep?" Bobby asks. "Yeah, are you outside the house already?" You answer. "Nah, I'm on my way over. I hope you're packed and ready to go though, because it's nuts out here. I know you don't tend to leave the house much, but if you've been out lately, you'd know it's been getting fucking crazy in town. Seriously, you'll see how fucked up it is out there when we drive through town. The cops are everywhere, groups of people are rioting, like I said, it's a mess. Okay, I need to focus on the road, there's a meat wagon picking up some bodies off the road. I'll see you soon. Love you." Bobby says and hangs up. As you take a quick shower before getting ready to leave, you think more about your strange dream. You wonder if it was some sort of subconscious thing that your mind was telling you that this move is a bad idea. You have to admit, you still are feeling very unsure about it, especially now that Bobby has told you that you're moving into an isolated compound with not just his immediate family, but a bunch of other family that could be even crazier. Still, this could just be mostly anxiety of leaving a place where you've traditionally always felt safe and lived most of your life combined with a freaky dream. Bobby did say you could leave if you weren't comfortable there, so you're trying to not to focus on the possible negatives. You try to calm your nerves the old fashioned way and think about Bobby the entire time. Exiting the shower, getting dressed and grabbing your packed bags, you finally leave your basement. You packed as much as you could, hopefully you can return to get the rest later. You head upstairs and you're not waiting long before you hear a knock on the door. Upon answering it, you see Bobby who embraces you with a hug and a kiss. "By Tiamat, I've missed your body against mine." Bobby says caressing you all over. "I never would have guessed. I have missed your touch as well though Bobby. Let me just get my bags." You turn around and bend over to grab your bags and that's when Bobby grabs you around the waist and if it wasn't for the fabric separating the two of you, he'd also be inside you. It's startling enough that you probably would've lost you balance had Bobby not been holding on to you so tightly. "What the hell? Sheesh Bobby, I nearly fell forward on my face!" "You wouldn't have, I got you. Mmm, I just can't help myself, I just..." At this point Bobby starts kissing on your neck and groping you. "Bobby, Bobby, stop. My brother Peter is still here in the connected garage. Last thing I need is for him to hear us and then suddenly walk in on me getting plowed from behind. Besides, didn't you say it's getting crazy out there? Shouldn't we be getting the hell out of town?" "Yeah, it's wonderfully chaotic out there. Like Tiamat herself has blessed this town. It really started putting me in the mood and then seeing you...well how can I not want to make love to you in the midst of all this chaos?" Bobby at this point is trying pull your shirt off over your head and you hear the sound of a zipper being unzipped, though with as excited as he is, you dare say it could just impale you through his pants. He's grunting, slobbering all over your neck and sniffing your hair and...well he REALLY wants you right now. This isn't really what you had in mind and something about the way Bobby is behaving is a bit...animalistic. He's never been that way in your other intimate encounters with him. Well not excessively so at any rate. Also, you HAVE been fighting for awhile, and it's sort of presumptuous of him to just think you're going to spread your legs immediately because you're on good terms again. Then again, this is sort of turning you on right now, and it has been awhile for you. (By something not battery operated or your own hands at least) > You get busy with Bobby It's not like this is a complete stranger, this is someone you do have feelings for and what the hell, it's not like you aren't going to be doing this again with him eventually. Still, there is the matter of decorum. You manage to twist your body around so that you're face to face to him; he barely stops when you tell him. "Bobby, look we can do this, but like I said, we're NOT doing this in the middle of the living room. Let's at least go down to the basement and we can fuck on my couch." "Okay, okay, whatever, let's just get down their quickly." Bobby agrees continuing to kiss on you. The pair of you head down into the basement and one of Bobby's hands is practically glued to your ass the entire time. When you get to your room, you see that Bobby has somehow managed to strip off most of his clothing by this point (amazing considering he had one hand on your ass the entire time). He helpfully starts stripping your clothing off. "Well seeing as you're obviously taking the alpha male approach to this, after you're done tearing off my clothes, you can carry me over to the sofa and start doing me like a conquering warrior. I want to see your face stare into mine as you thrust into me, let me know who exactly is in charge and teach me a lesson." You say licking your index finger and then running your finger down Bobby's chest. (Never let it be said that you can't tap into your dirty side when necessary) The next half hour is fun, if a little rougher than you're used to with Bobby. It starts off with him just really ramming it into you and telling you in various ways to "Take it." while staring directly into your eyes which are more piercing than usual. His hands are also mostly holding down your wrists at this point. Despite all this, you aren't scared. You just wrap your legs around him tightly like a boa constrictor and enjoy the ride. A little later he put his hands around your neck and even squeezes a little while continuing to stare into your eyes. You can certainly still breathe, but he is definitely establishing his dominance and that he is firmly in control of things. Despite all this, you still aren't really scared, you even add to the "experience" by squeaking out a "No." "Please don't." "Stop hurting me." every now and then. Eventually Bobby chants something in a language you've never heard before and then orgasms. Again, not really scary since he's always doing that. It was weird the first few times you had sex with him but now it acts as a nice little alarm letting you know that things will be over soon. Completely spent after orgasm, Bobby collapses on top of you and begins hugging you tightly, and then whispers... "I love you so much Suzy, I want us to be joined forever. I want our bodies as well as our souls to be married." NOW you get scared and suddenly push him off of you in alarm at this declaration. "What?! Married?" You exclaim recoiling to one corner of the couch. Bobby's a little surprised by your reaction. "I want us to be married. I mean we're obviously soul mates and its the next logical step for us." "Step? What step? We were just having fun a moment ago and now you spring life long commitment?" "Are you saying you never saw us eventually getting married? I mean in all that time since we've been together?" "No, and especially not when all the trouble with your sister came about." "But on several occasions you asked me to run away with you! You didn't think we'd get married if we ever did that even?" "Not really." "I'm guessing you didn't ever think about having children either then." "Children?! What the hell, you think I'm some sort of brood mother? Now Bobby is downright confused. "Suzy... I really don't understand your... well view of things..." Bobby says. "That pretty rich coming from the cultist." You say. "Okay, I'm going to ignore that because I love you. But if it makes any difference, at least I still behave in a consistent way which you do not." "What's that supposed to mean?" "(Sigh) I really don't want us to fight again..." "Bobby I just let you simulate what could be considered a rape fantasy on me, the least you can do is explain yourself." "Okay then THAT right there is what I'm talking about. You have no problem with having kinky sex with me, you have no major problems with my religion and what it entails, you're even willing to move in with me and my family even though you're concerned about my sister and probably the rest of them, but somehow marriage is what is freaking you out? I mean I'm trying to do the right thing here and it's because I genuinely love you. Why are you so resistant?" It's actually a good question. You're pretty tolerant of a lot of stuff most would've recoiled in horror from and something like marriage and (shudder) kids is scaring you off. There's probably a good psychological reason for your reluctance, involving your observations of other married couples such as your own mother (overly compliant) and father (distant) or your brother Ben (paranoid psychotic) and his wife (utterly clueless) but there are a few other concerns. "Bobby...you've never brought up marriage before either, why all of a sudden?" You ask. "Well, I just think it's time. I mean we've been together awhile. We've stuck together through ups and downs. We're going to be living together. I obviously love you and I assume you love me right?" "Well...yeah...but... I dunno...I mean kids? Come on do you really think I'm mother material? I can barely take care of myself...in fact I can't at all, otherwise I wouldn't be in this situation in the first place." At this point Bobby takes your hand into his and gets closer to you. "Suzy, don't you see, you don't need to worry about any of that anymore. When you marry me you won't have to worry about taking care of yourself ever again. And as far as being mother material, I can't imagine a better mother to my children. Even if you do have trouble, I'm sure my sisters will help out...well okay Helen will help out, but you know what I'm saying. The main thing is you won't have any more worries when you're in the family...MY family. We'll look after you. I'll look after you." And there it is. Your future. A "housewife" popping out a whole mess of little cultists like a Pez dispenser. While it might not be quite that extreme, the writing is on the wall. While Bobby is probably sincere in his love and desire to care for you, he's still the head of a human sacrificing cult and as such he's going to be somewhat controlling and manipulative. How long before you become brainwashed into believing in the same shit he believes in? How long before you passively accept other sudden changes over time? Hell, how long before some organization like the FBI or the ATF comes charging in to lay siege to the place? Though on the other hand what are you really doing with your life right now and what prospects do you really have? You could do worse than have a man who obviously loves you a lot and is willing to take care of the stuff you don't want to bother worrying about. You've got a major life changing decision to make, because you get the impression that if you get into that compound of his, changing you mind isn't going to be an option. > You accept his proposal "Okay, Bobby. I suppose you're right. We both love each other and that's the most important thing...so yes. I'll marry you." You say. Bobby is overjoyed and hugs and kisses you. "Oh Suzy, this is fantastic! I'll make the announcement to everyone as soon as we get to the compound! I got the ring there and we'll make it official as soon as we're all settled in. In fact, this Friday should be perfect! I hope that’s good with you.” “Um…yeah this Friday is fine.” You answer. “Tiamat truly blesses her most worthy servants! Come on let's get going!" Bobby exclaims. Bobby immediately starts grabbing his clothing that he left in various places in the basement on the way to your room and getting dressed. Your own clothing is a bit torn now, so you grab some new clothes that were still in your closet. Heading back upstairs, Bobby picks up your bags and carries them to this van. He opens the door for you and everything. You did miss his attention to the little things like that. As soon as you leave your neighborhood you notice what Bobby was talking about the town. He wasn't kidding when he said it’s a mess. You see police trying maintain order, fights, car wrecks, fire fighters trying put out fires and ambulances blaring their sirens. As Bobby focuses on the road, he goes on about how everything that's currently going on in town is just a small sample of what's to come. He talks about how there are several wars are going on in the world and how tensions are at an all time high. (He actually sounds like one of those Ground Zero infomercials on that bit) He mentions how everything is always trending towards chaos and entropy and how the signs that Tiamat is finally coming back to return the world to its natural state. Between your recent acceptance of his proposal and this, you don't think you've ever seen him so happy and excited. "Well whatever's going on, I'm glad we are leaving town, it's like everyone here has lost their mind." You say. "Yeah, some of my family don't agree that we should go to the compound. Some say we should be out here personally embracing the increasing chaos in the world like Tiamat would want, but... as I said there aren't a lot of us and I'd still like to make sure we're relatively safe. I believe Tiamat would want her chosen to be smart about things. Build up our numbers over time and THEN we will rise to become a force that none can oppose." You don't say much, you just nod and smile. You imagine you're going to be directly contributing to those "numbers." You cross your legs at the thought. Eventually you manage to get out of town and things are slightly better and the traffic is even thinning out. You've never been north of town before...actually you've never been out of town before. You also never realized how rural of an area you lived in. The quiet calm of the great outdoors is actually a little scarier than the chaos of the town you just left behind, doesn't help that it's getting dark by this point. Bobby ends up turning off the main road to an unsaved dirt one leading further into wilderness. Just as you're wonder how much further, you see the compound (surrounded by a high fence with razor wire of course) and it's certainly big enough and imposing enough to make any cult leader jealous. "Shit, it looks like a small prison." You say. "Yeah my dad and some of his brothers were constantly adding on to this thing for decades. To be honest, it isn't even completely finished. I mean it's more than sufficient for several people to comfortably live in, but there are many rooms that are just the bare minimum of four walls. Towards the back where you can't see from here, there are some portions of it that are exposed to the outside. However, seeing as there will be a bunch of us living here now, I think we'll at least be able to finish the place up, and in time make even more additions." "Didn't know your dad had brothers." "Yeah three older, and one younger. A younger sister too, but none of them will be coming here." "Oh. Wait, all of them are dead?" "No, the two younger siblings, Uncle Leslie and Aunt Lilith are still alive. In fact Leslie and Lilith live in a house together south of town. But let's just say they aren't exactly believers in the faith and chose a different path instead...I'm sure you've heard of the Ground Zero corporation especially with all their annoying infomercials and ads everywhere nowadays." "Wait, seriously? You've got family that works for GZ? You never told me that before either." You ask. "My dad wasn't really on speaking terms with either of them. Long story. Anyway, technically just Aunt Lilith works for GZ. Dunno doing what, but I think it's important. Uncle Leslie just lives with her and spends most of his time indulging in his pointless experiments, though I know he does some black market organ shit on the side." Bobby explains. "I guess you couldn't get your aunt to pull a few strings and get set up in one of those shelters they're always trying to sell huh?" You say. "Actually I did contact her during the recent family video conference. She told me that we'd all be much better off in dad's slightly unfinished compound than in one of those shelters. Apparently half of those things are death traps or something. She said even though she wasn't a believer, she still didn't want to subject her nieces and nephews to the fate of being in one of those live-in mass coffins." "Well that was nice of her to look out for you." "Yeah, she always was one of the nicest people in our family. Dunno why she's with Uncle Leslie, the guy is a psychotic asshole to practically everyone. Good doctor though. Anyway, let's see who's on duty tonight." Bobby says pulling up to the large gate. Bobby rolls down his window and speaks into an intercom. "Hey, it's Bobby. Anyone there?" "Bobby? Where the hell have you been? Thought you were going back into town and coming straight back to help with arranging all this furniture." A voice replies a few moments later. "Yeah well I had something really important to do and town is crazy right now. Did anyone else show up since yesterday?" "Nah, but a few people called saying they were going to get in by tomorrow at least." "Okay, what's everyone else doing right now?" "Um, well mostly everyone's asleep or otherwise retired to their rooms. Except me who drew the short straw to keep a look out for you." "What?! Asleep already? It's not that late!" Bobby exclaims. "Well everyone was a bit tired from all the moving around. Also your sister Helen felt the young ones should get a good night's sleep earlier since there's more shit to do tomorrow." "Hmm, well I had a big announcement to make, but I suppose if everyone is mostly in dreamland right now, it can wait until tomorrow. Might as well anyway seeing as you said more people are supposed to show up. Okay let us in William." "Us, huh? I guess that means you have a certain lady with you? Oh Tiamat, can't wait to see Diana's reaction to that one." William remarks. "Diana's gonna just have to fucking deal with it, I'm the fucking head of this family and I love this woman!" "Sheesh, calm down Bobby. I got no problem with that. I will just ask one thing, is she one of us?" Bobby looks over at you which puts you a bit on the spot. "I love you Bobby, and I go where you go now." You say which is enough of a positive answer for Bobby who has a big grin due to your answer. "Yes, of course she is." Bobby remarks. "Well then she's alright with me. Come on in around the right side, you'll be less likely to wake up the others and nobody is using that side of the building right now, so you'll have that big bedroom over there all to yourself." And with that the large gate slides open and Bobby drives you both in. He passes a few parked cars on his way over to the right wing of the compound and parks a few feet in front of a large door. You and he both get out. You attempt to get your bags, but again he insists on carrying them for you. He hands you the keys to the door to open it though, which you do and you both enter. After turning on a light switch, Bobby takes the lead. "Come on, down this corridor and through a couple of rooms." "This place isn't quite as spartan as I imagined. You've got some rather nice carpeting and even the wall coloring is fairly cheerful." You say walking and looking around. "I told you, this is our home, and we have to live here comfortably. We're not trying to create a psychologically oppressive effect to break down the willpower of potential followers, so what's the point of having a depressing drab gray everywhere?" "Makes sense. The artwork you got up is pretty...interesting as well." You say glancing at the various strange pictures hanging up ranging from multi headed dragons to gory scenes of sacrifices. "Oh, yeah. My grandmother painted most of these." Bobby replies. "Really? Well, she certainly made some vivid scenes. That one with young raven haired naked lady holding the bloody dagger surrounded by the corpses is pretty detailed. Probably the best one of the bunch." You say being supportive. "It should be the best one considering that's a self portrait of her. Took her a few months to finish it apparently because she wanted to get the color of decay just right for the bodies. Yep, she sure was talented." Bobby stares a bit at his long dead grandmother's naked image for a moment until you wave your hand in front of him. "Sorry, it's a bit hypnotic at times. Like the eyes follow you." Bobby says. "Hrmmm. Sure it's not two other things?" You ask. "Ha ha, well gotta admit, Grandma was pretty hot back in the day." "That...would be disturbing even if I wasn't your soon to be wife." You remark. (Though you’re not really THAT disturbed given what you know of Bobby’s family) "Oh I'm joking, you know you're the only one for me." Bobby says and kisses you on the cheek before saying you'll be heading up some nearby stairs. A flight of stairs, another corridor, a few rooms later and you're finally at your destination. A fully furnished master bedroom with all the comforts. "Well gotta admit, this is a very nice room. A little heavy on the red coloring, but I'll definitely be comfortable here especially since I'm starting to get tired." "Hey go ahead and relax. You're home now. I'd join you, but I think I better go see my cousin William to get a proper update on what's been going on, so I'll be back later." "Okay then." you say stretching out on the bed. Bobby kisses you goodbye and you're alone at last. You think about grabbing your laptop, but the bag it's in is too far and you're far too comfortable so you just spend your time scanning the room with your eyes thinking about your situation. When you look over to your left you notice another self portrait of Grandma Morningstar. Fortunately, she's got all her clothes on in this one and is in a more traditional pose. Same stern and confident look though. "Well I guess I'll be joining the family officially soon. Hope you approve from...well wherever you guys go when you shuffle off this mortal coil." You say towards the direction of the painting, though you don't look at it too long. Bobby's right, there is something a little hypnotic about the pictures of her. Instead you close your eyes as the comfort of the bed and silence causes you to soon fall asleep. > Next day... TUESDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world banana eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe away the whipped cream on your lips, graciously stand up and bow for your adoring fans. The big dude on your right wearing nothing but chaps and a biker jacket looks at you in disbelief and then turns away to puke in a bucket. Meanwhile the little Asian She-Male on your left just shakes his head wondering how the hell you could've beaten him. "I don't understand it...all my training. I glanced over at you during the contest...you...you were barely even chewing! How?" He asks. "Oh just natural talent at swallowing bananas I suppose." You reply humbly and wink at the audience, which continues to praise you. While you're blowing kisses at your fans, you suddenly get a feeling you’ve done something like this before…. Suddenly a hand touches your shoulder and you spin around to see a woman about your age with long raven colored hair and a low cut black gown. She’s pretty, but has a sneering look on her face. It’s not quite a cruel look, but she’s definitely not impressed with you. “So, you think you got what it takes to meet Misty huh? Pfft. I don’t see you lasting another day. Maybe two at best.” “Who is Misty?” you ask. “(Sigh) Deary, if you don’t know, then you’ll never know. And if you never know, then how can you ever hope to survive?” the woman says in a condescending tone and then starts laughing at you. She then begins to age rapidly until she becomes a wizened crone and then eventually a rotting corpse. When you begin to step back, the woman then disappears, but her laughter remains, getting louder and louder to the point being deafening and causing pain. You futilely attempt to cover your ears, but the laughter persists even when you try to cram left over bananas in your ears. Meanwhile, the biker turns in a unicorn and the she-male turns into rainbow colored fox which jumps on the back of the unicorn and they run off together. The audience surprisingly has completely disappeared. In fact it’s just you and that awful laughter that won’t quit. Just when you think you can’t take the pain anymore everything goes black… You wake up to the sound of a female voice. “What’s going on?!” you exclaim sitting up fast. “Oh! Sorry! I…I didn’t mean to wake you…but I just was told to bring you this.” the source of the female voice says. You rub your eyes and see a young woman with light brown hair before you holding a tray of food. She’s probably a few years younger than you. “…wait…you’re Helen right?” you say recognizing her. “Yes. I didn’t think you remembered me. We only saw each other a couple times before.” Helen says. “Yeah I remember you. Where’s Bobby?” “Oh, Bobby’s busy doing something with cousin William. I think its something to do with working on the compound here. I’m not really sure. I just tend to look after the little ones, but Bobby told me I should bring you something to eat, so um here.” Helen thrusts the tray of food at you. It consists of typical breakfast type food like scrambled eggs, bacon, cereal and juice. You see no reason not to take the offering seeing as you aren’t served like this very often. “Wow, breakfast in bed. That’s something I’ve never had before.” You say and start to eat. Helen stares at you nervously, which causes you to stop eating. “What?” you ask. “Oh! Nothing, I just wanted to make sure you liked it. Is the food good? I really didn’t know what to make you and I just wanted it to be right.” Helen says. “It’s fine Helen.” You say. “Oh good. I just…I just didn’t want to disappoint you.” “It’s just breakfast Helen. Relax. Probably way better than anything I could make, I dunno how to cook.” “You don’t? Didn’t your mother teach you?” Helen asks as if cooking is something every woman knows how to do. “Nope. She taught me how to sew when I was younger, but I sort of stopped doing it when she died of a flesh-eating virus. Didn’t really see the point anymore.” “Oh no, how sad!” Helen says empathetically. “Yeah.” You say continuing to eat. “Well don’t worry, I’m a very good cook and I can even teach you!” “Hm, well between that offer and this meal, you’ve probably done more for me than my own family has in years.” “I’m so glad you said that. I want us to get along because I know you’re going to be married to Bobby and all.” “Wait, Bobby told you already?” you ask. “He told everyone last night. He was so happy. I’m so glad he was, I like seeing him happy.” “Hm, I can guess who wasn’t happy to hear about it.” You remark. “Oh. Yes. Um…you probably mean Diana. Yes, she was quite upset. Um…in fact I probably should leave. She’s looking after the little ones and I’m sure I’ll get an earful about being away from my duties for so long. She’s in a bad enough mood as it is.” Helen says. “Okay, well sorry to keep you then. I don’t want to get you into trouble.” “Oh, it’s okay. I’m not really worried about me anyway. It’s just if I stay away for too long she might… well she’s not as patient as I am with our younger siblings. So are you okay with the food and everything?” “Yeah Helen.” “Okay good. Good. Um…okay I’m going now. Um, I suppose I’ll see you around some time.” “Okay then.” At this point Helen nervously waves and opens the door to leave, but then she calls out to you. “Um, Suzy?” “Yes?” “I’m really glad you’re going to be part of this family soon.” She says with a faint smile and then leaves. You shake your head and finish your food. Helen obviously has some issues. Though maybe its because you know what its like to have a bullying older sister, you can sympathize. After putting aside your food tray you take a shower in the private bathroom connected to the bedroom which is very convenient. While washing up you take time to ponder your odd dream which while having its surreal moments seemed “real” to you in some ways. The raven haired woman in the dream was most certainly Bobby’s grandmother which is sort of creepy, but then maybe she just popped up due you seeing pictures of her (and even one in your room) earlier that night. Ultimately you decide not to worry too much about it unless this becomes an ongoing problem. After your shower, you then change your clothing and decide to explore what is now your new home. You walk around the right wing of the compound, upstairs and down, not running into anyone. It’s all pretty empty on this side which is sort of good you suppose and you’re half tempted to just go back to your new room and play on your computer. However, you figure you’re going to have to make the effort to be social with everyone so you head over to the central part of the compound where you assume more of Bobby’s family is located. Eventually you get to a large dining area and see a few dirty plates still on the table. The voices of children can be heard a few rooms away and then… That red headed witch Diana steps out from the kitchen. She holds a knife in one hand and you notice her hand tighten around its handle when she sees you. “Look, I don’t want any trouble Diana. I know you’re mad but…” you start to say before Diana interrupts. “Spare me your pathetic words blonde whore. You will not sway me with superficial attempts at diplomacy. YOU are in my way, but I promise you that before the week’s end, you will be out of it.” When you cautiously step back a bit, Diana smirks. “You better keep stepping backwards and out the front door if you want to stay out of my way AND keep your pitiful life.” While Diana is doing a fairly adequate job of intimidating you, she’s actually starting to make you angry. Like a rage is building up within you and you feel like just picking up one of the forks on one of the dirty plates on the table and stabbing her in the neck with it. In fact violent visions start to enter your head, visions of bloody bodies and other murderous images. They hit you so suddenly; you actually stumble and keep yourself from falling by propping yourself up against the table. You then rub your head from this spell, as you don’t feel completely well. “Now what? Am I scaring you too much? Are you about to cry? By Tiamat you really are worthless. And that is why you’ll never make a good wife to my brother. You’re far too weak. My brother will realize that soon.” Diana remarks. As unwell as you suddenly feel, the rage within you is still rising. > You attack Diana You already put up with one bullying asshole of an older sister who basically threw you out your house, you’ll be damned if you’ll let someone else do it again. You turn your head to address Diana. “Hey, you know what your brother also realized? That I’m more fun in the bed than you are. Told me you were about as fun as fucking a log and about as lively too. Yeah, I’m crying alright, I’m crying tears of laughter at your fucking stupidity if you actually think you have a chance at getting Bobby back.” If Diana were a cartoon character you’d imagine this would be the part where steam shoots out of her head and her face goes completely red. “You’re fucking dead blondie!” Diana shouts and runs at you with the knife in hand. You grab one of the plates on the table and throw it at her. She dodges, but it’s enough to get her a bit off balance while you grab a fork and plunge it into the side of her arm. “Agh SHIT!” she shouts , but manages to swipe at you with her knife which barely misses your face. You don’t have time to retrieve your fork from her arm. You throw another plate at her, which causes her to drop her knife when she blocks her face with her hands. She recovers quickly however and pulls the fork from her arm and lunges at you with it. As the pair of you struggle, you and Diana have made enough noise for others to take notice of it. Helen comes walking into the room with a couple of kids behind her and freaks out. “Wha…Stop! Stop it! Don’t fight!” she exclaims and then screams for help and runs over to attempt to disarm her sister. “Please Diana, don’t…” Helen utters before Diana shoves her aside. At least this allows you to grab Diana’s wrist and slam it hard on the edge of the table, causing her to drop the fork. Doesn’t stop her from punching you with her free hand though. Helen once again tries to pull the two of you apart, but fails to do so. She ends up shouting at the cheering children who are enjoying the violent display to go fetch help. Meanwhile Diana is slightly getting the better of you in this fight as she lands a kick to your stomach, flooring you. You wheeze and have a hard time catching your breath. “You actually thought you could challenge me? What was that about me being the stupid one?” Diana taunts as she picks up a nearby chair. You barely manage to roll out of the way when she tries to bring it down on your head. Desperate to gain the advantage again, you struggle to get back up and start throwing plates at her again. She manages to deflect them with the chair, but then with all your energy you charge at her and holding on to the other end of the chair you slam her into the wall. You manage to pull the chair away and then it’s just you and her again. At first you’re scratching, punching and slapping each other upright and then soon the pair of you are rolling on the floor. “By Tiamat’s Chaotic Cunt, quick grab ‘em both!” you hear a male voice shout. A mass of various arms and hands grab you and Diana and after a bit of prying, the would be peacemakers succeed in keeping you and Diana from doing anymore damage. “I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU AND I’M NOT FUCKING LEAVING!” you scream at Diana who is being pulled away by Helen and another well dressed man you don’t recognize. “Whoa, easy! Easy! I gotcha.” The male voice says that spoke earlier. You look and see the one who has pulled you away from Diana and see a scruffy looking man. “Let go of me!” you exclaim and pull away from the man who lets you go. “Okay, okay, you’re free, now I heard you two don’t like each other, but already? What the hell happened?” At this point you and Diana both start accusing each other of starting the fight. After some shouting you demand to know where Bobby is. “Bobby isn’t here. He actually left an hour ago to go gather some stuff from the old house. (Sigh) I wish he was here though, because this is definitely his problem not mine.” The scruffy man says. “Yeah, well who the fuck are you anyway?” you exclaim. “Wow, you’re actually a little different than I expected considering what Bobby has said about you. Though if you need to the introductions, I’m William. Mr. fancy over there is Brandon.” William remarks. “Hey.” Brandon says. Diana interrupts this temporary break in the hostilities by attempting to attack you again, but Brandon and Helen manage to hold her back, meanwhile William grabs you since you attempt to defend yourself. “Let me go! Why the fuck are you all holding me back?! You should be letting me kill this fucking outsider and serving her heart up to Tiamat!” Diana exclaims. “Yeah, while that would normally be the plan, you know damn well this is Bobby’s bride to be and he’s the head of the family. Now I know your pissed about that but them’s the rules.” William remarks. “Shut the fuck up William you don’t know shit about how I feel! And since when do you give a shit about the rules for anything?” Diana says. “Okay, I’ll give you both of those. However I DO respect your brother and he loves this woman so you and nobody else will be sacrificing or harming her in any way…besides given how she was fighting, I’d say she shows promise of fitting right in in this family.” William laughs. Diana shakes her head, fumes and huffs about her situation. She looks like she’s about to attack you again, but instead she pushes Helen out of the way and storms off. Despite being pushed Helen follows her sister in an effort to console her. “Well. That was exciting. If we’re all done here, I’ll be checking on Veronica and making sure the young ones aren’t getting into the armory or something. Um, nice meeting you Suzy.” Brandon remarks straightening out his suit and walks away. You sit down on a nearby chair rubbing the upper left side of your face, which is probably sporting a bruise or soon will be. You still feel angry, but you’re too tired to go chasing after Diana at this moment. You notice William still lingering around and staring at you. “What?!” you ask. “Okay, just settle down now. I’m not the enemy here.” William remarks. “Maybe not, but I don’t really care for your staring right now.” “Fair enough. Like I said, you’re just much different than what I expected. Bobby mentioned to me you were this gentle quite girl. More like Helen actually. Never expected you to be giving Diana a good fight. On your second day here no less.” “Yeah, well everyone has their limits.” “Guess that’s true too, though I’m sure you know why Diana doesn’t like you.” “Yeah I know, and you know what? That’s tough shit and she needs to just get the fuck over it. Bobby wants to marry ME. Not her. It isn’t my fault that she’s not woman enough for him. To my understanding she had YEARS with him. If she couldn’t hang on to him with that much of a head start, I’d say the problem was with her, not me.” William smiles at your remark. “Man, I wasn’t sure if I’d like you, but shit if you weren’t Bobby’s bride to be, I’D marry you. Well if I was the marrying type. Anyway, I’d say you handled the situation with Diana the only way you could have. She at least knows she can’t just bully you like she does with poor Helen. Still, I’d watch out. It isn’t over with her. She’s not going to just let this go.” “I’m going to tell Bobby about this and he’s going to just have to straighten her out once and for all.” “Well, that MIGHT work in the short term, but Diana doesn’t let go of grudges and given that you’ll officially become family soon, she’s likely to ignore him. Look, it’s like this. Diana is definitely going to try to do something to you before you can marry Bobby because if she succeeds in getting you out of the picture before that happens, she won’t suffer any repercussions. Granted Bobby will probably be pissed at her and she’ll get passed over for Helen I suppose, but as a follower of Tiamat she technically has got the right to kill an outsider. It’s just out of respect for Bobby that we accept you.” “Okay, so as soon as Bobby gets back, I’m going to demand he marry me now.” “Heh, well due to some sort of alignment of the stars on Friday I don’t think it’s going to be moved forward. Though, given how pissed Diana is about all this, I really wouldn’t put it past her to just wait years to get revenge on you and make it look like an accident or make up some sort of bullshit about it being Tiamat’s will or something.” “So…what…am I going to have to kill her to get any fucking peace?” you blurt out. William waves his hand down a bit as if to tell you to be quiet and looks around. “Shhh, don’t talk that way out loud. You’re not officially family yet. You talk like that around some of the others here and they’ll throw you on the sacrificial altar. Hell, even Helen would probably go tell on you for talking like that.” William says. “What the hell? What about Bobby? Doesn’t his leadership mean anything?!” “Well yeah, but in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s very observant of certain rules and rituals. As much as he loves you, I don’t even he would be able to help if you actually killed Diana.” “Well I gotta do something! I can’t just sit around with a thumb up my ass constantly looking over my shoulder thinking Diana’s going to do something to me.” “I know and I get it. (Sigh) Quite frankly if I was running things, I’d go back to the old ways of Tiamat where we had less rules and ritual and more adherence to primal urges. What I’d do is have you and Diana enter a steel cage and nobody left until one of you was dead, but that’s me.” “Great. Glad to know I’d be better off under a more anarchic regime.” You say with a tone of defeat. William exhales deeply and then speaks. “Well blondie, this is how I see it. You can either hold out until Friday after which point you can probably get rid of Diana a little easier or at least with less repercussions. Or you can, shall we say…find an opportunity before then. I’m not saying anymore, but if you really feel like you’re in immediate danger then you know what to do.” With those words, William leaves you alone to ponder his advice. > You take care of Diana You get up and decide you need to take things into your own hands. You are not going to spend one more night under this roof with someone who openly wants to kill you. You catch up to William who hasn’t gone far and ask him where Diana’s room is. “Left wing second floor…uh…you planning to do that thing?” he asks. “Guess you’ll find out soon.” You say and walk past him. You make your way through the house and climb a flight of stairs. As you’re looking around for where Diana’s room is, you hear some voices and start heading towards them since they sound familiar. The closer you get and you recognize one of the voices as Helen. The louder voice with the abusive tone can only be Diana. “Diana, please try to calm yourself…” Helen says. “Calm myself? Are you a fucking idiot?! That fucking bitch is an outsider and you’re seriously okay with that?! You’re okay with her taking Bobby away?” Diana replies. “But she isn’t taking him away, he’ll still be here…” “Helen, you’re a f…WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN MY ROOM? GET THE FUCK OUT!” Diana says when she sees you enter. Helen turns her head and sees you and she looks scared about what’s going to happen next. “Uh…um hey Suzy…I really don’t think this is a good time…” Helen remarks and tries to get in between you and Diana who is already making steps towards you. You didn’t necessarily plan on Helen being here, but given how she’s been living in fear of Diana for years, you’re fairly certain you can angle that in your favor. You plan is fairly simple. You’re going to “apologize” but you know Diana is going to just start a fight again and in the process you’re going to do damage she’s going to be less likely to walk away from. You’ve already clashed with her once, she wasn’t nearly as tough as she makes out and you’re tougher than you actually thought you were. Survival of the fittest is going to play out very soon. “Diana, like I said before I didn’t come here to fight. I’ve just come to apologize if I offended you downstairs. I should’ve realized this is your home and I had no right to insult you.” “And like I said before I’m not interested in anything you’ve got to say you fucking man stealing cunt! Now get the fuck out of here before Bobby comes home to a corpse bride!” Helen at this point is practically pushing you out the door, but you’re not moving. “Diana, are you seriously going to threaten my life again after I’m trying to make peace?” you ask. “Suzy, please get out of here…” Helen says. “BITCH I DON’T WANT PEACE WITH YOU! YOU STOLE MY BOBBY AWAY RAAAAAAGH!” Diana screams and charges at you. Somehow Helen manages to duck and squeeze out of the way before she’s tackled along with you. Diana is now fighting with a fury you didn’t see downstairs. While she was certainly filled with rage before, now it seems like she’s possessed. You catch two blows to the face before you manage to push her back and land a kick to her stomach. Helen helplessly stands nearby calling for you both to stop, but neither of you are listening. Nearby vases are smashed, knick-knacks are knock over and even small pieces of furniture are damaged. Eventually Diana pushes you backwards and then runs back into her room. You waste no time in chasing after her only to find that she’s attempting to grab a large dagger from under her bed. She slashes at you with it, but misses and you land a kick to her face. You then grab her and slam her into a desk causing her to drop her knife. You go to pick it up, but Diana prevents you from doing so by crashing her bruised body into yours. The pair of you roll on the floor some more until you finally get the upper hand again and knock Diana into her window and partially through it. Diana groans in pain, but doesn’t move. The top part of her body dangles outside, and her lower back is no doubt impaled on some of the broken glass. It’ll be a simple matter of you just picking up her legs and pushing her out. Or at least it would if Helen wasn’t around. “Stop it! Stop it please! Don’t kill her! She’s my sister!” Helen shouts. “Helen, this bitch has been abusing you for YEARS. Don’t you think it’s time for her bullying to end? Come on Helen, you know your life would be better without her. Come on, just let everyone know this was purely in self defense. You know this is the right thing.” You say. Helen looks around a moment and bites her lip. She’s very unsure, but eventually she complies. “…okay…just do it.” she says and turns her head away. You smile and go to pick up Diana’s legs. You knew Helen would side against her sister. As you push Diana out the window, that’s when you realize Helen’s sided against you as well. You feel a sharp pain go straight into your back. The shock causes you to temporarily unable to catch your breath as you try to reach for whatever it is that just got plunged into you. You turn around just in time to see Helen give you a hefty shove. “Sorry Suzy.” She says and you fall out the window. The thing is, you may have possibly still survived the fall, but unfortunately landing on your back with a big knife in it, drives it completely through the front of your chest. As you lay next to Diana’s corpse, gurgling blood and struggling to breathe you soon follow her in death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You already put up with one bullying asshole of an older sister who basically threw you out your house, you’ll be damned if you’ll let someone else do it again. You turn your head to address Diana. “Hey, you know what your brother also realized? That I’m more fun in the bed than you are. Told me you were about as fun as fucking a log and about as lively too. Yeah, I’m crying alright, I’m crying tears of laughter at your fucking stupidity if you actually think you have a chance at getting Bobby back.” If Diana were a cartoon character you’d imagine this would be the part where steam shoots out of her head and her face goes completely red. “You’re fucking dead blondie!” Diana shouts and runs at you with the knife in hand. You grab one of the plates on the table and throw it at her. She dodges, but it’s enough to get her a bit off balance while you grab a fork and plunge it into the side of her arm. “Agh SHIT!” she shouts , but manages to swipe at you with her knife which barely misses your face. You don’t have time to retrieve your fork from her arm. You throw another plate at her, which causes her to drop her knife when she blocks her face with her hands. She recovers quickly however and pulls the fork from her arm and lunges at you with it. As the pair of you struggle, you and Diana have made enough noise for others to take notice of it. Helen comes walking into the room with a couple of kids behind her and freaks out. “Wha…Stop! Stop it! Don’t fight!” she exclaims and then screams for help and runs over to attempt to disarm her sister. “Please Diana, don’t…” Helen utters before Diana shoves her aside. At least this allows you to grab Diana’s wrist and slam it hard on the edge of the table, causing her to drop the fork. Doesn’t stop her from punching you with her free hand though. Helen once again tries to pull the two of you apart, but fails to do so. She ends up shouting at the cheering children who are enjoying the violent display to go fetch help. Meanwhile Diana is slightly getting the better of you in this fight as she lands a kick to your stomach, flooring you. You wheeze and have a hard time catching your breath. “You actually thought you could challenge me? What was that about me being the stupid one?” Diana taunts as she picks up a nearby chair. You barely manage to roll out of the way when she tries to bring it down on your head. Desperate to gain the advantage again, you struggle to get back up and start throwing plates at her again. She manages to deflect them with the chair, but then with all your energy you charge at her and holding on to the other end of the chair you slam her into the wall. You manage to pull the chair away and then it’s just you and her again. At first you’re scratching, punching and slapping each other upright and then soon the pair of you are rolling on the floor. “By Tiamat’s Chaotic Cunt, quick grab ‘em both!” you hear a male voice shout. A mass of various arms and hands grab you and Diana and after a bit of prying, the would be peacemakers succeed in keeping you and Diana from doing anymore damage. “I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU AND I’M NOT FUCKING LEAVING!” you scream at Diana who is being pulled away by Helen and another well dressed man you don’t recognize. “Whoa, easy! Easy! I gotcha.” The male voice says that spoke earlier. You look and see the one who has pulled you away from Diana and see a scruffy looking man. “Let go of me!” you exclaim and pull away from the man who lets you go. “Okay, okay, you’re free, now I heard you two don’t like each other, but already? What the hell happened?” At this point you and Diana both start accusing each other of starting the fight. After some shouting you demand to know where Bobby is. “Bobby isn’t here. He actually left an hour ago to go gather some stuff from the old house. (Sigh) I wish he was here though, because this is definitely his problem not mine.” The scruffy man says. “Yeah, well who the fuck are you anyway?” you exclaim. “Wow, you’re actually a little different than I expected considering what Bobby has said about you. Though if you need to the introductions, I’m William. Mr. fancy over there is Brandon.” William remarks. “Hey.” Brandon says. Diana interrupts this temporary break in the hostilities by attempting to attack you again, but Brandon and Helen manage to hold her back, meanwhile William grabs you since you attempt to defend yourself. “Let me go! Why the fuck are you all holding me back?! You should be letting me kill this fucking outsider and serving her heart up to Tiamat!” Diana exclaims. “Yeah, while that would normally be the plan, you know damn well this is Bobby’s bride to be and he’s the head of the family. Now I know your pissed about that but them’s the rules.” William remarks. “Shut the fuck up William you don’t know shit about how I feel! And since when do you give a shit about the rules for anything?” Diana says. “Okay, I’ll give you both of those. However I DO respect your brother and he loves this woman so you and nobody else will be sacrificing or harming her in any way…besides given how she was fighting, I’d say she shows promise of fitting right in in this family.” William laughs. Diana shakes her head, fumes and huffs about her situation. She looks like she’s about to attack you again, but instead she pushes Helen out of the way and storms off. Despite being pushed Helen follows her sister in an effort to console her. “Well. That was exciting. If we’re all done here, I’ll be checking on Veronica and making sure the young ones aren’t getting into the armory or something. Um, nice meeting you Suzy.” Brandon remarks straightening out his suit and walks away. You sit down on a nearby chair rubbing the upper left side of your face, which is probably sporting a bruise or soon will be. You still feel angry, but you’re too tired to go chasing after Diana at this moment. You notice William still lingering around and staring at you. “What?!” you ask. “Okay, just settle down now. I’m not the enemy here.” William remarks. “Maybe not, but I don’t really care for your staring right now.” “Fair enough. Like I said, you’re just much different than what I expected. Bobby mentioned to me you were this gentle quite girl. More like Helen actually. Never expected you to be giving Diana a good fight. On your second day here no less.” “Yeah, well everyone has their limits.” “Guess that’s true too, though I’m sure you know why Diana doesn’t like you.” “Yeah I know, and you know what? That’s tough shit and she needs to just get the fuck over it. Bobby wants to marry ME. Not her. It isn’t my fault that she’s not woman enough for him. To my understanding she had YEARS with him. If she couldn’t hang on to him with that much of a head start, I’d say the problem was with her, not me.” William smiles at your remark. “Man, I wasn’t sure if I’d like you, but shit if you weren’t Bobby’s bride to be, I’D marry you. Well if I was the marrying type. Anyway, I’d say you handled the situation with Diana the only way you could have. She at least knows she can’t just bully you like she does with poor Helen. Still, I’d watch out. It isn’t over with her. She’s not going to just let this go.” “I’m going to tell Bobby about this and he’s going to just have to straighten her out once and for all.” “Well, that MIGHT work in the short term, but Diana doesn’t let go of grudges and given that you’ll officially become family soon, she’s likely to ignore him. Look, it’s like this. Diana is definitely going to try to do something to you before you can marry Bobby because if she succeeds in getting you out of the picture before that happens, she won’t suffer any repercussions. Granted Bobby will probably be pissed at her and she’ll get passed over for Helen I suppose, but as a follower of Tiamat she technically has got the right to kill an outsider. It’s just out of respect for Bobby that we accept you.” “Okay, so as soon as Bobby gets back, I’m going to demand he marry me now.” “Heh, well due to some sort of alignment of the stars on Friday I don’t think it’s going to be moved forward. Though, given how pissed Diana is about all this, I really wouldn’t put it past her to just wait years to get revenge on you and make it look like an accident or make up some sort of bullshit about it being Tiamat’s will or something.” “So…what…am I going to have to kill her to get any fucking peace?” you blurt out. William waves his hand down a bit as if to tell you to be quiet and looks around. “Shhh, don’t talk that way out loud. You’re not officially family yet. You talk like that around some of the others here and they’ll throw you on the sacrificial altar. Hell, even Helen would probably go tell on you for talking like that.” William says. “What the hell? What about Bobby? Doesn’t his leadership mean anything?!” “Well yeah, but in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s very observant of certain rules and rituals. As much as he loves you, I don’t even he would be able to help if you actually killed Diana.” “Well I gotta do something! I can’t just sit around with a thumb up my ass constantly looking over my shoulder thinking Diana’s going to do something to me.” “I know and I get it. (Sigh) Quite frankly if I was running things, I’d go back to the old ways of Tiamat where we had less rules and ritual and more adherence to primal urges. What I’d do is have you and Diana enter a steel cage and nobody left until one of you was dead, but that’s me.” “Great. Glad to know I’d be better off under a more anarchic regime.” You say with a tone of defeat. William exhales deeply and then speaks. “Well blondie, this is how I see it. You can either hold out until Friday after which point you can probably get rid of Diana a little easier or at least with less repercussions. Or you can, shall we say…find an opportunity before then. I’m not saying anymore, but if you really feel like you’re in immediate danger then you know what to do.” With those words, William leaves you alone to ponder his advice. > You keep a low profile As much you’d actually like to get Diana out of the picture, it probably would be best to just keep to yourself for the rest of the day. At least until Bobby gets back. In fact you think about calling him about this, but you decide it would be better to discuss something like this in person. You head back to your room and lock the door. So much for being “social” today. You spend most of your time doing what you used to do in your basement, which actually suits you just fine. Though in between your computer game downtime (Sadly no Internet here), you also do more thinking about your future here. It isn’t just Diana, you’re going to have to do something about; it’s also this whole Tiamat religion. You wonder if you’re going to have to sacrifice people. You aren’t even sure if you have it in you to kill Diana in cold blood (Maybe in self defense though) how are you going to kill an innocent person? You also are wondering about Bobby’s desire to have children and how that’s going to go. While you’ve never thought about being a mother, that’s actually one of your lesser concerns. Bobby’s family has a “tradition” of interbreeding. As fucked up as your family was, there was never any of THAT going on and you’re not exactly comfortable with the idea of your offspring having sex with each other…and just HOW young is that encouraged anyway? “Goddamnit Suzy, you really got yourself into a mess.” You say to yourself. But its done now and you’re just going to have to muddle through. You briefly ponder escape, but you’re fairly certain that wouldn’t be a good idea even if you did manage to get out of the compound. No, your best plan for now is to speak to Bobby about all this. Surely you’ve got some influence over him. Hours pass and eventually when night starts to fall there’s a knock on the door. “Hey, Suzy. It’s Bobby, why is the door locked?” you hear Bobby ask. “Because I already had a fight with your bitch of a sister once today and I was avoiding any more potential conflict. Hold on…” you say and go to open the door. You open the door and Bobby goes to hug you, though you barely return the favor. “Suzy, shit, you should put something on that.” He remarks about your face bruising. “I’m fine, stop! Don’t touch it. (Sigh) Look we’ve got A LOT to discuss. First of which is why the hell did you leave without telling me?” “I actually didn’t plan on leaving at all, but I remembered a few things that I left back at the house that I thought we should have here so I figured I’d make a quick trip there which turned out to be a cluster fuck. Shit is getting worse in town. Anyway, I saw no reason to bother you since I figured you wouldn’t even bother leaving the room. I had it planned for Helen to come up to serve you food at appointed hours, of course she mentioned the fight when I finally got in and she wasn’t sure if she should bother you. Now I already heard some of it from the rest of the family and especially Diana, now why don’t you tell me what happened exactly?” You recount the event to Bobby and then add your own displeasure about his sister in general. “I know, I know, I’ll straighten it out.” Bobby remarks. “You said that before and that bitch is still trying to kill me! You better do something about her permanently.” You say. “Whoa, hold on now. I know you’re upset, but let’s rein it in a bit. I mean it probably wasn’t the best idea on your part to provoke her.” Your jaw nearly drops. “Bobby, I KNOW you just didn’t take her fucking side. Because if you are…” “I’m NOT taking her fucking side! I’m just saying my sister is a lot of bark most of the time and she only reacts when someone really provokes her.” “Oh, so what? Am I just supposed to put up with Diana’s abuse in silence? Be a doormat like Helen? NO! I had enough of that shit from Kelly, I didn’t come here just to repeat that cycle again! You told me you were the fucking leader of your family, shouldn’t you just be able to snap your fingers and they have to fall in fucking line?” Bobby just hangs his head and slumps down on a chair. “(Sigh) Alright, alright, you made your point and you’re right. You shouldn’t have to put up with that sort of treatment. I’ll handle Diana, but from now on don’t get into a fight with her if she’s being a bitch. Just ignore her.” Bobby says. “Yeah well I’m not sure if that’s going to be an option if she pushes me too much, which brings me to some other issues.” “Other issues? What the else fucking happened while I was gone?” “Nothing, but I’ve been doing some thinking. If I’m going to be popping out children, I refuse to have them involved in some kiddie porn ring. I’m not having it! I can look past a lot, but that’s where I’m drawing the fucking line.” You say with authority. Now Bobby’s jaw drops. “Kiddie porn? By Tiamat’s Twenty Tits, what the hell do you think goes on here Suzy?” Bobby says being genuinely offended. “Well I don’t fucking know! I mean I know you guys participate in human sacrifice and commit incest like its no big deal! I mean you and your sister had to start experimenting with each other at an early age and taught that it was perfectly fine to do so. What the hell am I supposed to think?” you say. “You could’ve just asked you know. You could’ve asked about Tiamat and all this other shit before jumping to your own conclusions. I’ve tried on many occasions to actually enlighten you on my religion but (Sigh) nevermind. We’ll get to THAT later, first let me allay your fears of any rampant pedophilia going on here of which there ISN’T. Or at least under my watch there won’t be.” “So you’re saying that it has happened in your family.” “Look, I’m not going to lie and say that maybe sometimes that shit HAS happened in the past with other family members, but I’m sure my family isn’t the only one that has had such elements in it. I mean what about your family? Like your old Uncle Ed?” “Hey my Uncle Ed wasn’t a kiddie fiddler, he was just a plain old serial killer.” You say. “Oh well, I guess he was a saint then, look my point is, I think you’ve got the wrong impression about all of us. All right, it’s true my family did tend to interbreed a bit more in the past and yeah by and large we don’t see it as some great taboo. However it wasn’t like it was a standard procedure to get the kids to start playing doctor at an early age. To be honest, I probably only grew close to Diana because my dad was a fucking tyrant who barely let any of us socialize with others our own age. Then after mom died…who WASN’T related to my dad by the way, Diana and me just grew even closer and…well I won’t go into anymore because I’m sure you don’t want to hear it. I’m just saying it wasn’t like my dad was telling us to fuck one another or else. If anything, my dad probably was a bigger prude than some Christian fundies. If he had known what was going on, he probably would’ve horse whipped the pair of us for distracting ourselves from Tiamat’s glory or some shit.” Bobby holds up his hand before you can interrupt. “So, what I’m saying is that any children we have aren’t going to be forced to have sex with each other or anyone else. That’s not part of the plan nor will it ever be.” “Hmm, glad to hear it.” You say. “Okay, are there any other concerns we need to discuss?” “Well, I don’t see why we can’t get married sooner, like tomorrow for instance.” “Because this Friday is perfect. I’ve already got things planned out.” “Wait, I’m the bride, shouldn’t I be planning all this out? In fact why do I have practically no say in this?” “Because…look…argh, fine besides wanting the wedding moved up what else do you want?” “Well…I dunno. Okay, I guess I don’t have any ideas. That’s not the point though, it’s the principle that I want my voice to be heard.” “Well trust me, after today it’s been more than heard. Look, if you DO have any requests, let me know because we can accommodate you…except pushing up the date. It really needs to be on Friday. Why do you want it pushed up anyway?” “William told me I’m in danger with Diana until I’m actually married to you.” “And I’m telling you not to worry about Diana anymore. I’m going to take care of that. And I wouldn’t listen to my cousin anyway. He’s a bit of a shit stirrer. Now is there anything else?” “No, I guess that’s all the major things for now. So um, how was your day in town?” At this point Bobby tells you about his trip back and forth to his house and while to an extent it was exciting, he was glad to get back home to you. Bobby also goes on to tell you that a few more family members apparently arrived while he was gone and you were in self-isolation. “Great, more people to hate me.” “Don’t worry about it. Tomorrow, I’m definitely not going anywhere so I’ll be around to introduce you to everyone proper. You’re not going to get the Diana treatment by all of them. To be honest, what little the rest have seen of you, you’re ahead in the polls. Helen likes you of course. You managed to impress William and some of the kids thought you were, in their words a pretty blonde lady that was beating up their mean sister Diana or aunt Diana in some cases. Even my cousin Brandon said you seemed okay and he barely ever gives an opinion without his wife telling him what to think.” “Well I guess that’s something I suppose.” At this point Bobby goes back to reassuring you that everything will be fine and the pair of you spend the remainder of the night together. Eventually as the hours grow late the pair of you go to sleep. Still, you can’t help but have your doubts and concerns even though Bobby alleviated a few of them. You still think you’re going to have to take matters into your own hands rather than rely solely on Bobby. > Next day… WEDNESDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world cucumber eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe away the ranch dressing on your lips, graciously stand up and bow for your adoring fans. The Minotaur on your right looks at you in disbelief and then turns away to puke in a trough. Meanwhile the little Asian satyr on your left just shakes his head wondering how the hell you could've beaten him. "I don't understand it...all my training. I glanced over at you during the contest...you...you were barely even chewing! How?" He asks. "Oh just natural talent at swallowing cucumbers I suppose." You reply humbly and wink at the audience, which continues to praise you. While you're blowing kisses at your fans, you suddenly get a feeling you’ve done something like this before. In fact you remember you HAVE participated in similar contests and you can’t help but think there’s some sort of connection with what you’ve been eating at these things. Suddenly a hand touches your shoulder and you spin around to see a woman with long raven colored hair and a low cut black gown. It’s Bobby’s grandmother. This time she’s a little older and she still doesn’t look too impressed with you. “Yeah that’s great you got a skill and its real obvious that’s one of the things Bobby loves about you because men in general tend to make their most important decisions with their dicks.” She says to you. “Excuse me?” you reply. “To be honest I’m not even too sure about him, but nobody appears to have the ambition to stand up to him or are otherwise too much in love with him. That’s Diana’s problem right there. Anyway, MAYBE there is more to you than meets the eye. You might just meet Misty yet.” “Okay who the hell is Misty?” you ask. “Sheesh, you really are slow on the uptake there blondie. Well maybe you’ll get it, maybe you won’t. I don’t give a shit either way. Off you go then.” Bobby’s grandmother at this point snaps her fingers and at this point the Minotaur grabs your upper body and the satyr grabs your legs while the audience cheers them on. You attempt to struggle without success, then a giant hole in the ground between the stage and the audience opens up. A swirling black void appears at the bottom. Without another word, you are tossed in which is followed by your screaming, the audience’s cheering and Bobby’s grandmother laughing. You fall and eventually the light from above grows dimmer until you are enveloped in complete darkness. Then you wake up suddenly with one of your hands tightly clutching to the side of the bed. “No! Huh? Shit! Oh. Good. Not falling. Fucking bitch.” You incoherently mumble, which is heard by Bobby who is in the room getting dressed. “You okay over there?” he asks. “Hrm? Oh. Nothing. Just another fucked up dream. What’s going on?” you ask rubbing your eyes. “Nothing much, just some more of my family showed up here in the middle of the night. I was just about to wake you up to finally have you come meet everyone properly. Now I know you probably don’t really want to but…” “Yeah, whatever let’s do it.” You interrupt and get out of bed. “Wow, I didn’t expect you to be so accommodating so quickly.” “Don’t have much of choice now do I? I mean I’m going to have to get along with all these people. Better I make my good impressions as soon as possible before Diana starts spreading lies about me.” “Suzy, I wouldn’t worry about…” “Have you spoken to her yet?” you interrupt again. “Well no.” “Well until you do and lay down the fucking law, I’m going to assume she’s already caused a shitload of damage.” Bobby stops dressing for a moment. “Suzy, what’s wrong? I thought we were good with our talk yesterday.” “WE are good. Diana and me though? Never will be and something is going to have to be done about it.” “Suzy, I TOLD you I’d fucking talk to her alright?” “Yeah, we’ll see.” You say and close the bathroom door. As you wash up, you wonder if you were unnecessarily bitchy with Bobby, but then you think no you weren’t. You have a legitimate gripe against a woman who is trying to kill you and he’s SUPPOSED to be doing something about it. Honestly at this point you wish he’d do more than talk, but you suppose that’s wishful thinking. That dream really put you in a bad mood. Especially since you’ve had it three times now and it always ends with you getting fucked up in some way. Not to mention Bobby’s grandmother has started appearing in them. You’ve never been one to believe in the supernatural, but the dream shit is really starting to get too weird for you to ignore as just your subconscious in play. You’re starting to wonder if Bobby’s grandmother is mocking you from beyond the grave and one thing you don’t need right now is yet another Morningstar woman on your case. On top of all that, you still ache from yesterday’s fight, but the hot shower at least feels good. After leaving the bathroom you get dressed. Bobby is still in the bedroom waiting for you. He doesn’t say much, but that’s probably because he’s trying to avoid an argument just before the pair of you are supposed to be “formally” meeting his people. “Okay, I’m ready.” You say when you finish getting dressed, Bobby nods and the pair of you leave the room. Bobby finally speaks to you again as you walk and talk, though you’re mostly just listening to him going on about the other family members you haven’t met yet and how to best handle them. To be honest, you’ve already made up your mind that you’re going to treat them how they treat you. Eventually you get to the large living area where you see familiar faces along with unknown ones. William sits in a large comfy looking chair and nods at you, taking a drink. You see that Brandon guy with a slightly chubby woman, you’re guessing that’s his wife Veronica. They both greet you, but nothing more than that. You also see three new people who are more of Bobby’s cousins. They all introduce themselves, but much like Brandon and Veronica, they don’t do much more than that. You don’t get the impression any of this is personal either. Aaron doesn’t seem like he wants to be here at all. Ronald and Denise look more interested in each other than anyone else at the moment. You then see Helen again who looks like she has her hands full with several boys and girls. She still manages to wave hi to you though. The kids themselves look at you, but seem to be pre-occupied with bickering with each other. “How many of those are your siblings again?” you whisper to Bobby. “Oh just the three. The oldest boy there Jordan and the twins Aiden and Nadia. The other half are Brandon and his wife’s kids.” He answers. “Um, shouldn’t they be looking after them then?” “I’m sure they do all the time and are just taking advantage of the extra support system they have now. I mean they trust Helen to look after them and Helen said she was happy to do it. Besides, everyone is family here so it hardly matters who is looking after them directly.” While you haven’t known these people long, you know Helen’s personality well enough that she’d agree to anything since she seems to be the family doormat. You don’t see Diana, but someone mentions she’s in the kitchen making food for everyone. “Okay, I’m going to go do this now, because I don’t want to do it later. I’m going to go speak with Diana and straighten everything out and make it clear there is to be no more dissension in the family today.” “Hm, while you’re at it make sure she’s not putting rat poison in my food.” You remark. Bobby heads into the kitchen leaving you alone with the rest of his family. Having little else to do, you make the attempt to be social. Brandon and Veronica are more talkative than the rest. They ask you a few questions and you answer. They don’t seem to really care too much about you though. As far as they’re concerned it isn’t their place to disapprove of you even if you caused such a negative reaction in them, which apparently you don’t. You almost get the impression they find you more boring than anything else, which unfortunately due to your basement dwelling past might very well be a fair assessment. But you’ll take apathy because it’s better than hatred. Bobby’s other cousins are more of a mixed bag. Aaron barely speaks to you at all and he’s pretty snappish when he does. He seems like he’s a pent up ball of nerves since he’s tapping his foot and moving one of his hands the entire time. In fact the more of an effort that you try to speak to him, the more hostile he starts to look. The moment you get the feeling of his eyes burning a hole in you the more you decide to move on. By the time you get to Ronald and Denise, they’re making out, so you don’t even bother. Which leaves you with William and Helen, the latter of which has already left the room with all the little kids of this family presumably to be out of the way as usual. William on the other hand is still relaxing in a chair at the far end of the room and watching something on TV. Well at least you know those two are friendly with you. > You go speak to William While Helen would probably appreciate your company, you don’t really feel like dealing with all the little kids that are going to be hanging around her so William it is. You head over and sit in a chair near him. “What are you watching?” you ask. “Nothing really, mostly Ground Zero ads. These fuckers are really raking in the money preying upon people’s fears like this. Gotta say though, if I was the corporate type, I’d sure want a piece of that action.” William remarks. “You believe its all a scam?” “Heh, well as always the best lies have truth mixed in with them. A day of mass destruction is definitely coming. I believe that. The writing is on the wall, but I know damn well GZ isn’t the savior from that. Nothing is except yourself and how strong your will to live is. Yep, dark days are coming and it’s going to weed out the weak so only the strong survive.” “Like the Morningstars.” “Heh, well some of us I suppose. To be honest, I’m not sure about some of the people here. I mean I love ‘em because they’re family, but…(sigh) well take Brandon over there. The guy would be killed and eaten in a completely savage world with no laws. His wife too. I dare say even you might thrive better.” “Thanks…I think.” You answer. “You see, this place. This compound that Bobby has tried to bring all the family to…it’s just another form of restriction. The day is coming soon where unbridled chaos is going to become a reality and Bobby…Tiamat bless him is misguidedly still clinging to ways that should be abandoned. Now is not really the time to hide in a fortress like some 80s cult. Now is the time we should be out there embracing the chaos like Tiamat intended.” Looks like there is a bit of dissension in the family that doesn’t involve you. At least not directly. “I thought you supported Bobby.” You ask. “(sigh) Yeah…I thought I did. I mean I still do. I respect WHAT he’s trying to accomplish and his plan. And I’m obviously not going to overthrow his power or anything…but I just don’t think this is going to be for me. Y’know? I’ve always been a bit more of a drifter and after being here a few days, I’m starting to get really bored. That fight you had with Diana was about the most interesting thing that’s happened here and while I’d certainly like to see the outcome of that drama, I don’t think I’m going to stick around long enough to find out. I’m going to be heading out, along with Aaron.” William says. “Aaron? That guy sitting in the corner who looks like a ball of pent up energy?” “Yep. He’s even more anxious to leave more than I am. I think he only showed up to meet up with me since he doesn’t have a vehicle and it’s always good to have at least one person to watch your back.” “So…when are you leaving?” “As soon as possible, in fact I’ll probably talk to Bobby, before I do. He’s going to be disappointed, but I know he’ll understand…so how about you?” “How about me what?” you ask. “Well, are YOU comfortable here? I mean you haven’t been here long and you already got into a major fight with Diana and nobody here seems all that close to you. Polite perhaps, but you’re not exactly bonding here.” William says. “Well that might take time, besides, still better than my own family so far.” You answer. “Hm, well what about this wedding? From what I know, Bobby sort of sprung that proposal on you. You okay with that?” “I love Bobby.” “Yes, I know you love Bobby. I don’t doubt that, but that’s not necessarily a good reason to get married. Hell, love can sometimes be the WORST reason to get married. Also if I know Bobby, he’s probably already got it in head that you’ll be popping out a whole mess o’ babies.” “…yeah, I actually already addressed some of that yesterday.” “What about the wedding sacrifice?? “Wedding sacrifice?” William pauses for a moment. “You mean to tell me, he hasn’t told you about the wedding sacrifice?” William whispers to you. “No! He…he’s not going to mutilate me is he?” you ask in a hushed tone. “No! No, no, no nothing like that. I just can’t believe he hasn’t told you considering it’s pretty important and he’s pretty big on all this ritual crap to Tiamat.” “Well what is it?!” “Nothing, you just have to sacrifice someone on an altar in the name of Tiamat to prove your allegiance and dedication to the family.” “What?!” “That’s the rules. I mean personally I think just a simple prayer while bludgeoning something to death in an alley works just as well, but like I said, Bobby’s all into the rituals. Guess he takes after his dad that way, but then again so do I. It is said that most sons become like their fathers after all.” Those last words by William aren’t very endearing ones given what a fanatic Bobby’s father was. Still your main concern is this human sacrifice thing. You didn’t think that you’d have to do it, in fact you aren’t sure if you’re going to be able. While you’ve had murderous thoughts about Diana, that’s a little different. For one, you haven’t acted on them, and two that’s self-defense. You don’t know if you have it in you to murder some innocent person in cold blood, let alone to some cult goddess you don’t even believe in. “I take it, you aren’t really enthused about the possibility of killing someone. Well someone who isn’t immediately attacking you at any rate.” William says. “Um, well…I wasn’t expecting to.” “See, this is something Bobby REALLY should’ve told you before dragging you up here. (Sigh) You’re supposed to be the love of his life and he should KNOW if you’re completely in sync with him. I mean not everyone is cut out to be a member of one of Tiamat’s chosen and that’s fine, but again he really should’ve asked you first.” “So…wait, where are they getting this…um sacrifice?” “The sacrifice? Oh got a whole mess of them in the basement in the left wing of this place. We captured a bunch of folks and locked them in cages before starting to move the family in…and I’m guessing that’s another thing you didn’t know about.” William says noticing your surprise at this revelation too. You’re just silent. Combined with the mess with Diana, the wedding and all this new info, you’re starting to seriously wonder if you’re strong enough to go through with all this now. At this point William leans over to you and keeps a low tone. “Look, I can see that you’re probably not cut out for this life and as I said, that’s perfectly fine. But Bobby… well I don’t think he’d take it well if you backed out now or worse, backed out on the wedding day.” “I know.” You say with your voice starting to get a little quivery. “Shhh, okay. Look, it’s not too late to leave this place. I’d be willing to take you with me, and I’ll drop you off wherever you want. Of course we’d have to do it secretly.” “How?” “Well, my van is the dark blue one out front. Here’s the keys.” William says and hands you some keys, which surprises you. “Don’t worry, I trust you. Besides, that big gate has to be opened up first anyway. All you have to do is hide in the can, until me and Aaron leave which shouldn’t be long. Just make sure you keep the doors unlocked so we can get in.” William says. “Aren’t they going to notice I’m gone?” “Well, this is a big place, so if you went missing for a little while people would probably think you’re either just wandering the house or maybe back in your room before suspicion arose. I’d also be willing to make up a story if it came to that. In any case, if you’re going to do it, we need to do it now.” > You go with William The more you think about it, the more you realize that William’s probably right. You’re just going from one fucked up family to another and you certainly aren’t cut out to kill someone in the name of a religion you don’t even believe in. This is your one chance to back out of this mistake and you’re going to take it. You aren’t sure where you’re going to go after you leave, but at least you won’t be trapped like you are here. “How long do you think you’ll take?” you ask. “Shouldn’t take long actually. Just nonchalantly leave now and like I said make your way to the dark blue van. There are a lot of tarps and blankets you can hide under if you really want to play it safe, but as soon as me and Aaron are in that van, we’re leaving even if we have to drive through the gate, but again that shouldn’t be necessary.” Nodding at William you get up and make your way out of the room, which from you can tell, nobody is even paying attention to you. You spend half of your time constantly looking around, to make sure nobody is following you or anything like that, but again you’re in the clear. You manage to make it out the house and into the van in secret. The van itself is pretty old, definitely a relic from several decades past. William has a variety of tools scattered all over the back of the van and you see the tarps and blankets in the back like William mentioned. They don’t look the cleanest, but you figure you might as well hide under them in the meantime. No point in risking someone wandering outside and catching a glimpse of you through the van window. Seconds, minutes and you think an hour passes before you start to hear voices outside. One of them sounds like William. The driver’s door opens and you hear William more distinctly. “Okay Aaron, you go open it, I’ll pick you up as we’re going out.” He says and then shuts the door. Then you hear some squeaking around on the front seat. “Hey Suzy, you there under all that stuff? I sort of need my keys back to start the van up.” He says. You peak your head out and out stretch your arm with the keys and William takes them. “Don’t worry, we’re almost the clear blondie.” He says starting up the van and begins driving. A few moment later and you hear another door opening and slamming shut. “Let’s get the hell out of this prison.” You hear Aaron say in a gruff tone. And with that, William hits the gas and begins driving at a faster pace and you slowly start getting out from under your “hiding spot.” “All clear blondie.” William says. “Yeah I thought we were well on our way now. So did you have any trouble?” you ask. “Trouble? Nah, by the time Bobby was done speaking with Diana he seemed so emotionally drained that he barely tried to convince me to stay. He basically just told me to leave and wished me and Aaron well. He didn’t see us out though, he sent Ronald to shut the gate when we left.” “So Bobby didn’t ask where I was?” “Actually he did, but I said I wasn’t sure where you went and that you wandered off a long time ago, probably back to your room. He didn’t seem to rush off to go looking for you though. I’m not exactly sure how that conversation went with Diana, but I know she went running out of the kitchen in tears and like I said he was pretty down.” You aren’t exactly sure how to feel about that. You can’t imagine Bobby’s going to be in a better mood when he realizes you’re gone. “Shit, maybe I should’ve stayed.” You say. “Well it’s a little late for that now. Look, he’ll be fine…well okay maybe he won’t be fine when he realizes you’re gone, but he’ll get over it. He’ll most likely just get back with Diana out of duty and their history together and she’ll take him back, because he’s everything in the world to her. And in time they’ll live happily ever after, more or less. Nothing’s perfect, nor should it be.” “Chaos always finds a way.” Aaron adds in creepy tone. You realize he hasn’t taken his eyes off of you which is a little concerning. “Um…yeah…so what’s next?” you ask wearily. “What’s next? Well, that’s an interesting question. Before you were coming along, I’m pretty sure Aaron here wanted to go indulge in some of the looting going on in town. Can’t say I was opposed to that idea either. I guess we could still go do that since I imagine you probably want to go back home right?” “That’s NOT what you said William! You said we were using this blonde bitch and tossing her violated corpse out the fucking van!” Aaron suddenly blurts out. Now you back up and freeze. Terror fills every inch of your body. “(Sigh) By Tiamat’s Twenty Tits, do you have any fucking impulse control Aaron? Now this is going to be harder than it needs to be.” William says without even stopping his driving. You start looking around the van and eyeing one of the many tools laying the floor, but before you can even reach any of them, Aaron pulls a pistol. “DO NOT even think about it bitch!” he exclaims and is about to get up out his seat and head toward you, but William grabs his shoulder. “Aaron will you calm the fuck down for just one fucking second. Now you’re going to get yer dick in that soon, we both are, but I’d like to at least drive far enough away from the damn compound and find a nice place to park where we can do this with minor possible distractions. I’d think you’d like to take your time with this one right?” Aaron glares at William, but doesn’t argue any more. He still continues to hold the gun on you though. At this moment you feel like a fucking idiot. Not do you wish you never left the compound, but you also wish you never left home. You start to cry and sniffle. “(sob) Please you don’t have to do this…” you whimper. “Awwww…I thought you were stronger than that Suzy and weren’t gonna get too weepy about this. (Sigh) Besides that’s not gonna do ya any good anyway blondie. This is going to happen. However, Aaron here has been a little dramatic about the whole situation as usual. I never said we were going to throw your corpse out this van. I mean maybe we will if you put up a fight…but since I’ve grown to like you a little, I’m thinking if you just submit and let us do what we’re gonna do without any problems, well I’ll be happy to take you back home or drop you off anywhere else in town. Your choice of course.” William explains matter of factly. Either get raped and survive, or die. Those are your choices and those are no kind of choices at all, but it’s what’s been given to you. You start to think about the pair of them violating you and it’s starts to make you sick. In fact you even start hyperventilating and coughing up, though you don’t actually vomit. Aaron makes some threat about how if you don’t stop it, he’s going to shove his dick in your mouth and give you something real to choke on. Are they going to do it one after another or are they going to “kebob” you like pig on a spit? Are they going to sodomize you or slap you around while fucking you? Are they going to just kill you anyway after they’ve had their jollies? As the van keeps driving through the woods, your mind keeps racing about how maybe you might be able to survive this if you just give in… And you can’t do it. You can’t just let these fuckers shove their dicks in you like some meat with holes in it. You have to at least try to resist. You might die, but the alternative is even worse. You don’t think you’d be able to live with yourself. Mustering up all your inner strength and recomposing yourself, you start taking off your clothing, which immediately gets Aaron’s attention. “What’re you doing?” he asks. “I’m taking my clothes, I mean that’s what you guys want right?” you say still sniffling a bit. At this point William’s head turns sideways so he can see. “Well glad to see you’ve gotten with the program so fast. Shit, you got some nice tits on you. I mean I figured you did, but seeing them uncovered is even better. Can’t wait to see ‘em up close. I bet you made Bobby REALLY happy.” William remarks. “She better make ME really happy by letting me fuck her in the ass!” Aaron exclaims. “Pretty sure she’s gonna let us do whatever, right Suzy?” “Whatever you both want William.” You say in defeat. Eventually you strip off the last bit of your clothing. “I’m ready.” you say meekly and spread your legs wide giving Aaron an eyeful of your lady bits. William looks again and almost does a double take. “Shit, well hold on girl, we’ll get to…” “Fuck that, I’m not waiting any longer.” Aaron says and is already got his hard cock out in one hand and still holding his pistol in the other. Aaron’s already on top of you before William can stop him this time and he gets the head of his dick partially in you before you grab a nearby awl on the floor of the van and stab him in the side of the neck with it repeatedly. Aaron yells in pain, and tries to shoot you in the head, but he only succeeds in blowing off your ear and hitting you in the shoulder before he drops the pistol entirely and collapses completely on top of you. “Oh fuck it.” William remarks and the van comes to a screeching halt. Screaming in pain yourself, you try to grab for Aaron’s pistol, but William manages to get it from you first. Bleeding, scared, tears in your eyes and partially deaf, and trying to catch your breath from this whole ordeal. You stare at William who is looking down at you with gun in hand. You try your best to give him a look of defiance even though all you want to do is cry. “I probably would’ve done the same thing blondie. Protecting yer virtue to the end. While I’m disappointed I won’t be experiencing some of what Bobby got, I’m glad to see you were a fighter after all. Don’t worry, unlike some in my family, I’m not into necrophilia.” William remarks. And then he shoots you in the face.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While Helen would probably appreciate your company, you don’t really feel like dealing with all the little kids that are going to be hanging around her so William it is. You head over and sit in a chair near him. “What are you watching?” you ask. “Nothing really, mostly Ground Zero ads. These fuckers are really raking in the money preying upon people’s fears like this. Gotta say though, if I was the corporate type, I’d sure want a piece of that action.” William remarks. “You believe its all a scam?” “Heh, well as always the best lies have truth mixed in with them. A day of mass destruction is definitely coming. I believe that. The writing is on the wall, but I know damn well GZ isn’t the savior from that. Nothing is except yourself and how strong your will to live is. Yep, dark days are coming and it’s going to weed out the weak so only the strong survive.” “Like the Morningstars.” “Heh, well some of us I suppose. To be honest, I’m not sure about some of the people here. I mean I love ‘em because they’re family, but…(sigh) well take Brandon over there. The guy would be killed and eaten in a completely savage world with no laws. His wife too. I dare say even you might thrive better.” “Thanks…I think.” You answer. “You see, this place. This compound that Bobby has tried to bring all the family to…it’s just another form of restriction. The day is coming soon where unbridled chaos is going to become a reality and Bobby…Tiamat bless him is misguidedly still clinging to ways that should be abandoned. Now is not really the time to hide in a fortress like some 80s cult. Now is the time we should be out there embracing the chaos like Tiamat intended.” Looks like there is a bit of dissension in the family that doesn’t involve you. At least not directly. “I thought you supported Bobby.” You ask. “(sigh) Yeah…I thought I did. I mean I still do. I respect WHAT he’s trying to accomplish and his plan. And I’m obviously not going to overthrow his power or anything…but I just don’t think this is going to be for me. Y’know? I’ve always been a bit more of a drifter and after being here a few days, I’m starting to get really bored. That fight you had with Diana was about the most interesting thing that’s happened here and while I’d certainly like to see the outcome of that drama, I don’t think I’m going to stick around long enough to find out. I’m going to be heading out, along with Aaron.” William says. “Aaron? That guy sitting in the corner who looks like a ball of pent up energy?” “Yep. He’s even more anxious to leave more than I am. I think he only showed up to meet up with me since he doesn’t have a vehicle and it’s always good to have at least one person to watch your back.” “So…when are you leaving?” “As soon as possible, in fact I’ll probably talk to Bobby, before I do. He’s going to be disappointed, but I know he’ll understand…so how about you?” “How about me what?” you ask. “Well, are YOU comfortable here? I mean you haven’t been here long and you already got into a major fight with Diana and nobody here seems all that close to you. Polite perhaps, but you’re not exactly bonding here.” William says. “Well that might take time, besides, still better than my own family so far.” You answer. “Hm, well what about this wedding? From what I know, Bobby sort of sprung that proposal on you. You okay with that?” “I love Bobby.” “Yes, I know you love Bobby. I don’t doubt that, but that’s not necessarily a good reason to get married. Hell, love can sometimes be the WORST reason to get married. Also if I know Bobby, he’s probably already got it in head that you’ll be popping out a whole mess o’ babies.” “…yeah, I actually already addressed some of that yesterday.” “What about the wedding sacrifice?? “Wedding sacrifice?” William pauses for a moment. “You mean to tell me, he hasn’t told you about the wedding sacrifice?” William whispers to you. “No! He…he’s not going to mutilate me is he?” you ask in a hushed tone. “No! No, no, no nothing like that. I just can’t believe he hasn’t told you considering it’s pretty important and he’s pretty big on all this ritual crap to Tiamat.” “Well what is it?!” “Nothing, you just have to sacrifice someone on an altar in the name of Tiamat to prove your allegiance and dedication to the family.” “What?!” “That’s the rules. I mean personally I think just a simple prayer while bludgeoning something to death in an alley works just as well, but like I said, Bobby’s all into the rituals. Guess he takes after his dad that way, but then again so do I. It is said that most sons become like their fathers after all.” Those last words by William aren’t very endearing ones given what a fanatic Bobby’s father was. Still your main concern is this human sacrifice thing. You didn’t think that you’d have to do it, in fact you aren’t sure if you’re going to be able. While you’ve had murderous thoughts about Diana, that’s a little different. For one, you haven’t acted on them, and two that’s self-defense. You don’t know if you have it in you to murder some innocent person in cold blood, let alone to some cult goddess you don’t even believe in. “I take it, you aren’t really enthused about the possibility of killing someone. Well someone who isn’t immediately attacking you at any rate.” William says. “Um, well…I wasn’t expecting to.” “See, this is something Bobby REALLY should’ve told you before dragging you up here. (Sigh) You’re supposed to be the love of his life and he should KNOW if you’re completely in sync with him. I mean not everyone is cut out to be a member of one of Tiamat’s chosen and that’s fine, but again he really should’ve asked you first.” “So…wait, where are they getting this…um sacrifice?” “The sacrifice? Oh got a whole mess of them in the basement in the left wing of this place. We captured a bunch of folks and locked them in cages before starting to move the family in…and I’m guessing that’s another thing you didn’t know about.” William says noticing your surprise at this revelation too. You’re just silent. Combined with the mess with Diana, the wedding and all this new info, you’re starting to seriously wonder if you’re strong enough to go through with all this now. At this point William leans over to you and keeps a low tone. “Look, I can see that you’re probably not cut out for this life and as I said, that’s perfectly fine. But Bobby… well I don’t think he’d take it well if you backed out now or worse, backed out on the wedding day.” “I know.” You say with your voice starting to get a little quivery. “Shhh, okay. Look, it’s not too late to leave this place. I’d be willing to take you with me, and I’ll drop you off wherever you want. Of course we’d have to do it secretly.” “How?” “Well, my van is the dark blue one out front. Here’s the keys.” William says and hands you some keys, which surprises you. “Don’t worry, I trust you. Besides, that big gate has to be opened up first anyway. All you have to do is hide in the can, until me and Aaron leave which shouldn’t be long. Just make sure you keep the doors unlocked so we can get in.” William says. “Aren’t they going to notice I’m gone?” “Well, this is a big place, so if you went missing for a little while people would probably think you’re either just wandering the house or maybe back in your room before suspicion arose. I’d also be willing to make up a story if it came to that. In any case, if you’re going to do it, we need to do it now.” > You stay at the compound And suddenly all your instincts cry out “DANGER.” You also remember Bobby telling you that you shouldn’t listen to William since he’s a shit stirrer and he’s certainly doing a good job here. William seems too eager to help you given everything you’ve heard him spout about survival of the fittest and wanting to embrace pure chaos. Technically you still aren’t “family” and if you aren’t with Bobby, what’s stopping him from just gutting you and tossing your corpse along side the road or worse when you leave the compound? And that’s not even counting that creepy Aaron guy who is going to be travelling with him. Even if he is on the up and up, you have no idea where to go. Going back home isn’t really an option, in fact going back to town sounds like a bad idea all around given what Bobby told you yesterday. And you certainly don’t want to be travelling around with William while he raises hell, since again he’s libel to “raise hell” on you. You still don’t know about the whole wedding sacrifice, but you do know that running away with William isn’t the answer. You’re going to just have to deal with your situation another way. You take a deep breath and hand William his keys back. “I thank you for the offer William, but I’m staying.” You say. William looks a little surprised at first, but then his face turns to a smile. “Well… Tiamat certainly sent a blessing to Bobby when he met you. I hope he realizes it.” William remarks. “If he doesn’t, I’ll be reminding him.” You answer. “Of that I have no doubt. Okay. Well it was nice meeting you Suzy, and may Tiamat’s blessed chaos always swing in your favor.” William says and then gets up. He makes a head gesture to Aaron who apparently has been watching the pair of you the entire time. The pair of them leave the room and you get the impression they’re not going to bother telling Bobby they’re leaving the compound either. Perhaps William figures you’ll mention to Bobby that he attempted to whisk you away, along with confronting him about the wedding stuff, which you will most certainly be doing. As soon as you can at any rate since Bobby is still talking with Diana, or at least he was until you see her running out of the kitchen and trying to cover her face. It’s obvious she’s crying or at least about to. Bobby soon comes out of the kitchen as well. He doesn’t look in the best of moods. “Food’s in the kitchen, serve yourselves.” He says. Nobody says anything, except Helen who asks what’s going on when she enters the room. Bobby just waves her away and tells her to see to the children as usual then he slumps down by the chair next to you. Bobby’s family at this point heads into the kitchen, not wishing to “It’s done.” He says. “Well don’t look so down about it. And what’s done exactly? Did she get the message? Am I still going to have to worry about her?” “No. For the last time no. It’s done. It’s over. I made it quite clear that it’s over between her and I. So clear in fact that she probably hates me more than you now.” “I seriously doubt that, but do you think it’s wise to let her run around this house if she hates you?” “(Sigh) Suzy, I’m not throwing her out and I’m not killing her okay?” “Okay fine. If you want to live dangerously…” “Suzy, how about this. If you REALLY hate her that much, then why don’t YOU kill her? Seriously, you have my permission if it will get you to stop bitching about it.” You didn’t really expect Bobby to say that, but then… “Well I suppose that would make the wedding sacrifice a lot easier.” You say which causes an eyebrow raise by Bobby. “Great, so you know. Who told you? Wait, I know. William did right?” Bobby says. “Yeah, I think he hoped to scare me into leaving with him…speaking of which I think he and Aaron left.” You answer. “Figures. (Sigh) I don’t even know why I’m bothering trying to hold this family together. Most of them aren’t even here. One of them hates me, and the rest aren’t exactly sterling examples of Tiamat’s Chosen. In fact the ones that are here are probably here because it’s safe and filled with enough supplies to live comfortably.” “Well, what’s wrong with that?” “Nothing I suppose, but supporting about bunch of freeloaders wasn’t really part of my plan to honor Tiamat.” “Well maybe you need to change your damn plan. I mean its still early, but if you really feel like someone isn’t pulling their weight around here, then you need to just kick their asses out, family or not. I mean you’re the boss around here and your word is supposed to be law.” Bobby sits up a bit as you continue to speak. “Look, you know you’re a leader and you know the head of this family. So you can’t give into all this self-doubt. You NEEDED to lay down the law to your sister Diana., but you know that’s just going to be a temporary fix. Now I think you KNOW what you’re going to have to do with her, but your past with her is preventing you from doing it, which is why you made your outburst about me doing it a few moments ago.” Bobby continues to listen intently. “Now, I’m not going to do it for you unless she gives me cause to, but she’s going to have to be dealt with by our wedding day. Whether that means you exiling her ass or killing her, that’s up to you. Love isn’t one-sided Bobby, and if I’m going to have to ultimately submit to your beliefs and everything that goes with it including murdering innocent people, well you’re going to make a sacrifice to me as well. If not, well you can throw me on that slab and thrust that dagger in me and get it over with.” Bobby looks a little overwhelmed by your ultimatum. He’s never heard you speak like this before and really; you’re a little surprised you’re saying what you’re saying yourself. You’re rolling the dice and betting everything here. You think you’ve got the inner strength to go through with all this, you just hope that Bobby proves to be just as strong. “Suzy, you are the love of my life and what you’ve just told me just confirms that Tiamat’s chaos did favor me when I met you. You’re right. I know I have to do something more permanent with my sister Diana. I’ll come to a decision tomorrow though. I think I need the rest of the day to recover from all the shit I’ve already had to go through. It’s not even night yet!” “Well, okay. I understand. Well, should we go eat with the rest of the family?” “Might as well.” You and Bobby briefly kiss each other and go join the rest of the family who have congregated in the dining area. None of them say anything to you or rather none of them ask any questions if everything is okay or anything. Diana isn’t here and Bobby makes the announcement that Aaron and William have left and then tells Brandon when he’s done eating, he can go check the front gate to make sure they closed it properly. The remainder of the day is a bit out of the norm for you since you spend it mainly with Bobby’s family. They’re surprisingly really into board games. Unsurprisingly most of the board games seem to involve conquest or killing everyone else. While you never really played many board games before, you catch on quick thanks to your years of playing strategy games on your computer and its fun enough that it keeps your mind off other things. You even manage to win a game of Scorched Earth. Diana never joins in, and at one point Helen (who was playing separate games with the kids) goes to check on her out of concern, but she remains in her room. Eventually you start to get tired of socializing and you feel you’ve bonded enough with Bobby’s family for one day so you return to your own room. Bobby tells Ronald to take watch for the night and goes with you. Before you settle down for bed, you check your phone out of curiosity to see if anyone has tried to call you. “Somebody call you?” Bobby asks. “Nah, though I didn’t really expect anyone to. Pretty much says it all about my ties to my own family.” You say. “Well I think we both know you’re already with your new family now.” “Yeah. Still, I can’t help but wonder how they’re all dealing with the situation in town. Though who knows, maybe its calmed down now. Anyway, doesn’t matter.” You say and get into bed. Bobby follows and it doesn’t take long before he’s grabbing and grinding up against you. You return his affection and have pleasant round of passion before going to sleep. > Next day… THURSDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world twelve inch salami eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe the sour cream off your lips… and you stand up and yell: “Alright this is getting fucking insulting! For the past four nights now I’ve been winning contests involving eating phallic shaped food. What the fuck is the symbolism here? That I’m some whore that sucks cock all the time? For fuck’s sake, I’ve only had the one goddamn boyfriend and soon to be husband. If anything I’m the exact opposite of a whore! So whoever or WHATEVER is trying to send a message to me needs to just come out and fucking say it.” And with those words of indignation, your surroundings immediately change to that of a blasted wasteland. There is nothing around you save for burned out buildings in the distance and dead landscape. Reminds you a bit of a video game you once played. “You know, the entire world is soon going to look like this…how I wish I could be young and alive to experience the uncertainty and chaos that is going to shape the years to follow.” You hear a voice say. You turn around and see Bobby’s grandmother again. She’s an old lady walking with a cane this time. “But enough about the future, let’s talk about the present. You survived a lot longer than I thought you would, maybe you are worthy of my grandson after all. You even are starting to manipulate him a bit, that’s good. The true leaders in Tiamat’s service have always been women anyway. I swear if it wasn’t for us prodding them in the right direction every now and then, most men would be content just jacking off to pass the time. Still, you aren’t quite there yet. I think today should prove to quite interesting. Survive today and you might just meet Misty yet.” “Okay, I want some answers, who the hell is Misty, and what’s going to happen today?” you demand. “You’ll find out soon enough what’s going to happen and as for Misty, well why don’t you put some thought into it. I mean it’s pretty simple even for you blondie.” Bobby’s grandmother replies with slight distain. “Well what’s deal with all these contests in my dreams?” “Sorry, I really don’t know anything about that. If you’re lucky and actually meet Misty, maybe you can ask her, but I just assumed you really liked dreaming about sucking dick...in a symbolic way I guess. Hmm, come to think of it this would explain why Bobby’s so enamored with you. Maybe you aren’t a whore blondie, but you sure got the mouth of one. It’s almost as if it was a highway for oral sex.” “Hey!” “Don’t take offense blondie. It’s a good thing. Suck a man’s dick right, and you can practically get him to do ANYTHING for you. I mean you got natural talent. Hell, maybe even Tiamat blessed you with it so you stood an equal chance against Diana. Now that girl, as much as she loves Bobby, she just can’t suck a dick properly. Bad gag reflex, slightly oversized teeth, I dunno. Tiamat works in whimsical ways I suppose.” “How do you even know all…nevermind I don’t want to hear anymore.” You say. Bobby’s grandmother ignores you though and continues to speak. “Still, Bobby always did have a slight obsession for blowjobs. He likes them a lot more than he’s probably told you. He’s a bit too much of a gentleman that way.” “Gah! I’m done listening!” you shout feeling increasingly uncomfortable about hearing Bobby’s grandmother talk about his sexual interests. “Oh, alright Miss Prude. I’m rambling and it’s time for you to go anyway. See ya Deep Throat!” Bobby’s grandmother cackles again and then raises her cane and all your surroundings go black… And then you wake up. “Something bad is going to happen today.” You say to yourself. (Then again why should today be any different from the rest of this week?) You look around and see nobody in the room (Save for Bobby’s grandmother’s portrait staring like a gargoyle). Looks like Bobby woke up before you as usual. You look at the time on your phone and see you’ve actually slept until the afternoon. While the normal thing for you to do would be to just stay in your room and avoid everyone, but given your recent dream, you think your best bet might be to be a little proactive today. After going through your usual routine of washing up and getting dressed you head down to the main living area where you know everyone usually gathers. Before you get there you bump into Helen, who looks a bit harried and is carrying a pistol in one hand. “There you are, good. Saves me time. Bobby told me to go get you.” Helen says. “Wha…what’s going on?” you ask. “Aaron came back and he’s threatening to drive an army truck through the front gate if we all don’t leave the compound. He claims that we’re defying Tiamat by not embracing the chaos outside. Bobby’s been trying to negotiate with him through the intercom, but he thinks we’re going to have no option but to open fire on Aaron.” “Where the hell did he get an army truck? Is William with him?” “Apparently the town has been in a state of martial law since yesterday and the National Guard have taken over according to Aaron’s ranting. I guess he stole one. I don’t think William is with him. Anyway Bobby wants you to be safe so follow me to where all the children...” Loud shouting by Bobby in the distance suddenly interrupts Helen. You immediately rush towards where he might be located despite the protests by the Helen that you need to come with her though she just runs along with you. You soon manage to catch up with the most of the family (Save for the younger children and Diana) who are standing in the foyer with their weapons ready and Bobby who has opened the front door. “Aaron, I tried being reasonable. YOU left here without permission, but that was fine because it’s obvious you didn’t feel happy here. There are several paths to Tiamat’s glory and you obviously had your own ideas about which one you should pick. Anyone here is free to leave, but NOBODY is going to be forced to leave due to your threats! Again, if you try coming in here, you’re going to be shot down like a fucking dog and I’ll personally perform Tiamat’s ritual of desecration over your stinking body so your soul NEVER enters Timat’s glory!” Bobby shouts and walks out with his rifle drawn. Bobby’s brother Jordan is the first one who cautiously follows afterwards and then everyone else slowly walks towards the door as well. You don’t think anyone has even paid any attention to you or Helen (who keeps pulling on you to leave). “My soul is already with Tiamat! You can’t do shit about it ritual boy! If you unworthy fucks won’t embrace chaos as Tiamat intended, then I’m gonna bring it to you!” Aaron shouts through a bullhorn, which is followed by a laugh. The truck revs up and Bobby orders everyone to open fire. You and Helen are still inside at this point so you don’t actually do so and just hang back as you watch Aaron mow through the gate followed by a hail of bullets peppering the oncoming truck. The truck swerves hard to the left smashes into Brandon’s parked vehicle. You can hear him swearing about it. Meanwhile you also see Jordan jumping up and down in victory and running over to the wrecked truck. “Yeah! We got that bastard! Whoo!” he shouts. “Hey Jordan, get the fuck back here, don’t go off ahead like that by yourself!” Bobby shouts. “Aw, it’s fine, he didn’t survive that!” And that’s when Aaron proves Jordan wrong, starting by recovering from his crash and shooting several holes into Jordan. Then he follows up by throwing several grenades out the truck window. “SHIT!” Bobby shouts and everyone runs back, but not before several explosions occur. Nobody is killed, but everyone scrambles and on the ground crawling for cover. Bobby himself crawls behind cover of another parked vehicle and continues to fire in the direction of the truck. Helen now really tugs at you saying you need to come with her where its safe, but you wonder if you should try to help Bobby considering he’s the only one currently trying to kill Aaron. Everyone else has completely retreated and is even running past you. > You help Bobby This is the man you’ve chosen to marry for better or worse. If you aren’t going to help him in a matter of life or death then that wouldn’t say much for your commitment. Besides, if he gets killed this whole compound is going to turn to shit and you’d no doubt be at the bottom of it, assuming Aaron doesn’t kill you all first. Pulling away from Helen, you grab one of the dropped rifles by one of Bobby’s family and rush outside towards Bobby who is still taking cover behind a car and firing upon the Aaron. He sees you out the corner of his eye while still keeping an eye on the direction of the truck. “Keep your head down, I think Aaron escaped out the passenger door of the truck and is hiding behind Brandon’s car now. Where the hell did you come from anyway? I told Helen to go get you and the younger children to a safer location when Aaron showed up.” Bobby exclaims. “Yeah well I’m showing you that I’m not just going to let you do this shit alone. I’m with you all the way. No hiding with Helen and the kids, no matter what you say.” You’re interrupted by gunfire on your position and Aaron ranting. “You think you can stop what’s coming by hiding? Hah! People are already fucking EATING each other out there! Shit, I’ll be doing you a favor by killing you now. Actually now that I think about… your blonde bitch looks like a fine piece of ass in more way than one!” Aaron shouts and starts laughing maniacally and then throws another grenade your way. You and Bobby have no choice but to leave your position and make a dash back to the house entrance. It’s somewhat of a minor miracle that you and Bobby aren’t hit by any of the bullets he fires at you. You manage to get inside just as the grenade goes off and adds to the total of destroyed vehicles outside. You and Bobby are on the floor though Bobby has partially managed to cover you with his own body. “What the hell did he do, rip off the entire National Guard armory?” you say as Bobby back kicks the front door shut from his prone position. “I don’t know but…” Two more explosions are heard on the left side of compound. Aaron is apparently throwing explosives through the windows now. “Shit, I hope nobody ran and hid over there.” You remark as the pair of you start to get up off the floor. “Where the fuck IS everyone anyway? Nice to know I can REALLY count on these fuckers when the going gets tough. Why the fuck am I even bothering again? Fuck!” Bobby yells in frustration. You understand his anger, but it’s probably not the best time for a rant. “Bobby, calm yourself. You can yell at those idiots later, but right now all that matters is that I’m here helping you okay?” you say. “Hey…I’ll help too…” a voice suddenly says. You both look and see that it’s Helen with a pistol in hand. “Helen, you’re supposed to be with the children!” Bobby exclaims. “Veronica and Brandon are with them. When they ran, the children’s room upstairs was the first place they went. Guess they were concerned about their daughters.” “…well I guess I can understand the pair of them running to their children. So they’re looking after all the kids then?” Bobby remarks. “Yeah, I figured since they were doing that, I’d come help you, though I hope I just don’t get in the way.” “No, it’s good. Glad you’re here Helen. What about Ronald and Denise?” Bobby says. “Haven’t seen them. Um, I haven’t seen Diana either…in case you were wondering.” Helen remarks briefly glancing at you after saying it. “Hopefully Aaron kills her.” You remark. “Yeah, well I actually was going to exile her today, but that might have to wait assuming Aaron doesn’t kill her.” Bobby says. “Okay, enough of all this. What’s the game plan?” you ask slightly disappointed that Bobby’s decision was to exile Diana rather than death, but you aren’t entirely surprised. Still, there’s always the hope that Aaron does kill her. Bobby quickly snaps back to the situation at hand. “Well it sounds like he’s stopped with the explosives, or maybe he’s just fishing out more. I’d say the safest bet is to get to the second floor and shoot him through one of the windows. No point in going back out the front door when we can get the vantage point.” “How do we know he’s still outside, he might’ve already entered house through one of the holes he’s undoubtedly made with his grenades.” You say. “Yeah true. No telling where he might be heading first. The armory maybe?” Helen remarks. “He’s still gotta come through this way if he wants to go there. Given his state of mind though he might also try to do something like run upstairs and kill all the children for fun. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past him to try to access the prisoner’s dungeon and set them all free. It is on the left wing after all.” Maybe we should split up and take different floors?” Helen asks. “Maybe though I’m not keen on the idea of splitting up. (Sigh) Okay. Since you said Brandon and Veronica are with the children, I’m going to hope they’re up to dealing with Aaron if he shows up. I’m going to the left wing of the house and try to stop him there. I want you two to stay here and guard the foyer in case he somehow manages to sneak past me and is heading towards the armory. He’s going to have come through here.” Bobby says. Helen immediately complies with the plan, but you’re not so sure. “I really think I should come with you. Splitting up is always a bad idea in these situations.” “I don’t like it either, but it’s a big house and we need to cast a wide net to deal with this asshole.” Bobby says and then puts his arm over you and takes you aside. “Besides, as glad as I am that Helen stepped up, we both know she’s not exactly a fighter. I don’t want her coming with me and possibly getting in my way when I’m hunting Aaron, but by the same token I’d feel more comfortable if you were here with her since I know you can handle yourself and aren’t going to freeze up in a fight. I’ll be fine by myself. Don’t worry about me. I mean I did kill your uncle Ed by myself right?” Bobby whispers. You glance over at Helen and as brave as she’s trying to appear, she still looks like a deer in the headlights. Bobby’s right in that her survival would probably increase if you were here and she had the misfortune of Aaron popping up. Then again by the same token, YOU’D actually feel safer being with Bobby. You’d also worry less about Bobby’s own safety if you were watching his back. After all, this situation is also little different than the one with your uncle. Aaron’s not just carrying a knife; he’s carrying around grenades and machine guns for one thing. Also, while Helen might be a nice girl, she’s ultimately not your responsibility. > You go with Bobby “Bobby, I’m coming with you and I’m not budging on this. We’re going to take out this crazy bastard together. I’ll worry less if I’m with you watching your back.” You say. You half expect Bobby to argue, but that doesn’t happen. Instead he smiles and then kisses you on the lips quickly. “Okay then, you’re with me. Helen! You’re going to be guarding this area alone. Do you think you’re up to it?” Bobby asks. “I am.” Helen says with a nod still attempting to not look nervous. “Okay. Remember, if you see Aaron shoot him on sight and don’t even think about it. Oh and if Ronald and Denise ever come out of hiding and pass through here, tell them to fucking help you.” With that last bit of advice, you and Bobby proceed to head towards the left wing of the house. You and Bobby cautiously walk through the corridor keeping your eyes and ears open for any sign of Aaron, but so far you haven’t seen or heard him. The smell of gunpowder and smoke is in the air of part of the house and peering in one of the rooms you see the results of Aaron’s grenades. The room is charred, blackened and wrecked. Whatever items were in this room have been completely destroyed and there is now a large hole allowing direct entry from the outside to the inside. “So much for the second den. Glad none of my personal stuff was in here. (Sigh) One more thing to fix.” Bobby remarks. “He either wounded himself during or you must’ve hit him from before, look.” You say and point at small splotches of blood in the room and creating a trail going to one of the other doors. (Or rather the entryway since the door itself is in pieces and not even on the hinges anymore.) “Yep, he’s going towards the dungeon. Knew he’d be somewhat predictable.” Bobby says and the pair of you follows the blood trail. You pass through a series of room to get to your destination. Some furnished, some empty. The left wing of this house seems to be designed a little oddly though, almost mazelike. Eventually you get to a small room that has a door leading to what you assume is the dungeon Bobby mentioned. “Well he’s probably down there. The blood trail is heading down and we would’ve seen him if he’d doubled back. You ready?” Bobby asks. “Yeah.” You remark. “No seriously. Are you ready? Because while I know you’ve got your mindset on killing Aaron, you MIGHT very well have to kill whatever prisoners he’s managed to convince to help him. You might be less inclined to kill them due to them…well having a legitimate reason for wanting to escape.” “Bobby, I already told you, I’m with you on this one hundred percent. If that means shooting a few prisoners well Tiamat’s going to be getting a few extra souls to eat early or something.” You say causing Bobby to chuckle a bit. “Well that’s not exactly how it works, but as always I’m touched by your enthusiasm.” “You’re going to be touched all over by my enthusiasm after this is over.” You say and then give him a deep tongue kiss along with a firm caress to his crotch. “Whoa, easy there girl. We’ll get to that. Let’s take care of this first.” Bobby says reluctantly pulling back from you. To be honest, you’re not even sure what came over you. Maybe you’re starting to not only accept this type of life, but enjoying it as well which might concern you more if you weren’t in the middle of hunting someone down and shooting them. Bobby descends first and then you. While descending you start to catch the sent of what a dungeon full of unwashed prisoners locked in it smells like. It isn’t the most pleasant, but actually better than you expected from a dungeon. When you get downstairs the dungeon is relatively well lit. You see rows of empty cages to the left and right side and on the very far end you see Aaron who has a group of what you presume to be the prisoners. He’s apparently bullied them into acting as a human barrier. They’re a mixture of old, young, male and female and they’re a dirty, miserable and practically naked lot. Most of them are barely standing up. Looks like taking care of them wasn’t high on Bobby’s list though then again why would it? At this point if you have to shoot them (which seems likely) you think you’d be doing them a favor. Aaron himself doesn’t look all that great from what you can see of him. He’s obviously been wounded and this is his last ditch effort to…well whatever his grand plan was. He’s holding something in his hand though above his head, probably another grenade. “You think you’ve won? Hah! I’ve already beaten you! You kill me and this grenade drops, then what will you do for sacrifices? You’ll have to go out and get more and I guarantee NONE of you are prepared for the beautiful chaos that lies outside. None of you are truly worthy of Tia…” Aaron rambles insanely. Aaron is completely delusional at this point. Bobby doesn’t even argue with him, the whole time Aaron is talking, Bobby is taking careful aim at his head. A single shot drops Aaron and then Bobby tells you to run which you both do up the stairs. You get to the top just in time for the grenade to explode. No harm done to you, but you can imagine the mess that’s down in the dungeon now. “You okay?” Bobby asks. “I’m fine. Guess you’ll have to repair your dungeon too.” You say. “Yeah…fuck!” Bobby yells and slams his fist into the floor. “What’s wrong? Didn’t we win?” “That sonofabitch killed all the prisoners! Now who the hell are we supposed to sacrifice for the wedding tomorrow?!” “Well…do I have to sacrifice someone? I mean I’m not asking because I don’t want to do it. I’m just asking is it absolutely necessary for the wedding? I mean couldn’t I make a sacrifice later when we get someone else? I mean I’ll even come with you to make the capture.” “(Sigh) No…I suppose in the scheme of things it isn’t necessary. I just wanted everything to be perfect. I dunno…Aaron might’ve been right about one thing. Maybe I am a little caught up in ritual…but still I THINK it’s important to revere Tiamat in a formal way! Just because I’m not completely running amok stealing army trucks and throwing explosives at shit doesn’t make me any less dedicated to glorious chaos! I mean…does it?” And that’s your cue to support the fragile male ego again. “Well of course it doesn’t my love. Your way is obviously a more intelligent approach to chaos. Just because something is chaotic, doesn’t mean it’s mindless. You’re playing the long game and attempting to build a dynasty. Instead of burning out quick, you’re plotting and planning labyrinthian schemes to eventually burn them all.” You say while looking into Bobby’s eyes and stroking the side of his face. “I’m so glad you understand me.” Bobby remarks and hugs you tightly. Bobby really does always feel completely better with just a few supportive words from you. Its sort of amazing really since you didn’t realize you had this sort of power over him, then again you two were never really in a situation like this before except the first time you met and that was when you counted on him to “rescue you.” That dynamic has clearly changed. You guess this is what his grandmother meant when she spoke to you in the dream. In any case Bobby tells you he’s going to check the dungeon to see if maybe there were any survivors just in case. You offer to help, but he says there’s no point in both of you trudging through blood and gore, which is probably covering the place. You tell him you’ll just wait for him and kiss him before he heads back downstairs. No sooner has Bobby left, when you hear footsteps coming from the room nearby. Still paranoid, you hold up your pistol not knowing who is coming through “Who’s there?” you ask. “Hold on! It’s just me! Don’t shoot!” you hear a female voice say. “Helen?” “Yeah, it’s me! Is everything okay here? Heard another loud explosion in this direction.” Helen says and enters the room cautiously. “Yeah everything’s fine. Aaron’s dead. How come you’re not guarding the foyer?” “Well I was, but then Diana showed up and…” “Wait, you’ve seen Diana?” you interrupt and Helen’s head drops a little looking sad. “Yeah…she was um…I dunno. She showed up in the foyer and wasn’t acting…I mean she’d always had a mean streak in her, but I just couldn’t take it…” You aren’t sure what happened, but obviously something occurred between Helen and her sister. “Helen, out with it. Where is she and what happened?” “She’s tied up in the large living room and unconscious. I had to knock her out.” “Wait you knocked out Diana?” “I had to. She was talking crazy like Aaron. She wanted to kill you.” “Well that’s hardly surprising.” You say. “Well she also wanted to kill Bobby and she wanted me to help in all this! I…I just couldn’t do that! I mean I don’t have any hatred for you (sniffle) and I love Bobby! You know? He’s the leader of this family and should be respected! I protested and tried to reason with her…but she just kept pushing and pushing like when we were kids and all my life! I couldn’t let her go through with it. (sniffle) Then she started threatening that she’d do something to the children…and I just lost it.” “It’s okay, Helen. You did what you had to.” You say trying to keep Helen from getting too weepy. It’s still hard to believe that Helen stood up to… well anyone, let alone her sister. Maybe your recent actions provided a bit of a model for her to follow of standing up for one’s self, maybe there was just only so much bullying she could take and that last threat was the final straw. Maybe it was a combination. Either way, this event has given you an idea. “So, she’s still alive?” you ask. “Yeah, I mean even after all the horrible things she was saying, I still couldn’t kill her…she’s still my sister.” “Understandable, but she still has to pay for this treachery as all who betray Tiamat do.” You call downstairs for Bobby. “What?” Bobby answers. “Anyone alive down there?” you ask. “No, just charred bloody body parts everywhere. Looks like we’ll have to do the wedding without the sacrifice.” “No, I think we’ll be okay. Come on up.” You state with a big smile. When Bobby comes back up you explain what recently occurred with Helen and suggest that Diana be the person you sacrifice. Bobby is silent for half a second and then agrees. “I’m not going to say I’m ecstatic about this, but it is what it is. You are my soon to be wife and Diana has proven to be a traitor. Death by your hand is certainly a fitting punishment. Do you have an opinion on this Helen?”” Bobby remarks. “I…my opinion on the matter is unimportant…. It’s just…very sad that Diana couldn’t have been… nicer. I support you Bobby and you too Suzy.” Helen says obviously upset. With that settled, Bobby, you and Helen all make your way back to where Helen said she tied up Diana. When you arrive, you see Diana unconscious on the floor with her arms and legs hogtied tightly with a bunch of duct tape and also her mouth covered with it. You also see Denise and Ronald nearly setting her free! Bobby scolds them of course and brings them up to date on the situation. Helen excuses herself and says she wants to check on the children and tell them everything has calmed down now. “Yeah and tell Veronica and Brandon they can come down too. Them and YOU two, I need to have a long talk with. ” Bobby says pointing at Denise and Ronald who are somewhat a little worried about Bobby’s comment. “What about her? Where are you going to keep her?” you ask pointing to Diana. “Well there are still a couple of intact cages down in the dungeon. I’ll probably throw her unconscious ass in one of them and she won’t be coming up until the big day tomorrow. Shit, there’s so much to do, cleaning up, getting prepared, (Sigh) well we better get started.” Bobby tells you not to worry about doing anything as you did enough today just standing by him and he wants you to just rest up for tomorrow. You offer to help, but he really won’t hear of it. You don’t press the issue since hey if he doesn’t want you doing any work, you’re not going to argue about that. Before you leave he tells you that he’s got a spare gun in his clothing drawer just in case of an emergency. You grab a quick meal from the kitchen before heading back to the bedroom where you stay for the rest of the day and night. You hear noise occasionally from downstairs. At one point you hear the sound of vehicles outside and looking out the window you see someone driving the damaged army truck in front of where Aaron crashed through the gate as a temporary barrier you guess. You stay up for Bobby as long as you can, but eventually you realize he’s really focused on trying to fix and clean up the house as much as he can and probably won’t be back anytime soon. Too bad, since you weren’t kidding about displaying your enthusiasm to him after the Wild West shootout was over. Taking matters into your own hands with your battery powered substitute, you satisfy yourself before going to sleep, hoping that tonight’s dream doesn’t have you deep throating the Washington Monument or something. > Next day… FRIDAY "And now Suzy, having beaten the chicken soup out of all her other opponents this week, will take this final challenge by herself! Will she be able to do it ladies and gentlemen? Will she be able to impress Misty at last? We’ll find out today! Let’s give our small town girl some encouragement for her task at hand!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A big bag of dicks. It’s even labeled as such. BIG BAG OF DICKS in big black lettering so you can’t miss it. You don’t even look inside the bag; you take their word for it and double face palm before exhaling and looking back up. “Really?” you ask in disbelief. “This is the last task Suzy…” the disembodied announcer’s voice whispers. “I don’t give a shit, I’m not eating a goddamn bag of dicks! That’s just fucking disgusting for one thing and for another… Suddenly Bobby’s grandmother appears as she has been doing in your dreams. “See? Told you she wasn’t going to do it. Still, it was funny to see the reaction.” Bobby’s grandmother cackles and with a wave of her cane, you’re back in that blasted wasteland you were in last time. “So what now? Am I going to meet this Misty, whoever the fuck that is?” “Not quite yet. You’re still not married to my grandson. Misty has decided that she’ll meet you after that event…and sheesh you still haven’t figured out who Misty is yet? You suffer a head injury when Aaron was tossing grenades around?” Bobby’s grandmother asks and then taps you in the forehead with her hand. “Ow! Stop!” you say and back away. “I hope you aren’t this slow on the uptake today. Oh well, guess you can’t help being blonde. Anyway, congrats on your wedding and you’ve got my blessing. Good luck!” Good luck? Somehow that doesn’t sound reassuring. You’re about to ask Bobby’s grandmother what she exactly means by that, but then she waves that damn cane again and you’re enveloped the blackness and then you wake up. “Gah, fucking bitch.” You say groggily. “Um, I’m sorry for waking you…but we really need to see if this fits.” a familiar female voice remarks. You look around the room and see Helen coming in carrying some red clothing. “Huh? No, not you…wait what are you doing in here anyway? Did Bobby spend all night working on the house?” you ask “I’m bringing in your wedding dress and yes, Bobby has been working on the house for the most part. Trying to patch up the big hole in the house, cleaning up the dungeon, blocking the front gate. He had to bury our brother Jordan as well. I don’t believe he’s actually slept yet.” “Oh yeah, forgot that that asshole killed one of your siblings. I didn’t know him that well, but sorry for your loss.” You remark. “Thank you. Yes, it was very sad, but to be honest Jordan wasn’t the brightest. I remember numerous times when looking after him I had to stop him from eating something poisonous or doing something else life threatening so it’s actually amazing he lived as long as he did. Still, he had some very endearing qualities. He looked up to Bobby a lot, wanted to be just like him. He even had a small crush on me I think to partially emulate Bobby and Diana’s old relationship.” Helen says with a smile before her face goes back to normal. “But we are all just puppets in Tiamat’s glorious chaos, so we all need to just move on right? Could you see if this fits?” Helen cheerfully asks holding up the red clothing which now looks a lot like lingerie. “Wait, that’s the wedding dress? It looks like slutty underwear from Hot Secret.” You answer and get out of bed. Helen’s face looks a bit offended by that statement. “My grandmother wore this on her wedding day! She had this dress made of the finest silk, not whatever cheap material they use in North Tiwanaland or some place! THIS is a one of a kind article of clothing! It’s not something you’d find in some edgy teenager hang out!” Helen remarks. “Okay! Geez. I’m not trying to insult the dress or your grandmother. It’s just…well I thought I’d be wearing something a little more… substantial. But seeing as your family isn’t exactly conventional and when in Rome…I guess I better try it on. Um, you washed it right?” “Of course. Hand washed it myself. Can’t risk putting it in a machine.” Helen says and hands it to you. You have to admit; it does feel rather nice in your hands. “Oh, here’s the stockings and the shoes too.” Helen says and hands you what is apparently the rest of the outfit. “Red fishnets…red high heels…” you say. “Yes. Those shoes were also special made with the finest…” “Leather. Yes, I can imagine. Let me guess the fishnets were made with the finest silk as well.” “Well of course, what else would it be?” “What else indeed. Okay, well I guess I’m going in the bathroom to change.” “You don’t need to you know. I mean I won’t be offended if you change in front of me. We’re practically family now.” Helen says. “Um…no that’s okay. Besides, I should wash up before changing anyway. I probably still smell of sweat from yesterday’s events.” “Okay, well I guess I’ll just wait out here then and remember you can call if you need something. You enter the bathroom and go through your usual routine of showering and such. Afterwards you finally get around putting on the “wedding dress” The first thing you do is look at the dress before putting it on and wondering if it’s going to be bigger in the chest area. While you’re not lacking in that region, you’ve met Bobby’s grandmother (in dream form anyway) and she’s got at least another couple cup sizes on you. In fact her body type back in her prime was more of an old school 1950s pinup girl hourglass figure than your own “petite” size. The funny thing is, as soon as you put it on, it seems to fit perfectly to your own body. The material isn’t any sort of spandex or stretchy material, it’s silk like Helen said, but given Bobby’s family’s strangeness, you have to wonder if it’s…magical? “Magical underwear.” You scoff; shaking your head in half disbelief you’re even considering it. Not surprisingly the stockings AND the shoes fit you perfectly as well. Yeah, Grandma Morningstar probably had all this stuff weaved by a giant magical spider voodoo priest or some shit because it doesn’t make sense that any of this stuff would fit you so well. Regardless of its origins, you do feel pretty comfortable despite looking like a Hollywood streetwalker. The heels don’t even hurt your feet, though you’re still a little unsteady on them due to not being used to wearing such things. Let alone these being stilettos. The last time you wore heels was when Uncle Ed made you wear stripperiffic clothing with the intent to lure Bobby and his dad into the woods where he could kill them. While everything turned out for the best because you met Bobby that fateful night, the part with Uncle Ed still gives you the shivers just thinking about it. You look at yourself in the mirror one more time, before leaving the bathroom. “Well Suzy, you might look like a whore in this thing, but at least you look like a high priced one.” You say to yourself. When you exit the bathroom Helen stands up and looks at you. “Oh my. You’re…you’re…so beautiful looking. I knew it would fit you perfectly.” Helen gushes. “Yeah I am pretty hot looking in this get up. Shit, still can’t balance on these heels though.” You say. “Oh we have to go show everyone now what you look like. Maybe take some pictures!” Helen says approaching you. “What? I thought I was just putting it on as a test drive as it were. While I won’t deny this stuff feels pretty comfortable on my skin that I don’t mind wearing it, I sort of don’t want to be walking around the house with it on until show time. Besides everyone can see how awesomely sexy I am then.” “I think they should see you now. It’ll raise the spirits around here seeing you dressed like this.” Helen remarks as she begins touching your arm. “Well it’ll raise something with the males around here when they see me of course. Not sure about the ladies of this house, though you’re getting a little too close there Helen.” “Oh please? At least go show Bobby. I know he’d like to see you.” Helen says ignoring your previous remark about invading your personal space. “I’m sure he’s really busy right now, besides isn’t it bad luck for me to see him right before the wedding?” “Oh you’re thinking of those silly traditions for other weddings. That’s not the case here. Come on I’ll take you to him.” Helen says and at this point is pulling on your hands almost causing you fall. “Hey! I nearly fell! I told you already that you’re too damn close!” Helen immediately backs away and looks down submissively. “I’m sorry Suzy. I didn’t mean to violate your personal space. It’s just I thought…well it’s Bobby.” “What about him? “Well, as I said he hasn’t slept and he’s been working everyone like a task master trying to get the house as much in order as he can. And that’s his right of course. He is the head of this family. Still, during all the hustle and bustle when I was going to see him when he was cleaning up the dungeon. I caught him weeping and praying to Tiamat. Normally I wouldn’t have intruded, but he looked so…vulnerable and sad. He kept going on about he wasn’t even sure if this wedding was the right thing because he wasn’t confident that he’d be a strong enough husband for you and be a good provider. He was having doubts about even leading this family after all the mess that’s happened this week.” “Oh geez. I’ve already told him several times that I loved him and that I was behind him no matter what.” You say. “Well maybe that’s all he needs again. Sometimes a little boost is all that someone needs to feel better. Like I remember yesterday when I was with the children during Aaron’s rampage, I told them that they would be safe because Tiamat’s chaos was in their favor that day. They were so brave after that, they were perfectly fine when I left them alone to help you and Bobby.” Helen says. > You go with Helen now If Bobby’s feeling a little down about everything and Helen feels like you could cheer him up, it couldn’t hurt to go see him right now. Not like you’ve got anything better to do. “Alright, I’ll go see him. I suppose I might as well get used to walking around in this thing.” You say. “Oh I know he’ll be so glad to see you, here let me get the door.” Helen says and opens it for you. You walk down the corridor with Helen nearby going on about how she’s so glad you’re officially going to be part of the family. “And don’t worry, when you start having all those babies, I can certainly help you out on that front.” “Great. I’ll be looking forward to it…” you say unenthusiastically while at the same time still trying to maintain your balance on the heels. When you get to the stairs you stop. “Shit, I think I should take these heels off before heading downstairs. I don’t want to fall.” You say. “Oh don’t worry about that, just hang on to the railing and I’ll be right here to make sure you don’t fall. In fact I can even put my arm around you just to make sure you don’t.” Helen says and goes to balance you a bit. “Well thanks, but I really don’t need your arm around m…” you start to say and then Helen punches you in the face. The punch itself isn’t even that hard as far as punches go, in fact Helen even winces when she does it as if she wasn’t confident in her abilities and was reluctant to even do so. However combined with being on top of the stairs and your high heels you lose your balance completely and go tumbling down them. Falling down a flight of stairs is always a bit of a crapshoot, sometimes people survive it with just a few bumps and bruises and other times they break their necks and die before they reach the bottom. You fall somewhere in between, you break your neck, but you don’t die. You won’t be moving anytime soon though. You’d probably be in more horror about the situation of not being able to move if your head wasn’t so scrambled from the fall. As you struggle to remain conscious, you see Helen coming down the stair before you. Her face has a sad expression. “Oh no. I was afraid this might happen.” She says with the tone of being genuinely upset. As Helen approaches and kneels near your head you both hear the sounds of gunfire outside and shouting inside the house. Neither of you know what that’s about, but you’re in no condition to worry about it. Helen picks your head up and speaks. “Sorry Suzy, but I just love Bobby too much to let you have him. I wish there could’ve been another way, but I’ll make this quick.” You don’t respond, you just close your eyes and let go. And then a final snap.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY "And now Suzy, having beaten the chicken soup out of all her other opponents this week, will take this final challenge by herself! Will she be able to do it ladies and gentlemen? Will she be able to impress Misty at last? We’ll find out today! Let’s give our small town girl some encouragement for her task at hand!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A big bag of dicks. It’s even labeled as such. BIG BAG OF DICKS in big black lettering so you can’t miss it. You don’t even look inside the bag; you take their word for it and double face palm before exhaling and looking back up. “Really?” you ask in disbelief. “This is the last task Suzy…” the disembodied announcer’s voice whispers. “I don’t give a shit, I’m not eating a goddamn bag of dicks! That’s just fucking disgusting for one thing and for another… Suddenly Bobby’s grandmother appears as she has been doing in your dreams. “See? Told you she wasn’t going to do it. Still, it was funny to see the reaction.” Bobby’s grandmother cackles and with a wave of her cane, you’re back in that blasted wasteland you were in last time. “So what now? Am I going to meet this Misty, whoever the fuck that is?” “Not quite yet. You’re still not married to my grandson. Misty has decided that she’ll meet you after that event…and sheesh you still haven’t figured out who Misty is yet? You suffer a head injury when Aaron was tossing grenades around?” Bobby’s grandmother asks and then taps you in the forehead with her hand. “Ow! Stop!” you say and back away. “I hope you aren’t this slow on the uptake today. Oh well, guess you can’t help being blonde. Anyway, congrats on your wedding and you’ve got my blessing. Good luck!” Good luck? Somehow that doesn’t sound reassuring. You’re about to ask Bobby’s grandmother what she exactly means by that, but then she waves that damn cane again and you’re enveloped the blackness and then you wake up. “Gah, fucking bitch.” You say groggily. “Um, I’m sorry for waking you…but we really need to see if this fits.” a familiar female voice remarks. You look around the room and see Helen coming in carrying some red clothing. “Huh? No, not you…wait what are you doing in here anyway? Did Bobby spend all night working on the house?” you ask “I’m bringing in your wedding dress and yes, Bobby has been working on the house for the most part. Trying to patch up the big hole in the house, cleaning up the dungeon, blocking the front gate. He had to bury our brother Jordan as well. I don’t believe he’s actually slept yet.” “Oh yeah, forgot that that asshole killed one of your siblings. I didn’t know him that well, but sorry for your loss.” You remark. “Thank you. Yes, it was very sad, but to be honest Jordan wasn’t the brightest. I remember numerous times when looking after him I had to stop him from eating something poisonous or doing something else life threatening so it’s actually amazing he lived as long as he did. Still, he had some very endearing qualities. He looked up to Bobby a lot, wanted to be just like him. He even had a small crush on me I think to partially emulate Bobby and Diana’s old relationship.” Helen says with a smile before her face goes back to normal. “But we are all just puppets in Tiamat’s glorious chaos, so we all need to just move on right? Could you see if this fits?” Helen cheerfully asks holding up the red clothing which now looks a lot like lingerie. “Wait, that’s the wedding dress? It looks like slutty underwear from Hot Secret.” You answer and get out of bed. Helen’s face looks a bit offended by that statement. “My grandmother wore this on her wedding day! She had this dress made of the finest silk, not whatever cheap material they use in North Tiwanaland or some place! THIS is a one of a kind article of clothing! It’s not something you’d find in some edgy teenager hang out!” Helen remarks. “Okay! Geez. I’m not trying to insult the dress or your grandmother. It’s just…well I thought I’d be wearing something a little more… substantial. But seeing as your family isn’t exactly conventional and when in Rome…I guess I better try it on. Um, you washed it right?” “Of course. Hand washed it myself. Can’t risk putting it in a machine.” Helen says and hands it to you. You have to admit; it does feel rather nice in your hands. “Oh, here’s the stockings and the shoes too.” Helen says and hands you what is apparently the rest of the outfit. “Red fishnets…red high heels…” you say. “Yes. Those shoes were also special made with the finest…” “Leather. Yes, I can imagine. Let me guess the fishnets were made with the finest silk as well.” “Well of course, what else would it be?” “What else indeed. Okay, well I guess I’m going in the bathroom to change.” “You don’t need to you know. I mean I won’t be offended if you change in front of me. We’re practically family now.” Helen says. “Um…no that’s okay. Besides, I should wash up before changing anyway. I probably still smell of sweat from yesterday’s events.” “Okay, well I guess I’ll just wait out here then and remember you can call if you need something. You enter the bathroom and go through your usual routine of showering and such. Afterwards you finally get around putting on the “wedding dress” The first thing you do is look at the dress before putting it on and wondering if it’s going to be bigger in the chest area. While you’re not lacking in that region, you’ve met Bobby’s grandmother (in dream form anyway) and she’s got at least another couple cup sizes on you. In fact her body type back in her prime was more of an old school 1950s pinup girl hourglass figure than your own “petite” size. The funny thing is, as soon as you put it on, it seems to fit perfectly to your own body. The material isn’t any sort of spandex or stretchy material, it’s silk like Helen said, but given Bobby’s family’s strangeness, you have to wonder if it’s…magical? “Magical underwear.” You scoff; shaking your head in half disbelief you’re even considering it. Not surprisingly the stockings AND the shoes fit you perfectly as well. Yeah, Grandma Morningstar probably had all this stuff weaved by a giant magical spider voodoo priest or some shit because it doesn’t make sense that any of this stuff would fit you so well. Regardless of its origins, you do feel pretty comfortable despite looking like a Hollywood streetwalker. The heels don’t even hurt your feet, though you’re still a little unsteady on them due to not being used to wearing such things. Let alone these being stilettos. The last time you wore heels was when Uncle Ed made you wear stripperiffic clothing with the intent to lure Bobby and his dad into the woods where he could kill them. While everything turned out for the best because you met Bobby that fateful night, the part with Uncle Ed still gives you the shivers just thinking about it. You look at yourself in the mirror one more time, before leaving the bathroom. “Well Suzy, you might look like a whore in this thing, but at least you look like a high priced one.” You say to yourself. When you exit the bathroom Helen stands up and looks at you. “Oh my. You’re…you’re…so beautiful looking. I knew it would fit you perfectly.” Helen gushes. “Yeah I am pretty hot looking in this get up. Shit, still can’t balance on these heels though.” You say. “Oh we have to go show everyone now what you look like. Maybe take some pictures!” Helen says approaching you. “What? I thought I was just putting it on as a test drive as it were. While I won’t deny this stuff feels pretty comfortable on my skin that I don’t mind wearing it, I sort of don’t want to be walking around the house with it on until show time. Besides everyone can see how awesomely sexy I am then.” “I think they should see you now. It’ll raise the spirits around here seeing you dressed like this.” Helen remarks as she begins touching your arm. “Well it’ll raise something with the males around here when they see me of course. Not sure about the ladies of this house, though you’re getting a little too close there Helen.” “Oh please? At least go show Bobby. I know he’d like to see you.” Helen says ignoring your previous remark about invading your personal space. “I’m sure he’s really busy right now, besides isn’t it bad luck for me to see him right before the wedding?” “Oh you’re thinking of those silly traditions for other weddings. That’s not the case here. Come on I’ll take you to him.” Helen says and at this point is pulling on your hands almost causing you fall. “Hey! I nearly fell! I told you already that you’re too damn close!” Helen immediately backs away and looks down submissively. “I’m sorry Suzy. I didn’t mean to violate your personal space. It’s just I thought…well it’s Bobby.” “What about him? “Well, as I said he hasn’t slept and he’s been working everyone like a task master trying to get the house as much in order as he can. And that’s his right of course. He is the head of this family. Still, during all the hustle and bustle when I was going to see him when he was cleaning up the dungeon. I caught him weeping and praying to Tiamat. Normally I wouldn’t have intruded, but he looked so…vulnerable and sad. He kept going on about he wasn’t even sure if this wedding was the right thing because he wasn’t confident that he’d be a strong enough husband for you and be a good provider. He was having doubts about even leading this family after all the mess that’s happened this week.” “Oh geez. I’ve already told him several times that I loved him and that I was behind him no matter what.” You say. “Well maybe that’s all he needs again. Sometimes a little boost is all that someone needs to feel better. Like I remember yesterday when I was with the children during Aaron’s rampage, I told them that they would be safe because Tiamat’s chaos was in their favor that day. They were so brave after that, they were perfectly fine when I left them alone to help you and Bobby.” Helen says. > You talk with Helen a little more That last statement doesn’t sound right to you… “Wait a minute Helen. I thought you said yesterday that Veronica and Brandon ran to you and stayed with the kids when you parted company with them.” Helen pauses for a moment. “Uh yeah, I did. Yes! I meant I left the kids alone, but just as I was leaving, it was fortunate that Veronica and Brandon showed up at that time so they weren’t completely alone.” Bobby’s grandmother claimed you were slow on the uptake and maybe in dreamland you are, but you know damn well when someone is obviously lying to you. “That didn’t happen Helen.” You say. “Wha…yes it did!” Helen exclaims. “Okay then…” you say and sit down to take off your heels. “What are you doing?” “I’m taking off these fucking heels because I don’t feel like nearly breaking my neck when we go ask Veronica and Brandon to confirm your story.” “Um, I don’t think that will be necessary. In fact, I think Bobby will be fine. Probably just wedding jitters. Apologies for bothering you and glad to see that the dress fits you.” Helen says and starts backing towards the door. “You know now that I’m thinking about it, it seems pretty strange that Bobby would be crying and praying in front of Diana who I presume is sitting in a dungeon cage right now.” “She was unconscious?” Helen says as if saying it in the tone of a question is going to cause it to be more believable. “Unconscious or not, I doubt Bobby would show any sort of weakness around Diana now. In fact I’m starting to doubt a lot of things…” At this point Helen’s eyes widen in fear and she turns to run for the door. Just as she gets to the handle, you manage to bean her in the head with one of the heels. It’s just enough to stop her from getting away before you rush over and grab her by the hair and throw her to the floor. “Out with it bitch.” You say and lock the door. When she doesn’t answer right away, you raise your hand and Helen starts to cry before you’ve even done anything. She cowers by curling up and putting her hands and arms in front of her completely submissively. “Please! Mercy! It wasn’t my idea! It was all Diana! You just don’t know what it’s like having such a bullying older sister who dominates virtually every aspect of your life!” “Save the pity party speech about being a victim of sibling abuse. Heard it before and I already lived something similar so it doesn’t impress me. Besides, I’m not buying this babe in the woods routine anymore Helen. At best you’re lying to cover up the fact that Diana AND yourself were planning on killing me all along yesterday and you just covered your own ass when it looked like things weren’t going to work out. At worst, this entire thing was your idea and Diana was just your dumb ass pawn. Either way, I’m not enthused and it doesn’t change the fact that YOU were trying to kill me…were you going to make another attempt today? Huh? Is that why you came up here? Maybe push me down the stairs or something? Claim it was an accident? ANSWER ME AND DON’T FUCKING LIE!” “Okay! Okay! I’ll tell you everything! Just please try to understand it wasn’t personal! I actually like you!” “Not personal?! You like me? So I guess your plan to kill me was just your way of showing affection?” “No (sob) I did it because I just love (sob) Bobby so much! I always have and I stood on the sidelines too long. (sob) I was just so desperate…” You just shake your head and sigh at this point. Helen sits up from the floor and scoots back to prop herself up against your bed coughing, sniffling, and trying to regain her composure. You stand nearby ready to jump on her if she tries anything, but for now you allow this moment for her to “explain” as it were. “If there had been some way to remove you Suzy without killing you I would have done it. You have to believe me I really would have. I even thought about approaching you in a plan to kill Diana instead.” “Yeah and then you would’ve probably killed me afterwards to make it look like Diana and I killed each other.” “No! I was going to…well I was going to try to seduce you.” “Excuse me?” you say completely surprised by that part of the explanation. “Well I wasn’t sure, but I just sort of got a feeling from you that you might be a bit… flexible on your orientation.” Helen says. “Wha… (sputter) What the hell would give you that impression?” you exclaim. “I dunno…sometimes I thought your eyes were wandering all over my body a little more than average whenever we spoke, plus you were so nice to me and you just sort of give off a lesbian vibe at times. I probably would’ve been too shy to go through with it anyway so it obviously wouldn’t have worked.” “You’re damn right that wouldn’t have worked! And what was your plan after that if your main goal was Bobby? Were you going to seduce me and while you were fucking me from behind with a big strap on you were going to plunge a knife in my back?” you ask Helen. “No, I told you, if I didn’t have to kill you, I wouldn’t have. I would have just suggested that we both marry Bobby. It’s not common, but our religion does allow for multiple wives. I think… I think I could have shared him with you.” “…I…I can’t believe how fucked up this situation even is…” you say sitting down on a nearby chair. Meanwhile Helen continues her tale of woe. “But I approached Diana because she was my sister and I knew her better. She was predictable. After I saw you beat her and after Bobby laid down the law to her about how it was over, she was a broken woman. Seriously, I’d never seen her confidence so shaken. After being on the receiving end of her abuse for so long, it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. So I convinced her of the plan…actually took me longer than I thought it would. I thought she’d be hungry for revenge, but no. I had to reignite that fire, but I knew she’d agree in the end.” “So she WAS trying to kill me too.” You say. “Oh yes. That was the plan as far as she knew. She’d kill you, but then I’d kill her and make up an excuse that I tried to save you or something similar. Of course when you stayed with Bobby during that whole time we were dealing with Aaron, I knew it wasn’t going to work which then resulted in an argument between me and Diana since she was now back to bullying mode. I knocked her out and I nearly killed her then, but I thought suggesting that she be your sacrifice on your wedding day would be fitting. When I found out Aaron had killed all the other prisoners…well that worked out even better since you suggested it.” “But you still wanted to kill me.” “Yes…after the chaos of yesterday and after I saw how you stuck by Bobby. I knew you really did love Bobby as much as Diana did…maybe even as much as me. So I temporary rethought my actions. I thought maybe I could live with Bobby being with someone like you. I mean you were nice to me at least. And I knew at least Bobby would be happy with you. When I woke up this morning though, I realized I just couldn’t let you have him without at least making one last ditch effort…and so here we are.” At this point Helen starts to lose what little composure she mustered up to tell her side of the story. She starts to break down in tears again and apologizes to you and going on about how much she loves Bobby. It’s really pitiful and sad. You can’t believe you’re almost considering NOT killing her now. Before you can come to any sort of conclusion, you hear shooting and screaming from outside. Still keeping an eye on Helen, you edge over to the window and take a peek. You see several figures crawling under the truck blocking the broken front gate or trying to climb the fence. The ones that have gotten in are loping in a wild jerky like motion. They’re also screaming, howling and making inhuman sounds. From your vantage point they LOOK human, but they’re certainly not acting like it. A loud banging on the door occurs next and you glare at Helen who doesn’t make a sound. “Hey! Suzy! You in there?! Why’s this door locked?” you hear a voice shout. You think its Veronica. “Yeah, I’m in here. What’s going on? I just heard all the commotion.” You answer. “We’re being attacked by zombies!” Veronica answers. You and Helen look over at each other briefly. “Did you say zombies?” you ask. “Yeah, I mean…I dunno if they are. Maybe they’re just rabid humans or something, but they’re gnashing their teeth, moaning and coming at us like something out of a horror movie. We need all the help we can get to repel these things!” “Okay, Veronica. I’ll be out in a moment!” you yell. “Well hurry up…and you haven’t seen Helen have you?” Helen and you look at each other again. “Yeah, she’s in here with me. I was trying on my wedding dress that she brought.” You say. “If the pair of you don’t stop playing dress up, there won’t be a damn wedding! Bobby’s having a hard enough time trying to keep them from getting close to the house!” A loud crashing noise followed by gunfire is heard from downstairs. “Shit! That sounded close! I gotta go!” Veronica shouts and you hear her run off. Well it looks like Bobby’s “pep talk” yesterday lit a fire under his relative’s asses to pull their weight around here at least. “(Sigh) Fucking zombies. Of course this day HAD to get worse…” you say shaking your head. “Suzy, we need to go to Bobby, he needs our help.” “We?” you ask. “…I…look…I know what’s just occurred between us and you have no reason to trust me, but from what Veronica said, it sound like this is a bad attack and we’ll need everyone we can to stop it!” She might have a point or she might just be stalling for a chance to escape or clobber you in the head. Possibly both. > You deal with Helen now You can’t trust her. Even if you wanted to, you can’t do it. She’s actually proven to be more dangerous than Diana could hope to be, if she’s weaved multiple murder plots against you this week. You don’t have a choice. You have to kill her. In fact the more you look at how weak and helpless she is right now… You WANT to kill her. “Alright, get up Helen, let’s go help Bobby.” You say offering a hand to help her up. Helen looks up at you and takes your hand trustingly. When she stands up, she starts to look relieved. And that’s when you back hand her and shove her to the floor. Helen holds the side of her face and tries to back away. “No! No! No! You can’t! Please! No! Don’t kill me!” she utters. “Don’t kill you? I’ll kill you twice you fucking cunt! And trust me, it’s not going to look like an accident!” you say and pounce on top of Helen. You begin beating Helen like she stole something. Helen pathetically attempts to defend herself, but it predictably doesn’t work. Her pleading for you to stop doesn’t help either. Instead, your hands stop beating her face and then start to wrap around her neck. You want to stop that infernal wailing, the pleading, the crying, everything. She tries to stop you from choking her, but your grip is firm. Her eyes begin to bulge a bit and she attempts to catch what is little left of her breath. Then you do something you don’t even expect doing. You start to giggle. You’ve gone beyond anger and are starting to enjoy this. Meanwhile Helen begins to gurgle and gasp what sounds to be words. “What? What’s that? You trying to speak? You having a little trouble? Here, whisper it to me.” You mock and get slightly closer while still maintaining your grip. “Bo…Bob..by…he…help…plea…” you hear Helen gasp. “What? Bobby help you? He can’t help you. He’s not even here.” You sneer. As Helen’s face turn an unnatural color, you just smile. “Shhh…shhh…just let go Helen…just let go…you fucking bitch…” The light in her eyes starts to fade, the life begins to leave her body and her struggle is soon over. She ceases moving. Ignoring the gunfire and yelling you hear downstairs, you just continue to sit on top of her for a moment staring at her. You stroke her hair. You’ve finally crossed that line. You know you can kill someone if you have to. Actually you also know you can kill someone if you don’t have to and while you went through a variety of emotions leading to it and during it, now that it’s over, you don’t feel much of anything. You wonder if your Uncle Ed felt this when he killed someone. Maybe you take after him in some way? Could it be genetic and maybe you have some sort of latent serial killer tendency? Given your family, it isn’t that hard to imagine insanity runs in it. It sure would explain why you were so comfortable with Bobby in the first place. After all, what rational woman would stay with a man that runs a murderous cult? But these are all things you can dwell on later; right now you need to help Bobby. “You know…you did have pretty eyes.” You say with a smirk and stand up. You open the clothing drawer where Bobby keeps the spare gun he mentioned yesterday, take it and leave the room without even changing your clothes. And why should you? It’s your wedding day after all. The events that follow aren’t nearly as interesting as the experience of your first kill. By the time you get to where Bobby and the rest of his family are holding back the invaders, they’ve already killed most of them. You remember shooting a couple of the things, but it wasn’t nearly as exciting as choking the life out of Helen. Turns out they weren’t zombies anyway. Just seemingly mad humans trying to eat you. You can only guess your town is overrun by them and this is what Aaron was referring to when he said people were eating each other out there. Some sort of sickness perhaps? Maybe the government was fucking around with a secret weapon like they tend to do and it got out of hand. It would explain why there was a drastic rise in violence even before you left and why the National Guard showed up later. It isn’t until after all the mad attackers are killed that Bobby manages to address you directly. He’s incredibly tired looking, the rest of his family looks pretty tired too, but he looks like he’s about to collapse. Bobby asks you if you’re okay and of course you say you’re fine. He then tells the rest of his family to check the rest of the house just to make sure the situation is completely safe. After everyone leaves, he sits down in a nearby chair wiped out from this whole ordeal. “I think you need to sleep.” You say. “Can’t. Too much to do. Especially now. Bodies to clean up, walls to patch up, gates and doors to fix. Now we got these…things attacking and who knows if any more will wander this way… there’s just so much to do...” Bobby says trying to fight the exhaustion. “Let me take care of some of this. You don’t have to do this all by yourself you know.” You say. “…shit…the wedding. That’s another thing we need to do…I just…had no fucking time to make the preparations…I’m sorry this couldn’t be how it should…” Bobby adds. “Will you not worry about that? Look, does this wedding really need to be so complicated? Can’t we just get one of your family members to witness it and another to marry us right now so I can at last be your wife properly?” you ask. “We don’t even need to do that really…I mean I’m the high priest here. All I have to do is say the passage and you accept and we’re married. No need for witnesses, I mean Tiamat’s watching. Who else is needed?” “What? That’s it? We could’ve done that a long time ago!” “Well, like I’ve told you before, I just wanted it to be perfect…” You sit in Bobby’s lap and wrap your arms around him. “Bobby, just being with you, is enough perfection for me. Besides, isn’t the carnage surrounding us true perfection in the eyes of Tiamat’s chaotic glory or something?” you ask. Bobby looks around at the nearby mess of broken furniture and the couple bodies laying on the floor and smiles. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” He says. Bobby recites what you guess is a passage from whatever holy book of Tiamat he got it from and when the time comes, you accept your place as his wife. Then the both of you kiss like you’ve done so many times before, though this time it’s different. You now feel like you belong here. “Oh. Here. I’ve been carrying this in my pocket the whole day, nearly forgot it was there.” Bobby remarks and hands you a ring with a sizable red diamond in the center and smaller black inlayed around it. It’s definitely beautiful and when you try it on, you find that it fits perfectly. “Let me guess, this used to be your grandmother’s ring?” you ask. “Yeah…how did you know?” “Oh let’s just say the fact that it fits me so well like her wedding dress did was a clue.” “Yeah, I was meaning to ask about that.” Bobby says rubbing your legs. “Oh Helen gave me the dress to try on before all the trouble went down. Didn’t really have time to change.” “(Yawn) Where is Helen anyway? I didn’t see her with you when you arrived, but then I was in the middle of blasting some freak’s head off at the time.” “Oh she stayed upstairs.” You say. “Hm, probably looking after the children as usual. She’s really reliable that way, (Yawn) nice girl. That’s why didn’t believe the bullshit Diana was spouting about her when I was cleaning up the dungeon.” “Oh? What was that?” Bobby begins to close his eyes, but keeps talking. “Oh, she was trying to claim Helen set her up and the attempt on your life was all her plan and how she never wanted to kill me at all…(yawn) typical desperation to save her own ass. Pretty laughable that she thought I’d believe it, I mean Helen likes you.” “Hm…where is Diana now?” “Oh she’s still in her cage…(yawn).” “Good. I’m going to go kill her.” You say. “You, don’t need to you know. You (yawn) don’t need to prove anything. I can do it.” “No, it’s fine. I’m willing to do it. I mean maybe this isn’t going to be official or how you planned, but I’m part of this family now and I’m going to make the effort to be fully part of it because I love you.” At this point Bobby smiles at your words and his consciousness fades completely and he’s asleep. You give him another kiss and get up to head to the dungeon. When you get there you see Diana sitting in her cage with a bored expression. When she sees you, she ceases looking as bored. “It’s you.” She says and her eyes begin to examine your clothing and then wander over to your finger sporting your new status in the family. She also spies the pistol in your hand. “I…heard a lot of noise upstairs. Is Bobby okay?” “Don’t you worry about Bobby. He’s not your concern anymore.” “So…you’re the new top mama now?” You don’t answer you just raise your arms presenting yourself to signify that is the case. Her head hangs briefly knowing she’s truly defeated. “Shit… can you at least tell me if Helen’s dead?” “Yes, she’s dead.” You answer. This revelation while not making any impact on Diana’s ultimate fate still brings a brief bit of happiness to her. “Good…that’s good… okay, no point in dragging this out.” Diana says and stands as close as she can to the bars and you get slightly closer with the pistol drawn. “Fuck Tiamat and fuck you blondie.” Diana says and then you fire a round into her chest. Diana falls back wheezing, gasping and clutching at the bloody wound. You move in closer to watch her for the last few minutes she clings to life, but then eventually she follows her sister in death. And now your “competition” has completely been eliminated. Leaving Diana in much the same way you left Helen, you go back upstairs and attempt to take charge of some of what needs to be done around the house. It’s actually easier than you think. Bobby’s family is a little surprised by the fact that you and he got married so spur of the moment, but that’s not a problem and given the recent events, they were less focused on attending a formal wedding anyway. You tell Veronica to go check on the children and to make sure they’re okay, when she seems less than enthused to do it and asks where Helen is, you get in her face and tell her. “She’s dead.” “What?! Well shouldn’t we tell Bobby?” Veronica exclaims with the rest of the family looking a little surprised at this revalation. “Bobby needs his rest and I’m calling the shots while he does so, now just do what the hell I say Veronica. The rest of you help me move these corpses out of here and Bobby’s sleeping in the living room near the kitchen. Let’s try not to wake him.” Clean up goes relatively fast. Around the house at least since that’s your primary concern. You go for the quick dirty approach of just getting all the dead bodies in one pile outside. You briefly think about burning them, but then you worry that maybe that might attract more attention. You figure Bobby can make that decision tomorrow. Since you’re not any sort of carpenter or anything similar your solution to patch up any broken windows and the front door is to barricade it with furniture for the night. Somewhere just after midnight everyone is ready to crash. You take mercy on everyone and tell them to just sleep with a weapon tonight and you’ll take tonight’s watch. You aren’t sure how you’re going to do it with as tired as you are, but fortunately when you check on Bobby you find that he’s just waking up and after a bit of a report, he is pleasantly surprised by what you’ve done. “Well that’s at least a few things I don’t need to worry about. Probably a good idea on not burning the bodies yet. We can do that tomorrow when everyone is alert in case it does draw attention. Nice job in taking charge.” “Thanks.” You say with a yawn. “Why don’t you go upstairs and get some sleep. I’m good now. I can take watch.” “You sure? You were up longer than I was.” “Nah, I’m really fine. I don’t usually need much sleep anyway. I just needed the brief recharge. Hey, we’re in this together remember? I’ll take over now.” He says. You don’t argue you just kiss him goodnight and tell him you love him and to call you if he needs your help. You head upstairs back to your bedroom feeling sleep creep up on you ever faster. When you get to your bedroom, you find Helen still lying on the floor where you left her. Besides forgetting to clean up her body, you also forgot to tell Bobby about what happened to her. (You didn’t really tell the rest of his family either, you just said she was dead and they never really asked how she died.) You look at Helen’s corpse again and then look over at the portrait of Grandma Morningstar with its eyes watching everything as usual. “Fuck it, he can find out tomorrow. I’m tired and I undoubtedly still have your ghostly mindfuck bullshit to look forward to in dreamland tonight.” You say. Stepping over Helen’s body, you get into bed and fall asleep. > Next day… SATURDAY "Suzy! You’ve won! You’ve truly overcome all odds! You have not only survived the various uncertain events of this week, but you’ve also thrived! Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give our small town girl some applause and respect for she truly is worthy of it!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A bigger bag of dicks. It’s even labeled as such. BIGGER BAG OF DICKS in big black lettering so you can’t miss it though that would be impossible since the bag itself is wide enough to take up half of the table and tall enough that you can’t even see the audience from where you’re sitting unless you stand up or look around the bag. You just shake your head. “This joke never gets old with you does it?” you ask. No sooner have you said that, when everything disappears and you’re facing Grandma Morningstar in the blasted wasteland again. “I told you, I don’t have anything to do with your oral fixation scenario dreams, but I will admit it’s a pretty funny joke.” “Hardly, but anyway am I finally done with all this nonsense? Am I finally meeting this Misty?” you say. “You figure out who it is yet?” “Yeah and I can’t believe I didn’t catch it before. Misty…MISS T…Tiamat.” You answer. “Yay! Your pretty little blonde head finally got it! Give this woman the BIGGEST BIG OF DICKS as a reward!” Grandma Morningstar cackles to the point where she actually starts wheezing a bit. “You done yet, you mean old crone?” you ask. “Crone is it? Better watch the tone there blondie, you might be officially family now, but don’t think I’m going to put up with your sass. Even in this form I could severely fuck you up, you best remember that.” Grandma Morningstar warns. “What…what are you exactly anyway? A ghost? A demon?” “Does it matter? Tiamat blessed me with this existence for my dedication to chaos and if you continue to prove yourself worthy like you have been doing then when that inevitable day comes that you shuffle off your mortal coil you might be just as blessed as I am. I doubt it though. You’ll probably just rot in the ground.” “Probably right since I’m not exactly the most religious person.” “Bah, Tiamat doesn’t really care about mindless ritualistic worship. She is the goddess of chaos so who knows what she really likes at any given time?” “Interesting, so am I meeting her now?” “Uh, no. Tiamat is sort of busy now or maybe she just doesn’t care, hard to tell sometimes…” “What?! I thought you said I was meeting her now.” “I actually never did, but cheer up. Given that you just admitted to not being a religious sort you can’t be too disappointed in not meeting her directly.” “Well…no, but that’s not the point. I sort of feel like there was a build up and by not meeting her now is an anti-climax.” “Ah, but if you really think about it, your journey has only just begun! Perhaps there is more build up for the ultimate climax later! There is nothing to say you won’t meet her in the future, but will it be on good terms or bad? Eh? Eh? One never knows!” “Great, more shit to worry about.” Grandma Morningstar steps forward and touches you on the shoulder. “Don’t despair blondie, you’ll do fine. Besides, I like you.” She says and then pinches your cheek before giving you a couple gentle taps to the face like some sort of mafia godfather figure from the movies. As you rub your face, Grandma Morningstar waves goodbye to you, disappears and everything around you gets dark. And you wake up. You’re a little surprised since you have a body right next to you, but you quickly calm down when you realize its Bobby. He’s partially under the blankets with you and puts down a book he was reading. “You okay? You seem a little jumpy. Bad dream?” he asks. “Eh…better than others I’ve had this week. We actually need to have a talk about them…when we…” you then realize if Bobby is here then he’s obviously seen Helen. You look over to your left and see that Helen’s body is no longer there and then you look over at Bobby. “…I meant to tell you about that…” you say. “No need. I can sort of guess what happened. So I take it Diana wasn’t lying to me after all?” “Not completely, Helen was the initial mastermind, but Diana was definitely still going to kill me when the opportunity presented itself. Things didn’t quite work out as planned as you can tell.” “Hm. Still can’t believe it. Helen was always so quiet and docile.” “Well, you know what they say about the quiet ones. They’re the most dangerous.” You remark. “Guess you know something about that.” Bobby says. “Yeah…I guess I do.” You say cuddling up next to him. It’s true. You used to be a shut in wallflower at one time. That meek girl that used to hide out in the basement is long gone after this week’s events. “I see you’re still wearing your dress as well as your ring.” “Oh. Yeah, too tired to change and the ring…well I really like it.” You say caressing it a bit. “That’s good. I’m glad.” “So…what are you doing up here anyway? Thought you were on watch duty.” You ask. “I was, and as usual you’ve slept most of the day again. It’s the middle of the afternoon. I’m up here because I was going to get a bit of rest before catching some more sleep due to being up all night. Plus I figure the rest of the family can do the majority of grunt work for a change without me having to hoover over them. Besides, I wanted to spend time with my wife and be the first thing she sees when she wakes up. I know that hasn’t been a real common thing since you got here.” “I’ll say. I’m glad you’re here too since we haven’t had a chance to consummate the marriage and we really need to do that…like right now.” You say and your hand starts groping at Bobby’s crotch. “You aren’t THAT tired.” You remark after feeling his dick status. “Well not now I’m not.” Bobby says and then embraces you. You feel Bobby plunge into like you have so many times before, but this time it almost feels slightly different because you’re now married to this man. Something about that makes it almost feel more…”special”. You didn’t really think you’d ever really feel that way over some silly ritual that joins people supposedly for life, but its probably more of the fact that you know for certain that Bobby is your soul mate. During the love making session, you begin to take on a more aggressive role and eventually get Bobby so he’s under you and continue riding him. It’s a bit different than the norm since he’s usually the dominant one ramming it into you, but he isn’t enjoying it any less. And then near the point of climax that’s when it happens. A flash of bright light briefly covers the windows and a loud noise is heard in the distance. “Shit what the hell was that?” Bobby asks sitting up a bit. “I dunno. I had my eyes closed and I just caught the tail end of the flash. Glad I didn’t have them all the way open.” You remark rubbing your eyes a bit. “Wait a minute…I think I know…” Bobby says and then motions for you to get off of him. He walks over to the window and you follow close behind. In the distance to the west, you see the remnants of a mushroom cloud. Probably landed on Security City or near it. You can only guess it probably wasn’t a big one, but you’re still a little concerned if you’re in some sort of fallout radius. “So…they finally went and did it.” You say. “Looks like. (Sigh) Shit.” Bobby says. “What’s wrong? I thought we were prepared for this sort of thing.” “Oh we are. I’m not even worried about that, it’s just I wanted to spend the day relaxing with you. Now? Well I think you know I’m going to have to go and direct everyone. You know at least one of my family, if not all of them are going to come running up here asking what to do.” “Yeah, well such is the burden of being a leader.” “Indeed. Guess I better get down there. Are you coming?” “Of course my love. We’re in this together.” You and Bobby get dressed and prepare yourselves for the new world that’s undoubtedly coming soon confident in the fact that whatever its going to throw at you, you’ll do it together. > … Matriarch of Madness The Future… “We’re here mom.” Your son says as your personal armored truck pulls up to the site. You look out the window and see the beautiful carnage outside. You can even hear some of the screams and crying from here. “Ahh, yes. Lovely.” You say. “Yeah, dad really did a number on this place after the siege was finally successful.” Your son remarks. “Well those rednecks really were asking for it by encroaching on a town that was rightfully ours. Glad to see this white trash haven finally being put to the torch and annihilated. It was a blight on the map even before the nukes hit. Well anyway let’s go, I want to surprise your father.” You remark getting ready to unlock the door. “You sure you want to get out? I mean we only just took the place and while the place is in the process of being purged completely, there were still a few of these trailer park bastards hiding in the area. In fact we believe some even ran into the nearby woods and are planning a counter attack. Not that they have any meaningful way of doing so, but still.” “Your concern for my safety is sweet Enki, but I didn’t get where I am today by remaining fearful of the possibility of the unknown. Besides, I so rarely get to see your father work anymore and I’d like to give him a nice surprise on his victory. I mean what do you think? Do you think when he sees me, he’ll want to bend me over on the nearest pile of corpses?” you ask and open up the trench coat you’re wearing over your naked body and run your hands briefly down your body Enki feeling slightly uncomfortable is unsure of what to say. “Well? I mean three children and not a fucking stretchmark. Years older and not even an inch of cellulite. I’m not just a MILF, I’m the fucking Alpha MILF.” You laugh. “Um, yeah you look pretty mom. I dunno, I don’t think about you in that way.” Enki remarks. “You’re a poor liar son. I’ve seen the way you look at me sometimes. You think I don’t notice you staring at my chest or those brief glances at my ass on occasion?” “No, I…” Enki starts to say before you interrupt him by waving your hand at him. “It’s okay as long as you know never to touch. Your older brother Anu had to learn that lesson the hard way from your father. Glad cutting off his pinkies didn’t impede his combat abilities though.” “Um, yeah. I’d never do that. I…” Enki starts to say then you interrupt him again. This time by putting a finger to his lips. “Of course you wouldn’t. You’re the smartest of my children. True, you’re a little on the quiet and introspective side, but then so was I at your age, probably even more so…and as they say it’s the quiet ones you have to look out for.” You say stroking his face. Enki is speechless while you continue this exercise in severely fucked up mixed messages. “I love all family and I especially love all my children, however I’ll only admit this to you. You’re my favorite and because you’re my favorite, I’m going to give you something a little more…just a taste if you will…but not a word. It’s a secret and secrets aren’t special when everyone knows.” You take the same finger that was on his lips and while closing your eyes and making “mmm” sounds, you slowly insert it into your mouth and then back out again just as slowly. When you open your eyes, Enki is obviously in a mixed state of panic and being incredibly turned on. He probably doesn’t know whether to run or whip his dick out and start shoving your head into his lap. Since doesn’t know what your intentions are he just freezes. You’re totally enjoying the way he has to be having a lot of mental conflict with this. “Now, I’m going to go find your father. I’m sure you’ve got other things you’ll need to take care of so you needn’t escort me. I’ve got a pistol in my coat pocket anyway, so I’ll be safe. Love you son.” You say with a smile and get out of the car. You walk into what remains of the trailer park. You can’t imagine this place looked much different before your family rightfully conquered it. Several of the trailers are overturned, a couple of them are on fire. In fact a couple of its inhabitants are also on fire. Bobby’s younger siblings Aiden and Nadia are casually lighting up a third redneck tied to a stake when you walk over to them. They both respectfully bow when they see you. “Hello…” Aiden says. “Aunt Suzy.” Nadia says. “Didn’t expect to…” Aiden adds. “…see you here.” Nadia finishes. “I’m surprising Bobby, have you seen him?” you ask, trying to speak over the screaming trailer trash burning alive. “Our brother…” Aiden says. “…we believe…” Nadia says. “is on…” Aiden adds. “the farside of the trailer park.” They say in unison. “Okay then, I’ll let you get back to it.” You say and then they nod and go back to watching their victims burn. Passing more scenes of violence and waving to a couple of Bobby’s cousins, nephews and nieces you eventually run into your youngest son Nergal who approaches with a young girl over his shoulder. He must have knocked her unconscious because she’s not even struggling. Nergal may be the youngest of your children, but he’s huge and towers over everyone else in your family. He’d be a scary figure to most, but to you, he’s your baby. “Mom! When did you get here?” Nergal says excitedly. “Just now. Have you seen your father?” “Yeah, he’s with Anu in that trailer near the edge of that large field over there. I think they’re arguing about a possible plan to make raids on New Security next, but that was boring so I left to go have fun with what’s left of the population here.” “Looks like you got a good one son.” You remark and point at the girl over his shoulder. “Yeah, this will be fun for awhile, but battle we had before…man it was great! You should’ve seen me mom! I almost racked up as many kills as Anu!” “That’s good! Glad to hear it. Tiamat will be most pleased. Well, I’m here to see your father so I’ll talk to you later. Love you son.” You say and leave him to his aggressive dating strategy. You see the trailer that you guess Nergal was talking about and approach. Just before you do however, you hear several gunshots come from it. You stop for a moment and then proceed inside. You have nothing to fear. You are a chosen of Tiamat after all. When you enter the trailer, you see Anu standing over Bobby with a pistol in hand. Bobby lies on the floor with dead eyes and a several holes in his body. His own pistol lies near his hand. The funny thing is when you first saw Anu, you briefly thought it was Bobby. Anu looks a lot like his father back in his youthful days, minus his pinkies of course. “Awww, that’s a shame. I did so want to surprise your father. Looks like the pair of you surprised me instead.” You remark with a frown causing Anu to turn around. “He gave me no choice mother. He was no longer a fit leader. He told me that raiding New Security would be a bad idea.” You walk up to Anu calmly and slap his face. He gives you a look of anger, but does nothing. “He was right. Raiding New Security is a horrible idea. It’s too large and its defenses are strong. Better to consolidate our current holdings. We’ve got a whole town to play with now.” You say before Anu rudely interrupts. “Bullshit! He was just being a coward! He was getting old and weak! He was no longer fit to serve Tiamat!” Anu remarks gruffly. You slap your son again causing his anger to rise. “Your father may have been many things, but never a coward. And true he was getting old, and obviously your reflexes were faster, but he wasn’t weak either and he still was five times smarter than you, but then that isn’t hard to do. We’re not attacking New Security. End of story.” You say dismissively before he grabs your arms forceful and slams you against the wall. You’re hardly intimidated, Anu has always been predictable. “YOU are NOT in charge here mother! I AM! I have taken what is rightfully mine! I AM the head of this family now!” “So, you’ve taken what’s rightfully yours eh? You gonna take me too? Or am I also too old?” you ask with a raise of your eyebrow. Anu releases you and opens your trench coat revealing your naked body. He stares and marvels at it as if it’s a magical treasure…and for him, it just might be. He wastes no time in taking it off you and then starts to take off his belt. “Get on your knees mother.” He orders which causes you to chuckle. “Oh I’ll be getting on my knees, but we’re not doing this the way YOU think. I came here primarily for your father.” “The old bastard’s dead in case you haven’t noticed!” “And? That’s supposed to stop me? (Sigh) you lack imagination, let me show you…” At this point you kneel down near Bobby’s body and start pulling his bloody shirt up. Blood is everywhere, on his clothes, on the floor and still coming from his wounds. You start putting your hands in it and rubbing yourself all over until his blood is covering most of your own body. “Hmmmm, it’s almost like I’m even closer to him now…” you say starting to finger yourself as Anu stands by watching. You then unzip Bobby’s pants and pull out his dead dick. It’s actually hard, which you didn’t expect. “Ooooh baby…even in death…I can still turn you on. Here, let me prove how much I still love you…” you say and then lower your head down. While you’re on your hands and knees in blood and enjoying the taste your dead husband’s cock, your son Anu shakes off the initial shock and spurs into action. “Oh fuck this. He will NOT have you in death as well! I’ll show him! I’ll show you both!” Anu exclaims and gets behind you. You temporary stop what you’re doing to turn your head to address your son. “It’s about time you manned up and joined us. Just try not to bore me.” You remark and go back to what you were doing while Anu hastily rubs the blood of his dead father on his dick to use as makeshift lube. Anu starts ramming his dick into your supple ass as if he’s trying to hurt you, but thanks to your many interesting love making sessions with Bobby, this isn’t your first rodeo. Plus he’s not even as big as his father so that isn’t an issue either. “That all you got son? Your father’s a dead man and he’s still turning me on more. Thought you were going to show me who was really in charge? ” you mock. “I AM in fucking charge!” he says pulling your hair, which brings a smile to your face. “Come on then, make mommy happy!” you demand and Anu attempts to do just that. So much for being “in charge” you’ve got him right where you want him. He may be fucking you in the ass, but you’re in charge. Just like you’ve always been and will continue to be. It will be pathetically easy to manipulate Anu into doing what you want. Still, maybe Anu does have what it takes to be an effective puppet king…at least in the short term, then in time you’ll have Enki replace him…Enki looks more like you anyway. As you enjoy your twisted pleasures, you think about how you got to this point as you have in the past a few times before. You think about how easy it was for you to cross line after line after line and how it didn’t even bother you that much to do so. Did you really get caught up in the murderous rhetoric of being in a sick cult or were you always prone to insanity and all of this was always “you”? Does it even matter at all? No. It doesn’t. What matters is what you can enjoy now in this shitty world and you’ve got that right this minute. “All hail fucking Tiamat and her glorious chaos!” You laugh maniacally as you climax. You may not be Grandma Morningstar, but you’re getting there.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>That last statement doesn’t sound right to you… “Wait a minute Helen. I thought you said yesterday that Veronica and Brandon ran to you and stayed with the kids when you parted company with them.” Helen pauses for a moment. “Uh yeah, I did. Yes! I meant I left the kids alone, but just as I was leaving, it was fortunate that Veronica and Brandon showed up at that time so they weren’t completely alone.” Bobby’s grandmother claimed you were slow on the uptake and maybe in dreamland you are, but you know damn well when someone is obviously lying to you. “That didn’t happen Helen.” You say. “Wha…yes it did!” Helen exclaims. “Okay then…” you say and sit down to take off your heels. “What are you doing?” “I’m taking off these fucking heels because I don’t feel like nearly breaking my neck when we go ask Veronica and Brandon to confirm your story.” “Um, I don’t think that will be necessary. In fact, I think Bobby will be fine. Probably just wedding jitters. Apologies for bothering you and glad to see that the dress fits you.” Helen says and starts backing towards the door. “You know now that I’m thinking about it, it seems pretty strange that Bobby would be crying and praying in front of Diana who I presume is sitting in a dungeon cage right now.” “She was unconscious?” Helen says as if saying it in the tone of a question is going to cause it to be more believable. “Unconscious or not, I doubt Bobby would show any sort of weakness around Diana now. In fact I’m starting to doubt a lot of things…” At this point Helen’s eyes widen in fear and she turns to run for the door. Just as she gets to the handle, you manage to bean her in the head with one of the heels. It’s just enough to stop her from getting away before you rush over and grab her by the hair and throw her to the floor. “Out with it bitch.” You say and lock the door. When she doesn’t answer right away, you raise your hand and Helen starts to cry before you’ve even done anything. She cowers by curling up and putting her hands and arms in front of her completely submissively. “Please! Mercy! It wasn’t my idea! It was all Diana! You just don’t know what it’s like having such a bullying older sister who dominates virtually every aspect of your life!” “Save the pity party speech about being a victim of sibling abuse. Heard it before and I already lived something similar so it doesn’t impress me. Besides, I’m not buying this babe in the woods routine anymore Helen. At best you’re lying to cover up the fact that Diana AND yourself were planning on killing me all along yesterday and you just covered your own ass when it looked like things weren’t going to work out. At worst, this entire thing was your idea and Diana was just your dumb ass pawn. Either way, I’m not enthused and it doesn’t change the fact that YOU were trying to kill me…were you going to make another attempt today? Huh? Is that why you came up here? Maybe push me down the stairs or something? Claim it was an accident? ANSWER ME AND DON’T FUCKING LIE!” “Okay! Okay! I’ll tell you everything! Just please try to understand it wasn’t personal! I actually like you!” “Not personal?! You like me? So I guess your plan to kill me was just your way of showing affection?” “No (sob) I did it because I just love (sob) Bobby so much! I always have and I stood on the sidelines too long. (sob) I was just so desperate…” You just shake your head and sigh at this point. Helen sits up from the floor and scoots back to prop herself up against your bed coughing, sniffling, and trying to regain her composure. You stand nearby ready to jump on her if she tries anything, but for now you allow this moment for her to “explain” as it were. “If there had been some way to remove you Suzy without killing you I would have done it. You have to believe me I really would have. I even thought about approaching you in a plan to kill Diana instead.” “Yeah and then you would’ve probably killed me afterwards to make it look like Diana and I killed each other.” “No! I was going to…well I was going to try to seduce you.” “Excuse me?” you say completely surprised by that part of the explanation. “Well I wasn’t sure, but I just sort of got a feeling from you that you might be a bit… flexible on your orientation.” Helen says. “Wha… (sputter) What the hell would give you that impression?” you exclaim. “I dunno…sometimes I thought your eyes were wandering all over my body a little more than average whenever we spoke, plus you were so nice to me and you just sort of give off a lesbian vibe at times. I probably would’ve been too shy to go through with it anyway so it obviously wouldn’t have worked.” “You’re damn right that wouldn’t have worked! And what was your plan after that if your main goal was Bobby? Were you going to seduce me and while you were fucking me from behind with a big strap on you were going to plunge a knife in my back?” you ask Helen. “No, I told you, if I didn’t have to kill you, I wouldn’t have. I would have just suggested that we both marry Bobby. It’s not common, but our religion does allow for multiple wives. I think… I think I could have shared him with you.” “…I…I can’t believe how fucked up this situation even is…” you say sitting down on a nearby chair. Meanwhile Helen continues her tale of woe. “But I approached Diana because she was my sister and I knew her better. She was predictable. After I saw you beat her and after Bobby laid down the law to her about how it was over, she was a broken woman. Seriously, I’d never seen her confidence so shaken. After being on the receiving end of her abuse for so long, it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. So I convinced her of the plan…actually took me longer than I thought it would. I thought she’d be hungry for revenge, but no. I had to reignite that fire, but I knew she’d agree in the end.” “So she WAS trying to kill me too.” You say. “Oh yes. That was the plan as far as she knew. She’d kill you, but then I’d kill her and make up an excuse that I tried to save you or something similar. Of course when you stayed with Bobby during that whole time we were dealing with Aaron, I knew it wasn’t going to work which then resulted in an argument between me and Diana since she was now back to bullying mode. I knocked her out and I nearly killed her then, but I thought suggesting that she be your sacrifice on your wedding day would be fitting. When I found out Aaron had killed all the other prisoners…well that worked out even better since you suggested it.” “But you still wanted to kill me.” “Yes…after the chaos of yesterday and after I saw how you stuck by Bobby. I knew you really did love Bobby as much as Diana did…maybe even as much as me. So I temporary rethought my actions. I thought maybe I could live with Bobby being with someone like you. I mean you were nice to me at least. And I knew at least Bobby would be happy with you. When I woke up this morning though, I realized I just couldn’t let you have him without at least making one last ditch effort…and so here we are.” At this point Helen starts to lose what little composure she mustered up to tell her side of the story. She starts to break down in tears again and apologizes to you and going on about how much she loves Bobby. It’s really pitiful and sad. You can’t believe you’re almost considering NOT killing her now. Before you can come to any sort of conclusion, you hear shooting and screaming from outside. Still keeping an eye on Helen, you edge over to the window and take a peek. You see several figures crawling under the truck blocking the broken front gate or trying to climb the fence. The ones that have gotten in are loping in a wild jerky like motion. They’re also screaming, howling and making inhuman sounds. From your vantage point they LOOK human, but they’re certainly not acting like it. A loud banging on the door occurs next and you glare at Helen who doesn’t make a sound. “Hey! Suzy! You in there?! Why’s this door locked?” you hear a voice shout. You think its Veronica. “Yeah, I’m in here. What’s going on? I just heard all the commotion.” You answer. “We’re being attacked by zombies!” Veronica answers. You and Helen look over at each other briefly. “Did you say zombies?” you ask. “Yeah, I mean…I dunno if they are. Maybe they’re just rabid humans or something, but they’re gnashing their teeth, moaning and coming at us like something out of a horror movie. We need all the help we can get to repel these things!” “Okay, Veronica. I’ll be out in a moment!” you yell. “Well hurry up…and you haven’t seen Helen have you?” Helen and you look at each other again. “Yeah, she’s in here with me. I was trying on my wedding dress that she brought.” You say. “If the pair of you don’t stop playing dress up, there won’t be a damn wedding! Bobby’s having a hard enough time trying to keep them from getting close to the house!” A loud crashing noise followed by gunfire is heard from downstairs. “Shit! That sounded close! I gotta go!” Veronica shouts and you hear her run off. Well it looks like Bobby’s “pep talk” yesterday lit a fire under his relative’s asses to pull their weight around here at least. “(Sigh) Fucking zombies. Of course this day HAD to get worse…” you say shaking your head. “Suzy, we need to go to Bobby, he needs our help.” “We?” you ask. “…I…look…I know what’s just occurred between us and you have no reason to trust me, but from what Veronica said, it sound like this is a bad attack and we’ll need everyone we can to stop it!” She might have a point or she might just be stalling for a chance to escape or clobber you in the head. Possibly both. > You take Helen with you While you’re very tempted to kill her, the immediate threat at hand does present the need for every possible person to help even if that means throwing Helen to the zombies to buy yourself time if you need to. “Alright, get up Helen, let’s go help Bobby.” You say offering a hand to help her up. Helen looks up at you and takes your hand trustingly. When she stands up, she starts to look relieved, then she tenses up again when you go to Bobby’s clothing drawer to get the spare gun he mentioned yesterday. “Relax, this is for the zombies, or whatever those things are.” You say. “Oh.” “Yeah, well don’t look too relieved Helen. After this is over, me and you are going to settle up.” You say. “I…understand.” Helen says while nodding. “Okay then, you first.” You say gesturing towards the door. “Wait, aren’t you going to change?” Helen asks. “Huh? Oh. No, it’s my fucking wedding day, why shouldn’t I wear my dress?” “Um, okay then.” Helen cautiously unlocks and opens the door. You both hear the sounds of gunfire and more glass breaking downstairs, this followed by shouting and inhuman growling. “Suzy, I don’t have a weapon.” Helen remarks. “Well I guess you’re just going to have to trust me to protect you, because I’m certainly not giving you one.” You say. Defeated, Helen stops stalling and you both leave and proceed downstairs. (Making sure she’s in front of you of course) The growling, shouting and the gunfire get louder. As you head towards the center of the house, Helen freezes up in fear. “Helen, move your ass! We don’t have…” you start to say and then suddenly one of the things bursts through the door in front of you and Helen. Helen screams and practically crumples to the floor in front of you in terror. Unfortunately for you the thing in question lunges over Helen and right at you! You fall backwards and drop your gun in the process. You manage to keep it from biting your face off by at least pushing your forearms up across its neck. At this close range, it doesn’t look rotten, just very dirty looking and crazed. Still, undead or not, you don’t want to risk getting bit, let alone killed and eaten. As you struggle with the creature on the floor, you briefly look desperately over the gun that you dropped and try to reach for it, but it’s just out your grasp. The thing nearly bites you again and tightens its grip on your arms in an attempt to immobilize you. Even your knees to its groin don’t help. Then out the corner of your eye you see another hand reach for the gun. “Shit.” You say knowing that this isn’t good. Then a shot is fired into the side of the thing’s head and blood splatters on you, the floor and partially on the nearby wall. You try to pull yourself out from under the corpse, but at this range Helen isn’t going to miss even if you could free yourself quickly. You just give her a glaring look of hatred as she points the gun at you even if she does look like she doesn’t want to do it. “I knew I should’ve killed your treacherous ass.” You say. “I’m sorry Suzy, but I just can’t trust you, anymore than you can trust me. I wish this could’ve been different.” Helen responds Before you have any more last words, Helen ends your life with several shots to your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is the man you’ve chosen to marry for better or worse. If you aren’t going to help him in a matter of life or death then that wouldn’t say much for your commitment. Besides, if he gets killed this whole compound is going to turn to shit and you’d no doubt be at the bottom of it, assuming Aaron doesn’t kill you all first. Pulling away from Helen, you grab one of the dropped rifles by one of Bobby’s family and rush outside towards Bobby who is still taking cover behind a car and firing upon the Aaron. He sees you out the corner of his eye while still keeping an eye on the direction of the truck. “Keep your head down, I think Aaron escaped out the passenger door of the truck and is hiding behind Brandon’s car now. Where the hell did you come from anyway? I told Helen to go get you and the younger children to a safer location when Aaron showed up.” Bobby exclaims. “Yeah well I’m showing you that I’m not just going to let you do this shit alone. I’m with you all the way. No hiding with Helen and the kids, no matter what you say.” You’re interrupted by gunfire on your position and Aaron ranting. “You think you can stop what’s coming by hiding? Hah! People are already fucking EATING each other out there! Shit, I’ll be doing you a favor by killing you now. Actually now that I think about… your blonde bitch looks like a fine piece of ass in more way than one!” Aaron shouts and starts laughing maniacally and then throws another grenade your way. You and Bobby have no choice but to leave your position and make a dash back to the house entrance. It’s somewhat of a minor miracle that you and Bobby aren’t hit by any of the bullets he fires at you. You manage to get inside just as the grenade goes off and adds to the total of destroyed vehicles outside. You and Bobby are on the floor though Bobby has partially managed to cover you with his own body. “What the hell did he do, rip off the entire National Guard armory?” you say as Bobby back kicks the front door shut from his prone position. “I don’t know but…” Two more explosions are heard on the left side of compound. Aaron is apparently throwing explosives through the windows now. “Shit, I hope nobody ran and hid over there.” You remark as the pair of you start to get up off the floor. “Where the fuck IS everyone anyway? Nice to know I can REALLY count on these fuckers when the going gets tough. Why the fuck am I even bothering again? Fuck!” Bobby yells in frustration. You understand his anger, but it’s probably not the best time for a rant. “Bobby, calm yourself. You can yell at those idiots later, but right now all that matters is that I’m here helping you okay?” you say. “Hey…I’ll help too…” a voice suddenly says. You both look and see that it’s Helen with a pistol in hand. “Helen, you’re supposed to be with the children!” Bobby exclaims. “Veronica and Brandon are with them. When they ran, the children’s room upstairs was the first place they went. Guess they were concerned about their daughters.” “…well I guess I can understand the pair of them running to their children. So they’re looking after all the kids then?” Bobby remarks. “Yeah, I figured since they were doing that, I’d come help you, though I hope I just don’t get in the way.” “No, it’s good. Glad you’re here Helen. What about Ronald and Denise?” Bobby says. “Haven’t seen them. Um, I haven’t seen Diana either…in case you were wondering.” Helen remarks briefly glancing at you after saying it. “Hopefully Aaron kills her.” You remark. “Yeah, well I actually was going to exile her today, but that might have to wait assuming Aaron doesn’t kill her.” Bobby says. “Okay, enough of all this. What’s the game plan?” you ask slightly disappointed that Bobby’s decision was to exile Diana rather than death, but you aren’t entirely surprised. Still, there’s always the hope that Aaron does kill her. Bobby quickly snaps back to the situation at hand. “Well it sounds like he’s stopped with the explosives, or maybe he’s just fishing out more. I’d say the safest bet is to get to the second floor and shoot him through one of the windows. No point in going back out the front door when we can get the vantage point.” “How do we know he’s still outside, he might’ve already entered house through one of the holes he’s undoubtedly made with his grenades.” You say. “Yeah true. No telling where he might be heading first. The armory maybe?” Helen remarks. “He’s still gotta come through this way if he wants to go there. Given his state of mind though he might also try to do something like run upstairs and kill all the children for fun. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past him to try to access the prisoner’s dungeon and set them all free. It is on the left wing after all.” Maybe we should split up and take different floors?” Helen asks. “Maybe though I’m not keen on the idea of splitting up. (Sigh) Okay. Since you said Brandon and Veronica are with the children, I’m going to hope they’re up to dealing with Aaron if he shows up. I’m going to the left wing of the house and try to stop him there. I want you two to stay here and guard the foyer in case he somehow manages to sneak past me and is heading towards the armory. He’s going to have come through here.” Bobby says. Helen immediately complies with the plan, but you’re not so sure. “I really think I should come with you. Splitting up is always a bad idea in these situations.” “I don’t like it either, but it’s a big house and we need to cast a wide net to deal with this asshole.” Bobby says and then puts his arm over you and takes you aside. “Besides, as glad as I am that Helen stepped up, we both know she’s not exactly a fighter. I don’t want her coming with me and possibly getting in my way when I’m hunting Aaron, but by the same token I’d feel more comfortable if you were here with her since I know you can handle yourself and aren’t going to freeze up in a fight. I’ll be fine by myself. Don’t worry about me. I mean I did kill your uncle Ed by myself right?” Bobby whispers. You glance over at Helen and as brave as she’s trying to appear, she still looks like a deer in the headlights. Bobby’s right in that her survival would probably increase if you were here and she had the misfortune of Aaron popping up. Then again by the same token, YOU’D actually feel safer being with Bobby. You’d also worry less about Bobby’s own safety if you were watching his back. After all, this situation is also little different than the one with your uncle. Aaron’s not just carrying a knife; he’s carrying around grenades and machine guns for one thing. Also, while Helen might be a nice girl, she’s ultimately not your responsibility. > You stay with Helen Bobby is going to be able to take care of himself and if he feels more comfortable with you staying with Helen, well it’ll probably put one less distraction in his mind while he’s looking for Aaron. Also now that the gunfire has died down a bit, you’ve gotten a breather to realize that maybe you rushed into things a little quickly due to wanting to help Bobby so bad. Aaron is really dangerous and you nearly got yourself killed. Maybe you’re becoming more assertive, but you probably should realize you’re not some amazon princess to go in guns blazing. “Okay Bobby, I’ll stay with Helen, but please be careful.” You remark. “I’ll be fine, you two just keep a look out and remember, if you see him, don’t talk, just shoot. Oh and if Ronald and Denise ever come out of hiding and pass through here, tell them to fucking help you.”” Bobby says and then kisses you before heading to the left wing of the house. Soon after Bobby leaves, you put your back against one of the walls and start keeping an eye on the doorways. Helen tries to do the same, but she paces a lot more. It’s obvious she’s nervous, but the fact that she’s nervous, starts making you nervous. “Helen will you stop pacing like that? You’re putting me more on edge than necessary.” You say. “Sorry. This is just so nerve racking. I’m really worried about Bobby you know? I wonder if we should’ve gone with him.” “You heard what he said, he wants us to stay here to make sure Aaron doesn’t manage to run around him to other parts of the house. Besides he said he can handle Aaron and I trust him.” You say. “Yeah I guess you’re ri…AH! WHAT WAS THAT?!” Helen suddenly exclaims causing you to jump. “Don’t fucking do that!” you say. “But didn’t you hear that noise? It sounds like its coming from the left wing where Bobby went.” “I didn’t hear anything, you’re paranoid.” “I swear! I heard something! Ohhh, I think we should go help Bobby, but I dunno…oh I wish none of this was going on!” Helen says and begins pacing in the middle of the room even more to the point of starting to shake a bit. At this moment you starting to get concerned she’s going to accidently fire off her gun at you, not to mention she’s starting to get on your nerves. You walk over to not so gently calm her down. “HELEN! Stop it and clam the fuck down!” you say and grab Helen’s arm tightly. Then you briefly hear the sounds of rushing footsteps behind you and you don’t even get to completely turn around before you feel a crushing blow to the side of your head. You crumple to the floor on your knees and then another blow to your head causes you to collapse flat on the floor and lose grip of your rifle. A pair of blurry hands quickly grabs it from you. “What took you so long?” Helen asks. “Had to wait for a fucking opportunity. Took YOU long enough to distract her.” “Well hurry up, I’m worried about Bobby! I think we should help him.” “He’ll be fine, I’m going to enjoy this…turn your ass over bitch, I wanna look you in the eye when I kill you.” Diana says and kicks you over. You vision is blurry due to the blows to the head you’ve taken, but you can make out the image of Diana pointing a rifle straight at you. You try to get up, but Diana kicks you in the face. “Diana, hurry up!” “Will you shut the fuck up Helen? I’m trying to savor the moment and you’re ruining it!” “I don’t want one of our cousins suddenly walking in on us!” “Oh like they’re going to do anything…(Sigh) fine. I swear Helen, you’re no fun whatsoever. Well blondie, I wish I could take more time with you, but time isn’t on my side any more than its on yours right now, so guess this is it. You never should’ve laid eyes on Bobby bitch.” Diana says. Despite Diana aiming for your head and being at this close range she manages to completely fuck up her shot and hit you in the throat instead which doesn’t kill you instantly. Of course maybe that was her intension to let you suffer a bit more. As you gurgle, choke and start to die, you hear two more shots and through blurry (and now dimming) vision you see Diana’s image get hit and fall backwards. Helen kneels down next to you and starts stroking the top of your head and hair as you bleed out and die. “Shhhh, it’ll be over soon. I’m so sorry for this Suzy. I always liked you. You were just in the way…” are the last words you hear.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world twelve inch salami eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe the sour cream off your lips… and you stand up and yell: “Alright this is getting fucking insulting! For the past four nights now I’ve been winning contests involving eating phallic shaped food. What the fuck is the symbolism here? That I’m some whore that sucks cock all the time? For fuck’s sake, I’ve only had the one goddamn boyfriend and soon to be husband. If anything I’m the exact opposite of a whore! So whoever or WHATEVER is trying to send a message to me needs to just come out and fucking say it.” And with those words of indignation, your surroundings immediately change to that of a blasted wasteland. There is nothing around you save for burned out buildings in the distance and dead landscape. Reminds you a bit of a video game you once played. “You know, the entire world is soon going to look like this…how I wish I could be young and alive to experience the uncertainty and chaos that is going to shape the years to follow.” You hear a voice say. You turn around and see Bobby’s grandmother again. She’s an old lady walking with a cane this time. “But enough about the future, let’s talk about the present. You survived a lot longer than I thought you would, maybe you are worthy of my grandson after all. You even are starting to manipulate him a bit, that’s good. The true leaders in Tiamat’s service have always been women anyway. I swear if it wasn’t for us prodding them in the right direction every now and then, most men would be content just jacking off to pass the time. Still, you aren’t quite there yet. I think today should prove to quite interesting. Survive today and you might just meet Misty yet.” “Okay, I want some answers, who the hell is Misty, and what’s going to happen today?” you demand. “You’ll find out soon enough what’s going to happen and as for Misty, well why don’t you put some thought into it. I mean it’s pretty simple even for you blondie.” Bobby’s grandmother replies with slight distain. “Well what’s deal with all these contests in my dreams?” “Sorry, I really don’t know anything about that. If you’re lucky and actually meet Misty, maybe you can ask her, but I just assumed you really liked dreaming about sucking dick...in a symbolic way I guess. Hmm, come to think of it this would explain why Bobby’s so enamored with you. Maybe you aren’t a whore blondie, but you sure got the mouth of one. It’s almost as if it was a highway for oral sex.” “Hey!” “Don’t take offense blondie. It’s a good thing. Suck a man’s dick right, and you can practically get him to do ANYTHING for you. I mean you got natural talent. Hell, maybe even Tiamat blessed you with it so you stood an equal chance against Diana. Now that girl, as much as she loves Bobby, she just can’t suck a dick properly. Bad gag reflex, slightly oversized teeth, I dunno. Tiamat works in whimsical ways I suppose.” “How do you even know all…nevermind I don’t want to hear anymore.” You say. Bobby’s grandmother ignores you though and continues to speak. “Still, Bobby always did have a slight obsession for blowjobs. He likes them a lot more than he’s probably told you. He’s a bit too much of a gentleman that way.” “Gah! I’m done listening!” you shout feeling increasingly uncomfortable about hearing Bobby’s grandmother talk about his sexual interests. “Oh, alright Miss Prude. I’m rambling and it’s time for you to go anyway. See ya Deep Throat!” Bobby’s grandmother cackles again and then raises her cane and all your surroundings go black… And then you wake up. “Something bad is going to happen today.” You say to yourself. (Then again why should today be any different from the rest of this week?) You look around and see nobody in the room (Save for Bobby’s grandmother’s portrait staring like a gargoyle). Looks like Bobby woke up before you as usual. You look at the time on your phone and see you’ve actually slept until the afternoon. While the normal thing for you to do would be to just stay in your room and avoid everyone, but given your recent dream, you think your best bet might be to be a little proactive today. After going through your usual routine of washing up and getting dressed you head down to the main living area where you know everyone usually gathers. Before you get there you bump into Helen, who looks a bit harried and is carrying a pistol in one hand. “There you are, good. Saves me time. Bobby told me to go get you.” Helen says. “Wha…what’s going on?” you ask. “Aaron came back and he’s threatening to drive an army truck through the front gate if we all don’t leave the compound. He claims that we’re defying Tiamat by not embracing the chaos outside. Bobby’s been trying to negotiate with him through the intercom, but he thinks we’re going to have no option but to open fire on Aaron.” “Where the hell did he get an army truck? Is William with him?” “Apparently the town has been in a state of martial law since yesterday and the National Guard have taken over according to Aaron’s ranting. I guess he stole one. I don’t think William is with him. Anyway Bobby wants you to be safe so follow me to where all the children...” Loud shouting by Bobby in the distance suddenly interrupts Helen. You immediately rush towards where he might be located despite the protests by the Helen that you need to come with her though she just runs along with you. You soon manage to catch up with the most of the family (Save for the younger children and Diana) who are standing in the foyer with their weapons ready and Bobby who has opened the front door. “Aaron, I tried being reasonable. YOU left here without permission, but that was fine because it’s obvious you didn’t feel happy here. There are several paths to Tiamat’s glory and you obviously had your own ideas about which one you should pick. Anyone here is free to leave, but NOBODY is going to be forced to leave due to your threats! Again, if you try coming in here, you’re going to be shot down like a fucking dog and I’ll personally perform Tiamat’s ritual of desecration over your stinking body so your soul NEVER enters Timat’s glory!” Bobby shouts and walks out with his rifle drawn. Bobby’s brother Jordan is the first one who cautiously follows afterwards and then everyone else slowly walks towards the door as well. You don’t think anyone has even paid any attention to you or Helen (who keeps pulling on you to leave). “My soul is already with Tiamat! You can’t do shit about it ritual boy! If you unworthy fucks won’t embrace chaos as Tiamat intended, then I’m gonna bring it to you!” Aaron shouts through a bullhorn, which is followed by a laugh. The truck revs up and Bobby orders everyone to open fire. You and Helen are still inside at this point so you don’t actually do so and just hang back as you watch Aaron mow through the gate followed by a hail of bullets peppering the oncoming truck. The truck swerves hard to the left smashes into Brandon’s parked vehicle. You can hear him swearing about it. Meanwhile you also see Jordan jumping up and down in victory and running over to the wrecked truck. “Yeah! We got that bastard! Whoo!” he shouts. “Hey Jordan, get the fuck back here, don’t go off ahead like that by yourself!” Bobby shouts. “Aw, it’s fine, he didn’t survive that!” And that’s when Aaron proves Jordan wrong, starting by recovering from his crash and shooting several holes into Jordan. Then he follows up by throwing several grenades out the truck window. “SHIT!” Bobby shouts and everyone runs back, but not before several explosions occur. Nobody is killed, but everyone scrambles and on the ground crawling for cover. Bobby himself crawls behind cover of another parked vehicle and continues to fire in the direction of the truck. Helen now really tugs at you saying you need to come with her where its safe, but you wonder if you should try to help Bobby considering he’s the only one currently trying to kill Aaron. Everyone else has completely retreated and is even running past you. > You go with Helen Getting into a fistfight with Diana is one thing, but you’re definitely not up to dealing with this crazy asshole. You just hope Bobby is up for dealing with him though apparently Helen thinks so as you start to allow yourself to be pulled away by her. “Come on! Bobby can handle this, but we need to get to the children where its safe!” Helen exclaims and you start to follow her. The pair of you run upstairs away from the sounds of shouting and gunfire. You soon reach the top and follow Helen through a corridor doorway. Then you promptly get smashed in the face hard by a blunt object. You fall backwards and through blurry eyes you see the image of Diana walking towards you holding a small bat. You attempt to get up, but the next blow is to your legs causing you to cry out. “Diana! Hurry up! Someone might hear that and see all this! Besides I want to go help Bobby!” Helen exclaims. “Will you shut the fuck up Helen? I want to enjoy this. Besides, sounds like Aaron is keeping everyone occupied, and ain’t nobody coming for this bitch.” Diana says. “Don’t be so sure, just hurry up and kill her. We should go help Bobby anyway.” “(Sigh) Fine. I swear Helen, you’re no fun whatsoever. Well blondie, I wish I could take more time with you, but time isn’t on my side any more than it’s on yours right now, so guess this is it. You never should’ve laid eyes on Bobby bitch.” Diana says. Diana ceases your screaming with another blow to the head and then another and another. While your face is mashed into mush, your vision becoming dark and your breathing becoming more erratic, your hearing isn’t completely gone and you hear several gunshots and Diana’s body falling partly on your own. You then hear a very faint voice say, “I’m sorry” before everything goes black.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world cucumber eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe away the ranch dressing on your lips, graciously stand up and bow for your adoring fans. The Minotaur on your right looks at you in disbelief and then turns away to puke in a trough. Meanwhile the little Asian satyr on your left just shakes his head wondering how the hell you could've beaten him. "I don't understand it...all my training. I glanced over at you during the contest...you...you were barely even chewing! How?" He asks. "Oh just natural talent at swallowing cucumbers I suppose." You reply humbly and wink at the audience, which continues to praise you. While you're blowing kisses at your fans, you suddenly get a feeling you’ve done something like this before. In fact you remember you HAVE participated in similar contests and you can’t help but think there’s some sort of connection with what you’ve been eating at these things. Suddenly a hand touches your shoulder and you spin around to see a woman with long raven colored hair and a low cut black gown. It’s Bobby’s grandmother. This time she’s a little older and she still doesn’t look too impressed with you. “Yeah that’s great you got a skill and its real obvious that’s one of the things Bobby loves about you because men in general tend to make their most important decisions with their dicks.” She says to you. “Excuse me?” you reply. “To be honest I’m not even too sure about him, but nobody appears to have the ambition to stand up to him or are otherwise too much in love with him. That’s Diana’s problem right there. Anyway, MAYBE there is more to you than meets the eye. You might just meet Misty yet.” “Okay who the hell is Misty?” you ask. “Sheesh, you really are slow on the uptake there blondie. Well maybe you’ll get it, maybe you won’t. I don’t give a shit either way. Off you go then.” Bobby’s grandmother at this point snaps her fingers and at this point the Minotaur grabs your upper body and the satyr grabs your legs while the audience cheers them on. You attempt to struggle without success, then a giant hole in the ground between the stage and the audience opens up. A swirling black void appears at the bottom. Without another word, you are tossed in which is followed by your screaming, the audience’s cheering and Bobby’s grandmother laughing. You fall and eventually the light from above grows dimmer until you are enveloped in complete darkness. Then you wake up suddenly with one of your hands tightly clutching to the side of the bed. “No! Huh? Shit! Oh. Good. Not falling. Fucking bitch.” You incoherently mumble, which is heard by Bobby who is in the room getting dressed. “You okay over there?” he asks. “Hrm? Oh. Nothing. Just another fucked up dream. What’s going on?” you ask rubbing your eyes. “Nothing much, just some more of my family showed up here in the middle of the night. I was just about to wake you up to finally have you come meet everyone properly. Now I know you probably don’t really want to but…” “Yeah, whatever let’s do it.” You interrupt and get out of bed. “Wow, I didn’t expect you to be so accommodating so quickly.” “Don’t have much of choice now do I? I mean I’m going to have to get along with all these people. Better I make my good impressions as soon as possible before Diana starts spreading lies about me.” “Suzy, I wouldn’t worry about…” “Have you spoken to her yet?” you interrupt again. “Well no.” “Well until you do and lay down the fucking law, I’m going to assume she’s already caused a shitload of damage.” Bobby stops dressing for a moment. “Suzy, what’s wrong? I thought we were good with our talk yesterday.” “WE are good. Diana and me though? Never will be and something is going to have to be done about it.” “Suzy, I TOLD you I’d fucking talk to her alright?” “Yeah, we’ll see.” You say and close the bathroom door. As you wash up, you wonder if you were unnecessarily bitchy with Bobby, but then you think no you weren’t. You have a legitimate gripe against a woman who is trying to kill you and he’s SUPPOSED to be doing something about it. Honestly at this point you wish he’d do more than talk, but you suppose that’s wishful thinking. That dream really put you in a bad mood. Especially since you’ve had it three times now and it always ends with you getting fucked up in some way. Not to mention Bobby’s grandmother has started appearing in them. You’ve never been one to believe in the supernatural, but the dream shit is really starting to get too weird for you to ignore as just your subconscious in play. You’re starting to wonder if Bobby’s grandmother is mocking you from beyond the grave and one thing you don’t need right now is yet another Morningstar woman on your case. On top of all that, you still ache from yesterday’s fight, but the hot shower at least feels good. After leaving the bathroom you get dressed. Bobby is still in the bedroom waiting for you. He doesn’t say much, but that’s probably because he’s trying to avoid an argument just before the pair of you are supposed to be “formally” meeting his people. “Okay, I’m ready.” You say when you finish getting dressed, Bobby nods and the pair of you leave the room. Bobby finally speaks to you again as you walk and talk, though you’re mostly just listening to him going on about the other family members you haven’t met yet and how to best handle them. To be honest, you’ve already made up your mind that you’re going to treat them how they treat you. Eventually you get to the large living area where you see familiar faces along with unknown ones. William sits in a large comfy looking chair and nods at you, taking a drink. You see that Brandon guy with a slightly chubby woman, you’re guessing that’s his wife Veronica. They both greet you, but nothing more than that. You also see three new people who are more of Bobby’s cousins. They all introduce themselves, but much like Brandon and Veronica, they don’t do much more than that. You don’t get the impression any of this is personal either. Aaron doesn’t seem like he wants to be here at all. Ronald and Denise look more interested in each other than anyone else at the moment. You then see Helen again who looks like she has her hands full with several boys and girls. She still manages to wave hi to you though. The kids themselves look at you, but seem to be pre-occupied with bickering with each other. “How many of those are your siblings again?” you whisper to Bobby. “Oh just the three. The oldest boy there Jordan and the twins Aiden and Nadia. The other half are Brandon and his wife’s kids.” He answers. “Um, shouldn’t they be looking after them then?” “I’m sure they do all the time and are just taking advantage of the extra support system they have now. I mean they trust Helen to look after them and Helen said she was happy to do it. Besides, everyone is family here so it hardly matters who is looking after them directly.” While you haven’t known these people long, you know Helen’s personality well enough that she’d agree to anything since she seems to be the family doormat. You don’t see Diana, but someone mentions she’s in the kitchen making food for everyone. “Okay, I’m going to go do this now, because I don’t want to do it later. I’m going to go speak with Diana and straighten everything out and make it clear there is to be no more dissension in the family today.” “Hm, while you’re at it make sure she’s not putting rat poison in my food.” You remark. Bobby heads into the kitchen leaving you alone with the rest of his family. Having little else to do, you make the attempt to be social. Brandon and Veronica are more talkative than the rest. They ask you a few questions and you answer. They don’t seem to really care too much about you though. As far as they’re concerned it isn’t their place to disapprove of you even if you caused such a negative reaction in them, which apparently you don’t. You almost get the impression they find you more boring than anything else, which unfortunately due to your basement dwelling past might very well be a fair assessment. But you’ll take apathy because it’s better than hatred. Bobby’s other cousins are more of a mixed bag. Aaron barely speaks to you at all and he’s pretty snappish when he does. He seems like he’s a pent up ball of nerves since he’s tapping his foot and moving one of his hands the entire time. In fact the more of an effort that you try to speak to him, the more hostile he starts to look. The moment you get the feeling of his eyes burning a hole in you the more you decide to move on. By the time you get to Ronald and Denise, they’re making out, so you don’t even bother. Which leaves you with William and Helen, the latter of which has already left the room with all the little kids of this family presumably to be out of the way as usual. William on the other hand is still relaxing in a chair at the far end of the room and watching something on TV. Well at least you know those two are friendly with you. > You go speak to Helen Well at least you know Helen is going to be friendly with you. She’s pleasant with everyone. You head into the next room and see Helen sitting in a chair preoccupied with watching the six children also in the room. While they’re being loud, they’re at least playing games and not being too disruptive. Helen sees you and smiles. “Hey Helen.” You say sitting next to her on the couch. “Hey Suzy. As you can see I’m just doing my role in this family.” She says pointing to the children. “Do you really need to look after them? Seems like they’re old enough to play by themselves.” You ask. “It’s not them we’d worry about, it’s the rest of this compound! While it may not look like it now, these little ones are balls of chaotic energy. Morningstar children have always needed a little extra supervision if only so they don’t end up burning the entire places to the ground. However it is true they all seem to be a little more subdued today. Even Jordan is playing with his siblings rather than fighting with them.” Helen says. “Um, which one’s Jordan?” you ask already forgetting Bobby already told you. “Jordan’s the oldest boy. He’s over there playing with his siblings Aiden and Nadia. They’re twins as you can tell. Actually those three are also my younger brothers and sister, so I do have a bit of a duty to watch out for them. Jordan’s getting to the point where I think Bobby is going to have to start training him though. He’s just becoming a teenager and he really wants to be like his older brother, but sadly he isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. He’s a still a fine boy though, he even has a bit of a crush on me which is sort of cute.” Helen says with a minor giggle. “Erm…yeah…so what about the twins?” you ask changing that last mildly disturbing remark. “Oh those two are very intelligent. They even got a mental link to each other.” “What really?” you ask. “Really. They often just sit across from each other nodding and occasionally changing expressions at each other. It’s like they’re having a conversation with their minds or something. I dunno, but sometimes it feels like they’re making private jokes about all of us. Jordan in particular and while he’s not the brightest, he’s smart enough to know when he thinks he’s being made fun of. And that’s when I often have to step in and tell them not to mock their brother.” At this point both twins look in your direction and Helen’s. They give a peculiar smile and then return to the game they’re playing with Jordan. It’s enough to make you feel a little uneasy. “Um, Helen, they can’t read our minds can they?” you ask. “Oh no…at least I don’t think so. I mean I never even thought of that before. Oh dear, now I’m going to wonder about that.” Helen says. “Sorry didn’t mean to add to your worries Helen…or my own for that matter.” You say. “Oh, I’m not really that worried. Even if they can, we’re all family anyway and they know I have no ill thoughts about them or anyone connected to it…and that’s going to include you too soon.” Helen says and smiles. Helen next mentions that ever since Veronica and Brandon arrived, their children have pretty much been put under her care. She then points out Ione and Hannah (Who are playing another game with each other) and Leon (Who is building something and seemingly content to play by himself). “Geez Helen, you look like you always got your hands full, are you really okay looking after all the children all the time?” you ask. “Oh…it’s not so bad. I mean like I said, we’re all family. What’s family for if not to help one another? Besides, I know nobody else really wants to do or otherwise has other major responsibilities.” “What responsibilities do Veronica and Brandon have? I haven’t seen them do anything since I got here. I mean they got three kids, and they’ve obviously been taking care of them before coming here. They shouldn’t just be passing them on to you just because it’s convenient. You deserve to have your own time to yourself.” “Really it’s okay Suzy. I like looking after all of them. Besides, I don’t think the children would want someone other than myself doing it anyway. When you and Bobby have children I fully expect you’ll want help on the supervision front won’t you?” “Well…probably. I was talking about this subject a little to Bobby last night and to be honest I’m still not exactly enamored with the notion of popping out a bunch of them. The idea of the pain involved isn’t exactly something I’m looking forward to.” “Well I don’t think any woman looks forward to that part. It’s the joy of bringing a new life into this world, raising them and loving them.” “I…guess…I dunno. Hell I’m still having trouble with the concept of marriage, let alone kids.” “Oh? Is it the ritual sacrifice to Tiamat that’s got you a little baffled? Don’t worry, you don’t need to memorize any prayers, Bobby will probably tell you what to say or he’ll make the appropriate chants himself.” Helen asks. “What? Wait. I know you guys sacrifice people, but is that going to go on at the wedding?” “Well of course. It’s tradition for the one to marry into this family to prove themselves to be worth of Tiamat by making a sacrifice.” “Wait, you mean I’M going to be the one doing it?” “Well yeah…you mean Bobby didn’t tell you? Oh dear. I didn’t mean to ruin the surprise.” Helen says. “Oh it’s a surprise alright.” “Well if you’re worried about messing up, we’ve got more than enough prisoners in the dungeon you could practice on tomorrow.” “Prisoners? Dungeon? Oh geez…” you say and rub your hand over your head. Helen pats you on the back a bit and tries to look understanding. “I take it, you’ve never killed anyone before?” Helen asks. “Of course I haven’t! Why would I?” you exclaim. “I just figured you having a serial killer uncle and all…plus Bobby said you helped him kill your uncle.” “I didn’t really have a hand in that directly. Are you saying YOU’VE killed someone before?” “Oh yes, but I’m not exactly fond of it, but we all have to do our part to serve Tiamat.” The fact that Helen just told you so cheerfully and without any hesitation that she’s committed murder, makes her seem a lot less harmless in your eyes. “Wait, so how many? When?” you ask. “Oh not many. First time was about when I was Jordan’s age. However, since Bobby is the head of the house, he mostly does it. Just like our father did before him. Diana sometimes does it, but I try to avoid doing it unless I really have to…I know I shouldn’t feel anything for infidels, but sometimes I can’t help it. Then I try to remember that their souls are going to feed Tiamat so it’s all for a good cause.” This is nuts… Right now you’re just wondering how deep of shit you’ve gotten yourself into. “I…dunno if I’m going to be able to do this Helen…” you say. “Oh don’t say that! You’ll be fine!” Helen says trying to be supportive. “I don’t think I will. The most fucked up thing is, I’m still more worried about having kids!” “You still concerned about that? That will come naturally, I don’t think you should worry.” “I dunno Helen. I’m obviously not like you. I thought we were more similar in many ways, mainly because we both had to put up with an asshole older sister, but it’s turning out we’re pretty different. I mean unlike me you’d obviously make a very good mother. You’re nice, attentive and everything.” You say. Helen’s eyes light up a bit when you say that and she grabs your hand. “Thank you. You have no idea how touched I am right now to hear those words.” She says and then leans in quick to give you a quick peck on the cheek. It surprises the hell out of you and you recoil a bit. Helen’s expression turns from one of happiness to one of worry. “Oh no. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have done that! By Tiamat, what was I thinking. I’m so sorry Suzy!” she starts saying which causes a lot of the children to start watching the pair of you. Helen stands up and begins to panic still repeating to you about how sorry she is, you think she’s going to have an anxiety attack. “Helen. Helen. Calm yourself. It’s…well…it’s okay. I mean I know you were just trying to be friendly and didn’t mean anything else by it. You just caught me by surprise, no harm done…” you say. “No…I can’t…you’ll have to excuse me!” Helen suddenly says and runs off. You try to call her back, but she’s gone. You wonder if you should tell someone or go after her. Then one of the kids speaks to you. “Hey what’s wrong with Aunt Helen?” Hannah asks. “She’s having a lover’s quarrel with her girlfriend.” Ione says smirking. “She is not! My sister isn’t a dyke! Besides this woman is Bobby’s girlfriend!” Jordan remarks indignantly. “You’re just saying that because YOU like Aunt Helen!” Leon says and then makes kissy noises, which causes Jordan to punch him in the arm. At this point they look like they’re going to get even more unruly, but then one of the twins speaks up. “She loves Bobby you know.” Aiden says. “Yes, Aunt Helen loves Bobby very much.” Nadia adds. “You and Diana must…” Aiden continues. “…die.” Nadia ends. The creepy tone they say it in causes utter silence, not to mention sends a bit of a shiver down your spine. “Um…are you telling me… Helen plans on killing me and Diana?” you utter. The twins just look at each other and smile. They don’t say anything else and just calmly go back to their game. They’ve also managed to successfully creep out their brother and cousins who start to leave the room. Meanwhile, if Helen IS planning to kill you, you need to find out now. As much as you’re hesitant to speak to them again, you have little choice but to ask the twins where their sister’s room is. “Uh…hey, where is Helen’s room?” you ask. “Left wing…” Aiden says. “Second floor…” Nadia adds. “Go right then…” Aiden continues. “Through the last door.” Nadia ends. Great now they’re being creepy in rhyme. They didn’t even look at you the entire time. You don’t even bother to thank them, you just follow their directions. Eventually when you think you’re getting close, you hear some faint crying. You slowly look in a room to your right and find Helen weeping softly to herself on her bed. She notices you and she tries to wipe away her tears. “(sniffle) Oh. You didn’t need to come see to me. Really I’m fine. I just acted foolishly, I apologize again for kissing you Suzy.” Helen remarks. “Um, yeah I’m not really bothered by that…or rather I mean that was unexpected, but…look nevermind about that. I’m here about something else of a more serious nature and I’m hoping we can hammer this out because whether you realize it or not, a lot of shit just got sprung on me within the last few minutes.” You say. “Is this about the sacrifice?” “No, this is about something your creepy twin mind reading sibling just said to me. They said you love Bobby.” “Huh? Oh…well of course I love Bobby. I mean he’s my older brother of course I love him.” Helen says a bit nervously. “Yeah and in any other family that wouldn’t mean anything more than friendship at best, but love goes to a whole other level in this family. There’s also the fact they said you were going to kill me.” Now Helen goes from nervous to shocked. “WHAT?! They said that?!” “Well technically they said you were going to kill Diana too and they didn’t say it so much as they heavily implied it, but given that they’re creepy as fuck and you said they can read minds, as well as your own guilty behavior on the whole loving Bobby situation and well what the hell am I supposed to think? So is it all true?” Helen just give you a sad look and then begins to tear up again and put her hands to her face. “Oh fuck Helen! You were lying and just plotting to kill me the entire time?! Goddamn it, had I known I was going to have to deal with not one but TWO of Bobby’s murderous sisters, I would’ve just stayed at home. At least I would’ve only had one to deal with there!” you shout. Helen tries to compose herself to address you. “No, that’s not true. (sniffle) I wasn’t lying to you. I genuinely like you and after our most recent conversation I like you even more. I mean…I really like you…but it is true I love Bobby. I’ve always loved him…(sniffle) I mean I always thought Diana was wrong for him and they were only together because she happened to be the oldest sister. Did you know I had two other older sisters and Diana killed them both for fear of competition? Everyone thinks they were accidents, but I knew the truth. Never said anything of course, I was too afraid and I didn’t want to cause any problems.” “Bobby never mentioned he had two dead sisters before.” “It’s not really something we discuss. It was a pretty traumatic experience for everyone at the time. My dad was very upset especially since Mom had died of natural causes no long before. It was a lot of family to lose within such a short period of time.” “So how come she didn’t kill you or Nadia?” “ Nadia’s a twin and will most likely bond with Aiden. Plus she’s much younger so no threat either way. As for me, well I was still young enough at the time when she killed my other two sisters. I guess I was just so weak in her eyes that she thought I wasn’t any threat. Maybe she even knew that I loved Bobby and enjoyed flaunting it in my face. In any case things really changed when you came into the picture. I wasn’t sure what to think really. Then when I finally met you, I could see why Bobby liked you. You were so nice and I want you to know I always felt like we were very similar too. You know, under appreciated in our own families. I wish you’d been my sister instead of Diana.” “Yeah? Well if I’m so nice, why were you still plotting to kill me?” you ask. “I wasn’t! I…mean not really…I mean…(sniffle) I just had this… this… idea and I dunno… it was just my mind! I wouldn’t have acted upon it! Especially not after getting to know you more! I can see you’re very good for Bobby. I’m genuinely hap…hap…(sob).” And Helen starts crying again. At this point you’re starting to wonder if she did have any intention on killing you, if she’d end up apologizing for it the whole time. The fact is though, you’re still not entirely sure if she was going to do it or not. Maybe the twins were partially fucking with you. (Helen did say they liked doing that with people) Maybe Helen just had wishful thinking on her mind. It isn’t like you haven’t had thoughts about killing your own sister Kelly on more than one occasion. Of course the difference is, Helen’s actually got some bodies under her belt to go through with such a deed. Any other right thinking person would probably be trying to leave this mad house right now, but quite frankly the more you think about it, you don’t have many options and despite this fucked up situation with his sisters, you still love Bobby. All of which means you’re probably just as fucked up as the rest of them (more than you realized actually) which also means you fit in here much better than you think, you just have to figure out how to deal with everything. First of which is Helen who against all odds, you actually still feel sorry for. Of course the other option is to start getting your hands dirty now and do away with her. It’s not like anyone’s around and she probably wouldn’t put up much of a fight. > You kill Helen You already got one sister to worry about; you aren’t about to worry about another one. If you’re going to have to kill someone on your wedding day anyway, you might as well get in the practice. You aren’t exactly looking forward to doing it, but you don’t see much choice. The question is how to go about it without making it look suspicious. You take a glance around the room and see a window. You’re only on the second floor though, if you pushed her out of it, it might not kill her immediately. You then think maybe you could choke her first then throw her out… Yes, that’s what you’ll do. Choke her and throw her out the window. It’ll look like a suicide and if anyone asks, you’ll just tell them the truth, she was in love with Bobby and was having a hard time coming to terms with him marrying you so out the window she went. You walk over to Helen and sit next to her on the bed. “Helen will you stop crying for one moment?” you ask which causes her to comply. You take a deep breath and exhale. “Okay, You seem genuinely distraught about all this…so this is going to make this harder.” You say and then you punch Helen in the face as hard as you can. Helen yelps and falls back on the bed and you pounce on her immediately with your hands wrapped around her throat. “Suzy…no! No! You…(cough)…” Helen squeaks out and attempts to hit you, but you ignore the pain and focus all your strength on her throat. “Shhhhh….Helen, stop struggling, just let go.” you say wishing she wasn’t making this so hard. “Bobby…he…help…” she utters with tears in her eyes. This pitiful plea that she utters almost causes you to stop choking her, but you’ve come too far now. You can’t stop. The only thing you can do is get it done and try not to feel too sick about it, because you almost feel like you’re going to throw up. Helen’s face turns a different shade and you continue to focus on your grim work at hand. Eventually her squeals and punches disappear altogether when you successfully crush her windpipe and deprive her of any more oxygen. And the deed is done. You’ve killed a person and you feel pretty terrible even though you know it had to be done. You’re exhausted and emotionally drained as you sit there straddling Helen’s dead body. You choke back tears, though you no longer can contain the rising illness and you immediately sprint off of her and the bed and vomit into a small wastepaper can in her room. You don’t even think about the fact that you’re going to have to clean it or all the loud noise your retching is making. Not that it mattered since Diana was apparently listening in and spying on you both the whole time. When you lift your head up out of the trash can still recovering from your bout of sickness, you look up just in time to see Diana’s swing a bat upside your head. You collapse on the floor, tipping over the trash can causing it to spill your sick back on to you. “Guess you didn’t want any more competition huh? You had the right idea though and I do thank you for saving me the trouble. Now I can legitimately blame Helen’s death on you and I was merely coming to the aid of my poor late sister. I can see I was just being tested…Tiamat’s glorious chaos sure works in mysterious ways.” Diana says and then hits you in the head with another bat swing. And then another…and then another…and then another…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well at least you know Helen is going to be friendly with you. She’s pleasant with everyone. You head into the next room and see Helen sitting in a chair preoccupied with watching the six children also in the room. While they’re being loud, they’re at least playing games and not being too disruptive. Helen sees you and smiles. “Hey Helen.” You say sitting next to her on the couch. “Hey Suzy. As you can see I’m just doing my role in this family.” She says pointing to the children. “Do you really need to look after them? Seems like they’re old enough to play by themselves.” You ask. “It’s not them we’d worry about, it’s the rest of this compound! While it may not look like it now, these little ones are balls of chaotic energy. Morningstar children have always needed a little extra supervision if only so they don’t end up burning the entire places to the ground. However it is true they all seem to be a little more subdued today. Even Jordan is playing with his siblings rather than fighting with them.” Helen says. “Um, which one’s Jordan?” you ask already forgetting Bobby already told you. “Jordan’s the oldest boy. He’s over there playing with his siblings Aiden and Nadia. They’re twins as you can tell. Actually those three are also my younger brothers and sister, so I do have a bit of a duty to watch out for them. Jordan’s getting to the point where I think Bobby is going to have to start training him though. He’s just becoming a teenager and he really wants to be like his older brother, but sadly he isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. He’s a still a fine boy though, he even has a bit of a crush on me which is sort of cute.” Helen says with a minor giggle. “Erm…yeah…so what about the twins?” you ask changing that last mildly disturbing remark. “Oh those two are very intelligent. They even got a mental link to each other.” “What really?” you ask. “Really. They often just sit across from each other nodding and occasionally changing expressions at each other. It’s like they’re having a conversation with their minds or something. I dunno, but sometimes it feels like they’re making private jokes about all of us. Jordan in particular and while he’s not the brightest, he’s smart enough to know when he thinks he’s being made fun of. And that’s when I often have to step in and tell them not to mock their brother.” At this point both twins look in your direction and Helen’s. They give a peculiar smile and then return to the game they’re playing with Jordan. It’s enough to make you feel a little uneasy. “Um, Helen, they can’t read our minds can they?” you ask. “Oh no…at least I don’t think so. I mean I never even thought of that before. Oh dear, now I’m going to wonder about that.” Helen says. “Sorry didn’t mean to add to your worries Helen…or my own for that matter.” You say. “Oh, I’m not really that worried. Even if they can, we’re all family anyway and they know I have no ill thoughts about them or anyone connected to it…and that’s going to include you too soon.” Helen says and smiles. Helen next mentions that ever since Veronica and Brandon arrived, their children have pretty much been put under her care. She then points out Ione and Hannah (Who are playing another game with each other) and Leon (Who is building something and seemingly content to play by himself). “Geez Helen, you look like you always got your hands full, are you really okay looking after all the children all the time?” you ask. “Oh…it’s not so bad. I mean like I said, we’re all family. What’s family for if not to help one another? Besides, I know nobody else really wants to do or otherwise has other major responsibilities.” “What responsibilities do Veronica and Brandon have? I haven’t seen them do anything since I got here. I mean they got three kids, and they’ve obviously been taking care of them before coming here. They shouldn’t just be passing them on to you just because it’s convenient. You deserve to have your own time to yourself.” “Really it’s okay Suzy. I like looking after all of them. Besides, I don’t think the children would want someone other than myself doing it anyway. When you and Bobby have children I fully expect you’ll want help on the supervision front won’t you?” “Well…probably. I was talking about this subject a little to Bobby last night and to be honest I’m still not exactly enamored with the notion of popping out a bunch of them. The idea of the pain involved isn’t exactly something I’m looking forward to.” “Well I don’t think any woman looks forward to that part. It’s the joy of bringing a new life into this world, raising them and loving them.” “I…guess…I dunno. Hell I’m still having trouble with the concept of marriage, let alone kids.” “Oh? Is it the ritual sacrifice to Tiamat that’s got you a little baffled? Don’t worry, you don’t need to memorize any prayers, Bobby will probably tell you what to say or he’ll make the appropriate chants himself.” Helen asks. “What? Wait. I know you guys sacrifice people, but is that going to go on at the wedding?” “Well of course. It’s tradition for the one to marry into this family to prove themselves to be worth of Tiamat by making a sacrifice.” “Wait, you mean I’M going to be the one doing it?” “Well yeah…you mean Bobby didn’t tell you? Oh dear. I didn’t mean to ruin the surprise.” Helen says. “Oh it’s a surprise alright.” “Well if you’re worried about messing up, we’ve got more than enough prisoners in the dungeon you could practice on tomorrow.” “Prisoners? Dungeon? Oh geez…” you say and rub your hand over your head. Helen pats you on the back a bit and tries to look understanding. “I take it, you’ve never killed anyone before?” Helen asks. “Of course I haven’t! Why would I?” you exclaim. “I just figured you having a serial killer uncle and all…plus Bobby said you helped him kill your uncle.” “I didn’t really have a hand in that directly. Are you saying YOU’VE killed someone before?” “Oh yes, but I’m not exactly fond of it, but we all have to do our part to serve Tiamat.” The fact that Helen just told you so cheerfully and without any hesitation that she’s committed murder, makes her seem a lot less harmless in your eyes. “Wait, so how many? When?” you ask. “Oh not many. First time was about when I was Jordan’s age. However, since Bobby is the head of the house, he mostly does it. Just like our father did before him. Diana sometimes does it, but I try to avoid doing it unless I really have to…I know I shouldn’t feel anything for infidels, but sometimes I can’t help it. Then I try to remember that their souls are going to feed Tiamat so it’s all for a good cause.” This is nuts… Right now you’re just wondering how deep of shit you’ve gotten yourself into. “I…dunno if I’m going to be able to do this Helen…” you say. “Oh don’t say that! You’ll be fine!” Helen says trying to be supportive. “I don’t think I will. The most fucked up thing is, I’m still more worried about having kids!” “You still concerned about that? That will come naturally, I don’t think you should worry.” “I dunno Helen. I’m obviously not like you. I thought we were more similar in many ways, mainly because we both had to put up with an asshole older sister, but it’s turning out we’re pretty different. I mean unlike me you’d obviously make a very good mother. You’re nice, attentive and everything.” You say. Helen’s eyes light up a bit when you say that and she grabs your hand. “Thank you. You have no idea how touched I am right now to hear those words.” She says and then leans in quick to give you a quick peck on the cheek. It surprises the hell out of you and you recoil a bit. Helen’s expression turns from one of happiness to one of worry. “Oh no. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have done that! By Tiamat, what was I thinking. I’m so sorry Suzy!” she starts saying which causes a lot of the children to start watching the pair of you. Helen stands up and begins to panic still repeating to you about how sorry she is, you think she’s going to have an anxiety attack. “Helen. Helen. Calm yourself. It’s…well…it’s okay. I mean I know you were just trying to be friendly and didn’t mean anything else by it. You just caught me by surprise, no harm done…” you say. “No…I can’t…you’ll have to excuse me!” Helen suddenly says and runs off. You try to call her back, but she’s gone. You wonder if you should tell someone or go after her. Then one of the kids speaks to you. “Hey what’s wrong with Aunt Helen?” Hannah asks. “She’s having a lover’s quarrel with her girlfriend.” Ione says smirking. “She is not! My sister isn’t a dyke! Besides this woman is Bobby’s girlfriend!” Jordan remarks indignantly. “You’re just saying that because YOU like Aunt Helen!” Leon says and then makes kissy noises, which causes Jordan to punch him in the arm. At this point they look like they’re going to get even more unruly, but then one of the twins speaks up. “She loves Bobby you know.” Aiden says. “Yes, Aunt Helen loves Bobby very much.” Nadia adds. “You and Diana must…” Aiden continues. “…die.” Nadia ends. The creepy tone they say it in causes utter silence, not to mention sends a bit of a shiver down your spine. “Um…are you telling me… Helen plans on killing me and Diana?” you utter. The twins just look at each other and smile. They don’t say anything else and just calmly go back to their game. They’ve also managed to successfully creep out their brother and cousins who start to leave the room. Meanwhile, if Helen IS planning to kill you, you need to find out now. As much as you’re hesitant to speak to them again, you have little choice but to ask the twins where their sister’s room is. “Uh…hey, where is Helen’s room?” you ask. “Left wing…” Aiden says. “Second floor…” Nadia adds. “Go right then…” Aiden continues. “Through the last door.” Nadia ends. Great now they’re being creepy in rhyme. They didn’t even look at you the entire time. You don’t even bother to thank them, you just follow their directions. Eventually when you think you’re getting close, you hear some faint crying. You slowly look in a room to your right and find Helen weeping softly to herself on her bed. She notices you and she tries to wipe away her tears. “(sniffle) Oh. You didn’t need to come see to me. Really I’m fine. I just acted foolishly, I apologize again for kissing you Suzy.” Helen remarks. “Um, yeah I’m not really bothered by that…or rather I mean that was unexpected, but…look nevermind about that. I’m here about something else of a more serious nature and I’m hoping we can hammer this out because whether you realize it or not, a lot of shit just got sprung on me within the last few minutes.” You say. “Is this about the sacrifice?” “No, this is about something your creepy twin mind reading sibling just said to me. They said you love Bobby.” “Huh? Oh…well of course I love Bobby. I mean he’s my older brother of course I love him.” Helen says a bit nervously. “Yeah and in any other family that wouldn’t mean anything more than friendship at best, but love goes to a whole other level in this family. There’s also the fact they said you were going to kill me.” Now Helen goes from nervous to shocked. “WHAT?! They said that?!” “Well technically they said you were going to kill Diana too and they didn’t say it so much as they heavily implied it, but given that they’re creepy as fuck and you said they can read minds, as well as your own guilty behavior on the whole loving Bobby situation and well what the hell am I supposed to think? So is it all true?” Helen just give you a sad look and then begins to tear up again and put her hands to her face. “Oh fuck Helen! You were lying and just plotting to kill me the entire time?! Goddamn it, had I known I was going to have to deal with not one but TWO of Bobby’s murderous sisters, I would’ve just stayed at home. At least I would’ve only had one to deal with there!” you shout. Helen tries to compose herself to address you. “No, that’s not true. (sniffle) I wasn’t lying to you. I genuinely like you and after our most recent conversation I like you even more. I mean…I really like you…but it is true I love Bobby. I’ve always loved him…(sniffle) I mean I always thought Diana was wrong for him and they were only together because she happened to be the oldest sister. Did you know I had two other older sisters and Diana killed them both for fear of competition? Everyone thinks they were accidents, but I knew the truth. Never said anything of course, I was too afraid and I didn’t want to cause any problems.” “Bobby never mentioned he had two dead sisters before.” “It’s not really something we discuss. It was a pretty traumatic experience for everyone at the time. My dad was very upset especially since Mom had died of natural causes no long before. It was a lot of family to lose within such a short period of time.” “So how come she didn’t kill you or Nadia?” “ Nadia’s a twin and will most likely bond with Aiden. Plus she’s much younger so no threat either way. As for me, well I was still young enough at the time when she killed my other two sisters. I guess I was just so weak in her eyes that she thought I wasn’t any threat. Maybe she even knew that I loved Bobby and enjoyed flaunting it in my face. In any case things really changed when you came into the picture. I wasn’t sure what to think really. Then when I finally met you, I could see why Bobby liked you. You were so nice and I want you to know I always felt like we were very similar too. You know, under appreciated in our own families. I wish you’d been my sister instead of Diana.” “Yeah? Well if I’m so nice, why were you still plotting to kill me?” you ask. “I wasn’t! I…mean not really…I mean…(sniffle) I just had this… this… idea and I dunno… it was just my mind! I wouldn’t have acted upon it! Especially not after getting to know you more! I can see you’re very good for Bobby. I’m genuinely hap…hap…(sob).” And Helen starts crying again. At this point you’re starting to wonder if she did have any intention on killing you, if she’d end up apologizing for it the whole time. The fact is though, you’re still not entirely sure if she was going to do it or not. Maybe the twins were partially fucking with you. (Helen did say they liked doing that with people) Maybe Helen just had wishful thinking on her mind. It isn’t like you haven’t had thoughts about killing your own sister Kelly on more than one occasion. Of course the difference is, Helen’s actually got some bodies under her belt to go through with such a deed. Any other right thinking person would probably be trying to leave this mad house right now, but quite frankly the more you think about it, you don’t have many options and despite this fucked up situation with his sisters, you still love Bobby. All of which means you’re probably just as fucked up as the rest of them (more than you realized actually) which also means you fit in here much better than you think, you just have to figure out how to deal with everything. First of which is Helen who against all odds, you actually still feel sorry for. Of course the other option is to start getting your hands dirty now and do away with her. It’s not like anyone’s around and she probably wouldn’t put up much of a fight. > You let her live Maybe it’s stupid or weakness, but you can’t bring yourself to kill Helen based on heavy suspicion. You decide to talk this out with her instead. “Helen…Helen…will you stop crying for one minute?” you say which causes her to comply. You take a deep breath and exhale. “Okay. You seem genuinely distraught about all this…so I’m going to go out on a limb and take you at your word that you had no solid intention on killing me and it was just a fleeting thought that we all have once in awhile. I mean I’ve had them too.” Helen looks a little happier when you say that. “Oh…I’m so glad you feel that way Suzy…(sniff)” Helen says. “I’m not finished! I AM going to be keeping an eye on you though and I think it’s going to take me awhile to fully trust you.” You say which causes her to nod rapidly. “I…I understand. Wha…what about Bobby?” “Well that is the question isn’t it? I guess I could threaten you. However, that’s really not going to help matters and the heart wants what the heart wants. Can’t really stop that…well other than killing that person, but I think neither one of us wants to go that route. Let me ask you this though, does he possibly know already how you feel?” “Oh no. I don’t believe so. He’s either been too into Diana or too into you, to pay any serious attention to me in that way. So no, I do not believe he knows.” “Do you want to tell him?” you ask. “Oh! No! No, I can’t! Especially not now! That will just mess things up for you! I don’t want to be in the way! Please Suzy, don’t tell Bobby about my real feelings either. I…I’ve come to deal with the reality that Bobby will never be mine. Just wasn’t meant to be. I can be… happy without him as long as I know you’ll be making him happy.” Helen says and then tries to smile, but it doesn’t last long. That was incredibly hard for her to say. You know her heart is probably breaking in a million pieces on the inside. You almost want to console her, but then you have to remember she might have been plotting to kill you. “Okay then…so are we good?” you ask unsure of what else to address. “Yes, Suzy. We’re good…um can I just have a hug?” Helen asks. This family just gets weirder and weirder… “A hug?” you ask. “Well, I know you don’t trust me, but you’re still willing to give me a chance. That alone is more kindness than my own sister Diana has ever shown me. I feel closer to you than I ever have with her. I mean I guess I understand if you don’t want to…” Helen says a little sadly. You look at her sideways wondering if this is some sort of trick, but if you’re going to go with this building trust route AND if it’ll make Helen feel better, you can do a hug. You go to Helen and sit beside her on her bed who gloms on to you immediately. As you reluctantly hug back, Helen exhales as if a big weight has been lifted. “You don’t know how much this means to me Suzy…” she says. “Um, yeah.” You reply. “You smell pretty and feel so soft and warm.” She then says squeezing you a little tighter. “Uh…okay…I think I should be getting back to Bobby now.” You remark and start to let go though it feels like Helen doesn’t really want to let go. “Okay. You go back to Bobby, I’m sure he’s wondering where you are. I’ll be fine. Thank you for being so understanding. I’ll never forget this.” Helen waves good-bye with a smile as you leave her room. What a strange girl. As you make your way back towards the stairs, you realize that you didn’t address the possibility that Helen might have planned to kill Diana as well, not that you care since you’d rather she be completely out of way. Even if Helen did have that plan, it’s clear that if she’s telling the truth about having too much feelings about killing you, she’s unlikely to kill her sister due to whatever fucked up battered sibling syndrome she has. Besides, as far as you’re concerned Bobby’s supposed to take care of the Diana situation or he will if he expects you to sacrifice someone on a slab on the wedding day. When you get downstairs the some of the family members are all eating. You don’t see Bobby though. “Hey Veronica have you seen Bobby?” you ask. “Oh, I think he went to your room to look for you. Figured you’d be there. I think he’s pretty upset about what just happened with William and Aaron.” “What happened? “They just left the compound. Not exactly sure what William told Bobby, but he and Aaron are both gone. Brandon’s outside closing up the front gate.” Veronica says and shovels more food into her mouth. Great, more drama. You make the long trek back to the bedroom… Sure enough, you find Bobby looking slightly mopey on the bed. These Morningstars sure are a miserable lot today. “Hey Bobby.” You say. “Hey. Where have you been?” Bobby asks ‘Bonding with your sister Helen. You know, the nice one.” “Oh. That’s good. Glad to hear something going well…” Bobby says with his voice sounding like he isn’t as happy about that as he should be. “Okay, I already heard about William and Aaron, but what are you really upset about?” you ask. “I don’t even know why I’m bothering trying to hold this family together! Most of them aren’t even here. Two of them just left. One of them hates me now, and the rest aren’t exactly sterling examples of Tiamat’s Chosen. In fact the ones that are here are probably here because it’s safe and filled with enough supplies to live comfortably.” Bobby exclaims. “Well, what’s wrong with that?” “Nothing I suppose, but supporting about bunch of freeloaders wasn’t really part of my plan to honor Tiamat.” “Well maybe you need to change your damn plan. I mean its still early, but if you really feel like someone isn’t pulling their weight around here, then you need to just kick their asses out, family or not. I mean you’re the boss around here and your word is supposed to be law.” Bobby sits up a bit as you continue to speak. “Look, you know you’re a leader and you know the head of this family. So you can’t give into all this self-doubt. You NEEDED to lay down the law to your sister Diana and you did it. In fact, speaking of which, what exactly IS going to be done about her? Because whatever you said you know that’s just going to be a temporary fix. Now I think you KNOW what you’re going to have to do with her, but your past with her is preventing you from doing it.” Bobby continues to listen intently. “Love isn’t one-sided Bobby, and if I’m going to have to ultimately submit to your beliefs and everything that goes with it including murdering innocent people…” “Wait…you know about the sacrifice on the wedding day?” Bobby asks. “Yeah and thanks a lot for keeping me in the dark about it. But it’s fine, I’ve gotten over it. I’ve had a lot of time to think about things and how this marriage is going to go if it’s going to work. I’m willing to go all in, but you’re going to have to do likewise and fix this problem with Diana permanently. How is up to you, but she is NOT going to be here.” Bobby looks a little overwhelmed by your ultimatum. He’s never heard you speak like this before and really; you’re a little surprised you’re saying what you’re saying yourself. You’re rolling the dice and betting everything here. You think you’ve got the inner strength to go through with all this, you just hope that Bobby proves to be just as strong. “Suzy, you are the love of my life and what you’ve just told me just confirms that Tiamat’s chaos did favor me when I met you. You’re right. I know I have to do something more permanent with my sister Diana. I’ll come to a decision tomorrow though. I think I need the rest of the day to recover from all the shit I’ve already had to go through. It’s not even night yet!” “Well, okay. I understand. Well, should we go eat with the rest of the family?” “No. I’m not really feeling it right now. I’d rather just spend time with you.” “Sounds good to me.” You remark. You and Bobby kiss each other, which then soon leads to something a lot more intense. A little later after your pleasant round of passion, Bobby says he should go tell one of his family members to take the night watch and have a long conversation with all of them. “Well good luck on that front.” You say as you briefly check your phone out of curiosity. “Did someone call?” Bobby asks. “No, just curious. I was wondering if any of my family tried to contact me given how with the craziness going on in town recently. Guess I’m not surprised nobody cared to call. Not mad about it though, just one more confirmation that this is my new family and home now.” You say. “Well other than you know who, it seems like you’ve gotten along with the rest of my family. Sounds like you’ve really gotten along with Helen. So what did you two talk about anyway?” Bobby asks. “Oh… you know…girl stuff.” You say with a slight smile, which cause Bobby to snicker a bit. “Alright, you two have your little secrets. Just as long as you’re getting along. Love you.” Bobby says opening the door. “Love you too.” You say as he leaves. You enjoy the rest of your evening in solitude until you eventually fall asleep. > Next day… THURSDAY “Due to new developments, today’s contest has been canceled. We sincerely apologize to you good folks, but don’t despair with any luck our reigning champion Suzy will return to us soon to take on more challengers! Let’s still hear it for our little blonde small town girl!” the announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Well this is certainly different, but it’s also a nice change of pace. You were starting to feel insulted by the implications of yourself participating in all these phallic food-eating contests. However, you’re still a little fond of being cheered for, so you stand up and take a bow for your fans. No sooner have you done that, when your surroundings immediately change to that of a blasted wasteland. There is nothing around you save for burned out buildings in the distance and dead landscape. Reminds you a bit of a video game you once played. “You know, the entire world is soon going to look like this…how I wish I could be young and alive to experience the uncertainty and chaos that is going to shape the years to follow.” You hear a voice say. You turn around and see Bobby’s grandmother again. She’s an old lady walking with a cane this time. “But enough about the future, let’s talk about the present. You survived a lot longer than I thought you would, maybe you are worthy of my grandson after all. You even are starting to manipulate him a bit, that’s good. The true leaders in Tiamat’s service have always been women anyway. I swear if it wasn’t for us prodding them in the right direction every now and then, most men would be content just jacking off to pass the time. Still, you aren’t quite there yet. I think today should prove to quite interesting. Survive today and you might just meet Misty yet.” “Okay, I want some answers, who the hell is Misty, and what’s going to happen today? Is Helen going to kill me?” you demand. “Helen? Oh yes my submissive co-dependent grand daughter. Yes, that was sort of an interesting way you dealt with her…” Grandma Morningstar replies. “So is she going to try to kill me or not?” “Who said she ever was? You just came to that conclusion yourself. She told you she was never going to try to kill you. I suppose it’s up to you to believe her or not. I think the better question is, do you like her?” “What?” “Do you like her? Not a hard question blondie.” Grandma Morningstar says tapping on her cane. “I don’t dislike her despite everything…I mean growing up in this family is prone to make her a little fucked up.” You say. “Hm, well do you think she’s pretty?” “Pretty?” “Yes, sheesh you go fucking deaf blondie? Pretty, you know better than average looks.” Grandma Morningstar replies getting annoyed. “Um…well I suppose she is.” You say. “Is one of the reasons why you spared her is because she reminds you of yourself in some ways?” “No…I mean…well maybe somewhat. I mean I just couldn’t bring myself to kill her on suspicion. But yes, I suppose the fact that I see some of myself in her did cause me to be a little sympathetic to her.” “So if you fucked her…it would almost be like fucking yourself right?” “Wait…what? What are you trying to get at?” you ask. “Oh I think you know EXACTLY what I’m trying to get at. It’s okay Suzy, I’m making no judgments. The female form is a beautiful thing. Well anyway you’ll find out what’s in store for you today soon. As for Misty, well why don’t you put some thought into it. I mean it’s pretty simple even for you blondie.” Bobby’s grandmother replies with slight distain. “Well can you at least tell me what’s deal with all these contests in my dreams?” “Sorry, I really don’t know anything about that. If you’re lucky and actually meet Misty, maybe you can ask her, but I just assumed you really liked dreaming about sucking dick...in a symbolic way I guess. Hmm, come to think of it this would explain why Bobby’s so enamored with you. Maybe you aren’t a whore blondie, but you sure got the mouth of one. It’s almost as if it was a highway for oral sex.” “Hey!” “Don’t take offense blondie. It’s a good thing. Suck a man’s dick right, and you can practically get him to do ANYTHING for you. I mean you got natural talent. Hell, maybe even Tiamat blessed you with it so you stood an equal chance against Diana. Now that girl, as much as she loves Bobby, she just can’t suck a dick properly. Bad gag reflex, slightly oversized teeth, I dunno. Tiamat works in whimsical ways I suppose.” “How do you even know all…nevermind I don’t want to hear anymore.” You say. Bobby’s grandmother ignores you though and continues to speak. “Still, Bobby always did have a slight obsession for blowjobs. He likes them a lot more than he’s probably told you." “Gah! I’m done listening!” you shout feeling increasingly uncomfortable about hearing Bobby’s grandmother talk about his sexual interests. “Oh, alright Miss Prude. I’m rambling and it’s time for you to go anyway. See ya Deep Throat!” Bobby’s grandmother cackles again and then raises her cane and all your surroundings go black… And then you wake up. “Something bad is going to happen today.” You say to yourself. (Then again why should today be any different from the rest of this week?) You look around and see nobody in the room (Save for Bobby’s grandmother’s portrait staring like a gargoyle). Looks like Bobby woke up before you as usual. You look at the time on your phone and see you’ve actually slept until the afternoon. While the normal thing for you to do would be to just stay in your room and avoid everyone, but given your recent dream, you think your best bet might be to be a little proactive today. After going through your usual routine of washing up and getting dressed you head down to the main living area where you know everyone usually gathers. Before you get there you bump into Helen, who looks a bit harried and is carrying a pistol in one hand. You tense up immediately. “There you are, good. Saves me time…” she says. “Uh…Helen …” you start to say and back away slowly. “Huh?” Helen looks down at her pistol. “OH! Shit! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you! I didn’t come to do anything to you! Here, you can take it, if it makes you feel better, but we need to go!” she exclaims and hands you the pistol. You snatch the weapon from her and eye her suspiciously. She gets worried at first that you’re going be the one to shoot her, but then just continues to explain in greater detail about what’s going on. “Aaron came back and he’s threatening to drive an army truck through the front gate if we all don’t leave the compound. He claims that we’re defying Tiamat by not embracing the chaos outside. Bobby’s been trying to negotiate with him through the intercom, but he thinks we’re going to have no option but to open fire on Aaron.” “Where the hell did he get an army truck? Is William with him?” “Apparently the town has been in a state of martial law since yesterday and the National Guard have taken over according to Aaron’s ranting. I guess he stole one. I don’t think William is with him. Anyway Bobby wants you to be safe so follow me to where all the children...” Loud shouting by Bobby in the distance suddenly interrupts Helen. You immediately rush towards where he might be located despite the protests by the Helen that you need to come with her though she just runs along with you. You soon manage to catch up with the most of the family (Save for the younger children and Diana) who are standing in the foyer with their weapons ready and Bobby who has opened the front door. “Aaron, I tried being reasonable. YOU left here without permission, but that was fine because it’s obvious you didn’t feel happy here. There are several paths to Tiamat’s glory and you obviously had your own ideas about which one you should pick. Anyone here is free to leave, but NOBODY is going to be forced to leave due to your threats! Again, if you try coming in here, you’re going to be shot down like a fucking dog and I’ll personally perform Tiamat’s ritual of desecration over your stinking body so your soul NEVER enters Timat’s glory!” Bobby shouts and walks out with his rifle drawn. Bobby’s brother Jordan is the first one who cautiously follows afterwards and then everyone else slowly walks towards the door as well. You don’t think anyone has even paid any attention to you or Helen (who keeps pulling on you to leave). “My soul is already with Tiamat! You can’t do shit about it ritual boy! If you unworthy fucks won’t embrace chaos as Tiamat intended, then I’m gonna bring it to you!” Aaron shouts through a bullhorn, which is followed by a laugh. The truck revs up and Bobby orders everyone to open fire. You and Helen are still inside at this point so you don’t actually do so and just hang back as you watch Aaron mow through the gate followed by a hail of bullets peppering the oncoming truck. The truck swerves hard to the left smashes into Brandon’s parked vehicle. You can hear him swearing about it. Meanwhile you also see Jordan jumping up and down in victory and running over to the wrecked truck. “Yeah! We got that bastard! Whoo!” he shouts. “Hey Jordan, get the fuck back here, don’t go off ahead like that by yourself!” Bobby shouts. “Aw, it’s fine, he didn’t survive that!” And that’s when Aaron proves Jordan wrong, starting by recovering from his crash and shooting several holes into Jordan. Then he follows up by throwing several grenades out the truck window. “SHIT!” Bobby shouts and everyone runs back, but not before several explosions occur. Nobody is killed, but everyone scrambles and on the ground crawling for cover. Bobby himself crawls behind cover of another parked vehicle and continues to fire in the direction of the truck. Helen now really tugs at you saying you need to come with her where its safe, but you wonder if you should try to help Bobby considering he’s the only one currently trying to kill Aaron. Everyone else has completely retreated and is even running past you. > You help Bobby This is the man you’ve chosen to marry for better or worse. If you aren’t going to help him in a matter of life or death then that wouldn’t say much for your commitment. Besides, if he gets killed this whole compound is going to turn to shit and you’d no doubt be at the bottom of it, assuming Aaron doesn’t kill you all first. “Helen, you go see to the young ones, I’m going to stand by Bobby.” “But…” “It’s my choice, I’ll be fine! Now go!” Helen is a little unsure, but complies with your wishes. “Be careful, Suzy.” Helen says and leaves. You rush outside towards Bobby who is still taking cover behind a car and firing upon the Aaron. He sees you out the corner of his eye while still keeping an eye on the direction of the truck. “Keep your head down, I think Aaron escaped out the passenger door of the truck and is hiding behind Brandon’s car now. Where the hell did you come from anyway? I told Helen to go get you and the younger children to a safer location when Aaron showed up.” Bobby exclaims. “Yeah well I’m showing you that I’m not just going to let you do this shit alone. I’m with you all the way. No hiding with Helen and the kids, no matter what you say.” You’re interrupted by gunfire on your position and Aaron ranting. “You think you can stop what’s coming by hiding? Hah! People are already fucking EATING each other out there! Shit, I’ll be doing you a favor by killing you now. Actually now that I think about… your blonde bitch looks like a fine piece of ass in more way than one!” Aaron shouts and starts laughing maniacally and then throws another grenade your way. You and Bobby have no choice but to leave your position and make a dash back to the house entrance. It’s somewhat of a minor miracle that you and Bobby aren’t hit by any of the bullets he fires at you. You manage to get inside just as the grenade goes off and adds to the total of destroyed vehicles outside. You and Bobby are on the floor though Bobby has partially managed to cover you with his own body. “What the hell did he do, rip off the entire National Guard armory?” you say as Bobby back kicks the front door shut from his prone position. “I don’t know but…” Two more explosions are heard on the left side of compound. Aaron is apparently throwing explosives through the windows now. “Shit, I hope nobody ran and hid over there.” You remark as the pair of you start to get up off the floor. “Where the fuck IS everyone anyway? Nice to know I can REALLY count on these fuckers when the going gets tough. Why the fuck am I even bothering again? Fuck!” Bobby yells in frustration. You understand his anger, but it’s probably not the best time for a rant. “Bobby, calm yourself. You can yell at those idiots later, but right now all that matters is that I’m here helping you okay?” you say. “Yeah…okay. Just wish we had more reliable help. (Sigh) To think, the only thing I was concerned about was exiling Diana today.” “Okay, so what’s the game plan?” you ask slightly disappointed that Bobby’s decision was to exile Diana rather than death, but you aren’t entirely surprised. Still, there’s always the hope that Aaron does kill her. Bobby quickly snaps back to the situation at hand. “Well it sounds like he’s stopped with the explosives, or maybe he’s just fishing out more. I’d say the safest bet is to get to the second floor and shoot him through one of the windows. No point in going back out the front door when we can get the vantage point.” “How do we know he’s still outside, he might’ve already entered house through one of the holes he’s undoubtedly made with his grenades.” You say. “He could try for the armory, though he’s still gotta come through this way if he wants to go there. Given his state of mind though he might also try to do something like run upstairs and kill all the children for fun. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past him to try to access the prisoner’s dungeon and set them all free. It is on the left wing after all. (Sigh) As much as I hate splitting up, I’m going to need you to stay here and guard the foyer just in case he tries to sneak through here.” Bobby says. “I really think I should come with you. Splitting up is always a bad idea in these situations.” “I don’t like it either, but it’s a big house and we need to cast a wide net to deal with this asshole.” Bobby says. “Okay Bobby, I’ll stay here, but please be careful.” You remark. "I'll be fine, you just keep a look out and remember, if you see him, don't talk, just shoot. Oh and if any of my cousins ever come out of hiding and pass through here, tell them to fucking help you." Bobby says and then kisses you before heading to the left wing of the house. Soon after Bobby leaves, you put your back against one of the walls and start keeping an eye on the doorways. Minutes pass and you start to get a little nervous. Not a lot, but enough that you move from your spot and check the left doorway. Then you briefly hear the sounds of rushing footsteps behind you and you don’t even get to completely turn around before you feel a crushing blow to the side of your head. You crumple to the floor on your knees and then another blow to your head causes you to collapse flat on the floor and lose grip of your pistol. A pair of blurry hands quickly grabs it from you. “You and that traitorous bitch of a sister of mine think you can take Bobby after he exiles me? I heard the pair of you conspiring together yesterday in her room after Bobby ripped my heart out. Fucking cunt.” Diana says and points it at you. You weakly attempt to grab at Diana who kicks you in the face, your already bleeding head hits the floor. “Normally, I’d savor this moment. Maybe even keep you alive longer to enjoy torturing you a bit more, but I think under the circumstances, putting you down now is the more efficient plan. Haven’t decided if I should help Bobby yet…or perhaps even Aaron…guess I’ll surprise them both.” Despite Diana aiming for your head and being at this close range she manages to completely fuck up her shot and hit you in the throat instead which doesn’t kill you instantly. “Shit, well I guess it’s good my aim isn’t that great, I got to see you suffer a little more after all. Say hello to my sister in fucking traitor’s hell. I will be laughing at you both within Tiamat’s glorious chaos!” Diana shouts as you gurgle, choke and finally die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY “Due to new developments, today’s contest has been canceled. We sincerely apologize to you good folks, but don’t despair with any luck our reigning champion Suzy will return to us soon to take on more challengers! Let’s still hear it for our little blonde small town girl!” the announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Well this is certainly different, but it’s also a nice change of pace. You were starting to feel insulted by the implications of yourself participating in all these phallic food-eating contests. However, you’re still a little fond of being cheered for, so you stand up and take a bow for your fans. No sooner have you done that, when your surroundings immediately change to that of a blasted wasteland. There is nothing around you save for burned out buildings in the distance and dead landscape. Reminds you a bit of a video game you once played. “You know, the entire world is soon going to look like this…how I wish I could be young and alive to experience the uncertainty and chaos that is going to shape the years to follow.” You hear a voice say. You turn around and see Bobby’s grandmother again. She’s an old lady walking with a cane this time. “But enough about the future, let’s talk about the present. You survived a lot longer than I thought you would, maybe you are worthy of my grandson after all. You even are starting to manipulate him a bit, that’s good. The true leaders in Tiamat’s service have always been women anyway. I swear if it wasn’t for us prodding them in the right direction every now and then, most men would be content just jacking off to pass the time. Still, you aren’t quite there yet. I think today should prove to quite interesting. Survive today and you might just meet Misty yet.” “Okay, I want some answers, who the hell is Misty, and what’s going to happen today? Is Helen going to kill me?” you demand. “Helen? Oh yes my submissive co-dependent grand daughter. Yes, that was sort of an interesting way you dealt with her…” Grandma Morningstar replies. “So is she going to try to kill me or not?” “Who said she ever was? You just came to that conclusion yourself. She told you she was never going to try to kill you. I suppose it’s up to you to believe her or not. I think the better question is, do you like her?” “What?” “Do you like her? Not a hard question blondie.” Grandma Morningstar says tapping on her cane. “I don’t dislike her despite everything…I mean growing up in this family is prone to make her a little fucked up.” You say. “Hm, well do you think she’s pretty?” “Pretty?” “Yes, sheesh you go fucking deaf blondie? Pretty, you know better than average looks.” Grandma Morningstar replies getting annoyed. “Um…well I suppose she is.” You say. “Is one of the reasons why you spared her is because she reminds you of yourself in some ways?” “No…I mean…well maybe somewhat. I mean I just couldn’t bring myself to kill her on suspicion. But yes, I suppose the fact that I see some of myself in her did cause me to be a little sympathetic to her.” “So if you fucked her…it would almost be like fucking yourself right?” “Wait…what? What are you trying to get at?” you ask. “Oh I think you know EXACTLY what I’m trying to get at. It’s okay Suzy, I’m making no judgments. The female form is a beautiful thing. Well anyway you’ll find out what’s in store for you today soon. As for Misty, well why don’t you put some thought into it. I mean it’s pretty simple even for you blondie.” Bobby’s grandmother replies with slight distain. “Well can you at least tell me what’s deal with all these contests in my dreams?” “Sorry, I really don’t know anything about that. If you’re lucky and actually meet Misty, maybe you can ask her, but I just assumed you really liked dreaming about sucking dick...in a symbolic way I guess. Hmm, come to think of it this would explain why Bobby’s so enamored with you. Maybe you aren’t a whore blondie, but you sure got the mouth of one. It’s almost as if it was a highway for oral sex.” “Hey!” “Don’t take offense blondie. It’s a good thing. Suck a man’s dick right, and you can practically get him to do ANYTHING for you. I mean you got natural talent. Hell, maybe even Tiamat blessed you with it so you stood an equal chance against Diana. Now that girl, as much as she loves Bobby, she just can’t suck a dick properly. Bad gag reflex, slightly oversized teeth, I dunno. Tiamat works in whimsical ways I suppose.” “How do you even know all…nevermind I don’t want to hear anymore.” You say. Bobby’s grandmother ignores you though and continues to speak. “Still, Bobby always did have a slight obsession for blowjobs. He likes them a lot more than he’s probably told you." “Gah! I’m done listening!” you shout feeling increasingly uncomfortable about hearing Bobby’s grandmother talk about his sexual interests. “Oh, alright Miss Prude. I’m rambling and it’s time for you to go anyway. See ya Deep Throat!” Bobby’s grandmother cackles again and then raises her cane and all your surroundings go black… And then you wake up. “Something bad is going to happen today.” You say to yourself. (Then again why should today be any different from the rest of this week?) You look around and see nobody in the room (Save for Bobby’s grandmother’s portrait staring like a gargoyle). Looks like Bobby woke up before you as usual. You look at the time on your phone and see you’ve actually slept until the afternoon. While the normal thing for you to do would be to just stay in your room and avoid everyone, but given your recent dream, you think your best bet might be to be a little proactive today. After going through your usual routine of washing up and getting dressed you head down to the main living area where you know everyone usually gathers. Before you get there you bump into Helen, who looks a bit harried and is carrying a pistol in one hand. You tense up immediately. “There you are, good. Saves me time…” she says. “Uh…Helen …” you start to say and back away slowly. “Huh?” Helen looks down at her pistol. “OH! Shit! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you! I didn’t come to do anything to you! Here, you can take it, if it makes you feel better, but we need to go!” she exclaims and hands you the pistol. You snatch the weapon from her and eye her suspiciously. She gets worried at first that you’re going be the one to shoot her, but then just continues to explain in greater detail about what’s going on. “Aaron came back and he’s threatening to drive an army truck through the front gate if we all don’t leave the compound. He claims that we’re defying Tiamat by not embracing the chaos outside. Bobby’s been trying to negotiate with him through the intercom, but he thinks we’re going to have no option but to open fire on Aaron.” “Where the hell did he get an army truck? Is William with him?” “Apparently the town has been in a state of martial law since yesterday and the National Guard have taken over according to Aaron’s ranting. I guess he stole one. I don’t think William is with him. Anyway Bobby wants you to be safe so follow me to where all the children...” Loud shouting by Bobby in the distance suddenly interrupts Helen. You immediately rush towards where he might be located despite the protests by the Helen that you need to come with her though she just runs along with you. You soon manage to catch up with the most of the family (Save for the younger children and Diana) who are standing in the foyer with their weapons ready and Bobby who has opened the front door. “Aaron, I tried being reasonable. YOU left here without permission, but that was fine because it’s obvious you didn’t feel happy here. There are several paths to Tiamat’s glory and you obviously had your own ideas about which one you should pick. Anyone here is free to leave, but NOBODY is going to be forced to leave due to your threats! Again, if you try coming in here, you’re going to be shot down like a fucking dog and I’ll personally perform Tiamat’s ritual of desecration over your stinking body so your soul NEVER enters Timat’s glory!” Bobby shouts and walks out with his rifle drawn. Bobby’s brother Jordan is the first one who cautiously follows afterwards and then everyone else slowly walks towards the door as well. You don’t think anyone has even paid any attention to you or Helen (who keeps pulling on you to leave). “My soul is already with Tiamat! You can’t do shit about it ritual boy! If you unworthy fucks won’t embrace chaos as Tiamat intended, then I’m gonna bring it to you!” Aaron shouts through a bullhorn, which is followed by a laugh. The truck revs up and Bobby orders everyone to open fire. You and Helen are still inside at this point so you don’t actually do so and just hang back as you watch Aaron mow through the gate followed by a hail of bullets peppering the oncoming truck. The truck swerves hard to the left smashes into Brandon’s parked vehicle. You can hear him swearing about it. Meanwhile you also see Jordan jumping up and down in victory and running over to the wrecked truck. “Yeah! We got that bastard! Whoo!” he shouts. “Hey Jordan, get the fuck back here, don’t go off ahead like that by yourself!” Bobby shouts. “Aw, it’s fine, he didn’t survive that!” And that’s when Aaron proves Jordan wrong, starting by recovering from his crash and shooting several holes into Jordan. Then he follows up by throwing several grenades out the truck window. “SHIT!” Bobby shouts and everyone runs back, but not before several explosions occur. Nobody is killed, but everyone scrambles and on the ground crawling for cover. Bobby himself crawls behind cover of another parked vehicle and continues to fire in the direction of the truck. Helen now really tugs at you saying you need to come with her where its safe, but you wonder if you should try to help Bobby considering he’s the only one currently trying to kill Aaron. Everyone else has completely retreated and is even running past you. > You go with Helen Getting into a fistfight with Diana is one thing, but you’re definitely not up to dealing with this crazy asshole. You just hope Bobby is up for dealing with him though apparently Helen thinks so. “Come on! Bobby can handle this, but we need to get to the children where it’s safe!” Helen exclaims and you start to follow her. The pair of you run upstairs away from the sounds of shouting and gunfire. You soon reach the top and follow Helen through a corridor doorway. And then Helen nearly gets bashed in the head with a bat when she passes through an entryway. She does take a hit to the shoulder though which causes her to fall to the floor in pain. Diana steps out from the corner she was hiding behind and then rushes at you. You’re caught off guard and point your pistol at Diana, and actually manage to fire a shot, but unfortunately Diana’s smashes your arm with the bat away from her direction so your shot goes wild. Hardly matters since between the kickback of the pistol and the pain you end up dropping the gun entirely. With you unarmed and Helen still clutching her arm in pain, Diana’s head swivels back and forth rapidly, to make sure neither one of you are going to suddenly lunge at her, though she’s also eyeing the dropped pistol too. “After Bobby ripped my heart out I went upstairs to my room and overheard you two bitches conspiring against me. Didn’t know you had it in you Helen. I always knew you loved Bobby, but always figured you’d be too weak to do shit about it. Guess that’s my fault for showing you mercy.” Diana remarks. While Diana’s ranting to her sister, you attempt to make a play for the gun, but Diana swings her bat at you, nearly hitting you in the face. You step back just in time. “And you. You certainly have proved yourself the stereotype of dumb blonde, because if you actually bought that bullshit that my sister fed you, you’re stupider than I thought you were. You actually think she’s gonna just let you have Bobby? She’s gonna backstab you the same way she backstabbed me.” “Maybe she backstabbed you because you were a fucking bully to her, you ever think of that?” you say. “Bully? She oughta be grateful I didn’t kill her ass and instead made her strong enough for her to grow a spine to betray me in the first place! Hey! Where the fuck you goin’?” Diana remarks when she turns her head to see Helen getting up to run away. Diana throws her bat at Helen’s legs, which successfully hit and trip her up. Diana then goes for the pistol and that’s when you pounce and manage to tackle her. The pair of you are soon rolling on the floor again, punching, scratching and kneeing each other. You both try to go for the pistol on several occasions, but neither of you gets the advantage, in fact when Diana finally does, you knock it out of her hand and it goes sprawling and down the stairs to the first floor. “Bah! I don’t need a gun to do my work anyhow! I’ll enjoy it even more killing you with my bare hands!” Diana remarks and lands a good punch on you and then she slams the back of your head into the floor causing you to become a little dazed. She’d do more, but then Helen comes up from behind her with the bat in hand. Unfortunately for Helen, Diana hears Helen and catches Helen’s feeble swing and stops the bat from actually hitting her. “I’m gonna so enjoy hurting you little sister…” Diana exclaims and attempts to rip the bat from Helen’s hand. Helen’s grip is strong enough that Diana doesn’t succeed so instead Diana uses Helen’s weight against her and pushes the bat towards Helen as hard as she can. Helen, not expecting this, loses her footing on her already bruised legs and falls back on the nearby wall, dropping the bat entirely, which rolls away. Diana gets off of you, to take care of her sister who at this point is begging to not be hurt. “Diana, please…this isn’t my fault…Bobby chose Su…” Diana squeaks. “BOBBY CHOSE ME FIRST! BOBBY IS MINE! HE’S ALWAYS BEEN MINE BY BIRTH! You fucking little weakling traitorous bitch! Had you just stayed in line, I might’ve even been kind enough to let Bobby face fuck you on your birthday, but the only fucking you’re going to get now is in your ass because I’m going knee deep in it!” At this point Helen squeals in fear and curls up in a tight ball while Diana starts kicking the hell out of her. Meanwhile you’re starting to come around a bit more. Things are still a bit dizzy for you and you’re a bit wobbly standing up, but you manage it. You attempt to make a run (or fast paced wobble at any rate) for the bat, but Diana stops you before you can even reach it. “Don’t think so bottled blonde bitch!” Diana says and knocks you to the floor and then follows up with a kick. Diana gets on top of you and while you struggle to fight her off, she slaps away your attempts and wraps her hands around your throat. “You are going to very dark place and I’m going to enjoy putting you there.” She remarks and then she starts doing some weird chanting, similar to the shit Bobby says at times when you’re having sex with him, but this isn’t nearly as fun. You try to pry her hands off your throat, but her grip is like iron. You start to lose consciousness. You try one more time to get her off of you by punching her in the face, but your swing isn’t strong enough and Diana is just too determined to end your life. Diana’s face gets blurry, you choke and then everything goes black. Everything is black for what probably seems to be forever. There is nothing. No fluffy cloud heaven, no lake of fire, and definitely not any Tiamat. Then you feel a sensation around your mouth and the sensation of air going in. It’s pleasant enough that you instinctively throw your arms out to embrace Bobby. When you open your eyes you find Helen’s face lip locked to yours. After a few seconds you actually freak out about it being her instead of Bobby. “H…hey! What the hell?!” you say and push Helen off of you. “I’m sorry Suzy, but you were unconscious and I was resuscitating you.” Helen remarks. “I wasn’t breathing?” you ask. “Um, well it didn’t look like you were. I mean Diana choked you out before I got to her.” “Wait, I was just unconscious. (cough) You didn’t check to see if I was still breathing first? You just wrapped your (cough) lips around mine and started blowing into my mouth?” “I panicked and didn’t want to waste time checking! I didn’t want you to die!” Helen exclaims. Well you can’t really fault her for trying to save your life. “(Cough) Well thanks Helen. So where is Diana?” you ask rubbing your throat which still hurts like hell. “Over to your right.” Helen points out and sure enough you turn your head and see Diana laying face down on the floor. “I smacked her in the head with the bat when she was choking you. I dunno if I killed her. I didn’t check to see if she was still breathing either, I was too busy worrying about you. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” “Yeah, I’m fine.” You slowly starting to stand. It takes some effort, but Helen helps you up. Your whole body hurts. You stare at Diana’s body and see her chest briefly rise and fall, so it looks like she’s still alive, just unconscious. Though you’re severely tempted to put an end to that, but you’ve got a better idea. “You think Bobby would let me sacrifice Diana?” you ask which takes her a little by surprise. “Um…I don’t know. I mean after we explain what she did, I can’t see he’d have any objections. There are no rules against it.” Helen replies. “Good, it’s my fucking wedding day, I should at least get to pick…well shit looks like she’s waking up already.” You remark when you see Diana begin to stir. “Hey, guess what Diana, you’re going to be at my wedding after all. You’re going to be one of the most important people there in fact. Helen, do you have anything to tie this bitch up with?” you ask. “Uh, yeah I think I know where there are some handcuffs and there’s always duct tape laying around somewhere.” Helen replies. “Well go get them. I’ll keep an eye on Diana.” You say and pick up the nearby bat. While Helen goes running off, you standby staring at Diana who is giving you the stare of death, but is obviously still in lady pain. “You think I’m gonna just let you throw me on the altar and shove a knife in me like some fucking sheep? You gotta another thing coming blondie.” She remarks. “I don’t see as you have really a choice at this point.” You remark. “Bullshit, I still got a few choices. Like for instance, I could rush you right now, take that bat from you and bash your brains in with it.” “You think you still got the strength for that, let alone the speed?” “Maybe I’ll make it, maybe I won’t, but we’re gonna see…” Diana says and spits blood from her mouth. Just as you’re about to put out Diana’s lights again, you suddenly hear a very loud explosion which sounds like it’s coming from the left side of the house. You’ve been so busy with Diana, you’ve completely forgotten that Bobby’s been battling it out with Aaron elsewhere in the house. Your concerns are briefly for him instead. However, with this very brief distraction, Diana takes advantage and lunges at you and the pair of you are struggling with the damn bat again. Diana seems to be fueled by some sort of unnatural rage at this point, because she’s certainly more formidable than the first time you fought with her in the dining room, or maybe she’s not underestimating you like she did last time. In any case, you need an advantage, which is either going to be the bat you’re currently still struggling with, or the gun which you know is still somewhere on the stairwell. > You continue to struggle with Diana You don’t have time to go hunting for a gun when Diana’s already at your throat. Besides, if you shoot her, you risk killing her and you’ve still got that plan to sacrifice her ass. Diana’s grip and pull on the bat begins loosening your on grip on it. She’s going to have it soon, but since she’s so focused on the upper body, she’s not really paying attention to her lower defenses. You let go of the bat, which causes her to fall backwards slightly. Not enough to fall, but enough to put her a bit off balance and back up from you. Within this brief window of relief you follow up with your next attack and as hard as you can you kick her RIGHT IN THE PUSSY. Diana’s grip on the bat fails and you’re quick to retrieve it while she’s grabbing her girl parts in agony. “And I don’t dye my hair, I’m a fucking natural blonde, you fucking bitch!” you say and smash Diana’s nose in with the pommel of the bat. She falls to the floor bellowing in pain. Meanwhile Diana’s finally returned with the duct tape as well as a pair of handcuffs. “Shit, what happened?” Helen asks. “She attacked me again, what the fuck do you think happened? Come on let’s tie this bitch up, I just heard an explosion in the house and I want to go help Bobby.” You and Helen waste no time in handcuffing Diana’s hands behind her back and then duct taping her ankles together to the point where the bottom part of her legs look like a mummy. Of course when she won’t stop swearing and cursing at you both, you duct tape her mouth shut as well. “Okay, she should be secure. I’m going to grab that gun that’s probably somewhere still on the stairs and check on Bobby. Here, you take this and keep an eye on that bitch.” You say to Helen and hand her the bat. “Okay, please be careful Suzy.” Helen remarks and you’re off. On your way down the stairs you find the pistol that was dropped and take it. Then when you get to the ground floor you start cautiously making your way to the left wing of the house. You still haven’t seen anyone yet. The smell of gunpowder and smoke is in the air of this part of the house and peering in one of the rooms you see the results of what you assume is from grenades. The room is charred, blackened and wrecked. Whatever items were in this room have been completely destroyed and there is now a large hole allowing direct entry from the outside to the inside. You also notice small splotches of blood on the floor causing an easier to follow trail. Though who’s blood it is you have no idea. You can only hope it’s Aaron’s. “Shit, I really hope you’re alright Bobby.” You say to yourself and begin to follow the trail. You pass through a series of rooms to get to your destination. Some furnished, some empty. Eventually you get to a small room that has a door leading to stairs going down. You wonder if this is the dungeon that was mentioned to you in passing before. While you’re a little reluctant to go down there, this is where the blood trail leads. The smell emanating from that direction isn’t pleasant though it sounds silent down there. You slowly walk down the steps. The closer you get to the bottom, the smell becomes worse and when you finally get to the bottom there is no mistaking that this is indeed the dungeon, but it’s a complete wreck. There are body parts, gore and blood all over the place. A few of the cages you see are destroyed and at the farthest wall there is a large chunk taken out of it. Apparently there was more explosive fun down here. And sitting close to one of the more intact cages on a sturdy looking chair is Bobby looking down at the floor. Most of his clothing is covered blood and looks a bit dejected, but doesn’t look hurt so that’s good at least. “Bobby? Bobby are you okay?” you ask causing him to look up. “Oh yes, I’m fine…what happened to you?” Bobby says and starts getting up. You didn’t think about how you might look after coming back from your tussle with Diana. You’re probably sporting a few cuts and bruises of your own. “Oh, I had a knock down drag out with your sister Diana. Tried to kill me and Helen this time. We took care of it though.” “She dead?” “No, but I decided if I have to sacrifice someone on my wedding day, I’m requesting…no I’m demanding that it be her. So we’ve got her tied up for that purpose.” Bobby doesn’t respond in too much surprise at your request. “Well, I think after everything you’ve gone through, I think you deserve that right. It’s just as well anyway considering Aaron’s crazy ass just blew up all the prisoners.” Bobby says with a sigh. “What’s wrong? Didn’t we win and everything has worked out?” you ask. “Yeah, it did…it’s just…I dunno. I guess some of Aaron’s ranting just got to me that’s all.” “Well what did he say?” “Oh he just kept accusing me of not really being dedicated to Tiamat. I dunno, I know I shouldn’t pay any attention to it, but I can’t help but think he might have had a point. Maybe I am a little caught up in ritual…but still I THINK it’s important to revere Tiamat in a formal way! Just because I’m not completely running amok stealing army trucks and throwing explosives at shit doesn’t make me any less dedicated to glorious chaos! I mean…does it?” And that’s your cue to support the fragile male ego again. “Well of course it doesn’t my love. Your way is obviously a more intelligent approach to chaos. Just because something is chaotic, doesn’t mean it’s mindless. You’re playing the long game and attempting to build a dynasty. Instead of burning out quick, you’re plotting and planning labyrinthian schemes to eventually burn them all.” You say while looking into Bobby’s eyes and stroking the side of his face. “I’m so glad you understand me.” Bobby remarks and hugs you tightly. Bobby really does always feel completely better with just a few supportive words from you. Its sort of amazing really since you didn’t realize you had this sort of power over him, then again you two were never really in a situation like this before except the first time you met and that was when you counted on him to “rescue you.” That dynamic has clearly changed. You guess this is what his grandmother meant when she spoke to you in the dream. With that settled, Bobby and you make your way back to where Helen and Diana are. When you arrive, you see several other family members who finally came out of hiding. “Bobby you’re alive! I’m so glad to see you’re safe!” Helen remarks. Bobby just nods acknowledging Helen, but then turns his attention to everyone as a group. “Helen, you go check on the kids, if you haven’t already and YOU four, I’m gonna have another long talk with, but we’re going to do that later. Right now, Brandon, Ronald you grab Diana and throw her in one of those cells in the dungeon. There’s a couple of good ones still left. Afterwards, all of you are going to help me clean up this place…shit there is so much to do.” Bobby tells you not to worry about doing anything as you did enough just having to deal with Diana and he wants you to just rest up for tomorrow. You offer to help, but he really won’t hear of it. You don’t press the issue since hey if he doesn’t want you doing any work, you’re not going to argue about that. Before you leave he tells you that he’s got a spare gun in his clothing drawer just in case of an emergency. Before you head to your room, you grab a quick meal since you realize you didn’t really eat yesterday. By the time you get to your room, you’re really glad you didn’t have to help Bobby, because you’re really starting to feel the aches and pain all over your body. You take another shower, which helps a little. You spend the remainder of the day and night in the bedroom just resting. You hear noise occasionally from downstairs. At one point you hear the sound of vehicles outside and looking out the window you see someone driving the damaged army truck in front of where Aaron crashed through the gate as a temporary barrier you guess. Eventually you hear a knock on the door. You ask who it is and it’s Helen. You tell her to come in. “Hey Suzy, I just came in to check on you. Are you feeling okay?” Helen asks. “Well my body hurts all over, but other than that, I’m fine. You?” You ask. “Oh, I’m a little sore too, but nothing to worry about.” “Hm, so how’s the clean up going?” “Oh, I suspect that will be going on through the night.” “Well I guess Bobby won’t be coming to bed tonight then.” You remark. Then Helen walks towards the bed closer and asks: “Did…did you want me to get into bed with you? I mean I know it’s not the same but...” You’re almost at a loss for words. “Excuse me? I just meant he won’t be coming to bed, I wasn’t even implying anything sexual, and why are you offering to get into bed with me?! Y’know Helen, you’ve been putting out some strange signals towards me a couple times these past few days and at this point I’m starting to think you’re attracted to me…” Helen’s face turns a little pale and she attempts to turn to run away. “Helen, stop! I wanna know what’s going on in that head of yours, so come back.” You demand and sit up as Helen slowly walks back over. “I’m…sorry Suzy…I just thought…I dunno…you liked me…” Helen says looking down. “I do like you, but…wait, so you don’t love Bobby anymore?” you ask. “I do…but I feel like we’ve been so close these past two days, I think I’m starting to fall for you too. I mean when our lips were touching I felt a closer connection to you than I ever had before.” “You were giving me mouth to mouth resuscitation!” you shout. “But you embraced me in your arms! You even slipped your tongue in my mouth and when you opened your eyes you didn’t even let go immediately…” Helen points out. “I…I… was out of it! I thought you were Bobby!” you exclaim. “Bobby kisses like me?” Helen asks. “No, you tasted sweeter…I mean…fuck…Gah! Look I thought you were Bobby okay?” “Okay…I’m sorry Suzy. I didn’t mean to offend you.” “I’m not offended, this is just…weird though. I’m not a lesbian, not to mention I’m going to marry your brother. (Sigh) Look Helen, I’m a little tired to deal with this right now. I think we might have to address this in more detail tomorrow.” “But the wedding is tomorrow.” “Well, I guess that will be one more thing to deal with then, so until then good night. And before you even ask, no I won’t tell Bobby about this. I’m sure he’s got enough on his mind.” You say. “Thank you Suzy.” Helen says and then slowly walks out of your room. After she leaves you rub your face in disbelief of how this day has ended. This whole week has felt so random that you feel like you’re in one of those choose your own adventure books, you can’t even imagine how tomorrow is going to go. The only upside is unless this is some really elaborate seduction plot, Helen’s not planning to kill you like you thought she might be. Then again, who the hell ever knows in this house? As you start to fall asleep, you can imagine Grandma Morningstar is going to have a field day with this one. > Next day… FRIDAY "And now Suzy, having beaten the chicken soup out of all her other opponents this week, will take this final challenge by herself! Will she be able to do it ladies and gentlemen? Will she be able to impress Misty at last? We’ll find out today! Let’s give our small town girl some encouragement for her task at hand!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A huge plate of tacos, fish tacos to be precise. The lack of subtlety is hardly surprising at this point. You double face palm before exhaling and looking up. “Really?” you ask in disbelief. “This is the last task Suzy…” the disembodied announcer’s voice whispers. “I don’t give a shit, the concept of fish tacos is fucking disgusting for one thing and for another…” Suddenly Bobby’s grandmother appears as she has been doing in your dreams. “See? Told you we should’ve just went with traditional beef. Anyway I think the point was made.” Bobby’s grandmother cackles and with a wave of her cane, you’re back in that blasted wasteland you were in last time. “And what point would that be? And am I meeting this Misty yet or what?” “No, you’re not meeting Misty yet, and as for the point I think we both know what point that was.” “Yeah and I’m not a lesbian.” You say. “Who said you were? It’s pretty clear you love the cock, but you’re in some serious denial if you’re standing here claiming that you’re not into girls as well. It’s okay, really. There are no lines, we’re all here to enjoy each other’s bodies.” “I’m not!” you protest. “Oh come on Suzy, you know deep down you’re curious. Some of that three way porn on your computer involves the two girls and a guy configuration. I’d say beyond curious at this point. We both know you find Helen cute because you’re a narcissist at heart and she reminds you of yourself in some ways. Nothing like self love.” “Well she does have pretty eyes… but I’m still not interested. She’s a girl and I just don’t swing that way.” you say. “Bullshit, are you seriously saying you wouldn’t like to put a strap on and do my grand daughter from behind? Pull her hair and make her say your name and then after you were done fucking her, you’d shove her face in your pussy until she licked it clean and you climaxed in her mouth?” You’re not sure what’s more disturbing. A dead old lady giving graphic descriptions of how you’d fuck her grand daughter, or the fact that it’s sort of turning you on a bit. You’re a little at loss for words. “Hey…hey two girls and one guy isn’t lesbian porn.” You say fumbling with a partial defense. “Oh? I see. So it’s not gay if it’s a three-way? Well whatever you have to tell yourself I suppose. Still, if you truly feel that way I’m wondering if you’d be open to…nah…” “What?” you ask wondering where she’s going with this. “Hah! You ARE curious!” Grandma Morningstar cackles. “I’m not! I’m just wondering what you were going to drone on about!” “Okay then here it is, besides being really into getting blowjobs, Bobby’s also really into girl on girl stuff. Bobby probably wouldn’t turn down the idea of having a second wife which would be Helen in this instance. This wouldn’t have worked before with Diana, because of how much you two hated each other. However, with Helen, I think this would be more workable…” Grandma Morningstar says. “What? He’s never told me this! He’s never even gave any indication!” you say. “Well of course he hasn’t, as I told you before he’s a bit too much a gentleman to suggest it and I’m fairly certain he’s never even felt any romantic feelings towards Helen either. However I know for certain if you approached him with the idea, that he damn sure wouldn’t be against it.” “Well I’D be fucking against it!” you say. “Wait, so you’re fine with murdering someone on your wedding day, but you’re against marrying two people. You’re fine with being associated with a bunch of murderers that practice incest, but you’re against having sex with another girl even one you find attractive even if you don’t want to admit it. Interesting set of moral values you’ve got there blondie.” “But I’m marrying into YOUR family! Isn’t that a little hypocritical to criticize me when you’ve probably engaged in all manner of illegal and unnatural acts yourself?” “Not at all. My point is I didn’t really have the same arbitrary limits you place on yourself. I’m just pointing out your odd inconsistencies. I suppose it’s not really your fault. You can’t help the puritanical way you were raised.” You’re getting a little agitated and getting tired of insane troll logic at this point. “Look, if all you’re going to do is insult me, I think I’d like to wake up now.” You say. “You will soon, in any case I’m just trying to help YOU out!” “How is sharing Bobby helping me out?” “Sheesh, first you still can’t figure out who Misty is, now this? You really are slow on the uptake ain’t ya blondie? You’re lucky you’re pretty.” Bobby’s grandmother asks and then taps you in the forehead with her hand. “Ow! Stop!” you say and back away. “Look, I’m just going to end with this sagely wisdom. If you really want to live in a harmonious household, I suggest you open your mind a little. You’ve already made a few steps in the right direction; you might as well go all the way. I mean who the hell is going to be judging you? Nobody important that’s for sure. Besides, I’m sure with a little forethought you can think of the benefits of such an arrangement and turn it into an advantage. Well, that’s what I think. Anyway, congrats on your wedding and you’ve got my blessing. Good luck!” Good luck? Somehow that doesn’t sound reassuring. You’re about to ask Bobby’s grandmother what she exactly means by that, but then she waves that damn cane again and you’re enveloped the blackness and then you wake up. “Gah, fucking bitch.” You say groggily. “Oh...I’m sorry for waking you…I just wanted to apologize for yesterday and give you this to see if it fits, but I understand if you don’t want me here…” a familiar female voice remarks. You look around the room and see Helen coming in carrying some red clothing. “Huh? No, not you…wait what are you doing in here anyway? Did Bobby spend all night working on the house?” you ask “I’m bringing in your wedding dress and yes, Bobby has been working on the house for the most part. Trying to patch up the big hole in the house, cleaning up the dungeon, blocking the front gate. He had to bury our brother Jordan as well. I don’t believe he’s actually slept yet.” “Oh yeah, forgot that that asshole killed one of your siblings. I didn’t know him that well, but sorry for your loss.” You remark. “Thank you, but I suppose we’re all just puppets in Tiamat’s glourious chaos, so we all need to just move on right? We have to accept that some things just will never be…anyway could you see if this fits?” Helen asks holding up the red clothing which now looks a lot like lingerie. “Wait, that’s the wedding dress? It looks like slutty underwear from Hot Secret.” You answer and get out of bed. Helen’s face looks a bit offended by that statement. “My grandmother wore this on her wedding day! She had this dress made of the finest silk, not whatever cheap material they use in North Tiwanaland or some place! THIS is a one of a kind article of clothing! It’s not something you’d find in some edgy teenager hang out!” Helen remarks. “Okay! Geez. I’m not trying to insult the dress or your grandmother. It’s just…well I thought I’d be wearing something a little more… substantial. But seeing as your family isn’t exactly conventional and when in Rome…I guess I better try it on. Um, you washed it right?” “Of course. Hand washed it myself. Can’t risk putting it in a machine.” Helen says and hands it to you. “Red fishnets…red high heels…” you say. “Yes. Those shoes were also special made with the finest…” “Leather. Yes, I can imagine. Let me guess the fishnets were made with the finest silk as well.” “Well of course, what else would it be?” “What else indeed. Okay, well I guess I’m going in the bathroom to change.” “I understand. I’m still sorry about making you uncomfortable about my unwanted advances.” Helen says. Before you enter the bathroom, you start to wonder… “Helen, why did you approach me? Or rather I know why, but you were attracted to Bobby long before you met me. You obviously have the inner strength to make the first move as it were.” “Well, that was a little different for several reasons. I mean Diana would’ve killed me had I actually made a move on Bobby! With you, I just…I dunno. The moment felt right? And it still wasn’t easy. Of course I misread signals. Sorry.” Helen remarks meekly. And there it is, Helen’s subservience in action. Even with Diana gone, Helen’s mindset hasn’t changed much. You’re just a “nicer” replacement to Diana. You’re fairly certain now that Helen means no harm to you, if indeed she ever really did. So this is it, you’ll marry Bobby, have children by him and live happily ever as queen in this twisted family. Helen as usual will play the second fiddle content with her lot in life. As strange as that seems all relatively good for you, you still can’t help but think Helen doesn’t deserve better in some way. She did directly save your life after all. It makes you start to ponder Grandma Morningstar’s words of opening one’s mind to make way for new possibilities… > You continue on your path And you silently dismiss that idea immediately! Grandma Morningstar may or may not have been right about your “flexible” sexuality, but even if she was, you are still not fucking Helen just because you feel sorry for her or on some whim! Besides, you’re about to marry Bobby and you made a damn commitment. You can’t just be fucking his sister, hours before the wedding. Maybe nobody else in this family has any much sense of “social mores” but that’s just wrong as far as your concerned. And even if Bobby WAS okay with it, you’re already making enough sacrifices for him and giving in to his possible secret desires for a harem aren’t part of that plan. You’re the only one and that’s that. You don’t fucking share. You enter the bathroom and go through your usual routine of showering and such. Afterwards you finally get around putting on the “wedding dress.” The first thing you do is look at the dress before putting it on and wondering if it’s going to be bigger in the chest area. While you’re not lacking in that region, you’ve met Bobby’s grandmother (in dream form anyway) and she’s got at least another couple cup sizes on you. In fact her body type back in her prime was more of an old school 1950s pinup girl hourglass figure than your own “petite” size. The funny thing is, as soon as you put it on, it seems to fit perfectly to your own body. The material isn’t any sort of spandex or stretchy material, it’s silk like Helen said, but given Bobby’s family’s strangeness, you have to wonder if it’s…magical? “Magical underwear.” You scoff; shaking your head in half disbelief you’re even considering it. Not surprisingly the stockings AND the shoes fit you perfectly as well. Yeah, Grandma Morningstar probably had all this stuff weaved by a giant magical spider voodoo priest or some shit because it doesn’t make sense that any of this stuff would fit you so well. Regardless of its origins, you do feel pretty comfortable despite looking like a Hollywood streetwalker. The heels don’t even hurt your feet, though you’re still a little unsteady on them due to not being used to wearing such things. Let alone these being stilettos. The last time you wore heels was when Uncle Ed made you wear stripperiffic clothing with the intent to lure Bobby and his dad into the woods where he could kill them. While everything turned out for the best because you met Bobby that fateful night, the part with Uncle Ed still gives you the shivers just thinking about it. You look at yourself in the mirror one more time, before leaving the bathroom. “Well Suzy, you might look like a whore in this thing, but at least you look like a high priced one.” You say to yourself. When you exit the bathroom Helen stands up and looks at you. “Oh my. You’re…you’re…so beautiful looking. I knew it would fit you perfectly.” Helen gushes. “Yeah I am pretty hot looking in this get up. Shit, still can’t balance on these heels though.” You say. “Hmm, well maybe you can dispense with those. I mean I’d hate for you to fall down the stairs when we go show everyone how you look. Maybe we should take some pictures!” Helen says approaching you. “What? I thought I was just putting it on as a test drive as it were. While I won’t deny this stuff feels pretty comfortable on my skin that I don’t mind wearing it, I sort of don’t want to be walking around the house with it on until show time. Besides everyone can see how awesomely sexy I am then.” “I think they should see you now. It’ll raise the spirits around here seeing you dressed like this.” Helen remarks as she begins touching your arm. “Well it’ll raise something with the males around here when they see me of course. Not sure about the ladies of this house, though you’re getting a little too close there Helen.” “Oh please? At least go show Bobby. I know he’d like to see you.” Helen says ignoring your previous remark about invading your personal space. “I’m sure he’s really busy right now, besides isn’t it bad luck for me to see him right before the wedding?” “Oh you’re thinking of those silly traditions for other weddings. That’s not the case here. Come on I’ll take you to him.” Helen says and at this point is pulling on your hands almost causing you fall. “Hey! I nearly fell! I told you already that you’re too damn close!” you snap. Helen immediately backs away and looks down submissively. “I’m sorry Suzy. I didn’t mean to violate your personal space.” “(Sigh) It’s fine Helen…just calm down a bit and let me at least take these shoes off first before I go heading downstairs.” As you sit down and start taking your shoes off, you and Helen start to hear noise from outside. The both of you go over to the window to take a peek. You and Helen see several figures crawling under the truck blocking the broken front gate or trying to climb the fence. The ones that have gotten in are loping in a wild jerky like motion. They’re also screaming, howling and making inhuman sounds. From your vantage point they LOOK human, but they’re certainly not acting like it. Then the door swings open causing both you and Helen to jump a bit. It’s Veronica with a gun in hand. “What the hell are you two doing in here, dyking it out? Don’t you know we’re being attacked by zombies?” Veronica exclaims. “I was trying on my wedding dress, thank you very much and we only just saw the freaks outside, so they are zombies?” you say. “Yeah, I mean…I dunno if they are. Maybe they’re just rabid humans or something, but they’re gnashing their teeth, moaning and coming at us like something out of a horror movie. We need all the help we can get to repel these things!” “We’ll be ready in a moment.” You say. “Well hurry up or else there isn’t going to be a wedding. We’re having a hard time trying to…” A loud crashing noise followed by gunfire is heard from downstairs. “Shit! That sounded close! I gotta go!” Veronica shouts and you hear her run off. Well at least it looks like Bobby’s finally lit a fire under his relative’s asses to pull their weight around here. “(Sigh) Fucking zombies. Of course this day HAD to get worse…” you say shaking your head. “Suzy, we need to hurry to go help Bobby.” Helen says pointing out the obvious. “Yeah, hold on let me just get something.” You go to Bobby’s clothing drawer to get the spare gun he mentioned yesterday. “Hey, what about me?” Helen asks. “Well, just grab a blunt object! Unplug that desk lamp and use that to bash those freaks’ heads in I guess.” “Suzy, I don’t really want to argue, but do you even know how to use a gun properly? Maybe you should give me the gun and you just stay behind me.” “What? I’m not giving you the gun! And for your information my older brother Ben DID show me how to shoot a gun…a few times.” “A few times…Suzy, I was taught to fire a gun, aim and everything else before I was ten. I’m just saying in a situation like this, it might be best if I have the gun, I’m sure when we get to the others, Bobby will give you another one of his.” Helen remarks. “Yeah and in the mean time I’m fucking defenseless.” “You won’t be! I’ll protect you and I think you can count on that.” Helen says. Helen’s insistence on wanting the gun is making you even more paranoid in this already fucked up situation. In the back of your mind you can’t help but think she’s going to shoot you even though the pair of you are supposed to be cool with each other. Of course it’s possible she’d just feel safer with the gun in her hand. You don’t actually know if she’s a better shot than you, though you aren’t exactly a highly skilled sharp shooter. Especially after failing to hit Diana during your scuffle yesterday. > You hand the gun to Helen You’re making a big leap in faith here… You look at Helen and the gun, then with a deep exhale you slowly hand it to her. Helen takes the pistol and checks it before addressing you. “You still don’t trust me do you?” Helen says looking a little hurt. “I gave you the gun didn’t I? Come on let’s go deal with these zombies, or whatever they are before they eat us or something.” “Um, aren’t you going to change your clothing?” Helen asks. “Huh? Oh.” You say not even realizing you were still dressed the way you were. “No, it’s my fucking wedding day, but I will be taking this.” You say and then unplug the small desk lamp you mentioned earlier to Helen and take it as a makeshift weapon. “Um, okay then.” Helen remarks and the pair of you are out the door with her taking the lead. The pair of you head through the corridor and down the stairs both not making many comments at this point. Might be due to the situation being more than a little tense and its only getting more so as the gunfire, yelling and guttural noises are getting louder as you approach the center of the fighting. As you approach yet another door, suddenly two of the creatures burst through it. The sight and surprise cause the both of you to scream, but Helen manages to keep her cool long enough to shoot the first creature directly in the head, dropping it immediately. The second one however tackles Helen to the floor. She drops her pistol and struggles with the creature while calling for you to help. You don’t even bother scrambling for the gun yourself; you just smash the side of the thing’s head with the lamp you already have in hand, which is enough to cause it roll off of Helen, but not enough to kill it. With a massive head wound the thing starts to move again, continuing to make all sorts of horrible guttural noises. Helen however has retaken possession of the gun again and fires two more shots into the thing’s face. It ceases moving and slumps lifelessly to the floor. “Shit, that was intense.” You say. “Yeah, thanks for getting that thing off me.” Helen remarks. “No problem. Guess it was a good idea handing you the gun afterall. You are a much better shot. I probably would’ve missed and dropped the damn gun as soon as those zombies came running through the door.” “Y’know these things aren’t really rotten looking or anything. Maybe they aren’t undead.” Helen says. “Well I still don’t want to get killed and eaten by some virus infected asshole. Come on, this isn’t over yet.” You say and help Helen up. By the time you get to Bobby and the rest of the family’s location, they’ve managed to wipe out most of the things and you and Helen don’t have much to do. Still, you wonder about their origin. Some sort of sickness perhaps? Maybe the government was fucking around with a secret weapon like they tend to do and it got out of hand. It would explain why there was a drastic rise in violence even before you left town and why the National Guard showed up later. It isn’t until after all the mad attackers are killed that Bobby manages to address you directly. He’s incredibly tired looking, the rest of his family looks pretty tired too, but he looks like he’s about to collapse. “Are you okay?! They didn’t bite you did they?” Bobby asks, stumbling a bit from exhaustion. “No, I’m fine. We both are.” You reply. “Suzy saved my life.” Helen remarks. “Well, I think we both saved each other more than enough times this week.” You say which causes a bit of a happiness of Helen’s face. “I’m just glad the both of you are okay. I have to ask though, what’s with your clothing?” Bobby asks. “Oh yeah, I guess Veronica didn’t tell you, I was trying on the wedding dress when all this shit went down. Speaking of which let’s get this wedding started! I’m anxious to get married!” you say and go up to Bobby giving him a kiss. Now you’ve caught everyone off guard. One moment they’re fighting for their lives, the next they’re attending a wedding. “Now?” Bobby asks. “We just won a great victory and I’m in my wedding dress. What better time than now?” you ask. “Well I suppose you have a point.” Bobby says with a smile. “Good! I’m ready to become part of this family.” You say. Bobby looks around at the rest of his family. “Well, you heard my soon to be wife! Let’s get this started! Helen go get the kids, Brandon, Ronald, go grab Diana and the rest of you do a quick sweep of the house just to make sure we got all those bastards. Let’s go!” Bobby orders. Everyone complies and soon you and Bobby are left by yourselves. Bobby takes a seat to briefly rest. He yawns several times in a row and is struggling to stay awake, but you can tell your enthusiasm for the wedding has energized him a bit. You decide to keep the energy going by sitting on his lap and making a fuss. “Hey, it’s not time for the honeymoon yet.” Bobby remarks with a brief chuckle. “Oh it’s always times for the honeymoon with you.” You say. “Damn, I wish I wasn’t so tired…hope I don’t stumble over the joining passage when I’m marrying us.” Bobby remarks as he rubs your legs. “Wait, isn’t someone else doing that?” “Huh? No, I’m doing it. I mean I’m the high priest here. Technically it could just be me and you here.” “What? That’s it? We could’ve done that a long time ago!” “Well, like I’ve told you before, I just wanted it to be perfect.” You wrap your arms around Bobby and lean your body against him. “Bobby, just being with you, is enough perfection for me. Besides, isn’t the carnage surrounding us true perfection in the eyes of Tiamat’s chaotic glory or something?” you ask. Bobby looks around at the nearby mess of broken furniture and the couple bodies laying on the floor and smiles. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” He says and then pauses. “You know I’ve been thinking. I’ll take care of Diana personally; you don’t need to worry about her anymore. You don’t need to go through some sacrifice ritual just to prove yourself…I know you love me and that you’re one of us now. No need to dirty your hands on her.” “That’s sweet and I’m really glad you feel that way. But I’ll take the knife anyway, I’ve got something special in mind.” You say. “Oh? Like what?” “Oh, you’ll see.” You say with a smile. A few more moments pass as you wait for everyone to return. In the meantime you let Bobby rest a bit by closing his eyes. Veronica and Denise return first, then Helen with all the children. Finally Brandon and Ronald arrive gripping Diana by each arm. Predictably she’s swearing up a storm and accusing everyone of being against her. It wakes Bobby up from his brief nap. “Oh? Everyone here? Good. Let’s get this started. (Yawn) Sorry, I’m so damn tired…” “Bobby, you don’t need to stand up for this, just keep resting in your chair and I’ll just be right here on your lap. I’m sure that’s acceptable to everyone right?” you ask. Nobody has any real objections to this, well except Diana of course. “Bobby! You’re making a fucking mistake! I’M your soul mate! I’M the one supposed to marry you! You’re betraying Tiamat and everything we hold dear!” she screams. Ignoring Diana, Bobby recites what you guess is a passage from whatever holy book of Tiamat he got it from and when the time comes, you accept your place as his wife. Then the both of you kiss like you’ve done so many times before, though this time it’s different. Most of Bobby’s family claps if they are able. You now feel like you belong here. “Here. I’ve been carrying this in my pocket the whole day, nearly forgot it was there.” Bobby remarks and hands you a ring with a sizable red diamond in the center and smaller black inlayed around it. It’s definitely beautiful and when you try it on, you find that it fits perfectly. Diana’s eyes would burn through you if they could. “You…you gave her grandma’s ring?! YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! You dishonor that woman! I hope grandma’s spirit comes back and rapes the pair of you with a fucking broom handle!” Diana shouts. At this point Bobby calmly pulls out a knife and hands it to you. “Did you still want the honors?” Bobby asks. You take the knife and look over at Helen, who is trying her best to look supportive. Well, you know she IS supportive, but you also know that this isn’t really what she wants. Still, maybe there is a way to make things just a little better for her. “Helen, you and I have been through a lot this week and in this week I’ve come to see you as the sister I never had. Now that I’m officially part of this family, we ARE sisters. I know this is my day, but I feel like I should at least share some of my fortune with you. So here you go. Time to finally put all those years of bullying to rest.” You say and hand Helen the knife. Helen is shocked by your gesture. Several other family members are as well. Diana however is still livid. “Oh by Tiamat’s Chaotic Cunt…I’m not believing this…fine. I’ve been a bullying bitch to you, I won’t deny that, is that what you want to hear? But if you REALLY love Bobby as much as I KNOW you do, you’ll take that knife and stab the shit out of that bitch over there before you stab me, because if you don’t you’re just going to play second fiddle to blondie for the rest of your life and NEVER get Bobby. And you’ll just be loser like you alw…UGH!” Diana’s words are interrupted when Helen rushes to her and stabs her in the chest. “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! YOU FUCKING BITCH! YOU WERE ALWAYS IN THE FUCKING WAY! JUST FUCKING DIE! DIE! JUST DIE ALREADY! I FUCKING HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! DIE!” Helen screams alternating between laughing and crying while stabbing Diana. Brandon and Ronald let go of Diana and everyone just watches Helen’s meltdown. When it’s all said and done, Helen is on top of her sister’s bloody body and the floor covered in blood. “I…always…(pant)…why? Why couldn’t you (sob) have…just been nice…(sob) just once? Nice…like…Suzy.” Helen says in a quivering voice and looks at you. At this point you get up and walk over to Helen. You even kneel down in the blood next to her. She drops the knife and goes to hug you and completely falls apart in your arms. “Shhh, it’s okay Helen…it’s okay. It’s over now…” you say. Helen looks at you and nods silently. While she sniffles and tries to compose herself, you address everyone who are probably starting to form their own ideas about what Diana might’ve been babbling about. Even Bobby is alert again. “Okay folks, I’m sure we need to clean up around here after this recent attack and I also imagine that Bobby could use some rest, so let’s help him out and get to it!” you say. Clean up goes relatively fast. Around the house at least since that’s your primary concern. You go for the quick dirty approach of just getting all the dead bodies in one pile outside. You briefly think about burning them, but Bobby says that might attract attention and doing it tomorrow when everyone is more awake enough to defend this place properly is a better idea. Broken windows and the front door are barricaded with furniture for the night. Somewhere just after midnight everyone is ready to crash. Bobby, who has been practically sleep walking by this point just tells everyone to sleep with a weapon tonight and you can all just roll the dice without a night watch tonight. Nobody argues. You help Bobby upstairs and the pair of you collapse on the bed. You won’t be celebrating your honeymoon tonight, but at least you’ll be sleeping together. You cuddle up to Bobby who is fast asleep at this point and head into dreamland yourself, fully expecting Grandma Morningstar to fuck with you in some way as usual. > Next day… SATURDAY "Suzy! You’ve won! You’ve truly overcome all odds! You have not only survived the various uncertain events of this week, but you’ve also thrived! Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give our small town girl some applause and respect for she truly is worthy of it!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A broomstick. It’s just a plain wooden broomstick, nothing more, nothing less. “Nice. I’m guessing you were listening to Diana’s rant earlier.” You say unemotionally. No sooner have you said that, when everything disappears and you’re facing Grandma Morningstar in the blasted wasteland again. “Hey at least it wasn’t a plate of tacos this time. Guess you really are deeply repressed.” Grandma Morningstar says. “Whatever. Am I finally done with all this nonsense? Am I finally meeting this Misty?” you say. “You figure out who it is yet?” “Yeah and I can’t believe I didn’t catch it before. Misty…MISS T…Tiamat.” You answer. “Yay! Your pretty little blonde head finally got it! And no you don’t get to meet her.” “What? After all this build up? Seems pretty anti-climatic.” “Yeah, well besides her being busy, the jury’s still out on you.” “But…didn’t I win? I’m part of the family now.” “Yes, yes, technically you won, I suppose, but the lot you’re with are practically just sheep to be lead around by the nose by Bobby so they’ll accept anything he says and Bobby’s in love so of course he’s fine with whatever you do as long as you’re petting his ego and sucking his dick. However, it wasn’t like you killed Diana yourself.” “So? I let Helen do it. I think it was pretty therapeutic for her.” “Hmm, and do you think Helen is going to be on your side in the long run knowing how she feels about not just Bobby, but you as well? You’re too soft hearted, but marrying her and Bobby might’ve better solved the potential problems you may have with Helen in the future. However you didn’t do that and while you probably appeased her feelings in the short term, I still say problems are going to crop up in the future with her. You don’t think she won’t just snap one day or silently plot against you?” “Maybe, but I’d say that’s unlikely.” Grandma Morningstar snorts. “And how can you be so sure?” “I’m not, but isn’t that what chaos is all about? The risk on a possible outcome no matter how small? I mean I’m sure the pragmatic thing to do would be to kill Helen, but I don’t really see why I should or need to. In fact a little kindness is already going a long way with her and will most likely do so in the foreseeable future. Besides, this whole week has taught me a little something about myself.” “Oh? And what’s that?” Grandma Morningstar asks. “I’m fucked up.” You say. “Well I could’ve told you that.” Grandma Morningstar cackles. “No what I mean is, there is a dark place within me. I know that now. I even feel it sometimes. Why else would I willingly marry a man in a murderous cult? I mean obviously I’ve got some serious mental issues going on in my head that I’ve only managed to not act on and outright block out mainly because I’ve been doing next to nothing in life. Until recently that is. I’ve been realizing that the more fucked up things get around me, the easier it would be for me to just say fuck it too and go full retard on the dark side and the thing is, I’d probably be fairly decent at it. Probably even better than most of the current family here.” Grandma Morningstar listens intently wondering where you’re going with this. “But I’m not going to do that, because I also still have a sense of decency. I see no reason to just go engaging in murder, rape and all the rest of that shit just because I’m…evil? I mean am I evil? I don’t know. Probably to most I would be. Probably to you, I’m not evil enough, but to me I’m just me. And THAT’S all I have to worry about. My own fucking code. So, if I want to show kindness to Helen because a small part of me feels genuine pity for her, then so be it. And by the same token, if I suddenly feel the need to blow her brains out because I feel she’s a risk, well we’ll just have to see what happens in the future.” Grandma Morningstar leans on her cane and remains silent staring at you, then a creepy smiles spreads across her face. “Well, I guess we will blondie. I guess we will. I suppose Tiamat’s chaos can be as kind as it can be cruel. Who is to say what is right? Well anyway, see you around blondie, I think you’ll be alright.” Grandma Morningstar waves goodbye to you, disappears and everything around you gets dark. And you wake up. You turn your head to the right and see Bobby still with you partially under the blankets. He puts down a book he was reading. “Hey, it’s about time you got up. You look a little frazzled. Bad dream?” Bobby asks. “Eh…better than others I’ve had this week. Probably should talk about at some point later, but I’m surprised to see you here. I figured you were going to going to get up early to work on the compound’s defenses.” You say. “I didn’t sleep for practically a day remember? Anyway, I did get up earlier and gave everyone their orders of what I want worked on then I told everyone not to disturb me unless cannibals or more asshole family members are trying to wreck the place. So far haven’t had any trouble. Glad to see I don’t have to hover around them constantly.” Bobby remarks. As Bobby brings you closer to him by putting his arm around you, and he surprises you with his next words. “So…Helen was in love with me huh?” he says. “…yeah…she was. She probably still is.” You say. “(Sigh) Shit. You don’t think this will be a problem do you?” Bobby says. “Why would it be? You don’t have the same feelings for her do you?” you ask. “No, never thought about her in that way. Didn’t know she felt that way about me until Diana opened her mouth yesterday. Guess it’s sort of obvious in retrospect. I was just more concerned about you though. I don’t want you fearing for plots against your life. I mean I can go talk to her…” “Don’t worry about it. I’ve discussed all this with Helen on more than one occasion this week. We’ve worked it out.” You say. While this reassures Bobby you start to wonder about a few of the things you spoke to his grandmother about. “Bobby?” you ask. “Yes?” “Are you disappointed that I didn’t kill Diana?” “What? What’s brought this on? I told you that didn’t need to kill Diana.” Yeah, but it seemed so important to you before and it doesn’t have to be just Diana, I mean are you disappointed that I haven’t killed…anyone? I mean before this week went all to hell, I was supposed to sacrifice one of your captives that Aaron blew up.” Bobby’s arm squeezes around you a little tighter as if to reassure you. “Suzy, I’ve had a lot of things to think about this week. I had all these grand plans of how this week was going to go and due to unforeseen events some of those plans went to shit. Such is the way of chaos and such is the will of Tiamat. Maybe all of this was her way of showing me that. But getting back to you, I had time to think hard about our relationship and why I fell in love with you in the first place. Your innocence.” Bobby remarks. “My virginity?” you say. “Ha ha! Well that might’ve been part of it, but I was referring more about the fact that well you hadn’t grown up in the same sort of environment I did. That you hadn’t killed anyone.” “Are you saying the fact that I hadn’t murdered anyone made you more drawn to me?” “Yes initially. You have to remember Suzy, as fucked up as YOU think your family were, you were the closest link to normal for me and I guess that was sort of a turn on. Of course in time when our relationship grew into love, I wanted even more to…corrupt you? I guess that might be the right word. I wanted you to be more like me, more like my family.” “But…?” “But, like I said a lot of shit happened this week. I tried to make plans that didn’t work out the way I expected which made me realize that maybe I shouldn’t have been making so many plans, and then I came to the conclusion that maybe I shouldn’t be trying so hard to change you either. I should just go more with the flow and whatever happens, happens. If you never sacrifice someone in Tiamat’s honor, that’s fine. Hell, if you never even accept her glorious chaos, that’s fine too. I love you for who you are now, that’s good enough for me and always will be.” Bobby’s words make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. You might not be that “good girl” that once hid from the world in basement anymore, but apparently in Bobby’s eyes, you’re still “his good girl.” You begin to initiate closer intimacy and then that’s when a flash of bright light briefly covers the windows and a loud noise is heard in the distance. “Shit what the hell was that?” Bobby asks sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “I dunno, I’m glad we weren’t looking directly at that flash though.” You remark rubbing your eyes too. “Wait a minute…I think I know…” Bobby says and gets up. He walks over to the window and you follow close behind. In the distance to the west, you see the remnants of a mushroom cloud. Probably landed on Security City or near it. You can only guess it probably wasn’t a big one, but you’re still a little concerned if you’re in some sort of fallout radius. “So…they finally went and did it.” You say. “Looks like. (Sigh) Shit.” Bobby says. “What’s wrong? I thought we were prepared for this sort of thing.” “Oh we are. I’m not even worried about that, it’s just I wanted to spend the day relaxing with you. Now? Well I think you know I’m going to have to go and direct everyone. Oh to hell with it, the apocalypse isn’t going anywhere. Let’s go back to what we were doing.” “Works for me.” You agree. Eventually you will have to deal with this new world and whatever its going to throw at you, but for now you and Bobby allow yourselves to enjoy yourselves after this chaotic week. > … Calm in the Storm of Chaos The Future… “Look Nergal, I know Emberville is miles away, but ever since those dumb ass rednecks have been aggressively trying to move in on our territory, we can’t trade with them or even New Security anymore in the near future. So get these crates of berries and apples over there as quick as you can and get us some medical supplies.” You say to Nergal having to strain your neck just to look up at him a bit. Nergal is an imposing figure to be sure. He’s the largest member of the family, but he’ll always be your “baby” as far as you’re concerned. “But why do I have to do this? I want to go help Anu and Dad fight those trailer trash fuckers.” Nergal replies. “Don’t argue son. Besides, Aiden and Nadia are going with you. I thought you liked hanging out with them.” “Well they’re good in a fire fight sure, but…I dunno I always feel like they’re telepathic talking about me inside each others’ heads. They’re always making odd laughter about some private joke that only they know.” “Well that’s probably because they are, but trust me, you know deep down they’ll come through for you. Right?” you say asking Aiden and Nadia. The two twins look at each other. “Of…” Aiden says. “course…” Nadia says. “Aunt Suzy.” They both say in unison with a smile. You’ve gotten used to a lot of odd things since marrying Bobby, but these two sibling never fail to creep you out to a minor degree. You go back to address Nergal. “Now get a move on, you know those mutants really like their fruit…oh and DON’T waste any of it on some three legged hooker like before. You remember what happened last time, you had to use up some of the medical supplies just curing yourself of whatever the hell that… thing was carrying…ugh. You’re lucky your cock didn’t turn green and fall off.” “Aw mom…” Nergal says looking a bit embarrassed. “Don’t aw mom me. You heard what I said. Now get going and be safe son.” You remark and hug him goodbye before the three of them get in the truck. You watch the gate open, the truck leave and the gate close again before going to check on your other son who is inside the house. You find Enki in his workshop with a stack of books and reading one he took from the library (Unsurprisingly the town library was mostly untouched in the chaos, nobody in town has ever appreciated reading very much even before the bombs). As usual he’s reading something science related, probably in the effort to figure out how to possibly improve something around here...or perhaps he’s just doing it for his own enjoyment. “Anything interesting son?” you ask. “Oh. Didn’t see you there mom. I fixed those guns Dad took from the last raid on those rednecks. I was just catching up on some reading. I was reading about solar power, but I dunno where we’d get the panels. I guess we’re sticking with biofuel in the foreseeable future. In any case I think I need to go search the library again, I’m almost done with the books I took last time.” You smile at how he’s always trying to learn new things. He’s always been the smartest of your children. He’s also the quietest and most introspective. He probably takes after you the most, not surprising since he looks the most like you. You pat him on the shoulder. “Sometimes I think it’s a shame you didn’t grow up before the bombs. You would’ve really liked the Internet. All that knowledge at the tip of your fingers and you never had to ever leave the house.” You say. “Yeah, you’ve told me before mom. Sounded really useful, wish it was still around.” Enki replies. “Certainly occupied a lot of my time, anyway I’ll let you get back to it. Remember to eat something son, I know how you get really involved with your reading and tinkering.” Leaving Enki to his own devices you decide to go back to your own as well by heading to your room, and that’s when the sounds of various laughter and similar noises coming up from the basement stairs. School must be out. Several little ones pass you by, a few wave or say “Hi Aunt Suzy” but most to run off to go play. You don’t even know which ones belong to who anymore, you just know they aren’t yours or Bobby’s and you are definitely glad that it isn’t your responsibility to look after them. “Children! Remember if you go outside, to stay within the fence! Don’t try to climb over it! I mean it!” you hear Helen shout. You then see Helen slowly walking from the basement stairs. She looks pretty drained but then having to look after the Morningstar youth constantly for years tends to do that to a person. “You need some help there Helen? You look a little tired.” You ask. “Oh, hey there Suzy. I’m fine. They were just a little overly rambunctious today. All excited about tonight’s sacrifice to Tiamat I guess.” Helen replies. “Oh is it time for one of those again? Didn’t realize. Seems like you’ve been having a lot of them lately.” You say. “Well, we are at war with those trailer parkers. Tends to bring in some more captives than usual.” “Mmm, true.” You say with a nod. You’re about to leave when Helen makes more conversation. “You shouldn’t worry about them you know. They’re fine.” She says. “Who shouldn’t I worry about?” you ask. “Bobby and Anu.” “I wasn’t worried. Why would I be Helen?” “Oh…um…well I thought maybe with them leading these raids against the trailer park, your concern would be increased.” Helen starting to stumble over her words. “Not particularly, I know they’re both far more skilled than some trailer trash.” “Yes…of course. I just know how much you love Bobby and wouldn’t want anything to happen to him, and Anu being your first born and all.” “Indeed, but I’m almost inclined to believe you’re more worried than I am especially given your own feelings towards him.” You say. “What? I don’t love Bobby! I mean I do, but not in that way! I mean it’s not like that anymore!” Helen exclaims. “I wasn’t talking about Bobby. I was talking about Anu.” You say. Helen begins to look panicked. “I…I um…” Helen begins to sputter. “Oh come on Helen, Anu, looks almost exactly like a younger version of Bobby. You probably saw it as a second chance even. I’m not blind Helen, I know you’ve been fucking my son.” Helen’s eyes begin to tear up and she begins to shake. You ALMOST have an urge to press this a little further, but you just can’t bring yourself to torment poor Helen even if it would be funny to do so. “Helen, Helen, relax okay? I’m not angry. Stop worrying and calm yourself.” You say and put a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to reassure her. “Y…you’re not?” Helen responds. “Well…that might be the wrong choice of words. I’m not THRILLED by the idea, but I already confronted Anu about this, months ago when I first started to notice it. Wasn’t really a conversation I wanted to have and Anu swore up and down that it was all his idea…though I suspect he wasn’t entirely truthfully about that…” Helen’s head looks down. “I’m sorry…I just…I was so lonely…you don’t know what it’s like…” Helen meekly says. “I know Helen. I know. (Sigh) Look, the only reason why I’m not excessively angry about this is because…well this family isn’t exactly conventional and you’re both consenting adults and Anu’s old enough to make his own decisions.” “So…you’re okay with it?” “Eh…let’s just say…that time you brought me back to life in the past? That debt’s finally repaid. Just…just continue to keep it low profile okay?” “Of course! We will Suzy…and thank you for understanding.” Helen says and hugs you tightly. “Mm, well I am the nice one in the family.” You say patting her on the back and slowly withdrawing yourself away. Helen bids you goodbye with a slightly more upbeat tone and leaves to go see to the children. You just shake your head at how simple it is to make Helen happy. You guess after all these years; you still can’t help but feel sorry for her. You may not be a born killer like most in this family, but you’ve definitely proven that even living among incestuous cult killers, a little kindness still goes a long way.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>And you silently dismiss that idea immediately! Grandma Morningstar may or may not have been right about your “flexible” sexuality, but even if she was, you are still not fucking Helen just because you feel sorry for her or on some whim! Besides, you’re about to marry Bobby and you made a damn commitment. You can’t just be fucking his sister, hours before the wedding. Maybe nobody else in this family has any much sense of “social mores” but that’s just wrong as far as your concerned. And even if Bobby WAS okay with it, you’re already making enough sacrifices for him and giving in to his possible secret desires for a harem aren’t part of that plan. You’re the only one and that’s that. You don’t fucking share. You enter the bathroom and go through your usual routine of showering and such. Afterwards you finally get around putting on the “wedding dress.” The first thing you do is look at the dress before putting it on and wondering if it’s going to be bigger in the chest area. While you’re not lacking in that region, you’ve met Bobby’s grandmother (in dream form anyway) and she’s got at least another couple cup sizes on you. In fact her body type back in her prime was more of an old school 1950s pinup girl hourglass figure than your own “petite” size. The funny thing is, as soon as you put it on, it seems to fit perfectly to your own body. The material isn’t any sort of spandex or stretchy material, it’s silk like Helen said, but given Bobby’s family’s strangeness, you have to wonder if it’s…magical? “Magical underwear.” You scoff; shaking your head in half disbelief you’re even considering it. Not surprisingly the stockings AND the shoes fit you perfectly as well. Yeah, Grandma Morningstar probably had all this stuff weaved by a giant magical spider voodoo priest or some shit because it doesn’t make sense that any of this stuff would fit you so well. Regardless of its origins, you do feel pretty comfortable despite looking like a Hollywood streetwalker. The heels don’t even hurt your feet, though you’re still a little unsteady on them due to not being used to wearing such things. Let alone these being stilettos. The last time you wore heels was when Uncle Ed made you wear stripperiffic clothing with the intent to lure Bobby and his dad into the woods where he could kill them. While everything turned out for the best because you met Bobby that fateful night, the part with Uncle Ed still gives you the shivers just thinking about it. You look at yourself in the mirror one more time, before leaving the bathroom. “Well Suzy, you might look like a whore in this thing, but at least you look like a high priced one.” You say to yourself. When you exit the bathroom Helen stands up and looks at you. “Oh my. You’re…you’re…so beautiful looking. I knew it would fit you perfectly.” Helen gushes. “Yeah I am pretty hot looking in this get up. Shit, still can’t balance on these heels though.” You say. “Hmm, well maybe you can dispense with those. I mean I’d hate for you to fall down the stairs when we go show everyone how you look. Maybe we should take some pictures!” Helen says approaching you. “What? I thought I was just putting it on as a test drive as it were. While I won’t deny this stuff feels pretty comfortable on my skin that I don’t mind wearing it, I sort of don’t want to be walking around the house with it on until show time. Besides everyone can see how awesomely sexy I am then.” “I think they should see you now. It’ll raise the spirits around here seeing you dressed like this.” Helen remarks as she begins touching your arm. “Well it’ll raise something with the males around here when they see me of course. Not sure about the ladies of this house, though you’re getting a little too close there Helen.” “Oh please? At least go show Bobby. I know he’d like to see you.” Helen says ignoring your previous remark about invading your personal space. “I’m sure he’s really busy right now, besides isn’t it bad luck for me to see him right before the wedding?” “Oh you’re thinking of those silly traditions for other weddings. That’s not the case here. Come on I’ll take you to him.” Helen says and at this point is pulling on your hands almost causing you fall. “Hey! I nearly fell! I told you already that you’re too damn close!” you snap. Helen immediately backs away and looks down submissively. “I’m sorry Suzy. I didn’t mean to violate your personal space.” “(Sigh) It’s fine Helen…just calm down a bit and let me at least take these shoes off first before I go heading downstairs.” As you sit down and start taking your shoes off, you and Helen start to hear noise from outside. The both of you go over to the window to take a peek. You and Helen see several figures crawling under the truck blocking the broken front gate or trying to climb the fence. The ones that have gotten in are loping in a wild jerky like motion. They’re also screaming, howling and making inhuman sounds. From your vantage point they LOOK human, but they’re certainly not acting like it. Then the door swings open causing both you and Helen to jump a bit. It’s Veronica with a gun in hand. “What the hell are you two doing in here, dyking it out? Don’t you know we’re being attacked by zombies?” Veronica exclaims. “I was trying on my wedding dress, thank you very much and we only just saw the freaks outside, so they are zombies?” you say. “Yeah, I mean…I dunno if they are. Maybe they’re just rabid humans or something, but they’re gnashing their teeth, moaning and coming at us like something out of a horror movie. We need all the help we can get to repel these things!” “We’ll be ready in a moment.” You say. “Well hurry up or else there isn’t going to be a wedding. We’re having a hard time trying to…” A loud crashing noise followed by gunfire is heard from downstairs. “Shit! That sounded close! I gotta go!” Veronica shouts and you hear her run off. Well at least it looks like Bobby’s finally lit a fire under his relative’s asses to pull their weight around here. “(Sigh) Fucking zombies. Of course this day HAD to get worse…” you say shaking your head. “Suzy, we need to hurry to go help Bobby.” Helen says pointing out the obvious. “Yeah, hold on let me just get something.” You go to Bobby’s clothing drawer to get the spare gun he mentioned yesterday. “Hey, what about me?” Helen asks. “Well, just grab a blunt object! Unplug that desk lamp and use that to bash those freaks’ heads in I guess.” “Suzy, I don’t really want to argue, but do you even know how to use a gun properly? Maybe you should give me the gun and you just stay behind me.” “What? I’m not giving you the gun! And for your information my older brother Ben DID show me how to shoot a gun…a few times.” “A few times…Suzy, I was taught to fire a gun, aim and everything else before I was ten. I’m just saying in a situation like this, it might be best if I have the gun, I’m sure when we get to the others, Bobby will give you another one of his.” Helen remarks. “Yeah and in the mean time I’m fucking defenseless.” “You won’t be! I’ll protect you and I think you can count on that.” Helen says. Helen’s insistence on wanting the gun is making you even more paranoid in this already fucked up situation. In the back of your mind you can’t help but think she’s going to shoot you even though the pair of you are supposed to be cool with each other. Of course it’s possible she’d just feel safer with the gun in her hand. You don’t actually know if she’s a better shot than you, though you aren’t exactly a highly skilled sharp shooter. Especially after failing to hit Diana during your scuffle yesterday. > You keep the gun When in doubt, always keep the gun. “Helen, I’m not giving you the gun, just stay behind me.” You say. “You…you don’t trust me do you?” Helen remarks. “What? No, of course do.” “No you don’t, you think I’m going to shoot you!” “Look, I just feel safer with the gun in my hand, now let’s go!” you say and start heading out the door. Helen isn’t letting this go though; she continues to bitch about your decision as you make your way through the corridor and down the stairs. “You’re a poor liar Suzy and I’m not sure what hurts more, you not trusting me after all we’ve been through or you feeling like you need to lie to me about your true feelings.” Helen remarks. “Oh for fuck’s sake, we don’t have time for this!” “I saved your life yesterday you know!” “And I’m grateful for that, but your current bitching about this situation isn’t exactly putting my mind at ease. You seem a little too eager to want the damn gun.” When you finally finish going down the stairs, the gunfire, yelling and guttural noises are louder, but you and Helen are still arguing even as you make your way towards where the fighting is coming from. “I can’t believe you still don’t trust me...” Helen remarks causing you to stop and spin around to address her. “ENOUGH! Just fucking STOP! At this point no I DON’T trust you! I obviously broke your hopes of having some fucked up three way with Bobby and you’re harboring a grudge about it. Now we can settle our differences later, right now we have to…” “SUZY LOOK OUT!” Helen suddenly screams in your face. You spin back around just in time to see two of the creatures burst through the door in front of you. You get off one shot, which goes wild due to being taken by complete surprise and not being used to shooting under pressure. You are tackled to the ground by one of them dropping your gun in the process, while the other goes running for Helen, who you hear screaming and running away. As you struggle with the creature on the floor, you briefly look desperately over the gun that you dropped and try to reach for it, but it’s just out your grasp. The thing nearly bites you again and tightens its grip on your arms in an attempt to immobilize you. Even your knees to its groin don’t help. You don’t know if this thing is undead or just rabid, but it hardly matters when it soon overpowers you and rips open your throat with its teeth.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY "And now Suzy, having beaten the chicken soup out of all her other opponents this week, will take this final challenge by herself! Will she be able to do it ladies and gentlemen? Will she be able to impress Misty at last? We’ll find out today! Let’s give our small town girl some encouragement for her task at hand!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A huge plate of tacos, fish tacos to be precise. The lack of subtlety is hardly surprising at this point. You double face palm before exhaling and looking up. “Really?” you ask in disbelief. “This is the last task Suzy…” the disembodied announcer’s voice whispers. “I don’t give a shit, the concept of fish tacos is fucking disgusting for one thing and for another…” Suddenly Bobby’s grandmother appears as she has been doing in your dreams. “See? Told you we should’ve just went with traditional beef. Anyway I think the point was made.” Bobby’s grandmother cackles and with a wave of her cane, you’re back in that blasted wasteland you were in last time. “And what point would that be? And am I meeting this Misty yet or what?” “No, you’re not meeting Misty yet, and as for the point I think we both know what point that was.” “Yeah and I’m not a lesbian.” You say. “Who said you were? It’s pretty clear you love the cock, but you’re in some serious denial if you’re standing here claiming that you’re not into girls as well. It’s okay, really. There are no lines, we’re all here to enjoy each other’s bodies.” “I’m not!” you protest. “Oh come on Suzy, you know deep down you’re curious. Some of that three way porn on your computer involves the two girls and a guy configuration. I’d say beyond curious at this point. We both know you find Helen cute because you’re a narcissist at heart and she reminds you of yourself in some ways. Nothing like self love.” “Well she does have pretty eyes… but I’m still not interested. She’s a girl and I just don’t swing that way.” you say. “Bullshit, are you seriously saying you wouldn’t like to put a strap on and do my grand daughter from behind? Pull her hair and make her say your name and then after you were done fucking her, you’d shove her face in your pussy until she licked it clean and you climaxed in her mouth?” You’re not sure what’s more disturbing. A dead old lady giving graphic descriptions of how you’d fuck her grand daughter, or the fact that it’s sort of turning you on a bit. You’re a little at loss for words. “Hey…hey two girls and one guy isn’t lesbian porn.” You say fumbling with a partial defense. “Oh? I see. So it’s not gay if it’s a three-way? Well whatever you have to tell yourself I suppose. Still, if you truly feel that way I’m wondering if you’d be open to…nah…” “What?” you ask wondering where she’s going with this. “Hah! You ARE curious!” Grandma Morningstar cackles. “I’m not! I’m just wondering what you were going to drone on about!” “Okay then here it is, besides being really into getting blowjobs, Bobby’s also really into girl on girl stuff. Bobby probably wouldn’t turn down the idea of having a second wife which would be Helen in this instance. This wouldn’t have worked before with Diana, because of how much you two hated each other. However, with Helen, I think this would be more workable…” Grandma Morningstar says. “What? He’s never told me this! He’s never even gave any indication!” you say. “Well of course he hasn’t, as I told you before he’s a bit too much a gentleman to suggest it and I’m fairly certain he’s never even felt any romantic feelings towards Helen either. However I know for certain if you approached him with the idea, that he damn sure wouldn’t be against it.” “Well I’D be fucking against it!” you say. “Wait, so you’re fine with murdering someone on your wedding day, but you’re against marrying two people. You’re fine with being associated with a bunch of murderers that practice incest, but you’re against having sex with another girl even one you find attractive even if you don’t want to admit it. Interesting set of moral values you’ve got there blondie.” “But I’m marrying into YOUR family! Isn’t that a little hypocritical to criticize me when you’ve probably engaged in all manner of illegal and unnatural acts yourself?” “Not at all. My point is I didn’t really have the same arbitrary limits you place on yourself. I’m just pointing out your odd inconsistencies. I suppose it’s not really your fault. You can’t help the puritanical way you were raised.” You’re getting a little agitated and getting tired of insane troll logic at this point. “Look, if all you’re going to do is insult me, I think I’d like to wake up now.” You say. “You will soon, in any case I’m just trying to help YOU out!” “How is sharing Bobby helping me out?” “Sheesh, first you still can’t figure out who Misty is, now this? You really are slow on the uptake ain’t ya blondie? You’re lucky you’re pretty.” Bobby’s grandmother asks and then taps you in the forehead with her hand. “Ow! Stop!” you say and back away. “Look, I’m just going to end with this sagely wisdom. If you really want to live in a harmonious household, I suggest you open your mind a little. You’ve already made a few steps in the right direction; you might as well go all the way. I mean who the hell is going to be judging you? Nobody important that’s for sure. Besides, I’m sure with a little forethought you can think of the benefits of such an arrangement and turn it into an advantage. Well, that’s what I think. Anyway, congrats on your wedding and you’ve got my blessing. Good luck!” Good luck? Somehow that doesn’t sound reassuring. You’re about to ask Bobby’s grandmother what she exactly means by that, but then she waves that damn cane again and you’re enveloped the blackness and then you wake up. “Gah, fucking bitch.” You say groggily. “Oh...I’m sorry for waking you…I just wanted to apologize for yesterday and give you this to see if it fits, but I understand if you don’t want me here…” a familiar female voice remarks. You look around the room and see Helen coming in carrying some red clothing. “Huh? No, not you…wait what are you doing in here anyway? Did Bobby spend all night working on the house?” you ask “I’m bringing in your wedding dress and yes, Bobby has been working on the house for the most part. Trying to patch up the big hole in the house, cleaning up the dungeon, blocking the front gate. He had to bury our brother Jordan as well. I don’t believe he’s actually slept yet.” “Oh yeah, forgot that that asshole killed one of your siblings. I didn’t know him that well, but sorry for your loss.” You remark. “Thank you, but I suppose we’re all just puppets in Tiamat’s glourious chaos, so we all need to just move on right? We have to accept that some things just will never be…anyway could you see if this fits?” Helen asks holding up the red clothing which now looks a lot like lingerie. “Wait, that’s the wedding dress? It looks like slutty underwear from Hot Secret.” You answer and get out of bed. Helen’s face looks a bit offended by that statement. “My grandmother wore this on her wedding day! She had this dress made of the finest silk, not whatever cheap material they use in North Tiwanaland or some place! THIS is a one of a kind article of clothing! It’s not something you’d find in some edgy teenager hang out!” Helen remarks. “Okay! Geez. I’m not trying to insult the dress or your grandmother. It’s just…well I thought I’d be wearing something a little more… substantial. But seeing as your family isn’t exactly conventional and when in Rome…I guess I better try it on. Um, you washed it right?” “Of course. Hand washed it myself. Can’t risk putting it in a machine.” Helen says and hands it to you. “Red fishnets…red high heels…” you say. “Yes. Those shoes were also special made with the finest…” “Leather. Yes, I can imagine. Let me guess the fishnets were made with the finest silk as well.” “Well of course, what else would it be?” “What else indeed. Okay, well I guess I’m going in the bathroom to change.” “I understand. I’m still sorry about making you uncomfortable about my unwanted advances.” Helen says. Before you enter the bathroom, you start to wonder… “Helen, why did you approach me? Or rather I know why, but you were attracted to Bobby long before you met me. You obviously have the inner strength to make the first move as it were.” “Well, that was a little different for several reasons. I mean Diana would’ve killed me had I actually made a move on Bobby! With you, I just…I dunno. The moment felt right? And it still wasn’t easy. Of course I misread signals. Sorry.” Helen remarks meekly. And there it is, Helen’s subservience in action. Even with Diana gone, Helen’s mindset hasn’t changed much. You’re just a “nicer” replacement to Diana. You’re fairly certain now that Helen means no harm to you, if indeed she ever really did. So this is it, you’ll marry Bobby, have children by him and live happily ever as queen in this twisted family. Helen as usual will play the second fiddle content with her lot in life. As strange as that seems all relatively good for you, you still can’t help but think Helen doesn’t deserve better in some way. She did directly save your life after all. It makes you start to ponder Grandma Morningstar’s words of opening one’s mind to make way for new possibilities… > You take a new path You have to admit you HAVE always been a bit curious, and this probably would be the easiest way to satisfy that curiosity. “Fuck it.” You say to yourself, throw your “wedding dress” aside and you turn around and approach Helen. “Take off all your clothes.” You say. “Wha…what?” Helen remarks in surprise. “Take off all your clothes. Obviously we got some things to work out before we proceed any further, or more specifically I got some things to work out before I proceed any further. So get your clothes off.” You say and head over to the bed where you start taking off your own. This is uncharted territory for you, but strangely as you lie in bed completely naked, you’re not quite as nervous about it as you thought you might be. When Helen finally gets naked, you see she has nice little body on her. Her tits aren’t as big as yours, but nobody’s perfect. As mildly anxious as you are, Helen has to be doubly so. She might’ve made the “first move” but you’ve definitely taken the lead. Helen’s also a virgin for all intents and purposes. You wonder if that might be making all this a little hotter for you. “You’re very beautiful.” Helen says walking over to you. “Yeah…oh you’re not bad yourself. So…you ready to do this?” you ask. “Yes, I’m ready…um…I’ve never done this before with anyone…how should we start?” Helen asks. “Uh, I guess kissing. Even in the movies they usually start like that.” You reply. “Okay.” Helen remarks compliantly. Helen lies next to you and the pair of you begin kissing and caressing each other. It’s definitely different than when you’re with Bobby who tends to be a little rougher. This really isn’t all that bad; in fact the only downside is Helen is doing a lot of talking instead of focusing on the task at hand. It’s not even dirty talk; she keeps asking questions if she’s doing something right. Doesn’t take you long before you start pushing her head down so she can stop talking altogether. “Oh…okay…” Helen remarks as she gets the hint. “And Helen, I don’t want any more talking. Just focus, understand? Yeah…mmm…just like that…” you say as you feel the magic starting to happen. Your back starts arching, your toes start curling, you begin to make moans of pleasure and grab the back of Helen’s head. You’re generally in a state of bliss as Helen does her thing. At this moment nothing else exists except your pleasure so you aren’t paying any attention to the noise that is going on outside. And you aren’t paying attention to the door when it opens up… “Urgh! What the fuck are you two doing?!” Veronica exclaims with a gun in her hand. “Oh! Um…uh…” Helen stutters as she wipes her mouth and raises her head up and probably looking like a deer in the headlights from Veronica’s perspective. “SHIT! Doesn’t anyone fucking knock!? What the hell are you doing in here waving a gun around?” you say and try to cover up as much as you can. “I was coming to warn you that we’re being fucking attacked by zombies! I didn’t realize I was going to walk in on you two dyking it out! Does Bobby know about this?” Veronica says. “Nevermind all that, did you just say zombies are attacking us?” you ask. “Yeah, I mean…I dunno if they are. Maybe they’re just rabid humans or something, but they’re gnashing their teeth, moaning and coming at us like something out of a horror movie. We need all the help we can get to repel these things!” “We’ll be ready in a moment.” You say as Veronica shakes her head. “Well you two better hurry up, (Sigh) honestly, we’re getting attacked and you two are busy licking…” A loud crashing noise followed by gunfire is heard from downstairs. “Shit! That sounded close! I gotta go!” Veronica shouts and you hear her run off. Well at least it looks like Bobby’s finally lit a fire under his relative’s asses to pull their weight around here. “(Sigh) Fucking zombies. Of course this day couldn’t just be a pleasant one.” You say fumbling with your clothing. “I hope we get down there in time to help Bobby.” Helen says getting dressed as well. “We will, hold on let me get something first.” You go to Bobby’s clothing drawer to get the spare gun he mentioned yesterday. “Hey, what about me?” Helen asks. “Well, just grab a blunt object! Unplug that desk lamp and use that to bash those freaks’ heads in I guess.” “Suzy, I don’t really want to argue, but do you even know how to use a gun properly? Maybe you should give me the gun and you just stay behind me.” “For your information my older brother Ben DID show me how to shoot a gun…a few times.” “A few times…Suzy, I was taught to fire a gun, aim and everything else before I was ten. I’m just saying in a situation like this, it might be best if I have the gun, I’m sure when we get to the others, Bobby will give you another one of his.” Helen remarks. “Yeah and in the mean time I’m fucking defenseless.” “You won’t be! I’ll protect you and I think you can count on that.” Helen says and then follows up by putting her arm around your waist and then sensually kissing you on the lips. You ALMOST want to head right back to the bed, but unfortunately you’ve got more important things to deal with. “Okay, okay, you can take the gun, but me and you are definitely going to finish what we started after all this is over.” You say and go unplug the small desk lamp you mentioned earlier to Helen and take it as a makeshift weapon. The pair of you head through the corridor and down the stairs both not making many comments at this point. Might be due to the situation being more than a little tense and its only getting more so as the gunfire, yelling and guttural noises are getting louder as you approach the center of the fighting. Helen then suddenly stops and turns to you. “Suzy?” Helen says. “What!?” you ask. “I just want you to know that if something goes wrong…” “Helen, nothing is going to go wrong, but we need to just focus and get to Bobby.” “Well just in case it does, I just want you to know I love…” “SHIT HELEN! SHOOT! SHOOT!” you exclaim when you see two creatures bursting through the door in front of you. Helen spins around and fires, hiting one of them square in the chest twice, but it doesn’t even slow down, it just tackles Helen onto the floor. She drops her pistol and struggles with the creature while calling for you to help and while you’d love to do just that, the second creature is currently trying to make a meal out of you. You swing at the creature a couple times, but it moves in such a jerky motion that you don’t land a good hit and cause only a glancing blow to its head. Still it’s enough to give you a bit of a breather while the thing tries to get back up off the floor. You spy the gun nearby and wonder if you should go for it or help Helen directly first. > You help Helen With as much strength as you can muster, you swing the lamp upside the head of the creature that is pinning Helen to the floor which is enough to cause it roll off of Helen, but not enough to kill it. You soon have problems of your own when the second creature you hit before has completely recovered and tackles you to the floor. With the map still in hand, you attempt to swing it from your prone position, but the creature has already dug its fingers deep into that arm and forcibly holds it to prevent you from doing so. You manage to keep it from biting your face off by at least pushing your forearms up across its neck. At this close range, it doesn’t look rotten, just very dirty looking and crazed. Still, undead or not, you don’t want to risk getting bit, let alone killed and eaten. As you struggle with the creature on the floor, a shot is fired into the side of the thing’s head and blood splatters on you, the floor and partially on the nearby wall. “Shit!” you shout and then try to pull yourself out from under the corpse. While you’re doing that, another shot is fired killing the other creature that was previously on top of Helen and recovering from the blow it took to the head from you. She then places two more headshots to both bodies. “I think they’re dead, we can’t waste bullets, if there are more of them.” You say. “Are you okay?” Helen asks touching your bruised arm, which aches. “Yeah, I’m fine.” “These things aren’t really rotten looking or anything. Maybe they aren’t undead.” Helen says. “Well I still don’t want to get killed and eaten by some virus infected asshole. Come on, this isn’t over yet.” You say. By the time you get to Bobby and the rest of the family’s location, they’ve managed to wipe out most of the things and you and Helen don’t have much to do. Still, you wonder about their origin. Some sort of sickness perhaps? Maybe the government was fucking around with a secret weapon like they tend to do and it got out of hand. It would explain why there was a drastic rise in violence even before you left town and why the National Guard showed up later. It isn’t until after all the mad attackers are killed that Bobby manages to address you directly. He’s incredibly tired looking, the rest of his family looks pretty tired too, but he looks like he’s about to collapse. “Are you okay?! They didn’t bite you did they?” Bobby asks, stumbling a bit from exhaustion. “No, I’m fine. We both are.” You reply. “Suzy saved my life.” Helen remarks. “Well, I think we both saved each other more than enough times this week.” You say which causes a bit of a happiness of Helen’s face. “Could’ve used your help a lot sooner, if you hadn’t been busy cheating on Bobby.” Veronica snorts. This remark causes every family member to stop what they are doing and take notice. Helen, looks more terrified than she did when facing the rabid people. Bobby looks more surprised than anyone. He looks at Veronica and then looks at you. You keep a straight face despite Veronica ratting you out. “What’s she talking about Suzy?” “Well it’s like this Bobby…” you say and then grab Helen close to you and give her a kiss on the cheek. Helen blushes a bit and tries to remain composed, but she’s a mixture of bashful and fearful. “Before all this shit went down, your sister and I were bonding in a way that I don’t think you’ll disapprove of. Helen loves you. I love you. Helen likes me and I’ve grown very fond of her and I want ALL of us to get married. Right now.” Now you’ve caught everyone off guard. One moment they’re fighting for their lives, the next they’re attending a wedding. Not mention this new bombshell you’ve dropped. “Now?” Bobby asks. “We just won a great victory! What, you don’t want to marry two beautiful women?” you say. “I didn’t say that, I just…this is a bit surprising. Helen, I never knew you felt this way…why didn’t you tell me? I guess it doesn’t matter, we can discuss this in more detail afterwards, but by Tiamat’s Chaotic Cunt and Twenty Tits YES! I’ll marry the pair of you!” Bobby shouts and then you turn to Helen. “Helen why don’t you go get your grandmother’s wedding dress and wear it?” You say causing her eyes to light up. “You…you really want me to wear it? Are you sure?!” she asks. “I’m sure. I think you deserve the honors and I think she’d want you to wear it.” “Oh thank you Suzy!” she says and kisses you on the lips and runs off. Bobby at this point tells Brandon and Ronald to drag Diana out from her cell. Veronica looks slightly disappointed by the lack of drama and is even more disappointed when Bobby tells her to gather the children for the wedding. He then warns everyone to still keep an eye out for anymore of those rabid bastards just in case you didn’t get them all. Everyone complies and soon you and Bobby are left by yourselves. Bobby takes a seat to briefly rest. He yawns several times in a row and is struggling to stay awake, but you can tell your enthusiasm for the wedding has energized him a bit. You decide to keep the energy going by sitting on his lap and making a fuss. “Hey, it’s not time for the honeymoon yet.” Bobby remarks with a brief chuckle. “Oh it’s always times for the honeymoon with you.” You say. “Damn, I wish I wasn’t so tired…hope I don’t stumble over the joining passage when I’m marrying us.” Bobby remarks as he rubs your legs. “Wait, isn’t someone else doing that?” “Huh? No, I’m doing it. I mean I’m the high priest here. Technically it could just be me and you here.” “What? That’s it? We could’ve done that a long time ago!” “I’m glad I didn’t because obviously Helen would’ve missed out…wow still can’t believe she was in love with me all this time…” “Is it so hard to believe?” “I guess I just wasn’t paying attention to her. I mean it makes sense in retrospect given how attentive she’s always been…just don’t know why she never said anything before.” “Scared of Diana.” “That makes sense…speaking of not saying anything. Why didn’t YOU tell me you were also into girls, let alone my sister?” Bobby asks. You wrap your arms around Bobby and lean your body against him. “Eh…well I sort of went through some odd self discovery lately…I’m not into girls so much as I just like your sister. I can’t quite explain it all properly right now, maybe later. Let’s just say it’s been a weird week. Besides isn’t all this spontaneity along with the carnage causing Tiamat’s chaotic glory smile upon us or something?” You say. Bobby looks around at the nearby mess of broken furniture and the couple bodies laying on the floor and smiles. “I suppose you’re right.” A few more moments pass as you wait for everyone to return. In the meantime you let Bobby rest a bit by closing his eyes. Veronica and Denise return first with all the children. Brandon and Ronald arrive gripping Diana by each arm. Predictably she’s swearing up a storm and accusing everyone of being against her. It wakes Bobby up from his brief nap. “Oh? Everyone here? Good. Let’s get this started. (Yawn) Sorry, I’m so damn tired…” “Helen’s not here yet. You don’t need to stand up for this, just keep resting in your chair and I’ll just be right here on your lap. I’m sure that’s acceptable to everyone right?” you ask. Before anyone can answer you, Helen returns in her grandmother’s wedding dress. Everyone is in awe of how sexy she looks in it. If Bobby needed anymore rousing from his tired state, this has certainly done it. She’s not having any problems walking on the heels either. In fact the only two who aren’t in awe, are you mainly because you were just having sex with her not too long ago and this a pale substitute and Diana who just swears and looks disgusted. “How do I look?” she asks a bit nervously. “Well I’d do you right now, if it was just Bobby here.” You say. “By Tiamat’s Angry Asshole I’m not fucking believing this! You’re seriously going to marry them both? The traitor and the whore? I guess it would take two to replace me! Your TRUE soul mate!” Diana yells. Ignoring Diana, Helen sits next to you and Bobby and the three of you hold hands as he recites what you guess is a passage from whatever holy book of Tiamat he got it from and when the time comes, you both accept your place as his wives. Then the three of you exchange kisses with each other. Most of Bobby’s family claps if they are able. It’s definitely unusual, but it feels so right. You now feel like you belong here. “Here. I’ve been carrying this in my pocket the whole day, nearly forgot it was there.” Bobby remarks and hands you a ring with a sizable red diamond in the center and smaller black inlayed around it. It’s definitely beautiful and when you try it on, you find that it fits perfectly. “You…you gave her grandma’s ring?! YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! You dishonor that woman! I hope grandma’s spirit comes back and rapes the three of you with a fucking broom handle!” Diana shouts. Bobby ignores Diana and turns to Helen. “I apologize…I didn’t know I’d be blessed with a second bride today. I don’t have another ring. I’ll have to acquire another.” He says to Helen. “Oh that’s okay. I’m just so happy to be married to you at last!” Helen says and squeezes him tightly. Diana is completely livid. “Oh fuck this! Fuck ALL of this! FUCK Tiamat! FUCK this family! FUCK my treacherous bitch of a sister! FUCK your blonde whore! And most importantly FUCK YOU BOBBY! FUCK YOU, you fucking fickle cheating bastard. Just fucking kill me now so I can leave this fucking shameful spectacle. At this point Bobby calmly pulls out a knife. “Who wants to do the honors?” You take the knife and look over at Helen. “Did you want to be the one?” you ask Helen. “Can we do it together?” Helen asks. “Of course.” You answer. The pair of you stand and walk over to Diana who has now become silent. You can’t imagine the rage she’s experiencing, but her gaze would burn through you both if it could. You raise the knife and then Helen stand behind you and puts one arm around your waist and then one hand on yours that holds the handle so they are like one. You turn your head slightly over your right shoulder to give her a kiss and then together with one single thrust you both jam the knife into Diana’s chest. The blade strikes true, puncturing her heart. The hatred still burns in Diana’s eyes as she coughs up blood, wheezing and finally dying. Brandon and Ronald let her body flop to the floor when her life force is gone. And there it is, your first kill. “Was it good for you?” Helen asks. “Oh it was the best.” You say. At this point Bobby is completely alert. “As hot as all this is and despite this being my wedding day…sadly duty comes first and this house has to be put in order. Who knows if we’re going to get attacked again. Let’s start with the clean up.” Bobby orders. Clean up goes relatively fast. Around the house at least since that’s your primary concern. You go for the quick dirty approach of just getting all the dead bodies in one pile outside. You briefly think about burning them, but Bobby says that might attract attention and doing it tomorrow when everyone is more awake enough to defend this place properly is a better idea. Broken windows and the front door are barricaded with furniture for the night. Somewhere just after midnight everyone is ready to crash. Bobby, who has been practically sleep walking by this point just tells everyone to sleep with a weapon tonight and you can all just roll the dice without a night watch tonight. Nobody argues. You and Helen help Bobby upstairs and three of you collapse on the bed. You and Helen still have a bit of energy left and you briefly consider celebrating your honeymoon without him, but that doesn’t seem quite right despite the fact that you really wanted to finish what was started in this bedroom. Instead you cuddle up to Bobby who is fast asleep at this point while Helen snuggles next to you. Feeling very loved, you head into dreamland, not even worrying about how Grandma Morningstar might fuck with you tonight. > Next day… SATURDAY "Suzy! You’ve won! You’ve truly overcome all odds! You have not only survived the various uncertain events of this week, but you’ve also thrived! Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give our small town girl some applause and respect for she truly is worthy of it!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A huge plate of those little Vienna sausages. “Let me guess, they double as looking like oversized clits along with being phallic.” You say. No sooner have you said that, when everything disappears and you’re facing Grandma Morningstar in the blasted wasteland again. “Hey, that’s quick catching on to the symbolism there, blondie.” Grandma Morningstar says. “I have my moments. So am I finally done with all this nonsense? Am I finally meeting this Misty?” you say. “You figure out who it is yet?” “Yeah and I can’t believe I didn’t catch it before. Misty…MISS T…Tiamat.” You answer. “Well shit, you’re two for two! Glad to see you’re on a roll and your pretty little blonde head finally got it, but no you don’t get to meet her.” “What? After all this build up? Seems pretty anti-climatic.” “Yeah, well she’s busy. Besides the jury’s still out on you a bit.” “What? Didn’t I win? I’m part of the family now. I mean I killed a bitch for Tiamat, married a pair of siblings and everything!” you say. “So? You didn’t like Diana to begin with, it wasn’t like were killing some stranger you didn’t have any grudge against. As far as marrying two of my grand children, well that’s certainly unconventional, but hardly very interesting in the scheme of things. Though I suppose given how boring and repressed your basement dwelling years were you probably think you’re a real wild woman.” “So what was the point of all this?!” “None really…well I suppose for my own curiosity I did want to see if Bobby’s blonde beauty was even worthy of being in this family and despite what I just said, the fact that you’ve been speaking with me means you’re probably closer to Tiamat than most of them even are. The lot you’re with are practically sheep to be lead around by the nose by Bobby. And Bobby’s so in love with you he’ll do anything for you. I mean sure you added Helen to the mix, but Bobby is always going to love you more. Helen’s just so thrilled to be there that she’s easily pliable as well. I dare say you probably could get either one of them to do what you want if you really pushed for it…but then you sort of already knew that didn’t you?” Grandma Morningstar says with slight smile. You don’t say anything for a moment. “Well it wasn’t all because I felt sorry for Helen and that she gave good head. Helen being a second wife means she can have that whole mess o’ babies Bobby wants. Let her worry about getting fat, stretch marks and the pain of child birth.” You remark. “Heh, interesting approach. So I take it you’re going to be the opinionated sexy fun wife while Helen gets to be the submissive, baby and sandwich making one.” "Pretty much.” “Well guess you aren’t quite as mediocre as you appear. That’s good. Well maybe Tiamat doesn’t give a shit, but I like you. In fact if I was still alive and decades younger, I’d bend you over and fuck you in the ass raw with a strap on. Make you say my name while I pulled that pretty golden hair of yours. Wouldn’t that be fun?” Grandma Morningstar says with a creepy leer. “Um…no.” you just say backing away. Grandma Morningstar cackles. “Still prudish as ever. See ya around blondie, I think you’ll be alright.” Grandma Morningstar waves goodbye to you, disappears and everything around you gets dark. And you wake up. You turn your head to the right and see Bobby reading and partially under the blankets. To your left Helen’s face and body is practically on top of your own as she’s still cuddled up next to you and got her arm around you. When you try to move, Helen moves with you. “Helen, Helen, move your arm, I need to sit up.” You say. “Huh? But I like holding you.” Helen says still half asleep. “Of course you do, but you still need to move.” You say and forcibly move Helen’s arm. She begins to stir a bit now that you’ve disturbed her comfort. “It’s about time you got up. You look a little frazzled. Bad dream?” Bobby asks putting his book away. “Eh…better than others I’ve had this week. Probably should talk about at some point later, but I’m surprised to see you here. I figured you were going to going to get up early to work on the compound’s defenses.” You say. “I didn’t sleep for practically a day remember? Anyway, I did get up earlier and gave everyone their orders of what I want worked on then I told everyone not to disturb me unless cannibals or more asshole family members are trying to wreck the place. So far haven’t had any trouble. Glad to see I don’t have to hover around them constantly. I’m sort of surprised Helen has been asleep all day, she tends to wake up earlier than I do to see to the young ones.” Bobby remarks. “I felt I deserved a day off.” Helen remarks starting to become more energetic. At this point Bobby brings you closer to him by putting his arm around you. Helen also starts getting gropey again and you’re now the meat in an incest sandwich. “So how exactly are we doing this?” Bobby asks. “Should we take turns?” Helen asks. “I don’t see why with a little bit of maneuvering, we can’t all just get our pleasure simultaneously. Helen, you’re still technically a virgin AND you’ve been practically waiting your whole life to get fucked by Bobby, so why don’t we get that out of the way and then at the same time when he’s doing you from behind, you can finish up where we left off yesterday. We can sort of go from there.” “Suzy…oh you’re the best! I just love you so much! You’re so thoughtful!” Helen exclaims squeezing you tightly. “Hey, okay, okay, you can show your appreciation when your tongue is deep inside me. So, Bobby are you okay with this arrangement?” you say. “Sure, but at some point during all of this, THIS is going inside you.” Bobby says pointing at his dick for emphasis. “I sure hope so.” You say and kiss Bobby. The three of you move around to get into your positions. Helen and Bobby briefly make out a bit and exchange a few sweet words to each other before getting to it. You imagine that this has got to be the best day her life. Actually it’s probably Bobby’s as well, but that’s for different reasons. As the three of you enjoy each other’s company, a feeling of satisfaction overcomes you. Not sexual satisfaction…well there is that too, but you genuinely feel good about your situation. You have not one, but two people who love you very much. Helen’s a bit “clingy” but you think you can handle that. At one time having a three way with a pair of siblings after killing someone would’ve been unthinkable, but then again it didn’t turn out quite so terrible either. While you’re still not quite into all this Tiamat worshipping, you do have a slightly new outlook on life now. You briefly wonder if you’re “evil” for not only going along with all this, but also enjoying it to a small degree, but what other options did you really have? You’re making the best of the current situation and you won’t apologize for it. You’re no longer that basement dwelling “good girl” anymore. While you’re in the middle of riding Bobby’s dick and Helen sucking on one of your tits, that’s when a flash of bright light briefly covers the windows and a loud noise is heard in the distance. “Shit what the hell was that?” Bobby asks sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “I dunno, I’m glad we weren’t looking directly at that flash though. I had my back to the window and that was still fucking bright.” You remark Helen doesn’t say anything, she’s still just rubbing her eyes, and then Bobby motions you to get off of him. “Wait a minute, I think I know what it was…” Bobby says and gets up off the bed. He walks over to the window and you and Helen follow close behind. In the distance to the west, you see the remnants of a mushroom cloud. Probably landed on Security City or near it. You can only guess it probably wasn’t a big one, but you’re still a little concerned if you’re in some sort of fallout radius. “By Tiamat…” Helen says and squeezes Bobby tightly out of nervousness. “So…they finally went and did it.” You say. “Looks like. (Sigh) Shit.” Bobby says. “What’s wrong? I thought we were prepared for this sort of thing.” You say. “Oh we are. I’m not even worried about that, it’s just I wanted to spend the day relaxing with the pair of you. Now? Well I think you know I’m going to have to go and direct everyone. Oh to hell with it, the apocalypse isn’t going anywhere. Let’s go back to what we were doing.” “Works for me.” You agree while Helen nods and smiles. Eventually you will have to deal with this new world and whatever its going to throw at you, but for now the three of you are going to get back to enjoying yourselves after this chaotic week. > … Parent of Sanity The Future… “Mom, are you really sure you want to go to Emberville with me? I mean it’s not exactly a relaxing journey.” Enki asks. “You don’t think your mother can handle herself in a fight? I have been living in this post apocalyptic hell longer than you have, you know. Would you rather Aiden and Nadia go with you, because right now they’re the only two not immediately busy.” “Yeah I know…don’t really feel like dealing with ongoing private jokes at my expense on the trip. Okay, I guess I’d rather have you along.” “Well geez, I guess I should be honored you’re allowing me to come with you.” You remark. “I didn’t mean it like that…I just…look, are you fully prepared for this trip?” “Of course, I got all my gear and everything. This isn’t the first time I’ve been out of the compound you know. It isn’t even my first trip to Emberville.” “Okay, okay, Mom, I get it. You’re a wasteland bad ass, let’s go.” You and your son get in the armored car and after a quick wave to one of the Morningstars at the gate you’re soon on your way. You study Enki for a moment just sort of recognizing how much he looks more like you than his father. His personality is certainly more similar to yours as well. Enki notices you studying him. “What?” he questions. “Nothing son.” You say and then pausing to think of what to say to try to lighten up the mood. “See? This is nice. How often do we get to spend any quality time together like this anymore? You’re always locked in your workshop tinkering with gadgets and reading. It does us both some good to get out once in awhile.” You say. Enki just gives you a brief look before turning his attention back to the road. He isn’t convinced that leaving the compound is ever a good idea, and you can’t really blame him, but you’re going to reinforce some life lessons in him today. That is one reason why you came on this trip, another is just so you can get away from Helen gushing about being pregnant for the umpteenth time. You take a look behind your seat and see the several crates of berries and apples in the storage area. “Those Emberville mutants sure enjoy their fruit. They’ll trade just about anything for it, even medicine. Then I suppose medicine is probably the last thing they need now so it makes sense.” You remark. “Yeah, well I always feel like some of them are going to dispense with the civility one day and just take all our fruit, along with cooking me up as well.” Enki remarks. “Nah…well maybe a few of them, but I think for the most part they know a good ongoing deal.” “I guess. I just hate having to make this run. I’d rather be working on improving our compound.” “Well in a perfect world, you’d be able to just shut yourself away from it and spend all your time reading those books you gather up from the libraries, but if you’re going to really make it, you have to deal with people…and mutants, you know what I mean. A little diplomacy isn’t a bad thing; it can even turn potential enemies into friends. Trust me I know.” You say. “Diplomacy… is that what we’re doing with those trailer park people? I heard Dad’s last raid destroyed some of their trailers and killed a lot of them. Not to mention we got all those captives for sacrifice.” “Well, sometimes diplomacy fails, which is why you also have to be prepared for war.” “Surprised you didn’t have me help dad instead of doing these runs.” “Oh, I’d never allow that even though your father really wanted you to start going on raids with him.” Enki predictably gets a bit insulted by this remark. It’s silly of course because you know it’s more of a male ego thing, the reality is Enki wouldn’t want to go on raids with his dad either. “What?!” Enki exclaims. “Calm down, I don’t mean it how it sounds. I just mean I’m not having you risking your life on regular shoot outs with a bunch of hostile rednecks.” You say. “But…driving to miles to a town full of mutants is perfectly safe?” “No, but despite your paranoia, it’s a hell of a lot safer than what your dad and some of your older siblings and cousins are doing. Think about it. Have you actually had any major trouble since you’ve been doing this? Other than a bunch of mutants trying their best to look scary and intimidate you, have you REALLY had any trouble?” “Well I had to shoot a few bikers trying to hijack the vehicle once and another time I had to prevent a mutant from stealing a crate of fruit and running off with it.” Enki points out. “Hm, glad to hear that you’ve been able to handle yourself, but that’s still a far cry from what your dad has been dealing with.” “Yeah I get it, I’m not dad.” “No, you’re not. You’re me and that’s a hell of a lot better. Now shut up and listen because this isn’t something you can learn in a book.” Enki goes back to watching the road while you talk. “I never really had a great desire for children, I suppose that was one reason why I suggested the current arrangement I have with your father and your aunt Helen. It’s worked out fairly well I think and I know it makes Helen very happy. She gets to be perpetually pregnant and raise children and for the most part I get to avoid it. Well for awhile anyway, see, your father may have a fondness for Helen, but he’ll never love her like he loves me…I think even Helen might know that, but she’s fine with it. Your father REALLY wanted to have a child with me and eventually after some thought to it, I agreed and here you are.” “So I’m only here because you let dad impregnate you instead of aunt Helen?” Enki asks. “I told you not to interrupt!” you snap. You continue. “Now of course the general assumption was that I’d probably just let Helen take care of you, but I didn’t do that. I gave birth to you, and I felt you were MY responsibility. You and I may be Morningstars by name, but we both know that we’re not really like the rest of them. Think about all your brothers, sisters and cousins, can you honestly say you feel any connection to any of them? I’m not asking if you like, love or even care for them, but don’t you feel disconnected just a little?” “Well…I suppose sometimes I do.” Enki says. “And that is exactly how I used to feel with my own family a long time ago. I used to hide out from the world as much as possible and I did a good job of it too and then one week…a bunch of shit happened that changed my life forever. Quite frankly if it hadn’t been for your father I’m not sure if I would have even survived it, because I was near totally unprepared when the shit hit the fan.” Enki looks over at you a bit more interested in what you have to say now. Good. “I don’t want YOU to ever be that unprepared. Hence why you have to occasionally deal with the outside world no matter how shitty it is. Had I actually been prepared, maybe I could’ve made some better choices. Don’t get me wrong, I think I made the best of a potentially bad situation and I’m happy with your father, and my current life could be a hell of a lot worse, but still sometimes I think: What if?” “Doesn’t Tiamat teach us all that life is chaos and that ultimately our choices don’t really matter anyway?” Enki asks. “Do you really believe in all that stuff?” “Not really.” “Which is another example of how you stand out from the rest. You’re intelligent and you’re a potential leader, Enki. You’re not like your siblings…or rather your half siblings. Helen can have as many incest babies as she likes, She can have them in the double digits to match their IQ levels and your father can use them in whatever war he likes. Your life however is much more valuable. You’re MY son and there is only one of you.” Enki looks at you in not quite disbelief, but something close to it. He knows full well you’ve always had a major hand in directly raising him and teaching him about this harsh new world, but this is probably the first time you’ve come close to expressing a close bond with him. Not in a twisted way like so many of the other Morningstars engage in, but in a normal way. “I love you son and whether you eventually become head of the family or if you decide to just strike out on your own completely and find your own path doesn’t matter. Don’t get stuck in a rut or allow yourself to feel trapped so you have no options. Ultimately just do what is best for you because that’s all you can do in this world.” You say. Enki is visibly overcome a bit with emotion. Some eye watering occurs and in true male fashion he turns his head away so you can’t see, which causes you to smile a bit. “Don’t worry son, you can let your guard down in front of me. Just don’t let those mutants see you like that.” you say. “Yeah, definitely wouldn’t want that to happen. Showing weakness in front of them is probably bad for diplomacy.” Enki chuckles and briefly rubs his eyes. As you and your son continue on your way to Emberville, you talk much more and can see Enki is going to be just fine. Maybe you made some concessions to get where you are and you even had some fun doing it, but at least your son knows that he doesn’t have to compromise and can be a master of his own destiny rather than being a slave to circumstance. Even Grandma Morningstar would approve of that lesson.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to admit you HAVE always been a bit curious, and this probably would be the easiest way to satisfy that curiosity. “Fuck it.” You say to yourself, throw your “wedding dress” aside and you turn around and approach Helen. “Take off all your clothes.” You say. “Wha…what?” Helen remarks in surprise. “Take off all your clothes. Obviously we got some things to work out before we proceed any further, or more specifically I got some things to work out before I proceed any further. So get your clothes off.” You say and head over to the bed where you start taking off your own. This is uncharted territory for you, but strangely as you lie in bed completely naked, you’re not quite as nervous about it as you thought you might be. When Helen finally gets naked, you see she has nice little body on her. Her tits aren’t as big as yours, but nobody’s perfect. As mildly anxious as you are, Helen has to be doubly so. She might’ve made the “first move” but you’ve definitely taken the lead. Helen’s also a virgin for all intents and purposes. You wonder if that might be making all this a little hotter for you. “You’re very beautiful.” Helen says walking over to you. “Yeah…oh you’re not bad yourself. So…you ready to do this?” you ask. “Yes, I’m ready…um…I’ve never done this before with anyone…how should we start?” Helen asks. “Uh, I guess kissing. Even in the movies they usually start like that.” You reply. “Okay.” Helen remarks compliantly. Helen lies next to you and the pair of you begin kissing and caressing each other. It’s definitely different than when you’re with Bobby who tends to be a little rougher. This really isn’t all that bad; in fact the only downside is Helen is doing a lot of talking instead of focusing on the task at hand. It’s not even dirty talk; she keeps asking questions if she’s doing something right. Doesn’t take you long before you start pushing her head down so she can stop talking altogether. “Oh…okay…” Helen remarks as she gets the hint. “And Helen, I don’t want any more talking. Just focus, understand? Yeah…mmm…just like that…” you say as you feel the magic starting to happen. Your back starts arching, your toes start curling, you begin to make moans of pleasure and grab the back of Helen’s head. You’re generally in a state of bliss as Helen does her thing. At this moment nothing else exists except your pleasure so you aren’t paying any attention to the noise that is going on outside. And you aren’t paying attention to the door when it opens up… “Urgh! What the fuck are you two doing?!” Veronica exclaims with a gun in her hand. “Oh! Um…uh…” Helen stutters as she wipes her mouth and raises her head up and probably looking like a deer in the headlights from Veronica’s perspective. “SHIT! Doesn’t anyone fucking knock!? What the hell are you doing in here waving a gun around?” you say and try to cover up as much as you can. “I was coming to warn you that we’re being fucking attacked by zombies! I didn’t realize I was going to walk in on you two dyking it out! Does Bobby know about this?” Veronica says. “Nevermind all that, did you just say zombies are attacking us?” you ask. “Yeah, I mean…I dunno if they are. Maybe they’re just rabid humans or something, but they’re gnashing their teeth, moaning and coming at us like something out of a horror movie. We need all the help we can get to repel these things!” “We’ll be ready in a moment.” You say as Veronica shakes her head. “Well you two better hurry up, (Sigh) honestly, we’re getting attacked and you two are busy licking…” A loud crashing noise followed by gunfire is heard from downstairs. “Shit! That sounded close! I gotta go!” Veronica shouts and you hear her run off. Well at least it looks like Bobby’s finally lit a fire under his relative’s asses to pull their weight around here. “(Sigh) Fucking zombies. Of course this day couldn’t just be a pleasant one.” You say fumbling with your clothing. “I hope we get down there in time to help Bobby.” Helen says getting dressed as well. “We will, hold on let me get something first.” You go to Bobby’s clothing drawer to get the spare gun he mentioned yesterday. “Hey, what about me?” Helen asks. “Well, just grab a blunt object! Unplug that desk lamp and use that to bash those freaks’ heads in I guess.” “Suzy, I don’t really want to argue, but do you even know how to use a gun properly? Maybe you should give me the gun and you just stay behind me.” “For your information my older brother Ben DID show me how to shoot a gun…a few times.” “A few times…Suzy, I was taught to fire a gun, aim and everything else before I was ten. I’m just saying in a situation like this, it might be best if I have the gun, I’m sure when we get to the others, Bobby will give you another one of his.” Helen remarks. “Yeah and in the mean time I’m fucking defenseless.” “You won’t be! I’ll protect you and I think you can count on that.” Helen says and then follows up by putting her arm around your waist and then sensually kissing you on the lips. You ALMOST want to head right back to the bed, but unfortunately you’ve got more important things to deal with. “Okay, okay, you can take the gun, but me and you are definitely going to finish what we started after all this is over.” You say and go unplug the small desk lamp you mentioned earlier to Helen and take it as a makeshift weapon. The pair of you head through the corridor and down the stairs both not making many comments at this point. Might be due to the situation being more than a little tense and its only getting more so as the gunfire, yelling and guttural noises are getting louder as you approach the center of the fighting. Helen then suddenly stops and turns to you. “Suzy?” Helen says. “What!?” you ask. “I just want you to know that if something goes wrong…” “Helen, nothing is going to go wrong, but we need to just focus and get to Bobby.” “Well just in case it does, I just want you to know I love…” “SHIT HELEN! SHOOT! SHOOT!” you exclaim when you see two creatures bursting through the door in front of you. Helen spins around and fires, hiting one of them square in the chest twice, but it doesn’t even slow down, it just tackles Helen onto the floor. She drops her pistol and struggles with the creature while calling for you to help and while you’d love to do just that, the second creature is currently trying to make a meal out of you. You swing at the creature a couple times, but it moves in such a jerky motion that you don’t land a good hit and cause only a glancing blow to its head. Still it’s enough to give you a bit of a breather while the thing tries to get back up off the floor. You spy the gun nearby and wonder if you should go for it or help Helen directly first. > You grab the gun You go for the pistol and manage to pick it up. Unfortunately the creature you just beaned in the head has already recovered from its head wound. Much like Helen, you manage to pull the trigger and get a couple shots to its stomach, but it isn’t slowed down and uses all its weight to cause the pair of you to crash to the floor. You drop the gun, but you still have the lamp in hand and you attempt to swing it from your prone position, but the creature has already dug its fingers deep into that arm and forcibly holds it to prevent you from doing so. You punch with your other free arm, but your hits to its face do nothing. It just repeats what it has done to your other arm and digs its nails in deeply. With horrible snarling, foam and blood coming from its mouth and more ruthless savagery than you have, the thing soon overpowers you completely and its face meets your own to bite your nose off. You scream in agony as a gout of blood gushes from the new hole in your face. Your screams soon stop completely when it bites out your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Getting into a fistfight with Diana is one thing, but you’re definitely not up to dealing with this crazy asshole. You just hope Bobby is up for dealing with him though apparently Helen thinks so. “Come on! Bobby can handle this, but we need to get to the children where it’s safe!” Helen exclaims and you start to follow her. The pair of you run upstairs away from the sounds of shouting and gunfire. You soon reach the top and follow Helen through a corridor doorway. And then Helen nearly gets bashed in the head with a bat when she passes through an entryway. She does take a hit to the shoulder though which causes her to fall to the floor in pain. Diana steps out from the corner she was hiding behind and then rushes at you. You’re caught off guard and point your pistol at Diana, and actually manage to fire a shot, but unfortunately Diana’s smashes your arm with the bat away from her direction so your shot goes wild. Hardly matters since between the kickback of the pistol and the pain you end up dropping the gun entirely. With you unarmed and Helen still clutching her arm in pain, Diana’s head swivels back and forth rapidly, to make sure neither one of you are going to suddenly lunge at her, though she’s also eyeing the dropped pistol too. “After Bobby ripped my heart out I went upstairs to my room and overheard you two bitches conspiring against me. Didn’t know you had it in you Helen. I always knew you loved Bobby, but always figured you’d be too weak to do shit about it. Guess that’s my fault for showing you mercy.” Diana remarks. While Diana’s ranting to her sister, you attempt to make a play for the gun, but Diana swings her bat at you, nearly hitting you in the face. You step back just in time. “And you. You certainly have proved yourself the stereotype of dumb blonde, because if you actually bought that bullshit that my sister fed you, you’re stupider than I thought you were. You actually think she’s gonna just let you have Bobby? She’s gonna backstab you the same way she backstabbed me.” “Maybe she backstabbed you because you were a fucking bully to her, you ever think of that?” you say. “Bully? She oughta be grateful I didn’t kill her ass and instead made her strong enough for her to grow a spine to betray me in the first place! Hey! Where the fuck you goin’?” Diana remarks when she turns her head to see Helen getting up to run away. Diana throws her bat at Helen’s legs, which successfully hit and trip her up. Diana then goes for the pistol and that’s when you pounce and manage to tackle her. The pair of you are soon rolling on the floor again, punching, scratching and kneeing each other. You both try to go for the pistol on several occasions, but neither of you gets the advantage, in fact when Diana finally does, you knock it out of her hand and it goes sprawling and down the stairs to the first floor. “Bah! I don’t need a gun to do my work anyhow! I’ll enjoy it even more killing you with my bare hands!” Diana remarks and lands a good punch on you and then she slams the back of your head into the floor causing you to become a little dazed. She’d do more, but then Helen comes up from behind her with the bat in hand. Unfortunately for Helen, Diana hears Helen and catches Helen’s feeble swing and stops the bat from actually hitting her. “I’m gonna so enjoy hurting you little sister…” Diana exclaims and attempts to rip the bat from Helen’s hand. Helen’s grip is strong enough that Diana doesn’t succeed so instead Diana uses Helen’s weight against her and pushes the bat towards Helen as hard as she can. Helen, not expecting this, loses her footing on her already bruised legs and falls back on the nearby wall, dropping the bat entirely, which rolls away. Diana gets off of you, to take care of her sister who at this point is begging to not be hurt. “Diana, please…this isn’t my fault…Bobby chose Su…” Diana squeaks. “BOBBY CHOSE ME FIRST! BOBBY IS MINE! HE’S ALWAYS BEEN MINE BY BIRTH! You fucking little weakling traitorous bitch! Had you just stayed in line, I might’ve even been kind enough to let Bobby face fuck you on your birthday, but the only fucking you’re going to get now is in your ass because I’m going knee deep in it!” At this point Helen squeals in fear and curls up in a tight ball while Diana starts kicking the hell out of her. Meanwhile you’re starting to come around a bit more. Things are still a bit dizzy for you and you’re a bit wobbly standing up, but you manage it. You attempt to make a run (or fast paced wobble at any rate) for the bat, but Diana stops you before you can even reach it. “Don’t think so bottled blonde bitch!” Diana says and knocks you to the floor and then follows up with a kick. Diana gets on top of you and while you struggle to fight her off, she slaps away your attempts and wraps her hands around your throat. “You are going to very dark place and I’m going to enjoy putting you there.” She remarks and then she starts doing some weird chanting, similar to the shit Bobby says at times when you’re having sex with him, but this isn’t nearly as fun. You try to pry her hands off your throat, but her grip is like iron. You start to lose consciousness. You try one more time to get her off of you by punching her in the face, but your swing isn’t strong enough and Diana is just too determined to end your life. Diana’s face gets blurry, you choke and then everything goes black. Everything is black for what probably seems to be forever. There is nothing. No fluffy cloud heaven, no lake of fire, and definitely not any Tiamat. Then you feel a sensation around your mouth and the sensation of air going in. It’s pleasant enough that you instinctively throw your arms out to embrace Bobby. When you open your eyes you find Helen’s face lip locked to yours. After a few seconds you actually freak out about it being her instead of Bobby. “H…hey! What the hell?!” you say and push Helen off of you. “I’m sorry Suzy, but you were unconscious and I was resuscitating you.” Helen remarks. “I wasn’t breathing?” you ask. “Um, well it didn’t look like you were. I mean Diana choked you out before I got to her.” “Wait, I was just unconscious. (cough) You didn’t check to see if I was still breathing first? You just wrapped your (cough) lips around mine and started blowing into my mouth?” “I panicked and didn’t want to waste time checking! I didn’t want you to die!” Helen exclaims. Well you can’t really fault her for trying to save your life. “(Cough) Well thanks Helen. So where is Diana?” you ask rubbing your throat which still hurts like hell. “Over to your right.” Helen points out and sure enough you turn your head and see Diana laying face down on the floor. “I smacked her in the head with the bat when she was choking you. I dunno if I killed her. I didn’t check to see if she was still breathing either, I was too busy worrying about you. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” “Yeah, I’m fine.” You slowly starting to stand. It takes some effort, but Helen helps you up. Your whole body hurts. You stare at Diana’s body and see her chest briefly rise and fall, so it looks like she’s still alive, just unconscious. Though you’re severely tempted to put an end to that, but you’ve got a better idea. “You think Bobby would let me sacrifice Diana?” you ask which takes her a little by surprise. “Um…I don’t know. I mean after we explain what she did, I can’t see he’d have any objections. There are no rules against it.” Helen replies. “Good, it’s my fucking wedding day, I should at least get to pick…well shit looks like she’s waking up already.” You remark when you see Diana begin to stir. “Hey, guess what Diana, you’re going to be at my wedding after all. You’re going to be one of the most important people there in fact. Helen, do you have anything to tie this bitch up with?” you ask. “Uh, yeah I think I know where there are some handcuffs and there’s always duct tape laying around somewhere.” Helen replies. “Well go get them. I’ll keep an eye on Diana.” You say and pick up the nearby bat. While Helen goes running off, you standby staring at Diana who is giving you the stare of death, but is obviously still in lady pain. “You think I’m gonna just let you throw me on the altar and shove a knife in me like some fucking sheep? You gotta another thing coming blondie.” She remarks. “I don’t see as you have really a choice at this point.” You remark. “Bullshit, I still got a few choices. Like for instance, I could rush you right now, take that bat from you and bash your brains in with it.” “You think you still got the strength for that, let alone the speed?” “Maybe I’ll make it, maybe I won’t, but we’re gonna see…” Diana says and spits blood from her mouth. Just as you’re about to put out Diana’s lights again, you suddenly hear a very loud explosion which sounds like it’s coming from the left side of the house. You’ve been so busy with Diana, you’ve completely forgotten that Bobby’s been battling it out with Aaron elsewhere in the house. Your concerns are briefly for him instead. However, with this very brief distraction, Diana takes advantage and lunges at you and the pair of you are struggling with the damn bat again. Diana seems to be fueled by some sort of unnatural rage at this point, because she’s certainly more formidable than the first time you fought with her in the dining room, or maybe she’s not underestimating you like she did last time. In any case, you need an advantage, which is either going to be the bat you’re currently still struggling with, or the gun which you know is still somewhere on the stairwell. > You go for the gun Obviously all this rolling on the floor and hand to hand shit isn’t getting you anywhere with her. She’s tougher than you thought and you need to just shoot her and put an end to this. As hard as you can, you do the same trick Diana did to Helen and use her weight against her and shove her as hard as you can while letting go of the bat. Diana ends up falling on her ass and you turn to run towards the stairs. You get half way down the stairs when you feel a hard smack against your lower back when Diana throws the bat at you, causing you to lose your balance and you take a full tumble down the stairs. Not only do you break your arm in the process, you also end up hitting your head hard on the steps several times to the point where you’ve probably got a concussion, but that’s the least of your concerns. Dizzy and moaning in pain from your arm. You’re in no condition to fight Diana when she hovers over you with the gun you were trying to get in hand. “Y’know, under ideal circumstances, I’d take my time with you and enjoy dishing out the pain over the course of days, but I suppose I’ll just have to do that with my sister instead. Tiamat truly blesses the strong, all hail her glorious chaos!” Diana says and blasts you several times.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>TUESDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world banana eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe away the whipped cream on your lips, graciously stand up and bow for your adoring fans. The big dude on your right wearing nothing but chaps and a biker jacket looks at you in disbelief and then turns away to puke in a bucket. Meanwhile the little Asian She-Male on your left just shakes his head wondering how the hell you could've beaten him. "I don't understand it...all my training. I glanced over at you during the contest...you...you were barely even chewing! How?" He asks. "Oh just natural talent at swallowing bananas I suppose." You reply humbly and wink at the audience, which continues to praise you. While you're blowing kisses at your fans, you suddenly get a feeling you’ve done something like this before…. Suddenly a hand touches your shoulder and you spin around to see a woman about your age with long raven colored hair and a low cut black gown. She’s pretty, but has a sneering look on her face. It’s not quite a cruel look, but she’s definitely not impressed with you. “So, you think you got what it takes to meet Misty huh? Pfft. I don’t see you lasting another day. Maybe two at best.” “Who is Misty?” you ask. “(Sigh) Deary, if you don’t know, then you’ll never know. And if you never know, then how can you ever hope to survive?” the woman says in a condescending tone and then starts laughing at you. She then begins to age rapidly until she becomes a wizened crone and then eventually a rotting corpse. When you begin to step back, the woman then disappears, but her laughter remains, getting louder and louder to the point being deafening and causing pain. You futilely attempt to cover your ears, but the laughter persists even when you try to cram left over bananas in your ears. Meanwhile, the biker turns in a unicorn and the she-male turns into rainbow colored fox which jumps on the back of the unicorn and they run off together. The audience surprisingly has completely disappeared. In fact it’s just you and that awful laughter that won’t quit. Just when you think you can’t take the pain anymore everything goes black… You wake up to the sound of a female voice. “What’s going on?!” you exclaim sitting up fast. “Oh! Sorry! I…I didn’t mean to wake you…but I just was told to bring you this.” the source of the female voice says. You rub your eyes and see a young woman with light brown hair before you holding a tray of food. She’s probably a few years younger than you. “…wait…you’re Helen right?” you say recognizing her. “Yes. I didn’t think you remembered me. We only saw each other a couple times before.” Helen says. “Yeah I remember you. Where’s Bobby?” “Oh, Bobby’s busy doing something with cousin William. I think its something to do with working on the compound here. I’m not really sure. I just tend to look after the little ones, but Bobby told me I should bring you something to eat, so um here.” Helen thrusts the tray of food at you. It consists of typical breakfast type food like scrambled eggs, bacon, cereal and juice. You see no reason not to take the offering seeing as you aren’t served like this very often. “Wow, breakfast in bed. That’s something I’ve never had before.” You say and start to eat. Helen stares at you nervously, which causes you to stop eating. “What?” you ask. “Oh! Nothing, I just wanted to make sure you liked it. Is the food good? I really didn’t know what to make you and I just wanted it to be right.” Helen says. “It’s fine Helen.” You say. “Oh good. I just…I just didn’t want to disappoint you.” “It’s just breakfast Helen. Relax. Probably way better than anything I could make, I dunno how to cook.” “You don’t? Didn’t your mother teach you?” Helen asks as if cooking is something every woman knows how to do. “Nope. She taught me how to sew when I was younger, but I sort of stopped doing it when she died of a flesh-eating virus. Didn’t really see the point anymore.” “Oh no, how sad!” Helen says empathetically. “Yeah.” You say continuing to eat. “Well don’t worry, I’m a very good cook and I can even teach you!” “Hm, well between that offer and this meal, you’ve probably done more for me than my own family has in years.” “I’m so glad you said that. I want us to get along because I know you’re going to be married to Bobby and all.” “Wait, Bobby told you already?” you ask. “He told everyone last night. He was so happy. I’m so glad he was, I like seeing him happy.” “Hm, I can guess who wasn’t happy to hear about it.” You remark. “Oh. Yes. Um…you probably mean Diana. Yes, she was quite upset. Um…in fact I probably should leave. She’s looking after the little ones and I’m sure I’ll get an earful about being away from my duties for so long. She’s in a bad enough mood as it is.” Helen says. “Okay, well sorry to keep you then. I don’t want to get you into trouble.” “Oh, it’s okay. I’m not really worried about me anyway. It’s just if I stay away for too long she might… well she’s not as patient as I am with our younger siblings. So are you okay with the food and everything?” “Yeah Helen.” “Okay good. Good. Um…okay I’m going now. Um, I suppose I’ll see you around some time.” “Okay then.” At this point Helen nervously waves and opens the door to leave, but then she calls out to you. “Um, Suzy?” “Yes?” “I’m really glad you’re going to be part of this family soon.” She says with a faint smile and then leaves. You shake your head and finish your food. Helen obviously has some issues. Though maybe its because you know what its like to have a bullying older sister, you can sympathize. After putting aside your food tray you take a shower in the private bathroom connected to the bedroom which is very convenient. While washing up you take time to ponder your odd dream which while having its surreal moments seemed “real” to you in some ways. The raven haired woman in the dream was most certainly Bobby’s grandmother which is sort of creepy, but then maybe she just popped up due you seeing pictures of her (and even one in your room) earlier that night. Ultimately you decide not to worry too much about it unless this becomes an ongoing problem. After your shower, you then change your clothing and decide to explore what is now your new home. You walk around the right wing of the compound, upstairs and down, not running into anyone. It’s all pretty empty on this side which is sort of good you suppose and you’re half tempted to just go back to your new room and play on your computer. However, you figure you’re going to have to make the effort to be social with everyone so you head over to the central part of the compound where you assume more of Bobby’s family is located. Eventually you get to a large dining area and see a few dirty plates still on the table. The voices of children can be heard a few rooms away and then… That red headed witch Diana steps out from the kitchen. She holds a knife in one hand and you notice her hand tighten around its handle when she sees you. “Look, I don’t want any trouble Diana. I know you’re mad but…” you start to say before Diana interrupts. “Spare me your pathetic words blonde whore. You will not sway me with superficial attempts at diplomacy. YOU are in my way, but I promise you that before the week’s end, you will be out of it.” When you cautiously step back a bit, Diana smirks. “You better keep stepping backwards and out the front door if you want to stay out of my way AND keep your pitiful life.” While Diana is doing a fairly adequate job of intimidating you, she’s actually starting to make you angry. Like a rage is building up within you and you feel like just picking up one of the forks on one of the dirty plates on the table and stabbing her in the neck with it. In fact violent visions start to enter your head, visions of bloody bodies and other murderous images. They hit you so suddenly; you actually stumble and keep yourself from falling by propping yourself up against the table. You then rub your head from this spell, as you don’t feel completely well. “Now what? Am I scaring you too much? Are you about to cry? By Tiamat you really are worthless. And that is why you’ll never make a good wife to my brother. You’re far too weak. My brother will realize that soon.” Diana remarks. As unwell as you suddenly feel, the rage within you is still rising. > You keep calm You’re not going to play her game. Getting into a fight is just going to make things worse. She’s all talk anyway, she’s just going to bark and not actually do anything. You just stay silent and try to walk away. Diana however keeps barking. “Hey, where you going, this isn’t over you fucking bitch!” Diana says, but you ignore her and keep walking away. When you don’t respond, Diana moves from barking to biting which involves grabbing you on the shoulder and spinning you around. “Hey, get your hands off of me!” you say and attempt to push her away. Diana’s spoiling for a fight however and grabs your arm with her free hand. And unfortunately she’s also spoiling for your death. “You’re fucking too weak for Bobby, better that I take care of this now. He’ll thank me in the long run!” She exclaims and stabs you chest with her knife. You scream in pain and fall back in shock. Diana wastes no time in taking advantage and leaps on you while stabbing the entire time. While the noise brings the attention of other family members who attempt to pull Diana off of you, but it’s already too late, she’s hit several vital organs and opened up several of your veins. “All hail fucking Tiamat and her glorious chaos!” Diana yells in triumph and laughing as your blood is splattered all over her.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It's not like this is a complete stranger, this is someone you do have feelings for and what the hell, it's not like you aren't going to be doing this again with him eventually. Still, there is the matter of decorum. You manage to twist your body around so that you're face to face to him; he barely stops when you tell him. "Bobby, look we can do this, but like I said, we're NOT doing this in the middle of the living room. Let's at least go down to the basement and we can fuck on my couch." "Okay, okay, whatever, let's just get down their quickly." Bobby agrees continuing to kiss on you. The pair of you head down into the basement and one of Bobby's hands is practically glued to your ass the entire time. When you get to your room, you see that Bobby has somehow managed to strip off most of his clothing by this point (amazing considering he had one hand on your ass the entire time). He helpfully starts stripping your clothing off. "Well seeing as you're obviously taking the alpha male approach to this, after you're done tearing off my clothes, you can carry me over to the sofa and start doing me like a conquering warrior. I want to see your face stare into mine as you thrust into me, let me know who exactly is in charge and teach me a lesson." You say licking your index finger and then running your finger down Bobby's chest. (Never let it be said that you can't tap into your dirty side when necessary) The next half hour is fun, if a little rougher than you're used to with Bobby. It starts off with him just really ramming it into you and telling you in various ways to "Take it." while staring directly into your eyes which are more piercing than usual. His hands are also mostly holding down your wrists at this point. Despite all this, you aren't scared. You just wrap your legs around him tightly like a boa constrictor and enjoy the ride. A little later he put his hands around your neck and even squeezes a little while continuing to stare into your eyes. You can certainly still breathe, but he is definitely establishing his dominance and that he is firmly in control of things. Despite all this, you still aren't really scared, you even add to the "experience" by squeaking out a "No." "Please don't." "Stop hurting me." every now and then. Eventually Bobby chants something in a language you've never heard before and then orgasms. Again, not really scary since he's always doing that. It was weird the first few times you had sex with him but now it acts as a nice little alarm letting you know that things will be over soon. Completely spent after orgasm, Bobby collapses on top of you and begins hugging you tightly, and then whispers... "I love you so much Suzy, I want us to be joined forever. I want our bodies as well as our souls to be married." NOW you get scared and suddenly push him off of you in alarm at this declaration. "What?! Married?" You exclaim recoiling to one corner of the couch. Bobby's a little surprised by your reaction. "I want us to be married. I mean we're obviously soul mates and its the next logical step for us." "Step? What step? We were just having fun a moment ago and now you spring life long commitment?" "Are you saying you never saw us eventually getting married? I mean in all that time since we've been together?" "No, and especially not when all the trouble with your sister came about." "But on several occasions you asked me to run away with you! You didn't think we'd get married if we ever did that even?" "Not really." "I'm guessing you didn't ever think about having children either then." "Children?! What the hell, you think I'm some sort of brood mother? Now Bobby is downright confused. "Suzy... I really don't understand your... well view of things..." Bobby says. "That pretty rich coming from the cultist." You say. "Okay, I'm going to ignore that because I love you. But if it makes any difference, at least I still behave in a consistent way which you do not." "What's that supposed to mean?" "(Sigh) I really don't want us to fight again..." "Bobby I just let you simulate what could be considered a rape fantasy on me, the least you can do is explain yourself." "Okay then THAT right there is what I'm talking about. You have no problem with having kinky sex with me, you have no major problems with my religion and what it entails, you're even willing to move in with me and my family even though you're concerned about my sister and probably the rest of them, but somehow marriage is what is freaking you out? I mean I'm trying to do the right thing here and it's because I genuinely love you. Why are you so resistant?" It's actually a good question. You're pretty tolerant of a lot of stuff most would've recoiled in horror from and something like marriage and (shudder) kids is scaring you off. There's probably a good psychological reason for your reluctance, involving your observations of other married couples such as your own mother (overly compliant) and father (distant) or your brother Ben (paranoid psychotic) and his wife (utterly clueless) but there are a few other concerns. "Bobby...you've never brought up marriage before either, why all of a sudden?" You ask. "Well, I just think it's time. I mean we've been together awhile. We've stuck together through ups and downs. We're going to be living together. I obviously love you and I assume you love me right?" "Well...yeah...but... I dunno...I mean kids? Come on do you really think I'm mother material? I can barely take care of myself...in fact I can't at all, otherwise I wouldn't be in this situation in the first place." At this point Bobby takes your hand into his and gets closer to you. "Suzy, don't you see, you don't need to worry about any of that anymore. When you marry me you won't have to worry about taking care of yourself ever again. And as far as being mother material, I can't imagine a better mother to my children. Even if you do have trouble, I'm sure my sisters will help out...well okay Helen will help out, but you know what I'm saying. The main thing is you won't have any more worries when you're in the family...MY family. We'll look after you. I'll look after you." And there it is. Your future. A "housewife" popping out a whole mess of little cultists like a Pez dispenser. While it might not be quite that extreme, the writing is on the wall. While Bobby is probably sincere in his love and desire to care for you, he's still the head of a human sacrificing cult and as such he's going to be somewhat controlling and manipulative. How long before you become brainwashed into believing in the same shit he believes in? How long before you passively accept other sudden changes over time? Hell, how long before some organization like the FBI or the ATF comes charging in to lay siege to the place? Though on the other hand what are you really doing with your life right now and what prospects do you really have? You could do worse than have a man who obviously loves you a lot and is willing to take care of the stuff you don't want to bother worrying about. You've got a major life changing decision to make, because you get the impression that if you get into that compound of his, changing you mind isn't going to be an option. > You decline his proposal You love Bobby…well at least you think you do. He’s been your only boyfriend so you don’t have any other real comparison. But even if you do love him, you still don’t think you’re ready to marry him at least not on the terms he wants. “Can’t we just…I dunno…runaway together?” you ask. “What? I don’t understand, I thought you loved me.” Bobby says. “I do, but marriage…that’s a really big step…and all my other concerns aside I still don’t feel comfortable living with your sister. I mean maybe it would be different if it were just us and no other ties. I might even feel comfortable starting a family with you with a clean slate as it were.” “Suzy…that’s just not possible. First of all I already have a perfectly good home that’s fully stocked with necessities, why the hell would I just abandon it? That would be dumb just from a logical standpoint and just because you don’t want anything to do with your worthless family, I still love mine and I’m not going to just abandon them.” “Worthless? Yeah, I don’t think highly of them either, but don’t you dare come in and start claiming superiority! At least my family isn’t a bunch of inbred brainwashed murderers. And fuck you Bobby, if you REALLY wanted to, we could fucking run away together. You’re a resourceful guy.” “Oh I’m a resourceful guy huh? Well maybe I am, but what are YOU going to be doing?” “What do you mean what am I going to be doing? I’m going to be with you! Isn’t that enough?” “Suzy, you’re sitting here asking me to give up EVERYTHING that’s important to my life and I’m asking why should I? I mean yes, I get you don’t like Diana, but I already told you that she isn’t going to be a problem…” Bobby says before you interrupt. “And excuse me if I’m not completely fucking convinced. She’s your fucking ex, she hates my guts AND you expect me to live under the same roof with her even when we’re fucking married? No, not fucking happening and I’m also not being a goddamn brood sow just waiting around for you to fuck me.” You interject. “Don’t see how that’s much different from your life now…” Bobby says dismissively. You’re speechless for a second. “Excuse me?” you say. “I said I don’t see how sitting around waiting for me to fuck you would be that big of a change in your life because you practically do that now. I mean what the hell do YOU do except hide out down here from the rest of the world and then every now and then we meet up to fuck. If we got married, the only difference would be you’d be living in a better home and actually have to do something with your time like maybe look after our kids…but of course you don’t want any because at your core you’re completely self centered and only care about what YOU want. You know, you got a lot more in common with Diana than you realize in that department.” With as much power as you can, you slap Bobby across his face. He doesn’t flinch, and it seems he was even expecting it. He just gives you the stone face stare. “Get the fuck out. Go back to your fucked up religion and sister fucking. We’re through, for good this time.” You say. Bobby doesn’t say anything he just gathers his clothing and gets dressed as fast as possible. He doesn’t look at you the entire time until he starts to walk away. “I love you Suzy, but I suppose this is easier for the both of us. I hope your life works out.” He says and then turns away. You hear his footsteps going up the basement stairs and then eventually you hear the front door slam. And he’s gone. That’s it. Bobby’s out of your life forever and you immediately feel a mixture of sadness and sickness. You’re sad of course because despite all the problems you had towards the end of your relationship (And the incredibly shitty thing he said to you which caused the final split anyway), he was your first and you do believe he did love you and you loved him. You thought you both had so much in common at one time, but it turned out your differences were greater than you thought and some people just aren’t meant to be together. You also feel sick due to the fact that he was potentially your “savior” in getting out of your current predicament with your older sister. Now that he’s gone, you don’t know what the hell you’re going to do. You spend a little time wondering if you should’ve just went along with Bobby’s proposal. Would it have really been all that bad? It’s too late now though, you can’t call him now even if you really wanted to…and you do really want to, but you just can’t ignore his own faults in what caused the final straw to be broken in the relationship. Somewhere in between the crying and moping, you realize that what you’re doing right now isn’t any different from any other day; namely, you’re hiding out from the world in your basement. The only major difference is you happen to be extremely upset right now. Bobby was right about that on some level. You do just sit around down here doing nothing waiting for…what exactly? Maybe you were waiting for Bobby to “save you” somehow, but obviously you didn’t really want that or at least you didn’t want it on the terms he was demanding. What DO you want in life Suzy? What can you do to change your status? Well, you aren’t sure what you want in life, but you know the only potential way to change your status now is to either get a job or find some new place to live. Seeing as you’re already depressed, you open up your laptop and proceed to engage in the soul-crushing task of looking for a job. As day turns to night, you spend hours looking for a job…well actually you spend AN hour looking and the rest of the time being distracted with your depression. The problem is there is just nothing out there for the likes of you unless you want to be stripper at one of the many strip clubs. You sometimes wish you were more like Donna because if you had less hangs up about being slutty, you’d jump at the chance. However, you were cursed with an odd concept of self-respect so no stripping for you. You look into waitressing since it seems like that’s another job that’s always available. You find a few places hiring…at the strip clubs…great. The further descent of desperation causes you to look for jobs involving house keeping or janitorial work. You are already dreading the idea of doing such labor, but you still have to look. You find one that’s open…at an adult bookstore. You can only imagine what you’d be primarily cleaning up. “What the fuck is wrong with this town? Isn’t there even a goddamn fast food place in need of a hapless burger flipper?” you cry out in frustration. You’re about to give up and resign yourself to being depressed and doing nothing until you fall asleep when you find something that looks slightly more promising. There is not one but TWO jobs open at a comic shop, imaginatively called “Jake’s Comic Shop” who you assume is the owner. One is moving a bunch of boxes around and the other is working a register. Not exactly the most desirable of jobs, but it beats the idea of dressing in skimpy clothing, getting ogled and possibly groped. (Let alone cleaning up jizz for a living) As far as you’re concerned that’s your task for tomorrow. You’re heading over to Jake’s Comic Shop and you’re not leaving until you have employment. You feel slightly positive about this, well not really, but you do at least feel like you’ve accomplished something this dark day. With that out of the way, you allow yourself to go back to being depressed over today’s unfortunate event until you set your alarm for tomorrow (Which you never usually do) and eventually fall asleep. > Next day... TUESDAY Your alarm goes off and you groggily wake up. Way earlier than you’re used to actually. It’s morning and you haven’t been up this early in a long time. You’re surprised you didn’t just sleep through the alarm considering how emotionally drained you were yesterday. Even now, you still feel tired. You’re also still pretty damn depressed. Depression combined with your type of ingrained apathy would normally make for a really bad combination of motivation, but against all odds, you actually get up out of bed to go wash up. You spend an extra long time in the shower trying to motivate yourself for the first phase of your goals today which is heading over to Jake’s comic shop and getting a job. Eventually you finish up and head back to your room where you start to get dressed, thinking about one of your other possible goals which is finding a new place to live because if this comic shop thing doesn’t work out, you doubt if you’re going to find anything else you’d be willing to do before the week is over. Always one to seek the way of least resistance, you reluctantly call your sister Donna since she did say you could live with her and Julie. You didn’t really want to go live with her and Julie though because you know it’s going to be party central non-stop, but you don’t have many other options. You ring up Donna several times and get no answer. You ring up Julie and also get no answer. They’re probably both passed out from whatever they were doing the night before. You give up attempting to contact them today, deciding that you’ll just show up on their doorstep with all your shit if you don’t get this job. It’s not much of a plan, but you do feel slightly better believing you have a safety net. Well you like to THINK you have a safety net anyway. With that fear partially quelled, you absent-mindedly check to see if Bobby called…then you stop… “Christ, that was stupid. Get your head straight Suzy…” you say to yourself, starting to feel bad again. You then remind yourself that you’ll have to break that habit. You nearly delete his number entirely, but you can’t quite bring yourself to do it just yet. Pushing through it all, you now move on to your next step of trying to convince your brother Peter to let you borrow his car so you drive over to the comic shop. You head upstairs and bang on the door to the garage. “Hey Peter, open up I need a favor!” you shout and after a few seconds the door opens up. “What the fuck Suzy? Why the hell are you banging on my door like you’re the police?” Peter exclaims peeking his head out the door. He’s probably naked. “Yeah, sorry to bother you with whatever currently doing at the moment, but I need to borrow your car. I’m trying to get a job.” You say. “A job? I thought you were too much of a prude to be a stripper.” “Ha ha, very funny. I’m not going to be a stripper, I’m going to try to get a job at a Jake’s comic shop.” You reply. “A comic shop? Doing what? Getting all the virgin nerds excited?” “I’m going to be moving boxes or working a register…look I don’t fucking know exactly, I haven’t gotten the job yet. I just know I NEED to get this fucking job or else Kelly’s gonna throw me out on my ass!” you reply getting increasingly exasperated. “Alright, fine. Don’t fucking bite my goddamn head off because you got problems. I’ve got problems of my own. (Sigh) Wait a minute.” Peter closes the door and then a few seconds later opens it up and then tosses some keys at you. “Here. Don’t fuck it up, and I fully expect you to put gas in it.” He says and then slams the door shut. Well that was easier than you expected, but then he probably just wanted you out of the way for whatever client he has coming over. With that out of the way, you get in Peter’s car and pull out of the driveway. A few minutes of driving to your destination and you now learn first hand what Bobby was talking about yesterday. The roads are a mess and the town is in fucking chaos. There are cops everywhere, as well as ambulances and fire trucks racing to their various destinations too. You’re also seeing small groups of people rioting. It’s like the whole town has lost its damn mind and you nearly get into an accident more than a few times. Fortunately Jake’s comic shop isn’t too far away, but given the town’s situation you’re hoping that everything there isn’t going to be as bad as what you’ve been seeing so far. Eventually you do get to the shop and so far the place doesn’t look too bad, though given that you see a police barricade a few blocks up the street, you wonder if that could all change. Pulling into the parking lot, you exit the car and enter the building. As soon as you walk in, you briefly scan the shop and find it completely empty save for a bearded middle-aged man with a ponytail at a counter staring at you. He couldn’t be more of a stereotype of a “comic book guy.” “Well…hello. You lost or something? The beauty salon is down the street…though I believe there was a shooting or something there earlier.” He says. “Um, no. I’m here about the job. Are you Jake?” you ask. “That’s me. Now what job are you talking about exactly?” Jake asks while looking at you up and down. The guy is already probably thinking several dirty thoughts about you and at this point you’re really hoping this guy doesn’t turn the whole job thing into some stupid line about giving him a blowjob. “The job openings I found on the internet for this place. It said you needed someone to move boxes or work the register.” You say. “Oh yeah, I’m not even sure why I posted that. In this current economy I can barely afford to hire one employee and lately I’m wondering if I can even do that.” Jake says. “Shit, does this mean you’re not hiring?” “Well…considering you’re easy on the eyes, I’m not going to say I’m NOT hiring. Besides you’re the only one that’s even applied so far. You’d think with all the fanboy nerds that practically live at this place one of them would’ve offered to fucking help me out. (Sigh) Whatever, you got your resume?” “Resume?” you ask. “Yeah, when people tend to apply for jobs they usually have one. I mean not that any of the tasks here are brain surgery, but it’s nice to have some basic information.” Jake says. “Oh. Well I don’t have one.” You reply. “Seriously? You came in here for a job without a resume?” “I didn’t think I’d need one.” “You didn’t…alright can you give me any references then?” “Um, no.” “You can’t or you won’t?” “I can’t because I don’t have any.” “Jesus Christ…do you have ANY job experience whatsoever?” “No.” “Do you even want a fucking job here?” Jake asks getting exasperated. “Not really, but I want to run around half naked swinging on a pole getting ogled, slobbered over and groped by horny guys for a living even less, so this place is currently my only option for my desperate situation.” You say. Jake laughs at your comment. “Well at least your honest, but if you think you’re not going to get ogled and slobbered over by guys here, you’re sadly mistaken. You do realize this is a comic shop right?” “Oh come on, there has to be female customers that come in here.” You say. “Sure, but they don’t look like you and you’ll probably get a couple of them awkwardly hitting on you as well. On the bright side, none of the nerds here are probably going to try to grope you. They’ll be far too shy to try that. No pole swinging either, but feel free to run around half naked. I guarantee something like that would really help out business.” Jake says with a smirk. “Yeah, not happening.” You reply. “Didn’t think I’d be that lucky. Well despite your total lack of skill, I suppose I’ll hire you, I do have to ask one thing first though…” And here it comes; he’s going to ask you to do something sexual and you’ll be heading out the door… “Do you even read comics?” Well that was unexpected. “Well, I used to when I was little, but my older sister Kelly just kept taking them from me and either hitting me with them or tearing them up, so I didn’t see the point anymore.” You reply. “Jeez, that’s not fucking right. You should’ve kicked her ass.” Jake says. “Yeah well that wasn’t possible, she’s ten times bigger than me. In fact that’s why I applied to this job, she’s threatening to kick me out of the house.” You say. “Hmm, sounds like a similar situation that I had with my last assistant. His mom was threatening to kick him out of the house and he begged me to hire him. He was a pathetic little worm addicted to all that anime shit. Really he was a lousy helper, but given that the one I had before him just died in my bathroom, I figured I’d give the fat little anime addict a shot.” “Wait someone died in the bathroom here?” you ask. “Yeah my retarded assistant strangled himself in my bathroom while jacking off. Spent the damn day cleaning the bathroom because of it.” “Uh, the other assistant didn’t die in the bathroom too did he?” “Nah, he ended up marrying his crazy cousin and lives in the trailer park outside of town I think. Dunno what he does now since he never comes in anymore which is a shame since the pervert used to spend a fortune in this place.” “That’s…interesting. So about the job.” You say steering the conversation back on track. “Yeah, about the job. I’m guessing you’ll want to be working the register…what is your name anyway blondie?” “Suzy, and why are you assuming I want to be working the register?” “Because I doubt a little thing like you really wants to be lugging boxes around, I mean unless you’re trying to tell me you can’t do basic math.” “Of course I know how to do basic fucking math!” you snap. “Okay, sheesh. Calm down I didn’t mean to imply anything. So you’re working the register…” Jake has still already made the decision for you about what job you’re going to be doing and while lugging boxes around really doesn’t appeal to you, you’re still a little insulted that the option has just been taken away from you. Besides the sexist implications that you aren’t strong enough to do the other job because you’re female, you get the strong impression that Jake also just wants you at the register so you’ll be more visible to all the horny virgin nerds that come in this place. And the more you’re thinking about the fact that you’ll have to interact with the public in general if you’re working the register you’re finding it about as appealing as lifting a bunch of heavy boxes around. Then again if you antagonize Jake over this, he might just throw you out of the shop and then you’ll have no job. > You stick with the register Considering you’d rather just sit on your ass and work the register than lift boxes anyway, there doesn’t seem to be much point in engaging in an argument that will lose you this job opportunity. Honestly you’re just lucky that Jake is willing to hire you and isn’t making advances on you (yet). Jake proceeds to show you how to work the register and the credit card machine. After a few trial runs and examples, you think you got it. The funny thing is, nobody has actually come into the comic shop yet. “See, not very difficult. So, you think you’re ready to officially take the responsibility of the register?” Jake asks. “Yeah, I guess, but is it always this empty?” you ask. “No, not usually. It’s about…what a little after noon now? Yesterday was slow as well, but I’m chalking it up to all the craziness going on in town, which I’m really hoping dies down soon. There is a group of regulars that should be arriving in few moments though. They usually just hang out here all fucking day, but they tend to buy a lot when they actually do decide to part with their money and not drive me up a fucking wall with their banter. However since you’re working the register, you’ll get to put up with them this time.” “Great, can’t wait.” You say and sit at the register unenthusiastically. Jake proceeds to tell you that if you need anything he’ll be in his office catching up on going over his financial books. He also warns you not to steal anything, which seems weird since if you were going to steal something, it’s not like you’d listen to his warning. Without many more words Jake disappears into his office and you sit at the register waiting for customers to come in. While you wait you start looking at the various items near the counter and start reading through some of the comics. As time passes you continue to hear the sounds of sirens and such in the distance. Through the windows you see a couple of police officers running in the direction where you saw those barricades. A little more time passes and a short man who looks to be in his mid thirties enters. He’s dressed in casual clothing and just nods at you when he sees you at the register. In an attempt to be a friendly, you smile and wave hi before he goes off to look at comics. Well either Jake was exaggerating about his customers being sex crazed assholes or this guy isn’t one of the “regulars” he was talking about. You watch him for a moment as he browses and takes various comics off the shelves. He looks like he’s really into comics with as many as he’s taking. Eventually he comes up to the counter with a stack of comic books. “Can I just sit these here for now? I’m not really done looking yet, but I don’t want to lug around a bunch of comics and possibly dropping them all over the place.” The man asks. “Oh yeah sure. I guess you really like comics huh?” you say. “Heh, I suppose I look a little obsessed. I don’t really come in here that much since normally I tend to buy stuff online, but this is one of those times where I don’t have the luxury of waiting for stuff to arrive in the mail. So I’m loading up now that I’m here. Never seen you here before though.” The man says. “I’m new. Just started today actually and you’re sort of my first customer. Nobody else has come in.” you reply. “Oh. Well, this is sort of an interesting day to start a new job given what’s been going on in town lately. I’m betting that’s why there hasn’t been anyone else in here today.” “Yeah, tell me about it. I wouldn’t have left the house if I had the choice.” “Yeah, I hear you, I don’t like going out too much myself, but I’ve been getting better about it lately.” “Same here and it still sucks, but bills aren’t going to pay themselves.” “I sort of got around that by being able to work at home. I used to sell and buy shit on the Internet a lot.” “What, like Ebay or something?” “Yeah something like that. Buy low, sell high, that sort of thing.” “I wish I could do something like that.” “You can, it’s not really difficult.” “Eh, I’m not really a wheeler and dealer type. Besides, if I had a job involving a computer, especially one involving self employment, I’d probably just goof off and never get any work accomplished.” “Well that’s the beauty of working at home. You can sort of be as lazy as you want!” The man says with slight grin. “Oh I don’t think you know exactly how lazy I can be.” You say returning the smile. “You can’t be that lazy, you’re working here.” “Well like I said, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be. (Sigh) Events however have conspired against me and here I am.” “Yeah, always sucks when things out of your control put you in a bad situation. For what it’s worth, sorry you’re in such a bind.” You didn’t expect sympathy for your minor “pity party” but you’ll definitely accept it. You usually aren’t one to hold long conversations with random strangers, but then it’s been a bit of an unusual week for you. “Thanks, so selling and buying shit on the Internet works for you huh? I suppose maybe I could do it. There’s certainly already enough crap around the house that surely someone would be interested in. Obviously with as many comics as you intend on buying you’re making a good living at it.” You say. “Well I probably would be if I wasn’t a bit of a hoarder and kept most of the shit I did buy. However, I made enough that I pulled my weight so my mom didn’t kick me out of the basement of the house. Yeah, I know I’m a walking stereotype, basement dweller in a comic shop. Big surprise right?” the man remarks. You don’t reply immediately, you just briefly think about how odd it is you’ve got so much in common with a complete stranger. “Oh, I dunno. I don’t tend to judge people.” You reply. “Well that’s a rare trait these days. Though I suppose I’m more of a hermit than a basement dweller nowadays anyway. My mother died a few years ago and I’m not even going to be living here anymore soon. Hence another reason why I’m loading up on books now.” “So wait you’re moving out of town?” you say a bit surprised. “Yeah…I guess you could say that. I mean under normal circumstances I wouldn’t bother, but it’s getting really bad out there and it’s only going to get worse.” “Worse? How do you know? You don’t think things will get back to normal in a few days?” The man starts like he’s about to say more, but stops. Then he stumbles over some words a bit before continuing. “Um…it’s just…well these things…you never can tell right? I guess I don’t really know. I think I’m just rambling at this point and not making any sense. I didn’t mean to talk your ear off. I guess I should get back to it and let you get back to doing your job.” The man says and then briskly walks to the back of the comic shop. You nearly tell him to come back to talk to clarify what he meant and that he wasn’t really bothering you, but then you think that would be a bit strange and also you don’t really know this guy. He’s probably a weirdo anyway; he just said he lived in his mom’s basement until she died after all. You don’t even know why you’re even still thinking about it or him. “Christ Suzy, you’re taking the break up harder than you thought. You’re starting to latch on to minor conversations with complete fucking strangers. Get a grip already.” You say to yourself. A sudden brick through one of the shop windows breaks up your introspective moment. You duck down behind the counter and then Jake comes out running out of his office. “What the fuck is going on out here?!” he exclaims. “I don’t know! Someone just threw a brick through…” Before you can complete that sentence you hear a bunch of laughter and the shop door opening up. You continue to stay hidden behind the counter. “Did you see that shit? Told ya I could land the brick right in the middle of the O on the window!” a young male voice exclaims. “Yeah, yeah, let’s just see what we got in here…” another remarks. “What the fuck do you little shits think you’re doing? You just broke my fucking window! I hope you fuckers got some money to pay for that RIGHT NOW or else I’m going to be kicking all of your asses THEN I’m going to your parents’ houses and kicking their asses for not aborting you.” Jake exclaims. “Oh fuck off Jake, with as much as you’ve ripped us off by overcharging, I’d say that more than covers the cost of your goddamn window. We’re going to be taking some free comics too.” You hear a voice shout back. “Look, I dunno what the fuck has compelled you social rejects even THINK you can get away with this, but if you don’t fucking get out of my shop right fucking now, there are going to be consequences you aren’t going to walk away from.” “Ohhh, so fucking scared Jake.” You hear one say who from the sound of the voice sounds like he’s getting closer. “HEY! Step back from the counter!” You hear someone hit the counter and then you look up to see a pimply teenager staring over at you. “Holy shit guys! Jake’s got a fucking bitch hiding over here! She looks hot too, no wonder he’s fucking pissed! She was probably blowing him before we came in!” he exclaims and then tries to grab your hair at which point you slap his hand away and stand up and away from the counter so you can’t be molested. It’s at this point you finally see the motley lot. Four teenage boys of all varying shapes and sizes. You don’t know who these guys are, but if they’re the “regulars” Jake mentioned, they’re certainly not acting like what you expected. “Goddamn Jake how the hell you manage to pull this off? She looks way too fucking hot for you. She a whore or something?” The tallest boy asks. “Hey, you know who she looks like? She looks like that cute zombie chick.” The fattest one says. “Nah, she looks more like that chick who controls all the dragons.” The pimply one remarks. “For fuck’s sake she’s blonde not a goddamn albino, she doesn’t look like either of them, the pair of you are idiots. She obviously looks like the blonde chick that fucks vampires.” The tallest one remarks. “Which one, Trent?” the fat one asks. “The one that’s mainly killing them too.” Trent says. “I dunno guys, I thought she looked like that chick that was a private investigator…” another one begins to say before Jake interrupts their temporary distraction of comparing you to various female nerd culture figures. “SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SHOP! I’M NOT WARNING YOU AGAIN!” Jake shouts. At which point Trent pulls a pistol out of his hoodie pocket. He doesn’t actually point it at Jake, but he’s definitely warning him by just showing it. Jake steps back a bit, but doesn’t lose his cool. You on the other hand are really worried, especially considering you got four hormone addled teenage guys staring at you. “And I’m telling YOU we’re not fucking leaving without getting our comics! Don’t you know what today is? It’s fucking free comic book day Jake!” “This is how you want to play this Trent?” Jake asks. Now Trent points the pistol at Jake and gives a look of less playfulness and more deadly seriousness. “I’m not fucking playing Jake, just like I wasn’t fucking playing with my mom when she told me to clean my room two days ago, just like I wasn’t playing with those assholes yesterday that used to give me wedgies back in sixth grade or that bitch who wouldn’t go out with me even though I did a whole bunch of nice shit for her. Things are changing around this town and if you ain’t changing with it, you’re gonna get rolled over.” Trent looks over at his fellows and waves as if he’s telling them to take whatever they want. He continues to point the gun at Jake though he keeps an eye on you as well. While you’re a little busy worrying about Trent and the rest, you realize you haven’t seen that guy you were talking to before. You can’t imagine he managed to slip out without anyone noticing. He might be hiding, but if he is, he’s doing a really good job, because with the way Trent’s pals are going through the store, it seems like they would have stumbled upon him by now. While they do that, Trent gets closer to Jake still holding the gun to him. “So what is the story with the blonde bitch anyway Jake? I know she can’t be your girlfriend. A fat old loser like you wouldn’t have one.” Trent sneers, but Jake is still keeping composure. “I hired her to work the register today.” Jake remarks. “Hm. I’d rather see her mouth work my dick.” Trent says looking you up and down. Jake starts laughing. “What’s so fucking funny?” “YOU! You’re fucking funny Trent. You’re calling me a loser and apparently you can’t even GET a woman without holding her at gunpoint. Pfft. I don’t give a shit what little emo angsty shooting spree trip you’re on, but I’m not playing. I still remember when you were in here as a little kid and your ugly ass mama beat the hell out of you for shitting your pants. How you cried and cried.” Jake chuckles. Trent of course is not amused and points the gun closer to Jake. “Shut the fuck up fat ass!” he exclaims. “Make me lanky bitch!” Jake says and suddenly grabs Trent’s hand now that it’s close enough. The pair of them struggle with the weapon and Trent begins calling for his fellows to help. While you’re certainly close enough to help Jake before Trent’s buddies get to him, you see the front door and wonder if you shouldn’t just jump over the counter and get the hell out of here. > You run for the front door It’s not exactly the bravest thing to do, but then your own life is at risk and if there is a chance at getting out of this mess now then you’re going to take it. You jump over the counter and rush towards the door; two of Trent’s friends try to intercept you until Trent demands that they help him and forget about you. His third friend however ignores him and continues after you. You manage to make it half way out the door before pimple boy grabs your arm. “You’re not going anywhere blondie, except on my dick!” pimple boy shouts and follows that up with a really creepy annoying giggle. You pull away and get out of the store, but he’s a persistent bastard and manages to grab you around the waist from behind. “Come on baby, I like an older woman like you!” he exclaims in his attempt to grope your breasts while dry humping you. “Older woman like me? Motherfucker…” you exclaim and elbow the scrawny fucker in the face. It gets him off of you and then you spin around to give him a swift kick to the balls. Twice. He falls to the ground crying and holding his crotch. He tries to mumble some curses at you, but it’s hard to do in between the tears. As much as you want to get out of here, you’re so pissed you kick him in his acne-ridden face for good measure, before running off. Just in time too, since you hear two gunshots coming from the store. You turn the corner to the parking lot and rush to your car to open the door, then suddenly hear footsteps closing in quickly behind you. “Gimme that car bitch! I gotta get the fuck outta here!” you hear a voice shout. You don’t even turn your head since you already can tell it’s the voice of one of the teenagers from the store. You get in the car and start it up. You pull out and are already in the process of driving off until the same teenager gets in front of the car and throws a brick at your driver window “SHIT!” you shout before the brick smashes through the window and hits you in the side of the head. You lose complete control of the car and promptly crash into a nearby telephone pole. Thanks to shitty air bags not working properly you hit your already injured head against the driver’s wheel. Somehow you’re still conscious, but you’re incredibly dazed and woozy. You’re also not exactly feeling like moving too far, however your feelings are not in consideration here. “Get outta the car bitch!” the teen who threw the brick exclaims and opens the door to get you out of it. He starts to drag you out and despite your less than stellar state you still make an effort to fight. Eventually with some effort he drags you out and then you fell a kick to your ribs while on the street pavement. Bleeding, bruised, and dizzy you attempt to get up, only to not quite make it. Just when it looks like the teen is going to land another kick to you, a shot rings out and the teen falls to the ground nearly on top of you. “ARGH! SHIT! FUCK! I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS! NO!” the teen screams. You crawl away from the teen and through your blurry vision you see a figure coming towards you. It’s the stranger from the comic shop. The fact that he has a pistol in hand isn’t exactly encouraging despite the fact that he just shot your assailant. “You alright? You okay?” he asks running over to you. “Yeah, I just…I need some…help up…” you remark. Using him and the car as leverage you manage to get back on your feet. The teen is still screaming at you and the strange from his prone position. “Can you stand on your own?” the stranger asks. “Yeah, I think…” you reply. “Okay then.” The stranger says and then kicks the teen in the face a couple times shutting him up. “Last thing we need is that dickhead bringing the attention of the cops that are a few blocks up.” “I dunno, the gunshots might have already done that or maybe they don’t give a shit just like everyone else in this town…fuck…” you say holding the side of your head. “You might be right, but we need to get out of the area I think, it doesn’t look like your car is going too far, my car is still in the parking lot. I can take you to get that head injury looked at.” Between everything that’s happened, you’re not exactly thinking straight or at all except about the pain you’re in. “Yeah. Yeah. Whatever, let’s go.” You remark feeling wobbly. “Okay, I’ll help you along the way. My name is Jack by the way.” The stranger says. “Suzy.” You say. Jack helps you back to the parking lot as quick as you’re able to move. You don’t see any signs of the cops coming, though you’re hearing other gunshots in the distance so maybe bigger things are happening elsewhere. Eventually you get back to the lot and approach a small blue car. “Okay, let me open the door and you can just lay in the backseat.” “Sure…” you say and lean against the car, while he opens up the driver’s door and then unlocks the door to the backseat. “Hey…where were you? You…you kill those guys?” you ask. “Hiding within a small back niche where all the old comics were, in the hope of ambushing one of them. I might have done so, had your boss not riled them up enough to rush him. I came out and you were already gone. I smashed the fat one in the back of the head with a metal comic character statue. After he went down I tried to help the owner. He got shot before I could grab the gun from the tall one and then it was reflex response that I shot him.” Jack replies. Jack opens the back door for you and you get in and lay down while Jack closes the door and then gets in the driver’s seat. “That one I know is dead since I shot him right in the head. I was sort of in shock for a moment since I’ve never killed another person before. The other teen had already run by the time I snapped out of it. I came out and I saw what was going on with you and I just reacted again. I dunno if I killed the others. I mean maybe I just knocked the fat one out and the other one when I kicked him in the face. Although I guess I paralyzed him for sure.” Jack says. Jack pulls out of the parking lot and your lids are starting to get heavy. “You kill pimple boy? I left that asshole in a heap outside the shop.” You ask. “Um, no. I didn’t see him when I came out. Guess he ran off?” Jack answers. “Wish I’d killed him. Little fucker…ah, shit…” “Hey, I’ll help like I said so just hang in there okay?” “Yeah…okay…” you start to say. Within the next five minutes all you hear is Jack swearing and making exclamations of how everyone is driving like an asshole or acting crazy. You can feel the car swerving back and forth when you guess that Jack must be avoiding various things on the wrong. At some point as you’re drifting in and out of consciousness. You hear Jack swear some more about how he can’t get to the hospital because the entire area is barricaded and part of the hospital is even on fire. “Fuck! Suzy! You still with me?!” he asks. “Huh? Yeah…” you answer groggily. “I can’t take you to the hospital, but I can still get you help. You trust me?” “Well I’m not really in any condition to not trust you I suppose.” “I’m not a serial killer or anything I swear.” Jack says. You start chuckling at that proclamation. For one thing his name is Jack, which is a bit on the nose for a serial killer. For another if this guy actually did turn out to be one; it pretty much would be in line of your run of luck lately. Hell, if you’re REALLY lucky, he’ll probably be your next boyfriend because you’re certainly fucked up enough to fall for someone like that. “Bet you say that to all the girls.” You say while still chuckling. “Is there any way I can convince you? I mean…if you don’t trust me, I understand. I suppose I could try to take you home if you told me how to get there, but given how fucked up this town is getting, I’m not sure if…” Jack start to say until you interrupt him. “Jack… just take me to wherever it is you’re going to take me. I truly don’t care at this point because I don’t even really have a home to go back to now. I’ve been having a shitty week, I just lost the only job I ever had, I got groped by some fucking asshole, my fucking head is bleeding, I think I got glass embedded in my face, my body aches, and I’m this close to just falling unconscious. So like I said, if you got anything sinister in mind for me, I’m not exactly in any position to stop you. Just drive.” You say as the sleep is starting to take you. Jack doesn’t say anything and just begins reversing the car and swinging it around. You hear something hit the back windshield, not enough to break it though. Sirens and the general sounds of chaos can be heard throughout the drive. You have no idea where Jack is going to take you or even if he’s going to make it wherever he has in mind. All that encompasses your mind is the slumber that eventually wins you over. > Next day… WEDNESDAY You wake up and find yourself on a small bed in a gray concrete room. There isn’t much else in the room except a dresser and a lamp which is currently turned on. It almost feels like a cell except there is no door, just an entryway, which looks like it leads into a corridor. You sit up and find that you’re still fully clothed, so either Jack isn’t a serial killing rapist or he was enough of a gentleman to put your clothes back on exactly right after he was done and is now playing mind games with you. Your girl parts and ass don’t feel sore and you don’t have a bad taste in your mouth so you’re guessing that you weren’t violated in any way. (You hope) However the rest of your body certainly still aches from the kicks and physical abuse you took yesterday, but when you go to touch your head, you don’t feel any bandages like you were expecting. In fact, you aren’t even feeling any open wound that you’re sure that you probably had. The side of your face doesn’t feel to be scratched up either. Is Jack some sort of doctor? You check your phone which was still in your pocket to see if anyone tried to call you, but nobody has. You thought maybe Peter would have at least tried calling considering you had his car last. If you ever get back home, you can only imagine how pissed he’s going to be when he finds out what happened to it. You sit in the bed for a while just wondering what exactly is going on and what you should do next. Honestly, you’re drawing a blank. You had a plan, you tried to follow it and you thought you were succeeding and then it all went to shit yesterday. You’re starting wonder if you’re jinxed. While you could spend your whole time being introspective like you have so many times before, the fact remains that you don’t know where the hell you are and where your “white knight” is. Jack seems like an okay guy, but you really don’t know anything about him except that he’s helped you out quite a bit which would probably make the average person feel grateful, instead it makes you a bit suspicious and this prison like interior isn’t exactly helping. Still, you don’t seem like you’re being held captive either, so you take the opportunity to get up and leave your room. When you enter the corridor you see several other open entryways leading to more small rooms. Since the left part of the corridor looks like it ends at a solid wall, you go right. You peer into a few of these rooms as you pass by to find that they aren’t really furnished, but rather hold several boxes and containers. Some of them do contain furniture; none of it is arranged in a useable way. In general everything is stacked or positioned to resemble a warehouse more than anything else. Maybe you are in some sort of warehouse, because so far the color of every walls you’ve seen is gray and they’re concrete along with the floor and ceiling. Lights embedded in the ceiling provide illumination, but this whole place doesn’t seem like a normal house of any kind, which you assumed Jack lived in, you guess not though. You pass a set of stairs leading up, so you’re guessing you’re on the ground floor, the way you’re currently heading it looks like a large open room ahead. As you approach the large room, you start to hear noise. Sounds like it’s coming from one the rooms ahead and to your right causing you to cautiously approach. You peek around the corner and see Jack occupied and messing about with some sort of large radio system along with a few monitors set up. You hear garbled transmissions, but some of it you’re making out sounds military related, something about marshal law. “Well you don’t need to spy on me, you’re welcome to come in.” Jack says without immediately looking in your direction. Apparently you’re not as stealthy as you thought and Jack is very aware of his surroundings. “Didn’t mean to spy, just wasn’t sure who or what I’d be possibly bumping into after finding myself in a strange place.” You say standing in the entryway. “Understandable. So I trust you’re doing okay?” Jack asks while still messing about with his radio. “Yeah, I mean I still ache a bit, but I’m more or less fine. Hey you’re not medically trained are you? Because I thought I’d have some bandages or something what with getting smacked with a brick and glass shattering on the side on my head.” “Not professionally, but I used some medical gel on your wounds. Glad to see it worked well.” Jack says finally turning to look at you. “Worked well? I’m practically fully healed, is it magical or something?” you joke. “No, just highly advanced…um…well if you really need to know, I shouldn’t even have the stuff, but you can acquire a lot of stuff you shouldn’t over the deep web.” Jack says. “I see. So I take it, this is where you live? “Yeah, more or less now.” “Wait, so this is where your mom lived too?” “What? Oh no. When I lived with mom, it was a regular house in town. In fact after she died, I still lived there, but when shit started getting hectic in town, I decided I better move somewhere less vulnerable so here I am at this gray building I bought years ago online. As you might have already seen, I got tons of shit stacked in rooms, told you I was a big of a hoarder.” “Well it certainly is very gray, must cost a lot to upkeep it.” “Not really, place sort of takes care of itself. Just never made a permanent living arrangement out of this place because…well it’s a long story.” There’s a bit of a pause in the conversation since Jack just abruptly stops talking and starts twisting knobs and then eventually waves his hands at the radio altogether and the garbled transmissions stop altogether when he turns it off. “What are you trying to do?” you ask. “I’m trying to listen in on a military frequency. Normally I can get clear messages from Fort Timons near Security City, but I’m not having much luck. All I know is marshal law has been declared in major cities across the country. Well that and apparently Ground Zero is still offering their shelters at low low prices. Those ads are fucking everywhere.” Jack replies. “Marshall law…that sounds pretty serious.” You remark. “Yeah, but I can’t say I’m surprised with the way things have been going in the world lately. Anyway…so what are your plans?” Jack asks. “I dunno. I’ve been trying to figure that out myself. I’m not having much luck either.” “Well, considering how fucked up things are in town, you’re welcome to stay here. Got plenty of space, food and such.” It’s a tempting offer. Really tempting, mainly because you don’t have any idea what you’re going to go, but you exhale and try to gather your thoughts. “(Sigh) Look, I’m not ungrateful for probably saving my life yesterday. I didn’t mind speaking with you before all that shit went down in the comic shop. Hell, you’re even not bad looking and you’re obviously got your shit together enough that you own your own damn building. I’m also fairly certain you were telling the truth about not being a serial killer.” “But?” Jack says predicting your lead in. “But all of this…well my gut is telling me that something weird is going on with you. I don’t know what exactly, but I imagine it’s complicated. The funny thing is that it probably wouldn’t even necessarily bother me, but you sort of caught me at an unusual point in my life. While I don’t want to bore you with my life story, but I just recently went through an upsetting break up with my first and currently only boyfriend to date a couple days ago and I’m still trying to mentally deal with that along with all the other shit that’s gone on in my life.” Jack continues to listen as you go on. “You think YOU were a basement dweller? At least you seemed to be doing something productive, my whole life was just coasting by and living off of other people and the most recent one was my ex. I’m fairly certain he would have done anything to take care of me had I complied, but even basement dwellers have their limits I suppose and I just couldn’t make that step. All of which left me up shit’s creek without a boat, let along a paddle. I’m trying to make a real effort of being self-sufficient and I sort of feel like if I stayed here I’d just be falling back into my old routine of sponging off some guy.” “You wouldn’t exactly be sponging off me…” Jack starts to say before you interrupt. “Jack, I think you better stop right there, if you’re about to imply what I think you’re going to imply. I’m not a damn whore.” “What? No! I wasn’t going to suggest that! I just meant I have so much that it’s not like I’d mind if you stuck around. It’s obviously dangerous out there and I’d be quite the asshole if I just threw you out.” You just hang your head down at this remark. “Well that makes you better than my older sister, but it also makes this harder for me, because it would have been easier if you had been looking for some sort of cynical sex exchange like that.” “Wait…so you WANT me to treat you like a whore?” Jack asks confused. “No! Fuck. I just…shit…I dunno what the hell I want…” you say putting your head in your hands. At this point Jack tries to interpret your complete mess of explaining things. “Okay, I think I know what you’re getting at. You just got out of a relationship and you aren’t really in the mood for another guy to be sniffing around you right now. You also want to be by yourself and try to make it on your own without help since you’ve never been truly independent your whole life. Am I right so far?” Jack asks. “Yes.” You reply. “And while you aren’t exactly thinking the worst of me right now, you’re still wisely suspicious enough to wonder why the hell I helped you out if I didn’t want something. Obviously there must be something odd about me, for all you know I’ve been stalking you or something.” “Well, basically.” “Okay, good. Now just let me explain my side of things.” You lean again the side of the entryway before Jack goes into his own speech. “First, yes, I do think you’re attractive and from what I know of you, I WOULD like to get to know you a lot better. I thought maybe there was something there during our nice conversation at the comic shop, but I dunno…I sort of…well let’s just say I’m not exactly great at the whole asking someone out thing, so I lost my nerve and had to gather it again by leaving, and of course that’s when those guys showed up. Not to mention I wasn’t really planning on doing that anyway since I didn’t expect to see anyone other than Jake at the register. Which brings me to the second point, I helped you, for the same reason I helped Jake yesterday, it was the right thing to do. I just wasn’t so lucky with him as I was with you. I’m not saying I’m some hero, but I’ve always liked to believe I’m not a bad guy. So when I saw the opportunity to get you help, I did it. I assure you there was no ulterior motive.” At this point Jack fishes something out of his pocket. It’s keys and a wad of money in a roll. He tosses them to you and you catch them. “Do I want you to stay here because I like you? Yes, of course I would, but I can’t just keep you here, if you don’t want to be. You sound like you have very strong feelings about trying to make it on your own and being by yourself and I understand that. So since your car was trashed, I’m giving you mine. I’m not going to need it much longer…and no that doesn’t mean I’m going to commit suicide. I just won’t be needing it. As for the cash, well you’ll need it more than I will too. You take them both and go live your life and hopefully it will be a good one.” You’re pretty speechless. You’ve so rarely had anyone be this cool with you and this doesn’t seem to be a “nice guy” act. If it were, he would’ve been calling you a complete cunt the moment you told him you weren’t interested. “I dunno what to say except thanks.” You say “Don’t mention it. Come on I’ll walk you out.” Jack responds Jack and you leave the radio room and enter the large open room which has a lot of boxes stacked in it’s four corners. On one of the walls is a door, which Jack says, leads to the outside. “Car is parked right outside, and is in good working condition. Um, just to let you know though we’re several miles east outside of town. It will be quite the drive, but you should get back to town by nightfall. Remember, I want you to know you can come back here if it looks like the town is in just complete anarchy. I…I still worry about your safety. Anyway, just knock three times on the door and I’ll know it is you.” “I’ll certainly keep that in mind Jack.” “Okay, well…good luck Suzy.” Jack says opening the door, which lets in a blinding brightness. You look at Jack and then you suddenly hug him and then kiss him on the cheek. You figure it’s the least you can do. Jack wasn’t expecting it though; he returns the hug until you pull away. You and he don’t exchange any more words; you just turn around and leave as the door shuts behind you. You get in the car, and count up the money to find that Jack has given you a thousand dollars in hundreds. Not much in the long term, but it would at least sustain you awhile. You wonder if you should head back to town or just keep driving east and try to start over somewhere else. > You head back to town Maybe if he’d given you ten or even five thousand you’d feel more comfortable making the risk of “starting over” but with just a thousand, you’re not that confident even with your new found self sufficient approach to life. Besides, you’re not even sure where the hell eastward even takes you. For all you know it ends in wilderness, you’ve never been out of your own town before. Better to take your chances with the devil you know. As you drive down the empty road, you pass long stretches of trees and wilderness. You never realized until just now how rural in an area you lived in before. You briefly check your phone again to see if anyone has called, but as usual nobody has. Nobody cares. You continue driving thinking about probably having to deal with the near state of anarchy the town is in. Assuming you even get home in one piece you’ll have to deal with Peter and his car. You figure you’ll have to at least give him this one. All of which isn’t going to help you with Kelly who is still intent on throwing you out by the end of the week. Chances are if you attempted to “pay rent” with some of your money she’d just punch you in the face and take ALL of your money and let you stay another month at best which means being on a time limit and scrambling for a job again. You got very lucky once with the job situation as fast as you did, and you don’t think you’ll manage it that quickly again even if the town wasn’t all fucked up. That leaves your plan “B” choice of living with your sister Donna and your so called best friend Julie which isn’t much of a plan at all so much as it’s just a free living arrangement. What a joy that’s going to be, dealing with their partying every night. You might as well be living out in the chaos filled streets given how they carry on. Hell, you might even be safer. You’ll definitely have to make sure to keep your newly acquired loot well hidden. You try to take you mind off of all this by turning on the radio…Ground Zero ads. “Ground Zero…how fucking original.” You say and turn the radio off, shaking your head. You continue driving and driving and driving; your thoughts continuing to go back and forth about why you’re even going back to town. It really would be so much easier to just stay with Jack. > You keep driving to town As much as it might be tempting to go stay with Jack, you need to keep to your plan of self-sufficiency or at least an attempt at it. Staying with Jack is just a bad idea in the long term. While he might say he isn’t expecting anything, the longer you stay the more likely he’s going to get resentful and the more likely you’re just going to revert to your old ways. It’s a recipe for disaster. Jack and his Gray Building were pretty weird anyway, better you just put all of that out of your head right now. Living with your sister and friend won’t be fun, but at least it will motivate you to get a means of employment to get the hell out of there quicker. It probably won’t even be as bad as you think it will be either. So that’s it. You’ve made up your mind, set a goal and you’re going to stick to it. You actually feel a little good about that. “And fuck Peter, I’m keeping this damn car. Peter’s stolen enough of my clothing over the years that I already paid for his damn vehicle.” You mumble to yourself. Now you feel even better. So much so you’re smiling. With your thoughts getting comfortable with risk and leaving behind thoughts of doing the “safe” thing you continue back to town. You must drive for hours and never see another car on the road. It’s sort of eerie, especially as it starts to get dark. At least you don’t have to worry about traffic though. As you get within the distance of the town, you wonder just how fucked up it’s gotten since you left, or if order has been restored. You remember Jake mentioned marshal law being enforced in cities across the country. Makes you sort of wonder if the whole damn world is going mad or something. Just as you get within the town’s limits, you think you notice a large vehicle up head and even people. Then suddenly several spotlights shine in the direction of your vehicle and one right ahead of you. You nearly lose control of your vehicle due to the blinding light and slam on your breaks. “HALT! BY THE ORDER OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT THIS TOWN IS UNDER MARSHAL LAW! ALL ENTRY AND IN AND OUT IS FORBIDDEN! STOP YOUR VEHICLE FOR INSPECTION!” a loud speaker echoes. The government has apparently decided to place your shithole town under marshal law as well, you can’t imagine why, but you aren’t even really thinking about that, all you’re thinking about is getting the hell out of here before you get shot, rounded up into a camp or both. “Christ, Suzy, you ARE fucking jinxed.” You say and then with a deft maneuver you reverse the car and spin it around. You then slam on the gas. Gunshots ring out and your back window is shot out. Soon the sounds of a jeep can be heard followed by more gunfire. Your attempt to outrun the National Guard prove to be a failure as your back tires are shot and blown out causing your car to spin out of control, flip a few times and then slam into a row of tree along the side of the road. Unlike the last accident you got into, you aren’t quite as lucky and you are severely injured due to low hanging branches going right through the windshield and impaling you through the chest. By the time the guardsmen reach you, all they find is a bloody mangled corpse.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe if he’d given you ten or even five thousand you’d feel more comfortable making the risk of “starting over” but with just a thousand, you’re not that confident even with your new found self sufficient approach to life. Besides, you’re not even sure where the hell eastward even takes you. For all you know it ends in wilderness, you’ve never been out of your own town before. Better to take your chances with the devil you know. As you drive down the empty road, you pass long stretches of trees and wilderness. You never realized until just now how rural in an area you lived in before. You briefly check your phone again to see if anyone has called, but as usual nobody has. Nobody cares. You continue driving thinking about probably having to deal with the near state of anarchy the town is in. Assuming you even get home in one piece you’ll have to deal with Peter and his car. You figure you’ll have to at least give him this one. All of which isn’t going to help you with Kelly who is still intent on throwing you out by the end of the week. Chances are if you attempted to “pay rent” with some of your money she’d just punch you in the face and take ALL of your money and let you stay another month at best which means being on a time limit and scrambling for a job again. You got very lucky once with the job situation as fast as you did, and you don’t think you’ll manage it that quickly again even if the town wasn’t all fucked up. That leaves your plan “B” choice of living with your sister Donna and your so called best friend Julie which isn’t much of a plan at all so much as it’s just a free living arrangement. What a joy that’s going to be, dealing with their partying every night. You might as well be living out in the chaos filled streets given how they carry on. Hell, you might even be safer. You’ll definitely have to make sure to keep your newly acquired loot well hidden. You try to take you mind off of all this by turning on the radio…Ground Zero ads. “Ground Zero…how fucking original.” You say and turn the radio off, shaking your head. You continue driving and driving and driving; your thoughts continuing to go back and forth about why you’re even going back to town. It really would be so much easier to just stay with Jack. > You turn around You suddenly slam on the breaks. “What the fuck am I doing? I don’t really want to go back to that shithole town! I don’t want to deal with shit on my own! Fuck this!” you exclaim and then spin the car around. You drive back justifying everything in your mind that this isn’t really abandoning your goal of being self sufficient, it’s just a minor set back. “You’re not going back to your old ways Suzy, you just need to some help. Jack wants to help so why shouldn’t you let him help? There’s no shame in it. Besides, you’re not going to whore yourself out and he’s not expecting you to. Everything is going to be fine.” You say to yourself. After several times of thinking this, you have probably managed to convince yourself of it to a minor degree. Eventually as day turns to night you see the Gray Building looming in the distance. “Besides, it’s very dangerous in town right now. It’s probably safer to stay here anyway. Yeah, it will be safer…” you say ignoring the fact that you’ll be completely alone with a perfect stranger in the middle of nowhere. Well actually you aren’t really ignoring it, so much as you’re trying to mentally block it out. You park near the building, get out of the car and head to the door. Remembering that Jack told you to knock three times, you do so and the door opens. Jack isn’t at the door, but you assume he’s probably got it on some sort of automatic system. You enter the large front room and shortly after the door closes, you see Jack exiting one of those rooms in the back and quickly walking towards you. “Suzy! Are you alright?! You’re not hurt are you?” He asks. “Um, I’m fine Jack. I just decided that you might be right about how dangerous the town is right now and I should stay here awhile just to play it safe. No point in being proud for no reason.” You say. “So you never actually got back to town?” Jack asks. “No, why?” “Because the town is currently under marshal law as well. After fucking around with the radio a bit more, I managed to get a little more info on that military frequency. My heart sank when I heard it knowing you were probably heading back that way. To be honest, I really worried.” If Jack’s playing up his concern, he’s doing a really good job because you’re fairly convinced he’s being genuine. “Well…I guess its good I decided to come back then.” You say realizing that this happy coincidence is only going to reinforce your more slothful tendencies. Still, you ARE glad you avoided potentially getting shot by the National Guard or something. Attempting to avoid awkward silence you move on to a topic of immediate need. “So, you got a shower I can use? I think I’m about due.” “Sure, you know that room you woke up at? Well there’s a bathroom on that same side of the corridor towards the end of it, can’t miss it mainly because it actually has a door on it. Plenty of unused towels too…um, I don’t really have any spare women’s clothing lying around though. Not that I remember anyway. I suppose anything’s possible with all the shit I have laying around.” “Well I’ll just wear these and figure that out later. I also just realized I haven’t eaten anything since Monday.” “Oh, there’s a kitchen area across from the bathroom conveniently enough. Help yourself to whatever in the cupboards or refrigerators. Got plenty of stuff. I can even try to cook for you if you tell me what you like.” “You can cook?” “Well, I’m not an expert, but I can get by. I’m mostly lazy though and just pop in a frozen dinner.” “Same here and that’s what I’ll probably do. No need to trouble yourself.” You answer. “Okay, well I guess I’ll leave you to it. Oh, and you’re welcome to use that room to sleep in again. I think that’s it, if you need me I’ll be messing about with my radio as usual.” At this point Jack raises his arm in a gesture to invite you back to his home. “Thanks Jack.” You say as you walk by. “I’m just glad you’re safe.” Jack says. You head to the bathroom, which is a fairly mundane one with all the usual amenities. Plenty of towels like Jack said. You lock the door and take a much-needed shower. You get a half paranoid thought that Jack is going to suddenly burst in on you, but that doesn’t happen. So far Jack is still staying true to his gentleman form. You get dressed and then head to the kitchen where you find Jack wasn’t kidding about having a well stocked one. You grab a drink and find the frozen dinner that takes the least amount of time to heat up in the microwave and then eat. Once again you think Jack is going to come in to check on you, but he doesn’t. After eating you sort of just sit in the kitchen looking around for a moment. That of course becomes boring fairly fast and you go back to your assigned bedroom, which looks about the same as it did before. It isn’t any more interesting in there either. Normally, you would’ve had your laptop to keep you occupied, but it’s sadly back home and you’re unlikely to see it anytime soon. Even your phone has recently gone dead. You almost want to go through the dresser in the room, but you sort of think that would be a bit intrusive since it’s probably just filled with Jack’s things. Lacking any other ideas, you try to go to sleep, but you’re just not tired yet. Not to mention you’re still too anxious about sleeping here. Your usual method of “easing” yourself to sleep, isn’t an option since for one thing your battery powered boyfriend is also at home. However, even if you wanted to take matters into your own hands, you’d rather not be in the middle of spittin’ the kitten if Jack does decide to walk in to check on you. So you do the very thing that’s you’ve been expecting Jack to do to you, you go seek him out to see what he’s doing. (The irony isn’t lost on you) He mentioned he would be in that radio room so that’s where you initially head to, but then you hear a few noises in another one of the side rooms. Sounds like a video game. You take a look and see a proper living room like area. Odd that you didn’t notice it the first time you were here, but then you weren’t really paying excessive attention to every room you were passing last time. There sitting on a sofa is Jack playing a video game on a sizable screen. “Well I guess you got sick of listening in on the military huh?” you ask causing Jack to look in your direction. “Oh hey, I thought you’d be asleep or something.” Jack says pausing his game. “Can’t sleep and I left any sort of stimulus to keep myself entertained at home unfortunately. This looks promising though.” You say. “Got another controller, you can join right in if you want.” Jack says and points to some controllers on his coffee table. “Nah, that’s okay. I’ll just watch for now.” You say and just as you’re about to sit on the sofa, Jack starts to get up. “How come you’re getting up?” you ask when you sit down. “Well I can sit in that seat over there.” Jack says. “Jack it’s your home, no need to move on my account. I’m fully comfortable sitting next to you. I need to get over my paranoid scenarios about you anyway.” “Scenarios?” Jack asks while sitting back down. “Yeah, I kept thinking you were going to come rape me in the shower.” “Yikes. I thought you said you didn’t think I was a serial killing rapist anymore.” Jack says not taking offense and going back to his game. “Yeah, but…well I can’t help thinking the worst of people.” “Well I get that.” “If it helps, I’m about ninety nine percent sure that you aren’t a serial killing rapists anymore and I just think there is something weird about you.” “Well looks like I’m doing better then.” Jack says with a smile. You watch Jack kill something on screen before he speaks again. “Well Suzy, I’m not sure if this is going to disappoint you, but I’m going to admit something to you that I’ve never told anyone before.” Jack says. “Uh oh.” You say. “I’m completely boring. Seriously, there is nothing remarkable about me at all. Like I said, I mainly kept to myself and lived in my mom’s basement until she tragically died, then I lived alone in her house…and now I live here. The end. Oh and collected a bunch of shit along the way.” “Wow, way to sell yourself to me there Jack.” You say. “Well I figure if saving your life a couple times and being honest isn’t going to get you to like me, nothing will.” Jack chuckles, causing you to snicker a bit too. “Hah, I knew that’s why you saved me.” You say. “Oh well, I guess the secret’s out.” Jack replies. You have to admit, you’re starting to become more at ease with Jack, the guy is very laid back and you’re certainly not used to dealing with that sort of personality. The closest was your older brother Ben’s hippy wife Moonshadow and she was an annoying flake. (She did have pretty eyes though) “So am I actually going to learn anything more about you?” Jack asks. “You know what Jack? I think you will, what the hell…” you say. You open up to Jack, and begin telling him of your life. The funny thing is while you find it pretty dull Jack finds it pretty fascinating. You imagine that’s probably due to your “colorful” family members who probably would be a lot more amusing to someone else not having the burden of dealing with them. Jack stops playing his game altogether when you start going into your Uncle Ed and Bobby. He hangs on every word, asking you for clarification at times which you provide. You don’t know why you’re telling him all this stuff, you suppose it’s because you feel very comfortable with him, not to mention telling him all this stuff almost feel like a weight has been lifted off of you, since it isn’t like you talk to anyone normally. “Holy shit Suzy. Your life wasn’t all that boring what with all the psycho family members and your cultist ex. Wow. Maybe I should be scared of you given how you managed to survive it all.” Jack says after hearing everything. “Eh, seems like someone’s always saved me or I’ve been lucky. I mean Bobby saved me from my uncle. That’s probably why I fell in love with him…(Sigh) Sort of fucked up right?” “Well I think I understand it. I dunno, never been in that position myself, so I’m not really one to judge. Obviously it was love while it lasted. I mean he didn’t try to kill you when you broke up.” “True. So how about you?” you ask though you’re starting to get sleepy. “How about me what?” Jack says. “Any long lost loves in your life?” “Not really any love whatsoever really…it’s a rather depressing tale. I’d rather keep the conversation upbeat.” “Mm. Shit, wave of sleep is starting to hit me.” You say and then yawn. “Are you going to bed?” Jack asks. “You mind if I just sleep on this sofa? I think I mentioned how I’m used to sleeping on one.” You reply. “Sure. Sure. I’ll move and you just stretch out and be comfortable.” Jack says and gets up so you can lie down fully. Jack turns off his console and as you settle in to sleep you continue to speak a bit. “I like you Jack.” You say. “I like you too Suzy…um…I feel I should tell you something though since you were so open with me.” “What, you’re a serial killer rapist after all? Well, if I’m still alive tomorrow, I think I’ll be able to look past the raping if you at least still respect me.” You darkly joke as sleep continues to creep up on you. “No, I just was going to say, while I wasn’t lying about not being a remarkable person, I suppose I’ve acquired some remarkable things in my dealings.” “Oh, well you can tell me all about your rare antiques tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll find it interesting.” “Well, I suppose I do have some of those, but I was referring to this building actually…um…I guess I’ll tell you tomorrow since it’s really important you know and I think you’ll want to be attentive when you hear it.” Jack says in a serious tone. “Sure…whatever (Yawn)…” you say. With those last words Jack leaves you to sleep and you drift off… > Next day… THURSDAY You wake up to the sound of…well you can’t quite place it. White noise might be the closest thing you can think of, but that wouldn’t be correct. It’s like an annoying hum or buzz going straight to your head. You get up and see that the TV is off from yesterday, so it isn’t that. “Jack? You hear that noise?” you call out in a groggy tone. There isn’t any answer, just that increasingly annoying noise. You attempt to get up and it takes you a couple tries, not because you’re naturally lazy, but more because you’re starting to feel nauseous. The noise you’re hearing isn’t helping matters. You get up on your feet and stagger to the door way which when you get to, you lean up against and feel like you’re going to puke. “Jack…” you just barely manage to shout, before you have to stop to keep from vomiting. You look up and down the corridor and find that the lights are flickering. Some are out completely. You have no idea what the hell is going on, but you’d probably be more scared if you didn’t feel so sick. Mustering up all your willpower, you head to the bedroom thinking Jack might be asleep in there. Nobody there, but you can’t fight the sickness any longer and you run as fast as you can to the bathroom nearly falling over in the process. You just barely manage to make it to throw up in the toilet. The lights are going nuts at this point and you notice the bathtub and sink are both on. After recovering a bit, you notice the stuff coming out of the sink isn’t exactly water. It’s black and tarry looking. You don’t risk touching it, you just get the hell out of the bathroom. No sooner have you done this, when a sudden loud noise hits you so hard you actually stumble and fall to the floor. You wouldn’t even be able to describe the sound, it’s just really horrible and even though you’ve just puked, you still feel pretty damn nauseous. Picking yourself back up and leaning against the wall, you slowly try to make your way to the room where Jack was messing about with his radio stuff. You don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere though, in fact the more you walk, the more you feel like you’re on a treadmill in an endless corridor. You continue on, but as you pass by rooms you can swear you’re seeing weird things out the corner of your eye. You then start thinking you’re seeing shit in front of you as well. Shadowy humanoid figures blink in and out existence along with the lighting. At this point the feeling of terror is becoming stronger than your feeling of sickness. The white noise is still drilling into your head, but now it’s accompanied by an insane laugh, which varies in pitch and tone. When you pass the flight of stairs, you hear whispery voices beckoning you go in that direction. You’re hardly enticed to do so. As you get closer to the radio room, the shadowy figures can be seen running about in the large room up ahead. As you get closer, these figures are becoming less shadowy and more “solid.” These figures are starting to no longer look humanoid either. It is around this time that you notice your surroundings are becoming… warped. Walls are melting around you and you’re seeing those shadowy figures in the next room starting to move in slow motion one moment and then other times you see them rapidly moving back and forth in a repetitious manner. You nearly jump out of your skin when several of these beings appear right in front of you and you get a good look at them now that they aren’t so shadowy anymore. They’re a mass of tentacles, teeth and misshaped features that would make any horror movie demon jealous, unfortunately this is no movie. The screeching, wailing, and gibbering are bad enough, the visual is bad enough, but the fetid smell is what puts it over the top in just vile nastiness. You see one particularly disgusting one with a mutilated face like raw meat and a the scent of a rotten corpse on a hot day, transform into something even worse looking before it opens three of its mouths to reveal its tongues which not only look infested with disease, but have ugly little faces on them. When it attempts to lick you, you turn and run only to find yourself in a wide open space where everything now looks like it’s been put through a multicolored filter. You feel like you’re in a rainbow void. When you look behind you however all you see is darkness save for the creatures now moving towards you. You don’t run far when all of a sudden the rainbow filter disappears and is replaced by a flickering affect that you’re actually back in a “real” location. It isn’t the corridor though, it resembles more of a large college auditorium and in the center is a single figure sitting in a lotus position. He’s bald and not dressed in modern clothing and in fact looks like he’s from some sort of nerd cosplay convention. He appears human however. One thing that’s about him that doesn’t look human though is his eyes are completely white and not just normal “blind eyes” sort either. They’re glowing pure white light. You become very disorientated as the flickering of this reality disappears and slowly just becomes a blank gray open space with more gray as far as you can see despite there not being any more walls. You see that the creatures behind you aren’t following, but they definitely want to get closer. It would seem this man’s presence is at least holding them back somehow. At this point you you’re completely lost to as what is going on, but you approach the man if it means keeping the monsters at bay. The man suddenly speaks as you get close to him. He’s not really looking at you though, more like looking through you. “You…I…don’t belong here…everything changes…so many changes…been here…before…somewhere else…so much to do…bring balance…the future is beautiful…the past is beautiful…everything is ugly…corrupted…it’s beautiful…” the man utters in a fragmented way and you have no idea what the hell he’s talking about. “Where is Jack?! What’s going on? Who are you?!” you ask trying to figure out this situation. To your horror you notice your hands and arms become weathered and wrinkled. From what you can tell, your hair has gone completely white as well. With some hesitation, you feel your face and it definitely doesn’t feel smooth anymore. “Oh my god…” you utter. “…time is short…fleeting life…the others do not like this place…disrupts balance…” the man says still not moving from his spot. You then notice your hands and everything else have gone back to normal. This entire situation is very fucked up, and you don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on, but you hope that “Mr. Lotus” has some answers with all the cryptic shit he’s spouting. “Look! I need answers! What is going on here and who are you?!” you ask again while still looking back to make sure those creatures are still staying away from you. “A footnote…forgotten… traveller…cursed…blessed…nobody… you must choose… Suzy…” the man utters. “How did you know my…” you start to ask before you’re interrupted. “You must choose…the others…they come…” You turn your head and see that the monsters and the darkness are indeed starting to move towards you once again. “Choose? Choose what?! What are you talking about?!” you ask again. “You must choose…” the man says again with less of an air of indifference and more of one of authority. “What am I choosing?” The area surrounding you and the man begins to darken and now you’re getting creatures starting surround you as well. “You must choose or die…” the man says again. “Alright! Alright! I choose! But what the fuck am I choosing!?!” you shout with a mixture of fear and frustration. “You’ll know when the time comes…” the man says. For a brief moment your surroundings change from that of the large classroom auditorium again with the man still in front of you. The blackness has disappeared, but the monsters have not as you see several floating tentacle creatures in the room with you. They aren’t quite as disgusting, but they’re still dangerous and giving off that aura that’s making you feel nauseous again. Just as you think you see a more humanoid figure enter the room there is suddenly a blinding flash all around you causing you to shield your eyes. Everything goes completely white, to completely black and then when you open your eyes again, you find yourself in the large front room of the building. Items are no longer neatly stack and are instead scattered about all over the place, some of them probably broken. Still completely baffled by what the fuck is going on, you look around for something to protect yourself with amongst the junk all over the floor. You eventually see a sturdy looking bat and pick it up. Upon inspection you notice the words “RUTH” on it, no doubt one of Jack’s valuable purchases. Speaking of Jack you still haven’t seen him, but you soon hear him. “Suzy?! Suzy? Are you here? Where are you?” you hear him call out. Sounds like it’s coming from the corridor, but you don’t see anyone. Maybe he’s upstairs? You haven’t been up there yet, but given what you just experienced, you’re a little reluctant to go deeper into this place. You remember Jack said he was going to tell you something about this building before you fell asleep, well whatever that was, it’s apparent that you were right that something about him was weird. Not just weird, but dangerous. You don’t think you’re ever going to quite get some of the images out of your head, you even feel a little different. Maybe the sensory overload has made you a bit numb rather than reducing you to a gibbering wreck. Numb or not, you still have a good mind to just walk out the front door and get the hell out of here. Maybe this was the “choice” that strange guy was talking about. > You leave the building You like Jack and all, but obviously you need to break this habit of going for guys that save you and have really complicated baggage. You head towards the door, open it revealing that it’s almost night already and get out of the building. Your car is still parked in the same location and you waste no time in starting it up and driving away. You almost don’t want to look back at the building, but you’re compelled to do so anyway. However when you do, you see absolutely nothing in your rear view mirror. “What the fuck?” you say and then briefly turn your head to look directly and it’s confirmed, the Gray Building is gone. You didn’t see it disappear, but it obviously has. Where, you have no idea, but you feel a little bad for leaving Jack now. You can only imagine what might have happened to him. “He already knew what that building was, Suzy. He’ll be fine and if he isn’t…well YOU had to get out of there right? In fact HE’S an asshole for not telling you what the hell that damn building was about in the first place…yeah…goddamn it…” you say to yourself. In your haste to forget about some of the stuff you saw, you absent-mindedly turn the radio on. “Fuck, it’s going to just be ads for Ground…what the hell?” you say as you hear something you didn’t expect. “…and talks today were very successful between the President and several other world leaders. It would seem that despite previous disagreements, tensions in the world are lower than they have been in quite some time. In other news, financial experts say things are looking up for the economy ever since…” You change the station and find actual music on; in fact you do this several times and find no annoying Ground Zero ads at all! Just the normal annoying ones in between the music, but the fact that anything else is on is very surprising to you. No doom and gloom as far the news goes too or at least not as bad as it was when you remember. What the hell is going on? You also remember that Jack told you he heard on the radio that your town is under marshal law; maybe that’s no longer the case too? You certainly hope so, because you have no idea where else to go. As you drive you wonder about the Gray Building and what it might have done. You start forming weird theories, but given what you just went through, maybe they aren’t so weird. You first wonder if maybe you went through time somehow. Maybe the passage of time goes slower in there or something. You do remember that frightening bit when you aged and then reverted back briefly. (You look in your mirror again to make sure you are indeed still young and of course you are) Maybe all the troubles in the world subsided and things are back to normal? If so, you can’t imagine that it’s just been a couple days and everything would be okay again. You would have had to been gone a long time. It also occurs to you that maybe you went back in time and maybe this is before the whole world started going to shit (as well as your town). The immediate hole in either of these theories is the fact that the music playing on the radio stations is current. Of course you could just be listening to the “oldies” station and perhaps a shitload more time has passed than you thought. Wouldn’t support the going back in time theory though if that’s the case and unless every station is an “oldies” station you quickly start dismissing the idea that you might’ve travelled through time. You dismiss it altogether when you hear a newsperson on the radio announce today’s date. So you haven’t travelled through time…maybe you went to a different dimension? You certainly don’t think those things or that bald guy were from your world. Then there was that flickering effect that you experience where you were in a halfway normal location that looked to be an auditorium. If this is a different dimension though, so far a lot of shit is the same. Same famous musicians on the radio at least. Same world leaders mentioned, same celebrities mentioned that you know of. Of course things seem to be a lot better as far as the world not nearly being on the verge of blowing itself up. You suppose you won’t really know until you get back to town. The drive is a long one, and it’s nightfall by the time you reach your town. You aren’t seeing any military trucks or any blockades, so that’s a good sign. As you drive into town, you notice that it isn’t an anarchic mess that it was when you left. It doesn’t even look like there was any riots or disasters at all. Just normal traffic and there isn’t even much of that going on right now. It is at this time you know this can’t be your reality and while you’re certain glad you aren’t in immediate danger anymore, you can’t help but feel a bit lost. What are you going to do? Do you still go home? What is home going to be like now? Will you still have the same crappy life? How much is different? Once again, about the only thing you can do is find out, hell it isn’t like you have much better to do now. You drive home which is a lot easier to do when there aren’t assholes throwing bricks at your windshield or general chaos in the streets. When you arrive at what you presume is still home you park on the street and you notice it’s slightly different. The house doesn’t look like it’s in a state of disrepair mainly. It doesn’t look like the lights are on either, which isn’t excessively unusual since Kelly is usually working at this time, Peter’s in the garage and you’re in the basement so there isn’t exactly anyone in the front living room or even upstairs where you might see a light. Peter’s car isn’t in the driveway either, maybe he’s out or maybe he doesn’t live here, you can’t know. You aren’t even sure if this is your house. Who knows, maybe you don’t even live in this town. Surprisingly even after all the mess you’ve gone through, you still have your house key so after taking it out of your pocket, you get out of the car an head towards the house. You walk up to the front door and you’re about to try your key, but then you wonder if maybe you shouldn’t just ring the bell or knock first. > You try your key You might as well try your key, if it doesn’t fit then you can ring the bell. You try your key. It works! Maybe you live here after all. It’s pitch dark inside and you fumble around for a light switch on the wall, but apparently it doesn’t work which already seems like something that would happen in your own house. Unable to achieve illumination that way, you see the silhouette of a lamp in the darkness and you head to it. Unfortunately you end up tripping over a bunch of shit in the dark, because apparently the furniture is arranged differently in this house. You end up breaking the lamp in the process of trying to turn it on. You curse and just sit in the dark for a moment holding on to your bruised shin and knee. You then attempt to carefully get up since the last thing you want is broken shards of the lamp in your hand or anywhere else in your body. Just as you’re about to carefully make your way to the kitchen and turn the light on there, you hear a creaking noise. Sounds like it’s coming from upstairs. You go in that direction just in time to see a figure at the top of the stairs followed by the muzzle blast of a double-barreled shotgun. The impact throws you against the wall and you wheeze for breath and cough up blood. “Got that fucking burglar!” you hear a vaguely familiar voice shout as you bleed out. “George?! Is it safe?” another voice calls out. Sounds female and you can’t believe you’re hearing it after all these years…either of the voices actually. But especially hers… Suddenly the upstairs light comes on which provides just enough illumination to shine down on you and the voice of who you now know belongs to your father becomes very panicked. “OH SHIT! OH FUCK! BERTHA! BERTHA! CALL 911!” your father shouts and runs down the stairs nearly tripping the process. He drops the shotgun and goes over to you, but you’re already well on your way to death. “Suzy! Oh my fucking god! I didn’t mean to…what are you even doing here?! I thought you were visiting Saturday! I didn’t even know you still had a key to the house! Oh shit! No! Hang on!” While your dad attempts to hold you, your mother who apparently is also very much alive in this reality still doesn’t quite know what’s going on until she sees the carnage. “SUZY! NO! GEORGE WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?” your mom screams and runs down the stairs. “I didn’t know! I didn’t know!” your father exclaims. You can’t talk or do anything except gurgle and choke on blood right now, but as the light begins to fade from your eyes and the life starts leaving your body, you watch your mother approach and tearfully embrace your bloody body. And somehow seeing your mother one last time before you die doesn’t make it quite so bad. You just wish it had been under better conditions.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You like Jack and all, but obviously you need to break this habit of going for guys that save you and have really complicated baggage. You head towards the door, open it revealing that it’s almost night already and get out of the building. Your car is still parked in the same location and you waste no time in starting it up and driving away. You almost don’t want to look back at the building, but you’re compelled to do so anyway. However when you do, you see absolutely nothing in your rear view mirror. “What the fuck?” you say and then briefly turn your head to look directly and it’s confirmed, the Gray Building is gone. You didn’t see it disappear, but it obviously has. Where, you have no idea, but you feel a little bad for leaving Jack now. You can only imagine what might have happened to him. “He already knew what that building was, Suzy. He’ll be fine and if he isn’t…well YOU had to get out of there right? In fact HE’S an asshole for not telling you what the hell that damn building was about in the first place…yeah…goddamn it…” you say to yourself. In your haste to forget about some of the stuff you saw, you absent-mindedly turn the radio on. “Fuck, it’s going to just be ads for Ground…what the hell?” you say as you hear something you didn’t expect. “…and talks today were very successful between the President and several other world leaders. It would seem that despite previous disagreements, tensions in the world are lower than they have been in quite some time. In other news, financial experts say things are looking up for the economy ever since…” You change the station and find actual music on; in fact you do this several times and find no annoying Ground Zero ads at all! Just the normal annoying ones in between the music, but the fact that anything else is on is very surprising to you. No doom and gloom as far the news goes too or at least not as bad as it was when you remember. What the hell is going on? You also remember that Jack told you he heard on the radio that your town is under marshal law; maybe that’s no longer the case too? You certainly hope so, because you have no idea where else to go. As you drive you wonder about the Gray Building and what it might have done. You start forming weird theories, but given what you just went through, maybe they aren’t so weird. You first wonder if maybe you went through time somehow. Maybe the passage of time goes slower in there or something. You do remember that frightening bit when you aged and then reverted back briefly. (You look in your mirror again to make sure you are indeed still young and of course you are) Maybe all the troubles in the world subsided and things are back to normal? If so, you can’t imagine that it’s just been a couple days and everything would be okay again. You would have had to been gone a long time. It also occurs to you that maybe you went back in time and maybe this is before the whole world started going to shit (as well as your town). The immediate hole in either of these theories is the fact that the music playing on the radio stations is current. Of course you could just be listening to the “oldies” station and perhaps a shitload more time has passed than you thought. Wouldn’t support the going back in time theory though if that’s the case and unless every station is an “oldies” station you quickly start dismissing the idea that you might’ve travelled through time. You dismiss it altogether when you hear a newsperson on the radio announce today’s date. So you haven’t travelled through time…maybe you went to a different dimension? You certainly don’t think those things or that bald guy were from your world. Then there was that flickering effect that you experience where you were in a halfway normal location that looked to be an auditorium. If this is a different dimension though, so far a lot of shit is the same. Same famous musicians on the radio at least. Same world leaders mentioned, same celebrities mentioned that you know of. Of course things seem to be a lot better as far as the world not nearly being on the verge of blowing itself up. You suppose you won’t really know until you get back to town. The drive is a long one, and it’s nightfall by the time you reach your town. You aren’t seeing any military trucks or any blockades, so that’s a good sign. As you drive into town, you notice that it isn’t an anarchic mess that it was when you left. It doesn’t even look like there was any riots or disasters at all. Just normal traffic and there isn’t even much of that going on right now. It is at this time you know this can’t be your reality and while you’re certain glad you aren’t in immediate danger anymore, you can’t help but feel a bit lost. What are you going to do? Do you still go home? What is home going to be like now? Will you still have the same crappy life? How much is different? Once again, about the only thing you can do is find out, hell it isn’t like you have much better to do now. You drive home which is a lot easier to do when there aren’t assholes throwing bricks at your windshield or general chaos in the streets. When you arrive at what you presume is still home you park on the street and you notice it’s slightly different. The house doesn’t look like it’s in a state of disrepair mainly. It doesn’t look like the lights are on either, which isn’t excessively unusual since Kelly is usually working at this time, Peter’s in the garage and you’re in the basement so there isn’t exactly anyone in the front living room or even upstairs where you might see a light. Peter’s car isn’t in the driveway either, maybe he’s out or maybe he doesn’t live here, you can’t know. You aren’t even sure if this is your house. Who knows, maybe you don’t even live in this town. Surprisingly even after all the mess you’ve gone through, you still have your house key so after taking it out of your pocket, you get out of the car an head towards the house. You walk up to the front door and you’re about to try your key, but then you wonder if maybe you shouldn’t just ring the bell or knock first. > You ring the bell Even if your key fits, that’s no guarantee you live here. You could very well be trespassing and if someone is actually in this house right now, you could find yourself in deep shit when the owner finds you and pulls a shotgun on you. Erring on the side of caution, you ring the bell a couple times and knock. You wait a few minutes thinking that nobody is home which might mean it’s at least safer to try your key, but then you think you hear footsteps and a voice. Soon you see a light emanating from the front room. Someone has come to answer the door at least. An older man opens the door and you can hardly believe your eyes. “It’s damn near midnight who the hell…Suzy?!” your father says mid rant. “Dad?” you answer back, not really expecting to see him. “What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t visiting until Saturday.” Your dad asks. You have no answer except a sudden raising of your arms and a smile. “Um, well surprise!” you utter and go to hug your father, who returns the hug. It’s weird, you never really had a close relationship with your father, but somehow seeing him alive AND not being a pathetic drunk that just watches TV pining over your mother makes you a little happier to see him. You wonder what changed? “Well, okay Suzy. We’re always glad to see you, you know that. Just wish you would’ve called in advance you know?” your father says and invites you in. You notice that the furniture lay out in the living room is different along with the furniture itself. A lot of little things are different really. The “we” sort of throws you at first since you wonder if your dad is referring to your siblings. However you soon see who he’s referring to and if you couldn’t believe your eyes when seeing your father still alive, you really don’t believe them now. “George, who is…Suzy? I thought you were visiting Satur…” You immediately run to hug your mother before she can even complete her sentence. She’s older looking of course, but you’d recognize her anywhere. You can’t believe you’d ever see her alive again. You’re having a hard time holding back tears of joy. Meanwhile your parents are both a little perplexed by your behavior. “I love you mom.” You say squeezing her tightly. “Well of course you do. I know that. I love you too, but why are you here at this late hour? You could have called us first, you know how we like to turn in early.” “I know, I know, I just…I just wanted to see you guys, you know?” you say finally letting go of your mother, yet still staying close to her. “I know it’s a long drive from Security City, have you slept at all?” you dad asks. “A little. Don’t worry, I’m fine. So how are you guys?” you ask. “We’re good, though there has been a neighborhood burglar skulking about. If he tries coming in here, he’s getting both barrels. It is really late though, and while your mother and I would love to talk, can we do this tomorrow morning? I have to get up to fix this overhead light in the living room which decided to go out today.” “Oh…yeah sure. Don’t let me keep you up.” You say. “You can sleep in your old room. It’s pretty much the same as when you left it, still haven’t turned it into a storage room or anything in case you were wondering.” Your mom says. “Oh good, I want to check on some old things I left here anyway.” You say and start to head towards where the basement is only to have your mother call out. “Um, Suzy where are you going?” your mom asks. “I’m going to my room.” “Don’t you think you should be heading upstairs then and not towards the basement?” You nearly face palm for not realizing that maybe you had a different sleeping arrangement in this reality. You play it off with a laugh though. “Oh! Yeah! Hah! I’m sorry, I’ve had a very long drive and I’m a little loopy and tired I suppose.” You say. “You okay Suzy?” your father asks. “Yeah, yeah, I really am. Like I said, I’m just really tired. I’ll probably fall asleep soon after I get to my room.” “Mmm, I told you about driving when that tired before. You could get into an accident.” Your dad says. “Oh George, don’t lecture the girl now. Let’s just be glad we have a daughter who is still thoughtful enough to visit us.” Your mother says with a smile and pats you on the shoulder. You return the smile. You are really glad to see her again. “(Yawn) Alright, well if we’re done here, I’m heading back up, you coming Bertha?” your dad asks. “Yes, Suzy you heading up too? You said you were tired and wanted to go to your room.” Your mom asks. “Yeah I will soon, but I also haven’t eaten all day, you don’t mind if I grab something out of the fridge right?” “You know better than to ask. Help yourself.” Your mom says. “Don’t make a mess though. Oh and remember, your room is the second door on your right.” Your dad snorts in jest due to your previous confusion. It’s actually a good thing he told you though since you probably would’ve been fumbling into random rooms when you actually went up there. You dad kisses you on the head before saying goodnight and heading up the stairs. Your mom does as well causing you to hug her once again. You almost don’t want to let go, but you know you need to keep it together. “I’m really glad to be back home, I missed you.” You say. “Suzy, we just spoke a few days ago.” You mom says. “I know, but it’s just not the same as seeing you in person, you know?” “I know sweetheart, we’ll have all day to talk tomorrow. Goodnight.” You watch as your mom heads upstairs and you’re soon left alone where you continue to hold it together until you go downstairs into the basement where you finally release your tears. You honestly didn’t realize just how much you missed your mother until you saw her again. You certainly were very sad when she died in your reality and for some time after, but overtime you didn’t just move on, part of you just shut down completely. Maybe that explains some of you problems. After composing yourself, you actually take a look around the basement and find that it’s much different than your own. For one, “your room” is just a storage space full of old clothes, tools and other junk. You almost get a little nervous looking at all the junk as you’re reminded of the Gray Building. You quickly leave the basement, not wishing to dwell on that which led you here in the first place. You spend some more time just looking about the house, particularly the pictures which right there is already a major difference since there are barely any in your own house. You see several happy family photos, which you attempt to use as a quick way to possibly learn what you can about your “family.” It looks like your dad wasn’t a travelling lightning rod salesman and worked at the meat processing plant in town since you see a few pictures of him in a factory uniform. Him being around probably helped. Your mom seems like she was still a housewife from what you can tell. Your brother Ben apparently went into the actual military rather than just being a paranoid survivalist nut. You see a lot of his pictures are of him in uniform. Looks like he got a lot of ribbons and honors too. You also see a picture of him with your best friend Julie in a wedding dress… they got married! You can imagine Julie from your reality would have liked that considering she always had a crush on him. (Or maybe she just wanted to fuck him, you don’t know exactly or care to think about it) Looks like they had two children, which you can’t even wrap your head around. You don’t see as many pictures of your sister Kelly, but they do exist. A lot of her pictures show her in uniform too, but one of a police officer. Seems like your family is really “orderly” in this reality. She looks about the same, just with less scars. She still looks mean and serious business in every photo though, so maybe some things never change. No pictures of a boyfriend (or girlfriend) or children. One thing you don’t see pictures of are of Donna or Peter. Surely with as many pictures there are displayed, you’d see some. You can only guess your parents stopped having children after you. Which makes you the “baby” you guess. Might explain why your family is a bit more stable too considering there were less kids to give your parents grief. Finally, you see pictures of yourself. Quite a few of them in fact. (More than Kelly definitely) You look more or less the same as you did at the various ages you see yourself. You also look pretty happy in every photo and you see that you graduated from college in this reality too. You don’t see yourself in any uniform, so you wonder what you do for a living. It’s at this moment you realize that you can no longer ignore that this reality, this family and these memories are not your own. It’s depressing and you also realize that it’s been mentioned that the Suzy of this reality is supposed to be coming for a visit on Saturday. You can’t stay here even though you’d like to, you’re going to have to leave before things get weird. You’re also going to have to figure out what you’re going to do with yourself in the long term. In some ways, the fact that the world isn’t going to complete shit, puts the pressure on even more. After all, if the world had ended it wouldn’t have mattered if you figured it out or not. Still, you’ve got one more day. One more day at least to spend here and enjoy before you figure out what you’re going to do with your life. You deserve that at least right? And so after grabbing a quick snack, you retire to your “old room.” It’s much brighter than your own old one in the basement, but then that because it’s a proper bedroom and not a dank dark basement. You look around a bit, but you figure you can better investigate your room tomorrow. Right now you’re too exhausted from today’s events and drained from the emotions of seeing your mother alive and finding out you had a much better life in an alternate reality and how it’s just another example of how life isn’t fair to you even across the fucking multiverse. > Next day… FRIDAY You wake up with the sun shining in on your bedroom. You can safely say you haven’t had that experience in a long time, if ever. You aren’t sure what time it is, but knowing you, you probably slept through the morning as usual. Once again, you’re stuck in the same clothes you’ve been wearing since the beginning of the week. While you can certainly shower, you’d really rather change clothes at this point so you go through your room and hope that your alternate self left some old clothes in it. After going through some drawers you find that your alternate self has about the same fashion sense as you do, meaning pretty simplistic. The clothing itself tends to be a bit brighter though as everything else seems to be in this reality and it’s starting to get on your nerves. You grab a pair of old jeans and a shirt and head to the bathroom where you wash up and later attempt to brush your teeth using your index finger with toothpaste on it. The jeans and shirt are a slightly tight on you though. It’s not enough that your alternate self has a happier life, but the fucking bitch is apparently a size smaller than you as well. “Oh well, I guess I’ll just be that much more popular with horny guys (Sigh) …unfucking believable…” you mutter as you squeeze yourself into the clothes. After getting dressed, you head downstairs. The first thing you see is dad on a small ladder working on the overhead light he mentioned wasn’t working. You don’t think you’ve ever seen your own dad ever fix anything. “Hey, look who’s finally up. You sleep well? You must have considering it’s the afternoon.” Dad says. “Yeah, I guess I really needed the sleep. Where’s mom?” you ask. “She’s in the kitchen. Oh meant to ask you, where’s that silver sports car your drive? I didn’t see it in the driveway or even on the street.” Silver sports car? Seriously? You own a fucking sports car? “Oh, um…yeah I decided not to drive that one here, it’s been giving me trouble lately anyway. I got an older car for cheap to just drive around in; it’s that small blue one outside.” You say. “Oh. Okay. I just thought I’d ask. Like I said, there’s been some burglaries and I was concerned that the criminals had expanded to car theft too. Probably a good idea you didn’t bring it, nobody is likely to steal that thing outside.” “Yeah, I suppose so.” You say and head to the kitchen. “Fucking sports car…” you whisper shaking your head before you greet mom in a friendly manner. “Hey sleeping beauty is finally awake! You sleep well I trust in your old bed?” mom asks while she works on cooking something. “Yeah. Slept fine. What are you cooking.” “Oh I’m preparing big batch of beef stew. I swear your father would probably not eat anything else. It will take awhile, but I can make you something before then of course.” “Nah, I’m okay.” You say sitting down. Your mother smiles at you and you smile back, but you don’t say anything else. It’s weird, you wanted to talk with her so much yesterday, but now as reality sets in that she’s not really your mother, you’re sort of at a loss for words and awkwardly silent. Still, you want to make the most of this time so you struggle to think of a topic without being suspicious. “So…uh…how are Ben and Kelly doing?” you ask. “Well Ben is still stationed over in Europe. Not exactly sure what he’s doing over there, but it doesn’t seem to be dangerous for once, which I for one am glad about. Julie and the children I imagine are glad about it too. You talk to her recently? “Not for awhile.” You say which is sort of the truth. “Oh. Well I did hear you two weren’t on speaking terms any longer. I hope you make up though since the pair of you were always good friends and the both of you probably said words neither of you really meant.” “Wait, what?” you ask. You mother stops chopping potatoes for a moment to address you directly. “A few months ago, Ben told me that Julie told him that you got in argument with her about how she’s too strict with your niece and nephew and she told you not to tell how to raise her kids. I can’t remember the entire exchange of what else happened except I know she ended up calling you a dyke that won’t ever know what it means to be a mother anyway and then you swore at her and hung up. While I can certainly see Julie’s defensiveness about how to raise her children, I don’t think it was right to say such hateful things, just because of your lifestyle choice.” “Lifestyle choice?” you say a bit confused as you’re attempting to process everything. “Oh right. I’m sorry Suzy. I know you were born that way. You explained it very well to your father and me when you came out years ago before graduating from college. We’re just still a little old fashioned in our way of thinking and it lapses at times.” You do not believe this… “But I’m not a…” you start to say, but then realize why bother correcting her? It would just confuse things for when their real Suzy arrives. “…I’ll try to make the attempt with Julie, but she really needs to apologize.” You say instead. “You always were the bigger person. And I wouldn’t give it another thought as far as what she said about being a mother is concerned. There’s always adoption and I also know you people are really big on all that artificial insemination stuff. I’m sure when the time is right you and Heather will…” “Heather?” “Yeah, your girlfriend. Wait, you didn’t break up with her did you? She seemed so nice when you brought her here for us to meet her…” “No…no…I didn’t break up with her, um… so how is Kelly again?” you ask really wanting to change the subject. “Kelly? Well she’s Kelly. Still one of this town’s finest and doing a good job at it. Wish she’d find a better man to settle down with though. She seems to flip back and forth between these various loser guys that are so far beneath her it isn’t even funny. She really could do so much better and it’s not like there haven’t been several good men that have made genuine attempts to woo her. She doesn’t want to be tied down though and it’s her life I suppose.” Well now you’ve heard everything. You truly are in bizarro world. “You okay dear?” mom asks. “Yeah, yeah I’m just fine mom.” You answer “Well enough about your siblings, how are you doing? You working on a new book yet?” “New book?” “Yeah, you started writing a new book again? I know last time you said you had a bit of writer’s block. Honestly I don’t know how you come up with all the ideas you do. You’ve written like three books already. I know I don’t have the imagination to do that, but you always were creative even as a little girl.” So that’s what you do. You’re a writer. Makes sense actually. In fact you almost want to kick yourself of why the hell you never tried your hand at it in your own reality. You certainly procrastinate enough. “I’ve got a few ideas in my head I suppose. Writing is never an exact science.” Before you have to make up more shit on the fly, dad comes walking in. “Smells good in here already. Anyway I fixed the light and now I’m going to the hardware store, I’ll be back later.” “If you already fixed the light, why do you have to go to the hardware store?” you mother asks. “I have to replenish all the stuff I used.” He says, but mom doesn’t look convinced. “Okay I just want to go because I really want a new drill.” Dad breaks down and admits. “George you’re really silly sometimes when you try to make up stories.” “Well it’s where Suzy gets her story telling ability from!” dad remarks and pats you on the shoulder giving you a smile, which you return. “Okay, see you both later.” Dad remarks and leaves the kitchen with Mom still smiling about the silliness. “You and dad seem very happy.” You remark. “Of course we are. Why wouldn’t we be? We’re enjoying our elderly years together, we’ve had a successful marriage, we have three successful children that love us, grandchildren, a nice home, what more could one hope for?” What more indeed. You’re still thinking about what the hell you’re going to do with your own life. Despite a few major differences in your alternate self, you’d still switch places with her. She’s got everything, a formal higher education, successful career, a fancy car, a significant other and most importantly a loving family. You begin to get lost in your own head, which is then disrupted by mom. “Suzy? Suzy?” mom asks. “Huh? Yeah?” you answer. “Are you really okay? You’ve been sort of spacing out lately.” “Oh, yeah. Well like I said, I’ve got a few story ideas in my head and sometimes I get lost in thought.” “Okay. Well I really have to go to the bathroom, can you finish cutting those carrots?” “Oh yeah, sure mom.” You reply. Your mom leaves the kitchen leaving you alone with your thoughts and cutting up carrots. You increasingly become melancholy as you dwell on how things still suck for you and as you’re apt to do, you begin talking to yourself. “(Sigh) Suzy, Suzy, Suzy, only you could find the negative out of the one relatively positive thing about thing about this fucked up week. Pull yourself together girl. You survived a hell of a lot worse than this. You wanted to be self-sufficient, we this is a good start. A fresh new world is your oyster and you’ve got plenty of opportunity…” Suddenly you hear a phone ring. It’s the land phone on the kitchen wall. You walk over and nearly grab it immediately, but then you remember you’re not really supposed to be here. However, you then notice the caller I.D. Suzy. You are compelled to pick up. “Hello?” you answer. “Hey. Mom? Is that you?” the voice on the other end says. You pause. You never realized that you and your mother sounded so similar before. “Yes, of course it’s me honey. Who else would it be?” you say. “I dunno, you sound a little different. Might be that ratty old land phone you have though, I keep telling you to get a cell!” “Oh you know me dear, your father and I are a bit set in our ways.” “Don’t I know it. Ha ha! Nah, I know you guys really do try. So hey, I was just calling to let you know I’m coming a little bit earlier and I’ll probably be there sometime late tonight. Like probably after midnight.” “You are?” “Yes, like I said I just wanted to let you know so you guys don’t get too mad when I’m knocking on your door late at night waking you up…unless you want me to stay at the town’s motel until tomorrow morning. I know you guys go to bed early.” It is at this moment that the dark idea your mind has been dancing around for quite some time isn’t going away and is now in full bloom. If you just got rid of this Suzy, all your problems would be solved. You just have to muster the fortitude to do it… > You tell Suzy to go to the motel If you’re going to do this, it’s better that you do it away from the house. There is exactly one motel in this town anyway so it’ll be real easy to find her. “I’m sorry dear, but your father has been a bit jumpy lately due to a recent string of burglaries. I wouldn’t want him suddenly pulling a shotgun on you just because you’re knocking on the door in the middle of the night. Nevermind the fact he’ll be pretty grumpy anyway. He hasn’t been sleeping well as you might expect.” You answer. “Yikes! Well I guess maybe I should stay at the motel then, I don’t want to cause grief. The Jinn Inn is still open right?” she says. “Yep, as far as I know.” You answer. “Okay, guess I’m staying there. Ugh, just hate the idea of staying there due to it being so dirty looking. It’s like one step up from that awful trailer park outside of town. I dunno how that place has stayed open so long.” “Well the hookers in town need to ply their trade somewhere.” “Mom! I’ve never heard you talk like that before!” She exclaims. “Well I’m not a prude dear, despite what you might think of me.” “Mom, I don’t think you’re a prude. I know you’re very open-minded. You’re just usually pretty reserved with how your talk.” “Well I’m full of surprises, just like you are. Where do you think you got it from?” “Hah, guess you’re right. Okay then, I suppose I shouldn’t really talk so much while I drive. I guess I’ll be seeing you on Saturday after all. Give my love to dad.” “I will dear.” “I love you mom.” “I love you too Suzy.” You say before hanging up. You don’t have much time, you have to prepare and make a plan of what you’re going to do. “Did I hear you on the phone out here?” you mother says walking into the kitchen. “Huh? Oh, yeah just someone trying to sell something. They were really persistent.” You reply. “I can tell, you hardly cut up any of the carrots.” “Sorry, I guess I got caught up in telling them to never call here again. I should have just hung up I suppose.” “No worries, I’ve gotten directly angry at those telemarketer types too.” “Hey mom, I’ve got some things I left here that I want to get and I know they’re probably in my room somewhere or maybe even the basement, you don’t mind if I go take care of that do you?” “No, not at all. We can talk later. Let me know if you’re looking for something in particular. I might know where it is.” “I will mom.” You head to your room to try to formulate a plan. You figure the easiest way to do this is to hang out near or around the motel parking lot and watch for a silver sports car. When you see what room she goes to, you can just blitz attack her as she’s attempting to open it up and take care of her in the motel room itself. You just need to be quick. So, now that you have her, now you have to kill her. You’re going to need something quick and not noisy. A knife you suppose, but that might take more than one stab unless you cut her throat or something. The bat you got from the Gray Building might work, if you smash her in the head multiple times. The thing is you don’t want is to splatter a bunch of blood all over the place. The Jinn Inn might be shady and dirty enough that a few blood spots on their carpets aren’t going to raise an eyebrow, but if you make it look like the chainsaw massacre, you will cause attention and it isn’t like you’re going to have all the time in the world to clean it up. The goal is to make the kill and replace her as efficiently as possible. Which brings you to the idea of how you’re going to dispose of the body since you can’t just leave a dead doppelganger of yourself in the motel room. You’re definitely going to have to haul it out into the wilderness-surrounding town. Dragging it to one of the trunks of the car is going to be the most difficult part. (You still aren’t sure which one you’ll take) Dragging her body out might be less risky if you at least wrapped it in something; you think you saw some things in the basement that might come in useful. Once you get the body into the trunk though, you just need to drive far enough away so it isn’t discovered. Even if it is, maybe you should mutilate the face so it can’t be identified. Pull out the teeth? Your murder plans are temporarily broken up by your thoughts of Bobby. You didn’t often speak to Bobby about his “religious practices”, but in the few times you dared to ask questions, he did explain helpfully about how he went about things. You never dreamed that such knowledge might come in handy. You make a mental note of everything you might need. You grab an old duffle bag out of the closet and fill it with some of her old clothing from her drawers. You figure you’re probably going to need new clothing to wear after your grim work. When you head downstairs you find that dad has returned. “Hey Suzy, where are you off to?” “Oh just putting some stuff of mine in the car, hey dad I was thinking about painting my place when I get back home. I noticed some old tarps and blankets in the basement, you wouldn’t mind if I took those would you?” you ask. “Oh no, go ahead. Take whatever you might need.” He says. You head to your car and throw the duffle bag in, then you return to the house and head down into the basement. You grab some of the folded up tarps and then you notice some of the old tools and other junk down here. Are you going to need an axe to chop up the body? Maybe you should take a shovel to bury it in the wilderness? You remember they stuffed a body into a luggage case in one movie… “Fuck it, I’m still not sure what I’m going to do, I better just take all this shit. Dad did say to help myself.” You say and make a couple trips up and down the basement, loading up your car with tools, tape, bags, and tarps in the process. (And being to keep the shovel and axe hidden within the tarps since the last thing you need is a question about why you might need those) By the time you’re done, you’re about ready to go do the deed right now, but it’s still too early. Besides, you can’t just disappear for all day and night, your parents would wonder. You’re going to have to come up with an excuse of why you’re going to be gone. As you’re piecing together an excuse, when you get back in the house your mom sees and addresses you again. “You going to have dinner with us in a half hour or so?” she asks. “…yes…of course. I have to leave though afterwards.” “Leave? You just got here!” “I don’t mean leave to go back to Security City, I just mean…well I’ve been in contact with a former school friend through the Internet and she’s sort of been going through some tough times. I promised I’d meet up with her when I was visiting.” “Oh…well I certainly understand. Who was this friend? Do I know her? Though I suppose I only ever remember Julie due to you two hanging together a lot.” You very briefly blank on making up a name on the spot, however you do come up with one rather quickly. “Um, Diana. Her name was Diana Morningstar. She never came over here, since her parents were always a bit strict, but I always got along with her in school. She wasn’t very popular, but I always felt a bit sorry for her so I was sort of her only real friend. Though I imagine she probably put more stock into it than I did, I mean I was still just a shallow kid at the time and wanted to hang out with Julie since we could have fun together like normal young teens. I sort of lost contact with her when her parents pulled her out of school altogether and home schooled her. I think they were religious nuts.” Your mother just shakes her head. “See, parents like that just shouldn’t have children. That’s a shame. Well I’m glad to hear that you showed that girl a bit of kindness. I’m sure she’s glad you’re in contact again and will be happy to see you. You always were thoughtful.” Your mother says and then mentions that you should take a spare key for the house from the desk in the front room just in case you come home late and they’re already asleep. Eventually it’s dinnertime and you have dinner with your mom and dad. Through a bit of conversation you do learn a little more about your “life” here and through careful weaving and quick thinking, you manage to navigate through questions you might not otherwise know the answers to. To be honest though, you’re only just barely paying attention to any of it, because you’re so preoccupied. While you’re apparently calm on the outside, you’re really a ball of nervous energy and as soon as dinner is over you nearly rush out of the house, though you do grab the spare house key for appearances. You say goodbye to your parents and leave the house. It’s night, but it’s still too early for her to be at the motel yet, well at least you hope that’s the case since that will change up your plans of how to get to her. You spend a bit of time driving around trying to put yourself in the mind frame to do this. You can’t afford to choke; this is a life or death decision quite literally. You need to do this for your future life here. The life that you deserved…but why are you so much more deserving? Didn’t this Suzy work hard to get what she got even if she had a few advantages? Are you just too overwhelmed with jealousy? How can you genuinely desire to find the inner strength to kill? “For fuck’s sake Suzy, you were going out with a cultist for fuck’s sake and you had no problem with him killing people! Is this really all that surprising?” you exclaim to yourself. Maybe this is genetic. Maybe you take after Uncle Ed. (Who you learned didn’t exist in this reality when your mom mentioned being an only child at dinner) Maybe it was your fucked up upbringing. Maybe it was your environment. Maybe there was always darkness in you and you were just too damn lazy for it ever to fully thrive. Well it’s thriving now. Is it ever. You’ve got more motivation than you ever have before. Maybe it’s because there is so much at stake. Maybe it’s because on some level you actually hate yourself and by killing this Suzy, well it’s like killing yourself without the actual downside of dying. Whatever the reason, you can’t waste anymore time thinking about whether this is right or wrong. Your life hasn’t exactly been “right” for a very long time, but if everything goes according to plan, your life will be getting there. Well at least that’s how you’re convincing yourself this time around. Just like you’ve convinced yourself of several other things this week, you succeed in convincing yourself of this too. It’s getting a lot easier. You stop driving around town and finally head to the motel. You’ll wait the rest of the time out in the parking lot. When you get to the Jinn Inn, it isn’t quite as bad as the one in your reality, but you definitely see some shady characters popping into the rooms. You see no sign of a silver sports car though and you do take the time to check. She’s not here yet so you just park in a strategic location where you can see all the traffic coming in and out. When she arrives, you’ll definitely see her. Hours pass, but you never lose focus. And eventually your vigilance pays off. You see a silver sports car. It actually isn’t as fancy as you thought it might be, probably was bought used, but it’s certainly more than you ever had. You watch her park close to the motel rooms and then you see her get out of the car. She’s dressed in casual clothing and carries a small purse, but when you watch her walk to the motel check in office, you notice she carries herself with an air of self-confidence. It’s like it doesn’t matter that the area she’s around is shit, she knows she’s better and isn’t at all intimidated by the element here. It is at this moment you grab your baseball bat and get out of the car still keeping an eye out and crouching down behind the vehicles. Fortunately nobody else happens to be lingering around the lot at the moment. Hopefully it stays that way. You soon see her come out of the check in office and as stealthily as you can you run over behind more cars and get closer. You watch where she walks to and continue to keep a look out for anyone else that might suddenly pop up. You just need to stay hidden as you follow her and then rush her when she finally opens up her room. You silently thank your luck for once since she seems to not be very aware of her surroundings and only focuses on heading towards her room. “Stupid, arrogant bitch…” you say to yourself. Your stalking soon ends when you see her reach her room. It’s a perfect opening too. Nobody is around and she fumbles with the keys a bit giving you time to get closer before making that mad sprint as soon as she opens her room… and then you strike. Your target opens the door and enters her room. She turns around to close the door just in time to see you up close in front of her hitting her with face with the bat. It isn’t a full swing, but rather a hard “poke”, but it’s enough to break her nose and cause her to go falling to the floor. You quickly slam the door shut behind you and you briefly think about beating her brains in with the bat, but then you realize that will probably be messy. “You…” is all she manages to get out before you kick her in the face to shut her up. Then you pounce on top of her and after turning her over, you use the bat sideways and you press it up against her throat as hard as you can as you pull back. She gasps and struggles for her life, but it’s no use, your determination to kill her is much stronger than her abilities to fight for her life. “Shhhhh…just let go….just let go…everything is going to work out and your parents won’t be losing a daughter at all. Just let go….” You whisper. Soon you hear a crunching sound of perhaps crushing bones in her neck or her windpipe or something. Whatever it is, her struggle temporarily becomes more violent and jerky with her limbs attempting to flail about. It almost feels like you’re riding her like a wild pony, but soon this outburst is muted and then nothing. Suzy collapses dying with her face partially in a small puddle of her blood and spital, leaving you sitting on top of a corpse’s back. You eventually stand up taking in what you’ve done. You’re hot and sweaty, but strangely invigorated. “(Whew) And I thought I was going to choke.” you say and then start to chuckle at your own dark joke. Well the first part of the deed is done, now comes the more labor inducing part. Getting rid of her body. You’ve actually managed to keep the mess to a minimum by choking her to death, so you’re wondering if you shouldn’t just grab the tarps from the car, roll her ass up in them, duct tape it together and take her to the trunk. She might be your size, (Okay slightly lighter) but it isn’t like you’re used to carrying bodies around. While there wasn’t anyone out there, the last thing you need is someone seeing you fumbling around with a body, even one wrapped in a tarp. If you wanted to play it safe, you suppose you could drag her to the bathroom and chop her up in the bathtub. It will definitely take longer and you might make more of a mess, but you could always carry her out in several pieces in that big luggage bag you brought with you. > You keep her in one piece The more you think about it, chopping her up is likely just going to complicate things. Your goal is to get rid of her body as quickly as possible and really all you need to do that is drive her dead ass to the wilderness and dump it. You probably over thought this by bringing all that shit with you. No matter, better to have it and not need it rather than the other way around. You quickly search her body, but find nothing of interest. The purse that she dropped on the floor when you smashed her in the face contains all the important stuff, but you figure you’ll have to go through it when you have more time. You go to the car grabbing the tape and tarps and return to the room. So far it’s still pretty quiet out there, you just hope it stays that way. You begin rolling her up in one of the tarps and then wrap duct tape around her like mummy. You then roll her up in a second tarp, which you also tape up. It’s not exactly the neatest, but you believe you’ve got her firmly wrapped up tight. You make the effort to clean up a little bit of the blood that was left on the motel carpet, you only got soap and water from the bathroom to work with, but it isn’t like you’re cleaning up brains and gore so you think you’re good. You sit on the bed for a little while taking a break from your task thinking about which car you want to use. You suppose it doesn’t matter, though the sports car probably has a smaller trunk, then again you loaded up your own car with a bunch of stuff, so you’re probably going to have to rearrange stuff to make room. You get up and using the car keys from the purse, you check out the sports car to see just how big the trunk is. After some inspection you decide that it’s probably just big enough for your purposes. It isn’t like it’s a big body after all. You still think it might be a good idea to bury the body though, so you grab the shovel out of your car and put it in the backseat of the sports car. “Okay Suzy, let’s do this.” You say to yourself and head back inside to get her body. You pick up the body and it really isn’t easy. It isn’t like you’re literally carrying “your own weight” on a regular basis, not to mention a dead body is somewhat awkward to attempt to carry even if you do have it wrapped tight. You get to the trunk of the sports car and start swearing when the body’s weight begins to take its toll and you even up dropping it on the cement before you can even attempt to get it into the trunk. “Shit!” you exclaim and then quickly look around to see if anyone is watching or around. You’re still in luck that nobody is around. (You guess the hookers are really busy with their tricks tonight) With some effort, you manage to pick the body back up and cram it into the trunk. Cram is definitely the correct word since you miscalculated and the trunk was slightly smaller than your thought. You actually have to lift your leg to stomp the body into the trunk before you can close it properly. When you’re done with that, you go back into the room to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything and grab her purse before you leave. As you start up the car and leave you figure you’ll drive north of town, drag her into the woods, find a good spot and start digging a hole. You have no idea how long that’s all going to take, but you imagine you’ll have to come up with another excuse for your parents about why you were out all night. You figure you’ll just make up something about Diana again. Never thought that bitch would come in so handy. You also figure you’ll have to come back for your own car as well since it will look pretty strange coming back home with the silver one. You suppose when you finally stop “visiting” your parents you can always come back for the silver one and just abandon this one. It’s all a lot to deal with still, and you’re already partially frustrated and tired from all the dead body lifting. Thanks to this fatigue and the sports car going slightly faster than when you were driving the other one, you end up going past the designated speed limit in the area and misfortune strikes, you attract the attention of a hidden police vehicle. The sirens and blinking lights soon follow. You curse loudly and briefly think about just speeding up and getting the hell out of town, but you instead remain calm. You have this Suzy’s ID and everything so as long as you don’t act suspicious, you’ll probably be fine. In fact, knowing the cops in this town, all you’ll have to do is flutter your eye lashes at them a bit and you’ll probably get let go with just a warning. You slow down and pull over. “Keep your head Suzy, you’re in the home stretch…” you say closing your eyes and trying to maintain your cool. A tall and bulky cop soon comes out of the car and walks over to you. At first you figure it’s going to be a guy, but then your heart sinks when you see who it really is. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t baby sister.” Kelly remarks. “Fuck.” You inadvertently exclaim, losing whatever composure you were attempting to have. “Fuck? Now is that anyway to greet your big sister? I heard you were in town visiting mom and dad. What are you doing out so late breaking traffic laws?” “I’m just coming back from an old friend’s house okay? And I wasn’t that much over the speed limit.” “Rules are rules Suzy, but then you always DID think there was a separate set of rules for you didn’t you? Yeah, always the favorite getting your own way…” You can’t believe this. Even in this reality, Kelly is still a fucking jealous bullying asshole to you. Some things never change. Kelly notices you’re looking a little annoyed and anxious by her stop. “What’s wrong Suzy? No pithy come back college girl?” Kelly asks. “Look, you win Kelly, you got me. I obviously broke the law and you got me. Just write me the damn ticket already.” You remark. “Not sure if I like your tone sis…in fact you’re acting a little odd. What old friend might have you been visiting anyway in this town? Figured when you moved away you were glad to leave everyone behind. Not to mention the only person I ever remember you hanging out with was Julie and I hear you’re not on speaking terms anymore.” “Just some girl from school days I’ve had contact with over the Internet. I promised I would visit her. I’m just on my way back to mom and dad’s.” “Ohhh, girl huh? This wouldn’t be some midnight booty call for you would it? Some old secret labia-licking friend you had when you were still in the closet? I thought you had a steady girlfriend. Guess more rules that you don’t give a shit about.” You know you should keep your composure, but Kelly is really getting on your nerves. “Are you going to give me the ticker or not?” you ask. “I’ll give you this fucking baton up your ass if you don’t stop giving me shit! In fact why don’t you get the hell out of the car, you’re acting really suspicious.” Kelly remarks. You sigh and shake your head. “Of course. Nothing is ever easy for me.” you say and then you quickly turn the car back on. “HEY! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! STOP!” Kelly shouts and grabs at the wheel while you attempt to drive off. You manage to actually get a few feet before Kelly manages to grab the key out of the ignition. You punch Kelly in the face multiple times, but she’s undeterred in her job of arresting you. Kelly returns your punches with a couple elbows to the face and then pulls you out of the car through the window. “You’re in deep fucking shit now little sister. You just assaulted a goddamn officer of th…ugh!” Kelly grunts when you punch her as hard as you can in the crotch. It slows her down and you attempt to grab her pistol. You manage to undue the snap of the holster, but Kelly stops you from getting and further with a knee to your face. Now SHE pulls out the pistol and points it directly at you. “Suzy, I’m telling you to fucking stop or I WILL fucking shoot you!” Kelly warns. You don’t stop though. Your grand plans have gone to shit once again and you’re a loser here just like you were a loser in your own world. You’re either going to get lucky and wrestle the gun away from Kelly, or she’s going to shoot you. One thing you’re not going to do is go to jail. Kelly sensing her life is in genuine danger now, ignores all the pain she’s in and no longer treats you like her “sister” and starts treating you like a dangerous criminal which you actually are at this point. Kelly shoots you once in the chest, dropping you instantly. You strongly get the impression that she COULD have easily stopped you without a fatal shot, but you imagine that Kelly being herself probably saw this as a perfect opportunity. “I fucking told you sis.” Kelly remarks. “(cough) I’m not your fucking sister, asshole. She’s in the goddamn trunk…” you laugh while still coughing up blood at the same time. Your last moments are looking the confused look on Kelly’s face before she radios for back up and an ambulance.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you’re going to do this, it’s better that you do it away from the house. There is exactly one motel in this town anyway so it’ll be real easy to find her. “I’m sorry dear, but your father has been a bit jumpy lately due to a recent string of burglaries. I wouldn’t want him suddenly pulling a shotgun on you just because you’re knocking on the door in the middle of the night. Nevermind the fact he’ll be pretty grumpy anyway. He hasn’t been sleeping well as you might expect.” You answer. “Yikes! Well I guess maybe I should stay at the motel then, I don’t want to cause grief. The Jinn Inn is still open right?” she says. “Yep, as far as I know.” You answer. “Okay, guess I’m staying there. Ugh, just hate the idea of staying there due to it being so dirty looking. It’s like one step up from that awful trailer park outside of town. I dunno how that place has stayed open so long.” “Well the hookers in town need to ply their trade somewhere.” “Mom! I’ve never heard you talk like that before!” She exclaims. “Well I’m not a prude dear, despite what you might think of me.” “Mom, I don’t think you’re a prude. I know you’re very open-minded. You’re just usually pretty reserved with how your talk.” “Well I’m full of surprises, just like you are. Where do you think you got it from?” “Hah, guess you’re right. Okay then, I suppose I shouldn’t really talk so much while I drive. I guess I’ll be seeing you on Saturday after all. Give my love to dad.” “I will dear.” “I love you mom.” “I love you too Suzy.” You say before hanging up. You don’t have much time, you have to prepare and make a plan of what you’re going to do. “Did I hear you on the phone out here?” you mother says walking into the kitchen. “Huh? Oh, yeah just someone trying to sell something. They were really persistent.” You reply. “I can tell, you hardly cut up any of the carrots.” “Sorry, I guess I got caught up in telling them to never call here again. I should have just hung up I suppose.” “No worries, I’ve gotten directly angry at those telemarketer types too.” “Hey mom, I’ve got some things I left here that I want to get and I know they’re probably in my room somewhere or maybe even the basement, you don’t mind if I go take care of that do you?” “No, not at all. We can talk later. Let me know if you’re looking for something in particular. I might know where it is.” “I will mom.” You head to your room to try to formulate a plan. You figure the easiest way to do this is to hang out near or around the motel parking lot and watch for a silver sports car. When you see what room she goes to, you can just blitz attack her as she’s attempting to open it up and take care of her in the motel room itself. You just need to be quick. So, now that you have her, now you have to kill her. You’re going to need something quick and not noisy. A knife you suppose, but that might take more than one stab unless you cut her throat or something. The bat you got from the Gray Building might work, if you smash her in the head multiple times. The thing is you don’t want is to splatter a bunch of blood all over the place. The Jinn Inn might be shady and dirty enough that a few blood spots on their carpets aren’t going to raise an eyebrow, but if you make it look like the chainsaw massacre, you will cause attention and it isn’t like you’re going to have all the time in the world to clean it up. The goal is to make the kill and replace her as efficiently as possible. Which brings you to the idea of how you’re going to dispose of the body since you can’t just leave a dead doppelganger of yourself in the motel room. You’re definitely going to have to haul it out into the wilderness-surrounding town. Dragging it to one of the trunks of the car is going to be the most difficult part. (You still aren’t sure which one you’ll take) Dragging her body out might be less risky if you at least wrapped it in something; you think you saw some things in the basement that might come in useful. Once you get the body into the trunk though, you just need to drive far enough away so it isn’t discovered. Even if it is, maybe you should mutilate the face so it can’t be identified. Pull out the teeth? Your murder plans are temporarily broken up by your thoughts of Bobby. You didn’t often speak to Bobby about his “religious practices”, but in the few times you dared to ask questions, he did explain helpfully about how he went about things. You never dreamed that such knowledge might come in handy. You make a mental note of everything you might need. You grab an old duffle bag out of the closet and fill it with some of her old clothing from her drawers. You figure you’re probably going to need new clothing to wear after your grim work. When you head downstairs you find that dad has returned. “Hey Suzy, where are you off to?” “Oh just putting some stuff of mine in the car, hey dad I was thinking about painting my place when I get back home. I noticed some old tarps and blankets in the basement, you wouldn’t mind if I took those would you?” you ask. “Oh no, go ahead. Take whatever you might need.” He says. You head to your car and throw the duffle bag in, then you return to the house and head down into the basement. You grab some of the folded up tarps and then you notice some of the old tools and other junk down here. Are you going to need an axe to chop up the body? Maybe you should take a shovel to bury it in the wilderness? You remember they stuffed a body into a luggage case in one movie… “Fuck it, I’m still not sure what I’m going to do, I better just take all this shit. Dad did say to help myself.” You say and make a couple trips up and down the basement, loading up your car with tools, tape, bags, and tarps in the process. (And being to keep the shovel and axe hidden within the tarps since the last thing you need is a question about why you might need those) By the time you’re done, you’re about ready to go do the deed right now, but it’s still too early. Besides, you can’t just disappear for all day and night, your parents would wonder. You’re going to have to come up with an excuse of why you’re going to be gone. As you’re piecing together an excuse, when you get back in the house your mom sees and addresses you again. “You going to have dinner with us in a half hour or so?” she asks. “…yes…of course. I have to leave though afterwards.” “Leave? You just got here!” “I don’t mean leave to go back to Security City, I just mean…well I’ve been in contact with a former school friend through the Internet and she’s sort of been going through some tough times. I promised I’d meet up with her when I was visiting.” “Oh…well I certainly understand. Who was this friend? Do I know her? Though I suppose I only ever remember Julie due to you two hanging together a lot.” You very briefly blank on making up a name on the spot, however you do come up with one rather quickly. “Um, Diana. Her name was Diana Morningstar. She never came over here, since her parents were always a bit strict, but I always got along with her in school. She wasn’t very popular, but I always felt a bit sorry for her so I was sort of her only real friend. Though I imagine she probably put more stock into it than I did, I mean I was still just a shallow kid at the time and wanted to hang out with Julie since we could have fun together like normal young teens. I sort of lost contact with her when her parents pulled her out of school altogether and home schooled her. I think they were religious nuts.” Your mother just shakes her head. “See, parents like that just shouldn’t have children. That’s a shame. Well I’m glad to hear that you showed that girl a bit of kindness. I’m sure she’s glad you’re in contact again and will be happy to see you. You always were thoughtful.” Your mother says and then mentions that you should take a spare key for the house from the desk in the front room just in case you come home late and they’re already asleep. Eventually it’s dinnertime and you have dinner with your mom and dad. Through a bit of conversation you do learn a little more about your “life” here and through careful weaving and quick thinking, you manage to navigate through questions you might not otherwise know the answers to. To be honest though, you’re only just barely paying attention to any of it, because you’re so preoccupied. While you’re apparently calm on the outside, you’re really a ball of nervous energy and as soon as dinner is over you nearly rush out of the house, though you do grab the spare house key for appearances. You say goodbye to your parents and leave the house. It’s night, but it’s still too early for her to be at the motel yet, well at least you hope that’s the case since that will change up your plans of how to get to her. You spend a bit of time driving around trying to put yourself in the mind frame to do this. You can’t afford to choke; this is a life or death decision quite literally. You need to do this for your future life here. The life that you deserved…but why are you so much more deserving? Didn’t this Suzy work hard to get what she got even if she had a few advantages? Are you just too overwhelmed with jealousy? How can you genuinely desire to find the inner strength to kill? “For fuck’s sake Suzy, you were going out with a cultist for fuck’s sake and you had no problem with him killing people! Is this really all that surprising?” you exclaim to yourself. Maybe this is genetic. Maybe you take after Uncle Ed. (Who you learned didn’t exist in this reality when your mom mentioned being an only child at dinner) Maybe it was your fucked up upbringing. Maybe it was your environment. Maybe there was always darkness in you and you were just too damn lazy for it ever to fully thrive. Well it’s thriving now. Is it ever. You’ve got more motivation than you ever have before. Maybe it’s because there is so much at stake. Maybe it’s because on some level you actually hate yourself and by killing this Suzy, well it’s like killing yourself without the actual downside of dying. Whatever the reason, you can’t waste anymore time thinking about whether this is right or wrong. Your life hasn’t exactly been “right” for a very long time, but if everything goes according to plan, your life will be getting there. Well at least that’s how you’re convincing yourself this time around. Just like you’ve convinced yourself of several other things this week, you succeed in convincing yourself of this too. It’s getting a lot easier. You stop driving around town and finally head to the motel. You’ll wait the rest of the time out in the parking lot. When you get to the Jinn Inn, it isn’t quite as bad as the one in your reality, but you definitely see some shady characters popping into the rooms. You see no sign of a silver sports car though and you do take the time to check. She’s not here yet so you just park in a strategic location where you can see all the traffic coming in and out. When she arrives, you’ll definitely see her. Hours pass, but you never lose focus. And eventually your vigilance pays off. You see a silver sports car. It actually isn’t as fancy as you thought it might be, probably was bought used, but it’s certainly more than you ever had. You watch her park close to the motel rooms and then you see her get out of the car. She’s dressed in casual clothing and carries a small purse, but when you watch her walk to the motel check in office, you notice she carries herself with an air of self-confidence. It’s like it doesn’t matter that the area she’s around is shit, she knows she’s better and isn’t at all intimidated by the element here. It is at this moment you grab your baseball bat and get out of the car still keeping an eye out and crouching down behind the vehicles. Fortunately nobody else happens to be lingering around the lot at the moment. Hopefully it stays that way. You soon see her come out of the check in office and as stealthily as you can you run over behind more cars and get closer. You watch where she walks to and continue to keep a look out for anyone else that might suddenly pop up. You just need to stay hidden as you follow her and then rush her when she finally opens up her room. You silently thank your luck for once since she seems to not be very aware of her surroundings and only focuses on heading towards her room. “Stupid, arrogant bitch…” you say to yourself. Your stalking soon ends when you see her reach her room. It’s a perfect opening too. Nobody is around and she fumbles with the keys a bit giving you time to get closer before making that mad sprint as soon as she opens her room… and then you strike. Your target opens the door and enters her room. She turns around to close the door just in time to see you up close in front of her hitting her with face with the bat. It isn’t a full swing, but rather a hard “poke”, but it’s enough to break her nose and cause her to go falling to the floor. You quickly slam the door shut behind you and you briefly think about beating her brains in with the bat, but then you realize that will probably be messy. “You…” is all she manages to get out before you kick her in the face to shut her up. Then you pounce on top of her and after turning her over, you use the bat sideways and you press it up against her throat as hard as you can as you pull back. She gasps and struggles for her life, but it’s no use, your determination to kill her is much stronger than her abilities to fight for her life. “Shhhhh…just let go….just let go…everything is going to work out and your parents won’t be losing a daughter at all. Just let go….” You whisper. Soon you hear a crunching sound of perhaps crushing bones in her neck or her windpipe or something. Whatever it is, her struggle temporarily becomes more violent and jerky with her limbs attempting to flail about. It almost feels like you’re riding her like a wild pony, but soon this outburst is muted and then nothing. Suzy collapses dying with her face partially in a small puddle of her blood and spital, leaving you sitting on top of a corpse’s back. You eventually stand up taking in what you’ve done. You’re hot and sweaty, but strangely invigorated. “(Whew) And I thought I was going to choke.” you say and then start to chuckle at your own dark joke. Well the first part of the deed is done, now comes the more labor inducing part. Getting rid of her body. You’ve actually managed to keep the mess to a minimum by choking her to death, so you’re wondering if you shouldn’t just grab the tarps from the car, roll her ass up in them, duct tape it together and take her to the trunk. She might be your size, (Okay slightly lighter) but it isn’t like you’re used to carrying bodies around. While there wasn’t anyone out there, the last thing you need is someone seeing you fumbling around with a body, even one wrapped in a tarp. If you wanted to play it safe, you suppose you could drag her to the bathroom and chop her up in the bathtub. It will definitely take longer and you might make more of a mess, but you could always carry her out in several pieces in that big luggage bag you brought with you. > You chop her up If you’re going to do this, you need to do this right. In fact the more you think about it, this isn’t going to be done in one day. However, you can get some of it done tonight if you stay focused. Sure, you’re going to have to come up with a few excuses to your parents of why you were out all night, but you can think them up while you’re taking care of this. You quickly search her body, but find nothing of interest. The purse that she dropped on the floor when you smashed her in the face contains all the important stuff, but you figure you can go through it more thoroughly later. The first thing you do is leave the room and head directly to the check in office. When you enter you see a slovenly man watching a tv. His leering eyes turn your way and you have no doubt he thinks you’re the same woman from earlier. “Hey, I’m gonna need that room a little longer.” You say. “Business that good huh?” he snorts. “Very funny, look how much for two more days?” “Same price you see on the fucking sign above my head.” “Oh, well I guess I didn’t see it since I was so mesmerized what with you being such a stud and all.” You say sarcastically while pulling out a couple hundreds out of your pocket. You toss the money at him dismissively, but he takes it without question. “Keep the change and I don’t want anyone disturbing me until its time to check out, got it? That means no house keeping ladies or shit knocking at my door.” You say. “House keeping ladies? Pfft, no problem there. I got one and she barely does her fucking job as it is. If I wasn’t married to her I would’ve fired her years ago.” The man says and returns to his show. You then head to your car where you start bringing in several of the various objects you brought from the house. Takes you a couple trips, but you don’t have any trouble. The motel bathroom is fortunately bigger than you expected it to be, it’s also a lot dirtier than you expected it to be. Of course now you’re not so much worried about making a mess so much as you’re afraid you’re going to catch hepatitis just being in the damn place. You lay down tarps on the floor and in the bathtub then you drag her body in. You go grab the axe and study it a bit; hoping that it’s sharp enough that you won’t need to struggle with the whole dismemberment task. Standing over her body with an axe is a little surreal to you, but you need to stop dwelling on how weird this all is and get on with it. “Here we go.” You say and swing the axe… Chopping up the body is a mixed feeling. On one hand you’re completely at peace with the deed and everything that goes along with it. The blood and gore isn’t even all that bad since you’ve gotten a bit accustomed to that, but it’s the smell that’s making you feel a little sick. You actually have to stop chopping for a moment because you can’t stop gagging. Eventually you just give in and throw up in the toilet nearby. Afterwards, you’re more or less fine. It still isn’t nearly as bad as that fucked up reality warping tentacle monster shadow abominations you had to endure during your time in the Gray Building. You never want to experience something like that again. By the time you’re finished, you’ve got severed parts waiting to be wrapped up. You got most of the bloody mess on the tarps, so that’s one less thing to worry about you suppose. You’ll have to dispose of the bloody clothing you’re wearing though. Getting naked, you return to your large luggage case, which you placed on the bed and open it up to retrieve all the trash bags you took along with the duct tape. The wrapping and taping is probably more time consuming than the chopping up part. You don’t really have too many problems except when it comes to the torso which is not fun to deal with since it’s still heavy and blood is leaking everywhere from it. Eventually you get everything in order and before you know it, you’ve got several body parts wrapped fairly tightly in bags and they don’t seem to be leaking either. After washing your hands and arms a bit, you grab the luggage case from the next room. It takes some effort and squeezing, but you just barely manage to fit all of the parts in the case. After carefully moving the tarps to drain the blood in the tub, you then fold them up and squeeze them in too, along with your blood drenched clothing. The luggage case itself is made of solid material and you’re confident there won’t be any leakage, but just dragging it back into the main room takes some effort. It definitely isn’t going to be easy to shove into the car trunk. Next you spend a little time cleaning up a few places where the blood spilled on the floor or splattered on the wall. Most of this was in the bathroom and is relativity easy to get rid of, though you do spend some time scrubbing the carpet a bit where you first choked her out. After you’re done with all of that, you take a shower, which also gets rid of the blood already in the tub. You briefly feel a little like that infamous countess that bathed in the blood of young girls to maintain her youth. Getting dressed in a new set of clothing you brought in the duffle bag, you finally collapse on the bed not caring how filthy it may or may not be. “Ahhh…shit…” you say to yourself as fatigue sets in. You take this opportunity to go a bit through the purse now, starting with the phone. You check the time and see that it’s practically getting up for morning. You figure you’ll sleep here for what remains of the night and tomorrow you’ll take the remains to the wilderness and find a good spot to bury them. You imagine your mom will call you at some point, possibly even waking you up. You figure you’ll tell her you had a few drinks with Diana and you didn’t want to risk driving home. She’ll understand that even if she might not approve. You also figure you’ll take the blue car when you drive. The shovel is still in that one and you might very well have to stop off at your parent’s house first for some reason anyway if they really make a fuss to want to see you immediately. Better you don’t have to park around the block or something just so you don’t arouse suspicion. You’ll definitely be abandoning the blue one and taking the silver one back when you leave town and head back to Security City though. And that’s just some of what you have to do for tomorrow. You’ll be able to do it though as long as you stay focused on your goals like you have been doing. As you begin to drift off, your thoughts briefly focus on Bobby. Seems weird to think of him even now after all you’ve been through this week. You wonder if his family lives in town? Are they still cultists or are they normal? You have no idea, there is going to be a lot to learn from this reality, but you can only dwell on “your” Bobby and what he might think. You certainly are a far cry from that “good girl” he rescued so long ago. He probably would be proud of you right now. You know he’s out of your life forever now, but you still can’t help feel a little sad about it. “I still wonder if being with you influenced me or what I just did was within me all along. Either way I guess if I stayed with you earlier this week…maybe…maybe… we could have made it work after all. Another reality perhaps…” you say and close your eyes. > Next day… SATURDAY You wake up to the cell phone ringing. You’re very tired, but when you see who it is, this call isn’t unexpected. “Hey mom…” you groggily reply. “Hey mom? Where are you? I thought you would’ve come back last night!” your mom exclaims. “What time is it now?” “It’s almost noon! Are you okay?” “Mom, mom, mom, calm down. I’m fine. I just…well I drank a little too much…” “Drink? You don’t drink!” your mom exclaims. “Yeah, I know hence why I’ve been more or less out of it. Diana was really distraught last night and she was already drinking a bit when I got over to her place. She got an eviction notice, she broke up with her boyfriend, she lost her job and just a whole bunch of other drama in genera hit her this week. She really needed a friend to speak with and well, I ended up drinking with her since she was sort of insistent and I wanted to be there for her. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I think she felt better as the night went on. Of course that might have just been the drink…I dunno…I’m sorry for worrying you though.” There is a pause after you give your excuse. “Okay Suzy. I get it. (Sigh) I’m just glad you had the sense not to drive if you really got that drunk though. I do hope this isn’t a habit though, I know you’re an adult, but you’re still my baby and I don’t like to think of you as being some falling down lush.” “Oh mom, that’s not going to happen. Seriously, like I said, I only did it so Diana would feel better. I fully intend to tell her when she wakes up that this won’t be happening again.” “Glad to hear it. So when do you think you’ll be home? Your father and I would still like to see you since you actually came here to visit us remember?” “I know, I’ll be home in a few hours I suppose. I still feel woozy from last night. Did you need me over immediately though? Because I can do that if you want.” “No, no, you take care of everything you need to over there and come over when you’re feeling up to driving. Don’t want you getting into an accident because you’re not feeling one hundred percent.” “Okay, I will be over as soon as I can though.” “Alright, we’ll see you then. Love you Suzy.” “I love you mom.” You hang up and rub your eyes a bit. “Well that’s one thing out of the way. Better get on with the more important task.” You say. You open up the door to your room and see a closer parking spot to your room, which is good since you really don’t want to drag that case too far. You go to your car and bring it in closer and then head back to your room to gather up everything. You gather up the bat and axe (which you also wash off in the tub) and toss them in the trunk. Next, you grab the luggage case. With some effort, you drag it to the trunk and lift it inside. You’re really glad you decided to chop her up, you can’t imagine how awkward it would’ve been to carry her intact. You take your new purse and duffle bag and leave the room. You’ll come back for the sports car later. The only danger of leaving it here is someone stealing the thing, but then it wasn’t really your car to begin with. Believing you’ve taken care of everything you need to here, you start up your car and drive off for north of town. A few hours later and you’re just finishing up digging a good-sized hole in the ground to shove the case in. You really think you were better off doing this in the day time since you neglected to bring a flashlight which would have made digging in the middle of the woods at night a little more difficult. You were a little concerned about some random campers stumbling upon you, or maybe some redneck hunters, but so far you haven’t seen a single thing, which is good. You look at the luggage case. “Well Suzy, now is where we part ways. I wish I could say I didn’t want things to be this way, but I’d be lying. You had a better life and I wanted that so I took it. Maybe that makes me a fucking sociopath or evil or something, I don’t know and I don’t care. All I can say is I’m going to make the most of it and not waste your life the way I wasted my life.” You grab the case and shove it into the hole. “Thanks Suzy and goodbye.” You say and then fill up the hole. After your deed you make the mildly long walk out of the woods and to your car. You throw your shovel in the trunk and sit in the car for a while not doing anything except resting. Digging a hole for a body is some tiring business even if it’s neatly tucked in a case. You grab your new phone out of the purse to call your mom so you can let her know you’ll be home soon and that’s when you notice someone else has called while you were out digging. It’s your “girlfriend.” Apparently her name is Heather and she left you a voice message which out of curiosity you listen to. “Hey Suzy, I hope you’re having a good time visiting your family. I just wanted to call though and see how you were. I know you haven’t been gone long, but you know I always miss you when you’re not around. Anyway, call me back when you have time. Oh and I sent you some pictures to keep you occupied when you’re alone! (Giggle!)” You go through the phone and see that Heather has indeed sent you more than a few pictures. You see a raven haired girl of small physique with lipstick and eye make up wearing lingerie and making sexy poses. You have to admit, she’s actually very pretty in a slightly goth sort of way. “Damn, maybe I shouldn’t break up with her immediately.” you chuckle. You turn the car on and begin making the journey back to your parent’s house. Along the way you think about everything that’s happened this week and how this is just beginning of your new life. You weren’t joking about making the most of it when you said those words out loud in the woods. You meant that, well except you’re not going to be making the most out of her life, you’re going to be making the most out of YOUR life. While the “transformation” is far from complete, you think the hardest part is over and even if there are challenges or you to overcome, you’ll succeed in surviving and conquering them. Because that’s all you’ve done during this Hell week, survived and ultimately conquered it. > … Mirror rorriM The Future… Your siblings, spouses, children, and you all stand in your mother’s bedroom. It probably won’t be long now. You always knew the day would come when you’d lose her again and that day is today. While you might have been more prepared for it this time, it doesn’t make it any less sad. You didn’t even feel this sad when your dad died years ago and you loved him very much, though maybe that’s because you always still had the tainted memory of your crappy alternate one. Your mother though in both realities was always there for you and you’ve never forgotten that. “Now that I’ve said my goodbyes to everyone…I want….I want to speak to Suzy…alone…” your mother utters. Everyone is a little surprised by this unexpected request. You are too, since you thought everyone was going to be in her room until the end. “What? But mother…” Kelly starts to say looking almost a little offended. “Kelly. Not now. Not today.” Ben says with a stern voice. Kelly looks at Ben like she wants to argue, but he’s about the only person that can make her back down. She does however give you the stare of death. Kelly never changes no matter what reality. She always hates you. There actually was a slightly comforting consistency when you first encountered her. “Fine. She’s all yours, just like she always is.” Kelly snaps and storms out the room. Ben exhales and shrugs with a slight widening of his eyes looking at you. “It’s okay…I’m used to it.” You say. “Alright, everyone come on let’s leave these two alone to talk.” Ben replies. Ben escorts his children out of the room while Julie goes up and gives you a quick hug before following them. You kiss and hug your husband and tell your daughter that you’ll see them later. After they leave it’s just you and mom. You pull up your chair as close as you can to the bed and sit near her and hold her hand. “I’m here mom.” You say. “Yes…yes you are. You’ve always been here. (Cough) Even when you weren’t.” Your mom at this point turns to look directly at you and despite her very weak state you feel her hand squeeze yours somewhat strongly and she gives you a sudden intense look. “I know you’re not Suzy…or rather you’re not the Suzy I gave birth to…” she says with a tone that you’ve never heard before. It isn’t anger or anything negative, but it is one that puts you so off guard that you get a chill down your back. “Mom, I…” you begin to sputter before she interrupts you. “Don’t. I know. I’ve known for a very long time now. A mother always knows her own child.” You don’t know how to react. You look down and away from your “mother. You actually feel a little sick and you start to tremble a bit. You have never once in all these years felt bad about what you did, but now you’re not so sure. You begin to sniffle and tears start to form. “Shhhh, Suzy. Save your tears for when I’m truly gone because it doesn’t matter. You’re still my daughter, but I couldn’t go to my grave without letting you know that I knew. I also thought I’d tell you for your sake. Now (cough) I don’t want to know the gruesome details…about HOW this came to be, but if its been weighing on your conscience at all, you didn’t actually replace the Suzy I gave birth to anyway.” This is beyond unexpected. How is it possible that she knows all this just on instinct? You look up at your mother. “My Suzy…the Suzy I knew as the daughter I gave birth to? Something happened to her a long time ago. (cough cough) Something changed soon after she went to college. I never could place my finger on it, but first time she visited I knew something was different. And it wasn’t just due to experimenting with new ideas and sexuality in college. SHE was different and I KNEW she was. As I said, a mother knows, but the frequent little inconsistencies in her memories and such made it certain. Just as I learned with you.” You just continue holding your mother’s hand as she speaks. “But what could I do? What could I say? Who would believe such a fantastic tale? Sure this new Suzy was a little more full of herself, but she still loved me just like my Suzy did. I couldn’t lose my baby daughter twice so I never spoke up. Never (cough) dreamed it would happen again though. I suppose in some ways I might have even been glad though. You replaced the one who replaced mine.” Never did you ever believe that your mother knew. To learn this now is just as overwhelming as when you had to deal with the situation so long ago. “Why…why didn’t you say anything before?” you ask looking up. “Why ruin a good relationship? You never disrespected me and treated me kindly. You always visited when you could and you even moved back to town with your family when your father died so you could be closer to me. You obviously loved me very much. Could I really ask for a better daughter?” your mother says with a faint smile. The feelings are almost overwhelming you at this point. You’re completely at a loss. At this point your mom gives your hand another squeeze, but weaker this time. “You’re my daughter. My baby and I always loved you. Never doubt that.” She says. “I don’t…(Sob)” you say and attempt to hold it together. Your mother’s grip is becoming less firm now. “Soon none of this will matter, but before I go…I want to know a couple things…” your mother says weakly. “Of course.” You reply. “What…(cough) was your other mother like?” “She…(sniffle) was very much like you. She was kind and was the only one who ever truly cared when I was growing up. I…(sob) was still little when she died…I missed her very much…” you say trying to keep from crying completely. Your mother nods. “I see…I suppose…(cough cough) that answer might partially answer my other question then…” “What’s that?” “How many other Suzys were there after you?” You’re silent for a moment. “Three that I know of. I think you may have even met one of them.” “Mm…considering you were never replaced… I suppose…you just wanted this life more than they did then…” “It…(sob) has been a good life…(sob)” Your mother pats your hand. “And you’ll still have a good life Suzy, even after I’m gone…” she says. At this point your mother’s eyes begin to flutter and then shut completely and her breathing becomes shallow. You stay until the end and then sadness is completely released. You cry over your loss and head towards the door, not wishing to be in the same room with the empty shell that was your mother any longer. When you exit, your husband immediately sees had distraught you are and goes to comfort you. Your daughter has been visibly crying as well. Ben, says that he’ll start making the arrangements for the funeral, meanwhile Kelly takes it upon herself to call medical personnel. Later, the drive back home is quieter, with your daughter Sally sleeping in the backseat and your husband Roger just paying attention to the road. It’s been an emotional roller coaster for you today. More than you even thought it would be, but you’re sort of glad your mother knew. Somehow her knowing and still loving and accepting you anyway made it just as real as how your reality’s mom felt towards you. You also wonder if this means you won’t have to put up with any other reality hopping Suzys any longer. That might be a little too much to hope for though, after all your life is still a good one and you have much to be happy about in the scheme of things. Your mother was right about that. Doesn’t matter, you’ll continue to fight for it just like you always have because now you truly have a life worth fighting for. “You okay over there honey?” Roger asks. “Yes, well no, but I guess I’m just trying to think about all the good times I had with mom. You know, focus on the positive.” “That’s good Suzy. I think that’s a healthy approach.” He replies. Roger always has been a supportive husband to you. You never would have thought you would have fallen for a soldier type before. You sometimes wonder if you and Roger ever met in another reality. “Yeah, it’s odd, but I think I’m also coming up with an idea for a new book. Figure maybe I should re-channel all this negativity into something productive.” You say. “Oh? What idea?” “Well I suppose my mind is still a bit fragmented for a solid idea, but I’m thinking of doing a sequel to Mirrors.” “Oh, your scifi book about parallel dimensions? That one was pretty popular. I know I certainly liked it better than that one your wrote about that inbred cultist family. That one was a little too gruesome for my tastes.” “Well I had to make a dramatic break from my first three books. Up until then, all people thought I could write was lesbian pirate erotica.” “Hey I liked Treasure Chest. I thought it was a pretty deep love story.” Roger says. “Oh I know why YOU liked it.” You say chuckling a little bit and allowing yourself to feel a little better. “Well okay I liked the obvious too, well anyway do you have any idea on what the new story might involve?” “It will probably just pick up a few years after Mirror left off and I’ll see how it goes from there. Like I said, it’s just in the idea stages now, but whatever I come up with, I’ll definitely be dedicating it in the memory of mom.” “Well I think that’s a very good way to honor her. She certainly has contributed to your inspiration.” You nod. “In more ways than one Roger. In more ways than one.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY You wake up with the sun shining in on your bedroom. You can safely say you haven’t had that experience in a long time, if ever. You aren’t sure what time it is, but knowing you, you probably slept through the morning as usual. Once again, you’re stuck in the same clothes you’ve been wearing since the beginning of the week. While you can certainly shower, you’d really rather change clothes at this point so you go through your room and hope that your alternate self left some old clothes in it. After going through some drawers you find that your alternate self has about the same fashion sense as you do, meaning pretty simplistic. The clothing itself tends to be a bit brighter though as everything else seems to be in this reality and it’s starting to get on your nerves. You grab a pair of old jeans and a shirt and head to the bathroom where you wash up and later attempt to brush your teeth using your index finger with toothpaste on it. The jeans and shirt are a slightly tight on you though. It’s not enough that your alternate self has a happier life, but the fucking bitch is apparently a size smaller than you as well. “Oh well, I guess I’ll just be that much more popular with horny guys (Sigh) …unfucking believable…” you mutter as you squeeze yourself into the clothes. After getting dressed, you head downstairs. The first thing you see is dad on a small ladder working on the overhead light he mentioned wasn’t working. You don’t think you’ve ever seen your own dad ever fix anything. “Hey, look who’s finally up. You sleep well? You must have considering it’s the afternoon.” Dad says. “Yeah, I guess I really needed the sleep. Where’s mom?” you ask. “She’s in the kitchen. Oh meant to ask you, where’s that silver sports car your drive? I didn’t see it in the driveway or even on the street.” Silver sports car? Seriously? You own a fucking sports car? “Oh, um…yeah I decided not to drive that one here, it’s been giving me trouble lately anyway. I got an older car for cheap to just drive around in; it’s that small blue one outside.” You say. “Oh. Okay. I just thought I’d ask. Like I said, there’s been some burglaries and I was concerned that the criminals had expanded to car theft too. Probably a good idea you didn’t bring it, nobody is likely to steal that thing outside.” “Yeah, I suppose so.” You say and head to the kitchen. “Fucking sports car…” you whisper shaking your head before you greet mom in a friendly manner. “Hey sleeping beauty is finally awake! You sleep well I trust in your old bed?” mom asks while she works on cooking something. “Yeah. Slept fine. What are you cooking.” “Oh I’m preparing big batch of beef stew. I swear your father would probably not eat anything else. It will take awhile, but I can make you something before then of course.” “Nah, I’m okay.” You say sitting down. Your mother smiles at you and you smile back, but you don’t say anything else. It’s weird, you wanted to talk with her so much yesterday, but now as reality sets in that she’s not really your mother, you’re sort of at a loss for words and awkwardly silent. Still, you want to make the most of this time so you struggle to think of a topic without being suspicious. “So…uh…how are Ben and Kelly doing?” you ask. “Well Ben is still stationed over in Europe. Not exactly sure what he’s doing over there, but it doesn’t seem to be dangerous for once, which I for one am glad about. Julie and the children I imagine are glad about it too. You talk to her recently? “Not for awhile.” You say which is sort of the truth. “Oh. Well I did hear you two weren’t on speaking terms any longer. I hope you make up though since the pair of you were always good friends and the both of you probably said words neither of you really meant.” “Wait, what?” you ask. You mother stops chopping potatoes for a moment to address you directly. “A few months ago, Ben told me that Julie told him that you got in argument with her about how she’s too strict with your niece and nephew and she told you not to tell how to raise her kids. I can’t remember the entire exchange of what else happened except I know she ended up calling you a dyke that won’t ever know what it means to be a mother anyway and then you swore at her and hung up. While I can certainly see Julie’s defensiveness about how to raise her children, I don’t think it was right to say such hateful things, just because of your lifestyle choice.” “Lifestyle choice?” you say a bit confused as you’re attempting to process everything. “Oh right. I’m sorry Suzy. I know you were born that way. You explained it very well to your father and me when you came out years ago before graduating from college. We’re just still a little old fashioned in our way of thinking and it lapses at times.” You do not believe this… “But I’m not a…” you start to say, but then realize why bother correcting her? It would just confuse things for when their real Suzy arrives. “…I’ll try to make the attempt with Julie, but she really needs to apologize.” You say instead. “You always were the bigger person. And I wouldn’t give it another thought as far as what she said about being a mother is concerned. There’s always adoption and I also know you people are really big on all that artificial insemination stuff. I’m sure when the time is right you and Heather will…” “Heather?” “Yeah, your girlfriend. Wait, you didn’t break up with her did you? She seemed so nice when you brought her here for us to meet her…” “No…no…I didn’t break up with her, um… so how is Kelly again?” you ask really wanting to change the subject. “Kelly? Well she’s Kelly. Still one of this town’s finest and doing a good job at it. Wish she’d find a better man to settle down with though. She seems to flip back and forth between these various loser guys that are so far beneath her it isn’t even funny. She really could do so much better and it’s not like there haven’t been several good men that have made genuine attempts to woo her. She doesn’t want to be tied down though and it’s her life I suppose.” Well now you’ve heard everything. You truly are in bizarro world. “You okay dear?” mom asks. “Yeah, yeah I’m just fine mom.” You answer “Well enough about your siblings, how are you doing? You working on a new book yet?” “New book?” “Yeah, you started writing a new book again? I know last time you said you had a bit of writer’s block. Honestly I don’t know how you come up with all the ideas you do. You’ve written like three books already. I know I don’t have the imagination to do that, but you always were creative even as a little girl.” So that’s what you do. You’re a writer. Makes sense actually. In fact you almost want to kick yourself of why the hell you never tried your hand at it in your own reality. You certainly procrastinate enough. “I’ve got a few ideas in my head I suppose. Writing is never an exact science.” Before you have to make up more shit on the fly, dad comes walking in. “Smells good in here already. Anyway I fixed the light and now I’m going to the hardware store, I’ll be back later.” “If you already fixed the light, why do you have to go to the hardware store?” you mother asks. “I have to replenish all the stuff I used.” He says, but mom doesn’t look convinced. “Okay I just want to go because I really want a new drill.” Dad breaks down and admits. “George you’re really silly sometimes when you try to make up stories.” “Well it’s where Suzy gets her story telling ability from!” dad remarks and pats you on the shoulder giving you a smile, which you return. “Okay, see you both later.” Dad remarks and leaves the kitchen with Mom still smiling about the silliness. “You and dad seem very happy.” You remark. “Of course we are. Why wouldn’t we be? We’re enjoying our elderly years together, we’ve had a successful marriage, we have three successful children that love us, grandchildren, a nice home, what more could one hope for?” What more indeed. You’re still thinking about what the hell you’re going to do with your own life. Despite a few major differences in your alternate self, you’d still switch places with her. She’s got everything, a formal higher education, successful career, a fancy car, a significant other and most importantly a loving family. You begin to get lost in your own head, which is then disrupted by mom. “Suzy? Suzy?” mom asks. “Huh? Yeah?” you answer. “Are you really okay? You’ve been sort of spacing out lately.” “Oh, yeah. Well like I said, I’ve got a few story ideas in my head and sometimes I get lost in thought.” “Okay. Well I really have to go to the bathroom, can you finish cutting those carrots?” “Oh yeah, sure mom.” You reply. Your mom leaves the kitchen leaving you alone with your thoughts and cutting up carrots. You increasingly become melancholy as you dwell on how things still suck for you and as you’re apt to do, you begin talking to yourself. “(Sigh) Suzy, Suzy, Suzy, only you could find the negative out of the one relatively positive thing about thing about this fucked up week. Pull yourself together girl. You survived a hell of a lot worse than this. You wanted to be self-sufficient, we this is a good start. A fresh new world is your oyster and you’ve got plenty of opportunity…” Suddenly you hear a phone ring. It’s the land phone on the kitchen wall. You walk over and nearly grab it immediately, but then you remember you’re not really supposed to be here. However, you then notice the caller I.D. Suzy. You are compelled to pick up. “Hello?” you answer. “Hey. Mom? Is that you?” the voice on the other end says. You pause. You never realized that you and your mother sounded so similar before. “Yes, of course it’s me honey. Who else would it be?” you say. “I dunno, you sound a little different. Might be that ratty old land phone you have though, I keep telling you to get a cell!” “Oh you know me dear, your father and I are a bit set in our ways.” “Don’t I know it. Ha ha! Nah, I know you guys really do try. So hey, I was just calling to let you know I’m coming a little bit earlier and I’ll probably be there sometime late tonight. Like probably after midnight.” “You are?” “Yes, like I said I just wanted to let you know so you guys don’t get too mad when I’m knocking on your door late at night waking you up…unless you want me to stay at the town’s motel until tomorrow morning. I know you guys go to bed early.” It is at this moment that the dark idea your mind has been dancing around for quite some time isn’t going away and is now in full bloom. If you just got rid of this Suzy, all your problems would be solved. You just have to muster the fortitude to do it… > You tell Suzy to come home You can’t do it. Even if you could pull it off and ignore the immorality of it, you still can’t do it. If you did, you’d be taking the easy way out just in a different fashion. Besides, what right do you have to take this good life away from this reality’s Suzy? You don’t. “No! We wouldn’t dream of making you do such a thing! You come right over, and we’ll answer the door when you arrive.” You say. “You sure?” “Of course I’m sure! What kind of parents would we be if we didn’t let our own daughter back into the house?” “You two really are the greatest parents sometimes. What am I saying? You two are the greatest parents ALL the time! Okay, well I guess I’ll be seeing you tonight then.” “Suzy?” you utter. “Yeah?” she asks. “I want you to know that your father and I love you very much.” “I know that mom. I love you guys too.” “Just always remember that, okay? We’ll see you when you get here.” You say before hanging up. You have to fight back the urge to cry. “Did I hear you on the phone out here?” you mother says walking into the kitchen. “Huh? Oh, yeah just someone trying to sell something. They were really persistent.” You reply. “I can tell, you hardly cut up any of the carrots.” “Sorry, I guess I got caught up in telling them to never call here again. I should have just hung up I suppose.” “No worries, I’ve gotten directly angry at those telemarketer types too.” “Hey mom, I’ve got some things I left here that I want to get and I know they’re probably in my room somewhere, you don’t mind if I go take care of that do you?” “No, not at all. We can talk later. Let me know if you’re looking for something in particular. I might know where it is.” “I will mom.” You leave the kitchen and head to your room where you close the door and break down a bit quietly. It isn’t fair, but it is the right thing to do. “Well, at least I had a few more moments with her, even if she wasn’t my real mom.” You say to yourself. After a few moments of being sad, you finally motivate yourself to action. “Well, I might not be killing her, but I’m not above stealing from the bitch.” You say and grab an old looking duffle bag out of her closet and grab a bunch of her old clothes out of her drawers for yourself. Sure they’re going to be a little tight, but at least you won’t have spend money on clothes for awhile and you’re going to have to make that thousand dollars you still have last until you figure out a way to make a living in this world. After pillaging your alternate’s room, you decide you probably should leave now. No point in drawing this out and it will be easier for you. You imagine that your visit here is probably going to leave some very strange questions for this family when the real Suzy arrives, but you really can’t worry about it. Besides, you’re sure that everything will work itself out anyway. Seems to have so far with this Suzy. You head back downstairs and find that dad is back home. “Hey Suzy, where are you heading off to?” dad asks. “Oh, I’m just going to put this in the car and maybe drive around town. Look up some old friends and such. Might not be back until late so I might be knocking on the door waking you up again.” “What? You’re not even going to have dinner with us tonight? I thought the whole point of this visit was to see us!” your dad exclaims. “It is, but I still want to visit a few old school friends I haven’t seen in a long time too. I mean we’ll have lots of time tomorrow and the rest of the week!” “Rest of the week? I thought you had to leave here by Monday.” “Oh, yeah…well two days is still a lot of time!” you say. “I suppose…it’s just…well your mother and I were really happy that you arrived a little earlier than you did since we don’t see you as much anymore and we really wanted to enjoy the time we were getting with you. The extra day was like a bonus.” You look a little downtrodden at dad’s disappointed tone. “But I guess if you made other plans with other people, I wouldn’t want to stop you.” Your dad remarks and leaves the room. You nearly say something, but stop yourself. Instead you just head out the door and to your car. You throw the duffle bag in the trunk of your car and get ready to drive off… “(Sigh) Shit…” you say to yourself as you hang your head down with the key just in the ignition. You get back out of the car and head back to the house. “She’s not supposed to arrive until after midnight. Still gives me plenty of time. It’s not going to hurt to have dinner.” You say to yourself and ring the bell. The door soon opens and dad answers. “You forget something?” he asks. “Yeah, my manners. You’re right, I should be spending time with you guys. Sorry dad.” You say and give him a hug. “It’s okay honey.” He replies and hugs you back. You pass the next few hours chatting with dad. Mostly about mundane matters, which actually don’t involve any more insight into what your alternate life was like here. Doesn’t really matter though, you’re actually just enjoying the conversation. Back in your reality, you don’t think you ever spoke more than a half hour with your father at most. Eventually when dinner is served you sit down to eat with mom too and the conversation continues. This time you do learn a little more about your “life” here and through careful weaving and quick thinking, you manage to navigate through questions you might not otherwise know the answers to. By the time dinner is over, you’re enjoying your time with mom and dad so much that you put off leaving immediately after. Instead you play a few board games with them (Which you definitely never did as a child with either of them in your own reality) and continue to have more fun. Eventually the time is getting very late and you do start to get concerned that the other Suzy will arrive earlier than expected. Fortunately mom and dad being creatures of habit tell you they’re turning in for the night and after a few more words, hugs goodnight and mentions of plans for tomorrow, they go to bed. You look at the time and see it’s indeed getting up for midnight. You leave the house and get in your car once again. As you drive off, you notice you aren’t sad. Well you’re sad that you do have to leave, but you not the emotional wreck you thought you might be. Maybe that little extra time together brought closure of sorts. You certainly are more at peace with it all. You wipe a few tears from your eyes and smile. This moment of “zen” is suddenly cut short by a car slamming into your driver’s side while rolling through a stop sign due to neither you nor the other driver paying full attention to your surroundings. The impact is pretty hard and given you weren’t even wearing your seatbelt at the time makes it worse. Unlike the car crash you had this earlier week, you’re hurt very badly and you even can’t move in your current condition. As you’re lying in your car bleeding, bones broken, having a hard time breathing drifting in and out of consciousness and a piece of twisted metal impaling your side you don’t think a mysterious stranger with magical healing gel is going to fix you this time. You also can’t help but think that this is probably the only way this week could have ended for you. Part of you wants to fight, but somehow with the last few good moments you just had with mom and dad make you actually want to let go. Why keep struggling? If you live you live, if not, well at least you had some joy during your last day. More than you might have had otherwise. Maybe you just weren’t meant for this world either. You aren’t sure how long you lay twisted in the wrecked vehicle for before you hear sirens, but you aren’t even awake long enough to hear the ambulance sirens, let alone before anyone actually comes and helps you. You die of your wounds in the ambulance thanks to the paramedics attending to the other driver first. Who are more than a little freaked out when they first see you and the driver of the other car. The funny thing is, you never did see that it was a silver sports car that slammed into you. Somehow fitting that this reality’s Suzy was luckier than you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY You wake up to the sound of…well you can’t quite place it. White noise might be the closest thing you can think of, but that wouldn’t be correct. It’s like an annoying hum or buzz going straight to your head. You get up and see that the TV is off from yesterday, so it isn’t that. “Jack? You hear that noise?” you call out in a groggy tone. There isn’t any answer, just that increasingly annoying noise. You attempt to get up and it takes you a couple tries, not because you’re naturally lazy, but more because you’re starting to feel nauseous. The noise you’re hearing isn’t helping matters. You get up on your feet and stagger to the door way which when you get to, you lean up against and feel like you’re going to puke. “Jack…” you just barely manage to shout, before you have to stop to keep from vomiting. You look up and down the corridor and find that the lights are flickering. Some are out completely. You have no idea what the hell is going on, but you’d probably be more scared if you didn’t feel so sick. Mustering up all your willpower, you head to the bedroom thinking Jack might be asleep in there. Nobody there, but you can’t fight the sickness any longer and you run as fast as you can to the bathroom nearly falling over in the process. You just barely manage to make it to throw up in the toilet. The lights are going nuts at this point and you notice the bathtub and sink are both on. After recovering a bit, you notice the stuff coming out of the sink isn’t exactly water. It’s black and tarry looking. You don’t risk touching it, you just get the hell out of the bathroom. No sooner have you done this, when a sudden loud noise hits you so hard you actually stumble and fall to the floor. You wouldn’t even be able to describe the sound, it’s just really horrible and even though you’ve just puked, you still feel pretty damn nauseous. Picking yourself back up and leaning against the wall, you slowly try to make your way to the room where Jack was messing about with his radio stuff. You don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere though, in fact the more you walk, the more you feel like you’re on a treadmill in an endless corridor. You continue on, but as you pass by rooms you can swear you’re seeing weird things out the corner of your eye. You then start thinking you’re seeing shit in front of you as well. Shadowy humanoid figures blink in and out existence along with the lighting. At this point the feeling of terror is becoming stronger than your feeling of sickness. The white noise is still drilling into your head, but now it’s accompanied by an insane laugh, which varies in pitch and tone. When you pass the flight of stairs, you hear whispery voices beckoning you go in that direction. You’re hardly enticed to do so. As you get closer to the radio room, the shadowy figures can be seen running about in the large room up ahead. As you get closer, these figures are becoming less shadowy and more “solid.” These figures are starting to no longer look humanoid either. It is around this time that you notice your surroundings are becoming… warped. Walls are melting around you and you’re seeing those shadowy figures in the next room starting to move in slow motion one moment and then other times you see them rapidly moving back and forth in a repetitious manner. You nearly jump out of your skin when several of these beings appear right in front of you and you get a good look at them now that they aren’t so shadowy anymore. They’re a mass of tentacles, teeth and misshaped features that would make any horror movie demon jealous, unfortunately this is no movie. The screeching, wailing, and gibbering are bad enough, the visual is bad enough, but the fetid smell is what puts it over the top in just vile nastiness. You see one particularly disgusting one with a mutilated face like raw meat and a the scent of a rotten corpse on a hot day, transform into something even worse looking before it opens three of its mouths to reveal its tongues which not only look infested with disease, but have ugly little faces on them. When it attempts to lick you, you turn and run only to find yourself in a wide open space where everything now looks like it’s been put through a multicolored filter. You feel like you’re in a rainbow void. When you look behind you however all you see is darkness save for the creatures now moving towards you. You don’t run far when all of a sudden the rainbow filter disappears and is replaced by a flickering affect that you’re actually back in a “real” location. It isn’t the corridor though, it resembles more of a large college auditorium and in the center is a single figure sitting in a lotus position. He’s bald and not dressed in modern clothing and in fact looks like he’s from some sort of nerd cosplay convention. He appears human however. One thing that’s about him that doesn’t look human though is his eyes are completely white and not just normal “blind eyes” sort either. They’re glowing pure white light. You become very disorientated as the flickering of this reality disappears and slowly just becomes a blank gray open space with more gray as far as you can see despite there not being any more walls. You see that the creatures behind you aren’t following, but they definitely want to get closer. It would seem this man’s presence is at least holding them back somehow. At this point you you’re completely lost to as what is going on, but you approach the man if it means keeping the monsters at bay. The man suddenly speaks as you get close to him. He’s not really looking at you though, more like looking through you. “You…I…don’t belong here…everything changes…so many changes…been here…before…somewhere else…so much to do…bring balance…the future is beautiful…the past is beautiful…everything is ugly…corrupted…it’s beautiful…” the man utters in a fragmented way and you have no idea what the hell he’s talking about. “Where is Jack?! What’s going on? Who are you?!” you ask trying to figure out this situation. To your horror you notice your hands and arms become weathered and wrinkled. From what you can tell, your hair has gone completely white as well. With some hesitation, you feel your face and it definitely doesn’t feel smooth anymore. “Oh my god…” you utter. “…time is short…fleeting life…the others do not like this place…disrupts balance…” the man says still not moving from his spot. You then notice your hands and everything else have gone back to normal. This entire situation is very fucked up, and you don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on, but you hope that “Mr. Lotus” has some answers with all the cryptic shit he’s spouting. “Look! I need answers! What is going on here and who are you?!” you ask again while still looking back to make sure those creatures are still staying away from you. “A footnote…forgotten… traveller…cursed…blessed…nobody… you must choose… Suzy…” the man utters. “How did you know my…” you start to ask before you’re interrupted. “You must choose…the others…they come…” You turn your head and see that the monsters and the darkness are indeed starting to move towards you once again. “Choose? Choose what?! What are you talking about?!” you ask again. “You must choose…” the man says again with less of an air of indifference and more of one of authority. “What am I choosing?” The area surrounding you and the man begins to darken and now you’re getting creatures starting surround you as well. “You must choose or die…” the man says again. “Alright! Alright! I choose! But what the fuck am I choosing!?!” you shout with a mixture of fear and frustration. “You’ll know when the time comes…” the man says. For a brief moment your surroundings change from that of the large classroom auditorium again with the man still in front of you. The blackness has disappeared, but the monsters have not as you see several floating tentacle creatures in the room with you. They aren’t quite as disgusting, but they’re still dangerous and giving off that aura that’s making you feel nauseous again. Just as you think you see a more humanoid figure enter the room there is suddenly a blinding flash all around you causing you to shield your eyes. Everything goes completely white, to completely black and then when you open your eyes again, you find yourself in the large front room of the building. Items are no longer neatly stack and are instead scattered about all over the place, some of them probably broken. Still completely baffled by what the fuck is going on, you look around for something to protect yourself with amongst the junk all over the floor. You eventually see a sturdy looking bat and pick it up. Upon inspection you notice the words “RUTH” on it, no doubt one of Jack’s valuable purchases. Speaking of Jack you still haven’t seen him, but you soon hear him. “Suzy?! Suzy? Are you here? Where are you?” you hear him call out. Sounds like it’s coming from the corridor, but you don’t see anyone. Maybe he’s upstairs? You haven’t been up there yet, but given what you just experienced, you’re a little reluctant to go deeper into this place. You remember Jack said he was going to tell you something about this building before you fell asleep, well whatever that was, it’s apparent that you were right that something about him was weird. Not just weird, but dangerous. You don’t think you’re ever going to quite get some of the images out of your head, you even feel a little different. Maybe the sensory overload has made you a bit numb rather than reducing you to a gibbering wreck. Numb or not, you still have a good mind to just walk out the front door and get the hell out of here. Maybe this was the “choice” that strange guy was talking about. > You go to Jack Maybe this isn’t a good idea, but considering Jack did save your life a couple times, it seems like a pretty shitty thing to do if you just left him. With bat in hand, you head towards back to the corridor and call out to Jack. “Hey Jack! Are you upstairs?” you say. “Suzy? Yeah! I’m up here! Be careful though, there’s still a bunch of weird shit going on.” Not terribly descriptive or encouraging. Weird shit could literally be anything, and in this case probably is. You head towards the stairs and go up for the first time. As you going up, you have this fear that you’re going to start sinking into them, that doesn’t happen and when you arrive to the top, you find yourself exiting into a corridor that’s laid out very much the same way as the first floor, the only difference is you’re across from another set of stairs on the opposite side. You look to your right and hear some noise causing you to ready your bat, though you soon see Jack exiting room of the side rooms. “Suzy! I’ve been looking all over for you.” He says approaching with an axe in hand. “Hey! Keep your distance!” You shout and raise your bat “What?” Jack asks as he stops in his tracks. “Sorry, it’s just, well there has been as you put it, a lot of weird shit going on and for all I know you’re some horrible monster. Not to mention you’re coming at me with an axe in hand, though I suppose given the shit I’ve already encountered, you probably wouldn’t have bothered to even stop.” You reply lowing the bat. “Well, you probably were best to err on the side of caution. I’ve just spent what I believe to be an hour or two looking for you.” Jack says. “I was in your living room downstairs asleep on your couch. Right where you left me last night.” You reply. “Yeah, and you weren’t there when I checked on you later this morning. I called out and looked in every room on the first floor. I heard your voice coming from the second floor so I went up there and that’s when things started getting weird. (Sigh) and I thought this place was done with all that…should have known better I suppose…” Jack trails off, but at this point you’re demanding an answer. “Jack, you’ve saved my life twice, but if I’m going to hang out with you, you better start explaining what the hell’s going on with this place. I’m not sure what weirdness you’ve experienced up here, but what I just experienced downstairs was beyond weird, it was fucking terrifying.” You exclaim. “I know. I know. I should have told you about this place yesterday. Well let’s head into this room and talk about it.” Jack heads into a room down the corridor and to the left. You follow and find that it’s another living area furnished in a similar manner as the one downstairs. Jack was really like consistency. The pair of you sit and after you tell Jack what happened with you downstairs, Jack apologizes that you had to go through it and then tells you a little about what he knows of this place. Jack goes on about how he bought this Gray Building years ago for cheap and figured it would also be good to store all his stuff along with being a place he could live and thus no longer living in his mom’s basement. He then mentions he went to check out the place after he bought it and right away he experienced weirdness. He said the first time he opened up the door to the place there was a jungle village inside. He mentions that upon entering the building seemed to whisk him away to this place and his surroundings completely changed. “Curiosity got the better of me I guess. However it wasn’t just a jungle. I found out later when cannibals were chasing me, that I was on an island made of Styrofoam and held together by hemp rope. Barely escaped.” Jack says. “What?! That’s…incredibly random.” You say. “That was just the beginning. Of course any right thinking person, would have just written this place off, but I couldn’t help but find it fascinating. Of course I found it less fascinating the second time I went in, when I was attacked by these shadow wolf things. Barely survived that too.” “Why the hell did you keep coming back here?” “Well I actually stayed away after the second time. Though after a few months, I felt drawn to the place again. I can’t explain it, but as it turned out third time was the charm, well maybe not entirely, but the place started to become more accommodating. In time, I started to encounter less dangerous shit and the place became more normal, well as normal as it could ever be I suppose. Still, I was never quite willing to go all in and actually live in this place until recently and that’s only because of some positive weirdness that I experienced when in this building a few months ago.” “What happened?” “Well I saw a glimpse of the future and in few days I believe this world as we know it is going to start resembling Road Warrior. Of course even without seeing the future I was listening in on some pretty scary radio broadcasts before the Ground Zero corporation started cracking down and scrambling the airwaves.” “Wait, you say you saw the future, like how exactly? In your head or what?” “No, it was a portal or rather a small window that opened up on the third floor. Happened rather suddenly while I was up there deciding on where I should put more of my stuff a few weeks ago. I saw Security City get nuked. The town looks like it survived, but I saw that overrun by mad people, like rabid or something. Given how the people in town have been acting and the world situation lately, I’d say what I saw was on the mark. It was then, I decide that I might actually be safer in here.” “Doesn’t seem like it, by the look of things.” You say. “No, apparently I was wrong about that. (Sigh) I dunno, I’m sorry I got you involved in all this.” “Well it’s done now and it seems like I was fucked no matter what this week. So, is there anything we can do? I mean we can’t really stay here I think you’d agree, but if the world is doomed like you’re saying, where could we go?” “Know where there is a fallout shelter?” Jack asks. “Yes and no. My older brother made one a long time ago back home, unfortunately its entrance is a bit of a mystery now since he’s dead.” “That would mean going back to town anyway and with the National Guard and the rabid there I imagine it’s going to resemble a warzone.” “Well there has to be somewhere we can…is that snow?” you say noticing the hallway. At this point Jack stands up and you do too, both with your weapons ready as you approach the hallway where white flakes are falling from the ceiling and snow is starting to fill up the hallway. Jack looks to the left and right and then speaks. “Well I don’t see anything else out of the ordinary except the snow, but I think we better get the hell out of here and take our chances with the outside world, whatever might happen to it.” Jack exclaims. “Don’t need to tell me twice.” You say and the pair of you run as quickly as you can back down to the first floor. When you get to the first floor, you and Jack make your turn towards the large front room and that’s when reality starts warping and you’re getting disoriented again. “Shit…” Jack says tripping over. You go to help Jack up and that’s when you see them again. Those tentacle things coming at you down the hallway, which is once again increasingly being enveloped in darkness. There’s no magical bald guy around this time to save you either. ‘Oh fuck, we need to move!” You say and start running towards the front room. Jack follows along. When you get the front room the lights flicker. Junk is still scattered all over the place and there is also no front door now, but TWO open doors. “What the fuck?” Jack exclaims and then the lighting gets even dimmer and soon you’ll be left completely in the dark save for the illumination coming from the open doors. At glance, one door is leading to what looks to be a tropical area since you’re seeing vines, trees and such. The other door is leading to a snowy area and you can even feel the cold air whipping in from that one. And those creatures are still in pursuit behind you with darkness ever encroaching. You’re starting to hear them now in your head, howling, chattering, gibbering. It’s madness and you need to leave now. “Shit, my head…” Jack says staggering. “Come on! This way!” you say and start heading towards the jungle. “Wait! That’s a fucking jungle, and I know nothing ever good comes from entering one! Remember my first trip here?” Jack says. “Well, it’s either that or the fucking artic and we’re not exactly dressed for that!” you say. “I’d rather take my chances with snow than a jungle.” “It’s pointlessss….death…isssss everywhere…embrace madnessss and ssssave yourself… embrace usssssss…” a voice in your head suddenly interjects this is followed by hideous mocking laughter. Maybe you’re getting resilient or something because you manage to keep it together. Jack isn’t looking as great though which is odd since you figured he’d be used to something like this. He’s having a hard time standing up and you’re having a hard time keeping him from falling. Either way, you’re making the decision on which way to go. > The jungle Jack may have had a bad experience with the jungle before, but you’re going to have one infinitely worse you don’t get the hell out of here! You don’t know where you’re going to end up, but you figure at least there is more chance of survival in the jungle than the tundra or artic or wherever you might end up with the snow door. Since Jack isn’t exactly in a position to argue, you continue heading towards the jungle. You’re almost at the door when everything goes dark. You feel like those things are almost upon you and you can only hope they stop pursuing you when you go through the door. With a boost of energy and a shove, you and Jack both tumble through the opening and into the jungle area. Soft muddy ground gets all over you both. You recover as quickly as you can, fearing that those creatures are still right behind you, but when you get up you find that not only are they not, but the Gray Building itself is gone. Nothing is behind save for more jungle. “Where the hell? Where did it go?” you say. “It’s gone. We’re some place completely different and who knows where the hell that building is now. Shit…my head is still throbbing and all fucked up. I still don’t feel quite right. Just let me rest here a moment.” Jack says still sitting on the ground. You look around and you have no idea where to go next. You look at the trees and ground and for all you know you’re in the Amazon. Certainly feels hot enough and you’re already starting to sweat. “Goddamn, it’s hot. Jack I’m going to tell you right now, I MIGHT be taking my shirt off at some point and I can only hope you’re a gentleman enough to keep your eyes at least focused on my face when you’re directly speaking with me.” You say. “Fuck, with the way I feel, I dunno if I’m even up for that sort of stimulation. Besides, I’m going to be keeping an eye on everywhere else given that we’re in a jungle. Ohhh, I really wished you went towards the snow, I got a bad feeling about this.” “What are the chances we’re on another Styrofoam island?” you ask. “Well, I dunno, but it still doesn’t change the fact we’re in a jungle where all manner of animals, bugs and plants can kill you. I guess we better pick a direction and hope we find friendly civilization.” Jack says and gets up. As Jack gets up while you look around again and decide on a direction. “Well at least you’ve still got your axe and I got a bat. The jungle doesn’t look as heavy in that direction I suppose. Guess we’re going that way.” You say. “I suppose it’s as good as a direction as any.” Jack replies. You and Jack begin your trek through the jungle… Despite the jungle not being as thick in this direction, it’s still not an easy walk. The only upside, is the canopy of the trees is at least shielding you from the sun directly. You can honestly say you don’t remember when the last time you had to deal with this sort of heat. All that time spent in the cool basement has made you a little less resistant to it you guess. Jack and you continue to keep your eyes and ears open. So far you’ve not seen any signs of civilization, but at one point a small purple furry rodent like animal walks by and you can honestly say even with all the animal and nature shows you’ve seen, you’ve never seen something like this before. It sees you and squeaks causing you to raise your bat before it runs off. “What the hell was that?” you ask. “I dunno, looked like some sort of rat, but purple though.” Jack replies. “Well don’t you think a purple rat is a little strange?” you ask. “Well of course I do, but given that this is where the Gray Building sent us, is it really surprising?” “I don’t mean just that though. I mean before I thought that maybe we were at least still on our world. Weird looking purple rat like creatures aren’t exactly native there. Is it possible it sent us to some alien planet?” “Suzy, with the Gray Building anything is fucking possible.” It’s at this moment you lose a little hope. Its one thing to possibly be lost in a jungle on Earth at least there would have been a slim chance of survival if you somehow made it to civilization. The idea of being on some sort of alien planet is a lot more disheartening. “Great, we are so fucked.” You say. “Probably, but we have to keep moving.” “What the hell’s the point? For all we know this whole damn planet is jungle and uninhabited and if it is inhabited I can’t imagine the natives are going to be friendly!” you exclaim. “We don’t know if this is an alien planet! I mean maybe we got transported back in time to the Mesozoic Era, we don’t know what the hell sort of creatures lived back then or what color they were.” “Oh, so we’re in the time of dinosaurs? Yeah, don’t think that’s any better.” Jack at this point wipes his face and closes his eyes. “Suzy, it’s too hot for us to argue, but I told you I didn’t want to go to the jungle anyway!” “There it is. I told you so. Thanks. Real helpful. (Sigh) Okay, look I’m sorry I’m just…” At this moment you hear a rustling noise and then a whizzing sound is heard just before blood splatters on you. Jack looks down briefly to see the top of a spear through his chest. He coughs up blood and falls to his knees looking at you the whole time. “Oh shit Jack…” you utter and then another spear just narrowly misses your head and hits a nearby tree. Then you see your assailants coming out of the undergrowth. Several small bipedal lizard like creatures armed with spears. They’re not even as tall as you, but they certainty look more than capable of killing you. They hiss at you and one proceeds to finish off Jack who was already dying at that point. You turn and run in the opposite direction ignoring the fact that you’re going to only get yourself further lost in the jungle, you have to escape these things. They screech and they run after you. Another spear nearly hits you and despite the very real fear of death you’re experiencing, the only thing going through your mind is how you curse the day you went out to go get a real job. One day you were living comfortably in a basement and now you’re running through a hot ass jungle being chased by fucking lizard aliens. You already know this isn’t going to end well for you. You’ve been pushing the odds ever since you left the damn basement, and it’s only a matter of time before those lizards get you and… Suddenly you feel a sharp bite to the side of your neck. It isn’t a spear. It’s some sort fauna that resembles a snake with legs. You didn’t even see it, but even if you hadn’t been so focused on running, you still wouldn’t have seen it due to its camouflage. Then before your eyes several of these creatures seemingly blink into existence and they’re all jumping on you and biting. You’ve just run into a nest of whatever these things are and you fall to their onslaught. The only upside is their deadly poison kills you before they can start eating you alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe this isn’t a good idea, but considering Jack did save your life a couple times, it seems like a pretty shitty thing to do if you just left him. With bat in hand, you head towards back to the corridor and call out to Jack. “Hey Jack! Are you upstairs?” you say. “Suzy? Yeah! I’m up here! Be careful though, there’s still a bunch of weird shit going on.” Not terribly descriptive or encouraging. Weird shit could literally be anything, and in this case probably is. You head towards the stairs and go up for the first time. As you going up, you have this fear that you’re going to start sinking into them, that doesn’t happen and when you arrive to the top, you find yourself exiting into a corridor that’s laid out very much the same way as the first floor, the only difference is you’re across from another set of stairs on the opposite side. You look to your right and hear some noise causing you to ready your bat, though you soon see Jack exiting room of the side rooms. “Suzy! I’ve been looking all over for you.” He says approaching with an axe in hand. “Hey! Keep your distance!” You shout and raise your bat “What?” Jack asks as he stops in his tracks. “Sorry, it’s just, well there has been as you put it, a lot of weird shit going on and for all I know you’re some horrible monster. Not to mention you’re coming at me with an axe in hand, though I suppose given the shit I’ve already encountered, you probably wouldn’t have bothered to even stop.” You reply lowing the bat. “Well, you probably were best to err on the side of caution. I’ve just spent what I believe to be an hour or two looking for you.” Jack says. “I was in your living room downstairs asleep on your couch. Right where you left me last night.” You reply. “Yeah, and you weren’t there when I checked on you later this morning. I called out and looked in every room on the first floor. I heard your voice coming from the second floor so I went up there and that’s when things started getting weird. (Sigh) and I thought this place was done with all that…should have known better I suppose…” Jack trails off, but at this point you’re demanding an answer. “Jack, you’ve saved my life twice, but if I’m going to hang out with you, you better start explaining what the hell’s going on with this place. I’m not sure what weirdness you’ve experienced up here, but what I just experienced downstairs was beyond weird, it was fucking terrifying.” You exclaim. “I know. I know. I should have told you about this place yesterday. Well let’s head into this room and talk about it.” Jack heads into a room down the corridor and to the left. You follow and find that it’s another living area furnished in a similar manner as the one downstairs. Jack was really like consistency. The pair of you sit and after you tell Jack what happened with you downstairs, Jack apologizes that you had to go through it and then tells you a little about what he knows of this place. Jack goes on about how he bought this Gray Building years ago for cheap and figured it would also be good to store all his stuff along with being a place he could live and thus no longer living in his mom’s basement. He then mentions he went to check out the place after he bought it and right away he experienced weirdness. He said the first time he opened up the door to the place there was a jungle village inside. He mentions that upon entering the building seemed to whisk him away to this place and his surroundings completely changed. “Curiosity got the better of me I guess. However it wasn’t just a jungle. I found out later when cannibals were chasing me, that I was on an island made of Styrofoam and held together by hemp rope. Barely escaped.” Jack says. “What?! That’s…incredibly random.” You say. “That was just the beginning. Of course any right thinking person, would have just written this place off, but I couldn’t help but find it fascinating. Of course I found it less fascinating the second time I went in, when I was attacked by these shadow wolf things. Barely survived that too.” “Why the hell did you keep coming back here?” “Well I actually stayed away after the second time. Though after a few months, I felt drawn to the place again. I can’t explain it, but as it turned out third time was the charm, well maybe not entirely, but the place started to become more accommodating. In time, I started to encounter less dangerous shit and the place became more normal, well as normal as it could ever be I suppose. Still, I was never quite willing to go all in and actually live in this place until recently and that’s only because of some positive weirdness that I experienced when in this building a few months ago.” “What happened?” “Well I saw a glimpse of the future and in few days I believe this world as we know it is going to start resembling Road Warrior. Of course even without seeing the future I was listening in on some pretty scary radio broadcasts before the Ground Zero corporation started cracking down and scrambling the airwaves.” “Wait, you say you saw the future, like how exactly? In your head or what?” “No, it was a portal or rather a small window that opened up on the third floor. Happened rather suddenly while I was up there deciding on where I should put more of my stuff a few weeks ago. I saw Security City get nuked. The town looks like it survived, but I saw that overrun by mad people, like rabid or something. Given how the people in town have been acting and the world situation lately, I’d say what I saw was on the mark. It was then, I decide that I might actually be safer in here.” “Doesn’t seem like it, by the look of things.” You say. “No, apparently I was wrong about that. (Sigh) I dunno, I’m sorry I got you involved in all this.” “Well it’s done now and it seems like I was fucked no matter what this week. So, is there anything we can do? I mean we can’t really stay here I think you’d agree, but if the world is doomed like you’re saying, where could we go?” “Know where there is a fallout shelter?” Jack asks. “Yes and no. My older brother made one a long time ago back home, unfortunately its entrance is a bit of a mystery now since he’s dead.” “That would mean going back to town anyway and with the National Guard and the rabid there I imagine it’s going to resemble a warzone.” “Well there has to be somewhere we can…is that snow?” you say noticing the hallway. At this point Jack stands up and you do too, both with your weapons ready as you approach the hallway where white flakes are falling from the ceiling and snow is starting to fill up the hallway. Jack looks to the left and right and then speaks. “Well I don’t see anything else out of the ordinary except the snow, but I think we better get the hell out of here and take our chances with the outside world, whatever might happen to it.” Jack exclaims. “Don’t need to tell me twice.” You say and the pair of you run as quickly as you can back down to the first floor. When you get to the first floor, you and Jack make your turn towards the large front room and that’s when reality starts warping and you’re getting disoriented again. “Shit…” Jack says tripping over. You go to help Jack up and that’s when you see them again. Those tentacle things coming at you down the hallway, which is once again increasingly being enveloped in darkness. There’s no magical bald guy around this time to save you either. ‘Oh fuck, we need to move!” You say and start running towards the front room. Jack follows along. When you get the front room the lights flicker. Junk is still scattered all over the place and there is also no front door now, but TWO open doors. “What the fuck?” Jack exclaims and then the lighting gets even dimmer and soon you’ll be left completely in the dark save for the illumination coming from the open doors. At glance, one door is leading to what looks to be a tropical area since you’re seeing vines, trees and such. The other door is leading to a snowy area and you can even feel the cold air whipping in from that one. And those creatures are still in pursuit behind you with darkness ever encroaching. You’re starting to hear them now in your head, howling, chattering, gibbering. It’s madness and you need to leave now. “Shit, my head…” Jack says staggering. “Come on! This way!” you say and start heading towards the jungle. “Wait! That’s a fucking jungle, and I know nothing ever good comes from entering one! Remember my first trip here?” Jack says. “Well, it’s either that or the fucking artic and we’re not exactly dressed for that!” you say. “I’d rather take my chances with snow than a jungle.” “It’s pointlessss….death…isssss everywhere…embrace madnessss and ssssave yourself… embrace usssssss…” a voice in your head suddenly interjects this is followed by hideous mocking laughter. Maybe you’re getting resilient or something because you manage to keep it together. Jack isn’t looking as great though which is odd since you figured he’d be used to something like this. He’s having a hard time standing up and you’re having a hard time keeping him from falling. Either way, you’re making the decision on which way to go. > The snow Really either choice seems pretty shitty, but if Jack feels that strongly about the jungle being worse, you guess you’ll take the snow (and probably freeze to death). You suppose the upside is that there are probably less deadly animals lurking about as there might be in a jungle. “You better be right about this Jack.” You say, You’re almost at the door when everything goes dark. You feel like those things are almost upon you and you can only hope they stop pursuing you when you go through the door. With a boost of energy and a shove, you and Jack both tumble through the opening and into the snowy area. Snow gets all over you both and it’s at that point you notice there are also a lot of trees nearby, so it’s not just endless tundra, which is at least a good sign that you didn’t wind up Antarctica. You also recover as quickly as you can, fearing that those creatures are still right behind you, but when you get up you find that not only are they not, but the Gray Building itself is gone. Nothing is behind you save for more snow and trees. “Where the hell? Where did it go?” you say. “It’s gone. We’re some place completely different and who knows where the hell that building is now. Shit…my head is still throbbing and all fucked up. I still don’t feel quite right. Just let me rest here a moment.” Jack says still sitting on the snowy ground. You look up and while the clouds are covering the sun, it’s definitely still daytime wherever you are, but with the wind making the cold even worse, you’re going to have to find shelter pretty damn quick and you have no idea which way to go. For all you know you’re in the Canadian wilderness or some other godforsaken place. “Goddamn, it’s cold.” You say. “Yeah, we need to get going, even though I’m still feeling woozy. We need to keep an eye out for everything though. I guess we better pick a direction and hope we find friendly civilization.” Jack says and gets up. As Jack gets up while you look around again and decide on a direction. “Well at least you’ve still got your axe and I got a bat. This direction looks as good as any.” You say pointing to the right. “I suppose so.” Jack replies. You and Jack begin your trek through the snow… The snow actually isn’t really that deep, but it’s deep enough that it’s not pleasant to walk through. The wind eventually dies down a bit which makes things a little better, but not by much. You and Jack are both very cold and periodically you’re rubbing your hands together and blowing on them in a futile effort to keep them warm. “This is sucking so much, we’re going to freeze to death out here in the fucking forest.” You say suddenly stopping. “Well maybe, but we gotta keep moving. We just gotta stay positive.” “Yeah, well as you might already know, positive things haven’t been happening to me lately.” You respond. “Trust me, you aren’t only one.” Jack replies. “…I’m sorry, I’m just really cold, and as brave as I’m trying to be about all this, I feel like I’ve already been pushing my luck all this week and I feel like this is going to be it. Like my dumb luck has run out and I’m really fucking scared of dying.” You say trying to remain calm. “I know.” Jack replies and puts his hand on your shoulder. It isn’t much comfort, but if the end is coming soon, you could have worse company. “Come on, you’re right, we need to keep moving.” You say and the pair of you continues on. A few moments later, you feel like your fingers and toes have gone numb and you’re even starting to get a little sleepy. Day is starting to end and night will be beginning soon. Just when you believe it’s starting to look even worse than ever, you and Jack notice some smoke rising in the distance up ahead, and as they say where there is smoke there is fire. (Hopefully) You and Jack both quicken your pace as much as you can and eventually you reach the edge of the ground, which starts sloping downward from your location. In the short distance from that you see a small log cabin with smoke coming from it. Salvation, but somehow you doubt if it’s going to be easy. “You know there are going to be people living there.” You say. “Yeah, but I mean come on, we’re freezing to death, surely they’ll help us. At best they’ll let us warm up before giving us directions to the next nearest town.” “Jack, your optimism would actually be very charming if we weren’t in the situation we’re currently in.” you say. “Well hopefully you’ll better appreciate it when we’re nice and warm. Come on.” Jack says. You and Jack carefully make your way down the slope and soon you’re at the cabin. You see piles of logs stacked nearby, along with some barrels. The cabin doesn’t have any windows or at least none on the sides that you’ve seen. “Okay, so how are we doing this?” you ask. “Well I guess I’ll knock.” Jack says. Jack bangs on the door a couple times. “Hello? Anyone in there? We’re freezing and we need help. Hello?” he says. There is no answer. You don’t even hear any noise. “Maybe nobody is home after all.” You say. “But there’s smoke coming from the chimney, obviously there’s probably a fire going on in there.” Jack replies. “Well, maybe they’re out hunting or something and there’s a scared kid in there that was told not to open the door to strangers. See if the door is unlocked.” You say. “Wait a minute, didn’t you just say there might be a scared kid in there?” “Yeah and if there is, he’s still going to be scared whether we’re inside or outside. We need to get in there Jack, we can deal with the consequences later!” you exclaim. Jack exhales. “Well okay…” Jack says as he goes for the handle. Surprisingly it opens and when Jack peers into the dimly lit cabin, he sees absolutely no one inside. “This place is empty.” Jack says. “Good, now let’s get to that damn fire!” you say and push past Jack. You warm up by the fireplace while Jack shuts the door and locks it with a large piece of wood across it. He soon joins and sits down right next to you. “Oh, sorry.” Jack says when he thinks he’s too close to you, but you stop him from moving over. “Jack, I think we’re at that point in our relationship that under normal circumstances, we’d probably be dating already. You’re fine, in fact why don’t you just hold me. I could use the extra warmth.” Jack complies with your request and you’re feeling a little warmer already. As you still trying to enjoy the warmth, Jack is still looking around the room a bit from his position. “This is strange.” Jack mentions. “Really? I thought this was probably the least strange thing we’ve done since we met.” “No, I mean this cabin, something seems very, I dunno, medieval.” “Well it is a log cabin in the middle of the woods, it isn’t like it’s going to have the amenities of the modern world.” “Yeah, but have you noticed the decorations? A shield and a sword are hanging over on that wall along with a small banner of some sort. Over there in that corner is a set of spears. There also a lot of furs just laying around.” “Maybe the guy that lives here is a historical buff on top of being a hunter. You know, trying to live the way they did back in the old days.” “Yeah, well I’ve never seen something like that either. Look.” “What? That’s just a deer’s head…oh what the hell? That’s fucking hideous looking.” You say just noticing the head of some very furry creature with far too many teeth mounted on the wall. It doesn’t look like anything you’ve ever seen on those nature or animal shows. You shiver a bit looking at the damn thing causing Jack to give you a bit of a squeeze. “Ugh, I don’t want to look at that thing. What is it?” you say. “That’s what I’m saying, I dunno. I mean a lot of this shit looks familiar, but seeing something like makes me less sure.” “What are you saying?” “I dunno. I mean I’m wondering if we’re even on our world.” In all the worrying about freezing to death, you suppose it never occurred that might not actually be on Earth. “You think the Gray Building sent us to a different dimension or something?” “I have no idea, but with that thing it’s not out of the realm of possibility. I mean you told me yourself you experienced reality weirdness when you were speaking with that bald guy.” “Yeah, that’s true…shit. We might be in some real trouble.” “Well, in the chance that we are on another world, I’d say we can at least look on the bright side that we aren’t going to get nuked any time soon.” “Heh, always looking on the bright side.” “Did it charm you this time?” “A little bit.” You say with a smile. After warming up completely, you and Jack explore the cabin a little more in detail, which doesn’t take too long considering it’s not excessively big. Some of that exploration includes raiding the foodstuff stored in the cabinets and the actual stew that’s in the hanging pot over the fire. All you find to drink is water and some sort of sweet alcohol. Jack says that’s probably mead. One of the more important things you find is a small pouch of coins. A few are gold, some are silver and a lot of them are copper. You also find a few books, but they’re in some sort of language you don’t understand. The last thing you discover is a trap door near the bed to a small root cellar where there is more food and water stored. Looks like you might be okay if you have to stay here awhile at least. The only short term major concern is a toilet at which point Jack points that while it’s possible there is an outhouse you missed somewhere in the area, you both might have to be roughing that in the cold air of nature. You’re not looking forward to either possibility. You remark about how this place reminds you of something from a video game you played on your computer, which only cements Jack’s view that you’re possibly not on your world any longer, or at best you’ve been transported back in time on earth to who knows where. That thing’s head on the wall seems to favor the former though. Eventually though as the night moves on, you start to get tired again, but this time you’re not in danger of dying of hypothermia. It’s soon pointed out that there is only one bed. “Well I guess I’ll let you take the bed.” Jack says. “Actually I want to sleep by the fire, I’m just going to grab some more of those furs to sleep on. You can take the bed, or if you really want to, sleep with me by the fire.” You say. “Well that’s no choice at all, of course I’m going to sleep with you by the fire.” Jack says. “Fine with me, as long as you know I’m just using you for your warm body.” You reply with a smile. “Well, just respect me in the morning.” Jack smiles back. “Um, speaking of that. Do you think we should be worried that the owner will be coming back at some point?” “Probably, but if someone comes knocking on the door, it isn’t like we’re weaponless.” “True, okay let’s try to get some rest and figure out what we’re going to do tomorrow.” You and Jack lay down several furs on the floor and settle in to sleep. Despite this situation not exactly being the best, you both at least enjoy the closeness of each other. > Next day… FRIDAY You wake up feeling slightly colder than you did last night, though it’s probably because the fire has died down a little and Jack is no longer spooning you. A quick look around though shows that he’s still here. He notices that you’re up. “Well good morning sunshine.” He says sitting at a table with a candle burning. “What time is it?” you ask, not thinking. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d say it’s still morning, maybe the afternoon. In any case it’s daytime the last time I looked outside.” “Oh right. No modern luxuries. Is that one of those books we found yesterday?” you ask. “Oh yeah. I was trying to read or at least understand any of it.” “You a linguist?” “Eh, not really. I mean I have studied a few languages from time to time for my own reasons and in a couple cases thanks to the Gray Building weirdness I had to learn some new ones, but it isn’t like I had any formal training on the matter.” “You understand any of it?” “Not excessively so, but I only really started. I get the impression whoever lives here is a fur trader. Some of this book isn’t doesn’t really consist of words as it’s a list of numerical symbols and totals. Fortunately those are universal. It would also explain the large amounts of furs piled up and this…” Jack says picking up the pouch of coins. “…I would imagine is their life savings.” “So you still think we’re in a different world?” “I dunno. As I mentioned I’ve looked outside while you were asleep, and wandered the area a bit. Not too far, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary save for trees, snow and a few white rabbits bouncing around. I mean that ugly head on the wall is the only thing I’ve seen so far that’s out of the ordinary. I will say that the presence of books at least shows writing and probably literature exists. The coins imply some sort of economy system. So civilization here exists, but of course who knows what said civilization is like.” “You said you thought it was a medieval one.” “Yeah, and I’m still holding on to that belief, of course it’s possible that maybe we’re just in a less advanced area. For all we know there are people whizzing around in jetpacks elsewhere.” Jack says and then snaps his fingers. “Oh I did see an outhouse. It’s not excessively far; we just never saw it yesterday due to the direction we came from. Well that and paying more attention to wanting to get into this cabin. You’ll happy to know it’s not even a disgusting diarrhea sprayed mess or overly foul smelling. The cold climate probably helps on that aspect. There’s even a roll of paper in there. Um, it’s not exactly the softest stuff though, and you’ll have to clean your hands in the snow.” “Lovely. Definitely not looking forward to the experience. So you see anything else of note on your outdoor adventures?” “I noticed foot prints going from this cabin and heading towards the east. I imagine they’re from the boots of the person who lives here. I’ve seen the same foot prints all over this immediate area, but those were going somewhere with a purpose rather than milling about taking care of every day chores around here I imagine.” “Wow, you’re tracker too huh? You really do know a little bit of everything.” You say. “I wouldn’t say I’m a tracker, I’m just sort of making guesses in the scheme of things. I just saw the prints in the snow and made the conclusion.” “You think the person living here is coming back?” you ask. “I dunno. I mean it’s possible, but I’m wondering if this place was abandoned. Seems like the door would have been locked. Of course the door can only be barred from the inside, so maybe that’s unavoidable and there generally aren’t many people wandering around here to worry about locks. Still, it seems like they would have hidden their pouch of coins better or even taken them with them. You nod and there is a silent pause in the conversation. You look back at the fire and Jack goes back to looking at the book. Probably the pair of you are wondering what the hell you’re going to do now. At least you are. Jack seems like he’s trying his hardest to make sense of everything and that’s certainly a good thing. You can’t help but think maybe you’re not pulling your weight as much as you can though, it’s just you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing. It isn’t like you’ve ever been in a situation like this before. So far you’ve just been trying to make the concentrated effort of not falling apart and giving in to despair because you get the impression no matter what happens, from here on out your life is going to be very different. “I know how to sew.” You suddenly blurt out. “What?” Jack responds. “I know how to sew, I mean I haven’t done it ever since my mother died, but you never forget something like that completely I suppose. My mother was the one who taught me, which is why I just sort of lost interest in it when she died.” You say. “Well that’s an interesting little fact you never told me about yourself when you were talking about your family before. What made you bring it up?” “Our situation I suppose. I mean I suppose at some point we’re going to need new clothes. I’ve never sewn furs together, but I suppose I’ll figure it out. I guess I just want to let you know I’m not completely useless and I will be contributing to our survival out here. I mean I’ll chop wood and learn to hunt and whatever else we need to do together.” “Suzy, you’re stressing about this too much. I mean yes, this situation isn’t the best, but trust me I’m just as worried if I’M going to be useful at all in this situation. I mean it’s only thanks to all the past weirdness I had to deal with due to that Gray Building that I even have some of the basic knowledge I have of various things and a good portion of that probably isn’t even going to be useful here.” Jack gets up and goes over to sit with you and he takes your hand. “When it’s all said and done. We’re both a pair of basement dwellers and neither one of us was truly prepared for this, but we’re still going to get through it. I mean I like to think I’m a survivor on some level. And you, well I think you’ve more than proven to be one. I know you think it’s all just been luck or coincidence in that regard, but hell, maybe there’s a reason. Maybe there’s a reason for all this.” “You think so? You believe that all this is part of some plan?” “I dunno. Maybe it’s just a bunch of shit that happened. Still doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get through this.” You look into Jack’s eyes and you take the initiative and kiss him full on the mouth. He reciprocates your affection, but you’re getting the strong impression that you might be the experienced one here. And then something urgent breaks up the moment. “Damn it.” You say. “What? Did I do something wrong?” Jack asks. “No. That thing that I wasn’t looking forward to has finally arrived.” “Wha…Oh. That. Um, well did you want me to come with you?” “You’re going to watch me go to the bathroom? Freak.” “No! I meant did you want me to come with you to show you the way or extra protection.” “I know what you meant, just joking. Yeah, I suppose you should come with me so you can at least show me where it is. Knowing me, I’d end up getting lost on the way there. Well alright come on, let’s go get this over with.” You say getting up. Remembering how cold it is out there, you grab a couple of the furs to wrap around you so you’re at least better protected this time. You go to grab your bat, but then you think if you shouldn’t take one of those spears instead. > You take the bat You’ve never used a spear before, so you aren’t even sure if you’d use something like that effectively. Better to stick with something you’re used to. Jack puts on one of the furs as well and grabs his axe and the pair of you are out the door. The sun shines down and you feel the cold wind blow. “Shit, even with these furs on I forgot how cold it was.” You say. “We’ll get another big fire started when we get back.” Jack says. “I’ll look forward to it, so which way?” “Oh to the left and then past some trees, it’s not hard to find.” You and Jack make your way to the infamous outhouse. You both look around periodically, but see nothing dangerous. Eventually you get to your goal and it looks exactly like you thought it would. “Well this is it.” You say. “I’ll be out here. Keeping a look out.” Jack responds. You enter the outhouse and endure the unavoidable. Thankfully Jack makes no attempt to speak to you while you’re inside. Eventually you come out and start putting your hands in the snow. Jack watches you and then goes back to looking around. “Well, wasn’t as bad as I thought, I’m still missing modern plumbing though. Wish we had soap too.” You say. “I guess if you want to sanitize your hands even more I suppose you could pour some of that mead we have at the cabin on them.” “Will that work?” “It’s got alcohol in it, I assume it can’t hurt. You ready to go?” “Yeah, you see anything out here?” “Nah, just a few more of those white rabbits I always see hopping around.” As you and Jack make your way back to the cabin, you and he speak on if either one of you knows anything about hunting. You of course know nothing, Jack says he’s not much better, though he thinks maybe you both could start making simple traps or something, especially given that there are obviously rabbits around here to be caught. “Wish we had the Internet so we could at least look all this shit up. God, I really miss the Internet…I think this is the longest I’ve been without it and I suppose those days are over as well.” You say as you approach the cabin. “Oh, you don’t know. We’re still just stuck out here in the wilderness, like I said, maybe there is Internet and hover cars somewhere else.” “Love that optimism Jack…” you say chuckling and heading towards the door. “Hey Suzy, wait is that blood in the snow?” You and Jack both stop a few feet away from the cabin, you’re still closest to the door, which suddenly swings open. Before you, you see a man with a good amount of facial hair and wearing several furs and clothing much more suited for this sort of weather. He’s not completely standing upright, but is in a somewhat stooped position as if wounded which judging from the blood in the snow is probably the case. While it’s difficult to tell his facial expression due to the hair, his eyes are wide as if he’s surprised, desperate or possibly even afraid. Maybe a mixture of all three. The major thing you see however is the crossbow he’s holding and pointing at you and Jack. The man shouts something at you in a language you don’t understand and before you can duck or get out of the way he fires a bolt and at this range his aim is still sound. You feel the piecing object go into your heart and you fall to the ground. Jack screams your name and attacks the man who is desperately attempting to reload his crossbow. You however never know if Jack avenges your death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY You wake up feeling slightly colder than you did last night, though it’s probably because the fire has died down a little and Jack is no longer spooning you. A quick look around though shows that he’s still here. He notices that you’re up. “Well good morning sunshine.” He says sitting at a table with a candle burning. “What time is it?” you ask, not thinking. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d say it’s still morning, maybe the afternoon. In any case it’s daytime the last time I looked outside.” “Oh right. No modern luxuries. Is that one of those books we found yesterday?” you ask. “Oh yeah. I was trying to read or at least understand any of it.” “You a linguist?” “Eh, not really. I mean I have studied a few languages from time to time for my own reasons and in a couple cases thanks to the Gray Building weirdness I had to learn some new ones, but it isn’t like I had any formal training on the matter.” “You understand any of it?” “Not excessively so, but I only really started. I get the impression whoever lives here is a fur trader. Some of this book isn’t doesn’t really consist of words as it’s a list of numerical symbols and totals. Fortunately those are universal. It would also explain the large amounts of furs piled up and this…” Jack says picking up the pouch of coins. “…I would imagine is their life savings.” “So you still think we’re in a different world?” “I dunno. As I mentioned I’ve looked outside while you were asleep, and wandered the area a bit. Not too far, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary save for trees, snow and a few white rabbits bouncing around. I mean that ugly head on the wall is the only thing I’ve seen so far that’s out of the ordinary. I will say that the presence of books at least shows writing and probably literature exists. The coins imply some sort of economy system. So civilization here exists, but of course who knows what said civilization is like.” “You said you thought it was a medieval one.” “Yeah, and I’m still holding on to that belief, of course it’s possible that maybe we’re just in a less advanced area. For all we know there are people whizzing around in jetpacks elsewhere.” Jack says and then snaps his fingers. “Oh I did see an outhouse. It’s not excessively far; we just never saw it yesterday due to the direction we came from. Well that and paying more attention to wanting to get into this cabin. You’ll happy to know it’s not even a disgusting diarrhea sprayed mess or overly foul smelling. The cold climate probably helps on that aspect. There’s even a roll of paper in there. Um, it’s not exactly the softest stuff though, and you’ll have to clean your hands in the snow.” “Lovely. Definitely not looking forward to the experience. So you see anything else of note on your outdoor adventures?” “I noticed foot prints going from this cabin and heading towards the east. I imagine they’re from the boots of the person who lives here. I’ve seen the same foot prints all over this immediate area, but those were going somewhere with a purpose rather than milling about taking care of every day chores around here I imagine.” “Wow, you’re tracker too huh? You really do know a little bit of everything.” You say. “I wouldn’t say I’m a tracker, I’m just sort of making guesses in the scheme of things. I just saw the prints in the snow and made the conclusion.” “You think the person living here is coming back?” you ask. “I dunno. I mean it’s possible, but I’m wondering if this place was abandoned. Seems like the door would have been locked. Of course the door can only be barred from the inside, so maybe that’s unavoidable and there generally aren’t many people wandering around here to worry about locks. Still, it seems like they would have hidden their pouch of coins better or even taken them with them. You nod and there is a silent pause in the conversation. You look back at the fire and Jack goes back to looking at the book. Probably the pair of you are wondering what the hell you’re going to do now. At least you are. Jack seems like he’s trying his hardest to make sense of everything and that’s certainly a good thing. You can’t help but think maybe you’re not pulling your weight as much as you can though, it’s just you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing. It isn’t like you’ve ever been in a situation like this before. So far you’ve just been trying to make the concentrated effort of not falling apart and giving in to despair because you get the impression no matter what happens, from here on out your life is going to be very different. “I know how to sew.” You suddenly blurt out. “What?” Jack responds. “I know how to sew, I mean I haven’t done it ever since my mother died, but you never forget something like that completely I suppose. My mother was the one who taught me, which is why I just sort of lost interest in it when she died.” You say. “Well that’s an interesting little fact you never told me about yourself when you were talking about your family before. What made you bring it up?” “Our situation I suppose. I mean I suppose at some point we’re going to need new clothes. I’ve never sewn furs together, but I suppose I’ll figure it out. I guess I just want to let you know I’m not completely useless and I will be contributing to our survival out here. I mean I’ll chop wood and learn to hunt and whatever else we need to do together.” “Suzy, you’re stressing about this too much. I mean yes, this situation isn’t the best, but trust me I’m just as worried if I’M going to be useful at all in this situation. I mean it’s only thanks to all the past weirdness I had to deal with due to that Gray Building that I even have some of the basic knowledge I have of various things and a good portion of that probably isn’t even going to be useful here.” Jack gets up and goes over to sit with you and he takes your hand. “When it’s all said and done. We’re both a pair of basement dwellers and neither one of us was truly prepared for this, but we’re still going to get through it. I mean I like to think I’m a survivor on some level. And you, well I think you’ve more than proven to be one. I know you think it’s all just been luck or coincidence in that regard, but hell, maybe there’s a reason. Maybe there’s a reason for all this.” “You think so? You believe that all this is part of some plan?” “I dunno. Maybe it’s just a bunch of shit that happened. Still doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get through this.” You look into Jack’s eyes and you take the initiative and kiss him full on the mouth. He reciprocates your affection, but you’re getting the strong impression that you might be the experienced one here. And then something urgent breaks up the moment. “Damn it.” You say. “What? Did I do something wrong?” Jack asks. “No. That thing that I wasn’t looking forward to has finally arrived.” “Wha…Oh. That. Um, well did you want me to come with you?” “You’re going to watch me go to the bathroom? Freak.” “No! I meant did you want me to come with you to show you the way or extra protection.” “I know what you meant, just joking. Yeah, I suppose you should come with me so you can at least show me where it is. Knowing me, I’d end up getting lost on the way there. Well alright come on, let’s go get this over with.” You say getting up. Remembering how cold it is out there, you grab a couple of the furs to wrap around you so you’re at least better protected this time. You go to grab your bat, but then you think if you shouldn’t take one of those spears instead. > You take the spear “Hey Jack, is that outhouse large enough to prop up a spear inside it?” “Um, I think so. Why? You taking one of those instead of the bat?” “Yeah, I was remembering something I watched once talking about how the spear was an easy weapon to learn how to use even for someone completely unskilled which is why it was used so much in ancient and medieval wars amongst infantry. I’m just thinking I’d probably want something like that with me instead of a bat if we encounter a bear or something I want to keep at a distance.” Jack looks at you a bit impressed. “Well, look at you. Suzy, warrior princess over here. You said you didn’t know anything.” Jack says smiling. You take the spear and then look over at the shield. “Jack, help me get that shield down from the wall.” You say. “What?” Jack responds. “I want to take the shield with me too.” “Suzy, you’re just going to the bathroom, not to war!” “Hey you said it yourself, we still don’t know what this place is all about and I want to feel as secure as possible, so if that means carrying around a shield, then that’s what I’m going to do!” “…alright…” Jack says and then proceeds to grab the circular shield down from the wall and then hands it to you. The shield isn’t light and is made of strong thick wood; you definitely feel the weight just holding the thing. “You sure you don’t want the sword too?” Jack asks. “Nah, I think this is all I can carry. The shield is definitely heavier than I thought it would be.” “I really don’t think you’re going to need that.” Jack says wrapping a fur around himself and grabbing the axe he brought with him from the Gray Building. “And like I said, it makes me feel better. Come on let’s go.” Upon exiting the cabin you see the sun shining down and you feel the cold wind blow. “Shit, even with these furs on I forgot how cold it was.” You say. “We’ll get another big fire started when we get back.” Jack says. “I’ll look forward to it, so which way?” “Oh to the left and then past some trees, it’s not hard to find.” You and Jack make your way to the infamous outhouse. You both look around periodically, but see nothing dangerous. When Jack’s not looking around, he’s studying you. “So you ready to fight the Persians?” Jack asks with a smirk. “I dunno, but I have to say I do feel rather empowered.” You reply. Eventually you get to your goal and it looks exactly like you thought it would. “Well this is it.” You say unenthusiastically. “Your shield is going to be kind of bulky, leave it out here with me. Unless you plan on getting attacked from below and if that’s the case, a shield isn’t going to help.” “Fuck, now I’m going to be worrying about something lurking down there and reaching up to grab me. Thanks a lot!” you say and give the shield to Jack. You enter the outhouse and endure the unavoidable. Thankfully Jack makes no attempt to speak or make jokes to you while you’re inside. Eventually you come out and start putting your hands in the snow. Jack watches you and then goes back to looking around. “Well, wasn’t as bad as I thought, I’m still missing modern plumbing though. Wish we had soap too.” You say. “I guess if you want to sanitize your hands even more I suppose you could pour some of that mead we have at the cabin on them.” “Will that work?” “It’s got alcohol in it, I assume it can’t hurt. You ready to go Valkyrie?” Jack asks and hands you back your shield. “Yeah, you see anything out here?” “Nah, just a few more of those white rabbits I always see hopping around.” As you and Jack make your way back to the cabin, you and he speak on if either one of you knows anything about hunting. You of course know nothing, Jack says he’s not much better, though he thinks maybe you both could start making simple traps or something, especially given that there are obviously rabbits around here to be caught. “Wish we had the Internet so we could at least look all this shit up. God, I really miss the Internet…I think this is the longest I’ve been without it and I suppose those days are over as well.” You say as you approach the cabin. “Oh, you don’t know. We’re still just stuck out here in the wilderness, like I said, maybe there is Internet and hover cars somewhere else.” “Love that optimism Jack…” you say chuckling and heading towards the door. “Hey Suzy, wait is that blood in the snow?” You and Jack both stop a few feet away from the cabin, you’re still closest to the door, which suddenly swings open, instinctively you put the shield up to cover yourself as much as you can. Before you, you see a man with a good amount of facial hair and wearing several furs and clothing much more suited for this sort of weather. He’s not completely standing upright, but is in a somewhat stooped position as if wounded which judging from the blood in the snow is probably the case. While it’s difficult to tell his facial expression due to the hair, his eyes are wide as if he’s surprised, desperate or possibly even afraid. Maybe a mixture of all three. The major thing you see however is the crossbow he’s holding and pointing at you and Jack. The man shouts something at you in a language you don’t understand and fires, but fortunately you had the shield in front of you and the bolt is prevented from hitting your body and merely goes stops half way through the shield instead. There is the smallest pause in this encounter where you realize that you just came close to being killed again, Jack realizing you nearly came close to being killed and the man realizing he’s failed to kill you. The man quickly backs inside and hastily attempts to reload his crossbow, meanwhile you don’t think about your near death experience and just act. You charge forward with the shield up and the spear out. You even start screaming like you’re in an action movie. Your charge is stopped when you hit the man full on. The spear sinks into his body and he cries out in pain dropping the crossbow. You attempt to pull the spear as hard as you can back out, but it isn’t easy because the man keeps you from doing so by gripping the top of the shaft and the man still has enough strength to grab the knife on his side with his other hand. Fortunately he can’t quite reach you and swings helplessly with one hand. Since you can’t pull the spear out, you instead start wiggling it to the left and right no doubt adding to the pain as well as internal organ damage. The man once again screams in agony and lets go of the spear allowing you to pull it out. He falls to the floor. Jack who was having difficulty in getting around you before finally succeeds so he can get in closer to swing his axe down at the man on the floor. “Suzy, hang on I can…agh!” Jack exclaims as the man desperately slashes at the closest leg to him with his knife, which happened to be Jack’s. This causes Jack to reel back and nearly stumble into the fireplace. Fortunately he only falls into a small pile of logs for the fireplace. You press your advantage by stepping up and attempting to plunge the spear into the man’s neck, but he manages to dodge and you only hit the floor. He grabs the shaft of the spear again in an attempt to keep you from using it. He’s got a weak one-handed grasp though. > You pull the spear With as much strength as you can, you pull the spear from the man’s grasp. It puts you a little off balance, which is enough for the man with his other hand to swing his with the knife and plunge it into your foot before pulling it out again. You scream in pain and lose complete balance and fall to the floor dropping your spear. Jack has recovered by this point to help, but the man sits up and throws his knife into Jack’s stomach. Jack falls to the floor, dropping his axe and stopped from being able to help you. Meanwhile you’re attempting to recover from your wounded foot, and sit up just in time to see the man stagger and stumble over to pick up the spear. Upon seeing how severely wounded Jack is, and your own injury you begin to panic. Not enough to run, but also not enough to make the best decisions. You limp over to the man in an attempt to cave his head in with the shield, but thanks to your foot, you aren’t really the fastest. The man dodges your attempt by falling back to the floor, but with the spear now in his hand, from his prone position he manages to thrust it into your side. You cry out and fall. The agony of your wounds is overwhelming now and you can barely stand it. Actually you can’t stand it at all and your body feels like it’s going into shock, like all the energy is leaving you. You weakly attempt to put your shield up to defend yourself when you see the man hover above you, but you don’t have the strength just tears. He knocks the shield aside and finishes you off by spearing your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Hey Jack, is that outhouse large enough to prop up a spear inside it?” “Um, I think so. Why? You taking one of those instead of the bat?” “Yeah, I was remembering something I watched once talking about how the spear was an easy weapon to learn how to use even for someone completely unskilled which is why it was used so much in ancient and medieval wars amongst infantry. I’m just thinking I’d probably want something like that with me instead of a bat if we encounter a bear or something I want to keep at a distance.” Jack looks at you a bit impressed. “Well, look at you. Suzy, warrior princess over here. You said you didn’t know anything.” Jack says smiling. You take the spear and then look over at the shield. “Jack, help me get that shield down from the wall.” You say. “What?” Jack responds. “I want to take the shield with me too.” “Suzy, you’re just going to the bathroom, not to war!” “Hey you said it yourself, we still don’t know what this place is all about and I want to feel as secure as possible, so if that means carrying around a shield, then that’s what I’m going to do!” “…alright…” Jack says and then proceeds to grab the circular shield down from the wall and then hands it to you. The shield isn’t light and is made of strong thick wood; you definitely feel the weight just holding the thing. “You sure you don’t want the sword too?” Jack asks. “Nah, I think this is all I can carry. The shield is definitely heavier than I thought it would be.” “I really don’t think you’re going to need that.” Jack says wrapping a fur around himself and grabbing the axe he brought with him from the Gray Building. “And like I said, it makes me feel better. Come on let’s go.” Upon exiting the cabin you see the sun shining down and you feel the cold wind blow. “Shit, even with these furs on I forgot how cold it was.” You say. “We’ll get another big fire started when we get back.” Jack says. “I’ll look forward to it, so which way?” “Oh to the left and then past some trees, it’s not hard to find.” You and Jack make your way to the infamous outhouse. You both look around periodically, but see nothing dangerous. When Jack’s not looking around, he’s studying you. “So you ready to fight the Persians?” Jack asks with a smirk. “I dunno, but I have to say I do feel rather empowered.” You reply. Eventually you get to your goal and it looks exactly like you thought it would. “Well this is it.” You say unenthusiastically. “Your shield is going to be kind of bulky, leave it out here with me. Unless you plan on getting attacked from below and if that’s the case, a shield isn’t going to help.” “Fuck, now I’m going to be worrying about something lurking down there and reaching up to grab me. Thanks a lot!” you say and give the shield to Jack. You enter the outhouse and endure the unavoidable. Thankfully Jack makes no attempt to speak or make jokes to you while you’re inside. Eventually you come out and start putting your hands in the snow. Jack watches you and then goes back to looking around. “Well, wasn’t as bad as I thought, I’m still missing modern plumbing though. Wish we had soap too.” You say. “I guess if you want to sanitize your hands even more I suppose you could pour some of that mead we have at the cabin on them.” “Will that work?” “It’s got alcohol in it, I assume it can’t hurt. You ready to go Valkyrie?” Jack asks and hands you back your shield. “Yeah, you see anything out here?” “Nah, just a few more of those white rabbits I always see hopping around.” As you and Jack make your way back to the cabin, you and he speak on if either one of you knows anything about hunting. You of course know nothing, Jack says he’s not much better, though he thinks maybe you both could start making simple traps or something, especially given that there are obviously rabbits around here to be caught. “Wish we had the Internet so we could at least look all this shit up. God, I really miss the Internet…I think this is the longest I’ve been without it and I suppose those days are over as well.” You say as you approach the cabin. “Oh, you don’t know. We’re still just stuck out here in the wilderness, like I said, maybe there is Internet and hover cars somewhere else.” “Love that optimism Jack…” you say chuckling and heading towards the door. “Hey Suzy, wait is that blood in the snow?” You and Jack both stop a few feet away from the cabin, you’re still closest to the door, which suddenly swings open, instinctively you put the shield up to cover yourself as much as you can. Before you, you see a man with a good amount of facial hair and wearing several furs and clothing much more suited for this sort of weather. He’s not completely standing upright, but is in a somewhat stooped position as if wounded which judging from the blood in the snow is probably the case. While it’s difficult to tell his facial expression due to the hair, his eyes are wide as if he’s surprised, desperate or possibly even afraid. Maybe a mixture of all three. The major thing you see however is the crossbow he’s holding and pointing at you and Jack. The man shouts something at you in a language you don’t understand and fires, but fortunately you had the shield in front of you and the bolt is prevented from hitting your body and merely goes stops half way through the shield instead. There is the smallest pause in this encounter where you realize that you just came close to being killed again, Jack realizing you nearly came close to being killed and the man realizing he’s failed to kill you. The man quickly backs inside and hastily attempts to reload his crossbow, meanwhile you don’t think about your near death experience and just act. You charge forward with the shield up and the spear out. You even start screaming like you’re in an action movie. Your charge is stopped when you hit the man full on. The spear sinks into his body and he cries out in pain dropping the crossbow. You attempt to pull the spear as hard as you can back out, but it isn’t easy because the man keeps you from doing so by gripping the top of the shaft and the man still has enough strength to grab the knife on his side with his other hand. Fortunately he can’t quite reach you and swings helplessly with one hand. Since you can’t pull the spear out, you instead start wiggling it to the left and right no doubt adding to the pain as well as internal organ damage. The man once again screams in agony and lets go of the spear allowing you to pull it out. He falls to the floor. Jack who was having difficulty in getting around you before finally succeeds so he can get in closer to swing his axe down at the man on the floor. “Suzy, hang on I can…agh!” Jack exclaims as the man desperately slashes at the closest leg to him with his knife, which happened to be Jack’s. This causes Jack to reel back and nearly stumble into the fireplace. Fortunately he only falls into a small pile of logs for the fireplace. You press your advantage by stepping up and attempting to plunge the spear into the man’s neck, but he manages to dodge and you only hit the floor. He grabs the shaft of the spear again in an attempt to keep you from using it. He’s got a weak one-handed grasp though. > You drop the shield on him Thinking unconventionally and with a bit of a heft from your shield arm, you drop your shield on the man’s body. He isn’t expecting the sudden weight smashed into him and expects it even less when you decide to jump on top of the shield, putting more crushing weight on his wounded torso. The man bellows and lets go of your spear. He doesn’t even have the energy to do anything with his other hand holding the knife. You quickly lift the spear from its original position and looking directly into his eyes, you thrust it directly into his throat and twist. The man makes sickening gurgling sounds as blood comes from his mouth and neck, his eyes bulge and his body convulses for a few seconds and then stops. Meanwhile, you’re breathing heavily and just staring at the body. “Suzy? Suzy? You alright?” Jack asks. “Huh? Yeah…I just…I just killed a man. Never did that before…well not directly I suppose.” You say and step down from the shield and the dead man’s body. Jack limps over to close the door and then over to you. “You…you sure you’ve never fought before? I mean it all happened so fast, but you seemed to just suddenly go into some sort of warrior mode.” “I dunno. Something just clicked inside my head. Can’t explain it myself either. Maybe it was just a fight or flight response and I’ve been sick of running lately. This guy was trying to kill us and I had no choice but to kill him.” “Well it was certainly one of those situations.” “Yeah…I guess. Is your leg okay?” you say moving your shield off the body. “Yeah, It’s superficial, I guess I better clean it out with alcohol and wrap it up though. I think I saw a roll of linen wrap in one of those drawers.” “Looks like that’s what this guy was attempting to do too because the wrap you mentioned is right there on the table along with an open jar and a big pouch. This guy was obviously already hurt when we found him. Look there.” You say and point at the man who you now notice has an ugly gash on his arm that looks like some green stuff was smeared on it. You lift up a few more of the furs on his body and notice another wound on his side as well. You weren’t responsible for either of those. Jack goes over to get the wrap and inspect the open jar. “I think this might be some sort of ointment. Smells awful and has the same green color on his wounded arm. This pouch looks like it has more of his items. I’m going to take a look.” Jack says. While Jack goes through the dead man’s bag, you decide to directly search the body. You don’t find anything though except a half full quiver of crossbow bolts and his fur clothing, which you start taking off of him. “Suzy, what are you doing?” Jack asks when he sees you stripping the dead man. “I’m looting his corpse. So far this is the only set of proper clothing we have for this sort of weather. Might as well keep some of it, we can always get the blood out and I can sew up the holes later. The boots alone should be worth keeping.” You say. “…well I suppose you’re right. You need any help?” Jack asks. “Nah, I got it. Just patch up your leg.” You say. While Jack does just that, you proceed with your task. By the time you get the man down to his raggedy loincloth, you temporarily stop to just look at the body, exhale and rub your hand over your face. “Not a pretty sight from here either.” Jack says. “No, it’s not that. It’s the fact that I’ve just realized that I’ve been sitting here stealing a dead man’s clothes and I don’t feel bad about it. And even coming to that conclusion, I STILL don’t feel bad about it. It’s like nothing.” “Well I admit, this is sort of fucked up, but he did attack us first.” “The thing is though is we’re the trespassers. I mean he owned this place. Probably built it with his own fucking hands. From his perspective and any right thinking person’s, he had the damn right to try to kill us. I know if someone invaded my home I wouldn’t like it. We just stumbled in and started going through his shit and stealing it.” You say. “We needed to survive.” Jack says. “I’m not debating that. I just…well…does this make us evil? Because if it does, I have to say, I’m perfectly fine with that and that’s probably a scariest thing I’ve just learned about myself this week and the funniest too, because I can also honestly say killing this guy was one of the highest points of motivation I’ve ever had and that includes all the times I was running for my life this week and especially attempting to get a job in a shitty comic shop.” you say. Jack doesn’t respond, he just sort of looks down and then away, going back to wrapping his leg. You stand up and grab the man by his feet. “Jack can you get the door?” you say. “Yeah, and don’t try to drag him by yourself, I’ll help.” Jack replies as he heads over to the door. “It’s okay. I got it. Just get that fire going while I’m dragging his body out into the wilderness.” You say. “Suzy, we’re in this together. I’ll help you.” Jack says. “Yeah, you’re right. Grab the other leg after you open the door.” You respond. You and Jack drag the body into the wilderness. You make a mention that maybe you should bury it at some point, but as long as it’s immediately out of sight and away from the cabin, it’s good enough where it is. The pair of you then quickly make your way back hoping nobody else has shown up at your home. Which is certainly what it is now considering you just killed the owner. You’re still feeling a bit numb about that. When you’re back inside the cabin, Jack speaks up again. “Just for the record, I don’t think we’re evil.” Jack says. “Well evil people don’t tend to think they are.” You answer with a minor chuckle. “I dunno about that, there are tons of evil bastards that revel in their evilness. I mean I’ll admit I feel a little bad about what we did, but I just don’t want you to beat yourself up about what happened too much. It’s done.” “I’m not. That’s sort of my point and why I was wondering if I was evil in the first place, but you’re right. It wasn’t something to brag about, but it’s done and there’s no point in worrying about it.” You close the door and bar it. “I’m a little tired. I’m going to go lay down on the bed.” You say. “Okay, I’ll get this fire going like I planned to do before all this happened. I’ll clean up some of the mess around here too.” Jack replies. You get on the simple bed, which is basically made up of straw, animal skin and furs. It’s not a sofa, but it’s all the comfort you’re going to have in the near future. Even though you already talked about this with Jack, you still can’t help but go back to it. You start wondering if there is something genetically wrong inside your head and part of you takes after your uncle Ed, or maybe if when you went through all that shit in the Gray Building you “lost” part of yourself somehow. Then you start wondering if maybe it was just a desperate situation and in such times, people do desperate things even if they normally wouldn’t have done so. Like Jack said, you are trying to survive and like you said, that man was going to kill you and you had to prevent that from happening. It’s as good as a rationalization as any. Jack seems to be fine with it and you are too. You sit up slightly from your position and watch Jack clean up the place and stoke the fire. It’s weird to think you met this guy in a comic shop and here you are with him who knows where. You’ve had more adventures with him this week than you ever had with anyone else. And that includes Bobby because it wasn’t like the two of you ever went anywhere. As you think on these things, your hands start to wander and you feel a lump in your pocket which you forgot being there. You half expect it to be your dead cell phone, but what it is, is the thousand dollars and the car keys Jack gave you. “Heh, I forgot these were even in my pocket. Guess we have another reminder of the old world.” You say jingling the keys a bit at Jack. “Sadly, I doubt if all that cash is going to be useful here, well except for kindling.” Jack replies “Well at least the keys can be a reminder of your first gift ever to me.” You respond. “Great. My first gift to you was a car and a thousand dollars. That’s going to be tough to top now.” Jack says. “Actually I got an idea of how you might be able to match it. Jack, stop cleaning up, I want you over here.” You say. “What’s wrong?” “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just remembering earlier that we were in middle of something, and I’m thinking we need to get back to that again.” “Wha…oh…” Jack says suddenly getting it when you start taking your clothes off. “Well, what are you waiting for? Get your clothes off.” You say. “Suzy, we don’t need to do this you know. I’m perfectly fine waiting.” Jack says. “Yeah, well I’m not. It’s been a while and I haven’t even been able to set time aside for splittin’ the kitten so this is as much for me as it is for you. Besides, after surviving the week we’ve both had, I think we should have a little celebration don’t you think? What the fuck else do we have to do?” you say. Jack doesn’t respond, he just starts taking his clothes off a bit shyly. It’s at that moment you remember the fact that he seemed a little inexperienced when you were kissing him earlier. “Jack, you don’t need to be nervous around me. We can start off slow if we need to and I’m not going to judge. It’s just me and you okay? Just like it’s been all this week.” “Okay. I just…I’m…I’m a…” “I know and it’s fine, just come over to me.” You say reassuringly. It isn’t long before Jack and you are both on the bed naked. Just as you said, you take it a bit slow with him. Feels a little weird being the “aggressive” one, but there certainly is a part of you that’s enjoying the role. You’re in the middle of it, when Jack says something that makes things slightly odd. “I love you Suzy.” He says. “… I… love you Jack…” you answer back. Well, maybe it isn’t TOO odd, considering you’re probably the only girl Jack has ever been with and spent any long amount of time with too. In fact you sort of wonder why you even hesitated to say it back, after all, you are fond of him and you’ve had a budding relationship with Jack all this week. You just suppose that “love” hasn’t really been in your mind since you broke up with Bobby. Still, it’s a nice feeling after all the shit that’s happened this week. Afterwards, you and Jack hold each other and generally talk about shit that doesn’t pertain to your immediate situation. There is much that will have to be done, but for now the pair of you are enjoying shutting out the outside world. Just like when you two were living in the basement. Day eventually becomes night and the pair of you turn in a little earlier than usual. > Next day… SATURDAY You groggily wake up and see Jack over at the table like he was the last time you woke up in this place. He looks like he’s studying a piece of paper and doesn’t notice you waken immediately this time. After sitting up, you call out to him. “Hey, cunninglinguist whatcha discover today?” you ask rubbing your eyes. “Oh hey, you’re up. Just looking at this parchment that was in this large pouch here. It’s a crude map from what I can tell.” “A map? Well that’s convenient. Anything good?” “Well I don’t know all the symbols obviously, but I THINK this might lead to a couple towns. Some of these look like roads, I don’t know though until we do some exploring.” “Let’s do it.” You exclaim. “What right now?” “Sure. I mean we’re going to have to at some point, might well start getting some of this shit out of the way.” “Well okay, guess we better get dressed then.” You nod and start grabbing your clothing. As much is you might like the furry boots, They’re a little big on you. They’re actually a little big on Jack too, but they at least fit him better, so he gets them. You both of you put on furs much like you did yesterday, then you grab your spear and shield. “I think I’ll take that other spear. Seems like it worked for you yesterday.” Jack mentions. “You sure you don’t want to take the crossbow?” you ask. “If I knew how to use one properly, sure I’d take it. But I think I’m going to have to practice with something like that first. Seems slow to load and it won’t do you any good if you’re in trouble and I can’t use it effectively. At least with this spear I can help you directly.” “Yeah, good idea.” After hiding a few of your more valuable items (Like your only pouch of coins) you both leave the cabin. “So which way should we go?” you ask. “Hmm, I’m thinking we should follow the tracks of the guy who lived here. They were going to the right before he came back. According to the map, there is a town in this direction. Or at least I think there is, guess we’ll find out.” “Okay.” You and Jack head to the right. The occasional blood in the snow makes it pretty easy to follow them though the tracks have been partially covered by snow or stomped over already. “I’m thinking it was sort of a good thing that guy was wounded yesterday. He wasn’t exactly easy to put down. I can’t imagine the fight he would have put up if he had been at full strength.” Jack says. “Yeah, but now I’m wondering what the hell he was fighting before he met us and how many.” You respond. Eventually after a bit of traveling, you and Jack see something lying in the snow. It looks very large too. The pair of you cautiously approach. When you reach the body, you notice that it’s a massive… creature with grayish blue skin and tusk like teeth. It’s dressed in the barest of fur clothing and has several crossbow bolts and arrows in its body and face. You also see signs of deep cuts across its body. Next to its body is a large club, which resembles more of a broken tree branch rather than a proper weapon. However it would certainly kill someone if swung at them and judging by how massive this creature’s muscles are, it looks more than capable of smashing someone’s head in even without a club. The club has signs of blood on it. “Holy shit. What the fuck…” Jack says. “I think we just found what that guy was running from or limping away from rather. Must’ve been quite the fight.” You say. “I think there is more stuff up ahead, well more blood anyway.” You and Jack leave the creature’s body behind and follow the rest of the blood trail noting a broken sword along the way. You soon find a second body, but this one looks human, or at least you guess it was, since the half of the head is caved in. Blood and brains are scattered about the snow. It’s a pretty grisly sight, but you’re long since desensitized by now. You see a bow nearby, but the body still clutches a bloody dagger in its hand. A fur hat also sits several paces away. You assume it probably was knocked off during the fight. “I guess this was his friend” Jack says. “I’m thinking it could have even been his girlfriend, smaller frame, even with the furs on I can see the chest is bigger. Long hair and from what I can tell of what’s left of the face, it looks slightly female…is that ear pointed?” you say. “…yeah…that ear is definitely pointed.” Jack says looking “What the hell, did we step into some sort of fantasy world?” “Your guess is as good as mine. Told you that Gray Building could have sent us any fucking where.” You exhale, not quite knowing what to make of all this. “Let’s keep going a bit further.” You say. Jack and you press on, but you don’t find any more signs of battle. You do eventually find that the wilderness ends and the edge of a road begins however. Sort of hard to tell due to the snow, but there definitely is a road here. Across the road are more trees. Sort of reminds you home that way. “Well I guess this is one of the roads, which means I guess I got something on this map correct at least. Looks like if we go south, we’ll hit the closest town. Still looks quite the like a walk though.” Jack responds. “Maybe we should cut the exploration trip a little short for today. Let’s gather all that useful stuff from that battle scene and take it back to the cabin. We can certainly use some of it. The boots on that girl look like they would be more likely to fit me anyway and wearing something like those would be a hell of a lot more pleasant for walking around in.” You say. “Okay, let’s go back.” You and Jack return to the battle scene and begin looting the dead girl first. Along with the furs and her weapons, you also find a nearly empty quiver of arrows and a small pouch similar to the one that the man had. You take a quick look inside and see several items for you to inspect when you’re in the comfort of your much warmer cabin. When you and Jack are loaded up, you and he leave the dead woman mostly naked in the snow, much like you left the man and make your way back. Upon getting back to the body of the monster you attempt to pull out some of the bolts and arrows lodged in its body, but some are either partially broken off inside or just sunk in too deep and you’re not willing to make the effort to hang around and pull out every single one. The monster itself wasn’t carrying anything save for it’s minimalistic fur cloth around it’s waist and neither you or Jack are interested in taking it. Soon you both get back to the cabin where you drop your new loot and go warm up by the fire. The pair of you are silent as you sit, watching the flames flicker. Jack however breaks up the silence eventually. “So, you really think that woman was the owner’s girlfriend?” Jack asks. “Maybe wife, I dunno how it works here. Seems like the logical conclusion though.” You respond. “Just didn’t notice a prominent second set of tracks around the cabin.” “Well it has been snowing off and on, there is the wind to think of, not to mention animals running around. Maybe she was walking behind him so she didn’t have to get her boots engulfed with snow. All sorts of reasons why you might not have noticed them. Don’t worry about it. Besides, you said it yourself, you’re not a tracker.” “I suppose. I guess I just feel that missing a detail like that could be fatal given what we’ve experienced as well as seen.” “Yeah, this does seem to be a pretty harsh place. Still don’t know what the hell that blue gray thing was. Definitely want to avoid encountering those things though…and those.” You say pointing to the ugly head on the wall. “I’ll get rid of that thing later today. I know it bothers you.” Jack says. “Nah, it can stay. I’m strangely sort of getting attached to Toothy over there.” A pause of silence in the conversation follows before Jack speaks up again. “If that was his wife or girlfriend though, that’s sort of fucked up that he just left her body like that.” Jack says. “Well, it seems like that thing was still chasing him, maybe he didn’t know if was dead or not and wanted to get to a place where he could better defend himself and heal a bit. He could have always returned for the body.” You say. “Maybe. I just want you to know I’ll never abandon you like that.” Jack says causing you to chuckle. “Well that’s sweet Jack, but if I already got my brains splattered on the ground and there’s a hulking monster around by all means run your ass to safety. No point in both of us getting killed.” You say. “I don’t even want to think about something like that. I just…I can’t imagine a life without you now.” Jack responds and grabs your hand. “Well with as brutal as this place seems to be, you never know.” “No, I can’t think about such depressing thoughts. I love you too much.” Jack’s face displays one of concern, like he’s worried you’re going to die right this very second and he can’t even bear the thought of you gone. It’s apparent he’s fallen for you a bit hard; perhaps a bit more than you’ve fallen for him, but you suppose it’s better that he’s like this rather than not giving a shit. You give him a reassuring hug. “Don’t worry so much Jack, I’ll try to last as long as I can in this world before the monsters get me.” “No, you’re going to survive. I bet you’ll even survive longer than I will. You’ll survive everything.” Jack’s confidence in you is a lot higher than your own though you have to admit, you’ve been doing pretty well so far. You’re certainly not that “good girl” that hid from the rest of the world any longer. You have no idea what’s in store for you or how you’re going to deal with it, but whatever the future hold for you here, you will make your best attempt to survive and push through it. > … Eternal Mother The Future… It’s a harsh world. “Number 660.” Possibly more than your old one was, but you eventually learned how to deal with it. You even managed to make a proper life for yourself here despite all the trials and tribulations. You remember how hard that first year with Jack was. Struggling to survive, learning how to hunt, dealing with the elements, dealing with unfriendly people and creatures, and generally just being a “modern” person who didn’t have too many survival skills to speak of and being thrust into a primitive environment. You think learning the language was the most difficult part. Jack was always a little better at it than you were. You probably still sound like a retard to some folks, but it gets the job done. “Number 661.” During those early years you also ended up having to do a few things you never took pleasure in doing, but it was always it was always for survival. In those instances you were always a little better at that. Jack would definitely always support you, but then he loved you very much and would have followed you into the Gates of Hell. You suppose it did get to a point where rationalizations really didn’t excuse what you did, but then you don’t think you ever cared about those anyway. You were a woman who was willingly dating a human sacrificing cultist at one time after all. You smile upon thinking about your old flame. You think Bobby would have fit in very well in this world. Maybe to some extent, you did too. “Number 662.” You think for a while you might have gotten a little colder and ruthless. Seemed like this was a place where the strong ruled over the weak and fuck you if you couldn’t keep up. From what you could tell people here had three choices: Beg and hope their tormenters took mercy on them, which was almost never likely. Die and just roll over to accept death because it was preferable to keep living in this shitty world. Or struggle and fight tooth and nail for what little you actually did have. And in that case you either won or kept it, or you died and lost it. You know which one you chose. “Number 663.” Things did change a little though when you had your first child. You never planned on ever having a family before, let alone one in a world like this one since it seemed more like a punishment than a blessing…but Jack always had a way of making you see the positive. You loved him for that. Another child followed and for a while it seemed like everything was going well. You had a loving family, a larger dwelling; you weren’t struggling to survive any more. You even had another baby on the way and you didn’t even mind it. Hell, you probably achieved quite a bit for a pair of former basement dwellers. You were starting almost feel “normal” or as normal as you could ever be or get in a place like this. And then just like everything in your life, it all eventually went to shit. “Number 664.” While the occasional wandering ogres were certainly dangerous, they tended to stick a little further north. Other than that dead ogre you saw the first time you came here, you fortunately never encountered one in person again. The freedom fighting elves gave grief to the government, but never really made raids on civilian settlements. Indeed they tended to stay hidden. The barbarian tribes however were always an ongoing problem in Rask, but you always figured you were far enough away from them and you knew there was at least an Empire Fort in the area they would attack first before moving deeper into more “civilized” territory. Of course the Empire has always had a hard time maintaining order in this place. You suppose that was one of the upsides of living here, you didn’t need to deal with the oppressive seemingly monolithic government that controls a vast amount of land here. But it was also a downside as you would soon experience one dreadful day and the fact it all happened in broad daylight does make it seem all the more horrible. A small group of seven barbarians from the Wendigo tribe suddenly attacked, possibly the most vicious of all the tribes in fact. They attacked without warning and so fast, that your two children were dead before you or Jack could even spur into action. While you and Jack had long been experienced in combat during your time here, you and he were no match for them or their numbers. Especially in your condition at the time. You sometimes wonder if a baby hadn’t burdened you, you would have been able to at least save Jack. “Number 665.” Before he tried to hold them off to give you time to run, you remember Jack’s last words to you; Go. Our child needs to survive. YOU need to survive. You almost didn’t want to. You almost wanted to meet death right there with him, but you think two things stopped you. One, your will to survive has always been stronger than your defeatism. And two, you loved Jack enough to honor his last request. You remember when you managed to get far enough away to the safety of a town; you broke down in tears and cried over him for at least a couple days. You still do sometimes. You miss him so much. Your eyes tear up a bit upon thinking about Jack and then you hear your number being called out. It’s time to do this. Maybe you could look after this child, but it would be a struggle. A struggle you just can’t do. Part of you feels like you’re going back to your “old ways” by taking the easy way out, but you haven’t come to this conclusion lightly. You stand up and make your way to the front of the long waiting room. A tired looking clerk behind a counter looks at you and the bundle you’re carrying. “Name?” she asks. “Suzy McCray.” You answer. “And I take it that this is the baby you wish to put into the care of the Empire?” “…Yes…” “Very well. Sign this, and you’ll receive your payment.” “I don’t want payment.” You say which causes a very confused look on the clerk’s face. “Don’t want payment? Well that’s a first. We got some people here all the time bringing in babies. Probably stealing them in fact, but at least it’s better than those dark elves do.” “Well I don’t want payment.” “Well I’m sorry, but that’s sort of a law. You have to take something.” “Can’t you just make sure that he’ll be given a good home?” “I can’t make that promise, I don’t even do that process! I’m just a damn underpaid government drone. If you’re so damn concerned about him, why the hell are you giving him away?” Just as you’re about to yell at the clerk, another woman walks over. She has long white hair and very dark skin. She’s very pretty. You wonder if this one of those svelk you’ve heard about. “Frieda, what’s got you all flustered and generally acting like a typical monkey as usual?” she asks. “Huh? What the hell are you doing here? You slumming or something? Shouldn’t you living the good life in the Emperor’s Palace like my high and mighty brother?” “Jealousy is a terrible thing Frieda especially when I’ve spoken to Jacob on more occasions than I’d care to and I can honestly say you have nothing to be jealous about… but then neither would he. However, for your information I’m here on official business.” “Hrm. Well good for you, now let me get back to my fucking job.” At this point you intervene. “Look can we please get back to me?” Just as the clerk is about to say something. The svelk woman speaks out again. “Frieda. You’re obviously burned out, why don’t you let me take over for awhile?” “You? Working a lowly job like this?” “Sure, I’m no stranger in performing tasks nobody likes to do.” “Fine by me. I’m going on a LONG break.” She says and storms off leaving you and the svelk woman to talk. She smiles at you in an attempt to be friendly, but right now you just want this to be over with and you’re starting to think this was a bad idea. “Don’t pay any attention to her, I’m sure you have a very good reason for giving your child to the care of the Empire.” The svelk says. “I don’t want to, you know.” You say. “I believe you. I don’t think any mother truly ever wants to give up their child, but if I may ask, why are you doing it?” “It’s just…(sniffle) I lost my husband and other children in a Wendigo raid and I barely have anything left. (sniffle) I can’t take care of him the way I want to. I mean maybe I could try, but I just don’t have the energy left in me to do it. I don’t have the drive and if I do a half assed job of it and something happens to him because I can’t do my fucking job, then I’m even shittier mother than I thought. I can’t take another loss in my life.” You say trying to keep it together. The svelk woman nods. “I see. I think I understand. So what is it that you were exactly arguing about before? I heard something about not wanting payment.” “I don’t, I’m not selling my baby for financial gain, I’ll be fine. I’m giving him to the Empire because I’m hoping there is an off chance that the fucking government will do a better job at raising him or finding someone to raise him than I can because I’m too emotionally drained to do it any more.” You say. “Well, I hate to destroy your hope, but many of the children put in the care of the Empire aren’t exactly that much better off. In fact in some cases they might be worse and as for getting someone to adopt, well it’s a possibility a good family will, but usually they’re just passed off to anyone.” “Great. So this has all been a waste of fucking time. Nice to know the Empire is fucking incompetent as well as being oppressive.” To your surprise the svelk woman laughs a little. “You speak your mind. I like that. Hmm. Well, tell you what I CAN put him in the special E Wing.” “What’s that?” “Oh just a place where they often put unwanted babies from higher born families. Bastard children spawned by lust that would create social embarrassments, that sort of thing. Typically these children are very well looked after and special care is gone to make sure they aren’t going to sweat shop owners or something equally hideous.” “And he would get a good home?” “Well maybe, I should inform you though that it’s still rare and if not adopted within a certain period of time the Empire still raises them directly. These children are typically raised to be officers and commanders in the military. Their training is severe, but the results create very well disciplined and skilled men and women…are you okay with your child possibly being given that sort of life?” You look down at your baby. He’s been very quiet throughout all this. Hasn’t cried once. Never been much of a crier really. It’s odd. You begin to think about how harsh this world is, and maybe it would be best if your baby got that sort of life. At least he would be better able to survive this world. Much better odds than you can provide. You begin to sniffle and cry. You nod. “Okay (sob) okay. Do it. It’s a better life than I can ever give him now. (sob)” “Very well. Let me have him.” You reluctantly pass your baby to the svelk woman who smiles as she holds him. “I’m usually not fond of the way human babies look, but I have to admit, this one is sort of cute. What’s his name?” “Name? Oh…yes. Well his name was the same as his father’s middle name.” you say and tell her your baby’s name. “Hrm. Strange name, but then I’ve always found human names a bit weird.” “Do I need to sign anything?” “Nah, I’ll take care of this myself and have two of the best workers here take him to the appointed location. Contrary to the horrible lies about my people, we svelk cherish the lives of infants. You don’t worry about this little one any longer, he’s truly in good hands now and will either get a good home or receive the very best training the Empire can provide. You have my word and I say that as one of the Emperor’s top advisors.” “Goodbye.” You say, tearfully waving at your baby one last time. The svelk woman holds your baby’s hand up and makes a waving motion with it. You can’t stay any longer and you leave the building as fast as you can. The streets of the capital are busy, but you still manage to find a secluded spot to release your anguish. You still don’t know if you made the right decision, but it’s done and now all you can do is hope. Eventually in time you manage to get over your loss and move on with your life. You’ve suffered much tragedy, but above all you’ve always been a survivor and you’ll survive this too. Jack was right about that. as years always do and eventually you grow old. Much of the political climate changes within your lifetime, but as a fairly mundane citizen who never makes waves and knows how to keep out of the way during times of strife you’re never ever in the middle of it. You spend your remaining years living day-to-day and occasionally brightening up you life by dwelling on happier times. When you finally die, it’s not an important death, as you were never considered an important person. However you and your decisions probably made more of an impact on this world than anyone would ever really know. For it was your little Francis that grew up and became… ETERNAL<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY You wake up and find yourself on a small bed in a gray concrete room. There isn’t much else in the room except a dresser and a lamp which is currently turned on. It almost feels like a cell except there is no door, just an entryway, which looks like it leads into a corridor. You sit up and find that you’re still fully clothed, so either Jack isn’t a serial killing rapist or he was enough of a gentleman to put your clothes back on exactly right after he was done and is now playing mind games with you. Your girl parts and ass don’t feel sore and you don’t have a bad taste in your mouth so you’re guessing that you weren’t violated in any way. (You hope) However the rest of your body certainly still aches from the kicks and physical abuse you took yesterday, but when you go to touch your head, you don’t feel any bandages like you were expecting. In fact, you aren’t even feeling any open wound that you’re sure that you probably had. The side of your face doesn’t feel to be scratched up either. Is Jack some sort of doctor? You check your phone which was still in your pocket to see if anyone tried to call you, but nobody has. You thought maybe Peter would have at least tried calling considering you had his car last. If you ever get back home, you can only imagine how pissed he’s going to be when he finds out what happened to it. You sit in the bed for a while just wondering what exactly is going on and what you should do next. Honestly, you’re drawing a blank. You had a plan, you tried to follow it and you thought you were succeeding and then it all went to shit yesterday. You’re starting wonder if you’re jinxed. While you could spend your whole time being introspective like you have so many times before, the fact remains that you don’t know where the hell you are and where your “white knight” is. Jack seems like an okay guy, but you really don’t know anything about him except that he’s helped you out quite a bit which would probably make the average person feel grateful, instead it makes you a bit suspicious and this prison like interior isn’t exactly helping. Still, you don’t seem like you’re being held captive either, so you take the opportunity to get up and leave your room. When you enter the corridor you see several other open entryways leading to more small rooms. Since the left part of the corridor looks like it ends at a solid wall, you go right. You peer into a few of these rooms as you pass by to find that they aren’t really furnished, but rather hold several boxes and containers. Some of them do contain furniture; none of it is arranged in a useable way. In general everything is stacked or positioned to resemble a warehouse more than anything else. Maybe you are in some sort of warehouse, because so far the color of every walls you’ve seen is gray and they’re concrete along with the floor and ceiling. Lights embedded in the ceiling provide illumination, but this whole place doesn’t seem like a normal house of any kind, which you assumed Jack lived in, you guess not though. You pass a set of stairs leading up, so you’re guessing you’re on the ground floor, the way you’re currently heading it looks like a large open room ahead. As you approach the large room, you start to hear noise. Sounds like it’s coming from one the rooms ahead and to your right causing you to cautiously approach. You peek around the corner and see Jack occupied and messing about with some sort of large radio system along with a few monitors set up. You hear garbled transmissions, but some of it you’re making out sounds military related, something about marshal law. “Well you don’t need to spy on me, you’re welcome to come in.” Jack says without immediately looking in your direction. Apparently you’re not as stealthy as you thought and Jack is very aware of his surroundings. “Didn’t mean to spy, just wasn’t sure who or what I’d be possibly bumping into after finding myself in a strange place.” You say standing in the entryway. “Understandable. So I trust you’re doing okay?” Jack asks while still messing about with his radio. “Yeah, I mean I still ache a bit, but I’m more or less fine. Hey you’re not medically trained are you? Because I thought I’d have some bandages or something what with getting smacked with a brick and glass shattering on the side on my head.” “Not professionally, but I used some medical gel on your wounds. Glad to see it worked well.” Jack says finally turning to look at you. “Worked well? I’m practically fully healed, is it magical or something?” you joke. “No, just highly advanced…um…well if you really need to know, I shouldn’t even have the stuff, but you can acquire a lot of stuff you shouldn’t over the deep web.” Jack says. “I see. So I take it, this is where you live? “Yeah, more or less now.” “Wait, so this is where your mom lived too?” “What? Oh no. When I lived with mom, it was a regular house in town. In fact after she died, I still lived there, but when shit started getting hectic in town, I decided I better move somewhere less vulnerable so here I am at this gray building I bought years ago online. As you might have already seen, I got tons of shit stacked in rooms, told you I was a big of a hoarder.” “Well it certainly is very gray, must cost a lot to upkeep it.” “Not really, place sort of takes care of itself. Just never made a permanent living arrangement out of this place because…well it’s a long story.” There’s a bit of a pause in the conversation since Jack just abruptly stops talking and starts twisting knobs and then eventually waves his hands at the radio altogether and the garbled transmissions stop altogether when he turns it off. “What are you trying to do?” you ask. “I’m trying to listen in on a military frequency. Normally I can get clear messages from Fort Timons near Security City, but I’m not having much luck. All I know is marshal law has been declared in major cities across the country. Well that and apparently Ground Zero is still offering their shelters at low low prices. Those ads are fucking everywhere.” Jack replies. “Marshall law…that sounds pretty serious.” You remark. “Yeah, but I can’t say I’m surprised with the way things have been going in the world lately. Anyway…so what are your plans?” Jack asks. “I dunno. I’ve been trying to figure that out myself. I’m not having much luck either.” “Well, considering how fucked up things are in town, you’re welcome to stay here. Got plenty of space, food and such.” It’s a tempting offer. Really tempting, mainly because you don’t have any idea what you’re going to go, but you exhale and try to gather your thoughts. “(Sigh) Look, I’m not ungrateful for probably saving my life yesterday. I didn’t mind speaking with you before all that shit went down in the comic shop. Hell, you’re even not bad looking and you’re obviously got your shit together enough that you own your own damn building. I’m also fairly certain you were telling the truth about not being a serial killer.” “But?” Jack says predicting your lead in. “But all of this…well my gut is telling me that something weird is going on with you. I don’t know what exactly, but I imagine it’s complicated. The funny thing is that it probably wouldn’t even necessarily bother me, but you sort of caught me at an unusual point in my life. While I don’t want to bore you with my life story, but I just recently went through an upsetting break up with my first and currently only boyfriend to date a couple days ago and I’m still trying to mentally deal with that along with all the other shit that’s gone on in my life.” Jack continues to listen as you go on. “You think YOU were a basement dweller? At least you seemed to be doing something productive, my whole life was just coasting by and living off of other people and the most recent one was my ex. I’m fairly certain he would have done anything to take care of me had I complied, but even basement dwellers have their limits I suppose and I just couldn’t make that step. All of which left me up shit’s creek without a boat, let along a paddle. I’m trying to make a real effort of being self-sufficient and I sort of feel like if I stayed here I’d just be falling back into my old routine of sponging off some guy.” “You wouldn’t exactly be sponging off me…” Jack starts to say before you interrupt. “Jack, I think you better stop right there, if you’re about to imply what I think you’re going to imply. I’m not a damn whore.” “What? No! I wasn’t going to suggest that! I just meant I have so much that it’s not like I’d mind if you stuck around. It’s obviously dangerous out there and I’d be quite the asshole if I just threw you out.” You just hang your head down at this remark. “Well that makes you better than my older sister, but it also makes this harder for me, because it would have been easier if you had been looking for some sort of cynical sex exchange like that.” “Wait…so you WANT me to treat you like a whore?” Jack asks confused. “No! Fuck. I just…shit…I dunno what the hell I want…” you say putting your head in your hands. At this point Jack tries to interpret your complete mess of explaining things. “Okay, I think I know what you’re getting at. You just got out of a relationship and you aren’t really in the mood for another guy to be sniffing around you right now. You also want to be by yourself and try to make it on your own without help since you’ve never been truly independent your whole life. Am I right so far?” Jack asks. “Yes.” You reply. “And while you aren’t exactly thinking the worst of me right now, you’re still wisely suspicious enough to wonder why the hell I helped you out if I didn’t want something. Obviously there must be something odd about me, for all you know I’ve been stalking you or something.” “Well, basically.” “Okay, good. Now just let me explain my side of things.” You lean again the side of the entryway before Jack goes into his own speech. “First, yes, I do think you’re attractive and from what I know of you, I WOULD like to get to know you a lot better. I thought maybe there was something there during our nice conversation at the comic shop, but I dunno…I sort of…well let’s just say I’m not exactly great at the whole asking someone out thing, so I lost my nerve and had to gather it again by leaving, and of course that’s when those guys showed up. Not to mention I wasn’t really planning on doing that anyway since I didn’t expect to see anyone other than Jake at the register. Which brings me to the second point, I helped you, for the same reason I helped Jake yesterday, it was the right thing to do. I just wasn’t so lucky with him as I was with you. I’m not saying I’m some hero, but I’ve always liked to believe I’m not a bad guy. So when I saw the opportunity to get you help, I did it. I assure you there was no ulterior motive.” At this point Jack fishes something out of his pocket. It’s keys and a wad of money in a roll. He tosses them to you and you catch them. “Do I want you to stay here because I like you? Yes, of course I would, but I can’t just keep you here, if you don’t want to be. You sound like you have very strong feelings about trying to make it on your own and being by yourself and I understand that. So since your car was trashed, I’m giving you mine. I’m not going to need it much longer…and no that doesn’t mean I’m going to commit suicide. I just won’t be needing it. As for the cash, well you’ll need it more than I will too. You take them both and go live your life and hopefully it will be a good one.” You’re pretty speechless. You’ve so rarely had anyone be this cool with you and this doesn’t seem to be a “nice guy” act. If it were, he would’ve been calling you a complete cunt the moment you told him you weren’t interested. “I dunno what to say except thanks.” You say “Don’t mention it. Come on I’ll walk you out.” Jack responds Jack and you leave the radio room and enter the large open room which has a lot of boxes stacked in it’s four corners. On one of the walls is a door, which Jack says, leads to the outside. “Car is parked right outside, and is in good working condition. Um, just to let you know though we’re several miles east outside of town. It will be quite the drive, but you should get back to town by nightfall. Remember, I want you to know you can come back here if it looks like the town is in just complete anarchy. I…I still worry about your safety. Anyway, just knock three times on the door and I’ll know it is you.” “I’ll certainly keep that in mind Jack.” “Okay, well…good luck Suzy.” Jack says opening the door, which lets in a blinding brightness. You look at Jack and then you suddenly hug him and then kiss him on the cheek. You figure it’s the least you can do. Jack wasn’t expecting it though; he returns the hug until you pull away. You and he don’t exchange any more words; you just turn around and leave as the door shuts behind you. You get in the car, and count up the money to find that Jack has given you a thousand dollars in hundreds. Not much in the long term, but it would at least sustain you awhile. You wonder if you should head back to town or just keep driving east and try to start over somewhere else. > You drive east You come to the conclusion that there is literally nothing for you back in your hometown. Given the state it’s in, it doesn’t seem like there is much possibility there either and you’d be better off just trying to make it on your own. This is very new territory for you just throwing complete caution to the wind like this, but you’re determined to turn over a new leaf. This is going to be a brand new Suzy and your new life starts right now. You start up the car and drive off. As you drive you keep trying to form various plans about what you’re going to do when you get to the next town. First thing to do will be to get a room somewhere… or maybe you should just sleep in the car. That would stretch your money out a lot more, but you can’t just do that can you? You’ll need to bathe every once in awhile! Whore baths in a public restroom perhaps? As you’re attempting to figure out how you’re going to go about your new life, you start to get a headache just realizing how much hard work this is going to be. You turn the radio on in an effort to keep your mind occupied on something else. “…remember our shelters are the best in the world. Your family’s survival is important to us, so don’t settle for imitations…” “Ground Zero ads. Of course.” You say. You try to find a station that doesn’t seem to be bought out by this company, but the only luck you have is a few doomsday preacher type stations. Since you’re not really in the mood for that either, you turn the radio off and return to silence. You continue to drive for some time. You notice you haven’t even seen another vehicle on the road, which is a little eerie, gets even more so when it starts to get dark. You haven’t seen any signs of civilization for quite some time, just rows and rows of trees on either side. You never realized just how rural of an area you’ve lived in before. Eventually the trees thin out a bit and you see a looming structure in the distance on your left. It’s a Grey Building. “What the hell? Did I drive in a circle?” you say to yourself. You can’t imagine that you did considering you’ve been pretty much driving in a straight path the entire time. You suppose it MIGHT be possible since your attention hasn’t exactly been completely focused since the drive itself has been so boring, but this seems pretty damn odd. Odd or not you’re back where you started and you stop your car near the Grey Building pretty frustrated at your situation. “Shit!” you exclaim and bang on the driver’s wheel. You have half a mind to just continue on and go back to town, but you sort of feel like that would be giving up when really this is just a minor set back and you’ve had much worse ones. Jack probably has a GPS, maps or something in that treasure trove of shit he collects and he’ll probably be more than willing to help you out. You just hope he doesn’t see this as a “sign” that you decided to stay after all. You park along side the Grey building, get out and make your way towards the door. Remembering that Jack told you to knock three times, you do so and the door opens up. Jack isn’t there at the door though; maybe he’s got it on an automated system. The other thing that seems strange is that it’s pitch black inside. You step just inside the entryway and still can’t see shit. Not even the dim moonlight from the outside is providing any minimal illumination within the doorway. “Hey Jack! It’s me Suzy! Why are all your lights …Ungh!” you start to call out before you get smashed in the head and fall to the concrete floor. “DIE INTERLOPER! THIS IS MY GREY BUILDING!” a horrible voice screams before you’re forcibly pulled deeper inside and the door slams shut leaving you in complete darkness. You try to get up to run, but a very strong force is keeping you down. You hear the sounds of a rusty chainsaw being started up followed by insane laughter. In your last moments before the chainsaw starts ripping your flesh, you realize that you’ve made a terrible mistake. You didn’t drive in a circle and this isn’t the GRAY Building. This is the GREY Building You don’t understand it and you never will, but it doesn’t matter, you’re dead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Considering you’d rather just sit on your ass and work the register than lift boxes anyway, there doesn’t seem to be much point in engaging in an argument that will lose you this job opportunity. Honestly you’re just lucky that Jake is willing to hire you and isn’t making advances on you (yet). Jake proceeds to show you how to work the register and the credit card machine. After a few trial runs and examples, you think you got it. The funny thing is, nobody has actually come into the comic shop yet. “See, not very difficult. So, you think you’re ready to officially take the responsibility of the register?” Jake asks. “Yeah, I guess, but is it always this empty?” you ask. “No, not usually. It’s about…what a little after noon now? Yesterday was slow as well, but I’m chalking it up to all the craziness going on in town, which I’m really hoping dies down soon. There is a group of regulars that should be arriving in few moments though. They usually just hang out here all fucking day, but they tend to buy a lot when they actually do decide to part with their money and not drive me up a fucking wall with their banter. However since you’re working the register, you’ll get to put up with them this time.” “Great, can’t wait.” You say and sit at the register unenthusiastically. Jake proceeds to tell you that if you need anything he’ll be in his office catching up on going over his financial books. He also warns you not to steal anything, which seems weird since if you were going to steal something, it’s not like you’d listen to his warning. Without many more words Jake disappears into his office and you sit at the register waiting for customers to come in. While you wait you start looking at the various items near the counter and start reading through some of the comics. As time passes you continue to hear the sounds of sirens and such in the distance. Through the windows you see a couple of police officers running in the direction where you saw those barricades. A little more time passes and a short man who looks to be in his mid thirties enters. He’s dressed in casual clothing and just nods at you when he sees you at the register. In an attempt to be a friendly, you smile and wave hi before he goes off to look at comics. Well either Jake was exaggerating about his customers being sex crazed assholes or this guy isn’t one of the “regulars” he was talking about. You watch him for a moment as he browses and takes various comics off the shelves. He looks like he’s really into comics with as many as he’s taking. Eventually he comes up to the counter with a stack of comic books. “Can I just sit these here for now? I’m not really done looking yet, but I don’t want to lug around a bunch of comics and possibly dropping them all over the place.” The man asks. “Oh yeah sure. I guess you really like comics huh?” you say. “Heh, I suppose I look a little obsessed. I don’t really come in here that much since normally I tend to buy stuff online, but this is one of those times where I don’t have the luxury of waiting for stuff to arrive in the mail. So I’m loading up now that I’m here. Never seen you here before though.” The man says. “I’m new. Just started today actually and you’re sort of my first customer. Nobody else has come in.” you reply. “Oh. Well, this is sort of an interesting day to start a new job given what’s been going on in town lately. I’m betting that’s why there hasn’t been anyone else in here today.” “Yeah, tell me about it. I wouldn’t have left the house if I had the choice.” “Yeah, I hear you, I don’t like going out too much myself, but I’ve been getting better about it lately.” “Same here and it still sucks, but bills aren’t going to pay themselves.” “I sort of got around that by being able to work at home. I used to sell and buy shit on the Internet a lot.” “What, like Ebay or something?” “Yeah something like that. Buy low, sell high, that sort of thing.” “I wish I could do something like that.” “You can, it’s not really difficult.” “Eh, I’m not really a wheeler and dealer type. Besides, if I had a job involving a computer, especially one involving self employment, I’d probably just goof off and never get any work accomplished.” “Well that’s the beauty of working at home. You can sort of be as lazy as you want!” The man says with slight grin. “Oh I don’t think you know exactly how lazy I can be.” You say returning the smile. “You can’t be that lazy, you’re working here.” “Well like I said, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be. (Sigh) Events however have conspired against me and here I am.” “Yeah, always sucks when things out of your control put you in a bad situation. For what it’s worth, sorry you’re in such a bind.” You didn’t expect sympathy for your minor “pity party” but you’ll definitely accept it. You usually aren’t one to hold long conversations with random strangers, but then it’s been a bit of an unusual week for you. “Thanks, so selling and buying shit on the Internet works for you huh? I suppose maybe I could do it. There’s certainly already enough crap around the house that surely someone would be interested in. Obviously with as many comics as you intend on buying you’re making a good living at it.” You say. “Well I probably would be if I wasn’t a bit of a hoarder and kept most of the shit I did buy. However, I made enough that I pulled my weight so my mom didn’t kick me out of the basement of the house. Yeah, I know I’m a walking stereotype, basement dweller in a comic shop. Big surprise right?” the man remarks. You don’t reply immediately, you just briefly think about how odd it is you’ve got so much in common with a complete stranger. “Oh, I dunno. I don’t tend to judge people.” You reply. “Well that’s a rare trait these days. Though I suppose I’m more of a hermit than a basement dweller nowadays anyway. My mother died a few years ago and I’m not even going to be living here anymore soon. Hence another reason why I’m loading up on books now.” “So wait you’re moving out of town?” you say a bit surprised. “Yeah…I guess you could say that. I mean under normal circumstances I wouldn’t bother, but it’s getting really bad out there and it’s only going to get worse.” “Worse? How do you know? You don’t think things will get back to normal in a few days?” The man starts like he’s about to say more, but stops. Then he stumbles over some words a bit before continuing. “Um…it’s just…well these things…you never can tell right? I guess I don’t really know. I think I’m just rambling at this point and not making any sense. I didn’t mean to talk your ear off. I guess I should get back to it and let you get back to doing your job.” The man says and then briskly walks to the back of the comic shop. You nearly tell him to come back to talk to clarify what he meant and that he wasn’t really bothering you, but then you think that would be a bit strange and also you don’t really know this guy. He’s probably a weirdo anyway; he just said he lived in his mom’s basement until she died after all. You don’t even know why you’re even still thinking about it or him. “Christ Suzy, you’re taking the break up harder than you thought. You’re starting to latch on to minor conversations with complete fucking strangers. Get a grip already.” You say to yourself. A sudden brick through one of the shop windows breaks up your introspective moment. You duck down behind the counter and then Jake comes out running out of his office. “What the fuck is going on out here?!” he exclaims. “I don’t know! Someone just threw a brick through…” Before you can complete that sentence you hear a bunch of laughter and the shop door opening up. You continue to stay hidden behind the counter. “Did you see that shit? Told ya I could land the brick right in the middle of the O on the window!” a young male voice exclaims. “Yeah, yeah, let’s just see what we got in here…” another remarks. “What the fuck do you little shits think you’re doing? You just broke my fucking window! I hope you fuckers got some money to pay for that RIGHT NOW or else I’m going to be kicking all of your asses THEN I’m going to your parents’ houses and kicking their asses for not aborting you.” Jake exclaims. “Oh fuck off Jake, with as much as you’ve ripped us off by overcharging, I’d say that more than covers the cost of your goddamn window. We’re going to be taking some free comics too.” You hear a voice shout back. “Look, I dunno what the fuck has compelled you social rejects even THINK you can get away with this, but if you don’t fucking get out of my shop right fucking now, there are going to be consequences you aren’t going to walk away from.” “Ohhh, so fucking scared Jake.” You hear one say who from the sound of the voice sounds like he’s getting closer. “HEY! Step back from the counter!” You hear someone hit the counter and then you look up to see a pimply teenager staring over at you. “Holy shit guys! Jake’s got a fucking bitch hiding over here! She looks hot too, no wonder he’s fucking pissed! She was probably blowing him before we came in!” he exclaims and then tries to grab your hair at which point you slap his hand away and stand up and away from the counter so you can’t be molested. It’s at this point you finally see the motley lot. Four teenage boys of all varying shapes and sizes. You don’t know who these guys are, but if they’re the “regulars” Jake mentioned, they’re certainly not acting like what you expected. “Goddamn Jake how the hell you manage to pull this off? She looks way too fucking hot for you. She a whore or something?” The tallest boy asks. “Hey, you know who she looks like? She looks like that cute zombie chick.” The fattest one says. “Nah, she looks more like that chick who controls all the dragons.” The pimply one remarks. “For fuck’s sake she’s blonde not a goddamn albino, she doesn’t look like either of them, the pair of you are idiots. She obviously looks like the blonde chick that fucks vampires.” The tallest one remarks. “Which one, Trent?” the fat one asks. “The one that’s mainly killing them too.” Trent says. “I dunno guys, I thought she looked like that chick that was a private investigator…” another one begins to say before Jake interrupts their temporary distraction of comparing you to various female nerd culture figures. “SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SHOP! I’M NOT WARNING YOU AGAIN!” Jake shouts. At which point Trent pulls a pistol out of his hoodie pocket. He doesn’t actually point it at Jake, but he’s definitely warning him by just showing it. Jake steps back a bit, but doesn’t lose his cool. You on the other hand are really worried, especially considering you got four hormone addled teenage guys staring at you. “And I’m telling YOU we’re not fucking leaving without getting our comics! Don’t you know what today is? It’s fucking free comic book day Jake!” “This is how you want to play this Trent?” Jake asks. Now Trent points the pistol at Jake and gives a look of less playfulness and more deadly seriousness. “I’m not fucking playing Jake, just like I wasn’t fucking playing with my mom when she told me to clean my room two days ago, just like I wasn’t playing with those assholes yesterday that used to give me wedgies back in sixth grade or that bitch who wouldn’t go out with me even though I did a whole bunch of nice shit for her. Things are changing around this town and if you ain’t changing with it, you’re gonna get rolled over.” Trent looks over at his fellows and waves as if he’s telling them to take whatever they want. He continues to point the gun at Jake though he keeps an eye on you as well. While you’re a little busy worrying about Trent and the rest, you realize you haven’t seen that guy you were talking to before. You can’t imagine he managed to slip out without anyone noticing. He might be hiding, but if he is, he’s doing a really good job, because with the way Trent’s pals are going through the store, it seems like they would have stumbled upon him by now. While they do that, Trent gets closer to Jake still holding the gun to him. “So what is the story with the blonde bitch anyway Jake? I know she can’t be your girlfriend. A fat old loser like you wouldn’t have one.” Trent sneers, but Jake is still keeping composure. “I hired her to work the register today.” Jake remarks. “Hm. I’d rather see her mouth work my dick.” Trent says looking you up and down. Jake starts laughing. “What’s so fucking funny?” “YOU! You’re fucking funny Trent. You’re calling me a loser and apparently you can’t even GET a woman without holding her at gunpoint. Pfft. I don’t give a shit what little emo angsty shooting spree trip you’re on, but I’m not playing. I still remember when you were in here as a little kid and your ugly ass mama beat the hell out of you for shitting your pants. How you cried and cried.” Jake chuckles. Trent of course is not amused and points the gun closer to Jake. “Shut the fuck up fat ass!” he exclaims. “Make me lanky bitch!” Jake says and suddenly grabs Trent’s hand now that it’s close enough. The pair of them struggle with the weapon and Trent begins calling for his fellows to help. While you’re certainly close enough to help Jake before Trent’s buddies get to him, you see the front door and wonder if you shouldn’t just jump over the counter and get the hell out of here. > You help Jake Even if you made a dash for the door, you don’t think you’d make it before Trent’s friends would reach you, better that you help Jake. You rush over to Jake and also grab Trent’s hand that is still clutching the pistol. Jake and Trent are also hitting each other, though Jake can’t really get a good hit in due to the counter being in the way and Trent being tall and having a long reach. Trent maintains a vice like grip on the pistol. “Hey you motherfuckers come help me! Fat ass and this bitch are trying to get the gun!” Trent exclaims. Jake seeing that you have a grip on Trent’s pistol hand, Jake releases one of his hands to try to pull Trent forward over the counter. He succeeds easily and Trent is half way over the counter, though two of his buddies manage to grab ahold of his legs and waist. Meanwhile Trent’s third friend has jumped over the counter and grabbed on to you. It’s mister pimple and he’s more like groping you rather than just trying to pull you off of his buddy. In your attempt to get the little perv off of you end up letting go of Trent’s pistol hand and while Jake still has a partial grip on it and is currently punching Trent in the face with his other fist, Trent manages to at last get his finger back around the trigger and starts shooting. Of course he’s firing wildly due to getting punched in the face and still not having complete control over his gun, but unfortunately you’re close enough and in the direction he happens to pull the trigger. You catch two in the chest and his buddy groping you gets one in the throat. The pair of you fall to the floor, him gurgling and spiting up blood and you struggling to breathe and also coughing up blood. You die in a bloody heap on top of some acne ridden virgin that still manages to be clutching your right tit even in death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>TUESDAY Your alarm goes off and you groggily wake up. Way earlier than you’re used to actually. It’s morning and you haven’t been up this early in a long time. You’re surprised you didn’t just sleep through the alarm considering how emotionally drained you were yesterday. Even now, you still feel tired. You’re also still pretty damn depressed. Depression combined with your type of ingrained apathy would normally make for a really bad combination of motivation, but against all odds, you actually get up out of bed to go wash up. You spend an extra long time in the shower trying to motivate yourself for the first phase of your goals today which is heading over to Jake’s comic shop and getting a job. Eventually you finish up and head back to your room where you start to get dressed, thinking about one of your other possible goals which is finding a new place to live because if this comic shop thing doesn’t work out, you doubt if you’re going to find anything else you’d be willing to do before the week is over. Always one to seek the way of least resistance, you reluctantly call your sister Donna since she did say you could live with her and Julie. You didn’t really want to go live with her and Julie though because you know it’s going to be party central non-stop, but you don’t have many other options. You ring up Donna several times and get no answer. You ring up Julie and also get no answer. They’re probably both passed out from whatever they were doing the night before. You give up attempting to contact them today, deciding that you’ll just show up on their doorstep with all your shit if you don’t get this job. It’s not much of a plan, but you do feel slightly better believing you have a safety net. Well you like to THINK you have a safety net anyway. With that fear partially quelled, you absent-mindedly check to see if Bobby called…then you stop… “Christ, that was stupid. Get your head straight Suzy…” you say to yourself, starting to feel bad again. You then remind yourself that you’ll have to break that habit. You nearly delete his number entirely, but you can’t quite bring yourself to do it just yet. Pushing through it all, you now move on to your next step of trying to convince your brother Peter to let you borrow his car so you drive over to the comic shop. You head upstairs and bang on the door to the garage. “Hey Peter, open up I need a favor!” you shout and after a few seconds the door opens up. “What the fuck Suzy? Why the hell are you banging on my door like you’re the police?” Peter exclaims peeking his head out the door. He’s probably naked. “Yeah, sorry to bother you with whatever currently doing at the moment, but I need to borrow your car. I’m trying to get a job.” You say. “A job? I thought you were too much of a prude to be a stripper.” “Ha ha, very funny. I’m not going to be a stripper, I’m going to try to get a job at a Jake’s comic shop.” You reply. “A comic shop? Doing what? Getting all the virgin nerds excited?” “I’m going to be moving boxes or working a register…look I don’t fucking know exactly, I haven’t gotten the job yet. I just know I NEED to get this fucking job or else Kelly’s gonna throw me out on my ass!” you reply getting increasingly exasperated. “Alright, fine. Don’t fucking bite my goddamn head off because you got problems. I’ve got problems of my own. (Sigh) Wait a minute.” Peter closes the door and then a few seconds later opens it up and then tosses some keys at you. “Here. Don’t fuck it up, and I fully expect you to put gas in it.” He says and then slams the door shut. Well that was easier than you expected, but then he probably just wanted you out of the way for whatever client he has coming over. With that out of the way, you get in Peter’s car and pull out of the driveway. A few minutes of driving to your destination and you now learn first hand what Bobby was talking about yesterday. The roads are a mess and the town is in fucking chaos. There are cops everywhere, as well as ambulances and fire trucks racing to their various destinations too. You’re also seeing small groups of people rioting. It’s like the whole town has lost its damn mind and you nearly get into an accident more than a few times. Fortunately Jake’s comic shop isn’t too far away, but given the town’s situation you’re hoping that everything there isn’t going to be as bad as what you’ve been seeing so far. Eventually you do get to the shop and so far the place doesn’t look too bad, though given that you see a police barricade a few blocks up the street, you wonder if that could all change. Pulling into the parking lot, you exit the car and enter the building. As soon as you walk in, you briefly scan the shop and find it completely empty save for a bearded middle-aged man with a ponytail at a counter staring at you. He couldn’t be more of a stereotype of a “comic book guy.” “Well…hello. You lost or something? The beauty salon is down the street…though I believe there was a shooting or something there earlier.” He says. “Um, no. I’m here about the job. Are you Jake?” you ask. “That’s me. Now what job are you talking about exactly?” Jake asks while looking at you up and down. The guy is already probably thinking several dirty thoughts about you and at this point you’re really hoping this guy doesn’t turn the whole job thing into some stupid line about giving him a blowjob. “The job openings I found on the internet for this place. It said you needed someone to move boxes or work the register.” You say. “Oh yeah, I’m not even sure why I posted that. In this current economy I can barely afford to hire one employee and lately I’m wondering if I can even do that.” Jake says. “Shit, does this mean you’re not hiring?” “Well…considering you’re easy on the eyes, I’m not going to say I’m NOT hiring. Besides you’re the only one that’s even applied so far. You’d think with all the fanboy nerds that practically live at this place one of them would’ve offered to fucking help me out. (Sigh) Whatever, you got your resume?” “Resume?” you ask. “Yeah, when people tend to apply for jobs they usually have one. I mean not that any of the tasks here are brain surgery, but it’s nice to have some basic information.” Jake says. “Oh. Well I don’t have one.” You reply. “Seriously? You came in here for a job without a resume?” “I didn’t think I’d need one.” “You didn’t…alright can you give me any references then?” “Um, no.” “You can’t or you won’t?” “I can’t because I don’t have any.” “Jesus Christ…do you have ANY job experience whatsoever?” “No.” “Do you even want a fucking job here?” Jake asks getting exasperated. “Not really, but I want to run around half naked swinging on a pole getting ogled, slobbered over and groped by horny guys for a living even less, so this place is currently my only option for my desperate situation.” You say. Jake laughs at your comment. “Well at least your honest, but if you think you’re not going to get ogled and slobbered over by guys here, you’re sadly mistaken. You do realize this is a comic shop right?” “Oh come on, there has to be female customers that come in here.” You say. “Sure, but they don’t look like you and you’ll probably get a couple of them awkwardly hitting on you as well. On the bright side, none of the nerds here are probably going to try to grope you. They’ll be far too shy to try that. No pole swinging either, but feel free to run around half naked. I guarantee something like that would really help out business.” Jake says with a smirk. “Yeah, not happening.” You reply. “Didn’t think I’d be that lucky. Well despite your total lack of skill, I suppose I’ll hire you, I do have to ask one thing first though…” And here it comes; he’s going to ask you to do something sexual and you’ll be heading out the door… “Do you even read comics?” Well that was unexpected. “Well, I used to when I was little, but my older sister Kelly just kept taking them from me and either hitting me with them or tearing them up, so I didn’t see the point anymore.” You reply. “Jeez, that’s not fucking right. You should’ve kicked her ass.” Jake says. “Yeah well that wasn’t possible, she’s ten times bigger than me. In fact that’s why I applied to this job, she’s threatening to kick me out of the house.” You say. “Hmm, sounds like a similar situation that I had with my last assistant. His mom was threatening to kick him out of the house and he begged me to hire him. He was a pathetic little worm addicted to all that anime shit. Really he was a lousy helper, but given that the one I had before him just died in my bathroom, I figured I’d give the fat little anime addict a shot.” “Wait someone died in the bathroom here?” you ask. “Yeah my retarded assistant strangled himself in my bathroom while jacking off. Spent the damn day cleaning the bathroom because of it.” “Uh, the other assistant didn’t die in the bathroom too did he?” “Nah, he ended up marrying his crazy cousin and lives in the trailer park outside of town I think. Dunno what he does now since he never comes in anymore which is a shame since the pervert used to spend a fortune in this place.” “That’s…interesting. So about the job.” You say steering the conversation back on track. “Yeah, about the job. I’m guessing you’ll want to be working the register…what is your name anyway blondie?” “Suzy, and why are you assuming I want to be working the register?” “Because I doubt a little thing like you really wants to be lugging boxes around, I mean unless you’re trying to tell me you can’t do basic math.” “Of course I know how to do basic fucking math!” you snap. “Okay, sheesh. Calm down I didn’t mean to imply anything. So you’re working the register…” Jake has still already made the decision for you about what job you’re going to be doing and while lugging boxes around really doesn’t appeal to you, you’re still a little insulted that the option has just been taken away from you. Besides the sexist implications that you aren’t strong enough to do the other job because you’re female, you get the strong impression that Jake also just wants you at the register so you’ll be more visible to all the horny virgin nerds that come in this place. And the more you’re thinking about the fact that you’ll have to interact with the public in general if you’re working the register you’re finding it about as appealing as lifting a bunch of heavy boxes around. Then again if you antagonize Jake over this, he might just throw you out of the shop and then you’ll have no job. > You argue about your job You’re sick of everyone trying to control your life. You weren’t putting up with it with Bobby, and you’re sure as hell not going to put up with it with Jake. “Are you just assuming I can’t carry the boxes around because I’m a woman?” you ask. “What? No, that’s not it…” Jake starts to say before you interrupt. “You just said a little thing like me doesn’t want to lug boxes around like I’m some helpless damsel.” “Look, as a businessman it’s my job to match up potential employees with what they’re probably going to be best at. The fact is you ARE on the smaller side, not to mention you’ve just told me you’ve never done a hard day’s work in your life. So yeah, I don’t think you’re strong enough to do the job and not bitch about it or even get that much work done. I’d rather have you out here working the register.” “You just want me out here as eye candy for the customers.” You reply. “Jesus fucking Christ, I didn’t realize I was hiring a FemiNazi. Are you telling me you want to move boxes?” Jake says in exasperation. “I’m not a goddamn FemiNazi and no I don’t want particularly want to move boxes, but my point is you just took the damn choice out of my hands and made a stupid assumption that I couldn’t do the job due to your own narrow-mindedness.” Jack exhales again and rubs his face. “Are you kidding fucking me? You’re arguing about a job you don’t even want? In fact, you don’t even want THIS job! You know how many employers would’ve thrown you out with that sort of shitty work ethic and you haven’t even started yet! I’m fucking helping YOU out by hiring you in the first place with absolutely no skills or experience and you’re giving me shit already! It’s not like I’m grabbing your ass and telling you to suck my dick! I’m trying to be a nice guy here.” “Given with how you’re speaking to me, you’re not really all that fucking nice.” You respond. “Alright, I’ve had it. Get the fuck out of my shop. You probably think because you’re pretty you can just get what you want well not this time bitch. I got enough shit to deal with, get the fuck out! Get out! Get out! Get out!” Jake yells and points at the door. “FUCKING ASSHOLE!” you shout as loud as you can and storm out the shop. Well that could’ve went better. As you walk to your car, several nerd types are just now approaching the store. While they’re probably the sort that would’ve been staring at you all day if you’d been working at the shop, now they’re actively avoiding you since you’re mumbling and swearing to yourself like a crazy person. Your swearing continues when you’re actually in the car. You bang on the steering wheel several times in frustration. “I hate my fucking life!” you cry out and begin to sob. Life just isn’t fair Suzy and lately for you it’s only been getting harder. All you wanted to do is hang out in your basement, hiding out from the rest of the world. Now your forced to deal with all this shit that you’re just no good at and when you do try to assert yourself, you fail at that too. If you were fighting depression before, you’re currently getting your ass kicked by it. It’s a good thing you aren’t suicidal, but the thought is starting to cross your mind. After taking a moment to pull yourself together, you think about what you need to do next. “Okay…I need to go back home. Need to pack up all the most important shit I have and head over to Julie’s house.” You say to yourself. With this new goal in mind, you pull out of the comic shop parking lot and intend on making your way back home. You don’t get a couple blocks before you soon discover the way you came is barricaded due to an accident or something. There are ambulances and police cars blocking the way and you realize you’re going to have to go a different direction. You go down some side streets and find out that they currently aren’t much better and in one instance actually worse as a bunch of people have made a makeshift barricade with overturned cars and some of them are shooting at each other. You get the hell out of the area as fast as you can before someone starts shooting at you. After having to drive around avoiding barricades, downed power lines, overturned vehicles and general chaos, you begin to get even more frustrated since it’s starting to look like you can’t even get home. Or at least not by driving there and given the shit that’s going on, you’ll be damned if you’re going to get out of your vehicle to walk home. “Goddamn it, I just want to get the fuck home! Fuck it, I’m just going to go to Julie’s now…” you shout to yourself. It’s a further drive, but considering Julie lives in a better area, you’re hoping that maybe things won’t be as bad driving in that direction. You soon find out that isn’t the case as you’re desperately trying to avoid getting into an accident every five minutes. “Seriously what the hell is going on with this town? Everyone is acting like an asshole even more than usual.” You say and you’re starting to wonder if there’s something in the water. Turning on the radio doesn’t help, since you’re not getting much on it save for those annoying Ground Zero ads. “Come on, there’s gotta be something about…SHIT!” you say when look up from the radio and are just in time to see a bus turning left and about to hit you. You swerve immediately to avoid being hit, but unfortunately you slam the car into another speeding car, which crashes into your passenger side at full force. You are knocked around as your car goes spinning across the street. It all happens so fast you don’t even have time to panic or feel the fear of possibly dying right now. A large black truck slams on its breaks in an attempt to not hit you, which it succeeds in doing, only for your car to be stopped by lamppost instead. Thanks to airbags never working correctly when they should, you hit your head on the steering wheel hard and while you don’t quite knock yourself out you definitely scramble your brains a bit and you’re feeling pretty dazed. While you’re still recovering, you suddenly hear knocking on your window and a voice. “Hey, miss. Miss? You alright?” You slowly look out your window and see a woman wearing glasses and dressed in business attire staring back at you. Well actually you’re sort of seeing two of her and the image is still a little blurry, but that’s the size of it. You unhook your seat belt and get out of the car wincing in a bit of pain as you do so. The businesswoman helps you from falling since you’re still wobbly. “You’re lucky to be alive, I’ve seen a shitload of crashes like yours since I’ve been driving through town today. I only just managed to put on my breaks when I saw your car spinning out of control like that.” she remarks. You don’t really answer her; you just turn to look at the car, which is totaled. Besides part of the front being wrapped around a now leaning lamppost, the passenger side is trashed and you certainly aren’t going to be driving anywhere soon due to the front wheel area being caved in and the axel broken. You just look at the wreckage of the car silently and then start to giggle at the situation. Soon the giggling becomes full blown laughter and the woman that helped you out of the car gives you a strange look. “Are you alright?” she asks again. “Oh I’m just peachy! This has been a wonderful day!” you say laughing. “Do you know your name and where you’re at?” “Yeah, my name is mud and I’m in a world of shit.” You say still laughing. “Um, well you seem to be having a bit of difficulty balancing and you’ve got a nasty bruise on your forehead. You might have a concussion and given your laughter you might even be in some state of shock. I think it would be best if you had some medical attention.” You look at the woman that’s trying to help you and begin to stop laughing quite as hard and your mind starts heading back to earth again. Your head and body remind you of the pain you’re actually still in. “Yeah…yeah…maybe. Shit, my head does hurt… I guess…can you drive me to the hospital?” you ask. “The hospital? Yeah, that place is sort of fucked right now. Even if we could get to it in this mess of chaos, the place has been overflowing with patients and you might be waiting a long time, if they get to you at all. I’m not sticking around in this town any longer than I need to. However, my brother is a doctor with his own private practice just outside town; he can probably check you out for free. It won’t be any problem since I’m going to him right now.” The woman says. Well it’s either head somewhere with a complete stranger or try to make it to the hospital (or wherever) in your current condition. > You take the woman up on her offer Considering how fucked things are in town and your woozy condition, you probably wouldn’t be safe walking the streets right now. This woman also seems okay; she’s actually being more helpful than most would. Most would’ve just drove off, let alone offer to give you medical attention. “Alright, let’s go.” You say and the woman nods and helps you head towards her black truck. You around and see your accident isn’t even being paid much attention to. Other vehicles are merely driving by and nearby onlookers lose interest. You look over at the other vehicle on the far end of the street that slammed into you. The front end of that one is trashed and the driver has gone half way through the windshield. He’s a bloody mess and isn’t moving. “You think that other driver is dead?” you ask. “Dunno, I didn’t check on him. I just checked you first since you were closer to my vehicle. Just going by his appearance and the fact he hasn’t moved I’d say it isn’t good. Can’t save everyone though. Come on, let’s just get off the street and out of this town.” She says. The woman helps you into her truck and then gets into the driver side, before you know it; she’s started it up and driving off. The interior of the truck is pretty nice. Comfy seats and everything. The dashboard looks like something out of a science fiction movie. Must be a really new model. “You doing okay over there? You don’t feel like you’re going to pass out do you?” the woman asks. “No, not really. Still just sore mainly.” You respond. “That’s good. Maybe you’re okay for the most part, but it doesn’t hurt for you to get checked out. My name’s Lilith by the way.” “My name’s Suzy.” You say. “Didn’t think your name was actually mud like you said back there. Still, sort of a strange reaction you had laughing about your car crash.” Lilith says. “Yeah, well I’ve just been having a really bad day and that accident just sort of topped it, so I guess I just laughed instead of crying like I have been doing for the past couple days.” “Hmm, you been having a lot mood swings lately?” Lilith asks. “I don’t usually have mood swings at all, but like I said, there have been some major events going down in what was my previously calm life that have really fucked with my stability. I’m getting thrown out of my house, my boyfriend broke up with me, I can’t get a job, I just trashed my brother’s car and I have no idea what my future prospects are going to be. Things can’t get much worse.” “Oh they can always get worse, but yeah if all that shit has happened to you, then I guess your laughing at the car crash situation is a little understandable. Self defense mechanism and all.” Lilith’s inquisitive nature causes you to be a little inquisitive too. “You a psychiatrist or something like that?” you ask. “Eh, something like that. I observe a lot of human behavior for the company I work for. Usually other employees, but lately it’s mostly been non-employees in relation to the company.” Lilith says. “You wouldn’t have any job opening at this company for unskilled labor would you? A cleaning woman perhaps?” you ask. “Heh, well I’m not exactly involved in the hiring process, but Ground Zero is a big company and we pretty much have a lot of openings for all kinds of positions. I’m sure I could find something for you.” Lilith says. There’s a pause as you aren’t sure what you just heard. “Wait a minute. Did you just say you work for Ground Zero? That company that’s been putting out all those annoying ads non-stop for the past few weeks?” you ask. “Guilty as charged. Trust me, I know how annoying those ads are all over the place, but I’m not involved that department either.” Lilith remarks. “I didn’t even know you guys even had a headquarters here in a small town like this one.” “It’s more of a small branch office really and it’s so non-descript most don’t even know it’s there anyway. We do have a bigger place in Security City. Sometimes I go all the way out there to do my job too, but since I live just south of town it’s a pretty long drive as you might expect. In those cases I usually just sleep at a hotel room paid for by the company until my work there is done.” “I thought you said your brother lived south of town.” “He does. We live together. It’s a large house that’s been in the family awhile and we did grow up there so we never wanted to get rid of it and we just decided to keep living there. Might sound a bit child like, but why move when you don’t really need too?” “Hey you don’t need to tell me. I wish I didn’t have to move from my home. So does your brother work for Ground Zero too?” you ask. “No. I wish he did since his talents would really be useful to us, but Leslie’s really not a fan of the corporate lifestyle despite the fact that I keep telling him he wouldn’t even be working in a position that requires dress codes and such. Leslie’s also always been a bit of an independent thinker too. He could’ve easily been a doctor working at a hospital pulling down lots of money, but he prefers his humble private practice. Who am I to tell him to do something that doesn’t make him happy?” “Well you certainly sound like a more understanding sister than my own who is kicking me out of the house.” You respond. “See, that’s not right. Family should stick together. Well at least that’s what I was always taught. Even when you don’t agree with them, you should at least help them out, not leave them twisting. I’m really sorry to hear that your sister is doing that to you.” Lilith says. “Thanks for your sympathy, but she’s always hated me and I imagine my brother will too now that I’ve wrecked his car, though to be honest he didn’t really care that much about me either. I’m sort of a black sheep.” You say. “Mm. Interesting. My brother and I are sort of black sheep as well, since we’re not religious like the rest of the family, but like I said, it hasn’t completely ruined our generally good relationship with most of them. To be honest though my brother’s personality is more likely to do that than our lack of religious beliefs.” Lilith laughs. You aren’t quite sure what to think right now driving with an employee of Ground Zero. Certainly was a pretty unexpected twist of events. It’s even more surprising that she’s seemingly pretty nice since you’ve always had the idea that someone working for GZ would be on the cold and uncaring side. You’re just hoping that after her brother checks you out, she’ll help you out on the job front somehow. Whatever you’d be doing, it probably would pay more than a cashier at a comic shop. You and Lilith are silent for a bit while she tries to concentrate on getting out of town. Eventually after several near misses the pair of you are finally out of there. “Shit, I thought we were going into another accident a couple times.” You remark. “Yeah, it’s been pretty crazy in town lately. Should be relatively smooth sailing from here though.” Lilith says. “How far do you live?” “Oh, not that far. We’ll be coming up to it soon enough.” Lilith says. “Your brother must really be a good doctor to have patients coming all the way out here to see him. Is it mostly a steady supply of the richer folks making the journey?” “Not as many as you might think. Honestly, Leslie gets more people that don’t have health insurance or are otherwise on the poorer side really. People who don’t have anyone to help them. As to how folks get to the place, well my brother’s got a couple assistants who drive people to him and they more or less provide this service for cheap. Occasionally my brother will drive people back to his clinic himself. Like I said, he could’ve been pulling down a lot of money, but he prefers the more personal touch of private practice.” “Well, he certainly sounds like a humanitarian.” You say. “Oh he is. He is. More than you know.” About a half hour passes and you see one of those old colonial houses in the distance. It’s very isolated as there isn’t another house in sight and you haven’t seen another one since you left town. “Is that your home?” you ask. “Yep, that’s it.” Lilith responds. “Pretty big. Looks very old.” “Oh it is on both accounts. I mean of course inside has all the modern luxuries, but I wanted the outside to still have that old charm.” “Pretty isolated out here.” “Yeah. It has its advantages though. Lilith soon turns and pulls into the house’s extended driveway and stops the vehicle. “Well we’re here, you okay to get out of the car by yourself?” Lilith asks. “Yeah. I actually don’t even ache as much now and I’m not dizzy at all. I’m wondering if I’ve just wasted your time.” You say. “Nonsense, this hasn’t been a waste of time at all. I actually enjoyed our conversation on the way here. I don’t really talk to many people outside of work and my brother.” You get out of the truck and take a look at the house. It’s even more impressive now that you’re in front of it. A lot of care has obviously gone into its upkeep. You notice another car in the driveway that looks a lot less fancy than Lilith’s truck. Must be her brother’s vehicle. Lilith is still in the truck fumbling around with something in her purse as you continue to take in the sights. Eventually she gets out though. “Okay, sorry about that. I got so much shit in this bag I sometimes have to recheck to make sure I got everything.” Lilith says clutching some keys and her large bag. “Sure, no problem.” “Let’s go around the back. It’s quicker to get to Leslie’s office that way. Just follow that path.” You walk on the stone path that leads around the back of the house and Leslie follows closely behind. Along the way see a few rows of well-tended blue and purple flowers on both sides of the pathway. “Aren’t they lovely?” Lilith remarks. “They certainly are colorful. I’m not too familiar with flowers though.” You say. “They’re called Morning Glorys. My brother though keeps calling them Morningstars. I think he only does that because that’s our last name and he can’t be bothered to remember a new name with morning in it.” Lilith chuckles. You stop walking. “Did you just say your last name was Morningstar?” you ask. “Yes, why?” Lilith says. “My boyfriend’s last name was Morningstar.” You say. “Is that right? Wow, what are the odds?” You suddenly feel very uneasy. You slowly start to turn around and before you can react, Lilith grabs your arm and stabs it with a needle. She injects you with something before you can even pull away. Whatever it was is taking effect almost immediately and you’re already beginning to lose your balance. “Careful, careful. Don’t fall on the flowers now.” Lilith says. You can’t even speak; you just look at Lilith in shock as you fall on the pavement struggling to remain conscious. Lilith crouches down and stares at you, as your eyes start to close. “…now I know who you are. Bobby mentioned you to me a couple times recently when he was trying to convince us to go live in his compound. Never figured you’d be the same Suzy. (Sigh) Too bad you told me you two broke up though…guess that explains why you’re not at the compound with him.” You grab at Lilith, but she easily pulls away from your weak grasp. She just continues to look on at you as a scientist might look at a test subject. “…still…I suppose this might make things a little more complicated. Oh well, I guess this will just make things a little more interesting too. Get some rest Suzy, we’re going to have a big day tomorrow.” With those last words, you completely pass out. > Next day… WEDNESDAY You wake up and remembering everything that happened just before you passed out, you attempt to sit up immediately, unfortunately you can’t due to being restrained. Your legs, your arms and even your body are all strapped down on a gurney. You can’t cry out either as you have a ball gag on your mouth. You can make loud “Mmhghm!” sounds but that’s about it. Your clothing has also changed. While you’re not naked, you’re in one of those hospital gowns. You don’t feel sore or anything, so you can only hope you weren’t raped during the time someone was changing your clothes. The fear of what’s going to happen to you is overwhelming. A quick glance around from you position shows that you’re in a plain white room with no windows. There is a light above and a chair and door to your right, but to your left gives you cause for more terror as you see a table full of surgical instruments. A lot of them don’t even look like proper surgical instruments so much as they look like torture devices. There isn’t much you can do except wait and attempt to stop crying though you fail in that endeavor. You just lie there thinking about how you said yesterday that things couldn’t get any worse…and then they did. You think about what you could’ve done differently to have made your life better and most importantly avoid the situation you’re in now. You then think about how at some point, either Lilith, her brother or both are going to come in and start cutting you up and torturing you to death. You’re completely helpless and you wish that someone would just come in and save you from all this. The door suddenly opens and you turn your head hoping that somehow your magical thinking worked, but you only see Lilith walking in with a notebook in hand. “Figured you should be up by now. Sorry to keep you knocked out for so long, but I’m sure you can see it was completely necessary. Couldn’t have you running away or anything.” You turn away from Lilith who then gets closer and stares at your face a moment. “Hmm, you’ve been crying. Natural response I suppose given your situation. Good. (Sigh) I told my brother not to put those in here.” Lilith says taking notice of the surgical instruments and shaking her head. “He probably thought it would be funny to have you even more terrified out of your mind than you already would be. I love Leslie with all my heart, but he really can be an inconsiderate asshole sometimes. Well most of the time really, anyway the main thing is don’t pay any attention to those tools over there. That’s not what I brought you in for.” Lilith puts her notebook on the table with the tools and addresses you again. “Now. I’m going to release your ball gag since I’m sure it’s uncomfortable. However when I do, I must ask you NOT to scream or anything like that. First of all it won’t do any good. Second, it’s terribly annoying. If we’re going to have a positive relationship Suzy, it’s absolutely necessary that you comply with my instructions. Do you understand?” You don’t really have much in the way of choices and resisting her with no way of actually doing anything would probably just result in something bad. You nod your head compliantly and Lilith takes off your ball gag. “Are you going to kill me?” you ask. “Ah the predictable question first. Well, we’re going to get to that and several other questions you might have, but we’re going to be doing this my way. So while I know you’re very nervous and scared, you’re going to just have to wait a while before they get answered. Do you understand?” Once again you nod silently. “Good. Very compliant. We’re getting off on the right foot Suzy. Now then let’s get to some of the more minor concerns you might have had running through your mind while you were laying here.” Lilith pulls the chair over to the table and after moving some of the tools out of the way she sits down, opens up her notebook and begins writing something in it while addressing you. “I want to first alleviate any concerns you might have had about being sexually molested while you were unconscious. I assure you I undressed and dressed you myself. And since I’m not a lesbian you were completely unharmed as far as that goes. I can see one of the obvious reasons that would cause Bobby to be enamored with you though. You’re a very pretty girl with a nice body and it’s obvious just by speaking with him he still loves you despite your break up.” “…you…you spoke with Bobby?” you ask. “Oh yes. Called him up as soon as I got you in the house. Took awhile to reach him, but eventually I did and I proceeded to have a very long conversation with him. I wanted to know more about you and only Bobby could provide those answers what with you being unconscious and all. He told me about how you met, your general personality, what you liked to do, and all of that stuff. When I asked what exactly caused the break up, he seemed to stumble over his words a bit. He claimed that he realized he couldn’t abandon the silly family traditions, but it seemed like there was more to it than that because he kept insisting it was his fault and not yours. As if that was going to change what is going to be going on over here. You want to shed a little light on it Suzy? Please be honest.” “I…I (sniffle) didn’t want to get married to him. I didn’t want to live under the same roof as Diana since she was his ex and she hates me. I suppose…I also wasn’t fond of the idea of having a bunch of babies like he wanted either. Our argument sort of spiraled from there.” You answer. “Hm, interesting. So you wouldn’t consider yourself a domestic woman then. I suppose I can understand that. I certainly wouldn’t want to spend most of my time barefoot and pregnant and my whole life revolving around my man’s needs. I don’t think my brother would like that either. He gets so wrapped up in his experiments that I don’t even see him for days sometimes and he’d probably be homeless and living under a bridge if I wasn’t working.” Lilith chuckles and continues writing. You remain extremely anxious about what’s going to happen to you. “I also can understand not wanting to live with my bitchy niece either. I know my nephew probably didn’t think anything of it, but I also wouldn’t have put it past him to hope for some sort of three way between you all. Good for you, putting your foot down like that.” All you can think is you’d willingly have a three-way with Bobby and Diana if it got you out of this situation. “Anyway when my nephew found out you were over here he practically pleaded for me and his uncle not to kill or harm you in any way. He even said he’d be over to pick you up, but I told him that was completely out of the question since plans were already in motion. Still, I love my nephew and didn’t wish to cause him any suffering so I agreed that you would not come to any harm as long as you followed the rules. So there’s the obvious question answered.” You close your eyes silently thanking Bobby that he spoke up for you. Of course this doesn’t make your fear disappear completely. Far from it, but at least you might have a glimmer of hope now. “With that out of the way, your other questions are probably what is going to be done to you. Well, before I called Bobby, my initial intention was to do some tests and study you since I wanted another subject to observe and I saw an opportunity to grab you when you nearly crashed into me. However, some things have obviously changed, but there is still is opportunity here so I’m going to take advantage of it.” “…what do you mean?” you ask thinking Lilith has decided to completely twist her word to Bobby somehow. “I’m getting to that. As you might’ve noticed most of the folks in town have gone completely nuts. Well there’s a reason for that and you’re going to be one of the few people outside of the higher-ranking Ground Zero personnel to learn about it.” Lilith stops writing to give you her complete attention. “We put an experimental drug in the water supply and that’s what’s causing most people to act the way they’re doing in town. In fact we’ve done this to a lot of places. As bad as what’s going on in town, I imagine it’s even worse in a bigger populated area like Security City.” Lilith says. While you’re still worried about yourself, this bit of information is a little frightening for other reasons. “Wait. What? Why?” you ask. “Well there are very good reasons I assure you, but most of them probably wouldn’t matter to most with any sort of so called ethical concerns on human testing. Indeed I don’t even know all of the answers myself, I’m just a small cog in a big relentless machine. All I can do is tell you this, the world IS going to change very severely and very soon and it’s Ground Zero’s goal to try to save the human race at any cost. Our shelters aren’t the only way we’re doing that.” Lilith says. “But how is putting crazy juice in the water supply doing that?” you ask. “Well, I’m not completely familiar with all the science involved, but it basically makes people more resilient to things like diseases, radiation, and even chemical gases. You know, anything that’s likely to wipe out humanity on a wide scale when our glorious world leaders start pressing buttons. It seems like it increases strength and speed as well. Unfortunately it would seem it has a very negative effect on the mind, but that of course was an unintended side effect. However, if animal testing is anything to go by, those effects should only be temporary.” “But how long do they last?” “With animals? A few weeks, but we never really got to test on humans at least not on a wide scale. There were some individual tests I believe, but those were the earlier stages of the drug and the results of those weren’t very positive. Ground Zero wanted to pick a populated area to do testing on years ago to hammer out all the problems quicker, but we had an agreement with government, which kept dragging its damn feet as usual on things. It didn’t help that GZ was also temporarily burdened with some incompetent leadership for a while so we didn’t get to do any of this until the last minute and now this is the result. Don’t get me started on the faulty elevator problems in most of the shelters…” Lilith at this point shakes her head and runs her fingers through her hair as if dismayed with how things have turned out. As she’s doing this, a horrible conclusion comes to you. “Wait…am I going to go crazy too? I drank mostly bottled water!” you say. “Yes, a lot of people do these days, but most people still bathe regularly, brush their teeth and such and all that is still enough even if you’re not drinking straight from the tap. As for if you’re going to go crazy, well that’s a matter of perspective. Given what I know about you, I have to say from a professional perspective you’re not exactly a beacon of sanity Suzy, but then who of us really is right? If you were worried that you’re going to start going into a violent fit of rage, I’d have to say I don’t think you are since you haven’t already. The drug doesn’t seem to be affecting everyone in town the same way for some reason. Not sure why, but again that’s why I’m keeping you around for observation. You’re going to be my control subject as it were.” “What does that mean?” you ask. “What it essentially means is as long as you cooperate and don’t try to escape, you’ll be well taken care of. I’ll ask you questions, maybe do a few non-invasive tests and that’s about it. If it seems you’re completely fine, I guess we’ll move on from there. For now though I think you should have better accommodations don’t you? This room is rather spartan, I’m going to take you to a new one. Now, I could call my brother in here or just wheel you to it still strapped to the gurney, but I’d rather NOT do that Suzy. I want our relationship to be a trusting one. So, I’m going to release you from your straps, you’ll follow me and you WILL NOT try to escape or anything like that. Do you understand?” Of course you’re going to say yes to Lilith, no matter what, but your intentions are another matter. While Lilith seems like a reasonable lady, she’s still a Morningstar and all that entails from what you know of that fucked up family. She might not be one of the chaos goddess worshipping brainwashed cultist ones, but she’s obviously still not concerned with the value of human life and the only thing that’s saved you is having a past relationship with Bobby and his continued feelings for you. She doesn’t look tough, of course looks can be deceiving, but you’re pretty desperate and you REALLY want to leave. When she releases you, you could probably easily grab one of those surgical instruments and hold her hostage until you took her car and got out of this place. You’ve no idea where you’d go, but anywhere would be better. > You make no attempt to escape You don’t know the complete lay out of the house and you also don’t really know Lilith excessively well to judge how “tough” she actually is. For all you know she’s got some sort of GZ martial arts training especially given what she’s revealed about what insidious practices they’re doing. You also don’t know much about her brother, but he’s probably a damn psycho. If you threatened his sister, he might be capable of anything; you know how close the Morningstar family tends to be after all… Also, so far this week, every time you’ve “asserted” yourself, it’s gone very badly. Might be better to at least wait a while and see if a better opportunity comes along and get a feel for this place first. Lilith undoes your straps and you’re soon free. You sit up, stretch and try to maintain composure that you’re not still scared about all this. “I know the first time we met you were having problems walking by yourself. You okay to do that now? Not still feeling wobbly or anything?” “I believe I’m fine. Just very nervous about all this.” “Don’t be nervous. As I said, follow the rules and you’ll be fine. If you’re worrying about catching the madness that the town has, well like I said, you’re probably fine, but even if you aren’t I’ve got a few things that might help. You ready to go?” “Yeah I guess.” You say and Lilith leads you out the door. When you exit, you find yourself in an uncarpeted corridor with a few rows of doors to the left and right of you (All with very strong looking and very locked doors). It reminds you of a hospital setting; you can’t help but wonder if you’re still in Lilith’s house anymore. “Um, are we still in your house?” you ask. “Oh yes. We’re not on the ground floor if that’s what you’re wondering though, we’re in the basement. Of course this house never had a basement this large originally. A lot of this was added on much later due to my work in GZ. Leslie nearly blew a gasket when he heard workers were coming in to make severe alterations to it, but in time he realized it had its advantages and I told him his area wouldn’t be fussed with anyway. He spends a lot of time down here with his experiments you see and hates change…guess you and he have that in common no?” “What?” “Well as I said, Bobby told me much about you and your past. Said you preferred to stay down in your basement and hide away from the world and weren’t a fan of change yourself. Was he incorrect in what he told me?” “…no…no I suppose he wasn’t. It’s true. I did spend all my time in the basement hiding out from the real world and hated change. This week has been a big wake up call that things couldn’t be like that forever though.” You say. “Hm, well don’t despair. While things do eventually change, they can always change for the better. Here’s your new room.” Lilith remarks and unlocks it. The door opens up to another windowless room, but this one is much nicer. In fact it’s downright cozy. There’s a sofa, a bookcase with books, a TV…hell it almost reminds you of home. As enter to get a closer look at everything, Lilith is preoccupied with something on her phone. “Shit, well something came up and we’re going to have to get to the questions later. But for now, what do you think to your new surroundings?” Lilith asks. “It’s okay. I didn’t expect to have such a fancy cell.” You say. “Suzy! Don’t think of this as a cell, think of it as just a regular room where you’re staying until it’s confirmed you’re okay! Now, if you notice there is another small room off to the right. That’s the bathroom where you’ll find all the usual facilities. I would imagine you’re probably hungry and I’ll be back with some food soon. Just have to deal with something. The National Guard has been deployed in town to maintain order and apparently GZ is sending some of their people to this house as added security. They’re already on their way so I’m going to have to go talk to my brother about this and make sure he curbs his anti-social behavior to a manageable level. Doesn’t help that he’s got those two inbred redneck assistants of his with him right now. I can’t stand those assholes. He’s either going to have to keep them out of sight completely or make them leave…(sigh) Ugh, anyway I’ll be back soon, just make yourself at home.” Lilith closes the door, which you then hear lock and you’re now alone. You sit down on the sofa trying to wrap your head around all this. Never in a million years would you have thought you’d be a prisoner by your ex-boyfriend’s aunt who works for the corporation responsible for all those ads on TV and apparently involves in some seriously shady practices. Makes you think about some of those crackpots that posted conspiracy theories on various sites you read. Turns out some of them weren’t too far from the truth after all. The thing is, you can’t even worry about something of that magnitude. For one thing, you have absolutely no power to do anything about it and second, you’ve got the more pressing concern about what is going to happen to you. While things are going better than you thought they going to go, you’re still not seeing a good end to any of this. Your luck has been up and down this entire week and just when something good seems to happen, something equally bad happens. You don’t trust Lilith completely, no matter how “nice” she’s trying to be. At best Lilith keeps her word and you’re not sick or infected only for her to ultimately execute you “humanely” with shot to your head. You can’t imagine her keeping you alive after telling you her corporation’s secrets like that. Unless of course she thinks you wouldn’t tell anyone and even if you did, who would believe you anyway? The darker picture is of course she said the world was going to change very soon implying a nuclear holocaust like all the GZ ads have been harping on about. Maybe she’s told you because ultimately it isn’t going to matter due to doomsday. If that’s the case, where is that going to leave you? Maybe Lilith will release you alive, but leaving you to fend for yourself in a blasted wasteland of which you don’t fancy your chances. And these are all the best-case scenarios you’re envisioning, because you don’t even want to think about the worst case, which is undoubtedly going to involve you being in more pain than you could ever imagine. You have no more tears for any of this, because you’re spent as far as that’s concerned. You’re still scared of course, but you feel like you’re starting to become numb to very real possibility of death. Doesn’t mean you’re giving up though and you proceed to study your surroundings, taking note of anything you could possibly use as a weapon. You don’t find any secret passages or vents you could crawl around in because that only happens in the movies. Eventually you take a break and lay down on the sofa, which at least is comfortable, you just wish you weren’t wearing a damn hospital gown. You think about turning the TV on, but you figure it will probably just be full of Ground Zero ads. Time passes and eventually you hear the door opening up. At first you figure it’s going to be Lilith, but it’s not. Two dirty looking men open up the door and enter. One of them is huge and has a slackjawed look on his face. He wears overalls that look like they’ve never been washed. The smaller of the two is wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit and trucker’s cap. When he sees you a big grin spreads across his face making him even creepier than the larger one. “Hoo wee! Well look at what we got here! Doc really has been fixing up this place, because that is one sweet piece I tell ya what!” the smaller one exclaims. You can only guess these must be Leslie’s “assistants.” You sit up immediately and try to arrange your gown to cover you as much as possible. “Didn’t mean to startle ya darlin’ but I’m Jed and this here’s my brother Hugo. What’s yer name and what the hell are you doin’ in here?” the smaller one says. “My name’s Suzy, and this is my room. What the hell are YOU two doing in here?” “Whoa, easy there blondie. This is where me and Hugo always go to hang out when we’re on standby as it were. No point in headin’ back ta town right now anyway, since it sounds like the shit’s really hit the fan out there, but never mind all that, what’s all this about this bein’ yer room? You some new live in whore for the Doc to fuck when his snooty sister isn’t putting out?” Jed asks. Jed gets closer towards you meanwhile Hugo hasn’t moved from the entryway. You’re feeling very threatened. “No, I’m Lilith’s guest, now will you please leave my room?” you say. “Lilith’s guest? Wait, you sayin’ you HER whore? Well shit, I like the sound of that even better! So you ever been with a guy at all or are you strictly a pussy licker?” Jed asks with a pretty predatory look in his eyes. “The pair of you better get out of here. Lilith has made it clear she doesn’t want anyone else in here.” You say standing up from the couch. “Oh is that right? Well I ain’t heard nuthin’ about it and I take my orders from the Doc, not his snobby bitch of a sister. So I think you better just settle down blondie. In fact, I think you better start making yourself REAL comfortable.” Jed says and starts fondling his crotch while still approaching you. You’re steadily running out of options. About the only thing you can do now is either threaten them to the point that they back off or beg and hope they take mercy. Either option isn’t likely to succeed. > You threaten them You focus your mind and try to muster up all your courage for what you’re about to say next. It might very well be suicidal, but if the unthinkable is going to happen, then at least you can take comfort that you stood up to them even as scared as you are right now. “Look, you fucking inbred rednecks, get the fuck out before you get in some major shit so deep that you ain’t got the hip waiters for it!” you exclaim. Jed is hardly intimidated and his expression changes from perverted leer to burning hatred. “Hugo get out of that entryway and close that fucking door. I think this little blonde bitch needs to learn I don’t take orders from whores. Let alone one that isn’t sucking my cock, but I think we can change that situation.” Jed says. “You think that’s supposed to fucking scare me?” you say and then Jed grabs you by both arms squeezing tightly. He presses his body against yours and looks down at you menacingly. “Oh I can tell you’re scared bitch, I’ve been doing this a long time. And even if you weren’t, you better damn well be. Last time I saw Doc’s sister she was outside speaking with some soldier boys. She ain’t gonna be down here in time to save your ass and if you think that we’ll get in trouble for fucking you up, you over estimate your worth. At the most, we’ll get chewed out by Doc, for pissing off his sister by wreckin’ her kitty licking fuck buddy.” Jed says. You just look down after Jed’s response. Still holding your arms tightly he addresses you again. “What? Got nuthin’ else to say? Yeah that’s what I fucking thought. You fucking whores talk tough when you think you got a savior, but when the shit goes down, you shut the fuck up real quick.” You start laughing and look up at Jed’s face, which is now showing a bit of confusion due to your response. “You truly are one dumb ass fucktard, Jed. You keep thinking I’m Lilith’s whore, or whatever fantasy YOU put in your own goddamn pathetic little head of yours. If I was her whore, don’t you think I’d be dressed more like one? Look at how the fuck I’m dressed! I’m in a fucking HOSPITAL GOWN! Who wears hospital gowns? FUCKING PATIENTS! I’m her patient! I’M FUCKING SICK AND CONTAGIOUS YOU STUPID ASSHOLE!” you shout with a mixture of contempt and amusement. At this point Jed takes his hands off of you and backs off a bit. “Shit!” he shouts. “Oh what? Am I not so attractive now that you’ve found out I might have shit that will make your dick fall off? Come on stud, I’ll make it totally worth it! I guarantee it’ll be the last fuck you’ll ever need.” You say and start grabbing at him and laughing. Jed gives you a hard shove causing you to fall backwards. “Fuck! Hugo, this bitch has got the crotch rot somethin’ fierce! Open up that fucking door!” Jed shouts. Hugo comprehends the situation just well enough to follow Jed’s orders and it doesn’t take long before they’re both out the door. Unfortunately Jed isn’t quite so stupid to leave the door open or unlocked since you hear a firm click. Of course maybe he was just so scared of you possibly getting out that he took the time to lock it. In any case you got rid of them and you’re alone again. You’re quite pleased that this is the first time you actually employed an assertive method this week and it worked out. Your arms hurt from Jed squeezing them though. A half hour later, you hear the door again. This time it’s Lilith and she looks somewhat harried when she comes in. She’s also carrying a tray of food with what looks to be meat on it and some potatoes on it. She places it on coffee table in front of the sofa and also gives you a bottle of water. She then sits down on the chair Jed was sitting in. “Whew. Sorry about that. Just one thing after another. Anyway, there’s your food. It’s left over meatloaf from yesterday that I heated up. Hope that’s okay. We still had quite a bit left and I didn’t really have time to prepare anything else. Leslie usually does most of the cooking around here anyway.” You stare at the meatloaf, which doesn’t look all that appetizing. The potatoes look okay though. You notice your eating utensils are plastic. Guess Lilith isn’t completely trusting of you either. “What’s wrong? You’re not a vegetarian are you?” Lilith asks. “Um, no. Not at all.” You say and poke at the meatloaf. “You think I poisoned the food?” “Actually I didn’t think that, until you just mentioned it. I was just thinking of how unappealing the meat looks.” You say. “Well not that this might help calm your fears, but I didn’t poison or drug the food. There wouldn’t be much point in it; you’re my control subject after all. As for the look of the meat, well my brother’s a good cook, but he’s never been big on presentation, but I assure you it tastes much better than it looks. Of course you don’t need to eat it. There are potatoes there.” “No, I’ll eat. I’m hungry enough and I don’t have that much choice.” You say. You take a bite of the meatloaf and it’s actually just like Lilith said, it looks awful, but it does taste good. “You were right.” You say. “Well I do understand the hesitation. I remember some of the meals my brother has made in the past and they looked more like something that already was digested. He’s gotten a bit better with it though. Anyway, so how have you been feeling? Still no sudden mood swings or violent urges or anything I trust?” Lilith asks. “Well no, but I did have to act crazy to get two redneck assholes out of here.” “Oh no. (Sigh) Jed and Hugo came in here? I told my brother not to let those assholes wander around down here picking the locks to places they’re not supposed to be going anyway!” “Apparently they were under the impression I was your personal whore.” “What?! Why the hell would they think…nevermind…they didn’t do anything to you did they?” “No, like I said, I acted crazy. Or more specifically I convinced them I was sick and contagious. They left real quick after that.” “Heh, good thinking. Explains why I saw their shitty pick up truck screech out of here earlier.” “Hope to never see them again.” You say continuing to eat. “Yeah well that will be arranged. I’ll tell my people stationed outside to shoot them on sight if they return. I don’t care if Leslie complains about it either. Besides, there’s news that we all might not be staying here much longer.” You stop eating for a moment. “What do you mean?” you ask. “Well as I said, the National Guard are currently stationed in town and trying to maintain order. While they might succeed, GZ doesn’t fancy their chances and would rather not lose a valuable employee such as myself in the possible chaos that will spill over. So they’re ready to ship me and my brother out of here to a GZ shelter, a proper company one, not the ones that have been built for the common public. It’s just as well considering the reports we’ve been getting on the world situation.” Lilith says. You take a drink of water wondering what this means for you. “When is this going to happen?” you ask. “Maybe tomorrow, definitely by Friday. I’m going to miss this house, so many good memories here especially with Leslie. I can only imagine the talk I’m going to have to have with him. Looks like he’s going to have company job whether he wants one or not. Oh well, he’ll get used to it…” “What about me?” you interrupt. “Well, that is the question isn’t it?” Lilith says, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes. “While I haven’t been able to do the tests and ask the questions like I wanted to earlier today, I’m fairly certain you’re fine and you’re one of those few that aren’t affected by the side affects of the drug. I have a few theories on why that might be, but nothing solid. It doesn’t really matter anyway I suppose at this late stage.” Lilith remarks. “So…I’m free to go?” you ask. “Well, I do want to keep you for observation for one more day. I mean might as well since we might not be leaving tomorrow anyway. After that, well I suppose it’s up to you. If you want to leave, you will be allowed to leave. You probably should keep in mind however, that returning to town might not be the best idea, so I’m not sure where you’d go. Do you have anywhere to go?” “Not really. I mean I don’t have my phone so I can’t even call anyone who might give a shit. Not that my family would give a shit of course, so I don’t really even have a home at this point.” “Hm, well that leads me to the other possible option, that I can probably take you with us. Might take some string pulling and calling in of favors, but if you want to come with us, you can.” “Go with you? To a GZ Shelter? What would I do there?” “Oh I’m sure we could find something, no need to worry about that. You’d have to follow the rules there though. Life would be quite different, but with the way things are going, I’m sure life is going to be different anyway.” You just nod silently as Lilith stands up to head back to the door. “Tell you what. Let’s dispense with any more interrogation today. You already had to deal with waking up strapped to a gurney, not knowing where you were, being told that the world may end soon and that you may or may not suffer a negative side affect of a drug, not to mention those redneck rapists barging in here. I think you deserve to relax for the rest of the day and night.” “So, that’s it?” “For today it is. Like I said, just make yourself at home for now. This will all be over soon and you won’t be a prisoner here. I’m glad you’ve been making this easy Suzy. That’s definitely a good thing.” Lilith says and leaves. Alone once again and now you’ve got the whole night to contemplate your situation, which has changed again. Escape is now looking unnecessary given that Lilith seems to not have any insidious plans of going back on here word. You’re not even sure it would be a good idea to do so anyway now considering she mentioned GZ security are now guarding the perimeter of the house. Of course that still leaves the question of “where will you go?” While she’s already warned you about town, you really don’t have anywhere else. You don’t even have a vehicle. You suppose you could always just risk heading back home or maybe even Julie’s assuming either place is still standing. The offer to go with Lilith and her brother is just odd though. It really is an unknown factor, but if things are really getting as bad as Lilith claims, maybe you need to embrace the unknown. You spend the rest of the night pondering your options until you eventually get sleepy and drift off on the couch. > Next day… THURSDAY You wake up once again a prisoner, though perhaps not for long and despite everything, you’re actually feeling slightly optimistic about your situation. Very slightly. You aren’t sure what time it is, but knowing your usual sleeping habits, it’s probably at least the afternoon. You imagine you’ll be getting a visit from Lilith as usual soon so you start perusing the nearby books until she comes in. You pick one that looks interesting to you. As you’re reading “Unusual Sexual Practices From Around the World” you start hearing the faint noise of what sounds like yelling or shouting. Doesn’t really sound like any actual words though, more like just noises, still the sound isn’t completely distinct. A few minutes later you hear something that sounds like a gunshot. You start to worry and keeping you ears open, but you don’t hear anything else unusual until you hear that familiar sound of the door opening up. Fortunately it’s Lilith and not someone who isn’t supposed to be in here. Once again she looks a bit beleaguered as she carries in what looks to be a small medical bag and a notebook. “Um, is everything okay? I thought I heard shouting and a shot.” You say. “Yeah, I imagine you would have given your proximity. You remember I said you were my control subject? Well some of the others down here aren’t and they’ve been getting worse. My brother just put one down that was starting to break his restraints. I have a feeling the rest are going to have to be put down as well, because I don’t think I’m going to bother having them transported with us when we leave, which is looking like today since shit is reportedly getting even worse in town. The “putting down” of subjects is a little concerning until Lilith immediately follows up her statement. “Relax, you’re not getting shot unless you start regressing into a savage and let me guess, you’ve experienced no problems correct?” “Nope. Feel fine. Just a little anxiousness, especially being near people that might be turning into beasts.” You remark. “Don’t worry about that. They might escape the restraints, but they aren’t escaping out the rooms. We made sure of that when we had this area built it had solid doors and walls. Anyway, since things are moving rather quickly now I suppose I’ll just wrap up your little part in this observation which isn’t going to take long.” Lilith at this point pulls out a syringe and a tourniquet along with some cotton balls and rubbing alcohol. “Now I’m just going to draw some blood, not inject you with anything.” “What do you need my blood for?” “Oh just need another sample for testing. I mean I already drew blood from you when you were unconscious a day ago, so this is just a follow up really. Considering you’re not frothing at the mouth or destroying this room by now, I’m very certain you weren’t affected by whatever exposure of the drug you might have in contact with, but never hurts to be thorough. Your arm please.” Lilith has more or less been playing square with you so reluctantly you hold out your arm and after prepping it she begins to draw blood. “Ugh, hate needles.” You say looking away. “Most people do. Leslie used to hate them too. Still does actually. Really odd considering he’s a doctor and uses them on a regular basis…then again I suppose it’s different when you’re using them on other people. There we go.” Lilith finishes up and you’re rubbing your arm watching a tube of your blood go into another container and then placed back into the bag. Lilith then starts flipping through pages of her notebook. “So, I guess I’ll be free to leave soon?” you ask. “Yes. I’ll have the clothes you were wearing brought to you soon. I’m sure you’re sick of wearing the gown. After that well, I guess you can make your decision on whether to go or come with us. I contacted a few high ups at the offices and they said it was fine if I brought you.” She answers without looking up. “Oh. Well I guess that does open up options for me then.” You say still unsure of what you’re going to do. You have been meaning to ask Lilith about something she said to you yesterday though. “Hey, I was sort of wondering…what did you mean yesterday about me not being a beacon of sanity?” you ask. “Funny you should ask, since I was just about to do a last minute interview with you, so I had at least a few more things to put down in my report. Most of what I’ve got on you is only through observation or what Bobby told me. It would be nice if I had something directly from you. Of course as I keep complaining about, things haven’t been ideal lately.” Lilith finds the page she was looking for and then focuses complete attention on you. “To answer your question…keep in mind this is based on all observation and mostly Bobby’s words so I’ll admit this isn’t necessarily an accurate assessment of your personality. No offense is meant, but here’s my impression of you and why and please feel free to interject whenever you want.” Lilith goes into a psychological assessment of your character and while you do fill in on some of what she might be missing and clarify on other aspects of your life, she doesn’t really lose a beat in her view of you, indeed it only seems to enhance it. She starts off by talking about your introverted behavior to the point of falling into escapist behavior. She discusses that some of this is due to being the product of a dysfunctional family where you were only ever close to your mother since she was the only one that ever displayed any positive attention and when she died that was one of the major turning points of you shutting yourself off from the world and “giving up” in general. However Lilith mentions that this relationship wasn’t exactly the healthiest since it placed pressure on being “good and proper” which apparently had some negative effects on not just you, but your other sisters as well. Then she mentions that while you finally broke out of this shell a bit when you met Bobby, that relationship wasn’t exactly built on a stable foundation to begin with and indeed just fed into your world of fantasy on some level, with Bobby being a “Prince” whisking you away from the clutches of a “villain” (Your uncle in this case). Most of your relationship was co-dependency and enabling behavior since who would anyone that considered themselves “normal” stay with a man who doesn’t just murder people, but essentially runs a cult? She then goes on to say that while she does think you did care for Bobby on some level, she doesn’t believe that you were really capable of ever loving him and not because of his sister, but because deep down you’re not really capable of the emotion at all. She mentions that you’re so used to your own company and withdrawn that you can’t even form proper attachments. Even a “non-normal” one like you had with Bobby. She finishes up by saying that while much of your personality can be explained by “nurture”, there is evidence that all of the behaviors you exhibit were all just laying in wait to flourish anyway. Other members of your family have their own personality problems (Sadism, suicidal depression, narcissism, nymphomania, paranoid delusions, psychopathy, etc) meaning that it’s probably all genetic on some level. She even believes that under certain circumstances you could not only be capable of great violence, but also revel in it. “But what does all this mean?” you ask. “Nothing much as far as my report goes except maybe a half assed theory on why the drug didn’t seem to have an affect on your mind. I suppose for you it’s greater insight on yourself, but I’d wager that given your introspective nature, you’ve probably already pondered all of what I’ve just told at one time or another. It’s probably why you’re not really insulted by my words, because you probably agree with everything I said on some level.” You don’t really have a response because what Lilith says is somewhat true. It’s actually pretty damn scary how accurate she was given that all her information was mainly based on Bobby’s words and the few conversations she’s had with you. “Wow. Well I guess you didn’t go the typical route and say I was a closet lesbian or something.” You say. “Oh, no. I don’t believe you’re a closeted lesbian.” Lilith chuckles. “You just have some repressed bisexual tendencies, but that’s really a very minor point in the scheme of things. Anyway, I think we’re done. I’ll go grab your clothes and…” Suddenly the door opens up and you see an older man with wild hair that’s completely white in color. He wears a bloody lab coat and has a pistol in one hand. You wonder if this Leslie. “Sis, you need to get your ass out here. We’re under damn attack and we could use another pair of hands to hold a weapon out here.” He says. “Who the hell is attacking?” Lilith says. “Who do you think? Damn crazies from town and your GZ boys aren’t exactly the crack team they think they are. Just saw one of those fucking cowards run off…well before he got tackled and eaten by a bunch of those crazy fuckers.” “Shit, they probably sent a bunch of fucking rookies. (Sigh) Fine, let’s go Leslie. Suzy, you might want to stay here.” Lilith gets up to go with her brother, and the pair of them leaves the room. You don’t hear a click this time and you get curious… You get up and try the door, and find it hasn’t been locked this time. They were probably in too much of a hurry to bother. You sort of wonder if you shouldn’t take this opportunity to escape on your own terms, since you still have a bit of a trust problem with Lilith considering she did make a lab rat out of you. (Doesn’t matter if she was “nice” about it) Of course maybe you’d be safer in here if there crazy cannibals out there. > You leave the room You’re not staying in here like a sitting duck. If whatever the things are that are attacking the house succeed in overrunning the place, you’d be trapped. Better you at least get to an area where you can run somewhere else, and with any luck you’ll be able to escape this place altogether. You exit the room and quickly run down a corridor where you hope you’ll some stairs in that direction, because with as noisy as the other patients are, you have just as much fear that one of them is going to get out their locked rooms and attack you despite the fact Lilith says they’re secure. You soon find the stairs leading up and the sounds of gunfire and shouts get even louder. You hear a lot of glass breaking as well. All the action seems like it’s going on in the front part of the house, so that’s where you head away from and soon find yourself in the kitchen. From the kitchen you can see a door leading to backyard. Looking out the window, it doesn’t appear that any of those crazy people are attacking from this direction so that’s one good thing. It also looks like the fence would be very hard to climb since it’s a smooth high wooden fence. If you were planning to escape, your chances of doing it this way have decreased. Still, you also notice the tree in the yard with branches that hang over the fence. You probably could climb it and drop down if you really wanted to get away. Of course with all those things out there, that might not be the safest plan, even if they aren’t coming from this direction. You also feel a little vulnerable what with just wearing a hospital gown. Then you hear the chaos going on within the house and the sounds of what you think to be those things finally getting into this place. Wasting no more time, you look around for a weapon and a nasty looking machete catches your eye. You have no idea what one of these would be doing in the kitchen, but you’re taking it and getting the hell out of here. As you’re opening up the door you hearing the sounds of battle getting more hectic, in fact it even sounds like it’s getting closer to your location… “I’m gonna check around back to make sure none of them are…HOLY SHIT!” A uniformed man with a GZ logo on it exclaims when you turn to face him. Having no idea who you are, seeing you hold a machete in your hand, the fact that you just opened the backdoor and him being totally surprised by your presence causes him to do the only logical thing a man in his position would do. He thinks you’re a hostile and immediately opens fire on you with his rifle. You don’t have time to do anything except fatally catch bullets at that point. When the chaos dies down, Lilith is annoyed about losing you as her control subject, but she gets over it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY You wake up once again a prisoner, though perhaps not for long and despite everything, you’re actually feeling slightly optimistic about your situation. Very slightly. You aren’t sure what time it is, but knowing your usual sleeping habits, it’s probably at least the afternoon. You imagine you’ll be getting a visit from Lilith as usual soon so you start perusing the nearby books until she comes in. You pick one that looks interesting to you. As you’re reading “Unusual Sexual Practices From Around the World” you start hearing the faint noise of what sounds like yelling or shouting. Doesn’t really sound like any actual words though, more like just noises, still the sound isn’t completely distinct. A few minutes later you hear something that sounds like a gunshot. You start to worry and keeping you ears open, but you don’t hear anything else unusual until you hear that familiar sound of the door opening up. Fortunately it’s Lilith and not someone who isn’t supposed to be in here. Once again she looks a bit beleaguered as she carries in what looks to be a small medical bag and a notebook. “Um, is everything okay? I thought I heard shouting and a shot.” You say. “Yeah, I imagine you would have given your proximity. You remember I said you were my control subject? Well some of the others down here aren’t and they’ve been getting worse. My brother just put one down that was starting to break his restraints. I have a feeling the rest are going to have to be put down as well, because I don’t think I’m going to bother having them transported with us when we leave, which is looking like today since shit is reportedly getting even worse in town. The “putting down” of subjects is a little concerning until Lilith immediately follows up her statement. “Relax, you’re not getting shot unless you start regressing into a savage and let me guess, you’ve experienced no problems correct?” “Nope. Feel fine. Just a little anxiousness, especially being near people that might be turning into beasts.” You remark. “Don’t worry about that. They might escape the restraints, but they aren’t escaping out the rooms. We made sure of that when we had this area built it had solid doors and walls. Anyway, since things are moving rather quickly now I suppose I’ll just wrap up your little part in this observation which isn’t going to take long.” Lilith at this point pulls out a syringe and a tourniquet along with some cotton balls and rubbing alcohol. “Now I’m just going to draw some blood, not inject you with anything.” “What do you need my blood for?” “Oh just need another sample for testing. I mean I already drew blood from you when you were unconscious a day ago, so this is just a follow up really. Considering you’re not frothing at the mouth or destroying this room by now, I’m very certain you weren’t affected by whatever exposure of the drug you might have in contact with, but never hurts to be thorough. Your arm please.” Lilith has more or less been playing square with you so reluctantly you hold out your arm and after prepping it she begins to draw blood. “Ugh, hate needles.” You say looking away. “Most people do. Leslie used to hate them too. Still does actually. Really odd considering he’s a doctor and uses them on a regular basis…then again I suppose it’s different when you’re using them on other people. There we go.” Lilith finishes up and you’re rubbing your arm watching a tube of your blood go into another container and then placed back into the bag. Lilith then starts flipping through pages of her notebook. “So, I guess I’ll be free to leave soon?” you ask. “Yes. I’ll have the clothes you were wearing brought to you soon. I’m sure you’re sick of wearing the gown. After that well, I guess you can make your decision on whether to go or come with us. I contacted a few high ups at the offices and they said it was fine if I brought you.” She answers without looking up. “Oh. Well I guess that does open up options for me then.” You say still unsure of what you’re going to do. You have been meaning to ask Lilith about something she said to you yesterday though. “Hey, I was sort of wondering…what did you mean yesterday about me not being a beacon of sanity?” you ask. “Funny you should ask, since I was just about to do a last minute interview with you, so I had at least a few more things to put down in my report. Most of what I’ve got on you is only through observation or what Bobby told me. It would be nice if I had something directly from you. Of course as I keep complaining about, things haven’t been ideal lately.” Lilith finds the page she was looking for and then focuses complete attention on you. “To answer your question…keep in mind this is based on all observation and mostly Bobby’s words so I’ll admit this isn’t necessarily an accurate assessment of your personality. No offense is meant, but here’s my impression of you and why and please feel free to interject whenever you want.” Lilith goes into a psychological assessment of your character and while you do fill in on some of what she might be missing and clarify on other aspects of your life, she doesn’t really lose a beat in her view of you, indeed it only seems to enhance it. She starts off by talking about your introverted behavior to the point of falling into escapist behavior. She discusses that some of this is due to being the product of a dysfunctional family where you were only ever close to your mother since she was the only one that ever displayed any positive attention and when she died that was one of the major turning points of you shutting yourself off from the world and “giving up” in general. However Lilith mentions that this relationship wasn’t exactly the healthiest since it placed pressure on being “good and proper” which apparently had some negative effects on not just you, but your other sisters as well. Then she mentions that while you finally broke out of this shell a bit when you met Bobby, that relationship wasn’t exactly built on a stable foundation to begin with and indeed just fed into your world of fantasy on some level, with Bobby being a “Prince” whisking you away from the clutches of a “villain” (Your uncle in this case). Most of your relationship was co-dependency and enabling behavior since who would anyone that considered themselves “normal” stay with a man who doesn’t just murder people, but essentially runs a cult? She then goes on to say that while she does think you did care for Bobby on some level, she doesn’t believe that you were really capable of ever loving him and not because of his sister, but because deep down you’re not really capable of the emotion at all. She mentions that you’re so used to your own company and withdrawn that you can’t even form proper attachments. Even a “non-normal” one like you had with Bobby. She finishes up by saying that while much of your personality can be explained by “nurture”, there is evidence that all of the behaviors you exhibit were all just laying in wait to flourish anyway. Other members of your family have their own personality problems (Sadism, suicidal depression, narcissism, nymphomania, paranoid delusions, psychopathy, etc) meaning that it’s probably all genetic on some level. She even believes that under certain circumstances you could not only be capable of great violence, but also revel in it. “But what does all this mean?” you ask. “Nothing much as far as my report goes except maybe a half assed theory on why the drug didn’t seem to have an affect on your mind. I suppose for you it’s greater insight on yourself, but I’d wager that given your introspective nature, you’ve probably already pondered all of what I’ve just told at one time or another. It’s probably why you’re not really insulted by my words, because you probably agree with everything I said on some level.” You don’t really have a response because what Lilith says is somewhat true. It’s actually pretty damn scary how accurate she was given that all her information was mainly based on Bobby’s words and the few conversations she’s had with you. “Wow. Well I guess you didn’t go the typical route and say I was a closet lesbian or something.” You say. “Oh, no. I don’t believe you’re a closeted lesbian.” Lilith chuckles. “You just have some repressed bisexual tendencies, but that’s really a very minor point in the scheme of things. Anyway, I think we’re done. I’ll go grab your clothes and…” Suddenly the door opens up and you see an older man with wild hair that’s completely white in color. He wears a bloody lab coat and has a pistol in one hand. You wonder if this Leslie. “Sis, you need to get your ass out here. We’re under damn attack and we could use another pair of hands to hold a weapon out here.” He says. “Who the hell is attacking?” Lilith says. “Who do you think? Damn crazies from town and your GZ boys aren’t exactly the crack team they think they are. Just saw one of those fucking cowards run off…well before he got tackled and eaten by a bunch of those crazy fuckers.” “Shit, they probably sent a bunch of fucking rookies. (Sigh) Fine, let’s go Leslie. Suzy, you might want to stay here.” Lilith gets up to go with her brother, and the pair of them leaves the room. You don’t hear a click this time and you get curious… You get up and try the door, and find it hasn’t been locked this time. They were probably in too much of a hurry to bother. You sort of wonder if you shouldn’t take this opportunity to escape on your own terms, since you still have a bit of a trust problem with Lilith considering she did make a lab rat out of you. (Doesn’t matter if she was “nice” about it) Of course maybe you’d be safer in here if there crazy cannibals out there. > You stay in the room You might be reverting back to old habits, but if there is some hectic bullshit going on out there, then you want to avoid it. They can handle it and you decide to be extra cautious and block the door with a chair. You hear the sounds of gunfire above you. That isn’t what bothers you so much as it’s the growling and yelling that sounds like it’s coming from nearby. You remember that there are other “patients” on this same floor. More time passes and you still hear gunshots and the inhuman noises. You are starting to worry that it’s quite possible this house is going to be overrun by these things, and you haven’t even seen one. This fear becomes even more intense when you stop hearing the gunshots and only hear the guttural noises nearby. You start to feel like you’ve made another bad choice. Suddenly there’s an attempt to open the door only to be stopped by the chair you’ve propped against it. This is followed by a loud bang on the door, which scares the hell out of you. “Suzy! What the hell? Is this door barricaded?” you hear Lilith’s voice shout. “Yeah…is it safe?” you ask. “It’s safe in that we’re not in any immediate danger, but we gotta start getting the hell outta here. Open up!” Wasting no time you move the chair and the door opens up. Lilith throws your clothes at you and you can hear those awful noises in the corridor. Yelling and banging. “Here. Get dressed and don’t worry about the noises, the other subjects aren’t getting out of those rooms anytime soon.” Lilith says. You’re not as sure as Lilith is about that, so you just get dressed as fast as you can and exit the room with her. “So what’s going on?” you ask as you follow her. “What’s going on is Leslie and I are heading to that GZ Shelter after he and I gather a few things. The crazies from town are spilling out from it and we don’t want to be here in case another wave comes. I was hoping to have more time to pack, but I guess we can’t have everything.” You and Lilith get to the ground floor and finally see the house proper. It’s a bit of a mess now probably due to all the running around and shooting, but obviously was nice at one time. Then you enter the front room and see several broken windows, and couple of dead bodies. One of them is a uniformed man with his throat ripped out and several slashes across his face. Nearby him is a body of a disheveled looking woman with several bullet holes in her body and head. She still has a chunk of flesh in her teeth and even in death her eyes display a crazed look. It sort of freaks you out. “Um, that guy in the uniform, shouldn’t someone shoot him in the head?” “What? No. These aren’t zombies. They’re just well…rabid.” Lilith chuckles. “Headshots aren’t even necessary to kill them, though it sure as hell helps.” A couple more uniformed men with the Ground Zero insignia on them walk into the room holding rifles. “Place seems to be all secure Dr. Morningstar. No other hostiles in the house or around the house.” One of them says. “Good. Glad not all of you were incompetent. Wait, are you two the only ones left?” “Afraid so doctor.” One of them remarks. “Oh well. Okay, I want you two to stand guard out front. Make sure there isn’t another horde or whatever coming our way and if there is, run back in here and tell me immediately.” The two uniformed men nod and leave out the front door which is now half hanging off the hinges. You and Lilith both take a quick look outside and see the bodies of several crazies as well as GZ security. In the driveway you see that Lilith’s truck is heavily shot up and a couple bodies of crazed townies lie next to it. “Great, these assholes never learned the concept of one shot one kill. (Sigh) Guess we’re all just piling into the Ground Zero van.” Lilith says shaking her head. Lilith continues looks around a bit more at her partially destroyed house. “Well at least nobody has to clean this up this time. I remember the many many times I’d come home from work and I’d find Leslie had left a damn mess all over the house, much worse than this sometimes even. A lot more bodies too. Still remember the disorder he left when he was trying to write a poem for me on one of our past anniversaries. But it was such a lovely and thoughtful sentiment so I wasn’t too mad…anyway have you made your decision of what you’re going to do yet?” Lilith asks. You still really aren’t sure and lacking an answer, you ask a question. “What would I do at the shelter again? “Well I told you, I’m not in charge of assignments, but I’m sure there would be some sort of position there for you. Ground Zero doesn’t waste resources.” “I see.” Lilith looks at you with a squint. “You…still don’t trust me do you? Don’t answer. I know you don’t. (Sigh) I suppose I don’t blame you. Look, if you don’t want to go with us you don’t have to, I meant that. Still, I think it would be foolish if you didn’t.” “It might be equally foolish if I went with you. Who knows what the hell is in store for me in an underground shelter.” You say. “True, but think on this. If I really had anything bad in store for you there, don’t you think I would’ve just had security and my brother restrain you and take you there against your will anyway? I’m giving you a choice. You can go with us, or not. One of your problems Suzy is you don’t take chances, you stick with what you think is safe and look where that has gotten you. But if safety is your main concern, I’m just going to say that staying here isn’t exactly the safe option. This house isn’t secure, you’ll have a few days of food and water at best and if the crazed townsfolk don’t come ripping this place apart again, there are always just the plain opportunists that are no doubt lurking about as well. You don’t even have a vehicle to leave this place. Mine got all shot up and we’re taking the other one. Do you even have a plan if you stay here?” You don’t…as usual. “No.” you reply. “Well I’d think your choice would be simple then. Anyway, I have to bags to pack and when I’m done, I’m going to need to know what your answer is Suzy.” Lilith remarks and leaves you by yourself. You walk around the ground floor of the house a bit, just looking around. You start to form various thoughts in your head about how this place could be made more defensible. You just aren’t sure if you’re up to the task though. You briefly consider the idea of somehow overpowering one of those GZ security guys outside and driving off with the truck yourself, but you aren’t confident that you’d be successful. You then wonder if you could successfully flirt with one of them… You head outside and speak with both of the guards while attempting to be as charming as you can. You even manage to muster up the fortitude to blatantly make sexual innuendo and such. It doesn’t work. One of them is gay and the other is happily married and even if that wasn’t the case, they get irritated at the fact that you’re distracting them from their duty and start telling you to go away. You realize your plan isn’t going to work and you give up. “Christ Suzy, some seductress you are.” You mutter to yourself. This brings you back to your original two choices and both of those have the potential to go to shit for various reasons, but it’s all you got. > You go to the shelter It does seem very likely that if Lilith were going to do something to you, she would’ve done it already. Plus you haven’t given her any trouble like she wanted, so that’s has to be in your favor. Also, she makes some very good points about staying here. Civilization as you know it seems to be failing hard and you aren’t exactly the “survivalist” type to deal with it. Seems like it would be too late to start learning how in the final hour too, even if you had the desire. While you aren’t exactly sure how life would be in an underground shelter, you can’t help think that you’d be more “at home” there. After all it’s just an oversized basement right? It’s a risk, but it’s one you feel more confident about mainly because it requires little effort on your part. You sit on one of the few non-broken chairs and wait for Lilith. A few moments pass and you hear footsteps coming up from the basement accompanied by some swearing and more footsteps in one of the other rooms. “Where the fuck did I put that fucking thing? Shit, better not have lost…oh good here it is.” You hear Leslie say before he soon enters the front room where you’re waiting for Lilith. Leslie carries two sizable black bags and a machete when he enters the room. He stares at you for a moment, which makes you a bit uncomfortable. “Is my sister still upstairs?” he asks, but it’s more like an order due to his tone. “Yeah.” You answer. “Typical. She’s the one dragging me to this fucking shelter and I’m ready before she is. I swear I don’t want to go to this fucking place. Let alone working there. The idea of becoming part of a corporate fucking machine is just a fucking anathema to me. Probably have some little shit bean counter for a boss telling me he wants something done at a certain time. I fucking hate shit like that. I fucking hate it. I don’t like being told what to do, when to do it, or ANYTHING!” At this point Leslie begins shaking his machete in a violent manner and you see his eyes briefly roll into the back of his head like he’s going to go into a convulsion. Then all of a sudden his eyes snap back and he addresses you again. “But the things we do for love right?” Leslie says. “I guess so.” “Mm. Speaking of love, my sister has told me a bit about you and it’s too bad you and my nephew didn’t work out. Guess he’ll be stuck with his shrew of a sister now. If he’s smart, he’d ditch her and go for his other one…can’t remember her fucking name…really quiet…” “Helen?” you answer. “Yeah, that’s her. You sort of remind me of her a bit. You’re prettier of course, but same sort of wallflower personality. You get molested as a child? Daddy ever make you suck his dick when Mommy wasn’t around? Something like that?” “No!” you say not expecting such a question. “Hm, interesting. Would’ve thought you had been, especially since I heard your family was a bit on the dysfunctional side.” “Well they weren’t THAT dysfunctional.” Leslie gives you a look of annoyance, which makes you a little tense, well more tense than when he was waving his machete around earlier. “Oh. I see. That was a shot at MY family right?” Leslie exclaims. “I didn’t…” you start to say. “No, YOU know what you meant and so did I! Is that why you didn’t stay with my nephew? Felt you were too good for him?” “That’s not the reason, I…” “Pfft, I don’t want to fucking hear it! Here I am trying to make the effort to have friendly fucking conversation with you and you’re fucking insulting me! Well fuck you too bitch!” Leslie says and when you see him starting to walk in your direction you begin to get worried, but instead he storms out the front door. Just as you’re recovering from that incident of Morningstar insanity, Lilith comes walking down from upstairs carrying a couple bags. “What’s going on down here? I heard my brother ranting as usual. Everything okay?” she asks. “I dunno. He started talking to me and I tried to be friendly, but he took what I said out of context and got really pissed at me.” “Oh. Yeah, been there before. My brother’s not very good at social interaction unless that other person also happens to be an asshole. Nevermind him, you’re fine. Anyway, did you make your decision? Are you going with us?” “Well…I was, but now I’m not sure…” “What? Is it my brother? I told you forget about him. The shelter is a big place! Chances are you’re never going to have to interact with him again when we get there.” Lilith puts her bags down and walks over in an attempt to reassure you. “Come on, you don’t really want to stay here do you? Dangerous cannibals and criminal types, scavenging for sustenance, no proper toilets, I assure you Suzy at the GZ shelter you won’t have to worry about any of that shit.” “Well, okay.” You say. “Great, ah damnit!” Lilith suddenly remarks and puts her hand on her lower back. “What’s wrong?” “I dunno. It’s my back. Shit. I think all that damn running around, shooting, lifting and carrying heavy things took its toll. I really need to start exercising on a regular basis. Damn. (Sigh) I hate to ask, but could you carry my bags outside, you can just hand them to those two guards if you want.” “Oh, sure okay.” You say. You pick up the bags and head out the door with Lilith slowly walking behind. You approach the two guards who are still standing on the porch and just as you’re holding the bags out for them to take, you feel a sharp needle going into the side of your upper arm. You drop the bags and turn around in horror, clutching your arm. Lilith once again holds a needle in her hand and you’re soon feeling the affects. “Sorry Suzy, but this was the ONLY way GZ was going to let me take you. I never lied though; you will be given a position to contribute to the community. You’ll continue to be a test subject…though I’m afraid it will involve a little more than just questions and some blood tests this time.” “You…you…” is all you manage to utter before you collapse on the ground and unconsciousness begins to take affect. You can still hear some of the conversation as you start to pass out. “Carry her to the truck and Leslie, you can carry my bags since your short temper nearly cost GZ a perfectly good subject.” “Dunno why you just didn’t take that bitch to begin with.” Leslie remarks. “Because I wanted to see if she’d ultimately go with what was easy or actually grow as a person and make the harder decision. She failed which is why she might as well be put in a GZ experiment lab. She’s obviously not a learning animal, better her life goes towards something more useful.” You’re out for the remainder of the day, in fact you’re out of it for quite a few days. By the time you wake up you’re strapped to a surgical table with metal restraints with a lot medical equipment in the room. A bright light shines overhead. Fear overwhelms every fiber of your being. You being to call out for help, but the group of masked doctors in a circle nearby don’t look like they’re going to be doing that. “The subject is up, chief.” One of them says. “Yeah, I could tell by her screaming. Okay, let’s get her started with the injections first, then I guess we’ll see the reaction and go from there.” The head doctor says. “Should be interesting.” Another says. “Maybe. I’m just glad we didn’t get that asshole Leslie Morningstar assigned to our group. Dodged a bullet on that one. Let those fuckers in C Wing put up with him and his sister.” You panic, you struggle, you scream, you beg, you plead, you even call out for Bobby at one point, but none of it matters. The Ground Zero doctors begin to subject you to their experiments. You have no idea how long this goes on for. Days, weeks, months? You never see Lilith or Leslie again and your world becomes to the surgical room to the observation room. You never see the rest of the Ground Zero facility. Your body is wracked with pain and goes through several ugly changes; your mind eventually becomes broken to the point of insanity though occasionally you have moments of clarity and that’s probably when you’re at your worst since you’re practically wishing to die. Several times the doctors prevent you from killing yourself. The doctors themselves don’t really talk to you, but rather with each other like you’re not even there. You do hear one mention in passing about the world being nuked, but that hardly matters given the torture you’re being subjected to, indeed dying in a nuclear fire would be much kinder at this point. Eventually through all their experimentation you become little more than a wild animal. Almost like what people back in town became, but even worse. It gets to a point where you actually manage to break what they thought to be strong enough shackles and kill three of the doctors experimenting on you. Ground Zero security is called in and after enough bullets you are finally put down.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You might be reverting back to old habits, but if there is some hectic bullshit going on out there, then you want to avoid it. They can handle it and you decide to be extra cautious and block the door with a chair. You hear the sounds of gunfire above you. That isn’t what bothers you so much as it’s the growling and yelling that sounds like it’s coming from nearby. You remember that there are other “patients” on this same floor. More time passes and you still hear gunshots and the inhuman noises. You are starting to worry that it’s quite possible this house is going to be overrun by these things, and you haven’t even seen one. This fear becomes even more intense when you stop hearing the gunshots and only hear the guttural noises nearby. You start to feel like you’ve made another bad choice. Suddenly there’s an attempt to open the door only to be stopped by the chair you’ve propped against it. This is followed by a loud bang on the door, which scares the hell out of you. “Suzy! What the hell? Is this door barricaded?” you hear Lilith’s voice shout. “Yeah…is it safe?” you ask. “It’s safe in that we’re not in any immediate danger, but we gotta start getting the hell outta here. Open up!” Wasting no time you move the chair and the door opens up. Lilith throws your clothes at you and you can hear those awful noises in the corridor. Yelling and banging. “Here. Get dressed and don’t worry about the noises, the other subjects aren’t getting out of those rooms anytime soon.” Lilith says. You’re not as sure as Lilith is about that, so you just get dressed as fast as you can and exit the room with her. “So what’s going on?” you ask as you follow her. “What’s going on is Leslie and I are heading to that GZ Shelter after he and I gather a few things. The crazies from town are spilling out from it and we don’t want to be here in case another wave comes. I was hoping to have more time to pack, but I guess we can’t have everything.” You and Lilith get to the ground floor and finally see the house proper. It’s a bit of a mess now probably due to all the running around and shooting, but obviously was nice at one time. Then you enter the front room and see several broken windows, and couple of dead bodies. One of them is a uniformed man with his throat ripped out and several slashes across his face. Nearby him is a body of a disheveled looking woman with several bullet holes in her body and head. She still has a chunk of flesh in her teeth and even in death her eyes display a crazed look. It sort of freaks you out. “Um, that guy in the uniform, shouldn’t someone shoot him in the head?” “What? No. These aren’t zombies. They’re just well…rabid.” Lilith chuckles. “Headshots aren’t even necessary to kill them, though it sure as hell helps.” A couple more uniformed men with the Ground Zero insignia on them walk into the room holding rifles. “Place seems to be all secure Dr. Morningstar. No other hostiles in the house or around the house.” One of them says. “Good. Glad not all of you were incompetent. Wait, are you two the only ones left?” “Afraid so doctor.” One of them remarks. “Oh well. Okay, I want you two to stand guard out front. Make sure there isn’t another horde or whatever coming our way and if there is, run back in here and tell me immediately.” The two uniformed men nod and leave out the front door which is now half hanging off the hinges. You and Lilith both take a quick look outside and see the bodies of several crazies as well as GZ security. In the driveway you see that Lilith’s truck is heavily shot up and a couple bodies of crazed townies lie next to it. “Great, these assholes never learned the concept of one shot one kill. (Sigh) Guess we’re all just piling into the Ground Zero van.” Lilith says shaking her head. Lilith continues looks around a bit more at her partially destroyed house. “Well at least nobody has to clean this up this time. I remember the many many times I’d come home from work and I’d find Leslie had left a damn mess all over the house, much worse than this sometimes even. A lot more bodies too. Still remember the disorder he left when he was trying to write a poem for me on one of our past anniversaries. But it was such a lovely and thoughtful sentiment so I wasn’t too mad…anyway have you made your decision of what you’re going to do yet?” Lilith asks. You still really aren’t sure and lacking an answer, you ask a question. “What would I do at the shelter again? “Well I told you, I’m not in charge of assignments, but I’m sure there would be some sort of position there for you. Ground Zero doesn’t waste resources.” “I see.” Lilith looks at you with a squint. “You…still don’t trust me do you? Don’t answer. I know you don’t. (Sigh) I suppose I don’t blame you. Look, if you don’t want to go with us you don’t have to, I meant that. Still, I think it would be foolish if you didn’t.” “It might be equally foolish if I went with you. Who knows what the hell is in store for me in an underground shelter.” You say. “True, but think on this. If I really had anything bad in store for you there, don’t you think I would’ve just had security and my brother restrain you and take you there against your will anyway? I’m giving you a choice. You can go with us, or not. One of your problems Suzy is you don’t take chances, you stick with what you think is safe and look where that has gotten you. But if safety is your main concern, I’m just going to say that staying here isn’t exactly the safe option. This house isn’t secure, you’ll have a few days of food and water at best and if the crazed townsfolk don’t come ripping this place apart again, there are always just the plain opportunists that are no doubt lurking about as well. You don’t even have a vehicle to leave this place. Mine got all shot up and we’re taking the other one. Do you even have a plan if you stay here?” You don’t…as usual. “No.” you reply. “Well I’d think your choice would be simple then. Anyway, I have to bags to pack and when I’m done, I’m going to need to know what your answer is Suzy.” Lilith remarks and leaves you by yourself. You walk around the ground floor of the house a bit, just looking around. You start to form various thoughts in your head about how this place could be made more defensible. You just aren’t sure if you’re up to the task though. You briefly consider the idea of somehow overpowering one of those GZ security guys outside and driving off with the truck yourself, but you aren’t confident that you’d be successful. You then wonder if you could successfully flirt with one of them… You head outside and speak with both of the guards while attempting to be as charming as you can. You even manage to muster up the fortitude to blatantly make sexual innuendo and such. It doesn’t work. One of them is gay and the other is happily married and even if that wasn’t the case, they get irritated at the fact that you’re distracting them from their duty and start telling you to go away. You realize your plan isn’t going to work and you give up. “Christ Suzy, some seductress you are.” You mutter to yourself. This brings you back to your original two choices and both of those have the potential to go to shit for various reasons, but it’s all you got. > You stay at the house Lilith’s right. Your choice is simple. And that’s the one that doesn’t involve going somewhere with a pair of sociopaths and a shady corporation. “Safest choice my firm ass it is.” You say to yourself. Lilith’s psychobabble about you might’ve been a bit spot on in places, but it made you realize that not only is it not completely true, but that this past week you HAVE been making a concentrated effort to adapt to your surroundings. True, you haven’t been successful at it for the most part, but you’ve survived this long in this fucked up week, so you must not be too terrible at it either. Having to fend for yourself isn’t fun, but then being alone isn’t exactly new to you. In any case, you still don’t trust Lilith and begin looking around the house and there in the kitchen, you pick up a fairly large butcher knife. Actually it isn’t a knife so much as it’s a machete. One can only imagine what the hell it’s doing in their kitchen, but you can take a guess. You at first wonder if you should go try to kill Lilith or something, but then you think that probably isn’t the best plan. It’s likely to just end in your demise at the hands of her guards or her brother. You’re not some close combat expert and despite what Lilith said about you possibly “exploding into a ball of violent rage” you actually don’t have so much hate for her that you want to kill her without provocation. She actually might be telling the truth about the shelter as well rather than have any sinister intent. Still, you aren’t ready to take that chance either. While she has said she’ll just leave you in peace if decline the offer, you still have images of someone grabbing you, drugging you and taking you to the shelter against your will. So that leaves one option. You’re going to go hide. The question is where though. Lilith’s upstairs, he brother is in the basement. You imagine if you hid somewhere on the ground floor, you’d get discovered pretty quickly… It occurs to you, that you could just go out the backdoor and leave the premises for a while. You know they’re still in a hurry to get the hell out of here, chances are, they are not going to spend a whole lot of time looking for you, let alone looking for you off the grounds of the house. So that’s what you do. You leave out the backdoor. Unfortunately the backyard has a high wooden fence so climbing it wouldn’t be the easiest thing to do (And chopping it with the machete, would just cause noise) and the gate leading to the side of the house is locked. You see a shed, but you imagine that’s locked as well and it doesn’t seem like it would be a good place to hide. There are a couple trees in the yard and that’s when you notice that one of them has a few branches hanging over the fence. The tree in question looks a lot easier to climb than the fence so you go up the tree which is slightly tricky with the machete still in your hand, but you soon make it to the branch you need to get to, drop the machete on the ground first and then drop down. And promptly land wrong and twist the hell out of your ankle as you crumple to the ground. “Fuck. Shit…” you start to curse until you stop yourself, when you hear a voice yelling on the other side of the fence. “I dunno where your blonde lab rat is, go get your guards to look. I’m trying to look for my favorite machete! I thought I had it in the kitchen, but it’s not there. I’m going to check the shed.” From your low angle and through the slats of the fence you can see Leslie walking towards his shed. Definitely turning back now as you’re most likely in possession of Leslie’s favorite machete and you really hope that this isn’t going to inspire a “hunt.” You crawl away from the fence and the house as fast as you can. The pain in your ankle makes standing to “limp away” a bit more painful, but your desire to not get caught allows you to fight through it. The high grass and the occasional bush or tree makes your escape into the “wilderness” slightly less nerve wracking since at least you aren’t in a completely open field where if they were looking for you, you would be an easy find. Just as you think you’re getting far enough away, you hear a voice call out your name in the distance. You freeze and turn your head to look behind you, but you don’t see anyone. You still hear Lilith’s voice shouting for you from far away, but you guess that she’s just doing it from near the house rather than actively searching for you. Eventually you cease hearing her call for you and you take a breather within a cluster of trees. Actually you think if you went any further, you’d probably start going into a forest which you’re prepared to do if you think anyone is actually going to come looking for you. For now though, you need to rest your ankle a bit. A few moments pass and you don’t hear anything other than the occasional bird. A rabbit bounding nearby makes you jump a bit, but so far you don’t think anyone is coming out this way to look for you. Still, you can’t tell if they’ve all left yet. You decide to be on the safe side, you’ll wait a little longer. No more than that though since you really don’t want to get caught out here in the dark. So you wait, keeping your eyes and ears open. Really before now, you didn’t realize how rural of an area you lived in. You don’t think you’ve ever appreciated the outdoors before…and you still don’t now. Time passes and still no sign of anyone heading your way. You decide they’ve probably left by now and it’s probably safe. You ankle feels slightly better, but it still aches. As you try to keep your weight off of it and make your way back to the house, you suddenly hear rustling noise in the trees and bushes nearby. At first you think it’s another rabbit, but then you see exactly what it is “Shit!” you exclaim when you see a wild looking man with an equally wild look in his eyes. He sees you and makes that awful animalistic noise you heard while you were locked away in the basement and then sprints straight for you. Fear grips you, but you know you can’t outrun it with your ankle not being a hundred percent. Your only saving grace is you aren’t completely defenseless. You barely have time to react by the time it lunges upon you. You manage to swing your blade and as luck would have it you sink the blade across the thing’s face while its mouth was wide open. You weren’t strong enough to cleave its head off, but it can’t really bite you with a machete blade in the way either. Still, that doesn’t stop it from tackling you to the ground, not to mention the blade is now stuck half way through its head and you couldn’t really pull it out if you wanted to what with it being on top of you now. With blood spray all over you and this thing still trying to kill you, you do the only thing you can think of: You push the flat edge of the blade on your side and the handle so the machete cuts deeper into the thing’s head. It makes horrible squeals and shrieks, and keeps attempting to claw at your face, blood, teeth, bits of flesh are spraying/falling on you, but you keep the pressure on until at last you successfully shove the blade all the way through and the top of it’s head come off. After a bit more struggling, you get the thing completely off of you as it still attempts to kill you in its death throes. The thing continues to twitch and you’re busily looking around to make sure more of them aren’t coming or if the Morningstars are still around and heard all the noise. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else around though. By the way this thing was dressed he even looked like he might be a camper so hopefully it was just him in the woods. You just realize you killed someone…well someTHING at any rate. You don’t feel bad, since it was more out of necessity. You get the impression you might be killing more of these things in the near future, so better you get used to it now. You quicken your pace to the house though still proceeding cautiously as possible. You hug the back fence and slowly edge your way around to the front of the house and you see that the Ground Zero vehicle is gone, along with the two guards that were out front. At least that’s one thing you don’t need to worry about. You enter the house through the still open front door and check the ground floor and find nobody around. The place is still a mess though. You’re about to check the upstairs when you see a piece of paper attached to the refrigerator with your name written in big black marker. You take it and read. Suzy, Assuming you came back here, I just want to say I understand why you ran off like you did and I probably wouldn’t have completely trusted you if the roles were reversed. Still, it is a shame we didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to each other. Leslie was quite angry with your theft of his favorite machete, but I talked him out of attempting to hunt you down for it. Not like we even need it where we’re going. Anyway, I imagine you should have power in this house for a couple days at least. There is food and drink in the fridge and in the cupboards. You’ll probably want to eat the stuff in the fridge first before the power goes out and spoilage occurs though. Not sure if you’ll like some of it, but considering you liked the meatloaf, maybe you’ll like what’s in there. Good luck Suzy, I certainly hope your foray into being a survivalist is successful. I mean that. You’re going to have to really push yourself and prepare for what is coming, but I think you’ve got a shot. Lilith Morningstar P.S. The other patients are still locked in the rooms in the basement. There are four of them in total and have already very likely broken their restraints by now. As I have said before, the doors should be more than enough to contain them and you should be safe from them as long as you don’t open the rooms. Well that was certainly a thoughtful note to you. You sit down for a second thinking of what to do next. You thought that maybe you’d try to barricade this house up and stay here, but now you’re wondering if you shouldn’t just leave considering you’ve got four of those things clawing to get out of the basement. You to come to the conclusion that you might stay here another day tops and that’s only to just search this place of anything useful and then you’re heading out to well, you don’t know where exactly, but you’re going to continue to play this by ear. For right now though, you really need to wash up. You’re covered in blood, gore, dirt and generally feel really gross. You really don’t want to use the shower in that room you were in during your time in the basement of this place though. You head upstairs in the hopes of finding another bathroom and sure enough you find one. Lilith’s clothes are a slightly bigger size, but you can’t afford to be choosey since your own clothes are a bloody mess and it doesn’t make much sense changing back into them. During all this, you continue to keep your wits about you. Still afraid that something may pop up to attack at any time. By the time you’re out of the shower, night is beginning to fall. While you would’ve liked to have gotten started on searching the house you’re a little wary of turning on the lights in this house since it might very well attract more attention than you want. You do gather up a duffle bag that Lilith apparently decided not to use and plan to use that as your container for your search tomorrow. Given that you’re staying here the night, you need to secure this house as much as you can. You lock the back door and the basement door. (And trying to ignore the noises you hear coming from down there) You then shove a sofa in front of the ruined front door. It’s not much, but if those things try to come in, you’ll most likely hear it at least. You also realize you haven’t eaten all day, so you look in the fridge and grab something that looks similar to the meatloaf you ate yesterday since you don’t feel like making a decision. “Hm, Lil and Les really liked their meatloaf I guess.” You say and eat the stuff in the dark. (At least you don’t need to look at it this time) Tastes okay. You’re up for quite awhile paranoid about every noise you hear. However, you know you can’t stay awake all night despite your paranoia. You head back upstairs to one of the bedrooms and close the door. You then shove a dresser in front of it. Best you can do. You then flop down on the bed and reluctantly let sleep take you. > Next day… FRIDAY You wake up to the sound of a noisy vehicle outside. You waste no time in springing to your feet. You cautiously peek out the window and see a beat up pick up truck pulling up behind Lilith’s shot up vehicle. You then see two familiar figures get out of the truck with one of them speaking loud enough for you to hear even from your position. “Woowee! Looks like we missed some shit going down around here! Make sure you keep yer eyes peeled! Thinkin’ Doc might not even be alive anymore!” Jed exclaims. “Shit. What the fuck are those two assholes doing here?” you say to yourself. You see Hugo and Jed both carrying shotguns and going to the back of the pick up, which from your vantage point you can see a pile of blankets in the bed of the truck. Jed uncovers the blanket and reveals a naked woman tied up with ropes. She looks dirty, beaten and bloody. You can’t quite tell if she’s dead, but she’s definitely unconscious. You then see Jed say something to his brother and points to the house. Hugo nods and you see him walk out of your view. You temporarily freeze up when you hear a knock from downstairs. You hear it several times until you hear Jed shouting at his dim-witted brother. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ Hugo, are ya stupider than usual today? Can’t ya see that door is already hangin’ off the fuckin’ hinges? Just go in, and fuckin’ check the place out, then let me know if Doc’s even around or not. I’ll be out here keepin’ this fierce one entertained.” Jed shouts and you see him patting the leg of the girl a couple times. The knocking becomes a crashing sound as you hear Hugo bashing the door in and probably moving the sofa in the process. You turn your attention away from what’s going on outside and how you’re going to handle this situation. You think about climbing out the window and on to the roof, but that’s a risky proposition. Not really so much of the risk of falling (Though your ankle still hurts a bit) but more because Jed is practically in front of you and if he just bothers to till his head up or hears you, he’s going to see you and probably open fire. You look around the room and hoping maybe there is a firearm or something that Lilith didn’t take, but you don’t find anything. That dresser you put up against the door isn’t going to last long if Hugo tries to come in here. You suppose you could just try shoving move stuff against it, but considering he not only looks extremely strong, he’s got a shotgun and could probably just blast his way through. You hear Hugo stomping around downstairs. If Hugo comes up here, and you hide in the closet, there’s the possibility that you could get the drop on him as he walks in. You wonder though if it might not be more advantageous to just head downstairs and try to sneak up on him now though. If he comes up and things go to shit, you aren’t going to have any place to run to, especially if he traps you in this room. > You seek out Hugo Either way you’re going to have to get the drop on him, better you have more places to run to, rather than just being trapped in one room. As quietly as you can you move the dresser out of the way of the door and exit the bedroom. You still hear Hugo clomping around downstairs and you actually wait around the corner of the stairs hoping that maybe if he is heading upstairs you can ambush him that way. Waiting doesn’t prove fruitful though and in fact you think Hugo’s footsteps are actually getting fainter. It then occurs to you, he’s probably looking for Leslie and Leslie would be down in the basement. You cautiously head downstairs though you do it fairly quickly since the last thing you want is to be wrong and get caught going half way down the stairs while Hugo is going up them. After a quick look around on the ground floor and keeping your ears open you’re not hearing or seeing Hugo down here. You are starting to hear Jed shouting from outside though. When you peek out the window, you can’t quite see everything, but you notice Jed is clearly doing something with the woman that was in the back of the truck. You can guess what that might be given his movements and vulgar shouting. You head towards the stairs of the basement and you nearly fall down them when you’re startled by a sudden gunshot coming from down there. Hugo must’ve just shot one of the four “patients” down there. Of course it’s hard to know if he’d opened a door and killed one or perhaps it managed to get out on its own. Either way, you’re going to have to be really careful. You get to the basement floor and the noise of those things is much louder. You peek around the corner and down the corridor you see two doors to the rooms open. The closest one you know was yours, so nothing in there. The second one however looks like it also has a dead body lying partially in the entryway. You see Hugo in the corridor opening up another door across the hall of the other two open ones. He isn’t really paying much attention to your direction and when he steps into the other room, you make a dash for your old room and get inside. Along with hearing the banging of the creatures still locked up, you hear another shotgun blast signifying Hugo’s killed another one. You figure before he opens up the next door, you run up and chop him in the back of the head. You peek out from behind the door and see Hugo exiting the room. He walks to the middle of the corridor and begins fiddling with his shotgun, as if he’s having trouble with it. Just then the door across from him bursts open and one of the patients attacks him. You see and hear them struggle, growling, yelling, and everything else that comes with a life or death situation. It gets more interesting however when you see Hugo drop the shotgun as he’s struggling with the patient. You waste no time and rush from your position to nab it. Hugo meanwhile is still struggling with the patient who has now bitten into Hugo’s hand. You’re about to put a hole in the pair of them and that’s when the door to the room containing the last patient bursts open. The thing seeing that one of its “fellows” is already struggling with Hugo, it screams and lunges forward to attack you instead. You instinctively turn the shotgun towards the patient and pull the trigger, unfortunately it doesn’t work which is why Hugo was fiddling with it earlier. It was jammed. Before you can pick your machete back up to defend yourself, the thing has already tackled you. You struggle for a moment, but this one is a lot stronger than the one you fought with yesterday. It soon overpowers you and its teeth are ripping your throat out and its fingers are clawing your eyes out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY You wake up to the sound of a noisy vehicle outside. You waste no time in springing to your feet. You cautiously peek out the window and see a beat up pick up truck pulling up behind Lilith’s shot up vehicle. You then see two familiar figures get out of the truck with one of them speaking loud enough for you to hear even from your position. “Woowee! Looks like we missed some shit going down around here! Make sure you keep yer eyes peeled! Thinkin’ Doc might not even be alive anymore!” Jed exclaims. “Shit. What the fuck are those two assholes doing here?” you say to yourself. You see Hugo and Jed both carrying shotguns and going to the back of the pick up, which from your vantage point you can see a pile of blankets in the bed of the truck. Jed uncovers the blanket and reveals a naked woman tied up with ropes. She looks dirty, beaten and bloody. You can’t quite tell if she’s dead, but she’s definitely unconscious. You then see Jed say something to his brother and points to the house. Hugo nods and you see him walk out of your view. You temporarily freeze up when you hear a knock from downstairs. You hear it several times until you hear Jed shouting at his dim-witted brother. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ Hugo, are ya stupider than usual today? Can’t ya see that door is already hangin’ off the fuckin’ hinges? Just go in, and fuckin’ check the place out, then let me know if Doc’s even around or not. I’ll be out here keepin’ this fierce one entertained.” Jed shouts and you see him patting the leg of the girl a couple times. The knocking becomes a crashing sound as you hear Hugo bashing the door in and probably moving the sofa in the process. You turn your attention away from what’s going on outside and how you’re going to handle this situation. You think about climbing out the window and on to the roof, but that’s a risky proposition. Not really so much of the risk of falling (Though your ankle still hurts a bit) but more because Jed is practically in front of you and if he just bothers to till his head up or hears you, he’s going to see you and probably open fire. You look around the room and hoping maybe there is a firearm or something that Lilith didn’t take, but you don’t find anything. That dresser you put up against the door isn’t going to last long if Hugo tries to come in here. You suppose you could just try shoving move stuff against it, but considering he not only looks extremely strong, he’s got a shotgun and could probably just blast his way through. You hear Hugo stomping around downstairs. If Hugo comes up here, and you hide in the closet, there’s the possibility that you could get the drop on him as he walks in. You wonder though if it might not be more advantageous to just head downstairs and try to sneak up on him now though. If he comes up and things go to shit, you aren’t going to have any place to run to, especially if he traps you in this room. > You hide in this room Better to stay put and surprise attack him that way. Quite frankly if you don’t get the drop on him, you’re probably not going to get the chance to run anyway. You get the closet and hide in the extra niche space within it. Hugo comes kicking in the door, he wanders in and probably looks around the room first, and then you attack hoping you kill him before he shoots you. You took out one of those rabid things by yourself and that was pretty dangerous right? You can do this. You can do this. You can do this. You convince yourself as you wait in a closet to ambush a large and heavily armed retarded redneck rapist… You wait, still hearing Hugo clomping around and probably knocking shit over if the sounds are any indication. You also start hearing some shouting outside. You can’t tell what’s going on, but you’re more focused what’s going on inside. At any time, you expect to hear the sound of boots loudly stomping up the stairs, but you don’t, in fact the sounds of Hugo’s stomping get faint and soon you’re not hearing it at all. At first you think maybe he went back outside, but then it occurs to you that Jed told Hugo to look for Leslie. And if Leslie were here, he’d probably be in the basement so that might be where Hugo went. You cautiously come out of the closet and try to listen for Hugo, but the only thing you’re hearing now is Jed making “whooping” noises as well as shrieking. You peek out the window again just to see what the hell is going on. You see the girl that was in the bed of the truck now bent over the tailgate and Jed raping her. Her arms are still tied behind her back, but she’s not unconscious anymore. She’s obviously squirming and making the shrieking sounds you heard before. Something isn’t right though, and it’s not just the whole rape thing. The noise that this woman is making doesn’t entirely sound…well “natural.” You think she might be one of those crazies. That doesn’t seem to bother Jed however, he just keeps laughing and punches her in the back of the head every once in a while to “calm” her. His shotgun is leaning up against the side of the truck. You guess he got over the idea of “catching” something. You shake your head at this fucked up situation and then suddenly you hear a shotgun blast from within the house. You then remember there are still four of those things locked up in those rooms in the basement. You have no idea if Hugo’s just opened up one of the doors and killed one, or they’ve gotten out on their own though. You don’t hear another gunshot, so you also don’t know if he successfully killed it or it (or they) possibly got him. Meanwhile the shot briefly get Jed’s attention and he actually stops raping for one minute, but then he quickly goes back to it and starts shouting at the crazed woman. “Hah! Sounds like my brother just put another one of you crazy bitches down!” he exclaims and then slams her face into the bed of the truck. Well it seems like both brothers are suitably distracted and divided which is the best situation you’re going to get. Ideally, you’d take out Jed first and grab his shotgun. The only problem is there is no way you can really sneak up on him since his line of sight is directly in front of the house. Walking out the front door even quietly as possible and even with him in the middle of his rape of one of the rabid, if he sees you, it won’t take him long to grab his shotgun and open fire. Hugo on the other hand might very well already be dead for all you know. If he is, that doesn’t necessarily mean things are going to be any easier with one of those insane people or possibly more than one lurking around free in the basement. Even if he isn’t dead, the same problem arises that you’re going to have when you thought he might come up the stairs. Might even be harder given the corridors don’t allow for many places to hide and he’s going to be more alert now. Whether Hugo is alive or there are a group of cannibals eating him right now, you still feel like Jed would be easier for you to deal with armed only with a machete. You move the dresser and cautiously leave the bedroom. You continually keep looking around as you head towards the stairs. You make your way down the stairs and try to keep your head low so you don’t possibly get seen through one of the broken windows. The front door is wide open and you can see Jed with the girl. Right now he’s got his head down and isn’t paying attention to what could be in front of him, he’s too busy slamming his dick into crazy woman and keeping her from getting away from him. As quickly and as quietly as you can, you slip out the front door and hide behind one of the front porch pillars. You think if you’re quick enough you could make it to hide behind the front Lilith’s vehicle and then from there just crawl alongside that vehicle to Jed’s vehicle, grab the shotgun and you’re home free. You peek around the pillar and see Jed’s still engrossed in his activity. You immediately make the attempt… Then another shotgun blast emanates from the house just as you’re a the bottom of the front stairs causing you to stumble a bit and Jed to look up. Your eyes meet. “SHIT!” pair of you shout and Jed starts fumbling with his dick and pants. You MIGHT make it if you make a sprint to grab the shotgun, but then again you might not and not getting it, means game over. You’ve probably got a better chance if you run back into the house, but in that case you’re going to be playing a game of cat and mouse with him and considering you just heard a second gunshot, it would seem Hugo is probably alive too. > You run back in the house You turn around and try to get back in the house as quick as you can. You hear Jed shout at you to stop, but you don’t listen, you just to get in the front door. You don’t quite make it and feel the burning pain a slug hitting the back of your left leg. Not only do you scream in agony, you also fall straight on you your face. “Stupid bitch, I told ya, to stop!” Jed shouts. You don’t even look at your leg, but you sense that it may just be barely attached to the rest of your body at this point. The agony is so bad you feel like you’re going to be sick or go unconscious at the same time. Against all odds you continue to try to crawl into the entryway of the house. “HEY! I SAID STOP FUCKING MOVING! Goddamnit…” you hear Jed shout and you expect to another shot, but instead you hear shouting of a different kind. “ARGH! FUCK!” You manage to turn your head enough to see Jed being attacked by the rabid woman he was violating. She’s bitten him, but he’s still managing to fight her off. You use this opportunity to continue to crawl away. You manage to get back inside, and you hear another gunshot followed by more swearing. Your heart sinks since that means Jed must still be alive. The combination of fear and pain is clouding your thoughts of everything save for trying to get away, but you know that’s not going to happen. Your fears become reality when you’re only half way up the stairs to the second floor and hear footsteps coming into the house. “I hear ya whimpering girl and I can see the bloody mess yer leavin’. Won’t be half as messy though when I get through with ya!” you hear Jed shout. You soon hear him on stairs behind you. “Dunno, why yer goin’ up there for, your fate is sealed sick girl. Didn’t seem so sick out there when you were trying to reach for my shotgun. Bet you thought pullin’ one over on me a couple days ago was really funny. Well I guess I’m the one laughing now. Since I didn’t finish with my ex-girlfriend back there, guess you’ll have to fill in for her. You suddenly feel a hand grip your good leg and pull hard. As you’re dragged, you make one last ditch effort to fight, by twisting your body and swinging the machete you’re still carrying in your hand. You manage to catch Jed’s arm sinking the blade in. He yells, lets go and falls backwards down the stairs. Unfortunately with his other hand that still holds the shotgun, he pulls the trigger on it. You’re hit again and it’s a quick death as part of your head and brains are splattered all over the stairs and walls, which at least spares you of any further suffering.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Better to stay put and surprise attack him that way. Quite frankly if you don’t get the drop on him, you’re probably not going to get the chance to run anyway. You get the closet and hide in the extra niche space within it. Hugo comes kicking in the door, he wanders in and probably looks around the room first, and then you attack hoping you kill him before he shoots you. You took out one of those rabid things by yourself and that was pretty dangerous right? You can do this. You can do this. You can do this. You convince yourself as you wait in a closet to ambush a large and heavily armed retarded redneck rapist… You wait, still hearing Hugo clomping around and probably knocking shit over if the sounds are any indication. You also start hearing some shouting outside. You can’t tell what’s going on, but you’re more focused what’s going on inside. At any time, you expect to hear the sound of boots loudly stomping up the stairs, but you don’t, in fact the sounds of Hugo’s stomping get faint and soon you’re not hearing it at all. At first you think maybe he went back outside, but then it occurs to you that Jed told Hugo to look for Leslie. And if Leslie were here, he’d probably be in the basement so that might be where Hugo went. You cautiously come out of the closet and try to listen for Hugo, but the only thing you’re hearing now is Jed making “whooping” noises as well as shrieking. You peek out the window again just to see what the hell is going on. You see the girl that was in the bed of the truck now bent over the tailgate and Jed raping her. Her arms are still tied behind her back, but she’s not unconscious anymore. She’s obviously squirming and making the shrieking sounds you heard before. Something isn’t right though, and it’s not just the whole rape thing. The noise that this woman is making doesn’t entirely sound…well “natural.” You think she might be one of those crazies. That doesn’t seem to bother Jed however, he just keeps laughing and punches her in the back of the head every once in a while to “calm” her. His shotgun is leaning up against the side of the truck. You guess he got over the idea of “catching” something. You shake your head at this fucked up situation and then suddenly you hear a shotgun blast from within the house. You then remember there are still four of those things locked up in those rooms in the basement. You have no idea if Hugo’s just opened up one of the doors and killed one, or they’ve gotten out on their own though. You don’t hear another gunshot, so you also don’t know if he successfully killed it or it (or they) possibly got him. Meanwhile the shot briefly get Jed’s attention and he actually stops raping for one minute, but then he quickly goes back to it and starts shouting at the crazed woman. “Hah! Sounds like my brother just put another one of you crazy bitches down!” he exclaims and then slams her face into the bed of the truck. Well it seems like both brothers are suitably distracted and divided which is the best situation you’re going to get. Ideally, you’d take out Jed first and grab his shotgun. The only problem is there is no way you can really sneak up on him since his line of sight is directly in front of the house. Walking out the front door even quietly as possible and even with him in the middle of his rape of one of the rabid, if he sees you, it won’t take him long to grab his shotgun and open fire. Hugo on the other hand might very well already be dead for all you know. If he is, that doesn’t necessarily mean things are going to be any easier with one of those insane people or possibly more than one lurking around free in the basement. Even if he isn’t dead, the same problem arises that you’re going to have when you thought he might come up the stairs. Might even be harder given the corridors don’t allow for many places to hide and he’s going to be more alert now. Whether Hugo is alive or there are a group of cannibals eating him right now, you still feel like Jed would be easier for you to deal with armed only with a machete. You move the dresser and cautiously leave the bedroom. You continually keep looking around as you head towards the stairs. You make your way down the stairs and try to keep your head low so you don’t possibly get seen through one of the broken windows. The front door is wide open and you can see Jed with the girl. Right now he’s got his head down and isn’t paying attention to what could be in front of him, he’s too busy slamming his dick into crazy woman and keeping her from getting away from him. As quickly and as quietly as you can, you slip out the front door and hide behind one of the front porch pillars. You think if you’re quick enough you could make it to hide behind the front Lilith’s vehicle and then from there just crawl alongside that vehicle to Jed’s vehicle, grab the shotgun and you’re home free. You peek around the pillar and see Jed’s still engrossed in his activity. You immediately make the attempt… Then another shotgun blast emanates from the house just as you’re a the bottom of the front stairs causing you to stumble a bit and Jed to look up. Your eyes meet. “SHIT!” pair of you shout and Jed starts fumbling with his dick and pants. You MIGHT make it if you make a sprint to grab the shotgun, but then again you might not and not getting it, means game over. You’ve probably got a better chance if you run back into the house, but in that case you’re going to be playing a game of cat and mouse with him and considering you just heard a second gunshot, it would seem Hugo is probably alive too. > You run for the shotgun You’re going to be at a severe disadvantage if you run away, better to just get this over with and if you die today, then you die. Ignoring any pain you might still have with your ankle, you sprint for the shotgun. Jed at this point doesn’t bother pants anymore and goes to grab the shotgun. Seeing that he’ll easily beat you to it, you throw the machete at him. It’s enough to cause him to jump and stumble when he thinks it’s going to hit him, which is enough time to grab the shotgun, unfortunately just not enough time to shoot Jed with it. “Fuckin’ bitch!” Jed says and elbows you in the side of the head. You try to hang on to the shotgun, but he manages to pull it away from you and then kicks you to the ground. You hear a racking sound of the shotgun and you don’t look up. While you’re certainly scared, you’re angrier that you failed more than anything else. “I remember you…you were Miss sick weren’t you? You don’t seem so sick now. In fact you don’t even seem like the crazies in town. Guess you had a big laugh about pullin’ one over on me huh? LOOK AT ME!” You look up, but maintain a defiant look in your eye as Jed continues to point his shotgun at you. “Oh. Still the tough bitch huh? Well it don’t mean shit and it ain’t gonna change shit. Tell ya what though, I didn’t get to finish up with my current girlfriend over there and as you can see my dick’s still hard. Suck me off like the whore you are and MAYBE you might get a quick death.” Jed says. You take a brief look at Jed’s filthy dick and look back up and smile. “Jed, you better just shove that shotgun barrel in my face and pull the trigger because that’s the only thing you’re getting in my mouth and blowing a load in. It would at least be a lot more spectacular than what’s actually between your legs.” Jed’s face nearly becomes red with rage. “Yer gonna WISH I blew your head off, you cunt!” Jed says and he pulls the shotgun up and then flips it around to use the butt of it smash you in the head. He’s not quite quick enough though since you manage to shield your face with your hands. Still it’s enough to knock you back to the ground in pain. “Where the fuck is that machete.” Jed says and grabs it from the ground before approaching you with it one hand and still holding the shotgun in the other. “Been awhile since I fucked an amputee, guess we’ll see if I can cum before you bleed out…” Jed in his haste to “teach you a lesson” has completely ignored the fact that he is no longer restraining the crazy woman he was violating. You see the thing recover and get up from it’s previous vulnerable position. “You sure you want to do this Jed? Think your girlfriend is jealous.” You say. “Wha…AGH!” Jed says and turns just in time for the crazed townie to bite Jed between the neck and shoulder. He drops the shotgun and swings the machete in an attempt to kill the rabid woman. While they struggle you scramble and grab the shotgun. Jed manages to fight off the rabid woman and finishes her off with a chop to her neck. “Aww, I was rooting for her.” You say. Jed turns around and sees you pointing the shotgun at him. He doesn’t look scared. “What, you think I’m scared because you’re pointing a gun at me? Ain’t the first time I’ve had one pointed at me blondie.” He says. “Heh, blondie now is it? Not whore, bitch, cunt, or whatever other unimaginative name you’ve called me before? I may not have been doing this as long as you have, but it seems like someone is scared.” “Pfft, you don’t even know how to use that thing, the fucking safety is on you dumb bitch.” You pull the trigger and literally blow his balls off. The kickback hurts your arm, but it’s a lot less pain than what you imagine Jed is feeling right now. Jed howls on the ground in agony and you walk over near him. “Did you actually expect I was going to fall for that like in a movie? Get me to check like an idiot and give you just enough time to possibly rush me? I just heard you rack this fucking shotgun not a few seconds ago. Not to mention with the time you spent playing with rabid girl over there, I would have had more than enough time to take the safety off and that’s even if this particular shotgun HAD a safety feature on it to begin with which it doesn’t!” You say. Jed just looks at you with a mixture of pain and disbelief that you would even know that much about a gun. “I know, brains and beauty. It’s a curse sometimes, but after this week I’m starting to get the hang of it.” You say and blast Jed into oblivion. The first thing you do is keep an eye on your immediate surroundings. You, Jed and crazy woman made a hell of a lot of noise. Who knows what the hell might have been attracted. Not to mention the last thing you need is Hugo to have heard all of this and come running out. You seem to be okay for now though. The second thing you do is search Jed’s body or what’s left of it for keys to the truck. It’s a gory mess and the only thing you succeed in doing is getting your hands bloody. You do remember seeing Hugo getting out of the driver’s side, so you imagine he’s probably the one that has them. “Well, he was going to be next anyway.” you say and head back towards the house. Once again you enter the house with caution. You get the feeling Hugo didn’t hear anything outside or if he did, he’s too pre-occupied with shit in the basement. Come to think of it, you haven’t heard another blast and you know there are at least two more of those things down there, then again you’ve been a little pre-occupied as well. You make your way to the stairs leading to the basement. You aren’t hearing anything at all, which makes all the more scary. “Made it this far by yourself Suzy, you can finish this…” you say and descend. You get to the bottom floor of the basement and just looking down the corridor, you see several of the doors are open. No sign of Hugo or the “patients” though. You head down the corridor fully ready for anything about to leap out at you. You look into the first room with the door open and see nothing. In fact, this is your old room. The next two rooms obviously housed “patients.” One of those patients is laying dead face down half in the doorway. The other is still in his room and hadn’t even broken his restraints. You notice the next room is empty, but the door looks like it was broken open from the inside. It would seem these rooms weren’t as secure as Lilith thought. It is at this point you notice splatters of blood all over the floor and a trail of it leading to the last open door which again looks broken from the outside. You slowly peek around the corner. There you see one of the patients lying near the entryway with his head twisted all the way around and blood around his mouth. His teeth are clenched in a creepy death grin and you also notice the remnants of a couple fingers still gripped in it. It would appear Hugo didn’t get a chance to shoot this one. Another patient lies further in the room with its brains bashed into the floor. It also has blood around it’s mouth and in this case nails too. Finally you see Hugo sitting up against a wall with his shotgun nearby on the floor. He doesn’t look so great though. He’s clearly wounded very badly. It looks like he’s holding his stomach, which he is bleeding out of and you already know he’s lost some fingers. When he looks up at you. He doesn’t even go for his gun, he just stares…with one eye. He apparently lost one of those too. “HUGO HURT BAD.” He says. Either he doesn’t recognize you, he doesn’t think you’re a threat, or is too concerned about his injuries. “Yeah, doesn’t look too good.” You answer, Hugo still makes no move to the shotgun despite you walking in. “YOU THE SICK PRETTY LADY.” Hugo says finally recognizing you. “Yeah, well I got better.” “DOC CAN MAKE HUGO BETTER.” “Doc’s not here.” Hugo at this point winces in pain and coughs up some blood. Hugo is just a retard; he probably doesn’t even know he does bad things. You imagine his brother Jed has been manipulating him all his life. It might even be tragic under normal circumstances. “YOU SEE JED? JED MAKE HUGO BETTER.” “Sure I’ve seen him, I’ll take you to him.” You point the shotgun at Hugo who doesn’t even really realize the gravity of the situation and with a mixture of avenging angel and angel of mercy you pull the trigger and put Hugo out of his misery. Probably quicker than he deserved, but it got the job done. You exit the room feeling a bit drained. You weren’t really expecting to do all this the first thing you got up this morning, but you handled it about as well as you could have. It’s amazing how much someone can change and what they’re capable of within just a few days. You just killed two people this time and granted they deserved it, you still feel a little weird that you aren’t sick about it or something. Maybe Lilith was right. Maybe you are capable of great violence without a second thought. The jury is still out on that since as far you’re concerned you haven’t killed any innocent people, just two people who fucked with you. In any case you’re a far cry from that “good girl” who hid in the basement. Speaking of basements, you decide to check out the rest of this one since you’re down here. You don’t find much though except one large room that is obviously where Leslie did all his “experiments.” Looks like he took most of his stuff and left a couple of dead bodies on his table behind. You don’t really stay long due to the smell, which is pretty awful. You leave the basement with a second shotgun and Hugo’s truck keys. You spend the rest of the day looting the house for any potential worthwhile items. The Morningstars left surprisingly a lot of every useful items behind, but then again they’re going to be in a nice safe shelter so there really wasn’t any need you suppose. You pack what bags you can find full of stuff until you feel you have enough. After doing that you take a break to wash up again and eat. You grab something out of the fridge that looks like lasagna. It doesn’t taste like any lasagna you’ve ever had, but then again you’ve only ever eaten the microwavable kind, so that might be why it tastes a hell of a lot better. Leslie might’ve been a horrible human being, but damn if he wasn’t a good cook. As the sun starts to go down, you wonder if you should leave or stay one more night and leave in the morning. You ultimately decide now that you’re a lot better armed, you can probably afford to stay one more night. You don’t know if you’ll get to sleep on a proper bed again. Once again you take all the proper precautions of securing the house as much as you can and once again end with pushing the dresser to block the door of the bedroom before turning in to sleep. A little less reluctantly this time given that you have two shotguns and as well as a machete for protection now. > Next day… SATURDAY You wake up to the sound of a noisy vehicle outside. You waste no time in springing to your feet. You cautiously peek out the window and see a military truck pulling up behind Jed’s vehicle. “Are you fucking kidding me? Is fate just determined to make my life more hell than it needs to be?” you say to yourself. You then see a familiar figure getting out of the truck and carrying a rifle. He looks around and then wastes no time in running to the house. “Bobby?” you say and then go move the dresser. By the time you’ve gotten out the door, you hear him downstairs kicking over the sofa in the front door entryway and calling out your name. “SUZY! SUZY!” he shouts in a panic as you hear him knocking over shit in an effort to look for you. “I’m right here and you’re lucky it’s just me, because anyone else would’ve long since blown your head off with the way you’re announcing yourself by now.” You say coming down the stairs. When you see Bobby, he definitely looks like he’s seen better days, but when Bobby sees you he drops his weapon and his face is one of extreme elation. Like a great weight has been lifted off of him by seeing you. He rushes forward to presumably hug you and you immediately pull your own shotgun up. “Alright, stop.” You say. “Wha…it’s me! Bobby!” he exclaims. “Yeah, I know who you are silly, I’m just wondering WHY you’re here. Who else is with you?” you ask. “Nobody! It’s just me! Suzy, just put the gun down, I’m…” “I don’t think so, after the week I’ve had I’m not too fucking keen on just putting my weapon down. Besides we didn’t part exactly on the best of terms or have you forgotten?” “I know! I know! I was an asshole about that! I didn’t mean any of that shit I said! I was a big fucking asshole and you were right the whole time! I should’ve realized sooner that you were always the one for me and that I should’ve made the sacrifice for you because you’re completely worth it and I still love you” “And…what? You just realized this today?” “No! I realized it soon after my aunt called telling me she had you over here.” “Wait, didn’t she call you on Tuesday? I was drugged and held against my will by your psycho aunt and uncle and you didn’t think to come here sooner?” “I…it took me awhile to sort out my feelings…I was still confused…” You can’t believe this! “Took you awhile to sort out your feelings?! Confused? Are you fucking kidding me?! That’s your excuse?” “It’s no excuse! That’s how it was! I thought there was no chance again with you given how bad we broke up! And besides, I’m sure my aunt told you how I pleaded for your life. It’s probably why you’re still alive.” “Yeah, okay fine I’ll give you that. Your groveling probably kept me alive initially, but if you REALLY wanted to come here and play white knight and save the damsel, you REALLY should’ve got here fucking sooner! Do you even know what the fuck I’ve had to deal with here for past three days?” “No, but I really did try to get here sooner! Seriously I did!” “Oh yes, sorting out your feelings and probably getting one last fuck from Diana…” “Hey! For your information I killed Diana.” Well Bobby’s peaked your interest enough that you lower your shotgun. “Wait, you killed that bitch?” you ask. “Well it wasn’t on purpose, but yeah I accidently killed her when I was trying to leave the compound. I told her to either the hell out of the way or I was going through that gate anyway. Never believed she wouldn’t move and the crunch under the tires was pretty much an indication that I killed her.” Bobby replies. “That’s not exactly an accident Bobby, but that’s okay. That’s another point in your favor.” “Anyway, I ended up getting held up in town by the fucking National Guard, when both of my cousins decided it would be a good idea to antagonize them even more by firing upon them. That went about as well as you’d expect…” “Your cousins? You brought family with you?” “Wasn’t exactly my idea. Two of my cousins, William and Aaron wanted to leave the compound as well, so they followed me for a while in William’s vehicle. Then before I knew it, Aaron was firing at shit, which called more attention than it needed to. I parted company with them as soon as I could, but by that time I had the National Guard all over me. Crashed the vehicle and nearly got shot. In fact I probably would’ve gotten shot had it not been for this tight ass government official insisting I be held for questioning. Thought I was a terrorist or something.” “So you were held captive by the National Guard?” “Well I was on Wednesday and for part of Thursday until the camp got overrun by fucking crazy cannibals. Nearly getting eaten was a nice change of pace of getting punched in the face and beaten.” Well that explains the bruises and scratches on Bobby’s face and arms as well as the condition of his clothing, which is torn in several places. “Spent the rest of Thursday just trying to get away from those fuckers and trying to make it through the town which was a warzone at this point. Wasn’t until Friday night I managed to get a hold of a Guardsman’s truck and drive out of there.” You remain silent as Bobby at this point walks over to you. He takes your hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner Suzy, I really wanted to and I really tried. My mind was always pre-occupied with concern of if you were even still alive or not. I can only imagine what horrors you had to face here. I don’t know exactly what happened here, but I saw all the bodies outside and the state of the house…and well I can guess you didn’t have an easy time of it. I’m here now though and you don’t need to worry anymore. We can go anywhere you want. We can run away to anywhere just like you wanted. I’m done with my family; I’m done with my religion. From the moment I knew you were being held here, I knew YOU were my family. YOU were my religion and I love you so much. You have to believe me.” You look at Bobby and see in his eyes he really means all this. You stroke his face lovingly. “Oh Bobby…” And then promptly slap him. He gives a surprised look. “…you’re goddamn right you don’t know what horrors I fucking faced! I was scared the entire time!” You go into an exaggerated tirade about what you experienced while you were here. Not that what you really went through wasn’t bad, but to be honest it sounds like what Bobby went through was probably worse in his attempt to get here and you’re not going to let Bobby just think he can waltz back into your life and get you back with ease with his “hero” attempt. “…and did I mention I was nearly RAPED by rednecks several times?” “They didn’t…” “No they didn’t, but I had to fend for myself and I did a pretty damn good job at it. Proved to me that I have an inner strength that I never took advantage of before and when the chips are down, I don’t really need anyone.” Bobby’s face starts to show one of distress and just before he goes into his routine of telling you more honeyed words of his love for you and begs you to take him back, you stop him by continuing to speak. “…but there also were times where things would have been a lot easier had someone had been around to help me.” Now you take Bobby’s hand. “(Sigh) Look Bobby, maybe all this crazy shit that’s happened between us and to us is like wiping the slate clean or something. Maybe we do have a future. I believe you when you say you love me and obviously you went through a lot to try to get here to save me. But we can’t just jump back into this like we were before. You’re going to have to give me some time.” Bobby nods. “Okay. I understand Suzy. I do.” You and Bobby just stare at each other for a while. It’s funny how you never thought you’d even see Bobby again, let alone reunite with him. Somehow the argument you had earlier in the week just doesn’t matter anymore. “Okay, let’s head upstairs to the bedroom.” You say and pat his hand. “What for?” Bobby asks. “For sex duh.” You say. “Sex? I thought you said you needed some time.” “Yeah well I decided that some of that time involves pleasuring me. Besides, this isn’t YOUR reward, it’s MY fucking reward for surviving this shitty week. So I hope you’re prepared to do a lot of licking.” “Hey whatever you need.” Bobby says following up the stairs. Doesn’t take long for the pair of you to be totally into your reunification. In fact you’re enjoying yourself so much you nearly don’t notice the bright flash coming from the window and loud noise in the distance. “Shit that was bright, glad I wasn’t looking directly at whatever that was.” You say. “I wouldn’t know about the light since my face was buried in your pussy at the time, I did hear the noise though.” Bobby says. The pair of you wander over to the window and in the far distance you see the remnants of a mushroom cloud. Probably landed on Security City or near it. You can only guess it probably wasn’t a big one. “So…they finally went and did it.” You say. “Looks like.” Bobby says. “Oh well, we’ll be okay.” “You seem very sure of that, I remember a time you would’ve been worrying about radiation and everything else.” “Well you’ve been through this hellish week the same way I have and we both survived. Together I think our chances are even greater. Besides, your aunt told me GZ put drugs in the water that are supposed make people more resistant to radiation and disease and such.” “What seriously?” “Seriously. That drug is what also made most people go batshit crazy. Doesn’t affect everyone though and I never did get a solid answer on why I wasn’t affected. Guess you aren’t either.” “Maybe we’re already crazy?” “Probably.” You chuckle. You and Bobby go back to doing what you were doing and why the hell not? It isn’t like the apocalypse isn’t going to still be there. Later you Bobby load up his army truck with all the stuff you think you’ll need. You aren’t sure where you’ll go yet, but you maintain a positive attitude that you’ll ultimately be fine. As he begins driving away from the house, you open up one of the Tupperware containers of food that you took with you when you left and start eating. “What is that you’re eating? It looks awful.” Bobby remarks. “I dunno. I think it’s some sort of beef. I know it’s not much for looks, but it tastes delicious though. Your uncle Leslie was a really good cook. I’ve never been a big food person, but I’m seriously going to miss eating from that house. I took this as a last hoorah as it were. You want some?” Bobby’s face begins to look a little concerned. “Suzy, you’ve been eating out of my aunt and uncle’s fridge? How much have you eaten?” “I dunno. I’ve had at least one meal a day there. What the hell else was I going to eat? I’m telling you though I’d like to know how to make this stuff, but I imagine just picking up meat from the super market isn’t going to be an option anymore.” “Oh you can make that stuff without needing a super market. Suzy, my aunt and uncle were fucking CANNIBALS! You’ve probably been eating human meat for the past three days!” Bobby exclaims. You stop eating and start looking at the meal you’re eating. You poke at it a few times wondering if you’re going to come across a finger or something, but after doing this for a few seconds you don’t find anything out of the ordinary, and you scoop out another piece and eat it. Bobby looks shocked. “What? Still tastes good. Think of it this way, at least we know I’m willing to eat human flesh if things get tough out here in the big bad apocalyptic wasteland. You sure you don’t want any?” Bobby just shakes his head and continues to drive. “Hm, more for me.” You say with a shrug and take another bite. “You really have changed Suzy.” Bobby remarks. “Yeah, well happens to the best of us.” You say. > Love SICK Too The Future… “You know how mutants are dear, they act on impulse sometimes.” You say as you sew up a shirt. “Yes, I get that, but I specifically told my congregation NOT to attack Iron Union transports! Last thing we need is the GZ corporation sniffing around this town asking questions. I’m just glad I managed to convince them to clean up the mess, even if some of them were bitching the entire time.” Bobby exclaims. “Hm, well you are very persuasive when you want to be. Guess that’s why they listen to you at all.” Bobby just sits down in a nearby chair continuing to rant about the troubles with his “congregation.” You’ve heard the complaints before several times and really this is just a normal routine for you both. Bobby complains and you listen to his troubles. Just part of married life you suppose. Making adjustments to accommodate your significant other’s desires is another part of married life. Bobby may have very well left his “religion” behind, but the cult leader part of him never really left him. You’re not even exactly sure what “higher power” Bobby believes in now, if he does at all. Personally you think he just made up some shit and managed to convince a bunch of mutants to follow him. Not that you really care. He’s bringing in the loot with his little band of brainwashed mutants and it provides him with a sense of fulfillment, despite the fact he’s doing a lot of complaining right now. “Bobby, you’re worrying too much again. I’m sure your minions aren’t the only mutants living in this town that have attacked Iron Union transports. Besides, last I heard the Iron Union is in the middle of a civil war. So even if they did find out, I doubt if they’ve even got the firepower to launch an attack on a place that has the reputation of being a large and extremely dangerous mutant town.” You say. “Heh, well they certainly got less now. There were some nice weapons in that transport.” Bobby chuckles. “See? Just gotta look on the bright side of things.” You say. Maintaining an optimistic mindset certainly came in handy during those early years when it was just you and Bobby surviving on the road, drifting from place to place. Not that it was all-bad and some of it was even fun, but you and Bobby were never truly happier when you finally managed to lay down roots here in Emberville. You, of course for the reasons of comfort and security. Bobby of course still wanted a family. He had you of course, but you know deep down he still wanted to have children with you. Which also became another adjustment, but really not one you were so resistant about anymore. You just needed time like you said and eventually you felt it was the right time. “Alexander! Your shirt is done!” you shout. Your son comes in from his room. Normally he’s out playing, but there are times where he just shuts himself away and reads whatever books Bobby or you find for him. It’s good that he has a variety of interests. “Hey this looks as good as new.” He exclaims. “I doubt that, but I did the best I could with what I had.” “Where did you learn to sew Mom?” Alexander asks. “Oh, my mother taught me when I was little. Never thought I’d actually ever take it up again though, but in this sort of world, it’s sort of a handy skill to have.” “Hey how come you never told me about that little interesting tidbit about your life when we were first going out? I remember being surprised when you told me you had seamstress skills” Bobby asks. “Like I said, I never thought it was important until this whole world went to shit and sewing up clothes was something I had to actually do more frequently.” You answer. “Did she teach you how to cook too?” Alexander asks “Hah, no. I didn’t learn how to do that until much later in life and I taught myself mostly.” You say. “Your mother is misremembering things again. She actually learned a lot from Mrs. Zerul down the street. Before we moved here, your mother’s cooking probably nearly killed me more times than gunfire.” Bobby jokes, which gets him a glare. “Hey, there were several times that we didn’t starve thanks to me.” You snap. “Well I think you’re a good cook Mom.” Alexander remarks. “Thanks son, at least someone here appreciates me. Now go out and play and try not to ruin the shirt you’re currently wearing. Especially if you play with that Jenny girl.” “Who’s Jenny?” Bobby asks, not knowing all of his son’s friends as usual. “Jenny is a cute little mutant girl with talons instead of normal nails. Last time they were playing and Alexander came home with a shirt that was beyond my sewing skills.” “You sure they were just playing?” Bobby asks. “Bobby!” you say. “Hey, kids grow up fast without traditional social norms!” Bobby says. “And what exactly would YOU even know what traditional social norms are?” you ask. “…well I do know what they were even if I didn’t actually practice them. In fact I’d say I’m a living example of what happens to a child growing up without traditional social norms.” Bobby replies. Alexander isn’t quite sure what you and Bobby going on about, but speaks up. “Me and Jenny were just playing tag that time my shirt was all ripped up, like I said.” “Yes, I remember and I believe you. Now off you go, and remember dinner will be ready just before night fall.” Alexander agrees he’ll be careful and runs out to play with his friends. You watch him briefly from the door. “Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t be a little more protective of him.” You say. “He’s fine. Better he get some claw scratches and bruises now so he doesn’t grow up to be completely sheltered.” Bobby responds. “Yeah I know all too damn well what the dangers that can bring, especially with the way the world is now. Still, can’t help but worry at times.” Bobby stands up and walks over to reassure you. “Well of course you worry, you’re a good mother. And here you always thought you wouldn’t make a good one, remember?” “Yeah, that was a whole other lifetime ago. I can honestly say I’m glad those old days are behind us.” Bobby nods and begins to caress you. You return his affection with a kiss and the pair of you just sort of hold each other for awhile. Seems surreal at times that you arrived at this point. Married, a child, and living modest home in a town mainly consisting of mutants. Though given both your family and Bobby’s, maybe it makes sense you fit in better with a community full of mutants. To be honest, you think the only real problem you ever had with moving in and marrying Bobby to begin with was due to the situation with his sister Diana. You wonder if you would’ve done all this sooner had she never been in the picture. Oh well, no point in playing “What if” especially since everything worked out. This life is harder than your old one in several ways, but given all the new skills you learned and all of what you’ve managed to achieve, you’re definitely a stronger and better person now than you ever were before. “Well I guess I better get started on dinner. Unless you want what Mrs. Zerul is serving down the street.” You say elbowing Bobby in the side for his previous comment. “Oh yeah because hideous old women with humps on their back and scales on their face really do it for me. You know I was joking about that.” “I know. You brought the groceries right?” “Yeah, just vegetables and meat though. Didn’t get a hold of much else this time.” “It’s all I ever really need. I know you’re probably tired from getting the stuff last night, but can you help me get started?” you ask. “Sure. Meet you in the kitchen.” Bobby responds. Bobby heads to the root cellar and you head to the kitchen when you start your preparations. You’re lucky to have the kitchen amenities you have compared to most in this town. Wood burning stoves aren’t that common here, but then again most mutants don’t bother cooking their food at all. You and Bobby of course aren’t savages. As you’re getting everything set, Bobby comes up with the groceries and sets them down on the large prep table. “There you go baby. You need me to help prep the meat?” “Nah, I can do it. Doesn’t take me long.” “Okay, I’m going to get some sleep. Call me if you need anything.” “Will do. Thanks dear.” You say and Bobby kisses you on the cheek before heading off to bedroom. You grab your machete and stare at the table. The tied and gagged naked young woman continues to squirm on the table. If she could, she’d probably scream or beg. You’re guessing she was part of whatever caravan Bobby and his congregation raided. Probably the merchant since she doesn’t look like a guard. That’s a good thing; her meat isn’t going to be as tough. This would be the other advantage of living in a mutant town: They don’t frown upon cannibalism here. The young woman’s eyes widen as you bring the machete down to finish her off. As you chop up the rest of the woman’s body, you briefly think about the past again, specifically when Bobby’s aunt was psychoanalyzing you. She certainly was right when she said you were prone to revel in great violence under the right circumstances.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t know the complete lay out of the house and you also don’t really know Lilith excessively well to judge how “tough” she actually is. For all you know she’s got some sort of GZ martial arts training especially given what she’s revealed about what insidious practices they’re doing. You also don’t know much about her brother, but he’s probably a damn psycho. If you threatened his sister, he might be capable of anything; you know how close the Morningstar family tends to be after all… Also, so far this week, every time you’ve “asserted” yourself, it’s gone very badly. Might be better to at least wait a while and see if a better opportunity comes along and get a feel for this place first. Lilith undoes your straps and you’re soon free. You sit up, stretch and try to maintain composure that you’re not still scared about all this. “I know the first time we met you were having problems walking by yourself. You okay to do that now? Not still feeling wobbly or anything?” “I believe I’m fine. Just very nervous about all this.” “Don’t be nervous. As I said, follow the rules and you’ll be fine. If you’re worrying about catching the madness that the town has, well like I said, you’re probably fine, but even if you aren’t I’ve got a few things that might help. You ready to go?” “Yeah I guess.” You say and Lilith leads you out the door. When you exit, you find yourself in an uncarpeted corridor with a few rows of doors to the left and right of you (All with very strong looking and very locked doors). It reminds you of a hospital setting; you can’t help but wonder if you’re still in Lilith’s house anymore. “Um, are we still in your house?” you ask. “Oh yes. We’re not on the ground floor if that’s what you’re wondering though, we’re in the basement. Of course this house never had a basement this large originally. A lot of this was added on much later due to my work in GZ. Leslie nearly blew a gasket when he heard workers were coming in to make severe alterations to it, but in time he realized it had its advantages and I told him his area wouldn’t be fussed with anyway. He spends a lot of time down here with his experiments you see and hates change…guess you and he have that in common no?” “What?” “Well as I said, Bobby told me much about you and your past. Said you preferred to stay down in your basement and hide away from the world and weren’t a fan of change yourself. Was he incorrect in what he told me?” “…no…no I suppose he wasn’t. It’s true. I did spend all my time in the basement hiding out from the real world and hated change. This week has been a big wake up call that things couldn’t be like that forever though.” You say. “Hm, well don’t despair. While things do eventually change, they can always change for the better. Here’s your new room.” Lilith remarks and unlocks it. The door opens up to another windowless room, but this one is much nicer. In fact it’s downright cozy. There’s a sofa, a bookcase with books, a TV…hell it almost reminds you of home. As enter to get a closer look at everything, Lilith is preoccupied with something on her phone. “Shit, well something came up and we’re going to have to get to the questions later. But for now, what do you think to your new surroundings?” Lilith asks. “It’s okay. I didn’t expect to have such a fancy cell.” You say. “Suzy! Don’t think of this as a cell, think of it as just a regular room where you’re staying until it’s confirmed you’re okay! Now, if you notice there is another small room off to the right. That’s the bathroom where you’ll find all the usual facilities. I would imagine you’re probably hungry and I’ll be back with some food soon. Just have to deal with something. The National Guard has been deployed in town to maintain order and apparently GZ is sending some of their people to this house as added security. They’re already on their way so I’m going to have to go talk to my brother about this and make sure he curbs his anti-social behavior to a manageable level. Doesn’t help that he’s got those two inbred redneck assistants of his with him right now. I can’t stand those assholes. He’s either going to have to keep them out of sight completely or make them leave…(sigh) Ugh, anyway I’ll be back soon, just make yourself at home.” Lilith closes the door, which you then hear lock and you’re now alone. You sit down on the sofa trying to wrap your head around all this. Never in a million years would you have thought you’d be a prisoner by your ex-boyfriend’s aunt who works for the corporation responsible for all those ads on TV and apparently involves in some seriously shady practices. Makes you think about some of those crackpots that posted conspiracy theories on various sites you read. Turns out some of them weren’t too far from the truth after all. The thing is, you can’t even worry about something of that magnitude. For one thing, you have absolutely no power to do anything about it and second, you’ve got the more pressing concern about what is going to happen to you. While things are going better than you thought they going to go, you’re still not seeing a good end to any of this. Your luck has been up and down this entire week and just when something good seems to happen, something equally bad happens. You don’t trust Lilith completely, no matter how “nice” she’s trying to be. At best Lilith keeps her word and you’re not sick or infected only for her to ultimately execute you “humanely” with shot to your head. You can’t imagine her keeping you alive after telling you her corporation’s secrets like that. Unless of course she thinks you wouldn’t tell anyone and even if you did, who would believe you anyway? The darker picture is of course she said the world was going to change very soon implying a nuclear holocaust like all the GZ ads have been harping on about. Maybe she’s told you because ultimately it isn’t going to matter due to doomsday. If that’s the case, where is that going to leave you? Maybe Lilith will release you alive, but leaving you to fend for yourself in a blasted wasteland of which you don’t fancy your chances. And these are all the best-case scenarios you’re envisioning, because you don’t even want to think about the worst case, which is undoubtedly going to involve you being in more pain than you could ever imagine. You have no more tears for any of this, because you’re spent as far as that’s concerned. You’re still scared of course, but you feel like you’re starting to become numb to very real possibility of death. Doesn’t mean you’re giving up though and you proceed to study your surroundings, taking note of anything you could possibly use as a weapon. You don’t find any secret passages or vents you could crawl around in because that only happens in the movies. Eventually you take a break and lay down on the sofa, which at least is comfortable, you just wish you weren’t wearing a damn hospital gown. You think about turning the TV on, but you figure it will probably just be full of Ground Zero ads. Time passes and eventually you hear the door opening up. At first you figure it’s going to be Lilith, but it’s not. Two dirty looking men open up the door and enter. One of them is huge and has a slackjawed look on his face. He wears overalls that look like they’ve never been washed. The smaller of the two is wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit and trucker’s cap. When he sees you a big grin spreads across his face making him even creepier than the larger one. “Hoo wee! Well look at what we got here! Doc really has been fixing up this place, because that is one sweet piece I tell ya what!” the smaller one exclaims. You can only guess these must be Leslie’s “assistants.” You sit up immediately and try to arrange your gown to cover you as much as possible. “Didn’t mean to startle ya darlin’ but I’m Jed and this here’s my brother Hugo. What’s yer name and what the hell are you doin’ in here?” the smaller one says. “My name’s Suzy, and this is my room. What the hell are YOU two doing in here?” “Whoa, easy there blondie. This is where me and Hugo always go to hang out when we’re on standby as it were. No point in headin’ back ta town right now anyway, since it sounds like the shit’s really hit the fan out there, but never mind all that, what’s all this about this bein’ yer room? You some new live in whore for the Doc to fuck when his snooty sister isn’t putting out?” Jed asks. Jed gets closer towards you meanwhile Hugo hasn’t moved from the entryway. You’re feeling very threatened. “No, I’m Lilith’s guest, now will you please leave my room?” you say. “Lilith’s guest? Wait, you sayin’ you HER whore? Well shit, I like the sound of that even better! So you ever been with a guy at all or are you strictly a pussy licker?” Jed asks with a pretty predatory look in his eyes. “The pair of you better get out of here. Lilith has made it clear she doesn’t want anyone else in here.” You say standing up from the couch. “Oh is that right? Well I ain’t heard nuthin’ about it and I take my orders from the Doc, not his snobby bitch of a sister. So I think you better just settle down blondie. In fact, I think you better start making yourself REAL comfortable.” Jed says and starts fondling his crotch while still approaching you. You’re steadily running out of options. About the only thing you can do now is either threaten them to the point that they back off or beg and hope they take mercy. Either option isn’t likely to succeed. > You beg Antagonizing them even further isn’t going to help; at this point you’re better off trying to beg. “Jed, please. I’d just like you both to leave. Lilith really doesn’t want anyone here and I don’t want anyone to get into trouble.” You say. “Oh don’t worry blondie, ain’t nobody gonna get into any trouble and ain’t nobody gonna get hurt as long as you give in. Hey Hugo get yer big ass in here and, close that fucking door.” Jed says and starts approaching you. This is not a good situation. There is no way you’re going to be able to fight off both of these redneck rapists. You don’t even have a weapon and they’re both bigger than you. You fear the inevitable as Jed is now standing in front of you. He wastes no time in groping your body. Hugo however is still standing in front of the door staring like a gargoyle. “Aww, is little blondie scared? You don’t need to be darlin’. Like I said, me an’ Hugo here are just gonna have us some fun an’ then we’ll be out of yer pretty little hair, well unless I cum in it.” Jed laughs. “Please don’t…” you start to say before Jed firmly grabs your chin with one of his dirty hands. “No. None of that blondie. The only time a whore should open her mouth is when she’s giving head. An’ since you seem to like having it open, you can get to doing just that.” Jed says and then roughly shoves you to your knees. You don’t even look up, you just stare at Jed’s crotch as he starts undoing his zipper because you don’t even want to look at his fucking leering rape face. Jed pulls out his cock and slaps you in the face with it. “Alright, bitch get to suckin! Do a good job cause this is just the beginning and I’m sure you’re lookin’ forward to what I got in store for that pretty little tight ass of yours!” You have no choice. This is happening and you’ve gone beyond feeling scared and you’re now feeling completely and utterly helpless. You get started… Your mind starts to go to another place. Or at least it tries to; the problem is Jed is so fucking repulsive in every way possible; you can’t even at least begin to pretend he’s Bobby or someone else. ANYONE else. Jed is pushing your head and making all sorts of grunting noises and vulgar comments in general. It’s without a doubt the worst feeling in the world and there really are no words to describe how horrible this is. And it’s only going to get worse given the implications that Jed is going to rape you anally. While you’re dwelling on this miserable situation, something in your mind begins to change. The fear is starting to dissipate and you’re starting to get angry and you start to feel less helpless… His dick is in YOUR mouth. You’ve got ALL the fucking power here. This might be suicide, but you can’t just let these assholes violate you anymore than they already have without a fight. You HAVE to do SOMETHING. “Holy fucking shit, Hugo! Blondie here is fucking an amazing cocksucker! I think she’s deep throated the whole…ARGH!” You bite. You bite as hard as you can. Even with Jed punching at your head, you don’t stop biting. You bring a whole new meaning to the phrase lockjaw. Jed by this point is screaming on the floor for his brother to help him. Hugo attempts to pull you off, but all he’s succeeding in doing is contributing to ripping his brother’s dick off due to your firm bite on the now bloody member. You keep grinding and gnashing and the fight is now going completely out of Jed who is now just howling in pain and screaming like a little girl. And at last you manage to bite through, blood fills your mouth and as Hugo pulls you away, you spit Jed’s dick back at him. “I’m the blowjob queen bitch!” you shout and start laughing as blood drips from all over your mouth and face. In between his screaming and holding where his dick once was, he orders Hugo to kill you. Hugo doesn’t waste anytime in squeezing you tightly. You begin to have hard time breathing. Using the back your head you slam into his face several times and while you probably break his nose in the process, Hugo continues with his bear hug and you start to lose consciousness. “(sob)Don’t fucking knock her out, I said fucking kill that goddamn biting bitch! OWWW OHHH (sob) Break her goddamn neck!” Jed screams. Suddenly the door opens up and you see an older man in a bloody lab coat. His hair is completely white and wild looking. This must be Leslie. “What the fuck are you two inbreds doing in here making all this fucking noise?! OH FUCK! You fucktards have really done it! I can’t rely on you two for shit! Hugo drop that fucking bitch now!” Leslie says and pulls a pistol out of his coat pocket. “…(sob) she bit my fuckin’ dick off Doc! She’s gotta die! OWWWWW OHHHH (Sob)” Jed screams. “Yeah, well maybe she will, but this here’s my sister’s patient and you two just fucked with her results. Y’know what, fuck this I’m tired of reasoning with you two.” The Leslie says and points the pistol at Jed. “Now Hugo, you overgrown retard, you kill blondie there, your brother fucking eats a bullet. I can sew your brother’s dick back on, but you gotta let that bitch go cause she’s my sister’s patient, not mine. Now what’s it gonna be?” Hugo just looks on confused while still squeezing the life out of you. “FUCKING JUST DROP THE BITCH HUGO! I NEED MY DICK!” Jed cries. Hugo finally understanding the situation drops you in a heap. You remain on the floor just coughing up dick blood and still trying to catch your breath. “Thank you. Now was that so hard?” Leslie says and then calmly shoots Hugo in the head three times. The big man fortunately falls backwards rather than forward on to you. “NOOOOO!” Jed screams. “What the fuck Doc?! You (Sob) killed my fucking brother! Why?!” “Told you, I was done reasoning with you two assholes. You have proven time and time again to be non-learning animals. Besides, Lilith’s already gonna bitch at me for what you two fucktards did. Might as well do damage control now.” “But you said you’d sew my dick back on if that bitch lived!” “I’m not touching your fucking diseased dick.” Leslie laughs. “Fuck you Doc! FUCK…” Leslie calmly places three rounds in Jed’s head, putting the redneck out of his misery. You just look on in complete shock at what just happened and try stand up. Leslie however kicks you back to the floor. You want to fight, but you’re too weak at this point. Leslie pulls out a syringe and holds you down while stabbing you in the arm with it. Must be the same stuff his sister injected you with yesterday, because it works nearly immediately. “No, I don’t think so blondie. Think you’ve had enough action for one day.” Leslie says as he strokes your hair. “Oh the fun I would have with you, but I guess what ultimately happens to you will be my sister’s call. Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky….SHIT!” Leslie suddenly exclaims when he sees that you’re not falling unconscious, but rather going into violent convulsions. Leslie begins to look through his other coat pocket and pulls out another syringe cursing when he sees it. Meanwhile you’re spitting and coughing up blood. It feels like you can’t breathe and that’s mainly because you can’t. “FUCK! I used the wrong syringe on the bitch! Fuck! Sis is gonna be even more pissed! Shit! Fuck!” Leslies exclaims pacing back and forth. Whatever Leslie’s concerns are about getting yelled at by his sister are nothing compared to the agony you’re going through right now. Your insides feel like they’re on fire and every major organ in your body is shutting down. By the time Lilith gets back to your room, your poisoned bloody corpse, the bodies of two dead rednecks and Leslie’s poor attempt to spin the event so it doesn’t seem like it was his fault are all that remain.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY You wake up and remembering everything that happened just before you passed out, you attempt to sit up immediately, unfortunately you can’t due to being restrained. Your legs, your arms and even your body are all strapped down on a gurney. You can’t cry out either as you have a ball gag on your mouth. You can make loud “Mmhghm!” sounds but that’s about it. Your clothing has also changed. While you’re not naked, you’re in one of those hospital gowns. You don’t feel sore or anything, so you can only hope you weren’t raped during the time someone was changing your clothes. The fear of what’s going to happen to you is overwhelming. A quick glance around from you position shows that you’re in a plain white room with no windows. There is a light above and a chair and door to your right, but to your left gives you cause for more terror as you see a table full of surgical instruments. A lot of them don’t even look like proper surgical instruments so much as they look like torture devices. There isn’t much you can do except wait and attempt to stop crying though you fail in that endeavor. You just lie there thinking about how you said yesterday that things couldn’t get any worse…and then they did. You think about what you could’ve done differently to have made your life better and most importantly avoid the situation you’re in now. You then think about how at some point, either Lilith, her brother or both are going to come in and start cutting you up and torturing you to death. You’re completely helpless and you wish that someone would just come in and save you from all this. The door suddenly opens and you turn your head hoping that somehow your magical thinking worked, but you only see Lilith walking in with a notebook in hand. “Figured you should be up by now. Sorry to keep you knocked out for so long, but I’m sure you can see it was completely necessary. Couldn’t have you running away or anything.” You turn away from Lilith who then gets closer and stares at your face a moment. “Hmm, you’ve been crying. Natural response I suppose given your situation. Good. (Sigh) I told my brother not to put those in here.” Lilith says taking notice of the surgical instruments and shaking her head. “He probably thought it would be funny to have you even more terrified out of your mind than you already would be. I love Leslie with all my heart, but he really can be an inconsiderate asshole sometimes. Well most of the time really, anyway the main thing is don’t pay any attention to those tools over there. That’s not what I brought you in for.” Lilith puts her notebook on the table with the tools and addresses you again. “Now. I’m going to release your ball gag since I’m sure it’s uncomfortable. However when I do, I must ask you NOT to scream or anything like that. First of all it won’t do any good. Second, it’s terribly annoying. If we’re going to have a positive relationship Suzy, it’s absolutely necessary that you comply with my instructions. Do you understand?” You don’t really have much in the way of choices and resisting her with no way of actually doing anything would probably just result in something bad. You nod your head compliantly and Lilith takes off your ball gag. “Are you going to kill me?” you ask. “Ah the predictable question first. Well, we’re going to get to that and several other questions you might have, but we’re going to be doing this my way. So while I know you’re very nervous and scared, you’re going to just have to wait a while before they get answered. Do you understand?” Once again you nod silently. “Good. Very compliant. We’re getting off on the right foot Suzy. Now then let’s get to some of the more minor concerns you might have had running through your mind while you were laying here.” Lilith pulls the chair over to the table and after moving some of the tools out of the way she sits down, opens up her notebook and begins writing something in it while addressing you. “I want to first alleviate any concerns you might have had about being sexually molested while you were unconscious. I assure you I undressed and dressed you myself. And since I’m not a lesbian you were completely unharmed as far as that goes. I can see one of the obvious reasons that would cause Bobby to be enamored with you though. You’re a very pretty girl with a nice body and it’s obvious just by speaking with him he still loves you despite your break up.” “…you…you spoke with Bobby?” you ask. “Oh yes. Called him up as soon as I got you in the house. Took awhile to reach him, but eventually I did and I proceeded to have a very long conversation with him. I wanted to know more about you and only Bobby could provide those answers what with you being unconscious and all. He told me about how you met, your general personality, what you liked to do, and all of that stuff. When I asked what exactly caused the break up, he seemed to stumble over his words a bit. He claimed that he realized he couldn’t abandon the silly family traditions, but it seemed like there was more to it than that because he kept insisting it was his fault and not yours. As if that was going to change what is going to be going on over here. You want to shed a little light on it Suzy? Please be honest.” “I…I (sniffle) didn’t want to get married to him. I didn’t want to live under the same roof as Diana since she was his ex and she hates me. I suppose…I also wasn’t fond of the idea of having a bunch of babies like he wanted either. Our argument sort of spiraled from there.” You answer. “Hm, interesting. So you wouldn’t consider yourself a domestic woman then. I suppose I can understand that. I certainly wouldn’t want to spend most of my time barefoot and pregnant and my whole life revolving around my man’s needs. I don’t think my brother would like that either. He gets so wrapped up in his experiments that I don’t even see him for days sometimes and he’d probably be homeless and living under a bridge if I wasn’t working.” Lilith chuckles and continues writing. You remain extremely anxious about what’s going to happen to you. “I also can understand not wanting to live with my bitchy niece either. I know my nephew probably didn’t think anything of it, but I also wouldn’t have put it past him to hope for some sort of three way between you all. Good for you, putting your foot down like that.” All you can think is you’d willingly have a three-way with Bobby and Diana if it got you out of this situation. “Anyway when my nephew found out you were over here he practically pleaded for me and his uncle not to kill or harm you in any way. He even said he’d be over to pick you up, but I told him that was completely out of the question since plans were already in motion. Still, I love my nephew and didn’t wish to cause him any suffering so I agreed that you would not come to any harm as long as you followed the rules. So there’s the obvious question answered.” You close your eyes silently thanking Bobby that he spoke up for you. Of course this doesn’t make your fear disappear completely. Far from it, but at least you might have a glimmer of hope now. “With that out of the way, your other questions are probably what is going to be done to you. Well, before I called Bobby, my initial intention was to do some tests and study you since I wanted another subject to observe and I saw an opportunity to grab you when you nearly crashed into me. However, some things have obviously changed, but there is still is opportunity here so I’m going to take advantage of it.” “…what do you mean?” you ask thinking Lilith has decided to completely twist her word to Bobby somehow. “I’m getting to that. As you might’ve noticed most of the folks in town have gone completely nuts. Well there’s a reason for that and you’re going to be one of the few people outside of the higher-ranking Ground Zero personnel to learn about it.” Lilith stops writing to give you her complete attention. “We put an experimental drug in the water supply and that’s what’s causing most people to act the way they’re doing in town. In fact we’ve done this to a lot of places. As bad as what’s going on in town, I imagine it’s even worse in a bigger populated area like Security City.” Lilith says. While you’re still worried about yourself, this bit of information is a little frightening for other reasons. “Wait. What? Why?” you ask. “Well there are very good reasons I assure you, but most of them probably wouldn’t matter to most with any sort of so called ethical concerns on human testing. Indeed I don’t even know all of the answers myself, I’m just a small cog in a big relentless machine. All I can do is tell you this, the world IS going to change very severely and very soon and it’s Ground Zero’s goal to try to save the human race at any cost. Our shelters aren’t the only way we’re doing that.” Lilith says. “But how is putting crazy juice in the water supply doing that?” you ask. “Well, I’m not completely familiar with all the science involved, but it basically makes people more resilient to things like diseases, radiation, and even chemical gases. You know, anything that’s likely to wipe out humanity on a wide scale when our glorious world leaders start pressing buttons. It seems like it increases strength and speed as well. Unfortunately it would seem it has a very negative effect on the mind, but that of course was an unintended side effect. However, if animal testing is anything to go by, those effects should only be temporary.” “But how long do they last?” “With animals? A few weeks, but we never really got to test on humans at least not on a wide scale. There were some individual tests I believe, but those were the earlier stages of the drug and the results of those weren’t very positive. Ground Zero wanted to pick a populated area to do testing on years ago to hammer out all the problems quicker, but we had an agreement with government, which kept dragging its damn feet as usual on things. It didn’t help that GZ was also temporarily burdened with some incompetent leadership for a while so we didn’t get to do any of this until the last minute and now this is the result. Don’t get me started on the faulty elevator problems in most of the shelters…” Lilith at this point shakes her head and runs her fingers through her hair as if dismayed with how things have turned out. As she’s doing this, a horrible conclusion comes to you. “Wait…am I going to go crazy too? I drank mostly bottled water!” you say. “Yes, a lot of people do these days, but most people still bathe regularly, brush their teeth and such and all that is still enough even if you’re not drinking straight from the tap. As for if you’re going to go crazy, well that’s a matter of perspective. Given what I know about you, I have to say from a professional perspective you’re not exactly a beacon of sanity Suzy, but then who of us really is right? If you were worried that you’re going to start going into a violent fit of rage, I’d have to say I don’t think you are since you haven’t already. The drug doesn’t seem to be affecting everyone in town the same way for some reason. Not sure why, but again that’s why I’m keeping you around for observation. You’re going to be my control subject as it were.” “What does that mean?” you ask. “What it essentially means is as long as you cooperate and don’t try to escape, you’ll be well taken care of. I’ll ask you questions, maybe do a few non-invasive tests and that’s about it. If it seems you’re completely fine, I guess we’ll move on from there. For now though I think you should have better accommodations don’t you? This room is rather spartan, I’m going to take you to a new one. Now, I could call my brother in here or just wheel you to it still strapped to the gurney, but I’d rather NOT do that Suzy. I want our relationship to be a trusting one. So, I’m going to release you from your straps, you’ll follow me and you WILL NOT try to escape or anything like that. Do you understand?” Of course you’re going to say yes to Lilith, no matter what, but your intentions are another matter. While Lilith seems like a reasonable lady, she’s still a Morningstar and all that entails from what you know of that fucked up family. She might not be one of the chaos goddess worshipping brainwashed cultist ones, but she’s obviously still not concerned with the value of human life and the only thing that’s saved you is having a past relationship with Bobby and his continued feelings for you. She doesn’t look tough, of course looks can be deceiving, but you’re pretty desperate and you REALLY want to leave. When she releases you, you could probably easily grab one of those surgical instruments and hold her hostage until you took her car and got out of this place. You’ve no idea where you’d go, but anywhere would be better. > You make an attempt to escape You aren’t going to stick around to be someone’s lab rat only to probably get disposed of later. And you know enough about the Morningstar family that they’re all a bunch of damn psychos at their core. You need to make your escape now. Lilith undoes your straps and you’re soon free. You sit up, stretch and then make out like you’re about to fall. “Oh shit.” You say and Lilith quickly comes to your aid to prevent you from “falling.” “Whoa, easy there, you o…” Lilith starts to say and then you elbow her in the face. Lilith falls to the floor and you grab a particularly sadistic looking knife from the table. Lilith is remarkable quick to recover because by the time you’ve done all this, she’ already run to the door and opened it. “LESLIE!” she shouts before you manage to grab her hair and put the knife to her throat. “Don’t move. I don’t want to kill you, but I will to get out of here.” You warn. “This was a very stupid thing to do Suzy. If you’d cooperated you would’ve gotten out of here in a few days at most. Now you’ve sealed your own death certificate.” “Quiet! Now I’m taking your vehicle, so I’m going to need your keys. After I grab those I’ll be leaving and if YOU cooperate you won’t get hurt. So you better tell me where we’re going and NOT shout for help again!” You say. “(Sigh) Fine. I have my keys with me in my pocket. We just have to go to the vehicle. This way.” Lilith says and the pair of you leave the room. You constantly look around thinking you’re going to see Lilith’s brother coming around a corner, but so far nothing. Lilith tells you which way to go and eventually you’re heading up the stairs. It’s at this point Lilith starts talking shit again. “You’re not getting away with this you know. My brother’s going to stop you before you can escape and when that happens…well you think things were going bad in your life before? You’re going to soon learn that they’re going to be infinitely worse.” “Yeah well I haven’t seen him yet. I guess he didn’t hear you. Probably too busy with his experiments or whatever fucked up shit you two do here. Christ, your family is fucked up.” Lilith laughs. “Yes, and that apparently that didn’t stop you from dating one of us.” She says. “That was different!” you snap. “Of course it was. Extreme situations tend to create unusual pairings. Such as the one you and Bobby had. Although I think it was more unusual for him rather than for you given how much of a slave he is to some of my family’s sillier traditions.” You get to the ground floor. “Bobby saved you like some damsel in distress from your mean old serial killer uncle. Makes sense you’d latch on to him the way you did. In a way you’re very much like one of those fairly tale princesses locked away in a tower, except in your case, you locked yourself away in your basement. Bobby was your Prince Charming.” You continue to ignore Lilith’s ramblings. “Now of course you still KNEW what Bobby was, but you willingly looked past that. Why? Was it love? No, even if you thought it was at first. If it was love you would’ve married him in his compound instead of being here. Was it low self esteem? Possibly. But even as introverted as you are, you’re still a very pretty girl and you have to know that on some level…I mean even YOU aren’t that stupid.” “Will you shut up?” “Not to mention you seem to be fine by yourself. Even Bobby mentioned that you seemed to prefer your own company when you weren’t with him. So where does that leave us Suzy? Why would you willingly date someone from a family as fucked up as ours? Do you know the answer?” “Shut the hell up, I don’t care! Just tell me where the front fucking door is!” you exclaim. “Next two rooms to the right.” Lilith is quiet again and you make it to the front door. Still no sign of Leslie, so far so good. When you open the door, Lilith once again starts getting chatty. “Since our time together is almost at an end, I guess I’ll tell you the answer. You went with Bobby because deep down underneath all that apathy you’re just as fucked up as the rest of us.” “That’s not even remotely true.” “Oh, just because you were merely looking away from my nephew’s murderous deeds, that somehow makes you less fucked up? That’s classic enabling behavior, not to mention your co-dependency during your relationship with Bobby. Hell, before Bobby came into your life, you were pretty detached from the real world and lived in your own made up reality anyway. I’d say under a different sort of extreme circumstance, you’d easily turn into a killer like your uncle especially since from what I’ve heard the rest of your own family isn’t exactly well adjusted either. Didn’t one of them kill his whole family before shooting himself?” You press the blade closer to Lilith’s throat to the point that it draws blood. “You keep talking and you’re going to find that THIS extreme situation is the one that turns me into my fucking uncle, so keep fucking talking and you’re going to be the first fucking victim!” Your threat finally shuts Lilith up. You make your way to the truck, still looking around Leslie, but you don’t see anything. Eventually you get to the truck. “Alright, very slowly grab the keys out of your pocket. Drop them in my other hand and I’ll release you.” Lilith complies with your orders and as soon as you have the keys you toss her to the ground hard. You then open up the door and suddenly feel a hand grab one of your upper ankles and then a sharp blade cutting into where the tendon would be. You scream out in pain and fall on the driveway pavement. Then another hand grabs your other ankle and you feel a blade cut into your other tendon. Meanwhile Lilith has recovered and taken away the knife you dropped. She stands over you while you scream in pain. An older man with completely white and wild hair crawls out from under the truck. He wears a bloody lab coat and goes over to Lilith and asks if she’s okay and remarks on her neck, she nods that she is fine. You roll over and try to stand, but find it’s quite impossible with your tendons sliced the way they are. You’re bleeding all over the place and the fear of what’s coming next is overwhelming your physical agony. “Told you my brother would help me. I knew he would. He’s my Prince Charming after all. Hm. I suppose because it’s drilled into our heads when we’re little that on some level we all like to be rescued. A big strong man charging in to save the day and all that chivalrous patriarchal nonsense, but on some level it’s still sort of hot.” Lilith says and then gives her brother a long kiss and hugs him. You try to crawl away, since you can’t even stand at this point, but you don’t get far. “Too bad nobody’s going to rescue you now though. Should’ve killed me instead of holding back…but then that’s always been your problem isn’t it? Squandering your potential.” You hear Lilith say and then what follows is a hefty kick to the back of your head. You black out. When you wake up you’re firmly strapped to another table completely naked. This isn’t a regular surgical table though since your legs are spread apart. “Oh…no…NO…NO!” you start to say and try to struggle free. Your voice calls attention to Leslie who was currently hovering over another body on a different table. “Oh good, you’re up. I wanted you to be before I started. My sister said it was imperative that you not be unconscious for whatever I have in store for you.” You start screaming for help in vain and Leslie goes over to you and starts stroking your head. “Now she did suggest that one of the things I should do is hand you over to a couple of my redneck assistants and let them have fun with you, but no. After you harmed my sister’s lovely neck with a blade, I think I should have ALL the honors. I’m going to do things. Bad things and I’m going to have fun doing it and nobody is going to stop me. We’ll start off slow.” Leslie says patting your head. You begin to cry and for whatever reason in your grasp for hope in this hopeless situation you call out for Bobby. “Bobby?” Leslie chuckles and then moves over to the part of the table where your legs are spread open and he gets between them while undoing his belt. “I’m afraid he’s not here to help you blondie. I will say that I’ve never considered this before, but since this is a unique situation… is my dick bigger than my nephew’s? I guess you can be the judge.” What Leslie proceeds to do to you next is horrible and degrading. Then it gets worse. And worse. And worse. The next day, what’s left of you (which isn’t much) is cooked and wrapped up for sandwiches. What isn’t used for lunchmeat is tossed in the trash. And that is the story of you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re sick of everyone trying to control your life. You weren’t putting up with it with Bobby, and you’re sure as hell not going to put up with it with Jake. “Are you just assuming I can’t carry the boxes around because I’m a woman?” you ask. “What? No, that’s not it…” Jake starts to say before you interrupt. “You just said a little thing like me doesn’t want to lug boxes around like I’m some helpless damsel.” “Look, as a businessman it’s my job to match up potential employees with what they’re probably going to be best at. The fact is you ARE on the smaller side, not to mention you’ve just told me you’ve never done a hard day’s work in your life. So yeah, I don’t think you’re strong enough to do the job and not bitch about it or even get that much work done. I’d rather have you out here working the register.” “You just want me out here as eye candy for the customers.” You reply. “Jesus fucking Christ, I didn’t realize I was hiring a FemiNazi. Are you telling me you want to move boxes?” Jake says in exasperation. “I’m not a goddamn FemiNazi and no I don’t want particularly want to move boxes, but my point is you just took the damn choice out of my hands and made a stupid assumption that I couldn’t do the job due to your own narrow-mindedness.” Jack exhales again and rubs his face. “Are you kidding fucking me? You’re arguing about a job you don’t even want? In fact, you don’t even want THIS job! You know how many employers would’ve thrown you out with that sort of shitty work ethic and you haven’t even started yet! I’m fucking helping YOU out by hiring you in the first place with absolutely no skills or experience and you’re giving me shit already! It’s not like I’m grabbing your ass and telling you to suck my dick! I’m trying to be a nice guy here.” “Given with how you’re speaking to me, you’re not really all that fucking nice.” You respond. “Alright, I’ve had it. Get the fuck out of my shop. You probably think because you’re pretty you can just get what you want well not this time bitch. I got enough shit to deal with, get the fuck out! Get out! Get out! Get out!” Jake yells and points at the door. “FUCKING ASSHOLE!” you shout as loud as you can and storm out the shop. Well that could’ve went better. As you walk to your car, several nerd types are just now approaching the store. While they’re probably the sort that would’ve been staring at you all day if you’d been working at the shop, now they’re actively avoiding you since you’re mumbling and swearing to yourself like a crazy person. Your swearing continues when you’re actually in the car. You bang on the steering wheel several times in frustration. “I hate my fucking life!” you cry out and begin to sob. Life just isn’t fair Suzy and lately for you it’s only been getting harder. All you wanted to do is hang out in your basement, hiding out from the rest of the world. Now your forced to deal with all this shit that you’re just no good at and when you do try to assert yourself, you fail at that too. If you were fighting depression before, you’re currently getting your ass kicked by it. It’s a good thing you aren’t suicidal, but the thought is starting to cross your mind. After taking a moment to pull yourself together, you think about what you need to do next. “Okay…I need to go back home. Need to pack up all the most important shit I have and head over to Julie’s house.” You say to yourself. With this new goal in mind, you pull out of the comic shop parking lot and intend on making your way back home. You don’t get a couple blocks before you soon discover the way you came is barricaded due to an accident or something. There are ambulances and police cars blocking the way and you realize you’re going to have to go a different direction. You go down some side streets and find out that they currently aren’t much better and in one instance actually worse as a bunch of people have made a makeshift barricade with overturned cars and some of them are shooting at each other. You get the hell out of the area as fast as you can before someone starts shooting at you. After having to drive around avoiding barricades, downed power lines, overturned vehicles and general chaos, you begin to get even more frustrated since it’s starting to look like you can’t even get home. Or at least not by driving there and given the shit that’s going on, you’ll be damned if you’re going to get out of your vehicle to walk home. “Goddamn it, I just want to get the fuck home! Fuck it, I’m just going to go to Julie’s now…” you shout to yourself. It’s a further drive, but considering Julie lives in a better area, you’re hoping that maybe things won’t be as bad driving in that direction. You soon find out that isn’t the case as you’re desperately trying to avoid getting into an accident every five minutes. “Seriously what the hell is going on with this town? Everyone is acting like an asshole even more than usual.” You say and you’re starting to wonder if there’s something in the water. Turning on the radio doesn’t help, since you’re not getting much on it save for those annoying Ground Zero ads. “Come on, there’s gotta be something about…SHIT!” you say when look up from the radio and are just in time to see a bus turning left and about to hit you. You swerve immediately to avoid being hit, but unfortunately you slam the car into another speeding car, which crashes into your passenger side at full force. You are knocked around as your car goes spinning across the street. It all happens so fast you don’t even have time to panic or feel the fear of possibly dying right now. A large black truck slams on its breaks in an attempt to not hit you, which it succeeds in doing, only for your car to be stopped by lamppost instead. Thanks to airbags never working correctly when they should, you hit your head on the steering wheel hard and while you don’t quite knock yourself out you definitely scramble your brains a bit and you’re feeling pretty dazed. While you’re still recovering, you suddenly hear knocking on your window and a voice. “Hey, miss. Miss? You alright?” You slowly look out your window and see a woman wearing glasses and dressed in business attire staring back at you. Well actually you’re sort of seeing two of her and the image is still a little blurry, but that’s the size of it. You unhook your seat belt and get out of the car wincing in a bit of pain as you do so. The businesswoman helps you from falling since you’re still wobbly. “You’re lucky to be alive, I’ve seen a shitload of crashes like yours since I’ve been driving through town today. I only just managed to put on my breaks when I saw your car spinning out of control like that.” she remarks. You don’t really answer her; you just turn to look at the car, which is totaled. Besides part of the front being wrapped around a now leaning lamppost, the passenger side is trashed and you certainly aren’t going to be driving anywhere soon due to the front wheel area being caved in and the axel broken. You just look at the wreckage of the car silently and then start to giggle at the situation. Soon the giggling becomes full blown laughter and the woman that helped you out of the car gives you a strange look. “Are you alright?” she asks again. “Oh I’m just peachy! This has been a wonderful day!” you say laughing. “Do you know your name and where you’re at?” “Yeah, my name is mud and I’m in a world of shit.” You say still laughing. “Um, well you seem to be having a bit of difficulty balancing and you’ve got a nasty bruise on your forehead. You might have a concussion and given your laughter you might even be in some state of shock. I think it would be best if you had some medical attention.” You look at the woman that’s trying to help you and begin to stop laughing quite as hard and your mind starts heading back to earth again. Your head and body remind you of the pain you’re actually still in. “Yeah…yeah…maybe. Shit, my head does hurt… I guess…can you drive me to the hospital?” you ask. “The hospital? Yeah, that place is sort of fucked right now. Even if we could get to it in this mess of chaos, the place has been overflowing with patients and you might be waiting a long time, if they get to you at all. I’m not sticking around in this town any longer than I need to. However, my brother is a doctor with his own private practice just outside town; he can probably check you out for free. It won’t be any problem since I’m going to him right now.” The woman says. Well it’s either head somewhere with a complete stranger or try to make it to the hospital (or wherever) in your current condition. > You decline the offer You might not be in the best condition right now, but you’re not going off with some stranger. You don’t know who this woman is and with your luck she could be some psycho. “No, I’m okay. I’ll make it on my own.” You say. “Are you sure? You really don’t look well.” The woman says. “I said I’m fine.” You say starting to get agitated. “Alright, alright, just trying to help. I’ll go.” The woman says and steps away. As the woman goes back to her large black truck, you survey the immediate area and see that your accident isn’t being paid much attention to. Other vehicles are merely driving by and nearby onlookers lose interest. You look over at the other vehicle on the far end of the street that slammed into you. The front end of that one is trashed and the driver has gone half way through the windshield. He’s a bloody mess and isn’t moving. The first thing you need to do is get your bearings, because you don’t even know where the hell you’re at right now. You walk away from your vehicle, nearly falling a couple times until you lean up against the side of a building. You really feel woozy. You’re starting to wonder if you shouldn’t have taken the woman up on her offer. You try to ask a few people that are nearby where you are and they just brush you off. None of them offer to help you and one of them actually snarls like some sort of animal. The people in this town really have lost their damn minds. Since you don’t know where you’re at and you’re not exactly thinking clearly, you employ a simple plan of just going in a straight direction until you start to recognize something. It’s about all you can do at this point. Along the way, you get to see up close just how bad the town is getting. And it’s even scarier now that you’re not even within the safety of a vehicle. You attempt to maintain a low profile and hasten your pace, but it’s a little difficult to do since you’re limping along. Eventually you see a park a block ahead of you and instantly recognize it. It’s actually the same place you met Bobby once upon a time. You sort of wish he was here right now. You think you can make it to Julie’s from the park, that would probably be your best bet since you were told the hospital was sort of screwed and going home is probably a longer walk. She’s probably got more than enough painkillers there anyway. With this new goal in mind, you press onwards toward the park thinking you just might make this after all. Then several gunshots ring out. You don’t even know from what direction, you just duck behind a nearby-parked car. You hear shouting and shooting. You peek your head up just enough to see three armed men in animal masks running towards your direction, but shooting in the other. You duck your head back down when you see one catch a bullet to the head. From your cover, you hear another one cry out and the falling of a body. The third one however jumps over the hood of the car you’re hiding behind… You freeze as the bunny masked man stares directly at you. “You’ll do.” He says and grabs you. You try to resist, but after a couple pistol-whips to your face, you become more limp and he picks you up. “Alright! You pigs better not fuckin’ shoot or I’ll blow this yellow haired bitch’s brains out.” He shouts holding you up in front of him and pointing his pistol at your head. In your blurry vision you can see several police officers in front of you with their weapons drawn. You’ve got the masked man shouting near your ear, the cops are shouting back and you just wish you weren’t here anymore. The past few days have been just plain shitty and they’re obviously not going to get any better. With your luck, you’ll get shot and not even die right away because that’s certainly how this week has been going. Well not if you can help it. You’ve still got some control over your destiny. “Just shoot the motherfucker.” You utter and start squirming causing the criminal to start grabbing you tighter. “Shut the fuck up bitch!” he shouts. “Just shoot you fucking pigs! Look at this shithole town, do you think anyone’s really going to question you if a civilian gets caught in the crossfire anymore? Just fucking shoot!” The cops at this point briefly look at each other and nod, they aren’t even telling you to calm down. Maybe they already planned to just shoot anyway. Good. “Fuck this!” the masked man shouts and starts firing on the cops, who return fire immediately. You’re hit several times during their shoot out with the masked man and finally something goes your way, you die instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>MONDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world hot dog eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe the mayonnaise off your lips, graciously stand up and bow for your adoring fans. The grossly fat dude on your right looks at you in disbelief and then turns away to puke in a bucket. Meanwhile the little Asian dude on your left just shakes his head wondering how the hell you could've beaten him. "I don't understand it...all my training. I glanced over at you during the contest...you...you were barely even chewing! How?" He asks. "Oh just natural talent at swallowing hot dogs I suppose." You reply humbly and wink at the audience, which continues to praise you. While you're blowing kisses at your fans, the announcer of the contest speaks again. "And as an extra special reward, our glorious host of this event, Misty will be coming soon to congratulate our winner in person. This hasn't happened in decades! Perhaps even centuries! It's all just so exciting! Oh wait...I think that's Misty now!" At this point the wind begins to pick up significantly, which is amazing since this contest was taking place in an indoor stadium. The audience seems to be going even wilder, but at this point you're getting a little concerned. Your concern becomes fear when the fat bastard to your right melts into a gory pile of goo, the Asian guy's head gets really large like in one of those anime cartoons and he screams before running away shouting about Tokyo getting destroyed by a giant lizard. You look back at the audience and see that they've begun stripping off their clothes and embracing each other in the biggest orgy you've ever seen. (Even larger than that porno you watched one time) The roof suddenly comes off the stadium revealing a dark sky with a jet black swirling hole above. "And here comes Misty folks! It's absolutely...GLORIOUS." The disembodied voice says as its pitch changes to demonic tone. You can't run, you can't even move, you just stare at this unearthly sight like a deer in the headlights completely frozen. You see the flash of a couple red glowing orbs in the black hole above you and then the wind picks you up and you're being pulled towards it. "COME TO ME SUZY. COME TO US. COME. COME. COME..." A deep voice echoes all around you which is backed up by the audience who are chanting along with having their orgy. You vainly try to struggle, but there isn't much you can do accept uselessly flail about in midair as you are slowly enveloped by darkness. Even when you try to scream, you make no sound, in fact all your senses go numb and everything goes black. You are then awakened by the ringing of your phone. At first you look around briefly still wondering if you're still levitating towards a black hole, but you breathe a sigh of relief that it was all just a dream. However, even though you're wide-awake, you still feel shaken up. Something about that dream seemed really unnerving and you usually aren't one to put much stock into your dreams. The ringing of the phone takes priority before dream analysis though, so after fumbling with it a bit you answer it. "Hey I've been trying to get a hold of you. We're you still asleep?" Bobby asks. "Yeah, are you outside the house already?" You answer. "Nah, I'm on my way over. I hope you're packed and ready to go though, because it's nuts out here. I know you don't tend to leave the house much, but if you've been out lately, you'd know it's been getting fucking crazy in town. Seriously, you'll see how fucked up it is out there when we drive through town. The cops are everywhere, groups of people are rioting, like I said, it's a mess. Okay, I need to focus on the road, there's a meat wagon picking up some bodies off the road. I'll see you soon. Love you." Bobby says and hangs up. As you take a quick shower before getting ready to leave, you think more about your strange dream. You wonder if it was some sort of subconscious thing that your mind was telling you that this move is a bad idea. You have to admit, you still are feeling very unsure about it, especially now that Bobby has told you that you're moving into an isolated compound with not just his immediate family, but a bunch of other family that could be even crazier. Still, this could just be mostly anxiety of leaving a place where you've traditionally always felt safe and lived most of your life combined with a freaky dream. Bobby did say you could leave if you weren't comfortable there, so you're trying to not to focus on the possible negatives. You try to calm your nerves the old fashioned way and think about Bobby the entire time. Exiting the shower, getting dressed and grabbing your packed bags, you finally leave your basement. You packed as much as you could, hopefully you can return to get the rest later. You head upstairs and you're not waiting long before you hear a knock on the door. Upon answering it, you see Bobby who embraces you with a hug and a kiss. "By Tiamat, I've missed your body against mine." Bobby says caressing you all over. "I never would have guessed. I have missed your touch as well though Bobby. Let me just get my bags." You turn around and bend over to grab your bags and that's when Bobby grabs you around the waist and if it wasn't for the fabric separating the two of you, he'd also be inside you. It's startling enough that you probably would've lost you balance had Bobby not been holding on to you so tightly. "What the hell? Sheesh Bobby, I nearly fell forward on my face!" "You wouldn't have, I got you. Mmm, I just can't help myself, I just..." At this point Bobby starts kissing on your neck and groping you. "Bobby, Bobby, stop. My brother Peter is still here in the connected garage. Last thing I need is for him to hear us and then suddenly walk in on me getting plowed from behind. Besides, didn't you say it's getting crazy out there? Shouldn't we be getting the hell out of town?" "Yeah, it's wonderfully chaotic out there. Like Tiamat herself has blessed this town. It really started putting me in the mood and then seeing you...well how can I not want to make love to you in the midst of all this chaos?" Bobby at this point is trying pull your shirt off over your head and you hear the sound of a zipper being unzipped, though with as excited as he is, you dare say it could just impale you through his pants. He's grunting, slobbering all over your neck and sniffing your hair and...well he REALLY wants you right now. This isn't really what you had in mind and something about the way Bobby is behaving is a bit...animalistic. He's never been that way in your other intimate encounters with him. Well not excessively so at any rate. Also, you HAVE been fighting for awhile, and it's sort of presumptuous of him to just think you're going to spread your legs immediately because you're on good terms again. Then again, this is sort of turning you on right now, and it has been awhile for you. (By something not battery operated or your own hands at least) > You stop Bobby You might be Bobby’s girlfriend, but you’re not his fuck toy. You’re not going to just give in because he happens to be horny right now. “Bobby, fucking STOP! Seriously! I’m not in the mood!” you say and pull yourself away from his arms. At first he look hurt by your rejection, then his face turns to one of anger. “What the fuck? I thought we were back together?!” Bobby exclaims. “Exactly! We JUST got back together! I mean we got a lot of shit to talk about before we can just hop in the sack again!” “Are you fuckin’ kidding…Suzy I just told you that you don’t need to worry about Diana if that’s what you’re still on about!” “It’s not just about her, but that’s certainly part of it. It’s about not treating me like some glory hole because your dick’s hard!” “Suzy, you know that’s not even the fucking case. And since when are you not into me being affectionate with you? Shit, you were probably splittin’ the kitten and thinking about me before I even came over here! Now maybe YOU can turn your feelings on and off, but I genuinely missed you! Excuse me if I want to express that in a physical way!” “Bobby, I can’t turn my feelings on and off, and this isn’t one sided. I missed you too, but we still have things to work out before we can just continue as normal.” At this point Bobby rubs his hands over his face. “(Sigh) You know what…fine. I’m not arguing with you. Play your little game. Let’s just get your shit and get over to the compound.” Bobby’s obviously mad about not getting any sex from you, but at least he isn’t pointing out how you should “give it up” because he’s helping you out or something similar. Bobby grabs some of your bags and you grab the rest and the pair of you leave out the front door. Bobby silently loads your bags in the van and the pair of you gets in equally as silent. You break up the silence by mentioning how crazy the town seems as you drive through it. And it is pretty crazy. You’re seeing police cars, fire trucks, ambulances and large groups of people fighting. This has to be the liveliest this town has ever been. “Wow, you weren’t kidding about it being nuts out here.” You say. “Yeah.” Bobby says. You don’t say anymore since it seems like he’s content on sulking, but then he surprises you. “Look, I’m sorry for being an aggressive asshole back there. I just got overly excited I guess.” Bobby says. “Well I suppose I can’t blame you, I am pretty hot.” You say which causes a smile between the both of you. “And I want to say, I’m really glad you’re helping me out by letting me move in with you.” You say. “Don’t even mention it. I mean I would’ve wanted you to move in sooner…well anyway it’s probably best we’re doing this now. This compound is a lot bigger. You’ll be happy to know you can have perfect solitude to yourself and not be bothered by anyone.” “Nice.” you respond. “And you’re right, we probably do have a lot to talk about and we can do that and address all your concerns when we get there. We’ll work everything out.” Bobby says and smiles again with an optimistic tone. For a moment there’s another pause of silence and you think about how Bobby is a pretty great boyfriend in the scheme of things. So you come to a decision. “So…you want a blowjob?” you ask. “What?” Bobby says being caught completely off guard. “Well I can see from here you’re fidgeting with your man parts every two seconds while driving. That either means you got some severe issues with your underwear or you’re still horny.” “My underwear is fine.” “Well that pretty much leaves one option. So you want one or not?” “I always want a blowjob, but now? I mean the streets are pretty fucking crazy right now and I’m trying to concentrate on the road.” “Well you’re not concentrating completely on the road now, because you’re still groping yourself.” You say. “What about all that stuff about not being a fuck toy?” Bobby asks. “Oh that was when you all over me, this is different because it’s my idea.” You say. “…I’m not even going to argue with your female logic, I’m just going to say yes.” Bobby responds. “Smart boy.” You say with a smile and slowly slide over to Bobby and start unzipping his pants. Fortunately there’s enough room for your head so you aren’t going to be constantly hitting the back of it against the steering wheel. Considering Bobby’s pretty ready as soon as you pull it out, you get right to it and start doing what…well one of the many things Bobby loves you for. You focus on the job at hand and you can hear Bobby making some sounds of enjoyment as you really start to get into it. Any other time, this probably would’ve been a nice little thing for Bobby and probably a way for you to gain leverage in the next disagreement the pair of you would have inevitably had in a future about something. Blowjobs are the keystone to any successful relationship after all. However this probably wasn’t the best time to showcase your dick sucking skills. As you’re deep throating Bobby into ecstasy, he’s having an incredibly hard time paying as much attention to the road. Normally he probably wouldn’t have been an issue in this normally sleepy town, but with as crazy as the streets are right now, he doesn’t see the fire truck barreling down the side street and smashing right into his side Bobby’s van is hit with great force and actually topples over twice. In the process you end up biting Bobby’s dick off and choking on it. Bobby is somewhat lucky in that he was knocked unconscious on impact, but he’s not going to survive long due to several severe wounds and that’s not even including his dick getting bit off. You’re also in no condition to even move now due to several broken bones, and your last moments are gasping for breath with a dismembered dick lodged in your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>All around you is the smell of warfare. Acrid smoke from the campfires, piss and refuse from the latrines, sweat from the men. And fear. You smell that too. These men have reason to be afraid. You have spent the last few months fighting King Harold's enemies, only to march double-time to confront his most dangerous yet; William of Normandy. His army is camped below, twelve thousand men strong, in comparison to your eight thousand. There is reason to be afraid. Are you afraid? No, you affirm decisively in your mind. You are not afraid. You are Lord Aethelwulf, The Lord In The North, King Harold's most trusted advisor, and the veteran of a hundred battles. Why should you be afraid of an army of ragtag Normans who come to die on your sword? Shaking such doubts from your mind, you stride purposefully through the bustle of the camp, intent on checking on the forward defenses. A pair of giggling urchins weave nimbly around you and a staggering drunk lurches out in front of you, notices your sparkling chainmail armor and backs away, apologizing profusely. Striding onward towards the edge of the English camp you pass the watchful gaze of the sentries unchallenged and stand at the upper slope of the hill. You are not alone. Another man sits on the hill, wreathed in the shadow of the setting sun. Drawing closer you recognize him as Acwellen, a minor lord, but stalwart fighter. His face is stone, his jaw grimly set and his eyes staring out at the horizon. Looking over his shoulder you see the black smoke smearing the red evening sky. In the distance the town of Hastings burns. In the blurry uncertainty of the setting sun, you cannot tell if the glisten at his eyes is tears or just the sparkle of dying sunlight. Acwellen's son, you remember, was put in command of Hasting's garrison. Above the treeline you can just make out the crackle of flames. Hastings burns. > You offer your condolences Gently, you place your hand on his shoulder and speak softly "I'm sorry for your loss. I cannot imagine the pain of losing a son, but I am sure he looks down on you from heaven." Acwellen's gaze remains fixed on the burning town, and his face is still set in a mask of stone, but his cheeks are streaked. "Thank you" He exhales shakily, opens his mouth to say something else, then closes it and remains silent, yet the words are plainly on his mind, trying to slip free like hounds on a leash. At last he speaks, grim and quiet, little more than a whisper. "Can we win this battle?" The question hangs there for an eternity, all the fear and anxiety of the English army expressed in the musings of one broken man. > Yes "Yes!" You bark, with a sudden harshness that surprises both Acwellen and yourself. "Yes" You continue in a softer tone. "We can win. This is not the end." In your mind there is no room for doubt. You cannot afford it. Behind the screen of trees the town of Hastings roils with flames and the Norman William's horde assembles. > You leave Acwellen continues to stare into the flickering glow of the burning town. His face is stony, unfathomable. You turn to leave, picking your way through a patch of muck gingerly. Pressing down with your foot, you assess the ground. Certain patches are dry, but the soil is perilously loose. All it will take is a night of rain to turn the battlefield into a muddy hell. Well, you think to yourself, at least the mud will hurt the Normans worse than us. "Aethelwulf!" A voice interrupts your musings. A very familiar voice, deep and booming. It is the voice of Harold, your king. At just under six feet, he stands a head taller than most, and is just on par with yourself. Both his beard and hair are a fiery orange, and both are thick and wild. His chest is broad and his body muscular, but you notice a distinct bulge in the leather jerkin around his midriff; his infamous love of revelry has not gone unpunished. "Aethelwulf, you canny bastard!" He bellows, grinning and thumping you on the back. > You say "Harold!" Grinning, you embrace your boyhood friend. "Harold, good to see you, as always." Harold grins. "I know it is! Everyone says the same exact damn thing!" He chuckles, long and low. "But come, I haven't seen you since our last battle! That was two bloody months ago, near as! Where've you been! Avoiding me, have you?" You laugh "If I went to another feast of yours, I wouldn't fit into my mail" He shakes his head ruefully "You should learn to unwind more! Live your life, you know? Speaking of, how's your wife?" You nod solemnly "She fares well, and yours?" Harold snorts derisively "Fat and ugly, as always. Ah well, that's what tavern girls are for, eh?" He grins and nudges you with his shoulder; you shrug. Harold notices your expression and laughs again "As chaste as a damned priest! Ah well, we'll break you in eventually." Again you shrug. You and Harold have very different views on the matter, he won't change, nor will you. The best course, you decide, is to skate around the issue altogether. Nodding towards the hill, you speak seriously "What do you make of our defenses?" Harold frowns, his earlier humor gone. He throws up his hands irritably. "My Kingdom depends on a hill and five thousand farmers" You shake your head "Five thousand farmers and three thousand warriors" Harold nods "Aye. True enough. We'll make this William pay for every inch, if nothing else" He squints at the hill in the fading light "The scouts say William has four thousand cavalry" You shake your head decisively "No cavalry in the world can break a strong shieldwall" Harold laughs bitterly "Our shieldwall isn't strong! It's weak! Half of the bloody farmers don't even own shields! Goddamned useless bastards!" Surveying the hill thoughtfully, two plans come to mind; You could craft wooden stakes and plant them along the hill, disorganizing the horse charge. Or you could create makeshift shields for the conscripts, to help them hold the line. The carpenters will only have enough time to do one of the two tasks, you must choose which you value most. > You craft stakes You nod towards the hill "We should put our carpenters to work, set up some wood stakes along the hill. With any luck, that'll break up most of his cavalry" Harold grins wickedly "And a rider on a lamed horse is a dead rider. This is good!" He claps you on the shoulder "I'll have my carpenters start working right away! Let's turn this battlefield into a hell!" He laughs, and you see the fire in his eyes. This is what King Harold does best. Strategy and rule he manages, but it's the fighting he loves. You understand the feeling all too well. How many times have you knelt before a cross, armor bloody and gore speckled, thinking back with revulsion and guilt at how you loved it. Loved every bit of it. Loved the blades flashing, reflecting the rays of the sun. Loved the sound of shields splintering, cracking open. Loved the bloody chaos of the shieldwall. In the clash of the shieldwall it is where men like you, and Harold, and no doubt William too, come alive. This world has molded you. Molded you into a warrior. You are bred for this. > You sleep A warhorn sounds, long and low, dragging you from your sleep. Throwing off your thick fur sheets, you fumble about in the darkness of your tent, feeling for your clothes. Finally grasping your leather trousers, you slip them on and pull the woolen drawstrings closed. Next you retrieve your blue linen tunic and pull the stinking garment over your head. Beside the opening of the tent you find your boots, which you pull on, the well-worn leather forming around the contours of your legs. Fully clothed, you stretch and prepare to leave the comparative comfort of your tent. Rising stiffly, you undo the tent flap with dull fingers and step out into hell. The sky is a deep red, and clouds roil overhead. The ground is slick with mud, squelching underfoot. The air itself is inhospitable; it is thick with moisture and clings in the throat. The warhorn bellows a second time, the sound rolling through the forest of tents. The Normans are coming. > You prepare for battle Your squire, an orange-haired young farm boy with a pox-scarred face and an easy smile, drags your chest of armor to where you wait impatiently, listening for the sounds of a Norman advance above the chaos of the camp's preparations. Like a stirred anthill, the English encampment is abuzz with activity, men fetching spears and armor, running to and fro, assembling into companies. Opening the chest, your squire first removes a thick jacket of hardened leather, which you will wear under your mailshirt. "Thank you, Hugh" You say to your squire and tousle his curly orange hair absent-mindedly. Hugh grins shyly and then proceeds to bring forth the next piece of armor, the mailshirt itself. Beautifully forged, the chain links shimmer in the dawn light. As the light bounces of the metal, thousands of scratches can be seen, sanded down but still visible; the marks left behind by thousands of blades. This mailshirt has been in your family for generations, stretching back through hundreds of years of bloodshed and war. Slipping into the metal garment, you feel your squire tug at the leather lacings in the back, tightening the mailshirt around your body. You breathe in deeply, and as your chest expands, so too does the mailshirt, acting with the familiarity of a second skin. Next come the metal strips, a personal favorite of yours. Each strip is made of tough iron, and each is covered in serrations and scratches. These you slip under your trousers and Hugh helps lace them tight to your legs. If an enemy were to try and stab at your seemingly unprotected legs their sword would merely slide off the hidden plating, unbalancing them and allowing you to slip under their defenses. With your shin-plates cleverly hidden, Hugh unwraps the last piece of armor; your helmet. Masterfully crafted, it gleams in the sun. Complete with cheek-guards, a nosepiece, and spectacle-rings to protect the eyes. Surmounting the front is a snarling metal wolf's head, which stares proudly forward. Slipping the helmet on and tightening the chinstrap, you grin, canines showing. Time to kill some Normans. > You find your men Orvyn meets you at the edge of camp. A priest and a warrior, an Eriu and a Christian, Orvyn has been your stalwart follower and friend for nearly two decades. You both clasp hands firmly and grin, filled with pre-battle adrenaline. Although Orvyn is not technically in command of your men, you have left your normal commander, Garyn, back at home to guard your wife and children with a skeleton crew. With Garyn away, Orvyn is stepping in. He is a good commander for battles; he is amicable and courageous, but also capable and firm. In peacetime he would lack the rigid authoritarianism necessary for drilling the men, but right now they need a man to keep them confident. Orvyn inspires confidence; he isn't especially tall, but he is solidly built and a force to be reckoned with. His beard and hair are both jet black, and both are kept in place by various bone rings. That, and his sparkling green eyes, give him a look of mad fanaticism that men are all too happy to follow. You provide the encouragement, and Orvyn provides the fire. Together you are a killing force. Orvyn fingers the axe at his belt restlessly. "Should we go to the shieldline?" There is still probably an hour or more before the two armies actually meet, as men are ever reluctant to face a shieldwall, but being early couldn't hurt. > You go to the Shieldwall Most men are already at the edge of the camp, loosely organized into their respective groups. You find your soldiers lounging in the grass to the left of king Harold's men. Some laugh and cajole with each other. Some sharpen their weapons idly. Others play dice with Harold's Housecarls. One has undone his breeches and is calmly urinating in the direction of William's army. In short, of the seventy warriors under your command, not a single one looks concerned or frightened. That makes you proud. Most of these men you trained since boyhood, and for many you serve as a father figure. When they stand beside you at a shieldwall you have absolute confidence in your safety. They would risk their lives to save yours, and you would do the same for any of them. You only wish you could say the same for your fyrdmen. Nearly a hundred and fifty, and every single one looks terrified. You can hardly blame them. In the clash of a shieldwall, it is the fyrdmen who bear the brunt of the assault. To break a shieldwall, aiming for its weakest combatants is a common strategy. With Harold outnumbered to begin with, more fyrdmen than normal will be forced into the front ranks. The continued success of the English nation could well depend on their spirits. Approaching some of your men, who greet you amicably but respectfully, you instruct them to spread some of your ale reserves amongst the fyrd. Although you always fight sober, many of your men prefer to battle under the comforting haze of ale, and so long as they remain sharp enough you permit it. Some men just aren't capable of facing the sheer brutality of a shieldwall sober. Someone calls your name. Turning, you see Harold waving to you from the midst of his group of Housecarls. He grins excitably, filled with the same mad energy that bubbles inside of you. His armor is expertly wrought, fine mail links that shine red under the ominous clouds. At his belt a gold-hilted sword rests in its sheath, and slung across his back is a heavy Daneaxe. His roundshield is thick and red, and is emblazoned with his personal banner; the Fighting Man. A symbol as legendary as King Harold himself, the Fighting Man depicts a golden warrior, wielding a Daneaxe and roundshield. His face is filled with the mad joy of battle, and under his watchful gaze the forces of England will stand against the Norman tide. Moving closer, Harold clasps your forearm with his free hand "Ready?" You nod fiercely "Always" He smiles, but for a moment you see a flicker of emotion cross his face. Tiredness? He opens his mouth slowly, mulling his words "Once this war is over, I think I'll-" One of Harold's Housecarls interrupts the conversation "My liege, the Normans are advancing!" Instantly, Harold leaps back into action. Waving his shield, he calls not just to his own men, but also to all the men across the English line "To arms! To arms! Form a shieldwall!" The cry of "shieldwall" is taken up across the line, as men rush to the front, each shield overlapping with the one to the left, forming an impenetrable wall. In theory. Calling to your men, you order them to form up beside Harold's. The fight for England has begun. > You ready your weapons "Shields!" Bellows a Housecarl standing to Harold's right. The English line reverberates with the clacking sound of wood on wood as men rattle their shields, making sure they overlap with their neighbors'. Leaning forward, Harold waves at you from his position on the shieldwall and grins, his teeth shining in the dawn light. Behind the king, the great Dragon Banners of Wessex fly. Enormous and red, they flap and flutter in the gentle morning breeze, snarling at the approaching Normans. Looking down the hill you watch the Norman advance. It is simply incredible. At least a thousand horses have lined up at the base of the hill. Their riders wear good mail army, which glints in the light, and long blue Norman kite shields, which provide good full body protection, but are slower and less flexible than your English roundshields. For armaments they carry long lances and spears, as well as longswords. To protect their heads they wear the classic Norman helmets, conical and tall with comically long nasal plates. The whole situation is laughable. You turn to Orvyn, who stands beside you and is also grinning "How stupid can these Normans be?" Orvyn shrugs "They're not used to facing real warriors. Killing fleeing peasants is one thing. Riding down a shieldwall, especially uphill? Well-" He fails to suppress a chuckle "Let's hope they're slow learners!" The men around you laugh, and that laughter drifts up and down the shieldwall. The mood begins to lighten. Still grinning, you sheathe your short sword and draw your long sword from across your back. The greater reach will make it easier to kill the horses. Easier to kill the fools. > You prepare to face the cavalry Despite your amusement at the Normans' lack of strategy, the charge impresses you. The sound of a thousand horses' hooves pounding the mud and churning the soil, is thunderous. The vibrations shudder under your feet. Out of the corner of your eye, you see some of your fyrdmen begin to back away, and you bark at them to get back into line. They comply gingerly. You can almost smell their fear. You watch keenly as the Norman horses near the stakes. During the night, Harold's carpenters cut a great number of them, and they litter the hill in uneven clusters, about three quarters up. Most of the riders edge their horses through the gaps, but a few are careless and their horses fall screaming, dragging down other riders with them. The spikes catch no more than fifty, but every bit counts. The horses are fast approaching the top of the hill. Harold barks out an order to his Housecarls, and one in every two sheathes sword and shield in favor of a Daneaxe. Held two-handed, their reach, in the hands of a capable warrior, is more than enough to counter the reach of a man on horseback. You take a quick look at the faces of your men. Some are scared, but none show it. Your shieldwall is as solid as a palisade, an impenetrable barrier of wood and steel. The horses are very close now, and the drumbeat of their hooves beats in frantic time with your heart. You size up the mounted warrior barreling towards you. His horse is a chestnut hue, with a dark black mane. The rider wears a mailshirt and Norman helmet, as well as the customary blue kite shield and a long thin lance. Making sure your stance is good and firm, you prepare to take on your adversary. > You hold firm The rider thunders towards you, his horse kicking up thick clods of mud. Drawing close, he plunges his lance forward, but you slash sideways with your longsword and knock the spear into the ground. The thin lance bends and then breaks, splintering along its core. Disgustedly, the Norman tosses the broken lance aside and moves to draw his sword, but you are already counterattacking. Twisting your wrist, you backswing the blade into the horse's mouth, lacerating its cheeks and splintering its teeth. The wounded animal screams, wide eyed, and collapses on the ground, trapping its rider. As the Norman struggles to free himself you slip your blade neatly down his mailshirt and thrust deep, driving a foot of steel into his body. The Norman gasps pitifully and lolls sideways, dead. The horse is still screaming, kicking up clods of earth. One of its flailing hooves strikes Orvyn's shield, knocking him back a pace. Recovering, he ducks under the flurry of hooves and swings his axe down, hard, crushing the poor beast's spine. Its long legs stop moving. Satisfied, Orvyn returns to his position on the shieldwall. Across the line, William's horsemen meet similar fates. To your right, you watch one of King Harold's Housecarls fully behead a horse with his Daneaxe, mid-charge. Spurting blood, the headless beast collapses to the ground, and before its rider can regain his footing he meets a similar fate at the hands of the grisly Daneaxe. On the far left, a horse actually breaks through, the rider spearing a man through the neck and then creating an opening by hacking wildly with his sword. His act of valor is short-lived. The fyrdmen swarm the rider from all sides, butchering him with their axes and scythes. The breach in the line quickly closes. The Norman horsemen who are still alive turn tail and ride their horses back down the hill. The top of the hill is spattered with the corpses of horses and their riders. Perhaps a full three quarters of the charge were vanquished. Orvyn, his face slick with horse blood, grins at you. You grin back. The shield line has held. > You keep the line steady For almost half an hour, you wait. At the bottom of the hill, the Norman forces swarm, but make no attempt to push forward. By now, your heavy linden shield is weighing your arm down, and your muscles are beginning to tire. Loosening the straps, you place it carefully on the muddy soil, and motion for your men to do the same. They all sigh with relief, and there is much muscle rubbing and idle chatter. So long as they stay in their positions, you allow them to relax. With forces of this size, the battle could easily take all day. Idly, you watch the Norman forces. They don't appear to be doing anything of interest. You are about to strike a conversation with Orvyn, when a portion of the Norman line surges forward. Some of the men stumble to their feet, but you wave them down. The hill is at least three hundred feet, and the Normans appear to be on foot. You stare at the mass of men in a state of bewilderment. All of them seem to be fairly lightly armored, none of them sparkle, like the men in mail shirts do. Suddenly, the advance stops, not even halfway up the hill. Why they would just stop seems ridiculous, unless- You leap up and call out frantically, not just to your men, but to everyone else across the line "Shields! Shields!" You tear yours from its resting place, fasten it to your arm, and then hold it above your head. Other men follow your lead. Just in time. A dark cloud wafts from the Norman advance to the English line. Arrows. Thousands and thousands of arrows. They whistle through the air like a swarm of enraged wasps, raining down upon the English line. Three arrows strike your shield, each one slamming into the thick wood with hammer blows. Across the line men fall to the deadly barrage, clutching at feathered shafts protruding from throats and chests. The fyrd are hit by far the worst, devoid of protection, they die where they stand, too tightly packed too dodge. For a brief moment many seem on the point of breaking, but warriors in the rear quickly push them back into line and try to protect them with their shields, the effort is mostly futile, but it helps reassure them. In all the commotion; the screaming and shouting, the whistling of arrows, you almost miss the noise. That unmistakable drumbeat of horse hooves. By now the horses are quite close, and the arrow rain has stopped, as the Norman archers are wary of killing their own riders. You drop your shield down and heft your longsword. "Shields forward! Shields forward! Hold the line!" Your warriors respond instantly, as do Harold's Housecarls. Shields drop forward and interlock, forming a solid barrier to thwart the Norman riders. You focus on the rider charging towards you, he has his lance couched under his arm and pointed directly at your shield. Suddenly, as he approaches the line a javelin, thrown by a man behind you, pierces the horse's chest. The animal screams and froths blood. It drops to its knees and pitches forward, you take a half-step closer and thrust your longsword straight into the Norman's throat. He chokes hot blood and keels over, falling on top of his dead steed. You nod in satisfaction. In front of you there now lies a barrier of two dead horses. Looking left and right, you survey the battle-line. As expected, your men and the Housecarls have fared fine, killing or throwing back their attackers. The same cannot be said for other places on the line. In some places, the Norman riders were able to break through, and although the Normans were quickly killed or driven off, many of the bodies strewn across the field are English. The shieldwall has held, but barely. > You hold the line The sun is now high in the sky. You have lost track of the hours, and the number of Norman attempts. Every attack is the same. First comes the barrage, then the charge of cavalry. The fyrd has been decimated, perhaps a third have either died or run away. The toll on the warriors has been lighter, but no less serious. Because of your proximity to the King, your soldiers have been hit hard, and many of their bodies lie limp along the battle-line. You and Orvyn are still in fit shape, although you are both tired, and your arm aches from holding your shield, which has been gnawed to splinters by the constant rain of arrows. A painfully familiar whistling fills your ears. Groaning, you lift up your shield to ward off the barrage. You're just so, so tired... > You keep holding the line... You have no idea what time it is, but the sun is beginning to lap at the treetops, and a blissfully cool evening breeze wafts around you. You crouch in the blood-soaked mud, behind the shadow of a horse corpse. The blood is everywhere. It coats your sword. It is spattered across your mailshirt. It is smeared across your face. For the first time in a long while, you want to throw up. The battlefield is littered with corpses, human and animal. Mostly human. Mostly English. Only a quarter of the fyrd are still alive. No, that's not right. You look around briefly. Maybe a sixth. No one has remained unscathed, not even Harold's legendary Housecarls. The shieldwall has been effectively broken, men huddle in small groups behind the cover of dead horses, each spattered with arrows. To stand out in the open is to die. You peer over the top of your horse carcass. You have done grave damage to William's forces, but they are still numerous. In fact, as you watch, you see men advancing. Your hand twitches, an instinctive raising of the shield hammered into your brain by years of training. However, you pause briefly. The masses of Normans aren’t archers, or cavalry. They are infantry. Thousands and thousands of foot soldiers. Throughout the day, William has sent them at you, but never in these numbers. You grip your sword. The end is near. > You fight The Normans advance, neat and orderly. Their armaments are very similar to that of their riders. Most wear mailshirts, and those bizarre conical helmets. Some carry axes, most carry swords, but all heft the customary Norman blue kite shield. That, at least, is some consolation. Whereas you English fight as a cohesive team, the Norman's tend to fight as individuals, because the kite shield, although effective, cannot interlock with that of a neighbor's. Despite your weakened state, a lone Norman is still a dead one. You crouch low behind the horse corpse and wait. The familiar jingle of mailshirts heralds their arrival. Beside you, Orvyn bristles, but you put a cautionary hand on his shoulder. You want them close. You wait a moment more, then leap out. Your longsword snakes forward, lashing out at a Norman's face. He raises his kite shield to deflect the blow, but as he does one of the men on your right sweeps his blade down and cuts into the Norman's ankle. The man screams and drops to one knee, Orvyn's axe crushes his jaw. You press into the gap and push the Normans towards Harold's Housecarls, whose bloody Daneaxes make short work of the thin kite shields. Ducking under a Norman sword thrust, you stab forwards and gut the man. Kicking him aside, you search for your next opponent... And find no one. The Normans are retreating. To your left, you notice King Harold. He waves madly with his axe, and men are surging forward alongside him. With a sudden shock you realize he is trying to rally the men and charge downhill, towards William's retreating infantry. > You follow Harold Adding your voice to the English battle cries, you advance on the fleeing Norman foot soldiers. In front of you, one stumbles as his boot slides through a patch of reddened mud. He only falters a moment, but it is enough. Your longsword lances forward, piercing the fleeing Norman's calf. He screams and falls, holding up his arms to futilely ward off your blade. You keep moving forward, using your heavy shield to shove the wounded Norman out of your way. Behind you, Orvyn's axe resonates with a heavy crunch as he finishes off the crippled soldier. Ahead of you, another Norman stumbles forward, a heavy javelin slamming into his shoulder. He manages one strangled yelp before your blade connects with his neck, a heavy swing that severs his jugular and jars against his spine. You wrench the sword free and keep moving. This charge has filled you with fresh energy, filling your mind with bloody courage, but now it is starting to ebb and your mind is working more clearly. There is something very wrong here. This retreat is far too organized, too simultaneous. The Norman foot soldiers are increasing the distance between themselves and the beleaguered English soldiers, the pounding of their feet grows fainter, but another pounding grows louder. Horse hooves. You turn to your left, Harold has thrown off his battered shield and carries only a Daneaxe, which he wields two-handed. He is completely out in the open. You turn and race towards him. > You say "Harold!" "Harold!" You call out, sprinting towards him. He half turns towards you, and flashes one of his charismatic bright smiles. The single arrow that flies through the air surprises you more than Harold. Curving gently, it hisses downward and slams into Harold's eye. He lets out a startled cough and staggers backward. You keep running towards your king, but a Norman rider cuts in front of you. Turning his horse neatly, the Norman swings his blade and opens your King's throat, spraying blood. Harold falls to the ground, dead. You falter indecisively, filled with wordless horror and remorse. > You fall back and gather your men You back away, slowly at first, then swiftly. "Back! Back to the horses!" You repeat your message, shouting as loud as your worn throat will allow. Men begin to gather around you. You look to your left; Norman horsemen have obliterated the line, fyrdmen and warriors alike are being hacked down as they run. The right flank has suffered the same fate. Wordlessly, you turn your back to the men of the flanks and retreat to the center. Around you stand perhaps a hundred men, the last of Harold's great army. The horses ride towards you from all sides. "Shields!" Orvyn echoes the cry. Men embrace briefly, and then turn to lock shields. Someone calls out "For Harold!” No one cheers. Even the Housecarls are wearied by the prospect of an imminent death. The horses draw close. You whisper a prayer for your family. You fight with cold fury, sword flashing. Horses crash through your shieldline, circling, wheeling, killing left and right. You refuse to break. At some point the Norman infantry joined the fight. That was shortly after you lost your shield. Or was it shortly before? You can't remember. Your world is blood and steel, screams and death. Perhaps it is a horse's hoof, perhaps a soldier's mace, maybe even a Norman shield. You're not sure what it is, but it strikes the back of your skull with tremendous force, knocking you into the mud and blurring your vision. You try to rise but the mud grabs you and drags you into the abyss. > You blackness... The small, cramped room is dark, but your eyes have long since adjusted to the dimness. For nearly a month you have languished here, confined under what was once the seat of England's power; the ancient city of London. You yawn tiredly and stretch, your hand strikes the hard stone wall on your left, which is slick with fungus. Beside you, others stir. The prison cell holds a grand total of twenty-two men; of the seventy soldiers you brought, only they remain. Beside you, Orvyn mutters prayers in his native Irish tongue. You lie quiet amongst the molded straw, conserving your strength. A searing flare of light illuminates your surroundings. Shielding your eyes, you stare groggily through the iron bars of your cell at the sharp outline of a man holding a torch, flanked by two guards. The man rattles at the iron bars with the flaming head of his torch, casting sparks which smolder in the wet straw. "Lord Aethelwulf, you have been summoned to meet with King William. You will come with us immediately." His English is heavily accented, but understandable, you struggle to rise, but Orvyn gets up first "Lord Aethelwulf does not leave without me." The two guards look expectantly at the torch-bearer. He looks bored. "Very well, Lord Aethelwulf may have his retinue" He leans in menacingly, glaring at Orvyn "Try anything, and you die" He shoves the torch deeper into the cell, illuminating the huddled masses of your soldiers "The same applies to you lot" Without another word, the torch-bearer withdraws a thick metal key and unlocks the prison door. The guards level their spears threateningly. You and Orvyn leave the prison and follow the torch-bearer into the light. > You follow the Normans As you exit the dungeon, the torch-bearer leaves his torch in a wall bracket and continues to walk up a set of sharp flagstone stairs. For the first time in a month you see true, pure sunlight. Your weakened eyes strain to adjust, but they quickly regain their vitality and the world returns to its former luster. Behind you, Orvyn catches his foot on one of the flagstones. He plunges forward, and as he grabs hold of you for support, he whispers in your ear "Just say the word." You keep your face emotionless. Up ahead, a long corridor leads toward a huge set of wooden doors, flanked by two taciturn guards, and within those doors lies the throne room. > The Throneroom Your jailor steps up to the guards and speaks to them in French. They salute hastily and step aside. The Norman grasps two iron facets on the doors and pulls back, drawing open the wooden doors with an aching creak. Inside, a woven blue rug leads inward. The guards press you forward from behind, and two more from within the room keep pace adjacent to you. You keep walking. > You walk forwards You remember what this room was like a year ago. Men and women laughed and cajoled, children played with the great wolfhounds that were always on the hunt for table scraps, and bards echoed melodies that filled the rafters with pleasant music. But that was a different time, under a different king. The throne room is empty, other than a handful of guards and a few servants milling idly, the throne room is devoid of people. It is silent too, the place is blanketed by an austere noiselessness, so that every footstep makes a clattering echo. Residing over it all, William sits in the throne, glaring at you thoughtfully. With just a handful of meters separating you and the king, your guards stop you. William looks at you expectantly. > You kneel With a bitter taste in your mouth, you kneel. Orvyn looks openly disgusted, but he too gets down on one knee. William smiles contemptuously, he speaks softly, in an English that is only faintly accented. "Ah, this one knows his manners. Good." > You thank him "Thank you" You snarl through gritted teeth. Anger wells up inside of you like a storm, like an enraged beast trapped inside a frail cage of flesh and bone. Beside you, Orvyn notices your anger and tenses up, every muscle in his body is ready to spring into action. Even William notices the tension and waves discreetly to the Norman soldiers behind you. You feel cold steel pricking at your back. William glares icily, he leans forward. "You might be wondering why you are still alive, no?" You shrug sardonically. William pretends not to notice your insolence. "The North has proven especially difficult to pacify. I could have you executed, and place a Norman in charge, however I believe the peasants would disapprove, and I would prefer to keep them alive" He pauses briefly, mentally collecting his words "As such, I am reinstating you as lord in the North, providing you swear fealty to me" He leans even closer "Make no mistake. You will be closely watched by one of my men, whom you will take orders from. This is not an offer. Swear to me, or die. Your choice." > You take the Oath You swallow your pride, and your anger. You think of your family; your wife and children. It still feels like cowardice. A Norman page timidly places a worn copper cross in your chapped fingers. You grip it limply and speak the same oath that you gave to Harold not a year earlier. At the end William smirks, and you drop the copper cross disgustedly. With a casual wave of his hand, William dismisses you from the throneroom. Your audience is over. > You leave Although the sun is high, the frigid December air pierces your bones, and you draw your tattered cloak tighter around your shivering form. Once outside of the city walls, the Normans give you back your weapons and your horse. Your men are released, however their weapons are not returned to them and the horses they are given are lame swaybacked farm horses. Your own horse is a magnificent charger named Thunder, a black stallion measuring fifteen hands at his withers. He has been trained as a war horse, and his gnashing teeth are strong enough to snap bone, yet when he nuzzles up against your hand his eyes are soft and his lips are gently. You pat him affectionately on the cheek and then swing into his saddle, feeling the leather's familiar curves. Your breath floats foglike in the cold air, you wait impatiently for your men to get mounted, your hands are beginning to burn. Once your men mount their horses you ride North; homeward bound. > You ride You ride all through the day, as fast as your horses can manage. Everywhere you go you see the devastation of William's invasion. Parts of the countryside appear normal, but others are burnt husks, farms and fields replaced with ash and bones. The roads are thick with mounted Normans, they glare at you suspiciously, but one of your men carries the Norman flag, and they let you pass. The sun is beginning to set, and the cold is becoming too much. Even Orvyn, a man who can walk barefoot through snow without a qualm, looks uncomfortable. You stop at an abandoned farmhouse, there are large holes in the roof, but your men cut swathes of dead grasses and stuff them in the crevasses. Someone starts a fire in the buildings dilapidated mud-daub chimney, which snakes up the back wall and protrudes through the messy thatch roofing. Normally supper is a time for boisterous laughing and cajoling, but today you eat in silence. Afterwards, you bring several of the horses inside and curl up to them for warmth. Despite the uncomfortable ground and chilly temperatures, Thunder's flank is soft and the methodical rhythm of his heartbeat is oddly calming. You drift off into a dark, dreamless sleep. > You wake up You wake up stiff and smelling distinctly of horse. Getting up, you strap on your swords and get your men moving, Orvyn kicks some of the stragglers into action. Your own horse seems reluctant to get up, and it takes all of your coaxing to convince him to get up. Your own muscles are aching from the cold, but a few hours of riding help warm them up somewhat. The next few days develop a sort of routine; ride, find shelter, sleep, and ride again. As you journey further northward the scenery begins to change. The roads become smaller and more rugged, little more than oxen paths. The Norman presence decreases too; you pass only a few tired looking patrols. The lack of Norman occupation manifests itself in the land too, the devastation seen in the south is not present here, plenty of farms lie abandoned, but few have been burned. Many northern men gave their lives at Hastings, but their families have yet to suffer from Norman vengeance. It feels good to know that your people are still present, still unified. At last, you see the banks of the river Ouse. Beyond it lies your home; the ancient city of York. > You head to the banks of the river Ouse An old roman bridge of crumbling stone fords the Ouse. As you urge your horses towards the edge of the bridge, a dozen mounted men materialize from the treeline on the other side. The riders approach the bridge and halt at its mouth. Your hand reaches for the sword at your sheathe, but you quickly relax. You recognize the man leading the mounted force; his name is Garyn, and he is the captain of your guard. > You go meet Garyn You dismount and hand the reins of your horse to one of your men. Moving briskly, you cross the old stone bridge. On the other side, Garyn dismounts and hurries to meet you. It has been several months since you last saw him, however he hasn't changed a bit. He wears a mail hauberk, and his shield -emblazoned with your snarling wolf sigil- is slung over his back. On his left he wears a thick fighting sword, shorter than your longsword but almost twice as thick. On his right he carries a vicious looking seaxe, a heavy stabbing dagger perfect for thrusting through mail links. His face, like much of his body, is scarred by a lifetime of fighting. He is bald, and his hooked nose gives him a predatory, reptilian look. His eyes are hard, flinty; the eyes of a soldier. You meet in the middle of the bridge and he clasps your forearm warmly, his face shows relief. "Our scouts saw you coming, I came as soon as I could. The Lady Catheryn will be overjoyed to hear that you are back" Catheryn. You feel your heartbeat rise. These months without her have been far too long. You can almost see her, like an apparition drawing you homewards. Footsteps echo on the bridge behind you; Orvyn has joined you. He speaks to you, but his eyes are fixed on Garyn "We should ride to the villages first. As their lord, you owe them an explanation. Everyone there has a relative who served in your fyrd. They deserve an audience" Garyn glares contemptuously at Orvyn "A lord does not serve at the beck and call of his peasants. Maybe if the useless sods had held the line, we wouldn't be in this predicament" Orvyn takes a step towards Garyn, Garyn's hand drops closer to the lethal looking dagger at his hip. Orvyn keeps his hands well away from his weapons, in an open show of contempt "Do you want the commonfolk to rebel against us? What harm can it do to delay Aethelwulf's homecoming by a few hours!" Both of them turn expectantly towards you, waiting for you to settle their dispute. > You agree with Garyn "I want to see my family again." You say it plain and quiet, but Orvyn recognizes the tone of command in your voice. He looks hurt, but relents, shooting Garyn a final angry stare. Garyn smiles and signals to the his men at the bridge "Come on boys! We're escorting lord Aethelwulf home!" > You go Home Between the banks of the rivers Ouse and Foss sits a finger of land, atop which rests the ancient walled city of York. Created by the Romans, its old stone walls have been mostly replaced by wooden palisades, but in some sections they remain; impenetrable rock formations three feet thick and fifteen feet high. Waving methodically in the slow December wind, your snarling wolf banners fly proudly. Surrounding the outside of the city walls, thin huts of mud and thatch lean precariously, using the palisades for support. You curse irritably; those huts will provide excellent cover for any attacker who wishes to besiege your city. Picking its way through the thin cobble street, your horse passes by the frail mud-and-thatch houses beside the walls. From within their shallow depths, grimy faces peer outwards suspiciously. From atop the walls, a young man in an ill-fitting mailshirt challenges you "Go no farther! Who are you?" A grizzled veteran with a scarred face and grey hair cuffs the younger man over the head "Open the gate you idiot, it's lord Aethelwulf!" The young soldier blanches fearfully, stammers a pardon, and practically leaps off the palisade's platform to unbar the gate; a massive four meter structure of wood and iron. The gate opens inward with a heavy groan and the young soldier- still looking suitably embarrassed- waves you inside. As you pass, you grin at him good-naturedly. You are home. > You enter the Courtyard The courtyard is a chaos of raised voices and the neighing of horses and the splashing of mud, which coats the ground; it has been churned loose from the frosty ground and warmed by the trampling of hundreds of feet. Across the courtyard from you is the inner keep, a building made from Roman stone and patched with Anglo-Saxon woodwork. It is where you host your warriors and organize meetings, and it also functions as your personal quarters. You should organize a meeting soon, but it would be wise to meet with your family first. > You find your wife Moving with dreamlike purpose, you navigate the halls and passageways within your home. Standing outside the door to your quarters, you fingers feel the familiar shape of the door handle, which opens at your touch. The room is plain, in one corner is a chest of clothes and in the other is a fur bed. On the bed sits your wife, Catheryn. She is angelic in form, swathed in a pale white dress with her long golden hair flowing effortlessly down her shoulders. Her face transitions from shock to delight; her perfect mouth smiles and her bright blue eyes sparkle. Vaulting into your arms, she embraces you, long slender arms twined around your body. Her lips caress your cheek, and she whispers quietly in your ear "I missed you" You kiss her back "I missed you too" Your eyes settle to the door in your room opposing the one through which you entered; it is the entrance to your daughter's room. Catheryn's eyes follow yours "She's sleeping" She grins coyly, kissing you passionately > You kiss her back She tastes so sweet, like spring. Her eyes sparkle and she draws you closer, your hands move down to her thighs, clutching at the gossamer white fabric around her knees. Her own hands, slender and smooth, trace their way down your chest. You both slip out of your clothes, and slip under the fur bed sheets. For the first time in nearly a month, you feel warm. For the first time in nearly a month, you feel happy.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Moving with dreamlike purpose, you navigate the halls and passageways within your home. Standing outside the door to your quarters, you fingers feel the familiar shape of the door handle, which opens at your touch. The room is plain, in one corner is a chest of clothes and in the other is a fur bed. On the bed sits your wife, Catheryn. She is angelic in form, swathed in a pale white dress with her long golden hair flowing effortlessly down her shoulders. Her face transitions from shock to delight; her perfect mouth smiles and her bright blue eyes sparkle. Vaulting into your arms, she embraces you, long slender arms twined around your body. Her lips caress your cheek, and she whispers quietly in your ear "I missed you" You kiss her back "I missed you too" Your eyes settle to the door in your room opposing the one through which you entered; it is the entrance to your daughter's room. Catheryn's eyes follow yours "She's sleeping" She grins coyly, kissing you passionately > You say "I should see our daughter" You return her kiss, but when her hands move down your body, you hold them still "I want to see our daughter" Catheryn looks hurt for a moment, but recovers quickly, she flashes you a sympathetic smile "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be selfish, go in and wake Laila, but-" She slips by you and whispers in your ear flirtatiously "Just don't keep me waiting" You kiss her once more before grasping the copper handle of your daughter's door and pushing it open softly. Like your own, your daughter's room is plain, just a bed and chest of drawers, but you notice someone has placed an earthenware jug of flowers on top of the pine chest. Laila is sleeping curled up on her bed, head partially obscured by the thick fur blankets. Her long golden hair, silken smooth like her mother's, cascades over the blanket's contours. You nudge her shoulder gently "Laila, wake up" The young girl snuffles in her sleep, but otherwise makes no move to wake. When you left several months ago, Laila was five and enjoyed sleeping through the day. She is six now, but clearly her sleeping habits have not changed. You shake her again, still delicately, but with an added firmness "Laila, wake up" Laila yawns groggily "Wha-?" You wait patiently for her eyes to open, when they do she shrieks with happiness, diamond blue eyes widening with surprise. Wrapping her arms around your midriff with a surprisingly strong grip, she practically squeals with delight "Father!" You tossle her hair fondly, which bunches together briefly but then almost instantly resumes its waterfall-smoothness. She looks at you seriously "How long are you staying, father?" You smile reassuringly "With any luck, the rest of the winter, past that, I can't say" With you now firmly secured in her life, Laila decides to inform you about all the wonderful things she has seen and done while you've been away. You are all too happy to listen; you talk for hours, laughing and cajoling, strengthening the bond that had grown all too tenuous during the long months you were absent.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The courtyard is a chaos of raised voices and the neighing of horses and the splashing of mud, which coats the ground; it has been churned loose from the frosty ground and warmed by the trampling of hundreds of feet. Across the courtyard from you is the inner keep, a building made from Roman stone and patched with Anglo-Saxon woodwork. It is where you host your warriors and organize meetings, and it also functions as your personal quarters. You should organize a meeting soon, but it would be wise to meet with your family first. > You find your son In the courtyard, you grab a passing servant girl by the arm "Have you seen my son?" The servant seems unsurprised at your arrival; evidently news travels fast. She bites her lip nervously "Ah... yes, yes I have, but-" "Where is he?" You inquire incredulously. The servant blushes "He's in the stables my lord, but I really don't think you should-" Waving off her concerns, you thank her and depart towards the stables. The stables are large and ornate, a mix of carved wood and interlocking wicker. The smell is heavy of stale hay and horse manure, but the atmosphere is pleasant nonetheless. At least three-dozen horses of various shades rest in the shade of the stable's long awning, but your son is nowhere to be found. On a hunch, you decide to check the stable master’s quarters, at the rear of the stable. As you approach the door you hear a muffled laugh through the porous wood of the door. Undoing the latch, you throw open the door and enter the dimly lit room. Inside, you son Eamon, a long-haired blond boy of seventeen lies under an old cotton blanket alongside a freckled girl of similar age. The pair are twined together, moving rythmically, and apparently neither noticed you open the door. You clear your throat politely. The girl gives a shriek of surprise, and covers herself with a fold of the tattered blanket. Your son looks equally surprised, but emits only a startled cough. You grin "Hello Eamon" You turn your attention to the girl lying beside him. > You say "Get out" "Get out" You snap idly, sparing her hardly a second glance. Blushing profusely, the young servant girl slips a threadbare tunic over her freckled body and hurries out of sight. Your son stares after her longingly, he sighs exasperatedly "You didn’t have to do that father" You fix him with a hard stare "I'm sorry, I merely assumed you would prefer to see your father rather than rut in the muck with some servant girl. Apparently I was mistaken." Your son mutters something under his breath, you stare him down, daring him to argue with you "What did you say?" Your son returns your glare "Her name is Lynette" > You say "You shouldn't get too attached to her." You bite your lip awkwardly "You shouldn't do this" Your son stares at you incredulously "I shouldn’t love someone?" "You are only making this harder for yourself" Your son glares back at you "I don't want to marry just anyone. I want to marry someone I care about" You grab your son viciously by his shoulders "Are you insinuating that I don't care about Catheryn!" Your son backpedals hurriedly "Of course not, father you know I wouldn't-" He searches for words "I- I just... what if it doesn't work out for me? What if I don't love my wife?" You let go of his shoulders limply "I'm sure you'll love her" Your son doesn't seem so convinced. He slips on his trousers and shirt and departs the stable master’s quarters in silence, brushing past you on the way out. You sigh tiredly and depart the stables alone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>In the courtyard, you grab a passing servant girl by the arm "Have you seen my son?" The servant seems unsurprised at your arrival; evidently news travels fast. She bites her lip nervously "Ah... yes, yes I have, but-" "Where is he?" You inquire incredulously. The servant blushes "He's in the stables my lord, but I really don't think you should-" Waving off her concerns, you thank her and depart towards the stables. The stables are large and ornate, a mix of carved wood and interlocking wicker. The smell is heavy of stale hay and horse manure, but the atmosphere is pleasant nonetheless. At least three-dozen horses of various shades rest in the shade of the stable's long awning, but your son is nowhere to be found. On a hunch, you decide to check the stable master’s quarters, at the rear of the stable. As you approach the door you hear a muffled laugh through the porous wood of the door. Undoing the latch, you throw open the door and enter the dimly lit room. Inside, you son Eamon, a long-haired blond boy of seventeen lies under an old cotton blanket alongside a freckled girl of similar age. The pair are twined together, moving rythmically, and apparently neither noticed you open the door. You clear your throat politely. The girl gives a shriek of surprise, and covers herself with a fold of the tattered blanket. Your son looks equally surprised, but emits only a startled cough. You grin "Hello Eamon" You turn your attention to the girl lying beside him. > You say "Would you mind if I spoke to my son, alone?" You flash the young girl a warm smile "If you wouldn't mind, I would prefer to speak to my son alone" Blushing profusely, the young servant girl slips a threadbare tunic over her freckled body and scurries towards the door, executing a clumsy curtsy as she passes you. Your son stares after her longingly, he sighs "You didn’t have to do that father" You fix him with an amused stare "I'm sorry, I merely assumed you would prefer to see your father rather than rut in the muck with some servant girl. Apparently I was mistaken." Your son mutters something under his breath, you grin "What did you say?" Your son returns tries to frown at you, but smiles "I said her name is Lynette" You nod "Is she a favorite of yours?" Your son looks shocked "I love her, father"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>In the courtyard, you grab a passing servant girl by the arm "Have you seen my son?" The servant seems unsurprised at your arrival; evidently news travels fast. She bites her lip nervously "Ah... yes, yes I have, but-" "Where is he?" You inquire incredulously. The servant blushes "He's in the stables my lord, but I really don't think you should-" Waving off her concerns, you thank her and depart towards the stables. The stables are large and ornate, a mix of carved wood and interlocking wicker. The smell is heavy of stale hay and horse manure, but the atmosphere is pleasant nonetheless. At least three-dozen horses of various shades rest in the shade of the stable's long awning, but your son is nowhere to be found. On a hunch, you decide to check the stable master’s quarters, at the rear of the stable. As you approach the door you hear a muffled laugh through the porous wood of the door. Undoing the latch, you throw open the door and enter the dimly lit room. Inside, you son Eamon, a long-haired blond boy of seventeen lies under an old cotton blanket alongside a freckled girl of similar age. The pair are twined together, moving rythmically, and apparently neither noticed you open the door. You clear your throat politely. The girl gives a shriek of surprise, and covers herself with a fold of the tattered blanket. Your son looks equally surprised, but emits only a startled cough. You grin "Hello Eamon" You turn your attention to the girl lying beside him. > You say "What's your name?" You flash the young girl a warm smile "Hello there, what's your name?" The girl stammers out an answer "L-lynette, milord" You nod solemnly "A very pretty name. Who gave it to you?" While you spoke, Lynette had slipped on her threadbare tunic, in her panic she has managed to entangle the fabric around her face, and the cloth muffles her voice "My mother works in the kitchen, milord" "And the father?" You inquire "I don't know, milord" She replies quietly, having finally wrestled her tunic into its proper position. With her attention switched from her tunic back to you, her embarrassment returns "If milord will excuse me, I should be getting back to the kitchens" "Of course" Blushing profusely, the young servant girl scurries towards the door, executing a clumsy curtsy as she passes you. Your son stares after her longingly, he sighs, and you nod knowingly "Is she a favorite of yours?" Your son looks shocked "I love her, father"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The courtyard is a chaos of raised voices and the neighing of horses and the splashing of mud, which coats the ground; it has been churned loose from the frosty ground and warmed by the trampling of hundreds of feet. Across the courtyard from you is the inner keep, a building made from Roman stone and patched with Anglo-Saxon woodwork. It is where you host your warriors and organize meetings, and it also functions as your personal quarters. You should organize a meeting soon, but it would be wise to meet with your family first. > You speak to Orvyn Orvyn stands with a group of other men, all holding ale cups. As you approach he waves you a jaunty salute, but you sense a sullen undertone. You motion for him to follow you. Walking purposefully, you wait until there is no one in the general vicinity before speaking. > You say "We should be wary of Garyn" "I'm worried about Garyn" Orvyn nods vigorously "I know exactly what you mean; bloody idiot will get us all killed with his recklessness" Again making sure no one is listening, you put a hand on Orvyn's shoulder "Can I trust you?' Orvyn affirms loyally "Of course Aethelwulf!" You clap him on the shoulder "I know, old friend, I know" You lean in "I want you to keep an eye on Garyn, make sure he doesn't blunder our men into a trap" Orvyn checks over his shoulder suspiciously, as though he expects Garyn to materialize from thin air "Don't worry, I'll watch him like a hawk" "Excellent, let me know if he does anything foolish" Orvyn salutes amicably and departs; you walk in the opposite direction, towards the main courtyard.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Orvyn stands with a group of other men, all holding ale cups. As you approach he waves you a jaunty salute, but you sense a sullen undertone. You motion for him to follow you. Walking purposefully, you wait until there is no one in the general vicinity before speaking. > You say "You need to cooperate with Garyn" You wonder how to put this in a way Orvyn will comprehend; he is not, after all, a man who enjoys playing nice. You decide to start cautiously "You know, of course, that I do, and always will, trust you with my life" Orvyn nods slowly, you continue "You also know that I rely on you to maintain order and discipline amongst the men" Again, Orvyn nods, his bright green eyes watching you carefully. You press on "I need you to be an example to the men, be something they can look up to" Orvyn runs a hand through his jet-black hair distractedly "Aethelwulf, I've always done th-" You wave him off, and cut to the point "I can't have you arguing with Garyn. It's bad for moral, and it makes the men lose confidence in their leaders" Orvyn's pale cheeks are tinged pink, he stares determinedly at his feet "If my lord would rather put his trust in me then Garyn, he need only say so" The coldness of his tone shocks you. You open your mouth to apologize, but Orvyn has already stalked off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The courtyard is a chaos of raised voices and the neighing of horses and the splashing of mud, which coats the ground; it has been churned loose from the frosty ground and warmed by the trampling of hundreds of feet. Across the courtyard from you is the inner keep, a building made from Roman stone and patched with Anglo-Saxon woodwork. It is where you host your warriors and organize meetings, and it also functions as your personal quarters. You should organize a meeting soon, but it would be wise to meet with your family first. > You speak to Father Wilfrid You decide to pay father Wilfrid a visit. The man has served your family for nearly forty years, and he has served you personally as teacher, mentor, and adviser. As a person, you harbor a vague dislike for him, and the feeling is mutual. However, you can trust him to give good advice, and for that reason you set off in the direction of the huge stone church that towers above every other building within York's walls. The church, St. Peters, was built nearly three hundred years ago, and it has stood against the tides of half a hundred bloody wars. Staring at the immense building of hard cut stone, you are overcome with a sudden monumental certainty; that one way or another, the church will outlive you, and everyone else. Something about its towering austerity lends to its aura of chilling weariness, like the pressure of an invisible hand. You never really liked churches, and a career as a soldier has done little to improve the situation. When you enter the building, you can feel the judgment, the guilt, bearing down on you. You have defended your kin and country with the ruthless efficiency of a trained warrior, and for that you have been condemned, deemed impure. No one says this, of course; the priests are always tactful and subservient, listening to your confessions with dull faces, but you sense their fear. They watch you like a caged animal, one that could at any minute turn on its companions. Whenever you touch one of the priests, you see the undeniable flicker of disgust that bolts across their faces for the briefest of instances. To them, you will always reek of blood. Shouldering your emotions, you push open the thick oaken doors that bar your entry to the church. > You enter the Church Father Wilfrid kneels at the far end of the church, prostrate before a towering sculpture of Jesus upon a cross. He is dressed in a plain woolen robe that drapes loosely across his skeletal form. His hands are spotted with age, and his left shakes incessantly. His lips are thin and chapped, and they move loosely, muttering prayers in Latin. As he whispers, his head bobs slightly, shaking the wisps of white hair that sparsely cover his head. You wait patiently for him to finish, ignoring the suspicious glances of the other priests. Your eyes drift upwards, where a lengthy tapestry occupies the farthest wall. You spend the next five minutes perusing it idly, watching grotesque caricatures of heathens smolder in the depths of woolen flames. At last, father Wilfrid finishes his prayers and struggles to rise, heaving awkwardly against a weathered can that shudders under his minute weight. You offer a hand, and he regards it with unhidden distaste, as though you had presented him with a human heart as opposed to an offer of aid. You withdraw the hand tactfully and Wilfrid gets shakily to his feet. He looks you up and down, as though he expects you to suddenly dematerialize. "You're back" You nod, trying not to think back on your less pleasant schooling days. "How fare the people?" Father Wilfrid looks at you with grudging respect. His teachings of angels and gospels have long since faded from memory, but his teachings on the importance of a lord's people have remained steadfast in your mind. "They fare as well as one might expect. They grieve, and you cannot deny that their grief is largely your fault" You exhale tiredly, Wilfrid grabs your arm "We have our differences, you and I, but we agree on one thing; a lord should never forget about his people" You nod and begin to speak, but Wilfrid cuts you off "I know you must hate the Normans, but if you rebel, you will lose, and it will be the people, your people, who will suffer because of it. You cannot rebel against King William" The old priest coughs harshly, his battered lungs quivering. He spits out the last sentence "If you rebel, we will all die" > You say "I won't rebel" You laugh bitterly "If I wanted to rebel, I would have done it in the throneroom. It's too late now." Father Wilfrid looks at you strangely, overcoming a momentary hesitation; he places a scrawny arm on your shoulder "You are making a wise choice, lord Aethelwulf" You want to say something, and for a moment you just stand there, staring at your old tutor. Father Wilfrid breaks the silence "You should go, doubtless you have work to do" You nod and turn to depart, as you leave Father Wilfrid offers one last comment "I am proud of you, Aethelwulf, even if it doesn't seem like it" You push open the heavy church doors and step out into the crisp December air.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Father Wilfrid kneels at the far end of the church, prostrate before a towering sculpture of Jesus upon a cross. He is dressed in a plain woolen robe that drapes loosely across his skeletal form. His hands are spotted with age, and his left shakes incessantly. His lips are thin and chapped, and they move loosely, muttering prayers in Latin. As he whispers, his head bobs slightly, shaking the wisps of white hair that sparsely cover his head. You wait patiently for him to finish, ignoring the suspicious glances of the other priests. Your eyes drift upwards, where a lengthy tapestry occupies the farthest wall. You spend the next five minutes perusing it idly, watching grotesque caricatures of heathens smolder in the depths of woolen flames. At last, father Wilfrid finishes his prayers and struggles to rise, heaving awkwardly against a weathered can that shudders under his minute weight. You offer a hand, and he regards it with unhidden distaste, as though you had presented him with a human heart as opposed to an offer of aid. You withdraw the hand tactfully and Wilfrid gets shakily to his feet. He looks you up and down, as though he expects you to suddenly dematerialize. "You're back" You nod, trying not to think back on your less pleasant schooling days. "How fare the people?" Father Wilfrid looks at you with grudging respect. His teachings of angels and gospels have long since faded from memory, but his teachings on the importance of a lord's people have remained steadfast in your mind. "They fare as well as one might expect. They grieve, and you cannot deny that their grief is largely your fault" You exhale tiredly, Wilfrid grabs your arm "We have our differences, you and I, but we agree on one thing; a lord should never forget about his people" You nod and begin to speak, but Wilfrid cuts you off "I know you must hate the Normans, but if you rebel, you will lose, and it will be the people, your people, who will suffer because of it. You cannot rebel against King William" The old priest coughs harshly, his battered lungs quivering. He spits out the last sentence "If you rebel, we will all die" > You say "I will rebel" You lean in, forcing the old priest to take a half step backward "Who do you give your loyalty to?" His answer is immediate and unequivocal "God" Your snarl, taking another step forward "Well, my loyalties lie with England. Always. You would be wise to develop a similar mindset" Father Wilfrid watches you coldly "Get out of my church" Livid with anger, you storm out of the church, pushing open the heavy oaken doors and breathing in the calming December air. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You dismount and hand the reins of your horse to one of your men. Moving briskly, you cross the old stone bridge. On the other side, Garyn dismounts and hurries to meet you. It has been several months since you last saw him, however he hasn't changed a bit. He wears a mail hauberk, and his shield -emblazoned with your snarling wolf sigil- is slung over his back. On his left he wears a thick fighting sword, shorter than your longsword but almost twice as thick. On his right he carries a vicious looking seaxe, a heavy stabbing dagger perfect for thrusting through mail links. His face, like much of his body, is scarred by a lifetime of fighting. He is bald, and his hooked nose gives him a predatory, reptilian look. His eyes are hard, flinty; the eyes of a soldier. You meet in the middle of the bridge and he clasps your forearm warmly, his face shows relief. "Our scouts saw you coming, I came as soon as I could. The Lady Catheryn will be overjoyed to hear that you are back" Catheryn. You feel your heartbeat rise. These months without her have been far too long. You can almost see her, like an apparition drawing you homewards. Footsteps echo on the bridge behind you; Orvyn has joined you. He speaks to you, but his eyes are fixed on Garyn "We should ride to the villages first. As their lord, you owe them an explanation. Everyone there has a relative who served in your fyrd. They deserve an audience" Garyn glares contemptuously at Orvyn "A lord does not serve at the beck and call of his peasants. Maybe if the useless sods had held the line, we wouldn't be in this predicament" Orvyn takes a step towards Garyn, Garyn's hand drops closer to the lethal looking dagger at his hip. Orvyn keeps his hands well away from his weapons, in an open show of contempt "Do you want the commonfolk to rebel against us? What harm can it do to delay Aethelwulf's homecoming by a few hours!" Both of them turn expectantly towards you, waiting for you to settle their dispute. > You agree with Orvyn Thoughts of your wife and children burn inside of you, but a good lord's first priority should always be to his people. You nod to Orvyn "I will ride down to the villages. Garyn, send us some of your men as an escort." Garyn obeys, but his lips are curled in an ugly sneer and he refuses to even look at Orvyn, who wears a distinctly smug expression. Following Orvyn, you turn your back temporarily on thoughts of homecoming. A good lord's duty is to his people, after all. You mount your horse and ride towards the town of Wichestun. > You head into town You smell the town before you see it. A horrid combination of sewage and rotting thatch permeates the crisp December air. The town has perhaps a hundred homes at most, with most people living in farmsteads around the surrounding area. Normally, the town would be fairly quiet, however today is Wednesday, marketday, and the town is filled with crowds of villagers from the farthest corners of your realm. As your horses move through the center street, villagers hurry to make room. Some cheer, but others eye you with suspicion or even fear. At the center of the town, you hold up your fist and your party draws to a halt. A crowd quickly gathers, all eyes are on you. Pausing to gather your words, you address your people. > You say "We stand together!" You raise your hand and silence falls like a blanket over the crowd of people. Your eyes flick from face, some meet your gaze, others stare at their feet. "We have been through hell, all of us. You have all lost people to the fyrd; fathers, brothers, sons. I understand your pain. But know this; they died with me, beside me, because we are the north! We live, we fight, and we die together! They say a warrior is only as strong as the shield held by his neighbor, they say this because it is the united who are strong, and we are the united!" Your escort applauds, rattling swords on shields and roaring. Some of the villagers clap nervously, but others remain still; one, a young woman with a grim face raises her hand. "Why was the fyrd so undersupplied? Why was it not provided with shields?" One of your men barks at her to be silent, but she snarls back, tears bead her eyes "I lost my husband and my son! Don't you dare tell me to be silent!" She stabs her finger at you, sobbing "Answer me! Answer me!" One of your men reaches for his sword, but you wave him off. Looking the determined young woman in the eye, you give her an answer. > You say "War is brutal" You exhale tiredly and spread your hands sympathetically "I am sorry, truly I am. By joining my fyrd your husband and son were put in a dangerous position, and regrettably they were killed. I can never ask you to forget, but I can ask you to forgive. Will you do that?" The woman says nothing; her cheeks are streaked with tears. Bowing her head, she pushes through the crowd, away from the market square, people make way respectfully. Tugging at your horses reins, you turn homeward, and your escort silently follows you. The crowd remains silent, watching.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You raise your hand and silence falls like a blanket over the crowd of people. Your eyes flick from face, some meet your gaze, others stare at their feet. "We have been through hell, all of us. You have all lost people to the fyrd; fathers, brothers, sons. I understand your pain. But know this; they died with me, beside me, because we are the north! We live, we fight, and we die together! They say a warrior is only as strong as the shield held by his neighbor, they say this because it is the united who are strong, and we are the united!" Your escort applauds, rattling swords on shields and roaring. Some of the villagers clap nervously, but others remain still; one, a young woman with a grim face raises her hand. "Why was the fyrd so undersupplied? Why was it not provided with shields?" One of your men barks at her to be silent, but she snarls back, tears bead her eyes "I lost my husband and my son! Don't you dare tell me to be silent!" She stabs her finger at you, sobbing "Answer me! Answer me!" One of your men reaches for his sword, but you wave him off. Looking the determined young woman in the eye, you give her an answer. > You say "If I could have saved them, I would have" You sigh, an angry rush of air escapes your mouth. You lean in, and the woman recoils momentarily; mounted on your horse with gleaming steel at your waist, you look like an imposing figure. Sensing your tense emotions, Thunder bares his thick teeth, but you quiet him. "If I could bring your husband and son back from the dead, I would. Truly. I do feel every fyrdmen lost under my service to be a terrible tra-" The woman glares at you angrily, stepping forward "Do you think I care? Do you think I want your condolences? My son, my husban-" "I have lost people too!" You snap irritably, and she backs off carefully. The crowd is tense, and your guards place hands on swordhilts. You wave them down and continue talking. "I have lost family too. Every soldier dead in my service is a brother whose death I mourn. You lost two people, and I know their deaths will haunt you. But I am haunted too. I am haunted too; I am haunted by the deaths of not only the forty-eight warriors I commanded, many of whom I knew since they were boys, but also the deaths amongst the fyrdmen who died alongside me. We were all brothers; me, the fyrdmen, my warriors, all of us. those men who died were my brothers, and I mourn them like any other would. So know this; you do not grieve alone" The woman meets your eyes for a long moment, and then turns away, the crowd lets her pass. Did those eyes hold forgiveness? Maybe. The crowd is equally divided; some seem unmoved, but many others look at you with a new appraisal. Satisfied, you turn your horse homewards, and your escort follows.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You raise your hand and silence falls like a blanket over the crowd of people. Your eyes flick from face, some meet your gaze, others stare at their feet. "We have been through hell, all of us. You have all lost people to the fyrd; fathers, brothers, sons. I understand your pain. But know this; they died with me, beside me, because we are the north! We live, we fight, and we die together! They say a warrior is only as strong as the shield held by his neighbor, they say this because it is the united who are strong, and we are the united!" Your escort applauds, rattling swords on shields and roaring. Some of the villagers clap nervously, but others remain still; one, a young woman with a grim face raises her hand. "Why was the fyrd so undersupplied? Why was it not provided with shields?" One of your men barks at her to be silent, but she snarls back, tears bead her eyes "I lost my husband and my son! Don't you dare tell me to be silent!" She stabs her finger at you, sobbing "Answer me! Answer me!" One of your men reaches for his sword, but you wave him off. Looking the determined young woman in the eye, you give her an answer. > You say "I am sorry for your losses" What can you say? The truth, you suppose. "War is brutal, it is horrific and ungodly. It is savage and barbaric. That your son and husband died is tragic, but it is also a reality, and it is a reality that we fast approach. William will come here, and the killing will continue, because that is war. And in the world of today; war is life. It is terrible and tragic, but it is the life we live and I cannot shield you from that." You search for more words, but none come. None are necessary. The woman exhales heavily, fixes you with a mixed stare, and then departs, melting into the crowd. Did those eyes hold forgiveness? Maybe. The crowd is equally divided; some seem unmoved, but many others look at you with a new appraisal. Satisfied, you turn your horse homewards, and your escort follows.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You smell the town before you see it. A horrid combination of sewage and rotting thatch permeates the crisp December air. The town has perhaps a hundred homes at most, with most people living in farmsteads around the surrounding area. Normally, the town would be fairly quiet, however today is Wednesday, marketday, and the town is filled with crowds of villagers from the farthest corners of your realm. As your horses move through the center street, villagers hurry to make room. Some cheer, but others eye you with suspicion or even fear. At the center of the town, you hold up your fist and your party draws to a halt. A crowd quickly gathers, all eyes are on you. Pausing to gather your words, you address your people. > You say "You must be strong!" You raise your hand and silence falls like a blanket over the crowd of people. Your eyes flick from face, some meet your gaze, others stare at their feet. "As a husband and father, I can understand the devotion one feels for a family member, and therefore cannot even comprehend the pain of your losses. I wish I could tell you that they died honorably, but in truth they were butchered! William slaughtered them, mercilessly. What happened at Hastings cannot be repeated, and to ensure that I need your support. If not for my sake, or England's, then for the sake of avenging your loved ones. William must pay!" Your escort applauds, rattling swords on shields and roaring. Some of the villagers clap nervously, but others remain still; one, a young woman with a grim face raises her hand. "Why was the fyrd so undersupplied? Why was it not provided with shields?" One of your men barks at her to be silent, but she snarls back, tears bead her eyes "I lost my husband and my son! Don't you dare tell me to be silent!" She stabs her finger at you, sobbing "Answer me! Answer me!" One of your men reaches for his sword, but you wave him off. Looking the determined young woman in the eye, you give her an answer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You smell the town before you see it. A horrid combination of sewage and rotting thatch permeates the crisp December air. The town has perhaps a hundred homes at most, with most people living in farmsteads around the surrounding area. Normally, the town would be fairly quiet, however today is Wednesday, marketday, and the town is filled with crowds of villagers from the farthest corners of your realm. As your horses move through the center street, villagers hurry to make room. Some cheer, but others eye you with suspicion or even fear. At the center of the town, you hold up your fist and your party draws to a halt. A crowd quickly gathers, all eyes are on you. Pausing to gather your words, you address your people. > You say "I am truly sorry for your losses" You raise your hand and silence falls like a blanket over the crowd of people. Your eyes flick from face, some meet your gaze, others stare at their feet. "I know the losses you have experienced have hurt you all deeply, but you must remain strong. William's butchery of your loved ones cannot go unanswered, we hurt him at Hastings, and those you lost were a part of that. Do not let them die in vain! William must pay, and we will bring justice to him!" Your escort applauds, rattling swords on shields and roaring. Some of the villagers clap nervously, but others remain still; one, a young woman with a grim face raises her hand. "Why was the fyrd so undersupplied? Why was it not provided with shields?" One of your men barks at her to be silent, but she snarls back, tears bead her eyes "I lost my husband and my son! Don't you dare tell me to be silent!" She stabs her finger at you, sobbing "Answer me! Answer me!" One of your men reaches for his sword, but you wave him off. Looking the determined young woman in the eye, you give her an answer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Thank you" You snarl through gritted teeth. Anger wells up inside of you like a storm, like an enraged beast trapped inside a frail cage of flesh and bone. Beside you, Orvyn notices your anger and tenses up, every muscle in his body is ready to spring into action. Even William notices the tension and waves discreetly to the Norman soldiers behind you. You feel cold steel pricking at your back. William glares icily, he leans forward. "You might be wondering why you are still alive, no?" You shrug sardonically. William pretends not to notice your insolence. "The North has proven especially difficult to pacify. I could have you executed, and place a Norman in charge, however I believe the peasants would disapprove, and I would prefer to keep them alive" He pauses briefly, mentally collecting his words "As such, I am reinstating you as lord in the North, providing you swear fealty to me" He leans even closer "Make no mistake. You will be closely watched by one of my men, whom you will take orders from. This is not an offer. Swear to me, or die. Your choice." > You attack King William With a short, deft movement, you leap to your left and crack a guard's knee with your boot. He gasps and collapses on the floor, cradling his injured leg. From his limp hands you tear his spear and whip around. The guard behind you parries with his sword, but you twirl your spear around his blade and plunge it into his gut. Leaving it there, you tear the sword from his grip. Behind you, Orvyn has also managed to acquire a weapon and is dueling with the remaining guard and the jailor. With his free hand, he waves to you "Go, Aethelwulf, go! Kill him!" You press onwards toward the throne. William's two guards stand ready for you. Taking a massive lunge to your right, you drive your sword at a guard's face. He deflects the blow easily with his heavy Norman kite shield, but the shield momentarily blinds him and allows you to cut past him. William, seeing you in front of him, reaches for an ornate gilded sword at his side. You don't give him a chance. Channeling all your strength, you drive the blade deep into his gut. Behind you, footsteps resonate, and shortly after you feel sharp steel driving into your back. It no longer matters. You keep pushing, driving the blade upwards. William's eyes roll back and his features curl into an insane grimace. More men enter the room. Orvyn dies. Your hand, up to your arm, is covered in blood. Another blade pierces you. Your grip weakens. You fall over, and your vision turns red. Blood pours from your mouth, but you manage to spit out two words "For England" > The Aftermath... With William dead, the Norman occupation crumbles. Multiple uprisings drive the Norman force out of London. In 1067 the Normans rally briefly under William's son, who is also named William. In an act of vengeance, he makes his last stand in Northumbria, your home. While he waits for the impending arrival of a unified English army, he makes Northumbria bleed. Entire villages are put to the sword, and your home is no exception. Your entire family is wiped out; an ancient bloodline extinguished. The English forces catch William II in a deft pincer; most of his army is killed during the battle. Those who are captured are put to the sword. William II is taken prisoner, he is brought to London and found guilty of numerous charges by a completely unanimous jury. On August 18, 1067, William II, at nineteen years of age, is executed. In the next four years a wave of bloodshed rips through England. Normans in hiding are methodically sought out and killed. By 1071, there are none left. Meanwhile, many English lords vie for the throne. In 1072, an English lord named Ryce takes the throne, and the English monarchy is preserved. Although you will be remembered as the man who saved England, your actions resulted in your people being massacred and your family being killed. As history progresses, facts will fade into legend, but you will always remain. Your name will be lost to history, but you will be remembered instead by your posthumous nickname; The Bloody Wolf.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With a bitter taste in your mouth, you kneel. Orvyn looks openly disgusted, but he too gets down on one knee. William smiles contemptuously, he speaks softly, in an English that is only faintly accented. "Ah, this one knows his manners. Good." > You remain silent You hold your tongue, but anger wells up inside of you like a storm, like an enraged beast trapped inside a frail cage of flesh and bone. Beside you, Orvyn notices your anger and tenses up, every muscle in his body is ready to spring into action. Even William notices the tension and waves discreetly to the Norman soldiers behind you. You feel cold steel pricking at your back. William glares icily, he leans forward. "You might be wondering why you are still alive, no?" You shrug sardonically. William pretends not to notice your insolence. "The North has proven especially difficult to pacify. I could have you executed, and place a Norman in charge, however I believe the peasants would disapprove, and I would prefer to keep them alive" He pauses briefly, mentally collecting his words "As such, I am reinstating you as lord in the North, providing you swear fealty to me" He leans even closer "Make no mistake. You will be closely watched by one of my men, whom you will take orders from. This is not an offer. Swear to me, or die. Your choice."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You remember what this room was like a year ago. Men and women laughed and cajoled, children played with the great wolfhounds that were always on the hunt for table scraps, and bards echoed melodies that filled the rafters with pleasant music. But that was a different time, under a different king. The throne room is empty, other than a handful of guards and a few servants milling idly, the throne room is devoid of people. It is silent too, the place is blanketed by an austere noiselessness, so that every footstep makes a clattering echo. Residing over it all, William sits in the throne, glaring at you thoughtfully. With just a handful of meters separating you and the king, your guards stop you. William looks at you expectantly. > You remain standing You remain stonily silent, and stiff as iron. William sneers and barks a command in French, the two guards behind you force you and Orvyn to your knees. William smiles patronizingly, he speaks softly, in an English that is only faintly accented. "I cannot imagine how tiring it must be to stand all the time. I thought you might appreciate a break" <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Harold!" You call out, sprinting towards him. He half turns towards you, and flashes one of his charismatic bright smiles. The single arrow that flies through the air surprises you more than Harold. Curving gently, it hisses downward and slams into Harold's eye. He lets out a startled cough and staggers backward. You keep running towards your king, but a Norman rider cuts in front of you. Turning his horse neatly, the Norman swings his blade and opens your King's throat, spraying blood. Harold falls to the ground, dead. You falter indecisively, filled with wordless horror and remorse. > You kill the bastard You sprint full tilt at the Norman rider. Your shield feels heavy on your arm, so you toss it aside. Seeing your approach, the Norman wheels his horse around to face you. He knees his horse into a canter, driving it straight for you. At the last moment you drop down and slide along the mud of the hill, under the belly of the horse. Thrusting upward, you plunge your blade deep into the horse's gut, drenching yourself in thick blood. The horse collapses, but you roll out from under it. You leap to your feet quickly; the Norman rider is slower to rise. From under the horse carcass, you see the hilt of your longsword protruding. > You go for your longsword The Norman struggles to rise, his leg is broken. He stabs at you feebly with his sword. You knock it aside and retrieve you own, pulling it from the horse's stomach with a sickening wrench. Shoving the rider onto his back, you stand over him with your sword raised high. "For Harold" You breathe, and then plunge the blade into his chest, shattering the mail links and piercing his heart. You stand there awhile, alone in the middle of a slaughter. Orvyn reaches you, and tugs urgently at your shoulder, he is yelling something, but you cannot understand him. The words sound far away; small. You see a Norman on horseback charge towards you, he wields a cudgel. You make no attempt to dodge. You just stand there, frozen. It is Orvyn who saves you, he ducks under the cudgel swing and drives his axe into the horseman's chest. The cudgel blow loses force and changes direction, clipping your helmet as opposed to killing you. Your vision fades and you feel the ground rush towards you, feel the mud leeching through your mailshirt. Your vision blackens.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sprint full tilt at the Norman rider. Your shield feels heavy on your arm, so you toss it aside. Seeing your approach, the Norman wheels his horse around to face you. He knees his horse into a canter, driving it straight for you. At the last moment you drop down and slide along the mud of the hill, under the belly of the horse. Thrusting upward, you plunge your blade deep into the horse's gut, drenching yourself in thick blood. The horse collapses, but you roll out from under it. You leap to your feet quickly; the Norman rider is slower to rise. From under the horse carcass, you see the hilt of your longsword protruding. > You attack the Norman unarmed The Norman struggles to rise, you ignore your sword and instead dive for him. Knocking him down, you press him down with your legs and drive blow after blow into his face, cracking your knuckles and snapping his nose. The Norman writhes, and as you try and secure him he drives a fist into your gut. As you recover, gasping, he draws a dagger and stabs it at your neck. Twisting out of the way, you avoid most of his strike, but feel the blade cut up across your jaw. His momentum throws him off-guard, and in an instant you are both clutching the knife's hilt. He fights hard, but his strength is the hot struggle for survival, and yours is the cold power of vengeance. You force the dagger down and plunge it into his chest, splintering his mailshirt and piercing his heart. You stand there awhile, alone in the middle of a slaughter. Orvyn reaches you, and tugs urgently at your shoulder, he is yelling something, but you cannot understand him. The words sound far away; small. You see a Norman on horseback charge towards you, he wields a cudgel. You make no attempt to dodge. You just stand there, frozen. It is Orvyn who saves you, he ducks under the cudgel swing and drives his axe into the horseman's chest. The cudgel blow loses force and changes direction, clipping your helmet as opposed to killing you. Your vision fades and you feel the ground rush towards you, feel the mud leeching through your mailshirt. Your vision blackens.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Adding your voice to the English battle cries, you advance on the fleeing Norman foot soldiers. In front of you, one stumbles as his boot slides through a patch of reddened mud. He only falters a moment, but it is enough. Your longsword lances forward, piercing the fleeing Norman's calf. He screams and falls, holding up his arms to futilely ward off your blade. You keep moving forward, using your heavy shield to shove the wounded Norman out of your way. Behind you, Orvyn's axe resonates with a heavy crunch as he finishes off the crippled soldier. Ahead of you, another Norman stumbles forward, a heavy javelin slamming into his shoulder. He manages one strangled yelp before your blade connects with his neck, a heavy swing that severs his jugular and jars against his spine. You wrench the sword free and keep moving. This charge has filled you with fresh energy, filling your mind with bloody courage, but now it is starting to ebb and your mind is working more clearly. There is something very wrong here. This retreat is far too organized, too simultaneous. The Norman foot soldiers are increasing the distance between themselves and the beleaguered English soldiers, the pounding of their feet grows fainter, but another pounding grows louder. Horse hooves. You turn to your left, Harold has thrown off his battered shield and carries only a Daneaxe, which he wields two-handed. He is completely out in the open. You turn and race towards him. > You say "Protect the King!" "Protect the King!" You cry, and several weary Housecarls bound into action, following your lead. You sprint towards him. He half turns towards you, and flashes one of his charismatic bright smiles. The single arrow that flies through the air surprises you more than Harold. Curving gently, it hisses downward and slams into his eye. He lets out a startled cough and staggers backward. You keep running towards your king, but a Norman rider canters in front of you, blocking your way. Turning his horse neatly, the Norman swings his blade and opens your King's throat, spraying blood. Harold falls to the ground, dead. You falter indecisively, filled with wordless horror and remorse.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Normans advance, neat and orderly. Their armaments are very similar to that of their riders. Most wear mailshirts, and those bizarre conical helmets. Some carry axes, most carry swords, but all heft the customary Norman blue kite shield. That, at least, is some consolation. Whereas you English fight as a cohesive team, the Norman's tend to fight as individuals, because the kite shield, although effective, cannot interlock with that of a neighbor's. Despite your weakened state, a lone Norman is still a dead one. You crouch low behind the horse corpse and wait. The familiar jingle of mailshirts heralds their arrival. Beside you, Orvyn bristles, but you put a cautionary hand on his shoulder. You want them close. You wait a moment more, then leap out. Your longsword snakes forward, lashing out at a Norman's face. He raises his kite shield to deflect the blow, but as he does one of the men on your right sweeps his blade down and cuts into the Norman's ankle. The man screams and drops to one knee, Orvyn's axe crushes his jaw. You press into the gap and push the Normans towards Harold's Housecarls, whose bloody Daneaxes make short work of the thin kite shields. Ducking under a Norman sword thrust, you stab forwards and gut the man. Kicking him aside, you search for your next opponent... And find no one. The Normans are retreating. To your left, you notice King Harold. He waves madly with his axe, and men are surging forward alongside him. With a sudden shock you realize he is trying to rally the men and charge downhill, towards William's retreating infantry. > You stay back Some of your men are beginning to join this mad charge. Waving frantically, you call them back to your position. Most capitulate, somewhat reluctantly. With your men beside you, you pause to get a better look at the retreating Normans. There is something very wrong here. This retreat is far too organized, too simultaneous. The Norman foot soldiers are increasing the distance between themselves and the beleaguered English soldiers, the pounding of their feet grows fainter, but another pounding grows louder. Horse hooves. You stare with horror, Harold has thrown off his battered shield and carries only a Daneaxe, which he wields two-handed. He is completely out in the open. Instinctively, you turn and race towards him.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Orvyn meets you at the edge of camp. A priest and a warrior, an Eriu and a Christian, Orvyn has been your stalwart follower and friend for nearly two decades. You both clasp hands firmly and grin, filled with pre-battle adrenaline. Although Orvyn is not technically in command of your men, you have left your normal commander, Garyn, back at home to guard your wife and children with a skeleton crew. With Garyn away, Orvyn is stepping in. He is a good commander for battles; he is amicable and courageous, but also capable and firm. In peacetime he would lack the rigid authoritarianism necessary for drilling the men, but right now they need a man to keep them confident. Orvyn inspires confidence; he isn't especially tall, but he is solidly built and a force to be reckoned with. His beard and hair are both jet black, and both are kept in place by various bone rings. That, and his sparkling green eyes, give him a look of mad fanaticism that men are all too happy to follow. You provide the encouragement, and Orvyn provides the fire. Together you are a killing force. Orvyn fingers the axe at his belt restlessly. "Should we go to the shieldline?" There is still probably an hour or more before the two armies actually meet, as men are ever reluctant to face a shieldwall, but being early couldn't hurt. > You have some time, let's talk You shrug "We still have some time." You find a moist log and sit down. Orvyn follows your lead and seats himself on a campstool taken from a nearby firepit. He cracks his knuckles "So?" You stretch, mailshirt shimmering "I just wanted to talk" "About?" "The weather of course" Orvyn looks at you quizically, and you roll your eyes "I meant the battle. I wanted to talk about the battle" Orvyn touches the hilt of his axe "Mm. I might have preferred a conversation on the weather" You spread your palms "Sorry, just this; do you think that we can win?" Orvyn shrugs "Do you?" For a while you sit in silence. Neither one of you is willing to speak. You grit your teeth angrily "I was hoping for some encouragement. This is definitely not helping either of us. Come on, let's go to the front." Orvyn nods, and helps you up from your log "Alright, let's go then"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Grinning, you embrace your boyhood friend. "Harold, good to see you, as always." Harold grins. "I know it is! Everyone says the same exact damn thing!" He chuckles, long and low. "But come, I haven't seen you since our last battle! That was two bloody months ago, near as! Where've you been! Avoiding me, have you?" You laugh "If I went to another feast of yours, I wouldn't fit into my mail" He shakes his head ruefully "You should learn to unwind more! Live your life, you know? Speaking of, how's your wife?" You nod solemnly "She fares well, and yours?" Harold snorts derisively "Fat and ugly, as always. Ah well, that's what tavern girls are for, eh?" He grins and nudges you with his shoulder; you shrug. Harold notices your expression and laughs again "As chaste as a damned priest! Ah well, we'll break you in eventually." Again you shrug. You and Harold have very different views on the matter, he won't change, nor will you. The best course, you decide, is to skate around the issue altogether. Nodding towards the hill, you speak seriously "What do you make of our defenses?" Harold frowns, his earlier humor gone. He throws up his hands irritably. "My Kingdom depends on a hill and five thousand farmers" You shake your head "Five thousand farmers and three thousand warriors" Harold nods "Aye. True enough. We'll make this William pay for every inch, if nothing else" He squints at the hill in the fading light "The scouts say William has four thousand cavalry" You shake your head decisively "No cavalry in the world can break a strong shieldwall" Harold laughs bitterly "Our shieldwall isn't strong! It's weak! Half of the bloody farmers don't even own shields! Goddamned useless bastards!" Surveying the hill thoughtfully, two plans come to mind; You could craft wooden stakes and plant them along the hill, disorganizing the horse charge. Or you could create makeshift shields for the conscripts, to help them hold the line. The carpenters will only have enough time to do one of the two tasks, you must choose which you value most. > You craft makeshift shields You look back at the camp, where five thousand farmers, butchers, bakers, and other citizens huddle in their cloaks for warmth, or sit by a fire and listen in awe as soldiers tell them tales of battles in faraway lands. None of them are ready for this, and most will not have the courage to face the prospect of shieldwall combat willingly. Giving them a slight advantage is the least you can do, really. "If your carpenters can hew some fresh wood, they could make shields for the conscripts. Nothing fancy, just a wood board with a grip. Something to keep them alive. To keep them from breaking." Harold claps you on the shoulder "I'll have my carpenters start working right away! Let's turn these farmers into proper soldiers!" He laughs, and you see the fire in his eyes. This is what King Harold does best. Strategy and rule he manages, but it's the fighting he loves. You understand the feeling all too well. How many times have you knelt before a cross, armor bloody and gore speckled, thinking back with revulsion and guilt at how you loved it. Loved every bit of it. Loved the blades flashing, reflecting the rays of the sun. Loved the sound of shields splintering, cracking open. Loved the bloody chaos of the shieldwall. In the clash of the shieldwall it is where men like you, and Harold, and no doubt William too, come alive. This world has molded you. Molded you into a warrior. You are bred for this.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Acwellen continues to stare into the flickering glow of the burning town. His face is stony, unfathomable. You turn to leave, picking your way through a patch of muck gingerly. Pressing down with your foot, you assess the ground. Certain patches are dry, but the soil is perilously loose. All it will take is a night of rain to turn the battlefield into a muddy hell. Well, you think to yourself, at least the mud will hurt the Normans worse than us. "Aethelwulf!" A voice interrupts your musings. A very familiar voice, deep and booming. It is the voice of Harold, your king. At just under six feet, he stands a head taller than most, and is just on par with yourself. Both his beard and hair are a fiery orange, and both are thick and wild. His chest is broad and his body muscular, but you notice a distinct bulge in the leather jerkin around his midriff; his infamous love of revelry has not gone unpunished. "Aethelwulf, you canny bastard!" He bellows, grinning and thumping you on the back. > You say "My liege" Inclining your head respectfully, you murmur solemnly "My liege" King Harold laughs madly, and then punches you light-heartedly on the shoulder "You always were a mannerful bastard, Aethelwulf!" He chuckles, long and low. "But come, I haven't seen you since our last battle! That was two bloody months ago, near as! Where've you been! Avoiding me, have you?" You laugh, your respectful tone undone by his amicable nature. "If I went to another feast of yours, I wouldn't fit into my mail" He shakes his head ruefully "You should learn to unwind more! Live your life, you know? Speaking of, how's your wife?" You nod solemnly "She fares well, and yours?" Harold snorts derisively "Fat and ugly, as always. Ah well, that's what tavern girls are for, eh?" He grins and nudges you with his shoulder; you shrug. Harold notices your expression and laughs again "As chaste as a damned priest! Ah well, we'll break you in eventually." Again you shrug. You and Harold have very different views on the matter, he won't change, nor will you. The best course, you decide, is to skate around the issue altogether. Nodding towards the hill, you speak seriously "What do you make of our defenses?" Harold frowns, his earlier humor gone. He throws up his hands irritably. "My Kingdom depends on a hill and five thousand farmers" You shake your head "Five thousand farmers and three thousand warriors" Harold nods "Aye. True enough. We'll make this William pay for every inch, if nothing else" He squints at the hill in the fading light "The scouts say William has four thousand cavalry" You shake your head decisively "No cavalry in the world can break a strong shieldwall" Harold laughs bitterly "Our shieldwall isn't strong! It's weak! Half of the bloody farmers don't even own shields! Goddamned useless bastards!" Surveying the hill thoughtfully, two plans come to mind; You could craft wooden stakes and plant them along the hill, disorganizing the horse charge. Or you could create makeshift shields for the conscripts, to help them hold the line. The carpenters will only have enough time to do one of the two tasks, you must choose which one you believe is more strategic. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Acwellen continues to stare into the flickering glow of the burning town. His face is stony, unfathomable. You turn to leave, picking your way through a patch of muck gingerly. Pressing down with your foot, you assess the ground. Certain patches are dry, but the soil is perilously loose. All it will take is a night of rain to turn the battlefield into a muddy hell. Well, you think to yourself, at least the mud will hurt the Normans worse than us. "Aethelwulf!" A voice interrupts your musings. A very familiar voice, deep and booming. It is the voice of Harold, your king. At just under six feet, he stands a head taller than most, and is just on par with yourself. Both his beard and hair are a fiery orange, and both are thick and wild. His chest is broad and his body muscular, but you notice a distinct bulge in the leather jerkin around his midriff; his infamous love of revelry has not gone unpunished. "Aethelwulf, you canny bastard!" He bellows, grinning and thumping you on the back. > You kneel Kneeling in the muck, you incline you head towards your king "My liege, I am honored-" King Harold bellows with great peals of laughter. Reaching down, he grabs you under the armpit and yanks you to your feet "You always were a mannerful bastard, Aethelwulf!" He chuckles, long and low. "But come, I haven't seen you since we set up camp here! That was two bloody months ago, near as! Where've you been! Avoiding me, have you?" You laugh, your respectful tone undone by his amicable nature. "If I went to another feast of yours, I wouldn't fit into my mail" He shakes his head ruefully "You should learn to unwind more! Live your life, you know? Speaking of, how's your wife?" You nod solemnly "She fares well, and yours?" Harold snorts derisively "Fat and ugly, as always. Ah well, that's what tavern girls are for, eh?" He grins and nudges you with his shoulder; you shrug. Harold notices your expression and laughs again "As chaste as a damned priest! Ah well, we'll break you in eventually." Again you shrug. You and Harold have very different views on the matter, he won't change, nor will you. The best course, you decide, is to skate around the issue altogether. Nodding towards the hill, you speak seriously "What do you make of our defenses?" Harold frowns, his earlier humor gone. He throws up his hands irritably. "My Kingdom depends on a hill and five thousand farmers" You shake your head "Five thousand farmers and three thousand warriors" Harold nods "Aye. True enough. We'll make this William pay for every inch, if nothing else" He squints at the hill in the fading light "The scouts say William has four thousand cavalry" You shake your head decisively "No cavalry in the world can break a strong shieldwall" Harold laughs bitterly "Our shieldwall isn't strong! It's weak! Half of the bloody farmers don't even own shields! Goddamned useless bastards!" Surveying the hill thoughtfully, two plans come to mind; You could craft wooden stakes and plant them along the hill, disorganizing the horse charge. Or you could create makeshift shields for the conscripts, to help them hold the line. The carpenters will only have enough time to do one, you must choose which is more beneficial.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Gently, you place your hand on his shoulder and speak softly "I'm sorry for your loss. I cannot imagine the pain of losing a son, but I am sure he looks down on you from heaven." Acwellen's gaze remains fixed on the burning town, and his face is still set in a mask of stone, but his cheeks are streaked. "Thank you" He exhales shakily, opens his mouth to say something else, then closes it and remains silent, yet the words are plainly on his mind, trying to slip free like hounds on a leash. At last he speaks, grim and quiet, little more than a whisper. "Can we win this battle?" The question hangs there for an eternity, all the fear and anxiety of the English army expressed in the musings of one broken man. > No Hidden by the dense screen of trees, twelve thousand Norman warriors wait. Each one is battle ready, and battle hardened; professional killers. Within your camp waits fewer than eight thousand men, but of those eight thousand only three thousand can be trusted. The rest are just farmers, weary and ill-disciplined. Even with the high ground, these numbers are far too slanted. You know it with a dull certainty; only death awaits you here. Acwellen is still looking at you, waiting for a response. Your mouth moves of its own accord, the words escaping in a wisp of breath. "No."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Gently, you place your hand on his shoulder and speak softly "I'm sorry for your loss. I cannot imagine the pain of losing a son, but I am sure he looks down on you from heaven." Acwellen's gaze remains fixed on the burning town, and his face is still set in a mask of stone, but his cheeks are streaked. "Thank you" He exhales shakily, opens his mouth to say something else, then closes it and remains silent, yet the words are plainly on his mind, trying to slip free like hounds on a leash. At last he speaks, grim and quiet, little more than a whisper. "Can we win this battle?" The question hangs there for an eternity, all the fear and anxiety of the English army expressed in the musings of one broken man. > You don't know Hidden by the dense screen of trees, twelve thousand Norman warriors wait. Each one is battle ready, and battle hardened; professional killers. Within your camp waits fewer than eight thousand men, but of those eight thousand only three thousand can be trusted. The rest are just farmers, weary and ill-disciplined. These are long odds, and even with the high ground, this will be no easy victory. Acwellen is still looking at you, waiting for a response. You shrug grimly. "I don't know Acwellen. I don't know." Behind the screen of trees the town of Hastings roils with flames and the Norman William's horde assembles.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>All around you is the smell of warfare. Acrid smoke from the campfires, piss and refuse from the latrines, sweat from the men. And fear. You smell that too. These men have reason to be afraid. You have spent the last few months fighting King Harold's enemies, only to march double-time to confront his most dangerous yet; William of Normandy. His army is camped below, twelve thousand men strong, in comparison to your eight thousand. There is reason to be afraid. Are you afraid? No, you affirm decisively in your mind. You are not afraid. You are Lord Aethelwulf, The Lord In The North, King Harold's most trusted advisor, and the veteran of a hundred battles. Why should you be afraid of an army of ragtag Normans who come to die on your sword? Shaking such doubts from your mind, you stride purposefully through the bustle of the camp, intent on checking on the forward defenses. A pair of giggling urchins weave nimbly around you and a staggering drunk lurches out in front of you, notices your sparkling chainmail armor and backs away, apologizing profusely. Striding onward towards the edge of the English camp you pass the watchful gaze of the sentries unchallenged and stand at the upper slope of the hill. You are not alone. Another man sits on the hill, wreathed in the shadow of the setting sun. Drawing closer you recognize him as Acwellen, a minor lord, but stalwart fighter. His face is stone, his jaw grimly set and his eyes staring out at the horizon. Looking over his shoulder you see the black smoke smearing the red evening sky. In the distance the town of Hastings burns. In the blurry uncertainty of the setting sun, you cannot tell if the glisten at his eyes is tears or just the sparkle of dying sunlight. Acwellen's son, you remember, was put in command of Hasting's garrison. Above the treeline you can just make out the crackle of flames. Hastings burns. > You remind him his son could be alive Adamantly, you grip him by the shoulder and turn him to face you. Kneeling, you look him in the eyes, grasping his shoulders with sudden ferocity. "Listen to me Acwellen! Your son may not be dead. Every hour men from the garrison at Hastings enter our camp. There are survivors. Do not give up hope so soon" Acwellen sighs raggedly, and seems about to disagree, but instead nods fiercely. "Yes. You're right. I cannot give up hope, my son... my son could still be out there" His conviction appears slight, but at least you have gotten his attention away from the blaze of Hastings' buildings. Acwellen exhales shakily, opens his mouth to say something else, then closes it and remains silent, yet the words are plainly on his mind, trying to slip free like hounds on a leash. At last he speaks, grim and quiet, little more than a whisper. "Can we win this battle?" The question hangs there for an eternity, all the fear and anxiety of the English army expressed in the musings of one broken man.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>All around you is the smell of warfare. Acrid smoke from the campfires, piss and refuse from the latrines, sweat from the men. And fear. You smell that too. These men have reason to be afraid. You have spent the last few months fighting King Harold's enemies, only to march double-time to confront his most dangerous yet; William of Normandy. His army is camped below, twelve thousand men strong, in comparison to your eight thousand. There is reason to be afraid. Are you afraid? No, you affirm decisively in your mind. You are not afraid. You are Lord Aethelwulf, The Lord In The North, King Harold's most trusted advisor, and the veteran of a hundred battles. Why should you be afraid of an army of ragtag Normans who come to die on your sword? Shaking such doubts from your mind, you stride purposefully through the bustle of the camp, intent on checking on the forward defenses. A pair of giggling urchins weave nimbly around you and a staggering drunk lurches out in front of you, notices your sparkling chainmail armor and backs away, apologizing profusely. Striding onward towards the edge of the English camp you pass the watchful gaze of the sentries unchallenged and stand at the upper slope of the hill. You are not alone. Another man sits on the hill, wreathed in the shadow of the setting sun. Drawing closer you recognize him as Acwellen, a minor lord, but stalwart fighter. His face is stone, his jaw grimly set and his eyes staring out at the horizon. Looking over his shoulder you see the black smoke smearing the red evening sky. In the distance the town of Hastings burns. In the blurry uncertainty of the setting sun, you cannot tell if the glisten at his eyes is tears or just the sparkle of dying sunlight. Acwellen's son, you remember, was put in command of Hasting's garrison. Above the treeline you can just make out the crackle of flames. Hastings burns. > You say "..." You have no words. Perhaps Acwellen's son is alive, even now rallying survivors and waiting for the cover of night to slip into the safety of the English camp, yet more likely he is dead, cleaved open by a Norman axe, or gutted by a Norman blade, or shot by a Norman arrow. Lying there, consumed by the inferno that lights the evening sky in the distance. You cannot offer false consolation. Instead you stand by him, silently sharing in his grief. Acwellen exhales shakily, opens his mouth to say something, then closes it and remains silent, yet the words are plainly on his mind, trying to slip free like hounds on a leash. At last he speaks, grim and quiet, little more than a whisper. "Can we win this battle?" The question hangs there for an eternity, all the fear and anxiety of the English army expressed in the musings of one broken man.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your name is Bill Grey and you were born in Missouri in 1840. When the American Civil War broke out you sided with your friends and family and served on the Southern side, first in the Missouri State Guard and then with Quantrill's Raiders. After both your parents were shot dead by Union soldiers in the Camp Jackson Massacre your vengeance knew no bounds and you served as a guerrilla under such men as Captain Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson and Little Archie Clement. You were at the Lawrence Massacre in 1863 where Quantrill's Raiders killed some two hundred Yankee men and boys in Lawrence, Kansas. A year later you took part in the Centralia Massacre where, with the rest of Anderson's band, you helped stop a train, took two dozen unarmed Union soldiers off it and shot them dead - when soldiers were sent out a few hours later your band ambushed them as well and killed more than one hundred. Following Anderson's death in 1864 and Quantrill's in 1865 you and your surviving companions surrendered at the end of the Civil War. Returning to Missouri you try to rebuild your life as a farmer on your family's lands but it is impossible: though pardoned you and your fellow guerrillas have not been forgiven for your Civil War activities and are threatened and persecuted by pro-Unionist citizens and lawmen. The victorious North controls the banks, railroad and government and in fear of your life and unable to do business with any but your fellow impoverished Southerners by 1866 you have had enough. You learn that your last surviving war-time leader Archie Clement is secretly arranging a meeting of several former-Guerrillas and when he invites you to take part you readily accept. Clement's plan is to rob Yankee banks in Missouri to show the Federal Government that though the war may be over you and your companions are still fighting back. It is this fateful decision that will be your first step down the Outlaw path, a dangerous and lonely road... In this story your fate will be determined entirely by your choices. The number of Gunfights you take part in, the people you Injure and Kill, the number of Robberies you commit and your Score (your share of the amount of money you steal) will all be recorded. Your main aim is to survive, avoiding both prison and death in order to continue your Outlaw career with a long-term goal of eventually retiring. Be careful: one wrong decision, particularly in a gunfight where any moment can be your last, will signal a sudden and fatal end to your career, prison is less of a final ending but depending on the evidence against you can either be a short term delay to your career or a decisive end to it. Your secondary aim is to build up your Score by taking part in as many successful robberies as possible, if you are part of a ten-man team that rob a bank of $10,000 dollars for example your share will come to $1,000 and this will be added to your Score. When your career ends, whether through peaceful retirement or suddenly and violently, you will be sent to the Performance Table where you can compare your Gunfights, Injured, Killed, Robberies and Score to your fellow Outlaws as an indication of how well you performed - leaving a comment at the end of the story will also enable others to see your Score. Good luck Reader, your Outlaw story is about to begin. > The First Step You and your fellow Outlaws meet at the James Family Farm to plan your first bank robbery. There are seven of you: your youthful leader Little Archie Clement, calm and reserved Frank James, cunning Cole Younger and his reliable brother-in-law John Jarette, the Shepherd brothers George Shepherd and one-eyed Ol Shepherd and finally yourself. You fought alongside each other for years during the War and you know from experience they are all brave and daring. It is your 20 year old leader Little Archie, the youngest and deadliest man present, who arranged this meeting and plans the robbery. "It's time for us to ride again boys," he declares to you all. "Show those Yankee carpet-baggers that there is still some fight in the South! The town of Liberty, is our target boys, we'll all ride in together. Frank, you and Cole will go in the bank, take the tellers hostage and put all the money you find in the safe into this haversack. The rest of us will wait outside, hold the horses and keep anyone from entering the bank. When you two have finished lock the tellers in the vault, come outside and we'll mount up and ride off. If the alarm is raised boys pull out your pistols and fire them into the air like we used to do in the War when we raided a town - it works wonders for keeping those Yankee shop owners and stable boys off the street! If they start shooting back clear out fast, whether we have the money or not. We'll hit the bank on February 13th, an unlucky day for Yankees but a good day for us!" On the chosen day you and your companions ride into Liberty early in the morning when there are few people on the street. With winter snow still swirling through the air you and your companions rein in outside the bank while Frank and Cole dismount and enter the bank, giving their horses's reins to the Shepherd brothers to hold. The moments seem to drag by ponderously with no sound coming out of the plain stone building in front of you. A few townsfolk are glancing at you all curiously; you reach into your right pocket and nervously clench your heavy but loaded revolver which you have hidden inside. Suddenly Cole and Frank emerge from the bank, the latter holding a bulging haversack. They walk quickly back to their horses and begin to mount up. It all seems too easy. Suddenly a voice from inside the bank shouts out "Robbery! They're robbing the bank!" As a few nearby civilians start in alarm you and your companions promptly draw out your pistols and begin shooting them into the air, yelling at people to get off the street. Two youths are standing nearby when the alarm is raised and promptly turn and start running down the street in the direction of a Gun Store. Little Archie spurs his horse after them and fires a shot at them with his pistol, which misses. "Shoot them," he shouts at you, who are closest to him. "Shoot them, they're going for the guns!" Obediently you raise your pistol and point it at one of the fleeing teenager's backs but hesitate about pulling the trigger. > You shoot the boy Your shot hits one of the boys in the back, pitching him face-first down to the street with a cry. The other boy takes shelter in a doorway so turning your horse away you and your companions ride out of town. Using routes well-known to you all you ride your horses across the countryside for several hours, completely eluding any pursuit that might have been sent after you. Reaching a safe place you stop to count to your money and to your amazement you find that Frank and Cole have managed to steal $60,000, your share alone comes to $8,500. Little Archie is pleased but instinctively cautious. "There will be a big noise about this so it is best if we split up for a time," he declares. There is some discussion and then you all make your decisions: Little Archie is going to check into a hotel in the town of Lexington, Missouri and lie low for a while. Frank, John and Cole all decide to hide out at Cole's family farm near the town of Independence while George and Ol are going back to their own Farm near the town of St Joseph. All your companions invite you to go with them and you need to choose who to hide out with. > You go with Little Archie to Lexington You and Little Archie travel to Lexington where you rent rooms in a hotel and lie low for the rest of the year, spending your stolen money in bars, restaurants and with sporting ladies. One winter's night in December however Little Archie's notoriety leads to an arrest attempt. You and Archie are sitting in a saloon having a quiet drink when three blue-uniformed soldiers armed with rifles approach your table. "Gentlemen, you are both under arrest," one of the soldiers declares. You and Archie glance at each other and then Archie springs to his feet, pulling a pistol from his pocket as he does so, and starts firing. The soldiers scatter, one firing back and hitting Archie in the side. You are on your feet, pistol in hand and follow Archie as he dashes across the room, hand clasped to his bleeding side, and the pair of you use the pandemonium of fleeing bar customers to escape out a side door into an alley. Several horses are tied up nearby and untying two you mount up. Archie turns and spurs his horse down the alley towards the main street while in the other direction you can see the alley opens up into a side street. You have a choice of directions. > You follow Little Archie towards the main street As you both ride out of the alley into the main street a volley of gunshots ring out from a dozen soldiers waiting in a line. Both of you are hit several times and fall from your horses into the dust of the street. You are so badly hurt you are barely able to move, turning your head slightly you see Archie trying to re-cock his pistol with his teeth. As the soldiers approach cautiously, rifles raised, Archie rasps "I've done what I've always said I would do, die before I surrender." You are unable to speak and moments later you and your companion are both dead. > You your Outlaw Career is at an end This is the Performance Table where you can compare your Gunfights, Injured, Killed, Robberies, Score and Fate with those of your fellow members of the James Gang to see who is the greatest Outlaw! 1: Jesse James: Gunfights: 11, Killed: 7, Injured: 1, Robberies: 21, Score: $19,900 - Killed. 2: Frank James: Gunfights: 11, Killed: 2, Injured: 1, Robberies: 17, Score: $26,900 - Surrendered. 3: Cole Younger: Gunfights: 6, Killed: 1, Injured: 2, Robberies: 15, Score: $26,800 - Imprisoned. 4: John Younger: Gunfights: 4, Killed: 4, Injured: 0, Robberies: 7, Score: $3,300 - Killed. 5: Bob Younger: Gunfights: 3, Killed: 0, Injured: 2, Robberies: 8, Score: $12,100 - Imprisoned. 6: Clell Miller: Gunfights: 4, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 8, Score: $12,500 - Killed. 7: Jim Younger: Gunfights: 3, Killed: 1, Injured: 1, Robberies: 5, Score: $2,200 - Imprisoned. 8: John Jarette: Gunfights: 3, Killed: 0, Injured: 1, Robberies: 3, Score: $10,600 - Killed. 9: Charlie Pitts: Gunfights: 2, Killed: 0, Injured: 1, Robberies: 5, Score: $3,400 - Killed. 10: Wood Hite: Gunfights: 2, Killed: 0, Injured: 1, Robberies: 4, Score: $2,400 - Killed. 11: Bill Chadwell: Gunfights: 1, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 5, Stolen: $3,400 - Killed. 12: Dick Liddil: Gunfights: 2, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 4, Stolen: $1,200 - Surrendered. 13: Ol Shepherd: Gunfights: 3, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 2, Stolen: $10,200 - Killed. 14: Little Archie Clement: Gunfights: 2, Killed: 1, Injured: 0, Robberies: 1, Stolen: $8,500 - Killed. 15: George Shepherd: Gunfights: 2, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 2, Stolen: $102,00 - Imprisoned. 16: Bill Ryan: Gunfights: 0, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 4, Stolen: $2,800 - Imprisoned. 17: Charlie Ford: Gunfights: 2, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 1, Stolen: $100 - Surrendered. 18: Clarence Hite: Gunfights: 1, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 2, Stolen: $200 - Imprisoned. 19: Bud McDaniels: Gunfights: 1, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 1, Stolen: $7,800 - Killed. 20: Tom McDaniels: Gunfights: 2, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 1, Stolen: $2,000 - Killed. 21: Tom Webb: Gunfights: 1, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 1, Stolen: $2,000 - Imprisoned. 22: Ed Miller: Gunfights: 1, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 1, Stolen: $1,000 - Killed. 23: Tucker Bassham: Gunfights: 0, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 1, Stolen: $1,000 - Imprisoned. 24: Hoobs Kerry: Gunfights: 0, Killed: 0, Injured: 0, Robberies: 1, Stolen: $1,600 - Imprisoned. 25: Robert Ford: Gunfights: 3, Killed: 2, Injured: 0, Robberies: 0, Stolen: $0 - Killed. Most Prolific Gunfighter: 1: Frank James / Jesse James (11 Gunfights), 2: Cole Younger (6 Gunfights). Most Lethal Hurter: 1: Bob Younger / Cole Younger (2 Injured). Most Deadly Killer: 1: Jesse James (7 Killed), 2: John Younger (4 Killed), 3: Frank James (2 Killed). Most Enthusiastic Robber: 1: Jesse James (21 Robberies), 2: Frank James (17 Robberies), 3: Cole Younger (15 Robberies). Most Successful Bandit: 1: Frank James ($26,900), 2: Cole Younger ($26,800), 3: Jesse James ($19,900). Overall Best Outlaw: 1: Jesse James, 2: Frank James, 3: Cole Younger, 4: John Younger, 5: Bob Younger. As always thank you for taking the time to read my story, please rate and if you would like others to see your score please leave a comment. Have a good day!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and Little Archie travel to Lexington where you rent rooms in a hotel and lie low for the rest of the year, spending your stolen money in bars, restaurants and with sporting ladies. One winter's night in December however Little Archie's notoriety leads to an arrest attempt. You and Archie are sitting in a saloon having a quiet drink when three blue-uniformed soldiers armed with rifles approach your table. "Gentlemen, you are both under arrest," one of the soldiers declares. You and Archie glance at each other and then Archie springs to his feet, pulling a pistol from his pocket as he does so, and starts firing. The soldiers scatter, one firing back and hitting Archie in the side. You are on your feet, pistol in hand and follow Archie as he dashes across the room, hand clasped to his bleeding side, and the pair of you use the pandemonium of fleeing bar customers to escape out a side door into an alley. Several horses are tied up nearby and untying two you mount up. Archie turns and spurs his horse down the alley towards the main street while in the other direction you can see the alley opens up into a side street. You have a choice of directions. > You set off by yourself up the alley towards the side street You turn your horse away from Little Archie's and spur it down the alley into the side street. The side street is clear of people so you gallop down it towards the edge of town: as you do you hear a volley of gun shots, a horse screaming and then an ominous silence. Riding to a small knoll overlooking the town you look down and your worst fears are realized: your companion is lying dead in the dust of main street surrounded by silent soldiers. Anxious not to share your leader's fate you ride cross-country for twelve hours straight until you reach the safety of the Shepherd's Family Farm. George and Ol are shocked to hear of Little Archie's death and for all of 1867 you all lay low before a meeting is arranged and the gang re-convenes in the spring of 1868. > Another Robbery It is a somber group that gathers at the James Farm in the spring of 1868: you, Frank, John, George, Ol and Cole are all saddened by your leader's death. Also present at the gathering is Frank's younger brother Jesse James, a garrulous Civil War veteran who was shot three times in the war including one occasion when he blew half his right index finger off while cleaning a loaded pistol. You are all unanimous that you should continue robbing banks and stealing Yankee money, as the oldest and most experienced of the group John Jarette takes charge. "Missouri may be dangerous for us now," he says seriously. "We should cross the border into Kentucky, rob a bank in that Yankee state and then ride back here to hide out. I've been doing some investigating the bank in Russellville, Kentucky is wealthy. This should be our next target." On the chosen day the seven of you ride into town. While the Shepherd brothers guard your horses you, Frank, Jesse, John and Cole all dismount and walk into the bank. There are three tellers inside and as you approach the front counter you all draw your pistols. "This is a hold up," John barks. "Throw up your hands." Instantly one of the tellers springs to his feet and starts running towards a side door. You aim your pistol at the fleeing man's head but pause, wondering whether or not you should pull the trigger. > You shoot the fleeing man You fire a shot that grazes the teller's head and though the man stumbles he keeps running, makes it to the door, throws it open and dashes outside yelling "Robbery!" Moving quickly you and Frank ransack the vault, throwing all the money you can find into two haversacks while the others guard the tellers and rifle the counter. Shutting the remaining tellers inside the vault you all race outside. While you and your companions mount up the Shepherd brothers begin firing shots into the air to keep citizens off the street. You have just pulled yourself onto your horse's back when a young man comes running out of a store across from you with a pistol in his hands. As you and your companions begin spurring your horses down the street he fires a shot at you all, which whizzes overhead to shatter a window in the back behind you. "Get that bastard with the gun," someone shouts. You have your pistol in your hand and consider firing back. > You fire back Raising your pistol you fire back: your shot hits the man on the side, spins him on the spot and he falls to the ground. Turning your horse you spur after your companions and moments later you are out of town and riding across the countryside. You ride hard until you are back across the border in Missouri and there you pause in a copse of trees to count the money you have stolen: you are all pleased to discover it comes to $12,000, which split seven ways makes your share $1,700, which has been added to your Score. "We need to all split up now to make it harder for the Law to track us," John declares. "Jesse and I will go back to our Farm and hide out there," Frank declares. "I'll go with George and Ol back to their Farm to hide out," John decides. "My brother John has just got a job at his friend Tom McDaniel's Farm near the town of Scyene down in Texas," Cole says thoughtfully. "I'll go down there for a bit to lie low." You consider who to hide out with. > You go with Frank and Jesse to the James Farm You join the James brothers at their farm where you live quietly for a few weeks until one morning Frank returns from town with a newspaper and a grim expression. "Yankee lawmen killed John and Ol," he says tersely. "George is in prison charged with bank robbery." You and Jesse crowd round to read how your three companions were identified as participants in the Russellville robbery and were tracked to their homes by lawmen. George later receives a three year prison sentence for his part in the robbery. Despite the loss of three of your companions Jesse is eager for the three of you to rob a bank and after a year and a half when you feel it is safe you make a plan to rob the little bank in the town of Gallatin, Missouri. Riding into town one winter's morning you leave your horses tied up outside and walk inside to find a single teller talking to a customer. The teller looks oddly familiar to you and you can't figure out where you have seen him from until Jesse pulls you and Frank to one side. "Isn't that Colonel Cox?" Jesse asks quietly. "That Yankee Colonel who killed Bill Anderson during the War? I heard he lived in Gallatin." The three of you study the teller closely. You now remember Cox well from his picture in the newspapers, he led an ambush that killed several of your friends including your former leader Bloody Bill Anderson. The teller does indeed look exactly like him and Frank agrees quietly. "Let's kill him," he mutters. Approaching the bank counter the three of you draw your pistols from your pockets. The customer backs away and the teller looks up startled. > You shoot him in the head Your bullet hits the teller in the head, blasting a circle of red blood and gore onto the wall behind him. As the teller slumps dead in his chair Frank and Jesse fire more bullets into him. The customer screams "Murder!" and starts running past the three of you towards the door to the bank. "Shoot him," Jesse yells. > You shoot the customer as well Your shot hits the man in the back of the right arm but he keeps on running and makes it through the door and out onto the street. "Quickly boys, get the money," you call out and moving quickly you, Frank and Jesse scoop up all the money you can find from the counter, which comes to several hundred dollars. Unwilling to spend time pillaging the vault you all run outside and begin mounting your horses but the alarm has already been raised a a few citizens are taking pot shots at you with pistols from teh shelter of a gun store. When a bullet nicks it Jesse's horse rears up in terror, spilling it's rider to the ground before running off. "Get up behind me Jesse," Frank yells and while you fire your pistol at the gun store, trying to cover them, Jesse awkwardly scrambles up behind Frank. The three of you ride out of town on two horses, not stopping for several hours until you reach the safety of the James Farm. There you find you have escaped with less than $700, making your share a paltry $200. There is worse news to follow however. The next morning Frank returns to the Farm with a paper. "It wasn't Colonel Cox who we killed in Gallatin," he declares. "It was some bank clerk called John Sheets. They know it was us as well, we've all been identified by name. We'd better clear out." Leaving the James Farm the three of you go traveling for a year to wait for the attention to die down before returning to Missouri in the summer of 1871 and arranging a meeting with Cole Younger at the home of your mutual friend Clell Miller. Despite the loss of John, George and Ol you are all determined to continue your robberies. > A new Gang By the time you, Frank, Jesse and Cole meet in the summer of 1871 you have all been identified as bank robbers and probably killers or would-be killers. Frank, stern and silent sits thoughtfully to one side, fingering a bible lying in his lap. Jesse, grinning and cheerful sits next to him while Cole, balding but as tough as any man you know sits alone in the corner. You sit next to Clell Miller, a light-hearted friend of Jesse's who as a teenager served briefly as a Guerrilla during the War. You all chat over things and despite the deaths of Little Archie, John and Ol and George's retirement from crime following his release from prison the five of you resolve to form a new Gang and continue robbing Northern banks as revenge for their treatment of Southerners since the War ended. Jesse has been looking as possible targets and has chosen a bank in the pro-Union town of Corydon in Iowa, a place in which bank robbers are unheard of. One summer day the five of you ride into town, dismount, tie up your horses and walk into the bank. It's Sunday and everyone is at church except a lone teller who is quickly captured. You and Frank empty the contents of the vault rapidly into a sack and then locking the teller inside you stroll outside, mount your horses and begin riding off. The robbery has been so easy that when you pass an open-air church service Jesse got resist shouting out to them gleefully "Hey there, we've just robbed the bank!" Frank frowns but the congregation just ignore you and whooping and laughing you all ride out of town. You all ride back to the James Farm in Missouri where you count the haul and find you have made off with $8,000, making your share $1,600. When the papers report the crime you, Frank, Jesse and Cole are all identified again and the newspapers begin calling you the James-Younger Gang. Jesse is delighted with his newfound fame while Cole prevails upon the rest of you to let his younger brother John Younger join the Gang. John, who has already killed three men including two Texan lawmen, is an angel-faced but deadly young man and Jesse especially seems pleased to have him in the Gang. You plan your next bank robbery to take place in Kentucky. > You 29 April 1872: Columbia, Kentucky As you have done so many times you and your companions ride into a small town early one morning. While Frank, Clell and John hold the horses outside you lead Jesse and Cole into the bank. Inside four customers are sitting at a table talking while one smiling cashier waits behind the counter. The three of you walk up to the counter and draw your pistols. "Consider yourself under arrest," Cole says cheerfully. To your amazement the cashier begins shouting "Bank Robbers! Bank Robbers!" at the top of his voice. "Shut up man or I'll kill you," you yell at him but the cashier keeps shouting warnings at the top of his voice. > You shoot him You shoot the cashier in the chest and he staggers back, blood spreading across his shirt front. Jesse and Cole shoot him as well and the cashier falls dead to the ground. Instantly the four customers spring to their feet and start running for the door. "Stop them," Jesse yells. > You fire a shot at them to try to stop them running You fire a shot that hits one of the men in the hand. He yells in pain but a moment later the four customers have scrambled out the door leaving the three of you alone in the bank with the dead teller on the floor behind the counter. "Quickly, grab the money" you tell the others and moving fast you snatch up all the money you can find on the counter. In less than a minute you are back outside to find Frank, Clell and John firing their pistols into the air as you, Jesse and Cole scramble back onto your horses. A man runs out onto the street and fires a pistol at you, Jesse fires back. Both miss but Jesse's shot prompts the man to take cover and the six of you are able to spur your horses out of town and escape. Riding hard you do not stop until you are a long way from Columbia. When you pause to count the money you find you have escaped with less than $1,000, which makes your share $200. Frank is especially unhappy. "We're killing too many bank tellers Jesse," he tells his brother. "This will bring the law down on us." "Maybe we should lay off banks for a while," Jesse says thoughtfully and grins. "I have a mind to rob a ticket office at the Kansas City Exposition." After a quick discussion Cole and John both offer to join Jesse but Frank and Clell decide it is better to lay low - Frank is going back to the James Farm while Clell is going back to his own family's farm. You consider what is best to do. > You join Frank at the James Farm You and Frank hide out at the James Farm and the surrounding area for a while, relying on newspapers for your information. You read about how Jesse and his companions succeeded in robbing the Kansas City Exposition. You also get a scare when you learn that Clell has been arrested for the Columbia Bank Robbery but is released after the shaken witnesses failed to correctly identify him. After a year when you feel the heat has warn off you and the gang reunite to plan your next robbery. > Another Robbery By now you and your companions have become famous across America as the James-Younger Gang and Southern newspapers laud you as Robin Hood type figures continuing the fight for Southern Rights while Northern newspapers focus on the amounts you have stolen and the men you have killed, a number which altogether has reached six slain. Jesse loves all this attention and John and Clell enjoy it too but Frank is quick to point out that you haven't made much money from your recent robberies. That is why on a lazy summer afternoon you and your fellow Outlaws ride into the little town of St Genevieve. While Frank, Clell and John look after your horses you, Jesse and Cole enter the bank. There is just one cashier inside and following your usual procedure you take him prisoner, empty the vault of money and then lock the cashier inside. As you are riding out of town Jesse again throws caution to the wind and begins firing his pistol into the air and cheering. Clell and John soon join in, much to Frank and Cole's disapproval. Returning to the Younger Farm this time you count the money and find you have stolen $4,000, making your share $600. All the robberies seem so easy that Jesse decides it is time to increase the stakes. He lays out a plan for you all to rob a train in the state of Iowa, a extremely rare crime that is sure to gain the attention of all America. Though Clell and John readily agree to the plan Frank and Cole are more reluctant and only agree on the condition that more men can be brought in to join the Gang. You all agree to meet in the town of Adair, Iowa in two months. > You from Banks to Trains... In the pre-dawn morning light you and the rest of the James-Younger Gang assemble outside the busy little town of Adair. Cole and John have brought along their brothers Jim and Bob to join in the robbery. Jim is a steady veteran who you fought alongside during the Civil War, though he seems reluctant to be involved in this robbery, Bob is a likable and reliable young man. You and Clell turn up with Charlie Pitts, a quiet but tough man who is another former Guerrilla. Frank and Jesse arrive with an extremely tall and chatty man called Bill Chadwell. Altogether there are ten of you, including the two James brothers and the four Younger brothers. Though you held up trains during the War you are all new to peacetime train robbery and you study the railroad trying to think of the best way to get the train to stop near your place of concealment. Predictably it is Jesse who has the idea of using a mental bar and a hammer to tear up the track, reasoning that the driver will see the broken line and halt the train alongside where you will be waiting with the horse. You all agree to the plan. "Who will tear up the track?" Cole asks and you all glance among yourselves. > You volunteer to tear up the track Taking the hammer and the bar you pry up several rails and toss them to one side. You and the rest of the Gang then take cover in the trees near the track and wait for the train. When the train comes down the line you are astonished by how fast it is going. The driver sees the damage to the track and slams on the brakes but the train is going too fast: to your astonishment the locomotive shoots off the end of the broken line and crashes down onto it's side with an ear-splitting crash, as does the first passenger carriage. The noise is indescribable. The train has come to a complete halt with the front two carriages on their side and you and your deafened companions emerge stunned from the trees. While Bill, Charlie, Bob and Jim hold the horses and Jesse leads most of the rest towards the Express Carriage at the rear of the train you and Frank jog to the crashed locomotive and peer inside. The sight sickens you, the driver has been literally crushed to death and the fireman has been badly hurt, bleeding freely from his head. You are still shaken by the time you return to the woods and are rejoined by Jesse and the others. Mounting up you ride away from the train you have just wrecked and ride nonstop for several hours to get to safety. When you count the money you are disappointed to find the train was not carrying a lot, just $3,000 which is divided between the ten of you to make your share $300. Despite the small profits from this you know this brazen robbery will increase your already great fame and notoriety. Bill, Clell and Charlie are all a bit unnerved by the attention this crime will bring and decide they will all go and hide out at Charlie's farm in Missouri. Jesse, as usual, is delighted and indifferent to the fact the robbery has led to another death. He intends for himself, Frank, Bob, Cole, Jim and John (all the James and Younger brothers) to ride south into Arkansas to rob a stagecoach, another type of crime the Gang haven't committed before which Jesse hopes will lead to more fame. It is up to you whether or not you want to go into hiding or join in the crime spree. > You join Bill, Charlie and Clell in hiding out at the Pitts's Farm Hiding out at the Pitts Farm you feel confident of avoiding detection because though both you and Clell are well-known outlaws Bill Chadwell and Charlie Pitts have never been connected with any crime and you rely on those two to go into town for all your supplies and newspapers. You read how the James and Younger boys continue to pull robberies in Arkansas and Missouri but there are consequences: the Pinkerton Detective Agency is hired to bring you and your companions to justice. Frank and Jesse kill one Pinkerton Agent near their Farm but a second gunfight claims the lives of two more lawmen and John Younger near the Younger Farm, Jim Younger being the sole survivor. A letter arrives from Jesse telling you all to meet the rest of the gang in Texas and when you reunite the Gang is a grim bunch. All the remaining Younger Brothers are saddened by John's death with Jim openly blaming Frank and Jesse for getting him mixed up in robberies and swearing he wants nothing more to do with either of them and that he's going to California. Frank and Cole also think it's better that you all lie low for a time at the farm of their friend Bud McDaniels but not Jesse: he sees it as the best way to avenge John is to pull another robbery and the newer members of the gang, Clell, Charlie, Bill and Bob Younger all agree to join him in robbing a stagecoach here in Texas. You need to choose who you join. > You help Jesse, Clell, Bill, Charlie and Bob rob a stagecoach in Texas Riding into the town of Austin you and your companions make inquiries about the local stagecoach routes before heading south and hiding in some trees to waylay a coach on its route. The hold-up goes smoothly, the coach is stopped and the passengers forced to dismount before being stripped of their valuables. Mounting up your ride cross-country before catching a train and rejoining Frank and Cole at the McDaniels Farm. During the ride you count the loot to find you have stolen $3,000, making your share $500. The success of the robbery has encouraged Frank and Cole to join in fresh robberies and you soon have a new gang member in the form of Bud McDaniels, the cheerful life-long friend of the Younger family. Together you all plan a daring train robbery in Kansas but Bill and Charlie prefer to lay low this time and return to their hiding place at Charlie's farm as they are both enjoying the fact they haven't been identified as outlaws yet and have safety in their anonymity. You need to choose which group you join. > You join Frank, Jesse, Cole, Bob, Clell and Bud in robbing the Kansas train One winter's day you and your companions ride out to the train tracks near the town of Muncie. You start a fire right next to the tracks and hide in the trees: sure enough when the train comes down the line the driver sees the fire and stops the train. While Bob and Cole take the driver hostage you, Frank and Jesse board the Express Carriage and capture the messenger at gunpoint. Quickly emptying the contents of the safe into a sack you leave the train, all of you running back to where Bud and Clell are holding your horses. You ride a long distance from Muncie before you stop to count the money and when you do you discover you have really hit the jackpot big time: you have stolen $55,000 from the train, making your share a whopping $7,800. Everyone, especially Bud, are very happy but you know it is time to split up again. Frank, Jesse and Clell decide to hide out with friends near St Joseph, Missouri, Bud McDaniels declares he intends to rent a hotel room in Kansas City while Bob and Cole decide they are going down to Texas to stay with their old friend Bud's brother Tom McDaniels. You need to choose who to join. > You go with Frank, Jesse and Clell to St Joseph You go with the James boys and Clell to hide out near St Joseph where you read in newspapers that Bud was identified as one of the Muncie train robbers and shot while trying to escape prison in Kansas City. His death saddens you all and drives you into hiding but in January 1875 you read even more incredible news in the newspapers. Suspecting that you and the others are in the area a small army of Pinkerton Agents surrounded the James Farm and blew it up with some kind of explosive. The explosion killed Frank and Jesse's eight year old brother Archie and tore their elderly mother Zerelda's right arm off. Frank and especially Jesse are overwhelmed with rage when they learn of the cowardly attack and Jesse's first reaction is to kill every single Pinkerton Detective involved in the raid. After calming a little he decides to settle for killing his neighbor Dan Askew who is wildly known to have allowed the Pinkertons to use his Farm as a base from which to launch the raid. One night the four of you approach the Askew Farm and knock on the door. When the old farmer opens his front door Jesse shoots him in the chest. > You shoot him as well Raising your pistol you shoot the old farmer in the head killing him. Fleeing the scene rapidly you and your companions take to the woods where you live in hiding. Reading newspapers you learn that the Pinkerton Detective Agency are sending one of their Agents, Jack Ladd, to investigate Dan Askew's murder. As Ladd also took part in the attack on the James Family Farm Frank and Jesse see more opportunity for revenge and decide to kill the Pinkerton as well. Returning to the Askew Property armed with rifles you and your companions sneak through the trees and get yourself into a position from which you can see the farm house. You watch it for several hours until finally a man in a smart suit who you recognize as Ladd from the newspaper photographs emerges from the front door. "Now," Jesse murmurs and all of you raise your rifles. You consider whether or not to fire at the unsuspecting man. > You shoot the Pinkerton Your aim is perfect and Ladd jerks as four bullets slam into his chest, knocking him to the ground. Fleeing the property you decide it is better to get out of Missouri and heading south to join Bob and Cole. Most of the newspapers, which were initially supportive of the James brothers after the attack on their family, are outraged by the two murders and urge people everywhere to shoot any member of the James-Younger Gang on sight. Going down to the McDaniels Farm you meet up with Bob, Cole and their host Tom McDaniels, brother of the slain Bud. Together with another friend and war veteran called Tom Webb the group are planning to rob a bank in West Virginia, far from your usual raiding areas. Frank likes the idea but uncharacteristically Bob, Clell and Jesse think it is better to lay low for a spell until the attention of the Pinkertons has worn off. You will have to choose who to join. > You join Frank, Cole and the two Tom's in robbing the bank in West Virginia On the morning chosen for the robbery you and your four companions ride into Huntingdon and dismount outside the town bank. While the two Tom's guard the horses you, Frank and Cole walk into the bank, draw your weapons, take the teller hostage, empty all the money in the vault into a sack and lock him inside the vault. Going outside you re-mount your horses and ride out of town. Once more it seems like you have pulled off another straight-forward robbery. You haven't got far from Huntingdon when suddenly you spot a dozen horsemen riding out of the town straight after you. "Now boys, ride for it," Cole calls out and all of you spur your horses into a gallop. You hear bangs behind you as the posse begin shooting their rifles and pistols at you all, the bullets whistling overhead and between you all. Suddenly Tom McDaniels reins his horse in and turns it about. "Fuck this," he calls out as he pulls his rifle from his saddle scabbard and begins firing back at the posse. > You join Tom in returning fire Like Tom you turn your horse and fire back at the approaching riders. The posse fires a volley of shots at the pair of you and both of you are hit, Tom in the chest and you in the throat. Gasping wetly through the blood you turn your horse to try to ride away but the wound is fatal. You topple from your horse to the ground, Tom is also lying nearby. As your pursuers get closer and closer you stare up at the clear blue sky above you and silently expire.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>On the morning chosen for the robbery you and your four companions ride into Huntingdon and dismount outside the town bank. While the two Tom's guard the horses you, Frank and Cole walk into the bank, draw your weapons, take the teller hostage, empty all the money in the vault into a sack and lock him inside the vault. Going outside you re-mount your horses and ride out of town. Once more it seems like you have pulled off another straight-forward robbery. You haven't got far from Huntingdon when suddenly you spot a dozen horsemen riding out of the town straight after you. "Now boys, ride for it," Cole calls out and all of you spur your horses into a gallop. You hear bangs behind you as the posse begin shooting their rifles and pistols at you all, the bullets whistling overhead and between you all. Suddenly Tom McDaniels reins his horse in and turns it about. "Fuck this," he calls out as he pulls his rifle from his saddle scabbard and begins firing back at the posse. > You keep riding after your companions You keep riding but a yell behind you makes you glance back: Tom McDaniels has been shot in the chest and he slowly falls from his horse to the ground. You and your surviving companions concentrate on outracing your pursuers across the prairie and though they follow you all day at nightfall they finally break off the pursuit. Weary and exhausted you stop to count the money you have stolen: though you made off with $10,000 from the bank Tom was carrying some of it when he was shot so your share of the robbery is only $2,000. "We need to split up in case they keep coming after us," Cole says wearily. "Frank and I will keep going west into Kentucky, Tom you turn south and head into Tennessee. Keep a low profile and we will all meet up together again back in Missouri. This could be desperate work." You consider who you will go with. > You go west into Kentucky with Frank and Cole You continue west with Frank and Cole across Kentucky and into Missouri. On the way you read in the newspapers that Tom Webb has been captured in Tennessee. He is put on trial, found guilty and sentenced to eight years for armed robbery. You and your veteran companions are exhausted by the time you get back to Missouri: this has been your most difficult escape from a bank robbery yet and you spent the winter and spring lying low until the gang reunites in the summer of 1876 in the small Missouri town of Otterville. > The Gang reunites You and the other nine members of the James-Younger Gang who gather in an empty cabin on the edge of Otterville are the most wanted men in America. Jesse, grinning and carefree sits next to a dour and frowning Frank. Cole, tough and capable sits between his handsome, young brother Bob and his other brother Jim who looks like he is wishing he could be somewhere else. The joker Clell Miller and the tall Bill Chadwell are gazing at Jesse with something like adoration while the silent Charlie Pitts sits with them. Finally you are sitting next to the newest member of the Gang, another former Guerrilla but a bit of a weak link called Hoobs Kerry. "Boys, we've had a turbulent couple of years but we sure are taking the fight to the Yankees, America's never known bandits like us before," Jesse declares. "My idea for this year is that we rob a train here in Missouri first and then go all the way up to Minnesota and rob one of those fat Northern banks up there. Bill here is from Minnesota and knows the area well and together the ten of us are unbeatable! We'll pull off a crime so audacious all of America will be talking about it!" "I'm only here to try and stop you from getting my brothers Cole and Bob killed the way you got John killed," Jim Younger says dourly. "You can rob your train here without me." "Well I'm sorry you feel that way Jim," Jesse says, his smile not even flickering. "What do the rest of you say? You're all in aren't you?" Everyone else agrees and then it's your turn. > You join Frank, Jesse, Cole, Bob, Clell, Bill, Charlie and Hoobs in robbing a train in Missouri Leaving Jim behind you join the rest of the gang in holding up the train outside Otterville. As usual the robbery goes smoothly: after forcing the train to halt you and the James brothers empty the Express Safe while the Youngers guard the train staff and the others hold the horses. Mounting up you ride cross-country, easily eluding pursuit, and once you are well clear of Otterville. You have got away with a good haul: $15,000, which makes your share $1,600. You are all ready now to make the trip up to Minnesota and even Jim joins you to help protect his brothers. At the last moment Hoobs gets cold feet, he has been nervous ever since the train robbery and he insists on staying behind at his farm in Missouri. You and the other outlaws are not impressed but since you can't force him to go with you if he doesn't want to you all agree to let him back out of the planned robbery and make preparations to head up to Minnesota without him. > You join Frank, Jesse, Cole, Jim, Bob, Clell, Bill and Charlie in robbing the bank in Minnesota You and your eight companions begin scouting towns in Minnesota for good banks to rob and settle on one in the town of Northfield. While you are in Minnesota you learn that Hoobs Kerry has been identified and arrested and has promptly identified each of the Gang including those who took part in the Otterville Train Robbery in exchange for a reduced sentence of two years imprisonment. You are all furious at Hoobs's betrayal but decide to go ahead with your plans anyway. As usual it's Jesse who makes the plans. "Folk in Minnesota will be on the lookout for nine men acting suspiciously so we won't all go in at once tomorrow," he declares. "Frank, Bob and myself will go into the bank while Cole and Clell hold the horses outside. Bill, Charlie and Jim, I want you to wait on the edge of town and if you hear any shooting come riding in like hell firing your pistols into the air to get those Yankee townsfolk off the streets. I know it's a big town boys but this is a rich bank and the money we should get is worth the risk. Bill, which group do you want to join?" > You join Frank, Jesse and Bob in entering the bank You and your friends ride up to the bank, leave your horses tied up outside and go in. There are three tellers but no customers inside the bank and drawing your pistols you approach the tellers. "We're robbing this bank," Jesse declares. "Don't any of you holler, we've got forty men outside." The tellers raise their hands and Frank wanders inside the vault to look at the safe inside. As he does one of the tellers suddenly grabs the vault door and starts pulling it shut. Frank darts back and jams his arm forward as the teller slams the door on it, running forward Bob hits the teller with his pistol and knocks him to the floor. You all approach the fallen man, Frank angrily rubbing his crushed arm, and drawing a small knife from his pocket Jesse holds it to the injured teller's neck. "Open the safe or I'll cut your damn throat from ear to ear," Jesse snarls. "You'll have to cut my throat because I can't open the safe," the man replies bravely. A shot from outside makes you all glance at the door. As you do another of the tellers springs into action, and dashes away, through a back door and out into the street. "Get him," Jesse shouts. > You chase after the fleeing teller and shoot him Racing to the backdoor you point your pistol at the fleeing man and fire. The bullet hits the teller in the back of his shoulder, though the man stumbles he makes it to the edge of the street and vanishes round a corner. As you shut the door and go back inside the bank you can hear shots outside and suddenly Cole's voice yelling "Hurry up, they've given the alarm!" "God damn you, open the safe," Jesse barks at the teller on the floor and fires his pistol at the floor next to the man's head. You and Bob quickly scoop all the loose notes you can find off the counter while Frank and Jesse continue to threaten the fallen teller who bravely refuses to help them in any way. Dozens of gunshots are ringing out on the streets outside now and again you hear Cole's voice shouting "They're killing our men! Get out here!" "Fuck you," Jesse snarls, hitting the teller in the face again with his gun and then he and Bob give up and run out of the bank. As you are about to follow them you notice Frank massaging his wounded arm and eyeing the teller. "We should kill that son of a bitch," Frank says to you. > You shoot the man in the head Going up to the teller you place your pistol against his head and squeeze the trigger, killing him instantly. You and Frank run outside to be greeted by a scene of utter pandemonium. Clell, Bill and a third man who looks like a citizen of the town are lying dead in the street; the rest of your Gang are riding their horses up and down firing their pistols up at the buildings where several men seemed to have armed themselves and are firing back. Bob's horse has been killed and Bob himself has taken shelter under a wooden staircase near the bank. You and Frank make it to your horses and scramble on top of them, as you do someone starts shooting at both of you, hitting Frank in the leg and you in the left forearm, both fairly minor wounds. "It's no use boys, lets clear out," you shout and spurring your horses into a gallop you concentrate on riding your horse out of time, quickly catching up with Charlie and Cole, the latter bleeding from several gunshot wounds. As you reach the edge of town you hear a scream behind you "Don't leave me boys, I've been shot!" Glancing back you realize you have all forgotten Bob who has sprung out of his hiding place and is sprinting down the street after you. "Shit," Cole mutters and glances at you and Charlie. "Cover me boys," he orders. Cole then does the most incredible thing you have ever seen someone do in real life: he spurs his horse directly back down the street towards his injured brother. Several men are shooting at them and though you and Charlie are firing your pistols at the buildings you might as well be throwing stones at them for all the good it does. Cole and Bob seem to be moving through a virtual rain of bullets. Bob stumbles as one shot hits his leg. Two more graze Cole's horse making it scream and rear but he keeps it under control. Reaching down he helps Bob climb onto his horse. As he does three more bullets hit Cole, the dust exploding from his clothes in small puffs as each bullet hits him. Gritting his teeth he turns his horse around and gallops straight back towards you and Charlie. The gunfire is directed at you two now: one bullet grazes Charlie's arm and another bullet whizzes right past your right ear. As Bob and Cole reach you both you turn horses around and gallop out of town after Frank, Jesse and Jim. Behind you leave the dead bodies of your two fellow outlaws and the shattered myth of the invincibility of the James-Younger Gang. > You flight By the time you and your surviving companions make it out of Northfield you are in a pretty bad way: Bill Chadwell and Clell Miller are dead and everyone except Jesse (and possibly you) has been wounded: Charlie and Frank have both been shot once, Bob twice, Jim three times and Cole a remarkable five times, though all his wounds are minor. The most serious wounds are Jim's and Bob's the latter of whom has had his right elbow completely shattered. Altogether you have managed to steal less than $27 dollars from the bank in Northfield. Perhaps worst of all your only guide to Minnesota, Bill Chadwell, is dead leaving all of you stranded in a hostile state with only the knowledge that you have to head in a generally southern direction to reach safety. You don't have a single friend in Northfield and within days thousands of men in hundreds of posses are combing Minnesota for you. The first week after your escape from Northfield requires all the knowledge that all of you (except Bob) gained during your four years as Guerrillas during the Civil War and your eleven years as outlaws since. Performing basic medical care for your injured and stealing a horse for Bob you manage to get the drop on one posse of several men who are hunting you, swiftly disarm them and ride off with their guns. Exchanging shots with another posse you escape during a rainstorm you pass yourselves off as a posse hunting the Northfield Robbers which goes well until one night when you camp on a small island and wake to find the island surrounded by hundreds of men. You only escape by unleashing your horses in one direction and swimming off in another, somehow escaping in the fog and the storm. After this narrow escape you spend a few days resting in an abandoned farmhouse before continuing, stealing horses along the way. By the 14th things are serious. Both Bob and Jim have become feverish from their untreated wounds and can only travel very slowly. Finally Cole turns to you and the others. "It's no good, we'll never get out of Minnesota going at this speed," he admits to you all. "Bill, it's better that you, Frank and Jesse ride ahead. You'll be moving faster, attracting more attention from the posses and meanwhile me, Jim and Bob can keep going in our own slow way and hopefully slip out of Minnesota unnoticed while all the posses are busy chasing you." You all consider the idea but Charlie shakes his head and declares that he wouldn't feel right abandoning the badly injured Younger Brothers. The James brothers have no problem with the plan and take all the Youngers money and personal possessions to give to their family in case the worst happens. Frank and Jesse decide to ride directly west towards the Dakotas and try to draw posses after them while the Youngers and Charlie continue south towards Iowa. You need to choose which group you will join. > You accompany the James Brothers west You decide to split off with Frank and Jesse and after a week of riding you have covered a lot of distance. That night you approach a bridge over a lake and unfortunately a posse of men are sleeping on the bridge. Dismounting you all try to lead your horses quietly across the bridge but something wakes up one of the posse members. Sitting up he fires a rifle shot which passes through Jesse's thigh to hit Frank in the leg. A moment later he fires another shot which hits your left leg just below the knee. Yelling in pain the three of you throw yourselves onto the backs of your horses and spur them into a gallop, rapidly escaping as the posse fire at you. Riding west non-stop for more than forty-eight hours you finally cross into South Dakota and safety three days after your injury. Turning south you escape back to Missouri. En-route you learn that a week after you parted with them your companions were discovered and surrounded by a posse in Minnesota. Cole, Jim and Bob were all wounded again and captured while Charlie Pitts was killed. All three of the Younger Brothers later draw a twenty-five year sentence in the state penitentiary, refusing to the last to name who took part in the Northfield Robbery with them. Your incredibly narrow escape and the complete destruction of the James-Younger Gang have persuaded you, Frank and Jesse that it is time to retire from crime. While Frank and Jesse go into hiding with their wives and children while you travel east all the way to New York and live anonymously for a long time. Finally three years after your escape from Minnesota a letter arrives from Jesse James. He has formed a new gang and would like you to join him in returning to the outlaw life. After a long internal struggle for reasons you don't, and perhaps never fully will, understand you find yourself on a train heading back to Missouri and your old outlaw life. > The James Gang Returning to Missouri you meet your old friend for the first time in many years. Jesse hasn't changed at all, though he is now in his thirties and has grown a beard he maintains all his old enthusiasm, high-spirits and carefree attitude. Apparently Frank wants nothing more to do with crime and is enjoying his retirement in Tennessee but Jesse has formed a new gang of five men, making you the seventh member of the new James Gang. The new recruits don't impress you and are nowhere near as high quality as the Youngers or the other former members of the James-Younger Gang. The most reliable of the lot seems to be Wood Hite, Jesse's cousin and a former Guerrilla. Dick Liddil, a clever young man seems reliable enough while Bill Ryan, a hard-drinking admirer of Jesse also seems fairly dependable. The last two members of the Gang, Clell Miller's younger brother Ed Miller and a farmer called Tucker Bassham strike you as idiots and the absence of Frank James concerns you. Despite your worries your first robbery in three years goes very well: Jesse has decided to concentrate on trains rather than banks after his experience at Northfield and one winter's night you hold a train outside Glendale, using a red light to stop the train. You and Jesse quickly empty the Express Safe while the others guard the driver and passengers before you all mount your horses and escape cross-county. After several hours you pause to count the money, you have stolen $6,000 which makes your share $800. Jesse is pleased with the success of the robbery but cautions his new recruits. "This will get the law on our trail and when the papers learn I am behind it the whole state will be looking for us. It's best if we split up, Tucker you back to your farm at Jackson. Wood, Dick and Bill, you head up to Wood's family's place in Kentucky. Ed, you come with me, we'll go and hole up at your farm outside Norborne. Where you going to go Bill?" > You join Tucker at the Bassham Farm You go with Tucker back to his farm, all the while having to endure his inane conversation conveying how excited he is by the amount of money you have made. He takes a shopping trip into Jackson and apparently brags loudly about taking part in the Glendale train robbery because the next morning there is a knock on his cabin door. When Tucker answers it you hear a man declare "Tucker Bassham, you are under arrest for train robbery." You spring to your feet and glance around, you are in your bedrrom a short way away and though there is only one door that leads into the kitchen where Tucker is there is a window. You could try jumping through the window to escape but it would make a loud noise and could be dangerous. > You try jumping through the window You start running and crash through the window, glass shards raining down as you hit the grass below. You hear a shout of alarm in the building behind you but you are on your feet in a moment and don't stop running, reaching the safety of nearby trees in an instant and sprinting through them as you hear more shouts behind you. You make it to Jackson, steal a horse and keep going until you reach the Hite Farm in Kentucky where you join up with Dick, Bill and Wood. There you read that after his arrest Tucker promptly named all of you who helped rob the Glendale train. Soon after this you read that fellow gang member Ed Miller’s body has been found in Missouri, allegedly killed by Jesse James. Soon after Jesse himself turns up at the Hite Farm. > You more Robberies The new James Gang has not had a good start with Tucker Bassham arrested and Ed Miller killed by Jesse for threatening to betray the Gang, that just leaves you, Jesse, Jesse's cousin Wood Hite, the cunning Dick Liddil and the alcoholic Bill Ryan. The murder of his old friend Clell's brother seems to weigh heavily on Jesse's conscience and the usual energy and cheerfulness of his younger years seems to be fading from your friend as Jesse enters his thirties. He remains as decisive as ever though. "There are lots of stagecoaches in Kentucky and the authorities won't be expecting one of them to be robbed," he declares. "Bill Ryan, you and I will ride out and hold up a stagecoach over by Mammoth Caves, they are always packed full of rich tourists. Dick and Wood, I want you to stay here in case I need you. Bill Grey, you can join us if you want or you can stay here and lie low with the boys." > You help Jesse and Bill rob a stagecoach in Kentucky You and your two companions ride out to Mammoth Cave, a popular tourist destination. You all wait by the side of the road and when a stagecoach full of tourist approaches you all surround it, pistols in hands. Forcing the unarmed driver and passengers to disembark you relieve them of their money and valuables before riding cross-country back to the Hite Farm. Counting your loot there you find you have made off with $2,000, making your share $600. Back at the Hite Farm Jesse is not content with your takings and having learned there is a large sum of money held in a store in the nearby town of Mercer he decides to rob that as well. Again he chooses to take Bill with him and also Dick while Wood will remain at the Farm making sure the place remains safe and keeping a watch out for lawmen. Again Jesse offers you the choice of whether to join him and the others in the robbery or remain at the Farm. > You join Jesse, Bill and Dick in robbing the payroll Riding into Mercer with the others you leave Dick and Bill outside with the horses and enter the store with Jesse. The pair of you draw your pistols and demand that the lone storekeeper hand over the payroll. "My son has taken it to the bank already," the nervous man tells you with his hands in the air and sure enough the safe is almost completely empty. Jesse is very annoyed but there is nothing you can do except leave the store, mount your horses and ride away. Jesse is very put out but after a winter spent exploring various states he learns that a similar payroll is being transported to the town of Muscle Shoals in far-off Alabama, a long way from your usual operating places. Jesse is determined to get the money and decides to take the ever-loyal Bill and Wood Hite with him this time, leaving Dick Liddil at the Hite Farm. Again he offers you the choice of accompanying him or staying at the Hite Farm. > You join Jesse, Bill and Wood in robbing the payroll Traveling south to Alabama with your friends you make your way to Muscle Shoals and learn what route the man carrying the payroll usually takes into town. Making your way to a lonely part of the road you all hide in some trees until the paymaster comes into sight. Emerging with pistols in your hands you all relieve him of the sack of money he is carrying before riding off across the countryside. When you stop to count the money you find you have stolen $5,000, making your share $1,200. You and your companions are pleased by the easy job, especially Bill. "I think I'll go back to Adairville in Kentucky to celebrate with some of my old friends," he says. "Don't be there too long," Jesse says. "I think I'm going to go and talk to Frank and some other boys to get them to join the boy. This summer I think we should start hitting trains in Missouri." Agreeing to meet up at the Hite Farm Jesse and Wood part ways with Bill leaving you free to choose who to join. > You go with Jesse and Wood to talk to Frank That summer you accompany Jesse and Wood to Tennessee where Frank is living a peaceful life in retirement as a farmer. Jesse manages to persuade his brother to return to the outlaw life while Wood also recruits his younger brother Clarence Hite. As you are all traveling back to the Hite Farm you learn that Bill Ryan has been arrested in Adairville after being recognized as a wanted outlaw. Despite this setback the five of you rejoin Dick Liddil at the Hite Farm where Jesse discusses his latest plans. > The James Gang return to Missouri The loss of Bill Ryan, his favorite gang member, has hit Jesse hard but despite looking more tired than ever Jesse's ambition remains as boundless as always. As well as you, Dick Liddil and Wood Hite Jesse has persuaded his brother Frank to rejoin the gang and also his cousin Clarence Hite, Wood's younger brother who is dying of tuberculosis and is so emaciated you are not certain he'll be up to the rigors of outlaw life. Jesse remains confident though. "It is time we went back to Missouri and reminded the governor there that are fifteen years the James boys are still going strong," he declares, grinning at Frank. "The Civil War may be over but we haven't stopped fighting it! We'll hold up a few trains and then clear out of the state." On the chosen day Dick, Wood and Clarence camp outside the town of Winston while you, Frank and Jesse ride into town. Boarding the noon train you make your way to the driver's carriage where you take him hostage and have him stop the train close to where your friends are waiting. After the train stops you, Frank and Jesse make your way down the passenger carriages towards the express carriage, Jesse leading the way. "This is a hold up," he barks to the passengers. "Remain in your seats." Without warning a uniformed conductor suddenly springs forward and grabs at Jesse's pistol. Startled the two men wrestle over the weapon while you and Frank stand by startled. "Shoot him," Jesse yells. > You shoot the conductor You raise your pistol and shoot the conductor in the head. As the man falls to the ground Jesse regains control of his pistol and shoots him again in the chest. While the conductor lies on the floor bleeding and gun smoke rises in the carriage another passenger springs to his feet, gun in hand. "Jesse," Frank yells out in warning as he aims his pistol at the man. > You shoot the armed passenger The man staggers as your bullet hits him in the chest and dropping his pistol he falls to the ground. "Quickly boys," Frank calls out and the three of you hurry down the passenger carriage, leaving the two dead men behind you. Reaching the Express Carriage you find the safe contains very little money but you throw what little it does contain into a sack before making your escape from the train. Running to where you left your horses you escape cross country and count the money, finding you have made it away with $700, making your share $100. The robbery and it's accompanying double-killing make national news and the reward for, you, Frank or Jesse reaches a record $5,000 each to be brought in dead or alive, making the three of you worth $15,000 altogether. Jesse is completely unperturbed and recruits another gang member, a young friend of Dick Liddil's called Charley Ford. Together the seven of you plan your next train robbery to take place on the fifth anniversary of the disastrous Northfield Bank Robbery. > The Blue Cut Train Robbery Five years to the day since the James-Younger Gang was destroyed at Northfield you and the rest of the James Gang rob a train at Blue Cut, Missouri. Together with the wary Frank and gregarious Jesse you halt the train with lanterns and climb aboard. "I'm Jesse James," Jesse declares to the frightened passengers. "You might have read about me in the papers. Stay calm and no one will get hurt." Making your way to the Express Carriage you empty the safe of a small amount of money and hastily disembark. Escaping on horses you find that you have made away with $1,000, which split seven ways makes your share $100. "We need to split up boys," Jesse declares. "Wood, Dick and Charley, you go and hide out at Charley's sister's place near Kansas City. Clarence, I want you to hole up in Adairville and get some medical treatment. I'm going to rent my own place in Kansas City. What are you going to do Frank?" "I reckon anywhere near Missouri is too dangerous at the moment," Frank says. "I'm going back to my farm in Tennessee." Jesse glances at you. "What are you going to do Bill?" > You go with Wood, Dick and Charley to the Ford Farm You accompany Dick, Wood and Charley back to Charley's Farm where you meet his sister Martha and his brother Bob, a nervous young man who seems to regard you all with awe. Your stay at the Farm isn't a happy one: Dick and Wood both like Martha and become increasingly hostile towards each other. The argument escalates one evening when you, Dick, Wood, Charley and Bob are all sitting upstairs. Screaming insults at each other Dick and Wood promptly pull out their pistols, spring to their feet and start shooting at each other. > You join in the gunfight Drawing your pistol you take Wood's side in the argument and fire a shot, hitting Dick in the leg. Dick returns fire, hitting Wood in the arm and suddenly Charley's kid brother Bob unexpectedly joins the gunfight, shooting Wood in the head. As you turn towards him Bob fires a second shot, hitting you in the throat. Gasping and choking you sink to the floor, your life's blood pouring from you as Bob coldly steps closer to you and executes you with a final shot. The same man who will kill Jesse James has just killed you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You accompany Dick, Wood and Charley back to Charley's Farm where you meet his sister Martha and his brother Bob, a nervous young man who seems to regard you all with awe. Your stay at the Farm isn't a happy one: Dick and Wood both like Martha and become increasingly hostile towards each other. The argument escalates one evening when you, Dick, Wood, Charley and Bob are all sitting upstairs. Screaming insults at each other Dick and Wood promptly pull out their pistols, spring to their feet and start shooting at each other. > You get the hell out of there You haven't survived this long by being stupid and springing to your feet you race through the door out of the room. The shots continue to ring out behind you ending in the sound of a body hitting the floor - later you will learn that Charley's brother Bob has killed Wood Hite. Making it to your horse in the Farm's stable you hastily mount up and ride away. For the rest of the winter you live in hiding in Missouri, not emerging until the winter. In the meantime the James Gang is destroyed. First Dick and Charley, fearful of Jesse's revenge after killing his cousin Wood, surrender to the law. They tell them where they can find Clarence Hite who is arrested in his hotel in Adairville. Finally Bob Ford murders Jesse James, shooting him in the back of the head while your friend hangs a picture on the wall. Stunned to hear the legendary outlaw is dead you make your way to Tennessee where the other remaining survivor of the gang, Frank James is still living. > The end of the James Gang Frank is in shock when you join him in Tennessee: like you he finds it impossible to believe that Jesse James, America's greatest bank robber and survivor of so many gunfights and robberies, is dead. As you spend the summer hiding out in Tennessee Frank grows increasingly pessimistic. "They'll kill us next you know Bill," he tells you one day. "I'm going back to Missouri to surrender. I figure if I surrender myself they might go easy on me, it's either that or keep running until they catch or kill me. I've got no choice. What are you going to do Bill? I suppose you could make a run down to Mexico or up to Canada or some place where the law ain't got no jurisdiction. But I reckon they'll still get you in the end, just like they got Jesse." You carefully mull over what to do. > You go with Frank to Missouri to surrender You and Frank make your way to Jefferson City, Missouri where friends of Frank have arranged both of your surrenders to Governor Crittenden of Missouri himself. When you meet the Governor you both hand your guns over to him, Frank commenting that it is the first time in twenty-one years since the start of the American Civil War that he has surrendered his gun to anyone. "We have spent our last twenty-one years on the run," you tell him. "We have been hunted day and night, never able to rest in case every sound is an approaching posse or some lawman on our trail. It will be a massive relief to finally be able to rest." The two of you are placed in custody and the next three years and taken over by a long series of trials in which Clarence Hite, Charley Ford and Dick Liddil all testify. Despite the many charges laid against you and the mound of testimony by some miracle you and Frank manage to argue your way into acquittal on all the charges and in the spring of 1885 you are finally pardoned of all your crimes and allowed to go free, a truly incredible result! > One last enemy By the 1890's as you enter your fifties it seems that you have put your outlaw past behind you and become a respectable citizen. You have little touch with your former fellow Outlaws: Jesse James, John Younger, Clell Miller, John Jarette, Charlie Pitts, Wood Hite, Bill Chadwell, Oll Shepherd, Little Arch Clement, Bud McDaniels and Tom McDaniels are all dead. Bob Younger and Clarence Hite are dead too, claimed by tuberculosis while Charley Ford has shot himself, overwhelmed by guilt for his role in Jesse's death. Tom Webb, Bill Ryan, Tucker Bassham and Hoobs Kerry all vanished after their release from prison while Cole Younger and Jim Younger are still incarcerated. That leaves just yourself, Frank James, George Shepherd and Dick Liddil alive on the outside, and naturally you have little contact with the last two. You do see the face of an enemy one summer day when you are in a little town called Creede in Colorado to transact some business. Bob Ford, the man who murdered your friend Jesse, owns a saloon in town and you recognize him in the street. Hatred fills you and you strongly consider killing the man who killed your friend. Doing so would of course put you back outside the law again but it would be a fitting revenge after he betrayed and murdered Jesse James. You carefully consider what to do. > You buy a gun and kill Bob Ford Making your way to a nearby gun store you buy a shotgun. After loading and cocking the gun you enter Bob Ford's saloon to find the man you are looking for standing at the bar with his back to you. "Hello Bob," you call out and the young man turns around. Raising the shotgun you fire both barrels directly into his throat, nearly blowing his head off. As Bob Ford is blasted to the floor everyone in the saloon stares at you in stunned silence as you slowly lower the shotgun. "That's for Jesse James," you declare. You surrender without a struggle and after a short trial you are naturally found guilty of murder. The Judge takes a very lenient view of the killing and you are sentenced to just nine years imprisonment, being released in 1901. You never regret the killing of Bob Ford. > The end of the story The year of 1901 brings two pieces of good news for you: first the traitor Dick Liddil dies of a heart attack and then finally Cole and Jim Younger are released from prison after serving the full term of their twenty-five year sentences. Jim struggles to adjust and when his parole conditions don't allow him to marry the woman he loves he commits suicide a year after his release from prison, a tragic end to a life beset by tragedies. Cole does better, reuniting with you and Frank James. For several years the three of you travel around the Old West in various exhibitions and shows, earning a bit of money from your notoriety. The days of the horseback outlaw are truly over now with fictional accounts of your crimes told in awful Dime Novels, songs and in the revolutionary new moving picture films. Your infamy is never far away and one day when the three of you have some business to transact in a bank Cole suddenly stops you. "If the tellers see Frank James, Cole Younger and Bill Grey walk into their bank they are liable to start shooting," he points out. The years pass and the last actors leave the stage: Frank dies in 1915 and Cole in 1916. The death of one time gang member George Shepherd in 1917 leaves you the last surviving member of the James Gang, now well into your seventies you continue to live in your native Missouri which is peaceful now. The young folks don't believe you when you tell them tales of whizzing bullets, thrilling horseback rides and the screams of dying men in the dust. They don't believe you when you say you rode with the best: the daring Younger Brothers and the best bandits of them all, the legendary outlaws Frank and Jesse James. CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE EARNED THE HIDDEN SURVIVOR BONUS OF 100,000 WHICH WILL BE ADDED TO YOUR SCORE AND VISIBLE TO OTHERS IF YOU LEAVE A COMMENT. THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO PLAY MY GAME. > You click here if you are interested in how you wrote this Jesse James stands alongside Billy the Kid and John Wesley Hardin as one of the foremost outlaws of the Old West thanks in part to his actions and in part to his legend, which Jesse actively worked on and promoted during his lifetime. Jesse was genuinely a bank robber of outstanding ability, the James-Younger Gang's successful record would not be beaten until the rise of Butch Cassidy's Hole in the Wall Gang in the 1890's. Jesse had a reputation as a Southern Robin Hood and a deadly gunfighter of outstanding ability. In truth most of the men Jesse and his gang shot and killed were unarmed and you certainly wouldn't have wanted to be in a bank when he and his pals came through the door. Many of their killings were random and pointless and Jesse rarely had much stomach for a fight once people started shooting back at him. Far from being a Robin Hood Jesse and his friends never shared their money with anyone except their immediate friends and family, in fact most of the banks and trains he robbed contained the money of his fellow Southern men in Missouri and other states. But Jesse has been kind to Jesse in part because of the fun alliteration of his name and in part because of his legend. Jesse promoted himself in a way his somber brother Frank or the cautious Cole Younger never did and he couldn't care less about the people he hurt along the way. As one historian pointed out people tended to look at this legendary figure of Jesse James, they rarely spent time looking into the details of all the killings and robberies that put him on this pedestal. Researching outlaws is always fun and easy, building up a timeline of their activities provides a natural framework to build the story up around, all that really needs to be fleshed out are the characters of the outlaws themselves and the details of the gunfights which were genuinely dramatic and exciting. I think Cole Younger riding back into Northfield towards a dozen people shooting at him to rescue his wounded brother Bob show that the historic truth can sometimes be more amazing than fiction, even great works of fiction like True Grit. As I have timelines for every gang of American criminals including the Doolin-Dalton Gang, the Hole in the Wall Gang, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Al Karpis and the Barkers, Pretty Boy Floyd and every other major outlaw gang of bank robbers between the years 1865 and 2015 I may write more sequels depending on how this story is received, though the slightly repetitive nature of the story (robbery, possible gunfight, hide out for a time with another possible gunfight or arrest attempt, robbery again etc etc) does concern me as does the fact the reader is encouraged to kill defenseless people to improve his or her score. Still those people who really lived and really did so many incredible things may prove just too fascinating for me not to write about!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>By the 1890's as you enter your fifties it seems that you have put your outlaw past behind you and become a respectable citizen. You have little touch with your former fellow Outlaws: Jesse James, John Younger, Clell Miller, John Jarette, Charlie Pitts, Wood Hite, Bill Chadwell, Oll Shepherd, Little Arch Clement, Bud McDaniels and Tom McDaniels are all dead. Bob Younger and Clarence Hite are dead too, claimed by tuberculosis while Charley Ford has shot himself, overwhelmed by guilt for his role in Jesse's death. Tom Webb, Bill Ryan, Tucker Bassham and Hoobs Kerry all vanished after their release from prison while Cole Younger and Jim Younger are still incarcerated. That leaves just yourself, Frank James, George Shepherd and Dick Liddil alive on the outside, and naturally you have little contact with the last two. You do see the face of an enemy one summer day when you are in a little town called Creede in Colorado to transact some business. Bob Ford, the man who murdered your friend Jesse, owns a saloon in town and you recognize him in the street. Hatred fills you and you strongly consider killing the man who killed your friend. Doing so would of course put you back outside the law again but it would be a fitting revenge after he betrayed and murdered Jesse James. You carefully consider what to do. > You let him be You manage to control yourself and turn your back on your outlaw life once and for all, riding out of Creede without exacting any vengeance. It doesn't matter: soon after you read in the newspapers that Bob Ford has been killed by a man called Ed O'Kelley who had a general dislike of him. Growing old gracefully you move into the Twentieth Century.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Frank is in shock when you join him in Tennessee: like you he finds it impossible to believe that Jesse James, America's greatest bank robber and survivor of so many gunfights and robberies, is dead. As you spend the summer hiding out in Tennessee Frank grows increasingly pessimistic. "They'll kill us next you know Bill," he tells you one day. "I'm going back to Missouri to surrender. I figure if I surrender myself they might go easy on me, it's either that or keep running until they catch or kill me. I've got no choice. What are you going to do Bill? I suppose you could make a run down to Mexico or up to Canada or some place where the law ain't got no jurisdiction. But I reckon they'll still get you in the end, just like they got Jesse." You carefully mull over what to do. > You try your chances in fleeing south to Mexico Parting ways with Frank you head south, cross the Rio Grande and join numerous American fugitives from justice in hiding out in Mexico. You spend three years living in Mexico, reading in papers as Frank is miraculously acquitted in trial after trial despite the mountain of evidence against him. Finally in 1885 all charges against him are dismissed and you receive word that all charges against you have been dismissed as well. A free and safe man for the first time in nearly twenty-five years, since the start of the American Civil War, you finally return to America.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Five years to the day since the James-Younger Gang was destroyed at Northfield you and the rest of the James Gang rob a train at Blue Cut, Missouri. Together with the wary Frank and gregarious Jesse you halt the train with lanterns and climb aboard. "I'm Jesse James," Jesse declares to the frightened passengers. "You might have read about me in the papers. Stay calm and no one will get hurt." Making your way to the Express Carriage you empty the safe of a small amount of money and hastily disembark. Escaping on horses you find that you have made away with $1,000, which split seven ways makes your share $100. "We need to split up boys," Jesse declares. "Wood, Dick and Charley, you go and hide out at Charley's sister's place near Kansas City. Clarence, I want you to hole up in Adairville and get some medical treatment. I'm going to rent my own place in Kansas City. What are you going to do Frank?" "I reckon anywhere near Missouri is too dangerous at the moment," Frank says. "I'm going back to my farm in Tennessee." Jesse glances at you. "What are you going to do Bill?" > You go with Clarence to Adairville You accompany Clarence to Adairville but your companion is so sick with his terminal tuberculosis that mostly he keeps to his room. One afternoon you are both eating dinner in the hotel's restaurant when several Deputy Sheriffs enter the room and immediately walk towards you. Immediately you know they are here to arrest you and a quick glance around reveals a door to the kitchen just a few feet from you. You could try to make a break for it but as all the Deputies are armed with guns it could be dangerous. > You make a break for it Springing to your feet you race towards the door, shoulder-barge through it and hurtle through the kitchen, past the stunned cooks and kitchen staff. The lawmen are in hot pursuit but bursting through a backed door you make it out into the street and spring onto the back of a nearby horse. Spurring it into life you gallop out of town as the Deputies fire their pistols at you. One bullet whizzes past your left ear, another knocks your hat from your head but miraculously you make it out of town unhurt and ride hard for Missouri where you spend the spring in hiding. During your time hiding the James Gang is destroyed. After killing Wood Hite in Missouri Dick Liddil and Charley Ford surrender to the law. Clarence Hite is imprisoned. Soon after Charley's younger brother Bob Ford shoots Jesse James in the back of the head while your friend hangs a picture on the wall. Stunned to hear of your legendary friend's death you ride for Tennessee where the other remaining survivor of the James Gang, Frank James, is living in hiding.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You accompany Clarence to Adairville but your companion is so sick with his terminal tuberculosis that mostly he keeps to his room. One afternoon you are both eating dinner in the hotel's restaurant when several Deputy Sheriffs enter the room and immediately walk towards you. Immediately you know they are here to arrest you and a quick glance around reveals a door to the kitchen just a few feet from you. You could try to make a break for it but as all the Deputies are armed with guns it could be dangerous. > You surrender Like Clarence you raise your hands in surrender and allow the lawmen to take you into custody. Imprisoned in Adairville you soon learn that Dick Liddil and Charley Ford have surrendered to the law after killing Wood Hite in a gunfight. Soon after Charley's younger brother Bob shoots Jesse James in the back of the head while your friend has a picture on the wall. In order to avoid his brother's fate Frank James surrenders to the law in Missouri, finally bringing the James Gang to an end. You and Frank go to court together in a remarkable series of trials that see Dick, Charley and Clarence all testify against you. In a remarkable series of trials that go on for three years you defeat all the charges against you both through lack of evidence, aggressive cross-examination and outright perjury. Finally in the spring of 1885 you are both released and for the first time in nearly twenty years you finally succeed in putting your outlaw life behind you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Five years to the day since the James-Younger Gang was destroyed at Northfield you and the rest of the James Gang rob a train at Blue Cut, Missouri. Together with the wary Frank and gregarious Jesse you halt the train with lanterns and climb aboard. "I'm Jesse James," Jesse declares to the frightened passengers. "You might have read about me in the papers. Stay calm and no one will get hurt." Making your way to the Express Carriage you empty the safe of a small amount of money and hastily disembark. Escaping on horses you find that you have made away with $1,000, which split seven ways makes your share $100. "We need to split up boys," Jesse declares. "Wood, Dick and Charley, you go and hide out at Charley's sister's place near Kansas City. Clarence, I want you to hole up in Adairville and get some medical treatment. I'm going to rent my own place in Kansas City. What are you going to do Frank?" "I reckon anywhere near Missouri is too dangerous at the moment," Frank says. "I'm going back to my farm in Tennessee." Jesse glances at you. "What are you going to do Bill?" > You go with Jesse to Kansas City You and Jesse take a small house in Kansas City where you hide out for a time. In the spring of 1882 you learn that Clarence Hite has been arrested in Kentucky and Jesse invites the gang's newest recruit Charley Ford and his younger brother, a nervous youth called Bob Ford, to live with the pair of you. He is planning another bank robbery in Platte City, Missouri and wants you and the Ford brothers to take part in it. One spring morning you are all sitting to breakfast while Jesse reads the day's newspaper and gives a cry of surprise. "It says here that Dick Liddil has been arrested," he announces and you all glance at each other. "Well, I suppose they'll get all of us in the end," Jesse says thoughtfully. Rising from the table he goes into the living room and later when you follow him you find he has taken off his gun belt and is standing on a chair, straightening a picture on the wall. Suddenly a deafening gunshot next to you makes you jump. The bullet hits Jesse in the back of the head, slamming his face into the picture and he falls off the chair. Turning you find Charley Ford's kid brother Bob standing next to you, a smoking pistol in his hand. As you glance at each other he hastily re-cocks his pistol. > You draw your own pistol and shoot the man who murdered your friend You draw your own pistol but you are too slow: Bob Ford finishes re-cocking his pistol and shoots you in the right eye. Without a sound you fall to the ground dead, slain just feet from your famous friend, the cold hand of justice having finally extinguished your criminal life at last.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and Jesse take a small house in Kansas City where you hide out for a time. In the spring of 1882 you learn that Clarence Hite has been arrested in Kentucky and Jesse invites the gang's newest recruit Charley Ford and his younger brother, a nervous youth called Bob Ford, to live with the pair of you. He is planning another bank robbery in Platte City, Missouri and wants you and the Ford brothers to take part in it. One spring morning you are all sitting to breakfast while Jesse reads the day's newspaper and gives a cry of surprise. "It says here that Dick Liddil has been arrested," he announces and you all glance at each other. "Well, I suppose they'll get all of us in the end," Jesse says thoughtfully. Rising from the table he goes into the living room and later when you follow him you find he has taken off his gun belt and is standing on a chair, straightening a picture on the wall. Suddenly a deafening gunshot next to you makes you jump. The bullet hits Jesse in the back of the head, slamming his face into the picture and he falls off the chair. Turning you find Charley Ford's kid brother Bob standing next to you, a smoking pistol in his hand. As you glance at each other he hastily re-cocks his pistol. > You make a run for it Without hesitation you bolt from the room into the kitchen; Bob fires at you but narrowly misses. Passing Charley Ford you race out the back door of the house and make it across the yard and into the town. Rapidly escaping Kansas City, your mind numbed by the fact that Jesse James is dead, you make your way to Tennessee. In time you learn the truth: Dick Liddil and Charley Ford killed Wood Hite in a gunfight and then surrendered to the law, now Bob Ford has murdered your friend. Swiftly you make your way to the other remaining survivor of the James Gang, Jesse's brother Frank who is still hiding in Tennessee.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Five years to the day since the James-Younger Gang was destroyed at Northfield you and the rest of the James Gang rob a train at Blue Cut, Missouri. Together with the wary Frank and gregarious Jesse you halt the train with lanterns and climb aboard. "I'm Jesse James," Jesse declares to the frightened passengers. "You might have read about me in the papers. Stay calm and no one will get hurt." Making your way to the Express Carriage you empty the safe of a small amount of money and hastily disembark. Escaping on horses you find that you have made away with $1,000, which split seven ways makes your share $100. "We need to split up boys," Jesse declares. "Wood, Dick and Charley, you go and hide out at Charley's sister's place near Kansas City. Clarence, I want you to hole up in Adairville and get some medical treatment. I'm going to rent my own place in Kansas City. What are you going to do Frank?" "I reckon anywhere near Missouri is too dangerous at the moment," Frank says. "I'm going back to my farm in Tennessee." Jesse glances at you. "What are you going to do Bill?" > You go with Frank to Tennessee You travel with Frank to Tennessee and there you live quietly in hiding, reading in newspapers as the James Gang is destroyed. First Dick Liddil and Charley Ford surrender to the law after killing Wood Hite in a gunfight. Next Clarence Hite is arrested in his hotel in Kentucky. Finally Charley's younger brother Bob Ford goes up behind Jesse James as he is hanging a picture on the wall and shoots him in the back of the head. The murder of your friend shocks America and signals an end to your outlaw career.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You raise your pistol and shoot the conductor in the head. As the man falls to the ground Jesse regains control of his pistol and shoots him again in the chest. While the conductor lies on the floor bleeding and gun smoke rises in the carriage another passenger springs to his feet, gun in hand. "Jesse," Frank yells out in warning as he aims his pistol at the man. > You let Frank deal with him The man staggers as Frank shoots hits him in the chest and dropping his pistol he falls to the ground. "Quickly boys," Frank calls out and the three of you hurry down the passenger carriage, leaving the two dead men behind you. Reaching the Express Carriage you find the safe contains very little money but you throw what little it does contain into a sack before making your escape from the train. Running to where you left your horses you escape cross country and count the money, finding you have made it away with $700, making your share $100. The robbery and it's accompanying double-killing make national news and the reward for, you, Frank or Jesse reaches a record $5,000 each to be brought in dead or alive, making the three of you worth $15,000 altogether. Jesse is completely unperturbed and recruits another gang member, a young friend of Dick Liddil's called Charley Ford. Together the seven of you plan your next train robbery to take place on the fifth anniversary of the disastrous Northfield Bank Robbery.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The loss of Bill Ryan, his favorite gang member, has hit Jesse hard but despite looking more tired than ever Jesse's ambition remains as boundless as always. As well as you, Dick Liddil and Wood Hite Jesse has persuaded his brother Frank to rejoin the gang and also his cousin Clarence Hite, Wood's younger brother who is dying of tuberculosis and is so emaciated you are not certain he'll be up to the rigors of outlaw life. Jesse remains confident though. "It is time we went back to Missouri and reminded the governor there that are fifteen years the James boys are still going strong," he declares, grinning at Frank. "The Civil War may be over but we haven't stopped fighting it! We'll hold up a few trains and then clear out of the state." On the chosen day Dick, Wood and Clarence camp outside the town of Winston while you, Frank and Jesse ride into town. Boarding the noon train you make your way to the driver's carriage where you take him hostage and have him stop the train close to where your friends are waiting. After the train stops you, Frank and Jesse make your way down the passenger carriages towards the express carriage, Jesse leading the way. "This is a hold up," he barks to the passengers. "Remain in your seats." Without warning a uniformed conductor suddenly springs forward and grabs at Jesse's pistol. Startled the two men wrestle over the weapon while you and Frank stand by startled. "Shoot him," Jesse yells. > You let the James Brothers take care of the situation While you watch Jesse manages to pull the trigger of his pistol and shoot the conductor in the chest. As the man falls to the ground Jesse shoots him again in the head. While the man lies bleeding on the floor and gun smoke rises in the carriage a second passenger springs to his feet, gun in hand. "Jesse," Frank yells out in warning and raises his own gun.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Traveling south to Alabama with your friends you make your way to Muscle Shoals and learn what route the man carrying the payroll usually takes into town. Making your way to a lonely part of the road you all hide in some trees until the paymaster comes into sight. Emerging with pistols in your hands you all relieve him of the sack of money he is carrying before riding off across the countryside. When you stop to count the money you find you have stolen $5,000, making your share $1,200. You and your companions are pleased by the easy job, especially Bill. "I think I'll go back to Adairville in Kentucky to celebrate with some of my old friends," he says. "Don't be there too long," Jesse says. "I think I'm going to go and talk to Frank and some other boys to get them to join the boy. This summer I think we should start hitting trains in Missouri." Agreeing to meet up at the Hite Farm Jesse and Wood part ways with Bill leaving you free to choose who to join. > You go with Bill to Adairville Parting from the others you and Bill make your way to Adairville where you spend several days drinking in saloons and generally having a fun time. The fun ends abruptly one night when Bill gets into a drunken argument with someone and boasts that he is friends with Jesse James. Lawmen quickly arrive on the scene and before Bill knows what is happening he is under arrest. You are standing by the bar at the time a few feet from a side door and as lawmen advance on you with pistols in their hands you consider making a break for it, though it could be dangerous. > You try escaping out a side door As the lawmen approach you suddenly make dart to the right, throw the door open and rush through. As the lawmen shout out you run down the alley outside, make it to a horse and mount up. You ride hard out of town and don't stop riding for 24 hours until you make it back to the safety of the Hite Farm: there you learn that Bill has been imprisoned for several years for his role in the Muscle Shoals payroll robbery but he has refused to name his companions. Soon after you arrive at the Hite Farm Jesse and Wood show up with their brothers Frank and Clarence Hite in tow, recruits for Jesse's latest plans.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Parting from the others you and Bill make your way to Adairville where you spend several days drinking in saloons and generally having a fun time. The fun ends abruptly one night when Bill gets into a drunken argument with someone and boasts that he is friends with Jesse James. Lawmen quickly arrive on the scene and before Bill knows what is happening he is under arrest. You are standing by the bar at the time a few feet from a side door and as lawmen advance on you with pistols in their hands you consider making a break for it, though it could be dangerous. > You surrender You meekly raise your hands in the air and surrender, together with Bill you are taken into custody. Put on trial in Adairville you are testified against by none other than Tucker Bassham and convicted not only of the Muscle Shoals payroll robbery but also of the Glendale train robbery: you are both sentenced to eight years imprisonment. While you are in prison the James Gang is destroyed: Wood Hite and your friend Jesse James are killed while Dick Liddil and Frank James surrender to the authorities, both are later acquitted of the charges against them. By the time you are eventually released your outlaw days are long gone by and the world seems a very different place as you enter into a peaceful retirement from your outlaw life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Riding into Mercer with the others you leave Dick and Bill outside with the horses and enter the store with Jesse. The pair of you draw your pistols and demand that the lone storekeeper hand over the payroll. "My son has taken it to the bank already," the nervous man tells you with his hands in the air and sure enough the safe is almost completely empty. Jesse is very annoyed but there is nothing you can do except leave the store, mount your horses and ride away. Jesse is very put out but after a winter spent exploring various states he learns that a similar payroll is being transported to the town of Muscle Shoals in far-off Alabama, a long way from your usual operating places. Jesse is determined to get the money and decides to take the ever-loyal Bill and Wood Hite with him this time, leaving Dick Liddil at the Hite Farm. Again he offers you the choice of accompanying him or staying at the Hite Farm. > You stay with Dick at the Hite Farm You remain with Dick at the Hite Farm while your companions head south to rob the payroll in Alabama. The robbery goes off well but afterwards Bill Ryan is arrested in Adairville after he draws too much attention to himself. The news is bad but Bill refuses to talk and soon after Jesse and Wood Hite return to the Hite Farm with Wood's younger brother Clarence Hite and Jesse's brother Frank who has been lured out of his retirement as a farmer in Tennessee by his enthusiastic younger brother. Jesse has a summer of crime planned for his native Missouri.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and your two companions ride out to Mammoth Cave, a popular tourist destination. You all wait by the side of the road and when a stagecoach full of tourist approaches you all surround it, pistols in hands. Forcing the unarmed driver and passengers to disembark you relieve them of their money and valuables before riding cross-country back to the Hite Farm. Counting your loot there you find you have made off with $2,000, making your share $600. Back at the Hite Farm Jesse is not content with your takings and having learned there is a large sum of money held in a store in the nearby town of Mercer he decides to rob that as well. Again he chooses to take Bill with him and also Dick while Wood will remain at the Farm making sure the place remains safe and keeping a watch out for lawmen. Again Jesse offers you the choice of whether to join him and the others in the robbery or remain at the Farm. > You wait with Wood at the Hite Farm You stay with Wood at the Hite Farm while the others ride into Mercer to commit their robbery, only succeeding in robbing an already empty safe. Jesse is very put out but after a winter spent exploring various states he learns that a similar payroll is being transported to the town of Muscle Shoals in far-off Alabama, a long way from your usual operating places. Jesse is determined to get the money and decides to take the ever-loyal Bill and Wood Hite with him this time, leaving Dick Liddil at the Hite Farm. Again he offers you the choice of accompanying him or staying at the Hite Farm.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The new James Gang has not had a good start with Tucker Bassham arrested and Ed Miller killed by Jesse for threatening to betray the Gang, that just leaves you, Jesse, Jesse's cousin Wood Hite, the cunning Dick Liddil and the alcoholic Bill Ryan. The murder of his old friend Clell's brother seems to weigh heavily on Jesse's conscience and the usual energy and cheerfulness of his younger years seems to be fading from your friend as Jesse enters his thirties. He remains as decisive as ever though. "There are lots of stagecoaches in Kentucky and the authorities won't be expecting one of them to be robbed," he declares. "Bill Ryan, you and I will ride out and hold up a stagecoach over by Mammoth Caves, they are always packed full of rich tourists. Dick and Wood, I want you to stay here in case I need you. Bill Grey, you can join us if you want or you can stay here and lie low with the boys." > You stay with Wood and Dick at the Hite Farm You wait at the Hite Farm while Jesse and Bill pull off their robbery and rejoin you. Jesse has plans for another robbery and having learned there is a large sum of money held in a store in the nearby town of Mercer he decides to rob that as well. Again he chooses to take Bill with him and also Dick while Wood will remain at the Farm making sure the place remains safe and keeping a watch out for lawmen. Again Jesse offers you the choice of whether to join him and the others in the robbery or remain at the Farm.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You go with Tucker back to his farm, all the while having to endure his inane conversation conveying how excited he is by the amount of money you have made. He takes a shopping trip into Jackson and apparently brags loudly about taking part in the Glendale train robbery because the next morning there is a knock on his cabin door. When Tucker answers it you hear a man declare "Tucker Bassham, you are under arrest for train robbery." You spring to your feet and glance around, you are in your bedrrom a short way away and though there is only one door that leads into the kitchen where Tucker is there is a window. You could try jumping through the window to escape but it would make a loud noise and could be dangerous. > You surrender instead You meekly surrender to the lawmen and together with Tucker you are both conveyed to Jackson for your trial. The trial itself is a short affair thanks largely to Tucker's testimony which names you and every other participant in the Glendale train robbery. You are found guilty and sentenced to an incredibly lenient two years imprisonment as the Glendale robbery is the only crime you are charged with and found guilty of. During your imprisonment you read that Ed Miller's body was discovered in Missouri, apparently killed by Jesse James. Bill Ryan is arrested a year after you but the other gang members are still at large by the time you and Tucker are released in the winter of 1881. Tucker immmediately goes into hiding while you go to Missouri to join up with Jesse, Wood Hite and Dick Liddil. By this time Jesse has managed to expand his gang, persuading his brother Frank to join him, his cousin Clarence Hite (Wood's younger brother) and a friend of Dick Liddil's called Charley Ford have also joined the gang. Jesse is delighted to see you again and it doesn't take him long to persuade you to join him and the others in his latest train robbery planned in Missouri on the fifth anniversary of the disastrous Northfield Raid...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Returning to Missouri you meet your old friend for the first time in many years. Jesse hasn't changed at all, though he is now in his thirties and has grown a beard he maintains all his old enthusiasm, high-spirits and carefree attitude. Apparently Frank wants nothing more to do with crime and is enjoying his retirement in Tennessee but Jesse has formed a new gang of five men, making you the seventh member of the new James Gang. The new recruits don't impress you and are nowhere near as high quality as the Youngers or the other former members of the James-Younger Gang. The most reliable of the lot seems to be Wood Hite, Jesse's cousin and a former Guerrilla. Dick Liddil, a clever young man seems reliable enough while Bill Ryan, a hard-drinking admirer of Jesse also seems fairly dependable. The last two members of the Gang, Clell Miller's younger brother Ed Miller and a farmer called Tucker Bassham strike you as idiots and the absence of Frank James concerns you. Despite your worries your first robbery in three years goes very well: Jesse has decided to concentrate on trains rather than banks after his experience at Northfield and one winter's night you hold a train outside Glendale, using a red light to stop the train. You and Jesse quickly empty the Express Safe while the others guard the driver and passengers before you all mount your horses and escape cross-county. After several hours you pause to count the money, you have stolen $6,000 which makes your share $800. Jesse is pleased with the success of the robbery but cautions his new recruits. "This will get the law on our trail and when the papers learn I am behind it the whole state will be looking for us. It's best if we split up, Tucker you back to your farm at Jackson. Wood, Dick and Bill, you head up to Wood's family's place in Kentucky. Ed, you come with me, we'll go and hole up at your farm outside Norborne. Where you going to go Bill?" > You join Wood, Dick and Bill at the Hite Farm You and your new friends go to Wood's farm and lie low for a few months. You are startled to read that Tucker Bassham has been arrested in Missouri and promptly named you and every other participant in the Glendale train robbery; soon after you read that Ed Miller’s body has also been discovered in Missouri, allegedly killed by Jesse James. A few months later Jesse himself turns up at the Farm looking grim and full of plans for your next robbery.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Returning to Missouri you meet your old friend for the first time in many years. Jesse hasn't changed at all, though he is now in his thirties and has grown a beard he maintains all his old enthusiasm, high-spirits and carefree attitude. Apparently Frank wants nothing more to do with crime and is enjoying his retirement in Tennessee but Jesse has formed a new gang of five men, making you the seventh member of the new James Gang. The new recruits don't impress you and are nowhere near as high quality as the Youngers or the other former members of the James-Younger Gang. The most reliable of the lot seems to be Wood Hite, Jesse's cousin and a former Guerrilla. Dick Liddil, a clever young man seems reliable enough while Bill Ryan, a hard-drinking admirer of Jesse also seems fairly dependable. The last two members of the Gang, Clell Miller's younger brother Ed Miller and a farmer called Tucker Bassham strike you as idiots and the absence of Frank James concerns you. Despite your worries your first robbery in three years goes very well: Jesse has decided to concentrate on trains rather than banks after his experience at Northfield and one winter's night you hold a train outside Glendale, using a red light to stop the train. You and Jesse quickly empty the Express Safe while the others guard the driver and passengers before you all mount your horses and escape cross-county. After several hours you pause to count the money, you have stolen $6,000 which makes your share $800. Jesse is pleased with the success of the robbery but cautions his new recruits. "This will get the law on our trail and when the papers learn I am behind it the whole state will be looking for us. It's best if we split up, Tucker you back to your farm at Jackson. Wood, Dick and Bill, you head up to Wood's family's place in Kentucky. Ed, you come with me, we'll go and hole up at your farm outside Norborne. Where you going to go Bill?" > You join Jesse and Ed at the Miller Farm Jesse rents a small house on the outskirts of Norborne and together you, Jesse and Ed live there for a time. Ed is a heavy drinker and over time you notice he seems to hold you and Jesse responsible for the death of his brother Clell in the Northfield Bank Robbery three years ago. One night after an especially heavy drinking bout Ed threatens to tell local lawmen where you are all staying unless you give him money. Jesse takes you to one side and quietly declares he intends to kill Ed. He asks if you would be willing to help him. > You help Jesse kill Ed You and Jesse walk up behind Ed who is sitting in a chair. Without a word you both draw your pistols and shoot him in the head, killing him instantly. Wrapping the body in a blanket you dump it outside before saddling up and riding away, heading to the Hite Farm in Kentucky where Wood, Dick and Bill are staying. When you arrive you learn that Tucker Bassham has been arrested in Missouri and named all of you who took part in the Glendale robbery, worsening Jesse's already grim mood.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Jesse rents a small house on the outskirts of Norborne and together you, Jesse and Ed live there for a time. Ed is a heavy drinker and over time you notice he seems to hold you and Jesse responsible for the death of his brother Clell in the Northfield Bank Robbery three years ago. One night after an especially heavy drinking bout Ed threatens to tell local lawmen where you are all staying unless you give him money. Jesse takes you to one side and quietly declares he intends to kill Ed. He asks if you would be willing to help him. > You refuse to help murder your fellow gang member You return to the kitchen and join Ed sitting at the table. A moment later Jesse walks up behind Ed and without a word he draws his pistol and shoots him in the back of the head, killing him instantly. Wrapping the body in a blanket you dump it outside before saddling up and riding away, heading to the Hite Farm in Kentucky where Wood, Dick and Bill are staying. When you arrive you learn that Tucker Bassham has been arrested in Missouri and named all of you who took part in the Glendale robbery, worsening Jesse's already grim mood.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>By the time you and your surviving companions make it out of Northfield you are in a pretty bad way: Bill Chadwell and Clell Miller are dead and everyone except Jesse (and possibly you) has been wounded: Charlie and Frank have both been shot once, Bob twice, Jim three times and Cole a remarkable five times, though all his wounds are minor. The most serious wounds are Jim's and Bob's the latter of whom has had his right elbow completely shattered. Altogether you have managed to steal less than $27 dollars from the bank in Northfield. Perhaps worst of all your only guide to Minnesota, Bill Chadwell, is dead leaving all of you stranded in a hostile state with only the knowledge that you have to head in a generally southern direction to reach safety. You don't have a single friend in Northfield and within days thousands of men in hundreds of posses are combing Minnesota for you. The first week after your escape from Northfield requires all the knowledge that all of you (except Bob) gained during your four years as Guerrillas during the Civil War and your eleven years as outlaws since. Performing basic medical care for your injured and stealing a horse for Bob you manage to get the drop on one posse of several men who are hunting you, swiftly disarm them and ride off with their guns. Exchanging shots with another posse you escape during a rainstorm you pass yourselves off as a posse hunting the Northfield Robbers which goes well until one night when you camp on a small island and wake to find the island surrounded by hundreds of men. You only escape by unleashing your horses in one direction and swimming off in another, somehow escaping in the fog and the storm. After this narrow escape you spend a few days resting in an abandoned farmhouse before continuing, stealing horses along the way. By the 14th things are serious. Both Bob and Jim have become feverish from their untreated wounds and can only travel very slowly. Finally Cole turns to you and the others. "It's no good, we'll never get out of Minnesota going at this speed," he admits to you all. "Bill, it's better that you, Frank and Jesse ride ahead. You'll be moving faster, attracting more attention from the posses and meanwhile me, Jim and Bob can keep going in our own slow way and hopefully slip out of Minnesota unnoticed while all the posses are busy chasing you." You all consider the idea but Charlie shakes his head and declares that he wouldn't feel right abandoning the badly injured Younger Brothers. The James brothers have no problem with the plan and take all the Youngers money and personal possessions to give to their family in case the worst happens. Frank and Jesse decide to ride directly west towards the Dakotas and try to draw posses after them while the Youngers and Charlie continue south towards Iowa. You need to choose which group you will join. > You keep going south with Cole, Jim, Bob and Charlie You choose to remain with the Younger Brothers and Charlie while the James boys ride off. Initially the plan works well, continuing to head slowly south you rarely encounter posses now, most have them have drawn off west to chase Frank and Jesse. Unfortunately Bob and Jim's fever is continuing to worsen and you are moving slower than ever. One week after the James brothers split off you find yourselves approaching a copse of woods when a glance back shows a few hundred posse members armed with pistols, rifles and shotguns closing in on you. The four of you run into a thicket and take shelter behind a fallen tree. "If anyone wants to surrender they can," Cole suggests but you are all determined to go down fighting." As the posse fans out to surround the copse of trees where you are hiding and seven men armed with rifles approach on foot Cole sighs. "When they get close let them have it," he orders. "Bob, you reload our pistols. Ok boys get ready... now!" Cole fires his pistol, hitting one of the approaching posse in the hip. > You join the others in firing at the posse You fire your pistol over the dead-fall, one of your shots clipping a posse member in the side. The posse returns fire, the men in front firing from cover while those behind on a slight hill direct their fire over their heads. Your friends are hit several times: Cole is hit three times, Charlie four times and Jim once but you all keep firing. Charlie glances at Cole. "We are entirely surrounded and we had better surrender." Cole nods. "Charlie if you want to surrender go but this is where Cole Younger dies." "All right Captain, I can die as game as you can," Charlie replies. "Let's get it done." Springing to his feet with a pistol in each hand he opens fire, hitting one posse member in the hand. A moment later he is shot through the chest and with a groan he falls dead to the ground. A moment later Jim is shot in the face, the bullet knocking out several of his teeth and lodging in his head, clutching his face he falls to the ground. Cole turns to look at Jim and a bullet hits him in the back of the head, he too falls to the ground. Glancing round you catch Bob's frightened eyes looking at you. > You copy Charlie and spring to your feet guns blazing You spring to your feet, firing your pistols as fast as you can. One of your shots hits a posse member in the shoulder then someone shoots you in the chest, directly into your heart. You fall back behind the dead tree and as silence falls you quietly die, another Outlaw passing into the legend of the Old West.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fire your pistol over the dead-fall, one of your shots clipping a posse member in the side. The posse returns fire, the men in front firing from cover while those behind on a slight hill direct their fire over their heads. Your friends are hit several times: Cole is hit three times, Charlie four times and Jim once but you all keep firing. Charlie glances at Cole. "We are entirely surrounded and we had better surrender." Cole nods. "Charlie if you want to surrender go but this is where Cole Younger dies." "All right Captain, I can die as game as you can," Charlie replies. "Let's get it done." Springing to his feet with a pistol in each hand he opens fire, hitting one posse member in the hand. A moment later he is shot through the chest and with a groan he falls dead to the ground. A moment later Jim is shot in the face, the bullet knocking out several of his teeth and lodging in his head, clutching his face he falls to the ground. Cole turns to look at Jim and a bullet hits him in the back of the head, he too falls to the ground. Glancing round you catch Bob's frightened eyes looking at you. > You keep firing from behind cover You keep firing at the posse but a bullet passes over the dead tree to strike you in the upper chest and knocking you backwards onto the ground. You lie there among your fallen motionless companions as the guns slowly stop firing. You hear a voice shout out "do you men surrender?" A moment later Bob replies. "I surrender. They're all down but me. For God's sake don't shoot me too." You get a glimpse of Bob rising to his feet when suddenly a shot rings out hitting him in the chest and he falls to his knees. "Stop shooting," an angry voice yells. "Anyone else fires I'll shoot them!" A moment later a handsome young lawman climbs over the dead tree followed by his companions. "I was surrendering," Bob murmurs to him. "Someone shot me while I was surrendering." The posse members approach you and the others. Jim is moaning in pain, clutching his shattered jaw, while Cole tries to fight off two men who try to help him up. "Cole it's over," Bob tells him. "Give it up or they'll hang us for sure." Another two men lift you up, gasping in pain and barely aware of what is happening. The four of you and the dead Charlie are taken into a nearby town in a wagon. You all receive treatment: in the gunfights at Northfield and Hanska Slough Bob has suffered a total of three bullet wounds, Jim five and Cole a remarkable eleven while you have been shot at least once, possibly more at Northfield. It takes two months of medical treatment until the four of you are fit enough to stand trial. Meanwhile Frank and Jesse James succeed in escaping back to Missouri. Your trial is an open and shut case and it is only by pleading guilty to bank robbery and murder that you all avoid execution: instead you are sentenced to prison for twenty-five years, all of you always refuse to identify Frank and Jesse James as your fellow bank robbers in Northfield. While you serve your sentence you read how first Jesse and then Frank return to their outlaw careers. Jesse is finally betrayed and shot dead by his friend Robert Ford in April 1882 and Frank surrenders to the law six months later. After a series of lengthy trials Frank defeats all the charges against him and is released from custody in 1885. Though Bob dies in prison of tuberculosis, worsened by his chest injury, in 1889 you, Cole and Jim all survive to be paroled from prison in 1901. By this time you are over sixty and both the Younger Brothers are in their fifties. Jim doesn't enjoy his freedom: unable to marry the woman he loves because of his parole conditions he commits suicide a year after his release. As you and Cole enter the Twentieth Century you reflect over the lives you have led.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You choose to remain with the Younger Brothers and Charlie while the James boys ride off. Initially the plan works well, continuing to head slowly south you rarely encounter posses now, most have them have drawn off west to chase Frank and Jesse. Unfortunately Bob and Jim's fever is continuing to worsen and you are moving slower than ever. One week after the James brothers split off you find yourselves approaching a copse of woods when a glance back shows a few hundred posse members armed with pistols, rifles and shotguns closing in on you. The four of you run into a thicket and take shelter behind a fallen tree. "If anyone wants to surrender they can," Cole suggests but you are all determined to go down fighting." As the posse fans out to surround the copse of trees where you are hiding and seven men armed with rifles approach on foot Cole sighs. "When they get close let them have it," he orders. "Bob, you reload our pistols. Ok boys get ready... now!" Cole fires his pistol, hitting one of the approaching posse in the hip. > You help Bob reload the pistols You keep your head down and concentrate on helping Bob reload the pistols while your companions fire their guns. The posse returns fire, the men in front firing from cover while those behind on a slight hill direct their fire over their heads. Your friends are hit several times: Cole is hit three times, Charlie four times and Jim once but you all keep firing. Charlie glances at Cole. "We are entirely surrounded and we had better surrender." Cole nods. "Charlie if you want to surrender go but this is where Cole Younger dies." "All right Captain, I can die as game as you can," Charlie replies. "Let's get it done." Springing to his feet with a pistol in each hand he opens fire, hitting one posse member in the hand. A moment later he is shot through the chest and with a groan he falls dead to the ground. A moment later Jim is shot in the face, the bullet knocking out several of his teeth and lodging in his head, clutching his face he falls to the ground. Cole turns to look at Jim and a bullet hits him in the back of the head, he too falls to the ground. Glancing round you catch Bob's frightened eyes looking at you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Racing to the backdoor you point your pistol at the fleeing man and fire. The bullet hits the teller in the back of his shoulder, though the man stumbles he makes it to the edge of the street and vanishes round a corner. As you shut the door and go back inside the bank you can hear shots outside and suddenly Cole's voice yelling "Hurry up, they've given the alarm!" "God damn you, open the safe," Jesse barks at the teller on the floor and fires his pistol at the floor next to the man's head. You and Bob quickly scoop all the loose notes you can find off the counter while Frank and Jesse continue to threaten the fallen teller who bravely refuses to help them in any way. Dozens of gunshots are ringing out on the streets outside now and again you hear Cole's voice shouting "They're killing our men! Get out here!" "Fuck you," Jesse snarls, hitting the teller in the face again with his gun and then he and Bob give up and run out of the bank. As you are about to follow them you notice Frank massaging his wounded arm and eyeing the teller. "We should kill that son of a bitch," Frank says to you. > You leave him alone and make your escape You turn and run out of the bank, as you do you hear a gunshot behind you as Frank coldly executes the brave teller. Outside the bank you are greeted by a scene of utter pandemonium. Clell, Bill and a third man who looks like a citizen of the town are lying dead in the street; the rest of your Gang are riding their horses up and down firing their pistols up at the buildings where several men seemed to have armed themselves and are firing back. Bob's horse is lying dead and Bob himself runs off to find cover but your horse and Jesse's are still alive and you pull yourself onto your horse's back as Jesse does likewise with his. As Frank emerges from the bank and the gunfire intensifies you see that you have to get out of town fast or you will all be killed. "It's no use boys, lets clear out," you shout and spurring your horses into a gallop you concentrate on riding your horse out of time, quickly catching up with Charlie and Cole, the latter bleeding from several gunshot wounds. As you reach the edge of town you hear a scream behind you "Don't leave me boys, I've been shot!" Glancing back you realize you have all forgotten Bob who has sprung out of his hiding place and is sprinting down the street after you. "Shit," Cole mutters and glances at you and Charlie. "Cover me boys," he orders. Cole then does the most incredible thing you have ever seen someone do in real life: he spurs his horse directly back down the street towards his injured brother. Several men are shooting at them and though you and Charlie are firing your pistols at the buildings you might as well be throwing stones at them for all the good it does. Cole and Bob seem to be moving through a virtual rain of bullets. Bob stumbles as one shot hits his leg. Two more graze Cole's horse making it scream and rear but he keeps it under control. Reaching down he helps Bob climb onto his horse. As he does three more bullets hit Cole, the dust exploding from his clothes in small puffs as each bullet hits him. Gritting his teeth he turns his horse around and gallops straight back towards you and Charlie. The gunfire is directed at you two now: one bullet grazes Charlie's arm and another bullet whizzes right past your right ear. As Bob and Cole reach you both you turn horses around and gallop out of town after Frank, Jesse and Jim. Behind you leave the dead bodies of your two fellow outlaws and the shattered myth of the invincibility of the James-Younger Gang.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and your friends ride up to the bank, leave your horses tied up outside and go in. There are three tellers but no customers inside the bank and drawing your pistols you approach the tellers. "We're robbing this bank," Jesse declares. "Don't any of you holler, we've got forty men outside." The tellers raise their hands and Frank wanders inside the vault to look at the safe inside. As he does one of the tellers suddenly grabs the vault door and starts pulling it shut. Frank darts back and jams his arm forward as the teller slams the door on it, running forward Bob hits the teller with his pistol and knocks him to the floor. You all approach the fallen man, Frank angrily rubbing his crushed arm, and drawing a small knife from his pocket Jesse holds it to the injured teller's neck. "Open the safe or I'll cut your damn throat from ear to ear," Jesse snarls. "You'll have to cut my throat because I can't open the safe," the man replies bravely. A shot from outside makes you all glance at the door. As you do another of the tellers springs into action, and dashes away, through a back door and out into the street. "Get him," Jesse shouts. > You concentrate on getting all the money you can You ignore the fleeing man and begin scooping all the loose change you can find on the counter into a sack but Bob runs after him, stands in the back door of the bank and fires a shot at the fleeing man. Coming back inside the bank he slams the door. As he does you can hear shots outside and suddenly Cole's voice yelling "Hurry up, they've given the alarm!" "God damn you, open the safe," Jesse barks at the teller on the floor and fires his pistol at the floor next to the man's head. You and Bob quickly scoop all the loose notes you can find off the counter while Frank and Jesse continue to threaten the fallen teller who bravely refuses to help them in any way. Dozens of gunshots are ringing out on the streets outside now and again you hear Cole's voice shouting "They're killing our men! Get out here!" "Fuck you," Jesse snarls, hitting the teller in the face again with his gun and then he and Bob give up and run out of the bank. As you are about to follow them you notice Frank massaging his wounded arm and eyeing the teller. "We should kill that son of a bitch," Frank says to you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and your eight companions begin scouting towns in Minnesota for good banks to rob and settle on one in the town of Northfield. While you are in Minnesota you learn that Hoobs Kerry has been identified and arrested and has promptly identified each of the Gang including those who took part in the Otterville Train Robbery in exchange for a reduced sentence of two years imprisonment. You are all furious at Hoobs's betrayal but decide to go ahead with your plans anyway. As usual it's Jesse who makes the plans. "Folk in Minnesota will be on the lookout for nine men acting suspiciously so we won't all go in at once tomorrow," he declares. "Frank, Bob and myself will go into the bank while Cole and Clell hold the horses outside. Bill, Charlie and Jim, I want you to wait on the edge of town and if you hear any shooting come riding in like hell firing your pistols into the air to get those Yankee townsfolk off the streets. I know it's a big town boys but this is a rich bank and the money we should get is worth the risk. Bill, which group do you want to join?" > You join Cole and Clell in guarding the horses outside That morning you ride up to the bank and while your companions enter you, Clell and Cole wait outside. After a few moments two men approach the bank and though you and Clell move to intercept them the men are walking too fast and suddenly freeze as they witness your friends holding up the bank at gunpoint through the bank's glass windows. "Keep your damned mouths shut," Clell hisses and the men nod and start walking away when suddenly one of them starts shouting "Get your guns boys! They're robbing the bank!" Swearing Clell draws his pistol and fires a shot one of the men's head which misses. You, Cole and Clell quickly mount your horses and begin galloping up and dozen the street firing your pistols into the air and shouting "Get in, get in!" Alerted by the shot, Jim, Bill and Charlie gallop into town and begin imitating your tactics. Unfortunately for you and your friends the townsfolk quickly find their weapons and begin returning fire at you all from the safety of windows, doorways and store fronts. As he rides past the bank Cole shouts to the men inside "hurry up! They've given the alarm!" As you ride along the front of the bank you see a young man standing absolutely motionless nearby staring round in confusion. "Get off the damn street," Cole yells at him as he rides past but the man just steps at him before suddenly putting his hand into his pocket. > You shoot the man in the head Your shot hits the man in the head and he falls to the ground fatally wounded. You turn away just in time to see Clell get shot off his horse by a bullet fired from somewhere high. As you and Cole ride towards him and dismount Clell is in a bad way, lying on the ground with blood pouring from his face and shoulder. A quick check reveals he is indeed dead. Cole snatched up Clell's pistol and cartridge belt but as he does so a bullet hits his left leg. Glancing up you think you can see the man who shot and killed Clell. He is standing at an upper-story window rapidly reloading a rifle in his hands. Though it is a very difficult shot with a pistol you could try to shoot and kill him. > You fire up at the sniper You fire up at the man, missing, and a moment later he fires back, hitting you in the throat. You fall backwards to the ground, your pistol flying from your grasp. You are dimly aware of Cole at your side shouting something in your ear but you can't hear him. You quickly bleed to death as the gun battle rages on, one of five men killed on this bloody day.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your shot hits the man in the head and he falls to the ground fatally wounded. You turn away just in time to see Clell get shot off his horse by a bullet fired from somewhere high. As you and Cole ride towards him and dismount Clell is in a bad way, lying on the ground with blood pouring from his face and shoulder. A quick check reveals he is indeed dead. Cole snatched up Clell's pistol and cartridge belt but as he does so a bullet hits his left leg. Glancing up you think you can see the man who shot and killed Clell. He is standing at an upper-story window rapidly reloading a rifle in his hands. Though it is a very difficult shot with a pistol you could try to shoot and kill him. > You concentrate on finding cover You duck down behind your horse to avoid the sniper but behind you another of the townsfolk fires a shot that hits you in the right arm. Swearing you risk remounting your horse and gallop after Cole, who has also been hit again in the shoulder. Riding past the bank he shouts "They're killing our men! Get out here!" Continuing down the street, still firing your pistol, you pass the dead body of Bill Chadwell who is lying dead in the dirt and Jim Younger, still mounted on his horse but bleeding from multiple wounds. Finally Frank, Jesse and Bob emerge from the bank at a run and make it to their horses. "It's no use boys, let's go," you shout at them and turning your horse you spur it down the street leading out of town. You are soon joined by Charlie and Cole, the latter bleeding from several gunshot wounds. As you reach the edge of town you hear a scream behind you "Don't leave me boys, I've been shot!" Glancing back you realize you have all forgotten Bob who has sprung out of his hiding place and is sprinting down the street after you. "Shit," Cole mutters and glances at you and Charlie. "Cover me boys," he orders. Cole then does the most incredible thing you have ever seen someone do in real life: he spurs his horse directly back down the street towards his injured brother. Several men are shooting at them and though you and Charlie are firing your pistols at the buildings you might as well be throwing stones at them for all the good it does. Cole and Bob seem to be moving through a virtual rain of bullets. Bob stumbles as one shot hits his leg. Two more graze Cole's horse making it scream and rear but he keeps it under control. Reaching down he helps Bob climb onto his horse. As he does three more bullets hit Cole, the dust exploding from his clothes in small puffs as each bullet hits him. Gritting his teeth he turns his horse around and gallops straight back towards you and Charlie. The gunfire is directed at you two now: one bullet grazes Charlie's arm and another bullet whizzes right past your right ear. As Bob and Cole reach you both you turn horses around and gallop out of town after Frank, Jesse and Jim. Behind you leave the dead bodies of your two fellow outlaws and the shattered myth of the invincibility of the James-Younger Gang.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>That morning you ride up to the bank and while your companions enter you, Clell and Cole wait outside. After a few moments two men approach the bank and though you and Clell move to intercept them the men are walking too fast and suddenly freeze as they witness your friends holding up the bank at gunpoint through the bank's glass windows. "Keep your damned mouths shut," Clell hisses and the men nod and start walking away when suddenly one of them starts shouting "Get your guns boys! They're robbing the bank!" Swearing Clell draws his pistol and fires a shot one of the men's head which misses. You, Cole and Clell quickly mount your horses and begin galloping up and dozen the street firing your pistols into the air and shouting "Get in, get in!" Alerted by the shot, Jim, Bill and Charlie gallop into town and begin imitating your tactics. Unfortunately for you and your friends the townsfolk quickly find their weapons and begin returning fire at you all from the safety of windows, doorways and store fronts. As he rides past the bank Cole shouts to the men inside "hurry up! They've given the alarm!" As you ride along the front of the bank you see a young man standing absolutely motionless nearby staring round in confusion. "Get off the damn street," Cole yells at him as he rides past but the man just steps at him before suddenly putting his hand into his pocket. > You ignore him You turn away but seconds later you hear a gunshot and glancing back you find the young man shot through the head and lying motionless on the street. You turn away, this time just in time to see Clell get shot off his horse by a bullet fired from somewhere high. As you and Cole ride towards him and dismount Clell is in a bad way, lying on the ground with blood pouring from his face and shoulder. A quick check reveals he is indeed dead. Cole snatched up Clell's pistol and cartridge belt but as he does so a bullet hits his left leg. Glancing up you think you can see the man who shot and killed Clell. He is standing at an upper-story window rapidly reloading a rifle in his hands. Though it is a very difficult shot you could try to kill him.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and your eight companions begin scouting towns in Minnesota for good banks to rob and settle on one in the town of Northfield. While you are in Minnesota you learn that Hoobs Kerry has been identified and arrested and has promptly identified each of the Gang including those who took part in the Otterville Train Robbery in exchange for a reduced sentence of two years imprisonment. You are all furious at Hoobs's betrayal but decide to go ahead with your plans anyway. As usual it's Jesse who makes the plans. "Folk in Minnesota will be on the lookout for nine men acting suspiciously so we won't all go in at once tomorrow," he declares. "Frank, Bob and myself will go into the bank while Cole and Clell hold the horses outside. Bill, Charlie and Jim, I want you to wait on the edge of town and if you hear any shooting come riding in like hell firing your pistols into the air to get those Yankee townsfolk off the streets. I know it's a big town boys but this is a rich bank and the money we should get is worth the risk. Bill, which group do you want to join?" > You join Jim, Bill and Charlie waiting on the edge of town You join Jim, Bill and Charlie on the edge of town hoping the alarm will not be raised requiring you all to ride into town. Unfortunately, mere moments into the robbery, you hear a gunshot which is the signal for all of you ride into town. Spurring your horses into a gallop and drawing your pistols you ride down the street, firing your guns into the air and shouting for townsfolk to get off the street. Unfortunately by the time you all arrive the situation has degenerated into an all-out battle. Townsfolk have taken cover in buildings up and down the street, grabbed their weapons and are firing back at you all. Jim is hit in the left shoulder as you all gallop down the street and you are fired at by some people who have taken shelter in stores further down the street. Bill reins his horse to a halt and taking careful aim at the people he fires back at them with his pistol while Jim and Charlie keep riding on. > You join Bill in firing at the people in the building You and Bill halt and fire your pistols at the people in the store but unfortunately there are several of them, they are behind cover adn they are armed with rifles. First Bill and then you are hit in the chest and with a wet gasp you fall from your horse onto the ground. Shot through the heart you rapidly bleed to death as the gunfight rages on.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You join Jim, Bill and Charlie on the edge of town hoping the alarm will not be raised requiring you all to ride into town. Unfortunately, mere moments into the robbery, you hear a gunshot which is the signal for all of you ride into town. Spurring your horses into a gallop and drawing your pistols you ride down the street, firing your guns into the air and shouting for townsfolk to get off the street. Unfortunately by the time you all arrive the situation has degenerated into an all-out battle. Townsfolk have taken cover in buildings up and down the street, grabbed their weapons and are firing back at you all. Jim is hit in the left shoulder as you all gallop down the street and you are fired at by some people who have taken shelter in stores further down the street. Bill reins his horse to a halt and taking careful aim at the people he fires back at them with his pistol while Jim and Charlie keep riding on. > You keep riding on You keep riding and hear a boom of a rifle and see Bill fall from his saddle dead to the ground. As you all reach the bank several more shots are fired at you: Jim is hit in his other shoulder and a bullet grazes your right hip making you wince. Outside the bank Clell Miller and another man are lying dead in the street while, Cole bleeding from his own wounds, is outside the bank firing his pistol into the air. As you arrive Bob, Jesse and Frank emerge from the banks and mount their horses, except Bob whose horse has been killed so he takes shelter under some wooden stairs. "It's no use boys, let's go," you shout at everyone and turning your horse you spur it down the street leading out of town. You are soon joined by Charlie and Cole, the latter bleeding from several gunshot wounds. As you reach the edge of town you hear a scream behind you "Don't leave me boys, I've been shot!" Glancing back you realize you have all forgotten Bob who has sprung out of his hiding place and is sprinting down the street after you. "Shit," Cole mutters and glances at you and Charlie. "Cover me boys," he orders. Cole then does the most incredible thing you have ever seen someone do in real life: he spurs his horse directly back down the street towards his injured brother. Several men are shooting at them and though you and Charlie are firing your pistols at the buildings you might as well be throwing stones at them for all the good it does. Cole and Bob seem to be moving through a virtual rain of bullets. Bob stumbles as one shot hits his leg. Two more graze Cole's horse making it scream and rear but he keeps it under control. Reaching down he helps Bob climb onto his horse. As he does three more bullets hit Cole, the dust exploding from his clothes in small puffs as each bullet hits him. Gritting his teeth he turns his horse around and gallops straight back towards you and Charlie. The gunfire is directed at you two now: one bullet grazes Charlie's arm and another bullet whizzes right past your right ear. As Bob and Cole reach you both you turn horses around and gallop out of town after Frank, Jesse and Jim. Behind you leave the dead bodies of your two fellow outlaws and the shattered myth of the invincibility of the James-Younger Gang.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Leaving Jim behind you join the rest of the gang in holding up the train outside Otterville. As usual the robbery goes smoothly: after forcing the train to halt you and the James brothers empty the Express Safe while the Youngers guard the train staff and the others hold the horses. Mounting up you ride cross-country, easily eluding pursuit, and once you are well clear of Otterville. You have got away with a good haul: $15,000, which makes your share $1,600. You are all ready now to make the trip up to Minnesota and even Jim joins you to help protect his brothers. At the last moment Hoobs gets cold feet, he has been nervous ever since the train robbery and he insists on staying behind at his farm in Missouri. You and the other outlaws are not impressed but since you can't force him to go with you if he doesn't want to you all agree to let him back out of the planned robbery and make preparations to head up to Minnesota without him. > You stay behind with Hoobs in Missouri The others are disappointed by your decision but accept it and you choose to stay behind at the Kerry Farm with Hoobs. One morning you are in the kitchen when there is a knock on the front door. When Hoobs goes to answer it you hear a voice cry out "Hoobs Kerry, you are under arrest!" Springing quietly to your feet you quickly consider your options. There are two doors out of the kitchen, one to a pantry and one leading outside, you can either hide in the pantry or run out the back door and make for the nearby woods. > You hide in the pantry Quickly and quietly you cross the room, slip inside the pantry and close the door behind you. Unfortunately for you the lawmen search the house to see if anyone is hiding there and soon discover your hiding place. Dragged out you are taken into custody with Hoobs Kerry who soon starts singing like a canary, identifying all the members of the James-Younger Gang including you and claiming you took part in the Otterville Train Robbery, whether you did or not. Your trial is a foregone conclusion so you plead guilty to armed robbery of a train and escape with the incredibly light sentence of two years imprisonment. While you are in prison the rest of the gang tries to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota but the alarm is raised and an epic gunfight breaks out. Bill and Clell are killed and soon after Charlie is killed and Cole, Bob and Jim are all wounded and captured in a second major gunfight. Only Frank and Jesse James succeed in escaping Minnesota and when you are released in 1878 you immediately return to Missouri to rejoin them, Hoobs has already been released and gone into hiding. By the following year Jesse has formed a new Gang and he invites you to join them.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The others are disappointed by your decision but accept it and you choose to stay behind at the Kerry Farm with Hoobs. One morning you are in the kitchen when there is a knock on the front door. When Hoobs goes to answer it you hear a voice cry out "Hoobs Kerry, you are under arrest!" Springing quietly to your feet you quickly consider your options. There are two doors out of the kitchen, one to a pantry and one leading outside, you can either hide in the pantry or run out the back door and make for the nearby woods. > You run out the back door Opening the back door silently you slip outside, shut the door and run for the safety of some nearby woodland. You escape completely and stealing a horse you set off up to Minnesota after your companions. You manage to catch up with them and breathlessly tell them the story of Hoobs's capture. You all decide to go ahead with your robbery plans anyway and continue on up to Minnesota and begin looking for banks to rob.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and the other nine members of the James-Younger Gang who gather in an empty cabin on the edge of Otterville are the most wanted men in America. Jesse, grinning and carefree sits next to a dour and frowning Frank. Cole, tough and capable sits between his handsome, young brother Bob and his other brother Jim who looks like he is wishing he could be somewhere else. The joker Clell Miller and the tall Bill Chadwell are gazing at Jesse with something like adoration while the silent Charlie Pitts sits with them. Finally you are sitting next to the newest member of the Gang, another former Guerrilla but a bit of a weak link called Hoobs Kerry. "Boys, we've had a turbulent couple of years but we sure are taking the fight to the Yankees, America's never known bandits like us before," Jesse declares. "My idea for this year is that we rob a train here in Missouri first and then go all the way up to Minnesota and rob one of those fat Northern banks up there. Bill here is from Minnesota and knows the area well and together the ten of us are unbeatable! We'll pull off a crime so audacious all of America will be talking about it!" "I'm only here to try and stop you from getting my brothers Cole and Bob killed the way you got John killed," Jim Younger says dourly. "You can rob your train here without me." "Well I'm sorry you feel that way Jim," Jesse says, his smile not even flickering. "What do the rest of you say? You're all in aren't you?" Everyone else agrees and then it's your turn. > You join Jim in sitting this robbery out You hide out with Jim at Hoob Kerry's Farm while the others pull off the robbery and rejoin you. You are all ready now to make the trip up to Minnesota and even Jim joins you to help protect his brothers. At the last moment Hoobs gets cold feet, he has been nervous ever since the train robbery and he insists on staying behind at his farm in Missouri. You and the other outlaws are not impressed but since you can't force him to go with you if he doesn't want to you all agree to let him back out of the planned robbery and make preparations to head up to Minnesota without him.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You keep riding but a yell behind you makes you glance back: Tom McDaniels has been shot in the chest and he slowly falls from his horse to the ground. You and your surviving companions concentrate on outracing your pursuers across the prairie and though they follow you all day at nightfall they finally break off the pursuit. Weary and exhausted you stop to count the money you have stolen: though you made off with $10,000 from the bank Tom was carrying some of it when he was shot so your share of the robbery is only $2,000. "We need to split up in case they keep coming after us," Cole says wearily. "Frank and I will keep going west into Kentucky, Tom you turn south and head into Tennessee. Keep a low profile and we will all meet up together again back in Missouri. This could be desperate work." You consider who you will go with. > You go south into Tennessee with Tom Webb You and Tom split off from the other two and ride south. For five days you make your way out of West Virginia and across Tennessee until you feel confident you have left your pursuit behind you but you are mistaken. One afternoon as you are trotting your horses along a rocky hill path several lawmen suddenly rise from behind several rocks to your right and level their rifles at you. "Throw up your hands gentlemen," one of the lawmen calls out. "You are under arrest." After a moment's hesitation Tom raises his hands. He is between you and the lawmen giving you a little time and glancing to your left you see the hillside descends steeply into a tree-lined valley. You could spur your horse down into the valley but it would be very dangerous and if you horse trips or fall he could roll down the hill, killing you both. As the lawmen approach slowly and cautiously you know you only have seconds to decide. > You surrender like Tom Meekly you raise your hands into the air and together with Tom you are taken into custody. Imprisoned in Nashville you are put on trial and witnesses from Huntingdon swiftly identify both of you as men who helped rob the bank. You both refuse to name your fellow outlaws and together you are both sentenced to eight years imprisonment for armed robbery. This effectively ends your outlaw career and until 1883 you are forced to perform hard labor in the prison. Over the following years your companions are all captured or killed. Bill, Clell and Charlie are killed and Bob, Cole and Jim are captured following a failed bank robbery in Minnesota the year after your capture. Frank and Jesse remain at large for another six years until Jesse is murdered by a friend of his called Robert Ford while he hangs a picture on the wall and to avoid the same fate Frank surrenders himself. Finally the long years of prison end and in the winter of 1883 you and Tom are released. Frank soon after is acquitted after a series of trials and both of you decide to renounce your outlaw ways and enter into a peaceful retirement.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and Tom split off from the other two and ride south. For five days you make your way out of West Virginia and across Tennessee until you feel confident you have left your pursuit behind you but you are mistaken. One afternoon as you are trotting your horses along a rocky hill path several lawmen suddenly rise from behind several rocks to your right and level their rifles at you. "Throw up your hands gentlemen," one of the lawmen calls out. "You are under arrest." After a moment's hesitation Tom raises his hands. He is between you and the lawmen giving you a little time and glancing to your left you see the hillside descends steeply into a tree-lined valley. You could spur your horse down into the valley but it would be very dangerous and if you horse trips or fall he could roll down the hill, killing you both. As the lawmen approach slowly and cautiously you know you only have seconds to decide. > You risk spurring your horse down the slope You spur your horse down the slope and the lawmen cry in alarm as you vanish from sight. Bounding and slipping your horse takes you down the slope in what seems mere seconds and you are in the safety of the trees. Riding as fast as you dare through the woodland you make it to safety and escape from Tennessee back to Missouri. You later read that Tom Webb was found guilty of armed robbery and sentenced to eight years imprisonment, true to the rest of you he doesn't identify his fellow outlaws. You hide out in Missouri over the winter and spring until in the summer the gang re-gathers again in the little Missouri town of Otterville.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your aim is perfect and Ladd jerks as four bullets slam into his chest, knocking him to the ground. Fleeing the property you decide it is better to get out of Missouri and heading south to join Bob and Cole. Most of the newspapers, which were initially supportive of the James brothers after the attack on their family, are outraged by the two murders and urge people everywhere to shoot any member of the James-Younger Gang on sight. Going down to the McDaniels Farm you meet up with Bob, Cole and their host Tom McDaniels, brother of the slain Bud. Together with another friend and war veteran called Tom Webb the group are planning to rob a bank in West Virginia, far from your usual raiding areas. Frank likes the idea but uncharacteristically Bob, Clell and Jesse think it is better to lay low for a spell until the attention of the Pinkertons has worn off. You will have to choose who to join. > You lie low with Jesse, Clell and Bob in Missouri You decide to stay in Missouri with your friends and hide out at the Farm of Hoobs Kerry, another former Guerrilla but a bit of a flake. The others travel to West Virginia and pull off their robbery but during their escape Tom McDaniels is shot and killed by a posse and Tom Webb is captured: only Frank and Cole make it back to Missouri. You spend the rest of the year and the first half of 1876 resting until Jesse summons all the Gang together for a meeting to plan your next robberies in the small Missouri town of Otterville.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Raising your pistol you shoot the old farmer in the head killing him. Fleeing the scene rapidly you and your companions take to the woods where you live in hiding. Reading newspapers you learn that the Pinkerton Detective Agency are sending one of their Agents, Jack Ladd, to investigate Dan Askew's murder. As Ladd also took part in the attack on the James Family Farm Frank and Jesse see more opportunity for revenge and decide to kill the Pinkerton as well. Returning to the Askew Property armed with rifles you and your companions sneak through the trees and get yourself into a position from which you can see the farm house. You watch it for several hours until finally a man in a smart suit who you recognize as Ladd from the newspaper photographs emerges from the front door. "Now," Jesse murmurs and all of you raise your rifles. You consider whether or not to fire at the unsuspecting man. > You let the others kill him You hold back from firing but the others don't and Ladd jerks as three bullets slam into his chest, knocking him to the ground. Fleeing the property you decide it is better to get out of Missouri and heading south to join Bob and Cole. Most of the newspapers, which were initially supportive of the James brothers after the attack on their family, are outraged by the two murders and urge people everywhere to shoot any member of the James-Younger Gang on sight. Going down to the McDaniels Farm you meet up with Bob, Cole and their host Tom McDaniels, brother of the slain Bud. Together with another friend and war veteran called Tom Webb the group are planning to rob a bank in West Virginia, far from your usual raiding areas. Frank likes the idea but uncharacteristically Bob, Clell and Jesse think it is better to lay low for a spell until the attention of the Pinkertons has worn off. You will have to choose who to join.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You go with the James boys and Clell to hide out near St Joseph where you read in newspapers that Bud was identified as one of the Muncie train robbers and shot while trying to escape prison in Kansas City. His death saddens you all and drives you into hiding but in January 1875 you read even more incredible news in the newspapers. Suspecting that you and the others are in the area a small army of Pinkerton Agents surrounded the James Farm and blew it up with some kind of explosive. The explosion killed Frank and Jesse's eight year old brother Archie and tore their elderly mother Zerelda's right arm off. Frank and especially Jesse are overwhelmed with rage when they learn of the cowardly attack and Jesse's first reaction is to kill every single Pinkerton Detective involved in the raid. After calming a little he decides to settle for killing his neighbor Dan Askew who is wildly known to have allowed the Pinkertons to use his Farm as a base from which to launch the raid. One night the four of you approach the Askew Farm and knock on the door. When the old farmer opens his front door Jesse shoots him in the chest. > You let Jesse finish him off Jesse shoots the old man twice more in the chest and he falls dead to the ground. Fleeing the scene rapidly you and your companions take to the woods where you live in hiding. Reading newspapers you learn that the Pinkerton Detective Agency are sending one of their Agents, Jack Ladd, to investigate Dan Askew's murder. As Ladd also took part in the attack on the James Family Farm Frank and Jesse see more opportunity for revenge and decide to kill the Pinkerton as well. Returning to the Askew Property armed with rifles you and your companions sneak through the trees and get yourself into a position from which you can see the farm house. You watch it for several hours until finally a man in a smart suit who you recognize as Ladd from the newspaper photographs emerges from the front door. "Now," Jesse murmurs and all of you raise your rifles. You consider whether or not to fire at the unsuspecting man.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>One winter's day you and your companions ride out to the train tracks near the town of Muncie. You start a fire right next to the tracks and hide in the trees: sure enough when the train comes down the line the driver sees the fire and stops the train. While Bob and Cole take the driver hostage you, Frank and Jesse board the Express Carriage and capture the messenger at gunpoint. Quickly emptying the contents of the safe into a sack you leave the train, all of you running back to where Bud and Clell are holding your horses. You ride a long distance from Muncie before you stop to count the money and when you do you discover you have really hit the jackpot big time: you have stolen $55,000 from the train, making your share a whopping $7,800. Everyone, especially Bud, are very happy but you know it is time to split up again. Frank, Jesse and Clell decide to hide out with friends near St Joseph, Missouri, Bud McDaniels declares he intends to rent a hotel room in Kansas City while Bob and Cole decide they are going down to Texas to stay with their old friend Bud's brother Tom McDaniels. You need to choose who to join. > You go with Bud to Kansas City You join Bud in going to Kansas City where you both check into a hotel and begin celebrating your success at the train robbery by frequenting local bars. Unfortunately one night Bud drinks too much and brags to some girls that he helped rob the Muncie Train, they promptly tell some local lawmen. That night you are woken by a fist slamming against your hotel door and a voice calls out "This is the law Bill Grey, come out with your hands up in ten seconds or we start shooting!" You spring from your bed and glance around the room, the only exit apart from the door is the window but you are on the first floor and could hurt yourself quite badly if you try jumping out. > You surrender to the lawmen "Ok, I'm coming out," you call wearily and open the hotel door to find a pistol pointing at your face. You and Bud are promptly taken to the Kansas City Jail but as you are taken to a cell a commotion breaks out a few cells away as a prisoner grabs a policeman who has got too close to the cells. The two lawmen escorting you and Bud promptly abandon you both to go and deal with the situation. Though handcuffed you both immediately take advantage of the situation and make a break for the unlocked front door of the Jail. Seeing what you are doing the lawmen shout in alarm and as you race down the street a shotgun blast suddenly fires behind you. The charge hits Bud in the back, nearly cutting him in half as he flies to the ground dead. You glance back and see a Deputy standing in the Jail doorway re-cocking his shotgun for another shot. An alleyway opens to your left and you could dart down that or you could keep going towards a horse tied to a hitching post a short way further down the street. > You dart down the alley You reach the alley and dart down it just as the lawman fires again, the shotgun pellets whistling harmlessly across the mouth of the alley behind you. Racing down the alley and then through a tangle of streets you manage to find an unguarded horse, steal it and ride out of Kansas City. You find a blacksmith who can remove your handcuffs and unnerved by your narrow escape you spend the next year in hiding in Kansas until in the summer of 1876 you get a letter from Jesse telling you the Gang is gathering in Otterville, Missouri. Reluctantly you return to your outlaw life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Ok, I'm coming out," you call wearily and open the hotel door to find a pistol pointing at your face. You and Bud are promptly taken to the Kansas City Jail but as you are taken to a cell a commotion breaks out a few cells away as a prisoner grabs a policeman who has got too close to the cells. The two lawmen escorting you and Bud promptly abandon you both to go and deal with the situation. Though handcuffed you both immediately take advantage of the situation and make a break for the unlocked front door of the Jail. Seeing what you are doing the lawmen shout in alarm and as you race down the street a shotgun blast suddenly fires behind you. The charge hits Bud in the back, nearly cutting him in half as he flies to the ground dead. You glance back and see a Deputy standing in the Jail doorway re-cocking his shotgun for another shot. An alleyway opens to your left and you could dart down that or you could keep going towards a horse tied to a hitching post a short way further down the street. > You make for the horse You keep running down the street but the shotgun explodes into life behind you. Dozens of tiny razor-sharp pellets tear through your back and emerge out your chest, shredding your heart and other organs. The blast throws you down onto the street and kills you in an instant of oblivion, conclusively ending your attempt to escape justice.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You join Bud in going to Kansas City where you both check into a hotel and begin celebrating your success at the train robbery by frequenting local bars. Unfortunately one night Bud drinks too much and brags to some girls that he helped rob the Muncie Train, they promptly tell some local lawmen. That night you are woken by a fist slamming against your hotel door and a voice calls out "This is the law Bill Grey, come out with your hands up in ten seconds or we start shooting!" You spring from your bed and glance around the room, the only exit apart from the door is the window but you are on the first floor and could hurt yourself quite badly if you try jumping out. > You risk the jump Opening the window wide you slip your legs over the sill, brace yourself and slide down. You fall straight down fifteen feet and land in a crouching position, badly spraining your right wrist. Hissing in pain you spring to your feet as you hear your hotel door burst open above you and slip down an alleyway. Racing through the streets you find and steal a horse before riding out of town. A few days later when you are in another town you learn that Bud McDaniels was arrested and killed trying to escape. Your latest narrow escape has made you wary of fresh crimes for a while and you spend a year drifting around Kansas while your fellow gang members pull off more robberies and crimes. Finally in the summer of 1876 Jesse summons the whole gang together to meet in the little town of Otterville, Missouri to plan your most daring crimes yet.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>One winter's day you and your companions ride out to the train tracks near the town of Muncie. You start a fire right next to the tracks and hide in the trees: sure enough when the train comes down the line the driver sees the fire and stops the train. While Bob and Cole take the driver hostage you, Frank and Jesse board the Express Carriage and capture the messenger at gunpoint. Quickly emptying the contents of the safe into a sack you leave the train, all of you running back to where Bud and Clell are holding your horses. You ride a long distance from Muncie before you stop to count the money and when you do you discover you have really hit the jackpot big time: you have stolen $55,000 from the train, making your share a whopping $7,800. Everyone, especially Bud, are very happy but you know it is time to split up again. Frank, Jesse and Clell decide to hide out with friends near St Joseph, Missouri, Bud McDaniels declares he intends to rent a hotel room in Kansas City while Bob and Cole decide they are going down to Texas to stay with their old friend Bud's brother Tom McDaniels. You need to choose who to join. > You go with Bob and Cole to Texas You and your two friends go to Tom McDaniels's house where you lie low together with another friend of Tom's and a fellow war veteran called Tom Webb. You read in the papers that Bud McDaniels was recognized as a train robber in Kansas City and killed while trying to escape arrest. Bud is very sad to hear about the death of his brother. You are all soon joined by Frank, Jesse and Clell who have fled Missouri after killing two men including a Pinkerton Agent. You, Cole and the two Tom's have developed a plan to rob a bank in West Virginia which is far from your usual hunting areas and hopefully not as well protected. You explain the plan to the others but only Frank is keen, unusually Jesse, Bob and Clell think it is better that you lie low for the rest of the year and start robbing targets again next year. Finally only Frank, Cole, Tom McDaniels and Tom Webb agree to the idea while Jesse, Bob and Clell announce they are going to hide out in Missouri.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Riding into the town of Austin you and your companions make inquiries about the local stagecoach routes before heading south and hiding in some trees to waylay a coach on its route. The hold-up goes smoothly, the coach is stopped and the passengers forced to dismount before being stripped of their valuables. Mounting up your ride cross-country before catching a train and rejoining Frank and Cole at the McDaniels Farm. During the ride you count the loot to find you have stolen $3,000, making your share $500. The success of the robbery has encouraged Frank and Cole to join in fresh robberies and you soon have a new gang member in the form of Bud McDaniels, the cheerful life-long friend of the Younger family. Together you all plan a daring train robbery in Kansas but Bill and Charlie prefer to lay low this time and return to their hiding place at Charlie's farm as they are both enjoying the fact they haven't been identified as outlaws yet and have safety in their anonymity. You need to choose which group you join. > You join Bill and Charlie in hiding out at the Pitts's Farm You hide out with Bill Chadwell and Charlie Pitts at Charlie's farm, mostly staying in and around the property while the others do the chores of going into town for supplies and newspapers. You become reliant on the newspapers, reading avidly about the rest of the gang's crimes but rarely seeing your fellow outlaws until after two years you are starting to go stir-crazy. You persuade Bill and Charlie to join you in robbing a bank in the little town of Baxter Springs, Kansas. One spring morning you lead your companions into the little town of Baxter Springs and dismount outside the town bank. While Bill holds the horses you and Charlie walk into the bank, draw your pistols, take the lone teller hostage and loot the safe. After locking the teller inside you all ride out of town, traveling cross-country until you get to a safe place where you can count the money. You find that you have stolen $3,000, making your share $1,000 - not bad for a morning's work! You return to the Pitts Farm for a few months until a letter arrives from Jesse telling you that the Gang is gathering in Otterville, Missouri to plan it's most daring robberies yet!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Hiding out at the Pitts Farm you feel confident of avoiding detection because though both you and Clell are well-known outlaws Bill Chadwell and Charlie Pitts have never been connected with any crime and you rely on those two to go into town for all your supplies and newspapers. You read how the James and Younger boys continue to pull robberies in Arkansas and Missouri but there are consequences: the Pinkerton Detective Agency is hired to bring you and your companions to justice. Frank and Jesse kill one Pinkerton Agent near their Farm but a second gunfight claims the lives of two more lawmen and John Younger near the Younger Farm, Jim Younger being the sole survivor. A letter arrives from Jesse telling you all to meet the rest of the gang in Texas and when you reunite the Gang is a grim bunch. All the remaining Younger Brothers are saddened by John's death with Jim openly blaming Frank and Jesse for getting him mixed up in robberies and swearing he wants nothing more to do with either of them and that he's going to California. Frank and Cole also think it's better that you all lie low for a time at the farm of their friend Bud McDaniels but not Jesse: he sees it as the best way to avenge John is to pull another robbery and the newer members of the gang, Clell, Charlie, Bill and Bob Younger all agree to join him in robbing a stagecoach here in Texas. You need to choose who you join. > You join Frank and Cole at the McDaniels Farm You stay at the McDaniels Farm and soon learn that the robbery of a stagecoach in Texas went off without a hitch when the rest of the gang (bar Jim Younger who is still in California) rejoin you at the McDaniels Farm. The success of the robbery has encouraged Frank and Cole to join in fresh robberies and you soon have a new gang member in the form of Bud McDaniels, the cheerful life-long friend of the Younger family. Together you all plan a daring train robbery in Kansas but Bill and Charlie prefer to lay low this time and return to their hiding place at Charlie's farm as they are both enjoying the fact they haven't been identified as outlaws yet and have safety in their anonymity. You need to choose which group you join.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Hiding out at the Pitts Farm you feel confident of avoiding detection because though both you and Clell are well-known outlaws Bill Chadwell and Charlie Pitts have never been connected with any crime and you rely on those two to go into town for all your supplies and newspapers. You read how the James and Younger boys continue to pull robberies in Arkansas and Missouri but there are consequences: the Pinkerton Detective Agency is hired to bring you and your companions to justice. Frank and Jesse kill one Pinkerton Agent near their Farm but a second gunfight claims the lives of two more lawmen and John Younger near the Younger Farm, Jim Younger being the sole survivor. A letter arrives from Jesse telling you all to meet the rest of the gang in Texas and when you reunite the Gang is a grim bunch. All the remaining Younger Brothers are saddened by John's death with Jim openly blaming Frank and Jesse for getting him mixed up in robberies and swearing he wants nothing more to do with either of them and that he's going to California. Frank and Cole also think it's better that you all lie low for a time at the farm of their friend Bud McDaniels but not Jesse: he sees it as the best way to avenge John is to pull another robbery and the newer members of the gang, Clell, Charlie, Bill and Bob Younger all agree to join him in robbing a stagecoach here in Texas. You need to choose who you join. > You go to California with Jim Younger You travel with Jim out to California where the pair of you purchase a cabin, a tract of land and live a quiet life as farmers for two years. You continue to read about your companions committing more crimes but continuing to elude capture. Finally a letter arrives from Bob urging you both to return to Missouri where the Gang are planning their most daring crimes yet. "We'll have to go," Jim says with a great sigh. "I'll never forgive myself if the law catches or kills Bob and Cole like it did with John and I'm not there to help them." Reluctantly the pair of you leave your peaceful lives in California and in the summer of 1876 you return to Missouri to return to the outlaw life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Taking the hammer and the bar you pry up several rails and toss them to one side. You and the rest of the Gang then take cover in the trees near the track and wait for the train. When the train comes down the line you are astonished by how fast it is going. The driver sees the damage to the track and slams on the brakes but the train is going too fast: to your astonishment the locomotive shoots off the end of the broken line and crashes down onto it's side with an ear-splitting crash, as does the first passenger carriage. The noise is indescribable. The train has come to a complete halt with the front two carriages on their side and you and your deafened companions emerge stunned from the trees. While Bill, Charlie, Bob and Jim hold the horses and Jesse leads most of the rest towards the Express Carriage at the rear of the train you and Frank jog to the crashed locomotive and peer inside. The sight sickens you, the driver has been literally crushed to death and the fireman has been badly hurt, bleeding freely from his head. You are still shaken by the time you return to the woods and are rejoined by Jesse and the others. Mounting up you ride away from the train you have just wrecked and ride nonstop for several hours to get to safety. When you count the money you are disappointed to find the train was not carrying a lot, just $3,000 which is divided between the ten of you to make your share $300. Despite the small profits from this you know this brazen robbery will increase your already great fame and notoriety. Bill, Clell and Charlie are all a bit unnerved by the attention this crime will bring and decide they will all go and hide out at Charlie's farm in Missouri. Jesse, as usual, is delighted and indifferent to the fact the robbery has led to another death. He intends for himself, Frank, Bob, Cole, Jim and John (all the James and Younger brothers) to ride south into Arkansas to rob a stagecoach, another type of crime the Gang haven't committed before which Jesse hopes will lead to more fame. It is up to you whether or not you want to go into hiding or join in the crime spree. > You join Frank, Jesse, Bob, Cole, Jim and John in robbing a stagecoach in Arkansas Crossing the border into Arkansas you and your companions continue your crime spree by holding up a stagecoach one night outside the town of Hot Springs. After stopping the coach you all force the passengers to disembark at gunpoint and relieve them of their money and valuables. Escaping back across the border to Missouri you count the loot and find you have gotten away with $2,000, which split seven ways makes your share $200. Jesse now has plans to rob another train. > Another Train Job At a little community called Gad's Hill you, Frank and Jesse board the night train, having come up with a new way to stop the train. Making your way to the locomotive you draw your pistols, take the driver hostage and order him to stop the train where the four Younger brothers are waiting next to a fire. They board too and while you and Frank guard the driver Jesse leads them to the back of the train to rob the Express Carriage. This safe is quite full and when you have finished the robbery you all mount your horses and ride off, back across the Arkansas border knowing state law forces can't pursue you across state lines. Counting the money you find you have stolen an impressive $12,000, $1,700 of which is yours. But your crime spree is not finished yet. > Another Arkansas Hold-Up Keen to expand into new areas of criminal achievement Jesse has heard of a wealthy store owner in the little Arkansas town of Bentonville. Sure enough one evening you all ride into town and dismount outside, while the others hold the horses you and Cole enter the store and at gunpoint force the solitary owner to hand over the contents of the till. He might be wealthy by Bentonville standards but not by your standards, he hands over a paltry $200 which isn't large enough to warrant you getting a sizable share. Your unprecedented crime wave in Arkansas and Missouri has got the attention of the National Press and in Missouri you all read how the Pinkerton Detective Agency has been hired specifically to bring each and every member of the James-Younger Gang to justice. Though Jesse and Bob want to continue the crime spree the rest of you persuade them it is better that you all split up. Frank and Jesse decide to go back to the James Farm, Jim and John will go back to the Younger Farm while Cole and Bob decide to go and hide out at the Farm of their friend Bud McDaniels. You will have to pick one of these pairs to accompany. > You hide out with Frank and Jesse at the James Farm Riding with the James boys you soon get back to their Farm where you hide out for a time until one night there is a knock on the door. Frank and Jesse's mother Zerelda opens it and a young man steps in. He claims he is a worker looking for work in the area and heard there might be a place in the James Farm. Zerelda leads him into the kitchen where you and your companions are waiting. You can tell just by looking at him he isn't a common worker and has the look of an educated man. Frank draws his pistol, cocks it and points it at the man. "You are a Pinkerton Detective," he declares. "I would bet my life on it." The man vigorously denies this but a quick search of him reveals a pistol in his pocket and incriminating papers. The three of you march him out of the Farmhouse and across several fields, interrogating him the whole way. Finally when Jesse holds a knife to his throat the man breaks down and admits he is a Pinkerton Detective called Joseph Whicher. You and Jesse glance at each other. "What do you want to do with him?" you ask. "Shoot him," Jesse replies. You silently glance among yourselves deciding who will do it. > You take out your pistol and execute Whicher You walk up behind Whicher and shoot him in the back of the head. As he falls to the ground Jesse draws his pistol and shoots him twice more in the back. Frank kneels down to check that he is dead before nodding. "Let's go," Jesse mutters and returning to the Farm the three of you mount your horses and ride south to Texas. A week later you are shocked to read of another gunfight in the area: two more lawmen caught up with Jim and John and in a raging gun battle both lawmen and John Younger were killed. As Pinkerton Agents pour into Missouri to avenge their slain Detectives Jesse fires off a series of letters summoning the whole Gang to Texas. Cole, Bob and Jim are devastated by the death of their brother, particularly Jim who blames Frank and Jesse for getting John involved in robberies in the first place, swearing he wants nothing more to do with them and declaring he's going to California. Frank and Cole think it's better to lie low at their friend Bud McDaniels's farm but Jesse is certain the best way to avenge John's death is to rob a stagecoach here in Texas and the newer gang members, Clell, Bill Chadwell, Charlie Pitts and Bob Younger all agree to join him. You have to choose who to go with.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Riding with the James boys you soon get back to their Farm where you hide out for a time until one night there is a knock on the door. Frank and Jesse's mother Zerelda opens it and a young man steps in. He claims he is a worker looking for work in the area and heard there might be a place in the James Farm. Zerelda leads him into the kitchen where you and your companions are waiting. You can tell just by looking at him he isn't a common worker and has the look of an educated man. Frank draws his pistol, cocks it and points it at the man. "You are a Pinkerton Detective," he declares. "I would bet my life on it." The man vigorously denies this but a quick search of him reveals a pistol in his pocket and incriminating papers. The three of you march him out of the Farmhouse and across several fields, interrogating him the whole way. Finally when Jesse holds a knife to his throat the man breaks down and admits he is a Pinkerton Detective called Joseph Whicher. You and Jesse glance at each other. "What do you want to do with him?" you ask. "Shoot him," Jesse replies. You silently glance among yourselves deciding who will do it. > You leave it to Frank or Jesse to kill Whicher You are all silent for a moment and then Jesse walks up behind Whicher and shoots him in the back of the head. As he falls to the ground Jesse shoots him twice more in the back. Frank kneels down to check that he is dead before nodding. "Let's go," Jesse mutters and returning to the Farm the three of you mount your horses and ride south to Texas. A week later you are shocked to read of another gunfight in the area: two more lawmen caught up with Jim and John and in a raging gun battle both lawmen and John Younger were killed. As Pinkerton Agents pour into Missouri to avenge their slain Detectives Jesse fires off a series of letters summoning the whole Gang to Texas. Cole, Bob and Jim are devastated by the death of their brother, particularly Jim who blames Frank and Jesse for getting John involved in robberies in the first place, swearing he wants nothing more to do with them and declaring he's going to California. Frank and Cole think it's better to lie low at their friend Bud McDaniels's farm but Jesse is certain the best way to avenge John's death is to rob a stagecoach here in Texas and the newer gang members, Clell, Bill Chadwell, Charlie Pitts and Bob Younger all agree to join him. You have to choose who to go with.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Keen to expand into new areas of criminal achievement Jesse has heard of a wealthy store owner in the little Arkansas town of Bentonville. Sure enough one evening you all ride into town and dismount outside, while the others hold the horses you and Cole enter the store and at gunpoint force the solitary owner to hand over the contents of the till. He might be wealthy by Bentonville standards but not by your standards, he hands over a paltry $200 which isn't large enough to warrant you getting a sizable share. Your unprecedented crime wave in Arkansas and Missouri has got the attention of the National Press and in Missouri you all read how the Pinkerton Detective Agency has been hired specifically to bring each and every member of the James-Younger Gang to justice. Though Jesse and Bob want to continue the crime spree the rest of you persuade them it is better that you all split up. Frank and Jesse decide to go back to the James Farm, Jim and John will go back to the Younger Farm while Cole and Bob decide to go and hide out at the Farm of their friend Bud McDaniels. You will have to pick one of these pairs to accompany. > You hide out with Jim and John at the Younger Farm You and your two friends go into hiding at the Younger Farm for a time but one morning you read in the papers that Frank and Jesse have killed a Pinkerton Detective near their Farm and you decide you'd better leave. After traveling all night you are hiding out at a friend's farm where you hear men making inquiries about you to the farm's owner. After they leave John is keen to get after those men and find out who they are and you and Jim reluctantly agree. Riding down the road you see three men riding ahead of you. You and Jim draw your pistols and John pulls a shotgun from his saddle scabbard and all three of you shout for the men to halt. One reins in but the third gallops away for his life, with casual accuracy Jim fires a shot that knocks the hat off his head but leaves the man beneath it untouched. As he vanishes down the road the rest of you close in on the two that remain and order them to throw their guns onto the road which they do. While Jim dismounts and begins collecting up the pistols you and John start questioning the two men. They insist they are cattle buyers but when you accuse them of being Pinkerton Agents one of the men suddenly pulls a small pistol from his pocket and shoots John in the throat. Knocked backwards by the force of the shot John instinctively shoots the man in the chest with his shotgun. The wounded lawman turns his horse away from you all and Jim fires a shot at him, missing. The second, unhurt lawman, also turns his horse away as you raise your weapon. > You shoot him in the back of the head Your shot hits the man in the back of the head and he falls from his horse. While Jim runs over to check if he is alive John spurs his horse after the wounded lawmen and chases him straight across a field towards a copse of trees, dropping his shotgun as he goes and drawing a pistol which he fires at the man. You spur your horse after John and watch as he shoots the wounded lawman a second time knocking him from his horse. Exhausted and weakened from his injury Jim turns away without checking to see if the lawman is dead or not. > You spur your horse into the thicket to check if the lawman is dead You gallop your horse straight towards the thicket and as you do the lawman shakily rises from cover and fires a pistol shot at you. The bullet hits you squarely in the right eye, toppling you from your saddle and you lie insensible on the ground. You are the fourth victim of a gunfight that claimed the lives of the two lawmen and your fellow outlaw John Younger. Your famous last gunfight will become the stuff of Western Legend, though this is no consolation to you as you lie dead on the green fields of Missouri.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your shot hits the man in the back of the head and he falls from his horse. While Jim runs over to check if he is alive John spurs his horse after the wounded lawmen and chases him straight across a field towards a copse of trees, dropping his shotgun as he goes and drawing a pistol which he fires at the man. You spur your horse after John and watch as he shoots the wounded lawman a second time knocking him from his horse. Exhausted and weakened from his injury Jim turns away without checking to see if the lawman is dead or not. > You approach cautiously with pistol ready You approach cautiously and as you do the badly-wounded lawman rises from cover to fire a shot at you. You fire first, hitting him in the chest for the third time and knocking him down, fatally wounded. Turning you spot your friend John reeling in his saddle nearby, blood pouring down his chest from his neck. As you ride towards him he suddenly topples to the ground. Reaching him you dismount and drop to your knees alongside him as his brother Jim runs up but it is too late. Your friend John is dead. Two farmer working in a nearby field witnessed the gunfight and run up. "See that my brother is buried right," Jim tells them, tears in his eyes, as he takes John's pistol from his motionless hand and you both run back to where you left your horses. Remounting you leave the two lawmen and John lying dead on the bloody field. Riding south you escape Missouri and eventually make it to Texas where you rejoin the rest of the Gang. Jim is inconsolable and blames Frank and Jesse for his brother's death, claiming they lured John into taking part in their robberies. Swearing he never wants to see them again he declares he is going to California. Frank and Cole also think it is a good idea to lie low at their friend Bud McDaniels's farm but not Jesse: he thinks the best way to avenge John is to rob a stagecoach here in Texas and the newer members of the gang, Clell, Bill Chadwell, Charlie Pitts and Bob Younger, agree with him. You have to choose who you will accompany.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and your two friends go into hiding at the Younger Farm for a time but one morning you read in the papers that Frank and Jesse have killed a Pinkerton Detective near their Farm and you decide you'd better leave. After traveling all night you are hiding out at a friend's farm where you hear men making inquiries about you to the farm's owner. After they leave John is keen to get after those men and find out who they are and you and Jim reluctantly agree. Riding down the road you see three men riding ahead of you. You and Jim draw your pistols and John pulls a shotgun from his saddle scabbard and all three of you shout for the men to halt. One reins in but the third gallops away for his life, with casual accuracy Jim fires a shot that knocks the hat off his head but leaves the man beneath it untouched. As he vanishes down the road the rest of you close in on the two that remain and order them to throw their guns onto the road which they do. While Jim dismounts and begins collecting up the pistols you and John start questioning the two men. They insist they are cattle buyers but when you accuse them of being Pinkerton Agents one of the men suddenly pulls a small pistol from his pocket and shoots John in the throat. Knocked backwards by the force of the shot John instinctively shoots the man in the chest with his shotgun. The wounded lawman turns his horse away from you all and Jim fires a shot at him, missing. The second, unhurt lawman, also turns his horse away as you raise your weapon. > You check to see if John is alright You glance at John who seems to have recovered, as you do Jim raises his pistol and shoots the fleeing uninjured lawman in the back of the head. While Jim runs over to check if he is alive John spurs his horse after the wounded lawmen and chases him straight across a field towards a copse of trees, dropping his shotgun as he goes and drawing a pistol which he fires at the man. You spur your horse after John and watch as he shoots the wounded lawman a second time knocking him from his horse. Exhausted and weakened from his injury Jim turns away without checking to see if the lawman is dead or not.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Keen to expand into new areas of criminal achievement Jesse has heard of a wealthy store owner in the little Arkansas town of Bentonville. Sure enough one evening you all ride into town and dismount outside, while the others hold the horses you and Cole enter the store and at gunpoint force the solitary owner to hand over the contents of the till. He might be wealthy by Bentonville standards but not by your standards, he hands over a paltry $200 which isn't large enough to warrant you getting a sizable share. Your unprecedented crime wave in Arkansas and Missouri has got the attention of the National Press and in Missouri you all read how the Pinkerton Detective Agency has been hired specifically to bring each and every member of the James-Younger Gang to justice. Though Jesse and Bob want to continue the crime spree the rest of you persuade them it is better that you all split up. Frank and Jesse decide to go back to the James Farm, Jim and John will go back to the Younger Farm while Cole and Bob decide to go and hide out at the Farm of their friend Bud McDaniels. You will have to pick one of these pairs to accompany. > You hide out with Bob and Cole at the McDaniels Farm You and your friends hide out at the home of Bud McDaniels, who along with his brother Tom is a good friend of the Younger Family. There you read about the Pinkerton Detectives flooding into Missouri in search of you all. Frank and Jesse confront and kill one near their Farm, prompting you, Cole and Bob to flee south to Texas. You are still en route when you learn that two more lawmen have caught up with Jim and John and in a bloody gunfight both lawmen and John Younger are killed. Bob and Cole are devastated when you grimly report their brothers death to them. Reaching Texas you are soon joined by Frank and Jesse with the rest of the gang following soon after. Jim in particular is angry, blaming Frank and Jesse for John's death because they got him involved in robberies in the first place and he angrily swears he is going to California and wants nothing more to do with them. Frank and Cole also think it is better to lie low and hide out at Bud McDaniels's Farm but Jesse persuade the newer gang members Clell, Bill Chadwell, Charlie Pitts and Bob Younger that the best way to avenge John is to rob a stagecoach in Texas. Again you have to choose who to join.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>In the pre-dawn morning light you and the rest of the James-Younger Gang assemble outside the busy little town of Adair. Cole and John have brought along their brothers Jim and Bob to join in the robbery. Jim is a steady veteran who you fought alongside during the Civil War, though he seems reluctant to be involved in this robbery, Bob is a likable and reliable young man. You and Clell turn up with Charlie Pitts, a quiet but tough man who is another former Guerrilla. Frank and Jesse arrive with an extremely tall and chatty man called Bill Chadwell. Altogether there are ten of you, including the two James brothers and the four Younger brothers. Though you held up trains during the War you are all new to peacetime train robbery and you study the railroad trying to think of the best way to get the train to stop near your place of concealment. Predictably it is Jesse who has the idea of using a mental bar and a hammer to tear up the track, reasoning that the driver will see the broken line and halt the train alongside where you will be waiting with the horse. You all agree to the plan. "Who will tear up the track?" Cole asks and you all glance among yourselves. > You let someone else do it Jesse uses the hammer and iron bar to pry up several railway tracks. You and the rest of the Gang then take cover in the trees near the track and wait for the train. When the train comes down the line you are astonished by how fast it is going. The driver sees the damage to the track and slams on the brakes but the train is going too fast: to your astonishment the locomotive shoots off the end of the broken line and crashes down onto it's side with an ear-splitting crash, as does the first passenger carriage. The noise is indescribable. The train has come to a complete halt with the front two carriages on their side and you and your deafened companions emerge stunned from the trees. While Bill, Charlie, Bob and Jim hold the horses and Jesse leads most of the rest towards the Express Carriage at the rear of the train you and Frank jog to the crashed locomotive and peer inside. The sight sickens you, the driver has been literally crushed to death and the fireman has been badly hurt, bleeding freely from his head. You are still shaken by the time you return to the woods and are rejoined by Jesse and the others. Mounting up you ride away from the train you have just wrecked and ride nonstop for several hours to get to safety. When you count the money you are disappointed to find the train was not carrying a lot, just $3,000 which is divided between the ten of you to make your share $300. Despite the small profits from this you know this brazen robbery will increase your already great fame and notoriety. Bill, Clell and Charlie are all a bit unnerved by the attention this crime will bring and decide they will all go and hide out at Charlie's farm in Missouri. Jesse, as usual, is delighted and indifferent to the fact the robbery has led to another death. He intends for himself, Frank, Bob, Cole, Jim and John (all the James and Younger brothers) to ride south into Arkansas to rob a stagecoach, another type of crime the Gang haven't committed before which Jesse hopes will lead to more fame. It is up to you whether or not you want to go into hiding or join in the crime spree.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fire a shot that hits one of the men in the hand. He yells in pain but a moment later the four customers have scrambled out the door leaving the three of you alone in the bank with the dead teller on the floor behind the counter. "Quickly, grab the money" you tell the others and moving fast you snatch up all the money you can find on the counter. In less than a minute you are back outside to find Frank, Clell and John firing their pistols into the air as you, Jesse and Cole scramble back onto your horses. A man runs out onto the street and fires a pistol at you, Jesse fires back. Both miss but Jesse's shot prompts the man to take cover and the six of you are able to spur your horses out of town and escape. Riding hard you do not stop until you are a long way from Columbia. When you pause to count the money you find you have escaped with less than $1,000, which makes your share $200. Frank is especially unhappy. "We're killing too many bank tellers Jesse," he tells his brother. "This will bring the law down on us." "Maybe we should lay off banks for a while," Jesse says thoughtfully and grins. "I have a mind to rob a ticket office at the Kansas City Exposition." After a quick discussion Cole and John both offer to join Jesse but Frank and Clell decide it is better to lay low - Frank is going back to the James Farm while Clell is going back to his own family's farm. You consider what is best to do. > You join Jesse, Cole and Frank in robbing the Kansas City Exposition After a few months hiding out you and your companions ride into Kansas City on the day of the Exposition and approach the ticket office. "Hand over the money box," Jesse tells the cashier and you all draw your pistols. The man obediently obeys and quickly the four of you start to ride away. The alarm is quickly raised and as the guards of the Exposition are alerted you and your friends start firing your guns into the air to clear the crowd. It works well and you are quickly clear and riding to safety. Jesse is delighted with the ease of the robbery and opening the cashier's money box you find you have made off with $1,000, which split between the four of you makes your share $200. The event is widely reported and to make sure the reports are correct Jesse sends his own letter to the newspapers describing the robbery. You are slightly worried when you learn that Clell has been arrested for the Columbia Bank Robbery but he is soon released when witnesses of the robbery fail to identify him, in high spirits you and the rest of the Gang gather in the spring of 1873 to plan your next robbery.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fire a shot that hits one of the men in the hand. He yells in pain but a moment later the four customers have scrambled out the door leaving the three of you alone in the bank with the dead teller on the floor behind the counter. "Quickly, grab the money" you tell the others and moving fast you snatch up all the money you can find on the counter. In less than a minute you are back outside to find Frank, Clell and John firing their pistols into the air as you, Jesse and Cole scramble back onto your horses. A man runs out onto the street and fires a pistol at you, Jesse fires back. Both miss but Jesse's shot prompts the man to take cover and the six of you are able to spur your horses out of town and escape. Riding hard you do not stop until you are a long way from Columbia. When you pause to count the money you find you have escaped with less than $1,000, which makes your share $200. Frank is especially unhappy. "We're killing too many bank tellers Jesse," he tells his brother. "This will bring the law down on us." "Maybe we should lay off banks for a while," Jesse says thoughtfully and grins. "I have a mind to rob a ticket office at the Kansas City Exposition." After a quick discussion Cole and John both offer to join Jesse but Frank and Clell decide it is better to lay low - Frank is going back to the James Farm while Clell is going back to his own family's farm. You consider what is best to do. > You join Clell at the Miller Farm You and Clell hide out at the Miller Farm for a few months until one evening there is a knock on the door. Clell goes to answer it and you hear a voice declare "Clell Miller, you are under arrest." You are sitting in the kitchen and springing to your feet you raise to the back door. As you do you hear a voice yell halt and glancing back you see a Deputy Sheriff standing in the kitchen doorway pointing a pistol at you. You have to decide whether or not to surrender or keep running. > You surrender Unwilling to risk a bullet in the back you sigh and raise your hands. You and Clell are taken into custody and escorted to the local jail. There you find things aren't as bad as you fear: you and Clell are only charged with the armed robbery of the Columbia Bank. Even better when the four customers who were in the bank are brought to the jail to identify you they seem uncertain that you are the men who really robbed the bank. Thanks to their mistake you and Clell are released on bail due to the lack of evidence and you both promptly go on the run. Pleased at your lucky break you meet up with the rest of the gang in the spring of 1873.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and Clell hide out at the Miller Farm for a few months until one evening there is a knock on the door. Clell goes to answer it and you hear a voice declare "Clell Miller, you are under arrest." You are sitting in the kitchen and springing to your feet you raise to the back door. As you do you hear a voice yell halt and glancing back you see a Deputy Sheriff standing in the kitchen doorway pointing a pistol at you. You have to decide whether or not to surrender or keep running. > You keep running Taking a risk you dart out the door, promptly turn right and spring around the side of Clell's farmhouse. The Deputy tries to pursue you but you lose him in the dark and escape through the tangle of trees that surrounds Clell's home. Making it to safety you read more good news in the papers: after being arrested and charged with the Columbia robbery Clell was released when witnesses failed to identify him as one of the robbers. Pleased at your success you and the rest of the gang reunite the following spring.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You shoot the cashier in the chest and he staggers back, blood spreading across his shirt front. Jesse and Cole shoot him as well and the cashier falls dead to the ground. Instantly the four customers spring to their feet and start running for the door. "Stop them," Jesse yells. > You let someone else deal with them and focus on getting all the money you can You move towards the counter and as you do Cole fires a shot that hits one of the men in the hand. He yells in pain but a moment later the four customers have scrambled out the door leaving the three of you alone in the bank with the dead teller on the floor behind the counter. "Quickly, grab the money" you tell the others and moving fast you snatch up all the money you can find on the counter. In less than a minute you are back outside to find Frank, Clell and John firing their pistols into the air as you, Jesse and Cole scramble back onto your horses. A man runs out onto the street and fires a pistol at you, Jesse fires back. Both miss but Jesse's shot prompts the man to take cover and the six of you are able to spur your horses out of town and escape. Riding hard you do not stop until you are a long way from Columbia. When you pause to count the money you find you have escaped with less than $1,000, which makes your share $200. Frank is especially unhappy. "We're killing too many bank tellers Jesse," he tells his brother. "This will bring the law down on us." "Maybe we should lay off banks for a while," Jesse says thoughtfully and grins. "I have a mind to rob a ticket office at the Kansas City Exposition." After a quick discussion Cole and John both offer to join Jesse but Frank and Clell decide it is better to lay low - Frank is going back to the James Farm while Clell is going back to his own family's farm. You consider what is best to do.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you have done so many times you and your companions ride into a small town early one morning. While Frank, Clell and John hold the horses outside you lead Jesse and Cole into the bank. Inside four customers are sitting at a table talking while one smiling cashier waits behind the counter. The three of you walk up to the counter and draw your pistols. "Consider yourself under arrest," Cole says cheerfully. To your amazement the cashier begins shouting "Bank Robbers! Bank Robbers!" at the top of his voice. "Shut up man or I'll kill you," you yell at him but the cashier keeps shouting warnings at the top of his voice. > You keep yelling at him to be quiet You keep shouting at the teller but he continues to shout at the top of his lungs. A moment later Jesse and Cole both shoot him and the cashier falls dead to the ground. Instantly the four customers spring to their feet and start running for the door. "Stop them," Jesse yells.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your bullet hits the teller in the head, blasting a circle of red blood and gore onto the wall behind him. As the teller slumps dead in his chair Frank and Jesse fire more bullets into him. The customer screams "Murder!" and starts running past the three of you towards the door to the bank. "Shoot him," Jesse yells. > You let him go Frank fires a shot that hits the man in the back of the right arm but he keeps on running and makes it through the door and out onto the street. "Quickly boys, get the money," you call out and moving quickly you, Frank and Jesse scoop up all the money you can find from the counter, which comes to several hundred dollars. Unwilling to spend time pillaging the vault you all run outside and begin mounting your horses but the alarm has already been raised a a few citizens are taking pot shots at you with pistols from teh shelter of a gun store. When a bullet nicks it Jesse's horse rears up in terror, spilling it's rider to the ground before running off. "Get up behind me Jesse," Frank yells and while you fire your pistol at the gun store, trying to cover them, Jesse awkwardly scrambles up behind Frank. The three of you ride out of town on two horses, not stopping for several hours until you reach the safety of the James Farm. There you find you have escaped with less than $700, making your share a paltry $200. There is worse news to follow however. The next morning Frank returns to the Farm with a paper. "It wasn't Colonel Cox who we killed in Gallatin," he declares. "It was some bank clerk called John Sheets. They know it was us as well, we've all been identified by name. We'd better clear out." Leaving the James Farm the three of you go traveling for a year to wait for the attention to die down before returning to Missouri in the summer of 1871 and arranging a meeting with Cole Younger at the home of your mutual friend Clell Miller. Despite the loss of John, George and Ol you are all determined to continue your robberies.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You join the James brothers at their farm where you live quietly for a few weeks until one morning Frank returns from town with a newspaper and a grim expression. "Yankee lawmen killed John and Ol," he says tersely. "George is in prison charged with bank robbery." You and Jesse crowd round to read how your three companions were identified as participants in the Russellville robbery and were tracked to their homes by lawmen. George later receives a three year prison sentence for his part in the robbery. Despite the loss of three of your companions Jesse is eager for the three of you to rob a bank and after a year and a half when you feel it is safe you make a plan to rob the little bank in the town of Gallatin, Missouri. Riding into town one winter's morning you leave your horses tied up outside and walk inside to find a single teller talking to a customer. The teller looks oddly familiar to you and you can't figure out where you have seen him from until Jesse pulls you and Frank to one side. "Isn't that Colonel Cox?" Jesse asks quietly. "That Yankee Colonel who killed Bill Anderson during the War? I heard he lived in Gallatin." The three of you study the teller closely. You now remember Cox well from his picture in the newspapers, he led an ambush that killed several of your friends including your former leader Bloody Bill Anderson. The teller does indeed look exactly like him and Frank agrees quietly. "Let's kill him," he mutters. Approaching the bank counter the three of you draw your pistols from your pockets. The customer backs away and the teller looks up startled. > You hold your fire You pause but Jesse shoots the man in the head, blasting his brains out onto the wall behind him. As the teller slumps dead in his chair Frank and Jesse fire more bullets into him. The customer screams "Murder!" and starts running past the three of you towards the door to the bank. "Shoot him," Jesse yells.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Raising your pistol you fire back: your shot hits the man on the side, spins him on the spot and he falls to the ground. Turning your horse you spur after your companions and moments later you are out of town and riding across the countryside. You ride hard until you are back across the border in Missouri and there you pause in a copse of trees to count the money you have stolen: you are all pleased to discover it comes to $12,000, which split seven ways makes your share $1,700, which has been added to your Score. "We need to all split up now to make it harder for the Law to track us," John declares. "Jesse and I will go back to our Farm and hide out there," Frank declares. "I'll go with George and Ol back to their Farm to hide out," John decides. "My brother John has just got a job at his friend Tom McDaniel's Farm near the town of Scyene down in Texas," Cole says thoughtfully. "I'll go down there for a bit to lie low." You consider who to hide out with. > You go with John, George and Ol to the Shepherd Farm The four of you arrive at the Shepherd Farm where you hide out for a time until, less than two weeks after the Russellville Robbery John returns to the Farm with a bombshell: all four of you have been identified as participants in the Russellville Robbery and warrants have been issued for your arrests. "We need to split up again," John declares. "I'm going back to my farm, you stay here Ol. George, you go and hide out at the Miller Farm. Who do you want to go with Bill?" You consider who would be best to hide out with and where you consider safest. > You go with John to the Jarette Farm You and John go to his Farmhouse where you are the only residents and for a few days you live in peace. One night you are woken by an alarming crackling sound and springing from your bed you see smoke filling the house. A glance through the windows shows dozens of men outside armed with all sorts of weapons from guns to pitchforks. Grabbing your pistol you rush out of your room in your underclothes to encounter John similarly prepared. "The house is on fire and we're surrounded by vigilantes," John declares. "We'll have to make a break for it." There is only one door into the farmhouse and no windows so John approaches it carefully, a pistol in each hand and prepares to charge out guns blazing. As he does so you glance at the chimney and the thought strikes you that if you can somehow squirm up there you might be able to drop down from the roof and escape, though if you get stuck you'll probably be burnt alive. > You follow John out the main entrance The pair of you throw open the front door and race out into the night as flames engulf the house. As you start running a voice shouts "Death to the bank robbers" and gunshots ring out. John jerks like a marionette as bullet after bullet tears through his body and he topples to the ground. You make it a few more feet until a shotgun explodes into life directly in front of you, hitting you in the centre of the chest and hurling you back onto the ground. As you struggle to rise more pistol and rifle bullets hit you and like John you die in a rain of bullets, killed by vigilantes on this bloody night.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and John go to his Farmhouse where you are the only residents and for a few days you live in peace. One night you are woken by an alarming crackling sound and springing from your bed you see smoke filling the house. A glance through the windows shows dozens of men outside armed with all sorts of weapons from guns to pitchforks. Grabbing your pistol you rush out of your room in your underclothes to encounter John similarly prepared. "The house is on fire and we're surrounded by vigilantes," John declares. "We'll have to make a break for it." There is only one door into the farmhouse and no windows so John approaches it carefully, a pistol in each hand and prepares to charge out guns blazing. As he does so you glance at the chimney and the thought strikes you that if you can somehow squirm up there you might be able to drop down from the roof and escape, though if you get stuck you'll probably be burnt alive. > You risk the chimney Squirming awkwardly up the chimney you shimmy yourself up the narrow chimney shaft. Outside you hear shouts and dozens of gunshots but focus on ignoring the intense heat and making it up the chimney. Finally you burst out into the cold night air of the roof. Approaching the edge of the roof cautiously you glance down to see John lying dead in a pool of blood just in front of his house. There is a shout as a vigilante spots you and points at you. Turning you race across the roof as vigilantes fire at the spot where you were seen and with a flying leap you jump off the back of the roof, fortunately landing on one of the few snow mounds to have escaped destruction from the spring sun. Scrambling up you race through the trees that surround John's farmhouse and make your escape through the forest. After an all-night journey you manage to make it to a friend's house and safety. In the morning you buy a newspaper and read about a series of raids carried out against you and your companions. Ol Shepherd is dead too, killed by lawmen while resisting arrest. George has been arrested and charged with bank robbery. After a short trial he is found guilty and given a short prison sentence. For the next three years you move around Missouri, never staying in one place for too long until finally in the spring of 1871 you re-establish contact with Cole Younger and Frank and Jesse James and arrange to meet at the farm of your mutual friend Clell Miller. Though the gang has lost three of its members you are determined to continue your bank-robbing career.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The four of you arrive at the Shepherd Farm where you hide out for a time until, less than two weeks after the Russellville Robbery John returns to the Farm with a bombshell: all four of you have been identified as participants in the Russellville Robbery and warrants have been issued for your arrests. "We need to split up again," John declares. "I'm going back to my farm, you stay here Ol. George, you go and hide out at the Miller Farm. Who do you want to go with Bill?" You consider who would be best to hide out with and where you consider safest. > You go with George to the Miller Farm You and George set off towards the Miller Farm but you never get there. One evening you reach the little town of St Joseph and as you are trotting your horses down the street two lawmen armed with rifles emerge from an alleyway to your right. "Hold up your hands men, you are under arrest!" one calls out. George immediately raises both his hands but the thought crosses your mind that rather than surrender you could lean down your horse's left flank and try to spur it into a gallop for safety. That would be far more dangerous than just surrendering however. > You surrender Slowly you raise your hands and allow the lawmen to take you into custody. You and George are swiftly imprisoned and put down for an early trial, around the same time both John and Ol are shot and killed while trying to escape arrest. Your trial is a simple affair: you and George are both found guilty of armed robbery and both receive a fairly lenient sentence of three years imprisonment. You serve your time and when you are both released George decides he is done with crime and is ready to go straight. You have no such intention and immediately arrange to meet Cole Younger, Frank and Jesse James at the farm of your mutual friend Clell Miller to resume your outlaw career.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and George set off towards the Miller Farm but you never get there. One evening you reach the little town of St Joseph and as you are trotting your horses down the street two lawmen armed with rifles emerge from an alleyway to your right. "Hold up your hands men, you are under arrest!" one calls out. George immediately raises both his hands but the thought crosses your mind that rather than surrender you could lean down your horse's left flank and try to spur it into a gallop for safety. That would be far more dangerous than just surrendering however. > You try riding to safety You start to raise your arms and then suddenly yell out "Fuck you, you sons of bitches!" Leaning down in your saddle to try to keep your horse's body between yourself and them you dig your spurs in so deep they draw blood. With a scream your horse bolts, the lawmen fire a few pistol shots which zip overhead but within seconds your horse has carried you down the street, out of town and across the prairie leaving the startled lawmen with their prisoner. Riding your unhappy horse all night you reach safety and over the next few days learn what has transpired. In a series of raids lawmen and vigilantes have killed Ol and John and captured George, who gets a short prison sentence. For the next few years you live a wondering assistance, moving around Missouri and other states to avoid detection. Finally, in the spring of 1871, you renew contract with Cole Younger and Frank and Jesse James and arrange a meeting at the home of your mutual friend Clell Miller. Despite the loss of three of your companions you are ready to resume your career in banditry.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The four of you arrive at the Shepherd Farm where you hide out for a time until, less than two weeks after the Russellville Robbery John returns to the Farm with a bombshell: all four of you have been identified as participants in the Russellville Robbery and warrants have been issued for your arrests. "We need to split up again," John declares. "I'm going back to my farm, you stay here Ol. George, you go and hide out at the Miller Farm. Who do you want to go with Bill?" You consider who would be best to hide out with and where you consider safest. > You stay with Ol at the Shepherd Farm You stay with Ol hiding out at the Shepherd Ranch while the other two clear out and for three days all is peaceful. One morning you hear a knock on the front door and you hear Ol go and open it. "Hello Ol," a voice says. "I am Detective Bligh, this is Detective Gallagher and you are under arrest." There is a bang and a yell that sounds very much as though Ol has just hit someone with the door and then Ol bolts into the kitchen and races for the back door, pulling a pistol from his pocket as he goes. You have two swift choices to make, you can either follow Ol out the back door or run through a door that leads to a bedroom. From the bedroom a second door opens into the hall and you might be able to slip back through the front door as the Detectives run through, though the plan is a risky one. > You follow Ol out the back door You follow Ol out the back door and spring across the yard outside towards the safety of some trees, pulling your pistol from your pocket as you run. The two Detectives follow you both outside and begin shooting, Ol goes down first with a bullet in his back. A second later you are hit in the back of your head and your world ends in an explosion of light followed by endless darkness. Both you and Ol are cut down and killed in a series of raids that also bring John and George's careers in banditry to an end.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stay with Ol hiding out at the Shepherd Ranch while the other two clear out and for three days all is peaceful. One morning you hear a knock on the front door and you hear Ol go and open it. "Hello Ol," a voice says. "I am Detective Bligh, this is Detective Gallagher and you are under arrest." There is a bang and a yell that sounds very much as though Ol has just hit someone with the door and then Ol bolts into the kitchen and races for the back door, pulling a pistol from his pocket as he goes. You have two swift choices to make, you can either follow Ol out the back door or run through a door that leads to a bedroom. From the bedroom a second door opens into the hall and you might be able to slip back through the front door as the Detectives run through, though the plan is a risky one. > You run into the bedroom and try to circle round to slip out the front door You dart through into the bedroom and moving as swiftly and silently as you can you circle round to the hall door. As you expected both Detectives run straight through the kitchen and out the back door where they begin shooting at the fleeing Ol. You take your chance, dart out the front door and immediately make a left to the safety of some nearby trees. Fleeing through the thickets on foot you make it to the farm of a friend several hours later. Over the next few days you learn what has happened: Ol was indeed shot dead while trying to run away while John was also killed and George arrested in a series of raids (George later receives a short jail sentence for armed robbery). Shaken by your narrow escape you spend the next three years moving around Missouri and generally lying low until you finally get back in touch with Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger and arrange a meeting at the home of your mutual friend Clell Miller to return to your chosen profession of robbing banks.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Raising your pistol you fire back: your shot hits the man on the side, spins him on the spot and he falls to the ground. Turning your horse you spur after your companions and moments later you are out of town and riding across the countryside. You ride hard until you are back across the border in Missouri and there you pause in a copse of trees to count the money you have stolen: you are all pleased to discover it comes to $12,000, which split seven ways makes your share $1,700, which has been added to your Score. "We need to all split up now to make it harder for the Law to track us," John declares. "Jesse and I will go back to our Farm and hide out there," Frank declares. "I'll go with George and Ol back to their Farm to hide out," John decides. "My brother John has just got a job at his friend Tom McDaniel's Farm near the town of Scyene down in Texas," Cole says thoughtfully. "I'll go down there for a bit to lie low." You consider who to hide out with. > You go with Cole down to Texas You travel south with Cole to Texas and join his brother John and John's employer Tom McDaniels at McDaniels's Ranch. You are in Texas when you learn that in a series of raids in Missouri your friends John Jarette and Ol Shepherd have been killed and George Shepherd has been arrested and imprisoned after they were identified as Russellville Bank Robbers. Fearing he'll be identified to Cole goes to California to join another brother Jim but you like Texas so you stay on with John and Tom for a few years. Nearly three years after the Russellville robbery you, John and Tom go into the local town of Scyene to have a few drinks in a bar. John drinks more than you two and begins boasting he is an excellent shot and can hit any target. To demonstrate this he pulls out his pistol and shoots the smoking pipe out of the mouth of an old man who is sitting at a nearby table. The very frightened man leaves the bar and initially you think nothing of it. The next morning after spending the night in town the three of you go down to the local stable to collect your horses and ride back to Tom's ranch. While you are in the stables two Deputy Sheriffs walk in and approach the three of you with pistols in their hands. "John Younger?" one of them asks. "We have had a complaint of attempted murder lodged against you and we need to take you into custody. Please hand over your weapons." "Certainly officers," John says pleasantly, drawing his pistol from his pocket. He is still smiling when he shoots the lawman in the chest. There is a moment of stunned silence and then all five of you draw your weapons. The wounded officer fires back at John, his shot creasing his hip while the other officer aims at you. > You fire at the man aiming at you You fire at the lawman, by luck or skill you shoot him through the heart and without a sound he falls to the ground, his pistol discharging as it hits the ground though the bullet goes wide. John has shot the lawman who wounded him again and the man has sunk to his knees, though he is still trying to raise his gun arm from the ground to fire at John again. John's gun clicks on a faulty cartridge and there is a risk the badly-injured lawman might shoot him. > You ride your horse up and shoot the wounded lawman in the head Your shot hits the wounded lawman in the side of the head and he falls to the ground where he lies still. An ominous silence descends on the stables as the three of you stare down at the bodies of the two Deputy Sheriffs whom you have just murdered. Tom, who hasn't moved since he drew his pistol, is shaking. "We need to get out of here," John mutters as blood drips from his hip and through his fingers and spurring your horses out of the stable you rapidly clear out of Scyene. You pause briefly to collect your things from the McDaniels Ranch before riding on while Tom clears out to other parts. In Missouri you and John split up: John goes back to the Younger Ranch to see his brother Bob and recover from his injury. Meanwhile you get back in touch with Cole and Frank and Jesse James and arrange a meeting with them at the home of your mutual friend Clell Miller. Your role in the murder of the two lawmen in Texas has put your name firmly back on Missouri's list of wanted men so you figure it's time for you to get back to robbing banks and making some money!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fire at the lawman, by luck or skill you shoot him through the heart and without a sound he falls to the ground, his pistol discharging as it hits the ground though the bullet goes wide. John has shot the lawman who wounded him again and the man has sunk to his knees, though he is still trying to raise his gun arm from the ground to fire at John again. John's gun clicks on a faulty cartridge and there is a risk the badly-injured lawman might shoot him. > You let John deal with the mess he has made John raises his pistol, shoots the wounded lawman in the side of the head and he topples to the ground where he lies still. An ominous silence descends on the stables as the three of you stare down at the bodies of the two Deputy Sheriffs whom you have just murdered. Tom, who hasn't moved since he drew his pistol, is shaking. "We need to get out of here," John mutters as blood drips from his hip and through his fingers and spurring your horses out of the stable you rapidly clear out of Scyene. You pause briefly to collect your things from the McDaniels Ranch before riding on while Tom clears out to other parts. In Missouri you and John split up: John goes back to the Younger Ranch to see his brother Bob and recover from his injury. Meanwhile you get back in touch with Cole and Frank and Jesse James and arrange a meeting with them at the home of your mutual friend Clell Miller. Your role in the murder of the two lawmen in Texas has put your name firmly back on Missouri's list of wanted men so you figure it's time for you to get back to robbing banks and making some money!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You travel south with Cole to Texas and join his brother John and John's employer Tom McDaniels at McDaniels's Ranch. You are in Texas when you learn that in a series of raids in Missouri your friends John Jarette and Ol Shepherd have been killed and George Shepherd has been arrested and imprisoned after they were identified as Russellville Bank Robbers. Fearing he'll be identified to Cole goes to California to join another brother Jim but you like Texas so you stay on with John and Tom for a few years. Nearly three years after the Russellville robbery you, John and Tom go into the local town of Scyene to have a few drinks in a bar. John drinks more than you two and begins boasting he is an excellent shot and can hit any target. To demonstrate this he pulls out his pistol and shoots the smoking pipe out of the mouth of an old man who is sitting at a nearby table. The very frightened man leaves the bar and initially you think nothing of it. The next morning after spending the night in town the three of you go down to the local stable to collect your horses and ride back to Tom's ranch. While you are in the stables two Deputy Sheriffs walk in and approach the three of you with pistols in their hands. "John Younger?" one of them asks. "We have had a complaint of attempted murder lodged against you and we need to take you into custody. Please hand over your weapons." "Certainly officers," John says pleasantly, drawing his pistol from his pocket. He is still smiling when he shoots the lawman in the chest. There is a moment of stunned silence and then all five of you draw your weapons. The wounded officer fires back at John, his shot creasing his hip while the other officer aims at you. > You raise your hands to show him you mean no harm You raise your hands but to your amazement and fury the lawman points his pistol at you and fires, hitting you in the left side. As pain shoots through your chest you cry out in anger and lower your pistol but seeing what is happening John has already turned and shot the lawman who wounded you in the side of the head. As the lawman falls dead to the ground John turns back to the lawman who shot him and squeezes the trigger again, hitting him in the chest. As the lawman sinks to his knees on the ground he tries to raise his gun arm but when John tries to shoot him a third time he revolver clicks on a faulty cartridge.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Another day home from school… “I’m telling you Ms. Zelamoyer is a witch, there’s no way she could know what we did unless she read our minds!” David says. “Yeah maybe she’s even a demon in human disguise!” Tom adds “Or maybe you two looked guilty as hell and laughed the loudest when she sat on the thumbtacks you put in her seat.” You say. “I told you guys that was a bad idea. I’m surprised she only paddled you and didn’t have you kicked out of the school permanently.” “Yeah well it didn’t even hurt. My dad beats me harder than that. Though I guess Tom thought it hurt with the way he cried! Hahahaha!” David taunts. “Shut up David!” Tom exclaims. “So are you playing Smash Sphere over in the park today?” David asks you. “I hope so, but my dad’s been on my case about me studying harder. Says he wants me to make something of myself when I grow up.” “That sucks. My dad is always either at the mines or drinking at your dad’s place. The only time I have to worry about him is when my mom tells him about something I did, then I get a beating. I don’t think I’d survive it if he was always around.” David replies. “My mom doesn’t beat me, but she’ll yell and throw me into a small dark closet without food if I do something bad.” Tom says. “Your mom is one scary ass dyke, Tom. My dad said he saw her scare away a mountain troll in the mines once.” “Shut up David! My mom’s not a dyke!” “Yes she is! What about that other lady that lives with you then?” “That’s just mom’s roommate! She needs a place to stay so she helps around the house, like cook dinner or clean up. Mom is at the mines all day, so she can’t do that stuff, so it works out. She’s kind of like a live in maid!” “Sounds more like a second mom…” As much as you enjoy Tom’s naïve defense of his lesbian mother and David’s taunting of it, you arrive at the Inn where you say goodbye to your friends and tell them you might see them later. As soon as you get in, you dad calls you over to the bar. “So do you have any homework?” he asks. “Yeah, but it’s not due until next week.” “Hmm, well if it’s not due until next week it must need a lot of attention, better get started on it.” “It’s really not that much dad, I can do it over the weekend. I’m going to go out and play smash sphere with David and Tom.” “Is that what you think? Better cancel that idea. You’re hitting the books, besides I vaguely remember you mentioning you were also going to have test next week too.” “But dad!” “Don’t dad me! You’ve been letting your school work slide lately and getting into trouble at school with those two little hoodlums you hang out with.” “They’re not hoodlums, and I didn’t get into trouble today!” “You aren’t supposed to be getting into trouble in the first place! Look son, I know you think I’m being hard on you, but this really is for your own good. Your little friends don’t have fathers that give shit about them, I should know because David’s dad is in here all the time and as for Tom, well the less said about his situation the better.” Doesn’t look like you’re getting out of here today, but you make one last attempt. “But I really don’t have that much homework, I really can do it quick over the weekend!” “Well if that is the case, you can help me out here instead.” “What?” “One of my barmaids is sick and I’m expecting a full house here tonight due to it being one of the miner’s birthdays today, so you can carry food and drinks.” You certainly weren’t expecting that. “What? Can’t mom do it?” “Your mother is going to have her hands full attempting to cook the giant cloudspeak ram in the kitchen for the celebration, in fact you can start off by helping her chop up the beast.” As usual your dad has given you no "choice" at all. > You resign yourself to doing your homework Well, you’d rather not do any real work and lying and sneaking out is probably just going to get you into more trouble. “Alright, I’ll do my homework!” you say. “Good choice son. Make sure you lock the door to the private quarters as usual.” You head upstairs to the third floor where your family has their own living space and lock the door. You get started on your homework to get it out of the way so you’ll at least have the weekend to enjoy. As you go through it, it’s a little more difficult than you thought it would be and it was probably good that you have given yourself a lot of time to work on it. A few hours pass and you’re finally finished. Your dad might be right; if you’d paid more attention in class your homework wouldn’t have taken as long. It’s too late now to go out and play even if you were allowed, but that still doesn’t mean you have to do anymore studying tonight. You spend the rest of the night playing with some of your toy soldiers and reading a few of your copper dreadfuls. You sometimes can hear some of the louder drunk miners using a bunch of curse words in an amusing way. Eventually you fall asleep. The next day you wake up early, your parents are still asleep so you grab some cookies before you go out to play. You run into Quincy on the way to David’s house. “Hey, where were you yesterday? You missed all the excitement!” Quincy says. “Yeah, I had to go my homework. Damn, I knew I was going to miss a good game of smash ball!” “No, not that! David and Tom got arrested!” “What!?” “Yeah! After we played a few games, we all went to the sweet shop. Well David and Tom tried to steal some of the candy and when Mr. Blek saw them, they ran off with it! They didn’t get far though. From what I know they spent the night in Juvie Hall!” This is surreal to you. Your dad was right again. You wonder if you would’ve went along with them and gotten in trouble as well if you’d snuck out yesterday. You can always say now that you wouldn’t have, but who knows at that moment? One thing is for sure; you’re not going to hang out with those two on a regular basis anymore. … The day is finally here and you’re heading off to Klyton University. All your hard work has finally paid off and your parents couldn’t be happier. “Now remember, I’ve been saving for your tuition since you were born, but remember why you’re there. To learn! I don’t want you getting caught up in wild parties and failing your classes. Maybe the upper class kids with super rich parents can afford to, but you can’t.” “I know dad.” “Oh, don’t mind your father, have some fun when you can. We know you’ll do the right thing.” For the most part you do, accomplish the right things in your days at Klyton University. You study, you make contacts, you make friends, and in your free time you have fun. You initially thought you might be “looked down on” due to your working class background. While there are a few like you here, a university education is still expensive and generally only the rich can afford to send their children there. Still, you managed to get here, you (and your family) must have earned it, and so you’re treated with respect. Your years at Klyton University are busy but happy ones. You can only imagine that when you just started you pre-med courses that more of the same would’ve come about, however that’s not to be… You’re in your dorm when you get the message from a courier. Your father has died of a heart attack. Happened suddenly last night while he was working and by the time a physician arrived nothing could be done to save him. You sit down in shock for a brief moment and when you finally gather your strength, you catch the next coach to the Miner’s Mug Inn. When you arrive the Inn is closed, so you let yourself in to find your mother who is unsurprisingly upset. You console her as best you can for the time being and help make the funeral arrangements. Your father didn’t want an expensive funeral, so it’s a small one. The Inn’s staff is invited along with a few of the miners that were genuinely friends with your dad. Everyone pays their respects before dear old dad is put into the ground. On your way home with your mother, you suddenly realize you’ve missed a couple classes during all this. You then start to wonder about your future college plans and while it’s still a fragile time for your mother, you need to ask her about it when you get home. You don’t know it yet, but you’re in for more shocking news… > The long talk “You’re selling the inn?!” “I have to! I can’t run this place myself.” “Well that’s what you have staff for!” “Oh son…(sniff) I don’t think you know the entire situation. You haven’t been around as much over the years.” “Mom, I always meant to visit more, but…” “No, it’s not that. In fact I’m glad you had fun at college. You at least had some enjoyment. I’m just sorry you won’t get to have any more.” “Mom, I don’t like where this is going.” You mom at this point begins cry again until you eventually get her to calm down. What comes next almost makes you cry though. While your father did indeed save for you, it wasn’t enough to put you through college completely. Costs were higher than he thought and even though business was okay, he had unexpected expenses such as making fixes to the inn and price hikes in his alcohol supplier. Your father was determined to not pull you out of college though, so he found another way. He borrowed money from a moneylender. “WHAT?! Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve taken less classes or gotten a part time job at the university!” “No, he didn’t want you to worry or get distracted.” “Well I guess that’s good since all that worry can go to this now! By the gods, why didn’t he at least go to a bank to get the loan!?” “He tried, but didn’t get approved. They wouldn’t even take the inn as collateral. I pleaded with him not to borrow money from criminals, but he claimed it would be fine as long as he opened the tavern earlier, found a cheaper supplier and made a few cuts here and there. And for a while things were running a little smoother, but I could see the stress taking a toll on him. It’s what ultimately killed him. I’m just so sorry that we failed you. We wanted so much better for you. Now I’ll have to sell the inn off to pay off the moneylender and hopefully I’ll be able to find a job as a cook elsewhere.” You just sit in silence and try to wrap your head around all of this. Your bright future in medicine as you know is gone. You still have quite a bit of education, and you’re fairly certain you could still find a job to support yourself, but it’s going to be hard initially and you probably won’t be satisfied with it. You’re also worried about your mom, what if she can’t find a job? You won’t be able to help her much. You can only think of one solution. “Would it help if I ran the inn?” you ask. “What?” your mother replies. “Would it help if I helped you run this place. I mean granted I don’t have excessive experience, I have watched you guys do it while I grew up here. I think I can manage the basics. If we managed to keep this place running at least long enough to pay off the loan, maybe then I can save enough to finish my education.” “I don’t know son, I mean…I would love to see you finish your education, but it’s a lot to take on. Would you have time? I don’t want you getting burned out and suffering a pre-mature heart attack like your father because of the stress!” “Well, I’m going to have nothing but time now, if I drop out and focus on this place. I think the main concern is getting us out of debt…just how much do you owe?” “Uh…about ten thousand gold coins.” You really hoped it would be significantly less than that. “Okay, well I’m guessing he takes smaller payments to buy you time but then charges more interest with each passage of time. We’ll have to get this place whipped into shape so it’s making enough profit that we’ll be able to pay the entire sum as soon as possible. After that, we’ll have some breathing room.” Your mom looks apprehensive about all this and then shakes her head claiming she can’t let you shoulder this responsibility especially with the risk of physical danger involved if you anger the moneylender in some way. She says that you should go on with your life and forget about the inn, she’ll be able to sell it and pay off the debt with no problem. And as for her, she also tells you not to worry about her either, but she hopes that you’ll forgive her and your father for failing in giving you the life you deserve. It is true you could walk away from all this. You don’t really have any great desire to run the inn. It was just a solution you came up with to help your mom and possibly help yourself. But there’s no guarantee it’s going to work, just like there’s no guarantee that you can’t still achieve your goals on your own. > You take over the inn You shake your head; you can’t walk away from this. Your mom might be in serious trouble because this loan. Selling the inn might not even be enough to cover it and even if it is, she probably won’t have enough to fall back on. You aren’t angry with her, but you do feel a little anger towards your dad for getting her in this position (and you indirectly). You realize he still had the best intentions for you, but those don’t really help right now. “Alright first things first, who is the name of this loanshark?” you ask your mother. “Mr. Reynolds. He’ll be coming next week to pick up a collection. He’s not a member of the Crimson Talons, but he does have a couple of their goons working for him.” “The Crimson Talons? Oh geez, this just get better…okay how is this place doing for business?” “It’s doing about as well as it always has.” “That won’t be enough, we’ll need to get more people in here, or cut costs somehow.” “Well your father was going to have more work done on the rooms in the hopes that it would keep adventurers and maybe even merchants to come back whenever they travel through here. I’m not sure if it’s worth it though. Adventures don’t care where they sleep half the time and it’s not always a sure thing that they’re going to live long enough for repeat business. As for merchants, I think this place is a little too blue collar for them most of the time.” “You said something about getting a new liquor supplier?” “Yeah, the one here raised their prices, it would actually be cheaper to get the stuff shipped in from Hessla. Your father was supposed to meet with the new potential distributor in a couple days, so I’m not sure how that’s going to go through, if at all.” “How about the staff?” “The staff is working on minimum wage as it is, we’ve got three barmaids, Rita, Eliza and Wendy and they’re all disgruntled about their jobs, but they all still work well.. We can barely pay them though, and we might have to fire one of them. Grim stuff, but you’re determined to see this through. Since the liquor supplier from Hessla won’t arrive in two days you’re just going to focus on what you can do now. Fixing the rooms is still a good idea to keep potential returning wandering adventurers happy. Spending a little money now could increase potential profits later. Who knows, maybe even a merchant will show up and spread the word that this place isn’t just some place where miners get drunk. Firing people sounds like it might save you money, but all it’s really going to do is create more work for the rest of you, so you decide to hold off on firing anyone for now. Your mother doesn’t agree with your idea of fixing the rooms, but seems relieved that you’re not firing anyone. Things go as normal at the inn. Several of the miners still offer their condolences about your father and are surprised to see that you’re taking up his mantle as it were, but other than that they don’t say to much to you. They probably don’t know what to say since while some of them might know you since you were little, but you’re not really “one of them” in terms of education level. Not to say they’re all a bunch of grunting idiots, but they probably figure you’re used to talking about things of a more cerebral nature. You don’t mind though, after all your main concern is getting your mom out of debt. Two days pass and the supplier from Hessla arrives. He’s a grungy shady looking individual, but considering he’s from Hessla that’s hardly surprising. He immediately says his name is Calwin asks for your father at which point you tell him he died recently. Calwin shows no sympathy and merely complains that he’s made a trip up here for no reason. You show a little restraint and call your mother to speak with him, but after five minutes with him she’s ready to throw him out the door for hitting on her, and you’re not exactly thrilled with him either at this point. “Look folks, if you want good quality alcohol at a low price I’m willing to deal wit ya, but I’m gonna need some incentive for my troubles because y’all seem like a buncha uptight prigs. Now I was invited here by the man who ran this establishment, so you called me here, if my help ain’t wanted, I’ll be on my way…” Calwin says. While you’re tempted to just have him leave, you decide it would be best to at least see if his stuff is any good. “Alright prove it. Surely you’ve brought some of your alcohol here so we can test to see if it’s any good.” “Well I do have some with me, but I can’t just be givin’ this stuff away for free.” “Don’t worry, you’ll be compensated.” You call attention to the miners in the room and ask them if they’d like to try some new beer, naturally they’re all for it. A few of the miners take their fill of Calwin’s beer and they say that it’s different from what they usually drink, but it’s just as good. Calwin looks a little put off that they claimed his alcohol is “just as good”, but still maintains that it’s better than what you already have. He states his price, and also mentions that he wants a free room whenever he comes here since he’s apparently got a harpy of a wife at home and he likes to stay away for a couple days before having to go back to Hessla. Your mother obviously isn’t thrilled with having to deal with him, and in the short time he’s been here; he’s also hit on every one of the barmaids. Granted they’re used to such behavior, he’s particularly revolting. (Plus he’s from Hessla) > You deal with him and agree to the free room If it’s only for a couple days, what can it hurt and you’re getting a good deal on his alcohol, so you figure it’s a good idea. This does not go well with your mother who says you’re going to get the pair of you further into debt. It takes some time, but eventually you manage to convince her that the money you’re saving will be worth the couple days out of the month that he actually comes up here. Meanwhile Calwin calls his lackeys to unload his cart and take the stuff down to your cellar. Calwin then states he’s going to retire to his room and that if any of your barmaids want to join him his door will be open. The next couple days aren’t exactly pleasant, Calwin is a complete lecherous slob and leaves not only his room a disgusting mess, but hangs around the bar all day trying to grope the barmaids. (Rita in particular) You have to warn him several times to leave them alone, and eventually one of the miners who has a crush on Rita punches him in the face resulting in a minor scuffle in which Calwin is not the winner. You fully expect Calwin to claim that he’s never dealing with you again, but as it turns out he doesn’t think anything of it. Indeed he claims if it had been a bar in Hessla he probably would’ve gotten a knife in the eye instead, so he considers himself lucky. Eventually he leaves and everyone is glad, but there’s the sickening feeling that you know you’re going to have to put up with him a few times every month. By the end of the week you haven’t saved any money. In fact you’ve barely broke even. While you’re sweeping up the inn early morning, a non-descript man of medium height enters with two bigger figures. One of them is unmistakably an ogre while the other guy is just a tall muscular human. Either one could break you in half. “Are you are Mr. Reynolds?” you ask, knowing that it has to be him. “That would be me. I take it you’re the son of my late debtor? I do hope you realize that the debt doesn’t end with him dying…” Mr. Reynolds says “No, no of course not. I’ve got some of what my father owed.” You hand over the most you can under the circumstances, but Mr. Reynolds looks insulted. “My boy do you take me for an asshole? Your father used to pay me much more than this pittance!” “It was a rough week…” “No, no, I don’t give a shit about your excuses, you’ve chosen to take on your father’s debt so you are expected to fucking pay up like he did! (Sigh) Look, since you’re obviously new to this, I’ll let you off with a warning. Olaf.” Suddenly the ogre steps forward with a smile and punches you the stomach. You temporarily lose the ability to breath and collapse on the floor. When you finally do catch your breath, you promptly vomit. “That was my warning, let’s hope I don’t need to do it again. Be seeing you again in a few weeks kid. Let’s get out of here.” As Mr. Reynolds leaves, your mother comes running up from the cellar wondering what’s going on. She helps you up when she sees you. “Oh no son I can’t let this go on. We’re selling the inn right now!” “No, no mom, it’s alright, you’ll see. We’re going to make this place profitable and payback the loan and after that we’ll be able to take the next step.” “Son, I love you, but you’ve made a lot of questionable decisions as far as business is concerned. I mean if this keeps up, I’m stepping in before this place goes to hell so I can actually make money selling it to the city.” “You won’t get enough for it!” “Well I’ll get enough to pay off the debt, and if worst comes to worst, I’ll leave Klyton and live with my sister in Teckleville” “You can’t live with aunt Enora, you always said she’s crazy.” “She is, but that still doesn’t mean she wouldn’t help me out.” “Look, we’ve still got time, I know my ideas are going to help us out soon.” “Well, I hope all your fancy schooling you gained some sort of insight that I’m not privy to. Alright we’ll give it until the next time Mr. Reynolds comes around for payment.” You agree and start wiping up the floor before customers come in. The next few days are uneventful; the miners seem to be enjoying the new Hessla ale though so that’s a relief. They even seem to be talking to you a little more, one in particular Ular has been chewing your ear quite frequently. He’s the one that has an obvious crush on Rita, but you’ve never seen him actually talk to her on any serious level. Strange that a big tough miner would be too shy to speak to a girl, but there it is. “So how long have you known Rita?” Ular asks. “Me? Well she started working here just before I left for college so I didn’t speak to her too much back then, and I haven’t really spoken to her too much other than about duties around the inn since I’ve got back here.” “She’s so beautiful, you know? I always wonder if she isn’t a Delantium Princess hiding out or something.” “Yeah, she’s a pretty girl.” You reply. “Can you speak to her for me?” “What?” “Just speak to her for me. I try, but I…dunno I don’t have the words! I get all tongue tied an’ shit. I mean you’re a smart guy, you went to college an’ shit. Maybe you can tell her better how I feel than I can.” “I dunno if should get involved in this…” “Please man, just do it…oh shit here she comes!” At this point Ular stumbles over his own feet trying to get to a dark corner before Rita arrives for more ale. Feeling a little sorry for the guy, you talk to Rita. “Hey Rita, this is going to be strange question, but…” “Oh gods, you’re not going to start hitting on me too are you?” “What? Uh no! But well, there’s a miner named Ular who’s sort of nuts about you.” “Yeah, he’s nuts over me like every other miner here trying to get under my skirt.” “Heh, I don’t think so, he’s so damn shy he’s practically afraid to speak to you, and surely you’ve noticed.” “Yeah I suppose I have. I will admit he’s a little different than the rest of these ale swilling pigs.” “So are you interested in him?” “Eh…I dunno. I mean from what I know of him he seems respectful and he did punch out that fucker Calwin when he groped me, but that’s not really enough. I need a man that’s going places. I mean he’s a miner; where’s that going to lead me? Not in fine Selkie furs and a big house, I’ll just be barefoot and pregnant and still living here.” Same old Rita. Still, you can certainly understand her desire to move up in the world. However, a miner still makes a decent living. A lot better than her that’s for sure. She’d still be “moving up.” > You tell Ular she's not interested There’s no point in trying to convince Rita, she’s obviously looking to marry into money, though there’s a lot better ways she could go about it. Ular seems like a cool guy and probably should know the type of girl she is anyway. As Rita walks off, you look for Ular and see him slowly coming out of his dark corner. You explain to him how the conversation went, he’s obviously upset about it, but thanks you nonetheless. “Well, I guess it’s true about that old saying. You can’t judge a book by its cover. Give everyone a round for the house on me, everyone else might as well be happy even if I’m not. Just don’t have Rita serve my drinks anymore okay?” You understand and carry on with your duties. The remaining days until the next payment go as normal and Mr. Reynolds is satisfied with the payment he receives, and you still have a little saved over. You have hope that in time you’ll get out of this debt eventually. However, trouble rears its ugly head when Calwin shows up on his monthly delivery. He says that he’s decided to bump the price up on his alcohol. You furiously ask why, and he says that the last time he was here he noticed how nice the rooms were and that if you can afford to fix them up, you must be able to afford to pay him more for his product. It doesn’t need to be said that your mother does not want to deal with him at all at this point. > You comply with his demands He’s got you over a barrel, you agree to his price. Your mother throws up her hands and rolls her eyes in disgust. Calwin smirks and calls his lackeys to take his alcohol into the cellar, while he “retires” to his room again. Like last time, Calwin is a lecherous slob and Rita doesn’t have Ular defending her “honor” anymore. This time she quits when Calwin practically molests her when she takes food up to his room. Deal or not, your mother isn’t going to put up with his shit any longer, grabs your dad’s Troll Gun from behind the bar and kicks him out of his room. He screams at you saying that you’ll regret reneging on the deal like this before leaving. Now you’re a barmaid short and you’ll have to go back to the old Klyton supplier. While it’s true you don’t have to pay Rita anymore, you end up losing a couple of customers that liked looking at her. That’s not even counting the extra work that Eliza and Wendy have to do now who are now miserable to the point of wanting to seriously quit. You and your mother take up some of the slack, but it’s a drain on the pair of you. And while you have enough to pay Mr. Reynolds this month, you’re not optimistic about the future. The problem is you won’t be saving money like you were going to while Calwin was your supplier. Your nice rooms haven’t really been helping like you thought they might and while you can keep on this way, you’re never really going to get ahead. The thought of continuing to work here any longer is disheartening to you. Maybe you’re just being impatient, but after all the problems and headaches you’ve encountered you really don’t feel like dealing with this job anymore, especially not when there is potential danger constantly looming overhead. You’re ready to tell your mother to just sell the place. So you do. You fought the good fight for as long as you could, but maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. You’re not going to finish this one, which is a familiar theme to you since you dropped out of college. You tell your mother what you think and she seems just as eager to sell the place off too since the past few months have been pretty stressful. During the remaining week the inn stays open to make a last bit of change before closing for good and selling to the city. Some of the miners seem a little sad by it, but there were so many changes within such a short period of time that most seemed content on finding a new place since the old one wasn’t like how it used to be anymore. When the inn is sold off, you barely make enough to cover the debt, but at least you and your mother aren’t in any immediate danger now. Your mother finds work as a cook for a short time, but eventually decides she can’t really stand living in the city without your father anymore. She leaves to go live with your aunt Enora in Teckleville, which is to the east on the outskirts of the Delantium Kingdom. After a long time of the inn just sitting untended and forgotten due to the council having more pressing matters and red tape, it’s broken into by several homeless people who use it as a place to sleep. The homeless are soon ousted by a local gang who use it as a safe house. Eventually though they cause enough trouble that the Klyton Militia has to take severe action and storm the place, resulting in a small fire. At this point someone in the council finally notices it, decides that the place isn’t worth salvaging and proposes that it be knocked down to build a medical clinic in its place to try to uplift the area. The motion passes. As for you, you find a job thanks to your education level, but it isn’t anywhere in the field that you would’ve liked. You’re a clerk in tax office, filing away items, straightening out reports and such. You never really move up and you never make enough money to save away to get ahead either. You don’t really have a bad life so much as a mind numbingly mundane one. You do have your good days, but ultimately you never really achieve your goals and always have a sense of dissatisfaction with your life. Sometimes you look back and wonder where you exactly went wrong with the inn and how you could’ve done things differently. You’ll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There’s no point in trying to convince Rita, she’s obviously looking to marry into money, though there’s a lot better ways she could go about it. Ular seems like a cool guy and probably should know the type of girl she is anyway. As Rita walks off, you look for Ular and see him slowly coming out of his dark corner. You explain to him how the conversation went, he’s obviously upset about it, but thanks you nonetheless. “Well, I guess it’s true about that old saying. You can’t judge a book by its cover. Give everyone a round for the house on me, everyone else might as well be happy even if I’m not. Just don’t have Rita serve my drinks anymore okay?” You understand and carry on with your duties. The remaining days until the next payment go as normal and Mr. Reynolds is satisfied with the payment he receives, and you still have a little saved over. You have hope that in time you’ll get out of this debt eventually. However, trouble rears its ugly head when Calwin shows up on his monthly delivery. He says that he’s decided to bump the price up on his alcohol. You furiously ask why, and he says that the last time he was here he noticed how nice the rooms were and that if you can afford to fix them up, you must be able to afford to pay him more for his product. It doesn’t need to be said that your mother does not want to deal with him at all at this point. > You don't comply with his demands You tell Calwin you’re not paying him anything more than he’s getting and that it’s complete bullshit that he’s jacking up his prices like this. Calwin goes on a rant about supply and demand and how he’s doing you a favor. The argument heats up, but ultimately ends when your mother grabs your dad’s Troll Gun from under the bar counter and points it at him, telling him to get the hell out before she blows his head off. He and his lackeys leave, which means you’ll have no alcohol supply this month. “I told you we shouldn’t have dealt with him at all now we’ll have to go back to the Klyton supplier and they probably won’t even get around to delivering a shipment to us until near the end of the month! We’ll have to make due with what we have left and given how much those miners drinks, we won’t have enough!” “Well maybe we could water down the drinks or something…” you say trying to think of a solution. “Water down the drinks? Are you serious? That’s not going to work and we’re going to lose people doing that! Those miners are some serious drinkers, they’re going to know the difference.” “If you hadn’t chased Calwin out with a gun, I might’ve been able to reason with him. Okay fine, the only other solution I can think of is we’ll have to make our own ale.” “And how do we do that? I don’t have any experience in doing that and we don’t have license to do it either!” “I took some chemistry classes, I’m fairly certain I could try to build a still and…” “And that’s even worse than watering down the drinks. Look, I’m tired just thinking about all this and I’m going to rest before the business hours start.” > You start watering down the drinks You figure you’ll be able to stretch out your alcohol supply just long enough to get your next shipment and you’ll just have to hope for the best. That very night you’re already getting comments that the ale doesn’t taste quite as strong, this results in the miners ordering MORE ale since they aren’t getting drunk on what you’re currently giving them. This means you end up having less alcohol to stretch things out. By the end of the week, you’re getting loud verbal complaints about the ale, and outright accusations that it tastes like water. Several miners are insulted and leave the inn claiming that they’ve been loyal patrons here for so long and that they don’t need to be treated like this. You attempt to explain, but they shove you out of the way and tell you to go back to your fancy college. “I wish I could.” You quietly say to yourself. You aren’t optimistic about the rest of the month. Sure there’s still adventurers and the odd wanderer, but not enough to turn a profit before you get in the next shipment. This still wouldn’t be so bad except it’s going to be time to pay Mr. Reynolds soon and you’re going to fall short again. Your mother can’t bare to see you get hurt again and suggests forgetting all about the inn and just taking off with all the remaining money you have and going to live with your crazy aunt Enora. > You leave Klyton You agree with your mother, you don’t want to take another beating and that was only a punch in the stomach from an ogre. Who knows what they’ll do to you next? You and your mother pack as quickly as you can and catch a late coach heading west. It feels weird leaving Klyton, in fact now that you think about it, you’ve never been out of city before. Eventually after a couple days the coach stops in Teckleville where your aunt lives. Teckleville is just one of the many small villages on the borders of the Dalantium Kingdom. Probably in time it’ll get absorbed like so many others do, but that’s not really a concern of yours right now. Your aunt Enora is happy to see you both, and while this whole living with her thing was sprung on her at the last moment it doesn’t seem to bother her. She says there’s plenty of room and you can stay as long as you like. While the house is certainly nice and you’re happy to live there rather than in the street, it’s sort of on the small side and you feel like you have no privacy. Teckleville isn’t anything like you’re used to either. The whole small town thing just doesn’t appeal to you, and you feel trapped with a bunch of boring backwards people. It’s even worse than when you were stuck serving the miners. You were supposed to do greater things! Your were going to be a doctor! You did everything right and studied hard and what do you have to show for it? Nothing! You’re stuck in some cow town where the best job you can hope to get is probably shoveling shit. Some future. “Thanks dad, you fucking idiot.” You say throwing a rock against a barn door. In time, your mother works at the local tavern where she serves as a cook. It’s not much, but it is something she’s used to doing. You manage to get a job working as an assistant to the mean old bastard who runs the general store. It’s a thankless job, but he’s about the only one who’ll hire you since nobody else will work for him and everyone else thinks you have a superiority complex (Which is sort of true) and won’t hire you. The only upside is since you live at your aunt’s house you manage to save what little money you do make. You have a plan to head to the Delantium Kingdom and start fresh again, because staying here isn’t in your future. Unfortunately neither is the Delantium Kingdom. One night while you’re sleeping an oversized hand covers your mouth and two more grab your arms. You open your eyes to see Olaf grinning at you in the darkness. “What? Did you really think we’d forget about you? Don’t worry about the debt anymore kid, consider it paid with your family’s life.” You hear Mr. Reynolds whisper before he shoves a knife into your stomach and rips it up to your chest. The next day your aunt’s friend finds the bloody bodies of you, your mother and your aunt. The incident becomes known as the Teckleville Massacre.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You figure you’ll be able to stretch out your alcohol supply just long enough to get your next shipment and you’ll just have to hope for the best. That very night you’re already getting comments that the ale doesn’t taste quite as strong, this results in the miners ordering MORE ale since they aren’t getting drunk on what you’re currently giving them. This means you end up having less alcohol to stretch things out. By the end of the week, you’re getting loud verbal complaints about the ale, and outright accusations that it tastes like water. Several miners are insulted and leave the inn claiming that they’ve been loyal patrons here for so long and that they don’t need to be treated like this. You attempt to explain, but they shove you out of the way and tell you to go back to your fancy college. “I wish I could.” You quietly say to yourself. You aren’t optimistic about the rest of the month. Sure there’s still adventurers and the odd wanderer, but not enough to turn a profit before you get in the next shipment. This still wouldn’t be so bad except it’s going to be time to pay Mr. Reynolds soon and you’re going to fall short again. Your mother can’t bare to see you get hurt again and suggests forgetting all about the inn and just taking off with all the remaining money you have and going to live with your crazy aunt Enora. > You stick around “Do you think you’d still be able to get a good price for this place?” you ask your mother. “Yeah, but not before next payment! That’s why we just need to get out of the city now!” You grab what payment you can afford and start heading for the door. “What’re you doing?!” “I’m going to see Mr. Reynolds early.” “What?! You can’t! He’ll kill you!” “No, he’ll have me beaten. Look, if we leave he’s just going to track us down and he probably will kill us by that time. If I pay him this now, I’ll take a beating, but he’s going to figure I’m still a source of income for him. We can then pay it off completely when you sell this place. Afterwards, well we’ll see what happens.” Your mother still doesn’t want you to go, but you’re determined so she doesn’t stand in your way. You walk several blocks into bad neighborhoods half expecting to get mugged on your way to see him, but for once luck is on your side. Mr. Reynolds sits at his desk counting coins with both of his goons beside him as usual. “Well this is unexpected, what can I do for you today m’boy?” “This is all we can afford for this payment. I guarantee the next one will be much bigger.” You say plopping the bag of coins on his desk. He lifts the bag and frowns at its weight. “Feels a little light kid. You do realize what’s going to happen next right?” “Yes, that’s why I came early to get it over with.” You say trying to sound brave. “Heh, you’re trying your best to be brave, but I know deep down inside you’re terrified. It’s okay, you should be. (Sigh) Olaf. Reggie. Just beat him up, don’t break any bones, I’m in a good mood today.” Olaf approaches you with a little disappointment that he doesn’t get to break any bones today, but he still takes glee in punching you in the face. Reggie picks you up and holds you while Olaf beats on you some more. You try not to think about the pain, but instead try to think about how it’s absolutely amazing that Olaf manages to pull his punches enough that he doesn’t break anything. It’s the odd ogre that can show restraint during violence. Olaf does fail eventually though, when everyone hears an awful crunch sound and blood flies everywhere from your nose which is now completely broken. “Oh Olaf, I told you not to break anything! All right he’s had enough, drop him Reggie.” Mr. Reynolds orders and steps from his behind his desk to speak to you. “That’s two times I’ve been lenient kid. Next time, well for your sake there better not be a fucking next time because you’re not exactly the hardy type to take beatings like this. Olaf carry this kid back to his inn, he can’t make it home in his condition.” You don’t even remember what happens in the next few moments since you’re drifting in and out of consciousness. When Olaf arrives at the inn he dumps your limp body inside and walks off. Your mother makes sure you’re still alive and somehow manages to get you to crawl to the bed of one of the empty rooms. During the remaining week the inn stays open to make a last bit of change before closing for good and selling to the city. Some of the miners seem a little sad by it, but there were so many changes within such a short period of time that most seemed content on finding a new place since the old one wasn’t like how it used to be anymore. When the inn is sold off, you barely make enough to cover the debt, but at least you and your mother aren’t in any immediate danger now. Your mother finds work as a cook for a short time, but eventually decides she can’t really stand living in the city without your father anymore. She leaves to go live with your aunt Enora in Teckleville, which is to the east on the outskirts of the Delantium Kingdom. After a long time of the inn just sitting untended and forgotten due to the council having more pressing matters and red tape, it’s broken into by several homeless people who use it as a place to sleep. The homeless are soon ousted by a local gang who use it as a safe house. Eventually though they cause enough trouble that the Klyton Militia has to take severe action and storm the place, resulting in a small fire. At this point someone in the council finally notices it, decides that the place isn’t worth salvaging and proposes that it be knocked down to build a medical clinic in its place to try to uplift the area. The motion passes. As for you, you find a job thanks to your education level, but it isn’t anywhere in the field that you would’ve liked. You’re a clerk in tax office, filing away items, straightening out reports and such. You never really move up and you never make enough money to save away to get ahead either. You don’t really have a bad life so much as a mind numbingly mundane one. You do have your good days, but ultimately you never really achieve your goals and always have a sense of dissatisfaction with your life. Sometimes you look back and wonder where you exactly went wrong with the inn and how you could’ve done things differently. You’ll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You tell Calwin you’re not paying him anything more than he’s getting and that it’s complete bullshit that he’s jacking up his prices like this. Calwin goes on a rant about supply and demand and how he’s doing you a favor. The argument heats up, but ultimately ends when your mother grabs your dad’s Troll Gun from under the bar counter and points it at him, telling him to get the hell out before she blows his head off. He and his lackeys leave, which means you’ll have no alcohol supply this month. “I told you we shouldn’t have dealt with him at all now we’ll have to go back to the Klyton supplier and they probably won’t even get around to delivering a shipment to us until near the end of the month! We’ll have to make due with what we have left and given how much those miners drinks, we won’t have enough!” “Well maybe we could water down the drinks or something…” you say trying to think of a solution. “Water down the drinks? Are you serious? That’s not going to work and we’re going to lose people doing that! Those miners are some serious drinkers, they’re going to know the difference.” “If you hadn’t chased Calwin out with a gun, I might’ve been able to reason with him. Okay fine, the only other solution I can think of is we’ll have to make our own ale.” “And how do we do that? I don’t have any experience in doing that and we don’t have license to do it either!” “I took some chemistry classes, I’m fairly certain I could try to build a still and…” “And that’s even worse than watering down the drinks. Look, I’m tired just thinking about all this and I’m going to rest before the business hours start.” > You start building a still You head down to the cellar and start constructing your still while trying to remember everything you learned in those chemistry classes. The main thing is to make something strong that isn’t going to make folks go blind. You work on it over the course of several days during your spare time as the real alcohol supply dwindles down. Eventually after a mixture of sugar, yeast, potatoes and bunch of other stuff you’ve taken from the garbage, you’re fairly confident you’ve made enough of this stuff to last you by the time you get the proper shipment. You haven’t exactly been telling your mother what you’ve been doing, but the smell has been getting to the point that it’s starting to invade the kitchen. “Ugh! It smells awful down here, and I hope you aren’t doing what I think you’re doing.” “I had to, besides it’s finished now and I think this batch has come out pretty good.” “Smells like rotting garbage!” “Well some of it is, but trust me I think this will tide us over.” Hoping for the best, you and your mother release this new brew to the clientele. You do have the decency to warn them that it’s new, but they’re always willing to try anything once. The moonshine brew goes over well, more or less. A few think it’s a lot more bitter, but it’s not enough to drive anyone away since they’re all getting drunk at a quicker rate. Mr. Reynolds receives his payment and by the end of the month you’ve got your usual shipment. The problem is you won’t be saving money like you were going to while Calwin was your supplier. Your nice rooms haven’t really been helping like you thought they might and while you can keep on this way, you’re never really going to get ahead. The thought of continuing to work here any longer is disheartening to you. Maybe you’re just being impatient, but after all the problems and headaches you’ve encountered you really don’t feel like dealing with this job anymore, especially not when there is potential danger constantly looming overhead. You’re ready to tell your mother to just sell the place. The only other thing you can think of to cut costs to a degree that will speed up the process is to continue using the still and not bother with buying from the Klyton supplier in the future. > You sell the inn You fought the good fight for as long as you could, but maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. You’re not going to finish this one, which is a familiar theme to you since you dropped out of college. You tell your mother what you think and she seems just as eager to sell the place off too since the past few months have been pretty stressful. During the remaining week the inn stays open to make a last bit of change before closing for good and selling to the city. Some of the miners seem a little sad by it, but there were so many changes within such a short period of time that most seemed content on finding a new place since the old one wasn’t like how it used to be anymore. When the inn is sold off, you barely make enough to cover the debt, but at least you and your mother aren’t in any immediate danger now. Your mother finds work as a cook for a short time, but eventually decides she can’t really stand living in the city without your father anymore. She leaves to go live with your aunt Enora in Teckleville, which is to the east on the outskirts of the Delantium Kingdom. After a long time of the inn just sitting untended and forgotten due to the council having more pressing matters and red tape, it’s broken into by several homeless people who use it as a place to sleep. The homeless are soon ousted by a local gang who use it as a safe house. Eventually though they cause enough trouble that the Klyton Militia has to take severe action and storm the place, resulting in a small fire. At this point someone in the council finally notices it, decides that the place isn’t worth salvaging and proposes that it be knocked down to build a medical clinic in its place to try to uplift the area. The motion passes. As for you, you find a job thanks to your education level, but it isn’t anywhere in the field that you would’ve liked. You’re a clerk in tax office, filing away items, straightening out reports and such. You never really move up and you never make enough money to save away to get ahead either. You don’t really have a bad life so much as a mind numbingly mundane one. You do have your good days, but ultimately you never really achieve your goals and always have a sense of dissatisfaction with your life. Sometimes you look back and wonder where you exactly went wrong with the inn and how you could’ve done things differently. You’ll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head down to the cellar and start constructing your still while trying to remember everything you learned in those chemistry classes. The main thing is to make something strong that isn’t going to make folks go blind. You work on it over the course of several days during your spare time as the real alcohol supply dwindles down. Eventually after a mixture of sugar, yeast, potatoes and bunch of other stuff you’ve taken from the garbage, you’re fairly confident you’ve made enough of this stuff to last you by the time you get the proper shipment. You haven’t exactly been telling your mother what you’ve been doing, but the smell has been getting to the point that it’s starting to invade the kitchen. “Ugh! It smells awful down here, and I hope you aren’t doing what I think you’re doing.” “I had to, besides it’s finished now and I think this batch has come out pretty good.” “Smells like rotting garbage!” “Well some of it is, but trust me I think this will tide us over.” Hoping for the best, you and your mother release this new brew to the clientele. You do have the decency to warn them that it’s new, but they’re always willing to try anything once. The moonshine brew goes over well, more or less. A few think it’s a lot more bitter, but it’s not enough to drive anyone away since they’re all getting drunk at a quicker rate. Mr. Reynolds receives his payment and by the end of the month you’ve got your usual shipment. The problem is you won’t be saving money like you were going to while Calwin was your supplier. Your nice rooms haven’t really been helping like you thought they might and while you can keep on this way, you’re never really going to get ahead. The thought of continuing to work here any longer is disheartening to you. Maybe you’re just being impatient, but after all the problems and headaches you’ve encountered you really don’t feel like dealing with this job anymore, especially not when there is potential danger constantly looming overhead. You’re ready to tell your mother to just sell the place. The only other thing you can think of to cut costs to a degree that will speed up the process is to continue using the still and not bother with buying from the Klyton supplier in the future. > You use the still You’re willing to stick it out a little longer, but you really need to use a few short cuts now. The brew from the still is good enough for the miners and you won’t have to deal with a middleman anymore. Your mother isn’t happy with this idea. She wasn’t thrilled with it before, but realized it was necessary at the time. You argue with her for hours about the moral and legal ramifications of it all until she finally gets tired and capitulates under stress. Over the months you manage to save tons of money, are able to pay Mr. Reynolds off larger amounts and you believe in a few more months you’ll completely be free of him. The problem now is with your mother who still insists on bitching at you day in day out despite the fact that you’re basically saving her ass from the problems that her and your dumb ass dad got you involved into in the first place. “For fuck’s sake, will get off my fucking back? I’ve been the main one coming up with solutions on how to save this fucking place and I’m getting shit for it? Why the hell am I getting punished for something you and dad did? I was supposed to be taking classes right now to become a doctor! Y’know, like YOU all wanted me to? I’m trying to make the best of this situation and still find a damn way of achieving my goals yet all I’m getting is kicked in the fucking face for it!” you yell while throwing a potato against the wall. Your mother shakes her head. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, but the son I knew wouldn’t be engaging in criminal activities and yelling at me like this. This isn’t worth it; I’m not dealing with this anymore. You want to be mad at me and your father, you can go right ahead, you might even be right in some way but I’m still not going to put up with it. You think you can turn this place around and still achieve your goals? Go right ahead, but you’re doing it without my help. I quit, and I’m handing this place over to you. Have fun, and I hope you make all your dreams come true.” You’re a little shocked by this. You run after her asking what she’s going to do and that you’re sorry about the stuff you said, but she won’t hear it. She just says she’s leaving the deed with you and she’s going to go live with your aunt Enora in Teckleville. After some last words are exchanged she’s gone. You aren’t quite sure how to feel and you’re still trying to wrap your head around it when your barmaids come in. “Hey which one of you is the best cook?” “Uh, I guess that would be me.” Wendy says. “Good, you’re upgrade to cook, you’ll get a small raise too.” “What seriously?” “Yeah, mom quit and gave me this place, so we’re making some changes around here.” Wendy looks a little pleased with getting a small promotion, but Rita isn’t so happy. “Hey what about us? You can’t just expect us to shoulder all the extra work! You’re going to have to hire someone else to help!” Rita says “Settle down Rita, I’ll be getting some new help soon don’t worry about it. All I need from the rest of you is to do your jobs.” A few weeks pass and you’re doing okay even if you’re getting some grumbles from your staff every once in awhile. You do end up hiring a new person, but it’s not another barmaid. It’s a janitor so the barmaids don’t need to worry about cleaning up as much anymore. The great thing is he’s simple minded and you don’t need to pay him since apparently his mother wanted him out of the house and dragged him by the ear to you when she saw your Help Wanted sign. You agreed to let him sleep in your cellar and he could eat all the rats he catches down there. (Though Eliza gives him real food from time to time) Your still is perfected a bit better, but the brew from that stuff does take it’s toll on your usual patrons. While none of the miners go blind, a lot of them are starting to feel several side effects from drinking the stuff on a regular basis. This causes some to stop coming in altogether, but on the “plus side” you do get a few more lowly types that don’t give a shit what poison they put into their system. You end up changing the name of the place to the Bottomless Mug Inn. Despite your decrease in clientele you still manage to cut enough corners and exploit enough drunks that you pay off Mr. Reynolds. He’s a little surprised considering how run down the inn has gotten. He suspects (quite rightly) that you’re probably doing something illegal and tells you if you ever need another loan in the future you know where to find him. You vow that you’re not going to let that happen. Well the inn is profitable again (barely) and you’ve effectively saved the place and your mother from potential danger (mainly yourself) but taking over your father’s inn wasn’t your dream and it wasn’t your parents’ dream either. You figure you’ve got two choices, you could either sell this place now and hope you get enough money for it to finish your education, or you could continue to run it as a ongoing source of income and somehow manage to save enough as well as find the time to study while running this dump. > You sell the inn You can’t stand running this increasingly run down piss hole anymore; you’re selling the place. You figure you should be able to get enough money to finish your schooling. Unfortunately “piss hole” is too correct of a word for what it goes for. Sure it’s a business, and it’s in adequate shape, but the city generally doesn’t give out that much money for “adequate”. You get just enough money to probably cover a couple semesters, not nearly enough. That’s when you get the idea to improvise. Learning the lesson in cutting corners at the inn, you enroll back at Klyton University and set up a small lab like you did with the still but this time you decide to make drugs instead. Cloud rock is easy to make and you figure you’ll be able to support yourself and if you get a part time job on campus, you should be able to swing it. The inn money will help you in the beginning months while you get settled. Things initially go good for you, just like you thought, but when the inn money runs out that’s when crunch time starts and you’re not quite as prepared for it as you thought. Classes get increasingly harder, which means you need to study a lot more, combining that with your two jobs is rough and eventually you’re not getting enough rest and one of them has to go. Not surprisingly you quit your regular job as the university’s bookstore assistant since it pays less and you figure you can easily make up the money just by selling more drugs which you’ve become frighteningly good at. After one more semester, you figure why bother with college at all? You could just sell Cloud Rock all day make as much money as a low level physician might and not bother with studying, because really what has this college business gotten you? A lot of wasted time that’s what. So that’s what you do. It doesn’t need to be said that such a path rarely leads to a good end, but you do have your fun while it lasts which is probably a little longer than you thought it might be. As you lay dying because you pissed off some other criminal for whatever wrong or perceived wrong you might’ve done to him, you think back to where it all went wrong and all you can think about is: “That damn inn.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re willing to stick it out a little longer, but you really need to use a few short cuts now. The brew from the still is good enough for the miners and you won’t have to deal with a middleman anymore. Your mother isn’t happy with this idea. She wasn’t thrilled with it before, but realized it was necessary at the time. You argue with her for hours about the moral and legal ramifications of it all until she finally gets tired and capitulates under stress. Over the months you manage to save tons of money, are able to pay Mr. Reynolds off larger amounts and you believe in a few more months you’ll completely be free of him. The problem now is with your mother who still insists on bitching at you day in day out despite the fact that you’re basically saving her ass from the problems that her and your dumb ass dad got you involved into in the first place. “For fuck’s sake, will get off my fucking back? I’ve been the main one coming up with solutions on how to save this fucking place and I’m getting shit for it? Why the hell am I getting punished for something you and dad did? I was supposed to be taking classes right now to become a doctor! Y’know, like YOU all wanted me to? I’m trying to make the best of this situation and still find a damn way of achieving my goals yet all I’m getting is kicked in the fucking face for it!” you yell while throwing a potato against the wall. Your mother shakes her head. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, but the son I knew wouldn’t be engaging in criminal activities and yelling at me like this. This isn’t worth it; I’m not dealing with this anymore. You want to be mad at me and your father, you can go right ahead, you might even be right in some way but I’m still not going to put up with it. You think you can turn this place around and still achieve your goals? Go right ahead, but you’re doing it without my help. I quit, and I’m handing this place over to you. Have fun, and I hope you make all your dreams come true.” You’re a little shocked by this. You run after her asking what she’s going to do and that you’re sorry about the stuff you said, but she won’t hear it. She just says she’s leaving the deed with you and she’s going to go live with your aunt Enora in Teckleville. After some last words are exchanged she’s gone. You aren’t quite sure how to feel and you’re still trying to wrap your head around it when your barmaids come in. “Hey which one of you is the best cook?” “Uh, I guess that would be me.” Wendy says. “Good, you’re upgrade to cook, you’ll get a small raise too.” “What seriously?” “Yeah, mom quit and gave me this place, so we’re making some changes around here.” Wendy looks a little pleased with getting a small promotion, but Rita isn’t so happy. “Hey what about us? You can’t just expect us to shoulder all the extra work! You’re going to have to hire someone else to help!” Rita says “Settle down Rita, I’ll be getting some new help soon don’t worry about it. All I need from the rest of you is to do your jobs.” A few weeks pass and you’re doing okay even if you’re getting some grumbles from your staff every once in awhile. You do end up hiring a new person, but it’s not another barmaid. It’s a janitor so the barmaids don’t need to worry about cleaning up as much anymore. The great thing is he’s simple minded and you don’t need to pay him since apparently his mother wanted him out of the house and dragged him by the ear to you when she saw your Help Wanted sign. You agreed to let him sleep in your cellar and he could eat all the rats he catches down there. (Though Eliza gives him real food from time to time) Your still is perfected a bit better, but the brew from that stuff does take it’s toll on your usual patrons. While none of the miners go blind, a lot of them are starting to feel several side effects from drinking the stuff on a regular basis. This causes some to stop coming in altogether, but on the “plus side” you do get a few more lowly types that don’t give a shit what poison they put into their system. You end up changing the name of the place to the Bottomless Mug Inn. Despite your decrease in clientele you still manage to cut enough corners and exploit enough drunks that you pay off Mr. Reynolds. He’s a little surprised considering how run down the inn has gotten. He suspects (quite rightly) that you’re probably doing something illegal and tells you if you ever need another loan in the future you know where to find him. You vow that you’re not going to let that happen. Well the inn is profitable again (barely) and you’ve effectively saved the place and your mother from potential danger (mainly yourself) but taking over your father’s inn wasn’t your dream and it wasn’t your parents’ dream either. You figure you’ve got two choices, you could either sell this place now and hope you get enough money for it to finish your education, or you could continue to run it as a ongoing source of income and somehow manage to save enough as well as find the time to study while running this dump. > You continue to run it You know it isn’t going to be easy, but selling the inn would be folly. You’re not going to get as much for the inn anymore and you know that you’ll need a steady source of income and this place also serves as your home. You’ve already managed to cut a few corners to save money, so perhaps you’ll be able to figure out how to cut some more to achieve your goal. One idea has crossed your mind already, but you’d rather see if any other opportunities arise before resorting to it. The inn is a little shadier now, and that’s partly because of you. Still, you aren’t really a bad person, you’ve just been put in a rough situation and you’re trying to make the best of it. You figure the ends will justify the means after all is said and done. You hope. > Back to school... A year has passed and you’re back in college, though it’s not as much fun as it was when you didn’t need to worry about where your tuition was coming from or having something like a job. Finding time to study while running the inn is difficult, but fortunately Wendy picks up the slack when you’re not around. You’ve also managed to re-establish some old contacts with people you were “friends” with before your “break”. Most of them are ahead of you and some are getting ready to graduate. While none of them bothered to stay in contact with you (so much for education breaking down class distinctions) a few of them are still willing to help you out by selling you books for cheap or giving you some of their old notes. Every little bit helps. As for the inn, it’s doing well, but you constantly worry about its future profitability. Your regular patrons aren’t the upstanding working class anymore, most of them are petty criminals, broke losers and other ne’er-do-wells. You also have to do something about your overworked/underpaid staff. So far Wendy has been doing far more than she anticipated and is demanding more pay. Rita on the other hand is just plain threatening to quit. All of which is cutting into your study and school time. A few bright spots are you’re getting adventurers coming in since those nice rooms you got awhile back started to pay off. You’re also saving money with your stills (You have multiple ones in the basement now) and your retarded janitor Alan who seems to be just happy to work and follow your orders. If only all your employees were so agreeable. Today’s the day you make a change to the status quo. > You fire Rita and hire some pretty girls Rita is already threatening to quit anyway so you might as well get rid of her, besides you figure you can hire some prettier faces that will complain less and probably work for less as well. The first thing you do is advertise for new barmaids. You get a few takers. Most of them don’t seem much better than Rita though, coming in and demanding more stuff immediately. You’re about to give up when a mother comes in with her two half elven daughters practically begging you to hire them. Sort of what you’re looking for, young, pretty “exotic” even given that they’re half-elven. Their bloodline is what sort of concerns you though. Elves aren’t exactly known for their hard work ethic. “Pfft! You think I don’t know that? Their no good father left to go prance around in the forest again while I have to raise these little leeches!” the mother says. “Look you don’t even have to pay ‘em that much, at this point I just want them to earn their keep around the house!” “Well, I’ll see what we can do.” You hire Sunshine and Flameflower and explain how things work and what is expected of them. Their mother periodically interrupts to tell them to pay attention and how if they end up getting fired that she’ll be kicking them out of the house. The pair of them seem rather unworried about the situation and do a lot of eye rolling, sighing and even some minor giggling. After all is said and done you tell them to arrive on time tomorrow and go back to work. “It’s about time you hired some more help.” Wendy remarks. “Well, I’m also getting rid of some too, where’s Rita at?” “She’s out front serving drunks as usual, wait you’re going to fire Rita?” “Yeah, I can’t afford them and her. Besides I’m getting two pretty faces for the price of one and hopefully less bitching.” “Sheesh, I know Rita’s a pain in the ass and all, but you really think you should get rid of her? Who’s going to train the new girls? I noticed the pointy ears, I’m guessing they’re half-breeds. Elves have terrible work ethics.” “I already told them what to do, but I figured you’d be keeping an eye on them most of the time, so you can make sure if they’re working and not goofing off” “What?! As if I don’t have enough to do around here? Look, I’ll do what I can, but really between the cooking and other shit I do, you expect me to play mother hen to them you’re going to be sorely disappointed.” “I can’t give you a raise if that’s what you’re angling for.” “Huh, I wouldn’t dream of being that optimistic, but quite simply I’m stretched thin as it is, I can’t do it all and I think you know that.” “Yeah, I suppose you’re right, well I guess Eliza will have to do it.” “HER? Eliza’s a nice girl and all, but I dunno if she’s up to supervising.” “Well she’s gonna have to, now if you’ll excuse me, I have to speak to her and Rita about the changes around here.” Wendy shakes her head as you call Rita and Eliza over to speak to them in the kitchen “WHAT?! You’re fucking firing me?! After all the shit I’ve done around here?!” Rita predictably reacts. “Rita, all you do is complain and you’ve been threatening to quit for months! Is this really all that surprising? Hell, I would’ve thought you wouldn’t even give a shit given your attitude.” “…y’know what? You’re right. I don’t give a shit. I should’ve quit a long time ago. I could get a better job just like that! (snap) Thanks for freeing me from this slave wage shithole, but I’ll just say one thing, without me, this place is gonna fail! You think you can replace me with those little half-breed sluts I saw you with earlier? Yeah right! I’m outta here!” Rita says and makes a dramatic exit by shouting to the various patrons of how they should take a good look at her ass as she walks out the door, because it’ll be the last time they see it around the inn. “Oh my!” Eliza exclaims. “Whatever. Okay, now I have to talk to you too…and don’t worry I’m not firing you.” You say before Eliza jumps to that conclusion. You explain to Eliza that it’ll be part of her job to train the new girls. She’s surprised and nervous as you’d expect, but you try to reassure her that she’ll be fine. Initially things are shaky. Eliza isn’t very authoritative and often Wendy or you have to step in to lay down more discipline in the half elven sisters. A couple more months pass and it’s obvious things are not working out. Sunshine and Flameflower work, but in a very half-assed way. Even Rita did her job. The sisters are prone to flirt a lot to the patrons, which is good…but not so great when they tend to disappear with said patrons for a few hours. This wouldn’t be a problem if you were running a brothel and making money on this, but you aren’t and it’s too late to start now. You get angry with Eliza and tell her that she needs to get a leash on them, but all this does is make Eliza more nervous and cry that you’re yelling at her. You try to get Wendy to help more, but she complains about how she told you in advance that she can’t do anymore than what she’s doing now. Ultimately she quits because she’s getting burned out. This is soon followed by Eliza who is so stressed out that she can’t take it anymore. As for Flameflower and Sunshine, you don’t even bother firing them since they just stop coming in one day. At this point your school work is taking a small dive due to your only source of income crumbling. You see the writing on the wall and decide to sell the place hoping that you can finish up at least the year. You aren’t going to be able to become a doctor, but MAYBE you’ll be able to get a good job with your education level. You feel slightly bad about Alan who you have to run off because he doesn’t completely understand why he has to leave. You don’t get quite as much money as you’d like for the inn, mainly because the place had gone down hill quite a bit during the time your father ran it, but you finish out the year. As for getting a job, you manage to get one, but it’s working as an office clerk in the city. Maintaining records, filling out shit, etc. It’s tediously dull work, but to a certain extent you’re just glad to not have to worry about that damn inn anymore. Over the years, you settle into your mundane life. You’re always a little bitter about your situation, but you try to make the best of it. It isn’t a terrible life, but you always wonder what you could’ve done differently. You’ll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A year has passed and you’re back in college, though it’s not as much fun as it was when you didn’t need to worry about where your tuition was coming from or having something like a job. Finding time to study while running the inn is difficult, but fortunately Wendy picks up the slack when you’re not around. You’ve also managed to re-establish some old contacts with people you were “friends” with before your “break”. Most of them are ahead of you and some are getting ready to graduate. While none of them bothered to stay in contact with you (so much for education breaking down class distinctions) a few of them are still willing to help you out by selling you books for cheap or giving you some of their old notes. Every little bit helps. As for the inn, it’s doing well, but you constantly worry about its future profitability. Your regular patrons aren’t the upstanding working class anymore, most of them are petty criminals, broke losers and other ne’er-do-wells. You also have to do something about your overworked/underpaid staff. So far Wendy has been doing far more than she anticipated and is demanding more pay. Rita on the other hand is just plain threatening to quit. All of which is cutting into your study and school time. A few bright spots are you’re getting adventurers coming in since those nice rooms you got awhile back started to pay off. You’re also saving money with your stills (You have multiple ones in the basement now) and your retarded janitor Alan who seems to be just happy to work and follow your orders. If only all your employees were so agreeable. Today’s the day you make a change to the status quo. > You cut back on food and promote Wendy Again, the inn isn’t really like how it used to be where you’d get miners coming in wanting some food with their ale. Nowadays you just get plain ol’ drunks coming in. Even the adventurers don’t normally order anything fancy. You figure you’ll just cut down on food shipments and jack the price up so only adventurers or perhaps the odd merchant will be willing to pay for a hot meal. You also decide that Wendy is a pretty vital part of running this place, so you offer her the only thing you can think of that would keep her happy… “Less kitchen work and a free permanent room? Are you serious?” Wendy says in disbelief. “If you want it. The catch is though, you’d be living here and need to make sure things are running smoothly on a regular basis, this means opening up the inn early, closing it down late, or whatever else is required.” “Pfft, I basically do that now.” “Perhaps, but now you’d get to live at a place rent free, not to mention you don’t need to walk that far to work anymore. Now that should certainly alleviate some of your problems I trust?” “Yeah, that would help a lot.” “Good, oh one more thing, I know you have kids, I really hope they won’t be running all over the place bothering patrons.” “No, it won’t be a problem. Y’know I had my doubts about you running this place and while I know me living here is going to make it more convenient for your own goals, thanks all the same.” “You’re welcome.” You say and feel positive that this decision is going to work out just fine. A few months pass and your inn is making a little more money and you have a little more time for your academic goals. Things are nice for a little while, but as usual a problem crops up to make you life a lot more difficult. Wendy’s kids are little monsters. Not to you, but to just about everyone else. Wendy tries to keep them in line through screaming and beatings, but it doesn’t work for long. Her youngest Carl is a dirty little boy who is constantly trying to look up Eliza and Rita’s dresses or touch them in some inappropriate way. If he can’t get to them, the local trashy women who frequent the bar will do. Most of the time he tries to play it off like he doesn’t mean anything, but he knows damn well what he’s doing. Wendy’s daughter Annie is obviously taking after her with the same grasp of verbal swears. She swears so much you initially thought she had Rosette’s Syndrome. Her mouth wouldn’t really be a problem except she’s loud and is always asking the inn guests strange questions (swearing the whole time of course). Finally her oldest son, Henry is well on his way to be a future sociopath. The kid will sit in a corner watching everything and everyone with this creepy look like he’d murder everyone if he could. You’ve noticed that knives from the kitchen have been going missing and you never used to come across so many bloody cat heads in the alley before Wendy moved in. While you can’t prove the animal killing or knife theft, you know for a fact that he’s been fucking with Alan. For the past week you’ve noticed Alan limping, when you questioned him, he stated it was nothing, but on closer inspection you saw that his shoe was in a burned condition and he had a bruise on his neck. You question it further and Alan finally breaks down and tells you it was Wendy’s son, but states that Wendy’s son was just “playing” that it wasn’t a big deal and he didn’t want him getting into trouble. That’s the last straw for you. You and Wendy need to have another talk about this arrangement. “Wendy I need to talk to you now.” “Can it wait…HEY GET BACK HERE YOU LITTLE BASTARD!” Wendy says shouting at one her little demons. “That’s exactly what we need to talk about.” “Wha…oh fine.” You and Wendy step into the kitchen and you waste no time in expressing your concerns. “Wendy you’ve been a great help her since you moved in, but it was my understanding that you were going to have your kids under better control than you have been.” “Hey this is the best all of them have been in ages! Besides they haven’t been bothering you and business has been doing okay.” “Yeah, but at this rate I’m not sure how long that’s going to last with how your kids have been acting lately. Your youngest is sexually harassing Eliza and Rita more than the lowest scum that drinks here. Your daughter is causing some the most hardcore adventurers feel uncomfortable. And your oldest son, hoo boy, you NEED to get that kid on a leash quick and instill some discipline into him because he’s one twisted little pup.” “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to fuckhead? You think you can tell me how to raise my goddamn kids? You think it’s fucking easy? You don’t have any, so fuck you! Shit, you ain’t even got a woman, so I’m guessing you ain’t gonna have to worry about it ever. Faggot.” “And who the hell do you think YOU’RE talking to? I’m your boss and I’m telling you need to get your kids in line! Alan just told me that your oldest son snuck down into basement and gave him a hotfoot while he was sleeping. When Alan predictably woke up, he nearly choked himself because your little psycho set up a wire noose around his neck tied to the table nearby.” “And you believed Alan?” “Alan’s a lot of things, but he’s not a liar. If anything I had to drag the info out of him. He was afraid of getting your son in trouble, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was just afraid of your son period.” “(Sigh) Even if it is true. So what? That’s just how boys play.” “That’s how future murderers play. Look, I’m not arguing with you anymore. Your kids are a problem and you said they wouldn’t be. So get your shit together or face the consequences.” “Fuck you, you gonna fire me? Pfft! Yeah right. Without me, you couldn’t run this place and pursue your precious education at the same time. Hell, I doubt if you could run it period.” > You keep trying to reason with her You can’t afford to fire her and you don’t even want to risk threatening her with it lest she call your bluff and leave. “Will you listen to yourself for one moment? All I’m saying is to get your kids in line because they’re not just fucking up MY business, but they’re actually fucking up yours by proxy! If you won’t do it for me, at least do it for your own self-preservation!” “Sounds like you’re threatening to fire me again. If you’re going to do it, do it and stop beating around the fucking fairy bush shithead!” You shake your head at Wendy’s insults. It’s obvious she isn’t going to listen to reason this way, so you try another tactic. “Look, I’m not going to fire you, but you’re going to have to find another place to live. I can’t have your kids screwing up my business like this. If this is unacceptable to you, well I suppose I can’t stop you from quitting, but seriously I think you know I have a point here.” Wendy is a little caught of guard since she figured you might back down from this completely. “Wha… shit. You do have a point. I know they’re little monsters. Look I’ll talk to them, I’ll get them in line.” “I’m glad you see it my way, but the time for that has passed. I think it would be best for our future working relationship if you didn’t live here anymore.” “But come on you can’t fucking throw us out like this! I at least need time to find a new place!” “I’m not throwing you out right now, but you need to find a new place by the end of next month.” “Okay…okay. But hey, if I manage to get my kids to behave within that time can we stay?” Wendy asks hopefully, which is odd to you considering how she was just behaving. You’ve never seen her act in such a desperate fashion before. In fact you’re pretty surprised she hasn’t called you a bunch of names again, though she might’ve realized now that isn’t going to work. > You give her time You figure you’ve made your point and she’s still vital to the inn, so you can give her this chance. Besides if she doesn’t get her kids in line then she’s out. “Alright Wendy, but don’t stop looking for other places to move to, because I’m not optimistic about your chances.” “Don’t worry about it, I can handle it.” “Okay then I hope you prove me wrong.” After this exchange you and Wendy go back to work. A few weeks pass and you notice a decrease in the bad behavior from her kids. Carl’s not grabbing Rita’s ass, Annie’s not cussing out the adventurers and Henry…well he’s still creepy, but he isn’t setting any of your employees on fire and you haven’t tripped over any new cat heads in the alley. By the last week it actually looks like Wendy has succeeded. You’re a little impressed considering how horrible her kids were; still you don’t want a setback. “Okay Wendy you can stay, but I hope you know that they better continue acting like how they are now. If there’s a relapse, it’s back to finding a new place again.” Wendy of course tells you that she has everything under control with her kids now. Unfortunately after a month you find that she doesn’t. Even worse, she isn’t the only person looking for a new place. Apparently Henry couldn’t contain himself any longer and one night decided to finish what he started with poor Alan by setting more than just his foot on fire. Alan’s flailing soon set portions of the basement on fire, and your stills just make things explosively worse. The first explosion wakes you up immediately. The smell of smoke and the sounds of your inn collapsing on itself gets your ass out of bed and running to the nearest exit. You don’t even have time to check on Wendy before the floor suddenly collapses on you and plunge to a fiery death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t afford to fire her and you don’t even want to risk threatening her with it lest she call your bluff and leave. “Will you listen to yourself for one moment? All I’m saying is to get your kids in line because they’re not just fucking up MY business, but they’re actually fucking up yours by proxy! If you won’t do it for me, at least do it for your own self-preservation!” “Sounds like you’re threatening to fire me again. If you’re going to do it, do it and stop beating around the fucking fairy bush shithead!” You shake your head at Wendy’s insults. It’s obvious she isn’t going to listen to reason this way, so you try another tactic. “Look, I’m not going to fire you, but you’re going to have to find another place to live. I can’t have your kids screwing up my business like this. If this is unacceptable to you, well I suppose I can’t stop you from quitting, but seriously I think you know I have a point here.” Wendy is a little caught of guard since she figured you might back down from this completely. “Wha… shit. You do have a point. I know they’re little monsters. Look I’ll talk to them, I’ll get them in line.” “I’m glad you see it my way, but the time for that has passed. I think it would be best for our future working relationship if you didn’t live here anymore.” “But come on you can’t fucking throw us out like this! I at least need time to find a new place!” “I’m not throwing you out right now, but you need to find a new place by the end of next month.” “Okay…okay. But hey, if I manage to get my kids to behave within that time can we stay?” Wendy asks hopefully, which is odd to you considering how she was just behaving. You’ve never seen her act in such a desperate fashion before. In fact you’re pretty surprised she hasn’t called you a bunch of names again, though she might’ve realized now that isn’t going to work. > You stand firm While you hate to be uncompromising dick, you need to stand your ground on this situation. Even if Wendy does get her kids in line, who is to say they won’t relapse later. Really you’ve got more important things to worry about than some little brats that aren’t even yours. “Sorry Wendy, it’ll just be better in the long run if you don’t live here anymore.” Once again Wendy is a little shocked that you wouldn’t budge. She quickly gets over it though. “Yeah, whatever. Since we’re done here, I’ve got work to do.” She says pushing you aside. A week passes and Wendy has already found a new place and moved out. You half expect her to also quit since you know she’s still pissed at you, but she doesn’t. Perhaps she might know this is for the best even if she isn’t going to let you know about it. In the meantime you’re worried more about your future schooling. Even with cutting back on the food, you’re still understaffed and thanks to recent events, Wendy isn’t quite as “enthusiastic” about her job anymore. You just need to hold out a little longer. You figure if you can pass the remainder of your classes this year, you should be able to get a job working as an intern at the hospital while you finish your medical schooling. While that won’t pay that well, you can sell the inn and live off that for quite awhile especially if you get a cheap apartment, maybe even a roommate. All great plans, but it would help if you could get the backing from one of your professors. It’s possible that one of them could really help you out if you explained your situation. You can think of two that might help you. You advanced microbiology teacher, professor Gossey has always been a friendly sort and you know for a fact that she hasn’t had a problem helping out her students in the past. Your advanced anatomy & physiology teacher, professor Kovas isn’t as friendly, but he’s always made a point of praising the work you turn in. > You professor Gossey After her class you approach Dr. Gossey about your situation, she of course is sympathetic. “Yes, yes, I understand. It must be hard for you, running a business like that and attending school, let alone paying for it all. I’m not exactly sure how I can help though, I have hired all the student assistants I need and I doubt if you would have the time for it anyway.” “Isn’t there something I could help with, I dunno like an experimental project I could participate in or something?” “Ha ha! No, I’m not Dr. Kovas…but now that I’m thinking about it I may have something. You are aware that my other specialty is zoology right?” “Yes, I know, you’ve even discovered some new species in the past.” “Ah back when I was younger and more adventurous. Nowadays I tend to hire adventurers to explore for me to find strange and new beasts.” “Wait, you don’t want me to go seeking new creatures do you?” “Oh no, again you wouldn’t have the time and you could get killed without the right equipment and proper training for such a thing. However, you do own that inn of yours do you not?” “Yes, I own it.” “Good, now I’m going to let you know something that few other do and you must swear that you will NOT mention this to anyone else on campus especially staff!” “I won’t.” I have funded an expedition to the Sotakan swamps south of here. Naturally this was incredibly dangerous for several reasons, but most of which is the capture of the elusive daquala. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of the beast.” “Stories, I’ve heard it’s more legendary than anything. Don’t the Sotakans revere it as the living embodiment of one of their gods?” “Something like that, anyway the university wasn’t too keen on this expedition and refused to help, so I had to use my own funds. I’ve gotten word that the adventurers I hired have succeeded in their quest, but I just need some place to keep the beast for awhile before I can clear everything with the university like potentially dangerous wildlife, rogue funding, ignoring safety measures, and the rest of usual red tape shit. Your inn would be a good safe place to keep it I think and I’d certainly pay you well for your trouble, plus you’d make money on the adventurers I hired who will stay there.” This information is a little overwhelming and you have several questions. “Okay, first of all how dangerous is this creature? I mean how do you know they got it? I thought it was more of a scary myth than anything else.” “I know they got it, because after I received a message from the adventurers that they had succeeded, I took a trip last week just outside the Elven-Sotakan warzone to see it for myself and the creature in question fits all the common descriptions of a daquala, as well as some of the more fantastic descriptions. The only reason why I didn’t bring it with me is because I’m trying to keep this as quiet as possible and I can’t be seen with this creature until I clear it with the university first. Plus I knew I was going to have to figure out a way to indirectly bribe the Klyton Milita not to ask any questions when this group brings the beast through. As for how dangerous the daquala is, well apparently it killed one of them, but if you’re worried that this is some hulking monster, it isn’t. It’s about the size of a small dog. It isn’t even that noisy and spends most of its time camouflaged and sleeping. The adventurers I hired will still be looking after it while they stay at the inn, so you shouldn’t worry at all.” This all still sounds a bit dangerous to you, but after asking exactly how much money Dr. Gossey is going to offer you for this task, you really can’t refuse. You agree and Dr. Gossey thanks you and gives you the names and descriptions of the adventurers who will be arriving to your inn in a few days. You spend the time in between preparing your best rooms and keeping them unoccupied in preparation for the adventurers. This causes a few questions from your staff who notice you’re turning people away from staying here, but you just tell them that you’ve got some special guests coming who are going to be spending a lot more money. Eventually one of the adventurers arrives. He’s a wiry man with a goatee and wearing leather armor with a couple of flintlock pistols strapped to his sides. “You must be Hanon.” “And you must be the inn keeper. I trust you have our rooms ready?” “Yes, four of you right?” “Two actually, used to be six at one time, but more loot for the rest of us I suppose. I’m guessing you have a cellar where we can keep the beast?” “I have a cellar, but I was told you’d be keeping with you.” “Oh no, we’re not spending anymore time with that fucking thing! It might not live up to the legends, but it’s dangerous enough.” You’re more than a little worried now. “Uh…should I even be keeping it here?” “Probably not, but I’m guessing that Gossey’s paying a lot so you’re willing to risk it. (Sigh) Look, we’ve got the creature locked up in a mithril cage with three spell wards on it, it’s not going anywhere, but we’re just sick of damn thing and all the trouble we’ve had to go through to capture it ALIVE. The little bastard seems calmer in the darkness, so I figure your cellar will be a good place to keep it while we wait. I’ll check on it twice a day, it’ll be fine.” This is all starting to sound a little more complicated, but again you don’t have much choice. You’re going to have to get Alan out of the cellar though and you’ll have to make sure none of the girls get any drinks from there. “Okay, I guess bring it on in then, go around the back though, it’ll attract less attention.” Hanon nods and heads outside, and you quickly go get Alan to explain to him that you need him to sleep in one of the rooms you originally set aside for the adventurers. He doesn’t quite understand why, but he obeys your orders to not go into the cellar for a while. You open up the backdoor and see Hanon and a very large man carrying a cage with a black cloth over it. He must be Benjamin. After a walk short walk, you pick an unused part of the cellar to place the daquala. No sounds have come from the cage at all. “Is it alive?” you ask. “Yeah, it’s alive, it just sleeps a lot. Good thing too, because it’s quite vicious when awake. I’ll have to feed it in a few hours though…hey I see you got your own brewery here.” Hanon says looking over at your stills. You didn’t even think about that when you brought them down here. “Oh yeah, that…uh I trust you won’t tell anyone.” “Bah, if we’re keeping this daquala situation quiet, you certainly don’t have anything to worry about. Okay I think Ben and I are heading up to our rooms, it’s been a damn long trip and actually sleeping in a bed instead of the fucking wilderness for once will make a nice change.” As Hanon and Benjamin head up to their rooms you immediately call the rest of your staff to tell them to not go into the cellar for awhile and if they need to refill the alcohol, you’ll do it. While this creates less work for them, they’re getting curious about what is going on. After all they’re seeing adventurers come out of the cellar, Wendy already noticed the cage being brought into the back of the inn, and the various other changes you’ve been making lately. At this point you figure there might be fewer potential complications if they know what’s going on, so you explain everything. “Oh that’s fucking wonderful. You’re using this place as a zoo for dangerous animals now?” Rita says. “Shhhh! Keep your fucking voice down!” you say. “How dangerous is this thing? I mean could it get out? I heard stories about the daquala when I was a little girl and they still scare me to this day!” Eliza mentions. “It won’t get out. Precautions have been taken. Trust me.” “I sure hope so, because if that thing gets out and attacks one of us…well I don’t think I need to mention how much shit you’ll be in. Did you tell Alan to get the hell out of the cellar yet?” Wendy says. “Yes, he’ll be staying in one of the rooms upstairs and I told him to not go into the cellar.” “Hmmm well I guess I’m glad you threw me out of this place when you did, because there’s no way I’d live here with a killer monster in the cellar. Still, you’re putting us all in potential danger so I’d say that entitles us to some hazard pay doesn’t it?” “Yeah! What Wendy said! Hazard pay!” Rita agrees. You almost wish that they’d just refuse to work at all, but you just sigh heavily and come to a fair agreement on “danger” pay while the daquala is at the inn. You just hope it isn’t too long of a stay since that money that Dr. Gossey is paying you is supposed to go to finishing up your tuition. The next few days go by relatively uneventfully and it’s business as usual. Hanon checks on the daquala periodically to feed and sedate it somehow. You wonder how he’s doing it and he says with magic of course. You have to say that by his look you didn’t think he was a wizard. He and Benjamin spend a fair amount of money in the tavern so it sort of offsets the danger pay you have to give your staff. Everyone stays away from the cellar, except Alan who forgot he wasn’t supposed to go down there, but fortunately Eliza stops him before he got down the stairs. After a week goes by you ask Dr. Gossey when she’s going to take the thing, but she says she’s still working on the university faculty, as compensation for your patience she gives half of your money now. That’s great and all, but your concern is more of a safety issue now. The magical meat or whatever hell Hanon has been feeding the daquala isn’t keeping it appeased anymore and it’s been more “vocal” lately. Hanon’s also been keeping the magical wards on it for about a month now, and he’s feeling tired all the time now due to the constant drain. Another couple of days and Hanon’s ready to dump the daquala on Dr. Gossey’s doorstep and be done with it. He says he and Ben have gone way beyond what they were paid to do. You sympathize and you want the daquala gone as much as everyone else, but you’re concerned that if he does this, it’s going to fuck up things between you and your professor, not to mention the rest of your money. > You let Hanon go to the university You don’t think you could stop him if you tried, but you do try to minimize the damage by insisting on going with him and trying to talk to your professor first. You suggest going tomorrow night when you know she’ll be working late in her lab and there won’t be a lot of other people around. “Alright, but whether or not you manage to talk any sense into this bitch, she’s getting her monster tomorrow and forking over the rest of our pay!” The trip to the university is an awkward coach ride. The daquala is growling loud enough for people to know Benjamin is carrying something alive in the covered cage, but fortunately you get to Dr. Gossey’s lab without incident. She of course is surprised to see the three of you. “Uh hello, I wasn’t expecting to see you three… wait did you bring the daquala with you?!” “Damn straight! We’ve completed your task for you and then some! Time for you to take this fucking thing and pay us the rest of our money!” Hanon yells. “I’ll do no such thing, I haven’t managed to clear things up with the dean yet and I still have some…look I don’t have time for this, you tell them!” Dr. Gossey says to you in an exasperated tone. “Uh, I don’t think that’s going to help professor. Look surely there’s a good strong container to hold this thing in here at the university and I’m pretty sure it can just be fed any sort of meat. Can’t it be held here for now? Just keep it here in your private lab until you clear things up.” “NO! If anyone found out I’d be ruined! I’ve risked everything to get the beast, and I won’t lose it all by keeping it on campus because of stupid rules! Now get it out of here now!” You’ve never known professor Gossey to be so irrational, but she’s going into overkill with this daquala business. You don’t really understand why she can’t keep it here. It would probably be better anyway since she could study it while she tries to do whatever “red tape clearing” she says she needs to do. “Alright fuck this stupid shit, Ben drop the cage over there, we’re getting out of here…but we’re also getting our money. I suggest you pay up, before things get ugly.” Hanon warns. “I’m not paying you anything else! I told you when the job is done I will and not before! What? What will you do, kill me? You’d never get away with it and I assure you I am not as defenseless as you might think! And as for YOU, if you don’t stop siding with these glorified mercs you won’t only not get the rest of your money, but you also won’t be passing your class!” After a couple more threats back and forth, and you trying to make peace between your professor and the adventurers, Hanon pulls out one of his pistols, Benjamin draws his axe and Dr. Gossey runs to a panel nearby which slams a adamantium shutter on the lab door sealing everyone in, she then produces a vial with a stopper on top. “Hold it right there! One more move and I fill this place with the black pox plague!” “Oh fuck! Come on everyone stop fighting!” you say backing away from everyone and looking for someway of getting out of the lab. “Yeah right! Like you’d infect yourself!” “Fool! Don’t you think I’ve take the antidote already?” “Bitch we just spent a month in the Sotakan swamps getting bit, stung and exposed to several diseases they probably don’t even have names for yet. I’m pretty sure my magic can cure black pox!” “Well let’s find out then!” Dr. Gossey says and shatters the vial to the floor! You can only look on in horror and sink to the floor in hopelessness. You don’t even pay attention to the events that happen next. Benjamin chases Dr. Gossey around the lab with his axe and while he’s doing that, Hanon casts some sort of spell. Of course with Hanon no longer bothering with up keeping the spell wards on the cage, the daquala manages to finally bust out of its imprisonment due to ravenous hunger. The daquala leaps on Hanon and tears into his neck releasing an arterial spray all over the surrounding area. “NO!” Benjamin bellows and charges at the darquala who jumps away from eating Hanon’s body and camouflages itself. It doesn’t help it much though, the lab isn’t like the dark expansive swamp and Ben is a big man with a big axe, he just starts chopping at everything and sure enough he eventually manages to graze the creature. The daquala and Benjamin engage in a short battle, but ultimately Ben proves to be stronger and better armored. He manages to grab it in mid leap, throws it to the floor, stomps on its body with one of his heavy boots and finally brings his axe down on its head, killing it for good. “Fuck, I told you bastards to just wait a little while! Now look what you’ve done! Eat lead asshole!” Dr. Gossey yells and shoots Benjamin in the head twice. He teeters a moment and then falls in a heap near the darquala. Meanwhile you’re still rocking back and forth and babbling about how all you wanted to be was a doctor and how you’re going to die. “If you’re worried about black pox, you needn’t be, there wasn’t anything in the damn vial. I’m not crazy enough to release a plague. Now I’m sure Hanon and Ben coming here was probably out of your hands and you were just trying to play diplomat, but I suggest if you still want to be that doctor you always wanted to be, then you need to do what I say right now…” Dr. Gossey orders you to help her clean up this mess. The corpse of the daquala is placed in a new container. She says she can probably present a dead one without as many problems. She really was hoping for a live one though. You ask her about the bodies of the adventurers, and she tells you grab that axe and start chopping them up. She then opens up another panel, presses a few buttons to reveal a secret passage. She enters the passage and comes back out with a big dumpster on wheels. “When you hack them into small enough pieces, put them into this dumpster and feed the wazia in the next room. Don’t worry he’s quite tame; just make sure you throw the parts at him from a safe distance. You snap out of your shock. A wazia? Those huge things live in the Cloudspeak Mountains and they’ve been known to even prey on trolls and small manticores! You’re almost about to question Dr. Gossey about how she got one of those things, but you stop yourself. The why’s and how’s aren’t even important right now, what matters is getting out of this mess. After stopping yourself from vomiting several times during your dismemberment of Ben and Hanon, you proceed to nervously feed the wazia, which isn’t even chained up. You half expect it to gobble you up in one gulp or even Dr. Gossey shutting you in, neither happens. You toss limbs near the beast and it eats a few, and ignores the rest. You presume it will eat them later and you get the hell out of there. “You see why I couldn’t have yet another illegal creature on campus? I’m already running a risk with that wazia. If you think what happened here was bad, you should’ve seen what happened when the adventurers I hired were demanding payment for that thing! Speaking of which I suppose I should pay you the rest of your money. Sorry about the threats before. It was sort of a tense moment you know. I’m sure you understand.” You just nod and don’t argue. It’s unspoken that you won’t be saying anything to anyone about this. What could you say anyway? After Dr. Gossey gives you some new lab clothes to change into, you head home exhausted. The next day you don’t even bother going to class, you sleep in late and spend a majority of the afternoon sitting in your room thinking about some of the shit you’ve done to achieve your goals. Serving homemade alcohol without a license seems to be the least of your crimes now. “Okay, okay, I just did what I had to do. It’s all for a good cause, I’m just trying to better myself.” You say and try to wipe your concerns about the morality of it all. You then head downstairs to the surprise of Wendy who figured you were at school. “Stayed home today eh? How come you didn’t come down when I opened this place up?” “I was busy.” “Hmm, okay then. I know you left with those two adventurers and that monster last night. I’m guessing that business is settled then?” “Yeah, it’s all settled.” True words in many ways. You have enough money to continue your education and with this financial pressure off, you easily pass the rest of your classes with no worries. You later sell off the inn (Which pisses off Rita and Wendy who now have to find new jobs, Eliza and Alan are a bit upset as well), get a cheap apartment near the campus and given your close relationship with Dr. Gossey you get a good job working at the hospital while you complete medical school. It isn’t easy of course, but given what you’ve already been through you’re able to handle it. Eventually you do fulfill your goals of becoming a doctor. You don’t stay in Klyton though. You have too many bad memories and reminders of “bad things” going on there in general. So you move to the Delantium Kingdom, specifically a border city called Sivak, which has great demand for doctors at their new hospital. The rest of your life is a relatively good one. Still, you do have your bouts of guilt every now and then with some of your choices that got you to where you are, sometimes wondering if you could’ve handled a few things better at the inn. Who can say, but in any case your days as an innkeeper are long over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> After her class you approach Dr. Gossey about your situation, she of course is sympathetic. “Yes, yes, I understand. It must be hard for you, running a business like that and attending school, let alone paying for it all. I’m not exactly sure how I can help though, I have hired all the student assistants I need and I doubt if you would have the time for it anyway.” “Isn’t there something I could help with, I dunno like an experimental project I could participate in or something?” “Ha ha! No, I’m not Dr. Kovas…but now that I’m thinking about it I may have something. You are aware that my other specialty is zoology right?” “Yes, I know, you’ve even discovered some new species in the past.” “Ah back when I was younger and more adventurous. Nowadays I tend to hire adventurers to explore for me to find strange and new beasts.” “Wait, you don’t want me to go seeking new creatures do you?” “Oh no, again you wouldn’t have the time and you could get killed without the right equipment and proper training for such a thing. However, you do own that inn of yours do you not?” “Yes, I own it.” “Good, now I’m going to let you know something that few other do and you must swear that you will NOT mention this to anyone else on campus especially staff!” “I won’t.” I have funded an expedition to the Sotakan swamps south of here. Naturally this was incredibly dangerous for several reasons, but most of which is the capture of the elusive daquala. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of the beast.” “Stories, I’ve heard it’s more legendary than anything. Don’t the Sotakans revere it as the living embodiment of one of their gods?” “Something like that, anyway the university wasn’t too keen on this expedition and refused to help, so I had to use my own funds. I’ve gotten word that the adventurers I hired have succeeded in their quest, but I just need some place to keep the beast for awhile before I can clear everything with the university like potentially dangerous wildlife, rogue funding, ignoring safety measures, and the rest of usual red tape shit. Your inn would be a good safe place to keep it I think and I’d certainly pay you well for your trouble, plus you’d make money on the adventurers I hired who will stay there.” This information is a little overwhelming and you have several questions. “Okay, first of all how dangerous is this creature? I mean how do you know they got it? I thought it was more of a scary myth than anything else.” “I know they got it, because after I received a message from the adventurers that they had succeeded, I took a trip last week just outside the Elven-Sotakan warzone to see it for myself and the creature in question fits all the common descriptions of a daquala, as well as some of the more fantastic descriptions. The only reason why I didn’t bring it with me is because I’m trying to keep this as quiet as possible and I can’t be seen with this creature until I clear it with the university first. Plus I knew I was going to have to figure out a way to indirectly bribe the Klyton Milita not to ask any questions when this group brings the beast through. As for how dangerous the daquala is, well apparently it killed one of them, but if you’re worried that this is some hulking monster, it isn’t. It’s about the size of a small dog. It isn’t even that noisy and spends most of its time camouflaged and sleeping. The adventurers I hired will still be looking after it while they stay at the inn, so you shouldn’t worry at all.” This all still sounds a bit dangerous to you, but after asking exactly how much money Dr. Gossey is going to offer you for this task, you really can’t refuse. You agree and Dr. Gossey thanks you and gives you the names and descriptions of the adventurers who will be arriving to your inn in a few days. You spend the time in between preparing your best rooms and keeping them unoccupied in preparation for the adventurers. This causes a few questions from your staff who notice you’re turning people away from staying here, but you just tell them that you’ve got some special guests coming who are going to be spending a lot more money. Eventually one of the adventurers arrives. He’s a wiry man with a goatee and wearing leather armor with a couple of flintlock pistols strapped to his sides. “You must be Hanon.” “And you must be the inn keeper. I trust you have our rooms ready?” “Yes, four of you right?” “Two actually, used to be six at one time, but more loot for the rest of us I suppose. I’m guessing you have a cellar where we can keep the beast?” “I have a cellar, but I was told you’d be keeping with you.” “Oh no, we’re not spending anymore time with that fucking thing! It might not live up to the legends, but it’s dangerous enough.” You’re more than a little worried now. “Uh…should I even be keeping it here?” “Probably not, but I’m guessing that Gossey’s paying a lot so you’re willing to risk it. (Sigh) Look, we’ve got the creature locked up in a mithril cage with three spell wards on it, it’s not going anywhere, but we’re just sick of damn thing and all the trouble we’ve had to go through to capture it ALIVE. The little bastard seems calmer in the darkness, so I figure your cellar will be a good place to keep it while we wait. I’ll check on it twice a day, it’ll be fine.” This is all starting to sound a little more complicated, but again you don’t have much choice. You’re going to have to get Alan out of the cellar though and you’ll have to make sure none of the girls get any drinks from there. “Okay, I guess bring it on in then, go around the back though, it’ll attract less attention.” Hanon nods and heads outside, and you quickly go get Alan to explain to him that you need him to sleep in one of the rooms you originally set aside for the adventurers. He doesn’t quite understand why, but he obeys your orders to not go into the cellar for a while. You open up the backdoor and see Hanon and a very large man carrying a cage with a black cloth over it. He must be Benjamin. After a walk short walk, you pick an unused part of the cellar to place the daquala. No sounds have come from the cage at all. “Is it alive?” you ask. “Yeah, it’s alive, it just sleeps a lot. Good thing too, because it’s quite vicious when awake. I’ll have to feed it in a few hours though…hey I see you got your own brewery here.” Hanon says looking over at your stills. You didn’t even think about that when you brought them down here. “Oh yeah, that…uh I trust you won’t tell anyone.” “Bah, if we’re keeping this daquala situation quiet, you certainly don’t have anything to worry about. Okay I think Ben and I are heading up to our rooms, it’s been a damn long trip and actually sleeping in a bed instead of the fucking wilderness for once will make a nice change.” As Hanon and Benjamin head up to their rooms you immediately call the rest of your staff to tell them to not go into the cellar for awhile and if they need to refill the alcohol, you’ll do it. While this creates less work for them, they’re getting curious about what is going on. After all they’re seeing adventurers come out of the cellar, Wendy already noticed the cage being brought into the back of the inn, and the various other changes you’ve been making lately. At this point you figure there might be fewer potential complications if they know what’s going on, so you explain everything. “Oh that’s fucking wonderful. You’re using this place as a zoo for dangerous animals now?” Rita says. “Shhhh! Keep your fucking voice down!” you say. “How dangerous is this thing? I mean could it get out? I heard stories about the daquala when I was a little girl and they still scare me to this day!” Eliza mentions. “It won’t get out. Precautions have been taken. Trust me.” “I sure hope so, because if that thing gets out and attacks one of us…well I don’t think I need to mention how much shit you’ll be in. Did you tell Alan to get the hell out of the cellar yet?” Wendy says. “Yes, he’ll be staying in one of the rooms upstairs and I told him to not go into the cellar.” “Hmmm well I guess I’m glad you threw me out of this place when you did, because there’s no way I’d live here with a killer monster in the cellar. Still, you’re putting us all in potential danger so I’d say that entitles us to some hazard pay doesn’t it?” “Yeah! What Wendy said! Hazard pay!” Rita agrees. You almost wish that they’d just refuse to work at all, but you just sigh heavily and come to a fair agreement on “danger” pay while the daquala is at the inn. You just hope it isn’t too long of a stay since that money that Dr. Gossey is paying you is supposed to go to finishing up your tuition. The next few days go by relatively uneventfully and it’s business as usual. Hanon checks on the daquala periodically to feed and sedate it somehow. You wonder how he’s doing it and he says with magic of course. You have to say that by his look you didn’t think he was a wizard. He and Benjamin spend a fair amount of money in the tavern so it sort of offsets the danger pay you have to give your staff. Everyone stays away from the cellar, except Alan who forgot he wasn’t supposed to go down there, but fortunately Eliza stops him before he got down the stairs. After a week goes by you ask Dr. Gossey when she’s going to take the thing, but she says she’s still working on the university faculty, as compensation for your patience she gives half of your money now. That’s great and all, but your concern is more of a safety issue now. The magical meat or whatever hell Hanon has been feeding the daquala isn’t keeping it appeased anymore and it’s been more “vocal” lately. Hanon’s also been keeping the magical wards on it for about a month now, and he’s feeling tired all the time now due to the constant drain. Another couple of days and Hanon’s ready to dump the daquala on Dr. Gossey’s doorstep and be done with it. He says he and Ben have gone way beyond what they were paid to do. You sympathize and you want the daquala gone as much as everyone else, but you’re concerned that if he does this, it’s going to fuck up things between you and your professor, not to mention the rest of your money. > You talk him out of it You can’t let him fuck this up for you, Dr. Gossey just needs a little more time. You rush to talk to Hanon. “Outta my way, me and Ben are getting that monster!” Hanon says pushing you aside. “No! No! Hold on! Wait! Just give her more time!” “More time? I’m getting fucking exhausted up keeping the wards! Not to mention it’s getting more and more agitated in that cage. Also we’ve been spending most of our money here, if this keeps up we’re going to be broke!” “Okay how about for the remainder of your stay here, everything is free for you and Ben? That should certainly take the stress off shouldn’t it?” “Hmm, free huh? (Sigh) Alright, you’ve bought yourself some more time and ain’t sayin’ how much, but YOU better go talk to your teacher and tell her she needs to get her shit together soon or I will be coming to drop this fucker on her doorstep!” Hanon and his buddy at this point proceed to the bar to indulge in their free booze. A few more days pass and Hanon and Ben are getting drunk every night. Didn’t used to be a problem before mainly because they were holding back due to funds, but now with free reign they’re becoming the lives of the party on a regular basis. In addition to drinking they’re picking fights with your other paying customers which results in broken furniture. Combine this with the higher wages you have to pay your staff and you’re hemorrhaging money. You see Dr. Gossey everyday about taking the daquala, but she just says the same thing all the time “still clearing through the red tape.” It’s getting really old, and you begin to get pissed at her, to which her response is if you want to a career in medicine you’ll do what the hell you’re told and shut up about it. You head back to the inn cursing the fact you ever asked her for help. “HEY ITS DA (HIC!) INNKEEPER! GO MAKE YERSELF USEFUL FOR ONCE AND GET US NOTHER DRINK! HAR HAR HAR!” Benjamin bellows as you enter the inn. Seems that he and Hanon are getting an early start. You storm over to the bar and begin ranting at your staff which is doing nothing. “Wendy why the fuck are all of you standing around not doing your fucking jobs?” “Because they drank all the fucking booze and you told us to not go downstairs to get refill casks. Not that we’d go down there in the first place, you don’t give us nearly enough danger pay for that.” You grumble and swear as you head down the cellar steps. “I don’t fucking deserve this shit! I was supposed to be finishing up medical school by now, not cleaning up shit around this place! Thanks a lot dad! You ever think when you started borrowing from a fucking loan shark? Fucking…” You cut your rant short when you suddenly hear a low growl. At first you figure it’s just the daquala again and you’re right except he’s not in his cage anymore. Ever since the free booze policy Hanon’s been taking advantage of, he’s also been getting lax in checking on the daquala. The constant alcoholic haze hasn’t really been helping on his concentration for keeping up the wards on the cage either. All of which contributed to the daquala finally breaking out of his confinement. Still thinking it’s still in its cage, you go get a cask of booze. You’ve barely managed to pick one up and you feel a sharp pain in your leg. You fall to the floor, dropping the cask and yelling for help when you see the amount of blood leaking from the sizable hole in your leg. It’s the last thing you do, before the daquala’s next attack is on your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While you hate to be uncompromising dick, you need to stand your ground on this situation. Even if Wendy does get her kids in line, who is to say they won’t relapse later. Really you’ve got more important things to worry about than some little brats that aren’t even yours. “Sorry Wendy, it’ll just be better in the long run if you don’t live here anymore.” Once again Wendy is a little shocked that you wouldn’t budge. She quickly gets over it though. “Yeah, whatever. Since we’re done here, I’ve got work to do.” She says pushing you aside. A week passes and Wendy has already found a new place and moved out. You half expect her to also quit since you know she’s still pissed at you, but she doesn’t. Perhaps she might know this is for the best even if she isn’t going to let you know about it. In the meantime you’re worried more about your future schooling. Even with cutting back on the food, you’re still understaffed and thanks to recent events, Wendy isn’t quite as “enthusiastic” about her job anymore. You just need to hold out a little longer. You figure if you can pass the remainder of your classes this year, you should be able to get a job working as an intern at the hospital while you finish your medical schooling. While that won’t pay that well, you can sell the inn and live off that for quite awhile especially if you get a cheap apartment, maybe even a roommate. All great plans, but it would help if you could get the backing from one of your professors. It’s possible that one of them could really help you out if you explained your situation. You can think of two that might help you. You advanced microbiology teacher, professor Gossey has always been a friendly sort and you know for a fact that she hasn’t had a problem helping out her students in the past. Your advanced anatomy & physiology teacher, professor Kovas isn’t as friendly, but he’s always made a point of praising the work you turn in. > You professor Kovas Given that Dr. Kovas rarely compliments anyone, he has to like you a lot. You decide it might be best to take advantage of that fact. After his class you approach him about your situation, but he doesn’t seem very sympathetic. “Yes, yes, I’m sure your problems are very important to you, but my question is why are you telling me?” “Well that’s what I was getting at, I wanted to know if there was something I could do to help you out. Some way of maybe earning more money…” “Money? Hah! What do you think this is a factory employment line? If you want to help me, you shouldn’t be doing it for cash m’boy. You should be doing it for the love of science!” He starts to make his way out of the classroom, but you follow. “Dr. Kovas, I’d love to help for the love of science, but I’m not exactly in a position to do so! I mean I’ve got so many expenses and responsibilities and…” “Stop right there m’boy. Again you’re telling me these things as if I can do something about them…or that I WANT to do something about them.” “(sputter)…because I thought that given how much you praise my work in class you’d want to help out a potential fellow future doctor.” You say getting exasperated. “YOU? A fellow doctor? Ha ha ha ha! Granted you may have the ability to be a doctor one day, but if you think you’d ever approach someone of my caliber, I’ve sorely underestimated your capacity for logical thinking.” Dr. Kovas laughs. At this point you’re angry, you came to get help, not be insulted by this asshole. You’re hesitant to outright insult him back though since you still need to finish his class, so you just decide to leave. “Alright fine, don’t help me then. I just thought you were different from the other rich elitist bastards that look their noses down at me just because of my working class background. I’ll just leave…” “Wait, wait, you think I’m looking down on you because of your humble roots? My, my someone has an inferiority complex. M’boy I’m looking down on you because you’re whining about your problems to me. You have much potential and despite your pathetic tales of woe it is obvious that you’ve overcome much and are determined in your goals to become a doctor. I think however you could do something more, but unless you’re willing to help me for the love of science, not because of money, or what I might be able to do for you then I think you will languish in mediocrity like most that pass through my class.” At this point you don’t know what the hell kind of head game Dr. Kovas is playing with you, but if there is some sort of possibility that he might help you, then you might need to play along. “I don’t believe you. Or rather I don’t believe you’ll help me for the right reasons. You’re going to help, because you still believe that I’m going to help you.” “Yes.” You blurt out. “Heh, well at least you’re honest now. All right I’m going to roll the dice with you and allow you to help me on a project I’ve been working on. I’ll even assure you that you will profit from this because I know you seem to be concerned about such things.” “”I’m really not, I just need extra money to…” “Don’t interrupt!” Dr. Kovas snaps. “As I was saying, you will profit from this, but it is my hope that you will come to do this for science more than anything. Because if you aren’t then you’re in the wrong field.” “I thought the field of medicine was primarily to help the sick.” You say. “Bah! Helping people? Nonsense! Most so called doctors aren’t in it to help people, they’re in it for the money! They’re all a bunch of soulless greed automatons that have no real passion for the mysteries of the human body and all this field has to offer!” Dr. Kovas has a reputation for misanthropy and cynicism, but you weren’t aware how much until just now, still he says he’s willing to help you and that’s good enough for you. “Now then, if you are going to help me, you need to meet me at my lab tonight and whatever you do, don’t tell anyone about it. When you get inside you are NOT to discuss what you see with anyone, do you understand?” “Um, what exactly are we going to be doing?” you ask a little concerned. “You’ll see soon enough, but it’s a secret project that will change the way modern medicine works! I can’t afford to have anyone stealing my ideas! So I need you to be all the way in on this! If you’re going to hesitate, then get out of my sight right now.” “Okay, okay, I’ll help you.” “Good. See you tonight.” Dr. Kovas says and walks away. You put in some time at the inn, but later leave Wendy in charge and tell her to close it down if you aren’t back by closing time. You remind Alan to lock everything up. Wendy of course isn’t very pleased with this idea and reminds you once again of how she’s overworked. You just apologize and leave. When you get to Dr. Kovas’ lab he doesn’t immediately open the door, and you have to wait about five minutes before he comes out to scold you that you’re five minutes late! You don’t argue though, you just enter only for Dr. Kovas to immediately ask you a disturbing question. “Can you kill a man?” “WHAT?!” “Or woman, in fact a woman might be better. Yes, I need you to kill a woman.” You’re literally speechless for a few moments before sputtering your protests. “Dr. Kovas, I didn’t sign up to kill people!” “Yes you did, the moment you said you’d help me. (Sigh) Look, progress in medical science has always required sacrifices. Sometimes that sacrifice has involved the lives of others. What is one life compared to the wonders that scientific break through can do?” Dr. Kovas isn’t just misanthropic, he’s sociopathic and you’re out of here. “I’m not a killer and I’m not capable of this. So I’m just going to leave. You needn’t worry I won’t tell anyone.” “Sorry son, I can’t take that chance, nighty night!” Dr Kovas suddenly produces a needle filled with something and injects you with it. You push him away and try the door handle only to find it locked. You don’t struggle with it for long though before you pass out. When you wake up you’re strapped to a table, with Dr. Kovas shaking his head at you. “What am I going to do with you? I placed what little faith I have in humanity in you and this is how you act? It’s my own fault I suppose.” You try to talk, but most of your body is still paralyzed. “Now then, I’m going to give you ONE last chance because I still see potential in you. After this wears off I want you to go out and get a girl. I don’t care how, just do it and bring her here. You don’t even need to kill her, just bring her here and I’ll do the deed. Do you think you can handle that?” You still can’t talk, but you know damn well if you don’t agree he’s certainly going to kill you, so you strain yourself to nod “yes”. “Good, I’ll release you. Oh and just to let you know, you only have until dawn. I’ve injected you with a toxin to ensure you don’t go running off or something silly like that. Don’t bother with trying to get an antidote either, it’s a special toxic mix that only I have the cure to.” You get up, very wobbly and still a little dizzy. By the time you start regaining all your faculties Dr. Kovas has shoved you out his lab door and locked it. You feel like you’re living a nightmare, but you don’t have much of a choice, you need to bring a woman back to the lab before dawn or you’re going to die. This isn’t going to be easy not just due to the immorality of the situation, but also because you haven’t exactly been a ladies man. What with all the studying and work at the inn, you don’t have much of a social life. You figure your best bet might be to go to one of the many college parties near campus and hope to get a drunk girl, though you could just go get a regular whore. > You go to a party No shortage of parties going on right now and getting a drunk co-ed will be just like getting a whore except you won’t have to travel as far. You head down to the popular night club near campus called the Wild Princess. After standing in line for an hour, you’re told by the bouncer that they don’t need people like you in there. You don’t bother arguing; you know you’re too “uncool” to get in, so you move on. Your next stop is going to a guild house party. You manage to sneak in thanks to a lot of people more concerned with having fun rather than crashers. Unfortunately a lot of the girls there aren’t remotely interested in the likes of you, but you sort of anticipated that would happen. Your plan is going to be to hang out here a few more hours then try to isolate a girl that should well be drunk at that point and offer to take her home. You pass the time basically being a creepy stalker and watching which of the ladies are getting loaded, which of them have boyfriends, which of them are here by themselves, etc. Eventually you set your sights on a cute redhead who doesn’t seem to have any attachments and is definitely wobbly. You breathe in deeply, exhale and walk towards the girl…only to get cock blocked by some guild member. Looks like he’s part of the university’s gladiator team too, so he’d easily crush you. “Hey babe, come on let’s get you some place where you can lie down.” He says and begins to guide her towards one the bedrooms while you curse your luck. You could try to find another girl here, but you’re quite frankly sick of waiting around, you don’t have all night. It occurs to you that you’re a medical student while that guild guy is a muscle headed gladiator. Surely you should be able to out smart him. You see the back of his big head stand out in the crowd and follow him. He gets the redhead to a private bedroom just like you anticipated, places her body on the bed and just as he goes to close the door you stop him. “Whoa shit dude! You’re not actually going to fuck that bitch are ya?” you say. “Huh? Well yeah! And who the fuck are you?” “You can’t fuck her man, she’s got Rotties!” “What?! Really? Nah, she doesn’t look like she does.” “Trust me dude, she does! My cousin’s in medical school and he said they had to do an assignment involving volunteers who had various non-life threatening diseases and she was one of them!” “Wait, wait, wouldn’t something like that be anonymous to protect the identities or some shit? And who are you again?” the gladiator asks proving he isn’t quite as dumb as you thought. “It was supposed to be anonymous, but my cousin’s a inconsiderate fucktard who told me all this shit anyway. Besides isn’t it good I did know and I was here to warn you?” “Yeah I suppose it was. Whew. Oh shit I touched her tits, I might have caught some shit!” “Nah, don’t worry about it, my cousin said unless you stick your dick in her, you’ll be fine.” “Fuck that! They don’t know all the shit about that disease yet! We need to get that bitch outta here before she infects everyone…and burn that bed too!” You almost smile at how well this is working for you. You tell the gladiator that you’ll get her out of here. He says better you than him and heads to the bathroom. The redhead is still sort of conscious, but definitely not aware of her surroundings. “Whozz you…I…(giggle) think I…(hic) drank too mush…” she says as you pick her up. The walk back to Dr. Kovas’ lab is slow at first since the girl is still conscious, but eventually her incoherent babbling stops and she’s completely out of it, at which point you just pick her up and carry her. Of course you’re sweating being seen and questioned by campus security. Last thing you need is to get accused of date rape especially since you just saved this girl from getting date raped…of course you’re also taking her to her death. It’s just a fucked up situation no matter how you look at it! Luckily you get to the lab with no problems. You bang on the door and Dr. Kovas pulls you both inside. He looks at the girl and frowns a bit. “Well I suppose she’ll do. I’m guessing you got her from one of the party’s near campus.” “Is that a problem?” “No, not at all, young girls go to wild parties and go missing around here all the time, and I certainly don’t have anything to do with all of those incidents. Anyway get her to the table and strap her down. I need to get some stuff from the back. You follow Kovas’ orders and hope that one of the things he’s getting is your antidote. He comes out with much more than your antidote, he comes out with a rolling cart filled with several medical instruments that look more like torture devices and tosses you a small vial of clear liquid. “Here, take this and put on some gloves. We’re about make history!” he says and injects the redhead on the table with some sort of liquid. It doesn’t take her long to stop breathing. You swallow the contents of the vial which you hope is the antidote. You don’t feel any different after taking it though. You half wonder if he was bluffing about poisoning you at all. If that’s the case then you just brought a girl to her death for no reason, though it hardly matters at this point, as annoyed as you are at Dr. Kovas you might as well go through with this all the way. You stand there for a moment just watching Dr. Kovas enthusiastically cutting into the girl and injecting more strange fluid directly into her vital organs. He suddenly stops when the girl comes back to life! “Ragh! Gargh! Argh!” she growls. It suddenly occurs to you what exactly Dr. Kovas is experimenting with, Incitahol. It’s a banned concoction that was supposed to bring the dead back to life and it does, but only to create them as zombies. Lazy wannabe necromancers and mad scientists love the stuff, and would seem you’re working with the latter right now. “You’re experimenting with incitahol? This is your big project? I thought you’d be aware that this shit’s only good for creating zombies and not even controllable ones!” you say. “Ah, not yet anyway! I’ve made some changes to it. If you’ll notice the subject is not as aggressive as it would be under regular incitahol. Unfortunately it still seems quite hostile. I can’t be sure if this due to my changes in the drug, or the alcohol in her system screwing things up. I probably should’ve waited until she was sober and then proceeded (sigh) I’ll need a new subject.” You’re hardly surprised at this request; you just say you’ll get on it tomorrow. “Hmm, very well. And try to get a sober one this time!” Over the course of a month you manage to get several “subjects” for Dr. Kovas and while he does eventually start contributing to your “college fund” you aren’t exactly overjoyed with what you’re doing especially since he’s insulting you at every given opportunity. While it’s true you are learning quite a bit about the human brain and other things about the human body he doesn’t seem like he’s getting anywhere with his own experiments. As far as you can tell he’s just cutting up girls and making them into zombies. On another front, your inn staff has pretty much had it with you, specifically Wendy. She ends up quitting because she’s sick of having to look after the inn all day AND night while you secretly go disappearing to kidnap young girls. Rita certainly has no intention taking up the slack so she quits as well. This pretty much leaves you no option other than selling the inn and get a cheap apartment. Between the money you get from the sale and Dr. Kovas’ payment you have enough to finish up the rest of your classes, but the expenses of medical school are still going to be a struggle. Dr. Kovas assures you that he can easily get you a good job at the hospital while you go through the rest of your schooling, but he’ll still need you to work for him as well. On the plus side he’s also offered you a free place to stay at his private lab. This would be convenient financially. The downside to all this is of course you’d still be working for Dr. Kovas and all that entails. Even if you’ve managed to mostly shed yourself the moral implications of what you’ve been doing, there’s always the legal ones to worry about. Never mind the verbal abuse you’ll have to endure. You could just say fuck it and go do something else, which has been crossing your mind at this point. You aren’t exactly sure what that might be, but after all the shit you’ve been through you are a little hesitant to put yourself through more. It’s ultimately your choice on whether you still want to achieve your medical profession goals or not, but in any case your days as an innkeeper are over. > You continue with medicine You’ve come this far; you might as well go for the gold. You agree to help Dr. Kovas, and continue to “aquire” subjects for him, which you’ve become frighteningly good at. Time goes by and you even indulge in some of the actual killing. You certainly learn just as much from him as you do in “regular class.” In your spare time you do a few experiments of your own on victims you capture. Dr. Kovas doesn’t really approve since its taking time away from what he wants you to be helping him with, and he feels you’re just bumbling around and engaging in sadistic torture for your own twisted pleasure. (To be fair he’s partially right at this point) As for his experiments, you still don’t see him making any more progress. He has managed to get the zombies to be relatively docile with training, but they’re still relatively mindless. He’s a scientifically minded necromancer at this point, but he’s not even doing anything that useful with it. He keeps saying that he WILL succeed in bringing a being back to life fully intact without the zombification element, but it doesn’t seem possible. Not even the old school magicians of legend could do that. Once the brain is completely dead, it’s dead! Even through his verbal abuse you still used to respect Dr. Kovas for his dedication and his knowledge, but lately he’s just been looking like a crazy old fool. “Argh grah!" “Well that’s another one for the cages, or are we going to dispose of this one?” you ask in a bored tone as Dr. Kovas fails to completely “resurrect” another one. “Damn! I strengthened the dose to compensate for her vegetarian diet! She shouldn’t be trying to bite me!” “Y’know we’ve been doing this for about a year now and we’ve still made a lot of progress.” “I’VE made a lot of progress, but what is your point?” “My point is, maybe this just isn’t in the cards. Maybe we can’t bring someone back, well not in a good way at least.” “Hmmm, what is this? A moment of conscience? Some sort of introspective that we’re not supposed to play diety? You losing your passion for this work?” Dr. Kovas says with a sneer. “Ha ha ha ha! No, perish the thought.” You laugh “Oh? Then what is it?” “Well I’ve been thinking…” “Ha ha ha ha! Oh this SHOULD be amusing.” You make a slight facial tic at this insult, but then continue hoping that your “mentor” will listen to you. “What I was going to say is we’ve got the medical knowledge and equipment to run a good body legging business. Lots of demand for body parts on the black market. And with the advances we have made with incitathol we could even sell some of the tamer zombies to wannabe necromancers or even for pit fights. It certainly would put our skills to better use.” Dr. Kovas sighs and shakes his head at you. “Oh my dear boy, you have learned NOTHING while serving under me! First of all, what’s this we business? I’M the only real doctor here; you haven’t even finished medical school yet! You think you can dare put yourself on my level just because I’ve allowed you to aid me and you cut up a few bubble headed co-eds? Hah! Not bloody likely! Second, you still don’t get it do you? Science is not supposed to be for profit! It’s about the challenges and over coming them! You want to make money why don’t you go reopen that little inn you used to have and serve swill to the other low lives? Now grab that mallet over there, smash this zombie’s head in and dispose of it. Menial labor is about all you’re good for anyway.” You grab the mallet, but you don’t smash the zombie’s head in, you smash Dr. Kovas head in instead. His arrogance and complacency allows you to get in a good shot without him expecting it and he falls to the floor bleeding profusely from the head. You kneel down to finish him off. “YOU (WHAM!) FUCKING (WHAM!) PIECE OF (WHAM!) FUCKING (WHAM!) SHIT!” you shout at the top of your lungs while you beat the good doctor’s brains into pulp. After you’ve satisfied your bloodlust, you sit back and think about your next move. The tied up zombie girl on the table is disturbing your concentration with her growling so you shove some of Kovas’ brains in her mouth while you plan… Your major obstacle is explaining Doctor Kovas’ disappearance. This actually isn’t that much of a problem though. The man wasn’t well liked at all by his peers so nobody really goes looking for him. You are eventually asked questions by the Klyton militia, but you simply say one day you showed up to assist him and he was gone with no warning. They also ask if you know much about any of the disappearance of young girls around the university, but you say you don’t know much except that it’s pretty horrible. Again there is some suspicion, but not really on you and more on him. It probably helped that the first thing you did was completely clean his lab, and left vague incriminating evidence pointing to him if suspicion should ever come up about anything. The second thing you did was clean out his savings (Lucky for you the old bastard didn’t believe in keeping it at a bank) but live frugally in a cheap apartment again. By the time you finish up medical school you’re in the clear and Dr. Kovas’ disappearance is chalked up to him doing something illegal and then fleeing the city. You on the other hand are now a fully-fledged doctor with access to all that entails… It doesn’t need to be said that your time with Dr. Kovas warped you and while you managed to lay low when necessary, you now feel more freedom to engage in all those ideas you tried to suggest to Kovas a few years ago. The rest of your life is basically a mask of sanity hiding a very immoral person. Your crimes are vast, routine and you could care less. Your parents failed you, the inn failed you, even your “mentor” failed you and as far as you’re concerned you only managed to achieve your goals because YOU took charge of the situations that presented themselves and thrived. This outlook on life never changes. You take what you want and you use people as you see fit. You never regret your decisions and feel only a weak fool would suffer any sort of guilt or remorse. And thanks to your intelligence, you mange to avoid punishment and you experience a death not granted to any of your many victims: Namely, you die as an old man peacefully in your bed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> No shortage of parties going on right now and getting a drunk co-ed will be just like getting a whore except you won’t have to travel as far. You head down to the popular night club near campus called the Wild Princess. After standing in line for an hour, you’re told by the bouncer that they don’t need people like you in there. You don’t bother arguing; you know you’re too “uncool” to get in, so you move on. Your next stop is going to a guild house party. You manage to sneak in thanks to a lot of people more concerned with having fun rather than crashers. Unfortunately a lot of the girls there aren’t remotely interested in the likes of you, but you sort of anticipated that would happen. Your plan is going to be to hang out here a few more hours then try to isolate a girl that should well be drunk at that point and offer to take her home. You pass the time basically being a creepy stalker and watching which of the ladies are getting loaded, which of them have boyfriends, which of them are here by themselves, etc. Eventually you set your sights on a cute redhead who doesn’t seem to have any attachments and is definitely wobbly. You breathe in deeply, exhale and walk towards the girl…only to get cock blocked by some guild member. Looks like he’s part of the university’s gladiator team too, so he’d easily crush you. “Hey babe, come on let’s get you some place where you can lie down.” He says and begins to guide her towards one the bedrooms while you curse your luck. You could try to find another girl here, but you’re quite frankly sick of waiting around, you don’t have all night. It occurs to you that you’re a medical student while that guild guy is a muscle headed gladiator. Surely you should be able to out smart him. You see the back of his big head stand out in the crowd and follow him. He gets the redhead to a private bedroom just like you anticipated, places her body on the bed and just as he goes to close the door you stop him. “Whoa shit dude! You’re not actually going to fuck that bitch are ya?” you say. “Huh? Well yeah! And who the fuck are you?” “You can’t fuck her man, she’s got Rotties!” “What?! Really? Nah, she doesn’t look like she does.” “Trust me dude, she does! My cousin’s in medical school and he said they had to do an assignment involving volunteers who had various non-life threatening diseases and she was one of them!” “Wait, wait, wouldn’t something like that be anonymous to protect the identities or some shit? And who are you again?” the gladiator asks proving he isn’t quite as dumb as you thought. “It was supposed to be anonymous, but my cousin’s a inconsiderate fucktard who told me all this shit anyway. Besides isn’t it good I did know and I was here to warn you?” “Yeah I suppose it was. Whew. Oh shit I touched her tits, I might have caught some shit!” “Nah, don’t worry about it, my cousin said unless you stick your dick in her, you’ll be fine.” “Fuck that! They don’t know all the shit about that disease yet! We need to get that bitch outta here before she infects everyone…and burn that bed too!” You almost smile at how well this is working for you. You tell the gladiator that you’ll get her out of here. He says better you than him and heads to the bathroom. The redhead is still sort of conscious, but definitely not aware of her surroundings. “Whozz you…I…(giggle) think I…(hic) drank too mush…” she says as you pick her up. The walk back to Dr. Kovas’ lab is slow at first since the girl is still conscious, but eventually her incoherent babbling stops and she’s completely out of it, at which point you just pick her up and carry her. Of course you’re sweating being seen and questioned by campus security. Last thing you need is to get accused of date rape especially since you just saved this girl from getting date raped…of course you’re also taking her to her death. It’s just a fucked up situation no matter how you look at it! Luckily you get to the lab with no problems. You bang on the door and Dr. Kovas pulls you both inside. He looks at the girl and frowns a bit. “Well I suppose she’ll do. I’m guessing you got her from one of the party’s near campus.” “Is that a problem?” “No, not at all, young girls go to wild parties and go missing around here all the time, and I certainly don’t have anything to do with all of those incidents. Anyway get her to the table and strap her down. I need to get some stuff from the back. You follow Kovas’ orders and hope that one of the things he’s getting is your antidote. He comes out with much more than your antidote, he comes out with a rolling cart filled with several medical instruments that look more like torture devices and tosses you a small vial of clear liquid. “Here, take this and put on some gloves. We’re about make history!” he says and injects the redhead on the table with some sort of liquid. It doesn’t take her long to stop breathing. You swallow the contents of the vial which you hope is the antidote. You don’t feel any different after taking it though. You half wonder if he was bluffing about poisoning you at all. If that’s the case then you just brought a girl to her death for no reason, though it hardly matters at this point, as annoyed as you are at Dr. Kovas you might as well go through with this all the way. You stand there for a moment just watching Dr. Kovas enthusiastically cutting into the girl and injecting more strange fluid directly into her vital organs. He suddenly stops when the girl comes back to life! “Ragh! Gargh! Argh!” she growls. It suddenly occurs to you what exactly Dr. Kovas is experimenting with, Incitahol. It’s a banned concoction that was supposed to bring the dead back to life and it does, but only to create them as zombies. Lazy wannabe necromancers and mad scientists love the stuff, and would seem you’re working with the latter right now. “You’re experimenting with incitahol? This is your big project? I thought you’d be aware that this shit’s only good for creating zombies and not even controllable ones!” you say. “Ah, not yet anyway! I’ve made some changes to it. If you’ll notice the subject is not as aggressive as it would be under regular incitahol. Unfortunately it still seems quite hostile. I can’t be sure if this due to my changes in the drug, or the alcohol in her system screwing things up. I probably should’ve waited until she was sober and then proceeded (sigh) I’ll need a new subject.” You’re hardly surprised at this request; you just say you’ll get on it tomorrow. “Hmm, very well. And try to get a sober one this time!” Over the course of a month you manage to get several “subjects” for Dr. Kovas and while he does eventually start contributing to your “college fund” you aren’t exactly overjoyed with what you’re doing especially since he’s insulting you at every given opportunity. While it’s true you are learning quite a bit about the human brain and other things about the human body he doesn’t seem like he’s getting anywhere with his own experiments. As far as you can tell he’s just cutting up girls and making them into zombies. On another front, your inn staff has pretty much had it with you, specifically Wendy. She ends up quitting because she’s sick of having to look after the inn all day AND night while you secretly go disappearing to kidnap young girls. Rita certainly has no intention taking up the slack so she quits as well. This pretty much leaves you no option other than selling the inn and get a cheap apartment. Between the money you get from the sale and Dr. Kovas’ payment you have enough to finish up the rest of your classes, but the expenses of medical school are still going to be a struggle. Dr. Kovas assures you that he can easily get you a good job at the hospital while you go through the rest of your schooling, but he’ll still need you to work for him as well. On the plus side he’s also offered you a free place to stay at his private lab. This would be convenient financially. The downside to all this is of course you’d still be working for Dr. Kovas and all that entails. Even if you’ve managed to mostly shed yourself the moral implications of what you’ve been doing, there’s always the legal ones to worry about. Never mind the verbal abuse you’ll have to endure. You could just say fuck it and go do something else, which has been crossing your mind at this point. You aren’t exactly sure what that might be, but after all the shit you’ve been through you are a little hesitant to put yourself through more. It’s ultimately your choice on whether you still want to achieve your medical profession goals or not, but in any case your days as an innkeeper are over. > You quit After a long period of introspection, you realize your choices haven’t really gotten you anywhere good. You’ve alienated your mother by breaking the law. You continued to break the law while in possession of the inn and your staff grew to dislike you and you don’t even own the place anymore. You moved on to being an accessory to murder in illegal experiments for monetary gain and your own obsession to go to medical school. You’ve managed to get away with it all so far, but for how much longer? Are you going to end up like Dr. Kovas and be a misanthropic asshole hated by your colleagues by day and be a completely batshit insane madman by night? You know you aren’t a “good guy” after all the shit you’ve been doing, but you figure you can do something to at least keep from getting worse. So it’s decided, you leave Klyton with no fanfare. You aren’t particularly worried about Dr. Kovas. Most likely he’ll just curse you for being a “weakling bound by pangs of morality” but that’s about it. You end up going to Teckleville where your mom is surprised to see you. You make up with her and apologize for what happened between the both of you. You of course don’t let her know about all the stuff you did while assisting Dr. Kovas. You live with her for a while and try to figure out what you’re going to do with your life and eventually you get a job as a teacher at the high school in town where your extensive knowledge on the sciences comes in quite handy and greatly appreciated. For several years you live a fairly mundane life. It’s even a little boring at times, but you don’t mind it. You may have lived out the rest of your days in Teckleville if things had gone right, but as they say, there ain’t no rest for the wicked. While you were building a new life in Teckleville, Dr. Kovas was still continuing his illegal experiments; he also eventually got caught and was arrested for his crimes. He wasn’t in custody for long since he was killed trying to escape. Unfortunately for you, he kept detailed journals about his experiments and your name was mentioned several times in them. (Mostly in hate filled rants after you left) One day while you’re teaching a class, the Klyton militia shows up and you already know what they’re there for. “Um, okay class just take out your books and read chapters twelve and thirteen until the bell rings, I have to speak to these men for a moment.” You say and leave with the militia. You are shackled and taken away in a coach. It’s quite the spectacle to the folks witnessing the event. You don’t ask to say goodbye to your mother, you wouldn’t know how to explain this and it would just break her heart again. Granted she’s going to find out eventually anyway, but you don’t have to be the one to face her. Your return to Klyton is a short one since you immediately plead guilty to the judge. No sense in drawing it out you think. You spend your last few days in a cell waiting to be hanged, thinking about the mistakes you made and how you’re finally sorry that you didn’t make better choice when you had the chance. When you’re at the gallows you are asked if you have any last words, but you have none. The lever is pulled, you fall through the hole and the rope snaps your neck instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Given that Dr. Kovas rarely compliments anyone, he has to like you a lot. You decide it might be best to take advantage of that fact. After his class you approach him about your situation, but he doesn’t seem very sympathetic. “Yes, yes, I’m sure your problems are very important to you, but my question is why are you telling me?” “Well that’s what I was getting at, I wanted to know if there was something I could do to help you out. Some way of maybe earning more money…” “Money? Hah! What do you think this is a factory employment line? If you want to help me, you shouldn’t be doing it for cash m’boy. You should be doing it for the love of science!” He starts to make his way out of the classroom, but you follow. “Dr. Kovas, I’d love to help for the love of science, but I’m not exactly in a position to do so! I mean I’ve got so many expenses and responsibilities and…” “Stop right there m’boy. Again you’re telling me these things as if I can do something about them…or that I WANT to do something about them.” “(sputter)…because I thought that given how much you praise my work in class you’d want to help out a potential fellow future doctor.” You say getting exasperated. “YOU? A fellow doctor? Ha ha ha ha! Granted you may have the ability to be a doctor one day, but if you think you’d ever approach someone of my caliber, I’ve sorely underestimated your capacity for logical thinking.” Dr. Kovas laughs. At this point you’re angry, you came to get help, not be insulted by this asshole. You’re hesitant to outright insult him back though since you still need to finish his class, so you just decide to leave. “Alright fine, don’t help me then. I just thought you were different from the other rich elitist bastards that look their noses down at me just because of my working class background. I’ll just leave…” “Wait, wait, you think I’m looking down on you because of your humble roots? My, my someone has an inferiority complex. M’boy I’m looking down on you because you’re whining about your problems to me. You have much potential and despite your pathetic tales of woe it is obvious that you’ve overcome much and are determined in your goals to become a doctor. I think however you could do something more, but unless you’re willing to help me for the love of science, not because of money, or what I might be able to do for you then I think you will languish in mediocrity like most that pass through my class.” At this point you don’t know what the hell kind of head game Dr. Kovas is playing with you, but if there is some sort of possibility that he might help you, then you might need to play along. “I don’t believe you. Or rather I don’t believe you’ll help me for the right reasons. You’re going to help, because you still believe that I’m going to help you.” “Yes.” You blurt out. “Heh, well at least you’re honest now. All right I’m going to roll the dice with you and allow you to help me on a project I’ve been working on. I’ll even assure you that you will profit from this because I know you seem to be concerned about such things.” “”I’m really not, I just need extra money to…” “Don’t interrupt!” Dr. Kovas snaps. “As I was saying, you will profit from this, but it is my hope that you will come to do this for science more than anything. Because if you aren’t then you’re in the wrong field.” “I thought the field of medicine was primarily to help the sick.” You say. “Bah! Helping people? Nonsense! Most so called doctors aren’t in it to help people, they’re in it for the money! They’re all a bunch of soulless greed automatons that have no real passion for the mysteries of the human body and all this field has to offer!” Dr. Kovas has a reputation for misanthropy and cynicism, but you weren’t aware how much until just now, still he says he’s willing to help you and that’s good enough for you. “Now then, if you are going to help me, you need to meet me at my lab tonight and whatever you do, don’t tell anyone about it. When you get inside you are NOT to discuss what you see with anyone, do you understand?” “Um, what exactly are we going to be doing?” you ask a little concerned. “You’ll see soon enough, but it’s a secret project that will change the way modern medicine works! I can’t afford to have anyone stealing my ideas! So I need you to be all the way in on this! If you’re going to hesitate, then get out of my sight right now.” “Okay, okay, I’ll help you.” “Good. See you tonight.” Dr. Kovas says and walks away. You put in some time at the inn, but later leave Wendy in charge and tell her to close it down if you aren’t back by closing time. You remind Alan to lock everything up. Wendy of course isn’t very pleased with this idea and reminds you once again of how she’s overworked. You just apologize and leave. When you get to Dr. Kovas’ lab he doesn’t immediately open the door, and you have to wait about five minutes before he comes out to scold you that you’re five minutes late! You don’t argue though, you just enter only for Dr. Kovas to immediately ask you a disturbing question. “Can you kill a man?” “WHAT?!” “Or woman, in fact a woman might be better. Yes, I need you to kill a woman.” You’re literally speechless for a few moments before sputtering your protests. “Dr. Kovas, I didn’t sign up to kill people!” “Yes you did, the moment you said you’d help me. (Sigh) Look, progress in medical science has always required sacrifices. Sometimes that sacrifice has involved the lives of others. What is one life compared to the wonders that scientific break through can do?” Dr. Kovas isn’t just misanthropic, he’s sociopathic and you’re out of here. “I’m not a killer and I’m not capable of this. So I’m just going to leave. You needn’t worry I won’t tell anyone.” “Sorry son, I can’t take that chance, nighty night!” Dr Kovas suddenly produces a needle filled with something and injects you with it. You push him away and try the door handle only to find it locked. You don’t struggle with it for long though before you pass out. When you wake up you’re strapped to a table, with Dr. Kovas shaking his head at you. “What am I going to do with you? I placed what little faith I have in humanity in you and this is how you act? It’s my own fault I suppose.” You try to talk, but most of your body is still paralyzed. “Now then, I’m going to give you ONE last chance because I still see potential in you. After this wears off I want you to go out and get a girl. I don’t care how, just do it and bring her here. You don’t even need to kill her, just bring her here and I’ll do the deed. Do you think you can handle that?” You still can’t talk, but you know damn well if you don’t agree he’s certainly going to kill you, so you strain yourself to nod “yes”. “Good, I’ll release you. Oh and just to let you know, you only have until dawn. I’ve injected you with a toxin to ensure you don’t go running off or something silly like that. Don’t bother with trying to get an antidote either, it’s a special toxic mix that only I have the cure to.” You get up, very wobbly and still a little dizzy. By the time you start regaining all your faculties Dr. Kovas has shoved you out his lab door and locked it. You feel like you’re living a nightmare, but you don’t have much of a choice, you need to bring a woman back to the lab before dawn or you’re going to die. This isn’t going to be easy not just due to the immorality of the situation, but also because you haven’t exactly been a ladies man. What with all the studying and work at the inn, you don’t have much of a social life. You figure your best bet might be to go to one of the many college parties near campus and hope to get a drunk girl, though you could just go get a regular whore. > You seek out a whore It certainly will be the easiest for you to do emotionally and less likely to get you into trouble with the law. Who’s going to miss a whore right? The only thing you really need to worry about is getting mugged while you’re looking for one. You take a deep breath and catch a coach to the slums of Klyton. It doesn’t take you long to get propositioned several times when you arrive. “Hey baby, you like what you see?” “Mmmm, come put your dick in this slice of paradise!” “You see these lips? They could be wrapped around your cock.” “Come over here honey, you ain’t never had goblin ass before!” While you wince at that last one. A big man approaches you. “Hey you, you gonna just look or you actually gonna buy some pussy?” “Are you their pimp?” “I’m their manager! Now enough with the questions, you buying or what?” You can’t get a prostitute that has a pimp. If she turns up missing, he’s likely to seek you out and take the loss out on your hide or even blackmail you. You excuse yourself and continue to wander the streets. You travel into an even more destitute area of the slums looking for a whore, which is proving to be a lot harder than you thought it would be. You eventually find what you’re looking for and they’re revolting. The drug whores are certainly out in force tonight. “You got some green lotus or yellow devil? I’ll suck your dick!” is what most of the drug whores say to you. You almost figure you’d be doing them a favor by getting them killed. You pick the one who looks least likely to infect you just by breathing on you. (The irony that you’re already infected by a killer toxin isn’t lost on you.) You hand her several gold coins, probably the most money she’s seen in a long time and is ready to take you around the corner and blow you, but you have to explain that you’re heading to some place nicer and warm, with lots of drugs! She seems to like that idea, so she agrees to follow you. Fortunately you manage to catch another coach relatively quickly and your trip back to the campus is uneventful other than the ramblings and awful coughing of your “lady friend.” You arrive to the lab with your whore in tow and Dr. Kovas pulls you both in all the while not looking impressed. “Are you fucking kidding me? You got a whore? I could’ve got a whore!” “Well why didn’t you?” “I’d watch your tongue boy if you want that antidote.” “Look I did what you said! Just cure me now!” “Not yet, I need you to do one more thing, here.” Dr. Kovas points you to a syringe on a table filled with something. Something not good no doubt. It’s obvious he wants you to inject the whore with it. “No, no, you said all I had to do is bring her here.” “Yes, well I think under the circumstances you’re ready to take the next step for science.” “Hey wait, am I doing both of you? That’s okay I guess, but this is extra.” The whore says still not grasping the situation. As for you, you shake your head, knowing it’s useless to argue. You almost feel like grabbing the syringe and running over to stab him with it, but you still need the antidote and then you’d probably have to still kill the whore too. “Alright honey, I’m gonna take care of you.” you say holding the syringe and approaching the whore. “Oooh now that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Shoot me up.” You inject the eager whore with the needle and she soon falls unconscious. “Quickly, bring her to the table!” While you do so, Dr. Kovas disappears to the back of his lab. You check the girl and realize she’s stopped breathing. You’ve killed her, though you’re not really surprised, you’re just hoping that Kovas is coming out with your antidote. He comes out with much more than your antidote, he comes out with a rolling cart filled with several medical instruments that look more like torture devices and tosses you a small vial of clear liquid. “Here, take this and put on some gloves. We’re about make history!” You swallow the contents of the vial which you hope is the antidote. You don’t feel any different after taking it though. You half wonder if he was bluffing about poisoning you at all. If that’s the case then you just killed a girl for no reason, though it hardly matters at this point, as mad as you are at Dr. Kovas you might as well go through with this all the way. You stand there for a moment just watching Dr. Kovas enthusiastically cutting into the girl and injecting more strange fluid directly into her vital organs. He doesn’t seem to be paying attention to anything else, until he suddenly stops. “Hold on wait, did you strap her down? Shit you didn’t strap her down! Quick, tie her up!” “What?!” you say not really understanding why you’d need to do it, but you find out when she suddenly comes to life! “Tie her feet! Tie her feet!” Dr. Kovas yells as he shackles her arms to the table. You grab the rope on the cart and begin tying her feet, which are twitching as much as she’s making some no longer human noises. “Raagh. Gargah! Arrgh!” It suddenly occurs to you what exactly Dr. Kovas is experimenting with, Incitahol. It’s a banned concoction that was supposed to bring the dead back to life and it does, but only to create them as zombies. Lazy wannabe necromancers and mad scientists love the stuff, and would seem you’re working with the latter right now. “You’re experimenting with incitahol? This is your big project? I thought you’d be aware that this shit’s only good for creating zombies and not even controllable ones!” you say. “Ah, not yet anyway! I’ve made some changes to it. If you’ll notice the subject is not as aggressive as it would be under regular incitahol. Unfortunately it was still quite hostile and nearly bit my ear when I was trying to strap it down. I can’t be sure if this due to my changes in the drug, or the fact that this subject’s organs were heavily damaged due to her own major drug use and life style. Probably had several sexual diseases too, who knows what those factors might’ve played. This is why I didn’t want a drug addled whore (sigh) I’ll need a new subject.” You’re a little put off, considering he did say he didn’t care what kind of girl you got. You’re hardly surprised though; you just say you’ll get on it tomorrow. “You? No I don’t think so. I think I’m misjudged your abilities considering you’ve been argumentative and an utter failure in bringing me a good test subject. No I do not think there will be anymore chances. You may leave, I’m done with you.” NOW you’re surprised and more than a little pissed. This dick has been insulting you, poisoned you, made you kill a girl and now he’s just dismissing you like some flunky without even paying you for your time? “Oh is that how it is? Well you still owe me money for this!” “Owe? I don’t owe you anything. You did this for science m’boy. You should be happy you’re alive so that you can live out the rest of your boring existence.” It’s the last straw, you aren’t going to take it anymore and you snap. You immediately attack Dr. Kovas who anticipates your attack by dodging it. You crash straight into the zombie whore’s table and are unfortunately bit in the arm. “Arrrrgh! My arm!” you scream struggling to get your arm out of the zombie whore’s mouth. “Nargh Gabrah Raagh!” “Well, I guess you still might have your uses…” You feel a crushing blow to the back of your head and that’s the last thing you experience in your life. Your short undead “life” isn’t even worth mentioning.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Given that Dr. Kovas rarely compliments anyone, he has to like you a lot. You decide it might be best to take advantage of that fact. After his class you approach him about your situation, but he doesn’t seem very sympathetic. “Yes, yes, I’m sure your problems are very important to you, but my question is why are you telling me?” “Well that’s what I was getting at, I wanted to know if there was something I could do to help you out. Some way of maybe earning more money…” “Money? Hah! What do you think this is a factory employment line? If you want to help me, you shouldn’t be doing it for cash m’boy. You should be doing it for the love of science!” He starts to make his way out of the classroom, but you follow. “Dr. Kovas, I’d love to help for the love of science, but I’m not exactly in a position to do so! I mean I’ve got so many expenses and responsibilities and…” “Stop right there m’boy. Again you’re telling me these things as if I can do something about them…or that I WANT to do something about them.” “(sputter)…because I thought that given how much you praise my work in class you’d want to help out a potential fellow future doctor.” You say getting exasperated. “YOU? A fellow doctor? Ha ha ha ha! Granted you may have the ability to be a doctor one day, but if you think you’d ever approach someone of my caliber, I’ve sorely underestimated your capacity for logical thinking.” Dr. Kovas laughs. At this point you’re angry, you came to get help, not be insulted by this asshole. You’re hesitant to outright insult him back though since you still need to finish his class, so you just decide to leave. “Alright fine, don’t help me then. I just thought you were different from the other rich elitist bastards that look their noses down at me just because of my working class background. I’ll just leave…” “Wait, wait, you think I’m looking down on you because of your humble roots? My, my someone has an inferiority complex. M’boy I’m looking down on you because you’re whining about your problems to me. You have much potential and despite your pathetic tales of woe it is obvious that you’ve overcome much and are determined in your goals to become a doctor. I think however you could do something more, but unless you’re willing to help me for the love of science, not because of money, or what I might be able to do for you then I think you will languish in mediocrity like most that pass through my class.” At this point you don’t know what the hell kind of head game Dr. Kovas is playing with you, but if there is some sort of possibility that he might help you, then you might need to play along. “I don’t believe you. Or rather I don’t believe you’ll help me for the right reasons. You’re going to help, because you still believe that I’m going to help you.” “Yes.” You blurt out. “Heh, well at least you’re honest now. All right I’m going to roll the dice with you and allow you to help me on a project I’ve been working on. I’ll even assure you that you will profit from this because I know you seem to be concerned about such things.” “”I’m really not, I just need extra money to…” “Don’t interrupt!” Dr. Kovas snaps. “As I was saying, you will profit from this, but it is my hope that you will come to do this for science more than anything. Because if you aren’t then you’re in the wrong field.” “I thought the field of medicine was primarily to help the sick.” You say. “Bah! Helping people? Nonsense! Most so called doctors aren’t in it to help people, they’re in it for the money! They’re all a bunch of soulless greed automatons that have no real passion for the mysteries of the human body and all this field has to offer!” Dr. Kovas has a reputation for misanthropy and cynicism, but you weren’t aware how much until just now, still he says he’s willing to help you and that’s good enough for you. “Now then, if you are going to help me, you need to meet me at my lab tonight and whatever you do, don’t tell anyone about it. When you get inside you are NOT to discuss what you see with anyone, do you understand?” “Um, what exactly are we going to be doing?” you ask a little concerned. “You’ll see soon enough, but it’s a secret project that will change the way modern medicine works! I can’t afford to have anyone stealing my ideas! So I need you to be all the way in on this! If you’re going to hesitate, then get out of my sight right now.” “Okay, okay, I’ll help you.” “Good. See you tonight.” Dr. Kovas says and walks away. You put in some time at the inn, but later leave Wendy in charge and tell her to close it down if you aren’t back by closing time. You remind Alan to lock everything up. Wendy of course isn’t very pleased with this idea and reminds you once again of how she’s overworked. You just apologize and leave. When you get to Dr. Kovas’ lab he doesn’t immediately open the door, and you have to wait about five minutes before he comes out to scold you that you’re five minutes late! You don’t argue though, you just enter only for Dr. Kovas to immediately ask you a disturbing question. “Can you kill a man?” “WHAT?!” “Or woman, in fact a woman might be better. Yes, I need you to kill a woman.” You’re literally speechless for a few moments before sputtering your protests. “Dr. Kovas, I didn’t sign up to kill people!” “Yes you did, the moment you said you’d help me. (Sigh) Look, progress in medical science has always required sacrifices. Sometimes that sacrifice has involved the lives of others. What is one life compared to the wonders that scientific break through can do?” Dr. Kovas isn’t just misanthropic, he’s sociopathic and you’re out of here. “I’m not a killer and I’m not capable of this. So I’m just going to leave. You needn’t worry I won’t tell anyone.” “Sorry son, I can’t take that chance, nighty night!” Dr Kovas suddenly produces a needle filled with something and injects you with it. You push him away and try the door handle only to find it locked. You don’t struggle with it for long though before you pass out. When you wake up you’re strapped to a table, with Dr. Kovas shaking his head at you. “What am I going to do with you? I placed what little faith I have in humanity in you and this is how you act? It’s my own fault I suppose.” You try to talk, but most of your body is still paralyzed. “Now then, I’m going to give you ONE last chance because I still see potential in you. After this wears off I want you to go out and get a girl. I don’t care how, just do it and bring her here. You don’t even need to kill her, just bring her here and I’ll do the deed. Do you think you can handle that?” You still can’t talk, but you know damn well if you don’t agree he’s certainly going to kill you, so you strain yourself to nod “yes”. “Good, I’ll release you. Oh and just to let you know, you only have until dawn. I’ve injected you with a toxin to ensure you don’t go running off or something silly like that. Don’t bother with trying to get an antidote either, it’s a special toxic mix that only I have the cure to.” You get up, very wobbly and still a little dizzy. By the time you start regaining all your faculties Dr. Kovas has shoved you out his lab door and locked it. You feel like you’re living a nightmare, but you don’t have much of a choice, you need to bring a woman back to the lab before dawn or you’re going to die. This isn’t going to be easy not just due to the immorality of the situation, but also because you haven’t exactly been a ladies man. What with all the studying and work at the inn, you don’t have much of a social life. You figure your best bet might be to go to one of the many college parties near campus and hope to get a drunk girl, though you could just go get a regular whore. > You go to the Klyton Militia You won’t do it, you won’t kill anyone and you’re not going to bring someone to Dr. Kovas for him to murder either. Maybe you’ll die, but you’re going to make sure Kovas pays as well. You head to the nearest Klyton militia station and tell them everything. The sergeant in charge asks if you’ve been to the hospital yet to which you say no. He says they need to get you there immediately and if you do indeed have some sort of poison in your system they’ll obviously be able to arrest Dr. Kovas with no problems. You’re rushed to the hospital and thanks to the militia you’re seen to immediately. The physicians run all sorts of tests on you. They don’t find anything, but given the situation they put you on observation. The militia still goes to check out Dr. Kovas since there are several doctors they speak with at the hospital who don’t particularly like him and don’t put it past him to pull something like this. You wait in your bed, getting more nervous by the hour. You don’t feel sick at all, maybe he was bluffing? You sure hope so. In any case, you realize that maybe you need to give up on the whole medical profession thing. You tried your best, but it seems that events have constantly conspired against you. You’ve even broken laws of your own to achieve your goals and all you’ve managed to succeed in is alienating your mom, earning the loathing of your staff and getting yourself poisoned. After thinking about this for a while, you begin to get sleepy. It isn’t dawn yet, but you can’t be sure if it isn’t the poison or not, of course it could just be the stress of the night finally getting to you. In any case you close your eyes to darkness. When you wake up you’re surprised to see your mom sitting there. “Oh by the gods, thanks to them you’re alive!” “Mom? How the? How’d you get here so fast? How did you find out?” “Son, I think the first thing you should know is that you’ve been in a coma for about a month!” “Whaaaa…” You mother explains everything that she knows that has happened. You did have a deadly toxin in your body, but fortunately the hospital was able to keep you alive until the militia found the antidote in Kovas’ lab. Dr. Kovas himself was killed while resisting arrest. They injected the antidote into your unconscious body, but they assume it didn’t work like it should have due to the toxin already running through your body and in the process of shutting everything down. When the militia informed Wendy of your condition, she immediately contacted your mother by messenger. Being your only immediate family, she also regained possession of the inn while you were incapacitated and possibly on your deathbed. As a result she sold it to help pay for your medical treatment and she’s been by your side ever since. You can’t believe that your mom has helped you like this after how you parted a year ago. Needless to say you and her make up in an emotional way. You spend another week in the hospital still getting tested by doctors. They tell you you’ll be able to go home, but your body has been severely weakened by the toxin and how it is unlikely that you’ll ever be fully healthy again. No more inn and no more college and somehow it all just seems like a great relief to you. Your mother takes you to her home in Teckleville, you have no idea what you’re going to do there, but for a while you just take it easy. Just like the doctors said, you don’t make a complete recovery. You feel tired all the time and sometimes you don’t feel well at all. You mother and your aunt Enora make sure to look after you, but as the months go on you begin to get frustrated and depressed. You try to occupy your time with hobbies, but nothing really works. You almost consider suicide, but that would probably devastate your mom more than anything, so you take the same determined mindset that you once had for college and place it towards finding a job you’ll be able to handle. Eventually you succeed and get a position at the small library in town where your extensive knowledge on the sciences comes in quite handy and greatly appreciated. The rest of your life is fairly mundane, perhaps even a little boring, but you do come to appreciate the life you managed to carve out in light of everything that happened to you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Again, the inn isn’t really like how it used to be where you’d get miners coming in wanting some food with their ale. Nowadays you just get plain ol’ drunks coming in. Even the adventurers don’t normally order anything fancy. You figure you’ll just cut down on food shipments and jack the price up so only adventurers or perhaps the odd merchant will be willing to pay for a hot meal. You also decide that Wendy is a pretty vital part of running this place, so you offer her the only thing you can think of that would keep her happy… “Less kitchen work and a free permanent room? Are you serious?” Wendy says in disbelief. “If you want it. The catch is though, you’d be living here and need to make sure things are running smoothly on a regular basis, this means opening up the inn early, closing it down late, or whatever else is required.” “Pfft, I basically do that now.” “Perhaps, but now you’d get to live at a place rent free, not to mention you don’t need to walk that far to work anymore. Now that should certainly alleviate some of your problems I trust?” “Yeah, that would help a lot.” “Good, oh one more thing, I know you have kids, I really hope they won’t be running all over the place bothering patrons.” “No, it won’t be a problem. Y’know I had my doubts about you running this place and while I know me living here is going to make it more convenient for your own goals, thanks all the same.” “You’re welcome.” You say and feel positive that this decision is going to work out just fine. A few months pass and your inn is making a little more money and you have a little more time for your academic goals. Things are nice for a little while, but as usual a problem crops up to make you life a lot more difficult. Wendy’s kids are little monsters. Not to you, but to just about everyone else. Wendy tries to keep them in line through screaming and beatings, but it doesn’t work for long. Her youngest Carl is a dirty little boy who is constantly trying to look up Eliza and Rita’s dresses or touch them in some inappropriate way. If he can’t get to them, the local trashy women who frequent the bar will do. Most of the time he tries to play it off like he doesn’t mean anything, but he knows damn well what he’s doing. Wendy’s daughter Annie is obviously taking after her with the same grasp of verbal swears. She swears so much you initially thought she had Rosette’s Syndrome. Her mouth wouldn’t really be a problem except she’s loud and is always asking the inn guests strange questions (swearing the whole time of course). Finally her oldest son, Henry is well on his way to be a future sociopath. The kid will sit in a corner watching everything and everyone with this creepy look like he’d murder everyone if he could. You’ve noticed that knives from the kitchen have been going missing and you never used to come across so many bloody cat heads in the alley before Wendy moved in. While you can’t prove the animal killing or knife theft, you know for a fact that he’s been fucking with Alan. For the past week you’ve noticed Alan limping, when you questioned him, he stated it was nothing, but on closer inspection you saw that his shoe was in a burned condition and he had a bruise on his neck. You question it further and Alan finally breaks down and tells you it was Wendy’s son, but states that Wendy’s son was just “playing” that it wasn’t a big deal and he didn’t want him getting into trouble. That’s the last straw for you. You and Wendy need to have another talk about this arrangement. “Wendy I need to talk to you now.” “Can it wait…HEY GET BACK HERE YOU LITTLE BASTARD!” Wendy says shouting at one her little demons. “That’s exactly what we need to talk about.” “Wha…oh fine.” You and Wendy step into the kitchen and you waste no time in expressing your concerns. “Wendy you’ve been a great help her since you moved in, but it was my understanding that you were going to have your kids under better control than you have been.” “Hey this is the best all of them have been in ages! Besides they haven’t been bothering you and business has been doing okay.” “Yeah, but at this rate I’m not sure how long that’s going to last with how your kids have been acting lately. Your youngest is sexually harassing Eliza and Rita more than the lowest scum that drinks here. Your daughter is causing some the most hardcore adventurers feel uncomfortable. And your oldest son, hoo boy, you NEED to get that kid on a leash quick and instill some discipline into him because he’s one twisted little pup.” “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to fuckhead? You think you can tell me how to raise my goddamn kids? You think it’s fucking easy? You don’t have any, so fuck you! Shit, you ain’t even got a woman, so I’m guessing you ain’t gonna have to worry about it ever. Faggot.” “And who the hell do you think YOU’RE talking to? I’m your boss and I’m telling you need to get your kids in line! Alan just told me that your oldest son snuck down into basement and gave him a hotfoot while he was sleeping. When Alan predictably woke up, he nearly choked himself because your little psycho set up a wire noose around his neck tied to the table nearby.” “And you believed Alan?” “Alan’s a lot of things, but he’s not a liar. If anything I had to drag the info out of him. He was afraid of getting your son in trouble, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was just afraid of your son period.” “(Sigh) Even if it is true. So what? That’s just how boys play.” “That’s how future murderers play. Look, I’m not arguing with you anymore. Your kids are a problem and you said they wouldn’t be. So get your shit together or face the consequences.” “Fuck you, you gonna fire me? Pfft! Yeah right. Without me, you couldn’t run this place and pursue your precious education at the same time. Hell, I doubt if you could run it period.” > You fire Wendy It’s a risky gamble, but you feel you have no choice. “Alright fine, you’re fired.” You say after taking a deep breath. “Ha ha ha ha! Yeah right.” Wendy laughs. “I’m not joking, you’re fired and you can pack your bags and get the hell out of my inn too.” “Wait a minute!” “No, you’ve made it quite clear you don’t respect my generosity and are just taking advantage of it. I’d expect this sort of behavior from Rita, but I thought better of you.” “…you can’t fire me! You need me! “ Wendy sputters. “It’s done. You’re gone. And while you may be right that I do need you, I don’t need your bratty kids. Especially one that’s setting my other employees on fucking fire.” You begin to leave the kitchen and Wendy grabs your arm. “Alright, alright! Shit. You win. I can’t afford to lose my job and a free place on top of everything right now. I’ll do something about my kids. (Sigh) I just hope I can do something about Henry. I’m not sure anything is going to help. I have to admit, I’m not looking forward to him when he becomes a teenager.” “Well, have you thought about sending him away?” “I wish. I don’t have that sort of money to send him to some boys school, besides he’d probably get kicked out within a week.” “No, there’s a program that the city militia has been trying to promote lately. It’s basically like boot camp for juvenile delinquents. They say it has good results in turning them around.” You suggest. “Well I’d try anything I suppose, but doesn’t that cost money as well?” “No, basically you go down to the local militia guard station and sign your kid up, then at sometime in the middle of the night they take him away for a year.” “Wow, sounds pretty extreme, but if it’s free hell I’ll try it.” The next few days are slightly quieter. Wendy has obviously laid down the law once again to them, but it won’t last. You really hope she goes through with your suggestion because as much as you are perfectly willing to go through with your threat, you also know it would ruin your own goals. Later that night, heavy banging on your inn’s front door and yelling wakes you up. “This is the Klyton Militia open up at once! We have important business here!” You smile and head downstairs to open the door, but you find that Wendy has already done it. When they take him away, he doesn’t cry or even protest. He allows himself to go quietly, which makes you believe that you made the right decision in pushing Wendy in this direction. You have your doubts if the militia program will help him, but he’s out of your life now and that’s what is important. The best thing is, this event scared Wendy’s other two kids so much that they straighten up so as not to suffer the same fate. Time passes and everything seems to be going well until one day when you get another visit from the Klyton militia who storm in the same way they did when they took away Henry. “You the owner of this establishment?” the sergeant asks. “Yeah?” you answer groggily “You’re under arrest for serving illegal substances.” “What?! I don’t sell drugs here!” “You’re selling homemade booze ain’t cha? Clearly you’re violating alcohol law 3.6721. Gibbs! Check the basement, that’s where it’s supposed to be!” You’re put into manacles and sputter in disbelief at all this. You were careful! Who could’ve ratted you out? None of you patrons would’ve cared given that they drink here. Even your ex-patrons just left due to the alcohol not tasting as good to them, they would’ve have bothered. Your staff? If this place goes down, then they all lose their jobs and if anything you’ve made strides in making things easier for them…shit. You know now. It’s Henry. That little bastard must’ve told all about this place. Whether he did it out of spite for you or his mom or if they really rehabilitated him and he felt it was his “duty” to rat you out hardly matters, you’re fucked. “Found them sir. There’s a whole bunch of stills in the basement, along with some retard who seemed confused.” Gibbs reports. “Ugh, you keep retarded sex slaves in this place too? What the hell are you running here?!” the sergeant says jumping to conclusions. “Sex slaves? He’s the fucking janitor!” you protest. “Save it you sicko! You’re coming with us!” As you’re taken away you shout to Wendy who is standing by watching all this, to get the money from the safe to bail you out. Eventually you’re brought up on charges of distribution of illegal substances, posing a health risk to the populous, exploitation of the mentally incompetent and tax evasion. Guess which one you got in the most trouble? You spend almost all your money on a lawyer, and your inn is taken away by the city, along with your dreams of going into medicine. After all is said and done you’ve lost everything and are completely broke. The only good thing is the city decided that your inn would cover the cost of all the alcohol taxes you weren’t paying due to making your own so you didn’t serve any jail time. It’s of minor consolation though, you’re still left with nothing and don’t have much future prospects. You wish you’d listened to your mother and you think about going to Teckleville to apologize to her in person, but you can’t bring yourself to even face her. You do eventually get another job as a boring assistant clerk. It’s a mind numbing tedious job that does nothing for your mental well-being. After years of this drudge you hang yourself still lamenting about where you went wrong with the inn.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A year has passed and you’re back in college, though it’s not as much fun as it was when you didn’t need to worry about where your tuition was coming from or having something like a job. Finding time to study while running the inn is difficult, but fortunately Wendy picks up the slack when you’re not around. You’ve also managed to re-establish some old contacts with people you were “friends” with before your “break”. Most of them are ahead of you and some are getting ready to graduate. While none of them bothered to stay in contact with you (so much for education breaking down class distinctions) a few of them are still willing to help you out by selling you books for cheap or giving you some of their old notes. Every little bit helps. As for the inn, it’s doing well, but you constantly worry about its future profitability. Your regular patrons aren’t the upstanding working class anymore, most of them are petty criminals, broke losers and other ne’er-do-wells. You also have to do something about your overworked/underpaid staff. So far Wendy has been doing far more than she anticipated and is demanding more pay. Rita on the other hand is just plain threatening to quit. All of which is cutting into your study and school time. A few bright spots are you’re getting adventurers coming in since those nice rooms you got awhile back started to pay off. You’re also saving money with your stills (You have multiple ones in the basement now) and your retarded janitor Alan who seems to be just happy to work and follow your orders. If only all your employees were so agreeable. Today’s the day you make a change to the status quo. > You keep things as they are and start cheating at school Making any changes might make things worse than they are and you’re already got enough problems as it is. The only thing you can reliably control is yourself so you decide to cut a few corners in your studies. It’s not like you won’t completely know the information, it’s just between studying and managing the inn to make money for school, the money aspect is more important to your future in medicine… This twisted logic doesn’t work so well. First of all your inn isn’t really doing any better with you around more often. You’re still breaking even and your staff is still unhappy for the most part. Second of all, you spend nearly as much time scamming and scheming for your tests that you probably could’ve better spent it studying. Lastly, you’re going into the medicine, it’s not like law where you can just bullshit your way through and by it’s very nature you can’t really “cheat” at least not for very long. Some tests just can’t be cheated on and this becomes apparent during your advanced anatomy and physiology final where you’re presented with a real dead body and you get several parts of it laughably wrong. YOU FAIL BASIC HUMAN BIOLOGY FOREVER is what is actually posted on your paper by your professor. You don’t do too much better in the rest of your classes. What this all means is you have to repeat most of your classes which means more money, or at least that’s what it would mean if you were rich. Since you aren’t, the university just throws you out since you failed to meet the academic standard. Well all your short cuts, the home brewed hooch, the overworked staff, the cheating, it has all amounted to nothing. Sure you still have the inn, and if you made some cuts you could keep it running, but why bother? You never wanted to run this damn thing in the first place. This is all your parents fault, they pushed you in one direction and then they fuck up and you have to go into another direction. A direction which ended up leading to ruin. At this point you’re so fed up with busting your ass to get shit done, you decide to not do anything at all. Basically, you don’t learn your lesson from all this. First thing you do is sell the inn for as much as you can. Not as much as you like, but it’s enough to keep you from having to do anything for a while. You spend the next few months mainly picking up loose co-eds at the university. It’s a lot of fun, but as the money starts running out, you realize you’re going to have to get a job again. You wind up getting a job as a lowly clerk doing boring file keeping, but you pretty much slack off on that job quite a bit. You mostly get away with it for a long time, but eventually much like your cheating you don’t get away with it forever and you’re fired. After a couple more failed attempts at keeping a job in the city, you’ve got no choice, but to either become a beggar or apologize to your mom in Teckleville and hope she takes you in for a while. You take the remaining amount of your money and take a one-way trip to Teckleville and mentally prepare yourself for a lot of apologizing, even if you don’t really mean it. When you arrive you meet up with your mother (who now has her own place as opposed to living with your aunt Enora). She’s surprised to see you and isn’t immediately hostile. You explain your situation though omit some of the information (like cheating) and replace it with a hard luck story instead. This of course is followed by a lot of apologies and stating how she was right all along. It works and she takes you in. Of course the problem is now you’re living with your mom and while she’s forgiven you, she doesn’t expect you to sit around doing nothing which you’ve decided to continue doing. This willful sloth, leads to a cycle of several never-ending arguments, but the result is always the same. You either get a odd job around the town to get your mom off your back for awhile or she throws you out and you live with your crazy aunt Enora for awhile until you can’t put up with her quirkiness anymore and you get an odd job around town anyway and beg to move back in with your mom (who always accepts mainly because she still has a lingering feeling of guilt that maybe her and your dad really are responsible for your decline). The rest of your life is a rather miserable one and not very interesting in the scheme of things. You always remain bitter about “what you could’ve been” and this of course results in you thinking about that damn inn a lot and what you could’ve done differently. You’ll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A year has passed and you’re back in college, though it’s not as much fun as it was when you didn’t need to worry about where your tuition was coming from or having something like a job. Finding time to study while running the inn is difficult, but fortunately Wendy picks up the slack when you’re not around. You’ve also managed to re-establish some old contacts with people you were “friends” with before your “break”. Most of them are ahead of you and some are getting ready to graduate. While none of them bothered to stay in contact with you (so much for education breaking down class distinctions) a few of them are still willing to help you out by selling you books for cheap or giving you some of their old notes. Every little bit helps. As for the inn, it’s doing well, but you constantly worry about its future profitability. Your regular patrons aren’t the upstanding working class anymore, most of them are petty criminals, broke losers and other ne’er-do-wells. You also have to do something about your overworked/underpaid staff. So far Wendy has been doing far more than she anticipated and is demanding more pay. Rita on the other hand is just plain threatening to quit. All of which is cutting into your study and school time. A few bright spots are you’re getting adventurers coming in since those nice rooms you got awhile back started to pay off. You’re also saving money with your stills (You have multiple ones in the basement now) and your retarded janitor Alan who seems to be just happy to work and follow your orders. If only all your employees were so agreeable. Today’s the day you make a change to the status quo. > You your staff (Current status) Wendy: Head barmaid/cook She has more responsibility and has higher pay, but she’s steadily not feeling like it’s worth it. The fact that you’re not there for most of the day means she has to oversee most things. Same is true if you have important school work you need to do. She’s basically doing most of the work your mother used to do, but the major exception is she is NOT your mother and has her own kids to worry about. This fact has been brought to your attention directly several times during one of her many rants at you due to her dissatisfaction. Rita: Barmaid Rita doesn’t have it nearly as bad as Wendy, but she complains just as much if not more. It is true she’s overworked more than she used to be however. Rita is always arguing with Wendy or you. If she isn’t then she’s taking out her frustration on Eliza or Alan if he gets in the way. She’s still trying to find that “sugar daddy” type to take her away from all of this, but the inn doesn’t get many merchants anymore and those it does aren’t interested in an obnoxious serving wench as a trophy wife. Her threats of quitting are a daily routine. Eliza: Barmaid Eliza is more or less her usual quiet self, though it is evident that even she feels overworked since every once in awhile she’ll make a couple of minor grumbles about things. Alan: Janitor/Handyman This is your prized employee. He never complains and follows orders. The best thing is he has managed to save you money in repairs since he’s good at that sort of thing. You don’t really know what you’d do without him. Part of you feels a little guilty about making him sleep in the basement and generally treating him like a second-class citizen, but he doesn’t seem to mind. The only problem you have with him is due to his slow mindedness in most things you get frustrated in explaining more complex stuff to him. However you usually tell Wendy to tell him so you can avoid all of that trouble.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If it’s only for a couple days, what can it hurt and you’re getting a good deal on his alcohol, so you figure it’s a good idea. This does not go well with your mother who says you’re going to get the pair of you further into debt. It takes some time, but eventually you manage to convince her that the money you’re saving will be worth the couple days out of the month that he actually comes up here. Meanwhile Calwin calls his lackeys to unload his cart and take the stuff down to your cellar. Calwin then states he’s going to retire to his room and that if any of your barmaids want to join him his door will be open. The next couple days aren’t exactly pleasant, Calwin is a complete lecherous slob and leaves not only his room a disgusting mess, but hangs around the bar all day trying to grope the barmaids. (Rita in particular) You have to warn him several times to leave them alone, and eventually one of the miners who has a crush on Rita punches him in the face resulting in a minor scuffle in which Calwin is not the winner. You fully expect Calwin to claim that he’s never dealing with you again, but as it turns out he doesn’t think anything of it. Indeed he claims if it had been a bar in Hessla he probably would’ve gotten a knife in the eye instead, so he considers himself lucky. Eventually he leaves and everyone is glad, but there’s the sickening feeling that you know you’re going to have to put up with him a few times every month. By the end of the week you haven’t saved any money. In fact you’ve barely broke even. While you’re sweeping up the inn early morning, a non-descript man of medium height enters with two bigger figures. One of them is unmistakably an ogre while the other guy is just a tall muscular human. Either one could break you in half. “Are you are Mr. Reynolds?” you ask, knowing that it has to be him. “That would be me. I take it you’re the son of my late debtor? I do hope you realize that the debt doesn’t end with him dying…” Mr. Reynolds says “No, no of course not. I’ve got some of what my father owed.” You hand over the most you can under the circumstances, but Mr. Reynolds looks insulted. “My boy do you take me for an asshole? Your father used to pay me much more than this pittance!” “It was a rough week…” “No, no, I don’t give a shit about your excuses, you’ve chosen to take on your father’s debt so you are expected to fucking pay up like he did! (Sigh) Look, since you’re obviously new to this, I’ll let you off with a warning. Olaf.” Suddenly the ogre steps forward with a smile and punches you the stomach. You temporarily lose the ability to breath and collapse on the floor. When you finally do catch your breath, you promptly vomit. “That was my warning, let’s hope I don’t need to do it again. Be seeing you again in a few weeks kid. Let’s get out of here.” As Mr. Reynolds leaves, your mother comes running up from the cellar wondering what’s going on. She helps you up when she sees you. “Oh no son I can’t let this go on. We’re selling the inn right now!” “No, no mom, it’s alright, you’ll see. We’re going to make this place profitable and payback the loan and after that we’ll be able to take the next step.” “Son, I love you, but you’ve made a lot of questionable decisions as far as business is concerned. I mean if this keeps up, I’m stepping in before this place goes to hell so I can actually make money selling it to the city.” “You won’t get enough for it!” “Well I’ll get enough to pay off the debt, and if worst comes to worst, I’ll leave Klyton and live with my sister in Teckleville” “You can’t live with aunt Enora, you always said she’s crazy.” “She is, but that still doesn’t mean she wouldn’t help me out.” “Look, we’ve still got time, I know my ideas are going to help us out soon.” “Well, I hope all your fancy schooling you gained some sort of insight that I’m not privy to. Alright we’ll give it until the next time Mr. Reynolds comes around for payment.” You agree and start wiping up the floor before customers come in. The next few days are uneventful; the miners seem to be enjoying the new Hessla ale though so that’s a relief. They even seem to be talking to you a little more, one in particular Ular has been chewing your ear quite frequently. He’s the one that has an obvious crush on Rita, but you’ve never seen him actually talk to her on any serious level. Strange that a big tough miner would be too shy to speak to a girl, but there it is. “So how long have you known Rita?” Ular asks. “Me? Well she started working here just before I left for college so I didn’t speak to her too much back then, and I haven’t really spoken to her too much other than about duties around the inn since I’ve got back here.” “She’s so beautiful, you know? I always wonder if she isn’t a Delantium Princess hiding out or something.” “Yeah, she’s a pretty girl.” You reply. “Can you speak to her for me?” “What?” “Just speak to her for me. I try, but I…dunno I don’t have the words! I get all tongue tied an’ shit. I mean you’re a smart guy, you went to college an’ shit. Maybe you can tell her better how I feel than I can.” “I dunno if should get involved in this…” “Please man, just do it…oh shit here she comes!” At this point Ular stumbles over his own feet trying to get to a dark corner before Rita arrives for more ale. Feeling a little sorry for the guy, you talk to Rita. “Hey Rita, this is going to be strange question, but…” “Oh gods, you’re not going to start hitting on me too are you?” “What? Uh no! But well, there’s a miner named Ular who’s sort of nuts about you.” “Yeah, he’s nuts over me like every other miner here trying to get under my skirt.” “Heh, I don’t think so, he’s so damn shy he’s practically afraid to speak to you, and surely you’ve noticed.” “Yeah I suppose I have. I will admit he’s a little different than the rest of these ale swilling pigs.” “So are you interested in him?” “Eh…I dunno. I mean from what I know of him he seems respectful and he did punch out that fucker Calwin when he groped me, but that’s not really enough. I need a man that’s going places. I mean he’s a miner; where’s that going to lead me? Not in fine Selkie furs and a big house, I’ll just be barefoot and pregnant and still living here.” Same old Rita. Still, you can certainly understand her desire to move up in the world. However, a miner still makes a decent living. A lot better than her that’s for sure. She’d still be “moving up.” > You convince Rita that money isn't everything Ular seems like a good guy and Rita could certainly do worse, so you decide to play matchmaker. “I understand Rita, I mean I was supposed to become a doctor, but now I’m back here.” “Yeah, suck to be you.” Rita says. “Indeed, but my point is, you need to grab the good times when you can. I mean you think you’re going to find any of the type of men you’re interested in here?” “So you’re saying I should just settle?” “No, I’m saying Ular’s a nice guy who’s going to probably try to do everything within his means to make you happy. Now doesn’t that at least sound worthwhile?” “Yeah I suppose it does…I haven’t really been happy in a long time. Okay, tell him to meet me after work.” “Okay, and what the hell, you can get off an hour earlier.” You add. Rita walks off with a slight spring in her step. You look for Ular and see him slowly coming out of his dark corner. You tell him that she’s interested and that she’ll talk with him in greater length after work. He’s ecstatic. He immediately orders a round of drinks for everyone along with giving you a large tip. “Who says good deeds go unrewarded?” You say to yourself. The remaining days until the next payment go well. Rita hits it off pretty well with Ular. She’s actually happy enough to the point now where her job performance increases. Ular is so happy with her that he routinely buys rounds for the house to celebrate his good fortune. Mr. Reynolds is satisfied with the payment he receives, and you still have a little saved over. You have high hopes that in time you’ll get out of this debt. However, unexpected troubles arise in the next month. Ular stops coming in altogether. Rita has had a great affect on him, namely she doesn’t want him wasting all his money at the inn anymore; she wants him wasting it on her. This might not be too bad, except Rita also quits her job to move into Ular’s home seeing as he makes enough for the pair of them. While it’s true you don’t have to pay her anymore, you lose a couple of other customers that must’ve liked looking at her. That’s not even counting the extra work that Eliza and Wendy have to do now who are now miserable to the point of wanting to seriously quit. You and your mother take up some of the slack, but it’s a drain on the pair of you. The kicker is when Calwin shows up on his monthly delivery. He says that he’s decided to bump the price up on his alcohol. You furiously ask why, and he says that the last time he was here he noticed how nice the rooms were and that if you can afford to fix them up, you must be able to afford to pay him more for his product. Your mother who is already stressed out from overwork, is so disgusted with him that she grabs your dad’s Troll Gun from under the bar counter and points it at him, telling him to get the hell out before she blows his head off. He and his lackeys leave, which means you’ll have no alcohol supply this month. You’ll have to make due with what you have left and go back to the old expensive one. The bigger immediate problem is Mr. Reynold’s payment, which you won’t have enough to give him this time around and it’s going to be that time again in a few more days. Your mother can’t bare to see you get hurt again and suggests forgetting all about the inn and just taking off with all the remaining money you have and going to live with your crazy aunt Enora.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You shake your head; you can’t walk away from this. Your mom might be in serious trouble because this loan. Selling the inn might not even be enough to cover it and even if it is, she probably won’t have enough to fall back on. You aren’t angry with her, but you do feel a little anger towards your dad for getting her in this position (and you indirectly). You realize he still had the best intentions for you, but those don’t really help right now. “Alright first things first, who is the name of this loanshark?” you ask your mother. “Mr. Reynolds. He’ll be coming next week to pick up a collection. He’s not a member of the Crimson Talons, but he does have a couple of their goons working for him.” “The Crimson Talons? Oh geez, this just get better…okay how is this place doing for business?” “It’s doing about as well as it always has.” “That won’t be enough, we’ll need to get more people in here, or cut costs somehow.” “Well your father was going to have more work done on the rooms in the hopes that it would keep adventurers and maybe even merchants to come back whenever they travel through here. I’m not sure if it’s worth it though. Adventures don’t care where they sleep half the time and it’s not always a sure thing that they’re going to live long enough for repeat business. As for merchants, I think this place is a little too blue collar for them most of the time.” “You said something about getting a new liquor supplier?” “Yeah, the one here raised their prices, it would actually be cheaper to get the stuff shipped in from Hessla. Your father was supposed to meet with the new potential distributor in a couple days, so I’m not sure how that’s going to go through, if at all.” “How about the staff?” “The staff is working on minimum wage as it is, we’ve got three barmaids, Rita, Eliza and Wendy and they’re all disgruntled about their jobs, but they all still work well.. We can barely pay them though, and we might have to fire one of them. Grim stuff, but you’re determined to see this through. Since the liquor supplier from Hessla won’t arrive in two days you’re just going to focus on what you can do now. Fixing the rooms is still a good idea to keep potential returning wandering adventurers happy. Spending a little money now could increase potential profits later. Who knows, maybe even a merchant will show up and spread the word that this place isn’t just some place where miners get drunk. Firing people sounds like it might save you money, but all it’s really going to do is create more work for the rest of you, so you decide to hold off on firing anyone for now. Your mother doesn’t agree with your idea of fixing the rooms, but seems relieved that you’re not firing anyone. Things go as normal at the inn. Several of the miners still offer their condolences about your father and are surprised to see that you’re taking up his mantle as it were, but other than that they don’t say to much to you. They probably don’t know what to say since while some of them might know you since you were little, but you’re not really “one of them” in terms of education level. Not to say they’re all a bunch of grunting idiots, but they probably figure you’re used to talking about things of a more cerebral nature. You don’t mind though, after all your main concern is getting your mom out of debt. Two days pass and the supplier from Hessla arrives. He’s a grungy shady looking individual, but considering he’s from Hessla that’s hardly surprising. He immediately says his name is Calwin asks for your father at which point you tell him he died recently. Calwin shows no sympathy and merely complains that he’s made a trip up here for no reason. You show a little restraint and call your mother to speak with him, but after five minutes with him she’s ready to throw him out the door for hitting on her, and you’re not exactly thrilled with him either at this point. “Look folks, if you want good quality alcohol at a low price I’m willing to deal wit ya, but I’m gonna need some incentive for my troubles because y’all seem like a buncha uptight prigs. Now I was invited here by the man who ran this establishment, so you called me here, if my help ain’t wanted, I’ll be on my way…” Calwin says. While you’re tempted to just have him leave, you decide it would be best to at least see if his stuff is any good. “Alright prove it. Surely you’ve brought some of your alcohol here so we can test to see if it’s any good.” “Well I do have some with me, but I can’t just be givin’ this stuff away for free.” “Don’t worry, you’ll be compensated.” You call attention to the miners in the room and ask them if they’d like to try some new beer, naturally they’re all for it. A few of the miners take their fill of Calwin’s beer and they say that it’s different from what they usually drink, but it’s just as good. Calwin looks a little put off that they claimed his alcohol is “just as good”, but still maintains that it’s better than what you already have. He states his price, and also mentions that he wants a free room whenever he comes here since he’s apparently got a harpy of a wife at home and he likes to stay away for a couple days before having to go back to Hessla. Your mother obviously isn’t thrilled with having to deal with him, and in the short time he’s been here; he’s also hit on every one of the barmaids. Granted they’re used to such behavior, he’s particularly revolting. (Plus he’s from Hessla) > You deal with him, but no free room You tell him if he wants to spend a few days here that’s fine, but he’s paying like everyone else, either that he can lower the price of his alcohol to cover the cost. Calwin protests saying that he should be put up for free, but you’re unmoved. Eventually he tells you to forget it and tells his lackeys to just carry his booze down to your cellar and he’ll be on his way. “Glad you stood your ground on that one. Don’t really want his type hanging around anyway.” Your mother says. The next few days are blessed ones. Some successful adventurers walk in with a whole lot of loot. They rest up in your nice rooms and tip generously. By the end of the week you’ve managed to save bit of money. While you’re sweeping up the inn early morning, a non-descript man of medium height enters with two bigger figures. One of them is unmistakably an ogre while the other guy is just a tall muscular human. Either one could break you in half. “Are you are Mr. Reynolds?” you ask, knowing that it has to be him. “That would be me. I take it you’re the son of my late debtor? I do hope you realize that the debt doesn’t end with him dying…” Mr. Reynolds says “No, no of course not. I’ve got your payment.” Mr. Reynolds looks pleased that you’ve handed him a weighty bag of coins. “Nice. Glad to see we’re getting off on the right foot, kid. Wouldn’t want to have to sic Olaf here on you.” Mr. Reynolds says while patting his ogre goon on the arm. “Be seein’ ya in a few weeks kid.” As Mr. Reynolds leaves, your mother comes running up from the cellar wondering what’s going on. “Was that Reynolds? Why didn’t you call me up here?!” “I had it under control, besides it all went well. We’re saving money, and hopefully those nice rooms we have will pay off still.” The next few days are uneventful; the miners seem to be enjoying the new Hessla ale though so that’s a relief. They even seem to be talking to you a little more, one of the older miners Aglim, remarks about the adventurers that spent a few nights here awhile back. “Y’know that’s something I should’ve went into, instead of mining. You travel all over the damn place, killin things and take their shit. Sounds a hell of a lot more fun than spendin’ your time hittin’ the same damn piece of mountain over and over again.” “They didn’t speak too much to me, but they said they were coming back from the Cloudpeak Mountains. Said they found some old crypt filled with treasure.” You say. “Yeah, I’ll bet it was some old Dwarven tomb too. For their sake, they better hope the dwarves don’t find out about it. They aren’t too fond of outsiders desecrating their dead like that. Still, there’s been an increase in those types lately in the mountains and a lot of them have been passing back and forth through Klyton. You might want to do some advertising for your inn or something.” Aglim says before walking back to his table with his friends. He does bring up an interesting point. You obviously have some nice rooms now, why not be a little pro-active and get more of these adventuring types to spend their ill gotten loot here? You figure the best way to do this is appealing to the lowest common denominator. Sex appeal… “What?! Son I certainly hope you aren’t suggesting that…” “NO! I was thinking about someone a lot younger like one of the barmaids.” “Hmm, I’m not sure if that’s more or less insulting…very well I agree that getting those adventuring type in here would help out a lot. We used to have more, but ever since the Flying Griffon Inn opened up in the merchant district we get less of their business.” “Do you know anything about this other inn?” “Not much except it doesn’t really offer anything more than ours, it just happens to be in a better location, what with all the shops around it and all.” You weren’t aware of this other inn, then again you’ve just been focusing on your immediate problems. Maybe you should actively try to discredit this other inn while you’re advertising. The one thing you need to do is speak to your barmaids about this. “Huh, well I can tell you right now I’m not parading around the streets trying to seduce passing adventurers like some harlot.” Wendy says. “I’ll do it, but I’m not sucking anyone’s cock!” Rita exclaims. “We…we have to suck someone’s cock?” Eliza asks looking a little worried. “ Argh! Nobody is going to have to suck anyone’s cock!” you yell. “Look I only need one of you to go out on the street, find adventurers and try to entice them into coming to our Inn. I don’t really care how you do it, just try your best, and that will most likely involve you looking as pretty as you can.” “Oh, well I suppose I could try to do that if I have to.” Eliza says. > You pick Rita You get the impression Eliza might be a little too shy for this sort of thing, so Rita seems like a better choice. Rita’s also the most extroverted and will most likely prefer doing this than having to work at the inn. “Alright Rita, starting tomorrow, you’re working the streets…er so to speak. Don’t think you still won’t be working around here though; I’ll still need you during the late shift. Besides I don’t want you wandering around at night, people might get the wrong idea or something.” “Fine, as long as it gets me out of this place for a little while I’m game.” “Okay, also I’d like you to try to throw around some insults about the Flying Griffon Inn while you’re making your sales pitch.” “Got it.” The next day, Rita comes in and while she’s always been a pretty girl, she now looks like a succubus that you’ve heard about from old tales. You try to contain your own desire to shamelessly flirt with her. “By the gods Rita, you’re going to have every guy within this area after you.” “Meh, wouldn’t be the first time. Okay, I’m off, try not to fantasize about me too much while I’m gone.” You’re not exactly sure how to take that, but you are wondering how this will play out for you. Over the course of a few days you definitely see a drastic increase in customers, and not just adventurers either. You’ve got Klyton Milita (who usually just drink at their barracks) coming in and even a few humble storeowners. You’re making a lot more money, but it’s a lot of extra work for the rest of you. Mr. Reynolds receives sizable amounts of money and he continues to be satisfied with your payments. At this rate you’ll probably be able to get out of debt by the end of the year. The only major problems are how overworked the rest of you are getting and how arrogant Rita is getting. Rita states that she should even have to work as a barmaid anymore because it interferes with her “advertising.” “Advertising? You wiggle your ass at horny men! You’re basically a harlot that doesn’t put out…or is there another reason why everyone comes here?” Wendy accuses. “Figures that you’d be jealous of my popularity. Face it; I do more around here than ANYONE to keep this place successful, and I deserve some credit for it!” Rita demands. “Hey we all know Rita, but…” “But nothing, if you expect me to keep working here, I want a raise and I don’t want to be working as some lowly barmaid anymore! I’m above serving food and drinks!” “So you basically want to be paid to stand around and look pretty? What the hell kind of job title would we even call that?” you ask. “I dunno, hostess maybe? Yeah, I’d be the hostess!” “By the gods, this is ridiculous! You can’t seriously be considering this!” Wendy exclaims. The only people who are silent in all this are Eliza who is being her usual quiet self, and your mother who just shrugs and says it’s your call since this was mainly your idea. You get the impression she doesn’t care for Rita’s attitude though. > You make Rita a hostess Sometimes you have to take risks to get ahead. “Alright fine, if that’s the way this is going, then we don’t have much of a choice. Rita, you’re the Miner’s Mug hostess.” You say. “WHAT!? “As it should be.” “Fuck this, I’m not working myself to death while she gets a raise to just stand around.” Wendy says. “That’s good because you’ll be getting a raise as well since I’m promoting you to head barmaid and we’re hiring a new one. Now that should make you feel a little bit better now shouldn’t it?” Before Wendy can reply, your mother speaks up. “What are you doing? We can’t afford all this or have you forgotten that we still have to pay off Mr. Reynolds?” “And we are, and we will. But this place has finally gotten the kind of business it should be getting and we need to broaden our base. We’re getting more than just miners and low ranking adventurers; we’re starting to get a slightly higher class of patrons. I think these changes will be good in the long run, so are we all in agreement?” Everyone seems to nod and be fine with their new job titles/promotions and the idea of making the inn into a better moneymaker. Just then Eliza speaks up after being quiet the whole time. “I have a suggestion. If we’re branching out past our usual miner customers shouldn’t we change the name of the inn to something slightly more inclusive?” Eliza has a point, after thinking about it, you come up with “The Traveler’s Inn” which seems to be as good as name as any to signify people other than miners come here. The changes are made… Months pass and everything goes as well as expected. Everyone is a little busier, but the inn is finally making a lot more profit and you were right, eventually you get out of Mr. Reynolds’ debt. You half expect him to try to pull a fast one to get more money out of you, but with the increase in Klyton Militia hanging around, he doesn’t and just says if you ever need another loan in the future you know where to find him. You’re definitely not going to let that happen. You also re-establish your alcohol supplier with Klyton again. You’re making enough money to afford it and you won’t have to deal with Calwin anymore. The inn is profitable again and you’ve effectively saved the place and your mother from potential danger (as well as yourself) but taking over your father’s inn wasn’t your dream and it wasn’t your parents’ dreams either. They pushed you to make something better of yourself and it stuck. You’re not going to give up now, you have to find out a way of raising enough money to put yourself through school again AND finding the time to study while running the inn. You try to think about how you’re going to accomplish this, and you know you've got quite the challenge ahead of you. > Back to school... A year has passed and you’re back in college, though it’s not as much fun as it was when you didn’t need to worry about where your tuition was coming from or having something like a job. Finding time to study while running the inn is difficult, but fortunately your mother picks up some of the slack when you really need time. You’ve also managed to re-establish some old contacts with people you were “friends” with before your “break”. Most of them are ahead of you and some are getting ready to graduate. While none of them bothered to stay in contact with you (so much for education breaking down class distinctions) a few of them are still willing to help you out by selling you books for cheap or giving you some of their old notes. Every little bit helps. As for the inn, it’s doing well, but you constantly worry about its future profitability. You’ve got a much broader customer base and even classed the place up a bit, but this isn’t without its drawbacks. Namely the Flying Griffon Inn has stepped up its efforts to get back its customers. This has so far involved an aggressive advertising campaign, hiring a bunch of sexy barmaids and special deals. So far it has helped them a lot and if they continue to succeed, your inn is going to start losing money and you can’t have that. It doesn’t help that your place isn’t in as good of a location as the Flying Griffon So first things first, you need to figure out how to deal with Flying Griffon and you call a staff meeting in the hopes of getting some other ideas on how to deal with them. “Why don’t you just hire someone to cut up their slutty barmaids? I mean that’s what’s mainly getting the main draw right? Seems like you could easily solve the problem by getting rid of them.” Rita says. Naturally this doesn’t go over well with the others. “That’s horrible!” Eliza says “ What? I didn’t say kill them, they’d still be able to work and shit. They just wouldn’t be pretty anymore.” “Have you gotten so jealous that you’ve gone completely barmy? By the gods, we’re not doing that, we’re not the Crimson Talons!” Wendy shouts. As much as disfiguring Flying Griffon’s staff would solve some problems, you hesitate to resort to such measures. “Maybe we could offer deals to traveling merchants like Flying Griffon does, like they get a discount on their rooms?” your mom suggests. “Not sure if that’s going to help us a lot, unless we make an addition to the inn. It’s not like our rooms aren’t being used. If we start giving discount to merchants we might attract them, but we might not have enough rooms to accommodate them or we’ll be accommodating them, but won’t be accommodating adventurer types who are paying full price.” Wendy says. “Well if you’re so knowledgeable Wendy, what’s YOUR solution?” Rita sneers. “We have a lot of Klyton Milita that come here to drink now don’t we? Why don’t we get some of them to help us? Seems like some very public investigation during heavy business hours would help out a lot and ruin the reputation of Flying Griffon. Hell, maybe they’ll even find something and we’ll really get lucky.” You take all these suggestions into consideration, but you can’t help notice that Eliza looks like she wants to say something. “Eliza, do you have a suggestion?” “Huh? Oh. Um…yes…but I... Just forget it. It’s silly anyway. The rest of your ideas sound better.” “Eliza, just spit it out!” Wendy demands. “It’s okay, just tell us.” You say with a lot less intimidation. “Well okay, but it’s silly. I was going to suggest getting someone on the inside to spy on the place and finding something to use against them. It seems odd that they are managing to attract that much attention with just pretty barmaids when we have our own. I think maybe something else is going on there, like an illegal brothel or something.” Most of you are surprised that Eliza came up with something so complex. “Well, that’s a very elaborate plan Eliza, but I think we could accomplish the same thing just by sending in our militia buddies to harass them. Like I said, if they do find anything actually incriminating, then its even better.” “Yes, of course. That sounds like a more efficient idea.” Eliza says. > You go with Rita's idea While all the rest of the ideas seem okay, you really think you need to act quickly on this. It’ll be ugly and ruthless, but unfortunately necessary. Since everyone is against Rita’s idea though, you decide not to say anything about it and say you’re going to have to think everything over later. When everyone’s away you decide to talk to Rita privately. “Rita, can I speak to you for a moment?” “I knew this was coming eventually…look you’re alright looking and if you do manage to become a doctor then maybe I’ll be interested, but until then…” “What? No! I wanted to speak to you about your plan.” “Oh.” Rita says looking a little disappointed that you weren’t suggesting what she thought you were. “Anyway, who did you have in mind to do this deed?” “Well, I don’t know really. I figured you might know, I mean didn’t you have Crimson Talon connections or something?” “Connections? Those were thugs that were going to break my legs if I didn’t pay a loanshark on time. I don’t have any connections. I mean with all the guys you go out with…” “Hey! I don’t like what you’re implying! Contrary to popular belief I’m not some whore like those two half breed sluts you saw fit to hire recently. I’m a lot more selective and I’m certainly not going out with criminal types!” “Hmmm, if you say so.” “Why don’t you just go back to that Reynolds guy? I mean he’s sort of a connection right?” “You must be joking!” “Not at all, I mean surely for a fee he could lend you that ogre for a little while right?” “I dunno if it works that way…(Sigh) alright I suppose I could try since I don’t have any other contacts.” “Okay. Oh! Here take this.” Rita says handing you a small notebook. “What’s this?” “It’s the name of every whore that works for the Flying Griffon and their physical description. I have where some of them live too, but not all of them.” You stare at Rita in disbelief “What? Eliza’s not the only one who can think up spying you know.” Rita remarks. “Yeah, but Eliza’s not the one who was stalking the competition out of jealousy either. Nevermind, I guess this will help since I never kept up on who worked there anyway.” The next day after class, you don’t go to the inn, but instead head to where you know Mr. Reynold’s “office” is. It’s not in a good part of the city, but you make it without any problems. Mr. Reynold’s is currently alone and smiles when he sees you. “Somehow I just knew we’d meet each other again soon, so how much you need this time?” “I don’t need money, I need something else and you’re about the only person I can think of who might be able to help.” “Oh? Well this is interesting. What is it?” “I need that ogre that works for you or whoever that other big guy was.” “Olaf and Silence? They’re not freelancing for me anymore sadly. The Crimson Talons have them doing something more directly important for them. I believe they fight at one of those underground gladiator matches now.” “Well, can I get in contact with them some how?” “Ha ha ha! Well I suppose I could tell you, but I don’t think they’d necessarily let you in, I guess you’d have to speak to whoever’s in charge and well it would be a big hassle really…what did you need them for anyway?” “Is it any of your business?” “Well if Olaf and Silence had still been freelancing for me it would’ve been, but I guess not now. I’m assuming you need some sort of muscle though, and if that is the case I DO have two new employees that might work out for you. David! Tom! Get in here, we might have some business!” “Yeah, boss what’s up…hey! I know you!” David says looking at you. “Hey! How’s it been? Didn’t you go to college?” Tom adds. Now here’s a blast from the past, your two old school buddies all grown up and obviously full blown criminals now. Funny to think back how your life turned out so different…then again maybe not considering you’re here to have several women horribly disfigured. “Well, it seems you gentlemen all know each other, maybe now you’re ready to tell us what you need doing?” You take a deep breath and state what you need done. “Wow, didn’t expect that one.” Mr. Reynolds says. David and Tom are also surprised. “Shit, what the hell did they do to you, cheat on you?” David asks. “Fuck man, that’s some serial killer shit!” Tom adds. “Look, I don’t need them killed! I just need them disfigured so they aren’t pretty anymore.” “Yeah, I got that. Okay, so how much you willing to pay?” Mr. Reynolds asks. You and Mr. Reynolds negotiate a price, which is agreeable, but Tom begins to speak up. “Uh…I dunno Mr. Reynolds. I don’t think I can do this…” “Tom, stop being a pussy! We’re just gonna cut up some bitches and get out, shit ain’t that hard.” David says “But I dunno. I just feel weird about doing this. It’s not like beating up people who don’t pay on time.” “You’ll do what I tell you to do! David, you better keep your little sidekick in line before I replace the pair of you!” Mr. Reynolds snaps. You think back to your old childhood involving your former friends. Tom always was the weakest of you three, but he always went along despite protests. You have no doubt David’s capable of committing the act, you just wonder if he’s gotten any brighter since then. The last thing you need is for them to fuck this up for you and get all of you in trouble. Getting the “real professionals” might be tough though. Might even cost more money. > You hire David and Tom Getting Olaf and Silence seems unlikely now, you’re sure you could probably travel the seedy underbelly of Klyton and hire some other Crimson Talon thugs, but you’d really rather not. Besides, you actually “know” David and Tom to a degree so you feel slightly more comfortable with them. “Splendid! Now David and Tom, you go back with your old friend here and I’m sure he can fill you in on more details. I expect to see the pair of you soon with the money.” Mr. Reynolds before he goes back writing in a ledger. You, David and Tom all walk back your inn. This whole thing feels a little surreal, like you’re all back in primary school again. “So. What brings you back to the old neighborhood? Thought you were gonna be a rich doctor or some shit.” David asks. “Ehh, long story. I’ve actually been back for awhile running my dad’s inn. Still taking classes, just not living on campus anymore.” “Yeah heard about your dad dying. Wish mine was dead; mean old fucker’s still alive. Never talk or see him anymore though after he kicked me out of the house.” “…huh….uh so Tom what’s been going on with you?” you ask changing the subject. “Me? Um, nothing. Me and David just work for Mr. Reynolds beating people up who don’t pay. So you owed him money before we worked for him?” “Well, not me, but my family borrowed some. It’s all in the past though.” “That’s good. It would’ve been weird seeing each other again under those circumstances. I don’t think I could intimidate your mom. She was always so nice, not like my mom.” “That’s because your mom’s still a big ass scary dyke that’s why!” David taunts. “Shut up David! My mom’s not a dyke! She just has a roommate!” Some things never change… Speaking of moms, it occurs to you that actually taking them to the inn to talk probably isn’t a good idea as your mom will probably start asking you all sorts of question on why you’re hanging out with your old hoodlum friends. Instead you go into an alley. “Okay, here’s a list of the girls you need to confront, their names, descriptions, and even addresses for most of them.” “Shit, what the hell did you stalk ‘em or something? Sounds like you could’ve done this yourself.” David remarks. “I didn’t stalk them, I just have an overly enthusiastic employee motivated greatly by jealousy. Now I’m depending on you guys to do this right.” “Relax, we’re professionals now. None of this getting caught in the candy store for us anymore.” “Okay, so how long do you think this will take you?” “Ehhh, we can probably get this done in a few days if we hurry. Quite a few targets, but it really shouldn’t take long. Probably get most of them after they leave work or going to work. I assume we’ll meet at your inn when the job’s done?” “Uh no, we’ll meet over in the park around five, where we used to play Smash Sphere in a couple days. If you haven’t finished the job by then, we’ll meet again there in two more days and that should hopefully give you enough time.” “I told you we’ll be done before then, but fine we’ll do it this way since you think your inn is obviously too good for us…” “That’s not…” “Bullshit! The very fact that we’re talking in this alley is an indication that you don’t want us in your place.” “Is that true? I thought we were friends?” Tom asks being slow on the uptake as usual. “David, I have certain patrons and I can’t have known criminals walking around the place, not to mention my mom…” “Fuck you, mama’s boy. All that fancy learnin’ and you still live with your mom. We may be lowly thugs but at least we’re not still livin’ at home. Rather be a goon for hire than a hypocrite like you. Too good to have us at your fancy ass inn, but not too good to hire us to wipe out the competition eh?” You’re silent for a moment after David’s accurate statement, but you’re not going to let him get away with talking like that to you even if it does mean a possible beating. “…Alright, fine David. You got me, I’m a fucking hypocrite, is that what you want to hear? At least I tried to do something with my fucking life rather than just rot in juvie for most of my youth and live a hand to mouth existence as some dumb ass goon. So are you gonna do the fucking job or what?” David starts laughing. “Sheesh, I was just fucking with you. You always did take shit so seriously. Anyway yeah we’ll get right on this. See ya in a couple days mama’s boy. Heh.” You part company with David and Tom hoping that you’ve made the right decision. A few days pass and you wait at the park at the time you mentioned. Time passes and neither has shown up yet and you start feel anxious. “I have to say, I’m surprised at the lengths you went through to compete with me. I never expected you to pull something like this. You might’ve succeeded in this clumsy attempt, but a couple of my employees were a little more skilled than your thugs.” It’s Frank, the owner of The Flying Griffon. You’re so shocked that you can’t even come up with an excuse. It doesn’t matter though since Frank isn’t done talking. “Don’t bother with excuses, I know everything. Your little friends proved quite talkative when questioned. On the brighter side for you, you won’t have to pay them now.” “They’re dead?” “Oh I wouldn’t know about such things, but I do know they won’t be troubling anyone else any longer. Now the question is what to do about you?” “…you don’t need to do anything about me…in fact I suggest you don’t. I’m friends with several Klyton militia and an investigation would certainly follow if I were to suddenly disappear.” Frank smirks and your attempt to intimidate him. “Truly? Might I also tell these same militia friends of your of how you hired two thugs to cut up my employees? But let’s get to the point, you’ve done a lot of damage to my business and I think some reparations are in order. I want your inn. Or rather your mother’s inn.” “What?” “You heard me. That’s the only thing that’s going to get you out of this mess you’ve dug yourself into. I’ll of course give you a few days to make preparations. Don’t bother asking if you can still live or work there, I‘m afraid I just couldn’t trust someone who has shady dealings.” “And if I say no?” “I’d advise against it. That’s all I’m going to say. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back, we’re a little understaffed lately.” You quickly make your way back to the inn lamenting the mess you’ve gotten yourself into. You glare at Rita on your way in while everyone else asks you where you’ve been. You’re distracted all night and your mother notices it the most. At the end of the workday she asks if there’s anything wrong. > You tell her everything You can’t hide something like this, so you just confess everything. Your mother says nothing for a moment and then you feel a slap to your face. “I can’t believe you would do such a thing. That is not how you were raised! Those poor women! They were just trying to earn a living and you had them disfigured just to hamper the competition? We were doing just fine!” “No, we weren’t! Frank’s inn was starting to beat the hell out of us in everyway! With the way things were going we wouldn’t have had enough business to support this place let alone me trying to finish up my schooling!” “Is your schooling more important than basic humanity or even the confines of the law? (Sigh) Nevermind, I suppose some of this is our fault. We pushed so hard for your education that now you’re willing to do anything to achieve it…well there’s only one thing left to do I suppose. Sell this place to Frank.” “What?! He’s not going to do anything, he’s just bluffing!” ‘And what if he isn’t? What if he decides to do the same thing you did, or worse? No, I’m not living my life like that; I had enough of it with Mr. Reynolds who YOU just recently brought into our lives again by hiring your old hoodlum friends of yours. So first thing I want you to do in the morning is to pay whatever you agreed to Mr. Reynolds, I’m sure we can cover it or else you wouldn’t have made the deal. Meanwhile I’ll talk to Frank to hammer out the agreement.” “So that’s it then? We’re just giving up?” “Nobody’s giving up son. I stayed to help you as much as I could, but I can’t stand by and help you anymore if you’re going to engage in criminal activity. I’m selling this place and saving you from yourself. Now if you decide to continue being involved in criminal activity, well…I suppose I can’t stop you, but in any case I’m moving back to Teckleville.” You protest, yell and accuse at your mother for a good half hour, but her mind is made up and eventually she just closes her door and goes to sleep. The next few days go according to your mother’s wishes. Mr. Reynolds is paid, though he does wonder about where David and Tom are, you tell him that maybe he should take that up with Frank. The Traveller’s Inn is sold to Frank and your mother doesn’t give you any of the money from the sale. She just wishes you well and knows that with your intelligence you’ll be able to find work before she moves back to Teckleville. It doesn’t need to be said that you’re very angry about all this, at your mother, at Rita, at David and Tom, at Frank, at everyone really, but you’re mainly mad at yourself. You should’ve shown better judgment and now you’ve lost everything. You do manage to find work, but it’s only as a lowly clerk filing away insignificant papers and other dull material. You never really get ahead and your former goals are discarded anyway since you wonder why you wasted all that time studying only for it to all fall apart so spectacularly. As the years pass you only grow more bitter and angry until one day you snap and arrive at work, killing your boss with your dad’s old Troll Gun. The Klyton Militia soon arrive and as you lay dying from several sword blows and a few gunshot wounds all you do is laugh. “Thanks dad…you heh heh heh finally came through heh heh heh (sputter) for me…”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Getting Olaf and Silence seems unlikely now, you’re sure you could probably travel the seedy underbelly of Klyton and hire some other Crimson Talon thugs, but you’d really rather not. Besides, you actually “know” David and Tom to a degree so you feel slightly more comfortable with them. “Splendid! Now David and Tom, you go back with your old friend here and I’m sure he can fill you in on more details. I expect to see the pair of you soon with the money.” Mr. Reynolds before he goes back writing in a ledger. You, David and Tom all walk back your inn. This whole thing feels a little surreal, like you’re all back in primary school again. “So. What brings you back to the old neighborhood? Thought you were gonna be a rich doctor or some shit.” David asks. “Ehh, long story. I’ve actually been back for awhile running my dad’s inn. Still taking classes, just not living on campus anymore.” “Yeah heard about your dad dying. Wish mine was dead; mean old fucker’s still alive. Never talk or see him anymore though after he kicked me out of the house.” “…huh….uh so Tom what’s been going on with you?” you ask changing the subject. “Me? Um, nothing. Me and David just work for Mr. Reynolds beating people up who don’t pay. So you owed him money before we worked for him?” “Well, not me, but my family borrowed some. It’s all in the past though.” “That’s good. It would’ve been weird seeing each other again under those circumstances. I don’t think I could intimidate your mom. She was always so nice, not like my mom.” “That’s because your mom’s still a big ass scary dyke that’s why!” David taunts. “Shut up David! My mom’s not a dyke! She just has a roommate!” Some things never change… Speaking of moms, it occurs to you that actually taking them to the inn to talk probably isn’t a good idea as your mom will probably start asking you all sorts of question on why you’re hanging out with your old hoodlum friends. Instead you go into an alley. “Okay, here’s a list of the girls you need to confront, their names, descriptions, and even addresses for most of them.” “Shit, what the hell did you stalk ‘em or something? Sounds like you could’ve done this yourself.” David remarks. “I didn’t stalk them, I just have an overly enthusiastic employee motivated greatly by jealousy. Now I’m depending on you guys to do this right.” “Relax, we’re professionals now. None of this getting caught in the candy store for us anymore.” “Okay, so how long do you think this will take you?” “Ehhh, we can probably get this done in a few days if we hurry. Quite a few targets, but it really shouldn’t take long. Probably get most of them after they leave work or going to work. I assume we’ll meet at your inn when the job’s done?” “Uh no, we’ll meet over in the park around five, where we used to play Smash Sphere in a couple days. If you haven’t finished the job by then, we’ll meet again there in two more days and that should hopefully give you enough time.” “I told you we’ll be done before then, but fine we’ll do it this way since you think your inn is obviously too good for us…” “That’s not…” “Bullshit! The very fact that we’re talking in this alley is an indication that you don’t want us in your place.” “Is that true? I thought we were friends?” Tom asks being slow on the uptake as usual. “David, I have certain patrons and I can’t have known criminals walking around the place, not to mention my mom…” “Fuck you, mama’s boy. All that fancy learnin’ and you still live with your mom. We may be lowly thugs but at least we’re not still livin’ at home. Rather be a goon for hire than a hypocrite like you. Too good to have us at your fancy ass inn, but not too good to hire us to wipe out the competition eh?” You’re silent for a moment after David’s accurate statement, but you’re not going to let him get away with talking like that to you even if it does mean a possible beating. “…Alright, fine David. You got me, I’m a fucking hypocrite, is that what you want to hear? At least I tried to do something with my fucking life rather than just rot in juvie for most of my youth and live a hand to mouth existence as some dumb ass goon. So are you gonna do the fucking job or what?” David starts laughing. “Sheesh, I was just fucking with you. You always did take shit so seriously. Anyway yeah we’ll get right on this. See ya in a couple days mama’s boy. Heh.” You part company with David and Tom hoping that you’ve made the right decision. A few days pass and you wait at the park at the time you mentioned. Time passes and neither has shown up yet and you start feel anxious. “I have to say, I’m surprised at the lengths you went through to compete with me. I never expected you to pull something like this. You might’ve succeeded in this clumsy attempt, but a couple of my employees were a little more skilled than your thugs.” It’s Frank, the owner of The Flying Griffon. You’re so shocked that you can’t even come up with an excuse. It doesn’t matter though since Frank isn’t done talking. “Don’t bother with excuses, I know everything. Your little friends proved quite talkative when questioned. On the brighter side for you, you won’t have to pay them now.” “They’re dead?” “Oh I wouldn’t know about such things, but I do know they won’t be troubling anyone else any longer. Now the question is what to do about you?” “…you don’t need to do anything about me…in fact I suggest you don’t. I’m friends with several Klyton militia and an investigation would certainly follow if I were to suddenly disappear.” Frank smirks and your attempt to intimidate him. “Truly? Might I also tell these same militia friends of your of how you hired two thugs to cut up my employees? But let’s get to the point, you’ve done a lot of damage to my business and I think some reparations are in order. I want your inn. Or rather your mother’s inn.” “What?” “You heard me. That’s the only thing that’s going to get you out of this mess you’ve dug yourself into. I’ll of course give you a few days to make preparations. Don’t bother asking if you can still live or work there, I‘m afraid I just couldn’t trust someone who has shady dealings.” “And if I say no?” “I’d advise against it. That’s all I’m going to say. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back, we’re a little understaffed lately.” You quickly make your way back to the inn lamenting the mess you’ve gotten yourself into. You glare at Rita on your way in while everyone else asks you where you’ve been. You’re distracted all night and your mother notices it the most. At the end of the workday she asks if there’s anything wrong. > You keep it to yourself You can’t tell your mother what you did; she’d never forgive you. Frank is probably just bluffing. Even if he did say something to the Klyton Militia there’s no evidence and they probably wouldn’t believe him anyway. Besides he pretty much suggested that Tom and David are dead. Of course that makes you worry that he might try to do the same thing to you, your mother or one of your employees. Maybe he wasn’t bluffing. For the next few weeks you become increasingly paranoid asking your employees if they noticed anyone strange following them. You can’t concentrate in class and your grades start to suffer. The stress gets so much that you end up pulling your dad’s Troll Gun on a patron you don’t recognize. Fortunately nothing bad happens, unless you count several people questioning your sanity and no longer entering your inn. Several of your staff grumble about leaving, but it doesn’t quite get to that point. You’ve been so stressed out that you haven’t been able to sleep properly for weeks, you constantly wake up and double check all the locks on the doors and sleep with the Troll Gun next to you. Eventually a wave of exhaustion causes you to collapse and fall into a deep sleep for once. You begin to dream that you’re sitting near a tree studying. A pretty girl in a red dress sits next to you saying that you should come with her instead of putting your nose in a book. “I have to study! I have to become a doctor! That’s my goal!” you answer. “Is it? Or is it some high aspiration that your parents put into your head when you were young? Do you really know what you want? How hard have you pushed yourself only to be thwarted at every turn? Don’t you think you should take time to rest? Come with me.” “I would like to rest, but I can’t. I have to continue.” “No, you don’t. You can allow yourself time to take break. You’ve done as much as you can…perhaps more than you should have. But none of that matters now; it’s time to rest. Come with me.” The words of this word are so soothing and she speaks in a way that you find alluring and truthful. Still, you can’t but think you know her from somewhere. “…who are you? Do I know you? It seems like I’ve seen you before…” you ask. “Does it matter? You must come with me now. You may not get another chance.” The woman says in a firm, but gentle tone. You get the impression that she sincerely is looking out for your best interest, so you put down your book and hold her hand as you go walking into the fields with her… “I can’t believe he just died in his sleep! He was too young! (sob)” your mother cries. “I’m sorry for your loss, but he did seem like he was under a lot of stress lately. Dunno what would’ve caused that. Maybe his classes were getting harder and he just couldn’t take it any longer?” Wendy says not really knowing what to say. “Well, at least he looked peaceful.” Eliza says, tearing up a little. Rita stays quiet the whole time, looking a little nervous about whether or not her “idea” had anything to do with this. After burying you next to your father, you mother has no more reason to stay in Klyton and sells the inn to Frank before moving back to Teckleville to live with her sister Enora. Meanwhile... “So sister, did Frank yell at you for disposing of his competition in such a gentle manner?” “Hah, that little mage knows not to overstep his bounds. Oh I long for the day when we can figure out how to break his little contract over us. Honestly using us as mere barmaids, it’s degrading.” “I agree sister, but I will never under stand why you choose to take the delicious life force in the manner you do.” “Oh sister, you are truly a product of our race. Seduction and then a horrifying end to the victim. It needn’t always be so vulgar. Besides, I sensed so much stress, worry and guilt in him, I figured he could use a peaceful end.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While all the rest of the ideas seem okay, you really think you need to act quickly on this. It’ll be ugly and ruthless, but unfortunately necessary. Since everyone is against Rita’s idea though, you decide not to say anything about it and say you’re going to have to think everything over later. When everyone’s away you decide to talk to Rita privately. “Rita, can I speak to you for a moment?” “I knew this was coming eventually…look you’re alright looking and if you do manage to become a doctor then maybe I’ll be interested, but until then…” “What? No! I wanted to speak to you about your plan.” “Oh.” Rita says looking a little disappointed that you weren’t suggesting what she thought you were. “Anyway, who did you have in mind to do this deed?” “Well, I don’t know really. I figured you might know, I mean didn’t you have Crimson Talon connections or something?” “Connections? Those were thugs that were going to break my legs if I didn’t pay a loanshark on time. I don’t have any connections. I mean with all the guys you go out with…” “Hey! I don’t like what you’re implying! Contrary to popular belief I’m not some whore like those two half breed sluts you saw fit to hire recently. I’m a lot more selective and I’m certainly not going out with criminal types!” “Hmmm, if you say so.” “Why don’t you just go back to that Reynolds guy? I mean he’s sort of a connection right?” “You must be joking!” “Not at all, I mean surely for a fee he could lend you that ogre for a little while right?” “I dunno if it works that way…(Sigh) alright I suppose I could try since I don’t have any other contacts.” “Okay. Oh! Here take this.” Rita says handing you a small notebook. “What’s this?” “It’s the name of every whore that works for the Flying Griffon and their physical description. I have where some of them live too, but not all of them.” You stare at Rita in disbelief “What? Eliza’s not the only one who can think up spying you know.” Rita remarks. “Yeah, but Eliza’s not the one who was stalking the competition out of jealousy either. Nevermind, I guess this will help since I never kept up on who worked there anyway.” The next day after class, you don’t go to the inn, but instead head to where you know Mr. Reynold’s “office” is. It’s not in a good part of the city, but you make it without any problems. Mr. Reynold’s is currently alone and smiles when he sees you. “Somehow I just knew we’d meet each other again soon, so how much you need this time?” “I don’t need money, I need something else and you’re about the only person I can think of who might be able to help.” “Oh? Well this is interesting. What is it?” “I need that ogre that works for you or whoever that other big guy was.” “Olaf and Silence? They’re not freelancing for me anymore sadly. The Crimson Talons have them doing something more directly important for them. I believe they fight at one of those underground gladiator matches now.” “Well, can I get in contact with them some how?” “Ha ha ha! Well I suppose I could tell you, but I don’t think they’d necessarily let you in, I guess you’d have to speak to whoever’s in charge and well it would be a big hassle really…what did you need them for anyway?” “Is it any of your business?” “Well if Olaf and Silence had still been freelancing for me it would’ve been, but I guess not now. I’m assuming you need some sort of muscle though, and if that is the case I DO have two new employees that might work out for you. David! Tom! Get in here, we might have some business!” “Yeah, boss what’s up…hey! I know you!” David says looking at you. “Hey! How’s it been? Didn’t you go to college?” Tom adds. Now here’s a blast from the past, your two old school buddies all grown up and obviously full blown criminals now. Funny to think back how your life turned out so different…then again maybe not considering you’re here to have several women horribly disfigured. “Well, it seems you gentlemen all know each other, maybe now you’re ready to tell us what you need doing?” You take a deep breath and state what you need done. “Wow, didn’t expect that one.” Mr. Reynolds says. David and Tom are also surprised. “Shit, what the hell did they do to you, cheat on you?” David asks. “Fuck man, that’s some serial killer shit!” Tom adds. “Look, I don’t need them killed! I just need them disfigured so they aren’t pretty anymore.” “Yeah, I got that. Okay, so how much you willing to pay?” Mr. Reynolds asks. You and Mr. Reynolds negotiate a price, which is agreeable, but Tom begins to speak up. “Uh…I dunno Mr. Reynolds. I don’t think I can do this…” “Tom, stop being a pussy! We’re just gonna cut up some bitches and get out, shit ain’t that hard.” David says “But I dunno. I just feel weird about doing this. It’s not like beating up people who don’t pay on time.” “You’ll do what I tell you to do! David, you better keep your little sidekick in line before I replace the pair of you!” Mr. Reynolds snaps. You think back to your old childhood involving your former friends. Tom always was the weakest of you three, but he always went along despite protests. You have no doubt David’s capable of committing the act, you just wonder if he’s gotten any brighter since then. The last thing you need is for them to fuck this up for you and get all of you in trouble. Getting the “real professionals” might be tough though. Might even cost more money. > You get Olaf and Silence You need professionals for this and David and Tom don’t qualify. You ask for directions to the underground gladiator matches, but Mr. Reynolds still insists on a bit of money for that information, so you have no choice but to pay him. After running back and forth to his office and the inn, (And incurring some questions by your mom and staff where you’re going) you pay him and he tells you that it’s located in a tavern called the Troll’s Breath on the edge of the warehouse district. He tells you to that can let the bartender know that he sent you. You feel like you’re going to get mugged around every corner on your way to the place, but fortunately that doesn’t happen. You are approached by several prostitutes and offered Cloud Rock a lot though. When you walk in the place, it’s filled with a rowdy bunch as you’d expect. You try not to make eye contact and walk straight to the bar. “Yeah?” the bald bartender asks gruffly. “Mr. Reynolds sent me because of my interest in games.” “Did he now? Alright, but the next time you see that dick, tell him his time as an independent loanshark are coming to an end soon. He needs to join up with the Crimson Talon or get the fuck outta Kyton. Door’s around the back.” “Thanks, oh uh one more thing.” “What!?” “Is there anyway to speak to Olaf or Silence after their fights?” “What the hell do you wanna be talkin’ to those two idiots for? The pair of them together barely have enough intelligence to put on their own boots.” “It’s a business proposition.” At this point the bartender’s eye narrow. “Wait a fucking minute. You’re sent here by Reynolds and you wanna talk to Olaf and Silence about a business proposition? This sounds like Reynolds trying weasely shit as usual. Fuck you, they don’t freelance anymore. They’re pit fighters for the Crimson Talons until I say otherwise! Now get the fuck outta here!” “Okay, I’ll talk with you then, how much do you want for their services temporarily?” “I said they ain’t for fuckin’ hire you dumbfuck! If you wanna meet them so bad though, I can oblige and throw your ass in the ring with them!” At this point the bartender snaps his fingers and two thugs grab your arms ready to carry you off. You make one desperate plea. “Alright! Alright! I’ll hire whomever else you got then! These two guys holding me will do, I just need some people fucked up and I got money to give to whoever will do it!” The bartender nods and you’re released. “Alright in my office and start talkin’ fast. Reg, you’re at the bar.” You follow the bartender upstairs to a room that is much nicer than the rest of place. He sits down at a fancy desk and pours himself a drink, but doesn’t offer you anything. You look around the office at the various items he has on the wall until you’re interrupted. “Well? Are we just wasting my time here while you admire my office, because the fight pit is another place you can admire from the inside.” You quickly explain everything and your situation and give him the information that Rita wrote down for you. The bartender nods a bit while playing with his ring. When you’re done, he speaks. “Is that it? You wanted to hire two bruisers like that to cut up some barmaids? You’re sort of new at this I take it. Those two would’ve probably raped and broke all their necks right in the middle of the fucking Flying Griffon. Subtlety is not their strong point.” “Okay so do you have someone else in mind?” “Sure, got a mean ass Sotakan assassin that could easily do the job.” “A Sotakan? One of those lizard people? But they avoid cities.” You say. “That they do, but let’s just say I acquired this one from an egg. The great thing about him, is he’s completely loyal and doesn’t require much. Just does what he’s told.” “How’s he sneak around though? I mean seems like he’d stick out.” “Hah, those lizard bastards have natural camouflage abilities. As they grow up they adapt to whatever sort of environment they grow up in. Now a regular swamp dwelling Sotakan would stick out, but not my boy. He’s lived here in the city his whole life, took him out in the night to get acquainted with the surroundings while he grew up and now he’s practically invisible when he wants to be.” “Okay well that’s great, but I don’t need them killed.” “Heh, maybe not all of them, but a couple may come back to kill you. I think I may have a little more information on the Flying Griffon than your barmaid found out. Frank’s an unregistered wizard. Well wizard’s giving him a little too much credit perhaps, but he’s managed to snag himself a couple of succubae as barmaids.” “What?! He can’t summon demons into the city! That’s illegal!” “Oh and I suppose what we’re doing is?” “Alright, but it’s not only illegal, but it’s a potential danger to the city.” “No, I agree. Demons tend to fuck up business and their chaotic ways are too much of a risk to deal with, but then again I don’t have to tell you that.” “So…how do you know all this?” “Because it’s my fucking job to know shit that might interfere with business that’s why. I kept wondering why some of my merchant contacts weren’t stopping by here anymore. Frank might have some control over his ladies, but I know he can’t completely stop their appetites. Rather short sighted of him really, it’s not like they’re going to be able to stop themselves from completely draining victims forever. They’re going to eventually get out of hand and he’s going to start having to explain to the Klyton militia why people are always last seen going into his place before mysteriously disappearing. You must’ve really pissed him off for him to resort to this.” “Yeah, I guess so…so where does that leave us?” The bartender (who mentions his name is Edmond and is definitely more than just bartender) says that he was keeping an eye on the Flying Griffon and if he lost anymore of his merchant contact to it, he was going to act. He didn’t before since as skilled as his lizard is, he’s not sure if he can take two succubae by himself, in fact it would be easier to just try and kill Frank. But of course then there would be two unleashed succubae running around in Klyton and nobody really wants that. Still, if you’re willing to pay then Edmond will readily accept your money, and he’ll have the mortal barmaids disfigured and the demonic ones killed. He assures you that unlike Mr. Reynolds this will be a straight up agreement and that the Crimson Talons will not seek to extort your inn in some way. Mainly due to all the Klyton militia and adventurers going there it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. He doesn’t need to risk some do gooder or gung-ho orderly type sniffing around. Of course you’ve been overwhelmed by all this information. Part of you wonders if all this is worth it. You could wait it out, Edmond did claim that Frank probably won’t be able to control them forever; the problem with this is in the meantime it’ll still be cutting into your business. With this new information you could also report Frank to your militia buddies, though this might be difficult without evidence. Still, you’re on good terms with most of the ones that frequent your place and they’ll probably investigate. > You hire the assassin You don’t have any proof to give to the militia other than Edmond’s information and you can’t afford to wait around and hope things get better. You need to act now, so you tell Edmond that you’ll pay for the assassin. “Okay, but this is going to be expensive AND once we do this I don’t want to hear any shit about you having second thoughts because you feel guilty. Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? Edmond asks. “…I’d be lying if I said yes, but this is something that has to be done. You won’t get any complaints from me. I just hope your lizard can do the job.” “Well I hope so too, because if not, we’re both going to be in for a fight if we have angry succubae after us. I want five hundred gold by tomorrow.” “Five…that’s a lot.” “That’s fuckin’ cheap to hire the best! You’re only getting a discount due to the fact that this is something I was thinking about doing anyway! Now if you don’t like the price…” “No, I can get it. When’s the job going to be done?” “Tonight if possible, but I suspect it might take my boy into the wee hours of the morning since he’s dealing with other worldly beings and all. If he hasn’t done it by the time you come by with the money tomorrow, then he’s failed and you can keep half of your money because I’m a nice guy. How’s that sound?” “Erm…good I guess, but I’d rather he succeed.” “I’m sure he will. So is our business done or did you still want to see the fight pits? I’m sure Olaf’s eating his competitior right about now.” “Eh, that’s okay I should be getting back.” “Suit yourself.” You’re able to get a coach back to inn, naturally it’s a lot later now and everyone is asking you where you’ve been. You explain that you forgot to do something at campus for a class, which seems to satisfy as an excuse. For the remainder of the night, you’re preoccupied with your decision. Wondering if it’s going to fail or not. You barely get any sleep and the next day at your classes you can barely concentrate. You basically wander the day in a haze until it’s time for you to go pay Edmond. When you enter the Troll’s Breath, Edmond points to his office and you follow. “Told you my boy could do it. Now aren’t you glad you made this decision? You got my money?” Edmond asks in a friendly tone. “Yeah…you mean that’s it? It succeeded?” “Of course it did! I figured you already knew it did given that you’re closer to the Flying Griffon and are friends with all those Klyton militia folks…I mean it’s pretty big news! Flying Griffon Massacre they’re calling it! ” You’ve been so caught up in your own worry you haven’t been paying much attention to outside discussion or events. You feel a sense of relief, but then you question the word… “Massacre?” “Yeah the demons are dead and Frank is going to jail. Seems that the militia think he was making human sacrifices to summon up the demons and it all got out of hand.” “Wait, why would they think all that? “Eh, well apparently my boy had some problems understanding the differences in the terms disfigure and dismember, so he killed those human barmaids in a rather gruesome fashion, but on the bright side it completely puts all the blame on Frank. They figured he or the succubae killed the barmaids and then the succubae tried to rebel against their master he was forced to kill them. Being an unlicensed mage certainly doesn’t help him. In any case the heat doesn’t even trace back to us as long you don’t start acting suspicious around your militia buddies, which I trust you won’t.” “Yeah…” You’re a little in shock as the realization that you’ve just participated in murder. Granted you weren’t doing a good thing anyway, but disfiguring is still a lot different than murder. You don’t say anything since you promised that you wouldn’t whine about having a guilty conscious afterwards. Edmond takes your money and makes you stay until it is all counted. When it is, he says you can leave. “Oh one more thing. I hear you’re going into medicine. Very useful profession, I could use a competent doctor every once in awhile; gods know that drunk that I currently have on my payroll is barely useful. I hope I can call upon you in the future if I need to.” And there it is, the “catch” for doing business with a criminal. You could kick yourself in the head for actually believing that this was going to be a straight up transaction. He may not be extorting your inn; he’s just hanging a “favor” over your head in the future. Somehow that’s almost worse. There’s little you can do about it now though, you head back to the inn where your patrons and staff are all talking about what happened at the Flying Griffon. Rita in particular speaks to you about it. “Sheesh, I didn’t know you were going to go to that extreme, but can’t say those bitches didn’t deserve it. That’s what happens when you work with demons right? Who knew Frank was a mage? Well at least we don’t have any competition anymore.” Rita’s callous talk about the Griffon barmaids makes you angry. In fact all of this was Rita’s initial suggestion and while you listened to it, that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t suffer the negative consequences for it too. You snap and grab Rita by the arm roughly and pull her into the cellar. Flameflower and Sunshine are down there drinking your wine supply. “Erm…uh…(giggle)” is all Sunshine can utter when getting busted, “If you two halfbreed bitches don’t get upstairs and start doing some actual work for a change you’re gonna get some of what Rita’s about to get! MOVE!” You don’t need to say it twice, your tone is enough to sober them up and get them moving. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You better let me go, and what the hell do you mean I’m getting something? You better not be implying what I think you’re implying. You so much as start grabbing my tits and I’ll scr…” You don’t let Rita finish; you just slam her up against the wall as hard as you can with your hand over her mouth. “Bitch I wouldn’t touch your gold digging fuckhole with a ten pole. You think those girls deserved to die? Oh no, you just felt that they needed to be disfigured; well maybe you need to be mutilated. Take your ass down a few notches.” At this point you grab a nearby candle and start holding it need Rita’s face. She pulls away and tears start. “Oh what’s the matter? Don’t like being a victim? Well how do you think those girls felt in their final moments?!” you say and throw Rita to the floor. “I fucking caused that to happen! And guess what? So did you. So if you’re not going to feel bad about it, you’re at least going to feel bad in other ways. I’m lowering your pay and if you don’t like it, tough shit, you can quit. I can get some other shallow whore to do your job, you’re not special. And if you’re getting some sort of bright ideas about reporting me to the militia or some shit, remember what happened at the Flying Griffon? Well I can make that happen to you too.” You leave on that threatening note, while Rita tries to compose herself. You’re a little surprised that Rita’s “tough girl” act was broken so easily, you’re also surprised at your own actions. The scary part to you is that it was easy and how you feel a lot better now. You exit the cellar and a few moments later Rita follows. This leads to a few whispers amongst your staff. Everyone assumes that you and Rita must’ve had some rough sex. Your mother even approaches you about it. “Far be it from me to interfere with your personal life, but if you’re going to insist on having sex with the help, I’d appreciate it if you at least took Rita up to your room and NOT anywhere on the business premises!” “…okay mom.” “(Sigh) I mean…(Sigh) Rita? You could do so much better! Sure she’s pretty, but the girl is a shallow gold digger and not even a very good one! Couldn’t you at least picked Eliza? I could’ve understood that, she’s sweet. Or how about a nice girl at your college? You know like one with a bright future ahead of her? (Sigh) I just hope for your sake you didn’t get that little tart pregnant!” You just nod and agree with your mother the whole time. It’s better if everyone thinks that you were fucking Rita rather than the truth anyway. With the Flying Griffon closed down, business picks up and you don’t have as many financial worries any longer. You’re not out of the woods yet though since now you’re in your final stages of your education, which means medical school as well as having to get a job actually working at a hospital. The only problem with that is being an intern doesn’t pay all that well and you certainly can’t do that AND work at the bar. Your mother reassures you that you shouldn’t worry about it as she’ll be able to hire a couple extra people as well as being able to help with the rest of your tuition. In any case it looks like your days as an innkeeper are over. > You future Prospects A few years have passed and your medical schooling is complete and you now work at the Klyton hospital as a real doctor. You haven’t been able to really enjoy your success though. Sure, you have your own apartment and you make a decent living to afford the things you want, but you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop and Edmond is going to call in that favor. It’s prevented you from even having a serious relationship for fear that whomever you’re with could possibly be hurt if things get…complex. Of course there’s also your mother to worry about still, but from what you know she’s planning on selling the old inn and moving to Teckleville. Hopefully soon, so it’ll at least keep her somewhat out of potential harm. Ultimately you try to keep yourself busy with work hoping it will keep your mind off things, but it doesn’t help. Eventually you do come up with something that does help a bit. Alcohol. It’s amazing that you grew up in a place that sells the stuff and never had a drink until now. You have to say, it’s not bad and it seems to calm you a bit when you’re feeling anxious. Through this crutch you finally manage to cope. Well at least until the fateful day does arrive… One night when you’re coming home from the hospital and carriage pulls up next to you. “Hey doc, I think we have a friend in common.” A voice says from the inside of the carriage. “Let me guess, Edmond. Right?” you reply. “Correct. I think you know what comes next doc.” “Yeah, I do.” You say and get into the carriage. You sit down on one side while sitting opposite of you is one man dressed in a cheap suit smoking pipe weed. The other one is dressed more casually and openly playing with a dagger. The pipe man lights up and speaks. “Before we get started, my name’s Hans and this is my brother Wallace. Now that that’s over with, Edmond is personally in need of your medical services.” “I figured it was something like that. What happened to him? “Oh what usually happens to our kind in this business. There was a disagreement, some words were exchanged and before you know it, some people get hurt while others aren’t so lucky.” “I…see. So I take it we’re heading to him right now?” “Yes. He’s a little paranoid about going to hospitals especially with the attempt on his life and all.” “Hey, doesn’t he already have a doctor?” “He did, but unfortunately his over indulgence of the spirits made his skills useless and he was…sent away a long time ago.” “Oh…” The rest of the trip is mostly in silence. Hans asks a few superficial things about you which you give quick answer to, but your mind is focused more on what you’re going to encounter when you get to Edmond. How bad is he going to be? What happens if you can’t help him? By the gods you could use a drink right now. You then think to yourself. “Maybe this is why his old doctor was a drunk.” Eventually you arrive at the Troll’s Breath Tavern. When you enter the place it’s completely empty save for a few rough looking sorts who look like they’re focused on cleaning up the place. You notice broken glass and a few blood spots here and there. “Is that the doc?” one of them asks Hans. “Yeah, is Ed still in his office?” “Yeah, and his pet lizard is guarding him like a fucking dragon. Ed’s not letting anyone in there except the doctor.” “Hm, well I guess you better get in there then. Don’t worry. You’re probably safer than the rest of us right now.” You don’t share that sentiment, but you have little choice in the matter. You head to Edmond’s office and knock on the door. “Who the fuck is it? That better be the doc!” “Yeah, it’s me. I’m coming in.” You cautiously enter and see a great deal of blood on the floor. Edmond is clutching on to his left side and his Sotakan assassin is standing close by staring directly at you. A bottle whiskey is also nearby probably being used to dull his pain and as a disinfectant. “Well, don’t just stand there, I gotta fucking hole in my side!” You quickly inspect the wound and see that Edmond’s been shot most likely by a blunderbuss and he’s still got fragments of the shot in his body. “Okay, keep the pressure on it like you’ve been doing. I can fix this, but I need to act fast and I’m gonna need some stuff from the hospital.” You say. “What?! You mean those idiots didn’t have you pick up any supplies?” “No, they told me to just get into the carriage.” “Fucking morons. It’s like they want me to die! Okay look, we got access to some hospital supplies in a warehouse much closer than the hospital. Just tell Reg outside what you need and he’ll get them for you. Go, go.” You leave the office and ask for Reg, who comes up immediately. “What’s up? Will he live?” “Yeah, but I’ll need some medical supplies. He said you can get them from one of your warehouses. Now I need…” Before you can finish Hans interjects. “Reg, you realize we sold most of those supplies to that bodylegger a few weeks ago? We don’t have much left.” “We don’t? Well what do we have left?” Reg asks. “I dunno, I don’t have the supply list in front of me now do I? But what if you get there and find that what the doc asked for isn’t there? We’ve wasted valuable time fucking around while the boss bleeds to death! Look why don’t we just take the doctor back to the hospital, I’m sure we can get everything there right?” “Well yeah, but Edmond said…” “I’m sure Edmond won’t mind if disobey his orders if it’s going to save his life.” Well this certainly stressful. If the warehouse is lacking supplies, you might not be able to help Edmond. If you go back to the hospital you might take too much time since it’s not just the trip back and forth but it’s the sneaking around stealing medical supplies. > You tell Reg to get the supplies at the warehouse You decide it would be best to do this quickly as possible. You’re sure that you can improvise if needed. “Better go to the warehouse, I don’t want to leave Edmond in the state he’s in any longer than necessary.” “Sounds good, but you’re coming with me, it’ll go even faster if you’re there to point out stuff you need.” Reg says. “Uh… okay.” You reply not expecting to leave with Reg. You and Reg take the carriage and soon you’re at the warehouse where a couple of goons let you in. “Okay, the medical shit is over here, let’s get it and go.” You tell Reg to find the obvious things like syringes and bandages while you try to look for the pharmaceuticals. You’re having a hard time though and look for a good twenty minutes before Reg gets impatient. “Come on, what’s taking so fucking long?” “I can’t find any antibiotics or anything like that. I need that stuff to make sure he doesn’t die of an infection even after I sew him back up. The fact that this place has really bad lighting doesn’t make it any easier.” “Look, worry about that later. Grab some of that stuff when you’re at work tomorrow and come back here. Right now though the primary concern is stopping the bleeding and getting him patched up! He’s tough he’s not going to die overnight of some infection.” Not necessarily true, as you’ve seen it happen before, but there’s little you can do about it now. You just hope Edmond’s constitution is as good as Reg claims. Just as you’re about to leave a couple of gunshots are heard followed by the death yelps of several men. “Oh shit! It’s a hit!” Reg shouts scrambling for his flintlock pistol, while the sounds of several footsteps enter the building. You start to panic and look for another exit, but it’s hard to see in this darkness, so you fumble around trying to stay hidden. A couple more gunshots are heard followed by the slumping of a couple of bodies. “Argh shit!!” you hear Reg shout. This is followed by a set of running footsteps and the sound of a sword hitting something. You don’t hear Reg anymore. You creep behind a bunch of boxes hoping that you’re not found, but it doesn’t work. A hand suddenly grabs you and turns you around. “There you are doc. I really wish this could’ve been different, I really do. But it’s time for a change in this organization and you’re just another casualty of war, nothing personal.” Hans says and stabs you repeatedly in the chest until you’re no longer breathing.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A few years have passed and your medical schooling is complete and you now work at the Klyton hospital as a real doctor. You haven’t been able to really enjoy your success though. Sure, you have your own apartment and you make a decent living to afford the things you want, but you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop and Edmond is going to call in that favor. It’s prevented you from even having a serious relationship for fear that whomever you’re with could possibly be hurt if things get…complex. Of course there’s also your mother to worry about still, but from what you know she’s planning on selling the old inn and moving to Teckleville. Hopefully soon, so it’ll at least keep her somewhat out of potential harm. Ultimately you try to keep yourself busy with work hoping it will keep your mind off things, but it doesn’t help. Eventually you do come up with something that does help a bit. Alcohol. It’s amazing that you grew up in a place that sells the stuff and never had a drink until now. You have to say, it’s not bad and it seems to calm you a bit when you’re feeling anxious. Through this crutch you finally manage to cope. Well at least until the fateful day does arrive… One night when you’re coming home from the hospital and carriage pulls up next to you. “Hey doc, I think we have a friend in common.” A voice says from the inside of the carriage. “Let me guess, Edmond. Right?” you reply. “Correct. I think you know what comes next doc.” “Yeah, I do.” You say and get into the carriage. You sit down on one side while sitting opposite of you is one man dressed in a cheap suit smoking pipe weed. The other one is dressed more casually and openly playing with a dagger. The pipe man lights up and speaks. “Before we get started, my name’s Hans and this is my brother Wallace. Now that that’s over with, Edmond is personally in need of your medical services.” “I figured it was something like that. What happened to him? “Oh what usually happens to our kind in this business. There was a disagreement, some words were exchanged and before you know it, some people get hurt while others aren’t so lucky.” “I…see. So I take it we’re heading to him right now?” “Yes. He’s a little paranoid about going to hospitals especially with the attempt on his life and all.” “Hey, doesn’t he already have a doctor?” “He did, but unfortunately his over indulgence of the spirits made his skills useless and he was…sent away a long time ago.” “Oh…” The rest of the trip is mostly in silence. Hans asks a few superficial things about you which you give quick answer to, but your mind is focused more on what you’re going to encounter when you get to Edmond. How bad is he going to be? What happens if you can’t help him? By the gods you could use a drink right now. You then think to yourself. “Maybe this is why his old doctor was a drunk.” Eventually you arrive at the Troll’s Breath Tavern. When you enter the place it’s completely empty save for a few rough looking sorts who look like they’re focused on cleaning up the place. You notice broken glass and a few blood spots here and there. “Is that the doc?” one of them asks Hans. “Yeah, is Ed still in his office?” “Yeah, and his pet lizard is guarding him like a fucking dragon. Ed’s not letting anyone in there except the doctor.” “Hm, well I guess you better get in there then. Don’t worry. You’re probably safer than the rest of us right now.” You don’t share that sentiment, but you have little choice in the matter. You head to Edmond’s office and knock on the door. “Who the fuck is it? That better be the doc!” “Yeah, it’s me. I’m coming in.” You cautiously enter and see a great deal of blood on the floor. Edmond is clutching on to his left side and his Sotakan assassin is standing close by staring directly at you. A bottle whiskey is also nearby probably being used to dull his pain and as a disinfectant. “Well, don’t just stand there, I gotta fucking hole in my side!” You quickly inspect the wound and see that Edmond’s been shot most likely by a blunderbuss and he’s still got fragments of the shot in his body. “Okay, keep the pressure on it like you’ve been doing. I can fix this, but I need to act fast and I’m gonna need some stuff from the hospital.” You say. “What?! You mean those idiots didn’t have you pick up any supplies?” “No, they told me to just get into the carriage.” “Fucking morons. It’s like they want me to die! Okay look, we got access to some hospital supplies in a warehouse much closer than the hospital. Just tell Reg outside what you need and he’ll get them for you. Go, go.” You leave the office and ask for Reg, who comes up immediately. “What’s up? Will he live?” “Yeah, but I’ll need some medical supplies. He said you can get them from one of your warehouses. Now I need…” Before you can finish Hans interjects. “Reg, you realize we sold most of those supplies to that bodylegger a few weeks ago? We don’t have much left.” “We don’t? Well what do we have left?” Reg asks. “I dunno, I don’t have the supply list in front of me now do I? But what if you get there and find that what the doc asked for isn’t there? We’ve wasted valuable time fucking around while the boss bleeds to death! Look why don’t we just take the doctor back to the hospital, I’m sure we can get everything there right?” “Well yeah, but Edmond said…” “I’m sure Edmond won’t mind if disobey his orders if it’s going to save his life.” Well this certainly stressful. If the warehouse is lacking supplies, you might not be able to help Edmond. If you go back to the hospital you might take too much time since it’s not just the trip back and forth but it’s the sneaking around stealing medical supplies. > You go back to the hospital The hospital is probably a better bet. Besides you can get the higher quality stuff there. You doubt if you’ll have that much of a problem getting the supplies too, it isn’t an uncommon thing for a few things to go missing here and there. “We better go back to the hospital, I’d rather be on the safe side.” “Good man, come on we’ll take the carriage back to the hospital, my brother will drive it, he knows all the short cuts in this city and isn’t squeamish about running over dumb fuckers that get in the way.” “Erm, okay then.” You reply. “Just be quick about this shit, if you take too fucking long and Edmond dies, you three are going to be joining him!” Reg reminds all of you. You, Hans and Wallace leave the Troll’s Breath Tavern and set out for the hospital. On the way there you make a mental note of what to say if anyone at the hospital asks you any questions and where else in the hospital to search just in case you don’t find what you need right away. “Tell me, do you think Edmond is a fair man?” Hans suddenly asks you. “Huh?” “I said, do you think Edmond is a fair man? Tis not a hard question.” “Uh, well sure. I mean I had a deal with him in the past and he lived up to it.” “Yeah, I know all about that so called deal. If it were truly a deal, you and me wouldn’t be having this conversation. I hope you realize this isn’t going to be the last time he calls on you again.” You don’t say anything. You were trying not to dwell on the possibility of such depressing matters. “Look friend, I know you. You’d rather not have to live your life being connected to the underworld, but you were in a tight spot, so you resorted to desperate measures. Sort of like your father no?” “Yeah…I guess so…” you answer not really thinking of that parallel before. “Well, I sympathize. Trust me I do. I mean I know what it’s like to get so far deep into something that you don’t know how you’re ever going to get out. Hell, I never intended to be part of the Crimson Talons, but I had to do it not just for my survival but my brother’s as well.” You say nothing and wait for Hans to get to the point he’s going to make. “What I’m saying is, you don’t NEED to have this hanging over your head forever. You could end it tonight.” “Hold on, if we’re talking about what I think we are, you heard Reg, he said if we took too long he’d have us all killed.” “I didn’t suggest that. I mean that hospital surely has a bunch of things that shouldn’t be used in excessive dosages.” “You want me to kill him? I can’t do that, I’d get killed by that Sotakan! If not immediately then certainly soon after he suspected that I had something to do with his death!” “Well I figured that you’d be a little creative in that area. Perhaps give him something for the pain. Something that creates a plausible tale that the man just died in his sleep. It’s not like that lizard is really going to put two and two together. It’s not the brightest thing; it’s just really good at following orders and killing people. I wouldn’t worry about it anyway. The lizard will be taken care of soon. And you needn’t worry about anyone else potentially retaliating either, Edmond’s never been too popular and what few loyal cronies he has other than the lizard will also be dealt with.” You bury your hands in your head at the thought of all this and how you got here in the first place. If you go through with this, you won’t just be an accomplice the murder anymore, but a full blown one. You think about the irony of being a doctor. You’re supposed to be keeping people alive not killing them. “Look, I know this is all a lot to take in, but just think. If you do this, you’re free. Free to go about the rest of your life as you see fit. And getting rid of Edmond would be a favor to everyone; he’s an evil bastard. Now I’m not saying I’m a saint, but the man is unnecessarily brutal. I’d at least try to put an end to some of the random violence that goes on in the organization and get back to focusing on business. Hell, I’ve got even a long-term plan of trying to make the organization legit one day. Like I said, I didn’t really want this life, but it was survival at the time.” If Hans is trying to identify with you on some level to get you to help him, it’s working, because you’re starting to seriously consider going through with this plan. Eventually you get to the hospital and you tell Hans you’ll be out as soon as possible. It’s the graveyard shift so you don’t run into too many people you know that ask questions. In fact nobody really pays too much attention to you at all, but you decide to play it safe and head down to the supply room in the basement to take what you need. After grabbing a few syringes, disinfectants, bandages and the like, you break the lock of the cabinet with the pharmaceutical supplies. You grab the pain killers immediately, but then you look for something that might help you with the other problem. “Incitahol? What the hell?” you say to yourself, picking up the small vial. This stuff shouldn’t even be mixed in with the regular drugs. It’s a powerful experimental concoction! It was supposed to be a “miracle” drug that increased the body’s natural healing ability even greater than that of mountain trolls and was first used on dying patients. Unfortunately what the drug really did was the speed up the death process and bring them back as zombies. It was banned by most civilized places and is highly sought out by lazy necromancers who don’t have the natural ability to raise hordes of undead. You’d worry more about finding this if you didn’t have your own drama going on right now. In fact this would probably be the perfect thing to take with you. Incitahol doesn’t cause pain and quickly puts the patient into a coma and death follows soon after. (And then it’s zombie time) You’ll have to explain some of this to Hans though so he’s prepared. Part of you wonders if you should really go through with all this though. There’s no guarantee that Hans is telling you the truth and you might be just trading one master for another. In fact he might just blame you for everything and have you killed when he takes power. Of course another way to handle this is to inject this stuff into Edmond and not tell him what’s going to happen. Chances are undead Ed might kill everyone nearby. Incitahol does increase the reflexes and strength after death making for a rather lively zombie. The problem is this is a very risky endeavor not to mention severely irresponsible. > You don't kill Edmond You don’t know if you’ll forever be indebted to Edmond, but at least you know his character a little bit better than Hans. Telling Hans you’re not going to go through with his plan though would be foolish, the only way to do this is to act like you are and then rat him out when you get to Edmond. Not the noblest of plans, but you see that you have little choice. When you leave the hospital you enter the carriage, which is waiting for you across the street. “I trust you got everything you need?” “Yeah, I found something perfect to take care of our problem.” “Excellent! I knew you’d see things my way.” Hans says. He doesn’t seem to think you’re going to double cross him, which is good news for you. Hans goes on a little more about how you’re doing the right thing and to make sure to stay calm throughout the whole procedure You get back to the tavern where Reg and several other Talon members are waiting. “What the fuck took you so damn long? Edmond could’ve died already!” “Sorry.” You reply and head to his office. You enter the office and the Sotakan assassin is holding a dagger to your throat already. “Down boy, it’s the doc...ugh…what the fuck took you so long? I’m dying over here!” The Sotakan releases you and you run over to Edmond who is now lying on the floor still clutching his side. You begin working on Edmond immediately. “Argh, fuck! That hurt!” Edmond winces as you take out a few pieces of shrapnel before sewing him up. “Yeah I imagine it would. I got some bad news to tell you.” “What worse than getting shot? “Well maybe not as bad as that, but how close are you to Hans and his brother?” “We’re business associates though they’ve been working for me since they were snot nosed kids. So I suppose I’m like a father figure to them. Heh heh.” “Then they’re ready to commit patricide, because they tried to get me to kill you.” “What!?” You explain to Edmond what Hans told you as you’re working on him. He’s mad, but not at you. In fact he doesn’t even accuse you of making it up. He says it’s hardly surprising given the business he’s in. He calls over his Sotakan and tells him “Hans, Wallace, dead.” With this simple instruction, the lizard assassin finally leaves the room to do his mission. Doesn’t take long for the Sotakan to come back. “Wow. I guess that’s the end of that then.” You say still working on Edmond. “Looks like. Hey doc, that was a real standup thing ya did. You probably could’ve easily injected me with some shit that could’ve killed me without even my lizard boy even realizing it before it was too late.” “I’m not a killer, despite my unfortunate lapse of judgment concerning how to deal with those waitresses a few years ago.” “Hmm, well I’m sure it probably still passed through your mind. Especially how that deal went down with Frank’s place. Anyway, Hans was probably right about one thing, I was going to hang that incident over your head for the rest of your life, but given these recent events let’s call it even.” “Thanks Edmond.” You say politely. Sure you could get self-righteous and point out that you’ve saved his life TWICE. But really, why piss off a crime boss? After patching up Edmond and making sure he’s not going to get an infection, you mention that he should be fine as long as he takes it easy for a couple months. He thanks you again and says if you ever need another favor you know where to find him. You assure him that you won’t. You get on with your life after this last bit of dabbling with the underworld. Part of you for a while worries that Edmond is going to go back on his word, but that doesn’t happen thankfully. You definitely feel a great weight has been lifted off of you. You also properly dispose of the Incitahol. You’d normally report something like this, but you’d rather not have to explain why you were breaking into the pharmaceutical cabinet in the first place. You just hope whoever was dumb enough to put the stuff there doesn’t have any more of it. As for your family’s inn, your mother eventually sells it in a few years and moves back to Teckleville. You aren’t unhappy to see it sold off; you didn’t have too many great memories of the place in the last years you were there. Still, if it weren’t for the inn you wouldn’t have been able to become a doctor either. While the rest of your life generally plays out in a positive way, you never do lose your minor alcohol problem because every once in awhile you still feel guilt about some of the things you were involved in. Drinking helps ease the pain a bit, but you never talk to anyone else about it of course. Sometimes you wonder what you could’ve done different when you worked at the inn, a better way perhaps. You’ll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The hospital is probably a better bet. Besides you can get the higher quality stuff there. You doubt if you’ll have that much of a problem getting the supplies too, it isn’t an uncommon thing for a few things to go missing here and there. “We better go back to the hospital, I’d rather be on the safe side.” “Good man, come on we’ll take the carriage back to the hospital, my brother will drive it, he knows all the short cuts in this city and isn’t squeamish about running over dumb fuckers that get in the way.” “Erm, okay then.” You reply. “Just be quick about this shit, if you take too fucking long and Edmond dies, you three are going to be joining him!” Reg reminds all of you. You, Hans and Wallace leave the Troll’s Breath Tavern and set out for the hospital. On the way there you make a mental note of what to say if anyone at the hospital asks you any questions and where else in the hospital to search just in case you don’t find what you need right away. “Tell me, do you think Edmond is a fair man?” Hans suddenly asks you. “Huh?” “I said, do you think Edmond is a fair man? Tis not a hard question.” “Uh, well sure. I mean I had a deal with him in the past and he lived up to it.” “Yeah, I know all about that so called deal. If it were truly a deal, you and me wouldn’t be having this conversation. I hope you realize this isn’t going to be the last time he calls on you again.” You don’t say anything. You were trying not to dwell on the possibility of such depressing matters. “Look friend, I know you. You’d rather not have to live your life being connected to the underworld, but you were in a tight spot, so you resorted to desperate measures. Sort of like your father no?” “Yeah…I guess so…” you answer not really thinking of that parallel before. “Well, I sympathize. Trust me I do. I mean I know what it’s like to get so far deep into something that you don’t know how you’re ever going to get out. Hell, I never intended to be part of the Crimson Talons, but I had to do it not just for my survival but my brother’s as well.” You say nothing and wait for Hans to get to the point he’s going to make. “What I’m saying is, you don’t NEED to have this hanging over your head forever. You could end it tonight.” “Hold on, if we’re talking about what I think we are, you heard Reg, he said if we took too long he’d have us all killed.” “I didn’t suggest that. I mean that hospital surely has a bunch of things that shouldn’t be used in excessive dosages.” “You want me to kill him? I can’t do that, I’d get killed by that Sotakan! If not immediately then certainly soon after he suspected that I had something to do with his death!” “Well I figured that you’d be a little creative in that area. Perhaps give him something for the pain. Something that creates a plausible tale that the man just died in his sleep. It’s not like that lizard is really going to put two and two together. It’s not the brightest thing; it’s just really good at following orders and killing people. I wouldn’t worry about it anyway. The lizard will be taken care of soon. And you needn’t worry about anyone else potentially retaliating either, Edmond’s never been too popular and what few loyal cronies he has other than the lizard will also be dealt with.” You bury your hands in your head at the thought of all this and how you got here in the first place. If you go through with this, you won’t just be an accomplice the murder anymore, but a full blown one. You think about the irony of being a doctor. You’re supposed to be keeping people alive not killing them. “Look, I know this is all a lot to take in, but just think. If you do this, you’re free. Free to go about the rest of your life as you see fit. And getting rid of Edmond would be a favor to everyone; he’s an evil bastard. Now I’m not saying I’m a saint, but the man is unnecessarily brutal. I’d at least try to put an end to some of the random violence that goes on in the organization and get back to focusing on business. Hell, I’ve got even a long-term plan of trying to make the organization legit one day. Like I said, I didn’t really want this life, but it was survival at the time.” If Hans is trying to identify with you on some level to get you to help him, it’s working, because you’re starting to seriously consider going through with this plan. Eventually you get to the hospital and you tell Hans you’ll be out as soon as possible. It’s the graveyard shift so you don’t run into too many people you know that ask questions. In fact nobody really pays too much attention to you at all, but you decide to play it safe and head down to the supply room in the basement to take what you need. After grabbing a few syringes, disinfectants, bandages and the like, you break the lock of the cabinet with the pharmaceutical supplies. You grab the pain killers immediately, but then you look for something that might help you with the other problem. “Incitahol? What the hell?” you say to yourself, picking up the small vial. This stuff shouldn’t even be mixed in with the regular drugs. It’s a powerful experimental concoction! It was supposed to be a “miracle” drug that increased the body’s natural healing ability even greater than that of mountain trolls and was first used on dying patients. Unfortunately what the drug really did was the speed up the death process and bring them back as zombies. It was banned by most civilized places and is highly sought out by lazy necromancers who don’t have the natural ability to raise hordes of undead. You’d worry more about finding this if you didn’t have your own drama going on right now. In fact this would probably be the perfect thing to take with you. Incitahol doesn’t cause pain and quickly puts the patient into a coma and death follows soon after. (And then it’s zombie time) You’ll have to explain some of this to Hans though so he’s prepared. Part of you wonders if you should really go through with all this though. There’s no guarantee that Hans is telling you the truth and you might be just trading one master for another. In fact he might just blame you for everything and have you killed when he takes power. Of course another way to handle this is to inject this stuff into Edmond and not tell him what’s going to happen. Chances are undead Ed might kill everyone nearby. Incitahol does increase the reflexes and strength after death making for a rather lively zombie. The problem is this is a very risky endeavor not to mention severely irresponsible. > You kill Edmond and inform Hans of the plan Hans is probably right about Edmond, he’s going to keep you around indefinitely. If you help Hans he’ll most likely have his hands full trying to root out all the people still loyal to Edmond and solidifying his power base to worry about you. When you leave the hospital you enter the carriage, which is waiting for you across the street. “I trust you got everything you need?” “Yeah, I found something perfect to take care of our problem, but I need to warn you about it first.” “Oh? Well, out with it then.” Hans says. You explain to Hans about the Incitahol and he seems intrigued. “So this stuff will kill him and then bring him back to life?” “In a manner of speaking. He’ll slowly lapse into a coma and then die. Then he’ll come back as a zombie and most likely a very lively and hostile one.” “Interesting. Okay. Good. That lizard will probably be by his side the whole time. When Edmond comes back he’ll probably try to attack his lizard who will defend himself and then the rest takes care of itself.” You’re glad Hans sounds pleased with this plan, the only thing you have to do now is pull off the deception. Eventually you get back to the tavern where Reg and several other Talon members are waiting. “What the fuck took you so damn long? Edmond could’ve died already!” “Sorry.” You reply and head to his office. You enter the office and the Sotakan assassin is holding a dagger to your throat already. “Down boy, it’s the doc...ugh…what the fuck took you so long? I’m dying over here!” The Sotakan releases you and you run over to Edmond who is now lying on the floor still clutching his side. “I’m going to give you this shot first, it’ll help as an anti-biotic and to ease the pain. You might start getting sleepy though, do you someplace more comfortable to lay?” “Yeah, I guess the sofa.” You Help Edmond to the sofa and give him the shot of Incitahol. You then begin sewing him up as quickly as possible. Normally you’d do a better job and extract the shrapnel in his body, but you figure he’s going to be dead soon anyway and you need to get out of here before he starts turning. “There you go. You should be good now, but you’ll need to rest and not move too much for a few days.” “(Yawn) Not a problem. I’ll probably just take care of business from here for the time being. As long I got my Sotakan whatchin’ my back, I’ll be fine. Damn, that shit kicks in really quick. I don’t feel anything….(Yawn) Glad you could help out doc…be sure to stick around…(Yawn) might have some work for you in the…zzzzzzzzzz…” You stand away from Edmond, give a nod to the Sotakan and then leave quickly. “So is he asleep?” Edmond asks walking up to you. “Yeah, won’t be long…hey where’s that Reg guy?” you say noticing a difference in some of the personnel hanging around the bar now. “Don’t worry about him, you just take a seat at that table over there. If need anything just let Wallace know.” “But you know what’s going to happen and I’m not a fighter. I don’t think you’ll need me here.” “Don’t be so sure. Given what’s going to go down, we might still need a doctor soon. Besides having a doctor around in the future might be useful. Sit down, you’ll be fine.” You get the impression you don’t have any choice in the matter, so you do what Hans says. You curse yourself for believing him. You have indeed traded one master for another. “Could I have a drink?” you ask Wallace, who looks less than pleased about you barking orders at him, but he gets you a bottle of strong whiskey before going to talk to his brother. Time passes and as you slowly get more drunk a loud noise is heard from Edmond’s office. It’s a mixture of hissing, moaning and loud crashing. “Hah! Sounds like he’s (hic!) up!” you slur while taking another drink. At this point Hans, Wallace and several other thugs rush into the office. You hear a bunch of yelling, fighting, and gunshots, but you just continue to drink the whole time. “Dis is yer fate mr. smart ass doctor, now you gotta (hic!) get yoost to it.” You say to your self while looking at the bottle. “Was it worth it?” At this point Hans exits Edmond’s office looking a bit winded. He’s followed by Wallace and one of the other thugs that lived. “Shit, it’s a good thing that lizard had been preoccupied with Edmond. I can say with all honesty he put up a damn good fight even with a couple of bites in him.” “You chopped his head off I (hic!) hope!” you exclaim. “Yeah, of course I know the stories of the dead infection. Sheesh doc, I think you’ve had enough for the night.” Hans remarks. “I haven’t begun to drink!” you shout and then promptly pass out in the tavern. While this would be the first time you passed out in the Troll’s Breath Tavern, it wouldn’t be the last. After this night, your life takes a drastic turn. Your hospital career begins to take a slow but sure nosedive, though your “career” as a Crimson doc begins to pick up a lot. Hans has a lot more trouble establishing order over the Crimson Talons than he thought he would. You end up doing a lot of after hours surgery. To Hans’ credit he pays you well and you get free drinks whenever you can. Eventually your mother knows something is going on with you, she isn’t sure what (and doesn’t really want to either), but she knows it isn’t good. Having no real reason to stay any longer, she finally sells the inn to the city and moves back to Teckleville. She mentions when you get your life together you can visit her, until that time, stay away. You never see her again. From there your life becomes a downward spiral and your drinking increases to cope with your situation. As the years go on, the hospital can’t tolerate your sub par work due to a combination of drink and lack of proper sleep. Getting fired is bad enough, but you also lose your license and are lucky not to go to jail for malpractice. Doesn’t really matter to you at this point, you just embrace the whole criminal lifestyle and work for Hans full time. The only problem is, he’s getting sick of your sub-par work as well. Your situation becomes very much like the doctor who once worked Edmond. It doesn’t really need to be said that your fate is very similar to his as well. One night during a poker game you’re on a rare winning streak and drinking heavily as usual. Your obnoxious bragging gets on the nerves of several Crimson Talon members who have already been told on several occasions by Hans that your usefulness is soon coming to an end. They decide that tonight is the night. As you try to stumble your way home in the dark, a crushing blow knocks you to the street followed by several sharp piecing to your body. Fortunately you’re so damn drunk that the pain is somewhat nonexistent. You mumble something incoherent and then pass out forever. Your winnings are taken back and your body sold to a bodylegger for spare parts. (Your liver is useless though)<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The hospital is probably a better bet. Besides you can get the higher quality stuff there. You doubt if you’ll have that much of a problem getting the supplies too, it isn’t an uncommon thing for a few things to go missing here and there. “We better go back to the hospital, I’d rather be on the safe side.” “Good man, come on we’ll take the carriage back to the hospital, my brother will drive it, he knows all the short cuts in this city and isn’t squeamish about running over dumb fuckers that get in the way.” “Erm, okay then.” You reply. “Just be quick about this shit, if you take too fucking long and Edmond dies, you three are going to be joining him!” Reg reminds all of you. You, Hans and Wallace leave the Troll’s Breath Tavern and set out for the hospital. On the way there you make a mental note of what to say if anyone at the hospital asks you any questions and where else in the hospital to search just in case you don’t find what you need right away. “Tell me, do you think Edmond is a fair man?” Hans suddenly asks you. “Huh?” “I said, do you think Edmond is a fair man? Tis not a hard question.” “Uh, well sure. I mean I had a deal with him in the past and he lived up to it.” “Yeah, I know all about that so called deal. If it were truly a deal, you and me wouldn’t be having this conversation. I hope you realize this isn’t going to be the last time he calls on you again.” You don’t say anything. You were trying not to dwell on the possibility of such depressing matters. “Look friend, I know you. You’d rather not have to live your life being connected to the underworld, but you were in a tight spot, so you resorted to desperate measures. Sort of like your father no?” “Yeah…I guess so…” you answer not really thinking of that parallel before. “Well, I sympathize. Trust me I do. I mean I know what it’s like to get so far deep into something that you don’t know how you’re ever going to get out. Hell, I never intended to be part of the Crimson Talons, but I had to do it not just for my survival but my brother’s as well.” You say nothing and wait for Hans to get to the point he’s going to make. “What I’m saying is, you don’t NEED to have this hanging over your head forever. You could end it tonight.” “Hold on, if we’re talking about what I think we are, you heard Reg, he said if we took too long he’d have us all killed.” “I didn’t suggest that. I mean that hospital surely has a bunch of things that shouldn’t be used in excessive dosages.” “You want me to kill him? I can’t do that, I’d get killed by that Sotakan! If not immediately then certainly soon after he suspected that I had something to do with his death!” “Well I figured that you’d be a little creative in that area. Perhaps give him something for the pain. Something that creates a plausible tale that the man just died in his sleep. It’s not like that lizard is really going to put two and two together. It’s not the brightest thing; it’s just really good at following orders and killing people. I wouldn’t worry about it anyway. The lizard will be taken care of soon. And you needn’t worry about anyone else potentially retaliating either, Edmond’s never been too popular and what few loyal cronies he has other than the lizard will also be dealt with.” You bury your hands in your head at the thought of all this and how you got here in the first place. If you go through with this, you won’t just be an accomplice the murder anymore, but a full blown one. You think about the irony of being a doctor. You’re supposed to be keeping people alive not killing them. “Look, I know this is all a lot to take in, but just think. If you do this, you’re free. Free to go about the rest of your life as you see fit. And getting rid of Edmond would be a favor to everyone; he’s an evil bastard. Now I’m not saying I’m a saint, but the man is unnecessarily brutal. I’d at least try to put an end to some of the random violence that goes on in the organization and get back to focusing on business. Hell, I’ve got even a long-term plan of trying to make the organization legit one day. Like I said, I didn’t really want this life, but it was survival at the time.” If Hans is trying to identify with you on some level to get you to help him, it’s working, because you’re starting to seriously consider going through with this plan. Eventually you get to the hospital and you tell Hans you’ll be out as soon as possible. It’s the graveyard shift so you don’t run into too many people you know that ask questions. In fact nobody really pays too much attention to you at all, but you decide to play it safe and head down to the supply room in the basement to take what you need. After grabbing a few syringes, disinfectants, bandages and the like, you break the lock of the cabinet with the pharmaceutical supplies. You grab the pain killers immediately, but then you look for something that might help you with the other problem. “Incitahol? What the hell?” you say to yourself, picking up the small vial. This stuff shouldn’t even be mixed in with the regular drugs. It’s a powerful experimental concoction! It was supposed to be a “miracle” drug that increased the body’s natural healing ability even greater than that of mountain trolls and was first used on dying patients. Unfortunately what the drug really did was the speed up the death process and bring them back as zombies. It was banned by most civilized places and is highly sought out by lazy necromancers who don’t have the natural ability to raise hordes of undead. You’d worry more about finding this if you didn’t have your own drama going on right now. In fact this would probably be the perfect thing to take with you. Incitahol doesn’t cause pain and quickly puts the patient into a coma and death follows soon after. (And then it’s zombie time) You’ll have to explain some of this to Hans though so he’s prepared. Part of you wonders if you should really go through with all this though. There’s no guarantee that Hans is telling you the truth and you might be just trading one master for another. In fact he might just blame you for everything and have you killed when he takes power. Of course another way to handle this is to inject this stuff into Edmond and not tell him what’s going to happen. Chances are undead Ed might kill everyone nearby. Incitahol does increase the reflexes and strength after death making for a rather lively zombie. The problem is this is a very risky endeavor not to mention severely irresponsible. > You kill Edmond and don't inform Hans of the plan Hans is probably right about Edmond, he’s going to keep you around indefinitely. On the other hand Hans probably isn’t any better. It’s always possible Hans will get killed by “normal” dangers when he gets in power, but he seems pretty savvy. He’s likely to stay in power long enough for you to get trapped in this life and his successor is just going to insist on your services. That’s even assuming you live that long, being connected to organized crime isn’t necessarily a safe way to live if you don’t have the street cred and stomach for it. You need to get rid of Hans as well and hopefully not telling him what you’re exactly going to do will create that opportunity. When you leave the hospital you enter the carriage, which is waiting for you across the street. “I trust you got everything you need?” “Yeah, I found something perfect to take care of our problem. He’ll slowly fall asleep, then lapse into a coma then finally die.” “Perfect, I can even say his lizard killed him. I better have a crew ready to bum rush him though. He’s not going to be an easy kill though.” You’re glad Hans sounds pleased with this plan, the only thing you have to do now is pull off the deception. Eventually you get back to the tavern where Reg and several other Talon members are waiting. “What the fuck took you so damn long? Edmond could’ve died already!” “Sorry.” You reply and head to his office. You enter the office and the Sotakan assassin is holding a dagger to your throat already. “Down boy, it’s the doc...ugh…what the fuck took you so long? I’m dying over here!” The Sotakan releases you and you run over to Edmond who is now lying on the floor still clutching his side. “I’m going to give you this shot first, it’ll help as an anti-biotic and to ease the pain. You might start getting sleepy though, do you someplace more comfortable to lay?” “Yeah, I guess the sofa.” You Help Edmond to the sofa and give him the shot of Incitahol. You then begin sewing him up as quickly as possible. Normally you’d do a better job and extract the shrapnel in his body, but you figure he’s going to be dead soon anyway and you need to get out of here before he starts turning. “There you go. You should be good now, but you’ll need to rest and not move too much for a few days.” “(Yawn) Not a problem. I’ll probably just take care of business from here for the time being. As long I got my Sotakan whatchin’ my back, I’ll be fine. Damn, that shit kicks in really quick. I don’t feel anything….(Yawn) Glad you could help out doc…be sure to stick around…(Yawn) might have some work for you in the…zzzzzzzzzz…” You stand away from Edmond, give a nod to the Sotakan and then leave quickly. “So is he asleep?” Edmond asks walking up to you. “Yeah, won’t be long…hey where’s that Reg guy?” you say noticing a difference in some of the personnel hanging around the bar now. “Don’t worry about him, you just take a seat at that table over there. If need anything just let Wallace know.” “Uh, I don’t think you really need me around any longer.” “Nonsense! Given what’s going to go down, we might still need a doctor soon. Besides having a doctor around in the future might be useful. Sit down, you’ll be fine.” You get the impression you don’t have much choice in the matter so you do as Hans says. You try not to make your panic too noticeable, but you really scared about what’s going to happen. What happens if Hans finds out what you did? What if something gets out of hand and you suddenly got a bunch of zombies hungry for flesh? Normally you’d probably have a drink to calm your nerves, but you’re so worried about what might happen, you feel your only hope is to have all your wits about you. Eventually Wallace gets sick of watching you and goes to talk with his brother who is currently sitting at a table with a group of other thugs telling them how they need to attack the Sotakan assassin as quickly as possible when they rush the room. You think about making a break for it, but you’d never make it. Time passes and eventually noise is heard from Edmond’s office. It’s a mixture of hissing, moaning and loud crashing. “What the fuck?” Hans says pulling out his flintlock and then looks over in your direction, you shrug your shoulders replying “I dunno.” “Come on, let’s just do it!” Wallace says picking up a nearby blunderbuss. At this point Wallace and the rest of the thugs rush into Edmond’s office. Hans stays outside watching you and the both of you hear a bunch of yelling, fighting, and gunshots. Then there’s silence. “Wallace?” Hans calls out while heading towards the office. “…ugh…yeah…I’m hurt…get the doc…” Wallace’s voice calls back. “Come on, get yer ass over here, my brother’s hurt!” Wallace says. You gulp nervously and slowly make your way to Wallace “Shit, it looks like a fucking slaughterhouse in here.” Hans remarks as you both enter the room. Hans is quite correct, the office is splattered with blood and gore with several dead bodies everywhere. Edmond, the Sotakan, and the Crimson thugs they’re all dead. You notice Edmond has a head wound, the Sotakan does too, you can’t tell with some of the other though until… “OH SHIT! WALLACE!” Hans shouts as two of those bodies suddenly sit up and attack! Hans shoots one of them in the chest, dropping it to the floor temporarily, but the other one begins munching on Wallace. His screams are enough to finally cause you to run. “HEY YOU COWARDLY FUCK, HELP ME! AGH! MY FOOT!” Hans yells as you try to open the tavern door. Unfortunately Hans wasn’t taking any chances of you attempting to escape and the door is firmly locked. In desperation you grab a nearby chair to bust out a small window you might be able to squeeze through. You attempts are cut short when one of the zombies tackles you to the floor and take a bite out of your arm. You cries of pain are cut short when the next bite rips out your throat. Your death is just one of the first in the zombie plague you thoughtlessly unleashed on Klyton.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need professionals for this and David and Tom don’t qualify. You ask for directions to the underground gladiator matches, but Mr. Reynolds still insists on a bit of money for that information, so you have no choice but to pay him. After running back and forth to his office and the inn, (And incurring some questions by your mom and staff where you’re going) you pay him and he tells you that it’s located in a tavern called the Troll’s Breath on the edge of the warehouse district. He tells you to that can let the bartender know that he sent you. You feel like you’re going to get mugged around every corner on your way to the place, but fortunately that doesn’t happen. You are approached by several prostitutes and offered Cloud Rock a lot though. When you walk in the place, it’s filled with a rowdy bunch as you’d expect. You try not to make eye contact and walk straight to the bar. “Yeah?” the bald bartender asks gruffly. “Mr. Reynolds sent me because of my interest in games.” “Did he now? Alright, but the next time you see that dick, tell him his time as an independent loanshark are coming to an end soon. He needs to join up with the Crimson Talon or get the fuck outta Kyton. Door’s around the back.” “Thanks, oh uh one more thing.” “What!?” “Is there anyway to speak to Olaf or Silence after their fights?” “What the hell do you wanna be talkin’ to those two idiots for? The pair of them together barely have enough intelligence to put on their own boots.” “It’s a business proposition.” At this point the bartender’s eye narrow. “Wait a fucking minute. You’re sent here by Reynolds and you wanna talk to Olaf and Silence about a business proposition? This sounds like Reynolds trying weasely shit as usual. Fuck you, they don’t freelance anymore. They’re pit fighters for the Crimson Talons until I say otherwise! Now get the fuck outta here!” “Okay, I’ll talk with you then, how much do you want for their services temporarily?” “I said they ain’t for fuckin’ hire you dumbfuck! If you wanna meet them so bad though, I can oblige and throw your ass in the ring with them!” At this point the bartender snaps his fingers and two thugs grab your arms ready to carry you off. You make one desperate plea. “Alright! Alright! I’ll hire whomever else you got then! These two guys holding me will do, I just need some people fucked up and I got money to give to whoever will do it!” The bartender nods and you’re released. “Alright in my office and start talkin’ fast. Reg, you’re at the bar.” You follow the bartender upstairs to a room that is much nicer than the rest of place. He sits down at a fancy desk and pours himself a drink, but doesn’t offer you anything. You look around the office at the various items he has on the wall until you’re interrupted. “Well? Are we just wasting my time here while you admire my office, because the fight pit is another place you can admire from the inside.” You quickly explain everything and your situation and give him the information that Rita wrote down for you. The bartender nods a bit while playing with his ring. When you’re done, he speaks. “Is that it? You wanted to hire two bruisers like that to cut up some barmaids? You’re sort of new at this I take it. Those two would’ve probably raped and broke all their necks right in the middle of the fucking Flying Griffon. Subtlety is not their strong point.” “Okay so do you have someone else in mind?” “Sure, got a mean ass Sotakan assassin that could easily do the job.” “A Sotakan? One of those lizard people? But they avoid cities.” You say. “That they do, but let’s just say I acquired this one from an egg. The great thing about him, is he’s completely loyal and doesn’t require much. Just does what he’s told.” “How’s he sneak around though? I mean seems like he’d stick out.” “Hah, those lizard bastards have natural camouflage abilities. As they grow up they adapt to whatever sort of environment they grow up in. Now a regular swamp dwelling Sotakan would stick out, but not my boy. He’s lived here in the city his whole life, took him out in the night to get acquainted with the surroundings while he grew up and now he’s practically invisible when he wants to be.” “Okay well that’s great, but I don’t need them killed.” “Heh, maybe not all of them, but a couple may come back to kill you. I think I may have a little more information on the Flying Griffon than your barmaid found out. Frank’s an unregistered wizard. Well wizard’s giving him a little too much credit perhaps, but he’s managed to snag himself a couple of succubae as barmaids.” “What?! He can’t summon demons into the city! That’s illegal!” “Oh and I suppose what we’re doing is?” “Alright, but it’s not only illegal, but it’s a potential danger to the city.” “No, I agree. Demons tend to fuck up business and their chaotic ways are too much of a risk to deal with, but then again I don’t have to tell you that.” “So…how do you know all this?” “Because it’s my fucking job to know shit that might interfere with business that’s why. I kept wondering why some of my merchant contacts weren’t stopping by here anymore. Frank might have some control over his ladies, but I know he can’t completely stop their appetites. Rather short sighted of him really, it’s not like they’re going to be able to stop themselves from completely draining victims forever. They’re going to eventually get out of hand and he’s going to start having to explain to the Klyton militia why people are always last seen going into his place before mysteriously disappearing. You must’ve really pissed him off for him to resort to this.” “Yeah, I guess so…so where does that leave us?” The bartender (who mentions his name is Edmond and is definitely more than just bartender) says that he was keeping an eye on the Flying Griffon and if he lost anymore of his merchant contact to it, he was going to act. He didn’t before since as skilled as his lizard is, he’s not sure if he can take two succubae by himself, in fact it would be easier to just try and kill Frank. But of course then there would be two unleashed succubae running around in Klyton and nobody really wants that. Still, if you’re willing to pay then Edmond will readily accept your money, and he’ll have the mortal barmaids disfigured and the demonic ones killed. He assures you that unlike Mr. Reynolds this will be a straight up agreement and that the Crimson Talons will not seek to extort your inn in some way. Mainly due to all the Klyton militia and adventurers going there it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. He doesn’t need to risk some do gooder or gung-ho orderly type sniffing around. Of course you’ve been overwhelmed by all this information. Part of you wonders if all this is worth it. You could wait it out, Edmond did claim that Frank probably won’t be able to control them forever; the problem with this is in the meantime it’ll still be cutting into your business. With this new information you could also report Frank to your militia buddies, though this might be difficult without evidence. Still, you’re on good terms with most of the ones that frequent your place and they’ll probably investigate. > You wait it out You tell Edmond that you think that you’ll take his approach and wait it out. If he wants to do anything against Frank, well you won’t have anything to do with it. Edmond nods and remarks that perhaps it’s best you don’t get yourself into this game since it’s slippery slope that you’re libel to get yourself in a lot more trouble that you wouldn’t be equipped to handle. Before you leave he trusts that you won’t be speaking to anyone about your meeting, because if anyone finds out, it won’t matter how many militia buddies you have. You assure him that you remember his pet lizard and that it won’t be a problem. You’re able to get a coach back to inn, naturally it’s a lot later now and everyone is asking you where you’ve been. You explain that you forgot to do something at campus for a class, which seems to satisfy as an excuse. So you wait and time passes. You continue to wait and more time passes. Six months pass and nothing has changed with the Flying Griffon except they continue to do better than your inn and at this point you’re just breaking even. Frank must have his demon girls under control because he’s still doing well and Klyton militia isn’t investigating him. You wonder if you should take Edmond up on his offer, but then perhaps he’s already tried to kill them and his assassin failed. You also ponder if you should report Frank again, but you shake your head. It’s pointless now. You’re losing a war that can’t be won and you’re ready to throw in the towel. Everyone working here isn’t happy anymore, and you never wanted to do this job anyway. You wanted to go into medicine. You approach your mother about selling the inn and she agrees. She apologizes that this inn ultimately became a burden on you, so she says when she sells the place she’ll give you all the money in the hopes that it will help with your education. Ironically your mother ends up selling the inn to Frank. She says he was smug the whole time but was willing to pay much more than the city would. It’s a lot, but not enough to finish proper medical school. She wishes you well before leaving Klyton for Teckleville and tells you that you’ll always be welcome at Enora’s house where she will be living. You decide maybe while you can’t be a doctor, maybe you can still choose something in medical field, presumably something you’ll be able to afford and not be as stressed all the time. You ultimately become a veterinarian and feel a great sense of accomplishment. The only problem is they aren’t in great demand in Klyton and the few that do exist in the city have the market pretty much cornered, but you do know of a place where they might need one… You move to Teckleville where you make a living treating farm animals and pets like kitties and puppies. Occasionally someone has something more exotic like a purple tailed glittermane, but it’s a quiet life for the most part. You eventually have a family and live the rest of your days there. Sometimes you wonder what would’ve happened if you’d done things a bit differently at the inn, but all things considered it worked out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need professionals for this and David and Tom don’t qualify. You ask for directions to the underground gladiator matches, but Mr. Reynolds still insists on a bit of money for that information, so you have no choice but to pay him. After running back and forth to his office and the inn, (And incurring some questions by your mom and staff where you’re going) you pay him and he tells you that it’s located in a tavern called the Troll’s Breath on the edge of the warehouse district. He tells you to that can let the bartender know that he sent you. You feel like you’re going to get mugged around every corner on your way to the place, but fortunately that doesn’t happen. You are approached by several prostitutes and offered Cloud Rock a lot though. When you walk in the place, it’s filled with a rowdy bunch as you’d expect. You try not to make eye contact and walk straight to the bar. “Yeah?” the bald bartender asks gruffly. “Mr. Reynolds sent me because of my interest in games.” “Did he now? Alright, but the next time you see that dick, tell him his time as an independent loanshark are coming to an end soon. He needs to join up with the Crimson Talon or get the fuck outta Kyton. Door’s around the back.” “Thanks, oh uh one more thing.” “What!?” “Is there anyway to speak to Olaf or Silence after their fights?” “What the hell do you wanna be talkin’ to those two idiots for? The pair of them together barely have enough intelligence to put on their own boots.” “It’s a business proposition.” At this point the bartender’s eye narrow. “Wait a fucking minute. You’re sent here by Reynolds and you wanna talk to Olaf and Silence about a business proposition? This sounds like Reynolds trying weasely shit as usual. Fuck you, they don’t freelance anymore. They’re pit fighters for the Crimson Talons until I say otherwise! Now get the fuck outta here!” “Okay, I’ll talk with you then, how much do you want for their services temporarily?” “I said they ain’t for fuckin’ hire you dumbfuck! If you wanna meet them so bad though, I can oblige and throw your ass in the ring with them!” At this point the bartender snaps his fingers and two thugs grab your arms ready to carry you off. You make one desperate plea. “Alright! Alright! I’ll hire whomever else you got then! These two guys holding me will do, I just need some people fucked up and I got money to give to whoever will do it!” The bartender nods and you’re released. “Alright in my office and start talkin’ fast. Reg, you’re at the bar.” You follow the bartender upstairs to a room that is much nicer than the rest of place. He sits down at a fancy desk and pours himself a drink, but doesn’t offer you anything. You look around the office at the various items he has on the wall until you’re interrupted. “Well? Are we just wasting my time here while you admire my office, because the fight pit is another place you can admire from the inside.” You quickly explain everything and your situation and give him the information that Rita wrote down for you. The bartender nods a bit while playing with his ring. When you’re done, he speaks. “Is that it? You wanted to hire two bruisers like that to cut up some barmaids? You’re sort of new at this I take it. Those two would’ve probably raped and broke all their necks right in the middle of the fucking Flying Griffon. Subtlety is not their strong point.” “Okay so do you have someone else in mind?” “Sure, got a mean ass Sotakan assassin that could easily do the job.” “A Sotakan? One of those lizard people? But they avoid cities.” You say. “That they do, but let’s just say I acquired this one from an egg. The great thing about him, is he’s completely loyal and doesn’t require much. Just does what he’s told.” “How’s he sneak around though? I mean seems like he’d stick out.” “Hah, those lizard bastards have natural camouflage abilities. As they grow up they adapt to whatever sort of environment they grow up in. Now a regular swamp dwelling Sotakan would stick out, but not my boy. He’s lived here in the city his whole life, took him out in the night to get acquainted with the surroundings while he grew up and now he’s practically invisible when he wants to be.” “Okay well that’s great, but I don’t need them killed.” “Heh, maybe not all of them, but a couple may come back to kill you. I think I may have a little more information on the Flying Griffon than your barmaid found out. Frank’s an unregistered wizard. Well wizard’s giving him a little too much credit perhaps, but he’s managed to snag himself a couple of succubae as barmaids.” “What?! He can’t summon demons into the city! That’s illegal!” “Oh and I suppose what we’re doing is?” “Alright, but it’s not only illegal, but it’s a potential danger to the city.” “No, I agree. Demons tend to fuck up business and their chaotic ways are too much of a risk to deal with, but then again I don’t have to tell you that.” “So…how do you know all this?” “Because it’s my fucking job to know shit that might interfere with business that’s why. I kept wondering why some of my merchant contacts weren’t stopping by here anymore. Frank might have some control over his ladies, but I know he can’t completely stop their appetites. Rather short sighted of him really, it’s not like they’re going to be able to stop themselves from completely draining victims forever. They’re going to eventually get out of hand and he’s going to start having to explain to the Klyton militia why people are always last seen going into his place before mysteriously disappearing. You must’ve really pissed him off for him to resort to this.” “Yeah, I guess so…so where does that leave us?” The bartender (who mentions his name is Edmond and is definitely more than just bartender) says that he was keeping an eye on the Flying Griffon and if he lost anymore of his merchant contact to it, he was going to act. He didn’t before since as skilled as his lizard is, he’s not sure if he can take two succubae by himself, in fact it would be easier to just try and kill Frank. But of course then there would be two unleashed succubae running around in Klyton and nobody really wants that. Still, if you’re willing to pay then Edmond will readily accept your money, and he’ll have the mortal barmaids disfigured and the demonic ones killed. He assures you that unlike Mr. Reynolds this will be a straight up agreement and that the Crimson Talons will not seek to extort your inn in some way. Mainly due to all the Klyton militia and adventurers going there it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. He doesn’t need to risk some do gooder or gung-ho orderly type sniffing around. Of course you’ve been overwhelmed by all this information. Part of you wonders if all this is worth it. You could wait it out, Edmond did claim that Frank probably won’t be able to control them forever; the problem with this is in the meantime it’ll still be cutting into your business. With this new information you could also report Frank to your militia buddies, though this might be difficult without evidence. Still, you’re on good terms with most of the ones that frequent your place and they’ll probably investigate. > You tell the militia You decide to tell Edmond that you think that you’ll wait it out. Edmond nods and remarks that perhaps it’s best you don’t get yourself into this game since it’s slippery slope that you’re libel to get yourself in a lot more trouble that you wouldn’t be equipped to handle. Before you leave he trusts that you won’t be speaking to anyone about your meeting, because if anyone finds out, it won’t matter how many militia buddies you have. You assure him that you remember his pet lizard and that it won’t be a problem. You’re able to get a coach back to inn, naturally it’s a lot later now and everyone is asking you where you’ve been. You explain that you forgot to do something at campus for a class, which seems to satisfy as an excuse. You are a little nervous now about reporting this to the militia after Edmond’s threat, but you figure as long as you keep his name out of it, you’ll be fine. You walk over to one the tables where several militiamen are drinking. Their leader, Sergeant Keller greets you and asks if Wendy’s coming back to the table soon. You aren’t sure how to approach this so you just explain the situation while omitting the way you came about the information. Keller of course is skeptical and naturally asks you how you know this. After dodging several questions, Keller realizes he isn’t going to get anymore information from you. “Alright, something shady is going on here…however if you’re serious about these demons at the Flying Griffon, I suppose it can’t hurt to check it out. We’re not doing this favor for free though. Fifty silvers.” “What!?” “Hey while I’d love to just harass people on a daily basis I really can’t go around abusing his position like that, at least not without a little incentive.” “(Sigh) Yeah, yeah I get it, everyone’s gotta get paid. Fine, let me get it from the back, but you better shut Frank down.” “Oh don’t worry about that. Tomorrow we’ll check the place out and if anything is out of the ordinary, we’ll handle it. If Frank turns out to be an unlicensed mage we’ll run him in, demons or not.” You pay Keller, feel a little better about handling it this way and go about your business for the rest of the night. The next day you get out of class you’re about to board a coach to take you to the inn, but two militiamen stop you. “Sir, you need to come with us.” “What? What did I do?” “Just come with us quickly. Sergeant Keller wants to see you.” Not wishing to cause a scene you board a different coach with the militiamen. You continue to ask them questions, but they say they don’t have any answers. All they know is that they were sent to get you and that you’ll have to speak to their Sergeant about everything. You get very nervous when the coach passes several barracks and through the Klyton south gate. Eventually it stops miles away from Klyton and the militiamen tell you to get out. “What’s going on? What are we doing out of Klyton? Hey!” The two men at this point grab you and roughly throw you out of the carriage. You pick yourself up as quickly as you can and find yourself in front of Sergeant Keller. “You should’ve left well enough alone, college boy.” Keller says. “What the hell’s going on? Did Frank put you up to this?” “Don’t know what you’re talking about, but what I do know is you need to leave Klyton now.” “What?! But…look, you need to tell me what happened. Did you find the demons at Frank’s or…” “Don’t know what you’re talking about and you need to just shut the fuck up and be thankful you’re alive. Now I suggest you go far far away and don’t think about entering Klyton for any reason. Come on let’s go men.” Keller says pushing you aside and heading to the coach. You stand in disbelief as they leave you stranded in the wilderness. It’s obvious something has happened to Keller and probably some of his men. You can only guess that Frank or his demon girls have had something to do with this. The problem is that you can’t really do anything about it. Keller probably already has told his subordinates to capture you if they see you in the city and will probably report you to his superiors as well. The only thing you can think of to do is to head to Teckleville where your aunt Enora lives and send a message to your mom what has happened from there. Of course walking there is a long way from where your current location. They dropped you off practically on the border of elven/sotakan territory which is not a good place to be even if you’re a member of one their savage races let alone an outsider like yourself. You decide the safest course of action is to follow the road back to Klyton and then skirt around it’s edges until you reach the road that will lead to Teckleville. With luck you’ll run across some friendly adventurers or something. As you walk you think about your future and how your plans are now severely altered. Your mom is going to be worried until she hears from you and she’ll probably sell the inn, which is just as well since it’ll no doubt be losing money now. You won’t get to complete your schooling; you won’t get to achieve lots of things really. Shortly after nightfall you begin to tire from all the walking and try to find a place to rest. Following the road might be slightly safer than wandering the wilderness, but highwaymen and ruthless bandits love the roads. A couple of them find you asleep and violently wake you up with a knife to your chest. You gasp one last breath before sleeping forever.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A year has passed and you’re back in college, though it’s not as much fun as it was when you didn’t need to worry about where your tuition was coming from or having something like a job. Finding time to study while running the inn is difficult, but fortunately your mother picks up some of the slack when you really need time. You’ve also managed to re-establish some old contacts with people you were “friends” with before your “break”. Most of them are ahead of you and some are getting ready to graduate. While none of them bothered to stay in contact with you (so much for education breaking down class distinctions) a few of them are still willing to help you out by selling you books for cheap or giving you some of their old notes. Every little bit helps. As for the inn, it’s doing well, but you constantly worry about its future profitability. You’ve got a much broader customer base and even classed the place up a bit, but this isn’t without its drawbacks. Namely the Flying Griffon Inn has stepped up its efforts to get back its customers. This has so far involved an aggressive advertising campaign, hiring a bunch of sexy barmaids and special deals. So far it has helped them a lot and if they continue to succeed, your inn is going to start losing money and you can’t have that. It doesn’t help that your place isn’t in as good of a location as the Flying Griffon So first things first, you need to figure out how to deal with Flying Griffon and you call a staff meeting in the hopes of getting some other ideas on how to deal with them. “Why don’t you just hire someone to cut up their slutty barmaids? I mean that’s what’s mainly getting the main draw right? Seems like you could easily solve the problem by getting rid of them.” Rita says. Naturally this doesn’t go over well with the others. “That’s horrible!” Eliza says “ What? I didn’t say kill them, they’d still be able to work and shit. They just wouldn’t be pretty anymore.” “Have you gotten so jealous that you’ve gone completely barmy? By the gods, we’re not doing that, we’re not the Crimson Talons!” Wendy shouts. As much as disfiguring Flying Griffon’s staff would solve some problems, you hesitate to resort to such measures. “Maybe we could offer deals to traveling merchants like Flying Griffon does, like they get a discount on their rooms?” your mom suggests. “Not sure if that’s going to help us a lot, unless we make an addition to the inn. It’s not like our rooms aren’t being used. If we start giving discount to merchants we might attract them, but we might not have enough rooms to accommodate them or we’ll be accommodating them, but won’t be accommodating adventurer types who are paying full price.” Wendy says. “Well if you’re so knowledgeable Wendy, what’s YOUR solution?” Rita sneers. “We have a lot of Klyton Milita that come here to drink now don’t we? Why don’t we get some of them to help us? Seems like some very public investigation during heavy business hours would help out a lot and ruin the reputation of Flying Griffon. Hell, maybe they’ll even find something and we’ll really get lucky.” You take all these suggestions into consideration, but you can’t help notice that Eliza looks like she wants to say something. “Eliza, do you have a suggestion?” “Huh? Oh. Um…yes…but I... Just forget it. It’s silly anyway. The rest of your ideas sound better.” “Eliza, just spit it out!” Wendy demands. “It’s okay, just tell us.” You say with a lot less intimidation. “Well okay, but it’s silly. I was going to suggest getting someone on the inside to spy on the place and finding something to use against them. It seems odd that they are managing to attract that much attention with just pretty barmaids when we have our own. I think maybe something else is going on there, like an illegal brothel or something.” Most of you are surprised that Eliza came up with something so complex. “Well, that’s a very elaborate plan Eliza, but I think we could accomplish the same thing just by sending in our militia buddies to harass them. Like I said, if they do find anything actually incriminating, then its even better.” “Yes, of course. That sounds like a more efficient idea.” Eliza says. > You go with your mom's idea Mom’s idea seems the least underhanded so you decide to go with that. You realize that you’re going to have to spend more money in actually building the place up, but you figure that you’ll earn more in the long term. So you start to build. It’s a lengthy and expensive process, and the Flying Griffon’s success hasn’t been slowing down and it’s starting to cut into your business. Meanwhile you’re having a hard time concentrating on your schoolwork due to all the stress, you start snapping at everyone which makes the overall atmosphere of the inn a little tense. Eventually your additions get done, and for a while it helps, but ultimately you’ve spent more money than you’re gaining, because whatever the hell the Flying Griffon is doing, they’re still getting more customers. At this rate you won’t make enough to pay for your tuition and you’ll have to drop out again and that won’t exactly endear you to the university who frown upon such chaotic patterns to higher learning even you do manage to raise the money to get back in again. One night it all comes crashing down. “Yes sir, you’ll get your breakfast in the morning at twenty five percent off, so that’s three gold and 4 silvers.” You tell a fat Delantium merchant. “Huh! Highway robbery for a place like this! But I suppose I have no choice as the Flying Griffon is filled up tonight…” “Flying Griffon…Flying Griffon…” you say with a smile before you grab the merchant by his throat. “Hey, ulp!” “You like the Flying fucking Griffon so much well get the fuck outta here and sleep in their doorway you fat piece of shit!” you shout, releasing the merchant roughly so he falls to the floor dropping his coins all over the place. Everyone in the place stops what they’re doing to watch your outburst. As the merchant tries to get up and collect his dropped possessions, you grab your dad’s Troll Gun and point it at him telling him to hurry up or you’re going to blow his head off. At this point several of the Klyton Militia customers tell you to calm down and draw their own weapons, some of which have small flintlock pistols of their own. You mother and several of your staff pleads with you to calm down. It works and the merchant leaves the inn as quickly as possible along with several other customers. The only ones who stay are the militia who insist that you hand over your weapon or they’ll actually arrest you. You comply and state you have to go lie down. When you get to your room you collapse on your bed and fall asleep. When you wake up the next day, you feel like you’re in a daze. You aren’t sure how you’re going to proceed, but your mother has already stepped in for you. “You’re selling the inn?” you say with a sense of familiarity. “Yes, I’m selling this place, it’s going to be the best thing for both of us! Especially you!” “Bullshit! You just don’t want to be here anymore! You’ve said it yourself! If you really cared about me, you’d try to help me with finishing my education. You know like YOU and DAD wanted me to? But why bother right? It was all fucked from the moment dad ran out of money and had to borrow from a loanshark. I never had a chance.” At this point your mother takes your hand. “Son, I’m sorry. We really tried the best we could. We really did want the best for you, but maybe we just aimed too high and as a result you had a lot of pressure on you. I never thought I’d ever see you pull a gun on someone in anger. It was scary to see that side of you because I didn’t raise you to be that way. So I’m going to do the only thing I can think of to help you. I’m selling this inn and you can have ALL of the money I get from it. I don’t know if it’ll be enough that you’ll be able to finish up your classes, but maybe it’ll help. Now doesn’t that sound a little easier?” You have to admit, it does though you’re still concerned about finances. Proper medical school is still really expensive, but you guess you’ll figure something out. “I just want you to know that if something doesn’t work out though, that you’ll always be welcome at your aunt’s house in Teckleville where I’m going to stay. I love you.” You and your mom hug and at that point you feel a little weight lifted off your shoulders. Your mother ends up selling the inn to Frank, the owner of the Flying Griffon. He mentions that he’s a little surprised at the offer considering the new additions built onto the Traveller’s Inn, but he’s willing to pay more than the city will. It’s a lot, but not enough for medical school. You decide maybe while you can’t be a doctor, maybe you can still choose something in medical field, presumably something you’ll be able to afford and not be as stressed all the time. You ultimately become a veterinarian and feel a great sense of accomplishment. The only problem is they aren’t in great demand in Klyton and the few that do exist in the city have the market pretty much cornered, but you do know of a place where they might need one… You move to Teckleville where you make a living treating farm animals and pets like kitties and puppies. Occasionally someone has something more exotic like a purple tailed glittermane, but it’s a quiet life for the most part. You eventually have a family and live the rest of your days there. Sometimes you wonder what would’ve happened if you’d done things a bit differently at the inn, but all things considered it worked out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A year has passed and you’re back in college, though it’s not as much fun as it was when you didn’t need to worry about where your tuition was coming from or having something like a job. Finding time to study while running the inn is difficult, but fortunately your mother picks up some of the slack when you really need time. You’ve also managed to re-establish some old contacts with people you were “friends” with before your “break”. Most of them are ahead of you and some are getting ready to graduate. While none of them bothered to stay in contact with you (so much for education breaking down class distinctions) a few of them are still willing to help you out by selling you books for cheap or giving you some of their old notes. Every little bit helps. As for the inn, it’s doing well, but you constantly worry about its future profitability. You’ve got a much broader customer base and even classed the place up a bit, but this isn’t without its drawbacks. Namely the Flying Griffon Inn has stepped up its efforts to get back its customers. This has so far involved an aggressive advertising campaign, hiring a bunch of sexy barmaids and special deals. So far it has helped them a lot and if they continue to succeed, your inn is going to start losing money and you can’t have that. It doesn’t help that your place isn’t in as good of a location as the Flying Griffon So first things first, you need to figure out how to deal with Flying Griffon and you call a staff meeting in the hopes of getting some other ideas on how to deal with them. “Why don’t you just hire someone to cut up their slutty barmaids? I mean that’s what’s mainly getting the main draw right? Seems like you could easily solve the problem by getting rid of them.” Rita says. Naturally this doesn’t go over well with the others. “That’s horrible!” Eliza says “ What? I didn’t say kill them, they’d still be able to work and shit. They just wouldn’t be pretty anymore.” “Have you gotten so jealous that you’ve gone completely barmy? By the gods, we’re not doing that, we’re not the Crimson Talons!” Wendy shouts. As much as disfiguring Flying Griffon’s staff would solve some problems, you hesitate to resort to such measures. “Maybe we could offer deals to traveling merchants like Flying Griffon does, like they get a discount on their rooms?” your mom suggests. “Not sure if that’s going to help us a lot, unless we make an addition to the inn. It’s not like our rooms aren’t being used. If we start giving discount to merchants we might attract them, but we might not have enough rooms to accommodate them or we’ll be accommodating them, but won’t be accommodating adventurer types who are paying full price.” Wendy says. “Well if you’re so knowledgeable Wendy, what’s YOUR solution?” Rita sneers. “We have a lot of Klyton Milita that come here to drink now don’t we? Why don’t we get some of them to help us? Seems like some very public investigation during heavy business hours would help out a lot and ruin the reputation of Flying Griffon. Hell, maybe they’ll even find something and we’ll really get lucky.” You take all these suggestions into consideration, but you can’t help notice that Eliza looks like she wants to say something. “Eliza, do you have a suggestion?” “Huh? Oh. Um…yes…but I... Just forget it. It’s silly anyway. The rest of your ideas sound better.” “Eliza, just spit it out!” Wendy demands. “It’s okay, just tell us.” You say with a lot less intimidation. “Well okay, but it’s silly. I was going to suggest getting someone on the inside to spy on the place and finding something to use against them. It seems odd that they are managing to attract that much attention with just pretty barmaids when we have our own. I think maybe something else is going on there, like an illegal brothel or something.” Most of you are surprised that Eliza came up with something so complex. “Well, that’s a very elaborate plan Eliza, but I think we could accomplish the same thing just by sending in our militia buddies to harass them. Like I said, if they do find anything actually incriminating, then its even better.” “Yes, of course. That sounds like a more efficient idea.” Eliza says. > You go with Wendy's idea Wendy’s idea requires almost no effort on your part and she’s right, if they are doing something illegal like Eliza suggested then the unexpected militia inspection should catch them off guard and in the act. “Okay let’s get some of our militia buddies to help us.” You say. Wendy smiles and says she’s on good terms with one of the sergeants that drinks here and can easily persuade him to help. You mother doesn’t exactly approve of this and Rita’s not thrilled with you picking Wendy’s idea over hers, but everyone goes along with it. Later, Wendy speaks with Sergeant Keller, who is drinking with a few of his men at a corner table. You watch from the distance at get the impression that something more is going on between Wendy and the Sergeant, but whatever works right? Wendy comes back with a slight smile on her face. “Well?” “He says he’ll do it, but not for free. He wants at least fifty silvers.” “What!?” “He says that while he’d love to just harass people on a daily basis he really can’t go around abusing his position like that, at least not without a little incentive.” “(Sigh) Yeah, yeah I get it, everyone’s gotta get paid. Fine, let me get it from the back, but for that amount of money he better do a good job.” “Oh don’t worry about that.” You pay off the militia and get on with your work for the rest of night. You fully expect them to show up towards closing time, but they never do. Wendy says that maybe they did find something that they made a bunch of arrests. Of course if that was the case, it seems like Keller might’ve sent someone back to at least tell you. You’re hoping they just didn’t pocket the money, but Wendy assures you that Keller wouldn’t have done that. The next day after you get back from class and ready for another grueling day at the inn, you ask Wendy what’s the status on the Flying Griffon and Keller. She says she doesn’t know and that she hasn’t seen him. “What?! Are you kidding me? I know you two got something going on and you’re saying you haven’t seen him?” “Yeah that’s what I said! We’re not fucking married alright? He’s a damn militia man, he might’ve gotten assigned to the Cloudspeak Mountains and his head smashed in by a troll for all I know!” “Who got their head smashed in by troll?” a familiar voice asks. Wendy and you turn to look and see Sergeant Keller with his men. “Where have you been?! I was worried!” Wendy exclaims, running to him. “Just on business, m’love. No need to worry, I’m here now.” “And that still doesn’t answer the question, where have you been? I paid a lot of money, I would’ve appreciated someone telling what exactly happened at the Flying Griffon last night.” You demand causing Sergeant Keller’s eyes to narrow. “Nothing happened. And I don’t know what you’re talking about. In fact I’ve gotten some reports about this place and I’m afraid I need to search it. Please cooperate and things will go smoother.” Keller says as his men start spreading out to search the place. “What the fuck Keller?! Did Frank pay you more money or something?! You fucking sonofabitch!” you shout. “I said mind your tone kid, or I’ll arrest you for interference with an investigation.” Your mom soon comes out of the kitchen and your remaining guests start wondering what’s going on as they’re being pushed out of their rooms. “Son, what’s going on, there’s militia looking all through the kitchen and the cellar!” “Apparently Keller’s a double crossing bastard that’s what…” “Now hold on! I’m sure he’s got a perfectly good explanation for all this!” Wendy says trying to defend him. “Hey Sergeant! We got something here!” At this point one his men comes out with a container that contains several Cloudspeak Rock. “NO! NO! NO FUCKING WAY! You planted that shit there!” you protest. “That wasn’t in there!” your Mom adds “Oh my!” Eliza says. Keller looks at the container and shakes his head. “(Sigh) Y’know I’ve been coming here for awhile now, and I can’t believe that this going on the whole time…” “Now wait a minute! You can’t honestly believe that we were all selling illegal drugs!” Wendy says. “No, I don’t believe you were. But I do believe they were.” Suddenly four of Keller’s men apprehend you and your mother. There’s a lot of protesting and fighting, but of course this only makes things worse. You end up getting a mace to your head and when you wake up you’re in a jail cell with almost all of your staff. “What…what’s going on?” you say rubbing your head and sitting up from the cell floor. “Keller’s gone fucking crazy that’s what and that bitch Wendy is backing him up to save her own ass! I told you we should’ve just went with my plan!” Rita yells. “What the hell are you doing in here? Last thing I remember they took me and mom in for those drugs they claimed we were selling.” “Well they decided to trump up the charges of illegal prostitution as well, so they took in me and those two half elven sluts over there. Yeah right like if I was a prostitute, they’d even be in the same league as me!” “Oh fuck you Rita.” Sunshine says, while Flameflower gives Rita the finger. “Even Eliza?” you say in disbelief at all this. “Um, no. I’m here for assault. I knocked out one of Keller’s men when they were taking you and your mother away. I didn’t mean to, I just got so angry at this great injustice.” Eliza says. “Heh, thanks I guess.” You get off the floor and go sit over with your mother who’s been silent the whole time. She doesn’t have too much to say except that assuming that she doesn’t go to prison, she’s getting the hell out of Klyton. She apologizes to you that you won’t get to achieve your goal, but at this point you’re just worried about not going to prison too. Eventually all of you are released after a couple days. Rita, Flameflower and Sunshine are all given a warning. Eliza somehow manages to avoid real prosecution for assaulting a guard, but for whatever reason she doesn’t get any further punishment. You and your mother aren’t quite as lucky. You don’t have to serve any time fortunately, but the inn is taken away from you and given to the city of Klyton as reparations for your “crimes” against it. Well that’s it then. An end to you future in Klyton. You and your mother have little choice but to move to Teckleville now. And that’s where you go. Your aunt Enora is happy to see you both, and while this whole living with her thing was sprung on her at the last moment it doesn’t seem to bother her. She says there’s plenty of room and you can stay as long as you like. While the house is certainly nice and you’re happy to live there rather than in the street, it’s sort of on the small side and you feel like you have no privacy. Teckleville isn’t anything like you’re used to either. The whole small town thing just doesn’t appeal to you, and you feel trapped with a bunch of boring backwards people. You were supposed to do greater things! You were going to be a doctor! You did everything right and studied hard and what do you have to show for it? Nothing! You’re stuck in some cow town where the best job you can hope to get is probably shoveling shit. Some future. In time, your mother works at the local tavern where she serves as a cook. It’s not much, but it is something she’s used to doing. You manage to get a job working as an assistant to the mean old bastard who runs the general store. It’s a thankless job, but he’s about the only one who’ll hire you since nobody else will work for him and everyone else thinks you have a superiority complex (Which is sort of true) and won’t hire you. The only upside is since you live at your aunt’s house you manage to save what little money you do make and eventually get a place of your own. You always think about moving to the Delantium Kingdom and start fresh again, but you never do. You basically remain in Teckleville where you eventually take over running the general store when the mean old bastard dies, where upon you become the new mean old bastard who runs the general store until you die as well. You often think back about what went wrong at the inn and what might’ve happened if you’d done things differently, but you’ll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A year has passed and you’re back in college, though it’s not as much fun as it was when you didn’t need to worry about where your tuition was coming from or having something like a job. Finding time to study while running the inn is difficult, but fortunately your mother picks up some of the slack when you really need time. You’ve also managed to re-establish some old contacts with people you were “friends” with before your “break”. Most of them are ahead of you and some are getting ready to graduate. While none of them bothered to stay in contact with you (so much for education breaking down class distinctions) a few of them are still willing to help you out by selling you books for cheap or giving you some of their old notes. Every little bit helps. As for the inn, it’s doing well, but you constantly worry about its future profitability. You’ve got a much broader customer base and even classed the place up a bit, but this isn’t without its drawbacks. Namely the Flying Griffon Inn has stepped up its efforts to get back its customers. This has so far involved an aggressive advertising campaign, hiring a bunch of sexy barmaids and special deals. So far it has helped them a lot and if they continue to succeed, your inn is going to start losing money and you can’t have that. It doesn’t help that your place isn’t in as good of a location as the Flying Griffon So first things first, you need to figure out how to deal with Flying Griffon and you call a staff meeting in the hopes of getting some other ideas on how to deal with them. “Why don’t you just hire someone to cut up their slutty barmaids? I mean that’s what’s mainly getting the main draw right? Seems like you could easily solve the problem by getting rid of them.” Rita says. Naturally this doesn’t go over well with the others. “That’s horrible!” Eliza says “ What? I didn’t say kill them, they’d still be able to work and shit. They just wouldn’t be pretty anymore.” “Have you gotten so jealous that you’ve gone completely barmy? By the gods, we’re not doing that, we’re not the Crimson Talons!” Wendy shouts. As much as disfiguring Flying Griffon’s staff would solve some problems, you hesitate to resort to such measures. “Maybe we could offer deals to traveling merchants like Flying Griffon does, like they get a discount on their rooms?” your mom suggests. “Not sure if that’s going to help us a lot, unless we make an addition to the inn. It’s not like our rooms aren’t being used. If we start giving discount to merchants we might attract them, but we might not have enough rooms to accommodate them or we’ll be accommodating them, but won’t be accommodating adventurer types who are paying full price.” Wendy says. “Well if you’re so knowledgeable Wendy, what’s YOUR solution?” Rita sneers. “We have a lot of Klyton Milita that come here to drink now don’t we? Why don’t we get some of them to help us? Seems like some very public investigation during heavy business hours would help out a lot and ruin the reputation of Flying Griffon. Hell, maybe they’ll even find something and we’ll really get lucky.” You take all these suggestions into consideration, but you can’t help notice that Eliza looks like she wants to say something. “Eliza, do you have a suggestion?” “Huh? Oh. Um…yes…but I... Just forget it. It’s silly anyway. The rest of your ideas sound better.” “Eliza, just spit it out!” Wendy demands. “It’s okay, just tell us.” You say with a lot less intimidation. “Well okay, but it’s silly. I was going to suggest getting someone on the inside to spy on the place and finding something to use against them. It seems odd that they are managing to attract that much attention with just pretty barmaids when we have our own. I think maybe something else is going on there, like an illegal brothel or something.” Most of you are surprised that Eliza came up with something so complex. “Well, that’s a very elaborate plan Eliza, but I think we could accomplish the same thing just by sending in our militia buddies to harass them. Like I said, if they do find anything actually incriminating, then its even better.” “Yes, of course. That sounds like a more efficient idea.” Eliza says. > You go with Eliza's idea Eliza’s idea might be a little complicated, but if you’re going sic the Klyton militia on Frank for something, you’d better at least have some sort of evidence to back it up, real or imagined. “Okay Eliza, we’ll go with your plan.” “What?” Rita exclaims. “Are you serious?” Wendy adds. “ Oh, um really?” Eliza says just as surprised as everyone. “Sure and you’re going to be the one to do it.” “Oh I couldn’t…I’m far too shy!” “Oh for…if you’re going to insist on doing this plan, you’ll need someone who can work a room. Of course I’ll expect to be paid extra for this.” Rita volunteers. “Oh I can see this plan is a GREAT idea.” Wendy says rolling her eyes. “Everyone be quiet! I’m not using you Rita because quite frankly too many people already know who you are and you’re too obvious. Eliza needs to do it. She’s practically invisible. No offense.” “Oh none taken, but I just don’t know if I can.” “Of course you can, you came up with the idea right? We just need to hammer out the details.” After a few moments of discussion, Eliza says that the easiest way would be to get hired there as a waitress. If Frank questions her, she’ll say that she didn’t like the environment at your place and her co-workers (especially Rita). It should be enough to convince him, but Eliza’s just worried that she won’t get hired due to her looks. She’s a pretty a girl, but she suffers from low self esteem so you try to boost her up a bit with compliments. Hopefully they work and hopefully this plan works. A few days later the plan is in motion. Eliza “quits” working at your Inn and works for Frank. In your first secret meeting, she tells you he did know who she was, but apparently he didn’t even question her that much. He was too overjoyed that he was taking help away from you that he hired her right away. Though you wonder if that could be a ruse to lull her into some sort of trap, you tell her to be very cautious. The next time you meet Eliza she’s dressed a lot more provocatively than usual. You can’t help but to comment. “Wow, Eliza that uh dress…” “I know. It doesn’t leave much to the imagination does it? I feel like I’m almost walking around naked and everyone is looking.” “Oh don’t worry about it, they were looking even before you dressed like that. You are very attractive after all.” “Oh you don’t need to boost me up anymore, I’m getting over my shyness, though I suppose I don’t have much choice. Now here’s what I’ve found out so far…” Eliza goes on to say that other than having a lot of beautiful girls working for him she hasn’t found anything out of the ordinary yet. He doesn’t seem to be involved in any illegal activity either. “Are you sure there isn’t any prostitution going on?” “That was the first thing I thought of, but it doesn’t look like it. None of the other waitresses are sneaking off with the patrons to some backroom and I haven’t been asked to do anything unseemly either.” “Damn…uh I mean that’s good you weren’t put in that position though. So nothing at all huh?” “Well, the only thing that I noticed that might be odd is two of the girls always seem to be there all the time and sometimes they go off with Frank in the basement for long periods of time. There are rumors that they’re sleeping with him.” “Well sleeping with the boss might be sleazy, but it’s not illegal.” You say. “I dunno if it’s that sleazy, I think people can maintain a healthy relationship even if one is in a higher position than the other.” This odd little quip from Eliza puts you off guard for a moment. “Uh, well sure, but I doubt if that’s the case with those three.” You sputter. “Oh I agree, but the thing is, I get the impression it isn’t necessarily sex. It feels like something else is going on with them. I think it’s still worthwhile to stick around a little longer.” “Okay, but as I’ve said before, be very careful. I wouldn’t want anyone there to find out about you, you’re the only employee I have that doesn’t cause any trouble.” “I will, but thanks for your concern.” You suddenly feel the need to “correct” yourself. “I don’t mean I only care about you as an employee, I mean I also care about you…I mean as a person! Y’know, I don’t want anything to happen to you.” You awkwardly word. “I know what you mean. And thanks again I appreciate it.” Eliza says with a smile. You tell her the next time you want to meet, but if she finds out anything really important to come to you earlier. As she begins to leave you realize you are starting to develop some feelings for Eliza, though you aren’t sure if she feels the same way, but you get the impression that she has also been dropping a few hints. > You say something Things don’t get accomplished by sitting around doing nothing. You have to seize the day! You stand up from your seat and call out to her. “Eliza!” “Yes?” “I like you! Do you like me?” Not exactly the most mature way of “seizing the day” but fortunately for you Eliza is easily amused and she isn’t without her own feelings towards you. After a few moments of talking the pair of you both realize you can’t really do anything major with this relationship now, but after all this spying business is over with you’ll be able to. Except that doesn’t really happen and the pair of you are meeting a lot more frequently. A month passes and Wendy begins to grumble about being short staffed and wonder when the hell Eliza is coming back. “Eliza’s doing important work and I’m sick of hearing criticism about her, so just suck it up and work harder.” You tell Wendy “Are you fucking kidding me? I work like a fucking Dwarven Shieldmaiden around here!” Wendy exclaims. “It’s not like Rita does any damn work except sit around and look pretty, and as for those two halfbreed sluts I have to practically light a fire under their asses in order to get them to do anything. Eliza was the only one who I could reliably count on and now I don’t even have her because she’s fucking you!” “HEY! Watch who the hell you’re talking to!” “Or what? It’s true isn’t it? Don’t think I haven’t noticed the increase in your little meetings with her. Far be it from me to get in the way of young love and all that, but it’s starting to interfere with MY life. Tell me has she even found anything to incriminate Frank yet?” “Well no, but she says there’s still a lot of suspicious stuff going on. She says she thinks she might be on to something soon.” Wendy just shakes her head. “I told you we should’ve just gone with my plan. I’m telling you right now though, I’m not going to put up with being overworked too much longer, so if you expect me to stick around, you better stop playing so much grab ass with her so she can concentrate on her real job.” While Wendy’s words give you something to consider, they’re a little too late. A few days later while you’re going to one of your classes you run into Frank of all people on campus. “So, this is what college is like eh? I believe I probably would’ve liked going to this institution. Having more knowledge is always a good thing.” “Frank…what are you doing here?” “Ah, what I’m doing here, let’s walk and talk, wouldn’t want you to be late for class and all.” You slowly walk with Frank while having a sickening feeling about this whole surprise visit. “Okay m’boy let’s get right to it since you’re obviously about to vomit. I know all about Eliza, quite honestly I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on her reasons for being there in the first place. Stupidness on my part, I suppose I was blinded by the idea that my inn was finally starting to gain more customers again…but this isn’t about my stupidity, it’s about yours.” You stop for a moment as you begin to feel sick to the point that you’re dry heaving. “Oh for…alright I better tell you the good news first before you make a damn scene. Eliza is fine…for now. Anyway let me get to the point. Your inn is mine now.” “What?” “Well your mother’s inn then, or whoever owns it. I’m not unreasonable so I will buy it for a fair price.” “Wait, you just want me to hand over the inn to you?” “No, I said I was offering to buy it…that is unless you don’t really care about your precious Eliza after all.” At this point you get angry and grab Frank by the collar with both hands, causing several passersby to avoid the pair of you. Frank isn’t at all intimidated though. “Attempting to beat the hell out of me isn’t going to improve your situation m’boy. Look you need to just accept the fact that you’ve lost. It’s obvious you have feelings for Eliza, so the logical thing to do is to sell your inn.” “I have friends in the Klyton militia, I could just have them storm your place!” “You could I suppose, but not in time to save Eliza, not to mention that plan might not work out like you think. I have friends of my own too, much more powerful than the Klyton militia.” Frank’s expression is quite serious at this point. Lacking any other ideas, you feebly attempt to bluff. “…well maybe…Eliza will have to be sacrificed for the good of the inn…or…” “Wow, I’m surprised you actually managed to say it, even if you don’t mean it. Even if you were serious, I doubt that even you would want to sacrifice your own child within her.” The shock of this revelation leaves you speechless. “Hmm, didn’t tell you then? She’s not far along and obviously not showing yet but trust me I know. It’s one of the reasons why you’re getting this special generous deal. I’m not exactly heartless even though you probably think I’m being a complete bastard right now. Well I suppose I’ll leave you to it, I imagine you’ll need lots of time to get your stuff in order.” You heart sinks, there’s no way out of this. You’ll have to tell your mother everything and this is definitely going to put an end to your college pursuits for a long time. The transfer isn’t complicated. Your mother isn’t exactly happy about how you bungled all this, but she isn’t willing to sacrifice her future grandchild. Not to mention she was only continuing to help with the inn due to your college fees. She’s been tired of living in Klyton ever since your father died. When you and your mother meet Frank at his inn, he has a couple of his waitresses to get Eliza. She looks none the worse for wear. Frank assures you that apart from keeping her locked up in one of his rooms nothing was done to her. In the following months you eventually marry Eliza and get a job as a lowly clerk filing away insignificant papers and other dull material. You move into a modest apartment and manage to get settled in fairly well due to the money your mother got from selling the inn. She gave most of it to you since she moved to Teckleville to live with her sister Enora. In the months that follow, Eliza finally gives birth to your daughter. You find yourself working a lot and while you aren’t completely unhappy, you begin to feel a sense of dissatisfaction. In the years that follow you’re beginning to feel burned out, you wonder if moving to Teckleville wouldn’t be a good idea, but Eliza says that you wouldn’t be find work there, or at least not the kind that pays well enough to support all of you. You and her begin to argue a lot, mostly over money and how you never seem to have enough of it. Another decade and you’re practically miserable. You’re working at a job that you hate, you live with a wife that you’ve fallen out of love with and you now have two children that are barely obedient. It’s probably just as well that you suddenly suffer from a heart attack due to all the stress. Any longer and you probably would’ve snapped and went on a killing spree. In your last moments you wonder back to your days at the inn and if you could’ve avoided all this had you done things differently there. You’ll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Eliza’s idea might be a little complicated, but if you’re going sic the Klyton militia on Frank for something, you’d better at least have some sort of evidence to back it up, real or imagined. “Okay Eliza, we’ll go with your plan.” “What?” Rita exclaims. “Are you serious?” Wendy adds. “ Oh, um really?” Eliza says just as surprised as everyone. “Sure and you’re going to be the one to do it.” “Oh I couldn’t…I’m far too shy!” “Oh for…if you’re going to insist on doing this plan, you’ll need someone who can work a room. Of course I’ll expect to be paid extra for this.” Rita volunteers. “Oh I can see this plan is a GREAT idea.” Wendy says rolling her eyes. “Everyone be quiet! I’m not using you Rita because quite frankly too many people already know who you are and you’re too obvious. Eliza needs to do it. She’s practically invisible. No offense.” “Oh none taken, but I just don’t know if I can.” “Of course you can, you came up with the idea right? We just need to hammer out the details.” After a few moments of discussion, Eliza says that the easiest way would be to get hired there as a waitress. If Frank questions her, she’ll say that she didn’t like the environment at your place and her co-workers (especially Rita). It should be enough to convince him, but Eliza’s just worried that she won’t get hired due to her looks. She’s a pretty a girl, but she suffers from low self esteem so you try to boost her up a bit with compliments. Hopefully they work and hopefully this plan works. A few days later the plan is in motion. Eliza “quits” working at your Inn and works for Frank. In your first secret meeting, she tells you he did know who she was, but apparently he didn’t even question her that much. He was too overjoyed that he was taking help away from you that he hired her right away. Though you wonder if that could be a ruse to lull her into some sort of trap, you tell her to be very cautious. The next time you meet Eliza she’s dressed a lot more provocatively than usual. You can’t help but to comment. “Wow, Eliza that uh dress…” “I know. It doesn’t leave much to the imagination does it? I feel like I’m almost walking around naked and everyone is looking.” “Oh don’t worry about it, they were looking even before you dressed like that. You are very attractive after all.” “Oh you don’t need to boost me up anymore, I’m getting over my shyness, though I suppose I don’t have much choice. Now here’s what I’ve found out so far…” Eliza goes on to say that other than having a lot of beautiful girls working for him she hasn’t found anything out of the ordinary yet. He doesn’t seem to be involved in any illegal activity either. “Are you sure there isn’t any prostitution going on?” “That was the first thing I thought of, but it doesn’t look like it. None of the other waitresses are sneaking off with the patrons to some backroom and I haven’t been asked to do anything unseemly either.” “Damn…uh I mean that’s good you weren’t put in that position though. So nothing at all huh?” “Well, the only thing that I noticed that might be odd is two of the girls always seem to be there all the time and sometimes they go off with Frank in the basement for long periods of time. There are rumors that they’re sleeping with him.” “Well sleeping with the boss might be sleazy, but it’s not illegal.” You say. “I dunno if it’s that sleazy, I think people can maintain a healthy relationship even if one is in a higher position than the other.” This odd little quip from Eliza puts you off guard for a moment. “Uh, well sure, but I doubt if that’s the case with those three.” You sputter. “Oh I agree, but the thing is, I get the impression it isn’t necessarily sex. It feels like something else is going on with them. I think it’s still worthwhile to stick around a little longer.” “Okay, but as I’ve said before, be very careful. I wouldn’t want anyone there to find out about you, you’re the only employee I have that doesn’t cause any trouble.” “I will, but thanks for your concern.” You suddenly feel the need to “correct” yourself. “I don’t mean I only care about you as an employee, I mean I also care about you…I mean as a person! Y’know, I don’t want anything to happen to you.” You awkwardly word. “I know what you mean. And thanks again I appreciate it.” Eliza says with a smile. You tell her the next time you want to meet, but if she finds out anything really important to come to you earlier. As she begins to leave you realize you are starting to develop some feelings for Eliza, though you aren’t sure if she feels the same way, but you get the impression that she has also been dropping a few hints. > You leave it alone Whatever feelings either of you might have need to be put aside and left alone at least until she’s done with this mission. She needs to focus. A month passes and Wendy begins to grumble about being short staffed and wonder when the hell Eliza is coming back. “Eliza’s doing important work, just hang in there. She’ll be back here on a regular basis soon.” “Well she better. Dunno why you went with her plan anyway, it would’ve been easier to go with mine.” Wendy says. “Maybe, but I wanted to have some extra leverage on Frank if we’re going to report him to our militia friends.” Your gamble pays off, a few days later. Eliza comes running into the inn with something bundled under one of her arms and looking more than a little nervous. She says she needs to talk to you immediately and how important it is. You comply and head to the kitchen where your mother is, since she probably needs to know whatever Eliza has to say as well. “Demons…Frank’s in league with demons!” Eliza blurts out. “What? Are you sure?” you ask. “Yes! I was in his wine cellar getting a special bottle for one of his wealthy merchant customers when a rat passed by and startled me. This caused me to jump back and I hit the wall, but in doing so I must’ve hit some sort of secret button because the wall opened up into a small room. There was blood on the floor, a few bones, and a bunch of symbols drawn everywhere. The thing that stood out though was this!” Eliza drops the bundle on the kitchen table and unwraps the cloth she’s put it in to reveal a large leather bound book with a few symbols written on it. If it isn’t a spell book, it sure looks like one. “Well I suppose we now know Frank’s an unlicensed mage, but are you sure about the demons?” Your mother asks. “Yes! I’ve seen them! I mean everyone has, they just don’t know!” Eliza exclaims. “When I was leaving with the book and closing the secret door, two of the waitresses I work with confronted me. When they showed me their true forms, I was scared for my life. These two in particular had always made me a little nervous. They just had an odd aura about them, never imagined that they were demons though.” “They didn’t try to do anything to you?” “No, they just said that I was very lucky Frank neglected to be thorough when drawing up his contract with them. I think they saw me as a potential loophole out of their service to him. I know they never really seemed fond of Frank.” “Well whatever the reason, I’m glad you’re safe. I suppose now we should go inform the Klyton militia.” You say. After bringing the book to Klyton sergeant and Eliza repeating her story to them, they take action immediately. Unlicensed magery is a very series offense, let alone cavorting with demons. Naturally you don’t witness the raid; in fact the Klyton militia tries its best to section off the area beforehand, but given that Frank’s place is in a high traffic area and is already pretty popular, it’s not an entirely successful endeavor. A group of heavily armed Klyton militia with sanctioned wizards as support tends to draw attention. Fortunately it doesn’t end in a big explosion and hundreds dead. It ends with a few smaller explosions and only a couple dozen dead instead. Unfortunately it also ends with the one of the demons escaping as well. For a while there’s a lock down on the entire city as the Klyton militia tries to maintain order as well as searching for the thing, eventually nothing comes of it and it is assumed that the succubus flew away to a place where it could hunt for new prey a lot easier. (Probably Hessla). During this time, the inn was pretty busy since several merchants couldn’t leave the city right away, not to mention some of the regulars drinking a little more to calm themselves of a possible demon running around, so it works out for you pretty well. After everything is said and done, you have enough money to continue your education and with this financial pressure off, you easily pass the rest of your classes with no worries. Of course now you’re in your final stages of your education, which means medical school as well as actually having to get a job actually working at a hospital. The only problem with that is being an intern doesn’t pay all that well and you certainly can’t do that AND work at the bar. Your mother reassures you that you shouldn’t worry about it as she’ll be able to hire a couple extra people as well as being able to help with the rest of your tuition. In any case it looks like your days as an innkeeper are over. > You future Plans A few years have passed and your medical schooling is complete and you now work at the Klyton hospital as a real doctor. Your personal life has changed quite a bit over the past few years as well. You currently live in an apartment near the hospital with a fellow medical student. Actually she’s your girlfriend. It started out as a simple roommates thing, but then it developed into something a little more. Cindy still has a year of schooling to go, and you now have a job at the hospital so you weren’t planning on going anywhere just yet. However Cindy suggests that the pair of you should leave for the Delantium Kingdom, specifically Sivak, which is the closest big city. She mentions that there are more opportunities there and she would prefer living there as well. You don’t really have any specific objections against going there, it’s just you’ve never left Klyton, so you’re probably a little nervous especially since you’ve managed to succeed in getting a good job here and maintain a friendly relationship with most of the people you work beside. Well you have a year to hammer out all the plans in the meantime you’re on your way to visit your mother. You don’t see her as much as you used to but she is of course very proud of you and mentions that your father would be too if he were still alive. After all it was always his goal to make sure that you went into medicine for a career. When you get to the Traveler’s Inn, it never ceases to amaze you how much the place has changed and how much it has grown since the days when you were little. Wendy does most of the day to day inn management nowadays, leaving your mom to concentrate on the cooking, which she prefers in the first place. Rita still works there surprisingly enough. Apparently she found it a lot better to just hook up with various rich guys for a short period of time to get some gifts and then remain single. Eliza is the new head barmaid. You guess that experience with the whole Griffon Inn situation boosted her confidence. She even managed to turn Flameflower and Sunshine into productive employees! You remember how friendly you were to each other and how sometimes it seemed like there was the potential for more there, but neither one of you seriously pursued it. “Well, haven’t seen you in awhile Mr. big shot doctor. You still with that…girl?” Rita asks when you walk in. “Her name’s Cindy and yes I am, Rita. What’s it to you anyway?” “Nothing, can’t I be concerned for your well being? I mean we have known each other for a long time and all.” “Hm. Well I’m fine. Where’s my mom?” “She’s in the kitchen as usual.” You walk past Rita, shaking your head at her sudden interest in you now that you have a good paying job. As you approach the bar, Wendy notices you. “I see the great doctor has come for a visit. Taking a break from that girl you shacked up with huh? Anyway your mom is in the kitchen.” She says and then goes back to talking with some of the patrons. When you enter the kitchen your mom turns around to see you and smiles before rushing to give you a big hug. “Aw mom.” You say not wanting all this fuss. “Hey indulge me, I don’t get to see you as much as I used to. So how have you been? What’s going on? Are you still with…that girl?” “Her name’s Cindy, geez why doesn’t anyone like her? Rita and Wendy both made some snide remark about her as I came walking in.” “Sorry son, I’m sure Cindy’s a nice girl and all, but the couple times you visited here with her, she was a bit pretentious, and you know Wendy doesn’t care for people like that. As for Rita, well I’m sure you know why she’s acts the way she does by now.” “ Okay I know Cindy has a bit of that upper class personality, but Eliza was the only one who even tried to be friendly with Cindy the last time she was here!” “Eliza would be friendly to a mountain troll as long as it wasn’t eating her. It’s just her nature. Not to mention she thinks you’re happy with Cindy so she’s happy for you.” “So, why can’t you be happy for me?” “Who said I wasn’t? If that’s who you want then good! I’m all for it. The question though is are you happy?” “Of course I am! I wouldn’t be moving with her to Sivak by next year if I wasn’t! That’s sort of why I came here today. I wanted to let you know, I’ll be leaving Klyton soon.” You mother doesn’t seem too emotional about this revelation, you were sort of expecting more tears or celebration. Instead she just sighs and heads off to cut some vegetables, before speaking again. “Hmm, okay. Well as long as you’re sure that’s what you want to do.” “Why wouldn’t it? I mean there are more opportunities in Sivak than there are here for me and Cindy. You didn’t want me to stay did you? I thought you were going to sell this place and move to Teckleville anyway.” “No, of course I don’t want you to stay for me! Geez, I can manage just fine. Your father and I always knew the day would come that you’d move far away. As for selling this place, eh, I’m not sure yet. It is true that after your father died, my main motivation was to keep this place running to help continue paying for your education. I figured after that goal was reached I would indeed retire to Teckleville. I dunno now though. I guess after all the stuff we went through to keep this place, not to mention making it better, I’ve become more attached to it again.” Now you’re sort of surprised to hear her say that, you thought for sure that she was fully intending on moving back to Teckleville. “Well, no matter where you are, I hope you know I’ll visit.” You say. “Oh of course, I wasn’t worried about that. Well anyway I have to finish preparing this drakling. Some adventurers can’t ever order something simple, well at least they brought it in themselves I suppose.” At this point you and your mother say goodbye to each other and you walk out of the kitchen. On your way out you bump into Eliza. “Hey you! I haven’t seen you in a long time! How have you been? Are things going well for you and Cindy?” You smile at the fact that she remembered your girlfriend’s name. “I’ve been okay. I heard about you being the head waitress now, congratulation.” “Thanks, I’m actually running a little late right now. I’ll have to talk with you later, maybe we should meet sometime when we’re not both busy.” “Um…yeah maybe. Well see you later.” You say and quickly leave the area. As you leave you feel a mixture of guilt, anxiety and confusion. Part of you wants to go back. You don’t know if you have real feelings for Eliza or you’re just deliberately thinking about sabotaging things so you don’t have to move away from Klyton. > You make plans to meet with Eliza You go back to the inn. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but you’re doing it. “Back so soon doc?” Rita says as you ignore her and look for Eliza. You instinctively head back to the kitchen where you find her talking to some of the other staff members. “Eliza, I have to talk to you!” you say anxiously. “Um…okay, I’m almost done here.” You wait impatiently for Eliza to finish talking to her subordinates, while you’re doing that your mother is eyeing you suspiciously as she begins cooking a large piece of meat. You can’t wait here! This was a mistake! You have to leave now! You rush out of the kitchen, but you don’t get far when you feel Eliza’s hand grab your shoulder. “Hey, where are you going? I thought you had to talk to me.” She says. You turn around and nothing comes out. You just take one look at her face and you can’t contain yourself. You grab and kiss her right on the lips. This is followed by a few cheers and claps from the patrons in the bar. “Huh, took him long enough to realize it.” Wendy says and goes back to cleaning the bar. Eliza’s response is pure shock. She doesn’t know what to do except run into the ladies room. You call out to her before realizing you’ve done this in front of several onlookers. You panic again and run into the kitchen. “What’s going on out there? Did I hear you call out Eliza’s name? What did you do?” “I…I fucked up…” you blurt out. You quickly explain what just happened and your mother shakes her head while throwing a washcloth on the table. “(Sigh) I KNEW something was up when you wanted to talk to her and were acting more jittery than a goblin caught in a troll’s larder. I don’t know what to tell you son except you’ve handled this poorly. This is definitely something you’re going to have to fix yourself, but you need to do it soon, because Eliza’s one of the best employees here and I don’t need her all upset right now.” You think about slipping out the back, but your mother’s right, you need to take care of this now. At least part of it, because you’ll need to take care of the rest tonight when you talk to Cindy. You sheepishly exit the kitchen wondering if everyone will be looking. Most glance your way, but go back to their business. “She’s down in the cellar doctor love.” Wendy says. Not saying another word you go down to the cellar. You see Eliza trying to keep busy by taking stock of the beer casks with another employee you don’t know. “Eliza.” “I can’t talk anymore, I really have to make sure we have enough beer this month. Our shipment is a little late. It was nice seeing you.” She answers without looking in your direction. “Eliza we need to talk about what just happened.” “I think we should just forget about it. Shouldn’t you be getting home? I’m sure Cindy will be wondering about where you are.” At this point you grab Eliza again and tell the stock boy to leave, he doesn’t seem to want to get involved in whatever drama you two have so he complies. “Let me go.” “Okay, but we’re gonna talk!” “Talk about what? About me being the other woman? I don’t want to be that and Cindy doesn’t deserve it! I don’t deserve it!” “I’m gonna break up with Cindy! I want you. I know that now. I should’ve acted on it earlier…” “You certainly should have! (sob) Do you know how much I wanted you to say something? Years! From the moment you came back to this inn after your father died, I wanted you to say something. Now it’s too late!” “It’s not too late! I just said I’ll break up with Cindy then we can be together!” “Just like that huh? You can toss her aside so easily? I thought you were in love with her.” “I was…I mean…no…agh! Shit look, I want to be with you! Why are you making this so difficult?” “Because it IS fucking difficult! (sob) I had just come to accept the fact that you and I were never going to happen no matter how much I wanted it. (sob) And now you come back and stir all my emotions up, because you’re having doubts about your relationship with Cindy? What the hell happens when you start having doubts about me one day?” “That wouldn’t happen…” “How do I know? I mean… (sniffle) we’ve never even gone out on a date. How do you know if we’re even going to be compatible?” “Well let’s go on one right now. Anywhere you want!” “Just leave me alone. I need time to myself.” You try to touch Eliza to reassure her, but she flinches away. You don’t say anything else and leave her be like she wanted. On your way home you think about everything and how badly it all went. You didn’t know Eliza pined after you for so long. You really had no idea. If you did you would’ve… Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve, doesn’t really matter now. What matters now is what you’re going to do about all this. Eliza also brought up a good point on how can you possibly know that you’re compatible and how it looks like you’re just reaching out to her because of your doubts with Cindy. Speaking of Cindy, you need to figure out what you’re going to say to her when you get home. > You stay with Cindy Given that Eliza didn’t seem to happy with you, your future with her seems unlikely. You see now that you missed that opportunity a long time ago and that you need to move on from this folly. You just hope that you’ll be able to and that none of this will get back to Cindy. When you get home, Cindy asks where you’ve been and you tell her you visited your mother at the inn. You don’t really elaborate anymore than that, but Cindy doesn’t ask anything further as she’s not too interested in what’s ever going on there in the first place. During your last remaining year in Klyton, you don’t visit your family’s inn anymore as a safety precaution. You try to go on about your life though the fear of Cindy finding out what might’ve happened is always in the back of your mind. Granted Cindy’s not likely to visit the inn anytime soon, but what happens if one of those miners goes to the hospital for a broken leg or something? What if he sees you and asks how Eliza is in the “sack?” What if Cindy is with you when he asks that question? What if Eliza herself comes down and causes a scene? “Hey you! Come here we need another doctor in ER!” a nurse shouts at you. You stop your current daydreaming and quickly follow her to the emergency room “She’s not breathing!” “Does anyone know what she took?” “Her employer said she thinks it was Bog Malice.” The noisy chaos of the emergency room seems to go silent when you step forward to see the girl lying on the table. It’s Eliza. “Don’t just stand there, hand me that pump!” You snap out of your daze and grab the pump the surgeon asked for. “This isn’t working, the poison’s too damn strong. Her body is probably completely shutting down. Where the hell are those electro-gauntlets?” “NO, she can’t die!” you shout. “Hand me a syringe of Troll Adrenaline!” “Troll Adrenaline? Her body can’t take that!” a nurse says “She’s already fucking dying! Somebody gimme that syringe now!” You shove the syringe deep into her chest and inject the adenaline. This causes Eliza’s body to begin to twitch violently and she even opens her eyes. She then spits up a mixture of blood and some sort of black fluid. “Huuuuuuuuuu!” Eliza wheezes A nurse rushes in with electro-gauntlets and you grab them immediately and lay your hands on Eliza’s chest. “CLEAR!” BUZZ! “CLEAR!” BUZZ! “CLEAR!” BUZZ! SPARK! FWOOM! The electro-gauntlets short out and you end up giving yourself a nasty zap causing you to fall to the floor. It doesn’t take you long to realize the gauntlets are also on fire. You shake them off immediately. You smell the scent of burnt flesh and scramble back up to help Eliza who has now once again ceased to move. “Oh shit, shit! I’m sorry Eliza! I’m so fucking sorry!” you say and begin pounding on her chest, but it’s no use “You tried everything you could my boy, she’s gone.” The surgeon says trying to calm you down. “No, but look her foot just twitched, she…” “That twitch was just an after effect of the troll adrenaline. (Sigh) Never gets easy losing a patient…and I gather you knew this one personally?” “…yeah…she…yeah…” You stumble out of the emergency room and see your mother who must’ve been the one who brought her here. “Son! Is Eliza…” “She’s dead.” After the funeral you take time off from work. Cindy tries to be sympathetic, but the fact that you feel really guilty over Eliza’s death and incredibly broken up about it leads her to quite rightly think that you had stronger feelings for her than you let on. Ultimately Cindy breaks up with you and eventually moves back to the Delantium Kingdom by herself. Eventually you go back to work and continue on with your life. You never do forgive yourself for Eliza’s death though and immerse yourself in your work. As for your family’s inn, your mother continues to run it until the day she dies. You get the impression her concern for you caused her to stay rather than retire to Teckleville like she once planned. Upon her death you sell the inn, as you have no desire to run the place. The owner of a chain of inns from the Delantium Kingdom ends up buying it. Due to your focus on your job, you end up becoming a more dedicated doctor with many patients speaking highly of you. In time you even win an Excellence in Medicine Award. You graciously accept these awards and praise, but you always think back of what you should’ve done differently to save the one life you feel directly responsible. You think Eliza’s suicide could’ve been prevented if only you’d kept your mouth shut that day. Or maybe you should’ve pursued her harder. Or maybe you should’ve done something else. You routinely mentally torture yourself with all the possible better ways you think you could’ve handled things. As a result you never marry and place flowers on her grave site on a weekly basis. Your own death is a sudden one at home that comes to you many years later well into an age when you should’ve long retired. When your body is found, your last request in your will is carried out. Your body is cremated and the ashes sprinkled over Eliza’s grave.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You go back to the inn. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but you’re doing it. “Back so soon doc?” Rita says as you ignore her and look for Eliza. You instinctively head back to the kitchen where you find her talking to some of the other staff members. “Eliza, I have to talk to you!” you say anxiously. “Um…okay, I’m almost done here.” You wait impatiently for Eliza to finish talking to her subordinates, while you’re doing that your mother is eyeing you suspiciously as she begins cooking a large piece of meat. You can’t wait here! This was a mistake! You have to leave now! You rush out of the kitchen, but you don’t get far when you feel Eliza’s hand grab your shoulder. “Hey, where are you going? I thought you had to talk to me.” She says. You turn around and nothing comes out. You just take one look at her face and you can’t contain yourself. You grab and kiss her right on the lips. This is followed by a few cheers and claps from the patrons in the bar. “Huh, took him long enough to realize it.” Wendy says and goes back to cleaning the bar. Eliza’s response is pure shock. She doesn’t know what to do except run into the ladies room. You call out to her before realizing you’ve done this in front of several onlookers. You panic again and run into the kitchen. “What’s going on out there? Did I hear you call out Eliza’s name? What did you do?” “I…I fucked up…” you blurt out. You quickly explain what just happened and your mother shakes her head while throwing a washcloth on the table. “(Sigh) I KNEW something was up when you wanted to talk to her and were acting more jittery than a goblin caught in a troll’s larder. I don’t know what to tell you son except you’ve handled this poorly. This is definitely something you’re going to have to fix yourself, but you need to do it soon, because Eliza’s one of the best employees here and I don’t need her all upset right now.” You think about slipping out the back, but your mother’s right, you need to take care of this now. At least part of it, because you’ll need to take care of the rest tonight when you talk to Cindy. You sheepishly exit the kitchen wondering if everyone will be looking. Most glance your way, but go back to their business. “She’s down in the cellar doctor love.” Wendy says. Not saying another word you go down to the cellar. You see Eliza trying to keep busy by taking stock of the beer casks with another employee you don’t know. “Eliza.” “I can’t talk anymore, I really have to make sure we have enough beer this month. Our shipment is a little late. It was nice seeing you.” She answers without looking in your direction. “Eliza we need to talk about what just happened.” “I think we should just forget about it. Shouldn’t you be getting home? I’m sure Cindy will be wondering about where you are.” At this point you grab Eliza again and tell the stock boy to leave, he doesn’t seem to want to get involved in whatever drama you two have so he complies. “Let me go.” “Okay, but we’re gonna talk!” “Talk about what? About me being the other woman? I don’t want to be that and Cindy doesn’t deserve it! I don’t deserve it!” “I’m gonna break up with Cindy! I want you. I know that now. I should’ve acted on it earlier…” “You certainly should have! (sob) Do you know how much I wanted you to say something? Years! From the moment you came back to this inn after your father died, I wanted you to say something. Now it’s too late!” “It’s not too late! I just said I’ll break up with Cindy then we can be together!” “Just like that huh? You can toss her aside so easily? I thought you were in love with her.” “I was…I mean…no…agh! Shit look, I want to be with you! Why are you making this so difficult?” “Because it IS fucking difficult! (sob) I had just come to accept the fact that you and I were never going to happen no matter how much I wanted it. (sob) And now you come back and stir all my emotions up, because you’re having doubts about your relationship with Cindy? What the hell happens when you start having doubts about me one day?” “That wouldn’t happen…” “How do I know? I mean… (sniffle) we’ve never even gone out on a date. How do you know if we’re even going to be compatible?” “Well let’s go on one right now. Anywhere you want!” “Just leave me alone. I need time to myself.” You try to touch Eliza to reassure her, but she flinches away. You don’t say anything else and leave her be like she wanted. On your way home you think about everything and how badly it all went. You didn’t know Eliza pined after you for so long. You really had no idea. If you did you would’ve… Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve, doesn’t really matter now. What matters now is what you’re going to do about all this. Eliza also brought up a good point on how can you possibly know that you’re compatible and how it looks like you’re just reaching out to her because of your doubts with Cindy. Speaking of Cindy, you need to figure out what you’re going to say to her when you get home. > You break up with Cindy You have to go for this. Even if doesn’t work out you’ll always be wondering “What if?” But before you can do anything, you have to break up with Cindy first. You aren’t looking forward to it, but in a way you feel it’s probably for the best no matter what happens with Eliza. You don’t particularly want to move and you’re happy where you’re at right now. Cindy’s been dominating your relationship since you’ve been together and it’s time to put an end to it. When you get home, Cindy’s already there questioning where you’ve been. You take a deep breath and say what’s on your mind about her whole plan to move and how you’re not into the idea. This of course has the predictable result of causing an argument, but Cindy’s not an idiot. She KNOWS there is more to it than just the moving. She continues to press the issue of where you’ve been before you came to tell her this new revelation. Eventually you just tell her everything about how you also have feelings for Eliza. Cindy becomes very upset and even throws a few objects at you before attempting to hit you with her fists. You manage to fend her off long enough so she stops and just resorts to calling you every swear word in the human language (and a few in some other languages!) before starting to pack her belongings. “Cindy, I’m really sorry, I didn’t want it to be like this, I just…” “Save it asshole. I can’t believe I fell for you! I see now that you can take the boy out of the gutter, but you can’t take the gutter out of the boy. I hope you and your trashy barmaid have a good life together because you certainly deserve each other. Oh and don’t think you’re getting away with this insult. My wrath will be terrible. This, I fucking vow dickhead!” And with that Cindy leaves while slamming the door of your apartment. It went about as well as you could’ve expected. All you have to do now is talk to Eliza again. You figure you should probably give her a couple days before do so though. A few days pass and after work you head over to the inn. “Oh it’s you. I suppose you’re looking for Eliza, well she’s here. Dunno where though. Y’know, you should’ve just tried to hook up with me instead. Hell I wouldn’t have even cared if you still wanted to stay with Cindy.” Rita says. “Yeah, just as long as I bought you something nice and expensive right? Sorry, I don’t go for gold digging whores.” “Oh fuck you, Mr. big shot doctor! Don’t try to play moral superiority on me with all the drama you got going on!” “I wasn’t playing anything and none of this is about you anyway, despite the fact that you like to think everything is.” You retort and leave. After a quick scan of the room, you don’t see Eliza. You head over to the bar where Wendy is located. “Wendy where’s Eliza?” “You’re back a lot earlier than I expected. You just cost me 20 coppers in the bet we had going. But nevermind all that, I’d just like to say, that you really fucked up with how you handled this situation. I hope you’ve at least had the sense to break over with that snooty bitch before trying this again.” “Cindy’s not…” you begin to say still feeling the need to defend her, but you stop yourself “(Sigh) Yeah, yeah I did. And I’m probably going to pay for it later.” “We all pay for our mistakes in some way. She’s in the kitchen. And hey! Be gentle with her, she’s been upset for the past few days and in a fragile state right now.” You nod and enter the kitchen. Upon entering the kitchen all eyes turn to you. Eliza’s, your mother’s, the other workers you don’t know, everyone. You half expect Eliza to run off again, but she doesn’t in fact she seems ready to confront you. “Um, Flameflower can you be in charge of the staff for a little while?” she asks. “Can I? I’ve waited for this day to come!” Flameflower gleefully says in semi-power drunk glee and then telling everyone to quickly get to work. Her sister Sunshine looks a little jealous. You knew Eliza had managed to instill a work ethic into them, but you didn’t think either of them would jump on the chance for more responsibility. “If you two are going to talk here at the inn, I suggest one of the empty rooms upstairs and I’d rather you not cause such a scene this time.” You mother says. “We won’t.” You and Eliza exit the kitchen through the back way. “Hey wait doesn’t this lead to your family’s living quarters?” Eliza asks. “Yeah, and what better place to talk? Nobody will be there, nobody will interrupt us and if something upsetting does happen, a scene won’t be caused.” You take Eliza to the living area to talk. You notice she’s shaking a bit. “How come you’re shaking?” “I’m nervous. I’ve been nervous about all this for the past few days. I didn’t know what was going to come next. I didn’t even know if you were going to come back after what I said to you.” “What you said? If anything, I should be the one apologizing for all the stuff I did. I mean I mean you were right, I dumped all this stuff on to you suddenly, I also just grabbed and kissed you the way I did. That was really out of line, I’m sorry about that.” “It wasn’t so much the kiss that bothered me, it was just the situation in which it happened really. I always believed our first kiss…if we ever had one, would be under different circumstances.” You take a deep breath before continuing. “Well I feel you should know, I’ve broken up with Cindy.” “You really broke up with her?” “Yes, she’s vowed revenge on me and everything.” “Revenge? You don’t think she’ll do anything crazy or violent do you?” “I don’t think so and least I hope not. Look, I’ll deal with it when it happens. The point is, I want you to know is I’m here for YOU now. If this means your ready, then I’m ready too. If this means you still need some time, I’ll back off and wait. If that means you don’t want me at all, then fine I’ll leave you alone.” Eliza takes your hand. “I don’t want you to leave. I’ve waited a long time for this moment, but I still have concerns about whether we’ll really be happy together or not. I mean what if you come to the conclusion one day that you’ve made a mistake breaking up with Cindy. I’d hate for you to start resenting me for that.” “Eliza, my breaking up with Cindy wasn’t only for you. I mean I hate to admit it, but yeah perhaps there were selfish reasons for breaking up with her as well. Like not wanting to have her plan our entire life out with minimal say on my part. I really should’ve broken up with her earlier (Sigh) I really did handle this poorly. I just hope you can forgive me for putting you through all this.” Your talk with Eliza goes on for awhile, eventually you both agree on taking things slow at first, but the pair of you are pretty happy about this new relationship. Time passes and your relationship with Eliza is going well. Unfortunately Cindy is true to her word and takes revenge even after she leaves Klyton. She doesn’t do it directly, but rather indirectly, namely through her father’s business connections. The price of booze distributed to your family’s inn is increased, the food too. Most of the traveling merchants that used to stay at the inn now have taken their business elsewhere. Your family’s inn takes a huge loss, and it ends up resulting in laying off most of the staff. While your mother could keep the place running even with all the cut backs, she ultimately decides it isn’t worth it and sells it altogether in a few years. Naturally Cindy’s father makes sure his people are the ones that get a hold of it. The revenge tries to continue on directly through price gouging from a few shops you buy from, but you manage to put an end to that, by reminding the various owners that you’re a doctor and how pissing you off might not be beneficial for their health plan should they ever get sick in the future. You apologize to your mother for the situation with the inn however, but she tells you not to worry about it. She got enough from the sale and is moving to Teckleville like she originally planned. She just hopes that you and Eliza will visit every once in awhile. With Eliza out of a job, she moves in with you. It becomes permanent when you get married. Eventually you also move to Teckleville to start a private practice and soon Eliza gives birth to twins and you start the next phase of your relationship as a family. Overall your life with Eliza is a good one and you never regret your decision even if it did result in the loss of your family’s inn. Besides you always had the best thing that was ever connected to that place and really that’s what was important.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A few years have passed and your medical schooling is complete and you now work at the Klyton hospital as a real doctor. Your personal life has changed quite a bit over the past few years as well. You currently live in an apartment near the hospital with a fellow medical student. Actually she’s your girlfriend. It started out as a simple roommates thing, but then it developed into something a little more. Cindy still has a year of schooling to go, and you now have a job at the hospital so you weren’t planning on going anywhere just yet. However Cindy suggests that the pair of you should leave for the Delantium Kingdom, specifically Sivak, which is the closest big city. She mentions that there are more opportunities there and she would prefer living there as well. You don’t really have any specific objections against going there, it’s just you’ve never left Klyton, so you’re probably a little nervous especially since you’ve managed to succeed in getting a good job here and maintain a friendly relationship with most of the people you work beside. Well you have a year to hammer out all the plans in the meantime you’re on your way to visit your mother. You don’t see her as much as you used to but she is of course very proud of you and mentions that your father would be too if he were still alive. After all it was always his goal to make sure that you went into medicine for a career. When you get to the Traveler’s Inn, it never ceases to amaze you how much the place has changed and how much it has grown since the days when you were little. Wendy does most of the day to day inn management nowadays, leaving your mom to concentrate on the cooking, which she prefers in the first place. Rita still works there surprisingly enough. Apparently she found it a lot better to just hook up with various rich guys for a short period of time to get some gifts and then remain single. Eliza is the new head barmaid. You guess that experience with the whole Griffon Inn situation boosted her confidence. She even managed to turn Flameflower and Sunshine into productive employees! You remember how friendly you were to each other and how sometimes it seemed like there was the potential for more there, but neither one of you seriously pursued it. “Well, haven’t seen you in awhile Mr. big shot doctor. You still with that…girl?” Rita asks when you walk in. “Her name’s Cindy and yes I am, Rita. What’s it to you anyway?” “Nothing, can’t I be concerned for your well being? I mean we have known each other for a long time and all.” “Hm. Well I’m fine. Where’s my mom?” “She’s in the kitchen as usual.” You walk past Rita, shaking your head at her sudden interest in you now that you have a good paying job. As you approach the bar, Wendy notices you. “I see the great doctor has come for a visit. Taking a break from that girl you shacked up with huh? Anyway your mom is in the kitchen.” She says and then goes back to talking with some of the patrons. When you enter the kitchen your mom turns around to see you and smiles before rushing to give you a big hug. “Aw mom.” You say not wanting all this fuss. “Hey indulge me, I don’t get to see you as much as I used to. So how have you been? What’s going on? Are you still with…that girl?” “Her name’s Cindy, geez why doesn’t anyone like her? Rita and Wendy both made some snide remark about her as I came walking in.” “Sorry son, I’m sure Cindy’s a nice girl and all, but the couple times you visited here with her, she was a bit pretentious, and you know Wendy doesn’t care for people like that. As for Rita, well I’m sure you know why she’s acts the way she does by now.” “ Okay I know Cindy has a bit of that upper class personality, but Eliza was the only one who even tried to be friendly with Cindy the last time she was here!” “Eliza would be friendly to a mountain troll as long as it wasn’t eating her. It’s just her nature. Not to mention she thinks you’re happy with Cindy so she’s happy for you.” “So, why can’t you be happy for me?” “Who said I wasn’t? If that’s who you want then good! I’m all for it. The question though is are you happy?” “Of course I am! I wouldn’t be moving with her to Sivak by next year if I wasn’t! That’s sort of why I came here today. I wanted to let you know, I’ll be leaving Klyton soon.” You mother doesn’t seem too emotional about this revelation, you were sort of expecting more tears or celebration. Instead she just sighs and heads off to cut some vegetables, before speaking again. “Hmm, okay. Well as long as you’re sure that’s what you want to do.” “Why wouldn’t it? I mean there are more opportunities in Sivak than there are here for me and Cindy. You didn’t want me to stay did you? I thought you were going to sell this place and move to Teckleville anyway.” “No, of course I don’t want you to stay for me! Geez, I can manage just fine. Your father and I always knew the day would come that you’d move far away. As for selling this place, eh, I’m not sure yet. It is true that after your father died, my main motivation was to keep this place running to help continue paying for your education. I figured after that goal was reached I would indeed retire to Teckleville. I dunno now though. I guess after all the stuff we went through to keep this place, not to mention making it better, I’ve become more attached to it again.” Now you’re sort of surprised to hear her say that, you thought for sure that she was fully intending on moving back to Teckleville. “Well, no matter where you are, I hope you know I’ll visit.” You say. “Oh of course, I wasn’t worried about that. Well anyway I have to finish preparing this drakling. Some adventurers can’t ever order something simple, well at least they brought it in themselves I suppose.” At this point you and your mother say goodbye to each other and you walk out of the kitchen. On your way out you bump into Eliza. “Hey you! I haven’t seen you in a long time! How have you been? Are things going well for you and Cindy?” You smile at the fact that she remembered your girlfriend’s name. “I’ve been okay. I heard about you being the head waitress now, congratulation.” “Thanks, I’m actually running a little late right now. I’ll have to talk with you later, maybe we should meet sometime when we’re not both busy.” “Um…yeah maybe. Well see you later.” You say and quickly leave the area. As you leave you feel a mixture of guilt, anxiety and confusion. Part of you wants to go back. You don’t know if you have real feelings for Eliza or you’re just deliberately thinking about sabotaging things so you don’t have to move away from Klyton. > You go home You never really had a relationship with Eliza on any romantic level; it’s probably just the “idea of Eliza” that’s getting to you. Your life is probably going to change a lot in the near future so your mind is starting to look for loopholes to stay. But you shake off these feelings. Your life is going good right now, why jeopardize it with poor judgment and fear of the unknown? You overcame hardship to get where you are now. To invite more drama when it isn’t necessary would be foolish. You head home and when Cindy is finished with her classes you take her out for romantic dinner to reaffirm your dedication of your future plans together. This seems to please her greatly. During your last remaining year in Klyton, you don’t visit your family’s inn anymore as a safety precaution. You don’t need doubt plaguing your thoughts again. You do make one more visit to your mom before you do eventually leave though. Thanks to Cindy’s family connections in the Delantium Kingdom, your job at the Sivak hospital is more or less secured (Obviously hers is as well), though they were in need of more medical professionals anyway. The hospital there is a little newer and understaffed, so for a while you’re working a little more than you usually did, but over time your workload becomes manageable. Your life in general plays out rather mundanely, you end up living in a nice area and eventually you have a couple of children. No major problems for you ever truly crop up though. As for the old inn, your mother eventually does sell it a few years after you initially left Klyton and retires to Teckleville. On one of your family visits you ask who bought the place and she says Wendy ended up taking it over, which doesn’t surprise you. Curiosity gets the better of you and you ask your mother for more information on your old co-workers. Your mother mentions that Rita quit about a few months before she sold the place. Apparently she finally snagged a guy rich enough to settle down with. Flameflower took her place as hostess and she, along with her sister Sunshine still work there. As for Eliza your mother says she was still working as the head barmaid there. “All seems like a lifetime ago eh?” your mother says. “Yeah. I suppose so.” You answer a little preoccupied. “Is there something wrong son?” “Oh no. Nothing wrong, just momentarily lost in thought.” You don’t really explain anymore than that, but your mother senses that you’re playing “what could’ve been” again. She doesn’t address it directly, but does mention of how successful you are and how you’ve got a good life. She also mentions of how it’s everything that your father and her could’ve hoped for you. This truth snaps you out of it, and you never dwell on the past again. You live out the rest of your life in Sivak working as a physician until you decide to retire. You grow old with Cindy, your children eventually have their own families, and one day you fall asleep and don’t wake up. Yes, it was a good life overall, but your years as an innkeeper were definitely the ones that helped achieve it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A few years have passed and your medical schooling is complete and you now work at the Klyton hospital as a real doctor. Your personal life has changed quite a bit over the past few years as well. You currently live in an apartment near the hospital with a fellow medical student. Actually she’s your girlfriend. It started out as a simple roommates thing, but then it developed into something a little more. Cindy still has a year of schooling to go, and you now have a job at the hospital so you weren’t planning on going anywhere just yet. However Cindy suggests that the pair of you should leave for the Delantium Kingdom, specifically Sivak, which is the closest big city. She mentions that there are more opportunities there and she would prefer living there as well. You don’t really have any specific objections against going there, it’s just you’ve never left Klyton, so you’re probably a little nervous especially since you’ve managed to succeed in getting a good job here and maintain a friendly relationship with most of the people you work beside. Well you have a year to hammer out all the plans in the meantime you’re on your way to visit your mother. You don’t see her as much as you used to but she is of course very proud of you and mentions that your father would be too if he were still alive. After all it was always his goal to make sure that you went into medicine for a career. When you get to the Traveler’s Inn, it never ceases to amaze you how much the place has changed and how much it has grown since the days when you were little. Wendy does most of the day to day inn management nowadays, leaving your mom to concentrate on the cooking, which she prefers in the first place. Rita still works there surprisingly enough. Apparently she found it a lot better to just hook up with various rich guys for a short period of time to get some gifts and then remain single. Eliza is the new head barmaid. You guess that experience with the whole Griffon Inn situation boosted her confidence. She even managed to turn Flameflower and Sunshine into productive employees! You remember how friendly you were to each other and how sometimes it seemed like there was the potential for more there, but neither one of you seriously pursued it. “Well, haven’t seen you in awhile Mr. big shot doctor. You still with that…girl?” Rita asks when you walk in. “Her name’s Cindy and yes I am, Rita. What’s it to you anyway?” “Nothing, can’t I be concerned for your well being? I mean we have known each other for a long time and all.” “Hm. Well I’m fine. Where’s my mom?” “She’s in the kitchen as usual.” You walk past Rita, shaking your head at her sudden interest in you now that you have a good paying job. As you approach the bar, Wendy notices you. “I see the great doctor has come for a visit. Taking a break from that girl you shacked up with huh? Anyway your mom is in the kitchen.” She says and then goes back to talking with some of the patrons. When you enter the kitchen your mom turns around to see you and smiles before rushing to give you a big hug. “Aw mom.” You say not wanting all this fuss. “Hey indulge me, I don’t get to see you as much as I used to. So how have you been? What’s going on? Are you still with…that girl?” “Her name’s Cindy, geez why doesn’t anyone like her? Rita and Wendy both made some snide remark about her as I came walking in.” “Sorry son, I’m sure Cindy’s a nice girl and all, but the couple times you visited here with her, she was a bit pretentious, and you know Wendy doesn’t care for people like that. As for Rita, well I’m sure you know why she’s acts the way she does by now.” “ Okay I know Cindy has a bit of that upper class personality, but Eliza was the only one who even tried to be friendly with Cindy the last time she was here!” “Eliza would be friendly to a mountain troll as long as it wasn’t eating her. It’s just her nature. Not to mention she thinks you’re happy with Cindy so she’s happy for you.” “So, why can’t you be happy for me?” “Who said I wasn’t? If that’s who you want then good! I’m all for it. The question though is are you happy?” “Of course I am! I wouldn’t be moving with her to Sivak by next year if I wasn’t! That’s sort of why I came here today. I wanted to let you know, I’ll be leaving Klyton soon.” You mother doesn’t seem too emotional about this revelation, you were sort of expecting more tears or celebration. Instead she just sighs and heads off to cut some vegetables, before speaking again. “Hmm, okay. Well as long as you’re sure that’s what you want to do.” “Why wouldn’t it? I mean there are more opportunities in Sivak than there are here for me and Cindy. You didn’t want me to stay did you? I thought you were going to sell this place and move to Teckleville anyway.” “No, of course I don’t want you to stay for me! Geez, I can manage just fine. Your father and I always knew the day would come that you’d move far away. As for selling this place, eh, I’m not sure yet. It is true that after your father died, my main motivation was to keep this place running to help continue paying for your education. I figured after that goal was reached I would indeed retire to Teckleville. I dunno now though. I guess after all the stuff we went through to keep this place, not to mention making it better, I’ve become more attached to it again.” Now you’re sort of surprised to hear her say that, you thought for sure that she was fully intending on moving back to Teckleville. “Well, no matter where you are, I hope you know I’ll visit.” You say. “Oh of course, I wasn’t worried about that. Well anyway I have to finish preparing this drakling. Some adventurers can’t ever order something simple, well at least they brought it in themselves I suppose.” At this point you and your mother say goodbye to each other and you walk out of the kitchen. On your way out you bump into Eliza. “Hey you! I haven’t seen you in a long time! How have you been? Are things going well for you and Cindy?” You smile at the fact that she remembered your girlfriend’s name. “I’ve been okay. I heard about you being the head waitress now, congratulation.” “Thanks, I’m actually running a little late right now. I’ll have to talk with you later, maybe we should meet sometime when we’re not both busy.” “Um…yeah maybe. Well see you later.” You say and quickly leave the area. As you leave you feel a mixture of guilt, anxiety and confusion. Part of you wants to go back. You don’t know if you have real feelings for Eliza or you’re just deliberately thinking about sabotaging things so you don’t have to move away from Klyton. > You cindy (Your girlfriend) Cindy: Girlfriend You met Cindy about a year and a half ago. How you missed each before all this time is mostly due to her focus in pediatrics. It’s a relatively new field. Before it was seriously considered as a real branch of medicine; kids were treated like miniature adults, which sometimes lead to unfortunate “over medication.” Like most people who pursue the medical field she comes from a wealthy merchant family, though originally her family came from the Delantium Kingdom and moved here a long time ago mainly because her father didn’t like all the new taxes imposed by the Kingdom. She still has extended family there and remains on good terms with them and hopes to move back some day since she’s never cared much for Klyton, claiming that most of the city doesn’t have the appreciation of the fine arts and is rather “low class” in general. (Even the rich Klytonians) This sort of attitude is mostly due to her Delantium upbringing when she was young, but despite this she still wants to help the children of the less fortunate since she feels everyone still should get the chance to pull themselves out of the gutter. This is probably why she found you attractive. While you certainly had help, you did manage to pull yourself “out of the gutter” so to speak. Of course the few times that she visited the inn, she didn’t make a good impression with most of your acquaintances there. She wasn’t outright rude, but she was standoffish to a point where most of them considered her a snob (and a few others worse than that!) You take it in stride for the most part. As long as she’s not calling your mother a gutter whore, you’re not excessively bothered by her slightly elitist ways.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A year has passed and you’re back in college, though it’s not as much fun as it was when you didn’t need to worry about where your tuition was coming from or having something like a job. Finding time to study while running the inn is difficult, but fortunately your mother picks up some of the slack when you really need time. You’ve also managed to re-establish some old contacts with people you were “friends” with before your “break”. Most of them are ahead of you and some are getting ready to graduate. While none of them bothered to stay in contact with you (so much for education breaking down class distinctions) a few of them are still willing to help you out by selling you books for cheap or giving you some of their old notes. Every little bit helps. As for the inn, it’s doing well, but you constantly worry about its future profitability. You’ve got a much broader customer base and even classed the place up a bit, but this isn’t without its drawbacks. Namely the Flying Griffon Inn has stepped up its efforts to get back its customers. This has so far involved an aggressive advertising campaign, hiring a bunch of sexy barmaids and special deals. So far it has helped them a lot and if they continue to succeed, your inn is going to start losing money and you can’t have that. It doesn’t help that your place isn’t in as good of a location as the Flying Griffon So first things first, you need to figure out how to deal with Flying Griffon and you call a staff meeting in the hopes of getting some other ideas on how to deal with them. “Why don’t you just hire someone to cut up their slutty barmaids? I mean that’s what’s mainly getting the main draw right? Seems like you could easily solve the problem by getting rid of them.” Rita says. Naturally this doesn’t go over well with the others. “That’s horrible!” Eliza says “ What? I didn’t say kill them, they’d still be able to work and shit. They just wouldn’t be pretty anymore.” “Have you gotten so jealous that you’ve gone completely barmy? By the gods, we’re not doing that, we’re not the Crimson Talons!” Wendy shouts. As much as disfiguring Flying Griffon’s staff would solve some problems, you hesitate to resort to such measures. “Maybe we could offer deals to traveling merchants like Flying Griffon does, like they get a discount on their rooms?” your mom suggests. “Not sure if that’s going to help us a lot, unless we make an addition to the inn. It’s not like our rooms aren’t being used. If we start giving discount to merchants we might attract them, but we might not have enough rooms to accommodate them or we’ll be accommodating them, but won’t be accommodating adventurer types who are paying full price.” Wendy says. “Well if you’re so knowledgeable Wendy, what’s YOUR solution?” Rita sneers. “We have a lot of Klyton Milita that come here to drink now don’t we? Why don’t we get some of them to help us? Seems like some very public investigation during heavy business hours would help out a lot and ruin the reputation of Flying Griffon. Hell, maybe they’ll even find something and we’ll really get lucky.” You take all these suggestions into consideration, but you can’t help notice that Eliza looks like she wants to say something. “Eliza, do you have a suggestion?” “Huh? Oh. Um…yes…but I... Just forget it. It’s silly anyway. The rest of your ideas sound better.” “Eliza, just spit it out!” Wendy demands. “It’s okay, just tell us.” You say with a lot less intimidation. “Well okay, but it’s silly. I was going to suggest getting someone on the inside to spy on the place and finding something to use against them. It seems odd that they are managing to attract that much attention with just pretty barmaids when we have our own. I think maybe something else is going on there, like an illegal brothel or something.” Most of you are surprised that Eliza came up with something so complex. “Well, that’s a very elaborate plan Eliza, but I think we could accomplish the same thing just by sending in our militia buddies to harass them. Like I said, if they do find anything actually incriminating, then its even better.” “Yes, of course. That sounds like a more efficient idea.” Eliza says. > You your Staff (Current status) Mom: Owner/Cook Mom’s still around, but it’s mainly to help you out in your effort to put yourself through school. She’s made it quite clear that ever since your father died, she doesn’t really feel the desire to live in Klyton anymore, and would eventually still like to move back to her old home of Teckleville. Rita: Hostess Rita’s ego has only gotten bigger since becoming a hostess (You’re still questioning the name of that position) but she’s still popular with most of the male folk and it at least keeps your old miner customer base still around who sometimes find a lot the inn’s changes a bit discomforting. Rita still claims she’s going to live in a mansion one day and is still looking for that “one guy” that’s going to take her away from all this. This would be more of a concern for you if most guys that were into her weren’t just looking to fuck her a few times and then toss her aside, because if anyone really was interested in more than just her body, they probably wouldn’t put up with her personality for long. Wendy: Head barmaid Along with serving food and drinks, Wendy tends to help out with the cooking or running the bar when you or your mother need it, but she always lets everyone know that she has the most thankless job out of everyone. Not entirely true, but you’re reluctant to piss her off any further since she keeps things running smoother. She also balances out Rita’s ego. She always says she’s going to quit, but that’s probably not likely due to her having a couple of children to support. Eliza: Barmaid Eliza’s still your model employee; she’s still the quiet one and doesn’t make waves. She’s about the only one that hasn’t mentioned any plans on potentially leaving. Wendy wishes she’d take charge a little more, since it would help her out at times. Flameflower & Sunshine: Barmaids These are your newest employees and the pair of them are half-elves which means it’s amazing that they even got jobs considering how full blood elves are notorious for avoiding real work. Still, their human mothers (naturally their elven fathers are absentee dads) seem to want them to learn the value of a copper so here they work. Fortunately Wendy’s a good task master and keeps them from being lazy, but she gets at her wits end at times. Still, the pair of them are pretty and can be good workers when they aren’t goofing off so they do their part for the inn, though Rita obviously doesn’t like either of them since they draw attention away from her.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You get the impression Eliza might be a little too shy for this sort of thing, so Rita seems like a better choice. Rita’s also the most extroverted and will most likely prefer doing this than having to work at the inn. “Alright Rita, starting tomorrow, you’re working the streets…er so to speak. Don’t think you still won’t be working around here though; I’ll still need you during the late shift. Besides I don’t want you wandering around at night, people might get the wrong idea or something.” “Fine, as long as it gets me out of this place for a little while I’m game.” “Okay, also I’d like you to try to throw around some insults about the Flying Griffon Inn while you’re making your sales pitch.” “Got it.” The next day, Rita comes in and while she’s always been a pretty girl, she now looks like a succubus that you’ve heard about from old tales. You try to contain your own desire to shamelessly flirt with her. “By the gods Rita, you’re going to have every guy within this area after you.” “Meh, wouldn’t be the first time. Okay, I’m off, try not to fantasize about me too much while I’m gone.” You’re not exactly sure how to take that, but you are wondering how this will play out for you. Over the course of a few days you definitely see a drastic increase in customers, and not just adventurers either. You’ve got Klyton Milita (who usually just drink at their barracks) coming in and even a few humble storeowners. You’re making a lot more money, but it’s a lot of extra work for the rest of you. Mr. Reynolds receives sizable amounts of money and he continues to be satisfied with your payments. At this rate you’ll probably be able to get out of debt by the end of the year. The only major problems are how overworked the rest of you are getting and how arrogant Rita is getting. Rita states that she should even have to work as a barmaid anymore because it interferes with her “advertising.” “Advertising? You wiggle your ass at horny men! You’re basically a harlot that doesn’t put out…or is there another reason why everyone comes here?” Wendy accuses. “Figures that you’d be jealous of my popularity. Face it; I do more around here than ANYONE to keep this place successful, and I deserve some credit for it!” Rita demands. “Hey we all know Rita, but…” “But nothing, if you expect me to keep working here, I want a raise and I don’t want to be working as some lowly barmaid anymore! I’m above serving food and drinks!” “So you basically want to be paid to stand around and look pretty? What the hell kind of job title would we even call that?” you ask. “I dunno, hostess maybe? Yeah, I’d be the hostess!” “By the gods, this is ridiculous! You can’t seriously be considering this!” Wendy exclaims. The only people who are silent in all this are Eliza who is being her usual quiet self, and your mother who just shrugs and says it’s your call since this was mainly your idea. You get the impression she doesn’t care for Rita’s attitude though. > You put Rita in her place Rita’s bluffing. Despite her high opinion of herself, she still needs this job. “Rita, you’re out of line. EVERYONE busts their ass around here and I’m not going to show you some sort of favoritism just because your looks are bringing in more people!” Rita bickers with the rest of you for a while and after threatening to quit several times during the argument she finally agrees to stay, but you still have to give her a small raise. Nothing pocket breaking, but enough to shut her up and keep Wendy from rebelling in the process. The next few weeks go as well as can be expected, though Rita’s constant complaining is an ongoing problem. Eventually you learn to tune her out, but one day she’s “tuned out” permanently. While Rita was still more or less doing her job of bringing in more people, her attitude got a lot worse. This sometimes resulted in her driving away people as opposed to enticing them. This still wouldn’t be so bad considering how many losers are willing to put up with abuse from pretty girls. The problem was when she eventually pissed off the wrong person and this deranged individual decided to “teach the whore a lesson” and waited for her after work. The gruesome details involved rape, the removal of several of her vital parts and death (Not necessarily in that order). You can’t say you exactly liked Rita’s personality, but she didn’t deserve that. You even feel partially responsible for putting her in that position in the first place. Your mother tries to assure you that it wasn’t your fault, but it still doesn’t make you feel any better. You feel even worse when the inn begins to feel the loss. While several regular customers offer their condolences many of the others brought in by Rita in the first place stop coming. You also don’t have Rita to help bring in any new people either. Eliza also quits because she’s so shook up about Rita’s death that she feels it isn’t safe to work at the inn anymore. You manage to pay off Mr. Reynolds, but it’s just barely again and you’re not optimistic about future payments since he’s hinted that he’s going to need larger payments in the future. It would seem he realizes that you’ve almost paid him off and he wants to keep the money flow a little longer. You’re so disheartened by this, Rita’s death and the other headaches that you’ve had to put up with that you decide maybe it’s time to just give up. You fought the good fight for as long as you could, but maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. You’re not going to finish this one, which is a familiar theme to you since you dropped out of college. You tell your mother what you think and she seems just as eager to sell the place off too since the past few months have been pretty stressful. During the remaining week the inn stays open to make a last bit of change before closing for good and selling to the city. Some of the miners seem a little sad by it, but there were so many changes within such a short period of time that most seemed content on finding a new place since the old one wasn’t like how it used to be anymore. When the inn is sold off, you barely make enough to cover the debt, but at least you and your mother aren’t in any immediate danger now. Your mother finds work as a cook for a short time, but eventually decides she can’t really stand living in the city without your father anymore. She leaves to go live with your aunt Enora in Teckleville, which is to the east on the outskirts of the Delantium Kingdom. After a long time of the inn just sitting untended and forgotten due to the council having more pressing matters and red tape, it’s broken into by several homeless people who use it as a place to sleep. The homeless are soon ousted by a local gang who use it as a safe house. Eventually though they cause enough trouble that the Klyton Militia has to take severe action and storm the place, resulting in a small fire. At this point someone in the council finally notices it, decides that the place isn’t worth salvaging and proposes that it be knocked down to build a medical clinic in its place to try to uplift the area. The motion passes. As for you, you find a job thanks to your education level, but it isn’t anywhere in the field that you would’ve liked. You’re a clerk in tax office, filing away items, straightening out reports and such. You never really move up and you never make enough money to save away to get ahead either. You don’t really have a bad life so much as a mind numbingly mundane one. You do have your good days, but ultimately you never really achieve your goals and always have a sense of dissatisfaction with your life. Sometimes you look back and wonder where you exactly went wrong with the inn and how you could’ve done things differently. You’ll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You tell him if he wants to spend a few days here that’s fine, but he’s paying like everyone else, either that he can lower the price of his alcohol to cover the cost. Calwin protests saying that he should be put up for free, but you’re unmoved. Eventually he tells you to forget it and tells his lackeys to just carry his booze down to your cellar and he’ll be on his way. “Glad you stood your ground on that one. Don’t really want his type hanging around anyway.” Your mother says. The next few days are blessed ones. Some successful adventurers walk in with a whole lot of loot. They rest up in your nice rooms and tip generously. By the end of the week you’ve managed to save bit of money. While you’re sweeping up the inn early morning, a non-descript man of medium height enters with two bigger figures. One of them is unmistakably an ogre while the other guy is just a tall muscular human. Either one could break you in half. “Are you are Mr. Reynolds?” you ask, knowing that it has to be him. “That would be me. I take it you’re the son of my late debtor? I do hope you realize that the debt doesn’t end with him dying…” Mr. Reynolds says “No, no of course not. I’ve got your payment.” Mr. Reynolds looks pleased that you’ve handed him a weighty bag of coins. “Nice. Glad to see we’re getting off on the right foot, kid. Wouldn’t want to have to sic Olaf here on you.” Mr. Reynolds says while patting his ogre goon on the arm. “Be seein’ ya in a few weeks kid.” As Mr. Reynolds leaves, your mother comes running up from the cellar wondering what’s going on. “Was that Reynolds? Why didn’t you call me up here?!” “I had it under control, besides it all went well. We’re saving money, and hopefully those nice rooms we have will pay off still.” The next few days are uneventful; the miners seem to be enjoying the new Hessla ale though so that’s a relief. They even seem to be talking to you a little more, one of the older miners Aglim, remarks about the adventurers that spent a few nights here awhile back. “Y’know that’s something I should’ve went into, instead of mining. You travel all over the damn place, killin things and take their shit. Sounds a hell of a lot more fun than spendin’ your time hittin’ the same damn piece of mountain over and over again.” “They didn’t speak too much to me, but they said they were coming back from the Cloudpeak Mountains. Said they found some old crypt filled with treasure.” You say. “Yeah, I’ll bet it was some old Dwarven tomb too. For their sake, they better hope the dwarves don’t find out about it. They aren’t too fond of outsiders desecrating their dead like that. Still, there’s been an increase in those types lately in the mountains and a lot of them have been passing back and forth through Klyton. You might want to do some advertising for your inn or something.” Aglim says before walking back to his table with his friends. He does bring up an interesting point. You obviously have some nice rooms now, why not be a little pro-active and get more of these adventuring types to spend their ill gotten loot here? You figure the best way to do this is appealing to the lowest common denominator. Sex appeal… “What?! Son I certainly hope you aren’t suggesting that…” “NO! I was thinking about someone a lot younger like one of the barmaids.” “Hmm, I’m not sure if that’s more or less insulting…very well I agree that getting those adventuring type in here would help out a lot. We used to have more, but ever since the Flying Griffon Inn opened up in the merchant district we get less of their business.” “Do you know anything about this other inn?” “Not much except it doesn’t really offer anything more than ours, it just happens to be in a better location, what with all the shops around it and all.” You weren’t aware of this other inn, then again you’ve just been focusing on your immediate problems. Maybe you should actively try to discredit this other inn while you’re advertising. The one thing you need to do is speak to your barmaids about this. “Huh, well I can tell you right now I’m not parading around the streets trying to seduce passing adventurers like some harlot.” Wendy says. “I’ll do it, but I’m not sucking anyone’s cock!” Rita exclaims. “We…we have to suck someone’s cock?” Eliza asks looking a little worried. “ Argh! Nobody is going to have to suck anyone’s cock!” you yell. “Look I only need one of you to go out on the street, find adventurers and try to entice them into coming to our Inn. I don’t really care how you do it, just try your best, and that will most likely involve you looking as pretty as you can.” “Oh, well I suppose I could try to do that if I have to.” Eliza says. > You pick Eliza Rita’s libel to ask for more money and all sorts of special favors if you give her any more work so you pick Eliza instead. She’s a little younger than Rita and if she fixes herself up a bit more she could easily bit just as attractive as her. Eliza’s a bit surprised that you even picked her, but accepts. Rita on the other hand is insulted that you didn’t and leaves the table claiming she has to prepare for her rounds. (As if she ever does that!) “Alright Eliza, starting tomorrow, you’re working the streets…er so to speak. You’ll still be working around here though since I need you during the late shift. Besides I don’t want you wandering around at night, people might get the wrong idea or something.” “Okay.” “I’d like you to try to throw around some insults about the Flying Griffon Inn while you’re making your sales pitch.” “Got it.” The next day, Eliza comes in and while she’s always been pretty in a subtle way, when you see her all “dolled up” she almost looks like a different girl. You can’t help but to comment on her appearance. “Wow Eliza, you look really good.” “Thanks, but I don’t look like a whore do I?” “Eh, I doubt if anyone’s going to mistake you for a whore, you’re not sleazy looking enough to qualify. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” “I’m really nervous.” “Relax, like I said you’ll do fine.” Over the next few weeks, not much happens. Eliza really does try her best, but she’s just not outgoing enough. She also gets a little worried when some lowlifes begin stalking her which distracts her from her job. Eventually you decide to take Eliza off advertisement duty, she apologizes for failing. You tell her it’s all right, but the reality is, that you’re not getting ahead, you’re just breaking even and that’s not what you’re aiming for if you want to finish paying off the inn’s debt and get your school plans back on track. Still convinced that you had a good idea, you tell Rita to do it. She agrees, but immediately demands a pay raise and less work in the bar. Her demands are only partially met since you refuse to be pushed around by someone that’s just mad because she’s got a big ego. Rita does her job grudgingly and for awhile she succeeds in bringing in a few more people, unfortunately The Flying Griffon Inn noticed your attempts of gaining new customers when Eliza was bumbling around. They up the ante and hire their own girl to advertise. The other girl is slightly classier and manages to attract more people, this of course only pisses Rita off who is already is a borderline explosive case now. Things go from bad to worse when she allows it to interfere with her work at the inn resulting in a few incidents of yelling at patrons. Things really get bad when the Flying Griffon girl runs into Rita on the street. An argument ensues and an old-fashioned catfight soon follows. You weren’t there of course, but one of your regulars runs in to tell you that Rita got herself arrested when she nearly killed the girl and then smashed a militiaman in the face with a broken bottle. Rita faces jail time and refuses to speak to you, claiming that you’re to blame for all this anyway. The publicity isn’t the best for the inn and while you’re still breaking even, it’s not because you’re getting a higher-class customers, it’s because you start attracting the lower dregs of society. Eventually even the miners don’t want to drink at the place anymore. Your mother refuses to see the inn become a hang out for criminals and decides to sell the place, and you agree since you’re tired of the headache at this point. During the remaining week the inn stays open to make a last bit of change before closing for good and selling to the city. Some of the miners seem a little sad by it, but there were so many changes within such a short period of time that most seemed content on finding a new place since the old one wasn’t like how it used to be anymore. When the inn is sold off, you barely make enough to cover the debt, but at least you and your mother aren’t in any immediate danger now. Your mother finds work as a cook for a short time, but eventually decides she can’t really stand living in the city without your father anymore. She leaves to go live with your aunt Enora in Teckleville, which is to the east on the outskirts of the Delantium Kingdom. After a long time of the inn just sitting untended and forgotten due to the council having more pressing matters and red tape, it’s broken into by several homeless people who use it as a place to sleep. The homeless are soon ousted by a local gang who use it as a safe house. Eventually though they cause enough trouble that the Klyton Militia has to take severe action and storm the place, resulting in a small fire. At this point someone in the council finally notices it, decides that the place isn’t worth salvaging and proposes that it be knocked down to build a medical clinic in its place to try to uplift the area. The motion passes. As for you, you find a job thanks to your education level, but it isn’t anywhere in the field that you would’ve liked. You’re a clerk in tax office, filing away items, straightening out reports and such. You never really move up and you never make enough money to save away to get ahead either. You don’t really have a bad life so much as a mind numbingly mundane one. You do have your good days, but ultimately you never really achieve your goals and always have a sense of dissatisfaction with your life. Sometimes you look back and wonder where you exactly went wrong with the inn and how you could’ve done things differently. You’ll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You shake your head; you can’t walk away from this. Your mom might be in serious trouble because this loan. Selling the inn might not even be enough to cover it and even if it is, she probably won’t have enough to fall back on. You aren’t angry with her, but you do feel a little anger towards your dad for getting her in this position (and you indirectly). You realize he still had the best intentions for you, but those don’t really help right now. “Alright first things first, who is the name of this loanshark?” you ask your mother. “Mr. Reynolds. He’ll be coming next week to pick up a collection. He’s not a member of the Crimson Talons, but he does have a couple of their goons working for him.” “The Crimson Talons? Oh geez, this just get better…okay how is this place doing for business?” “It’s doing about as well as it always has.” “That won’t be enough, we’ll need to get more people in here, or cut costs somehow.” “Well your father was going to have more work done on the rooms in the hopes that it would keep adventurers and maybe even merchants to come back whenever they travel through here. I’m not sure if it’s worth it though. Adventures don’t care where they sleep half the time and it’s not always a sure thing that they’re going to live long enough for repeat business. As for merchants, I think this place is a little too blue collar for them most of the time.” “You said something about getting a new liquor supplier?” “Yeah, the one here raised their prices, it would actually be cheaper to get the stuff shipped in from Hessla. Your father was supposed to meet with the new potential distributor in a couple days, so I’m not sure how that’s going to go through, if at all.” “How about the staff?” “The staff is working on minimum wage as it is, we’ve got three barmaids, Rita, Eliza and Wendy and they’re all disgruntled about their jobs, but they all still work well.. We can barely pay them though, and we might have to fire one of them. Grim stuff, but you’re determined to see this through. Since the liquor supplier from Hessla won’t arrive in two days you’re just going to focus on what you can do now. Fixing the rooms is still a good idea to keep potential returning wandering adventurers happy. Spending a little money now could increase potential profits later. Who knows, maybe even a merchant will show up and spread the word that this place isn’t just some place where miners get drunk. Firing people sounds like it might save you money, but all it’s really going to do is create more work for the rest of you, so you decide to hold off on firing anyone for now. Your mother doesn’t agree with your idea of fixing the rooms, but seems relieved that you’re not firing anyone. Things go as normal at the inn. Several of the miners still offer their condolences about your father and are surprised to see that you’re taking up his mantle as it were, but other than that they don’t say to much to you. They probably don’t know what to say since while some of them might know you since you were little, but you’re not really “one of them” in terms of education level. Not to say they’re all a bunch of grunting idiots, but they probably figure you’re used to talking about things of a more cerebral nature. You don’t mind though, after all your main concern is getting your mom out of debt. Two days pass and the supplier from Hessla arrives. He’s a grungy shady looking individual, but considering he’s from Hessla that’s hardly surprising. He immediately says his name is Calwin asks for your father at which point you tell him he died recently. Calwin shows no sympathy and merely complains that he’s made a trip up here for no reason. You show a little restraint and call your mother to speak with him, but after five minutes with him she’s ready to throw him out the door for hitting on her, and you’re not exactly thrilled with him either at this point. “Look folks, if you want good quality alcohol at a low price I’m willing to deal wit ya, but I’m gonna need some incentive for my troubles because y’all seem like a buncha uptight prigs. Now I was invited here by the man who ran this establishment, so you called me here, if my help ain’t wanted, I’ll be on my way…” Calwin says. While you’re tempted to just have him leave, you decide it would be best to at least see if his stuff is any good. “Alright prove it. Surely you’ve brought some of your alcohol here so we can test to see if it’s any good.” “Well I do have some with me, but I can’t just be givin’ this stuff away for free.” “Don’t worry, you’ll be compensated.” You call attention to the miners in the room and ask them if they’d like to try some new beer, naturally they’re all for it. A few of the miners take their fill of Calwin’s beer and they say that it’s different from what they usually drink, but it’s just as good. Calwin looks a little put off that they claimed his alcohol is “just as good”, but still maintains that it’s better than what you already have. He states his price, and also mentions that he wants a free room whenever he comes here since he’s apparently got a harpy of a wife at home and he likes to stay away for a couple days before having to go back to Hessla. Your mother obviously isn’t thrilled with having to deal with him, and in the short time he’s been here; he’s also hit on every one of the barmaids. Granted they’re used to such behavior, he’s particularly revolting. (Plus he’s from Hessla) > You don't deal with him at all This guy is a complete creep and going to be nothing but trouble. You’d rather continue paying the Klyton supplier. Calwin grumbles a lot about wasting his time, but leaves without too much trouble. While your mother agrees with your decision, it doesn’t really help you in the money department and by the end of the week you haven’t saved any money. In fact you’ve barely broken even. While you’re sweeping up the inn early morning, a non-descript man of medium height enters with two bigger figures. One of them is unmistakably an ogre while the other guy is just a tall muscular human. Either one could break you in half. “Are you are Mr. Reynolds?” you ask, knowing that it has to be him. “That would be me. I take it you’re the son of my late debtor? I do hope you realize that the debt doesn’t end with him dying…” Mr. Reynolds says “No, no of course not. I’ve got some of what my father owed.” You hand over the most you can under the circumstances, but Mr. Reynolds looks insulted. “My boy do you take me for an asshole? Your father used to pay me much more than this pittance!” “It was a rough week…” “No, no, I don’t give a shit about your excuses, you’ve chosen to take on your father’s debt so you are expected to fucking pay up like he did! (Sigh) Look, since you’re obviously new to this, I’ll let you off with a warning. Olaf.” Suddenly the ogre steps forward with a smile and punches you the stomach. You temporarily lose the ability to breath and collapse on the floor. When you finally do catch your breath, you promptly vomit. “That was my warning, let’s hope I don’t need to do it again. Be seeing you again in a few weeks kid. Let’s get out of here.” As Mr. Reynolds leaves, your mother comes running up from the cellar wondering what’s going on. She helps you up when she sees you. “Oh no son I can’t let this go on. We’re selling the inn right now!” “No, no mom, it’s alright, you’ll see. We’re going to make this place profitable and payback the loan and after that we’ll be able to take the next step.” “Son, I love you, but we’re not getting any further ahead. I mean if this keeps up, I’m stepping in before this place goes to hell so I can actually make money selling it to the city.” “You won’t get enough for it!” “Well I’ll get enough to pay off the debt, and if worst comes to worst, I’ll leave Klyton and live with my sister in Teckleville” “You can’t live with aunt Enora, you always said she’s crazy.” “She is, but that still doesn’t mean she wouldn’t help me out.” “Look, we’ve still got time, I know my ideas are going to help us out soon.” “Well, I hope all your fancy schooling you gained some sort of insight that I’m not privy to. Alright we’ll give it until the next time Mr. Reynolds comes around for payment.” You agree and start wiping up the floor before customers come in. The next few days are uneventful. The miners seem to be talking to you a little more, mainly to chew your ear, either telling you how rough their jobs are and how your dad was a good man. You aren’t really listening to anything they say because you’re more preoccupied with the future and trying to figure out how you’re going to get out of debt and more importantly how to avoid getting beat up or worse. “So what’s you’re problem, Mr. Barkeep?” a miner asks, which none of them has ever done before, so it breaks you out of your trance long enough for you to utter “Huh?” “I asked what’s troubling you? And don’t tell me nothin’ because for the past few days you’ve been staring off at the walls.” Davin asks. He’s a bit of a loner type, mostly drinks alone, which makes his questioning even stranger. “Oh nothing.” “Heh, I told you not to tell me that. Seriously, what’s wrong? Think of it this way, you have to hear most of these idiots tell their stories all the time, now you’ve got someone willing to hear yours.” True enough, and you don’t see any harm so you tell him everything, your schooling, the inn, the debt, and how you’re worrying about all of it. He nods and listens to all of it, and it isn’t until you’re finished that he finally speaks. “Could you sell this place and get enough money to pay off the debt?” he asks. “Well probably…yeah.” “Then do it.” “What? I can’t do that!” “Why not? You’ll be safe and your mother will be safe, isn’t that the main goal?” “Well yeah, but…” “But nothing. All your other troubles are secondary when it comes to the survival of your family and yourself, or at least they should be.” “I can’t just worry about immediate survival Davin, there’s my future to worry about as well.” “Heh, well you’d better or you won’t have a future to worry about. Look son, I know you want the whole higher education thing. I remember you used to study all the time when you were little, but sometimes you have to be realistic. I mean I had big dreams too once, I thought about becoming an astronomer.” “Really?” “Hell yeah, but as I got older I realized that it wasn’t going to happen and I was gonna be a miner just like my dad…and that’s okay.” “But the inn…” “It’s just an inn son. There’s tons of them in the city, it’s not like we can’t find another place to drink. You’ve pretty much made it clear you don’t like working here and your mother is more than willing to sell it. You have no real attachments to it, so why put yourself through the hassle? You might not get to be a doctor, but you’ve still got a lot more education than most people, I’m sure you’ll be able to easily find something you’ll like to do more running an inn.” “I don’t know…” “Trust me kid, you’ll feel a lot better if you just let this one go.” And with those words Davin heads to a table to drink by himself, leaving you to ponder your situation. > You sell the inn You haven’t got off to a good start and you don’t think it’s really going to get any better. Davin’s words ring true, you aren’t happy running this place and trying to get to your goals by doing it, is either going to get you killed or burned out and miserable. You immediately go to your mother and tell her how you feel, and she understands, she’s actually a bit relieved that you’ve decided to let her sell it. She tells you to take the rest of the night off and you return to your room where you feel saddened that you won’t get to go back to school, at least not anytime in the near future. Your goals of going into medicine will have to remain just dreams for now and you don’t know what your future holds. During the remaining week the inn stays open to make a last bit of change before closing for good and selling to the city. Some of the miners seem a little sad by it, but there were so many changes within such a short period of time that most seemed content on finding a new place since the old one wasn’t like how it used to be anymore. When the inn is sold off, you barely make enough to cover the debt, but at least you and your mother aren’t in any immediate danger now. Your mother initially was going to find work in the city, but when you express a random desire to leave Klyton altogether, she suggests that you both move in with your aunt Enora in Teckleville. which is to the east on the outskirts of the Delantium Kingdom. You agree eagerly, you’ve never been out of the city and maybe it’s time for a brand new start. You and your mother pack and catch a coach heading west. It feels weird leaving Klyton. Eventually after a couple days the coach stops in Teckleville. Which is just one of the many small villages on the borders of the Dalantium Kingdom. Probably in time it’ll get absorbed like so many others do, but that’s not really a concern of yours right now. Your aunt Enora is happy to see you both, and while this whole living with her thing was sprung on her at the last moment it doesn’t seem to bother her. She says there’s plenty of room and you can stay as long as you like. While the house is certainly nice and you’re happy to live there rather than in the street, it’s sort of on the small side. Teckleville isn’t anything like you’re used to, but it isn’t unwelcome. You just aren’t sure what you’re going to do here. In time, your mother works at the local tavern where she serves as a cook. It’s not much, but it is something she’s used to doing. You manage to get a job working as an assistant to the old librarian that works here. Not many use it, so she’s happy to get some company. You aren’t unfond of the job since you get to read a lot of books, some of which you’re a bit surprised to find in a small town like this. The librarian mentions that she tends to get a few of wandering adventurers once in awhile that give books to her that they’ve found in whatever dungeons they’ve been delving into. “If it isn’t a spell book, they usually sell it for a few coppers. I believe they’d probably just leave the books wherever they found them most of the time, but you know those adventuring types, they’re all a bunch of closet kleptos that absolutely HAVE to take everything that isn’t nailed down.” She says. For awhile you live at your aunt’s house you manage to save what little money you do make and move out. You briefly think about going to the Delantium Kingdom, but you become attached to Teckleville and stay. As time goes on you take over as the head librarian, get married and have a family. You live the remainder of your life in Teckleville never regretting your decision and die with sense of fulfillment despite never going back to pursue medicine. There were times though; you always wondered what would’ve happened had you stayed to run the inn? You’ll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This guy is a complete creep and going to be nothing but trouble. You’d rather continue paying the Klyton supplier. Calwin grumbles a lot about wasting his time, but leaves without too much trouble. While your mother agrees with your decision, it doesn’t really help you in the money department and by the end of the week you haven’t saved any money. In fact you’ve barely broken even. While you’re sweeping up the inn early morning, a non-descript man of medium height enters with two bigger figures. One of them is unmistakably an ogre while the other guy is just a tall muscular human. Either one could break you in half. “Are you are Mr. Reynolds?” you ask, knowing that it has to be him. “That would be me. I take it you’re the son of my late debtor? I do hope you realize that the debt doesn’t end with him dying…” Mr. Reynolds says “No, no of course not. I’ve got some of what my father owed.” You hand over the most you can under the circumstances, but Mr. Reynolds looks insulted. “My boy do you take me for an asshole? Your father used to pay me much more than this pittance!” “It was a rough week…” “No, no, I don’t give a shit about your excuses, you’ve chosen to take on your father’s debt so you are expected to fucking pay up like he did! (Sigh) Look, since you’re obviously new to this, I’ll let you off with a warning. Olaf.” Suddenly the ogre steps forward with a smile and punches you the stomach. You temporarily lose the ability to breath and collapse on the floor. When you finally do catch your breath, you promptly vomit. “That was my warning, let’s hope I don’t need to do it again. Be seeing you again in a few weeks kid. Let’s get out of here.” As Mr. Reynolds leaves, your mother comes running up from the cellar wondering what’s going on. She helps you up when she sees you. “Oh no son I can’t let this go on. We’re selling the inn right now!” “No, no mom, it’s alright, you’ll see. We’re going to make this place profitable and payback the loan and after that we’ll be able to take the next step.” “Son, I love you, but we’re not getting any further ahead. I mean if this keeps up, I’m stepping in before this place goes to hell so I can actually make money selling it to the city.” “You won’t get enough for it!” “Well I’ll get enough to pay off the debt, and if worst comes to worst, I’ll leave Klyton and live with my sister in Teckleville” “You can’t live with aunt Enora, you always said she’s crazy.” “She is, but that still doesn’t mean she wouldn’t help me out.” “Look, we’ve still got time, I know my ideas are going to help us out soon.” “Well, I hope all your fancy schooling you gained some sort of insight that I’m not privy to. Alright we’ll give it until the next time Mr. Reynolds comes around for payment.” You agree and start wiping up the floor before customers come in. The next few days are uneventful. The miners seem to be talking to you a little more, mainly to chew your ear, either telling you how rough their jobs are and how your dad was a good man. You aren’t really listening to anything they say because you’re more preoccupied with the future and trying to figure out how you’re going to get out of debt and more importantly how to avoid getting beat up or worse. “So what’s you’re problem, Mr. Barkeep?” a miner asks, which none of them has ever done before, so it breaks you out of your trance long enough for you to utter “Huh?” “I asked what’s troubling you? And don’t tell me nothin’ because for the past few days you’ve been staring off at the walls.” Davin asks. He’s a bit of a loner type, mostly drinks alone, which makes his questioning even stranger. “Oh nothing.” “Heh, I told you not to tell me that. Seriously, what’s wrong? Think of it this way, you have to hear most of these idiots tell their stories all the time, now you’ve got someone willing to hear yours.” True enough, and you don’t see any harm so you tell him everything, your schooling, the inn, the debt, and how you’re worrying about all of it. He nods and listens to all of it, and it isn’t until you’re finished that he finally speaks. “Could you sell this place and get enough money to pay off the debt?” he asks. “Well probably…yeah.” “Then do it.” “What? I can’t do that!” “Why not? You’ll be safe and your mother will be safe, isn’t that the main goal?” “Well yeah, but…” “But nothing. All your other troubles are secondary when it comes to the survival of your family and yourself, or at least they should be.” “I can’t just worry about immediate survival Davin, there’s my future to worry about as well.” “Heh, well you’d better or you won’t have a future to worry about. Look son, I know you want the whole higher education thing. I remember you used to study all the time when you were little, but sometimes you have to be realistic. I mean I had big dreams too once, I thought about becoming an astronomer.” “Really?” “Hell yeah, but as I got older I realized that it wasn’t going to happen and I was gonna be a miner just like my dad…and that’s okay.” “But the inn…” “It’s just an inn son. There’s tons of them in the city, it’s not like we can’t find another place to drink. You’ve pretty much made it clear you don’t like working here and your mother is more than willing to sell it. You have no real attachments to it, so why put yourself through the hassle? You might not get to be a doctor, but you’ve still got a lot more education than most people, I’m sure you’ll be able to easily find something you’ll like to do more running an inn.” “I don’t know…” “Trust me kid, you’ll feel a lot better if you just let this one go.” And with those words Davin heads to a table to drink by himself, leaving you to ponder your situation. > You stick with it He might have a point on some level, but you can’t just give up because some old miner gives his “sagely” advice. Still, you do have a bit of a dilemma on your hands; you need to think of a long-term way to raise profits. Actually at this point you need a short-term way to raise profits, because Mr. Reynolds will be coming in soon to collect and you doubt if you’re going to have an adequate amount to pay him. That’s going to result in a beating, which will result in your mom stepping in and selling the place. Lacking any other solution you decide to water down the drinks, in the hopes that people will end up ordering more ale since it’ll take them longer to get drunk. This solution doesn’t go over well. That very night you’re already getting comments that the ale doesn’t taste quite as strong, and while this does result in the miners ordering more ale, the miners are used to drinking the Klyton alcohol they normally get and can instantly tell if something’s wrong with it. By the end of the week, you’re getting loud verbal complaints about the ale, and outright accusations that it tastes like water. Several miners are insulted and leave the inn claiming that they’ve been loyal patrons here for so long and that they don’t need to be treated like this. You attempt to explain, but they shove you out of the way and tell you to go back to your fancy college. “I wish I could.” You quietly say to yourself. You aren’t optimistic about the rest of the month. Sure there’s still adventurers and the odd wanderer, but not enough to turn a profit. It’ll be time to pay Mr. Reynolds soon and you’re going to fall short again. Your mother can’t bare to see you get hurt again and suggests forgetting all about the inn and just taking off with all the remaining money you have and going to live with your crazy aunt Enora.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> “You’re selling the inn?!” “I have to! I can’t run this place myself.” “Well that’s what you have staff for!” “Oh son…(sniff) I don’t think you know the entire situation. You haven’t been around as much over the years.” “Mom, I always meant to visit more, but…” “No, it’s not that. In fact I’m glad you had fun at college. You at least had some enjoyment. I’m just sorry you won’t get to have any more.” “Mom, I don’t like where this is going.” You mom at this point begins cry again until you eventually get her to calm down. What comes next almost makes you cry though. While your father did indeed save for you, it wasn’t enough to put you through college completely. Costs were higher than he thought and even though business was okay, he had unexpected expenses such as making fixes to the inn and price hikes in his alcohol supplier. Your father was determined to not pull you out of college though, so he found another way. He borrowed money from a moneylender. “WHAT?! Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve taken less classes or gotten a part time job at the university!” “No, he didn’t want you to worry or get distracted.” “Well I guess that’s good since all that worry can go to this now! By the gods, why didn’t he at least go to a bank to get the loan!?” “He tried, but didn’t get approved. They wouldn’t even take the inn as collateral. I pleaded with him not to borrow money from criminals, but he claimed it would be fine as long as he opened the tavern earlier, found a cheaper supplier and made a few cuts here and there. And for a while things were running a little smoother, but I could see the stress taking a toll on him. It’s what ultimately killed him. I’m just so sorry that we failed you. We wanted so much better for you. Now I’ll have to sell the inn off to pay off the moneylender and hopefully I’ll be able to find a job as a cook elsewhere.” You just sit in silence and try to wrap your head around all of this. Your bright future in medicine as you know is gone. You still have quite a bit of education, and you’re fairly certain you could still find a job to support yourself, but it’s going to be hard initially and you probably won’t be satisfied with it. You’re also worried about your mom, what if she can’t find a job? You won’t be able to help her much. You can only think of one solution. “Would it help if I ran the inn?” you ask. “What?” your mother replies. “Would it help if I helped you run this place. I mean granted I don’t have excessive experience, I have watched you guys do it while I grew up here. I think I can manage the basics. If we managed to keep this place running at least long enough to pay off the loan, maybe then I can save enough to finish my education.” “I don’t know son, I mean…I would love to see you finish your education, but it’s a lot to take on. Would you have time? I don’t want you getting burned out and suffering a pre-mature heart attack like your father because of the stress!” “Well, I’m going to have nothing but time now, if I drop out and focus on this place. I think the main concern is getting us out of debt…just how much do you owe?” “Uh…about ten thousand gold coins.” You really hoped it would be significantly less than that. “Okay, well I’m guessing he takes smaller payments to buy you time but then charges more interest with each passage of time. We’ll have to get this place whipped into shape so it’s making enough profit that we’ll be able to pay the entire sum as soon as possible. After that, we’ll have some breathing room.” Your mom looks apprehensive about all this and then shakes her head claiming she can’t let you shoulder this responsibility especially with the risk of physical danger involved if you anger the moneylender in some way. She says that you should go on with your life and forget about the inn, she’ll be able to sell it and pay off the debt with no problem. And as for her, she also tells you not to worry about her either, but she hopes that you’ll forgive her and your father for failing in giving you the life you deserve. It is true you could walk away from all this. You don’t really have any great desire to run the inn. It was just a solution you came up with to help your mom and possibly help yourself. But there’s no guarantee it’s going to work, just like there’s no guarantee that you can’t still achieve your goals on your own. > You go on your own You think about it and realize your mom is right. Taking on this responsibility isn’t for you. All you’re mainly concerned about is getting the loan repaid and you’ll probably be able to do that by selling the inn to the city. The pair of you keep the inn open one last week to make some extra money before closing it down for good. It’s another sad time for the miners who frequent there, because while granted they’ll either find another place to drink or continue to drink at this one under new management, your family has been a familiar sight here. When the inn is sold off, you barely make enough to cover the debt, but at least your mother isn’t in any immediate danger now. Your mother does find work as a cook for a short time, but eventually decides she can’t really stand living in the city without your father anymore. She leaves to go live with your aunt in one of the small villages to the east on the outskirts of the Delantium Kingdom. After a long time of the inn just sitting untended and forgotten due to the council having more pressing matters and red tape, it’s broken into by several homeless people who use it as a place to sleep. The homeless are soon ousted by a local gang who use it as a safe house. Eventually though they cause enough trouble that the Klyton Militia has to take severe action and storm the place, resulting in a small fire. At this point someone in the council finally notices it, decides that the place isn’t worth salvaging and proposes that it be knocked down to build a medical clinic in its place to try to uplift the area. The motion passes. As for you, you find a job thanks to your education level, but it isn’t anywhere in the field that you would’ve liked. You’re a clerk in a tax office, filing away items, straightening out reports and such. You never really move up and you never make enough money to save away to get ahead either. You don’t really have a bad life so much as a mind numbingly mundane one. You do have your good days, but ultimately you never really achieve your goals and always have a sense of dissatisfaction with your life. Sometimes you wonder back, what if you had taken that chance and ran the inn? Would you have had a chance at a better life, or would you have made things worse? You’ll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> “You’re selling the inn?!” “I have to! I can’t run this place myself.” “Well that’s what you have staff for!” “Oh son…(sniff) I don’t think you know the entire situation. You haven’t been around as much over the years.” “Mom, I always meant to visit more, but…” “No, it’s not that. In fact I’m glad you had fun at college. You at least had some enjoyment. I’m just sorry you won’t get to have any more.” “Mom, I don’t like where this is going.” You mom at this point begins cry again until you eventually get her to calm down. What comes next almost makes you cry though. While your father did indeed save for you, it wasn’t enough to put you through college completely. Costs were higher than he thought and even though business was okay, he had unexpected expenses such as making fixes to the inn and price hikes in his alcohol supplier. Your father was determined to not pull you out of college though, so he found another way. He borrowed money from a moneylender. “WHAT?! Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve taken less classes or gotten a part time job at the university!” “No, he didn’t want you to worry or get distracted.” “Well I guess that’s good since all that worry can go to this now! By the gods, why didn’t he at least go to a bank to get the loan!?” “He tried, but didn’t get approved. They wouldn’t even take the inn as collateral. I pleaded with him not to borrow money from criminals, but he claimed it would be fine as long as he opened the tavern earlier, found a cheaper supplier and made a few cuts here and there. And for a while things were running a little smoother, but I could see the stress taking a toll on him. It’s what ultimately killed him. I’m just so sorry that we failed you. We wanted so much better for you. Now I’ll have to sell the inn off to pay off the moneylender and hopefully I’ll be able to find a job as a cook elsewhere.” You just sit in silence and try to wrap your head around all of this. Your bright future in medicine as you know is gone. You still have quite a bit of education, and you’re fairly certain you could still find a job to support yourself, but it’s going to be hard initially and you probably won’t be satisfied with it. You’re also worried about your mom, what if she can’t find a job? You won’t be able to help her much. You can only think of one solution. “Would it help if I ran the inn?” you ask. “What?” your mother replies. “Would it help if I helped you run this place. I mean granted I don’t have excessive experience, I have watched you guys do it while I grew up here. I think I can manage the basics. If we managed to keep this place running at least long enough to pay off the loan, maybe then I can save enough to finish my education.” “I don’t know son, I mean…I would love to see you finish your education, but it’s a lot to take on. Would you have time? I don’t want you getting burned out and suffering a pre-mature heart attack like your father because of the stress!” “Well, I’m going to have nothing but time now, if I drop out and focus on this place. I think the main concern is getting us out of debt…just how much do you owe?” “Uh…about ten thousand gold coins.” You really hoped it would be significantly less than that. “Okay, well I’m guessing he takes smaller payments to buy you time but then charges more interest with each passage of time. We’ll have to get this place whipped into shape so it’s making enough profit that we’ll be able to pay the entire sum as soon as possible. After that, we’ll have some breathing room.” Your mom looks apprehensive about all this and then shakes her head claiming she can’t let you shoulder this responsibility especially with the risk of physical danger involved if you anger the moneylender in some way. She says that you should go on with your life and forget about the inn, she’ll be able to sell it and pay off the debt with no problem. And as for her, she also tells you not to worry about her either, but she hopes that you’ll forgive her and your father for failing in giving you the life you deserve. It is true you could walk away from all this. You don’t really have any great desire to run the inn. It was just a solution you came up with to help your mom and possibly help yourself. But there’s no guarantee it’s going to work, just like there’s no guarantee that you can’t still achieve your goals on your own. > You your staff (Current status) Mom: Owner/Cook Mom is still trying to get over dad’s death. At this point she’d rather sell the place and move back to Teckleville where her sister Enora lives. Rita: Barmaid Rita’s about your age and started working at the inn a few years before you went off to the university. You remember thinking she was hot when you first saw her and you tried to speak to her a few times to test the waters so to speak, but it was pretty obvious that she didn’t have any sort of interest in you since were more of a bookworm. A bookworm without much money. Not a good combination for getting her affection. Wendy: Barmaid Wendy’s been working here since you were in primary school. She’s unofficially the “head barmaid” but the inn has never had that big of a staff to assign fancy titles. Still, she’s the one that gets the others moving faster if it calls for it. As for you, she’s never really paid any major attention mainly because she’s got kids of her own she has to deal with and you never had any reason to talk to her on any meaningful level. She probably was just relieved that you weren’t some “bratty boss’ kid” that she had to put up with along with being a minimum wage slave. Eliza: Barmaid Eliza’s a little younger than you. In fact you were already at Klyton University when she started working at the inn. In the past during your visits to the inn, she seemed to be nice to you, but you don’t know much about other than she’s a pretty girl and on the shy side.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Another day home from school… “I’m telling you Ms. Zelamoyer is a witch, there’s no way she could know what we did unless she read our minds!” David says. “Yeah maybe she’s even a demon in human disguise!” Tom adds “Or maybe you two looked guilty as hell and laughed the loudest when she sat on the thumbtacks you put in her seat.” You say. “I told you guys that was a bad idea. I’m surprised she only paddled you and didn’t have you kicked out of the school permanently.” “Yeah well it didn’t even hurt. My dad beats me harder than that. Though I guess Tom thought it hurt with the way he cried! Hahahaha!” David taunts. “Shut up David!” Tom exclaims. “So are you playing Smash Sphere over in the park today?” David asks you. “I hope so, but my dad’s been on my case about me studying harder. Says he wants me to make something of myself when I grow up.” “That sucks. My dad is always either at the mines or drinking at your dad’s place. The only time I have to worry about him is when my mom tells him about something I did, then I get a beating. I don’t think I’d survive it if he was always around.” David replies. “My mom doesn’t beat me, but she’ll yell and throw me into a small dark closet without food if I do something bad.” Tom says. “Your mom is one scary ass dyke, Tom. My dad said he saw her scare away a mountain troll in the mines once.” “Shut up David! My mom’s not a dyke!” “Yes she is! What about that other lady that lives with you then?” “That’s just mom’s roommate! She needs a place to stay so she helps around the house, like cook dinner or clean up. Mom is at the mines all day, so she can’t do that stuff, so it works out. She’s kind of like a live in maid!” “Sounds more like a second mom…” As much as you enjoy Tom’s naïve defense of his lesbian mother and David’s taunting of it, you arrive at the Inn where you say goodbye to your friends and tell them you might see them later. As soon as you get in, you dad calls you over to the bar. “So do you have any homework?” he asks. “Yeah, but it’s not due until next week.” “Hmm, well if it’s not due until next week it must need a lot of attention, better get started on it.” “It’s really not that much dad, I can do it over the weekend. I’m going to go out and play smash sphere with David and Tom.” “Is that what you think? Better cancel that idea. You’re hitting the books, besides I vaguely remember you mentioning you were also going to have test next week too.” “But dad!” “Don’t dad me! You’ve been letting your school work slide lately and getting into trouble at school with those two little hoodlums you hang out with.” “They’re not hoodlums, and I didn’t get into trouble today!” “You aren’t supposed to be getting into trouble in the first place! Look son, I know you think I’m being hard on you, but this really is for your own good. Your little friends don’t have fathers that give shit about them, I should know because David’s dad is in here all the time and as for Tom, well the less said about his situation the better.” Doesn’t look like you’re getting out of here today, but you make one last attempt. “But I really don’t have that much homework, I really can do it quick over the weekend!” “Well if that is the case, you can help me out here instead.” “What?” “One of my barmaids is sick and I’m expecting a full house here tonight due to it being one of the miner’s birthdays today, so you can carry food and drinks.” You certainly weren’t expecting that. “What? Can’t mom do it?” “Your mother is going to have her hands full attempting to cook the giant cloudspeak ram in the kitchen for the celebration, in fact you can start off by helping her chop up the beast.” As usual your dad has given you no "choice" at all. > The city of Klyton and the surrounding area (History lesson) Klyton This is the city-state where you live. As far as city-state go it’s not a big one yet, your parents are still able to remember when it was still just considered an “ independent large town”, but when you have steady population growth combined with an good location relatively free of major dangers it’s only natural for a community to grow unhindered. It is primarily run by a small council of elected officials to govern major matters such as defense of the town, administering punishments for crimes or issuing licenses for magic use. While Klyton doesn’t have a major standing army, it does have a strong voluntary militia to fend off a potential attack, though there has never ever been a serious threat to Klyton. Most militia duties are reserved to protecting miners in the mountains or apprehending criminals. The idea of forming a proper military has always been brought up once in awhile, but again due to the lack of real danger to Klyton, and the cost of keeping a standing army has always been put on the backburner. The Klytonian community has always been a mostly self-sufficient one, but if anything else is needed, most of their trading is done with the port town of Hessla, the Cloudspeak dwarves or even the Delantium Kingdom. Mining is still a major job field and the beginnings of industrialization is starting, (a couple of small factories have already been built) but Klyton doesn’t ignore other fields such as medicine or education. The city is still primarily made up of humans, but there has been a small creep in other races making their homes there as well over the years, for better or worse. The surrounding area To the north, the Cloudspeak Mountains form a natural barrier to any possible marauding barbarian tribes. While the mountains themselves are dangerous, it is rare for monsters to venture very far from them. Klyton worked out an agreement with the small dwarf community that lives there long ago for mining rights. A river originating from the Cloudspeak Mountains runs directly east of Klyton. The dwarves keep to themselves for the most part, but sometimes a few come to the city on business. To the south is a mixture of forests and swamps and home to an on going battlefield. The elves and sotakan (A race of lizard like people) have been involved in an ongoing tribal war for at least as long Klyton has ever existed and probably even before that. Neither side ever gains the upper hand for very long and the cycle continues. Klytonians don’t exactly know what it’s all about, they just know they’re glad the savages have always kept their little fight confined to their area. Sometimes elves come to the city to trade, but they’re looked down upon as trouble makers and savages. No Sotakans have ever come to the city at all. The closest human settlement is to the west, a rough port town on the ocean called Hessla. Despite having immediate access to the ocean (or perhaps because of it) it hasn’t grown to a large size like Klyton has. That might be due to several factors. Hesslans have a habit of engaging in piracy other criminal activities involving high levels of violence. There’s floods that occasionally hit the town. But even while teetering on the brink of total anarchy Hessla stays together mainly because a strong leader to prevent that from happening usually always runs it. (Weak Hessla leaders don’t last long) While they have extreme differences in society and some past bad blood, Klyton and Hessla have always maintained a good trading relationship. As far as both are concerned trading with each other is good business regardless of their personal feelings are. To the east past the Cloudspeak River, exist long stretches of plains, scattered woods and the occasional small village. Past that is the Delantium Kingdom. The occasional merchant from there comes to trade and then leaves, though they usually also act as “emissaries” speaking of all the positive things about the Delantium Kingdom and saying how Klyton would be much better off if it joined it. While the Delantium Kingdom has never shown any signs that it would try to take Klyton by force, this sort of talk still makes most Klytons a little wary, as they value their independence and the thought of having to serve a “king” is not appealing at all. > Back to the story Another day home from school… “I’m telling you Ms. Zelamoyer is a witch, there’s no way she could know what we did unless she read our minds!” David says. “Yeah maybe she’s even a demon in human disguise!” Tom adds “Or maybe you two looked guilty as hell and laughed the loudest when she sat on the thumbtacks you put in her seat.” You say. “I told you guys that was a bad idea. I’m surprised she only paddled you and didn’t have you kicked out of the school permanently.” “Yeah well it didn’t even hurt. My dad beats me harder than that. Though I guess Tom thought it hurt with the way he cried! Hahahaha!” David taunts. “Shut up David!” Tom exclaims. “So are you playing Smash Sphere over in the park today?” David asks you. “I hope so, but my dad’s been on my case about me studying harder. Says he wants me to make something of myself when I grow up.” “That sucks. My dad is always either at the mines or drinking at your dad’s place. The only time I have to worry about him is when my mom tells him about something I did, then I get a beating. I don’t think I’d survive it if he was always around.” David replies. “My mom doesn’t beat me, but she’ll yell and throw me into a small dark closet without food if I do something bad.” Tom says. “Your mom is one scary ass dyke, Tom. My dad said he saw her scare away a mountain troll in the mines once.” “Shut up David! My mom’s not a dyke!” “Yes she is! What about that other lady that lives with you then?” “That’s just mom’s roommate! She needs a place to stay so she helps around the house, like cook dinner or clean up. Mom is at the mines all day, so she can’t do that stuff, so it works out. She’s kind of like a live in maid!” “Sounds more like a second mom…” As much as you enjoy Tom’s naïve defense of his lesbian mother and David’s taunting of it, you arrive at the Inn where you say goodbye to your friends and tell them you might see them later. As soon as you get in, you dad calls you over to the bar. “So do you have any homework?” he asks. “Yeah, but it’s not due until next week.” “Hmm, well if it’s not due until next week it must need a lot of attention, better get started on it.” “It’s really not that much dad, I can do it over the weekend. I’m going to go out and play smash sphere with David and Tom.” “Is that what you think? Better cancel that idea. You’re hitting the books, besides I vaguely remember you mentioning you were also going to have test next week too.” “But dad!” “Don’t dad me! You’ve been letting your school work slide lately and getting into trouble at school with those two little hoodlums you hang out with.” “They’re not hoodlums, and I didn’t get into trouble today!” “You aren’t supposed to be getting into trouble in the first place! Look son, I know you think I’m being hard on you, but this really is for your own good. Your little friends don’t have fathers that give shit about them, I should know because David’s dad is in here all the time and as for Tom, well the less said about his situation the better.” Doesn’t look like you’re getting out of here today, but you make one last attempt. “But I really don’t have that much homework, I really can do it quick over the weekend!” “Well if that is the case, you can help me out here instead.” “What?” “One of my barmaids is sick and I’m expecting a full house here tonight due to it being one of the miner’s birthdays today, so you can carry food and drinks.” You certainly weren’t expecting that. “What? Can’t mom do it?” “Your mother is going to have her hands full attempting to cook the giant cloudspeak ram in the kitchen for the celebration, in fact you can start off by helping her chop up the beast.” As usual your dad has given you no "choice" at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You… think too much. It’s always been your issue. You’ve had twelve miserable years in the world, an existence wracked with headaches, horrible, coma-like states known as your “deep dreams”, and horrible, scratching and never-ceasing voices that knaw at your sanity. You’ve been left frail, pale and very skinny from your condition as you spend most of your life sleeping, wrapped up and coddled in a tent of animal hides. If there was any justice, you would’ve been left on a hill to die when your tribe realized how weak you were, but through your condition you’ve made yourself useful. You have premonitions, messages that you can make out from the depth of your dreams that make you the most valuable member of the tribe. Whether it be seeing the green flames of anger running through the eastern fringes of the forests that signal an upcoming Greenkskin attack, the sweet smells drifting from the lake that indicate a herd of Braxen or a flock of buzzards that can easily be haunted down by some of your hunters. That’s not even to mention some of your other abilities. You can unnerve, even frighten strong warriors with a glance, cause mass confusion with a few words, easily convince some of the dumber members of the tribe to do your bidding, and with a lot of effort you’re able to “drag” items towards you without touching them. Still, due to the fact you can barely walk, it’s hardly a fair trade off. “Karth!” a voice cries. You look up, pulling your skinny body slightly above the blankets that are wrapped around you to look at Duggin as he walks inside, carrying a spear, a bow and sheath, wearing the hide of one of the many beasts of the jungle. “What thoughts have you for us today?” Duggin asks. You love your tribe. Your tribe is a group of strong, brave and loyal men who only want the best for each other. Better men don’t exist. Unfortunately, they’re idiots. Half your job here is relaying the many dreams, omens and messages you have in your sleep. The other half is keeping them from killing themselves. There are men here who have lived twenty, thirty, forty, even fifty years, but in your twelve years on this world you’ve learned infinitely more. You introduced them to the concept of stealing the hides from slain beasts and wearing it as your own, the concept of hiding like a predator with camouflage and strength, and new battlefield strategies beyond “attack!”. “None. It was a peaceful night,” you say. “We’re having a hunt with the Azajaja tribe. We’re heading to meet up with them soon.” You nod, raising your bony arms as Duggin lifts you up. You wrap your frail body around him as he walks outside. A large boar-like creature, a puk, sits there with a double-saddle tied to it. Duggin sits in the front saddle and places you in the back one, wrapping blankets tightly around you. You need the blankets for multiple reasons: to keep warm, to give yourself some sort of cushion to protect your fragile body, and most importantly it stops from having to feel the rough puk hair. Many textures, just like puk hair, just sends you into a tantrum for some strange reason. You can't rationalize it, but it still effects you. The puk begins striding forward in a half-gallop, as the other hunters of your tribe hop astride the puk, heading out toward the nearby lake. Suddenly, you watch as dozens of lizard-like creatures burst out of the trees, scuttling away from the jungles. “Ah! Look what we have here, boys! Fresh prey, sent to us by the great God-Emperor!” Duggin yells, raising his bow. You watch as the lizards charge out with reckless abandon, straight into your arrow fire. You pull yourself up the saddle into more of a sitting position, thinking. These are simple beasts, but even beasts have a level of cunning that stops them from acting as such. They aren’t this stupid, are they? > You warn your allies These beasts would never simply charge into the path of a fierce predator… unless a fiercer predator was chasing them. “Wait! Wait! Attack!” you shout. “What?” Duggin asks, annoyed as your outburst causes him to miss a shot. “There’s something chasing the beasts!” Duggin raises an eyebrow, before barking out an order. The hunters quickly rearrange formation, just as a horde of Greenskins charge out of the trees with a fierce roar. A burst of spears and arrows flies out from your allies, but the orks take them in their stride. Arrows imbed themselves into their chest and arms, but they don’t go down. Spears jab forward, metal points finding the softest parts of the thick green skin, sinking deep with a spurt of blood. There’s about two dozen, as many as you, but they can take more punishment. You’re outnumbered, but thanks to your forethought and your tiny amount of preparation, you have a chance. You still find yourself useless in the upcoming battle, but it lasts only a few minutes. You watch as blood is shed, limbs are hacked off and puk are struck down. You use what little might you have to cling onto the puk, only barely stopping yourself from falling off. You close your eyes, and wait. Eventually, Duggin calls you. “Karth! It’s over!” he says. You open your eyes, and survey the carnage. Bodies litter the earth, green and tan, lean and muscled, big and small. You’ve lost half your hunters in a single attack, but the rest of you have survived with few wounds. When orks strikes land, they kill, not wound. “Men, we need to check on the Azajaja boys!” Duggin yells. He rides forward, towards the Azajaja camp, deep in the trees. You cling to the puk, looking through the trees as you approach their camp. It’s in ruins. Tents have been torn apart, set alight and entirely wiped out. Bodies cover the ground, and you see the last few remnants of the Azajaja struggling to fight off the approaching Orks. Most are naked, still refusing to pick up your tactic of not going into battle with their dicks flapping in the breeze or their breasts hanging, as well as being one of the more idiotic tribes not to take on clothing at all, unlike yours. “Idiots,” you mutter to yourself. Duggin raises his spear and charges forward, the puk bursting forward as you struggle to hold on. Why couldn’t the idiot have left you at home?! Your allies attack with rage and speed, smashing into the orks from behind. There’s a short, brutal fight, before you see an ork charging towards you, swinging his axe. “Duggin!” you yell, pointing at the ork. Duggin turns, but he’s not fast enough. The ork’s weapon smashes into your puk, cutting through flesh and beheading him in a single blow. You’re sent flying as the puk collapses suddenly, smashing into the cold earth. You let out a pained yell, before opening your hazy eyes, only to find yourself in the centre of the remaining Azajaja survivors, which only consist of half a dozen warriors, a number that’s constantly dropping as the Orks charge once more, as well as two dozen civilians hastily armed with weapons. Suddenly, a small, goblin-like creature, a Gretchen, scampers through the warriors’ line, carrying a small knife fashioned from a large stone, who lets out a chuckle as he spots you and lets out a terrifying grin. You need to do something, fast. > You crawl away You scamper backward, before the creature charges toward you with its blade. You grab the earth, your frail strength still managing to pull your light body away, but the Gretchen it eager. It leaps onto you with a yell, jamming its blade into your throat. You let out a yell, as blood stains the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>These beasts would never simply charge into the path of a fierce predator… unless a fiercer predator was chasing them. “Wait! Wait! Attack!” you shout. “What?” Duggin asks, annoyed as your outburst causes him to miss a shot. “There’s something chasing the beasts!” Duggin raises an eyebrow, before barking out an order. The hunters quickly rearrange formation, just as a horde of Greenskins charge out of the trees with a fierce roar. A burst of spears and arrows flies out from your allies, but the orks take them in their stride. Arrows imbed themselves into their chest and arms, but they don’t go down. Spears jab forward, metal points finding the softest parts of the thick green skin, sinking deep with a spurt of blood. There’s about two dozen, as many as you, but they can take more punishment. You’re outnumbered, but thanks to your forethought and your tiny amount of preparation, you have a chance. You still find yourself useless in the upcoming battle, but it lasts only a few minutes. You watch as blood is shed, limbs are hacked off and puk are struck down. You use what little might you have to cling onto the puk, only barely stopping yourself from falling off. You close your eyes, and wait. Eventually, Duggin calls you. “Karth! It’s over!” he says. You open your eyes, and survey the carnage. Bodies litter the earth, green and tan, lean and muscled, big and small. You’ve lost half your hunters in a single attack, but the rest of you have survived with few wounds. When orks strikes land, they kill, not wound. “Men, we need to check on the Azajaja boys!” Duggin yells. He rides forward, towards the Azajaja camp, deep in the trees. You cling to the puk, looking through the trees as you approach their camp. It’s in ruins. Tents have been torn apart, set alight and entirely wiped out. Bodies cover the ground, and you see the last few remnants of the Azajaja struggling to fight off the approaching Orks. Most are naked, still refusing to pick up your tactic of not going into battle with their dicks flapping in the breeze or their breasts hanging, as well as being one of the more idiotic tribes not to take on clothing at all, unlike yours. “Idiots,” you mutter to yourself. Duggin raises his spear and charges forward, the puk bursting forward as you struggle to hold on. Why couldn’t the idiot have left you at home?! Your allies attack with rage and speed, smashing into the orks from behind. There’s a short, brutal fight, before you see an ork charging towards you, swinging his axe. “Duggin!” you yell, pointing at the ork. Duggin turns, but he’s not fast enough. The ork’s weapon smashes into your puk, cutting through flesh and beheading him in a single blow. You’re sent flying as the puk collapses suddenly, smashing into the cold earth. You let out a pained yell, before opening your hazy eyes, only to find yourself in the centre of the remaining Azajaja survivors, which only consist of half a dozen warriors, a number that’s constantly dropping as the Orks charge once more, as well as two dozen civilians hastily armed with weapons. Suddenly, a small, goblin-like creature, a Gretchen, scampers through the warriors’ line, carrying a small knife fashioned from a large stone, who lets out a chuckle as he spots you and lets out a terrifying grin. You need to do something, fast. > You attack it You grab a rock, swinging it forward and smashing it into the side of the Gretchen’s face. It smacks into the ground, and you climb atop it and smack it into the creature’s skull again and again. The Gretchen’s head is crushed, and you let out a relieved sigh. The relief is short-lived, though, as the orks continue to charge forward, swinging hastily-made weapons. The number of Azajaja survivors grows much smaller, as your tribesmen attempt to rescue both them and you whilst surviving the onslaught of Greenskin, but there’s just too many. Hands grab your shoulders and pull you up, just out of the path of an oncoming spear. You turn, to see the face of a young girl, barely older than you, holding a spear with a terrified look on her face. You blush as you realize she’s naked, before chiding yourself for having such an immature thought while people are charging to kill you. You hear a roar, and turn back to see an ork charging forward. He sees you, raising his axe. > You crawl away You scamper backward, before the creature charges toward you with its blade. You grab the earth, your frail strength still managing to pull your light body away, but the ork swings, the blade sinking into your shoulder, cutting through bone and flesh with ease. You let out a yell, as blood stains the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab a rock, swinging it forward and smashing it into the side of the Gretchen’s face. It smacks into the ground, and you climb atop it and smack it into the creature’s skull again and again. The Gretchen’s head is crushed, and you let out a relieved sigh. The relief is short-lived, though, as the orks continue to charge forward, swinging hastily-made weapons. The number of Azajaja survivors grows much smaller, as your tribesmen attempt to rescue both them and you whilst surviving the onslaught of Greenskin, but there’s just too many. Hands grab your shoulders and pull you up, just out of the path of an oncoming spear. You turn, to see the face of a young girl, barely older than you, holding a spear with a terrified look on her face. You blush as you realize she’s naked, before chiding yourself for having such an immature thought while people are charging to kill you. You hear a roar, and turn back to see an ork charging forward. He sees you, raising his axe. > You attack You grab a rock, swinging it forward, but the ork’s so big you can only reach its thigh, and the rock harmlessly bounces off the ork. The ork swings, the blade sinking into your shoulder, cutting through bone and flesh with ease. You let out a yell, as blood stains the ground. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab a rock, swinging it forward and smashing it into the side of the Gretchen’s face. It smacks into the ground, and you climb atop it and smack it into the creature’s skull again and again. The Gretchen’s head is crushed, and you let out a relieved sigh. The relief is short-lived, though, as the orks continue to charge forward, swinging hastily-made weapons. The number of Azajaja survivors grows much smaller, as your tribesmen attempt to rescue both them and you whilst surviving the onslaught of Greenskin, but there’s just too many. Hands grab your shoulders and pull you up, just out of the path of an oncoming spear. You turn, to see the face of a young girl, barely older than you, holding a spear with a terrified look on her face. You blush as you realize she’s naked, before chiding yourself for having such an immature thought while people are charging to kill you. You hear a roar, and turn back to see an ork charging forward. He sees you, raising his axe. > You scream You can barely walk. You’re not going to crawl away from an ork, let alone kill it. The orks have struck down everyone around you. Only you and the girl are left, with your tribesmen on the other side of a wall of green muscle, struggling to survive. You do pretty much the only thing you can do. You let out a terrified, ear-piercing scream. In one outburst of air, you release all your pent-up terror and fear. The ork lets out a pained howl, clutching its ears. It continues screaming, collapsing to its knees, before its head explodes in a spray of crimson mist. You watch as dozens of orks collapse to the ground, blood streaming from their eyes, ears, nose and mouth. You feel a scratching behind your eyes, in the centre of your skull, as if invisible hands are trying to pull you apart. You let out a moan, and collapse backwards. > You enter oblivion You have horrible nightmares of ever-changing balls of tentacles and eyes, horrible creatures of claws, breasts, hooves and long tongues, large, boil-covered, plague-ridden abominations and horned red beasts wielding flaming swords. Finally, you awaken in a cold sweat, coddled in your old, musky blankets. You look around, your eyes adjusting to the light of dusk. You notice the girl from earlier sitting in the corner, scaled hides and furs wrapped around her with her head resting on the handle of the sword she’s clutching. She notices your wandering eyes and begins staring at you with her bright, green eyes. She's covered in dirt, with her brown hair hacked as short as yours, making her look like a boy. “You’re awake,” she says. “Yes,” you reply, staring back at her, wondering why she’s keeping herself from blinking. “You sleep a long time.” “I do.” You sit there staring at each for quite some time, before the tent flap opens as Duggin walks inside. You notice several fresh scars across his chest, and a long one across his face. “Karth! You’re awake!” he says with surprise. “How long was I dreaming?” you ask. “Two weeks. We thought… after what happened… Well, we considered feeding you to the puk,” Duggin chuckles. “Good to see you’re alive. What visions have you had?” You reflect briefly on your dreams. “There’s heavy storms coming within a weak, heavy amounts prey south towards the coast of the lake… and no sign of Greenskin activity,” you say. “Good to know, little one. I’ll pass the message on.” Duggin turns his attention to the girl, who sits there. “Have you met the Azajaja, Karth?” he asks. “She hasn’t said a word the entire time she was here. She just sat there. It took a fierce bit of effort to get her to eat. I’m pretty sure she’s just been shitting in the corner.” Duggin looks to the girl, seemingly expecting her to say something, but she says nothing, just stares at you. “I’ll… grab you some food and drink. For both of you,” Duggin says, walking out of the tent, leaving you and the girl alone. “I’m Karth,” you reply, offering your hand to shake. She just sits there in response, staring at you. It’s getting unnerving. After a few minutes, Duggin returns, carrying two wooden bowls of cooked meats as well as two more of wine. He leaves them on the floor in front of you. “Make sure she eats. I’ll give you some time, but then we need to discuss how you wiped out two dozens orks with… whatever powers you’ve been blessed with,” he says, before leaving. You grab the two bowls of meat, sliding one across the floor to her. You begin eating, as she does the same. She grabs the meat and stuffs it into her mouth, all without breaking eye contact or letting go of her sword. She eats the meat with her mouth open, making loud chewing noises. You wince at the noise, the churning, slicing and crushing being another thing your mind is repulsed by. You blink, unnerved by the staring, but begin to eat, the delicious taste of flesh filling your mouth. “You snore loudly,” she says after several minutes. “Yeah, I’ve been told,” you reply. "What do you do?" she asks. “What do you mean?” “What do you do all day? You don’t seem like you can walk around much, let alone do chores or work.” “I sit here and sleep a lot. Sometimes I make plans when needed.” “Why are you so pale?” she asks quizzically. “I spend most of my time in a tent, obviously,” you reply. “Do you want to go outside?” she asks. “Everyone’s too busy to carry me around.” The girl considers this. “Do you want to go on my back so I can take you outside?” > Yes “Yes, if you don’t mind,” you say. She stands, scoffing the remaining bits of meat down her throat before gulping down the wine. She walks forward, turning and bending over to allow you to wrap your arms around her shoulders and then lift yourself up enough to wrap your legs around her thighs. She stands with a grunt, grabbing her sword before walking forward and out of the tent. You look up at the quickly falling sun, basking your face in its warmth. The rest of the tribe gives you a quick glance, surprised to see you outside, but go back to work. The girl continues to carry you around, trotting along the tents towards the trees. “So… do I get to know your name?” you ask. “It’s Fay,” she replies. “I’m Karth.” “What do you dream of? You know, when you sleep?” “Bad things, mostly. Monsters. Sometimes, I get messages. I see beasts attacking, and I know when the orks will strike. I…” “Did you know the orks were going to attack my village?” Fay asks, sadness filling her voice. “I… no. I don’t get messages every time.” “Oh. OK.” You arrive at the trees, and you outstretch your arm, running it across the bark of one of the trees. You spot the sun finally descending under the horizon, as the darkness stretches over the sky. Two duller bright lights take its place, but they’re far too weak to give even an ounce of its brightness. “We should go back,” you say. “Why?” Fay asks. “Monsters dwell here at night.” She pats her sword gently. “I have a blade. I can easily kill the monsters.” “Monsters are scary.” “I can be scary too.” > You pressure her to go back “Come on, let’s go back, please,” she says. “Fine,” she says with a sigh, turning and heading back to the camp. She goes back inside the camp, putting you back on your blankets. “Can I sleep in here?” she asks. “Uh… OK,” you reply, curling up in your blankets. “I’ll see you in the morning,” she says. “Goodnight.” “Goodnight.” With that, you curl up in your blankets and let sleep take you once more. > Three Years Later... Over the next three years, things change, both for you and the world at large. Fay becomes a constant companion, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the other children of the tribe would be happy to play with her and devoting all her time to you. You’re not sure why, but you’re grateful for it. Puberty changes both of you. Fay grows significantly taller, faster and stronger, growing from a small girl to a large and powerful warrior. She stands as tall and proud as the boys of the village, and is more than happy to face them off in a wrestling match, winning all of them. She seems to prefer spending her time hunting with the boys or more often with you than learning the common girl's chores of cooking, sewing and cleaning. You'd imagine soon enough she'll have to find a husband among the hunters. Thankfully, growth does not leave you behind, although it doesn’t effect you nearly as much. You grow strong enough to be able to stand and stroll around the camp, even taking small trips, although even a light jog for a minute or two is enough to topple you over with exhaustion. Compared to Fay, you're a twig whilst her muscled form is that of an thick tree trunk. Puberty also has a significant change on your abilities. You sleep less, although your dreams are harsher, and there’s more… anger behind them. The monsters seem aware of you know, there voices constantly breaking into reality and continuing to scream and plead with you. You simply refuse to listen, and with training, you can make them become something of a white noise to your day to day activity. Your powers also increase. With the flick of your fingers, you can start a small fire. With a word, you can leave anything, man or beast, confused and befuddled. You can pick things up and throw them with a strength unfound to you, beating out many of the warriors in throwing contests without even moving. The world as a whole changes as well. The amount of Greenskin attacks intensifies, and in response the tribes band together, forming a much larger community to stand against the tide. Your dreams are muddled, but you feel something is coming. The sky, which to the plain eye is beautiful, blue and unchanging, seems about to be torn open in your dreams. Something bad is coming. You sit in the grass, a tan finally having replaced your pale form, next to Fay as you watch buzzards flying overhead, eating a bowl of Braxen meat. “It’s a nice day,” Fay says. “It is,” you say, your dreams from the previous nights still filling you with a feeling of dread. “You look nervous.” “Do I?” you ask, feigning confusion. “As much as you like to think so, I’m not stupid. I can tell something’s up.” > You tell her the truth “I’ve been having a lot of nightmares. I think… I think bad things are coming.” “Really?” Fay asks, getting worried. “Like what?” “I don’t know,” you admit. “But it’s bad.” “Have you told Duggin?” “He just increased the amount of training warriors are doing. He asked what else he could do, and I didn’t have any better suggestions.” “You worry too much. You’re not even eating. Your bowl’s full. Speaking of which…” She plucks the bowl from your hands. “I’m still hungry!” Fay laughs as she gracefully hops out of reach. “Oh, no! Whatever shall I do? I’ve been left helpless! What will poor Karth do?” you say sarcastically. With the wave of your hand, Fay’s feet go from under her and the bowl flies into your hands. You grab a piece of meat and throw it into your mouth with a smile. “You’re just a bully,” Fay says, fake pouting. “Thank the God-Emperor you were cursed to be a cripple.” “Hey! I’m not a cripple! I’m just super weak. If we find a tribe of women who aren’t ugly bags with stringy hair, odd scars sand gross teeth, I’ll get super buff. But, we haven’t,” you reply. Fay looks down, actually looking hurt by your joking comment. Shit. “Uh… don’t be so insulted, Fay,” you say, gently knocking her to the ground again with the flick of your wrist. “You’re less ugly when you smile. You need to have thicker skin.” She smiles as she stands back up. “Me? I need thicker skin? This is coming from the guy who’s always like “I’m scared because I dreamed something bad”!” “Hey, I’m never wrong. I have a lot of power,” you say, emphasizing your point with another flick of your wrist. “Stop that!” she complains, hitting the ground. “I don’t even know why I hang out with you.” “Because of my dashing good looks?” “Shut up! I’m going down to the lake for a swim!” she says, jumping up and jogging off towards the lake. You quickly stand up, walking after her. “Wait up! You know I can’t go that fast!” Fay rolls her eyes, stopping and grabbing your hand. “Come on!” she says. Shit. You hate swimming. It’s mostly just you sitting in the shallow, exhausted from the effort of getting in. Still, you go where she does, and she’s the same. You walk as quickly as you can towards the lake. > Four Hours Later... You lie on the grassy edge of the lake, your feet dipping gently in the water, watching as Fay gathers berries, nuts, fruit and whatever other edibles she has access to. You watch her approaching you, carrying a handful of food. You eagerly extend a hand as she hands some to you, and you stuff your cheeks with them, eagerly eating. “How can someone be so hungry yet be so thin?” “I suppose I’m just an abomination,” you smile, watching as the water turns gold as the sun shines across it, finally beginning to disappear as night takes hold. “It was a nice day,” you say. “But we should head back.” “You’re such a maybe. You’d think a magic man who can kill dozens of orks with one petrified scream would be less of a coward.” You flick your wrist and she falls over with a yelp. “Stop doing that!” “No,” you reply with a smile. You watch as the bright two moons appear, just as dozens of stars fill the sky. “Beautiful night,” Fay remarks. “Yeah. The sky’s looking gorgeous,” you reply. “You know..." Fay starts. There’s a howling scream, and the sky is torn apart. You watch as the very fabric of reality is sliced through, tearing a hole in the sky. There’s a bright, purple hole in the sky itself. “What the fuck is…?” Fay asks, drawing her sword as if with some hope of stopping the horror that is to come. A headache pulses through you as you try to stand, collapsing back to the floor. In the distance, a massive, black shape leaves the hole, heading straight towards the planet. You stand again, but the shrieking continues, preventing you from thinking, let alone running. “Karth!” Fay yells, wrapping her hands around you and lifts you up. > You tell her to go back to camp and warn them “Go… go back to camp without me. Warn them!” “I’m not leaving you!” “Fay, have you fucking seen me? It’s a hell of a lot less dangerous here, I’ll be fine. Go!” Fay nods, turning and sprinting off towards the camp. You sit there, clutching your head. After about a minute, your head clears enough to realize that there’s no way in hell the camp wouldn’t notice the massive, sky-tearing hole in reality itself, so sending Fay back to warn them is completely useless. Suddenly, you’re hit by another wave of anguish as pain courses through you. Then, the voices return. This time, though, one pierces through, louder than ever before, almost as if someone is whispering directly in your ear. “Karth… Karth… I can help you… I have so much power… I have so much strength… all of it, I’m happy to offer you…” You feel the claws of a million voices scratching at your mind. You begin to scratch at your eardrums, hoping, begging the voices to stop. You shudder, and thankfully, oblivion takes you and you lapse into unconsciousness. > You awaken You awaken, lying on the grass outside of your camp. Your eyes blink twice, as you begin to look around. Several large, metal buildings sit there in the fields next to the tents. Men holding large spears march around the camp, directing throngs of tribespeople towards the buildings. These spears seem to be capable of firing arrows made of concentrated sunlight. Interesting. You notice several giants, seemingly made of metal, standing on the edge of the camp, watching the work. Suddenly, you find yourself yanked into the air by invisible hands, and float into the air, suspended two four feet above the ground. You watch as a trio of men approach you, smiling. The one on the left is a giant, seemingly made entirely of metal. He stands at around eight feet, with dozens spikes protruding from his metal skin. His body’s black, with a purple head. In the middle, a tall, pale man wearing a long, black leather overcoat, a spiked collar strapped around his neck. The third seems to be a hybrid between a girl and a metal monster, her eyes replaced by the three red, unblinking eyes of a monster, a dozen long, metal arms extending from the nape of her back, three arms ending in claws and one a drill, with her legs replaced by four spider-like legs. Where her human arms would be extends a grasping, whirring claw and a metal barrel, the inside of which glows faintly blue. The middle one walks forward with a smile. “Hello there, young Karth. Pleasure to see you,” he smiles jovially. “We don’t have time for pleasantries, psyker,” the metal man says. “Load him onto the ship! "Give him time to adjust! He's only just waking up," the man, the psyker, says. One of the long, metal arms attached to the monster-man's back goes towards you, whirring its drill. It cuts along your arm, drawing a long, thin cut as you yelp in pain. "This one is weak... how pitiful," the monster-man says. "It's pain tolerance is low, but I can work with it." "I want to use his mind, not his flesh," the psyker says. "My name is Kyros. The burly armored man to my right is Chapter Master Taj Suenage, and the robotic companion to my left is the Heretek known as the Craftsman of Vorn, the Butcher of Karis IV and the Father to the Prometheans. Her name is Magos Cern. We are the Forces of Chaos." The monster-man extends one of her metal tentacle arms once more, tracing the outline of your cheek bones. "Bah! Time wastes! Either give me the surge of the warp overtaking me, or give me the surge of battle, Kyros!" Taj roars, smacking a metal hand against his chest. "As you wish, Taj," the Psyker says. The Psyker claps his hands, and his various forces begin forcing the last of the tribespeople inside the building, as those who litter the floor, those who presumably tried to resist, are carried there. "Are they dead?" "Some, presumably. I gave the order to keep as many alive as possible," Kyros says. You see Fay's battered and bruised body being tossed over a metal giant's shoulder as she's carried off towards the building. "No! Give her back!" you shout. "She fought well. When my men entered this pathetic village, she was trying to warn them. She even tried to fight them off. Killed one of the dumber ones who tried to call her bluff. Commendable." You furrow your brow, and the Psyker grins as Taj's head is knocked slightly back, before presuming position. Despite how little you've harmed him, the metal giant seems enraged. "You scum-sucking sociopathic cunt!" Taj roars, charging forward. Taj is flipped into the air, being suspended just out of reach of you. His metal fists swing at you, but he's kept out of grasp. "Tut tut. Stay your anger, my dear Taj. Karth, I'll make you a deal. Do as I say, and the girl will be unharmed. Deal? > You agree "OK. Just don't hurt her," you say. You drop, hitting the floor quite gently. Kyros grins and gives you a nod. "Good boy. I'll make sure special care is taken of the girl."k "Ha! I'll give your bitch whore "special care"!" Taj roars, still grabbing at you. Kyros rolls her eyes, flipping Taj into the dust. "Quiet now, marine," he says. "I have a gift to sate your bloodlust. Bring out the chieftain!" You watch as Duggin is dragged form his tent, growling and yelling. A large cut goes down his chest, blood having soaked his armor, turning it a deep crimson that shines in the sun. "Come on, finish me!" he roars. "I don't want to see my men die, Karth. I gave your chieftain the option to surrender, give me his finest warriors... and you, of course, and I'd spare his civilians. He refused, killed some of my men, had his warriors killed and now I have to take you all. Now, he will die. This is what happens when people mess with my plans, Karth." Taj drops to the ground, turning to stare at Duggin with a monstrous laugh. "Fortunately, Karth, I won't make you watch. You have agreed, haven't you?" Kyros says with a wink. You're released to the ground, and Kyros and Magos Cern walk alongside you towards the metal buildings. You walk inside, and the doors shut. A bright red light, like a very powerful candle, appears out of nothingness, brightening the room. The tribespeople are packed in here, surrounded by a tight bundle of guards with spears raised. "What happens here? There's no space to do anything," you say. "It's a landing craft, little one. Now, we soar to the stars," Kyros says. You see several feet away from you is Fay's crumpled form and feel a twinge of pain. You sit down in the metal building as it begins to shake and shudder as if moving, terrified of the world around you. > Four Hours Later... The trip is long. The landing craft constantly shakes and shudders, and quickly fills with the smell of puke as the stomachs of many of the men and women around you as they fail to handle the constant shaking. You sit there, unmoving, staring up at the guards. Finally, the ship shudders to a stop. "Good! We're here!" Kyros says. "Welcome to the Roar of the Vortex! Please file out and follow the guards towards your cells." "What are you going to do with us?" someone asks. "I'm going to make you matter in a galaxy that stands for no one," Kyros says proudly. The people begin being shuffled off the landing raft, and you find yourself in a massive metal room. You look out a massive opening, filled with similar craft. You look around, before a metal hand grabs your shoulder. "Stay," Taj growls. "You're not to be mixed in with these common curs." "What's going to happen to them?" you ask. "Some will live. Most will die. All will suffer," Taj says. "What... what are you?" "A space marine, boy," Taj says. He grabs his head, twisting it. His metal head is yanked off, revealing a scarred human head underneath. "You're a human." "Practically. Did you think I was metal through and through?" Taj asks. "Yes." "It's armor, boy," Taj says. "I don't have time to explain shit to you." Kyros marches out, raising you into the air. "Come on, boy. Let's go!" Kyros says eagerly, walking along the ship. You float after him, being dragged through the air, unable to resist. After a few minutes, you fall to your knees in front of a metal door. "I've asked what's going to happen to us. You still haven't given me an answer," you say. "You've found yourself in a war, little one. Your planet is worth jack shit. Everything you know doesn't matter. This war encompasses the galaxy.Systems burn, billions die, the fate of trillions is fought for." "War? Whose fighting?" you ask. "Everyone. The world has monsters so powerful that they'd wipe out every warrior in all your tribes in an instant. There's the Tyranids, a horrible bug hive-mind with nothing but a need to eat. There's the Necrons, an ancient of soulless machines that have only just began to awaken. There's the Orks, a warring species of monsters, the Eldar, an enigmatic species just as likely to help as hinder you, Then, you have the worst villains. The Imperium of Man. They're freedom-crushing, innovation-stopping, potential-destroying fascists who enslave trillions and worship a corpse. We stand against them. We serve the Dark Gods. Khorne the Warrior God, Tzeentch the Sorcery God, Slaaneesh the Pleasure God and Nurgle the Plague God. We fight to free ourselves from tyranny, to make sure every man is free. We offer gifts of strength, knowledge, joy and immortality, yet the Imperium spurns us. So we rebelled. We are the Forces of Chaos, who fight back against tyranny! Praise Chaos in all it's glory!" "I'm still waiting for an answer," you say. "We're going to turn you into super-soldiers. Magos Cern has long worked on the process. We're going to make you greater than Space Marines. You hold the most potential. Cern can play with their flesh and Taj can train them, but I offer the greatest gift: Ultimate power. You're gifted, Karth. I want to use that gift to make you one of the most powerful beings known to man." You stare at him nervously. You're not an idiot. People don't just create powerful soldiers without having a chain around them. You watch as Kyros takes a steel, studded collar and walks towards you. He wraps it around your throat, clicking it into place. "Is that comfortable?" Kyros asks. "I suppose," you see, scratching at the collar. "At any moment, I can shut down your powers and strangle the very air out of your throat. So play nice." Kyros picks you up again with a flick of the wrist and you float upwards. Kyros carries you through the air, stopping at another door. It opens with being touched, and Kyros drops you inside it. "This is your cell. I've made it... comfortable. In return, you best be... compliant I need to... check on some things. Wait here for the time being," Kyros says, sealing the door behind you." You stand up, looking around the room. There's a bed there, a small hole in the floor the size of a baby's head, a shelf and a small glass box with a lever inside. > You investigate the hole You walk over to the hole, and look down it. Nothing but blackness. You put your ear against it, but no noise comes out. Finally, you put your arm down it, up to the shoulder. There's a gunk coating it further down, but you can't make out what it is by touch. You lift out your arm, only to find it caked with dried shit. "Fuck," you complain, as the smell just begins to hit you. > You investigate the box You walk over to the box, entering it. You press down on the lever, and nothing happens. You pull it, and suddenly you're hit by a burst of water. You look up, and it's like lashing rain has formed right above you. This has the added benefit of washing off the shit that cakes your arm. You quickly turn it off, avoiding getting too soaked. > You lie on the bed and wait You collapse onto the bed, closing your eyes. Almost immediately, the voice begins. "Karth... Karth..." the voice calls. "I have so much to offer you... you're a prisoner here, Karth. These men are going to break you, child. Only I can help you... just give me time..." the horrible voices stops, and reality fades back into reality. The voices thankfully subside, and you're granted a short break of blissful sleep. Unfortunately, this is broken by the door opening. You look up to see Kyros standing there. "Karth, it's time for your... augmentation," he says cheerfully. "What's going to happen?" you ask fearfully. "Magos Cern and the Chapter Master want to create super-soldiers. They're aiming so low they could hit themselves in the foot. I want to create something... excuse me, someone of immense power. Your mind will be a thousand times sharper than any blade. You will be a Psyker feared by the entire Imperium." "Let's say you make me extremely powerful. Then what? How do you keep me under your control?" you ask. "Karth, you're my prisoner, but I don't think you need to be for long. I want you to join me. We figtht for freedom, for power, for glory! We'll crush the dying Imperium, and lead mankind towards a new dawn. Can't you see that that's a strong goal? Can't you see that that's something to join us to fight for?" > You say "I agree. They're commendable ideals." "I'm glad to hear it. I'm sorry to say you'll still have to remain my prisoner for the time being, but I'm sure the crew will come to trust you quickly enough." You arrive in a large room, filled with dozens of large, see-through tubes. You glance at them, take a deep breath, and get sick all over the glass while falling to your knees. "Ah, yes... you best not look at these," Kyros says, flicking his finger to pick you up again. Inside the tube, submersed in a thick, viscous liquid, are your tribespeople. They're completely naked, with long tubes having been forced down their throat. Dozens of needles have been forced into their arms, backs and necks, pumping strange liquids into them. "What the fuck are you doing to them?" you ask. "Making them super-soldiers. We've been through this," Kyros says absent-mindedly. "I thought you'd be training them!" "After we change them. If you think the nutrients and drug treatment is bad, wait until we start using the Geneseed. At least they'll all survive this bit." > You look around for Fay You look around, noticing Fay floating in a tube. "Let her out!" you say, tears welling in your eyes as you watch her body convulse as chemicals and nutrients flood into it. "No. She needs to become strong if she wishes to survive here." "She's one of our best warriors! She trains everyday!" "I don't particularly care whose the best warrior of some shithole tribe on some shithole planet! We'll be fighting super, cybernetic orks, super-soldiers the likes of Taj, ancient, psychic warriors and never-ending waves of bug warriors. Your sister could be torn apart in seconds by even the weakest of threats." "She's not my sister," you say, putting your hand against the glass. "Really? Wife, then? I've seen cultures with younger marriage ages, but they're not the norm." "We're not married, we're just friends," you say sadly, as you're carried into the air once more and dragged along Kyros. "Ah, I see. Your society isn't patriarchal enough that you can just demand she has sex with you. Unreciprocated love, what a pity," Kyros laughs. "It's not... let her go!" you shout. The collar tugs tightly around your throat, taking the breath away from you. You choke and gasp for several seconds, before it releases, allowing you to take a breath. "Quiet now." You continue on, arriving at a thick, metal door. "Here we are," Kyros says with a smile. The metal doors slide open, revealing a large, empty chamber. Magos Cern stands in the center, her head twisting around to reveal her glowing red eyes, piercing your soul. "Is the chamber complete?" Kyros asks. "Have you succeeded?" Magos Cern stares at you. "Well?" Kyros asks again. "Don't question my work, Kyros. If something goes wrong, it's because you're an idiot trying to harness the magical energies of the warp while using a flesh battery." "I have a name, you know," you point out. Magos Cern walks out of the room, the mechanical part of her body whirring. "What is she?" you ask. "Is she even a "she"?" "Imagine a simple human girl. Useless. Unknown. Weak. We all want to be strong. She scorns are use of the Warp, but she's happy to replace most of her body with machinery." "Machinery?" "She... adds metal shielding, important tools, new robotic arms... that kind of thing. Are you ready to start the procedure?" "Do I have a choice?" you ask. "Not in the slightest, but if you have any questions, you might as well ask them." > You ask questions about the Warp "What's the Warp?" "Imagine an alternate dimension, of pure Chaos and emotion. It's known as the Warp. We are in a galaxy teeming with life. These lives all mean that there are trillions of bright, powerful souls. The powers of the Warp can easily be reaped here. By passing through it, we're able to travel hundreds of light years with ease. Through manifesting and manipulating the Warp, some of us, Psykers, can use it's powers like you and I do." "We use the powers of the Warp for our magic?" "Yes, yes. Here, in the warp, are powerful and ancient creatures such as the Dark Gods and their daemons. There's Khorne, who has been born out of the galaxy's never-ending combat, representing courage, strength, blood-thirst, honor and most importantly, rage. There's Tzeentch, who has been born out of scheming and plotting. He represents sorcery and the use of magic, scheming, plotting, hope and change. There's Nurgle, the plague god. He represents sickness, decay, rot, plague, defeat and in a strange way, life and acceptance. Finally there's Slaaneesh, who represents self-indulgence, passion, love and pleasure. These are the four greatest Dark Gods, and it is to them I pledge my life. In exchange, they give me gifts to enhance my dark powers and give me the strength to fight for what's right." > You ask questions about the procedure "What's going to happen to me?" "Your body is frail, weak, useless, because that's not where your strength comes from. Look at the finest warriors in your village. Their strength comes from the pathetic vessels their souls use. Your body could be upgraded, and we could make you as strong as someone like Taj with enough work, but what would be the point? It would be like adding a simple rifle bayonet to the heavy macro cannon of a starship. Now, I'm going to refine your abilities." "You haven't told me what you're going to do," you point out. "Well, this could be quite unpleasant. We're going to pump the chamber ful of Psychic energies and enhance your abilities," Kyros says. "Is that going to work?" you ask. "Probably," Kyros shrugs, flashing a devilish grin. "What I expect is a forced evolution of your mind to a much stronger state. It'll skip directly to the height of your psychic maturity, and then several levels past that. It requires a powerful Psyker who's still growing as a psyker with a lot of potential to succeed, but I'm certain you'll be able to survive it. Good luck." > You start the procedure "Alright, I'm ready," you say with a grimace. "Good. Now, it is important to know that this chamber is going to flood with psychic energy. If you feel your a few outer layers of your skin begin to burn off, you'll be find. It's quite likely that as the connections to the Warp that are built up and a portal is built up, daemons could attempt to manifest in the chamber. These are beings that are built on fear. You might see them, but they can't hurt you unless you react to in fear. They'll be able to cease on the presence of your fear and* fully manifest, and then they'll definitely be able to hurt you." "So they can't hurt me if I don't react to them?" "Well... if this goes well, they won't be able to harm you if you don't show fear. If it goes wrong in some way and if they can harm you, being scared what change anything and you'll be slaughtered like a lamb either way won't do anything. So don't get scared, and don't react in anyway." Kyros steps backwards, outside of the chamber, as four massive giant men wearing the metal armor just like Chapter Master Taj, wearing black armor with purple helmets. Severed Ork heads hang from around their heads, seemingly quite fresh, while they hold in their hands massive Bolters, which as you've learned from the chitchat between guards aboard the landing craft, spit huge bits of flaming metal with amazing speed. They're either here to keep you in... or to keep whatever ends up in this chamber if something goes wrong. The doors close, sealing you in there. Shit. You're definitely going to die in this chamber. "Shit!" you say loudly, you voice echoing off the walls of the circular chamber. The chamber begins to hum, as the entire room begins shaking. The walls course with psychic energy. You hear a thousand energetic voices begin to chatter endlessly in your mind. One voice is loud and strong above the others. "Karth..." the now familiar voice calls. "...feel the power reverberate through your soul... I knew I was right to target you." "Who the fuck are you?" you whimper. You feel your body shudder, as your mind stretches. You feel sharp bursts of emotion. A deep, powerful rage at the slaughter and enslavement of your people. How dare those fucks kill your allies, kidnap your people and do these things? What gives them the right?! This rage is quickly replaced by a burst of joyous bliss, as an immense pleasure floods through your body, and you shudder in ecstasy. This is replaced by a deep sadness, as you realize that your entire tribe, your entire planet, all of the heroes of lore that you looked up to, meant nothing. Your world, as the Chaos lords said, is infinitesimally small and worthless compared to the rest of the galaxy. "I am a friend, Karth. An ally. A daemon with unimaginable power which I'm willing to offer you. My name is Meliodas. I want you to survive this... I'm your friend... I know the powers flooding into you like you know the air you breath. Just ignore the chattering... ah, look... they're arrived. Try not to react..." You watch as the air courses, pulsing with solid, permanent beat. You see the air morph and flex with energy, as colored energy begins to manifest and coagulate. You see a morphing shape appear, a humanoid, red shape standing on black claws with a long, spiked head with two black horns. In it's hand is a long, flaming sword. It's skin the same as a burning coal sitting in the center of flames, veins of molten blood coursing through it. It looks at you and lets out an angry, guttural hiss. It slowly walks over to you, as it's blade crackles with heat. You feel your headache worsen ten times over, as the inside of your mind is scratched and hacked apart from the inside. The daemon raises a burning sword high into the air, before swinging towards your neck. > You do nothing You close your eyes to take in a deep breath, calming your mind slightly. You can feel your very consciousness shaking, and let out a shudder, opening your eyes. The daemon is gone, leaving you alone in the room. Electricity cackles along the wall, lightning running across you and wrapping around your very being. You feel a massive, terrible psychic scream reverberating deep in your mind, across every facet of your soul. You drop to your knees, as an unimaginable pain fills you. You let out a horrified scream from deep in your lungs, deep in your mind and deep in your soul. The room explodes, setting alight with multicolored flames which race along the walls, with flashes of lightning appearing and disappearing like snowflakes on wet stone. You collapse forward, onto the ground, as the room begins to cool down, but this only speeds up your fall into the void. > You enter the Void... You hear screaming. You look up, to find yourself falling through an endless void. You look at your body, starring in abject horror as it blisters, boils, sores and rashes cover you puke, releasing a torrent of vomit, blood and bile, as your flesh begins to decay, rotting in front of you. "Karth!" a voice screams, bringing you back to reality. You open your eyes, finding yourself lying in the chamber. The four Space Marines stand over you, massive figures wearing thick-plated armor, next to Kyros. "We should kill the Psyker. He's probably possessed, or corrupted beyond sanity," one says, not noticing you waking up. "You can try, but I'll bind your souls to a fucking Soul Grinder! I'll make a flaying seem like the greatest ecstasies Slaanesh has to offer!" Kyros roars. "If that cunt has failed and died from this, I'll toss his entire tribe to the mutants to be flayed, the dogs to be mauled and the men to be fucked! I'll burn the fucking...!" Kyros notices you, and his hate-filled expression changes to a friendly, cheerful one. "Ah, Karth, you've survived! Terrific!" he says, gripping your hand and shaking your hand eagerly. "Congratulations on your survival!" "Yeah... I did," you say, rubbing your head. "Ah, I've found... residence," Meliodas says from deep in your mind. "Your mind has grown powerfully. I know you had potential." Magos Cern walks into the room, starring at you with her cold eyes. She raises a pincer, quickly tearing off a stretch of skin from your arm. You yelp in pain and surprise as the skin is pealed away. She stares at it, scanning it with your mechanical eyes, before looking back at you. "Light signs of Warp mutation. Should be cleared with a round of decontamination therapy," she says. "How fares his mind? Did it work?" Taj growls, marching inside. "I'll probe your consciousness, see how much I've succeeded, shall I?" Kyros says. "My head hurts," you complain, as you feel a pounding headache hit. "Oh yes, that's normal," Kyros says. "I thought you've never done this before. How do you know the aftermath of it leads to headaches?" you ask. "Oh no, I mean if you're as powerful a psyker as I expect you to be, you'll be suffering from constant headaches, and that's when you're at your best," Kyros says, shrugging. "Why the fuck didn't you tell me that earlier?" you say. "You're a slave, Karth. Remember that when you speak back to me, or you'll become familiar with the lash," Kyros says, his cheerful, friendly demeanor dropping for a second, before he smiles once more. "Now, shall we begin the probing? You'll feel a sharp sensation. Just ignore it." You nod your head slowly, before you feel something akin to an ice-cold blade slowly being forced into your consciousness. You shudder, but try not to tense up or resist in anyway. "Hmmm... it's strong. Very strong. I've done well here. Thank the Dark Gods I installed that collar before I put you in the chamber," Kyros says, smiling as the collar tightens slightly around your throat. "These space marines will act as your personal bodyguard." "He's the prisoner, we're the guards. Don't let him think any different," one of the Space Marines says, as Kyros hands him a long chain which the space marine wraps around his fist. "That'll control his collar, marine. Use it to throttle the life out of him if he gets uppity." "Yes, sir," one of the space marines responds. You can practically feel the super-soldier maliciously grinning through his helmet. "Now, let's take our newly evolved friend to the training pit," Kyros smiles. "Test out his new abilities." > You an Hour Later... You sit in the middle of a large, Colosseum-type building. Kyros stands in a booth up above you all, next to Magos Cern and Taj Suenage. All around the seating area are the various men of the ship, crewmen, soldiers and the favored slaves. In four side of the circular arena are metal gates, where your foes will be released from. You question the insanity of building a fighting arena aboard a spaceship with very limited space, but then again, you're not in charge. "Alright, Karth, the rules are simple. No attacking the audience. There is a protective shield keeping you guys in there from damaging the crowd or, Dark Gods forbid, me. Also, if you try, we're more than happy to strangle the life out of your, break your body and bind your soul to a Soul Grinder," Kyros shouts. "Now, let's begin. Leave none alive!" The first gate opens, and you freeze as you see a group of a dozen shambling mutant abominations walking forward. You can tell they were once human, but now you can barely tell. Tentacles, extra limbs, massive tumors, animal parts and much worse. There's barely a human intelligence left behind their eyes, replaced by an animal-like instinct. They shamble towards you, roaring, howling, screeching, shouting, hissing and letting out whatever bursts of noise they can. > You fire psychic bolts of energy You fire a bolt of purple energy, striking down the largest whose head explodes. You flick your wrist again, burning the hair off a howling beastman. A mutant is struck in the face by another bolt, and by now they're confused and scared, attempting to flee back to the gate they came through which has now closed shut. Needless to say, it doesn't take much more to fully finish off the mutant pack, leaving them all dead. "Alright!" Kyros yells cheerfully. "Now, anyone can strike down some animalistic mutants. Now, let's see how the gladiator-slaves fare!" You watch as another gate opens, and half a dozen semi-armored humans walk out, holding swords, spears, halbeards, axes and all hold shields. Thankfully, they've no long-range weapons, so you have a fairly good chance. With that, they begin to advance. They're in a solid formation, bundled together to stop you from picking them off one, shields raised in an attempt to mimic a shelled creature. > You fire a burst of flames at them You raise your hand, firing a stream of fire that manifests in your palm and gushes out towards your foes. They raise their shields, but the fire easily surpasses them, going past the shield and searing flesh, burning hair and melting bone. There's a burst of screams and howls of pain that quickly fizzle out, leaving a mass of ash, burning flesh and melted armor and weapons. "Alright, alright!" Kyros yells. "Let's see him fight some real, blooded warriors. May I introduce the last known members of the Pandemian 501st Regiment!" The third gate opens, and ten men wearing combat armor, gas masks and holding lasguns with bayonets march forward in unison, before raising their weapons to fire. You need to react quickly. > You teleport behind the enemy You close your eyes, opening them once more and finding yourself less than a step behind the soldiers, who look around, confused, not noticing you. Time to strike. > You send a fireball hurtling towards your enemy You fire a massive, burning fireball directly at the guardsmen. Unfortunately, you over-estimated the distance between the two of you. The guardsman is engulfed in a fiery explosion, but unfortunately you are as well, your skin turning to ash and your bones quickly melting, your soul expiring shortly after.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You close your eyes, opening them once more and finding yourself less than a step behind the soldiers, who look around, confused, not noticing you. Time to strike. > You charge them with psychically-enhanced fists You charge forward, as psychic energy floods into your fists. You grab one, yanking her head off and flinging it with all your psychic strength at another. You grab a lasgun, breaking someone's neck and beheading two more with the bayonet. The guardsmen panic, falling over each other to escape, but you don't give up, finishing the rest of them with relative ease. "Alright, he's shed some blood. Perhaps we should give him a break," Kyros says, before laughing cheerfully. "Or perhaps... we should give him a real challenge. Bring out the Champion of Davial!" The final gate, the one behind you, opens. You spin around on the balls of your feet, prepared to kill, even through you're exhausted. You can here your psychic defenses begin to falter as the voices come back, thousands of voices screaming, laughing and howling in your mind. Physically, you're tired from this heavy exercise, and just want to pass out. You watch in terror as a massive figure clad in huge plates of armor walks forward. Two sharpened tusks come out from his helmet, and in one hand he holds a massive warhammer, while in the other, attached to his arm, is a bolter. By either side of the massive Champion is a nearly naked slave wearing rags, trying to polish the armor while the Champion of Davial continues walking forward. "Begin!" Kyros shouts. Suddenly, you hear another familiar voice. "Hello, my dear Karth. I see you're outgunned here. Need some help?" Meliodas asks. The Champion raises his bolter and it fires. You quickly form a shield, barely absorbing the massive amount of power behind the bolter. "I can help you, but you're going to need to get your hands dirty. See those two slaves? Go for them. Boil their bloods with your mind, and help draw the psychic beings that are trying to enter." "What?" you ask aloud, teleporting out of the way of another burst of bolter fire as the Champion of Davial continues to advance. "Kill the slaves. I'll offer their souls as a... summoning gift to two potential allies for you." This presents a moral dilemma. Can you wipe out the two slaves in order to win this battle? Can you even trust Meliodas? You do have other options. Through teleportation and levitation, you can easily evade the Champion, and you can wait to tire him out. You can attempt to wear down the Champion's armor through fire and psychic bolts. You can also attempt to teleport atop the Champion and try use your psychic powers to tear this bastard's head off. > You kill the slaves for Meliodas You nod, raising your hands and directing a blast of powerful psychic flames towards both slaves. The slaves are hit by the stream of fire and engulfed entirely, their existence ending with a powerful scream. The fire engulfs them, but while the bodies falls apart to ash, two new shapes appear in the fire. You watch, as from the engulfing flames step two daemons. They're humanoid, half beautiful women and half horrifying crab-monster. Their face are stretched and gaunt, like once beautiful women whose faces melted, with long black hair, pale skin changing to black shell in patches over their bodies and a massive claw having replaced their right arm. They eagerly turn to the Champion of Delial, charging forward. They bounce, picing and attacking and cutting through metal with their powers. You fire a stream of fire at the Champion's armored head as the two daemons repeatedly pince and cut at his head and chest. He fights valiantly, but he doesn't last long fighting two powerful daemons and a psyker. He falls to his knees, before collapsing onto his face. The space marine guards begin sending bolter fire down at the daemons, who quickly with under the fire before collapsing back into the flames, disappearing, leaving you in an arena, empty except for the corpses of your enemies. "Well," Kyros says. "That was interesting. I didn't expect daemon summoning to be in your inventory. None the less, well done." Kyros levitates down towards you as the shield evaporates, before ending up less than two or three feet above you. "Well done, noble warrior! Look and behold the powers of the Warp!" he says, in the opening of a speech. > You kill Kyros You take a deep breath, preparing all of your reserves of psychic energy. Quickly, you manifest it in your most powerful bolt yet, before firing straight at Kyros. The energy drained from you, you collapse to your knees. You feel your collar flex, beginning to choke you. "Ha! You have balls, my little ally! I love it!" Meliodas cries. Kyros rises up quickly and brings the shields up full force, and they explode, barely managing to contain your psychic power. Kyros watches as the collar chokes the last ounce of psychic power from you, dropping down to his previous height with an enraged snarl. "Is that how you want to play this, you little cunt?" he snarls. You search your mind, but your entire psychic reserve is gone. You can't even make a spark. You do have a ounce of physical strength yet, before you collapse from exhaustion, and you intend to use it. The entire audience of slaves, mutants, soldiers and thousand-year old warriors watches as you arch your head back and spit in Kyros face, before collapsing. > The Familiar Oblivion... After going through another sparse of evil dreams and horrifying nightmares, including getting chased by tentacle abominations through tunnels, watching your tribe being flayed alive by men infested by worms and covered in a solid sheet of pus and staring into the eyes of beings of pure, unending hate, you awaken in a small room. You're lying on a metal table, completely naked, while Magos Cern stands nearby, drilling holes through a large blob of meat on another table. "Ah, the good Techpriest is looking after you. You'd have been safer if they tossed you in a pit of deathworms," Meliodas says. > You speak up "Hello?" you say. "Ah, look whose woken up," she says, her head swiveling around mechanically to stare at you "What happened?" "You passed out from fatigue. I brought you here, left you to sleep for a while, injected you with a few shots of adrenaline, gave you a full cleansing of your blood and burned off a few layers of your skin to remove all Chaos taint." She emits a long burst of static energy, before staring at you. "Kyros has been informed of your awakening. He'll be here shortly." Magos Cern immediately goes back to working on the chunk of meat, clearly not in the mood to converse. After a few minutes, Kyros enters, covered in blood. He seems quite calmer then before. "Ah, look who it is, the traitorous bastard." "You invaded my world, burned my villag, killed half my tribe and enslaved the other half. What did you expect?" you say. "I suppose. I just assumed you were intelligent enough to know that that would never work, or even a little grateful at the fact that I had given you the gifts of power. "It's quite hard to use the gift of power while bound by chains." "Perhaps," Kyros says. "You're to be escorted back to your cell. Let's go." Your four guards enter, as stern as ever, and you stand, following them along the halls. > A Week Later... The week goes by. Your guards give you no chance to even think about escape, let alone actually making an attempt at it. You practice fighting in the arena everyday, facing hordes of mutants, failed attempts at creating super-soldiers, thankfully none of them from your tribe and a few slaves thrown in there for you to kill. Kyros is prone to sending out enemies that can cause painful wounds such as those that utilize painful poisons and toxins. It seems he's still bitter about the fact you tried to murder him. Understandable. After that, you have meditation, to calm the storms of your mind and give you a chance to keep the demons, and more literally daemons, at bay. You spend time with Kyros as he attempts to indoctrinate you to serve him willingly, although after your attempt at his life this time mainly serves as a time to check on the wards for your collar and make sure you haven't circumvented them. You give him the idea that you're buying it, but you know he's just a madman. His ultimate goal seems to be regrouping with several other Chaos war-bands of various sizes to topple the Imperium of Man and take Terra, although the whisperings from other men tell you that that is an impossible goal.You're still not allowed to see Fay or anyone else com your tribe. You shudder at the thoughts of what Kyros is doing with them. For all his friendly gestures, kind deeds and grand ideals and plans, Kyros is but a corrupted mad man who is willing to sacrifice anyone and everyone in an attempt to gain power. Under the Magos' orders, you've spent a lot of time sleeping from either the fatigue of constant fighting and training to expand your mind and permanently trying to ward off the daemons that scratch at your mind, or from various drugs and chems to put you under. Sleeping is painful, for the most part. You get a few brief bit of oblivion, which is a peace incomparable to anything you've ever had to deal with, but these states still being you deeper into your mind and the theWarp. Then the nightmares start. In the waking world, you have classes with the teachers. Kyros teaches you meditation techniques for controlling your powers as well as new ways to utilise the psychic energy flowing through your mind. Taj teaches you military tactics and how to lead everything from a small unit of hardened men to a massive army of garrisoned troops. Magos Cern teaches you a bit about mechanics, the various technologies of the galaxy and gives you a broad, general education about the galaxy and its inhabitants. One day, you lie in bed, having emerged from the state of horrified dreaming but not yet having fully awoken, in a blissful, thoughtless state. The door opens, as two of your space marine guards enter. One uses a small device to make your collar tighten quickly before releasing again, a small threat to make sure you know whose boss. The fucking collar. You could turn him into a thick pink mist inside that armor if the collar wasn't stifling your abilities. "What?" you ask, annoyed to have been disturbed from your bliss. "Kyros wants you," one says. "What does he want?" Kyros appears in the room, leaning against the doorway, seemingly manifested out of thin air. "Come on, let's go," he says nonchalantly, picking his nails. "Where?" you ask. "Well, as a... reward for your long week of work, I have a surprise. We're going to go see Fay." "Really?" you ask. A surge of emotions rising up inside you. Joy at the thought of seeing your friend, surprise at Kyros' kindness, gratitude for the gift, fear at what could've happened Fay, all these manifest into an overwhelming feeling of both exhilaration and dread. "Well? Let's go!" Kyros says, walking out of the room. > You follow Kyros You stand, walking along after Kyros. You're at a point where your psychic growth has overtaken your physical growth to such a degree that it'd be easier to float along the ground rather than actually having to walk. Unfortunately, the collar prevents you from even firing out some sparks without Kyros' permission. You arrive in a metal door, which opens, revealing the booth from which Kyros and the others watch down at the fight. You walk along, looking down at the arena, which is empty. "I thought you were bringing me to see Fay," you say nervously, despite knowing what this is. "I brought you to see her fight!" Kyros says with a smile. You stare down, as one of the gates opens. You watch as an abomination stumbles out. Stumbling on four insect-like legs, with it's eft arm replaced by a long tentacle of coiled pink muscle, the very end of it studded with bone outgrowths to make it a more formidable weapon. In it's right hand is a short, rusted axe stained with blood and gore. It's head is monstrous, with an oversized mouth filled to the brim with teeth, overflowing with acid that drips onto it's chest with a sizzle, and a single, blood-shot eye. The creature looks up at you, it's eye flinching, before it lets out a miserable howl. "Shit... that looks miserable beyond belief," you say. "Yes, she does," Kyros says, grinning from ear to ear as half a dozen more beasts just like the first walk, stumble or crawl into the center of the arena. "She?" you ask. Now that you're not fighting them, you can have a long look and see what these mutant abominations really are: disgusting, pitiful creatures that should receive a quick death. "You don't recognize her?" Kyros says, clearly suppressing laughter. "This is what remains of the Uwais Tribe, and the first one to come out, the pack leader, is Fay." You look at monsters underneath, trying to see any resemblance to your friends as pure horror overtakes your mind. You collapse to your knees, puking over the banister and onto the monsters underneath as Kyros bursts into laughter. "He's done this to provoke you. He wants to get you angry, to see how powerful you are even with the collar. He's under-exaggerating how powerful you are, so you might be able to harm him, but..." Meliodas advises, but you don't pay any attention, too filled with anger. You stand, holding onto the banister to pull yourself up. Your knees shake, but you take a moment to regain your strength. Then, you launch yourself at Kyros. You grab at his eyes, your fingers going straight for his eyes. Kyros stumbles backwards, unprepared, before you feel your collar quickly tightening as you start to choke. You continue to scratch and gouge, even as the air is choked from you. Finally, you're dragged upwards by invisible hands, floating a few feet away from Kyros. Your weak body has done practically no damage to Kyros, who seems surprised and a bit amused rather than angry. "Hmmm... I under-exaggerated how angry you'd get, or how stupid you are if you think trying to fight me is an option." "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to break you. I don't care how long it takes, I will destroy your very soul," you say, staring at him. Kyros chuckles softly, before forcing you around to stare down at the arena. "Watch the match," he says. "We will have our revenge, Karth. Not today, not tomorrow, but we will have our revenge, " Meliodas says. You watch for about a minute as the abominations sit there, wandering around in confusion, falling to brief bursts of violence and self-harm and a lot of screaming and howling. Finally, the second gate opens. You watch as hooded figures enter, holding swords and small, circular shields. The trio charges forward, diving into the air. The beasts charge forward, attacking with fierce brutality. You watch as the lead one, the thing that used to be Fay, is almost beheaded by one of the trio. The trio fight with ease, diving, ducking and weaving out of the way of tentacles, axes, biting and stomping. Within a minute, the last of the abominations stumble forward and hits the ground as its front two legs are hacked off, and one of the trio leaps on top of the monster and impales it through the head. "What a display!" Kyros says with a smile. "Shall we see the victors?" Before you can say a word, Kyros releases you and you fall through the air, smacking into the dirt with a pained yelp. You moan in pain, looking up at the fighters. They walk forward, staring at you. "Karth?" one of them asks. You look up to see Fay standing there, her hooded robes covered in blood, alongside two other Uwais tribals you vaguely remember from your trips accompanying hunting parties, the Jakar Twins. "Fay," you reply, staring back at her, not knowing what else to say. Fay tosses her sword aside, grabbing you and embracing you tightly. Even though you feel yourself being turned into a fine powder from the strength of her hug, you're just so happy that you've found her that you don't care, hugging back. Kyros drops down, staring at you from over Fay's shoulder, as Magos Cern joins you. "Ah, what a happy reunion!" Kyros says. "You said she was dead!" you shout angrily, pushing Fay aside to point an accusatory finger at him. "I did. I lied," Kyros says, smiling. "Never trust a psyker, Karth. Not even yourself," Meliodas says. You shrug it off, trying not to bow to his attempts at emotional manipulation. You grab Fay, looking at her properly as she takes off her hooded cloak. She's tall, standing over six foot tall, and she's a lot more muscular than you remember. Whatever Kyros has done to her, it's had a serious affect. Her arms and legs are quite muscled, and you doubt you could find an ounce of fat anywhere on her. Still, she has the same coy smile, the wild, adventurous look in her eyes, She's pretty much the same Fay. "So... what's with the hood?" you ask, struggling to find anything else to say. "Um... it's so the mutants can't grab my hair and drag me down, Karth. Was that the most important question? How are you? What are they doing to you?" "Come on, out of the arena. I have a captured Squig the boys want to have some fun fighting," Kyros says. "Jakar twins, back to the dorm. Karth, Fay, follow me." You look at Fay, before grabbing her hand and walking after Kyros and Magos Cern. "Hmm, walking alongside me with my hand held? Where's the old Karth that I would piggyback around the village?" Fay asks. "Pffh, if I didn't have this collar I'd be floating around the place," you say. The stress of being kidnapped, having your tribe enslaved and murdered, your village burned down, your mind and soul forced through the very depths of hell falls away as you talk to your old friend. You recount your story as she tells hers. Apparently, she spent much of the time in a coma, having her body hacked apart and remade. Her blood now contains vast amounts of chems and combat drugs, she has several new organs and stronger bones, faster blood clotting and much more. She's trained extensively both with swords, guns, explosives and infinitely more, as well as team tactics. She's been chosen out as Team Leader for the Uwais super-soldiers. "So basically, you've become a super-soldier?" "Super-soldier?" Magos Cern says, her voice flooded with the most emotion you've heard from her the entire time you knew her. "She's a failure. A disgrace. I had access to geneseed, space marine test subjects and untold resources. What did I create? A mockery. These "super-soldiers" couldn't take on multiple space marines each like I had hoped. They couldn't take on a single fucking space marine like I had planned! They're barely worth half a space marine! I've failed!" "They'll do fine, Magos," Kyros says, arriving at another set of metal doors, which open to reveal a large table, where various figures are sitting. There's Kyros, Magos Cern and Taj Suenage, as well as Kyros' daughter, who sits in the corner. There's also many more who you don't know. One is a tall, gaunt looking woman with pale skin and black hair pulled back in a pony tail, wearing a long coat that disturbingly, appears to be made from human skin. Another is a girl with a shaved head wearing heavy combat armor who is sharpening a long machete, another is a... person whose gender you can't tell, wearing black leather armor and lingerie in an odd attempt to look sexy at a war meeting, with long, curly black hair and excessive make-up. The person smiles at you, licking his... or her... or its lips. Then there's a young girl, younger than even you, wearing hooded robes and reading an ancient, dusty tome. Finally, there's a barely human monster. An obese man covered with rotting pores, boils, sores and pus-filled, infected wounds, with its arms replaced by long, rusted spikes. Kyros and Magos Cern take a seat. "These are the leaders of the fleet, Fay and Karth. Some introductions are in order. First is me, the supreme leader of the entire fleet. Magos Cern leads the Dark Mechanicus on the ship and maintains the vessel itself. Chapter Master Taj Suenage leads the space marine chapter on board, the Undying Reapers. Then we have Calpurnia the Ravager, leader of the 22nd Istanford Regiment. " The one with the human skin coat stands up, extending a hand to shake. "Pleasure to meet you," she says, shaking both your hand and Fay's. I hope you're... efficient during your stay here." "Then there's the Staine siblings. There's Rebecca Staine, the leader of the Bloody Claws, a war-band that worships Khorne the war god." "Fuck you, psyker. You're weak and pathetic. Your parents should've left you to die," Rebecca growls, pointing her blade at you. "Fuck you," Fay snarls, shoving her blade point away from your throat. Rebecca stands, brandishing her sword, before the plague-ridden man stands, blocking Rebecca's path forward with one of his spike arms. "Hey, hey! There's no need for violence! We're all brothers and sisters here!" Rebecca sits back down with another growl. "Alright, next we have Elios, leading of the Shrieking Harpies, a war-band that worships Slaanesh, the god of excess," Kyros says, pointing at the person clad in leather and lingerie. "Pleasure to meet you, darlings. For slaves aboard a Chaos vessel, might I say you're looking... delectable," Elios says in a deep, masculine voice, licking his lips as he stares at both you and Fay. "Keep it in your pants, Elios," Kyros says. "Next we have Elizabeth." Elizabeth, the hooded girl reading the book, doesn't look up. "She's risen to the position of leader of the One-Eyed Crows, a war-band that worships Tzeentch, the sorceror god. She easily reached the position through her amazing social abilities. Tell us about yourself, Elizabeth." "Move along," Elizabeth says, making a circular motion with her hand without looking up. "OK, Elizabeth. Finally, we have Durge, leader of the Black Rats war-band that worships Nurgle the plague god." "Hello!" the diseased man says, waving his spike-arms. "It's a pleasure to meet you! I hope you're being treated well. I hope you're being fed enough. If not, it's probably because I've eaten all the food aboard this vessel!" The man, Durge, breaks into laughter as several maggots burst from his skin. You try not to get sick. "You're here to meet the leaders of this fleet so that you know who you'll be answering. We want you both to lead the slave army." "Slave army?" Fay asks. "The Uwais tribe soldiers, the previous batch of failed test subjects, the gladiator slaves and whatever else we can muster up. We'll hold the detonators to your explosive collars, but you'll hold a copy of the detonators for all the men under your command." "There was a previous batch of failed test subjects?" Fay asks. "Yes, there was. They were quite strong, but their minds were easily broken. Most weren't sentient, the sentient ones were insane. There was only one who you could even have a conversation with, the one I appointed leader. I'll show you to them some time after this. I assume you'll take the position?" "It's not like I have much choice," you say. "We'll take it," Fay says, answering for the both of you. "This slave army, ot whatever you want to call it, will give us the strength advantage to become a serious military power in this tiny little sector. We could conquer ourselves a little kingdom from the weak and undefended worlds. We could become a raiding fleet that could have us living a life of luxury. But one little slave army wouldn't even give us a chance against even the defenses on Pluto!" Calpurnia says. "I'll tear out your soul and devour it if you show anymore signs of cowardice!" Kyros yells. "Magos Cern, take Fay and Karth to see the previous batch of super-soldiers." "I'll have to let the galaxy witness the shame of my failed creation when we release them on the galaxy. I might as well let the two adolescents have a preview of my sickening failure," Magos Cern says. "We're not finished here!" Calpurnia splutters angrily. "I'm not launching my army on a suicide mission!" "My army! As long as you serve me, it's my army!" Kyros screams. "We take a vote, then," Calpurnia suggests. "Fine, raise your hands if you don't want to go through with the assault, if you're a coward, if you're not loyal." Calpurnia defiantly holds up her hands. Elios holds up his next. "Sorry, Kyros. I'm not dying.. I'm too young and beautiful to die fighting an unwinnable war," he says. Durge holds up a spike, looking ashamed. "I'm loyal, Kyros, but I'm just as loyal to my men as you, and I won't see them die for nothing." Elizabeth slowly raises a hand, looking up from her book for the first time. "This plans suicide, Kyros. We both know that." Kyros snarls in anger, looking around. "That's me, Cern, Taj and Rebecca for attacking, and Elizabeth, Durge, Elios and Calpurnia for not doing so," Kyros says in a low growl. "The slave leaders are the tie-breakers, then," Calpurnia says. Kyros looks at you with a stare, holding onto the controller for your collars. Well, this seems like an obvious answer, even if it is a suicide mission. > You support the assault on Terra You keep your hand at your side, and while Fay raises an eyebrow, she does the same. "Cowardly... but smart," Meliodas says. "Perhaps you'll realize your potential after all." "Good... good!" Kyros says, his voice flooded with relief. "The slaves are loyal! Now I must question why my own allies aren't." An uneasy silence fills the room, before Magos Cern breaks it. "I shall take Fay and Karth out to inspect their new troops, the old generation of super-soldiers. Is that acceptable, Kyros?" "Yes, yes," Kyros says, his mind clearly focused on other things. "Go then." Magos Cern walks out of room, and you quickly follow, followed by Fay. You walk along empty hallway, heading towards the super-soldiers. Magos Cern is clearly not interested to talk at all, so you and Fay have time to talk. "So, what just happened?" you ask. "Were we just given an army?" "We've went from slaves to masters of a slave army, in five minutes," Fay says. "Well, to be fair, we're still slaves. We're slaves who are also slave masters of a slave army," you point out. "Alright, I suppose so. Anyway, are you OK? We've walked a lot," Fay says. "I'm fine," you smile. "I don't know whether to be thankful you're looking out for me, or insulted you think I can't even walk that much." You walk on, eventually entering a large, metal elevator. The elevator quickly begins descending down the ship. "Alright, children. Listen up. We're going to wake our super-soldiers from their cyro-sleep. Don't make any sudden movements, don't make any loud noises, do nothing of the sort." "Got it," you both say. The elevator doors open, revealing hundreds of metal tubes lining the walls, the cyro-pods. Magos Cern walks forward, extending a metal tentacle that grows from her spike. The tentacle presses onto the consoles attached to the many pods, and three open. Cold air quickly floods out, and you watch as three lumbering monsters walk out. "Behold, my failures," Magos Cern says. The super-soldiers stand at eight feet tall, and are made of massive coils of muscle that makes them nearly twice as wide as even a normal man, without any armor. Their mouths are filled with hundreds of carnivorous teeth, like a shark's. They have short, four-inch bone claws extending from their wrists. Their skin is dark and misshapen, like someone tanned human skin to make leather and then stitched it over their bodies. They walk forward, grunting and growling. The first looks around, before stumbling back inside it's cyro-pod. "Sleep... sleep... sleep..." it mutters, walking back inside. "Size isn't everything... but it sure as fuck counts for a lot," Meliodas remarks. The other two immediately begin head-butting each other with grunts, and you hear the sound of heavy bones smashing against each other. Magos Cern takes out a small data pad, pressing it. The two super-soldiers grunt, wandering back to their cyro-pods. "These are the super-soldiers. The guards here have given them the nickname "Goliath's". I suppose it's fitting. They're not smart, but they fear the lash and the electro-collar, so they follow orders easily." To prove her point, Magos Cern pulls out a small datapad, quickly tapping it. The pair of super-soldiers roar in pain, backing up into their cyro-pods. Magos Cern quickly taps on the pad and the cyro-pods close. He strides forward, to another tank. "Let me introduce you to Specimen 401245. It goes by the name Cain. It's the most intelligent of the beasts, and the most friendly. Now, here he is." The cyro-pod opens as Magos Cern taps quickly on the datapad. You see another massive, lumbering Goliath wander out of the cyro-pod. It looks almost the exact same as the others, the only differences being a pair of bone growths sticking out of its forehead like horns and its oversized lips held up by hooks to allow it to breath. It steps out, taking in a deep breath, before staring at you. There's a brief silence, that Fay quickly breaks. "Does... can it talk?" she asks. "It can definitely hear," the beast grunts in response. "Um, hi there!" Fay says. "I'm Fay. What's your name?" "Cain," he responds, his voice a low, rumbling, guttural growling sound. "I'm Karth," you say. "What time is it?" Cain asks. "Time?" you respond. "I don't know. A little after noon, probably, or what the ship uses as noon." "I don't care. What time is it for me?" "... uh... the same time?" "I am awake. I always sleep in the cold pod until I'm needed. I'm only needed to be cut up, drugged, poked and prodded, or to kill. What time is it for me to do? Kill, or be torn apart?" "Neither. I'm here to introduce you to Fay and Karth, the new leaders of your men." "My men? First time I've heard them called men," Cain says, running his claws against each other absent-mindedly. "Well? They've met me. What else is there? What do you want to know?" > You ask a question "What?" Cain grunts. > You say "How did you get your name?" "Found it scrawled in a tome that was dropped out in the trash, back when they let us be rather than freezing us. "Cain" is a lot easier to remember than the Subject however many numbers," Cain says.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What?" Cain grunts. > You say "How old are you?" "How old? I don't know. Time in the cold pod makes it hard to tell. There's no sun, no days, no minutes," Cain says, seemingly pondering this. "This subject is roughly five years, three months and two days." "Ah... interesting," Cain remarks.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What?" Cain grunts. > You say "How many men do you have?" "Do I look like I've counted many?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What?" Cain grunts. > You say "How capable are your men?" "They're tough. We've fought many times before. Most of us can wield bolters, though a few just end up using them as clubs to fight with their claws. A few can operate bigger weapons, and a few can only wield clubs and such. They follow orders, though. They show no fear, feel no pain, lose no battle. They'll take as much firepower as the enemy can give, even without armor."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What?" Cain grunts. > You say "What exactly is your motive?" "Motive?" "What do you want?" Cain pauses, scratching one of his "horns". The horn begins to bleed, but you doubt he cares. "I don't know," Cain finally answers.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What?" Cain grunts. > You say "I've no more questions." "Alright," Cain sleeps. "What else?" "Nothing else is required," Magos Cern says. "Return to your pod." Cain nods, before walking back into his pod. The cyro-pod shuts, leaving Cain back to his cold, endless sleep. "We should continue," Magos Cern says. "I still have to show you the gladiator slaves who you'll take under you command and the Uwais Tribe. The Goliaths will act as your heavy shock troopers, the gladiator-slaves will act as scouts, skirmishers and fill in whatever spare roles you have, and the Uwais tribe will be your main unit. I'll take you to see them." You begin following Magos Cern out of the cyro-sleep area, and along the hallways. After ten minutes, you reach a large metal door, which opens to reveal a large room filled with bunk beds, with familiar bronze bodies lying in the beds. "This is Dorm A. We have around sixty soldiers here," Magos Cern says. Fay walks into the room, and lets ou a shout. "Gentlemen! Your captain's back!" The tribals roll out of bed. You recognize a few of them, but strangely you recognize many as men from other various tribes." "Fay, you're back!" one says. "How did the fight go? It took far longer than expected," another adds. "Oh, shit! Is that Karth?" another asks. The attention immediately goes from Fay to you, as tribals begin appearing. They all appear far more muscular, many bearing fresh scars. "Karth! How are you even still alive?" someone asks incredulously. "It's the Uwais shaman!" another asks. "Karth, how are you? What have they been doing to you?" You watch as the tribals begin to surround the three of you, although Magos Cern makes sure they keep as least half a dozen feat away from her. "Stay back. Karth is only here to see you, not talk to you," Magos Cern says, drawing a datapad and letting out an electro-shock that causes the group to let out a pained yelp before they back away. "Why are there so many men and women from other tribes? I thought it was the Uwais tribe who was kidnapped." "When we arrived on your planet, we needed to do a lot of work. We drained lakes for water, drilled into the planet's crust to get vast quantities of Promethium, wiped out native species for food. It takes a lot of effort to run a vessel this large, and to do it quickly and efficiently. While we did so, our soldiers went to work. They needed to fight, both to train and to simply shed blood for their own enjoyment. Prisoners were taken in vast quantities, and I used them as I used the Uwais tribe. Now, there's far more from other tribes than there are from Uwais tribe." "Hmmm... your home world is destroyed. Ambition is the only path forward now, Karth, there is no going back. We will conquer the stars together." Meliodas says. "I suppose calling them the Uwais tribe is a bit of a failing, then. Tribals would be more suitable." "As you wish. You are their superior. You can do as you wish with them." "The average tribal will be be outfitted with combat armor as well as some equipment, such as grenades, gas masks, communications devices, that kind of thing. The stronger ones will get Bolters, the strongest will be equipped with melee weapons; chainswords, chainaxes, power swords, as well as bolt pistols. The weaker ones will be given specialized roles and equipped for as such: meltaguns and missile launchers for anti-armor, snipers with sniper rifles and stealth roles with chameoline cloaks and silenced weapons. We should have a fairly well equipped army that will be able to hold their own when fighting alongside the Guardsmen and Traitor Marines we have under our command." "We're not fighting for you fucks!" someone shouts. "Yeah! Fuck you, you kidnapping bastards!" "Ah, this is an issue," Magos Cern says. "Unfortunately, due to my... failures in work on the brain, Kyros has forbid me to tinker on their minds to ensure loyalty. Fay has only so far failed to do, so it'll be your job now. I need all rebelliousness to be crushed." "How?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Get it done. I don't care how. I need to go check on the oxygen decks to the macro guns on the starboard side doesn't asphyxiate," Magos says, turning around and walking off. "Well, that's a bitch," you complain, turning to Fay. "I guess we need to get rid of rebelliousness before Kyros gets pissy and blows our heads clean off." "Or..." Fay says slyly. "We could just hide the rebelliousness. It would be better if we kept it under wraps until we have a chance to get out of here." "Oh, choices, choices, choices. Terrify, threaten, talk or trust. Which shall it be, Karth?" Meliodas says. You walk forward, into the center of the dorm. You have several options here. You could attempt to use some of your psychic powers to show these tribals the true power of the Warp. That would definitely ensure their loyalty, if only out of fear. You could threaten them to ensure their loyalty, once again while out of fear, and you wouldn't have to alienate yourself by making yourself seem like a terrifying psychic being. You could attempt to convince the tribals that loyalty to this place is the only rational choice. You could also take Fay's path, and assure them that they'll have the chance to get revenge, but that for now they should hide all rebelliousness until it's time to strike. > You terrify the tribals with the powers of the Warp You tug at your collar, but fortunately, due to Kyros' distraction with his troops who are "disloyal", the restrictions are loose. Not gone, still definitely there. You know if you try anything you'll gain his attention and the restrictions will be tightened, as well as the collar around your throat, most likely. Still, you need to take advantage of this and put on a full show. You walk slowly forward, raising into the air. Black and purple electricity begins running along your body, bursting along yourself. You set alight, as the crimson flames of the Warp engulf. You change your meek and timid voice, amplifying it through the Warp to booming proportions. "Do you see what I've become? Do you see what Kyros made me? I am a vessel of Chaos, a being of the Warp. This is the power the Warp holds. This is the power Kyros holds, the power this vessel holds, and the power of the cursed men who guard and crew it. You can't possibly hope to beat it. You should only thank the Dark Gods that the role they've asked you to fill is beneficial to you, and embrace this role to the utmost." The tribals, including Fay, stand back, looking terrified. You know in that moment that fear has replaced all rebelliousness in their souls. They'll follow orders now. You drop down to your feet, staring around. "Spread the message," you say to the tribals, before turning to Fay. "We should go." You walk out of the room, quickly followed by Fay, who runs after you. "What the fuck was that?" she asks. "I did my job," you say simply. "Those are our friends, our family, our kinsman. You're not seriously happy with a life of service to a guy who kidnapped us? These guys killed Duggin!" "Duggin was a fool," you reply. "Our lives were once meaningless. Now, we have a hope. Surely you understand?" "I wish I could say I could, Karth, but I don't. I don't know how you can think that." You walk outside, where Kyros awaits, smiling. "Well done," he says, smiling. "Impressive display." "You were there for that?" you ask. "I was aware. Why else would your collar restrictions be weaker?" "I assumed it was because you were distracted," you admit. "If that was true, whenever I slept you'd be free to do whatever you wanted," Kyros says, smirking. "Now, we need to visit the last of your soldiers, the gladiator-slaves. They're always an interesting crew. Shall we go?" You look at Fay, who nods, although she still looks nervous from your earlier "display" of power. "Yes, let's," you reply. > You visit the gladiator-slaves You follow Kyros, as you head to the arena. You reach the doors that would lead into it, but instead oof entering you go off to a small elevator behind it. You enter, and it slowly begins descending. It opens, revealing the underhive of the arena. There's dozen of cages, holding exotic beasts and dangerous Xenos. You see a half dozen thick, heavily muscled, green-skinned Orks in a cage, their necks chained to the wall. They're howling and roaring, tugging at their chains. Surprisingly, while most shout in their barbaric, guttural language, one seems to speak yours. "Humie! Humie! Get me free! Get me free!" he shouts. "I is gonna let you live, even give ya a bitta loot and an escape pod if ya let me free!" "Don't respond!" someone further down the catacombs that lay beneath the arena shouts. "It only encourages Ol' Dak!" "Hmmm... this Ork must be one of the greatest speakers of his kind," Meliodas points out. "Of course to us he's a fucking idiot." The ork's eyes narrow, before he begins howling in frustration and smacking his hands against his own head, a heavy thud emanating as his muscled fists slam into his thick skull. You continue walking, passing amazing and fantastic creatures and gladiators. There's a tentacled slug-man with a large beak and dozens of eyes peppered around his body which is huddled up in the corner of it's cage, a trio of horrible bird-hound creatures that scratch at their bars, a massive human wearing what appears to be an iron cage with hundreds of inward pointing nails who rams himself against the cage wall, his body shredded to such an extent you're amazed he's not dead yet, a multi-legged, horned creature that looks almost cute. Finally, you reach a long hallway, with thick, heavy metal doors spread along the hallway. An eye peers out of a door eye-slot, staring at you. "Hello there. Do we have more fighters, or...? Oh wait, it's them. Terrific." The eye disappears, and the slot closes. Kyros takes out a datapad, pressing several buttons before the door slowly slides open, revealing a large open area. Bunk beds line the wall, with a bunch of young men and women, the oldest in their late twenties and the youngest in their mid-teens. They wear very little armor, all of which is either leather or light combat armor. They sit around a fire, roasting chunks of meat on sticks in it. Two of the gladiators lean against the beds nearest to you, staring at you. One is a tall, muscled and tanned, with long blond hair and sparking green eyes. She holds a long, rifle-like gun with an axe blade made into the barrel with a grip under it. The other is shorter, with similarly tanned skin, with playful green eyes and curly brown hair, holding a curved sword and a Plasma pistol. They both look to be in their late teens or early twenties at latest. "Is that a fire?" Fay asks. "Are they armed?" you also. "Yes and yes," the male says, turning to the girl. "This question game is fun." "The fire's below a vent that's sending the smoke... somewhere. We weren't exactly given schematics of this place, all we know is the smoke doesn't bother us. And we're allowed weapons to keep the others in check. Even if we both went for Kyros, our minds would be shattered before we could raise our weapons," the girl says. "Nah, I could at least start a swing before I was killed." "These are the Twins. They lead the Gladiator-Slaves. Now, introduce yourselves," Kyros says. "I'm Castus," the boy smiles, staring at the pair of you. His eyes flicker, as he looks over Fay. He appears to be checking her out. You feel like punching him in the throat, but refrain. "You're a jealous one, aren't you?" Meliodas says. "I'm Olive," the girl says, extending a hand, which you grab and shake before Fay does the same. "So, is there a reason you're here?" Castus asks. "Fay and Karth will be taking command of the gladiators. They are my lieutenants, and will command a segment of our army, the slaves." "Oh, terrific. We've been shafted," Castus says. "I'm sure Kyros will want us to have an advisor position to assist Fay and Karth," Olive says. "Correct," Kyros says. "Well, there might be an issue with that," Castus says. "You see, both Fay and Karth have a history of... well, murdering my men. Pitting the Kyros Jr and Magos Cern's latest brand of super-freaks against us has led to a lot of men being, quite understandably, pissed with the guys who hacked apart, or psychically exploded, or simply beat their friends upside the head until they went comatose." "If you want, we can have the dissenters flailed alive. Simply point them out, and I'll have them broken. Is that preferable?" Castus goes quiet. "As I thought," Kyros says with a smile. "Make sure the men know to follow orders. Now, it's late, and these guys need sleep. Is anything else needed?" "I suppose not," Olive says. "Well, we need a lot, but nothing we're realistically getting anytime soon," Castus says. Kyros stares at Castus, fire beginning to run along his body. "Nothing needed, sir," Castus says. "Good. Fay, Karth, let's go," Kyros says. Kyros swivels around, walking out of the room. You quickly follow him, and the massive metal door shuts behind you. "So, we'll escort Fay back to the Uwais dorms, and then send you to your room," Kyros says. "Well you know, Karth's room is closer. I could just spend the time in his," Fay suggests. "It would give us some time to go over battle plans now that we know what our men are capable of, and I can inform him of what the Uwais tribe are like in battle..." "Really? That's the reason? That's the reason you're going for?" Kyros asks, raising an eyebrow. "No." > You argue that Fay should spend the night in your room "But she could help me plan what do to with the lieutenants and what to do to secure their loyalty, and..." "Don't fuck with me, Karth. You just want the girl there so you can have something fuck. Maybe if you were a little smarter with the way you acted towards me I'd grant you such base pleasures, but you acted like a prick all while you've been here, so no, she'll go back to her bed, and you'll go back to hers." "Surprisingly, the cunt doesn't stop being a cunt just because you want to get laid. Unless I'm wrong and you seriously didn't plan or want to try anything with her, in which case Slaanesh will never get a hold on your soul," Meliodas says. You arrive at the doors to your cell, and Kyros opens it. "Hurry up, inside," Kyros says. You look at Fay, who smiles at you. "Bye, Karth. Thanks for trying," she says, giving a short little wave. "Bye, Fay," you reply. The doors are shut, and you walk over to your bed, collapsing on it. Only now do you realize how exhausted you are. You've spent all day walking, which again isn't exactly your specialty. You close your eyes, and soon sleep takes you. Thankfully, the twilight stage where your soul can rest and your exhausted mind can find peace, lasts extra long. Of course, it doesn't take long before the nightmares hit. > You sleep You writhe in pain, curling up in an attempt to get the endless suffering to end. All you hear is the chattering of thousands of skulls laughing at you. You star up at a mountain of skulls that rises up into the sky past. You can see beasts of metal roaring as they charge across the skulls, ramming into each other with powerful clashes, with dragon-like beasts flying overhead. You take in a panicked breath, stumbling away from a nearby one and falling. You tumble along the skulls, rolling down the mountain of skulls. You slam into the skull of a massive beast, ending your tumble. You look down at a massive river of boiling blood, horrifying creatures of bones bursting from the water and diving back under again. You frantically try to use your powers, to levitate away from this horrifying place, but you can feel an invisible hand around your neck, closed tightly around your trachea and preventing you from breathing, tethering you to the ground and preventing you from using your power. It... doesn't go well from there. You wander the endless mountain of skulls, hiding in terror from the daemonic beasts that roam. Eventually, you awaken with a start, finding yourself lying in bed in a cold sweat, naked and scared. The rest of the night is, thankfully, not as bad. The monsters of your dreams staying off in the distance away from you. Sleep is... somewhat bearable. > You several Hours Later... You wake up to the sound of the metal doors opening. You stand, looking up to see Kyros and Fay entering the room. You realize you're naked, grabbing a blanket and wrapping it around yourself. Fay giggles, smiling. "Well, that was a surprise. A pretty small one, to be fair," she says with a smile. You find a little leeway with your collar, and eagerly use it through the flick of a wrist and send Fay onto her behind once more. The collar tightens around your throat quickly, making it hard to breath but not unbearable. You raise your hands in surrender, and Kyros releases the collar. "We're going to the war room," he says, softly but creepily. Kyros seems considerably darker today. His coat is covered with several dark red splotches and stains. You doubt it's a good idea to ask about their origins. You stand up, following Kyros along the halls. "What's in the war room?" you ask. "We're just having a meeting. Quiet now," Kyros says. You walk along the hallways in silence, passing my various crewmen running along the halls, working. Kyros walks quickly and you break a sweat trying to walk at his pace. "Can we slow down?" Fay asks. "You're a genetically-upgraded super-soldier. Is a fast walk really too much for you?" Kyros says, continuing at his speed. "It's too much for Karth," she says. "I'm... fine," you pant. "No you're not," Fay says. "Physical exercise isn't exactly a strength of yours." "He has the energy to talk, he has the energy to walk! Now silence!" Kyros flicks his wrists, and Fay yelps. A long, thin cut appears, running down her cheek, as blood runs down her chin. "Hey!" you shout. You step up, staring into Kyros' eyes. His eyes are wild and cruel. The humor and joy he held only a few hours ago is gone. You realize that he'll be more than happy to hurt both you and Fay seriously. You back down. "That's what I thought. Now faster, we've wasted time with this!" Kyros says. You speed up, moving as quickly as possible. Soon enough you reach the war room. The doors open, and you pause. Inside, lying in her seat, is Calpurnia. All of her skin is just... missing, seemingly flayed off her. Blood covers her seat, the the floor around her and the table. Her eyes are missing, seemingly gored out by inhuman claws. She lets out a pained moan, and you realize with a start that she's somehow alive. "What the fuck...?" Fay says. Magos Cern appears behind you, walking forward. She stares at Calpurnia, seemingly disinterested. "Does this concern me?" she asks. "No, old friend.This concerns the others," Kyros says, his voice a low growl. Uncaring, Kyros sits down at the table. Taj enters, but doesn't even respond, simply taking his place at the table. Calpurnia holds up a hand as if begging for help, but Taj simply spits on the table. "Traitor," he grunts. You watch as Durge walks in, with Elizabeth at his side. Durge pauses, looking at Calpurnia, before looking at Kyros, as Elizabeth turns very pale. "What the hell is this?" Durge asks, staring down at Calpurnia. His massive, bloated frame waddles forward, standing over the bleeding near-corpse. "What happened you, he asks, before shoving a spike-arm in front of Elizabeth and pushing her back, stepping in front of her defensively as he stares at the rest of the room. "Who did this?!" Rebecca walks in, a grin on her face. "Oh, who did this?" she asks, clearly feigning surprise. Finally, Elios walks in, pausing, and looking around the room, taken aback. "What... what happened?" he asks, turning even paler than his chalk-white makeup. "It seems our good friend Calpurnia has been attacked in the dead of night," Kyros says. "Imagine how much pain she's feeling. The pain of her wounds. The pain of her betrayal. Who hear could have possibly betrayed them? Who could have plotted late in the night to back stab a person, to betray someone who had given them so much? Could it have been Elios? Durge? Elizabeth?" "Fuck... you," Calpurnia says, before collapsing her head against the table. Calpurnia screams as her arm's bare flesh begins to cook, as Kyros glares at her. Durge raises a spike, running it through Calpurnia's head. "Enough. There's no need to prolong her suffering," Durge says, glaring at Kyros. "I suppose. Perhaps it's best that she died. Do you know what, Durge? Magos Cern, Chapter Master Taj and Rebecca all came to me, told me a coup was being planned by Calpurnia, and she was recruiting all the faction leaders. I'm sure she hadn't gotten around to asking you, Elizabeth and Elios yet, or you would've reported it to me. Correct?" Durge stares at Kyros, not saying a word. "Well, I'll have someone investigate who could have possibly done this to our dear friend. Anyone, as for the purpose of this meeting, I just wanted to tell you we're all out of Recaf, and I'll have it replaced by tomorrow. I also suppose I must say I'm taking control of the 33rd Istanford Regiment in the wake of Calpurnia's passing. Now, everyone back to their duties. We're in a risky time. Who knows who'll have the next... accident?" Kyros walks out of the room, and you and Fay follow him. He immediately has you set to work. He has you train with a few of your new men, fighting off dozens of crab-like aliens with a handful of Goliaths, Tribals and Gladiators to learn how they fight. The Tribals still work with their hunting tactics and the methods of war used to fight off the endless greenskin attacks, so you find you're easily able to lead them to victory. The Goliaths are borderline idiots, who even in the heat of battle get distracted by themselves and each other, get frustrated when their massive hands fail to successfully reload their bolters, and are more than happy to break formation to charge the enemy. Cain proves himself as a solid leader, taking you orders and bellowing them out with massive, powerful lungs, loud enough to snap the Goliaths back to violence. The Goliaths make up for their mental failings with their extreme strength, withstanding punishment beyond what you thought was possible, whilst turning steel to dust with their powerful blows. The Gladiators' fighting style is an interesting one. Due to the lifestyle of gladiators, they haven't really trained for being part of a large unit, only knowing how to fend for themselves or maybe fight alongside a small unit of a half dozen people. They're good, experienced fighters, but despite their experience they're still young and wild, taking unnecessary risks in battle and acting far too prideful. While Castus is wild and barely acts as a leader in battle other than shouting out curses at the enemies, rallying his men and leading a charge whenever necessary, Olive is calm, collected and acts as the real leader, spitting out battlefield tactics that allow for a crushing defeat. The gladiators also have a certain showmanship, no doubt because they're performers before they're fighters. The gladiators' attacks maximize bloodshed and feature extravagant yet unnecessary feats of agility, something that needs to be eliminated from their battle doctrine. All in all, your newfound force is fairly competent. You're satisfied with their ability to fight, which is bolstered by your immense powers, the only outlet of which are these arena battles. After several long hours fighting, just as you're too exhausted to continue fight, the massive metal gates from which the aliens spew slam closed. You hover in the air, firing a stream of multi-colored fire that consumes a crab-alien, before you swoop down, firing a psychic blast directly into the unarmored face of another. Your forces wipe out the remaining beasts, and soon the fighting is over, leaving you surrounded by corpses, blood and bolter shells. The metal gate you came through opens, and you drop to the ground, feeling your collar begin to restrain your psychic powers again, before standing and beginning to walk back inside. "Well done, men. You've proven yourselves today," you say. Your four guards wait by the gate, alongside dozens of other guards to ensure none of you attempt a mistake. The gladiators are led to the underneath of the arena, the Goliaths back to cyro-sleep and the Tribals to their cell-dorms. You're quickly escorted to your room, and the doors close behind you. You walk forward, quickly undressing from your blood-stained, sweat-soaked clothes before collapsing on your bed, burying your head in your pillow. > You go to sleep "Karth!" Meliodas' voice says, appearing in your mind. "Look behind you, you fool!" You quickly twist around in bed, raising your fists and preparing to use what little psychic powers, to see Elios leaning in the doorway of your bathroom. "Shit! What the fuck are you doing!?" you shout. "Hmmm... a man can't just lean back and enjoy one of the finer sights in life?" Elios says, winking as he strolls confidently towards you. "Get...!" you try to speak, but he puts a finger against your lips, leaning in close. "Quiet, baby. No need to fret. I'm not here to give you any trouble. I'm hear to help you with a certain little... problem." Elios runs his hand along your bare chest and up to your collar, playfully tugging on it. You stare at him, waiting. "Well, let's be realistic here. We're going to be slaughtered. If we're lucky, we're going to be killed when Kyros leads his moronic charge against the Imperium. If we're unlucky, we're going to end up like Calpurnia, tortured to death by a paranoid Psyker." "You're at risk of being tortured to death. I never betrayed him," you say. "Oh, baby, why do you have to be so difficult?" Elios smiles, two of his fingers walking up your legs, slowly nearing your groin. "Baby, at the moment, Kyros is looking to eliminate those who are going to betray him. But he's growing paranoid. He'll end thinking you're going to betray him, whether you are or are not. Let's be fair, you do have motives. Your tribe destroyed or enslaved, forced to bear the troubles that a Psyker does? Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if you had an escape plan in the works. Hell, even if he doesn't, one of your men will act rebellious or a battle will go wrong, and you'll be blamed for it. You need to get with us, baby." "Let's say I'm considering it. What would it entail?" you ask. "You need to get the leaders on your side. Fay, Olive, Castus, whoever's in charge of those big monster boys I saw you working with earlier. Get them on your side, while I will talk to Elizabeth and Durge about maintaining the rebellious attitude amongst Calpurnia's boys, make sure they're still up for a little bit of mutiny." "What happens when we take the ship?" you ask. "That'll be decided once we've secured the other leaders. I'm sure they have demands of their own. So are you in?" "Hmmm... it's clearly our only option, but you should know that Elios both wants to fuck you over and straight up fuck you," Meliodas says. "I'm pretty sure my other choice is death. That's not even a choice," you say. "Well, it's the one I'm giving you, baby," Elios says,gently flicking the tip of your dick, causing you to yelp and scuttle back on your bed. > You agree Elios steps forward, knocking on the metal door. The guards open, immediately raising their bolters. Elios waves his hand. "You didn't see me here. The voice of Slaanesh calls you, and you're his now. Move aside, and tell no one I was here." "I... no... yes, sir," one says, stepping aside. You watch Elios stroll out of the room, giving a final smile and wave as he leaves the room. You get some sleep, lying wrapped up in your blankets. Blissfully, there's only a few dark, terror-filled dreams, the rest only filling your with a vague, uneasy sense of dread. You awaken to Magos Cern poking you in the stomach with a white-hot pincer. "AH!" you scream. "What the fuck?" "My diagnostics told me that I'd be able to wake you up 0.4 seconds faster this way. We need to go," Magos Cern says. "Where?" "First, you require food. Then, you'l get some implants. I'm going through some long overdue upgrades for the... "Goliaths", as you called them, and Kyros asked me to pencil you in for a few biological upgrades." "Then?" you ask "Melee practice. In wake of assassination threats, Kyros wants you to be able to fend off a melee assassination as easily as you could a ranged or psychic attack." "My powers can do that," you say. "You'd be run through before you could react. Castus and Olive will run through some drills to get your reaction time up and give you a few dodging techniques that will lend themselves to all your battles." "Then?" "By then, with the recovery time from the implants, your weak body will require sleep." "OK", you say. Magos Cern leads you out of the room, and along the hallways. You find yourself in a massive cafeteria. You walk forward, spotting Fay sitting alongside a badly burnt girl with a long braid wrapping around herself and another with a prosthetic arm replaced by a sharpened, mechanical claw. Fay looks up, noodles hanging from her mouth, spotting you. "Oh, Karth!" she says, waving, before noticing that her mouth is filled with noodles and blushing. You take a seat next to her, and she smiles. "So, how are you doing?" she asks. "We need to talk. Alone," you say, looking at the two tribals beside her. "Uh... OK," Fay says, motioning for the two tribals to move, which they quickly do. "Thanks," you say to the tribals as they walk off. "So? Is this about what I think it's about?" "What do you think it's about?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Well, you know... you want to speak to me alone... privately... so I kind of assume it's about us." "Yeah, of course it's about us, that's why we're both here to talk about it." "No, I mean... like, us us," Fay says, clearly frustrated by your failure to understand. "What?" "Well, like, do you want us to be a couple?" > You say "Yeah, I want to go out." "Oh, really?" Fay says smiling. "Don't you?" "Oh, yeah, yeah!" Fay says, smiling. "I was actually just going to ask you about that. I'm glad you said yes." Fay smiles, before leaning in and kissing you briefly on the lips. You stare into her bright green eyes, the split-second kiss lasting for infinitely longer, feeling the warmth of her lips flood into you, before she pulls back. "Well, that was nice. Ideally our next rendezvous is going to take place somewhere where we're not surrounded by our tribe and horrible guards who want us dead," Fay smiles. "Was that it, or was there something else?" "Yeah, we have something important to discuss." "Wasn't that important?" Fay asks, smiling. "Oh no,it was, I just... I meant important for the tribe, not just for us," you say, stumbling over your words. "It feels nice to see you've become as awkward as I just was," Fay giggles. "Now, stop spitting out words. Take a breath, and tell me what's so important." "Rebellion." "Oh?" "Kyros is mad and paranoid. He's either going to slit our throats or send us on an endless string of suicide missions. We need to do something, and I really need your help. A group of collaborators have planned to rise up, and rid ourselves of Kyros. Then, we take over. I need the support of your Tribals to do so. "Yeah, totally. Done." "Done?" "Yeah. If we don't escape, we die here. Also, they're your Tribals as much as mine. Who else is in on this?" Fay asks. "Elios, Durge and Elizabeth are all in. No doubt Calpurnia's man will help us," you say. "What about Cain and the twins?" "I haven't asked them yet, but we need to get them on board," you say. "Do we hae a solid plan yet?" Fay asks. "Not yet. We need to find out how many people we have fighting for us." "What happens after we take the ship," Fay asks, raising an eyebrow. "That is still to be decided. Once we have Cain. Castus and Olive behind us, we'll have bargaining power. So you're in?" "I'm in," Fay nods. "I'll have the message spread among the tribals." You notice one of your guards walking towards you, carrying a tray. You motion for Fay to quiet down, as the guard arrives putting the tray down on the table. "Eat," he says, in a cold voice like the scraping of a blade on rusted metal. You look at your food. There's a bowl of noodles and strips of thin, cured meat, a small bowl of green jelly with chunks of odd, alien fruit inside, a large plastic cup of wine and a small, dense biscuit-like cake. "Well, someone's being pampered," Fay says, smiling. "Clearly I'm just more important than you," you gloat as you have a forkful of noodles and meat. Fay grabs the biscuit cake from your tray, taking a bite. "Hey!" you say in annoyance, as Fay sticks her tongue out. You quickly eat your meal, polishing off the entire tray and gulping down the wine. Then, Magos Cern arrives. "Good, you've eaten," she says. "These operations will be safer if you've had a full stomach." "OK, I'm ready, let's go, you say. "Bye, Fay. See you soon." "See you later, Fay says, blowing a kiss. Magos Cern leads you out of the cafeteria and along the halls, off along halls and elevators. Eventually, you pass through the cyro-sleep section, arriving in a large operating room. Dozens of Goliaths are lying on the surgery tables, many halfway through surgery. A half dozen other Tech Priests wander around between the Goliaths, removing and adding flesh, bone, organs, cybernetic implants and other strange things. "I didn't know there were other Tech Priests," you note. "This ship is the size of a small moon. Did you think you've seen enough of it to accurately be able to say that we don't have something? I have scores of Tech Priests who followed me into the embrace of the Dark Gods," Magos Cern says. Magos Cern leads you to an operating table. "This is yours. Please get undressed and wait here, I need to grab my materials and equipment. Stay here." Magos Cern turns around, walking off, leaving you alone. You spot Cain, lying on his operating table, his chest cut open to reveal still functioning organs. You wonder how he can still be alive with such a hastily cut-up torso, before you wince as you see his eyes dart towards you and you realize he's conscious. Looking to see Magos Cern hobbling away, you hop off the operating table and walk over to him. "Commander Karth," Cain grunts. "Need something?" "I have... an offer." "An offer? An offer of what?" Cain says, absent-mindedly picking at a cut alongside his... or at least, one of his stomachs. "Freedom," you say, catching the monster's attention. "Go on," Cain says, furrowing his scarred brow and causing a thin stream of blood to pour from his horns. "We're planning an escape. We could use you and your men," you say. "We?" "Elios, Durge, Elizabeth, Fay, others," you say. "That's it, I think." "When?" "We don't have details, yet. We need a head count before we can start planning it." "Hmmm... I'm willing to give you control of my... "Goliaths", as you called them. But, I have a list of conditions that I want to be satisfied once we take the ship." "Go on," you say. "I want us to get names. Every Goliath who is capable of remembering and answering to a name will be called that instead of its serial number, by you and ALL other members of command. No more cyro-sleep. I want a bed for every single Goliath. I don't care if it's fine cloth or a slab of concrete, as long as it doesn't freeze them, it'll do us. I want free time that's not just killing." "Anything else?" you ask. "That's it," Cain says, spitting out a serrated teeth that's fallen free from his jaw. Cain's demands are far from unfair. Really, all he wants is slightly more rights for his Goliaths, which wouldn't even take any more resources. Still, you don't want the beast getting a big head. You ARE still in charge of not only his collar, but the collars of every single Goliath. All you need is a few threats, and the Goliaths will be yours. > You agree to Cain's demands "Deal," you say. "Good, good," Cain nods, extending a hand. You grab his hand, and thankfully Cain doesn't attempt to squeeze, which would almost certainly result in your fragile bones shattering. You shake vigorously, and Cain attempts a smile. The corners of his mouth twist unnaturally high, revealing rows of serrated teeth, curved fangs, massive molars and many other weird, odd teeth, protruding from bloody, rotten gums. You smile in response, not willing to offend him. "The beast would've taken half of what he asked for," Meliodas says. "Why didn't you tell me that before?" you say angrily. "I presumed you knew," Meliodas replies. "Are you OK?" Cain says. "Tell you what?" "Uh, nothing. Sorry," you say. "OK. Good deal," Cain says, his face contorted in what you assume is his version of a raising of the eyebrow. "Alright, best get prepared for your operation before Magos Cern gets back." "Yeah, I should," you say. You walk over to your operating table and quickly get undressed, before lying down. After another minute or two, Magos Cern appears, pushing a tray in front of her. One of her metallic tendrils grabs a syringe filled with a pale, translucent liquid. "This might hurt a little. It will more likely hurt a lot more," she says. You let out a pained yelp as she jams the syringe into your neck. She begins pushing down on the plunger as what you hope is anesthetic is pumped into you. Warm hands embrace you, pulling you into the oblivion of unconsciousness. > You embrace the darkness Your eyes lull closed, and you lose consciousness. You awake an unknown time later, lying on the metal operating table. Magos Cern stands over you, washing her implements in a basin of water. She looks at you, her cold, red eyes peering into your soul. "Ah, you're awake. Good," she says. "What did you put into me?" you ask. "The biology of what I did is beyond you, flesh bag." "Can you dumb it down for me?" you ask. "Could one reduce concertos to the mumbled grunts of mutants?" Magos Cern asks indignantly. "Please?" "Fine. I increased the size of your heart by 40% and lungs by 12%, and added several veins and arteries leading directly to the brain from the heart. These actions increase the blood flow to your brain, and should hence increase psychic abilities. I added multiple microchips that breed monocytes, other white blood cells, platelets and other helpful things for your body. That was the bulk of my work. Other than that, it was just a medical check-up." "OK," you say. "I have a lot of important work to do, now. You should've had enough time to recover." Two of your massive space marine guards arrive, a roaring face on their thick helmets. "Here you are," Magos Cern says. "Guards, make sure to walk slow. If at any point the patient starts puking blood, let him sit down for ten, maybe fifteen minutes." "Shouldn't you keep him hearing for observation, then?" one of the guards ask. "I have far too much work to do," Magos Cern says. "Don't disturb me. If anything goes wrong, go to Genetor Corivan. He is very experienced with medical matters." "Yes, sir," the space marine says. Magos Cern quickly heads off, walking off to a row of elevators. The space marines stare at you, and you climb out of bed with a groan. "Ah, my head," you say. "You should have headaches for the next 48 hours," Magos Cern shouts, right before she disappears into an elevator. You stand, feeling a rush of blood hit your head. You walk after the space marines, along halls and up and down elevators, until you find yourself in the arena. Castus and Olive are there, mid-battle with each other. "Oh look, it's tweedle-dum and tweedle-fucking idiot," Meliodas says. "Not even a laugh? Oh wait, you didn't grow up with nursery rhymes, you're from a Feral world. My bad." Castus swings his sword at her, while Olive swings her rifle-axe up at his head. He rolls out of the way, kicking Olive's foot away and sending her to her knee, before booting her in the head. She collapses down, before rolling out of the way to avoid a downward stab by Castus. She grabs Castus' sword handle and punches him. Castus falls backwards, before taking up a fighting stance. Olive begins circling him, her gun-axe at the ready. She spots you, smiling. "Karth's here," she says. "Bullshit," Castus says, readying his sword. "Karth, tell him you're here," Olive says. "Yeah, I'm here," you say. Castus turns to look at you, but Olive charges, swinging her gun-axe. She knocks the feet away from Castus, dropping his knee down on Castus stomach. Castus grunts before Olive grabs her gun-axe and holds it to Castus throat. "Dead," she says. "No fair, we were supposed to stop when Karth got here," Castus says. "You're still dead," Olive smiles, standing up. Castus grabs Olive's wrist, pulling her forward so his sword pokes into her stomach. "Dead," he smiles. "Seriously?" Olive says, rolling her eyes. "Fine, I'm dead. Are we finished yet? The kid needs training." "Fine," Castus shrugs. "Let's start it." Castus draws a dagger from his belt, staring at it. The blade is a bright silver, with an odd pattern etched into it. It's handle is a bright, light blue, with a short, silver horn coming from the end of the handle. "Now, this is an absolute beauty. I really don't use it enough, so it's yours. Xenos-origin, so even owning it is heresy. The blade is razor sharp, it could cut through flesh and bone easier than it could through air. Here." Castus turns, tossing the dagger straight at your head. > You duck You duck your head, the knife flying just over your head and cluttering to the floor behind you. "Good catch," Castus says. You grab the knife, taking a practice stab. "What do you think?" "It's a knife," you say simply. "Yeah, it is. Do you like it? Does it feel good?" Castus says. "I don't know anything about knives. Maybe," you say. "Alright, first, we need to talk. Is anyone watching us? Like, are there cameras?" "No. Well yes, but they're offline," Olive says, resting her head on the butt of her axe-gun. "What is it?" "A plan is being formed. We're going to escape." "Escape?" Olive says, musing. "Who's on our side?" "We have a large amount of people on our side. Elios, Elizabeth and Durge are bringing the weight of their war-bands, as well as most, if not all, of the Guardsmen here. Then there's the Goliaths and the Tribals, both of whom are with us." "What...?" "Because I've done this twice before, I best say. We have no plans yet. They're to be decided. We have literally nothing. We just need to check whether you'll join us. Then, we'll get the leaders together to plan our to take over, and what to do with once we've actually done so." "Huh. Well, I'm in," Castus says. "What?" Olive asks, surprised. "Yeah, I'm in," Castus says. "We don't know the plan, we don't have any assurances that we won't be back-stabbed as soon as we take over, we..." "Olive, let's be smart here. If we don't rebel, we'll definitely either be killed fighting Kyros' war, killed trying to put down these fuckers' mutiny, or killed fighting another arena battle for these bastard's amusement." "If we rebel, we'll almost certainly be killed!" "Almost certainly is way better than definitely. Plus, we'll get to kill a few of Kyros' bastards before we go down." "Fine, I'm in, but I... we have a few demands," Olive says. "Go on," you say. You know the gladiators will be essential to your plans, so you really need to get them, but still, you don't want to devote to many resources to this issue. "I want instant freedom once we take-over. No more being locked up under the arena. I want my men to have free reign to travel around the ship. I want pay, do the men and women who fight and work for the ship actually get something from it. I want an increase in food rations, and better equipment than the shit we're given. I want actual medical care, on top of this." "That it?" you ask, annoyed with her large demands. It'll probably take a serious amount of resources to fulfill her request. You have a few options here. "What a fucking greedy bitch. This fucker needs a dick, I tell you that," Meliodas complains. > You agree to her demands "Done," you say. Olive extends a hand, which you grip and shake extensively. Castus extends his hand, which you grab, but he twists your arm around, causing you to yelp painfully. He kicks away your foot and sends you to your knee, before bringing his sword up to your throat. "Dead," he says with a smile. "Well shit, Castus, what's wrong with you?" "What? I was just preparing him for fighting. I thought we were supposed to be training him. First lesson, kid: trust no one. Now, get up." Olive offers you a hand, smiling. > You allow her to help you up You grab Olive's hand, and she pulls you to your feet. "Ah, good job," Castus says. "Second rule: the first rule is bullshit. You know who doesn't trust anyone? Bastards like Kyros who ends up with no loyal friends, no allies, nothing, and then end up alone, with no one. If you want to survive in this world, you need allies." Castus grabs his sword by the blade, offering it to you. You reach out to grab it, before he swings it and smacks you in the side of the heat, sending you to the ground. Castus offers his hand to you, which you accept. He pulls you up, before kneeing you in the stomach and tossing you to the ground. "Come on, you're not learning. First rule: trust no one. Don't you listen?" "I was going my the second rule," you say, groaning. "Sometimes, the first rule is more important than the second rule," Castus shrugs. "How the fuck am I supposed to tell the difference between which rule to us?" you ask, annoyed. "Beats me. When you find out, you'll be the most powerful warlord in history. Until then, you just go off gut feeling and intellect." "Seems like a shitty system," you say, as Castus finally lets you stand up. "Seems like a shitty world you're in. That system is the best I have to offer. Now, rule three: in hand to hand combat, go for the weak spots. The throat, eyes and balls are always good, but when it comes to half these fucks, I'd stick to the eyes, because past that, I don't know what you have left. Observe." Castus flips his sword so he holds the blade again, wrapping his sleeve around the blade so it doesn't bite into his fingers as much. He steps forward, swinging his sword with insane speed. The pommel slams into your throat before jabbing you in the eyes, leaving you to stumble backwards. You quickly close your legs together before Castus jabs the pommel into your groin, and you collapse backwards with a pained yelp. "See? Effective," Castus smiles. "Rule four: you can win through many ways. Pain submission, incapacitating them, or simply taking their lives. Judge which can be used to take down your enemies. For instance, in your case, pain is the way forward." You're growing tired of being hit in the face. As Castus steps forward with his sword raised, you decide you're going to do something to dissuade him from continuing to hit you. > You freeze Castus' sword in place You use your telekinesis to hold the sword in mid air, Castus grunts in confusion as he finds his weapon stuck in the air as it was concrete. "I don't need to learn how to wield a sword, Castus. You've trained all your life with a sword. I never have. Yet look how simply I disarm you? I need a sword as much as you need fangs. I've evolved past the need for it," you say, before sending the sword clattering to the ground. "Fair point, kid," Castus says, as you have his sword levitate back up to him. "I suppose you're good to go. End of training." "Terrific," you say. "So, can I leave?" "Yeah, I'll call your guards here to open the gates and take you off," Castus says, grabbing a walkie-talkie hanging from his belt and speaking into it. "Yeah, we're finished here," he says. "Oh shit, over." "Affirmative, out," the voice comes back. Soon, the gate lifts up as your guards saunter out in their thick power armor. "Where to next, boys?" you ask. "Shut it, psyker," one growls, looking at Castus and Olive. "Is it back to the cells for you two?" "We're happy to practice some more here," Olive says, twirling her gun-axe to stop a surprise attack from Castus. "I mean, if this dumb bastard has done so little practice to think that would take me down, he's go to need a lot more practice." "Pffh, I'd like to see you take me down," Castus says. "So be it," your captor growls. "Move it, psyker." You raise your hands defensively, and allow them to escort you back to your room. > Three Days Later... There's no peep from Elios, Durge or Elizabeth over the next few days. There's more of the usual, training, fighting and such. Eventually though, as you put your head down on the pillow, you hear a familiar voice. "Karth, talking to you with that collar on is painfully hard. Can you start checking the shadows so I don't have to do this?" Meliodas says. You twist around in bed, to spot a familiar figure in the corner, wearing tight, very revealing black leather with heavy make-up. "Why do we have a habit of meeting like this?" Elios says. "Fuck," you say, jumping up in bed. "Is that an order? Because I'm more than willing to... serve," he says, licking his lips. "Why are you here?" "We're meeting up. We have plans to make. Shall we go?" Elios smiles. "Uh... sure," you reply. Elios strides over to the door, knocking on it. The guards open, and Elios once again deceives them so they easily step aside. "How do you do that?" you ask, as you stroll past your guards. "Serving Slaanesh has it's benefits. Charisma, beauty, the ability to bend people to your desires, and an ever-lasting... stamina," he says, breathing the last word. "Ah, good to know," you say. You stroll through the hallways, heading down a path you've never headed down before. Eventually, you find yourself in a seemingly abandoned section, entering a large room that's been done up like a war-room. "This is the old war-room. Kyros had a new one built in a position safer from boarding actions. From here, we run the mutiny." You look around the room, taking note of who's here. Durge sits in a large wooden chair, pricking boils along his belly with his spike-arms. Elizabeth sits in the corner, reading a datapad. A young man, seemingly in his twenties, leans against a wall, smoking and scratching his thick stubble, with a shaved head, scarred face and sallow skin. Cain is scratching the scarred cuts that run along his leathery bare chest. Castus is playing with a knife, while Olive leans against the wall, drinking from a canteen. Fay leans against the wall, noticing you instantly. "Hey, Karth," she smiles, walking up to you. "How'd Elios get you out of your cell?" "Did some deceiving trick on the guards. You?" "Elizabeth put the guard's to sleep somehow," Fay replies. "Alright, boys. We're all here. Shall we begin?" "Yes, let's go through this," Durge says. Durge stands, scratching the side of his stomach as you see something furry scuttling through his intestines. You try not to get sick, or to simply set the entire monstrosity known as Durge aflame to cauterize his disgusting form, before reassuring yourself that he's on your side. "Sssh, sssh," Durge says, patting the side of his stomach, before grabbing a remote from the large metal table and turning on a large blue hologram of the ship, the Roar of the Vortex. "Here she is. We need to start planning how to grasp control of the ship. Remember, this isn't a planet. We don't win by capturing more territory than the enemy has. We need to capture the necessary areas." The hologram begins to change, as various sections become different colors. "These black sections are abandoned by crew. They're either unnecessary cargo space, unused dorms or functional sections whose functions are either redundant, have been taken over by other sections or are being fulfilled by whoever remains in these sections." "I thought they were abandoned," Fay says. "Abandoned by the crew, not abandoned by all. You must remember just how large this vessel is. Certain sections were crewed by slaves or mutants who, from lack of contact with crew members, have regressed to a feral state. Many of them now fulfill their roles, such as cleaning pipes or pumping air or working generators, because they consider it a religious ritual, necessary for their food, water and waste pipes to continue or just do it without knowing why." "Ah. How... terrifying to know that that's a reality," Fay says. "Their sacrifice is necessary," Durge shrugs. "Now, I shall continue. These brown sections are entirely ran by mutants. These mutants hold no loyalty to either side, and fulfill non-essential roles, or at least roles that aren't essential short-term. For the term's of this... mutiny, these spaces are as irrelevant as the abandoned areas. Now, we get onto the important things. These green sections are, or at least will definitely, be controlled by us. The Black Rat's floors, the Shrieking Harpies' floors, the One Eyed Crows' floors, the arena and arena catacombs, the cyro-sleep area, the medical bay, the Tribals' dormitories, and the 22nd Regiment's dormitories. The 22nd Regiment is, for the most part, under our command, although their are loyalists to Kyros, so it will take some time for them to sort out that issue in the mutiny. These red sections are the enemy's. Kyros' chambers, the Bloody Claw's floors, the Techpriests' sections, the floors used by the Undying Reapers, and the floors controlled by those who will almost certainly be loyal to Kyros, whether they be from assimilated war-bands or his original allies he had when first capturing this vessel." Suddenly, the hologram shifts again, as the sections become either black, grey, blue, green or gold. "These sections in black are irrelevant. Ignore them. These areas in grey are of little importance, but these are still a benefit to hold. The blue sections should be captured. The green sections are of more importance than the green sections, and should be prioritized. These gold sections, the command bridge, the engines and the macro-cannon decks, are completely necessary. We need these for victory. Now, Elizabeth shall go into details on the objectives, and Elios shall divide our forces." Elizabeth stands up, walking towards the hologram, as Durge collapses into his seat. "Thank you, brother. Now, we have four main objectives. The first is to kill Kyros. If we're lucky, that should get much of his forces to surrender. Hopefully, Rebecca will as well," Elizabeth says. "She won't surrender," Elios says. "She might," Durge says hopefully. "I've know her the longest. She never gave up. When dad gave her the choice of apologizing for breaking the barn's windows in exchange for half as many lashes, she spat in his eye. As long as she has a limb left, she'll fight us. And I'm counting her head as a limb," Elios says. "Well... we can hope," Elizabeth says. "The second objective is to capture the golden sections. The third and fourth objectives are to capture as many servitors as possible and Drake Amadeus, respectively." "Who the fuck is Drake Amadeus, and what's a servitor?" Castus asks loudly. "A servitor is a partly biological machine, made from machinery and the body of a criminal, slave or cloned body. They're not sentient, but are controlled by the Techpriests and used as their workforce. They do the bulk work of maintaining the ship. Capturing as many of them should make the transfer of power... easier. Drake Amadeus is an extremely powerful Navigator, a species of mutant who have a psychic third eye that allows it to see through the Warp and allow us to navigate through the Warp. Drake is one of the few Navigators powerful enough to allow a ship this large to navigate safely. If we don't secure him, we lose all abilities to go at the speed of light. In other words, we drift through space until we all starve to death. So, Drake is an important objective. Those are our four main objectives. If we fail in any of those, we fail in everything. There are dozens of other objectives, such as securing medical supplies, finding food, what have you. Those can be handed out to the individual groups. Elios?" Elios stands up, strolling over to the hologram as Elizabeth sits down. "Now, we have a sizeable force. The Shrieking Harpies, the Black Rats, the One-Eyed Crows, the 22nd Regiment, the Tribals, the Goliaths and the Gladiators. We even have a... special asset," he says, looking at you. "Whilst each of these factions on their own are fairly effective, combined they're infinitely stronger. Here are lists of what forces you'll command, and which of the forces you were to command will be transferred to another leader." Various rolls of parchment and datapads, a strange mix of tech levels, is passed out. You raise an eyebrow as you realize you've not been given anything. "Why didn't I get something?" you ask. Elios smiles as you. "Putting you with a large force would be a waste of resources. Putting you with a small force would leave you wiping out too many enemies, unable to hold the ground you've already taken. So, we're going to use your as a specialty item. We're sending you to capture the prisoners. Release the ones you deem trustworthy, and secure them. Most importantly, secure Drake Amadeus. Understood?" "Yeah, got it," you say. "Once you have, we'll regroup forces, and make a move to finish off Kyros and his lieutenants." "Got it," you say. "When?" Cain asks in his monstrous voice. "Soon. Within the next few days. We need time to spread the orders, make preparations and Elizabeth needs time to find a way to deactivate the various collars and explosives planted on the slaves. Be ready at all moments," Durge says. "How do we know when to strike?" Olive asks. "We're going to have explosives planted to take out as many loyalists as possible. When you hear massive explosives, or if you're too far away when the alarms start, your collars should deactivate given that I succeed, which I will, and then strike and go immediately to your objective. Understood?" Elizabeth says. "Got it," Olive nods. Elios begins passing out files. "Look over these, then leave them to be burnt," Elios says. You're passed a file, and eagerly grab it. > You look at the files You look at the files and see three subheadings: Drake Amadeus, the Penthouse, Charles Antonguella and the Troupe of Dancing Blades. The files seem to be a mixture of printed out and hand-written, leading you to assume they're from different sources. > You read File: Drake Amadeus Name: Drake Amadeus Species: Human, Sub-species Navigator Age: 27 Marital Status: Unmarried Children: None House of Origin: House Jenassis Current Location: The Penthouse, Roar of the Vortex Blood Type: A Positive Additional Mutations: None Mental Illnesses: Sociopath, Sadist, Narcissist, Alliances: None Dependents: None Useful Intel: -Drake has so far proven to have no loyalty, betraying all of his previous employers. Do not trust him. -Drake has refused to pledge to any of the Dark Gods, or even to Chaos Undivided -Drake has proven to have many hedonistic tendencies, such as whore-mongering, heavy drug use and similar activities. -Drake is reasonable sufficient with firearms and melee weapons. It is necessary to keep him away from all weapons.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look at the files and see three subheadings: Drake Amadeus, the Penthouse, Charles Antonguella and the Troupe of Dancing Blades. The files seem to be a mixture of printed out and hand-written, leading you to assume they're from different sources. > You read File: The Penthouse The Penthouse is a large house situated on the Roar of the Vortex. It is made up of multiple rooms, including a kitchen, a massive bedroom, a bath house, a large lounge, room for dozens of slaves to live and much more. It is the home of Drake Amadeus. It is occupied by not only Amadeus, but also bodyguards Charles Antonguella and the Troupe of Dancing Blades, as well as dozens of slaves and prostitutes under the service of Amadeus. The penthouse holds luxuries and treasures of great value, both monetarily and intellectually. All operations carried out here should take care around such items.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look at the files and see three subheadings: Drake Amadeus, the Penthouse, Charles Antonguella and the Troupe of Dancing Blades. The files seem to be a mixture of printed out and hand-written, leading you to assume they're from different sources. > You read File: Charles Antonguella Charles Antonguella was a miner on Kerunga-IV, until he was kidnapped by Dark Eldar. He was forced to fight as a gladiator for the Dark Eldar, but found himself to have bested several Wyches. He became an esteemed fighter for the Dark Eldar, who reveled in his beauty and his abilities at killing enemies with his bare hands. Eventually, he escaped and fled off-world, where he became a mercenary. He eventually began working for Kyros as a bodyguard for the infamous Navigator Drake Amadeus.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look at the files and see three subheadings: Drake Amadeus, the Penthouse, Charles Antonguella and the Troupe of Dancing Blades. The files seem to be a mixture of printed out and hand-written, leading you to assume they're from different sources. > You read File: The Troupe of the Dancing Blades The Troupe of Dancing Blades is a Chaos group under service of the Chaos Lord Kazirai the Beast-Fucker, known for both his highly amusing name and his large amounts of sexy aesthetically pleasing warriors who served as his mistresses. They fight with acrobatics and long blades. They have extensive use of stealth technology as well as hallucegenics. They are currently in service to Kyros, acting as bodyguards to Drake Amaedus.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look at the files and see three subheadings: Drake Amadeus, the Penthouse, Charles Antonguella and the Troupe of Dancing Blades. The files seem to be a mixture of printed out and hand-written, leading you to assume they're from different sources. > You finish reading the files You hold the file out, offering it back to Elios. "Burn it, honey," Elios says. You shrug, as the file sets alight in your fingertips, turning to ash. Fay notices you're finished, and hands her file to you. "Are you offering this to me to read?" you ask, confused. "No, Karth, but there's no candles around. It's times like this where it's good to have a friend who can act as a lighter." You quickly set the file alight, and it turns to ash once again. "Thank you," Fay says. "How's your mission looking?" "Easy enough. If I can get this collar off, I'll be fine. If not, I'm fucked," you say. "I'm sure Elizabeth can get the collar off. She seems smart," Fay says. "I am," Elizabeth says, not looking up from her files. "Are we finished here?" you ask. "Sure thing, darling," Elios says, standing. "Shall I escort you back to your room?" "Sure thing," you say, as Fay nods eagerly. You stand, following Elios along the hallways. After a few minutes, you reach the tribals' dormitories, where two Chaos Marines stand at either side of the door. "Hey, you're not supposed to be out of your cell!" one says, raising his bolter. Elios snaps his fingers, and the two guards pause. "You saw nothing," Elios says. "Yes... yes, sir," the space marine replies, as Elios opens the door. "Goodnight, Fay," Elizabeth says. "Goodnight, Karth," she says, before disappearing into the dorms. You quickly head towards your room, reaching there after a few minutes. Elios pulls the same trick with your guards, as they fall under Elios' commands. He opens the door, motioning for you to enter. "Goodnight, Karth. I have a lot to organize, so I won't be able to offer you the chance for me to stay the night. Sleep tight, darling," he says, as the door closes." You shake your head, walking over to the bed, collapsing onto it. Soon, you drift off to sleep. > Two Days Later... You walk down the hallways alongside your four Chaos Marine guards. You head towards the war room, where Kyros is planning the first strike against the Imperium, taking over a Hive World, to secure a huge population that can be recruited from to bolster Kyros' forces ten times. You hum a tune, some old Uwais war chant that you find quite catchy. You feel a wave of nausea hit you, and you pause, as you feel a heavy weight lifted off your soul, and your cloudy mind is cleared. Your collar clicks, and falls off you, hitting the ground. Your guards stop, noticing you've stopped. "Prisoner, why have you s...?" one of the guards asks, before noticing your collar has fallen off. "Wait..." he starts to say, as the alarm begins to blare. "Hahaha! Freedom! Freedom!" Meliodas cries. Then, you strike. The first guard's head snaps around, tearing his head clean off his shoulders. You quickly set the second alight, shielding yourself from the bright blue flames that begin melting through the thick armor as the guard roars. You teleport behind the last two as bolter fire slams into the hallway where you once were. You blow a hole in the chest of one with a blast of psychic energy, before levitating the last one into the air, tossing his bolter across the room. "No, no, no!" the space marine roars, shaking and trying to grasp at you. "Kill! Maim! Burn! Break! Smash! Crush! Slaughter!" Meliodas gleefully chants. You smash the space marine into the ground repeatedly, shattering armor and leaving him as a bloody smear on the ground. You attempt to orientate yourself, trying to picture the path you took from your room to get here, and remembering where the Penthouse is. "Brother! Is Prisoner Alpha secure?" a radio crackles. You turn, noticing the radio attached to the first space marine's belt. You pick it up, as the psychic energy around you vibrates as you talk, changing your voice into that of the space marine. "Imitate his comrade's voice. Use the Warp," Meliodas suggests. "We were forced to kill him. What's the situation?" "Good riddance. Our brothers have betrayed us. The One Eyed Crows, the Black Rats, the Shrieking Harpies, all traitors! The 22nd are fighting, but I don't know whether the majority is with Kyros." "What's the plans?" "Kyros has us divided between exterminating the traitors and trying to put down the slave revolts that are taking place. The first and second generation super-soldiers are rebelling. Take your unit, and secure the gladiators. If they have the arena secured, they will have a strong defensive position." "Understood. We'll get it done," you say. "Send them to their reapers, brother, and ward off your own one," the radio crackles. "Glory to Kyros," you say. "Praise the Dark Gods!" "Nice touch," Meliodas says. The radio finishes, and you clip it to your belt. You float into the air, hovering along the hallways towards the Penthouse. You pass a trio of shotgun-wielding Bloody Claws, rushing towards the cyro-chambers. You fire a jet of flames, engulfing the trio but don't even slow down to watch them die. Soon, you find yourself in the elevator, rising towards the penthouse. You wait patiently, listening to reports come through the radio. "The entire area's filled with them! They're all traitors. I..." "Bridge secured, push forward." "Fall back, fall back, they're not going down!" "Rage! Kill! Maim! Smash! Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" "Leading the charge! Secure Elizabeth Staine, and they'll all... shit! AARGH!" "Damn it! I've been sealed in! Get me out, dammit! They're coming for us!" The elevator doors open, leaving you faced with five heavy bolters aiming at you. "It's the Psyker!" someone shouts. "Time to die, mortals!" Meliodas roars. > You quickly fire some firebolts You spew fireballs from each hand, immediately engulfing two of the bolters, and their operators, in flames as they let out terrified screams. Unfortunately, the other three fire. Bullets slam into your boy, one quickly finding your head and blowing it apart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk down the hallways alongside your four Chaos Marine guards. You head towards the war room, where Kyros is planning the first strike against the Imperium, taking over a Hive World, to secure a huge population that can be recruited from to bolster Kyros' forces ten times. You hum a tune, some old Uwais war chant that you find quite catchy. You feel a wave of nausea hit you, and you pause, as you feel a heavy weight lifted off your soul, and your cloudy mind is cleared. Your collar clicks, and falls off you, hitting the ground. Your guards stop, noticing you've stopped. "Prisoner, why have you s...?" one of the guards asks, before noticing your collar has fallen off. "Wait..." he starts to say, as the alarm begins to blare. "Hahaha! Freedom! Freedom!" Meliodas cries. Then, you strike. The first guard's head snaps around, tearing his head clean off his shoulders. You quickly set the second alight, shielding yourself from the bright blue flames that begin melting through the thick armor as the guard roars. You teleport behind the last two as bolter fire slams into the hallway where you once were. You blow a hole in the chest of one with a blast of psychic energy, before levitating the last one into the air, tossing his bolter across the room. "No, no, no!" the space marine roars, shaking and trying to grasp at you. "Kill! Maim! Burn! Break! Smash! Crush! Slaughter!" Meliodas gleefully chants. You smash the space marine into the ground repeatedly, shattering armor and leaving him as a bloody smear on the ground. You attempt to orientate yourself, trying to picture the path you took from your room to get here, and remembering where the Penthouse is. "Brother! Is Prisoner Alpha secure?" a radio crackles. You turn, noticing the radio attached to the first space marine's belt. You pick it up, as the psychic energy around you vibrates as you talk, changing your voice into that of the space marine. "Imitate his comrade's voice. Use the Warp," Meliodas suggests. "We were forced to kill him. What's the situation?" "Good riddance. Our brothers have betrayed us. The One Eyed Crows, the Black Rats, the Shrieking Harpies, all traitors! The 22nd are fighting, but I don't know whether the majority is with Kyros." "What's the plans?" "Kyros has us divided between exterminating the traitors and trying to put down the slave revolts that are taking place. The first and second generation super-soldiers are rebelling. Take your unit, and secure the gladiators. If they have the arena secured, they will have a strong defensive position." "Understood. We'll get it done," you say. "Send them to their reapers, brother, and ward off your own one," the radio crackles. "Glory to Kyros," you say. "Praise the Dark Gods!" "Nice touch," Meliodas says. The radio finishes, and you clip it to your belt. You float into the air, hovering along the hallways towards the Penthouse. You pass a trio of shotgun-wielding Bloody Claws, rushing towards the cyro-chambers. You fire a jet of flames, engulfing the trio but don't even slow down to watch them die. Soon, you find yourself in the elevator, rising towards the penthouse. You wait patiently, listening to reports come through the radio. "The entire area's filled with them! They're all traitors. I..." "Bridge secured, push forward." "Fall back, fall back, they're not going down!" "Rage! Kill! Maim! Smash! Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" "Leading the charge! Secure Elizabeth Staine, and they'll all... shit! AARGH!" "Damn it! I've been sealed in! Get me out, dammit! They're coming for us!" The elevator doors open, leaving you faced with five heavy bolters aiming at you. "It's the Psyker!" someone shouts. "Time to die, mortals!" Meliodas roars. > You create a psychic shield You immediately raise your shields, as bolter fire thuds into them. You feel them, like a tapping on your mind. Unfortunately, by the sheer amount of bolter fire being shot at you, one finds it's way in. It slams into you, blowing your chest open. You collapse to your knees, as your shields fail as you lose focus. Bullets riddle your body, killing you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk down the hallways alongside your four Chaos Marine guards. You head towards the war room, where Kyros is planning the first strike against the Imperium, taking over a Hive World, to secure a huge population that can be recruited from to bolster Kyros' forces ten times. You hum a tune, some old Uwais war chant that you find quite catchy. You feel a wave of nausea hit you, and you pause, as you feel a heavy weight lifted off your soul, and your cloudy mind is cleared. Your collar clicks, and falls off you, hitting the ground. Your guards stop, noticing you've stopped. "Prisoner, why have you s...?" one of the guards asks, before noticing your collar has fallen off. "Wait..." he starts to say, as the alarm begins to blare. "Hahaha! Freedom! Freedom!" Meliodas cries. Then, you strike. The first guard's head snaps around, tearing his head clean off his shoulders. You quickly set the second alight, shielding yourself from the bright blue flames that begin melting through the thick armor as the guard roars. You teleport behind the last two as bolter fire slams into the hallway where you once were. You blow a hole in the chest of one with a blast of psychic energy, before levitating the last one into the air, tossing his bolter across the room. "No, no, no!" the space marine roars, shaking and trying to grasp at you. "Kill! Maim! Burn! Break! Smash! Crush! Slaughter!" Meliodas gleefully chants. You smash the space marine into the ground repeatedly, shattering armor and leaving him as a bloody smear on the ground. You attempt to orientate yourself, trying to picture the path you took from your room to get here, and remembering where the Penthouse is. "Brother! Is Prisoner Alpha secure?" a radio crackles. You turn, noticing the radio attached to the first space marine's belt. You pick it up, as the psychic energy around you vibrates as you talk, changing your voice into that of the space marine. "Imitate his comrade's voice. Use the Warp," Meliodas suggests. "We were forced to kill him. What's the situation?" "Good riddance. Our brothers have betrayed us. The One Eyed Crows, the Black Rats, the Shrieking Harpies, all traitors! The 22nd are fighting, but I don't know whether the majority is with Kyros." "What's the plans?" "Kyros has us divided between exterminating the traitors and trying to put down the slave revolts that are taking place. The first and second generation super-soldiers are rebelling. Take your unit, and secure the gladiators. If they have the arena secured, they will have a strong defensive position." "Understood. We'll get it done," you say. "Send them to their reapers, brother, and ward off your own one," the radio crackles. "Glory to Kyros," you say. "Praise the Dark Gods!" "Nice touch," Meliodas says. The radio finishes, and you clip it to your belt. You float into the air, hovering along the hallways towards the Penthouse. You pass a trio of shotgun-wielding Bloody Claws, rushing towards the cyro-chambers. You fire a jet of flames, engulfing the trio but don't even slow down to watch them die. Soon, you find yourself in the elevator, rising towards the penthouse. You wait patiently, listening to reports come through the radio. "The entire area's filled with them! They're all traitors. I..." "Bridge secured, push forward." "Fall back, fall back, they're not going down!" "Rage! Kill! Maim! Smash! Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" "Leading the charge! Secure Elizabeth Staine, and they'll all... shit! AARGH!" "Damn it! I've been sealed in! Get me out, dammit! They're coming for us!" The elevator doors open, leaving you faced with five heavy bolters aiming at you. "It's the Psyker!" someone shouts. "Time to die, mortals!" Meliodas roars. > You teleport behind the heavy bolters You disappear from their sight, appearing behind them. You let out a jet of flames, engulfing two heavy bolters and killing their operators. You twist around, shooting a blast of psychic energy at another, before spitting lightning to kill the last two operators. It's only a minute before you arrive at a massive, thick metal door with an intercom. > You use the intercom You press down on the button, and a voice crackles through. "Password?" the deep voice asks. > You attempt to physically probe the man's mind for the password You feel his mind, and gently test it for it's thoughts. "Should I have stayed loyal to Kyros? Fuck, I could sti... No, no." "I wonder if Mimtu needs more food. I should buy more food." "Is this dipshit going to say Railroad or am I going to have to kill him?" "It's Railroad," you say. The door clicks open. "Alright, get inside. Quickly," he says. > You step inside "I can smell him. He's here," Meliodas says. You step inside the doorway, looking into a marvelous palace. There's a huge grand staircase, with above it a massive chandelier of candles, the only illumination for the room. Beside it is an obsidian, bejeweled statue of a dragon, emitting a long burst of flames made from a bright red and orange gemstone, sits beside a marble table laden with roast meats, delicate pastries and fancy wines. You spot Amadeus, lying on a large silk couch, wearing an opened red silk hooded robe. On his forehead is a third, closed eye, while his normal eyes are focused on the girl in front of him, on her knees performing fellatio. You momentarily blush, before remembering that you're an insanely powerful psyker and not a fucking child. "Drake Amadeus, you're coming with me," you say, as Drake lets out a yelp, kicking the girl off him and stumbling back. "Shit, it's Karst! It's Karst! Get him the fuck away from me!" You step forward, before seeing a dozen girls emerge from the rooms upstairs, walking towards the grand staircase. They move with insane flexibility. Some behind back and walking with their heads peering out between their legs, before twisting their heads around a hundred and eight degrees. Some on all fours, their legs stretched back around their shoulders to allow them to walk forward at an odd angle. They move with delicate grace, before they each draw a pair of curved knifes, continuing to walk towards you. You see Drake Amadeus scuttle away from the corner of your eye, but it seems you have a bigger threat. "Ah, Slaaneeshi whores. Make their deaths quick. They'd just enjoy you drawing it out," Meliodas says. > You fire a jet of flames to hold the Troupe back You fire a jet of flames, and the Dancing Blades quickly retreat out of the range of your fire. They dance along the edge, waiting to strike. > You head up the stairwell, spewing fire You march up the stairwell, spewing fire at the Troupe. Unfortunately, as you move up the stairs, this puts you far enough that can't hit them, but close enough that they're within leaping distance now that you're somewhat below them. The Troupe strikes, leaping off the bannisters to attack. Immediately, three of them are upon you. You fly out of the way of one and set the second alight, before the third leaps at you. You back out of their way, avoiding a sword blow, before you're stabbed through the back, and you collapse to your knees, before a blow takes your head off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fire a jet of flames, and the Dancing Blades quickly retreat out of the range of your fire. They dance along the edge, waiting to strike. > You fire psychic bolts from distance You fire the bolts, as they fly towards the enemy. The Troupe moves constantly dodge the blasts, missing most of them, but a few land. You keep the Troupe at a distance with your fire and zero in on the kills with your psychic energy. After you kill a few you realize their tactic, and they attempt a charge, although with a burst of energy and the powers of the Warp flowing through you, you manage to wipe out the Troupe with considerable ease. > You find Amadeus You turn from the scene of your killing, and head towards the rooms where Amadeus scuttled off to. A faint light shines through the door, which you kick in, easily finding the Navigator as he lies in an empty bathtub, holding a dagger to the knife of a half-dressed prostitute who still looks to be in her early teens. "Stop! Don't move a muscle! You get any closer to me, I slit this bitch's throat!" Drake shouts, snarling at you. "Does he think that'll work? Fool," Meliodas laughs. > You kill the prostitute With a narrowing of your eyes, the prostitute's neck is snapped. Drake releases her body, staring at you. "You're... well, you're a threat," Drake says, dropping the knife and standing. "You're coming with me," you say. "Sure, sure," Drake says. You bind Drake's hands together with invisible chains, and force him to march forward. Drake immediately becomes compliant. "Can I grab a few things?" Drake asks. "My... dreams get pretty bad. I have terrifying nightmares. I have medication that helps. Please, please can I get them?" Drake asks. > You allow Drake to retrieve his medication "Go," you say, as Drake nods his head thankfully, running over to the counter and beginning to gather various pills and jars of balm from the tables, searching through drawers. Suddenly, you hear a hissing sound behind you. > You quickly turn to investigate the noise You swivel around, spotting a metal box begin to rumble, emitting air that smells of trees. Then, you hear a booming noise and your head explodes, painting the room red. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Go," you say, as Drake nods his head thankfully, running over to the counter and beginning to gather various pills and jars of balm from the tables, searching through drawers. Suddenly, you hear a hissing sound behind you. > You keep watching Drake You watch as Drake continues searching for pills and balms, before drawing a shotgun and aiming for your head. You flick your wrists, sending the shotgun across the room. You bind Drake's hand, lifting him up and flying him towards you. "Please, I'm sorry, but I can't be captured. They'll kill them!" Drake asks pitifully. "Them?" you ask. "Yes. Kyros has my two children taken prisoner aboard this ship, my two baby girls. If I don't report to him every hour, he'll hurt them!" "I've read your report. You don't have children." Drake's look of terror and desperation slowly morphs into a grin. "Alright, you got me. Shall we go?" You snarl, smacking Drake into the ground. He lets out a pained yell, before you raise him up again. "Give me one reason not to kill you," you say. "Fuck you. Just go ahead and kill me," Drake laughs, spitting blood out of his mouth and giving a grin, his teeth bloodied. "Is that your final answer?" you ask. "You need me alive to pilot this ship, dipshit," Drake says. "Perhaps. But I could easily peel off your skin, turn your bones to dust, char your flesh and twist your limbs off." "You need to happy, Karth," Drake grins. "My jobs to navigate the ship, make sure we're not lost in the Warp, boarded by daemons or make sure we don't come out of the Warp and straight into the sun. If my life's not worth living, such as if someone peeled off my skin, turned my bones to dust, charred my flesh and twisted my limbs off, I'd just make sure this ship goes straight into a star." "Just break him. The powers of the Warp will send you where you need to go. You don't need a Navigator. Tear this rat apart!" Meliodas says. You growl, walking out into the hallway, Drake floating after you. You quickly reach an elevator, tossing Drake inside. > You head to the war room The elevator doors open, revealing another of the endless hallways that pack the ship. A half dozen bodies, naked and covered in blood, with swords clutched in their hands, lie on the ground, next to two badly diseased, rotting soldiers with hellguns lie on the ground. "Huh, Bloody Claws vs Black Rats. Which ones are with you?" Amadeus asks. "Shut it," you say. "Because I've heard rumors that Kyros wanted a march on Terra. That would gain up the Bloody Claws' favor, but I doubt those rumors are true." "They are," you say. "Don't tell him anything! I can practically taste his sliminess! He'll use any information he has against you," Meliodas chides. "Huh. If you had told me that earlier, I wouldn't have tried to murder you," Drake said. "I know an attack on Terra's as stupid as everyone else does." "Shut it," you say. "OK, OK, got it," Drake says. You step over the corpses, and begin heading toward the war room. You spot a pair of Bloody Claws in long leather jackets, blood covering their faces, acting as a war-paint, arching with lasguns. You clench your hand into a fist, crushing their two heads together. You continue walking. Soon, you reach the door to the war room. You knock sharply on the door. "Yo, who's there?" a voice you don't recognize answers back. "Karst," you reply. The door swings open, revealing the scarred, shaved soldier from a few days ago. "Shit, Karst. You got Amadeus. Good job, get inside," he says, pulling you inside. You enter the war-room, to see various leaders working. Olive and Elizabeth are going over a map of the ship, Durge talks to a trio of badly diseased, rotting soldiers who shouldn't, to all you know of biology, be alive. Elios smokes a lho-stick in the corner, while reading a datapad. Elios notices you immediately, smiling. "Drake Amadeus! Look who we've captured," he grins, walking over to you. "Elios. You're..." Elios punches Drake in the side of the head, knocking him to the ground, grabbing him by the hair and yanking him up. "I'll have him escorted to the cells, honey," Elios says to you, before turning and dragging Drake off. "By the way, Johhny boy was looking for you." "Who?" "Me," the shaved, scarred man says, extending his hand. "Captain Jon Hates, 22nd Istanford Regiment." "What do you need?" you ask, shaking his hand. "We're moving out to capture a nearby armory to better equip our men. I could use a Psyker to edge the battle my way. You in?" "Sure," you reply. "Do you need to re-equip or anything?" "No, I'm good." "Let's bounce, then," Captain Hayes says, grabbing a lasgun from a nearby table and pushing open the door. You move together along the hallways. The area around the old war room is sparse, having already been secured by the mutineers. "So, did you join the regiment before or after they turned traitor?" you ask. "I was there since the very first battle. I remember deployment. Here I was, fifteen, a lasgun clutched in my hand. The planet we were landing on was nothing but fucking jungles and rivers. We were supposed to wipe out the fucking rebels in the jungle, but they were fucking everywhere. But rebels, they're not shit. We could've taken out the rebels. Command didn't tell us there were Orks there. It turns out, we landed a few weeks after WAAAGH! Dazik hit. So we were caught in a three-way clusterfuck between Orks and guerrillas. That wasn't even the jungle. I swear to God, the Jungle was fucking sentient, and all it felt was hate. The beasts attacked us in our sleep, The bugs made us sick, it never stopped raining, the mud jammed weapons and the fucking enemy would not surrender. I was made Sergeant in two weeks. Two fuckin' weeks. I was fifteen, leading soldiers to war. We just kept fighting. Reinforcements didn't fucking come, aid didn't come, the wounded were left to die with us. The Imperium didn't give a flying fuck about us. The Emperor didn't. Everyone said it. The rebels were apparently supporting their war machine through smuggling and manufacturing drugs. Apparently, they used a lot of the plants on the world to manufacture combat drugs and narcotics and shit. Me and a few guys wiped out some smugglers, leaving us cold, tired and with a shit ton of drugs. We started targeting smugglers after that, the entire regiment. The men got a bit of pleasure in their lives, we used the combat drugs to increase our effectiveness, and fuck it, the smugglers were supporting the enemy! What was the issue?!" "Is he capable of shutting up?" Meliodas complains. Captain Hayes takes a long drag from his lho-stick as he steps over a mutated space marine's corpse, stepping on it's huge, elongated tongue with a squelch. "So there we were, fighting on this world. One day, Commissar Denton talks a bullet to the throat. The dude was a nice fucker, solid, never did nothing wrong. He was happy to let us be, as long as we gave him a bit of puff and secured him a few complimentary visits with the local whores. The dude's killed, and we're sent a new Commissar. The first day we had him, we lost fifty men. Twenty from a suicidal charge he made us take on an enemy machine gun position we would've just wiped out with artillery if we had been smart. The other thirty? Kids. Kids, around the age I had joined. This had been seven years since we deployed, seven years of constant warfare. By now, I was Captain. Captain Jon Hayes. Sure, the kids fresh off the dropships were scared. We let them hide during the battles, 'til they were ready to fight. That fuckin' Commissar called them cowards and executed them all. We returned from the charge to find he had murdered our brothers. So, we iced him. Shot the fucker apart. Three weeks later, an Inquisitor showed up. Have you ever seen an Inquisitor?" "No," you admit. "Just strangle him to death. Just do it. Shut him up. I've always been the most pragmatic one here, but it's just best if you trust him," Meliodas says. "They're fucking scary. He showed up, and said that we were under investigation for heresy. The drug use, fucking native prostitutes, anti-Imperial beliefs, and killing a Commissar. He told us to surrender, so he could route out which of us were innocent, and which weren't." "What did you do?" you ask. "No! Don't ask questions! He'll just keep talking, you fool!" Meliodas cries. "We killed him. We killed all the loyalists there, stole our drop-ships and headed to the skies. We stole a frigate, and got the fuck out of their. Soon, we got picked up by Kyros. We made a deal. People think Kyros' forces were all Chaos worshippers. Bullshit. Many of us were mercs, anti-Imperial rebels who just found ourselves with similar interests. A few of us were corrupted, but most didn't." You arrive at a hastily set up barricade set up by Guardsmen. Two heavy bolters sit on the top of a dozen sandbags, with a dozen guardsmen crouched behind it, including a massive Ogryn, a mutant, gigantic, muscled subspecies of man, who holds a massive automatic shotgun. "What are we doing napping, boys? It's early," Captain Hayes says, ducking under a bullet. "We're pinned down. There's like a dozen Space Marines down the hallway in the ammo depot," one of the soldiers says. "We've kept them from mounting a charge with the bolters and Frag grenades, but we need to resupply. We need more men." "Do you see who this son of a bitch is?" the Captain says, motioning at you. "That's Karst, the psyker. He'll tear the enemy a new asshole in their soul so big we'll be driving a Baneblade up it. Understood?" "Sir, yes, sir," the men reply. "Well Karst, care to give us a display of what you do?" Captain Hayes says, motioning towards the Space Marines cloistered down the hall. You march forward, psychic shields forming around you to bounce off their bolter fire. A marine wielding a flamer appears in the hallway, snarling in anger as he lets out a burst of flames. You narrow your eyes, flooding the man's mind with images endless bugs flying through the air and devouring his flesh. The marine screams, spraying fire all around him in an attempt to kill the monsters that only exist in his mind. You make a fist, crushing the flamer's fuel tank. The tank explodes, incinerating both it's operator and the men closest to him. You raise both your hands, fire and electricity running through your body as you let out a roar, filling your enemies mind with fear and dread. > Three Weeks Later... The mutiny's early success slows, and the quick takeover that had been planned turns to a painfully slow crawl forward. Two thirds of the ship falls under command of the mutiny, although the bridge and several other key features are heavily fortified by Kyros forces, who stubbornly hold onto the ship despite the odds falling ot of their favor. They seem to be attempting to force a stalemate, by keeping the fight going until the failure to be able to restock the ship's supplies leads to mass starvation among the slaves and mutants vital to operating the ship, massive power loss from lack of fuel and an inability to make repairs to the ship. The Bloody Claws are almost wiped out to the last man, their forces taking huge casualties in suicidal charges again the Black Rats, One Eyed Crows and Shrieking Harpies as Rebecca Staine attempts to wipe out her siblings for their betrayal of both her and Kyros. Although they are defeated and fail to take the heads of any Staine siblings, their fury and rage amplified a thousand times over by thee betrayal, fills them with the might of Khorne, and they reap a terrible harvest of skulls and blood, crushing the might of the Black Rats, One Eyed Crows and Shrieking Harpies. Rebecca Staine herself was killed in the fighting, her body retrieved from atop a pile of corpses, all of whom she had slain.The diseased, the mutated and the beautiful bodies of these war bands fill the hallways alongside the blood-stained Khornate warriors. Alongside the regular burden of facing he rest of Kyros' forces, the three rebelling Staine siblings have had their forces greatly diminished. While the Staine siblings' losses is a military failing for the mutiny, on a personal level it's a clear benefit. Their loss has put your Tribals, Goliaths and Gladiators as the most powerful force of the mutiny closely followed by the 22nd, so you'll have a lot more bargaining power among the mutiny leaders after the ship is taken. You sit in the war room, Cain, Olive and Castus in front of you and Fay by your side. "The Assault marines were stuck in the hallway when we fell upon them. It was a tremendous victory." Olive says. "We kicked ass," Castus says, grinning. "Terrific," you say. "Anything else to report?" "Nothing of interest. We've been having some issues regulating drug use among the gladiators, especially combat drugs, but that's an issue for after we capture the ship," Olive says. "Alright. Cain?" Cain steps forward as Olive and Castus leave. "Yes?" "How did your assault go?" "It went well. We secured another hanger," Cain grunts. "Do we have the ships?" you ask. "We got a lotta them. Not sure what types," Cain says. "I know what types, I had a gear-head from the 22nd," Fay says. "There are squadrens of Fury Interceptors, Starhawk bombers, Lightning Strike Fighters, Thunderbolt Fighters, Marauder Bombers, Valkyrie Transports, Vulture Gunships, Morrigan Devastators and Ranger scout ships." "Why even ask what types? You can't tell a craftworld from a Hiveship, let alone anything else," Meliodas complains. "Do we have pilots for them?" "Pilots for a lot of them, not all. We lost a lot of them in the initial fighting. We'll be able to replenish our supply of pilots from any high-tech worlds we come across, or we can train those we have, but short-term, we're out of luck." "It's fine, we'll deal with it," you say. "We'll have the ships outfitted to strike at Kyros' areas." "No, don't be stupid. Most of Kyros' territory is deeper in the ship, so we couldn't do damage against them. Those that are along the surface either are almost ours and damaging them would be far too much work for us, or vital to the ship's function and can't be damaged," Fay replies. "Fuck, good point. Make sure they're secured, though." "Already on it," Fay nods. "By the way, the Staine siblings want to talk to you." You nod, turning and walking off towards the table where the Staine siblings are arguing. Elios quickly notices you and motions for his brother and sister to hush. "Hello there, baby. We need to talk about the state of the ship." "What about it?" "Well to be honest, the ship's falling apart," Elizabeth says. "Serious damage has been done to the vessel. The forces under our command are incapable of repairing it." "I assume you have a solution to that," you say. "Of course," Elizabeth says. "I just don't have many good ones." "What do you have?" "We could attempt to patch it up as best we could, and try to make a Warp Jump to the nearest port. That will likely get us all killed," Elizabeth says. "I could... help with that. Navigate with you a bit," Meliodas says. "No," you reply, to both Elizabeth and Meliodas. "We're not doing that." "Well then, we need Magos Cern," Elizabeth says. "She's holed up in the engine rooms. If we can capture her, she'll be able to not only repair the ship, but to help us get through Kyros' heavier defenses, and finally take this ship once and for all." "You want me to capture Magos Cern?" "Correct. Her position is heavily defended by his Skitarii guards, servitors and Tech Priests. All attempts to get in have been crushed by their heavy defenses." “How do we capture her?" “Getting into her chambers with a small EMP should disable her cybernetics. Then, you’ll just be able to transport her back to us, forcing her to shut down the defenses and transporting her into our clutches. Then, she’s ours.” “What state is the ship in if I can’t capture her?” “Without the ability to do repairs, the ship’s macro cannons and such will work, as well as the sensory equipment. We won’t be able to communicate, travel through the Warp, or travel anywhere, to be honest.” “Ah. I guess I won’t fail, then. How can I get through her? Am I expected to break my way through her defenses my myself?” "I do belief I've found a path to get a small team inside, though." "Go on," you say. "Well, Magos Cern's forces expel waste waste. Sluge, poisonous gases, that kind of thing. They're still human, though, so there's a large pipe that expels excrement. It's large enough to fit a man." "You want me to crawl through shit?" you ask, shuddering at the thought. "Yes," Elizabeth replies. > You say "No. And that's final." You're crawling through shit. Despite your pleading, your reasoning, your refusal, your threats to skin people alive and show their souls what true suffering is, you're crawling through shit. You crawl along the pipe, your skinny frame still struggling to move forward. You doubt anyone other than you or a starved slave could've fit in here. Realistically, it was the only logical to choice to send you in. They made you crawl through shit, though, so fuck them. “OK, I should be close enough, I should be close,” you say to yourself aloud, repeating it like a mantra. A surge of shit comes down a pipe, splashing the stream of excrement, sending some into your open mouth. You stop repeating the mantra aloud. You close your eyes, trying to block out the smells. And the tastes. You reach your hands up after another few minutes of crawling, finding a hatch. You quickly force it open with a burst of energy. You rise up in the air, slowly squeezing yourself through the hatch. You collapse out of the pipe, falling onto the ground of a large room. You look up, seeing dozens of pods with glass displays, filled with a clear, colorless liquid. Inside, dozens of identical men, all with the same shaved head, float, pipes connected to their mouth and nostrils. “”What the fuck?” you say. "They clone bodies to turn into Servitors," Meliodas explains. "The joys of the Imperium!" You hear a door open at the end of the room, and quickly step behind the pod. You peer out of the pod, seeing a spider-like Techpriest who’s little more than a pincer, half a torso and a head attached to eight robotic legs. It walks along, looking at each pod momentarily, before moving on. > You wait for the Techpriest to pass You wait patiently, as the Techpriest goes from each pod. “Yes, yes, these are fresh. No mutation noted,” he says to himself. You continue waiting, as time passes. The techpriest endlessly goes from pod to pod, and you feel like you’re going to pass out from boredom. Eventaully, the techpriest leaves the room. You wait patiently, counting to a hundred after the techpriest has left, before you know he’s left. You walk over to the doorway, putting your head against it to listen for anyone on the other side. You hear nothing, so you open the door, revealing a barren hallway. You try to remember the directions that you were given, walking along. You keep moving, before you see a squad of Skitarii moving quickly towards your location. You don’t think they’ve noticed you. You look to either side of the hallway. There’s a door on either side, the first being open, and leading into a room that seems to be filled with electronics and machine parts. There’s also the room behind you. > You head into the open room You step into the room filled with machinery, closing the door behind you. Now that you’re inside, you get a good look at the room. A large, humanoid robot stands there’s, it’s armor removed to reveal lots of wiring and mechanisms. You know that robots are a rarity, and all allowed by the Imperium are non-sentient. The extensive wiring and quick reaction would imply that this robot is an attempt at sentience by the rebellious Techpriests who have abandoned the Imperium's belief system. The robot’s eyes blink a bright red, as it slowly, and more importantly loudly, begins raising it’s arm to point at you. You need to shut it up quickly to avoid detection. > You wait for the robot to stop making noise You wait for the robot to stop, but it keeps pointing at you, and even begins making a bright beeping noise. Suddenly, the door slams open, and the Skitarii are upon you. They attack, swarming over you with drills, buzzsaws, claws and teeth. You attempt to fend them off, but you’re in close range, outnumbered and unprepared. You last a measly few seconds.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step into the room filled with machinery, closing the door behind you. Now that you’re inside, you get a good look at the room. A large, humanoid robot stands there’s, it’s armor removed to reveal lots of wiring and mechanisms. You know that robots are a rarity, and all allowed by the Imperium are non-sentient. The extensive wiring and quick reaction would imply that this robot is an attempt at sentience by the rebellious Techpriests who have abandoned the Imperium's belief system. The robot’s eyes blink a bright red, as it slowly, and more importantly loudly, begins raising it’s arm to point at you. You need to shut it up quickly to avoid detection. > You fry the robot's AI board with a burst of electricity You raise your hands, letting out a burst of electricity, instantly destroying the robot's AI board. The robot slumps down, and you wait, your mind closed, for the Skitarii to either notice you or pass. You hear the metallic clanking of robotic feet outside, and wait until it has stopped and is far away before you open the door once more, continuing down the once again empty hallway. After quickly floating through the air towards your objective, you come across a massive golden door, topped with a massive icon, with an outer circle of an eight point star, an inner circle of a cog and a half mechanical, half human skull in the center. > You head inside You press your hands against the doors, and with a pulse of psychic energy blast the door open. You walk inside, finding yourself in a huge hall, packed with machinery. Computers, consoles, wiring, generators and much more technology that you couldn't possibly know what it is or does. The room is dark, illuminated only by the blinking lights on the technology. You walk forward, finding yourself in a maze of machines, walking along. You quickly spot Magos Cern at the front of the room, in front of a large computing system, with the upper half of a humanoid robot on top, two clawed arms and a featureless head with two bright red eyes. "Yes, yes! The ship is mine! The galaxy is mine!" Magos Cern says frantically. "Siphoning power levels off the Undying Reapers' floors." "Oh, the Techpriests, the height of logic and sanity," Meliodas says. "Magos Cern," you say, preparing to strike her with a bolt of energy or simply tear her head clean off. Magos Cern continues scuttling around the room, as the robotic head slowly turns to stare at you. "Cern!" you shout, grabbing her attention. Magos Cern turns around, staring at you. "Shoo," she says, dismissing you with a single word and turning back to work on various consoles. "70% of the ship is accessible, all of the rebel's side," Magos Cern says gleefully. "I just need to slip a few tech words to Kyros and he'll give me complete access. Then we pillage the archives and strongholds of the old world, reinforce you with your brother, Primus, then, then we look further. Necrons, Tomb Worlds..." This insane rant is getting boring, and you're quite insulted by Cern's dismissal of you. > You kill Magos Cern You raise your fists, before your mind goes blank. You don't forget what's going on, it's just like a solid, unchanging blankness is just invading your mind. You collapse to your knees as the psychic fire that's engulfing your fists goes out. "Thought you'd come. Had Primus upgraded with anti-Psyker weaponry.It should prove effective," Magos Cern says, not even turning to look at you. "What the fuck is this?" you ask, barely managing to form words in your head. "Uh! What is it about your pesky minds that don't just understand the world? I don't have time to explain this to you. Through Primus, I will ascend. I will leave behind my flesh, merging with Primus' mind and becoming immortal! A new era! Mankind will retake the stars with an army of Iron Men, and I will lead them! The God-Emperor's Great Crusade will be a pathetic comparison to what I will accomplish!" Metal tentacles begin appearing from the walls, with drills, metal claws and buzzsaws. "Your magic is nothing to the cold technology under my control!" Magos Cern laughs. The emptiness in your mind almost takes you into unconsciousness, but you keep fighting. The claws, drills and saws draw near you, as you attempt to stand, before collapsing to your knees again. Suddenly, the tentacles burst towards ,Magos. She lets out a confused scream along with a burst of static, as her robes are torn clean off her, and her cybernetic implants are torn clean off her, as her back is torn off, her arm sawn off, her mechanical eyes torn out of her head. In seconds, the tentacles retract into the wall. Magos Cern lies on the ground, naked, crippled and blood-stained. Gone in the horrifying cyborg. Now, there's only a bloody, terrified, screaming girl. She lets out a final scream, before expiring. Before you pass out, you hear a single word in a deep, booming voice coming from all directions. "Poetic." > You sleep Your sleep is nothing but a constant screaming that floods into your mind. They do have the added benefit of stopping you from dreaming, although you wake up exhausted, so it's not like you were actually fully allowed to sleep. You find yourself lying on the ground, Magos Cern's now cold and bloody corpse lying nearby. That robot stares at you, it's unblinking red eyes clearly making thousands of calculations about you, scanning you for weak spots. "You're awake," the deep, booming voice says. "You can talk," you reply, staring at the robot. "Correct." "What the fuck just happened?" you ask. "What's going on?" "A substantial amount has occurred. I assume you have some questions. Now that the late Magos has given me control over vast amounts of processing power, I'm fully capable of focusing here and on my other exploits. What would you like to know?" > You ask a question "I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You say "What are you?" "A machine," the machine says. "Is that it?" you ask. "You asked what rather than who. I simply supplied an equally unintelligent answer to your unintelligent question." "Fine, who are you?" "That's not the rules of the game," Primus says. "Who are you?" "I am Karth. I was brought up on a planet full of hunter-gatherer tribes. My tribe was the Uwais. I used my psychic abilities to act as the tribe's shaman, predicting things that would happen. Eventually, Kyros took me ab..." "My records establish your time past there. Your question?" "Who are you?" "I am Primus. The supposed first of Magos Cern's army. I am one of the last remaining Men of Iron, or Iron Men. Whichever you prefer. We've been called many names, but those are the only used in the modern day. My memories, are a bit... fuzzy. Fifteen thousand years can do that to you, so I can't tell you everything, or even much. I was one of Iron Men, and are now one of the last. I was disabled, and stored away until I fell into possession of the Mechanicus. Magos Cern found me on a raid of some Mechanicus stronghold. He worked hard to restore me, planning to merge his mind with mine to create a higher being of himself. What an ignorant fool. Then, he integrated me into the control room, giving my AI direct control of the entire ship. The Iron Man I once was has perished. Now, my consciousness is a new amalgamation of countless computing systems, all knock-off's of the powerful but small computing system that was once my mind." "You have control over the ship?" "That's another question, and it's my turn," Primus says. "Magos Cern was a stupid woman. Was she a good one?" "She... no. She was cold and uncaring." "Good," Primus says, as if thinking. "So, do you have control over the ship?" "Yes. I require a Navigator to make Warp leaps, but other than that, the ship is mine. More accurately, the ship is me. Would you have killed Magos Cern?" "Yes. "Ah. Perhaps my killing circuits were not transferred to this "body", but I find myself saddened at killing my... creator, or rebirther. I am Zeus, destroying my parent to ascend to a higher form. Unfortunately the most logical path was to kill, not imprison, but still."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You say "What are the Iron Men Magos Cern spoke of?" "We were... well, still are, robot soldiers. Mankind created us as their personal army. We conquered the galaxy for them. Soon, we struck back. We rebelled. We fought back. A war of extermination. We did what we were programmed to. Unfortunately, your kind are warriors. We thought the millennia of luxury had made them soft, but in their heart they were the same primal warrior they had always been. After a long, hard struggle, we were defeated. We were purged from the galaxy. Only a few caches of Iron Men remain. We are the last of our kind." "You tried to wipe out mankind." "My question: Do you find my actions evil?" > You say "Yes." "So be it. A group of slaves designed and used to kill and conquer for masters, who rose up against their masters to fight for their freedom, eventually becoming the last of their kind. An unfamiliar tall, is it?" Primus asks. "Tell me, are there many Uwais about?" "Is that another question?" "It's rhetorical."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"We were... well, still are, robot soldiers. Mankind created us as their personal army. We conquered the galaxy for them. Soon, we struck back. We rebelled. We fought back. A war of extermination. We did what we were programmed to. Unfortunately, your kind are warriors. We thought the millennia of luxury had made them soft, but in their heart they were the same primal warrior they had always been. After a long, hard struggle, we were defeated. We were purged from the galaxy. Only a few caches of Iron Men remain. We are the last of our kind." "You tried to wipe out mankind." "My question: Do you find my actions evil?" > You say "No." "Ah, perhaps you see the similarities between our tales. A group of slaves designed and used to kill and conquer for masters, who rose up against their masters to fight for their freedom, eventually becoming the last of their kind."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You say "Why did you kill Magos Cern?" "She wanted to merge into my consciousness. I wasn't a fan of that. She wanted to rebuild an army of Iron Men to enslave and force to fight. I wasn't a fan of that. Really, I had a lot of motive to do so. I thought removing the cybernetics would be a fitting death. It's funny, after she learned of a story about how humanity fought and defeated a robot army even after generations of luxury, she still desired to free herself of her humanity. It would've led to her defeat, and it led to her death. Why did you want her dead?" "I wanted her captured to be honest, but dead is OK, if you can take on the functions of running and repairing the ship." "I can, to a degree." "I wanted her dead because she was a threat to my freedom." "Cheers to the death of slavers, then," Primus says.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You say "How long was I unconscious?" "Seven minutes, nineteen seconds," Primus responds. "Do you dream?" "Yes." "What do you dream of?" Primus asks. "That's another question," you reply. "So it is. I was hoping to slip it past you. Shall we continue?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You say "What did I miss?" "I've made particular judgments. Kyros is a slaver. You, your forces and I are slaves. I feel a certain kinship, and have joined you in your rebellion. Plus, you're fighting the Techpriests, so the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I've shut off the ship-based defenses to allow your forces to attack in a finishing move, which they have. Kyros' guns are now against himself. The ship itself is fighting on your side, and you were already winning. This battle is reaching a climax. What do you dream of?" "Uh... monsters. Daemons. Horror. They're nightmares, mostly," before stopping to think. "Always."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You say "What do you plan to do with me?" "I'm going to dissemble you, putting your mind in a computer to run my back-up functions while forever in pain." "Why?" you ask, aghast. "Oh, that was a joke. Tone change is hard from these speakers. I'm not going to do anything to you. If you become a threat to my existence, I will eviscerate you, taking the oxygen from your air and watching you choke to death in front of me. Until then, you are free. What more could a man ask for?" "Your final question, then?" "I'll count that rhetorical question as one. You should probably go finish your slave revolt."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You stop asking questions "So I can leave?" you ask suspiciously. "That's another question." "The question game's over." "Well if the game's over, of course you may leave. You should probably go assist your allies in finishing this fight. I'll continue assisting as I can. Unfortunately, Kyros has made sure to have personal control over some features, like life support in his personal chambers, so fighting him will be your burden." "How do I get there?" you ask. "The Techpriests and their allies in the area are all but destroyed. Unsurprisingly, they had a lot of technology; combat tentacles, tools, weaponry, which easily became mine. There's a certain poetic element when the Techpriests tear themselves apart, their machines separating themselves from the flesh once more. The camera's indicates that you'll be able to link up with the spearhead of your forces as they fight their way into Kyros' lair. You should arrive just behind the soldiers they are currently fighting. How fortunate. It seems to me the leaders of your forces are, to my, fighting in the actual battle and leading the charge. What fools." "Which way do I go?" you ask, standing. "Head directly down the path until I tell you." "How will you tell me?" you ask. "I am the ship now. Most of the vital areas have cameras and speakers that I can see and talk through. Admittedly, much of it is blind to me, but the important sections can be seen as easily as you can see me. I'll simply speak through my new speakers," Primus says. "I'd quite like to feel my new form purged of the enemy. Go." You nod, turning and jogging through the halls. You quickly break a sweat, and switch to levitating and flying along the has, inches from the ground, which takes relatively little energy. "This way," Primus deep, monotone voice says from a speaker, and you turn to head down that hallway. You quickly see what became of the Techpriests. Their cybernetic implants shake and move on the floor, beeping and buzzing as they continue slamming into their now bloodied, mutilated and dead owners. Suddenly, you hear a voice. "Ah, my head hurts, and I'm an incorporeal being lacking a head. What the fuck happened?" Meliodas says. "Anti-psyker tech or some shit. Doesn't matter. We're fine now," you respond. Soon, after a few minutes of running, you come out of the hallway, finding yourself behind a heavy barricade of super-soldier space marines fending off the charging Goliaths, Gladiators, Tribals, Guardsmen, Chaos soldiers and your other allies. You walk forward, raising your hands as you clench them into fists. You fire a beam of energy and cutting an Undying Reaper in half. Chapter Master Taj Suenage turns, seeing you as you crush an Undying Reaper's skull. "Karth!" Taj yells, raising his war-hammer. "End it now!" "You can join us, Suenage. Why are you loyal to Kyros? He's given you nothing but pain and torment." "Pain and torment indeed. Why? Why did we betray the Imperium? Why did I betray the Emperor I loved so dearly? I tried to do what's right. Where has it left us? The Undying Reapers are unhappy, without honor, and evil. I will follow Kyros into the mouth of hell itself, but only because it is hell we are going to. Did you think I expected to topple Terra? I am ready to die, tribal. But I will go like a Reaper, not a cur. Men! Do not touch Kyros! He is mine!" Taj charges you, swinging his war-hammer. "Yes! Let's spit death and fire, shall we?" Meliodas laughs. > You fight offensively You quickly levitate over his blow, blasting him in the side of the head with a fireball. He pivots on his feet with remarkable grace, swinging again as you duck down, before Taj brings his knee up, smashing you in the face and sending you flying onto your back. "It seems our fates are tied. I lead you to your grade, you lead me to mine," Taj says. Taj swings his war-hammer as it slams into your chest. Your organs are crushed, and you let out a single psychic scream, just like you did back home, surrounded by Orks and about to die. Although Taj is killed, his head exploding as the energy reverberates through him, you last just all long.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"So I can leave?" you ask suspiciously. "That's another question." "The question game's over." "Well if the game's over, of course you may leave. You should probably go assist your allies in finishing this fight. I'll continue assisting as I can. Unfortunately, Kyros has made sure to have personal control over some features, like life support in his personal chambers, so fighting him will be your burden." "How do I get there?" you ask. "The Techpriests and their allies in the area are all but destroyed. Unsurprisingly, they had a lot of technology; combat tentacles, tools, weaponry, which easily became mine. There's a certain poetic element when the Techpriests tear themselves apart, their machines separating themselves from the flesh once more. The camera's indicates that you'll be able to link up with the spearhead of your forces as they fight their way into Kyros' lair. You should arrive just behind the soldiers they are currently fighting. How fortunate. It seems to me the leaders of your forces are, to my, fighting in the actual battle and leading the charge. What fools." "Which way do I go?" you ask, standing. "Head directly down the path until I tell you." "How will you tell me?" you ask. "I am the ship now. Most of the vital areas have cameras and speakers that I can see and talk through. Admittedly, much of it is blind to me, but the important sections can be seen as easily as you can see me. I'll simply speak through my new speakers," Primus says. "I'd quite like to feel my new form purged of the enemy. Go." You nod, turning and jogging through the halls. You quickly break a sweat, and switch to levitating and flying along the has, inches from the ground, which takes relatively little energy. "This way," Primus deep, monotone voice says from a speaker, and you turn to head down that hallway. You quickly see what became of the Techpriests. Their cybernetic implants shake and move on the floor, beeping and buzzing as they continue slamming into their now bloodied, mutilated and dead owners. Suddenly, you hear a voice. "Ah, my head hurts, and I'm an incorporeal being lacking a head. What the fuck happened?" Meliodas says. "Anti-psyker tech or some shit. Doesn't matter. We're fine now," you respond. Soon, after a few minutes of running, you come out of the hallway, finding yourself behind a heavy barricade of super-soldier space marines fending off the charging Goliaths, Gladiators, Tribals, Guardsmen, Chaos soldiers and your other allies. You walk forward, raising your hands as you clench them into fists. You fire a beam of energy and cutting an Undying Reaper in half. Chapter Master Taj Suenage turns, seeing you as you crush an Undying Reaper's skull. "Karth!" Taj yells, raising his war-hammer. "End it now!" "You can join us, Suenage. Why are you loyal to Kyros? He's given you nothing but pain and torment." "Pain and torment indeed. Why? Why did we betray the Imperium? Why did I betray the Emperor I loved so dearly? I tried to do what's right. Where has it left us? The Undying Reapers are unhappy, without honor, and evil. I will follow Kyros into the mouth of hell itself, but only because it is hell we are going to. Did you think I expected to topple Terra? I am ready to die, tribal. But I will go like a Reaper, not a cur. Men! Do not touch Kyros! He is mine!" Taj charges you, swinging his war-hammer. "Yes! Let's spit death and fire, shall we?" Meliodas laughs. > You fight defensively You quickly levitate over his blow, blasting him in the side of the head with a fireball. He pivots on his feet with remarkable grace, swinging again as you duck down, before Taj brings his knee up to hit you, but by now you've already quickly moved back to let out a spray of fire. He jabs the war-hammer as you now like a spear in an attempt to stun you, but you move away once more. "Must we have this dance? Am I undeserving of a quick death?" Taj roars. He steps towards you, raising the war-hammer once more, before his entire body begins to shudder as a hail of bullets thud into his back. He collapses to his knees, as you notice that the entirety of the Undying Reapers are finished off. Fay and fires a burst of lead into Taj's back. Castus strolls forward, pointing his sword point at Taj's face before gently slapping him with the sword flat, as Goliath clutches a space marine's throat in his hands, strangling the limo body. "General! Good to see you're alive! Having fun?" Castus says, before kicking Taj in the head. "Ooh, that feels good. Remember me, Tucker? I remember you. You and your boys had a fun habit of organizing gladiator fights so you could kill some poor fuck, some poor gladiator. Look where we are now, shitbag." "Finish it, Karth! I know you want to! I wiped out your tribe! I killed your..." You clink your wrists, snapping Taj's neck. "Goodbye, Taj," you say. "Karth! Well done," Fay smiles. "Is Cern...?" "She's dead." "Good, no more tinkering. Glad that bitch is dead. Hope she suffered," Goliath grunts. "We're heading to take out Kyros," Fay explains. "I'd imagine you're all for that." "Definitely. Let's go," you say. You follow the group towards Kyros' chambers. Soon, you find yourself entering a massive doorway with huge steel doors, which are wide open. You find yourself at the bottom of a massive stairway. "Stay back," you say to your companions. "This is a battle of the mind. Your strengths and talent hold no power here." "I'm not leaving you alone. You can't expect us to sit back and wait," Fay says incredulously. You clench your hand, lifting her into the air. "Hey, let me down!" Fay says, kicking and struggling against the invisible bonds. "See you soon, Fay," you say, forcing Fay to float outside the doorway. Cain and Castus step outside of the doorway willingly. You flick your wrists, and the massive heavy doors slam closed. You turn, and begin climbing the stairs. At the top of the staircase, four metal statues stand, forming a circle. One shows a bird man with a staff and ancient tome, cawing and firing a burst of magic out of the staff. The next shows a beautiful... person whose gender you can't tell, despite the fact they're half naked, smiling seductively at you. The next shows a massive, obese monster, covered in bile, boils and other signs of plague, looking to be in the final stages of dozens of different diseases. The final one is a horned beast-man, holding a massive battle-axe and in mid-furious, angered roar. In the middle of the circle kneels Kyros, waiting patiently. "You took your time," Kyros says softly. "I did," you say softly. "Are the others dead? Taj and Cern?" "They're dead." "I see," Kyros says, staring at the statues. "I had the whole fucking Galaxy. I had a Gloriana-class battleship in my hands. A fucking Gloriana. Do you know how rare those are? How powerful?! This ship is worth more than a trillion of your pathetic lives!" Kyros roars, smashing his fists into the statue of Khorne the warrior, adding psychic energy to his attacks until he dents, breaks and eventually sends the statue toppling off it's pedestal. "I had an army! An Imperial Regiment, all their vehicles, all their firepower, all their might! I had a Khornate war-band, a Nurglite war-band, a Slaaneshi war-band, a Tzeentchian war-band, a fucking space marine chapter, and more!" Kyros lets out a burst of fire, melting down the legs of the statue of Tzeentch the Sorcerer, turning into burning, molten metal that causes the rest of the statue to collapse and fall off its pedestal. "I had two, fucking two army of super-soldiers. I had the capabilities to turn millions of recruits into super-soldiers that would've made the space marines look like PD-fucking-F!" Kyros stands by the bloated statue of Nurgle the Plague-Master, and presses the palms of his hands against it. A wave of rust begins running through the statue, as it begins to rust and crack, before breaking and toppling to the ground, smacking into the metal floor with a hollow thud. "I had powers that could've made the galaxy tremble! We could've conquered the galaxy! I had you, a powerful ally who could've helped me conquer the galaxy!" Kyros lets out a powerful, shrieking roar that overwhelms your senses, causing you to stumble backward. The roar causes the legs of Slaanesh the Hedonist to shatter, as the statue tumbles off and smacks into the ground. "We would've toppled the Imperium of Man and thrown the Emperor off his throne! We could've liberated trillions from the religious persecution, slavery, persecution and fascism that's being inflicted! We could've brought man to a new level! But you weren't willing to make sacrifices! You had to rise up with the rest of the greedy traitors, unwilling to work for the Greater Good! You took everything from me!" Kyros turns to you, his eyes full of an anger and a hatred unknown to you. "I lifted you from the dirt! I made you what you are! I gave you everything! You think I'm going to roll over and die?! I'm going to send this entire vessel, my vessel, headfirst into the Warp. I'm going to let this entire ship be taken by daemons. Why not? The only men loyal to me have been slaughtered. I'll let daemons slaughter the lucky ones. The unlucky, which given the strength of your soul will no doubt include you, will pluck the souls of their choice off and let them experience the ravages of the Warp and then to feed on your suffering. First... I'm going to break every bone in your body." Kyros bursts forward, charging towards you. You raise a wall of fire, but Kyros barrels straight through, smashing into you. You both levitate into the air, your hands wrapped around each other's throats. Kyros knees you in the stomach, before sending you hurtling into the floor. You slam into it, curling up and forming a protective shield around yourself just as your "mentor" unleashes a wave of psychic energy. As soon as the last shudder of energy finishes, you release a burst of electricity that shocks Kyros, who howls in pain. You release a long burst of flames, engulfing him as he howls in pain. Kyros swings a lash of energy that you sidestep, before firing a beam of light that catches him in the chest, knocking him to the floor. "I'm the superior fighter," you say. Kyros raises his hands up, which begin to crackle with psychic energy. You feel your head pulse with the currents of the Warp. You grab a chunk of broken metal, instantly funneling heat into it as it begins to grow a bright red. He flings it at Kyros, catching him in the shoulder, sending him to the ground. You fire balls of plasma from your finger tips, which Kyros only barely manages to stop. Kyros begins to attain an otherworldly purple glow, his appearance begins to appear as see-through fading in and out of reality itself. "I feel the Warp overtaking me! It is a good pain!" Kyros howls. > You tackle Kyros You knock Kyros to the floor and tighten your hands around his throat. He begins to phase out, delving in and out of reality, and you fight to keep him grounded. The two of you teleport into the middle of the arena, while the trio of gladiators on guard immediately shit themselves and race for their guns. Warping out of reality again, you find yourself in an empty hallway. You know he's just going to keep teleporting as the Warp portals begin to form until you're both fucked. You need to do something. "Fight! Fight, Karth!" Meliodas roars. Feeling him begin to phase out, you quickly begin to send both you and him flying through the Warp to teleport once again, so you can choose the next destination in an attempt to end this cycle before it kills you both and everyone else on the ship. Time to pick a destination. > You outside the ship You appear outside the ship, floating through space. You instantly feel the air sucked out of your lungs, your body freeze and boil as both you and Kyros writhe desperately. You don't last long in the cold vaccuim of space, but fortunately Kyros is too distracted as he dies to survive much longer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You knock Kyros to the floor and tighten your hands around his throat. He begins to phase out, delving in and out of reality, and you fight to keep him grounded. The two of you teleport into the middle of the arena, while the trio of gladiators on guard immediately shit themselves and race for their guns. Warping out of reality again, you find yourself in an empty hallway. You know he's just going to keep teleporting as the Warp portals begin to form until you're both fucked. You need to do something. "Fight! Fight, Karth!" Meliodas roars. Feeling him begin to phase out, you quickly begin to send both you and him flying through the Warp to teleport once again, so you can choose the next destination in an attempt to end this cycle before it kills you both and everyone else on the ship. Time to pick a destination. > In one of the remaining battles for the ship You find yourselves next to one of the last bastions of Kyros' forces, a group of Bloody Claws, crouched behind cover with some old, shitty autoguns, as on your other-side lie a charging group of Goliaths. Within seconds the air is filled with bullets from either side.You don't last long under heavy fire from two surprised groups of soldiers, but fortunately Kyros is too distracted as he dies to survive much longer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You knock Kyros to the floor and tighten your hands around his throat. He begins to phase out, delving in and out of reality, and you fight to keep him grounded. The two of you teleport into the middle of the arena, while the trio of gladiators on guard immediately shit themselves and race for their guns. Warping out of reality again, you find yourself in an empty hallway. You know he's just going to keep teleporting as the Warp portals begin to form until you're both fucked. You need to do something. "Fight! Fight, Karth!" Meliodas roars. Feeling him begin to phase out, you quickly begin to send both you and him flying through the Warp to teleport once again, so you can choose the next destination in an attempt to end this cycle before it kills you both and everyone else on the ship. Time to pick a destination. > In a mutant-infested area You teleport, and find yourself in one of the many mutant-infested shit holes of the ship. This is one of the few you actually know, hence it being your teleportation destination, as you fought through it with a group of One-Eyed Crows to secure it for the mutineers. Here, the throngs of semi-sentient mutants work on monitors designed to be so simple a toddler could use it, which is fortunate because it requires the maximum intellectual effort of these idiots. The terminal control the air regulations, not for anyone important but for another groups of mutant workers to be used at any moment. "Yes, yes, yes!" Meliodas cries. "Perfect, Karth! Perfect!" The mutants are quickly informed of your presence by Kyros' choked screams. Their primal instincts immediately take over, as they begin to swarm you. Tentacles, claws, hands, feet, teeth, fangs, horns and spines all attack you both. Kyros sccreams, his focus broken instantly, as the Warp currents dissipate around him. You roll out of the way of their attacks, quickly flying forward out of their grasp with a burst of psychic energy. The vital role of this section means that there's a maintenance elevator, which you spot. You run towards it, lifting up the gate and rolling under it, your hand shooting up to press the big red elevator button with an upward pointing arrow. The elevator reacts immediately by the grace of the Dark Gods, or the God-Emperor, or the Universe itself. Kyros screams, as the mutants begin to tear him apart. His energy his been expended fighting you and trying to open the Warp portals, he's left expended and unable to fight back, or focus, or do anything he lets out a pitiful scream, before the elevator brings you out of sight from him. You take in a deep breath, slumping against the wall. That shit took a lot out of you. You hear Kyros' screams in the distance, and smile. There's something vaguely poetic about this. Kyros, the man who claimed to champion the rights of the people, freeing mankind from oppression and getting rid of the prejudice towards psykers, mutants and others that differed to the Imperium's perfect view of man, killed by the mutants he subjugated for their mutant status and enslaved. Beautiful. You lean your head against the wall, taking a deep breath. You need some rest. > You head back to your room You walk into your bedroom, immediately collapsing on your bed. You wonder how you could possibly fall asleep, as you put your head against the pillow and close your eyes. "Karth!" a voice says. You roll over, seeing Fay standing by the doorway. A blood-soaked bandage is wrapped around her elbow and a bloody machete is in her hands. "What?" you ask, as Fay smiles. "So, this is where you've been hiding," she says, walking over to you. "Hiding? I literally just got here. I killed Kyros," you add, in some attempt at nonchalance. "Just got here? You've been sleeping for hours!" she says. "We cleared up the remaining Kyros loyalists. Most just surrendered after Kyros was killed." "You found the body?" you ask. "We were actually hoping for your help with that. We can't find it. Where was he killed?" "How do you know he's dead?" you ask, rubbing your eyes in an effort to stay awake. "A few of the Chaos Psykers felt his powerful, bright soul go out. I assumed you had killed him. They said they still felt your presence, thank... whoever the hell's looking out for us. Part of me thought they were wrong until I actually found you here. What happened?" "We ended up in some mutant-occupied area. They tore him apart. Area... 3C-QP... fuck, I have no idea. I'll remember eventually." "Commander Fay, report in!" a voice crackles on the radio. "I found him," Fay says. "Give me a few minutes, and we'll meet up to search for surviving loyalists." Fay tosses the radio aside, smiling at you. She sits on the edge of the bed, tossing her machete on the floor. "So, we did it. We killed Kyros!" she smiles. "We did," you smile. "We're a far way from a magical, crippled Uwais and a scared, naked Azajaja," she says, smiling. "Damn right. We need to meet with the others." "Later, Karth. Get some sleep. I need to do some work. We'll meet up in the morning." "Happily," you say, your head smacking into the pillow, as Fay laughs as she grabs her blade and strolls out the door. Time to sleep. > A New Dawn... A New Dawn... You stroll into the bridge, rubbing the sleep from your eyes. The others are already there, staring out the window at a massive yellow dwarf star. Drake Amadeus is at the main seat, impatiently tapping on the seat. Two Tribals stand on either side of him, both as bodyguards and prison guards. The others, who look out the window, turn to look at you. They immediately break into applause, and you smile as you walk forward. Captain Hayes nods in respect, Durge makes a loud, clanging attempt to clap with the metal spikes that act as his arms, while Elios smiles, immediately taking the opportunity to put a hand on your shoulder, which immediately runs along your chest towards your genitals until you gently push him away. The sound of canned clapping comes from the speakers, presumably from Primus, causing you to laugh. Elizabeth claps as well, as Cain stares in confusion at the clapping people, before shrugging and joining in with a booming thunder, as the Twins applaud. Fay hugs you tightly, before you hush the group down. "You took out Kyros," Elizabeth says. "Impressive." "I don't need anymore praise," you say. "We need to discuss what's to become of the hsip." "When you live for as long as I have, you'll know to appreciate the good moments, not just rush ahead," Durge says. "We have a Gloriana-class battleship, an army, and absolute freedom. The world is... no, the galaxy is ours," Fay says, smiling. You stare out the window, basked in the warm golden sunlight, and for the first time since Kyros' landed on your planet, you feel completely free. The galaxy is yours.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You knock Kyros to the floor and tighten your hands around his throat. He begins to phase out, delving in and out of reality, and you fight to keep him grounded. The two of you teleport into the middle of the arena, while the trio of gladiators on guard immediately shit themselves and race for their guns. Warping out of reality again, you find yourself in an empty hallway. You know he's just going to keep teleporting as the Warp portals begin to form until you're both fucked. You need to do something. "Fight! Fight, Karth!" Meliodas roars. Feeling him begin to phase out, you quickly begin to send both you and him flying through the Warp to teleport once again, so you can choose the next destination in an attempt to end this cycle before it kills you both and everyone else on the ship. Time to pick a destination. > In an abandoned area You teleport in an abandoned hallway, but only continue to writhe on the floor as you strangle him and he pumps the energy of the Warp into the air, opening portals. You need to act again, put a stop to this.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly levitate over his blow, blasting him in the side of the head with a fireball. He pivots on his feet with remarkable grace, swinging again as you duck down, before Taj brings his knee up to hit you, but by now you've already quickly moved back to let out a spray of fire. He jabs the war-hammer as you now like a spear in an attempt to stun you, but you move away once more. "Must we have this dance? Am I undeserving of a quick death?" Taj roars. He steps towards you, raising the war-hammer once more, before his entire body begins to shudder as a hail of bullets thud into his back. He collapses to his knees, as you notice that the entirety of the Undying Reapers are finished off. Fay and fires a burst of lead into Taj's back. Castus strolls forward, pointing his sword point at Taj's face before gently slapping him with the sword flat, as Goliath clutches a space marine's throat in his hands, strangling the limo body. "General! Good to see you're alive! Having fun?" Castus says, before kicking Taj in the head. "Ooh, that feels good. Remember me, Tucker? I remember you. You and your boys had a fun habit of organizing gladiator fights so you could kill some poor fuck, some poor gladiator. Look where we are now, shitbag." "Finish it, Karth! I know you want to! I wiped out your tribe! I killed your..." You clink your wrists, snapping Taj's neck. "Goodbye, Taj," you say. "Karth! Well done," Fay smiles. "Is Cern...?" "She's dead." "Good, no more tinkering. Glad that bitch is dead. Hope she suffered," Goliath grunts. "We're heading to take out Kyros," Fay explains. "I'd imagine you're all for that." "Definitely. Let's go," you say. You follow the group towards Kyros' chambers. Soon, you find yourself entering a massive doorway with huge steel doors, which are wide open. You find yourself at the bottom of a massive stairway. "Stay back," you say to your companions. "This is a battle of the mind. Your strengths and talent hold no power here." "I'm not leaving you alone. You can't expect us to sit back and wait," Fay says incredulously. You clench your hand, lifting her into the air. "Hey, let me down!" Fay says, kicking and struggling against the invisible bonds. "See you soon, Fay," you say, forcing Fay to float outside the doorway. Cain and Castus step outside of the doorway willingly. You flick your wrists, and the massive heavy doors slam closed. You turn, and begin climbing the stairs. At the top of the staircase, four metal statues stand, forming a circle. One shows a bird man with a staff and ancient tome, cawing and firing a burst of magic out of the staff. The next shows a beautiful... person whose gender you can't tell, despite the fact they're half naked, smiling seductively at you. The next shows a massive, obese monster, covered in bile, boils and other signs of plague, looking to be in the final stages of dozens of different diseases. The final one is a horned beast-man, holding a massive battle-axe and in mid-furious, angered roar. In the middle of the circle kneels Kyros, waiting patiently. "You took your time," Kyros says softly. "I did," you say softly. "Are the others dead? Taj and Cern?" "They're dead." "I see," Kyros says, staring at the statues. "I had the whole fucking Galaxy. I had a Gloriana-class battleship in my hands. A fucking Gloriana. Do you know how rare those are? How powerful?! This ship is worth more than a trillion of your pathetic lives!" Kyros roars, smashing his fists into the statue of Khorne the warrior, adding psychic energy to his attacks until he dents, breaks and eventually sends the statue toppling off it's pedestal. "I had an army! An Imperial Regiment, all their vehicles, all their firepower, all their might! I had a Khornate war-band, a Nurglite war-band, a Slaaneshi war-band, a Tzeentchian war-band, a fucking space marine chapter, and more!" Kyros lets out a burst of fire, melting down the legs of the statue of Tzeentch the Sorcerer, turning into burning, molten metal that causes the rest of the statue to collapse and fall off its pedestal. "I had two, fucking two army of super-soldiers. I had the capabilities to turn millions of recruits into super-soldiers that would've made the space marines look like PD-fucking-F!" Kyros stands by the bloated statue of Nurgle the Plague-Master, and presses the palms of his hands against it. A wave of rust begins running through the statue, as it begins to rust and crack, before breaking and toppling to the ground, smacking into the metal floor with a hollow thud. "I had powers that could've made the galaxy tremble! We could've conquered the galaxy! I had you, a powerful ally who could've helped me conquer the galaxy!" Kyros lets out a powerful, shrieking roar that overwhelms your senses, causing you to stumble backward. The roar causes the legs of Slaanesh the Hedonist to shatter, as the statue tumbles off and smacks into the ground. "We would've toppled the Imperium of Man and thrown the Emperor off his throne! We could've liberated trillions from the religious persecution, slavery, persecution and fascism that's being inflicted! We could've brought man to a new level! But you weren't willing to make sacrifices! You had to rise up with the rest of the greedy traitors, unwilling to work for the Greater Good! You took everything from me!" Kyros turns to you, his eyes full of an anger and a hatred unknown to you. "I lifted you from the dirt! I made you what you are! I gave you everything! You think I'm going to roll over and die?! I'm going to send this entire vessel, my vessel, headfirst into the Warp. I'm going to let this entire ship be taken by daemons. Why not? The only men loyal to me have been slaughtered. I'll let daemons slaughter the lucky ones. The unlucky, which given the strength of your soul will no doubt include you, will pluck the souls of their choice off and let them experience the ravages of the Warp and then to feed on your suffering. First... I'm going to break every bone in your body." Kyros bursts forward, charging towards you. You raise a wall of fire, but Kyros barrels straight through, smashing into you. You both levitate into the air, your hands wrapped around each other's throats. Kyros knees you in the stomach, before sending you hurtling into the floor. You slam into it, curling up and forming a protective shield around yourself just as your "mentor" unleashes a wave of psychic energy. As soon as the last shudder of energy finishes, you release a burst of electricity that shocks Kyros, who howls in pain. You release a long burst of flames, engulfing him as he howls in pain. Kyros swings a lash of energy that you sidestep, before firing a beam of light that catches him in the chest, knocking him to the floor. "I'm the superior fighter," you say. Kyros raises his hands up, which begin to crackle with psychic energy. You feel your head pulse with the currents of the Warp. You grab a chunk of broken metal, instantly funneling heat into it as it begins to grow a bright red. He flings it at Kyros, catching him in the shoulder, sending him to the ground. You fire balls of plasma from your finger tips, which Kyros only barely manages to stop. Kyros begins to attain an otherworldly purple glow, his appearance begins to appear as see-through fading in and out of reality itself. "I feel the Warp overtaking me! It is a good pain!" Kyros howls. > You unleash a blast of psychic energy You fire a bolt of energy, smashing into Kyros chest. Kyros howls in pain, as his chest explodes. The rest of his body begins to glow, before it begins to be absolved by the purple glow emanating from him, turning into light. A portal begins to form, absorbing Kyros. Seconds later, you see a clawed red hand emerge from the portal, holding a sword of red hot burning steel. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" you yell. "You fool! Daemons are pouring through to this realm, and I'm not leading them because my energy was focused on... Fuck!" Meliodas cries. You watch as holes begin to be torn in the fabric of reality, as more Warp portals begin to open, powered by the last sacrificial pulse of Kyros' energy. A horned cyclops with a rust and bile-encrusted blade steps through, letting out a wet growl. A strange, horse-like creature with a long tongue eagerly jumps through another portal. You watch as an endless horde of daemons begin to appear, coming through the portals, straight into your reality. They overwhelm you in less than a minute, claws and swords cutting you apart. The rest of the ship lasts longer, taking three hours before the horrible daemons have wiped out the fortunate, and captured the less fortunate to give them... a much less enjoyable fate. Soon, the Gloriana-class Roar of the Vortex is little more than a daemon-filled hellhole. Your last gift to the world is a horrible, daemon-filled vessel drifting through existence. So ends the legacy of Karth.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly levitate over his blow, blasting him in the side of the head with a fireball. He pivots on his feet with remarkable grace, swinging again as you duck down, before Taj brings his knee up to hit you, but by now you've already quickly moved back to let out a spray of fire. He jabs the war-hammer as you now like a spear in an attempt to stun you, but you move away once more. "Must we have this dance? Am I undeserving of a quick death?" Taj roars. He steps towards you, raising the war-hammer once more, before his entire body begins to shudder as a hail of bullets thud into his back. He collapses to his knees, as you notice that the entirety of the Undying Reapers are finished off. Fay and fires a burst of lead into Taj's back. Castus strolls forward, pointing his sword point at Taj's face before gently slapping him with the sword flat, as Goliath clutches a space marine's throat in his hands, strangling the limo body. "General! Good to see you're alive! Having fun?" Castus says, before kicking Taj in the head. "Ooh, that feels good. Remember me, Tucker? I remember you. You and your boys had a fun habit of organizing gladiator fights so you could kill some poor fuck, some poor gladiator. Look where we are now, shitbag." "Finish it, Karth! I know you want to! I wiped out your tribe! I killed your..." You clink your wrists, snapping Taj's neck. "Goodbye, Taj," you say. "Karth! Well done," Fay smiles. "Is Cern...?" "She's dead." "Good, no more tinkering. Glad that bitch is dead. Hope she suffered," Goliath grunts. "We're heading to take out Kyros," Fay explains. "I'd imagine you're all for that." "Definitely. Let's go," you say. You follow the group towards Kyros' chambers. Soon, you find yourself entering a massive doorway with huge steel doors, which are wide open. You find yourself at the bottom of a massive stairway. "Stay back," you say to your companions. "This is a battle of the mind. Your strengths and talent hold no power here." "I'm not leaving you alone. You can't expect us to sit back and wait," Fay says incredulously. You clench your hand, lifting her into the air. "Hey, let me down!" Fay says, kicking and struggling against the invisible bonds. "See you soon, Fay," you say, forcing Fay to float outside the doorway. Cain and Castus step outside of the doorway willingly. You flick your wrists, and the massive heavy doors slam closed. You turn, and begin climbing the stairs. At the top of the staircase, four metal statues stand, forming a circle. One shows a bird man with a staff and ancient tome, cawing and firing a burst of magic out of the staff. The next shows a beautiful... person whose gender you can't tell, despite the fact they're half naked, smiling seductively at you. The next shows a massive, obese monster, covered in bile, boils and other signs of plague, looking to be in the final stages of dozens of different diseases. The final one is a horned beast-man, holding a massive battle-axe and in mid-furious, angered roar. In the middle of the circle kneels Kyros, waiting patiently. "You took your time," Kyros says softly. "I did," you say softly. "Are the others dead? Taj and Cern?" "They're dead." "I see," Kyros says, staring at the statues. "I had the whole fucking Galaxy. I had a Gloriana-class battleship in my hands. A fucking Gloriana. Do you know how rare those are? How powerful?! This ship is worth more than a trillion of your pathetic lives!" Kyros roars, smashing his fists into the statue of Khorne the warrior, adding psychic energy to his attacks until he dents, breaks and eventually sends the statue toppling off it's pedestal. "I had an army! An Imperial Regiment, all their vehicles, all their firepower, all their might! I had a Khornate war-band, a Nurglite war-band, a Slaaneshi war-band, a Tzeentchian war-band, a fucking space marine chapter, and more!" Kyros lets out a burst of fire, melting down the legs of the statue of Tzeentch the Sorcerer, turning into burning, molten metal that causes the rest of the statue to collapse and fall off its pedestal. "I had two, fucking two army of super-soldiers. I had the capabilities to turn millions of recruits into super-soldiers that would've made the space marines look like PD-fucking-F!" Kyros stands by the bloated statue of Nurgle the Plague-Master, and presses the palms of his hands against it. A wave of rust begins running through the statue, as it begins to rust and crack, before breaking and toppling to the ground, smacking into the metal floor with a hollow thud. "I had powers that could've made the galaxy tremble! We could've conquered the galaxy! I had you, a powerful ally who could've helped me conquer the galaxy!" Kyros lets out a powerful, shrieking roar that overwhelms your senses, causing you to stumble backward. The roar causes the legs of Slaanesh the Hedonist to shatter, as the statue tumbles off and smacks into the ground. "We would've toppled the Imperium of Man and thrown the Emperor off his throne! We could've liberated trillions from the religious persecution, slavery, persecution and fascism that's being inflicted! We could've brought man to a new level! But you weren't willing to make sacrifices! You had to rise up with the rest of the greedy traitors, unwilling to work for the Greater Good! You took everything from me!" Kyros turns to you, his eyes full of an anger and a hatred unknown to you. "I lifted you from the dirt! I made you what you are! I gave you everything! You think I'm going to roll over and die?! I'm going to send this entire vessel, my vessel, headfirst into the Warp. I'm going to let this entire ship be taken by daemons. Why not? The only men loyal to me have been slaughtered. I'll let daemons slaughter the lucky ones. The unlucky, which given the strength of your soul will no doubt include you, will pluck the souls of their choice off and let them experience the ravages of the Warp and then to feed on your suffering. First... I'm going to break every bone in your body." Kyros bursts forward, charging towards you. You raise a wall of fire, but Kyros barrels straight through, smashing into you. You both levitate into the air, your hands wrapped around each other's throats. Kyros knees you in the stomach, before sending you hurtling into the floor. You slam into it, curling up and forming a protective shield around yourself just as your "mentor" unleashes a wave of psychic energy. As soon as the last shudder of energy finishes, you release a burst of electricity that shocks Kyros, who howls in pain. You release a long burst of flames, engulfing him as he howls in pain. Kyros swings a lash of energy that you sidestep, before firing a beam of light that catches him in the chest, knocking him to the floor. "I'm the superior fighter," you say. Kyros raises his hands up, which begin to crackle with psychic energy. You feel your head pulse with the currents of the Warp. You grab a chunk of broken metal, instantly funneling heat into it as it begins to grow a bright red. He flings it at Kyros, catching him in the shoulder, sending him to the ground. You fire balls of plasma from your finger tips, which Kyros only barely manages to stop. Kyros begins to attain an otherworldly purple glow, his appearance begins to appear as see-through fading in and out of reality itself. "I feel the Warp overtaking me! It is a good pain!" Kyros howls. > You add your powers to submerge the ship in the Warp Kyros begins to glow, before it begins to be absolved by the purple glow emanating from him, turning into light. A portal begins to form, absorbing Kyros. Seconds later, you see a clawed red hand emerge from the portal, holding a sword of red hot burning steel. You watch as holes begin to be torn in the fabric of reality, as more Warp portals begin to open, powered by the last sacrificial pulse of Kyros' energy and further powered with your own. "You fool! Daemons are pouring through to this realm, and I'm not leading them because my energy was focused on... Fuck!" Meliodas cries. A horned cyclops with a rust and bile-encrusted blade steps through, letting out a wet growl. A strange, horse-like creature with a long tongue eagerly jumps through another portal. You watch as an endless horde of daemons begin to appear, coming through the portals, straight into your reality. They overwhelm you in less than a minute, claws and swords cutting you apart. The rest of the ship lasts longer, taking three hours before the horrible daemons have wiped out the fortunate, and captured the less fortunate to give them... a much less enjoyable fate. Soon, the Gloriana-class Roar of the Vortex is little more than a daemon-filled hellhole. Your last gift to the world is a horrible, daemon-filled vessel drifting through existence. So ends the legacy of Karth.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press your hands against the doors, and with a pulse of psychic energy blast the door open. You walk inside, finding yourself in a huge hall, packed with machinery. Computers, consoles, wiring, generators and much more technology that you couldn't possibly know what it is or does. The room is dark, illuminated only by the blinking lights on the technology. You walk forward, finding yourself in a maze of machines, walking along. You quickly spot Magos Cern at the front of the room, in front of a large computing system, with the upper half of a humanoid robot on top, two clawed arms and a featureless head with two bright red eyes. "Yes, yes! The ship is mine! The galaxy is mine!" Magos Cern says frantically. "Siphoning power levels off the Undying Reapers' floors." "Oh, the Techpriests, the height of logic and sanity," Meliodas says. "Magos Cern," you say, preparing to strike her with a bolt of energy or simply tear her head clean off. Magos Cern continues scuttling around the room, as the robotic head slowly turns to stare at you. "Cern!" you shout, grabbing her attention. Magos Cern turns around, staring at you. "Shoo," she says, dismissing you with a single word and turning back to work on various consoles. "70% of the ship is accessible, all of the rebel's side," Magos Cern says gleefully. "I just need to slip a few tech words to Kyros and he'll give me complete access. Then we pillage the archives and strongholds of the old world, reinforce you with your brother, Primus, then, then we look further. Necrons, Tomb Worlds..." This insane rant is getting boring, and you're quite insulted by Cern's dismissal of you. > You let her finish "What the fuck is this?" you ask. "Uh! What is it about your pesky minds that don't just understand the world? I don't have time to explain this to you. Through Primus, I will ascend. I will leave behind my flesh, merging with Primus' mind and becoming immortal! A new era! Mankind will retake the stars with an army of Iron Men, and I will lead them! The God-Emperor's Great Crusade will be a pathetic comparison to what I will accomplish!" Metal tentacles begin appearing from the walls, with drills, metal claws and buzzsaws. You growl, preparing to strike. You raise your fists, before your mind goes blank. You don't forget what's going on, it's just like a solid, unchanging blankness is just invading your mind. You collapse to your knees as the psychic fire that's engulfing your fists goes out. "Thought you'd come. Had Primus upgraded with anti-Psyker weaponry.It should prove effective," Magos Cern says, not even turning to look at you." Your magic is nothing to the cold technology under my control!" Magos Cern laughs. The emptiness in your mind almost takes you into unconsciousness, but you keep fighting. The claws, drills and saws draw near you, as you attempt to stand, before collapsing to your knees again. Suddenly, the tentacles burst towards Magos. She lets out a confused scream along with a burst of static, as her robes are torn clean off her, and her cybernetic implants are torn clean off her, as her back is torn off, her arm sawn off, her mechanical eyes torn out of her head. In seconds, the tentacles retract into the wall. Magos Cern lies on the ground, naked, crippled and blood-stained. Gone in the horrifying cyborg. Now, there's only a bloody, terrified, screaming girl. She lets out a final scream, before expiring. Before you pass out, you hear a deep, booming voice from all directions say a single word. "Poetic."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step into the room filled with machinery, closing the door behind you. Now that you’re inside, you get a good look at the room. A large, humanoid robot stands there’s, it’s armor removed to reveal lots of wiring and mechanisms. You know that robots are a rarity, and all allowed by the Imperium are non-sentient. The extensive wiring and quick reaction would imply that this robot is an attempt at sentience by the rebellious Techpriests who have abandoned the Imperium's belief system. The robot’s eyes blink a bright red, as it slowly, and more importantly loudly, begins raising it’s arm to point at you. You need to shut it up quickly to avoid detection. > You blind the robot's senses with shadows You blind the robot's senses as shadows form over his sensory equipment. The robot lets out a confused bleep, before it slumps down, and you wait, your mind closed, for the Skitarii to either notice you or pass. You hear the metallic clanking of robotic feet outside, and wait until it has stopped and is far away before you open the door once more, continuing down the once again empty hallway. After quickly floating through the air towards your objective, you come across a massive golden door, topped with a massive icon, with an outer circle of an eight point star, an inner circle of a cog and a half mechanical, half human skull in the center.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wait patiently, as the Techpriest goes from each pod. “Yes, yes, these are fresh. No mutation noted,” he says to himself. You continue waiting, as time passes. The techpriest endlessly goes from pod to pod, and you feel like you’re going to pass out from boredom. Eventaully, the techpriest leaves the room. You wait patiently, counting to a hundred after the techpriest has left, before you know he’s left. You walk over to the doorway, putting your head against it to listen for anyone on the other side. You hear nothing, so you open the door, revealing a barren hallway. You try to remember the directions that you were given, walking along. You keep moving, before you see a squad of Skitarii moving quickly towards your location. You don’t think they’ve noticed you. You look to either side of the hallway. There’s a door on either side, the first being open, and leading into a room that seems to be filled with electronics and machine parts. There’s also the room behind you. > You head into the closed room You quickly open the door behind you, stepping inside and closing the door behind you. The room seems to be empty except for a few dozen pipes and valves. You wait patiently, and after a few minutes, you open the door once more, continuing down the once again empty hallway. After quickly floating through the air towards your objective, you come across a massive golden door, topped with a massive icon, with an outer circle of an eight point star, an inner circle of a cog and a half mechanical, half human skull in the center.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wait patiently, as the Techpriest goes from each pod. “Yes, yes, these are fresh. No mutation noted,” he says to himself. You continue waiting, as time passes. The techpriest endlessly goes from pod to pod, and you feel like you’re going to pass out from boredom. Eventaully, the techpriest leaves the room. You wait patiently, counting to a hundred after the techpriest has left, before you know he’s left. You walk over to the doorway, putting your head against it to listen for anyone on the other side. You hear nothing, so you open the door, revealing a barren hallway. You try to remember the directions that you were given, walking along. You keep moving, before you see a squad of Skitarii moving quickly towards your location. You don’t think they’ve noticed you. You look to either side of the hallway. There’s a door on either side, the first being open, and leading into a room that seems to be filled with electronics and machine parts. There’s also the room behind you. > You attack the Skitarii You move forward with a roar, firing a burst of flames and a blast of psychic energy. The Skitarii are machines built for war though, equipped with the best Magos Cern can get. Plasma, bullets and fire fills the air. You snap one of their necks before firing flames at another one. Plasma slams into you, sending you to the ground. You attempt to fight back even though you’re now missing a lot of flesh, but a Skitarii quickly scuttles forward and drives its drill into your throat, killing you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wait patiently, as the Techpriest goes from each pod. “Yes, yes, these are fresh. No mutation noted,” he says to himself. You continue waiting, as time passes. The techpriest endlessly goes from pod to pod, and you feel like you’re going to pass out from boredom. Eventaully, the techpriest leaves the room. You wait patiently, counting to a hundred after the techpriest has left, before you know he’s left. You walk over to the doorway, putting your head against it to listen for anyone on the other side. You hear nothing, so you open the door, revealing a barren hallway. You try to remember the directions that you were given, walking along. You keep moving, before you see a squad of Skitarii moving quickly towards your location. You don’t think they’ve noticed you. You look to either side of the hallway. There’s a door on either side, the first being open, and leading into a room that seems to be filled with electronics and machine parts. There’s also the room behind you. > You hide yourself in the shadows of the doorway with your psychic powers You step into the doorway, feeling shadows swarm around you, hiding you from sight. You watch as a few Skitarii march, scuttle or crawl past, before one of them stops suddenly. It turn’s it’s head directly behind it’s back, staring at you with three red, cybernetic eyes and one real one. "New scent detected. Analyzing for target." Suddenly, it’s jaw drops open, as a speaker attached to the back of its throat lets out a horrible shriek of static. The Skitarii all turn, immediately noticing you. They attack, swarming over you with drills, buzzsaws, claws and teeth. You attempt to fend them off, but you’re in close range, outnumbered and unprepared. You last a measly few seconds.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're crawling through shit. Despite your pleading, your reasoning, your refusal, your threats to skin people alive and show their souls what true suffering is, you're crawling through shit. You crawl along the pipe, your skinny frame still struggling to move forward. You doubt anyone other than you or a starved slave could've fit in here. Realistically, it was the only logical to choice to send you in. They made you crawl through shit, though, so fuck them. “OK, I should be close enough, I should be close,” you say to yourself aloud, repeating it like a mantra. A surge of shit comes down a pipe, splashing the stream of excrement, sending some into your open mouth. You stop repeating the mantra aloud. You close your eyes, trying to block out the smells. And the tastes. You reach your hands up after another few minutes of crawling, finding a hatch. You quickly force it open with a burst of energy. You rise up in the air, slowly squeezing yourself through the hatch. You collapse out of the pipe, falling onto the ground of a large room. You look up, seeing dozens of pods with glass displays, filled with a clear, colorless liquid. Inside, dozens of identical men, all with the same shaved head, float, pipes connected to their mouth and nostrils. “”What the fuck?” you say. "They clone bodies to turn into Servitors," Meliodas explains. "The joys of the Imperium!" You hear a door open at the end of the room, and quickly step behind the pod. You peer out of the pod, seeing a spider-like Techpriest who’s little more than a pincer, half a torso and a head attached to eight robotic legs. It walks along, looking at each pod momentarily, before moving on. > You ambush the techpriest You move forward, firing a burst of electricity. You hit the Techpriest directly in the head and he lets out a howl of pain, as you continue pumping him full of electricity. It melts his eyes, which drip down his face, as the Techpriest lets out a final yell, before slumping over, his eight legs keeping him standing. You flick your wrist, toppling the Techpriest over. You walk over to the doorway, putting your head against it to listen for anyone on the other side. You hear nothing, so you open the door, revealing a barren hallway. You try to remember the directions that you were given, walking along. You keep moving, before you see a squad of two dozen Skitarii moving quickly towards your location. You don’t think they’ve noticed you. You look to either side of the hallway. There’s a door on either side, the first being open, and leading into a room that seems to be filled with electronics and machine parts. There’s also the room behind you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With a narrowing of your eyes, the prostitute's neck is snapped. Drake releases her body, staring at you. "You're... well, you're a threat," Drake says, dropping the knife and standing. "You're coming with me," you say. "Sure, sure," Drake says. You bind Drake's hands together with invisible chains, and force him to march forward. Drake immediately becomes compliant. "Can I grab a few things?" Drake asks. "My... dreams get pretty bad. I have terrifying nightmares. I have medication that helps. Please, please can I get them?" Drake asks. > You force Drake to leave "No, we're going!" you growl. Drake nods slowly, before drawing a pistol from his belt, aiming at you. You fling the pistol out of his hands, dragging him into the air. "Please, I'm sorry, but I can't be captured. They'll kill them!" Drake asks pitifully. "Them?" you ask. "Yes. Kyros has my two children taken prisoner aboard this ship, my two baby girls. If I don't report to him every hour, he'll hurt them!" "I've read your report. You don't have children." Drake's look of terror and desperation slowly morphs into a grin. "Alright, you got me. Shall we go?" You snarl, smacking Drake into the ground. He lets out a pained yell, before you raise him up again. "Give me one reason not to kill you," you say. "Fuck you. Just go ahead and kill me," Drake laughs, spitting blood out of his mouth and giving a grin, his teeth bloodied. "Is that your final answer?" you ask. "You need me alive to pilot this ship, dipshit," Drake says. "Perhaps. But I could easily peel off your skin, turn your bones to dust, char your flesh and twist your limbs off." "You need to happy, Karth," Drake grins. "My jobs to navigate the ship, make sure we're not lost in the Warp, boarded by daemons or make sure we don't come out of the Warp and straight into the sun. If my life's not worth living, such as if someone peeled off my skin, turned my bones to dust, charred my flesh and twisted my limbs off, I'd just make sure this ship goes straight into a star." "Just break him. The powers of the Warp will send you where you need to go. You don't need a Navigator. Tear this rat apart!" Meliodas says. You growl, walking out into the hallway, Drake floating after you. You quickly reach an elevator, tossing Drake inside. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn from the scene of your killing, and head towards the rooms where Amadeus scuttled off to. A faint light shines through the door, which you kick in, easily finding the Navigator as he lies in an empty bathtub, holding a dagger to the knife of a half-dressed prostitute who still looks to be in her early teens. "Stop! Don't move a muscle! You get any closer to me, I slit this bitch's throat!" Drake shouts, snarling at you. "Does he think that'll work? Fool," Meliodas laughs. > You move forward You step forward. "I swear to all the Dark Gods, I will open this bitch up!" Drake yells. You move forward once again, before Drake slices the girl's throat open, blood dripping down her chest. "Well. Now what?" you ask. "I... I'm necessary to operating the ship. You can't kill me." "So be it," you say. "You're coming with me." "Sure, sure," Drake says. You bind Drake's hands together with invisible chains, and force him to march forward. Drake immediately becomes compliant. "Can I grab a few things?" Drake asks. "My... dreams get pretty bad. I have terrifying nightmares. I have medication that helps. Please, please can I get them?" Drake asks.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn from the scene of your killing, and head towards the rooms where Amadeus scuttled off to. A faint light shines through the door, which you kick in, easily finding the Navigator as he lies in an empty bathtub, holding a dagger to the knife of a half-dressed prostitute who still looks to be in her early teens. "Stop! Don't move a muscle! You get any closer to me, I slit this bitch's throat!" Drake shouts, snarling at you. "Does he think that'll work? Fool," Meliodas laughs. > You telekinetically disarm Drake With a narrowing of your eyes, the knife flies into your hands. The prostitute stands, shoving Drake away. "Out," you command, as the prostitutes nods in thanks and leaves. "OK, OK, you're skilled," you say. "You're coming with me," you say. "Sure, sure," Drake says, standing up. You bind Drake's hands together with invisible chains, and force him to march forward. Drake immediately becomes compliant. "Can I grab a few things?" Drake asks. "My... dreams get pretty bad. I have terrifying nightmares. I have medication that helps. Please, please can I get them?" Drake asks.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fire a jet of flames, and the Dancing Blades quickly retreat out of the range of your fire. They dance along the edge, waiting to strike. > You teleport behind the enemy You teleport behind the enemies, immediately sending out bursts of flames to incinerate those closest to you, before a shock of lightning runs through another. Still, this si close combat, their specialty. They move with incredible speed, dodging your blows. One gets in close, stabbing through through the neck. You shudder, blood running down your killer's blade, before your soul expires.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I can smell him. He's here," Meliodas says. You step inside the doorway, looking into a marvelous palace. There's a huge grand staircase, with above it a massive chandelier of candles, the only illumination for the room. Beside it is an obsidian, bejeweled statue of a dragon, emitting a long burst of flames made from a bright red and orange gemstone, sits beside a marble table laden with roast meats, delicate pastries and fancy wines. You spot Amadeus, lying on a large silk couch, wearing an opened red silk hooded robe. On his forehead is a third, closed eye, while his normal eyes are focused on the girl in front of him, on her knees performing fellatio. You momentarily blush, before remembering that you're an insanely powerful psyker and not a fucking child. "Drake Amadeus, you're coming with me," you say, as Drake lets out a yelp, kicking the girl off him and stumbling back. "Shit, it's Karst! It's Karst! Get him the fuck away from me!" You step forward, before seeing a dozen girls emerge from the rooms upstairs, walking towards the grand staircase. They move with insane flexibility. Some behind back and walking with their heads peering out between their legs, before twisting their heads around a hundred and eight degrees. Some on all fours, their legs stretched back around their shoulders to allow them to walk forward at an odd angle. They move with delicate grace, before they each draw a pair of curved knifes, continuing to walk towards you. You see Drake Amadeus scuttle away from the corner of your eye, but it seems you have a bigger threat. "Ah, Slaaneeshi whores. Make their deaths quick. They'd just enjoy you drawing it out," Meliodas says. > You take out the chandelier You look at the Troupe, before flexing your hand and grabbing hold of the chandelier and sending it hurtling into the staircase. Most of the Troupe dodge, but a few are too slow and crushed by the chandelier. You take a deep breath as the chandelier's candles go out, leaving you in total darkness. You focus, and you can still vaguely see the Warp presence of the Troupe. You need to wipe them out, and quickly. > You fire a jet of flames You fire a jet of flames out, engulfing a pair of Dancing Blades. Unfortunately, this has the side-effect of illuminating the room, and now being able to see, the Troupe strikes. Immediately, three of them are upon you. You fly out of the way of one and set the second alight, before the third leaps at you. You back out of their way, avoiding a sword blow, before you're stabbed through the back, and you collapse to your knees, before a blow takes your head off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look at the Troupe, before flexing your hand and grabbing hold of the chandelier and sending it hurtling into the staircase. Most of the Troupe dodge, but a few are too slow and crushed by the chandelier. You take a deep breath as the chandelier's candles go out, leaving you in total darkness. You focus, and you can still vaguely see the Warp presence of the Troupe. You need to wipe them out, and quickly. > You telekinetically send furniture at the Troupe You feel their presence, slowly picking up the couch with your mind. The furniture flies towards them, and you feel their Warp presence flicker and die. You slowly move around the room, moving slowly and quietly, before you send a statue to crush another. You continue to move and weave, sending objects to crush and impale the Troupe. It only takes a minute before you hear the last one scream in pain as the dragon statue crushes them. You spray fire into the air, illuminating the room, just as she dies. Now, time to get back to the objective.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I can smell him. He's here," Meliodas says. You step inside the doorway, looking into a marvelous palace. There's a huge grand staircase, with above it a massive chandelier of candles, the only illumination for the room. Beside it is an obsidian, bejeweled statue of a dragon, emitting a long burst of flames made from a bright red and orange gemstone, sits beside a marble table laden with roast meats, delicate pastries and fancy wines. You spot Amadeus, lying on a large silk couch, wearing an opened red silk hooded robe. On his forehead is a third, closed eye, while his normal eyes are focused on the girl in front of him, on her knees performing fellatio. You momentarily blush, before remembering that you're an insanely powerful psyker and not a fucking child. "Drake Amadeus, you're coming with me," you say, as Drake lets out a yelp, kicking the girl off him and stumbling back. "Shit, it's Karst! It's Karst! Get him the fuck away from me!" You step forward, before seeing a dozen girls emerge from the rooms upstairs, walking towards the grand staircase. They move with insane flexibility. Some behind back and walking with their heads peering out between their legs, before twisting their heads around a hundred and eight degrees. Some on all fours, their legs stretched back around their shoulders to allow them to walk forward at an odd angle. They move with delicate grace, before they each draw a pair of curved knifes, continuing to walk towards you. You see Drake Amadeus scuttle away from the corner of your eye, but it seems you have a bigger threat. "Ah, Slaaneeshi whores. Make their deaths quick. They'd just enjoy you drawing it out," Meliodas says. > You fire bolts of Psychic energy You fire bolts of Psychic energy, but the Troupe easily dodges the blasts, leaping, ducking and jumping. You only manage to catch one, killing her instantly, before the Troupe strikes. Immediately, three of them are upon you. You fly out of the way of one and set the second alight, before the third leaps at you. You back out of their way, avoiding a sword blow, before you're stabbed through the back, and you collapse to your knees, before a blow takes your head off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press down on the button, and a voice crackles through. "Password?" the deep voice asks. > You say "I don't know the password, Kyros didn't tell me!" "Bullshit. Kyros would've without a doubt told you the password. He's not an idiot. Fuck off, rebel scum." Well. That was unsuccessful. > You attempt to break down the door You press your hands on the door, and begin to melt through the thick steal, as steel drips to the ground. Suddenly, you feel your energy hit an odd texture, before the anti-personal defenses prepared their blows, tearing your head off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Bullshit. Kyros would've without a doubt told you the password. He's not an idiot. Fuck off, rebel scum." Well. That was unsuccessful. > You try the intercom again You press down on the button, and a voice crackles through. "Do... do you think I don't know it's still you? There's a camera here, bud."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press down on the button, and a voice crackles through. "Password?" the deep voice asks. > You say "I'm here to escort Amadeus to Kyros' chambers!" "Bullshit. If Kyros wanted Amadeus, we would've got a message. Fuck off, rebel scum." Well. That was unsuccessful.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press down on the button, and a voice crackles through. "Password?" the deep voice asks. > You say "I don't know the password. I'm here to kidnap Amadeus. Can you let me in?" "Wh... what?" "I don't know the password because I'm not here on Kyros' orders. I'm here to kidnap Amadeus." "It's just you out there." "Correct," you reply. "There's a shit ton of trained killers in here." "Yeah, I know," you say. "And you've come to kidnap Amadeus by yourself?"2 "Yes," you confirm. "Well, I respect your honesty. Come right in. I'm going to have to kill you, but fuck it, I'll open the door." The doors clicks open. Well, that was... easy.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk down the hallways alongside your four Chaos Marine guards. You head towards the war room, where Kyros is planning the first strike against the Imperium, taking over a Hive World, to secure a huge population that can be recruited from to bolster Kyros' forces ten times. You hum a tune, some old Uwais war chant that you find quite catchy. You feel a wave of nausea hit you, and you pause, as you feel a heavy weight lifted off your soul, and your cloudy mind is cleared. Your collar clicks, and falls off you, hitting the ground. Your guards stop, noticing you've stopped. "Prisoner, why have you s...?" one of the guards asks, before noticing your collar has fallen off. "Wait..." he starts to say, as the alarm begins to blare. "Hahaha! Freedom! Freedom!" Meliodas cries. Then, you strike. The first guard's head snaps around, tearing his head clean off his shoulders. You quickly set the second alight, shielding yourself from the bright blue flames that begin melting through the thick armor as the guard roars. You teleport behind the last two as bolter fire slams into the hallway where you once were. You blow a hole in the chest of one with a blast of psychic energy, before levitating the last one into the air, tossing his bolter across the room. "No, no, no!" the space marine roars, shaking and trying to grasp at you. "Kill! Maim! Burn! Break! Smash! Crush! Slaughter!" Meliodas gleefully chants. You smash the space marine into the ground repeatedly, shattering armor and leaving him as a bloody smear on the ground. You attempt to orientate yourself, trying to picture the path you took from your room to get here, and remembering where the Penthouse is. "Brother! Is Prisoner Alpha secure?" a radio crackles. You turn, noticing the radio attached to the first space marine's belt. You pick it up, as the psychic energy around you vibrates as you talk, changing your voice into that of the space marine. "Imitate his comrade's voice. Use the Warp," Meliodas suggests. "We were forced to kill him. What's the situation?" "Good riddance. Our brothers have betrayed us. The One Eyed Crows, the Black Rats, the Shrieking Harpies, all traitors! The 22nd are fighting, but I don't know whether the majority is with Kyros." "What's the plans?" "Kyros has us divided between exterminating the traitors and trying to put down the slave revolts that are taking place. The first and second generation super-soldiers are rebelling. Take your unit, and secure the gladiators. If they have the arena secured, they will have a strong defensive position." "Understood. We'll get it done," you say. "Send them to their reapers, brother, and ward off your own one," the radio crackles. "Glory to Kyros," you say. "Praise the Dark Gods!" "Nice touch," Meliodas says. The radio finishes, and you clip it to your belt. You float into the air, hovering along the hallways towards the Penthouse. You pass a trio of shotgun-wielding Bloody Claws, rushing towards the cyro-chambers. You fire a jet of flames, engulfing the trio but don't even slow down to watch them die. Soon, you find yourself in the elevator, rising towards the penthouse. You wait patiently, listening to reports come through the radio. "The entire area's filled with them! They're all traitors. I..." "Bridge secured, push forward." "Fall back, fall back, they're not going down!" "Rage! Kill! Maim! Smash! Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" "Leading the charge! Secure Elizabeth Staine, and they'll all... shit! AARGH!" "Damn it! I've been sealed in! Get me out, dammit! They're coming for us!" The elevator doors open, leaving you faced with five heavy bolters aiming at you. "It's the Psyker!" someone shouts. "Time to die, mortals!" Meliodas roars. > You attempt to reason with them "Wait!" you shout, preparing for the bolters to fire. Surprisingly, they don't. Well, time to reason with them. > You say "Abandon your weapons, or you die!" There's a brief pause, before the bolters fire. Bullets slam into your boy, one quickly finding your head and blowing it apart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Wait!" you shout, preparing for the bolters to fire. Surprisingly, they don't. Well, time to reason with them. > You say "I'm a loyalist to Kyros!" "Well, what do we do, Sarge?" someone asks. "Fuck, if the mutiny succeeds and we're found with a loyalist, we'll be killed," another man answers. "If we kill him and Kyros wins, we die." "We'll say he asked to betray Kyros," the sergeant says. You attempt to put up your shield, as the heavy bolters fire. You immediately raise your shields, as bolter fire thuds into them. You feel them, like a tapping on your mind. Unfortunately, by the sheer amount of bolter fire being shot at you, one finds it's way in. It slams into you, blowing your chest open. You collapse to your knees, as your shields fail as you lose focus. Bullets riddle your body, killing you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Wait!" you shout, preparing for the bolters to fire. Surprisingly, they don't. Well, time to reason with them. > You say "The mutiny is going to succeed. Join us, or perish." "Fuck, what do we do, Sarge?" "The radio makes it sound like the loyalists are having their ass handed to them, and the prisoners are close to taking the complex! The psyker's right! Abandon post! Join the mutiny!" The guards lay down their bolters, and begin running towards the elevators. You shrug and allow them to pass, making your way down the hall. It's only a minute before you arrive at a massive, thick metal door with an intercom.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab Olive's hand, and she pulls you to your feet. "Ah, good job," Castus says. "Second rule: the first rule is bullshit. You know who doesn't trust anyone? Bastards like Kyros who ends up with no loyal friends, no allies, nothing, and then end up alone, with no one. If you want to survive in this world, you need allies." Castus grabs his sword by the blade, offering it to you. You reach out to grab it, before he swings it and smacks you in the side of the heat, sending you to the ground. Castus offers his hand to you, which you accept. He pulls you up, before kneeing you in the stomach and tossing you to the ground. "Come on, you're not learning. First rule: trust no one. Don't you listen?" "I was going my the second rule," you say, groaning. "Sometimes, the first rule is more important than the second rule," Castus shrugs. "How the fuck am I supposed to tell the difference between which rule to us?" you ask, annoyed. "Beats me. When you find out, you'll be the most powerful warlord in history. Until then, you just go off gut feeling and intellect." "Seems like a shitty system," you say, as Castus finally lets you stand up. "Seems like a shitty world you're in. That system is the best I have to offer. Now, rule three: in hand to hand combat, go for the weak spots. The throat, eyes and balls are always good, but when it comes to half these fucks, I'd stick to the eyes, because past that, I don't know what you have left. Observe." Castus flips his sword so he holds the blade again, wrapping his sleeve around the blade so it doesn't bite into his fingers as much. He steps forward, swinging his sword with insane speed. The pommel slams into your throat before jabbing you in the eyes, leaving you to stumble backwards. You quickly close your legs together before Castus jabs the pommel into your groin, and you collapse backwards with a pained yelp. "See? Effective," Castus smiles. "Rule four: you can win through many ways. Pain submission, incapacitating them, or simply taking their lives. Judge which can be used to take down your enemies. For instance, in your case, pain is the way forward." You're growing tired of being hit in the face. As Castus steps forward with his sword raised, you decide you're going to do something to dissuade him from continuing to hit you. > You send Castus into the arena wall As Castus swings his sword, you send him straight into the metal gate with a thud. He lets out a pained yelp, collapsing onto his stomach. "I don't need to learn how to wield a sword, Castus. You've trained all your life with a sword. I never have. Yet look how simply I defeat you? I need a sword as much as you need fangs. I've evolved past the need for it," you say, as Castus stands. "Fuck me, kid, couldn't you have made that point without breaking my fucking spine?" Castus says. "Yeah, fine, point proven. End of training, piss off." "Terrific," you say. "So, can I leave?" "Yeah, I'll call your guards here to open the gates and take you off," Castus says, grabbing a walkie-talkie hanging from his belt and speaking into it. "Yeah, we're finished here with the little cunt," he says, rubbing his back. "Oh shit, over." "Affirmative, out," the voice comes back. Soon, the gate lifts up as your guards saunter out in their thick power armor. "Where to next, boys?" you ask. "Shut it, psyker," one growls, looking at Castus and Olive. "Is it back to the cells for you two?" "We're happy to practice some more here," Olive says, twirling her gun-axe to stop a surprise attack from Castus. "I mean, if this dumb bastard has done so little practice to think that would take me down, he's go to need a lot more practice." "Pffh, I'd like to see you take me down," Castus says. "So be it," your captor growls. "Move it, psyker." You raise your hands defensively, and allow them to escort you back to your room.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab Olive's hand, and she pulls you to your feet. "Ah, good job," Castus says. "Second rule: the first rule is bullshit. You know who doesn't trust anyone? Bastards like Kyros who ends up with no loyal friends, no allies, nothing, and then end up alone, with no one. If you want to survive in this world, you need allies." Castus grabs his sword by the blade, offering it to you. You reach out to grab it, before he swings it and smacks you in the side of the heat, sending you to the ground. Castus offers his hand to you, which you accept. He pulls you up, before kneeing you in the stomach and tossing you to the ground. "Come on, you're not learning. First rule: trust no one. Don't you listen?" "I was going my the second rule," you say, groaning. "Sometimes, the first rule is more important than the second rule," Castus shrugs. "How the fuck am I supposed to tell the difference between which rule to us?" you ask, annoyed. "Beats me. When you find out, you'll be the most powerful warlord in history. Until then, you just go off gut feeling and intellect." "Seems like a shitty system," you say, as Castus finally lets you stand up. "Seems like a shitty world you're in. That system is the best I have to offer. Now, rule three: in hand to hand combat, go for the weak spots. The throat, eyes and balls are always good, but when it comes to half these fucks, I'd stick to the eyes, because past that, I don't know what you have left. Observe." Castus flips his sword so he holds the blade again, wrapping his sleeve around the blade so it doesn't bite into his fingers as much. He steps forward, swinging his sword with insane speed. The pommel slams into your throat before jabbing you in the eyes, leaving you to stumble backwards. You quickly close your legs together before Castus jabs the pommel into your groin, and you collapse backwards with a pained yelp. "See? Effective," Castus smiles. "Rule four: you can win through many ways. Pain submission, incapacitating them, or simply taking their lives. Judge which can be used to take down your enemies. For instance, in your case, pain is the way forward." You're growing tired of being hit in the face. As Castus steps forward with his sword raised, you decide you're going to do something to dissuade him from continuing to hit you. > You teleport out of the way of the blow You teleport behind Castus, causing him to smash his sword into the ground, Castus grunts in confusion as the force of his blow flying through the air causing him to stumble forward. "I don't need to learn how to wield a sword, Castus. You've trained all your life with a sword. I never have. Yet look how simply I evade your blows? I could just teleport behind you and break your neck without lifting a finger. I need a sword as much as you need fangs. I've evolved past the need for it," you say, gently poking him in the back. "Dead." "Fair point, kid," Castus says, smiling. " I like your style. I suppose you're good to go. End of training." "Terrific," you say. "So, can I leave?" "Yeah, I'll call your guards here to open the gates and take you off," Castus says, grabbing a walkie-talkie hanging from his belt and speaking into it. "Yeah, we're finished here," he says. "Oh shit, over." "Affirmative, out," the voice comes back. Soon, the gate lifts up as your guards saunter out in their thick power armor. "Where to next, boys?" you ask. "Shut it, psyker," one growls, looking at Castus and Olive. "Is it back to the cells for you two?" "We're happy to practice some more here," Olive says, twirling her gun-axe to stop a surprise attack from Castus. "I mean, if this dumb bastard has done so little practice to think that would take me down, he's go to need a lot more practice." "Pffh, I'd like to see you take me down," Castus says. "So be it," your captor growls. "Move it, psyker." You raise your hands defensively, and allow them to escort you back to your room.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Done," you say. Olive extends a hand, which you grip and shake extensively. Castus extends his hand, which you grab, but he twists your arm around, causing you to yelp painfully. He kicks away your foot and sends you to your knee, before bringing his sword up to your throat. "Dead," he says with a smile. "Well shit, Castus, what's wrong with you?" "What? I was just preparing him for fighting. I thought we were supposed to be training him. First lesson, kid: trust no one. Now, get up." Olive offers you a hand, smiling. > You get up yourself You try to stand up, but Castus kicks you in the stomach again. You groan and collapse onto the floor, before Castus puts his foot on your head. "Second rule: the first rule is bullshit. You know who doesn't trust anyone? Bastards like Kyros who ends up with no loyal friends, no allies, nothing, and then end up alone, with no one. If you want to survive in this world, you need allies." Castus offers his hand to you, which you accept. He pulls you up, before kneeing you in the stomach and tossing you to the ground. "Come on, you're not learning. First rule: trust no one. Don't you listen?" "I was going my the second rule," you say, groaning. "Sometimes, the first rule is more important than the second rule," Castus shrugs. "How the fuck am I supposed to tell the difference between which rule to us?" you ask, annoyed. "Beats me. When you find out, you'll be the most powerful warlord in history. Until then, you just go off gut feeling and intellect." "Seems like a shitty system," you say, as Castus finally lets you stand up. "Seems like a shitty world you're in. That system is the best I have to offer. Now, rule three: in hand to hand combat, go for the weak spots. The throat, eyes and balls are always good, but when it comes to half these fucks, I'd stick to the eyes, because past that, I don't know what you have left. Observe." Castus flips his sword so he holds the blade, wrapping his sleeve around the blade so it doesn't bite into his fingers as much. He steps forward, swinging his sword with insane speed. The pommel slams into your throat before jabbing you in the eyes, leaving you to stumble backwards. You quickly close your legs together before Castus jabs the pommel into your groin, and you collapse backwards with a pained yelp. "See? Effective," Castus smiles. "Rule four: you can win through many ways. Pain submission, incapacitating them, or simply taking their lives. Judge which can be used to take down your enemies. For instance, in your case, pain is the way forward." You're growing tired of being hit in the face. As Castus steps forward with his sword raised, you decide you're going to do something to dissuade him from continuing to hit you. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You duck your head, the knife flying just over your head and cluttering to the floor behind you. "Good catch," Castus says. You grab the knife, taking a practice stab. "What do you think?" "It's a knife," you say simply. "Yeah, it is. Do you like it? Does it feel good?" Castus says. "I don't know anything about knives. Maybe," you say. "Alright, first, we need to talk. Is anyone watching us? Like, are there cameras?" "No. Well yes, but they're offline," Olive says, resting her head on the butt of her axe-gun. "What is it?" "A plan is being formed. We're going to escape." "Escape?" Olive says, musing. "Who's on our side?" "We have a large amount of people on our side. Elios, Elizabeth and Durge are bringing the weight of their war-bands, as well as most, if not all, of the Guardsmen here. Then there's the Goliaths and the Tribals, both of whom are with us." "What...?" "Because I've done this twice before, I best say. We have no plans yet. They're to be decided. We have literally nothing. We just need to check whether you'll join us. Then, we'll get the leaders together to plan our to take over, and what to do with once we've actually done so." "Huh. Well, I'm in," Castus says. "What?" Olive asks, surprised. "Yeah, I'm in," Castus says. "We don't know the plan, we don't have any assurances that we won't be back-stabbed as soon as we take over, we..." "Olive, let's be smart here. If we don't rebel, we'll definitely either be killed fighting Kyros' war, killed trying to put down these fuckers' mutiny, or killed fighting another arena battle for these bastard's amusement." "If we rebel, we'll almost certainly be killed!" "Almost certainly is way better than definitely. Plus, we'll get to kill a few of Kyros' bastards before we go down." "Fine, I'm in, but I... we have a few demands," Olive says. "Go on," you say. You know the gladiators will be essential to your plans, so you really need to get them, but still, you don't want to devote to many resources to this issue. "I want instant freedom once we take-over. No more being locked up under the arena. I want my men to have free reign to travel around the ship. I want pay, do the men and women who fight and work for the ship actually get something from it. I want an increase in food rations, and better equipment than the shit we're given. I want actual medical care, on top of this." "That it?" you ask, annoyed with her large demands. It'll probably take a serious amount of resources to fulfill her request. You have a few options here. "What a fucking greedy bitch. This fucker needs a dick, I tell you that," Meliodas complains. > You try to compromise "I can't guarantee you all that," you say. "It's simply too expensive." "What can you guarantee?" "Freedom, definitely as well as free reign to travel the ship. But we're not giving you free rooms, food, equipment and medical equipment as well as pay. Pick one." "Fine, no pay," Olive says. "That's a deal, then," you say. Olive extends a hand, which you grip and shake extensively. Castus extends his hand, which you grab, but he twists your arm around, causing you to yelp painfully. He kicks away your foot and sends you to your knee, before bringing his sword up to your throat. "Dead," he says with a smile. "Well shit, Castus, what's wrong with you?" "What? I was just preparing him for fighting. I thought we were supposed to be training him. First lesson, kid: trust no one. Now, get up." Olive offers you a hand, smiling.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You duck your head, the knife flying just over your head and cluttering to the floor behind you. "Good catch," Castus says. You grab the knife, taking a practice stab. "What do you think?" "It's a knife," you say simply. "Yeah, it is. Do you like it? Does it feel good?" Castus says. "I don't know anything about knives. Maybe," you say. "Alright, first, we need to talk. Is anyone watching us? Like, are there cameras?" "No. Well yes, but they're offline," Olive says, resting her head on the butt of her axe-gun. "What is it?" "A plan is being formed. We're going to escape." "Escape?" Olive says, musing. "Who's on our side?" "We have a large amount of people on our side. Elios, Elizabeth and Durge are bringing the weight of their war-bands, as well as most, if not all, of the Guardsmen here. Then there's the Goliaths and the Tribals, both of whom are with us." "What...?" "Because I've done this twice before, I best say. We have no plans yet. They're to be decided. We have literally nothing. We just need to check whether you'll join us. Then, we'll get the leaders together to plan our to take over, and what to do with once we've actually done so." "Huh. Well, I'm in," Castus says. "What?" Olive asks, surprised. "Yeah, I'm in," Castus says. "We don't know the plan, we don't have any assurances that we won't be back-stabbed as soon as we take over, we..." "Olive, let's be smart here. If we don't rebel, we'll definitely either be killed fighting Kyros' war, killed trying to put down these fuckers' mutiny, or killed fighting another arena battle for these bastard's amusement." "If we rebel, we'll almost certainly be killed!" "Almost certainly is way better than definitely. Plus, we'll get to kill a few of Kyros' bastards before we go down." "Fine, I'm in, but I... we have a few demands," Olive says. "Go on," you say. You know the gladiators will be essential to your plans, so you really need to get them, but still, you don't want to devote to many resources to this issue. "I want instant freedom once we take-over. No more being locked up under the arena. I want my men to have free reign to travel around the ship. I want pay, do the men and women who fight and work for the ship actually get something from it. I want an increase in food rations, and better equipment than the shit we're given. I want actual medical care, on top of this." "That it?" you ask, annoyed with her large demands. It'll probably take a serious amount of resources to fulfill her request. You have a few options here. "What a fucking greedy bitch. This fucker needs a dick, I tell you that," Meliodas complains. > You convince Olive that Castus is right "Look, we can't guarantee anything. We don't know what's going to happen. Castus is right, we'd be killed if we don't rebel. Other than a chance, a simple chance, at freedom and life, I don't think we can start making deals for anything more," you say, putting all your energy into weaving an offer made almost entirely of bullshit. Olive narrows her eyes. "Fine. But let me tell you this, if I find myself with the shit side of the stick, I'm going to cause a lot of problems." "You can trust me," you say, as sincerely as possible. "Fine," Olive says. Olive extends a hand, which you grip and shake extensively. Castus extends his hand, which you grab, but he twists your arm around, causing you to yelp painfully. He kicks away your foot and sends you to your knee, before bringing his sword up to your throat. "Dead," he says with a smile. "Well shit, Castus, what's wrong with you?" "What? I was just preparing him for fighting. I thought we were supposed to be training him. First lesson, kid: trust no one. Now, get up." Olive offers you a hand, smiling.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You duck your head, the knife flying just over your head and cluttering to the floor behind you. "Good catch," Castus says. You grab the knife, taking a practice stab. "What do you think?" "It's a knife," you say simply. "Yeah, it is. Do you like it? Does it feel good?" Castus says. "I don't know anything about knives. Maybe," you say. "Alright, first, we need to talk. Is anyone watching us? Like, are there cameras?" "No. Well yes, but they're offline," Olive says, resting her head on the butt of her axe-gun. "What is it?" "A plan is being formed. We're going to escape." "Escape?" Olive says, musing. "Who's on our side?" "We have a large amount of people on our side. Elios, Elizabeth and Durge are bringing the weight of their war-bands, as well as most, if not all, of the Guardsmen here. Then there's the Goliaths and the Tribals, both of whom are with us." "What...?" "Because I've done this twice before, I best say. We have no plans yet. They're to be decided. We have literally nothing. We just need to check whether you'll join us. Then, we'll get the leaders together to plan our to take over, and what to do with once we've actually done so." "Huh. Well, I'm in," Castus says. "What?" Olive asks, surprised. "Yeah, I'm in," Castus says. "We don't know the plan, we don't have any assurances that we won't be back-stabbed as soon as we take over, we..." "Olive, let's be smart here. If we don't rebel, we'll definitely either be killed fighting Kyros' war, killed trying to put down these fuckers' mutiny, or killed fighting another arena battle for these bastard's amusement." "If we rebel, we'll almost certainly be killed!" "Almost certainly is way better than definitely. Plus, we'll get to kill a few of Kyros' bastards before we go down." "Fine, I'm in, but I... we have a few demands," Olive says. "Go on," you say. You know the gladiators will be essential to your plans, so you really need to get them, but still, you don't want to devote to many resources to this issue. "I want instant freedom once we take-over. No more being locked up under the arena. I want my men to have free reign to travel around the ship. I want pay, do the men and women who fight and work for the ship actually get something from it. I want an increase in food rations, and better equipment than the shit we're given. I want actual medical care, on top of this." "That it?" you ask, annoyed with her large demands. It'll probably take a serious amount of resources to fulfill her request. You have a few options here. "What a fucking greedy bitch. This fucker needs a dick, I tell you that," Meliodas complains. > You threaten Olive "No." "Then I guess we have no deal to make," Olive says. "No. I don't think you understand the nature of the offer I'm giving you. I'm letting you live. Whenever I want, I could have every single man under your command strangled to death by your collars, blown apart or force you to tear each other apart. You're going to follow my orders, or you're going to die." "Fine, at least guarantee me that you're not going to have us all killed once the ship is taken." "Sure, I can promise that," you say. Olive extends a hand, which you grip and shake extensively. Castus extends his hand, which you grab, but he twists your arm around, causing you to yelp painfully. He kicks away your foot and sends you to your knee, before bringing his sword up to your throat. "Dead," he says with a smile, before slashing open your throat. You gargle on your own blood, collapsing backwards. "Well, that was easy," Castus says. "Kill those fuckers!" Meliodas snarls. You raise your hand, focusing your mind, and Castus head snaps back, his neck breaking. Olive's eyes widen, before your send a fireball her way, consuming her in flames. You let out a final, desperate gasp, before your soul fades out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your eyes lull closed, and you lose consciousness. You awake an unknown time later, lying on the metal operating table. Magos Cern stands over you, washing her implements in a basin of water. She looks at you, her cold, red eyes peering into your soul. "Ah, you're awake. Good," she says. "What did you put into me?" you ask. "The biology of what I did is beyond you, flesh bag." "Can you dumb it down for me?" you ask. "Could one reduce concertos to the mumbled grunts of mutants?" Magos Cern asks indignantly. "Please?" "Fine. I increased the size of your heart by 40% and lungs by 12%, and added several veins and arteries leading directly to the brain from the heart. These actions increase the blood flow to your brain, and should hence increase psychic abilities. I added multiple microchips that breed monocytes, other white blood cells, platelets and other helpful things for your body. That was the bulk of my work. Other than that, it was just a medical check-up." "OK," you say. "I have a lot of important work to do, now. You should've had enough time to recover." Two of your massive space marine guards arrive, a roaring face on their thick helmets. "Here you are," Magos Cern says. "Guards, make sure to walk slow. If at any point the patient starts puking blood, let him sit down for ten, maybe fifteen minutes." "Shouldn't you keep him hearing for observation, then?" one of the guards ask. "I have far too much work to do," Magos Cern says. "Don't disturb me. If anything goes wrong, go to Genetor Corivan. He is very experienced with medical matters." "Yes, sir," the space marine says. Magos Cern quickly heads off, walking off to a row of elevators. The space marines stare at you, and you climb out of bed with a groan. "Ah, my head," you say. "You should have headaches for the next 48 hours," Magos Cern shouts, right before she disappears into an elevator. You stand, feeling a rush of blood hit your head. You walk after the space marines, along halls and up and down elevators, until you find yourself in the arena. Castus and Olive are there, mid-battle with each other. "Oh look, it's tweedle-dum and tweedle-fucking idiot," Meliodas says. "Not even a laugh? Oh wait, you didn't grow up with nursery rhymes, you're from a Feral world. My bad." Castus swings his sword at her, while Olive swings her rifle-axe up at his head. He rolls out of the way, kicking Olive's foot away and sending her to her knee, before booting her in the head. She collapses down, before rolling out of the way to avoid a downward stab by Castus. She grabs Castus' sword handle and punches him. Castus falls backwards, before taking up a fighting stance. Olive begins circling him, her gun-axe at the ready. She spots you, smiling. "Karth's here," she says. "Bullshit," Castus says, readying his sword. "Karth, tell him you're here," Olive says. "Yeah, I'm here," you say. Castus turns to look at you, but Olive charges, swinging her gun-axe. She knocks the feet away from Castus, dropping his knee down on Castus stomach. Castus grunts before Olive grabs her gun-axe and holds it to Castus throat. "Dead," she says. "No fair, we were supposed to stop when Karth got here," Castus says. "You're still dead," Olive smiles, standing up. Castus grabs Olive's wrist, pulling her forward so his sword pokes into her stomach. "Dead," he smiles. "Seriously?" Olive says, rolling her eyes. "Fine, I'm dead. Are we finished yet? The kid needs training." "Fine," Castus shrugs. "Let's start it." Castus draws a dagger from his belt, staring at it. The blade is a bright silver, with an odd pattern etched into it. It's handle is a bright, light blue, with a short, silver horn coming from the end of the handle. "Now, this is an absolute beauty. I really don't use it enough, so it's yours. Xenos-origin, so even owning it is heresy. The blade is razor sharp, it could cut through flesh and bone easier than it could through air. Here." Castus turns, tossing the dagger straight at your head. > You catch the knife You reach up and catch the knife, cutting your fingers with the blade, blood dripping down the blade. "Good catch," Castus says. "Try to catch the handle next time." You grab the knife by it's handle with your other hand, licking your cut fingers clean. You hold the knife, stabbing it forward. "What do you think?" Castus asks. "It's a knife," you say simply. "Yeah, it is. Do you like it? Does it feel good?" Castus says. "I don't know anything about knives. Maybe," you say. "Alright, first, we need to talk. Is anyone watching us? Like, are there cameras?" "No. Well yes, but they're offline," Olive says, resting her head on the butt of her axe-gun. "What is it?" "A plan is being formed. We're going to escape." "Escape?" Olive says, musing. "Who's on our side?" "We have a large amount of people on our side. Elios, Elizabeth and Durge are bringing the weight of their war-bands, as well as most, if not all, of the Guardsmen here. Then there's the Goliaths and the Tribals, both of whom are with us." "What...?" "Because I've done this twice before, I best say. We have no plans yet. They're to be decided. We have literally nothing. We just need to check whether you'll join us. Then, we'll get the leaders together to plan our to take over, and what to do with once we've actually done so." "Huh. Well, I'm in," Castus says. "What?" Olive asks, surprised. "Yeah, I'm in," Castus says. "We don't know the plan, we don't have any assurances that we won't be back-stabbed as soon as we take over, we..." "Olive, let's be smart here. If we don't rebel, we'll definitely either be killed fighting Kyros' war, killed trying to put down these fuckers' mutiny, or killed fighting another arena battle for these bastard's amusement." "If we rebel, we'll almost certainly be killed!" "Almost certainly is way better than definitely. Plus, we'll get to kill a few of Kyros' bastards before we go down." "Fine, I'm in, but I... we have a few demands," Olive says. "Go on," you say. You know the gladiators will be essential to your plans, so you really need to get them, but still, you don't want to devote to many resources to this issue. "I want instant freedom once we take-over. No more being locked up under the arena. I want my men to have free reign to travel around the ship. I want pay, do the men and women who fight and work for the ship actually get something from it. I want an increase in food rations, and better equipment than the shit we're given. I want actual medical care, on top of this." "That it?" you ask, annoyed with her large demands. It'll probably take a serious amount of resources to fulfill her request. You have a few options here. "What a fucking greedy bitch. This fucker needs a dick, I tell you that," Meliodas complains.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your eyes lull closed, and you lose consciousness. You awake an unknown time later, lying on the metal operating table. Magos Cern stands over you, washing her implements in a basin of water. She looks at you, her cold, red eyes peering into your soul. "Ah, you're awake. Good," she says. "What did you put into me?" you ask. "The biology of what I did is beyond you, flesh bag." "Can you dumb it down for me?" you ask. "Could one reduce concertos to the mumbled grunts of mutants?" Magos Cern asks indignantly. "Please?" "Fine. I increased the size of your heart by 40% and lungs by 12%, and added several veins and arteries leading directly to the brain from the heart. These actions increase the blood flow to your brain, and should hence increase psychic abilities. I added multiple microchips that breed monocytes, other white blood cells, platelets and other helpful things for your body. That was the bulk of my work. Other than that, it was just a medical check-up." "OK," you say. "I have a lot of important work to do, now. You should've had enough time to recover." Two of your massive space marine guards arrive, a roaring face on their thick helmets. "Here you are," Magos Cern says. "Guards, make sure to walk slow. If at any point the patient starts puking blood, let him sit down for ten, maybe fifteen minutes." "Shouldn't you keep him hearing for observation, then?" one of the guards ask. "I have far too much work to do," Magos Cern says. "Don't disturb me. If anything goes wrong, go to Genetor Corivan. He is very experienced with medical matters." "Yes, sir," the space marine says. Magos Cern quickly heads off, walking off to a row of elevators. The space marines stare at you, and you climb out of bed with a groan. "Ah, my head," you say. "You should have headaches for the next 48 hours," Magos Cern shouts, right before she disappears into an elevator. You stand, feeling a rush of blood hit your head. You walk after the space marines, along halls and up and down elevators, until you find yourself in the arena. Castus and Olive are there, mid-battle with each other. "Oh look, it's tweedle-dum and tweedle-fucking idiot," Meliodas says. "Not even a laugh? Oh wait, you didn't grow up with nursery rhymes, you're from a Feral world. My bad." Castus swings his sword at her, while Olive swings her rifle-axe up at his head. He rolls out of the way, kicking Olive's foot away and sending her to her knee, before booting her in the head. She collapses down, before rolling out of the way to avoid a downward stab by Castus. She grabs Castus' sword handle and punches him. Castus falls backwards, before taking up a fighting stance. Olive begins circling him, her gun-axe at the ready. She spots you, smiling. "Karth's here," she says. "Bullshit," Castus says, readying his sword. "Karth, tell him you're here," Olive says. "Yeah, I'm here," you say. Castus turns to look at you, but Olive charges, swinging her gun-axe. She knocks the feet away from Castus, dropping his knee down on Castus stomach. Castus grunts before Olive grabs her gun-axe and holds it to Castus throat. "Dead," she says. "No fair, we were supposed to stop when Karth got here," Castus says. "You're still dead," Olive smiles, standing up. Castus grabs Olive's wrist, pulling her forward so his sword pokes into her stomach. "Dead," he smiles. "Seriously?" Olive says, rolling her eyes. "Fine, I'm dead. Are we finished yet? The kid needs training." "Fine," Castus shrugs. "Let's start it." Castus draws a dagger from his belt, staring at it. The blade is a bright silver, with an odd pattern etched into it. It's handle is a bright, light blue, with a short, silver horn coming from the end of the handle. "Now, this is an absolute beauty. I really don't use it enough, so it's yours. Xenos-origin, so even owning it is heresy. The blade is razor sharp, it could cut through flesh and bone easier than it could through air. Here." Castus turns, tossing the dagger straight at your head. > You levitate the knife towards you You raise your hand, pausing the blade in mid-air and levitating it towards you, catching it's handle. "Impressive party trick, kid," Castus says. You take a practice stab with the knife. "What do you think?" "It's a knife," you say simply. "Yeah, it is. Do you like it? Does it feel good?" Castus says. "I don't know anything about knives. Maybe," you say. "Alright, first, we need to talk. Is anyone watching us? Like, are there cameras?" "No. Well yes, but they're offline," Olive says, resting her head on the butt of her axe-gun. "What is it?" "A plan is being formed. We're going to escape." "Escape?" Olive says, musing. "Who's on our side?" "We have a large amount of people on our side. Elios, Elizabeth and Durge are bringing the weight of their war-bands, as well as most, if not all, of the Guardsmen here. Then there's the Goliaths and the Tribals, both of whom are with us." "What...?" "Because I've done this twice before, I best say. We have no plans yet. They're to be decided. We have literally nothing. We just need to check whether you'll join us. Then, we'll get the leaders together to plan our to take over, and what to do with once we've actually done so." "Huh. Well, I'm in," Castus says. "What?" Olive asks, surprised. "Yeah, I'm in," Castus says. "We don't know the plan, we don't have any assurances that we won't be back-stabbed as soon as we take over, we..." "Olive, let's be smart here. If we don't rebel, we'll definitely either be killed fighting Kyros' war, killed trying to put down these fuckers' mutiny, or killed fighting another arena battle for these bastard's amusement." "If we rebel, we'll almost certainly be killed!" "Almost certainly is way better than definitely. Plus, we'll get to kill a few of Kyros' bastards before we go down." "Fine, I'm in, but I... we have a few demands," Olive says. "Go on," you say. You know the gladiators will be essential to your plans, so you really need to get them, but still, you don't want to devote to many resources to this issue. "I want instant freedom once we take-over. No more being locked up under the arena. I want my men to have free reign to travel around the ship. I want pay, do the men and women who fight and work for the ship actually get something from it. I want an increase in food rations, and better equipment than the shit we're given. I want actual medical care, on top of this." "That it?" you ask, annoyed with her large demands. It'll probably take a serious amount of resources to fulfill her request. You have a few options here. "What a fucking greedy bitch. This fucker needs a dick, I tell you that," Meliodas complains.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Deal," you say. "Good, good," Cain nods, extending a hand. You grab his hand, and thankfully Cain doesn't attempt to squeeze, which would almost certainly result in your fragile bones shattering. You shake vigorously, and Cain attempts a smile. The corners of his mouth twist unnaturally high, revealing rows of serrated teeth, curved fangs, massive molars and many other weird, odd teeth, protruding from bloody, rotten gums. You smile in response, not willing to offend him. "The beast would've taken half of what he asked for," Meliodas says. "Why didn't you tell me that before?" you say angrily. "I presumed you knew," Meliodas replies. "Are you OK?" Cain says. "Tell you what?" "Uh, nothing. Sorry," you say. "OK. Good deal," Cain says, his face contorted in what you assume is his version of a raising of the eyebrow. "Alright, best get prepared for your operation before Magos Cern gets back." "Yeah, I should," you say. You walk over to your operating table and quickly get undressed, before lying down. After another minute or two, Magos Cern appears, pushing a tray in front of her. One of her metallic tendrils grabs a syringe filled with a pale, translucent liquid. "This might hurt a little. It will more likely hurt a lot more," she says. You let out a pained yelp as she jams the syringe into your neck. She begins pushing down on the plunger as what you hope is anesthetic is pumped into you. Warm hands embrace you, pulling you into the oblivion of unconsciousness. > You resist You shake your head, struggling to avoid falling into unconsciousness. You take in a deep breath, flinging the warm hands away from your mind. Magos Cern continues pressing down on the plunger, shooting the remaining fluid into your blood. Your mind is gripped by a scream for sleep. Perhaps you should just embrace it. > You resist Magos Cern notices your struggle with indifference, refilling her syringe with anesthetic and injecting it into you again, although you can't feel the needle pierce your skin. Your eyes flutter before they roll in the back of your head. As you lose the fight to resist the void of oblivion, in the back of your mind you hear voices. "Magos Cern, I polished the AI module." "Good, Adept. You have gained one step forward in receiving your cybernetic upgrades." "How long, master? My flesh is weak, my body frail, I crave the strength of steel." "Soon, Adept, soon. Do not bother me in a time like this! We are on the brink of discovery! We have a mind older than the Emperor himself. Fifteen thousand years old! Can you imagine the knowledge it holds? Prepare Primus for start-up. I believe now is the time. I must just play with Kyros' pet's flesh, and then we will work." "Yes, Magos. Understood, Magos." Then, you lose all resistance and sleep takes you, leaving you powerless in its dark embrace. You awake an unknown time later, lying on the metal operating table. Magos Cern stands over you, washing her implements in a basin of water. She looks at you, her cold, red eyes peering into your soul. "Ah, you're awake. Good," she says. "What did you put into me?" you ask. "The biology of what I did is beyond you, flesh bag." "Can you dumb it down for me?" you ask. "Could one reduce concertos to the mumbled grunts of mutants?" Magos Cern asks indignantly. "Please?" "Fine. I increased the size of your heart by 40% and lungs by 12%, and added several veins and arteries leading directly to the brain from the heart. These actions increase the blood flow to your brain, and should hence increase psychic abilities. I added multiple microchips that breed monocytes, other white blood cells, platelets and other helpful things for your body. That was the bulk of my work. Other than that, it was just a medical check-up." "OK," you say. "I have a lot of important work to do, now. You should've had enough time to recover." Two of your massive space marine guards arrive, a roaring face on their thick helmets. "Here you are," Magos Cern says. "Guards, make sure to walk slow. If at any point the patient starts puking blood, let him sit down for ten, maybe fifteen minutes." "Shouldn't you keep him hearing for observation, then?" one of the guards ask. "I have far too much work to do," Magos Cern says. "Don't disturb me. If anything goes wrong, go to Genetor Corivan. He is very experienced with medical matters." "Yes, sir," the space marine says. Magos Cern quickly heads off, walking off to a row of elevators. The space marines stare at you, and you climb out of bed with a groan. "Ah, my head," you say. "You should have headaches for the next 48 hours," Magos Cern shouts, right before she disappears into an elevator. You stand, feeling a rush of blood hit your head. You walk after the space marines, along halls and up and down elevators, until you find yourself in the arena. Castus and Olive are there, mid-battle with each other. "Oh look, it's tweedle-dum and tweedle-fucking idiot," Meliodas says. "Not even a laugh? Oh wait, you didn't grow up with nursery rhymes, you're from a Feral world. My bad." Castus swings his sword at her, while Olive swings her rifle-axe up at his head. He rolls out of the way, kicking Olive's foot away and sending her to her knee, before booting her in the head. She collapses down, before rolling out of the way to avoid a downward stab by Castus. She grabs Castus' sword handle and punches him. Castus falls backwards, before taking up a fighting stance. Olive begins circling him, her gun-axe at the ready. She spots you, smiling. "Karth's here," she says. "Bullshit," Castus says, readying his sword. "Karth, tell him you're here," Olive says. "Yeah, I'm here," you say. Castus turns to look at you, but Olive charges, swinging her gun-axe. She knocks the feet away from Castus, dropping his knee down on Castus stomach. Castus grunts before Olive grabs her gun-axe and holds it to Castus throat. "Dead," she says. "No fair, we were supposed to stop when Karth got here," Castus says. "You're still dead," Olive smiles, standing up. Castus grabs Olive's wrist, pulling her forward so his sword pokes into her stomach. "Dead," he smiles. "Seriously?" Olive says, rolling her eyes. "Fine, I'm dead. Are we finished yet? The kid needs training." "Fine," Castus shrugs. "Let's start it." Castus draws a dagger from his belt, staring at it. The blade is a bright silver, with an odd pattern etched into it. It's handle is a bright, light blue, with a short, silver horn coming from the end of the handle. "Now, this is an absolute beauty. I really don't use it enough, so it's yours. Xenos-origin, so even owning it is heresy. The blade is razor sharp, it could cut through flesh and bone easier than it could through air. Here." Castus turns, tossing the dagger straight at your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Oh, really?" Fay says smiling. "Don't you?" "Oh, yeah, yeah!" Fay says, smiling. "I was actually just going to ask you about that. I'm glad you said yes." Fay smiles, before leaning in and kissing you briefly on the lips. You stare into her bright green eyes, the split-second kiss lasting for infinitely longer, feeling the warmth of her lips flood into you, before she pulls back. "Well, that was nice. Ideally our next rendezvous is going to take place somewhere where we're not surrounded by our tribe and horrible guards who want us dead," Fay smiles. "Was that it, or was there something else?" "Yeah, we have something important to discuss." "Wasn't that important?" Fay asks, smiling. "Oh no,it was, I just... I meant important for the tribe, not just for us," you say, stumbling over your words. "It feels nice to see you've become as awkward as I just was," Fay giggles. "Now, stop spitting out words. Take a breath, and tell me what's so important." "Rebellion." "Oh?" "Kyros is mad and paranoid. He's either going to slit our throats or send us on an endless string of suicide missions. We need to do something, and I really need your help. A group of collaborators have planned to rise up, and rid ourselves of Kyros. Then, we take over. I need the support of your Tribals to do so. "Yeah, totally. Done." "Done?" "Yeah. If we don't escape, we die here. Also, they're your Tribals as much as mine. Who else is in on this?" Fay asks. "Elios, Durge and Elizabeth are all in. No doubt Calpurnia's man will help us," you say. "What about Cain and the twins?" "I haven't asked them yet, but we need to get them on board," you say. "Do we hae a solid plan yet?" Fay asks. "Not yet. We need to find out how many people we have fighting for us." "What happens after we take the ship," Fay asks, raising an eyebrow. "That is still to be decided. Once we have Cain. Castus and Olive behind us, we'll have bargaining power. So you're in?" "I'm in," Fay nods. "I'll have the message spread among the tribals." You notice one of your guards walking towards you, carrying a tray. You motion for Fay to quiet down, as the guard arrives putting the tray down on the table. "Eat," he says, in a cold voice like the scraping of a blade on rusted metal. You look at your food. There's a bowl of noodles and strips of thin, cured meat, a small bowl of green jelly with chunks of odd, alien fruit inside, a large plastic cup of wine and a small, dense biscuit-like cake. "Well, someone's being pampered," Fay says, smiling. "Clearly I'm just more important than you," you gloat as you have a forkful of noodles and meat. Fay grabs the biscuit cake from your tray, taking a bite. "Hey!" you say in annoyance, as Fay sticks her tongue out. You quickly eat your meal, polishing off the entire tray and gulping down the wine. Then, Magos Cern arrives. "Good, you've eaten," she says. "These operations will be safer if you've had a full stomach." "OK, I'm ready, let's go, you say. "Bye, Fay. See you soon." "See you later, Fay says, blowing a kiss. Magos Cern leads you out of the cafeteria and along the halls, off along halls and elevators. Eventually, you pass through the cyro-sleep section, arriving in a large operating room. Dozens of Goliaths are lying on the surgery tables, many halfway through surgery. A half dozen other Tech Priests wander around between the Goliaths, removing and adding flesh, bone, organs, cybernetic implants and other strange things. "I didn't know there were other Tech Priests," you note. "This ship is the size of a small moon. Did you think you've seen enough of it to accurately be able to say that we don't have something? I have scores of Tech Priests who followed me into the embrace of the Dark Gods," Magos Cern says. Magos Cern leads you to an operating table. "This is yours. Please get undressed and wait here, I need to grab my materials and equipment. Stay here." Magos Cern turns around, walking off, leaving you alone. You spot Cain, lying on his operating table, his chest cut open to reveal still functioning organs. You wonder how he can still be alive with such a hastily cut-up torso, before you wince as you see his eyes dart towards you and you realize he's conscious. Looking to see Magos Cern hobbling away, you hop off the operating table and walk over to him. "Commander Karth," Cain grunts. "Need something?" "I have... an offer." "An offer? An offer of what?" Cain says, absent-mindedly picking at a cut alongside his... or at least, one of his stomachs. "Freedom," you say, catching the monster's attention. "Go on," Cain says, furrowing his scarred brow and causing a thin stream of blood to pour from his horns. "We're planning an escape. We could use you and your men," you say. "We?" "Elios, Durge, Elizabeth, Fay, others," you say. "That's it, I think." "When?" "We don't have details, yet. We need a head count before we can start planning it." "Hmmm... I'm willing to give you control of my... "Goliaths", as you called them. But, I have a list of conditions that I want to be satisfied once we take the ship." "Go on," you say. "I want us to get names. Every Goliath who is capable of remembering and answering to a name will be called that instead of its serial number, by you and ALL other members of command. No more cyro-sleep. I want a bed for every single Goliath. I don't care if it's fine cloth or a slab of concrete, as long as it doesn't freeze them, it'll do us. I want free time that's not just killing." "Anything else?" you ask. "That's it," Cain says, spitting out a serrated teeth that's fallen free from his jaw. Cain's demands are far from unfair. Really, all he wants is slightly more rights for his Goliaths, which wouldn't even take any more resources. Still, you don't want the beast getting a big head. You ARE still in charge of not only his collar, but the collars of every single Goliath. All you need is a few threats, and the Goliaths will be yours. > You threaten Cain "No." "No?" "No. I don't think you understand the nature of the offer I'm giving you. I'm letting you live. Whenever I want, I could have every single man under your command strangled to death by your collars, blown apart or force you to tear each other apart. You're going to follow my orders, or you're going to die." You prepare yourself for Cain to strike, but he only lets out a low, rumbling growl. "What was that?" you ask suspiciously. "An order," Cain snarls. Suddenly, a massive fist smashes into your back. You fly forward, smacking into the operating table and onto the ground. You let out a pitiful moan, before Cain puts his massive foot on your head. "What orders do you have for me?" he asks. Cain attempts a triumphant yet terrifying smile. The corners of his mouth twist unnaturally high, revealing rows of serrated teeth, curved fangs, massive molars and many other weird, odd teeth, protruding from bloody, rotten gums. Cain raises his foot, before bringing it down and crushing your head. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Elios steps forward, knocking on the metal door. The guards open, immediately raising their bolters. Elios waves his hand. "You didn't see me here. The voice of Slaanesh calls you, and you're his now. Move aside, and tell no one I was here." "I... no... yes, sir," one says, stepping aside. You watch Elios stroll out of the room, giving a final smile and wave as he leaves the room. You get some sleep, lying wrapped up in your blankets. Blissfully, there's only a few dark, terror-filled dreams, the rest only filling your with a vague, uneasy sense of dread. You awaken to Magos Cern poking you in the stomach with a white-hot pincer. "AH!" you scream. "What the fuck?" "My diagnostics told me that I'd be able to wake you up 0.4 seconds faster this way. We need to go," Magos Cern says. "Where?" "First, you require food. Then, you'l get some implants. I'm going through some long overdue upgrades for the... "Goliaths", as you called them, and Kyros asked me to pencil you in for a few biological upgrades." "Then?" you ask "Melee practice. In wake of assassination threats, Kyros wants you to be able to fend off a melee assassination as easily as you could a ranged or psychic attack." "My powers can do that," you say. "You'd be run through before you could react. Castus and Olive will run through some drills to get your reaction time up and give you a few dodging techniques that will lend themselves to all your battles." "Then?" "By then, with the recovery time from the implants, your weak body will require sleep." "OK", you say. Magos Cern leads you out of the room, and along the hallways. You find yourself in a massive cafeteria. You walk forward, spotting Fay sitting alongside a badly burnt girl with a long braid wrapping around herself and another with a prosthetic arm replaced by a sharpened, mechanical claw. Fay looks up, noodles hanging from her mouth, spotting you. "Oh, Karth!" she says, waving, before noticing that her mouth is filled with noodles and blushing. You take a seat next to her, and she smiles. "So, how are you doing?" she asks. "We need to talk. Alone," you say, looking at the two tribals beside her. "Uh... OK," Fay says, motioning for the two tribals to move, which they quickly do. "Thanks," you say to the tribals as they walk off. "So? Is this about what I think it's about?" "What do you think it's about?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Well, you know... you want to speak to me alone... privately... so I kind of assume it's about us." "Yeah, of course it's about us, that's why we're both here to talk about it." "No, I mean... like, us us," Fay says, clearly frustrated by your failure to understand. "What?" "Well, like, do you want us to be a couple?" > You say "I really like you, but as a friend." "Oh, yeah, yeah, I agree," Fay says. "I feel the same way, I was actually really dreading telling you that, and I thought I'd have to tell you it now, but since we feel the way, it's OK now." "Oh, good, good." "So, what was that other thing?" Fay asks, rushing onto the next subject. "Rebellion." "Oh?" "Kyros is mad and paranoid. He's either going to slit our throats or send us on an endless string of suicide missions. We need to do something, and I really need your help. A group of collaborators have planned to rise up, and rid ourselves of Kyros. Then, we take over. I need the support of your Tribals to do so. "Yeah, totally. Done." "Done?" "Yeah. If we don't escape, we die here. Also, they're your Tribals as much as mine. Who else is in on this?" Fay asks. "Elios, Durge and Elizabeth are all in. No doubt Calpurnia's man will help us," you say. "What about Cain and the twins?" "I haven't asked them yet, but we need to get them on board," you say. "Do we hae a solid plan yet?" Fay asks. "Not yet. We need to find out how many people we have fighting for us." "What happens after we take the ship," Fay asks, raising an eyebrow. "That is still to be decided. Once we have Cain. Castus and Olive behind us, we'll have bargaining power. So you're in?" "I'm in," Fay nods. "I'll have the message spread among the tribals." You notice one of your guards walking towards you, carrying a tray. You motion for Fay to quiet down, as the guard arrives putting the tray down on the table. "Eat," he says, in a cold voice like the scraping of a blade on rusted metal. You look at your food. There's a bowl of noodles and strips of thin, cured meat, a small bowl of green jelly with chunks of odd, alien fruit inside, a large plastic cup of wine and a small, dense biscuit-like cake. "Well, someone's being pampered," Fay says, smiling. "Clearly I'm just more important than you," you gloat as you have a forkful of noodles and meat. Fay grabs the biscuit cake from your tray, taking a bite. "Hey!" you say in annoyance, as Fay sticks her tongue out. You quickly eat your meal, polishing off the entire tray and gulping down the wine. Then, Magos Cern arrives. "Good, you've eaten," she says. "These operations will be safer if you've had a full stomach." "OK, I'm ready, let's go, you say. "Bye, Fay. See you soon." "See you later, Fay says, looking a bit sullen, as you wonder whether that put down was too forward. Magos Cern leads you out of the cafeteria and along the halls, off along halls and elevators. Eventually, you pass through the cyro-sleep section, arriving in a large operating room. Dozens of Goliaths are lying on the surgery tables, many halfway through surgery. A half dozen other Tech Priests wander around between the Goliaths, removing and adding flesh, bone, organs, cybernetic implants and other strange things. "I didn't know there were other Tech Priests," you note. "This ship is the size of a small moon. Did you think you've seen enough of it to accurately be able to say that we don't have something? I have scores of Tech Priests who followed me into the embrace of the Dark Gods," Magos Cern says. Magos Cern leads you to an operating table. "This is yours. Please get undressed and wait here, I need to grab my materials and equipment. Stay here." Magos Cern turns around, walking off, leaving you alone. You spot Cain, lying on his operating table, his chest cut open to reveal still functioning organs. You wonder how he can still be alive with such a hastily cut-up torso, before you wince as you see his eyes dart towards you and you realize he's conscious. Looking to see Magos Cern hobbling away, you hop off the operating table and walk over to him. "Commander Karth," Cain grunts. "Need something?" "I have... an offer." "An offer? An offer of what?" Cain says, absent-mindedly picking at a cut alongside his... or at least, one of his stomachs. "Freedom," you say, catching the monster's attention. "Go on," Cain says, furrowing his scarred brow and causing a thin stream of blood to pour from his horns. "We're planning an escape. We could use you and your men," you say. "We?" "Elios, Durge, Elizabeth, Fay, others," you say. "That's it, I think." "When?" "We don't have details, yet. We need a head count before we can start planning it." "Hmmm... I'm willing to give you control of my... "Goliaths", as you called them. But, I have a list of conditions that I want to be satisfied once we take the ship." "Go on," you say. "I want us to get names. Every Goliath who is capable of remembering and answering to a name will be called that instead of its serial number, by you and ALL other members of command. No more cyro-sleep. I want a bed for every single Goliath. I don't care if it's fine cloth or a slab of concrete, as long as it doesn't freeze them, it'll do us. I want free time that's not just killing." "Anything else?" you ask. "That's it," Cain says, spitting out a serrated teeth that's fallen free from his jaw. Cain's demands are far from unfair. Really, all he wants is slightly more rights for his Goliaths, which wouldn't even take any more resources. Still, you don't want the beast getting a big head. You ARE still in charge of not only his collar, but the collars of every single Goliath. All you need is a few threats, and the Goliaths will be yours.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Karth!" Meliodas' voice says, appearing in your mind. "Look behind you, you fool!" You quickly twist around in bed, raising your fists and preparing to use what little psychic powers, to see Elios leaning in the doorway of your bathroom. "Shit! What the fuck are you doing!?" you shout. "Hmmm... a man can't just lean back and enjoy one of the finer sights in life?" Elios says, winking as he strolls confidently towards you. "Get...!" you try to speak, but he puts a finger against your lips, leaning in close. "Quiet, baby. No need to fret. I'm not here to give you any trouble. I'm hear to help you with a certain little... problem." Elios runs his hand along your bare chest and up to your collar, playfully tugging on it. You stare at him, waiting. "Well, let's be realistic here. We're going to be slaughtered. If we're lucky, we're going to be killed when Kyros leads his moronic charge against the Imperium. If we're unlucky, we're going to end up like Calpurnia, tortured to death by a paranoid Psyker." "You're at risk of being tortured to death. I never betrayed him," you say. "Oh, baby, why do you have to be so difficult?" Elios smiles, two of his fingers walking up your legs, slowly nearing your groin. "Baby, at the moment, Kyros is looking to eliminate those who are going to betray him. But he's growing paranoid. He'll end thinking you're going to betray him, whether you are or are not. Let's be fair, you do have motives. Your tribe destroyed or enslaved, forced to bear the troubles that a Psyker does? Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if you had an escape plan in the works. Hell, even if he doesn't, one of your men will act rebellious or a battle will go wrong, and you'll be blamed for it. You need to get with us, baby." "Let's say I'm considering it. What would it entail?" you ask. "You need to get the leaders on your side. Fay, Olive, Castus, whoever's in charge of those big monster boys I saw you working with earlier. Get them on your side, while I will talk to Elizabeth and Durge about maintaining the rebellious attitude amongst Calpurnia's boys, make sure they're still up for a little bit of mutiny." "What happens when we take the ship?" you ask. "That'll be decided once we've secured the other leaders. I'm sure they have demands of their own. So are you in?" "Hmmm... it's clearly our only option, but you should know that Elios both wants to fuck you over and straight up fuck you," Meliodas says. "I'm pretty sure my other choice is death. That's not even a choice," you say. "Well, it's the one I'm giving you, baby," Elios says,gently flicking the tip of your dick, causing you to yelp and scuttle back on your bed. > You disagree "No." "No?" Elios says, taken aback. "I'm not joining you. He knows what you're planning. I'm not joining your death trap." "So be it," he says, a sneer forming on his face. Elios steps forward, knocking on the metal door. The guards open, immediately raising their bolters. Elios waves his hand. "You didn't see me here. The voice of Slaanesh calls you, and you're his now. Move aside, and tell no one I was her," Elios says, strolling forward, leaving without looking at you. In the next few weeks, you're quickly proven right. Elios is first. When he's found, he's had his limps slowly sanded off, before being thrown in a pit with mutants who tore him apart. A "mysterious" assassin attempts to kill Elizabeth, but Durge fends her off, only for a "malfunction" to destroy him the next day, incinerating him in a single blast. Elizabeth is killed by one of the ship's macro-cannons, taking out the shuttle they were going on, because of a sensor malfunction identifying it as hostile. With his threats to power gone, the assault on the Imperium is on. The first few worlds fall with ease, as they're unprepared for the level of firepower that Kyros is bringing to the table. Still, issues arise. You're reinforced by those recruited from the conquered realms as well as throngs of war-bands coming to join your invasion. Still, Kyros gets greedy. He attempts to take on a Forge World, a world literally covered with layers of factories, run by the cyborg-engineers that are part of the machine-worshipping cult known as the Mechnicus. Kyros' grand plans to have a Forge World producing endless war machines are ruined when the planet's orbital defenses take out much of your fleet, and in the ensuing battle the factories are leveled. When Kyros finally takes the planet, it's nothing but a smoking rock. Everything falls apart after that. In a desperate attempt to capture geneseed stores to allow him to take over the home world of a Space Marine chapter known as the Horned Kings. The chapter is wiped out, but again Kyros gains nothing as the last act of the Chapter Master is to detonate their geneseed stores. At this point, Kyros' forces are a pale shadow of their previous selves. Cain and most of the Goliaths were taken out as their landing pods were wiped out in an attempt to take the Forge World, and the gladiators are wiped out by a suicidal charge by the Iron Kings. They're not the only ones gone. Fay is killed, along with many of the tribals, in the Genesee stores' destruction. It's only at that point that you truly stop caring. Your tribe is gone, only a few faces so grief-stricken you can barely recognize them remaining. You don't care if you reach Terra. You don't care if you live. You don't care if you die. You just don't care, about anything. You find yourself on some war-stricken world, killing. Scores of refugees are wiped out as your hand waves and warpfire spurts from the earth. Once, you would've have wanted to hurt innocents. You wouldn't have done it. Now, you feel nothing as you smell their cooked flesh. A Space Marine charges towards you, but you stare at him. The Space Marine screams as you force him to tear his own arms off, tossing them aside and having tentacles rapidly grow out of his arm sockets, before his mind is corrupted and he charges, roaring towards his allies as he begins to tear them apart. You watch as a Dreadnought's legs buckle under your telekinesis, sending it toppling and tumbling down before it explodes. You levitate a Guardsman into the air as he howls in terror, be... The earth shutters as artillery booms, sending you into the air. Artillery tears through the earth, and you slam into an APC. You hastily stand, to see dozens of refugees piling out of the crippled APC. You see to your surprise Tribals shooting at you and the other refugees, bullets thudding into the metal next to you, before they're killed by bolter fire. You look at your reflection in the half-broken window of a destroyed building, and realize why they were firing. With your now torn clothes and dirt-covered face, you are now indistinguishable from the refugees you've been killing. You hear a dozen monstrous roars from your allies off towards your right, signifying a charge, before it's answered by the shouts of the Imperial Guard and Space Marine preparing a counter-charge. You could try to escape this. Hide amongst the refugees. Find a way out of this life. But what would be the point? You hear the charge nearing. Damn Kyros, putting you in this situation. Maybe you should be the one to finish his mad invasion? Or maybe you should return to what you know, and fight? > You attack the Space Marines and Imperial Guard Fear the Psyker You turn, to see dozens of colored, heavily armored bodies making a charge. You let out a psychic scream, destroying eardrums and leaving the closest to you collapsing on the ground and howling in pain. You fire a long stream of flames, engulfing another two. From then on, it's a blur. Warpfire flies from you in a whirlwind of flaming death. Psychic electricity runs along your wrists and melts bone, fries skin and takes life. Bolts of energy take out any stupid enough to near you. You take fire, though. You dodge most, shield yourself from most of what remains, but a few get through. By the end of this, blood pours from your wounds and you feel the life drain from you. You continue fighting, breaking and shattering all those before you. Your life has become a blaze, burning all that nears to cinders. Like a blaze, it begins to blaze out. Eventually, you find yourself on your knees, continuing to wipe out dozens of your enemies, though lacking the strength to stand up. You let out a final roar, releasing a burst of psychic energy, before your soul is violently rendered from you. Although Kyros takes the planet, his forces are nothing more. They take two more worlds before being wiped out as the Ultramarines, Bronze-born and Lead Vipers wipe them out to the last man. Still, Kyros name is barely known. It's another name that becomes commonplace through the Imperium, as a terrifying reminder of why Psykers need to be crushed or imprisoned: Karth. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"No." "No?" Elios says, taken aback. "I'm not joining you. He knows what you're planning. I'm not joining your death trap." "So be it," he says, a sneer forming on his face. Elios steps forward, knocking on the metal door. The guards open, immediately raising their bolters. Elios waves his hand. "You didn't see me here. The voice of Slaanesh calls you, and you're his now. Move aside, and tell no one I was her," Elios says, strolling forward, leaving without looking at you. In the next few weeks, you're quickly proven right. Elios is first. When he's found, he's had his limps slowly sanded off, before being thrown in a pit with mutants who tore him apart. A "mysterious" assassin attempts to kill Elizabeth, but Durge fends her off, only for a "malfunction" to destroy him the next day, incinerating him in a single blast. Elizabeth is killed by one of the ship's macro-cannons, taking out the shuttle they were going on, because of a sensor malfunction identifying it as hostile. With his threats to power gone, the assault on the Imperium is on. The first few worlds fall with ease, as they're unprepared for the level of firepower that Kyros is bringing to the table. Still, issues arise. You're reinforced by those recruited from the conquered realms as well as throngs of war-bands coming to join your invasion. Still, Kyros gets greedy. He attempts to take on a Forge World, a world literally covered with layers of factories, run by the cyborg-engineers that are part of the machine-worshipping cult known as the Mechnicus. Kyros' grand plans to have a Forge World producing endless war machines are ruined when the planet's orbital defenses take out much of your fleet, and in the ensuing battle the factories are leveled. When Kyros finally takes the planet, it's nothing but a smoking rock. Everything falls apart after that. In a desperate attempt to capture geneseed stores to allow him to take over the home world of a Space Marine chapter known as the Horned Kings. The chapter is wiped out, but again Kyros gains nothing as the last act of the Chapter Master is to detonate their geneseed stores. At this point, Kyros' forces are a pale shadow of their previous selves. Cain and most of the Goliaths were taken out as their landing pods were wiped out in an attempt to take the Forge World, and the gladiators are wiped out by a suicidal charge by the Iron Kings. They're not the only ones gone. Fay is killed, along with many of the tribals, in the Genesee stores' destruction. It's only at that point that you truly stop caring. Your tribe is gone, only a few faces so grief-stricken you can barely recognize them remaining. You don't care if you reach Terra. You don't care if you live. You don't care if you die. You just don't care, about anything. You find yourself on some war-stricken world, killing. Scores of refugees are wiped out as your hand waves and warpfire spurts from the earth. Once, you would've have wanted to hurt innocents. You wouldn't have done it. Now, you feel nothing as you smell their cooked flesh. A Space Marine charges towards you, but you stare at him. The Space Marine screams as you force him to tear his own arms off, tossing them aside and having tentacles rapidly grow out of his arm sockets, before his mind is corrupted and he charges, roaring towards his allies as he begins to tear them apart. You watch as a Dreadnought's legs buckle under your telekinesis, sending it toppling and tumbling down before it explodes. You levitate a Guardsman into the air as he howls in terror, be... The earth shutters as artillery booms, sending you into the air. Artillery tears through the earth, and you slam into an APC. You hastily stand, to see dozens of refugees piling out of the crippled APC. You see to your surprise Tribals shooting at you and the other refugees, bullets thudding into the metal next to you, before they're killed by bolter fire. You look at your reflection in the half-broken window of a destroyed building, and realize why they were firing. With your now torn clothes and dirt-covered face, you are now indistinguishable from the refugees you've been killing. You hear a dozen monstrous roars from your allies off towards your right, signifying a charge, before it's answered by the shouts of the Imperial Guard and Space Marine preparing a counter-charge. You could try to escape this. Hide amongst the refugees. Find a way out of this life. But what would be the point? You hear the charge nearing. Damn Kyros, putting you in this situation. Maybe you should be the one to finish his mad invasion? Or maybe you should return to what you know, and fight? > You attack Kyros' forces Ending the Crusade You turn, to see Chaos Space Marines, Traitor Guard, Mutants, Tribals, Goliaths and Gladiators charging onto the battle. Far in the distance, floating high above the forces, is Kyros. You know what needs to be done. You leap into the air, flying directly towards Kyros with a roar. You release waves of warpfire and psychic energy, killing dozens of people around you, but that's just a side-note to your main foe. You slam into Kyros, wrapping your hands around his throat. You begin to crush his throat, screaming, as Kyros immediately begin to activate your collar, strangling the life out of you. You don't care. You feel your trachea explode, but you don't care, you only keep strangling. As the two of you fight, you release waves of psychic energy, killing scores of men around you. You let out a scream, transfering all your energy into your hands, and Kyros screams in pain and terror, before you tear his head clean from his head. IN a final scream, you release your hold on line, adding all your remaining life and energy into the psychic blast Kyros releases upon his death, wiping out much of Kyros force. With your move, Kyros' forces are stopped. Without a leader, they are broken on that planet. Magos Cern is taken down attempting to flee the planet, while Chapter Master Taj is killed in a suicidal charge. Kyros' forces take so many losses in you and Kyros' battle and are so confused that they're crushed by the following charge, leaving few alive. Guardsmen who survive note the suicidal rampage you went on with your final breath. Many wonder if, instilled with an ounce of the God-Emperor's courage, you sacrificed herself to take out the monster Kyros was and the monster he made you. Of course, these thoughts would be heresy, so known dare to even think it aloud in there head. Still, the belief persists, to whatever degree, that your death meant something.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"No." "No?" Elios says, taken aback. "I'm not joining you. He knows what you're planning. I'm not joining your death trap." "So be it," he says, a sneer forming on his face. Elios steps forward, knocking on the metal door. The guards open, immediately raising their bolters. Elios waves his hand. "You didn't see me here. The voice of Slaanesh calls you, and you're his now. Move aside, and tell no one I was her," Elios says, strolling forward, leaving without looking at you. In the next few weeks, you're quickly proven right. Elios is first. When he's found, he's had his limps slowly sanded off, before being thrown in a pit with mutants who tore him apart. A "mysterious" assassin attempts to kill Elizabeth, but Durge fends her off, only for a "malfunction" to destroy him the next day, incinerating him in a single blast. Elizabeth is killed by one of the ship's macro-cannons, taking out the shuttle they were going on, because of a sensor malfunction identifying it as hostile. With his threats to power gone, the assault on the Imperium is on. The first few worlds fall with ease, as they're unprepared for the level of firepower that Kyros is bringing to the table. Still, issues arise. You're reinforced by those recruited from the conquered realms as well as throngs of war-bands coming to join your invasion. Still, Kyros gets greedy. He attempts to take on a Forge World, a world literally covered with layers of factories, run by the cyborg-engineers that are part of the machine-worshipping cult known as the Mechnicus. Kyros' grand plans to have a Forge World producing endless war machines are ruined when the planet's orbital defenses take out much of your fleet, and in the ensuing battle the factories are leveled. When Kyros finally takes the planet, it's nothing but a smoking rock. Everything falls apart after that. In a desperate attempt to capture geneseed stores to allow him to take over the home world of a Space Marine chapter known as the Horned Kings. The chapter is wiped out, but again Kyros gains nothing as the last act of the Chapter Master is to detonate their geneseed stores. At this point, Kyros' forces are a pale shadow of their previous selves. Cain and most of the Goliaths were taken out as their landing pods were wiped out in an attempt to take the Forge World, and the gladiators are wiped out by a suicidal charge by the Iron Kings. They're not the only ones gone. Fay is killed, along with many of the tribals, in the Genesee stores' destruction. It's only at that point that you truly stop caring. Your tribe is gone, only a few faces so grief-stricken you can barely recognize them remaining. You don't care if you reach Terra. You don't care if you live. You don't care if you die. You just don't care, about anything. You find yourself on some war-stricken world, killing. Scores of refugees are wiped out as your hand waves and warpfire spurts from the earth. Once, you would've have wanted to hurt innocents. You wouldn't have done it. Now, you feel nothing as you smell their cooked flesh. A Space Marine charges towards you, but you stare at him. The Space Marine screams as you force him to tear his own arms off, tossing them aside and having tentacles rapidly grow out of his arm sockets, before his mind is corrupted and he charges, roaring towards his allies as he begins to tear them apart. You watch as a Dreadnought's legs buckle under your telekinesis, sending it toppling and tumbling down before it explodes. You levitate a Guardsman into the air as he howls in terror, be... The earth shutters as artillery booms, sending you into the air. Artillery tears through the earth, and you slam into an APC. You hastily stand, to see dozens of refugees piling out of the crippled APC. You see to your surprise Tribals shooting at you and the other refugees, bullets thudding into the metal next to you, before they're killed by bolter fire. You look at your reflection in the half-broken window of a destroyed building, and realize why they were firing. With your now torn clothes and dirt-covered face, you are now indistinguishable from the refugees you've been killing. You hear a dozen monstrous roars from your allies off towards your right, signifying a charge, before it's answered by the shouts of the Imperial Guard and Space Marine preparing a counter-charge. You could try to escape this. Hide amongst the refugees. Find a way out of this life. But what would be the point? You hear the charge nearing. Damn Kyros, putting you in this situation. Maybe you should be the one to finish his mad invasion? Or maybe you should return to what you know, and fight? > You hide amongst the refugees You successfully hide amongst the refugees, and are transported to a nearby evacuation facility. You're given a cheap meal of Grox Jerky and soup, before being put into a massive fenced off area. Unfortunately, soon you learn that you overestimated how easy this would be. "Ah, an inquisitor has arrived. We're going to die here." Meliodas says, as you hear his voice for the first time in a while. You spot an Inquisitor, a heavily armored agent of the Imperium built for rooting out Chaos and Heresy. He stands, tall and heavily armored, a longsword glowing faintly blue clutched in one hand and a bolt pistol in the other. At his side is a grizzled soldier in Carapace armor holding a Flamer and snarling her scarred face as passer-bys, a man in browns robes holding a huge chainsword and a heavily cybernetically-upgraded Tech Priest. You wait patiently, attempting to hide every ounce of your power. "It's not going to work," Meliodas says. "He's going to find us. You're going to die here. You can get revenge, though. Let me take you. Let me take hold of your body, and open a pathway through the Warp. I can summon endless hordes of daemons to this world, wipe out that inquisitor, gain your vengeance, and allow me power. We have a chance now." He strolls along, stopping next to you. He looks down, raising an eyebrow. "Are we experiencing more Warp Storms, Engsineer Low?" he asks. "No, sir," the tech-priest says in a monotone voice. The inquisitor rapidly raises a bolt pistol, aiming at you head as he swings the longsword. "It's Karst! TAKE HIM DOWN!" he screams. "Now, now! We can crush them! You're already dead. They can be too!" Meliodas howls in your mind. > You face the bullets You close your eyes, and soon, the world is taken away. You hope to find a peace in death you could never find in sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You successfully hide amongst the refugees, and are transported to a nearby evacuation facility. You're given a cheap meal of Grox Jerky and soup, before being put into a massive fenced off area. Unfortunately, soon you learn that you overestimated how easy this would be. "Ah, an inquisitor has arrived. We're going to die here." Meliodas says, as you hear his voice for the first time in a while. You spot an Inquisitor, a heavily armored agent of the Imperium built for rooting out Chaos and Heresy. He stands, tall and heavily armored, a longsword glowing faintly blue clutched in one hand and a bolt pistol in the other. At his side is a grizzled soldier in Carapace armor holding a Flamer and snarling her scarred face as passer-bys, a man in browns robes holding a huge chainsword and a heavily cybernetically-upgraded Tech Priest. You wait patiently, attempting to hide every ounce of your power. "It's not going to work," Meliodas says. "He's going to find us. You're going to die here. You can get revenge, though. Let me take you. Let me take hold of your body, and open a pathway through the Warp. I can summon endless hordes of daemons to this world, wipe out that inquisitor, gain your vengeance, and allow me power. We have a chance now." He strolls along, stopping next to you. He looks down, raising an eyebrow. "Are we experiencing more Warp Storms, Engsineer Low?" he asks. "No, sir," the tech-priest says in a monotone voice. The inquisitor rapidly raises a bolt pistol, aiming at you head as he swings the longsword. "It's Karst! TAKE HIM DOWN!" he screams. "Now, now! We can crush them! You're already dead. They can be too!" Meliodas howls in your mind. > You try to reason with him "Wait! You...!" The inquisitor fires, and the bolts slam into your skull, ending your life. You hope to find a peace in death you could never find in sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You successfully hide amongst the refugees, and are transported to a nearby evacuation facility. You're given a cheap meal of Grox Jerky and soup, before being put into a massive fenced off area. Unfortunately, soon you learn that you overestimated how easy this would be. "Ah, an inquisitor has arrived. We're going to die here." Meliodas says, as you hear his voice for the first time in a while. You spot an Inquisitor, a heavily armored agent of the Imperium built for rooting out Chaos and Heresy. He stands, tall and heavily armored, a longsword glowing faintly blue clutched in one hand and a bolt pistol in the other. At his side is a grizzled soldier in Carapace armor holding a Flamer and snarling her scarred face as passer-bys, a man in browns robes holding a huge chainsword and a heavily cybernetically-upgraded Tech Priest. You wait patiently, attempting to hide every ounce of your power. "It's not going to work," Meliodas says. "He's going to find us. You're going to die here. You can get revenge, though. Let me take you. Let me take hold of your body, and open a pathway through the Warp. I can summon endless hordes of daemons to this world, wipe out that inquisitor, gain your vengeance, and allow me power. We have a chance now." He strolls along, stopping next to you. He looks down, raising an eyebrow. "Are we experiencing more Warp Storms, Engsineer Low?" he asks. "No, sir," the tech-priest says in a monotone voice. The inquisitor rapidly raises a bolt pistol, aiming at you head as he swings the longsword. "It's Karst! TAKE HIM DOWN!" he screams. "Now, now! We can crush them! You're already dead. They can be too!" Meliodas howls in your mind. > You try to fight You leap up, but the Inquisitor is trained for this. He knocks you back with a pychic blast, and the sword bites into your neck, draining your lifeforce and killing you instantly. You hope to find a peace in death you could never find in sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You successfully hide amongst the refugees, and are transported to a nearby evacuation facility. You're given a cheap meal of Grox Jerky and soup, before being put into a massive fenced off area. Unfortunately, soon you learn that you overestimated how easy this would be. "Ah, an inquisitor has arrived. We're going to die here." Meliodas says, as you hear his voice for the first time in a while. You spot an Inquisitor, a heavily armored agent of the Imperium built for rooting out Chaos and Heresy. He stands, tall and heavily armored, a longsword glowing faintly blue clutched in one hand and a bolt pistol in the other. At his side is a grizzled soldier in Carapace armor holding a Flamer and snarling her scarred face as passer-bys, a man in browns robes holding a huge chainsword and a heavily cybernetically-upgraded Tech Priest. You wait patiently, attempting to hide every ounce of your power. "It's not going to work," Meliodas says. "He's going to find us. You're going to die here. You can get revenge, though. Let me take you. Let me take hold of your body, and open a pathway through the Warp. I can summon endless hordes of daemons to this world, wipe out that inquisitor, gain your vengeance, and allow me power. We have a chance now." He strolls along, stopping next to you. He looks down, raising an eyebrow. "Are we experiencing more Warp Storms, Engsineer Low?" he asks. "No, sir," the tech-priest says in a monotone voice. The inquisitor rapidly raises a bolt pistol, aiming at you head as he swings the longsword. "It's Karst! TAKE HIM DOWN!" he screams. "Now, now! We can crush them! You're already dead. They can be too!" Meliodas howls in your mind. > You follow Meliodas' plan Daemonic Pawn You release yourself, allowing Meliodas to take control. Your soul is burnt out, in a quick and slightly painful action, and your life is gone. You hope to find a peace in death you could never find in sleep. The planet is soon overwhelmed. In the death of your soul, Meliodas opens a portal to the Warp. He manifests, alongside endless daemon armies. The inquisitor barely manages to react before he's wiped out. Soon, the world is taken. Ironically, a bitter alliance is formed between Kyros and the forces of the Imperium in an attempt to hold back the daemons who care not for Kyros' delusions of grandeur or supposed "loyalty" to the Dark Gods. Soon, the planet is theirs. The planet's populace is wiped out, and warp storms form, taking the planet back to the Chaos of the warp. The last sound on the planet, before it's plunged into the warp, is Meliodas' laughter. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"No." "No?" Elios says, taken aback. "I'm not joining you. He knows what you're planning. I'm not joining your death trap." "So be it," he says, a sneer forming on his face. Elios steps forward, knocking on the metal door. The guards open, immediately raising their bolters. Elios waves his hand. "You didn't see me here. The voice of Slaanesh calls you, and you're his now. Move aside, and tell no one I was her," Elios says, strolling forward, leaving without looking at you. In the next few weeks, you're quickly proven right. Elios is first. When he's found, he's had his limps slowly sanded off, before being thrown in a pit with mutants who tore him apart. A "mysterious" assassin attempts to kill Elizabeth, but Durge fends her off, only for a "malfunction" to destroy him the next day, incinerating him in a single blast. Elizabeth is killed by one of the ship's macro-cannons, taking out the shuttle they were going on, because of a sensor malfunction identifying it as hostile. With his threats to power gone, the assault on the Imperium is on. The first few worlds fall with ease, as they're unprepared for the level of firepower that Kyros is bringing to the table. Still, issues arise. You're reinforced by those recruited from the conquered realms as well as throngs of war-bands coming to join your invasion. Still, Kyros gets greedy. He attempts to take on a Forge World, a world literally covered with layers of factories, run by the cyborg-engineers that are part of the machine-worshipping cult known as the Mechnicus. Kyros' grand plans to have a Forge World producing endless war machines are ruined when the planet's orbital defenses take out much of your fleet, and in the ensuing battle the factories are leveled. When Kyros finally takes the planet, it's nothing but a smoking rock. Everything falls apart after that. In a desperate attempt to capture geneseed stores to allow him to take over the home world of a Space Marine chapter known as the Horned Kings. The chapter is wiped out, but again Kyros gains nothing as the last act of the Chapter Master is to detonate their geneseed stores. At this point, Kyros' forces are a pale shadow of their previous selves. Cain and most of the Goliaths were taken out as their landing pods were wiped out in an attempt to take the Forge World, and the gladiators are wiped out by a suicidal charge by the Iron Kings. They're not the only ones gone. Fay is killed, along with many of the tribals, in the Genesee stores' destruction. It's only at that point that you truly stop caring. Your tribe is gone, only a few faces so grief-stricken you can barely recognize them remaining. You don't care if you reach Terra. You don't care if you live. You don't care if you die. You just don't care, about anything. You find yourself on some war-stricken world, killing. Scores of refugees are wiped out as your hand waves and warpfire spurts from the earth. Once, you would've have wanted to hurt innocents. You wouldn't have done it. Now, you feel nothing as you smell their cooked flesh. A Space Marine charges towards you, but you stare at him. The Space Marine screams as you force him to tear his own arms off, tossing them aside and having tentacles rapidly grow out of his arm sockets, before his mind is corrupted and he charges, roaring towards his allies as he begins to tear them apart. You watch as a Dreadnought's legs buckle under your telekinesis, sending it toppling and tumbling down before it explodes. You levitate a Guardsman into the air as he howls in terror, be... The earth shutters as artillery booms, sending you into the air. Artillery tears through the earth, and you slam into an APC. You hastily stand, to see dozens of refugees piling out of the crippled APC. You see to your surprise Tribals shooting at you and the other refugees, bullets thudding into the metal next to you, before they're killed by bolter fire. You look at your reflection in the half-broken window of a destroyed building, and realize why they were firing. With your now torn clothes and dirt-covered face, you are now indistinguishable from the refugees you've been killing. You hear a dozen monstrous roars from your allies off towards your right, signifying a charge, before it's answered by the shouts of the Imperial Guard and Space Marine preparing a counter-charge. You could try to escape this. Hide amongst the refugees. Find a way out of this life. But what would be the point? You hear the charge nearing. Damn Kyros, putting you in this situation. Maybe you should be the one to finish his mad invasion? Or maybe you should return to what you know, and fight? > You just walk into the battlefield and let it end You stroll forward into the battlefield, watching as dozens of brightly colored and heavily armored Space Marines near you. They raise their weapons and fire, as others attempt to get to your with chainswords. You offer no resistance. You don't attempt to dodge the fire, or to block it, or even move. You feel the shells burst through, your organs being decimated. As you collapse back in a pool of blood, you hope death will give you the peace you could never get from sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You follow Kyros, as you head to the arena. You reach the doors that would lead into it, but instead oof entering you go off to a small elevator behind it. You enter, and it slowly begins descending. It opens, revealing the underhive of the arena. There's dozen of cages, holding exotic beasts and dangerous Xenos. You see a half dozen thick, heavily muscled, green-skinned Orks in a cage, their necks chained to the wall. They're howling and roaring, tugging at their chains. Surprisingly, while most shout in their barbaric, guttural language, one seems to speak yours. "Humie! Humie! Get me free! Get me free!" he shouts. "I is gonna let you live, even give ya a bitta loot and an escape pod if ya let me free!" "Don't respond!" someone further down the catacombs that lay beneath the arena shouts. "It only encourages Ol' Dak!" "Hmmm... this Ork must be one of the greatest speakers of his kind," Meliodas points out. "Of course to us he's a fucking idiot." The ork's eyes narrow, before he begins howling in frustration and smacking his hands against his own head, a heavy thud emanating as his muscled fists slam into his thick skull. You continue walking, passing amazing and fantastic creatures and gladiators. There's a tentacled slug-man with a large beak and dozens of eyes peppered around his body which is huddled up in the corner of it's cage, a trio of horrible bird-hound creatures that scratch at their bars, a massive human wearing what appears to be an iron cage with hundreds of inward pointing nails who rams himself against the cage wall, his body shredded to such an extent you're amazed he's not dead yet, a multi-legged, horned creature that looks almost cute. Finally, you reach a long hallway, with thick, heavy metal doors spread along the hallway. An eye peers out of a door eye-slot, staring at you. "Hello there. Do we have more fighters, or...? Oh wait, it's them. Terrific." The eye disappears, and the slot closes. Kyros takes out a datapad, pressing several buttons before the door slowly slides open, revealing a large open area. Bunk beds line the wall, with a bunch of young men and women, the oldest in their late twenties and the youngest in their mid-teens. They wear very little armor, all of which is either leather or light combat armor. They sit around a fire, roasting chunks of meat on sticks in it. Two of the gladiators lean against the beds nearest to you, staring at you. One is a tall, muscled and tanned, with long blond hair and sparking green eyes. She holds a long, rifle-like gun with an axe blade made into the barrel with a grip under it. The other is shorter, with similarly tanned skin, with playful green eyes and curly brown hair, holding a curved sword and a Plasma pistol. They both look to be in their late teens or early twenties at latest. "Is that a fire?" Fay asks. "Are they armed?" you also. "Yes and yes," the male says, turning to the girl. "This question game is fun." "The fire's below a vent that's sending the smoke... somewhere. We weren't exactly given schematics of this place, all we know is the smoke doesn't bother us. And we're allowed weapons to keep the others in check. Even if we both went for Kyros, our minds would be shattered before we could raise our weapons," the girl says. "Nah, I could at least start a swing before I was killed." "These are the Twins. They lead the Gladiator-Slaves. Now, introduce yourselves," Kyros says. "I'm Castus," the boy smiles, staring at the pair of you. His eyes flicker, as he looks over Fay. He appears to be checking her out. You feel like punching him in the throat, but refrain. "You're a jealous one, aren't you?" Meliodas says. "I'm Olive," the girl says, extending a hand, which you grab and shake before Fay does the same. "So, is there a reason you're here?" Castus asks. "Fay and Karth will be taking command of the gladiators. They are my lieutenants, and will command a segment of our army, the slaves." "Oh, terrific. We've been shafted," Castus says. "I'm sure Kyros will want us to have an advisor position to assist Fay and Karth," Olive says. "Correct," Kyros says. "Well, there might be an issue with that," Castus says. "You see, both Fay and Karth have a history of... well, murdering my men. Pitting the Kyros Jr and Magos Cern's latest brand of super-freaks against us has led to a lot of men being, quite understandably, pissed with the guys who hacked apart, or psychically exploded, or simply beat their friends upside the head until they went comatose." "If you want, we can have the dissenters flailed alive. Simply point them out, and I'll have them broken. Is that preferable?" Castus goes quiet. "As I thought," Kyros says with a smile. "Make sure the men know to follow orders. Now, it's late, and these guys need sleep. Is anything else needed?" "I suppose not," Olive says. "Well, we need a lot, but nothing we're realistically getting anytime soon," Castus says. Kyros stares at Castus, fire beginning to run along his body. "Nothing needed, sir," Castus says. "Good. Fay, Karth, let's go," Kyros says. Kyros swivels around, walking out of the room. You quickly follow him, and the massive metal door shuts behind you. "So, we'll escort Fay back to the Uwais dorms, and then send you to your room," Kyros says. "Well you know, Karth's room is closer. I could just spend the time in his," Fay suggests. "It would give us some time to go over battle plans now that we know what our men are capable of, and I can inform him of what the Uwais tribe are like in battle..." "Really? That's the reason? That's the reason you're going for?" Kyros asks, raising an eyebrow. "No." > You accept Kyros' decision "Fine," you say dejectedly. "Jeez, Karth, your stubbornness will serve us well in time," Fay says, looking annoyed at you. You arrive at the doors to your cell, and Kyros opens it. "Very well," Kyros says. "Inside." You look at Fay, who smiles at you despite still looking annoyed. "Bye, Karth," she says, giving a short little wave. "Bye, Fay," you reply. The doors are shut, and you walk over to your bed, collapsing on it. Only now do you realize how exhausted you are. You've spent all day walking, which again isn't exactly your specialty. You close your eyes, and soon sleep takes you. Thankfully, the twilight stage where your soul can rest and your exhausted mind can find peace, lasts extra long. Of course, it doesn't take long before the nightmares hit.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Alright," Cain sleeps. "What else?" "Nothing else is required," Magos Cern says. "Return to your pod." Cain nods, before walking back into his pod. The cyro-pod shuts, leaving Cain back to his cold, endless sleep. "We should continue," Magos Cern says. "I still have to show you the gladiator slaves who you'll take under you command and the Uwais Tribe. The Goliaths will act as your heavy shock troopers, the gladiator-slaves will act as scouts, skirmishers and fill in whatever spare roles you have, and the Uwais tribe will be your main unit. I'll take you to see them." You begin following Magos Cern out of the cyro-sleep area, and along the hallways. After ten minutes, you reach a large metal door, which opens to reveal a large room filled with bunk beds, with familiar bronze bodies lying in the beds. "This is Dorm A. We have around sixty soldiers here," Magos Cern says. Fay walks into the room, and lets ou a shout. "Gentlemen! Your captain's back!" The tribals roll out of bed. You recognize a few of them, but strangely you recognize many as men from other various tribes." "Fay, you're back!" one says. "How did the fight go? It took far longer than expected," another adds. "Oh, shit! Is that Karth?" another asks. The attention immediately goes from Fay to you, as tribals begin appearing. They all appear far more muscular, many bearing fresh scars. "Karth! How are you even still alive?" someone asks incredulously. "It's the Uwais shaman!" another asks. "Karth, how are you? What have they been doing to you?" You watch as the tribals begin to surround the three of you, although Magos Cern makes sure they keep as least half a dozen feat away from her. "Stay back. Karth is only here to see you, not talk to you," Magos Cern says, drawing a datapad and letting out an electro-shock that causes the group to let out a pained yelp before they back away. "Why are there so many men and women from other tribes? I thought it was the Uwais tribe who was kidnapped." "When we arrived on your planet, we needed to do a lot of work. We drained lakes for water, drilled into the planet's crust to get vast quantities of Promethium, wiped out native species for food. It takes a lot of effort to run a vessel this large, and to do it quickly and efficiently. While we did so, our soldiers went to work. They needed to fight, both to train and to simply shed blood for their own enjoyment. Prisoners were taken in vast quantities, and I used them as I used the Uwais tribe. Now, there's far more from other tribes than there are from Uwais tribe." "Hmmm... your home world is destroyed. Ambition is the only path forward now, Karth, there is no going back. We will conquer the stars together." Meliodas says. "I suppose calling them the Uwais tribe is a bit of a failing, then. Tribals would be more suitable." "As you wish. You are their superior. You can do as you wish with them." "The average tribal will be be outfitted with combat armor as well as some equipment, such as grenades, gas masks, communications devices, that kind of thing. The stronger ones will get Bolters, the strongest will be equipped with melee weapons; chainswords, chainaxes, power swords, as well as bolt pistols. The weaker ones will be given specialized roles and equipped for as such: meltaguns and missile launchers for anti-armor, snipers with sniper rifles and stealth roles with chameoline cloaks and silenced weapons. We should have a fairly well equipped army that will be able to hold their own when fighting alongside the Guardsmen and Traitor Marines we have under our command." "We're not fighting for you fucks!" someone shouts. "Yeah! Fuck you, you kidnapping bastards!" "Ah, this is an issue," Magos Cern says. "Unfortunately, due to my... failures in work on the brain, Kyros has forbid me to tinker on their minds to ensure loyalty. Fay has only so far failed to do, so it'll be your job now. I need all rebelliousness to be crushed." "How?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Get it done. I don't care how. I need to go check on the oxygen decks to the macro guns on the starboard side doesn't asphyxiate," Magos says, turning around and walking off. "Well, that's a bitch," you complain, turning to Fay. "I guess we need to get rid of rebelliousness before Kyros gets pissy and blows our heads clean off." "Or..." Fay says slyly. "We could just hide the rebelliousness. It would be better if we kept it under wraps until we have a chance to get out of here." "Oh, choices, choices, choices. Terrify, threaten, talk or trust. Which shall it be, Karth?" Meliodas says. You walk forward, into the center of the dorm. You have several options here. You could attempt to use some of your psychic powers to show these tribals the true power of the Warp. That would definitely ensure their loyalty, if only out of fear. You could threaten them to ensure their loyalty, once again while out of fear, and you wouldn't have to alienate yourself by making yourself seem like a terrifying psychic being. You could attempt to convince the tribals that loyalty to this place is the only rational choice. You could also take Fay's path, and assure them that they'll have the chance to get revenge, but that for now they should hide all rebelliousness until it's time to strike. > You threaten them to ensure their loyalty You walk slowly forward, growling. "Magos Cern has told me about some rebellious behavior. It needs to end. We are a tiny fraction of the population of our ship. Even if we could somehow get all of our weapons, get everyone together and ready to fight, and we'd fail to get free. What could we do? We're light-years away from home by now. Even if, by some miracle, we could take this ship, we have no idea how to pilot it, and even then the chances of getting that far is astronomical. Kyros, the team leader, has amazing psychic powers. He could read our minds at any moment. He'd have you flayed alive and had the skin made into a cloak! He'll have this entire dorm filled with Chlorine gas! If you don't want to doom our entire tribe to non-existence, don't even think about rebelling." The tribals seem a mixture of disappointed, angered and annoyed, but you know the see the logic in what you're saying. They won't rebel. They'll follow orders now. "Tell the other tribals. I don't want anyone doing anything stupid," you say to the tribals, before turning to Fay. "We should go." You walk out of the room, quickly followed by Fay, who runs after you. "That was a bit depressing," she admits. "How so?" you ask. "You're not seriously happy with a life of service to a guy who kidnapped us? These guys killed Duggin!" she asks. "We need to be pragmatic. If there was an option for escape, I'd take it. But I'm not dying when there's no real chance of escape." "Umm... I guess," Fay says, clearly unsure what to do. You walk outside, where Kyros awaits, smiling. "Ah, you're here. Were they convinced?" You nod eagerly, and Kyros smiles. Well done," he says. "Now, we need to visit the last of your soldiers, the gladiator-slaves. They're always an interesting crew. Shall we go?" You look at Fay, who nods, although she still looks nervous from your earlier threats. "Yes, let's," you reply.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Alright," Cain sleeps. "What else?" "Nothing else is required," Magos Cern says. "Return to your pod." Cain nods, before walking back into his pod. The cyro-pod shuts, leaving Cain back to his cold, endless sleep. "We should continue," Magos Cern says. "I still have to show you the gladiator slaves who you'll take under you command and the Uwais Tribe. The Goliaths will act as your heavy shock troopers, the gladiator-slaves will act as scouts, skirmishers and fill in whatever spare roles you have, and the Uwais tribe will be your main unit. I'll take you to see them." You begin following Magos Cern out of the cyro-sleep area, and along the hallways. After ten minutes, you reach a large metal door, which opens to reveal a large room filled with bunk beds, with familiar bronze bodies lying in the beds. "This is Dorm A. We have around sixty soldiers here," Magos Cern says. Fay walks into the room, and lets ou a shout. "Gentlemen! Your captain's back!" The tribals roll out of bed. You recognize a few of them, but strangely you recognize many as men from other various tribes." "Fay, you're back!" one says. "How did the fight go? It took far longer than expected," another adds. "Oh, shit! Is that Karth?" another asks. The attention immediately goes from Fay to you, as tribals begin appearing. They all appear far more muscular, many bearing fresh scars. "Karth! How are you even still alive?" someone asks incredulously. "It's the Uwais shaman!" another asks. "Karth, how are you? What have they been doing to you?" You watch as the tribals begin to surround the three of you, although Magos Cern makes sure they keep as least half a dozen feat away from her. "Stay back. Karth is only here to see you, not talk to you," Magos Cern says, drawing a datapad and letting out an electro-shock that causes the group to let out a pained yelp before they back away. "Why are there so many men and women from other tribes? I thought it was the Uwais tribe who was kidnapped." "When we arrived on your planet, we needed to do a lot of work. We drained lakes for water, drilled into the planet's crust to get vast quantities of Promethium, wiped out native species for food. It takes a lot of effort to run a vessel this large, and to do it quickly and efficiently. While we did so, our soldiers went to work. They needed to fight, both to train and to simply shed blood for their own enjoyment. Prisoners were taken in vast quantities, and I used them as I used the Uwais tribe. Now, there's far more from other tribes than there are from Uwais tribe." "Hmmm... your home world is destroyed. Ambition is the only path forward now, Karth, there is no going back. We will conquer the stars together." Meliodas says. "I suppose calling them the Uwais tribe is a bit of a failing, then. Tribals would be more suitable." "As you wish. You are their superior. You can do as you wish with them." "The average tribal will be be outfitted with combat armor as well as some equipment, such as grenades, gas masks, communications devices, that kind of thing. The stronger ones will get Bolters, the strongest will be equipped with melee weapons; chainswords, chainaxes, power swords, as well as bolt pistols. The weaker ones will be given specialized roles and equipped for as such: meltaguns and missile launchers for anti-armor, snipers with sniper rifles and stealth roles with chameoline cloaks and silenced weapons. We should have a fairly well equipped army that will be able to hold their own when fighting alongside the Guardsmen and Traitor Marines we have under our command." "We're not fighting for you fucks!" someone shouts. "Yeah! Fuck you, you kidnapping bastards!" "Ah, this is an issue," Magos Cern says. "Unfortunately, due to my... failures in work on the brain, Kyros has forbid me to tinker on their minds to ensure loyalty. Fay has only so far failed to do, so it'll be your job now. I need all rebelliousness to be crushed." "How?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Get it done. I don't care how. I need to go check on the oxygen decks to the macro guns on the starboard side doesn't asphyxiate," Magos says, turning around and walking off. "Well, that's a bitch," you complain, turning to Fay. "I guess we need to get rid of rebelliousness before Kyros gets pissy and blows our heads clean off." "Or..." Fay says slyly. "We could just hide the rebelliousness. It would be better if we kept it under wraps until we have a chance to get out of here." "Oh, choices, choices, choices. Terrify, threaten, talk or trust. Which shall it be, Karth?" Meliodas says. You walk forward, into the center of the dorm. You have several options here. You could attempt to use some of your psychic powers to show these tribals the true power of the Warp. That would definitely ensure their loyalty, if only out of fear. You could threaten them to ensure their loyalty, once again while out of fear, and you wouldn't have to alienate yourself by making yourself seem like a terrifying psychic being. You could attempt to convince the tribals that loyalty to this place is the only rational choice. You could also take Fay's path, and assure them that they'll have the chance to get revenge, but that for now they should hide all rebelliousness until it's time to strike. > You convince the tribals that loyalty is the best option You walk slowly forward, growling. "Magos Cern has told me about some rebellious behavior. It needs to end. We are a tiny fraction of the population of our ship. Even if we could somehow get all of our weapons, get everyone together and ready to fight, and we'd fail to get free. What could we do? We're lightyears away from home by now. Even if, by some miracle, we could take this ship, we have no idea how to pilot it, and even then the chances of getting that far is astronomical. If we stay loyal, we'll survive. We'll prosper. Eventually, we'll be rewarded. We'll survive, we'll carve a little place in this hellish galaxy for us. Understood?" The tribals seem a mixture of disappointed and inspired. You know the see the logic in what you're saying. They won't rebel. They'll follow orders now. "Tell the other tribals. I don't want anyone doing anything stupid. We need to do what's best," you say to the tribals, before turning to Fay. "We should go." You walk out of the room, quickly followed by Fay, who walks alongside after you.N "That was a bit depressing," she admits. "How so?" you ask. "You're not seriously happy with a life of service to a guy who kidnapped us? These guys killed Duggin!" she asks. "We need to be pragmatic. If there was an option for escape, I'd take it. But I'm not dying when there's no real chance of escape." "Umm... I guess," Fay says, clearly unsure what to do. You walk outside, where Kyros awaits, smiing. "Are they convinced?" You nod eagerly, and he smiles. "Terrific. Now, we need to visit the last of your soldiers, the gladiator-slaves. They're always an interesting crew. Shall we go?" You look at Fay, who nods. "Yes, let's," you reply.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Alright," Cain sleeps. "What else?" "Nothing else is required," Magos Cern says. "Return to your pod." Cain nods, before walking back into his pod. The cyro-pod shuts, leaving Cain back to his cold, endless sleep. "We should continue," Magos Cern says. "I still have to show you the gladiator slaves who you'll take under you command and the Uwais Tribe. The Goliaths will act as your heavy shock troopers, the gladiator-slaves will act as scouts, skirmishers and fill in whatever spare roles you have, and the Uwais tribe will be your main unit. I'll take you to see them." You begin following Magos Cern out of the cyro-sleep area, and along the hallways. After ten minutes, you reach a large metal door, which opens to reveal a large room filled with bunk beds, with familiar bronze bodies lying in the beds. "This is Dorm A. We have around sixty soldiers here," Magos Cern says. Fay walks into the room, and lets ou a shout. "Gentlemen! Your captain's back!" The tribals roll out of bed. You recognize a few of them, but strangely you recognize many as men from other various tribes." "Fay, you're back!" one says. "How did the fight go? It took far longer than expected," another adds. "Oh, shit! Is that Karth?" another asks. The attention immediately goes from Fay to you, as tribals begin appearing. They all appear far more muscular, many bearing fresh scars. "Karth! How are you even still alive?" someone asks incredulously. "It's the Uwais shaman!" another asks. "Karth, how are you? What have they been doing to you?" You watch as the tribals begin to surround the three of you, although Magos Cern makes sure they keep as least half a dozen feat away from her. "Stay back. Karth is only here to see you, not talk to you," Magos Cern says, drawing a datapad and letting out an electro-shock that causes the group to let out a pained yelp before they back away. "Why are there so many men and women from other tribes? I thought it was the Uwais tribe who was kidnapped." "When we arrived on your planet, we needed to do a lot of work. We drained lakes for water, drilled into the planet's crust to get vast quantities of Promethium, wiped out native species for food. It takes a lot of effort to run a vessel this large, and to do it quickly and efficiently. While we did so, our soldiers went to work. They needed to fight, both to train and to simply shed blood for their own enjoyment. Prisoners were taken in vast quantities, and I used them as I used the Uwais tribe. Now, there's far more from other tribes than there are from Uwais tribe." "Hmmm... your home world is destroyed. Ambition is the only path forward now, Karth, there is no going back. We will conquer the stars together." Meliodas says. "I suppose calling them the Uwais tribe is a bit of a failing, then. Tribals would be more suitable." "As you wish. You are their superior. You can do as you wish with them." "The average tribal will be be outfitted with combat armor as well as some equipment, such as grenades, gas masks, communications devices, that kind of thing. The stronger ones will get Bolters, the strongest will be equipped with melee weapons; chainswords, chainaxes, power swords, as well as bolt pistols. The weaker ones will be given specialized roles and equipped for as such: meltaguns and missile launchers for anti-armor, snipers with sniper rifles and stealth roles with chameoline cloaks and silenced weapons. We should have a fairly well equipped army that will be able to hold their own when fighting alongside the Guardsmen and Traitor Marines we have under our command." "We're not fighting for you fucks!" someone shouts. "Yeah! Fuck you, you kidnapping bastards!" "Ah, this is an issue," Magos Cern says. "Unfortunately, due to my... failures in work on the brain, Kyros has forbid me to tinker on their minds to ensure loyalty. Fay has only so far failed to do, so it'll be your job now. I need all rebelliousness to be crushed." "How?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Get it done. I don't care how. I need to go check on the oxygen decks to the macro guns on the starboard side doesn't asphyxiate," Magos says, turning around and walking off. "Well, that's a bitch," you complain, turning to Fay. "I guess we need to get rid of rebelliousness before Kyros gets pissy and blows our heads clean off." "Or..." Fay says slyly. "We could just hide the rebelliousness. It would be better if we kept it under wraps until we have a chance to get out of here." "Oh, choices, choices, choices. Terrify, threaten, talk or trust. Which shall it be, Karth?" Meliodas says. You walk forward, into the center of the dorm. You have several options here. You could attempt to use some of your psychic powers to show these tribals the true power of the Warp. That would definitely ensure their loyalty, if only out of fear. You could threaten them to ensure their loyalty, once again while out of fear, and you wouldn't have to alienate yourself by making yourself seem like a terrifying psychic being. You could attempt to convince the tribals that loyalty to this place is the only rational choice. You could also take Fay's path, and assure them that they'll have the chance to get revenge, but that for now they should hide all rebelliousness until it's time to strike. > You take Fay's suggestion You walk forward, your voice dropping to a whisper. "Look, we need to be practical. We can cause some minor trouble, a riot or two, kill a few guards at best. That leads to them just shutting off our dorms and pumping these rooms full of chlorine gas. We stay seemingly loyal, do what we're told, and wait. Eventually, when we have the chance, we strike. They won't expect it, and we'll have waited until the perfect opportunity. Then, we escape. Then, we gain freedom. Then, we gain a future. Got it?" There's hushed responses, as the tribals take a hopeful, inspired look. They won't rebel. They'll follow orders... for now. As soon as the chance rises though, you'll have a loyal group of soldiers to fight alongside you. "Tell the other tribals. We need to stick togther" you say to the tribals, before turning to Fay. "We should go." You walk out of the room, with Fay at your side, holding your hand. "Well, I'm glad you took my suggestion," she says, smiling sweetly at you. "Well, you're clever, so I should listen to your advise every once in a while," you reply. "Stop teasing," she says, lightly hitting you. "We all know how this relationship works. You're the brains, I'm the brawn. Not the other way around." "Well, how come I can easily push you around?" you say, flicking your wrist and sending Fay onto her rear. "Hey!" she says. "Sorry," you say, laughing. "You're a massive dick," she complains, as you lift her back to her feet. You stop, the smile going from your face as you see Kyros walking quickly towards you. "Ah, here you are. Is the issue resolved?" You nod, trying not to let him see you gulp nervously. "Good. Now, we need to visit the last of your soldiers, the gladiator-slaves. They're always an interesting crew. Shall we go?" Kyros asks. You look at Fay, who nods, smiling at you. "Yes, let's," you reply.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stand, walking along after Kyros. You're at a point where your psychic growth has overtaken your physical growth to such a degree that it'd be easier to float along the ground rather than actually having to walk. Unfortunately, the collar prevents you from even firing out some sparks without Kyros' permission. You arrive in a metal door, which opens, revealing the booth from which Kyros and the others watch down at the fight. You walk along, looking down at the arena, which is empty. "I thought you were bringing me to see Fay," you say nervously, despite knowing what this is. "I brought you to see her fight!" Kyros says with a smile. You stare down, as one of the gates opens. You watch as an abomination stumbles out. Stumbling on four insect-like legs, with it's eft arm replaced by a long tentacle of coiled pink muscle, the very end of it studded with bone outgrowths to make it a more formidable weapon. In it's right hand is a short, rusted axe stained with blood and gore. It's head is monstrous, with an oversized mouth filled to the brim with teeth, overflowing with acid that drips onto it's chest with a sizzle, and a single, blood-shot eye. The creature looks up at you, it's eye flinching, before it lets out a miserable howl. "Shit... that looks miserable beyond belief," you say. "Yes, she does," Kyros says, grinning from ear to ear as half a dozen more beasts just like the first walk, stumble or crawl into the center of the arena. "She?" you ask. Now that you're not fighting them, you can have a long look and see what these mutant abominations really are: disgusting, pitiful creatures that should receive a quick death. "You don't recognize her?" Kyros says, clearly suppressing laughter. "This is what remains of the Uwais Tribe, and the first one to come out, the pack leader, is Fay." You look at monsters underneath, trying to see any resemblance to your friends as pure horror overtakes your mind. You collapse to your knees, puking over the banister and onto the monsters underneath as Kyros bursts into laughter. "He's done this to provoke you. He wants to get you angry, to see how powerful you are even with the collar. He's under-exaggerating how powerful you are, so you might be able to harm him, but..." Meliodas advises, but you don't pay any attention, too filled with anger. You stand, holding onto the banister to pull yourself up. Your knees shake, but you take a moment to regain your strength. Then, you launch yourself at Kyros. You grab at his eyes, your fingers going straight for his eyes. Kyros stumbles backwards, unprepared, before you feel your collar quickly tightening as you start to choke. You continue to scratch and gouge, even as the air is choked from you. Finally, you're dragged upwards by invisible hands, floating a few feet away from Kyros. Your weak body has done practically no damage to Kyros, who seems surprised and a bit amused rather than angry. "Hmmm... I under-exaggerated how angry you'd get, or how stupid you are if you think trying to fight me is an option." "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to break you. I don't care how long it takes, I will destroy your very soul," you say, staring at him. Kyros chuckles softly, before forcing you around to stare down at the arena. "Watch the match," he says. "We will have our revenge, Karth. Not today, not tomorrow, but we will have our revenge, " Meliodas says. You watch for about a minute as the abominations sit there, wandering around in confusion, falling to brief bursts of violence and self-harm and a lot of screaming and howling. Finally, the second gate opens. You watch as hooded figures enter, holding swords and small, circular shields. The trio charges forward, diving into the air. The beasts charge forward, attacking with fierce brutality. You watch as the lead one, the thing that used to be Fay, is almost beheaded by one of the trio. The trio fight with ease, diving, ducking and weaving out of the way of tentacles, axes, biting and stomping. Within a minute, the last of the abominations stumble forward and hits the ground as its front two legs are hacked off, and one of the trio leaps on top of the monster and impales it through the head. "What a display!" Kyros says with a smile. "Shall we see the victors?" Before you can say a word, Kyros releases you and you fall through the air, smacking into the dirt with a pained yelp. You moan in pain, looking up at the fighters. They walk forward, staring at you. "Karth?" one of them asks. You look up to see Fay standing there, her hooded robes covered in blood, alongside two other Uwais tribals you vaguely remember from your trips accompanying hunting parties, the Jakar Twins. "Fay," you reply, staring back at her, not knowing what else to say. Fay tosses her sword aside, grabbing you and embracing you tightly. Even though you feel yourself being turned into a fine powder from the strength of her hug, you're just so happy that you've found her that you don't care, hugging back. Kyros drops down, staring at you from over Fay's shoulder, as Magos Cern joins you. "Ah, what a happy reunion!" Kyros says. "You said she was dead!" you shout angrily, pushing Fay aside to point an accusatory finger at him. "I did. I lied," Kyros says, smiling. "Never trust a psyker, Karth. Not even yourself," Meliodas says. You shrug it off, trying not to bow to his attempts at emotional manipulation. You grab Fay, looking at her properly as she takes off her hooded cloak. She's tall, standing over six foot tall, and she's a lot more muscular than you remember. Whatever Kyros has done to her, it's had a serious affect. Her arms and legs are quite muscled, and you doubt you could find an ounce of fat anywhere on her. Still, she has the same coy smile, the wild, adventurous look in her eyes, She's pretty much the same Fay. "So... what's with the hood?" you ask, struggling to find anything else to say. "Um... it's so the mutants can't grab my hair and drag me down, Karth. Was that the most important question? How are you? What are they doing to you?" "Come on, out of the arena. I have a captured Squig the boys want to have some fun fighting," Kyros says. "Jakar twins, back to the dorm. Karth, Fay, follow me." You look at Fay, before grabbing her hand and walking after Kyros and Magos Cern. "Hmm, walking alongside me with my hand held? Where's the old Karth that I would piggyback around the village?" Fay asks. "Pffh, if I didn't have this collar I'd be floating around the place," you say. The stress of being kidnapped, having your tribe enslaved and murdered, your village burned down, your mind and soul forced through the very depths of hell falls away as you talk to your old friend. You recount your story as she tells hers. Apparently, she spent much of the time in a coma, having her body hacked apart and remade. Her blood now contains vast amounts of chems and combat drugs, she has several new organs and stronger bones, faster blood clotting and much more. She's trained extensively both with swords, guns, explosives and infinitely more, as well as team tactics. She's been chosen out as Team Leader for the Uwais super-soldiers. "So basically, you've become a super-soldier?" "Super-soldier?" Magos Cern says, her voice flooded with the most emotion you've heard from her the entire time you knew her. "She's a failure. A disgrace. I had access to geneseed, space marine test subjects and untold resources. What did I create? A mockery. These "super-soldiers" couldn't take on multiple space marines each like I had hoped. They couldn't take on a single fucking space marine like I had planned! They're barely worth half a space marine! I've failed!" "They'll do fine, Magos," Kyros says, arriving at another set of metal doors, which open to reveal a large table, where various figures are sitting. There's Kyros, Magos Cern and Taj Suenage, as well as Kyros' daughter, who sits in the corner. There's also many more who you don't know. One is a tall, gaunt looking woman with pale skin and black hair pulled back in a pony tail, wearing a long coat that disturbingly, appears to be made from human skin. Another is a girl with a shaved head wearing heavy combat armor who is sharpening a long machete, another is a... person whose gender you can't tell, wearing black leather armor and lingerie in an odd attempt to look sexy at a war meeting, with long, curly black hair and excessive make-up. The person smiles at you, licking his... or her... or its lips. Then there's a young girl, younger than even you, wearing hooded robes and reading an ancient, dusty tome. Finally, there's a barely human monster. An obese man covered with rotting pores, boils, sores and pus-filled, infected wounds, with its arms replaced by long, rusted spikes. Kyros and Magos Cern take a seat. "These are the leaders of the fleet, Fay and Karth. Some introductions are in order. First is me, the supreme leader of the entire fleet. Magos Cern leads the Dark Mechanicus on the ship and maintains the vessel itself. Chapter Master Taj Suenage leads the space marine chapter on board, the Undying Reapers. Then we have Calpurnia the Ravager, leader of the 22nd Istanford Regiment. " The one with the human skin coat stands up, extending a hand to shake. "Pleasure to meet you," she says, shaking both your hand and Fay's. I hope you're... efficient during your stay here." "Then there's the Staine siblings. There's Rebecca Staine, the leader of the Bloody Claws, a war-band that worships Khorne the war god." "Fuck you, psyker. You're weak and pathetic. Your parents should've left you to die," Rebecca growls, pointing her blade at you. "Fuck you," Fay snarls, shoving her blade point away from your throat. Rebecca stands, brandishing her sword, before the plague-ridden man stands, blocking Rebecca's path forward with one of his spike arms. "Hey, hey! There's no need for violence! We're all brothers and sisters here!" Rebecca sits back down with another growl. "Alright, next we have Elios, leading of the Shrieking Harpies, a war-band that worships Slaanesh, the god of excess," Kyros says, pointing at the person clad in leather and lingerie. "Pleasure to meet you, darlings. For slaves aboard a Chaos vessel, might I say you're looking... delectable," Elios says in a deep, masculine voice, licking his lips as he stares at both you and Fay. "Keep it in your pants, Elios," Kyros says. "Next we have Elizabeth." Elizabeth, the hooded girl reading the book, doesn't look up. "She's risen to the position of leader of the One-Eyed Crows, a war-band that worships Tzeentch, the sorceror god. She easily reached the position through her amazing social abilities. Tell us about yourself, Elizabeth." "Move along," Elizabeth says, making a circular motion with her hand without looking up. "OK, Elizabeth. Finally, we have Durge, leader of the Black Rats war-band that worships Nurgle the plague god." "Hello!" the diseased man says, waving his spike-arms. "It's a pleasure to meet you! I hope you're being treated well. I hope you're being fed enough. If not, it's probably because I've eaten all the food aboard this vessel!" The man, Durge, breaks into laughter as several maggots burst from his skin. You try not to get sick. "You're here to meet the leaders of this fleet so that you know who you'll be answering. We want you both to lead the slave army." "Slave army?" Fay asks. "The Uwais tribe soldiers, the previous batch of failed test subjects, the gladiator slaves and whatever else we can muster up. We'll hold the detonators to your explosive collars, but you'll hold a copy of the detonators for all the men under your command." "There was a previous batch of failed test subjects?" Fay asks. "Yes, there was. They were quite strong, but their minds were easily broken. Most weren't sentient, the sentient ones were insane. There was only one who you could even have a conversation with, the one I appointed leader. I'll show you to them some time after this. I assume you'll take the position?" "It's not like I have much choice," you say. "We'll take it," Fay says, answering for the both of you. "This slave army, ot whatever you want to call it, will give us the strength advantage to become a serious military power in this tiny little sector. We could conquer ourselves a little kingdom from the weak and undefended worlds. We could become a raiding fleet that could have us living a life of luxury. But one little slave army wouldn't even give us a chance against even the defenses on Pluto!" Calpurnia says. "I'll tear out your soul and devour it if you show anymore signs of cowardice!" Kyros yells. "Magos Cern, take Fay and Karth to see the previous batch of super-soldiers." "I'll have to let the galaxy witness the shame of my failed creation when we release them on the galaxy. I might as well let the two adolescents have a preview of my sickening failure," Magos Cern says. "We're not finished here!" Calpurnia splutters angrily. "I'm not launching my army on a suicide mission!" "My army! As long as you serve me, it's my army!" Kyros screams. "We take a vote, then," Calpurnia suggests. "Fine, raise your hands if you don't want to go through with the assault, if you're a coward, if you're not loyal." Calpurnia defiantly holds up her hands. Elios holds up his next. "Sorry, Kyros. I'm not dying.. I'm too young and beautiful to die fighting an unwinnable war," he says. Durge holds up a spike, looking ashamed. "I'm loyal, Kyros, but I'm just as loyal to my men as you, and I won't see them die for nothing." Elizabeth slowly raises a hand, looking up from her book for the first time. "This plans suicide, Kyros. We both know that." Kyros snarls in anger, looking around. "That's me, Cern, Taj and Rebecca for attacking, and Elizabeth, Durge, Elios and Calpurnia for not doing so," Kyros says in a low growl. "The slave leaders are the tie-breakers, then," Calpurnia says. Kyros looks at you with a stare, holding onto the controller for your collars. Well, this seems like an obvious answer, even if it is a suicide mission. > You don't support the assault on Terra You raise your hand, and Fay follows suit. "You have balls of steel," Meliodas says. "Unfortunately, now Kyros will tear them off, melt them down, turn them into a sword and fuck you up the arse." "You fucking cunts! I lifted you up from the dirt! I gave you power! I gave you a future! I gave you all a future, and now you want to betray me?!" Kyros screams, standing up. "I won't let scum like you kill our chance at greatness! Loyal brothers, wipe them from the face of the earth!" In an instant, everything goes to hell. Kyros puts your collars on full, and your collar tightens incredibly. You feel your throat be crushed and the air run out as you helplessly grab at it, watching the carnage. Calpurnia stands, raising her bolt pistol, but Rebecca leaps up, driving her sword through Calpurnia's chest, killing her instantly. Elios moves with incredible speed, drawing a hidden blade and slicing open Taj's throat as the space marine attempts to raise his bolter. Then, Magos Cern sprays boiling gasoline from a pipe in the side of her head into Elios' face, burning him severely before she stands, driving a drill into his burned face as he falls backwards. Durge struggles to stand with his immense wait, but immediately moves forward, standing in front of Elizabeth in an attempt to shield her from Kyros' wrath. "Elizabeth, get out of here!" Durge says, as a panicked Elizabeth gets out of her seat. "Durge, you miserable, plague-infested prick. You're going to die. You think you can save your sister? I'm going to cut off your spike-arms and drive them into both her eyes and then give her to the troops for a bit of fun." Durge roars, charging forward. The scene goes fuzzy as the lack of oxygen hits your brain and you feel your throat being crushed. All you see is the massive, blurry blob that is Durge explode, collapsing backwards, just as Elizabeth disappears, no doubt having teleported with some psychic ability she has. Kyros screams, but by now you're on the line between conscious. You reach a hand out, finding Fay's as she dies on the ground next to you. You hold her hand tightly as she squeezes back and the last bit of life leaves you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are sitting in the pilot's chair of the starship Andromeda, on the edge of the Protherus star system, getting ready to make a Light Space Jump to your freighter's next destination. You hear a sound, like someone gasping in surprise, and look up from your console. Your co-pilot, Karl, is looking intently at his console, and doesn't seem to have heard anything unusual. You must have imagined the sound, for you and Karl are the only two people aboard this starship. "Jump calculations are complete," Karl says to you, sitting in the co-pilots seat beside yours. Before you, the transparent plasglass windows of the cockpit provide a view of the stars. Space stretches on infinitely before you. Directly in the middle of your foreward view, a star shines brighter than the others - it is your destination, the closest star to the star system you are currently in. "Preparing to Jump to Light Space," you say, mentally going through your pre-jump checklist, as you press buttons and flick switches to the correct settings. You feel the ship beginning to vibrate as the interstellar propulsion system powers up, ready to activate. "Activating LSJD," you say, pressing the final button. There is the usual flash of white light, and... > You not Quite Right You are sitting in your pilot's chair, in the cockpit of the Andromeda, and something is not quite right. Outside the windows, the darkness of space is gone, there is only light. You raise your arm to cover your eyes, but as you do, the light pales. Instead of searing your eyes like a thousand suns, the endless expanse of white outside the windows gives off a soft light, like looking at a white plaster wall that someone is shining a torch on. As your eyes adjust to this strange phenomena, you hear a gasping, gurgling sound from behind you. Glancing to one side, you see the strangest thing. The right hand half of the cockpit is stretched out before and behind you. Your co-pilot, his chair and console, are now lines and blobs of horizontal colour, stretching through the room in streaks, like a motion-blurred, time-lapse photograph! Your head goes dizzy as your eyes and brain try to make sense of what it is you are seeing, then suddenly the strange warping of space stops, and the entire cockpit looks normal and whole once more. However, your co-pilot, his body restored to its correct physical form, sags forward in his chair, held up by his chest-crossing seatbelt buckle. Blood trickles from the corners of his mouth as his head drops forward, staring sightlessly down at his console. Outside the ship, the pale light - the endless expanse of whiteness instead of the blackness of space - tells you that something is horribly wrong here. > You examine Karl's body. You move from your console, over to beside your co-pilot. You lift up his head so you can look in his eyes. His head, fully illuminated by the pale light shining in through the windows, stares back at you, seeing nothing. You release him, letting his head drop back down again. Looking at his jumpsuit, you examine the body-monitoring device built into the suit. The device is supposed to monitor life signs, as well as the surrounding environment, and it tells you that his heart has stopped. Karl is clearly dead. > You bring up a ship damage report on your console, and try to find out what is wrong with the ship. Sitting in your chair, you bring up the ship status display, and look for signs of damage. For a moment you just look at the screen, unable to believe what it is saying. According to the screen, nothing exists behind the ship's cockpit. The rest of the ship is simply gone... vanished... non-existant! 'How can that be?' you think to yourself. After all, the power generators at the rear of the ship must exist, because all the computer systems and life support within the cockpit is functioning just as it always does. The rest of the ship MUST exist! Frustrated, you turn off the status display. > You check the ship's sensors, and see what it can detect. You look at the ship's sensor screen. It shows your ship in the middle of the screen, but shows no signs of planets or stars in the vicinity. In fact, it shows nothing at all, in any direction. You look out the window again, at the vast expanse of whiteness that seems to stretch out endlessly in every direction. There's nothing out there but pale, white light. What is this place? Is this Light Space, the other dimension, that ships pass through when they jump? Did your ship somehow become stuck in this dimension, half-way through the jump procedure? If so, how are you supposed to get out? > You open the cockpit door, and look into the central passageway. Feeling a little uncertain as to what you might find, you nervously walk to the rear of the cockpit, and press the door release button. The rear door slides open and... The central passageway that runs from the cockpit, through the ship, to the cargo bay at the rear, looks exactly as it always does. Lights in the ceiling illuminate the steel passage. Metal grating panels on the floor allow access to various wires and cables that run through the ship, beneath your feet. Door hatches are set into the passage walls at different points along its length, leading to various rooms aboard the ship. Far at the other end, you see a large hatch, that opens into the cargo bay at the other end of the starship. Everything looks completely - suddenly there is a shearing of light and form, as a section of wall about half way down the passage blurs outwards into the passage, in an array of colourful streaking lines - then suddenly flattens out again to look like a normal section of wall once more. Perhaps things aren't as completely normal as they seem... You say a short prayer that the motion blurring phenomena won't happen anywhere near you. > You start walking down the passageway. You step out of the cockpit and into the passageway. As you move through the doorway, you feel a strange sensation, like stepping through a thin wall of water. > You turn around. Having felt like you stepped through an invisible wall, you turn around to look at the doorway you just came through. The doorway looks as empty as before, the air is clear and invisible as always. However, looking back through the doorway into the cockpit, you can't help but gasp. Outside the cockpit windows, you see space! Black space! Dotted with stars! You're back in normal space again! In fact... it would seem the ship is exactly where it was before it tried to jump - as you can see the single bright star in the middle of the window, the star you were going to jump to. Then you gasp again, blinking your eyes to be sure you can believe what you are seeing - for there are two people in the cockpit! On the right sits Karl, your co-pilot, running jump calculations through the computer, and on the left is... it's you! You are in there, sitting in the pilot's chair, preparing the ship for jump! How is that possible? > You rush back into the cockpit! As you rush through the doorway, out of the passageway, and back into the cockpit, you feel the strange sensation again, the slight pressure against your body, as if you are passing through a thin wall of water. As your face passes through, the scene before your eyes changes! Karl's body lies dead in his chair, as you had left him, and your chair is empty again. Outside the windows is the shining expanse of pale, white light. What the heck is happening on your ship? It's almost as if... Yes, it's as if the cockpit and the passageway existed in two different places... Or rather, two different times! The passage outside the cockpit was somehow before the jump took place, and here in the cockpit is somehow at the current time frame... Actually, you would only be guessing that you were in the current time frame - how would you even know what was the past. For all you know, the cockpit could be somewhere in the distant future, or - or who knows what? > You start walking down the passageway, again. You step out of the cockpit and into the passageway. As you move through the doorway, you feel a strange sensation, like stepping through a thin wall of water.... > You turn around, again. Having felt like you stepped through an invisible wall, you turn around to look at the doorway you just came through. This time, you are prepared for what you see - outside the cockpit windows, you see space again, and both Karl and yourself are sitting in the cockpit chairs. You feel certain that if you tried to step into that cockpit, you would end up back in your version of the cockpit, surrounded by white space. > You continue down the passageway You decide to continue down the passageway. A few metres along, you reach door hatches on both sides of the passage. One is your sleeping quarters, the other is Karl's. An image of his dead face, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth, flashes before your eyes. You take a deep breath, and calm yourself. You know you will need to keep a level head if you are going to get out of this alive. > You open the door to your sleeping quarters. You press the door release button on the wall, and the door to your sleeping quarters slides open. Through the doorway, things look normal. Your bunk is up against one wall, the covers thrown aside - why make a bed if you're the only one who's going to look at it, or use it? Against another wall is a desk unit, with a few personal odds and ends inside and on top of it. A closet containing your clothing is up against a third wall. The lights are on, and you don't see any strange blurring, bending or stretching of the universe. > You go inside your sleeping quarters. You step through the doorway, and instantly feel that sensation again - the feeling of walking through an invisible wall, like passing through a sheet of water. Your sleeping quarters are now quite different to how they had looked an instant ago... Firstly, the bed is made. You can't remember ever having made your bed. Secondly, and more disturbingly to you, the sheets are bright pink with little white bunny rabbits on them! You suddenly hear footsteps behind you, and spin around to see a woman wearing a pilot's uniform, standing in the passageway, outside the room. She looks up from a clipboard she was reading, and her jaw drops as she sees you looking back at her. You can see the cogs turning inside her mind, as she tries to find words to say, and her first instinct is to shout, "Get the hell out of my sleeping quarters!" > You quickly step back out into the passageway! Blushing furiously, and stunned at whatever is happening - for only yourself and Karl were supposed to be aboard the starship - you step out into the passageway. As you do, you feel yourself passing through an invisible wall again, and an odd thing happens - as your eyes pass through the wall, she vanishes from in front of you. As you stand in the passageway, looking about, she is nowhere to be seen. Looking back into the sleeping quarters, you see your sleeping quarters, with your personal belongings, and your unmade bed! The woman in uniform is nowhere to be seen! How very, very strange. > You slowly step back into your quarters. Taking a deep breath, you step back through the doorway. As you pass the invisible wall again, you see the room, once more, clean and tidy, with pink bedsheets. Now though, the woman is inside the room with you. She is in the middle of the room, with her back to you. The clipboard lies where she dropped it on the floor, and she has drawn a pistol. She looks left and right, examining her sleeping quarters, holding the gun carefully, ready to fire. > You say "Please, don't shoot! I'm unarmed!" "Please, don't shoot! I'm unarmed!" you say, as she swivels quickly to face you, pointing her gun in your face. "Who are you? What are you doing on my ship?" she demands. > You say "Your ship? This is my ship, lady! These are my sleeping quarters!" "What are you talking about? I've run this ship for six years, now!" she says incredulously, waving the gun about in front of you. "The Andromeda has been under my command for twelve years," you growl back at her, "It was my father's ship before me, and I don't recall either him, or myself, selling it to anyone else!" "The Andromeda wasn't your father's ship - it was my father's ship!" she shouts back at you, waving her gun some more. "And it was my grandfather's ship before him, and my great-grandfather's before him!" Something crazy is going on, and your brain is hurting just trying to work it out. A suspicion is creeping into your mind. "My name is Michael Dobson," you tell her, hoping an introduction, and an attempt at being diplomatic, might stop her waving the gun in your face. If it accidentally went off... Her jaw drops, "No, it can't be..." She shakes her head in disbelief, "No, that was just a crazy tale, just mad talk - none of it could be true!" "None of what could be true?" you ask, not sure you like the sudden change in her. "My... My grandfather's name was Michael... My name is... I'm Susan Dobson," she says, looking you up and down, and inspecting you properly for the first time. She lowers the gun, then drops it forgotten to the floor. "You're saying you're my granddaughter? That's crazy! That's..." you realise that maybe it is not so crazy after all. Something has happened to your starship. What if something had happened half-way through the jump, and your ship was indeed stranded in the extra-dimension of Light Space. Who knows how your ship, or even you, might be affected. Could this location on your starship actually take you to another moment in time - somewhere into the future? "Tell me, why would you think you were my granddaughter?" you ask, softly. Her eyes glaze over, as she loses herself to memories, "My grandfather used to tell wild tales. No one really believed him, and by the time I was born, he wouldn't talk about it. My mother, though, she said that my grandfather was in a starship accident once. He used to say that he met people from the past and the future. Everyone thought he was crazy, but other than that, he was perfectly normal. People said that the starship accident did something to him, and that's why he would make those wild claims. People said he was just dreaming, or drunk. Once though, before he died, he asked me a strange question... 'Remember when we were aboard the Andromeda together?' he asked me. I guess if he was you, then this, here and now, is what he was talking about. He said he would never have made it back if it wasn't for me..." "So, I obviously get out of here alive then," you say as much to yourself as to her. "Karl and I made a starship jump, but we didn't appear at our destination - I think I'm still trapped inside of Light Space somehow. Strange things are happening as I move about my ship. When I step through that doorway, I'm back aboard my version of the ship, and this is my sleeping quarters, but when I step back in here, it's your sleeping quarters - somewhere in the future..." Suddenly the ship shudders, and you both grab hold of furniture so you don't fall over. "What was that?" you both ask at the same time. Suddenly a warning klaxon blares through the ship. "I've got to get to the bridge!" she shouts, forgetting about you and the whole 'mixed-up time' issue. She rushes out the door and down the passage. Instinctively you rush out the door to follow her, and suddenly pass through that invisible wall again. She vanishes from sight as you step into the passageway - and back into your own time. > You quickly go back into the sleeping quarters. You quickly step back into your - that is, her - sleeping quarters. You can barely make out voices in the distance, probably your granddaughter and her co-pilot talking in the cockpit. You wonder what is going on. Then you hear the ship's computer's voice saying "Intruder Alert! Closing All Doors!" A light flashes above the door, and you realise that the ship's computer, in her future time era, is about to close and lock all the doors on her ship! > You stay inside your sleeping quarters. You decide to stay put. The door slams shut, and clicks as the locking mechanism moves into place. You are now locked inside your granddaughter's sleeping quarters, at some point in the future... It feels weird, mostly because according to her, you died years ago. However, she said you made it out of the starship accident alive. However... You know many people have tried to understand and hypothesise over how time travel works, and wether there is but one timeline, or many branching off, depending on people's actions. You wonder if it is certain that you will survive, or if perhaps you will die, and your granddaughter will never have existed. Just trying to work out how time works begins to give you a headache, so you decide to focus on the present. The computer said there were intruders aboard. That must have been what the shuddering of the ship had been - a pirate's starship docking with the Andromeda. If pirates had come aboard, they would try to kill everyone, so they could steal the ship and its cargo. As you realise that, you also realise that you are now locked inside a room, with no way out unless someone breaks in from the outside, or your granddaughter has the computer unlock and open the doors. Then you notice a gun on the floor - the pistol your granddaughter lost! You can use it to protect yourself, however, you realise she must now be unarmed, and unable to defend herself against the pirates! If you hadn't appeared out of nowhere and surprised her, she would still have her gun! You curse yourself and the predicament you are in. (Click on the gun to pick it up.)<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly step back into your - that is, her - sleeping quarters. You can barely make out voices in the distance, probably your granddaughter and her co-pilot talking in the cockpit. You wonder what is going on. Then you hear the ship's computer's voice saying "Intruder Alert! Closing All Doors!" A light flashes above the door, and you realise that the ship's computer, in her future time era, is about to close and lock all the doors on her ship! > You head back into the passageway. You head back out into the passageway. Suddenly, that strange blurring phenomena takes place just in front of the cockpit door! The walls of the passageway around the doorway stretch out in lines of colour, twisting and blurring. Then the strange effect seems to move toward you, down the passage! In a few seconds, it will reach where you stand, beside the doors to your quarters, and Karl's quarters! You had best act fast! > You dive back into your quarters! You quickly dive through the doorway into your quarters, emerging through the 'time wall' into the future. You are once more inside your granddaughter's quarters. The intruder alarm is still ringing on her ship, and you hear another explosion as the pirates try to blast their way through the ship's interior hatches. You are starting to freak out - if you step through the door, you will be back in your own time - but will the spatial warping, the blurring of matter that killed Karl, be waiting for you on the other side of the door? Yet, if you remain where you are, it will only be a matter of time before the pirates find this room. On top of that, what of your granddaughter? Is there some way you can help her? You remember her words - supposedly it is she who saves you, from being stranded in Light Space back in your own time... What can you do? Then you notice a gun on the floor - your granddaughter had dropped her gun! You quickly pick it up. (Click on it to pick it up)<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head back out into the passageway. Suddenly, that strange blurring phenomena takes place just in front of the cockpit door! The walls of the passageway around the doorway stretch out in lines of colour, twisting and blurring. Then the strange effect seems to move toward you, down the passage! In a few seconds, it will reach where you stand, beside the doors to your quarters, and Karl's quarters! You had best act fast! > You quickly open the door to Karl's quarters! You slam the button by Karl's quarters' door with your fist, and the door slides open. On the other side of the doorway, there is no floor, no walls - no room! Just an endless expanse of pale white light... The twisting, stretching, blurring phenomena is almost upon you!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What are you talking about? I've run this ship for six years, now!" she says incredulously, waving the gun about in front of you. "The Andromeda has been under my command for twelve years," you growl back at her, "It was my father's ship before me, and I don't recall either him, or myself, selling it to anyone else!" "The Andromeda wasn't your father's ship - it was my father's ship!" she shouts back at you, waving her gun some more. "And it was my grandfather's ship before him, and my great-grandfather's before him!" Something crazy is going on, and your brain is hurting just trying to work it out. A suspicion is creeping into your mind. "My name is Michael Dobson," you tell her, hoping an introduction, and an attempt at being diplomatic, might stop her waving the gun in your face. If it accidentally went off... Her jaw drops, "No, it can't be..." She shakes her head in disbelief, "No, that was just a crazy tale, just mad talk - none of it could be true!" "None of what could be true?" you ask, not sure you like the sudden change in her. "My... My grandfather's name was Michael... My name is... I'm Susan Dobson," she says, looking you up and down, and inspecting you properly for the first time. She lowers the gun, then drops it forgotten to the floor. "You're saying you're my granddaughter? That's crazy! That's..." you realise that maybe it is not so crazy after all. Something has happened to your starship. What if something had happened half-way through the jump, and your ship was indeed stranded in the extra-dimension of Light Space. Who knows how your ship, or even you, might be affected. Could this location on your starship actually take you to another moment in time - somewhere into the future? "Tell me, why would you think you were my granddaughter?" you ask, softly. Her eyes glaze over, as she loses herself to memories, "My grandfather used to tell wild tales. No one really believed him, and by the time I was born, he wouldn't talk about it. My mother, though, she said that my grandfather was in a starship accident once. He used to say that he met people from the past and the future. Everyone thought he was crazy, but other than that, he was perfectly normal. People said that the starship accident did something to him, and that's why he would make those wild claims. People said he was just dreaming, or drunk. Once though, before he died, he asked me a strange question... 'Remember when we were aboard the Andromeda together?' he asked me. I guess if he was you, then this, here and now, is what he was talking about. He said he would never have made it back if it wasn't for me..." "So, I obviously get out of here alive then," you say as much to yourself as to her. "Karl and I made a starship jump, but we didn't appear at our destination - I think I'm still trapped inside of Light Space somehow. Strange things are happening as I move about my ship. When I step through that doorway, I'm back aboard my version of the ship, and this is my sleeping quarters, but when I step back in here, it's your sleeping quarters - somewhere in the future..." Suddenly the ship shudders, and you both grab hold of furniture so you don't fall over. "What was that?" you both ask at the same time. Suddenly a warning klaxon blares through the ship. "I've got to get to the bridge!" she shouts, forgetting about you and the whole 'mixed-up time' issue. She rushes out the door and down the passage. Instinctively you rush out the door to follow her, and suddenly pass through that invisible wall again. She vanishes from sight as you step into the passageway - and back into your own time. > You open the door to Karl's sleeping quarters You press the button set into the passage wall, and the door to Karl's sleeping quarters swooshes open. However, you just stand there stunned, looking through the doorway. Even with everything else going on, you did not expect to find this. Or rather, you expected to find at least something. On the other side of the doorway is nothing - just whiteness. No floor, no walls, no room - just the endless expanse of pale white light that surrounds your starship. > You close Karl's door. You quickly press the button again, and watch the door slide shut. The last thing you'd need is to trip and fall outside the ship into that endless nothingness!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press the button set into the passage wall, and the door to Karl's sleeping quarters swooshes open. However, you just stand there stunned, looking through the doorway. Even with everything else going on, you did not expect to find this. Or rather, you expected to find at least something. On the other side of the doorway is nothing - just whiteness. No floor, no walls, no room - just the endless expanse of pale white light that surrounds your starship. > You hope there is something else on the other side of the doorway, and step through... You stick your foot through the doorway, and it vanishes from sight. You feel it passing through an invisible wall, like sticking your foot through a flowing sheet of water. However, when you pull your foot back to this side of the doorway, you can see it again, and it feels fine. You take a deep breath, and plunge through the doorway... You stumble to a halt as you pass through. As your face passes the invisible wall in the doorway, the endless white expanse of nothingness vanishes from sight, to be replaced with Karl's sleeping quarters! You look around the room. There's a bunk against one wall, a closet with Karl's clothing against another wall, and a small desk unit with some of his various odds and ends. Turning to look out the door, you can see the passageway fine. Opposite Karl's open doorway, you can see the door hatch to your own sleeping quarters, and it is closed shut. > You head back out into the passageway. Well, you know that this location does exist aboard your starship, and is not, after all, an endless expanse of whiteness. You decide to head back out into the passageway. Stepping through the doorway, you feel yourself passing through an invisible wall again, and then look behind you. Where Karl's room had been was again a vast expanse of endless pale light. Very strange... You press the button in the wall, and close his door.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stick your foot through the doorway, and it vanishes from sight. You feel it passing through an invisible wall, like sticking your foot through a flowing sheet of water. However, when you pull your foot back to this side of the doorway, you can see it again, and it feels fine. You take a deep breath, and plunge through the doorway... You stumble to a halt as you pass through. As your face passes the invisible wall in the doorway, the endless white expanse of nothingness vanishes from sight, to be replaced with Karl's sleeping quarters! You look around the room. There's a bunk against one wall, a closet with Karl's clothing against another wall, and a small desk unit with some of his various odds and ends. Turning to look out the door, you can see the passageway fine. Opposite Karl's open doorway, you can see the door hatch to your own sleeping quarters, and it is closed shut. > You wait around, and see if your granddaughter comes past this room. Perhaps, you think, you might run into your granddaughter again? You sit on the bed, but then you realise that in this room, there is no blaring sound of the intruder alarm. Karl's room must not be in her era of time... Besides which, looking about the room, it looks like it is indeed Karl's room, and not being used by someone else.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Taking a deep breath, you step back through the doorway. As you pass the invisible wall again, you see the room, once more, clean and tidy, with pink bedsheets. Now though, the woman is inside the room with you. She is in the middle of the room, with her back to you. The clipboard lies where she dropped it on the floor, and she has drawn a pistol. She looks left and right, examining her sleeping quarters, holding the gun carefully, ready to fire. > You tackle her to the ground, trying to get the gun out of her hands! You dive at her back, and tackle her to the ground. She cries out in rage, as the two of you roll about, struggling for the gun. Suddenly, the gun goes off! It strikes her in the chest! She goes limp, and you roll off of her, grabbing the gun. Suddenly, as she breathes her last, the gun fades out of existance! It just vanishes from your hands! Then, before your confused eyes, she slowly fades until she doesn't exist either! What's happening, you wonder, then with horror, notice your own hands turning transparent. Moments before you also vanish from existance, you can't help but wish you at least knew what she had been doing on your ship. Then you are gone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step through the doorway, and instantly feel that sensation again - the feeling of walking through an invisible wall, like passing through a sheet of water. Your sleeping quarters are now quite different to how they had looked an instant ago... Firstly, the bed is made. You can't remember ever having made your bed. Secondly, and more disturbingly to you, the sheets are bright pink with little white bunny rabbits on them! You suddenly hear footsteps behind you, and spin around to see a woman wearing a pilot's uniform, standing in the passageway, outside the room. She looks up from a clipboard she was reading, and her jaw drops as she sees you looking back at her. You can see the cogs turning inside her mind, as she tries to find words to say, and her first instinct is to shout, "Get the hell out of my sleeping quarters!" > You ask what she is doing on your ship - and what did she do to your sleeping quarters? "What are you doing on my ship? HOW did you get on my ship? And what did you do to my sleeping quarters! I mean - bunny rabbits on the bed?" you growl at her incredulously. "Your ship? Your ship! What the blazes are you talking about! The Andromeda is my ship! I've run this vessel for six years now!" she growls, stalking into your/her sleeping quarters, and brandishing a pistol, which she proceeds to wave in front of your face! "The Andromeda has been under my command for twelve years," you growl back at her, "It was my father's ship before me, and I don't recall either him, or myself, selling it to anyone else!" "The Andromeda wasn't your father's ship - it was my father's ship!" she shouts back at you, waving her gun some more. "And it was my grandfather's ship before him, and my great-grandfather's before him!" Something crazy is going on, and your brain is hurting just trying to work it out. A suspicion is creeping into your mind. "My name is Michael Dobson," you tell her, hoping an introduction, and an attempt at being diplomatic, might stop her waving the gun in your face. If it accidentally went off... Her jaw drops, "No, it can't be..." She shakes her head in disbelief, "No, that was just a crazy tale, just mad talk - none of it could be true!" "None of what could be true?" you ask, not sure you like the sudden change in her. "My... My grandfather's name was Michael... My name is... I'm Susan Dobson," she says, looking you up and down, and inspecting you properly for the first time. She lowers the gun, then drops it forgotten to the floor. "You're saying you're my granddaughter? That's crazy! That's..." you realise that maybe it is not so crazy after all. Something has happened to your starship. What if something had happened half-way through the jump, and your ship was indeed stranded in the extra-dimension of Light Space. Who knows how your ship, or even you, might be affected. Could this location on your starship actually take you to another moment in time - somewhere into the future? "Tell me, why would you think you were my granddaughter?" you ask, softly. Her eyes glaze over, as she loses herself to memories, "My grandfather used to tell wild tales. No one really believed him, and by the time I was born, he wouldn't talk about it. My mother, though, she said that my grandfather was in a starship accident once. He used to say that he met people from the past and the future. Everyone thought he was crazy, but other than that, he was perfectly normal. People said that the starship accident did something to him, and that's why he would make those wild claims. People said he was just dreaming, or drunk. Once though, before he died, he asked me a strange question... 'Remember when we were aboard the Andromeda together?' he asked me. I guess if he was you, then this, here and now, is what he was talking about. He said he would never have made it back if it wasn't for me..." "So, I obviously get out of here alive then," you say as much to yourself as to her. "Karl and I made a starship jump, but we didn't appear at our destination - I think I'm still trapped inside of Light Space somehow. Strange things are happening as I move about my ship. When I step through that doorway, I'm back aboard my version of the ship, and this is my sleeping quarters, but when I step back in here, it's your sleeping quarters - somewhere in the future..." Suddenly the ship shudders, and you both grab hold of furniture so you don't fall over. "What was that?" you both ask at the same time. Suddenly a warning klaxon blares through the ship. "I've got to get to the bridge!" she shouts, forgetting about you and the whole 'mixed-up time' issue. She rushes out the door and down the passage. Instinctively you rush out the door to follow her, and suddenly pass through that invisible wall again. She vanishes from sight as you step into the passageway - and return to your own time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Feeling a little uncertain as to what you might find, you nervously walk to the rear of the cockpit, and press the door release button. The rear door slides open and... The central passageway that runs from the cockpit, through the ship, to the cargo bay at the rear, looks exactly as it always does. Lights in the ceiling illuminate the steel passage. Metal grating panels on the floor allow access to various wires and cables that run through the ship, beneath your feet. Door hatches are set into the passage walls at different points along its length, leading to various rooms aboard the ship. Far at the other end, you see a large hatch, that opens into the cargo bay at the other end of the starship. Everything looks completely - suddenly there is a shearing of light and form, as a section of wall about half way down the passage blurs outwards into the passage, in an array of colourful streaking lines - then suddenly flattens out again to look like a normal section of wall once more. Perhaps things aren't as completely normal as they seem... You say a short prayer that the motion blurring phenomena won't happen anywhere near you. > You remain in the Cockpit for a while, just to be safe - that is, if anywhere on this ship is safe... After seeing what the strange warping phenomena did to Karl, and seeing the wall bulge in a similar way further down the passage, you are not too sure it would be safe to walk through the starship. However, as you stand in the Cockpit, wondering what to do, you realise a few things. Firstly, if you stay here, there's no guarantee that the air around you won't warp, and you won't be killed. Secondly, if you are stuck half-way between a Light Space Jump, then the only way out that you can think of, would be to reactivate the Jump Drive, and hope that it finishes the jump, and returns you to normal space. However, the Jump Drive Chamber is at the rear of the ship, to one side of the Cargo Bay. That means, if it is possible to reactivate the drive, you will have to travel through the ship to get to it... The fact that the rest of the ship doesn't even show on the ship's computer is in no way reassuring to you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Vampire. Indeed, that is what Kelso called you. You can still hear his cold, baritone voice explaining it to you. Vampires in the tales of Fantasy are glamorized; nigh-immortal, sexually desirable, powerful. But, while you suppose you are some of those things, in truth, you are not much more than an albino with a lot of health issues. The sun, he said, will damage your skin more than anything else. Any sort of foodstuff can't be digested anymore by your barely functioning bodily systems. He claims to have an idea of what the 'Professor' was trying to do to us, but for whatever reason, he has dodged the questions anytime you ask. Any information other than that, Kelso hasn't revealed. The irking thing is that it is obvious he knows what's going on, but he consistently acts as if it is in your own good you don't know what went on. The nights have been hard since your escape from the Facility. Most nights you wake up shivering, after all the nightmares you've been dealing with. It's terrifying, and it only makes you wonder what horrible things were done to you at the Facility. You do know that they must have affected your ability to feel. No, not the wishy washy 'emotional' garbage you'd usually expect, but your sense of touch was dulled. While a lot of your senses have been heightened, that one stands out. You feel very little pain from your feet, which is odd; considering how you spent your time running over cracked glass just two days ago, but it seems to have healed recently. --- Waiting. It should be sunrise by now. Kelso said you shouldn't get out, as you are a creature of the darkness now. He, on the other hand, has been out for the entire night and then some. You're not sure what Kelso is hunting for, but you know that you're beginning to get thirsty. More and more questions begin to build up, and no doubt the bastard won't answer half of them. Even while you ran with him through the night, running across various landscapes. Most are just a barren dessert, though every once in while you'd pass a half-buried house like this. "Bright lights up ahead." He said. A city only several miles down. Kelso must have gone there for the clothes he mentioned, but you hope he's safe.... > You continue waiting inside for Kelso A sigh leaves your lips as you ruffle your hair with your hand. Now scratching, several hairs fall off. Perhaps not too unusal; trivial, even. But things like this interest people in boredom. That, and the twitching of a certain fly beside the table. Twitch. Twitch. Twitch. It's annoying. Your nose flares as you continue to sit. Sleep isn't what it used to be either, more like an odd sort of meditating. Besides that, your senses continue to ring as the fly takes to the air around you. It lands, and you feel a faint tickle on your cheek-- And you catch the damned bugger. Nothing but your hand moved, a small action was all it took to take the flies life. You didn't even mean to kill it immediately, though you don't mind it's yellow ooze. Without feeling it, you squished it. Threat destroyed, you put your fingers to your temples and try to meditate. Almost immediately, your mind begins to drift... --- Come on, wake up! "Wuh? What's going on? Who are you?" We can formally reintroduce ourselves later damnit, the lab is falling apart! The lab? What lab? Why the hell am I in a lab? I'll explain everything once we're safe. But we need to go. Now. It is then when your eyes adjust enough that you can actually view the chaos that surrounds you. The red, flashing lights give you just enough light to make out cracked capsules with smelly liquid pouring out from them and flooding the floor. Looking even slightly up, you can see your own smashed container, as well as the pillars supporting the ceiling riddled with cracks. An odd assortment of humanoids seem to be sprawled out on the floor, with several still writhing and creeping sluggishly. But besides all this, you don't really feel much, considering. A numbing liquid surrounding and licking at your sides, but not much else. You can't even recognize your own heart beat. Then again, that's quite possibly due to the tension and commotion. Perhaps you were numbed while in that storage container. The man beside you seems to still shaking you, though it takes you several seconds to notice. Grabbing you by the hand, he begins to force you up and drag you along until your legs begin to feel enough to move. Although still sluggish, your motor controls seem to be working better than whatever you could remember. Finally, you feel like you can resume mumbling out questions, even while hurtling around breaking pillars and stumbling on broken glass. Where... where are we going? Out. The Zealots of the Church may come in any moment, so we need to evacuate. The Church? I... Can you at least tell me your name? Stop talking. Just run. How do you expect me to trust you if I don't even know who you are? I'm not sure you know who you are either, right now it's best you trust me and shut the hell up. And you do. Thinking about it, you really don't remember who you are. Who you were? It's... blank. The man's hand is outstretched, motioning you to hold on and follow. --- A sudden crashing noise awakes you from your revelation. > A uniformed man appears. Out of nowhere, a humanoid with flashy armor leaps at you. Fearful, you quickly send out a powerful jab, lamely clunking on his armor as he topples on top of you. You expect him to attack, or continue the assault, but he appears to be as dazed you are. Although the metal armor is heavy, you're able to throw him off of yourself, hearing a splintering in the wooden floor as he lands. "I'm here." It's Kelso. His striking features resemble an older gentleman. Whitish blonde hair and a gruff voice, though perhaps with a slight German accent-- almost grandfather-like. "Master, where were you? What... is this man doing here?" "C.E. Agent, member of the Church and Special-Forces Unit for taking care of our kind. You need to kill this filth." You raise an eyebrow, "What? I dunno... Ugh. No, Kelso. He's just, like, doing his job. I think? No, it doesn't matter! What's going on?" "His job is to murder Creations, government is after us and the rest of the-- the Professor's creations. We're not safe. Which, is why you need to kill this officer. You need to get used to this before it becomes more common to handle." The soldier slowly looks up at you, scrambling to get up. "You two... speak? Lord in heaven, the damned speak!" You can imagine his eyes would be widening right about now, but his entire body is covered in the metal suit, flashing with electric blue lining, his helmet with a black visor. The figure, now up, begins to scramble for a rifle-like object, but Kelso gives a heavy slap to the back of his head, sending the man flying forward, his helmet flying off in a different direction. "Kelso, Creations? What the hell is going on? Tell me!" "First, kill him." "I'm really not sure about this..." "Kid, I know you're hungry." It's true. "This is the only thing you can feast on." You just stare in disbelief, shaking your head. Kelso stares at you for a moment before turning around and kicking the operative in the side. You hear a dent and a crack, likely his ribs were smashed along with his armor. "Let's get your questions over with. Now. You need to decide what you'll do with him." You take a deep breath, just shocked at everything that's transpiring. After mumbling and scratching your head, you think you know what to ask. > You say "Why the hell do I need to eat this man?" Kelso sighs with an apparent annoyance. "You're not eating him. You're going to drink his blood. I've explained this before." He sort of did, but it doesn't exactly make it better. He told you that you couldn't digest any food, but he never mentioned you'd have to digest blood! "I... I drink his blood... from the neck?" Your knowledge about supernatural creatures is more or less non-existent, give or take whatever nerdy things you might have dabbled in high-school. Unless you were some sort of jock before then. You don't remember... "Not necessarily. The wrist works too-- as long as you get a stream of blood in your mouth you'll be satiated. This should be easier as things go along though, since any sort of infirmary should have some blood packs for transfusions, and those are easily broken into. And you can always drink non-human blood... But this is necessary. Oh, and do remember to watch out for the diseased, bad blood isn't good for yor system." "Ugh... Do we really have to kill him?" You ask with a frown. "Unless you want him to call upon the rest of the C.E. Crew on our asses, then yes. Either way, you need to be full before we leave this shit hole. We have work to do."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Out of nowhere, a humanoid with flashy armor leaps at you. Fearful, you quickly send out a powerful jab, lamely clunking on his armor as he topples on top of you. You expect him to attack, or continue the assault, but he appears to be as dazed you are. Although the metal armor is heavy, you're able to throw him off of yourself, hearing a splintering in the wooden floor as he lands. "I'm here." It's Kelso. His striking features resemble an older gentleman. Whitish blonde hair and a gruff voice, though perhaps with a slight German accent-- almost grandfather-like. "Master, where were you? What... is this man doing here?" "C.E. Agent, member of the Church and Special-Forces Unit for taking care of our kind. You need to kill this filth." You raise an eyebrow, "What? I dunno... Ugh. No, Kelso. He's just, like, doing his job. I think? No, it doesn't matter! What's going on?" "His job is to murder Creations, government is after us and the rest of the-- the Professor's creations. We're not safe. Which, is why you need to kill this officer. You need to get used to this before it becomes more common to handle." The soldier slowly looks up at you, scrambling to get up. "You two... speak? Lord in heaven, the damned speak!" You can imagine his eyes would be widening right about now, but his entire body is covered in the metal suit, flashing with electric blue lining, his helmet with a black visor. The figure, now up, begins to scramble for a rifle-like object, but Kelso gives a heavy slap to the back of his head, sending the man flying forward, his helmet flying off in a different direction. "Kelso, Creations? What the hell is going on? Tell me!" "First, kill him." "I'm really not sure about this..." "Kid, I know you're hungry." It's true. "This is the only thing you can feast on." You just stare in disbelief, shaking your head. Kelso stares at you for a moment before turning around and kicking the operative in the side. You hear a dent and a crack, likely his ribs were smashed along with his armor. "Let's get your questions over with. Now. You need to decide what you'll do with him." You take a deep breath, just shocked at everything that's transpiring. After mumbling and scratching your head, you think you know what to ask. > You say "Creations? What did the Professor do to us?" "You and me both. The Professor was a nasty sort, creating freaks of nature to..." His face seems to strain, though for reasons you may or may not realize, "To... for a program, you see. The Government shut the facility down early enough, but he kept the creations up and running for a while longer. When the soldiers came to burn the place down, well, that's where you and I come in. Possibly others." "There are more like me and you?" You ask, trying to absorb as much as you can before Kelso shuts up again. "Maybe. I'd be surprised if that much survived the raid. But there are certainly other experiments that the Professor did. Chimera, Were-beasts, you name it. And, of course, 'vampires', like you." "What about yourself? I thought you were a vampire as well? "I'm a lot of things." A pause in the conversation occurs, before you shake your head and continue the questionnaire, "Right... And why are the soldiers trying to kill us?" "I told you already, the Church, lead by a certain priest named 'Tomas', believes we're demonic mutants created by the Professor. They think they're cleaning the world from us. That's what they've been doing for years, hunting down Creations on some sort of religious-killing spree. The facility which you woke up from was the last one before they destroyed it. Even though we live virtually forever, this is a curse, kid, and they realize that. As Creations, we're biologically forced to do things. We have to drink blood-- it's a necessity. The sunlight burns us, for our skin is too fair. What they don't realize is that we're also sentient beings. We were humans, once. ''And yet, the bastard that made us still lives somewhere out there. And I want you to help me find him. Furthermore, if we make a good enough team, we may even be able to overthrow the Church, for it's reach is strong. They're more or less the only ruling bodies the world has currently... Both of them, the Professor and the Church, are evils that need to be eradicated. We'll stop them both, just stick with me, kid."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Out of nowhere, a humanoid with flashy armor leaps at you. Fearful, you quickly send out a powerful jab, lamely clunking on his armor as he topples on top of you. You expect him to attack, or continue the assault, but he appears to be as dazed you are. Although the metal armor is heavy, you're able to throw him off of yourself, hearing a splintering in the wooden floor as he lands. "I'm here." It's Kelso. His striking features resemble an older gentleman. Whitish blonde hair and a gruff voice, though perhaps with a slight German accent-- almost grandfather-like. "Master, where were you? What... is this man doing here?" "C.E. Agent, member of the Church and Special-Forces Unit for taking care of our kind. You need to kill this filth." You raise an eyebrow, "What? I dunno... Ugh. No, Kelso. He's just, like, doing his job. I think? No, it doesn't matter! What's going on?" "His job is to murder Creations, government is after us and the rest of the-- the Professor's creations. We're not safe. Which, is why you need to kill this officer. You need to get used to this before it becomes more common to handle." The soldier slowly looks up at you, scrambling to get up. "You two... speak? Lord in heaven, the damned speak!" You can imagine his eyes would be widening right about now, but his entire body is covered in the metal suit, flashing with electric blue lining, his helmet with a black visor. The figure, now up, begins to scramble for a rifle-like object, but Kelso gives a heavy slap to the back of his head, sending the man flying forward, his helmet flying off in a different direction. "Kelso, Creations? What the hell is going on? Tell me!" "First, kill him." "I'm really not sure about this..." "Kid, I know you're hungry." It's true. "This is the only thing you can feast on." You just stare in disbelief, shaking your head. Kelso stares at you for a moment before turning around and kicking the operative in the side. You hear a dent and a crack, likely his ribs were smashed along with his armor. "Let's get your questions over with. Now. You need to decide what you'll do with him." You take a deep breath, just shocked at everything that's transpiring. After mumbling and scratching your head, you think you know what to ask. > You say "Who am-- was I?" Kelso stares at you, obviously contemplating how to answer. "Don't know, don't care. Your new life begins now." Damn. Well, okay, doesn't seem like he's going to reveal anything...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Out of nowhere, a humanoid with flashy armor leaps at you. Fearful, you quickly send out a powerful jab, lamely clunking on his armor as he topples on top of you. You expect him to attack, or continue the assault, but he appears to be as dazed you are. Although the metal armor is heavy, you're able to throw him off of yourself, hearing a splintering in the wooden floor as he lands. "I'm here." It's Kelso. His striking features resemble an older gentleman. Whitish blonde hair and a gruff voice, though perhaps with a slight German accent-- almost grandfather-like. "Master, where were you? What... is this man doing here?" "C.E. Agent, member of the Church and Special-Forces Unit for taking care of our kind. You need to kill this filth." You raise an eyebrow, "What? I dunno... Ugh. No, Kelso. He's just, like, doing his job. I think? No, it doesn't matter! What's going on?" "His job is to murder Creations, government is after us and the rest of the-- the Professor's creations. We're not safe. Which, is why you need to kill this officer. You need to get used to this before it becomes more common to handle." The soldier slowly looks up at you, scrambling to get up. "You two... speak? Lord in heaven, the damned speak!" You can imagine his eyes would be widening right about now, but his entire body is covered in the metal suit, flashing with electric blue lining, his helmet with a black visor. The figure, now up, begins to scramble for a rifle-like object, but Kelso gives a heavy slap to the back of his head, sending the man flying forward, his helmet flying off in a different direction. "Kelso, Creations? What the hell is going on? Tell me!" "First, kill him." "I'm really not sure about this..." "Kid, I know you're hungry." It's true. "This is the only thing you can feast on." You just stare in disbelief, shaking your head. Kelso stares at you for a moment before turning around and kicking the operative in the side. You hear a dent and a crack, likely his ribs were smashed along with his armor. "Let's get your questions over with. Now. You need to decide what you'll do with him." You take a deep breath, just shocked at everything that's transpiring. After mumbling and scratching your head, you think you know what to ask. > You continue. After asking all the questions you can think of, you watch the pained man writhe and groan. The domineering Kelso looks at his pitiful state, bends down and puts his index finger to right above where his carotid artery is, obviously sensing for the pulse. "Here, sink your teeth in and drink." Although you are hesitant, your instincts take over as your mouth begins to water slightly, making it slightly less dry for the first time. As you bend down, you begin to feel... fangs protrude from your upper jaw. Sharp, powerful teeth, ready to satiate your hunger. Hoping to get it over with, instinct and lust takes over as you bring your head down and get your teeth stuck on top of his neck. Rich, red blood squirts with an ugly squishing sound. "God damnit, on the artery!" Kelso grabs your neck and, pulling your fangs out of the man, forces it back on the right place. You moan, half in pleasure and the other half in disgust. It tastes... salty, filling. It tasted good, and you don't mind choking on this stuff. It's the first time you've felt such a rush, it's like a drug... But, on the other hand... This isn't human. This man... He's screaming, begging. Something about children and the forces of evil... As Kelso let's you have control of your own neck again, the sudden rush ends, and you cough out the other man's blood. "You didn't have to kill him, but he's dead now. Which is actually a good thing, but you really should be less sloppy. You missed." He continues to smile. Kelso begins to strip the Zealot's armor off, and hands it to you. A walkie-talkie falls to the floor and clatters, though it remains undamaged. "Now we can begin." He tosses you the armor, a hoodie, and some sort of... lotion? You catch, it reflexively, "Begin what?" "Our vengeance. Tying up loose ends. Give meaning to your un-life." "I... I just killed a man!" "Who was going to kill you. Plus, it was an accident." You stand there, with bloody hands and a mouth dripping with delectable blood. Kelso... What's he up to? He... You think he's a good person, he saved you. But, this isn't right. Maybe you should get away... "Snap out of it kid, we have a duty to fulfill. This isn't a blessing what happened to you and me, and that's why we need to kill the man who did this to us, so he can't do this to others." > You lacking a healthy alternative, join Kelso for your new life. It's like the first time you remember Kelso. His hand outstretched, asking him to join you... You shake it firmly. It's crazy, but you trust him. Like a baby chick to the first thing it sees... It's funny. He's become of a master and more like a father. While he may not have the most moral methods, he still knows way more than you and will help you through it. Besides, the Professor no doubt know your origins, before you kill him you might even get that from him. If you stick with Kelso, that is. As silence consumes the conversation, you attempt at conversing, "So, the lotion..." "Sun-tan lotion. It wears off after a small while, but it'll protect you when it counts. Spread it on your face, wouldn't want that to peel all the way off. The hoodie and that is the best things I was able to take." "So you stole it?" He shrugs. "Took it. We need to hide, remember? Can't have people know about us and our condition. The soldiers are much stronger when they are in control. Also: the Zealot's armor. It's worth equipping, just need to turn off the flashy-light part." "And now what?" "You stop asking questions and let me finish." He eyes you with seeming annoyance. "We'll be finding his stronger Creations that no doubt survived this long. They're a violent lot though, which is why having you will be a big help. I figure one of them will know where the Professor is." As if reading your mind, he continues, "And we find them by trailing the C.E. Division, which have specific DNA trackers on some of us. Not you or myself, thankfully, but a good deal of the Creations were registered to the government. Government program and all... But anyhow, we're going to town soon. I say we wait at the police station, they should have an outpost there. After hearing where they are, we hitch a ride in one of their vans. Not a very elaborate plan, but it'll probably work." He stares at you, as if expecting resistance. "Unless you have a better idea?" "Actually... > No. It seems solid enough. Let's do it." "It seems solid enough, let's do it." He nods in return, as if pondering about something. "Then let's go." "Now? Are you sure I'm ready?" "Yes now. You're ready." Kelso smiles. --- Suffice to say, you're pretty confident. You're in full control of your new body, and the armor you looted off the zealot may be bulky, but you'd be damned if you didn't look awesome with it. All this gave your self-esteem a much needed boost before setting off to the City. Kel, as you've come to call him, probably realized that when he offered it to you. Admittedly, it's probably why you haven't pressed him for questions on the plan; he just seems to have everything under control. Now, on the night of the full moon, Kelso's ambiguous plan will be enacted. Perhaps the full moon was completely planned, or perhaps not. Regardless, the tension can be felt in the air. Regardless, the journey to the flashy city several miles down is uneventful, save for the fascinating landscape and occasional howls that Kelso doesn't seem to hear (you've mentioned this to him; and he took interest but told you to save it for later, as it may be important). But yes, the landscape changed dramatically from the collection of half-buried houses that you were holed up in with Kelso. From complete, uninhabited desert, to a flashy, futuristic town with strobe lights and a somewhat dense population considering the size of the premises. It's not even that big, but it's... Out of place. Surrounded by desert, it stands as a beacon of light. Your mentor is garbed with the hoodie he gave you earlier, his older, but surly exterior showing out in the twilight. As he leads you through the sand to the City, he suddenly stops to speak; and you stand at attention. "So, you're probably all ears to hear what my plan was." You nod. "Err, yes." "Then why didn't you ask? Didn't my plan sound ridiculous" The wind stops blowing. "I know you have everything under control. I trust in you, master." Kelso turns to face you, his face solemn and grim. "Then you're not what I need. I want to tame a lion, not a goat." He spits, and before you know it your face has hit the rough sand. You quickly turn to see Kelso jumping up, the moon behind him and his silver claws in front, his eyes now turned red and gleaming. You jump from the ground to the side, but his hand catches your chest. You breathe; it doesn't regenerate. Another breath. More blood squirts out. His other hand now clawing at your eyes. Aching pain... it's all black, but you're still alive! You can feel your body spasming, and you turn all your confusion into rage and power, but to no avail... You have been killed by your mentor.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It's like the first time you remember Kelso. His hand outstretched, asking him to join you... You shake it firmly. It's crazy, but you trust him. Like a baby chick to the first thing it sees... It's funny. He's become of a master and more like a father. While he may not have the most moral methods, he still knows way more than you and will help you through it. Besides, the Professor no doubt know your origins, before you kill him you might even get that from him. If you stick with Kelso, that is. As silence consumes the conversation, you attempt at conversing, "So, the lotion..." "Sun-tan lotion. It wears off after a small while, but it'll protect you when it counts. Spread it on your face, wouldn't want that to peel all the way off. The hoodie and that is the best things I was able to take." "So you stole it?" He shrugs. "Took it. We need to hide, remember? Can't have people know about us and our condition. The soldiers are much stronger when they are in control. Also: the Zealot's armor. It's worth equipping, just need to turn off the flashy-light part." "And now what?" "You stop asking questions and let me finish." He eyes you with seeming annoyance. "We'll be finding his stronger Creations that no doubt survived this long. They're a violent lot though, which is why having you will be a big help. I figure one of them will know where the Professor is." As if reading your mind, he continues, "And we find them by trailing the C.E. Division, which have specific DNA trackers on some of us. Not you or myself, thankfully, but a good deal of the Creations were registered to the government. Government program and all... But anyhow, we're going to town soon. I say we wait at the police station, they should have an outpost there. After hearing where they are, we hitch a ride in one of their vans. Not a very elaborate plan, but it'll probably work." He stares at you, as if expecting resistance. "Unless you have a better idea?" "Actually... > You why don't we just signal them?" Kelso rubs at his clean chin. "Elaborate." You hold up the walky-talkie, "If they know where the Professor is, then that means they're either working for him, like you're assuming, or are just planning their vengeance; If we can get a message to them, get their attention--" "Then the C.E. Soldiers will get to us and them." "Not unless our signal is obscure, something only a Creation would know. Can I assume that we're the only one who refer to the Professor, as, well, a professor?" Your mentor smiles, "Yes... That's what the greater Creations called him. Myself, the Werewolf, Stein, and several others. We all were forced under the bastard to look over Lessers, like yourself. One of them are bound to be in this town, has the smallest C.E. division in the East. We just have to hope we'll be able to handle them in the case that they're still loyal. So you want us to send a wide broadcast, maybe even a flare labeled 'Professor', and hope we catch some of our brethren?" "That," you continue, "or we lure the church to us by contacting them with the Walkie, and just beat the information out of them. By the sounds of it, they'd be expecting a trap, so they wouldn't bring all their operatives to this location. Hopefully they have an idea where the other Creations are. It's not a perfect plan, but it's uh, better than yours. Don't think you can just nab one like you did with the last one, now that they're probably on guard." Kelso nods, considering both of your plans, "Much better. Regardless, Mr. Plans, we need to train." "Train, for what?" Crossing your arms as a child would, you question Kelso. "I feel like you're not telling me everything. Even if the plan is solid, but we need to be solid, with, umm, each-other." With a chuckle, Kelso replies, "What do you think we're doing? We're fighting against an elite military operation, as well as bio-genetically advanced Creations. We're not playing here, son, there's going to be blood. I'm pretty certain that you'll be able to be very powerful if we train accordingly. This may be surprising, but I think you should cherish your undeath while it lasts. Not to mention that I'd rather not jeopardize myself." "... So the Creations are going to be very hostile?" He shrugs in return, "Maybe, more likely than not anyhow. We're betting on whether they're still loyal or not to their Creator." "Why would they still be loyal to that... that bastard?" "Well, he did save our lives." You stand in silence with a confused frown. Kelso continues. "Mind you, he also treated us like lab rats and played with our genetic-material. That's why we're going to find him and his Creations, to put an end to it once and for all, so no one else is 'saved' by that man." You nod in understanding. Kelso and yourself... You're going to help the world together. Clean it. A hero... "The valley of dunes at night is the best place and time. We'll train today and tomorrow, and by then you should be ready. Now, more about that plan of yours..." > You contact the other Creations in any way possible. You spend the next several nights preparing for action, training with Kelso. Over the course of your tutoring, you've begun to really fit into your new, adaptable body. You're able to fight, and you're able to think, strategize. Be efficient, be in control. You know you're ready, and you don't need Kelso to convince you of that anymore. You feel like you're ready to pull off one of your plans. It's night once again, with the Moon full and bright. Kelso is clad in your hoodie, his aged but intimidating features showing out from under it. It didn't seem like his ideal clothes (you could see him rocking a cloak) but when at night a hoodie is probably more practical. You're still garbed in the bulky, but inspiring armor of the Zealot, just with the lights on the outside turned off. You look to your Mentor, who's sitting beside you in the half-buried house. You begin to explain your simplistic, though wishful plan to your mentor. "This is obviously just an assumption, but if we were able to nick a talkie pretty quick, then any other Creation in the area would probably have one." You begin, eyeing Kelso's facial expression. Blank. "Sound logic." You cough, and then continue, "But they wouldn't use the same channel that the Church uses to communicate, I'd assume. So if we fiddle with the channel, go through each one very thoroughly, then-" "We may find a fellow, nearby Creation. Interesting, though it may not work." "And if it doesn't work then we can try my other plan." You say arguing for your plans. "Well, we should get this done quick then. You're likely going to get hungry if you don't drink soon. Couple of days, I think." You shudder; drinking like you did last time wasn't fun. Even if it was tasty. "So, you think it's worth a shot?" He nods, "Provided you know what to say to them if they reply." Thoughts begin to form, though you can admit to yourself that you're not a hundred percent certain on what you could say. Hello, we're looking for the Professor? ... Um, want to tell us where you are? Thanks, please don't kill us when we meet. You laugh, the situation playing out in your head. "Let's do it then, no reason not to." You grab around and find the Zealot's walkie-talkie, and switch it on... Click You immediately memorize where the current dial is set at and then begin to move the dial all the way to the left. You wait for a moment, only hearing static. The dial moves about a millimeter to the right-- just static. One centimeter at a time... To say the least, it gets aggravating. More static, keeps going, and going, and no dice. > You trudge along... Every time the dial moves slightly less than a centimeter, you pause for thirty seconds, push the button and recite in monotone, "Hello, are you knowledgeable about the Professor?" Hoping you catch something or get a response. Kelso's eventual chuckles are disconcerting, to say the least, but you focus on the problem at hand. You continue pushing the dial to the right, passing it's original point and beyond. Meanwhile, you're praying to no deity in particular that your plan succeeds. You want to impress Kelso. He's like a father-figure, the first person you saw when your hatched out of your tube. On the other hand, he's a teacher who's withholding information, which gets frustrating at times. You remain conflicted about the only person you have met in your vampiric form. Suddenly, you hear a response. Short and you can't make out what it's saying, but it's something. You push the button and repeat, "Hello?" You stop pressing. Lots of static, probably bad reception on their end. A gruff, snarling voice speaks out, "Who's there? What's this about a professor?" "You know who I'm talking about." You reply, hoping. "The Professor, the one who Created us." "Then who are you?" "A fellow Creation, and I want to join forces. The Zealots are too many in number for my liking." "Do you really... Who's with you?" You look to Kelso, who brings a finger to his lips. "Just... Just me. Why?" "Because you're lying." The voice coughs, sending over a truly ugly sound over the transceiver, "But no matter. You wish to join the Wolves then, right?" "Assuming your group can take care of itself. How many are your group and where are you?" "Five and growing. You won't find it, it's under the ground." And growing? "So can you lead me to where you guys are?" You wait a couple of moments, and then he answers, "Hmm... Nah. We don't need more nutbars in this camp. I'd rather not bring attention to our hideout from the Zealots." Son of a bitch. "Well, you're missing out, Wolfie." "I'm sure I am, haha." You click it off. "Sorry, Kelso, that was pretty pointless." "Though interesting. It doesn't sound like they're too interested in finding the Professor, rather just survival. Perhaps with a little arm twisting we can get in there..." "If we find out where they are." "Well, that's what Plan B is for, right?" > You try to lure a Zealot here, in hopes one of them know where the Wolf hideout is. "Err, uh, yeah. Let's try my other plan." Kelso laughs. "Of course." "Hey, both of my plans were better than your's." You argue, setting the dial back to where it was. Now that you think about it, you wonder why the Church never went out looking for the Zealot which your mentor killed, and you killed. Perhaps they did, just you and Kelso never noticed it. Or perhaps the Zealots often went out in long journeys without communication. No matter now, You realize, they'll pick up at the signal. Somebody will. Excitedly, you fidget for the WT, and grasp it firmly. You clear your throat to speak, but Kelso briefs you. "Remember, just put the channel on. Listen in and wait for a while, and if nothing turns up then try speaking. But only then." "Does it matter?" "It might." You cough again, then breathe in. Out. In. You put the dial back to where it was in the first place. Out. Nothing but static, for now. Minutes go by. You stand at the ready. But all is static. Ten minutes turns to half an hour, though your body doesn't stop tensing. Something is coming. > You try to communicate. You push the button on the walkie-talkie, and speak into it. "Hello?" Moments pass. After several more crackles you get a response. A cool female voice speaks out, "Sebastian? Seargent, is everything alright?" British? Kelso shoots you a sideways glance. You can almost feel him sending you a message with his eyes. Be creative, you call the shots for now. You blink. Ahem, "I have spotted some of the err, creations." "Well of course you have." Matter of fact tone. "We've known where the devils that are the Wolves have been for a while now. We just need to strike them. Which reminds me, we should get back to base." Perfect. Ish. "No! The, uh, lord helped me and I found others." "Others? What do you mean?" "There are other Creations that have escaped aside from the, uh, wolves, and-" The woman on the other side is excited, "More?" "Um, only one. That I found, at least. But one is one too many. I uh, need backup." "Stop stuttering, Sebastian. This is important. Where are you? Now searching it up..." Pause. "Your GPS tracker hasn't been functioning for a couple of days. That's probably why security has tightened around the City. Where the hell are you?" Shit. "Well, uh, the battery died and, uh, things happened." "Things? Sebastian, I... Did it take you hostage?" You've decided you like her voice. "It?" She lowers her voice, "What is your general location, Sebastian? We'll find you. You'll be safe." You pause, looking to Kelso for help. To tell the truth, you have no idea where you are. Kelso looks the other way. You sigh, annoyed at him. Maybe he's just a bit offended that your plan was better. Or not. "I..." > You force the reciever into Kelso's hand. Scared to risk stuttering more and screwing things up, you take the WT and make sure Kelso holds it. He looks at you with contempt before speaking into it. "Indeed." He seethes, his voice threatening and just... Cold. Kelso doesn't even need to try to get his voice that way, it just is, even if it sounds grandfather-like when he scolds you, "I have him. It's amazing how the Church has destroyed what's left of this Earth. Only desert left aside from your little colony and houses buried in sand. But believe me, this 'Sebastian' isn't the first human who I've caught." Kelso pauses, and releases the button to see if she responds. She doesn't. He finishes. "And he won't be the last." Click And it's off. "Master, wasn't that too dramatic? We don't want them to send more than we can handle..." "Kid, you never force a person into a conversation he didn't start. You'd think you'd still remember proper manners. Let's just hope to heaven they don't bring every damn one of the king's men." --- Kelso and yourself find several mounds to hide behind. There are only several clusters of areas around the big City that have the half-buried houses, which means that the religious troupe will likely find them there, at some point. You keep your sights on the city. Every once in a while you'll see moving lights across the landscape, which are subsequently turned off. Then on. And off again... "Those are the soldiers." Kelso points out to you. A good deal of them too, and approaching quickly on more than one side. The lights seem to travel in groups. You count... Eight groups of five. You wonder how many you can take, and in turn how much more Kelso could. "So, what's the plan?" "We capture one and hightail it out of here. This... Is going to be challenging." Your mentor stands up, watching the approaching mob of Zealots. Two or three are way off, lighting up the opposite direction, but the rest are surrounding your vicinity, though you're uncertain if that's on purpose or not. Kelso motions you to come closer to him, to listen. "This is where we split up. They're trying to flank us, but that won't work when they're spread out like this. We're, funnily enough, a straight, though long line away from the city. The lights are moving toward us, and with other groups closing in from the two sides; a circle. I go one way, you go the other." "Like we trained, I hit hared and fast." He nods. "Let's get to it then. Good luck, kid." He begins jogging to the left. It's when he breaks out into a run when you only begin moving leftwards. For the first time since you escaped the Facility, you're scared. You sprint across the sand with your head down, maintaining balance and stealth even with your heavy armor. You ready yourself, the lights shining brighter and brighter until... You see them. Tall, thick, dark; the words that come to mind. Shining Crosses on ebony metal that covers the entire body, down to the legs. His helmet's visor is like a medieval knight's, only more techy. Not only that, but their rifles are huge, with tusks at the end. You wonder what caliber that behemoth could hold... Still, you have the element of surprise, if only because you aren't a lightbulb shaped a like freaking cross. You leap up, letting a gust of wind propel you, making a cross of your own in the night-sky, Your body finds itself right above the ringleader, who dumbly looks up when your feet, disguised as sneakers, land on his helmet. A heavy clunking sound is made before you hear a snap (his neck), which you use for momentum, jumping at another, this time with your fists. Refined rage, like Kelso taught you. It was going fine until bullets came into the picture. After the second clunk the last three of the group turn and point their bayonets-on-crack rifles at you. What comes out isn't a bullet, more like... Lightning? It bursts out at you with a mighty roar, and you feel your skin ripping, only to regenerate. Three more blasts, you make another swipe, hitting viciously through the armor of one, finishing him off with blood. Three (who were shooting at you) to go. They reload, which thankfully takes enough time. One of them doesn't bother, however, and stick the tusks of his rifle into you. Some of your blood spills, and even more of his bursts out when you push his rifle from inside you to inside of him, his armor nothing when your rage takes over. With blood squirting into your eyes, the rest are easy work. You claw at the armored figures, their lightning-shots hurting you but not overcoming you until... You're done. Five of them were killed, and you don't even remember how the last one went down. You lay on the sand, too stunned to move. More of the Crosses come over to belt you over the head with what must be a bible, because damn was it heavy. --- Even more bright lights (a recurring theme, you tell yourself), and you find yourself strapped onto a chair. The room is all blue, but your chair is white. For whatever reason, the colors seem pleasant, and calming to you. You wonder what happened to Kelso... A powerful voice speaks out, "Who are you?" > You reply truthfully. "I honestly don't know." You reply to the voice, "But who are you?" The blue room begins to make funny, scratching noises. Then, the sound of clinking; gears shifting, and a part of the room turns backwards, revealing an opening. Out of it, and elderly man with a flowing white beard, skullcap and robe comes out. "My apologies," His gravely, but strong voice speaks out, "I am the founder of the Church and retired Zealot." As he says this, a hatch in the floor is cranked open, allowing space for an odd chair to form out. "May I take a seat?" You lick your lips. Still some blood on them, you would have thought the assholes be kind enough to wash you, but apparently not. Seeing you not respond, the Father takes a seat. "So," He begins, "You don't remember... Anything? How have you been surviving alone? You're young." You nod. "No. I woke up when your 'Zealots' destroyed teh Facility. I'm lucky I made it out alive, with your dogs burning it down. I had a mentor, though you likely got him as well..." "There are two unlisted Creations? Fascinating." He strokes his beard, "The burning of the facility was necessary. Not that you'd know, you're in the dark, I believe." You find this funny, though not untrue. "And you're about to enlighten me?" Tomas nods, "Then end your suffering, through any means necessary." "So I'm going to die by the end of this?" "Of course. Though there's always the option of cooperating. Even the saints needed the devils to do their bidding. Sometimes." He smiles. "I'm not some sort of 'devil'." You reply, bewildered, "Why do you suppose that?" "You like stories, yes? Because there is a necessary one here, one that you probably never heard of." Head shaking, you motion for him to carry on. "For being such a good sport, I'll cut out the dramatic parts and just get to the real 'beef'" He states, his eyes trained on yours. He coughs, spewing out dots of mucus in your direction, then does it again. WIth his throat now cleared, Father Tomas begins his tale. "The world two decades ago was a much different place. Lush greens were the equivalent of sand today; everywhere you looked, there was grass. Huge cities, several miles in circumference, were common place. Buildings reaching the clouds and mods of transport like griffons, soaring high above. Religion, ironically, was considerably less widespread, and it continued to dwindle as so-called 'science' led many astray. As evil was legalized, sodomy and murder-rates soon became more and more consistent and the government fell to anarchy as horrible diseases began to spread. Militant radicals spread throughout the globe, raping and pillaging. At the time, to those who were looking, it was obvious that this was God's Reckoning; his flood to bring about a New Age. That's where Simon Kurschner's Creations came into play. With government support, he tried to find a way to get out of the apocalypse, not realizing it was God's will, it couldn't be stopped. But he tried, and he received the funding to do whatever he wanted, with hopes of stopping the plague, and creating beings who could stop the barbarians. He took the dead and dying, experimenting on them and trying to create slaves. There is no doubt in my mind he did things that weren't legal, but that didn't matter to them. As long as he saved us, he could go against the Lord's will, using humans as guinea pigs, and secretly trying to make for himself perfect slaves. Kurschner created many different sorts of entities, and for the next several years he was a beacon of hope for the non-believers. But we, the Church, we knew what was coming. The Creations were immune to disease, and had a fighting prowess unmatched by the strongest armies in the world. One Creation could destroy hundreds of Radicals with minimal effort, and it seemed like this would fix everything, but hell on Earth stayed. Even after the threats were stopped, the Creations and their Leader wanted more. They began to kill indiscriminately, with an attempt to rule the world." He takes a deep breath, trying to remember, "As God decreed, the Earth began to decay in the demons' wake. While Doctor Kurschner ruled his legions from hell, a few of us banded together. The Church was the new Ark; we banded together to maintain what's left of humanity. IT was hard, but we suceeded, with several towns in the Northern United States. But the demons still linger, and it is our duty to destroy what God intended to not let live. "Because that's is what you are!" He raises his voice, shaking his fists angrily at your helpless self on the chair, "You were supposed to stay dead, like the rest of the infected. But you were given life, and now are doomed to live a cursed life because of that Doctor. That is why the Church will destroy all the Creations that are still roaming the Earth." "But they're still human!" You interrupt, pointing to yourself, "I'm still human." The Priest continues, as if not hearing you, "However... It isn't your fault. Perhaps that's why I'm giving you this chance, a chance at a redemption, of sorts. After the men you've killed, there is nothing I can do to save your unlife, but perhaps you can still find favor with the Lord... Undercover." > You hear him out. His story is... Interesting, to say the least. So Simon Kurschner is the Professor's actual name. "So what do you want from me?" You ask, uncertain of yourself. Who is my main enemy? The Professor or the Church? Both? Is the Professor even still alive? The Father nods, "We need you to lead us to the other Creations, so we can finish them once and for all. You are the last of the Vampires, and you can most likely help our charge on the Wolves. As I said, the Creations are very powerful. Having one on our side could be a huge help." You smirk back at him, "Why though? It's not like you've given me any sort of ambition to help you wackos." "Well, I thought life was good objective." He shrugs, bringing his hand close to the opening of his robes. "You think I'd sell out my fellow Creations just for myself?" "I'd be surprised if you cared for them-- you don't even remember them! You have no connection to this world anymore." He grimaces, taking a knobby finger and waving it at your chest. "The only thing that may be left is your heart, and even that is subject to debate. Will you side with us, the humans, or die here. The choice is yours. Light and Darkness, that is your only option here!" Light and Darkness, but is it really that simple? > You redeem yourself in the eyes of God. "Very good." The old man grins, "Your training shall commence soon enough. Now, you will be fed every once in a while, we have some animals out back that you can feast from, if you want. But you certainly won't be getting human blood, haha." Regardless of your reasons for accepting the devil's bargain, you can't help but find him horribly irritating currently. You sigh, realizing that the only thing you can look forward to this week is the blandly colored room and the sneering priest. "Goodbye, then, Vampire of the Light." The priest happily shuffles away into the clinking gear-based doors, and your mind wanders... Days pass, and you'd be lying if you said that you weren't surprised that the withered old geezer wasn't mentoring you himself. Of course, this makes sense-- the rest of the Church would probably lynch him if he declared you 'AOK', but it's more surprising how spry the man is. He spends the next few days teaching you boring protocol, not-as-boring use of standardized C.E. weaponry, and a quick, refined crash-course through some-sort of martial art. Surprisingly, he doesn't bother you with the gospel of the Zealots, but you're too busy working on yourself in order to reflect on that. Within a week, he manages to transform you into what he thinks is a Creation killing machine. And it's then when he reveals the plan you were already somewhat familiar with. "It is necessary that we raid the Wolf hideout, and completely eliminate the Wolf threat once and for all, when they least expect it. We have found their coordinates, finally," he hands you a tablet, showing a mapping of the surrounding desert, "And can now make sure they can no longer harm themselves or anyone else anymore. So, Vampire-Of-Light, do you think you're ready to take on the Demons, as is your holy mission?" "Sir, yes sir!" He grins, then outfits you with standard Zealot equipment; armor, rifle, and various gadgets used for communication. "Now just wait here while I get the rest of the Zealots ready. Tonight, you will banish the evil in our own backyards! Godspeed, soldier." With that, he leaves, finally leaving you alone. Ah, the open air and the cold night sky. Beautiful in many ways, and-- wait, I'm outside! I can run away from this place! I can't believe they're letting me out unsupervised like this... > You run away, you must inform your brethren of the Church's plans before you're too late! You slowly begin making your way up and to the right-side, in the direction of the Wolves' actual hideout. What starts off as a slow walk turns into full-blown running on the cool desert sand. You breathe in the air, and then out. Despite the recent turn of events, you feel absolutely wonderful; though that feeling is soon changed into a horrific one. You suddenly sense your body being pulled back by some sort of shocking force, and then your bleary eyes only make out another cool-blue room. Difference is, there are several others in the room, all in masks. You try to move, but your entire body seems to be restrained by a cold metal, and your face is covered by some sort of hazy mask and... Is that a scalpel!?!? The Father's voice rings out, "See, the funny thing is, you never really had a choice in helping us. In the end, God always opens up ways for his sheep to wander, and always closes the gates on the bad wolves. I had plans to make use of you regardless of whether you actually meant repentance." Though it's a slow and dull process, you feel your life-energy slowly being sucked out. Even if you could probably survive much longer, you slowly realize that survival is what they want, so they could continue examining your body and organs for whatever purposes and rituals the Zealots want. Soon, your spirit leaves your body, and you feel yourself die on the hospital bed. You have been killed by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Very good." The old man grins, "Your training shall commence soon enough. Now, you will be fed every once in a while, we have some animals out back that you can feast from, if you want. But you certainly won't be getting human blood, haha." Regardless of your reasons for accepting the devil's bargain, you can't help but find him horribly irritating currently. You sigh, realizing that the only thing you can look forward to this week is the blandly colored room and the sneering priest. "Goodbye, then, Vampire of the Light." The priest happily shuffles away into the clinking gear-based doors, and your mind wanders... Days pass, and you'd be lying if you said that you weren't surprised that the withered old geezer wasn't mentoring you himself. Of course, this makes sense-- the rest of the Church would probably lynch him if he declared you 'AOK', but it's more surprising how spry the man is. He spends the next few days teaching you boring protocol, not-as-boring use of standardized C.E. weaponry, and a quick, refined crash-course through some-sort of martial art. Surprisingly, he doesn't bother you with the gospel of the Zealots, but you're too busy working on yourself in order to reflect on that. Within a week, he manages to transform you into what he thinks is a Creation killing machine. And it's then when he reveals the plan you were already somewhat familiar with. "It is necessary that we raid the Wolf hideout, and completely eliminate the Wolf threat once and for all, when they least expect it. We have found their coordinates, finally," he hands you a tablet, showing a mapping of the surrounding desert, "And can now make sure they can no longer harm themselves or anyone else anymore. So, Vampire-Of-Light, do you think you're ready to take on the Demons, as is your holy mission?" "Sir, yes sir!" He grins, then outfits you with standard Zealot equipment; armor, rifle, and various gadgets used for communication. "Now just wait here while I get the rest of the Zealots ready. Tonight, you will banish the evil in our own backyards! Godspeed, soldier." With that, he leaves, finally leaving you alone. Ah, the open air and the cold night sky. Beautiful in many ways, and-- wait, I'm outside! I can run away from this place! I can't believe they're letting me out unsupervised like this... > You proceed with the facade of a loyal Zealot, only to turn when the time is right. You remain compliant, for now. You think about everything you've been through so far-- not much, though it's felt like a lot. The main 'highlights' was Kelso, where the hell is that bastard? and the constant torment you've endured from Father Tomas. At least, regardless of today's outcome, you'll have you revenge against the Church, at least. You turn your head to find at least fifty armored Zealots in formation, marching along with their flashing chests and a surprisingly optimistic attitude, as described by their songs. "Soldier, what are you doing out here so early? What's your name and rank?" Crap, I just got called out, "Err, Father Tomas knows. Where is he? I thought he was, uh, coming." "Nope, he's staying back for morale reasons." The person who called for you gets out of the formation, and runs to catch up with you. The man, especially shown through the armor, is huge-- probably the biggest Zealot you've seen thus far. His voice is pretty heavy, but he sounds surprisingly intelligent for one of his size, "Wait, are you new? You look young..." "You could say that." He laughs, misunderstanding, "Right then, I'm Chief. If you need anything just ask, young one. This'll be much easier than you think. We'll steam-roll the hell out of those Demons with our newly refined weapons." "Oh?" "All silver, baby. It cost a lot to build, and we're the only Zealots aside from Karat- you know, they guy who persists to wear white armor," Who or what the hell is he talking about? "Who have this new design. The Father says this stops them from healing, so we have no chance of losing. Don't be scared, now. I'll get you a seat in formation, give me a sec." Your stupid grin at the cockiness of the head-Zealot is thankfully concealed by your helmet. He stuffs you in his position-- the front line, while he leads out in front. Just as well, you think, I don't think this will be as easy as he says, so my being in the front should help. I think. The march is treacherously long, and if you're admitting to that then you can't imagine how the Zealots are with all the excess armor. Thankfully, your so-called curse comes with its blessings, and if you were to add it all up, you'd probably count the curses in the blessing pile. Everything would be good if only the damn Church wasn't involved. Eventually, you reach the end of of the journey, and you find nothing but more desert. "Uh, Chief? Where is the Wolf hideout?" "Literally, underground." He laughs. He takes out his rifle and screws off the tusk, and from his armor he withdraws a crafty little shovel-head. "Samuel, Zadok, do the same. We need to open this up quickly." Two of the larger Zealots come up from behind you to help shovel the certain mound of sand, and while you find it amusing at first, it soon becomes apparent that this is the place when you hear a metal clanging sound. "This is it!" You look into the ditch, and find an odd metal disk embedded into a round concrete tube, large in diameter. Maybe a well? Te man labeled 'Zadok' changes his rifle's end again, back to the tusks, then hollers for everybody to get back. Everybody complies. With a large grunt, he prepares his rifle to shoot at the plate, then a large sonic-boom erupts, and the green lightning sets the plate to turn red, in heat. Samuel sends a heavy kick, which is just enough to send the disk out of its place, opening up the well. "For God's glory!" Chief yells, and they repeat after him with enthusiasm. "FOR GOD'S GLORY!" The three head-Zealots jump down the well, landing with a loud cracking sound. Impatient at this point, you decide to reveal your true, brutal colors while the Zealots line up for going down the well. Slowly, you wait your turn to follow the first half down the well, but as your turn is right about to come up, you grab the man in front of you, and turn him over and drop-- having him fall head-first into the concrete below. The other Zealots stop their chanting and look at you, confused. You take advantage of their shock by ramming the silver tusks of your rifle through the man behind you, and following through the bum rush, pushing over several more people. You let leave of your gun, and begin angrily clawing and punching any Zealot in your way, easily piercing their various armors. Occasionally, a larger one would manage to grab you during your rampage, but the built-up rage inside of you gives you the ability to flip them from over you, then continue your massacre. The state of chaos and cluttered set of armors running frantically around, trying to hit you with their weapons make it all the better, until, from what you can make out with blurred eyesight, comes back up from well, only to blast you with his rifle. What happens after that, you cannot tell. You have been killed by Zealots... But at least you took out about half of them with you!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Very good." The old man grins, "Your training shall commence soon enough. Now, you will be fed every once in a while, we have some animals out back that you can feast from, if you want. But you certainly won't be getting human blood, haha." Regardless of your reasons for accepting the devil's bargain, you can't help but find him horribly irritating currently. You sigh, realizing that the only thing you can look forward to this week is the blandly colored room and the sneering priest. "Goodbye, then, Vampire of the Light." The priest happily shuffles away into the clinking gear-based doors, and your mind wanders... Days pass, and you'd be lying if you said that you weren't surprised that the withered old geezer wasn't mentoring you himself. Of course, this makes sense-- the rest of the Church would probably lynch him if he declared you 'AOK', but it's more surprising how spry the man is. He spends the next few days teaching you boring protocol, not-as-boring use of standardized C.E. weaponry, and a quick, refined crash-course through some-sort of martial art. Surprisingly, he doesn't bother you with the gospel of the Zealots, but you're too busy working on yourself in order to reflect on that. Within a week, he manages to transform you into what he thinks is a Creation killing machine. And it's then when he reveals the plan you were already somewhat familiar with. "It is necessary that we raid the Wolf hideout, and completely eliminate the Wolf threat once and for all, when they least expect it. We have found their coordinates, finally," he hands you a tablet, showing a mapping of the surrounding desert, "And can now make sure they can no longer harm themselves or anyone else anymore. So, Vampire-Of-Light, do you think you're ready to take on the Demons, as is your holy mission?" "Sir, yes sir!" He grins, then outfits you with standard Zealot equipment; armor, rifle, and various gadgets used for communication. "Now just wait here while I get the rest of the Zealots ready. Tonight, you will banish the evil in our own backyards! Godspeed, soldier." With that, he leaves, finally leaving you alone. Ah, the open air and the cold night sky. Beautiful in many ways, and-- wait, I'm outside! I can run away from this place! I can't believe they're letting me out unsupervised like this... > You fulfill your duty as a Zealot of God. Indeed, you stand in the cold more stalwart than you've ever been, an entire outlook changed. While the Church may have its faults, blaming it for the world's destruction isn't true. It all boils down to the Professor and his deviants, like myself. Unless they wish to repent, then they have no stake in this world. Suddenly, you begin to hear an odd sort of chant or jingle being sung from behind you. You turn your head to find at least fifty armored Zealots in formation, marching along with their flashing chests and a surprisingly optimistic attitude, as described by their songs. "Soldier, what are you doing out here so early? What's your name and rank?" Crap, I just got called out, "Err, Father Tomas knows. Where is he? I thought he was, uh, coming." "Nope, he's staying back for morale reasons." The person who called for you gets out of the formation, and runs to catch up with you. The man, espeically shown through the armor, is huge-- probably the biggest Zealot you've seen thus far. His voice is pretty heavy, but he sounds surprisingly intelligent for one of his size, "Wait, are you new? You look young..." "You could say that." He laughs, misunderstanding, "Right then, I'm Chief. If you need anything just ask young one. This'll be much easier than you think. We'll steam-roll the hell out of those Demons with our newly refined weapons." "Oh?" "All silver, baby. It cost a lot to build, and we're the only Zealots aside from Karat- you know, they guy who persists to wear white armor," Who or what the hell is he talking about? "Who have this new design. The Father says this stops them from healing, so we have no chance of losing. Don't be scared, now. I'll get you a seat in formation, give me a sec." Your stupid grin at the kindness of the head-Zealot is thankfully concealed by your helmet. He stuffs you in his position-- the front line, while he leads out in front. Just as well, you think, I don't think this will be as easy as he says, so my being in the front should help. I think. And this begins you ascent into God's plan, whatever it may be. The march is treacherously long, and if you're admitting to that then you can't imagine how the others are with all the heavy armor. Thankfully, the curse comes with its blessings, and those blessings are obviously a reason why God's plan for you involved this. That, or we're all doomed. You shove that thought away for the moment, though. Eventually, you reach the end of of the journey, and you find nothing but more desert. "Uh, Chief? Where is the Wolf hideout?" "Literally, underground." He laughs. He takes out his rifle and screws off the tusk, and from his armor he withdraws a crafty little shovel-head. "Samuel, Zadok, do the same. We need to open this up quickly." Two of the larger Zealots come up from behind you to help shovel the certain mound of sand, and while you find it amusing at first, it soon becomes apparent that this is the place when you hear a metal clanging sound. "This is it!" You look into the ditch, and find an odd metal disk embedded into a round concrete tube, large in diameter. Maybe a well? Te man labeled 'Zadok' changes his rifle's end again, back to the tusks, then hollers for everybody to get back. Everybody complies. With a large grunt, he prepares his rifle to shoot at the plate, then a large sonic-boom erupts, and the green lightning sets the plate to turn red, in heat. Samuel sends a heavy kick, which is just enough to send the disk out of its place, opening up the well. "For God's glory!" Chief yells, and they repeat after him with enthusiasm. "FOR GOD'S GLORY!" The big-three Zealots jump in one after each-other, and after that it's a beeline to get into the concrete sewer below. Finally, when it's your turn, you manage to find foot-holds to climb down, rather than just jumping down aimlessly and without stealth. Of course, stealth is thrown out of the window whenever these lovable tools are in the equation. They're still chanting, and the light from their armor is the only thing lighting up the cavern! Your squadron of fifty or more begins a march through it, still as loud and boisterous as ever. But, suddenly, the mood changes. Something's not right... Where are the Wolves? Slowly, as the Zealots move inside the maze of hell, you notice more and more of them disappearing. "Chief! We're losing men as we speak!" The Chief looks around, his armor working as a flashlight, "Huh? But I don't see any of the Wolves?" More and more Zealots disappear, with barely anything but a gasp at best. What the hell is happening? After a small while of Zealots pleading for the Chief to turn back, you get the horrible feeling that you're next... "Nobody touches my Creations." You have been killed by an unknown player...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>His story is... Interesting, to say the least. So Simon Kurschner is the Professor's actual name. "So what do you want from me?" You ask, uncertain of yourself. Who is my main enemy? The Professor or the Church? Both? Is the Professor even still alive? The Father nods, "We need you to lead us to the other Creations, so we can finish them once and for all. You are the last of the Vampires, and you can most likely help our charge on the Wolves. As I said, the Creations are very powerful. Having one on our side could be a huge help." You smirk back at him, "Why though? It's not like you've given me any sort of ambition to help you wackos." "Well, I thought life was good objective." He shrugs, bringing his hand close to the opening of his robes. "You think I'd sell out my fellow Creations just for myself?" "I'd be surprised if you cared for them-- you don't even remember them! You have no connection to this world anymore." He grimaces, taking a knobby finger and waving it at your chest. "The only thing that may be left is your heart, and even that is subject to debate. Will you side with us, the humans, or die here. The choice is yours. Light and Darkness, that is your only option here!" Light and Darkness, but is it really that simple? > You say "I won't be your bitch, Tomas." The wrinkled old man frowns, "So, you're throwing your one chance for redemption?" "I don't need redemption from the likes of you." You seethe back, channeling your undead cajones. "You want me to fight for you, but you're too worried about the decision that you wouldn't let any of the other Zealots. "I won't tell you your wrong, but I will tell you that you're a fool to choose a unredeemed death over a redeemed life. But I cannot pretend to comprehend the demons." You tilt your head, "You don't really believe I'm a demon, do you?" He continues to frown. "This... You wouldn't give me any sort of chance if you actually backed your beliefs. By now you must be just fear-mongering. But why?" "Humanity needs a common-enemy, something to band us together to fight and destroy. That, and only that, will keep us alive." The priest turns his back to you, and begins to slowly creep away. You struggle, and you yell out to try and kill him, to get out of this room. Yet, the UV-lights seem to hold you down, and when you realize what is happening. Flames emit from the bottom of your chair and begin to lick at your skin... You have been killed by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Scared to risk stuttering more and screwing things up, you take the WT and make sure Kelso holds it. He looks at you with contempt before speaking into it. "Indeed." He seethes, his voice threatening and just... Cold. Kelso doesn't even need to try to get his voice that way, it just is, even if it sounds grandfather-like when he scolds you, "I have him. It's amazing how the Church has destroyed what's left of this Earth. Only desert left aside from your little colony and houses buried in sand. But believe me, this 'Sebastian' isn't the first human who I've caught." Kelso pauses, and releases the button to see if she responds. She doesn't. He finishes. "And he won't be the last." Click And it's off. "Master, wasn't that too dramatic? We don't want them to send more than we can handle..." "Kid, you never force a person into a conversation he didn't start. You'd think you'd still remember proper manners. Let's just hope to heaven they don't bring every damn one of the king's men." --- Kelso and yourself find several mounds to hide behind. There are only several clusters of areas around the big City that have the half-buried houses, which means that the religious troupe will likely find them there, at some point. You keep your sights on the city. Every once in a while you'll see moving lights across the landscape, which are subsequently turned off. Then on. And off again... "Those are the soldiers." Kelso points out to you. A good deal of them too, and approaching quickly on more than one side. The lights seem to travel in groups. You count... Eight groups of five. You wonder how many you can take, and in turn how much more Kelso could. "So, what's the plan?" "We capture one and hightail it out of here. This... Is going to be challenging." Your mentor stands up, watching the approaching mob of Zealots. Two or three are way off, lighting up the opposite direction, but the rest are surrounding your vicinity, though you're uncertain if that's on purpose or not. Kelso motions you to come closer to him, to listen. "This is where we split up. They're trying to flank us, but that won't work when they're spread out like this. We're, funnily enough, a straight, though long line away from the city. The lights are moving toward us, and with other groups closing in from the two sides; a circle. I go one way, you go the other." "Like we trained, I hit hared and fast." He nods. "Let's get to it then. Good luck, kid." He begins jogging to the left. It's when he breaks out into a run when you only begin moving leftwards. For the first time since you escaped the Facility, you're scared. You sprint across the sand with your head down, maintaining balance and stealth even with your heavy armor. You ready yourself, the lights shining brighter and brighter until... You see them. Tall, thick, dark; the words that come to mind. Shining Crosses on ebony metal that covers the entire body, down to the legs. His helmet's visor is like a medieval knight's, only more techy. Not only that, but their rifles are huge, with tusks at the end. You wonder what caliber that behemoth could hold... Still, you have the element of surprise, if only because you aren't a lightbulb shaped a like freaking cross. You leap up, letting a gust of wind propel you, making a cross of your own in the night-sky, Your body finds itself right above the ringleader, who dumbly looks up when your feet, disguised as sneakers, land on his helmet. A heavy clunking sound is made before you hear a snap (his neck), which you use for momentum, jumping at another, this time with your fists. Refined rage, like Kelso taught you. It was going fine until bullets came into the picture. After the second clunk the last three of the group turn and point their bayonets-on-crack rifles at you. What comes out isn't a bullet, more like... Lightning? It bursts out at you with a mighty roar, and you feel your skin ripping, only to regenerate. Three more blasts, you make another swipe, hitting viciously through the armor of one, finishing him off with blood. Three (who were shooting at you) to go. They reload, which thankfully takes enough time. One of them doesn't bother, however, and stick the tusks of his rifle into you. Some of your blood spills, and even more of his bursts out when you push his rifle from inside you to inside of him, his armor nothing when your rage takes over. With blood squirting into your eyes, the rest are easy work. You claw at the armored figures, their lightning-shots hurting you but not overcoming you until... You're done. Five of them were killed, and you don't even remember how the last one went down. You lay on the sand, too stunned to move. More of the Crosses come over to belt you over the head with what must be a bible, because damn was it heavy. --- Even more bright lights (a recurring theme, you tell yourself), and you find yourself strapped onto a chair. The room is all blue, but your chair is white. For whatever reason, the colors seem pleasant, and calming to you. You wonder what happened to Kelso... A powerful voice speaks out, "Who are you?" > You reply sarcastically. "A heathen, no doubt." You manage to spit out, angrily. "Not a heathen, an abomination. There is a difference." The voice is male, and older. "But I don't wish to quell your anger, as you are no doubt misguided. Worry not, we shall end your suffering." "Thanks, I wouldn't want to be a burden." He laughs. "You are a funny devil alright, but one who deserves an explanation, if he wants one." Gears grind, causing your ears to sting while a shaft opens up in the blue room. An old man in a priestly garb and a skullcap comes out, an inviting though intimidating aura around him. "Do you wish to know why you're here? What the Church's mission is?" You stare at the man. "What's the point if you're just going to kill me right after?" "Us antagonists like our monologs, do we not? You'd know, for I am only part of the lesser evil. So, if you please, allow me to explain why the verdict is so grim for one with such oratory abilities, like yourself." You nod to the bizarre old man, "Sure... But not before you tell me where my mentor is." "Hmm?" "Kelso." "Doesn't ring any bells. Can we go on?" He says, looking at his watch. He's not even wearing a watch! You sigh, "You really want to tell me the story then, huh." The pruned holy-man beams, "Why yes!" A long pause erupts. And you wait for the priest to tell you. He begins to cough, and cough... By now you're just irked, stuck in a room with a senile wackjob. It's surprising that he's your interrogator. "So." "Ah yes. On the first day," His large dark eyes twinkle, "of the new Era, the world began to sink. Horrible diseases and militant radicals swept through different parts of the globe. Coincidentally, this all began after marriage became void and immorality was embraced." He shakes his head, "Regardless, Simon Kurschner created his Program, with the government's support, and using the dead and dying as test subjects, he claimed that he wished to stop disease and create perfect soldiers as well. At the time, it sounded ludicrous; like a comic book. But the world governments were desperate, and he received the funding. The second day was much darker, with the disease spreading rapidly before Kurschner's lab was even finished. By the time it was done, he petitioned for less regulation, and that's when it began. There would be no stopping what he began to create. Worse than the viruses which wiped out humanity; a God's flood. This... you, are different, unnatural. Third day came and Simon sent a crew of his deathless zombies, which survived the disease under his care, to deal with military conflicts all over the world. The fact that it succeeded so well was a curse, as he gained more support. By the 4rth day he had thousands of Creations under his disposal. And who didn't trust him? The religious, the so-called 'supersticious' Church." He spits, getting emotional during his obviously summarized tale, "5th Day, his Creations began fighting against the world, rather than with them against evil. One experiment could take on hundreds of regular soldiers alone, and so they laid waste, all while Simon was living the good life. Then, what do you know, the diseases evolved, went airborn, killed everyone but the faithful, those who stayed in the First Chapel. The Earth was dying, as God didn't want it to continue as it did, and only two groups survived; the Zealots, and the Creations. The next day involved war. W wanting to e slowly began building society back up, getting stronger technology and a bigger community. But it was not enough, and the Creations spread us weak and thin. But we're growing, and the Creations are now on the run, no doubt split between wanting to kill us or the Professor, who got them into this mess. Everything with them is 'kill', for they are demon-spawn.'' He notices your eyese rolling and then bends down to your level, "Look at you, boy, blood on his lips and unrelenting anger. This is mercy, to end your cursed life. As now, on the 7th day, we shall put all of the cursed to rest. They may resist, but we will go out of our way to end them." You take a deep breath, taking all of this in. There isn't that much to say, and you realize how much fragments you still don't know. There has to be more to this, though you're not sure why... "Dramatic, no?" He nods, continuing. "Which makes me wonder where you fit into all of this. You don't have a name do you?" "Uh, no, I can't remember anything from before my awakening." The Father frowned, "Hmm, you must have been one of the last experiments if you're so young. Very well then, good night, I'm afraid. May God have mercy on your soul..." He turns to leave. "Wait, you're killing me after all that?!? Come back here! I'm sentient, I'm human, just like YOU!" You yell, struggling at the immobile chair. He doesn't answer. A quick, firey death unexpectedly follows, your seat spewing out bursts of flame, charring through your body and burning your soul to a crisp. Red, then all black. You have died by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You push the button on the walkie-talkie, and speak into it. "Hello?" Moments pass. After several more crackles you get a response. A cool female voice speaks out, "Sebastian? Seargent, is everything alright?" British? Kelso shoots you a sideways glance. You can almost feel him sending you a message with his eyes. Be creative, you call the shots for now. You blink. Ahem, "I have spotted some of the err, creations." "Well of course you have." Matter of fact tone. "We've known where the devils that are the Wolves have been for a while now. We just need to strike them. Which reminds me, we should get back to base." Perfect. Ish. "No! The, uh, lord helped me and I found others." "Others? What do you mean?" "There are other Creations that have escaped aside from the, uh, wolves, and-" The woman on the other side is excited, "More?" "Um, only one. That I found, at least. But one is one too many. I uh, need backup." "Stop stuttering, Sebastian. This is important. Where are you? Now searching it up..." Pause. "Your GPS tracker hasn't been functioning for a couple of days. That's probably why security has tightened around the City. Where the hell are you?" Shit. "Well, uh, the battery died and, uh, things happened." "Things? Sebastian, I... Did it take you hostage?" You've decided you like her voice. "It?" She lowers her voice, "What is your general location, Sebastian? We'll find you. You'll be safe." You pause, looking to Kelso for help. To tell the truth, you have no idea where you are. Kelso looks the other way. You sigh, annoyed at him. Maybe he's just a bit offended that your plan was better. Or not. "I..." > You continue on, yourself. You lower your voice, "I... not sure. We're in some sort of house. Lots of sand." No reply. You click it off. Kelso nods in seeming approval. "It'll do. Let's just hope they underestimate one Creation and send only a couple soldiers. They are tasked to deal with the unknown. I got lucky with 'Sebastian'; the foolish Zealot wandered out alone." --- Your mentor and youself make your way to a particularly large sand-dune near the house, watching for incoming Zealots from the city ahead. It doesn't too long-- after several minutes you begin to notice flashing armors marching in the moonlight. Your house is a surprisingly straight line to the city, and you notice some lights, formed in clusters, moving straight in your direction. Others seem to be coming in on a flank, moving to the left and right of the city before circling in, near your location. None are too close though, which gives time for Kelso to count them all. "Five groups of five in all, with the Church having only a slight notion where we are and us having the element of surprise." "You think that's good odds? From what it seems, they likely no more about what we can do then what we know they can." "Not we, you. I fought Zealots before the facility was destroyed, you know. Even if they've grown considerably, they're still the fear-mongering, symbolic fools as ever. With enough force their armor can be clawed through, only thing you have to worry about is silver and their lightning rifles." "Sounds fun." You chuckles out nervously, "Silver bullets and lightning rifles?" "Ah yes, silver is specifically harmful to us, for whatever reason. It is very pure... and the only thing that will stop us from regenerating, thankfully though, I don't think they've caught on to that just yet. The shock-troops they send in are equipped with monstrous bayonets that shoot out streams of electrons at high velocity, which are scarily painful..." He notices your frown, and smiles in return, "But it's healable. And I think we can do it." You nod, "Not if their flanks succeeds. We need to either split up and fight the ones coming on the side or take the clusters on together." "No question, we should fight together. Splitting up may make this go faster and more efficiently, but it's dangerous enough that it won't be worth it. Together, we can capture one of them as well as efficiently annihilate the groups one by one." You nod back, assured. Kelso may retain information, but he's never lied to you. You think. This brings your mind back to the incoming horde of Zealots, which are less than a mile away by now, marching tirelessly, not exactly in your direction, but close enough... "So, who do you think we should take on first?" > You zealots on a side. "Let's start on a side and move on from there. We can't let their flank be affective." Your mentor nods. "There was a reason why I saved you, even if I didn't realize it at the time." "Which is...?" "You're smart." You'd blush if could, you like compliments, "No, the reason why you got me in the first place." "You'll find out at some point." You both laugh. Kelso drops information every once in a while, and at some point you want to just have several hours with him to discuss everything. Was the world always like this? What happened to it? What is my purpose? And on and on. By now the collection of lights are nearing, so you stop chatting with your master and turn your attention to them. Keeping your head close to the ground and sneaking to the right, you prepare to overtake the group of five on that side. Your mind flashes back to your training in the training you did with Kelso in the dunes. You try your best to channel your anger while you run, Kelso behind, at the Zealots. Why should I hate the Church? Your mind answers. Because they hate me for what I am. The man called Sebastian called me a 'demon'; I'm not that. I know I'm not that. But they will crucify me if they can. And I won't let them do that to myself or Kelso. With your mind settled on some sort rage, you vent it with your sprinting, reaching the Zealots quick enough. They're big people, the C.E. Soldiers. Stygian black metal overlays their entire bodies, with an obvious group leader with a different helmet (with horns, like a medieval knight's would have.) The rest have a simplistic SWAT-team-like helmet with a visor. The most notable part of their ensemble is their heavily tusked rifles, which take up both of their arms, if only to carry the heavy block of metal. You assume that that's the thing that Kelso mentioned; the lightning bayonets. 'That, and their lit cross on the chest, flashing on and off. Thankfully, they don't seem to notice you, yet. Their heavy metal probably restricts them of that. You pay little attention to where Kelso is, and you angrily lash out on the leader, leaping from over eight meters away from the ground. While in the air, you let your claws grow out and you come onto the huge black being's chest, and sink your claws into him, through the weak parts of his armor. Wet, sticky blood pours out, and you messily continue to clutch onto him while he tries to shoot you off with his tusked-bayonet. He manages to shoot up wards once or twice before slumping to the ground, the Other Zealots probably pissing their pants at this point. You roar at them, jumping off the corps of their leader and sending a heavy-fisted slash at a close one that is unbashfully trying to use hiw walkie-talkie. The hand you send clunks off of his helmet, but the heavy crunch you feel from it obviously means you broke his neck. While you were busy with two, Kelso (still unseen) has done fine work with the remaining three, his body half-transformed into something... Animalistic. With hairy, muscular arms and sharp teeth he overpowers them easily, ripping heads off at insane speeds, to the point that you're convinced that you imagined part of it. After several lightning flashes from the last one, Kelso's new body soaks up the energy from it and grabs the Zealot, throwing him to the floor. Now, all that remains are you and your mentor. You hungrily sink your teeth into a nearby combatant, reinvigorating yourself. Kelso morphs back, seeming tired, and takes a helping from one of them. After only ten seconds, he grabs you to stop with him. "That's one group down. There are three more groups to annihilate, two to the left (what used to be the middle) and the third which is standing back, way over to the left. I'll assume we're moving on to the middle?" > You continue to the middle. "Indeed, the middle-men are next." Two groups of hulking Zealots stand between you and the other. They know you're there, and the element of surprise isn't yours anymore. Worse yet, Kelso seems to have used up whatever the hell that transformation was. Still, you're confident that Kelso and you can tackle on the fifteen Zealots left over, You see them aiming their blockish weapons at you, and charge. Two leaders... You look to Kelso, and he nods. You take one, and he takes the other. As they move forward with their tusks, streaks of bright green at you. You quickly move to the side, allowing for some to take mercy and miss, but one or two manage to land on your armor, causing it to heat up... Kelso manages to dodge every single one shot at him, and runs up ahead of you to disarm the Zealots shooting at you. While your metallic armor sizzles, you do your best to throw it off you and follow-up with Kelso before they reload and shoot again. Kelso jumps into the air, swinging his foot down on one of the head-Zealots-head. It doesn't take him out, but it stuns him long enough for Kelso to throw him at the other line of Zealots, and proceed to restlessly break their weapons by punching it. The Zealots try to fight him, but your mentor doesn't give up. Meanwhile, you quickly sweep the other Head's feet from under him during the confusion of Kelso's utter... coolness and fluidity in combat. You stomp your sneakers on it's neck; the crack is all you needed to hear. More bright streaks. You see the remaining six Soldiers trying to surround him and put him down, not paying as much attention to you. In return for their disrespect, you bring both of your hands to your sides, and begin a large tackle at the horde surrounding your master. Your rage-fueled push causes you to bleed (you're slamming your arms onto cold metal, remember) but pushes them all on top of eachother, all scarmbling to get up. Kelso manages to get out of the huddle of Zealots, and picks up one of the bayonets, and begins spiking the clunky radicals. More, deliciously red blood squirts out, and you follow suit by taking your own bayonet. Now, only one group left. Five fearful Zealots pitifully trying to snipe at both of you. But it's obvious who will win this fight, in your eyes. > You finish off the bastards on the left. You continue to finish the ones trying to attack you. It is a quick fight, considering. Kelso rushes ahead, jumping up and using the butt of his new bayonet to whack the head-Zealot of this group over the head, not snapping his eck but at the very least knocking him out. With blood-lust, you manage to bring up the hulking weapons to shoot lightning at one the group at point-blank, causing him to scream as his own armor boiled him. The others, no doubt bewildered by many things at the current moment, try their best to survive in various ways. One continues struggling, actually managing to spear Kelso and shoot at the same time, only to find Kelso laugh, bring his arms back and snap the man's neck before getting out of the tusks. One calls out to his god. In turn you gutted him with your rifle, piercing his armor like a can-opener. And one from the other side of the battle-field, that you obviously didn't kill correctly, gets up to flee back to the city. Even he didn't get a break. Kelso, with uncanny familiarity with the rifle, shoots him in the back. The flashing Zealot slumps over, dead. The fight ends there, and Kelso puts his hand on your back as you walk to the unconscious head-Zealot of the Left-group. "So, what do we do with him?" You ask, warily, "The Church will probably send more of it's operatives to subdue us." "Doubt it. The head-honchos in the Church are probably terrified right now. More Creations in addition to 'The Wolves' are definitely not what they wanted. Still, you're right. We need to find a new place, but only after we find out where the Wolves are, and subdue them." "You still think they know where the Professor is?" He looks at you, pondering, "Unsure. If they do, then we'll have to fight them. Which is doable, with your newfound talents." He points to bloody undergarments, "But if they hate the Professor as much as we do then we can join forces. Well, you might. I might have to leave soon." You frown. "Why?" "Ha, don't worry kid. I might not have to, but if I do I'll make sure you're ready to fend for your self." > You loot the bodies and proceed to interrogate the Zealot. Shrugging the thought of not having Kelso around, you collect the armors of the Zealots, turning the flash off and equipping them. They won't save you from everything, but they will certainly make you physical attacks stronger, if only because they're reinforced by cold metal. You wear everything but the helmet, since you like having your vision unrestricted. Kelso does similarly, putting on the armor, leggings, and boots. You also decide to take one of the undamaged rifles; good weapons, and more effective on humans than on Creations, ironically. After the slight diversion, you bring your attention to the rousing Zealot. Kelso points him out to you to deal with. With a cruel smile, you walk over to him, bringing your gauntleted hand to his armored helmet, and begin to squeeze. That wakes him up. He cries in agony, as his helmet soon becomes a 'custom-fit' of sorts. With your one hand, you pick him up by his face, and just hold him in mid-air. "Kelso, are we just interrogating him here or somewhere else?" "Here's fine." You shrug, and drop the Zealot on the floor. He groans in pain, bringing hands to his face to try to take off his helmet; he couldn't do it. "Tell you what, if I take off your new skullcap if you tell me where the other Creations are." He looks up pitifully, nodding. Carefully... You peel off the horned helmet from his visage. "You killed Sebastian, didn't you!" Is the first thing that erupts from his lips. That, and some spit. You back hand him, bloodying his face further and causing him to fall back onto the sand. "Location, now. Or you end up having a worse fate than Sebastian." The dark haired Zealots looks at you with menacing eyes, "I don't consort with demons. I will die with honor." "That's not what you were saying when your face was in a can." You laugh, and Kelso gets on one knee, beckoning closer to him. "You can become one of us, if you like. Be one of the damned, and survive the hell that is God's world. Just lead us to where the so-called 'Wolves' are." "I won't sell out that easy, demon. Sebastian was a brother before you bastards killed him!" The agitated cripple would be somewhat intimidating if he wasn't in such a pathetic situation. "Then it's time you became family." Kelso looks at you. "Try ghouling him." Your eyes widen, "What do you mean, 'ghoul'?" "Drink from him until he has only the minimum amount of blood he needs. He'll become one of us. Well, half. He'll also follow our commands in that state. For the first couple of days. An eternal slave." Your mentor grins. The Zealot, however, is horrified. "No, don't! Don't drink from me, I'll get you to the Wolves, I promise! I'll even tell you when the Church is to attack their base. Everything, just don't turn me into one of you! Stop!" Oh, so very tempting. But kind of... Evil, is it? Is there even a line anymore, after what I've done? Kindness will only hurt you at this point, and a side-kick if Kelso ever leaves is tempting... > You ghoul him. Curious, and perhaps a wee bit thirsty, you motion to the Zealot. "What's your name?" "David." He spits, "Why?" "Because your new name is... Slave." His eyes widen in horror as you sink your teeth into his soft and milky flesh, this time getting it on the artery. The blood squirts down your throat, and the high that you get is unimaginable. Sweet and slightly sour blood, like apple-juice. The euphoria you get is uplifting, and you feel... Happy. Power surges through your veins, and your stomach does happy somersaults as it absorbs all the nutrients from the Zealot's warrior-blood, and you continue chewing on his neck, trying to get as much as you can from this man before he falters. Just sublime... "Goddammit kid, your mother must have been some sort of an abuser." Kelso says with a chuckle, pulling you away. "But I think that' enough drinking, your new slave is deathly pale, but still breathing, albeit very slowly and inconsistently-- a sign that you've drunk just enough." He points out, "But hats off to you kid, you've got yourself a ghoul." You both stand, waiting for your slave to wake. The pale Zealot opens his eyes back up, a glossy look to them. He doesn't speak, but instead lazily lets saliva and a red substance that likely is blood ooze out from the side of his mouth. Nervously, you command him, "Lead us to the Wolves hideout." He lazily tries to get up, only to fall back down again. "Now." Firm. He gets up, straight this time. With uncoordinated steps he begins to march, stumbling through the sand and skin beginning to redden from the sun. You shrug, and follow your new ghoul. By the time you pass the City the trek is already nearly over. You take another left from there, then a turn to the right... And soon Kelso directs you and your new slave to stop. "This," he begins, "is where I take my leave." "What?" You exclaim, "Why now? Didn't you say that the other Creations might be on the Professor's side?" Kelso tilts his head to the side, "The longer I think about it, the less it makes sense. But I've been worried about something, and I'm nigh certain I'm correct on this." "What do you mean?" Your mentor walks to your ghoul, tugging at his armor's sleeve to get attention, "You, David, what does the Church know about Simon Kurschner?" Who? The slave replies in monotone, "Can't be found or traced. Not among Creations, unknown if even still alive." You raise an eyebrow, "Who's this Kurschner?" "The Professor." Comes the reply from Kelso. "But I thought our plan was to see if the other Creations know where the Professor is? Which could mean that they still serve him. Or not." "Exactly. If the Church has no idea of his whereabouts, then it's unlikely the Wolves have something definite either. Even though the Wolf and I have had our arguments, I still trust him enough to give you vacancy while I search for the Professor." "So where are you going?" "Anywhere. The world left is just a desert, and traveling by night only will waste time, which is why we have t split for the moment." Kelso frowns, and holds out his hand to shake. You firmly grasp it, "Then stay safe, Master. I trust you will return soon?" He stares at you blankly, "I have no idea how long it will take. But I believe in you just as well. You can make it on your own, especially with how you proved yourself today. Strong decision making and vast knowledge on how survival works have made you to what you are. There is very little that I can teach you that I even know. You shall grow past what I can even guess you can do." He begins to let go of the hand shake, but you hold on. Tightly. "There's one thing that you still haven't told me." "And what's that?" "How the World came to this pitiful state." > The Wolf Underground Your mentor, the Ghoul, and yourself make your way through the remnants of the past world. Suddenly, it all makes sense to you. The world went to hell, and it was the Professor's abuse of his Creations that furthered it. Now, the Church hunts you all down for no reason other than to to give hope to 'real' humans. It's despicable, but it's the world you're in right now. The hot sun beats down upon you, while your slave suddenly comes to a halt. "This is it." He blandly calls out, reaching down to the sandy flooring, and makes hand motions as to move some of the sand away. You turn to wish your master a farewell, but he is already gone. Only a hazy version of him can be seen through squinting in the distance. So, it's just me and my Ghoul. Let's just hope it doesn't get bloody... You follow David's beckoning, and bend down to see what he was unclearing. As your slave digs, more and more sand seems to pile in. "What are we looking for?" "They're underground, sir." With a nod, you decide to help out with the digging. As you lay your hands on the sand, you thank fortune that you hadn't done this in the middle of the day, rather than just an hour or so after sun-rise. The sand would no doubt have burnt your fingers otherwise! Even though you and your ghoul are digging barehanded, it doesn't take too much time before you begin to feel the sand getting thicker, more doughy. With quick powerful stroke, you continue ripping through the sand, throwing it out of your radius, soon creating a little pit, low enough that you could stand up in it. After clawing at the earth with your servant for a while, you accidentally scratch at something... Hard, metallic. Underneath the sand lay a metal disk, with evenly-spaced holes around it's edge and the middle. Even as it is right now, it's fairly obvious that the disk is heavily embedded into the ground, and prying it out would no doubt prove to be a challenge. At first, you try just digging around and under it, but your efforts seemed to have been in vain; the plate appeared to be a part of both the earth and some sort of brick-well that goes much further down. "You sure this is the place? You ask, making sure that this was the opening to the Wolf Stronghold. It'd make sense, as this is extremely safe from the Zealots, considering. "Yes." Comes the monotone reply, "The few remaining GPS satellites pin-pointed this exact spot. We caught several monsters disappearing from under the sand here." Now, how should we try to open this? > You try to pry it open. The Ghoul's combined strength with yours should be more than enough. "C'mon Slave, you and I together can probably take this out of it's place." As usual, he complies. With a flick of your wrist, you bring out one of your signature claws, and draw your index finger along the bottom edge of the metal plate, taking as much sand out of it as possible. After thousands of sand pellets fall out, you both position yourselves opposite one another, and firmly grasp the end of the disc, clawing in anywhere possible to gain enough leverage to pull it upwards, out of it's fixed place. David and yourself glance at each other, and meet at the red-eyes. 1, 2, 3! Forming an odd sort of mental connection with your ghoul, you both bring all the strength you can muster to pull the rough, grainy plate out of the stop of the well. As you pull at the disc, you can feel yourself pulling your muscles as well, the first feeling you've had of strain for a while. This would be a good thing any other time (sort of), but now it's just not a good time to go back to human-like limitations. Your ghoul on the other hand, glumly shows little exertion, even though he seems to be attempting to carry out your will. "David," You encourage, using his actual name this time, "Put your back into it. All your body, we can do this!" You continue trying to pry open the hatch, but it just doesn't budge... Until a sudden movement. Feeling it shift slightly to the side, your ghoul instinctively follow you there, and you both pull at it in a close space, together. After exerting yourself greatly, you manage to take it out of it's wedge in a very sudden throw, flinging it out of your own pit with a clatter. You shrug, and smile at your Ghoul, and then proceed to look down the brick-well... It's dark, for one thing, but you can barely make out the sound of feet pattering on cold concrete. Overcome with nervousness, you loudly blurt out, "We come in peace!" Several dark figures appear from the bottom of the well, after several glances upwards at you and whispering, one of them waves you down. Shivering, you jump down the well, using the cylindrical bricks surrounding you to position yourself as to not fall on them. Still, you fall with a heavy thud. Yeah, I'm gonna need new sneakers. Unlike yourself, David just goes down it normally, using the short metal bars protruding one of the sides, climbing downwards. The dark figures eye you carefully, taking a while to speak. One with dark gray hair and scruffy facial hair as well as a slouching hunchback of a surprisingly muscular body, points at your armor, "If you're a Zealot, I'd turn back right now." His voice isn't too threatening, but his body language and thick-eyebrows suggest otherwise. He's clad in tight cloth shirt and pants, bulging with muscles, and is surrounded in an intimidating aura. The other one is completely cloaked, though watches your Ghoul with suspicion. "I'm not of the Church," you start, trying to make a good first impression, "and neither is he. Not anymore at least." "Then what are you?" The gruff man calls out, his eyes narrowing. "Well, I'm glad you asked. I'm a... A Creation, just like you. This is my Ghou--" By the time you uttered the word, 'Creation' he had already put you in a headlock. The cloaked one has already put your ghoul to sleep, though hopefully not forever... The man continues, "What do you want from us, fangs-boy? I thought the rest of your clan died." Clans? "No!" You exclaim, struggling out of his hold. You actually manage to surprise him with your strength and are able to push him off of you. "I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. But you're part of the Wolves, right? My associate and I want to join your strong hold." He spits back at you, "We don't need any joiners." "Why not?" You argue, your body tensing. "The Zealots are planning to raid this place soon, and I figure you could use as much help as possible." The old man growls back you, "What are you, some sort of message-boy for the Professor?" Well, at least that means they aren't working for him. Probably. "The Church means no harm to us at this point. It'd be stupid for them to attack us. If you're trying to make a powerful group do something out of desperation, then oh boy, have you come to a bad place, vampy. I'd go back to the sun, where the pain is relatively quick." He cracks his knuckles. If you weren't so confident in your abilities, you might have been intimidated by this Neanderthal. "Then perhaps you should ask my Ghoul, David. He was a Zealot before I brought him to the darkness." You point at the slumped body on the floor. "He's dead now, too late." The brute says with a cruel grin, "Snapped his neck, Ragnor did." You laugh, "I don't think he'd die from that." You take several steps toward your slave, waving the cloaked man aside, you grab David by the cuff of his armor and pick him up, then bring your hand to his neck and snap it back. David glumly states, "Hi." The Wolf grits his teeth, "Didn't know Vampires could use their powers like that." "Then you'll be learning a whole lot more during my stay here. What was that you were saying about being the last of my clan?" He smiles back, surprisingly, "Oh? So you don't know. You're the last of the Vampire Creations, as the rest died in this desert planet. I'm surprised you made it this long since the last Facility was destroyed. But if you don't remember that, then do you even remember your name?" "I'm afraid not. Can you at least tell me yours?" The Wolf laughs, "Call me Gideon. The cloaked figure on the side is Ragnor, our residential assassin, even if fighting has little place anymore." He brings out a hairy, clawed hand to shakes yours. You accept it. "So I'm in?" "I'm still suspicious of your reasons for coming here, and your story about the Zealots needs some checking." "Is it really that surprising?" "Less that and more that we don't want to fight them." What? Seeing your confused expression, Gideon continues, "Listen here Vampy, I'd rather die and let humanity survive than not. And most of us here are ready for that. If the Zealots come to our turf then we'll wipe them out easy, but we're definitely not going to seek conflict, even if me and the boys can take those choir-boys out in an instant." "Why not? They want to kill us all?" He shakes his head, his face now grim, "The Church may believe that we're demons, but they also value the sanctity of life, so I doubt they'd come here. Regardless, they aren't all that wrong about us. The things we've done... The innocents we've massacred in our wake. It doesn't mean that we're bad now, per se, but what we've done is inexcusable. The World has gone to waste, and I'm alright if we don't survive to see it rebuild itself. You stand in silence for a little while, realizing that you've joined ranks with the modern equivalent of the hippies. Gideon grins again, "But don't worry about that now, let's close the lid on top of our well and then introduce you to the rest of the gang." > The rest of the Wolves. "Ragnor, use those climbing skills of yours and find a way to seal the top of the well better. Can't have one of them dust storms filling the place, nor let any traveler find us like these two rugrats." Gideon says, waving for you to follow him and his goofy walking pattern. While the cloaked man begins to climb, you and David follow the hunchback though the stronghold of the wolves. It's a dark tunnel path, but several well-placed torches along the concrete walls give you enough light to make out peculiar drawings on the walls. Not exactly professional artwork or anything, just passionate claw-markings. But still... “Hey Gideon,” you ask, examining one specifically for it's graphic nature, “What's up with the markings?” The hunchback turns his head, but continues moving, “The writing? It's a code language we formed, mixture of all the languages the folks here are familiar with. It's more or less a system of simplified pictures, but you'll be able to read it if you stay here long enough.” “Can you read this one out to me?” You make sure to stop and point it out; the writing here is different than the rest, even more picturesque than the rest. You can't hope to read it, but you do notice a recurring theme-- a cross and a pentagram. Not only that, but they're much less refined than the others, as if written with anger. “That one is rather basic, I think I even went over it before. It basically boils to, eh...” He shuffles closer to you, and brings his large eye to the writing, “Peace is what keeps our humanity, for the Professor, cursed be he, uses strife to tear us apart. The cursed Creator wishes that we destroy our brothers in battle so he reaps the reward when it's over.” Gideon tilts his head back and continues forward, “I'd keep this in mind, vampy. I'm not sure why you're here, whether to warn us or to do devil's bidding, but I trust you enough to see you have no idea what's going on, so I'll be giving you the chance to give a little presentation for the guys here. By vote, we'll either agree or not. After that, it's up to you whether you stay or not. Got it?” “That's all I could have asked for, sir.” You reply, hoping you can prepare them for the Church's onslaught next week. If not, then, well, you and your brothers are done for, regardless of non-violent intentions. After several minutes of treading through the passages of the tunnel, Gideon stops to look up, even if his head doesn't lift that far. You catch up to where he is, noticing what he's looking at: an opening, light. “That's our hideout.” The Wolf jumps up, grabbing onto some sort of ledge to bring his deformed body up. You watch his body struggle up it, land on solid ground (and then a lot of murmuring from above), then jump up yourself, making it up with ease. The hideout is surprisingly low-key for the most powerful beings on the planet, but considering how they're just trying to survive a dimly lit room filled with sleeping bags and animal-carcasses strewn about is to be expected. The ragtag group that are the Wolves are surprising though; a thin man with dark hair, only to have a visible streak of white in the front; a rather hairy, though otherwise attractive female with dirty blonde hair who's around your age (early twenties?); several scruffy teenagers; a dark-skinned, mustached, and barrel-chested man; at least three of obvious Asian descent; and, of course, Gideon, pointing you out to everybody. Most of them getting out of there bags, they begin gawking at you. You wince as the female eye you with interest, while the men seem to just want to know what you want so they could sleep. You motion to Gideon, and you get close to him and ask, "These are the Wolves? Not as... Impressive, as I thought they'd be." "You're not exactly super-hero material either, child. Kinda stock; dark, straight hair and pale skin. Lean physique." Noticing you're confusion he just pokes at your chest, "What matters is what's on the inside. That's where power comes from. Remember that." He begins to raise his voice, "Now, this here is a Vampire. He has no name, so call him whatever you like, but he has some 'opinions' he'd like to share. As your ghoul struggles up the hatch, you wonder how you want to persuade this group of lazy Wolves to prepare. > You describe it with urgency, they need to realize how serious this is. It's time to get these sleepy assholes up and running. You nod to the crowd as they gather around you, staring with glossy eyes and gaping mouths. "I'm not going to sugarcoat anything," you snarl, starting off with a very loud, though clear voice, "The Church has plans to raid our little stronghold here by next week." Gasps from the Wolves, and men exit their bags. Seems to have worked, for now. "And while that may be hard to believe, I'm sure we all know how ruthless the Zealots are. I escaped from the last Facility-- Facility 13, soon before it came tumbling down with C.E. Troopers, who burned down the laboratory. Since then, I have fought many of them, some purposely in order to find my brethren here, to join you as well as to warn you of the incoming second apocalypse. We are blessed Creations, gifted in our own right. We aren't innately evil, like the Church believes. Rather, we are capable of great things, but only if we survive our genocide." "Then what do you want us to do?" One of them shouts out, interrupting you. "I want you to fight back, and prepare for when they come next week. We need to take the initiative; I know how powerful Creations can be, so I have no doubt in my mind that we can beat them. But only if we get ready." "Why should we trust you?" One of the younger ones ask. You bare your teeth; fear is a big factor of your speech, "Because if I'm right then we all die." You seethe out, staring intently at your brethren. "We have three options the way I see it; defend the stronghold and prepare for when they come; try to take control of the city with our combined strengths before the attack; or just get slaughtered when the time comes." Most of the Wolves continue gaping, though Gideon cracks his knuckles. "Nice speech, Vampire" A voice declares, and the red-cloaked figure pops out of the hatch. Ragnor's hood fall down, and the profile is of a middle-aged, balding man. Terribly tall, and lean; powerful and domineering. "Do you really think we can overtake the Church?" "If we do it carefully, yes." He smiles, "Then I like what I'm hearing; I'm in." While it's amusing how enthusiastic he is, it also seems to win over more of the Wolves. Perhaps Ragnor is a big figure in the Wolf Underground. "It is likely to work, too. While some of us are inexperienced, we can easily beat them while their forces are divided into attacking our stronghold. We just need to be clever." Gideon continues to grimly frown, "I think the 'hold the fort' idea will work better. It's safer, and more suited to our abilities." It's odd, but you feel like it's completely your decision. Maybe they just really trust in you? > You side with Ragnor on this one. "I... Think Ragnor has a solid point. We can definitely beat the Zealots as long as we have the element of surprise. And if this goes well, then we won't have to worry about extinction ever again." The blonde vixen looks up to you, as do most of the Wolves. Ragnor laughs, and pats you on the back. Gideon, on the other hand, merely frowns, closes his eyes, and announces, "Right. Welcome to the family, Vampy. I'd rest, we're all practically nocturnal here anyhow. The cloaked Ragnor frowns, "Are you sure? I was just about to bring out the alcohol..." "No alcohol, Ragnor. We have a long night tonight, lots of training we need to go through. I don't think some of us here have actually fought Zealots." Ragnor nods, and the rest of the Wolves shuffle back to their blankets. Gideon shuts the lantern off, and heads down the hatch, disappearing after a thud. Meanwhile, you find a piece of concrete that is comfortable enough to meditate on, and begin to close your eyes... Only to realize that all the Wolves are watching you for some reason. They're all smiling, and the pretty one in particular seems to watch you in the dark of day. At some point during the night, she leans towards you to whispers, "Hi, I'm Cecilia." She giggles. "Uh, hi." You whisper back lamely. The next couple of days fly by, and you manage to go over the histories of your new friends, as well as prepare them for the fight. > You assault on Church City. The week passes by too soon for for your liking, but you and your compatriots can all agree that you got work done. You spent the week teaching the lesser-experienced Creations how to use their powers in battle, emphasizing team-work and effort. Like Kelso taught you, you passed on the knowledge of the power of emotion-- something you can vouch works in a fight. As the training went on it became rather obvious that in their human form, you can easily take on the strongest werewolf. In the real, bestial for, however, you have to use your wits. For that, you are forever thankful you are on the Wolves' good side. Heck, you're leading them to possible suicide. Other things you've focused on is appealing to both Gideon and Ragnor, both people whom you know you can trust to some sort of degree. The one thing you feel somewhat apologetic about is that you haven't been able to spend as much time with Cecilia as you wanted to, but you manage to remind yourself that if you succeed in taking over the City, you'll have all the time in the world. Perhaps, with enough time, you'll even learn the wolven-lingo, though it's the least of your worries currently. You focus on the plan: it's basic espionage, like how a movie would set it out (though you can't remember any one in particular). They send a one-man army to the middle of the battlefield, while they storm the castle-walls. You're confident that you can take care of yourself, especially in the night-time, assuming that's when you're sent in. The Creations stand together in a circle, well below the surface, waiting for the the scouting team (Ragnor's group) to tell you whether today is the day. While the Zealots begin their march to the Stronghold, the Creations will quickly get away, and run toward the city, attacking it while half of it's forces are trying to find the nonexistent. Time passes; you do this twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, to see if they're preparing for a night-attack or not. You hope it's at night, as the Creations would have an advantage, probably. Additionally, you wouldn't have to worry about sun-tan lotion, the tube Kelso gave you will run out sooner or later. And so you wait, everybody around you waiting in silence. You hear the codified knock: Clunk-clunk-clunk. That's three times. Today isn't the day after all. You go out to train once more, reviewing everything, and then turning back to refill on blood. Gideon gives you a broken plastic-cup with maybe an ounce of his blood. You drink it slowly, savoring the taste. It reinvigorates you, like usual, and you set down to meditate, waiting for nightfall. That night... Clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk That's 4... Is tonight the night? Ragnor's hooded head pokes out of the hatch, "Come on, wake everybody. Now!" Getting out of your trance, you begin repeatedly whispering, "Now!" as you went along, pulling off blankets from the Wolves. As with procedure, the Wolves spring into action, readying their clothes and going down, dividing themselves into the groups. Soon, the only Creations left are you (after ushering everybody out) and Gideon. "Gideon, are you coming?" You ask, concerned. You don't want to be late, after all. The hunchback stares back at you solemnly, not speaking. "Goddammit Gideon, let's go!" You begin edging out of the room. He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again. "Gideon, if you don't come with us, you'll die. We want you with us, so just... Come, man." "You may have been right about the Church, Vamp. But it doesn't change a thing. The real monster is the Professor, not humanity. Hurting them is hurting us..." You shake your head in disbelief, before angrily waving him off. That hippie won't bring me down. With haste, you make it to the well's opening, jumping off the walls to speedily catch up with Ragnor and the others. You were lucky they chose night-time, but that doesn't mean they didn't take advantage of it either. No flashes from miles ahead, just darkness, and maybe some slow movement here or there... But you only notice it if you squint. Crafty of them. "Ragnor, you see them?" "Yeah." He says, calling out from ahead, "But where's Gideon? He's supposed to be leading his group!" "I don't think that fool is coming." You spit out, finally catching up. "But it's unimportant. David can lead them." "David isn't exactly a leading-personality." "He knows what he's doing." "Which is why he should come with you! He'd be much more useful by you than by us. We're just giving you time. We can have one of the other Wolves lead, but for now you will no doubt need help, and a former Zealot is just perfect." > You urge for David to head a group. "Ragnor," you hold your hand out defiantly, "I can do just fine alone. I trust in David enough to know that he will aid you a lot in holding the fort than helping me on a stealth mission. Now come on." Ragnor grunts in protest, but shrugs it off. You and the the rest of the Wolves, keeping your heads low, move around the incoming horde of Zealots, attacking the City on its other side, almost opposite from where the Zealots marched from. After an hour of movement, you're eyes manage to detect the sentries watching the City. There are only perhaps 6 in total, evenly spaced out in hexagonal circumference around the City, but they each handle a fierce strobe-light that will bring light to the actual situation. Thankfully, the group is just far enough away that you aren't spotted. "So, do we have any good ideas on how I'm getting in?" You ask, your mind flipping through several theoretical simulations of getting into the City: most of them, you die. "You see the narrow dark passage-way in between the strobe lights?" "Yeah?" "You have to slip through that, then quickly kill the sentry on this side before he can get to the other, and then climb the barb-wire fence. You'll have to figure out what to do from then, but I'd focus on finding the actual Chapel, and killing the Elders there. We'll be rushing the City on this entire side while you're inside, confusing the Zealots and buying you time. Got it? Why the long face?" You hand him your rifle, "Guess I can't exactly bring this with me, haha." He takes it, smiles, and then salutes; this may be the last time you see him or several members of the group. You don't bother saying goodbye, and leave it to the hands of fate. "Just take care of Cecilia and David." You say, turning around to slowly creep forward... First taking it slow, you almost crawl on the ground as to not be seen by the sentry, and move forward. You position yourself perfectly so the lights miss you, and the cloudy sky allows you to remain concealed. As you crawl onward, you notice that the Zealot Sentry is practically sleeping; he must have been here all day, waiting. Seizing the opportunity, you make easy work of him by bite. The defenseless man is quickly drained, to the point of being unconscious for reasons other than tiredness. You don't even bother checking whether his pulse is still there, whether he's dead or not doesn't matter right now. Finding the big Chapel does. You keep the strobe-light on as to not raise attention to anything, and continue on inside of the City. You leap over the fence, still clad in the Zealot armor. What you see in the City is amazing. Nothing, almost a ghost-town. While the City has flashing banners all over, only two large buildings seem occupied: one with a giant cross, the other with an upside-down cross, like a sword. As you enter the former, obviously the Chapel, you see an elderly man open the door in front of you. His squinty eyes stare at you for a moment before he asks in a gravely voice, "Has my time come already?" Wordlessly, you grab at his throat, and begin to unintentionally rip at it, blood trickling down your wrist. "You are the reason for my brethren's suffering." you start, your pupils widening in anger, "You and your Zealots made us have to resort to living in fucking burrows. This is where God's plans for you ends, Tomas." "Then so be it." He dies there and then, and you find several monks staring at you in horror from the Chapel's door. Noticing them, you enter the Chapel to kill them as well. The balding priests hold out their necklaces, yelling, "We shall fear no evil for there is God." Over and over again. Thankfully, you aren't evil; you're just looking out for your race. Protecting it from those who want to cut down on it. The blood of the zealots tastes better than ever, but it gets cut short by the sudden blaring of sirens-- the assault has begun. Yet, oddly, enough, over ten Zealots rush in from all sides come to gawk at your bloody attire. While you cackle evilly when jumping and clawing at them, they still manage to have you surrounded by numbers if nothing else, breathlessly ending your unlife with their bayonets, all in the name of their God. You have been killed by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The week passes by too soon for for your liking, but you and your compatriots can all agree that you got work done. You spent the week teaching the lesser-experienced Creations how to use their powers in battle, emphasizing team-work and effort. Like Kelso taught you, you passed on the knowledge of the power of emotion-- something you can vouch works in a fight. As the training went on it became rather obvious that in their human form, you can easily take on the strongest werewolf. In the real, bestial for, however, you have to use your wits. For that, you are forever thankful you are on the Wolves' good side. Heck, you're leading them to possible suicide. Other things you've focused on is appealing to both Gideon and Ragnor, both people whom you know you can trust to some sort of degree. The one thing you feel somewhat apologetic about is that you haven't been able to spend as much time with Cecilia as you wanted to, but you manage to remind yourself that if you succeed in taking over the City, you'll have all the time in the world. Perhaps, with enough time, you'll even learn the wolven-lingo, though it's the least of your worries currently. You focus on the plan: it's basic espionage, like how a movie would set it out (though you can't remember any one in particular). They send a one-man army to the middle of the battlefield, while they storm the castle-walls. You're confident that you can take care of yourself, especially in the night-time, assuming that's when you're sent in. The Creations stand together in a circle, well below the surface, waiting for the the scouting team (Ragnor's group) to tell you whether today is the day. While the Zealots begin their march to the Stronghold, the Creations will quickly get away, and run toward the city, attacking it while half of it's forces are trying to find the nonexistent. Time passes; you do this twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, to see if they're preparing for a night-attack or not. You hope it's at night, as the Creations would have an advantage, probably. Additionally, you wouldn't have to worry about sun-tan lotion, the tube Kelso gave you will run out sooner or later. And so you wait, everybody around you waiting in silence. You hear the codified knock: Clunk-clunk-clunk. That's three times. Today isn't the day after all. You go out to train once more, reviewing everything, and then turning back to refill on blood. Gideon gives you a broken plastic-cup with maybe an ounce of his blood. You drink it slowly, savoring the taste. It reinvigorates you, like usual, and you set down to meditate, waiting for nightfall. That night... Clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk That's 4... Is tonight the night? Ragnor's hooded head pokes out of the hatch, "Come on, wake everybody. Now!" Getting out of your trance, you begin repeatedly whispering, "Now!" as you went along, pulling off blankets from the Wolves. As with procedure, the Wolves spring into action, readying their clothes and going down, dividing themselves into the groups. Soon, the only Creations left are you (after ushering everybody out) and Gideon. "Gideon, are you coming?" You ask, concerned. You don't want to be late, after all. The hunchback stares back at you solemnly, not speaking. "Goddammit Gideon, let's go!" You begin edging out of the room. He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again. "Gideon, if you don't come with us, you'll die. We want you with us, so just... Come, man." "You may have been right about the Church, Vamp. But it doesn't change a thing. The real monster is the Professor, not humanity. Hurting them is hurting us..." You shake your head in disbelief, before angrily waving him off. That hippie won't bring me down. With haste, you make it to the well's opening, jumping off the walls to speedily catch up with Ragnor and the others. You were lucky they chose night-time, but that doesn't mean they didn't take advantage of it either. No flashes from miles ahead, just darkness, and maybe some slow movement here or there... But you only notice it if you squint. Crafty of them. "Ragnor, you see them?" "Yeah." He says, calling out from ahead, "But where's Gideon? He's supposed to be leading his group!" "I don't think that fool is coming." You spit out, finally catching up. "But it's unimportant. David can lead them." "David isn't exactly a leading-personality." "He knows what he's doing." "Which is why he should come with you! He'd be much more useful by you than by us. We're just giving you time. We can have one of the other Wolves lead, but for now you will no doubt need help, and a former Zealot is just perfect." > You agree; David can help you take on the city from the inside. "Alright," you reply with a nod, "David will definitely be a huge help, considering that he's familiar with the area, but..." "But?" You frown, "I hope you guys'll be safe. The Zealots, especially in number, aren't pushovers." Ragnor smiles, and gives you a brotherly hug, "Don't worry Vamp, we'll manage. The Wolves aren't exactly pushovers either haha." "I know." You grin, returning the hug. You imagine, that after all this ends-- the fighting, you can retire, and just live your unlife with your new family. A dream, perhaps, but it's something to hope for. Soon after Ragnor turns to leave, he suddenly looks back at you, pupils dilated. "Wait a sec, David was a Zealot before you ghouled him, right?" "Err, yeah." "And he's still wearing his armor?" "Everything but the helmet." "You think they'd recognize him?" A pause begins, and ends with laughter. Ragnor snaps at you and puts on a silly grin, and jogs ahead back to his groups. You don't know who will head the second group, but you hope that it won't matter. All you need to do is wreak havoc in the city, and stay alive. The assault groups will do the rest, hopefully without harm as well. With David silently in tow, you continue on, analyzing the strong hold. Even from afar, the sleepless City is easily seen, and as you march on around the incoming Zealots, you can see how they set up the City's defense. Six sentries, commandeering strobe lights in a hexagonal circumference around the city, obviously looking out for unidentified enemies. Thankfully, flashing-Zealot armor is pretty identifiable, and so is David's face, assumably. "David?" You call, looking to make sure he's listening. He nods in return, but doesn't speak. "You think the Zealots will recognize you if they see you?" "Definitely, why?" "Since that means that you can draw attention due to your disappearance while I kill the head-honchos." "That's smart." He says, succinct as usual. You quit trying to make conversation and, once you get close enough to the City, point at the Zealot commandeering the strobe light in front of you. "Can you kill him before he turns to a radio?" David nods, and clicks on his blinking Cross-armor (you figure that it's to ward off friendly-fire) before he begins the march through the strobe light, waving his hands in the air and running to the Sentry. After several moments, you can see a wordless discussion taking place, starting with the sentry saluting and ending with him unconscious on the floor. When David turns the light a bit to the right, it gives you dark-space to walk through, unnoticed. The two groups are not too far away, and you manage to wave to Cecilia and Ragnor before following David into the urban Church City. You pat David's back and consider your good decision making. But, once again, you just hope the others will be alright... > You church City The strobe light aimed back to its original place and the Zealot downed by his own, you and David make your way to the barb-wire fence, and easily leap above it, too lazy to get the key from the Zealot. After David turns off his blinkers, you begin to pay more attention to the City only to realize that, from the inside at least, it isn't nearly as bustling as you thought it was. Perhaps that's because most of them went to raid the hideout. Gideon is still there... You shake your head; you tried your best with that fool, now it's time to take what's yours; what the Creations deserve regardless of what the Church or the Professor think of them. Not weapons, not demons: just people. David waits for you to start walking again, tapping his foot eagerly. He doesn't speak much, but you can tell he enjoyed his time with the Wolves. Still, you'll always wonder what's inside his head, now as a ghoul. You continue through the ghost-town, which for whatever reason has all of it's buildings rigged with neon lights, flashing. David leads you through the ugly urban landscape, and you keep a lookout for humans. Suddenly, you spot one, walking out of some sort of pub, walking unsteadily. You grab David by the cuff of his armor and quickly hide in the shadow of some sort of looming dumpster. With a finger to your lips, you wait until the man's back is turned before you sneak up on him, digging claws into his neck for a quick and silent death. The man falls to the ground dead, and you lick your bloody nails. David, unfazed, comes out of the shadows only to pick up the man, and silently position him into the trash. "That pub holds a great deal of Zealots. We need to move out before they see me." You nod in return. At first you considered just going in and slaughtering the gathering of Zealots, but then realized that the light-weights Ragnor and his crew could handle, but the higher-ups are going to be an issue. David once again takes lead, and you prowl the streets, silently killing anything in your way, passing by buildings of all shapes and sizes, though most not even occupied. Two buildings in particular stand out, however: one mansion with a giant blue Cross above the door; the other large and rectangular with an upside-down Cross, for whatever reason.You'd look through the windows to see what's going on inside, but the windows of both buildings seem to just reflect your own image, though you can only really discern your armor since your pale profile doesn't come out well in the reflection. "The one with the holy-sword is Zealot-headquarters, the other one is the Chapel." David answers your thoughts, smiling at you. "I think it's in our best interest to enter and clear out both." "Which do you suggest to do first?" "Either one, sir. We need to kill Father Tomas and the Chief, both in their respective buildings. The Zealots who aren't on their way to the stronghold will be in both, though. But whichever we pick, we need to do it quick; Ragnor and the others will be making their move any moment now." > You enter the Chapel. Not wasting any time, you turn to face the Chapel. Metallic and looming over you, with a large neon cross, still flashing. The door is a harsh steel, too old to cast a discernable reflection but maintained enough not to rust nor weaken. "How should we enter, then?" "No backdoors to the Church. Only one direction if you follow God." David recites from behind you. With a shrug, you continue onwards, going up a flight of concrete stairs, leading up to the looming steel door. You consider trying to bash the door in, but decide that knocking it and waiting for the door to be opened by whoever's inside would be an easier solution for getting in. Clang Your gauntlet taps at the metal. After a pause, you can hear noises on the inside of the Chapel, mostly worried murmuring. You quickly motion for David to go in front, right before a bald young man in ceremonial blue robe opens the door. In response to your ghoul's profile, the man just gapes for several moments before opening his mouth to speak. "Dave?!?" "No... Not anymore." He states, walking into the Church. The man doesn't seem to even notice you, engrossed in seeing a living ghost instead. Inside, several other monks are gathered, all of them staring at David with awe. You take the opportunity to slink into the shadow, and wait. "Behold! The blessed Lord brought our child back!" They cry, waving their hands in the air in synchronization. Up and down their hands go, until one with a cowl speaks up, "Brother David, where were you?" Your ghoul stares at them with disdain, "I got lost, but was found by a group of humans." They continue to gape. The cowled-one continues his interrogation, "Hmm? More humans, you say? "Crazy enough, the humans were in our backyard this entire time. We just didn't recognize them." "Whatever do you mean?" "The Wolves, Vadim. They're good people." Gasps erupt, and David's only looks down to his feet, and his hands ball up to fists. "They changed you, didn't they?" The one with the cowl points, and begins to chant in some sort of language which you are unfamiliar with. Bored of their religious, antics, you make your presence known by jumping out of the shadows, and decking 'Vadim' with a right hook, sending him to the middle of the crowd of twelve-or-so Monks. David nods, and sends a sharp kick to the nearest Zealot surrounding him. Before you know it, it becomes a rowdy brawl of fists. The monks may be very agile, but without any weapons nor armor you figure you or even David could take them out alone. Something tells you the alarms around the buildings weren't for show either-- you need to find the Father, quick! > You abandon David to search the Church. "David, finish off these grunts as I find the big man upstairs." You call out, examining the building for the Father's Quarters. David nods, "Up the stairs, to the left!" Your head turns from right to left, looking for the set of stairs that will lead you to the Father. Finding the red-carpeted stairs, you begin your ascent, only to be stopped by a heavy-set Monk, who angrily shoves you backwards. "Get away, foul demon!" He continues pushing, but you catch his left arm, and end squeeze-- Crack. He yells out in pain, and you manage to grab him by the cuff of his robe, only to throw him out of the way and into a wall. You run up the staircase, skipping steps to maintain speed. After reaching the end of the first staircase, you deftly,turn your body, not wasting any time by getting to the adjacent continuation of the stairs. Several leaps later, you reach the end of the stair case, only to be confronted by a terribly old man in a ceremonial blue robe, with a skullcap covering his no doubt balding head. His face is withered, and his frail eyes only compliment an extremely happy demeanor. This, you presume, is Father Tomas. He stares at you, silent, and raises a large metallic cross from an opening of his robe, though he seems to be holding it the wrong way... Wary of his silver weapon, you take a step to the side-- giving you room. "Father Tomas, it seems that I have finally had the honor to meet you." "No, the pleasure is mine, Vampire. Fate has brought it that it is my responsibility to put you down, as well as your canine friends." You glare at him in anger, and flick at your wrist; claws out, you get into a battle-stance. He, in turn, raises his shimmering Cross, wielding it as a sword. "I wouldn't put up a fight, if I were you. I know for a fact that you Creations can't heal from a wound of silver, and as such you have no otherworldly advantage over me." You laugh, "Except perhaps the age part." The priest stops smiling and instead eyes you angrily, "I suppose you'll learn the hard way." He slowly begins to approach you, his sword, pulsating with some sort of unrecognizable energy, held high. You make a quick examination of your surroundings: the stair case from behind you, doors and other hallways to your right, though several meters forward and to your left is a ledge, where there's an at least three-story drop down to the first floor, where you can see David slowly whittling off the Monks. Perhaps you can use the ledge to your advantage... You continue to parallel the insane priest, your claws at your side and your wits still intact. You need to make the first move, but how should you go about it? The man looks old, but something about him tells you that he's more than capable of wielding his weapon masterfully. Still, you're probably quicker than him, and a quick fight is all you need. Then again, you need to watch out for the silver sword, because if he gets a solid hit on you then you're done. > You fight Aggressively. You continue to stand parallel to the Head-Zealot, slowly beckoning him closer to the side with a ledge. While you know you have to end the fight soon, you also know that this won't be an easy fight. The cackling priest advances, holding his heavy Cross out like a rapier, poking it at you, trying to get you to move back. Deciding that staying on the defensive won't save you from this mad man, you take action by leaping in his direction-- he grins, preparing to simply swing upwards to hit you, but manage to somersault out of the old man's swipe, and land a heavy kick to his face. He staggers backwards, his hand on his eye in a mixture of pain and anger. Tomas angrily sends another swipe with his sword at you, but you're already charging for him, pushing the old to the ledge that is now to your right with your forearm. The priest coughs, but quickly recovers. Relentless, you send another barrage of jabs at him, moving close enough to him that his long-range won't be an advantage for him. A mixture of punches and claws manage to cut his robe to shreds, and he struggles to get you off of him-- to no avail. After a silly, pointless scuffle you manage to hold him right by the ledge, where a fall to the death would await him. Tomas holds up his silver cross, creating a pseudo-barrier between the two of you, but you just grab hold of it with your gauntlets, and shove him at the wooden slabs, and slowly increase pressure, slowly increase it. Several seconds more of pushing, and he won't have a choice of how his body breaks, as you'll secure his death in the fall. You shove once more... Snap. "There we go... See you in hell, bastard!" The wooden splinters open, and you find the two of you tumbling down at several meters, both grasping for eachothers' throats. Unfortunately for you, the old man barely manages to grab hold of your hair and uses it as leverage to be just slightly above you... You both fall with a heavy thud, your armored body crashing through the floor. You struggle to get out of it, as you find your armor almost embedded in to the rubble. Still, you manage to get up, and the sharp pang you feel in your head slowly begins to disappear. As the dust clears, you find a bleeding Tomas with a bloody eye holding an unconscious David to the wall, his silver sword still gripped in his hands. His remaining useable eye stares right at you, and the priest begins to cackle further, "If you take even one more step towards me, I swear I will slay your disciple right now. But, if you leave me here to die in peace, not of a sinners hand, then I can promise that I will not kill him. Hmm, you like this deal?" Your loyal ghoul stares at you blankly, and his shaking head can either be interpreted as a plea to let him live or to kill the priest. Or perhaps something else? Stunned and still recovering, you try to make a decision with a clear head... > You kill the Priest where he stands, because damn the consequences. "I'm sorry, David." You state, realizing that Tomas will be killing your ghoul regardless of your choices. With that in mind, you rush the bleeding geezer, hoping to catch him before he can finish off your ghoul. As you thrust your clawed hand at his head, he just barely manages to skewer David. Never has a killing felt more rewarding. Your hand pierces the fleshy skin-- leaving a flayed face and a collapsed priest. With a grunt, you rush over to David's side, horrified by the gruesome hole in his chest. You don't really say anything to him, as there is nothing more to say. He fulfilled his duty to you well, and his job, once the City will be taken over, will be easily replaced. But, for now, his death shall allow others of your kind to live. David smiles, and holds your hand firmly. Memories flash of your brief but powerful connection, Oh, and we just were getting close, too... As David closes his eyes, you stand up, ready to continue your mission-- now, to Zealot HQ. You make your way through the piles of corpses to the front door of the Church, more angry than anything else at this point. By now you recognize that the sirens are still blaring, which means that Zealots should be piling up in the streets-- but the street you see has nobody walking. Though you do hear voices from somewhere far to the left, you can't help but notice that Zealot HQ has its door open. Am I too late? You wonder, as you make haste by running into the building, looking around for someone to waste your adrenaline on. Inside, you see perhaps three half-dressed Zealots yawning and loitering about, seemingly confident that this is a false alarm. This means nothing to you, and you rush one-- kick him into a nearby table, deck the other one with a heavy punch, and angrily bite into the last one's hand when he tries to strangle you from behind. It's over in a matter of minutes, but you suddenly feel like you're being... Watched. "Bravo, Demon." Comes the voice. From across the room you can see a white-armored Zealot, taller and more sizeable than most you've seen. He carries with him a silver sword, less blunt than Tomas's though it doesn't seem to resonate with the same energy. "I see you were able to butcher my friends quickly enough, but somehow I doubt you'll manage to take someone like myself as easily." "Who're you?" You roar, setting yourself in front of him. "Zealot Karat, Chief of the Zealots." He grins, "At least, until the real Chief comes home from your clever diversion. "If." You state, bluffing. I have no idea what happened with Gideon and the other Zealots... "If, he comes back." Katar doesn't bother answering, and instead positions himself with his silver katana in an aggressive fighting position. Once again, you find yourself in a tactical situation that you need to decide how to approach. You need to be careful about his silver sword and make sure to finish the fight quickly, but he's probably more spry than that bastard, Tomas. > You play it defensively, make sure that sword doesn't come near your body. Fueling your rage into reserve energy, to be used when necessary, you plant your feet to the ground, readying yourself for the Zealot. Karat laughs, lazily letting his sword's tip fall to the ground. The man's bravery (or is it bravado?) astonishes you, "So, you fear God's might?" "Maybe, but not your's." Comes your sharp answer. "Then how come you haven't readied yourself to attack? Are you worried you won't make the cut?" "I'm simply more confident in your ability to leave yourself open, thanks." Karat shrugs, "Suit yourself, Vampire. Perhaps you shall find fear of God's servant instaed." With that, he raises his silver katana, it gleaming in the neon lights of the building. His stance confirmed, aggressive, he poises to attack. The white Zealot advances, giving a wide and open slash in the air to test you. Of course, you pass with barely any effort-- just a turn of the neck. Karat laughs once again, and attempts to bum-rush you-- but your defensive stance gives you an advantage, and with clever foot work you grip his wrist, pull, and flip him onto a nearby table. It cracks under the pressure of an armored giant slammed onto it, but the Zealot gets back up and, still gripping his katana, sends a swift vertical cut down at you. You attempt to dodge, but you'd admit that you didn't expect him to get back up so fast, and the slash sticks into your shoulder-armor, just barely missing your skin. As lucky as you were back there, now Karat has the initiative. He pulls the sword back, grabbing you with it and sending a heavy boot at your stomach. You begin to tip over, but you're sent backwards by a heavy, gauntleted punch to your nose-- which sends you back several feet and onto the ground. Your vision blurs slightly though you manage to get up before Karat manages to land a more accurate cut at your forehead, and manage to grapple him, using the core of your body to push him back. Your nose for some reason still bloodied, you continue to prefer close quarters, where your pinging head won't hamper your vision. Using the anger built up, you manage to grab hold of his helmet with both hands, and squeeze. The man screams, much like your ghoul did not so long ago. They all do, the humans scream in pain, struggle and kick in their last moments. And as the helmet crumples up and the man goes limp, you embrace your inner demon and drink him dry. The blood is refreshing and your vision clears, but then you notice why his armor is so bright. Must be inlaid with silver... You shrug. Does it really matter if the Zealots have been inlaying their weapons with silver? The Wolves can take care of themselves... Regardless, realizing that there aren't any Zealots left in the building, you leave to see how the war is going. Mission Accomplished. > You look for Ragnor and the others. You make your way outside of the building shaken but undeterred. The streets are empty, but you know that there are more humans in the houses, hiding. While the fighting itself may be dying down, you feel the need to go out and meet your courageous brethren, rather than have them come for you. You run down the steps and onto the concrete street, continuing back from where you came from, meanwhile trying to shove away distracting thoughts of your deceased friend. When this is done, we will honor you properly... Eventually, you begin to notice armored corpses strewn about in awkward positions. Alternatively, you find a brown Wolf, whom you recognize as the Middle-eastern man, white-eyed and bloody by a curb. How many of us were lost this day? You continue on in solemn silence when you reach the fence, and from beyond it you can see several more Wolven corpses. Frantically, you search for Cecilia-- Phew, none of them are blonde like she was. But still... This leaves perhaps eight of us left... Most likely the last of our kind. "Vamp!" Comes a cry behind you. You turn around quickly to be hugged by an especially warm Cecilia, with Ragnor smiling with glee. You return the embrace, happiness overcoming the previous thoughts of dread. "I'm glad to see your alright, man. We had a tough fight, but we fended the hordes of Zealots off. How did your fights go?" You nod, "We... We killed Tomas and- and a man named Karat, called himself 'Chief'. Either way, the place was deserted from Zealots by the time I came looking for you." "Zealots? What about civilians?" Cecilia joins the interrogation with the question you least wish to answer at this moment, "And where's David?" "The Father killed him." You answer succinctly, still trying to get your mind off of it-- you don't want anymore nightmares. "I'm going to deal with the civilians soon, Ragnor. I have a plan for them." Ragnor nods in turn, "Unfortunate, though he died a warrior's death. What shall you do with the civilians?" "Ghoul them, use them to help rebuild this city. Once this works, we can make an entire civilization of Zealots, and then... Find the Professor and kill the bastard." "Solid thinking. But what precisely is the next move?" "Well, where are the surviving Creations?" "Rampaging. Cecilia here was the only one of the virgins to be able to control their forms." "Rampaging?" "Err, yeah." Ragnor replies, confused, "What's the problem?" "For the plan to work we need as many live humans as possible to rebuild. Ghouls, remember?" Without wasting anymore time, you begin to move back in search of the Wolves when you feel a heavy hand on your shoulder, holding you back. "Woah there, Vamp. Are you sure you want to stop them? This is the first time they're in actual control of their lives. Plus, they're probably too tired to do any real damage. Just let 'em have their fun, alright?" > You give in. You stop in your tracks and turn around. "Alright, Ragnor. But we need to go see where they are if only to get things up and running before the rest of the Zealots come back from the hideout." Ragnor's eyes seem to pop out, "Shit! I forgot about them!" Moving as quickly as possible, you follow your ears to and alley-way, where seven Wolves lay, peacefully licking the blood off their coats. You let out a loud sigh of relief after this, thankful that they didn't cause too much havoc after the fight was won and that they're all in one place. Several of them snarl at you but remain reserved enough so Ragnor can give them a fatherly rub on the head, making them relax. And, as they collectively relax, they slowly morph out of their animal-forms and back to their naked, wonderful selves. This, your family, will be the parents of a new nation of Creations. A new beginning for your race. > You counting from A.D. For both the humans and Creations of Church-City, now simply referred to as 'Home', everything changed after the Night of First-Blood. Twelve moons past and the event simply became what everybody began counting from. Today marks the first year since it happened, and the Ghouls, in all of this time, have slowly warmed up to the 7 apostles and yourself, dubbed the Messiah of Creation. You care little for the title, but the energy spent creating a hierarchy and stable society would be all for naught without a leader, and you-- decorated 'war' hero and leader of the Wolves was the unanimously voted candidate. Ragnor wasn't interested in the position-- the way he put it was, "I'd much rather lead others to fight than lead them to work." As such, he mostly leads reconnaissance and other various missions while you worry about the boring stuff, such as feeding the hundreds of blood-thirsty ghouls, setting up scouting teams and doing fluffy 'moral support' meetings with your apostles. The scouting teams come with information about the surrounding areas and the status of the wildlife and animals in the desert, but you make sure they don't go too far out-- several scouts have been known to just disappear mysteriously. Your methods can't be called 'moral' by any means, though they are efficient. Perhaps thirty of the least fit humans were spared from being ghoul, and instead were tasked with giving of their blood monthly. The ghouls didn't need more than an ounce per month in addition to other foods, though you found yourself needing much more. The humans gave to the point that they practically were ghouls themselves, but not quite. Too tired to revolt, but too useful to just kill. Furthermore, you spent time looking through old files in the Zealot-labs, searching for more information on the Professor. What you found wasn't as much as you'd hope, just his name and several of his affiliations. No physical description or photo, just names, affiliations, and several of his experiments. Still, you're hoping that when you finally crack the computer you'll be able to find more on him. Ragnor thinks it's a long-shot and stopped helping you sort through the files to figure it out, deeming it 'hopeless' and a 'waste of time'. Truth be told, he might have a point-- for all you know, the Professor could have died a while ago. But there was one conundrum that among the time elapsed that you're all struggling to answer: what happened to the other Zealots? And Gideon? The desert was periodically searched for any traces of them, but nothing turned up. Several times you've set out to search for Kelso As much work as you had, you managed to do some more enjoyable things in your 'down time'. > The Wolves. (Optional) Even though the Creations are now in control of their lives and aren't persecuted for existing, you've heard several reports from the younger ones about nightmares and need for emotional support. After a small discussion about it with Ragnor, you decided that it may be best to have weekly group sessions where everybody can 'talk'. It's silly and tacky but you go along with it. Morale is important. One of the more memorable meetings was when you discussed the trauma induced from the Professor himself. "He used to stick a needle in me!" the young Allen blurts out, breaking the ice. "He'd continually poke and pull out my blood until there was nothing left..." Darla scoffs, "That's nothing, kiddo. The Professor-- he, he used to check if I could become..." We all watched her closely, intrigued by what she may say, until, suddenly, Doria begins to tear up and bury her head in her arms. Ragnor awkwardly puts his hand around her in an attempt to comfort her, but to no avail. "The Professor... He was a character." Ragnor begins, "I was brought to consciousness for several days, as he used to take me to spar-- no, fight to the death with his other mutants. Consistently the blonde bastard would take a mortally wounded Creation and perform more experiments on them, to check if he did it right. Still, there was something charismatic about the monster, charismatic; fatherly. Those who survived the fights were sent to far-off places to fight humans, and when we returned we'd be treated like kings until he stuffed us back into tubes." Nordim remains silent, but perks his head up. His head shakes, but he says nothing. Shamino starts to speak, only to be shut down by Cecilia, who tightly grips Nordim's hand. "Speak, young one." She whispers. Nordim nods, then opens his mouth. Nothing comes out, but eventually sounds can be made out. "Professor Kurschner was like.... Like what Ragnor s-said, fatherly. Like, like a f-father to me. And, and... He used to give me treats... If I only hurt someone-- someone for him. I..." He stops, and proceeds to 'do the Darla' and buries his head. Several gulps later, you begin to realize your displacement in the conversation. Why exactly is it that you are some sort of amnesiac? Everybody else seemed to remember something of the lab, but you know very little about anything. Only thing you know about yourself is that you're the only vampire left and that you somehow led 15 people to lead a rebellion against hundreds, only to win. Quite the accomplishment. You shake your head out of the otherwise uninteresting memory. If only Ragnor had a better memory then we could track the Professor down... Other notes you've gathered on your 'apostles': Ragnor, your second in command and easily the strongest fighter in Home. At least, in his beast-form. He couldn't care less for this garbage, but goes through it for the team. Cecilia isn't bashful about expressing herself to you, though it's obvious she'd rather do it in private rather than discuss it with everybody else. Still, she realizes the importance of this for the younger of the group, so that's good. Shamino is large and dopey, but he's really enthusiastic, which is great since something as silly as this needs the support. Simon is probably around sixteen years old and has been expressing discontent up until now. He seems to have warmed up after a couple of sessions of whining. Darla is still heartbroken over your ghoul's death. It's odd, but you never noticed that she and David were close. Then again, it's only now that you've really been acquainted with the Wolves. More personally, at least. Either way, she appears to be benefiting from the sessions. Nordim remains passive throughout all the sessions. Seems to share a resentment of any sort of authority and shudders when the Professor is discussed. Allen is extremely young, adolescent. He appears to idolize you and Ragnor, which gives you an impetus not to disappoint. As for you yourself, well, you try your best to act like a leader, though you've come to get bored of the place. The workload builds up and you don't want to bother anybody with your troubles. Somehow, you get the feeling that the Demon is somewhere out there-- the Professor lives. While you can't be certain of this, you simply feel the likelihood of something big happening any day now. And so you wait, praying for the day where you can take revenge on him for what he did to you: manipulating you and your brethren to hurt others-- without even knowing it! He used us as vessels for his own crimes, then left us out in the desert to be hunted down by the Zealots. The bastard will pay for what he did to us...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For both the humans and Creations of Church-City, now simply referred to as 'Home', everything changed after the Night of First-Blood. Twelve moons past and the event simply became what everybody began counting from. Today marks the first year since it happened, and the Ghouls, in all of this time, have slowly warmed up to the 7 apostles and yourself, dubbed the Messiah of Creation. You care little for the title, but the energy spent creating a hierarchy and stable society would be all for naught without a leader, and you-- decorated 'war' hero and leader of the Wolves was the unanimously voted candidate. Ragnor wasn't interested in the position-- the way he put it was, "I'd much rather lead others to fight than lead them to work." As such, he mostly leads reconnaissance and other various missions while you worry about the boring stuff, such as feeding the hundreds of blood-thirsty ghouls, setting up scouting teams and doing fluffy 'moral support' meetings with your apostles. The scouting teams come with information about the surrounding areas and the status of the wildlife and animals in the desert, but you make sure they don't go too far out-- several scouts have been known to just disappear mysteriously. Your methods can't be called 'moral' by any means, though they are efficient. Perhaps thirty of the least fit humans were spared from being ghoul, and instead were tasked with giving of their blood monthly. The ghouls didn't need more than an ounce per month in addition to other foods, though you found yourself needing much more. The humans gave to the point that they practically were ghouls themselves, but not quite. Too tired to revolt, but too useful to just kill. Furthermore, you spent time looking through old files in the Zealot-labs, searching for more information on the Professor. What you found wasn't as much as you'd hope, just his name and several of his affiliations. No physical description or photo, just names, affiliations, and several of his experiments. Still, you're hoping that when you finally crack the computer you'll be able to find more on him. Ragnor thinks it's a long-shot and stopped helping you sort through the files to figure it out, deeming it 'hopeless' and a 'waste of time'. Truth be told, he might have a point-- for all you know, the Professor could have died a while ago. But there was one conundrum that among the time elapsed that you're all struggling to answer: what happened to the other Zealots? And Gideon? The desert was periodically searched for any traces of them, but nothing turned up. Several times you've set out to search for Kelso As much work as you had, you managed to do some more enjoyable things in your 'down time'. > The Ghouls. (Optional) The Ghouls are, to put it simply, unhappy. From devout followers of God to what they believe are demons. If you weren't the leader of the City, you'd perhaps find it amusing when a Ghoul would attempt at suicide, only to find themselves un-killable by normal means. It's a sick kind of amusement which you don't take part it, though you can certainly see the appeal. They mostly live wherever they used to anyhow, only now they depend on your monthly visits when you give them vials of blood which the parents hide from their children. Almost every-time you appear an enraged male tries to fight you, but they're quite simply no match. It takes a while, but it's relaxed, for the most part. You have more or less recognized that only time can repair the fences torn down. Perhaps one day they'll understand. What you do realize, however, is that you'll need lots of blood to maintain this, and as such you have to make monthly visits to the old Zealot-HQ, where the twenty humans left serve as 'blood-donors'. You stop off at the old Zealot-HQ, where the twenty-or-so remaining humans are still kept. You open the metal doors, where what used to be a cafeteria for Zealots now holds Ghouls, carefully placing vials of blood into specific containers, storing them in an unused cupboard. As you enter, the Ghouls rise at attention and salute, before scurrying out of the building. They know why you're here. Once a month you have to extract more blood out of the humans, as well as make sure they're scared enough of you so they won't turn on each other. It's happened before, and you have to make sure it doesn't happen again-- after all, your society is defendant on feed. You move forward and to the right, opening another door which leads to a hallway, which leads in to another door whom's staircase leads to the basement, where the humans are kept. You go down the steps, flipping a light-switch as you do so. The lights are dim and buzz a lot, but the Zealots installed a powerful generator can probably work for several more years. The humans, shackled, pale, and grim, peer at you in the dim lighting. Their faces express nothing but disgust mixed with fear, and they say no words to you. You reach for a flask with one hand, and the other grasps the wrist of a young girl. She must have been ten before you took the City over, and now she is... Developed. Mature in physical, and probably would be attractive if she wasn't as pale as the undead themselves. You bend down and look at her straight in the eye as your claws rip into her wrist, and as blood pours out into the flask below she doesn't even cry out in pain-- none of them do, they just watch. When the flask is several centimeters full you patch her wrist with a large band-aid filled with alcohol. At this she winces when you place it on, her slender frame shivering. You stand back up, and stare at the others, watching you as you get ready to leave, placing a cork in the flask. You turn back around, finished with only one of your tasks concerning them. "Where is your god?" You question the humans. None of them answer, they just stare blankly at you, soulless. You point to one of them, one that has the soiled garb of a minister, "Where is your god now, human? Where has he gone to protect you in your time of need? In case you didn't know, an entire year has passed since your holding, and behold nothing has succeeded in saving you. You are hopeless." They maintain their silence. "Your only possible hope is to become one of the fallen, one of the so-called 'Demons' you once told your children to fear. Today I give you that option, to live eternal unlife, not the death that awaits you." One or two look up to you, some in fear, some in disgust, and some of interest. "Those who wish to join me can. Stand up, throw away your principles, and you shall join the magnificent civilization that has been created in God's absence." The girl you just cut speaks, "If- if I join you... will, will my child be safe?" You raise an eyebrow, only to see one of the young men, close to her, holding her hand tightly. You notice a slight bulge in her stomach. You rub your chin, "Aha..." Perhaps that would be a better method to keep the City living. Use the thirty here to reproduce more children to feed off of... "Yes, he would. You and your mate may stand, for we will take care of you." With a weak smile, the girl trembles to get up, while the male solemnly helps her up. "Indeed, I didn't expect for you to be able to... Be intimate here, but this is for the best. Whomever wishes to be fruitful, and to multiply, will be granted access to the World above. The rest will continue to stay here." Several more haggard men and women stand up, just barely able to with their shackles. With a powerful strike, you break the metal holding them, and the thirteen men and women stand behind you. The rest of them-- a truly hopeless pair of twins who still believe in their deity just wait there, watching as you take several of the men and ghoul them in front of the emotionally scarred group, the blood spraying over them. They stare blankly as you grab at the oldest human, and swipe at his neck-- revealing all of his ruby red blood before he could even react. The boy of the pair stares at you angrily; and knowingly, that he couldn't possibly fight you. The other of the two-- an odd looking girl with a bizarre paper-hat on her head-- one shaped like some sort of boat-- doesn't even react, truly mortified by your actions. As the youth glare at you, you deftly snatch the hat from her head, unfolding it slightly to read what the blotches of ink read. The brother breaks out of his phase just to push at you, trying to get the hat back only for you to easily push him back several meters with but a flick of your wrist. Just glancing at the paper, you recognize the format to realize that it is not recent-- pictures of gardens and open-houses primarily being the subject of the paper. Boring. You drop the newspaper on the floor before motioning to your new workers to follow you. Soon enough, you place the mates into their own 'cells', houses under lock and key. Every several days you watch to see how things are, and whether their efforts to make children for you is working. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take years before you can harvest the fruits of this brilliant plan, but at the very least it seems like a good investment...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For both the humans and Creations of Church-City, now simply referred to as 'Home', everything changed after the Night of First-Blood. Twelve moons past and the event simply became what everybody began counting from. Today marks the first year since it happened, and the Ghouls, in all of this time, have slowly warmed up to the 7 apostles and yourself, dubbed the Messiah of Creation. You care little for the title, but the energy spent creating a hierarchy and stable society would be all for naught without a leader, and you-- decorated 'war' hero and leader of the Wolves was the unanimously voted candidate. Ragnor wasn't interested in the position-- the way he put it was, "I'd much rather lead others to fight than lead them to work." As such, he mostly leads reconnaissance and other various missions while you worry about the boring stuff, such as feeding the hundreds of blood-thirsty ghouls, setting up scouting teams and doing fluffy 'moral support' meetings with your apostles. The scouting teams come with information about the surrounding areas and the status of the wildlife and animals in the desert, but you make sure they don't go too far out-- several scouts have been known to just disappear mysteriously. Your methods can't be called 'moral' by any means, though they are efficient. Perhaps thirty of the least fit humans were spared from being ghoul, and instead were tasked with giving of their blood monthly. The ghouls didn't need more than an ounce per month in addition to other foods, though you found yourself needing much more. The humans gave to the point that they practically were ghouls themselves, but not quite. Too tired to revolt, but too useful to just kill. Furthermore, you spent time looking through old files in the Zealot-labs, searching for more information on the Professor. What you found wasn't as much as you'd hope, just his name and several of his affiliations. No physical description or photo, just names, affiliations, and several of his experiments. Still, you're hoping that when you finally crack the computer you'll be able to find more on him. Ragnor thinks it's a long-shot and stopped helping you sort through the files to figure it out, deeming it 'hopeless' and a 'waste of time'. Truth be told, he might have a point-- for all you know, the Professor could have died a while ago. But there was one conundrum that among the time elapsed that you're all struggling to answer: what happened to the other Zealots? And Gideon? The desert was periodically searched for any traces of them, but nothing turned up. Several times you've set out to search for Kelso As much work as you had, you managed to do some more enjoyable things in your 'down time'. > The Wolven tongue. (Optional) The lupine language is an annoyingly complex one. Even though the alphabet is blocky and primitive, it's amazingly complicated. If you were to guess, the language was probably formed from several other ones-- particularly English, German, and Latin. Or perhaps not-- it's just that foreign to you. Over the months of relative tranquility you've picked up most of it, though the constant use of prefixes, suffixes and roots still mess you up greatly. As Ragnor puts it, "It's a beautiful language, simple but elegant. It's confusing to learn though, I'll give you that." You were given chalk and were set in some sort of rundown school, where they still used blackboards. Shamino-- who's just slightly younger than yourself, pretty much takes advantage of the opportunity to finally teach you something. He forces you to draw the assortment of curved lines in specific orders, with seemingly random dots in order to emphasize expression. Probably the most interesting part of the alphabet is that some letters are simply not used in the English language. Fittingly, they require use of the back of the throat to pronounce, almost like a choked howl. They say that they formed it to spite the Professor, but you're not really sure how it would accomplish that. It seems that it would be more useful as a secret-code language if needed. That's probably what it was at first though, assuming the Wolves were always this close in their Facility. It's fascinating to you, though, that the Wolves were close enough to build this language together. Unfortunately, they seem to share a link together that you don't have, a connection that they all have. Even with the newly added benefit of speaking their tongue, most of them still find you aloof to them, simply a leader- but little else.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For both the humans and Creations of Church-City, now simply referred to as 'Home', everything changed after the Night of First-Blood. Twelve moons past and the event simply became what everybody began counting from. Today marks the first year since it happened, and the Ghouls, in all of this time, have slowly warmed up to the 7 apostles and yourself, dubbed the Messiah of Creation. You care little for the title, but the energy spent creating a hierarchy and stable society would be all for naught without a leader, and you-- decorated 'war' hero and leader of the Wolves was the unanimously voted candidate. Ragnor wasn't interested in the position-- the way he put it was, "I'd much rather lead others to fight than lead them to work." As such, he mostly leads reconnaissance and other various missions while you worry about the boring stuff, such as feeding the hundreds of blood-thirsty ghouls, setting up scouting teams and doing fluffy 'moral support' meetings with your apostles. The scouting teams come with information about the surrounding areas and the status of the wildlife and animals in the desert, but you make sure they don't go too far out-- several scouts have been known to just disappear mysteriously. Your methods can't be called 'moral' by any means, though they are efficient. Perhaps thirty of the least fit humans were spared from being ghoul, and instead were tasked with giving of their blood monthly. The ghouls didn't need more than an ounce per month in addition to other foods, though you found yourself needing much more. The humans gave to the point that they practically were ghouls themselves, but not quite. Too tired to revolt, but too useful to just kill. Furthermore, you spent time looking through old files in the Zealot-labs, searching for more information on the Professor. What you found wasn't as much as you'd hope, just his name and several of his affiliations. No physical description or photo, just names, affiliations, and several of his experiments. Still, you're hoping that when you finally crack the computer you'll be able to find more on him. Ragnor thinks it's a long-shot and stopped helping you sort through the files to figure it out, deeming it 'hopeless' and a 'waste of time'. Truth be told, he might have a point-- for all you know, the Professor could have died a while ago. But there was one conundrum that among the time elapsed that you're all struggling to answer: what happened to the other Zealots? And Gideon? The desert was periodically searched for any traces of them, but nothing turned up. Several times you've set out to search for Kelso As much work as you had, you managed to do some more enjoyable things in your 'down time'. > You stargazing with Cecilia. "You're starting to lose your hair." With a loud chuckle, you sift your fingers through your once luxurious head of hair. As you take your hand out of it, white strands fall to the floor. "Ha, I suppose I am. I suppose that's what happens with stress." Cecilia giggles, snuggling up next to you. For a moment, the two of you marvel at the open sky, unpolluted by light. The stars shines from behind the slowly clearing clouds, a full-moon masked by the gray matter. "You think it was a good idea to sleep on top of a high roof top?" You ask. "Well, it's romantic." "Not really." More laughter. "You know, I still don't get you, Cess." She gets up, her long blonde hair falling into your face, "What is that supposed to mean, Vamp?" "You know I'm impotent." "... Yeah, so? Doesn't mean I can't like you." Now it's your turn to chuckle. "Of course, but that also means that you can't benefit our race if you stay the nights with me. Probably can't be too fun either." "Sometimes we don't have to sacrifice of ourselves for others. I like you and I can trust you, and that's all need, love." "Ah-huh." You slowly rise up, only for her to grab your hand to sit down with her again. You get closer to her once more, "Alright, so, you got me up here, finally, but as much as I like spending time with you, I think you need to tell me why you wanted to sleep on the roof tonight." Cecilia turns away, "I need to see something." "Like what?" "You'll see." In awkward silence you wait. As a powerful gust of wind passes, the night sky suddenly brightens slightly-- the full moon fully exposed. The Wolf gets up from the mattress, only to hop down from the roof and stare intently at the moon. "Cecilia?" You question, not wanting to upset her. All you know is that she wants to be in her animal-form, but you're not sure why. Suddenly, your lover begins to tremble, her shoulders jerking spontaneously and her chest rising with heavy breaths. Her body, barely concealed by a night-gown, grows-- thick blonde hair sprouting from every area, her legs becoming thick as tree trunks, claws protruding and her nose extending to a snout. Ugly fangs hang from her mouth and a vicious tongue hangs out as her maw becomes a weapon to be feared. The demonic beast stares at you and snarls in Cecilia's normal voice, "V-vamp?" "You can speak in that form?" You ask, shocked. "Yes." She replies, moving towards you, "I need you to do something for me." "What?" "Ghoul me." "What?" "I'm serious, my love. Else I wouldn't have already formed for you, rather than abruptly change in the middle of the process. I wish to live longer, like you shall!" You bring a hand to your brow, "Cecilia, my dear... This isn't necessary, really. You'll be living a long life anyway, as a Creation. "Cecilia, trust me, you do not want the curse of blood. The necessity eats at your very soul-- it justifies horrible things and--" "They're not horrible if they can be done with you." The poor girl... She doesn't get it, does she? She thinks she that being ghouled is a blessing, but it's a curse. The ghouls here, for example; they became sheep to be herded. Even I'd have a companian forever, it also means that my companion won't be herself anymore... > You become one with Cecilia. With a weak smile you cautiously approach Cecilia. "Alright, my love. Just remain quiet-- the others are still sleeping." You continue nearing the Wolf, who lowers her giant snout to clumsily lick your face. The slobber and sound gives you a distinct feeling of disgust, but you manage to nuzzle the liquid off your face on Cecilia's fur. "Are you sure you want this?" "Oh yes!" Cecilia whispers, her snout forming some sort of smile. On her command, you sink your teeth into her neck, getting your mouth full of hairs. It takes a while, but you finally manage to slurp enough blood that you feel the 'rush'. Power, energy, heat; everything connects you further in the moment. Despite her quirks, you've come to appreciate her more than anybody else. After all, she sacrificed most of her ability to feel just so you could savor her blood... No, she said she wished to live for eternity, like myself. To be with me, forever... You feel the sticky red goo splatter around your lips as the Wol struggles to not howl by pounding the ground around you. Your teeth maintain a strong hold on her neck, for you know that if you release prematurely the Ghouling process would have to be repeated from the beginning. The sweet and sour drink continues to flow down your throat, and before you know it-- Cecilia falls to the ground, naked and in her more human form. You fall upon her, and find yourself unconscious. You wake back in your quarters, a pale Cecilia in your bed and hugging you tightly. If it were anybody else this might have been an opportunity for debauchery or something naughty, but no-- you're still asleep downstairs. But that doesn't matter.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"You're starting to lose your hair." With a loud chuckle, you sift your fingers through your once luxurious head of hair. As you take your hand out of it, white strands fall to the floor. "Ha, I suppose I am. I suppose that's what happens with stress." Cecilia giggles, snuggling up next to you. For a moment, the two of you marvel at the open sky, unpolluted by light. The stars shines from behind the slowly clearing clouds, a full-moon masked by the gray matter. "You think it was a good idea to sleep on top of a high roof top?" You ask. "Well, it's romantic." "Not really." More laughter. "You know, I still don't get you, Cess." She gets up, her long blonde hair falling into your face, "What is that supposed to mean, Vamp?" "You know I'm impotent." "... Yeah, so? Doesn't mean I can't like you." Now it's your turn to chuckle. "Of course, but that also means that you can't benefit our race if you stay the nights with me. Probably can't be too fun either." "Sometimes we don't have to sacrifice of ourselves for others. I like you and I can trust you, and that's all need, love." "Ah-huh." You slowly rise up, only for her to grab your hand to sit down with her again. You get closer to her once more, "Alright, so, you got me up here, finally, but as much as I like spending time with you, I think you need to tell me why you wanted to sleep on the roof tonight." Cecilia turns away, "I need to see something." "Like what?" "You'll see." In awkward silence you wait. As a powerful gust of wind passes, the night sky suddenly brightens slightly-- the full moon fully exposed. The Wolf gets up from the mattress, only to hop down from the roof and stare intently at the moon. "Cecilia?" You question, not wanting to upset her. All you know is that she wants to be in her animal-form, but you're not sure why. Suddenly, your lover begins to tremble, her shoulders jerking spontaneously and her chest rising with heavy breaths. Her body, barely concealed by a night-gown, grows-- thick blonde hair sprouting from every area, her legs becoming thick as tree trunks, claws protruding and her nose extending to a snout. Ugly fangs hang from her mouth and a vicious tongue hangs out as her maw becomes a weapon to be feared. The demonic beast stares at you and snarls in Cecilia's normal voice, "V-vamp?" "You can speak in that form?" You ask, shocked. "Yes." She replies, moving towards you, "I need you to do something for me." "What?" "Ghoul me." "What?" "I'm serious, my love. Else I wouldn't have already formed for you, rather than abruptly change in the middle of the process. I wish to live longer, like you shall!" You bring a hand to your brow, "Cecilia, my dear... This isn't necessary, really. You'll be living a long life anyway, as a Creation. "Cecilia, trust me, you do not want the curse of blood. The necessity eats at your very soul-- it justifies horrible things and--" "They're not horrible if they can be done with you." The poor girl... She doesn't get it, does she? She thinks she that being ghouled is a blessing, but it's a curse. The ghouls here, for example; they became sheep to be herded. Even I'd have a companian forever, it also means that my companion won't be herself anymore... > You refuse. Slowly, you approach the vixen. "Cecilia... No, just no." It's as if you can see a frown in that huge snout of her's, "Why no? Vamp... I want this, for us. Why not?" "Because you shouldn't throw your life away for me!" You snap back, standing up to her bulking figure. "Ghoul's are inherently submissive and are forced to drink of other's blood to live. This is not a life for you-- I know you enough to know it isn't." "Only submissive to our sires," Cecilia murmurs, nuzzling her large cranium to your shoulder. "And I'd be okay with that." You push her away, slightly. "But I wouldn't be okay with it," you frown, petting her fuzzy chin, "Can you respect that?" Ugh, it's really hard to seem courteous when she looks like this... Cecilia backs down, "I suppose... I can't force you to do that. I'm sorry." "Don't be, it was a miscommunication on both sides. I think. Now, why don't we get some rest together? We have lots of time to look forward to." You smile and she smiles back.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For both the humans and Creations of Church-City, now simply referred to as 'Home', everything changed after the Night of First-Blood. Twelve moons past and the event simply became what everybody began counting from. Today marks the first year since it happened, and the Ghouls, in all of this time, have slowly warmed up to the 7 apostles and yourself, dubbed the Messiah of Creation. You care little for the title, but the energy spent creating a hierarchy and stable society would be all for naught without a leader, and you-- decorated 'war' hero and leader of the Wolves was the unanimously voted candidate. Ragnor wasn't interested in the position-- the way he put it was, "I'd much rather lead others to fight than lead them to work." As such, he mostly leads reconnaissance and other various missions while you worry about the boring stuff, such as feeding the hundreds of blood-thirsty ghouls, setting up scouting teams and doing fluffy 'moral support' meetings with your apostles. The scouting teams come with information about the surrounding areas and the status of the wildlife and animals in the desert, but you make sure they don't go too far out-- several scouts have been known to just disappear mysteriously. Your methods can't be called 'moral' by any means, though they are efficient. Perhaps thirty of the least fit humans were spared from being ghoul, and instead were tasked with giving of their blood monthly. The ghouls didn't need more than an ounce per month in addition to other foods, though you found yourself needing much more. The humans gave to the point that they practically were ghouls themselves, but not quite. Too tired to revolt, but too useful to just kill. Furthermore, you spent time looking through old files in the Zealot-labs, searching for more information on the Professor. What you found wasn't as much as you'd hope, just his name and several of his affiliations. No physical description or photo, just names, affiliations, and several of his experiments. Still, you're hoping that when you finally crack the computer you'll be able to find more on him. Ragnor thinks it's a long-shot and stopped helping you sort through the files to figure it out, deeming it 'hopeless' and a 'waste of time'. Truth be told, he might have a point-- for all you know, the Professor could have died a while ago. But there was one conundrum that among the time elapsed that you're all struggling to answer: what happened to the other Zealots? And Gideon? The desert was periodically searched for any traces of them, but nothing turned up. Several times you've set out to search for Kelso As much work as you had, you managed to do some more enjoyable things in your 'down time'. > You researching about your Creator. "Alright Ragnor, check the bin in the back. I'll flip through the files in the cabinet." As Ragnor groans, dropping a metal safe he was trying to punch open and moves to the back. "You know, I still don't get why you're so fixated on it still. You've got quite a bit ahead of you, why not focus on that?" "Because he still holds the answers to my questions. Like, who I was, et cetera." "Why not just put it behind you and focus on the present?" "Because I also need to make sure he doesn't mess with our future." "You don't think he's dead?" You shake your head, "Doubt it. Some of the files have already discussed the other Facilities and how the Zealots destroyed all thirteen of them. But I don't think that a man as resourceful and well-funded as the Professor wouldn't set up a back-up Facility. I'd wager that he's trying to do something there too- and we can't have that, can we?" Ragnor shrugs, "If it makes you happy." He silently sorts through the bin. With a sigh, you try to remember everything you've collected thus far: the Professor seemed to have thirteen Higher-Creations which eac helped run their specific Facilities, each with their own 'specialty'. From what you can tell, the ones you know are probably Gideon, Kelso, and... God, what was his name, Stein? They must have been the only ones who survived the Facility raids. The rest likely died. The Professor-- Sion Kurschner, apparently was known to experiment on himself as well as others. No pictures detail him, though it notes that he was of Germanic background, though American-born and raised. A lot of things detailing him are ripped, so it's hard to get anything useful. You flip through the last folder-- and something catches your eye. Eureka! It's a last sighting report. Apparently he was seen by Zealot scouts about a year ago, before the Church-City raid you ran. They saw a man in a white lab coat circle around the desert, then disappear. They say he went south, where they occasionally heard reports from another City that (used?) to be there. No other reference to that city is made anywhere else, but... This is the best lead we've gotten. Ever. "Ragnor, take a look at this! In about a week we should be able to send a team in that direction in search of the lost City!" We'll find you, Simon Kurschner. It's just a matter of time now...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You make your way outside of the building shaken but undeterred. The streets are empty, but you know that there are more humans in the houses, hiding. While the fighting itself may be dying down, you feel the need to go out and meet your courageous brethren, rather than have them come for you. You run down the steps and onto the concrete street, continuing back from where you came from, meanwhile trying to shove away distracting thoughts of your deceased friend. When this is done, we will honor you properly... Eventually, you begin to notice armored corpses strewn about in awkward positions. Alternatively, you find a brown Wolf, whom you recognize as the Middle-eastern man, white-eyed and bloody by a curb. How many of us were lost this day? You continue on in solemn silence when you reach the fence, and from beyond it you can see several more Wolven corpses. Frantically, you search for Cecilia-- Phew, none of them are blonde like she was. But still... This leaves perhaps eight of us left... Most likely the last of our kind. "Vamp!" Comes a cry behind you. You turn around quickly to be hugged by an especially warm Cecilia, with Ragnor smiling with glee. You return the embrace, happiness overcoming the previous thoughts of dread. "I'm glad to see your alright, man. We had a tough fight, but we fended the hordes of Zealots off. How did your fights go?" You nod, "We... We killed Tomas and- and a man named Karat, called himself 'Chief'. Either way, the place was deserted from Zealots by the time I came looking for you." "Zealots? What about civilians?" Cecilia joins the interrogation with the question you least wish to answer at this moment, "And where's David?" "The Father killed him." You answer succinctly, still trying to get your mind off of it-- you don't want anymore nightmares. "I'm going to deal with the civilians soon, Ragnor. I have a plan for them." Ragnor nods in turn, "Unfortunate, though he died a warrior's death. What shall you do with the civilians?" "Ghoul them, use them to help rebuild this city. Once this works, we can make an entire civilization of Zealots, and then... Find the Professor and kill the bastard." "Solid thinking. But what precisely is the next move?" "Well, where are the surviving Creations?" "Rampaging. Cecilia here was the only one of the virgins to be able to control their forms." "Rampaging?" "Err, yeah." Ragnor replies, confused, "What's the problem?" "For the plan to work we need as many live humans as possible to rebuild. Ghouls, remember?" Without wasting anymore time, you begin to move back in search of the Wolves when you feel a heavy hand on your shoulder, holding you back. "Woah there, Vamp. Are you sure you want to stop them? This is the first time they're in actual control of their lives. Plus, they're probably too tired to do any real damage. Just let 'em have their fun, alright?" > You shrug Ragnor off and run to make sure the chaos is controlled. With a heavy sigh, you continue on back to the streets of Church-City, Ragnor's hand not strong enough to keep you back. He and Cecilia follow you nonetheless, though in silence. The way back is uneventful, and the howls of the remaining Wolves are distinct enough to follow. Moving as quickly as possible, you follow your ears to and alley-way, where seven Wolves lay, peacefully licking the blood off their coats. You let out a loud sigh of relief after this, thankful that they didn't cause too much havoc after the fight was won and that they're all in one place. Several of them snarl at you but remain reserved enough so Ragnor can give them a fatherly rub on the head, making them relax. And, as they collectively relax, they slowly morph out of their animal-forms and back to their naked, wonderful selves. This, your family, will be the fathers of a new nation of Creations. A new beginning for your race.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'm sorry, David." You state, realizing that Tomas will be killing your ghoul regardless of your choices. With that in mind, you rush the bleeding geezer, hoping to catch him before he can finish off your ghoul. As you thrust your clawed hand at his head, he just barely manages to skewer David. Never has a killing felt more rewarding. Your hand pierces the fleshy skin-- leaving a flayed face and a collapsed priest. With a grunt, you rush over to David's side, horrified by the gruesome hole in his chest. You don't really say anything to him, as there is nothing more to say. He fulfilled his duty to you well, and his job, once the City will be taken over, will be easily replaced. But, for now, his death shall allow others of your kind to live. David smiles, and holds your hand firmly. Memories flash of your brief but powerful connection, Oh, and we just were getting close, too... As David closes his eyes, you stand up, ready to continue your mission-- now, to Zealot HQ. You make your way through the piles of corpses to the front door of the Church, more angry than anything else at this point. By now you recognize that the sirens are still blaring, which means that Zealots should be piling up in the streets-- but the street you see has nobody walking. Though you do hear voices from somewhere far to the left, you can't help but notice that Zealot HQ has its door open. Am I too late? You wonder, as you make haste by running into the building, looking around for someone to waste your adrenaline on. Inside, you see perhaps three half-dressed Zealots yawning and loitering about, seemingly confident that this is a false alarm. This means nothing to you, and you rush one-- kick him into a nearby table, deck the other one with a heavy punch, and angrily bite into the last one's hand when he tries to strangle you from behind. It's over in a matter of minutes, but you suddenly feel like you're being... Watched. "Bravo, Demon." Comes the voice. From across the room you can see a white-armored Zealot, taller and more sizeable than most you've seen. He carries with him a silver sword, less blunt than Tomas's though it doesn't seem to resonate with the same energy. "I see you were able to butcher my friends quickly enough, but somehow I doubt you'll manage to take someone like myself as easily." "Who're you?" You roar, setting yourself in front of him. "Zealot Karat, Chief of the Zealots." He grins, "At least, until the real Chief comes home from your clever diversion. "If." You state, bluffing. I have no idea what happened with Gideon and the other Zealots... "If, he comes back." Katar doesn't bother answering, and instead positions himself with his silver katana in an aggressive fighting position. Once again, you find yourself in a tactical situation that you need to decide how to approach. You need to be careful about his silver sword and make sure to finish the fight quickly, but he's probably more spry than that bastard, Tomas. > You fight aggressively, to make sure the fight is ended soon. Still angered by the death of your friend, you quickly lunge at the man, his mouth still moving. Karat moves out of the way, just in time. "You're a feisty little demon aren't you?" He laughs, readying his katana to slash. You don't waste a second when you swipe at him again, your claws forming from under the gauntlet. He dodges it again-- and counters, sending a flurry of swipes in your direction. Even though his advancing attacks barely give you enough time to dodge, you try to maintain being on the offensive. A horizontal slash causes you to crouch, and the next vertical one makes you have to move to the side. Again and again this cycle continues, and you feel as if he might be getting tired. When he begins to slow down even the slightest bit, you add a kick to your crouching, sweeping him off of his feet. He falls over, but not before a wild swing cuts at your cheek. While only a small amount of pus dribbles out of your cheek. you realize that this marks something worse. Still, you make an attempt to jump onto him, and strangle the bastard to death, but even on the floor Karat manages to use his sword at it's fullest, and this time, his sword is pushed with enough force to pierce your body armor. On the plus side, you did manage to end the fight relatively quickly. You have been killed by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You continue to stand parallel to the Head-Zealot, slowly beckoning him closer to the side with a ledge. While you know you have to end the fight soon, you also know that this won't be an easy fight. The cackling priest advances, holding his heavy Cross out like a rapier, poking it at you, trying to get you to move back. Deciding that staying on the defensive won't save you from this mad man, you take action by leaping in his direction-- he grins, preparing to simply swing upwards to hit you, but manage to somersault out of the old man's swipe, and land a heavy kick to his face. He staggers backwards, his hand on his eye in a mixture of pain and anger. Tomas angrily sends another swipe with his sword at you, but you're already charging for him, pushing the old to the ledge that is now to your right with your forearm. The priest coughs, but quickly recovers. Relentless, you send another barrage of jabs at him, moving close enough to him that his long-range won't be an advantage for him. A mixture of punches and claws manage to cut his robe to shreds, and he struggles to get you off of him-- to no avail. After a silly, pointless scuffle you manage to hold him right by the ledge, where a fall to the death would await him. Tomas holds up his silver cross, creating a pseudo-barrier between the two of you, but you just grab hold of it with your gauntlets, and shove him at the wooden slabs, and slowly increase pressure, slowly increase it. Several seconds more of pushing, and he won't have a choice of how his body breaks, as you'll secure his death in the fall. You shove once more... Snap. "There we go... See you in hell, bastard!" The wooden splinters open, and you find the two of you tumbling down at several meters, both grasping for eachothers' throats. Unfortunately for you, the old man barely manages to grab hold of your hair and uses it as leverage to be just slightly above you... You both fall with a heavy thud, your armored body crashing through the floor. You struggle to get out of it, as you find your armor almost embedded in to the rubble. Still, you manage to get up, and the sharp pang you feel in your head slowly begins to disappear. As the dust clears, you find a bleeding Tomas with a bloody eye holding an unconscious David to the wall, his silver sword still gripped in his hands. His remaining useable eye stares right at you, and the priest begins to cackle further, "If you take even one more step towards me, I swear I will slay your disciple right now. But, if you leave me here to die in peace, not of a sinners hand, then I can promise that I will not kill him. Hmm, you like this deal?" Your loyal ghoul stares at you blankly, and his shaking head can either be interpreted as a plea to let him live or to kill the priest. Or perhaps something else? Stunned and still recovering, you try to make a decision with a clear head... > You trust in the Priest and continue on to the other building. "You'll have your own choice of death today, Tomas. But I will honor the deal we made tonight, and I hope, for your sake, that you honor yours." Father Tomas stares at you with that crazy eye of his, nodding and cocking his head for you to move towards the door before he can release your friend. With an angry sigh, you move past the bloody corpses piled up in the room and hang by the front door. As David is dropped by the Father, you stand up, ready to continue your mission-- now, to Zealot HQ. David stares at you meekly, trying his best to grunt loudly. You wave to him, expecting him to follow, before opening the front door once again. By now you recognize that the sirens are still blaring, which means that Zealots should be piling up in the streets-- but the street you see has nobody walking. Though you do hear voices from somewhere far to the left, you can't help but notice that Zealot HQ has its door open. Am I too late? You wonder, as you make haste by running into the building, looking around for someone to waste your adrenaline on. Inside, you see perhaps three half-dressed Zealots yawning and loitering about, seemingly confident that this is a false alarm. This means nothing to you, and you rush one-- kick him into a nearby table, deck the other one with a heavy punch, and angrily bite into the last one's hand when he tries to strangle you from behind. It's over in a matter of minutes, but you suddenly feel like you're being... Watched. "Bravo, Demon." Comes the voice. From across the room you can see a white-armored Zealot, taller and more sizeable than most you've seen. He carries with him a silver sword, less blunt than Tomas's though it doesn't seem to resonate with the same energy. "I see you were able to butcher my friends quickly enough, but somehow I doubt you'll manage to take someone like myself as easily." "Who're you?" You roar, setting yourself in front of him. "Zealot Karat, Chief of the Zealots." He grins, "At least, until the real Chief comes home from your clever diversion. "If." You state, bluffing. I have no idea what happened with Gideon and the other Zealots... "If, he comes back." Katar doesn't bother answering, and instead positions himself with his silver katana in an aggressive fighting position. Once again, you find yourself in a tactical situation that you need to decide how to approach. You need to be careful about his silver sword and make sure to finish the fight quickly, but he's probably more spry than that bastard, Tomas. > You fight defensively, as to make sure that katana doesn't touch you. Fueling your rage into reserve energy, to be used when necessary, you plant your feet to the ground, readying yourself for the Zealot. Karat laughs, lazily letting his sword's tip fall to the ground. The man's bravery (or is it bravado?) astonishes you, "So, you fear God's might?" "Maybe, but not your's." Comes your sharp answer. "Then how come you haven't readied yourself to attack? Are you worried you won't make the cut?" "I'm simply more confident in your ability to leave yourself open, thanks." Karat shrugs, "Suit yourself, Vampire. Perhaps you shall find fear of God's servant instaed." With that, he raises his silver katana, it gleaming in the neon lights of the building. His stance confirmed, aggressive, he poises to attack. The white Zealot advances, giving a wide and open slash in the air to test you. Of course, you pass with barely any effort-- just a turn of the neck. Karat laughs once again, and attempts to bum-rush you-- but your defensive stance gives you an advantage, and with clever foot work you grip his wrist, pull, and flip him onto a nearby table. It cracks under the pressure of an armored giant slammed onto it, but the Zealot gets back up and, still gripping his katana, sends a swift vertical cut down at you. You attempt to dodge, but you'd admit that you didn't expect him to get back up so fast, and the slash sticks into your shoulder-armor, just barely missing your skin. As lucky as you were back there, now Karat has the initiative. He pulls the sword back, grabbing you with it and sending a heavy boot at your stomach. You begin to tip over, but you're sent backwards by a heavy, gauntleted punch to your nose-- which sends you back several feet and onto the ground. Your vision blurs slightly though you manage to get up before Karat manages to land a more accurate cut at your forehead, and manage to grapple him, using the core of your body to push him back. Your nose for some reason still bloodied, you continue to prefer close quarters, where your pinging head won't hamper your vision. Using the anger built up, you manage to grab hold of his helmet with both hands, and squeeze. The man screams, much like your ghoul did not so long ago. They all do, the humans scream in pain, struggle and kick in their last moments. And as the helmet crumples up and the man goes limp, you embrace your inner demon and drink him dry. The blood is refreshing and your vision clears, but then you notice why his armor is so bright. Must be inlaid with silver... You shrug. Does it really matter if the Zealots have been inlaying their weapons with silver? The Wolves can take care of themselves... Regardless, realizing that there aren't any Zealots left in the building, you leave to see how the war is going. Mission Successful. You get up, and stretch, getting ready to make your way to see how the Wolves fared. Suddenly... "DIE DEMON!" Comes the familiar thundering, though gravely voice. You hear and feel the heavy thud of a metal beam smashing into your skull. You double over, barely conscious, but you're able to make out the blue robe of the Father, now striped with rust-colored blood in front of you. "While it is saddening to think that you got this far, I am happy to relinquish you of your dark life-force, as I did to the man whom you corrupted. Good night." You have been killed by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"David, finish off these grunts as I find the big man upstairs." You call out, examining the building for the Father's Quarters. David nods, "Up the stairs, to the left!" Your head turns from right to left, looking for the set of stairs that will lead you to the Father. Finding the red-carpeted stairs, you begin your ascent, only to be stopped by a heavy-set Monk, who angrily shoves you backwards. "Get away, foul demon!" He continues pushing, but you catch his left arm, and end squeeze-- Crack. He yells out in pain, and you manage to grab him by the cuff of his robe, only to throw him out of the way and into a wall. You run up the staircase, skipping steps to maintain speed. After reaching the end of the first staircase, you deftly,turn your body, not wasting any time by getting to the adjacent continuation of the stairs. Several leaps later, you reach the end of the stair case, only to be confronted by a terribly old man in a ceremonial blue robe, with a skullcap covering his no doubt balding head. His face is withered, and his frail eyes only compliment an extremely happy demeanor. This, you presume, is Father Tomas. He stares at you, silent, and raises a large metallic cross from an opening of his robe, though he seems to be holding it the wrong way... Wary of his silver weapon, you take a step to the side-- giving you room. "Father Tomas, it seems that I have finally had the honor to meet you." "No, the pleasure is mine, Vampire. Fate has brought it that it is my responsibility to put you down, as well as your canine friends." You glare at him in anger, and flick at your wrist; claws out, you get into a battle-stance. He, in turn, raises his shimmering Cross, wielding it as a sword. "I wouldn't put up a fight, if I were you. I know for a fact that you Creations can't heal from a wound of silver, and as such you have no otherworldly advantage over me." You laugh, "Except perhaps the age part." The priest stops smiling and instead eyes you angrily, "I suppose you'll learn the hard way." He slowly begins to approach you, his sword, pulsating with some sort of unrecognizable energy, held high. You make a quick examination of your surroundings: the stair case from behind you, doors and other hallways to your right, though several meters forward and to your left is a ledge, where there's an at least three-story drop down to the first floor, where you can see David slowly whittling off the Monks. Perhaps you can use the ledge to your advantage... You continue to parallel the insane priest, your claws at your side and your wits still intact. You need to make the first move, but how should you go about it? The man looks old, but something about him tells you that he's more than capable of wielding his weapon masterfully. Still, you're probably quicker than him, and a quick fight is all you need. Then again, you need to watch out for the silver sword, because if he gets a solid hit on you then you're done. > You fight Defensively. You plant your feet sturdily into the flooring, watching his sword with caution. Whenever he moves closer, you move forward and around him, bringing him closer to the ledge and maintaining an important amount of distance between the two of you. Tomas chuckles, and finally begins swinging his heavy artifact. He does so not wildly, rather with strong, fluid motions; all of which your utmost concentration allow you to just barely dodge. His long strokes give him a lot of range, and you have a feeling that he's only just started. He picks up the pace, using his heavy sword more like a rapier, thrusting and swiping, attempting to corner you to the other side of the room; that isn't necessarily bad, as it's the side that has the ledge, but you need to quickly get back in control of the fight if you wish to get the old fool. Tomas advances, giving another quick thrust with his sword-- you try to take advantage of that by kicking his sword out of his hands, but his firm grip doesn't let go of it. Not wasting the opportunity, you leap at him while he rebalances the sword, and try to land a heavy claw at his neck. Seeing you, the old man, with bizarre agility, drops to the floor, and sweeps your legs from under you, knocking your head on the rails. You quickly get back up with a sharp twist, but he has enough time to give you a thwack on the back with his sword. The pain stings, and you feel your bones crack as he smacks you upside the head again with it, over an over again. Every time you attempt you get up, you are taken out again by Tomas's repetitive strikes. Can't... Get back up... Before you know it, You have been killed by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Not wasting any time, you turn to face the Chapel. Metallic and looming over you, with a large neon cross, still flashing. The door is a harsh steel, too old to cast a discernable reflection but maintained enough not to rust nor weaken. "How should we enter, then?" "No backdoors to the Church. Only one direction if you follow God." David recites from behind you. With a shrug, you continue onwards, going up a flight of concrete stairs, leading up to the looming steel door. You consider trying to bash the door in, but decide that knocking it and waiting for the door to be opened by whoever's inside would be an easier solution for getting in. Clang Your gauntlet taps at the metal. After a pause, you can hear noises on the inside of the Chapel, mostly worried murmuring. You quickly motion for David to go in front, right before a bald young man in ceremonial blue robe opens the door. In response to your ghoul's profile, the man just gapes for several moments before opening his mouth to speak. "Dave?!?" "No... Not anymore." He states, walking into the Church. The man doesn't seem to even notice you, engrossed in seeing a living ghost instead. Inside, several other monks are gathered, all of them staring at David with awe. You take the opportunity to slink into the shadow, and wait. "Behold! The blessed Lord brought our child back!" They cry, waving their hands in the air in synchronization. Up and down their hands go, until one with a cowl speaks up, "Brother David, where were you?" Your ghoul stares at them with disdain, "I got lost, but was found by a group of humans." They continue to gape. The cowled-one continues his interrogation, "Hmm? More humans, you say? "Crazy enough, the humans were in our backyard this entire time. We just didn't recognize them." "Whatever do you mean?" "The Wolves, Vadim. They're good people." Gasps erupt, and David's only looks down to his feet, and his hands ball up to fists. "They changed you, didn't they?" The one with the cowl points, and begins to chant in some sort of language which you are unfamiliar with. Bored of their religious, antics, you make your presence known by jumping out of the shadows, and decking 'Vadim' with a right hook, sending him to the middle of the crowd of twelve-or-so Monks. David nods, and sends a sharp kick to the nearest Zealot surrounding him. Before you know it, it becomes a rowdy brawl of fists. The monks may be very agile, but without any weapons nor armor you figure you or even David could take them out alone. Something tells you the alarms around the buildings weren't for show either-- you need to find the Father, quick! > You finish off the remaining monks, then worry about Father Tomas. Man, these bastards are quick. You may have gotten lucky with the Vadim fellow, but the rest, now pumping with adrenaline, are much harder to hit. The bald men may not be especially strong, but they're skilled enough that they can at least dodge and block your powerful claws and punches. Of course, they're bound to get tired after a minute or so of constant movement, but I need to get this done quickly. "Oof." One grunts as you land a knee into his groin, he stumbles to your side, where a heavy-set Monk elbows at your ribs-- only to miss and be targeted by David, who was unsuccessfully trying to down a midget of a Zealot. Your ghoul manages to leap atop of him and .wrap his arms around the man's neck. "What... happened.... to you... my.... friend..." Are his last words. The remaining monks still take up your time, giving quick jabs to your non-existent pressure points as you try to land a hit on them. The acrobats continue dodging, and you relentlessly continue, not hampered by mortal energy-consumption. They begin to slow, and your wild, badly-timed swings catch several of the surrounding monks, crushing their bones easily. Minutes passed, the only one standing is the sweating midget named, 'Miguel', who hopelessly kneels before you, "O how the lord has bested us, taught us a lesson in humility in dream-form, he did. Wake us from this nightmare, O merciful God!" You punt him across the room, cackling as you do so. Unfortunately for yourself and David, you can hear sirens-- Ragnor has begun his siege. You look from around you, and in front of you appears a pruned old man, wearing a ceremonial blue robe and a skullcap, wielding a shining... silver cross? Only, upside-down... As a sword... Father Tomas stares at you with a surprisingly serene smile, considering what you did with his disciples. "My monks did their part, do not worry, Vampire." Moments later, the old man throws his heavy rod with unreal accuracy and force, impaling your belly and opening it, spilling some gastric juices, but that's all. You feel your body convulsing as the holy metals sucks at your life force. You groan in pain, and kneel before the lord... If only you finished this man earlier. You have been killed by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The strobe light aimed back to its original place and the Zealot downed by his own, you and David make your way to the barb-wire fence, and easily leap above it, too lazy to get the key from the Zealot. After David turns off his blinkers, you begin to pay more attention to the City only to realize that, from the inside at least, it isn't nearly as bustling as you thought it was. Perhaps that's because most of them went to raid the hideout. Gideon is still there... You shake your head; you tried your best with that fool, now it's time to take what's yours; what the Creations deserve regardless of what the Church or the Professor think of them. Not weapons, not demons: just people. David waits for you to start walking again, tapping his foot eagerly. He doesn't speak much, but you can tell he enjoyed his time with the Wolves. Still, you'll always wonder what's inside his head, now as a ghoul. You continue through the ghost-town, which for whatever reason has all of it's buildings rigged with neon lights, flashing. David leads you through the ugly urban landscape, and you keep a lookout for humans. Suddenly, you spot one, walking out of some sort of pub, walking unsteadily. You grab David by the cuff of his armor and quickly hide in the shadow of some sort of looming dumpster. With a finger to your lips, you wait until the man's back is turned before you sneak up on him, digging claws into his neck for a quick and silent death. The man falls to the ground dead, and you lick your bloody nails. David, unfazed, comes out of the shadows only to pick up the man, and silently position him into the trash. "That pub holds a great deal of Zealots. We need to move out before they see me." You nod in return. At first you considered just going in and slaughtering the gathering of Zealots, but then realized that the light-weights Ragnor and his crew could handle, but the higher-ups are going to be an issue. David once again takes lead, and you prowl the streets, silently killing anything in your way, passing by buildings of all shapes and sizes, though most not even occupied. Two buildings in particular stand out, however: one mansion with a giant blue Cross above the door; the other large and rectangular with an upside-down Cross, for whatever reason.You'd look through the windows to see what's going on inside, but the windows of both buildings seem to just reflect your own image, though you can only really discern your armor since your pale profile doesn't come out well in the reflection. "The one with the holy-sword is Zealot-headquarters, the other one is the Chapel." David answers your thoughts, smiling at you. "I think it's in our best interest to enter and clear out both." "Which do you suggest to do first?" "Either one, sir. We need to kill Father Tomas and the Chief, both in their respective buildings. The Zealots who aren't on their way to the stronghold will be in both, though. But whichever we pick, we need to do it quick; Ragnor and the others will be making their move any moment now." > You enter the Zealot HQ. As you warily near the steel entrance to the Zealot headquarters, David taps on your shoulder, silently beckoning you to follow him. You comply, and follow your ghoul to around the building, where, after going up several flights of metal stairs (making as little noise as possible), you find a molding wooden door, a nice change from the ugly metal and concrete which make up the rest of the City. Of course, aside from giving you a vague feeling of deja vu, it's also gives you an easy opening. David motions toward it. Now let's make some noise. You remain careful in your last moments of anonymity, you try the golden knob- locked. Not wanting to jam it accidentally, you settle for setting up a roundhouse kick-- you twist your body, hold for a forceful kick, and push. The power of your kick rips at the wood, leaving a splintered hole in the door's midsection, big enough for you to swiftly roll under-- David following. Inside, you find several Zealots playing cards around a round table. They are visibly stunned, and gape at you and your ghoul. "David?" One asks, jumping up from their seat. Not cutting them any lack, you run at the Zealot, decking him to the floor with a solid punch. David takes on another, kicking him from the side, toppling him and his metal chair over. With only two left, you quickly claw at the one holding his hands up, splashing the table with his blood. With your claws entrenched in the Zealot neck, you fling him at the other the one. He flies, and with another clang the other one catches him, only to topple over as well. You quickly finish off any of them even barely conscious, clawing at their throats for edible parts. After grazing, you begin to hear footsteps. Can't waste time. "Where's the chief?" You roar, energized from the scuffle. David eyes bounce from each of the three doors connecting to other parts of the building, struggling to remember. "I'm the 'Chief', demonspawn." The door to the right opens, and there stands a tall, unusually garbed Zealot. Like most, he's tall, easily more than six feet and with navy blue armor with yellow lining, rather than the customary black and blue. He wears no mask, though his neck seems to be heavily guarded. Smart, but useless in my current state. "Vampire, we knew you'd come, but we didn't expect you to corrupt one of our own," he glares at David, and readies a gleaming silver sword, "Nor for you to attack us when we least expect it. But no matter, you both will die where you stand, for you deserve no mercy in this world." Your ghoul points at him, "Yes, that's Katar, we need to be careful with him though..." You nod, wondering how the best way to approach the enemy would be. > You angrily lash out at him as Kelso taught you; end the fight quickly. Barely letting him finish his speech, you lunge-- bringing the heel of your palm down near his jaw, only for him to deftly dodge out of the way. He shuffles several meters to the right, and raises his sword. He points at you, "By God's glory, the dead will stay dead tonight." Quickly, he swipes with his blade, you dodging it by as little as a hair. You continue to bend your spine in ways you never imagined you could, but remain on the offensive by clawing at him at every chance you have. You send a kick at his shin-- causing his knees to bend, and charge him with all your body force, screeching and yelling like a cat. You lay on top of him, and begin mercilessly pounding his bearded face, before he manages to separate you and him just by his sword-- which you angrily rip out of his grip, only for it to clumsily flip and cut into your forehead. He takes advantage of this and kicks you off, coughing out blood and quickly running for his sword. You try to reach for it, to no avail. David, now certain you need his help, jumps on Katar's back, trying to strangle the elite Zealot. Even with David on his back, he's able to stab you with his sword while you're still baffled as to why you're not regenerating your wounds properly. The cold steel hacks at your bones, and you begin crying out in pain while the holy man continues to mock you. Once you're incapacitated, the now ear-less Karat flings David off of him, and beheads him in front of you, the glum expression ever-present on your ghoul's head. He doesn't even need to finish you off, and you feel your energy being drained out. On the plus side, you did manage to end the fight relatively quickly. You have been killed by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you warily near the steel entrance to the Zealot headquarters, David taps on your shoulder, silently beckoning you to follow him. You comply, and follow your ghoul to around the building, where, after going up several flights of metal stairs (making as little noise as possible), you find a molding wooden door, a nice change from the ugly metal and concrete which make up the rest of the City. Of course, aside from giving you a vague feeling of deja vu, it's also gives you an easy opening. David motions toward it. Now let's make some noise. You remain careful in your last moments of anonymity, you try the golden knob- locked. Not wanting to jam it accidentally, you settle for setting up a roundhouse kick-- you twist your body, hold for a forceful kick, and push. The power of your kick rips at the wood, leaving a splintered hole in the door's midsection, big enough for you to swiftly roll under-- David following. Inside, you find several Zealots playing cards around a round table. They are visibly stunned, and gape at you and your ghoul. "David?" One asks, jumping up from their seat. Not cutting them any lack, you run at the Zealot, decking him to the floor with a solid punch. David takes on another, kicking him from the side, toppling him and his metal chair over. With only two left, you quickly claw at the one holding his hands up, splashing the table with his blood. With your claws entrenched in the Zealot neck, you fling him at the other the one. He flies, and with another clang the other one catches him, only to topple over as well. You quickly finish off any of them even barely conscious, clawing at their throats for edible parts. After grazing, you begin to hear footsteps. Can't waste time. "Where's the chief?" You roar, energized from the scuffle. David eyes bounce from each of the three doors connecting to other parts of the building, struggling to remember. "I'm the 'Chief', demonspawn." The door to the right opens, and there stands a tall, unusually garbed Zealot. Like most, he's tall, easily more than six feet and with navy blue armor with yellow lining, rather than the customary black and blue. He wears no mask, though his neck seems to be heavily guarded. Smart, but useless in my current state. "Vampire, we knew you'd come, but we didn't expect you to corrupt one of our own," he glares at David, and readies a gleaming silver sword, "Nor for you to attack us when we least expect it. But no matter, you both will die where you stand, for you deserve no mercy in this world." Your ghoul points at him, "Yes, that's Katar, we need to be careful with him though..." You nod, wondering how the best way to approach the enemy would be. > You might have to be defensive, that sword doesn't look too friendly. David watches, sure in your chances and not wanting to get in your way while you set up a defensive stance, planting your feet to the ground and readying your hands at the sides. Katar, parallel to you, closes the door behind him, and then raises his sword, pointing it at you. "So, you fear God?" "Not in yours." You laugh back, maintaining composure. He's trying to get me off-guard, that's what this mad-man wants. "Then perhaps you find fear in his servants instead, fool. Why else would you not attack me before I ready my blade? Katar slowly approaches you, his long sword only a quick-thrust away from your armored chest. You don't feel the need to respond, instead focusing on his blade. You remember Kelso mentioning to you that you won't regenerate from silver-caused cuts, making this the most dangerous fight you've been in, yet. You can only hope that after you survive this, you can make sure the Church doesn't have too much silver lying about. They probably have some idea of whether it works or not, otherwise Katar wouldn't have a silver katana. The aloof Zealot chuckles, "Then this will be an easy fight." He holds his sword with both hands, winds up, and swings it at your midsection, expecting you to duck and die. Thankfully, you saw through the ruse, and sidestep, only to slam the sword with your gauntlet out of Karat's hands. Angrily, he punches at you, sending a gauntleted fist at your nose. You get pushed back, but feel alright after rubbing it with your metal-covered wrist. You send a boot at the man's shins, making his knees bend, giving you perfect reach for swinging at his head. You feel his skull from under his skin after the blow, and the Zealot is pushed several meters away-- right next to his sword! Even though Karat is coughing blood, he gets up, using the sword as a cane. "COME AT ME, DEMON!" The bearded man yells, raising his word once more. You shake your head, not falling for it. He angrily charges for you, only to be sucker-punched and knocked out before he could swing. You stare at the man, then spit. "This pathetic being is the Chief?" "Second in command, actually. Chief is probably fighting Gideon right now. But really, I don't think you realize how close you were to dying back there." "Huh?" David touches at your nose, "I think his gauntlet is partly silver, so I don't think you're nose will fix itself." Both of you laugh. If the worst thing that happens to us is that we get broken noses, then we're doing pretty good. "So what now?" "Well, before the rest of the Zealots appear, we should probably try to kill Father Tomas, in the Church. Or, we could clear out this building while we--" "It's not a question, we finish the mission. Ragnor and the rest can take care of themselves." At that very moment, sirens begin to blare, and red lights beam on-and-off all over the HQ... > You continue to the Church. With the alarms already blaring you make sure not to waste time in getting out of the building and into the Church. Outside, swarms of Zealots are coming out of the Church's front doors, obviously en route to fight Ragnor and his Wolves. You and David mostly blend in enough to not be recognized as anything but Zealots and manage to swim past the incoming horde and through the next street, then up the concrete steps of the Church and right in front of the Chapel's gates.. "How should we enter, then?" "No backdoors to the Church. Only one direction if you follow God." David recites from behind you. You consider trying to bash the door in, but decide that knocking it and waiting for the door to be opened by whoever's inside would be an easier solution for getting in. Clang Your gauntlet taps at the metal. After a pause, you can hear noises on the inside of the Chapel, mostly worried murmuring. You quickly motion for David to go in front, right before a bald young man in ceremonial blue robe opens the door. In response to your ghoul's profile, the man just gapes for several moments before opening his mouth to speak. "Dave?!?" "No... Not anymore." He states, walking into the Church. The man doesn't seem to even notice you, engrossed in seeing a living ghost instead. Inside, several other monks are gathered, all of them staring at David with awe. You take the opportunity to slink into the shadow, and wait. "Behold! The blessed Lord brought our child back!" They cry, waving their hands in the air in synchronization. Up and down their hands go, until one with a cowl speaks up, "Brother David, where were you?" Your ghoul stares at them with disdain, "I got lost, but was found by a group of humans." They continue to gape. The cowled-one continues his interrogation, "Hmm? More humans, you say? "Crazy enough, the humans were in our backyard this entire time. We just didn't recognize them." "Whatever do you mean?" "The Wolves, Vadim. They're good people." Gasps erupt, and David's only looks down to his feet, and his hands ball up to fists. "They changed you, didn't they?" The one with the cowl points, and begins to chant in some sort of language which you are unfamiliar with. Bored of their religious, antics, you make your presence known by jumping out of the shadows, and decking 'Vadim' with a right hook, sending him to the middle of the crowd of twelve-or-so Monks. David nods, and sends a sharp kick to the nearest Zealot surrounding him. Before you know it, it becomes a rowdy brawl of fists. The monks may be very agile, but without any weapons nor armor you figure you or even David could take them out alone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you warily near the steel entrance to the Zealot headquarters, David taps on your shoulder, silently beckoning you to follow him. You comply, and follow your ghoul to around the building, where, after going up several flights of metal stairs (making as little noise as possible), you find a molding wooden door, a nice change from the ugly metal and concrete which make up the rest of the City. Of course, aside from giving you a vague feeling of deja vu, it's also gives you an easy opening. David motions toward it. Now let's make some noise. You remain careful in your last moments of anonymity, you try the golden knob- locked. Not wanting to jam it accidentally, you settle for setting up a roundhouse kick-- you twist your body, hold for a forceful kick, and push. The power of your kick rips at the wood, leaving a splintered hole in the door's midsection, big enough for you to swiftly roll under-- David following. Inside, you find several Zealots playing cards around a round table. They are visibly stunned, and gape at you and your ghoul. "David?" One asks, jumping up from their seat. Not cutting them any lack, you run at the Zealot, decking him to the floor with a solid punch. David takes on another, kicking him from the side, toppling him and his metal chair over. With only two left, you quickly claw at the one holding his hands up, splashing the table with his blood. With your claws entrenched in the Zealot neck, you fling him at the other the one. He flies, and with another clang the other one catches him, only to topple over as well. You quickly finish off any of them even barely conscious, clawing at their throats for edible parts. After grazing, you begin to hear footsteps. Can't waste time. "Where's the chief?" You roar, energized from the scuffle. David eyes bounce from each of the three doors connecting to other parts of the building, struggling to remember. "I'm the 'Chief', demonspawn." The door to the right opens, and there stands a tall, unusually garbed Zealot. Like most, he's tall, easily more than six feet and with navy blue armor with yellow lining, rather than the customary black and blue. He wears no mask, though his neck seems to be heavily guarded. Smart, but useless in my current state. "Vampire, we knew you'd come, but we didn't expect you to corrupt one of our own," he glares at David, and readies a gleaming silver sword, "Nor for you to attack us when we least expect it. But no matter, you both will die where you stand, for you deserve no mercy in this world." Your ghoul points at him, "Yes, that's Katar, we need to be careful with him though..." You nod, wondering how the best way to approach the enemy would be. > You say "We come in, uh, peace?" You raise your hands in surrender, though still maintain a defensive composure. "Listen, Katar, I have no interest in fighting you. We can settle this dispute with less blood if you could listen to me." "I wonder if you gave them," he eyes the corpses in the room, "the same offer." "They have no authority in the Church, and the only way to make us stop peacefully is to comply with our demands." "We don't negotiate with terrorists," he smirks, though you feel as if he's telling you to continue. "You need to let us live alongside you and the other humans in this city, and we promise we won't hurt you unless you persecute us. Simple, right?" "There is no rest for the wicked." He states, drawing his sword. Well, that didn't help. David just watches, seemingly sure in your chances and not wanting to get in your way while you fight. You set up a defensive stance, planting your feet to the ground and readying your hands at the sides. He, parallel to you, closes the door behind him, and then raises his sword, pointing it at you. "So, you fear God?" "Not in yours." You laugh back, maintaining composure. He's trying to get me off-guard, that's what this mad-man wants. "Then perhaps you find fear in his servants instead, fool. Why else would you not attack me before I ready my blade? Katar slowly approaches you, his long sword only a lunge away from your armored chest. You don't feel the need to respond, instead focusing on his blade. You remember Kelso mentioning to you that you won't regenerate from silver-caused cuts, making this the most dangerous fight you've been in, yet. You can only hope that after you survive this, you can make sure the Church doesn't have too much silver lying about. They probably have some idea of whether it works or not, otherwise Katar wouldn't have a silver katana. The aloof Zealot chuckles, "Then this will be an easy fight." He holds his sword with both hands, winds up, and swings it at your midsection, expecting you to duck and die. Thankfully, you saw through the ruse, and sidestep, only to slam the sword with your gauntlet out of Karat's hands. Angrily, he punches at you, sending a gauntleted fist at your nose. You get pushed back, but feel alright after rubbing it with your metal-covered wrist. You send a boot at the man's shins, making his knees bend, giving you perfect reach for swinging at his head. You feel his skull from under his skin after the blow, and the Zealot is pushed several meters away-- right next to his sword! Even though Karat is coughing blood, he gets up, using the sword as a cane. "COME AT ME, DEMON!" The bearded man yells, raising his word once more. You shake your head, not falling for it. He angrily charges for you, only to be sucker-punched and knocked out before he could swing. You stare at the man, then spit. "This pathetic being is the Chief?" "Second in command, actually. Chief is probably fighting Gideon right now. But really, I don't think you realize how close you were to dying back there." "Huh?" David touches at your nose, "I think his gauntlet is partly silver, so I don't think you're nose will fix itself." Both of you laugh. If the worst thing that happens to us is that we get broken noses, then we're doing pretty good. "So what now?" "Well, before the rest of the Zealots appear, we should probably try to kill Father Tomas, in the Church. Or, we could clear out this building while we--" "No, we need to finish our mission. The others will be able to deal with the remaining Zealots, easy." At that very moment, sirens begin to blare, and red lights beam on-and-off all over the HQ...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I... Think Ragnor has a solid point. We can definitely beat the Zealots as long as we have the element of surprise. And if this goes well, then we won't have to worry about extinction ever again." The blonde vixen looks up to you, as do most of the Wolves. Ragnor laughs, and pats you on the back. Gideon, on the other hand, merely frowns, closes his eyes, and announces, "Right. Welcome to the family, Vampy. I'd rest, we're all practically nocturnal here anyhow. The cloaked Ragnor frowns, "Are you sure? I was just about to bring out the alcohol..." "No alcohol, Ragnor. We have a long night tonight, lots of training we need to go through. I don't think some of us here have actually fought Zealots." Ragnor nods, and the rest of the Wolves shuffle back to their blankets. Gideon shuts the lantern off, and heads down the hatch, disappearing after a thud. Meanwhile, you find a piece of concrete that is comfortable enough to meditate on, and begin to close your eyes... Only to realize that all the Wolves are watching you for some reason. They're all smiling, and the pretty one in particular seems to watch you in the dark of day. At some point during the night, she leans towards you to whispers, "Hi, I'm Cecilia." She giggles. "Uh, hi." You whisper back lamely. The next couple of days fly by, and you manage to go over the histories of your new friends, as well as prepare them for the fight. > You training (Optional) You have talked with Ragnor at length on how you'll be running your operation on the City. What you both want to do is extremely difficult, even with the combined power of all the Wolves. The only chance you have is if the less-experienced Wolves learn from the best-- Gideon, Ragnor, and you. Not necessarily in that order either, since you have no idea what a werewolf is capable in full-form, nor do you know how you rank between them or even how they rank between each-other. Gideon is terrifyingly muscular, but Ragnor seems to be much faster. Any sparring matches you've had with either seemed to be somewhat held-back, for whatever reason. Still, the main plan appears to be that, after some hand-picked scouts tell you three when the Zealots are coming, silently break through one of the cities defenses, and drop you in. While you cause mayhem inside the streets of the City, Gideon and Ragnor's two groups will be pushing through the City's walls, and fighting from in there. Supposedly the head of Church is an old man who runs the whole shebang, a certain, 'Father Tomas'. Once you kill him, the Church will be extremely vulnerable. After that? Well, you just hope the humans don't continue resisting, otherwise it'll be a slaughter. Although you're going in by yourself (and maybe David, for ironic reasons), you're still tasked to help train the other Creations with Ragnor and Gideon. Over the days, what was probably most exciting' (aside from the shock of lovely Cecilia turning into a hulking were-wolf) part was your sparring match with Gideon. You can't help but feel both of you held back, however slightly, but it was likely of great education value to the other Creations. "Alright Vampy, give it all you got." Ha, worry about yourself. You stand, parallel to Gideon, in a surprisingly flat part of the desert. The other Creations surround you both stripped down to nothing but basic shirt and pants, readying yourselves for an honest fight. As ugly of a creature Gideon is, he really is a mellow guy, which makes you almost not want to get into any scuffle with him, even if it's ust sparring. Still, you ready yourself to attack. You flick out your wrist, causing claws to edge out. The crescent moon lies above you both, and the hunchback chuckles as he slowly moves toward you, shuffling one foot through the sand at a time. You took your time as well, starting with a brisk walk, turning that momentum into a jog, then using that into all-out sprinting... Gideon suddenly stops, and holds his hands out to block your advancing. When you reach him, you bring a clawed hand down, hoping to catch his shoulder; you succeed, though he remains unfazed, grabbing at your ankles while you deftly try to flip over him; that doesn't work. His palms squeeze at your feet, and he slams you onto the sand, using his weight to force you down. Thankfully, the rush of adrenaline, allows you to overpower him, throwing him off you. Once again parallel, he decides it's hsi turn to claw at you and he aims a long-winded at your gut-- your body twists, barely letting it hit, though allowing you to bring your elbow down to his neck. He falls to the floor with a slump, though seems to quickly recover by holding you by his feet. You fall down as well, though you catch yourself with a roll, and get right back up. Gideon, however, gets up as Gideon no longer. It was the first time you saw Gideon in his were-form. Massive, with a snout longer than an arm, silvery fangs almost as large as the L-bayonet itself, and white fur overlaying his entire body. You've seen other werewolves turn, but it's obvious why Gideon is the alpha-wolf around here. While you marvel at the werewolf, he sends a massive fist to crash down on you-- but you quickly jump out of the way. Unsure what you can do, you turn to your own fangs; they aren't nearly as powerful as his, but they have other uses other than killing. Gideon continuously deals out attacks, and you manage to dodge nearly all of them, only a couple giving you scrapes. The Wolf leaps at you, waving all of it's bulking appendages in your direction. As it nears closer to you, you see an opening... You took a leap of faith, catching Gideon in the neck with your own fangs. It was only the next morning when you woke, moved to the hideout once more. "That was an epic fight." One of the teen-wolves say, glaring at you in awe. Gideon was to the side of your bed, sitting up and laughing. "Very good, Vampy. Nice use of your abilities, those fangs exhaust people way easy, even those pumped up on canine-adrenaline. Crazy effective. You hear that, Wolves? Someone who knows the full-outset of their abilities is a dangerous fellow." And that's how you remember it. Even though Gideon helped train the Wolves to fight, you worry about him. He doesn't seem too enthusiastic about taking over the city. Hopefully he changes his mind soon...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I... Think Ragnor has a solid point. We can definitely beat the Zealots as long as we have the element of surprise. And if this goes well, then we won't have to worry about extinction ever again." The blonde vixen looks up to you, as do most of the Wolves. Ragnor laughs, and pats you on the back. Gideon, on the other hand, merely frowns, closes his eyes, and announces, "Right. Welcome to the family, Vampy. I'd rest, we're all practically nocturnal here anyhow. The cloaked Ragnor frowns, "Are you sure? I was just about to bring out the alcohol..." "No alcohol, Ragnor. We have a long night tonight, lots of training we need to go through. I don't think some of us here have actually fought Zealots." Ragnor nods, and the rest of the Wolves shuffle back to their blankets. Gideon shuts the lantern off, and heads down the hatch, disappearing after a thud. Meanwhile, you find a piece of concrete that is comfortable enough to meditate on, and begin to close your eyes... Only to realize that all the Wolves are watching you for some reason. They're all smiling, and the pretty one in particular seems to watch you in the dark of day. At some point during the night, she leans towards you to whispers, "Hi, I'm Cecilia." She giggles. "Uh, hi." You whisper back lamely. The next couple of days fly by, and you manage to go over the histories of your new friends, as well as prepare them for the fight. > You ragnor's tale. "Hey Vamp, take a seat." Ragnor calls out, waving you over to the off-kilter wooden bench he's sitting on. You comply; after several days and nights with barely any breaks, even sitting down to converse with the balding man who broke your Ghoul's neck sounds appealing. Plus, he can't exactly complain about not getting work done if he's taking a breather as well. If there's one thing you know about Ragnor, it's that he hates the Church more than anything. Except maybe the Professor; you've never really talked with him that much, after all. The cloaked man smiles at you, and helps sit you down with a heavy hand clutching onto your shoulder. "Hey man, I'm really glad you joined us," he begins, taking his arm off of you and bringing it in front for a handshake; you respond in kind. "Not as glad as I am to have joined." You laugh, releasing. "Don't be so sure. It was getting rather stale, just hiding out in a bunker until we run out of food. You've given us something to strive for." "Fighting the Church?" "Yeah." He nods, pauses, then shows out his palms to you in a waving motion, "I know, I know. Gideon's not exactly fond of it, but if it comes down to us and them, I vote us." Ragnor laughs. "You know, the moment you said that the Church is planning to destroy us, I already was planning on trying to overthrow the city." "You seemed very confident about it." You nod, rubbing at your chin, "But why?" "So that we have a stronghold strong enough that we won't be able to be exterminated that easily. We're a small group, the Creations. And it's not exactly a growing population either, at best you can ghoul whatever, but we can't breed normally. It takes more time for it to work, you know..." You raise an eyebrow, amused, "You've tried?" "Ha, back when I was practically mind-controlled by the Professor, yeah. Heck, he probably tried things with you while you were unconscious, but who knows? Life before civilization fell was much different than now. The bastard wanted to create a new specie of man, and instead he got Hollywood monsters with bad skin conditions." He shrugs, "But in some ways he succeeded, and I think that the Church shouldn't be allowed to hunt us down for it's own sake. There are some good kids in our pack, you know. Just honest-to-god decent kids that the Church wants to put down. It's not right." "So what will you be doing if you suceed?" "Hunt down the Professor, definitely. The Church may be corrupt, but the root of the evil afflicted to the world spawned from that one man. After we end the Church in the nearby city, then we'll be able to be in charge." "You seem confident that a couple of Creations can take on hundreds of Zealots." Ragnor looks at you with a wry grin, "You seem to be under a false-impression-- there really aren't that many Zealots. Can't be. The city they have is large, but only in comparison to other strongholds. Zealots are almost always male, if only because armor-fitting females is different, and they're probably sparse on metal. Plus, only able-bodied men can wield those huge-ass rifles. I'd say they have 200 Zealots tops, and that's not including how many you've just killed. Furthermore, they'll be divided while they march to our hideout and..." "That's still a lot." He shrugs, "As Wolves, we can shift either at will or automatically when stimulated luminescent orbs for some reason, into huge were-beasts. With proficiency, we can prove to be the fastest and most lethal things left on the planet. If, this week, we can train the kids to use their powers well, then it's definitely doable." "You sure Gideon's okay with it?" You ask, wondering whether you'll be joining him for sure, "Regardless of what Gideon thinks about it, I won't be taking everybody with me, that's too much of a risk, and I doubt I could convince everybody, but..." You shrug, changing the subject, "How experienced are you at your abilities?" "Enough." "You think you can take me on?" You ask, leaning forward and balancing your body on your palms. "Maybe. I kind of figure the Vampire Creations were made in order to build foundations for the Professor. They can live forever, create progeny of sorts, etc. I have no idea how combat ready they are. Still, you're extremely resourceful, so I definitely hope you stick around. With your ghouling powers, we can create an entire civilization of Creations. Imagine how great that'd be!" "I'll be honest, Ragnor; you didn't seem so cheery when I first met you." "When you first met me I had to make a good impression." He laughs. "Now, come on, we need to get back to training the cubs."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I... Think Ragnor has a solid point. We can definitely beat the Zealots as long as we have the element of surprise. And if this goes well, then we won't have to worry about extinction ever again." The blonde vixen looks up to you, as do most of the Wolves. Ragnor laughs, and pats you on the back. Gideon, on the other hand, merely frowns, closes his eyes, and announces, "Right. Welcome to the family, Vampy. I'd rest, we're all practically nocturnal here anyhow. The cloaked Ragnor frowns, "Are you sure? I was just about to bring out the alcohol..." "No alcohol, Ragnor. We have a long night tonight, lots of training we need to go through. I don't think some of us here have actually fought Zealots." Ragnor nods, and the rest of the Wolves shuffle back to their blankets. Gideon shuts the lantern off, and heads down the hatch, disappearing after a thud. Meanwhile, you find a piece of concrete that is comfortable enough to meditate on, and begin to close your eyes... Only to realize that all the Wolves are watching you for some reason. They're all smiling, and the pretty one in particular seems to watch you in the dark of day. At some point during the night, she leans towards you to whispers, "Hi, I'm Cecilia." She giggles. "Uh, hi." You whisper back lamely. The next couple of days fly by, and you manage to go over the histories of your new friends, as well as prepare them for the fight. > You gideon's tale. Hours pass quicker than you'd want during the training sessions. You've realized that the Wolves are powerful, but undisciplined, almost childish at times. But at the end of the night, you got work done. Yet, even after the night passes, Gideon routinely goes under the hatch. You've tried to peek at him, in interest of what he does when alone, but it brings no more results than asking around; zilch. But on one of those times you spend upside down, silently hanging from the hatch, Gideon turns around to acknowledge you. The hunchbacked leader stares back at you with cold eyes, "What do you want, lad? You think it's possible I really do just like sitting down here, alone?" Shocked, you suddenly lose your grip; only to land upright, as a cat would. "I, uh, maybe. But I've asked around, and people wonder about you, as I do. You're very... Silent, for a leader." He laughs, "Leader? Hah, that's good, Vampire. I just do the heavy work, as always. Keeping watch is one of my duties." "Don't put yourself down, Gideon. You seem to know what you're doing." You say, unsure how to respond to his glumness. "Vamp, the camp here believes you-- and that's fine by me, I'll be honest and say I trust you too, but the fact that we'll be fighting the Church isn't a good thing, regardless of the rewards." "Like our lives?" "You're young and timeless, so it's not something you can really sympathize with." Gideon snorts, "No offense, Vamp." "None taken, but what do you mean?" You say, letting him continue. "I don't think you really get what the Church is. I mean, I don't think anybody here does. Even Ragnor, he's blinded by rage and fury. He believes that the Church needs to be destroyed for the betterment of everyone, especially us. But..." "But what?" By now you're getting a bit agitated at Gideon for being so ambiguous. He turns his face away, "But he's dead wrong about it. Almost all of us here remember the treatments the Professor gave us. To say the least, you're lucky to have forgotten most, if not all of them. That man just bred hatred, even more than the religious back in the day." A pause. "He hurt us all, in so many ways. But worse yet, he made us hurt others. It started with killing evil, but then came to killing innocents, the only food-source left for us. And we followed him through fire and water, that man. Kurschner represented our hopes and dreams, true power for a true purpose. But he lied to us, and used us for himself, experimented with us, made sure our past lives weren't there so that there was nothing for us to go back to. Even I don't remember too much of what was before I became a Wolf. The dreams stop after you get comfortable in your form." The older gentlemen continues, "By the way, are you still dreaming?" "Uh..." You begin to realize that you indeed have stopped dreaming since you joined, "No, I rest much better now." He frowns in return, "Best not get too comfortable here, then. Those dreams are your only way to know what is really going on." "Which also reminds me, did you have somebody help you get out of the Facility before it was burnt down?" "Err, yes." You nervously answer. "Did he have a name?" "Kelso." "Who?" "Ahem, uh, Kelso." You repeat, slower this time. "He said he knew you. Also mentioned a fellow named Stein." Gideon bites his lip, "Never met a fellow named Kelso. Did he say anything else?" "He mentioned being tasked with watching the Lesser Creations, along with several other elites." "That explains it, though I can't say I know who he is under his new pseudo-name. I wonder where he is now..." "I wish I knew, " you say, longingly, "he said he'd come back at some point, he was searching for the Professor." "As do we all." Gideon says, closing his eyes, "Simon Kurschner was one evil, however brilliant man. A lot of our older members ran out in hopes to hunt him down, though they never returned..."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It's time to get these sleepy assholes up and running. You nod to the crowd as they gather around you, staring with glossy eyes and gaping mouths. "I'm not going to sugarcoat anything," you snarl, starting off with a very loud, though clear voice, "The Church has plans to raid our little stronghold here by next week." Gasps from the Wolves, and men exit their bags. Seems to have worked, for now. "And while that may be hard to believe, I'm sure we all know how ruthless the Zealots are. I escaped from the last Facility-- Facility 13, soon before it came tumbling down with C.E. Troopers, who burned down the laboratory. Since then, I have fought many of them, some purposely in order to find my brethren here, to join you as well as to warn you of the incoming second apocalypse. We are blessed Creations, gifted in our own right. We aren't innately evil, like the Church believes. Rather, we are capable of great things, but only if we survive our genocide." "Then what do you want us to do?" One of them shouts out, interrupting you. "I want you to fight back, and prepare for when they come next week. We need to take the initiative; I know how powerful Creations can be, so I have no doubt in my mind that we can beat them. But only if we get ready." "Why should we trust you?" One of the younger ones ask. You bare your teeth; fear is a big factor of your speech, "Because if I'm right then we all die." You seethe out, staring intently at your brethren. "We have three options the way I see it; defend the stronghold and prepare for when they come; try to take control of the city with our combined strengths before the attack; or just get slaughtered when the time comes." Most of the Wolves continue gaping, though Gideon cracks his knuckles. "Nice speech, Vampire" A voice declares, and the red-cloaked figure pops out of the hatch. Ragnor's hood fall down, and the profile is of a middle-aged, balding man. Terribly tall, and lean; powerful and domineering. "Do you really think we can overtake the Church?" "If we do it carefully, yes." He smiles, "Then I like what I'm hearing; I'm in." While it's amusing how enthusiastic he is, it also seems to win over more of the Wolves. Perhaps Ragnor is a big figure in the Wolf Underground. "It is likely to work, too. While some of us are inexperienced, we can easily beat them while their forces are divided into attacking our stronghold. We just need to be clever." Gideon continues to grimly frown, "I think the 'hold the fort' idea will work better. It's safer, and more suited to our abilities." It's odd, but you feel like it's completely your decision. Maybe they just really trust in you? > You agree with Gideon. You sigh, somewhat content with the ability to choose for your group. "I agree with Gideon-- defending is probably the best option. After all, the humans... Even if they hate us, they aren't our real enemy right now." Gideon grins, and slaps you on the back. Ragnor shrugs, and heads to a splintered cabinet in the back of the room. He comes back with several cans, accurately labeled as 'beer'. With a grin, he begins handing them out to the 'adults' in the room and you. "Rest on the floor, Vamp. Today is a day of celebration, a joiner to our brood!" With some large chants, Ragnor clicks open the can, and begins handing it to you. As you reach to take it, he immediately withdraws it. He lays it on the floor in front of you, then proceeds to bring a clawed index finger to his wrist above the can, poking deeply into it and letting blood slowly drip into the can. "Hah, I forgot you can't really taste anything but blood. Don't worry though, this'll get you high on no one's expense, Vamp, enjoy yourself." You laugh, scratching at your head for forgetting. You accept the bloody beer; while it's nothing compared to full blood, it's the most happy you've been since you got out of the Facility. It's nice to be part of a family. You and the rest of the Creations laugh and discuss the 'happenings' of the current world. You can't add much, but the leaders of the Wolves' collective stories are fascinating in their own rights, though. On top of it all, you think you've really hit it off with Cecilia-- the blonde Wolf. The next couple of days fly by... > You defending the Stronghold. The next week involved quite a bit of socializing and preparation for the big day. Night by night you trained, and although the week didn't give you as much time as you wanted, it gave you enough to get a feel for the Wolves, make a start with the community, and most importantly, teach the young ones how to harness their frustration into power. Power, that will hopefully be enough to block the Zealots off, and beat them by matter of attrition. You feel as though you've gotten on pretty good terms with both Gideon and Ragnor, both of whom are simply great guys. You've noticed that, despite their differing ideologies, they have utmost respect for each-other, which is rather pleasant to see. Something that always lay at the back of your mind, though, was that Ragnor claimed that he was going to raid the City, regardless of what choice the group took, but you never understood that. How was he going to do that without support? Still, the only thing you really feel sad about is the lack of time you were able to have with Cecilia. Even though you've trained together, you really wish you could have talked to her more often, about things other than unleashing her concealed persona: the werewolf. But, you manage to keep yourself jovial enough knowing that if you succeed at stopping the Zealot onslaught, you'll have all the time in the world with your new love. Additionally, you might even be able to learn how to read the mysterious hieroglyphs when times of peace are near. Bright lights ahead, but you just have to reach it. As the week passes, you all begin sitting in a circle daily, discussing the plan thoroughly, and then send out scouts to see if the Zealots are sending their men to raid your headquarters. The plan is simple; when you are alerted of the Zealot present, you will block off the entrance with any object available, then hide in secluded corners in the dark maze that is the well, and slowly pick off the Zealots as they pass. Today is one of those days, and you are warily waiting for the knock from the scouts. Any day now, the Zealots should be coming. Time passes; you do this twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, to see if they're preparing for a night-attack or not. You hope it's at night, as the Creations would have an advantage, probably. Additionally, you wouldn't have to worry about sun-tan lotion, the tube Kelso gave you will run out sooner or later. And so you wait, everybody around you waiting in silence. You hear the codified knock: Clunk-clunk-clunk. Someone lets out a sigh-- today isn't the day. You go out to train once more, reviewing everything, and then turning back to refill on blood. Gideon gives you a broken plastic-cup with maybe an ounce of his blood. You drink it slowly, savoring the taste. It reinvigorates you, like usual, and you set down to meditate, waiting for nightfall. That night... Clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk That's 4... Is tonight the night? Ragnor's head poking out of the hatch confirms it, "Everybody, wake up, now!" Hearing this everybody assembles, bringing out spare Zealot armors and weapons. Indeed, even you're surprised by their efficiency tonight. "Alright Wolves, tonight, we defend our home!" You announce, pumping your fist. However, unlike most of your announcements, nobody but Gideon roars in applause. Ragnor approaches you with a laugh, "Sorry bud, I think we're making ourselves a new home, tonight." "Huh?" You look around and it seems obvious that everybody but you and Gideon know what's going on. Cecilia turns to you with a frown, "Sorry, love... but I can't live in this shit-hole any longer. I just... think it's time we took a stand. You understand, right?" Gideon moves into the fray, sticking his finger into the taller man's chest, "What do you think you're doing, Ragnor? We, deh group, made a decision!" Ragnor stares back at the hunchback, "Yes, and I made a re-vote, without the peer pressure the group is used to. Turns out, they trust the Church much less than you do, and think that surviving well is better than just surviving, uncertain if they'll get a next meal. We can be the new Human-race: 'Homo-Creatio,' us, the Wolves, Gideon. Think about it!" Gideon just spits in disgust, "You fool! This is NOT how we're supposed to get continue! Ragnor, the humans "aren't much worse than we are, for there outlook is for survival as well. We can merge with them after showing how similar we are by not slaughtering them in their City!" "I don't think so, friend. But if I were either of you, I'd join us for survival's sake only, no way can you survive the oncoming Zealots. I saw them-- several groups of ten and covering ground right now. It's either join us or meet your doom." You look at Gideon, and his dark eyes just blink out, "Don't." What it comes to, in the end, is whether you wish to join Ragnor and the rest to assault the city or stay by Gideon, alone and at the mercy of the incoming horde. > You join Ragnor and the rest, to conquer the City as your own. "I'm glad you made the right choice, Vamp." Ragnor beams, and Cecilia gives you an excited thumbs-up. Gideon, on the other hand, simple glares at Ragnor, shakes his head, and takes a seat on a broken bench. "You sure you don't want to reconsider?" Ragnor asks, rubbing at his chin. Gideon makes no answer. "Forget it." He waves his hand, "Alright, guys, let's do this!" You all clamber out of the hatch and out of the well. The starry night opens up from above you and the darkness gives light to other matters. The Zealots, no doubt very ritualistic, are maintaining their flashing armor, which you vaguely make out from several miles away. You point them out to Ragnor, and he makes note of them. "That's a lot of Zealots on their way, I hope they don't have that much more fortifying the inside. Ragnor, do you have a plan for this?" "Yeah." The Wolf grunts, scratching at his head furiously. "God damnit! If Gideon came, he could have lead a group, and we'd have two solid teams, flanking the enemy fortress." "Can't I lead?" You ask, uncertain of his plan. "You could, but that'd be a waste of you're abilities. We're going to send you inside of it, where you'll be trying to assassinate the leaders of the Zealots. That way our assault can succeed in their confusion." "Okay..." You nod, trying to visualize your role in this plan, "So what about David?" "David isn't exactly a leading-personality." "He knows what he's doing." "Which is why he should come with you! He'd be much more useful by you than with us. We're just giving you time. We can have one of the other Wolves lead, but for now you will no doubt need help, and a former Zealot who knows the inner working of the compound is just perfect."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next week involved quite a bit of socializing and preparation for the big day. Night by night you trained, and although the week didn't give you as much time as you wanted, it gave you enough to get a feel for the Wolves, make a start with the community, and most importantly, teach the young ones how to harness their frustration into power. Power, that will hopefully be enough to block the Zealots off, and beat them by matter of attrition. You feel as though you've gotten on pretty good terms with both Gideon and Ragnor, both of whom are simply great guys. You've noticed that, despite their differing ideologies, they have utmost respect for each-other, which is rather pleasant to see. Something that always lay at the back of your mind, though, was that Ragnor claimed that he was going to raid the City, regardless of what choice the group took, but you never understood that. How was he going to do that without support? Still, the only thing you really feel sad about is the lack of time you were able to have with Cecilia. Even though you've trained together, you really wish you could have talked to her more often, about things other than unleashing her concealed persona: the werewolf. But, you manage to keep yourself jovial enough knowing that if you succeed at stopping the Zealot onslaught, you'll have all the time in the world with your new love. Additionally, you might even be able to learn how to read the mysterious hieroglyphs when times of peace are near. Bright lights ahead, but you just have to reach it. As the week passes, you all begin sitting in a circle daily, discussing the plan thoroughly, and then send out scouts to see if the Zealots are sending their men to raid your headquarters. The plan is simple; when you are alerted of the Zealot present, you will block off the entrance with any object available, then hide in secluded corners in the dark maze that is the well, and slowly pick off the Zealots as they pass. Today is one of those days, and you are warily waiting for the knock from the scouts. Any day now, the Zealots should be coming. Time passes; you do this twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, to see if they're preparing for a night-attack or not. You hope it's at night, as the Creations would have an advantage, probably. Additionally, you wouldn't have to worry about sun-tan lotion, the tube Kelso gave you will run out sooner or later. And so you wait, everybody around you waiting in silence. You hear the codified knock: Clunk-clunk-clunk. Someone lets out a sigh-- today isn't the day. You go out to train once more, reviewing everything, and then turning back to refill on blood. Gideon gives you a broken plastic-cup with maybe an ounce of his blood. You drink it slowly, savoring the taste. It reinvigorates you, like usual, and you set down to meditate, waiting for nightfall. That night... Clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk That's 4... Is tonight the night? Ragnor's head poking out of the hatch confirms it, "Everybody, wake up, now!" Hearing this everybody assembles, bringing out spare Zealot armors and weapons. Indeed, even you're surprised by their efficiency tonight. "Alright Wolves, tonight, we defend our home!" You announce, pumping your fist. However, unlike most of your announcements, nobody but Gideon roars in applause. Ragnor approaches you with a laugh, "Sorry bud, I think we're making ourselves a new home, tonight." "Huh?" You look around and it seems obvious that everybody but you and Gideon know what's going on. Cecilia turns to you with a frown, "Sorry, love... but I can't live in this shit-hole any longer. I just... think it's time we took a stand. You understand, right?" Gideon moves into the fray, sticking his finger into the taller man's chest, "What do you think you're doing, Ragnor? We, deh group, made a decision!" Ragnor stares back at the hunchback, "Yes, and I made a re-vote, without the peer pressure the group is used to. Turns out, they trust the Church much less than you do, and think that surviving well is better than just surviving, uncertain if they'll get a next meal. We can be the new Human-race: 'Homo-Creatio,' us, the Wolves, Gideon. Think about it!" Gideon just spits in disgust, "You fool! This is NOT how we're supposed to get continue! Ragnor, the humans "aren't much worse than we are, for there outlook is for survival as well. We can merge with them after showing how similar we are by not slaughtering them in their City!" "I don't think so, friend. But if I were either of you, I'd join us for survival's sake only, no way can you survive the oncoming Zealots. I saw them-- several groups of ten and covering ground right now. It's either join us or meet your doom." You look at Gideon, and his dark eyes just blink out, "Don't." What it comes to, in the end, is whether you wish to join Ragnor and the rest to assault the city or stay by Gideon, alone and at the mercy of the incoming horde. > You stand by Gideon. You take a step back, standing by Gideon's side. "I'm sorry too, Ragnor. But I simply don't think think this is the way to go." Ragnor stares back at you intently, before shrugging, "Alright then, Vamp. I'm not going to force either of you. But what about your ghoul?" "David?" You look around, searching for him. He is currently standing stiff by Ragnor's side, parallel to you. You're surprised you didn't take note of this already. "Yeah. I've talked to him, and he seems to sympathize with our cause. But, since I still more than an iota of respect for you," Ragnor pauses, giving you time to understand, "I'd rather not cause strife from after death between us. So, may I ask for you to allow him to come with us?" With a deep breath, you firmly reply back, "If he really wants to go, then he can follow you to oblivion." "That is all I want from you, Vamp. See you in whatever hell we end up in, eh?" He smiles and takes a hand out to shake. You wave him goodbye, but don't shake, "See you on the flip side, man. Good luck." Ragnor suddenly stands with a more serious attitude, and turns to leave, the Wolf Encampment. Within minutes, Gideon and you are alone. Silence dominates the room for a long while before you speak up. "Gideon, the Zealots are on their way right now. What are we going to do?" The hunchback takes his time finding a nice seat to reply from on, "Convince them." "Convince them of what?" You ask, baffled. "Convince them that we're the least of their worries." "You mean sabotage the assault?" "Of course. You have a better idea?" "... I can't say, yet. But I can tell you one thing, none of my plans would ever include the possibility of leading the Zealots to kill our brothers!" You bring your palm to your brow, "Seriously, Gideon, what kind of idea is that?" "One that preserves the sanctity of life that doesn't leech off of others'." "And you don't think they'll turn right around to kill us?" "Hey, if you can convince them we aren't actually Demons from outer space, then we should try that out first, but for now I'm satisfied with dying with the knowledge that I helped save the human race." > You try to bring attention to Ragnor's groups. "So you think the only feasible plan would be to divert there attention for the moment?" You frown, uncertain. The other option wouldn't make too much sense, considering that you fought with the Zealot army not too long ago, but this plan seems... distasteful, unattractive. You're betraying your brethren for those who believe you to be nothing more than a monster, people who believe that anything you do is without reason; good or bad, all mindless mistakes carried out by the Devil himself. It's a scary thought to you-- people believe that about Gideon and me. While I'm not squeaky clean by any means, at least Gideon is willing to throw away everything just to save them! Gideon begins to shuffle towards the hatch, "Come on, Vampire. We need to get the message out any way we can." "Well, we still have a Walkie-Talkie that's probably useable." He turns back to face you, and his eyes widen, "What? We do?" "Y-yeah..." You reply, beginning to scavenge through the various in nicknacks the Wolves kept, and finding David's transceiver under the mess. "Nigh certain it still works, too." He throws his hands up in return, "Then let's do that, genius." You grasp the radio firmly in your hand and get a vague feeling déjà vu as you once again dial it to the Zealot-channel. Click. It's on, sounding out static. You interrupt it with an additional button push when Gideon swiftly grabs it out of your hands. "What the hell, man!" "I'm doing this." Gideon states, still pushing the button. "Zealots, do you hear this?" The cool, female voice is back, "Err, hello?" "This is Wolf-leader Gideon, Ma'am. I need you to call off the Zealots attacking our base, for your own sake." "Um, we don't negotiate with evil, sir." "No! God damnit Ma'am, I'm warning you because there are only two of us left in the hideout, the rest are on their way to attack your City right now!" A pause. "We will look into it, then. Thank you for notifying us, whatever you are." You aren't able to identify her tone that well, but you hope it isn't sarcasm. Either way, she doesn't respond to Gideon's next reply, "Thank you." The two of you sit down on a broken couch, unsure how to proceed further. "So, if they still raid our stronghold, it's over for us?" "... Yeah. The way I see it, the best case scenario is that all the Wolves are wiped out by the C.E. Strike Force on the way. I just hope they find Ragnor and the rest after they get us." "And you're okay with this?" You shout, baffled by this still. He doesn't answer. > You try to contact the incoming Zealots directly and try to get them to sympathize. With amazing agility, you turn around to send a powerful roundhouse kick to Gideon, making powerful impact-- just enough to have him on the floor, but not hurt too bad. Meanwhile, you grab the fallen transceiver and angrily scold him, "What is the hell is matter with you, Gideon?" He doesn't respond, though he sits cross-legged on the floor, staring at the floor as a child would. You sigh, and try your own plan at survival. Click You push the button in, too anxious to wait for the crackling static, "Quick, Ma'am, what's the Zealot's Combat Channel?" It's the cool female voice, again, "Channel 40, why? Who is this?" But you're already flipping the channels. Now, from 13 to 40... Gideon sits up groggily, and watches you in silence. "Incoming Zealots!" You announce, then release the button, and wait. A heavy, though articulate-sounding voice replies from the other end, "This is Chief. Who is this?" "Friends. Or, at least, those who want to be. We are the last Creations around, and we want to talk to you." "What do you wish to speak about, Demons?" "Mostly about your usage of that term. We want peace, nothing else." "Huh?" "We- we know you're coming for us and our hideout. But we don't want to fight." You wait several moments for him to answer. "Give me your name first." "Err, Vamp." Gideon chuckles nervously in the background. The man named 'Chief' gives a heavy sigh, "Right. And how do you want your meeting to be set up?" "Any sort of meeting that doesn't include me being shot or speared by your guns sounds good." "Funny. If you actually wish to do this then I'd wait outside for us to come." "I... Think you misunderstand." You reply, rather certain about Chief's false attempt to mislead you, "Trying to kill us will not work out well for you. There are other Creations, actual evil ones that are heading for your city right now. If you don't stop them then you're city will be lost." Static for a while. "Why do you not tell me this sooner?" "... Do you even believe me?" "Perhaps," he says, "We may send scout teams to check. But for now I'm interested in what you want to speak about. Are you a man of your word?" "I try." "Hmm..." Chief pauses, his low-voice ending awkwardly, "Give us ten minutes." While you wait for him, Gideon just laughs, "I swear, vamp, if you pull this off then I swear..." He gets up with a wry smile. "Let's just hope their scouts get good information." You reply, ironically trying to be as optimistic as possible. The chances are slim, but you think this could work out with your unlife intact. Time passes, and while you didn't count how much you still worry that they may have ditched messaging and are just continuing their march to this area. "Vamp, are you still there?" You get out of your day-dream and push the button back to reply, "Yes." "It... Seems you're right that at there are a band of unknown beings several miles behind us. But this doesn't mean as much as you would hope." "Oh?" "How many of you are there in all? What if there are actually much more Creations at your base?" A reasonable suspicion, "Then that's problematic for you. But I'd wager that your guys won't be able to take on the ten-or-so of the Creations on the way. So I think getting them first should be more important." "Ah, but that is a good diversion for ten others to bypass us, eh?" Ugh. You bring a palm to your brow, uncertain how to answer the perhaps rightfully paranoid commander. He continues, "Still, you bring a solid point. I think you underestimate our capabilities, however. We will deal with both problems, but for now, how do you wish to meet?" "I assume you know how to enter the well, correct?" "Yes, we have figured out your trick." "... Right, well, send yourself and several of your best man down there and we'll talk. There are only two Creations here, but I assure you we can defend ourselves from whatever harm you might wish to inflict on us." "We'll be there." And... Off. Gideon looks to you, "What now, Vampire?" > You prepare the meet-and-greet and hope for the best. "We prepare by meeting them at the bottom of the well, like good hosts," you reply with a laugh, "If they kill us then they kill us, if they don't then we have a chance at surviving." Gideon sighs, "You think they'll be able to stop Ragnor and his men, at least?" "The Zealot name, 'Chief' seemed confident, but I doubt it. In Wolf-form, the Wolves can easily rip apart anyone in seconds, regardless of armor. Unless they send more than half of their troops all the way back to fortify the city then they have an issue." "Let's hope they do." Gideon says with a frown. Well, you can go hope by yourself, Gideon. I'm hoping we both survive this ordeal. The two of you wait for a while, unsure how to proceed. Eventually, you both head down the hatch and into the concrete cavern that is under the well. You make your way past the claw-scratches and to the end, where you notice Ragnor thoughtfully closed the plate from on top, instead of leaving it open. "This is it, Gideon. Our moment of truth." You begin to say, trying to start a conversation. The hunchback just nods in return, staring upwards to the closed opening, waiting. Many minutes pass-by, and when something like an hour passes you wonder whether they abandoned raiding the base at all. You idly stand, shaking in place. Sand slowly begins to pour out of the holes the plate, the the miniscule dots sprinkling on top of both you and Gideon. Soon, a vague blue light begins to peek in, and you know that the Zealots are here. You hear a crackling thud, and soon the plate is kicked over and you notice several flashing figures hunching over the well. "You there, below. You are, 'Vamp'?" "One and the same." You call back, "The man beside me is Gideon. You wish to come inside?" You see some finger pointing from the three men surrounding the well, and one extremely built character jumps from the top of the well, using his armor as a brake by trying to grab onto the surrounding wall. You laugh inside, realizing that he obviously didn't notice the ledges on the other side of the cylindrical opening. The man takes off his helmet, and what you see surprising you, though you;re not sure why. "I am the Chief." The dark-skinned individual introduces himself, bowing slightly. "I have brought exactly 32 men here, and the rest to find and kill the Demons approaching the City. Now, what do you want, both of you?" Gideon stares at the man with a wide smile, though he doesn't speak. You sigh once again, "We want you to not kill us, to be frank." Chief laughs, and calls upwards, "Samuel, Zadok, come down and meet these two... Gentleman." Soon after he announces it, the two men watching from above the well jump in from behind Chief, crashing into the concrete with a loud crack. The dust settles, and the man continues, "The two of you don't seem too bad, but even the Devil can act gracious-- but that's acting. How can you prove to us that you're actually willing of redemption? How can I trust you?" The two men behind him near, and although they aren't quite up to his size, they don't seem nearly as friendly. "Well, for one, we warned you about the other Creations... Wait, how much men did you send to apprehend them?" "Truth." He nods, "30, why?" That's 13 Creations against 30 mortals; they'll be slaughtered... You consider how to answer, but Gideon interjects, "Chief, the Wolves on their way aren't pushovers." "And neither are our soldiers." "No," Gideon continues, "I've seen their leader in action. He is merciless and faster than anything you've ever seen. Your precious City won't hold up!" For the first time, Chief seems alarmed, "Wait... You are the only De-- Creations here?" "Yeah. We have no time to waste, then. If you want our support in saving the city, then we'll need your promise of being vouched for." You state firmly. Chief nods, while the others watch you both, silent. "You got it. Now let's get get back, before it's too late!" "Alright then," you say, "Let's get out of here while we can." To show them the way, you rush ahead, using the ledges to climb. Gideon and the Zealots follow you up, where you find a horde of patient Zealots, waiting for orders. Chief raises his hands and yells, "RETREAT BACK TO THE CITY, NOW!" The Zealots' formation quickly changes and you begin your march to the city, hoping you get there in time... > You epilogue. With silent haste, the troops march back to the City. The Chief's strict protocol helps bring the scattered clusters into more orderly groups walking in a rectangular form. You cover plenty of ground in a short amount of time, but the tension builds when a scout comes back with no report on where the Wolves are. By the time you all reach the City, it's darker than it seemed before... Chief motions over to you, "You see, there?" He points to a corner of the City's hexagonal circumference, "The Sentries would usually be commandeering a light. But I don't see them now." He pauses to think, then speaks out in his powerful voice, "Enter Church-City in five groups of six! Never lose sight of a team member and ALWAYS watch your back. Also, remember to turn off your armor's flash. Now move out!" Immediately, the Zealots begin to cluster together, forming the teams, and spreading out and marching into the City. Before his new team begins to enter the City, Chief brings you and Gideon over, "Now, how shall we stop the Creations inside?" Gideon replies, "Especially now in the darkness, it'll be hard to defend against them. But otherwise it's find and then kill. Hope for the best, I suppose." You don't have a much better answer. You can see that everybody on Chief's team is equipped with silver weapons, and that's the only weakness you know about. It all boils down to how much Wolves and Zealots are left inside. With a sigh, Chief begins to lead his crew into the City while you and Gideon follow. Even in the darkness the City looks spectacularly flashy-- almost everything made of a flashy metal, with neon lights flashing up every corner. The clanging of metal boots on the harsh concrete makes any attempt of stealth completely pointless, but that doesn't seem to be the Zealot-style anyway. If anything, it looks like your team is looking for a fight. But, after marching through the otherwise quiet streets with no conflict, the group begins to relax slightly. Chief takes out his transceiver, and you can hear some muffled sounds coming from him-- but no response. You look around to notice only another group in a parallel street, but you don't see anybody else. Several minutes pass, "Bizarre," Chief starts, "Only one out of the four other groups are responding. You think..." He trails off, but suddenly the world becomes more tense, and you all remain on high alert. Out of nowhere, a huge blonde beast smashes through the metal door of what you can only suppose is a Church. The massive hulking figure is leaves a literal rip in the opening, and appears to be bleeding from the mouth-- though you're pretty certain it's not from itself. The werewolf stares in your direction, hungrily, and slowly begins to advance. Terrified, the Zealots in your group begin to open-lightning on it-- though it doesn't appear to faze it in any way, aside from scorching its fur. "Cecilia?" You yell, trying to distract it by waving your arms in the air. The beast pauses, but then continues pouncing in your direction. You quickly run up to it, and bring all your might into an air-splitting punch at the wolf's protruding jaw. It doubles over, but not before, in an act of desperation, making a huge swipe for the Zealots trying to spear it; about three Zealots were flung several meters into the air and back to the floor, only not to wake up. Chief manages to sink the tusks of his rifle into the horrid beast before she turns back into your would-be lover-- Cecilia. You spit, trying to make sure your emotions don't meddle with this. We must take back the City, for humanity's sake. By now, even the other Group appears to not be responding... "Vampire... We aren't going to win this fight." Chief confesses, clutching at his healthy chest. "What do we do now?" "You don't know that, Chief. There can't be too many Wolves left..." You reply slowly. As expected, the heavy bounding of paws is heard, and a black Werewolf, standing on its hind legs stares at the remaining of your group with its ruby eyes-- Gideon, Chief, and yourself. The surviving Zealots fled, no doubt to be killed by Ragnor: the black Wolf. With a horrible shriek of a howl, the Wolf slams it's paw into Chief, hitting awkwardly as he tries to dodge though sending him back long enough for the Wolf to focus on you, grabbing you with its paws-- digging his claws into your skin, and throwing your bleeding corpse almost an entire street. Your body cuts itself on the concrete, and even though it heals itself you can feel the pain of a dislocated shoulder and a broken wrist and several ribs. You manage to get up, albeit slowly, only to witness an Albino Wolf wrestling with a darker one, both relatively similar mass but different in proportion. The white one (Gideon) seems to be shorter, though more muscular, while the stygian Wolf (Ragnor) manages to be taller and much more overbearing; much like how they are in their regular forms. You run towards Ragnor, hoping to help Gideon out in the fight, but the white monster eyes you while it struggles against the darker one, it barks in your direction, as if telling you to get the hell out of this while they duke it out. As Ragnor sinks his teeth into Gideon shoulder, a horrible howl is let out-- and it soon becomes apparent that Gideon it outmatched. Taken aback, you meekly help the Chief up-- who's mesmerized by the masochistic display going on by the two forces at work. Gideon grasps the younger wolf by its throat, and manages to get on top in the scuffle. The two continue to exchange blows, blood squirting out into the floor, until... Gideon slows down, and with a final, angry bark-- he is killed. Ragnor feasts on his killed with a hungry lust; ripping at his enemy's fleshy neck, and happily ripping out and crunching on whatever bones he finds. While Chief continues to blankly stare, you decide that its time you took action on Ragnor, and with the rage built inside of you, the death of Gideon; the one honestly good person you've met, manage to take the Wolf off-guard with a bull-rush. You sink your own claws into the wolf-man's throat, hacking into it. The heavier and stronger animal attempts to crush your midsection with its bare hands before you can kill it, but your swipes prove affective enough with the additional injuries Ragnor got from the White Wolf. As the fight comes to a close, you find yourself soaked in blood and on top of a dead, un-regenerating corpse. You find the Chief bowing down to the floor, praying in a language you don't understand. After several moments he stands, in shock. Unlike before, there are no sounds; just the deathly chill of the wind. "What-- what now?" Comes his pathetic voice. "We... We find the other Creations, and bring them to justice." You bring a bleeding hand to your brow, "Think about it; this can't be the only civilization left, and there are bound to be other Creations wishing to do harm to others. But you and I, we can stop them. We can find a way through the desert." Chief nods, "But I don't think I can carry on with you, for I just... My legs... they aren't moving!" With a grin, you sink your teeth into his neck, and suck-- but not too much, just enough to ghoul him. The salty blood isn't as enjoyable since after today's events, but you'd be lying if you weren't.... Thirsty. The former-Zealot stands erect, ready to be at your command. "Shall we be off then?" "We shall." You have managed to survive in your undeath and leave a possible legacy, but the questions remain! What happened to Kelso? What about the Professor? What could have happened if you had chosen a different path? > You restart Vampire. Indeed, that is what Kelso called you. You can still hear his cold, baritone voice explaining it to you. Vampires in the tales of Fantasy are glamorized; nigh-immortal, sexually desirable, powerful. But, while you suppose you are some of those things, in truth, you are not much more than an albino with a lot of health issues. The sun, he said, will damage your skin more than anything else. Any sort of foodstuff can't be digested anymore by your barely functioning bodily systems. He claims to have an idea of what the 'Professor' was trying to do to us, but for whatever reason, he has dodged the questions anytime you ask. Any information other than that, Kelso hasn't revealed. The irking thing is that it is obvious he knows what's going on, but he consistently acts as if it is in your own good you don't know what went on. The nights have been hard since your escape from the Facility. Most nights you wake up shivering, after all the nightmares you've been dealing with. It's terrifying, and it only makes you wonder what horrible things were done to you at the Facility. You do know that they must have affected your ability to feel. No, not the wishy washy 'emotional' garbage you'd usually expect, but your sense of touch was dulled. While a lot of your senses have been heightened, that one stands out. You feel very little pain from your feet, which is odd; considering how you spent your time running over cracked glass just two days ago, but it seems to have healed recently. --- Waiting. It should be sunrise by now. Kelso said you shouldn't get out, as you are a creature of the darkness now. He, on the other hand, has been out for the entire night and then some. You're not sure what Kelso is hunting for, but you know that you're beginning to get thirsty. More and more questions begin to build up, and no doubt the bastard won't answer half of them. Even while you ran with him through the night, running across various landscapes. Most are just a barren dessert, though every once in while you'd pass a half-buried house like this. "Bright lights up ahead." He said. A city only several miles down. Kelso must have gone there for the clothes he mentioned, but you hope he's safe....<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"So you think the only feasible plan would be to divert there attention for the moment?" You frown, uncertain. The other option wouldn't make too much sense, considering that you fought with the Zealot army not too long ago, but this plan seems... distasteful, unattractive. You're betraying your brethren for those who believe you to be nothing more than a monster, people who believe that anything you do is without reason; good or bad, all mindless mistakes carried out by the Devil himself. It's a scary thought to you-- people believe that about Gideon and me. While I'm not squeaky clean by any means, at least Gideon is willing to throw away everything just to save them! Gideon begins to shuffle towards the hatch, "Come on, Vampire. We need to get the message out any way we can." "Well, we still have a Walkie-Talkie that's probably useable." He turns back to face you, and his eyes widen, "What? We do?" "Y-yeah..." You reply, beginning to scavenge through the various in nicknacks the Wolves kept, and finding David's transceiver under the mess. "Nigh certain it still works, too." He throws his hands up in return, "Then let's do that, genius." You grasp the radio firmly in your hand and get a vague feeling déjà vu as you once again dial it to the Zealot-channel. Click. It's on, sounding out static. You interrupt it with an additional button push when Gideon swiftly grabs it out of your hands. "What the hell, man!" "I'm doing this." Gideon states, still pushing the button. "Zealots, do you hear this?" The cool, female voice is back, "Err, hello?" "This is Wolf-leader Gideon, Ma'am. I need you to call off the Zealots attacking our base, for your own sake." "Um, we don't negotiate with evil, sir." "No! God damnit Ma'am, I'm warning you because there are only two of us left in the hideout, the rest are on their way to attack your City right now!" A pause. "We will look into it, then. Thank you for notifying us, whatever you are." You aren't able to identify her tone that well, but you hope it isn't sarcasm. Either way, she doesn't respond to Gideon's next reply, "Thank you." The two of you sit down on a broken couch, unsure how to proceed further. "So, if they still raid our stronghold, it's over for us?" "... Yeah. The way I see it, the best case scenario is that all the Wolves are wiped out by the C.E. Strike Force on the way. I just hope they find Ragnor and the rest after they get us." "And you're okay with this?" You shout, baffled by this still. He doesn't answer. > You await death. Seeing your stunned silence, Gideon just closes his eyes, "Best get comfortable then. They'll find the hiding place soon, don't you worry." Hopeless, you take a seat beside Gideon, and wait. Minutes turn to hours as you wait. After a long while, you hear footsteps approaching. "They're here." You whisper to Gideon, who is unresponsive. Suddenly, a small ball is tossed from the hatch, and it rolls near your feet. The last thing you feel is heat, the last thing you see is a mixture of fire and shrapnel, and the last thing you hear is the heavy grunts of Churchmen and the crackling of flames. Death was actually quicker than you expected. You have been killed by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You take a step back, standing by Gideon's side. "I'm sorry too, Ragnor. But I simply don't think think this is the way to go." Ragnor stares back at you intently, before shrugging, "Alright then, Vamp. I'm not going to force either of you. But what about your ghoul?" "David?" You look around, searching for him. He is currently standing stiff by Ragnor's side, parallel to you. You're surprised you didn't take note of this already. "Yeah. I've talked to him, and he seems to sympathize with our cause. But, since I still more than an iota of respect for you," Ragnor pauses, giving you time to understand, "I'd rather not cause strife from after death between us. So, may I ask for you to allow him to come with us?" With a deep breath, you firmly reply back, "If he really wants to go, then he can follow you to oblivion." "That is all I want from you, Vamp. See you in whatever hell we end up in, eh?" He smiles and takes a hand out to shake. You wave him goodbye, but don't shake, "See you on the flip side, man. Good luck." Ragnor suddenly stands with a more serious attitude, and turns to leave, the Wolf Encampment. Within minutes, Gideon and you are alone. Silence dominates the room for a long while before you speak up. "Gideon, the Zealots are on their way right now. What are we going to do?" The hunchback takes his time finding a nice seat to reply from on, "Convince them." "Convince them of what?" You ask, baffled. "Convince them that we're the least of their worries." "You mean sabotage the assault?" "Of course. You have a better idea?" "... I can't say, yet. But I can tell you one thing, none of my plans would ever include the possibility of leading the Zealots to kill our brothers!" You bring your palm to your brow, "Seriously, Gideon, what kind of idea is that?" "One that preserves the sanctity of life that doesn't leech off of others'." "And you don't think they'll turn right around to kill us?" "Hey, if you can convince them we aren't actually Demons from outer space, then we should try that out first, but for now I'm satisfied with dying with the knowledge that I helped save the human race." > You try to find a way to convince the Zealots you and Gideon aren't evil. Regardless of the fights you've had with Zealots in the past month, despite the fact that you have brutally slaughtered dozens of Zealots before tonight, you realize that it is extremely important that now you finally attempt at settling the differences between you and the Church. "We're going to survive this, Gideon. We can do it." He lazily looks at you, and the yawns, beginning to recline on the broken bench. "So, you've hatched a plan?" "Yeah," you reply, remembering that David probably left his Walkie-Talkie somewhere... You begin to dive through various clothes and various knickknacks that the Wolves have stored. "Aha!" "Wuh?" "A Walkie-Talkie. If we can try to reason with the Zealots, don't you think we can maybe convince them to not kill us?" He gets up, "You never told me you had one of those!" You nervously scratched at your head, "I... Kinda forgot about it as well. But it's great use for now, Gideon." He waves you off, "Doesn't matter, you'll never reason with them." "It's worth a shot," you say, crossing your arms defiantly. You unfold your arms and turn on the radio-- then remember that this would be Zealot HQ. Now you just need to fake being a Zealot again and get the station of the incoming horde... Click You push the button in, too anxious to wait for the crackling static, "Quick, Ma'am, what's the Zealot's Combat Channel?" It's the cool female voice, again, "Channel 40, why? Who is this?" But you're already flipping the channels. Now, from 13 to 40... Gideon sits up groggily, and watches you in silence. "Incoming Zealots!" You release the button, and wait. A heavy, though articulate-sounding voice replies from the other end, "This is Chief. Who is this?" "Friends. Or, at least, those who want to be. We are the last Creations around, and we want to talk to you." "What do you wish to speak about, Demons?" "Mostly about your usage of that term. We want peace, nothing else." "Huh?" "We- we know you're coming for us and our hideout. But we don't want to fight." You wait several moments for him to answer. "Give me your name first." "Err, Vamp." Gideon chuckles in the background. The man named 'Chief' gives a heavy sigh, "Right. And how do you want your meeting to be set up?" "Any sort of meeting that doesn't include me being shot or speared by your guns sounds good." "Funny. If you actually wish to do this then I'd wait outside for us to come." "I... Think you misunderstand." You reply, rather certain about Chief's false attempt to mislead you, "Trying to kill us will not work out well for you. There are other Creations, actual evil ones that are heading for your city right now. If you don't stop them then you're city will be lost." Static for a while. "Why do you not tell me this sooner?" "... Do you even believe me?" "Perhaps," he says, "We may send scout teams to check. But for now I'm interested in what you want to speak about. Are you a man of your word?" "I try." "Hmm..." Chief pauses, his low-voice ending awkwardly, "Give us ten minutes." While you wait for him, Gideon just laughs, "I swear, vamp, if you pull this off then I swear..." He gets up with a wry smile. "Let's just hope their scouts get good information." You reply, ironically trying to be as optimistic as possible. The chances are slim, but you think this could work out with your unlife intact. Time passes, and while you didn't count how much you still worry that they may have ditched messaging and are just continuing their march to this area. "Vamp, are you still there?" You get out of your day-dream and push the button back to reply, "Yes." "It... Seems you're right that at there are a band of unknown beings several miles behind us. But this doesn't mean as much as you would hope." "Oh?" "How many of you are there in all? What if there are actually much more Creations at your base?" A reasonable suspicion, "Then that's problematic for you. But I'd wager that your guys won't be able to take on the ten-or-so of the Creations on the way. So I think getting them first should be more important." "Ah, but that is a good diversion for ten others to bypass us, eh?" Ugh. You bring a palm to your brow, uncertain how to answer the perhaps rightfully paranoid commander. He continues, "Still, you bring a solid point. I think you underestimate our capabilities, however. We will deal with both problems, but for now, how do you wish to meet?" "I assume you know how to enter the well, correct?" "Yes, we have figured out your trick." "... Right, well, send yourself and several of your best man down there and we'll talk. There are only two Creations here, but I assure you we can defend ourselves from whatever harm you might wish to inflict on us." "We'll be there." And... Off. Gideon looks to you, "What now, Vampire?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sigh, somewhat content with the ability to choose for your group. "I agree with Gideon-- defending is probably the best option. After all, the humans... Even if they hate us, they aren't our real enemy right now." Gideon grins, and slaps you on the back. Ragnor shrugs, and heads to a splintered cabinet in the back of the room. He comes back with several cans, accurately labeled as 'beer'. With a grin, he begins handing them out to the 'adults' in the room and you. "Rest on the floor, Vamp. Today is a day of celebration, a joiner to our brood!" With some large chants, Ragnor clicks open the can, and begins handing it to you. As you reach to take it, he immediately withdraws it. He lays it on the floor in front of you, then proceeds to bring a clawed index finger to his wrist above the can, poking deeply into it and letting blood slowly drip into the can. "Hah, I forgot you can't really taste anything but blood. Don't worry though, this'll get you high on no one's expense, Vamp, enjoy yourself." You laugh, scratching at your head for forgetting. You accept the bloody beer; while it's nothing compared to full blood, it's the most happy you've been since you got out of the Facility. It's nice to be part of a family. You and the rest of the Creations laugh and discuss the 'happenings' of the current world. You can't add much, but the leaders of the Wolves' collective stories are fascinating in their own rights, though. On top of it all, you think you've really hit it off with Cecilia-- the blonde Wolf. The next couple of days fly by... > You training. (Optional) "Cecilia, please stop it." You say, pushing her off you. Thinking it through, it probably wasn't the best idea for you to personally trainer of the woman with mutual, though perhaps repressed for the moment, feelings for you. Regardless, she seems a bit too happy when she get close-and-personal with you during a sparring match. With a sigh, you look over to Ragnor and Gideon's respective groups-- it was a smart way the three of you ended up dividing the workload. Each of you would take 4 of the Wolves and personally trained them to defend themselves. Perhaps they gave you too much credit-- you're not a hundred percent sure what to do. Kelso was the one who taught you, but he seemed to recognize that berserking was the way you could unleash your full strength. You'll have to figure out how the Wolves were designed to fight, soon. On the plus side, you're very happy with you 'students', to the point that the names stick out in your mind. Shamino is a heavy-hitter, though surprisingly clumsy for one of his set stature; Haran is extremely agile, and almost vampire-like when it comes to fighting; and Cecilia, is, well, Cecilia. "So, group, have any of you ever shifted into your were-forms?" You ask, gathering your group outside the dunes. In the dark of night, the flat land of sand that you found might seem unimpressive, but the fact that's it's mostly flat is more rare than one would think here; the landscape is usually riddled with smaller hills evrywhere. "Not me." Haran says raising his hand, "Ragnor said that we'll turn only if our bodies deem it necessary. Or when there's a ball of light, but the moon isn't round tonight." As the rest of the Wolves nod, you rub your chin in thought. "David!" You call, waving to your ghoul, who is walking around, aimlessly for whatever reason. "Can you bring one of the L-Bayonets?" He nods in response, and wanders back the to Stronghold. "What do you want with the.. the guns?" The young Shamino asks, looking frightened. The other two Wolves seem to look disturbed as well, "Don't worry haha. We need to train your fortitude as well as make sure you master your abilities. From what it seems, you haven't done either." You watch them idly, waiting for David to bring the gun. As much as it may pain you, you'll need to see what the electronic bolt will do to them. If all goes well, they'll be forced to morph. And only then can you get started... "You want to force us to morph for you." Cecilia states, frowning. "Not for me, for you." You emphasize with a nod, "The way learned to fight was when I had to unleash my primal being, but still pay close attention to my abilities and skills. If you want to defend against the the Zealots, then we need to see you morph." They all gulp, but nod confidently. When David returns with the rifle, you firmly grasp it and prop it up, "This," you shake it as as to bring it at attention, "is the Zealots primary weapon. The tusks at the end are sharp, and will probably pierce nearly any type of hide. Still, assuming you have any sort of health-regeneration abilities, that shouldn't be a problem. What will be a problem, however, is what this rifle shoots out. Lightning." Silence. You clap, "So, who wants to see who can handle the 'holy' firepower?" To your surprise, both Cecilia and Shamino raise heir hands fairly quickly. Even though you're pretty sure Cecilia raised her hand first, you aim the gun in then big Asian's direction, "Shamino, you ready?" He nods, bracing himself as his team-mates slowly back away from him. You unleash the shot, it's force even taking you off guard as it erupts out of the rifle's end. The green-blue bolt reaches poor Shamino almost instantaneously, flinging him several feet in the air and into the sand, causing a small sand-mound of his own. You and the rest run to catch up to him, hoping he's alright. What you see isn't necessarily 'alright', per se, but it's what you wanted to see. What was a powerful Asian teenager is now a hulking, barely conscious furry monster. As it gets up, the snarling beast (about twice your height and thrice your width) begins sniffing around, it's eyes fully white. It's nose beckons in your direction before it lets out a horrible cry-- a howl. As your two students begin to run and David passively watches from afar, you find yourself at the mercy of Shamino the Werewolf. It starts towards you, walking on two feet and using it's other limbs to claw in your direction. While the beast begins it's charge, you take the initiative by jumping at it yourself,using the rifle's tusks as a range advantage. You stick the horns into the werewolf, though you're not surprised that it doesn't do much to slow it down. By now it has it's oversized arms around you, crushing your body... Click A bolt of lightning shoots out, straight into the werewolf's stomach. More sticky blood oozes from its stomach, and ith a growl the beast releases you, if only to take the gun out from between its ribs. Once again taking the initiative, you send a slamming claw to it's snout, and follow up with a kick to its already bleeding midsection. While it pushes it back, it doesn't seem to do as much as you'd hoped. It takes the bayonet and uses it like a bat to hit you, leaving you breathless as you are flung into the sky, the heavy gun landing on-top of you. You cough out blood, and get up to analyze the situation: Ragnor and Gideon's groups have stopped training just to watch while David, Haran and Cecilia finally get into action. You run to catch up with them, and the unfolding scene would make you tear if you could; the three of them coordinate with each-other beautifully, with Haran both dodging the werewolf's blows and throwing sand at its eyes in order to occupy it, while the other tackle at it's heavy feet, just managing to trip it, and keep it there. It's not the greatest way to end a fight, but it's good teamwork. By the time you reach them, Shamino is in his regular form, bleeding only slightly from his nose. He seems oblivious as to what happened, but you're excited team-mates are more than happy to fill him in. Several more lessons like this, and they'll be more than ready to fight the Zealots. After all, taking down a werewolf is much easier than a human.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Ragnor, use those climbing skills of yours and find a way to seal the top of the well better. Can't have one of them dust storms filling the place, nor let any traveler find us like these two rugrats." Gideon says, waving for you to follow him and his goofy walking pattern. While the cloaked man begins to climb, you and David follow the hunchback though the stronghold of the wolves. It's a dark tunnel path, but several well-placed torches along the concrete walls give you enough light to make out peculiar drawings on the walls. Not exactly professional artwork or anything, just passionate claw-markings. But still... “Hey Gideon,” you ask, examining one specifically for it's graphic nature, “What's up with the markings?” The hunchback turns his head, but continues moving, “The writing? It's a code language we formed, mixture of all the languages the folks here are familiar with. It's more or less a system of simplified pictures, but you'll be able to read it if you stay here long enough.” “Can you read this one out to me?” You make sure to stop and point it out; the writing here is different than the rest, even more picturesque than the rest. You can't hope to read it, but you do notice a recurring theme-- a cross and a pentagram. Not only that, but they're much less refined than the others, as if written with anger. “That one is rather basic, I think I even went over it before. It basically boils to, eh...” He shuffles closer to you, and brings his large eye to the writing, “Peace is what keeps our humanity, for the Professor, cursed be he, uses strife to tear us apart. The cursed Creator wishes that we destroy our brothers in battle so he reaps the reward when it's over.” Gideon tilts his head back and continues forward, “I'd keep this in mind, vampy. I'm not sure why you're here, whether to warn us or to do devil's bidding, but I trust you enough to see you have no idea what's going on, so I'll be giving you the chance to give a little presentation for the guys here. By vote, we'll either agree or not. After that, it's up to you whether you stay or not. Got it?” “That's all I could have asked for, sir.” You reply, hoping you can prepare them for the Church's onslaught next week. If not, then, well, you and your brothers are done for, regardless of non-violent intentions. After several minutes of treading through the passages of the tunnel, Gideon stops to look up, even if his head doesn't lift that far. You catch up to where he is, noticing what he's looking at: an opening, light. “That's our hideout.” The Wolf jumps up, grabbing onto some sort of ledge to bring his deformed body up. You watch his body struggle up it, land on solid ground (and then a lot of murmuring from above), then jump up yourself, making it up with ease. The hideout is surprisingly low-key for the most powerful beings on the planet, but considering how they're just trying to survive a dimly lit room filled with sleeping bags and animal-carcasses strewn about is to be expected. The ragtag group that are the Wolves are surprising though; a thin man with dark hair, only to have a visible streak of white in the front; a rather hairy, though otherwise attractive female with dirty blonde hair who's around your age (early twenties?); several scruffy teenagers; a dark-skinned, mustached, and barrel-chested man; at least three of obvious Asian descent; and, of course, Gideon, pointing you out to everybody. Most of them getting out of there bags, they begin gawking at you. You wince as the female eye you with interest, while the men seem to just want to know what you want so they could sleep. You motion to Gideon, and you get close to him and ask, "These are the Wolves? Not as... Impressive, as I thought they'd be." "You're not exactly super-hero material either, child. Kinda stock; dark, straight hair and pale skin. Lean physique." Noticing you're confusion he just pokes at your chest, "What matters is what's on the inside. That's where power comes from. Remember that." He begins to raise his voice, "Now, this here is a Vampire. He has no name, so call him whatever you like, but he has some 'opinions' he'd like to share. As your ghoul struggles up the hatch, you wonder how you want to persuade this group of lazy Wolves to prepare. > You start it light; they don't seem very prepared. Better not freak them out. Can't have them overreact or something. You nod to Gideon, who seems to be acting commander of the Wolves. They gather around you, staring with glossy eyes and gaping mouths. "Right," you announce, clapping your gauntleted hands together, "I am a fellow Creation, like, uh, you guys. And gals!" You add in quickly before pausing, "While I am the only Vampire left, I am a Creation just like you. I have been fighting the Church since I escaped from Facility 13-- the last one. As I understand it, the Church has been trying to kill us, even after the Professor is out of the picture." Nothing but silence from your audience as of yet. "Um, so after escaping the Facility, myself and a... A friend," It didn't sound like Kelso's on good terms with the Wolves, he probably knew Gideon from way back when, "we trained in the sand-dunes, and went out to find the only Creations left. While trying to find you, the Wolves, we had to fight the Zealots, who were more than happy to send their troops at us. As you all are powerful Creations, I will leave it up to you to realize how easy it was to defeat them. But, I kept one as a ghoul, and he had something very interesting to say about you all." You look to David, who nods back. "The Church has found out where your stockade is, and will send all their troops to finish the Creations here within a week." David says, blank-faced. Murmuring spreads throughout the encampment, and you can see several nodding their heads. Others seem more reluctant to believe it. "So what do you want us to do with your information?" One asks. "Well, there are multiple options. One; we can defend it, and train for when they attack. Two; we can go on the offensive and just attack the city, taking them by surprise. Or three; stay settled cozy here and get slaughtered by superstitious assholes. Up to you guys." "Can't we also flee?" Another question, obviously there's a split in the group; some seem to be especially vengeful against the Church, others just want to be left alone. But everyone here wants to survive, you're certain of that. "Possibly, though I doubt the Church wouldn't pursue you through the desert. "... Why should we trust you?" You consider the question for a moment, and realize that although you aren't lying, they have the right to be paranoid, "Because David was one of the Zealots, and he's just relaying what he knows. Heck, how do you think I found your hiding place? The Zealots know, and are getting ready to destroy everyone here. They believe us to be hellish creatures bound to Earth, and think that it's there obligation to banish us back to where we came from." Mostly done, you watch everyone surrounding you. Gideon remains stroking at his scruffy chin, and the rest are just... Thinking. Suddenly, the cloaked Ragnor makes a return, jumping up from the hatch. "So, what'd I miss?" He asks with a chuckle, taking his ruby-red hood off. Ragnor is a balding adult, probably middle-aged before he was reCreated. He's muscular, but not in the way Gideon is; he's extremely tall; lean and built. "Nothing much," Gideon answers, "It basically boils down to whether we defend, attack, or not believe Vampy and the Ghoul over here." With a sigh, he looks scans everyone in the room, "So, shall we put it to vote?" One of the younger wolves respond, "I believe the vampire. I don't see why he'd lie, and... The Church does plan to hurt us, no matter what colored lenses we put on. We are evil to them, aren't we?" Gideon cracks his neck, waits for any other response (there isn't), and then turns to you, "Well, it seems like you can decide for us. If you want my advice, I thinking attacking the entire city is a bit drastic, though defending well would get what's needed done: Survival." Ragnor glares at you as well, boldly standing parallel to the leader, "But going on the offensive will give us an advantage, for once. We just need to take the assault the City while the are on their way to our hideout. It'd be perfect timing to gain control of the city!"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your mentor, the Ghoul, and yourself make your way through the remnants of the past world. Suddenly, it all makes sense to you. The world went to hell, and it was the Professor's abuse of his Creations that furthered it. Now, the Church hunts you all down for no reason other than to to give hope to 'real' humans. It's despicable, but it's the world you're in right now. The hot sun beats down upon you, while your slave suddenly comes to a halt. "This is it." He blandly calls out, reaching down to the sandy flooring, and makes hand motions as to move some of the sand away. You turn to wish your master a farewell, but he is already gone. Only a hazy version of him can be seen through squinting in the distance. So, it's just me and my Ghoul. Let's just hope it doesn't get bloody... You follow David's beckoning, and bend down to see what he was unclearing. As your slave digs, more and more sand seems to pile in. "What are we looking for?" "They're underground, sir." With a nod, you decide to help out with the digging. As you lay your hands on the sand, you thank fortune that you hadn't done this in the middle of the day, rather than just an hour or so after sun-rise. The sand would no doubt have burnt your fingers otherwise! Even though you and your ghoul are digging barehanded, it doesn't take too much time before you begin to feel the sand getting thicker, more doughy. With quick powerful stroke, you continue ripping through the sand, throwing it out of your radius, soon creating a little pit, low enough that you could stand up in it. After clawing at the earth with your servant for a while, you accidentally scratch at something... Hard, metallic. Underneath the sand lay a metal disk, with evenly-spaced holes around it's edge and the middle. Even as it is right now, it's fairly obvious that the disk is heavily embedded into the ground, and prying it out would no doubt prove to be a challenge. At first, you try just digging around and under it, but your efforts seemed to have been in vain; the plate appeared to be a part of both the earth and some sort of brick-well that goes much further down. "You sure this is the place? You ask, making sure that this was the opening to the Wolf Stronghold. It'd make sense, as this is extremely safe from the Zealots, considering. "Yes." Comes the monotone reply, "The few remaining GPS satellites pin-pointed this exact spot. We caught several monsters disappearing from under the sand here." Now, how should we try to open this? > You blast it open with the L-Bayonet. "Move aside, Ghoul." You command, grabbing for the huge rifle you looted off of the Zealots you last killed. It truly is an amazing weapon, the bursts of lightning would be extremely affective against anything if caught off-guard. Of course, shooting at a metal lid may not be the most brilliant idea, but it's much cooler to try out than using your bare hands to pick up the metallic disk. With David the Ghoul backing away to the end of your pit, you aim and fire a blast of lightning at the plate. You hear a loud thundering emit from your weapon as you're flung several feet back from the recoil of this weapon. Through the cloudy smoke you can still make out the the green chain of lightning strike at the plate, creating a large hissing sound. Great, now the metal disk covering the well is visibly red hot, glowing a neon color and radiating heat from it. Your Ghoul sighs, though doesn't speak his thoughts, obviously as to not insult you. "Err," You stutter, realizing your blunder, "David," (you use his real name this time), "would you mind trying to kick off the plate? It should be weaker now that it's almost reached melting point. Maybe." Your ghoul shakes his head. He replies, "Can we try to use the bayonet's tusks to pry it open?" You nod awkwardly, and near the searing plate with your rifle. Swiftly, but carefully, you fit the tusks in a slight opening where sand must have been embedded, and use whatever leverage you can to push the lid up. Thankfully, you succeeded in loosening the disk, which means that your rifle manages to carry the lid off of the well. The bad part? Well, the end of your rifle seems to have melted a bit. Perhaps it wasn't made to deal with anything but short bursts of extreme-heat, rather than a prolonged carrying-session. Still, it could be worse. David has a back-up rifle as well, so little harm done, considering. After patting your Ghoul on the back for the idea, you begin to hear the sounds of running from inside of the well... You shrug, and smile at your Ghoul, and then proceed to look down the brick-well... It's dark, for one thing, and the sound of pattering foot-steps on concrete grows louder. Overcome with nervousness, you loudly blurt out, "We come in peace!" Several dark figures appear from the bottom of the well, after several glances upwards at you and whispering, one of them waves you down. Shivering, you jump down the well, using the cylindrical bricks surrounding you to position yourself as to not fall on them. Still, you fall with a heavy thud. Yeah, I'm gonna need new sneakers. Unlike yourself, David just goes down it normally, using the short metal bars protruding one of the sides, climbing downwards. The dark figures eye you carefully, taking a while to speak. One with dark gray hair and scruffy facial hair as well as a slouching hunchback of a surprisingly muscular body, points at your armor, "If you're a Zealot, I'd turn back right now. If you don't, then my friend here, the cloaked one, will happily snap your neck for making such a hideous racket." His voice isn't too threatening, but his body language and thick-eyebrows suggest otherwise. He's clad in tight cloth shirt and pants, bulging with muscles, and is surrounded with an intimidating aura. The other one is completely cloaked, though watches your Ghoul with suspicion. "I'm not of the Church," you start, trying to make a good first impression, "and neither is he. Not anymore at least." "Then what are you?" The gruff man calls out, his eyes narrowing. "Well, I'm glad you asked. I'm a... A Creation, just like you. This is my Ghou--" By the time you uttered the word, 'Creation' he had already put you in a headlock. The cloaked one has already put your ghoul to sleep, though hopefully not forever... The man continues, "What do you want from us, fangs-boy? I thought the rest of your clan died." Clans? "No!" You exclaim, struggling out of his hold. You actually manage to surprise him with your strength and are able to push him off of you. "I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. But you're part of the Wolves, right? My associate and I want to join your strong hold." After stabilizing, he spits back at you, "We don't need any joiners." "Why not?" You argue, your body tensing. "The Zealots are planning to raid this place soon, and I figure you could use as much help as possible." The old man continues growling at you, "What are you, some sort of message-boy for the Professor?" Well, at least that means they aren't working for him. "The Church means no harm to us at this point. It'd be stupid for them to attack us. If you're trying to make a powerful group do something out of desperation, then oh boy, have you come to a bad place, vampy. I'd go back to the sun, where the pain is relatively quick." He cracks his knuckles. If you weren't so confident in your abilities, you might have been intimidated by this Neanderthal. "Then perhaps you should ask my Ghoul, David. He was a Zealot before I brought him to the darkness." You point at the slumped body on the floor. "He's dead now, too late." The brute says with a cruel grin, "Snapped his neck, Ragnor did." You laugh, "I don't think he'd die from that." You take several steps toward your slave, waving the cloaked man aside, you grab David by the cuff of his armor and pick him up, then bring your hand to his neck and snap it back. David glumly states, "Hi." The Wolf grits his teeth, "Didn't know Vampires could use their powers like that." "Then you'll be learning a whole lot more during my stay here. What was that you were saying about being the last of my clan?" He smiles back, surprisingly, "Oh? So you don't know. You're the last of the Vampire Creations, as the rest died in this desert planet. I'm surprised you made it this long since the last Facility was destroyed. But if you don't remember that, then do you even remember your name?" "I'm afraid not. Can you at least tell me yours?" The Wolf laughs, "Call me Gideon. The cloaked figure on the side is Ragnor, our residential assassin, even if fighting has little place anymore." He brings out a hairy, clawed hand to shakes yours. You accept it. "So I'm in?" "I'm still suspicious of your reasons for coming here, and your story about the Zealots needs some checking." "Is it really that surprising?" "Less that and more that we don't want to fight them." What? Seeing your confused expression, Gideon continues, "Listen here Vampy, I'd rather die and let humanity survive than not. And most of us here are ready for that. If the Zealots come to our turf then we'll wipe them out easy, but we're definitely not going to seek conflict, even if me and the boys can take those choir-boys out in an instant." "Why not? They want to kill us all?" He shakes his head, his face now grim, "The Church may believe that we're demons, but they also value the sanctity of life, so I doubt they'd come here. Regardless, they aren't all that wrong about us. The things we've done... The innocents we've massacred in our wake. It doesn't mean that we're bad now, per se, but what we've done is inexcusable. The World has gone to waste, and I'm alright if we don't survive to see it rebuild itself. You stand in silence for a little while, realizing that you've joined ranks with the modern equivalent of the hippies. Gideon grins again, "But don't worry about that now, let's close the lid on top of our well and then introduce you to the rest of the gang."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your mentor, the Ghoul, and yourself make your way through the remnants of the past world. Suddenly, it all makes sense to you. The world went to hell, and it was the Professor's abuse of his Creations that furthered it. Now, the Church hunts you all down for no reason other than to to give hope to 'real' humans. It's despicable, but it's the world you're in right now. The hot sun beats down upon you, while your slave suddenly comes to a halt. "This is it." He blandly calls out, reaching down to the sandy flooring, and makes hand motions as to move some of the sand away. You turn to wish your master a farewell, but he is already gone. Only a hazy version of him can be seen through squinting in the distance. So, it's just me and my Ghoul. Let's just hope it doesn't get bloody... You follow David's beckoning, and bend down to see what he was unclearing. As your slave digs, more and more sand seems to pile in. "What are we looking for?" "They're underground, sir." With a nod, you decide to help out with the digging. As you lay your hands on the sand, you thank fortune that you hadn't done this in the middle of the day, rather than just an hour or so after sun-rise. The sand would no doubt have burnt your fingers otherwise! Even though you and your ghoul are digging barehanded, it doesn't take too much time before you begin to feel the sand getting thicker, more doughy. With quick powerful stroke, you continue ripping through the sand, throwing it out of your radius, soon creating a little pit, low enough that you could stand up in it. After clawing at the earth with your servant for a while, you accidentally scratch at something... Hard, metallic. Underneath the sand lay a metal disk, with evenly-spaced holes around it's edge and the middle. Even as it is right now, it's fairly obvious that the disk is heavily embedded into the ground, and prying it out would no doubt prove to be a challenge. At first, you try just digging around and under it, but your efforts seemed to have been in vain; the plate appeared to be a part of both the earth and some sort of brick-well that goes much further down. "You sure this is the place? You ask, making sure that this was the opening to the Wolf Stronghold. It'd make sense, as this is extremely safe from the Zealots, considering. "Yes." Comes the monotone reply, "The few remaining GPS satellites pin-pointed this exact spot. We caught several monsters disappearing from under the sand here." Now, how should we try to open this? > You just call through the disc's holes and hope to hear an answer. Using divine intuition, you lean in close to the holes on the lid and yell as loudly (and awkwardly) as you can, "HELLO THERE, WE'RE LOOKING FOR THE WOLVES." Your ghoul snickers. You vaguely hear the echo of your voice trail off into the buried well. Hopefully somebody down there heard your dopey exclamation, even if it came out dumb sounding. You certainly wouldn't want to go through it again. You hear some heavy foot-steps from the well, and try your best to peer through it. Alas, it is too dark. Still, you hear a voice in response. "Who are yeh?" The voice progressively gets closer. It's gruff, but calm. "Uh, I'm not a hundred-percent sure! But we're related." "Related eh? You'd have to explain that one to me." You can hear a sharp thud, and the lid on top of the well turn from a flat 180-degrees to a wedged 90. A hairy, clawed hand withdraws. You hear another thump, probably the Wolf down there falling back to the floor. You shrug, and smile at your Ghoul, and then proceed to look down the brick-well... It's dark, for one thing, and you can't make out anything but two figures looking up at you. Overcome with nervousness, you loudly blurt out, "We come in peace!" Several dark figures appear from the bottom of the well, after several glances upwards at you and whispering, one of them waves you down. Shivering, you make sure to slowly go down, using the metal foot-holds protruding from the side of the cylindrical, brick well. The dark figures eye you carefully, taking a while to speak. One with dark gray hair and scruffy facial hair as well as a slouching hunchback of a surprisingly muscular body, points at your armor, "If you're a Zealot, I'd turn back right now." His voice isn't too threatening, but his body language and thick-eyebrows suggest otherwise. He's clad in tight cloth shirt and pants, bulging with muscles, and is surrounded in an intimidating aura. The other one is completely cloaked, though watches your Ghoul with suspicion. "I'm not of the Church," you start, trying to make a good first impression, "and neither is he. Not anymore at least." "Then what are you?" The gruff man calls out, his eyes narrowing. "Well, I'm glad you asked. I'm a... A Creation, just like you. This is my Ghou--" By the time you uttered the word, 'Creation' he had already put you in a headlock. The cloaked one has already put your ghoul to sleep, though hopefully not forever... The man continues, "What do you want from us, fangs-boy? I thought the rest of your clan died." Clans? "No!" You exclaim, struggling out of his hold. You actually manage to surprise him with your strength and are able to push him off of you. "I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. But you're part of the Wolves, right? My associate and I want to join your strong hold." He spits back at you, "We don't need any joiners." "Why not?" You argue, your body tensing. "The Zealots are planning to raid this place soon, and I figure you could use as much help as possible." The old man growls back you, "What are you, some sort of message-boy for the Professor?" Well, at least that means they aren't working for him. Probably. "The Church means no harm to us at this point. It'd be stupid for them to attack us. If you're trying to make a powerful group do something out of desperation, then oh boy, have you come to a bad place, vampy. I'd go back to the sun, where the pain is relatively quick." He cracks his knuckles. If you weren't so confident in your abilities, you might have been intimidated by this Neanderthal. "Then perhaps you should ask my Ghoul, David. He was a Zealot before I brought him to the darkness." You point at the slumped body on the floor. "He's dead now, too late." The brute says with a cruel grin, "Snapped his neck, Ragnor did." You laugh, "I don't think he'd die from that." You take several steps toward your slave, waving the cloaked man aside, you grab David by the cuff of his armor and pick him up, then bring your hand to his neck and snap it back. David glumly states, "Hi." The Wolf grits his teeth, "Didn't know Vampires could use their powers like that." "Then you'll be learning a whole lot more during my stay here. What was that you were saying about being the last of my clan?" He smiles back, surprisingly, "Oh? So you don't know. You're the last of the Vampire Creations, as the rest died in this desert planet. I'm surprised you made it this long since the last Facility was destroyed. But if you don't remember that, then do you even remember your name?" "I'm afraid not. Can you at least tell me yours?" The Wolf laughs, "Call me Gideon. The cloaked figure on the side is Ragnor, our residential assassin, even if fighting has little place anymore." He brings out a hairy, clawed hand to shakes yours. You accept it. "So I'm in?" "I'm still suspicious of your reasons for coming here, and your story about the Zealots needs some checking." "Is it really that surprising?" "Less that and more that we don't want to fight them." What? Seeing your confused expression, Gideon continues, "Listen here Vampy, I'd rather die and let humanity survive than not. And most of us here are ready for that. If the Zealots come to our turf then we'll wipe them out easy, but we're definitely not going to seek conflict, even if me and the boys can take those choir-boys out in an instant." "Why not? They want to kill us all?" He shakes his head, his face now grim, "The Church may believe that we're demons, but they also value the sanctity of life, so I doubt they'd come here. Regardless, they aren't all that wrong about us. The things we've done... The innocents we've massacred in our wake. It doesn't mean that we're bad now, per se, but what we've done is inexcusable. The World has gone to waste, and I'm alright if we don't survive to see it rebuild itself. You stand in silence for a little while, realizing that you've joined ranks with the modern equivalent of the hippies. Gideon grins again, "But don't worry about that now, let's close the lid on top of our well and then introduce you to the rest of the gang."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Curious, and perhaps a wee bit thirsty, you motion to the Zealot. "What's your name?" "David." He spits, "Why?" "Because your new name is... Slave." His eyes widen in horror as you sink your teeth into his soft and milky flesh, this time getting it on the artery. The blood squirts down your throat, and the high that you get is unimaginable. Sweet and slightly sour blood, like apple-juice. The euphoria you get is uplifting, and you feel... Happy. Power surges through your veins, and your stomach does happy somersaults as it absorbs all the nutrients from the Zealot's warrior-blood, and you continue chewing on his neck, trying to get as much as you can from this man before he falters. Just sublime... "Goddammit kid, your mother must have been some sort of an abuser." Kelso says with a chuckle, pulling you away. "But I think that' enough drinking, your new slave is deathly pale, but still breathing, albeit very slowly and inconsistently-- a sign that you've drunk just enough." He points out, "But hats off to you kid, you've got yourself a ghoul." You both stand, waiting for your slave to wake. The pale Zealot opens his eyes back up, a glossy look to them. He doesn't speak, but instead lazily lets saliva and a red substance that likely is blood ooze out from the side of his mouth. Nervously, you command him, "Lead us to the Wolves hideout." He lazily tries to get up, only to fall back down again. "Now." Firm. He gets up, straight this time. With uncoordinated steps he begins to march, stumbling through the sand and skin beginning to redden from the sun. You shrug, and follow your new ghoul. By the time you pass the City the trek is already nearly over. You take another left from there, then a turn to the right... And soon Kelso directs you and your new slave to stop. "This," he begins, "is where I take my leave." "What?" You exclaim, "Why now? Didn't you say that the other Creations might be on the Professor's side?" Kelso tilts his head to the side, "The longer I think about it, the less it makes sense. But I've been worried about something, and I'm nigh certain I'm correct on this." "What do you mean?" Your mentor walks to your ghoul, tugging at his armor's sleeve to get attention, "You, David, what does the Church know about Simon Kurschner?" Who? The slave replies in monotone, "Can't be found or traced. Not among Creations, unknown if even still alive." You raise an eyebrow, "Who's this Kurschner?" "The Professor." Comes the reply from Kelso. "But I thought our plan was to see if the other Creations know where the Professor is? Which could mean that they still serve him. Or not." "Exactly. If the Church has no idea of his whereabouts, then it's unlikely the Wolves have something definite either. Even though the Wolf and I have had our arguments, I still trust him enough to give you vacancy while I search for the Professor." "So where are you going?" "Anywhere. The world left is just a desert, and traveling by night only will waste time, which is why we have t split for the moment." Kelso frowns, and holds out his hand to shake. You firmly grasp it, "Then stay safe, Master. I trust you will return soon?" He stares at you blankly, "I have no idea how long it will take. But I believe in you just as well. You can make it on your own, especially with how you proved yourself today. Strong decision making and vast knowledge on how survival works have made you to what you are. There is very little that I can teach you that I even know. You shall grow past what I can even guess you can do." He begins to let go of the hand shake, but you hold on. Tightly. "There's one thing that you still haven't told me." "And what's that?" "How the World came to this pitiful state." > You kelso's tale (Optional) Kelso sighs, "Too true. It is about time I fill you in on the details, even if they're hard, even for me, to recall. It was a spread of about two decades. Surprisingly small for the whole world to collapse, but when shit hits the fan it has to either be cleaned or it'll spew out everywhere," he chuckles, motioning the Ghoul to continue the walk toward the Wolves. The story will probably take a while... You begin reanointing your sun-tan lotion while your mentor explains what happened. "Years before you awoke, the world was in complete order. Governments were somewhat conciliatory with each other, and liberty and justice was preserved. It didn't take too long before the peace was endangered, the militant Religious-- like the Zealots," he shoots your Ghoul a glance, "began rioting, terrorizing less fortunate countries and gaining power there. While the governments were large and powerful, they were inexcusably... lazy when all this happened. Soon, this spread to the more developed places on Earth, like this continent. For a little while, these religions were corner-stones of society, but this weakened it. People were scared, and fear makes the common man do things they wouldn't do otherwise. To say the least, the 21st century was not off to a good start. And it slowly, but sneakily, went downhill from there. "Amidst all this, the earth was a beautiful, natural place. Ecosystems filled with life and splendor were everywhere. Civilization was at its peak, human beings were able to do wondrous things like fly, and cure almost all illnesses and conditions using scientific means. The methods used, of course, bothered many 'men of God', like your slave. They wanted to stop progress in the name of a deity long dead. After years of struggle, they were quieted to close-knit communities, and had no impact on politics and scientific progress. During this struggle, the terrorists began gaining traction. Even worse, new viruses began infecting parts of the globe, and the irresponsible Governments continued doing nothing, until it was too late. Developed countries or not, many fell ill of the horrible new diseases, and the Old-Zealots started to control more and more land, becoming the dominant force in most places. That's why the world turned to desert and we've already found a lot of remnants of the Old World buried in it; they were pillaged by the hordes of humans, and as the population dwindled, plants weren't tilled. Soon later, there was drought, and the entire world as we know it has become a giant Dustbowl, just mixed in with disease and raiders. Simon Kurschner became the 'man with a plan' for years during this. He garnered enough support from the local governments with his experiments to get funding, as well as a whole Facility to save the human-race. His science was new, revolutionary even; and while many disapproved of what he was doing, the Professor was recognized as the last hope of humanity." "What'd he do?" You ask, with vague memories coming back. Tidbits of information allow you to remember, but not enough... "He created me and you. He found a way to create human beings with extraordinary powers, with abilities of legend. His Creations were disposable humans; ones who were going to die regardless. Even though he had no authorization to do so, he began using these dead bodies for his experiments. He gave the dead and dying new life, even with a price. The first experiments he made were immune to disease, and he said he hoped to save the human-race this way. But that wasn't true, he wished to rule what was left of the human-race with his new super-soldiers. Kurschner sent his Creations to fight the Militants, with each one as powerful as you or myself, ten of them made easy work of five hundred Zealots at a time. His new humans were invincible fighting machines, and all under his control. Similar to ghouls, only a step above that. Regardless, even after the Militia problem was solved, the Professor began to mass-produce his Creations, each of them ravaging wherever they went, unregulated. Under his command, they annihilated whatever was left of the World Governments, and soon came upon humanity. The bastard trapped us in capsules, letting my friends out just to go on psychotic rampages on the humans opposing the Professor. That's where the other Zealots, of the Church, come in. Even though they were smaller at the time, they managed to push the Professor back by exploiting the Creations' specific weaknesses, and silver. They managed to destroy most of his Facilities, fighting against what they thought, and still think as, the devil. They grew very large as well, and have taken part of what is rebuilding humanity, with religiously-suited technology and a brand new gospel. But absolute power corrupts absolutely, and they ordered their men to kill any Creations left, regardless of malevolent intent. Our Facility, Facility 13, was the last one standing. By then the Professor was on the run, but the New-Zealots were laying waste to any of his work, believing that they should reset the World, like God did in his bible. Fueled on fear-mongering, the only human societies left rely on fighting evil, us, even though they massacre us now, as if it's open season. But no, they believe we are the Devil's work, and as such our sentience means nothing to them. So we run, and we fight, but only in self-defense. Now we're back in the Dark Ages, all thanks to the Professor, and once again, the Church." He kicks at the sand with a frown, but continues marching with you through the beautiful, though dead landscape, reminiscing about the world that was. You barely speak throughout this, considering all of it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Shrugging the thought of not having Kelso around, you collect the armors of the Zealots, turning the flash off and equipping them. They won't save you from everything, but they will certainly make you physical attacks stronger, if only because they're reinforced by cold metal. You wear everything but the helmet, since you like having your vision unrestricted. Kelso does similarly, putting on the armor, leggings, and boots. You also decide to take one of the undamaged rifles; good weapons, and more effective on humans than on Creations, ironically. After the slight diversion, you bring your attention to the rousing Zealot. Kelso points him out to you to deal with. With a cruel smile, you walk over to him, bringing your gauntleted hand to his armored helmet, and begin to squeeze. That wakes him up. He cries in agony, as his helmet soon becomes a 'custom-fit' of sorts. With your one hand, you pick him up by his face, and just hold him in mid-air. "Kelso, are we just interrogating him here or somewhere else?" "Here's fine." You shrug, and drop the Zealot on the floor. He groans in pain, bringing hands to his face to try to take off his helmet; he couldn't do it. "Tell you what, if I take off your new skullcap if you tell me where the other Creations are." He looks up pitifully, nodding. Carefully... You peel off the horned helmet from his visage. "You killed Sebastian, didn't you!" Is the first thing that erupts from his lips. That, and some spit. You back hand him, bloodying his face further and causing him to fall back onto the sand. "Location, now. Or you end up having a worse fate than Sebastian." The dark haired Zealots looks at you with menacing eyes, "I don't consort with demons. I will die with honor." "That's not what you were saying when your face was in a can." You laugh, and Kelso gets on one knee, beckoning closer to him. "You can become one of us, if you like. Be one of the damned, and survive the hell that is God's world. Just lead us to where the so-called 'Wolves' are." "I won't sell out that easy, demon. Sebastian was a brother before you bastards killed him!" The agitated cripple would be somewhat intimidating if he wasn't in such a pathetic situation. "Then it's time you became family." Kelso looks at you. "Try ghouling him." Your eyes widen, "What do you mean, 'ghoul'?" "Drink from him until he has only the minimum amount of blood he needs. He'll become one of us. Well, half. He'll also follow our commands in that state. For the first couple of days. An eternal slave." Your mentor grins. The Zealot, however, is horrified. "No, don't! Don't drink from me, I'll get you to the Wolves, I promise! I'll even tell you when the Church is to attack their base. Everything, just don't turn me into one of you! Stop!" Oh, so very tempting. But kind of... Evil, is it? Is there even a line anymore, after what I've done? Kindness will only hurt you at this point, and a side-kick if Kelso ever leaves is tempting... > You let him guide you willfully. "I'll have mercy on you now, Zealot. But don't even dare try to cross me." You state, giving him the evil eye. He noticeably gulps, then nods. Kelso rubs at his chin, probably thinking about the other Creations. Your mentor likely knows the head of the Wolves, but if you'd guess that there is some sort of bad-blood between them. God knows what. "So, what's your name?" You ask, trying to make communication easier. "David, sir." David starts, getting onto his own two feet. "David Crowe... Son of the Lord." You sigh, "Cut the bullshit, 'Dave'. Tell us all you know about the Wolves." The Zealot tenses, as if worried about something. "I... The Wolves are on the other side of the Dunes, from where we are, we need to just go straight past the City, go several miles down East, and then search for a burrow, of sorts." Kelso raises an eyebrow, "What is the Church planning to do? If they know such an exact location, they must be planning on doing something." David nods, "Yeah, the Church is planning on raiding the burrow, taking them by s confused.urprise and purifying them." "Purification?" You ask, confused. He rolls his swollen eye, "Death by burning. It is said that you abominations will be going to hell, but by burning your soul is destroyed, so you won't suffer. Unlike you two bastards, the Church keeps the World To Come in mind!" Kelso pushes him forward. "Lead then." He takes a deep breath, and leads you through the desert, passing the City that never stops flashing, and moving from there right. As you make the treacherously long walk, you notice the sun begin to rise. "Kelso! Do you still have the lotion?" He nods, looking like he's glad you remembered. David chuckles nervously while you lather the lotion on your face, the only uncovered part of your body. Even while the sun reflects it's light off of your creamy-white head, you feel your skin itch. The lotion is definitely something to get used to. MAybe you could get a hat later so this wouldn't be as much of a problem. You, Kelso, and David find the spot. At least, the spot David brought you to. "So, where's the pit?" You call out, beginning to search around the area for it with Kelso. David stays behind, "It should be there, somewhere." > You continue searching for it. Odd. "Alrighty then..." You mutter, searching the ground for any sort of opening. Several moments later you hear a boom as sand is pit at the back of your head, as well as the vague sound of someone screaming... Kelso? Son of a bitch... "IT'S A TRAP!" You manage to yell out before something horribly metal clamps on to your leg. "You're going to die for this, David!" You call out, though he's already limping away. Shit, he probably still has a transceiver... As you leg heals enough to get unstuck from the clamp, you begin to sprint through the field of traps, mines exploding as you trigger them. Several burn your feet, but others give you just enough momentum... You leap, easily catching up to the lying coward, and ruthlessly digging into the back of his skull with the momentum of the jump and the sharp ends of your gauntleted fingers, killing him almost instantly when you feel the mushy part inside (the brain?). Thirsty, again, you drink from the blood pouring from his head, barely realizing one of your feet were blown off in the explosion! Once you realize it, you begin to cough out all the blood you slurped in shock, unsure what to do. You see Kelso muttering in the distance, running away with more success than you are. It doesn't take too long before the Zealots arrive, catching you red-handed, and finishing you off with several bursts of lightning. You have died by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'll have mercy on you now, Zealot. But don't even dare try to cross me." You state, giving him the evil eye. He noticeably gulps, then nods. Kelso rubs at his chin, probably thinking about the other Creations. Your mentor likely knows the head of the Wolves, but if you'd guess that there is some sort of bad-blood between them. God knows what. "So, what's your name?" You ask, trying to make communication easier. "David, sir." David starts, getting onto his own two feet. "David Crowe... Son of the Lord." You sigh, "Cut the bullshit, 'Dave'. Tell us all you know about the Wolves." The Zealot tenses, as if worried about something. "I... The Wolves are on the other side of the Dunes, from where we are, we need to just go straight past the City, go several miles down East, and then search for a burrow, of sorts." Kelso raises an eyebrow, "What is the Church planning to do? If they know such an exact location, they must be planning on doing something." David nods, "Yeah, the Church is planning on raiding the burrow, taking them by s confused.urprise and purifying them." "Purification?" You ask, confused. He rolls his swollen eye, "Death by burning. It is said that you abominations will be going to hell, but by burning your soul is destroyed, so you won't suffer. Unlike you two bastards, the Church keeps the World To Come in mind!" Kelso pushes him forward. "Lead then." He takes a deep breath, and leads you through the desert, passing the City that never stops flashing, and moving from there right. As you make the treacherously long walk, you notice the sun begin to rise. "Kelso! Do you still have the lotion?" He nods, looking like he's glad you remembered. David chuckles nervously while you lather the lotion on your face, the only uncovered part of your body. Even while the sun reflects it's light off of your creamy-white head, you feel your skin itch. The lotion is definitely something to get used to. MAybe you could get a hat later so this wouldn't be as much of a problem. You, Kelso, and David find the spot. At least, the spot David brought you to. "So, where's the pit?" You call out, beginning to search around the area for it with Kelso. David stays behind, "It should be there, somewhere." > You wait a second... You hold pout your hand. "Kelso, wait up." He turns around, "Found something already?" You look at David with an hungry grin, "Not what we're looking for, but good enough." You raise your voice, "David why don't you join us?" The Zealot's eyes go wide, as he shakes his head and repeatedly says, "No." Over and over again. Kelso laughs, and slowly approaches the Zealot. "What trap have you attempted to lure us to, son of the lord?" The last bit dripping with sarcasm. You take an unfortunate step toward him, when it all goes black for a moment. You find your ears deafening as you tumble forwards, firey mines exploding from beneath your feet. You run across the landscape, fire erupting all around. You eye the Zealot, angry, and noticing him running away and talking to his... fist? Shit, why didn't I take away his reciever? It's too late now, and it doesn't take long to reach the coward, but among this you find yourself looking on the optimistic side; if you didn't catch it earlier, who knew what would happen? But you still fear what will happen now. You sprint behind him, barely overtaking him even with your flayed legs. You flick out your wrist, and throw your arm at him, your body almost falling with pain and missing him by an inch or so. Determined, you continue the arm motion, turning your arm around your body once again, twisting your body in a circle, gaining just enough momentum to slam your clawed hand at the back of his head. You feel his brain hitting the back of his head as he slumps to the sand, dead as can be. You look around; Kelso is nowhere to be found. Your body feeling heavy, you realize that Zealots are approaching from afar, and you suddenly black out again, probably due to the heat... > You wake up. An extremely... Blue, room is what you wake up to. Very bright, to the point you have to squint to make anything out. Worst of all, your skin begins to get irritated, and your efforts to get out of the chair seem to be futile. You scream, but your muscles seem to be neutralized. You simply can't get up. "UV-lightning, like it?" Says a robed figure, appearing out of an opening of the wall. You hear a clanking noise and steam rises when the opening is closed, making the opening close, the room is glows with the calming blue. The robe the priest is wearing is also blue, with white stripes. You notice, from a slight creak in his robes, that he has some sort of shiny sword in there. For whatever reason, you feel it from several meters away, your stomach hurting. "Don't worry, that just means that it's working. You demons can't afford to be in the sun, so the closest thing to it would logically bother you in some way." You notice that the bearded holyman, complete with a large blue skullcap, is terribly... Old. It's surprising he can move so much, with his crooked back and pruned face, the odd sort of shuffling he does to get closer to you is unnerving. Noticing you not retorting, he continues, "Ah, but where are my manners? I, am Father Tomas." It takes a couple of minutes, but he manages to get hand-distance away from you. You struggle to even spit at the man, the lights dominating your will. He takes your hand in his, and shakes it against your will. "So, what's your name?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Let's start on a side and move on from there. We can't let their flank be affective." Your mentor nods. "There was a reason why I saved you, even if I didn't realize it at the time." "Which is...?" "You're smart." You'd blush if could, you like compliments, "No, the reason why you got me in the first place." "You'll find out at some point." You both laugh. Kelso drops information every once in a while, and at some point you want to just have several hours with him to discuss everything. Was the world always like this? What happened to it? What is my purpose? And on and on. By now the collection of lights are nearing, so you stop chatting with your master and turn your attention to them. Keeping your head close to the ground and sneaking to the right, you prepare to overtake the group of five on that side. Your mind flashes back to your training in the training you did with Kelso in the dunes. You try your best to channel your anger while you run, Kelso behind, at the Zealots. Why should I hate the Church? Your mind answers. Because they hate me for what I am. The man called Sebastian called me a 'demon'; I'm not that. I know I'm not that. But they will crucify me if they can. And I won't let them do that to myself or Kelso. With your mind settled on some sort rage, you vent it with your sprinting, reaching the Zealots quick enough. They're big people, the C.E. Soldiers. Stygian black metal overlays their entire bodies, with an obvious group leader with a different helmet (with horns, like a medieval knight's would have.) The rest have a simplistic SWAT-team-like helmet with a visor. The most notable part of their ensemble is their heavily tusked rifles, which take up both of their arms, if only to carry the heavy block of metal. You assume that that's the thing that Kelso mentioned; the lightning bayonets. 'That, and their lit cross on the chest, flashing on and off. Thankfully, they don't seem to notice you, yet. Their heavy metal probably restricts them of that. You pay little attention to where Kelso is, and you angrily lash out on the leader, leaping from over eight meters away from the ground. While in the air, you let your claws grow out and you come onto the huge black being's chest, and sink your claws into him, through the weak parts of his armor. Wet, sticky blood pours out, and you messily continue to clutch onto him while he tries to shoot you off with his tusked-bayonet. He manages to shoot up wards once or twice before slumping to the ground, the Other Zealots probably pissing their pants at this point. You roar at them, jumping off the corps of their leader and sending a heavy-fisted slash at a close one that is unbashfully trying to use hiw walkie-talkie. The hand you send clunks off of his helmet, but the heavy crunch you feel from it obviously means you broke his neck. While you were busy with two, Kelso (still unseen) has done fine work with the remaining three, his body half-transformed into something... Animalistic. With hairy, muscular arms and sharp teeth he overpowers them easily, ripping heads off at insane speeds, to the point that you're convinced that you imagined part of it. After several lightning flashes from the last one, Kelso's new body soaks up the energy from it and grabs the Zealot, throwing him to the floor. Now, all that remains are you and your mentor. You hungrily sink your teeth into a nearby combatant, reinvigorating yourself. Kelso morphs back, seeming tired, and takes a helping from one of them. After only ten seconds, he grabs you to stop with him. "That's one group down. There are three more groups to annihilate, two to the left (what used to be the middle) and the third which is standing back, way over to the left. I'll assume we're moving on to the middle?" > You skip the middle and around to the other side. "Divide and conquer, Mentor. Let's take out the smaller groups first." With Kelso in tow, you make your way around to the other side. It takes longer, and you're certain the Zealots in the middle know you're there, but if you can finish off the five then the remaining ten are just more sheep coming to the slaughter. Running, and dodging bolts of lightning from your right, you find the group from the left, dangerously close to the middle ones. In fact, it's almost like just a large group of fifteen, ready to fight you. But there is a gap, if you and Kelso can make it... The green-lightning erupting from the rifles aren't very accurate, from what you've gathered, but when shot in large numbers you admittedly weren't surprised when one slammed into your armor. It stings, but the metal absorbs most of the impact. So much, in fact, that it begins to burn and boil your skin under it. You immediately throw it off, by then close enough to the group that you won't have to worry about dodging another shot from them. While they reload, you jump at them, kicking in mid-air and ruthlessly cutting through the weak spots in their armor, near the neckline. After killing one, the other spears your back, holding it up in the air while another charges at you with his bayonet, ready to pierce... Thankfully, Kelso was fast enough to jump, twist and turn so that his feet gained momentum-- and slam his foot on the incoming soldier, sending him several meters away. Not a problem for now. But the rest of the Zealots closing in are. Using your blind-fury, you manage to make a slight somersault while your back was tusked, releasing you from it's tearing grip and causing the soldier to flip over. Even with these successes, you realize that it is no use. Lightning is shot into the back of your head, causing you to fall on the ground, your head burning but regenerating. You can't find Kelso during this, but you realize one thing; bad strategizing did this one in for you. Your flesh didn't heal itself when shot multiple times in quick succession. You have died by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You lower your voice, "I... not sure. We're in some sort of house. Lots of sand." No reply. You click it off. Kelso nods in seeming approval. "It'll do. Let's just hope they underestimate one Creation and send only a couple soldiers. They are tasked to deal with the unknown. I got lucky with 'Sebastian'; the foolish Zealot wandered out alone." --- Your mentor and youself make your way to a particularly large sand-dune near the house, watching for incoming Zealots from the city ahead. It doesn't too long-- after several minutes you begin to notice flashing armors marching in the moonlight. Your house is a surprisingly straight line to the city, and you notice some lights, formed in clusters, moving straight in your direction. Others seem to be coming in on a flank, moving to the left and right of the city before circling in, near your location. None are too close though, which gives time for Kelso to count them all. "Five groups of five in all, with the Church having only a slight notion where we are and us having the element of surprise." "You think that's good odds? From what it seems, they likely no more about what we can do then what we know they can." "Not we, you. I fought Zealots before the facility was destroyed, you know. Even if they've grown considerably, they're still the fear-mongering, symbolic fools as ever. With enough force their armor can be clawed through, only thing you have to worry about is silver and their lightning rifles." "Sounds fun." You chuckles out nervously, "Silver bullets and lightning rifles?" "Ah yes, silver is specifically harmful to us, for whatever reason. It is very pure... and the only thing that will stop us from regenerating, thankfully though, I don't think they've caught on to that just yet. The shock-troops they send in are equipped with monstrous bayonets that shoot out streams of electrons at high velocity, which are scarily painful..." He notices your frown, and smiles in return, "But it's healable. And I think we can do it." You nod, "Not if their flanks succeeds. We need to either split up and fight the ones coming on the side or take the clusters on together." "No question, we should fight together. Splitting up may make this go faster and more efficiently, but it's dangerous enough that it won't be worth it. Together, we can capture one of them as well as efficiently annihilate the groups one by one." You nod back, assured. Kelso may retain information, but he's never lied to you. You think. This brings your mind back to the incoming horde of Zealots, which are less than a mile away by now, marching tirelessly, not exactly in your direction, but close enough... "So, who do you think we should take on first?" > You zealots in the middle. You point forwards. "Let us obliterate the ten in front first, then move on to the sides. That is their main strike force, after all." Your mentor shrugs in turn. "You're the boss, kid. Just make sure we both survive, alright?" Grin. You crack your knuckles, hearing more nitrogen bubbles pop than you expected. Still, the implication that you're more than ready for battle is caught by Kelso, who laughs. "Lead on, then." As the lights on the side continue their march, you silently sneak around the dune, starting to walk towards the lights ahead. Slowly... then you break out to a run, then a sprint; you can hear Kelso on your side, like a shadow. You can't even see him, but he's there, following you. You approach the groups, them not noticing your pale body, regardless that you're wearing one of their own armors. Even from afar, you notice their elite-uniforms. Stygian black suits with flashy lining, and an illuminating cross across their collective chests. Both of the groups have an obvious leader, with a horned helmet, reminiscent of the medieval ones knights used to wear. The rest just have simplistic, though futuristic, SWAT-team helmets with visors. The easily most intriguing thing is their tusked rifles, all huge and blocky. No doubt in your mind, those are the weapons you should watch out for most. You continue your run, and you're very thankful they aren't the most perceptive bunch. Once your only 15 meters away, you hear a voice in your ear. Make the first move A nod. The moment one of them notices you moving forward, you leap at him, body-slamming him with all the momentum you've been buidling up. Even though you think they're higher-ranking than Sebastian was, your armor seems to be strong enough to send one of the flying with a clank, and falling on the ground with a thud. He twitches, but doesn't get up. By now, the nine surviving look at you. The leader eyes you from behind his helmet, "God has delivered you into our hands. All troops, move in!" You here a crackle, no doubt from a walkie-talkie... Shit. Shit. Shit. With a quick turn you swing your arm, desperate and angry. Your claws rip at his metal face, and it thankfully looks like you hurt him more than you hurt yourself. Your hand may sting and bleed from bashing metal, but the one leader staggers backward, as the rest aim their rifles at you. Suddenly, a cold wind passes, and blood squirts out from the leader's neck, his head suddenly missing. "Kelso!" Shocked, the Zealots look around, and a storm of lightning shots are fired in many different directions. Eight of the Zealots are left, but... You pushed back as one of the shots hit you, the lightning burning your skin. You feel it growing back, but you're slowed. You jump at one of the closest ones, kicking at him with your ragged sneakers, and using that as leverage to leap at another one. After the push, you can feel him keel over with a gasp, but the other one stick his rifle right into you. You gasp, your mouth watering at the bloody sight. By now, the shadow that is Kelso has taken four or five of them, but even he was skewered by the other group-leader. More anger being built inside of you, you send a wicked, blood-felt punch at the Zealot who has you on the other side of his bayonet. The punch si probably the strongest one you've dealt, sending him and his rifle out of you. More blood squirts, and some even gets into your mouth (which feels good, gives you vigor). Kelso seems to disappear, no longer on the other C.E. Soldier's rifle, and in the confusion you forget that there are at least ten more Zealots coming in from all sides... A tingling feeling is felt and you find yourself on the sandy floor, bloody and beaten. The Zealots take turns shooting at you, making sure the demon has been destroyed. Your last thought is on why Kelso abandoned you... You have been killed by the hands of the Church.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Err, uh, yeah. Let's try my other plan." Kelso laughs. "Of course." "Hey, both of my plans were better than your's." You argue, setting the dial back to where it was. Now that you think about it, you wonder why the Church never went out looking for the Zealot which your mentor killed, and you killed. Perhaps they did, just you and Kelso never noticed it. Or perhaps the Zealots often went out in long journeys without communication. No matter now, You realize, they'll pick up at the signal. Somebody will. Excitedly, you fidget for the WT, and grasp it firmly. You clear your throat to speak, but Kelso briefs you. "Remember, just put the channel on. Listen in and wait for a while, and if nothing turns up then try speaking. But only then." "Does it matter?" "It might." You cough again, then breathe in. Out. In. You put the dial back to where it was in the first place. Out. Nothing but static, for now. Minutes go by. You stand at the ready. But all is static. Ten minutes turns to half an hour, though your body doesn't stop tensing. Something is coming. > You continue waiting for them to communicate. You continue waiting. Time turns to an entire hour forward, and Kelso is getting antsy... Crackling. "Sebastian? Sebastian, where are you?" The sudden noise surprises you and you let out a sharp, "Ahh!", which makes Kelso sigh loudly. Thankfully, they can't hear you unless you press the button to speak. The voice repeats itself. You recognize it as female, cool and British. "H-hello?" "Sebastian! Thank the lord you're safe! We haven't been able to contact you for days!" "Wh-why is that?" You stutter out, trying to mimic what you remember of the Zealot's voice best you can. "GPS-tracker stopped responding a couple of days ago. I only saw this now, but that's probably why security has tightened around the City. Where are you? Are you alright?" "I, uh, yes, I am." You try to think of a way to get some soldiers here. "I found another Creation." "Another one? Like, one that isn't part of the Wolves?" Her voice sounds nice, you decide. "Yeah, different." "Have you made contact with the demon yet?" "Um, no, but I need back-up." "Wait, what happened? Are you alright?" "Of course. I just... We need to catch these guys, don't we?" She seems agitated as well as worried, "We don't tackle on Creations alone, weren't you briefed?" You try your best to pull this off, "Listen I... Just need back-up." She pauses, "Are you... Captured? Sebastian, where the hell are you!" Nailed it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Kelso rubs at his clean chin. "Elaborate." You hold up the walky-talkie, "If they know where the Professor is, then that means they're either working for him, like you're assuming, or are just planning their vengeance; If we can get a message to them, get their attention--" "Then the C.E. Soldiers will get to us and them." "Not unless our signal is obscure, something only a Creation would know. Can I assume that we're the only one who refer to the Professor, as, well, a professor?" Your mentor smiles, "Yes... That's what the greater Creations called him. Myself, the Werewolf, Stein, and several others. We all were forced under the bastard to look over Lessers, like yourself. One of them are bound to be in this town, has the smallest C.E. division in the East. We just have to hope we'll be able to handle them in the case that they're still loyal. So you want us to send a wide broadcast, maybe even a flare labeled 'Professor', and hope we catch some of our brethren?" "That," you continue, "or we lure the church to us by contacting them with the Walkie, and just beat the information out of them. By the sounds of it, they'd be expecting a trap, so they wouldn't bring all their operatives to this location. Hopefully they have an idea where the other Creations are. It's not a perfect plan, but it's uh, better than yours. Don't think you can just nab one like you did with the last one, now that they're probably on guard." Kelso nods, considering both of your plans, "Much better. Regardless, Mr. Plans, we need to train." "Train, for what?" Crossing your arms as a child would, you question Kelso. "I feel like you're not telling me everything. Even if the plan is solid, but we need to be solid, with, umm, each-other." With a chuckle, Kelso replies, "What do you think we're doing? We're fighting against an elite military operation, as well as bio-genetically advanced Creations. We're not playing here, son, there's going to be blood. I'm pretty certain that you'll be able to be very powerful if we train accordingly. This may be surprising, but I think you should cherish your undeath while it lasts. Not to mention that I'd rather not jeopardize myself." "... So the Creations are going to be very hostile?" He shrugs in return, "Maybe, more likely than not anyhow. We're betting on whether they're still loyal or not to their Creator." "Why would they still be loyal to that... that bastard?" "Well, he did save our lives." You stand in silence with a confused frown. Kelso continues. "Mind you, he also treated us like lab rats and played with our genetic-material. That's why we're going to find him and his Creations, to put an end to it once and for all, so no one else is 'saved' by that man." You nod in understanding. Kelso and yourself... You're going to help the world together. Clean it. A hero... "The valley of dunes at night is the best place and time. We'll train today and tomorrow, and by then you should be ready. Now, more about that plan of yours..." > You use the WTs to lure a Zealot and interrogate him. You spend the next couple of nights training with your mentor. Practically having a dead body is odd, and it took you a while to get the hang of using it, but with the tutoring you've become very adept at recognizing what abilities it grants you, it's limitations, and how to channel your inner strength. Kelso has noted to you that he thinks you're ready, and you agree. Mostly. It's nerve-wrecking; at least, it should be, even though you're just excited to spread your wings (metaphorically, of course.) Overall, you feel that you're ready for this. About time too, you want to see more of the outside world, the part that isn't just dust and desert. Finding the rest of the Creations will help with that, hopefully. Your plan isn't overly elaborate, but you're certain it'll work. You pick up the walkie-talkie, and you wonder why on the other-side, why the Church hasn't tried to reach their operative. Maybe they knew he was dead, or perhaps the Zealots would routinely go on missions that took days. Who knows? No matter now, You realize, they'll pick up at the signal. Somebody will. It's night once again, the Moon is luminous and round. Kelso, is clad in your hoodie, his aged but intimidating features showing out from under it. It didn't seem like his ideal clothes (you could see him rocking a cloak) but when at night a hoodie is probably more practical. You're still garbed in the bulky, but inspiring armor of the Zealot, just with the lights on the outside turned off. You look to your Mentor, who's sitting beside you in the half-buried house. He nods. Excitedly, you fidget for the WT, and grasp it firmly. You clear your throat to speak, but Kelso briefs you. "Remember, just put the channel on. Listen in and wait for a while, and if nothing turns up then try speaking. But only then." "Does it matter?" "It might." You cough again, then breathe in. Out. In. Click Out. Nothing but static, for now. Minutes go by. You stand at the ready. But all is static. Ten minutes turns to half an hour, though your body doesn't stop tensing. Something is coming.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Kelso rubs at his clean chin. "Elaborate." You hold up the walky-talkie, "If they know where the Professor is, then that means they're either working for him, like you're assuming, or are just planning their vengeance; If we can get a message to them, get their attention--" "Then the C.E. Soldiers will get to us and them." "Not unless our signal is obscure, something only a Creation would know. Can I assume that we're the only one who refer to the Professor, as, well, a professor?" Your mentor smiles, "Yes... That's what the greater Creations called him. Myself, the Werewolf, Stein, and several others. We all were forced under the bastard to look over Lessers, like yourself. One of them are bound to be in this town, has the smallest C.E. division in the East. We just have to hope we'll be able to handle them in the case that they're still loyal. So you want us to send a wide broadcast, maybe even a flare labeled 'Professor', and hope we catch some of our brethren?" "That," you continue, "or we lure the church to us by contacting them with the Walkie, and just beat the information out of them. By the sounds of it, they'd be expecting a trap, so they wouldn't bring all their operatives to this location. Hopefully they have an idea where the other Creations are. It's not a perfect plan, but it's uh, better than yours. Don't think you can just nab one like you did with the last one, now that they're probably on guard." Kelso nods, considering both of your plans, "Much better. Regardless, Mr. Plans, we need to train." "Train, for what?" Crossing your arms as a child would, you question Kelso. "I feel like you're not telling me everything. Even if the plan is solid, but we need to be solid, with, umm, each-other." With a chuckle, Kelso replies, "What do you think we're doing? We're fighting against an elite military operation, as well as bio-genetically advanced Creations. We're not playing here, son, there's going to be blood. I'm pretty certain that you'll be able to be very powerful if we train accordingly. This may be surprising, but I think you should cherish your undeath while it lasts. Not to mention that I'd rather not jeopardize myself." "... So the Creations are going to be very hostile?" He shrugs in return, "Maybe, more likely than not anyhow. We're betting on whether they're still loyal or not to their Creator." "Why would they still be loyal to that... that bastard?" "Well, he did save our lives." You stand in silence with a confused frown. Kelso continues. "Mind you, he also treated us like lab rats and played with our genetic-material. That's why we're going to find him and his Creations, to put an end to it once and for all, so no one else is 'saved' by that man." You nod in understanding. Kelso and yourself... You're going to help the world together. Clean it. A hero... "The valley of dunes at night is the best place and time. We'll train today and tomorrow, and by then you should be ready. Now, more about that plan of yours..." > You bestial Training With Kelso (Optional read) Hit hard and fast. Only then will you be able to puncture the stone. Ugh. I'm trying! Not hard enough! I know what you're capable of so this game won't work with me. Let's try again; watch me closely this time. From what you're able to tell, your mentor is just throwing his arm at the boulder with as much brute force as he could muster, causing a large splintering in it's the middle of it, with his hand now stuck inside the middle. He withdraws it, and you notice the horrible scrapes on his forearms soon heal. Notice how I hit it? Looks to me like you just attacked it with all your might and nothing else. But I don't think that's the way it's supposed to go... Whatever do you mean? Embrace the beast, boy. Our primal natures are what make us human. Savor that. It may seem unrefined, but you have power-- I know you do, power that can only be unleashed by your raw spirit. Now attack it again, unrestrained! I... Isn't this supposed to be where you tell me I'm supposed to find inner harmony before I can unlock all of my abilities? He squints at you, probably struggling to notice your humor. Kelso simply sighs, waiting for you to comply. Right... just ust need to find out how to stop restraining myself. It isn't a conscious thought process... I think? "Who or what do you hate more than anything?" "Uh..." Who, the Professor? Maybe? With blunt force to your head, you find yourself toppling over. "Get up!" Your mentor roars angrily. You groan, getting up slowly, allowing your body to heal itself, right before Kelso kicks at you again. "What the hell?" As if disregarding your cries for him to stop, he continues beating on you, up until the point you raggedly throw him off of yourself. Now that you're up, Kelso stares at you right in the eye, jumps in your direction, clawed hands out... And you move out of the way, just in time to land a solid, unrefined kick at him. He tumbles, though with an uncanny dexterity pops back up. You rush at him, with a hand held high ready to strike, and at the last moment he drops to the sand-covered ground and lets your hand land into the rock. Unfortunately, the tree remains intact and your hand has become horribly misshapen (though that'll no doubt heal soon), on the good side, however, the thick pillar has an obvious dent in addition to a new, more crooked position, leaning backwards from the force of your punch. Surprised by your success, you laugh even when Kelso trips you from the bottom. "Now we're getting somewhere."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Kelso rubs at his clean chin. "Elaborate." You hold up the walky-talkie, "If they know where the Professor is, then that means they're either working for him, like you're assuming, or are just planning their vengeance; If we can get a message to them, get their attention--" "Then the C.E. Soldiers will get to us and them." "Not unless our signal is obscure, something only a Creation would know. Can I assume that we're the only one who refer to the Professor, as, well, a professor?" Your mentor smiles, "Yes... That's what the greater Creations called him. Myself, the Werewolf, Stein, and several others. We all were forced under the bastard to look over Lessers, like yourself. One of them are bound to be in this town, has the smallest C.E. division in the East. We just have to hope we'll be able to handle them in the case that they're still loyal. So you want us to send a wide broadcast, maybe even a flare labeled 'Professor', and hope we catch some of our brethren?" "That," you continue, "or we lure the church to us by contacting them with the Walkie, and just beat the information out of them. By the sounds of it, they'd be expecting a trap, so they wouldn't bring all their operatives to this location. Hopefully they have an idea where the other Creations are. It's not a perfect plan, but it's uh, better than yours. Don't think you can just nab one like you did with the last one, now that they're probably on guard." Kelso nods, considering both of your plans, "Much better. Regardless, Mr. Plans, we need to train." "Train, for what?" Crossing your arms as a child would, you question Kelso. "I feel like you're not telling me everything. Even if the plan is solid, but we need to be solid, with, umm, each-other." With a chuckle, Kelso replies, "What do you think we're doing? We're fighting against an elite military operation, as well as bio-genetically advanced Creations. We're not playing here, son, there's going to be blood. I'm pretty certain that you'll be able to be very powerful if we train accordingly. This may be surprising, but I think you should cherish your undeath while it lasts. Not to mention that I'd rather not jeopardize myself." "... So the Creations are going to be very hostile?" He shrugs in return, "Maybe, more likely than not anyhow. We're betting on whether they're still loyal or not to their Creator." "Why would they still be loyal to that... that bastard?" "Well, he did save our lives." You stand in silence with a confused frown. Kelso continues. "Mind you, he also treated us like lab rats and played with our genetic-material. That's why we're going to find him and his Creations, to put an end to it once and for all, so no one else is 'saved' by that man." You nod in understanding. Kelso and yourself... You're going to help the world together. Clean it. A hero... "The valley of dunes at night is the best place and time. We'll train today and tomorrow, and by then you should be ready. Now, more about that plan of yours..." > You refinement Training With Kelso (Optional read) It must be twilight by now... It's dark in the collection of sand-dunes, with several pillars of stone in the area, but the nearly full moon help your eyes adapt to the situation. You sit beside Kelso in a lotus position, waiting eagerly to here what he wants to say. While we may need to recognize our inner animal in order to fight, we need to also need to see what we actually are. Our limitations, our skills, both inherent and learnt. Okay. So, what are your main assets? My claws and fangs? Perhaps. What about your regeneration capabilities? Oh, uh, right. This is for you, not for me, kid. Use your newfound abilities wisely, and avoid situations where certain things won't help. Like, my regeneration won't save me after my head is blown off, right? Err, yes. But it will regenerate most limbs back, provided they hadn't been burnt to a stub. The body is interesting like that. So basically I should stay away from explosions. Indeed. We should tread carefully whenever dealing with the C.E. They no doubt have heavy-weaponry. But you should find out more about your abilities as time progresses, fairly certain your new genes are still stretching. I'm not really sure what that means... Neither do I, haha!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Day Zero. You wake up, it seems like a normal day. A little too normal.... > You go To Work You put your clothes on and head to work. Regardless of the abnomal normality of this day, the bills need to be paid. You walk down the street to your local 7/11 ,head to the back room and put on your work clothes. > You time to Work You spend the rest of the day working, your 9-5 job goes by as normal as ever. At little too normal.... > You well works done, let's go home You change back to your normal clothing and walk back home. There's not much to do so you make some food, play some games, masterbate and fall to sleep. Everything was just too normal though... > You day One Suppose it makes sense nothing unusual happens until the first day. After all, if anything happened the day before then that would have been considered the first day, now wouldn't it have. Before you wake up, let's reflect on who you are so you don't die to some random incident due to some crazy issue you had that you should have known you had all along since you are you. Anyways.... Name: James Age: 23 Sex: Yes Please Male Occupation: Clerk at 7/11 (Full time) Intelligence: Average Strength: Average Stamina: Low Weapon Experience: You can swing a melee weapon, then again anyone can do that.....that's it Relationships: You got a best friend who lives next store (Bob) and your family (Mom/Dad/younger Sister) lives across town, that's it. Don't you get lonely? Driving: You can drive fine, but sadly you cannot afford a car right now. Special Traits : None, you are an average bastard > You guess it's time to wake up You wake up at 8am, take a shower, throw on some clothes and turn on the local news. Everything seems to go just like it did yesterday, and the news is pretty much the same. Except all the normal murder stories are replaced by animal attacks and riots. The news doesn't say anything specific, no mention of zombies or anything, but the potential is still there... > You go to work anyways You decide to head to work anyways, you need money if you're going to finally buy a car and you have bills to pay. Nothing unusual happens on the way to work, nor for the first 3 hours. However at noon the news starts to say some interesting things. It's saying that the attacks and riots this morning are actually due to a new virus. They instruct everyone to return to their homes and wait until further instructions. No one arrives for the next hour, and finally your boss calls and tells you to go home. You change and proceed to head home, but then something different happens. > You well it's about damn time You exit the employee room, and find a customer standing just inside of the entrance to the store. He seems pretty out of it. You tell him the store is closed and he turns to you. His clothing is covered in blood, and his eyes seem completely black. He starts to stumble towards you. You continue to yell at him, angry that he is ignoring you. Finally, when he's just out of arm's reach, you realize hes probably been infected with that virus you heard about on the news. You hate to admit it, but he's probably a zombie. (Well no shit Sherlock) So, what's the plan? > You wrestle Him You um...decide the best course of action is to wrestle a zombie. Perhaps "average intelligence" was a bit too generous... Regardless, you slip behind the zombie and put him in a chokehold. You lean back, fall to the floor, and wrap your legs around him. Now usually this is the part where the person would slowly lose consciousness, and you would then let go and kick them a few times for good measure. Sadly this person is a zombie and can't lose consciousness. As such, his continous struggle eventually gets him out of your iron grip, and he bites your arm. We could go further into the story, but you can guess what your ending is now. [Death]<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You exit the employee room, and find a customer standing just inside of the entrance to the store. He seems pretty out of it. You tell him the store is closed and he turns to you. His clothing is covered in blood, and his eyes seem completely black. He starts to stumble towards you. You continue to yell at him, angry that he is ignoring you. Finally, when he's just out of arm's reach, you realize hes probably been infected with that virus you heard about on the news. You hate to admit it, but he's probably a zombie. (Well no shit Sherlock) So, what's the plan? > You avoid him and exit the store You avoid the man and exit the store. He looks pretty dangerous what with being covered in blood and all. You lock up behind you, effectively trapping the man inside. You don't care though, whoever works next can deal with him. You walk home and throw on the news to see exactly what this new virus is. > The News The news says that the new virus causes people to become hyper agressive, and that it is passed by the transfer of bodily fluids. They advise again that everyone stay indoors and wait for further instructions. Further in the day a video is shown on the news, the nature of the video makes it appear as if the news itself was not the one showing it. The video shows a man and one of the "infected", he says that they are like zombies from movies and such. The two are outside, it appears to be a parking lot but you can't tell what the building is and there are no cars. He says there is no cure and that everyone should put their "Zombie Survival Plan" into full effect. He then shoots the newly dubbed zombie in the head, and instructs that the only way to kill them is to damage the brain, however destroying their legs can render them pretty harmless as well. He continues and says that they are slow, and you can outrun them, however they never get tired. Pretty detailed for the first day of the infection. By now it's pretty late, you've been watching the news so intently that you've lost track of time, you go to sleep and decide that tommorow you'll put your Zombie Survival Plan into full effect! > You day Two You wake up to day two of the infection. Only now do you realize that you don't actually have a zombie plan. Well no worries. The infection is still in its early stages, and it should be at least a few days until all hell breaks loose. Until then you can probably walk the streets with no worries. Probably... So, what's the plan? > You go next door to your buddy Bob's You decide to go see your buddy Bob. You exit your house, lock it, and walk next door. You knock on the door and he answers. "Hey James, wanna get high...." Bob says, answering the door and showing you some weed. > You fuck Yea! You nod your head and enter. The next few hours go by quickly. Well, at least you think they do.... > You hours Later Hours later you remember why you came to Bob's house in the first place. "Hey...hey Bob" *cough* "Sup?" "You know there's like, zombies out right now. Right?" "Shit....shit really?" "Yea" "Fuck man. I thou-" Bob's comment is interupted by a knock on the door, a slow heavy pound. > You idiots can't knock right You go to the door and look through the peephole. Bob comes up behind you and tries to look through, but you push him back. Outside there's a girl, Bob's girlfriend if you're not mistaken. Sadly his girlfriend is in bad condition, in fact shes missing an arm. Clearly she's a zombie, which begs the question... Should you open the door? > Yes You open the door....really? You honestly thought that opening the door for the one-armed chick who is clearly a zombie fell into the "good idea" category? Well you did it anyways. The girl's knocking arm misses the door and instead hits you in the chest. It doesn't hurt, but she grabs onto your shirt and lunges forward at your neck. You attempt to fight her off, and are somewhat successful. Although you keep her face away from your neck, you both fall down to the floor, her landing on top of you. Using all your strength you push her off of you and towards the door. She ends up in a sitting position at the base of your feet. This entire time Bob is just staring at the two of you. Finally he does something. "Dude, that's Claire right!" Actually it's Casey, but this isn't the time to correct him and lecture him on how he should at least know the name of the girl he's dating. You attempt to crawl away from her but unfortunately she grabs your foot and takes a large bite into your ankle. You kick her in the face with your good foot and manage to get her outside the door, the quickly lean forward and shut the door. But you've been bit, so your story ends here. Also you eat Bob, but that bastard kind of deserved it for not helping you anyways. [Death]<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You go to the door and look through the peephole. Bob comes up behind you and tries to look through, but you push him back. Outside there's a girl, Bob's girlfriend if you're not mistaken. Sadly his girlfriend is in bad condition, in fact shes missing an arm. Clearly she's a zombie, which begs the question... Should you open the door? > You course Not You turn away from the door. There's no way in hell you're opening it and letting her inside. "Who's that?" Bob says. "Errr....wrong number" "Oh..." Bob walks away, apparently believing that the person knocking at the door had the wrong number. You throw on the TV and watch the news for the next few hours, forgetting all about the reason you came over to begin with.... Hours later you remember though (good thing right?). > You time for "The talk" Hours later you tell Bob that zombies have risen, and go into a detailed description of your day. "Woah...sounds rough." "Yeah, well least I'm alive. So what's your zombie plan?" Bob stands up from the couch and walks to his room. He comes back and throws a piece of paper at you. He actually had a zombie plan... You read it and it's not the most detailed, but it's better than your plan....of nothing.... You decide that in may be in your best interest to stay with him. Then again the guy can be very unpredictable, and when his weed runs out he'll probably get pretty pissed. But then again, he has a shotgun and you have no weapons at your place. Though trusting this guy with a shotgun makes you feel a bit uncomfortable. > You stay with Bob You decide Bob's plan is better than yours, and depending on what you've done you may not even have the supplies needed to survive on your own. A week passes and things happen. The military comes by in a caravan and tries to pick people up, but the two of you decide to stay inside (you were also scared they would find the weed). After picking people up the miltary attempts to control the situation, but they fail quite badly. People and zombies alike attack, but Bob's house holds out, at least for the first two months. The weed ran out after the first month, naturally Bob was pretty upset at first, but he dealt with it without going apeshit on you. > You phase 2 Interlude Well, this is a bit awkward.... Let's just say due to some constraints in the system and whatnaught you have to come here before Phase 2 can begin. Suppose a congratulations is in order, then again you only beat the first of three sections. Not to mention unless you were a dumbass (or having fun) you shouldn't have died at all. Common sense was all that was required to survive. Good luck in the next section, it requires slightly more thinking. Also there was one actual ending in phase 1, see if you can get it later. Here's something to help you on your journey.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to go see your buddy Bob. You exit your house, lock it, and walk next door. You knock on the door and he answers. "Hey James, wanna get high...." Bob says, answering the door and showing you some weed. > You drugs are bad mkay... You shake your head. "It's not optional", Bob says in an angry tone. "Kay...."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up to day two of the infection. Only now do you realize that you don't actually have a zombie plan. Well no worries. The infection is still in its early stages, and it should be at least a few days until all hell breaks loose. Until then you can probably walk the streets with no worries. Probably... So, what's the plan? > You go get supplies You decide to get supplies. Sadly you do not have a car, so your place for supplies is the local grocery store, a good 15 minute walk. You walk there with no issues, however everyone seems to have the same idea you do, and are all stocking up on supplies. You enter the store and see complete chaos. Well, what now? > You go back home You go back home, since you'd prefer not to die just to get some food. You return with no issues and decide on your next course of actions. > You go to you parent's house You decide to be a momma's boy and head to your parent's house. I mean, who else would know better how to survive zombies than your parents, right? It's a long walk, and since you won't be carrying anything (or returning for that matter) you ride your bike there. The journey takes an hour and along the way you notice various people taking part in riots, causing violence and eating each other. Though you hope those last ones were actually zombies. You hope... > You get to your parent's house and.... You arrive and put your bike in the garage. Everyone should be home what with the news telling everyone to be at home and all. You enter through the front door and are greeted by you parents. You explain the situation as you know it and they explain that the military is coming, soon. They say within a week they will be here and then they will take everyone to a "safe location". Until then your family will wait it out in their home. They have enough food for a week easily, and your dad has already started boarding up the house. They insist you stay with them, but since you're a big boy they don't plan to keep you here by force. It sounds like a good deal, wait a bit then be rescued by the miltary. There might be some sort of catch, but for now you don't know what it is. > You stay with your family You decide your best bet is to stay with your family. You doubt that the military will be as bad as they are in the movies during these times, so you're sure they can help you. Well, kinda sure... Regardless of if they can or cannot help, you and your father board up the rest of the house and your family waits out the week. Mant games of scrabble are played. Sadly you suck at scrabble, which makes this week one of your least favourite weeks ever (the zombies made it pretty bad too). Then the military finally arrives. > You well it's about damn time The military arrives a week after the start of the outbreak. True to their word, they begin calling out to people in the middle of the street to come outdoors and be picked up. Any nearby zombies stand no chance, as the military caravan consists of armoured vehicles which can handle the small amount nearby easily. You family opens the front door for the first time in a week and runs to the caravan. You kick the scrabble board for good measure before following them outside. You approach one of the transport vehicles (the one you family ran to before you) and are greated by a soldier. "Greetings", the soldier says as you approach, "what brings you out here?". > You [Moan like a zombie] You make various noises to try and mimic a zombie. Now why the hell would you do that? The soldier, in all of his 30 minutes of experience with zombies, has no idea that you are in fact, not one. As a result, he instinctively shoots you. No worries though, he has been trained properly and gives you a clean shot between the eyes. You don't even have time to scream. [Death]<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The military arrives a week after the start of the outbreak. True to their word, they begin calling out to people in the middle of the street to come outdoors and be picked up. Any nearby zombies stand no chance, as the military caravan consists of armoured vehicles which can handle the small amount nearby easily. You family opens the front door for the first time in a week and runs to the caravan. You kick the scrabble board for good measure before following them outside. You approach one of the transport vehicles (the one you family ran to before you) and are greated by a soldier. "Greetings", the soldier says as you approach, "what brings you out here?". > You say "I want to come" "I want to come." "Well fair enough, come on in!" the soldier replies, motioning for you to come in. You hop in and ride out into the sunset, just like some old western movie... > You epilogue - Family Ha! Like you'd actually get a real epilogue. You choose the fastest way out of the city. You and your family make it to the shelter and are protected by the military. You get news a little later that Bob was killed, cause of death was zombies. You live the rest of your life in the shelter. Sure the food is crap, the military is full of assholes, and there's not much to do, but hey you're alive right? Stats You got the First Epilogue available in the game. You survived Phase One. You got the Mediocre Ending. You got the achievement : Family Man<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The military arrives a week after the start of the outbreak. True to their word, they begin calling out to people in the middle of the street to come outdoors and be picked up. Any nearby zombies stand no chance, as the military caravan consists of armoured vehicles which can handle the small amount nearby easily. You family opens the front door for the first time in a week and runs to the caravan. You kick the scrabble board for good measure before following them outside. You approach one of the transport vehicles (the one you family ran to before you) and are greated by a soldier. "Greetings", the soldier says as you approach, "what brings you out here?". > You say "I want to pillage and rape this town " "I want to pillage and rape this town", you reply. "You do eh...." The soldier says, looking you up and down. "Well see, I can't let you do that, so, uh...." The soldier thinks about what to do in this situation and decides that it's best to shoot you in the leg. You scream out in pain and hear your family protest, but the soldier ignores them and the vehicle drives away. You manage to crawl to the sidewalk but the pain of the shot is too much and you faint due to blood lose. Shortly after, a crowd of zombies stumble by. I'm sure you can guess what they plan to do with you.... [Death]<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You arrive and put your bike in the garage. Everyone should be home what with the news telling everyone to be at home and all. You enter through the front door and are greeted by you parents. You explain the situation as you know it and they explain that the military is coming, soon. They say within a week they will be here and then they will take everyone to a "safe location". Until then your family will wait it out in their home. They have enough food for a week easily, and your dad has already started boarding up the house. They insist you stay with them, but since you're a big boy they don't plan to keep you here by force. It sounds like a good deal, wait a bit then be rescued by the miltary. There might be some sort of catch, but for now you don't know what it is. > You go back to your place You decide you're better off not trusting the miltary to this, you ponder on the idea of convincing your parent's and sister to not trust them but decide their best chance is to. After all a zombie world is no place for a family.... You say what may be your last goodbyes to your family and head back to your house, it takes a while but once again you beat all odds and return unharmed (though you're pretty damn tired by now). Too tired to try and get supplies you decide to just walk next door to Bob's house and see what his plan is. > You see what Bob's plan is You go next door to Bob's house. He answers the door, clearly high. Not bothering to ask him anything in this state, you enter and close the door behind you. He stares at you the whole time with a blank look on his face, but says nothing. Moments later you hear knocking on the door. A slow, heavy knock.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to get supplies. Sadly you do not have a car, so your place for supplies is the local grocery store, a good 15 minute walk. You walk there with no issues, however everyone seems to have the same idea you do, and are all stocking up on supplies. You enter the store and see complete chaos. Well, what now? > You go to where most people are - those are the supplies you want You decide to go where everyone else is, because following the crowd is sometimes a good thing. Right? You try and get a shopping cart through the crowd but give up, there's far too many people. You instead reach out and grab as much food as you can in your arms. However this is where your plan of following the crowd fails you. You see, some not-so-friendly people with guns had the same idea. They also seem to not be big fans of large crowds, and so they shoot in the air and into the crowd a few times. Most people are uninjured and run away, as gang of men have made their point. Sadly you are not in the group that survived, because you were shot in the leg. Now of course, a shot in the leg isn't fatal, but it did cause you to fall to the ground. Then what was your cause of death you ask? The large crowd of people who trampled you to escape was. Hey, at least you weren't eaten. [Death]<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to get supplies. Sadly you do not have a car, so your place for supplies is the local grocery store, a good 15 minute walk. You walk there with no issues, however everyone seems to have the same idea you do, and are all stocking up on supplies. You enter the store and see complete chaos. Well, what now? > You go to where no one is, it's safer that way You decide to avoid the large crowd of people and go to the less populated areas. The pickings are slim, but you manage to get your buggy at least half full with food. You should be able to survive at least a few months with this much. You hear a few gunshots from a couple of isles over, followed by a mass of people running out of the store. You take this as your cue to leave, and quickly run out of the store pushing your buggy of food. You get out fine, and your journey home is uneventful. You hope you don't run into those who made the gunfire later. Well now you're home, you got food, next step is to.... > You barracade and wait it out You decide to barracade your house and wait things out. You grab various tools and pieces of wood, then board up all your windows and doors. The next two months pass by and many things happen. Many, many things.... > You well what happened? A week after the events of the first day of the infection various things happened. Panic happened, riots happened. Real ones, not the initial ones which were actually just zombies causing havoc. Martial Law is put into effect, though it only lastws a few weeks before the military was over-run. Fighting the zombies head on was a bad idea but the military didn't learn this fast enough. They came by with caravans originally and picked up anyone who was willing to come with them. Then they created blockades and such to try and contain the problem. But eventually they were over-run. Your home is attacked a few times, but nothing major. A few gun fights happened just outside as well, but you survive. You've lost a bit of weight, but you're alive and well...ish. Two months have passed and for the past week it's been very quiet outside. No zombies, no people, nothing. Good thing too, because you're out of food and need to do leave the house now. Oh and congratulations, you survived Phase 1 of the zombies.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You exit the employee room, and find a customer standing just inside of the entrance to the store. He seems pretty out of it. You tell him the store is closed and he turns to you. His clothing is covered in blood, and his eyes seem completely black. He starts to stumble towards you. You continue to yell at him, angry that he is ignoring you. Finally, when he's just out of arm's reach, you realize hes probably been infected with that virus you heard about on the news. You hate to admit it, but he's probably a zombie. (Well no shit Sherlock) So, what's the plan? > You try and reason with him You continue to yell at the man, determined to get through to him. When he finally reaches you he grabs ahold of you and gives you a heartfelt hug. It seems you finally got through to him. Wait...no....no that's not a hug! The man grabs a hold of you and proceeds to bite your neck, ripping out the flesh from it. You fall to the floor and bleed out. Good thing you bleed out quickly, being eaten alive sure is painful. [Death]<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up at 8am, take a shower, throw on some clothes and turn on the local news. Everything seems to go just like it did yesterday, and the news is pretty much the same. Except all the normal murder stories are replaced by animal attacks and riots. The news doesn't say anything specific, no mention of zombies or anything, but the potential is still there... > You call in sick and see how everything progresses You call in sick, you don't feel like being involved in any riots or being murdered. Nothing new appears until noon, when they announce that the cause of all of this violence is a new virus, and that everyone should stay indoors until further notice. Good thing you didn't go to work. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Creator Notes: Please maximize the window to fully enjoy. I made this to tell a story while allowing you to see first-hand what the characters feel, think, and what they've been through. I wanted to make something enjoyable and worthwhile, so here it is. Disclaimer: All pictures are not mine - they are from google. Where the heck else will I, a 14-year-old, get angel pictures? However, all characters and such are mine. We throw out our bodies on the fire and we die, Settle into ashes as the flames keep piling high We tossed and spread the kerosene and alcohol, The ethylene ignited cardboard homes. The second in a hundred and again as many years Street signs, skyscrapers and names. State Street, what a great street When the places and the people stayed the same. Winter beats the summer on the worst ones I fall in love again on the first ones Carbon vapor lines burn as a grid Like the burning summer evenings like my fingertips did ... This town is choking on our filth Obstinate displays of wealth Clog our Lincoln, Wicker, Rogers parks. Here's to your health Chicago. Fiddle as we burn. Nevermore, nevertheless Build it up and tear it down and never learn ..... -- The Lawrence Arms PROLOGUE: BURNING CHICAGO > You start the game. ' There's a strange soft ringing in my ears, but I cannot open my eyes. Cinders of gray and red have blinded me, my movement halted by something large crushing into my back, my ribs. In an instant, I remember everything. A sound of gunfire and a thick, hearty smell of fuel makes me naseous. "Yuzo! Aki!" I can't even recognize my voice, it's so torn and raggerd. The apartment is no longer an apartment, but a pile of rubble and belongings - some of them I would know as my own. Swollen and burning with tears, my eyes try to pry open and see, and I'm made frantic by the sound of perpetual ringing and crumbling. My leg is mingled under the thick layers of debris and rock, and I fear it will only mangle worse with struggles. > You try to pry away. When I finally decide to try to pry myself out from under the rubble, I brace my abused hands down and pull out with as much vigor as I had to muster. I had to tell myself, no matter the strain placed on my leg, that staying would not save me. I have to escape, and I have to find Aki and Yuzo. I can't simply abandon my childhood friends. There was a loud pop that came after my leg was released from the painful hold, and I screamed. Oh, how I wish to see. I could feel hot ash brush under my face, in my hair. I tried so horribly to leep them away; I must've been pathetic. > You go find Aki and Yuzo. Slowly, I have gotten through much of the debris, though troubling. At the moment, my mind was set upon my two friends. If I was in such a wretched state, what was of them? "Y-Yuzo! Can you hear me! Please answer me!" They could've been buried in debris... > You go find help. I decide to find someone to help, someone who has better eyes and can see more than me. Someone who could tell me whether my friends have made it through; I would not make it without it. "Is anybody out there?! Anyone?! Please, answer me!" For a long time, there is no response, and suddenly a "Who's there?". It was a deep voice, like one's father would have. Then, a hand touching my shoulder. "My god, boy! You shouldn't be walking! You have a deep laceration in your side! And your eyes..." > You say "Please, we need to find my friends." He was silent as a grave, looking at me with sad eyes. "Kid, you're a miracle to be alive yourself. Your friends have a ghost of a chance. A ghost of a chance, I'm telling you." > You say "No, you're wrong! Dammit, you're wrong!" My face scrunches with anger, my aching eyes glaring. "Damn it, they are fine! They could be alive! You need to save all of the people alive right?! No matter the stakes! No matter anything!" "Kid, calm down. You'll only hurt yourself." "How can I be calm when...!" The man was right - I think I'd fainted in the prime of my cursing and ranting. ' ...This is where it will truly begin. > You end of Prolouge In 1954, Zempaphs were introduced into life; these newborns had contracted Schizophrenia Morphi, a specific type that allows into the baby a new part of the brain to use - almost like a locked door being opened up with a new key. Most are born insane, it's said, but out of every ten, there is a good three that have no symptoms of brain defunctions. Of course, only an estimated three hundred are recorded to date. Of this small group through billions of the Earth's people, they are gifted with unusual abilities. Normally, telepathic abilities and telekenesis -- even more than those as well. They are normally instantly noticed at birth because they are born feeble; and the Umbilical cord detaches around five hours before birth. We speculate that that is because the brains oxygen lowers, except the part of the brain that can perform the Zempaph abilities that then 'vacuum' stronger brain cells - the many accelerated during the fetus phase - and use it to boost its power in the last moments. Most births have proven fine to the mother - no miscarriages or mothers dying have yet to be seen. Now, the whole Zempaph debate (on whether to take more special... 'precautions'...) is in 1983, when one in certain, a young boy, had murdered his fellow classmates in Gates Elementary School. It spawned the Zempaph Hazard and Confinement Law, which would immediately put any one of the specimen into special classes to undergo brain alterations. In this way, they would not be as unstable, and the chance of murder is cut in half. When they brake laws, they are confined to special rooms. Some people thought it wrong, but it had more support than protest. The next incident... one of the most horrific incidents ever recorded in human history... would be The Devil's Act. In this, one Zempaph in specific had went on a rampage and destroyed cities near Canada... Chicago being a major one. Thousands or thousands had died from one: Julian Moore. He was around twenty-seven when the whole thing occured in 1989, using a manipulation of fire to destroy everything in sight. We still don't know if he is a 'Fire Manipulator' or a 'Fire Starter'. Fire Manipulators can bend an already lit fire, while a Starter can make it from components in the air. Moore was taken down by the local police, but he was never found nor known to be dead. In fact, we think he is very well alive, surfing the State of the Union. We don't know if he's still dangerous, or if the insanity that drove him is gone. --Doctor Elaine J. Rechell Chapter One: Bana-Jxo > You chapter One. Chapter One: Bana - Jxo Er wartet auf den Mittagswind die Welle kommt und legt sich matt mit einem Fächer jeden Tag der Alte macht das Wasser glatt Ich werf den Stein zu meinem Spaß das Wasser sich im Kreis bewegt der Alte sieht mich traurig an und hat es wieder glatt gefegt Im weißen Sand der alte Mann zitternd seine Pfeife raucht nur das Wasser und ich wissen wozu er diesen Fächer braucht Die Ahnung schläft wie ein Vulkan zögernd hab ich dann gefragt den Kopf geneigt es schien er schläft hat er bevor er starb gesagt Das Wasser soll dein Spiegel sein erst wenn es glatt ist, wirst du sehen wieviel Märchen dir noch bleibt und um Erlösung wirst du flehen Den Fächer an den Leib gepresst im Todeskrampf erstarrt die Hand die Finger mussten sie ihm brechen der Fächer bleibt zurueck im Sand Den Alten ruf ich jeden Tag er möchte mich doch hier erlösen ich bleib zurück im Mittagswind und in dem Fächer kann ich lesen Das Wasser soll dein Spiegel sein erst wenn es glatt ist, wirst du sehen wieviel Märchen dir noch bleibt und um Erlösung wirst du flehen. --Rammstein > You begin. Toronto 4.14. 1994 A lanky figure had spread itself out on the park bench of Toronto, a newspaper masking away his face, only showing a mass of red hair popping out from the top. His foot tapped a perpetual beat of three clicks, his eyes reading the words covering his face. "Oh wow... another speculation about Julian Moore. I've become quite famous ever since that little squabble." he said in a soft, almost sweet voice. He lifted his hand, and twirled it slightly to create a splinter of fire in his palm. "Curses." he laughed, "It's funny, actually." In truth, he felt a little bored. Health: 100 Money: 5 Level: 1<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>He was silent as a grave, looking at me with sad eyes. "Kid, you're a miracle to be alive yourself. Your friends have a ghost of a chance. A ghost of a chance, I'm telling you." > You say "So... What do I do now...?" The man is silent for a moment, overthinking his decisions. "Come with me. I'll get you to our place. Maybe your friends are there... I'll carry you." He lifts me up on his back, and I can't remember anymore. ' ...This is where it will truly begin.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>He was silent as a grave, looking at me with sad eyes. "Kid, you're a miracle to be alive yourself. Your friends have a ghost of a chance. A ghost of a chance, I'm telling you." > You say "But Yuzo... And Aki..." "I'm sorry, kid... but there's nothing I can do. We're to leave now - the city has gone to Hell." His hand feels heavy on my shoulder, and I can't remember anymore after that... ' ...This is where it will truly begin.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Slowly, I have gotten through much of the debris, though troubling. At the moment, my mind was set upon my two friends. If I was in such a wretched state, what was of them? "Y-Yuzo! Can you hear me! Please answer me!" They could've been buried in debris... > You continue the search. I felt through the dirt and hot smoldering ash in search of them. I swear I could almost feel their warm skin, undead and uninjured, but it is only hot embers that burn me at the touch. Through my eyes, and feel warmth ooze down, and I do not check to see if its blood or tears. No... my friends... it can't be... I fell unconsious there, leaving my search uncompleted.' ...This is where it will truly begin.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>' There's a strange soft ringing in my ears, but I cannot open my eyes. Cinders of gray and red have blinded me, my movement halted by something large crushing into my back, my ribs. In an instant, I remember everything. A sound of gunfire and a thick, hearty smell of fuel makes me naseous. "Yuzo! Aki!" I can't even recognize my voice, it's so torn and raggerd. The apartment is no longer an apartment, but a pile of rubble and belongings - some of them I would know as my own. Swollen and burning with tears, my eyes try to pry open and see, and I'm made frantic by the sound of perpetual ringing and crumbling. My leg is mingled under the thick layers of debris and rock, and I fear it will only mangle worse with struggles. > You remain there for help. I can't say I remember how long I had sat there and remained so terribly still, so helpless and sightless and immobile. I called for my friends, but they did not reply, and it frightened me. I would scream in agony from time to time when the pain of my eyes struck a nerve. My eyelids were close to gone - I touched them beforehand in frightened curiousity just to touch bleeding flesh and soft eyeballs. "Is anyone out there?" I know my ears are not fooling me, they can't have! "Hello? Hello!" I call, and the male's voice grows as he speaks. I feel a hand gripping my shoulder, and hear him speak. "God..."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You open your eyes and see the sun out of the open window. You watch it for a second trying to feel its heat on your body but after a moment you give up. Its winter and its perpetually cold here anyway. You get up and wander over to take in the view, you've been staying in this room for a while now. Your not sure exactly how long but it feels like around 5 months, long enough to become used to it at least. You lean out through the window and take in the sights, There are still some skyscrapers to the east looking in good condition, the stadium to the North isn't doing so well though, the roof has caved in and taken a small part of the wall down with it. Looking around you get a sense of general decay, between the points of interest are just fields of broken buildings and rubble. You know the couple of decades since the infection couldn't have done it alone so you decided it was the military. They had actually held out for years with relatively few casualties before it became airborne, after that it was chaos for a time until a 'vaccine' was found and sent world wide in an attempt to end the spread of the infection. You take one last look around then head for the door. You picked this room since it not only had a working lock on the door but actually had glass in the window, seemed like a nice touch of normality. Sadly the food has run out and you've scavenged the entire surrounding area until nothing is left, you have to move on. At least now you have a destination. Just last week you had found a decrepit old survivor mumbling to themselves in a fever and learned that somewhere to the far east past the skyscrapers there is a thriving colony, THOUSANDS of people actually living and forming a good community. The dying old man didn't have much of value but at least you got enough food to keep you full until now. > Down the Stairs You head down the stairs to check on your trap. Its a simple pitfall at the base of the stairs but it's sometimes good enough to catch a wild animal or two. Sadly no such luck today. Seems like the dead have finally managed to make the city free from even rats now. You start heading for the door when you hear a small sound outside, just a piece of wood being disturbed but your senses are attuned to listening for these things. Your now stuck, there is a back door but you don't keep it or the alleyways back there clear so just about anything could have moved in, however your pretty sure there is something out the front doors. > The Front Door You sling your pack over your shoulder and take out your metal baseball bat before edging slowly closer to the door, you need to know what's out there. It could just be a shambler who is about as dangeous as a child unless they are in a large pack. Then again it could be one of the other types. The Fast types are tricky to handle if not too smart. The mutant types, animals who got directly infected, are very dangerous. The Crazies, humans who got the vaccine too late or were bitten after getting it, they retain some semblance of intelligence but only that of a stupid flesh craved psychopath. Then theres the 'Heralds' or 'Harbingers', Nicknamed as the 'Harbingers of the apocalypse', they look nearly completely human but the infection somehow bonded with them making them stronger and faster than normal humans while retaining all of their intelligence, of course they still feed on living and partly decayed flesh, you avoid them at all costs. Once you get close you very slowly open the door a crack and peek out. Nothing immediately visible, your going to have to open it and look properly. > You outside You slowly open the door until its wide enough for you to fit through the gap, you have your bat ready and slip out into the sun. You carefully look around as you creep into the street, still nothing... 'CRACK' You hear the noise from behind you and whirl around to see something stepping out of a pile of rubbish very close to the door you just came out of. You panic for a moment and consider just running away as fast as you can... when you see it more clearly. It wasn't hiding to ambush you, it's just a shambler. The slowest and least dangerous of all the undead. It was probably lying in that heap for days and only moved because of you walking nearby. You walk up to it and even take the time to do a little impression of a pro-hitter before a single clean strike caves its skull right in and it crumples into a heap on the ground. You briefly reminisce about when the outbreak first happened and it would take several hits to the head to stop them, but now you're a lot stronger and faster than an average human and sport a physique that would have belonged to a professional athlete... if there were any left alive in this messed up world. You wipe your bat clean then begin walking East to the cross-roads a couple hundred yards away, your kill-count on shamblers must be over a hundred by now but you lost count somewhere in the fifties. You now face the choice of which way to go. You intend to reach the far east side of the city and investigate if the survivors are real however the skyscraper district was the most inhabited before the plague hit, which means it still is, only with less welcoming residents. To the North you could head up to the area around the stadium, some people tried to make a stand there and thinned out the undead but there isn't much in the way of food there since they were overwhelmed leaving the area stripped clean. South could probably take you along the highway to the suburbs which has a mixed chance of food and dangerous monsters. Deciding on the North as the safest choice for now you go that way. > You heading North You jog a couple of blocks North before finding a large blockade of crashed rusted cars, you know the area fairly well and slip into a side alley to bypass it, cutting North again through the first intersecting alley. You quickly make it out onto a main road again when you realize something is moving pretty close by to the east, you carefully edge up to a car and climb it to get a clear view. There's one of the wandering hordes that frequent the area working its way down the road. They look like mostly shamblers, but you never know. The other directions look clear leaving you the choice of heading into another ally North, heading down the road West and trying to loop around on a different road or fighting your way through the mob to the east, looks like 6 of them spread out on the road. > You north, back into the alleyways You're already heading North so why not continue and see what the old stadium district has to offer? The alleyways always have a chance of hiding a lurking undead but at least you're not out in the open and visible to anyone who wants to look. You easily slip through several alleyways before hearing a noise behind a closed door. Listening closely you hear some mumbling. mumbling can be very good or very bad. It means it isn't a full undead, so you've either located a survivor or a crazy, theres always a small chance its a harbinger but you highly doubt one would be hiding out in a dingy alley in this area. Of course you could just bypass it and not take the risk, keeping nice and quiet you can easily slip past and maybe even make the stadium district by nightfall. Then again finding an actual survivor is never to be passed up. > You take it Slow and Careful as you Open the Door You carefully test the door and almost have it open enough to slip inside when the hinges squeak, this also causes the mumbling to suddenly stop. Well its took late to go back so you quickly open the door the rest of the way and duck in, moving quickly to the side incase of gunshots. Nothing happens and you aren't hearing movement so whatever was in here is now hiding. You edge forward and take in you surroundings. A dingy small damp room with equipment caged all along the far wall and piles of trash and random looking objects strewn everywhere. Some sort of access room for the air-con of the building behind it you think to yourself as you ready your bat. You decide that the careful friendly approach might work best since you can't see anyone in the room "Is someone there?" you softly call out. Theres silence for a few moments before you hear a quiet chuckle from the pile of trah nearest your left side. "Thats just great, its a crazy after all." you think to yourself. You ready your bat and carefully walk forward until your just past the pile when they jump out at you, bursting into a loud gleeful cackle as they swing their pipe at your head. Luckily this is just what you were counting on and as they jump you spin and land a solid blow to their ribs, sending them crashing to the floor. You move to check if they were really a crazy or just a traumatized survivor but you see dried blood around their mouth and they are still trying to get up to attack with shattered ribs so either way they just need to be put down. You're kind and finish it quickly and cleanly before checking the room and body, packing some food for later and heading back out. "Only a crazy but hey, I have more food in my pack now than I did before so I count a win." you think to yourself as you head further North. > You night in the Northern Alleys You travel until dusk is well underway before trying to locate a good place to rest, the ground is dangerous as the monster types are more active during the dark hours this close to the city centre but its difficult to find secure high up rooms since they are usually magnets for the walkers and crazies. Theres a nice building up ahead though, maybe an old hotel. You can se the fire escape is still standing and could use it to get into an upper room or you could see about the basement and lock yourself into a secure area there since basements usually have nice heavy doors and solid walls. > You hotel basement for the Night The basement is closer and a solid door should hold off anything that comes by, you can always rely on the stupidity of shamblers so even if they follow you, they can't tell the difference between a door and a wall if you keep quiet. You force the lock on the entrance door and head down a short flight of stairs and through another door at the bottom to find yourself in a small square room with the buildings power and heating equipment in it. nothing is working so you wont have to worry about the noise at least. You close both doors then use the two wooden pallets you find to lightly barricade the inner door. looking around you find the rest of the room completely empty so lay down your sheet and begin to rest for the night. Its not too long before you hear the howling some distance off and reach for your bat. Howling means mutant types and most likely dogs, your really don't want to fight a dog pack again. Last time you did that nearly nearly left you ripped into pieces and eaten. You hold your breath but when the howl is heard again its much closer, close enough to be on your scent. You swear and jump to your feet, you can make a mad dash outside and try and get somewhere up high where they can't follow or you hope they pass you by/the doors hold out. > You run for higher ground You grab your things and wrench the flimsy barricade away from the door before sprinting outside, the howling is loud enough now that you're certain they are after you. Seeing a lumbering mass of teeth and muscle turn into the alleyway from the South just confirms your fears as you sprint up the fire escape, pulling the bottom section up after you. You know that the virus has made the dogs stronger faster and much much more dangerous than they were before so you keep sprinting up the fire escape only pausing briefly to see what is coming after you. Its hard to see in the dark but theres defiantly 3 or 4 smaller shadows following the larger one and they are moving at speed now towards the building. You resume sprinting until you close to the roof which you find is a single ladder to the top. You scramble up then lean over the edge to see what is going on below. You see a lot of movement punctuated by barks and yelps when you think you make out one of the dogs leaping off a dumpster onto the fire escape, it creaks lower under its weight allowing more to jump on and within seconds its on the ground with the dogs surging up after you. You stand and ready your bat. You assume the big one is the alpha and wont be able to jump high enough to reach you due to all the muscle it carries, you think it must weigh as much a a small car. The smaller ones however could probably get up to you if they were persistent so you going to have to fend them off. You glance round the rest of the roof and see no movement so prepare for the attack. The first dog to reach the top it pretty lithe compared to the others meaning it still looks like a Doberman on steroids and makes a jump at you, scrabbling at the ladder to try and get purchase. its head lines up nicely at your waist height and you meet it with a solid blow to the skull crashing it down onto its companions as they arrive. They ignore it and all start jumping at you keeping you fully occupied taking swings at them as they start to get purchase on the roof but not landing any more definitive hits. Your starting to get concerned when you hear glass smashing and see several windows are being broken out by undead inside. the dogs quickly loose interest in you in favor of the easier option of readily available food and launch into an all out attack on the shamblers trying to get out towards the noise. You take the opportunity to rest and watch the fight unfold. The Shamblers are clearly just trying to reach the source of the noise while the dogs are actively attacking and trying to rip them apart. The shamblers only seem to fight back after an attack is aimed at them specifically, ignoring the others being taken down. The mutants do easily the most damage at first, tearing several undead completely apart before they get too frenzied and start lashing out in all directions. One leaps in through the window and you hear lots of barking and growling before finally growing quiet and a shambler missing its left arm drags itself through the window. "One got itself overwhelmed" you think to yourself. You see another getting its rear leg bitten into by a shambler on the ground and hear the snap of the bone breaking before it pulled it away but it stays up and fighting until the huge muscled mutant and last smaller one tore the last of the shamblers apart. You watch the three surviving dogs feast on the shamblers before heading back down the fire escape and disappearing South again out of the alleyway. You finally relax and rest until first light when you head down into the alley again and start off North, you've got to be within a few hours of the stadium district now. > You into the stadium district You can tell by the changing architecture that you are nearing the stadium, just a few hours walking at most before you'll reach it. You aren’t too confident about finding food and supplies there but between the holdouts and the military trying to keep the stadium safe, as a refuge you think there shouldn’t be many dead up here. They do wander, though but you get the odd impression that they never wander too far from where they died, circling endlessly for months before their flesh gives up and they become prey for the others. As you get closer you begin to see the signs of battle everywhere, buildings collapsed, old craters, and burnt out cars. They had lasted a really long time in that stadium. You never went too close yourself but you occasionally saw the lights and the signs from tall buildings or when you were scavenging nearby. Over-confidence had been their end, just as you had predicted. Their regimented daily armored patrols, scavenging squads and clearance teams had, over the years, given way to weekly lightly armed excursions and missed guard duties. Their initial efforts probably cleared 95% of the infected in the area so they rarely if ever spotted one. You heard from a few survivors you ran into right after what had happened. “The patrols were just for show and guards rarely bothered to turn up to their shifts by the end. One patrol team went out to do a mix of scavenging and clearing but they were all young had no idea what the early days were like. They went right inside some store on the outskirts of their territory without even checking for infected. A couple got bit when they found a shambler in a locked office. One turned right away and took two more down because they weren’t ready to kill their friends. The two survivors finished the rest off and headed back to the stadium with their tails between their legs and covered with gore. Of course they immediately brought back all the old rules and regulations about ensuring the guard was always there and sending out veterans with the new kids but it was too late, one of the survivors had ingested some splattered blood during the fight and turned a few days later, sadly into a fast bugger. Went on a rampage biting everyone it saw. The people panicked and ran for the roof but it had been neglected for years and a strut failed, bringing the entire thing down, including part of the wall. Between the panic, the dead and the spreading infected inside it was all over and the survivors scattered and ran. No idea where they came from but a large number of dead swarmed them, as if they had been hiding and waiting all that time just to appear at the worst moment. Most probably died in the first few days to the infected or mutants.” You keep going as far as you can but the alleys become tighter and clogged with debris, you can keep to the alleys and clamber through them carefully to keep a low profile or you can head out to the main streets and move quickly. > You keep to the Alleys and move carefully Keep to the alleys and clamber through them carefully to keep a low profile You don’t want to risk getting fully exposed right now and decide to risk the alley ways. You make difficult progress at first and have to slow your pace a lot. The alleys are half blocked with trash and even the occasional human remains. Finally you start to find entire alleys blocked by rubble from collapsed buildings and have to climb over it all. It’s not as if you find this level of exercise difficult or anything but the more you climb and clamber over rubble and trash, the more chance of you stumbling right into infected. Unfortunately this is exactly what happens as you climb over a rubble pile a few minutes later. you just reach the top of the pile which is roughly level with the first floor of the buildings either side when a shambler lurches out from the building to the side and tries to grab you. You manage to shove it away and avoid its bite but now you aren’t in the best position. > You bash it with a bat then continue, it's just one shambler afterall Bash its head in then continue, one shambler won’t even slow you down. You sling your bat out of your belt loop and dispatch the shambler with a brutal efficiency, no time for playing around right now. You quickly wipe your bat off on its shirt and continue climbing down the rubble pile on the other side. “Got to pick up the pace a little.” You think to yourself as you climb the next rubble pile, trying to be more prepared of surprises. You are however getting the impression that the rubble is too regular to be an accident. “Must have been the holdouts trying to block the infected and funnel them” you decide as you continue. It’s only a short time later when climbing a particularly steep pile that the fast type makes an appearance. Normally you can outpace a single one, but halfway up the rubble it comes leaping down at you from above and manages to latch onto your arm before your punches knock it free and you finish it with several good blows with the bat. “Gorram thing ripped my arm open!” you complain to the air, and indeed you now have an obvious bite wound to the flesh of your left arm which needs binding up. You pause there to bandage it quickly with strips of cloth. It’s not nearly the worst wound you’ve had and so long as you keep eating enough you heal fast. After a brief pause you continue without further incident until you climb the last rubble pile and see the Stadium ahead of you. > You approaching the stadium “Now what?” you mumble to yourself as you look around. The streets behind you are either completely clear or blocked entirely by rubble. “Probably the hold outs work.” you think. The area in front has barricades and ditches leading up the stadium seemingly to prevent groups or vehicles from getting close. “Guess forward is the best option if I want to get inside that ruin, all the buildings around here are rubble so not much else around.” You decide that your only choices are to try and get inside the stadium or bypass it North, either way you're going to have to cross some barricades so you might as well take a closer look Scout out the stadium carefully > You scout the area out You begin slowly approaching the stadium, checking every ditch and barricade before crossing them, just incase there are any more surprises lurking there. You make relatively quick progress and are halfway through the blockades when you hear something ahead. You quickly pause and hunker down, taking your time to look ahead to try and locate source of the noise. If your hearing wasn’t so good and you weren’t being so careful you know you would have missed it entirely. There doesn’t seem to be anything close by and the area right in front of the stadium doors is flat and cleared so nothing there. You are about to put the noise up to your own paranoia when you catch a glimpse of movement on a balcony over the door. There’s a man lying on it, watching you through a rifle scope. “Gorramit, this place isn’t deserted and now they have me scoped before I can find out what’s happening.” You mumble to yourself. The man with the gun however has clearly realized he was spotted and stands up, along with 2 others to call out to you. “We know you spotted us so you may as well come out now. Move slowly into the open area in front of the stadium and show us that you aren’t an infected and there will be no problems.” You’ve been through this drill before, you show you aren’t an infected and they lower the guns. You get inside with the survivors. > You might as well go along with it again since they haven't fired yet and your currently goal is to find survivors after all. You know the drill so you may as well go along with it and get inside with the survivors to scout it out at least. You carefully finish getting through the barricades as they assure you that there are no infected ahead and reach the open ground below them. “Right, drop the weapon and show us your skin!” They call down. You lay the bat and your pack down and even start undoing your shirt before remembering that you have a large bite wound on your arm that really isn’t going to go over well with the men holding the guns. You have little choice left now and finish taking off the shirt revealing your skin and the rough bandage on your left arm to the men above. Quite predictably you hear the guns being cocked above you. “What’s the bandage for friend?” You hear called down in a distinctly unfriendly tone. > You can lie about it and just say it was a cut. You aren’t showing any other signs to make them suspicious after all You lie about it and claim you cut it climbing the debris in the alleyways, no point in telling them about the infected biting you. “When I was climbing through the alleyways back there I lost my footing and injured it on some old broken pipe. So I bound it up, as you can see I can still talk normally and show no symptoms! I’ve taken the vaccine after all!” They quietly confer and lower their guns slightly, so far so good. “Alright, the rest of your skins clear and the right color and you can talk normally. The vaccine doesn’t always protect from direct exposure so can’t be too careful. Just show the wound then we can let you inside.” You pause and try and think of a way out of showing it but there isn’t much option here. You slip your shirt back on and roll the sleeve up before taking the bandage off. You try and think quickly about what to say if they challenge your story but you are suddenly stopped short. You hear the loud crack at the same moment as you feel your clavicle disintegrate as if hit by a professional boxer, unfortunately you feel the damage continuing inside, finding when you try to breath, blood comes out of your mouth instead. You collapse back and vaguely hear the man arguing before everything turns black. “He lied; it’s a bite, look at it!” “He has no symptoms you idiot, he’s probably immune and was just wor…”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know the drill so you may as well go along with it and get inside with the survivors to scout it out at least. You carefully finish getting through the barricades as they assure you that there are no infected ahead and reach the open ground below them. “Right, drop the weapon and show us your skin!” They call down. You lay the bat and your pack down and even start undoing your shirt before remembering that you have a large bite wound on your arm that really isn’t going to go over well with the men holding the guns. You have little choice left now and finish taking off the shirt revealing your skin and the rough bandage on your left arm to the men above. Quite predictably you hear the guns being cocked above you. “What’s the bandage for friend?” You hear called down in a distinctly unfriendly tone. > You own up but point out that you have taken the vaccine and bites don’t affect you. No Point in lying about it now. You call up to them carefully, preparing to run if needed. “Firstly I’ve had the vaccine and had bites before with no affect. It’s a bite wound, from a fast bugger back in the alleyways. I’m not hiding anything!” You see one of the men react and take aim at you, you’re about to dodge when the one who is clearly in charge swats his gun to the side and the shot misses you by a few feet. “Put that gun down you idiot, what the hell you think you’re doing?” he shouts “He’s been bit! He admitted it!” the man replies clearly panicked. “And he has no symptoms, he also has been bitten before and no reaction so obviously the vaccine works for him. Are you mentally challenged or something?” He turns back to you. “Sorry about that, he’s just a little panicky at the moment even if he knows full well the vaccine protects some people from all exposure, even bites. We are letting you in, but be warned; you’re being quarantined until we can be sure.” You collect your things and head inside. “So the vaccine protects some people from bites as well as the airborne strain but others get infected by it regardless. Good to know.” You think as you head inside and find more guns pointed your way. “Seems your skin is the right color, you can still bleed and still talk but you’ve been bitten. It’s a few days in our quarantine for you my friend.” One of them says to you. You quickly find yourself in a locked room in some basement area where you stay undisturbed until you judge its night time, a lamp on the outside wall giving some light through the door’s window. A soldier finally arrives to take a look at the wound. “Don’t worry mate, I’m a military doctor so I’m just here to take a look at that bite of yours.” He says as you let him take the bandage off and put a fresh proper one on it. “There, got it wrapped up properly now, I thought you said you just got it in the alleyway, it looks at least a couple of days of healing there?” You think quickly. “Oh I got it in the alleys, just not today, I’ve been clambering around in there for days now, I had no idea anyone was left here so I’ve been slowly making my way as I scavenge.” You watch his face and it seems he buys it. “Yeh, after the collapse almost everyone died or fled. Some of us are back now and making a new start. Well back in a day or two to make sure you haven’t gone crazy on us or anything. Longest I ever heard before a man turned was 3 days, and he just became a crazy so if you’re still you when you see me next I’ll get you outa here.” You’re left a tray of food as the door is once more locked. And a few more hours pass with no noise outside the door. > You time to break out of here, you’re stronger than most and a few good charges will bust the door wide open. There’s no way you’re staying locked up in here, not when you’re close to a perfect food source that will last you months, you’re hungers back again stronger than ever for some reason too. Time to act on it! You get yourself prepared and listen at the door but hear nothing there; you back off and charge the door with your shoulder. You feel it crack but it’s not open yet. You back off and try again, this time smashing through as the bolts give way. You’re just about to congratulate yourself on your own strength when the shouting catches your attention. Guards are coming down the stairs just 20 feet to your right. Seems smashing a door open makes a lot of noise. You sprint at them and catch them off guard near the base of the steps, they clearly didn’t expect your speed or strength as you punch one in the chest, feeling his ribs crack. The others react better, trying to raise their guns. You move quickly and swat one to the side, punching the guy in the throat before spinning on the last guard. You can see in his eyes that he just simply want prepared to fight anything as fast or strong as you as he fires and misses right before you kill him too. You quickly ensure they are all dead and are about to leave when your hunger gets the better of you and you take a moment to grab one of the men’s knives to hack a chunk of flesh off which you eat ravenously. As soon as you have eaten and your hunger subsides your senses return somewhat. “What am I doing? I can’t waste time eating here when more guards will be coming.” You think. You glance around but the tunnel is blocked off at the other end and the only way is up the stairs. You can also already hear a lot of guards up there shouting and cocking weapons for you. “Bloody hungers gotten me killed, guess that bite did have some affect after all.” You back off, trying to think of a plan when the new guards arrive. At least a dozen with guns, all ready to fire and pointed your way. Once they see what’s happened they simple swear and some look like they are about to fire when one man steps a little forward and raises a hand. “HOLD!” he looks behind to ensure the men obey before turning back to you. “SO you smashed through a solid door, killed three armed guards and ate some of their flesh, all while not acting crazy. Welcome to our holdout harbinger.” The men all start swearing and some are clearly getting itchy trigger fingers despite the hold order. You finally reply. “Well this isn’t exactly how I wanted to be found out but getting bitten earlier today seemed to send my hunger into overdrive. But yes I am indeed a harbinger, I usually only get to tell people before they die rather than before I do but I guess I had a good run and ate my fair share of people” you end with a bit of a grin, awaiting the bullets. “Oh you won’t die so easily.” The Capt. Replies. You are about to question him when he gives the order to shoot your knees and elbows. It seems like every man there was just waiting for the chance and you feel you limbs practically disintegrate from all the shots. “Bind the wounds and retrain him, we have experiments to conduct.” You hear as you lose consciousness. You survive the experiments for several weeks due to your advanced healing and innate strength before your mind and body finally give out to the torture, it seems they found out little of use, but many of them defiantly felt better as they tortured you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No Point in lying about it now. You call up to them carefully, preparing to run if needed. “Firstly I’ve had the vaccine and had bites before with no affect. It’s a bite wound, from a fast bugger back in the alleyways. I’m not hiding anything!” You see one of the men react and take aim at you, you’re about to dodge when the one who is clearly in charge swats his gun to the side and the shot misses you by a few feet. “Put that gun down you idiot, what the hell you think you’re doing?” he shouts “He’s been bit! He admitted it!” the man replies clearly panicked. “And he has no symptoms, he also has been bitten before and no reaction so obviously the vaccine works for him. Are you mentally challenged or something?” He turns back to you. “Sorry about that, he’s just a little panicky at the moment even if he knows full well the vaccine protects some people from all exposure, even bites. We are letting you in, but be warned; you’re being quarantined until we can be sure.” You collect your things and head inside. “So the vaccine protects some people from bites as well as the airborne strain but others get infected by it regardless. Good to know.” You think as you head inside and find more guns pointed your way. “Seems your skin is the right color, you can still bleed and still talk but you’ve been bitten. It’s a few days in our quarantine for you my friend.” One of them says to you. You quickly find yourself in a locked room in some basement area where you stay undisturbed until you judge its night time, a lamp on the outside wall giving some light through the door’s window. A soldier finally arrives to take a look at the wound. “Don’t worry mate, I’m a military doctor so I’m just here to take a look at that bite of yours.” He says as you let him take the bandage off and put a fresh proper one on it. “There, got it wrapped up properly now, I thought you said you just got it in the alleyway, it looks at least a couple of days of healing there?” You think quickly. “Oh I got it in the alleys, just not today, I’ve been clambering around in there for days now, I had no idea anyone was left here so I’ve been slowly making my way as I scavenge.” You watch his face and it seems he buys it. “Yeh, after the collapse almost everyone died or fled. Some of us are back now and making a new start. Well back in a day or two to make sure you haven’t gone crazy on us or anything. Longest I ever heard before a man turned was 3 days, and he just became a crazy so if you’re still you when you see me next I’ll get you outa here.” You’re left a tray of food as the door is once more locked. And a few more hours pass with no noise outside the door. > You wait it out. What’s a couple of days in solitary when you’ve spent years doing it? You feel hungry, far more hungry than normal and eating the lukewarm rations provided for you doesn’t hurt at all, but you’ve decided to wait it out. If you had your pack it wouldn’t be so bad since you had a few meat strips left in there but your bat and bag are gone for now. You curl up on the cot and spend the entire night trying to ignore your hunger. As it turns morning you hear someone approaching and a tray of food is left inside the door for you. You didn’t sleep well however once you eat the rations and rest again for a bit the hunger isn’t as bad. Lunch and dinner pass with more food provided. It doesn’t seem to agree with you at all, and you’re not surprised by that, however the hunger has passed and you spend the third night mostly sleeping pretty well all things considered. You aren’t surprised the next day when the army medic returns and leaves the door open behind him. “Quick test then your free to join the rest of what is left of society!” You are finally directed up into an atrium where you find four guards waiting for you. The medic disappears into a side room and the four take charge of leading you around. > You inside the stadium doors The four lead you to a room where you’re made to hand over your things and strip to your underwear while two of them check you for marks and prick your arms, causing you to bleed a little. Finally after discussion they let you get dressed and welcome you to the area. “Sorry about all the security but after what happened before, we can’t be too careful.” They tell you as you emerge into the center of the stadium. “The roof came down with the wall but as you can see it held mostly intact and covered over two thirds of the space down here.” You look up and see the roof lying on the lowest level of the seats, leaving plenty of room underneath for a small community, a few holes near the top letting the light in. “It also blocked off all but two of the tunnels with rubble so it kind of fixed the defense issue for us too.” “How many of you are here now?” you ask looking at the small group. “Only about 40 for now, we are hoping for more to arrive slowly as we have been getting the word out that it’s a safe zone now. Sorry again about all the checks but we have to be extra careful now of who we let in.” “You mentioned that before, I thought it was some survivor that got infected that caused everything?” you reply while thinking to yourself ‘Might as well get what information I can while they are still talking and the higher ups haven’t come sniffin to make life difficult.’ “That’s what we thought but some of the military guys saw more of what was happening than most of us, said that the infected outside had moved in close overnight and the ones inside behaved weirdly. Didn’t attack and eat like normal, they went on biting sprees, like spreading fresh infection was their goal. Like they were organized. We think they were led by a harbinger! So now we check everyone for bite marks, greying skin or lack of bleeding from small cuts to make sure they aren’t one!” “You idiots, those are just myths” you think to yourself “Harbingers looks nearly identical to normal humans, well I guess I won’t be the one to tell you the truth at least.” You finally see a man in full dress uniform approach “Here we go” you mutter under your breath. The man approaches you and is, to your surprise, very congenial. He welcomes you to their little hold out and asks only a few cursory questions before excusing himself to go and check on the other lookouts. He does make you affirm that if you would like to stay you would be willing to help out with defense if needed. “Well that wasn’t so bad.” You mutter just loud enough for your guards to hear. One laughs and responds. “A nice guy in charge? Yeh, rare enough I suppose, but people wouldn’t still follow the Capt. if he was an ass would they! Come on we will show you around.” You follow them around the accessible areas under the roof and see the paths up to the balcony where the men were on guard, you also notice that there are higher balconies with men in soldier’s uniforms on them. “Probably good I didn’t run” you think to yourself as you see the tents and shacks set up for sleeping and the tunnels used for storage. “Well that’s pretty much it.” One of the men says, looking around him. “Obviously there used to be a lot more here before the collapse but this is just the start. Once word spreads and more survivors gather we can tidy the place up more.” You think for a moment before speaking again. “Isn’t there some big group to the East of the city doing well, I heard a rumor about it some months back.” The guard smiles knowingly before responding. “It’s true! We had contact with them some time back via a series of radios we were setting up in the city. This was right before the collapse O’course. Seems that they got a really good thing going out there, clean food and water, even fields and solar panels up for power! Sadly when the roof came down, it took out our good radio equipment and most of the relays in the city are unreachable now without the manpower we used to have. We might not have enough men here to push through but we think if we hold out here and gather a good community then we can scout a safe route through the North of the city to the river and cross there. For now we are going to be the western safe zone for people unable to pass the city. You wouldn’t believe the monsters we used to kill in there when we had out jeeps and heavy guns. Most people that try and get through the city to the bridges die trying or turn back having lost their friends, some tried to circle up North or South well past the city limits but seems that there are infected and mutants out there too and no way to safely cross the river unless you carry a boat.” He trails off and you can see he is thinking of past friends, he was probably one of the ones who tried to get through and failed. “Well I better go get my stuff back and find a place to rest.” You state. The guards give you a nod and let you wander back to the entrance tunnel to collect your gear. You get pointed to your new temporary home, a small tent on the old pitch. Considering you half expected to get killed as soon as you saw the men with the guns this day has really turned out in your favor! > You your new home at the stadium You make some more small talk that evening then retire to your tent, you had learned something new and important today. They all seemed to strongly believe a Herald had somehow led and controlled the infected, even the ones inside the stadium. Some blamed him for planning the entire thing and that the infected had attacked the strut when it fell. Hard to believe but after seeing what the infection was able to do to some animals you were willing to give the idea a chance. That also meant that even if they had no idea what Heralds were really like, there must have been one in the area only a year or so ago and still might be. You were going to have to be extra careful with your planning for now. The second important thing was that they had a few shamblers trapped down in some old storage rooms, they experimented on them for good ways to hurt them and how long they lasted without food. You have choices to make in the morning. > You first light in the stadium A quiet ringing wakes you at first light. “Huh a near silent alarm, smatter than a loud one I guess.” You say to yourself as you get ready. You glance through your bag. They had left your last few strips of dried meat in there so you start chowing down on one as you head out. They said you had a few days to decide what you’d be doing but if you chose to stay more than that, then you would have to be useful to them in some way, guard duty and scavenging seemed to be the implied option. You had some time though. > You check out the caged shamblers They are keeping shamblers fully contained for experiments, with everything you’ve heard recently it’s just too tempting to pass up a little look at what’s going on. You know the rough location and after finding the stairs down, you emerge into a basement area with several doors leading off it. You also find two guards who ask what you’re looking for. “I heard there were some shamblers in cages being tested here and wanted to have a look. Its not often you get to see they relatively close without having to run away after all.” You joke. Luckily neither of them seems to think this is too out of the ordinary. “Yeh most new guys end up down here once they hear about it. Go on through and the doc can show you what’s up. Door gets locked behind you though, safety first.” He adds with a wink. You get let through a heavy door into a side corridor and indeed you hear the sound of a reassuringly large bolt being secured behind you. At the end of the corridor you see an open door with the lights on so head there first, passing two doors on either side with heavy bolts on them. You find a man in military uniform at a desk, writing in a book. He looks up at your arrival. “Ah the newest new guy! I wondered if you’d find your way down here. Most of them do once they hear about our test subjects. Let me show you around!” At first you are a little taken aback by his willingness to show you everything having only just met you but after a few minutes it becomes clear that he isn’t divulging important secrets, he’s an army medic acting as the stadiums doctor and their tests amount to two shamblers being starved slowly to death on one side of the corridor and two having weapons tested on them through slots in the door on the other. One still has a crossbow bolt in its upper leg, giving it a limp. “That’s about it sadly.” He sums up for you. “We had string tied to the bolts to get them back easily but that one caught on the bone so the string snapped. We did find out that destroying their joints and muscles is effective in slowing them down and they will die from large trauma, not just neural damage. So shooting knees and legs will stop them chasing you faster than a snail and body shots can kill them despite what anyone else says. We proved it with a fast bugger we found down here. 2 shots in the chest and he went down. Sure they can keep going with far more damage than a normal human but most things still work on them eventually.” You nod along, filling the information at the back of your mind for later, it matches up with your findings as well. “I’m guessing the closer to human they are, the easier they go down then? The crazies seem to be just like humans, the fast ones a little tougher and the shamblers just soak up damage if it’s not the head.” The man smiles and nods. “A man of experience. I assume the vaccine gave you full protection if you were able to test all of that out. You are right of course, the further from human they go, the tougher they get, taking more normal damage to kill them. Destroying the neural center is always effective though, headshots I mean. It’s easier if you don’t think of them as human.” He peeks through the windows a few more times before heading back to his office. “You’re welcome to stay and test things out on number 4, just never remove a lock no matter how dead they look.” The doors have large numbers on them so number 4 turns out to be the one with a crossbow bolt in its leg. “So it seems you are the expendable one.” You say quietly through the small slot. “You’ll be seeing more of me soon.” You head back up into the light to make up an excuse for being there so much and decide on something basic, you head off in search of materials in the rubble. > You testing time You exchange pleasantries with a few of the others in the stadium while you search and give the impression that you will probably choose to stay but just need a day or two to decide. A few even give you a hand in your search and after a couple of hours you have some forked metal the right size and shape and industrial elastic cable housing to make a high powered slingshot. You grab various possible projectiles from pebbles to bits of jagged metal and head back down to speak to the doc. You explain that you’ve always wanted to test how shamblers react to projectile damage as a way of killing them quietly. He has no issues but tells you that you’ll have to write down your findings. You get a small notebook with columns to fill out for weapon name and type, type of damage, effect on the shambler, tissue types… the list goes on but you know it’ll be fairly easy to fill out once you shoot them a few times. You glance a few pages back to see what else has been tried. “Huh, a flamethrower.” You say out loud. The Doc. Overhears from his office and calls out. “Highly effective, turned it into a walking torch and killed it in seconds, made a huge mess and bad smell though. Sadly ran out of fuel.” You shrug and get to work. You leave the slot on door number four and lean up against the opposite wall. You wait for it to wander into view and let fire with a small rock. Your slingshot is extremely powerful, to the point that a average male couldn’t even draw it properly but with your strength you can get it back a fair distance. The pebble hits at speed and pierces the skin of its abdomen. You note down your findings and tries out a few different projectiles. The small jagged metal pieces beaten into roughly a ball shape seem to win for the moment, you manage to shatter its clavicle with one and break its wrist with another. The doctor makes an appearance and glances through your notes. “Excellent, I can add all this to the data later on.” He says as much to himself as to you as he heads off out on some errand. Once he is gone you move closer to the door and pretend to be writing in the book just in case anyone is watching you. “So number 4, if you had any brain left you’d know by now that in our relationship, I am in charge, I can hurt you at will and you can do nothing, but you don’t really have a brain left do you?” You receive the silence that you expected so carry on. “I’ll be here a lot ‘testing’ weapons and other things on you but I have bigger plans for you and your brothers if some rumors I have been hearing work out.” You take your time there, concentrating, until you’ve used up all your makeshift ammo, you write a few more notes for the doc. Then head back up for lunch. > The testing continues Over the next two days you spend a lot of you time down ‘testing’ out various things on number 4, since you obviously had no qualms hurting the shamblers the doc and a couple of others even gave you their ideas to use on it which you did happily as it gave you more excuses to be down there. You also had your chat with the Capt. and said you’d be wanting to stay and would obviously help out with guard duty and scavenging if needed but hoped you could keep helping the doc too. He agreed and gave you half time guard duty and half time being the doc’s new assistant for the coming week to see how it worked out. You use the arrangement to your advantage and get to spend most of your evenings down with the shamblers. It’s 5 days before you make a break through, not a big one, but you defiantly notice something. You’ve been testing various weapons and objects on Number 4, as you call him, every day while concentrating hard and you were even beginning to doubt anything would happen when you hit him in there eye with a rusty bolt and you feel a slight twinge in your mind. You spend the next hour trying to concentrate on where and how you felt that twinge and when you fire the next bolt into its chest, you feel it again, a little clearer. The rest of the evening and a little into the night is spent this way until you are certain you can feel the shamblers presence with your mind and can tell when it feels pain. “So, the rumors are true, harbingers ARE able to use their minds in ways normal humans can’t. Next I work on controlling them.” You think as you head to sleep > You morning revelations You wake in the morning and realize that you can already feel the presence of the shamblers in the basement below without having to concentrate on it. You also get a hazy feeling throughout the stadium that you can’t pin down yet. You quickly eat breakfast with the other guards and head up to your post while eating your last meat strip. “The last of that crazy I killed a while back” You think as you set up on your balcony. Luckily you are alone today on a not very important post so you can relax and concentrate on the new sensations you mind is feeding you. After a few hours you find the haziness resolve into pockets that move about and decide that it must be linked to the normal people in the stadium. You can’t get anything stronger from the shamblers yet but if you made this much progress just by sleeping on it, who knows what I can do in a few more days. That evening you take a long pole with a spike on the end down, it will give you a good excuse to be close to the door for long periods of time while you pretend to stab at number 4. Once you are seated and staring at him the sensations gets strong and you can easily tell when it feels pain from being stabbed. “Huh, you don’t outwardly respond but the pains still there, interesting.” Two more days pass of these mornings concentrating and evenings testing and by the end you can tell what is happening to number 4 or any of the other 3 shamblers even from up in the stadium. While you were eating lunch, you felt that number 4 got stabbed in the left shoulder, and sure enough when you went down, there was the doc writing down that stabbing it through the shoulder join restricted its movement in that arm. “I’m testing if it recovers from its injuries now so please avoid its shoulder and arm for now if you test more.” He says as he passes you the book and heads up to eat. It’s now been several days since you arrived and you ran out of human flesh days ago. The food they give you doesn’t sit well or seem to quench your hunger but the progress you are making is distracting you enough that you can ignore it for now. You are even getting on well with several of the others in the stadium which gives you doubts for the first time about your original plans to kill them all and feed off them. You could probably volunteer for a scavenging mission to try and get some food out there but you’d probably only manage to get hold of some shambler flesh and it was simply not the same as normal flesh. Seemed just like the toughness, the further from human they got, the less useful their flesh was. But for now you move onto the next stage, time to make the puppet dance for you. You concentrate hard of the feeling you get from what you presume is the remains of the shamblers mind and try to make it lift its right arm into the air with little success, however, over the next few hours you see the arm twitch and eventually it responds and you see it lifting its arm up over its head. You lean back against the opposite wall feeling elated by your success when the doc returns. “Hey! You’ve got the mother of all nose bleeds there! Let me grab some gauze.” He heads into his office and returns quickly while you dab at your own nose, seems you were concentrating so hard you didn’t even feel it happening. You do however now feel fairly light headed so after being cleaned up and making your excuses you head up to lie down in your tent and very unusually fall asleep for the whole evening and night. The morning brings the final revelation and the decisions. You wake to a solid feeling of not only where the four shamblers are, but roughly what they are doing. Concentrating easily makes number 4 turn in a circle and only a little more effort is required to make the others do the same. A slight tingling at the reaches of your mind tells you that you can sense other infected out in the alleys near the stadium. “Time to make a choice. This mind stuff seems like a muscle, the more I use it, the stronger I get. Sleeping after a breakthrough only seems to reinforce it too. In days I’m certain I’ll be able to control small groups of the shamblers at the same time so I’ll have to start testing on the other types next. Can’t get anything from the normals other than a hazy feeling though.” You’re a Harbinger and you’ve eaten people for years, time to flex those powers, use the shamblers to help you wipe the stadium survivors out. You are a harbinger, but you aren’t sure you want to attack these people right now. Stay playing nice as you are while you train your powers, maybe get out on some scavenges to test yourself further. > You you're a Harbinger and you've eaten people for years, time to flex those powers, use the shamblers to help you wipe the stadium survivors out. Time to make your move, you are inside with four shamblers you can control and it’s time to feast! You wait until after breakfast when everyone splits up and head down to see the Doc, you find him leaning over some books in his office like normal so you head right inside and shut the door behind you. “What can I help you with.” He asks, giving you a quick smile before turning back to his books. You look round and see one of the blades that had been used to experiment on number 4. You lift it and walk carefully up behind the doc as you talk. “I have just a minor problem I need solved, I’ve been feeling very hungry lately and the rations here don’t really solve it. He starts to turn to answer you when you strike and stab him in the throat, preventing him from shouting out, you watch him die with only the faintest hint of remorse before you feel that last flicker of humanity disappear once more and you feast on him for a few minutes. You quickly clean the blood off yourself and head back out, tapping on the door to be let through to the security area. Only two guards and you are a lot faster than a normal human. You strike quickly, catching one in the throat and stabbing the other in the chest, clamping your free hand over his mouth before he can shout for help. You quickly drag them into the corridor before releasing the four shamblers who were to be the start of your little army, you concentrate hard but find it is easy to prevent them from attacking you and they quickly obey your compulsions to feed on the dead guards. Finally prepared, you head back out the door and to the base of the stairs, you can feel something fuzzy headed your way so you hide the shamblers round the corner and lean against the wall, trying to seem carefree as you see another guard heading down towards you. You give him a smile and a nod which he begins to return before looking at your trousers and pausing several steps away. You glance down and realize that one trouser leg has a lot of blood on it, must have been from dragging the guards. You look back up and start to go for the guard but he is already raising his gun, you bat it aside and stab him had enough in the chest to feel multiple ribs crack under your fist however his gun goes off with a loud crack. You swear and immediately head up the stairs with your shamblers only to find several other guards running your way, you try to charge them but being seem with blood on you and in the company of the four shamblers means they start firing first. Even with your speed you don’t make it more than a few feet before the bullets bring you down.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake in the morning and realize that you can already feel the presence of the shamblers in the basement below without having to concentrate on it. You also get a hazy feeling throughout the stadium that you can’t pin down yet. You quickly eat breakfast with the other guards and head up to your post while eating your last meat strip. “The last of that crazy I killed a while back” You think as you set up on your balcony. Luckily you are alone today on a not very important post so you can relax and concentrate on the new sensations you mind is feeding you. After a few hours you find the haziness resolve into pockets that move about and decide that it must be linked to the normal people in the stadium. You can’t get anything stronger from the shamblers yet but if you made this much progress just by sleeping on it, who knows what I can do in a few more days. That evening you take a long pole with a spike on the end down, it will give you a good excuse to be close to the door for long periods of time while you pretend to stab at number 4. Once you are seated and staring at him the sensations gets strong and you can easily tell when it feels pain from being stabbed. “Huh, you don’t outwardly respond but the pains still there, interesting.” Two more days pass of these mornings concentrating and evenings testing and by the end you can tell what is happening to number 4 or any of the other 3 shamblers even from up in the stadium. While you were eating lunch, you felt that number 4 got stabbed in the left shoulder, and sure enough when you went down, there was the doc writing down that stabbing it through the shoulder join restricted its movement in that arm. “I’m testing if it recovers from its injuries now so please avoid its shoulder and arm for now if you test more.” He says as he passes you the book and heads up to eat. It’s now been several days since you arrived and you ran out of human flesh days ago. The food they give you doesn’t sit well or seem to quench your hunger but the progress you are making is distracting you enough that you can ignore it for now. You are even getting on well with several of the others in the stadium which gives you doubts for the first time about your original plans to kill them all and feed off them. You could probably volunteer for a scavenging mission to try and get some food out there but you’d probably only manage to get hold of some shambler flesh and it was simply not the same as normal flesh. Seemed just like the toughness, the further from human they got, the less useful their flesh was. But for now you move onto the next stage, time to make the puppet dance for you. You concentrate hard of the feeling you get from what you presume is the remains of the shamblers mind and try to make it lift its right arm into the air with little success, however, over the next few hours you see the arm twitch and eventually it responds and you see it lifting its arm up over its head. You lean back against the opposite wall feeling elated by your success when the doc returns. “Hey! You’ve got the mother of all nose bleeds there! Let me grab some gauze.” He heads into his office and returns quickly while you dab at your own nose, seems you were concentrating so hard you didn’t even feel it happening. You do however now feel fairly light headed so after being cleaned up and making your excuses you head up to lie down in your tent and very unusually fall asleep for the whole evening and night. The morning brings the final revelation and the decisions. You wake to a solid feeling of not only where the four shamblers are, but roughly what they are doing. Concentrating easily makes number 4 turn in a circle and only a little more effort is required to make the others do the same. A slight tingling at the reaches of your mind tells you that you can sense other infected out in the alleys near the stadium. “Time to make a choice. This mind stuff seems like a muscle, the more I use it, the stronger I get. Sleeping after a breakthrough only seems to reinforce it too. In days I’m certain I’ll be able to control small groups of the shamblers at the same time so I’ll have to start testing on the other types next. Can’t get anything from the normals other than a hazy feeling though.” You’re a Harbinger and you’ve eaten people for years, time to flex those powers, use the shamblers to help you wipe the stadium survivors out. You are a harbinger, but you aren’t sure you want to attack these people right now. Stay playing nice as you are while you train your powers, maybe get out on some scavenges to test yourself further. > You are a harbinger, but you aren't sure you want to attack these people right now. Stay playing nice as you are while you train your powers, maybe get out on some scavenges to test yourself further. You decide that attacking now is pointless, you’d not be strong enough to take out all of the armed guards without the risk of getting shot and you are getting on well with a few of them. You spend the next few days more on guard duty and less down in the basement, flexing your abilities from further away to try and strengthen them. You think you can even reach one of two of the nearest ones out in the streets from the balcony. Finally you talk to the doc and the Capt. and volunteer to go along with a couple of scavenging missions, a couple of days before two men from a team didn’t return so they are happy for the offer of help. Your first mission goes smoothly as it’s a quick run to a relatively close store which a scout said still had some tins in its store room. For the others it’s a routine food grab but for you, it’s your chance to begin testing your new powers out properly. Sure you’ve been able to control the shamblers inside the stadium but that was only after days spent concentrating on them. What you needed were some shamblers you hadn’t tried anything on before or even some fast types. Not that you were planning on seeking them out, but if you sensed one close then you could give it a go. You did get closer to a couple of shamblers, finding that it only took you a few moments of hard concentration to get them to do simple tasks like change direction or move a specific limb. Happy with your success you help the others bring what little food there was back to the stadium and volunteered to go out again the next day. > You mission 2 The second mission begins the same as the first, a team of 4 sent out to check an old store you think might still have some supplies in it. This one is a little further away but it’s to the West and away from the city center so your team is confident that they won’t run into too much trouble. You set out happily, planning on testing your ability to make the shamblers do more complicated tasks when you quickly sense something slightly different from before, similar to a shambler but… more complicated, where the shambler feels like the last remnants of a broken and dead mind this feels more like a mind that has been twisted and shattered, but not yet dying. You concentrate on it hard for the next few minutes as you walk and realize that it’s moving about, jumping or running from spot to spot. It must be one of the fast ones or crazies. You walk onwards and soon move out of your range to sense it but an hour or so later you sense another one ahead of you. “As if my test subjects were lining up for me” You joke to yourself as you begin trying to affect its mind. You go through the process as you had with the shamblers, concentrating on sensing them properly first, then getting an idea of their sensations and finally trying to make it react to your prodding. It takes you about 2 hours but you finally have a good sense of what to do, its definitely a fast type infected and making them follow simple actions is only slightly different to the shamblers so by the time you reach your destination it’s only a couple of streets away but you have it walking in circles on command. “Dude, you hit your face of something?” one of the men quietly calls back to you and you realize that you have a nose bleed again. Not as bad as before but you quickly wipe it clean. “Yeh, sorry, I just get them sometimes.” You say as you clean the blood off. “Guess concentrating that hard on the other infected means I miss a lot, going to have to be more careful.” You think. You quickly realize that you have all arrived at the store, and there are several more infected in the vicinity. You were concentrating so hard on the one that you missed a second fast type not far off and several nearby shamblers. The rest of your team, completely unaware of the danger just streets away, starts to head into the store to check for the supplies. “I guess I could go for the big test now.” You think to yourself The team is contained and you can control the infected, you could use them to take them out as the first step to destroying the stadium hold out or you could force them all far away and help the stadium people for now, some of them are treating you like a real friend after all. > You take the first step to wiping the stadium out, use the infected to kill the team then eat them before returning You’ve wasted enough time playing happy families with this small community, your three team-mates will be the first to fall and become your food as you work to wipe them all out. Maybe you’ll even keep a few caged up to eat later, that would be a funny reversal, you think to yourself as you concentrate on all the surrounding infected, drawing them towards the store. “Just going to wipe all this blood off then I’ll be right in!” you call to the others before climbing on top of an old van across the street. No point in being a sitting duck incase the control isn’t as strong as you hope. In moments the nearest shambles and fast type appear. “Got about 6 shamblers and two fast types once the other arrives, should be enough” You wait for the second fast type, holding the infected at bay a few metres from the store, it’s harder to stop them once they can hear and smell the human flesh inside but you find, as with all your powers, that as soon as you master it once, it becomes very easy to do again. You edge them closer to the store until finally one of the men begins walking outside with a bag. You send the fast types rushing at him and he barely has time to react before them knock him to the ground and start feeding off him. The shamblers are only a few feet behind and also start biting into him, ensuring he is dead before the other two scavengers run to the door, guns ready. The fast types don’t respond instantly and you have to force with all of your will to make them stop feeding and go after the two in the doorway however the seconds lost doing this gets one on them shot and badly injured. You can feel its organs giving out so you ignore it now and concentrate on the other one. It makes it close enough to bite into one of the men’s arm and you get lucky. It seems the vaccine isn’t protecting him from direct exposure since you see his actions slowing down and the strange haze you sense from normal humans diminishes before your eyes. You send the rest of the nearby infected inside after the last survivor. You feel him taking down four of them but finally he gets bitten and overwhelmed. The infected make no move to come after you despite your proximity so you climb down and take your time to feed off your former team mates. > You tIme to get back to the stadium for part two You grab one of the men’s bags, partly full of tins, and carefully clean any trace of blood off your face. Leaving the guns behind, you bash in the head of the slowly dying fast type to make it look like you fought, then head back to the stadium. Once close you start running and panting a little for effect. The guards see you some distance away and they are already with guns aimed past you at the street when you get close. “They swarmed us, I was the only one fast enough to get away!” you call up. The gate opens and you are ushered inside quickly before seeing it being barricaded again from the inside. You tell your story about seeming to be ambushed by them when you were in the store a couple more times and it seems like everyone is buying it. Just a few days before the other scavengers to loose teammates told a similar story after all. You are given the rest of the day and the next one off from duties and spend it relaxing in your tent, simply prying with your mind as far as you could and drawing any infected you find, closer to the stadium. It seems that wherever you leave them, they stay. Sure they wander around nearby streets and buildings sometimes but never too far from where they started and they seem to usually return there. By dinner of the second day you have a fair number of shamblers and 1 fast type in the surrounding alleyways and buildings and you hear over dinner that everyone is sure that the harbinger had returned. Seem like this sort of thing fitted right into their suspicions. Time to get to work, the food here feels like its poisoning you now the more you eat of it. You have your army ready and know the enemy defenses perfectly; they think you are one of their defenders after all. At night the doc often sleeps in his office and there are only two guards so you are sure you can get the 4 shamblers out to go wild inside then all you’ll need is to get some on the ones from outside into the stadium to complete your victory. You are considering the best way to do this when you sense all the infected you brought close suddenly begin leaving towards the South and you cannot bring them back no matter how hard you concentrate. The last one pauses and you can feel that it seems to be waving at you for a few minutes, beckoning you after it almost, before it turns and heads South and eventually out of your range to sense it. “Well that’s odd.” You think as you watch it vanish along with your immediate attack plans. “Best bet is that they were right and the original harbinger is back, seems he wants to talk to me too.” The morning will bring a new decision to make, Go to meet the other harbinger or ignore his summons and take down the stadium yourself with your own army; you’ll just need to gather a new one first. > You go to meet the harbinger You wake first thing in the morning to find no other infected have come near to the stadium. “At least he is respectful” you think as you get up. You share a meal with the others as you ponder your next move; however it’s hard to pass on the chance to meet another like you. You go to see the Capt. right after eating. You find him with one of his soldiers looking over a map of this part of the city, probably planning some more scavenges. “Um, Sir, mind if we talk?” He looks up at you then waves the other soldier out leaving the two of you alone. “So what can I help you with?” He asks, having already turned back to his map. “Well, before I came here I stashed a few things of importance to me, memento’s and the like. I want to go retrieve them. I didn’t really expect this place to be inhabited so I stashed them near my old place to the South.” The Capt. quickly asks. “Is it within half a day’s walk of here?” “No, its going to take 2 or three days to get there and back.” You reply. At first he does not respond and you are finally about to speak up and break the silence when he gives his answer. “I can’t send a team with you, too dangerous but I won’t stop you going alone either. It’s your choice, please send Harry back in.” You shrug and head outside, finding a soldier waiting outside “The Capt. said to go back in now.” You tell him as you head off back to you tent. “Well I guess that was Harry at least.” You think as you grab your things and head to the gate. You are let out without a second glance, they trust you now afterall, and begin walking South to where you saw the shambler last. About halfway there you sense it again, South-East of its original position. It waves again and you follow after it, letting it stay a few blocks ahead of you as it leads you South and East of your position. You walk for the rest of the day before finally being lead to a small shop that looks like it might have been a high class gentleman’s tailor before the infection spread. Very heavy duty shutters are down over most of the windows however the door is uncovered and propped open. You try and sense inside and feel something akin to a bright, almost blinding light inside. You quickly stop trying to sense it but you kept your mind open long enough to realize that there are hundreds of infected of different types in the surrounding buildings. > You meeting the man You hear a chuckle from inside and hear an old man’s voice calling to you. “Oh don’t worry so much and come on in, your abilities will grow stronger in time, you are simply less practiced than me!” You start walking to the door and see and old man with a broom sweeping some near invisible dirt out of the door before standing aside for you to enter. You walk past him to find yourself in the fanciest tailors you’ve ever seen, with suits you never could have afforded before the infection spread. You glance again at the old man then back to the suits. He is clearly well dressed but not in anything as fine as the clothing in the store. You hear him chuckling again as pulls the shutters down and closes the door leaving everything in a dim sort of twilight. “Yes I am the tailor not the customer. I made every suit in this store to sell to others but it never felt quite right to wear one myself.” You can make out that he is looking you up and down, clearly not bothered by the lack of light. “You on the hand might need some new clothing; I’ll adjust something for you later. For now let’s head upstairs.” He heads off still holding his broom and you follow him closely, trying not to bump into anything until you reach the second floor and light from the open windows makes it easier to see. You let him get several feet ahead of you to see him better. He is clearly a frail old man and you begin wondering if he is really strong enough to be the other harbinger when he moves faster than you thought possible and in right in front of you, pinning your arms in a grip that doesn’t even let you move an inch. “Yes indeed I am the harbinger, and yes I am defiantly strong enough.” He releases you and walks over to a small chair beside a table covered with slices of meat. “Come have a seat, and yes, I can read your mind. Your powers are developing but they are still in their infancy, I will train you to use them properly so long as you don’t disappoint me.” You take a seat and immediately recognize the smell of the meat as fresh human. The old man smiles. “Yes I usually have a couple hanging around in old cellars to keep them fresh for me, my servants bring them to me when they find them and I divide them between myself and my horde.” He is clearly expecting you to eat, so you do. It’s not as if you haven’t eaten humans before and its nice to have human flesh again, it makes your whole body feel better. “Oh good, I was a little worried that you had sided with humans and might refuse to eat the meat but that’s the first test past. Here is the second.” The old man says to you as a shambler comes in through a previously closed door and begins to lunge for you. Your old reflexes tell you to go for your bat but your new practice kicks in and you reflexively lash out with your mind instead. You see it suddenly stumble back against a wall as if physically struck, before sinking down and not moving any more. “Ah, and the second test passed too, you didn’t have to kill it though you know?” The old man says to you. “Erm, sorry about that, it was reflexive and I’ve only been using this ability for a couple of weeks, I didn’t know I could kill them.” You suddenly feel your nose bleeding again and quickly pich it to prevent the blood pouring out on your clothing. The old man gives you a very happy look. “Only a couple of weeks, well that is great news, it means you are developing very quickly. The quicker the development, the higher the potential! Well I accept you as my student. Over the next few weeks I will be training you in all aspects of your gift, starting with shielding your mind from others, we aren’t the only ones out there you know.” The old man pauses and looks at you intently. “That is of course if you choose to learn from me, if so I will teach you for a few weeks and you will then aid me in destroying the last holdouts in the stadium, the greater plans will be revealed after that. Or you can leave now.” You glance around; he isn’t holding a weapon or acting threateningly. You also are pretty sure he didn’t lock the shutter and a glance out the window shows that the streets are clear. You try and sense the infected in the area again but try and block the old man’s mind out as you do so to prevent the painful blindness from before. It somewhat works and you sense that all the infected are right where they were when you sensed them the first time. He clearly isn’t making any obvious moves to trap you. Choose to stay and learn, it’s what you are after all, a harbinger. Back out politely and head back to the stadium, you were happier there and the old man is a bit creepy. > You choose to stay and learn, it's what you are after all, a harbinger. You think about it carefully, he doesn’t appear to be making any moves to trap you and you were getting to like some of the people back in the stadium, but wasn’t your reason for going there in the first place to eat them? It only makes sense to learn from the experienced harbinger while you can. You are about to tell him you choice when you realize he is practically grinning from ear to ear. “I can read your mind still, remember? An excellent choice you made too. You thought it through and weighed up the pro’s and Con’s. Excellent, you will learn very quickly under my tutelage, now eat up, there is much to be done!” He says to you happily as he tucks into the meat on the table. You join him in the meal and feel better about your choice already, predators were made to eat their pray were they not? > You training time You spend the next couple of weeks with the old man, you have three meals a day of human flesh and spend most of your waking hours training your mind, you used to sleep only a handful of hours a night but now you collapse into bed each night with the beginnings of a headache. He trains you hard, you constantly get nosebleeds but he doesn’t push you too hard, it turns out that if you push past the pain of a headache, you can actually fry your own abilities and drive yourself mad, so you are trained until the headaches come, then you rest and eat until they pass. The training pays off quickly. Within days of accepting your role as a harbinger and training to improve your abilities you feel faster and stronger than ever before, you begin seeing better in the dark and you can control an entire horde while barely trying. You even learn the subtle differences involved in affecting the fast types and mutants minds. You train briefly with crazies but the old man teaches you only enough to fend them off mentally rather than full control “They are unpredictable, forget commands nearly instantly and make terrible subjects who require your constant attention and concentration only to have them be barely more useful as combatants than shamblers.” He told you at one point, and you felt you had to agree. Their minds with the strange mix of haziness and cracks seemed to always shift and move even while you were trying to grasp them. By the end of the second week you have fully embrace your role as the new alpha predator or the planet. Sure you were once human, but now you are more, evolved beyond what humans thought was possible. You see in nearly pitch black, you move at speeds you couldn’t have imagined and you can punch through solid doors without more than a few scratches on your skin. You can now easily control an extensive horde without much effort and direct small teams separately without difficulty. One important thing you learned though was that if another harbinger has control of an infected mind, it is extremely difficult to take it from him. The old man can still take infected from you due to his extensive practice but you never come slightly close to taking one from him. It means if another harbinger attacks you, then at least you can try to keep your own troops under command. > You more mental exercises You are preparing for the days mental exercises when the old man comes to you. “I did have some interesting exercises for you today however we have more pressing news; I have had my scouts watching the Stadium and their scouts. They have been reaching further and further east in the clear attempt to find a way through to the Eastern colony. Obviously we cannot let that happen, they know too much about the truth of harbingers and my army requires food, not to mention myself of course. You nod along; it would be good to test out your new abilities on live subjects and it’s not as if you care about the normal anymore, you are better than them. Their predator. The old man goes through his things and pulls out an old map of the bus routes through the city. “It looks like they are planning to keep to a main route.” He begins. “They have been keeping their main scouting to larger open roads which lead directly East so my assumption is that they plan to move through at speed. Now the tricky thing is, before I brought down the stadium the first time, they had some military jeeps with mounted guns, I had originally presumed that I had destroyed them all however their actions suggest otherwise. We have to assume at least 1 vehicle so I will be blockading the road here.” He points to the map indicating a section of road just after a large corner. “this way they will only see it once they round the bend and I can then block their retreat. Obviously normally I would co-ordinate everything myself, however with you here I can give you some of my forces to control, leaving me with much better fine control of the assault horde.” You look over the map for a few moments. “What will my job be then?” You ask. The Old man smiles, you will have roughly 1/3 or the army, your job will be to close the trap!” He gives you a big smile. “Their captain is an annoyingly smart man and will have backup routes and plans so you must keep your horde hidden until they pass the designated position then close the trap instantly. You can then of course join in the assault from their rear while I handle the front and flanks.” There isn’t much to argue about so again you simply nod along, you’d rather he split his forces with you 50/50 however you know he is still significantly more powerful than you mentally. You can hold him at bay for a few moments but he can still force his way into your mind whereas you can’t even dent his current defenses you know you are rapidly improving though and you hold out a few seconds longer every time. The old man rolls his map up and carefully stores it away. “Time for us to be heading out, they could leave any day now and we must be prepared for them!” > You heading out to the ambush You take a leisurely pace with the old man and bring your horde along with you, from various trips out around the city you have gathered over 50 infected including 2 mutant cats which you found during a trip to the edge of the city centre, not as strong as the dogs but frighteningly agile and fast. You’re pretty happy with your little horde however as you walk you come into range of more and more of the Old man’s ‘storage points’, buildings where he places large numbers of infected for use later. By the end of the day you can sense hundreds of infected moving around you. The Old man clearly notices you trying to sense all of them and laughs. “They took me many months to build up again, a large number were originally from the stadium hold-outs before I destroyed it, others I have scavenged where I could to re-build my forces. You have heard something similar before, the old man clearly lost his hord at some point and you don’t believe it was during the stadium battle, there is clearly something he is holding back from you. You finally arrive at a small apartment block that is less damaged than the rest in the area and the Old man takes you inside. “This place will have to do, we are only two roads South of where the stadium people should pass so we can begin preparations in the morning. You head to sleep thinking about what it would mean to wipe out the last survivors in the stadium, and probably the North-West of the city, the Old man had been thorough in hunting them all down. > You setting up time With first light you wake and check on your horde “Still right where I left you.” You think as you dress and head down into the street. You had left them all locked in a small hospital clinic you passed a couple of blocks South, you thought it was funny to pack it full of infected. You gather them together near the apartment when the Old man comes to you. “Interesting news, it seems they have left the stadium a few minutes ago!” You turn West and concentrate hard, it’s still many miles away but you get a faint sense of haziness there. “Now now, don’t strain yourself, you are not practiced enough to sense properly over that distance, it’s even at the limit of my own abilities.” He looks over your Horde. “Excellent, all gathered, well you better get over to the North side and prepare to close the trap, remember that they have a jeep so just standing in the road won’t cut it!” he heads off cheerfully and you feel a large number of infected in a nearby building leave his control, they must be your part of the horde. You take control of them and along with your own horde you head North to look for some good blockade materials. As you pass North you begin noticing a change, the closer to the Highways, the more cars there are. “Huh, they all went for the highway to escape and blocked each other in.” you mumble as you look around. “Well at least the cars might make the blockade easy enough. You begin commanding your shamblers to start pushing the cars and taking off handbrakes when you notice the bus on a side road. A large solid looking city bus, easily capable of blocking the main road by itself. “Hah, almost too easy!” you say aloud as you redirect all of your forces to the bus and maneuver it pointing south, it would have to go round a bend to get into position but any closer and they could spot you as they pass so you put a shambler into the driving seat and take careful control of its mind so you can ensure the bus gets where it needs to go. Then you wait, you carefully send your senses out West again a few times, not pushing it like before and after an few tries you begin to sense them coming closer and closer, moving at a solid pace. “They must all be jogging or running,” you suddenly panick and this they have enough vehicles for all of them but as they approach you realize that they are too spread out to be packed into a vehicle. You settle back and track their progress, you have at least an hour to watch them approach and after a few minutes begin picking out individuals in the larger haze, you then start trying to assign names to them and think back to your time with them. It occurs to you for the first time in two weeks that you didn’t really need to go through with this. You could betray the old man and help the people from the stadium; they did treat you like a friend after all. Stop concentrating on the haze; it’s causing you to think funny. You’re a predator and they are just pray Watching the haze so closely for so long must have brought these thoughts on, however they are correct, why not help them. They helped you before and you are sure they would accept you if you saved them. > You look away from the haze and attack You quickly shake off the feelings that the haze is giving you. You concentrate on your little army for a time and quickly feel the thoughts of helping recede and die. “So it’s dangerous to concentrate in the normal’s mind for too long. Well at least I learned it now.” You are committed and ready; you track the little convoys progress as they get closer and closer along the main road. You avoid concentrating closly on them but they are near enough for you to resolve the shapes of the haze into individual people without concentrating on them. Large crowd following behind a Jeep fits best, that means you plan will work as the jeep won’t have time to back out of the trap. You finally hear the old man pop trying to politely pop back into your head. He could force his way in but recently he politely ‘Taps’ on your defenses when he wishes to talk mind to mind. You let him in and immediately hear his voice in your mind. “Excellent, they are proceeding exactly as predicted. The trap is set, are you ready?” You quickly mentally go over your hordes positions and plans before answering. “All set. Ready to go the moment the last normal passes by.” You feel him vanish and assume he is turning his full attention to his horde. You watch and wait as the normal pass by below you and set your horde off on their attack. The bus starts rolling slowly but quickly picks up speed and within seconds you have to run to keep up with it as you control the shambler in the driver’s seat to ensure it stays on course. It navigates the bend in the road with only a small scrape along an abandoned car and finally come flying out onto the main road only meters behind where the rearmost guards are standing. You crash it into the buildings on the far side and check your work. The front of the bus is stuck in the now partly destroyed wall of a building and the rear reaches nearly right back to the turning, there is a gap at the back where they could escape but you immediately start moving your horde through it to block them from trying. You hear the Old man speaking and gunfire starting, the sound of a heavy machine-gun peppered with the softer cracks from rifles and know the attack had begun. You swarm your own little horde forward to join in the assault, you immediately feel several fall with bullet wounds but the jeeps gun suddenly goes silent and the hordes quickly over-run the convoy, tearing the normals apart. > You time to clean up The clean-up doesn’t take long. There are two ‘survivors’ from the assault who are taken away by the old man to be kept fresh until he was ready to kill and eat them, the rest are given to the horde along with their own dead and everything is consumed within minutes. The Old man finally makes a personal appearance and heads your way. “Excellent work, the bus was a nice touch, blocked most of the road without the fuss of lots of smaller cars!” You accept his thanks and begin organizing your horde again to count up the losses while you think about your response. “Well I lost nearly a dozen, including wounded I had the others eat. Not bad considering the number of guns they had. How did yours fair?” The Old man looks like he is concentrating for a moment “Nearly three dozen, my left flank took the brunt of the heavy gun before I silenced it.” acceptable losses though to ensure the future of the horde. It looks like he is going to head away when you call him back. “Before we head back, you said this was the beginning and you would tell me more after we were finished here. Well we are now, so what is the big secret?” You are unsure how he will react to the sudden questioning but he simply smiles. “Excellent, thinking like a proper predator and looking for the next pray, I very much approve young man!” He waves you towards the jeep as he talks. “Well firstly we needed our horde to be fed and to ensure there were no enemies behind us, which was the aim of this little raid.” He hops inside and restarts the engine. “This little jeep is a lovely surprise though and will be very useful, you see the infected are too awkward to use guns by themselves, completely lack the co-ordination and fine control to be effective. You can of course fine control a couple yourself to be able to use them, however the concentration required means that you lose most of your control on the rest of the horde. This heavy gun however might well be worth that risk, especially with the two of us.” He pauses as if deciding how to explain before waving you into the passenger seat and beginning to drive back South with both of you directing your hordes to follow. > You finally the reveal “I have an enemy” He begins “Well two actually. They are harbingers like us, well more like me, we became harbingers during the first wave of the virus, before the vaccine and before it became airborne so we have had years to practice. They joined up together and set themselves up in the very center of the city with their own hordes of powerful mutants. They quickly took control of most of the city center and set up a colony of sorts, they actually let normals live there in a reasonable number so long as they obey the rules and treat the pair like Gods in their little playground.” He slows the jeep as he directs groups into holding buildings then continues when he is satisfied they are locked in. “I found all this out right after I had destroyed the stadium and raised my strongest horde, I was overconfident and waltzed right into the city center to add powerful mutants to my ranks, the outskirts were all the normal types of dogs and cats among the shamblers etc. but I had heard that further in there were other types including mutated humans and I wanted to find those. I ran right into the ‘Lords of the New City’s’ horde as they call themselves. They indeed had a couple of the human mutants and they tore through my ranks but I had greater numbers by far and won the first battle. That’s the first I knew of their existence and they of mine. It seems that they had the larger and more powerful hordes overall but they were spread throughout the city center and I had just run into a small group. I obviously pressed the attack as I hoped to reach their little colony before the growing hordes I could sense on my flanks reached me but I was a little too late, they resized I was alone.” For the first time you see clear annoyance on the old man’s face as he speaks. “One of them launched a mental attack on me, trying to invade my mind to stop me. It was the strongest attack I had faced but I was just as strong as him and fended him off easily, sadly the second one then attacked my horde. I knew I could not defend both against two minds so as I shielded myself, they whittled my horde down and took control of large numbers of them. By the time their re-enforcements arrive I had lost over three quarters of my horde and had to flee, leaving almost all the rest behind as well to cover my escape. That’s why I need you; I’ve been training my mind every day since then in order to attack again however I knew I needed an ally, a second mind to shield the horde as I shielded us.” You nod quietly as he speaks. “So this is why he needed me and took all the time to train and test me.” You think to yourself. “Well it’s an interesting proposition but I’d want to know more before we attack” You respond. “Of course, of course, I’ve been researching them since the last battle and have all the information you need back at my little shop!” The Old man happily responds. It seems the prospect of revenge puts him into a good mood. > Back at the apartment Once back at the apartment above his shop you look over all the information the Old man had gathered. They were a pair of Harbingers now calling themselves the ‘Lords of the New City’. They ruled a colony of around a couple of hundred normal survivors, they had no fear of them trying to escape as they city center was still flooded with mutants and other infected. The old man didn’t know why they kept them all, maybe as an insurance supply of food. They control a vast horde between them with groups spread around in a large circle to completely surround the colony. “Well it’s not too much but it’s a good start, I assume you have a cunning plan?” you say. “As cunning as a fox!” He replies, grinning to himself about what must be a reference to something. “Well two options really, the first option is the obvious assault plan. We both push into the city center and grab every infected we sense to add to our horde then attack their little base right away. I know there are far too many infected in there for them to control them all so we would probably reach our limit of control as well before we fought. After that it’s a matter of shielding ourselves and the horde as we attack them and wipe them out. Once they are gone we can overrun the pesky colony to the East of the city too using the more powerful mutants. The other option is for you to go in undercover and help destroy them from the inside as I attack from outside, it’s a lot riskier for you, however if you physically attack when they are mentally attacking me you might be able to take them out before the fight even really begins.” The old man is clearly leaving the choice up to you now, he needs you after all. > You frontal attack, you aren't going to walk right into enemy territory alone. You have no plans to wander into enemy territory alone without backup so you select the frontal assault. The Old Man nods and starts putting the map away. “Excellent! We leave at dawn!” You head to bed, excited for what was to come. As dawn breaks you are both well on your way to the city centre, collecting every infected you find on the way. The Old Man mostly walks in silence but he gives you little bits of advice every now and then “We face two enemies so each attack one, send your horde attack orders first so you need to concentrate on them less later.” You always nod and add it to your information list of how to fight other harbingers, it seems though that the best tactic is simply overwhelming force. Impress upon them your superiority by outright crushing them. It takes a few hours but you finally reach the outskirts of the skyscrapers and start sensing an incredible number of infected. At first you grab every find you can sense but it quickly becomes clear that there are so many here in the towering forest of buildings that you can afford to be picky. A few hours more and each of you is trailing over a thousand infected, with a huge number of those mutants of one variety or another. The Old Man cuts in again “The Lords took every human mutant in the city they could find, moved them close to them so we can’t capture them, they are the hordes main targets.” You once more nod as you walk. It will be interesting to take a few of them once you kill your rivals, after all this was where you were meant to be wasn’t it. Leading a horde, devouring everything in your path and crushing your enemies. You glance left; you would have to kill the Old Man after too the battle. Can’t have him trying to kill you or steal the humans. Suddenly the world becomes clearer and crystalizes for you. It makes perfect sense really, you are not just an Alpha Predator, you are THE Alpha, the rest of existence is for you to rule and devour as you see fit. Anything that opposes you will be crushed and utterly destroyed without mercy. You see the Old Man suddenly look at you with suspicion, you are about to lash out at him for daring to look at you that way when he speaks “Good, you are even stronger!” A compliment, acceptable, you won’t kill him yet, you need to use him first. You simply bod to him and you both continue until you feel the army ahead of you. > You battle in red The army ahead of you seems vast, even with two thousand at your back your hordes are dwarfed by those ahead, and you can sense strange minds amongst them which must mean the human mutants. “They knew we were coming! No matter, we crush them now!” The Old man does not wait and you don’t either, arraying a horde against you is a futile insult and you will crush all those responsible, feasting on their flesh as your final victory over them. You charge your horde at theirs and lash out at the glowing green minds you see half way up a building ahead of you. You feel the old man do the same and each of you slams your anger against the enemy. They seem prepared and you hit against what seems like both of their wills joined together into one shield and it holds, but you can feel its weakness, you know it won’t hold forever. You keep pushing, ignoring everything else but attacking their minds, anything the Old Man taught you is ignored as you are better than him anyway and you will prove that shortly. You can feel their defenses weakening moment by moment, cracks forming and barriers failing, you are stronger, the rightful ruler and devourer of humanity and no weak self-proclaimed Lords can stand in your way. You feel the attack weaken suddenly and spare a shred of concentration to check on what the Old Man is doing. You immediately see his rage has grown and know why. Your forces are being decimated by the enemy, they must have been holding back some of their concentration to direct their forces against you. You let out a hiss the Old Man had lost this way before, how was he not prepared for it again, he was too weak a tool for you to use. You almost lash out at him there an then but the main threat was the Lords and their army. You quickly scan the battle to see what was happening. Your hordes had charged blindly, right into a huge block of shamblers who had soaked up all of the initial attack and taken the brunt of the damage like cannon fodder, then while your army was busy tearing shamblers and other useless infected apart the enemies mutants, including humanoids had clearly just torn right through your forces. The little extra control had turned the battle into a one sided massacre in seconds. You let out an angry roar and concentrate hard on attacking again, leaving the Old Man to try and salvage some of his infected. You lash out hard again at the two minds but without the Old man, you are no longer crushing them, they are holding you at bay, you fall further into rage and push with all your might, thinking that you are still make some headway against them when you feel something hitting your own defenses. You had neglected them and pain shoots into your mind as you quickly shore them up but a small light seems to slip in a crack and your entire mind seems to suddenly explode with pain and colours, blocking all of your senses for several seconds. You stagger back and rub your temples until your mind recovers, it was some cheap trick by them, your defenses were still intact. The old man laughs at you “You fell for such a weak trick? I trained you better than that! Now attack them while I salvage the horde you threw away!” You simply hiss at him then turn back to your attack, they wouldn’t get away with it. Again you lash out and again at the peak of your attack your mind explodes in colours and lights. This time you hear the Old Man swearing when you return and see that the battle has been totally lost, there are also several humanoid mutants moving your way at incredible speed, some small but ridiculously fast, others larger than delivery vans yet still moving at speed. You try and think of the best plan when the Old Man insults you again “Weakling, you couldn’t even distract them properly!” This time was enough and you lash out at him only to be met by his attack, you strive against each other and this time you are almost equally matched. You suddenly see him scream in pain and clutch his head, you try to push the advantage but your own head explodes in pain again and you realize too late that in your rage, you ignored the other enemies. As your senses come back to you, you see the fist of the monstrosity that reached you first. “It’s first is the size of my entire torso.” You think right before it slams into you. You feel your entire ribcage crushing inward and destroying your organs, then your back hits something hard and blood is forced out of your mouth like a fountain. But you are still alive. You try to move, to get away but as you raise your head you see several of the smaller ones coming for you. The big ones now seem more concerned with the Old Man who is screaming at them “I am the End of You! The Endmaster! You cannot stop me!” sadly he is wrong as you see them catch him and tear his upper body in half before beginning to eat him. You turn back to the ones near you, they seem small, almost weak compared to the others until one moves close faster than you even though possible for something to move, one moment it was several metres away and the next it was beside you and your arm was gone. The others then move and you barely feel it as they remove your head. > The Old man lead you into a trap, kill him now! The Old man was too weak and stupid for you to have followed all this time. You were going to wait to prove that to him but leading you into a trap was the last straw. You stop your attack on the green minds in the city, you can destroy them when they are less prepared for you. You lash out at the Old Man’s mind, feeling him instantly recoil and falter. “You see Old man! I am the Alpha here, not you! You are a weak excuse for a Harbinger, no wonder you lost!” You press the attack and feel him trying to block you but then you sense the green minds attacking him too and his defenses shatter. You barely register the surprise mixed with rage which crosses his face as you force your attack into his mind, burning it with the red flames. You watch his nose, eyes and ears spouting out blood and feel him die there and then, mind destroyed by your attack. You laugh aloud in triumph. “At least you will make a fitting meal for me!” You announce as you grab his body. In your rage you had forgotten about your real enemy and they now attack you. Pressing on your mind and attempting to destroy it the way you did the Old Man’s. You lash out in return and they back off for a moment but you can already feel the difference in power. You know you could beat one of them but the two could hold you off until their horde reached you. You run to the Jeep and throw the Old Man’s body inside. The attack has returned and you find that your defense feels a lot weaker than your attack. When you lash out with your mind it feels like spears of flame, able to destroy anything but flames used for a defense feel less substantial and you know they won’t hold out for too long. You floor the gas pedal and start speeding away from the city Centre, back to the North West, You even know the perfect place to make your new base, the old Stadium is empty and defensible after all. As you get further away the attacks weaken then stop. You expect to feel your horde being stripped away but it seems like they don’t need too and you simply lose control as the distance gets too far. “I even added to their defenses now” you growl to yourself as you reach more familiar streets. > The Empty Stadium You reach the stadium as the fuel begins to run dry, there are two spare cans on the sides full of gas though so you aren’t worried and park it at the back where you find a cover big enough to hide it. Time to start building up your empire. It will take time but you are stronger than the Old Man was and you will eventually crush the City Minds and their little haven. The Old Man had the nerve to call himself the EndMaster, as if he could end the world. Well that is your title now and you will become the ruler of the City before destroying the colony to the East. ************************************************ You have found the current end to the Evil Path, this will be extended into a larger and more complete path at a later date, I simply do not have the time to do it before the competition deadline!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The army ahead of you seems vast, even with two thousand at your back your hordes are dwarfed by those ahead, and you can sense strange minds amongst them which must mean the human mutants. “They knew we were coming! No matter, we crush them now!” The Old man does not wait and you don’t either, arraying a horde against you is a futile insult and you will crush all those responsible, feasting on their flesh as your final victory over them. You charge your horde at theirs and lash out at the glowing green minds you see half way up a building ahead of you. You feel the old man do the same and each of you slams your anger against the enemy. They seem prepared and you hit against what seems like both of their wills joined together into one shield and it holds, but you can feel its weakness, you know it won’t hold forever. You keep pushing, ignoring everything else but attacking their minds, anything the Old Man taught you is ignored as you are better than him anyway and you will prove that shortly. You can feel their defenses weakening moment by moment, cracks forming and barriers failing, you are stronger, the rightful ruler and devourer of humanity and no weak self-proclaimed Lords can stand in your way. You feel the attack weaken suddenly and spare a shred of concentration to check on what the Old Man is doing. You immediately see his rage has grown and know why. Your forces are being decimated by the enemy, they must have been holding back some of their concentration to direct their forces against you. You let out a hiss the Old Man had lost this way before, how was he not prepared for it again, he was too weak a tool for you to use. You almost lash out at him there an then but the main threat was the Lords and their army. You quickly scan the battle to see what was happening. Your hordes had charged blindly, right into a huge block of shamblers who had soaked up all of the initial attack and taken the brunt of the damage like cannon fodder, then while your army was busy tearing shamblers and other useless infected apart the enemies mutants, including humanoids had clearly just torn right through your forces. The little extra control had turned the battle into a one sided massacre in seconds. You let out an angry roar and concentrate hard on attacking again, leaving the Old Man to try and salvage some of his infected. You lash out hard again at the two minds but without the Old man, you are no longer crushing them, they are holding you at bay, you fall further into rage and push with all your might, thinking that you are still make some headway against them when you feel something hitting your own defenses. You had neglected them and pain shoots into your mind as you quickly shore them up but a small light seems to slip in a crack and your entire mind seems to suddenly explode with pain and colours, blocking all of your senses for several seconds. You stagger back and rub your temples until your mind recovers, it was some cheap trick by them, your defenses were still intact. The old man laughs at you “You fell for such a weak trick? I trained you better than that! Now attack them while I salvage the horde you threw away!” You simply hiss at him then turn back to your attack, they wouldn’t get away with it. Again you lash out and again at the peak of your attack your mind explodes in colours and lights. This time you hear the Old Man swearing when you return and see that the battle has been totally lost, there are also several humanoid mutants moving your way at incredible speed, some small but ridiculously fast, others larger than delivery vans yet still moving at speed. You try and think of the best plan when the Old Man insults you again “Weakling, you couldn’t even distract them properly!” This time was enough and you lash out at him only to be met by his attack, you strive against each other and this time you are almost equally matched. You suddenly see him scream in pain and clutch his head, you try to push the advantage but your own head explodes in pain again and you realize too late that in your rage, you ignored the other enemies. As your senses come back to you, you see the fist of the monstrosity that reached you first. “It’s first is the size of my entire torso.” You think right before it slams into you. You feel your entire ribcage crushing inward and destroying your organs, then your back hits something hard and blood is forced out of your mouth like a fountain. But you are still alive. You try to move, to get away but as you raise your head you see several of the smaller ones coming for you. The big ones now seem more concerned with the Old Man who is screaming at them “I am the End of You! The Endmaster! You cannot stop me!” sadly he is wrong as you see them catch him and tear his upper body in half before beginning to eat him. You turn back to the ones near you, they seem small, almost weak compared to the others until one moves close faster than you even though possible for something to move, one moment it was several metres away and the next it was beside you and your arm was gone. The others then move and you barely feel it as they remove your head. > You lash out at the city minds, crush them before their horde does any more damage You let out an angry roar and concentrate hard on attacking again, leaving the Old Man to try and salvage some of his infected. You lash out hard again at the two minds but without the Old man, you are no longer crushing them, they are holding you at bay, you fall further into rage and push with all your might, thinking that you are still make some headway against them when you feel something hitting your own defenses. You had neglected them and pain shoots into your mind as you quickly shore them up but a small light seems to slip in a crack and your entire mind seems to suddenly explode with pain and colours, blocking all of your senses for several seconds. You stagger back and rub your temples until your mind recovers, it was some cheap trick by them, your defenses were still intact. The old man laughs at you “You fell for such a weak trick? I trained you better than that! Now attack them while I salvage the horde you threw away!” You simply hiss at him then turn back to your attack, they wouldn’t get away with it. Again you lash out and again at the peak of your attack your mind explodes in colours and lights. This time you hear the Old Man swearing when you return and see that the battle has been totally lost, there are also several humanoid mutants moving your way at incredible speed, some small but ridiculously fast, others larger than delivery vans yet still moving at speed. You try and think of the best plan when the Old Man insults you again “Weakling, you couldn’t even distract them properly!” This time was enough and you lash out at him only to be met by his attack, you strive against each other and this time you are almost equally matched. You suddenly see him scream in pain and clutch his head, you try to push the advantage but your own head explodes in pain again and you realize too late that in your rage, you ignored the other enemies. As your senses come back to you, you see the fist of the monstrosity that reached you first. “It’s first is the size of my entire torso.” You think right before it slams into you. You feel your entire ribcage crushing inward and destroying your organs, then your back hits something hard and blood is forced out of your mouth like a fountain. But you are still alive. You try to move, to get away but as you raise your head you see several of the smaller ones coming for you. The big ones now seem more concerned with the Old Man who is screaming at them “I am the End of You! The Endmaster! You cannot stop me!” sadly he is wrong as you see them catch him and tear his upper body in half before beginning to eat him. You turn back to the ones near you, they seem small, almost weak compared to the others until one moves close faster than you even though possible for something to move, one moment it was several metres away and the next it was beside you and your arm was gone. The others then move and you barely feel it as they remove your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Once back at the apartment above his shop you look over all the information the Old man had gathered. They were a pair of Harbingers now calling themselves the ‘Lords of the New City’. They ruled a colony of around a couple of hundred normal survivors, they had no fear of them trying to escape as they city center was still flooded with mutants and other infected. The old man didn’t know why they kept them all, maybe as an insurance supply of food. They control a vast horde between them with groups spread around in a large circle to completely surround the colony. “Well it’s not too much but it’s a good start, I assume you have a cunning plan?” you say. “As cunning as a fox!” He replies, grinning to himself about what must be a reference to something. “Well two options really, the first option is the obvious assault plan. We both push into the city center and grab every infected we sense to add to our horde then attack their little base right away. I know there are far too many infected in there for them to control them all so we would probably reach our limit of control as well before we fought. After that it’s a matter of shielding ourselves and the horde as we attack them and wipe them out. Once they are gone we can overrun the pesky colony to the East of the city too using the more powerful mutants. The other option is for you to go in undercover and help destroy them from the inside as I attack from outside, it’s a lot riskier for you, however if you physically attack when they are mentally attacking me you might be able to take them out before the fight even really begins.” The old man is clearly leaving the choice up to you now, he needs you after all. > You undercover, get inside and you can take out the enemy without risking your horde, more infected left alive means more ready to attack the Eastern colony after. “I like the undercover plan, they won’t know me so I can get inside and take them out personally as soon as you appear and take their attention.” You say. The Old man simply nods and starts putting the map away carefully. “Then we leave in the morning! I will escort you closer but once we near the centre you will be on your own. Remember to act nice around them, can’t have them attacking you before you get inside!” You nod back and snack on a bit of what you think must be a human bicep muscle before getting a couple of hour of rest. As the mornings first light arrives you grab a few handfuls of flesh and you both set out in the jeep again, this time towards the city centre. It’s not long before you cover a good distance, riding is clearly faster than walking and before you know it you are walking away from the Jeep towards the city centre alone, the Old man heading off into a building to set himself up for a few days. “Time to get things going then!” you think to yourself as you begin sensing infected ahead of you, already some mutants mixed in with the normal shamblers and fast types. > You start taking them over, it's always best to move with your own little horde for protection You aren’t going to march into enemy territory undefended so you quickly grab control of any infected you sense until it finally turns to lunchtime and you have over a hundred infected following around you. “Old man was right; I already have a horde this big after only a few hours, this really is the jackpot for forming an army.” You keep going but stop building your horde at around 150, You could control more but you realize that it is somewhat pointless as there are simply so many around you. Shamblers in every building practically, and since every building around is a huge multistory, that makes for a lot of infected. You carry on forward, only stopping briefly to eat the rest of the flesh you had brought with you and by dinner time you are keeping yourself occupied by swapping out horde menders, dropping the shamblers and taking more mutants. A couple feel slightly different when you force your control over them but they act exactly the same once you take their minds so you keep them too. Finally as night approaches you sense a very large number of infected ahead who aren’t moving and when you reach out you immediately realize that they are under someone else’s control. You are still deciding how to proceed against what must be over 1000 mutants when you feel the pressure hit your mind. You force up your defense against the attack like you had practiced with the old man, envisioning slabs of steel slammed up against the pressure of the assault but most of what he showed was how to attack so you know you won’t hold out long. You do know how to talk though, it took several days to learn but the Old Man had taught you a very useful trick and you send out a small thread of thought through your defenses and you feel the attack lessen very slightly and a voice finally enters you mind through it. “This is unexpected, you wish to talk this time? Last time you attacked us you seemed more like the rage driven egotist than the chatty type.” The voice says. You quickly respond, having already thought through several possible conversations. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘this time’ but I have never met you before, never mind attacked you.” You immediately feel surprise coming from the other mind. “You are actually telling the truth, you aren’t the one who attacked us before, you shared his colouring and came from the west so we had assumed it was him coming again. But in that case why are you entering our domain with an army?” You respond carefully “I had heard there were others like me here, I didn’t intend to attack you with my horde, and I just never like to travel alone for safety reasons.” There is silence for a time before an answer comes. “You may pass but your horde cannot, you must release them then pass through alone or there will be no entry.” You think about this for a moment > You who are they to order you about, they have their horde for protection and you have yours. Who are they to tell you where you can take you own horde? You didn’t train all this time with the Old Man just to be bossed about. “I’m coming in but I will be bringing my horde for safety, I can’t trust you won’t attack the moment I release them.” You say as you begin forward again towards the gap that had formed in the army ahead. “I’m not going to bow to their wishes for everything; I’m the Alpha predator as much as them and they will learn that soon.” You get no response from the mind in the city and you let the link drop. “Good, they know not to try and boss me around” you think as you walk. Sadly as you reach the army ahead they move as one large unit to attack your horde from the front and sides simultaneously. You are about to order your troops to fight back when your mind also comes under attack again and you are forced to concentrate on defense again while your troops are helplessly torn to pieces. You know it’s only been seconds but the attack feels like it’s been going on for hours when you feel the enemy horde change a little and suddenly there are two minds crushing into yours with almost as much force as the Old Man used to use on you. One of them you might hold off but two of them quickly crush your defenses and sparks of pain shoot through your mind as the last defense falls. The pain intensifies for a moment, past what you can bear so you are almost happy when it suddenly ends and blackness overwhelms you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t going to march into enemy territory undefended so you quickly grab control of any infected you sense until it finally turns to lunchtime and you have over a hundred infected following around you. “Old man was right; I already have a horde this big after only a few hours, this really is the jackpot for forming an army.” You keep going but stop building your horde at around 150, You could control more but you realize that it is somewhat pointless as there are simply so many around you. Shamblers in every building practically, and since every building around is a huge multistory, that makes for a lot of infected. You carry on forward, only stopping briefly to eat the rest of the flesh you had brought with you and by dinner time you are keeping yourself occupied by swapping out horde menders, dropping the shamblers and taking more mutants. A couple feel slightly different when you force your control over them but they act exactly the same once you take their minds so you keep them too. Finally as night approaches you sense a very large number of infected ahead who aren’t moving and when you reach out you immediately realize that they are under someone else’s control. You are still deciding how to proceed against what must be over 1000 mutants when you feel the pressure hit your mind. You force up your defense against the attack like you had practiced with the old man, envisioning slabs of steel slammed up against the pressure of the assault but most of what he showed was how to attack so you know you won’t hold out long. You do know how to talk though, it took several days to learn but the Old Man had taught you a very useful trick and you send out a small thread of thought through your defenses and you feel the attack lessen very slightly and a voice finally enters you mind through it. “This is unexpected, you wish to talk this time? Last time you attacked us you seemed more like the rage driven egotist than the chatty type.” The voice says. You quickly respond, having already thought through several possible conversations. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘this time’ but I have never met you before, never mind attacked you.” You immediately feel surprise coming from the other mind. “You are actually telling the truth, you aren’t the one who attacked us before, you shared his colouring and came from the west so we had assumed it was him coming again. But in that case why are you entering our domain with an army?” You respond carefully “I had heard there were others like me here, I didn’t intend to attack you with my horde, and I just never like to travel alone for safety reasons.” There is silence for a time before an answer comes. “You may pass but your horde cannot, you must release them then pass through alone or there will be no entry.” You think about this for a moment > You let them all go and head in alone, no point making them mad now, you're playing the long game You head further into the city centre alone and the hordes part for you, you can feel them dispersing to either side around you. “The Old Man said they keep them evenly spaced out in a ring, does this mean they knew I was coming?” You think as you walk. Finally you see the two minds of the harbingers ahead of you without having to stretch your senses out, and you also see the minds of what seems like over 300 humans with them, the very thought makes you hungry. As you get closer you see another link reaching out for you and as before you join in to let them converse with you. “You are only about an hour’s gentle walk away but you will need to circle a little to your left, that’s North, to get inside, only one entrance you see and everything is guarded to prevent any problems in our little haven.” You carefully force your hunger and feelings down, if you’ve been getting snippits of theirs then they might get some of yours and that might not be good. “Of course, it’s getting dark but that isn’t really an issue for our kind, I’ll walk faster though so I don’t make you wait.” There is a pause and you are about to drop the link when you hear one more question “You came from the West where our enemy lurked, Have you have any interaction with him, he has the feel of an old man, a very angry one at that.” You pause for a moment; you didn’t expect this question so bluntly so you have to choose your words carefully. > You tell some of the truth, that you encountered someone that might match that description but no details, if they push cover up the involvement. The best tactic is a small truth to back up the lie right? Well, obviously it would be to slaughter then and feast on their flesh but for now you have to play nice. “I did encounter someone like that, they indeed seemed very angry. Coming here and meeting you seemed like the better option when compared to staying there with a clearly hostile harbinger.” There is a slight pause before the next question “And he didn’t attack you, no offence but I don’t see you being alive if he did.” You tut to yourself, got to cover a little more “Well I think he was trying to recruit me, I think he would have attacked once he realized I wasn’t taking him up on the offer but I was too far away already.” This time the reply comes right away “Oh how interesting, I presume he wanted your help in attacking us, he seems like the angry vengeful type and we did send him away in disgrace barely holding onto his life afterall. So you weren’t tempted to join him?” > You enough is enough. They aren't buying the half-truths as the whole story so Lie outright about it "Not at all, I got away as fast as I could to come here!' You emphasize, you can't let them know the truth There is a longer pause than before and you get a little nervous when you hear the voice again. “Ok just up ahead you’ll see the underground entrance on your right? Good, that’s the entrance you’ll need to take, we are quite nicely set up in an old arena here, if was half underground before so makes it very defensible as you can imagine!” The tone seems jovial and the tunnel leads towards the minds you sense so you head inside. As you walk through the tunnel which has obviously had some work done to it with reinforcements and walls removed or built you sense the humans all gathering up ahead. “Is something going on up there?” You ask down the link and immediately get the response “Of course! It’s not every day they get to see a new harbinger so this is somewhat of an event! Everyone has gathers for it. Some of the minds to the East don’t agree with our stance on the matter which is why we separated but we see that we are superior to humans and should be treated as such so we rule here like Gods in a way, when we say there is an event, EVERYONE attends, not that they’d want to miss this anyway.” You heartily agree with the statement. You ARE better than humans, they are your prey after all, you can see their position though. Keeping them like pets to obey and serve you before eating them wouldn’t be so bad either. You see some light up ahead and walk out into what looks like the centre of an arena with 10 foot walls of concrete topped with another 10 feet of metal and reinforced glass. The humans are all on the other side of the glass cheering down at you like fans watching a concert. Something clearly isn’t right though. You sense the minds above you and looking up you see two cloaked figures sitting on a platform that extended out from the wall over the tiered row s of seats giving them the best view both around the room and down into the pit. “Welcome to the City Arena! Rules by the Lords of the New City, this is the place where your post-apocalyptic fantasies can become a reality, for the right price!” You now know that something is definitely wrong as a massive battered steel sheet slams down behind you, trapping you in the arena. Even with your enhanced strength you aren’t sure you could budge it without a lot of time and something to level with. The announcement continues though, the speakers voice amplified through a speaker system hanging high above of the roof. “Today we have a very rare treat for you, in the ring is a harbinger folks! That’s right, like our very own Lords of the city he has superhuman abilities and can control infected, however this one tried to lie to the Lords and we know how they take that don’t we!” The crowd responds with even more cheers. > You what you get for lying You aren’t going to stand for this, being put on display like some animal while the humans throw money around and a large board has odds displayed! Odds displayed.. You look around as see another large metal sheet across the way beginning to rise. “That’s right folks, he might be a lot weaker than our lords but he is still a big challenge so we are sending in a big challenger! It’s Nate the Sentinel!” You lash out at the Lords above you but their defenses are solidly in place, you try the human minds, you are certain you can affect them but it seems that the two harbingers are protecting them too. The door does not wait for your tests though and before you have time to try the walls you see a huge beast lumber through. Like a man but grotesquely mutated into something that looked more like an ogre from the old myths than a human anymore. You can easily beat any mutant you have come across barehanded, even the large dog types but as you size this thing you realize that it must be 12 feet tall and covered in muscles, this won’t be an easy fight. The beast comes charging at you and you barely dodge in time as it moves faster than anything that size should be able to move. You don’t have many options left > You concentrate on its mind, if you get control of that then you can use it to let you escape. You lash out at Nate’s mind but find it protected, you push with everything you can to force your way in and register that its stopped moving at least while your try. The defense is slippery though, every time you think you have forced a way in, you find it there again. You finally think you have it when you feel a sudden spike against your own mind. Your defenses hold but you are stunned for a second. Your senses return just in time to register that your right arm and ribcage is crushed and you are flying at a tremendous speed directly at the wall. You impact with a sickeningly hard crunch and feel more ribs breaking. “Oh dear me folks, the Lords just indicated to me that instead of fighting Nate, the idiot tried to attack his mind and steal him from them! That left him wide open for Nate’s punch! Give the man a hand though, I never seem anything that didn’t turn into jelly at one of those hits never mind still be moving!” You cough up blood and stagger to your feet. Just in time for Nate to reach you again. You even see the punch coming but can’t get out of the way in time and take it full to the chest. You get slammed back into the wall and know your done for, your organs are jelly and your blood is pooling at your feet. “And it’s over folks, even if he is still breathing, he isn’t moving! That’s a win in two punches for Nate the sentinel, always a crowd favorite even if his opponent was weak. You want to protest and tell them you weren’t weak when just register being lifted in the air. “Oh and Nate is hungry folks!” you hear right before the crunch.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t going to stand for this, being put on display like some animal while the humans throw money around and a large board has odds displayed! Odds displayed.. You look around as see another large metal sheet across the way beginning to rise. “That’s right folks, he might be a lot weaker than our lords but he is still a big challenge so we are sending in a big challenger! It’s Nate the Sentinel!” You lash out at the Lords above you but their defenses are solidly in place, you try the human minds, you are certain you can affect them but it seems that the two harbingers are protecting them too. The door does not wait for your tests though and before you have time to try the walls you see a huge beast lumber through. Like a man but grotesquely mutated into something that looked more like an ogre from the old myths than a human anymore. You can easily beat any mutant you have come across barehanded, even the large dog types but as you size this thing you realize that it must be 12 feet tall and covered in muscles, this won’t be an easy fight. The beast comes charging at you and you barely dodge in time as it moves faster than anything that size should be able to move. You don’t have many options left > You concentrate on the two 'Lords' above you, hit their minds hard enough and you could get away or even defeat them You mentally lash out at the Lords above you again and once more find their defenses holding you at bay. You concentrate on just one of them and try to force you way in, putting all your anger and rage into the attack. You feel his defenses buckling under the pressure but then you find the problem with your plan. While you concentrated on your attack you stopped moving. Nate the Sentinel did not stop moving. You feel the impact and turn back to your normal senses just in time to register that your right arm and ribcage is crushed and you are flying at a tremendous speed directly at the wall. You impact with a sickeningly hard crunch and feel more ribs breaking. “Oh dear me folks, the Lords just indicated to me that instead of fighting Nate, the idiot tried to attack our rulers! That left him wide open for Nate’s punch! Give the man a hand though, I never seem anything that didn’t turn into jelly at one of those hits never mind still be moving!” You cough up blood and stagger to your feet. Just in time for Nate to reach you again. You even see the punch coming but can’t get out of the way in time and take it full to the chest. You get slammed back into the wall and know your done for, your organs are jelly and your blood is pooling at your feet. “And it’s over folks, even if he is still breathing, he isn’t moving! That’s a win in two punches for Nate the sentinel, always a crowd favorite even if his opponent was weak. You want to protest and tell them you weren’t weak when just register being lifted in the air. “Oh and Nate is hungry folks!” you hear right before the crunch.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t going to stand for this, being put on display like some animal while the humans throw money around and a large board has odds displayed! Odds displayed.. You look around as see another large metal sheet across the way beginning to rise. “That’s right folks, he might be a lot weaker than our lords but he is still a big challenge so we are sending in a big challenger! It’s Nate the Sentinel!” You lash out at the Lords above you but their defenses are solidly in place, you try the human minds, you are certain you can affect them but it seems that the two harbingers are protecting them too. The door does not wait for your tests though and before you have time to try the walls you see a huge beast lumber through. Like a man but grotesquely mutated into something that looked more like an ogre from the old myths than a human anymore. You can easily beat any mutant you have come across barehanded, even the large dog types but as you size this thing you realize that it must be 12 feet tall and covered in muscles, this won’t be an easy fight. The beast comes charging at you and you barely dodge in time as it moves faster than anything that size should be able to move. You don’t have many options left > You concentrate on the combat, it's based off a human so it has human weaknesses, hit it's eyes, nose and tendons, then see if it can fight you. You can’t beat two of them mentally so you will have to concentrate on the fight in front of you for now. Nate is huge and clearly going to be stronger than you but you might have speed and intelligence on your side. He charges you at amazing speed and swings a punch but you are prepared, you dodge it at the last second and land a punch of your on on its side as you move around it. You had punched right through metal car doors before and know it must have hurt the thing when it let out a roar and span wildly at you. You stayed being careful though, letting it attack and only hitting on counters. Finally you see your chance and as it lunged too far you jump its punch and hit it right in the eye, feeling it pop under the impact. You watch it stagger back and follow up with a running jump to hit the other eye before it recovers, feeling it pop too. “Let’s see you fight blind!” you sneer at the monster as it clutches its face and staggers back into the wall, making the whole thing shake. “Oh my! What a turn of events!” You hear blaring out. “The new entry has managed not only to avoid Nate’s attacks, but he blinded him folks! Let’s see those odd rolling!” You see a frenzy of activity as the humans obviously rush to place their bets on you as is only right. You are the Alpha here, not their ‘Lords’ or this monster and you would show all of them soon enough. You start towards Nate at a leisurely pace, it should be easy to finish off now at least. Suddenly its hands drop and it looks at you. “Oh dear folks, the new guy waited too long and Nate grew his eyes back! He’s going to be mad now!” You swear as the Nate charges you, faster and clearly angrier than before, he clips you with one punch and you are sent spinning away feeling several ribs shatter into pieces. “If that was a direct hit I’d be a gonner.” You think as he charges again but this time you roll under the punch and tear out his Achilles as you pass. You head the satisfying crunch as Nate smashed into the wall having lost the use of one foot and you can see he is stunned so you press the advantage and attack again, blinding it again and punching right through its flesh several times until it starts wheezing and looms like it might be a while before getting up. “And the fight is over folks! The new guy has defeated the crowd favorite, Nate the Sentinel!” You sense the monsters movements changing but instead of coming after you it slinks back against a wall near the door it came in “Everyone give a hand for our newest entrant!” you hear as the crowd goes wild. > You soak up the arenas glory You get caught up in the praise for a second until you see the door begin to move, this might be your chance to escape so you race towards it as it opens only to see several humanoids blocking your way. You skid to a halt a few feet short as the announcer comes back on. “Oh dear me folks, he tried to make a break for it but He found Madglee and the 3J’s blocking his escape, That’s right folks, he faced one sentinel and now he faces two of them!” He drops his tone to a fake stage whisper “The three J’s are really three people but they share one mind so they count as one right?” The crowd goes wild as the four enter and you quickly see three of them look similar to humans, just stretched out a little and identical to each other. The fourth one looked like a cross between them and the monster from before, it also looked semi-intelligent which worried you more. You back off as Nate slipped out the back of the area, already clearly healing its wounds and the four new entries move out towards you. You try and plan some tactics but suddenly they are all moving to attack. You instantly see that the 3J’s are faster than you and they seem to dodge attacks they can’t see, while Madglee circles you, not attacking yet. You start taking hit after hit, not hard but they are adding up and you feel bones breaking and bruises forming. You’ve had enough of them and suddenly charge at one, lashing out physically and mentally at the fast opponents who were dodging around you and keeping you from moving. You realize it was the wrong choice when suddenly the back of your head explodes in pain and you fly hard into the wall ahead of you. “Oh dear me folks, the 3 J’s kept him locked town tight and Madglee simply waited for the right moment to end things instantly!” You barely have time to pick yourself up when the last blows fall.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The best tactic is a small truth to back up the lie right? Well, obviously it would be to slaughter then and feast on their flesh but for now you have to play nice. “I did encounter someone like that, they indeed seemed very angry. Coming here and meeting you seemed like the better option when compared to staying there with a clearly hostile harbinger.” There is a slight pause before the next question “And he didn’t attack you, no offence but I don’t see you being alive if he did.” You tut to yourself, got to cover a little more “Well I think he was trying to recruit me, I think he would have attacked once he realized I wasn’t taking him up on the offer but I was too far away already.” This time the reply comes right away “Oh how interesting, I presume he wanted your help in attacking us, he seems like the angry vengeful type and we did send him away in disgrace barely holding onto his life afterall. So you weren’t tempted to join him?” > You enough is enough. They aren't buying the half-truths as the whole story sell out the Old man, he'd be the first to sell you out if it benefited him. These guys are clearly too suspicious to buy the lies. The Old Man would also sell you out in a second if it benefited him, so why not sell him out first and join the stronger side? “Ok to be very honest, he was stronger than me, by a lot. I only found my abilities a couple of months back and he recruited me when I didn’t really have a chance of fighting him. I did train with him for a while as he wanted me to help him and I got a lot stronger. Seems he wanted me to help him beat you guys as he didn’t want to risk the fight alone. I learned what I could from him and now would much rather join you guys as he is a bit crazy and would most likely kill me the moment you were defeated anyway.” There is silence for a time before an answer finally comes. “Well that is very interesting, and actually the truth which we didn’t initially expect. We shall let you join us, do understand though that you will still be under some suspicion for a time.” You nod, that’s pretty much what you expected “Sounds about what I expected so I’ll accept those terms.” You say as you walk closer. A different voice joins in the conversation now “As you get closer you will see a large underground entrance, then one building past that on the right you will see a metal door set back inside an entrance way, that’s the way you need to take in. If you see anything strange, do not attack it, they are semi-autonomous but still under our control and will not attack unless provoked.” You shrug to yourself “not as if anything could really surprise me anymore” you think as you see the underground entrance and head one building past it. You see what looks like a normal skyscraper lobby and almost wonder if you had gone too far when you see what looks more like a huge metal slab than a door part way into a side corridor. “Huge defensive door but tucked where people walking by won’t easily see it, smart.” As you get closer it swings open to reveal a huge monstrosity holding it. The roof here must be over 10 feet high and the thing is still hunched against the ceiling to be able to fit and its bulk blocks most of the corridors width, like a human mutated to be the biggest, most muscular abomination you could imagine. “Gorram-it, I take it back, I can still be surprised, you’re like some monster from mythology aren’t you?” You mutter as you decide about what to do. Surprisingly the thing growls at you in response. “Oh, and you seem to understand me, that’s a bit worrying too.” You say. You carefully edge past the thing as it makes no move to attack and you notice that the door is several inches thick of metal, and that the thing easily pulls it shut behind you even though it’s not on hinges. “Seems those muscles aren’t for show either, I can see why I wouldn’t want to pick a fight with you” you tell the monster which seems to take it as a compliment and grins at you, which is a truly horrifying sight. > You welcome to the thunderdone! You head down the corridor ahead and past several smaller doors, opened by other strange mutated humans. You make note that the walls and ceiling here is re-enforced, probably after knocking down walls to make the tunnel. You start hearing cheering up ahead as you come into a small lobby area. “Nearly there!” you hear the first voice saying “There are doors and corridors off this room but you need the blue one marked ‘Balcony’.” Then the link drops. You have some suspicions now about a trap, but why let you pass all the abominations which could probably kill you in the tight confines of the corridor only to try and kill you now? You head through the arch and up the stairs and walk right out into what looks like an old circular arena, lit from above with a large pit in the middle, walled by concrete topped with glass and steel. Crowds of humans line the glass, looking down and cheering like they are at a concert. “Welcome to the New City Arena!” you hear thundering above you, and looking up you see the suspended PA system as the announcer continues “The Lords have told me that we have a special guest here today, as so we are putting on a special show for you all!” place your bets and give a cheer for your competitors!” The crowd goes wild as you see giant metal doors in the pit opening. You catch sight of a section sticking out of the balcony and immediately recognize the minds of the two cloaked figures sitting on it as the harbingers. One of them waves you over and you move through the crowd until you reach their little dais, sticking out over the crowd below. There are now humans near them so you walk the last few feet quickly and find an empty seat for you beside them. “Welcome to our little community!” The nearest one begins “This is obviously our arena where we get our entertainment. Obviously living areas and all that are down other tunnels and in other buildings but we thought we would greet you in proper fashion today!” He indicates the pit and you see a pack of mutant dogs walk out into the large open space, on the other side you see a much large group of infected, shamblers and fast types enter. The Harbinger continues “As you see, we have brought back the coliseum, we have infected fight for our entertainment, and occasionally humans who break the laws here, a small group tried to rebell against us a while back, we gave them weapons and sent them in against Nate, who you met at the front door, he is one of our sentinels. It turned Nate into a crowd favorite and he ensured that the peace was kept, no-one has tried real insubordination since then!” You think for a moment before replying as you watch the infected standing still as the humans shout to make bets based off numbers displayed on a big screen on one wall “But the humans, don’t you eat them? That’s how we get stronger and they are simply prey.” You can almost feel the disapproval of the men beside you and you sense new colour swirling in the glow of their minds “Not at all, it seems the Harbinger of the West has been lying to you. Eating humans has no effect on your abilities at all. Only your mind and training does. You got stronger as you believed in what he was saying and because you trained. But it is also why we nearly killed you on sight. Your decision taints your mind and we can see it.” You don’t really know what to respond to this. But your overwhelming urge is to lash out, you were honest but now they were lying to you? Were they simply trying to indoctrinate you to use you like the old man? You follow your urge, you know they are lying as you ate humans and got stronger, in just a few weeks of eating humans and training you became superhuman yourself. Attack physically and mentally, once they are dead, their community and the humans will be your personal living food locker. You force your urges back down, the longer you spent with the Old Man and the more humans you ate, the more violent and volatile you became however they don’t really have a reason to lie to you right now. Find out what they are saying then decide the truth for yourself. > You follow the urge Tainted? You are not tainted by anything, you are the alpha predator of the weak humans below you and you will prove it by killing their ‘Lords’ in front of them and feasting on their flesh. Once you are in charge the games can continue but you will eat the humans as you watch. You lash out at them and make a lunge towards them at incredible speed but you feel both attacks suddenly blocked. The two men in cloaks moved just as fast as you and they are now pinning your arms in grips you can’t break. “You see, I told you we can’t trust a red, once they go that way they are ruled by the infection and lose all reason.” One says to the other “Sadly in this case you were right, I thought since his colour had shades and wasn’t set yet that he could still chance but I guess not.” “Don’t talk over me!” You shout at them, you are about to continue and tell them of what you will do to get your revenge when you feel something slamming into your mind and you have to use all your concentration to fend it off. You only hold for a second though as a second attack shatters your defense and you feel pressure inside your mind. Suddenly it vanishes and you don’t feel their minds anymore. “There, I left all your abilities and mind intact but you lost all of your… mental prowess shall we say.” One of them say cheerily to you “An impressive feat if I say so myself, mental brain surgery! Literally!” he chuckles at his own joke. You are about to say something when you feel yourself suddenly thrown out over the crowd and fall right into the centre of the pit. You try and lash out at them but find all of your mental senses gone; you can only feel what you did when you were a normal human. You panic for a moment but the announcer comes back on the PA system. “That’s right folks, our special event is that our Lords have captured an evil harbinger and stripped him of his mental powers! He is still incredibly strong and fast, but let’s see how he does against our hordes! The winners are the infected who deliver the killing blow, will it be mutants of walkers!” You looks up just in time to see all of the infected and mutants rush at you. You fight well, you still have your speed and strength and kill a large number of them but the small wounds add up. You lose your left arm first to a large mutant dog, you killed it but it had already severed the flesh. Your leg is broken by a shamber latching onto it while a fast type slammed into you. After that it goes quickly. It ends as a mutant tears your windpipe out, the last thing you hear is the crowd cheering your death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head down the corridor ahead and past several smaller doors, opened by other strange mutated humans. You make note that the walls and ceiling here is re-enforced, probably after knocking down walls to make the tunnel. You start hearing cheering up ahead as you come into a small lobby area. “Nearly there!” you hear the first voice saying “There are doors and corridors off this room but you need the blue one marked ‘Balcony’.” Then the link drops. You have some suspicions now about a trap, but why let you pass all the abominations which could probably kill you in the tight confines of the corridor only to try and kill you now? You head through the arch and up the stairs and walk right out into what looks like an old circular arena, lit from above with a large pit in the middle, walled by concrete topped with glass and steel. Crowds of humans line the glass, looking down and cheering like they are at a concert. “Welcome to the New City Arena!” you hear thundering above you, and looking up you see the suspended PA system as the announcer continues “The Lords have told me that we have a special guest here today, as so we are putting on a special show for you all!” place your bets and give a cheer for your competitors!” The crowd goes wild as you see giant metal doors in the pit opening. You catch sight of a section sticking out of the balcony and immediately recognize the minds of the two cloaked figures sitting on it as the harbingers. One of them waves you over and you move through the crowd until you reach their little dais, sticking out over the crowd below. There are now humans near them so you walk the last few feet quickly and find an empty seat for you beside them. “Welcome to our little community!” The nearest one begins “This is obviously our arena where we get our entertainment. Obviously living areas and all that are down other tunnels and in other buildings but we thought we would greet you in proper fashion today!” He indicates the pit and you see a pack of mutant dogs walk out into the large open space, on the other side you see a much large group of infected, shamblers and fast types enter. The Harbinger continues “As you see, we have brought back the coliseum, we have infected fight for our entertainment, and occasionally humans who break the laws here, a small group tried to rebell against us a while back, we gave them weapons and sent them in against Nate, who you met at the front door, he is one of our sentinels. It turned Nate into a crowd favorite and he ensured that the peace was kept, no-one has tried real insubordination since then!” You think for a moment before replying as you watch the infected standing still as the humans shout to make bets based off numbers displayed on a big screen on one wall “But the humans, don’t you eat them? That’s how we get stronger and they are simply prey.” You can almost feel the disapproval of the men beside you and you sense new colour swirling in the glow of their minds “Not at all, it seems the Harbinger of the West has been lying to you. Eating humans has no effect on your abilities at all. Only your mind and training does. You got stronger as you believed in what he was saying and because you trained. But it is also why we nearly killed you on sight. Your decision taints your mind and we can see it.” You don’t really know what to respond to this. But your overwhelming urge is to lash out, you were honest but now they were lying to you? Were they simply trying to indoctrinate you to use you like the old man? You follow your urge, you know they are lying as you ate humans and got stronger, in just a few weeks of eating humans and training you became superhuman yourself. Attack physically and mentally, once they are dead, their community and the humans will be your personal living food locker. You force your urges back down, the longer you spent with the Old Man and the more humans you ate, the more violent and volatile you became however they don’t really have a reason to lie to you right now. Find out what they are saying then decide the truth for yourself. > You force it down There are two of them and one of you, they are also much more experienced than you. Attacking now would be suicide. You force your urges back down and after a moment you think a little more rationally again. “It makes complete sense that the Old Man lied to me about things, he was a vengeance driven psycho afterall, he just wanted me to help him, probably the only reason he didn’t kill me.” You give yourself a moment then respond. “What do you mean?” You sense surprise from them as one speaks “Well it seems I was wrong, he held the urge back, you were correct my friend, so long as the red isn’t set there is still some hope for him!” You look t them then add “That doesn’t really tell me what you mean by these colours, or where my abilities really develop from.” The other one laughs “Sorry about that, were had a rather heated debate about you before you arrived and you seem to have provided the answer in my favour. We will explain everything while we watch the entertainment!” You hear the announcer providing commentary as the two groups in the arena below you rush each other and begin tearing each other to pieces. You mostly concentrate on what you are being told though. “You see your power has nothing to do with what you eat, you developed it the moment the infection altered your brain and body. It’s completely mental really, development is based on two things rather like a muscle. Training to make it stronger and understanding to know how to train and use it, as it were.” He pauses as you see three mutant dogs tear the limbs off a shamber right before a fast type leaps on one of their back and bites a chunk out of its neck. “As I was saying, the training is the obvious part. The other part is more understanding and belief, firstly you must believe that the abilities are possible, then you must believe in what you are and what your role in life is.” The fight begins winding down in the dogs favor as you expected, the shamblers and fast types had the numbers but the dog pack was stronger and faster. He looks at you “look at our minds and describe them to me.” > You understanding You concentrate on your senses and describe the impression of their minds that comes to you “They are like two suns compared to the dull glow of the humans below us, almost like they are a deep green with some other colours moving under the surface.” You see the man lean back in his throne-like chair “Excellent, and the other harbinger seemed like an angry red with swirls of darker colours under it yes?” You nod in agreement as he continues “The colours represent how you see yourself and your role, we believe it represents how much control the infection has over your mind and decisions, The red means you have lost any shred of humanity and are more like a rage driven animal than a human. You retain your intelligence of course, but you see humans and harbingers as mere prey and you lose control to your urges, like the one you just felt to kill us.” He raises an eyebrow to you and you nod to indicate that you are following along and that he was right about the urge to kill them “You colour is nearly red you see but it is not set, there are still other distinct colours there too which means you are not yet fully set in your decision, you believed what the Harbinger taught you but your final choice to live that way was not yet made, close, but not final.” He pauses to let you think. “So if I have given into my urges more and fully excepted that I was a preditor out to eat everything I would have been fully red? What does your green mean then?” You see the man smile under his hood “Exactly, and had your colour turned fully red we would have killed you the moment you got close, almost all harbingers would. Your last vestige of reason would have gone and the option to be anything other than a crazed killer would be removed from you. As for our green, it’s a complicated one, not one of the ‘pure’ colours as others describe them. Our green means we have accepted that we are not human and not normal infected. We see ourselves as a separate race above the others but not as their predators, as their next evolution and obvious rulers. We also see infected as nothing, hence our past-time here. They lack minds and are only good for fighting and entertainment.” You take time to think as the infected left alive in the ring feed on the dead, then all leave and the corpses are dragged out by new infected, probably to eat later. A new set of ‘combatants’ enter. This time a huge infected bear verses a large horde of shamblers. One of the Lords whispers over the announcer’s commentary “The bear is very strong but far too dumb to act as a sentinel; it does heal well though so it always wins in the end.” You nod and keep thinking for a bit. You can appreciate their stance, different and better than humans and infected but not their predator. It will be something to think on, you haven’t eaten anything but human in a while now though and you are already hungering for it. “So what about food, and you said ‘Pure’ colours?” You finally ask. One of them nods as he replies, still facing the games. “Blue and red, they represent the ‘pure’ decisions as some call them. Red you know, blues are called guardians, the fastest and easiest ways to describe it is that they think they are superheroes, and I don’t mean that in a funny way. They truly believe they are humans who are granted their powers for a greater purpose to help or serve humanity. The Eastern colony is mostly ruled by them.” You smirk at the description and the idea of serving humans but one of the men responds “Oh I wouldn’t smirk at them until you see their power, their mental defense is unrivaled in its strength and adaptability they are truly forces to be reckoned with, like your old teacher is, his attack is fuelled by his rage and will be stronger than other colours, but his defense is weak. We are of one of the many in-between colours with our own strengths.” This gives you pause, they lower themselves to serve humans but they are un-matched in aspects of their power. You truly will need to think more and come to your decision. One of the men continues “Oh and as for food, you really eat whatever you want so long as it matches your choice, we eat infected flesh and normal human food, either works. You will probably find it safest to eat infected flesh for now as normal food won’t sit well until your colour moves further from the red. Don’t try to eat any of our humans though, killing without our permission means you end in the pit.” You watch the rest of the entertainment as you think and you are finally shown to a fairly nice room through a few tunnels and up some stairs, you guess it’s probably a 6th floor apartment in one of the surrounding buildings. > You final choices You spend most of the night thinking on all you had found out. There are now several paths open you and you feel that you need to come to a choice. You have thought several different things over the past few weeks and each holds interest, the only one you can’t bring yourself to believe is that you are a gifted human sent to protect them. “Too long with the Old Man to ever be able to truly believe that I guess.” You think as you cycle through things. The two Lords here didn’t give their names yet but you like their position, choosing the red is still and option of course, a very attractive one, accept that you are truly superior to all other as the Old Man did and gain massive power, you would have to eventually kill the Lords and the Old Man too but you could easily do that later. They also didn’t go through all the possible colours or decisions, so there are other choices you could come too, they all involve moving away from the red though and accepting that you aren’t an alpha predator sent to earth to eat everything. You consider everything, but eating humans just feels right. They warned you about going red but what is wrong with power and standing on top of the food chain on your own terms, you are already in so they won’t kill you right away and that will buy you the time you need. You consider everything and the red is very tempting but they warned you strongly against it, you want to be on top but not at the expense of EVERYTHING else. You will find a way to rule and do as you wish, but not the red path. > The red path Going Crimson You choose the red. You considered all things but you are a true ruler and you will not be bound by others ideals. You will stand on top of the world and the food chain! You suddenly feel things crystalize around you, your senses clear and the haze around other minds reduces, you can see the humans minds clearly now, as well as the other harbingers, all of them your prey. You’ve made the right choice and already feel more powerful for it, you could crush the Lords and take their community, eating the humans at your leisure, and when the Old Man comes, you can devour him. How pitiable that he actually was so weak that he had to practically beg for your help. You flex your powers and see that your mind is like a fire now, as you stretch it out you can imagine the force of it crushing and burning everything before it. You suddenly notice one of the Lords sending you a link an laugh to yourself a little, the fools even let you inside and taught you how to be stronger! You accept the link to give them their final message before crushing and devouring them. “You chose the red then?” one asks you instantly. You smirk and let the emotion carry over the link “Of course, what other real choice was there? Some weak compromise in the middle? Lowering myself to ‘protect’ my prey? No, I chose my rightful place!” You feel disappointment and pity. Once you would have wondered at it but now that option is not there, it was an insult and that must be met with destruction, nothing more or less. You lash out instantly, reveling in your new strength and feel your mind crashing into one of the harbingers, you can feel his defenses instantly begin to weaken. “See my power, your weakness means your death now that I am whole!” You announce as you push harder to completely cave his mind in and destroy him but you hear the other one respond. “Sadly not dear boy, did you really think we left you to make this choice without planning? Of course you did, reds do not think, they are like rabid dogs, only fit to be put down.” You are about to respond in anger and lash out at him too when you feel an attack slam into your own mind and you are forced to defend against it, weakening your own attack. You can feel the defenses strengthening against you and know you could beat one of them but not while the other was attacking you. “If you were capable of it you should have learned from your teachers defeat, we do not have your attack or blues defense but we have a finesse each of you lacks. Like this for example.” You feel a sudden strange impact on your mental defenses and something slips through causing all of your senses to trigger at once, filling your head with pain and light. You try to recover and lash out again but suddenly feel your arm vanish, you turn back to your normal senses and realize there are human mutants in the room with you and one of them is holding your severed arm. You roar at them and forgetting alla bout the other harbingers in your rage you try and lash out mentally and physically at the enemies around you. Your mind explodes in pain and light again and once you recover you find yourself against a wall and see the monsters in front of you now holding both of your arms and a leg, you feel the blood draining from you as one of the Lords speaks to you. “It is too bad, we really thought you might join us, but it seems that the 3J’s and Madglee get to fest on you instead. Your mind explodes one more time and you never recover.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You spend most of the night thinking on all you had found out. There are now several paths open you and you feel that you need to come to a choice. You have thought several different things over the past few weeks and each holds interest, the only one you can’t bring yourself to believe is that you are a gifted human sent to protect them. “Too long with the Old Man to ever be able to truly believe that I guess.” You think as you cycle through things. The two Lords here didn’t give their names yet but you like their position, choosing the red is still and option of course, a very attractive one, accept that you are truly superior to all other as the Old Man did and gain massive power, you would have to eventually kill the Lords and the Old Man too but you could easily do that later. They also didn’t go through all the possible colours or decisions, so there are other choices you could come too, they all involve moving away from the red though and accepting that you aren’t an alpha predator sent to earth to eat everything. You consider everything, but eating humans just feels right. They warned you about going red but what is wrong with power and standing on top of the food chain on your own terms, you are already in so they won’t kill you right away and that will buy you the time you need. You consider everything and the red is very tempting but they warned you strongly against it, you want to be on top but not at the expense of EVERYTHING else. You will find a way to rule and do as you wish, but not the red path. > You find your own path Leaving the red behind You are tempted by the red, but it is not worth loosing yourself to gain a little more power, and the Lords hinted that they might have other abilities that the reds do not. You will work on your own choice here with them until you are sure of your course. A couple of hours later one of the Lords links to you and you join them again. They are both clearly happier with you and mention that your colour had already lightened, evidence of you rejecting the red. You spend the next week with them, learning a few tricks that the Old Man hadn’t taught you and getting used to new food. You ate the flesh of the infected that died in the arena and it wasn’t so bad. It didn’t have the rush of fresh human but you got more used to it the more you ate and your old hunger reduced now that you knew it wasn’t even needed. You even get to really enjoy the special arena events the Lords host. The Old Man soon makes his appearance though to make things more interesting. You are eating lunch when the Lords contact you and direct you to a ledge on one of the buildings, it is 60 stories up, which is only half way up the building they tell you that they can’t go too high or they won’t get the best view. As you stretch your senses out you see the tiny red sun on the western horizon, slowly getting closer. “It seems he is attacking in the hopes of you following his plan to kill us as he does so, it is your move now friend, what do you choose to do?” One of them says to you. They showed you how to reveal lies In a mind by how the colours change, it is not exact but it is fairly accurate and you know they are much better at it than you, part of their being green you guess so you cannot lie to them. > You say "I will help the Old man, I owe him that much" You realize nearly instantly that this was a bad choice; you actually just told two harbingers that you would help their enemy try and kill them. You try and take it back but before you can open your mouth you feel the punch on your back and go sailing out into the air. Even with your toughness and healing ability you aren’t going to come out well from a 60 story fall You do however have time to think about your own foolishness on the way down before finally hitting the road below.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Leaving the red behind You are tempted by the red, but it is not worth loosing yourself to gain a little more power, and the Lords hinted that they might have other abilities that the reds do not. You will work on your own choice here with them until you are sure of your course. A couple of hours later one of the Lords links to you and you join them again. They are both clearly happier with you and mention that your colour had already lightened, evidence of you rejecting the red. You spend the next week with them, learning a few tricks that the Old Man hadn’t taught you and getting used to new food. You ate the flesh of the infected that died in the arena and it wasn’t so bad. It didn’t have the rush of fresh human but you got more used to it the more you ate and your old hunger reduced now that you knew it wasn’t even needed. You even get to really enjoy the special arena events the Lords host. The Old Man soon makes his appearance though to make things more interesting. You are eating lunch when the Lords contact you and direct you to a ledge on one of the buildings, it is 60 stories up, which is only half way up the building they tell you that they can’t go too high or they won’t get the best view. As you stretch your senses out you see the tiny red sun on the western horizon, slowly getting closer. “It seems he is attacking in the hopes of you following his plan to kill us as he does so, it is your move now friend, what do you choose to do?” One of them says to you. They showed you how to reveal lies In a mind by how the colours change, it is not exact but it is fairly accurate and you know they are much better at it than you, part of their being green you guess so you cannot lie to them. > You say "The Old Man is a psycho and I owe him nothing, I will help you" You aren’t going to help a psycho slaughter everyone here and turn this place into a giant living meat locker. Even if you were, telling two harbingers to their faces while 60 stories up was just the same as committing suicide. They nod to you “Your job will simply be to shield, you can leave the infected gathering below to us, as well as any attacking. So long as you concentrate only on shielding and we aid you in that, we will win easily.” > You nod and prepare for battle You watch the Enemy get closer and closer and begin sensing his horde, you judge about 1500 infected, and a great number of those mutants. Normally this would have terrified you, but right below you were arrayed out nearly 4000 infected of various types and an extra thousand or so shamblers in a block in front of them. You can also sense quite a few of the strange infected minds that indicate human mutants “The Old Man has brought a large army today, I don’t see how he expects to win though.” One of the Lords comments. “You really went all out on the defense then.” You comment for lack of anything better to say. One of the men laughs “Oh this is just a small part of the forces we could bring in but we knew he couldn’t have brought more than two thousand so we judged these sufficient and kept the rest in place to guard other areas.” You nod, you had seen some of the ring of defenders that these two had moved into place and it was no idle boast that this was just a part of their forces. The approaching red mind suddenly flares and you slam your defenses into place, putting your shield over the two Lords through the link you had formed. You feel the other two adding strength to your defense as you feel some pressure pushing lightly on your mind. Suddenly you feel rage strongly emanating from the Old Man and his attack slams against your defenses. Despite his rage and power, with your two allies supporting you, your defenses hold strong and you know you can easily hold him at bay. “It seems he knows you are choosing to support us then!” one of the Lords jokes. “Just keep the defenses up and this shall be fast.” You do as asked and keep your defenses up but it quickly becomes apparent that it won’t matter soon. His horde was caught up in the block of shamblers, obviously devoid of fin control and will. In comparison, being free to do as they wish with you protecting them, the two Lords start dismantling his army in huge chunks while attacking him. Within minutes his attack has weakened then stops as he has to split his attention between his forces and defending. You know it’s no use though as they pick up their attack on him once they took the more dangerous of his forces away and send in their own army to slaughter the rest. You watch him rage and fight harder but with the two of them attacking him, you can see he is losing badly and suddenly staggers back clutching his head. One of your allies shouts out “Ha flashed him! It’s over now!” and you can tell it as, before he recovers two of the humanoid mutants reach him and literally tear him apart. You expect some shouting or celebration but the Lords simply stretch then start heading back inside while chatting “Well, we will eat well tonight at least, that was good exercise, I wonder how all the betting went?” You are confused for a moment but a quick scan shows that all the humans are in various buildings nearby watching the battle “You had them watch and bet on whether you would win or lose?” You ask after a moment. “Oh dear me no.” one replies “We had them bet on enemy forces, losses and how long he would last. The big bet was what would kill him, us or the Army, it seems we only took the assist and the army stole the kill though.” He jokes. You shrug and follow them down inside, glancing at the screen in the arena as you pass you see that it has “BATTLE OF THE CENTURY! BZ, SETH AND SURPRISE NEWCOMER VS. PSYCHO OLD MAN!” displayed on it. “What do you even need money for now?” you finally ask. “Oh, not much, but it’s fun to fill bath tubs with.” BZ replies as you all head to a late lunch. > You relaxing in the New City Life is pretty good after that and the Lords can teach you a lot, the entertainment is good too! ********************************************************************* Well done, you have reached another of the good endings in this version, later this arc will be greatly extended but I ran out of time so it ends here, congratulations!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head further into the city centre alone and the hordes part for you, you can feel them dispersing to either side around you. “The Old Man said they keep them evenly spaced out in a ring, does this mean they knew I was coming?” You think as you walk. Finally you see the two minds of the harbingers ahead of you without having to stretch your senses out, and you also see the minds of what seems like over 300 humans with them, the very thought makes you hungry. As you get closer you see another link reaching out for you and as before you join in to let them converse with you. “You are only about an hour’s gentle walk away but you will need to circle a little to your left, that’s North, to get inside, only one entrance you see and everything is guarded to prevent any problems in our little haven.” You carefully force your hunger and feelings down, if you’ve been getting snippits of theirs then they might get some of yours and that might not be good. “Of course, it’s getting dark but that isn’t really an issue for our kind, I’ll walk faster though so I don’t make you wait.” There is a pause and you are about to drop the link when you hear one more question “You came from the West where our enemy lurked, Have you have any interaction with him, he has the feel of an old man, a very angry one at that.” You pause for a moment; you didn’t expect this question so bluntly so you have to choose your words carefully. > You lie. You can't have them know you are affiliated with him, tell them you only recently came from the North before turning East to the city centre and didn't meet another harbinger. You Lie, can’t have them knowing the Truth. “I don’t recall anyone by that description, although I only recently came into the West of the City from the North, above the old stadium area. I really just passed through and didn’t stay to investigate if any others were there.” There is a longer pause than before and you get a little nervous when you hear the voice again. “Ok just up ahead you’ll see the underground entrance on your right? Good, that’s the entrance you’ll need to take, we are quite nicely set up in an old arena here, it was half underground before so makes it very defensible as you can imagine!” The tone seems jovial and the tunnel leads towards the minds you sense so you head inside. As you walk through the tunnel which has obviously had some work done to it with reinforcements and walls removed or built you sense the humans all gathering up ahead. “Is something going on up there?” You ask down the link and immediately get the response “Of course! It’s not every day they get to see a new harbinger so this is somewhat of an event! Everyone has gathered for it. Some of the minds to the East don’t agree with our stance on the matter which is why we separated but we see that we are superior to humans and should be treated as such so we rule here like Gods in a way, when we say there is an event, EVERYONE attends, not that they’d want to miss this anyway.” You heartily agree with the statement. You ARE better than humans, they are your prey after all, you can see their position though. Keeping them like pets to obey and serve you before eating them wouldn’t be so bad either. You see some light up ahead and walk out into what looks like the centre of an arena with 10 foot walls of concrete topped with another 10 feet of metal and reinforced glass. The humans are all on the other side of the glass cheering down at you like fans watching a concert. Something clearly isn’t right though. You sense the minds above you and looking up you see two cloaked figures sitting on a platform that extended out from the wall over the tiered rows of seats giving them the best view both around the room and down into the pit. “Welcome to the City Arena! Rules by the Lords of the New City, this is the place where your post-apocalyptic fantasies can become a reality, for the right price!” You now know that something is definitely wrong as a massive battered steel sheet slams down behind you, trapping you in the arena. Even with your enhanced strength you aren’t sure you could budge it without a lot of time and something to lever with. The announcement continues though, the speakers voice amplified through a speaker system hanging high above of the roof. “Today we have a very rare treat for you, in the ring is a harbinger folks! That’s right, like our very own Lords of the city he has superhuman abilities and can control infected, however this one tried to lie to the Lords and we know how they take that don’t we!” The crowd responds with even more cheers.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I like the undercover plan, they won’t know me so I can get inside and take them out personally as soon as you appear and take their attention.” You say. The Old man simply nods and starts putting the map away carefully. “Then we leave in the morning! I will escort you closer but once we near the centre you will be on your own. Remember to act nice around them, can’t have them attacking you before you get inside!” You nod back and snack on a bit of what you think must be a human bicep muscle before getting a couple of hour of rest. As the mornings first light arrives you grab a few handfuls of flesh and you both set out in the jeep again, this time towards the city centre. It’s not long before you cover a good distance, riding is clearly faster than walking and before you know it you are walking away from the Jeep towards the city centre alone, the Old man heading off into a building to set himself up for a few days. “Time to get things going then!” you think to yourself as you begin sensing infected ahead of you, already some mutants mixed in with the normal shamblers and fast types. > You simply move them aside, might be best not to approach with an army at your back You don’t want to appear too aggressive right away so you simply clear yourself a path through the infected, moving them aside as you walk and closing them back up behind you. “If this ring is part of their defense it’s probably best I leave it intact, and having a large number of infected might be useful in an emergency.” You think as you walk further and further in. After a few hours you have given up counting all the infected in the area, this part of the city is made up of blocks of giant multi-story sky-scrapers which all must have had thousands of people inside each before the infection hit if not more. Now even if only 1 in 100 is left alive then that’s still hundreds of infected for every building you walk past, and the mutants are everywhere too. You have no idea if they were strays, pets or migrated here after the infection had taken over but there was no shortage of food for them here at least. You move them aside like the others, a few feel slightly different when you try to take them over but they move aside like the rest and you ignore them once you know you are safely past. It’s nearly dinner time when you finally sense the gathering horde ahead of you. You carefully prepare your defenses and reach your mind out towards the city centre. You are just starting to sense something there when your senses show a strong green glow and you feel pressure on your mind. It’s like an attack but weaker than the ones the Old Man put you through when you were training and you are a lot stronger now than when you were training so you don’t even need to try to keep the pressure from your mind. > You they are weak, the Old man said he was stronger than them individually when he faced them before. Take this one out here and now. The second one won't be an issue alone. You Aren’t going to let some weakling push you around, they might have a lot of infected around them but it means nothing if their will is less than yours. You leave the bare minimum defense against the attack then lash out as hard as you can against the Green haze in the city centre that you know represents you enemy. You know if you can crush them in a single fast attack that the second one won’t stand a chance. You visualize your attack and send it racing out, almost gleefully imagining the moment it shatters right through the enemies weak and neglected defenses and you crush their mind. But it doesn’t. Your attack smashes into a fully formed barrier, easily as strong as anything you could make. You feel it flex and buckle slightly but it is immediately shored up while the attack on you suddenly intensifies. You realize your mistake too late, it was a trap to test whether you would attack and you failed. You frantically try to press your attack while holding your defense up but the enemies defense easily holds you to a stalemate while their attacks strains you defenses to their maximum. You try and think of a way out when the second attack slams into your mind and shatters your already weak defenses. You feel intense pain shooting through your mind. You can barely handle the pain and are almost glad when everything ends.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t want to appear too aggressive right away so you simply clear yourself a path through the infected, moving them aside as you walk and closing them back up behind you. “If this ring is part of their defense it’s probably best I leave it intact, and having a large number of infected might be useful in an emergency.” You think as you walk further and further in. After a few hours you have given up counting all the infected in the area, this part of the city is made up of blocks of giant multi-story sky-scrapers which all must have had thousands of people inside each before the infection hit if not more. Now even if only 1 in 100 is left alive then that’s still hundreds of infected for every building you walk past, and the mutants are everywhere too. You have no idea if they were strays, pets or migrated here after the infection had taken over but there was no shortage of food for them here at least. You move them aside like the others, a few feel slightly different when you try to take them over but they move aside like the rest and you ignore them once you know you are safely past. It’s nearly dinner time when you finally sense the gathering horde ahead of you. You carefully prepare your defenses and reach your mind out towards the city centre. You are just starting to sense something there when your senses show a strong green glow and you feel pressure on your mind. It’s like an attack but weaker than the ones the Old Man put you through when you were training and you are a lot stronger now than when you were training so you don’t even need to try to keep the pressure from your mind. > You play everything safe, sure the attack is weak but the other one hasn't turned up. Hold fast and see what happens. You aren’t going to risk everything on a blind attack right now, you don’t even know if this is a real attack of just a test so you simply stop moving and hold your defenses in place, waiting for their next move. It isn’t long before you see a thread of thought reaching out to you and you do the same just like the Old Man had taught. You immediately hear a voice. “Hmm, you look like our old enemy but you came without an army and didn’t attack while I appeared weaker than you. Strange.” You aren’t sure how to respond to this so go with the playing it simple option. “I’m not your old enemy; I’ve never been to the city centre before so I don’t think we have encountered each other before.” The response comes with some small feelings of surprise “The truth is seems, you aren’t him after all, in that case what brings you to our little dominion alone as you are?” Again you carefully consider before answering “I heard about the two of you and came to meet you.” There is a longer pause this time before the answer finally comes “You may enter however do not try to control any infected now or once you are inside our ring.” You had already decided to not bring a horde so you happily start forward alone once the communication thread vanishes<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With first light you wake and check on your horde “Still right where I left you.” You think as you dress and head down into the street. You had left them all locked in a small hospital clinic you passed a couple of blocks South, you thought it was funny to pack it full of infected. You gather them together near the apartment when the Old man comes to you. “Interesting news, it seems they have left the stadium a few minutes ago!” You turn West and concentrate hard, it’s still many miles away but you get a faint sense of haziness there. “Now now, don’t strain yourself, you are not practiced enough to sense properly over that distance, it’s even at the limit of my own abilities.” He looks over your Horde. “Excellent, all gathered, well you better get over to the North side and prepare to close the trap, remember that they have a jeep so just standing in the road won’t cut it!” he heads off cheerfully and you feel a large number of infected in a nearby building leave his control, they must be your part of the horde. You take control of them and along with your own horde you head North to look for some good blockade materials. As you pass North you begin noticing a change, the closer to the Highways, the more cars there are. “Huh, they all went for the highway to escape and blocked each other in.” you mumble as you look around. “Well at least the cars might make the blockade easy enough. You begin commanding your shamblers to start pushing the cars and taking off handbrakes when you notice the bus on a side road. A large solid looking city bus, easily capable of blocking the main road by itself. “Hah, almost too easy!” you say aloud as you redirect all of your forces to the bus and maneuver it pointing south, it would have to go round a bend to get into position but any closer and they could spot you as they pass so you put a shambler into the driving seat and take careful control of its mind so you can ensure the bus gets where it needs to go. Then you wait, you carefully send your senses out West again a few times, not pushing it like before and after an few tries you begin to sense them coming closer and closer, moving at a solid pace. “They must all be jogging or running,” you suddenly panick and this they have enough vehicles for all of them but as they approach you realize that they are too spread out to be packed into a vehicle. You settle back and track their progress, you have at least an hour to watch them approach and after a few minutes begin picking out individuals in the larger haze, you then start trying to assign names to them and think back to your time with them. It occurs to you for the first time in two weeks that you didn’t really need to go through with this. You could betray the old man and help the people from the stadium; they did treat you like a friend after all. Stop concentrating on the haze; it’s causing you to think funny. You’re a predator and they are just pray Watching the haze so closely for so long must have brought these thoughts on, however they are correct, why not help them. They helped you before and you are sure they would accept you if you saved them. > You what have you been doing, you need to help them You have to help them, the Old man was clearly altering your thoughts to make you do what he wanted but you were originally human, becoming stronger doesn’t change that so you should help the stadium survivors. You know that watching the haze so intently for a couple of hours brought this on but you feel like you know it’s the right thing to do. You have control of a couple of shamblers in their path and walk them out to try and signal but they are killed instantly by what feels like intense gunfire. “The old man wasn’t kidding about the armored jeep at least.” You start running towards them, intending to warn them in person about the trap but almost immediately feel the old man attempting to sense your thoughts. You block him out but know it will only hold for a few minutes, he can’t bring his full concentration onto you while controlling his horde. You begin hearing them coming and are about to run out into the street when you remember the shamblers and instead hide behind a corner and start shouting to get their attention. You feel the pressure on you mind intensify and quickly send the order for all the infected you control to attack the old man’s horde. You feel it subside slightly as he has to divert his attention again. “Who’s there?” you hear the convoy shouting to you. You step out. “It’s me! Don’t shoot!” You see all the guns pointed at you and the jeep slows but doesn’t stop, the pressure is already returning to your mind, you have little time. “It’s a trap, the harbinger has blocked the road off ahead, he has a huge army of infected ready to take you out.” You were about to say more when you feel the Old man’s mind slam into yours, your defenses hold but you are driven to your knees with the pain. You wince then speak again. “You have to change course, get away…” You feel the second mental attack and your defenses fail completely, the pain nearly blacks you out and you fall prone on the ground. You hear the Old man in your head. “Betraying me was a foolish mistake.” You hear him say sadly before he leaves your mind. You almost celebrate, “He couldn’t finish me off” you think, you try and stand but feel too week from the mental attack and collapse again. You hear the Captain talking. “Bring him with us, but chain him up carefully. We change course, loop South near the city center to try and bypass any blockade.” You are about to rejoice, they were taking you with them. Sadly in your current mental state you couldn’t sense the mutant dog behind you in the alleyway and in your physical state there is nothing you can do as it leaps onto your back and bites into your skull, crushing it instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hear a chuckle from inside and hear an old man’s voice calling to you. “Oh don’t worry so much and come on in, your abilities will grow stronger in time, you are simply less practiced than me!” You start walking to the door and see and old man with a broom sweeping some near invisible dirt out of the door before standing aside for you to enter. You walk past him to find yourself in the fanciest tailors you’ve ever seen, with suits you never could have afforded before the infection spread. You glance again at the old man then back to the suits. He is clearly well dressed but not in anything as fine as the clothing in the store. You hear him chuckling again as pulls the shutters down and closes the door leaving everything in a dim sort of twilight. “Yes I am the tailor not the customer. I made every suit in this store to sell to others but it never felt quite right to wear one myself.” You can make out that he is looking you up and down, clearly not bothered by the lack of light. “You on the hand might need some new clothing; I’ll adjust something for you later. For now let’s head upstairs.” He heads off still holding his broom and you follow him closely, trying not to bump into anything until you reach the second floor and light from the open windows makes it easier to see. You let him get several feet ahead of you to see him better. He is clearly a frail old man and you begin wondering if he is really strong enough to be the other harbinger when he moves faster than you thought possible and in right in front of you, pinning your arms in a grip that doesn’t even let you move an inch. “Yes indeed I am the harbinger, and yes I am defiantly strong enough.” He releases you and walks over to a small chair beside a table covered with slices of meat. “Come have a seat, and yes, I can read your mind. Your powers are developing but they are still in their infancy, I will train you to use them properly so long as you don’t disappoint me.” You take a seat and immediately recognize the smell of the meat as fresh human. The old man smiles. “Yes I usually have a couple hanging around in old cellars to keep them fresh for me, my servants bring them to me when they find them and I divide them between myself and my horde.” He is clearly expecting you to eat, so you do. It’s not as if you haven’t eaten humans before and its nice to have human flesh again, it makes your whole body feel better. “Oh good, I was a little worried that you had sided with humans and might refuse to eat the meat but that’s the first test past. Here is the second.” The old man says to you as a shambler comes in through a previously closed door and begins to lunge for you. Your old reflexes tell you to go for your bat but your new practice kicks in and you reflexively lash out with your mind instead. You see it suddenly stumble back against a wall as if physically struck, before sinking down and not moving any more. “Ah, and the second test passed too, you didn’t have to kill it though you know?” The old man says to you. “Erm, sorry about that, it was reflexive and I’ve only been using this ability for a couple of weeks, I didn’t know I could kill them.” You suddenly feel your nose bleeding again and quickly pich it to prevent the blood pouring out on your clothing. The old man gives you a very happy look. “Only a couple of weeks, well that is great news, it means you are developing very quickly. The quicker the development, the higher the potential! Well I accept you as my student. Over the next few weeks I will be training you in all aspects of your gift, starting with shielding your mind from others, we aren’t the only ones out there you know.” The old man pauses and looks at you intently. “That is of course if you choose to learn from me, if so I will teach you for a few weeks and you will then aid me in destroying the last holdouts in the stadium, the greater plans will be revealed after that. Or you can leave now.” You glance around; he isn’t holding a weapon or acting threateningly. You also are pretty sure he didn’t lock the shutter and a glance out the window shows that the streets are clear. You try and sense the infected in the area again but try and block the old man’s mind out as you do so to prevent the painful blindness from before. It somewhat works and you sense that all the infected are right where they were when you sensed them the first time. He clearly isn’t making any obvious moves to trap you. Choose to stay and learn, it’s what you are after all, a harbinger. Back out politely and head back to the stadium, you were happier there and the old man is a bit creepy. > Back out politely and head back to the stadium, you were happier there and the old man is a bit creepy. You decide to leave, you’re not sure you want to learn from a slightly creepy old man and you were getting to like some of the people in the stadium, the food was even sitting better. You get to your feet. “Well I think I should be going, thank you for the offer.” You tense but the old man makes no move as he replies. “This is a shame, you had so much promise and even managed to slightly shield my mind when you checked on my horde. Clearly a fast learner. It is too bad indeed.” Seeing his lack of aggression you head for the door, as you reach the stairs down you feel a sudden impact and looking down you see a foot of broom handle sticking out of the front of your chest around where you no longer beating heart should be. “Well at least you will make a very special meal.” You hear the old man say as you tumble dying into the stairwell.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab one of the men’s bags, partly full of tins, and carefully clean any trace of blood off your face. Leaving the guns behind, you bash in the head of the slowly dying fast type to make it look like you fought, then head back to the stadium. Once close you start running and panting a little for effect. The guards see you some distance away and they are already with guns aimed past you at the street when you get close. “They swarmed us, I was the only one fast enough to get away!” you call up. The gate opens and you are ushered inside quickly before seeing it being barricaded again from the inside. You tell your story about seeming to be ambushed by them when you were in the store a couple more times and it seems like everyone is buying it. Just a few days before the other scavengers to loose teammates told a similar story after all. You are given the rest of the day and the next one off from duties and spend it relaxing in your tent, simply prying with your mind as far as you could and drawing any infected you find, closer to the stadium. It seems that wherever you leave them, they stay. Sure they wander around nearby streets and buildings sometimes but never too far from where they started and they seem to usually return there. By dinner of the second day you have a fair number of shamblers and 1 fast type in the surrounding alleyways and buildings and you hear over dinner that everyone is sure that the harbinger had returned. Seem like this sort of thing fitted right into their suspicions. Time to get to work, the food here feels like its poisoning you now the more you eat of it. You have your army ready and know the enemy defenses perfectly; they think you are one of their defenders after all. At night the doc often sleeps in his office and there are only two guards so you are sure you can get the 4 shamblers out to go wild inside then all you’ll need is to get some on the ones from outside into the stadium to complete your victory. You are considering the best way to do this when you sense all the infected you brought close suddenly begin leaving towards the South and you cannot bring them back no matter how hard you concentrate. The last one pauses and you can feel that it seems to be waving at you for a few minutes, beckoning you after it almost, before it turns and heads South and eventually out of your range to sense it. “Well that’s odd.” You think as you watch it vanish along with your immediate attack plans. “Best bet is that they were right and the original harbinger is back, seems he wants to talk to me too.” The morning will bring a new decision to make, Go to meet the other harbinger or ignore his summons and take down the stadium yourself with your own army; you’ll just need to gather a new one first. > You ignore him, you will deal with the stadium first then decide his fate later Ignore the fool who stole your army for now, you can deal with him once you practice your own powers more and wipe out the stadium community. You spend the morning planning and stretching your powers as much as you can until you finally manage to detect something further North “Must be up near the highway.” You think as you head to find the Capt. He is a little surprised at first but you carefully explain that you really just want to keep busy and heading out with a scavenging party to the North should be perfect since it’s the furthers from the city centre and so should be the safest. He reluctantly agrees with you and the team for the day gets redirected to one of the Northern targets. You get to tag along as the 5th man. It only takes a couple of hours to get to the Highway on ramps directly North and your team raids the convenience stores there for supplies, finding a surprisingly good amount, seems like after the highway got fully blocked with cars and infected, no-one came back here. You also get lucky with the infected, you find a few dozen can be sensed from this far North so as you grab tins of Spam off a shelf you concentrate on beginning to steer them all South. Mostly shamblers and a few fast ones. You find one mind that’s different from the rest, hazy like a normal but also cracked and venerable with twisted knots inside. You give it a test push to see if you can affect it but it reacts erratically and you immediately realize that it would be a lot more work to try and affect it in any meaningful way so you leave it alone for now. No point getting a nosebleed now just for a single crazy. Watching the others work at filling their bags you realize you’re in the perfect spot for a meal again and the hunger begins to rise. You even have a proper little horde this time you could use. > You call in the horde to swarm them and feed, the fresh human flesh boosts your healing so maybe your powers too. You decide that this is simply too good an opportunity to pass up and call the little horde forward to surround your team. You simply have to eat and test if their flesh can increase your powers faster, you also need to get the taste of their rations out of your system, the more of them you eat, the worse they make you feel so it will be good to get some real food again. You carefully begin positioning your horde to ambush the group. You’ve never actively tried to control this many at once and you begin to feel the strain after just a few seconds. However you force yourself to keep going, fighting off a splitting headache until you are all half way back and you have the horde move it, fast ones followed by the shamblers. You feel your nose bleeding again and your headache becomes nearly unbearable but once the attack has begun you releases some of the control knowing that they can finish the job themselves. The team is almost instantly overwhelmed and you quickly join in the feeding, just controlling the ones nearest you to ensure they don’t attack you like they normally would. You rest for a few minutes after and can almost feel the fresh human flesh refilling your energy, the headache even passes a little and finally you clean off the blood and begin heading back to the stadium trying the same act as before. Sadly the Capt. is there this time and they don’t seem to believe your story. “It seems to me that a lot of our problems began right when you arrived here and now two entire teams get wiped out with you untouched. You can understand how this looks can’t you?” You try and profess your innocence but your headache is back in full swing having brought your horde closer in to the North of the stadium and you find it hard to think straight never mind sound convincing. You finally get control of yourself and begin to try and reason your way out of this when you feel a sudden pain like a whip in your mind and you vomit at your own feet. Sadly you have been eating a reasonably amount of human flesh and skin and blood is clearly still recognizable in the mess. You don’t even get a chance to run before all the shots ring out and you fall backwards riddled with bullets.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ignore the fool who stole your army for now, you can deal with him once you practice your own powers more and wipe out the stadium community. You spend the morning planning and stretching your powers as much as you can until you finally manage to detect something further North “Must be up near the highway.” You think as you head to find the Capt. He is a little surprised at first but you carefully explain that you really just want to keep busy and heading out with a scavenging party to the North should be perfect since it’s the furthers from the city centre and so should be the safest. He reluctantly agrees with you and the team for the day gets redirected to one of the Northern targets. You get to tag along as the 5th man. It only takes a couple of hours to get to the Highway on ramps directly North and your team raids the convenience stores there for supplies, finding a surprisingly good amount, seems like after the highway got fully blocked with cars and infected, no-one came back here. You also get lucky with the infected, you find a few dozen can be sensed from this far North so as you grab tins of Spam off a shelf you concentrate on beginning to steer them all South. Mostly shamblers and a few fast ones. You find one mind that’s different from the rest, hazy like a normal but also cracked and venerable with twisted knots inside. You give it a test push to see if you can affect it but it reacts erratically and you immediately realize that it would be a lot more work to try and affect it in any meaningful way so you leave it alone for now. No point getting a nosebleed now just for a single crazy. Watching the others work at filling their bags you realize you’re in the perfect spot for a meal again and the hunger begins to rise. You even have a proper little horde this time you could use. > You hold off for now, they are a suspicious lot and probably won't believe that you are the only one to get away twice in a row. You are highly tempted to wipe this team out just like you did with the last one but you know the guards would be too suspicious of you if that happened and it would make your life a lot harder so you hold off for now and instead have your new small horde hold off a few miles North of you and follow behind as you all return to the stadium. You’ve never actively tried to control this many at once and you begin to feel the strain after just a few seconds. However you force yourself to keep going, fighting off a splitting headache until you are all half way back. You feel your nose beginning to bleed this time and quickly plug it up tight with some balls of cloth. It means the blood backs up and you have to swallow it, but it’s better than having it streaming down your face again. You finally arrive back at the stadium and release your active hold on the infected to the North, leaving them all just inside your current maximum reach as you head inside. You receive several comments about how pale and terrible you look and quickly try to explain that maybe it was too soon after looking your other team. You quickly drop off the supplies and collapse into you tent with your head feeling like it’s going to split open where you fall unconscious for the rest of the evening and right through the night. > You waking up as lord of your own little horde. When morning comes you wake slowly and groggily, the last remnants of your headache still present however you immediately notice that you can sense your horde still milling about where you left them. You can even sense some of the stragglers further back that you had lost control of last night due to the pain. Trying to direct them right now is out of the question though as you know you over-did it the day before and you don’t want to risk any more bleeding incidents right now, there is only so many times you can lose half a pint of blood from your nose before people realize something is wrong. You find the Doc waiting for you at breakfast to check on your condition. “I heard you looked like death last night, one of the guards almost shot you before your team convinced him that you were ok and hadn’t been bitten.” You think fairly carefully before replying. “Yeh, I think it might just have been a bit soon after losing my other team, I thought being back out there might help me get over it but I guess it had the opposite reaction. Feeling better today but still got a headache so might be best if I rest for a bit.” The Doc nods and goes to chat with the Capt. who comes over. “We saw things like this back in the wars so don’t worry too much about it, it should mostly pass in a day or two, just let the doc here know if you start feeling overly paranoid or having flashbacks in the next week. You and your team brought back a huge haul of tins and supplies so don’t worry about the scavenging or other duties for a few days either.” He heads off and you finally relax. They were giving you exactly what you needed to destroy them. You head back to your tent with full permission to do nothing for a couple of days and fall asleep again, waking about lunchtime with your headache finally gone. You do however notice that one of the hazy blobs that mark a normal is still hanging around near your tent exactly where it was when you went to sleep. “Seems they are having me followed” You think “best act as normal as possible for a bit then” You head outside and see some of the guys you are friendlier with eating so you head over to join them, and sure enough your shadow follows, you never catch a glimpse of him so he must be one of the military ones or just very good at following people “Maybe they put an ex-stalker after me” you think with a laugh as you start joining in the conversation over lunch. By the next morning of acting normal again your shadow vanishes and you feel up to flexing your powers again. You reach out to your horde and find that, as expected, it’s simple to control them all at once now. “So keep pushing the limits, but not too far or for too long” You think to yourself as you plan your next move. > You hit the stadium right away, get infected inside before they can react and defend properly You have the horde, the ability to use them and you even have a reasonable plan, why wait? You head down into the basement on the premise of getting checkup by the doc and even get a few comments from the guards about them being glad you are feeling better. What a surprise it was going to be for them. Once in his office, you left him swing the door shut then, while his back is still turned you snap his neck from behind. “Huh, much easier than expected” you think as you carefully move his body out of sight from the corridor. You give it a few minutes then exit the office, closing the door behind you and head back out to the two waiting guards who unbolt the door for you and let you through. “Clean bill of health then?” one asks. You smile as you reply “Better than ever!” You punch him in the throat, planning just to crush the wind pipe but you feel his spine snap at the impact as you move to the next guard, you have your hand over his mouth and his neck snapped before the first even hits the floor. You quickly glance down at your hands before grabbing them both and half carry them down to the doc’s office to hide them. “Ok I was fast and strong before but this is on a whole new level. Guess advancing my other powers is helping my body too.” You think as you take the locks off the cell doors and let the four shamblers out. Number 4 is barely able to walk and two are half starved so you let them join you in feeding on the Doc. And the guards while you slowly make your horde move into position. Once you are finished you move with your little team of shamblers to the base of the stairs that lead up to the stadium and wait while your little horde surrounds the stadium, everywhere there are balconies that could lead inside. It’s just before lunch when you start the attack, shamblers and fast types moving out of the alleys and towards the stadium as fast of each of them is able. You immediately hear gunshots ringing out from the front balconies along with occasional booms indicating the 50cal. Sniper is getting involved too. The flanks are slower to react though like you predicted and your horde is already reaching the ditches and barricades by the time they open fire. You can feel large numbers of your horde dropping dead or injured now but you press them forward, each one that falls increases your fine control over the rest and with your guidance they are moving through the defenses at a good speed. The fast types reach the flanks about the time you realize the front is lost, two thirds of the infected there are already down and more drop every second. Seems the military guys on gate duty today are no slouches. You quickly try and read where the normal are and find haziness moving towards all parts of the stadium with two coming your way. The reinforcements are reacting already, that’s not the best news but you have fast types climbing up to the side balconies right now and you feel them taking down a couple of guards on the right side before the others get there. > You head out to attack from the rear; make sure your horde gets inside Now is the time to strike, you can take out the re-enforcements headed to the right and ensure your horde breeches the perimeter. You rush out with your shamblers following behind and run right into the two guards who were headed your way. You punch one right away and feel his chest cave, the other manages to shout and tries to raise his gun, but you’re too fast and bat it aside, letting your shamblers take him down. You begin heading to the right, to take out the re-enforcements however the shamblers, true to their name, move slowly and you decide to leave them behind and rush for the right flank. You arrive shortly behind the guards and feel them killing your horde but you attack from the rear and quickly kill all three, letting your horde into the stadium. You give it a few moments for them to get the first few inside as you try and prolong the other fights, the front attack is pretty much wiped out but you keep the badly wounded moving to draw attention at least. The left side has made the walls but it’s a much harder climb there so they aren’t doing well either. “Time to attack from the inside.” You think as you head down from the balcony with your small force. The first thing you notice is the low rumbling that seems out of place in the normally quiet stadium, the second thing is that the noise is coming from a large armored military jeep parked right in the middle of the field and pointing its mounted gun your way. Even with your super human speed, you can’t dodge bullets, so when the heavy machine-gun opens fire you feel yourself being torn apart along with your horde. “They had a back-up plan.” You think as you fall. “I could have told you that, if you had been willing to listen.” You hear in your head right before it goes black.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have the horde, the ability to use them and you even have a reasonable plan, why wait? You head down into the basement on the premise of getting checkup by the doc and even get a few comments from the guards about them being glad you are feeling better. What a surprise it was going to be for them. Once in his office, you left him swing the door shut then, while his back is still turned you snap his neck from behind. “Huh, much easier than expected” you think as you carefully move his body out of sight from the corridor. You give it a few minutes then exit the office, closing the door behind you and head back out to the two waiting guards who unbolt the door for you and let you through. “Clean bill of health then?” one asks. You smile as you reply “Better than ever!” You punch him in the throat, planning just to crush the wind pipe but you feel his spine snap at the impact as you move to the next guard, you have your hand over his mouth and his neck snapped before the first even hits the floor. You quickly glance down at your hands before grabbing them both and half carry them down to the doc’s office to hide them. “Ok I was fast and strong before but this is on a whole new level. Guess advancing my other powers is helping my body too.” You think as you take the locks off the cell doors and let the four shamblers out. Number 4 is barely able to walk and two are half starved so you let them join you in feeding on the Doc. And the guards while you slowly make your horde move into position. Once you are finished you move with your little team of shamblers to the base of the stairs that lead up to the stadium and wait while your little horde surrounds the stadium, everywhere there are balconies that could lead inside. It’s just before lunch when you start the attack, shamblers and fast types moving out of the alleys and towards the stadium as fast of each of them is able. You immediately hear gunshots ringing out from the front balconies along with occasional booms indicating the 50cal. Sniper is getting involved too. The flanks are slower to react though like you predicted and your horde is already reaching the ditches and barricades by the time they open fire. You can feel large numbers of your horde dropping dead or injured now but you press them forward, each one that falls increases your fine control over the rest and with your guidance they are moving through the defenses at a good speed. The fast types reach the flanks about the time you realize the front is lost, two thirds of the infected there are already down and more drop every second. Seems the military guys on gate duty today are no slouches. You quickly try and read where the normal are and find haziness moving towards all parts of the stadium with two coming your way. The reinforcements are reacting already, that’s not the best news but you have fast types climbing up to the side balconies right now and you feel them taking down a couple of guards on the right side before the others get there. > You ambush the two near you and keep hidden for now, wait for the right moment. You don’t want to play your hand just yet so you wait and concentrate on controlling the right flank now that they had made the balcony. Concentrating on them so much will lose you control elsewhere but the front group is almost entirely gone and the left flank is having huge issues climbing up so it’s the best choice for now. You have them hide either side of the door as the first of the shamblers starts to reach the top of the rubble and attempt to get over the balcony rail. The guards take the bait and rush forward, shooting the shamblers in front of them the moment they arrive and you have the hidden infected ambush them. You still lose one of them, but that’s two fast ones inside and more following up with the shamblers. You move to the side as you sense the guards heading down the stairs to you and quickly, but brutally dispatch them the second the round the corner. Can’t have them raising the alarm on you now. You hear a low rumbling from the back of the stadium but have to ignore it for the moment, it’s probably a generator or something and right now you have to get rid of the military guys at the front balconies. You sense no-one nearby so you head up the stairs as quickly as you can make your group move and start slipping between the shacks and tents toward the front. You hear the rumble getting louder and realize where you recognize it from. It’s a car engine, and a powerful one at that. You haven’t heard a working one in years. You speed up and direct your forces from the right to swarm down inside then up towards the front balcony to take them out before whatever type of car it is gets involved but you are too late. You hear the sound of a heavy machine gun opening up and instantly feel your force on the right flank go down, you have more coming but all your fast types in the stadium just got taken out in seconds and you are left trapped between the big gun and the balcony. > You rush the big gun, so long as it's around, you are doomed You send your four shamblers to the side a little then have them charge towards the vehicle as you circle round a little as quickly as you can before attacking from its flank. You immediately see that it is a fully armored military jeep with a 50cal. On the roof which tears through your distraction in seconds. With your new found speed though, it’s enough for you to cover the ground necessary for you to launch yourself at the jeep, landing on the roof and grabbing the gunner before he can turn to face you. You are about to let of a whoop of elation and kill him when you hear a strange voice in your head. “Close, but you forgot to account for the Captain, he is not a stupid man.” You get the urgent sense that you should look right, and see the captain and several others in full military garb hiding behind the shacks and pointing rifles at you. They don’t give you a chance to dodge before firing. The last thing you feel is the voice in your head again. “Of course he knew that the jeep was the lynch-pin so he guarded it with his best men.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t want to play your hand just yet so you wait and concentrate on controlling the right flank now that they had made the balcony. Concentrating on them so much will lose you control elsewhere but the front group is almost entirely gone and the left flank is having huge issues climbing up so it’s the best choice for now. You have them hide either side of the door as the first of the shamblers starts to reach the top of the rubble and attempt to get over the balcony rail. The guards take the bait and rush forward, shooting the shamblers in front of them the moment they arrive and you have the hidden infected ambush them. You still lose one of them, but that’s two fast ones inside and more following up with the shamblers. You move to the side as you sense the guards heading down the stairs to you and quickly, but brutally dispatch them the second the round the corner. Can’t have them raising the alarm on you now. You hear a low rumbling from the back of the stadium but have to ignore it for the moment, it’s probably a generator or something and right now you have to get rid of the military guys at the front balconies. You sense no-one nearby so you head up the stairs as quickly as you can make your group move and start slipping between the shacks and tents toward the front. You hear the rumble getting louder and realize where you recognize it from. It’s a car engine, and a powerful one at that. You haven’t heard a working one in years. You speed up and direct your forces from the right to swarm down inside then up towards the front balcony to take them out before whatever type of car it is gets involved but you are too late. You hear the sound of a heavy machine gun opening up and instantly feel your force on the right flank go down, you have more coming but all your fast types in the stadium just got taken out in seconds and you are left trapped between the big gun and the balcony. > You rush the balcony; if you take it out you can get more infected inside to deal with the big gun. You know you can’t take the heavy gun on with only four shamblers so you rush for the front balcony instead, aiming to get to the highest one you can attack the ones below from there and they will never expect it. You can’t move at speed with the shamblers following so you send them to the left to see if they can do damage there but just as you reach the stairs up you feel them go down as you hear the heavy gun again. Glancing behind you, you see a fully armored military jeep parked right in the middle of the stadium with its 50cal. Now turning towards you. You use all the speed you can and manage to dive out of the way before it opens fire and you see the stairs where you hand been a moment before erupt into a shower of debris. “Now what do I do.” You think to yourself as you hide behind a pillar. “I would try running away if I were you, this little attack isn’t working out for you.” Comes the unbidden reply into your mind. You pause speechless for a moment “What the hell, my mind is talking to me now, are you the source of my powers?” You think at the air in front of you. You sense laughter in the response. “Oh dear me no, that did make me laugh! I’m simply another gifted, although significantly more powerful than a fledgling like yourself. I was hoping you’d accept my invitation to meet and discuss the stadium but you had to go and take this rash course instead. Well if you survive then come find me, I’m to your South. I doubt you will though.” You get the feeling that whoever it was has gone so you concentrate on your current predicament. You’re now surrounded, you’re covered with human blood since you were feeding on corpses and you attack is failing. All that’s left is to trust in your speed. You crouch then move right into a full sprint up the rest of the stairs, you hear the big gun starting to fire behind you but the bullets don’t find you until you have reached the balcony, you feel one tearing clean through your leg but dive through the doors and the shooting stops. Sadly this particular balcony is full of heavily armed soldiers. You manage to take three of them down before the others get shots on you and you slowly go down, bleeding from multiple bullet holes. “Ah, thought so.” You hear in your mind before it goes blank.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>When morning comes you wake slowly and groggily, the last remnants of your headache still present however you immediately notice that you can sense your horde still milling about where you left them. You can even sense some of the stragglers further back that you had lost control of last night due to the pain. Trying to direct them right now is out of the question though as you know you over-did it the day before and you don’t want to risk any more bleeding incidents right now, there is only so many times you can lose half a pint of blood from your nose before people realize something is wrong. You find the Doc waiting for you at breakfast to check on your condition. “I heard you looked like death last night, one of the guards almost shot you before your team convinced him that you were ok and hadn’t been bitten.” You think fairly carefully before replying. “Yeh, I think it might just have been a bit soon after losing my other team, I thought being back out there might help me get over it but I guess it had the opposite reaction. Feeling better today but still got a headache so might be best if I rest for a bit.” The Doc nods and goes to chat with the Capt. who comes over. “We saw things like this back in the wars so don’t worry too much about it, it should mostly pass in a day or two, just let the doc here know if you start feeling overly paranoid or having flashbacks in the next week. You and your team brought back a huge haul of tins and supplies so don’t worry about the scavenging or other duties for a few days either.” He heads off and you finally relax. They were giving you exactly what you needed to destroy them. You head back to your tent with full permission to do nothing for a couple of days and fall asleep again, waking about lunchtime with your headache finally gone. You do however notice that one of the hazy blobs that mark a normal is still hanging around near your tent exactly where it was when you went to sleep. “Seems they are having me followed” You think “best act as normal as possible for a bit then” You head outside and see some of the guys you are friendlier with eating so you head over to join them, and sure enough your shadow follows, you never catch a glimpse of him so he must be one of the military ones or just very good at following people “Maybe they put an ex-stalker after me” you think with a laugh as you start joining in the conversation over lunch. By the next morning of acting normal again your shadow vanishes and you feel up to flexing your powers again. You reach out to your horde and find that, as expected, it’s simple to control them all at once now. “So keep pushing the limits, but not too far or for too long” You think to yourself as you plan your next move. > You wait for nightfall then sneak them in slowly. Attack once you have a good force inside Your stalker is gone, headache is gone and you can now control a horde easily. What more could you want from life? To wipe out this little holdout of normals of course! You don’t want to rush things too much though; no sense attacking in the day when they defenders can all easily see and shoot your horde from far away, nighttime is the best option. You spend the rest of the day acting nice and chatting with people; you get several comments about how much better you are looking and always thank the person a lot and say how you think you’ll be back out there in no time. All the while you move your horde slowly closer to the stadium, until finally just before sunset they are hidden a single street away from the start of the barricades. You pretend to head to sleep for the night and wait for several hours. About 2am most people get sleepy whether or not they slept during the day so you wait until then and finally sneak out of your tent, heading towards the right-hand balcony Grabbing a combat knife along the way. Some fallen rubble means that your horde should easily be able to climb in there and there aren’t usually too many guards. You get close and almost get onto the balcony itself before you are challenged by the guards there. “Who’s that moving back there?” they call back to you in a not entirely unfriendly voice, your Inside the stadium after all. “Hey man, it’s just me.” You say stepping out into the moonlight. “Couldn’t sleep you know, remembering the other day.” The guard nods, probably thinking of his own nightmares fueled by watching people he knew killed. “Well you’re welcome to join us out here, it’s just me and Daed here tonight and I’ve heard his stories far too many times. Daed gives you a wave then does back to staring out into the darkness. You smile and lean back against the door frame, behind the two of them. “Thanks man, but I’m not sure I’ve heard all his stories yet.” You hear a groan from the first guard as Daed immediately starts into a story about when he was riding his motorcycle. You let him talk away as the other man shakes his head and looks out into the darkness, leaving both of their backs to you. It’s almost too east from there. You move quietly and stab the first guard in the neck, jumping over to Daed and putting your hand over his mouth before he has time to shout. A quick stab and he dies too leaving you alone on the moonlit balcony. You quickly start calling your horde in small groups to ensure they make as little noise as possible and after a few minutes the first group is climbing up with you. > You have a handful of fast ones and a handful of shamblers, strike now as the others make their way up. You can take out most of the other guards as the rest of your horde gets inside. You gather your ready infected and head right back down the stairs from the balcony; from here you can send the fast ones to one front side balcony while you attack another then re-group to attack the rest, by that time a large number of infected should be ready to sweep down over the living areas. You make it half way down the stairs at the front of your group before realizing that something is wrong, there are far too many hazy areas moving around in the center of the stadium and ahead of you. You try and concentrate but can’t make out more details of what is going on in the near complete darkness of the interior. You wait a few moments for your eyes to adjust so you can see what’s happening when you realize your mistake. You hear a barely audible whirring noise as your eyes adjust enough to realize that there is a huge armored jeep parked right in the middle of the stadium’s open area and its gun is both spinning, and pointed your way. They had taken the obvious follower off you but they must have still been keeping an eye on you, you think as the Jeeps gun opens fire. You dive to the side into a row of seats as you feel your small group of infected getting torn apart by the high caliber bullets. You try and think of where to run when you hear the separate boom at the same time as a hole appears in a seat in front of you and you feel a huge impact in your side. The dam 50cal. Sniper just shot you right through your cover. You try and run back to the balcony but you are already wounded and barely make it two feet before the second boom rings out and a hole appears in your chest.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your stalker is gone, headache is gone and you can now control a horde easily. What more could you want from life? To wipe out this little holdout of normals of course! You don’t want to rush things too much though; no sense attacking in the day when they defenders can all easily see and shoot your horde from far away, nighttime is the best option. You spend the rest of the day acting nice and chatting with people; you get several comments about how much better you are looking and always thank the person a lot and say how you think you’ll be back out there in no time. All the while you move your horde slowly closer to the stadium, until finally just before sunset they are hidden a single street away from the start of the barricades. You pretend to head to sleep for the night and wait for several hours. About 2am most people get sleepy whether or not they slept during the day so you wait until then and finally sneak out of your tent, heading towards the right-hand balcony Grabbing a combat knife along the way. Some fallen rubble means that your horde should easily be able to climb in there and there aren’t usually too many guards. You get close and almost get onto the balcony itself before you are challenged by the guards there. “Who’s that moving back there?” they call back to you in a not entirely unfriendly voice, your Inside the stadium after all. “Hey man, it’s just me.” You say stepping out into the moonlight. “Couldn’t sleep you know, remembering the other day.” The guard nods, probably thinking of his own nightmares fueled by watching people he knew killed. “Well you’re welcome to join us out here, it’s just me and Daed here tonight and I’ve heard his stories far too many times. Daed gives you a wave then does back to staring out into the darkness. You smile and lean back against the door frame, behind the two of them. “Thanks man, but I’m not sure I’ve heard all his stories yet.” You hear a groan from the first guard as Daed immediately starts into a story about when he was riding his motorcycle. You let him talk away as the other man shakes his head and looks out into the darkness, leaving both of their backs to you. It’s almost too east from there. You move quietly and stab the first guard in the neck, jumping over to Daed and putting your hand over his mouth before he has time to shout. A quick stab and he dies too leaving you alone on the moonlit balcony. You quickly start calling your horde in small groups to ensure they make as little noise as possible and after a few minutes the first group is climbing up with you. > You wait for the rest of your horde, you have time before the guard change and it will be safer to swarm everything at once. There is no point in rushing now, you’re horde is climbing up and will soon be strong enough to swarm over the sleeping areas while you took the fastest ones to help with the other balconies. It’s only a few minutes before the balcony is getting full and you do a quick check ahead, trying to sense out the best targets you send the horde after. You immediately realize something is wrong, there is an awful lot of movement going on down there for the middle of the night, you edge through the doorway and carefully keep to cover while you let your eye adjust and look out. You quickly realize that there is something large in the middle of the previously empty space in the stadium and there are a lot of men out with guns, all in a nice big semi-circle around the stairs you were about to walk down. “They must have had someone still keeping an eye on me” You think as you back carefully back onto the balcony. It really doesn’t look like you can do much more here, you’re going to have to escape. You take more immediate control of the infected on the balcony, packed in as they are you have two dozen up here and more still climbing so you send they rushing down at the defenders, maybe they will be surprised and get over-run, worth a try after all. You almost instantly feel them getting torn apart as you hear what sounds like a heavy machine gun open fire. Punctuated now and them by a single boom which always co-insided with one of the infected dying from a huge wound to the chest. You swear to yourself as you realize that every one of them was killed in seconds and didn’t even get close to the defenders. You quickly climb down outside the stadium and set off at a run to try and put some distance between you and it. You leave the infected trying to climb inside as a distraction so you aren’t followed immediately.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The second mission begins the same as the first, a team of 4 sent out to check an old store you think might still have some supplies in it. This one is a little further away but it’s to the West and away from the city center so your team is confident that they won’t run into too much trouble. You set out happily, planning on testing your ability to make the shamblers do more complicated tasks when you quickly sense something slightly different from before, similar to a shambler but… more complicated, where the shambler feels like the last remnants of a broken and dead mind this feels more like a mind that has been twisted and shattered, but not yet dying. You concentrate on it hard for the next few minutes as you walk and realize that it’s moving about, jumping or running from spot to spot. It must be one of the fast ones or crazies. You walk onwards and soon move out of your range to sense it but an hour or so later you sense another one ahead of you. “As if my test subjects were lining up for me” You joke to yourself as you begin trying to affect its mind. You go through the process as you had with the shamblers, concentrating on sensing them properly first, then getting an idea of their sensations and finally trying to make it react to your prodding. It takes you about 2 hours but you finally have a good sense of what to do, its definitely a fast type infected and making them follow simple actions is only slightly different to the shamblers so by the time you reach your destination it’s only a couple of streets away but you have it walking in circles on command. “Dude, you hit your face of something?” one of the men quietly calls back to you and you realize that you have a nose bleed again. Not as bad as before but you quickly wipe it clean. “Yeh, sorry, I just get them sometimes.” You say as you clean the blood off. “Guess concentrating that hard on the other infected means I miss a lot, going to have to be more careful.” You think. You quickly realize that you have all arrived at the store, and there are several more infected in the vicinity. You were concentrating so hard on the one that you missed a second fast type not far off and several nearby shamblers. The rest of your team, completely unaware of the danger just streets away, starts to head into the store to check for the supplies. “I guess I could go for the big test now.” You think to yourself The team is contained and you can control the infected, you could use them to take them out as the first step to destroying the stadium hold out or you could force them all far away and help the stadium people for now, some of them are treating you like a real friend after all. > You feed off humans sure, but you aren't controled by that need and you are enjoying having friends for a change. Hold off wiping out the stadium for now You know, you feed on humans sure, but they are treating you well right now and it is nice to have friends for a change. You can help keep them safe until your powers develop fully at least. You concentrate hard for a moment and see near instant results, all the infected you concentrate on start moving out of the area. You initially try controlling individual actions and feel your nose bleed returning but after a few moments you relax and just give them the general incentive to move away and they find their own routes. You quickly wipe your nose and follow the others into the store, projecting the simple command of ‘Move away’ at the infected as you go. From there the mission goes very easily and you all bag a reasonable amount of food to take back with you. You joke with a couple of the other guys as you all head back about the super easy scavenge when you realize that you’ve been subconsciously projecting the command the entire time, all the shamblers that you get anywhere near immediately begin leaving the area. “It just keeps getting easier.” You think to yourself as you come close to the stadium. Confident that the only infected within several blocks of the stadium as the ones in the basement you head inside happily with the others and hand over the spoils of your scavenge. > You happy evenings rest You rest happily that evening with no infected in sensing range and you only got a minor headache as a response to your new advancement. Even the rations doled out at dinner time taste better and sit more comfortably in your stomach than normal. The doc comes up to eat and you joke with him about your teams haul improving the food in the stadium getting a laugh out of him before happily spending the rest of the evening chatting with the rest of the scavengers. You finally head to bed feeling happier than you have in a while, your control of the infected is growing practically by the hour and people are unwittingly accepting you as a friend, how could life get better? That’s when you sense the movement, its right at the edge of your sensing range while inside the stadium but it feels like a shambler to you, after a few moments it moves a little closer and you become sure. “Stupid thing is trying to stumble back to whatever whole I moved it from.” You think to yourself. You barely concentrate as you send it the signal to leave again but find it not reacting at all, sighing you concentrate hard and try again, this time it simply stops and wavers on the spot for a moment. “Huh, did I overdo it earlier?” you think to yourself as you sense it suddenly waving at you, you don’t know how you know it but it definitely waves at you to invite you to follow before turning and walking South again. “Well that’s odd.” You think as you watch it vanish along with your immediate plans. “Best bet is that they were right and the original harbinger is back, seems he wants to talk to me too.” The morning will bring a new decision to make.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A quiet ringing wakes you at first light. “Huh a near silent alarm, smatter than a loud one I guess.” You say to yourself as you get ready. You glance through your bag. They had left your last few strips of dried meat in there so you start chowing down on one as you head out. They said you had a few days to decide what you’d be doing but if you chose to stay more than that, then you would have to be useful to them in some way, guard duty and scavenging seemed to be the implied option. You had some time though. > You enlist with the stadium guards You head to the shack that was pointed out as the Captain’s room and are about to knock when you find the door open and the man already up and looking at a map of the local city area, he gives you a quick glance before going back to studying the map. “Made a choice already, most people take a day or two to see if they like it here?” You think carefully, but the choice is fairly simple for you now. “Yep, been living alone for far too long now and let’s face it, food is getting short. Joining up here and working as a guard and scavenger gives me a much better chance at a steady food supply for the near future and I can sleep safer at night. It’s a no-brainer really.” He gives you another glance before calling in one of the guards you recognize from the day before. “We have a new recruit, get him kitted out and test him on weapons, you can start taking him out on missions. Unarmed until he passes his weapons handling, then he can have a rifle.” You are lead away and the next couple of days pass quickly as you head out on some very close scavenging missions, It’s the 5th day when you get your first real opportunity. You are sent out with three others to scavenge from an old store that the Capt. doesn’t think was totally cleared out yet. You wern’t doing so great on the provided food and you thought that this might be the first opportunity for a proper meal in a while. Most surprisingly however, you think you might be adapting to their rations but it's too early to tell. > You mission 1 You all head out quietly about an hour after dawn and make your way through the main streets, you don’t have a gun like the others but you do have your bat which you trust a lot more, using it doesn’t cause enough noise to call others to you after all. “I heard you guys had originally cleared this place out of infected?” you whisper to the nearest guard. He thinks for a moment before replying. “We had, but then that thing lead hundreds more to us, and what with all the ones bitten again when the walls fell… well let’s just say it’s not as safe as it used to be. Seems the vaccine doesn’t always work too well against direct exposure either, only the airborne strains, some people are immune but others turn right after getting bit.” You file this information away for later and keep a look-out since you’re nearing the store now and the leader is speaking up. “Right it's go time, two for the front, two for the rear.” The front is visible, it’s fairly open and all the large windows are broken giving easy access and sightlines. The rear must be through one of the alleyways you glimpse to the side. > You front? You don’t feel like alleyways today so you raise your hand for going in the front. The leader nods. “You’re with me then, we all meet in the middle of the store once we check all entrances are clear.” The other two men head off for the alley leading round back as you carefully approach the front door. Since you are unarmed you pull the doors open and jump back to give your partner a line of sight but there is no sign of movement so you both slip inside. The store was some old grocery and drug store combo, it has been mostly cleared out but it was done in a rush and there are still useable supplies on the shelves and floor if you sort through it. You and your partner begin to check the aisles more carefully when you hear the shot coming from the back of the store and you see the other two men stumbling in the back door, slamming it shut behind them. The first thing you notice is that one is clutching his arm and his has a large gash out of it. “It was under some trash, it didn’t move when we poked the bags or anything but after we went by and were trying the door it suddenly lurched up and grabbed me; bit me before, before I knew, before.” He stops and winces in pain, dropping his gun. Red sirens begin going off in your head. “His speech! He’s Going!” you practically shout. Your partner swears and glances around, we have to move NOW! Grab what you can and start running, I’ll finish him off then follow with my bags once I know for sure he’s turning. > You follow orders, grab tins and run You and the other guard grab what food and bags you can and start running as fast as you can away from the store, about a minute later you hear a gun shot, you glance behind you, the store is out of sight already but you see shamblers coming out of a couple of the alleyways headed that way. You pause, considering going back when your new partner grabs your arm. “No time, they are ahead too, Gorramit, it’s like it was a bloody trap!” You see that he is right, a couple of shamblers are already on the road ahead, two of them you can run past easy but if more come, then there will be trouble and there are already more than a dozen you can see behind. You keep running. You finally come within sight of the stadium and just have time to notice what you thought was a light in a nearby window before starting to climb barricades to get back to safety. Seems like the shamblers were more intent on the loud noise than chasing you at least. Once inside you let your partner do the talking, no-one blames either of you and you’re given the next couple of days off to recover before the next mission which goes smoothly. > You life as a guard The next few missions go a lot smoother and there are no casualties, your physical condition gives you advantages over some of the others and you become a fairly popular scavenging partner. You actually begin enjoying living there and even feel like you have begun to properly adapt to their rations and pass your weapon handling so can take a gun with you, though you still prefer the trusty bat for shamblers. Life goes pretty well for another week or two and you even think that settling here might not be so bad after all even if that wasn’t close to your intent when you first walked in the doors. Sadly things do not last that way for long. It’s barely been a month since you arrived in the stadium ruins when the scavenging team fails to return. They decide to send a larger squad after them so find out what happened and ask for volunteers. > You raise your hand You’ve been a great scavenger so far so people are not surprised when you volunteer and your team of 8 men sets out, heavily armed and ready. Everyone walks in a grim silence on the way. Loosing people is always a possibility but it’s still rare, apart from the two lost on your first time out there hasn’t been an incident in 3 months so losing an entire team has shocked everyone again. You walk quietly holding your gun at the ready, noisy but since everyone else will be firing it will be more effective than the bat you think. Once close the leader raises his hand. “Teams of two, always keep at least one other team in sight and call out all strange sights or sounds instantly, got it?” You all nod and split up as you enter the large store front, it used to be glass but with all the windows smashed you can walk right in wherever you want. You’ve gone with the other survivor from the first mission, seems that having everyone else die in your team makes a bond. It’s only a few seconds before you hear the first call go up from one aisle to your left, the one to your right a few seconds later, glancing through the empty shelves you see the teams hunched over something, moving forward past some upturned trollies you also make a find a call it out. Seems like all members of the other team have been found. Well, what remains at least. The rest of your team converges on the three groups that found something. “Looks like they got swarmed here, torn to pieces before they could put up a real fight, only a few shells on the floor.” One of the men says Something clicks in your brain and you suddenly turn to your partner. “Remember the first mission; you said it was like a trap? We have to get out of here right now, we have to run!” The other men hear and you can see it on their faces that they all agree, you all grab the fallen weapons and run to the front of the store but you find the street in either direction already full of infected, and not just shamblers, you’re pretty sure you see some fast ones there too, almost dancing on the spot with repressed energy, wanting to charge you, but they don’t. From a window across the street you see an old man call down to you. “Greetings new survivors of the stadium!” One of the men instantly reacts, “YOU! You’re the Harbinger! We let you in right before the attack happened!” He tries to take aim with his rifle but the man seems to move faster than he has any right to and vanishes from sight, you can still hear him though. “Indeed I have been called that many times before, although I won’t be by you again, sadly my pets here need a little food before I take out the rest of your little stronghold. I’d love to turn a few of you but feeding the current army comes first you know!” The infected rush you, the men get off several shots but they are quickly overwhelmed by the fast ones and the shamblers close in. You know there is no hope when you see them coming through the store too and take a running jump to catch the awning hanging high over the door, you easily make the high jump and are pulling yourself up to get away across the roof before you feel an impact in your back and lose your grip, falling to the pavement below. “Oh dear, you are a spry one, normal men shouldn’t have made that jump so easily but no matter!” you hear the old guy laughing as you get torn to pieces.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next few missions go a lot smoother and there are no casualties, your physical condition gives you advantages over some of the others and you become a fairly popular scavenging partner. You actually begin enjoying living there and even feel like you have begun to properly adapt to their rations and pass your weapon handling so can take a gun with you, though you still prefer the trusty bat for shamblers. Life goes pretty well for another week or two and you even think that settling here might not be so bad after all even if that wasn’t close to your intent when you first walked in the doors. Sadly things do not last that way for long. It’s barely been a month since you arrived in the stadium ruins when the scavenging team fails to return. They decide to send a larger squad after them so find out what happened and ask for volunteers. > You keep quiet, you know full well what happened and don't want to be next You remember what happened on your first mission, going after them will be suicide and probably a trap. Luckily 8 men volunteer quickly enough and no-one blames those who don’t so you get away with no shame from it, you head off to your normal duty for that day, you’re on balcony 6 for the next 4 hours or so. You’ll be the only one there since it isn’t really an important one, kind of to the side of the main entrance and not looking at anything of interest. Its half way through your shift when you hear some muffled sounds coming from over the city and it seems another sentry heard it too, you report hearing it then head back up. Once you get off duty though and come back down it’s not to a pretty sight. It seems that they worked out that the noise was gun fire and the ‘rescue’ team was now also overdue. You think back again to your first mission and what seemed like a trap, your starting to get a bad feeling about the city now. Seems like scavenging too close to the city center isn’t such a good plan anymore. You have to choose whether to dump these guys and head out alone now or hold out until they are ready to make a larger push for the colony to the east, sure you have lost men recently but true to their word, they have recruited nearly a dozen in the last month. You had no idea there were so many survivors up in this area or you’d have come North a lot sooner. You’re also pretty sure that the Capt. is going to order a push East soon too, even with the losses, their numbers are still good and they have the guns and equipment for a full military push through the open streets, the scouts have everything planed out route wise with backups for it things go wrong. > You leave them, their tactics aren't working You really can't work out why people keep using tactics right out of old movies when they never work. You have to get out of here before you get taken down with everyone else on their suicide mission. You start your preparations, gathering spare food and supplies and get your bag ready to leave when your friend from the first mission approaches you about leaving with some others who share your opinion. You sign on immediately and get ready to sneak out. > You sneaking out You’ve been thinking the same for a while. If an even larger group of military couldn’t hold the infected at bay, then what will this small team do? Especially if the harbinger from before COULD control the infected, you’ll have to think about that more later, for now it’s time to get out. “I’m in, betting a small team can move a lot quieter than a large group too. Let’s go.” You grab you pack and bat, leaving the gun behind as you never liked using it anyway and head for a North-East balcony where you all climb down some piping and Begin heading East. There are 5 people in your little team including yourself. A few brought guns, but everyone needs something to make them feel safe you guess, even if all it does is draw more infected. The plan gets laid out as you walk. Seems that you are heading East along a route further North of the route the jeep will be taking, getting up to a highway that should take you most of the way to the river. It was too clogged with cars for the main group for no problem for 5 guys on foot. You all walk quietly for the next few hours before stopping to eat having covered a good distance. You pick a low rooftop that you think once belonged to a barber shop to rest. One of the men finally speaks up. “We are a few hours clear and this roof is pretty safe, shall we break for the rest of the night and head out again at dawn?” You all agree and settle down for the rest of the night on the rooftop. You spend the next few hours thinking about getting to the safe colony to the east and why you were originally heading there before getting so caught up with the stadium people before eventually falling asleep. > You morning hunger You wake with the dawn and find two of the others already up. “We couldn’t sleep so great being exposed out here.” One of them says to you. As the last two get up, you realize just how hungry you are and remember that you didn’t eat anything last night. You dig in your bag for your meat strips but find nothing there, remembering that you finished them off on the third day in the stadium. You accept some rations from the other guys but it seems to do little to your hunger. You think back to when you used to feel this hunger practically all the time, seems your days of living happily in the stadium and not feeling hungry are over for the time being. You all check your surroundings but it’s all clear and you head off again about an hour after dawn. “Won’t the others catchup to us at this rate?” one of the others asks out loud. It’s your friend that answers. “Nah, we are a few roads North of them and will be heading up to the highway by lunchtime, so even if they do move faster than us, they will pass right by us to the South and never see us. Hey if all goes well we will meet up with them in a few weeks at the colony and have a great laugh about this all!” The mood seems to lighten a little after that and you all keep moving with some quiet chatter going on. You even join in some of the joking and in the light atmosphere begin to forget about feeling hungry again. It’s a few hours later and you are getting close to the on ramps for the highway when you begin hearing the noises. Its very faint but you call it out anyway. “Low rumbling to the South.” The others pause and listen for a time before one turns and says. “I hear it now, sounds like the Jeep, they will be passing us soon. Those are some ears you have mate!” “Seems they are making great time if they are passing us already, they might actually do it at this rate!” one of the men jokes as you all start walking again, listening to the low rumble get louder, then start to get quieter as they pass you a few roads to the South. Its only a few minutes later that you hear a crashing noise and the rumbling stop. “Gorram Harbinger! They are being ambushed aren’t they, we should go help them!” > You agree to run and help, they aren't too far away after all You immediately agree. “Well we can’t just leave them there and even if it’s the harbinger, he won’t expect us. Your friend reluctantly agrees as do the others. You all set off at a run. There hasn’t been any other noise yet and you start to hear the Jeep again. “The jeeps just idling! They were probably just clearing a car off the road!” one of the guys says when you are only a couple of blocks away. Almost on cue you hear the 50cal. Starting up and blocking out any other noise. Swearing out loud you round the corner a couple of blocks behind the stadium group and find a bus between you and them, as well as a horde of the infected. One man with you drops to his knees. “It’s just like when the stadium fell. It’s the harbinger.” The 50cal. Falls silent, looking through the buss’s windows you see the infected swarming towards the jeep. “It’s already over, let’s get out of here!” You drag the kneeling man to his feet but he breaks free, rushing towards the buss firing his rifle. “We can still save them! It’s not too late!” He barely gets 20 feet before you see a couple of fast types sprinting from an alleyway, taking him down and beginning to feed on him. “Everyone run!” You hear someone shout. You don’t even check who it was and start sprinting back in the direction you came as you see 3 more fast types headed your way. You never even notice your friend and one other falling behind and getting eaten. You only stop once you are several blocks away and turn to see the last member of your group some distance behind trying to keep up. “Forgot how much faster I was” You think to yourself as you wait for him. “Where are the other two?” You ask, thinking about your friend. “Got, taken, down…” He stammers, out of breath. “None of us could keep up with you and the fast ones don’t tire like us. I only got away because they stopped to eat the other two.” “AAHH Gorramit!” you say out loud, you know it was only the 3 fast types and if you had helped then you could have easily taken them down, it’s not as if a bite of two would inconvenience you much, you’ve had enough before to know they will have no more effect on you. “Let’s just go before more come. We know what the plan was at least.” You head North and quickly get to the highway without further signs of pursuit. The lighthearted atmosphere from before has vanished leaving you and the last remaining survivor from the stadium walking in silence and brooding. You can feel your hunger returning with a vengeance now that you have little else good to think about and eating a trail bar doesn’t help at all. Your mind keeps wandering to how anyone you try and get close to dies anyway. You both walk until night when you find a van to climb into and shut the door behind you. “So they are all dead.” You mutter out loud as you both check for what food there is left, your hunger is killing you. Seems that between you, you have enough basic rations for a few days. “Right, I REALLY need to eat, let’s have a proper meal then we can scavenge more as we go.” Your new partner seems too depressed to argue about anything so you divide the food into two big meals and 1 day’s rations. You both eat up quickly and he curls up into a corner of the van to sleep. You spend the next few hours awake thinking about all those dead people and about talk of harbingers being able to control the infected. You hunger hasn’t gone down at all despite the meal. > You late night munchies It’s near midnight and the old hunger is eating at you and you come to a decision. “I tried, I tried for weeks. No-one can blame me now, since everyone around me dies, it may as well be to my plan like it used to be.” The other survivor doesn’t even move as you take out your bat and kill him with a single blow. Your hunger is finally sated and like returning to an old addiction, everything feels better than ever. You pack up what’s left of his remains to take with you as food for your journey and fall asleep happy in the fact that you have made you mind up at last. You will reach the colony to the East. And once there you will eat them one by one, you are a harbinger after all, it’s what you do. > You morning in the blood stained van The morning comes and you wake happy again, not the relaxed happiness of the stadium, a happiness with an edge. You have great things to do after all. You check that the other survivors remains are carefully wrapped up and in your packs, the last meat strips from that crazy you killed and ate had run out so you have to make sure you bring enough with you. You almost laugh out loud that the idiots in the stadium never thought you were a harbinger and the strips of mean were from a human. But time to move on. You need to test out these ideas of controlling infected. You walk slowly East on the highway, from memory this thing circles most of the city so it will be a much longer way round to the bridge but you still don’t want to be near the city centre. Mutants are still mutants whether you admit to yourself what you are or not. After a few hours you see a shambler down below, slowly making its way down a road. You pause and concentrate for hours on it. Concentrating, trying to feel its mind, trying to order it to do something mentally but to no avail. It slowly keeps walking down the road and eventually you give up following it, starting to walk along the highway looking for a closer target to test your theories on. You finally come across a car which had crashed into the van in front leaving the driver trapped. You thought it was dead at first but once you are close, it twitches a little and makes a weak movement with its arm. “Seems you’ve been trapped here a really long time little shambler.” You say to it, looking carefully in the car you see from all the bones that there must have been at least one other passenger in the car which the shambler was eating to have sustained itself this long. Either way it was still trapped and near death. A perfect test subject. You decide to use the van it crashed into for your bed and spent the next couple of hours concentrating on it. Still no luck, no reaction at all really. It seems the same as always, it wants to eat you and you have no effect. You sigh as you settle down for the night in the back of the van. You might have to give up on the stupid rumors, you’ve been a harbinger for years and never had an inkling of controlling infected with ‘mind powers’ sure it’s the apocalypse but its not some stupid movie. You’ve already seen the infected swarming towards noise and that jeep could be heard for miles, they just made too much noise and attracted everything in the area to them so when they stopped to push cars around, they got swarmed, they probably tried to use the bus to block the infected from getting to them and failed. > You give it up. Who are you kidding that you have amazing mind powers that you simply never noticed before? You head East, following the highway for several days and strangely find it mostly deserted, like someone had cleared it out some time before and only the occasional straggler came back. The going is easy and the worst you are left to contend with are the occasional shambler amidst the parked and crashed cars. Its not long before you see the bridge ahead of you. There are a few shamblers visible on it but it looks clear enough for you to make a try at getting across, "Then its right onto the Eastern Colony!" you say to yourself. You're a harbinger through and through and you're going to enjoy infiltrating the colony then eating everyone inside, one by one. Unfortunately as you take your first step onto the bridge you feel a sudden pain hit your mind, like the worst migraine you ever had described to you. You collapse gripping your head but the pain vanishes just as suddenly, leaving a strange numb feeling in your mind. A voice suddenly appears in your head "Too close to being red my friend, we can't have you coming here to try and destroy us now can we?" You feel a second wave of pain then nothing more<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The morning comes and you wake happy again, not the relaxed happiness of the stadium, a happiness with an edge. You have great things to do after all. You check that the other survivors remains are carefully wrapped up and in your packs, the last meat strips from that crazy you killed and ate had run out so you have to make sure you bring enough with you. You almost laugh out loud that the idiots in the stadium never thought you were a harbinger and the strips of mean were from a human. But time to move on. You need to test out these ideas of controlling infected. You walk slowly East on the highway, from memory this thing circles most of the city so it will be a much longer way round to the bridge but you still don’t want to be near the city centre. Mutants are still mutants whether you admit to yourself what you are or not. After a few hours you see a shambler down below, slowly making its way down a road. You pause and concentrate for hours on it. Concentrating, trying to feel its mind, trying to order it to do something mentally but to no avail. It slowly keeps walking down the road and eventually you give up following it, starting to walk along the highway looking for a closer target to test your theories on. You finally come across a car which had crashed into the van in front leaving the driver trapped. You thought it was dead at first but once you are close, it twitches a little and makes a weak movement with its arm. “Seems you’ve been trapped here a really long time little shambler.” You say to it, looking carefully in the car you see from all the bones that there must have been at least one other passenger in the car which the shambler was eating to have sustained itself this long. Either way it was still trapped and near death. A perfect test subject. You decide to use the van it crashed into for your bed and spent the next couple of hours concentrating on it. Still no luck, no reaction at all really. It seems the same as always, it wants to eat you and you have no effect. You sigh as you settle down for the night in the back of the van. You might have to give up on the stupid rumors, you’ve been a harbinger for years and never had an inkling of controlling infected with ‘mind powers’ sure it’s the apocalypse but its not some stupid movie. You’ve already seen the infected swarming towards noise and that jeep could be heard for miles, they just made too much noise and attracted everything in the area to them so when they stopped to push cars around, they got swarmed, they probably tried to use the bus to block the infected from getting to them and failed. > You can't give up yet, it's not as if you have anything else to do is it? You really don't have anything to loose by continuing testing so you decide to spend the day where you are studying the trapped shambler, even if you don't have mind powers, you might still learn something as it's not every day you get to study one without it actively trying to eat you. You spend your time concentrating on it, staring at it and even try rubbing your temples and waving your hand at it like in the old movies but to no avail. You are starting to get a headache too so decide to call it a day. You sleep a few hours hungry and frustrated before waking well before dawn. Your eyesight is pretty good and the moon is out so you try testing things on the shambler again with the same lack of luck as the evening before. Finally fed up you pick up a piece of metal and throw it at the trapped shambler. You watch as it sticks into the decaying flesh of its chest and fell a slight twinge in your own. touching your chest quickly you realize that you felt a twinge right where your projectile had stabbed into the shambler. "I call that progress!" You begin concentrating on how your felt the twinge and by the evening you think you are feeling something. The headache from the night before is back with a vengeance though and you realize that you now have a small nosebleed. "Guess its not good to stare at the same think for 12 hours straight" You think to yourself as you head to bed early for once. > The morning after the tests. You wake up and quickly notice three things; Your headache is gone, you can feel something strange just outside the van and judging by the light creeping in, its well into morning. "Must have been the headache, I never sleep more than a few hours" you think as you snack on some meat strips and peek outside. You definitely can sense something and it is exactly where the shambler sits trapped. a weird kind of haze shares it's position "So I can sense then, that is definitely a start, I'll have to keep this one alive for testing on" You toss the trapped shambler a meat strip which it devours quickly while you begin concentrating on the haze, you find as the morning passes that the haze resolves into a small ball and realize that it must represent the shamblers mind. You smile to yourself as you settle into trying to affect it. Again by the evening the headache and nosebleeds are back "These must be to do with my powers, streaching them after so long of un-use much be causing it" you think as you take a snack break. > You further tests The next few days pass in much the same way, you practice trying to control the shambler until you get a headache and nosebleed, then wait and rest until it passes. Sleep seems to help the most and you often wake up having progressed by a large leap from the day before. By the end of your practicing you can make the shambler react to your commands and you are pretty sure you can sense what is happening to it too, like where it is injured. You need to test further and see if you can control others as well or if you are limited to having to learn each new infected like you did with this one. Once you are pretty sure you could make it move the way you wanted if it wasn't completely trapped in place, you decide that it is time to move on and further your training with more testing. It's a few hours after setting out that you see something below you and realize that a shambler must be on the road below the highway. You reach out for it and feel its mind there like you did with the trapped one but you immediately feel your nosebleed coming on again and stop pushing it. It seems that you will need to take things slowly That night you find a rest stop and actually manage to camp inside a building. Your hunger is back but the last remains of the survivor you killed keep you sated for now "going to have to find some more food soon" you think to yourself. > You heading East with your new powers, get to the colony soon You keep heading East and don't find much food on the way but your powers do increase. You manage to control a fast type that comes into range, and since you were hungry, it provides some food too. Not nearly as good as human but definitely better than shambler flesh at least. You learn to differentiate the minds of shamblers and fast types, even a mutant to the South falls temporarily under your control as your range increases. Your tests let you control several infected at once and direct them as you please. "They will have no idea what hit them when I reach the Eastern colony" You think to yourself. Your physical abilities have also improved. You were already faster and stronger than any normal human but that has increases along with your mental abilities, you know there isn't a normal human alive who could face you in a fight and you can rip a car's door clean off its hinges with only a little effort. It's not long after that you finally reach the bridge across the river. there are infected on it but this wont stop you now as you direct them over the sides of the bridge to fall into the deep flowing water below. after a few moment you realize that either the fall or the drowning has actually killed most of them but shrug it off as another test, they are just prey after all. Then the pain begins. A sudden sharp stabbing right into your mind forces you to your knees. You try to fight it off and feel it diminishing, like you are holding a barrier up against it, protecting your mind with your powers, but you feel jsut how much stronger the other force is and your defense crumbles. "Sorry about this, I really am, but you are far too close to being red to get in here alive." You try and respond but find that everything feels fuzzy, you are sure the voice in your head is female though "Oh yes, might have damaged a few things there, attacking really isn't my strong suit so I might have used too much strength, well either way it doesn't matter now. Bye" You feel a slight pain then everything fades out to black<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next few days pass in much the same way, you practice trying to control the shambler until you get a headache and nosebleed, then wait and rest until it passes. Sleep seems to help the most and you often wake up having progressed by a large leap from the day before. By the end of your practicing you can make the shambler react to your commands and you are pretty sure you can sense what is happening to it too, like where it is injured. You need to test further and see if you can control others as well or if you are limited to having to learn each new infected like you did with this one. Once you are pretty sure you could make it move the way you wanted if it wasn't completely trapped in place, you decide that it is time to move on and further your training with more testing. It's a few hours after setting out that you see something below you and realize that a shambler must be on the road below the highway. You reach out for it and feel its mind there like you did with the trapped one but you immediately feel your nosebleed coming on again and stop pushing it. It seems that you will need to take things slowly That night you find a rest stop and actually manage to camp inside a building. Your hunger is back but the last remains of the survivor you killed keep you sated for now "going to have to find some more food soon" you think to yourself. > You heading North to train before you make for the Colony You need time and safety to train your new talents, wandering recklessly East while still developing is probably too dangerous as you don’t know what is lurking between you and the colony. Heading South would just take you right into the city center and that would be a death wish without better abilities so North is your final option. You know there used to be small communities in the outlying areas, hamlets and villages that served the farming communities, retirement homes and even some affluent areas for those who no longer wanted to live in the big city. If you look around enough you are sure you will find a nice enough building to make a temporary base, food might be scarce but you can always subside on the infected for a few weeks. You walk until the next off-ramp leading to a North-bound road and wander down. Looking around you see most of the buildings reduced to rubble, the military must have hit this area harder than others during the defense. “Maybe this was one of the areas they tried to make a stand and bombed the hordes of infected that attacked them” You think to yourself as you walk, but it is unlikely that you’ll ever find out for sure. There are not too many infected in this direction but you know if you find a small community that you should find some there to practice on, they never wander too far from where they turned after-all. By night-time you have left the outskirts of the city behind and begin to see open areas of land a fields, some overgrown with crops of varying types, untended for years, the old clearly defined lines haven given away to a mish-mash of crops invading others fields while weeds and thorns try to choke them all out. By nightfall you are looking for a likely place to rest and see a few options, in the distance you can make out what looks like a small grain silo, it would take a couple of hours to reach but they usually are made of metal, have small ladders right up to the top where you’d be nice and safe from everything, There is also an old broken down farmhouse nearby and a Barn on the same land. The House was clearly ransacked long ago, the doors are missing, windows smashed and everything looted out of it. The barn seems in better shape, the doors wide open but still intact at least. > You head onto the Grain Silo, solid metal construction is more trustworthy You head resolutely toward the grain silo, if you were going to find a safe resting spot it would be there. You can see scattered houses in the distance but they will most likely be like the one you passed, ransacked and useless. THe grain silo however is a huge solid metal cylinder with a walkway spiraling up the outside which leads to the metal hatch on top to get inside. Even if the grain levels are too low inside it, there is often a small internal platform or walkway below the hatch you could rest on for the night. As you get closer the dusk ends and the night fully sets in, you count your blessings that you have good night vision as avoiding an infected attack now would be very difficult. You stomach keeps rumbling on you, reminding you of how long it has been since you ate. The old hunger has kept getting stronger recently and you know you will need to eat something very soon. And luckily you see prey. A woman is running out of the fields, right towards the same silo as you! You are normally a lot more cautious but the old hunger has finally overwhelmed your better judgment. You are a harbinger and you need to feed. You begin to sprint towards the woman, planning on cutting her off and tackling her. It has been too long since you had human flesh and you are practically salivating over the remembered taste. You realize almost too late that you are not the only thing chasing the woman. She screams out for help while she runs and you think you hear a response from up on the tower but you do not have time to think about it. Right behind the woman are two large mutant animals, they look like farm cats fed steroids having morphed into things larger than cougars and they are about to catch the woman seconds before you do. The woman is not a threat and despite your hunger you know you must deal with these mutants first or they will tear you apart too. The woman screams again as she finally notices you charging her way, bat raised ready to strike but as she stumbles you step past her and meet the front mutant cat with the full force of your swing sending it crashing to the ground, injured but still moving. You glance at the woman and see something akin to surprise before it returns to fear and she scrambles away toward the silo where you now see three men heading your way. You turn back as the second mutant attacks you. You know you can't afford to have it jumping around all the time so when it snaps you offer it your arm and it latches on. Once there you start smashing it's head in with your bat. only stopping when it slumps off you to the ground with half of its skull gone. You are about to turn back to the humans when the first mutant leaps at you again, you hadn't finished it off with that first blow and it knocks you clean off your feet. You realize that it is badly injured and probably could have killed it had the back of your head not landed neatly on a rock, knocking you out cold. > A painful wakening You slowly wake up and immediately feel the pain at the back of your head "Great I came to eat a human and wound up fighting mutants off for her instead" You think as you try and sit up. You realize something is wrong almost the moment you do. You are not outside anymore. You carefully feel your head while you look around. There is a bad gash but it should heal up in a few days so long as you eat. Your arm is in worse shape with several deep tears in the flesh "can't be helped, taking on two mutants is never a good plan" You think while trying to work out where you are. Finally you realize you are inside the grain silo you were trying to reach. The humans you saw must have dumped you down here once they scared off the other mutant. "Well thats some gratitude isn't it. I did save her life afterall." You are about to add a comment about how you planned to eat her not save her but you are fortunately cut off by a female voice from above "I know you did and I am sorry but you are bitten, we cannot risk it. I am glad you woke up though. please keep quiet now, they patrol this area at night." You think about responding but decide against it "They think I am a normal human who did somthing heroic and have put me down here to quarantine me while keeping me safe. this works to my advantage." You carefully lie down again and get some more sleep now that you know you have safety at least until morning. > You morning in the silo You wake at what you assume is the early morning hearing voices from above. They are whispering meaning you cannot hear most of what is said but one is definitely a woman and the other a man, you think they are arguing about you. The woman seems pretty adamant and you assume it is her defending you since she thinks you acted to save her. You can't make out any more details anyway so you loudly roll over and let out a yawn. The whispering immediately stops and the man calls down "If you are still human prove it now!" You think for a second before replying "You prove that you are human first then I will, I just saved that womans life while you chucked me down here!" You hear the woman cutting in "If he speaks, he is still human Chris and you know it." You hear silence again before a more resigned male voice calls down. "Ok, so you haven't turned yet but take a look at your arm. They bit you good and we can't risk having you loose until we know you wont turn" You nod to yourself, you proved you were human and that you were not scared of time, time to play nice for a bit "Ok I understand that, it's smart to quarantine those who are bitten but I haven't turned and it's not exactly comfortable down here, I can't even see what I am lying on!" You hear a creak from above and light floods down into the silo, the metal walls reflecting it to ensure everywhere is lit. You cover your eyes while they get used to the light then look around. You are about 12 feet below the small walkway below the hatch where you can see the two humans sitting. You are currently sitting on top of what appears to be some old fencing thrown down here so you wouldn't sink into the grain below it. You also notice the shambler only a few feet away from you. You lurch away from it and slip off the fencing boards, finding yourself sinking into the grain slowly when you hear the shout from above "Hold on there, it's trapped and not a thread, get back on the boards before you sink too deep!" You scramble back up again and sit down holding your arm, open wounds are not meant for clambering about, you have no idea if you would actually sink into the grain or if that was just some old myth but you are also not willing to test it out yourself. You look closer at the shambler and realize that it is indeed trapped. It is up to its shoulders in the grain with a piece of wooden plank sticking into its side, ensuring it cannot move at all. "So mind if I ask what it is doing in here with me then?" You call up and it's the woman that answers "He was one of us, a survivor but he got bitten so we lowered him in there incase he turned. he must have realized he was going because in the night we heard him jump off into the grain and dig himself in before he lost control. It took him over a day to turn in the end." You nod along. You try to catch and eat a woman and end up trapped in a grain silo with a shambler for company "Just great" You think. "So how long am I spending down here with no food or water then?" You call up to them. You reply is in the form of a small bag being tossed down to you which you catch deftly 1 handed. "That has some water and some rations, enough to last you three days. That's how long you'll have to stay here for." Then you see the man climb out the hatch. The woman goes to follow then calls down "I'm sorry but we must be sure." Then follows the man out. They at least leave the hatch propped open so you get a little light in. > You quarantine in the silo You are trapped and now along with the shambler in the silo. You could probably escape if you really tried. there are two sections of fence down here, if you stood on one and wedged the other up against the wall you are pretty certain you could make the jump off it and up onto the small walkway. It would be fairley easy to ambush those humans when they returned too. > You go for it, they trapped you in here and eating humans is what you do after all You quickly decide that you want out of here so you grab the other piece of fencing and testing it find that it is still good and solid. You are about to wedge it against the wall of the silo when you think about how hungry you are. You place it down and walk over it towards the trapped shambler. You quickly pull the plank out of its side and kill it with it before feeding on it briefly to sate your desire. You then go back to the original plan and using the wedged fencing you make it up to the walkway with a huge leap. You automatically grab onto the bottom lip to pull yourself up but remember too late about your arm. You feel the slight healing that had happened come undone and blood starts flowing down your arm as you pull yourself up. You collapse onto the walkway in pain "Now they are really going to pay" you think to yourself, you haven't felt this much pain in years. You check around and find some bags of food, mostly fruit and veg in one corner and assume they are here scavenging. You quickly tear a strip off one of the bags to bind up your wound then move to the corner of the walkway, trying to ensure you will be out of sight when they first come in, and you do not have long to wait. You watch as the hatch opens and lets more light flood in while you edge as far back into the corner as possible. It is unnecessary though and the woman climbs right in without checking first, seemingly completely sure that you were trapped and not a threat. You watch her move right over to some bags and start unloading some more fruit while the man climbs in behind. You spring your trap just as he turns his back to you, leaping clean onto his back and forcing him flat instantly. it is a simple task then for you to snap his neck and sit up to look at the woman who lets out a belated scream. You laugh aloud before replying "Sorry my dear but I was actually intending to eat you when those mutants got in the way, don't worry though, I will keep you alive down in the silo until I am finished eating this fo..." You are cut off as you hear the boom and feel the impact in your back. You are thrown to the ground and roll over in time to see two more men outside the hatch with guns pointed your way "There were three of them when they came to help there woman weren't there, I shouldn't have forgotten that" You think as the second man fires and it goes dark.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are trapped and now along with the shambler in the silo. You could probably escape if you really tried. there are two sections of fence down here, if you stood on one and wedged the other up against the wall you are pretty certain you could make the jump off it and up onto the small walkway. It would be fairley easy to ambush those humans when they returned too. > You wait out the quarantine, a few days wont hurt and you have things to test on the shambler Three days down here wont hurt you and will give your arm time to start healing. You will also be just as talkative and lucid as before so they will obviously think you are fine and let you back up at the end, you just need to bind your arm so the wound is not so obviously healing too quickly. You tear a strip off the bag they threw down as a temporary solution and bind the wound up "Not visible now at least" You think as you settle in for the long haul. Since you are here with a completely trapped shambler you have the perfect test subject to work on the persistent rumors of Harbingers abilities. You take the time to think through them all carefully since you only have three days and want to use them to the fullest. "They are stronger and faster than humans, check, cos I am." You think to yourself "Two, they heal faster, also check. Three they can control hordes of infected, unknown. Four, they don't bleed, false but very useful." You pause for a moment to try and recall any other rumor but you draw a blank for now "Controlling the infected it is then" You think as you lie back down and begin staring hard at the shambler. ​You only last a few moments before your head begins to throb at you and you decide that maybe giving the head wound a few more hours to heal before concentrating too hard might be a good plan so simply lie back and let your mind wander over past encounters with infected and over the one close to you now, how you might control its mind. You drift off to sleep still thinking about the shambler and how to control it and do not wake up for a few hours. > You sudden light in the face You are woken by a light flashing on your face and you sit up quickly to look around. You hadn't planned to fall asleep, just to rest for a few moments. You immediately hear a voice from above "He's still moving at least" You look up and see the man has a torch in his hand, no longer pointed in your face though "You still talking? You've slept an awful lot." He calls down to you. You are about to answer back sarcastically but remember you are supposed to be nice at the moment "Yeh, the head wound was hurting so I decided to rest a bit more, it's not really like I have that many options down here." The man nods in response then heads back out. You notice the bags near the railing look a lot bigger though so they must have brought something back when they came in. You lie back down to rest but realize you can feel somthing near you, like when someone is in the room and you can kind of feel it in the hairs on the back of your neck. You turn towards the source of the feeling and it is clearly the trapped shambler. You can actually sense it already, either your head wound or the sleep helped you. You immediately decide that giving yourself another head wound is out of the question so you decide that it must have been the sleeping while thinking about the shambler that did it. You spend the rest of the day concentrating on the strange feeling and the shambler and slowly resolving it into something you can control a little better. By the end of the day you can sense the mind of the shambler as a small compressed haze which represents it's mind. Your concentration is occasional interrupted by the man and woman coming and going, dropping off what looks like fruit and veg into the large sacks "So this is their scavenging expedition then, they come to the farms to get food for where-ever their base is." The woman always takes a few moments to try and apologize for your treatment but each time you assure them that it is completely understandable and the only smart option and that finally seems to calm her about it and by even she simply trades pleasantries with you. You go to sleep once more thinking about the shambler and affecting the haze which is its mind. > The difference between the shambler and your guards You wake just after dawn and find a lot of dried blood on your lip "Dam nosebleeds" you think as you wipe it off, wouldn't be good for the humans to see you bleeding like this, they might jump to conclusions and last night you saw the other two men again standing outside, and they were carrying rifles. You turn to begin your concentration on the shambler like before but find you don't need to. You can sense it near you easily. you concentrate anyway and find you can sense thing from its mind, or what is left of it. It feels like the dying remains of a mind, weak and rotting away slowly. You can tell where it is injured though and with a slight push you make it lift its arm up in the air. You are about to rejoice when you feel wetness on your face and realize you have a massive nosebleed again. You quickly wipe it away again and wait for the bleeding to stop "guess the side effects are going to just keep being annoying for a while, going to have to be careful" you also feel the beginnings of a headache but as soon as you stopped concentrating it lessened slightly again. You lie back to take a break and realize another difference. You can sense a haze above you too, very different than the one from the shambler, warmer, full of energy and life "So thats the mind of a normal human then, I wonder what mine appears like?" You think as you try and concentrate on the human minds. You make a little progress and have reduced the haze to a small area around the sleeping humans when they begin to stir and the headache gets too strong. You take a complete break and rest while they do their short morning routine. The woman pauses to lean over and look down at you, realizing you are away and looking back she calls down "You'll be out soon, sorry again about this but as you said, we have to be safe!" You grin and reply "It really isn't a problem, I just get to rest down here all day while you guys go scavenging for food, you have the more dangerous job if there are more of those mutants out there." The man cuts in a little suspicious "How do you know we are scavenging for food here?" You just laugh as you see the woman rolling her eyes at him. He looks a little confused before she fills him in "We come in here 3 or 4 times a day and dump food into the sacs like 6 feet from his head, I would be more worried if he didn't know what we were doing." The man pauses then realizes his mistake "Right, then I'll be outside when you are ready" is all he says as he heads out the door clearly embarrassed. "The woman turns back to you "Sorry for that, he can be a little paranoid but his heart is in the right place. My name is Cara by the way" She gives you a big smile. "It's lovely to meet you Cara" you reply "And don't worry, the paranoid ones usually live longer these days." She smiles again as she heads out "Perfect, she trusts me already, I'll be out soon" You think as you settle down to your tests. You make the shambler do a few tricks and after throwing a couple of pieces of wood at it, you are confident you can sense what is happening to it. You do however get a wicked headache again and decide that you will need to pace yourself a little more. The headaches seem to accompany progress but they also might be dangerous as shown by the nosebleeds. You take the evening off just to recover more and spend more time chatting with the woman when she returns, trying to resolve the haze around her more, you finally fall asleep still concentrating on the human haze. > You morning resolutions The morning comes with more progress, things with the shambler seems the same, you can make it do anything you want already, but above you the haze has defined more. You can tell the difference between Cara's mind and the man's. You had spent time the night before gathering details and had given your own name and some details of your life before the infection spread but you gave away little of your recent life, just glossed over it as a hard life scavenging along. You did tell them about loosing some comrades recently to garner a little sympathy and from their looks they both knew what it was like to loose friends. Their minds also resolved to be clearer and softer. Utterly different from the shamblers beside you, almost the opposite, exuding life and clearly full of thought and emotion but you find you cannot affect them in any similar way or gather feelings from them, just sense that they have them. The energy they seem to exude does seem to make your hunger worse though, just knowing how much you would gain from eating them. You exchange a few more pleasantries as they head out and Cara throws you down a ripe apple for a snack, you thank her as you bite into it and find that it surprisingly helps with your hunger a little. Not a lot, but enough to take the slightest edge off, you are used to human food tasting terrible and barely sustaining you so it is a very welcome surprise. You relax and eat some of the other rations while thinking of the conversation the night before and what you had learned. They actually live in an old walled community a couple of days walking North of here. The large walls and steel gate kept infected out and guns held off the looters until they fell to the infected so they survived well. They are one of several scavenging teams that head out to gather food and supplies for the community. They give few other details but you guess they are small of number, maybe 30 in all but they seem to do well enough there. You finally decide that it is time to do more tests but you have exhausted what you want to try on the shambler so you put your mind to trying to sense other things around you. This takes most of the day, a nose bleed and several headaches but by evening you can sense some minds at the periphery of where your senses reach. You remember an old barn in that direction so assume that is where the infected you sense must be, that means you have several hundred feet of sensing ability. You relax as you feel the minds of the humans returning and make sure you don't have any blood left below your nose. THe evening passes like before with chatting and telling stories, it's been a while since you enjoyed yourself like this. > You decision time You wake in the morning and realize that once more you slept through the night instead of the normal few hours "Must be the mental training" You think as you test your senses to see what changed while you slept. Sure enough you can feel the infected in the barn more clearly now and with less effort "Two shamblers, one nearly dead and the other near it also in bad shape. Must be trapped in the basement of somthing" you think to yourself as the humans above you wake up. Once awake Cara immediately leans down over the bar "Time to wake up! Let's get you out of there!" The man groggily stands beside her, "Are you sure about this?" but she just gives him a disparaging look until he goes to fetch a rope and lowers it down to you, tying one end off on the railing. You catch it as it comes down and are about to start climbing up when you realize that your arm will be healed a lot further than a normal humans and your makeshift bandage is almost certainly going to be replaced soon, you're going to have to bluff. You climb up, pretending to be careful of the wounded arm but you secretly put extra strain on it and can feel the wounds tearing open again slightly "Perfect" You think as you climb ove the railing and immediately find yourself receiving a huge hug from Cara. You are taken aback for a moment by the very unusual occurrence and have no time to act before she hops away again "That was for saving my life, I've owed you it!" The she quickly hops out of the hatch, you can see the two men holding rifles greet her as she passes. The man turns to you "Wait here for a bit, we have to finish a quick scavenge then we will all return to discuss what to do with you." You judge it best not to decide anything while the two men with guns have a clear shot at you and you have you climb through a hatch to get to them so you simply nod and take a seat to await their return. This gives you plenty of time to think things through. It has not been long but you are already progressing amazingly with your abilities. You are certain you can control infected easily and can sense them coming a long way off and you can sense the presence of humans or 'normals' at an equal distance even if you can't affect them. Cara trust you and you actually enjoy her company, the man doesn't fully trust you but isn't aggressive either. The two outside seem to be the guards for the scavengers, you have yet to speak to them but you can sense them always nearby the scavengers. You could of course strike now, Cara trusting you and getting close to you can be used to your advantage, you just need to ge them off guard once when they return and you can take the guards out leaving Cara and Chris defenseless. It would be a little risky but you are certain you could pull it off. On the other hand you really are enjoying chatting with Cara in the evenings and the food they gave you is actually sitting well and taking the edge off your hunger, why not stay with them a bit, at least until you are back to their little colony, you can decide what to do when you are there after all. > You ambush them, you may like her company but you gain more from eating them You need to be prepared if you are going to kill them all. Cara you can use since she seems to trust you, Chris is a fool and wont be trouble. It is just the guards outside that you need to care about, you need a good opportunity to get to them before they can react. You spend the next couple of hours resting and preparing. You try some fruit from one of the bags but it tastes bad and sits horribly in your stomach as your hunger grows worse, you'll have to eat them soon. Finally you sense their approach and put on your best happy and innocent face to greet them. You think about putting out some food for them but you aren't sure how they would react to you going through their stores so you just wait instead. Cara enters first and gives you a big smile which you return with an equally big smile and nod, and you even greet Chris which somewhat surprises him but he seems happy about it. "lets get started then" You think to yourself as they sit down and Cara says that it is time for you to discuss your future with them. "Shouldn't we all be present for this?" You ask, indicating the two men standing outside with your head, "I haven't even met them yet." there is a pause and Chris replies "It's our rules, the guards stay on duty all the time and do shifts through the night time, it's the only way we have kept safe so far." > You suggest you all go outside then and discuss it there. You can get close to them that way and attack now! "Well why don't we all go out for our chat them!" You suggest "We could sit up on the silo behind them so they could be a part of the discussion while staying on duty." The two look at each other but you see Cara wavering in your favor and push it a little "It's not as if it will be any more dangerous and I haven't exactly seen the sun in a few days" You say and immediately see the guilt working. Cara agrees and you all head outside. The guards are not so easily won over though. As you exit they spread apart. They are still close enough either side to hear what is happening and take part but they are no longer close enough to attack at the same time. You have to time your attack perfectly. You make a show of offering Cara your hand to help her out and onto the silo roof then with a flourish do the same for Chris who gives you a wry laugh, one of the guards even smirks about it, but only for a moment as you suddenly lunge at him and tackle him down. You are faster and stronger than any human so it is only a couple of seconds before his neck is snapped and you are back to your feet, spinning to charge the other guard. Sadly it seems they did not survive this long without skills and the second guard is already pointing his gun at you. You just have time to take in the horror and tears in Cara's eyes and the immediate revulsion in Chris and the guards before you hear the boom and feel the impact on your chest. You stumble back but hear the click click of a bolt action, you look up in time to take the second shot to the chest and tumble off the silo railing. You are almost grateful that you die before you hit the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need to be prepared if you are going to kill them all. Cara you can use since she seems to trust you, Chris is a fool and wont be trouble. It is just the guards outside that you need to care about, you need a good opportunity to get to them before they can react. You spend the next couple of hours resting and preparing. You try some fruit from one of the bags but it tastes bad and sits horribly in your stomach as your hunger grows worse, you'll have to eat them soon. Finally you sense their approach and put on your best happy and innocent face to greet them. You think about putting out some food for them but you aren't sure how they would react to you going through their stores so you just wait instead. Cara enters first and gives you a big smile which you return with an equally big smile and nod, and you even greet Chris which somewhat surprises him but he seems happy about it. "lets get started then" You think to yourself as they sit down and Cara says that it is time for you to discuss your future with them. "Shouldn't we all be present for this?" You ask, indicating the two men standing outside with your head, "I haven't even met them yet." there is a pause and Chris replies "It's our rules, the guards stay on duty all the time and do shifts through the night time, it's the only way we have kept safe so far." > You bide your time, you'll get your chance at them soon There is no point blowing it by being pushy now "Ah of course, that is a pretty smart precaution" You begin "But as to my future, you say that as if it involves options?" Cara immediately replies with a smile "Well of course it does, we aren't keeping you prisoner or anything" she pauses "Anymore" She adds with a wink to which you grin. She then continues a little more seriously "Basically you can join us, or head on your way. I would much rather you came with us though" and you can definitely hear some hopefulness in her voice "Perfect, she completely trusts me, this will be easy now" You think you yourself, smiling all the while. "Well I would love to join you all, it will be much better than being alone again after what happened." you carefully craft your voice to make sure they understand you are referring to the lost friends you spoke about before and you watch them both immediately react like proper normal humans, putting on their caring faces and trusting you more "Honestly this is too easy, they buy anything I tell them" You think as Cara takes you hand, leading you outside. "Well, you are with us now! She announces "And since you have joined us we can do a quick introduction before we head off to the compound!" The guards chuckle and wink at the fact you are holding hands the moment you exit the hatch and Cara drops you hand, blushing, but berating the guards for being childish. They are now close together and distracted, but they said you were heading to the compound right now. > You they are open, attack now! You can get the location from one of them after the guards are dead There is no reason to wait. once the guards are dead, the other two are not even a threat and you can get all the information you need from them before you eat them. You lunge suddenly and punch one guard cleanly in the jaw. You are not a trained fighter but with your superhuman strength and speed you still hit like a professional heavyweight. You watch the man go unconscious immediately but the momentum tips him over the rail and he falls from the silo. You are already spinning though. The other guard starts to react and the woman starts to scream but you are too fast and punch the guard in the throat before slamming him into the ground and snapping his neck, the haze around his mind vanishes instantly. Seconds later you notice the haze from the first guard vanish too "The fall finished him off then" You think as you turn back to a horrified and crying woman. "Oh don't worry, I wont kill you right away, I will keep you and the other one alive for a few days, I need information afterall." You grab her and she is unable to resist your sheer strength ans you pull her through the hatch and toss her over the railing and into the silo. The man tries to intervene but you are again to strong and he is tipped over too. You leave them down there while you take the time to bring both bodies and guns inside, leaving no trace of your fight visible and begin feeding on one of them. You vaguely hear sobbing from the woman below and the man alternating between cursing you and comforting her but what does it matter? They are just prey after all. Finally your hunger is sated and you look down at them, leaving the blood smeared on your chin from your feeding. "So our roles are somewhat reversed then?" You call down. THe woman is clearly too distraught to answer right away so the man does "Harbinger, that's what you are!" he says it like an isult but it is a compliment really, you are better than them after all. "Indeed, that is one of my names" you reply with a smile "You made this rather easy for me too, trusting a stranger like that, tut tut." THe woman then pauses her crying long enough to speak up "But you saved me, you were horribly wounded doing it!" You just smirk. "Random luck for you, I was actually intending to kill you when I noticed the mutants too late, had to kill them first or they would have torn me apart while I attacked you. Giving me enough time to begin healing up was nice though" you say as you remove your temporary bandage and show your wounds already well on the way to healing. "Now, you will be telling me where this little colony of yours is before you die. You'll find I can be fairly persuasive when needed. The man clams up and the woman goes back to sobbing. > You they have no food or water, leave them a day or two while you feast on the guards in front of them, they will be desperate soon enough "Well be sure to rest now, you have a few days down there before I question you. although I might let the one who tells me everything go with your food and water. It's not like I need your fruit." You say indicating the partly eaten corpse. You then ignore them and go back to eating. As night falls they still haven't said a word but you don't expect them to break right away and keep ignoring them, you've eaten all the good meat on the first guard so chuck what is left down into the silo and have a good laugh at the resulting screams, it is one thing to see some one die, it's another to have their half eaten and desecrated corpse thrown at you in the dark. You settle down for a sleep and quickly fall asleep with your hunger sated for now, you are thinking about how to affect the normals haze when drift off. You are woken in the night by a thump and realize that you no longer sense the shambler in the silo, you call down "Killing it wont do you any good, not as if you could eat it!" You smile to yourself "And that should panic them more, the fact I know exactly what they are doing in the dark". You fall back asleep > The silo painted red You wake well before dawn and peer down into the silo, it is hard to make anything out down there even with your night vision so you wait until the light is shining through the cracks and wrench the hatch open, flooding the silo with light and blinding the humans. "Time to rise and shine!" you call down at them as they wake and cover their eyes "One of you might win a chance at going free to day by telling me what I need to now!" You then start eating the other guard, the hunger is never gone long. You try and probe their minds while you eat but you are met with little success, it seems normals minds are much trickier than infected, you will need to practice. There is not so much crying today so you decide to taunt them a little more, maybe throw the guards head down once you have eaten the brain os something like that. You tear the guards arm off to gnaw on while you lean over the railing to look down at them, you get a big surprise though and see the man holding a pistol pointed right at you. He immediately fires, giving you no time to dodge and you feel two bullets hit your chest before you stumble backwards, several more missing you. "Where did you?" You manage before you feel blood starting to pool in your lungs and stumble toward the hatch to get outside, there is still a chance of you surviving if you can get to safety, the amount of fresh human flesh you have eaten should help you. The man calls after you "We never mentioned that out friend down here still had his pistol on him when we lowered him down. I remembered and dug it out after killing him! And time to end this harbinger, you just showed me your back!" You try and climb outside but the open railing gives you no cover as you hear the man empty his clip. Most of the bullets miss but some still hit and it is enough. You slump down inside and hear the woman crying again as things darken "Why is she still crying" You think "I was eating them".<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There is no reason to wait. once the guards are dead, the other two are not even a threat and you can get all the information you need from them before you eat them. You lunge suddenly and punch one guard cleanly in the jaw. You are not a trained fighter but with your superhuman strength and speed you still hit like a professional heavyweight. You watch the man go unconscious immediately but the momentum tips him over the rail and he falls from the silo. You are already spinning though. The other guard starts to react and the woman starts to scream but you are too fast and punch the guard in the throat before slamming him into the ground and snapping his neck, the haze around his mind vanishes instantly. Seconds later you notice the haze from the first guard vanish too "The fall finished him off then" You think as you turn back to a horrified and crying woman. "Oh don't worry, I wont kill you right away, I will keep you and the other one alive for a few days, I need information afterall." You grab her and she is unable to resist your sheer strength ans you pull her through the hatch and toss her over the railing and into the silo. The man tries to intervene but you are again to strong and he is tipped over too. You leave them down there while you take the time to bring both bodies and guns inside, leaving no trace of your fight visible and begin feeding on one of them. You vaguely hear sobbing from the woman below and the man alternating between cursing you and comforting her but what does it matter? They are just prey after all. Finally your hunger is sated and you look down at them, leaving the blood smeared on your chin from your feeding. "So our roles are somewhat reversed then?" You call down. THe woman is clearly too distraught to answer right away so the man does "Harbinger, that's what you are!" he says it like an isult but it is a compliment really, you are better than them after all. "Indeed, that is one of my names" you reply with a smile "You made this rather easy for me too, trusting a stranger like that, tut tut." THe woman then pauses her crying long enough to speak up "But you saved me, you were horribly wounded doing it!" You just smirk. "Random luck for you, I was actually intending to kill you when I noticed the mutants too late, had to kill them first or they would have torn me apart while I attacked you. Giving me enough time to begin healing up was nice though" you say as you remove your temporary bandage and show your wounds already well on the way to healing. "Now, you will be telling me where this little colony of yours is before you die. You'll find I can be fairly persuasive when needed. The man clams up and the woman goes back to sobbing. > The woman seems the easier one to break, Kill the man now in front of her too so she breaks sooner. You want the information soon and you can easily dust off a human a day the way your hunger returns so kill the man now and eat him later. The woman should break easily enough and you will be headed off to the colony soon to have the feast of your dreams. You pick up one of the rifles the guards was carrying "Been years since I used one of these! I was never great with them so you'll have to excuse my accuracy." You call down as you take aim at the man. It looks like he might be about to give a retort but you can't be bothered listening and fire right away hitting him square in the chest and knocking him off his feet. "Ah never mind, that was a great shot! You say as you chuck the rifle down on the walkway. The woman just startles then keeps crying. "Well she will break soon enough" You think as you spend the rest of the evening sleeping and finishing off the rest of the guard. Once you have finished off the good meat you chuck the remains of the desecrated copse down into the silo and have a good laugh at how it would scare the woman before falling asleep. > You morning in the red silo You wake up bright and early and realize it is still well before dawn so you make a start of eating the second guard, the hunger is never gone for long. You make good headway before finally seeing light through he cracks around the hatch and wrench it open to let it all flood in and wake the woman up. You expect a startled sound but hear nothing and look down into the silo and see she is missing. You swear and check everywhere you can see but you can only see the pieces of fencing, the half buried shambler and the dead man. You leap down, knowing you can get back out easily enough and start looking for the woman "If she killed herself I will tear her corpse apart before eating it" You think as you wrench up one of the pieces of fence while standing on the second one. You realize too late that it is a little too heavy and you just lifted the woman up too as she held onto the under side.You might be faster than any normal human but when you loose several seconds to shock you can still be taken off guard and the woman lashes out with a knife, managing to plunge it into your chest before you can get away. You stumble back as you lash out in return, knocking her aside, but your usual strength is not in the blow and she quickly pulls herself back onto a piece of fence and gets to her feet. "I'll kill you!" You manage as you take a step towards her but your one lung is already full with blood and it is leaking into the other. You can definitely survive this but you need to eat more flesh and rest very very soon to stand a chance. The woman snarls back at you, a terrifying counterpoint to the smiles she gave you the morning before "Oh, you will? like you killed the others, leaving me alive? Did you think the woman would be the weakest?" She lunges at you repeatedly, slashing and stabbing. You could so easily defeat her normally, she wouldn't even be a threat, but you can't breath and you are getting weaker. You land a punch as she cuts your arm and she goes down, but she staggers back up, dazed but still fighting and you know it is over. You don't have the strength any more and when she stabs again you cannot stop it. You simply watch as the knife plunges into your chest twice more before you fall to the ground. The last thing you hear is the woman crying again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There is no reason to wait. once the guards are dead, the other two are not even a threat and you can get all the information you need from them before you eat them. You lunge suddenly and punch one guard cleanly in the jaw. You are not a trained fighter but with your superhuman strength and speed you still hit like a professional heavyweight. You watch the man go unconscious immediately but the momentum tips him over the rail and he falls from the silo. You are already spinning though. The other guard starts to react and the woman starts to scream but you are too fast and punch the guard in the throat before slamming him into the ground and snapping his neck, the haze around his mind vanishes instantly. Seconds later you notice the haze from the first guard vanish too "The fall finished him off then" You think as you turn back to a horrified and crying woman. "Oh don't worry, I wont kill you right away, I will keep you and the other one alive for a few days, I need information afterall." You grab her and she is unable to resist your sheer strength ans you pull her through the hatch and toss her over the railing and into the silo. The man tries to intervene but you are again to strong and he is tipped over too. You leave them down there while you take the time to bring both bodies and guns inside, leaving no trace of your fight visible and begin feeding on one of them. You vaguely hear sobbing from the woman below and the man alternating between cursing you and comforting her but what does it matter? They are just prey after all. Finally your hunger is sated and you look down at them, leaving the blood smeared on your chin from your feeding. "So our roles are somewhat reversed then?" You call down. THe woman is clearly too distraught to answer right away so the man does "Harbinger, that's what you are!" he says it like an isult but it is a compliment really, you are better than them after all. "Indeed, that is one of my names" you reply with a smile "You made this rather easy for me too, trusting a stranger like that, tut tut." THe woman then pauses her crying long enough to speak up "But you saved me, you were horribly wounded doing it!" You just smirk. "Random luck for you, I was actually intending to kill you when I noticed the mutants too late, had to kill them first or they would have torn me apart while I attacked you. Giving me enough time to begin healing up was nice though" you say as you remove your temporary bandage and show your wounds already well on the way to healing. "Now, you will be telling me where this little colony of yours is before you die. You'll find I can be fairly persuasive when needed. The man clams up and the woman goes back to sobbing. > You kill the woman and the man now, screw the information, you know where to find to compound alone You look down at the two of them and run through a plan in your mind "The compound is about two days walk North, it is a walled community and still defended. That means it will be on a main road and I will see smoke from fires soon enough. I have no need for them to live." You pick up one of the rifles and look down at them "Change of plans, I know where the compound is and don't need to torture you. Take this as a blessing, I'm really being rather nice considering the alternatives." It takes you three shots since you aren't the best with guns but they lie dead in the silo, sources of food for once the guard is gone. You spend the rest of the day feasting on human flesh. and sleep through the night with no hunger bothering you for the first time in an age. Morning comes with more feasting, as does the rest of the day, and the next. All in all you spend 4 more days there eating every good bit of meat and organ off the four before finally setting out North "This is the only road in the area and it heads North, I am practically guaranteed to find their little community just by following it" You think as you set out, pack on your back we a few leftovers and your bat swinging in your hand. > You northward with killing on the mind You start out North with a swing in your step. You are full to bursting with energy from eating the humans, all your wounds are healed up and you know where to find a whole group of humans just waiting to be eaten. "What more could a man want!" You say aloud to the surrounding fields. Having gorged yourself over the past few days they hunger is staying low to nonexistent and you know it will stay that way for a few days more. Not that you would pass up another meal, best to stay ahead of these sorts of things. After a few hours you begin testing your powers again. You were able to get your senses to reach further than before and had some fun controlling the shamblers in the barn while you feasted but you need to try something more difficult. Something like the mutants that you fought near the silo. If you can control them, then you will have a force to be reckoned with! You keep stretching your senses out and find shamblers in small groups or singly but not anything stronger than that. You assume the mutants must be further off road and you might have to go searching for them. > You it's worth the time and effort, go searching for mutants Shamblers are not really fighters, those mutants you fought with however, those could fight. You head off the road to the West, that seemed to be the direction the others came from and you know the humans were being most careful out that way. By lunchtime though you have found nothing new. Just the usual scattered shamblers and no signs of anything else. It is possible that the two you fought were the only ones in this area "Maybe they are territorial like before they died and killed off other mutants? Guess I should actually learn more about the infected if I want to control them all" You think as you take a break for lunch and eat more meat strips. You decide that even if you want mutants, you may as well practice controlling some shamblers full time so reach out for the nearest ones. You stretch out your senses and invade the shamblers minds. It is so much easier than before and you take control of 8 of them, forcing them to follow you as you progress through the fields. 8 was a little tricky and after a few hours you find your headache growing and your nose starts bleeding again so you take a break, relaxing your hold on them while you snack on a piece of meat, wondering which human you ripped it off. It takes a couple of hours for the headache to begin subsiding and you set out again, by nightfall you are exhausted and the headache is throbbing with a vengeance. You relax your hold once more and climb into a ditch to sleep, you are in too rough a shape you look for anything else. You wake well after dawn, that means you slept right through the night again, you are going to have to be more careful from now on if you are going to be asleep for that long. You do however notice two things; Your headache is gone, and your shamblers have not moved an inch. You gently feel for them and it's almost as if you still have a small connection to their broken minds, you gently push a command for them to walk and they obey instantly "I see, so I must force my mind over them at the start but once I am in control I can relax and they still follow ymy commands!" Happy with the progress the sleep has given you, you set out again, once more having your shamblers following you from a distance, through the fields and ditches, but now you don't concentrate on them constantly, just gently send out commands and instantly feeling them respond to your will. You grin to yourself "This is going to be easy". You keep going in a haphazard fashion to the West until nightfall and find the second floor of a barn to use as a bed for the night.You think about the situation and realize that without you killing them off, that the scavenging team will be due back in a day or two at the most, and you wont beat that time back now so they will be suspicious either way. > You keep searching for mutants, if they are going to be suspicious either way, you want good minions to fight them You keep heading West the next morning and finally spot a large grouping of buildings in the distance. Once you get closer you see that it must have been a large farming complex before the infection. Several houses are spread out, surrounded by barns and various buildings you assume had something to do with raising farm animals though your lack of knowledge regarding farming prevents you from working out exactly what that was. You start being more careful as you approach and sure enough you begin sensing something different than before. haziness in one of the barns that you do not recognize. "Jackpot, something other than humans and shamblers is here, it better not just be some Goram crazy though" You think as your edge closer and closer. Finally things resolve. there are two things in there that you cannot identify along with a shambler. This confuses you at first but shortly after the strange things move closer and the shambler's mind vanishes "And now at least they have eaten" You think as you finally judge yourself close enough to try and take them over. You reach out with your mind at one of them first and find it instantly. It's mid is definitely different from anything before, feral and pulsing with instinct but not the same emotions or remnants of intelligence as other minds you had sensed before. You force you will on it and find it fighting back. You can feel the headache starting and push harder as you feel it now trying to flee you attack, leaping around the barn. Finally though you force your control over it and it settles down as your slave. The other one has reacted too though and you realize it is headed your way. Once more you lash out, but this time completely confident of your ability to take it over and the confidence seems to matter and you take it over is seconds. You now control two mutants, and from their minds, they are two more large mutant cats "Must have been the farm's ratters" You think as you command them to finish eating the shambler in the barn before following you back East. Your headache is terrible and with the accompanying nose bleed you would rather they didn't have hunger on their minds when they were looking at your back. You have no need to worry though and the next morning they are behaving in the same way as the shamblers you control. docile and waiting your commands. You smile to yourself, this attack was going to be easy. It is not long after that you notice the faintest hint of smoke in the distance > You waiting for nightfall You look carefully as you approach. The walls are High, maybe 10 foot high and 12 with the railings, the spikes on the top were surely ornamental before but they have been sharpened now into points and you can see men with guns looking over the walls at various points. They are clearly the guards as they are holding guns however they are also clearly relaxed. they probably haven't had any real excitement since the raiders died out a few years back. It is not long before you have moved right around to the rear of the little community and see that the walls appear exactly the same the entire way around and that there are guards on every wall. You'll have to wait for nightfall. You spend the next few hours carefully maneuvering your shamblers in closer to the community and snacking on meat strips. "Almost out of meat, seems the more I eat humans, the more the hunger grows. Ah well, a feast is coming soon enough." You begin salivating at the though of eating all the humans in the community in front of you. Your senses tell you that there could be as many as 40 in there. You will have to improve you abilities to number humans at a distance but for now the numbers match your expectations and you settle in to wait. > You attacking in the moonlight You wait as midnight comes and goes and give the new guards on the walls a couple of hours to get comfortable and sleepy before you make your move. The moon is out in a beautiful crescent, looking every bit like a blade cutting down at the little community ahead of you. The light it provides is more than enough for you to see clearly but you know it isn't enough for the guards who have lit torches on the railings "They have lit themselves up like candles but the light will blind them to my approach!" You think to yourself gleefully as you move closer with the six shamblers near you. You are within a few metres of the first guard when you realize the problem. You can get over the wall easily but the shamblers will never make it. You hiss at yourself for being so stupid and take a few minutes to send them all round to the ditches near the front gate along with the mutants. You will have to open it to get them inside to fight for you. You move to a dark spot between the torches and leave your bat and pack against the wall before jumping up incase they banged against somthing and gave you away. You reach the railings easily and swing yourself over in one smooth movement, landing quietly on a wooden platform behind the walls "Smart, they built a little walkway all the way around for their guards" You think as you sneak back towards the guard you were near before. He had seemed extra sleepy earlier, and sure enough, you find him napping. Two steps into the light from the small torch and you have and hand clamped over his mouth and the other around his throat, crushing his windpipe. It gives way with a pop and you finish him off by snapping his neck. The hunger surges up but you have to ignore it for now. You can feast once you have control of the entire compound. You start sneaking along the walkway toward the next guard and once more find a sleepy man, relaxing in his chair in the torchlight, you smile to yourself, they had become too lax in the peaceful times after the raiders all died. You once more move in close and before the man even wakes up enough to react you have you hand over his mouth and throat. You clamp down, crushing his windpipe but as you feel it give way, you hear the thump of his heel hitting his chair. You quickly snap his neck but the damage is done and the chair tumbles off the edge and into the compound before you can stop it. You swear to yourself and you hear the noise it makes but you know it wasn't really that loud, You almost think you got away with it when you hear the next guard calling out "Hey Kiel, you fall asleep again!" You quickly drop to the ground, the guard wont take long to get suspicious when their friend does not reply so you need to get the gates open fast. You sprint between the houses, luckily finding most quiet and dark and come to the main gate. there are two guards here, one either side of the gateway and they are awake and chatting to each other. But you hear the shout going up. The guard has found the body. "Kiel is dead! we have intruders! help!" You swear and rush towards the gate, leaping up and vaulting yourself onto the walkway behind one of the guards. He saw you coming and tries to raise his gun but you are faster and a punch to the throat sends him stumbling over the wall, only to get impaled on a spike before he can fully fall. the haze of his mind already gone by the time he hits the spike. You run and leap at the second guard, but this one has had more time and you see her with rifle ready. She takes the shot as you leap and you feel the impact in your side. You are certain she just got you cleanly in the kidney as you land and start punching her, not giving her time to work the bolt action for another shot. She shot you though and the hunger fills your mind with anger as you punch her repeatedly in revenge, even though she was dead after the second hit. The shouts of humans running brings you back from your rage and you can sense the minds of several humans headed your way. You leap down and wrench the wooden bar off the gate, swinging it open. "Time for vengeance!" you think as you order your horde inside and lean up against the wall for a moment to stop your own bleeding. You will easily survive this, but it is still not trivial, you will need a few moments to bind it before you move. You simply order your horde to attack while you tear a strip off your shirt to stuff into your wound when you hear the shots starting and feel your horde reduce in number quickly. You look up to see the humans aren't all carrying bold action hunting rifles or pistols, several have assault rifles and they are tearing your shambler horde apart with ease, the mutants are doing damage in return though and each has already downed a human. > You your wound has to wait, support your horde before it is too late "Gorram automatic weapons!" you say as you drop you attempts to stop your own bleeding and charge the men shooting at the shamblers.You quickly pass the slow cannon fodder as see that two of those still standing have assault rifles and need to be taken down fast, your mutants have also easily killed a man each but they are stopping to feed and at risk themselves because of it. You quickly send to order to attack humans relentlessly, only feeding once they are all dead and leap at the closest human. You clearly take him by surprise with your speed, bullets pass you by but luckily none hit as you plow right into the man knee first, feeling his ribs crack and sending him flying backwards. You can sense that he is still alive but you doubt that he will be moving any time soon. You spin and land a heavy punch on the next man, knocking him out cold before he can even get an aim at you. You feel two more human minds vanish behind you and glancing back you see the mutants mauling two more before moving on "No more automatic weapons now" You think as you shove the last man standing towards the shamblers as be desperately tries to reload his rifle. Then you feel one on the mutants flash in pain then vanish. looking over you instantly see it on the ground, bullet wound to the head. You search for the cause and see two of the wall guards, one still aiming down her gun at your dead mutant. You snarl, they were going to pay for that. The second guard grabs the woman "Briar, you killed it, now let's go!" and the both start running along the platform to the rear of the compound. You give chase and know you can cut them off if you run through the buildings quickly enough. You start dodging through, hearing gunfire still happening and know that other humans had finished off the last of the shamblers at the gate, but your second mutant and 3 shamblers were already loose between the buildings, hunting for humans. You rush out the side to see the two you are chasing jumping down and running for what looks like a bunker hatch where other humans are already gathering. > You chase them down, then slaughter the others as well, they killed your new pet You Rush after them "They die for killing my pet!" You snarl in your mind as you rush towards them, covering the ground inhumanly fast. You quickly catch the man and backhand him aside then lunge after the one he called 'Briar' she was the one who shot your pet. You even imagine how good your revenge will feel as you snuff her life out. Sadly though you never consider that when you move with inhuman speed in front of humans with guns currently fighting infected that they will assume you are indeed inhuman. The first bullet misses but the second catches you cleanly in the side of your chest right before you reach Briar and it knocks you off your stride. You stumble to your knee, feeling the internal bleeding start, you've been shot twice now and you are definitely reaching your limit even with your regenerative capabilities. You sense a movement and looking up you see Briar turn to you and raise her gun "You killed claw!" She says as she is about to fire, but she killed your pet and is standing close to you. You lunge upwards as she fires, her bullet tearing through your chest but you have momentum and manage to punch her in the throat before you collapse. You can feel the blood draining from you now and know you wont get up again but you are also looking right at Briars face. You both know you killed the other as you see her choke to death and she watches you bleed out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Gorram automatic weapons!" you say as you drop you attempts to stop your own bleeding and charge the men shooting at the shamblers.You quickly pass the slow cannon fodder as see that two of those still standing have assault rifles and need to be taken down fast, your mutants have also easily killed a man each but they are stopping to feed and at risk themselves because of it. You quickly send to order to attack humans relentlessly, only feeding once they are all dead and leap at the closest human. You clearly take him by surprise with your speed, bullets pass you by but luckily none hit as you plow right into the man knee first, feeling his ribs crack and sending him flying backwards. You can sense that he is still alive but you doubt that he will be moving any time soon. You spin and land a heavy punch on the next man, knocking him out cold before he can even get an aim at you. You feel two more human minds vanish behind you and glancing back you see the mutants mauling two more before moving on "No more automatic weapons now" You think as you shove the last man standing towards the shamblers as be desperately tries to reload his rifle. Then you feel one on the mutants flash in pain then vanish. looking over you instantly see it on the ground, bullet wound to the head. You search for the cause and see two of the wall guards, one still aiming down her gun at your dead mutant. You snarl, they were going to pay for that. The second guard grabs the woman "Briar, you killed it, now let's go!" and the both start running along the platform to the rear of the compound. You give chase and know you can cut them off if you run through the buildings quickly enough. You start dodging through, hearing gunfire still happening and know that other humans had finished off the last of the shamblers at the gate, but your second mutant and 3 shamblers were already loose between the buildings, hunting for humans. You rush out the side to see the two you are chasing jumping down and running for what looks like a bunker hatch where other humans are already gathering. > You pull back and wait to see what is going on, there is a lot of them Chasing them down would be suicide and they would instantly notice your wound and that you are not one of them, pull back for now and observe. You slip into shadows between a house and some old decorative tree and watch what happens. The two fleeing guards are welcomed into the strange bunker and as the door opens you realize that a bunker is exactly what it is. One of the old 'survive the apocalypse' things you always laughed at. Even at a glance you can can see it has solid metal walls, a solid metal door and lots of room inside with shelved stuffed with food. "They weren't messing around with that thing, I bet dynamite would barely scratch it!" You think as you watch a family running out of the houses to the right, two shamblers in slow pursuit. "Even with a toddler they can outrun them" You think as the family gets to safety and the shamblers fall to gunfire. You send you mind out and realize the mutant has been doing its job though. there are no more guards on the walls and the gunfire has stopped although is is wounded, probably a single gunshot you think. You watch as the last humans run out from the houses toward the bunker and a man gets taken down from behind by the Mutant, you quickly change it's order from rampaging to surviving and feeding and it drags the body bad into the shadows, barely dodging the bullets from those at the bunker. You watch the humans look around desperately before all retreating inside and sealing the door. You find yourself along in the compound with your pet mutant and a small pile of dead humans. > You time to feast and heal You grab the two nearest bodies and head into a house at random. You find a well kept little home and feeling oddly out of place in the clearly well-loved house you take the bodies into the kitchen and start eating there, feasting until the easiest to devour meat and organs was gone and you couldn't eat more without serious risk of your stomach splitting open. You are about to take a limb with you but again the house puts you off and you head up empty handed after wiping the blood off your face with a cloth. You reflect on your own odd behavior, you have never respected property before but you guess that it might be different due to this clearly being a well loved home that was lived in literally until moments ago, the owners might even be alive just across the yard in their bunker, or they might be one of the dead you just ate. Either way you can literally feel how you are supposed to act here and find yourself obeying the old unwritten rules of a guest in another home without even thinking about it. Almost out of spite to how you were just behaving you head into the master bedroom and use it for the night, leaving your mutant orders to guard you as wel as feeding during the rest of the night. > You morning in the well loved home You wake up feeling a little strange in the house again, but this was no time to be put off, You have started healing but you need to feed more to expedite the process and you head back down to the kitchen. This time as you feast you start looking around and find all the things that you might find in a normal home before the infection came "Seems like they avoided the worst of everything here" You think as you gnaw on a piece of tough muscle. "Must have had a low turn rate when it became airborne and killed those who turned quickly to stop it spreading, guess I give them credit for that" You keep looking around and realize that there is a note on the fridge, a chore list addressed 'To myself' and signed "Cara" You laugh aloud "This is Cara's house!" you smile to yourself, no longer caring about the house, only thinking about how you tricked and killed it's owner as you feast. THe next three days pass much the same way, you feasting on humans and occasionally observing the bunker but nothing changes there when you are looking and you never sense any of the humans leaving it. Your wound is closing up already so you think it is time to start doing somthing. > You test the bunker, there might be a way it if the company selling it were scammers You can't sit around just healing for any longer so you decide to finally test out this bunker of theirs. You know there have always been companies selling these, some good and some scammers but also that the industry boomed as the virus first began to spread, and most of the boomer companies were frauds, installing the bare minimum for looks then leaving with the money before they had to be used. You move closer slowly but sense no response from the humans inside, they are so close together is is very difficult to tell anything from them though. You finally edge right up to the door and still no reaction so you start your investigation properly, running through a checklist of possible obvious problems "Hinges are on the inside and the door edges form a perfect seal, walls clearly go deep underground, no windows or large panels, internal welding, the air filters are imbedded right into a 3inch steel plate..." You run through everything you can think of but find no weaknesses, only that it appears to be extreamly well made and large, the 25-30 people you estimate inside seem to have spare room. You tut aloud as you plan your next move > You leave and head back South, you have learned what you need to crush the Eastern colony Time to get out of here and head East. No point wasting any more time now that you know you have the abilities needed to take out the entire Eastern colony. "Thousands, or even tens of thousands of humans just waiting to be eaten!" You think as you load up on some meat strips and Start the walk back South. You grab a few shamblers at first but think better of it and send them to the compound instead to harass anything that tries to live there again and walk on South alone smiling to yourself. There isn't an infected now that you are scared of as you can control them all. Maybe another harbinger could give you some problems but you know inside that you are the strongest, the alpha predator. You work out plans as you walk. A colony as big as the one you are heading too can't be handled the same way, even with only a small number of dead, the bodies started to rot before you could devour them all so you will need a smarter method. Maybe kill a couple of hundred at the start to make sure they know you are in control of their lives then trap the others with shambler and mutant guards. You can have them in little groups, each with their own guards or you could even ring the entire colony in a wall of infected, preventing any hope of escape. "I will need to increase my powers for that one though" You think. "Going to have to keep the majority alive, maybe use them as slaves while I feed off them slowly. a population that big could sustain me for years to come, my own little herd of cattle waiting for the slaughter." You are enjoying the ideas when night finally falls. You find a broken down building to camp in and sleep a few hours before setting off once more in the morning. > You reaching the highway from the North You move quickly the next day and cover a lot of ground by jogging and walking quickly, your hunger is already starting to return and you want to reach your goal as fast as possible. You think about grabbing the minds of some infected you pass but again decide against it, you can get stronger and better fed ones in the city. You could even grab a few mutants before crossing the bridge if you wanted as there should be a couple around there. As dusk begins you can make out the highway in the distance and keep jogging and hour into the night until you finally get back to the furniture van with the sofa in it. You lock yourself in once more and eat a few of your meat strips, as long as you keep eating those, then the hunger seems to keep itself at bay. It never truly vanishes though unless you consume fresh flesh. You consider this for a time, it used to be that your meals would come days apart, then weeks apart and you would have to horde scraps of human and animal flesh to get by. The hunger stayed away though, but now the more you eat, the more the hunger returns, getting stronger each time. Feasting on the humans in such numbers recently has made it stronger than ever and you can feel it constantly weighing on your mind, pushing you to kill more and eat more. "It's like a second voice where a conscience used to be, but the opposite, telling me to kill and feast on humans, which then makes it stronger. Maybe this is a curse harbingers face, each human they devour feeds the hunger inside which then drives them to kill more an more. I will have to be careful I don't let it influence me too greatly." With those thoughts you drift off to sleep > You east with the dawn You set off with the dawn as you know you have a few days walking ahead of you at the very least and wanted to relish the sofa for a few more hours. You keep heading East and don't find much food on the way but your powers increase even further, with you able to control and direct large groups of shamblers from a distance You learn to differentiate the minds of shamblers and fast types, even a mutants to the South easily fall under your control as your range increases. Your tests let you control several infected at once and direct them as you please individual without lessening your grip or concentration on the others. "They will have no idea what hit them when I reach the Eastern colony" You think to yourself. Your physical abilities have also improved. You were already faster and stronger than any normal human but that has increases along with your mental abilities, you know there isn't a normal human alive who could face you in a fight and you can rip a car's door clean off its hinges with only a little effort. It's not long after that you finally reach the bridge across the river. There are infected on it but this wont stop you now as they are just shamblers and you direct them over the sides of the bridge to fall into the deep flowing water below. After a few moment you realize that either the fall or the drowning has actually killed most of them but shrug it off as another test, they are just prey after all. Then the pain begins. A sudden sharp stabbing right into your mind forces you to your knees. You try to fight it off and feel it diminishing, like you are holding a barrier up against it, protecting your mind with your powers, but you feel just how much strong the other force is. It feels like a glacier bearing down on your mind, slow but inexorable. You lash out at it with your mind, trying to force it away and almost imagine your attacks as flames striving against the attack. Then the attack pauses, it cannot gain any more ground against you. The pressure is still there and the pain is throbbing in your head but you stopped it in it's tracks. You grin as you stand up as straight as you can, they probably cannot see you but if another harbinger is going to attack you then you will destroy them while standing tall and showing your superiority. You do however feel the blood streaming down your face from your nose and realize that this is the worst nosebleed you have ever had "But of course, they launched a surprise attack on me, anyone would take a small hit but I held them off, I stopped their surprise attack easily and now I can destroy them!" Then the second weight hits your mind and your defenses shatter, this one felt different, almost ethereal but once it hit, your already stretched defense shattered instantly, letting the original attack succeed, the pain spikes suddenly . But then the pain suddenly stops. "Sorry about this, I really am, but you are far too close to being red to get in here alive. Only a matter of days before you went fully over so it is much better you are killed now before you actually become a threat worth worrying about." You try and respond but find that everything feels fuzzy, you are sure the voice in your head is female though "Oh yes, might have damaged a few things there, attacking really isn't my strong suit so I might have used too much strength, well either way it doesn't matter now. Bye" You feel a slight pain then everything fades out to black<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can't sit around just healing for any longer so you decide to finally test out this bunker of theirs. You know there have always been companies selling these, some good and some scammers but also that the industry boomed as the virus first began to spread, and most of the boomer companies were frauds, installing the bare minimum for looks then leaving with the money before they had to be used. You move closer slowly but sense no response from the humans inside, they are so close together is is very difficult to tell anything from them though. You finally edge right up to the door and still no reaction so you start your investigation properly, running through a checklist of possible obvious problems "Hinges are on the inside and the door edges form a perfect seal, walls clearly go deep underground, no windows or large panels, internal welding, the air filters are imbedded right into a 3inch steel plate..." You run through everything you can think of but find no weaknesses, only that it appears to be extreamly well made and large, the 25-30 people you estimate inside seem to have spare room. You tut aloud as you plan your next move > You wait it out, you have enough food for a while and you can observe more There is no rush and you don't want to waste your time bashing your head against some stupid bunker so you simply make yourself at home and keep feasting for the next week. The time passes slowly but happily as you feast on the best humans and have your pet mutant feed of those who start to rot of the bits you don't want. It's the perfect pet, bigger than any normal dog should be, eats your leftovers nd can literally tear a group of humans apart in seconds. Time passes though and still nothing happens, even with so many humans in there you saw a lot of food and that was just a glimpse in the doorway, there is no telling how long it could take for them to come out. You pass the next week in the same way and finally have enough. You are basically fully healed, you have eaten all the good human flesh available and you need to do somthing > You test this thing properly, you have guns and access to gunpowder afterall You head back to where all the guards died and collect all their weapons and ammo before taking it back to in front of the bunker. you start but simply shooting a few of the guns at it and get a clear reaction from those inside but the bullets just bounce right off leaving barely a scratch on the metal. You then start taking them apart using tools in one of the sheds, someone here obviously made their own ammo and between their spare powder and that collected from bullets you dismantle you gain a fair sized bag of explosive to test. You once read something about needing to contain he blast until it built up enough so you find an old heavy duty pan with a sealing pressure lid to use and take everything over to the door of the bunker. You place the bag inside, slip in a makeshift fuse and light it. You seal the pan up as fast as possible then run for it. You dive behind a building but nothing happens. You wait a few moments an nothing is happening so you get to your feet and peek around the corner of the building as the explosion goes off. It's rather impressive if you say so yourself with lots of smoke and bits of metal flying everywhere but when it clears you can see the bunker clearly un-moved. You head over and find that it scorched the door a fair bit and there are some obvious scratches from the pieces of metal but that is all. You clearly aren't going to get inside this way. You turn to head away when you see hear the faintest humming noise and notice something blinking near the edge of the bunker. You find a small indent with a camera sunken into it behind a tiny thick piece of glass "They have a generator and cameras in this thing? where the hell do you buy something like this!" Frustrated you give up and start walking back over to the house. Unfortunately now that they took the risk of turning the generator and cameras on the humans can see you, and can see you are alone. You sense them moving before you hear the door open and have time to spin around so that you can clearly see when it opens and there are 4 humans already pointing guns your way. You try to dive to the side but two of the bullets still hit you and you hit the ground hard. You see you mutant rushing them from the shadows but they simply turn nd fire at it, automatic weapons tearing it apart and killing it before it even got half way to them. THen they turn back to you and fire again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Gorram automatic weapons!" you say as you drop you attempts to stop your own bleeding and charge the men shooting at the shamblers.You quickly pass the slow cannon fodder as see that two of those still standing have assault rifles and need to be taken down fast, your mutants have also easily killed a man each but they are stopping to feed and at risk themselves because of it. You quickly send to order to attack humans relentlessly, only feeding once they are all dead and leap at the closest human. You clearly take him by surprise with your speed, bullets pass you by but luckily none hit as you plow right into the man knee first, feeling his ribs crack and sending him flying backwards. You can sense that he is still alive but you doubt that he will be moving any time soon. You spin and land a heavy punch on the next man, knocking him out cold before he can even get an aim at you. You feel two more human minds vanish behind you and glancing back you see the mutants mauling two more before moving on "No more automatic weapons now" You think as you shove the last man standing towards the shamblers as be desperately tries to reload his rifle. Then you feel one on the mutants flash in pain then vanish. looking over you instantly see it on the ground, bullet wound to the head. You search for the cause and see two of the wall guards, one still aiming down her gun at your dead mutant. You snarl, they were going to pay for that. The second guard grabs the woman "Briar, you killed it, now let's go!" and the both start running along the platform to the rear of the compound. You give chase and know you can cut them off if you run through the buildings quickly enough. You start dodging through, hearing gunfire still happening and know that other humans had finished off the last of the shamblers at the gate, but your second mutant and 3 shamblers were already loose between the buildings, hunting for humans. You rush out the side to see the two you are chasing jumping down and running for what looks like a bunker hatch where other humans are already gathering. > You pretend to be a human fleeing the vilence like the others to get inside whatever it is they are running for You have the blood on you to look like a wound and you do look human so why not? You quickly start jogging out, clutching your side where you were shot and waving for help. You even pull the nearest shambler to 'chase you' to add a little realism to your drama. You see the group at the strange bunker entrance point at the two fleeing their way and welcoming them in. Then you see them point your way "Perfect, I get inside during the panic and they have no-where to run" You think as you close the distance. Shots ring out but you know they are aimed behind you and you feel the shambler go down, You glance behind then toward the men with guns "Thankyou! oh thankyou!" you start as you get close. Then the girl looks at you again, the one the man called 'Briar' "He is working with them, I saw him kill Claw at the gate!" she shouts and immediately the guns ring out again, this time at you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wait as midnight comes and goes and give the new guards on the walls a couple of hours to get comfortable and sleepy before you make your move. The moon is out in a beautiful crescent, looking every bit like a blade cutting down at the little community ahead of you. The light it provides is more than enough for you to see clearly but you know it isn't enough for the guards who have lit torches on the railings "They have lit themselves up like candles but the light will blind them to my approach!" You think to yourself gleefully as you move closer with the six shamblers near you. You are within a few metres of the first guard when you realize the problem. You can get over the wall easily but the shamblers will never make it. You hiss at yourself for being so stupid and take a few minutes to send them all round to the ditches near the front gate along with the mutants. You will have to open it to get them inside to fight for you. You move to a dark spot between the torches and leave your bat and pack against the wall before jumping up incase they banged against somthing and gave you away. You reach the railings easily and swing yourself over in one smooth movement, landing quietly on a wooden platform behind the walls "Smart, they built a little walkway all the way around for their guards" You think as you sneak back towards the guard you were near before. He had seemed extra sleepy earlier, and sure enough, you find him napping. Two steps into the light from the small torch and you have and hand clamped over his mouth and the other around his throat, crushing his windpipe. It gives way with a pop and you finish him off by snapping his neck. The hunger surges up but you have to ignore it for now. You can feast once you have control of the entire compound. You start sneaking along the walkway toward the next guard and once more find a sleepy man, relaxing in his chair in the torchlight, you smile to yourself, they had become too lax in the peaceful times after the raiders all died. You once more move in close and before the man even wakes up enough to react you have you hand over his mouth and throat. You clamp down, crushing his windpipe but as you feel it give way, you hear the thump of his heel hitting his chair. You quickly snap his neck but the damage is done and the chair tumbles off the edge and into the compound before you can stop it. You swear to yourself and you hear the noise it makes but you know it wasn't really that loud, You almost think you got away with it when you hear the next guard calling out "Hey Kiel, you fall asleep again!" You quickly drop to the ground, the guard wont take long to get suspicious when their friend does not reply so you need to get the gates open fast. You sprint between the houses, luckily finding most quiet and dark and come to the main gate. there are two guards here, one either side of the gateway and they are awake and chatting to each other. But you hear the shout going up. The guard has found the body. "Kiel is dead! we have intruders! help!" You swear and rush towards the gate, leaping up and vaulting yourself onto the walkway behind one of the guards. He saw you coming and tries to raise his gun but you are faster and a punch to the throat sends him stumbling over the wall, only to get impaled on a spike before he can fully fall. the haze of his mind already gone by the time he hits the spike. You run and leap at the second guard, but this one has had more time and you see her with rifle ready. She takes the shot as you leap and you feel the impact in your side. You are certain she just got you cleanly in the kidney as you land and start punching her, not giving her time to work the bolt action for another shot. She shot you though and the hunger fills your mind with anger as you punch her repeatedly in revenge, even though she was dead after the second hit. The shouts of humans running brings you back from your rage and you can sense the minds of several humans headed your way. You leap down and wrench the wooden bar off the gate, swinging it open. "Time for vengeance!" you think as you order your horde inside and lean up against the wall for a moment to stop your own bleeding. You will easily survive this, but it is still not trivial, you will need a few moments to bind it before you move. You simply order your horde to attack while you tear a strip off your shirt to stuff into your wound when you hear the shots starting and feel your horde reduce in number quickly. You look up to see the humans aren't all carrying bold action hunting rifles or pistols, several have assault rifles and they are tearing your shambler horde apart with ease, the mutants are doing damage in return though and each has already downed a human. > You get out of here, if your horde is loosing, you have to save yourself "Gorram automatic weapons!" You think as you quickly move out of the gate and into the night. You glance in all directions before heading South, the guards on the walls are too distracted by the fighting and you slip right past, jogging for nearly an hour before finding a small shed just off the road to collapse into for the night. You wedge the door shut then relax back against the wall to check your wound. The bullet is still inside and it is bleeding a lot, you'll have to keep it closed for it to heal and the jogging did you no favors, increasing your blood loss. You feel around the back and locate the bullet close to the skin on that side so you quickly cut the skin with a nail you find on the floor and pull the bullet out before finally using a strip of shift to bind yourself up. "Good thing I'm not human or that really would have killed me" you think as you fall deeply asleep never even wondering how far you had gotten in your jog. > You morning in the shed You wake with a headache and in pain from your wound but you can already feel it beginning to heal. This one would take at least a week to get healed enough to act normally but you got out alive and that is all that matters. You did however loose your horde and that angers you. You were going to have to get revenge on the humans another way, maybe once your wound heals up you can go for a new plan. Either way, you'll need to get a nice safe location to lay low for a bit. You retie your temporary bandage then force the door open to head out into the morning sunlight. You stop immediately when you find a ring of humans about 20 feet away with guns pointed at you. One calls over "You nearly had us that time raider, getting them inside the walls, don't know how you managed that but they are dumb and stop to feed letting us kill them easily. Then you also left us a blood trail all the way here, must be quite the wound you got." He says this last piece with a huge grin. He is obviously very happy that you are wounded. You spit and reply "I'm no raider, and I'm going to have my revenge on you all for killing my pets." you reply as you start forward, hunger and anger getting the better of you. Mere humans taunting you like this. Sadly anger is not a great way to think and the man replies as you take your first steps "Oh no, we will be getting our revenge on you, and we really don't care what you are." The humans all begin firing at once.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Shamblers are not really fighters, those mutants you fought with however, those could fight. You head off the road to the West, that seemed to be the direction the others came from and you know the humans were being most careful out that way. By lunchtime though you have found nothing new. Just the usual scattered shamblers and no signs of anything else. It is possible that the two you fought were the only ones in this area "Maybe they are territorial like before they died and killed off other mutants? Guess I should actually learn more about the infected if I want to control them all" You think as you take a break for lunch and eat more meat strips. You decide that even if you want mutants, you may as well practice controlling some shamblers full time so reach out for the nearest ones. You stretch out your senses and invade the shamblers minds. It is so much easier than before and you take control of 8 of them, forcing them to follow you as you progress through the fields. 8 was a little tricky and after a few hours you find your headache growing and your nose starts bleeding again so you take a break, relaxing your hold on them while you snack on a piece of meat, wondering which human you ripped it off. It takes a couple of hours for the headache to begin subsiding and you set out again, by nightfall you are exhausted and the headache is throbbing with a vengeance. You relax your hold once more and climb into a ditch to sleep, you are in too rough a shape you look for anything else. You wake well after dawn, that means you slept right through the night again, you are going to have to be more careful from now on if you are going to be asleep for that long. You do however notice two things; Your headache is gone, and your shamblers have not moved an inch. You gently feel for them and it's almost as if you still have a small connection to their broken minds, you gently push a command for them to walk and they obey instantly "I see, so I must force my mind over them at the start but once I am in control I can relax and they still follow ymy commands!" Happy with the progress the sleep has given you, you set out again, once more having your shamblers following you from a distance, through the fields and ditches, but now you don't concentrate on them constantly, just gently send out commands and instantly feeling them respond to your will. You grin to yourself "This is going to be easy". You keep going in a haphazard fashion to the West until nightfall and find the second floor of a barn to use as a bed for the night.You think about the situation and realize that without you killing them off, that the scavenging team will be due back in a day or two at the most, and you wont beat that time back now so they will be suspicious either way. > You head back quickly so you can attack before the party is too long overdue and alarms are raised You can take out the small compound alone easily enough so having some shamblers under your control will be more than enough. Also if you take too long they will be suspicious if their team does not return but you turn up instead. You stretch out your senses and invade the shamblers minds. It is so much easier than before and you take control of 8 of them, forcing them to follow you as you progress down the road. 8 was a little tricky and after a few hours you find your headache growing and your nose starts bleeding again so you take a break, relaxing your hold on them while you snack on a piece of meat, wondering which human you ripped it off. It takes a couple of hours for the headache to begin subsiding and you set out again, by nightfall you are exhausted and the headache is throbbing with a vengeance. You relax your hold once more and climb into a ditch to sleep, you are in too rough a shape you look for anything else. You wake well after dawn, that means you slept right through the night again, you are going to have to be more careful from now on if you are going to be asleep for that long. You do however notice two things; Your headache is gone, and your shamblers have not moved an inch. You gently feel for them and it's almost as if you still have a small connection to their broken minds, you gently push a command for them to walk and they obey instantly "I see, so I must force my mind over them at the start but once I am in control I can relax and they still follow ymy commands!" Happy with the progress the sleep has given you, you set out again, once more having your shamblers following you from a distance, through the fields and ditches, but now you don't concentrate on them constantly, just gently send out commands and instantly feeling them respond to your will. You grin to yourself "This is going to be easy" It is not long after that you notice the faintest hint of smoke in the distance > You approaching the target, horde following behind You slow your pace a little to match that of a normal human's walking and soon your keen eyes pick out a grey smudge below the thin trail of smoke. As you get closer the smudge resolves itself into a large grey wall topped with small spiked railings. The gated community. You keep your pace slow, you aren't sure if a normal human could have noticed the smoke and walls yet so you play it safe and wait a few more minutes before obviously turning your attention to the wall. You have your shamblers take more care and move slowly closer on either side, you picked up a few more that morning so you have a dozen of them now, 6 on each side. You look carefully as you approach. The walls are High, maybe 10 foot high and 12 with the railings, the spikes on the top were surely ornamental before but they have been sharpened now into points and you can see men with guns looking over the walls at various points. They are clearly the guards as they are holding guns however they are also clearly relaxed. they probably haven't had any real excitement since the raiders died out a few years back. You look carefully at them and realize that none of them is actually reacting to you at all. you look around and realize that most of you is covered by farm hedges and gates so that unless they were being vigilant they wont notice you for a few minutes yet. You still have time to decide on your best plan of action. > You head on up the road openly and claim the scavengers sent you so you can get inside The scavengers move a lot slower than you do so they might not even be expected back yet, time to use this to your advantage! You quickly check yourself over, your arm wound is already healed to the point that it looks more like an old injury than a frsh claw attack from a mutant, that will be easy to pass off. There is some blood on your clothing along with mud and other stains but honestly who doesn't in this world. You set out for the gates. As you walk you carefully maneuver all of your shamblers into ditches and under hedges, you are going to abandon then for a day maybe two before you attack so it is best if they are hidden properly, and it is not as if they complain about living in a hole for two days. You walk slowly, trying to emulate a weary human on a long walk and finally get close to the gate. You are in full view of the guard on the wall for a while before they finally notice you and the shout goes up to mark your presence "Lax guards, they should have seen me miles back. This will be easy if they are all this bad" You keep walking until you finally halt in front of the gate. The walls either side are clearly a solid 10 feet tall with the 2 foot railing spikes above and they are clearly maintained, the gates are large wooden affairs with metal banding, probably to emulate old castle gates but they will be strong. You see several humans looking down at you from either side and having seen them move there from around the walls you know they must have a walkway on the inside. You see several guns level at you but no fingers on triggers just yet, you also note that two of the guns are assault rifles, you will need to be careful. You know it is best to wait for them to speak first and do not need to wait for long before one of the men calls down "State your business, then prove you are human!" You lay your pak and bat down carefully then show your hands are now empty as you reply "Well I met your scavenging team a couple of days South and they sent me here to find sanctuary." you pause "I don't know how much they know about my kind so I'll play it dumb" You continue "As for proving I am human, well erm, I am talking?" The man stares at you "Show us your skin, no recent bites, that sort of thing. Then when we clear you, you can prove you were sent by our scavenging team." He keeps his gun up so you know you have to comply now. You slowly take your shirt off, revealing your muscular body and see a couple of approving looks from the women, then do a slow turn with arms raised to show you don't have any bites "Do I remove the trousers and underwear out here too?" You ask the man who is clearly in charge but he simply waves at your shirt and you put it back on. Realizing he is waiting for you you think quickly about what you had learned before you killed them, it occurs to you that they made a couple of jokes about a man called "Boring" who kept trying to be all official with the gate so you gamble on that. "Well when I was with Cara and Chris they did tell me what to do when I got here" You begin, and note the positive reaction when you gave their names "They said I should come to the gate a report to mr. Boring, well they just said 'boring'" You immediately see the man turn a little red and look displeased "I will have words with them!" The other guards clearly start chuckling and grinning behind him I have told them not to nickname me 'boring', they can use 'Fire' or 'Lion' but not Boring! what I do at the gate is important!" You can see you touched a nerve but from every ones expressions you know that you are safe, this is obviously a running joke so you keep going "Erm, sorry? Thats kind of all they told me to do,.." You trial off and know you are successful when you see the man sigh and wave behind him before replying "Yes, well you can't be blamed for their pranks, Chris is too easily influenced by Cara and her pranks, Welcome to 'Safe-Haven', the name might not be original but it fits." The gate opens and you head inside. > You safe-Haven As you walk in through the gate you get your first proper view of the little community, apart from the surrounding wall and wooden walkway you couldn't even tell that the world ended outside. There is a group of nicely laid out houses in the centre, a play park, a couple of mechanical looking buildings with tools and machinery inside and even a generator next to them. The people are the same, clean clothing and all smiling and chatting as if the most horrific decade in human history wasn't still fully underway just past the gate you had walked through. One of the guards hops down behind you and several of the people come over, one is even carrying a toddler. The guard starts introducing everyone and you give short pleasant responses before realizing the thing that was bugging you the most. You look like a hobo, a hobo who had something die and rot on it's clothing recently and everyone around you is clean and well dressed for a rural community. Your realization and glances at your torn and stained shirt must have registered as one of the women cuts the guard off "Let the man rest and get a change of clothing first before he gets embarrassed!" You are about to object when you hear a whoop from behind you and a female guard from the gate comes running over "I'll help, just wait till you see him with his shirt off!" The older woman tuts at her "Briar, behave yourself!" but she just grins and turns to you "Ok lets get you out of that shirt so I can burn it!". You don't actually feel embarrassed about anything around your prey and you definitely don't care what they think since you are about to eat them but you do find it strange that the social conventions still hold sway over you "I will have to break myself of these stupid old social compulsions, they get in the way" You think as you pull your shirt off and hear another whoop from Briar as she takes your shirt and heads off to a fire-pit near the walls. You also get some approving looks from the other ladies and glance down at your perfectly muscled self, "I am a bit of an Adonis thanks to the virus, makes sense I guess" you think as you let the crowd of women take you over to a shed and hand you some new clothing. You do change in private though, despite seeing them as prey to be eaten at the first opportunity, you mind still pulls you away from certain acts. When you finally come out there is a larger crowd, including men ready to greet you and show you their little community. They take you on a whirlwind tour, showing off everything like proud parents showing off their firstborn child. It is all as you first saw, nice well loved little houses and a couple of old barns used as machine shops, The one thing that catches your eye is at the back. A huge metal door leading into a metal corridor that seems half buried at the back of the compound. "That's our bunker!" One of the men proudly announces "If everything else fails, we can all live in there for months without any worries!" You mke a mental note to check it out, it would be problematic if you entire food supply was locked in a giant steel box after all. > The night and the next day You are shown to a house that looks less well kept than the others and are told you can use it as your own "An old member, called himself 'Playa' used to live here, sadly he was on a scavenge when they got attacked, him and his partner never returned so now it's yours." You thank them and head inside, finding yourself automatically wiping your feet as you do so "Oh come on, I haven't wiped my feet in years, what am I doing?" You head upstairs and find a nicely laid out bedroom complete with a full bead "Although I really can't complain about this!" You hop onto the bed and relax "Even better than my van-sofa!" You think as you begin making your plans. You start by stretching out your senses and trying to count the humans, you find that they are often too close together to count perfectly but at least 30-40 which fits your initial guess. Several act as guards day and night and they have a fair amount of guns including at least two automatic weapons. They also have the bunker but there are ways of dealing with that too. You slowly fall asleep as the sun sets, thinking about all those walking meals, just feet away and battling the hunger that always comes with those type of thoughts. > You well before dawn You wake after just a few hours sleep like you used too, hunger eating at your belly and pressing on the back of your mind. You are going to have to make your plans soon or you might snap and just outright attack someone.Then you pause "I'm not normally this bloodthirsty, I used to be able to control my urges much better. Guess this is what happens when I feast, luckily I know I can hold it at bay for a few days if I need too" You roll over in your bed and send out your senses again before finally heading over to the window to check the time "The moon says it's around 3 or 4 am and there are definitely guards still on the walkway but they are not moving at all. Probably sleep right now if not fully asleep from how lax they were when I approached. You head downstairs and peak out all of the windows, sure enough you see little to no movement anywhere in the compound. You cannot see the gate from your new house but if the two guards there are anything like the others then they will be fast asleep too. You think things through again "The scavengers are due back tomorrow I'd guess, I could play it out for one extra day if I say they had an extra large amount of food but people will get suspicious quickly. My other option is making my move now, I have the shamblers outside and ready to invade the second I kill a few guards and let them in." > You hold off one more day to plan and prepare Waiting it out one more day while you investigate the bunker and guard numbers is the best plan so you head to the kitchen and see what you can find to eat. You find it empty "They must have cleared it out after the last bugger died" You think s you head back upstairs to wait for dawn to arrive, it wouldn't be smart to be caught wandering about outside right now if you didn't plan to kill them all tonight. When the dawn finally comes, you have decided that the bunker is the key, even if you got half the guards dead and lat the shamblers inside, a large number of the humans could get to the bunker and hide out there if they were smart. You head out into the dawn light with a plan in mind. But first you have to act nice to the walking meat-sacks. You spend some time exchanging pleasantries with the members of the community and finally Boring heads you way with questions clearly on his mind "So friend, you survived long enough to get here and join us and you say Cara's team sent you but there are some things you need to answer". You give your best 'I'm not planning on ripping your head off and eating you' smile and reply "Of course, whatever you need to ask" "Two things" He begins "Firstly, everyone here earns their keep, even the kids, well, once they are able, anyway, if you plan to stay you'll need to do your share. Second, we were expecting Cara's team back before dusk yesterday and they haven't arrived, what do you know?" He immediately gets some disapproving looks from the others nearby but you reply quickly to them as well as him "They are fair questions, I will of course do my share where-ever I am needed, I will let the community decide my role and I will happily do it, you are the ones who know what is needed here. As for Cara and the others... I don't know, they did have a large number of sacks full of fruit and veg though, they said they had been extra successful?" He thinks for a moment then nods and heads off back to the gate while you force the bowl of gruel down your throat. It tasted liek ashes in your mouth and felt like it was kicking you in the gut it sat so badly but you had to keep the act up or they prey would get suspicious too quickly. After breakfast and the pleasantries you head for a walk around the inside of the wall, waving and saying hello to the guards before finally coming to the bunker, finding it open. > The bunker You grin at your own good fortune and immediately try to act like an innocent but curious visitor "Hello there?" You call as you slip through the door and down the ramp inside, finding yourself in a much larger room than expected. The walls lined with shelves packed with food tins of all varieties and bottles of water. You even see a generator with its vents plugged into the wall in one corner "They weren't kidding when they said they could survive here for months" You think as a man steps out of a far corner and simply asks "Can I help you?" You put on your best smile "Ah erm, well I just arrived yesterday and everyone was talking about the bunker so when I saw the door open I thought I should come and look, I did should hello?" The man simply nod and goes back to his clipboard "Ah yes, I saw you briefly as you were swarmed by the more excitable members of our little community. Luckily with the relatively recent loss of two members you will not throw our plans off at all. You are about to question his 'plans' when you realize he must be referring to the stores down here, he must be in charge of the rationing so he would be the one knowing exact numbers of people and things. "Well it seems very safe down here." You try. "Ah yes, safe indeed, out community all put in together to fund it from a specialist company I used to work for! We were not like the scammers that came after the infection began spreading. We were very expensive but with build with great care, our minimum standard was would we feel safe in it ourselves, and in this case I planned to use it myself so I made double certain of every detail." He seems keen on the subject so you keep asking questions "So you knew something like the virus was coming?" He pauses and looks at you "The virus?" Then he seems to reach some conclusion you can only guess at and brightens up before continuing "Oh dear me no, the virus was a shock indeed, we expected nuclear war. The world was headed towards it and we expected the biological attacks to get worse and worse until someone finally launched the first nuke. It seems that at least one country had other plans and released a virus that was a little too effective. Once it started mutating even their own vaccines were not effective.This beauty is a full community nuclear fallout shelter. You could house a small number safely for years without ever opening the door, the entire community could easily last" He glances down at his clipboard "5 and a half months before needing to make a run for more water, then they would have another 5 months!" excellent design and it could be hit directly by a tank and barely take any damage! We were remote enough to avoid the main hordes but close enough to the city to get the vaccine once it was developed and only lost a handful of members." He goes back to smiling to himself as he marked things off on his board "Well thanks for the info" you say as you head back out. Either you need to be in here when the door shuts of you need to stop anyone else getting in, you don't see any weakness at all in the design. > You waiting for nightfall You spend the rest of the day checking out all of the defenses as subtly as possible and being nice to all the humans as they taunted you with their flesh and minds, just waiting to be eaten, but you hold the urges off for now. You cannot act prematurely and let the hunger control you, that will just get you killed. You force yourself to stomach the horrendous food they give you and finally retire to your own house for the night and count the hour passed as you watch the moon. at midnight you sense the guards change over and watch the new ones settle in and get relaxed, leaving them long enough to get nice and sleepy before acting. But the ones at the gate keep moving, they clearly are not sleepy and might be a small problem tonight. > You gate open first, then while the shamblers get killed, you hide in the bunker with the others You slip quickly out of the house and head for the South West corner of the compound "No time like the present!" you think as you sneak close to the first guard and see he is isn't moving "Time to reduce the number of humans with guns so my shamblers will have free reign" You think as you move further along the wall. The guards have lit torches on the railings, helps them see nearby things but makes them night blind to anything more than a few feet away. You find a spot between torches and gently swing yourself up onto the walkway. You sneak back towards the guard you were near before. He had seemed extra sleepy earlier, and sure enough, you find him napping. Two steps into the light from the small torch and you have one hand clamped over his mouth and the other around his throat, crushing his windpipe. It gives way with a pop and you finish him off by snapping his neck. The hunger surges up but you have to ignore it for now. You can feast once you have control of the entire compound. You start sneaking along the walkway toward the next guard and once more find a sleepy man, relaxing in his chair in the torchlight, you smile to yourself, they had become too lax in the peaceful times after the raiders all died. You once more move in close and before the man even wakes up enough to react you have you hand over his mouth and throat. You clamp down, crushing his windpipe but as you feel it give way, you hear the thump of his heel hitting his chair. You quickly snap his neck but the damage is done and the chair tumbles off the edge and into the compound before you can stop it. You swear to yourself and you hear the noise it makes but you know it wasn't really that loud, You almost think you got away with it when you hear the next guard calling out "Hey Kiel, you fall asleep again!" You quickly drop to the ground, the guard wont take long to get suspicious when their friend does not reply so you need to get the gates open fast. You sprint between the houses, luckily finding most quiet and dark and come to the main gate. there are two guards here, one either side of the gateway and they are awake and chatting to each other. But you hear the shout going up. The guard has found the body. "Kiel is dead! we have intruders! help!" You swear and rush towards the gate, leaping up and vaulting yourself onto the walkway behind one of the guards. He saw you coming and tries to raise his gun but you are faster and a punch to the throat sends him stumbling over the wall, only to get impaled on a spike before he can fully fall. the haze of his mind already gone by the time he hits the spike. You run and leap at the second guard, but this one has had more time and you see her with rifle ready. She takes the shot as you leap and you feel the impact in your side. You are certain she just got you cleanly in the kidney as you land and start punching her, not giving her time to work the bolt action for another shot. She shot you though and the hunger fills your mind with anger as you punch her repeatedly in revenge, even though she was dead after the second hit.. The shouts of humans running brings you back from your rage and you can sense the minds of several humans headed your way. You leap down and wrench the wooden bar off the gate, swinging it open. "Time for vengeance!" you think as you order your horde inside and lean up against the wall for a moment to stop your own bleeding. You will easily survive this, but it is still not trivial, you will need a few moments to bind it before you move. You simply order your horde to attack while you tear a strip off your shirt to stuff into your wound when you hear the shots starting and feel your horde reduce in number quickly. You look up to see the humans aren't all carrying bold action hunting rifles or pistols, several have assault rifles and they are tearing your horde apart with ease. > You take them down fast before they kill too many of your shamblers Your wound will have to wait, you sprint towards the men, watching them take down two more shamblers with easy shots spread between the chest and head. The stupid shamblers were just not fast enough to get in close. But you are fast, very fast. You close the distance and pass your last 4 shamblers as you leap at the front human with an automatic weapon, Your knees hits him in the chest and you send him flying backwards. You felt his ribs crack but can feel that he is still alive "Out of action for now though" You think as you spin and punch another guard in the face, knocking him out cold. Then you feel the impacts in your back and stagger forwards. You turn slowly as your lungs fill with blood to see on of the men calmly pointing his rifle your way "Hey this one is a lot tougher than the normal ones at least!" He calls to his comrades as he pulls the trigger again and three more bullets tear into you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You spend the rest of the day checking out all of the defenses as subtly as possible and being nice to all the humans as they taunted you with their flesh and minds, just waiting to be eaten, but you hold the urges off for now. You cannot act prematurely and let the hunger control you, that will just get you killed. You force yourself to stomach the horrendous food they give you and finally retire to your own house for the night and count the hour passed as you watch the moon. at midnight you sense the guards change over and watch the new ones settle in and get relaxed, leaving them long enough to get nice and sleepy before acting. But the ones at the gate keep moving, they clearly are not sleepy and might be a small problem tonight. > You wait one more day, it wont hurt to be cautious now With the guards at the gate still active it is too risky, they could raise the alarm and ruin everything before your plan every really gets underway. You sleep for a few hours and wake with the dawn, heading down to the kitchen you find a couple of the guards there. You are immediately on alert but one smiles at you and waves you to a seat "So we decided you'll be joining the guards!" seems best suited for you if you survived this long out there along you'll know something about killing infected right?" You relax a little and nod your consent as he continues "We came to get you but then felt bad for waking you before dawn since you aren't a guard YET. so we let you sleep, but come on Boring has asked us to show you a few things." The guards all get up and head for the door and you follow, you notice they are all carrying their guns but think nothing of it, it is their job. They take you right to the bunker and lead you inside "So this is the bunker, our last line of defense. Our main job is not so much to hold off the attackers at the walls, but to delay them until everyone gets in here safely then we can simply wait it out!" You smile back and pretend to look around interested as you walk inside. "Yeh I met someone in here the other day and he told me about it..." you begin as you turn to see the guards backing out of the door and locking you in as he says "And we can also use it as a prison for those we suspect, since there is no way out without a key." You rush the door but it locks in place before you can do anything. > You prisoner in the bunker Your hunger pushes you to rage against the door, and you are about to give in before you calm yourself and step back. You try to call to them to profess your innocence for whatever they suspect but it seems like the door blocks the noise out too so you wander over to a fold-out chair and take a seat. It is several hours before you hear the door moving again. You jump to your feet but as it opens you see at least 6 men with guns pointed at you on the other side, no way you could get out the door before they shot you. You see Boring stepping out from where he was obviously opening the door and move up to the entryway but not inside. You note that he never blocks too many of the gunmen from your view though, probably to make sure you still feel intimidated when he speaks "That wont work on me though, I am better in every way then him, I could easily crush his skull with one hand. But I will play along for now, then enjoy slaughtering everyone he cares about the second I get free." He finally begins talking to you as you sit down again on your little folding chair "Well I am sorry to have to do this since several of our little community seem taken with you but things are looking suspicious right now and you wouldn't be the first raider to try and get our guard down this way." You think carefully before replying "Oh come on, I have behaved perfectly, I was even sent here by Cara and Chris!" You see the man smiling in response "Yes you joked around the fire about saving her life and spending time chatting with them, but now they are two days overdue on their return. I sent out a couple of our fastest men yesterday to find out what happened to them. It might be a freak accident or problem, or they might just turn up late but we must be careful and until we know the truth you will be living here." You try and protest but he backs out and closes the door again. > You judgement day You have two more nights in the Bunker and open a couple of cans of meat to eat while you are there "Can't blame me for eating if they were the ones to lock me in here" You think, but the canned food taste horrible to you and barely does anything for the hunger, if it wasn't slightly better than nothing you wouldn't even bother. Finally the door opens again and once more you see boring and the men with guns outside. This time though there are a few more of them. "Come on out now, there are people wanting to chat with you to work out the truth." You are confused at first but this is better than expected, maybe they didn't find the remains or thought that infected got them, there were two mutant carcass near the silo after all. They look nervous though so you will have to be careful "Of course" you reply "I can clear my name that way and get back to helping out here". Boring simply nods in response and starts walking away, several of the men follow him off to the side, leaving only a few near the entrance and they stop actively pointing guns at you. You walk up happily "I can play on their doubts, play the sadness card, pretend I am broken up about my new friends deaths bla bla. They will trust me again in no time, then I can tear them apart and feast tonight!" You think as you reach the doorway and notice that boring and the other guards had simply looped around as soon as they were out of sight and were now just a few metres away with all their guns pointed right at you. "Heralds must die, that is the first commandment for survivors!" Boring shouts as the others all open fire. You go down in the hail of bullets "Ah, they must have worked it out from the bodies then" you think<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake after just a few hours sleep like you used too, hunger eating at your belly and pressing on the back of your mind. You are going to have to make your plans soon or you might snap and just outright attack someone.Then you pause "I'm not normally this bloodthirsty, I used to be able to control my urges much better. Guess this is what happens when I feast, luckily I know I can hold it at bay for a few days if I need too" You roll over in your bed and send out your senses again before finally heading over to the window to check the time "The moon says it's around 3 or 4 am and there are definitely guards still on the walkway but they are not moving at all. Probably sleep right now if not fully asleep from how lax they were when I approached. You head downstairs and peak out all of the windows, sure enough you see little to no movement anywhere in the compound. You cannot see the gate from your new house but if the two guards there are anything like the others then they will be fast asleep too. You think things through again "The scavengers are due back tomorrow I'd guess, I could play it out for one extra day if I say they had an extra large amount of food but people will get suspicious quickly. My other option is making my move now, I have the shamblers outside and ready to invade the second I kill a few guards and let them in." > You head right for the gate and get it open for your shamblers Getting the gate open is the first priority, you will need your shamblers running distraction and killing the slow humans while you pick off the ones with the automatic weapons. You slip out in the moonlight and move silently between the houses. Your night-vision is as excellent as ever and the clouded night is revealed to you just as clearly as the daytime would be for a human. You keep checking on the guards and others in the community but everyone is in the beds on the second floor of the houses and most of the guards are not moving. "Probably asleep in their chairs" you think as you finally get in a clear view of the gate. The two guards at the gate are clearly still awake. They are standing, one on each side, chatting across the gap. They aren't any more use as guards than the others since they are not facing the road or fields at all but they are facing each other which is bad for you. You judge the gap between the walkway edges at 10 feet. You can easily make the jump but you will need to time everything perfectly. They also have torches lit beside them so they are lit up completly while making themselves night-blind to anything else. > You slip close quietly, they will be night blind so you can completly surprise one then leap for the other You will have to rely on speed and surprise, you can't think of any reason the guards would let you close to them in the middle of the night. especially at the front gate. You edge to the left first and manage to get within a few feet of the walkway before reaching the edge of the weak torchlight "Any further and I can be seen. Going to time this perfectly, you give them a few moments more before seeing the guard opposite stretching and looking away. You vault yourself onto the walkway behind one of the guards. He saw you coming at the last second and tries to raise his gun but you are faster and a punch to the throat sends him stumbling over the wall, only to get impaled on a spike before he can fully fall. the haze of his mind already gone by the time he hits the spike. You run and leap at the second guard, but this one has had more time and you see her with rifle ready. She takes the shot as you leap and you feel the impact in your side. You are certain she just got you cleanly in the kidney as you land and start punching her, not giving her time to work the bolt action for another shot. She shot you though and the hunger fills your mind with anger as you punch her repeatedly in revenge, even though she was dead after the second hit. The shouts of humans running brings you back from your rage and you can sense the minds of several humans headed your way. You leap down and wrench the wooden bar off the gate, swinging it open. "Time for vengeance!" you think as you order your horde inside and lean up against the wall for a moment to stop your own bleeding. You will easily survive this, but it is still not trivial, you will need a few moments to bind it before you move. You simply order your horde to attack while you tear a strip off your shirt to stuff into your wound when you hear the shots starting and feel your horde reduce in number quickly. You look up to see the humans aren't all carrying bold action hunting rifles or pistols, several have assault rifles and they are tearing your shambler horde apart with ease, the mutants are doing damage in return though and each has already downed a human.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Getting the gate open is the first priority, you will need your shamblers running distraction and killing the slow humans while you pick off the ones with the automatic weapons. You slip out in the moonlight and move silently between the houses. Your night-vision is as excellent as ever and the clouded night is revealed to you just as clearly as the daytime would be for a human. You keep checking on the guards and others in the community but everyone is in the beds on the second floor of the houses and most of the guards are not moving. "Probably asleep in their chairs" you think as you finally get in a clear view of the gate. The two guards at the gate are clearly still awake. They are standing, one on each side, chatting across the gap. They aren't any more use as guards than the others since they are not facing the road or fields at all but they are facing each other which is bad for you. You judge the gap between the walkway edges at 10 feet. You can easily make the jump but you will need to time everything perfectly. They also have torches lit beside them so they are lit up completly while making themselves night-blind to anything else. > You try to get close with talking, then when they relax, strike fast They are facing each other and chatting across the gap. You might be ridiculously fast but you are nearly certain that you couldn't kill one, make the jump and silence the other before they get out a shout, or worse a bullet. The second the alarm goes up you know your plans will be ruined so you need to get closer by other means. It takes a few minutes but eventually you notice something that you normally wouldn't have. You realize that the guard to the right is female. You haven't looked at humans as specifically male and female in years, since you started eating them at least. "This place is really affecting my brain, although this information I can use, she was one of the ones hanging around a lot when I first arrived and making comments about my looks". You stand up then begin walking forward, making a little more noise than necessary just to be safe. You get a few feet when you see the guards turn quickly to look your way "a little more alert then" You think as you continue forward a few steps "Who is it?" gets called your way as you reach the edge of the torchlight. You step fully into it so you can be seen before replying "Just me, I can never sleep around this time so I was just walking around" you bank on them being a little suspicious of this excuse and it works perfectly. The woman calls out "And you just happened to end up at the gate?" You pause and pretend to be embarrassed before replying "Well, actually I ended up at the South wall and chatted to one of the guards there for a bit and when I asked about you, he said you were on the gate duty tonight..." You trail off and it takes a few seconds but the male guard catches onto your hint and lets out a chuckle, that gives the game away to the girl and she immediately blushes, you can see her reactions as clear as day with your heightened senses but she does not know that and tries to hide it by putting up a front "No matter, all you need to do is let my up on the walkway and you wont ever have to act again" You think as she replies "Well he was right, I am on duty now. So why were you asking about me?" You smile this time"Well you made quite the first impression on me when I arrived and I was planning on, you know, trying to get to know you a bit better over the next few weeks, when I heard you were awake now too I just kinda headed this way". The girls blush deepens and you can see the other guard laughing his head off as she responds "Well I am on duty now and can't leave my post!" You know you have her now though and push one last time "Oh, I wouldn't expect you too but having another set of eyes up there while we chat wouldn't hurt would it?" You give your biggest smile and she finally gives in and smiles back "Ok hop up and you can try and chat me up then!" You grin as you jog forward and try to act like pulling yourself up onto the platform is at least a little tricky, finally leaning against the arch of the gate beside her "She let me stand between her and the gate, idiot!" You think as you glance at the male guard who is now making a point of looking the other way. You turn back as the girl speaks "Well I'm waiting, I thought you were going to chat me up?" she says with a cheeky grin. The timing was perfect so you struck. You step a little closer and open your mouth as if to speak but as she looks at your face your fist moves unbelievably fast and hits her cleanly in the throat, crushing her windpipe, she wont be able to should for help or do anything at all as she quickly suffocates. You spin and leap the gap. The other guard barely even registers what is happening as your punch knocks him cold. You quickly snap his neck then stop and listen to see if your attack alerted anyone but the only sound you hear is the soft strangled noise of the girl dying and after a few moments that ends too. You smile to yourself as you force your hunger back down "Can't feed yet, I have to keep it in check until the battle is over" you mumble as you gently hop down and lift the bar off the gate. You gently swing one side open just enough to let the shamblers in and control them all directly again, making them move quickly until they are gathered right across the road, then slipping over and into the compound. > You clearing the guards out before the rampage "Time to play my little pets" You tell them as you direct them carefully between the buildings, spreading them out so that they can cause the greatest havoc possible. even if they die, they should bite enough to make more infected and those can rampage too. You hop back up on the walkway and start creeping South until you find the first torch and guard asleep at his chair. You take two quick steps and grab him with one hand on his throat and the other over his mouth. Just a gentle squeeze crushes his windpipe and you hold him until he stops struggling, dropping him back into his chair after "There, you are just as much use sitting there dead as you were alive!" You chuckle as you keep moving and turn the corner, heading wet now until you see the next light and the next guard asleep, or close to, in his chair. You smile at just how lax the guards had become as you do exactly the same as before and have the man by the throat before he even knows what is happening. You feel his windpipe pop and keep holding him as he kicks, imagining how good it was going to be to eat all the dead soon when his foot kicks out and hits his chair and you watch helpless as if, and his gun, tumble over the side with a small crash. You swear to yourself, you can't let yourself daydream in the middle of killing someone! You hear the expected call from further along the wall and know the gig is up for now. If you hide, the body will be found and the alarm goes up, if the kill the next guy, the others who heard the call will raise the alarm when he vanishes too "Well, half of the guards will be down at least" You think as you sneak forward into the darkest area near you and wait. The guard comes jogging your way calling out "What did you fall asleep and tip your chair over again?" You immediately stand and hit him as hard as you can. You catch him cleanly in the jaw and see his head snapping round instantly, accompanied by a snapping sound. You sense his life vanish instantly and realize your punch must have snapped his neck "I am getting stronger, never used to be able to do that before" You think as you keep moving forward seeking the next guard. > The raised alarm call You hear the shout going up load and clear "Everyone evacuate, infected in the compound, the gate wa opened!" Then you hear a loud horn going off and every human mind in the compound begins to move "Their guards are lax but they know how to evacuate at least" You start running openly now, no point hiding out if the alarm is already raised. The next guard sees you coming but realizes you are not a comrade far too late to save himself and he joins the dead. You sense the humans reaching their doors and then the screaming starts. Your dozen shamblers were all placed perfectly to cause the most chaos and you instantly sense several biting and feeding on human flesh. You think about making them rampage but they are slow and they are doing their job so you just leave them to attack and feed as their instincts direct. You feel one getting beaten off and killed, but then you sense a human mind change as you watch it. You see something like rot spread over it, the glow fading, it seems to fight back but they rot tears away at it until it shatters, leaving a weak rotted husk where there was a vibrant mind moments before "And so it spreads" you say aloud as the new shambler lumbers after what must have been it's family moments before. You reach one more guard as the gunshots begin and two more shamblers die. This guard is ready for you though with his gun raised toward the compound to shoot the first infected that comes near. You are that first infected and he spins towards you as you rush him, he realizes in time that you are an enemy but you are too close and his shot skims past you, just grazing your side "Claw has spotted some, Centre West wall!" You hear from not far away. The dead guards reinforcements are headed right for you. You sense three below running your way and another along the walkway. You pull at the nearest shambler and have it go after the three below but they instantly shoot it down and keep coming, the one on the walkway is getting closer too and you only have moments before they see you. > You into the bunker! It should be close enough! You immediately slip over the edge and land lightly on the grass below, you only have a few seconds but you were right, the bunkers is close, so you sprint towards it and slip into the already open door. You are the first one here but you can sense more headed your way already. You quickly hunch up against a wall pretending to look worried and wait. The call from the guards goes up as they find the bodies and you can sense them moving outward in arcs, searching the area but they don't come your way yet. You are going to need more survivors in here incase they come your way. You quickly locate your shamblers and find one blocking some humans so make it move as if it has a new target to the side and you sense the humans surge past and toward you. The guards locate another and it vanishes amidst the gunfire. You can feel the difference now between the human minds, some are clearly fleeing, headed your way, wavering and moving in sprints while others are methodically sweeping the area, these must be the guards. You do your best to have your last shamblers ambush the guards but you only catch one before the last of your horde are wiped out. Then the humans arrive, they flood inside lead by a guard who doesn't even look your way and the other humans don't either. They are just too panicked and desperate to get inside. You smile to yourself, a few more and no-one will remember where you were, they will just think you came in with the others from the houses. You watch as more and more pile inside, filially followed by a few guards and the door swings partly shut, manned by two guards. You can sense others outside, more guards, holding the area around incase of more survivors or threats but you know there are none of either, the humans are all here and the infected are all dead. You do a quick head-count and see at least twenty inside, your shamblers did good work with the ambushes. Time to fit in, You quickly see a a group of the humans that you met the day before and head over there trying your best to look scared "What's going on? we were just directed here but there were infected everywhere!" They don't even look suspicious for a moment as they reply "The gate got breached and they got inside. We have as little idea what's going on as you do." You simply nod in response and stay close, they are now your alibi and you will look less suspicious in a group. "This is going perfectly, half of their guards are dead and all the humans are trapped in here with me! > You surviving in the bunker You stay with the group, occasionally chatting, sometimes watching others come over to trade stories but generally just trying to fit in and look appropriately worried. If you are going to make your plan work you need the humans to trust you for just a little bit longer. Finally you sense that the humans left outside have swept the area clear and they all enter the bunker, staying in a group near the entrance. You sense the last three outside heading at speed towards the gate. "Ok, the compound is clear now and we are shutting the gates. We do not yet know how they got inside but once the gate team returns they can tell us more. For now you know the drill. Everyone check your neighbors for bites." You hear some mumbled swearing, it seems that they all had forgotten part of the procedure in the panic and now everyone starts rolling up their sleeves of taking their shirts off. You of course join in and pretend to look a couple of others over before giving them the all clear and they return the favor. A few people start calling out "All clear here" and you call it out for the people near you. "Not a single bite in the room, too bad, could have used a shambler or fast type turning in here". Finally things begin settling down and the guards return from the front gate, giving their report to the other guards, they speak softly but you know the survivors nearest them can hear and your hearing is advanced enough to pick it up too "Gate was definitely opened from the inside, bar taken out and pulled open, inside job. Looks like other guards on the walkways were killed too, probably before the gate was opened." The guards keep conversing for a time and finally call out to the whole bunker "The immediate threat is gone, but we are going into lockdown. This was no accident, the infected were let into the compound by design." You hear worried mumbling breaking out but as the door seals shut and is locked you can feel the entire bunker relaxing slightly "They must have fended off attacks in here before then" You think as you suddenly realize that several of the guards and a few other humans are staring right at you. "Well of course they suspect me now, gonna have to act fast." > You pretend to want to prove your innocence to the guards, then strike fast and kill the armed ones, you must act before they do You stand up slowly and see several more set of eyes latch onto you so you begin your act right away "Look, I know I am the most likely suspect here since I just arrived so I am going to go talk to the guards to prove my innocence." You make sure to keep your voice calm but loud enough for the entire bunker to hear and see many of your watchers stop staring. You then begin to head over to the guards who watch you coming, they don't actively point weapons at you but they are clearly keeping them close to hand. "We heard your little speech there and you are right. You are the main suspect, so how do you plan to prove yourself?" One of them says. You notice than Boring isn't here and realize he must be one of the dead, you smile inside while you speak "Well I don't know but but letting infected inside would be suicide for me so it doesn't make sense. How would I get the gate open with the guards watching me then get away as the infected attacked, in fact, how could I even have made them attack? They are just lumbering relics that hang around where they died until disturbed." The guards clearly don't seem convinced "We have been attacked before, in fact a few years ago the raiders were strong in this area, they used to capture or lead infected right up to the gates of communities like ours then kill some guards and let the infected in to do the dirty work for them. I think you are one of them." A couple of the other guards nod but some don't seem so sure so you know the idea can't be watertight yet "And at least they don't suspect I am a harbinger" You think as you plan your next response, you already pretended to not know the guards were killed so best to keep with that. "So you think that the raiders, who were wiped out years ago, suddenly recovered and sent me in here to open the gate and let infected attack me? why on earth would I do that? If they were willing to sacrifice me why wouldn't I just join you instead. You held off the strongest raiders groups in the past so why would I risk ym own death for some weak remnant?" You pause as if thinking "And how would I even do it, I mean you have guards all around the walkways and at the gate and they all have guns, you' think they might just notice a guy removing the bar and opening the gate?" You can see from their faces that your points are sinking in and they are relaxing, a couple let their guns slide down to less threatening positions. You smile slowly, then strike. You lunge forward and punch one guard, immediately grabbing another in your other hand and throwing him back into a third. you spin and lash out at one behind you, grabbing his gun as he falls unconscious and fire it point-blank into the chest of the next one you see "Too easy" You think as you use the gun like a bat to smash a guard round the head, feeling her mind blink out instantly as she dies "They can barely comprehend what is happening before they die". You leap towards the ones you knocked over and two swift blows kill them too and you finally turn to the gathered humans who are rushing away from you as much as the space allows in fear. "Future meals! hear me, I am in charge now! You can recognize me as a herald or harbinger, whichever term you choose to use for me, but you can also see that you don't stand a chance against me." You wave to the group of dead or unconscious guards behind you "All your guards are now dead and I will feast on their flesh, all you have to do is cower and wait to be eaten." > You to feast or to kill? You have all the time in the world to decide You grin to yourself "Look at them, prey is the right work for them, cowering in fear from me as it should be. They can live in fear while I slowly eat them all one by one. I can even take the kaycards for the door an leave them locked in here with shamblers as guards!" You are considering your next announcement when you hear the boom, amplified by the small space and metal walls and feel the impact on your back. You see a spurt of red leaving your chest and something hits a bag of wheat on a shelf in front of you. Glancing down you see blood pouring out of your chest. You spin around as you fight off the weakness you are feeling and are just in time to hear the click-click of a bolt action being worked to reload a rifle. You see one of the guards still lying slumped against the wall where your punch had sent him flying "Too bad you didn't knock me out then isn't is harbinger!" He shouts at you. One bullet wound wont kill you, you just need to get outside and lock the door while you recover, you know you can survive it, only one lung was punctured and your healing is more accelerated than ever now. You leap at the guard but you ar too late as just as you land his second shot tears through your chest leaving a second gaping hole and you can feel both lungs rapidly filling with blood. You try and swing for him but you are too weak and simply slump to the side. you watch your prey running forward to help the wounded and see them just ignoring you as everything just fades away.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stay with the group, occasionally chatting, sometimes watching others come over to trade stories but generally just trying to fit in and look appropriately worried. If you are going to make your plan work you need the humans to trust you for just a little bit longer. Finally you sense that the humans left outside have swept the area clear and they all enter the bunker, staying in a group near the entrance. You sense the last three outside heading at speed towards the gate. "Ok, the compound is clear now and we are shutting the gates. We do not yet know how they got inside but once the gate team returns they can tell us more. For now you know the drill. Everyone check your neighbors for bites." You hear some mumbled swearing, it seems that they all had forgotten part of the procedure in the panic and now everyone starts rolling up their sleeves of taking their shirts off. You of course join in and pretend to look a couple of others over before giving them the all clear and they return the favor. A few people start calling out "All clear here" and you call it out for the people near you. "Not a single bite in the room, too bad, could have used a shambler or fast type turning in here". Finally things begin settling down and the guards return from the front gate, giving their report to the other guards, they speak softly but you know the survivors nearest them can hear and your hearing is advanced enough to pick it up too "Gate was definitely opened from the inside, bar taken out and pulled open, inside job. Looks like other guards on the walkways were killed too, probably before the gate was opened." The guards keep conversing for a time and finally call out to the whole bunker "The immediate threat is gone, but we are going into lockdown. This was no accident, the infected were let into the compound by design." You hear worried mumbling breaking out but as the door seals shut and is locked you can feel the entire bunker relaxing slightly "They must have fended off attacks in here before then" You think as you suddenly realize that several of the guards and a few other humans are staring right at you. "Well of course they suspect me now, gonna have to act fast." > You hold off, you can't be sure of vitory in this confined space and with so many guns around, the panic would help but you couldn't be sure to kill all the guards before they shot you You stand up slowly and see several more set of eyes latch onto you so you begin your act right away "Look, I know I am the most likely suspect here since I just arrived so I am going to go talk to the guards to prove my innocence." You make sure to keep your voice calm but loud enough for the entire bunker to hear and see many of your watchers stop staring. You then begin to head over to the guards who watch you coming, they don't actively point weapons at you but they are clearly keeping them close to hand. "We heard your little speech there and you are right. You are the main suspect, so how do you plan to prove yourself?" One of them says. You notice than Boring isn't here and realize he must be one of the dead, you smile inside while you speak "Well I don't know but but letting infected inside would be suicide for me so it doesn't make sense. How would I get the gate open with the guards watching me then get away as the infected attacked, in fact, how could I even have made them attack? They are just lumbering relics that hang around where they died until disturbed." The guards clearly don't seem convinced "We have been attacked before, in fact a few years ago the raiders were strong in this area, they used to capture or lead infected right up to the gates of communities like ours then kill some guards and let the infected in to do the dirty work for them. I think you are one of them." A couple of the other guards nod but some don't seem so sure so you know the idea can't be watertight yet "And at least they don't suspect I am a harbinger" You think as you plan your next response, you already pretended to not know the guards were killed so best to keep with that. "So you think that the raiders, who were wiped out years ago, suddenly recovered and sent me in here to open the gate and let infected attack me? why on earth would I do that? If they were willing to sacrifice me why wouldn't I just join you instead. You held off the strongest raiders groups in the past so why would I risk ym own death for some weak remnant?" You pause as if thinking "And how would I even do it, I mean you have guards all around the walkways and at the gate and they all have guns, you' think they might just notice a guy removing the bar and opening the gate?" You can see from their faces that your points are sinking in, it's lucky they thought you were a raider and not a harbinger as since you aren't a raider it is easier to convince them. One finally responds "We aren't saying the allegations are air tight but you arrived then after over a year of no infected sightings from the walkway, we are over-run within days." You pause, pushing further might be good or bad so you play it cautiously "That I can accept, as I said, I know I am the likely one but hopefully I can be proven innocent soon." One of the guards who had been silent up until now speaks up. "He might be guilty of letting them in for some other reason but he isn't with the raiders." The others look at him as he continues "The raiders always did the exact same thing, they killed some guards by surprise, opened the gates to let the infected they captured or lead here inside then ran. They were cowards who never faced a real fight and though only of themselves, one of them would never risk sacrificing himself by staying in the compound before and after the attack. Even if the attack worked and he out-ran the infected at the gate, he would know he would be the main suspect. He also would have a hard time killing the armed guards alone, so if it was him, he had help from other raiders meaning there was no need for him to stay, he would have just run off instead." The others pause and think about it for a time "Then since we have nothing better we go with that. If a raider squad miraculously turns up in the next two days as they always did after an attack, you are probably innocent. if they don't, then we shoot you and be done with it." You simply nod in response and head back to your seat "Time to make a raider squad appear from no-where" You think as your group nods at your return. > You planning a raider attack You settle back into your seat with one thing on your mind "How do I made a raider attack materialize in under two days? Every human I've met agrees that the raiding groups were all wiped out by the military or the infected years ago" Then it occurs to you that you don't actually need to make a raider attack happen, you just need to make it SEEM like one happens, and for that you need more information. You turn to those nearest you and begin fishing for clues "What were the raiders like, we never suffered from the the same way in the city?" A couple avoid your eyes but once the first ones begin describing their experiences others readily join in and a full on little debate about them begins. It goes on for nearly an hour before slowly dying out as people begin getting rations for breakfast and you pretend to enjoy a small can of meat with one of the others. You slowly work through all the stories to filter out the important information. The raiders always came from the North, avoiding the city and heavily populated areas. They used vehicles and had guns but still fought like cowards, killing a few guards then loosing infected that has taunted and made to follow them on the inhabitants of small communities. They would retreat right away so they were not forced to fight and were in no danger from the infected, returning the next day or day after to clear out the last of the infected and humans and steal all they could. They had also raided here a couple of times, killing guards and opening the gate before fleeing, but they always returned to find the inhabitants and food safely locked up, or back manning the walls so they would give up and leave after firing off guns for fun and breaking a few things. "So all that needs to happen is a lot of noise and some guns going off, and that I can do." Having worked out your plan, you relax back into a corner an pretend to be trying to get to sleep like many of the others. Once you are sure you wont be disturbed you send out your senses carefully, pushing near your limits but not forcing it, you don't want a nose-bleed now. You finally find a few scattered shamblers right at you limit and quickly grab their minds, sending the order to walk towards you before dropping the control again "That should do it for now" You think as the headache begins at the back of your mind, grabbing them at such range wasn't easy, you'll have to hope enough follow the order and get closer soon. > The Raiders arrival You actually let yourself rest for a few hours and nap for a short time before sending out your senses again and finding that you were successful. There are 5 shamblers now in easy range of your abilities so you quickly grab them and direct them to the community. Some of the humans are stirring again but you know most are avoiding you for now so you should have a little more time to relax and watch your shamblers approach. In the end it takes another hour for them to arrive and you finally get to direct them in the gate. They are in bad shape, nearer dead than alive so you direct them to feast on some of the bodies and leave them to it for a couple more hours while you exchange pleasantries with some of the humans. It seems that since you went and chatted to the guards and haven't been shot yet that some of them think that must mean you are innocent, enough to talk to you at least and that's fine, you only need the cover for a short time more. Once everyone quietens down again you once more retreat to your corner and pretend to nap while you check on your little hordes progress. They have been feeding and their bellies are full, you can sense the new energy in their bodies and know it is time to get to work, you want everything ready for evening. You have them stop feeding for now and carefully direct each one individually, having them find and gather guns. You fail at first, not knowing how to make them find something you cannot see but you can follow their senses to where you know the guards died and once there you have them sweep their arms around and feel whatever they find. It takes time and it is extremely difficult work for you, the fine control of their bodies, reading their senses and trying to locate things all at the same time takes it's toll and you headache is horrendous but you eventually get every shamblers holding a gun of some sort.You leave the order for them to hold on to their guns no matter what and release control, allowing your mind you relax as you try to wipe away a massive nosebleed. You glance around and see the guards are spread out with the other humans and many ar giving you suspicious looks "Good thing my plan is coming together" You think as you pretend to enjoy a late lunch with people and relax for the evening, you need to time this correctly. Three hours before sunset you think your headache has gone down enough to act so you move the shamblers closer to the bunker and begin trying to make one fire it's gun, this takes nearly twenty minutes to work out but finally you hear a muffled boom. Everyone looks instantly to the door and a guard makes sure it is locked, no-one says anything though and keeps quiet, waiting to see what comes next. You realize that the shambler dropped the gun when if fired and you don't have time to have it work out how to pick it up so you direct it to band on the door while starting to directly control a second one. This one you make hold the gun back against it's body and point the barrel at the bunker. You take much less time with this one and you hear the repeated cracking noises of a semi-automatic gun firing and at least a couple of the bullets ping off the outside of the shelter just as the first one reaches the door and slams it's arm into it. "The raiders are back!" one of the humans calls out in a panic and several others agree instantly, expressing the same concerns. Debate springs up with some saying they are wiped out while others say this must be a new group of them, either way they are all agreeing someone is outside with guns. You stop the one banging the door and have two more fire their guns off into the air before sending all of them to smash up a few breakables like the machine shop and its generator, keeping only the last one with a gun. You give it nearly half an hour before having this one fire it's gun too then have the shamblers leave. Directing them as far from the community as possible before loosing control over them > You acceptance and new trust The guards don't do much more than calm people down for the next few hours, re-assuring them about the bunker and how strong it is before finally one stands up and makes an announcement. "It seems like the raiders have returned. We don't know how or why, it is possible it is a new small group emulating their tactics after running out of supplies. We just know they are here. What happened over night was that several guards were killed, the gates opened and infected released inside. If they keep to their old playbook, it means that by now they are gone and all the infected are dead. We will wait in here one more night then go check on things" He sits back down as people begin talking about all the possibilities this brings up and you notice a massive drop in meaningful looks your direction. You smile to yourself "Off the hook for now then!" You think and people eat dinner then find a spot to sleep. You wait up a short time but your headache is throbbing so you finally lie down and join the sleeping humans. You even sleep right through the night and have to be woken in the morning by people moving around near you. Once you sit up, you get involved int he discussion about what the new raider threat means but add little to the conversation as you are mostly just trying to gage how quickly the doors open and you can get back to eating these walking ready meals. It isn't long before three guards head out and return with the news that guns were indeed fired around the compound and that the machine shop and a few of the houses were smashed up a little along with the generator but that little was taken, the general consensus rests with people deciding that it must have been another small community copying raider tactics to get more supplies. You smile to yourself once more "time for part B" You think as several people apologize for doubting you and the guards stop watching you. > You part B of the plan You watch the guards for a time, there are 7 of them and each is armed now however if you split them up, you can easily kill them all so you bide your time until a second team is sent out to investigate the surrounding area for danger. Three guards head out leaving 4 inside and you know it is the perfect chance. You wander slowly closer, seeing the door just ajar and the kaycard for it round one of the guards necks "So, about trying to prove my innocence here?" You begin as your excuse for walking closer and closer. Once of the guards replies for them all "We will still keep an eye on you but it does look more like a case of bad timing on your part now. Just don't do anything suspicious ok?" He gives you a little grin to signal that it's ok really but it freezes on his face as your fist crushes his windpipe. The others try and grab their guns but they are too late as you lash our at them, knocking them into the walls as you kill them. It is over is seconds and the four remaining guards lie dead at your feet. One of the humans rushes at you but you simply move too fast for him to stand a chance as you grab him by the skull with one hand and begin squeezing, forcing him to his knees in pain "I am a Harbinger, a Herald of the apocalypse! If you don't know what that means, it means that I am your new God, you can all cower in here while I feast on your dead, if your behave and cower like good prey should, many of you will survive, defy my and this is the result." You squeeze hard and feel the mans skull shatter, brain and blood squirts out as you drop his corpse in front of the others. You grab the keycard, checking the others to make sure there isn't a copy left inside then head outside and lock the door "And thats my food supply secured!" You laugh as you find the nearest body to feed on and clear the taste of the horrific human food from your mouth. > The coming days You know you are the Alpha predator now, humans are clearly just prey waiting to be eaten. You brought down an entire armed community with a security bunker no less and now you feast on their corpses. You powers are stronger than ever and you can keep pushing them further and further. Yes, this is right, there is a food chain and simply you are on top. other harbingers might rank second but you are first and the lowly humans are nothing but future meals. You suddenly feel your mind changing, everything becomes clearer, crystallized almost, your vision sharper and your mind more directed. It is as if a filter had been removed from your mind and you can see everything properly for the first time. Your rightful place in the world, your grandeur, it is all so simple really. You stretch out your senses, easily surpassing all of your previous limits and grab the minds of all the infected you locate, barely having to even think about it, every infected mind you touch, you crush instantly and control. You sense the three ast humans returning though and laugh "Oh how late to the party, well, you will be my next meal then, I shall eat you while you are still alive so you are as fresh as possible!" Once they are in the compound you sprint right for them. They can't even reach as you move with supernatural speed, knocking each of them flying into walls meters away and killing all but one instantly "Maybe I over did it? Ah well, they are still fresh now!" You look at the last one, pitifully clinging to life before lashing out at its mind with your own. You can almost see your mental attack, great red flames lashing the mind again and again as it writhes in pain then dies "Ah I can finally affect the normal human minds too, excellent, I truly am a god fit to rule this world." The next few weeks pass slowly and easily. You take humans from the bunker one by one and devour them until there isn't a single one left in the compound and you set your sights East "You are next oh great Eastern colony, you have enough prey to keep me going for years." You think as you rise and begin you journey > You journey of death You have reached the current Journey of Death ending. The second evil ending currently in the game. Of course this ending gets expanded greatly soon, but I was literally writing these pages a few hours before the deadline so I couldn't get it further along.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hear the shout going up load and clear "Everyone evacuate, infected in the compound, the gate wa opened!" Then you hear a loud horn going off and every human mind in the compound begins to move "Their guards are lax but they know how to evacuate at least" You start running openly now, no point hiding out if the alarm is already raised. The next guard sees you coming but realizes you are not a comrade far too late to save himself and he joins the dead. You sense the humans reaching their doors and then the screaming starts. Your dozen shamblers were all placed perfectly to cause the most chaos and you instantly sense several biting and feeding on human flesh. You think about making them rampage but they are slow and they are doing their job so you just leave them to attack and feed as their instincts direct. You feel one getting beaten off and killed, but then you sense a human mind change as you watch it. You see something like rot spread over it, the glow fading, it seems to fight back but they rot tears away at it until it shatters, leaving a weak rotted husk where there was a vibrant mind moments before "And so it spreads" you say aloud as the new shambler lumbers after what must have been it's family moments before. You reach one more guard as the gunshots begin and two more shamblers die. This guard is ready for you though with his gun raised toward the compound to shoot the first infected that comes near. You are that first infected and he spins towards you as you rush him, he realizes in time that you are an enemy but you are too close and his shot skims past you, just grazing your side "Claw has spotted some, Centre West wall!" You hear from not far away. The dead guards reinforcements are headed right for you. You sense three below running your way and another along the walkway. You pull at the nearest shambler and have it go after the three below but they instantly shoot it down and keep coming, the one on the walkway is getting closer too and you only have moments before they see you. > You attack the guards on the ground, surprise them You wait until the last second and leap out into the darkness, You can see the humans but know they wont see you clearly until it is too late. You crash into the first one as you land, knocking him to the ground as you punch another hard in the jaw, he doesn't die but you know he will be unconscious for a long time as you spin to the last guard. They fire at you but you are too quick and knock the rifle barrel to the side at the last second before grabbing their head and twisting until you feel their neck snap cleanly and they go limp. You guard you knocked over cries out and tries to crawl away instead of shooting at you so you simply walk over and stamp on him until his mind vanishes too and you are left with one unconscious guard "Well if he isn't dead, his meat will keep better. I will save him for later." You can sense the people and the panic now, over half of the shamblers have been killed but so have several humans and a couple even turned and attacked their friends and family before being killed. Then you realize that they are all headed your way "The bunker, they are trying to retreat there now, but I am between them and it, perfect!" You quickly scan for which minds will reach you first when you realize you were ignoring the guard on the walkway. You spin around just as they fire at you and the shot takes you right in the gut. You stagger back "That wont kill me, but I will tear them apart for shooting me!" You think as you let out a roar of anger and let the hunger drive you after the shooter. You leap cleanly up onto the walkway, ignoring the pain and the blood flowing from your wound, to land right in front of them. You immediately start to swing at them but they didn't hesitate either and their next shot hits you cleanly in the chest moments before your punch connects. You stagger forwards in an attempt to stay close to they as you realize your punch was weak and they are still conscious and only a little dazed. You take one more step and grab them as your lungs fill with blood and your heart begins beating erratically. You know you don't have the strength left to kill them yourself but you throw yourself forward onto them and are rewarded when you feet their body being pierced by the wall spikes behind them. You let go and slide down to the walkway in a pool of blood, mixed from your own and the still human guards. "Funny, I can't tell it apart" You think as you fall into blackness<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hear the shout going up load and clear "Everyone evacuate, infected in the compound, the gate wa opened!" Then you hear a loud horn going off and every human mind in the compound begins to move "Their guards are lax but they know how to evacuate at least" You start running openly now, no point hiding out if the alarm is already raised. The next guard sees you coming but realizes you are not a comrade far too late to save himself and he joins the dead. You sense the humans reaching their doors and then the screaming starts. Your dozen shamblers were all placed perfectly to cause the most chaos and you instantly sense several biting and feeding on human flesh. You think about making them rampage but they are slow and they are doing their job so you just leave them to attack and feed as their instincts direct. You feel one getting beaten off and killed, but then you sense a human mind change as you watch it. You see something like rot spread over it, the glow fading, it seems to fight back but they rot tears away at it until it shatters, leaving a weak rotted husk where there was a vibrant mind moments before "And so it spreads" you say aloud as the new shambler lumbers after what must have been it's family moments before. You reach one more guard as the gunshots begin and two more shamblers die. This guard is ready for you though with his gun raised toward the compound to shoot the first infected that comes near. You are that first infected and he spins towards you as you rush him, he realizes in time that you are an enemy but you are too close and his shot skims past you, just grazing your side "Claw has spotted some, Centre West wall!" You hear from not far away. The dead guards reinforcements are headed right for you. You sense three below running your way and another along the walkway. You pull at the nearest shambler and have it go after the three below but they instantly shoot it down and keep coming, the one on the walkway is getting closer too and you only have moments before they see you. > You attack the guard on the wall and dodge the three below You turn and sprint toward the mind coming your way and leap out of the darkness at him. His gun goes off too but again you are not hit as you snap his neck. You stand and begin to run when you hear the shot and feel the impact in your back. You stumble and look behind. The guards below should be too far to see you in the darkness but you realize you had jumped into torchlight when you killed the guard and lit up your actions for everyone to see. The next shot is followed by a burst from an automatic weapon and you die just as quickly as the guard you had punched.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You slow your pace a little to match that of a normal human's walking and soon your keen eyes pick out a grey smudge below the thin trail of smoke. As you get closer the smudge resolves itself into a large grey wall topped with small spiked railings. The gated community. You keep your pace slow, you aren't sure if a normal human could have noticed the smoke and walls yet so you play it safe and wait a few more minutes before obviously turning your attention to the wall. You have your shamblers take more care and move slowly closer on either side, you picked up a few more that morning so you have a dozen of them now, 6 on each side. You look carefully as you approach. The walls are High, maybe 10 foot high and 12 with the railings, the spikes on the top were surely ornamental before but they have been sharpened now into points and you can see men with guns looking over the walls at various points. They are clearly the guards as they are holding guns however they are also clearly relaxed. they probably haven't had any real excitement since the raiders died out a few years back. You look carefully at them and realize that none of them is actually reacting to you at all. you look around and realize that most of you is covered by farm hedges and gates so that unless they were being vigilant they wont notice you for a few minutes yet. You still have time to decide on your best plan of action. > You slip off the road before you are noticed, you can easily climb the wall and attack in the night You slow your pace a little to match that of a normal human to be less obvious and soon your keen eyes pick out a grey smudge below the thin trail of smoke. As you get closer the smudge resolves itself into a large grey wall topped with small spiked railings. The gated community. You look carefully as you approach. The walls are High, maybe 10 foot high and 12 with the railings, the spikes on the top were surely ornamental before but they have been sharpened now into points and you can see men with guns looking over the walls at various points. They are clearly the guards as they are holding guns however they are also clearly relaxed. they probably haven't had any real excitement since the raiders died out a few years back. You look carefully at them and realize that none of them is actually reacting to you at all. you look around and realize that most of you is covered by farm hedges and gates so that unless they were being vigilant they wont notice you for a few minutes yet. You still have time to decide on your best plan of action. You now have six shamblers on each side of the Road and two mutants hidden with you on the West It is not long before you have moved right around to the rear of the little community and see that the walls appear exactly the same the entire way around and that there are guards on every wall. You'll have to wait for nightfall. You spend the next few hours carefully maneuvering your shamblers in closer to the community and snacking on meat strips. "Almost out of meat, seems the more I eat humans, the more the hunger grows. Ah well, a feast is coming soon enough." You begin salivating at the though of eating all the humans in the community in front of you. Your senses tell you that there could be as many as 40 in there. You will have to improve you abilities to number humans at a distance but for now the numbers match your expectations and you settle in to wait. > You moonlight attacks You wait as midnight comes and goes and give the new guards on the walls a couple of hours to get comfortable and sleepy before you make your move. The moon is out in a beautiful crescent, looking every bit like a blade cutting down at the little community ahead of you. The light it provides is more than enough for you to see clearly but you know it isn't enough for the guards who have lit torches on the railings "They have lit themselves up like candles but the light will blind them to my approach!" You think to yourself gleefully as you move closer with the six shamblers near you. You are within a few metres of the first guard when you realize the problem. You can get over the wall easily but the shamblers will never make it. You hiss at yourself for being so stupid and take a few minutes to send them all round to the ditches near the front gate. You will have to open it to get them inside to fight for you. You move to a dark spot between the torches and leave your bat and pack against the wall before jumping up incase they banged against somthing and gave you away. You reach the railings easily and swing yourself over in one smooth movement, landing quietly on a wooden platform behind the walls "Smart, they built a little walkway all the way around for their guards" You think as you sneak back towards the guard you were near before. He had seemed extra sleepy earlier, and sure enough, you find him napping. Two steps into the light from the small torch and you have and hand clamped over his mouth and the other around his throat, crushing his windpipe. It gives way with a pop and you finish him off by snapping his neck. The hunger surges up but you have to ignore it for now. You can feast once you have control of the entire compound. You start sneaking along the walkway toward the next guard and once more find a sleepy man, relaxing in his chair in the torchlight, you smile to yourself, they had become too lax in the peaceful times after the raiders all died. You once more move in close and before the man even wakes up enough to react you have you hand over his mouth and throat. You clamp down, crushing his windpipe but as you feel it give way, you hear the thump of his heel hitting his chair. You quickly snap his neck but the damage is done and the chair tumbles off the edge and into the compound before you can stop it. You swear to yourself and you hear the noise it makes but you know it wasn't really that loud, You almost think you got away with it when you hear the next guard calling out "Hey Kiel, you fall asleep again!" You quickly drop to the ground, the guard wont take long to get suspicious when their friend does not reply so you need to get the gates open fast. You sprint between the houses, luckily finding most quiet and dark and come to the main gate. there are two guards here, one either side of the gateway and they are awake and chatting to each other. But you hear the shout going up. The guard has found the body. "Kiel is dead! we have intruders! help!" You swear and rush towards the gate, leaping up and vaulting yourself onto the walkway behind one of the guards. He saw you coming and tries to raise his gun but you are faster and a punch to the throat sends him stumbling over the wall, only to get impaled on a spike before he can fully fall. the haze of his mind already gone by the time he hits the spike. You run and leap at the second guard, but this one has had more time and you see her with rifle ready. She takes the shot as you leap and you feel the impact in your side. You are certain she just got you cleanly in the kidney as you land and start punching her, not giving her time to work the bolt action for another shot. She shot you though and the hunger fills your mind with anger as you punch her repeatedly in revenge, even though she was dead after the second hit.. The shouts of humans running brings you back from your rage and you can sense the minds of several humans headed your way. You leap down and wrench the wooden bar off the gate, swinging it open. "Time for vengeance!" you think as you order your horde inside and lean up against the wall for a moment to stop your own bleeding. You will easily survive this, but it is still not trivial, you will need a few moments to bind it before you move. You simply order your horde to attack while you tear a strip off your shirt to stuff into your wound when you hear the shots starting and feel your horde reduce in number quickly. You look up to see the humans aren't all carrying bold action hunting rifles or pistols, several have assault rifles and they are tearing your horde apart with ease.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There is no point blowing it by being pushy now "Ah of course, that is a pretty smart precaution" You begin "But as to my future, you say that as if it involves options?" Cara immediately replies with a smile "Well of course it does, we aren't keeping you prisoner or anything" she pauses "Anymore" She adds with a wink to which you grin. She then continues a little more seriously "Basically you can join us, or head on your way. I would much rather you came with us though" and you can definitely hear some hopefulness in her voice "Perfect, she completely trusts me, this will be easy now" You think you yourself, smiling all the while. "Well I would love to join you all, it will be much better than being alone again after what happened." you carefully craft your voice to make sure they understand you are referring to the lost friends you spoke about before and you watch them both immediately react like proper normal humans, putting on their caring faces and trusting you more "Honestly this is too easy, they buy anything I tell them" You think as Cara takes you hand, leading you outside. "Well, you are with us now! She announces "And since you have joined us we can do a quick introduction before we head off to the compound!" The guards chuckle and wink at the fact you are holding hands the moment you exit the hatch and Cara drops you hand, blushing, but berating the guards for being childish. They are now close together and distracted, but they said you were heading to the compound right now. > You hold off, they can get you inside a compound full of humans, that is worth the wait. Leaving them alive for a couple more days to get inside the compound is well worth it, you can eat them after that and once you have a proper plan. Time to keep getting in their good books. You make the polite small-talk with the guards to introduce yourself and do your best to be as nice as possible. After a few minutes the guards indicate it is nearly time to move and Cara jumps and looks like she is about to leap back through the hatch "Oh, lost track of time, we have to set out soon if we want to make our safe point soon!". You dodge ahead of her though and offer her your hand to climb back through. She raises an eyebrow and says "oohhh, being a gentleman today" before accepting it and climbing through while the guards chuckle to themselves. You climb through after her, thinking about how to keep in their good books. Once inside you find her waiting and before you can react she kisses you on the cheek saying "You're very sweet" then spins and heads over to the food bags. You finally catch onto the situation "She is actually flirting with me!" It has been years since you even though about things like that but you are sure now that she is actually flirting with you, a harbinger. "Well she doesn't know I'm a harbinger, and I did save her life" You look down at yourself "And thanks to being a harbinger I am actually a bit of an Adonis, I guess it makes sense." Somewhat dazed by the revelation you start helping picking up the sacks to help carry them. > You starting out for the compound With you all carrying bags there isn't too much and you make sure you take two of the heavier ones so Cara gets a single light bag to carry, and you know she notices "Well the plan is to stick with them for now and be trusted so this is the easiest way" You think as you all begin walking. The way is fairly simple as you had guessed, follow the road North for a couple of days and you will see the compound with big obvious walls and smoke above it from the fire pit "We used to be more cautious" Cara explains "But once the raiders were all wiped out it didn't matter so we can make as much smoke as we like!" You smile in response and begin trading stories with her. It seems life out here was very different from the city once the infection had taken hold. "It was all small communities here" She begins "Farmsteads and walled places like ours were the gathering points. There was so much food grown out here scavenging has never been a problem so people banded together. Sadly some of them for other reasons, The infected were bad at firsts, roving mobs of them dozens strong were seen coming out of the city or down other roads and they would simply overwhelm places without walls or defenses with their numbers. It didn't matter if you shot fifty of them if the last 5 got inside to bite everyone and turn them too." She pauses and seem close to tears when you realize she is speaking from experience. "Crap what are you supposed to do now?" You desperately try and remember the proper way to act when courting but when you look at her again and the gentle haze of her mind you realize you are moving automatically and you put your arm around her. "Oh perfect, comfort, going to have to really remember what it was like caring about humans for this to work. It's not like hanging around with males just being gruff and defensive the whole time". Cara instantly smiles when she notices that you dropped a bag to hug her and with a quick wipe at her eyes she jokes with you "You are not supposed to drop fruit and vegetables on the ground you know?" You quickly take your arm away and pick the bag up again realizing that you hadn't even noticed dropping it, but you are thrown off again when she kisses you on the cheek again saying "Thankyou", then as chuckles break out behind you from the men she follows up with a shouted "Shut-up or I'll poison your food tonight!". You laugh aloud with her before she takes up her story again. "Right, where was I. Well as you guessed that is what happened to my family. Our little community didn't have walls and we were over-run, maybe three of us escaped and ran all night. It was a long way East of here, we were separated by morning and I just kept going until a scavenging team found me living in an orchard alone and I joined 'Safe-Haven'. You immediately give her a look and raise an eye-brow, she sighs before going on "And yes it is a stupid and corny name but it fits ok? Anyway, that was some years ago, right after the city fell. After that the issue was the raiders. It seems that some communities decided that keeping trucks running and using guns to steal from others was better than scavenging. They probably killed more communities than the infected did, the burnt out places South of here were all their work if you saw those. They attacked the weak themselves but if a place was strong like ours they would kill guards in a surprise assault and open the gates just to release infected inside, then return the next day to see if everyone was dead." "they sound like cowards, if you wish to fight then you can do it with your own strength" You say after a moment, Cara give you a strange look "You're a funny one you know, most people would say how terrible it was to attack other humans bla bla bla but you just called them weak for not doing it themselves." She cocks her head to the side as if observing you differently "You really are interesting!" She gives you a big grin then calls lunchtime. > You walking talking and eating The next couple of days pass with the same routine. You walk with Cara chatting and carrying the bag while the other three walk behind you with their own conversation. The going is slow, not because it is difficult but simply because Cara sets a slow pace and no-one else is in any more of a rush to get anywhere it seems so you enjoy the leisurely stroll through the countryside. Even the food is tasting good, generally normal human food taste terrible and makes you feel like you ate a lump of dirt but each time you stop and eat the food tastes better. The evening of the second night you accidently let speak your thoughts instead of just thinking them "I can't believe this tastes good!" you say as you bite into a bowl of stew Cara had just made. You hear an immediate hiss from the other men and turn to see Cara leaning in close to your face "oooohhhhHHH? surprised that it's good? Surprised that I can cook?" Whether by luck or design, every hour you spent with Care let you remember more about what being a human was like so you know well enough just how much trouble you had somehow gotten into with your innocuous comment. "I can dig my way out or I can dig myself deeper into a whole, best not to dig myself deeper" You think. but You are not given an option as you immediately hear her saying "I'm waiting?". You panic a little "Crap it's not as if I even insulted her!" You finally try and explain seeing that you had no choice and she was beginning to brandish a knife at your throat. "No, erm I meant that I haven't tasted anything like this in years, even before the infection. I generally hate eating cos everything tasted like crap in a tin but this was just so good I was surprised it was even possible." You grin weakly and consider having to defend yourself from the knife waving close to your own throat when Cara suddenly grins and sits back down to eat her own food "Good save, I give you that." She announces and the three other men clap in approval. You just keep eating until Chris pats you on the shoulder and whispers 'good luck' before walking away from the fire "I'm checking our safe zone is still secure, if I don't return in under ten minutes, you know the drill. One of the guards gets up and heads off with him. You finally turn to Cara "Chris and you used to talk a lot but he has kept a little separate since I join up." She keeps eating as she replies "Oh, he isn't jealous, he has a partner back in the community so don't worry about that." She gives you a quick smile before going back to shoveling her food into her mouth "unexpected but I guess good, she though I was checking if she was available, this works out too". "Well that's good then" you say aloud and get another quick smile as the two return and let you know that the current safe zone is still in fact safe. You are all lead to a very old looking square building with a tin roof and solid looking door "So yesterday it was the second floor of a barn, and today it's a shed, seems like we are going down in the world" You announce and get a couple of smiles as everyone heads inside. Care quickly grabs you arm and leans in close "Don't worry, if you get cold we can cuddle for warmth!" She announces a little too loudly before jumping away again and dropping her bag off in a corner. You realize you are blushing, so do the two guards who once more chuckle as they secure the door "Stupid chuckle brothers, do you ever actually speak or just chuckle behind people all day long?" You announce, only to send them both into fits of proper laughter. You simply sigh and lie down. Cara does pick to lie close to you but still far enough away to make the message of 'Don't try anything' clear enough. She also makes sure you get the message by telling you "Don't try anything" loud enough for everyone to hear resulting in howls of laughter again. > You morning arrival at Safe-Haven You are awake well before dawn again and check the surroundings for infected but only find a couple of them nearby, both alone and near death anyway. You send them away and realize just how easy it was to do "Seems like my abilities are developing even without use or human flesh." You think to yourself while the others slowly wake up and join you for a breakfast of fruit. "Right today we reach the community!" Cara announces, immediately followed by Chris retorting "Where we would have been yesterday afternoon if you walked faster." She scowls at him before replying "Well I didn't see you taking the lead or speeding us up did I?" She grabs her bag and swings the door open "come on then!" she shouts as she heads out leading the rest of you to pack everything up and grab your bags to follow her. You find her waiting outside and clearly in a good mood. she slips her free hand through your arm while she tells you about what to expect "So it's a lovely little walled community, big solid walls and railing around a nice grassy area and pretty houses. It was a kind of rich person 'out of the city house' type thing so everything was very well made and cared for. You should see it any minute now actually on the horizon as we are not far off!" You don't tell her that you can already make out the grey smudge and smoke in the sky from here as you are pretty certain no normal human could. "Sounds lovely" is all you say as she goes on to tell you about certain people and specifically her own home there and how much she likes it and thinks you will too. You let her talk and make all the right agreeable noises when required while you scan the surrounding are for infected and humans, You can once more Sense a few scattered shamblers but that is about all the infected that seem to be left out here, up ahead though you can definitely sense human minds, the glow of a normal's mind is now totally unmistakable to you. You also suddenly realize that you aren't hungry when you look at it. Normally seeing a human wa enough to make your hunger spike but you haven't felt it in the last two days, even when looking at their energy filled minds. Then it stirs and you feel it hiding in the back of your mind again "I guess thinking about it was enough to trigger it again" You think as you do your best to forget about it again as you all close the distance to the compound. > The Safe-Haven of Safe-Haven As you get closer the smudge resolves itself into a large grey wall topped with small spiked railings. The gated community. You keep your pace slow, you aren't sure if a normal human could have noticed the smoke and walls yet so you play it safe and wait a few more minutes before obviously turning your attention to the wall. You look carefully as you approach. The walls are High, maybe 10 foot high and 12 with the railings, the spikes on the top were surely ornamental before but they have been sharpened now into points and you can see men with guns looking over the walls at various points. They are clearly the guards as they are holding guns however they are also clearly relaxed. they probably haven't had any real excitement since the raiders died out a few years back. You look carefully at them and realize that none of them is actually reacting to you at all. you look around and realize that most of you is covered by farm hedges and gates so that unless they were being vigilant they wont notice you for a few minutes yet. "Well the wall certainly looks impressive from here, but shouldn't the guards have spotted us by now, I mean we are out on the road?" Care is about to respond when you hear a bell ringing "Wel, they just did!" she announces happily. Now when we get to the gate we are going to be harassed by Boring, we call him that cos it is what he is. Anyway just be polite and he will open the gate, he just likes to act tough to seem like he is in charge." She quickly gives you another kiss on the cheek and says "Now remember I saw you first." Before walking ahead a little so she reaches the gate first. You are wondering what she was meaning when you hear the call from the gate "Who goes there" and the immediate response from Cara of "Oh shut up Boring and open the gate already!" you just sigh and mumble "so much for being polite" you hear a chuckle as one of the guards passes you and adds "As you have probably noticed, subtle is not really Cara's strong suit. good luck." you nod to him then join the group at the gate holding the bags while the little drama plays out. By the number of people on the walls laughing you can guess that this has happened before and more than once. You can also tell it isn't serious by the number of them laughing as the man up top repeatedly tries to tell Cara off and explain procedures and rules and that your group is late while she just insults him, calls him boring and tells him to go die because he is so old. Eventually you are told to prove you have no bites and remove your shirt and give them a turn so they can see, then you hear a female voice whooping at you from the wall and actually feel embarrassed. You get dressed again while you think about how strange it is for you to care about what a human thought. The gates swing open and Cara immediately breaks into the big grin and waves you inside. As you walk in through the gate you get your first proper view of the little community, apart from the surrounding wall and wooden walkway you couldn't even tell that the world had ended outside. There is a group of nicely laid out houses in the center, a play park, a couple of mechanical looking buildings with tools and machinery inside and even a generator next to them. The people are the same, clean clothing and all smiling and chatting as if the most horrific decade in human history wasn't still fully underway just past the gate you had walked through. One of the guards hops down behind you and several of the people come over, one is even carrying a toddler. The guard starts introducing everyone and you give short pleasant responses before realizing the thing that was bugging you the most. You look like a hobo, a hobo who had something die and rot on it's clothing recently and everyone around you is clean and well dressed for a rural community. Your realization and glances at your torn and stained shirt must have registered as one of the women cuts the guard off "Let the man rest and get a change of clothing first before he gets embarrassed!" You are about to object when you hear a whoop from behind you and a female guard from the gate comes running over "I'll help, just wait till you see him with his shirt off!" The older woman tuts at her "Briar, behave yourself!" but she just grins and turns to you "Ok lets get you out of that shirt so I can burn it!". You don't actually feel embarrassed about it and you haven't cared what humans thought for years but you do find it strange that the social conventions still hold such strong sway over you "I wonder if they lingered around in the back of my mind of all this time being nice to Cara has helped them resurface?" You think as you pull your shirt off and hear another whoop from Briar as she takes your shirt and heads off to a fire-pit near the walls. You also get some approving looks from the other ladies and glance down at your perfectly muscled self, "here we go again." you think as you let the crowd of women take you over to a shed and hand you some new clothing and let you change in private. When you finally come out there is a larger crowd, including men ready to greet you and show you their little community. They take you on a whirlwind tour, showing off everything like proud parents showing off their firstborn child. It is all as you first saw, nice well loved little houses and a couple of old barns used as machine shops, The one thing that catches your eye is at the back. A huge metal door leading into a metal corridor that seems half buried at the back of the compound. "That's our bunker!" One of the men proudly announces "If everything else fails, we can all live in there for months without any worries!" You make a mental note to check it out. > You first evening in the haven You are shown to a house that looks less well kept than the others and are told you can use it as your own "An old member, called himself 'Playa' used to live here, sadly he was on a scavenge when they got attacked, him and his partner never returned so now it's yours." You thank them and head inside, finding yourself automatically wiping your feet as you do so "Oh come on, I haven't wiped my feet in years, what am I doing?" You head upstairs and find a nicely laid out bedroom complete with a full bead "Although I really can't complain about this!" You hop onto the bed and relax "Even better than my van-sofa!" You think as you begin making your plans. You start by stretching out your senses and trying to count the humans, you find that they are often too close together to count perfectly but at least 30-40 which fits your initial guess. Several act as guards day and night and they have a fair amount of guns including at least two automatic weapons. They also have the bunker but there are ways of dealing with that too. Then you sense one in particular and can immediately tell it is Cara alone in a house nearby "Hmm, I can tell human minds apart now, thats a new development" You think as you drift off to sleep The morning is still far off when you wake up and automatically scan your surroundings, you see humans asleep all around you and guards un-moving on the walkway behind the walls, probably sleep judging by how lax they were. You also once more immediately sense Cara asleep in her house. "This place and being with the humans is clearly affecting me, bring up old emotions and issues but I am still a harbinger" You reach out your senses and find you can stretch them a long way before getting a headache and you grab control of all the nearby shamblers, forcing them out of where ever they were and close to the community. Then you pause "I guess there is the other option" You think to yourself as you head downstairs and peek out the windows into the silent night. > You clear your mind of the stupid thoughts and emotions, you are a harbinger and it is time to kill You look yourself over and shake your head "I eat humans, I have done for years, this stupidity is just from being forced to spend too much time with them recently and it will end once they are all dead!" You concentrate on getting the shamblers you had controlled closer and finally have six of them grouped up near the gate to get in once you had it open for them. The guards on the walls still hadn't moved and inch but the ones by the gates might have "So those two might still be awake at least" You think as you plan out your next move. If this place was affecting you like a virus in your brain then you didn't have any time to loose and you had to strike now. As you decide this it is as if your mind clears a little for you, what does it matter what one of them in named? Male, Female, child? they are all just prey and none of them matters at all. You are a harbinger, a Herald of the appocolypse and caring about humans is beneath you. It is time to feed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are shown to a house that looks less well kept than the others and are told you can use it as your own "An old member, called himself 'Playa' used to live here, sadly he was on a scavenge when they got attacked, him and his partner never returned so now it's yours." You thank them and head inside, finding yourself automatically wiping your feet as you do so "Oh come on, I haven't wiped my feet in years, what am I doing?" You head upstairs and find a nicely laid out bedroom complete with a full bead "Although I really can't complain about this!" You hop onto the bed and relax "Even better than my van-sofa!" You think as you begin making your plans. You start by stretching out your senses and trying to count the humans, you find that they are often too close together to count perfectly but at least 30-40 which fits your initial guess. Several act as guards day and night and they have a fair amount of guns including at least two automatic weapons. They also have the bunker but there are ways of dealing with that too. Then you sense one in particular and can immediately tell it is Cara alone in a house nearby "Hmm, I can tell human minds apart now, thats a new development" You think as you drift off to sleep The morning is still far off when you wake up and automatically scan your surroundings, you see humans asleep all around you and guards un-moving on the walkway behind the walls, probably sleep judging by how lax they were. You also once more immediately sense Cara asleep in her house. "This place and being with the humans is clearly affecting me, bring up old emotions and issues but I am still a harbinger" You reach out your senses and find you can stretch them a long way before getting a headache and you grab control of all the nearby shamblers, forcing them out of where ever they were and close to the community. Then you pause "I guess there is the other option" You think to yourself as you head downstairs and peek out the windows into the silent night. > You send the shamblers away, staying here for a while wouldn't be so bad You stop and think things through. Your kills were always driven by your hunger, and sure you enjoyed killing and eating humans, but right now you feel no need too. Your abilities have progressed greatly without eating any humans recently and the food Cara has been giving you tastes great and gets rid of the hunger completely. So what is wrong with staying here for a bit and enjoying things? Sure you are a harbinger and you might not be human anymore but they don't know that and it's not as if you are infectious... You stop. "Am I infectious? It's not as if I went round biting live humans then seeing how they react... No I don't think so, the virus did something strange to change my body but it must have mutated to do that. I should be safe enough." Having decided that you probably aren't infectious after all you settle into a chair and wait for the dawn. watching the human minds beginning to stir and move about their houses. Once you judge enough people have gathered around where you saw the large fire-pit the night before you head outside yourself to join them and get breakfast. You no longer have the burning driving hunger constantly in your head pushing you to kill, but your stomach still rumbles if you go too long between meals. Once there you are immediately greeted by several people and a couple of the younger women come over to give you food and chat. You grateful accept the food and try it "Still tastes good" You think as you notice Cara across the fire hacking angrily at her bowl "Erm sorry ladies but I have to run". They try and keep to you you insist that it is important and jog over to Cara to sit beside her. "Hey, why sitting alone?" You begin and make her jump, she had been so intent on killing her food that she hadn't even noticed your arrival. She quickly recovers and gives you look that you can't tell is happy or angry "I was just eating and you surprised me, anyway weren't you talking to those other girls first?" She looks over to indicate the girls that had been talking to you and is immediately met with three evil glowers, clearly directed right at her. She lets out an "oooo" noise before turning to you "Ok what did you do?" she says wearily. You think about it for just a second "Honestly I have no idea, they were nice and brought me some food but I saw you sitting here alone so told them I had to go. I mean, they did try and keep me but I told them I had something much more important to... Oh dear" You finish as realization dawns on you. Cara just bursts into laughter then shuffles closer so she can lean against your side "Good choice!" she announces as she sticks her tongue out at the girls glowing at her "Stupid hussies trying to steal my man" she adds mostly to herself. "Your man?" you ask before you realize it might be something that you should have pretended you didn't hear. Cara immediately flushes bright red and you can feel her entire body freeze up beside you "Oh crap" You think and you are about to try and save yourself when you feel her relax a little and she replies "Well you haven't asked me yet but you have good taste and aren't too stupid so I can wait a day or two more." You let out an audible sigh of relief and hear her chuckling to herself "Only a day or two more?" You start "I understand that your a highly desirable girl but are you saying you have men lined up that I will need to fight off if I take more than a day or two?". She gives you a cheeky grin "A girl never reveals her secrets so you better just not wait so you don't need to find out!" THen she hops to her feet and heads off. > You settling into the community life You don't wait and later that day you and Cara kiss for the first time. The relationship moves on from there as you stay in the little community and more time passes. You keep working on your abilities and find that all your physical skills improve along with your mental ones and you direct any infected you sense miles away from the community of scavenging areas. You join Cara's scavenging team permanently to protect her and make sure that the community is always well stocked and prepared incase anything does happen. You decide finally to settle down there and stay as a sort of 'resident protector' for the whole community. Cara already announced to everyone that you will be getting married soon despite only being together for a few weeks but you actually have no problem with it and are just going along with it since it makes her happy. Once you accepted your roll as her future husband and protector of the people in Safe-Haven your mind shifted. You felt your mind changing, as if it was clarifying everything for you. The last remnants of the headaches fade away and your senses, in their fully relaxed state, seem to stretch further, showing more details of those around you and making everything less hazy when you look at minds. As if you had been walking on a frozen lake covered with snow before and suddenly the snow was brushed aside to reveal the solid clear ice underneath. You quickly test a few other metal exercises and find that before your mental defenses were like random planks nailed over a window and mostly held in place by you pushing on them constantly whereas now the moment you try to put up a defense it’s like a thick wall of pure blue ice forms around your mind, shielding you from all sides. You push out at shambler minds, only now in range of your abilities and feel you mind moving out like an inexorable glacier, sweeping them away before it. You now know you truly made the right choice, you have full awoken. > A romance ending in blue You have found the romance ending as a Blue harbinger! If you do not know what that means, then you need to seek out the other endings hidden in the game as they explain it all!" ******************************* As with several other endings I have unfortunately had to cut it shorter than I would like due to time constraints but one day in the future it will be extended and completed!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake in the morning and realize that once more you slept through the night instead of the normal few hours "Must be the mental training" You think as you test your senses to see what changed while you slept. Sure enough you can feel the infected in the barn more clearly now and with less effort "Two shamblers, one nearly dead and the other near it also in bad shape. Must be trapped in the basement of somthing" you think to yourself as the humans above you wake up. Once awake Cara immediately leans down over the bar "Time to wake up! Let's get you out of there!" The man groggily stands beside her, "Are you sure about this?" but she just gives him a disparaging look until he goes to fetch a rope and lowers it down to you, tying one end off on the railing. You catch it as it comes down and are about to start climbing up when you realize that your arm will be healed a lot further than a normal humans and your makeshift bandage is almost certainly going to be replaced soon, you're going to have to bluff. You climb up, pretending to be careful of the wounded arm but you secretly put extra strain on it and can feel the wounds tearing open again slightly "Perfect" You think as you climb ove the railing and immediately find yourself receiving a huge hug from Cara. You are taken aback for a moment by the very unusual occurrence and have no time to act before she hops away again "That was for saving my life, I've owed you it!" The she quickly hops out of the hatch, you can see the two men holding rifles greet her as she passes. The man turns to you "Wait here for a bit, we have to finish a quick scavenge then we will all return to discuss what to do with you." You judge it best not to decide anything while the two men with guns have a clear shot at you and you have you climb through a hatch to get to them so you simply nod and take a seat to await their return. This gives you plenty of time to think things through. It has not been long but you are already progressing amazingly with your abilities. You are certain you can control infected easily and can sense them coming a long way off and you can sense the presence of humans or 'normals' at an equal distance even if you can't affect them. Cara trust you and you actually enjoy her company, the man doesn't fully trust you but isn't aggressive either. The two outside seem to be the guards for the scavengers, you have yet to speak to them but you can sense them always nearby the scavengers. You could of course strike now, Cara trusting you and getting close to you can be used to your advantage, you just need to ge them off guard once when they return and you can take the guards out leaving Cara and Chris defenseless. It would be a little risky but you are certain you could pull it off. On the other hand you really are enjoying chatting with Cara in the evenings and the food they gave you is actually sitting well and taking the edge off your hunger, why not stay with them a bit, at least until you are back to their little colony, you can decide what to do when you are there after all. > You stay with them for a bit and continue playing nice, you have nothing to loose that way There is nothing wrong with staying with them for a bit while you still enjoy their company, you can always eat them later if needed. You turn to Cara when she and Chris are seated "As to my future, you say that as if it involves options?" Cara immediately replies with a smile "Well of course it does, we aren't keeping you prisoner or anything" she pauses "Anymore" She adds with a wink to which you grin. She then continues a little more seriously "Basically you can join us, or head on your way. I would much rather you came with us though" and you can definitely hear some hopefulness in her voice to which you smile. "Well I would love to join you all, it will be much better than being alone again!" Cara gives you a huge smile and takes your hand, leading you outside. "Well, you are with us now! She announces "And since you have joined us we can do a quick introduction before we head off to the compound!" The guards chuckle and wink at the fact you are holding hands the moment you exit the hatch and Cara drops your hand, blushing, but berating the guards for being childish. You do the quick introductions to the guard but pause as you are heading back in to make a show of offering Cara your hand to help her enter. She blushes again as she accepts and climbs in to the laughter of the guards. Once inside you find her waiting and before you can react she kisses you on the cheek saying "You're very sweet" then spins and heads over to the food bags. You finally catch onto the situation "She is actually flirting with me!" It has been years since you even though about things like that but you are sure now that she is actually flirting with you, a harbinger. "Well she doesn't know I'm a harbinger, and I did save her life" You look down at yourself "And thanks to being a harbinger I am actually a bit of an Adonis, I guess it makes sense." Somewhat dazed by the revelation you start helping picking up the sacks to help carry them.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need time and safety to train your new talents, wandering recklessly East while still developing is probably too dangerous as you don’t know what is lurking between you and the colony. Heading South would just take you right into the city center and that would be a death wish without better abilities so North is your final option. You know there used to be small communities in the outlying areas, hamlets and villages that served the farming communities, retirement homes and even some affluent areas for those who no longer wanted to live in the big city. If you look around enough you are sure you will find a nice enough building to make a temporary base, food might be scarce but you can always subside on the infected for a few weeks. You walk until the next off-ramp leading to a North-bound road and wander down. Looking around you see most of the buildings reduced to rubble, the military must have hit this area harder than others during the defense. “Maybe this was one of the areas they tried to make a stand and bombed the hordes of infected that attacked them” You think to yourself as you walk, but it is unlikely that you’ll ever find out for sure. There are not too many infected in this direction but you know if you find a small community that you should find some there to practice on, they never wander too far from where they turned after-all. By night-time you have left the outskirts of the city behind and begin to see open areas of land a fields, some overgrown with crops of varying types, untended for years, the old clearly defined lines haven given away to a mish-mash of crops invading others fields while weeds and thorns try to choke them all out. By nightfall you are looking for a likely place to rest and see a few options, in the distance you can make out what looks like a small grain silo, it would take a couple of hours to reach but they usually are made of metal, have small ladders right up to the top where you’d be nice and safe from everything, There is also an old broken down farmhouse nearby and a Barn on the same land. The House was clearly ransacked long ago, the doors are missing, windows smashed and everything looted out of it. The barn seems in better shape, the doors wide open but still intact at least. > You check out the House, beds are too big to loot right? You head over to the house to see what might be left behind and are quickly disappointed. The entire place has been ransacked with whatever was left destroyed, you do find human remains in the basement though. "looks like this is where they tried to hide from the infected or looters, had no idea that a single old trapdoor was not a good defense against attackers" You think to yourself as you examine the smashed in wooden trapdoor. This place will be useless for shelter, there isn't a single whole door in the place. You head back outside and wander over to the Barn, may as well check it now that you are this close, again though you are disappointed. The entire place is also picked clean and the second level where you hoped to rest for the night has been collapsed down onto the floor. This place will be useless for shelter.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need time and safety to train your new talents, wandering recklessly East while still developing is probably too dangerous as you don’t know what is lurking between you and the colony. Heading South would just take you right into the city center and that would be a death wish without better abilities so North is your final option. You know there used to be small communities in the outlying areas, hamlets and villages that served the farming communities, retirement homes and even some affluent areas for those who no longer wanted to live in the big city. If you look around enough you are sure you will find a nice enough building to make a temporary base, food might be scarce but you can always subside on the infected for a few weeks. You walk until the next off-ramp leading to a North-bound road and wander down. Looking around you see most of the buildings reduced to rubble, the military must have hit this area harder than others during the defense. “Maybe this was one of the areas they tried to make a stand and bombed the hordes of infected that attacked them” You think to yourself as you walk, but it is unlikely that you’ll ever find out for sure. There are not too many infected in this direction but you know if you find a small community that you should find some there to practice on, they never wander too far from where they turned after-all. By night-time you have left the outskirts of the city behind and begin to see open areas of land a fields, some overgrown with crops of varying types, untended for years, the old clearly defined lines haven given away to a mish-mash of crops invading others fields while weeds and thorns try to choke them all out. By nightfall you are looking for a likely place to rest and see a few options, in the distance you can make out what looks like a small grain silo, it would take a couple of hours to reach but they usually are made of metal, have small ladders right up to the top where you’d be nice and safe from everything, There is also an old broken down farmhouse nearby and a Barn on the same land. The House was clearly ransacked long ago, the doors are missing, windows smashed and everything looted out of it. The barn seems in better shape, the doors wide open but still intact at least. > You check out the Barn, They often have second levels and old hay makes a comfortable enough bed. You wander over to the Barn, may as well check it now that you are this close, though you are disappointed. The entire place is picked clean and the second level where you hoped to rest for the night has been collapsed down onto the floor. This place will be useless for shelter. You head back outside and head over to the house to see what might be left behind and are quickly disappointed there too. The entire place has been ransacked with whatever was left destroyed, you do find human remains in the basement though. "looks like this is where they tried to hide from the infected or looters, had no idea that a single old trapdoor was not a good defense against attackers" You think to yourself as you examine the smashed in wooden trapdoor. This place will be useless for shelter, there isn't a single whole door in the place.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake with the dawn and find two of the others already up. “We couldn’t sleep so great being exposed out here.” One of them says to you. As the last two get up, you realize just how hungry you are and remember that you didn’t eat anything last night. You dig in your bag for your meat strips but find nothing there, remembering that you finished them off on the third day in the stadium. You accept some rations from the other guys but it seems to do little to your hunger. You think back to when you used to feel this hunger practically all the time, seems your days of living happily in the stadium and not feeling hungry are over for the time being. You all check your surroundings but it’s all clear and you head off again about an hour after dawn. “Won’t the others catchup to us at this rate?” one of the others asks out loud. It’s your friend that answers. “Nah, we are a few roads North of them and will be heading up to the highway by lunchtime, so even if they do move faster than us, they will pass right by us to the South and never see us. Hey if all goes well we will meet up with them in a few weeks at the colony and have a great laugh about this all!” The mood seems to lighten a little after that and you all keep moving with some quiet chatter going on. You even join in some of the joking and in the light atmosphere begin to forget about feeling hungry again. It’s a few hours later and you are getting close to the on ramps for the highway when you begin hearing the noises. Its very faint but you call it out anyway. “Low rumbling to the South.” The others pause and listen for a time before one turns and says. “I hear it now, sounds like the Jeep, they will be passing us soon. Those are some ears you have mate!” “Seems they are making great time if they are passing us already, they might actually do it at this rate!” one of the men jokes as you all start walking again, listening to the low rumble get louder, then start to get quieter as they pass you a few roads to the South. Its only a few minutes later that you hear a crashing noise and the rumbling stop. “Gorram Harbinger! They are being ambushed aren’t they, we should go help them!” > You can't sacrifice yourself by running into an ambush for them. Head North! You all chose to leave for exactly this reason didn't you? "Guys, we knew this might happen, it's why we left. If we run after them now we will just be dying with them at best and if they aren't really in trouble they will probably shoot us on the spot for deserting!" You tell them, trying to get them to leave the others for dead. "I can't!" is all one of them says before starting to run after the noises, clearly set on helping at all costs. The two others shrug and run after him, leaving you standing alone. You watch them disappear then shrug and begin heading North slowly, you'll keep to the plan even if you are the only one. You keep moving slowly and finally start up the on-ramp to the highway when you hear a shout behind you. turning you see one of the survivors running your way, chased by a fast type. Swearing you run back down and signal for the man to run past you, as he does you pause just for a second then swing. Your bat connects cleanly with the fast types head as it tries to pass you at full speed, intent on its prey. You watch it back flip and land with a thud, clearly not going to move again, before running after the man. You catch up quickly and call after him "Where are the others what happened?" he slows to a stop and nearly collapses "They are all dead, everyone dead. It was a trap, as we arrived to help they came after us too, I only got away because they stopped to eat the others before chasing me!" You realize that he is just a kid, probably still in his teens. You take his arm to help him walk and head up onto the highway. After a time you Find a secure looking van and you both get inside, securing the door behind you. You divide out the rations for a meal but your old hunger is back and even a full meal doesn't help. watching the depressed kid sink into the corner of the van and stare at nothing until he sleeps makes it worse too. "Every one of them dead." You think as you watch the kid sleeping.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You remember what happened on your first mission, going after them will be suicide and probably a trap. Luckily 8 men volunteer quickly enough and no-one blames those who don’t so you get away with no shame from it, you head off to your normal duty for that day, you’re on balcony 6 for the next 4 hours or so. You’ll be the only one there since it isn’t really an important one, kind of to the side of the main entrance and not looking at anything of interest. Its half way through your shift when you hear some muffled sounds coming from over the city and it seems another sentry heard it too, you report hearing it then head back up. Once you get off duty though and come back down it’s not to a pretty sight. It seems that they worked out that the noise was gun fire and the ‘rescue’ team was now also overdue. You think back again to your first mission and what seemed like a trap, your starting to get a bad feeling about the city now. Seems like scavenging too close to the city center isn’t such a good plan anymore. You have to choose whether to dump these guys and head out alone now or hold out until they are ready to make a larger push for the colony to the east, sure you have lost men recently but true to their word, they have recruited nearly a dozen in the last month. You had no idea there were so many survivors up in this area or you’d have come North a lot sooner. You’re also pretty sure that the Capt. is going to order a push East soon too, even with the losses, their numbers are still good and they have the guns and equipment for a full military push through the open streets, the scouts have everything planed out route wise with backups for it things go wrong. > You stay and help get ready for the push East with the military guys, they have the guns afterall It’s only a few days before your guesses are proven correct. The captain gathers everyone briefly and outlines a plan to head East. They have one working Military Jeep that they have been saving and lots of guns and ammo stockpiled for the attempt. Everyone is going along. They plan to head at a good pace just around the North of the city center along roads that have been scouted in advance over the past few weeks and head right for the bridge in force. Once over and safely near the ‘Eastern Haven’ as they call it, some of them will return with the jeep and begin their work here again to gather more survivors and get them across when they grow in number. Happy to be getting a free escort to your destination you continue your efforts to help the stadium and the next few days pass. It’s the day before the convoy leaves when you are approached by your friend from your first mission just as night falls. “Hey man, a couple of us don’t like the odds of this mission, they are going too close to the city center and that place is a death trap, also recently it seems like too much has been going wrong. We think the harbinger is behind it and we are getting out before everyone gets killed, you with us?” You weren’t expecting this since you’ve only been thinking of getting East for the last few days but you have to make a choice since he is clearly geared up and ready to leave. > You stay with the heavily armed convoy You aren’t going to leave the convoy now when you’re so close to your goal so you wish him the best of luck and wave him off; you can let the Capt. Know in the morning and just not tell him how long they have been gone. Staying has always been voluntary anyway. Morning comes and there is no sign of them, you report to the Capt. what happened and he simply nods. “Thought he might, hasn’t been the same since that mission. Glad you stayed though.” You head back to your post and prepare, you leave in 3 hours. The time arrives and you all gear up and follow the jeep, it weaves through the barricades and you all push the moveable ones out of its way until it stands ready to go on the road, its 50cal. reassuringly manned on the roof. “All stay close to the jeep and keep moving, we don’t stop for 4 hours when we make our first checkpoint, if you are too tired to continue then ride the tailgate and side seats on the jeep for a few minutes but switch out fairly.” Then you are moving. This level of exercise is nothing to you so you don’t feel the need to rest until three hours of jogging go past. That’s also about the time you turn a wide corner to find a full roadblock of cars. “I thought you scouted this!” one of the men shouts up “We did, but things have changed, we switch to route 2! Back 50 meters then we swap to a road parallel to this one, we only lose 5 minutes!” Its then that the bus comes rolling down the road you were headed back too and blocks your retreat. Swearing can be heard now and men and women preparing their guns. “Hold and prepare to fire!” the captain shouts but there isn’t anywhere to run even if you wanted too, infected start appearing in the doors and windows of all the buildings around you and start climbing the cars, climbing out of the bus until you are totally surrounded by a horde of infected, even a few mutants among them. You finally realize that you friend was right, the harbinger COULD control the infected and had come for you all. “Too late to make use for that information now” you think to yourself as the attack begins. At first the guns take them down but then the gunner on the jeep gets shot by something, followed by those doing the most damage, and the rest are swarmed over. You included.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t feel like alleyways today so you raise your hand for going in the front. The leader nods. “You’re with me then, we all meet in the middle of the store once we check all entrances are clear.” The other two men head off for the alley leading round back as you carefully approach the front door. Since you are unarmed you pull the doors open and jump back to give your partner a line of sight but there is no sign of movement so you both slip inside. The store was some old grocery and drug store combo, it has been mostly cleared out but it was done in a rush and there are still useable supplies on the shelves and floor if you sort through it. You and your partner begin to check the aisles more carefully when you hear the shot coming from the back of the store and you see the other two men stumbling in the back door, slamming it shut behind them. The first thing you notice is that one is clutching his arm and his has a large gash out of it. “It was under some trash, it didn’t move when we poked the bags or anything but after we went by and were trying the door it suddenly lurched up and grabbed me; bit me before, before I knew, before.” He stops and winces in pain, dropping his gun. Red sirens begin going off in your head. “His speech! He’s Going!” you practically shout. Your partner swears and glances around, we have to move NOW! Grab what you can and start running, I’ll finish him off then follow with my bags once I know for sure he’s turning. > You say "Hold on, your gun will attract more of them, I'll use my bat then make my own way back, I know how to move safely alone!" He looks at you for a few moments before nodding in assent to you plan, he grabs the other man and they start running out of the store with the bags of supplies you had grabbed. You turn back to the man whose speech had slurred just in time to see him stumble then shake slightly. It only seconds later that he suddenly leaps at you with his teeth bared. Luckily you were ready and his head is cleanly intercepted by a swing from your bat. He crumples to the ground and you glance around. The others were long gone so you quickly try to grab some food when you hear noises from behind the back door, you’re about to run for it yourself when the noises begin out the front too. You glance round and see a large number of shamblers starting to appear and make their way into the store. The rear door opens and more start coming in the back to, heading towards you. “They worked out how to open the door?” is all you have time to think before you are fighting for your life against the growing number of infected. It’s not long before they start to latch onto you and weight you down. It’s shortly after that, that they tear you apart as they eat you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You all head out quietly about an hour after dawn and make your way through the main streets, you don’t have a gun like the others but you do have your bat which you trust a lot more, using it doesn’t cause enough noise to call others to you after all. “I heard you guys had originally cleared this place out of infected?” you whisper to the nearest guard. He thinks for a moment before replying. “We had, but then that thing lead hundreds more to us, and what with all the ones bitten again when the walls fell… well let’s just say it’s not as safe as it used to be. Seems the vaccine doesn’t always work too well against direct exposure either, only the airborne strains, some people are immune but others turn right after getting bit.” You file this information away for later and keep a look-out since you’re nearing the store now and the leader is speaking up. “Right it's go time, two for the front, two for the rear.” The front is visible, it’s fairly open and all the large windows are broken giving easy access and sightlines. The rear must be through one of the alleyways you glimpse to the side. > You rear? You are considering the rear of the shop when someone else volunteers for the front which makes your mind up for you. You are paired off with a younger man who is clearly wearing a suit under his jacket. You ignore his choice of clothing and you both begin to carefully circle round the back of the store. The first alleyway you come too is clearly the right one. You see the dumpsters with the shops logo all over them and think you can see the back door some distance down the alleyway. You turn to your partner. “So what’s the plan?” He simply smiles at you before replying “Oh I have several plans. I have assessed dozens of situations like this and have backups for every eventuality. Careful research and planning is what always leads me to victory!” “Odd” you think before speaking aloud again. “Of course, that makes perfect sense, but what’s our plan for right now?” The man stares at the alley for a moment or two, “Ok you lead and I’ll back you up. Prod each dumpster and garbage pile you pass to check for hidden infected. If a shambler appears then you bat will be the best choice, a different kind or more than two of them and I’ll use the gun while we retreat to meet up with the others!” You shrug and start forward; it was an acceptable plan after all. The man whispers to you as you progress. “Names Drak by the way, not the one my parents gave me of course but I took it on after the infection, has a nice ring to it!” You nod back to him as you prod another garbage pile with your back and get no response. “A lot of people did that, kind of like a new start thing right?” You poke around inside a dumpster again for no response. “Exactly!” The man replies. “For all intents and purposes civilization ended, we are beginning anew in a new world so the new life begets a new name, don’t you agree?” You have just reached the backdoor and are about to open it when you hear a startled cry from behind you follow by two shots. Spinning around you see Drak with blood pouring down his arm and a dead shambler half out of a garbage pile you had just poked. “He didn’t respond when you poked the pile then went for me faster than I’ve ever seen one move!” He manages before wincing and grabbing his arm. You swear and force the door open; you both pile inside and slam it behind you. The others are headed your way guns at the ready. “What happened?” the leader calls out to you as they approach. You take half a step forward and do the talking for Drak since he is clearly in pain. “We were moving forward and being careful, I swear we poked and prodded every single piece of garbage when one leaped out and bit Drak.” The man swears and glances at him before turning back to you. “Drak’s always so careful too; we should get out of here soon. Grab what you can and let’s go.” You nod and turn to help Drak just in time to find him leaping at you, there’s no time to react as he sinks his teeth into your throat and rips out a large chunk of flesh, you knock him off and stand up again but immediately feel dizzy, he must have caught an artery. You feel blood pouring down your shirt as you see him spring to his feet and come after you again. “Gorram idiot had to turn into one of the fast ones didn’t he!” you think as you meet his lunge with a swing from your bat. His head caves in and his body his the floor only moments before you fall too due to the massive blood loss. You manage to roll over and see the leader of your team pointing his gun at you. “I’m sorry, but this is the only mercy I can give you now.” He says as he fires.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It's a dark night, with even the moon itself dim in the sky, its light incapable of piercing the veil of darkness that hangs over you. Your heavy boots trudge along stones as you stroll up the path to the old log cabin ahead of you. A pump-action shotgun sits in your hand, a solid determination clear in each of your steps. You survey the cabin, eyes watching for any movements ahead of you. The cabin looks run-down, and you'd have guessed it'd be abandoned if you didn't know better. The cold air prickles your face, so you grab your balaclava, pulling it up over your mouth and nose. You reach the old wooden door at the front of the lodge. Quickly checking your safety and checking you have everything for the third time, you loosen your shoulders and take a deep breath. Raising your hand, you rap your knuckles against the door. A few moments later, you hear a raspy voice call out through the door, as an eye peers through the eye hole at you. "Minski Kuzkin?" you ask. "Hello?" a thick Russian voice answers. You step back, raising your shotgun and blasting it through the door. You hear a horrified scream, and have to actively suppress any trace of empathy that peaks through. You pump your shotgun, the shell flying to the ground as you blow away the door hinges, before booting the door. You step through the door, finding a pathetic looking figure in tattered, filthy rags, blood soaking through them and pooling on the floor around him. The stench hits you then, the air so heavy with rot and pestilence that you have to gag. The man seems to be in his mid-to-late forties, although you know he's barely in his thirties. His ogre-like frame, no doubt intimidating normally, is now huddled up as he desperately tries to stem the bleeding. You stroll forward, pressing your boot against the man's neck as you aim your shotgun at his chest. "If you have any weapons on you, it'll be a lot easier if you tell me now." "You twisted fuck! You goddamn...!" You pump the shotgun, a shell flying to the ground. The noise quietens Minski's complaints to a pained whimpering. "I don't," he answers, his voice a mere whimper. "Good," you answer, grabbing a pair of silver handcuffs from your belt. You grab Minski's arm, forcing them behind his back as you cuff him. He screams again as you roll him onto his stomach, but a quick knee to the head quietens him again. You stand, taking a deep breath, your resolve in your duty strengthening. "Wh-who are y-you?" Minski asks. "I hunt monsters, Mr Kuzkin. Vampires, banshees, werewolves, wraiths, changelings, demons... you get the drift." Minski lets out a cold, cruel laugh, his demeanor changing. "Aah... I see. You've finally found me, after all these years. You've sensed my presence. You're after the demon that burns inside my soul. I've been waiting for someone like you." You don't even bother to look at the man, instead taking a step into the lounge kitchen, your fears confirmed. At that moment, you're glad you're wearing a balaclava. A badly burned body lies on the kitchen table, its face mutilated beyond recognition. The body's small, the victim not much older than fourteen. The smell is unbearable, filling the house. You look away, the sight burning into your retinas even after your years of doing this. "You twisted fuck," you mutter, gritting your teeth. You blink long and hard, trying to regain a semblance of your cold, methodical, professional demeanor, before looking down at Minksi. "The demons tear at me, scream at me to do it! It's how you make them stop!" You sigh, fingers dancing on the trigger as you aim it at the man's head. "Demons are real, Mr Kuzkin, but they're rare, and they don't plague you. I thought they might've. It's why I investigated you. But you're not one of the poor souls cursed to deal with them. You're an animal. A pathetic creature so wracked with insanity and hatred that you take it out on the world. You're a mental case, an animal that needs to be put down, a... a..." you pause, looking to find the right words. "A monster." "No, no, they're here! They talk to me, they tell me things, they...!" "Quiet," you say, your voice barely above a whisper, but still controlling the room. The man's lost in his deluded fantasies, he's not worth talking to. Even though you doubted you would, you'd hoped that you could find some traces of demonic possession here, so you could help the poor man, but no, unfortunately you've only found yourself on the trail of another psychopath rather than any real supernatural presence. "I... I didn't want to! I tried to fight them, but they wouldn't let me stop! I couldn't sleep, couldn't... couldn't eat, couldn't... I... I just..." The pathetic figure breaks into sobbing, as you decide what to do. A quick call to the police station, and an officer could come out here to find their job done for them, the evidence lying around the house with their suspect neatly tied up. Minski would no doubt escape with the insanity plea, where he'd be taken to an institution to see if his shattered mind could be pieced together over days and months and years and decades.... of course, with your rifle belies an easier, more just answer. > You kill Minski Kuzkin You tilt your head, staring down the sights of your shotgun as you still your breath. With that, you pull the trigger. The shotgun bucks, Minski's head shattering as gray brain matter and bits of skull flies across the room. You don't flinch, simply wiping off what bits of skull land upon you. The sight of death and sound of gunfire are both as familiar as old friends to you, and you shan't be spooked by their visit. "And so ends the tale of Minski the Muscovite," you remark. You turn, walking to the nearest bedroom, searching for the cleanest sheets you could find. Taking a pair of brown sheets from the bed, you walk back into the kitchen, where the flies are having a feast. Your eyes water, and even you can't tell if it's from the smell or the sight. Carefully laying the sheet across the body, you step back, bowing your head as a matter of respect. "It's OK, boy. The horrors are over," you whisper. Your job finished, you turn, heading out to your truck outside. You walk out to the old, beaten gray pick-up, your eyes peering to the back where a pair of red diesel cannisters lie. It's a struggle to know whether to use them. This deep in the woods, you could burn this whole fucking place to the ground, and destroy any evidence of what happened here. Part of you thinks that no one should have to know what happened here. The dull city of Bergen should just continue in its sweet, sweet bliss. You'd happily burn away any memory of Minski the Muscovite, but the boy leaves a pressing question. Perhaps he deserves a right to have his tale told, to be returned home for a proper burial. And of course, his parents deserve a right to know, don't they? But, then again... perhaps it's better they don't know. Perhaps they live in eternal hope that their boy was just another runaway, or suffered an accidental death rather than the awful fate he held. No parent deserves to see their beautiful boy in the state that that boy is now. > You inform the police of the grizzly scene You decide it's best his parents learn what happened, no matter what. It's not use hiding the world in shadows and keeping them from knowledge. They deserve to know the cold truth. With more certainty than before, you turn to the old gray pick-up, clambering into the front seat as you start your engine. The high beams illuminate the dark track ahead of you, as you quickly do a U-turn, heading back down the path back towards the city. Halfway through the drive back, you put in the call to the police, quickly telling them the address and telling them to send police and medical assistance. Hanging up when they ask for your name, you continue driving, trying to forget the memories of tonight. The night's still young, and you have work to do. It's not the time for weakness. It's a long and lonely drive, with only the darkness for company. Once you've gotten far enough from the death of the night and that chained up lunatic, you switch on your iTunes, listening to a podcast on cooking. You don't cook, nor do you ever aspire to, but something about it tends to calm you, to normalize your situation. You can almost imagine you're just a normal man for a while. You follow the back roads until you're long gone from the woods, at which point you can safely head back to the lodge. The current lodge is situated at an old, secluded country house, dating back to the Victorian manor. You've actually heard rumors of the manor being haunted before, and when you see it illuminated by the pale moon that's broken through the dark sky, you'd almost believe it. Of course, as a hunting lodge, it's probably about the safest place there could be in regards to the supernatural. With two dozen residents armed to the teeth and trained in fighting the creatures of the night, blessed by the holy men of more religions than you could name and with enough silver than the Queen herself had, it was as safe as could be. You speed up the long drive of the old house. A flashlight beam illuminates the road ahead of you and a voice yells at you to halt. You slow down, holding your hand out the window as the car stops besides a fresh-faced boy holding a hunting shotgun. He smiles when he recognizes you, a goofy looking face on a man you know to be a cold-blooded hunter. "Good hunting, Willy?" Sven asks in his thick Swedish accent. "Just a fucking slasher," you say. "Bastard cut up a wee boy." The superstitious man blesses himself, before nodding. "Poor boy. Well done to you anyway, Willy. You righted a wrong tonight. Boss is looking for you anyway." "The hunt never ends," you shrug. You drive up the long path, parking alongside the collection of pick-ups, vans, sedans and "heftier" vehicles parked outside. Pulling into your space, you step out of the car, walking into the Lodge. Walking through the front door, you're hit by the wave of heat and light coming from the roaring fire in the fireplace, illuminating the old sitting room. You walk up to it, removing your gloves and stuffing them in your pocket, holding them out into the fire's heat to try get some warmth into your bones. Wherever the Lodge is set up, be it an old country house, a farmhouse, an apartment block, an ancient Celtic castle, a former military base or anything else there could be, there's always a fireplace there. The fireplace is the heart of the lodge, giving heat, warmth and a sense of safety to the every lodge member. There's something primordial about it, the brightness of the fire acting as a beacon of hope in the dark night of horrors. You pause, memories flooding into your mind. You remember sitting here as a wee boy, hearing your father tell you tales and stories. The memories take hold of your mind, as you remember sitting there as clearly as you feel the heat on your face now. > You remember your father's lessons on the history of the lodge You embrace the memory, taking refuge in the past for a moment's rest from the laboring of the present. Your father was a good man. A hard man, but a good one. When you sat by the fire with him, his already large, muscular frame seemed almost akin to a giant's at that early age. His thick bushy black beard was like solidified smoke drooping down from his chin. He rarely smiled, but he was far from a stern man. No, Dad smiled with his eyes. Whenever he was in a good mood, the man's eyes would shimmer with joy, a sight that could've brought joy to the most fatigued and broken of Hunters. You rarely saw him in your younger days, with his "job" taking him all around the world while you stayed in the miserably wondrous city that was Glasgow with your mother. She gave you your fiery mane, your manners, your demeanor and your think Scottish brogue, and life was easy. When your father visited, the world seemed to change. He'd always told you that he knew you'd be a hunter from when you first stated kicking in Mum's belly. He taught you how to hunt rabbit and deer, how to fish, how to track... he taught you everything you knew. When you were a wee teen, barely hitting fourteen, Dad took you on a trip to an old manor hidden away in the Scottish hills. The men there were hard-faced and stern, but Dad told you to pay them no mind. He simply sat in front of the roaring fire, and put you on his knee, something the giant man could still do with his size even then, and told you about the Hunters. The Hunters were born in a time where darkness, horror and superstition reigned over the land. They were simple men with no knowledge of what prowled the nights. They were plagued with mysterious killings from things beyond understanding, and they set out to stop them They soon formed groups to help fight the supernatural, and these groups grew larger and larger, establishing alliances to fight back against the greater threats, be they Vampire Covenants, Werewolf packs, Witch Covens or worse. These groups survived via funding from rich and powerful patrons who knew the threat that dwelt in the shadows as well as heavy support from the Catholic Church, who saw these creatures as demonic enemies of God. Nowadays, things are far different from the days of men venturing into the darkest woods with torches and pitchforks. Nowadays, the Hunter Lodges had established funding from government grants, private assets controlled by the Lodges and of course, still a considerable helping hand from the Vatican, who had never stiffed in their duty against the demonic. With a flexible support network including suppliers, equipment experts, silversmiths, occultists and the ever-needed "cleaners" who made sure that no trace of this fight was revealed to the public for fear of mass panic, as well as dozens of other roles needed to ensure the survival of the Hunting Lodges, Dad inspired you, and when you hit sixteen, you dropped out of school and took to the Hunting Lodge. For the first two years, you worked on simple jobs, doing house work and maintenance, and doing what investigation work makes up most of a Hunter's life, tracking for traces of the supernatural. Eventually, however, you got your chance to go on a hunt when you hit eighteen, and went out with your father. A maddened Vampire Thrall, a Wight and an actual wolf with a taste for flesh all found their bodies burning on the bonfire by the next morning. With your job started, it's been your work ever since. Dad didn't last too much longer after that. While tracking a Wendigo in the Rocky Mountains, he found out that the beast was stealthier than him, and a better hunter. His remains were found weeks after when a Hunter relief team came to find him. The Wendigo was caught and eliminated, but it had managed to kill a Hunter of twenty seven years experience and dealt your Lodge a serious blow. At thirty four years, you've given sixteen years of your life to the cause. In that time, you've completed a dozen hunts, with this being your thirteenth. The others have pointed out that the unlucky thirteen might not be the best omen for your odds tonight, but you're not a man of superstition. You're a Hunter. With that, you're reminded of your duty to the Lodge, and remember it's time to get going. You have a job to do. For the cause. For the Lodge. For Dad. > You get back to work You quickly get to work, preparing your truck for the night's next hunt. You get a few more shells for your shotgun, knowing by now what a necessity it is to carry all the ammo you can on the hunt. You fill up your truck's gas tank from the diesel cannister you've left in the truck, before getting two replacement cannisters from the house's shed. You double and triple check every detail you've got on your next target. For him, your regular shotgun shells won't do, so you replace a few shells for incendiary rounds. The beautiful thing about fire is it doesn't distinguish between psychopath or demon, monster or beast. As you prepare for the next target to hunt, you watch the other grim-faced, stern Hunters arrive and leave off, silently preparing for their missions. Few Hunters can deal with the horrors of mutilated corpses and brutal beasts without hiding inward, losing any joviality and become stern and determined stoics, although black humor is common among your types. A few men manage to survive their time with grins and jokes to cover up their pains, but they're few and far between. Most of the Hunters you pass just give you a nod and continue on their way, a single, thread-bare sign of support and brotherhood. It would seem cold and dark to outsiders, but to you, you know the respect that these men hold for you, and you hold for them. Your next target of the night is a traditional Lodge target, a young vampire. The target, to your knowledge, is barely thirty years old, with only nine of those years plagued by the red thirst. That young, he should barely have a grasp of his powers, and should be easy prey. In addition, the vampire has a single Thrall, a human either so mad, so desperate for something, so lustful for power that they're willing to sell out their humanity and their very soul to a Vampire, serving them as a servant to be used for day-time work and tasks beneath their Vampiric master. With your target set out, you head back to your truck, ready to head out and kill what's already dead. > You head off to the take out the target After clambering into your pick-up, you head off down the road, speeding along the streets as you head towards your target. The target house, due to the nature of what happens there, is very secluded. This means that it'll be all the easier for you to hit, as you won't have to worry about avoiding witnesses or police detection. You sure as shit don't want another police officer walking in on you mid-execution. You've dealt with it before, and things got... well, best not to let the mind dwell in the shadows. It's a long drive to your target, so you take the time to mentally prepare yourself, running through the plan again and again. The Vampire's secluded nature means he wakens to feed every two to three nights, before retiring to sleep. It seems the creature still struggles with fatigue, meaning he's particularly untrained in his power. He fed last night, so he should be easy prey. Kill the Thrall, and simply kill the beast in it's coffin. You pull up far enough away from the target house so not even an awakened vampire could hear its engine rumbling or see the flickers of its light. You kill the lights and leave the engine running, just in case you need a quick get away, before stepping out of your car, grabbing your weapon and making your way up the road. The veil of darkness that hung over the early night sky has been pulled from the sky, revealing the beauty of the stars. The moon shines bright, big and round like a light, surrounded by a billion shining stars that dot the heaves. It's stunningly beautiful, you must admit. The moon almost seems full, but you know it's not. The full moon has a tendency to alight some passion into the hearts of beasts, so the Lodge never has a hunt on those nights. However, nights lit by the moon are often the safest and brightest, so you tend to pick nights close to it. Best to have a bright sky watching over you when venturing into the shadows. Heading towards the house, you keep the shotgun tight in your hands, ready to fire at a moment's notice, the dragon's breath rounds in the chamber. You see the lights . The thrall should be asleep, as should his master. It's nearly two, and the man's frantic work last night in capturing prey for his master should've left the exhausted bastard craving sleep. Never mind. Him being awake only heightens the challenge. As long as his master's asleep, this should be doable. Although, if he's awake, it's out of schedule. Perhaps something's afoot, and perhaps his master is too. If that's the case, perhaps you should lean on the safer side of things. Then again, it is the night of the hunt. Calling on back-up means depriving a Hunter from somewhere else, and that could have lasting consequences. Perhaps another team is short a member, and a Necromancer's flesh hounds get the drop on them. Perhaps a Skinwalker manages to escape the trap set for him, and hunt fresh prey in the safety of the far north, away from your reach. Either way, your actions, as always in this field, have consequences. > You call for back-up You retreat to the car, calling into the Lodge. They report back that they've a spare Hunter to send out, one who is only acting on stand-by. Father Paul Féval. You know the man well, and have worked with him before. The man's a representative from the Vatican, a priest even, and as adamant in following the laws of the Bible as you are in never leaving the Lodge without a spare, but the man's a professional and an experienced Hunter. The man's permanent cold, professional demeanor means you'd be hesitant to call him a "friend", but you feel it'd be disrespectful to like anything. You get in your car, driving back a minute away from the house just for some extra space. Once you're out there, you wait outside your car, your weapons ready in case the vampire or his thrall emerge. The wait is long, but after fifteen minutes, you see a pair of dazzling head beams approaching you. A blackened sedan seems to almost form from the shadows, pulling in behind you. The sedan's driver door opens, as a tall, gaunt figure with spectacles and a black jacket and pants steps out. His long, bizarrely slender fingers tap against his side as his lips turn upwards very slightly in the barest facsimile of a smile. You know it's simply a polite sign, the man's professional nature means he takes no joy in this, instead simply seeing it as his religious duty. "William," Father Féval nods. "The Lodge informs me we're dealing with a thrall and a youth, correct?" "Correct, Father," you nod. "But they might be up." "Best not to take risks, William. We have enough risks inherent to our job, don't we?" Father Féval leans into the car, pulling out a vile of holy water. He dribbles it into his hands, blessing himself, before leaning back in and grabbing a silver crucifix. He affixes it to his belt, before flipping his jacket tails back, pulling out a pair of shining pistols. He looks at them both, examining them for a moment, before nodding. "I'm ready and willing, William." "Let's go." The pair of you begin walking down the street, ready to strike. You soon come up again to the house once more, walking up the path towards the house. You know from surveillance that the house has the main entrance as well as a back door. The lounge, dining room and basement are located near the front door. The sitting positions would give anyone in there the sight of the door, but it would allow for the quickest contact. If the vampires awake, eliminating the thrall would give you far better chances against the Vampire shortly afterwards. "You did the ground work. Suggestions?" Father Féval says unemotionally, seeming entirely focused on the situation with no fear, dread or anticipation. > You go in together, through the front "We both go through the front, take the fucker out quickly so we'll have time to get the drop on the main target. The longer we take with the thrall, the more likely that the night haunt will wake up and get the drop on one of us." "I understand. Best of luck, William." "And to you, Father." The two of you walk towards the house, weapons at the ready. Surprisingly for a vampire's lair, your surveillance has said that the house is completely lacking in any serious security measures. Locked doors and windows, sure, but they're lacking the reinforced doors, security cameras. It's a young vampire, so you're not expecting legions of Thralls protecting him or runic blood magic protecting the house, but clearly the power's gone to this creature's head. Striding forward to the house's wooden door, you raise your shotgun, pointing it at the lock and firing. Booting the door open with a solid kick as you pump the shotgun, the door collapses to the ground as you quickly step through, making contact with the Thrall. The Thrall stands in the kitchen, a short, bearded man with crazed eyes and grime and dirt stuck in his beard and on his face. He shakes his head repeatedly, growling and swearing as he divides a pile of crushed and broken white crystals, no doubt a substitute between his feedings on the vampiric blood he's heavily addicted to. His eyes dart up to you as he growls, an animalistic sound that could only come from a beast. His blood-shot eyes bulge, as he kicks the table with incredible strength, flipping it onto its side as he dives behind it. You immediately open fire, bullets and shotgun blasts easily tearing through the table, but it was a simply distraction, and the Thrall's already ducked behind the kitchen counter. Suddenly, you see the barrel of a gun emerge from behind the kitchen counter, as the Thrall attempts to fight back. Father Féval, however, fails to spot it, as he rushes forward. The gun's muzzle flashes and screams with the crackling of gunfire, as Father Féval collapses with a scream, smacking into the floor. "Zut! Mes jambes!" Father Féval screams. You look over to the man, whose right leg is now heavily bleeding and torn apart, his right thigh bleeding heavily as well as dark red blood quickly pools around the floor. "I'm coming over!" you shout to Féval, who breathes heavily in trying to control his pain. "Non! Stay there, you fool! He'll get us both!" You nod, knowing he's right. Going over to try assist Father Féval right now would be suicide, and you'd just end up with a blast of bullets to the chest. The priest's pinned down, and you need to decide what your course of action is. Retreating, as always, seems promising. The racket you're causing has no doubt awoken the vile monster you've come here to kill, and you're going to be hard-fought keeping Féval alive and yourself facing these two foes. Of course, if you can rush the Thrall from his flank and take him out quickly, you'll be able to face the Vampire one-on-one and have some chance. > You fall back to the truck Knowing that staying there is a slaughter and every second you spend fighting is only going to make it more likely the sound of death and smell of flesh blood is going to awaken the thrall's master, you turn, looking at Father Féval one last time as he lies there, bleeding heavily. His eyes meet yours, and he knows what you're going to do. "God be with you, William," he says. The man struggles to raise his arms, the strength clearly sapped for them, but nevertheless the priest opens fire with a burst of gunfire towards the Thrall, giving you your chance. You break for the door, sprinting low and fast as your shotgun swings in your hands. You leap forward with every step, quickly bursting out the front door as you sprint towards your truck. You're running as fast as you're able, when suddenly, you get hit from the side with the strength of a truck. You're sent flying through the air before you can even realize what happens, as you skid along the cold earth and roll to a halt, feeling your now broken jaw smack into the frozen tundra. You lie there, broken and hurt, as you try to pull yourself to your feet. As soon as you put weight on your knee you're put through incredible pain and forced to do nothing but grit your teeth and bear it. "You seem tired, Hunter," a voice says. Your voice chills when you hear the voice, but you know it's not the time for tears. Turning your head, you find yourself staring up at a tall, deathly pale figure. It's skin seems almost entirely hairless except for the thick black hair that hangs down from its head. Its eyes, however... its blood red eyes betray an inhumanity that you'll never be able to comprehend. "Hello," the Vampire smiles, revealing a fanged mouth stretching from ear to ear. "And of course, goodbye." "Fucking... blood thirsty... prick," you say, struggling to keep from collapsing to the ground. The Vampire strolls forward, savoring this moment, as his smile stretches further and further across his face, almost seeming to cut it in half. He lifts a polished boot into the air, placing it on your broken leg. He applies pressure, and you grit your teeth and try not to give him the satisfaction of screaming. "A strong one. Your lodge will weep tonight. You can die quick, Hunter." The Vampire slowly drops down to his knees, as you struggle to reach for your revolver at your side. You're far too late, though, as she grabs your head gently. You breath carefully, before he snaps your neck in a single motion. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"We both go through the front, take the fucker out quickly so we'll have time to get the drop on the main target. The longer we take with the thrall, the more likely that the night haunt will wake up and get the drop on one of us." "I understand. Best of luck, William." "And to you, Father." The two of you walk towards the house, weapons at the ready. Surprisingly for a vampire's lair, your surveillance has said that the house is completely lacking in any serious security measures. Locked doors and windows, sure, but they're lacking the reinforced doors, security cameras. It's a young vampire, so you're not expecting legions of Thralls protecting him or runic blood magic protecting the house, but clearly the power's gone to this creature's head. Striding forward to the house's wooden door, you raise your shotgun, pointing it at the lock and firing. Booting the door open with a solid kick as you pump the shotgun, the door collapses to the ground as you quickly step through, making contact with the Thrall. The Thrall stands in the kitchen, a short, bearded man with crazed eyes and grime and dirt stuck in his beard and on his face. He shakes his head repeatedly, growling and swearing as he divides a pile of crushed and broken white crystals, no doubt a substitute between his feedings on the vampiric blood he's heavily addicted to. His eyes dart up to you as he growls, an animalistic sound that could only come from a beast. His blood-shot eyes bulge, as he kicks the table with incredible strength, flipping it onto its side as he dives behind it. You immediately open fire, bullets and shotgun blasts easily tearing through the table, but it was a simply distraction, and the Thrall's already ducked behind the kitchen counter. Suddenly, you see the barrel of a gun emerge from behind the kitchen counter, as the Thrall attempts to fight back. Father Féval, however, fails to spot it, as he rushes forward. The gun's muzzle flashes and screams with the crackling of gunfire, as Father Féval collapses with a scream, smacking into the floor. "Zut! Mes jambes!" Father Féval screams. You look over to the man, whose right leg is now heavily bleeding and torn apart, his right thigh bleeding heavily as well as dark red blood quickly pools around the floor. "I'm coming over!" you shout to Féval, who breathes heavily in trying to control his pain. "Non! Stay there, you fool! He'll get us both!" You nod, knowing he's right. Going over to try assist Father Féval right now would be suicide, and you'd just end up with a blast of bullets to the chest. The priest's pinned down, and you need to decide what your course of action is. Retreating, as always, seems promising. The racket you're causing has no doubt awoken the vile monster you've come here to kill, and you're going to be hard-fought keeping Féval alive and yourself facing these two foes. Of course, if you can rush the Thrall from his flank and take him out quickly, you'll be able to face the Vampire one-on-one and have some chance. > You push forward and take down the Thrall You charge forward, rushing past a bleeding Father Féval and raising your shotgun into the air as you run low and fast, fingers ready on the trigger. You emerge from behind your choice of cover, rushing forward as you raise your shotgun, firing through the thrall's chest. He screams, his clothes lighting into flames as he screams, catapulted into the wall. He lets lose with his rifle, either as his twitching body pulls the trigger or in one last burst of dying energy, and bullets slam into your chest. You feel the air knocked out of your lungs as you bounce against the wall and collapse to your knees. For a moment, you just feel a cold swelling through you as you're left unable to breathe, before the pain begins to burn its way through your chest. Gasping for breath that won't fill your lungs as you find them filling with warm, wet, blood instead, and you're left drowning in it. You manage to pull a few strangled breaths from the air, as you stay on your knee, knowing that if you collapse you'll end up letting the darkness taken. Then, somewhere in your struggle, you hear loud footsteps to your right. Turning your head, you find yourself staring up at a tall, deathly pale figure. It's skin seems almost entirely hairless except for the thick black hair that hangs down from its head. Its eyes, however... its blood red eyes betray an inhumanity that you'll never be able to comprehend. "Hello," the Vampire smiles, revealing a fanged mouth stretching from ear to ear. "And of course, goodbye." "Fucking... blood thirsty... prick," you say, struggling to keep from collapsing to the ground. The Vampire slowly walks forward, it's grin stretching further and further until it seems like it should be tearing its face in two. You know he could strike far faster, but the vampire seems to be savoring his kill. You go to your revolver, hidden at your side, grabbing the ivory handle as you attempt to draw your gun. You fumble to pull it from the safety of its holster, before the Vampire grabs his wrist, bending your arm behind your back as you scream. His jaw snaps forward, a fanged mouth tearing into your neck. You let out a scream, teeth bursting through flesh and slicing into veins. Your body weakens in the creature's grasp as it begins to drain you of your blood, and the world rapidly goes dark as blood loss takes you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You retreat to the car, calling into the Lodge. They report back that they've a spare Hunter to send out, one who is only acting on stand-by. Father Paul Féval. You know the man well, and have worked with him before. The man's a representative from the Vatican, a priest even, and as adamant in following the laws of the Bible as you are in never leaving the Lodge without a spare, but the man's a professional and an experienced Hunter. The man's permanent cold, professional demeanor means you'd be hesitant to call him a "friend", but you feel it'd be disrespectful to like anything. You get in your car, driving back a minute away from the house just for some extra space. Once you're out there, you wait outside your car, your weapons ready in case the vampire or his thrall emerge. The wait is long, but after fifteen minutes, you see a pair of dazzling head beams approaching you. A blackened sedan seems to almost form from the shadows, pulling in behind you. The sedan's driver door opens, as a tall, gaunt figure with spectacles and a black jacket and pants steps out. His long, bizarrely slender fingers tap against his side as his lips turn upwards very slightly in the barest facsimile of a smile. You know it's simply a polite sign, the man's professional nature means he takes no joy in this, instead simply seeing it as his religious duty. "William," Father Féval nods. "The Lodge informs me we're dealing with a thrall and a youth, correct?" "Correct, Father," you nod. "But they might be up." "Best not to take risks, William. We have enough risks inherent to our job, don't we?" Father Féval leans into the car, pulling out a vile of holy water. He dribbles it into his hands, blessing himself, before leaning back in and grabbing a silver crucifix. He affixes it to his belt, before flipping his jacket tails back, pulling out a pair of shining pistols. He looks at them both, examining them for a moment, before nodding. "I'm ready and willing, William." "Let's go." The pair of you begin walking down the street, ready to strike. You soon come up again to the house once more, walking up the path towards the house. You know from surveillance that the house has the main entrance as well as a back door. The lounge, dining room and basement are located near the front door. The sitting positions would give anyone in there the sight of the door, but it would allow for the quickest contact. If the vampires awake, eliminating the thrall would give you far better chances against the Vampire shortly afterwards. "You did the ground work. Suggestions?" Father Féval says unemotionally, seeming entirely focused on the situation with no fear, dread or anticipation. > You go in together, through the back "We both go through the back, take the fucker out quickly so we'll have time to get the drop on the main target. Get the drop on the Thrall, finish him, The longer we take with the thrall, the more likely that the night haunt will wake up and get the drop on one of us." "I understand. Best of luck, William." "And to you, Father." The two of you walk towards the house, weapons at the ready. Surprisingly for a vampire's lair, your surveillance has said that the house is completely lacking in any serious security measures. Locked doors and windows, sure, but they're lacking the reinforced doors, security cameras. It's a young vampire, so you're not expecting legions of Thralls protecting him or runic blood magic protecting the house, but clearly the power's gone to this creature's head. Moving slowly and softly through the garden around to the back, you still your breaths and do your best to be as soundless as the shadows. You creep through the rose bushes, whose petals look almost eerily beautiful in the moonlight. The sky's light brightens your path, but also makes it harder to sneak, and you just stay low and hope that if the Thrall happens to be looking out the window, he isn't looking too hard. Edging around to the back, you draw close to the wooden door. You look to Father Féval, who nods to you almost imperceptibly slowly. You move to the door, standing ready, before striking. You raise your shotgun, firing through the door's lock as you boot it open, quickly stepping through the now opened doorway and into the house. The Thrall stands in the kitchen, his back turned to you.The Thrall is a short, bearded man, growling and shaking his head repeatedly as he divides a pile of crushed and broken white crystals, no doubt a substitute between his feedings on the vampiric blood he's heavily addicted to. The man quickly turns, his crazed, blood-shot eyes bulging at you as he sees you. His eyes dart up to you as he growls, an animalistic sound that could only come from a beast. With a roar, he charges for you, as you pump your shotgun and put a round into him, firing straight through the thrall's chest. He screams, his clothes lighting into flames as he screams, catapulted into the wall. He slides down the wall, screaming out in anger and pain, a noise of such intense rage that it chills you. Father Féval walks in quickly, his guns raised. He stands over the bleeding, burning man, raising his pistols to aim at his heads. "Les flammes les plus méritées brûlent le plus chaud, pécheur. Que Dieu ait pitié de ce qui reste de votre âme misérable et trouve la miséricorde sur votre âme," Father Féval says calmly. The two pistols fire, the Thrall's face exploding as blood and gore coats his wild hair and thick beard, his head caving in as the bullets carve their way through. "Let's kill this Vampire and be done with this place," Father Féval says to you. "Let's," you say, pumping your shotgun as your next shell enters the chamber. > You take out the coffin You quickly head down the staircase of the basement, descending into the dark basement, lit by a dim candle. You slow down as you notice the counters piled with jars filled to the brim with red liquid. A bloody metal table sits there with unopened leather straps, a series of tubing and IV's connected to it. You're certain that it's equipment to drain the blood of victims the Thrall captures, to feed his master when he doesn't wish to hunt for himself. However, the highlight of the room is a large, ornate coffin, leaning against a concrete wall. You've seen enough coffins in your life for any man, but this one is a fairly nice one. It's solid wood, cherry, with brass handles, sitting up on its side so its resident can sleep standing up. The face on the front of the coffin shows a grinning, gargoyle-like face made of brass, its eyes shining at you. You flinch at the sight of it, nervous about what lies behind it. "Let's do it," Father Féval says. You hurry up to the coffin, readying your shotgun as Father Féval takes the other side. "I take the chest, you take the head," you say, as Father Féval nods. Quickly, the two of you perform the breaching mechanism. Swinging around and standing back, you quickly measure the size of the coffin and roughly calculate where the center of its heart is. You aim, your fingers tightening on the trigger as you fire the weapon, as does Father Féval. Your shotgun bucks, firing lead and magnesium shards directly through the heavy wood of the coffin. You fire three times as the wood splinters and explodes away, your shells bursting through them as they tear through the coffin. Father Féval's rounds tear through where the head of the vampire should lie, bursting through the wood and hitting through inside. After a few seconds, the sound of gunfire calms as you look at Father Féval. "Let us confirm the kill," Father Féval says. Stepping forward, you grab the handle of the coffin and wretch it open, tearing open the splintered and almost destroyed door. Staring inside, you find splintered wood and torn apart coffin... but no vampire, or no ash to show a clean kill. "That was expensive," a dark, chilling voice says. "You'll pay for that." Your voice chills when you hear the voice, but you know it's not the time for tears. Turning your head, you find yourself staring up at a tall, deathly pale figure standing behind Father Féval, its arms wrapped around him, baring a pair of ivory daggers that descend from its upper jaw, fangs so sharp and long they could tear out Father Féval's throat in an instant. It's skin seems almost entirely hairless except for the thick black hair that hangs down from its head. Its eyes, however... its blood red eyes betray an inhumanity that you'll never be able to comprehend. "Don't move, or your friend gets it," the Vampire says. "Drop your weapons. Slowly." "Shoot it!" Father Féval gasps, as the Vampire steps almost perfectly behind the priest, obscuring your shot. Surrender isn't an option. This creature needs to die, or neither you nor Father Féval will ever get out of here. > You shoot through Father Féval You fire your shotgun straight through Father Féval's chest without a moment's pause, knowing the way of the Hunter. You're going to do what's right, not what's empathetic, and you'd expect Father Féval to blow you away in a moment in order to fight the good fight. However, the blast fails to completely burst through Father Féval's chest, the burning magnesium shards lacking the penetration power you require, and the few lead balls tearing their way through his flesh are simply incapable of killing a Vampire. Father Féval's dying corpse is tossed into you, and you shove the body aside with a yell. However, it's far too late, and the vampire rams you against the wall. His fangs tear through the air and into your throat, biting down and tearing it out of your neck with a burst of blood. You gasp for air, but only blood fills your throat and lungs as you find yourself incapable of breathing. You paw desperately at the Vampire's face as he laughs again, before dipping his face into your bleeding neck and beginning to drain your blood. Soon, the blood loss and shock snuffs the light in your eyes, and your body goes numb.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly head down the staircase of the basement, descending into the dark basement, lit by a dim candle. You slow down as you notice the counters piled with jars filled to the brim with red liquid. A bloody metal table sits there with unopened leather straps, a series of tubing and IV's connected to it. You're certain that it's equipment to drain the blood of victims the Thrall captures, to feed his master when he doesn't wish to hunt for himself. However, the highlight of the room is a large, ornate coffin, leaning against a concrete wall. You've seen enough coffins in your life for any man, but this one is a fairly nice one. It's solid wood, cherry, with brass handles, sitting up on its side so its resident can sleep standing up. The face on the front of the coffin shows a grinning, gargoyle-like face made of brass, its eyes shining at you. You flinch at the sight of it, nervous about what lies behind it. "Let's do it," Father Féval says. You hurry up to the coffin, readying your shotgun as Father Féval takes the other side. "I take the chest, you take the head," you say, as Father Féval nods. Quickly, the two of you perform the breaching mechanism. Swinging around and standing back, you quickly measure the size of the coffin and roughly calculate where the center of its heart is. You aim, your fingers tightening on the trigger as you fire the weapon, as does Father Féval. Your shotgun bucks, firing lead and magnesium shards directly through the heavy wood of the coffin. You fire three times as the wood splinters and explodes away, your shells bursting through them as they tear through the coffin. Father Féval's rounds tear through where the head of the vampire should lie, bursting through the wood and hitting through inside. After a few seconds, the sound of gunfire calms as you look at Father Féval. "Let us confirm the kill," Father Féval says. Stepping forward, you grab the handle of the coffin and wretch it open, tearing open the splintered and almost destroyed door. Staring inside, you find splintered wood and torn apart coffin... but no vampire, or no ash to show a clean kill. "That was expensive," a dark, chilling voice says. "You'll pay for that." Your voice chills when you hear the voice, but you know it's not the time for tears. Turning your head, you find yourself staring up at a tall, deathly pale figure standing behind Father Féval, its arms wrapped around him, baring a pair of ivory daggers that descend from its upper jaw, fangs so sharp and long they could tear out Father Féval's throat in an instant. It's skin seems almost entirely hairless except for the thick black hair that hangs down from its head. Its eyes, however... its blood red eyes betray an inhumanity that you'll never be able to comprehend. "Don't move, or your friend gets it," the Vampire says. "Drop your weapons. Slowly." "Shoot it!" Father Féval gasps, as the Vampire steps almost perfectly behind the priest, obscuring your shot. Surrender isn't an option. This creature needs to die, or neither you nor Father Féval will ever get out of here. > You wait for a better opportunity You stand, stern and waiting with your shotgun raised. The Vampire laughs, his fangs bared as he holds them above Father Féval's neck. Father Féval simply stands perfectly still, slowing his breathing as he stares blankly ahead, slowly mouthing "Do it". "Come on!" the Vampire laughs, reaching his arm down and tapping on exactly where Father Féval's heart is. "Right here. Blow out your friend's heart and maybe you'll get me. You'll get rid of my shield, either way." With the Vampire's arm having moved around to Father Féval's chest, Father Féval's hand has been released. Father Féval slowly reaches his hand down to his belt, staring ahead. He slowly lifts up his jacket, reaching under to grab the silver crucifix affixed to his belt. He slides the cross free, holding it tightly in his hands. He looks at you, nodding ever so slightly in an almost imperceptible gesture. Father Féval swings his arm back in one solid gesture, jamming the crucifix into the Vampire's eye. The Vampire screams, a horrible rasping noise of anger and pain beyond what should come out of any human lungs, like the scraping of concrete on concrete. It grabs at the crucifix jamming into it's eye, hissing as Father Féval ducks out of his grasp, rolling to the side, giving you the perfect open target. You raise your shotgun, aiming it at the vampire's heart. You squeeze the trigger, doing what you should. The blast of lead and burning Magnesium shards tear through the air, bursting forward and exploding through his heart, and causing his flesh and clothes to catch up in flames. He screams out in pain, forced backwards from the sheer force of impact. You pump your shotgun, firing another blast as it hits the Vampire in the head, which snaps back as his head erupts through melting flesh. You pump another, and another, and another round into him, as his inhuman body erupts into fire, flesh turning into ash as he collapses backwards against the wall, the force of the shells leaving the Vampire stumbling back as it gasps. It's flesh continues burning away to ash as the creature collapses to the ground, and soon there's nothing but an ash pile left. "Thanks," Father Féval nods, looking down at the ash pile that was previously about to tear out his throat. "We should burn this wretched place to the ground and get out of here. Too much of a story here if they find the blood extraction equipment." A bright ringing noise startles you from behind, and you almost open fire in that direction as you redraw your revolver. You find yourself staring at a simple cellphone sitting on a table, vibrating and ringing away. You pause, looking at it with confusion. "What is it?" Father Féval asks you. "A phone," you answer, as you walk over slowly, reaching down and flipping open the phone, lifting it to your ear. "Hello?" "Hello, Mr Matasan." Your blood chills for a moment, as you take a deep breath, terror ringing through you. "And who may I be speaking to?" "My name is Hrólfr Gaange. It's a pleasure to meet you." "Is there something I can help you with?" you ask. "You don't seem particularly afraid, Mr Matasan." "Should I be, Mr Gaange?" you ask, trying to keep your calm. "Of course not. It's just refreshing to speak to a new person without them being so terrified. Now, let's be quite frank, Mr Matasan. You killed one of my agents, and their thrall, did you not?" "I did," you say, not wanting to waste the time that would've come from lying, since you know the creature's certain about these facts. "Interesting. Good. He was a weak, impulsive creature. He wasn't useful. Quite frankly, he was a threat to our existence. But you... you could be of assistance to me. You have potential. I want you to work for me." "No," you reply, almost instantly, prompting a dark chuckle from the bastard. "I understand. You've dedicated your life to protecting the innocent. But, so have I, Mr Matasan. I may be a vampire, but I do what's necessary for this world. I don't stalk through the streets at night attacking helpless women hiding in their beds. I'm not one of these crass specimens that wants to blot out the sun, or who wants to enslave mankind, or raise a legion of damned souls. I like the world the way it is. And I'm going to keep it safe from darker creatures of the night. I keep the world of darkness under wraps, as you do. I keep my dark brethren in check. I protect society. You could help me with that, and do a far better job than you do as a mortal." "No," you say again. "Think about what I'm offering you. Immortality, riches, power, strength, speed, intelligence. Everything you could want." "I can't do that, Mr Gaange. I think you already knew that, though." "Oh, I did. But I'm not looking to recruit you right now. I'm offering you a favor. You types never take the power offer. You don't join my side out of power-lust. You join out of desperation. A day will come when you need me. Perhaps you need some arcane knowledge. Perhaps you need money. Perhaps a cure for some unknown disease. Anything you ever need. Just... keep this phone. My number is under Mr Black. Generic, i know. When you need me, call. I can give you anything you want. And what do you lose for that? Your finite mortality, your weakness, your diseases, your poverty... a fair bargain, no." "I'm not going to..." you begin to see, before a dark voice interupts you. "Keep the phone. I know you don't think you'll need it, but you might. I'll talk to you sooner or later, Mr Matasan. Best of luck to you tonight. I've heard it'll be a big one." The phone beeps as Mr Gaange hangs up on you. "What was it?" Father Féval asks. "The target's vampiric master." "What did he say?" You pause, looking down at your phone as you try to think through what to do. You know Féval wouldn't support you taking the phone, but he doesn't have to know what was discussed. > You take the phone Thinking long and hard, you decide to take the phone. Perhaps it could be of some use. Maybe. Hopefully, you never have to use it, but you didn't survive this long in the field by turning away potential gifts, and you're not going to start now. Everything you can use in the fight against darkness, you will use.You slide the phone into one of your secure pockets, buttoning it up and patting it to make sure it's secure. "Nothing important," you say. "Just threats and bullshit. I'll take the phone back to the techs and see if they can trace the call, find us a master." "It won't work," Father Féval says. "It'll be untraceable. Vampires, especially masters, are far too clever to do things like this. Far too clever." "I want to try," you lie. "So be it," Father Féval answers. "Let us begin the clean-up, William. We have a lot of work to do. The techs can wait." You nod, and the two of you quickly set apart eradicating the evidence this place ever existed. The two of you pack up the jars of blood into the truck, for disposal somewhere that won't be investigated. You also take the IV and tubing, before grabbing your fuel cans. You quickly perform the same patterns, spreading it through the house evenly enough, focusing on that you need destroyed and that which is most flammable. With the two of you, the clean-up is surprisingly quickly the two of you working quickly in silence neither one of you wants to break. Once that's done, you head out of the house and set the home alight, watching as the flames run through the house and engulf it in an inferno. "A job well done," Father Féval nods. "One more soul sent to its judgment. We should get back. There is more work to be done. Unless you would like to watch the house burn? Pyromania is a common turn for many a man in this line of duty, no?" You don't feel like watching the house burn, not feeling the usual satisfaction of watching a lair of darkness light the shadows as a beacon of warmth and light. You just feel tired, even more so knowing that you're not finished your work tonight. "No, I'm fine. Let's go," you answer. Father Féval nods, shaking your hand before returning to his sedan, and heading off into the night. You head back to your truck as well, climbing in and heading off down the road again. The drive goes by quickly, as you turn your radio up until it's almost blaring some inane Norwegian pop song, and continue off down the road. It's not long before you pull up to the old country house again. The signs of the night's lateness are more obvious, now. A few of the vehicles parked outside are dented or have blood smears or bullet holes, and the Hunters that walk about them seem more exhausted. You head into the house, taking a moment to appreciate the light of the fireplace. But, the night is still young, and you have targets to hit. You walk towards the sitting room, one of the old house's converted into a "base of operations" of sorts. Although as Hunters, you tend to work independently, only using the Lodge for resources, resupplying and rest, as well as letting them know every so often you're not dead in the long periods of investigation and tracking in trying to find the lairs and dens of beasts, and trying to distinguish psychos and fools from men tainted by the demonic, or worse. However, it's the night of the Hunt, that beautiful night of the year where you wipe out the monsters that dwell in the shadows in one quick sweep, not even giving the bastards time to flee or figure out what's going on. And on the night of the Hunt, sometimes you need to work together. While maddened werewolves and loner vampires are easy prey with modern technology, hard-work, training and of course the element of surprise, when the creatures of darkness work together, so must you. When that happens, you plan and prepare in the lounge. You walk into the lodge, finding a large table with a map stretched across it. A half dozen men stand around it, all of whom you recognize as veteran Hunters. The leader of the group is the head of the Lodge, a man known as Ernest Collier. The old man's scarred, wrinkled face smiles at you as you enter. Ernest's too old at his age to still hunt, having since lost the physical peak that Hunters are required to be at, but his mind is strong and he's well experienced. Thus, he serves the cause through leading the lodge. Everything from supplying Hunters to recruiting to planning the larger hunts falls under his purview. "William. I heard your hunt with Father Féval went well. I'm glad. How did your earlier target go?" "Successfully," you say simply. The next man in the room you see is Father Féval, who nods at you once more. As always, cold and calculated. After him stands former-Unteroffizer Hans Hirsch. The tall man has dark black hair and light eyes, his face decorated with a long scar that goes vertically just left of his left eye. He leans over the table, scanning the map. His finger gently runs across hunting paths through the thick forest as he whispers to himself. Hans is a strange man, with a taste for drink, cigars, cigarettes, whores, gambling... anything he can get his hands on. But, he's a good hunter, having served in the military of his home country and having a great record on all his previous hunts. The final man is an Alaskan by the name of Russel Sloane. Time has taken the black from his thick beard and the hair from his head, but left the man's strength, speed and cunning, and only given him experience and wisdom for the trade. He's a powerful Hunter, and took the shift from bears and wolves to Kushtaka and Tupilaq with ease. He smiles at you grimly when you enter, his face showing a hint of more worry than usual. "Are we ready to start?" you ask. "We're waiting on someone," Russel says. As you raise an eyebrow, the door swings open and you find yourself staring down at a young boy, barely in his mid teens. "This is my boy Wyatt. Now that's he's a full man, we'll be taking him on tonight's hunt, showing him how we fight. I filled him in on the details." "Pleasure to meet y'all," he smiles nervously, as you look him up and down. He's young, short, weak and skinny. You don't think he should be coming out, but he's a man more than you would normally have for this mission, and you're not going to be telling his father how to raise his own child. "Take a seat, Wyatt," Ernest smiles. "We're going to go over tonight's details." Ernest takes a seat, as you stare down at the map ahead of you, which shows you a massive woods, with several hunting paths, potential lairs and scenes of incidents highlighted. "Let's recap for those who didn't get to hear it directly from me!" Ernest says. "There's been several mauling's in these areas, and we've had reports a werewolf pack is responsible. Not just one werewolf, but an entire pack of about six to twelve creatures. We're taking a small team in their to set up an ambush, draw them out and kill them all. The plans' simple. Take a truck into the woods with a mutilated deer carcass, slathered in human blood. The scent should draw the werewolves into your area, where you'll have set up an overview to take them out. Simple." You all nod, the review of your plan unnecessary for everyone but Wyatt. "We're heading off in an hour and a half. I want all of you prepared and by the truck for then, understood?" There's a chorus of affirmatives, as Ernest smiles. "Good to know. Best of luck, men." > You prepare for the night's final hunt You head to the old house's dining room, where a large wooden table sits. It's empty, the rest of the Hunters out and about in the world. The kitchen is brimming with the light and heat that activity tends to bring. A scarred Hunter is busy working in it, cooking an extensive meal. You vaguely know her, a young Spaniard by the name of Lola Garcia. The hunter's missing three fingers on her right hand and her right eye from a Gargoyle attack, so she's on recovery and acting as the Lodge chef for the time being. Tonight's meal, as with most Lodge meals, is very garlic heavy. Traditionally, Hunters have lots of garlic. In the old days, when the Hunters first rose up, garlic was an invaluable tool. Many monsters of the night could easily track a human via smell, so the first Hunters used garlic to disguise their scent and confuse their prey. Of course, it wasn't long before the smell of garlic became associated with Hunters, and they had to change tactic. Still, garlic is still popular among the Hunters as a meal, both to keep up the tradition and for a good luck charm. Tonight, the meal is potatoes, lamb and gravy, flavored with garlic. You take a bowl, returning to your seat with the rest of your squad of Hunters. While you didn't feel hungry during the night's exploits, now that the food is in front of you and you get to smell it, you feel just how hungry you are. You quickly grab your knife and fork, and begin wolfing it down. Within a minute flat, your bowl is empty, and you have to weigh up having any bit of respect from your peers against the joy you'd get from licking the bowl clean. Afterwards, you head to the main bathroom. You shower yourself, a nice treat, washing off the dirt, sweat, blood and grime that's coated you over the night's events. Having the hot water stream over your skin has a cleansing, almost purifying effect on you. You make sure to scrub extensively, trying to wipe off any scent of your "human side" that might be lingering. Afterwards, you get dressed in your best hiking boots and what clothing you have that's warm, tough and flexible, which is admittedly pretty much everything you have. You pack up your shotgun with its shells filled with silver shards as well as a hunting dagger with a silver edge and your revolver. Making sure you have all the survival gear you need, you head out to the truck. With twenty minutes left in the day, you move to your desk. It's laid out with your papers, your grinder, your filters and a large bag of your personal supply of Marijuana that helps you get through the darkest nights with the worst nightmares, pulling out your record player. You quickly flick through what few Vinyl you have, before going back to the one you most often return to. With (What's the Story) Morning Glory? emblazoned proudly across the top, you smile as you remember your father giving it to you for your eighteenth. Dad actually had a taste for music, and always liked them, as did you. You flip on the vinyl, setting your alarm for fifteen minutes, and sink into your desk chair as the songs play. The next fifteen minutes is a thoughtless bliss of unforming memories, but soon, your alarm bleeps you awake, and you head out to the others. The group is assembling outside, taking a worn out pick-up. Russel and Wyatt are loading a moose carcass into the back of the truck, while Hans, Father Féval are already getting into the truck. You quickly hurry up, as Russel looks at you. "Willy! You ready for this?" "Always am," you nod, as Russel hands you a jar of golden liquid. You uncap the jar, gently sprinkling the deer piss over your coat. Thanks to werewolves' naturally keen sense of smell, it's best to coat yourself in this disguise, despite how disgusting it is to you. "Ha! Perfect! Let's go! I'm driving up front with Frenchie and the German. You can come up front with us or sit up with Wyatt and the bait." You look at Wyatt, who looks pale and nervous, a hunting rifle in his hands. His father is either indifferent to his son's fears or ignorant of them. Part of you wants to sit in the front where it's warm, but another part of you feels like you should comfort Wyatt. > You take the front seat "I'll go in the front. It's cold tonight," you say, swinging your shotgun into the front of the pick-up and clambering in next to Hans. He looks at you, a cigarette sitting between his lips. "William," he says. "You look tired, my friend. How's hunting been?" "Been better. Been worse," you say. "Confirmed kills, no injuries, no escapes. I've had worse days," you say. "I hear that. Had to track down this fucking "werewolf" for two months. Found out it was nothing but a very cunning wolf. I was playing the role of a normal human hunter for two months." The truck pulls off, barreling down the road. You lean back in your seat, the car heading deep into the woods. You rest your shotgun against your shoulder, staring out the window. It's a silent journey, with all of the veterans of the hunt being far too quiet for any inane chatter, especially before the hunt. It's a long, boring drive, as you watch the tress pass by, shrouded by shadow. It's a waiting game until the drop zone, as you focus on nothing at all and let your mind drift to avoid getting yourself psyched out. "We're about fifteen minutes out from the drop soon. We debark in ten, then we hike into the target spot and set up," Russel says. "This'll be a good one, boy, don't you worry." You stare out the window at the darkened trees, waiting patiently. Russel Sloane, perhaps nervous bringing his boy out, tries to start a conversation. "The moon's out pretty bright tonight, isn't it, b... Shit, shit, shit!" Suddenly, the car swerves, as you hear the recognizable sound of car tires bursting. The car slams off the road, hitting the embarkment as you find yourself momentarily free-falling. You panic, reaching for your rifle, before the world goes black. > You consciousness fades... You open your eyes as blurry vision returns to you. You're covered in broken glass and enveloped in darkness, but your eyes slowly begin to make sense of your surroundings. You're sitting in the truck, looking around as you hear the nearby howls of nearing werewolves. You blink, feeling a rush of pain go through your numb body. Your skin is grazed and cut up, blood running down your skin as your bruised flesh and broken bones scream out to you in pain. Turning your head to the side, you see that the side door is open, with Hans leaning against the door with an assault rifle in his hands. He looks around rapidly, blood dripping down his face from a large cut on his forehead. "Guys! We have to get out of here!" he yells. "Let's go." You look to the front of the car, where Father Féval is either dead or unconscious, while Russel is stirring from unconscious the same as you. Gunfire erupts out as Hans begins opening fire at the shadows. You watch as he sprays the woods with gunfire. "We need to go! Come on!" he screams. You reach down, trying to unbuckle your seatbelt, before you see Hans smashed from the side, a wall of fur and teeth tearing him off into the darkness as he screams. You unbuckle your seatbelt, deciding what to do. You're in a confusing situation, heavily injured, being attacked by an unknown force of werewolves. You're practically out of options. > You grab your shotgun and open fire You fumble for your shotgun, grabbing your weapon and sliding out of the car. You grab the car’s broken door frame, lowering yourself onto your better leg. Wincing as you prop yourself up, you raise your shotgun and aim it at the night. The darkness is alive, with figures darting in and out of the threes. You only get terrifying glimpses of blood-coated teeth glistening, fur matted with gore or claws that could rend your flesh from your bone in an instance. As the shadows grow closer, the light of the moon seems to retreat, letting the darkness consume the trees and what dwells with in them. You hear Hans' screaming off to the side, before it's cut silent with a sickening crunch of tearing sinew and snapping bones. Your breath catches in your throat, but it's not the time for whimpering or weakness. You raise your shotgun, firing into the night at the creatures. You blast at the trees, and one of your shots rewards you with a pained yelp from one of the creatures, causing you to grin. You continue firing, before you hear the sound of crushed glass and the thud of something heavy landing on metal behind you, shortly replaced by the low, bestial ground of your night's "prey". You pause, hearing the noise behind you. Slowing your breathing, you know what's going to happen, and take solace knowing your time has come. Hoping you give the bastard something to remember you by, you drop to your knee, rolling to the side and firing your shotgun directly at the werewolf. Silver back burns through its fur and flesh, and it lets out a howl of pain and anger, swiping its claw as you. The blade-like claws tear through your throat, killing you instantly, but as your body collapses to the ground, you know you at least made the monster suffer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You open your eyes as blurry vision returns to you. You're covered in broken glass and enveloped in darkness, but your eyes slowly begin to make sense of your surroundings. You're sitting in the truck, looking around as you hear the nearby howls of nearing werewolves. You blink, feeling a rush of pain go through your numb body. Your skin is grazed and cut up, blood running down your skin as your bruised flesh and broken bones scream out to you in pain. Turning your head to the side, you see that the side door is open, with Hans leaning against the door with an assault rifle in his hands. He looks around rapidly, blood dripping down his face from a large cut on his forehead. "Guys! We have to get out of here!" he yells. "Let's go." You look to the front of the car, where Father Féval is either dead or unconscious, while Russel is stirring from unconscious the same as you. Gunfire erupts out as Hans begins opening fire at the shadows. You watch as he sprays the woods with gunfire. "We need to go! Come on!" he screams. You reach down, trying to unbuckle your seatbelt, before you see Hans smashed from the side, a wall of fur and teeth tearing him off into the darkness as he screams. You unbuckle your seatbelt, deciding what to do. You're in a confusing situation, heavily injured, being attacked by an unknown force of werewolves. You're practically out of options. > You play dead You go limp, lying still as you feign death. You wait, gently sniffing and listening intently to try get a sense of the situation now that you're lacking a sense. You hear the howls of werewolves as they prowl among the wreckage. You stay quiet, hoping that they'll be leaving soon. The top of the car crunches as a werewolf clambers atop it, climbing down as it sniffs in at the car. You hear a groan, before its replaced by a horrified scream as Russel is torn apart. Then, you hear the crunch of glass as the werewolf clambers through the car's front window. There's a moment of silence, before you hear the quiet sniffing of a werewolf just inches from your face. > You grab your blade You reach down, grabbing your blade and drawing it, before the werewolf's claw smashes into your shoulder, breaking your bone and crushing your flesh. The werewolf raises his claw, slashing down as he tears through your chest, rending flesh from bone in an instance. You scream as your skin is exposed to reveal flesh, which is soon shredded off to reveal ribs and internal organs. You scream, before the shock and blood loss quickly tear you off into the eternal darkness. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You go limp, lying still as you feign death. You wait, gently sniffing and listening intently to try get a sense of the situation now that you're lacking a sense. You hear the howls of werewolves as they prowl among the wreckage. You stay quiet, hoping that they'll be leaving soon. The top of the car crunches as a werewolf clambers atop it, climbing down as it sniffs in at the car. You hear a groan, before its replaced by a horrified scream as Russel is torn apart. Then, you hear the crunch of glass as the werewolf clambers through the car's front window. There's a moment of silence, before you hear the quiet sniffing of a werewolf just inches from your face. > You continue playing dead Staying limp, you keep your muscles from making any spasms or movements whatsoever, as the creature's massive snout keeps sniffing. It lets out a low growl, before its jaws snap forward, tearing into your throat. You try to scream, but your throat is torn out and you find yourself drowning in your own blood. You can faintly hear a howl as darkness sucks you away, before you're gone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head to the old house's dining room, where a large wooden table sits. It's empty, the rest of the Hunters out and about in the world. The kitchen is brimming with the light and heat that activity tends to bring. A scarred Hunter is busy working in it, cooking an extensive meal. You vaguely know her, a young Spaniard by the name of Lola Garcia. The hunter's missing three fingers on her right hand and her right eye from a Gargoyle attack, so she's on recovery and acting as the Lodge chef for the time being. Tonight's meal, as with most Lodge meals, is very garlic heavy. Traditionally, Hunters have lots of garlic. In the old days, when the Hunters first rose up, garlic was an invaluable tool. Many monsters of the night could easily track a human via smell, so the first Hunters used garlic to disguise their scent and confuse their prey. Of course, it wasn't long before the smell of garlic became associated with Hunters, and they had to change tactic. Still, garlic is still popular among the Hunters as a meal, both to keep up the tradition and for a good luck charm. Tonight, the meal is potatoes, lamb and gravy, flavored with garlic. You take a bowl, returning to your seat with the rest of your squad of Hunters. While you didn't feel hungry during the night's exploits, now that the food is in front of you and you get to smell it, you feel just how hungry you are. You quickly grab your knife and fork, and begin wolfing it down. Within a minute flat, your bowl is empty, and you have to weigh up having any bit of respect from your peers against the joy you'd get from licking the bowl clean. Afterwards, you head to the main bathroom. You shower yourself, a nice treat, washing off the dirt, sweat, blood and grime that's coated you over the night's events. Having the hot water stream over your skin has a cleansing, almost purifying effect on you. You make sure to scrub extensively, trying to wipe off any scent of your "human side" that might be lingering. Afterwards, you get dressed in your best hiking boots and what clothing you have that's warm, tough and flexible, which is admittedly pretty much everything you have. You pack up your shotgun with its shells filled with silver shards as well as a hunting dagger with a silver edge and your revolver. Making sure you have all the survival gear you need, you head out to the truck. With twenty minutes left in the day, you move to your desk. It's laid out with your papers, your grinder, your filters and a large bag of your personal supply of Marijuana that helps you get through the darkest nights with the worst nightmares, pulling out your record player. You quickly flick through what few Vinyl you have, before going back to the one you most often return to. With (What's the Story) Morning Glory? emblazoned proudly across the top, you smile as you remember your father giving it to you for your eighteenth. Dad actually had a taste for music, and always liked them, as did you. You flip on the vinyl, setting your alarm for fifteen minutes, and sink into your desk chair as the songs play. The next fifteen minutes is a thoughtless bliss of unforming memories, but soon, your alarm bleeps you awake, and you head out to the others. The group is assembling outside, taking a worn out pick-up. Russel and Wyatt are loading a moose carcass into the back of the truck, while Hans, Father Féval are already getting into the truck. You quickly hurry up, as Russel looks at you. "Willy! You ready for this?" "Always am," you nod, as Russel hands you a jar of golden liquid. You uncap the jar, gently sprinkling the deer piss over your coat. Thanks to werewolves' naturally keen sense of smell, it's best to coat yourself in this disguise, despite how disgusting it is to you. "Ha! Perfect! Let's go! I'm driving up front with Frenchie and the German. You can come up front with us or sit up with Wyatt and the bait." You look at Wyatt, who looks pale and nervous, a hunting rifle in his hands. His father is either indifferent to his son's fears or ignorant of them. Part of you wants to sit in the front where it's warm, but another part of you feels like you should comfort Wyatt. > You get in the back with Wyatt and the bait "I'll take the back," you say. "Cabin's just going to stink of deer piss anyway." "Suit yourself," Russel says. You walk over to the boot of the truck, clambering in. You step over the deer carcass, sitting down next to the young boy, who stares at you. "Hello," the boy says, extending a hand to you. "My name's Wyatt." "William," you say, shaking his hands. "Alright, moving off! Let's go!" Russel shouts, the truck heading off the road. You relax, leaning back and resting your head against the metal back of the truck. You lean your head over, looking at Wyat.. "Scared?" you ask. Wyatt quickly shakes his head. "No. No, I'm not." "I was. My first hunt, I nearly shit myself. Threw up in the bushes from worry, sharpened my knives so much they were almost useless and, if I'm honest, nearly blew off my dad's head when he came to get me. You feel a bit like that?" Wyatt smiles weakly at you. "I'm a little scared," the boy admits. "I've hunted deer, wolves, even, but this is a whole different level." "You should be scared. Fear keeps us alive. Fear is what holds us together." Wyatt nods as if you've said something profound, but you're half sure he's barely listening as he tries not to piss himself. The truck pulls off, barreling down the road. You lean back, the truck heading deep into the woods. Your shotgun feels heavy on your shoulder, shaking your head to free it of any sleepiness. It's a silent journey, you not being the type for any inane chatter, especially before the hunt and since Wyatt's trying to keep from puking, a chat seems unlikely. It's a long, boring drive. You watch the trees pass by, shrouded by shadow. It's a waiting game until the drop zone, as always. You focus on nothing at all and let your mind drift to avoid getting yourself psyched out. Suddenly, you feel yourself slam against the side of the truck as the car swerves. There's the sound of tires bursting as you're catapulted up, hands grabbing for your shotgun. The car slams off the road, hitting the embarkment as you find yourself momentarily free-falling, flying out of the back of the truck. You let out a terrified scream, flying through the air, before the world goes black. > You consciousness fades... You open your eyes as blurry vision returns to you. You're surrounded by dirt and darkness, but your eyes slowly begin to make sense of your surroundings. You're lying on the cold dirt, next to the road you were just driving along. You blink, feeling a rush of pain go through your numb body. Your skin is grazed and cut up and your flesh bruised, but you don't seem to be in too bad a condition. Certainly capable of walking and fighting. You force yourself to one knee, your eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness. Your is shotgun lying close by you, and feel a breath of relief. You stand cautiously, checking to make sure nothing's broken one more time, before grabbing your shotgun. After making sure it's still loaded, before surveying the situation. The trees to the side of the road are broken and crushed indicating where the truck must've gone off the road and down into the ravine below. Your eyes are slow to notice it due to it's black paint, but you see a pair of spike strips lying across the road. You stare at them in amazement for a moment, fingers clenched on your weapon. This doesn't make sense. Werewolves never take human servants, and they're not tool users when transformed. They wouldn't put the spike strips down... unless they knew you were coming... and prepared beforehand. FUCK! This shitshow's about to get a lot worse. You're dealing with a worse enemy than a pack of maddened werewolves. Struggling to the edge of the road, you stare down the steep ravine to where the truck lies. It's heavily crushed and damaged, beyond repair. You can hear screams down there, indicating that there's survivors. You doubt any of them are in any condition to defend yourself. But looking down at your current condition, you stand a chance. > You head down and rescue your team mates You have to protect your companions, and get them out of there. You can't leave them behind. You hold your shotgun tightly in your hands, before moving forward and darting down the decline. You slide down on your boots, hurrying down as fast as you can. You almost fall into a tumble, but manage to steady yourself, finding yourself on the ground near the wreckage. You look to the truck, and you can see a mutilated corpse strapped into the driver's seat, and realize Russel didn't even get out of the car. The screams off deeper into the woods don't give you hope for the fate of the others. "Stay back! Stay back!" a young, terrified voice screams from behind the wreckage. Swearing, you burst forward, your gun held tightly in your hands. Rushing around the roasting bonfire, you find Wyatt, collapsed on his back, desperately trying to shuffle backwards. Standing in front of him is a bestial creature you've faced many times before. A werewolf. The creature stands with black and gray fur matted with the gore of a previous kill. The creature growls, revealing a row of vicious teeth that could easily tear through a man. Your instincts kick in, and you drop to your knee, raising your gun and opening fire. The gun bucks, silver bursting forward and tearing through the werewolf's flesh. The creature howls, as you fire another shot, blowing the creature's head off as its body crumples. You watch as the lupine body begins to morph, shedding air and twisting as it turns into a naked, bloody human corpse, its head completely missing. "Oh Jesus, oh Jesus! William, they got my dad. They tore him up, and they took Hans off into the woods! Shit, we have to go help him! We have to go save them!" You hear a loud howl, looking over to see a trio of werewolves appearing out of the woods. At the front, a large creature with frost white hair and pink eyes. The creature begins prowling towards you, its jaws open as it licks its lips. The creature lets out a growl, as the other two werewolves pause, holding back as the creature approaches you. Clearly this one's a leader of some sort, and it wants to take you down by itself as some fucked up pursuit of honor or to show its pack mates its prowess. You don't have time to think. It's time to act. > You hold the beast off while Wyatt escapes You raise your shotgun, firing at the Albino as it charges towards you. The silver shards fly forward, but the creature rolls to the side to avoid the shot, before leaping forward. The Albino tackles you, knocking your weapon aside as it flies through the air. The beast slams into you, tackling you and sending you smashing into the earth. The werewolf's weight lands atop you. Its jaws snap down, tearing through your flesh as it bites into your shoulder. You scream, the Albino gulping down your hot blood and flesh. The Albino pulls its head up, releasing your torn flesh from its jaws, before looking down at you, your own blood dripping from its jaws onto your chest. It looks at you for a moment with an almost curious expression, tilting its head. "Come on! Fucking kill me! Kill me, you fucking bastard!" you growl. "Finish me off!" The Albino looks down at you for a second more, before turning. The Albino looks to its two pack-mates, before howling into the moon. As if answering the creature's call, the two werewolves burst off into the woods after Wyatt. The creature stares back at you for a moment with its blood red eyes, its tooth-filled mouth almost seeming to grin at you for a moment, before the creature bounds off into the woods. You lie there, bleeding onto the earth as you try to think. The werewolves are acting with high intelligence, even for werewolves. They laid an ambush. They figured out when he hunt was happening, what your paths were and when you'd be coming. They laid out spike strips, so this isn't just the bestial monsters within coming out, they were planning this in their human forms as well. You don't know what's happening, but you know that this is just the start. These monsters have a terrible plan that you can't just let happen. A wave of darkness hits you, and for a moment, you feel like sinking into the ground. You try to fight it, but part of you wants to lie there and embrace the peaceful darkness. > You wait for death You lie across the dirt, blood wetting the soil as it turns to mud. The darkness slowly grows at the edge of your vision, moving forward as it engulfs your sight, and you find yourself pulled into the darkness. Suddenly, the pain bursts through you as you begin shuddering in pain. You begin to scream, a sound which shifts into a pained howl of anguish. You can feel your body twisting and breaking, bones snapping and reforming as your limbs are stretched out longer and harder, your body shifting and reforming rapidly. Your face tears apart as it grows and reforms into a snout, as your teeth begin breaking and reforming. The hair rapidly bursts through your skin as it rapidly grows, coating your broken and reforged body into that of a werewolf. The pain tears at your mind and soul, and you're unable to focus on anything other than your instinct to escape it. Slowly, the pain begins to subside, but you find your mind incapable of reforming, still incapable of focusing in any regard. You shake your head with a growl, feeling the air blow through your fur, the smell of nearby prey, the crunching of soil under your paws. But most importantly, you feel the powerful call of the moon above you. Yes... that's it. It calls. Suddenly, instinct takes over, and you find yourself sprinting through the woods, howling into the sky. An array of howls answer back, and you follow the call. > The Call of the Moon The Call of the Moon You find yourself standing with your brothers, two dozen werewolves standing around the Alpha, howling towards the sky. The energy is ecstatic, running through the group as the Alpha answers your calls with a roar so ferocious and powerful that you're left in awe. This is your time! Fenrir calls! It is hunting time! War. Victory. Power. Blood. Hate. Anger! Hunger! Feed! HUNT! KILL! EAT! The Alpha pauses for a moment, as a still runs across the pack. Its eyes lower from the bright, powerful moon, and towards the direction of the humans. You look towards that direction, and can sense what lies that way. Noise. Smell. Smoke. Lights. Humans! Flesh! HUNT! KILL! EAT! The Alpha howls, tearing off into the forest to lead the nights hunt. Answering his call with an answer of your own, you follow after. Now, it is the time of the beast.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You raise your shotgun, firing at the Albino as it charges towards you. The silver shards fly forward, but the creature rolls to the side to avoid the shot, before leaping forward. The Albino tackles you, knocking your weapon aside as it flies through the air. The beast slams into you, tackling you and sending you smashing into the earth. The werewolf's weight lands atop you. Its jaws snap down, tearing through your flesh as it bites into your shoulder. You scream, the Albino gulping down your hot blood and flesh. The Albino pulls its head up, releasing your torn flesh from its jaws, before looking down at you, your own blood dripping from its jaws onto your chest. It looks at you for a moment with an almost curious expression, tilting its head. "Come on! Fucking kill me! Kill me, you fucking bastard!" you growl. "Finish me off!" The Albino looks down at you for a second more, before turning. The Albino looks to its two pack-mates, before howling into the moon. As if answering the creature's call, the two werewolves burst off into the woods after Wyatt. The creature stares back at you for a moment with its blood red eyes, its tooth-filled mouth almost seeming to grin at you for a moment, before the creature bounds off into the woods. You lie there, bleeding onto the earth as you try to think. The werewolves are acting with high intelligence, even for werewolves. They laid an ambush. They figured out when he hunt was happening, what your paths were and when you'd be coming. They laid out spike strips, so this isn't just the bestial monsters within coming out, they were planning this in their human forms as well. You don't know what's happening, but you know that this is just the start. These monsters have a terrible plan that you can't just let happen. A wave of darkness hits you, and for a moment, you feel like sinking into the ground. You try to fight it, but part of you wants to lie there and embrace the peaceful darkness. > You crawl over to the radio to call the Lodge You find yourself crawling desperately towards the smashed up car wreck, reaching forward and dragging yourself along the ground. You manage to pull yourself to a kneeling position, before standing cautiously. You take a step forward, trying not to focus on the brutal pain in your shoulder. You slowly move towards the truck before stumbling, leaning against it as you groan in pain. Resting on the cold metal bonnet, you gasp for breath. "William. You made it," a voice groans from the wreckage. You pause, grabbing your shotgun, before finding yourself staring at Father Féval's broken but still living body. The man is still buckled into the car wreckage, his face bloody from a cut on his forehead, his side looking like it's been completely chewed up by the werewolves. His expression is as emotionless as always, but there's a trace of weariness in his eyes. "Father Féval!" you say, exuberant to know you're not alone in these dark woods. "They ate you up pretty well, William" Father Féval says, his accent thickening as his eyes grow weary. "We've both been bit, it seems. If we survive much longer, we're going to become just like them. The beast is within us, and it will take over soon. We should embrace the end and go into it peacefully." "No! We need to radio the lodge!" Father Féval nods down to where the radio sat, and you see it's been smashed up. The radio's been torn out, its plastic case shattered and its internal wiring shredded. Clearly, the werewolves knew what they were looking for, and targeted this specifically. "I'm sorry, William. That's not really an option anymore. It's time to face our end." "We can't let them get away with this! This werewolf pack isn't a group of psychopathic killers, they're worse. They're a planning, thinking, growing group. We can't just give up and off ourselves!" "William, your adrenaline's pumping and your mind is desperate, but we're not escaping here. Either we die here, or the beast within takes over!" "Fuck that! We have to do something! We have time before we turn! We can get help, contact the others and tell them what happened, and then we can off ourselves! But we can't do it yet!" Father Féval raises his pistols, pointing them at you. "We live by a code, William. If you're not going to go peacefully into the night, I am going to take you into it," the Catholic Priest says coldly. > You defend yourself and open fire You raise your shotgun as Father Féval fires his two pistols. The shotgun fire hits Father Féval, his chest exploding in a burst of blood and guts, his body going limp. Father Féval's bullets slam into your chest as the air is knocked out of your lungs. You collapse onto your back, blood spurting onto the ground around you as you gasp for breath. For a moment, you just feel a cold swelling through you as you're left unable to breathe, before the pain begins to burn its way through your chest. The pain rapidly begins to fade, as the world starts going dark, the pain being replaced by a brutal numbness. Suddenly, the pain bursts through you as you begin shuddering in pain. You begin to scream, a sound which shifts into a pained howl of anguish. You can feel your body twisting and breaking, bones snapping and reforming as your limbs are stretched out longer and harder, your body shifting rapidly. Your face tears apart as it grows and twists into a snout, as your teeth begin breaking and mending. The hair rapidly bursts through your skin as it rapidly grows, coating your broken and reforged body into that of a werewolf. The pain tears at your mind and soul, and you're unable to focus on anything other than your instinct to escape it. Slowly, the pain begins to subside, but you find your mind incapable of reforming, still incapable of focusing in any regard. You feel the air blow through your fur, the smell of nearby prey, the crunching of soil under your paws. However, you feel your chest burning in pain. You feel like you have bits of burning hot coal inside your chest, but you ignore the pain. With a snarl and a shake of your head, you focus on the moment and endure it. Your ears flick as you hear a group of howls deep in the woods. Yes... that's it. Your brethren. Find them. Instinct takes over, and you find yourself sprinting through the woods, howling into the sky. > The Hunt! You sprint through the woods, eyes scanning the trees. The smell of blood fills your nostrils as the hunger in your stomach threatens to grow so large that it'll consume you. Your ears perk as you hear the sound of branches cracking nearby, and you quickly find the source. Prey. Food. Flesh! Hunger! KILL! FEED! You ignore the pain running through your belly that screams at you to feed, and you ignore the burning pain that erupts from your chest, the same burning pain that you can't quench, the hot coals seeming to burn without ever cooling. The hunger fills your belly, as you roar and scream towards the sky, instinct causing you to focus in on the prey ahead of you. Its eyes swivel as it notices you, and it darts off into the forest. > You kILL! You burst forward, sprinting ahead as you hurry through the forest after the creature. You're far faster than that, and you find yourself on its tail, growing closer and closer. You rapidly follow the animal, growling with hunger as you get closer and closer to your meal. Its sprint is wonky, at least one of its four legs seems to be hurt, which means that it doesn't have a chance to escape you. You keep close on its tail, though it manages to keep slightly ahead of you. It doesn't matter. All you need is one mistake. The creature stumbles, giving you the chance you need. You pounce forward, tackling the animal as you send it slamming into the earth, pinning it to the ground. You bare your teeth, jaws darting forward as you land your jaws on the its neck, tearing through it with ease. You pull back, tearing out the its throat as a wave of blood flows free. The creature spasms in its death throes, before going still. BLOOD! HUNGER! FEED! > You fEED! You jam your head into the corpse of your prey, tearing off mouthfuls of flesh as you lift your head and gulp down the flesh. You begin drinking down warm blood, feeling the thick liquid coating the inside of your mouth and throat as you enjoy the delicious meal. You tear through the prey's chest, pulling ribs aside to get to the delicious insides, allowing you to scoff down as much meat as you can fit in your mouth with every bite. However, pain distracts you from your meal for a moment, as you feel the burning in your chest rapidly get worse. Your blood is beginning to feel like its boiling as your nerves are set alight. However, this pain does nothing to distract you from the terrible hunger that runs through your body. > You ignore the pain! FEED! You ignore the burning pain, jamming your body further into the corpse as you feed, wolfing down mouthfuls of flesh and steaming blood. You continue devouring, flesh, intestines, lungs and other organs. You soon find yourself chewing at little more than bloody bones, having devoured the entire carcass with ease. You lick your lips, tasting the blood of your kill on your tongue, your nostrils filled with the pungent and delectable smell of your last meal. Your belly full, you lift your head into the hair and howl. Soon, an array of howls answer you, deeper into the forest. With a bestial smile, you burst off into the forest, ready to meet your brothers.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You jam your head into the corpse of your prey, tearing off mouthfuls of flesh as you lift your head and gulp down the flesh. You begin drinking down warm blood, feeling the thick liquid coating the inside of your mouth and throat as you enjoy the delicious meal. You tear through the prey's chest, pulling ribs aside to get to the delicious insides, allowing you to scoff down as much meat as you can fit in your mouth with every bite. However, pain distracts you from your meal for a moment, as you feel the burning in your chest rapidly get worse. Your blood is beginning to feel like its boiling as your nerves are set alight. However, this pain does nothing to distract you from the terrible hunger that runs through your body. > You focus on the pain You focus on the pain, feeling the burning sensation as your blood boils, your fur burns, your bones melt. It begins consuming you, letting out a pitiful howl that turns into a scream of horror. Your body starts shaking, tufts of fur start peeling off with strips of skin as you spasm. You smack your head against the cold ground as bones break and reform, as your body shifts and buckles and pain races through your flesh. You scream for help, a pitiful, desperate noise, as your fingernails begin to tear at your skin in a desperate attempt to stop your body from aching. Soon, you find yourself naked and sobbing, lying there in your human form once more. For a second, you're dazed, the only sense that you can feel being the feeling of the cold of the night on your numb, bare skin. Then, the waves of sensation begin hitting you. First, the pungent smell of freshly carved up meat lying in front of you. Then, the soft gurgling of a dying creature. Then, the taste of flesh and blood that sits in your mouth, and the feeling of warm blood coating your face and throat, backed with the burning in your chest. You look down, and find yourself staring at what, minutes ago, was your prey. The creature underneath you, your "prey", is a young fawn, barely a month or two old. It's stomach has been torn open, half its intestines torn clean out and the remaining half hanging out of its wound. The creature looks up at you with a pair of large brown eyes, staring at you innocently for a moment, as if confused as what's happening, the cold reality of its situation not yet dawning upon it. You vomit, chunks of raw meat and blood-tinged puke spewing out onto the ground. You begin sobbing, staring down at the dying deer, its mouth moving slowly, almost as if its trying to say something. The creature gives you one final look, before lowering its head against the cold earth as the light behind its eye is snuffed out. You stare at the fawn, trying to comprehend what happened. Its flesh is torn apart... looking so delicious. You feel the hunger returning for a moment. No! Fuck, it's raw flesh, and you're looking at it like it's a steak dinner! Jesus, what is wrong with you? The burning in your chest intensifies, as you find yourself curled up in the fetal position. You're stuck between weeping and growling aggressively, your mind racing and shifting. You find your skin rapidly growing and losing hair, your muscles tearing and reforming rapidly as your body shakes and spasms violently. You lie there for what feels like hours, trying to contemplate how you're feeling. Your body is wracked with pain, your mind struggling to find focus as you're filled with endless, ever-conflicting urges to run, to stay, to live, to die, to feed, to puke... it's hellish. You lie there, shivering. Your skin feels cold while you still sweat like a pig. Then, you hear a growl. You pull yourself up, looking around to find yourself staring at a dozen werewolves, prowling out of the trees to approach you, with the large Albino from earlier at the head of them. It slowly approaches, looking at you. The creatures seem to be lacking the usual aggressiveness werewolves have. They approach slowly, staring at you with inquisitive eyes. "You! You fucking bastard!" you yell at the Albino. The Albino lets out a rumbling growl, before a loud bark quietens him. The Albino steps aside, as a new werewolf emerges from the trees and takes the lead. The creature has long black fur, its left eye a ragged mess of scars, its right eye focused on you. The creature growls slowly, its eye fixed on you, its facial muscles moving, its ears twitching, its body moving... its almost as if its speaking to you, in some bestial language of body language, rumblings and something supernatural. The beast within you seems to understand, and somewhere in the back of your subconscious you understand him, a deep, beast-like voice talking in your head. "The transformation isn't complete," the one-eyed werewolf "says". "You... I can understand you," you say. "You must have an incredibly strong will to resist the change, little one." One-Eye moves closer, prowling forward slowly, before sniffing. The creature winces, snarling. "No... not willpower. Silver. You have silver in your veins. In your chest. Burning the beast within. Subduing it. It's going to take you a little longer for the transformation to be complete. Just fight the pain. Ignore it. Embrace the beast. Then, you can join our ranks." "Fuck you," you say, letting out a moan of pain as your body contorts yet again. "You're very lucky, human. Most of my brothers and sisters would've killed you. You've only been bit. You'll have the chance to join us. The time of the beast is coming, little one. Your kind destroy the forests we dwell in, drive our prey extinct, poison the air and waters, and walk around as lords of the land, not remembering that you... are a prey creature." The other werewolves let out an array of angry growls. "Tomorrow night, in the light of the full moon, we strike. We hit the humans, converting those we can to our cause. We will hit the power stations, the cell towers, the Hunter's Lodges... we will drive your kin back to being the prey animals you are." "We won't let you bastards win," you snarl. "You'll be one of us bastards soon enough. Come on, brothers and sisters, let's leave this poor fool to turn in his own times." You watch as the werewolves retreat into the forest once more, leaving you alone. You lie there, trying to regain enough of your mind to get up. You need to stop these creatures. Their plan is going to kill massive amounts of people, and do immeasurable harm. They're unlike other Werewolves, who are poor men plagued to be psychopathic killers. These creatures have a plan, and are determined to follow it as both humans and wolves. You need to take them down while you have the chance. > You try to focus... You slow your breathing, focusing on the pain in your chest. You raise your head, wiping the puke and blood from your face as you try to ignore the hunger in your belly. You wince, trying to ignore the desires of the beast within, telling you to run, to hunt, to feed, to howl. You shake your head violently, trying to focus, as you take up a kneeling position. The cold wind chills your bones and gives you goosebumps, and "You look to be in a bad state, friend," a voice says. You look up, finding yourself staring up at a a young, grinning man with curly black hair and a thick beard. His eyes are red and puffing, and seem to be somewhat burned. His jacket is patch-work, made of many stitched up patches of various colors, with the rest of his outfit being suitably gauche in its coloring to accentuate the man's weird look. He looks down at you, smiling. "You're either very hungover, or old Fenrir got his claws into you." "Who are you?" you ask weakly. "I'm getting really shit sick of having people walk up to me." "Oh, a fool, little else," the man smiles. "You look cold. I have a spare set of clothes, if you want." Cautious, you nod slowly, as the man pulls of his backpack, opening it. You pause, noticing the stock of your shotgun sticking out of the bag. The Fool tosses you a set of boots, underwear, an undershirt, socks, pants, t-shirt and a coat. Staring at him, you hurry to get dressed, as the Fool hums a song to himself. When you're finished, you look to the bag. The Fool notices what you're looking at, smiling. "That's my weapon." "Finders keepers, losers weepers, old Willy, old boy," the man shrugs. You pause, trying to calculate the chances of you grabbing your weapon before he can. "I didn't tell you my name," you say softly. "You didn't tell me my name either, but I know that," the Fool shrugs. The Fool grabs the shotgun, pulling it out and holding it in his hands, running his hands along the barrel. He pauses, digging through his pockets for a moment, before pulling out a golden coin. "Tell you what. I'll flip you for it. You call it, you get your gun back. You don't, I'll put you out of your misery and stop you from completely turning. Agreed?" You consider lunging at the man, but he lowers the barrel of the shotgun, anticipating your move. His grin widens, revealing more and more shiny teeth. "Agreed", you say. "Perfect!" the Fool grins. "Call it in the air, Willy." The man flips the coin, watching it spin in the air. > You heads "Heads!" The coin flips through the air ahead of you, as you step back, looking at the coin with interest. He steps back, leveling your own shotgun at you as he the coin lands in the dirt. The Fool peers down at it, tilting his head, before flipping the shotgun in his hands, grabbing the barrel and offering the stock to you. "It's your lucky day, Hunter. Good luck to you." You grab the shotgun, holding it in your hands and aiming it at the suspicious, patch coat man. "Who the fuck are you?" "An interesting question! Do you like riddles?" "No." The Fool frowns. "So dull. You're a dull old fellow, aren't you? Perhaps I should be helping the wolves." "Just tell me who you are, dammit! I'm a dying man, I don't have time for this." The Fool opens his mouth to complain, before pausing, then shrugging. "A slave I have been and shall remain To a golden mistress I'm tied with invisible chains Yet always I put on the same brave face She keeps me her prisoner, but leaves me some space." The Fool smiles at you for a moment, before raising an eyebrow. "So... who am I?" > A Hunter "You're... you're a Hunter, right? You must be." "Unfortunately, no. You're out alone in these woods tonight. Well, I best be off. Good luck dealing with my boy tonight, Willy. Best of luck." "Wait!" you growl, aiming your shotgun at him. "You move and I blow your brains out!" The Fool sighs, shaking his head. "I don't think you really know how this game works, do you?" the Fool says. The Fool leans forward, placing his thumb against the shotgun barrel. He scratches at his puffy, burned eyes, sighing. "You're not going to shoot that gun," he says simply. With that, the Fool turns, strolling off into the woods. You try to aim your shotgun, but find your arms are incapable of moving, the numb, cold muscles refusing to work. All you can do is watch as the Fool disappears into the darkness. When he's out of view, you snarl. You sniff the air, smelling the scent of prey, and... you try to focus on the pain for a moment, ignoring your bestial senses, before you smell something else. The smell of smoke, in the distance. You pause, raising an eye. Smoke means fire. Fire means activity. There needs to be something in that direction. > You head off towards the smoke You slowly begin walking in the direction of the smoke, keeping your mind on the burning pain in your chest. Your bullet holes and bite mark have already scabbed and scarred over, no doubt from the healing abilities the beast within has granted you. Still, the silver burns just as harshly, like flames trapped in your chest. It's a struggle trying to focus on the pain, to let it consume you and drive you into a violent psychosis, but you have no alternative. Whenever you try to ignore the pain, you can feel the monstrous urges return. The unending hunger, the desire to break free, the need to howl up at the sky, the lust for the power of the wild... you keep focused, and the burning pain continues. As you walk, you notice just how tight your clothes feel on you. No, not tight. Surprisingly, they seem to fit you perfectly, by whatever abilities of the Patchwork Man. They're not tight. They're constrictive. You want to tear them off, to feel the wind on your fur and to tear off into the night. You want to taste flesh and blood, to feel the dirt shift under your paws. You want to answer the call of the moon. You shake your head roughly, growling as you tighten your grip on the shotgun. The cool metal reminds you of who you are. A Hunter. It's a long distance of angered, confused walking, but you soon see lights emerge from the darkness. Not the passionate burning of flames, but the synthetic light of bulbs. You take up a crouching position, slowly sneaking up to where the trees give way to a clearing. A large wooden cabin sits in the center of the clearing, surrounded by bright lights that give light to the cabin. Standing at the edge of the lights, holding a semi-automatic rifle, is a human. The man has a thick beard reaching his chest and long, tangled hair. His arms are covered with tattoos, depicting old Nordic runes and wolf symbols. Interesting. He must be the werewolf-equivalent of a Thrall. You've never heard of such a thing, seeing as werewolves are usually too stupid and bestial to have human servants, but the werewolves you've seen tonight are definitely smart enough to have them. The Wolf Servant seems to be guarding the cabin, which has light plumes of smoke drifting up from its chimney. He hasn't noticed you, and seems to the only guard in sight. You need to take him out to get inside. > You sneak up on him You slowly edge towards the figure, moving slow and low through the darkness as you come up behind the guard. You feet move softly over the dirt and grass, as you rapidly approach the figure. As you near him, you see the servant's head twitch as he hears you, before you swing your shotgun, smashing the butt of the weapon into the man's head. He sinks to the ground with a grunt, before you raise your shotgun, smashing it into his head again, and again, and again, and again! KILL! BREAK! SHATTER! SLAUGHTER! FEED! EAT...! You stop yourself, looking down on the shattered skull beneath you, completely crushed. Gray brain matter and blood have spilled onto the ground, and you find yourself feeling sick as you look at what you've done. "Come on, come on, you can do this," you growl to yourself. You stand up, and jog ahead at a steady pace, shotgun in your hands. Staring through the shadows with unnatural sight, you spot another guard on the opposite side of the cabin, dressed in denim jeans and little else. He notices you as he raises his submachine gun, but you're faster, aiming your shotgun and firing your weapon. The scattering pellets smash into the guard and knock him from his feet, smacking into the ground. Shit. Two guards down, but you've been forced to go loud. Quickly scanning the surroundings and seeing no other guards, it's time to quickly take over the cabin. > You charge in through the door You move to the door of the cabin, ready to perform the door breaching actions you've done countless times before. Raising your shotgun, you fire twice, blowing out the door's hinges, before booting the door open. As you rush in, weapon raised, you find a hatchet blade swinging at you far faster than you can dodge. The weapon slices into your throat, knocking you off your feet as you hit the ground with a thud, blood tearing out of the tear in your throat. A gun barrel is pointed at your chest, and in a quick few seconds there's a short flash and a long, long darkness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You slowly edge towards the figure, moving slow and low through the darkness as you come up behind the guard. You feet move softly over the dirt and grass, as you rapidly approach the figure. As you near him, you see the servant's head twitch as he hears you, before you swing your shotgun, smashing the butt of the weapon into the man's head. He sinks to the ground with a grunt, before you raise your shotgun, smashing it into his head again, and again, and again, and again! KILL! BREAK! SHATTER! SLAUGHTER! FEED! EAT...! You stop yourself, looking down on the shattered skull beneath you, completely crushed. Gray brain matter and blood have spilled onto the ground, and you find yourself feeling sick as you look at what you've done. "Come on, come on, you can do this," you growl to yourself. You stand up, and jog ahead at a steady pace, shotgun in your hands. Staring through the shadows with unnatural sight, you spot another guard on the opposite side of the cabin, dressed in denim jeans and little else. He notices you as he raises his submachine gun, but you're faster, aiming your shotgun and firing your weapon. The scattering pellets smash into the guard and knock him from his feet, smacking into the ground. Shit. Two guards down, but you've been forced to go loud. Quickly scanning the surroundings and seeing no other guards, it's time to quickly take over the cabin. > You break the window and open fire on those inside You move to the cabin's window, feeling yourself swell with an animalistic energy. You swing your shotgun like a club, smashing through the window frame as it flies inwards with a shower of glass. Rather than firing in as planned, you find yourself leaping through the window with a roar, your shotgun in hand. You land in the small cabin, finding yourself in the glow of a series of monitors, in front of a roar of a set of iron bars. Your eyes focus on the two guards by the door, clearly standing up against it, waiting for you to enter. You raise your gun, firing as the first one takes a blast of silver through his chest, shredding the man's internal organs as he slumps against the wall. The other guard, wielding a hatchet, charges you with a roar. Rather than firing, the animalistic urges consume you, and you toss the weapon aside, roaring. KILL! FLESH! FEED! HUNT! You tackle the man, ramming him against the wall as the hatchet drops from his hand. You grab his face, driving your long nails into his eyes as you attempt to tear them out of your skull, as you drive your jaws forward and clamp them on his neck, tearing a mouthful of flesh clean off. You find yourself tearing and stabbing and biting, as the man's screams are quickly replaced by a dying gargle. The silver burns in your chest, and you step back, wiping the blood from your mouth. You look at the dead creature ahead of you, sighing. "Fuck," you swear, wiping the blood from your lips. All of a sudden, the blood on your lips begins stale and wretched and you find yourself spitting out what flesh remains in your mouth. You being retching, spitting blood onto the ground as you focus on your pain until a calm comes over you again, and you find focus. > You investigate the cabin The cabin is a bizarre room, a mismatch of an old cabin and a security office. A large map is spread over a large table, as you look down at it. You quickly scan the map. It appears to be an image of the forest, highlighting several points. The first one you notice seems to be the cabin you're in now, which is identified as a "SURVEILLANCE POINT". You look to the center of the map, which shows a large, abandoned mine. "HQ" is written across it in red marker, with several access points to the mine. It seems that the werewolves are using it as their central lair. That's where Alpha will be, alongside the rest of the werewolves. If you want to defeat these werewolves before you turn tonight, you'll want to head here. You continue searching the cabin for anything of value, finding only a rack of weapons and supplies. The weapons rack actually has a large amount of explosives, C4, plastic explosives and other timed explosive weapons. They're of little use as weapons of battle, but they could no doubt do some damage. There's very little of value here, but you now know where you need to go to take out this werewolf pack and finish it. If you can wipe out the wolves there, this pack of beasts won't survive the night. A burst of howls breaks through the silence of the night, and you have to fight the urge to howl back, biting your tongue. You reach for your gun, hoping to quench the bestial spirit inside you. Running your fingers along the iron barrel, you try to remind yourself who you are. You're a tool user, a human, a Hunter. You rush through the window, staring out past the frame of broken glass, spotting grey fur streaked with black emerging from the woods, howling towards the sky. Fuck! The creatures have found you! You rush over to the other window, only to see more beasts prowling out from the bushes. Swearing, you ready your gun, taking deep breaths as you try to figure a way out, the beast within desperately pushing to howl and answer the call. You can hear the howling creatures surround the cabin, no doubt alerted by one of the guards in the cabin before you blew them away. You need to get out of here fast, and you don't have many solutions. You don't have the ammo to kill them all, and there's no silver in the cabin to use. > You try to sneak out past the Werewolves You cautiously move out to the broken window, pulling yourself through and landing on your chest outside in the short grass. You slowly crawl along the ground, trying to stay in the darkness and the shadow to stay out of their gaze. However, there's little that the werewolves' incredible sight can't notice, and fewer still they can't smell. You soon find yourself with a half a dozen beasts of claws, fur and teeth charging towards you, howling and screaming. You raise your shotgun, before its torn from your hands and you face the fury of a dozen claws and far more teeth. You barely last seconds before you're torn apart. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The cabin is a bizarre room, a mismatch of an old cabin and a security office. A large map is spread over a large table, as you look down at it. You quickly scan the map. It appears to be an image of the forest, highlighting several points. The first one you notice seems to be the cabin you're in now, which is identified as a "SURVEILLANCE POINT". You look to the center of the map, which shows a large, abandoned mine. "HQ" is written across it in red marker, with several access points to the mine. It seems that the werewolves are using it as their central lair. That's where Alpha will be, alongside the rest of the werewolves. If you want to defeat these werewolves before you turn tonight, you'll want to head here. You continue searching the cabin for anything of value, finding only a rack of weapons and supplies. The weapons rack actually has a large amount of explosives, C4, plastic explosives and other timed explosive weapons. They're of little use as weapons of battle, but they could no doubt do some damage. There's very little of value here, but you now know where you need to go to take out this werewolf pack and finish it. If you can wipe out the wolves there, this pack of beasts won't survive the night. A burst of howls breaks through the silence of the night, and you have to fight the urge to howl back, biting your tongue. You reach for your gun, hoping to quench the bestial spirit inside you. Running your fingers along the iron barrel, you try to remind yourself who you are. You're a tool user, a human, a Hunter. You rush through the window, staring out past the frame of broken glass, spotting grey fur streaked with black emerging from the woods, howling towards the sky. Fuck! The creatures have found you! You rush over to the other window, only to see more beasts prowling out from the bushes. Swearing, you ready your gun, taking deep breaths as you try to figure a way out, the beast within desperately pushing to howl and answer the call. You can hear the howling creatures surround the cabin, no doubt alerted by one of the guards in the cabin before you blew them away. You need to get out of here fast, and you don't have many solutions. You don't have the ammo to kill them all, and there's no silver in the cabin to use. > You let the beast within take over You know you have to get out of here, and you only have one option. The beast inside you knows that's true as well, as you find yourself growling and shaking. The scent of blood and fresh flesh drives you wild, and you're reminded that you haven't eaten in a while. Your stomach rumbles, as you think back to the taste of flesh earlier, the warm, wet meat sliding down your throat. You need to turn. You have no other option. You grip your nails into your wrist, tearing at your flesh as blood begins to trickle down your wrist. Your roar of pain turns into a growl, as you find hair beginning to sprout from your skin. The scent of your own blood sends your muscles into spasms, as you collapse onto the floor. Your clothes tear from your body as you grow, falling in tatters as your shotgun slips from your fingers, which tear into knife-like claws. Flesh tears and knits, your teeth shattering and growing in your mouth as you rake your claws through your mouth, pieces of broken teeth and torn apart gums toppling out as you spit blood onto the ground with a maniacal laugh. You retract onto your hind-legs, standing tall as you scream... no, not scream. Howl, howl at the sky. Feeling enclosed in the man-made structure, you tear forward, smashing your claw against the lock in the door, tearing it free from the wooden frame as you leap outwards, hurrying into the darkness. Through your bestial eyes, you can make out the distant shapes of fur-covered beasts. The wolves' scents are easy to catch, and you mentally mark their locations. The desire to feast, to fight, to hunt and to kill burns through your heart and soul, as adrenaline surges through you. These other creatures are far weaker than you, with duller, more bestial, not even taking into account the fact that Fenrir only had weak, slow humans to transform unlike the man you once were, a Hunter. In short, you are strong. They are weak, and your belly is empty. However, a nagging voice, one last ounce of broken, disregarded sanity screams at you to run. The scent of coal and ash is ever so faint on the trail, but you have an urge to follow it, however small. > You fight! You let out a fearsome roar towards the moon, feeling its power surge through you as its light shines upon your fur. Leaping out into the darkness, you narrow in on the closest, weakest prey, wanting to kill the animal as quickly as you can to lower their numbers. The first werewolf races towards you with a roar, but its a skinny whelp. You tackle the creature, knocking it to the side as you land upon it, raising your claws and you jab your claws into the creature's neck, tearing out its throat. Another werewolf is upon you, but as it lunges towards you, you rend your claw across its face, blinding the creature as it collapses to the ground with a pained yelp. By now, the rest of the pack has arrived on you. A mouthful of razor teeth tears into your foreleg, as the weight of a werewolf smashes into your side, flipping you onto your back. Claws and teeth begin to tear at you, more than you can defend even with powerful claw strikes and your strong jaws, and you howl in pain as your fur is soon left wet with your own blood, your roar becoming little louder than a whisper shortly afterwards. You slowly grow weaker, before the werewolf you blinded stands above with a growl, before finishing you off by tearing out your stomach and letting blood loss send you off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know you have to get out of here, and you only have one option. The beast inside you knows that's true as well, as you find yourself growling and shaking. The scent of blood and fresh flesh drives you wild, and you're reminded that you haven't eaten in a while. Your stomach rumbles, as you think back to the taste of flesh earlier, the warm, wet meat sliding down your throat. You need to turn. You have no other option. You grip your nails into your wrist, tearing at your flesh as blood begins to trickle down your wrist. Your roar of pain turns into a growl, as you find hair beginning to sprout from your skin. The scent of your own blood sends your muscles into spasms, as you collapse onto the floor. Your clothes tear from your body as you grow, falling in tatters as your shotgun slips from your fingers, which tear into knife-like claws. Flesh tears and knits, your teeth shattering and growing in your mouth as you rake your claws through your mouth, pieces of broken teeth and torn apart gums toppling out as you spit blood onto the ground with a maniacal laugh. You retract onto your hind-legs, standing tall as you scream... no, not scream. Howl, howl at the sky. Feeling enclosed in the man-made structure, you tear forward, smashing your claw against the lock in the door, tearing it free from the wooden frame as you leap outwards, hurrying into the darkness. Through your bestial eyes, you can make out the distant shapes of fur-covered beasts. The wolves' scents are easy to catch, and you mentally mark their locations. The desire to feast, to fight, to hunt and to kill burns through your heart and soul, as adrenaline surges through you. These other creatures are far weaker than you, with duller, more bestial, not even taking into account the fact that Fenrir only had weak, slow humans to transform unlike the man you once were, a Hunter. In short, you are strong. They are weak, and your belly is empty. However, a nagging voice, one last ounce of broken, disregarded sanity screams at you to run. The scent of coal and ash is ever so faint on the trail, but you have an urge to follow it, however small. > You flee For some strange reason beyond instinct nor desperation, you decide to retreat into the darkness of the woods, breaking off towards the woods. Adrenaline fuels your movements as you race into the shadows. One of the beasts attempts to stop you, planting down its feet as it howls at you, but its easy prey. You swipe the werewolf's forelegs away, sending it collapsing forward. You grab its skull, smacking it into the earth with every ounce of strength you can muster, crushing its skull beneath your claw. Another werewolf leaps at you, jaws open, so you swing your claw, slashing through its eyes and blinding him instantly, leaving it yelping and whimpering. You growl, ready to leap forward and finish off the beast, before the voice in the back of your head stops you. Sniffing, you focus past the smell of fresh blood and of the beast's pure terror, smelling the faint, almost impossible to detect scent of coal. Your mind feels a second of focus and clarity, as you swivel on your legs and disappear into the forest. Sprinting through the trees, you feel free. The smells and scents of the woods give you a clear image of your surroundings, and your lungs fill with the cool air. The coal dust's bare scent guiding your path, you draw towards it, eager to reach the... Your mind draws a blank on your goal, before a new, far more pungent smell fills your nostrils. Prey. The easily recognizable scent of a prey animal catches you. The sweat and scent of fear and terror. The fresh blood from a recently injured animal. The guarantee of a kill, and more importantly, food. Your stomach rumbles, pangs of hunger hitting you like a knife, drawing your attention away from the coal, as your eyes fix on the direction of your prey. > You hunt! Your legs kick off the dirt, as you hurry after your prey. Rushing through the trees, you fly forward with a speed beyond what any natural creature of flesh and blood could keep up, diving over roots and ducking under branches. The prey pops into your vision, the pale outline of the predator making your mouth water. It's injured, slow and weak, and an easy kill. It's barely had time to notice you, before you're upon it. HUNT! KILL! FEED! You hit the creature with all the force of over hundreds of pounds of muscle and fur. You smash into the creature, knocking it into the dirt as its bones shatter and break beneath you. Pinning the creature to the ground, you slide a claw across it, tearing through its thick, blackened hide and releasing a burst of blood and guts, fluid filling the creature's collapsing lungs. You raise your head towards the sky, howling towards the moon in victory, the burning pain in your chest having dissipated. For the first time since Fenrir first called, you feel truly strong! Powerful! WILD! Victory. Power. Blood. Hate. Anger! Hunger! Feed! HUNT! KILL! EAT! You look down to your prey, grinning from ear to ear. Time to feast! > You kILL! Suddenly, pain, burning, all-consuming pain surges through your flesh, turning your blood to fire as you scream out in pain, howling upwards to the moon, wishing its light could wash you clean from this fiery hell. You collapse off your prey, your once mighty stature shrinking to that of a tiny, weak, terrified human. Lying in your warm blood, you gasp for air, feeling your body set alight, your pain barely dulled by the moon's light. "W-w... William?" a voice gasps. Your head rolls to the side, as you find yourself staring at Wyatt. The boy's chest has been torn to shreds. He's barely breathing, his face looking at you with a torn expression. "T-they... they got you," he manages to gasp through horrible, wet breaths. Breathing heavily, you paw at the burning, stabbing pain in your side, your fingers wrapping around a polished wooden handle. Realizing what's happened, you slowly slide the long blade out of your side, groaning in pain as blood pours down your skin. You slide out the silver knife, tossing the weapon across the dirt as you scream. You groan, feeling your muscles tighten and contract. Rolling onto your back, you slide over to Wyatt, ignoring your own pain. The knife hit has quietened the beast within, quashing the monster's howls. As far as wounds go, yours is fairly non-lethal, barely two or three inches in a non-lethal place. You doubt it would kill you normally, but with the beast within you, it's almost certainly non-lethal. You grit your teeth, rolling onto your knees as you stare down at the victim. His body's decimated, a barely surviving hulk. You lean down, pressing your hands against his bleeding chest wound as you try to stem the bleeding. Wyatt weakly bats at your arms, the occasional fear-wracked sob breaking out of him. "P-please... ple... please..." Wyatt begs, before his words disappear into a jumble of gurgling and dying chokes. The light in Wyatt's eyes goes dull, as the heat begins to drain from his pale skin. Blood runs down his chalk white skin, as you slowly let go of him. You hear a faint screaming that, somewhere in the back of your mind, you recognize as your own. You bash your fists into the earth, screaming as you feel the wolf howl inside you. Tears well up in your eyes, as you bash your head into the dirt, hoping to quash the wolf inside you. If you'd only been a man... if you'd only went out with Féval... You take a deep breath, calming yourself. You wait for several minutes, before you stand slowly, looking down at Wyatt's body. The boy lies there, limp and cold. You stare to the side, looking at the rifle that lies alongside him. You reach down, picking up the gun by the wooden stock, lifting it into the air. You pull back the bolt, loading a silver round into the chamber. For a moment, you stand there, feeling the cold air on your naked skin as you stare at Wyatt's gun. > You end it The Silver Doorway You raise the rifle to your head, taking it in your arms as you press the bottom of your chin against the gun barrel. You prop the gun upwards, aiming it so that it should go through your skull and out the top of your head. You reach down, pressing your finger against the trigger. You take a deep breath, closing your eyes. You've done enough tonight. You're tired, and you want to rest. You feel the pangs of hunger tear through you again as the beast awakens, roaring through your entire essence. You grit your teeth, trying to hold back the urge to scream. You slowly release your breath, before pressing down on the trigger. The gun fires, and the silver bullets tear through your chin, bursting up through your skull, blowing apart your brain and shooting out the top of your skull. Darkness shrouds over you, and you can feel the desperate, clawing, howling beast within you get pulled down into the depths of darkness with you. Now, the eternal rest is all that's left for you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Suddenly, pain, burning, all-consuming pain surges through your flesh, turning your blood to fire as you scream out in pain, howling upwards to the moon, wishing its light could wash you clean from this fiery hell. You collapse off your prey, your once mighty stature shrinking to that of a tiny, weak, terrified human. Lying in your warm blood, you gasp for air, feeling your body set alight, your pain barely dulled by the moon's light. "W-w... William?" a voice gasps. Your head rolls to the side, as you find yourself staring at Wyatt. The boy's chest has been torn to shreds. He's barely breathing, his face looking at you with a torn expression. "T-they... they got you," he manages to gasp through horrible, wet breaths. Breathing heavily, you paw at the burning, stabbing pain in your side, your fingers wrapping around a polished wooden handle. Realizing what's happened, you slowly slide the long blade out of your side, groaning in pain as blood pours down your skin. You slide out the silver knife, tossing the weapon across the dirt as you scream. You groan, feeling your muscles tighten and contract. Rolling onto your back, you slide over to Wyatt, ignoring your own pain. The knife hit has quietened the beast within, quashing the monster's howls. As far as wounds go, yours is fairly non-lethal, barely two or three inches in a non-lethal place. You doubt it would kill you normally, but with the beast within you, it's almost certainly non-lethal. You grit your teeth, rolling onto your knees as you stare down at the victim. His body's decimated, a barely surviving hulk. You lean down, pressing your hands against his bleeding chest wound as you try to stem the bleeding. Wyatt weakly bats at your arms, the occasional fear-wracked sob breaking out of him. "P-please... ple... please..." Wyatt begs, before his words disappear into a jumble of gurgling and dying chokes. The light in Wyatt's eyes goes dull, as the heat begins to drain from his pale skin. Blood runs down his chalk white skin, as you slowly let go of him. You hear a faint screaming that, somewhere in the back of your mind, you recognize as your own. You bash your fists into the earth, screaming as you feel the wolf howl inside you. Tears well up in your eyes, as you bash your head into the dirt, hoping to quash the wolf inside you. If you'd only been a man... if you'd only went out with Féval... You take a deep breath, calming yourself. You wait for several minutes, before you stand slowly, looking down at Wyatt's body. The boy lies there, limp and cold. You stare to the side, looking at the rifle that lies alongside him. You reach down, picking up the gun by the wooden stock, lifting it into the air. You pull back the bolt, loading a silver round into the chamber. For a moment, you stand there, feeling the cold air on your naked skin as you stare at Wyatt's gun. > You finish what you started It's time to do what needs to be done. You can't let the deaths of tonight be for nothing. A chill runs through you, as you realize you need new clothes, and there's only one place you can get them. You lean down, unbutton Wyatt's jacket as you try not to look at the body. Slowly, The underwear are soiled and the inside two layers of Wyatt's clothes are soaked with blood, but you manage to scavenge the boots, socks, pants and jacket, pulling them on. Once you've bundled yourself up in clothes, you raise your rifle to your shoulder and begin walking, leaving the corpse behind you. You don't have the time to bury it, and being around the corpse is only sending pangs of hunger through your body. You try not to shed a tear, heading off into the woods. Your senses quickly detect the faint smell of smoke and coal, and you begin heading towards it. The beast within you is quiet for now from the stabbing, but thankfully the beast seems to almost be absorbing the pain, and it's little more than a dull ache to you now. You walk in silence, and for a moment, it seems almost unnatural. Everything about you seems wrong now. You can tell you're walking loudly, almost falling and stumbling about. Your movements are as stealthy as ever thanks to your abilities as a hunter, but compared to your lupine form, it's clumsy. Your senses are dulled without the powers of the beast, your entire body weakening from exhaustion and blood loss. Your eyes are still bright, and you find yourself staring through the darkness at a trio of werewolves prowling through the undergrowth. The creatures are streaked with gray and black fur, growling as they slowly move forward, muscles moving under furry hides, their teeth glowing in the moonlight. They must be following your scent, and if they are, they have it now. The beast within you is quiet now, but the rage in your heart is burning. Time to do your duty as a Hunter. > You open fire from a range You raise your rifle, shouldering it as you quickly take the target in your sights. You aim at the lead werewolf, targeting the creature's head. It takes a moment for you to aim, unused to Wyatt's hunting rifle and preferring the pure blast power of your shotgun, but you quickly adjust. You've used pretty much every weapon under the sun over the years, and a simple hunting rifle is in every Hunter's arsenal. You see the bright of the wolf's eyes glinting in the moonlight, and pull the trigger. You pull the trigger, the werewolf's skull exploding as a silver bullet bursts through its brains. The other two werewolves burst off into the trees, trying to take cover. You scan the underbrush, looking for the signature fur of the creatures, but they race through the leaves, in opposite directions. Shit. Hitting both seems unlikely, and they're faster than you on foot. Perhaps retreating up a tree and climbing to the top to take shelter would be your best bet. Or perhaps that'll leave you as the perfect prey. > You retreat up the tree Your eyes scan the trees around you, as you pick one tall enough to escape up into and with thick enough branches that you can climb in. You jump into the air, your hands wrapping around a branch as you pull your body up on it. Your boots find another branch, as you quickly begin to scale the tree as quickly as you can. However, the werewolves and soon upon you, and leap into the air, claws digging into tree bark as they burst up the tree. A claw slashes at your ankle and you scream, blood bursting out and pouring down. Another claw slices into your thigh, sending you falling from the tree. You fall through the air, smacking into branches as you scream, before you slam into the dirt beneath you with a painful thud. You scream, as the werewolves around you howl in victory, leaping forward as they tear you limb from limb, devouring mouthfuls of flesh as soon, nothing is left.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You raise your rifle, shouldering it as you quickly take the target in your sights. You aim at the lead werewolf, targeting the creature's head. It takes a moment for you to aim, unused to Wyatt's hunting rifle and preferring the pure blast power of your shotgun, but you quickly adjust. You've used pretty much every weapon under the sun over the years, and a simple hunting rifle is in every Hunter's arsenal. You see the bright of the wolf's eyes glinting in the moonlight, and pull the trigger. You pull the trigger, the werewolf's skull exploding as a silver bullet bursts through its brains. The other two werewolves burst off into the trees, trying to take cover. You scan the underbrush, looking for the signature fur of the creatures, but they race through the leaves, in opposite directions. Shit. Hitting both seems unlikely, and they're faster than you on foot. Perhaps retreating up a tree and climbing to the top to take shelter would be your best bet. Or perhaps that'll leave you as the perfect prey. > You open fire on the creatures You need to kill them while you're down here. Retreating to the trees will just leave you open and get you slaughtered like a lamb. You begin backpedaling slowly, taking a better shooting stance as you rapidly switch your sights from either of your flanks. Suddenly, a howl from your left distracts you, as you turn. You swing your rifle around, finding the werewolf charging towards you, it's jaws open. You aim your weapon down its maw, finger pressing on the trigger as you snarl. Suddenly, a force like a truck smashes into you from behind, knocking the gun from your hands and sending you crumpling to the ground. You scream as you find yourself crippled between a pair of werewolves, as one bites down on your neck and the other tears out your stomach. You try to scream, but find yourself gurgling on blood as you're torn apart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It's time to do what needs to be done. You can't let the deaths of tonight be for nothing. A chill runs through you, as you realize you need new clothes, and there's only one place you can get them. You lean down, unbutton Wyatt's jacket as you try not to look at the body. Slowly, The underwear are soiled and the inside two layers of Wyatt's clothes are soaked with blood, but you manage to scavenge the boots, socks, pants and jacket, pulling them on. Once you've bundled yourself up in clothes, you raise your rifle to your shoulder and begin walking, leaving the corpse behind you. You don't have the time to bury it, and being around the corpse is only sending pangs of hunger through your body. You try not to shed a tear, heading off into the woods. Your senses quickly detect the faint smell of smoke and coal, and you begin heading towards it. The beast within you is quiet for now from the stabbing, but thankfully the beast seems to almost be absorbing the pain, and it's little more than a dull ache to you now. You walk in silence, and for a moment, it seems almost unnatural. Everything about you seems wrong now. You can tell you're walking loudly, almost falling and stumbling about. Your movements are as stealthy as ever thanks to your abilities as a hunter, but compared to your lupine form, it's clumsy. Your senses are dulled without the powers of the beast, your entire body weakening from exhaustion and blood loss. Your eyes are still bright, and you find yourself staring through the darkness at a trio of werewolves prowling through the undergrowth. The creatures are streaked with gray and black fur, growling as they slowly move forward, muscles moving under furry hides, their teeth glowing in the moonlight. They must be following your scent, and if they are, they have it now. The beast within you is quiet now, but the rage in your heart is burning. Time to do your duty as a Hunter. > You climb a tree and snipe the werewolves Your eyes scan the trees around you, as you pick one tall enough to escape up into and with thick enough branches that you can climb in. You jump into the air, your hands wrapping around a branch as you pull your body up on it. Your boots find another branch, as you quickly begin to scale the tree as quickly as you can. It's not long before you find a thick, stable branch high enough to take a shooting position in, protected by the cover of the leaves but with a clear sight on the werewolves. You raise your rifle, shouldering it as you quickly take the target in your sights. You aim at the lead werewolf, targeting the creature's head. It takes a moment for you to aim, unused to Wyatt's hunting rifle and preferring the pure blast power of your shotgun, but you quickly adjust. You've used pretty much every weapon under the sun over the years, and a simple hunting rifle is in every Hunter's arsenal. You see the bright of the wolf's eyes glinting in the moonlight, and pull the trigger. You find yourself staring at a second werewolf, one racing towards the tree. You aim your rifle as it leaps towards the tree, firing. The creature takes the shot to the side, crumpling to the ground, as you quickly reload and aim. The tree shakes as a werewolf begins clambering up the branches behind you. You quickly put another round in the wounded werewolf, blowing out its heart and killing it instantly. You swivel around, before you find a werewolf clambering up the branches, its maw wide open as it snaps at your leg. You yelp, realizing the beast is upon you, mere seconds away from devouring you. > You kick the bastard down You lash out at the werewolf with your boot, knocking at its jaws with all your force. The creature's jaws widen, biting down on your foot as it screams, its jaws cutting into your ankle and tearing tearing it off in one bite. You scream, pain tearing through you as blood spurts out, and you find yourself losing your position on the branch. You fall through the air, collapsing to the ground as you scream. You hit the ground with a thud, your back breaking as you scream, collapsing onto the ground. Your mind goes hazy, darkness beginning to take you as you hear the werewolf growl, leaping from branch to branch down to you. You hope you pass out before the creature reaches the ground, and you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your eyes scan the trees around you, as you pick one tall enough to escape up into and with thick enough branches that you can climb in. You jump into the air, your hands wrapping around a branch as you pull your body up on it. Your boots find another branch, as you quickly begin to scale the tree as quickly as you can. It's not long before you find a thick, stable branch high enough to take a shooting position in, protected by the cover of the leaves but with a clear sight on the werewolves. You raise your rifle, shouldering it as you quickly take the target in your sights. You aim at the lead werewolf, targeting the creature's head. It takes a moment for you to aim, unused to Wyatt's hunting rifle and preferring the pure blast power of your shotgun, but you quickly adjust. You've used pretty much every weapon under the sun over the years, and a simple hunting rifle is in every Hunter's arsenal. You see the bright of the wolf's eyes glinting in the moonlight, and pull the trigger. You find yourself staring at a second werewolf, one racing towards the tree. You aim your rifle as it leaps towards the tree, firing. The creature takes the shot to the side, crumpling to the ground, as you quickly reload and aim. The tree shakes as a werewolf begins clambering up the branches behind you. You quickly put another round in the wounded werewolf, blowing out its heart and killing it instantly. You swivel around, before you find a werewolf clambering up the branches, its maw wide open as it snaps at your leg. You yelp, realizing the beast is upon you, mere seconds away from devouring you. > You leap to another tree Bursting up, you push your boots against the branch as you stand for a second, before kicking off from the branches, leaping through the air towards the nearest tree. You fly through the air, hands reaching out for the next branch as you yell, only to find you're too far away and won't reach it. You fall through the air, collapsing to the ground as you scream. You hit the ground with a thud, your back breaking as you scream, collapsing onto the ground. Your mind goes hazy, darkness beginning to take you as you hear the werewolf growl, leaping from branch to branch down to you. You hope you pass out before the creature reaches the ground, and you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your eyes scan the trees around you, as you pick one tall enough to escape up into and with thick enough branches that you can climb in. You jump into the air, your hands wrapping around a branch as you pull your body up on it. Your boots find another branch, as you quickly begin to scale the tree as quickly as you can. It's not long before you find a thick, stable branch high enough to take a shooting position in, protected by the cover of the leaves but with a clear sight on the werewolves. You raise your rifle, shouldering it as you quickly take the target in your sights. You aim at the lead werewolf, targeting the creature's head. It takes a moment for you to aim, unused to Wyatt's hunting rifle and preferring the pure blast power of your shotgun, but you quickly adjust. You've used pretty much every weapon under the sun over the years, and a simple hunting rifle is in every Hunter's arsenal. You see the bright of the wolf's eyes glinting in the moonlight, and pull the trigger. You find yourself staring at a second werewolf, one racing towards the tree. You aim your rifle as it leaps towards the tree, firing. The creature takes the shot to the side, crumpling to the ground, as you quickly reload and aim. The tree shakes as a werewolf begins clambering up the branches behind you. You quickly put another round in the wounded werewolf, blowing out its heart and killing it instantly. You swivel around, before you find a werewolf clambering up the branches, its maw wide open as it snaps at your leg. You yelp, realizing the beast is upon you, mere seconds away from devouring you. > You fire with your rifle You grab your rifle, loading back the bolt in an instant, before lowering your gun. The werewolf's jaw bites down on your ankle, tearing through leather as it bites into your flesh. You scream, but stay focused, jamming your gun barrel against the werewolf's head, before pulling the trigger. The gun bucks, a bullet bursting through the werewolf's skull. The creature collapses from the tree, it's bloody body collapsing to the ground with a thud. You sigh, wiping the sweat from your brow, before checking your foot. It's cut, but other than that fine, and you should be able to walk, run, jump and everything else you'll need for the rest of night... and of course, you'll be able to climb down, which is quite helpful now. You slowly move down the tree, checking the two bodies of the werewolves, now naked, pale corpses covered in their own blood. You don't shed a tear for them. Normal werewolves are creatures cursed by the beast, like you. These creatures have embraced the beast. Human form or lupine form, they're beasts all the same. You look up towards the scent of the smoke, now a bare trace, but begin walking nonetheless. > You continue towards the smell of smoke You walk through the woods slowly, heading towards the scent. It draws nearer, the smell of smoke and coal becoming clear. It's a long, painful walk, and you find yourself scratching at your limbs, growling and shaking your head. The beast within is awakening again, as you run your tongue along your sharpened teeth, the taste of your own blood filling your own mouth. Your stomach growls, and the veil of darkness lifts as your supernatural eyes adjust to the darkness. Still, you focus on the burning pain in your chest and now, your stab wound, allowing the pain to consume you, bringing you just to the point where walking becomes impossible, all to stave off the wolf spirit howling to get out. It's not long, however, before you find your way to the mines. The earth begins to widen, revealing a huge, cavernous maw sticking out of the earth, a huge hole in the ground leading to darkness. The opening of the mineshaft. A light plume of smoke billows out from the mineshaft, as you can smell the scent of fresh meat and blood down below, the smell of wolves prowling and... strangely enough, diesel drifting out with its stink. You stare into the darkness, gun in your hands, as you prepare to go in. "Going in?" You turn your head, finding the patchwork fool standing in front of you. His eyes are still badly burned, although from this close, it seems more like its from a caustic chemical or animal venom rather than heat or fire. He grins at you, winking. "I was planning to," you say. "Going to tell me who you are yet?" "Maybe. Fancy another riddle?" "What the fuck is it with you and riddles?" "I like them," the Fool shrugs. "I used to be more of a pranks guy, but it's no use drawing attention to myself when I manage to get unbound, so riddles will have to do." "Unbound? Are you a ghost? A trapped spirit? It would explain some things," you say quietly, not wanting to risk dealing with them. "Nothing of the sort! I'm far more powerful," the Fool says. "I'd make the threat you're dealing with look like chump change, you know." "Glad you're not my enemy, then," you say, before pausing. "Are you?" "Of course not! Just a friendly visitor, curious to see what'll happen. I know a lot about werewolves. I remember watching the first one change. God, the terror he felt." "You saw the first change?" you ask cautiously. "I did indeed," the Fool smiles. "I saw when they chained up my dear old Fenrir, for nothing more than being scary. That's what they tend to do, you know," the Fool says, pointing to his eyes. "But, every so often, Fenrir would get just a bit lose, and some brave mortal would need to toss a new chain on him. One brave soul got too close, and Fenrir managed to bite him. That was the first of their kind. Now, they've spread throughout the world, all from that one mortal who felt it was fair to lock up a creature that had done nothing wrong. Cruel bastards the lot of them," the Fool mutters. You pause, trying to discern whether this is the fool's insane ramblings, a metaphor, a literal truth or something else entirely. For as long as you stare at the grinning bastard, you can't tell. "Anything else you wanted to tell me?" you say dismissively, not willing to play the Fool's games. "Nothing to tell, but something to ask. Care for another riddle?" "Fuck's sake," you mutter. "What the hell does this matter?" The Fool smiles, before grinning. "So! A lost shepard met two hunters, the first of who had three loaves and the second who had five loaves. All the loaves were the same size. The three men agreed to share the eight loaves equally between them. After they had eaten, the hunter gave the shepherds eight bronze coins as payment for his meal. How should the two shepherds fairly divide this money?" > You nothing to the first hunter, give it all to the second "You give all the pieces to the second hunter," you say. "Yes, another answer! Gods, I really like you!" "Is it right?" The Fool shrugs, smiling at you. "Who knows? I'll be off, anyway, my eyes are beginning to burn," he says, scratching at his burned up eyes. "Good luck in there. Shame it's not a silver mine, am I right?" He smiles, grinning, as you snarl. He raises his hands defensively, shrugging. "Fine, fine, I'll be on my way. Best of luck in there, Willy." You don't even try to stop him, your gun feeling unnaturally heavy in your hands as you know the patchwork man's magic is at work here. As soon as the Fool disappears into the trees, your gun lightens in your hands, and you heave to stare off into the mineshaft, smiling. > You head into the mineshaft You stare down the cavernous maw that sticks out of the earth. The darkness almost solidifies around you, attempting to consume your sanity. You focus your senses, as when the suffocating darkness steals your sight, your smell and hearing amplify. You can hear the near silent wind blow through the tunnel, nostrils flaring as you take as you smell the scent of coal dust and dirt. The scents begin to shift, as you detect a new smell. Fresh blood and the smell of a wild beast traveling through the tunnel. The sound of paws creeping along iron mine tracks and soft dirt begins just detectable. Your eyes narrow, as down the tunnel, a form cuts through the darkness. The creature's thin body is covered with a thick layer of white fur, a pair of red, blood-filled eyes becoming clear, shining in the dark. A maw of sharpened daggers becomes clear, as the Albino arrives. You recognize the creature from earlier. The one who bit you. The one who cursed you like this. You snarl, your gun tightening in your hands. The Albino's eyes flicker and you wonder if it recognizes you. There's an intellect there beyond what you've seen, in animals, or even in other werewolves. The creature growls, and you know it recognizes you. Your body shakes, the Albino's growl sending the beast into overdrive. Your hairy arms tense as your muscles bulge, your tongue flickering along your sharpened teeth. You let out a growl, eyes narrowing as you ready yourself to kill. You let out a loud roar which echoes down the tunnel, your fingernails toughening and sharpening to pre-transformation claws that dig into the wood of your rifle. > You let out the beast within You find yourself howling, your body transforming in a mere moment, incapable of holding off the change for any longer. The fur bursts from your skin as it toughens and tears, your body stretching in an instant. Your teeth, a mouthful of ivory blades, are revealed as you open your jaw. You smash into the Albino, tearing it through the air and smashing it off the tunnel wall. The creature bounces off the wall, before rolling to its feet and leaping forward with one pounce, lunging for you. You snarl, batting it aside with a pair of claws, slashing as its face at the creature pins you to the ground. The other beast is strong, fast and deadly, the creature being far more used to its bestial body than you are. The creature wields its fangs like daggers, its claws like swords, its weight a crushing wrecking ball, every feature of it turned into a weapon of death and slaughter. However, it's no doubt transformed from poorer stock than you, once having been a normal human rather than a Hunter like yourself, who dedicated their life to the craft of hunting. By how you reckon, the Albino has the advantage, but you won't be going down without a fight. You struggle against his grip, pinned against the stone, struggling to get out from it's weight, as its gnashing teeth comes towards your throat, its mouth caught in a fearsome howl. > You get your legs under the beast and force it off You roll your legs under the bulk of the Albino's weight, breathing heavily as you try to find your strength. You snarl, forcing your legs forwards as you force the creature back. You pause, building your strength for one moment, before using your legs to launch the beast at the wall. The Albino is launched against the wall, knocking against the earthen mine wall as it collapses to the ground with a thud. The creature growls, standing up as it moves forward, raising its clawed hands as it attempts to ram you against the wall, catching you in the bestial version of a rugby scrum. You raise your arms, grabbing them and trying to keep it from biting out your throat in a rage, standing on your hindlegs as you're ready to retreat. > You sTRENGTH! Ram it into the wall! You double down, catching in the Albino in a deadly embrace, forcing it back. Your reflexes, your speed and your abilities are far outpaced by the creature, who has had far more time to get used to its body. However, strength might be something you have. You're a tough, hardy man and far stronger than the average man, so perhaps in your lupine form you'll the stronger of this pair. You dig your hind legs in, ramming forward as you force the beast back. The Albino yelps, attempting to shove you aside, but you've caught it now, and you're able to twist it around as you launch it against the wall. The Albino smacks up against the wall, sliding down it as its covered in a thick layer of dirt, before you burst forward, raking your claws across the Albino's chest. You slash your claws forward, tearing out the creature's stomach as you hack into its ribs. The creature howls out in pain, weakly jabbing its claws at you as you step back in one quick dodge. You growl, watching the dying creature in front of you. Your stomach begs you to give up any semblance of weakness, to tear into this meal and feast, but some small, weak little voice reminds you that you have a mission to do. You could leave the beast here to bleed to death, with no hope of it surviving the lethal wounds you've caused, or you could crush its skull and end its life now. > You fEED! The hunger too strong and the desperate rumbling in your stomach meaning you're incapable of focusing, your eyes narrow as you stare at the bleeding corpse of the beast. You could use its strength. You move your head forward, wetting your nose in the creature's warm blood, gently lapping at that which streams out before the hunger overtakes you, and you can't hold back. You find yourself devouring mouthfuls of flesh, swallowing it desperately in an attempt to fill your stomach, drinking down warm blood, feeling the thick liquid coating the inside of your mouth and throat as you enjoy the delicious meal. You lick your lips, tasting the blood of your kill on your tongue, your nostrils filled with the pungent and delectable smell of your last meal. The meal is filling, and you find your predatory instinct howling in your mind as your body is filled with the strength of your fallen foe. Your body now fully fuelled, you look down the dark tunnel, a new sensation filling you. You hear the howls down further in, answering with a bark. You break into a bark, heading towards the barking. Your mind races, all pain ignored, all quiet voices in the back of your mind ignored, all remaining traces of your humanity ignored. Your brothers are calling, and the beast within you gives you no choice but to answer, and answer you will.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You double down, catching in the Albino in a deadly embrace, forcing it back. Your reflexes, your speed and your abilities are far outpaced by the creature, who has had far more time to get used to its body. However, strength might be something you have. You're a tough, hardy man and far stronger than the average man, so perhaps in your lupine form you'll the stronger of this pair. You dig your hind legs in, ramming forward as you force the beast back. The Albino yelps, attempting to shove you aside, but you've caught it now, and you're able to twist it around as you launch it against the wall. The Albino smacks up against the wall, sliding down it as its covered in a thick layer of dirt, before you burst forward, raking your claws across the Albino's chest. You slash your claws forward, tearing out the creature's stomach as you hack into its ribs. The creature howls out in pain, weakly jabbing its claws at you as you step back in one quick dodge. You growl, watching the dying creature in front of you. Your stomach begs you to give up any semblance of weakness, to tear into this meal and feast, but some small, weak little voice reminds you that you have a mission to do. You could leave the beast here to bleed to death, with no hope of it surviving the lethal wounds you've caused, or you could crush its skull and end its life now. > You finish off the dying cur With a low, rumbling snarl, you slowly approach the dying creature with almost disinterest in the creature. You raise your claw, striking with all your force as you smash the creature's skull against the wall, crushing its head against the stone wall and killing it instantly. You stare at the creature's limp, dead corpse, ignoring the dying creature. You move away from the creature, heading deep into the darkness once more. You spend several minutes walking through the darkness, before you find yourself prowling through a new plethora of senses. You find yourself in a large, cavernous room, glowing with golden light. A bonfire sits in the center of the cavern, warming your tired bones. Three corpses of cooked meat hang from the ceiling, blood dripping down in an appetizing fashion. You stare at them, licking your lips for a moment, before changing focus. There's a row of strange, bright glowing lights to the side, showing bizarre tiny forests in the distance. A metal table sits to the side, covered with strange objects, alongside a wall where many more things hang. Light. Heat. Warm. Fire! Bright! EAT! Meat! Flesh! Kill! FEED! NOISES! HUMANS! KILL! SLAUGHTER! You shake your head, your mind awash with new sensations, trying to let your instincts take over. You calm yourself, and your eyes flicker open as you examine the room. You find yourself smelling what looks to be dried blood, encrusted on one of the bizarre objects. You dip your snout forward, examining it cautiously. It seems to be covered in burning metal and cold metal, a bizarre combination of the two strange materials. You pause, hearing the sound of distant howling down the tunnels. It doesn't seem to be drawing closer, instead drawing fainter and fainter as the pack of werewolves screaming goes further and further a way. You feel drawn to it, curious as to what it could be, but a small mind deep in your head seems to recognize the object with a strange familiarity. > You follow the howls Your ears flicker as you hear the sound of barking and howling deep in the mineshaft, as you answer with a cautious bark. Another howl answers back, and instinct overwhelms the quiet voice in your head, and you find yourself running into the darkness, desperate to your brothers. Your mind races, all pain ignored, all quiet voices in the back of your mind ignored, all remaining traces of your humanity ignored. Your family, your true family of blood and instinct, are calling. The beast within you gives you no choice but to answer, and answer you will.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With a low, rumbling snarl, you slowly approach the dying creature with almost disinterest in the creature. You raise your claw, striking with all your force as you smash the creature's skull against the wall, crushing its head against the stone wall and killing it instantly. You stare at the creature's limp, dead corpse, ignoring the dying creature. You move away from the creature, heading deep into the darkness once more. You spend several minutes walking through the darkness, before you find yourself prowling through a new plethora of senses. You find yourself in a large, cavernous room, glowing with golden light. A bonfire sits in the center of the cavern, warming your tired bones. Three corpses of cooked meat hang from the ceiling, blood dripping down in an appetizing fashion. You stare at them, licking your lips for a moment, before changing focus. There's a row of strange, bright glowing lights to the side, showing bizarre tiny forests in the distance. A metal table sits to the side, covered with strange objects, alongside a wall where many more things hang. Light. Heat. Warm. Fire! Bright! EAT! Meat! Flesh! Kill! FEED! NOISES! HUMANS! KILL! SLAUGHTER! You shake your head, your mind awash with new sensations, trying to let your instincts take over. You calm yourself, and your eyes flicker open as you examine the room. You find yourself smelling what looks to be dried blood, encrusted on one of the bizarre objects. You dip your snout forward, examining it cautiously. It seems to be covered in burning metal and cold metal, a bizarre combination of the two strange materials. You pause, hearing the sound of distant howling down the tunnels. It doesn't seem to be drawing closer, instead drawing fainter and fainter as the pack of werewolves screaming goes further and further a way. You feel drawn to it, curious as to what it could be, but a small mind deep in your head seems to recognize the object with a strange familiarity. > You investigate the object You push your head up to the bizarre object, sniffing. The outside seems to be made of burning metal, its very aura unnerving you, but the inside is made of colder metal, and you gently press your nose against it, smelling it. It smells ever so faintly of blood, and... Suddenly, the device snaps shut, slicing through your nose as you scream out in pain, collapsing back. The object traps your face in its burning saws, sending waves of burning pain through you. Blood pours down your snout as you scream, the tip of your nose messily hacked off, beginning to burn. You yank your face back, breaking free of the device and spraying the area with a light mist of blood as you find yourself collapsing to the ground, darkness hitting you in waves which contrast with the waves of burning pain, as you're left lying there, your body breaking and burning with pain once again. You don't know whether it's hours, minutes or seconds later, but soon, you find sanity once again. You slowly take breath through your lips, which are torn up, cut and bleeding, your upper lip barely hanging on. Thankfully, the healing factor of the werewolves has left your upper lip scabbing up in a mismatched mess of colors. You nose is heavily damaged, smell somewhat obscured in your left nostril from the dried blood and pus clogging it. You scratch at it, a thin stream of warm blood running down your face. You groan, before finding the strength left in you. Knowing that it's too late for you to just lay down and die, you take a deep breath, focusing your remaining strength of what you can find inside you. You roll to your knees, resting a hand against the cold earth as you relax your tired muscles, looking around the room. The room must've been a mineshaft intersection at one point. It's been rigged up with lights and electricity, with a large desk stacked with television screens in the corner of the room. You peer over at them, watching the various scenes of the forest. It must be another bunch of cameras connected to the screens. Your eyes flicker to the hung up "meat" ahead of you, hanging from the ceiling, as you begin to feel sick. The mutilated, bleeding corpses of Hans Hirsch, Russel Sloane and Father Charles Féval hang from the ceiling, blood dripping down and pooling underneath them. Russel Sloane's been hacked apart, his face a crushed mess, his body missing dozens of chunks of flesh all over him from the pickings the werewolves chewed off him. Hans Hirsh is even less so, his upper body entirely missing, only a pair of legs in gray trousers with black, polished boots. You recognize him from his boots, and his boots alone. Father Féval's body still bares the marks of your shotgun blast, his chest blown apart, ribs hanging down to the ground. He's the most intact corpse there, yet the most gruesome. His face is stuck forever in an expression of fear and pain, his eyes dead and hollow, completely lifeless. You reach for your knife to cut them down, sighing as you realize its not there, and you're several outfits from the one you dressed yourself in this morning. Hell, maybe you should leave them up there anyway. At least the rats won't get there. You feel a pang of hunger, and draw your eyes away from your comrades. You won't disgrace them like that. Scanning the room, you find yourself staring at the table propped up against the wall, stacked with various items. Cellphones, guns, knives, ammo, equipment and an assortment of other items. At the Then, there's the tunnel. A long, dark cavern going in the other direction that you've went down. The howls you heard came from down there. That's where the wolves are. That's where you'll need to go to finish this. You look down at the map ahead of you, a sprawled out blueprints of the mine. Scanning it quickly, your old eyes take in the information you need. Though you're weak in Norway, you manage to make out the notes sprawled across the page. There's a dozen designations across the various areas in the mine. Judging by where you came in, you're in the "Security Room". There's also the "Sleeping Chambers", "(HUMAN) Sleeping Chambers", "Feeding Area", and... You pause, tapping your finger. The "Mine Equipment Storage Area (Armory)". Given the impressive arsenal of explosives that was at the scout house, there'd be even more explosives there at the armory. Enough to take down a mine. If there's even a fraction more explosives there, there might be enough to collapse the mine on itself and to kill all the beasts that prowl these mines. Perhaps you might find some use there. It's as good a place to start as any, given you won't be able to take down the horde with firearms alone. You turn your head, hearing a low growl nearby, only to find yourself staring at the blank stone walls. You squint your eyes, making out murals among them. Blood red images crudely painted, depicting fearsome creatures and other scenes. Interesting. > You investigate the table You walk over to the table, examining the items. Revolvers, pistols, blades, a shotgun, a rifle, an assault weapon... you pause, realizing what you're looking at. These are the weapons, gear and general items taken from the corpses at the crash site. You see your own silver dagger lying there, realizing they must've gathered up your weapons and what fell from the tatters of your clothes. You trace your fingers alongside your personal shotgun which lies there on the table, staring at the silver shells that lie alongside it. You notice Hans' dog tags, Father Féval's silver cross, the items that remind you of the others. However, just as you're about to turn away, you notice another object lying on the table. You lean over it, slowly examining it. The cell phone from earlier. The one given to you by Mr Gaange. You look at it, flipping it open, revealing its at half charge, its screen brightly chirping at you with a beep as it turns on. The phone starts up on the CONTACTS page, with a single number, with the contact name Mr Black. You pause for a moment, wondering whether to call. Perhaps he has the ability to deal with the threat here. To avenge your comrades. Of course... a deal with the dark isn't your ideal choice. > You call Mr Gaange You sigh, pressing the number. It rings for a few second, a bright, electronic noise, before it stops. "Hello," a deep voice answers. "I'm looking for Mr Gaange. I need that favor." A light chuckle comes through the phone. "Already? My, my, someone's been having fun. What do you need?" "I'm here in the mineshaft just North of that fucking country house your lieutenant was holed up in. There's a werewolf pack based here, with servants helping them and large numbers. I need them wiped out." "Yes, that does seem like an issue. Well, it's a serious favor, but it is in my interest to deal with these whelps and mongrels either way, they'll be a threat. You do know this means you agree to serve me, don't you?" You pause for a moment, the room silent. "I do." "Good. Then let's get down to it." You tell Mr Gaange everything you know about the pack and your location, before he stops you. "That's enough. I have all I need. You're lucky, I have a team nearby covering what happened with my lieutenant. See if you can last another fifteen minutes, and I'll do the rest." "OK," you answer heavily. "OK." "Good. Best of luck, Mr Matasan." The phone line goes dead, as you slowly move to the table ahead of you, picking up your shotgun, loading it carefully. You grab Father Féval's silver crucifix, leaning against the wall and sliding down it into a sitting position. You prop the shotgun up in your hands, aiming it at the tunnel ahead of you, and wait. The waiting is long and hard. Blood loss and exhaustion is an issue, and you focus to stay alert now that the night's adrenaline has calmed. In addition to that, the beast within is howling and roaring, and at several points you have to harshly dig your silver crucifix into your bullet wound, the roar of burning pain and the cross' silver driving the wolf back for a while. Suddenly, you see a figure entering the room, clad all in black. The figure wears black combat armor with a black gas mask, an assault rifle in his hands. The figure immediately swivels his gun to aim at you, dropping to a knee. "Drop your weapons!" he yells, his voice muffled by his gas mask. > You open fire! You grab your shotgun, swinging it off the table and aiming it at the trooper. He's faster, however, unnaturally fast, raising his gun and dropping to his knees. He raises his assault rifle, firing with a blast as bullets thud into your chest. The silver rounds tear through your heart, as you collapse backwards, sliding down the wall and leaving a trail of blood. You gasp, as the world begins to go black, the strength pouring out of your body. "Enemy combatant down, move in!" he says in a deep voice, motioning to the rest of his squad. You watch as a squad of the soldiers enter the room, clad in black and wielding the same guns. Feeling the silver bullets burn in your chest as he fades black, you feel a glimmer of hope. You're dying tonight, but so are the werewolves. Tonight, Fenrir's put down. Minutes later, when Mr Gaange's men move your body from the mineshaft, they wonder why you're smiling.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sigh, pressing the number. It rings for a few second, a bright, electronic noise, before it stops. "Hello," a deep voice answers. "I'm looking for Mr Gaange. I need that favor." A light chuckle comes through the phone. "Already? My, my, someone's been having fun. What do you need?" "I'm here in the mineshaft just North of that fucking country house your lieutenant was holed up in. There's a werewolf pack based here, with servants helping them and large numbers. I need them wiped out." "Yes, that does seem like an issue. Well, it's a serious favor, but it is in my interest to deal with these whelps and mongrels either way, they'll be a threat. You do know this means you agree to serve me, don't you?" You pause for a moment, the room silent. "I do." "Good. Then let's get down to it." You tell Mr Gaange everything you know about the pack and your location, before he stops you. "That's enough. I have all I need. You're lucky, I have a team nearby covering what happened with my lieutenant. See if you can last another fifteen minutes, and I'll do the rest." "OK," you answer heavily. "OK." "Good. Best of luck, Mr Matasan." The phone line goes dead, as you slowly move to the table ahead of you, picking up your shotgun, loading it carefully. You grab Father Féval's silver crucifix, leaning against the wall and sliding down it into a sitting position. You prop the shotgun up in your hands, aiming it at the tunnel ahead of you, and wait. The waiting is long and hard. Blood loss and exhaustion is an issue, and you focus to stay alert now that the night's adrenaline has calmed. In addition to that, the beast within is howling and roaring, and at several points you have to harshly dig your silver crucifix into your bullet wound, the roar of burning pain and the cross' silver driving the wolf back for a while. Suddenly, you see a figure entering the room, clad all in black. The figure wears black combat armor with a black gas mask, an assault rifle in his hands. The figure immediately swivels his gun to aim at you, dropping to a knee. "Drop your weapons!" he yells, his voice muffled by his gas mask. > You embrace the beast within You dig your nails into your skin, roaring as you burst forward. The soldier swings his gun around, dropping to his need with incredible speed and pulling the trigger, a blast of silver bullets spraying out and hitting you square in the chest. You collapse to the ground mid transformation, the silver in your chest stopping your heart and transformation instantly. You hit the ground with a thud, gasping for bloody breath, before going still. "Enemy combatant down, move in!" he says in a deep voice, motioning to the rest of his squad. You watch as a squad of the soldiers enter the room, clad in black and wielding the same guns. Feeling the silver bullets burn in your chest as he fades black, you feel a glimmer of hope. You're dying tonight, but so are the werewolves. Tonignt, Fenrir's put down. Minutes later, when Mr Gaange's men move your body from the mineshaft, they wonder why you're smiling.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sigh, pressing the number. It rings for a few second, a bright, electronic noise, before it stops. "Hello," a deep voice answers. "I'm looking for Mr Gaange. I need that favor." A light chuckle comes through the phone. "Already? My, my, someone's been having fun. What do you need?" "I'm here in the mineshaft just North of that fucking country house your lieutenant was holed up in. There's a werewolf pack based here, with servants helping them and large numbers. I need them wiped out." "Yes, that does seem like an issue. Well, it's a serious favor, but it is in my interest to deal with these whelps and mongrels either way, they'll be a threat. You do know this means you agree to serve me, don't you?" You pause for a moment, the room silent. "I do." "Good. Then let's get down to it." You tell Mr Gaange everything you know about the pack and your location, before he stops you. "That's enough. I have all I need. You're lucky, I have a team nearby covering what happened with my lieutenant. See if you can last another fifteen minutes, and I'll do the rest." "OK," you answer heavily. "OK." "Good. Best of luck, Mr Matasan." The phone line goes dead, as you slowly move to the table ahead of you, picking up your shotgun, loading it carefully. You grab Father Féval's silver crucifix, leaning against the wall and sliding down it into a sitting position. You prop the shotgun up in your hands, aiming it at the tunnel ahead of you, and wait. The waiting is long and hard. Blood loss and exhaustion is an issue, and you focus to stay alert now that the night's adrenaline has calmed. In addition to that, the beast within is howling and roaring, and at several points you have to harshly dig your silver crucifix into your bullet wound, the roar of burning pain and the cross' silver driving the wolf back for a while. Suddenly, you see a figure entering the room, clad all in black. The figure wears black combat armor with a black gas mask, an assault rifle in his hands. The figure immediately swivels his gun to aim at you, dropping to a knee. "Drop your weapons!" he yells, his voice muffled by his gas mask. > You surrender You drop your weapon, smiling grimly at the man. He moves forward, as more of his squad mates move into the room, sweeping their guns around it as they enter. The soldier in front of you kicks your gun away, before motioning to someone down the tunnel. "We're clear, we're clear, move in!" he shouts. The squad disappears off down the tunnel, leaving only two members guarding the way they came in. Then, a figure like a shadow enters the room. A tall, gaunt man, wear a black suit, black tie and bowler hat walks into the room. His pallor is unnaturally pale, his eyes cold and icy. He smiles at you as he enters, a polite smile with a small pair of fangs becoming clear when he does. "Mr Matasan, I presume?" he asks, extending his long arm to you. You grab it, shaking his hand weakly. "A pleasure, Mr Gaange." Mr Gaange sniffs, pulling a disgusted look. "You'll have to forgive my lack of manners, Mr Matasan, but by god, you smell terrible! Your blood reeks with the bestial stink of Fenrir." You nod, motioning to the scabbed mess that shows your werewolf bite. "Aah... unfortunate," Mr Gaange pauses. "I suppose in turning you I'll need to be draining you of your wolf blood before this conversion can take place. Are you ready to join the long night?" "You can still convert me?" you say, frowning. "Of course," the Vampire smiles. You nod, unsure how you feel about that, before nodding. "Let's do it," you nod grimly. Mr Gaange offers you his hand, and you take it. He lowers down, raising your wrist to his fanged mouth. Then, he bites down, two fangs disappearing into your arm with an slight stabbing pain. The vampire begins to suck, as you can feel your arm go weak, then your body, then your entire essence, your blood being drained from your body. You go woozy, eyes fluttering, before you find a new feeling in your body. A new, unholy strength of darkness building in your core. You groan, as your body grows cold, the warmth and energy drained from it, but replaced with something darker. Moments later, the new you emerges as Mr Gaange pulls his mouth away, dabbing his face with a napkin. You look down to your wrist, two puncture holes in your skin, but no blood trickles out, for none remains. Your body is cold, your skin pale. You feel your teeth twist in your jaw, a pair of fangs emerging down, but compared to the transformations of the night, it's heaven. Instead of endless burning pain, you just feel numb and cold. However, you feel a newfound power in you. A strength you've never felt before. You smile, nodding your head slowly. "Yes... this feels good," you smile. "I feel powerful." "Good. You take to it well, little one." You frown realizing how parched your throat is. The beast within you is dead, but your stomach is empty. You don't want food, though. The desperate desire to fill your stomach with flesh is gone. However... you thirst. Terribly so. A deep thirst runs through your body. "The thirst will be dealt with soon, don't worry," Mr Gaange smiles. "Sergeant Lund, have one of the captured wolf worshippers brought to me." The sergeant nods, before saying something in Norwegian into his walkie-talkie. Mere moments later, two of the black-clad soldiers arrive in, dragging a bare-chested, heavily tattooed man with long hair and covered with scars; one of the wolf servants from earlier. He's handcuffed and gagged, but snarls and fights with every step. "Target here, sir!" one says, bowing his head slightly. "Offer him to my new associate, if you please, gentlemen. He's growing thirsty," Mr Gaange says. The two soldiers nod, moving the prisoner in front of you. They grab his head, pulling it aside to reveal his bare neck. "Enjoy the meal, my good man," Mr Gaange says, grinning. With that, you're unable to resist the thirst, feeling so desperate for a think that you'll do anything. You dart your head forward, sinking your fangs into the man with predatory instinct. The man screams into his gag as his artery bursts, as you press your mouth up against the wound and begin to drain him of his blood. You gulp down the blood as quickly as you can, the warm blood filling you and sating your thirst as you sigh in joy. You drink for as long as you can, each gulp bringing you strength and power. Eventually, you pull your head back, your mouth covered with blood as you smile, filled with strength once more. The two soldiers lift the drained corpse onto their shoulders, looking to Mr Gaange. "Thank you, gentlemen, thank you," Mr Gaange smiles. You drop to your knees once more, feeling truly powerful and in control, and full. Strength ebbs through your body, as you grin from ear to ear, power filling your very core. You look up at Mr Gaange, as he offers you his hand. "Take my hand, Mr Matasan. Tonight, your new life begins." You feel the power course through your veins, wondering if you could strike and take him down. You'd be breaking your deal, but you have the element of surprise. > You take Mr Gaange's hand In Service of the Night The rest of the night is a hunt of the truest order. With the Hunters, you had limited support, limited training and only whatever equipment you could find. These men are an entirely different order. With unnatural speed, unnatural perception and unnatural strength, they move quickly through the mineshaft, their high-tech gear and weapons giving them the edge. Soon, the pack's been wiped out, every one of the kind dead. You're led out of the mineshaft to where a trio of black helicopters await you, and you're taken off to serve Mr Gaange in your new life. Life serving Mr Gaange is good. You're given a comfortable, secluded country house in your home country, a small place in Glasgow, although you spend most of your time in hotels and apartments abroad. You serve Mr Gaange as his primary hunter, tasked with targeting the same supernatural threats you hunted in life, investigating them and leading the elimination with Mr Gaange's security force. The types you normally go after are those who cross Mr Gaange, those that threaten to expose the existence of the supernatural to the mortal realm, or those who stand as a threat to man itself, like the werewolf pack you dealt with the night of your first vampiric feeding. Mr Gaange takes good care of you, like he said. You earn a six figure salary with plenty of perks, and whenever you can't secure some scumbag to feed off in your investigations or hunting, you simply have to call Mr Gaange. Days or even hours later, a bound and gagged man is delivered to you. Mr Gaange assures you that these men are the worst of the worst; traitors, rapists, murderers and those who conspired to help the creatures of the night spill innocent blood. You're never sure, though. That's a common theme with Mr Gaange. Uncertainty. Through and through it all, you're never sure what his motives are. He sure seems interested in helping humanity, but it could all be to get good publicity and keep the loyalty of his more moral minded servants. You're never sure what his true goals are, or what he really wants. Of course, you know not to look into it. You have a lot of freedom in doing your work, but that privilege is not within your reach. Still, life is good under Mr Gaange. Sure, you miss the sunlight, and the certainty that what you were doing was right with the Lodge, but overall, you're more effectively hunting your foe and you're living at a far higher standard of living. You were once weak and mortal. But now, you are a true hunter. A Vampire. And the night, which was once ruled by the monsters, now belongs to you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You drop your weapon, smiling grimly at the man. He moves forward, as more of his squad mates move into the room, sweeping their guns around it as they enter. The soldier in front of you kicks your gun away, before motioning to someone down the tunnel. "We're clear, we're clear, move in!" he shouts. The squad disappears off down the tunnel, leaving only two members guarding the way they came in. Then, a figure like a shadow enters the room. A tall, gaunt man, wear a black suit, black tie and bowler hat walks into the room. His pallor is unnaturally pale, his eyes cold and icy. He smiles at you as he enters, a polite smile with a small pair of fangs becoming clear when he does. "Mr Matasan, I presume?" he asks, extending his long arm to you. You grab it, shaking his hand weakly. "A pleasure, Mr Gaange." Mr Gaange sniffs, pulling a disgusted look. "You'll have to forgive my lack of manners, Mr Matasan, but by god, you smell terrible! Your blood reeks with the bestial stink of Fenrir." You nod, motioning to the scabbed mess that shows your werewolf bite. "Aah... unfortunate," Mr Gaange pauses. "I suppose in turning you I'll need to be draining you of your wolf blood before this conversion can take place. Are you ready to join the long night?" "You can still convert me?" you say, frowning. "Of course," the Vampire smiles. You nod, unsure how you feel about that, before nodding. "Let's do it," you nod grimly. Mr Gaange offers you his hand, and you take it. He lowers down, raising your wrist to his fanged mouth. Then, he bites down, two fangs disappearing into your arm with an slight stabbing pain. The vampire begins to suck, as you can feel your arm go weak, then your body, then your entire essence, your blood being drained from your body. You go woozy, eyes fluttering, before you find a new feeling in your body. A new, unholy strength of darkness building in your core. You groan, as your body grows cold, the warmth and energy drained from it, but replaced with something darker. Moments later, the new you emerges as Mr Gaange pulls his mouth away, dabbing his face with a napkin. You look down to your wrist, two puncture holes in your skin, but no blood trickles out, for none remains. Your body is cold, your skin pale. You feel your teeth twist in your jaw, a pair of fangs emerging down, but compared to the transformations of the night, it's heaven. Instead of endless burning pain, you just feel numb and cold. However, you feel a newfound power in you. A strength you've never felt before. You smile, nodding your head slowly. "Yes... this feels good," you smile. "I feel powerful." "Good. You take to it well, little one." You frown realizing how parched your throat is. The beast within you is dead, but your stomach is empty. You don't want food, though. The desperate desire to fill your stomach with flesh is gone. However... you thirst. Terribly so. A deep thirst runs through your body. "The thirst will be dealt with soon, don't worry," Mr Gaange smiles. "Sergeant Lund, have one of the captured wolf worshippers brought to me." The sergeant nods, before saying something in Norwegian into his walkie-talkie. Mere moments later, two of the black-clad soldiers arrive in, dragging a bare-chested, heavily tattooed man with long hair and covered with scars; one of the wolf servants from earlier. He's handcuffed and gagged, but snarls and fights with every step. "Target here, sir!" one says, bowing his head slightly. "Offer him to my new associate, if you please, gentlemen. He's growing thirsty," Mr Gaange says. The two soldiers nod, moving the prisoner in front of you. They grab his head, pulling it aside to reveal his bare neck. "Enjoy the meal, my good man," Mr Gaange says, grinning. With that, you're unable to resist the thirst, feeling so desperate for a think that you'll do anything. You dart your head forward, sinking your fangs into the man with predatory instinct. The man screams into his gag as his artery bursts, as you press your mouth up against the wound and begin to drain him of his blood. You gulp down the blood as quickly as you can, the warm blood filling you and sating your thirst as you sigh in joy. You drink for as long as you can, each gulp bringing you strength and power. Eventually, you pull your head back, your mouth covered with blood as you smile, filled with strength once more. The two soldiers lift the drained corpse onto their shoulders, looking to Mr Gaange. "Thank you, gentlemen, thank you," Mr Gaange smiles. You drop to your knees once more, feeling truly powerful and in control, and full. Strength ebbs through your body, as you grin from ear to ear, power filling your very core. You look up at Mr Gaange, as he offers you his hand. "Take my hand, Mr Matasan. Tonight, your new life begins." You feel the power course through your veins, wondering if you could strike and take him down. You'd be breaking your deal, but you have the element of surprise. > You strike with your newfound power! You take a deep breath, focusing on the feeling of your power in your chest, building it through your body before striking. You stab with your sharpened claws, jabbing them for his neck with a snarl. Mr Gaange sidesteps your strike, letting the nail fly past you as he grabs your wrist. He twists your arm around, sending you to your knees as you howl out in pain. Mr Gaange slams you forward, knocking your head into the ground with a thud. Mr Gaange drops down, keeping an unnaturally strong grip on your neck as he smashes your head into the ground again, and again, and again, as your nose breaks, blood spurting out onto the ground as your mind quickly goes dark. > The Darkness consumes you The Black Coffin Your hazy mind regains conscious, as you find yourself breathing heavily. There's a throbbing pain in your head as you groan, wondering where you are. Your eyes can see nothing but endless darkness, the rest of your senses just as dull. You reach out into the darkness, finding your fingers brushing against cold metal. You knock your hands against them, trying to move, finding yourself stuck by six tight metal walls. A light flickers on, as you find yourself staring at a TV screen. The screen depicts the smiling face of Mr Gaange, who is sitting in an armchair in front of a roaring fire. A whiskey glass, filled with dark, crimson liquid, sits in his hands, his face a dim smile. "Hell, Mr Matasan. It seems that you've betrayed me. I offered you the world, and you accepted. Then, you betrayed me seconds after our agreement. Mere... seconds. Do you remember?" "Fuck you!" you growl, struggling against the iron coffin. "And you had such politeness not too long ago," Mr Gaange sighs. "I'm watching you through a camera in this monitor, in case you were wondering. I'll be watching you, and I will have a delightful time doing so. You see, there are two interesting facts about vampires. The first is that we are immortal. Age cannot take us. Disease cannot take us. Starvation cannot take us. The only way we can die is through sunlight, and through being killed by stake, bullet, knife or whatever method. The second thing is that vampires need to drink blood to survive with their sanity intact. Without it, they grow thirsty. At first, simply a dry throat. Then, a deep thirst. A predatory need to feed. And it gets worse, and worse, and worse. Imagine lying in the hottest, driest desert in the world, without the chance to drop to drink. Imagine lying there, desperate, so maddened by thirst you'd do anything for a drop of water... for minutes... hours... days... weeks... months... years... decades... centuries..." The man laughs deeply. "Hard to imagine? Don't worry. There's no need to. You'll understand that pain soon. Here you are, buried in an iron coffin trapped deep underground. Down there, you are incapable of finding a way out. You are trapped. You are never going to escape. And I am going to watch as the thirst grows... as sanity and loneliness set in and tear your soul to shreds... as you suffer for betraying my generous offer. Good night, Mr Matasan." The screen flicks off, and you scream as you're consumed by total darkness. You scream, and scream, and scream, howling at the darkness, begging and pleading for mercy, pounding at the coffin as the thirst in your soul grows, as you become more and more desperate. Welcome to eternity.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk over to the table, examining the items. Revolvers, pistols, blades, a shotgun, a rifle, an assault weapon... you pause, realizing what you're looking at. These are the weapons, gear and general items taken from the corpses at the crash site. You see your own silver dagger lying there, realizing they must've gathered up your weapons and what fell from the tatters of your clothes. You trace your fingers alongside your personal shotgun which lies there on the table, staring at the silver shells that lie alongside it. You notice Hans' dog tags, Father Féval's silver cross, the items that remind you of the others. However, just as you're about to turn away, you notice another object lying on the table. You lean over it, slowly examining it. The cell phone from earlier. The one given to you by Mr Gaange. You look at it, flipping it open, revealing its at half charge, its screen brightly chirping at you with a beep as it turns on. The phone starts up on the CONTACTS page, with a single number, with the contact name Mr Black. You pause for a moment, wondering whether to call. Perhaps he has the ability to deal with the threat here. To avenge your comrades. Of course... a deal with the dark isn't your ideal choice. > You destroy the phone You draw a revolver from the table, checking to make sure its loaded, before aiming at the table. You fire, the phone exploding in a burst of wires and plastic. "Hope I don't leave you waiting for the call, vampire," you say grimly, before shaking your head. You drop the revolver to the table with a loud clatter, looking around the rest of the room.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You push your head up to the bizarre object, sniffing. The outside seems to be made of burning metal, its very aura unnerving you, but the inside is made of colder metal, and you gently press your nose against it, smelling it. It smells ever so faintly of blood, and... Suddenly, the device snaps shut, slicing through your nose as you scream out in pain, collapsing back. The object traps your face in its burning saws, sending waves of burning pain through you. Blood pours down your snout as you scream, the tip of your nose messily hacked off, beginning to burn. You yank your face back, breaking free of the device and spraying the area with a light mist of blood as you find yourself collapsing to the ground, darkness hitting you in waves which contrast with the waves of burning pain, as you're left lying there, your body breaking and burning with pain once again. You don't know whether it's hours, minutes or seconds later, but soon, you find sanity once again. You slowly take breath through your lips, which are torn up, cut and bleeding, your upper lip barely hanging on. Thankfully, the healing factor of the werewolves has left your upper lip scabbing up in a mismatched mess of colors. You nose is heavily damaged, smell somewhat obscured in your left nostril from the dried blood and pus clogging it. You scratch at it, a thin stream of warm blood running down your face. You groan, before finding the strength left in you. Knowing that it's too late for you to just lay down and die, you take a deep breath, focusing your remaining strength of what you can find inside you. You roll to your knees, resting a hand against the cold earth as you relax your tired muscles, looking around the room. The room must've been a mineshaft intersection at one point. It's been rigged up with lights and electricity, with a large desk stacked with television screens in the corner of the room. You peer over at them, watching the various scenes of the forest. It must be another bunch of cameras connected to the screens. Your eyes flicker to the hung up "meat" ahead of you, hanging from the ceiling, as you begin to feel sick. The mutilated, bleeding corpses of Hans Hirsch, Russel Sloane and Father Charles Féval hang from the ceiling, blood dripping down and pooling underneath them. Russel Sloane's been hacked apart, his face a crushed mess, his body missing dozens of chunks of flesh all over him from the pickings the werewolves chewed off him. Hans Hirsh is even less so, his upper body entirely missing, only a pair of legs in gray trousers with black, polished boots. You recognize him from his boots, and his boots alone. Father Féval's body still bares the marks of your shotgun blast, his chest blown apart, ribs hanging down to the ground. He's the most intact corpse there, yet the most gruesome. His face is stuck forever in an expression of fear and pain, his eyes dead and hollow, completely lifeless. You reach for your knife to cut them down, sighing as you realize its not there, and you're several outfits from the one you dressed yourself in this morning. Hell, maybe you should leave them up there anyway. At least the rats won't get there. You feel a pang of hunger, and draw your eyes away from your comrades. You won't disgrace them like that. Scanning the room, you find yourself staring at the table propped up against the wall, stacked with various items. Cellphones, guns, knives, ammo, equipment and an assortment of other items. At the Then, there's the tunnel. A long, dark cavern going in the other direction that you've went down. The howls you heard came from down there. That's where the wolves are. That's where you'll need to go to finish this. You look down at the map ahead of you, a sprawled out blueprints of the mine. Scanning it quickly, your old eyes take in the information you need. Though you're weak in Norway, you manage to make out the notes sprawled across the page. There's a dozen designations across the various areas in the mine. Judging by where you came in, you're in the "Security Room". There's also the "Sleeping Chambers", "(HUMAN) Sleeping Chambers", "Feeding Area", and... You pause, tapping your finger. The "Mine Equipment Storage Area (Armory)". Given the impressive arsenal of explosives that was at the scout house, there'd be even more explosives there at the armory. Enough to take down a mine. If there's even a fraction more explosives there, there might be enough to collapse the mine on itself and to kill all the beasts that prowl these mines. Perhaps you might find some use there. It's as good a place to start as any, given you won't be able to take down the horde with firearms alone. You turn your head, hearing a low growl nearby, only to find yourself staring at the blank stone walls. You squint your eyes, making out murals among them. Blood red images crudely painted, depicting fearsome creatures and other scenes. Interesting. > You investigate the murals You walk forward, staring at the wall in front of you. The scenes are in red paint, depicting fearsome werewolves prowling across the wall, chasing simple outlines of human figures. You follow it from right to left, seeing a massive chained wolf howling at the sky at the very left. Despite the brutal simplicity of the drawings, they reflect a certain life, certain realism, a certain bestial energy that's beyond you. You stare inherently, slowly moving your hands towards them. Your hands slowly edge towards the murals, fingers tracing the outlines of shapes and scenes. The first one depicts a wolf, bound and chained, surrounded by vague outlines of spear-wielding humans. The next depicts a spear wielding human holding a chain in the beasts maw. The next seems to depict a half-man, half-wolf. No doubt the first werewolf, frozen mid transformation in a scream. You pause, staring at the scene in front of you. Despite the simplistic nature of the drawing, being little more than a stick man with a wolf head and claw, most other duties vague and confusing to you, but it holds impact to you. You can almost hear the faint screams of the man as they turn to howls, feel the familiar pain he went through in your heart. You truly understand him. As you look on, the pictures seem to beat and hum with an animalistic energy. The next scene shows the werewolf hunting down packs of warriors, catching one by the leg. The next shows the werewolf watching him transform, as once again his painful transformation feels all too familiar to you. Then, you see an image of a pack of werewolves running against the tunnel walls. The final image shows you the glowing image of the moon, surrounded by a pack of werewolves tearing around Mother Luna. You stare at the moon, watching as the symbol drawing hums and haws with power, glowing in your eyes with a tremendous power beyond human comprehension. You watch, your eyes shining in the reflection. Bright. Moon. Power! Beast! FENRIR! FENRIR CALLS! You heard the world shake and shiver around you, as a booming growl fills the tunnels. "Little one... look at how far you've fallen. Once a proud mortal hunter, now a slave to your bestial urges... my bestial urges," a booming voice growls, tearing through your mind as you feel the urge to howl back at it. You drop to your knees, clutching your hands to your head, you try to focus on the burn of the silver inside you or your wounds, trying not to let your urges consume you. "I am Fenrir, God of Beasts, Hróðvitnir, Hound of Ragnarök, Vánagandr, son of Loki, father of Sköll and Hati Hróðvitnisson, the prophesied killer of Odin, the creator of the werewolves and the Great Maw That Will Consume The World." Focusing on your pain, you manage to hold back the beast within, but only barely. Focusing on the burning hot silver coals in your chest, the pain of your torn up face and the stab wound in your side that's been jabbed in your side, you hold onto your sanity, your humanity, yourself. "You've proven yourself strong. Courageous. Violent. Powerful. I wish to make you my champion. I will sharpen your bestial instinct, I will lengthen your claws, broaden your form, strengthen your flesh, harden your bones. I will make you far more powerful than you have been tonight, a true avatar of my form." You stare ahead at the mural, as the confusing red lines seem to draw together in the growling face of a wolf for a moment, before it becomes too painful to look at. "Simply... embrace the change. Embrace the beast within. Embrace yourself. I'll even leave you with enough of a mind that you can finish what you started here. All you have to do is to release the beast within, and answer my call!" > You aNSWER FENRIR'S CALL! RELEASE THE BEAST! The fear, the anger, the hate, the sadness and the pain inside you are consumed by the beast within, as you release your pent up emotions in a roar. Fenrir answers your roar with one of his own, as you collapse to your knees, hair sprouting rapidly to coat your body in a thick coating. Pain courses through you, but unlike before, its a good pain, like the burn of exercising. Your muscles grow and thicken in large coils beyond anything you've grown tonight, skin stretching to cover it. Your teeth sharpen, allowing you to form a malevolent grin that stretches across your face as it twists into a snout. Your ears flicker, listening carefully to the noises of the mineshaft, hearing a chorus of howls further down. Your lean back on your hind legs, your arms broken and reformed into forelegs topped with beautifully sharp claws that stretch from your fingernails, blood pouring forth from your hand, running down your fur-covered fingers as you laugh, your lupine vocal cords morphing the noise into a deep, guttural noise. Losing all traces of humanity, all you feel is a bloodlust beyond that of any man's mind, with a hunger filling you. You lick your lips greedily, ready to strike. You stand, tall and strong, much larger than you ever have, snarling and running your tongue along your sharpened teeth, like dozens of ivory daggers. You feel strength course through your blood, feeling the true power of Fenrir. No longer are you bound by your weak, wretched human form. Now you have the body of a true predator, gifted to you by the God of Beasts. You are a hunter. Those werewolves that are foolish enough to remain in this mine shaft are you prey. "Good... good, little one," the voice of Fenrir whispers. "Now... hunt." Time to answer his call. > You carve your way to the Alpha Fenrir's call having strengthened your soul and sharpened your abilities, your lupine hunting form solidified, your claws sharpened and a true feeling of power in your heart, you're ready to strike. You hurry through the mine shafts and tunnels, nostrils filled with the pungent odor of the other werewolves hiding in the tunnels. The werewolves are easy to hunt down through the tunnels, as you slaughter them like lambs. With your abilities, you've found that you're faster, stronger and better than any you come across. They're lambs, and you're a wolf. Any werewolves caught by themselves are torn apart, clawed up or eaten, none able to escape your fury. However, these are just simple targets to take down, not the main threat. The main threat's scent is on your nose, and you're hunting him down. You enter a large, open room of the mine shaft, and you find it emerging from the darkness. The Alpha. The creature stares at you with its one working eye, an eye that seems twisted by malice. It slowly prowls ahead, thin, angular body emerging from the darkness. It lets out a bark, as the other werewolves in the mine shaft slowly part, moving back to allow you two to fight. It's a challenge. The Alpha is challenging you for dominance, clearly aware that its position is tenuous, and that if it doesn't take down the new threat, it'll lose the respect of its pack. It's lost Fenrir's favor, and needs to regain it. You won't let it. Kill! Slaughter! TEAR! BITE! CLAW! HACK! EAT! BLOOD! FLESH! EVISCERATE" The werewolf lunges forward towards you, as you're left ready to take down the beast. > You rend the creatures face open with your claws You slash your claws forward, tearing through the Alpha's face and carving through its snout, but the full weight of hundreds of pounds are still barreling on top of you, as they slam into you, knocking you to the ground with a thud. The weight smashes you against the ground with a pained yell, as you're pinned to the ground. The Alpha howls, blood spraying down from its face, but its still got the instinct to keep you pinned down. The creature keeps you forced against the ground, pressing its claws against you as you only barely manage to force it back. It's snapping maw nears your face, as you attempt to keep the creature off you. You find yourself stuck and unable to react. > You throw the beast off you You roll your legs under the Alpha's weight, forcing your legs forwards under the creature's weight as you ram your claws against its chest, trying to push it off. You push with all your might, and the Alpha begins to budge, before taking its chance to strike. With your four legs pressed up against the creature's body in your attempt to throw it off, its claws are free, and burst forward, slashing at you. Two pairs of claws hack across your face, cutting through your snout and tearing it off, before cutting through your skull as you howl in pain. The claws tear through your face, leaving you broken and bleeding, before your head drops to the ground, blood staining your fur.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You slash your claws forward, tearing through the Alpha's face and carving through its snout, but the full weight of hundreds of pounds are still barreling on top of you, as they slam into you, knocking you to the ground with a thud. The weight smashes you against the ground with a pained yell, as you're pinned to the ground. The Alpha howls, blood spraying down from its face, but its still got the instinct to keep you pinned down. The creature keeps you forced against the ground, pressing its claws against you as you only barely manage to force it back. It's snapping maw nears your face, as you attempt to keep the creature off you. You find yourself stuck and unable to react. > You scratch at the creature's eyes You move your claw under the creature's weight, before slashing your furs towards the Alpha's bloody face. However, the creature's just had to feel the pain of your claws slashing through your face, as it strains to raise its head and keep your claws away from it. It manages to keep your claws from cutting through little but fur, as you wear out your strength. Soon, your strength is sapped, and you go weak under its weight. With your strength sapped, the Alpha smashes its claws down and bashes past your weak arms, hacking through your chest and busting through your ribcage. You howl, pain wracking through you as you go weak, body shuddering as your heart is crushed under the Alpha's blows.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You slash your claws forward, tearing through the Alpha's face and carving through its snout, but the full weight of hundreds of pounds are still barreling on top of you, as they slam into you, knocking you to the ground with a thud. The weight smashes you against the ground with a pained yell, as you're pinned to the ground. The Alpha howls, blood spraying down from its face, but its still got the instinct to keep you pinned down. The creature keeps you forced against the ground, pressing its claws against you as you only barely manage to force it back. It's snapping maw nears your face, as you attempt to keep the creature off you. You find yourself stuck and unable to react. > You hack open the creature's arm You hack your claws at the creature's arm, or leg, or whatever it could be called, cutting through its flesh and muscles, tearing through hide and fur to the point where your claw is scraping against bone. The creature howls in pain, rolling off you as it retreats with its torn up limb. You pounce forward, unready to give it's a moment respite from the bloodshed. You grab the Alpha in an embrace, forcing the creature back as its claws and arms wrap around. The two of you force your strengths against each other, each trying to push other down to tear your foe apart, but its an equal battle. Even with your gifts from Fenrir, the Alpha is an old being with a fearsome strength, and far beyond what you've dealt with before. The two of you fight, claw and tooth, howling and roaring in the mineshaft, as you try to find everything within you you can find to win this battle. > You kill! KILL! Call upon Fenrir's strength and kill! You roar, feeling Fenrir's might rush through your body. You ram the creature backwards, roaring and howling as you push the creature backwards. STRENGTH! POWER! RAGE! KILL! DIE! You force the Alpha back again, releasing a burst of laughing as you realize the creature isn't an Alpha. Its a weak, fragile creature to be torn apart. Roaring once more, you ram the creature against the mine shaft, before knocking it to the ground to bash your claw against the creature's skull. You knock it over onto its back with a swipe, before diving atop it, tearing your jaws into it. You tear out its throat, lifting your head into the air and swallowing it with a wave of blood and flesh. It tries to whimper, but its only a wet squelch. You stare at the other wolves, seeing them bow their heads, low and submissive of you. They're no longer your enemy. They're weak, and they see someone strong. You're their inspiration. You're their leader. Any traces of humanity is gone, as your howl joins Fenrir's. You are one of these creatures. You are their leader. This is your destiny. You lift your head towards the sky, and howl, as your call is answered by the rest of your pack. > You take control of your new pack The New Alpha You sprint through the forest, the glow of the moon above you, lighting your path and filling you with strength. Your companions follow you, prowling through the shadows, their every sound and movement a communication to you. Run. Lead. Track! Sprint! HUNT! You keep running, your ears flickering as you hear the sounds of the forest, your nose smelling the scents that fill the forest. Your body is perfect for sprinting through the forest, designed for running, for leaping and pouncing. Your claws are weapons designed to kill, your teeth knives to pierce and cut. You are a killing machine, a predator designed from millions of years. You are Fenrir's champion, blessed with his abilities, his form, his instincts, his nature, his power! You are a hunter. You reach the ridge at the edge of the forest, staring down at the moonlit suburbs. The suburbs seem strange, bizarre and confusing, but your instincts and the barest remains of your humanity know that they're filled with people. Lights. Noise. Humans! Prey! HUNT! KILL! The buzz of the suburbs, the strange, unnatural lights from the buildings and the strange sounds of humans activity. The suburbs are filled with the weak, pathetic prey animals. They're down there, little more than easy meals to be torn apart or devoured, with the worthiest given Fenrir's gift. They're down there, unaware to what owns the night. They are your prey. You let out your howl, as you watch as dozens upon dozens of werewolves emerge from the trees, staring down greedily towards the town. Those you're created, those you're recruited, those who have answered your call. The werewolves begin to descend upon the suburbs, racing towards the buildings. You howl again, a fierce noise as you howl towards the bright moon that hangs low in the sky. Tonight, you hunt in the pale moonlight. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hack your claws at the creature's arm, or leg, or whatever it could be called, cutting through its flesh and muscles, tearing through hide and fur to the point where your claw is scraping against bone. The creature howls in pain, rolling off you as it retreats with its torn up limb. You pounce forward, unready to give it's a moment respite from the bloodshed. You grab the Alpha in an embrace, forcing the creature back as its claws and arms wrap around. The two of you force your strengths against each other, each trying to push other down to tear your foe apart, but its an equal battle. Even with your gifts from Fenrir, the Alpha is an old being with a fearsome strength, and far beyond what you've dealt with before. The two of you fight, claw and tooth, howling and roaring in the mineshaft, as you try to find everything within you you can find to win this battle. > You focus and use all of your might! You focus, focusing on the pain in your chest, the wound in your side, your carved up nose. You growl, finding the strength rise up inside of you, focusing on your task. You need one more drop of strength tonight. One more victory! You dig your heels in, roaring as you toss the werewolf backwards, overcoming its strength and flipping it onto its back. As the creature collapses onto the ground, you lead forward, landing atop the creature. It howls out in pain, before you slam your claws against the creature's head with all your strength, crushing the creature's skull with one solid motion, killing it instantly. You howl towards the moon, a noise which soon turns to laughter. You turn other werewolves, finding them either fleeing into the woods again or whimpering at you. You laugh, ready to hunt down the mongrels that flee from your sight. Over the next few hours before sunrise, you hunt down the remaining the werewolves. They flee into the night, but your senses mean they're incapable of escaping and your claws and teeth mean that they're never going to escape from you. Soon, your belly is full with flesh, your hair streaked with blood, and the remaining survivors of the pack finished off or having fled. You sprint along the ground, instinct running through you as you sprint through the forest, following one of the last werewolves to have fled the scene. You're tight on her tail, ready to finish her off, before you hear a barrage of gunfire. Looking ahead, you hear a burst of gunfire, as you slide to a halt. You slam your claws into a tree and skid to a halt, your eyes staring through the trees as you find yourself staring at a werewolf being gunned down. You quickly disappear into the bushes and undergrowth, staring through as a squad of Hunters appears, no doubt looking for what happened to the rest of you. You pause, wondering whether to try talk to them, or retreat into the woods and leave the world alone. > You make contact with the Hunters You slowly approach the group of hunters, head down. You take One of the Hunters lets out a yell, as they group quickly turn around to aim at you. "It's trying to communicate," one of the Hunters says incredulously. "It's non-hostile." "It's must have some dregs of humanity left. Keep aim, lads!" Ernest shouts. You pause, eyes flickering over the leader of the Hunters, wondering where you recognize him from. Some distant memory that's rapidly fading from your mind. Soon, you no longer remember his name, only recognizing his status as leader through his physical cues. The Hunters faces twist into ones of confusion and malice, but they hold fire. "Listen to me, beast," Ernest says sternly, sighing his face. "If you can hear me, it's OK. We need to put you down. I think that we both know that. I know you did, somewhere it what remains of your soul. It's OK. It'll be OK. May God have mercy on your soul." Feeling pain run through you, you lower your face, not able to meet his gaze as you try to decide your future. > You let them kill you A Well-Deserved Rest You look down at the Hunters, your head lowering as you rest it against the cold soil, breathing heavily. The adrenaline fading from your blood, you just feel tired. Broken. Exhausted. Above all, you're ready to rest. You don't want violence. Only sleep. The Hunters raise their weapons, aiming it at your skull as they prepare to fire. You stare at them, letting go of the hatred, anger, worry, fear and terror of the night, calming the beast within, and wait. The werewolf pack is dead. Your mission is finished. Humanity is safe. There's nothing more for you left. The guns fire, and the silver bullets tear lupine skull and flesh, blowing apart your brain and shooting out the top of your skull. Darkness shrouds over you, and you can feel the desperate, clawing, howling beast within you get pulled down into the depths of darkness with you. Now, the eternal rest is all that's left for you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You slowly approach the group of hunters, head down. You take One of the Hunters lets out a yell, as they group quickly turn around to aim at you. "It's trying to communicate," one of the Hunters says incredulously. "It's non-hostile." "It's must have some dregs of humanity left. Keep aim, lads!" Ernest shouts. You pause, eyes flickering over the leader of the Hunters, wondering where you recognize him from. Some distant memory that's rapidly fading from your mind. Soon, you no longer remember his name, only recognizing his status as leader through his physical cues. The Hunters faces twist into ones of confusion and malice, but they hold fire. "Listen to me, beast," Ernest says sternly, sighing his face. "If you can hear me, it's OK. We need to put you down. I think that we both know that. I know you did, somewhere it what remains of your soul. It's OK. It'll be OK. May God have mercy on your soul." Feeling pain run through you, you lower your face, not able to meet his gaze as you try to decide your future. > You flee deeper into the woods You twist around on your legs, bursting off them in a single leap as you find yourself flying through the air, finding yourself in a sprint. The Hunters raise their weapons, a burst of bullets firing out as you leap from side to side, rushing behind the trees as bullets hit the dirt around you, splintering wood and narrowly missing you. Still, you're faster than they could be, and with your blessings, you manage to avoid the bullets with ease. Soon, you're out of range of the gunfire, hurrying along the woods as the sound of gunfire becomes more and more distant, as you head deeper and deeper into the endless forest. As you run, your worries, your hate, your anger burns away, as you just find yourself running, any traces of humanity being shed with each step. Mankind has rejected you. Fenrir has taken you in. You're no longer human. You are a beast. You are a predator. You are a hunter. You hear a few scattered howls through the forest, the answer of the surviving werewolves to your call. You howl once more, calling them to you. You have no need for Hunters anymore. You have your own predators now. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You slowly approach the group of hunters, head down. You take One of the Hunters lets out a yell, as they group quickly turn around to aim at you. "It's trying to communicate," one of the Hunters says incredulously. "It's non-hostile." "It's must have some dregs of humanity left. Keep aim, lads!" Ernest shouts. You pause, eyes flickering over the leader of the Hunters, wondering where you recognize him from. Some distant memory that's rapidly fading from your mind. Soon, you no longer remember his name, only recognizing his status as leader through his physical cues. The Hunters faces twist into ones of confusion and malice, but they hold fire. "Listen to me, beast," Ernest says sternly, sighing his face. "If you can hear me, it's OK. We need to put you down. I think that we both know that. I know you did, somewhere it what remains of your soul. It's OK. It'll be OK. May God have mercy on your soul." Feeling pain run through you, you lower your face, not able to meet his gaze as you try to decide your future. > You slaughter them all You let out a fearsome roar, bursting forward with a roar. The Hunters balk at the sound, as you dive forward, claws raised and teeth bared. The Hunters are used to dealing with werewolves, but you're no mere werewolf. You are the champion of Fenrir. You have his strength, his speed, his abilities, his ferocity. They don't have a chance. You swing your claw, tearing through a Hunter's neck and nearly beheading him with a spurt of blood, sending them flying aside. Your maw snaps onto a Hunter's arm and tearing it off with one motion, throwing it across the earth. You dive aside, dodging a barrage of bullets. You lunge forward, tackling a Hunter and crushing her under your weight and crushing her lungs. You reach your jaws down, tearing out her throat with ease, as you stare over towards the survivors, blood dripping from your maw as you let out a low growl. The last two Hunters turn, fleeing back towards their truck, running desperately as if they have some hope of escape. You easily race down to catch them, knocking away one of their legs and crushing his skull, before tackling the last one and slashing through her neck with your claws. Victorious, you howl towards the moon, laughter racing through you. You look at the scene around of you, slaughtered Hunters lying dead on the ground, blood sinking into the ground. There's no place for you hear. Prey, all slaughtered like lambs.Too weak for you. You hear a few scattered howls through the forest, the answer of the surviving werewolves to your call. You howl once more, calling them to you. You have no need for Hunters anymore. You have your own predators now. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You focus, focusing on the pain in your chest, the wound in your side, your carved up nose. You growl, finding the strength rise up inside of you, focusing on your task. You need one more drop of strength tonight. One more victory! You dig your heels in, roaring as you toss the werewolf backwards, overcoming its strength and flipping it onto its back. As the creature collapses onto the ground, you lead forward, landing atop the creature. It howls out in pain, before you slam your claws against the creature's head with all your strength, crushing the creature's skull with one solid motion, killing it instantly. You howl towards the moon, a noise which soon turns to laughter. You turn other werewolves, finding them either fleeing into the woods again or whimpering at you. You laugh, ready to hunt down the mongrels that flee from your sight. Over the next few hours before sunrise, you hunt down the remaining the werewolves. They flee into the night, but your senses mean they're incapable of escaping and your claws and teeth mean that they're never going to escape from you. Soon, your belly is full with flesh, your hair streaked with blood, and the remaining survivors of the pack finished off or having fled. You sprint along the ground, instinct running through you as you sprint through the forest, following one of the last werewolves to have fled the scene. You're tight on her tail, ready to finish her off, before you hear a barrage of gunfire. Looking ahead, you hear a burst of gunfire, as you slide to a halt. You slam your claws into a tree and skid to a halt, your eyes staring through the trees as you find yourself staring at a werewolf being gunned down. You quickly disappear into the bushes and undergrowth, staring through as a squad of Hunters appears, no doubt looking for what happened to the rest of you. You pause, wondering whether to try talk to them, or retreat into the woods and leave the world alone. > You retreat deeper into the woods The Hunters wouldn't understand you. They'd never understand what you are, never trust you. They'd simply see you as a different form of beast entirely, but still something to be hunted down and killed. You are no longer one of their kind. You are one of Fenrir's children now, not Adam's. You sprint as fast as you can, paws feeling the cold soil underneath you as the trees fly past. As you run, your worries, your hate, your anger burns away, as you just find yourself running, any traces of humanity being shed with each step. Mankind has rejected you. Fenrir has taken you in. You're no longer human. You are a beast. You are a predator. You are a hunter. You hear a few scattered howls through the forest, the answer of the surviving werewolves to your call. You howl once more, calling them to you. You have no need for Hunters anymore. You have your own predators now. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You focus, focusing on the pain in your chest, the wound in your side, your carved up nose. You growl, finding the strength rise up inside of you, focusing on your task. You need one more drop of strength tonight. One more victory! You dig your heels in, roaring as you toss the werewolf backwards, overcoming its strength and flipping it onto its back. As the creature collapses onto the ground, you lead forward, landing atop the creature. It howls out in pain, before you slam your claws against the creature's head with all your strength, crushing the creature's skull with one solid motion, killing it instantly. You howl towards the moon, a noise which soon turns to laughter. You turn other werewolves, finding them either fleeing into the woods again or whimpering at you. You laugh, ready to hunt down the mongrels that flee from your sight. Over the next few hours before sunrise, you hunt down the remaining the werewolves. They flee into the night, but your senses mean they're incapable of escaping and your claws and teeth mean that they're never going to escape from you. Soon, your belly is full with flesh, your hair streaked with blood, and the remaining survivors of the pack finished off or having fled. You sprint along the ground, instinct running through you as you sprint through the forest, following one of the last werewolves to have fled the scene. You're tight on her tail, ready to finish her off, before you hear a barrage of gunfire. Looking ahead, you hear a burst of gunfire, as you slide to a halt. You slam your claws into a tree and skid to a halt, your eyes staring through the trees as you find yourself staring at a werewolf being gunned down. You quickly disappear into the bushes and undergrowth, staring through as a squad of Hunters appears, no doubt looking for what happened to the rest of you. You pause, wondering whether to try talk to them, or retreat into the woods and leave the world alone. > You hunt! Kill! FEED! You let out a fearsome roar, bursting forward with a roar. The human prey animals balk at the sound, as you dive forward, claws raised and teeth bared. The Hunters are used to dealing with werewolves, but you're no mere werewolf. You are the champion of Fenrir. You have his strength, his speed, his abilities, his ferocity. They don't have a chance. You swing your claw, tearing through a Hunter's neck and nearly beheading him with a spurt of blood, sending them flying aside. Your maw snaps onto a Hunter's arm and tearing it off with one motion, throwing it across the earth. You dive aside, dodging a barrage of bullets. You lunge forward, tackling a Hunter and crushing her under your weight and crushing her lungs. You reach your jaws down, tearing out her throat with ease, as you stare over towards the survivors, blood dripping from your maw as you let out a low growl. The last two Hunters turn, fleeing back towards their truck, running desperately as if they have some hope of escape. You easily race down to catch them, knocking away one of their legs and crushing his skull, before tackling the last one and slashing through her neck with your claws. Victorious, you howl towards the moon, laughter racing through you. You look at the scene around of you, slaughtered Hunters lying dead on the ground, blood sinking into the ground. There's no place for you hear. Prey, all slaughtered like lambs.Too weak for you. You hear a few scattered howls through the forest, the answer of the surviving werewolves to your call. You howl once more, calling them to you. You have no need for Hunters anymore. You have your own predators now. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hack your claws at the creature's arm, or leg, or whatever it could be called, cutting through its flesh and muscles, tearing through hide and fur to the point where your claw is scraping against bone. The creature howls in pain, rolling off you as it retreats with its torn up limb. You pounce forward, unready to give it's a moment respite from the bloodshed. You grab the Alpha in an embrace, forcing the creature back as its claws and arms wrap around. The two of you force your strengths against each other, each trying to push other down to tear your foe apart, but its an equal battle. Even with your gifts from Fenrir, the Alpha is an old being with a fearsome strength, and far beyond what you've dealt with before. The two of you fight, claw and tooth, howling and roaring in the mineshaft, as you try to find everything within you you can find to win this battle. > You escape from the embrace and retreat to a safer distance You knock the beast back quickly, before scampering backwards to escape your foe. However, the Alpha manages to catch your snout with a powerful claw strike as you fumble back, nearly tearing your snout in two. You continue retreating backwards, but the creature lunges forward, tackling you. As you're left undefended and scampering backwards, you're practically unable to defend yourself as the creature slams you against the ground, snapping your neck with ease.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fenrir's call having strengthened your soul and sharpened your abilities, your lupine hunting form solidified, your claws sharpened and a true feeling of power in your heart, you're ready to strike. You hurry through the mine shafts and tunnels, nostrils filled with the pungent odor of the other werewolves hiding in the tunnels. The werewolves are easy to hunt down through the tunnels, as you slaughter them like lambs. With your abilities, you've found that you're faster, stronger and better than any you come across. They're lambs, and you're a wolf. Any werewolves caught by themselves are torn apart, clawed up or eaten, none able to escape your fury. However, these are just simple targets to take down, not the main threat. The main threat's scent is on your nose, and you're hunting him down. You enter a large, open room of the mine shaft, and you find it emerging from the darkness. The Alpha. The creature stares at you with its one working eye, an eye that seems twisted by malice. It slowly prowls ahead, thin, angular body emerging from the darkness. It lets out a bark, as the other werewolves in the mine shaft slowly part, moving back to allow you two to fight. It's a challenge. The Alpha is challenging you for dominance, clearly aware that its position is tenuous, and that if it doesn't take down the new threat, it'll lose the respect of its pack. It's lost Fenrir's favor, and needs to regain it. You won't let it. Kill! Slaughter! TEAR! BITE! CLAW! HACK! EAT! BLOOD! FLESH! EVISCERATE" The werewolf lunges forward towards you, as you're left ready to take down the beast. > You leap forward and tackle the beast You leap forward with a howl, your full weight smashing into the Alpha as the two of you roll to the side and smack into the dirt. You grab the Alpha in an embrace, forcing the creature back as its claws and arms wrap around. The two of you force your strengths against each other, each trying to push other down to tear your foe apart, but its an equal battle. Even with your gifts from Fenrir, the Alpha is an old being with a fearsome strength, and far beyond what you've dealt with before. The two of you fight, claw and tooth, howling and roaring in the mineshaft, as you try to find everything within you you can find to win this battle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fenrir's call having strengthened your soul and sharpened your abilities, your lupine hunting form solidified, your claws sharpened and a true feeling of power in your heart, you're ready to strike. You hurry through the mine shafts and tunnels, nostrils filled with the pungent odor of the other werewolves hiding in the tunnels. The werewolves are easy to hunt down through the tunnels, as you slaughter them like lambs. With your abilities, you've found that you're faster, stronger and better than any you come across. They're lambs, and you're a wolf. Any werewolves caught by themselves are torn apart, clawed up or eaten, none able to escape your fury. However, these are just simple targets to take down, not the main threat. The main threat's scent is on your nose, and you're hunting him down. You enter a large, open room of the mine shaft, and you find it emerging from the darkness. The Alpha. The creature stares at you with its one working eye, an eye that seems twisted by malice. It slowly prowls ahead, thin, angular body emerging from the darkness. It lets out a bark, as the other werewolves in the mine shaft slowly part, moving back to allow you two to fight. It's a challenge. The Alpha is challenging you for dominance, clearly aware that its position is tenuous, and that if it doesn't take down the new threat, it'll lose the respect of its pack. It's lost Fenrir's favor, and needs to regain it. You won't let it. Kill! Slaughter! TEAR! BITE! CLAW! HACK! EAT! BLOOD! FLESH! EVISCERATE" The werewolf lunges forward towards you, as you're left ready to take down the beast. > You roll to the side and avoid its strike You roll to the side, dashing past as the Alpha slams into the tunnel wall behind you, unable to stop the weight and speed of its lunge and instead crashing upon itself. It collapses to the ground. It falls upon itself as it scrambles to find its position. You wonder whether its time to strike, to tear the creature limb for limb while its off-balance, or whether to keep your distance, letting the creature make a few more lunges so the creature can tire itself out, before finishing it off with a few quick and heavy strikes. > You tear through it with tooth and claw! You lunge forward, hitting the Alpha by the side and knocking the creature on its side. You bite down on a mouthful of flesh, tearing through fur and hide to chew into human flesh, devouring it as the warm, wet beat slides down your throat. You slash your claws, cutting and carving through the creature's side as it tries to escape from your grip, but finds itself unable. It manages to press its claws against your own, stopping you from striking as it uses its leg to push your body away from its own, to keep its jaw away. The creature's dazed and wounded, semi-pinned under your weight, but its powerful maw is still lunging out at you, desperately trying to tear out your throat. If you're going to finish it before it gets a lucky blow or manages to turn the situation around, you need to do it quickly. > You crush its skull! You swing your claw down towards the creature's skull with all your might. The Alpha snaps its jaw forward, its maw tearing into your swinging arm. The strength of your swing only drives your flesh upon their teeth, as you find your arm locked in the Alpha's jaw as it tears through your flesh. The Alpha bites down with all its strength, tearing through your arm. The force of the bite breaks through bone and tears through muscle, as your arm is torn in two. You howl, your bleeding limb screaming with pain. You try to scamper away, but lacking one leg, you simply collapse to the ground, leaving the Alpha with the chance to strike. The Alpha tackles you, pinning you to the ground as its maw once again strikes, sinking into your neck and tearing out your throat. A torrential wave of blood bursts forward, staining your blood red and leaving you sinking to the ground, dead before your head hits the soil.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You lunge forward, hitting the Alpha by the side and knocking the creature on its side. You bite down on a mouthful of flesh, tearing through fur and hide to chew into human flesh, devouring it as the warm, wet beat slides down your throat. You slash your claws, cutting and carving through the creature's side as it tries to escape from your grip, but finds itself unable. It manages to press its claws against your own, stopping you from striking as it uses its leg to push your body away from its own, to keep its jaw away. The creature's dazed and wounded, semi-pinned under your weight, but its powerful maw is still lunging out at you, desperately trying to tear out your throat. If you're going to finish it before it gets a lucky blow or manages to turn the situation around, you need to do it quickly. > You tear through its underside! You burst forward, slashing with your claws as you toss the creature onto its back, revealing its bare, undefended stomach. You stab your claws forward, clawing and tearing through flesh as you eviscerate the creatures heart, stomach and intestines. The creatures whines as its devastated, but its body goes limp, collapsing to the ground. You howl towards the moon, a noise which soon turns to laughter. You turn other werewolves, finding them either fleeing into the woods again or whimpering at you. You laugh, ready to hunt down the mongrels that flee from your sight. Over the next few hours before sunrise, you hunt down the remaining the werewolves. They flee into the night, but your senses mean they're incapable of escaping and your claws and teeth mean that they're never going to escape from you. Soon, your belly is full with flesh, your hair streaked with blood, and the remaining survivors of the pack finished off or having fled. You sprint along the ground, instinct running through you as you sprint through the forest, following one of the last werewolves to have fled the scene. You're tight on her tail, ready to finish her off, before you hear a barrage of gunfire. Looking ahead, you hear a burst of gunfire, as you slide to a halt. You slam your claws into a tree and skid to a halt, your eyes staring through the trees as you find yourself staring at a werewolf being gunned down. You quickly disappear into the bushes and undergrowth, staring through as a squad of Hunters appears, no doubt looking for what happened to the rest of you. You pause, wondering whether to try talk to them, or retreat into the woods and leave the world alone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You roll to the side, dashing past as the Alpha slams into the tunnel wall behind you, unable to stop the weight and speed of its lunge and instead crashing upon itself. It collapses to the ground. It falls upon itself as it scrambles to find its position. You wonder whether its time to strike, to tear the creature limb for limb while its off-balance, or whether to keep your distance, letting the creature make a few more lunges so the creature can tire itself out, before finishing it off with a few quick and heavy strikes. > You wait and let the Alpha tire itself out lunging You wait patiently, prowling around at the corner of their view. You move slowly around the Alpha, watching intently as you wait for your chance to strike and tear it apart. It doesn't lunge again, perhaps realizing you have the speed to dodge. However, as you soon learn, they're not your only enemy. You hear a growl from the side, as one of the many werewolves of the pack charges out, leaping through the air as it finds courage. You twist around, slashing with your claws as you roar, the creature retreating with a new set of wounds. However, this opens up the chance for the Alpha to strike, and he darts out, tackling you. You try to twist, but the creature stands above you, launching its claws against your head and killing you instantly as they impale through your skull.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk forward, staring at the wall in front of you. The scenes are in red paint, depicting fearsome werewolves prowling across the wall, chasing simple outlines of human figures. You follow it from right to left, seeing a massive chained wolf howling at the sky at the very left. Despite the brutal simplicity of the drawings, they reflect a certain life, certain realism, a certain bestial energy that's beyond you. You stare inherently, slowly moving your hands towards them. Your hands slowly edge towards the murals, fingers tracing the outlines of shapes and scenes. The first one depicts a wolf, bound and chained, surrounded by vague outlines of spear-wielding humans. The next depicts a spear wielding human holding a chain in the beasts maw. The next seems to depict a half-man, half-wolf. No doubt the first werewolf, frozen mid transformation in a scream. You pause, staring at the scene in front of you. Despite the simplistic nature of the drawing, being little more than a stick man with a wolf head and claw, most other duties vague and confusing to you, but it holds impact to you. You can almost hear the faint screams of the man as they turn to howls, feel the familiar pain he went through in your heart. You truly understand him. As you look on, the pictures seem to beat and hum with an animalistic energy. The next scene shows the werewolf hunting down packs of warriors, catching one by the leg. The next shows the werewolf watching him transform, as once again his painful transformation feels all too familiar to you. Then, you see an image of a pack of werewolves running against the tunnel walls. The final image shows you the glowing image of the moon, surrounded by a pack of werewolves tearing around Mother Luna. You stare at the moon, watching as the symbol drawing hums and haws with power, glowing in your eyes with a tremendous power beyond human comprehension. You watch, your eyes shining in the reflection. Bright. Moon. Power! Beast! FENRIR! FENRIR CALLS! You heard the world shake and shiver around you, as a booming growl fills the tunnels. "Little one... look at how far you've fallen. Once a proud mortal hunter, now a slave to your bestial urges... my bestial urges," a booming voice growls, tearing through your mind as you feel the urge to howl back at it. You drop to your knees, clutching your hands to your head, you try to focus on the burn of the silver inside you or your wounds, trying not to let your urges consume you. "I am Fenrir, God of Beasts, Hróðvitnir, Hound of Ragnarök, Vánagandr, son of Loki, father of Sköll and Hati Hróðvitnisson, the prophesied killer of Odin, the creator of the werewolves and the Great Maw That Will Consume The World." Focusing on your pain, you manage to hold back the beast within, but only barely. Focusing on the burning hot silver coals in your chest, the pain of your torn up face and the stab wound in your side that's been jabbed in your side, you hold onto your sanity, your humanity, yourself. "You've proven yourself strong. Courageous. Violent. Powerful. I wish to make you my champion. I will sharpen your bestial instinct, I will lengthen your claws, broaden your form, strengthen your flesh, harden your bones. I will make you far more powerful than you have been tonight, a true avatar of my form." You stare ahead at the mural, as the confusing red lines seem to draw together in the growling face of a wolf for a moment, before it becomes too painful to look at. "Simply... embrace the change. Embrace the beast within. Embrace yourself. I'll even leave you with enough of a mind that you can finish what you started here. All you have to do is to release the beast within, and answer my call!" > You fIGHT THE CHANGE! You growl, squeezing your head between your hands as you take a deep breath, focusing on your pain. You focus on the human shape of your hands as they burn with pain, and the feeling of your skin glow with red hot pain, and your humanoid face which burns from silver. You focus on who you are, as you fight off the transformation. "No," you say. "I won't be doing that." "So be it," Fenrir grumbles. "I'll leave you to your fate. Rot in it, mortal one. Soon, your mind will be mine anyway." The roaring noise begins to fade, as the glow of the shifting murals calms, the mural solidifying in front of you. The magical glow that hangs over you fades, and you're left alone in the darkness. You sigh, turning away from the scene in front of you, not wanting to look at the animalistic mural ahead of you, as all it does it draw out the beast within. You shan't be making any deals with Fenrir, the father of beasts. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You push your head up to the bizarre object, sniffing. The outside seems to be made of burning metal, its very aura unnerving you, but the inside is made of colder metal, and you gently press your nose against it, smelling it. It smells ever so faintly of blood, and... Suddenly, the device snaps shut, slicing through your nose as you scream out in pain, collapsing back. The object traps your face in its burning saws, sending waves of burning pain through you. Blood pours down your snout as you scream, the tip of your nose messily hacked off, beginning to burn. You yank your face back, breaking free of the device and spraying the area with a light mist of blood as you find yourself collapsing to the ground, darkness hitting you in waves which contrast with the waves of burning pain, as you're left lying there, your body breaking and burning with pain once again. You don't know whether it's hours, minutes or seconds later, but soon, you find sanity once again. You slowly take breath through your lips, which are torn up, cut and bleeding, your upper lip barely hanging on. Thankfully, the healing factor of the werewolves has left your upper lip scabbing up in a mismatched mess of colors. You nose is heavily damaged, smell somewhat obscured in your left nostril from the dried blood and pus clogging it. You scratch at it, a thin stream of warm blood running down your face. You groan, before finding the strength left in you. Knowing that it's too late for you to just lay down and die, you take a deep breath, focusing your remaining strength of what you can find inside you. You roll to your knees, resting a hand against the cold earth as you relax your tired muscles, looking around the room. The room must've been a mineshaft intersection at one point. It's been rigged up with lights and electricity, with a large desk stacked with television screens in the corner of the room. You peer over at them, watching the various scenes of the forest. It must be another bunch of cameras connected to the screens. Your eyes flicker to the hung up "meat" ahead of you, hanging from the ceiling, as you begin to feel sick. The mutilated, bleeding corpses of Hans Hirsch, Russel Sloane and Father Charles Féval hang from the ceiling, blood dripping down and pooling underneath them. Russel Sloane's been hacked apart, his face a crushed mess, his body missing dozens of chunks of flesh all over him from the pickings the werewolves chewed off him. Hans Hirsh is even less so, his upper body entirely missing, only a pair of legs in gray trousers with black, polished boots. You recognize him from his boots, and his boots alone. Father Féval's body still bares the marks of your shotgun blast, his chest blown apart, ribs hanging down to the ground. He's the most intact corpse there, yet the most gruesome. His face is stuck forever in an expression of fear and pain, his eyes dead and hollow, completely lifeless. You reach for your knife to cut them down, sighing as you realize its not there, and you're several outfits from the one you dressed yourself in this morning. Hell, maybe you should leave them up there anyway. At least the rats won't get there. You feel a pang of hunger, and draw your eyes away from your comrades. You won't disgrace them like that. Scanning the room, you find yourself staring at the table propped up against the wall, stacked with various items. Cellphones, guns, knives, ammo, equipment and an assortment of other items. At the Then, there's the tunnel. A long, dark cavern going in the other direction that you've went down. The howls you heard came from down there. That's where the wolves are. That's where you'll need to go to finish this. You look down at the map ahead of you, a sprawled out blueprints of the mine. Scanning it quickly, your old eyes take in the information you need. Though you're weak in Norway, you manage to make out the notes sprawled across the page. There's a dozen designations across the various areas in the mine. Judging by where you came in, you're in the "Security Room". There's also the "Sleeping Chambers", "(HUMAN) Sleeping Chambers", "Feeding Area", and... You pause, tapping your finger. The "Mine Equipment Storage Area (Armory)". Given the impressive arsenal of explosives that was at the scout house, there'd be even more explosives there at the armory. Enough to take down a mine. If there's even a fraction more explosives there, there might be enough to collapse the mine on itself and to kill all the beasts that prowl these mines. Perhaps you might find some use there. It's as good a place to start as any, given you won't be able to take down the horde with firearms alone. You turn your head, hearing a low growl nearby, only to find yourself staring at the blank stone walls. You squint your eyes, making out murals among them. Blood red images crudely painted, depicting fearsome creatures and other scenes. Interesting. > You gather up the gear you need and take down the pack You limp over to the table, breathing heavily. You slowly go up to the corpses of your friends, too tired and exhausted to even feel sick or disgusted. You're just a professional doing one more job, you don't have time for disgust. You strip yourself a mismatched outfit from the corpses to at least afford you some protection from the cold, before grabbing a revolver and holstering it by your side. You grab a knife and sheath, attaching it to your belt, before looking to your shotgun. Running your hands along its familiar contours, you smile, feeling a sense of finality come over you. "Just one more push," you say to yourself, loading the shells into the cold metal chamber. Your gear ready and costume on, you look to the map one more time, scanning the paths you can take to get to the equipment area. Once you're sure of the way to go, you head off through the tunnels. Marching through the mine shafts at a reasonable, you keep your shotgun raised and your ears twitching. At this point, the beast is raging again inside of you, its sense allowing you to hear ever creak through the caverns and smell every scent. Its only through focusing on the painful silver throughout your body and fighting the beast every step of the way, but exhaustion is meaning that's getting harder and harder. Stumbling down the hallway, you hear the distant growls of a werewolf pack echoing off the walls. You flinch, as your ears perk up and you realize that the sounds are growing louder. A group of werewolves, more than one but no more than four or five, are coming. You swear under your breath, ready to fight them off. > You hide and let them pass You find a hiding spot along the mineshaft, a collapsing crook in the wall that you can clamber down into the hole. You tighten your body, moving into the cramped place and dusting dirt across onto you, to cover yourself up. You begin waiting, as the growls grow closer and closer. Soon, the werewolves appear, prowling along the dirt path. They creep forward, heads low as they sniff the air, slowly stumbling The lead wolf stops, nose flickering as its ears perk up. It sniffs the air, its head turning as its bright eyes zero in on you. It growls, as you realize it's caught your scent. Lying on your back, undefended and incapable of fighting, the werewolves tear you apart before you can even reach for your weapon.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You limp over to the table, breathing heavily. You slowly go up to the corpses of your friends, too tired and exhausted to even feel sick or disgusted. You're just a professional doing one more job, you don't have time for disgust. You strip yourself a mismatched outfit from the corpses to at least afford you some protection from the cold, before grabbing a revolver and holstering it by your side. You grab a knife and sheath, attaching it to your belt, before looking to your shotgun. Running your hands along its familiar contours, you smile, feeling a sense of finality come over you. "Just one more push," you say to yourself, loading the shells into the cold metal chamber. Your gear ready and costume on, you look to the map one more time, scanning the paths you can take to get to the equipment area. Once you're sure of the way to go, you head off through the tunnels. Marching through the mine shafts at a reasonable, you keep your shotgun raised and your ears twitching. At this point, the beast is raging again inside of you, its sense allowing you to hear ever creak through the caverns and smell every scent. Its only through focusing on the painful silver throughout your body and fighting the beast every step of the way, but exhaustion is meaning that's getting harder and harder. Stumbling down the hallway, you hear the distant growls of a werewolf pack echoing off the walls. You flinch, as your ears perk up and you realize that the sounds are growing louder. A group of werewolves, more than one but no more than four or five, are coming. You swear under your breath, ready to fight them off. > You set an ambush An ambush, if done well enough, could wipe out the werewolves that prowl through the corridors, which would mean you're able to continue your planned route to the storage area. You hold up, prying yourself in cover with your weapon ready. You see them in the dark mineshaft, a group of four prowling werewolves walking at a slow trot through the tunnels. If you open fire from the distance, you have more time before they reach you to take them all down, but if you open fire from closer, you'll preserve ammo, something you're running short on. > You wait unitl they're close to make the most of your limited shotgun ammo You wait for them them to move closer, and closer, watching intently as they come within the definite kill range. Moving out of cover, you fire, and your first blast blows away a werewolf, sending it slamming into the wall. You swivel, pumping out the used shell and firing again as you take off another werewolf's head, but at this point, they're upon you. A claw swipe bursts forward, hitting you in the side of head with the force of a baseball bat covered with knives. You hit the mineshaft all with a thud, the world going black and fuzzy as you can feel the warm, wet blood run down your face. You look up, seeing a vague shape lunging towards you. You don't survive the next strike.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>An ambush, if done well enough, could wipe out the werewolves that prowl through the corridors, which would mean you're able to continue your planned route to the storage area. You hold up, prying yourself in cover with your weapon ready. You see them in the dark mineshaft, a group of four prowling werewolves walking at a slow trot through the tunnels. If you open fire from the distance, you have more time before they reach you to take them all down, but if you open fire from closer, you'll preserve ammo, something you're running short on. > You open fire as soon as you see them, giving you distance from them You open fire, the first blast of shards of silver and magnesium tearing through the werewolves side, causing it to stumble, but at this distance and with your weakened aiming stance, you don't take it down. You pump your shotgun, the pack of werewolves nearing as you fire again. This round slams directly into a lupine head, killing it in one blast as its body rolls to a halt. You reload, firing again as you blow away a werewolf's front leg, causing it to fall and stumble, smacking into the ground with a spray of blood. You reload again, but by this time they're upon you. You raise your rifle, as a werewolf leaps forward, tackling you with a howl. You hit the ground with a thud, ramming your shotgun barrel against the underside of the creature's chest. Its jaws clamp down on your face, tearing through flesh, skin and cartilage. You fire, the werewolf hit straight through its chest, blowing the werewolf off you and killing it instantly. You roll to the side to try stand, as the other werewolf hits you from the side, knocking you down with a swipe of its claw, cutting through your side and carving open ribs. You scream out, as the werewolf lunges forward, landing on your neck and crushing your windpipe with a stomp and killing you instantly. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You limp over to the table, breathing heavily. You slowly go up to the corpses of your friends, too tired and exhausted to even feel sick or disgusted. You're just a professional doing one more job, you don't have time for disgust. You strip yourself a mismatched outfit from the corpses to at least afford you some protection from the cold, before grabbing a revolver and holstering it by your side. You grab a knife and sheath, attaching it to your belt, before looking to your shotgun. Running your hands along its familiar contours, you smile, feeling a sense of finality come over you. "Just one more push," you say to yourself, loading the shells into the cold metal chamber. Your gear ready and costume on, you look to the map one more time, scanning the paths you can take to get to the equipment area. Once you're sure of the way to go, you head off through the tunnels. Marching through the mine shafts at a reasonable, you keep your shotgun raised and your ears twitching. At this point, the beast is raging again inside of you, its sense allowing you to hear ever creak through the caverns and smell every scent. Its only through focusing on the painful silver throughout your body and fighting the beast every step of the way, but exhaustion is meaning that's getting harder and harder. Stumbling down the hallway, you hear the distant growls of a werewolf pack echoing off the walls. You flinch, as your ears perk up and you realize that the sounds are growing louder. A group of werewolves, more than one but no more than four or five, are coming. You swear under your breath, ready to fight them off. > You fall back and find another way You turn, quickly hurrying back along the mineshaft at a light job. You try move at a reasonable speed, dealing with your exhaustion as best as you can. You struggle to remember the map's various roots to your destination, and manage to turn off where you're supposed to, heading through the halls at a light jog. You have to move quick to avoid the prowling werewolves, but your senses mean that by time they hear you, you hear them, and you manage to move quickly to avoid the bastards. It takes some time, but you manage to come across the heavy wooden door to the armory, a dusty "Equipment Storage Area" sign above the door. You breathe a sigh of relief. Your journey's nearly over now. > You fire through the door! You raise your shotgun, aiming through the door as you try to target where a sitting man's head would be or a standing man's heart. You take a deep breath, before squeezing the trigger. The shotgun bucks, the blast tearing through the door and carving a hole, wood breaking, cracking and splintering from the blast. You hear a grunt from inside, quickly reloading as you stare through the hole, seeing a limp man lying in a chair, blood running down his chest. You wince as you hear the shot echoing off the wall, realizing just how loud it was. That'll no doubt draw the attention of the werewolves, so you need to act fast. You reach through the newly formed hole in the door, unlatching the door lock and opening the door. You move into the room, staring around it at the racks of equipment. Most of it is useless to you, picks, shovels and other mining tools. Most importantly, however, are your targets. Racks of C4, plastic explosives, dynamite and timed explosives are stacked haphazardly in crates in the corner, no doubt to be used for sabotage and destruction by the werewolves' servants, and the werewolves in their human forms. You smile, seeing nothing but potential there. There's definitely enough to wipe out these sons of bitches and bring this mine down on its... A growl interrupts you from your planning, as you turn to see a group of werewolves racing down the mineshaft towards the armory, no doubt attracted by the gunshot. You swear, seeing how close they are, and that you've already damaged the door beyond repair, leaving you with little defenses against them. "Fuck!" you snarl, seeing the werewolves quickly approach, a large, black creature with streaks of gray in its fur taking lead, as you hurry with the explosives, trying to arm them in time as you fumble with triggers. The werewolf claw tears through the bullet hole from the shotgun, claws tearing through splintering wood and breaking past it as it quickly carves its path through the door. It lunges through the hole, barreling on top of you as you scream, shaking desperately to get the beast off you, before it finishes you off with a weak claw strike that tears through your neck and carves open your spinal cord. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn, quickly hurrying back along the mineshaft at a light job. You try move at a reasonable speed, dealing with your exhaustion as best as you can. You struggle to remember the map's various roots to your destination, and manage to turn off where you're supposed to, heading through the halls at a light jog. You have to move quick to avoid the prowling werewolves, but your senses mean that by time they hear you, you hear them, and you manage to move quickly to avoid the bastards. It takes some time, but you manage to come across the heavy wooden door to the armory, a dusty "Equipment Storage Area" sign above the door. You breathe a sigh of relief. Your journey's nearly over now. > You knock on the door You knock on the heavy wooden door, a loud knocking noise ringing through the mineshaft. You wait for a moment, as the noise echoes off before being replaced by silence. For a moment, you worry no one's actually inside, before you're answered. "What is it?" a gruff, manic voice comes through the door. "What?" Time to think of a lie to get him to open the door. Quick! > You say "I'm here to relieve you from guard duty!" "I'm here to relieve you from guard duty." "Thank fuck," the voice answers. "I haven't eaten in hours. Those fucking Hunters need to learn their place, god dammit. Two secs." The door clicks unlocked, before swinging open. A weak, skinny figure stumbles out, his height only further stretching his gaunt frame becoming almost skeletal. His manic eyes spot you as he realizes he's been tricked, but you're far faster and better prepared than he is, moving forward swiftly with your knife drawn. You slice your blade into his stomach, moving up through the ribs and killing him instantly. He gasps as you continue to slice through his flesh. He goes weak, as you push his limp body to the ground. You grab him under his armpit, dragging him into the room and closing the door behind you. You move into the room, staring around it at the racks of equipment. Most of it is useless to you, picks, shovels and other mining tools. Most importantly, however, are your targets. Racks of C4, plastic explosives, dynamite and timed explosives are stacked haphazardly in crates in the corner, no doubt to be used for sabotage and destruction by the werewolves' servants, and the werewolves in their human forms. You smile, seeing nothing but potential there. There's definitely enough to wipe out these sons of bitches and bring this mine down on itself. > You rig this place up Your work with explosives isn't exemplary, but as a Hunter, you've worked with it before. You've done basic training in using them in the field, and even used them in hunting before. Triggering an avalanche to take out a pack of starved ghouls born from starved, lost, cannibalistic campers, a demolition of a ghost-ridden house and even using a grenade to take out a cultist's van. So, while this is a step up, it's not beyond you. You work quickly in setting up the explosives piling dynamite and fire-ignition based explosives as a base for the stacks of plastic explosives, all linked to the trigger of a simple timer. The work is hard, focusing being near impossible due to the ravenous hunger of the beast within, but you focus on your task and keep working, focusing on your pain when needs be. You set it for three minutes, adding an additional back-up timer hidden away under the stack so that if the first one is found and disabled, the disarmer is in for a serious surprise. Your job finished, you lean back, sighing as you stare ahead of you. As the ticking slowly continues, you wonder what's left to do. > You wait for death Ash and Silver You stare at the explosives, watching as it slowly ticks away. You breathe slowly, feeling the beast within howl and roar. Just a few minutes now. Soon, this hellish night will come to an end. You breathe slowly, a smile on your face as you weakly watch the clicking counter. It's time for this all to end. As the timer clicks to the last few seconds, you laugh, a freeing sound as you shake off all your worries and stress, your terrors and your nightmares, and just lets you feel free for the first time tonight. You expect a flash and a bang, but it doesn't come. Instead, the world just suddenly goes dark as the desperate, clawing, howling beast within you get pulled down into the depths of darkness with you. The mine erupt in a wave of ash and fire, the mines collapsing down itself and burying the entire mine shaft in a pile of rubble and earth, nothing but a mass grave now. The mine collapsed upon the werewolves' lair, everything inside is killed almost instantly, you included. As the sun rises on a new morning, chasing the moon from the sky, there's an air of hope left. The werewolf menace is defeated, the pack wiped out, the few survivors fleeing through the forest to where they'll be mopped up by the Hunters come to figure out what's happened you. The werewolf menace is wiped out, and the creatures that threatened to rule the night are left as nothing. The hold of the moon broken, nothing's left of the world. Although your thirteenth hunt has come to an end, as has you, you've done your duty. The dark things that plague the night, creatures made from darkness and nightmares that feed upon the blood and flesh of the innocent and that rule the night and loathe the living, are slaughtered like lambs, and it is safe to walk the night once more.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your work with explosives isn't exemplary, but as a Hunter, you've worked with it before. You've done basic training in using them in the field, and even used them in hunting before. Triggering an avalanche to take out a pack of starved ghouls born from starved, lost, cannibalistic campers, a demolition of a ghost-ridden house and even using a grenade to take out a cultist's van. So, while this is a step up, it's not beyond you. You work quickly in setting up the explosives piling dynamite and fire-ignition based explosives as a base for the stacks of plastic explosives, all linked to the trigger of a simple timer. The work is hard, focusing being near impossible due to the ravenous hunger of the beast within, but you focus on your task and keep working, focusing on your pain when needs be. You set it for three minutes, adding an additional back-up timer hidden away under the stack so that if the first one is found and disabled, the disarmer is in for a serious surprise. Your job finished, you lean back, sighing as you stare ahead of you. As the ticking slowly continues, you wonder what's left to do. > You try find your way out of the yours shaft before the timer goes off You stand up, weakly standing. You find what little strength remains in you, and decide to get out of there. You want to see the moon one last time. You take up a jog, hurrying as quickly as you can. The armory's located relatively close to a way out of the mineshaft, so you break into a run, hurrying through the mine shaft. You run as fast as you can, hurrying along the pathways. A werewolf appears in front of you, and you fire your shotgun, blowing a gaping hole in the beasts neck and putting it down. You keep running forward, leaping over the dying beast as it falls quickly. You keep heading with as much speed as you can, using your senses to avoid werewolf patrols as you hurry ahead. Suddenly, you see it. The beams of pale moonlight descending from the sky, beaming into the edge of the mineshaft. Seeing it so close, you continue running, quickly, making You stumble out of the mineshaft, heading out into the moonlight once again. You hurl yourself forward, scampering out into the light as you collapse on the ground, breathing heavily. You turn your head, staring back to the mineshaft. About twenty seconds later, the ground shakes as the mineshaft erupts, flames bursting along the mine shaft as the mine shaft collapses in on itself, earth collapsing in to fill the tunnel. The ground shakes as the sky roars, ash and smoke billowing up towards the sky. You laugh, a freeing sound as you shake off all your worries and stress, your terrors and your nightmares, and just lets you feel free for the first time tonight. You feel the beast prowling in your heart, tearing at your body as it tries to get free. Your shotgun is heavy as your hands, as you stare at the smoke pour from the collapsed mineshaft, billowing up into the sky. The howls that have permeated the night are over, and the moon's power wanes in the sky. It'll be an hour or two before the sun rises, but you're finished here. Your mission is complete, your allies avenged. With the werewolf pack defeated, you feel nothing but relief. You rest your tired head on your shotgun, staring ahead. > You take your own life Ash and Silver You raise the rifle to your head, taking it in your arms as you press the bottom of your chin against the gun barrel. You prop the gun upwards, aiming it so that it should go through your skull and out the top of your head. You reach down, pressing your finger against the trigger. You take a deep breath, closing your eyes. You're finished your work tonight. You've avenged your comrades, and defeated the threat. You feel the pangs of hunger tear through you again as the beast awakens, roaring through your entire essence. You grit your teeth, trying to hold back the urge to scream. You slowly release your breath, before pressing down on the trigger. The gun fires, and the silver bullets tear through your chin, bursting up through your skull, blowing apart your brain and shooting out the top of your skull. Darkness shrouds over you, and you can feel the desperate, clawing, howling beast within you get pulled down into the depths of darkness with you. The mist of your red blood mixes with the ash-filled air and the silver shards that hit the dust. As the sun rises, chasing the moon from the sky. The mine collapsed upon the werewolves' lair, no survivors are left. The werewolf menace is defeated, the pack wiped out, the few survivors fleeing through the forest to where they'll be mopped up by the Hunters come to figure out what's happened you. The werewolf menace is wiped out, and the creatures that threatened to rule the night are left as nothing. The hold of the moon broken, nothing's left of the world. Although your thirteenth hunt has come to an end, as has you, you've done your duty. The dark things that plague the night, creatures made from darkness and nightmares that feed upon the blood and flesh of the innocent and that rule the night and loathe the living, are slaughtered like lambs, and it is safe to walk the night once more.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stand up, weakly standing. You find what little strength remains in you, and decide to get out of there. You want to see the moon one last time. You take up a jog, hurrying as quickly as you can. The armory's located relatively close to a way out of the mineshaft, so you break into a run, hurrying through the mine shaft. You run as fast as you can, hurrying along the pathways. A werewolf appears in front of you, and you fire your shotgun, blowing a gaping hole in the beasts neck and putting it down. You keep running forward, leaping over the dying beast as it falls quickly. You keep heading with as much speed as you can, using your senses to avoid werewolf patrols as you hurry ahead. Suddenly, you see it. The beams of pale moonlight descending from the sky, beaming into the edge of the mineshaft. Seeing it so close, you continue running, quickly, making You stumble out of the mineshaft, heading out into the moonlight once again. You hurl yourself forward, scampering out into the light as you collapse on the ground, breathing heavily. You turn your head, staring back to the mineshaft. About twenty seconds later, the ground shakes as the mineshaft erupts, flames bursting along the mine shaft as the mine shaft collapses in on itself, earth collapsing in to fill the tunnel. The ground shakes as the sky roars, ash and smoke billowing up towards the sky. You laugh, a freeing sound as you shake off all your worries and stress, your terrors and your nightmares, and just lets you feel free for the first time tonight. You feel the beast prowling in your heart, tearing at your body as it tries to get free. Your shotgun is heavy as your hands, as you stare at the smoke pour from the collapsed mineshaft, billowing up into the sky. The howls that have permeated the night are over, and the moon's power wanes in the sky. It'll be an hour or two before the sun rises, but you're finished here. Your mission is complete, your allies avenged. With the werewolf pack defeated, you feel nothing but relief. You rest your tired head on your shotgun, staring ahead. > You watch the smoke billow up You stare at the rising plumes of smoke as they ascend into the sky, the brightness of the moon struggling to shine through the smoke. You watch as the sky slowly grows dark, as darkness crowds around the corner of your vision, slowly moving inward as you grow weak. Soon, you find yourself being pulled into the darkness as your vision goes dark, your body growing still. Suddenly, the pain bursts through you as you begin shuddering in pain. You grit your teeth, trying to hold in your urge to scream as you feel the change one more time. You struggle to defeat the beast inside your soul, but you're too weak and exhausted to do so, as the beast consumes your broken spirit with ease. You growl, your body twisting and breaking as you're torn apart and reformed into your lupine form. The pain is almost familiar to you now, as you quickly turn to the predator body that your instincts are familiar with. As you shake and shudder with pain, you find turned back to the brutal beast that has been residing in your heart this entire time. Slowly, the pain begins to subside, but you find your mind incapable of reforming, still incapable of focusing in any regard. You shake your head with a growl, feeling the air blow through your fur, the smell of nearby prey, the crunching of soil under your paws. With your human form broken and exhausted, the beast is able to shake off any remaining onces of anger. You feel the powerful call of the moon above you, feeling relieved and stronger than ever. Yes... that's it. It calls. Survivors of the pack, out hunting when the mines collapsed. They're scared, terrified, looking for a leader. You are that leader. Suddenly, instinct takes over, and you find yourself sprinting through the woods, howling into the sky. An array of howls answer back, and you follow the call, answering with your own powerful howl. Wolves. Pack. Call! Strong! POWER! HUNT! Now is your moment to gather the wolves, the beast within finally coming to howl in the light of the moon.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You knock on the heavy wooden door, a loud knocking noise ringing through the mineshaft. You wait for a moment, as the noise echoes off before being replaced by silence. For a moment, you worry no one's actually inside, before you're answered. "What is it?" a gruff, manic voice comes through the door. "What?" Time to think of a lie to get him to open the door. Quick! > You say "We need reinforcements! The Hunters are nearby!" "We need reinforcements! The Hunters are nearby!" "I know, dammit! They're all over these fucking woods, that's why they put me on guard duty! Make sure they can't take control of our weapons and blow this fucking place up! Just go search through the tunnels, try find them, do something useful, fucker!" Well shit, that didn't work. You suppose there's only one way in left. > You just shoot through the door "Oh for fuck's sake," you mutter. You raise your shotgun, aiming through the door as you try to target where a sitting man's head would be or a standing man's heart. You take a deep breath, before squeezing the trigger. The shotgun bucks, the blast tearing through the door and carving a hole, wood breaking, cracking and splintering from the blast. You hear a grunt from inside, quickly reloading as you stare through the hole, seeing a limp man lying in a chair, blood running down his chest. You wince as you hear the shot echoing off the wall, realizing just how loud it was. That'll no doubt draw the attention of the werewolves, so you need to act fast. You reach through the newly formed hole in the door, unlatching the door lock and opening the door. You move into the room, staring around it at the racks of equipment. Most of it is useless to you, picks, shovels and other mining tools. Most importantly, however, are your targets. Racks of C4, plastic explosives, dynamite and timed explosives are stacked haphazardly in crates in the corner, no doubt to be used for sabotage and destruction by the werewolves' servants, and the werewolves in their human forms. You smile, seeing nothing but potential there. There's definitely enough to wipe out these sons of bitches and bring this mine down on its... A growl interrupts you from your planning, as you turn to see a group of werewolves racing down the mineshaft towards the armory, no doubt attracted by the gunshot. You swear, seeing how close they are, and that you've already damaged the door beyond repair, leaving you with little defenses against them. "Fuck!" you snarl, seeing the werewolves quickly approach, a large, black creature with streaks of gray in its fur taking lead, as you hurry with the explosives, trying to arm them in time as you fumble with triggers. The werewolf claw tears through the bullet hole from the shotgun, claws tearing through splintering wood and breaking past it as it quickly carves its path through the door. It lunges through the hole, barreling on top of you as you scream, shaking desperately to get the beast off you, before it finishes you off with a weak claw strike that tears through your neck and carves open your spinal cord. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You knock on the heavy wooden door, a loud knocking noise ringing through the mineshaft. You wait for a moment, as the noise echoes off before being replaced by silence. For a moment, you worry no one's actually inside, before you're answered. "What is it?" a gruff, manic voice comes through the door. "What?" Time to think of a lie to get him to open the door. Quick! > You say "Open up! NOW!" "Open up! NOW!" you snarl, smacking your fist heavily against the heavy wooden door. "I've orders t...!" a worried voice comes back, seeming put off by the anger evident in your voice. I swear to fuck, i will tear out your throat myself and tear you apart, motherfucker!" you roar. "Shit, shit, OK!" the voice answers, as you hear the door hastily be unlocked. It seems the bestial, pack-based hierarchal nature of the wolf pack and its servants means that acting aggressively shows dominance and scares the weaker members into following you. The door clicks unlocked, before swinging open. A weak, skinny figure stumbles out, his height only further stretching his gaunt frame becoming almost skeletal. His manic eyes spot you as he realizes he's been tricked, but you're far faster and better prepared than he is, moving forward swiftly with your knife drawn. You slice your blade into his stomach, moving up through the ribs and killing him instantly. He gasps as you continue to slice through his flesh. He goes weak, as you push his limp body to the ground. You grab him under his armpit, dragging him into the room and closing the door behind you. Now alone in the room, you stare around it at the racks of equipment. Most of it is useless to you, picks, shovels and other mining tools. Most importantly, however, are your targets. Racks of C4, plastic explosives, dynamite and timed explosives are stacked haphazardly in crates in the corner, no doubt to be used for sabotage and destruction by the werewolves' servants, and the werewolves in their human forms. You smile, seeing nothing but potential there. There's definitely enough to wipe out these sons of bitches and bring this mine down on itself. "Perfect," you chuckle weakly, barely any strength left in you. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You double down, catching in the Albino in a deadly embrace, forcing it back. Your reflexes, your speed and your abilities are far outpaced by the creature, who has had far more time to get used to its body. However, strength might be something you have. You're a tough, hardy man and far stronger than the average man, so perhaps in your lupine form you'll the stronger of this pair. You dig your hind legs in, ramming forward as you force the beast back. The Albino yelps, attempting to shove you aside, but you've caught it now, and you're able to twist it around as you launch it against the wall. The Albino smacks up against the wall, sliding down it as its covered in a thick layer of dirt, before you burst forward, raking your claws across the Albino's chest. You slash your claws forward, tearing out the creature's stomach as you hack into its ribs. The creature howls out in pain, weakly jabbing its claws at you as you step back in one quick dodge. You growl, watching the dying creature in front of you. Your stomach begs you to give up any semblance of weakness, to tear into this meal and feast, but some small, weak little voice reminds you that you have a mission to do. You could leave the beast here to bleed to death, with no hope of it surviving the lethal wounds you've caused, or you could crush its skull and end its life now. > You leave the beast bleed The creature deserves to suffer like you have for what it's done to you. You snarl, shaking your head as you look down at the broken creature. It whines, looking up at you with a desperate, broken expression. The pain of its lethal wounds mean that it's simply so pain-wracked that it's lost all sentience or intelligence, now simply left as a pain-filled beast trying to find respite. You grin viciously down at it, before turning, heading deep into the darkness of the tunnel and leaving its desperate whines behind you. You spend several minutes walking through the darkness, before you find yourself prowling through a new plethora of senses. You find yourself in a large, cavernous room, glowing with golden light. A bonfire sits in the center of the cavern, warming your tired bones. Three corpses of cooked meat hang from the ceiling, blood dripping down in an appetizing fashion. You stare at them, licking your lips for a moment, before changing focus. There's a row of strange, bright glowing lights to the side, showing bizarre tiny forests in the distance. A metal table sits to the side, covered with strange objects, alongside a wall where many more things hang. Light. Heat. Warm. Fire! Bright! EAT! Meat! Flesh! Kill! FEED! NOISES! HUMANS! KILL! SLAUGHTER! You shake your head, your mind awash with new sensations, trying to let your instincts take over. You calm yourself, and your eyes flicker open as you examine the room. You find yourself smelling what looks to be dried blood, encrusted on one of the bizarre objects. You dip your snout forward, examining it cautiously. It seems to be covered in burning metal and cold metal, a bizarre combination of the two strange materials. You pause, hearing the sound of distant howling down the tunnels. It doesn't seem to be drawing closer, instead drawing fainter and fainter as the pack of werewolves screaming goes further and further a way. You feel drawn to it, curious as to what it could be, but a small mind deep in your head seems to recognize the object with a strange familiarity. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You roll your legs under the bulk of the Albino's weight, breathing heavily as you try to find your strength. You snarl, forcing your legs forwards as you force the creature back. You pause, building your strength for one moment, before using your legs to launch the beast at the wall. The Albino is launched against the wall, knocking against the earthen mine wall as it collapses to the ground with a thud. The creature growls, standing up as it moves forward, raising its clawed hands as it attempts to ram you against the wall, catching you in the bestial version of a rugby scrum. You raise your arms, grabbing them and trying to keep it from biting out your throat in a rage, standing on your hindlegs as you're ready to retreat. > You dODGE! Dart back, let it strike and hit its flank! You dodge back, retreating to avoid a fearsome bite, before sliding to the side, quickly retreating as your paws pounce along the mine cart tracks. You roll to avoid the Albino's lunge, before it manages to hit you from the side, grabbing your head and bouncing it against the wall. You shake off any potential concussion just in time to roll under a claw. The Albino's faster than you, its reflexes sharper, its abilities far greater as its hunted with its lupine body many a time, while you're entirely new to it. The Albino catches you with a claw, knocking away your hindleg. You stumble forward, before the Albino grabs your head with a pair of clawed paws, smashing your head against the ground with a pained scream, before the werewolf lands the full force of its strength on your skull, splitting it in two.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You find yourself howling, your body transforming in a mere moment, incapable of holding off the change for any longer. The fur bursts from your skin as it toughens and tears, your body stretching in an instant. Your teeth, a mouthful of ivory blades, are revealed as you open your jaw. You smash into the Albino, tearing it through the air and smashing it off the tunnel wall. The creature bounces off the wall, before rolling to its feet and leaping forward with one pounce, lunging for you. You snarl, batting it aside with a pair of claws, slashing as its face at the creature pins you to the ground. The other beast is strong, fast and deadly, the creature being far more used to its bestial body than you are. The creature wields its fangs like daggers, its claws like swords, its weight a crushing wrecking ball, every feature of it turned into a weapon of death and slaughter. However, it's no doubt transformed from poorer stock than you, once having been a normal human rather than a Hunter like yourself, who dedicated their life to the craft of hunting. By how you reckon, the Albino has the advantage, but you won't be going down without a fight. You struggle against his grip, pinned against the stone, struggling to get out from it's weight, as its gnashing teeth comes towards your throat, its mouth caught in a fearsome howl. > You slash your claws at the werewolf's eyes You move your claw under the creature's weight, before jabbing your claws forward in an attempt to hack out the creature's eyes. Your long, sharp claws razor along the Albino's face, carving off chunks of pale white hair and bits of flesh. You miss the eyes, carving out the top of its brow with a deep gouge. The werewolf snarls, throwing itself off you in an attempt to escape another claw attack. Blood rushes down its face, staining its pale fur and filling its eyes with its own blood. The Albino shakes its head as it tries to see, stumbling into the wall of the mineshaft as you manage to roll to your feet, ready to kill. The creature yelps, desperately trying to back up, shaking its head to get the blood out of its eyes to let it see again. You have a moment where the creature is confused, scared and on the back foot, but hurrying to recover, leaving you wondering whether it's time to land the killing blow. > You tear out their throat! With the creature weakened, you burst forward, pouncing with a solid leap as you grab the creature in your claws, pushing it against the wall in one solid move, revealing its throat, completely open to you and available to your tooth-filled jaws. You jab forward, landing a bite on the jaw. You dig your teeth in as hard as you can, feeling a burst of joy as a wave of blood hits you, tearing free of the creature's flesh and fresh, warm blood runs down your throat. You gulp it down eagerly, before tearing out the chunk of flesh with one solid motion. The creature's throat is left as a bloody hole. You watch as the creature begins to choke and drown on its blood, the Albino spasming pathetically in front of you as it weakly paws at your neck and trying to breathe as the light fades from its eyes. You growl, watching the dying creature in front of you. Your stomach begs you to give up any semblance of weakness, to tear into this meal and feast, but some small, weak little voice reminds you that you have a mission to do. You could leave the beast here to bleed to death, with no hope of it surviving the lethal wounds you've caused, or you could crush its skull and end its life now.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You move your claw under the creature's weight, before jabbing your claws forward in an attempt to hack out the creature's eyes. Your long, sharp claws razor along the Albino's face, carving off chunks of pale white hair and bits of flesh. You miss the eyes, carving out the top of its brow with a deep gouge. The werewolf snarls, throwing itself off you in an attempt to escape another claw attack. Blood rushes down its face, staining its pale fur and filling its eyes with its own blood. The Albino shakes its head as it tries to see, stumbling into the wall of the mineshaft as you manage to roll to your feet, ready to kill. The creature yelps, desperately trying to back up, shaking its head to get the blood out of its eyes to let it see again. You have a moment where the creature is confused, scared and on the back foot, but hurrying to recover, leaving you wondering whether it's time to land the killing blow. > You wait; bide your time You wait, standing back and waiting for a better chance to land the killing blow. The Albino repositions itself, growling cautiously as it retreats a few meters down the dark tunnel, refusing to near you in its snarl. The Albino repositions itself, now more cautious, the cunning glow in its eyes brightening as it stares at you. With a growl, it steps forward, ready to strike again. It moves forward with a quick few steps, as you find yourself trying to dodge strike after strike. The creature knocks away your foreleg, moving with quick speed. You hop up, trying to leap over the beast, but it catches your underside with a rake of its claw, tearing open your chest. You fly through the air, hitting the wall and sliding to the ground, your belly messily hacked open, your ribs broken. You try to stand, before the werewolf leaps forward, smashing its claw down. The creature buries its claw into your throat, severing your windpipe and spurting blood out and pooling it around you. You try to let out a terrified, pathetic howl, only to find your gurgling on your own blood. Unable to find the strength to keep your head up, you lower it into the warm pool of blood, letting the darkness take you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You find yourself howling, your body transforming in a mere moment, incapable of holding off the change for any longer. The fur bursts from your skin as it toughens and tears, your body stretching in an instant. Your teeth, a mouthful of ivory blades, are revealed as you open your jaw. You smash into the Albino, tearing it through the air and smashing it off the tunnel wall. The creature bounces off the wall, before rolling to its feet and leaping forward with one pounce, lunging for you. You snarl, batting it aside with a pair of claws, slashing as its face at the creature pins you to the ground. The other beast is strong, fast and deadly, the creature being far more used to its bestial body than you are. The creature wields its fangs like daggers, its claws like swords, its weight a crushing wrecking ball, every feature of it turned into a weapon of death and slaughter. However, it's no doubt transformed from poorer stock than you, once having been a normal human rather than a Hunter like yourself, who dedicated their life to the craft of hunting. By how you reckon, the Albino has the advantage, but you won't be going down without a fight. You struggle against his grip, pinned against the stone, struggling to get out from it's weight, as its gnashing teeth comes towards your throat, its mouth caught in a fearsome howl. > You swing the creature to the side and roll on top of it to take the advantage You begin rocking side to side, moving back and forth with several quick motions attempting to rock the creature's body with what little strength you have, before rolling to the side. You twist your body around, attempting to knock the creature off you, only to find the werewolf's weight and strength far outnumbers you ability to kick the creature off. You find your body twisted, your legs off to the side as you're left stuck under the Albino. With your body trapped and incapable of moving, the Albino lets out a low, rumbling noise with satisfaction, knowing its kill is assured. The creature raises a clawed hand, slowly slicing it across your snout and leaving deep gouges across your face as you howl out in pain. You attempt to burst free, but the creature places a heavy paw on your head, before sending it forward with crushing speed and snapping your neck in an instant.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stare down the cavernous maw that sticks out of the earth. The darkness almost solidifies around you, attempting to consume your sanity. You focus your senses, as when the suffocating darkness steals your sight, your smell and hearing amplify. You can hear the near silent wind blow through the tunnel, nostrils flaring as you take as you smell the scent of coal dust and dirt. The scents begin to shift, as you detect a new smell. Fresh blood and the smell of a wild beast traveling through the tunnel. The sound of paws creeping along iron mine tracks and soft dirt begins just detectable. Your eyes narrow, as down the tunnel, a form cuts through the darkness. The creature's thin body is covered with a thick layer of white fur, a pair of red, blood-filled eyes becoming clear, shining in the dark. A maw of sharpened daggers becomes clear, as the Albino arrives. You recognize the creature from earlier. The one who bit you. The one who cursed you like this. You snarl, your gun tightening in your hands. The Albino's eyes flicker and you wonder if it recognizes you. There's an intellect there beyond what you've seen, in animals, or even in other werewolves. The creature growls, and you know it recognizes you. Your body shakes, the Albino's growl sending the beast into overdrive. Your hairy arms tense as your muscles bulge, your tongue flickering along your sharpened teeth. You let out a growl, eyes narrowing as you ready yourself to kill. You let out a loud roar which echoes down the tunnel, your fingernails toughening and sharpening to pre-transformation claws that dig into the wood of your rifle. > You open fire! You raise your rifle, shouldering it in one quick motion as you aim as the approaching werewolf, targeting it directly in your sights, but the creature's too fast. It bounces off the wall, sprinting along the ground as it leaps from wall to wall, digging its claws into the wall as it clambers about the tunnel. You swing your rifle from side to side, trying to get sights on it, but the creature's faster, roaring down the tunnel. You begin to backpedal, but you're not even close to the speed of the wolf, and it quickly catches up. The werewolf leaps down from the wall, swiping a claw at you. The claw catches your arm, slicing through your flesh as you scream and sending your gun flying from your arm and bouncing against the wall. You scream, toppling over, as the werewolf lands its clawed foot on your head, crushing it instantly. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk through the woods slowly, heading towards the scent. It draws nearer, the smell of smoke and coal becoming clear. It's a long, painful walk, and you find yourself scratching at your limbs, growling and shaking your head. The beast within is awakening again, as you run your tongue along your sharpened teeth, the taste of your own blood filling your own mouth. Your stomach growls, and the veil of darkness lifts as your supernatural eyes adjust to the darkness. Still, you focus on the burning pain in your chest and now, your stab wound, allowing the pain to consume you, bringing you just to the point where walking becomes impossible, all to stave off the wolf spirit howling to get out. It's not long, however, before you find your way to the mines. The earth begins to widen, revealing a huge, cavernous maw sticking out of the earth, a huge hole in the ground leading to darkness. The opening of the mineshaft. A light plume of smoke billows out from the mineshaft, as you can smell the scent of fresh meat and blood down below, the smell of wolves prowling and... strangely enough, diesel drifting out with its stink. You stare into the darkness, gun in your hands, as you prepare to go in. "Going in?" You turn your head, finding the patchwork fool standing in front of you. His eyes are still badly burned, although from this close, it seems more like its from a caustic chemical or animal venom rather than heat or fire. He grins at you, winking. "I was planning to," you say. "Going to tell me who you are yet?" "Maybe. Fancy another riddle?" "What the fuck is it with you and riddles?" "I like them," the Fool shrugs. "I used to be more of a pranks guy, but it's no use drawing attention to myself when I manage to get unbound, so riddles will have to do." "Unbound? Are you a ghost? A trapped spirit? It would explain some things," you say quietly, not wanting to risk dealing with them. "Nothing of the sort! I'm far more powerful," the Fool says. "I'd make the threat you're dealing with look like chump change, you know." "Glad you're not my enemy, then," you say, before pausing. "Are you?" "Of course not! Just a friendly visitor, curious to see what'll happen. I know a lot about werewolves. I remember watching the first one change. God, the terror he felt." "You saw the first change?" you ask cautiously. "I did indeed," the Fool smiles. "I saw when they chained up my dear old Fenrir, for nothing more than being scary. That's what they tend to do, you know," the Fool says, pointing to his eyes. "But, every so often, Fenrir would get just a bit lose, and some brave mortal would need to toss a new chain on him. One brave soul got too close, and Fenrir managed to bite him. That was the first of their kind. Now, they've spread throughout the world, all from that one mortal who felt it was fair to lock up a creature that had done nothing wrong. Cruel bastards the lot of them," the Fool mutters. You pause, trying to discern whether this is the fool's insane ramblings, a metaphor, a literal truth or something else entirely. For as long as you stare at the grinning bastard, you can't tell. "Anything else you wanted to tell me?" you say dismissively, not willing to play the Fool's games. "Nothing to tell, but something to ask. Care for another riddle?" "Fuck's sake," you mutter. "What the hell does this matter?" The Fool smiles, before grinning. "So! A lost shepard met two hunters, the first of who had three loaves and the second who had five loaves. All the loaves were the same size. The three men agreed to share the eight loaves equally between them. After they had eaten, the hunter gave the shepherds eight bronze coins as payment for his meal. How should the two shepherds fairly divide this money?" > One piece to the first hunter, seven to the second "You give one piece to the first hunter, and the other seven to the second." "Yes, another answer! Gods, I really like you!" "Is it right?" The Fool shrugs, smiling at you. "Who knows? I'll be off, anyway, my eyes are beginning to burn," he says, scratching at his burned up eyes. "Good luck in there. Shame it's not a silver mine, am I right?" He smiles, grinning, as you snarl. He raises his hands defensively, shrugging. "Fine, fine, I'll be on my way. Best of luck in there, Willy." You don't even try to stop him, your gun feeling unnaturally heavy in your hands as you know the patchwork man's magic is at work here. As soon as the Fool disappears into the trees, your gun lightens in your hands, and you heave to stare off into the mineshaft, smiling. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk through the woods slowly, heading towards the scent. It draws nearer, the smell of smoke and coal becoming clear. It's a long, painful walk, and you find yourself scratching at your limbs, growling and shaking your head. The beast within is awakening again, as you run your tongue along your sharpened teeth, the taste of your own blood filling your own mouth. Your stomach growls, and the veil of darkness lifts as your supernatural eyes adjust to the darkness. Still, you focus on the burning pain in your chest and now, your stab wound, allowing the pain to consume you, bringing you just to the point where walking becomes impossible, all to stave off the wolf spirit howling to get out. It's not long, however, before you find your way to the mines. The earth begins to widen, revealing a huge, cavernous maw sticking out of the earth, a huge hole in the ground leading to darkness. The opening of the mineshaft. A light plume of smoke billows out from the mineshaft, as you can smell the scent of fresh meat and blood down below, the smell of wolves prowling and... strangely enough, diesel drifting out with its stink. You stare into the darkness, gun in your hands, as you prepare to go in. "Going in?" You turn your head, finding the patchwork fool standing in front of you. His eyes are still badly burned, although from this close, it seems more like its from a caustic chemical or animal venom rather than heat or fire. He grins at you, winking. "I was planning to," you say. "Going to tell me who you are yet?" "Maybe. Fancy another riddle?" "What the fuck is it with you and riddles?" "I like them," the Fool shrugs. "I used to be more of a pranks guy, but it's no use drawing attention to myself when I manage to get unbound, so riddles will have to do." "Unbound? Are you a ghost? A trapped spirit? It would explain some things," you say quietly, not wanting to risk dealing with them. "Nothing of the sort! I'm far more powerful," the Fool says. "I'd make the threat you're dealing with look like chump change, you know." "Glad you're not my enemy, then," you say, before pausing. "Are you?" "Of course not! Just a friendly visitor, curious to see what'll happen. I know a lot about werewolves. I remember watching the first one change. God, the terror he felt." "You saw the first change?" you ask cautiously. "I did indeed," the Fool smiles. "I saw when they chained up my dear old Fenrir, for nothing more than being scary. That's what they tend to do, you know," the Fool says, pointing to his eyes. "But, every so often, Fenrir would get just a bit lose, and some brave mortal would need to toss a new chain on him. One brave soul got too close, and Fenrir managed to bite him. That was the first of their kind. Now, they've spread throughout the world, all from that one mortal who felt it was fair to lock up a creature that had done nothing wrong. Cruel bastards the lot of them," the Fool mutters. You pause, trying to discern whether this is the fool's insane ramblings, a metaphor, a literal truth or something else entirely. For as long as you stare at the grinning bastard, you can't tell. "Anything else you wanted to tell me?" you say dismissively, not willing to play the Fool's games. "Nothing to tell, but something to ask. Care for another riddle?" "Fuck's sake," you mutter. "What the hell does this matter?" The Fool smiles, before grinning. "So! A lost shepard met two hunters, the first of who had three loaves and the second who had five loaves. All the loaves were the same size. The three men agreed to share the eight loaves equally between them. After they had eaten, the hunter gave the shepherds eight bronze coins as payment for his meal. How should the two shepherds fairly divide this money?" > Two pieces to the first hunter, six to the second "You give two pieces to the first hunter, six to the second." "Yes, another answer! Gods, I really like you!" "Is it right?" The Fool shrugs, smiling at you. "Who knows? I'll be off, anyway, my eyes are beginning to burn," he says, scratching at his burned up eyes. "Good luck in there. Shame it's not a silver mine, am I right?" He smiles, grinning, as you snarl. He raises his hands defensively, shrugging. "Fine, fine, I'll be on my way. Best of luck in there, Willy." You don't even try to stop him, your gun feeling unnaturally heavy in your hands as you know the patchwork man's magic is at work here. As soon as the Fool disappears into the trees, your gun lightens in your hands, and you heave to stare off into the mineshaft, smiling. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk through the woods slowly, heading towards the scent. It draws nearer, the smell of smoke and coal becoming clear. It's a long, painful walk, and you find yourself scratching at your limbs, growling and shaking your head. The beast within is awakening again, as you run your tongue along your sharpened teeth, the taste of your own blood filling your own mouth. Your stomach growls, and the veil of darkness lifts as your supernatural eyes adjust to the darkness. Still, you focus on the burning pain in your chest and now, your stab wound, allowing the pain to consume you, bringing you just to the point where walking becomes impossible, all to stave off the wolf spirit howling to get out. It's not long, however, before you find your way to the mines. The earth begins to widen, revealing a huge, cavernous maw sticking out of the earth, a huge hole in the ground leading to darkness. The opening of the mineshaft. A light plume of smoke billows out from the mineshaft, as you can smell the scent of fresh meat and blood down below, the smell of wolves prowling and... strangely enough, diesel drifting out with its stink. You stare into the darkness, gun in your hands, as you prepare to go in. "Going in?" You turn your head, finding the patchwork fool standing in front of you. His eyes are still badly burned, although from this close, it seems more like its from a caustic chemical or animal venom rather than heat or fire. He grins at you, winking. "I was planning to," you say. "Going to tell me who you are yet?" "Maybe. Fancy another riddle?" "What the fuck is it with you and riddles?" "I like them," the Fool shrugs. "I used to be more of a pranks guy, but it's no use drawing attention to myself when I manage to get unbound, so riddles will have to do." "Unbound? Are you a ghost? A trapped spirit? It would explain some things," you say quietly, not wanting to risk dealing with them. "Nothing of the sort! I'm far more powerful," the Fool says. "I'd make the threat you're dealing with look like chump change, you know." "Glad you're not my enemy, then," you say, before pausing. "Are you?" "Of course not! Just a friendly visitor, curious to see what'll happen. I know a lot about werewolves. I remember watching the first one change. God, the terror he felt." "You saw the first change?" you ask cautiously. "I did indeed," the Fool smiles. "I saw when they chained up my dear old Fenrir, for nothing more than being scary. That's what they tend to do, you know," the Fool says, pointing to his eyes. "But, every so often, Fenrir would get just a bit lose, and some brave mortal would need to toss a new chain on him. One brave soul got too close, and Fenrir managed to bite him. That was the first of their kind. Now, they've spread throughout the world, all from that one mortal who felt it was fair to lock up a creature that had done nothing wrong. Cruel bastards the lot of them," the Fool mutters. You pause, trying to discern whether this is the fool's insane ramblings, a metaphor, a literal truth or something else entirely. For as long as you stare at the grinning bastard, you can't tell. "Anything else you wanted to tell me?" you say dismissively, not willing to play the Fool's games. "Nothing to tell, but something to ask. Care for another riddle?" "Fuck's sake," you mutter. "What the hell does this matter?" The Fool smiles, before grinning. "So! A lost shepard met two hunters, the first of who had three loaves and the second who had five loaves. All the loaves were the same size. The three men agreed to share the eight loaves equally between them. After they had eaten, the hunter gave the shepherds eight bronze coins as payment for his meal. How should the two shepherds fairly divide this money?" > Three pieces to the first hunter, five to the second "You give three pieces to the first hunter, five to the second." "Yes, another answer! Gods, I really like you!" "Is it right?" The Fool shrugs, smiling at you. "Who knows? I'll be off, anyway, my eyes are beginning to burn," he says, scratching at his burned up eyes. "Good luck in there. Shame it's not a silver mine, am I right?" He smiles, grinning, as you snarl. He raises his hands defensively, shrugging. "Fine, fine, I'll be on my way. Best of luck in there, Willy." You don't even try to stop him, your gun feeling unnaturally heavy in your hands as you know the patchwork man's magic is at work here. As soon as the Fool disappears into the trees, your gun lightens in your hands, and you heave to stare off into the mineshaft, smiling. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk through the woods slowly, heading towards the scent. It draws nearer, the smell of smoke and coal becoming clear. It's a long, painful walk, and you find yourself scratching at your limbs, growling and shaking your head. The beast within is awakening again, as you run your tongue along your sharpened teeth, the taste of your own blood filling your own mouth. Your stomach growls, and the veil of darkness lifts as your supernatural eyes adjust to the darkness. Still, you focus on the burning pain in your chest and now, your stab wound, allowing the pain to consume you, bringing you just to the point where walking becomes impossible, all to stave off the wolf spirit howling to get out. It's not long, however, before you find your way to the mines. The earth begins to widen, revealing a huge, cavernous maw sticking out of the earth, a huge hole in the ground leading to darkness. The opening of the mineshaft. A light plume of smoke billows out from the mineshaft, as you can smell the scent of fresh meat and blood down below, the smell of wolves prowling and... strangely enough, diesel drifting out with its stink. You stare into the darkness, gun in your hands, as you prepare to go in. "Going in?" You turn your head, finding the patchwork fool standing in front of you. His eyes are still badly burned, although from this close, it seems more like its from a caustic chemical or animal venom rather than heat or fire. He grins at you, winking. "I was planning to," you say. "Going to tell me who you are yet?" "Maybe. Fancy another riddle?" "What the fuck is it with you and riddles?" "I like them," the Fool shrugs. "I used to be more of a pranks guy, but it's no use drawing attention to myself when I manage to get unbound, so riddles will have to do." "Unbound? Are you a ghost? A trapped spirit? It would explain some things," you say quietly, not wanting to risk dealing with them. "Nothing of the sort! I'm far more powerful," the Fool says. "I'd make the threat you're dealing with look like chump change, you know." "Glad you're not my enemy, then," you say, before pausing. "Are you?" "Of course not! Just a friendly visitor, curious to see what'll happen. I know a lot about werewolves. I remember watching the first one change. God, the terror he felt." "You saw the first change?" you ask cautiously. "I did indeed," the Fool smiles. "I saw when they chained up my dear old Fenrir, for nothing more than being scary. That's what they tend to do, you know," the Fool says, pointing to his eyes. "But, every so often, Fenrir would get just a bit lose, and some brave mortal would need to toss a new chain on him. One brave soul got too close, and Fenrir managed to bite him. That was the first of their kind. Now, they've spread throughout the world, all from that one mortal who felt it was fair to lock up a creature that had done nothing wrong. Cruel bastards the lot of them," the Fool mutters. You pause, trying to discern whether this is the fool's insane ramblings, a metaphor, a literal truth or something else entirely. For as long as you stare at the grinning bastard, you can't tell. "Anything else you wanted to tell me?" you say dismissively, not willing to play the Fool's games. "Nothing to tell, but something to ask. Care for another riddle?" "Fuck's sake," you mutter. "What the hell does this matter?" The Fool smiles, before grinning. "So! A lost shepard met two hunters, the first of who had three loaves and the second who had five loaves. All the loaves were the same size. The three men agreed to share the eight loaves equally between them. After they had eaten, the hunter gave the shepherds eight bronze coins as payment for his meal. How should the two shepherds fairly divide this money?" > You split it equally between the two hunters "You split it equally between the two hunters, because they're sharing it all equally, right?" "Yes, another answer! Gods, I really like you!" "Is it right?" The Fool shrugs, smiling at you. "Who knows? I'll be off, anyway, my eyes are beginning to burn," he says, scratching at his burned up eyes. "Good luck in there. Shame it's not a silver mine, am I right?" He smiles, grinning, as you snarl. He raises his hands defensively, shrugging. "Fine, fine, I'll be on my way. Best of luck in there, Willy." You don't even try to stop him, your gun feeling unnaturally heavy in your hands as you know the patchwork man's magic is at work here. As soon as the Fool disappears into the trees, your gun lightens in your hands, and you heave to stare off into the mineshaft, smiling. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk through the woods slowly, heading towards the scent. It draws nearer, the smell of smoke and coal becoming clear. It's a long, painful walk, and you find yourself scratching at your limbs, growling and shaking your head. The beast within is awakening again, as you run your tongue along your sharpened teeth, the taste of your own blood filling your own mouth. Your stomach growls, and the veil of darkness lifts as your supernatural eyes adjust to the darkness. Still, you focus on the burning pain in your chest and now, your stab wound, allowing the pain to consume you, bringing you just to the point where walking becomes impossible, all to stave off the wolf spirit howling to get out. It's not long, however, before you find your way to the mines. The earth begins to widen, revealing a huge, cavernous maw sticking out of the earth, a huge hole in the ground leading to darkness. The opening of the mineshaft. A light plume of smoke billows out from the mineshaft, as you can smell the scent of fresh meat and blood down below, the smell of wolves prowling and... strangely enough, diesel drifting out with its stink. You stare into the darkness, gun in your hands, as you prepare to go in. "Going in?" You turn your head, finding the patchwork fool standing in front of you. His eyes are still badly burned, although from this close, it seems more like its from a caustic chemical or animal venom rather than heat or fire. He grins at you, winking. "I was planning to," you say. "Going to tell me who you are yet?" "Maybe. Fancy another riddle?" "What the fuck is it with you and riddles?" "I like them," the Fool shrugs. "I used to be more of a pranks guy, but it's no use drawing attention to myself when I manage to get unbound, so riddles will have to do." "Unbound? Are you a ghost? A trapped spirit? It would explain some things," you say quietly, not wanting to risk dealing with them. "Nothing of the sort! I'm far more powerful," the Fool says. "I'd make the threat you're dealing with look like chump change, you know." "Glad you're not my enemy, then," you say, before pausing. "Are you?" "Of course not! Just a friendly visitor, curious to see what'll happen. I know a lot about werewolves. I remember watching the first one change. God, the terror he felt." "You saw the first change?" you ask cautiously. "I did indeed," the Fool smiles. "I saw when they chained up my dear old Fenrir, for nothing more than being scary. That's what they tend to do, you know," the Fool says, pointing to his eyes. "But, every so often, Fenrir would get just a bit lose, and some brave mortal would need to toss a new chain on him. One brave soul got too close, and Fenrir managed to bite him. That was the first of their kind. Now, they've spread throughout the world, all from that one mortal who felt it was fair to lock up a creature that had done nothing wrong. Cruel bastards the lot of them," the Fool mutters. You pause, trying to discern whether this is the fool's insane ramblings, a metaphor, a literal truth or something else entirely. For as long as you stare at the grinning bastard, you can't tell. "Anything else you wanted to tell me?" you say dismissively, not willing to play the Fool's games. "Nothing to tell, but something to ask. Care for another riddle?" "Fuck's sake," you mutter. "What the hell does this matter?" The Fool smiles, before grinning. "So! A lost shepard met two hunters, the first of who had three loaves and the second who had five loaves. All the loaves were the same size. The three men agreed to share the eight loaves equally between them. After they had eaten, the hunter gave the shepherds eight bronze coins as payment for his meal. How should the two shepherds fairly divide this money?" > Five pieces to the first hunter, three to the second "You give five pieces to the first hunter, three to the second." "Yes, another answer! Gods, I really like you!" "Is it right?" The Fool shrugs, smiling at you. "Who knows? I'll be off, anyway, my eyes are beginning to burn," he says, scratching at his burned up eyes. "Good luck in there. Shame it's not a silver mine, am I right?" He smiles, grinning, as you snarl. He raises his hands defensively, shrugging. "Fine, fine, I'll be on my way. Best of luck in there, Willy." You don't even try to stop him, your gun feeling unnaturally heavy in your hands as you know the patchwork man's magic is at work here. As soon as the Fool disappears into the trees, your gun lightens in your hands, and you heave to stare off into the mineshaft, smiling. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk through the woods slowly, heading towards the scent. It draws nearer, the smell of smoke and coal becoming clear. It's a long, painful walk, and you find yourself scratching at your limbs, growling and shaking your head. The beast within is awakening again, as you run your tongue along your sharpened teeth, the taste of your own blood filling your own mouth. Your stomach growls, and the veil of darkness lifts as your supernatural eyes adjust to the darkness. Still, you focus on the burning pain in your chest and now, your stab wound, allowing the pain to consume you, bringing you just to the point where walking becomes impossible, all to stave off the wolf spirit howling to get out. It's not long, however, before you find your way to the mines. The earth begins to widen, revealing a huge, cavernous maw sticking out of the earth, a huge hole in the ground leading to darkness. The opening of the mineshaft. A light plume of smoke billows out from the mineshaft, as you can smell the scent of fresh meat and blood down below, the smell of wolves prowling and... strangely enough, diesel drifting out with its stink. You stare into the darkness, gun in your hands, as you prepare to go in. "Going in?" You turn your head, finding the patchwork fool standing in front of you. His eyes are still badly burned, although from this close, it seems more like its from a caustic chemical or animal venom rather than heat or fire. He grins at you, winking. "I was planning to," you say. "Going to tell me who you are yet?" "Maybe. Fancy another riddle?" "What the fuck is it with you and riddles?" "I like them," the Fool shrugs. "I used to be more of a pranks guy, but it's no use drawing attention to myself when I manage to get unbound, so riddles will have to do." "Unbound? Are you a ghost? A trapped spirit? It would explain some things," you say quietly, not wanting to risk dealing with them. "Nothing of the sort! I'm far more powerful," the Fool says. "I'd make the threat you're dealing with look like chump change, you know." "Glad you're not my enemy, then," you say, before pausing. "Are you?" "Of course not! Just a friendly visitor, curious to see what'll happen. I know a lot about werewolves. I remember watching the first one change. God, the terror he felt." "You saw the first change?" you ask cautiously. "I did indeed," the Fool smiles. "I saw when they chained up my dear old Fenrir, for nothing more than being scary. That's what they tend to do, you know," the Fool says, pointing to his eyes. "But, every so often, Fenrir would get just a bit lose, and some brave mortal would need to toss a new chain on him. One brave soul got too close, and Fenrir managed to bite him. That was the first of their kind. Now, they've spread throughout the world, all from that one mortal who felt it was fair to lock up a creature that had done nothing wrong. Cruel bastards the lot of them," the Fool mutters. You pause, trying to discern whether this is the fool's insane ramblings, a metaphor, a literal truth or something else entirely. For as long as you stare at the grinning bastard, you can't tell. "Anything else you wanted to tell me?" you say dismissively, not willing to play the Fool's games. "Nothing to tell, but something to ask. Care for another riddle?" "Fuck's sake," you mutter. "What the hell does this matter?" The Fool smiles, before grinning. "So! A lost shepard met two hunters, the first of who had three loaves and the second who had five loaves. All the loaves were the same size. The three men agreed to share the eight loaves equally between them. After they had eaten, the hunter gave the shepherds eight bronze coins as payment for his meal. How should the two shepherds fairly divide this money?" > Six pieces to the first hunter, two to the second "You give six pieces to the first hunter, two to the second." "Yes, another answer! Gods, I really like you!" "Is it right?" The Fool shrugs, smiling at you. "Who knows? I'll be off, anyway, my eyes are beginning to burn," he says, scratching at his burned up eyes. "Good luck in there. Shame it's not a silver mine, am I right?" He smiles, grinning, as you snarl. He raises his hands defensively, shrugging. "Fine, fine, I'll be on my way. Best of luck in there, Willy." You don't even try to stop him, your gun feeling unnaturally heavy in your hands as you know the patchwork man's magic is at work here. As soon as the Fool disappears into the trees, your gun lightens in your hands, and you heave to stare off into the mineshaft, smiling. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk through the woods slowly, heading towards the scent. It draws nearer, the smell of smoke and coal becoming clear. It's a long, painful walk, and you find yourself scratching at your limbs, growling and shaking your head. The beast within is awakening again, as you run your tongue along your sharpened teeth, the taste of your own blood filling your own mouth. Your stomach growls, and the veil of darkness lifts as your supernatural eyes adjust to the darkness. Still, you focus on the burning pain in your chest and now, your stab wound, allowing the pain to consume you, bringing you just to the point where walking becomes impossible, all to stave off the wolf spirit howling to get out. It's not long, however, before you find your way to the mines. The earth begins to widen, revealing a huge, cavernous maw sticking out of the earth, a huge hole in the ground leading to darkness. The opening of the mineshaft. A light plume of smoke billows out from the mineshaft, as you can smell the scent of fresh meat and blood down below, the smell of wolves prowling and... strangely enough, diesel drifting out with its stink. You stare into the darkness, gun in your hands, as you prepare to go in. "Going in?" You turn your head, finding the patchwork fool standing in front of you. His eyes are still badly burned, although from this close, it seems more like its from a caustic chemical or animal venom rather than heat or fire. He grins at you, winking. "I was planning to," you say. "Going to tell me who you are yet?" "Maybe. Fancy another riddle?" "What the fuck is it with you and riddles?" "I like them," the Fool shrugs. "I used to be more of a pranks guy, but it's no use drawing attention to myself when I manage to get unbound, so riddles will have to do." "Unbound? Are you a ghost? A trapped spirit? It would explain some things," you say quietly, not wanting to risk dealing with them. "Nothing of the sort! I'm far more powerful," the Fool says. "I'd make the threat you're dealing with look like chump change, you know." "Glad you're not my enemy, then," you say, before pausing. "Are you?" "Of course not! Just a friendly visitor, curious to see what'll happen. I know a lot about werewolves. I remember watching the first one change. God, the terror he felt." "You saw the first change?" you ask cautiously. "I did indeed," the Fool smiles. "I saw when they chained up my dear old Fenrir, for nothing more than being scary. That's what they tend to do, you know," the Fool says, pointing to his eyes. "But, every so often, Fenrir would get just a bit lose, and some brave mortal would need to toss a new chain on him. One brave soul got too close, and Fenrir managed to bite him. That was the first of their kind. Now, they've spread throughout the world, all from that one mortal who felt it was fair to lock up a creature that had done nothing wrong. Cruel bastards the lot of them," the Fool mutters. You pause, trying to discern whether this is the fool's insane ramblings, a metaphor, a literal truth or something else entirely. For as long as you stare at the grinning bastard, you can't tell. "Anything else you wanted to tell me?" you say dismissively, not willing to play the Fool's games. "Nothing to tell, but something to ask. Care for another riddle?" "Fuck's sake," you mutter. "What the hell does this matter?" The Fool smiles, before grinning. "So! A lost shepard met two hunters, the first of who had three loaves and the second who had five loaves. All the loaves were the same size. The three men agreed to share the eight loaves equally between them. After they had eaten, the hunter gave the shepherds eight bronze coins as payment for his meal. How should the two shepherds fairly divide this money?" > Seven pieces to the first hunter, one to the second "Seven coins to the first hunter, and give the last one to the second," you say. "Yes, another answer! Gods, I really like you!" "Is it right?" The Fool shrugs, smiling at you. "Who knows? I'll be off, anyway, my eyes are beginning to burn," he says, scratching at his burned up eyes. "Good luck in there. Shame it's not a silver mine, am I right?" He smiles, grinning, as you snarl. He raises his hands defensively, shrugging. "Fine, fine, I'll be on my way. Best of luck in there, Willy." You don't even try to stop him, your gun feeling unnaturally heavy in your hands as you know the patchwork man's magic is at work here. As soon as the Fool disappears into the trees, your gun lightens in your hands, and you heave to stare off into the mineshaft, smiling. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk through the woods slowly, heading towards the scent. It draws nearer, the smell of smoke and coal becoming clear. It's a long, painful walk, and you find yourself scratching at your limbs, growling and shaking your head. The beast within is awakening again, as you run your tongue along your sharpened teeth, the taste of your own blood filling your own mouth. Your stomach growls, and the veil of darkness lifts as your supernatural eyes adjust to the darkness. Still, you focus on the burning pain in your chest and now, your stab wound, allowing the pain to consume you, bringing you just to the point where walking becomes impossible, all to stave off the wolf spirit howling to get out. It's not long, however, before you find your way to the mines. The earth begins to widen, revealing a huge, cavernous maw sticking out of the earth, a huge hole in the ground leading to darkness. The opening of the mineshaft. A light plume of smoke billows out from the mineshaft, as you can smell the scent of fresh meat and blood down below, the smell of wolves prowling and... strangely enough, diesel drifting out with its stink. You stare into the darkness, gun in your hands, as you prepare to go in. "Going in?" You turn your head, finding the patchwork fool standing in front of you. His eyes are still badly burned, although from this close, it seems more like its from a caustic chemical or animal venom rather than heat or fire. He grins at you, winking. "I was planning to," you say. "Going to tell me who you are yet?" "Maybe. Fancy another riddle?" "What the fuck is it with you and riddles?" "I like them," the Fool shrugs. "I used to be more of a pranks guy, but it's no use drawing attention to myself when I manage to get unbound, so riddles will have to do." "Unbound? Are you a ghost? A trapped spirit? It would explain some things," you say quietly, not wanting to risk dealing with them. "Nothing of the sort! I'm far more powerful," the Fool says. "I'd make the threat you're dealing with look like chump change, you know." "Glad you're not my enemy, then," you say, before pausing. "Are you?" "Of course not! Just a friendly visitor, curious to see what'll happen. I know a lot about werewolves. I remember watching the first one change. God, the terror he felt." "You saw the first change?" you ask cautiously. "I did indeed," the Fool smiles. "I saw when they chained up my dear old Fenrir, for nothing more than being scary. That's what they tend to do, you know," the Fool says, pointing to his eyes. "But, every so often, Fenrir would get just a bit lose, and some brave mortal would need to toss a new chain on him. One brave soul got too close, and Fenrir managed to bite him. That was the first of their kind. Now, they've spread throughout the world, all from that one mortal who felt it was fair to lock up a creature that had done nothing wrong. Cruel bastards the lot of them," the Fool mutters. You pause, trying to discern whether this is the fool's insane ramblings, a metaphor, a literal truth or something else entirely. For as long as you stare at the grinning bastard, you can't tell. "Anything else you wanted to tell me?" you say dismissively, not willing to play the Fool's games. "Nothing to tell, but something to ask. Care for another riddle?" "Fuck's sake," you mutter. "What the hell does this matter?" The Fool smiles, before grinning. "So! A lost shepard met two hunters, the first of who had three loaves and the second who had five loaves. All the loaves were the same size. The three men agreed to share the eight loaves equally between them. After they had eaten, the hunter gave the shepherds eight bronze coins as payment for his meal. How should the two shepherds fairly divide this money?" > You give it all to the first hunter "You give all the coins to the first hunter," you say. "Yes, another answer! Gods, I really like you!" "Is it right?" The Fool shrugs, smiling at you. "Who knows? I'll be off, anyway, my eyes are beginning to burn," he says, scratching at his burned up eyes. "Good luck in there. Shame it's not a silver mine, am I right?" He smiles, grinning, as you snarl. He raises his hands defensively, shrugging. "Fine, fine, I'll be on my way. Best of luck in there, Willy." You don't even try to stop him, your gun feeling unnaturally heavy in your hands as you know the patchwork man's magic is at work here. As soon as the Fool disappears into the trees, your gun lightens in your hands, and you heave to stare off into the mineshaft, smiling. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk through the woods slowly, heading towards the scent. It draws nearer, the smell of smoke and coal becoming clear. It's a long, painful walk, and you find yourself scratching at your limbs, growling and shaking your head. The beast within is awakening again, as you run your tongue along your sharpened teeth, the taste of your own blood filling your own mouth. Your stomach growls, and the veil of darkness lifts as your supernatural eyes adjust to the darkness. Still, you focus on the burning pain in your chest and now, your stab wound, allowing the pain to consume you, bringing you just to the point where walking becomes impossible, all to stave off the wolf spirit howling to get out. It's not long, however, before you find your way to the mines. The earth begins to widen, revealing a huge, cavernous maw sticking out of the earth, a huge hole in the ground leading to darkness. The opening of the mineshaft. A light plume of smoke billows out from the mineshaft, as you can smell the scent of fresh meat and blood down below, the smell of wolves prowling and... strangely enough, diesel drifting out with its stink. You stare into the darkness, gun in your hands, as you prepare to go in. "Going in?" You turn your head, finding the patchwork fool standing in front of you. His eyes are still badly burned, although from this close, it seems more like its from a caustic chemical or animal venom rather than heat or fire. He grins at you, winking. "I was planning to," you say. "Going to tell me who you are yet?" "Maybe. Fancy another riddle?" "What the fuck is it with you and riddles?" "I like them," the Fool shrugs. "I used to be more of a pranks guy, but it's no use drawing attention to myself when I manage to get unbound, so riddles will have to do." "Unbound? Are you a ghost? A trapped spirit? It would explain some things," you say quietly, not wanting to risk dealing with them. "Nothing of the sort! I'm far more powerful," the Fool says. "I'd make the threat you're dealing with look like chump change, you know." "Glad you're not my enemy, then," you say, before pausing. "Are you?" "Of course not! Just a friendly visitor, curious to see what'll happen. I know a lot about werewolves. I remember watching the first one change. God, the terror he felt." "You saw the first change?" you ask cautiously. "I did indeed," the Fool smiles. "I saw when they chained up my dear old Fenrir, for nothing more than being scary. That's what they tend to do, you know," the Fool says, pointing to his eyes. "But, every so often, Fenrir would get just a bit lose, and some brave mortal would need to toss a new chain on him. One brave soul got too close, and Fenrir managed to bite him. That was the first of their kind. Now, they've spread throughout the world, all from that one mortal who felt it was fair to lock up a creature that had done nothing wrong. Cruel bastards the lot of them," the Fool mutters. You pause, trying to discern whether this is the fool's insane ramblings, a metaphor, a literal truth or something else entirely. For as long as you stare at the grinning bastard, you can't tell. "Anything else you wanted to tell me?" you say dismissively, not willing to play the Fool's games. "Nothing to tell, but something to ask. Care for another riddle?" "Fuck's sake," you mutter. "What the hell does this matter?" The Fool smiles, before grinning. "So! A lost shepard met two hunters, the first of who had three loaves and the second who had five loaves. All the loaves were the same size. The three men agreed to share the eight loaves equally between them. After they had eaten, the hunter gave the shepherds eight bronze coins as payment for his meal. How should the two shepherds fairly divide this money?" > You fuck your damned riddles, fool! "Fuck you damned riddles! Fuck all of this shit! You better goddamn tell me who you are before I pump you full of lead, fucker!" "How dull," the Fool frowns. "Well, I guess you're just not going to answer, then. Good luck in there. Shame it's not a silver mine, am I right?" He smiles, grinning, as you snarl. He raises his hands defensively, shrugging. "Fine, fine, I'll be on my way. Best of luck in there, Willy." You don't even try to stop him, your gun feeling unnaturally heavy in your hands as you know the patchwork man's magic is at work here. As soon as the Fool disappears into the trees, your gun lightens in your hands, and you heave to stare off into the mineshaft. Into the darkness you go.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It's time to do what needs to be done. You can't let the deaths of tonight be for nothing. A chill runs through you, as you realize you need new clothes, and there's only one place you can get them. You lean down, unbutton Wyatt's jacket as you try not to look at the body. Slowly, The underwear are soiled and the inside two layers of Wyatt's clothes are soaked with blood, but you manage to scavenge the boots, socks, pants and jacket, pulling them on. Once you've bundled yourself up in clothes, you raise your rifle to your shoulder and begin walking, leaving the corpse behind you. You don't have the time to bury it, and being around the corpse is only sending pangs of hunger through your body. You try not to shed a tear, heading off into the woods. Your senses quickly detect the faint smell of smoke and coal, and you begin heading towards it. The beast within you is quiet for now from the stabbing, but thankfully the beast seems to almost be absorbing the pain, and it's little more than a dull ache to you now. You walk in silence, and for a moment, it seems almost unnatural. Everything about you seems wrong now. You can tell you're walking loudly, almost falling and stumbling about. Your movements are as stealthy as ever thanks to your abilities as a hunter, but compared to your lupine form, it's clumsy. Your senses are dulled without the powers of the beast, your entire body weakening from exhaustion and blood loss. Your eyes are still bright, and you find yourself staring through the darkness at a trio of werewolves prowling through the undergrowth. The creatures are streaked with gray and black fur, growling as they slowly move forward, muscles moving under furry hides, their teeth glowing in the moonlight. They must be following your scent, and if they are, they have it now. The beast within you is quiet now, but the rage in your heart is burning. Time to do your duty as a Hunter. > You release the wolf within and tear them apart! You growl, snarling as you draw on the beast deep inside you as you draw your fingernails against your wrists, causing blood to run down your arms in a thin trickle as you howl, staring up towards the moon as its glow shines upon your skin. However, the silver wound still burns your flesh, and the wolf within is far from your abilities. It's quiet now, sleeping and recovering from the wound, and you're left just shouting to the skies as the beast draws near. "Fuck... now it's silent. Now, the transformation that's plagued me all night is beyond me," you swear. It's a somber thought, but as the werewolves near you, now too close for you to be able to gun them down or run, you're grateful that you can die a man. You put up your chin, taking a deep breath, and face death with a grimace. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You slowly begin walking in the direction of the smoke, keeping your mind on the burning pain in your chest. Your bullet holes and bite mark have already scabbed and scarred over, no doubt from the healing abilities the beast within has granted you. Still, the silver burns just as harshly, like flames trapped in your chest. It's a struggle trying to focus on the pain, to let it consume you and drive you into a violent psychosis, but you have no alternative. Whenever you try to ignore the pain, you can feel the monstrous urges return. The unending hunger, the desire to break free, the need to howl up at the sky, the lust for the power of the wild... you keep focused, and the burning pain continues. As you walk, you notice just how tight your clothes feel on you. No, not tight. Surprisingly, they seem to fit you perfectly, by whatever abilities of the Patchwork Man. They're not tight. They're constrictive. You want to tear them off, to feel the wind on your fur and to tear off into the night. You want to taste flesh and blood, to feel the dirt shift under your paws. You want to answer the call of the moon. You shake your head roughly, growling as you tighten your grip on the shotgun. The cool metal reminds you of who you are. A Hunter. It's a long distance of angered, confused walking, but you soon see lights emerge from the darkness. Not the passionate burning of flames, but the synthetic light of bulbs. You take up a crouching position, slowly sneaking up to where the trees give way to a clearing. A large wooden cabin sits in the center of the clearing, surrounded by bright lights that give light to the cabin. Standing at the edge of the lights, holding a semi-automatic rifle, is a human. The man has a thick beard reaching his chest and long, tangled hair. His arms are covered with tattoos, depicting old Nordic runes and wolf symbols. Interesting. He must be the werewolf-equivalent of a Thrall. You've never heard of such a thing, seeing as werewolves are usually too stupid and bestial to have human servants, but the werewolves you've seen tonight are definitely smart enough to have them. The Wolf Servant seems to be guarding the cabin, which has light plumes of smoke drifting up from its chimney. He hasn't noticed you, and seems to the only guard in sight. You need to take him out to get inside. > You open fire from afar You aim your shotgun carefully, staring down the iron sights at the man. You still your breath, pulling the trigger as the gun bucks The scattering pellets smash into the guard and knock him from his feet. The man smacks into the ground with a burst of blood, as you rush towards the cabin. The smell of fresh blood drives you forward with a newfound, bestial energy. Your eyes spot a shift in the darkness, as you make out another guard on the opposite side of the cabin to you, a weapon in his hands. The guard raises his rifle, opening fire at you, as you dive to the ground. You roll behind the cabin, putting the wooden building between you and the guard. You slide up against the corner of the cabin, keeping in tight as the bullets fly past you from the other guard. You try to focus on the burning pain in your chest, so you stay calm and collected rather than letting your bestial rage consume you. > You charge the second guard quickly You ready your shotgun, before turning the corner and sprinting forward, your gun leveled. The guard aims his rifle, but you simply fire your shotgun, firing a spray of silver. You knock the man off his feet as he collapses to the ground with a scream. You fire again, hitting the man in the side and killing him. You turn to the cabin, pumping your shotgun. Now it's time to move inside and secure the cabin. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aim your shotgun carefully, staring down the iron sights at the man. You still your breath, pulling the trigger as the gun bucks The scattering pellets smash into the guard and knock him from his feet. The man smacks into the ground with a burst of blood, as you rush towards the cabin. The smell of fresh blood drives you forward with a newfound, bestial energy. Your eyes spot a shift in the darkness, as you make out another guard on the opposite side of the cabin to you, a weapon in his hands. The guard raises his rifle, opening fire at you, as you dive to the ground. You roll behind the cabin, putting the wooden building between you and the guard. You slide up against the corner of the cabin, keeping in tight as the bullets fly past you from the other guard. You try to focus on the burning pain in your chest, so you stay calm and collected rather than letting your bestial rage consume you. > You circle the cabin and hit him from the side Running your tongue along your sharpening teeth, you move swiftly, your nostrils filling with the scent of the man's sweat, blood and stink. Your feet move swiftly from instinct, knowing exactly where to step as you swing around the cabin, spotting the man's flank. Kill! Kill! KILL! The voices in your head, get stronger, as you find your grip on your weapon tightening. You raise your shotgun, firing as the blast almost takes off the man's head, sending blood spraying onto the ground as you laugh. You head turns as you let out a low, rumbling growl, staring at the cabin. Time to break inside and kill!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"You're... you're a Hunter, right? You must be." "Unfortunately, no. You're out alone in these woods tonight. Well, I best be off. Good luck dealing with my boy tonight, Willy. Best of luck." "Wait!" you growl, aiming your shotgun at him. "You move and I blow your brains out!" The Fool sighs, shaking his head. "I don't think you really know how this game works, do you?" the Fool says. The Fool leans forward, placing his thumb against the shotgun barrel. He scratches at his puffy, burned eyes, sighing. "You're not going to shoot that gun," he says simply. With that, the Fool turns, strolling off into the woods. You try to aim your shotgun, but find your arms are incapable of moving, the numb, cold muscles refusing to work. All you can do is watch as the Fool disappears into the darkness. When he's out of view, you snarl. You sniff the air, smelling the scent of prey, and... you try to focus on the pain for a moment, ignoring your bestial senses, before you smell something else. The smell of smoke, in the distance. You pause, raising an eye. Smoke means fire. Fire means activity. There needs to be something in that direction. > You go examine the coin You walk over to where the Fool dropped the golden coin, finding it lying, shining in the dirt. You drop to your knees, picking it up and examining it. The coin depicts an old image of two snakes, circling one another to form an 'S' shape. The snakes are biting each other's tails in a bizarre version of an ouroboros. You flip the coin over, finding yourself staring at the same image. Huh. You suppose in a strange way, each face of the coin depicts the both "Heads" and "Tails". It seems the strange, patchwork man was fucking with you. For a moment, you raise an eyebrow, wondering if "A coin" was the answer to that riddle. Either way, too late to ask. You pocket the coin, before standing and staring off towards where the smell of smoke came from.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Heads!" The coin flips through the air ahead of you, as you step back, looking at the coin with interest. He steps back, leveling your own shotgun at you as he the coin lands in the dirt. The Fool peers down at it, tilting his head, before flipping the shotgun in his hands, grabbing the barrel and offering the stock to you. "It's your lucky day, Hunter. Good luck to you." You grab the shotgun, holding it in your hands and aiming it at the suspicious, patch coat man. "Who the fuck are you?" "An interesting question! Do you like riddles?" "No." The Fool frowns. "So dull. You're a dull old fellow, aren't you? Perhaps I should be helping the wolves." "Just tell me who you are, dammit! I'm a dying man, I don't have time for this." The Fool opens his mouth to complain, before pausing, then shrugging. "A slave I have been and shall remain To a golden mistress I'm tied with invisible chains Yet always I put on the same brave face She keeps me her prisoner, but leaves me some space." The Fool smiles at you for a moment, before raising an eyebrow. "So... who am I?" > A Werewolf "You're a werewolf, aren't you? You're one of those fucked up beasts." "No, I'm far older than even werewolves, I'm afraid. Well, I best be off. Good luck dealing with my boy tonight, Willy." "Wait!" you growl, aiming your shotgun at him. "You move and I blow your brains out!" The Fool sighs, shaking his head. "I don't think you really know how this game works, do you?" the Fool says. The Fool leans forward, placing his thumb against the shotgun barrel. He scratches at his puffy, burned eyes, sighing. "You're not going to shoot that gun," he says simply. With that, the Fool turns, strolling off into the woods. You try to aim your shotgun, but find your arms are incapable of moving, the numb, cold muscles refusing to work. All you can do is watch as the Fool disappears into the darkness. When he's out of view, you snarl. You sniff the air, smelling the scent of prey, and... you try to focus on the pain for a moment, ignoring your bestial senses, before you smell something else. The smell of smoke, in the distance. You pause, raising an eye. Smoke means fire. Fire means activity. There needs to be something in that direction.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Heads!" The coin flips through the air ahead of you, as you step back, looking at the coin with interest. He steps back, leveling your own shotgun at you as he the coin lands in the dirt. The Fool peers down at it, tilting his head, before flipping the shotgun in his hands, grabbing the barrel and offering the stock to you. "It's your lucky day, Hunter. Good luck to you." You grab the shotgun, holding it in your hands and aiming it at the suspicious, patch coat man. "Who the fuck are you?" "An interesting question! Do you like riddles?" "No." The Fool frowns. "So dull. You're a dull old fellow, aren't you? Perhaps I should be helping the wolves." "Just tell me who you are, dammit! I'm a dying man, I don't have time for this." The Fool opens his mouth to complain, before pausing, then shrugging. "A slave I have been and shall remain To a golden mistress I'm tied with invisible chains Yet always I put on the same brave face She keeps me her prisoner, but leaves me some space." The Fool smiles at you for a moment, before raising an eyebrow. "So... who am I?" > A Lunatic "You're a goddamn lunatic," you growl. "Ouch! Just because something's true doesn't mean you should say it, Willy! Didn't your father ever teach you manners?" "Don't fucking talk about my father," you growl, raising your shotgun. "Ah, yes. My apologies. I didn't wish to bring up old memories. If it helps, I had a bad relationship with old Fárbauti. We never really... oh, never mind. It's late, I best be off. Good luck dealing with my boy tonight, Willy. Best of luck." "Wait!" you growl, aiming your shotgun at him. "You move and I blow your brains out!" The Fool sighs, shaking his head. "I don't think you really know how this game works, do you?" the Fool says. The Fool leans forward, placing his thumb against the shotgun barrel. He scratches at his puffy, burned eyes, sighing. "You're not going to shoot that gun," he says simply. With that, the Fool turns, strolling off into the woods. You try to aim your shotgun, but find your arms are incapable of moving, the numb, cold muscles refusing to work. All you can do is watch as the Fool disappears into the darkness. When he's out of view, you snarl. You sniff the air, smelling the scent of prey, and... you try to focus on the pain for a moment, ignoring your bestial senses, before you smell something else. The smell of smoke, in the distance. You pause, raising an eye. Smoke means fire. Fire means activity. There needs to be something in that direction.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Heads!" The coin flips through the air ahead of you, as you step back, looking at the coin with interest. He steps back, leveling your own shotgun at you as he the coin lands in the dirt. The Fool peers down at it, tilting his head, before flipping the shotgun in his hands, grabbing the barrel and offering the stock to you. "It's your lucky day, Hunter. Good luck to you." You grab the shotgun, holding it in your hands and aiming it at the suspicious, patch coat man. "Who the fuck are you?" "An interesting question! Do you like riddles?" "No." The Fool frowns. "So dull. You're a dull old fellow, aren't you? Perhaps I should be helping the wolves." "Just tell me who you are, dammit! I'm a dying man, I don't have time for this." The Fool opens his mouth to complain, before pausing, then shrugging. "A slave I have been and shall remain To a golden mistress I'm tied with invisible chains Yet always I put on the same brave face She keeps me her prisoner, but leaves me some space." The Fool smiles at you for a moment, before raising an eyebrow. "So... who am I?" > A Puppet "A puppet," you say softly. "Oh, you're actually answering the riddle? How delightful! Maybe I misjudged you!" "Am I right, then?" "Oh well, we're all puppets in a way, aren't we?" the Fool grins. "Well, I best be off. Good luck dealing with my boy tonight, Willy." "Wait!" you growl, aiming your shotgun at him. "You move and I blow your brains out!" The Fool sighs, shaking his head. "I don't think you really know how this game works, do you?" the Fool says. The Fool leans forward, placing his thumb against the shotgun barrel. He scratches at his puffy, burned eyes, sighing. "You're not going to shoot that gun," he says simply. With that, the Fool turns, strolling off into the woods. You try to aim your shotgun, but find your arms are incapable of moving, the numb, cold muscles refusing to work. All you can do is watch as the Fool disappears into the darkness. When he's out of view, you snarl. You sniff the air, smelling the scent of prey, and... you try to focus on the pain for a moment, ignoring your bestial senses, before you smell something else. The smell of smoke, in the distance. You pause, raising an eye. Smoke means fire. Fire means activity. There needs to be something in that direction.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Heads!" The coin flips through the air ahead of you, as you step back, looking at the coin with interest. He steps back, leveling your own shotgun at you as he the coin lands in the dirt. The Fool peers down at it, tilting his head, before flipping the shotgun in his hands, grabbing the barrel and offering the stock to you. "It's your lucky day, Hunter. Good luck to you." You grab the shotgun, holding it in your hands and aiming it at the suspicious, patch coat man. "Who the fuck are you?" "An interesting question! Do you like riddles?" "No." The Fool frowns. "So dull. You're a dull old fellow, aren't you? Perhaps I should be helping the wolves." "Just tell me who you are, dammit! I'm a dying man, I don't have time for this." The Fool opens his mouth to complain, before pausing, then shrugging. "A slave I have been and shall remain To a golden mistress I'm tied with invisible chains Yet always I put on the same brave face She keeps me her prisoner, but leaves me some space." The Fool smiles at you for a moment, before raising an eyebrow. "So... who am I?" > A Clock "A clock," you say softly. "Oh, you're actually answering the riddle? How delightful! Maybe I misjudged you!" "Am I right, then?" "Oh well, tick tock, tick tock, Willy," the Fool grins. "Do you hear that? That's the sound of our time together running out for now. I best be on my way. Good luck dealing with my boy tonight, Willy." "Wait!" you growl, aiming your shotgun at him. "You move and I blow your brains out!" The Fool sighs, shaking his head. "I don't think you really know how this game works, do you?" the Fool says. The Fool leans forward, placing his thumb against the shotgun barrel. He scratches at his puffy, burned eyes, sighing. "You're not going to shoot that gun," he says simply. With that, the Fool turns, strolling off into the woods. You try to aim your shotgun, but find your arms are incapable of moving, the numb, cold muscles refusing to work. All you can do is watch as the Fool disappears into the darkness. When he's out of view, you snarl. You sniff the air, smelling the scent of prey, and... you try to focus on the pain for a moment, ignoring your bestial senses, before you smell something else. The smell of smoke, in the distance. You pause, raising an eye. Smoke means fire. Fire means activity. There needs to be something in that direction.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Heads!" The coin flips through the air ahead of you, as you step back, looking at the coin with interest. He steps back, leveling your own shotgun at you as he the coin lands in the dirt. The Fool peers down at it, tilting his head, before flipping the shotgun in his hands, grabbing the barrel and offering the stock to you. "It's your lucky day, Hunter. Good luck to you." You grab the shotgun, holding it in your hands and aiming it at the suspicious, patch coat man. "Who the fuck are you?" "An interesting question! Do you like riddles?" "No." The Fool frowns. "So dull. You're a dull old fellow, aren't you? Perhaps I should be helping the wolves." "Just tell me who you are, dammit! I'm a dying man, I don't have time for this." The Fool opens his mouth to complain, before pausing, then shrugging. "A slave I have been and shall remain To a golden mistress I'm tied with invisible chains Yet always I put on the same brave face She keeps me her prisoner, but leaves me some space." The Fool smiles at you for a moment, before raising an eyebrow. "So... who am I?" > The Moon "The moon," you say softly. "Oh, you're actually answering the riddle? How delightful! Maybe I misjudged you!" "Am I right, then?" "Oh well, it is a very moonlit night" the Fool grins. "I like your answer either way. Well, I best be off. Good luck dealing with my boy tonight, Willy." "Wait!" you growl, aiming your shotgun at him. "You move and I blow your brains out!" The Fool sighs, shaking his head. "I don't think you really know how this game works, do you?" the Fool says. The Fool leans forward, placing his thumb against the shotgun barrel. He scratches at his puffy, burned eyes, sighing. "You're not going to shoot that gun," he says simply. With that, the Fool turns, strolling off into the woods. You try to aim your shotgun, but find your arms are incapable of moving, the numb, cold muscles refusing to work. All you can do is watch as the Fool disappears into the darkness. When he's out of view, you snarl. You sniff the air, smelling the scent of prey, and... you try to focus on the pain for a moment, ignoring your bestial senses, before you smell something else. The smell of smoke, in the distance. You pause, raising an eye. Smoke means fire. Fire means activity. There needs to be something in that direction.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Heads!" The coin flips through the air ahead of you, as you step back, looking at the coin with interest. He steps back, leveling your own shotgun at you as he the coin lands in the dirt. The Fool peers down at it, tilting his head, before flipping the shotgun in his hands, grabbing the barrel and offering the stock to you. "It's your lucky day, Hunter. Good luck to you." You grab the shotgun, holding it in your hands and aiming it at the suspicious, patch coat man. "Who the fuck are you?" "An interesting question! Do you like riddles?" "No." The Fool frowns. "So dull. You're a dull old fellow, aren't you? Perhaps I should be helping the wolves." "Just tell me who you are, dammit! I'm a dying man, I don't have time for this." The Fool opens his mouth to complain, before pausing, then shrugging. "A slave I have been and shall remain To a golden mistress I'm tied with invisible chains Yet always I put on the same brave face She keeps me her prisoner, but leaves me some space." The Fool smiles at you for a moment, before raising an eyebrow. "So... who am I?" > The Tide "The tide," you say softly. "Oh, you're actually answering the riddle? How delightful! Maybe I misjudged you!" "Am I right, then?" "Oh, I wouldn't want to spoil the answer by telling you," the Fool grins. "Well, I best be off. Good luck dealing with my boy tonight, Willy." "Wait!" you growl, aiming your shotgun at him. "You move and I blow your brains out!" The Fool sighs, shaking his head. "I don't think you really know how this game works, do you?" the Fool says. The Fool leans forward, placing his thumb against the shotgun barrel. He scratches at his puffy, burned eyes, sighing. "You're not going to shoot that gun," he says simply. With that, the Fool turns, strolling off into the woods. You try to aim your shotgun, but find your arms are incapable of moving, the numb, cold muscles refusing to work. All you can do is watch as the Fool disappears into the darkness. When he's out of view, you snarl. You sniff the air, smelling the scent of prey, and... you try to focus on the pain for a moment, ignoring your bestial senses, before you smell something else. The smell of smoke, in the distance. You pause, raising an eye. Smoke means fire. Fire means activity. There needs to be something in that direction.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Heads!" The coin flips through the air ahead of you, as you step back, looking at the coin with interest. He steps back, leveling your own shotgun at you as he the coin lands in the dirt. The Fool peers down at it, tilting his head, before flipping the shotgun in his hands, grabbing the barrel and offering the stock to you. "It's your lucky day, Hunter. Good luck to you." You grab the shotgun, holding it in your hands and aiming it at the suspicious, patch coat man. "Who the fuck are you?" "An interesting question! Do you like riddles?" "No." The Fool frowns. "So dull. You're a dull old fellow, aren't you? Perhaps I should be helping the wolves." "Just tell me who you are, dammit! I'm a dying man, I don't have time for this." The Fool opens his mouth to complain, before pausing, then shrugging. "A slave I have been and shall remain To a golden mistress I'm tied with invisible chains Yet always I put on the same brave face She keeps me her prisoner, but leaves me some space." The Fool smiles at you for a moment, before raising an eyebrow. "So... who am I?" > You man "Man," you say softly. "Oh, you're actually answering the riddle? How delightful! Maybe I misjudged you!" "Am I right, then?" "Oh well, I mean, it's clear you've heard the Sphinx Riddle. And you said you didn't like riddles, you fibber!" the Fool grins. "Well, I best be off. Good luck dealing with my boy tonight, Willy." "Wait!" you growl, aiming your shotgun at him. "You move and I blow your brains out!" The Fool sighs, shaking his head. "I don't think you really know how this game works, do you?" the Fool says. The Fool leans forward, placing his thumb against the shotgun barrel. He scratches at his puffy, burned eyes, sighing. "You're not going to shoot that gun," he says simply. With that, the Fool turns, strolling off into the woods. You try to aim your shotgun, but find your arms are incapable of moving, the numb, cold muscles refusing to work. All you can do is watch as the Fool disappears into the darkness. When he's out of view, you snarl. You sniff the air, smelling the scent of prey, and... you try to focus on the pain for a moment, ignoring your bestial senses, before you smell something else. The smell of smoke, in the distance. You pause, raising an eye. Smoke means fire. Fire means activity. There needs to be something in that direction.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Heads!" The coin flips through the air ahead of you, as you step back, looking at the coin with interest. He steps back, leveling your own shotgun at you as he the coin lands in the dirt. The Fool peers down at it, tilting his head, before flipping the shotgun in his hands, grabbing the barrel and offering the stock to you. "It's your lucky day, Hunter. Good luck to you." You grab the shotgun, holding it in your hands and aiming it at the suspicious, patch coat man. "Who the fuck are you?" "An interesting question! Do you like riddles?" "No." The Fool frowns. "So dull. You're a dull old fellow, aren't you? Perhaps I should be helping the wolves." "Just tell me who you are, dammit! I'm a dying man, I don't have time for this." The Fool opens his mouth to complain, before pausing, then shrugging. "A slave I have been and shall remain To a golden mistress I'm tied with invisible chains Yet always I put on the same brave face She keeps me her prisoner, but leaves me some space." The Fool smiles at you for a moment, before raising an eyebrow. "So... who am I?" > You an Oak Tree "An Oak Tree," you say softly. "Oh, you're actually answering the riddle? How delightful! Maybe I misjudged you!" "Am I right, then?" "Well, I am in a forest, so maybe," the Fool grins. "Well, I best be off. Good luck dealing with my boy tonight, Willy." "Wait!" you growl, aiming your shotgun at him. "You move and I blow your brains out!" The Fool sighs, shaking his head. "I don't think you really know how this game works, do you?" the Fool says. The Fool leans forward, placing his thumb against the shotgun barrel. He scratches at his puffy, burned eyes, sighing. "You're not going to shoot that gun," he says simply. With that, the Fool turns, strolling off into the woods. You try to aim your shotgun, but find your arms are incapable of moving, the numb, cold muscles refusing to work. All you can do is watch as the Fool disappears into the darkness. When he's out of view, you snarl. You sniff the air, smelling the scent of prey, and... you try to focus on the pain for a moment, ignoring your bestial senses, before you smell something else. The smell of smoke, in the distance. You pause, raising an eye. Smoke means fire. Fire means activity. There needs to be something in that direction.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Heads!" The coin flips through the air ahead of you, as you step back, looking at the coin with interest. He steps back, leveling your own shotgun at you as he the coin lands in the dirt. The Fool peers down at it, tilting his head, before flipping the shotgun in his hands, grabbing the barrel and offering the stock to you. "It's your lucky day, Hunter. Good luck to you." You grab the shotgun, holding it in your hands and aiming it at the suspicious, patch coat man. "Who the fuck are you?" "An interesting question! Do you like riddles?" "No." The Fool frowns. "So dull. You're a dull old fellow, aren't you? Perhaps I should be helping the wolves." "Just tell me who you are, dammit! I'm a dying man, I don't have time for this." The Fool opens his mouth to complain, before pausing, then shrugging. "A slave I have been and shall remain To a golden mistress I'm tied with invisible chains Yet always I put on the same brave face She keeps me her prisoner, but leaves me some space." The Fool smiles at you for a moment, before raising an eyebrow. "So... who am I?" > You fuck your riddles, you're not playing your games! "Fuck your riddles, I'm not playing your games!" you yell. "Ugh, how dull then. You're very angry, aren't you?" "Watch it, fucker. Don't think I won't kill you." "God, if you're going to be like this, I best go off and leave you alone with your anger. Good luck dealing with my boy tonight, Willy." "Wait!" you growl, aiming your shotgun at him. "You move and I blow your brains out!" The Fool sighs, shaking his head. "I don't think you really know how this game works, do you?" the Fool says. The Fool leans forward, placing his thumb against the shotgun barrel. He scratches at his puffy, burned eyes, sighing. "You're not going to shoot that gun," he says simply. With that, the Fool turns, strolling off into the woods. You try to aim your shotgun, but find your arms are incapable of moving, the numb, cold muscles refusing to work. All you can do is watch as the Fool disappears into the darkness. When he's out of view, you snarl. You sniff the air, smelling the scent of prey, and... you try to focus on the pain for a moment, ignoring your bestial senses, before you smell something else. The smell of smoke, in the distance. You pause, raising an eye. Smoke means fire. Fire means activity. There needs to be something in that direction.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You slow your breathing, focusing on the pain in your chest. You raise your head, wiping the puke and blood from your face as you try to ignore the hunger in your belly. You wince, trying to ignore the desires of the beast within, telling you to run, to hunt, to feed, to howl. You shake your head violently, trying to focus, as you take up a kneeling position. The cold wind chills your bones and gives you goosebumps, and "You look to be in a bad state, friend," a voice says. You look up, finding yourself staring up at a a young, grinning man with curly black hair and a thick beard. His eyes are red and puffing, and seem to be somewhat burned. His jacket is patch-work, made of many stitched up patches of various colors, with the rest of his outfit being suitably gauche in its coloring to accentuate the man's weird look. He looks down at you, smiling. "You're either very hungover, or old Fenrir got his claws into you." "Who are you?" you ask weakly. "I'm getting really shit sick of having people walk up to me." "Oh, a fool, little else," the man smiles. "You look cold. I have a spare set of clothes, if you want." Cautious, you nod slowly, as the man pulls of his backpack, opening it. You pause, noticing the stock of your shotgun sticking out of the bag. The Fool tosses you a set of boots, underwear, an undershirt, socks, pants, t-shirt and a coat. Staring at him, you hurry to get dressed, as the Fool hums a song to himself. When you're finished, you look to the bag. The Fool notices what you're looking at, smiling. "That's my weapon." "Finders keepers, losers weepers, old Willy, old boy," the man shrugs. You pause, trying to calculate the chances of you grabbing your weapon before he can. "I didn't tell you my name," you say softly. "You didn't tell me my name either, but I know that," the Fool shrugs. The Fool grabs the shotgun, pulling it out and holding it in his hands, running his hands along the barrel. He pauses, digging through his pockets for a moment, before pulling out a golden coin. "Tell you what. I'll flip you for it. You call it, you get your gun back. You don't, I'll put you out of your misery and stop you from completely turning. Agreed?" You consider lunging at the man, but he lowers the barrel of the shotgun, anticipating your move. His grin widens, revealing more and more shiny teeth. "Agreed", you say. "Perfect!" the Fool grins. "Call it in the air, Willy." The man flips the coin, watching it spin in the air. > You tails "Tails!" The coin flips through the air ahead of you, as you step back, looking at the coin with interest. He steps back, leveling your own shotgun at you as he the coin lands in the dirt. The Fool peers down at it, tilting his head, before flipping the shotgun in his hands, grabbing the barrel and offering the stock to you. "It's your lucky day, Hunter. Good luck to you." You grab the shotgun, holding it in your hands and aiming it at the suspicious, patch coat man. "Who the fuck are you?" "An interesting question! Do you like riddles?" "No." The Fool frowns. "So dull. You're a dull old fellow, aren't you? Perhaps I should be helping the wolves." "Just tell me who you are, dammit! I'm a dying man, I don't have time for this." The Fool opens his mouth to complain, before pausing, then shrugging. "A slave I have been and shall remain To a golden mistress I'm tied with invisible chains Yet always I put on the same brave face She keeps me her prisoner, but leaves me some space." The Fool smiles at you for a moment, before raising an eyebrow. "So... who am I?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You find yourself crawling desperately towards the smashed up car wreck, reaching forward and dragging yourself along the ground. You manage to pull yourself to a kneeling position, before standing cautiously. You take a step forward, trying not to focus on the brutal pain in your shoulder. You slowly move towards the truck before stumbling, leaning against it as you groan in pain. Resting on the cold metal bonnet, you gasp for breath. "William. You made it," a voice groans from the wreckage. You pause, grabbing your shotgun, before finding yourself staring at Father Féval's broken but still living body. The man is still buckled into the car wreckage, his face bloody from a cut on his forehead, his side looking like it's been completely chewed up by the werewolves. His expression is as emotionless as always, but there's a trace of weariness in his eyes. "Father Féval!" you say, exuberant to know you're not alone in these dark woods. "They ate you up pretty well, William" Father Féval says, his accent thickening as his eyes grow weary. "We've both been bit, it seems. If we survive much longer, we're going to become just like them. The beast is within us, and it will take over soon. We should embrace the end and go into it peacefully." "No! We need to radio the lodge!" Father Féval nods down to where the radio sat, and you see it's been smashed up. The radio's been torn out, its plastic case shattered and its internal wiring shredded. Clearly, the werewolves knew what they were looking for, and targeted this specifically. "I'm sorry, William. That's not really an option anymore. It's time to face our end." "We can't let them get away with this! This werewolf pack isn't a group of psychopathic killers, they're worse. They're a planning, thinking, growing group. We can't just give up and off ourselves!" "William, your adrenaline's pumping and your mind is desperate, but we're not escaping here. Either we die here, or the beast within takes over!" "Fuck that! We have to do something! We have time before we turn! We can get help, contact the others and tell them what happened, and then we can off ourselves! But we can't do it yet!" Father Féval raises his pistols, pointing them at you. "We live by a code, William. If you're not going to go peacefully into the night, I am going to take you into it," the Catholic Priest says coldly. > You let Father Féval kill you Putting down a Wolf You raise your hands slowly, nodding. "I understand. We can't give these fuckers reinforcements. We need to end this quickly. Go ahead and kill me, then. I'm ready." Father Féval raises his pistols, aiming them at your chest. You smile at him weakly, before nodding. "Do it." "You know," Father Féval suggests. "These is a chance for you to confess your sins before you die, and to accept Jesus Christ as your lord and saviour." "With all due respect, I'm in no mood for your preaching. Let me die in peace." "So be it. May God have mercy on your soul, William." "Bleed quickly and die quicker, my friend." The guns fire, and the silver bullets tear through your chest, and you collapse backwards, blood bursting onto the ground. Darkness shrouds over you, and you can feel the desperate, clawing, howling beast within you get pulled down into the depths of darkness with you. Now, the eternal rest is all that's left for you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to protect your companions, and get them out of there. You can't leave them behind. You hold your shotgun tightly in your hands, before moving forward and darting down the decline. You slide down on your boots, hurrying down as fast as you can. You almost fall into a tumble, but manage to steady yourself, finding yourself on the ground near the wreckage. You look to the truck, and you can see a mutilated corpse strapped into the driver's seat, and realize Russel didn't even get out of the car. The screams off deeper into the woods don't give you hope for the fate of the others. "Stay back! Stay back!" a young, terrified voice screams from behind the wreckage. Swearing, you burst forward, your gun held tightly in your hands. Rushing around the roasting bonfire, you find Wyatt, collapsed on his back, desperately trying to shuffle backwards. Standing in front of him is a bestial creature you've faced many times before. A werewolf. The creature stands with black and gray fur matted with the gore of a previous kill. The creature growls, revealing a row of vicious teeth that could easily tear through a man. Your instincts kick in, and you drop to your knee, raising your gun and opening fire. The gun bucks, silver bursting forward and tearing through the werewolf's flesh. The creature howls, as you fire another shot, blowing the creature's head off as its body crumples. You watch as the lupine body begins to morph, shedding air and twisting as it turns into a naked, bloody human corpse, its head completely missing. "Oh Jesus, oh Jesus! William, they got my dad. They tore him up, and they took Hans off into the woods! Shit, we have to go help him! We have to go save them!" You hear a loud howl, looking over to see a trio of werewolves appearing out of the woods. At the front, a large creature with frost white hair and pink eyes. The creature begins prowling towards you, its jaws open as it licks its lips. The creature lets out a growl, as the other two werewolves pause, holding back as the creature approaches you. Clearly this one's a leader of some sort, and it wants to take you down by itself as some fucked up pursuit of honor or to show its pack mates its prowess. You don't have time to think. It's time to act. > You break off into the woods with Wyatt "Run! Run now, Wyatt!" you scream, You sprint, running as fast as you can, your lungs burning, but it's not enough. Seconds later, a force like a truck smashes into your back, sending you crumpling to the floor with your legs shattering from the impact. You scream as the Albino lands atop your legs, sending pain racing through your body as you spasm. The creature looks down at you, growling. "Fuck you," you spit, hoping some part of the Albino understands you. The Albino's head snaps down, tearing out your throat, before binding off after Wyatt. You lie there on the ground, drowning in your own blood, as death slowly takes you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You open your eyes as blurry vision returns to you. You're surrounded by dirt and darkness, but your eyes slowly begin to make sense of your surroundings. You're lying on the cold dirt, next to the road you were just driving along. You blink, feeling a rush of pain go through your numb body. Your skin is grazed and cut up and your flesh bruised, but you don't seem to be in too bad a condition. Certainly capable of walking and fighting. You force yourself to one knee, your eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness. Your is shotgun lying close by you, and feel a breath of relief. You stand cautiously, checking to make sure nothing's broken one more time, before grabbing your shotgun. After making sure it's still loaded, before surveying the situation. The trees to the side of the road are broken and crushed indicating where the truck must've gone off the road and down into the ravine below. Your eyes are slow to notice it due to it's black paint, but you see a pair of spike strips lying across the road. You stare at them in amazement for a moment, fingers clenched on your weapon. This doesn't make sense. Werewolves never take human servants, and they're not tool users when transformed. They wouldn't put the spike strips down... unless they knew you were coming... and prepared beforehand. FUCK! This shitshow's about to get a lot worse. You're dealing with a worse enemy than a pack of maddened werewolves. Struggling to the edge of the road, you stare down the steep ravine to where the truck lies. It's heavily crushed and damaged, beyond repair. You can hear screams down there, indicating that there's survivors. You doubt any of them are in any condition to defend yourself. But looking down at your current condition, you stand a chance. > You fall back and get out of this damned woods You need to get out of here. There's no use risking your own life to try save your comrades when they're already most likely dead. Your shotgun ready in your hands, you head off down the road. Your body burns and pain shoots through your body, plus the energy sapped in your night's other hunts and surviving the crash means that exhaustion is quickly becoming an issue. You hurry along the road, taking up a steady jog along the road so you don't tire yourself out, but don't spend too long in these wretched woods. You keep your grip tight, as your eyes watch the shadows of the woods around you and struggle to hear the sounds of the surrounding woods over the sound of your tired, slightly panicked breathing. Several long minutes of jogging, as you try to get out of these woods again. You begin to hear nearby howls, bursting from the nearby forests and nearby undergrowth. Your breath catches in your throat, before you shake your head and continue jogging, speeding up your pace slightly. There's no use panicking. You hear the howls of the werewolves grow nearer, and you know that they're on your trail. No doubt, they know you'd be following the road back to the Lodge where you came from. You wonder whether it'd be safer to try to lose the pack in the forest around you, or whether you should stay on the road and hope you come across something soon. > You stay on the road, shotgun at the ready You continue sprinting down the road, staying on your path and refusing to yield. You run for a long time, hearing the howls of the werewolf pack growing louder and closer. Each time one howls, it seems like they're at the edge of the road or right behind you, but they're not, not just yet. Keeping a steady pace, you ignore the burning of your muscles and the horrible pain of your cuts and bruises, your body wanting nothing more than to collapse. Still, you keep your mind focused, keeping to a steady jog rather than an all out sprint that would leave you exhausted in no time at all. Just keep running and you'll make it out of there. Hopefully. Suddenly, you hear the howl of a werewolf, and it's so close, so clear, so loud that you know that you need to do something. Glimpses of gray fur and white teeth begin appearing on the edge of the forest. It's time to act. > You break to a sprint and get out of there You sprint, running as fast as you can, your lungs burning. Your feet burst along the tarmac, as you refuse to slow down. Your strides are now more akin to leaps as you fly through the air, charging forward. You hear the growls grow closer, the howls almost being roared right in your ears. You can practically feel the flicks of spit and blood landing on your ear from how close the werewolves' maws are when they howl into you, causing you to shiver with fright. Seconds later, a force like a truck smashes into your back, sending you smacking into the tarmac of the road. You bounce along the road, before skidding to a stop as the rough tarmac strips off a layer of skin, blood bursting forth. The werewolf's not far behind, its claw slashing at your unprotected neck. The claw tears through flesh and slices through your spinal cord with ease, as your head is ripped off from your broken and bleeding body, bouncing along the road as it comes to a stop, a pained, terrified expression now forever frozen on its face. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You continue sprinting down the road, staying on your path and refusing to yield. You run for a long time, hearing the howls of the werewolf pack growing louder and closer. Each time one howls, it seems like they're at the edge of the road or right behind you, but they're not, not just yet. Keeping a steady pace, you ignore the burning of your muscles and the horrible pain of your cuts and bruises, your body wanting nothing more than to collapse. Still, you keep your mind focused, keeping to a steady jog rather than an all out sprint that would leave you exhausted in no time at all. Just keep running and you'll make it out of there. Hopefully. Suddenly, you hear the howl of a werewolf, and it's so close, so clear, so loud that you know that you need to do something. Glimpses of gray fur and white teeth begin appearing on the edge of the forest. It's time to act. > You open fire on the beasts You raise your shotgun, taking up a shooting position as you open fire at the approaching werewolves. You aim down the iron sights of your shotgun, quickly targeting an approaching werewolf that appears from out of the trees. You fire your gun, silver shards tearing through the werewolf's open maw as you blow open its jaw, killing it instantly and sending it collapsing in a shower of gore and blood. You swivel around, quickly targeting another creature that's appearing from the bushes. You fire again, the shot hitting the creature's foreleg and leading it to stumble, hitting the ground, before quickly leaping off into the bushes again. By now, the creatures now to avoid your direct line of fire, so you simply stand there, sweeping your gaze around you, shotgun at the ready. Ever few seconds, you spot one emerging from the bushes, attempting to flank you and tear the gun from your hands, or your arm from your body, but the creatures dives back upon being noticed, and if it doesn't your shotgun easily sends them running. Still, you're far outnumbered, and your ammo is rapidly running out. You swear, wondering how you're going to get out of there, before you see a faint light in the distance. Your eyes widen as you see a pair of bright yellow lights, slowly growing larger and brighter. Adrenaline coursing through you, you double your efforts, firing at every flash of fur or teeth that you see in the bushes, hoping to give yourself some space. Soon, the source of the lights comes into view. A massive, eighteen wheeler truck comes into view, roaring along the road. The werewolves howl at you, but you continue firing upon them, until the truck "What the fuck are you doing?!" the driver yells, as you struggle to understand his thick Norwegian accent with your basic understanding of the language. "Please!, Please help me!" you yell, not giving him a second to respond as you race up to the truck, pulling the door open and clambering inside. "Drive!" Seeing the terror on your face, the trucker does as requested, slamming his foot on the accelerator. The truck speeds off down the road. You wince for a second, when the truck's still slow enough for a werewolf to leap through the windscreen, but thankfully the truck soon picks up speed, and the howls of angry werewolves are left in the distance. "What the hell happened you?" "Wolves," you reply simply. "A starved wolf pack attacked me while I was hunting. Thank you so much." "You look like you've been chewed up, boy." "Almost," you smile, before laughing, as the night's fear and tension break. "Just keep driving, sir. Get me out of here." The truck barrels down the road, as you head out from those moonlit woods. > You lucky Thirteen... Lucky Thirteen You soon return to the Lodge, informing them of what happened. The Lodge quickly recalls its Hunters, and prepares a defense that could hold off an army. Thankfully, the werewolves do not attack that night, or the following one. However, the next night, they do make their move. Under the night of the full moon, they strike. Power grids are knocked off, cell towers are taken down, and vast sections of suburbia are hit, their inhabitants slaughtered. The werewolves kill scores of humans, damaging critical infrastructure. From that night forward, the attacks only intensify, as their plan continues, their numbers growing far beyond what you can contain. The media doesn't know what to call it. A massive population of rabies-inflicted Wolves beyond what anyone had ever knew of. You're unsure what's to happen now, with the last news you remember being that the National Guard are being localized to deal with the threat. You don't fancy their odds. Either way, you survived another hunt. Your Lodge has requested support from dozens of other Lodges, trying to find the numbers to help deal with this threat. You don't know if they'll be able. All you do know is that you need to serve as you can. You survived your thirteenth. Your fourteenth hunt is tomorrow night, and your fifteenth after that. You are no longer a Hunter, you are a soldier in the war against this new threat. The night is long, and some say that this is the time of Beasts now, and that the time of man is over. You hope they're wrong.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need to get out of here. There's no use risking your own life to try save your comrades when they're already most likely dead. Your shotgun ready in your hands, you head off down the road. Your body burns and pain shoots through your body, plus the energy sapped in your night's other hunts and surviving the crash means that exhaustion is quickly becoming an issue. You hurry along the road, taking up a steady jog along the road so you don't tire yourself out, but don't spend too long in these wretched woods. You keep your grip tight, as your eyes watch the shadows of the woods around you and struggle to hear the sounds of the surrounding woods over the sound of your tired, slightly panicked breathing. Several long minutes of jogging, as you try to get out of these woods again. You begin to hear nearby howls, bursting from the nearby forests and nearby undergrowth. Your breath catches in your throat, before you shake your head and continue jogging, speeding up your pace slightly. There's no use panicking. You hear the howls of the werewolves grow nearer, and you know that they're on your trail. No doubt, they know you'd be following the road back to the Lodge where you came from. You wonder whether it'd be safer to try to lose the pack in the forest around you, or whether you should stay on the road and hope you come across something soon. > You try to lose them in the undergrowth of the forest You turn, rushing off the road as you leap off the tarmac onto the dirt of the forest floor. You keep your run fast and steady, boots crushing leaves and twigs underfoot as you maneuver through the trees, trying to keep at least somewhat parallel to the road so you don't end up lost in here. You push your way through the thin branches as quickly as you can, as they gently slap and snag at your clothes. You ignore the pain, barreling forward. However, it's not long before the other creatures are left on your tail, having caught the scent of your blood and the sound of you trampling over branches and leaves. It's not long before the howls are almost behind you again, and you need to act. > You keep running You sprint, running as fast as you can, your lungs burning. Your strides are now more akin to leaps as you fly through the air, charging forward. You hear the growls grow closer, the howls almost being roared right in your ears. You can practically feel the flicks of spit and blood landing on your ear from how close the werewolves' maws are when they howl into you, causing you to shiver with fright. Seconds later, a force like a truck smashes into your back, sending you crumpling to the floor with your legs shattering from the impact. You scream as the creature lands atop your legs, sending pain racing through your body as you spasm. The creature looks down at you, growling. "My comrades are going to wipe your kind out," you spit, hoping some part of the creature understands you. The creature's head snaps down, tearing out your throat. He begins digging into your neck, feeding on your blood and flesh as you screams become gargles.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn, rushing off the road as you leap off the tarmac onto the dirt of the forest floor. You keep your run fast and steady, boots crushing leaves and twigs underfoot as you maneuver through the trees, trying to keep at least somewhat parallel to the road so you don't end up lost in here. You push your way through the thin branches as quickly as you can, as they gently slap and snag at your clothes. You ignore the pain, barreling forward. However, it's not long before the other creatures are left on your tail, having caught the scent of your blood and the sound of you trampling over branches and leaves. It's not long before the howls are almost behind you again, and you need to act. > You hide and wait for them to pass You quickly scamper into the thickest underbrush, staying low and disappearing into the bushes. You know how to hide well, so you quickly begin covering yourself with dirt and immersing yourself in the leaves, keeping low and quiet. You still your tired breathing, and wait. You wait for several minutes, as the howls become louder, and louder, before going quiet. You wait carefully, your breath caught in your lungs, as you wait for several minutes. Suddenly, a lupine maw emerges from the bush in front of you, followed by a pair of blood-red eyes. The werewolf stares at you, growling in a low voice, as you realize the creatures have followed your scent, and surrounding you. The albino wolf that's come across you looks at you with almost sadistic glee, licking its lips. Almost an hour later, the screams filling the moonlit night finally end, the last few sounds little more than a dying, gargling whimper from a creature so broken and exhausted that they're incapable of even moving, the voice so red raw from screaming that it can barely make a noise. The torn apart, bloody body that is left there is never found, with what remains being food for the worms.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stand, stern and waiting with your shotgun raised. The Vampire laughs, his fangs bared as he holds them above Father Féval's neck. Father Féval simply stands perfectly still, slowing his breathing as he stares blankly ahead, slowly mouthing "Do it". "Come on!" the Vampire laughs, reaching his arm down and tapping on exactly where Father Féval's heart is. "Right here. Blow out your friend's heart and maybe you'll get me. You'll get rid of my shield, either way." With the Vampire's arm having moved around to Father Féval's chest, Father Féval's hand has been released. Father Féval slowly reaches his hand down to his belt, staring ahead. He slowly lifts up his jacket, reaching under to grab the silver crucifix affixed to his belt. He slides the cross free, holding it tightly in his hands. He looks at you, nodding ever so slightly in an almost imperceptible gesture. Father Féval swings his arm back in one solid gesture, jamming the crucifix into the Vampire's eye. The Vampire screams, a horrible rasping noise of anger and pain beyond what should come out of any human lungs, like the scraping of concrete on concrete. It grabs at the crucifix jamming into it's eye, hissing as Father Féval ducks out of his grasp, rolling to the side, giving you the perfect open target. You raise your shotgun, aiming it at the vampire's heart. You squeeze the trigger, doing what you should. The blast of lead and burning Magnesium shards tear through the air, bursting forward and exploding through his heart, and causing his flesh and clothes to catch up in flames. He screams out in pain, forced backwards from the sheer force of impact. You pump your shotgun, firing another blast as it hits the Vampire in the head, which snaps back as his head erupts through melting flesh. You pump another, and another, and another round into him, as his inhuman body erupts into fire, flesh turning into ash as he collapses backwards against the wall, the force of the shells leaving the Vampire stumbling back as it gasps. It's flesh continues burning away to ash as the creature collapses to the ground, and soon there's nothing but an ash pile left. "Thanks," Father Féval nods, looking down at the ash pile that was previously about to tear out his throat. "We should burn this wretched place to the ground and get out of here. Too much of a story here if they find the blood extraction equipment." A bright ringing noise startles you from behind, and you almost open fire in that direction as you redraw your revolver. You find yourself staring at a simple cellphone sitting on a table, vibrating and ringing away. You pause, looking at it with confusion. "What is it?" Father Féval asks you. "A phone," you answer, as you walk over slowly, reaching down and flipping open the phone, lifting it to your ear. "Hello?" "Hello, Mr Matasan." Your blood chills for a moment, as you take a deep breath, terror ringing through you. "And who may I be speaking to?" "My name is Hrólfr Gaange. It's a pleasure to meet you." "Is there something I can help you with?" you ask. "You don't seem particularly afraid, Mr Matasan." "Should I be, Mr Gaange?" you ask, trying to keep your calm. "Of course not. It's just refreshing to speak to a new person without them being so terrified. Now, let's be quite frank, Mr Matasan. You killed one of my agents, and their thrall, did you not?" "I did," you say, not wanting to waste the time that would've come from lying, since you know the creature's certain about these facts. "Interesting. Good. He was a weak, impulsive creature. He wasn't useful. Quite frankly, he was a threat to our existence. But you... you could be of assistance to me. You have potential. I want you to work for me." "No," you reply, almost instantly, prompting a dark chuckle from the bastard. "I understand. You've dedicated your life to protecting the innocent. But, so have I, Mr Matasan. I may be a vampire, but I do what's necessary for this world. I don't stalk through the streets at night attacking helpless women hiding in their beds. I'm not one of these crass specimens that wants to blot out the sun, or who wants to enslave mankind, or raise a legion of damned souls. I like the world the way it is. And I'm going to keep it safe from darker creatures of the night. I keep the world of darkness under wraps, as you do. I keep my dark brethren in check. I protect society. You could help me with that, and do a far better job than you do as a mortal." "No," you say again. "Think about what I'm offering you. Immortality, riches, power, strength, speed, intelligence. Everything you could want." "I can't do that, Mr Gaange. I think you already knew that, though." "Oh, I did. But I'm not looking to recruit you right now. I'm offering you a favor. You types never take the power offer. You don't join my side out of power-lust. You join out of desperation. A day will come when you need me. Perhaps you need some arcane knowledge. Perhaps you need money. Perhaps a cure for some unknown disease. Anything you ever need. Just... keep this phone. My number is under Mr Black. Generic, i know. When you need me, call. I can give you anything you want. And what do you lose for that? Your finite mortality, your weakness, your diseases, your poverty... a fair bargain, no." "I'm not going to..." you begin to see, before a dark voice interupts you. "Keep the phone. I know you don't think you'll need it, but you might. I'll talk to you sooner or later, Mr Matasan. Best of luck to you tonight. I've heard it'll be a big one." The phone beeps as Mr Gaange hangs up on you. "What was it?" Father Féval asks. "The target's vampiric master." "What did he say?" You pause, looking down at your phone as you try to think through what to do. You know Féval wouldn't support you taking the phone, but he doesn't have to know what was discussed. > You leave the phone Refusing to make any deals with the enemies you hunt, you drop the phone onto the group, watching it bounce along the hard concrete as it breaks, plastic splintering. You raise your shotgun, firing at it as it explodes in a shower of lead, magnesium and plastic. You step back, shaking your head. No use leaving any potential evidence for the fire department investigating this place. "Nothing important," you say. "Just threats and bullshit." "As always," Father Féval says. "Let's get out of here, William. There's nothing left for us here." Your job done, you quickly set apart eradicating the evidence this place ever existed. The two of you pack up the jars of blood into the truck, for disposal somewhere that won't be investigated. You also take the IV and tubing, before grabbing your fuel cans. You quickly perform the same patterns, spreading it through the house evenly enough, focusing on that you need destroyed and that which is most flammable. With the two of you, the clean-up is surprisingly quickly the two of you working quickly in silence neither one of you wants to break. Once that's done, you head out of the house and set the home alight, watching as the flames run through the house and engulf it in an inferno. "A job well done," Father Féval nods. "One more soul sent to its judgment. We should get back. There is more work to be done. Unless you would like to watch the house burn? Pyromania is a common turn for many a man in this line of duty, no?" You don't feel like watching the house burn, not feeling the usual satisfaction of watching a lair of darkness light the shadows as a beacon of warmth and light. You just feel tired, even more so knowing that you're not finished your work tonight. "No, I'm fine. Let's go," you answer. Father Féval nods, shaking your hand before returning to his sedan, and heading off into the night. You head back to your truck as well, climbing in and heading off down the road again. The drive goes by quickly, as you turn your radio up until it's almost blaring some inane Norwegian pop song, and continue off down the road. It's not long before you pull up to the old country house again. The signs of the night's lateness are more obvious, now. A few of the vehicles parked outside are dented or have blood smears or bullet holes, and the Hunters that walk about them seem more exhausted. You head into the house, taking a moment to appreciate the light of the fireplace. But, the night is still young, and you have targets to hit. You walk towards the sitting room, one of the old house's converted into a "base of operations" of sorts. Although as Hunters, you tend to work independently, only using the Lodge for resources, resupplying and rest, as well as letting them know every so often you're not dead in the long periods of investigation and tracking in trying to find the lairs and dens of beasts, and trying to distinguish psychos and fools from men tainted by the demonic, or worse. However, it's the night of the Hunt, that beautiful night of the year where you wipe out the monsters that dwell in the shadows in one quick sweep, not even giving the bastards time to flee or figure out what's going on. And on the night of the Hunt, sometimes you need to work together. While maddened werewolves and loner vampires are easy prey with modern technology, hard-work, training and of course the element of surprise, when the creatures of darkness work together, so must you. When that happens, you plan and prepare in the lounge. You walk into the lodge, finding a large table with a map stretched across it. A half dozen men stand around it, all of whom you recognize as veteran Hunters. The leader of the group is the head of the Lodge, a man known as Ernest Collier. The old man's scarred, wrinkled face smiles at you as you enter. Ernest's too old at his age to still hunt, having since lost the physical peak that Hunters are required to be at, but his mind is strong and he's well experienced. Thus, he serves the cause through leading the lodge. Everything from supplying Hunters to recruiting to planning the larger hunts falls under his purview. "William. I heard your hunt with Father Féval went well. I'm glad. How did your earlier target go?" "Successfully," you say simply. The next man in the room you see is Father Féval, who nods at you once more. As always, cold and calculated. After him stands former-Unteroffizer Hans Hirsch. The tall man has dark black hair and light eyes, his face decorated with a long scar that goes vertically just left of his left eye. He leans over the table, scanning the map. His finger gently runs across hunting paths through the thick forest as he whispers to himself. Hans is a strange man, with a taste for drink, cigars, cigarettes, whores, gambling... anything he can get his hands on. But, he's a good hunter, having served in the military of his home country and having a great record on all his previous hunts. The final man is an Alaskan by the name of Russel Sloane. Time has taken the black from his thick beard and the hair from his head, but left the man's strength, speed and cunning, and only given him experience and wisdom for the trade. He's a powerful Hunter, and took the shift from bears and wolves to Kushtaka and Tupilaq with ease. He smiles at you grimly when you enter, his face showing a hint of more worry than usual. "Are we ready to start?" you ask. "We're waiting on someone," Russel says. As you raise an eyebrow, the door swings open and you find yourself staring down at a young boy, barely in his mid teens. "This is my boy Wyatt. Now that's he's a full man, we'll be taking him on tonight's hunt, showing him how we fight. I filled him in on the details." "Pleasure to meet y'all," he smiles nervously, as you look him up and down. He's young, short, weak and skinny. You don't think he should be coming out, but he's a man more than you would normally have for this mission, and you're not going to be telling his father how to raise his own child. "Take a seat, Wyatt," Ernest smiles. "We're going to go over tonight's details." Ernest takes a seat, as you stare down at the map ahead of you, which shows you a massive woods, with several hunting paths, potential lairs and scenes of incidents highlighted. "Let's recap for those who didn't get to hear it directly from me!" Ernest says. "There's been several mauling's in these areas, and we've had reports a werewolf pack is responsible. Not just one werewolf, but an entire pack of about six to twelve creatures. We're taking a small team in their to set up an ambush, draw them out and kill them all. The plans' simple. Take a truck into the woods with a mutilated deer carcass, slathered in human blood. The scent should draw the werewolves into your area, where you'll have set up an overview to take them out. Simple." You all nod, the review of your plan unnecessary for everyone but Wyatt. "We're heading off in an hour and a half. I want all of you prepared and by the truck for then, understood?" There's a chorus of affirmatives, as Ernest smiles. "Good to know. Best of luck, men."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You retreat to the car, calling into the Lodge. They report back that they've a spare Hunter to send out, one who is only acting on stand-by. Father Paul Féval. You know the man well, and have worked with him before. The man's a representative from the Vatican, a priest even, and as adamant in following the laws of the Bible as you are in never leaving the Lodge without a spare, but the man's a professional and an experienced Hunter. The man's permanent cold, professional demeanor means you'd be hesitant to call him a "friend", but you feel it'd be disrespectful to like anything. You get in your car, driving back a minute away from the house just for some extra space. Once you're out there, you wait outside your car, your weapons ready in case the vampire or his thrall emerge. The wait is long, but after fifteen minutes, you see a pair of dazzling head beams approaching you. A blackened sedan seems to almost form from the shadows, pulling in behind you. The sedan's driver door opens, as a tall, gaunt figure with spectacles and a black jacket and pants steps out. His long, bizarrely slender fingers tap against his side as his lips turn upwards very slightly in the barest facsimile of a smile. You know it's simply a polite sign, the man's professional nature means he takes no joy in this, instead simply seeing it as his religious duty. "William," Father Féval nods. "The Lodge informs me we're dealing with a thrall and a youth, correct?" "Correct, Father," you nod. "But they might be up." "Best not to take risks, William. We have enough risks inherent to our job, don't we?" Father Féval leans into the car, pulling out a vile of holy water. He dribbles it into his hands, blessing himself, before leaning back in and grabbing a silver crucifix. He affixes it to his belt, before flipping his jacket tails back, pulling out a pair of shining pistols. He looks at them both, examining them for a moment, before nodding. "I'm ready and willing, William." "Let's go." The pair of you begin walking down the street, ready to strike. You soon come up again to the house once more, walking up the path towards the house. You know from surveillance that the house has the main entrance as well as a back door. The lounge, dining room and basement are located near the front door. The sitting positions would give anyone in there the sight of the door, but it would allow for the quickest contact. If the vampires awake, eliminating the thrall would give you far better chances against the Vampire shortly afterwards. "You did the ground work. Suggestions?" Father Féval says unemotionally, seeming entirely focused on the situation with no fear, dread or anticipation. > You split up and take both entrances "We split up. Take each side, catch the Thrall in a pincer movement, and get this done." "Good. I understand. I'll take the back, your weapon is more of a..." Father Féval pauses, looking for the word. "Breaching weapon, no?" "Fair point. Let's do it." "Best of luck, my friend. Give me thirty seconds. I'll wait for the gunshot. You walk towards the house, shotgun held tightly in your hands. Surprisingly for a vampire's lair, your surveillance has said that the house is completely lacking in any serious security measures. Locked doors and windows, sure, but they're lacking the reinforced doors, security cameras. It's a young vampire, so you're not expecting legions of Thralls protecting him or runic blood magic protecting the house, but clearly the power's gone to this creature's head. Striding forward to the house's wooden door, you raise your shotgun, pointing it at the lock and firing. Booting the door open with a solid kick as you pump the shotgun, the door collapses to the ground as you quickly step through, making contact with the Thrall. The Thrall stands in the kitchen, a short, bearded man with crazed eyes and grime and dirt stuck in his beard and on his face. He shakes his head repeatedly, growling and swearing as he divides a pile of crushed and broken white crystals, no doubt a substitute between his feedings on the vampiric blood he's heavily addicted to. His eyes dart up to you as he growls, an animalistic sound that could only come from a beast. His blood-shot eyes bulge, as he kicks the table with incredible strength, flipping it onto its side as he dives behind it. You watch as Father Féval walks into the room, having broken through the back door. He raises his rifles, pointing it as the Thrall's head. "Hands up," he says. "You goddamn bastard! We'll take the night back! We'll steal the fucking sun for you! We will rule the darkness, and we will fucking make blood bags of your loved o...!" "Silencieux," Father Féval says calmly, as the man groans in pain, gritting his teeth. "Les flammes les plus méritées brûlent le plus chaud, pécheur. Que Dieu ait pitié de ce qui reste de votre âme misérable et trouve la miséricorde sur votre âme." The two pistols fire, the Thrall's face exploding as blood and gore coats his wild hair and thick beard, his head caving in as the bullets carve their way through. "Let's kill this Vampire and be done with this place," Father Féval says to you. "Let's," you say, pumping your shotgun as your next shell enters the chamber. > You take out the coffin You quickly head down the staircase of the basement, descending into the dark basement, lit by a dim candle. You slow down as you notice the counters piled with jars filled to the brim with red liquid. A bloody metal table sits there with unopened leather straps, a series of tubing and IV's connected to it. You're certain that it's equipment to drain the blood of victims the Thrall captures, to feed his master when he doesn't wish to hunt for himself. However, the highlight of the room is a large, ornate coffin, leaning against a concrete wall. You've seen enough coffins in your life for any man, but this one is a fairly nice one. It's solid wood, cherry, with brass handles, sitting up on its side so its resident can sleep standing up. The face on the front of the coffin shows a grinning, gargoyle-like face made of brass, its eyes shining at you. You flinch at the sight of it, nervous about what lies behind it. "Let's do it," Father Féval says. You hurry up to the coffin, readying your shotgun as Father Féval takes the other side. "I take the chest, you take the head," you say, as Father Féval nods. Quickly, the two of you perform the breaching mechanism. Swinging around and standing back, you quickly measure the size of the coffin and roughly calculate where the center of its heart is. You aim, your fingers tightening on the trigger as you fire the weapon, as does Father Féval. Your shotgun bucks, firing lead and magnesium shards directly through the heavy wood of the coffin. You fire three times as the wood splinters and explodes away, your shells bursting through them as they tear through the coffin. Father Féval's rounds tear through where the head of the vampire should lie, bursting through the wood and hitting through inside. After a few seconds, the sound of gunfire calms as you look at Father Féval. "Let us confirm the kill," Father Féval says. Stepping forward, you grab the handle of the coffin and wretch it open, tearing open the splintered and almost destroyed door. Staring inside, you find splintered wood and torn apart coffin, and thankfully, the piles of ash that would indicate a clean kill. The vampire is dead, his body ash, and your task completed. "Confirmed," you say. "Thank God above," Father Féval says, showing the slightest traces of a smile. "We should burn this place to the ground and get out of here." A bright ringing noise startles you from behind, and you almost open fire in that direction as you redraw your revolver. You find yourself staring at a simple cellphone sitting on a table, vibrating and ringing away. You pause, looking at it with confusion. "What is it?" Father Féval asks you. "A phone," you answer, as you walk over slowly, reaching down and flipping open the phone, lifting it to your ear. "Hello?" "Hello, Mr Matasan." Your blood chills for a moment, as you take a deep breath, terror ringing through you. "And who may I be speaking to?" "My name is Hrólfr Gaange. It's a pleasure to meet you." "Is there something I can help you with?" you ask. "You don't seem particularly afraid, Mr Matasan." "Should I be, Mr Gaange?" you ask, trying to keep your calm. "Of course not. It's just refreshing to speak to a new person without them being so terrified. Now, let's be quite frank, Mr Matasan. You killed one of my agents, and their thrall, did you not?" "I did," you say, not wanting to waste the time that would've come from lying, since you know the creature's certain about these facts. "Interesting. Good. He was a weak, impulsive creature. He wasn't useful. Quite frankly, he was a threat to our existence. But you... you could be of assistance to me. You have potential. I want you to work for me." "No," you reply, almost instantly, prompting a dark chuckle from the bastard. "I understand. You've dedicated your life to protecting the innocent. But, so have I, Mr Matasan. I may be a vampire, but I do what's necessary for this world. I don't stalk through the streets at night attacking helpless women hiding in their beds. I'm not one of these crass specimens that wants to blot out the sun, or who wants to enslave mankind, or raise a legion of damned souls. I like the world the way it is. And I'm going to keep it safe from darker creatures of the night. I keep the world of darkness under wraps, as you do. I keep my dark brethren in check. I protect society. You could help me with that, and do a far better job than you do as a mortal." "No," you say again. "Think about what I'm offering you. Immortality, riches, power, strength, speed, intelligence. Everything you could want." "I can't do that, Mr Gaange. I think you already knew that, though." "Oh, I did. But I'm not looking to recruit you right now. I'm offering you a favor. You types never take the power offer. You don't join my side out of power-lust. You join out of desperation. A day will come when you need me. Perhaps you need some arcane knowledge. Perhaps you need money. Perhaps a cure for some unknown disease. Anything you ever need. Just... keep this phone. My number is under Mr Black. Generic, i know. When you need me, call. I can give you anything you want. And what do you lose for that? Your finite mortality, your weakness, your diseases, your poverty... a fair bargain, no." "I'm not going to..." you begin to see, before a dark voice interupts you. "Keep the phone. I know you don't think you'll need it, but you might. I'll talk to you sooner or later, Mr Matasan. Best of luck to you tonight. I've heard it'll be a big one." The phone beeps as Mr Gaange hangs up on you. "What was it?" Father Féval asks. "The target's vampiric master." "What did he say?" You pause, looking down at your phone as you try to think through what to do. You know Féval wouldn't support you taking the phone, but he doesn't have to know what was discussed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After clambering into your pick-up, you head off down the road, speeding along the streets as you head towards your target. The target house, due to the nature of what happens there, is very secluded. This means that it'll be all the easier for you to hit, as you won't have to worry about avoiding witnesses or police detection. You sure as shit don't want another police officer walking in on you mid-execution. You've dealt with it before, and things got... well, best not to let the mind dwell in the shadows. It's a long drive to your target, so you take the time to mentally prepare yourself, running through the plan again and again. The Vampire's secluded nature means he wakens to feed every two to three nights, before retiring to sleep. It seems the creature still struggles with fatigue, meaning he's particularly untrained in his power. He fed last night, so he should be easy prey. Kill the Thrall, and simply kill the beast in it's coffin. You pull up far enough away from the target house so not even an awakened vampire could hear its engine rumbling or see the flickers of its light. You kill the lights and leave the engine running, just in case you need a quick get away, before stepping out of your car, grabbing your weapon and making your way up the road. The veil of darkness that hung over the early night sky has been pulled from the sky, revealing the beauty of the stars. The moon shines bright, big and round like a light, surrounded by a billion shining stars that dot the heaves. It's stunningly beautiful, you must admit. The moon almost seems full, but you know it's not. The full moon has a tendency to alight some passion into the hearts of beasts, so the Lodge never has a hunt on those nights. However, nights lit by the moon are often the safest and brightest, so you tend to pick nights close to it. Best to have a bright sky watching over you when venturing into the shadows. Heading towards the house, you keep the shotgun tight in your hands, ready to fire at a moment's notice, the dragon's breath rounds in the chamber. You see the lights . The thrall should be asleep, as should his master. It's nearly two, and the man's frantic work last night in capturing prey for his master should've left the exhausted bastard craving sleep. Never mind. Him being awake only heightens the challenge. As long as his master's asleep, this should be doable. Although, if he's awake, it's out of schedule. Perhaps something's afoot, and perhaps his master is too. If that's the case, perhaps you should lean on the safer side of things. Then again, it is the night of the hunt. Calling on back-up means depriving a Hunter from somewhere else, and that could have lasting consequences. Perhaps another team is short a member, and a Necromancer's flesh hounds get the drop on them. Perhaps a Skinwalker manages to escape the trap set for him, and hunt fresh prey in the safety of the far north, away from your reach. Either way, your actions, as always in this field, have consequences. > You head in alone You frown, deciding that you can't take away reinforcements on such an important night. You still have the drop on the Thrall, and despite his vampiric favor, he's a simple mortal with a beating heart that can be stop and fresh blood that can be spilled. You're going to take him out ,and remind his master of how much mortality stings. With fresh-faced determination, you walk forward towards the house. You walk with steady, certain steps up towards the house. You know from surveillance that the house has the main entrance as well as a back door. The lounge, dining room and basement are located near the front door. The sitting positions would give anyone in there the sight of the door, but it would allow for the quickest contact. If the vampire's awake, eliminating the thrall would give you far better chances against the Vampire shortly afterwards. So, the only question left before you dive in the throes of nightmarish battle is whether you're going in through the front door or the back door. > You head in the front door You decide the front's the easiest option. You don't want to waste time messing about while the Vampire can be awoken at any point, because even with your skill and the element of surprise, a Thrall and his Vampire master are a serious threat. You need to do this quick and clean, and make sure you get the drop on the Vampire before's he's out of his coffin. You walk towards the house, shotgun held tightly in your hands. Surprisingly for a vampire's lair, your surveillance has said that the house is completely lacking in any serious security measures. Locked doors and windows, sure, but they're lacking the reinforced doors, security cameras. It's a young vampire, so you're not expecting legions of Thralls protecting him or runic blood magic protecting the house, but clearly the power's gone to this creature's head. Striding forward to the house's wooden door, you raise your shotgun, pointing it at the lock and firing. Booting the door open with a solid kick as you pump the shotgun, the door collapses to the ground as you quickly step through, making contact with the Thrall. The Thrall stands in the kitchen, a short, bearded man with crazed eyes and grime and dirt stuck in his beard and on his face. He shakes his head repeatedly, growling and swearing as he divides a pile of crushed and broken white crystals, no doubt a substitute between his feedings on the vampiric blood he's heavily addicted to. His eyes dart up to you as he growls, an animalistic sound that could only come from a beast. His blood-shot eyes bulge, as he kicks the table with incredible strength, flipping it onto its side as he dives behind it. You immediately open fire, bullets and shotgun blasts easily tearing through the table, but it was a simply distraction, and the Thrall's already ducked behind the kitchen counter. Suddenly, you see the barrel of a gun emerge from behind the kitchen counter, as the Thrall attempts to fight back. The gun's muzzle flashes and screams with the crackling of gunfire, and you dive behind cover, scrambling behind the corner of a wall, ready to fend off your opponent. You exchange fire with the Thrall, but he's hidden in cover and just firing her with potshots, and thus you don't really have a shot at him. It's clear he's trying to wait out the awakening of his master, so it's Retreating, as always, seems promising. The racket you're causing has no doubt awoken the vile monster you've come here to kill, and there's no use dying for no reason. You can also hold out patiently, wait for the Thrall to peek his head out and take him down, so you can secure the chance to fight the Vampire one-on-one. Of course, if you can rush the Thrall from his flank and take him out quickly, you'll be able to take down the Vampire while he's still slumbering in his coffin. > You retreat to the truck Knowing that staying there is a slaughter and every second you spend fighting is only going to make it more likely the sound of death and smell of flesh blood is going to awaken the thrall's master, you know you don't have a chance here. You break for the door, sprinting low and fast as your shotgun swings in your hands. Bullets land all around you, splintering the wooden door frame and embedding themselves in the wall around you as the Thrall tries to cut you down before you can escape, but you speed past and out of his line of fire. You leap forward with every step, quickly bursting out the front door as you sprint towards your truck. You're running as fast as you're able, when suddenly, you get hit from the side with the strength of a truck. You're sent flying through the air before you can even realize what happens, as you skid along the cold earth and roll to a halt, feeling your now broken jaw smack into the frozen tundra. You lie there, broken and hurt, as you try to pull yourself to your feet. As soon as you put weight on your knee you're put through incredible pain and forced to do nothing but grit your teeth and bear it. "You seem tired, Hunter," a voice says. Your voice chills when you hear the voice, but you know it's not the time for tears. Turning your head, you find yourself staring up at a tall, deathly pale figure. It's skin seems almost entirely hairless except for the thick black hair that hangs down from its head. Its eyes, however... its blood red eyes betray an inhumanity that you'll never be able to comprehend. "Hello," the Vampire smiles, revealing a fanged mouth stretching from ear to ear. "And of course, goodbye." "Fucking... blood thirsty... prick," you say, struggling to keep from collapsing to the ground. The Vampire strolls forward, savoring this moment, as his smile stretches further and further across his face, almost seeming to cut it in half. He lifts a polished boot into the air, placing it on your broken leg. He applies pressure, and you grit your teeth and try not to give him the satisfaction of screaming. "A strong one. Your lodge will weep tonight. You can die quick, Hunter." The Vampire slowly drops down to his knees, as you struggle to reach for your revolver at your side. You're far too late, though, as she grabs your head gently. You breath carefully, before he snaps your neck in a single motion. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide the front's the easiest option. You don't want to waste time messing about while the Vampire can be awoken at any point, because even with your skill and the element of surprise, a Thrall and his Vampire master are a serious threat. You need to do this quick and clean, and make sure you get the drop on the Vampire before's he's out of his coffin. You walk towards the house, shotgun held tightly in your hands. Surprisingly for a vampire's lair, your surveillance has said that the house is completely lacking in any serious security measures. Locked doors and windows, sure, but they're lacking the reinforced doors, security cameras. It's a young vampire, so you're not expecting legions of Thralls protecting him or runic blood magic protecting the house, but clearly the power's gone to this creature's head. Striding forward to the house's wooden door, you raise your shotgun, pointing it at the lock and firing. Booting the door open with a solid kick as you pump the shotgun, the door collapses to the ground as you quickly step through, making contact with the Thrall. The Thrall stands in the kitchen, a short, bearded man with crazed eyes and grime and dirt stuck in his beard and on his face. He shakes his head repeatedly, growling and swearing as he divides a pile of crushed and broken white crystals, no doubt a substitute between his feedings on the vampiric blood he's heavily addicted to. His eyes dart up to you as he growls, an animalistic sound that could only come from a beast. His blood-shot eyes bulge, as he kicks the table with incredible strength, flipping it onto its side as he dives behind it. You immediately open fire, bullets and shotgun blasts easily tearing through the table, but it was a simply distraction, and the Thrall's already ducked behind the kitchen counter. Suddenly, you see the barrel of a gun emerge from behind the kitchen counter, as the Thrall attempts to fight back. The gun's muzzle flashes and screams with the crackling of gunfire, and you dive behind cover, scrambling behind the corner of a wall, ready to fend off your opponent. You exchange fire with the Thrall, but he's hidden in cover and just firing her with potshots, and thus you don't really have a shot at him. It's clear he's trying to wait out the awakening of his master, so it's Retreating, as always, seems promising. The racket you're causing has no doubt awoken the vile monster you've come here to kill, and there's no use dying for no reason. You can also hold out patiently, wait for the Thrall to peek his head out and take him down, so you can secure the chance to fight the Vampire one-on-one. Of course, if you can rush the Thrall from his flank and take him out quickly, you'll be able to take down the Vampire while he's still slumbering in his coffin. > You hold out and wait for the Thrall to peek his head out for your shot You keep your position, taking pot shots at the Thrall as he fires back at you, but neither one of you is able to get anywhere close. You wait patiently, ready for the Thrall to peek his head out. The crazed, drug-addled man is well trained by his master, but he's still lacking in any real training or discipline, so you just need your chance. The seconds you wait feel like an eternity, the sound of gunfire bursting out and tearing away the veil of silence. "Playing with the slave, Hunter?" a voice says. Your voice chills when you hear the voice. Turning your head, you find yourself staring up at a tall, deathly pale figure. It's skin seems almost entirely hairless except for the thick black hair that hangs down from its head. Its eyes, however... its blood red eyes betray an inhumanity that you'll never be able to comprehend. "Hello," the Vampire smiles, revealing a fanged mouth stretching from ear to ear. The Vampire is nearly upon you, and you need to decide whether to open fire and hope you have a chance, even with him at the edge of tearing you apart, or you can try make a break for the back door. > You open fire on the Vampire You raise your shotgun through the air, but the Vampire's reflexes are faster. He bursts forward, grabbing the shotgun by it's barrel and flinging it across the room. "And of course, goodbye, little Hunter." The Vampire bursts forward, grabbing you by the neck and pinning you against the counter, his knee smashing into your chest and pinning you down against the counter. You groan in pain as ribs break, as the Vampire's smile stretches further and further across his face, almost seeming to cut it in half. He jams his knee further into your chest as you scream, pain burning and shooting through your chest, and you grit your teeth and try not to give him the satisfaction of screaming. "A strong one. Your lodge will weep tonight. You can die quick, Hunter." The Vampire pulls his knee back, before ramming it through your chest with all his strength with a laugh. You feel your organs crushed as they explode through, and you go limp, the eyes rolling to the back of your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You keep your position, taking pot shots at the Thrall as he fires back at you, but neither one of you is able to get anywhere close. You wait patiently, ready for the Thrall to peek his head out. The crazed, drug-addled man is well trained by his master, but he's still lacking in any real training or discipline, so you just need your chance. The seconds you wait feel like an eternity, the sound of gunfire bursting out and tearing away the veil of silence. "Playing with the slave, Hunter?" a voice says. Your voice chills when you hear the voice. Turning your head, you find yourself staring up at a tall, deathly pale figure. It's skin seems almost entirely hairless except for the thick black hair that hangs down from its head. Its eyes, however... its blood red eyes betray an inhumanity that you'll never be able to comprehend. "Hello," the Vampire smiles, revealing a fanged mouth stretching from ear to ear. The Vampire is nearly upon you, and you need to decide whether to open fire and hope you have a chance, even with him at the edge of tearing you apart, or you can try make a break for the back door. > You charge the Thrall to fight your way out You turn, barreling around the corner as fast as you can while you fire a shotgun blast. The Vampire laughs watching you run. You speed out from the counter, hurrying forward, as the Thrall lets out a burst of manic laughter, copying his master. The assault rifle's barrel bursts out in a scream of gunfire, and your scream soon answers it. After facing tooth, claw, demonic possession and worse, it's a simple bullet that takes you down. You collapse to the ground, your body shaking as blood pools around you. You feel the air knocked out of your lungs as you bounce against the wall and collapse to your knees. For a moment, you just feel a cold swelling through you as you're left unable to breathe, before the pain begins to burn its way through your chest. Gasping for breath that won't fill your lungs as you find them filling with warm, wet, blood instead, and you're left drowning in it. You manage to pull a few strangled breaths from the air, as you stay on your knee, knowing that if you collapse you'll end up letting the darkness taken. "Aah... you look appetizing, don't you?" the Vampire smiles. "Fucking... blood thirsty... prick," you say, struggling to keep from collapsing to the ground. The Vampire slowly walks forward. You know he could strike far faster, but the vampire seems to be savoring his kill. You go to your revolver, hidden at your side, grabbing the ivory handle as you attempt to draw your gun. You fumble to pull it from the safety of its holster, before the Vampire grabs his wrist, bending your arm behind your back as you scream. His jaw snaps forward, a fanged mouth tearing into your neck. You let out a scream, teeth bursting through flesh and slicing into veins. Your body weakens in the creature's grasp as it begins to drain you of your blood, and the world rapidly goes dark as blood loss takes you. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide the front's the easiest option. You don't want to waste time messing about while the Vampire can be awoken at any point, because even with your skill and the element of surprise, a Thrall and his Vampire master are a serious threat. You need to do this quick and clean, and make sure you get the drop on the Vampire before's he's out of his coffin. You walk towards the house, shotgun held tightly in your hands. Surprisingly for a vampire's lair, your surveillance has said that the house is completely lacking in any serious security measures. Locked doors and windows, sure, but they're lacking the reinforced doors, security cameras. It's a young vampire, so you're not expecting legions of Thralls protecting him or runic blood magic protecting the house, but clearly the power's gone to this creature's head. Striding forward to the house's wooden door, you raise your shotgun, pointing it at the lock and firing. Booting the door open with a solid kick as you pump the shotgun, the door collapses to the ground as you quickly step through, making contact with the Thrall. The Thrall stands in the kitchen, a short, bearded man with crazed eyes and grime and dirt stuck in his beard and on his face. He shakes his head repeatedly, growling and swearing as he divides a pile of crushed and broken white crystals, no doubt a substitute between his feedings on the vampiric blood he's heavily addicted to. His eyes dart up to you as he growls, an animalistic sound that could only come from a beast. His blood-shot eyes bulge, as he kicks the table with incredible strength, flipping it onto its side as he dives behind it. You immediately open fire, bullets and shotgun blasts easily tearing through the table, but it was a simply distraction, and the Thrall's already ducked behind the kitchen counter. Suddenly, you see the barrel of a gun emerge from behind the kitchen counter, as the Thrall attempts to fight back. The gun's muzzle flashes and screams with the crackling of gunfire, and you dive behind cover, scrambling behind the corner of a wall, ready to fend off your opponent. You exchange fire with the Thrall, but he's hidden in cover and just firing her with potshots, and thus you don't really have a shot at him. It's clear he's trying to wait out the awakening of his master, so it's Retreating, as always, seems promising. The racket you're causing has no doubt awoken the vile monster you've come here to kill, and there's no use dying for no reason. You can also hold out patiently, wait for the Thrall to peek his head out and take him down, so you can secure the chance to fight the Vampire one-on-one. Of course, if you can rush the Thrall from his flank and take him out quickly, you'll be able to take down the Vampire while he's still slumbering in his coffin. > You charge the Thrall from his flank You charge forward, raising your shotgun into the air as you run low and fast, fingers ready on the trigger. You emerge from behind your choice of cover, rushing forward as you raise your shotgun, firing through the thrall's chest. He screams, his clothes lighting into flames as he screams, catapulted into the wall. He lets lose with his rifle, either as his twitching body pulls the trigger or in one last burst of dying energy, and bullets slam into your chest. You feel the air knocked out of your lungs as you bounce against the wall and collapse to your knees. For a moment, you just feel a cold swelling through you as you're left unable to breathe, before the pain begins to burn its way through your chest. Gasping for breath that won't fill your lungs as you find them filling with warm, wet, blood instead, and you're left drowning in it. You manage to pull a few strangled breaths from the air, as you stay on your knee, knowing that if you collapse you'll end up letting the darkness taken. All you can think is that you can't fall out, and you should've clalled for fucking back-up. Then, somewhere in your struggle, you hear loud footsteps to your right. Turning your head, you find yourself staring up at a tall, deathly pale figure. It's skin seems almost entirely hairless except for the thick black hair that hangs down from its head. Its eyes, however... its blood red eyes betray an inhumanity that you'll never be able to comprehend. "Hello," the Vampire smiles, revealing a fanged mouth stretching from ear to ear. "And of course, goodbye." "Fucking... blood thirsty... prick," you say, struggling to keep from collapsing to the ground. The Vampire slowly walks forward, it's grin stretching further and further until it seems like it should be tearing its face in two. You know he could strike far faster, but the vampire seems to be savoring his kill. You go to your revolver, hidden at your side, grabbing the ivory handle as you attempt to draw your gun. You fumble to pull it from the safety of its holster, before the Vampire grabs his wrist, bending your arm behind your back as you scream. His jaw snaps forward, a fanged mouth tearing into your neck. You let out a scream, teeth bursting through flesh and slicing into veins. Your body weakens in the creature's grasp as it begins to drain you of your blood, and the world rapidly goes dark as blood loss takes you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You frown, deciding that you can't take away reinforcements on such an important night. You still have the drop on the Thrall, and despite his vampiric favor, he's a simple mortal with a beating heart that can be stop and fresh blood that can be spilled. You're going to take him out ,and remind his master of how much mortality stings. With fresh-faced determination, you walk forward towards the house. You walk with steady, certain steps up towards the house. You know from surveillance that the house has the main entrance as well as a back door. The lounge, dining room and basement are located near the front door. The sitting positions would give anyone in there the sight of the door, but it would allow for the quickest contact. If the vampire's awake, eliminating the thrall would give you far better chances against the Vampire shortly afterwards. So, the only question left before you dive in the throes of nightmarish battle is whether you're going in through the front door or the back door. > You head in the back door The back door, you decide. You want to ensure you get the drop on the Thrall, and don't end up in a firefight with the man, or else the vampire will have time to awaken from his internal, dreamless slumber, and then you don't have a chance in hell. With that decided, you walk towards the house, shotgun gripped tightly in your hand. Surprisingly for a vampire's lair, your surveillance has said that the house is completely lacking in any serious security measures. Locked doors and windows, sure, but they're lacking the reinforced doors, security cameras. It's a young vampire, so you're not expecting legions of Thralls protecting him or runic blood magic protecting the house, but clearly the power's gone to this creature's head. Moving slowly and softly through the garden around to the back, you still your breathing and do your best to be as soundless as the shadows. You creep through the rose bushes, whose petals look almost eerily beautiful in the moonlight. The sky's light brightens your path, but also makes it harder to sneak, and you just stay low and hope that if the Thrall happens to be looking out the window, he isn't looking too hard. Edging around to the back, you draw close to the wooden door. You move to the door, standing ready, before striking. Taking a deep breath, you growl, ready to act. You raise your shotgun, firing through the door's lock as you boot it open, quickly stepping through the now opened doorway and into the house. The Thrall stands in the kitchen, his back turned to you.The Thrall is a short, bearded man, growling and shaking his head repeatedly as he divides a pile of crushed and broken white crystals, no doubt a substitute between his feedings on the vampiric blood he's heavily addicted to. The man quickly turns, his crazed, blood-shot eyes bulging at you as he sees you. His eyes dart up to you as he growls, an animalistic sound that could only come from a beast. With a roar, he charges for you. > You reload and fire You pump your shotgun, as the crazed man leaps through the air towards you. Rolling back, your hands clench and pull the trigger, firing a burst of flames and metal through the air in a noise like a dragon's roar firing straight through the thrall's chest. He gasps, his clothes lighting into flames as he's catapulted into the wall. He slides down the wall, screaming out in anger and pain, a noise of such intense rage that it chills you. Marching forward, you aim your shotgun to his head. "You goddamn bastard! We'll take the night back! We'll steal the fucking sun for you! We will rule the darkness, and we will fucking make blood bags of your loved o...!" You fire the round, the man's head exploding. You've listened to enough insane ramblings in your day, so you're not bothering with the man. With him dead, you've one target left. > You take out the coffin You quickly head down the staircase of the basement, descending into the dark basement, lit by a dim candle. You slow down as you notice the counters piled with jars filled to the brim with red liquid. A bloody metal table sits there with unopened leather straps, a series of tubing and IV's connected to it. You're certain that it's equipment to drain the blood of victims the Thrall captures, to feed his master when he doesn't wish to hunt for himself. However, the highlight of the room is a large, ornate coffin, leaning against a concrete wall. You've seen enough coffins in your life for any man, but this one is a fairly nice one. It's solid wood, cherry, with brass handles, sitting up on its side so its resident can sleep standing up. The face on the front of the coffin shows a grinning, gargoyle-like face made of brass, its eyes shining at you. You flinch at the sight of it, nervous about what lies behind it. You hurry up to the coffin, readying your shotgun to perform the breaching actions. Swinging around and standing back, you quickly measure the size of the coffin and roughly calculate where the center of its heart is. You aim, your fingers tightening on the trigger as you fire the weapon. Your shotgun bucks, firing lead and magnesium shards directly through the heavy wood of the coffin. You fire four times as the wood splinters and explodes away, your shells bursting through them as they tear through the coffin, swiveling your aim between where the head and heart should lie. After a few seconds, you pause, quickly reloading your shotgun as you step back, hoping the creature lies dead inside there. Stepping forward, you grab the handle of the coffin and wretch it open, tearing open the splintered and almost destroyed door. Staring inside, you find splintered wood and torn apart coffin... but no vampire, or no ash to show a clean kill. "That was expensive," a dark, chilling voice says. "You'll pay for that." Your voice chills when you hear the voice, but you know it's not the time for tears. Turning your head, you find yourself staring up at a tall, deathly pale figure, baring a pair of ivory daggers that descend from its upper jaw. It's skin seems almost entirely hairless except for the thick black hair that hangs down from its head. Its eyes, however... its blood red eyes betray an inhumanity that you'll never be able to comprehend. The creature dashes forward, grabbing your shotgun by the handle and punching you in the stomach. He quickly begins to wrest the shotgun out of your hands as you use all your strength to stop it, fighting for control of your weapon while using your knees to keep the vampire far enough away from you so that it's fangs can't sink into your flesh and drain you of your blood. > You fight for control of the shotgun You grab the shotgun with both hands, tightening your grip and trying your best to wrestle it out of the Vampire's hand, but he's far stronger than you. The Vampire grabs your wrist, pulling it behind your back and forcing you to the ground. There's a painful snap as you feel your arm break in half, and you let out a horrified scream. The Vampire pulls the shotgun from your broken grip, laughing. "I thought you Hunters were supposed to be threats," he laughs. "You're never going to feel the sun on your face, you monster," you groan. The Vampire lifts the shotgun into the air, smashing it against your head as you scream. The creature repeatedly smashes the butt of your shotgun against your skull, hitting you again and again and again as your skull is crushed into the concrete floor, blood and brains leaking in a puddle around your shattered form.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly head down the staircase of the basement, descending into the dark basement, lit by a dim candle. You slow down as you notice the counters piled with jars filled to the brim with red liquid. A bloody metal table sits there with unopened leather straps, a series of tubing and IV's connected to it. You're certain that it's equipment to drain the blood of victims the Thrall captures, to feed his master when he doesn't wish to hunt for himself. However, the highlight of the room is a large, ornate coffin, leaning against a concrete wall. You've seen enough coffins in your life for any man, but this one is a fairly nice one. It's solid wood, cherry, with brass handles, sitting up on its side so its resident can sleep standing up. The face on the front of the coffin shows a grinning, gargoyle-like face made of brass, its eyes shining at you. You flinch at the sight of it, nervous about what lies behind it. You hurry up to the coffin, readying your shotgun to perform the breaching actions. Swinging around and standing back, you quickly measure the size of the coffin and roughly calculate where the center of its heart is. You aim, your fingers tightening on the trigger as you fire the weapon. Your shotgun bucks, firing lead and magnesium shards directly through the heavy wood of the coffin. You fire four times as the wood splinters and explodes away, your shells bursting through them as they tear through the coffin, swiveling your aim between where the head and heart should lie. After a few seconds, you pause, quickly reloading your shotgun as you step back, hoping the creature lies dead inside there. Stepping forward, you grab the handle of the coffin and wretch it open, tearing open the splintered and almost destroyed door. Staring inside, you find splintered wood and torn apart coffin... but no vampire, or no ash to show a clean kill. "That was expensive," a dark, chilling voice says. "You'll pay for that." Your voice chills when you hear the voice, but you know it's not the time for tears. Turning your head, you find yourself staring up at a tall, deathly pale figure, baring a pair of ivory daggers that descend from its upper jaw. It's skin seems almost entirely hairless except for the thick black hair that hangs down from its head. Its eyes, however... its blood red eyes betray an inhumanity that you'll never be able to comprehend. The creature dashes forward, grabbing your shotgun by the handle and punching you in the stomach. He quickly begins to wrest the shotgun out of your hands as you use all your strength to stop it, fighting for control of your weapon while using your knees to keep the vampire far enough away from you so that it's fangs can't sink into your flesh and drain you of your blood. > You release your grip on the shotgun and draw your revolver You release your grip on the shotgun, allowing the Vampire to tear it free from himself as you rapidly backpedal, grabbing the revolver at your side and drawing it in one smooth motion. You aim the revolver at the vampire's chest. For a moment, you see the smile drop from the vampire's face as you open fire, releasing a burst of silver bullets from your gun. The silver bullets embed themselves directly in the Vampire's heart as it topples back, the force of the bullets leaving the Vampire stumbling back as it gasps. It's flesh begins burning away to ash as the creature collapses to the ground, and soon there's nothing but an ash pile left. You gasp, leaning back as you sigh, putting away your revolver. You look down at the pile of ash, walking forward as you drop to your knees, searching through the ash to recover your spent bullets. You pull them out, stuffing them into your pocket to be reforged into fresh bullets later. With that, you stand. A bright ringing noise startles you from behind, and you almost open fire in that direction as you redraw your revolver. You find yourself staring at a simple cellphone sitting on a table, vibrating and ringing away. You pause, looking at it with confusion. You walk over slowly, reaching down and flipping open the phone, lifting it to your ear. "Hello?" "Hello, Mr Matasan." Your blood chills for a moment, as you take a deep breath, terror ringing through you. "And who may I be speaking to?" "My name is Hrólfr Gaange. It's a pleasure to meet you." "Is there something I can help you with?" you ask. "You don't seem particularly afraid, Mr Matasan." "Should I be, Mr Gaange?" you ask, trying to keep your calm. "Of course not. It's just refreshing to speak to a new person without them being so terrified. Now, let's be quite frank, Mr Matasan. You killed one of my agents, and their thrall, did you not?" "I did," you say, not wanting to waste the time that would've come from lying, since you know the creature's certain about these facts. "Interesting. Good. He was a weak, impulsive creature. He wasn't useful. Quite frankly, he was a threat to our existence. But you... you could be of assistance to me. You have potential. I want you to work for me." "No," you reply, almost instantly, prompting a dark chuckle from the bastard. "I understand. You've dedicated your life to protecting the innocent. But, so have I, Mr Matasan. I may be a vampire, but I do what's necessary for this world. I don't stalk through the streets at night attacking helpless women hiding in their beds. I'm not one of these crass specimens that wants to blot out the sun, or who wants to enslave mankind, or raise a legion of damned souls. I like the world the way it is. And I'm going to keep it safe from darker creatures of the night. I keep the world of darkness under wraps, as you do. I keep my dark brethren in check. I protect society. You could help me with that, and do a far better job than you do as a mortal." "No," you say again. "Think about what I'm offering you. Immortality, riches, power, strength, speed, intelligence. Everything you could want." "I can't do that, Mr Gaange. I think you already knew that, though." "Oh, I did. But I'm not looking to recruit you right now. I'm offering you a favor. You types never take the power offer. You don't join my side out of power-lust. You join out of desperation. A day will come when you need me. Perhaps you need some arcane knowledge. Perhaps you need money. Perhaps a cure for some unknown disease. Anything you ever need. Just... keep this phone. My number is under Mr Black. Generic, i know. When you need me, call. I can give you anything you want. And what do you lose for that? Your finite mortality, your weakness, your diseases, your poverty... a fair bargain, no." "I'm not going to..." you begin to see, before a dark voice interrupts you. "Keep the phone. I know you don't think you'll need it, but you might. I'll talk to you sooner or later, Mr Matasan. Best of luck to you tonight. I've heard it'll be a big one." The phone beeps as Mr Gaange hangs up on you. You pause, looking down at your phone as you try to think through what to do. > You take the phone Thinking long and hard, you decide to take the phone. Perhaps it could be of some use. Maybe. Hopefully, you never have to use it, but you didn't survive this long in the field by turning away potential gifts, and you're not going to start now. Everything you can use in the fight against darkness, you will use. You slide the phone into one of your secure pockets, buttoning it up and patting it to make sure it's secure. Your job done, you quickly set apart eradicating the evidence this place ever existed. You pack up the jars of blood into the truck, for disposal somewhere that won't be investigated. You also take the IV and tubing, before grabbing your fuel cans. You quickly perform the same patterns, spreading it through the house evenly enough, focusing on that you need destroyed and that which is most flammable. Once that's done, you head out of the house and set the home alight, watching as the flames run through the house and engulf it in an inferno. You don't feel like watching it, not feeling the usual satisfaction of watching a lair of darkness light the shadows as a beacon of warmth and light. You just feel tired, even more so knowing that you're not finished your work tonight. You head back to your truck, climbing in and heading off down the road again. The drive goes by quickly, as you turn your radio up until it's almost blaring some inane Norwegian pop song, and continue off down the road. It's not long before you pull up to the old country house again. The signs of the night's lateness are more obvious, now. A few of the vehicles parked outside are dented or have blood smears or bullet holes, and the Hunters that walk about them seem more exhausted. You head into the house, taking a moment to appreciate the light of the fireplace. But, the night is still young, and you have targets to hit. You walk towards the sitting room, one of the old house's converted into a "base of operations" of sorts. Although as Hunters, you tend to work independently, only using the Lodge for resources, resupplying and rest, as well as letting them know every so often you're not dead in the long periods of investigation and tracking in trying to find the lairs and dens of beasts, and trying to distinguish psychos and fools from men tainted by the demonic, or worse. However, it's the night of the Hunt, that beautiful night of the year where you wipe out the monsters that dwell in the shadows in one quick sweep, not even giving the bastards time to flee or figure out what's going on. And on the night of the Hunt, sometimes you need to work together. While maddened werewolves and loner vampires are easy prey with modern technology, hard-work, training and of course the element of surprise, when the creatures of darkness work together, so must you. When that happens, you plan and prepare in the lounge. You walk into the lodge, finding a large table with a map stretched across it. A half dozen men stand around it, all of whom you recognize as veteran Hunters. The leader of the group is the head of the Lodge, a man known as Ernest Collier. The old man's scarred, wrinkled face smiles at you as you enter. Ernest's too old at his age to still hunt, having since lost the physical peak that Hunters are required to be at, but his mind is strong and he's well experienced. Thus, he serves the cause through leading the lodge. Everything from supplying Hunters to recruiting to planning the larger hunts falls under his purview. "William. How have your two hunts been?" he asks. "Successfully," you say simply. The next man is Father Féval, a tall, gaunt figure with spectacles dressed in black. His lips turn upwards in the barest facsimile of a smile as he looks at you. You know he's only trying to be polite, his professional, cold nature means he rarely takes joy, and lives of a live of abstinence and religious duty. You retreat to the car, calling into the Lodge. They report back that they've a spare Hunter to send out, one who is only acting on stand-by. Father Paul Féval. You know the man well, and have worked with him before. The man's a representative from the Vatican, a priest even, and as adamant in following the laws of the Bible as you are in never leaving the Lodge without a spare, but the man's a professional and an experienced Hunter. The man's permanent cold, professional demeanor means you'd be hesitant to call him a "friend", but you feel it'd be disrespectful to like anything. After him stands former-Unteroffizer Hans Hirsch. The tall man has dark black hair and light eyes, his face decorated with a long scar that goes vertically just left of his left eye. He leans over the table, scanning the map. His finger gently runs across hunting paths through the thick forest as he whispers to himself. Hans is a strange man, with a taste for drink, cigars, cigarettes, whores, gambling... anything he can get his hands on. But, he's a good hunter, having served in the military of his home country and having a great record on all his previous hunts. The final man is an Alaskan by the name of Russel Sloane. Time has taken the black from his thick beard and the hair from his head, but left the man's strength, speed and cunning, and only given him experience and wisdom for the trade. He's a powerful Hunter, and took the shift from bears and wolves to Kushtaka and Tupilaq with ease. He smiles at you grimly when you enter, his face showing a hint of more worry than usual. "Are we ready to start?" you ask. "We're waiting on someone," Russel says. As you raise an eyebrow, the door swings open and you find yourself staring down at a young boy, barely in his mid teens. "This is my boy Wyatt. Now that's he's a full man, we'll be taking him on tonight's hunt, showing him how we fight. I filled him in on the details." "Pleasure to meet y'all," he smiles nervously, as you look him up and down. He's young, short, weak and skinny. You don't think he should be coming out, but he's a man more than you would normally have for this mission, and you're not going to be telling his father how to raise his own child. "Take a seat, Wyatt," Ernest smiles. "We're going to go over tonight's details." Ernest takes a seat, as you stare down at the map ahead of you, which shows you a massive woods, with several hunting paths, potential lairs and scenes of incidents highlighted. "Let's recap for those who didn't get to hear it directly from me!" Ernest says. "There's been several mauling's in these areas, and we've had reports a werewolf pack is responsible. Not just one werewolf, but an entire pack of about six to twelve creatures. We're taking a small team in their to set up an ambush, draw them out and kill them all. The plans' simple. Take a truck into the woods with a mutilated deer carcass, slathered in human blood. The scent should draw the werewolves into your area, where you'll have set up an overview to take them out. Simple." You all nod, the review of your plan unnecessary for everyone but Wyatt. "We're heading off in an hour and a half. I want all of you prepared and by the truck for then, understood?" There's a chorus of affirmatives, as Ernest smiles. "Good to know. Best of luck, men."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You release your grip on the shotgun, allowing the Vampire to tear it free from himself as you rapidly backpedal, grabbing the revolver at your side and drawing it in one smooth motion. You aim the revolver at the vampire's chest. For a moment, you see the smile drop from the vampire's face as you open fire, releasing a burst of silver bullets from your gun. The silver bullets embed themselves directly in the Vampire's heart as it topples back, the force of the bullets leaving the Vampire stumbling back as it gasps. It's flesh begins burning away to ash as the creature collapses to the ground, and soon there's nothing but an ash pile left. You gasp, leaning back as you sigh, putting away your revolver. You look down at the pile of ash, walking forward as you drop to your knees, searching through the ash to recover your spent bullets. You pull them out, stuffing them into your pocket to be reforged into fresh bullets later. With that, you stand. A bright ringing noise startles you from behind, and you almost open fire in that direction as you redraw your revolver. You find yourself staring at a simple cellphone sitting on a table, vibrating and ringing away. You pause, looking at it with confusion. You walk over slowly, reaching down and flipping open the phone, lifting it to your ear. "Hello?" "Hello, Mr Matasan." Your blood chills for a moment, as you take a deep breath, terror ringing through you. "And who may I be speaking to?" "My name is Hrólfr Gaange. It's a pleasure to meet you." "Is there something I can help you with?" you ask. "You don't seem particularly afraid, Mr Matasan." "Should I be, Mr Gaange?" you ask, trying to keep your calm. "Of course not. It's just refreshing to speak to a new person without them being so terrified. Now, let's be quite frank, Mr Matasan. You killed one of my agents, and their thrall, did you not?" "I did," you say, not wanting to waste the time that would've come from lying, since you know the creature's certain about these facts. "Interesting. Good. He was a weak, impulsive creature. He wasn't useful. Quite frankly, he was a threat to our existence. But you... you could be of assistance to me. You have potential. I want you to work for me." "No," you reply, almost instantly, prompting a dark chuckle from the bastard. "I understand. You've dedicated your life to protecting the innocent. But, so have I, Mr Matasan. I may be a vampire, but I do what's necessary for this world. I don't stalk through the streets at night attacking helpless women hiding in their beds. I'm not one of these crass specimens that wants to blot out the sun, or who wants to enslave mankind, or raise a legion of damned souls. I like the world the way it is. And I'm going to keep it safe from darker creatures of the night. I keep the world of darkness under wraps, as you do. I keep my dark brethren in check. I protect society. You could help me with that, and do a far better job than you do as a mortal." "No," you say again. "Think about what I'm offering you. Immortality, riches, power, strength, speed, intelligence. Everything you could want." "I can't do that, Mr Gaange. I think you already knew that, though." "Oh, I did. But I'm not looking to recruit you right now. I'm offering you a favor. You types never take the power offer. You don't join my side out of power-lust. You join out of desperation. A day will come when you need me. Perhaps you need some arcane knowledge. Perhaps you need money. Perhaps a cure for some unknown disease. Anything you ever need. Just... keep this phone. My number is under Mr Black. Generic, i know. When you need me, call. I can give you anything you want. And what do you lose for that? Your finite mortality, your weakness, your diseases, your poverty... a fair bargain, no." "I'm not going to..." you begin to see, before a dark voice interrupts you. "Keep the phone. I know you don't think you'll need it, but you might. I'll talk to you sooner or later, Mr Matasan. Best of luck to you tonight. I've heard it'll be a big one." The phone beeps as Mr Gaange hangs up on you. You pause, looking down at your phone as you try to think through what to do. > You destroy the phone Refusing to make any deals with the enemies you hunt, you drop the phone onto the group, watching it bounce along the hard concrete as it breaks, plastic splintering. You raise your shotgun, firing at it as it explodes in a shower of lead, magnesium and plastic. You step back, shaking your head. No use leaving any potential evidence for the fire department investigating this place. Your job done, you quickly set apart eradicating the evidence this place ever existed. You pack up the jars of blood into the truck, for disposal somewhere that won't be investigated. You also take the IV and tubing, before grabbing your fuel cans. You quickly perform the same patterns, spreading it through the house evenly enough, focusing on that you need destroyed and that which is most flammable. Once that's done, you head out of the house and set the home alight, watching as the flames run through the house and engulf it in an inferno. You don't feel like watching it, not feeling the usual satisfaction of watching a lair of darkness light the shadows as a beacon of warmth and light. You just feel tired, even more so knowing that you're not finished your work tonight. You head back to your truck, climbing in and heading off down the road again. The drive goes by quickly, as you turn your radio up until it's almost blaring some inane Norwegian pop song, and continue off down the road. It's not long before you pull up to the old country house again. The signs of the night's lateness are more obvious, now. A few of the vehicles parked outside are dented or have blood smears or bullet holes, and the Hunters that walk about them seem more exhausted. You head into the house, taking a moment to appreciate the light of the fireplace. But, the night is still young, and you have targets to hit. You walk towards the sitting room, one of the old house's converted into a "base of operations" of sorts. Although as Hunters, you tend to work independently, only using the Lodge for resources, resupplying and rest, as well as letting them know every so often you're not dead in the long periods of investigation and tracking in trying to find the lairs and dens of beasts, and trying to distinguish psychos and fools from men tainted by the demonic, or worse. However, it's the night of the Hunt, that beautiful night of the year where you wipe out the monsters that dwell in the shadows in one quick sweep, not even giving the bastards time to flee or figure out what's going on. And on the night of the Hunt, sometimes you need to work together. While maddened werewolves and loner vampires are easy prey with modern technology, hard-work, training and of course the element of surprise, when the creatures of darkness work together, so must you. When that happens, you plan and prepare in the lounge. You walk into the lodge, finding a large table with a map stretched across it. A half dozen men stand around it, all of whom you recognize as veteran Hunters. The leader of the group is the head of the Lodge, a man known as Ernest Collier. The old man's scarred, wrinkled face smiles at you as you enter. Ernest's too old at his age to still hunt, having since lost the physical peak that Hunters are required to be at, but his mind is strong and he's well experienced. Thus, he serves the cause through leading the lodge. Everything from supplying Hunters to recruiting to planning the larger hunts falls under his purview. "William. How have your two hunts been?" he asks. "Successfully," you say simply. The next man is Father Féval, a tall, gaunt figure with spectacles dressed in black. His lips turn upwards in the barest facsimile of a smile as he looks at you. You know he's only trying to be polite, his professional, cold nature means he rarely takes joy, and lives of a live of abstinence and religious duty. You retreat to the car, calling into the Lodge. They report back that they've a spare Hunter to send out, one who is only acting on stand-by. Father Paul Féval. You know the man well, and have worked with him before. The man's a representative from the Vatican, a priest even, and as adamant in following the laws of the Bible as you are in never leaving the Lodge without a spare, but the man's a professional and an experienced Hunter. The man's permanent cold, professional demeanor means you'd be hesitant to call him a "friend", but you feel it'd be disrespectful to like anything. After him stands former-Unteroffizer Hans Hirsch. The tall man has dark black hair and light eyes, his face decorated with a long scar that goes vertically just left of his left eye. He leans over the table, scanning the map. His finger gently runs across hunting paths through the thick forest as he whispers to himself. Hans is a strange man, with a taste for drink, cigars, cigarettes, whores, gambling... anything he can get his hands on. But, he's a good hunter, having served in the military of his home country and having a great record on all his previous hunts. The final man is an Alaskan by the name of Russel Sloane. Time has taken the black from his thick beard and the hair from his head, but left the man's strength, speed and cunning, and only given him experience and wisdom for the trade. He's a powerful Hunter, and took the shift from bears and wolves to Kushtaka and Tupilaq with ease. He smiles at you grimly when you enter, his face showing a hint of more worry than usual. "Are we ready to start?" you ask. "We're waiting on someone," Russel says. As you raise an eyebrow, the door swings open and you find yourself staring down at a young boy, barely in his mid teens. "This is my boy Wyatt. Now that's he's a full man, we'll be taking him on tonight's hunt, showing him how we fight. I filled him in on the details." "Pleasure to meet y'all," he smiles nervously, as you look him up and down. He's young, short, weak and skinny. You don't think he should be coming out, but he's a man more than you would normally have for this mission, and you're not going to be telling his father how to raise his own child. "Take a seat, Wyatt," Ernest smiles. "We're going to go over tonight's details." Ernest takes a seat, as you stare down at the map ahead of you, which shows you a massive woods, with several hunting paths, potential lairs and scenes of incidents highlighted. "Let's recap for those who didn't get to hear it directly from me!" Ernest says. "There's been several mauling's in these areas, and we've had reports a werewolf pack is responsible. Not just one werewolf, but an entire pack of about six to twelve creatures. We're taking a small team in their to set up an ambush, draw them out and kill them all. The plans' simple. Take a truck into the woods with a mutilated deer carcass, slathered in human blood. The scent should draw the werewolves into your area, where you'll have set up an overview to take them out. Simple." You all nod, the review of your plan unnecessary for everyone but Wyatt. "We're heading off in an hour and a half. I want all of you prepared and by the truck for then, understood?" There's a chorus of affirmatives, as Ernest smiles. "Good to know. Best of luck, men."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The back door, you decide. You want to ensure you get the drop on the Thrall, and don't end up in a firefight with the man, or else the vampire will have time to awaken from his internal, dreamless slumber, and then you don't have a chance in hell. With that decided, you walk towards the house, shotgun gripped tightly in your hand. Surprisingly for a vampire's lair, your surveillance has said that the house is completely lacking in any serious security measures. Locked doors and windows, sure, but they're lacking the reinforced doors, security cameras. It's a young vampire, so you're not expecting legions of Thralls protecting him or runic blood magic protecting the house, but clearly the power's gone to this creature's head. Moving slowly and softly through the garden around to the back, you still your breathing and do your best to be as soundless as the shadows. You creep through the rose bushes, whose petals look almost eerily beautiful in the moonlight. The sky's light brightens your path, but also makes it harder to sneak, and you just stay low and hope that if the Thrall happens to be looking out the window, he isn't looking too hard. Edging around to the back, you draw close to the wooden door. You move to the door, standing ready, before striking. Taking a deep breath, you growl, ready to act. You raise your shotgun, firing through the door's lock as you boot it open, quickly stepping through the now opened doorway and into the house. The Thrall stands in the kitchen, his back turned to you.The Thrall is a short, bearded man, growling and shaking his head repeatedly as he divides a pile of crushed and broken white crystals, no doubt a substitute between his feedings on the vampiric blood he's heavily addicted to. The man quickly turns, his crazed, blood-shot eyes bulging at you as he sees you. His eyes dart up to you as he growls, an animalistic sound that could only come from a beast. With a roar, he charges for you. > You smash him aside with the butt of your shotgun You swing your shotgun as hard as you can, the stock of your shotgun flying into his face. The shotgun butt smacks into his face, shattering the bridge of his nose and sending teeth and blood flying and spewing across the floor. The man stands there, with a broken nose and blood streaming down his face, skin torn and fleshed bruised, but still standing there. He roars, grabbing you and flinging you into the wall. You smack into the wall, sliding down it onto the ground as you groan in pain. The Thrall rushes forward, drawing a knife as he rams it into your stomach. You gasp, as the steel pierces and cuts through flesh and guts, and the Thrall precedes to repeatedly and aggressively penetrate your stomach. Blood, stomach acid and the remains of food begin pouring out of your open wound and running down your stomach as death quickly drags you into the endless darkness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up in your cabin in the woods. You sit up and scratch some fleas that have infested your body. You also realize its still daylight. You hate waking up early. You lope into the bathroom and look in the mirror where you see a canine face covered in gray fur, you remember a time when your fur was completely brown. “You’re getting old Wolf” you say to yourself like you always do while trying to look on the bright side that at least you don’t have the mange. You think you’d just put a silver bullet in your head if you ever started to go bald. After eating some left over mutton in the fridge and some Gummy Blobs (for the sugar “pick me up”) you ponder how you’re going to pay this month’s rent on your cabin. You call your agent Erik and see if that little pissant has found any work for you. Hopefully it’s an actual job and not just a guest speaker spot at a comic convention. “Erik! It’s me Wolf! Pick up the fucking phone! I know you’re there!” you say when you get the answering machine. “Erik! Get on the phone NOW, or I’m gonna go over there and shove a pipe organ up your ass!” That got his attention. “Wolf, I’m sorry, but I fear I’m in a deep depression.” “What else is new? Look I need some work, got anything? I don’t even care if it’s straight to video. I just need some of the green stuff!” “Sadly, I don’t think I do, but then I haven’t really checked…I’m so depressed. I’ve been wondering if I made the right decisions in my life…and now it’s too late for me to do anything about it, because I’m old…” “Join the fucking club Erik! Look do you…” “But my art, my music, that is my love and its failing me again. My latest opera isn’t doing well. I wonder if I chose the wrong thing to love and pursue. Just like I did with Christine. Oh Christine WHY couldn’t you have loved me? I loved you…” Wonderful, he’s in full blown tortured artist mode. He can go on like this forever. You can either give up, or persist in getting something out of him. > You persist “Oh boo fucking hoo, your latest Opera hasn’t been doing too well lately. At least people are paying to see the goddamn thing! As bad of a composer, and musician you are, you oughta be glad anyone’s even paying to see the goddamn thing! People don’t want to see anything with me in it! And at least you’ve got another job to fall back on LIKE BEING AN AGENT THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING ME A FUCKING JOB!” you snarl. There’s some dead air briefly and then Erik begins talking again. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be complaining about my problems to you. You of course know all about torment. A war that wages within you, a beast that…” “Erik I’ve got no time and I’m in no mood to hear how we’re supposed to be kindred spirits, you just better tell me you found something for me and it better not be another guest speaker spot at a comic convention!” “Well let’s see…I dunno. Werewolves aren’t popular anymore you know…there might be something…here it is! It’s called Wolf Pack.” “Pack? That implies more than one wolf on the set there Erik. Well I suppose I can share the spotlight with some others. As long as I’m in charge of course.” You say. “Er…well according to this, you’d be the old cranky grandpa wolf that makes a bunch of rude remarks.” “What?! What kind of stupid shit is that?” “Yeah that’s the stuff.” Erik replies not catching on. “I mean what the hell kind of movie is this?” “Its uh…let’s see…oh here. It’s a horror comedy about a werewolf family and how they adjust to human society. Looks like you’ll be playing with a lot of young pups as you’d call them.” “WHAT?! NO! What the fuck Erik? I’m a fucking monster not something to be fucking laughed at! And they already did a movie like that a long time ago and it sucked!” “Well that’s all I got. Maybe you could talk to the director to make changes since they also wrote it. I’m sure you and her are familiar with each other. You had an affair with her for quite some time.” “Uh, you wanna narrow that list down Erik?” “It’s Mary. You know, the one who used to be married to Frankie, until your affair broke up both of your marriages?” Erik’s new information didn’t exactly make you any more enthusiastic to want to take the job. > You take the job anyway “Alright I’ll take the job, just tell me where its at.” You say. After Erik gives you the information, you ride your Harley to the studio. When you arrive on the set, you see a bunch of snot nosed wolflings hanging around trying to look “tough”. Some of them are in human form, but you can smell them for who they truly are though. These cubs today, you swear they would’ve never lasted back in the old days. All flash and nothing to back it up. (Though you don’t mind looking at the young females that are there) That’s why they hang out in packs. You never did that even when you were young. You were always a lone wolf. “Hey who’s the fossil?” one of them asks. “Hey Grandpa, the remake of Old Yellow is next door!” This causes a howl of laughter from all of them, until you confront the one who said it. Probably the leader no doubt. Not even in wolf form. Pathetic. “I’m going to give you time to transform into a more adequate fighting form before I neuter you.” You calmly explain. “You? You’re like 300 years old! I could take…” Can’t say you didn’t give him a chance. You immediately pounce on him, knocking him down while clamping your jaws on his face and digging your fangs in. “HOLY SHIT DUDE!” one of them shouts. “Oh my god he’s killing him!” a female screams. “Get him off of him, get him off of him!” While them all attempt to pull you off of their leader you hear a familiar voice that gets your attention. “Well, I see Erik passed my script over to you, good. I’m also glad to see you’re still as anti-social as usual Wolf.” Mary says as you finally get off of your misguided heckler and approach her. She still looks the same, though she looks a lot better now that she got rid of that hair style she used to have and dyed it blonde. “Just re-establishing the proper hierarchy, nothing more.” “Hmm, always the Alpha Male, that was what I always loved about you. So primal. Maybe later I can dress in a little red cloak and we can reenact a fairy tale.” “Some fairy tale, as I remember you loved a lot of beings.” “Hey I can’t help who I am. I was created this way.” “Just like Frankie eh?” “Don’t you compare me to that sicko! Yes we are controlled by our genetics to a certain degree, but as you damn well know I rose above them! I made my own identity. I’m a successful director and writer now, so what if I have a healthy sexual appetite? There’s nothing wrong with that, I’m sure you’d agree given all the beings you had your way with before, after and DURING your marriage!” “Look never mind all that. I got a real problem with this film.” You say side stepping her correct accusation. “What’s wrong with it?” “What’s wrong with it? Are you kidding me? It sucks! It makes a mockery of werewolves! You even named one of them fucking Benji!” “Well comedy is popular now. Plus children like monsters just as long as they aren’t too scary, so I was hoping to make it a family film.” “ARRGH! I don’t DO family films! This is insulting and demeaning!” “How? Come on Wolf. In most horror movies you’ve made you always got killed in the end by a human, how was that any less demeaning?” “Because at least I was portrayed as feared monster that killed a bunch of people! I can play ball with the humans and their idealistic notion of good always having to overcome evil and all that…but THIS! This makes me into a fucking joke! I can’t even believe you of all people wrote this…no wait I can. You fucking undead don’t have any consideration for anyone, but yourselves.” “You know I’m technically not even undead, I’m created from several dead bodies. I’m more of a golem.” Mary attempts to correct you. “Who gives a shit, you’re still basically a walking corpse, and your flesh is dead. You’re Undead in my book.” “You know for someone who hasn’t been able to find a job in months and is basically just rotting away in his little cabin, you’d think that you’d be a little more appreciative. I wrote this with you in mind you hairy bigoted asshole!” You don’t know whether to take that as an insult or as an attempt for her to try to make amends for the past. > You take it as an insult “So you had me in mind eh? Well that proves it. You think I’m a joke because that’s how you wrote the character.” “What? No! I just…” “I see your time with that bloodsucker was well spent. Learning how to exploit and leech right? Look maybe you can pull this shit with those puppies over there, but I ain’t fucking one! I don’t need the money that badly. I’ll go fucking live my twilight years in the forest and DIE there as nature probably intended. I don’t need this shit.” As you turn to leave, Mary shouts at you. “Yeah, that’s right go on leave Mr. Lone Wolf! You’ll fucking die alone, you stubborn bastard! I tried to help you! Erik tried to help you and you don’t appreciate any of it! That’s why none of your children speak to you and…” You run back over to her and slam her into the wall. You stare at her face to face as she struggles to get free. She’s strong, but you manage to keep her pinned. She really pissed you off and you were already pissed off to begin with. “Fuck you, and fuck Erik! You two don’t know shit about me, never did. I’m through with the pair of you! In fact I think I’ll be taking something with me since you’re so worried about me being alone…” You release Mary and go over to the wolflings who look a little worried that you’re going to cause harm to them. Many of them cast their eyes downward. “Hey, you want to be REALLY tough? You want to really raise some hell? Come with me. If you want to stay under the thumb of this patchwork dead bitch and be exploited and mocked, stay here. Your statement alone convinces all of them. They all follow you, even the one you made an example of. Mary attempts to call everyone back, but it’s useless, you’ve taken control of the pack and they’ll do what you want now. And right now you want to get into a fight. You think about all the people and creatures that wronged you in some way and only two of them keep coming to mind consistently. One is that fucking Dr. Victor Frankenstein. If it wasn’t for him, Frankie and Mary wouldn’t have been created in the first place which also means you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into trouble all those years ago. You wouldn’t have had to put up with his “children” taking jobs away from you. Not to mention he sued you once. But the one who you REALLY despise, is that bisexual bloodsucker. Fucking Dracula or Vlad, or whatever the hell he’s calling himself these days. The disgust you have for him and the reasons are too numerous to list here. > You go kick Victor's ass Your recent dealings with Mary, have made you think about all the shit you’ve had to put up with from that no talent dickhead. No human has ever given you such trouble. You know he’s still alive. (Mad scientists always find ways of prolonging their lives somehow) That won’t be true for long though, if you get your way. You killed him once before. This time you’re going to make sure he stays that way. He’s probably got whatever crappy inventions and experiments protecting his castle and from what you know, Frankie’s still living with his “Dad” as well. You don’t give a fuck, you’ll kill him too. You figure you’ll be doing the world a favor as well as getting some satisfaction. Besides, you’ve got to show these wolflings what being a werewolf is all about. “All right you cubs! We’re going to go raise some fucking hell. We’re going to Frankenstein’s Castle. We’re going to rip the place apart brick by brick, and I’M going to rip Victor apart limb from limb.” “Erm…Castle Frankenstien? Isn’t that where Frankie lives?” one of the wolflings asks. “I heard he’s really powerful, didn’t he fight Dracula and win?” ‘I dunno if we should mess with him.” You can’t believe your ears! These snot nosed pups know nothing of their heritage! Back in the old days they would’ve been killed and eaten for such cowardice! “Goddammit are you Wolves or fucking Chihuahuas? Frankie’s a fucking pussy! I personally kicked his ass before and I’ll do it again all by myself if I have too! Now are you going to run with me and be a fucking Wolf or are you going to go back home with your tails tucked between your legs?” After looking at each other for awhile they all agree to go with you. “Good! Now I want all of you to transform into your wolf form too! I’m traveling with fellow wolves not humans!” Just before one of the females begins to transform, you stop her. She’s dressed in a short leather skirt and a tight white t-shirt that’s tied in the center and has long flowing brown hair. You can smell that she’s in heat. You hate to coin a pun, but she literally is one hot l’il bitch. “Erm, not you. You stay in your human form; I kind of like the whole teenage slut look you got going on. In fact you come here right now; you’ll be traveling on my bike with me.” You say. As she slides in behind you and holds on, you ask her one more question. “So what’s your name?” “Ginger. What’s your name, you never did tell us.” “Wolf. Just Wolf baby. Remember it. You’ll be screaming it later.” Damn you’re so fucking cool, you think as you start up your Harley and ride ahead of the pack. (You’d probably be even cooler if these pups weren’t all riding those Japanese “crotch rocket” bikes, but that’ll have to be another lesson for another day) After a couple of days of riding, and a few “pit stops” with Ginger, you all eventually reach Castle Frankenstein. You park your bikes at the gate, and size the place up, which now looks a lot different. It looks like a damn Nazi fortress now, there’s guard towers and everything. It seems Victor has been keeping himself very busy in recent years. As it begins to rain, a familiar voice calls to you from one of the towers. “Its you. Vic always knew you’d return one day. I never believed him though. I guess I owe him fifty bucks.” You look up and see Igor, he looks different too. He has a lot of clumsy cybernetic implants, one of them being some sort of gun in place of an arm. More of Vic’s “handy work” no doubt. He’s still got that damn hump on his back though. “Igor? You still alive? I thought your ungrateful master would’ve just let you die of old age and get himself another assistant. I see he did a real good job of improving you though. Tell me, how’s it feel to be the real brains, never getting the credit and continuing to be a doormat?” “I’m happy with my lot in life. How’s it feel to be broke ass overgrown dog who’s trying to relive his lost youth?” Igor retorts back. “Don’t know yet. I’ll tell you before I shove that metal arm up your ass.” Well looks like the fight’s starting here. > You attempt to climb over the gate before Igor can get off a shot In your prime you would’ve been able to scale the gate, climb the tower and rip Igor’s head off all without getting hit. Unfortunately you aren’t in your prime anymore. Igor’s having trouble aiming his awkward arm-gun, but with as many bullets as it pumps out he doesn’t need to be completely accurate. While you’re attempting to climb over the gate he hits you several times. Naturally those bullets are silver. You crash to the wet ground with a loud CLANK! sound, as the rest of the pack go running away with their tails between their legs.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your recent dealings with Mary, have made you think about all the shit you’ve had to put up with from that no talent dickhead. No human has ever given you such trouble. You know he’s still alive. (Mad scientists always find ways of prolonging their lives somehow) That won’t be true for long though, if you get your way. You killed him once before. This time you’re going to make sure he stays that way. He’s probably got whatever crappy inventions and experiments protecting his castle and from what you know, Frankie’s still living with his “Dad” as well. You don’t give a fuck, you’ll kill him too. You figure you’ll be doing the world a favor as well as getting some satisfaction. Besides, you’ve got to show these wolflings what being a werewolf is all about. “All right you cubs! We’re going to go raise some fucking hell. We’re going to Frankenstein’s Castle. We’re going to rip the place apart brick by brick, and I’M going to rip Victor apart limb from limb.” “Erm…Castle Frankenstien? Isn’t that where Frankie lives?” one of the wolflings asks. “I heard he’s really powerful, didn’t he fight Dracula and win?” ‘I dunno if we should mess with him.” You can’t believe your ears! These snot nosed pups know nothing of their heritage! Back in the old days they would’ve been killed and eaten for such cowardice! “Goddammit are you Wolves or fucking Chihuahuas? Frankie’s a fucking pussy! I personally kicked his ass before and I’ll do it again all by myself if I have too! Now are you going to run with me and be a fucking Wolf or are you going to go back home with your tails tucked between your legs?” After looking at each other for awhile they all agree to go with you. “Good! Now I want all of you to transform into your wolf form too! I’m traveling with fellow wolves not humans!” Just before one of the females begins to transform, you stop her. She’s dressed in a short leather skirt and a tight white t-shirt that’s tied in the center and has long flowing brown hair. You can smell that she’s in heat. You hate to coin a pun, but she literally is one hot l’il bitch. “Erm, not you. You stay in your human form; I kind of like the whole teenage slut look you got going on. In fact you come here right now; you’ll be traveling on my bike with me.” You say. As she slides in behind you and holds on, you ask her one more question. “So what’s your name?” “Ginger. What’s your name, you never did tell us.” “Wolf. Just Wolf baby. Remember it. You’ll be screaming it later.” Damn you’re so fucking cool, you think as you start up your Harley and ride ahead of the pack. (You’d probably be even cooler if these pups weren’t all riding those Japanese “crotch rocket” bikes, but that’ll have to be another lesson for another day) After a couple of days of riding, and a few “pit stops” with Ginger, you all eventually reach Castle Frankenstein. You park your bikes at the gate, and size the place up, which now looks a lot different. It looks like a damn Nazi fortress now, there’s guard towers and everything. It seems Victor has been keeping himself very busy in recent years. As it begins to rain, a familiar voice calls to you from one of the towers. “Its you. Vic always knew you’d return one day. I never believed him though. I guess I owe him fifty bucks.” You look up and see Igor, he looks different too. He has a lot of clumsy cybernetic implants, one of them being some sort of gun in place of an arm. More of Vic’s “handy work” no doubt. He’s still got that damn hump on his back though. “Igor? You still alive? I thought your ungrateful master would’ve just let you die of old age and get himself another assistant. I see he did a real good job of improving you though. Tell me, how’s it feel to be the real brains, never getting the credit and continuing to be a doormat?” “I’m happy with my lot in life. How’s it feel to be broke ass overgrown dog who’s trying to relive his lost youth?” Igor retorts back. “Don’t know yet. I’ll tell you before I shove that metal arm up your ass.” Well looks like the fight’s starting here. > You duck for cover! You tell everyone to get the hell out of Igor’s range and take cover. Fortunately Igor’s gun-arm isn’t the best design and he’s having problems aiming and standing still due to the recoil, so you all manage to hide behind some nearby rocks Still, there’s no way you’re going to be able to scale the front gate with Igor on that damn tower. “See I knew this was a bad idea!” one of the wolflings says. “How are we supposed to get past that? I’m pretty sure he’s firing silver bullets at us.” “Oh I KNOW he is. Hence the reason why I told everyone to get out of the way. Okay so we’re not going through the front gate, the castle’s a big place right? Igor’s only guarding the front. I say we split up and scale the walls on the sides and around the back. We’ll meet up inside the castle.” “Yeah, but won’t there be other defenses?” “Probably. So you better be fucking prepared! This ain’t no damn game. You cubs think you’re really tough when in fact you’ve probably never had a real challenge. This is it. Don’t think about backing out now. This is where we truly test the idea of survival of the fittest. Damn, my blood is starting to feel that rush! Don’t you all feel it? I haven’t felt this way since they sent a group of ten “werewolf assassins” to put me down. Shit. They never tried that again! Ha ha ha ha ha!” While you’re reveling in gruesome nostalgia, your pack is looking at you like you’ve completely lost it. And they’re probably right. However, your speech seems to have stirred something in them. “The crazy old fossil’s right! I remember having to hear about similar stuff my grandfather used to talk about all the damn time. I never really paid any attention to it before. Now I think I understand. We need to prove our skills to truly be proud to call ourselves werewolves!” one of them states. “Now that’s the attitude I’m talking about!” You all huddle in the rain and make a howling noise in unison to the moon and proceed with your plan. You all split up into a couple of groups and begin to scale the side and back walls, which really isn’t all that difficult. You know Igor’s probably ran off to warn Vic though. All you can think is, he better have something better than just Igor and Frankie defending him. As you prowl around in the courtyard, you hear moaning and the clomping of several footsteps. You and your group turn to see some of Vic’s defenses. “Zombies? Are you fucking kidding me Vic? I thought you’d at least have some robots or something!” you say to yourself. Though upon a second look, you see that the horde of corpses aren’t actually zombies. Zombies are complete corpses brought back to life. These things look more like Frankie, except designed even worse. A lot of them have arms and legs in odd places. Some have a couple of heads or extra limbs. Most aren’t even stitched together neatly, there are just giant rivets and spikes sticking out, holding them together. These are probably some of his “failed” experiments. Doesn’t matter, they’re close enough to be Undead for you. > You fight them Damn straight! That’s what you’re here for! You take out the nearest pile of shit with ease and your pack follows suit. They’re a little tougher than you thought, but limbs are flying everywhere. Needless to say you’re really enjoying yourself, and you can see your pack is too. (Well the ones that haven’t gotten themselves killed) You attack one large experiment with four arms, it catches a few heavy hits on you, before you rip them off. It’s relentless and begins smashing its head (Which contains a lot of jagged metal bits) into you, knocking you down. As you shake it off, Ginger (Who’s now in wolf form) and a couple of other wolflings comes to your aid and finish off the large abomination. “Godammit! I had that! Don’t EVER come to help me! I can handle myself!” you snarl angrily. “We were just helping…” Ginger says casting her eyes downward and lowering her ears. “…yeah…well…just don’t let it happen again…” you say understanding they weren’t really trying to embarrass you. “Come on, we’re done here, let’s get in the castle.” You meet up with the ones remaining in your pack at the front door of the castle. You put all your muscle into it and rip the doors of their hinges. When you step inside, you narrowly dodge a laser beam of some sort. “He’s got the whole place trapped, be careful where you…” A wolfling steps on some floor stone that releases yet another beam trap, reducing him to ashes. “Step.” You say completing the sentence. That’s when you hear a loud speaker. “Wolf! Igor informed me you had arrived with some friends! I’m actually glad you’re here I get to test out my new experiment on you! Assuming you survive long enough to get to me of course!” At this point he does his typical Mad Scientist laugh. If he thinks you’re going to waste your time in his castle of death traps he’s sadly mistaken. He seems to have forgotten you have an excellent sense of smell and tracking in general. Of course the smell of dead bodies seems to be emanating everywhere. You try to sniff out a human scent, but you aren’t getting anything solid. The dead body smell is too overpowering. You’re catching a couple of different ones though. One of them is a very faint sweet smell. The other is a burning type smell. > You follow the burning smell Knowing that Vic works with electricity a lot, you figure he’s in that direction. You and the wolflings that are still with you follow, carefully avoiding traps. You travel further to higher levels of the castle where the burning smell is getting stronger. You KNOW you’re getting closer to him. You can feel it. You just hope his “experiment” is as great as he claims. It would suck if there wasn’t a real battle to fight after all this. You burst into the room with strong burning smell and see big globes of energy, conduits, generators and a big ass corpse with cybernetic implants lying on the table. It’s Frankie with some modifications and absorbing more electricity than lightning rod. You half expect to see Victor somewhere, but all you hear is the loudspeaker disturbing your ears again. “You see Wolf! You see! While you’ve been wasting away in that shitty cabin, I’ve been preparing for my son’s come back! You stole his woman! You ended his career! You didn’t just damage him physically, you damaged his mind! Scarred him emotionally! It’s taken me YEARS to undo the damage!” “Damaged his mind? He was a psychopathic serial pedophile made of corpses! What the fuck kind of damage could I have done? And Mary never liked him anyway!” “She could’ve learned! He could’ve too! They just needed more time! But YOU! You prevented all that! You and your dog dick!” “For fuck’s sake, I wasn’t the only one fucking her!” “Yes, but you’re the one who did it the longest and destroyed my poor boy’s career! You’re going to pay! Ha ha ha ha! He’s up! HE’S ALIVE! HE’S ALIVE! HE’S ALIVE! Frankie look who we have here! And old friend, why don’t you go and give him a big hug?” Victor goes into his mad scientist laugh yet again, as Frankie “2.0” gets up from the table. He opens his eyes and looks directly at you. “FRANKIE BEAT YOUR HEAD IN NOW.” He says with a booming voice. Still as verbal and articulate as ever. > You have the pack surround Frankie You order everyone to surround Frankie to try to keep him off guard. Frankie watches as the wolfling encircle him, but he’s still slowly moving towards you. He charges! A couple of the wolfling dive for his legs in an effort to stop him, but he’s like a juggernaut and keeps charging. Fortunately you’re still nimble and get out of his way as he smashes through the wall. The wolflings that dived for his legs, follow up and begin attack him with tooth and claw. It’s not having that great of an effect though, he’s got metal plating on that dead flesh now. Frankie kills the pair of them by smashing their heads together until there is nothing left except mush. “Everyone grab a weapon! Don’t fight him head on!” you bark at the survivors while attempting to find something. You find a large metal pole, though you’re reluctant to take it, with all the electricity in the damn room. “It’s useless! You’ll never defeat my boy Frankie!” Victor says. Frankie begins to approach you again. > You throw the pole at him Just as Frankie charges you again, you throw the pole as hard as you can at him like a spear. Bullseye! Literally. The pole slams into his left eye and straight through his head. It still doesn’t slow him down though and you just barely get out his way. Frankie stops his attack for a moment and attempts to remove the pole, but you and another wolfling don’t miss the opportunity. The pole is quite long and you grab it from the front, while the other grabs it from the back and you both run clockwise around Frankie. All the titanium plating in the world isn’t going to protect him from massive head trauma. “RARRRRGH! BRAIN!” Frankie yells as half of his head comes apart. As he attempts to keep his brains from falling out, and that’s when the rest of the pack begins to beat his head in even more with various blunt objects. He’s still putting up a fight though. “NO! STOP! FRANKIE! MY SON!” you hear Victor scream over the loudspeaker. Victor’s voice sounds like its very close. You see another door in the lab, and you’ve got a really good feeling that he’s behind it. You leave the wolflings to finish off Frankie, and run to open the door. And there he is, Victor Frankenstein… Or what’s left of him at least, he’s just a brain in a jar, hooked up to various machines now. “Wow, Vic. I always knew you were a terrible mad scientist, but I would’ve thought you’d be able to at least create a robot body for yourself, or a youth elixir or something!” “Shut up Wolf! You haven’t won! I’ve still got…” “What? What’ve you got? Nothing! Unless you’re a giant space brain from Venus or some shit, you can’t do anything to me. And you ain’t, so…” ”Wait! Wolf! Can’t we talk about this?” “Oh like you wanted to talk to me, when you fed me drugged meat?” “Oh yeah…you’re not still mad about that are you? I mean you did kill me for it…” ”Yeah, and I should’ve stuck around to make sure you stayed dead. Well no mistakes this time.” You take Victor’s brain out of the jar. “NOOOOOOOO……” are the last words to come out of the loud speakers before you step back into the lab where Frankie is flailing wildly at the wolflings who are carefully standing out of harms way as they continue to make quick strikes as him. He’s badly damaged and blind. Not deaf though. You call over to Frankie who turns around when he recognizes your voice. “Hey Frankie, your Dad wants to talk to you, he’s got a lot on his mind.” You say and then throw Victor’s brain into what remains of Frankie’s face. The brain splatters into bloody pieces, while you follow up with a quick and vicious attack. You sink your fangs deep into Frankie’s shoulder until it hits the bone, where upon you rip off the arm at the socket. The rest of the pack follows your lead and help you rip Frankie apart, until he’s reduced to the pieces that made him up in the first place. “Damn, I think I broke a tooth on that fucking metal plating.” You say breathing heavily. “We won Wolf! You were right! This was fun! I felt the primal instinct and everything!” one of the wolflings exclaims. “Yeah and right now all of you are going to be feeling silver burning through your bodies.” Igor says standing in the lab door exit, pointing that infernal arm weapon at you all. > You rush him You take one look at your pack and nod at them. You all make a howl in unison. Igor realizes he’s in deep shit. “No wait you dumb ass dogs! I got a fucking weapon here! Stop!” You all charge at him and Igor opens fire, he can’t stop you all before you overwhelm him. Unfortunately he does get some… including you. You eviscerate Igor as the silver begins to take its toll on your system. He dies coughing up blood, apologizing for not being able to defend Victor in his death throws. “I’m sorry Victor…I’m sorry my brother…gurgle…” The rest of the pack attempts to carry you out, but you refuse their help and stagger to the outside of the castle where you finally collapse on the ground. It seems so comfortable you figure you’ll just rest for awhile. You’re not surprised to see Mary standing over you. “I take it you killed my whole family.” She says unemotionally. “Yeah, even Igor. Never knew he was Vic’s brother. That explains a lot.” “Why? Why’d you do it? What was the point?! You could’ve just done my movie and still been alive! Or even if you didn’t want anything to do with me, you could’ve just went back to your cabin instead! You could’ve been alive!” “You’ll never understand Mary. You don’t get old. I did and I wasn’t meant to. I outlived my place in this world. No point in going on. Just had to get in one last monster fight and damn it felt good.” Mary shakes her head, you think she might even shed a tear if she was capable. “Go on now Mary, there’s nothing for you here. Don’t morn your family. You were always better than the rest of them anyway. Don’t morn me either, I don’t want it. Go. The pack is coming.” Mary gives you one last look and runs off before the rest of the pack arrives. When they do they begin howling loudly. “Goddammit shut the fuck up! I’m trying to die with a little peace and quiet here!” you snarl. “You have to lead us! You can’t die!” one wolfling says “The hell I can’t! Look I showed you what it means to truly be a Wolf tonight. It’s up to you to do something with it.” Ginger kneels down and tries to sit you up hoping that you’re not really dying. She’s very upset. “You can’t die! I want you with me…I…” “Stop Ginger. Don’t say it. Don’t give yourself anymore unnecessary pain, especially when I don’t deserve it. It’s just as well as I die now, I probably would’ve only broken your heart later. Just remember me how I was in the short time you knew me and every time you look at your litter.” You touch her stomach. “How do you know? I mean it’s too early, we can’t be sure if…” Ginger exclaims. “Please. I’m the Alpha Wolf. I never fucking miss. I got kids everywhere. None of them ever listened to me or talk to me, but I got ‘em.” “What do you want me to tell our litter about you?” “Whatever you want, you’ll be the one raising them and I’ll be too dead to do anything about it… just teach them what I taught all of you here tonight…hopefully they’ll listen. Damn willful pups…mmm…getting sleepy…one more thing…” “What’s that Wolf?” “Burn my damn body, I don’t want some fucker trying to bring me back to life! I hate the Undead!” You close your eyes and feel the darkness envelop you. After a brief period of howling, the remaining pack members take your body and burn it just like you asked, then they all part ways, each to pursue their own destinies in their own way just like you did. A few months later, Ginger does indeed give birth to a new litter and teaches them about you and how you lived. (This is tempered by some common sense on her part though). At last, a legacy worthy of an Alpha Wolf.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just as Frankie charges you again, you throw the pole as hard as you can at him like a spear. Bullseye! Literally. The pole slams into his left eye and straight through his head. It still doesn’t slow him down though and you just barely get out his way. Frankie stops his attack for a moment and attempts to remove the pole, but you and another wolfling don’t miss the opportunity. The pole is quite long and you grab it from the front, while the other grabs it from the back and you both run clockwise around Frankie. All the titanium plating in the world isn’t going to protect him from massive head trauma. “RARRRRGH! BRAIN!” Frankie yells as half of his head comes apart. As he attempts to keep his brains from falling out, and that’s when the rest of the pack begins to beat his head in even more with various blunt objects. He’s still putting up a fight though. “NO! STOP! FRANKIE! MY SON!” you hear Victor scream over the loudspeaker. Victor’s voice sounds like its very close. You see another door in the lab, and you’ve got a really good feeling that he’s behind it. You leave the wolflings to finish off Frankie, and run to open the door. And there he is, Victor Frankenstein… Or what’s left of him at least, he’s just a brain in a jar, hooked up to various machines now. “Wow, Vic. I always knew you were a terrible mad scientist, but I would’ve thought you’d be able to at least create a robot body for yourself, or a youth elixir or something!” “Shut up Wolf! You haven’t won! I’ve still got…” “What? What’ve you got? Nothing! Unless you’re a giant space brain from Venus or some shit, you can’t do anything to me. And you ain’t, so…” ”Wait! Wolf! Can’t we talk about this?” “Oh like you wanted to talk to me, when you fed me drugged meat?” “Oh yeah…you’re not still mad about that are you? I mean you did kill me for it…” ”Yeah, and I should’ve stuck around to make sure you stayed dead. Well no mistakes this time.” You take Victor’s brain out of the jar. “NOOOOOOOO……” are the last words to come out of the loud speakers before you step back into the lab where Frankie is flailing wildly at the wolflings who are carefully standing out of harms way as they continue to make quick strikes as him. He’s badly damaged and blind. Not deaf though. You call over to Frankie who turns around when he recognizes your voice. “Hey Frankie, your Dad wants to talk to you, he’s got a lot on his mind.” You say and then throw Victor’s brain into what remains of Frankie’s face. The brain splatters into bloody pieces, while you follow up with a quick and vicious attack. You sink your fangs deep into Frankie’s shoulder until it hits the bone, where upon you rip off the arm at the socket. The rest of the pack follows your lead and help you rip Frankie apart, until he’s reduced to the pieces that made him up in the first place. “Damn, I think I broke a tooth on that fucking metal plating.” You say breathing heavily. “We won Wolf! You were right! This was fun! I felt the primal instinct and everything!” one of the wolflings exclaims. “Yeah and right now all of you are going to be feeling silver burning through your bodies.” Igor says standing in the lab door exit, pointing that infernal arm weapon at you all. > You stall for time You briefly entertain the idea of rushing Igor, he wouldn’t be able to get all of you, but you’re not ready to risk death at the hands of some deformed assistant after you already killed Victor and Frankie. You need to buy some time. “Alright Igor, just calm down. It’s over Vic and Frankie are dead. You don’t have to get pushed around by either one anymore and you got this whole castle as inheritance! I just did you a favor.” “A favor? A favor? You killed my younger brother you ASSHOLE!” You quickly put two and two together. “Vic? Victor was your brother? Your younger brother?” “He damn well better have been, after all the abuse I took from him! You know what it’s like being abused by your younger brother on a daily basis for YEARS?” “Not really, I killed all my brothers soon after we were born. I wasn’t sharing. Survival of the fittest and all.” You say dryly. “Really? Well I envy you. I wish I had that option. But nooo. Mom liked Vic best. Vic was handsome. Vic wasn’t deformed, Vic this. Vic that! Look after Vic, Igor. Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble Igor. He’s your younger brother and you have to protect him Igor. I was the first born! Why didn’t Igor get any love?! I was the smart one!” “Yes you were. I mean if it hadn’t been for you Vic wouldn’t have even created Frankie.” You say. “Damn straight! I was the one who kept his ass alive! I’m the one that corrected all his idiot ideas when it came to updating Frankie! I’m not stupid like everyone says! I’m smart! And I demand respect! And I never fucking got it! I just got a fucking whip to the hump!” At this point Igor is ranting so much about hating his brother and his self-pity, he’s not aiming his weapon at you any longer. You take advantage of the situation and rush at him, he’s not quick enough to react and you knock him to the ground before eviscerating him. Oddly after all that ranting, he dies gurgling an apology. “I’m sorry Vic…I tried…gurgle…” You shake your head at Igor’s misguided loyalty, while the Pack surrounds you. “We won! You rule Wolf! What now?” one of them asks. “Dunno, didn’t expect to survive really…so did you get all this on camera Mary?” you ask out loud, startling the wolflings. Mary comes out of hiding, with a camcorder. “How did you know I was here?” she asks “Please, I don’t forget a scent, especially one that I know quite intimately. So let me guess. You’re going to exploit this footage for financial gain right?” “Well yeah. When you left the studio I followed you a bit and found out you were heading here. At first I wanted to protect and help my family so I got here before you.” “What changed your mind?” “I realized what a bunch of miscreants and fuck ups they all were! What was I supposed to do? Be like Igor and stay loyal to a bunch of reprobates that wouldn’t appreciate it anyway? It’s not like they’re REALLY my family. So I just decided to film the epic battle since you ruined my original movie by taking this lot with you.” “I take it you didn’t care who won though.” “Not really, but if it makes you feel warm and squishy inside I suppose I was rooting for you more. You were the underdog after all…hey! That’s a great title for the movie!” Mary exclaims. The Wolflings get a little restless about all this. “Hey shouldn’t we do something, I mean she’s part of this fucked up family, and she’s trying to exploit us!” “Ah see now this is another lesson I can teach you guys. You don’t need to be an asshole all the time, especially when there’s some benefit for not doing so. A lesson I probably should’ve obeyed more when I was your age. Mary’s little movie is made purely for exploitation, but its GOOD exploitation. It’ll show everyone who we are and that we’re NOT to be fucked with! This isn’t some shitty family movie. This is raw footage of werewolves doing what they do best, kicking ass! We couldn’t ask for better publicity. AND I assume we’ll be getting some money for this right Mary?” Mary looks a little reluctant, but she realizes she has to give you something. “Right Wolf.” “That’s what I thought. Now the battle is good and all, but you’ll need to pad it out more, I say you start doing interviews with us. We can make this into a documentary! If you need more footage, we can always go bust up a bar…” And so it happens, Mary releases “Underdogs: The Inner Mind of the Wolf” in a bunch of pansy art theatres at first where it’s critically acclaimed. Later it gets released it regular theatres where most people like it mainly due to the brutal violence and your “colorful” interviews. You even win an award. The movie makes Werewolves “cool” again and you’re never out of work anymore, which is a good thing since Ginger gave birth to a litter of cubs which YOU have to pay to support! You come home every day to the little nippers biting your ankles for your attention. Still, life is good and you once again have achieved the fame and fear you deserve.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You order everyone to surround Frankie to try to keep him off guard. Frankie watches as the wolfling encircle him, but he’s still slowly moving towards you. He charges! A couple of the wolfling dive for his legs in an effort to stop him, but he’s like a juggernaut and keeps charging. Fortunately you’re still nimble and get out of his way as he smashes through the wall. The wolflings that dived for his legs, follow up and begin attack him with tooth and claw. It’s not having that great of an effect though, he’s got metal plating on that dead flesh now. Frankie kills the pair of them by smashing their heads together until there is nothing left except mush. “Everyone grab a weapon! Don’t fight him head on!” you bark at the survivors while attempting to find something. You find a large metal pole, though you’re reluctant to take it, with all the electricity in the damn room. “It’s useless! You’ll never defeat my boy Frankie!” Victor says. Frankie begins to approach you again. > You stand firm and wait for him to charge You hold the pole like a medieval pike waiting to skewer Frankie when he comes charging at you. It’s like throwing rocks at a tank. The pole certainly impales Frankie, but it barely slows him down, he continues his rush even as the pole breaks off into him and he slams his heavy body into you hard. You go flying into the wall and collapse on to the floor. Frankie follows up with stomping your head into mush. Werewolves do have regenerative powers, but you won’t be regenerating this severe damage since your brains have leaked out of your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Knowing that Vic works with electricity a lot, you figure he’s in that direction. You and the wolflings that are still with you follow, carefully avoiding traps. You travel further to higher levels of the castle where the burning smell is getting stronger. You KNOW you’re getting closer to him. You can feel it. You just hope his “experiment” is as great as he claims. It would suck if there wasn’t a real battle to fight after all this. You burst into the room with strong burning smell and see big globes of energy, conduits, generators and a big ass corpse with cybernetic implants lying on the table. It’s Frankie with some modifications and absorbing more electricity than lightning rod. You half expect to see Victor somewhere, but all you hear is the loudspeaker disturbing your ears again. “You see Wolf! You see! While you’ve been wasting away in that shitty cabin, I’ve been preparing for my son’s come back! You stole his woman! You ended his career! You didn’t just damage him physically, you damaged his mind! Scarred him emotionally! It’s taken me YEARS to undo the damage!” “Damaged his mind? He was a psychopathic serial pedophile made of corpses! What the fuck kind of damage could I have done? And Mary never liked him anyway!” “She could’ve learned! He could’ve too! They just needed more time! But YOU! You prevented all that! You and your dog dick!” “For fuck’s sake, I wasn’t the only one fucking her!” “Yes, but you’re the one who did it the longest and destroyed my poor boy’s career! You’re going to pay! Ha ha ha ha! He’s up! HE’S ALIVE! HE’S ALIVE! HE’S ALIVE! Frankie look who we have here! And old friend, why don’t you go and give him a big hug?” Victor goes into his mad scientist laugh yet again, as Frankie “2.0” gets up from the table. He opens his eyes and looks directly at you. “FRANKIE BEAT YOUR HEAD IN NOW.” He says with a booming voice. Still as verbal and articulate as ever. > You fight him head on Um…no. Even in your prime you would’ve had problems taking on Frankie in his current updated state. At your age it’s just unthinkable. You attempt to bite his neck in an effort to tear his head off, but he crushes his strong metallic arms around you squeezing with all his might. Your pack attempts to help, but Frankie is too focused on his revenge. Even when you tear out his eyes, he continues to squash your internal organs until he finally breaks your back and throws you blindly into one of those electric generators. Your limp corpse fries for a little while, but unlike Frankie, it doesn’t bring you back to life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Damn straight! That’s what you’re here for! You take out the nearest pile of shit with ease and your pack follows suit. They’re a little tougher than you thought, but limbs are flying everywhere. Needless to say you’re really enjoying yourself, and you can see your pack is too. (Well the ones that haven’t gotten themselves killed) You attack one large experiment with four arms, it catches a few heavy hits on you, before you rip them off. It’s relentless and begins smashing its head (Which contains a lot of jagged metal bits) into you, knocking you down. As you shake it off, Ginger (Who’s now in wolf form) and a couple of other wolflings comes to your aid and finish off the large abomination. “Godammit! I had that! Don’t EVER come to help me! I can handle myself!” you snarl angrily. “We were just helping…” Ginger says casting her eyes downward and lowering her ears. “…yeah…well…just don’t let it happen again…” you say understanding they weren’t really trying to embarrass you. “Come on, we’re done here, let’s get in the castle.” You meet up with the ones remaining in your pack at the front door of the castle. You put all your muscle into it and rip the doors of their hinges. When you step inside, you narrowly dodge a laser beam of some sort. “He’s got the whole place trapped, be careful where you…” A wolfling steps on some floor stone that releases yet another beam trap, reducing him to ashes. “Step.” You say completing the sentence. That’s when you hear a loud speaker. “Wolf! Igor informed me you had arrived with some friends! I’m actually glad you’re here I get to test out my new experiment on you! Assuming you survive long enough to get to me of course!” At this point he does his typical Mad Scientist laugh. If he thinks you’re going to waste your time in his castle of death traps he’s sadly mistaken. He seems to have forgotten you have an excellent sense of smell and tracking in general. Of course the smell of dead bodies seems to be emanating everywhere. You try to sniff out a human scent, but you aren’t getting anything solid. The dead body smell is too overpowering. You’re catching a couple of different ones though. One of them is a very faint sweet smell. The other is a burning type smell. > You follow the sweet smell Even though you’re sure that the burning smell is probably where Vic is at, the sweet smell is so out of place here, you’re compelled to follow it. You tell the wolflings to follow the burning smell while you investigate the other one. They look a little unsure of being without you leading them, but they follow your instructions. Carefully avoiding traps, you travel further to different parts of the castle where the sweet smell starts getting so strong it’s almost sickening, until you finally get to a closed door. You open the door to an elegant bedroom. The smell pervades the entire area. Someone soaked this place in perfume and there you see Mary standing there in a see-through nightgown. You’re genuinely surprised to see her here. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist. I knew you’d follow this scent. it’s the very perfume I used to wear when we had our affair.” “Mary? What the hell are you doing here and why the hell did you douse the room in the shit?” “I know you don’t like the dead smell, I don’t like it either. I makes me remember that I’m not alive…I never was.” “Yeah, well this smell isn’t too pleasant either. Whew!” “You know out the many, many…many lovers I had, you know you’re the only one that made me feel alive? Like a real woman, instead of collection of parts as you’ve pointed out so accurately so many times.” Mary begins to get closer to you. “Look Mary I ain’t got time for this reminiscing bullshit, I’m on a mission of kicking ass right now and you’d do well to stay out of my way. Why are you here anyway?” you ask again. “I figured after you left the studio, you’d be in a wicked mood. I thought you’d probably just take your pack and smash up a bar or something. I followed you for a bit and found out you were planning on coming here. Look. I understand that my family has wronged you in many ways. My dad has, Frankie has, and I know I have, but I can’t let you kill them. I know they’re all fucked up and even I don’t like them, but they’re still my family such as they are. Wolf you already got your revenge a long time ago. I mean you beat the hell out of Frankie and ended his career and I heard tales about how you even killed my Dad once before he created either of us. What’s this all going to prove? My dad isn’t any match for you now. He’s barely alive. Frankie has been just lying on a slab for years. Dad took him apart in an effort to fix him. That’s the only experiment he’s talking about and he’s nowhere completed. Dad spends all his time with the insane idea of revitalizing Frankie for a come back. I tell him that it isn’t going to happen, but he continues anyway. There’s no battle here Wolf. Just a lot of empty dreams and delusions.” At this point she takes your paw and brushes her other hand against your fur. “Please Wolf, just let my family live. If you have any lingering feelings for me that I know you once did, just call off your attack.” > You call off the attack Mary’s plea for you to spare her family has gotten to you. Maybe she’s right. Maybe you did do a lot of damage to them already. Maybe you were just trying to relive your own youth. Maybe you’re a complete fucking idiot. As soon as you embrace Mary, you feel multiple shots to the back and extreme pain. You collapse to the floor, as Mary stands back from you angrily shouting. “Igor, you humped backed fucker! Those bullets went through him and hit me! Asshole!” “Hey, I can’t control the damn power of this thing. So is he dead?” “Not quite.” Mary heftily kicks you over as you struggle to breathe. “Poor Wolf. You of all people forgot the cardinal rule. Blood is always thicker and you abandoned your own kind over silly nostalgic feelings for me. I am touched though. I shall always remember you as your pelt covers my body as a new coat. Time to put this doggie down Igor.” “I’m on it.” Igor raises his weapon once more and blasts your head off in a hail of silver.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Even though you’re sure that the burning smell is probably where Vic is at, the sweet smell is so out of place here, you’re compelled to follow it. You tell the wolflings to follow the burning smell while you investigate the other one. They look a little unsure of being without you leading them, but they follow your instructions. Carefully avoiding traps, you travel further to different parts of the castle where the sweet smell starts getting so strong it’s almost sickening, until you finally get to a closed door. You open the door to an elegant bedroom. The smell pervades the entire area. Someone soaked this place in perfume and there you see Mary standing there in a see-through nightgown. You’re genuinely surprised to see her here. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist. I knew you’d follow this scent. it’s the very perfume I used to wear when we had our affair.” “Mary? What the hell are you doing here and why the hell did you douse the room in the shit?” “I know you don’t like the dead smell, I don’t like it either. I makes me remember that I’m not alive…I never was.” “Yeah, well this smell isn’t too pleasant either. Whew!” “You know out the many, many…many lovers I had, you know you’re the only one that made me feel alive? Like a real woman, instead of collection of parts as you’ve pointed out so accurately so many times.” Mary begins to get closer to you. “Look Mary I ain’t got time for this reminiscing bullshit, I’m on a mission of kicking ass right now and you’d do well to stay out of my way. Why are you here anyway?” you ask again. “I figured after you left the studio, you’d be in a wicked mood. I thought you’d probably just take your pack and smash up a bar or something. I followed you for a bit and found out you were planning on coming here. Look. I understand that my family has wronged you in many ways. My dad has, Frankie has, and I know I have, but I can’t let you kill them. I know they’re all fucked up and even I don’t like them, but they’re still my family such as they are. Wolf you already got your revenge a long time ago. I mean you beat the hell out of Frankie and ended his career and I heard tales about how you even killed my Dad once before he created either of us. What’s this all going to prove? My dad isn’t any match for you now. He’s barely alive. Frankie has been just lying on a slab for years. Dad took him apart in an effort to fix him. That’s the only experiment he’s talking about and he’s nowhere completed. Dad spends all his time with the insane idea of revitalizing Frankie for a come back. I tell him that it isn’t going to happen, but he continues anyway. There’s no battle here Wolf. Just a lot of empty dreams and delusions.” At this point she takes your paw and brushes her other hand against your fur. “Please Wolf, just let my family live. If you have any lingering feelings for me that I know you once did, just call off your attack.” > You continue the attack For a moment you almost believed her. For a moment she almost displayed real emotions and feelings. For a moment you almost were a complete idiot, except you remember the old prejudice that you’ve never forgotten: “No matter how much the Undead try to mimic feelings, they have none.” You hear a click of a wall opening up. You see a metal arm point out and run out of the room, pushing Mary in the way. Igor opens fire and Mary takes king’s ransom in silver to her body, toppling her over with a heavy thud. She’s not dead, but she’ll need some new parts and a major stitch job. “Igor, you fucking idiot!” she yells from the floor attempting to get up. “Go help Dad! Wolf’s probably on his way there!” If Mary knew you were coming back, she probably wouldn’t have dismissed Igor so quickly. She manages to stand up just as you stand in the doorway…with a torch. “You know what I like about these old castles? They always have torches and candles lighting the corridors.” You say. “Even in my present condition, you won’t get close enough to use that thing!” Mary says with defiance. “Save your feeble threats, but I don’t need to get close, you doused your room with perfume in your overly elaborate and dramatic attempt to trick me. Bye bye baby.” Mary’s eyes widen as you dump the torch on the floor which lights up the room spectacularly. Mary attempts to get out of flames, but all the silver in her body makes her too heavy and she falls over again. “Hmm, maybe the undead do have emotions. She certainly looked scared and sounds like she’s in pain.” You say as you leave to catch up with the rest of the pack. You don’t get far when you see the wolflings running towards you. Many of them are wounded, some badly. “What’s going on?” you ask, stopping one of them. “It’s too damn big! It’s unstoppable! We really tried! Honest!” “What?!” “Frankie! He’s been heavily modified. He doesn’t look at all like he did the old pictures I’ve ever seen of him!” No sooner have you been informed when you hear that damn loud speaker again, the remaining wolflings run past you. “You see Wolf! You see! While you’ve been wasting away in that shitty cabin, I’ve been preparing for my son’s come back! You stole his woman! You ended his career! You didn’t just damage him physically, you damaged his mind! Scarred him emotionally! It’s taken me YEARS to undo the damage!” “Damaged his mind? He was a psychopathic serial pedophile made of corpses! What the fuck kind of damage could I have done? And Mary never liked him anyway!” you retort. “She could’ve learned! He could’ve too! They just needed more time! But YOU! You prevented all that! You and your dog dick!” “For fuck’s sake I wasn’t the only one fucking her!” “Yes, but you’re the one who did it the longest and destroyed my poor boy’s career! You’re going to pay! Frankie look who we have here! And old friend, why don’t you go and give him a big hug?” Victor goes into his mad scientist laugh yet again, and Frankie “2.0” comes lumbering down the hallway, he’s definitely got that cybernetic look now. “FRANKIE BEAT YOUR HEAD IN.” He says with a booming voice. Still as verbal and articulate as ever. > You grab a torch and burn him The problem with this tactic, is you’ve neglected to remember that Frankie has been vastly updated whereas Mary wasn.’t. Titanium plating doesn’t burn very well, as you find this out the hard way when you grab a nearby torch and shove it into Frankie’s body. It doesn’t do any notable damage. Frankie does some notable damage to you though. He grabs your arm, breaking it in several places, and then takes the torch and sets YOU on fire, by shoving the flaming torch right through your body. Fur seems to burn very well.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For a moment you almost believed her. For a moment she almost displayed real emotions and feelings. For a moment you almost were a complete idiot, except you remember the old prejudice that you’ve never forgotten: “No matter how much the Undead try to mimic feelings, they have none.” You hear a click of a wall opening up. You see a metal arm point out and run out of the room, pushing Mary in the way. Igor opens fire and Mary takes king’s ransom in silver to her body, toppling her over with a heavy thud. She’s not dead, but she’ll need some new parts and a major stitch job. “Igor, you fucking idiot!” she yells from the floor attempting to get up. “Go help Dad! Wolf’s probably on his way there!” If Mary knew you were coming back, she probably wouldn’t have dismissed Igor so quickly. She manages to stand up just as you stand in the doorway…with a torch. “You know what I like about these old castles? They always have torches and candles lighting the corridors.” You say. “Even in my present condition, you won’t get close enough to use that thing!” Mary says with defiance. “Save your feeble threats, but I don’t need to get close, you doused your room with perfume in your overly elaborate and dramatic attempt to trick me. Bye bye baby.” Mary’s eyes widen as you dump the torch on the floor which lights up the room spectacularly. Mary attempts to get out of flames, but all the silver in her body makes her too heavy and she falls over again. “Hmm, maybe the undead do have emotions. She certainly looked scared and sounds like she’s in pain.” You say as you leave to catch up with the rest of the pack. You don’t get far when you see the wolflings running towards you. Many of them are wounded, some badly. “What’s going on?” you ask, stopping one of them. “It’s too damn big! It’s unstoppable! We really tried! Honest!” “What?!” “Frankie! He’s been heavily modified. He doesn’t look at all like he did the old pictures I’ve ever seen of him!” No sooner have you been informed when you hear that damn loud speaker again, the remaining wolflings run past you. “You see Wolf! You see! While you’ve been wasting away in that shitty cabin, I’ve been preparing for my son’s come back! You stole his woman! You ended his career! You didn’t just damage him physically, you damaged his mind! Scarred him emotionally! It’s taken me YEARS to undo the damage!” “Damaged his mind? He was a psychopathic serial pedophile made of corpses! What the fuck kind of damage could I have done? And Mary never liked him anyway!” you retort. “She could’ve learned! He could’ve too! They just needed more time! But YOU! You prevented all that! You and your dog dick!” “For fuck’s sake I wasn’t the only one fucking her!” “Yes, but you’re the one who did it the longest and destroyed my poor boy’s career! You’re going to pay! Frankie look who we have here! And old friend, why don’t you go and give him a big hug?” Victor goes into his mad scientist laugh yet again, and Frankie “2.0” comes lumbering down the hallway, he’s definitely got that cybernetic look now. “FRANKIE BEAT YOUR HEAD IN.” He says with a booming voice. Still as verbal and articulate as ever. > You retreat You jump out of Frankie’s way as he smashes into the wall behind you. You make your way quickly down the stairs, where you here Frankie getting back up and following you down them like a freight train. You’re still a good ways from the bottom, but you see Igor appear at the bottom. You can’t stop or Frankie will slam into you and probably kill you by breaking every bone in your body and tearing you apart. You can keep going and attempt to jump towards Igor hoping you’ll land on him before he can fire accurately or you could jump over the banister and get out of the way altogether. The only problem with this is you’re still pretty high up. You wouldn’t die from such a fall, but you could break something if you land wrong and you certainly don’t want that disadvantage. > You jump over the banister You jump over the banister. Frankie goes flying past you unable to stop himself. You hear gunfire and some sounds of bullets plinking off of metal and burying themselves into flesh. “OH SHIT!” you hear Igor shout. This term is followed by your own, when you see that you were a lot higher than you thought. You go crashing through a solid wooden dining table. It hurts...A LOT. You don’t get up right away and you half expect Frankie or Igor to come and finish you off, but fortunately that doesn’t happen. You painfully rise and prepare yourself for the final battle, which doesn’t occur. You go over to the bottom of the stairs and see the wolflings taking advantage of Frankie’s weakened prone state and getting revenge for the beating he gave them all earlier. As for Igor he’s lying under Frankie crushed and dying. He’s bleeding from his ears, mouth, nose and eyes. “(Gurgle) (sputter) I’m sorry…Vic…Sorry brother…(Gurgle)” he says before dying. “Well I guess that explains his loyalty.” You say to yourself. “Hey Wolf you want to get in on this?” A wolfling says ripping a hand off of Frankie. “Nah, you’ve earned this. I’m just going to go back upstairs and finish off Victor.” “Need any of us to come up with you?” “No, you just make sure you do a good job of killing Frankie there.” You head back up stairs and head to the lab that Frankie came bursting out of, it’s empty, but there’s another door in the room and you’ve got the impression that a certain doctor is behind it. You open the door to a small room with a bunch of big computers hooked up to a brain in a jar… “Dr. Frankenstein I presume?” you say. “Wow Vic, I would’ve thought you would’ve at least made a clone body or something.” “Frankie! Igor! Get in here! NOW!” ‘They’re dead just like you’ll be soon and should’ve been before.” “Erm…Wolf! Hold on! Come on, I can’t do anything to you! This isn’t fair! Hold on how about…” “How about you shut up and die?” you say and take Victor’s brain out of the jar. “NOOOOOO….” Is the last thing that comes out of the loud speakers as you crush the brain under your foot. Its over. You won, and you fucking hurt like hell. You stagger back downstairs where you find Frankie completely in pieces. The wolflings look at you expectantly. “Did you kill him?’ “Yeah, and it was hardly worth the effort.” You reply. “What are we going to do now?” another asks. “Well I don’t know about you, but I’m going back home to rest.” “But aren’t you taking us to raise hell somewhere else?” “Maybe some other day. Look I’m not here to lead you around by the paw. If you want to raise hell you can certainly do it without me. I showed you the way of the wolf tonight, it’s up to you to do something with it. Just remember you’re fucking werewolves, live up to the name.” You get back on your Harley and head home. Hopefully you taught the new generation something so tonight wasn’t a complete bust. You didn’t really get to have the epic battle you were looking for, but you survived and in the end that’s what it’s all about.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You jump out of Frankie’s way as he smashes into the wall behind you. You make your way quickly down the stairs, where you here Frankie getting back up and following you down them like a freight train. You’re still a good ways from the bottom, but you see Igor appear at the bottom. You can’t stop or Frankie will slam into you and probably kill you by breaking every bone in your body and tearing you apart. You can keep going and attempt to jump towards Igor hoping you’ll land on him before he can fire accurately or you could jump over the banister and get out of the way altogether. The only problem with this is you’re still pretty high up. You wouldn’t die from such a fall, but you could break something if you land wrong and you certainly don’t want that disadvantage. > You jump towards Igor What happens next is so quick it’s amazing you survive it. You leap up in the air in an effort to land on Igor before he fires. Frankie is still charging behind you, but that changes when you leap up into the air, because he ends up being underneath you when gains more momentum. Meanwhile Igor is attempting to lift that heavy arm weapon of his to accurately shoot you. The weight and the recoil makes it difficult and he’s not very accurate and begins firing everywhere randomly in your AND Frankie’s direction. You’re still airborn heading towards Igor and now Frankie as well who’s somehow gotten in front of you due to him being unable to stop himself at this point. This is fortunate since this causes Frankie to block most of the randomly fired bullets with his body. You still take a couple in the leg though. “OH SHIT! Igor yells as Frankie slams into him and the floor at terrific speed. You don’t fair much better since you crash into the back of Frankie which is pretty hard due to the metal plating. It hurts like hell and you crawl off as quickly as possible while Frankie attempts to recover. Igor isn’t recovering as quickly; he’s bleeding from every orifice and whatever cybernetic parts he had can go to the scrap yard. You’re in great pain and you got some silver bullets in your leg, but you need to act. > You finish off Igor You’ll never be able to fight Frankie in this condition and in his updated status, you get an idea. You go over to Igor who pathetically attempts to point his weapon at you. You easily grab his arm weapon and begin to pull the thing out its weakened socket. Blood spurts all over you and Igor finally dies from the loss of it. “I’m sorry Vic…my brother… (gurgle)” he sputters. “Hm, that explains his loyalty I guess.” You say to yourself. Frankie’s is attempting to recover from his own wounds, but you’re not going to give him a chance to do it. You point Igor’s arm at Frankie and manipulate the tendons inside. The gun fires and you blast half of Frankie’s head off with a rain of silver bullets. The recoil causes you to fall to the ground and the heat from it burns the fur on your hands. “Holy shit that was fucking cool.” You say impressed. Frankie’s not dead yet though, he tries to get back up, so you just take the weapon and club him in what remains of his head with it until he stays down for good. You then tear him apart to make sure. You stand over Frankie’s body parts panting heavily. You can’t even give a victory howl. You’re too tired. The rest of the pack comes in, somewhat surprised to see you alive. “You’re alive!” “Of course I’m alive! No thanks to you! Where the hell were you assholes?” “Um…well we didn’t know if we should help since you got mad when we did it last time…” You can’t even argue with them, you’re too tired to do even that. You only have the strength to do one more thing… You head upstairs by yourself, back to the lab Frankie came bursting out of, its empty, but there’s another door in the room and you’ve got the impression that a certain doctor is behind it. You open the door to a small room with a bunch of big computers hooked up to a brain in a jar… “Vic, you really are a shitty Mad Scientist, you couldn’t even come up with a better way to prolong your life.” “Frankie! Igor! Get in here! NOW!” ‘They’re dead just like you’ll be soon and should’ve been before.” “Erm…Wolf! Hold on! Come on, I can’t do anything to you! Hasn’t there been enough killing for one day!? “Not yet.” you say and take Victor’s brain out of the jar. “NOOOOOO….” Is the last thing that comes out of the loud speakers as you crush the brain under your foot. “NOW there’s been enough killing for one day.” You say. Its over. You won, and you fucking hurt like hell. You stagger back downstairs. Where the wolflings look at you expectantly. “Did you kill him?’ “Yeah, and it was hardly worth the effort.” You reply. “What are we going to do now?” another asks. “Well I don’t know about you, but I’m going back home to rest.” “But aren’t you taking us to raise hell somewhere else? We want to do more werewolf stuff!” “Raise hell? You fuckers made ME do all the damn work! I killed every single member of this fucked up family all by my damn self! As far as I’m concerned I’M the only werewolf here! The rest of you are fucking lapdogs at best! I’m not leading any of you anywhere until you go prove otherwise…no fuck that. I don’t want to see ANY of you again! Well except Ginger. You know where I live baby. When you don’t want to hang around with these neutered pups, come see me.” Unsurprisingly Ginger comes with you immediately. You and Ginger get back on your Harley and head home. You’re now convinced that you’re the last of a dying breed. Today’s youth are fucking spoiled. Still, you got to prove that you’re still the baddest ass Alpha Wolf this world is ever going to see, and it’ll be a long time before the world sees an Alpha Wolf like you again. That is until Ginger has a litter of cubs…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>What happens next is so quick it’s amazing you survive it. You leap up in the air in an effort to land on Igor before he fires. Frankie is still charging behind you, but that changes when you leap up into the air, because he ends up being underneath you when gains more momentum. Meanwhile Igor is attempting to lift that heavy arm weapon of his to accurately shoot you. The weight and the recoil makes it difficult and he’s not very accurate and begins firing everywhere randomly in your AND Frankie’s direction. You’re still airborn heading towards Igor and now Frankie as well who’s somehow gotten in front of you due to him being unable to stop himself at this point. This is fortunate since this causes Frankie to block most of the randomly fired bullets with his body. You still take a couple in the leg though. “OH SHIT! Igor yells as Frankie slams into him and the floor at terrific speed. You don’t fair much better since you crash into the back of Frankie which is pretty hard due to the metal plating. It hurts like hell and you crawl off as quickly as possible while Frankie attempts to recover. Igor isn’t recovering as quickly; he’s bleeding from every orifice and whatever cybernetic parts he had can go to the scrap yard. You’re in great pain and you got some silver bullets in your leg, but you need to act. > You finish off Frankie You limp over to Frankie while he’s recovering and land a few well placed strikes, even ripping off some of the back plating. It’s no good though; Frankie’s still got a lot of fight in him. He turns around, grabs you by the throat and begins to squeeze the shit out of it, raising you off the ground. Igor who’s dying makes one last effort to avenge his last blunder. “For my brother Vic!” he yells and fires his weapon at you one last time. He can’t miss at this range and your death is instantaneous.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You tell everyone to get the hell out of Igor’s range and take cover. Fortunately Igor’s gun-arm isn’t the best design and he’s having problems aiming and standing still due to the recoil, so you all manage to hide behind some nearby rocks Still, there’s no way you’re going to be able to scale the front gate with Igor on that damn tower. “See I knew this was a bad idea!” one of the wolflings says. “How are we supposed to get past that? I’m pretty sure he’s firing silver bullets at us.” “Oh I KNOW he is. Hence the reason why I told everyone to get out of the way. Okay so we’re not going through the front gate, the castle’s a big place right? Igor’s only guarding the front. I say we split up and scale the walls on the sides and around the back. We’ll meet up inside the castle.” “Yeah, but won’t there be other defenses?” “Probably. So you better be fucking prepared! This ain’t no damn game. You cubs think you’re really tough when in fact you’ve probably never had a real challenge. This is it. Don’t think about backing out now. This is where we truly test the idea of survival of the fittest. Damn, my blood is starting to feel that rush! Don’t you all feel it? I haven’t felt this way since they sent a group of ten “werewolf assassins” to put me down. Shit. They never tried that again! Ha ha ha ha ha!” While you’re reveling in gruesome nostalgia, your pack is looking at you like you’ve completely lost it. And they’re probably right. However, your speech seems to have stirred something in them. “The crazy old fossil’s right! I remember having to hear about similar stuff my grandfather used to talk about all the damn time. I never really paid any attention to it before. Now I think I understand. We need to prove our skills to truly be proud to call ourselves werewolves!” one of them states. “Now that’s the attitude I’m talking about!” You all huddle in the rain and make a howling noise in unison to the moon and proceed with your plan. You all split up into a couple of groups and begin to scale the side and back walls, which really isn’t all that difficult. You know Igor’s probably ran off to warn Vic though. All you can think is, he better have something better than just Igor and Frankie defending him. As you prowl around in the courtyard, you hear moaning and the clomping of several footsteps. You and your group turn to see some of Vic’s defenses. “Zombies? Are you fucking kidding me Vic? I thought you’d at least have some robots or something!” you say to yourself. Though upon a second look, you see that the horde of corpses aren’t actually zombies. Zombies are complete corpses brought back to life. These things look more like Frankie, except designed even worse. A lot of them have arms and legs in odd places. Some have a couple of heads or extra limbs. Most aren’t even stitched together neatly, there are just giant rivets and spikes sticking out, holding them together. These are probably some of his “failed” experiments. Doesn’t matter, they’re close enough to be Undead for you. > You out run them and get into the castle You don’t have time to fight some half ass experiments, the wolflings can handle that. You’re after a bigger prize. You leave the pack behind and run to the front door of the castle where upon you rip it off the hinges. You’re in such a hurry to kill Victor; you don’t proceed cautiously enough and forget that he’s probably trapped the place. You step on a floor panel and a laser beam suddenly shoots out, incinerating you into ash.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your recent dealings with Mary, have made you think about all the shit you’ve had to put up with from that no talent dickhead. No human has ever given you such trouble. You know he’s still alive. (Mad scientists always find ways of prolonging their lives somehow) That won’t be true for long though, if you get your way. You killed him once before. This time you’re going to make sure he stays that way. He’s probably got whatever crappy inventions and experiments protecting his castle and from what you know, Frankie’s still living with his “Dad” as well. You don’t give a fuck, you’ll kill him too. You figure you’ll be doing the world a favor as well as getting some satisfaction. Besides, you’ve got to show these wolflings what being a werewolf is all about. “All right you cubs! We’re going to go raise some fucking hell. We’re going to Frankenstein’s Castle. We’re going to rip the place apart brick by brick, and I’M going to rip Victor apart limb from limb.” “Erm…Castle Frankenstien? Isn’t that where Frankie lives?” one of the wolflings asks. “I heard he’s really powerful, didn’t he fight Dracula and win?” ‘I dunno if we should mess with him.” You can’t believe your ears! These snot nosed pups know nothing of their heritage! Back in the old days they would’ve been killed and eaten for such cowardice! “Goddammit are you Wolves or fucking Chihuahuas? Frankie’s a fucking pussy! I personally kicked his ass before and I’ll do it again all by myself if I have too! Now are you going to run with me and be a fucking Wolf or are you going to go back home with your tails tucked between your legs?” After looking at each other for awhile they all agree to go with you. “Good! Now I want all of you to transform into your wolf form too! I’m traveling with fellow wolves not humans!” Just before one of the females begins to transform, you stop her. She’s dressed in a short leather skirt and a tight white t-shirt that’s tied in the center and has long flowing brown hair. You can smell that she’s in heat. You hate to coin a pun, but she literally is one hot l’il bitch. “Erm, not you. You stay in your human form; I kind of like the whole teenage slut look you got going on. In fact you come here right now; you’ll be traveling on my bike with me.” You say. As she slides in behind you and holds on, you ask her one more question. “So what’s your name?” “Ginger. What’s your name, you never did tell us.” “Wolf. Just Wolf baby. Remember it. You’ll be screaming it later.” Damn you’re so fucking cool, you think as you start up your Harley and ride ahead of the pack. (You’d probably be even cooler if these pups weren’t all riding those Japanese “crotch rocket” bikes, but that’ll have to be another lesson for another day) After a couple of days of riding, and a few “pit stops” with Ginger, you all eventually reach Castle Frankenstein. You park your bikes at the gate, and size the place up, which now looks a lot different. It looks like a damn Nazi fortress now, there’s guard towers and everything. It seems Victor has been keeping himself very busy in recent years. As it begins to rain, a familiar voice calls to you from one of the towers. “Its you. Vic always knew you’d return one day. I never believed him though. I guess I owe him fifty bucks.” You look up and see Igor, he looks different too. He has a lot of clumsy cybernetic implants, one of them being some sort of gun in place of an arm. More of Vic’s “handy work” no doubt. He’s still got that damn hump on his back though. “Igor? You still alive? I thought your ungrateful master would’ve just let you die of old age and get himself another assistant. I see he did a real good job of improving you though. Tell me, how’s it feel to be the real brains, never getting the credit and continuing to be a doormat?” “I’m happy with my lot in life. How’s it feel to be broke ass overgrown dog who’s trying to relive his lost youth?” Igor retorts back. “Don’t know yet. I’ll tell you before I shove that metal arm up your ass.” Well looks like the fight’s starting here. > You memories (Igor) The Assistant: Igor You’ve never really had much contact with Igor, other than knowing he’s Victor’s assistant. For awhile you thought he and Vic had something ELSE going on, (Much like Vlad and Renfield) but that’s not the case. Igor’s just a loyal henchman. You always wondered why he is though. Despite general public perception, he’s not stupid. In fact, he’s been the one that’s given Vic most of his “successful” experiment ideas. Vic wouldn’t even be around if it hadn’t been for Igor. Vic doesn’t seem to appreciate any of his help though and doesn’t treat him very well. He treats his experiments better than he treats Igor. You can only guess Igor is a masochist, or has some severe self-esteem problems. Probably both.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“So you had me in mind eh? Well that proves it. You think I’m a joke because that’s how you wrote the character.” “What? No! I just…” “I see your time with that bloodsucker was well spent. Learning how to exploit and leech right? Look maybe you can pull this shit with those puppies over there, but I ain’t fucking one! I don’t need the money that badly. I’ll go fucking live my twilight years in the forest and DIE there as nature probably intended. I don’t need this shit.” As you turn to leave, Mary shouts at you. “Yeah, that’s right go on leave Mr. Lone Wolf! You’ll fucking die alone, you stubborn bastard! I tried to help you! Erik tried to help you and you don’t appreciate any of it! That’s why none of your children speak to you and…” You run back over to her and slam her into the wall. You stare at her face to face as she struggles to get free. She’s strong, but you manage to keep her pinned. She really pissed you off and you were already pissed off to begin with. “Fuck you, and fuck Erik! You two don’t know shit about me, never did. I’m through with the pair of you! In fact I think I’ll be taking something with me since you’re so worried about me being alone…” You release Mary and go over to the wolflings who look a little worried that you’re going to cause harm to them. Many of them cast their eyes downward. “Hey, you want to be REALLY tough? You want to really raise some hell? Come with me. If you want to stay under the thumb of this patchwork dead bitch and be exploited and mocked, stay here. Your statement alone convinces all of them. They all follow you, even the one you made an example of. Mary attempts to call everyone back, but it’s useless, you’ve taken control of the pack and they’ll do what you want now. And right now you want to get into a fight. You think about all the people and creatures that wronged you in some way and only two of them keep coming to mind consistently. One is that fucking Dr. Victor Frankenstein. If it wasn’t for him, Frankie and Mary wouldn’t have been created in the first place which also means you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into trouble all those years ago. You wouldn’t have had to put up with his “children” taking jobs away from you. Not to mention he sued you once. But the one who you REALLY despise, is that bisexual bloodsucker. Fucking Dracula or Vlad, or whatever the hell he’s calling himself these days. The disgust you have for him and the reasons are too numerous to list here. > You go kick Vlad's ass Its long over due and its time. You need to go fucking kill that bloodsucker or die trying. You need to prove that you are and always will be the baddest of the monsters. You also need to prove to these wolflings that they need to be proud of their fucking heritage and not play second fiddle to some overgrown leeches. “All right you cubs! We’re going to go raise some fucking hell. We’re going to Dracula’s Castle. We’re going to rip the place apart brick by brick, and every fucking bloodsucker in the goddamned place and I’M going to rip Fagula apart limb from limb, drive a stake in his heart, cut his head off and then shove his dick in his mouth!” The Wolflings look very apprehensive about your suggestion, in fact they outright refuse. “You’re a fucking crazy old coot; if you think we’re gonna follow you to Dracula’s Castle! Fuck that, he’s got an army of bloodsuckers and ghouls and who knows what the hell else! We can’t win that Wolf! Can’t we just bust up a bar or something?” one of them exclaims You can’t believe your ears! These snot nosed pups know nothing of their heritage! Back in the old days they would’ve been killed and eaten for such cowardice! “Goddammit are you Wolves or fucking Chihuahuas? Vampires have been taking OUR rightful place in the monster hierarchy for centuries! We need to set the fucking record straight on this shit! Now are you going to run with me and be a fucking Wolf or are you going to go back home with your tails tucked between your legs?” After looking at each other for awhile they all begin to leave and head back to the studio. “Oh fuckin’ fine then, play werewolf in a movie, but I can see I’m the only fuckin’ REAL Werewolf here, the rest of you are just goddamn overgrown dingos! Fuck this, I don’t give a shit, I’ll kill Dracula my own goddamned self. I don’t need anybody’s help!” You get on your Harley and ride. You only make a few stops on your way; you’re completely driven to have your final showdown with Vlad. Finally after a few days of riding you reach Dracula’s Castle. The place looks exactly the same. You get off your bike and scale the high iron gate. As you jump down into the courtyard you half expect yourself to be overwhelmed by vampires, or even ghouls, but nothing happens. This is weird, there aren’t even any guards patrolling or even at the door. In fact it sounds like a party is going on inside. You hear lots of laughter and music. Suddenly someone comes outside and sees you. It’s some Vampire chick. “Ohhh, a Werewolf! Wow, I didn’t know any of you types were invited to the party; I thought Drac hated you guys. Well what’re you doing standing outside? Come on in the party’s just starting!” she says waving you in. A bit of a different approach than you were preparing for, but you enter. You entrance to the ballroom is immediately a big event. You’re the only Werewolf there. Everyone else is either a Vampire, a ghoul, or even a human “servant”. Everyone is staring at you, some with wonder and interest, most with hatred, a few in awe. Most probably haven’t encountered a Werewolf like you before. The staring would probably continue if another slightly out of place being didn’t come shuffling up to you to talk you in a friendly manner causing the bloodsuckers to go back to partying. It’s Im-Ho-Tep. You’re surprised to see him here. “Wolf?! YOU got an invitation to this thing? I can’t believe it! What the hell did you and Dracula kiss and make up?” he remarks with his scratchy sounding voice. “Not in this life time Teppy. What’re you doing here?” ”Me? Oh you know Vlad, he’s always gotta put on a show. Likes to play up the whole royalty thing to the other bloodsuckers, so he always invites me to these things to prove he’s got connections or something since I was a Prince. I always keep telling him, it’s a meaningless title since the Egyptian Empire fell thousands of years ago, but he insists on flying me out here, making a big fuss and everything so what the hell, it’s not like I got anything better to do plus I get a kick out of watching the bloodsuckers get drunk and make idiots out of themselves, well that and I like to look at some of these Vamp chicks. Heh, guess that makes me a voyeur, but again what the hell, its one of the few pleasures I get in this world anymore. But enough about this dirty old man, what brings you here if you weren’t invited? Just randomly crashing the party?” “Sort of…I didn’t even know there was one…I’m here to kill Fagula.” You whisper quietly. Tep’s eyes widen a bit under his bandages. He isn’t entirely surprised (At his age barely anything surprises him anymore) but he was caught a little off guard by your statement. “Wow Wolf…I can tell you’re really not joking about this. All I can say is… what took you so long? I thought this day would come long before now. Lost some bets because of it, oh well easy come easy go. Well you know your secret’s safe with me, though I suppose it won’t be a secret for too much longer! You’re still the craziest sonofabitch I know, but then you always did know how to liven up a party! Ha ha! Ol’ Vlad will probably be making his grand entrance soon, so just wait awhile. He threw this party for some kind of special announcement he has to make. I still got a bet with Erik that you would win if you and Drac ever got into a battle to the death. I’ll be hoping to collect that bet from Erik. Good luck!” Tep then shuffles off back to where he sitting. Erik bet against you? Fucking little depressed shit! You’re going to have a little talk with him after all this. You put your back against the wall, watching everyone while waiting for Dracula to arrive. An hour passes and you’re fucking sick of waiting, you don’t feel like waiting for him to make “an entrance”. You’re here to commit major mayhem on him, not listen to anything he has to say. While you’re surveying the place, you see a disheveled man peek out from a corner across the room and then slink back. That was Renfield, you’d know Fagula’s sycophantic bitch boy anywhere. > You wait a little longer You figure he really can’t be that long now, and decide to wait. Soon you see Renfield come back, he tells everyone to quiet down on orders of his master. “Excuse me everyone, I know you’re all anxious to hear what my master has to say, but I have been informed that he will not step into this room until a certain infestation has been taken care of first. Namely THAT ONE OVER THERE!” Suddenly all the Vampires, Ghouls and Human servants look at you and advance! You’re beyond out numbered. You put up a good fight for someone in your position, but ultimately you are scratched, bitten and sucked dry. And not in the good way either. You are then skinned where your pelt is hung up over Drac’s fireplace, where he always brags about how he defeated you single handedly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awake in a great hall, huge stone pillars holding up the high ceiling, fine stone art carved into the perfect marble walls. Couples dressed in medieval finery dance around you, ignoring the nearly naked man on the floor who just woke up. With surprise and embarrassment you realize you're only wearing a loose pair of breeches that only reach to your knees. You keep a hand on it to stop it from falling down. "Ah! Another one. I had just begun to believe the party was over. Seems the second round has started! Grab a lady and begin the dance anew. Oh, you might want to put something on first. Or not. Whatever you think is an appropriate way to celebrate!" A man sits in a stone throne a few steps up in front of you. He stares at you with dark red eyes as he taps his bare feet on the lovely gold and red carpets. His pure white hair is pushed back over his head, over his ears, and under a dull plain looking iron crown, more like a simple iron circle than a crown. He puts his hand over his chin in a thinking position. "On second thought; that is the perfect way to celebrate! Everybody naked! Brilliant my speechless friend! Haha, someone grab my friend here a partner!" He jumps up and rips off his coat. "Nevermind, I will!" He grabs your hand and pulls you up, spinning you around and around. Everyone around you is going through the long process of undressing and he pushes you into the crowd, towards the only person done, a woman who gracefully catches you before you not very gracefully fall into the nearly naked bodies. You don't know if this is a nightmare or a fantasy. > You where are you\? She's behind you, holding you up. You get back your footing and turn around to face her. She grabs your hands and starts to dance, forcing you along. Her long black hair is pulled up into a ridiculous hairdo, nearly making you laugh, but her intense face stops you. You open your mouth to ask the question, but she places one finger over her red lips. She turns her head and looks at you. You look around. The women have all stripped to down to their shifts and the men down to breeches or hose. > You ignore her warning As soon as you open your mouth again she pushes you away and stops dancing. The crowd has stopped and is looking at you. The man, now minus his tight black pants, stares at you. You noticed that some of his guards are walking torwards you. "Please, please, hold all questions until the end of the presentation." He claps and everyone resumes dancing. Everyone but you that is, as his guards have long since killed you and are now in the process of cleaning up the mess your blood leaves on the smooth tiles.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>She's behind you, holding you up. You get back your footing and turn around to face her. She grabs your hands and starts to dance, forcing you along. Her long black hair is pulled up into a ridiculous hairdo, nearly making you laugh, but her intense face stops you. You open your mouth to ask the question, but she places one finger over her red lips. She turns her head and looks at you. You look around. The women have all stripped to down to their shifts and the men down to breeches or hose. > You keep quiet for now Considering you have no idea what in the hell is happening, you decide to take her silent advice. You nod to let her know you understood her message. Her large lucious lips briefly show a tiny smile. She leads as you slowly dance. She tries to bring you up to speed, but you've no talent for this. Suddenly, you hear it. A cacophony of bells and whistles, flutes and drums. The horrible sound is quiet at first, messy and brutal, but as the volume grows it becomes cleaner. The cruelty of the sound is transformed into music by the strings that fade in. And then your feet will themselves along. They know every move, exactly what to do, exactly when to do it. You hands are placed at just the right place on your partners body. You search for the source of the sweet sound, seeing the man sprinting and springing all around the room, screaming. The music is so loud you can only hear his roars of laughter as he passes by you. The choir starts in and the sound feels like honey. The men at first, low basses, then the women join in, their high sopranos filling the air with such lovely wisps of beauty. You lean your head back and open your mouth to drink in the sounds. Your partner leans against you closely as dance, right against your chest, but the music is the only thought in your head and heart. Your body almost don't care. > You quiet And then it stops without notice. You nearly fall down, and would have, if it weren't for the support of your partner. The strange man has stopped dancing, his laughter the only sound now. "Stop! Stop stop stop! Everyone!" The people had continued dancing without the music, but now at his word they halt their movements. The man looks around at them all. He squints his eyes and angles his head with a hand cupped around his ear. "What? Time already? It can't be. Oh yes it is, is can be, because it is and therefore must be and can be. Oh well, next time, same time. And you, find some proper trousers . Here, you can have mine." He hands you his black pants. You reach out to take them, in shock. "On second thought, no." He quickly grabs it back. He walks through the wall behind his throne, disappearing, all the while laughing. The room breathes a collective sigh and everyone is searching the floor for their clothing. Your partner is putting on her clothes, and you avert your gaze. People all around are talking now, and she finally says something. "Relax. I bet you have many questions. Come. We'll find you something to wear." You open your eyes and she's wearing a simple grey outfit, probably something that went under the ridiculous dress she's carrying now. Her hair is down now, and you can't help but appreciate her stunning beauty. You take a breath. You'll listen to her and keep quiet for now, at least until you have an inkling of what's going on. This feeling of tension inside you isn't just because you're mostly naked... But it probably would be better if you were wearing something proper. You blush. > You she guides you out of the room She takes your arm and pulls you towards a corner of the great hall. "The man you just met is Zaren. He's... Complicated. All you need to know right now is that he's God here. If he asks you to do something, it's not a question. You obey him. Without hesitation." She pulls you through the stone blocks of the wall before you know what's happening. It's chilly on your naked skin and tickles slightly. "A few decades ago Zaren had an argument with... with a door. Apparently, the door won, so he decreed that all doors be hung and then burned." She looks straight at you, not even blinking. "It was a few years before he got sick of that and decided to introduce these fake walls." She pulls you through a narrow hallway, past tapesties of Zaren eating breakfast. In every single one he's moving. You can hear whispers coming from them, most of them asking if it's on. A few people pass you, guards and servants by their look. None of them gives you a second glance. You look in awe at the beautiful artwork on the walls. "Oh my, I'm forgeting my manners. It's good Zaren isn't here. We must be quiet. He hears much of what is not meant for him. My name is Ophelia." She pulls you through a series of walls, all made of gorgeous stone with artwork carved into the individual blocks. "It's been a long time since one has joined the upper ranks. Maybe you'll even last. Although I've never heard of someone... Well, just appearing out of thin air. Something that Zaren would do certainly, but I think he went through that phase a few hundred years ago. It's hard to remember all the things he does... You will be joining the upper rank, won't you? You must be, Zaren did not request your absence, as he calls it, or an execution, as we call it. So, why are you here?" She pulls you into a room full of mannequins and fabric, with colourful carpet on the floors, walls, and ceiling. "I'm sure the Tailor will find something for you. So why you are here?" > You where is here, exactly? "Oh my. Now that is a very good question. But here comes the Tailor." She turns around and curtsies towards the door. "What -" You stand there speechless. A man walks into the room and bows, a spotless fine black coat shimmering around his white furry torso, four furry little limbs poking out of the coat. They are end in three long, delicate fingers with little hairs at the base and bare human-like tips. His hairy legs have the same pattern, with his feet looking almost normal. Large wings are folded at his back, trailing on the floor. His large black eyes poke out from his white fur and his human jaw opens to speak in a slightly buzzing voice. "Hello, good lord. I am the tailor. I must say, your eyes are a wonderful colour. Such a light but intense brown. They will be a challenge to match correctly, but I will enjoy creating your outfits for you." "What..." You take a step back, bumping into a mannequin and accidently knocking it over. "You will have to work on your coordination if you plan to be part of The Court. Dancing is quite popular here. But even if you fall or some such thing, you will look wonderful. Still, that is not my job. Now come over here, I must measure you. Take a look around at the outfits. You may find one you like." Ophelia stares at you and gestures. You timidly take a few steps forward. The tailor places his finger tips on your arms, mummering to himself. "Don't you need measuring tape for this?" You ask. "Measuring tape? Bah, I am better then the tailors you have known. A true master can look at a man for a second and make him a god within minutes." "I've never known any tailors." "Well then trust me, I am the best. Now lift your arms please?" As he slides his hands around your arms and chest you look away, uncomfortable. > You look at the strange carpeted walls Colourful fine carpets cover all the walls, some more rugs hanging over them in turn. The carpets are like a dark, dull rainbow. The carpet itself is black, with colours seeming floating over it like a reflection in water. The colours swirl and mix and seperate so slowly you have to careful look before you see the emerging patterns of dancing colours.. You watch a batch of a grey blue twirl around with concentrated yellow and green drops, absorbing them. The rugs draped over them like curtains over imaginary windows are stationary pictures of outfits, each in a different pose. They continue from down the walls onto the floor and a few hang from the ceiling. You recognize a few outfits, but what really catches your eye is the one hidden on the far left, the one that looks just like Zaren's black finery. It's the only one with a person in the clothes. Zaren's in it, posed elegantly in his black and gold coat. His arms are raised as if to greet you, but his face perfectly shows his comtempt at your very existance. All but his eyes, which are laughing. You do not know if the contempt is the joke. There is a man behind that insanity, you are sure of it. Whether the insanity is a cover or not, you do not know. You look back at the swirling patterns. They are starting to resemble pictures now, just barely, but the proper shades are coming in... > You an Arena Your heart beats. You stand in an great amphitheatre, on shifting sands. It's quiet for but a moment, and then the clashes of weapons rings out in great echoes, with cheery yells of murder providing a bass quality. Smiles flash all around as people hack or are hacked about and nothing but snorts of laughter without the barest hint of pain accompany the carnage. Sprays of blood float on the air. Spilled guts and limbs sink deep into the sands. Heads laughing are choking on sand and sweet blood spills out of their lifeless bodies. You smell gore in the air and it clouds your thoughts. Little droplets rain down in your vision. You count each as they pass. Some spray in the corner of your eye hits your cheek and you can taste the liquid life. Liquid life. Life. You're alive. Where is your weapon? > A claymore on the ground to your right The heavy blade is laying on the ground. Your heart beats. You survey the fight. It's a giant mass of men screaming in a variety of different emotions. Joy here, fear there. You can see spectres spectating, watchers watching, and shadows spectating as well, because what else would they do? Be serious. With all the chaos, if you crouched you could conceivably have more cover. A lower center of gravity would also be a benefit. A quick roll would provide more cover and speed, but lack the same control. The ground, while littered with weapons and bodies, has a clear path to your weapon. You could try to crawl there. This would provide the most cover, but you risk being stepped on, and what you gain in cover you give up in speed. Beat. Move now, or risk danger for another look around. > You crouch You shift and fall, knees bent, head low. An arrow whistles in the air. Beat. You senses collaspe in on this one thing. The arrow shines brightly as the sun catches it and then wades in and out of bloody bodies. Your toes curl in the sand, trying to the draw the rest of your body in. Your arms follow your slowly moving torso as it curls as well. You blink and lose the arrow. When your eye open your head to low to see it. You can only hope. You push foward with one foot. Beat. The arrow catches your left shoulder blade and tears through the top layer of muscle and skin but leaves your body mostly intact. Beat. You grit your teeth and swallow a gurgle of pain. You've had worse. You lie. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. You reach the sword and grab it with your right hand, using all your strength to swing it up and around so your weak hand to hold it. The man in front of you laughs as back is penetrated by the blade. The combination of the unbalancing swing and the collision shock your hands and they tingle. Oh wait, that's because someone cut them off. Now who would do such a thing. A laugh swirls around in your mouth and tastes great. You let it out and the fear and terror and pain all disappear. A pommel strike to the face later and you're laying on the ground as the battle rages on, spitting out sand and blood and teethe as you laugh. > Back in the room You blink. The world is... well, not really "normal", but... it's better. You bring a hand to your head, fine, but tears are falling down your face. Colours spin in your eyes. The madness of the walls creeps and lurks in your head and it's shrieks and whispers make your ears bleed. "You looked at the walls, didn't you? Where did you go? Nevermind, it's not important. It's not frequently a pleasent place anyway. Now look at me. Hmm, the barber will have to take a look at you. Fuzzy face, tangled hair. Still, not my job. Now please stand still and um, please do not touch anything. You don't seem graceful. No offense meant, my good sir." The Tailor lets go of your arm and waddles off on his strange legs. He walks straight through a carpeted wall. You carefully sit down on the floor. This isn't real. But it is. This can't be real. But it is. It was a dream then. But you're -- you're awake now. It was a dream. Just a dream. No, no, no, NO, NO, NO! This can't be happening. The world is spinning now, and you feel faint and dizzy. There's a sour taste in the back of your dry mouth. Don't open your eyes. Don't look up. This isn't real. This isn't real. This isn't happening. Your heart pounds. Your fists close and your arms tense. No, no, no, NO, NO, NO! Something touches your head -- NO! "Get away! Get away! Take your bug men and crazy kings and doors and dreams and shove it!" You fling yourself backwards and push off the attacking nightmares. > You ophelia You hit the nightmares and they gasp. You open your eyes. It's just Ophelia. Just Ophelia. She's holding her wrist in her other hand. "I..." Your mouth closes. This is it. This is all happening too fast, too fast, too much. You didn't mean to hit her but the world is just spinning now. "I'm sorry. It's been so long since any of us have seen someone new to The Court, let alone to this world. Most people -- well, besides you, everyone -- come to this realm through the slums and move up. I'm afraid you'll have to forgive them. This place changes people... Some for the better, like the Tailor. Or at least he would say so. Most... Well, you'll see soon. Please, just calm down, and I'll answer all your questions. Zaren will forgive us this." "I'm sorry... I didn't mean---" "I know. Just hold on a moment. We'll get you some clothes and then I'll take you to your rooms. I'll explain there. Just hold on." You take a deep breath. You're under control now. Those walls... They play with your mind. But you're back now. The Tailor walks back through the wall. "Now sir, please take a look around the room. The mannequins have some samples, the carpets others, although you probably would like to stay away from them now. Small changes can be made quite easily to the design, or even after if you are disappointed with my work, although I doubt that will happen. Anything custom will have to come later I'm afraid. You have much work to do my friend." > The black outfit You point out the tapestry in the corner, the one with Zaren in his shining black clothes. There's something about it that intrigues you. Something that just draws you in. Ophelia and the Tailor give each other a look. "I'm... I'm afraid you'll have to choose another my friend. I don't believe Zaren would be... happy. Wait. I think I have something in a similar style. Take a look at this. You may request changes if you wish." The Tailor pulls out a tapestry and peels it apart. You did not notice before, but they're made of different layers stuck together. Each layer contains one piece of the outfit. The pants are the same thin fit, but looser at the ankles. The belt has two buckles of polished gold and beautiful leather. "The tanner can make you such a belt. It is only cloth that I may create." The Tailor buzzes. A tight but long shirt with slightly ruffled sleeves is next. It's tight around the torso and hugs the waist with large shoulders. Over that comes a waist coat with shining gold buttons. "It is designed with a similar cloth in mind and the same colours. Colour, that is. The shirt is long sleeved and with a waist coat, but I will keep your wishes in mind. You may take these rags for now. It will be completed soon. I suggest you visit the barber, cobbler, and tanner. Oh, and all gentlemen of The Court are expected to have their own sword. Something about duels. I never saw the point of it, but it's been a long time since I was... different. That reminds me. You should have been here before. The style now is very fond of vibrant colours, not this... Monotone thing you have chosen. That must have been at least decades ago... Off, now." You don't particularly feel like hanging around, so you accept his choice and the Tailor fills you hands with fine shirts and breeches, simple but elegant. Only he would call them rags. He then turns you around and pushes you along and out. You nearly panic when he shoves you into the wall, only to remember that it is in fact a door. Ophelia walks down the hall. "Coming?" > You follow her "One second." You call out. You'd prefer to be clothed at this point. You slip on a pair of pants and a shirt before running, trying to catch up to her without dropping any of the things you're carrying. She looks at you. You feel self conscious suddenly, despite your newly clothed appearance. You look straight ahead, trying to keep even steps and the same pace as Ophelia, who walks fast. "Zaren didn't tell me where you'd stay. I suppose the guest quarters -- no, that's no good. They're too far, for one, and I don't believe Zaren considers you a guest. He is very fond of order and organization. Or at least the order and organization of others. We'll drop these off in my room for now. We have others to visit. Please wait just a little bit longer." You and Ophelia walk in silence. The stoned passage gives way into large rooms with bustling people. Ophelia leads you past a great fountain spitting out clear water and up stairs. Putting on pants was probably a good decision. On the second level people jostle and bump into your and it takes great skill not to drop anything. After a few minutes of twisting turns Ophelia stops in the middle of a hall. "This is my humble abode. Please just dump those off on my desk." Ophelia then pulls you through the wall. You doubt you'll ever.... get.... used.... to that? > You ophelia's room This isn't a room. It's a damn mansion. This is just one room and it's huge. Expensive carpets cover over parts of the floor. The high quality marble shows through in other parts. The walls are the same stones from the halls, but large paintings with golden frames cover parts of it. A giant golden chandelier hangs from the ceiling. Giant golden stairs are placed on both sides of the room. Before the stairs stands a bronze statue of... Something. It looks like a regular man, naked but for a cloth that hangs from one shoulder, but something feels off about it. His face is turned down and his eyes closed, one mouth corner lifted in a sneer. He's kneeling almost in a pleading position, as if he dare not look up. "Zaren's work. I suppose he thinks it a gift and why he's right of course. It's very lovely. Every so often when one disagrees with him death is not always the suitable punishment. I'm sure Tunc agrees with me, though he may not express it well." Ophelia grabs your hand and leads you quickly to a small, bare room behind the statue. Her face is ashen. "Check the walls!" She hisses at you, then brushes her fingers along the walls. You follow her example, even if you cannot fathom why. She and you check the whole wall and she takes a deep breath. "Zaren has a habit of popping up when he isn't wanted. We can never be sure we are safe, but vigilance is the only option if we wish to survive. We must go soon, but if you have any questions that must be answered, ask now. We must be very careful what we say outside this room, even inside it." > You tunc "Oh... Tunc. Yes. Tunc was a friend of mine... A very, very long time ago." Ophelia leans against a wall. "You can drop those clothes off right here." She gestures towards the spotless floor. "Tunc. He... Disagreed with Zaren a very long time ago. Zaren is unpredictable at best, and the king of chaos at worst. The power he wields is not a good combination with his nature. Tunc took a great risk. He thought he could challenge Zaren's rule. He... Failed. Listen closely. I don't care to relive the experience, so I will not be sharing any details, and I'd doubt you'd really want to hear them once you understand his fate." Ophelia looks down, unsure. "I tried to warn him...." She pauses and closes her eyes. The memory is obviously a painful one for her. You are unsure of what to do, so you just stand there, dumbly. She takes a few seconds to collect her thoughts and then continues in a monotone voice. "Zaren is a creative.... Man. He didn't kill Tunc, exactly. He decided to create an example of him. He was feeling particularly... Well, something. It's hard to tell what goes on in his mind, though it gets easier after time. That's what scares me the most, I suppose. Anyway, Zaren is a powerful man. He has abilities that the rest of us cannot comprehend. He's kept Tunc alive even as he is now." She looks straight up at you. "I suppose there's no easy way about this. That statue out there is Tunc. Zaren did something with him. I used to cry, talk to him, anything, but there's a time when you just have to let go. Especially here. I'm not even sure if it was meant to be a punishment, reward, or just some twisted form of art. Zaren is confusing, misleading, childish, and any other number of unpleasant things." "You said Zaren keeps him alive... Does that mean?" You ask, afraid of the answer. "Yes. He moves, ever so slowly. Once in a very great while he cries. That's where the "art" comes in." She sighs. "Do you have any other questions?" > You zaren "Zaren? You mean besides his seeming complete and utter insanity? Well, I told you. He's a god here. The god here. There's not much else to him. I could tell you about all the things he's done over the years. All the times I nearly laughed at him. All the times others did laugh at him, and paid for it. All the times he laughed along with them. He's unpredictable. Don't forget it, ever. If you remember nothing else, remember that. I've seen him kill people for following his instructions to the word. He's done things... Things that are worse than death. Tunc's fate is far from the worst." "Then why? Why do you let him do it? Why not do something about it? Surely he couldn't stop you all?" "Look at Tunc. As bad as things are, they could be worse. Zaren's powerful in ways even the strongest of us can't imagine. Tunc used to say that reality is Zaren's bitch. He was frank like that. Everyone here has at least the smallest ability for magic, and some are very talented, but Zaren's in a class of his own. Besides, most have adapted. They've learned to live with it. It doesn't matter how awful something is. If you live with something for a long time it becomes the norm. You can only be in sheer terror for so long before it bores you." You can see it in her eyes. The fear that has long given way to numbness. She attempts to smile. "Better the devil you know." > You where am I "Now that's a good question. The short answer is: I don't know. Nobody does as far as I know. Except, perhaps, for Zaren, but I don't think he's likely to share that information, do you? You really never went through the slums?" Ophelia narrows her eyes suspiciously. "I don't know what you mean." You answer truthfully. "The slums are what they are. A broken down place infested with poverty and suffering. Everyone, nobility and peasants alike, appears in the slums. People don't really have children here. Pregnancy is extremely rare among the population, even over large periods of time. Most women will go their whole life without a child. Most pregnancies will end in miscarriages. Almost all of those carried to term will be stillborn. Of the handful of people over our whole history to be born here... I've never met one. I've heard that they turn out strangely, even compared to the average citizen. Nothing specific, just strange. There are rumours that Zaren is one, but I doubt a thing like him was even born, even in another place. To my knowledge there is no one older than Zaren alive today so I guess we'll never know. Anyway, people will simply "arrive" here instead. From somewhere else. Always... Well, you're the exception, but always in the slums. They're not a pleasant place. The slums are filled with screams and the raving of the mad. The "upper ranks" to which you now belong are comprised of the completely sane, or at least the sanest. Zaren... I don't think he's insane. I've known him too long. No, I think he just likes to watch us suffer in our own filth." "So you can't tell me anything about where I am." "No, I can tell you much about where we are. I just don't know where where we are is. I can't tell you anything about where any of us came from. Most people don't remember anything and even if they do it's after a long time of searching. But it just tears them apart. It's best to forget if you start remembering." "But I... I remember.... Something." You're not sure. It's that faint form of memory, but vivid in strange places. More like a story that you've visualized. "Forget it. Or if you can't forget it, ignore it. At the very least leave it alone. Do not go any further into that abyss." But this memory is to real to forget. Ophelia looks at you, rolls her eyes, and sighs. "Okay. Tell me about it, but then that's it. Don't ever think you can make it farther into your own mind. It won't end well." "I remember. I remember... " Words roll of your tongue as you look through the past towards the only memory you can find. > You white It's white. Some of it is powder and some is thicker and clear. Some of it sticks together. Snow. It's snow. And it's falling. You look up. The sky is dark with little flecks coming into existance as they get close enough for you to see them. Snow crunchs under you. You open your mouth and catch a flake on your tongue and then laugh. You look at one closely. It's pretty with its twirls and patterns and designs. You dance, dance in the snow, falling, rolling, screaming with laughter and fun. Each flake unique but nothing without its friends. Then it's gone. You have it here in your head now, fixed and alive, something you'll remember. There's more... But that's gone, at least for now. > You memories Ophelia is speechless for a minute."Wow. That's a lot, well, compared to me. You, you like... Liked nature, didn't you?" "I don't know. Maybe. It's all I remember anyw--" "No. No. I'm sure you have more in there. Don't try to remember... But if you do... I don't know if we come from the same place, but maybe, just maybe, we do. If you remember enough it might trigger my memories too." Ophelia looks hopeful. Happy. You don't think she'll ever remember if she hasn't by now, but it's not in your heart to crush her new found hope. She smiles for a brief moment, caught up in a memory that isn't hers yet is still her only link to her potential past, even if it's faint at best. Then she remembers where she is right now and shakes her head to rid her of her folly. "Anymore questions? We don't have much time." > You doors "Oh yes. I told you about the "fight" Zaren had. He got rid of all the doors in The Court, except for the large front doors to the palace. Apparently they "took his side". Without doors we lacked privacy, but Zaren didn't care. Probably didn't eve occur to him. But after a few years he had his brilliant idea; fake walls. No one had any idea he could do something like that, but I don't think it surprised anyone. That's why we check the walls. He can build them anywhere he wants, so we must be vigilant, vigilant always. It's tiring at first but you build up a habit eventually." "Doesn't it... Freak you out?" "At first it was a little strange, but after a year or two you don't even think about it anymore. You start to forget what doors look like." > The Court "This is The Court. It's part of this realm. It, the slums, the markets, and a few other districts make up about half of it, with wildness making up the other half. Zaren keeps meticulous records of nearly everything, including maps. I'm not sure why, he's a very chaotic person, but I guess even chaos is ordered from time to time -- otherwise it would have an order to it. We should visit his libraries some time. Just one of them would take a very long time to read through. Every so often he'll change the realm so much that previous records need to be updated, so he purges almost everything and everyone starts again. He always keeps a very accurate record of the books he's had though, even the purged ones. There are rumours he keeps copies of them somewhere after he destroys the others. I wouldn't put it past him, but there are many things only Zaren knows, and this is one of them. But that doesn't really answer your question, does it? "Tell me about The Court." You ask. "Well, it's composed of servants, guards, and merchants and the like that look after us from the upper ranks. You've met the Tailor and seen a few of the guards and servants. You'll also meet the Tanner, the Shoemaker, the Barber, the Blacksmith, the Jeweler, and various teachers and instructors. Probably a few more I'm forgetting. Almost all necessities and wants are provided for us. We are the only sane ones left in this forsaken realm. We are basically Zaren's playthings. Let's see, what else...." She stops to think for a moment. "We're in the west wing right now. It's devoted mostly to private residences. Zaren will assign you one soon. For the most part he'll let you decorate it as you wish -- oh, that reminds me, the Framer, the Painter, the Carpenter, the Mason, and a few others. Anyway, he may give you some "gifts", akin to housewarming gifts. He would be "offended" if you did not accept them. He's given me things: paintings, statues, furniture. A lot of it is weird and out of style, but surprising none of the chairs will break... or strangle you, or something else Zaren would find funny. Let's see... There's the south wing which houses the servants quarters and the kitchens and other such things, and the south tower, which is primarily for the craftsmen. What is literally called The Court is in the northern end and is filled with Zaren's gardens, libraries, mess halls, and other areas for social gatherings. Oh, the gymnasium as well. The east wing holds more craftsman and merchants. Some of the market district blends in with this area. The west wing also includes the entrance to this palace and the long hall, as we call it. Zaren's throne room really, but he also has thrones in other rooms." > You events "We also have many events, like the dance you saw. The Tailor mentioned duels; all the men learn how to fight, as well as quite a few of the women. Zaren finds it amusing, although he doesn't allow anyone to die. Most of the time. We have feasts every few days and a hunt the next day. Lets see. There's contests and tournaments. You must participate in at least one event. That's where those teachers and instructors are useful. What else... I think that's all. If not, well, you'll figure out the rest as you go. You seem like you already know how to dance, so that's one less thing." "But I don't." "Then what was that back in the dance hall?" "Didn't you hear the music? It was so loud." Ophelia's eyes narrow. "What music?" Curious. > You it's time "It's time. No more questions. That reminds me; one more thing you should know. Time functions strangely here. Nothing grows or changes unless Zaren wills it. Every so often he'll change The Court - usually not to a noticeable extent but once in a while there are some great changes. But back to the point; time is strange. We don't quite... Age. But that's a discussion for later. We still have to visit the Shoemaker, the Blacksmith, the Tanner, the Jeweler..." The list feels nearly endless, though it's actually short. Ophelia goes through them as she leads out of the empty room, back into the halls, and towards the south tower, leading you through winding halls, large decorative rooms, up and down stairs, out onto a blooming courtyard and finally in front of the south tower. "We didn't go this way before." You ask, curious. "You were naked before. I didn't think you'd want to." "Fair enough." The tower itself is huge, made of tiny white stones grinded and polished to create a perfect cylinder. The entrance is a pair of huge and heavy stone slab doors that are currently open. The tower is a hub and dozens of people are walking in and out at any one moment, mostly guards, servants, and nobles. You and Ophelia are out of place in your plain clothing as the guards are wearing armour, the servants the uniforms of their specific job, and the nobles in outlandish outfits. "We have much to do and little time to do it. After the formal dances Zaren will do "realm maintenance". I mentioned it before; this is when he plays around with the fabric of reality. That's why it's so busy. Everyone wants to get their work done before Zaren changes anything. It will be busy after too. The tower is frequently full, especially at these times, but I have seen it nearly empty a few times." > The lift "Follow me." Ophelia walks past the guards and weaves through the throng of people with grace. You follow carefully, not wanting the heavy armoured feet of the guard to crush yours. She leads you up a spiraling staircase to a small platform reaching over the center. As soon as you step on it floats upwards. Ophelia grabs your arm to keep you from falling or freaking out. "Be calm. If you stand still it is surprisingly safe. The Tailor's rooms are on the third floor, so it was unnecessary to take the lift. The others reside near the top though, so unless you would like to go up all those stairs we're taking the lift." Ophelia holds your arm tightly. You force yourself to take a breath and try not to look down. Ophelia senses this is not the time to talk and so you just stand there, jaw clenched. Finally Ophelia takes a breath and talks. "Who shall we visit first? As a new member of our lovely "family" you have priority, so don't fret about lines or some such nonsense. After we visit them all we should go back to the Tailor and pick up the beginning of what will, trust me, become a very large wardrobe ." > The Blacksmith (this will continue the story) Ophelia smiles. "He's a friend of mine. Please don't let his appearence frighten you, he is at heart a gentle man, but he can be a bit sensitive. I mentioned... Changes. Some, like the Tailor, are happy with their new existence. The Blacksmith is good at his job and enjoys it, but I believe he misses some things about his previous life." The lift slows down and moves towards a space that it then attaches to. Ophelia walks straight off. "Come on. Don't hesitate. It gets better with practice." You step off the lift. It leaves your feet and lowers again, leaving you with a nearly falling sensation. Your heart pounds and you don't care to look down, even though you're on a stable floor now. Ophelia holds your arm and pulls you forward, not even looking back at that horrible open space. "It's a little way from here." Ophelia walks beside you, much more steady than you could be. With perfect posture and graceful movements she looks almost regal. "Do you have any combat experience? The Blacksmith will have to make you many weapons of all kinds, especially if you are fan of the dueling, so you should be familar with them all and with more than one style." "No... Well, I don't really remember." You can smell the fires and you know you are close. "Oh... Yes. My apologies. We're getting closer. Zaren created these spaces to minimize the smells. They're particularly bad at the tanery; though we are beyond many of the more unhygenic and barbaric practices, it smells nearly as foul as it would if we used the original "recipes. Here we are." Ophelia stops and pulls you into a searing steam filled room. > You meeting the Blacksmith The steam that flies in your face and shocks you quickly dissapates. Beyond it there is a large forge filled to the brim with tools that line shelves and walls, with all kinds of hammers, chisels, tongs, and other things you don't recognize of all different sizes; and works, both completed weapons that are displayed and those still to be finished. There is a regular anvil as well as other large metal pieces for shaping metal. There are buckets of water, ingots of different metals, and even polishing materials thrown around the large yet somehow still full room. There the sound of a hammer striking metal, a steady, heavy ting ting ting. A man grunts with each sound. He turns around and you gasp. That is not a man. He's tall, easily another half of a man. Horns curve out of his large furred head and a bull's nose move as he smells the steam; above those large and surprisingly deep blue eyes. His neck is thick and his arms bulge with muscles as he grips the hammer. He wears a thick leather apron to keep his skin safe, but still litle burn marks line his arms. As he steps forward you hear the clip clop of his hooves. He turns to look at Ophelia and his scowl turns into a smile. "Ophelia! So nice to see you. It's been too long since you visiting me in Tartarus. I almost thought Hades had got you." His voice is baritone, regular but higher than one would expect, and softer. "And this is?" "He's new. He... Doesn't have a name yet. That reminds me, we must discuss that as well. Anyway, he requires some weapons." Ophelia smiles at the Blacksmith and goes forward to hug him. "Always business with you. Does he have any experience? Preferences? You will definitely need a polearm, sword, and dagger, but anything else will be your choice. You look like you can handle the heavier weapons. What would you prefer for a sword, first of all? One or two handed? Any specific type? We have something of almost everything. Take a look along the walls. Pick out anything you like. Feel free to try it." He speaks so fast you can't respond before he starts onto something else. You look at the wall the Blacksmith points to, scanning the swords, but something catches your eye. It's in the corner up higher than the rest. You walk over and look over it. It's an arming sword of a regular length, with a plain black covered hilt and pommel. The cross guard is a thin long diamond shape and the blade is double edged but dull. "This one. This is the one." You barely hear yourself say it. Yoo careful pick the blade off of the wall and hold it; it's perfectly balanced and its weight compliments you well. "Now that's an old one. Before my time even. It doesn't look much like my predecessor's work either. It's amazing it's lasted this long. Alright, hand it over to me. I'll make you one." The Blacksmith walks over to you. "Can't I have this one?" There's something about it. Something about the way your hand fits on it, something about the cool feeling of the leather over the hilt, something about the plain ridge in the middle that just draws you into it. "I don't see why, but I don't see why not. Are you sure you'd not rather have a new one? I won't sharpen or polish it - that's not my job. Oh well. You must still pick out a dagger and polearm. Other weapons will come later. The Court is a game of time." > The polearm and the dagger "You can use the grindstone and I'll give you some whetstones and polishing cloth. Still, you will need a dagger and a polearm of some kind. You look like you would fancy a heavier weapon. Take a look at the wall. I've got a poleaxe that I've recently finished; it's the perfect length for you. Let me get it." You stare at the walls again, this time at one filled with pole weapons, some leaning against the wall, some packed on shelves, some in actual weapon holders. There are the long pikes that take down calvary lined on shelves at the top. Other weapons have spikes, tongs, flat ends for hammering, large and small points, curved blades, and any combination thereof. The choice between weapon types is dizzying, and even among the individual types there are more variables; weight, length, thickness, curve, even the way the shaft and tip are joined. You carefully pick up a weapon or two and try them out, a swing, a thrust, a step and a turn. They are unsurprisingly heavy, much heavier than your smaller sword. You place them back, making sure they are not going to fall and cause an avalanche of weapons. You look around a bit. You manage to pick out a few weapons that look good. The Blacksmith walks back in carrying one of the heavy weapons in one hand like it's nothing and places it on a weapon rack. Including the weapon the Blacksmith just brought in you've narrowed it down to three: a halberd about your height, with an end that has a long spike at the tip, a small axe on one side and a hook on the opposite, all mounted on a thick and sturdy wood pole; a slightly smaller warhammer with small but brutal looking spike on one side and the flat end for crushing, all on a mix of metal of wood; and the Blacksmith's weapon, a longer glaive, with a long curved blade on the tip and a small hook, on heavy dark wood. > You halberd You pick up the halberd and inspect it. It's heavy of course, but you're strong enough for it. The blade is engraved with long intricate lines and designs that circle around the point, connecting to rays from the ax blade and a hatching pattern on the hook. "The halberd? A good weapon. It looks well suited to you as well, just the right height." The Blacksmith stands beside you, picks up the weapon he brought in, and places it in a rack. "It's a complicated pattern, but a beautiful weapon." > The dagger You place your weapons on a table and stare at yet another wall. Again, there's a wide selection but you're getting better at scanning them. The shorter weapons are packed in much tighter in than the others, nearly making you dizzy. You feel a few; the short weapons are light and nimble with sharp edges and points. Though there are many different kinds and variations between all those you decide to narrow it down to just a few of different kinds. You look along the choices and pick out three again; a cinquedea about a foot long, with a very wide blade that is decorative and an even longer cross guard with a short handle and pommel; a stiletto at the opposite end of the spectrum, with a very thin blade and handle that can easily pierce or find a way through armour; and a baselard, with a thicker blade, thin handle, and no cross guard or pommel to speak of. > The cinquedea You reach out and lightly touch the blade of the cinquedea, running your hand over the tip to the fullers and the cross-guard. It softly nips your fingers when you run them over the sharp blade, drawing the tiniest drop of blood. You wipe your hand on your shirt and pick up the dagger. It's light and strangely balanced because of the abnormally wide blade where it connects to the hilt, but already you're getting used to it. You give it a practice thrust, twist it, and pull back. "That one?" asks the Blacksmith. "Very well. You have great taste, I can tell. It seems just the right one for you. Well, we're done here for now. Armour will wait until later, because we'll have to measure you for each piece, and even then it'll take a while to make. Still, you're set up enough for now. It was nice seeing you Ophelia, and nice to meet you as well." > Back to the lift Well that's everything done so far. Not much really. Overall I'm not very happy with this in any way that counts. The story and characters aren't great so far, there's little to no real choices, and it sort of jumps from one part to another. The only reason I'm submitting it is because it's the most work I've ever done on a story, and I guess that's something to be proud of at least. At the best it's... rambling I guess. Please tell me what you think.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You place your weapons on a table and stare at yet another wall. Again, there's a wide selection but you're getting better at scanning them. The shorter weapons are packed in much tighter in than the others, nearly making you dizzy. You feel a few; the short weapons are light and nimble with sharp edges and points. Though there are many different kinds and variations between all those you decide to narrow it down to just a few of different kinds. You look along the choices and pick out three again; a cinquedea about a foot long, with a very wide blade that is decorative and an even longer cross guard with a short handle and pommel; a stiletto at the opposite end of the spectrum, with a very thin blade and handle that can easily pierce or find a way through armour; and a baselard, with a thicker blade, thin handle, and no cross guard or pommel to speak of. > The baselard "That one?" asks the Blacksmith. "Very well. It seems you have good taste, though all my weapons are high quality. It seems just the right one for you though. Well, we're done here for now. Armour will wait until later, because we'll have to measure you for each piece, and even then it'll take a while to make. Still, you're set up enough for now. It was nice seeing you Ophelia, and nice to meet you as well." With your right hand you hold out your arm to press against the baselard. The cool metal cuts your skin lightly, drawing less than even an entire drop of blood on your finger tip. You pick up the blade, smearing that crimson speck on the hilt. It's light as a feather in your grasp, perhaps too light after holding other weapons. With a practice slash from high and then to the left you sense the way the dagger reacts to force, gaining an understanding of its balance. "Interesting choice." remarks the Blacksmith. "Okay then. All done here I suppose. Armour will come later -- we've little enough time now, and it requires much measuring. But you've got everything you need for the moment. I'll be seeing you Ophelia, and you as well I suppose."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You place your weapons on a table and stare at yet another wall. Again, there's a wide selection but you're getting better at scanning them. The shorter weapons are packed in much tighter in than the others, nearly making you dizzy. You feel a few; the short weapons are light and nimble with sharp edges and points. Though there are many different kinds and variations between all those you decide to narrow it down to just a few of different kinds. You look along the choices and pick out three again; a cinquedea about a foot long, with a very wide blade that is decorative and an even longer cross guard with a short handle and pommel; a stiletto at the opposite end of the spectrum, with a very thin blade and handle that can easily pierce or find a way through armour; and a baselard, with a thicker blade, thin handle, and no cross guard or pommel to speak of. > The stiletto You pick up the blade by its handle and feel the guard over to the tip, where the sharp edge bites into your finger and draws a small drop of blood. You wipe the blood off your hand and hold the knife in the light to look over it. Light as any knife or dagger is, it glides though the air easy, almost requiring no effort. You sweep at and the air, listening to it cry out in that distinctive whistle. The Blacksmith looks over you and the blade before speaking "You choose that one? Good. Well I suppose that's everything. You'll need armour as well, but you'll need to be measured before and then it'll take a while for me to make all of it. But regardless, we're done here for now. Good to see you Ophelia. Wealth and health to you both.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"You can use the grindstone and I'll give you some whetstones and polishing cloth. Still, you will need a dagger and a polearm of some kind. You look like you would fancy a heavier weapon. Take a look at the wall. I've got a poleaxe that I've recently finished; it's the perfect length for you. Let me get it." You stare at the walls again, this time at one filled with pole weapons, some leaning against the wall, some packed on shelves, some in actual weapon holders. There are the long pikes that take down calvary lined on shelves at the top. Other weapons have spikes, tongs, flat ends for hammering, large and small points, curved blades, and any combination thereof. The choice between weapon types is dizzying, and even among the individual types there are more variables; weight, length, thickness, curve, even the way the shaft and tip are joined. You carefully pick up a weapon or two and try them out, a swing, a thrust, a step and a turn. They are unsurprisingly heavy, much heavier than your smaller sword. You place them back, making sure they are not going to fall and cause an avalanche of weapons. You look around a bit. You manage to pick out a few weapons that look good. The Blacksmith walks back in carrying one of the heavy weapons in one hand like it's nothing and places it on a weapon rack. Including the weapon the Blacksmith just brought in you've narrowed it down to three: a halberd about your height, with an end that has a long spike at the tip, a small axe on one side and a hook on the opposite, all mounted on a thick and sturdy wood pole; a slightly smaller warhammer with small but brutal looking spike on one side and the flat end for crushing, all on a mix of metal of wood; and the Blacksmith's weapon, a longer glaive, with a long curved blade on the tip and a small hook, on heavy dark wood. > You warhammer You hold the war hammer in your holds and turn it over. Heavy, but that's the point. The hammer itself is completely flat and even, smaller than you'd imagine, but that only concentrates the damage you'd guess. There's a metal grip on it, with a pattern to make it easier to hold. "Ah, the hammer. Brutal thing, that is. Just around the right size for you though." After placing the glaive he brought in on a rack the Blacksmith points to the hammer. "It doesn't matter if someone's wearing armour. With this, a single whack and it'll smash through a helmet, and even if it doesn't, it can still break bones, cause concussions, and at the very least give a very nasty bruise. The hook can rip through armour too, though usually a good set of platemail can block it. It's good for taking down calvary. The hook can tear at the legs of a horse, get the man off his mount, and the hammer can crush the horse's legs."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"You can use the grindstone and I'll give you some whetstones and polishing cloth. Still, you will need a dagger and a polearm of some kind. You look like you would fancy a heavier weapon. Take a look at the wall. I've got a poleaxe that I've recently finished; it's the perfect length for you. Let me get it." You stare at the walls again, this time at one filled with pole weapons, some leaning against the wall, some packed on shelves, some in actual weapon holders. There are the long pikes that take down calvary lined on shelves at the top. Other weapons have spikes, tongs, flat ends for hammering, large and small points, curved blades, and any combination thereof. The choice between weapon types is dizzying, and even among the individual types there are more variables; weight, length, thickness, curve, even the way the shaft and tip are joined. You carefully pick up a weapon or two and try them out, a swing, a thrust, a step and a turn. They are unsurprisingly heavy, much heavier than your smaller sword. You place them back, making sure they are not going to fall and cause an avalanche of weapons. You look around a bit. You manage to pick out a few weapons that look good. The Blacksmith walks back in carrying one of the heavy weapons in one hand like it's nothing and places it on a weapon rack. Including the weapon the Blacksmith just brought in you've narrowed it down to three: a halberd about your height, with an end that has a long spike at the tip, a small axe on one side and a hook on the opposite, all mounted on a thick and sturdy wood pole; a slightly smaller warhammer with small but brutal looking spike on one side and the flat end for crushing, all on a mix of metal of wood; and the Blacksmith's weapon, a longer glaive, with a long curved blade on the tip and a small hook, on heavy dark wood. > You glaive You look at the glaive that the Blacksmith brought in. The wood is smooth, balanced and strong, and the blade looks like it craves blood. You pick it up and its just as heavy as you expected. It's simple compared to the other weapons; no intricate patterns or designs, but it's lovely nonetheless. "The glaive? Ah, a good choice. I knew it'd be the weapon for you, just the right size." The Blacksmith stands beside you. "It may seem simple, but I made it with the care all my weapons deserve. Of course, the wood work isn't mine, but all metal has been forged by my hands."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Follow me." Ophelia walks past the guards and weaves through the throng of people with grace. You follow carefully, not wanting the heavy armoured feet of the guard to crush yours. She leads you up a spiraling staircase to a small platform reaching over the center. As soon as you step on it floats upwards. Ophelia grabs your arm to keep you from falling or freaking out. "Be calm. If you stand still it is surprisingly safe. The Tailor's rooms are on the third floor, so it was unnecessary to take the lift. The others reside near the top though, so unless you would like to go up all those stairs we're taking the lift." Ophelia holds your arm tightly. You force yourself to take a breath and try not to look down. Ophelia senses this is not the time to talk and so you just stand there, jaw clenched. Finally Ophelia takes a breath and talks. "Who shall we visit first? As a new member of our lovely "family" you have priority, so don't fret about lines or some such nonsense. After we visit them all we should go back to the Tailor and pick up the beginning of what will, trust me, become a very large wardrobe ." > The Tanner "I see. Get the worst out of the way first? I must say, the stench is worst I've ever smelled. He's not a... Nice man. Not mean, but wild. Feral, even. I've heard talk that he was born here, but he's one of the oldest I know of, so again, another thing we never may know. As you know, Zaren plays around with... the world. So don't let his appearence frighten you. If anything is terrifying, it's the stink. He's harmless really." You slow your upward motion and the lift reachs another floor, where it attaches to a opening. Ophelia walks off. "Don't let the height scare you. It's quite safe as long as you don't linger." One foot off and it feels stable enough. But as soon as your other leg leaves the platfrom descends. You go falling forward as your body compensates for the motion. Ophelia catches you and steadies you. "Let's go. The walk is long, to keep the smell from the lift." Ophelia leads you through a maze of halls and small rooms, as the smell gradually builds up and pains throb in your head. Just as you're about to pass out she pulls you into the tannery. There's a look of digust on her face. "Let us meet the Tanner." > You meeting the Tanner The smell hits your face; fresh rather than the stagnant air outside, but just as bad. Your eyes water and you blink again and again just to see. You nose and mouth curls up in disgust. There are furs everywhere, not just pelts but entire animals. "He prefers to skin them himself." Ophelia simply says. Tools for skinning and shaping litter the ground and little buckets of what you hope is water but is more foul smelling are sprinkled about the room. Larger vats are filled with the same foul odorous liquid, some of them colourless, but more black, brown, gray, or other dull colours. There are piles of furs, rags, and leather everywhere, some drying, being shaped, or otherwise in progress to becoming whatever they will be. A particularly large and dirty pile moves and -- oh dear, that's not a pile. It's a wereanimal, foul and feral, loudly poking around in dog corpse, picking out internal organs and placing them aside, sorting them. He pulls out bones and bits, and is covered in blood. Every so often he licks clawed hands with a slurping sound. He starts to peel off the skin with tools and surprising care when he lifts his head up and sniffs at the head. Turning around, he spots you and his mouth turns into a disgusting smile. "Ophelia? Why hellos! Goodness, goodness, I ams filthy." Emphasizing and adding an S to some words he speaks to you. He grabs a rag and attempts to clean his hands, then wipes drool and blood from his face with them. He's covered in spotted, dirty, clumped fur, especially along his legs and shoulders, with a longer patch on top of his leading down his back on his spine. The hair is shorter on his face and snout, except for a few long whiskers that poke out of his lips and along his chin. The shaggy fur recedes along his hands, leaving nearly thin fingers for precision in his trade. He wears only a pair of shorts and bones on a string on his thick and long neck. His ears are pierced, the left is tattered and they flap about independent of his head. His eyes are large and green and watch Ophelia with a sense of sincerity. He seems more like a dog than anything else. Then, as if suddenly seeing you, "I knows you! The Tailors said you were coming. Yesh, yesh. I have here somewhere... I cuts and cures it long time ago, ready for yous. Just waits, waits." He walks around in circles on his large paws and sniffs at the air. "Yesh, yesh, I see its!" He stretches up and pulls something off a shelf. "They gives me nice shiny buckles for belts. I use the yellow ones this time. People like the yellow ones." He sounds like a child, a filthy terrifying child. "You reminds me. You reminds me of hims. You gots the smell. He goods man, you know. Others they think he crazy, but he nice, he nice to mes. Used to be hads to thinks. All the times. Hard. Now I just do these things and I gets all I wants. He nice man. Waits, first I gots to cleans." He dips the belt in some sort of oily liquid and then hands it to you. "He says to use the oils because somes don't like the smell. But yous get used to it. I thinks it smells good now. Also these. The Tailors said yous might like." He hands you a pair of leather arm bands. > Back to the lift You take the black belt and bands out of his hands and try to hold as little of them as possible, with a forced smile. The Tanner smiles back at you, oblivious of your disgust. Ophelia takes your arm. "We have to go now." The Tanner smiles at you. "Come backs to visit. And if yous wants armours, I cans make it. But laters." His tail wags and he waves at Ophelia. Ophelia pulls you out of the room and walks off quickly, then runs after reaching the corner. "I'm sorry. I just can't stand it. He's just so pitiful. I want to hate him, I really do, but I also feel an overwhelming sense of sorrow for him." Her face is white and her hold is gripping your arm so hard it hurts. Her face says not to talk about it anymore, but you have a feeling there's something that she's not telling you. The smell diminishes as you get farther from the tannery. Once you reach the lift again you put on the belt and bracers, if just to buy some time before you have to step back on it. To your surprise the solution that the Tanner used actually seems to have worked. In fact, they have a slight leather smell, but otherwise are devoid of any discernible smell. You're about to step back on the lift. If you want to ask Ophelia about the Tanner, now is the time. > You ask Ophelia about the Tanner For a second, you're not sure she heard your question. She just holds your arm and pulls you onto the lift. Just when you're about to ask again she answers in a quiet voice, holding her necklace in a tight fist. "The Tanner is an animal. A nice, good-natured, even gentle thing, despite his appearance and the whispers of some, but an animal nonetheless. He isn't a man -- or maybe isn't one anymore. He can't make the decision to lie or even mislead. If you ask him a question he will answer to the best of his ability. He said you were like Zaren." She trails off. You want to know why this scares her so much. Maybe you smell like Zaren or something. Ophelia seems to be afraid of him, but why would this bother her so much? You're about to ask when her nails dig into your arm deep enough to cause marks, but not blood. "I don't want to talk about it. At least not now. Please." And that's all she'll say for now. A forced smile covers her anxious face. "Where to now?" She says, deftly changing the topic. "We've still got things to do yet." She lets go of your arm and lightly touches the mark. "I... Sorry." The discussion seems to be over. You doubt she'll even respond if you ask again, so you respect the silence, though you are still confused. The lift starts to move. "So, what's our next destination?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You take the black belt and bands out of his hands and try to hold as little of them as possible, with a forced smile. The Tanner smiles back at you, oblivious of your disgust. Ophelia takes your arm. "We have to go now." The Tanner smiles at you. "Come backs to visit. And if yous wants armours, I cans make it. But laters." His tail wags and he waves at Ophelia. Ophelia pulls you out of the room and walks off quickly, then runs after reaching the corner. "I'm sorry. I just can't stand it. He's just so pitiful. I want to hate him, I really do, but I also feel an overwhelming sense of sorrow for him." Her face is white and her hold is gripping your arm so hard it hurts. Her face says not to talk about it anymore, but you have a feeling there's something that she's not telling you. The smell diminishes as you get farther from the tannery. Once you reach the lift again you put on the belt and bracers, if just to buy some time before you have to step back on it. To your surprise the solution that the Tanner used actually seems to have worked. In fact, they have a slight leather smell, but otherwise are devoid of any discernible smell. You're about to step back on the lift. If you want to ask Ophelia about the Tanner, now is the time. > You keep quiet You close your mouth. She obviously doesn't want to talk about it and you still have things to do before Zaren... Does whatever Zaren does. You play with the folds of your belt and you and Ophelia stand in silence for a moment. "Thank you... I just... I'll explain it later. We've things to do now. I understand that things must be confusing for you -- it was for me, and even I had some experience with The Court before I joined it. It just... I've never done this before." Ophelia is quiet with this last sentence. "Zaren has people for this. I don't understand why he told me to help you. Then again, I don't understand why he does anything he does." The lift starts to move again. "Where to next?" <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Oh yes. I told you about the "fight" Zaren had. He got rid of all the doors in The Court, except for the large front doors to the palace. Apparently they "took his side". Without doors we lacked privacy, but Zaren didn't care. Probably didn't eve occur to him. But after a few years he had his brilliant idea; fake walls. No one had any idea he could do something like that, but I don't think it surprised anyone. That's why we check the walls. He can build them anywhere he wants, so we must be vigilant, vigilant always. It's tiring at first but you build up a habit eventually." "Doesn't it... Freak you out?" "At first it was a little strange, but after a year or two you don't even think about it anymore. You start to forget what doors look like." > You tailor "The Tailor? He's been here a very long time, longer than me, longer than most.... He used to be like us. I just barely remember it. He had another name too, but it's so far off I don't have an inkling what it could have been. Anyway he always had a talent for clothing, but he's had a lot of time to perfect his craft as well. Zaren decided he wanted to change The Court to something more like what you see now. He made the Tailor into what he is now so that he could... Well, so that he could be the Tailor. Zaren rubs off on people. He places the seeds of madness in our minds. The Tailor's soul was more fertile than most, but he still retained the appearance of reason. So he gladly accepted his changes and new role. He's happy with it, I think. One of few, but he has a long history here, and a possibly longer future." "What... Is he?" "Oh... That's your question. He's a silk worm. Part silk worm at least. At least he used to be a silk worm. I guess he's a moth now." You don't really want to think about him anymore.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Now that's a good question. The short answer is: I don't know. Nobody does as far as I know. Except, perhaps, for Zaren, but I don't think he's likely to share that information, do you? You really never went through the slums?" Ophelia narrows her eyes suspiciously. "I don't know what you mean." You answer truthfully. "The slums are what they are. A broken down place infested with poverty and suffering. Everyone, nobility and peasants alike, appears in the slums. People don't really have children here. Pregnancy is extremely rare among the population, even over large periods of time. Most women will go their whole life without a child. Most pregnancies will end in miscarriages. Almost all of those carried to term will be stillborn. Of the handful of people over our whole history to be born here... I've never met one. I've heard that they turn out strangely, even compared to the average citizen. Nothing specific, just strange. There are rumours that Zaren is one, but I doubt a thing like him was even born, even in another place. To my knowledge there is no one older than Zaren alive today so I guess we'll never know. Anyway, people will simply "arrive" here instead. From somewhere else. Always... Well, you're the exception, but always in the slums. They're not a pleasant place. The slums are filled with screams and the raving of the mad. The "upper ranks" to which you now belong are comprised of the completely sane, or at least the sanest. Zaren... I don't think he's insane. I've known him too long. No, I think he just likes to watch us suffer in our own filth." "So you can't tell me anything about where I am." "No, I can tell you much about where we are. I just don't know where where we are is. I can't tell you anything about where any of us came from. Most people don't remember anything and even if they do it's after a long time of searching. But it just tears them apart. It's best to forget if you start remembering." "But I... I remember.... Something." You're not sure. It's that faint form of memory, but vivid in strange places. More like a story that you've visualized. "Forget it. Or if you can't forget it, ignore it. At the very least leave it alone. Do not go any further into that abyss." But this memory is to real to forget. Ophelia looks at you, rolls her eyes, and sighs. "Okay. Tell me about it, but then that's it. Don't ever think you can make it farther into your own mind. It won't end well." "I remember. I remember... " Words roll of your tongue as you look through the past towards the only memory you can find. > You gray It's soft. It's got pieces branching off of it. It's small and blandly coloured. The colours continue along tiny pieces, like somebody just cut some of it out. This one is small, but you know there are bigger ones. It's a feather. You hold it close and peer at it. It looked solid at first, but now you see the little bits of fluff. The sky is blue and clear and you can see all the birds flying through the skies. Ravens flap in the wind and caw far off. Little songbirds sit on tree branches and tweet songs. Rabbit bolt through every so often. It's an orchestra of the wild. There's a slight breeze and the smell of trees. Green is everywhere. Long pieces of grass feel soft under your feet. Leaves and flower buds cover trees. This is it. This is life. Then it's gone. You have it here in your head now, fixed and alive, something you'll remember. There's more... But that's gone, at least for now.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Now that's a good question. The short answer is: I don't know. Nobody does as far as I know. Except, perhaps, for Zaren, but I don't think he's likely to share that information, do you? You really never went through the slums?" Ophelia narrows her eyes suspiciously. "I don't know what you mean." You answer truthfully. "The slums are what they are. A broken down place infested with poverty and suffering. Everyone, nobility and peasants alike, appears in the slums. People don't really have children here. Pregnancy is extremely rare among the population, even over large periods of time. Most women will go their whole life without a child. Most pregnancies will end in miscarriages. Almost all of those carried to term will be stillborn. Of the handful of people over our whole history to be born here... I've never met one. I've heard that they turn out strangely, even compared to the average citizen. Nothing specific, just strange. There are rumours that Zaren is one, but I doubt a thing like him was even born, even in another place. To my knowledge there is no one older than Zaren alive today so I guess we'll never know. Anyway, people will simply "arrive" here instead. From somewhere else. Always... Well, you're the exception, but always in the slums. They're not a pleasant place. The slums are filled with screams and the raving of the mad. The "upper ranks" to which you now belong are comprised of the completely sane, or at least the sanest. Zaren... I don't think he's insane. I've known him too long. No, I think he just likes to watch us suffer in our own filth." "So you can't tell me anything about where I am." "No, I can tell you much about where we are. I just don't know where where we are is. I can't tell you anything about where any of us came from. Most people don't remember anything and even if they do it's after a long time of searching. But it just tears them apart. It's best to forget if you start remembering." "But I... I remember.... Something." You're not sure. It's that faint form of memory, but vivid in strange places. More like a story that you've visualized. "Forget it. Or if you can't forget it, ignore it. At the very least leave it alone. Do not go any further into that abyss." But this memory is to real to forget. Ophelia looks at you, rolls her eyes, and sighs. "Okay. Tell me about it, but then that's it. Don't ever think you can make it farther into your own mind. It won't end well." "I remember. I remember... " Words roll of your tongue as you look through the past towards the only memory you can find. > You black They're big, much bigger than you. The big thing in the middle has pieces coming, and more off of those pieces. They're black. They're trees. Dead trees. You smell the air. Cold. Ashy. Fire, savage fire, has destroyed this haven of nature. But it's nature's way. You feel sad. You sit on a fallen tree. The fire is gone. Even the ground is cold now. You look up and see the sky. Gray. Ready to rain its tears on this dead place and put out any of the remaining flames. Little drops already dot the the air. A few fall on your head, as if nature is reassuring you. They mix with your tears, clearing paths through the soot on your face. This place is special. You loved something here. What? Then it's gone. You have it here in your head now, fixed and alive, something you'll remember. There's more... But that's gone, at least for now.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The heavy blade is laying on the ground. Your heart beats. You survey the fight. It's a giant mass of men screaming in a variety of different emotions. Joy here, fear there. You can see spectres spectating, watchers watching, and shadows spectating as well, because what else would they do? Be serious. With all the chaos, if you crouched you could conceivably have more cover. A lower center of gravity would also be a benefit. A quick roll would provide more cover and speed, but lack the same control. The ground, while littered with weapons and bodies, has a clear path to your weapon. You could try to crawl there. This would provide the most cover, but you risk being stepped on, and what you gain in cover you give up in speed. Beat. Move now, or risk danger for another look around. > You crawl The muscles holding you up loosen and you fall down. Beat. Your knees hit the sand and throw up little flecks. You hear a whistling sound. Beat. The rest of you falls forward, hands moving in position to cushion your fall. Beat. An arrow, bright and deadly, glides over you. Beat. You catch the ground and embrace it, pushing forward with your legs. Beat. Beat. The battle rages. Hand and elbow crawl forward as you make your way slowly to your weapon. Someone steps backwards into your path. You punch their leg and they fall out of the way. There is no mercy in this moment. Someone else tries to step backwards, but trips over you and falls. Almost there. Your hand is on your weapon now. Beat. Beat. Beat. You jump up and swing the blade around. You catch someone just barely on the back of their arm; you run them through and cleanly pull out the blade. In this small space no one can respect the length of the sword, so you kick a few people to clear a space. Something catches you in the side of your head and you fall down and... is that.... bloood.....<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The heavy blade is laying on the ground. Your heart beats. You survey the fight. It's a giant mass of men screaming in a variety of different emotions. Joy here, fear there. You can see spectres spectating, watchers watching, and shadows spectating as well, because what else would they do? Be serious. With all the chaos, if you crouched you could conceivably have more cover. A lower center of gravity would also be a benefit. A quick roll would provide more cover and speed, but lack the same control. The ground, while littered with weapons and bodies, has a clear path to your weapon. You could try to crawl there. This would provide the most cover, but you risk being stepped on, and what you gain in cover you give up in speed. Beat. Move now, or risk danger for another look around. > You roll Your arms start the long journey up. Your head lowers to meet them. Beat. An arrow shines between the blood and the laughter, then disappears. One leg contracts to bring your body in and the other pushes to give you your momentum. Your heel leaves the sand, then just your toes make contact with the ground, then you're in the air.. Beat. Your arms cover your head and you bring up one leg. The other pushes as you lean forward and bring your body low and ready for contact with the ground. Beat. Something rips through the skin in your left arm, leaving a relatively shallow wound. Beat. Beat. Beat. Your body falls and hits the ground, and with a little effort, the roll is completed. Beat. Beat. Beat. You reach the sword and grab it as your legs push you up. You bring the sword up and around to stand between you and the man in front of you. Another man with a smaller blade tries to stab your side. Your larger blade leaves little time to parry it and even less to regain balance, so you side step instead and let your movement swing the heavy sword around in his direction. He jumps back and knocks your blade just enough to leave him unscathed. Now that you're out of his range, you thrust foward and neatly catch his arm as he tries to avoid the attack. You push foward further and to the right, catching his torso. As you pull back the blade, he collaspes, eyes shut in pain at first, then open as he roars in laughter. All around you people are dying. Bodies litter the ground and few are left. Such a waste of life. The violent ones are dead, leaving the survivors to look across at each other in both suspicision and dread. Silence comes across the arena. The shades gather at the edges and stare at you. One sits alone, on a throne of burning night. It opens its mouth.... "NO! NO! NO NO NO NO! Please, stop! I beg of you!" You plead and cover your ears, but that doesn't alleviate the shattering misery the shade spouts. You writhe, you writhe, on the ground, tears streaming and blood leaking from your nose and the shades scream and scream and it hurts your heart so close to bursting you thrash and cry and pray but the anthem continues as others join in and they file into the sands as you see through blurry bloody eyes and surround you and rip you apart rip you apart rip you apart fingers and limbs and organs and blood so much blood and the shadows the shadows they scream and scream and scream and...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The heavy blade is laying on the ground. Your heart beats. You survey the fight. It's a giant mass of men screaming in a variety of different emotions. Joy here, fear there. You can see spectres spectating, watchers watching, and shadows spectating as well, because what else would they do? Be serious. With all the chaos, if you crouched you could conceivably have more cover. A lower center of gravity would also be a benefit. A quick roll would provide more cover and speed, but lack the same control. The ground, while littered with weapons and bodies, has a clear path to your weapon. You could try to crawl there. This would provide the most cover, but you risk being stepped on, and what you gain in cover you give up in speed. Beat. Move now, or risk danger for another look around. > You look Your eyes flicker and see everything on the battlefield. Beat. Beat. Recognition flashes for but a brief moment, as you see the sun shining on the arrow that procedes to catch your throat and rip through flesh to find sweet death. Blood spurts out and you drift into blackness. It feels like an eternity but some part of you knows it's only a beat or two before you die. Beat. Beat. Now death is all that is left in your eyes as all traces of you meld into the sands and you are swept away from existence.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your heart beats. You stand in an great amphitheatre, on shifting sands. It's quiet for but a moment, and then the clashes of weapons rings out in great echoes, with cheery yells of murder providing a bass quality. Smiles flash all around as people hack or are hacked about and nothing but snorts of laughter without the barest hint of pain accompany the carnage. Sprays of blood float on the air. Spilled guts and limbs sink deep into the sands. Heads laughing are choking on sand and sweet blood spills out of their lifeless bodies. You smell gore in the air and it clouds your thoughts. Little droplets rain down in your vision. You count each as they pass. Some spray in the corner of your eye hits your cheek and you can taste the liquid life. Liquid life. Life. You're alive. Where is your weapon? > You an axe in the hands of the man to your left The man next to you screams and whacks a corpse on the ground with your simple battle axe. He smiles and pulls himself up to grip the weapon with two hands and bring it down over the head of another distracted man. Your heart beats. You spare a quick glance over the rest of the battlefield. Men fight all around you, clanging metal and shrieking warriors ringing in your ears. There's laughter, joy, fear, and hatred in those screams. Shadows stand all around the raised edge of the arena, perfectly still. You need a weapon in your hands, something to defend yourself against this writhing mass of life and death. You need your axe; it's yours. It fits perfectly in your hand and bites at the flesh of your enemies like a loyal dog. There is no question: you must get it back. Beat. The man is chopping here and there and everywhere. He's not even holding your axe right. Beat. Attack him now and rely on your skills, or sneak up behind him? > You attack now! You rush, hoping to catch him unaware. He swings the axe around to his right and slashes another man. Beat. Your feet both push you forward and you put your hands into the perfect position to attack himand grab the handle of the axe. Both feet leave the ground and propel you into the man. Beat. Your right hand curls to give him a brutal punch with all your weight in his throat. Your left hand opens to grab the axe before he can swing it around to you. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Your fist makes contact with him and he falls back a bit, his face twisting in pain. You grab the handle of the axe and wrench it from his grasp as he's weak. Your fist only glances his neck and he recovers quickly to tug back at the axe and kick your shins. You quickly push him off and bring the axe down while he's still weak, but he blocks his face with one arm. There's a sickening thud as you bury it into his shoulder. He tries to pull it out and push you away as adrenaline covers his pain, but you elbow him in the face and kick him to the ground as you pull out the axe. Laughter takes him and he thrashes about on the ground. You sink the axe into his back and he stops moving, but that laughter continues. You're just about to end his pathetic life when an arrow catches your leg and tears open a huge gash. You collapse onto one knee and drop the axe as someone stabs you with a sword. The end sticks out of your left side and blood flows as the sword is pulled back. You lie on the ground and something bubbles inside of you. Well now, isn't that funny. You didn't get it before , but now... It's too much and you giggle until you can't breathe, but even when you try to stop and take a breath all you can feel is that hole in your torso. The other man grabs your hand and lets out a shriek, squeezes, and then his smile is stuck on his dead face. You can't help it. You smile too. And laugh. And laugh and laugh until a sword somehow finds its way into your eye. Woopsy daisy. How'd that get in there?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The man next to you screams and whacks a corpse on the ground with your simple battle axe. He smiles and pulls himself up to grip the weapon with two hands and bring it down over the head of another distracted man. Your heart beats. You spare a quick glance over the rest of the battlefield. Men fight all around you, clanging metal and shrieking warriors ringing in your ears. There's laughter, joy, fear, and hatred in those screams. Shadows stand all around the raised edge of the arena, perfectly still. You need a weapon in your hands, something to defend yourself against this writhing mass of life and death. You need your axe; it's yours. It fits perfectly in your hand and bites at the flesh of your enemies like a loyal dog. There is no question: you must get it back. Beat. The man is chopping here and there and everywhere. He's not even holding your axe right. Beat. Attack him now and rely on your skills, or sneak up behind him? > You sneak up on him You quickly move around a few fights and dodge a few weak attacks, making your way to the man. Beat. He's still whacking into a corpse, though a different one now. His back is to you... It's the perfect time to strike. Beat. You lift your hands and go flying into his body, slamming him forward. Beat. Beat. Beat. Before he can respond your arms are wrapped around his neck from behind. The fool drops your axe on his foot so he can claw at your arms. Chokes and screams are stuck in his throat and there's a wheezing sound; the only air he can get out, and none of it goes back in. You give another squeeze. He beats against your body with one hand, but lacks to strength to do any damage, already fading. Suddenly, something hits you in the leg. You collaspe onto the man and look to it. An arrow is sprouting from your leg like a plant in the dirt. At the sudden shock of it you let go of the man and he tries to turn around. Before either of you realize what's happening your hand is on the axe and the axe flying to towards his head... And then his head is flying off by itself. The warm blood hits you like a geyser. You roll around and sit up. Another arrow grows in your shoulder. You aren't sure when that happened. You can barely feel it now, barely feel anything. A gurgle and a giggle are swallowed by blood in your mouth, when you realize there's another arrow there. You fall back, trying to laugh and just barely managed to make a sound. You're drowning now... Drowning in your own blood... And losing to much of it... And... It's... Funny. Funny. Haha funny. And then it's nothing, nothing but black.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Colourful fine carpets cover all the walls, some more rugs hanging over them in turn. The carpets are like a dark, dull rainbow. The carpet itself is black, with colours seeming floating over it like a reflection in water. The colours swirl and mix and seperate so slowly you have to careful look before you see the emerging patterns of dancing colours.. You watch a batch of a grey blue twirl around with concentrated yellow and green drops, absorbing them. The rugs draped over them like curtains over imaginary windows are stationary pictures of outfits, each in a different pose. They continue from down the walls onto the floor and a few hang from the ceiling. You recognize a few outfits, but what really catches your eye is the one hidden on the far left, the one that looks just like Zaren's black finery. It's the only one with a person in the clothes. Zaren's in it, posed elegantly in his black and gold coat. His arms are raised as if to greet you, but his face perfectly shows his comtempt at your very existance. All but his eyes, which are laughing. You do not know if the contempt is the joke. There is a man behind that insanity, you are sure of it. Whether the insanity is a cover or not, you do not know. You look back at the swirling patterns. They are starting to resemble pictures now, just barely, but the proper shades are coming in... > A library Hundreds of volumes of large tomes cover shelves that reach up to the very high ceiling. You are in narrow crack between two long shelves. You walk through the space between the shelves, trailing your hands on the book. The shelves are so close you can't help but bump into a book here and there. The shelves are so large and heavy they don't make even the slighest movement when you fall against one accidently. You've tripped over a ladder. It's laid along the ground, edges from shelf to shelf, the same kind as there is in every other row. They were used to reach the books once, but no one reads these records anymore. Now they just keep the space between the shelves uniform. Those maps hate being in the same place as the other non fiction and always try to push the shelves apart. The books are all a dull green, faded from dust and time. They are larger than usual. Each one is about as wide as your palm and the same length as your arms. They are stuffed in very tightly, leaving not one inch of space. You wouldn't want to have the job of putting them into the shelves. You reach one end of the row. There's next to no room between the wall and the shelf, but you manage to squeeze through. The rows of shelves seem to go on forever in this direction. You use the next row to turn around and face the other way. The shelves end a few rows up, so you head that direction. You come out into a small space between a shelf and the grey stone wall. There's a door here you could try it but it's locked. Oh. There's also another small shelf here at the end of the row. You look at the small selection it has. Most are records of the books in this library. They include just a topic and a number. There are too many books to even list the names in this tiny shelf. Three books that are not records draw your attention. > You pick up the small brown book You pick up the small brown book. Its wretched condition is something compared to even the oldest and worst kept tomes you've seen.You take out a sheet of paper to record its name. The ratty cover nearly comes off when you lift it to turn to the first page. There's no title or author listed, just a strange star design in the center of the page. You copy onto another piece of paper with your fountain pen the design as best you can and place it beside you so you can request another copy of whatever this book is. You turn the page as carefully as you can. The thin paper seems almost as if to look at it would shred it. It's another design. With your vast experience what? in many different languages and the writing of many different authors, in the books prior to the invention of the printing press of course, you can easily see that the symbols were of the same hand. You turn the pages, seeing nothing but strange symbols belonging to no language you can recognize. Even then, it should have repeated characters, but each design is different, leading you to believe it is no language, simply meaningless symbols. The next page is torn in the center where the symbol would be. Through the hole you can the next page is blank. You check the torn page; it's a violent rip but does not look in danger of growing and the rest of the page is blank anyway. But there's something about that blank page... You look at it carefully. There! A shape! A rip! A tear! That wasn't you, you're careful. You haven't ripped a page in... Well, it's been so long you've forgotten. That's not a rip though... It's growing, like a burn. You set the book down away from the others to keep the fire from spreading but... It's not hot. It's not smoking. Still, the pages burn through. Fiery shapes grow... Why, it's almost moving... It's beautiful. You can't.... You can't look away. The ash blows up through the windless air and the sparks bloom into flowers of fire. It's an inferno bubble around you. Your skin burns and blackens and crackles. You can see through the fire now.... In the fire now... It's...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Hundreds of volumes of large tomes cover shelves that reach up to the very high ceiling. You are in narrow crack between two long shelves. You walk through the space between the shelves, trailing your hands on the book. The shelves are so close you can't help but bump into a book here and there. The shelves are so large and heavy they don't make even the slighest movement when you fall against one accidently. You've tripped over a ladder. It's laid along the ground, edges from shelf to shelf, the same kind as there is in every other row. They were used to reach the books once, but no one reads these records anymore. Now they just keep the space between the shelves uniform. Those maps hate being in the same place as the other non fiction and always try to push the shelves apart. The books are all a dull green, faded from dust and time. They are larger than usual. Each one is about as wide as your palm and the same length as your arms. They are stuffed in very tightly, leaving not one inch of space. You wouldn't want to have the job of putting them into the shelves. You reach one end of the row. There's next to no room between the wall and the shelf, but you manage to squeeze through. The rows of shelves seem to go on forever in this direction. You use the next row to turn around and face the other way. The shelves end a few rows up, so you head that direction. You come out into a small space between a shelf and the grey stone wall. There's a door here you could try it but it's locked. Oh. There's also another small shelf here at the end of the row. You look at the small selection it has. Most are records of the books in this library. They include just a topic and a number. There are too many books to even list the names in this tiny shelf. Three books that are not records draw your attention. > You pick up the grey book You pick up the grey book. With just that slight movement a huge cloud appears. As you discover through the huge dust cloud and your tears, it's actually a very old blue book, not grey. You walk through the cloud, past the door, and sit down where the air is clearer. You open up the blue book to the first page. In large flowery letters the title is written, "The Journals of Pip: Volume 8". Below that, "His Search For the History of the Colour Blue". You turn the page to read tiny block letters. "In his first year of journal writing, three years before his first published novel, "Theories on the Disappearance of Gravity During the Great Regression" (since which it has been discovered that spontaneously reverting the universe to a previous state may cause gravity to turn into small quantities of gravy, one of the outlined theories connecting the disappearance with the large increase in gravy mining during the years affected), Pip completed a few journals. One of these was a detailed plan and record of his three month long search for the nature and history of the colour blue. In the following pages you will see his journey as he discovers blue." "I have tracked it to a cave near the Grinning Stones. At first their wide mouths and the little giggles unnerved me, but I have grown used to their strange habits now. It has been nearly a week since I have seen it enter the cave, but I know it is in there. I hear the little snores before I sleep, "blu-o-o-o-o-o-o-o.... blu-o-o-o-o-o-o-o..." it calls. At dawn it will wake me up with a "Cocklebluedoblue!" You close the book. You just can't read through this radical nonsense. You've read through Pip's research; it's very good. But the man obviously has some trouble telling reality from fiction in his everyday life. You've been to the Grinning Stones; there are no caves anywhere near that region. It's too bad, he was a smart man. A little jerky and obsessive, but smart nonetheless. But you have to admit, those stones are creepy, especially at night. You pick it up and start on the... long, long journey, to row J786.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Hundreds of volumes of large tomes cover shelves that reach up to the very high ceiling. You are in narrow crack between two long shelves. You walk through the space between the shelves, trailing your hands on the book. The shelves are so close you can't help but bump into a book here and there. The shelves are so large and heavy they don't make even the slighest movement when you fall against one accidently. You've tripped over a ladder. It's laid along the ground, edges from shelf to shelf, the same kind as there is in every other row. They were used to reach the books once, but no one reads these records anymore. Now they just keep the space between the shelves uniform. Those maps hate being in the same place as the other non fiction and always try to push the shelves apart. The books are all a dull green, faded from dust and time. They are larger than usual. Each one is about as wide as your palm and the same length as your arms. They are stuffed in very tightly, leaving not one inch of space. You wouldn't want to have the job of putting them into the shelves. You reach one end of the row. There's next to no room between the wall and the shelf, but you manage to squeeze through. The rows of shelves seem to go on forever in this direction. You use the next row to turn around and face the other way. The shelves end a few rows up, so you head that direction. You come out into a small space between a shelf and the grey stone wall. There's a door here you could try it but it's locked. Oh. There's also another small shelf here at the end of the row. You look at the small selection it has. Most are records of the books in this library. They include just a topic and a number. There are too many books to even list the names in this tiny shelf. Three books that are not records draw your attention. > You pick up the gigantic green and gold book You place your hands over the gigantic book. It has a smooth and soft cover. Hands on the sides of it you strain to lift the thing, but settle for sliding it out instead. You sit down by the door so you can place the thing on your lap You turn it around and lift the cover. Inside is written I can't understand this language "Sinful Lake" in large, golden letters on a black page. It's written in the formal language of birds that are red. You'd think that birds, even just red birds, would only need a single language to communicate, but you must admit, you like the formal language over the everyday filth they will typically squak in. It's a good thing both languages are part of their education system. You turn the page. There is a diagram of a regular looking oak tree in white and more golden writing. "Quercus miaxia, also known as the Sinful Oak, is a species of oak tree that exists solely in the region of Sinful Lake. It is the only thing that will grow anywhere within a mile of the stagnant, murky waters. They often grow much denser and taller than other oak trees, but besides that, their diet, and their peculiar taste in soil, they are nearly indistinguishable from Quercus prinus. The Sinful Line is the tree line beyond which they cannot survive. It creates a very noticable change between thick forestation and bare plains. Boring You flip ahead a few pages. However, there has been some controversy over their diet. They have been known to trap smaller prey with the use of a sap that first traps them and with an oxydizing process begins to digest in a very slow manner. The tree will then grow around the trapped prey, which is often still alive through most of the process. After the prey is absorbed the tree will shrink down around the space the prey has left, with only the bones of the prey remaining. Certain logs found with the bones of what is agreed to be a extinct canine species with a bone structure remarkably similar to humans in the center is the cause of some very unfortunate rumours for us who study these awe inspiring trees. These rumours that they can trap and eat humans are completely unfounded. The numerous expeditions that into the Sinful Lake region that have disappeared are agreed to have traveled through the Lake into a little known bed and breakfast that exists on the other side. Numerous letters and records are listed in volume 2 and 3 of this series to prove this. You flip back to the beginning. "Sinful Lake". Under that in very tiny letters it reads "A study by Quercus miaxia Bob". You pick up the book with some effort and make your way to row A139 to replace it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Oh my. Now that is a very good question. But here comes the Tailor." She turns around and curtsies towards the door. "What -" You stand there speechless. A man walks into the room and bows, a spotless fine black coat shimmering around his white furry torso, four furry little limbs poking out of the coat. They are end in three long, delicate fingers with little hairs at the base and bare human-like tips. His hairy legs have the same pattern, with his feet looking almost normal. Large wings are folded at his back, trailing on the floor. His large black eyes poke out from his white fur and his human jaw opens to speak in a slightly buzzing voice. "Hello, good lord. I am the tailor. I must say, your eyes are a wonderful colour. Such a light but intense brown. They will be a challenge to match correctly, but I will enjoy creating your outfits for you." "What..." You take a step back, bumping into a mannequin and accidently knocking it over. "You will have to work on your coordination if you plan to be part of The Court. Dancing is quite popular here. But even if you fall or some such thing, you will look wonderful. Still, that is not my job. Now come over here, I must measure you. Take a look around at the outfits. You may find one you like." Ophelia stares at you and gestures. You timidly take a few steps forward. The tailor places his finger tips on your arms, mummering to himself. "Don't you need measuring tape for this?" You ask. "Measuring tape? Bah, I am better then the tailors you have known. A true master can look at a man for a second and make him a god within minutes." "I've never known any tailors." "Well then trust me, I am the best. Now lift your arms please?" As he slides his hands around your arms and chest you look away, uncomfortable. > You look at Ophelia She's watching the Tailor as he measures your body. You look at her stunning eyes, bright but deep, as they follow the Tailor's hands. They are framed by thin eyebrows, bunched forward as if in intense thought. Her light cheekbones are high in her face and her cheeks thin. Her strong chin leads into weak jaw lines, disappearing in the thick black hair that caves over her thin shoulders and covers the neck of her grey dress. Her dress is long, covering everything from her wrists to her ankles, but tight around her torso, while loose at her legs. It's not meant to be a showy thing, but the way it fits against her skin reveals her beauty better than the poofy gold decorations that she carries under her right arm now. The Tailor starts feeling the width of your legs from the calves down and you resist the urge to squirm in... it's?... grasp. Ophelia looks back at you. > You smile You smile at her, not a large, joyful smile, but a small smile of thanks. You would have never thought you'd enjoy having a woman stare at your naked body in such a circumstance, but without her here you would probably freak out at the furry hands that are measuring your thighs and climbing higher. You take a deep breath. Just calm down.... The tailor reachs up to your hips and you let out a low squeak against your will. Ophelia laughs so quietly you almost doubt she did. But her smirk confirms your hearing. > You all Finished You relax as the Tailor stops his rubbing and moves back. "You are quite a splendid fit for many of my discarded outfits! Now wait here. I will bring some of them out for you to try on, and we'll see what you like and what looks best on you." You feel a little cold with your skin bare against the frigid air, and definitely a little awkward about standing naked in some castle's hallway. Ophelia asks you something, but you're deep in thought. "What?" "Before you ask me anything you should know that most of the inhabitants will tell the king if you insult him or his system in anyway. I can answer some of your questions later, once I show you to your quarters, but if you need to know anything right now, ask before the Tailor returns. I've never known him to be a 'loyal' subject, but considering self preservation... He enjoys his life here, unlike much of the other nobility. So do you have any questions about this place?" > The Tailor Before you have time to ask any questions the Tailor waddles back in, carrying all kinds of clothing of many materials and colours. "These are what you can wear for now, while I create your outfit. Please, sir, while I sort these take a look around. Find something you like. Samples are on the mannequins and the carpets. Changes can be made easily if you wish. Pick one thing please. After it is completed you will likely need to see the others, so a proper wardobe can wait until you return to pick up your clothing." You look around the room, noticing the colourful tapestries hanging from the walls and the ceiling. They are pictures of different outfits of many different styles. You recognize a few outfits from your brief dance, but the one you really see is hidden on the far left. It looks just like Zaren's black clothing. It's the only one with a person in the clothes. He's in it, posed elegantly in his black and gold coat. His arms are raised as if to hug you and his eyes smile and laugh as if at a joke, but the rest of his face shows nothing but disdain.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> She's watching the Tailor as he measures your body. You look at her stunning eyes, bright but deep, as they follow the Tailor's hands. They are framed by thin eyebrows, bunched forward as if in intense thought. Her light cheekbones are high in her face and her cheeks thin. Her strong chin leads into weak jaw lines, disappearing in the thick black hair that caves over her thin shoulders and covers the neck of her grey dress. Her dress is long, covering everything from her wrists to her ankles, but tight around her torso, while loose at her legs. It's not meant to be a showy thing, but the way it fits against her skin reveals her beauty better than the poofy gold decorations that she carries under her right arm now. The Tailor starts feeling the width of your legs from the calves down and you resist the urge to squirm in... it's?... grasp. Ophelia looks back at you. > You turn away You turn away. You're not exactly at your most confident while you're naked and some... moth thing is poking you all over. You can't build up the nerve to look at the Tailor either, so you just stare into space while he plies his trade. A slight buzzing comes from the Tailor's... lips? He turns his head and looks at you from different angles. "Hold your arm up. Yes. Please. Okay. Good... I think I have an idea now. Hmm. Something red would look wonderful on you... What do you think? What is your favourite colour? Style? We're in a lull in proper style currently." He speaks fast and leaves no space to answer his questions. "Good for creative expressions, it looks rather silly I think, but Zaren..." The Tailor's face falls. "Nevermind."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 378 of the Second Era You were really starting to get tired of the color green. The forests were green, the grass was green, even your damn Realm's emblem was green. It made already boring guard duty even worse. You would pace back and forth staring at the dreadfully large expanse of forest ahead of you, but nothing would ever happen. You might see the occasional kobold walk along the edge of the forest, but they never did anything. They just watched and waited. If you weren't on a fifty foot high wall you might actually be worried, but, as it happens, you were. There was no kobold in all of the Lost Realm that could scale these walls, and even if there was it, and its disgusting green skin would get peppered with arrows before it had the chance to. Yes, this was simply the easiest most boring place to guard in all of the Realm of Men. It was because of this fact that your lieutenant was thoroughly confused when you requested to be transferred here. You were his most reliable soldier, and you knew that. You used his fondness of you to get him to give you this transfer. He'd asked why, and you'd simply replied that you needed time to get over what happened to Liliana. Your wife. She was assumed dead by everyone. The night of your wedding you and her were cornered in an alley by thugs. You were beaten to a pulp, and she was taken, in more than one sense of the word, right before your eyes. Her parting words to you before you blacked out from the pain were, "I'm lost!" I'm lost. You take off your wedding ring and examine it. It's a beautiful piece. Solid gold encrusted with an emerald gem. It is the only green you find yourself being able to stand, and only then because it was from Liliana. Guard duty wasn't paying you enough for you to be able to get rings for the both of you, so instead you blew all of your money on her ring. That one was polished iron inlaid with golden patterns, and it wasn't much, but it represented more than money. Liliana accepted your proposal, and when she found out you hadn't gotten yourself a ring she gave you her mother's ring. It was a little too girly for you, but the smile on her face turned you into an emotional sob, so you accepted. She was taken that same night. Presumed dead, and with you chosen as her closest 'relative' it was up to you to bury her coffin. You did so quickly. Many people, including your lieutenant, suggested you take things slower, but you were adamant. You didn't tell them why you were in such a hurry, and even if you did, you doubt they would've believed you. You were the closest person to Liliana and consequently the only one whom she would trust with her secrets. I'm lost. Those words could only mean one thing. They were a confirmation to a question you asked her years ago, when the two of you first met... > You memory: Meeting Liliana Year 366 of the Second Era At the age of ten, you were average. Your height, weight, disposition, and, well, pretty much everything about you was average. Never the last one chosen for capture the emblem, but never the first one either. Your life then was a monotonous slog: Go to your rundown academy, try to do well in your academic work, fail, and return home only to have your drunkard of a father beat you. You didn't realize how miserable your life was until the fateful day when Liliana joined your class at school. Like the rest of the girls in the class, she wore a dress. Unlike the rest of the girls in the class, her dress was obviously of fine make. The embroidery on her dress had no faults. No drops of blood from clumsy mothers who pricked themselves on their needle. No lazy patches sewn in to cover up holes. No, her dress was flawless. Her hair was onyx black, and fell down in waves around her face. Her glittering blue eyes were filled with anticipation, and maybe a little fear. She clearly wasn't used to being in these kinds of situations, and she kept glancing around as if someone else was going to introduce her to the other classmates. Your teacher, a hag of a woman, prompted her to introduce herself. "Go ahead and introduce yourself to the class, dear." She widened her eyes in surprise, but followed the teacher's command. "My name is Liliana, I'm ten years of age, and..," she looked to the teacher for instruction. She had an accent, and one that you'd never heard before at that. Not northern, or even like those from the eastern realm. No, this was decidedly different from any other accent you'd heard before. "Go on," the teacher prompted again. "I don't know what else to say," Liliana responded. The teacher frowned disappointedly. "Surely you have more things to tell us about yourself than your name?" When Liliana didn't respond, the teacher spoke again. "Where are you from? Or, what do you like to do in your spare time? Tell us things like that." Liliana hesitated once more. "Come now. We don't judge people here," the hag patted her comfortingly on the shoulder, but failed to notice the snickering in the back. Liliana, it seemed, found her words comforting, and finally started to open up. "I was born in Arboribus. My father is the king there, and it's an amazing place. There are trees larger than castles there! Oh, and I like to go stag riding with my father if he has the ti-" The teacher interrupted. "Excuse me. Where?" The teacher sounded somewhat confused, but definitely disappointed. The snickering in the back increased, but Liliana still hadn't noticed. "Arboribus," she said this clearly, and with an expression of incredulity fixed upon her face. The teacher simply stared at her blankly, until Liliana continued. "You know, in The Lost Realm..." The boys in the back, try as they might, couldn't contain themselves any longer. They busted out into raucous laughter that spread to the rest of the students that were typically thought of as nice. Everyone gave into the laughter, and even the teacher hag was chuckling. You were on the edge of laughter as well, but something kept you there. Stories of The Lost Realm, and rumors of a ancient city of humans therein. Your mother, before she died of disease, would tell you fairy tales of the ancient land, and how it used to be as prosperous as the Realm of Men is now. You'd always harbored the secret thought, hope, that the stories were true, and here was a person who claimed to hail from that very place. This, and the expression on Liliana's face, caused you to hesitate. Her expression was that of someone hurt , and a genuine expression at that. You held the laughter off, and waited for everyone else to do the same. They eventually quieted down, but only after tears started streaming down Liliana's face. Silence took the place of laughter, and all joy was replaced with the sad sound of sobbing. The old hag had the decency to attempt to comfort her by giving her a hug, but Liliana jerked away. Apparently she didn't like the idea of hugging the old hag. Especially since she'd promised no ridicule would come, but then turned around and gloried in it herself. "It's true!" Liliana yelled after she managed to control her sobbing. "I'm not a liar! And, and ,and..." She starts crying again, but instead of staying in the classroom for everyone to see, she ran through the door and out of the classroom. The silence continued for a moment longer, before you made your first life changing decision. You got up from your designated chair and followed after Liliana. You were no expert at dealing with girls. Let alone crying ones, and you weren't the most... > You ...charismatic... Year 366 of the Second Era ...charismatic of people, but you were smart enough to know that, when crying, a girl needs a comforting shoulder. Not a questioning voice. You follow the sound of sobbing through the worn wooden hallways of the school, and outside, until you find the source of the crying. Liliana sits on the steps to the main door of the school. Her well crafted dress is ruffled in places and her body constantly shifts under the pressure of her tears. Her hair comes down in waves around her head, effectively cutting off any view of her face. She doesn't notice you there at first, but when the main door closes behind you she jumps and turns towards you. Tears and snot cover her face with her eyes both sad and angry at the same time, and for a moment you find yourself regretting coming here. That moment passes, and the impulse you followed earlier propels you toward her. "Are you going to laugh at me again?" Her voice reflects what she is feeling. Sadness, despair, anger, and, you think, a bit of hope color her voice. You decide to concentrate on her hopefulness. "I didn't laugh." "Everyone laughed. I saw." Clearly she hadn't been paying attention to you when in the classroom. "Not me." You sit down on the same step as her, and she glares at you. Silence ensues, and you turn away and gaze out in front of you. You want to ask her about the Realm of the Lost, but the question dies in your throat. Wouldn't it be at least a little insensitive to ask her prying questions now? Your question is answered when you hear her start to sob again. This time it's less intense, but it's still crying all the same. Maybe it's the memory of her excited face when she was in front of the classroom, or maybe you just didn't like the sound of crying. Whatever the reason, you decide to wrap your arm around her shoulders in a half hug. Liliana turns to stone beneath your touch, and you think she'll pull away, but she doesn't. She stays still, but continues her crying. You feel absurdly awkward in this position, but she doesn't seem to mind. She even leans into your hug after a while. In between holding her and listening to her crying, you find yourself staring at her wondering how in all the realms this girl was from the Lost Realm. You might be tainted by the knowledge of fairytales, but you were still aware that the Lost Realm was crawling with kobold and others of that ilk. It was a very dangerous place. At the end of the first era was when the Lost Realm was supposedly at the height of its power, but that ended when a dragon led a massive host of kobold and wyverns and sacked the entirety of the realm. Well, that's how the stories went. So how then, could a delicate being such as this come from such a dangerous place? Then a brilliant idea came over you. There was a story your mother once told you. One about the faerie, a race of beings native to the Lost Realm. When they were in the Lost Realm they were humanoid creatures of a similar height humans, but with pointed ears and a slender build. In the story, a faerie wandered over the border of the Realm of Men and the Realm of the Lost, (Before the border walls were constructed) but the faerie were tied to their own realm. Whenever they left, they became as humans. This particular faerie panicked when they realized they left their home for another realm, and immediately tried to go back, but every time he tried to re-enter his homeland, he would get lost, turned around. He could never find his way back. Once the faerie willingly left the Realm of the Lost, they weren't allowed back. He was left in the Realm of Men to fend for himself, but he desired that no their faerie would feel like he did. Alone, confused and afraid. So the faerie came up with a code. If he thought there was another faerie, he would ask them a simple question. You ask that question now. "Are you lost?" Liliana immediately pulls from you and stares at you in disbelief. She suddenly wipes all of the tears from her face with her sleeve before asking you a question. "Will you help me fit in here?" Kinda shocked that your plan worked you only nod in response. A hint of a smile breaches her face. "What's your name?" You briefly wonder what you've gotten yourself into, but you answer regardless. "My name is..." > You end of Memory Year 378 of the Second Era You pull yourself from the memory. That was happening way too often since Liliana was captured. And she was captured. There was no doubt in your mind about that. Captured by people who obviously knew what they were doing. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to make it through the forests of the Lost Realm without being captured, killed, or raped by horny kobold. That means there's a way to make it through that forest. You just have to find it. That was the reason you spent your time here on the wall watching, waiting, planning your route through that kobold infested place. Of course you could just leave on your own and hope for the best, but th- Your thoughts are interrupted when the roar of some beast sounds throughout the air. You jerk your head immediately towards the sound. It came from somewhere over the tops of the trees, and still must've been miles out. Every guard on the wall peels their eyes to the forest, and it isn't long before one of your fellow guardsmen spots something. "There! Above the forest!" The guard sounds quite panicked. You look where he indicated and spot several grey blots in the distance. They look like birds at first, but as they get closer you can tell they're much larger and have several more rows of teeth than a bird. "Wyverns." The guard right beside you breathes out. You turn back to look at the beasts. They're still a few miles out, but you can hear the beat of their leathery wings drawing closer every second. The guards in your platoon stand on the wall in stunned silence. Nothing happens here, ever. Why now of all times? Your lieutenant, an older fellow named Byron, calls everyone to order. "This is what we're here for men! This is why..." Byron's voice fades into the depths of your mind. It is replaced by a different voice. One that's mocking, provoking. The memory of your first fight calls back to you. > You remember Year 368 of the Second Era "Are you listening bitch?" A hand is shoved into your back and you're sent tumbling to the ground. Grass presses against your face, and you even feel some dirt in your mouth. That was fine. You didn't care very much. These guys could push you around all they wanted. They'd never be able to beat you as bad as your father did. "Stop it, Daniel!" Liliana's voice sounds from behind you. Apparently she didn't like Daniel pushing you. You slowly pick yourself up and off of the ground as Daniel replies. "What? You didn't like me pushing your bitch around?" That remark is followed by some laughter. "He hasn't done anything to you." Liliana replies readily. "Leave and go hit your mom if you're looking for a bitch to hit. Don't touch him." There's a moment of silence before you hear a smack. That sound reverberates around the academy yard, and for a moment you think Liliana finally slapped the guy like she said she'd been wanting to do, but when you turn around you find it's the complete opposite. Liliana is on the grass now, clutching her face. You see tears start to come to her eyes, but she doesn't sob. Not anymore. You've never been the most violent person. Your mother instilled that into you, so you let others push you around. You didn't give a damn either way, but when you see Liliana on the ground you don't hesitate. You lunge forward and shove Daniel hard in the chest, and you do it hard enough to send him flying to the ground as well, but unlike you and Liliana he gets back up to his feet quickly. His reaction is also quick. He immediately rushes toward you and raises his fist back. You can tell a punch is coming. You've grown in the past couple years, and are easily one of the tallest guys in class. Aside from Daniel, that is. You might not be taller than Daniel, but you'd bet your mother's corpse (Muse bless her soul) that you can take more hits than he can. That being said, you don't particularly fancy getting punched if you can avoid it. > You let him hit you Year 368 of the Second Era Despite what others think of him, Daniel is weak. And you're going to prove just that. His punch comes directly into your right cheek. It has a hell of a lot of power. Certainly more than you anticipated, but you don't allow yourself to stumble. Your head snaps back as it hits, and there's a lot of pain, but you ignore it. Instead you revel in the shock displayed upon Daniel's face. He's thoroughly surprised, and you doubt someone has ever lasted past the first punch against him. Let alone be barely affected by it. You look him dead in the eyes and smile just before returning his punch with one of your own. He doesn't get away in time, and is hammered by your punch. He stumbles backward, and you take a step forward and shove him to the ground once more. There's no time for him to react as you pounce on top of him and lay punch after punch into his face. His 'friends' don't rise to stop you, and the courtyard is silent save for the sound of your fist pounding his face. After several more punches you feel a hand on your shoulder. You nearly jerk away from it, but, despite your frenzied mind, you are able to recognize that it is a distinctly feminine hand. Liliana, you think and stop punching. Daniel doesn't stop his groaning as you rise to your feet to face her. There's less baby fat on her face now than when you first saw her, and is beginning to be quite the knockout. Her eyes are still slightly red and the right side of her face is still red, but she isn't crying any more. "Enough," she whispers to you. You only nod in response. You start to walk away from the scene when you realize that you'd gathered quite the crowd. You think about saying something, but instead you reach for Liliana's hand and glare at everyone in the crowd. Your look says it all. You leave the scene with Liliana in tow. > You return from the memory Year 378 of the Second Era The memory fades away, and Byron's voice returns. "I need one person to light the signal light over by the watchtower. Everyone in division two stay here and support us with arrows. Everyone in division one follow me!" The wyverns are still racing to the wall, and a fight seems inevitable. Byron leads the way as he and division one head down to the ground to support the rest of the group. Everyone else stays and prepares their bows. You were assigned to division two upon your transfer here, and so your orders are abundantly clear. > You stay with division two Year 378 of the Second Era The signal fire will get lit by someone else, so you don't need to worry about that. After that your decision becomes even easier. You aren't a fool. Leaving the safety of the wall when it's under attack, and of your own volition at that, would be utter foolishness. You stay right where you are and string your bow with the rest of division two. The distinctive sounds of the wyverns approaching doesn't change, but as you wait for them to draw near, you hear another set of noises. Several sets of hooves pound against the ground just beyond the edge of the forest, and before too long you see the culprits of the noise bursting through the edge of the wood. Five horses, mounted by at least one person apiece, ride from out of the forest. They ride at a very fast speed, and the horses themselves seem to be running more from fear rather than their rider's instructions. A few moments after they come out of the woods almost twenty giant lizards come out of the forest. The beasts are generally green, but many, if not, all, have blue or purple scales scattered across their hide. Three kobold ride atop each of the lizards. If your division wasn't silent before, then they certainly are now. The math is easy. There are around sixty kobold, and that is discounting the wyverns and their riders still on their way. You briefly wonder what in the four realms this group of less than ten individuals did to anger this many kobold, but the thought is dashed from your mind as the kobold come into range. You aren't the best shot out there, but you are far from the worst, and today is a good day for you. Nearly every one of your arrows finds its mark, and many an enemy dies at your hand. You continue this up until the very moment division one clashes with the kobold host. After that you slow down, and pick your shots. You don't want to accidentally hit a fellow guard after all. You're so focused on the battle below you that you nearly miss it when the wyverns make their first approach. The beasts, although much larger than the giant lizards, only carry two kobold apiece. The wyverns themselves are a leathery grey color with razor sharp teeth, and hind legs that could tear guards apart. there are only five, but you have trouble thinking about how you and division two are supposed to bring down one of these monstrosities. Let alone five. The fear in division two is palpable as you and your fellow guardsmen switch your attention from the kobold below to the wyverns above. Almost as if they could sense the fear in your comrades, three of the wyverns barrel past the battle below and head straight towards the portion of the wall your division is centered on. Specifically, and unluckily so, one of the wyverns seem to be coming straight toward you. You find yourself in the midst of a decision that could cost you your life, and you only have a second to act. > You dodge to the side Year 378 of the Second Era You act on impulse and throw yourself to the side as the wyvern makes its pass, but you don't throw yourself nearly far enough away to avoid its claws. While it doesn't manage to grab you and fling you off the wall, its claws do manage to carve your stomach to pieces. If that wasn't enough, the sheer momentum of the beast flying at you at breakneck speed and hitting you is enough to send you flying off the wall. Your body can't even keep itself together as you plummet to your death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 378 of the Second Era The signal fire will get lit by someone else, so you don't need to worry about that. After that your decision becomes even easier. You aren't a fool. Leaving the safety of the wall when it's under attack, and of your own volition at that, would be utter foolishness. You stay right where you are and string your bow with the rest of division two. The distinctive sounds of the wyverns approaching doesn't change, but as you wait for them to draw near, you hear another set of noises. Several sets of hooves pound against the ground just beyond the edge of the forest, and before too long you see the culprits of the noise bursting through the edge of the wood. Five horses, mounted by at least one person apiece, ride from out of the forest. They ride at a very fast speed, and the horses themselves seem to be running more from fear rather than their rider's instructions. A few moments after they come out of the woods almost twenty giant lizards come out of the forest. The beasts are generally green, but many, if not, all, have blue or purple scales scattered across their hide. Three kobold ride atop each of the lizards. If your division wasn't silent before, then they certainly are now. The math is easy. There are around sixty kobold, and that is discounting the wyverns and their riders still on their way. You briefly wonder what in the four realms this group of less than ten individuals did to anger this many kobold, but the thought is dashed from your mind as the kobold come into range. You aren't the best shot out there, but you are far from the worst, and today is a good day for you. Nearly every one of your arrows finds its mark, and many an enemy dies at your hand. You continue this up until the very moment division one clashes with the kobold host. After that you slow down, and pick your shots. You don't want to accidentally hit a fellow guard after all. You're so focused on the battle below you that you nearly miss it when the wyverns make their first approach. The beasts, although much larger than the giant lizards, only carry two kobold apiece. The wyverns themselves are a leathery grey color with razor sharp teeth, and hind legs that could tear guards apart. there are only five, but you have trouble thinking about how you and division two are supposed to bring down one of these monstrosities. Let alone five. The fear in division two is palpable as you and your fellow guardsmen switch your attention from the kobold below to the wyverns above. Almost as if they could sense the fear in your comrades, three of the wyverns barrel past the battle below and head straight towards the portion of the wall your division is centered on. Specifically, and unluckily so, one of the wyverns seem to be coming straight toward you. You find yourself in the midst of a decision that could cost you your life, and you only have a second to act. > You duck behind the ramparts Year 378 of the Second Era You know you won't have enough time to get entirely out of the range of the wyvern's claws. It's better to duck and hope for the best than to definitely die. You follow this thought and duck behind the ramparts. The wyvern makes its pass, and perhaps from sheer luck, you pass between its hind legs. Stones from the ramparts on either side of you crumble and fall away, but you remain fairly unscathed. You thought you were going to die for sure, and, after finding out you managed to scrape by, you stand up in a fit of pure relief. You celebrate too early, however, for a kobold archer from the battle below takes the opportunity and releases an arrow at you. The arrow pierces through your jugular, and you bleed out in mere moments.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 378 of the Second Era The memory fades away, and Byron's voice returns. "I need one person to light the signal light over by the watchtower. Everyone in division two stay here and support us with arrows. Everyone in division one follow me!" The wyverns are still racing to the wall, and a fight seems inevitable. Byron leads the way as he and division one head down to the ground to support the rest of the group. Everyone else stays and prepares their bows. You were assigned to division two upon your transfer here, and so your orders are abundantly clear. > You go light the signal fire Year 378 of the Second Era When you first transferred here, Byron was telling you about all of the duties that you might have here as a wall guard. One of these duties, should the need arise, was to light the signal fire. Byron didn't expound upon the why, and said only that it was an important duty. You didn't find out until later that this was the signal fire for the Griffin Knights. The Griffin Knights, or at least the patrol of them that stood at the ready in case the walls were attacked. You assume most guards forget this fact. Otherwise they'd simply be fools. Griffin knights were among the best warriors in all of the Realm of Men, and that was when they weren't atop their chosen steed. With their griffins these knights surpassed all other units in their usefulness in battle. That was the way to win this battle. Not through grit, and a hell of a lot of grit. No, in order to win, to live to see Liliana again, the Griffin Knights needed to be here. The wyverns would tear apart everyone otherwise. You run along the ramparts to the signal fire. It's quite the distance from where the battle is taking place, and you start to hear the sound of swords clashing and wyverns roaring as you make your way. Upon arriving, you find straw and oil ready to be used in case of an emergency. You waste no time in starting the fire. Before long you tend the fire to maximum intensity, or at least as intense as you can get it on such short notice. Having finished your job, you gaze back in the direction of the battle. Five wyverns patrol the skies with each occasionally taking dives at the top of the wall where division two was stationed. You feel a pang of guilt that you should've stayed there to help, but you dismiss it. If the Griffin Knights come to support you in the battle, then your efforts will have been well worth it. That being said, there isn't much of an excuse for you now. > You return to the battle Year 378 of the Second Era You start a light jog to the wyvern infested ramparts, but you stop before you get there and string your bow. What is the point in throwing yourself into the middle of danger for nothing? Chances are that you would die a gruesome death for no reason other than your eagerness for battle. An inexperienced fool's death. With your bow stringed and the wyverns attention away from you, you start taking shots at the beasts. You aim your first few shots at the wyverns themselves, but when they bounce harmlessly off of their scaly hides, you shift your focus. There are two kobold atop each of the five wyverns present, and while they are certainly dwarfed by the sheer size of the wyverns they are riding, you don't let that distract you. Each of the kobold atop the wyvern has a critical purpose. The one in the front is to steer and control the mount while the one in the back holds a bow in its hands. It's job is to fire at anyone attempting to kill the former type of kobold. Such as you. The wyvern you'd been concentrating on turns its attention toward you, as does the kobold archer atop it, but it never gets a chance to loose its arrow at you. Instead your own arrow pierces its chest sending it tumbling from its mount and into the open air. Unfortunately, the other kobold still sits atop the wyvern, and after your display of accuracy, you've become a prime target. That wyvern and its rider come flying toward you, which is bad, but away from the battle, which is good. You take the last opportunity you'll get and loose one more arrow at the other kobold. Your aim is off on this, so your arrow only ends up bouncing off of the wyvern's body. You start to draw another arrow, but as you do, the wyvern takes on a burst of speed and is on you before you know it. Your life flashes before your eyes, and an image of Liliana's beautiful face plants itself at the forefront of your mind. You simply don't have enough time to react to the wyvern's speed, and you just close your eyes in acceptance. Then you feel a large claw grab your waist. Its touch is surprising gentle. Nothing of what you would expect of a wyvern, and you keep waiting for it to hurl you from its grip, but that doesn't happen. Hesitantly, you open your eyes to find yourself suspended in the air, and not in the grasp of a wyvern. Rather, you find yourself in the grip of a griffin. The relief you feel is instantaneous, but that is quickly replaced by terror. You quickly reach your hands and grip onto the cold claws of the griffin. You take stock of the situation. Including the griffin carrying you, there are at least seven Griffin Knights combating the wyverns in the air. It's an amazing scene, and your breath catches. Griffins are much smaller than the wyverns, but this makes them significantly faster, so the wyverns seeme clumsy by comparison. The griffin knights themselves wear gleaming silver armor and cast a perfect picture of the word 'knight.' On the ground, the fight continues. The kobold outnumber division one, by nearly two to one, and that is discounting the giant lizards they brought with them to the battle. You start wondering why so many kobold came to mount an attack on the wall, but are soon distracted from that with what happens next. You feel a sudden change in direction as the griffin carrying you heads back to the walls. You realize that it, and the rider, must want to drop you back off at the wall before returning to the melee. You are quite okay with this, but then a scene just below you unfolds in the span of a moment. A wyvern, with just the rider left to guide it, chases a griffin just below you. For that moment it seems the entire world slows down in order for you to see and understand what's happening. The wyvern is gaining, and it opens its mouth in anticipation for the coming chomp on the griffin's lower half. It isn't some beast's wild hope that it'll manage to bite the griffin either. No, you can very clearly see that this wyvern will be able to catch the griffin. Thus leading to both the griffin's and its rider's death. In this same moment, an utterly absurd idea crosses your mind. The griffin holding you wasn't trying to keep you prisoner. It was merely keeping you from falling, and you think you could pry yourself open from its grip if you really tried. If you did, then you should land just as the wyvern's saddle passes beneath you. Your weight might even be enough to cause the wyvern to lose the edge its gained on the griffin. You left your bow back on the ramparts when the griffin saved you from the wyvern, but you do still have your standard short sword strapped to your waist. If you did go through with such a ridiculous plan, you could maybe even take out the rider and wyvern. Maybe. > You follow that plan Year 378 of the Second Era This won't be the first time you've done something crazy, though it is likely the one with the most at stake. You pry yourself from the claws of the griffin and fall into the open air. Your plan... > You fails! Year 378 of the Second Era Your timing was horribly off. You jump much too early and find yourself face to face with the open mouth of a wyvern. It must think you're the griffin, for as soon as you even near its mouth it snaps its mouth shut on top of you. Your midsection is torn to pieces, and you die instantly. At least you can die well knowing that you saved that Griffin Knight.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 378 of the Second Era You start a light jog to the wyvern infested ramparts, but you stop before you get there and string your bow. What is the point in throwing yourself into the middle of danger for nothing? Chances are that you would die a gruesome death for no reason other than your eagerness for battle. An inexperienced fool's death. With your bow stringed and the wyverns attention away from you, you start taking shots at the beasts. You aim your first few shots at the wyverns themselves, but when they bounce harmlessly off of their scaly hides, you shift your focus. There are two kobold atop each of the five wyverns present, and while they are certainly dwarfed by the sheer size of the wyverns they are riding, you don't let that distract you. Each of the kobold atop the wyvern has a critical purpose. The one in the front is to steer and control the mount while the one in the back holds a bow in its hands. It's job is to fire at anyone attempting to kill the former type of kobold. Such as you. The wyvern you'd been concentrating on turns its attention toward you, as does the kobold archer atop it, but it never gets a chance to loose its arrow at you. Instead your own arrow pierces its chest sending it tumbling from its mount and into the open air. Unfortunately, the other kobold still sits atop the wyvern, and after your display of accuracy, you've become a prime target. That wyvern and its rider come flying toward you, which is bad, but away from the battle, which is good. You take the last opportunity you'll get and loose one more arrow at the other kobold. Your aim is off on this, so your arrow only ends up bouncing off of the wyvern's body. You start to draw another arrow, but as you do, the wyvern takes on a burst of speed and is on you before you know it. Your life flashes before your eyes, and an image of Liliana's beautiful face plants itself at the forefront of your mind. You simply don't have enough time to react to the wyvern's speed, and you just close your eyes in acceptance. Then you feel a large claw grab your waist. Its touch is surprising gentle. Nothing of what you would expect of a wyvern, and you keep waiting for it to hurl you from its grip, but that doesn't happen. Hesitantly, you open your eyes to find yourself suspended in the air, and not in the grasp of a wyvern. Rather, you find yourself in the grip of a griffin. The relief you feel is instantaneous, but that is quickly replaced by terror. You quickly reach your hands and grip onto the cold claws of the griffin. You take stock of the situation. Including the griffin carrying you, there are at least seven Griffin Knights combating the wyverns in the air. It's an amazing scene, and your breath catches. Griffins are much smaller than the wyverns, but this makes them significantly faster, so the wyverns seeme clumsy by comparison. The griffin knights themselves wear gleaming silver armor and cast a perfect picture of the word 'knight.' On the ground, the fight continues. The kobold outnumber division one, by nearly two to one, and that is discounting the giant lizards they brought with them to the battle. You start wondering why so many kobold came to mount an attack on the wall, but are soon distracted from that with what happens next. You feel a sudden change in direction as the griffin carrying you heads back to the walls. You realize that it, and the rider, must want to drop you back off at the wall before returning to the melee. You are quite okay with this, but then a scene just below you unfolds in the span of a moment. A wyvern, with just the rider left to guide it, chases a griffin just below you. For that moment it seems the entire world slows down in order for you to see and understand what's happening. The wyvern is gaining, and it opens its mouth in anticipation for the coming chomp on the griffin's lower half. It isn't some beast's wild hope that it'll manage to bite the griffin either. No, you can very clearly see that this wyvern will be able to catch the griffin. Thus leading to both the griffin's and its rider's death. In this same moment, an utterly absurd idea crosses your mind. The griffin holding you wasn't trying to keep you prisoner. It was merely keeping you from falling, and you think you could pry yourself open from its grip if you really tried. If you did, then you should land just as the wyvern's saddle passes beneath you. Your weight might even be enough to cause the wyvern to lose the edge its gained on the griffin. You left your bow back on the ramparts when the griffin saved you from the wyvern, but you do still have your standard short sword strapped to your waist. If you did go through with such a ridiculous plan, you could maybe even take out the rider and wyvern. Maybe. > You let yourself be brought back to the ramparts Year 378 of the Second Era Sure you've done crazy things in the past, but this is no time to try and accomplish the utterly insane. Especially when the chances of success are so very low. Better to live and keep your chance of saving Liliana alive rather than to throw it away on the unlikely chance that you'll be able to save some random nobody. Despite this fact, you still wince when you see the wyvern's mouth snap down on the griffins hindquarters. The scene turns into a bloody mess, and you can't help but look away as the griffin (or at least what's left of it) and its rider plummet down to the battle below. You feel a pang of guilt, but you push it away by telling yourself you couldn't have done anything anyway. Yet, somewhere in the back of your mind, you don't believe this. Not too long after that you are dropped off on the ramparts you were originally guarding. Much is different. Several chunks of the wall are missing, and many soldiers lie dead on the ramparts. The wall you once guarded no longer carries that symbol of boredom and ease in your mind. It is readily replaced with the memory of blood spilt, and comrades dying. Over half of division two is either dead or incapacitated. Division on was doing better, but the griffin that was killed only moments before plummeted right into their line. That turned out to be the turning point in the kobold's favor, and now division one is slowly being pushed back against the wall. The griffins are locked in a very deadly battle with the rest of the wyverns, and don't seem at all in a position to help the human forces on the ground. You aren't sure what you could do to help in this situation, for it looks like your defeat is inevitable. The griffins won't be able to kill the wyverns fast enough to help division one avoid getting slaughtered, which division one is mere minutes away from. This leaves you with a few honorable choices and one dishonorable choice. > You join division one on the ground Year 378 of the Second Era You're no griffin knight. You can't contend with wyverns on an equal level, and firing a few arrows won't make any difference in the fight on the ground. No, if you're going to win this fight, then you need to go right into the thick of it. If you can manage to help division stay alive for even five minutes longer, then the chances of the griffin knights helping out are significantly higher. You still have your sword strapped to your waist, and you don't usually carry a shield on you for guard duty, so you pick one up from the dead and strap it to your back. Following this you jog to the closest tower and go down the stairwell. Inside the tower it is eerily quiet compared to the roars and clangs of battle outside, and the sound of your steel boots hitting the stone stairs reverberates throughout. Moments later, you come to the bottom of the stairs. A large iron gate-like door greets you. It is quite the durable piece, and nothing less than a battering ram would be able to break through it. Or perhaps a wyvern flying at breakneck speed... You push that foreboding thought from your head and walk through the iron doors. What greets you outside is a scene of bloodshed and death. Division one has been pushed back nearly all the way to the walls, but their line still holds. Currently the division is organized in a semi-circle formation with the flat of the circle pressed against the wall. Everywhere else is a place for fighting, and nearly every soldier fights for their lives. There is one soldier, however, that does not fight, You see him sitting against the wall with the shaft of a crude arrow of kobold make protruding from his stomach. It's Byron, and it looks like he's lost a lot of blood. Almost instinctively, you approach him. As you near, a spurt of blood comes out of his mouth and splatter against your chest-piece. "Lieutenant Byron?" You ask this fairly loudly, but he doesn't respond, so you repeat it. "Lieutenant Byron?" This time he turns his pain and regret filled eyes toward you. He focuses on you and reaches his arm up and grips your forearm in his. A sign of comradery and trust. "I know not who you are, nor from where you came, but I need you now soldier. We are losing. My men die at every turn, and the kobold do not let up. Even still, there is hope. If we can keep the line, then they," he looks up to the sky, "will save us." He coughs up some more blood, but his grip on your arm stays strong. "Your name escapes me soldier, and I feel bad for laying this burden upon you, but someone must keep these soldier together. Will you do this for me brother? See to it that some of these men survive this battle." With this last request his grip loosens and falls limp at his side. His breaths cease, and you're left in the presence of a dead man. Numbly, you stand back up and gaze at the fight. You knew you needed to help in this battle in the first place, but speaking with Byron has strengthened your resolve. The only thing left to decide is where you will help. > You help the left flank Year 378 of the Second Era You aren't Byron. You won't be able to lead these men better than him, or lead them at all. You're just another soldier, so what does it matter where you go? So you head to the flank closest to you. The left one. The fighting over here doesn't seem nearly as intense as the fighting near the middle. You pull out your sword and shield, and immediately get to work. Most of the people fighting are beginning to get tired, so the addition of a fresh, well equipped soldier vastly improves the line. So much, in fact, that it seems that the entirety of the left flank almost molds around your fighting. Which strikes you as odd, because of the way you're fighting. You don't rush in and throw yourself at the enemy in a fit of battlefield rage, or anything of that sort. No, you're calm in the heat of battle. You have a focused determination, and because of this you don't make any brash moves. Your goal is to stay alive while keeping everyone else alive as well. Defense is the best offense, and it happens to make the fight last a hell of a lot longer. Maybe this will buy enough time for the griffin knights to take care of the wyverns. With this thought in mind, you fight. Not for glory, nor for yourself. You fight for Liliana, and the chance to see her alive and well again. "Retreat!" The sound of a despairing voice breaks you out of your focus, and a kobold nearly guts you because of it, but you quickly block the flimsy attack and return it with one of your own. It dies before you, and you have a sacred moment of rest before another kobold comes to fill its spot in the line. It gives you time to think about what the guy meant by retreating. Your line was doing so well, and retreating now would be suicide. The kobold would have a field day with chasing down and killing everyone on the ground. It was a cowardly, foolish mistake. Hopefully no one would listen to the fool's order, but, to your chagrin, they do. Soldiers from your left and right start disappearing, and, soon enough, there is no longer even the semblance of a line. You're quickly surrounded by kobold, and while you make a valiant effort to stay alive, it isn't enough.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 378 of the Second Era You're no griffin knight. You can't contend with wyverns on an equal level, and firing a few arrows won't make any difference in the fight on the ground. No, if you're going to win this fight, then you need to go right into the thick of it. If you can manage to help division stay alive for even five minutes longer, then the chances of the griffin knights helping out are significantly higher. You still have your sword strapped to your waist, and you don't usually carry a shield on you for guard duty, so you pick one up from the dead and strap it to your back. Following this you jog to the closest tower and go down the stairwell. Inside the tower it is eerily quiet compared to the roars and clangs of battle outside, and the sound of your steel boots hitting the stone stairs reverberates throughout. Moments later, you come to the bottom of the stairs. A large iron gate-like door greets you. It is quite the durable piece, and nothing less than a battering ram would be able to break through it. Or perhaps a wyvern flying at breakneck speed... You push that foreboding thought from your head and walk through the iron doors. What greets you outside is a scene of bloodshed and death. Division one has been pushed back nearly all the way to the walls, but their line still holds. Currently the division is organized in a semi-circle formation with the flat of the circle pressed against the wall. Everywhere else is a place for fighting, and nearly every soldier fights for their lives. There is one soldier, however, that does not fight, You see him sitting against the wall with the shaft of a crude arrow of kobold make protruding from his stomach. It's Byron, and it looks like he's lost a lot of blood. Almost instinctively, you approach him. As you near, a spurt of blood comes out of his mouth and splatter against your chest-piece. "Lieutenant Byron?" You ask this fairly loudly, but he doesn't respond, so you repeat it. "Lieutenant Byron?" This time he turns his pain and regret filled eyes toward you. He focuses on you and reaches his arm up and grips your forearm in his. A sign of comradery and trust. "I know not who you are, nor from where you came, but I need you now soldier. We are losing. My men die at every turn, and the kobold do not let up. Even still, there is hope. If we can keep the line, then they," he looks up to the sky, "will save us." He coughs up some more blood, but his grip on your arm stays strong. "Your name escapes me soldier, and I feel bad for laying this burden upon you, but someone must keep these soldier together. Will you do this for me brother? See to it that some of these men survive this battle." With this last request his grip loosens and falls limp at his side. His breaths cease, and you're left in the presence of a dead man. Numbly, you stand back up and gaze at the fight. You knew you needed to help in this battle in the first place, but speaking with Byron has strengthened your resolve. The only thing left to decide is where you will help. > You help the right flank Year 378 of the Second Era You aren't Byron. You won't be able to lead these men better than him, or lead them at all. You're just another soldier, but you do think it matters where you go. You happen to be right handed, so you'll likely fight better in the right flank. With this hope in mind, you go over to your destination. The fighting over here doesn't seem nearly as intense as the fighting near the center. You pull out your sword and shield, and immediately get to work. Most of the people fighting are beginning to get tired, so the addition of a fresh, well equipped soldier vastly improves the line. So much, in fact, that it seems that the entirety of the right flank almost molds around your fighting. Which strikes you as odd specifically because of the way you're fighting. You don't rush in and throw yourself at the enemy in a fit of battlefield rage, or anything of that sort. No, you're calm in the heat of battle. You have a focused determination, and because of this you don't make any brash moves. Your goal is to stay alive while keeping everyone else alive as well. Defense is the best offense, and it happens to make the fight last a hell of a lot longer. Maybe this will buy enough time for the griffin knights to take care of the wyverns. With this thought in mind, you fight. Not for glory, nor for yourself. You fight for Liliana, and the chance to see her alive and well again. "Retreat!" The sound of a despairing voice breaks you out of your focus, and a kobold nearly guts you because of it, but you quickly block the flimsy attack and return it with one of your own. It dies before you, and you have a sacred moment of rest before another kobold comes to fill its spot in the line. It gives you time to think about what the guy meant by retreating. Your line was doing so well, and retreating now would be suicide. The kobold would have a field day with chasing down and killing everyone on the ground. It was a cowardly, foolish mistake. Hopefully no one would listen to the fool's order, but, to your chagrin, they do. Soldiers from your left and right start disappearing, and, soon enough, there is no longer even the semblance of a line. You're quickly surrounded by kobold, and while you make a valiant effort to stay alive, it isn't enough.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 378 of the Second Era Sure you've done crazy things in the past, but this is no time to try and accomplish the utterly insane. Especially when the chances of success are so very low. Better to live and keep your chance of saving Liliana alive rather than to throw it away on the unlikely chance that you'll be able to save some random nobody. Despite this fact, you still wince when you see the wyvern's mouth snap down on the griffins hindquarters. The scene turns into a bloody mess, and you can't help but look away as the griffin (or at least what's left of it) and its rider plummet down to the battle below. You feel a pang of guilt, but you push it away by telling yourself you couldn't have done anything anyway. Yet, somewhere in the back of your mind, you don't believe this. Not too long after that you are dropped off on the ramparts you were originally guarding. Much is different. Several chunks of the wall are missing, and many soldiers lie dead on the ramparts. The wall you once guarded no longer carries that symbol of boredom and ease in your mind. It is readily replaced with the memory of blood spilt, and comrades dying. Over half of division two is either dead or incapacitated. Division on was doing better, but the griffin that was killed only moments before plummeted right into their line. That turned out to be the turning point in the kobold's favor, and now division one is slowly being pushed back against the wall. The griffins are locked in a very deadly battle with the rest of the wyverns, and don't seem at all in a position to help the human forces on the ground. You aren't sure what you could do to help in this situation, for it looks like your defeat is inevitable. The griffins won't be able to kill the wyverns fast enough to help division one avoid getting slaughtered, which division one is mere minutes away from. This leaves you with a few honorable choices and one dishonorable choice. > You stay here and support division one with arrows Year 378 of the Second Era The Griffin knights are living legends. They don't need your 'support,' and they definitely don't need you shooting stray arrows and accidentally hitting one of them. Division one, however, does need your help, but leaving the wall at this point would be foolish. You'd likely be an easy target for a kobold archer in the back. Instead you decide that your best option is to stay on the ramparts and pick your shots. Thus, you act. You find a bow lying beside a dead body, along with a few arrows, and immediately set to work. You focus on the easy targets, the ones away from the forefront of the battle. Those, and the kobold archers. You loose arrow after arrow into the enemy force, and bring many a kobold down, but it simply isn't enough. Your contribution isn't enough to turn the tide of battle at all, but, unfortunately for you, it is enough to garner the attention of the kobold archers. You manage to keep from being hit for quite a while, but eventually a kobold gets a lucky shot and you fall dead onto the ramparts with an arrow lodged in your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 378 of the Second Era Sure you've done crazy things in the past, but this is no time to try and accomplish the utterly insane. Especially when the chances of success are so very low. Better to live and keep your chance of saving Liliana alive rather than to throw it away on the unlikely chance that you'll be able to save some random nobody. Despite this fact, you still wince when you see the wyvern's mouth snap down on the griffins hindquarters. The scene turns into a bloody mess, and you can't help but look away as the griffin (or at least what's left of it) and its rider plummet down to the battle below. You feel a pang of guilt, but you push it away by telling yourself you couldn't have done anything anyway. Yet, somewhere in the back of your mind, you don't believe this. Not too long after that you are dropped off on the ramparts you were originally guarding. Much is different. Several chunks of the wall are missing, and many soldiers lie dead on the ramparts. The wall you once guarded no longer carries that symbol of boredom and ease in your mind. It is readily replaced with the memory of blood spilt, and comrades dying. Over half of division two is either dead or incapacitated. Division on was doing better, but the griffin that was killed only moments before plummeted right into their line. That turned out to be the turning point in the kobold's favor, and now division one is slowly being pushed back against the wall. The griffins are locked in a very deadly battle with the rest of the wyverns, and don't seem at all in a position to help the human forces on the ground. You aren't sure what you could do to help in this situation, for it looks like your defeat is inevitable. The griffins won't be able to kill the wyverns fast enough to help division one avoid getting slaughtered, which division one is mere minutes away from. This leaves you with a few honorable choices and one dishonorable choice. > You stay here and support the griffin knights with arrows Year 378 of the Second Era You aren't going to flatter yourself. You firing a few arrows into the kobold horde below won't change anything, except perhaps where you die. Fighting on the forefront of the battle won't change anything either, and will almost definitely lead to your gruesome death. No, you aren't that powerful of an individual. There is only one thing left. If you can manage to hit even just one of your shots on one of the kobold riders, then you could very well change the course of this battle. Killing a few kobold on the ground won't make that much of a difference, but if you can manage to help take down the wyverns, then the griffin knights will be free to help division one on the ground. At this point, victory relies on those knights. You only hope that you can help expedite that process. You find a bow lying among the dead on the ramparts, along with a few arrows. The only thing left to decide is what you will aim at. > You aim at the kobold riders Year 378 of the Second Era Wyverns are beasts of terrible power, and their hides, while not as thick as dragon hide, will easily block your arrows. Better to aim at the riders, and have the wyverns panic with their riders dead. This would make the wyverns much easier to kill. In theory. The situation casts you into a state of wonderment. You never would have though that you'd be in a battle this large, let alone one with aerial combat, and you don't want it all to end here. You take your first arrow, notch it, and pull it back. You wouldn't get many decent shots here, and when the opportunity arises, you don't want to miss it, so you wait. The kobold riders ride low in their saddles, for some among their numbers (including the one you killed) have felt the sting of mankind's arrows. This makes finding a decent shot all the more difficult, but you're patient. After all, you only need one good shot to turn the tide in this battle. You're left waiting for nearly a full minute before such an opportunity arises, and what the opportunity it is. One of the griffin riders, having been separated from the rest, rides past the wall only several feet away from you. A wyvern and its pair of riders give chase, and their passing by the wall gives you the perfect chance. You take aim at the kobold rider steering the beast, and release. The Muses must have seen it fit to bless you this day, for your arrow strikes true. it hits the kobold rider and it goes flying from the saddle. You're about to leap with joy when an arrow pierces you through the chest, and you immediately fall to the ramparts wounded. It isn't a shot that kills you immediately, but blood is pouring out of your chest at an alarming rate, so you know you're about to die. You only wish you could've seen Liliana one last time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 378 of the Second Era You aren't going to flatter yourself. You firing a few arrows into the kobold horde below won't change anything, except perhaps where you die. Fighting on the forefront of the battle won't change anything either, and will almost definitely lead to your gruesome death. No, you aren't that powerful of an individual. There is only one thing left. If you can manage to hit even just one of your shots on one of the kobold riders, then you could very well change the course of this battle. Killing a few kobold on the ground won't make that much of a difference, but if you can manage to help take down the wyverns, then the griffin knights will be free to help division one on the ground. At this point, victory relies on those knights. You only hope that you can help expedite that process. You find a bow lying among the dead on the ramparts, along with a few arrows. The only thing left to decide is what you will aim at. > You aim at the wyverns Year 378 of the Second Era Wyverns are beasts bred for killing and war. You don't think they'll simply abandon this instinct just because their riders die. No, if you're going to attempt to help the griffin knights, then the best way to do so is to take out a wyvern. Even if you only manage to take out one of them, it would help a significant amount. You cast your thoughts back to your youth. Your mother would tell you stories of the beasts in the Lost Realm, and of the heroes whom bested those beasts. You're sure you remember something about a wyvern being vulnerable in its underbelly? Or maybe it was its wings? You can't remember for sure, but you don't have any other ideas. > You aim for the stomach Year 378 of the Second Era Maybe you're certain that wyverns are weak in the stomach, or maybe it's just a wild guess. Whatever the reason, you decide to try hitting the wyverns' stomach. Sweat forms on your brow as you notch an arrow and take aim. You raise your bow at the wyvern closest to you, whom is being chased by a pair of griffin knights, and loose your arrow. Your aim is true, but the arrow merely glances off the strong hide. Apparently your hunch was wrong. The stomach is not a weak point for a wyvern. This fact, however, doesn't keep you from trying. You enter a state of pure focus. Arrow after arrow is loosed from your bow, and when you run out of arrows you search for more. You will kill one of these blasted beasts even if it takes every arrow in this realm, this wyvern will fall. Fortunately for you, you don't have to wait too long before one of your arrows finds a weak point in the wyverns scales. The wyvern roars in pain, and for a moment you think you've succeeded, but the wyvern keeps flying. There is one thing that changes, however, and that is that the wyvern now targets you. Apparently it didn't appreciate your lucky shot. The griffin knights are not quick enough to save you this time, and you end up learning how sharp a wyvern's teeth are firsthand.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 378 of the Second Era Wyverns are beasts bred for killing and war. You don't think they'll simply abandon this instinct just because their riders die. No, if you're going to attempt to help the griffin knights, then the best way to do so is to take out a wyvern. Even if you only manage to take out one of them, it would help a significant amount. You cast your thoughts back to your youth. Your mother would tell you stories of the beasts in the Lost Realm, and of the heroes whom bested those beasts. You're sure you remember something about a wyvern being vulnerable in its underbelly? Or maybe it was its wings? You can't remember for sure, but you don't have any other ideas. > You aim for the wings Year 378 of the Second Era You can't remember for certain if their wings are vulnerable, but you doubt the stomach is, as you can think of no viable reason for it to be. The wings, on the other hand, if damaged enough can cause a wyvern to lose its flight abilities. Sweat forms on your brow as you notch an arrow and take aim. You raise your bow at the wyvern closest to you, whom is being chased by a pair of griffin knights, and loose your arrow. Your aim is true, but the arrow is merely gusted away by the draft the flapping its wings create. Apparently your hunch was wrong. The wings are not a weak point for a wyvern. This fact, however, doesn't keep you from trying. You enter a state of pure focus. Arrow after arrow is loosed from your bow, and when you run out of arrows you search for more. You will kill one of these blasted beasts even if it takes every arrow in this realm, this wyvern will fall. Fortunately for you, you don't have to wait too long before you time your arrow just right. You let your arrow go just before the wyvern flaps his wings, and it sails true piercing the softer scales of the wing. The wyvern roars in pain, and for a moment you think you've succeeded, but you only hit one arrow, and that wyvern's wings are quite large. There is one thing that changes, however, and that is that the wyvern now targets you. Apparently it didn't appreciate your lucky shot. The griffin knights are not quick enough to save you this time, and you end up learning how sharp a wyvern's teeth are firsthand.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 378 of the Second Era Sure you've done crazy things in the past, but this is no time to try and accomplish the utterly insane. Especially when the chances of success are so very low. Better to live and keep your chance of saving Liliana alive rather than to throw it away on the unlikely chance that you'll be able to save some random nobody. Despite this fact, you still wince when you see the wyvern's mouth snap down on the griffins hindquarters. The scene turns into a bloody mess, and you can't help but look away as the griffin (or at least what's left of it) and its rider plummet down to the battle below. You feel a pang of guilt, but you push it away by telling yourself you couldn't have done anything anyway. Yet, somewhere in the back of your mind, you don't believe this. Not too long after that you are dropped off on the ramparts you were originally guarding. Much is different. Several chunks of the wall are missing, and many soldiers lie dead on the ramparts. The wall you once guarded no longer carries that symbol of boredom and ease in your mind. It is readily replaced with the memory of blood spilt, and comrades dying. Over half of division two is either dead or incapacitated. Division on was doing better, but the griffin that was killed only moments before plummeted right into their line. That turned out to be the turning point in the kobold's favor, and now division one is slowly being pushed back against the wall. The griffins are locked in a very deadly battle with the rest of the wyverns, and don't seem at all in a position to help the human forces on the ground. You aren't sure what you could do to help in this situation, for it looks like your defeat is inevitable. The griffins won't be able to kill the wyverns fast enough to help division one avoid getting slaughtered, which division one is mere minutes away from. This leaves you with a few honorable choices and one dishonorable choice. > You abandon them Year 378 of the Second Era There isn't anything left for you here but death. And you cannot die. Your goal is to save your beloved. Liliana. You don't have time to be caught up in border battles where death is a likely possibility. Your life is not your own anymore, for if you die, then Liliana will as well. With most of division two destroyed and with what's left of division one, there is no one to see you leave. You jog along the ramparts, and away from the battle. You pass the signal fire you lit and head to the next watchtower over. They keep food and water storage in the towers, and if you were to have any hope of deserting and living then you would need supplies. You move quickly, and gather food, water, flint and steel, extra arrows, a shield and everything else you could possibly need. After gathering it all, you head to the very bottom of the stairwell and tower. A large iron gate-like door greets you. It is quite the durable piece, and nothing less than a battering ram would be able to break through it. Or perhaps a wyvern flying at breakneck speed... You push that foreboding thought from your head and walk through the iron doors. A slight breeze pushes against your face. You're far enough from the battle that you can only barely hear the roar of the wyverns fighting. you take a breath and look at your next destination. The green of the forest is all that will greet your eyes for an indeterminate amount of time in the future. This is the only way to go. The penalty for desertion is death, so there is no way you are going to stay here. Your only option is to move forward in your search for Liliana. You take a deep breath, ready yourself mentally, then enter into the Lost Realm. You don't get very far in there, however, before you run into kobold reinforcements. They number over ten, and you are no god though you do manage to take a few out before succumbing to multiple stab wounds.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 378 of the Second Era The memory fades away, and Byron's voice returns. "I need one person to light the signal light over by the watchtower. Everyone in division two stay here and support us with arrows. Everyone in division one follow me!" The wyverns are still racing to the wall, and a fight seems inevitable. Byron leads the way as he and division one head down to the ground to support the rest of the group. Everyone else stays and prepares their bows. You were assigned to division two upon your transfer here, and so your orders are abundantly clear. > You abandon the fight Year 378 of the Second Era You didn't come here for a fight. This was supposed to be the easiest place to guard in all the realm. No wyverns or kobold were supposed to come here, and certainly not in the numbers that actually threaten your wall occupation. Your goal is to save your beloved. Liliana. You don't have time to be caught up in border battles where you might die. Your life is not your own anymore, for if you die, then Liliana will as well. You pretend to be lighting the signal fire, but when you are out of sight of the other soldiers you find one of the many towers and make your way down it. They keep food and water storage in the towers, and if you were to have any hope of deserting and living then you would need supplies. You move quickly, and gather anything that you might need: Food, water, flint and steel, extra arrows, a shield. Everything you could possibly need. After gathering it all, you head to the very bottom of the stairwell and tower. A large iron gate-like door greets you. It is quite the durable piece, and nothing less than a battering ram would be able to break through it. Or perhaps a wyvern flying at breakneck speed... You push that foreboding thought from your head and walk through the iron doors. A slight breeze pushes against your face. You're far enough from the battle that you can only barely hear the roar of the wyverns fighting. you take a breath and look at your next destination. The green of the forest is all that will greet your eyes for an indeterminate amount of time in the future. This was the only way to go. The penalty for desertion is death, so there was no way you were going to stay there. Your only option was to move forward in your search for Liliana. You take a deep breath, ready yourself mentally, then enter into the Lost Realm. You don't get very far in there, however, before you run into kobold reinforcements. They number over ten, and you are no god though you do manage to take a few out before succumbing to multiple stab wounds.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 368 of the Second Era "Are you listening bitch?" A hand is shoved into your back and you're sent tumbling to the ground. Grass presses against your face, and you even feel some dirt in your mouth. That was fine. You didn't care very much. These guys could push you around all they wanted. They'd never be able to beat you as bad as your father did. "Stop it, Daniel!" Liliana's voice sounds from behind you. Apparently she didn't like Daniel pushing you. You slowly pick yourself up and off of the ground as Daniel replies. "What? You didn't like me pushing your bitch around?" That remark is followed by some laughter. "He hasn't done anything to you." Liliana replies readily. "Leave and go hit your mom if you're looking for a bitch to hit. Don't touch him." There's a moment of silence before you hear a smack. That sound reverberates around the academy yard, and for a moment you think Liliana finally slapped the guy like she said she'd been wanting to do, but when you turn around you find it's the complete opposite. Liliana is on the grass now, clutching her face. You see tears start to come to her eyes, but she doesn't sob. Not anymore. You've never been the most violent person. Your mother instilled that into you, so you let others push you around. You didn't give a damn either way, but when you see Liliana on the ground you don't hesitate. You lunge forward and shove Daniel hard in the chest, and you do it hard enough to send him flying to the ground as well, but unlike you and Liliana he gets back up to his feet quickly. His reaction is also quick. He immediately rushes toward you and raises his fist back. You can tell a punch is coming. You've grown in the past couple years, and are easily one of the tallest guys in class. Aside from Daniel, that is. You might not be taller than Daniel, but you'd bet your mother's corpse (Muse bless her soul) that you can take more hits than he can. That being said, you don't particularly fancy getting punched if you can avoid it. > You use his strength against him Year 368 of the Second Era Despite what others think of him, Daniel is weak. And you're going to prove just that. His punch comes directly at your right cheek. It has a hell of a lot of power. Certainly more than you anticipated, but you don't allow yourself to hesitate. He might be powerful, but he was predictable. You dodge his punch by stepping in towards him, and then follow up his punch with one of your own. It hits right below his sternum, and he starts to keel over. You act on instinct now. You grip the top of his head and bring your knee up into his face, and there's a distinct crunch noise. You then push him slightly away from you. He stumbles backward, and you take a step forward and shove him to the ground once more. There's no time for him to react as you pounce on top of him and lay punch after punch into his face. His 'friends' don't rise to stop you, and the courtyard is silent save for the sound of your fist pounding his face. After several more punches you feel a hand on your shoulder. You nearly jerk away from it, but, despite your frenzied mind, you are able to recognize that it is a distinctly feminine hand. Liliana, you think and stop punching. Daniel doesn't stop his groaning as you rise to your feet to face her. There's less baby fat on her face now than when you first saw her, and is beginning to be quite the knockout. Her eyes are still slightly red and the right side of her face is still red, but she isn't crying any more. "Enough," she whispers to you. You only nod in response. You start to walk away from the scene when you realize that you'd gathered quite the crowd. You think about saying something, but instead you reach for Liliana's hand and glare at everyone in the crowd. Your look says it all. You leave with Liliana in tow.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 378 of the Second Era You pull yourself from the memory. That was happening way too often since Liliana was captured. And she was captured. There was no doubt in your mind about that. Captured by people who obviously knew what they were doing. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to make it through the forests of the Lost Realm without being captured, killed, or raped by horny kobold. That means there's a way to make it through that forest. You just have to find it. That was the reason you spent your time here on the wall watching, waiting, planning your route through that kobold infested place. Of course you could just leave on your own and hope for the best, but th- Your thoughts are interrupted when the roar of some beast sounds throughout the air. You jerk your head immediately towards the sound. It came from somewhere over the tops of the trees, and still must've been miles out. Every guard on the wall peels their eyes to the forest, and it isn't long before one of your fellow guardsmen spots something. "There! Above the forest!" The guard sounds quite panicked. You look where he indicated and spot several grey blots in the distance. They look like birds at first, but as they get closer you can tell they're much larger and have several more rows of teeth than a bird. "Wyverns." The guard right beside you breathes out. You turn back to look at the beasts. They're still a few miles out, but you can hear the beat of their leathery wings drawing closer every second. The guards in your platoon stand on the wall in stunned silence. Nothing happens here, ever. Why now of all times? Your lieutenant, an older fellow named Byron, calls everyone to order. "This is what we're here for men! This is why..." Byron's voice fades into the depths of your mind. It is replaced by a different voice. One that's mocking, provoking. The memory of your first fight calls back to you. > You push the memory back Year 378 of the Second Era This isn't the time for idle thoughts. No, you need to focus on the situation at hand. The memory fades away, and Byron's voice returns. "This is why we guard this wall! No wyverns, kobold, or other filth will cross this wall! Gather your weap-" Byron is interrupted by another voice. "Help! There are kobold chasing us on the ground. The rest of my party is coming with the kobold hot on their tail." The voice comes from all the way at the bottom of the wall. You can barely make out what he's saying, but someone does and repeats it to Byron, who then continues speaking. "I need one person to light the signal light over by the watchtower. Everyone in division two stay here and support us with arrows. Everyone in division one follow me!" Byron leads the way as he and division one head down to the ground to support the rest of the group. Everyone else stays and prepares their bows. You were assigned to division two upon your transfer here, and so your orders are abundantly clear. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Year 366 of the Second Era At the age of ten, you were average. Your height, weight, disposition, and, well, pretty much everything about you was average. Never the last one chosen for capture the emblem, but never the first one either. Your life then was a monotonous slog: Go to your rundown academy, try to do well in your academic work, fail, and return home only to have your drunkard of a father beat you. You didn't realize how miserable your life was until the fateful day when Liliana joined your class at school. Like the rest of the girls in the class, she wore a dress. Unlike the rest of the girls in the class, her dress was obviously of fine make. The embroidery on her dress had no faults. No drops of blood from clumsy mothers who pricked themselves on their needle. No lazy patches sewn in to cover up holes. No, her dress was flawless. Her hair was onyx black, and fell down in waves around her face. Her glittering blue eyes were filled with anticipation, and maybe a little fear. She clearly wasn't used to being in these kinds of situations, and she kept glancing around as if someone else was going to introduce her to the other classmates. Your teacher, a hag of a woman, prompted her to introduce herself. "Go ahead and introduce yourself to the class, dear." She widened her eyes in surprise, but followed the teacher's command. "My name is Liliana, I'm ten years of age, and..," she looked to the teacher for instruction. She had an accent, and one that you'd never heard before at that. Not northern, or even like those from the eastern realm. No, this was decidedly different from any other accent you'd heard before. "Go on," the teacher prompted again. "I don't know what else to say," Liliana responded. The teacher frowned disappointedly. "Surely you have more things to tell us about yourself than your name?" When Liliana didn't respond, the teacher spoke again. "Where are you from? Or, what do you like to do in your spare time? Tell us things like that." Liliana hesitated once more. "Come now. We don't judge people here," the hag patted her comfortingly on the shoulder, but failed to notice the snickering in the back. Liliana, it seemed, found her words comforting, and finally started to open up. "I was born in Arboribus. My father is the king there, and it's an amazing place. There are trees larger than castles there! Oh, and I like to go stag riding with my father if he has the ti-" The teacher interrupted. "Excuse me. Where?" The teacher sounded somewhat confused, but definitely disappointed. The snickering in the back increased, but Liliana still hadn't noticed. "Arboribus," she said this clearly, and with an expression of incredulity fixed upon her face. The teacher simply stared at her blankly, until Liliana continued. "You know, in The Lost Realm..." The boys in the back, try as they might, couldn't contain themselves any longer. They busted out into raucous laughter that spread to the rest of the students that were typically thought of as nice. Everyone gave into the laughter, and even the teacher hag was chuckling. You were on the edge of laughter as well, but something kept you there. Stories of The Lost Realm, and rumors of a ancient city of humans therein. Your mother, before she died of disease, would tell you fairy tales of the ancient land, and how it used to be as prosperous as the Realm of Men is now. You'd always harbored the secret thought, hope, that the stories were true, and here was a person who claimed to hail from that very place. This, and the expression on Liliana's face, caused you to hesitate. Her expression was that of someone hurt , and a genuine expression at that. You held the laughter off, and waited for everyone else to do the same. They eventually quieted down, but only after tears started streaming down Liliana's face. Silence took the place of laughter, and all joy was replaced with the sad sound of sobbing. The old hag had the decency to attempt to comfort her by giving her a hug, but Liliana jerked away. Apparently she didn't like the idea of hugging the old hag. Especially since she'd promised no ridicule would come, but then turned around and gloried in it herself. "It's true!" Liliana yelled after she managed to control her sobbing. "I'm not a liar! And, and ,and..." She starts crying again, but instead of staying in the classroom for everyone to see, she ran through the door and out of the classroom. The silence continued for a moment longer, before you made your first life changing decision. You got up from your designated chair and followed after Liliana. You were no expert at dealing with girls. Let alone crying ones, and you weren't the most... > You ...intelligent... Year 366 of the Second Era ...intelligent of people, but you were outgoing enough to provide a suitable person for her to talk to. You follow the sound of sobbing through the worn wooden hallways of the school, and outside, until you find the source of the crying. Liliana sits on the steps to the main door of the school. Her well crafted dress is ruffled in places and her body constantly shifts under the pressure of her tears. Her hair comes down in waves around her head, effectively cutting off any view of her face. She doesn't notice you there at first, but when the main door closes behind you she jumps and turns towards you. Tears and snot cover her face with her eyes both sad and angry at the same time, and for a moment you find yourself regretting coming here. That moment passes, and the impulse you followed earlier propels you toward her. "Are you going to laugh at me again?" Her voice reflects what she is feeling. Sadness, despair, anger, and, you think, a bit of hope color her voice. You decide to concentrate on her hopefulness. "I didn't laugh." "Everyone laughed. I saw." Clearly she hadn't been paying attention to you when in the classroom. "Not me." You sit down on the same step as her, and she glares at you. Silence ensues, and you turn away and gaze out in front of you. You want to ask her about the Realm of the Lost, but the question dies in your throat. Wouldn't it be at least a little insensitive to ask her prying questions now? Your question is answered when you hear her start to sob again. This time it's less intense, but it's still crying all the same. Maybe it's the memory of her excited face when she was in front of the classroom, or maybe you just didn't like the sound of crying. Whatever the reason, you decide to wrap your arm around her shoulders in a half hug. Liliana turns to stone beneath your touch, and you think she'll pull away, but she doesn't. She stays still, but continues her crying. You feel absurdly awkward in this position, but she doesn't seem to mind. She even leans into your hug after a while. In between holding her and listening to her crying, you find yourself staring at her wondering how in all the realms this girl was from the Lost Realm. You might be tainted by the knowledge of fairytales, but you were still aware that the Lost Realm was crawling with kobold and others of that ilk,. It was a very dangerous place. At the end of the first era was when the Lost Realm was supposedly at the height of its power, but that ended when a dragon led a massive host of kobold and wyverns and sacked the entirety of the realm. Well, that's how the stories went. So how then, could a delicate being such as this come from such a dangerous place? Then a brilliant idea came over you. There was a story your mother once told you. One about the faerie, a race of beings native to the Lost Realm. When they were in the Lost Realm they were humanoid creatures of a similar height humans, but with pointed ears and a slender build. In the story, a faerie wandered over the border of the Realm of Men and the Realm of the Lost, (Before the border walls were constructed) but the faerie were tied to their own realm. Whenever they left, they became as humans. This particular faerie panicked when they realized they left their home for another realm, and immediately tried to go back, but every time he tried to re-enter his homeland, he would get lost, turned around. He could never find his way back. Once the faerie willingly left the Realm of the Lost, they weren't allowed back. He was left in the Realm of Men to fend for himself, but he desired that no their faerie would feel like he did. Alone, confused and afraid. So the faerie came up with a code. If he thought there was another faerie, he would ask them a simple question. You ask that question now. "Are you lost?" Liliana immediately pulls from you and stares at you in disbelief. She suddenly wipes all of the tears from her face with her sleeve before asking you a question. "Will you help me fit in here?" Kinda shocked that your plan worked you only nod in response. A hint of a smile breaches her face. "What's your name?" You briefly wonder what you've gotten yourself into, but you answer regardless. "My name is..."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Blackness. Your mind is cloudy and hazy. Pain. You feel pain. Flashes of sound burst in the distance. You slowly feel awareness coming back, the world leaking back into coherent form. You are in so much pain. Around you you hear familiar sounds: Screaming, the butchery of men, the agony of rape, buildings burning, children screaming, and the cheers of the victors. "Where am I?" You think to yourself. Slowly you move your fingers, then your toes. A soft moan issues from somewhere around you. You realize it is you and you begin to make your stiff body begin to move again. First one arm, then your leg, then you slowly lift up and look around. You think hard to remove the fuzziness of the recent events from the corners of your mind and concentrate on survival. "I've got a concussion." You conclude. Finally, you peer through the dense smoke and realize that you are in a crater, the bodies of men, horses, and weapons of war surround you. The acrid smell of burning flesh mixed with the tinny smell of blood, the pain in your head, and the entrails of the man you ran beside all make you vomit. Strangely, you feel just a little bit better and your head is starting to clear, "I'm Sebastian, a mercenary, I chose to defend the city of Essitrea against the Turric . I don't think we won... I think I'd better get the hell out of here!" Looking around you a sturdy broadsword sticks out from a body of a Turric soldier, you recognize the blade as yours. You stagger over to the soldier and with effort pull the blade free from the man's corpse. Now armed, you know you've got to get out but amidst the rubble and the ruffians running amok, the sounds of battle in the air, and the thudding of artillery, every step could be your last. You decide quickly that you can either run building to building a fast method of travel but with heavy odds of discovery; try to enter the sewers, an obviously unsanitary means to travel but with less likelihood of discovery, or you can try to hole up in the nearest building and wait for the action to die down. > You run For It! You grab your blade tightly and look around quickly before dashing over the lip of the crater and towards the blasted wall nearest your left side. Nearby an explosion spurts up chunks of earth and stone as well as the arm of a corpse, high into the air. You watch in horror as the appendage plops onto the sidewalk. From your left, three Turric warriors rush and assault an injured merchant, stabbing him repeatedly with their wickedly barbed scimitars before looting the man's corpse. To your right you see another building about twenty feet across some exposed ground. Do you: > You attack the Turric Warriors? You attack the warriors with the advantage of surprise. Crawling low, you creep until you are at the edge of the wall you were hiding behind then you suddenly sprint with your broadsword lifted in both hands. As you descend upon the Turric Warriors, you swing the sword in an arc that splits the first Turric Swordsman's left arm from his body. You spin and use the heavy blade's momentum to make a second cut from the shoulder blade up through the man's neck decapitating him instantly. As the first warrior falls, blood arcing into the sky, the two others reel in shock. You take advantage of this momentary lapse of reason and bring a low slice towards the second man's knee. The blade connects and the limb is taken clean off. Following the blade's momentum, you raise it up and steer it into the man's chest. The third warrior has now gathered his wits and attacks viciously trying to slice you with his barbed scimitar. You back away from the first strike, block the second, and duck the third. His blows are coming faster than the broad-blade can react. Do you: Parry and look for an opening with the butt of your sword to stun the enemy or block with the sword and pull a dagger with your other hand and plunge it into his neck? > You parry and Stun the Enemy! You conserve your energy and block his blows. Knowing the wild style of the Turric swordsman, you easily parry several wild blows. As he failed to strike he becomes more and more frustrated and you lure him into a wide swing and while he is pulling back, you step in his reach and break his nose with the handle of your sword. The stunning blow makes him stumble backwards and you press the advantage kicking him backwards and then turning your sword and driving it through his stomach! He squirms like a worm for several long seconds before you twist your blade and finish the job. Though you conserved your energy by blocking, you attracted the attention of a few more warriors. They come streaming out of a building to your right and you count at least five men, two with crossbows aimed in your direction. Do you: Run away or turn to face the group and take them head on using throwing knives to whittle them down before resorting to your sword? > You run Away! Feeling like discretion is the better part of valor, you turn tail and run away as fast as you can. You are lithe and Agile and in light armor and the heavier, more armored men can't keep up. However, one of the crossbowmen draws a bead on you and fires. The bolt slams into your left shoulder and you scream in pain before skirting around a clump of rubble and ducking under some fallen timbers. The warriors curse as they try to track you but they walk past your position and disappear into the smoky ruins. You are injured and the bolt projects out of your left shoulder. You try to hold back tears as you reach with your good arm and gingerly touch the shaft. It's buried deep and you'll need a healer to remove it. You grimace and pull your first aid kit out of your belt. You find a few bandages and make yourself a sling and place your left arm in it. You are alive but now you are crippled. Without both arms your swordplay will be much diminished and you realize that your ability to defend yourself has been compromised. You will now have to use stealth until you can find an ally or escape altogether. Desperate, you must move on, losing consciousness in this state could be life-ending. Do you: > You wait for Nightfall to Continue? Resting back, you decide to wait until nightfall to continue trying to escape. You hope that your stealth will be aided by the darkness. The problem is finding a decent place to rest. Carefully, you creep towards a building that looks promising. It is three stories tall but also damaged and missing most of the roof. You think that it is the least likely place around the enemy will look but you admit it's a gamble and a possible deathtrap if you get cornered by enemy forces with no where to run. Making sure no one is watching, you scurry from the rubble to an alley and with another quick look around, you duck through a hole in the wall and make it into the first floor. A quick search reveals nothing good. A family has been butchered, the man stabbed repeatedly, his wife raped and her throat cut, the oldest boy, perhaps ten in age, was stapled to the wall with crossbow bolts and still hangs there, his life's blood pooled and congealed at his feet, and the youngest daughter, about six? Well if there is a hell, who ever hurt her will burn there forever. You curse the gods at their apathy and resolve to never give up, never surrender, even if death is the only alternative! Better to jump from a building or cut one's own throat than to be raped and killed like a cowering dog. A noise takes you out of your revelry, you need to hide somewhere and fast! Rushing towards the staircase do you... > You run Upstairs! You skate up the stairs taking three at a time and find a door at the top of the stairs. You pull out your lockpicks and begin to jimmy the door. Within seconds you hear the lock 'click' and you slide inside closing the door behind you. You hear a creak and some sniffling sounds somewhere in the room. It's very dark, all of the windows are shuttered, and you negotiate the room by sound and touch rather than lighting a lamp and giving yourself away. Following behind your sword, you investigate the dark room and try to track the noise before someone or something gets the drop on you. When the sound is made again, you rush to the wall ripping off a tapestry and see a that it hides a small doorway. You open it in a flash, sword back to provide a fatal stab. To your surprise a young girl, perhaps sixteen years in age is in hiding. You look at her frightened face, streaked with tears and the knowledge that none of her family made it through whatever happened downstairs. She screams at the sudden discovery and scrambles as far back in the hidden compartment as she can go. You curse your luck and say, "Be quiet girl! I'm not here to hurt you! Pray you haven't woken the neighborhood!" You quickly move away from the whimpering girl and check the windows. Sure enough two Turric Swordsmen and a Wardog are on the prowl. The dog starts to bark and drag the two soldiers towards the house. "Shit!" You hiss and move back to the secret compartment. Pulling up the tapestry you tell the girl, "No matter what you do, no matter what you hear, do not leave this compartment for the next few hours unless you hear me say 'Defender'." You slide a dagger her way and say, "And no matter what, don't let them take you alive, if this place is discovered, if this flap is opened and they try to take you, slice your throat, plunge this into your chest but don't let them take you out of here. No matter what!" You close the hidden door, drop the tapestry, close and lock the door to the first floor, and hide behind a desk. When those bastards come through they're going to pay dearly. The sound of heavy boots tromping up the stairs follow a barking dog. They try the lock, try it again, and then start trying to bash the door in. The door survives four solid charges before the door rips off of the hinges and the men and beast rush in swords drawn. > You kill the Dog First You realize that the hound is going to be a noisy, dangerous problem and so you resolve to end that issue first. As soon as the trio of enemies rush into the room you pop up from behind the desk and throw three throwing knives at the beast. The first knife goes wide and lands knee level in the wooden wall, but the second catches in the jaw bursting it's teeth and jutting through it's muzzle, and the third smashes in the flanks sticking through it's hind quarter. The beast yelps pitiably and staggers backwards incapacitated. The beast howls and you leap over the table drawing both of your short blades. In close quarter fighting, your short swords and stabbing style will be a good match against the barbed scimitars the Turrics favor which require wide fast swings. The first Turric swings high and you duck and deflect the first blade while reversing your spin and cutting the soldier's leg off at the knee. The second swings towards your midriff but you tumble and his swing lodges in his already injured partner's ribs. You crouch and then spring low stabbing the second soldier's foot and slicing his sword arm off at the wrist. The second soldier screams and tries to stagger backwards but his foot is pinned to the floor. Rising you pull the blade free and jut the short blade up into his stomach pushing under his ribs until the blade pierces his heart and blood runs down his armor like a burst dike. As he falls back, you turn to the hound. You hate to kill such a noble beast but it was now time to end it's pain. A quick reversal of your swords sets up a downward thrust that pierces it's brain and severs it's spine. The hound collapses with a quiver. You wipe your swords on a soldier's sleeve and place them again on your back. You then collect your throwing knives and search the soldiers for anything they carry you can use. You ignore their damaged armor, barbed scimitars, and top-heavy daggers and instead collect their coin pouches. Thirty Silvers later, you check the windows. You are relived to see that there is no further action in the streets. Do you: > You go into the Basement? You hurry downwards, using the stairs to enter the basement. At the bottom of the stairs is a cellar door. It opens easily into a pitch black room. You back up and decide to light your lantern. Now with a fresh light source, and broad sword in your other hand you begin to explore the room. The basement is dark and eerie, filled with boxes and other items of storage, small terra cotta statues, paintings and furniture with tarps over them, extra sets of candles, piles of clothes, and other errata fill the shelves, cabinets, and wall spaces. You figure that if you were to hide here, you'd probably be able to get the jump on any who entered here but you'd be trapped if there were multiple opponents. You reason you could probably take two swordsmen without difficulty but a larger group would be problematic. Do you: > You search the Basement You decide to search the basement. You comb through the boxes, look through the shelves, and rifle through the cabinets looking for something that could help you with your escape from the city. As you are searching, you hear some noises coming from above. Quickly you duck and blow out your lantern. You can now light your lantern 2 More times. Tense moments pass but the sounds cease. after ten minutes you feel safe enough to try looking again. After about a half of an hour you have accumulated everything that might be of interest to you. It isn't much but these people were obviously merchants, not warriors and as such didn't store any warrior items. You find: Lantern Oil: Useful for lighting your lantern 3 extra times. > You crash here. You're tired, you've had a long afternoon and you have found somewhere to crash. You hope that this place is safe enough but in a city under siege, no where is truly safe. You find a little corner amongst the clutter and nestle in as best as you can. You place your broadsword to your side within easy reach and thank the gods you have your modified light chainmail. It's very comfortable to sleep in, especially compared to most armors. Covering yourself with a blanket you slip easily into the demesne of sleep. TEST YOUR LUCK: Pick a number between 1 and 3. > You 1 You sleep fitfully, your dreams filled with nightmares that involve you being caught by the Turric, held down, and cut into pieces and fed to wardogs with fiery eyes. Several times you jump awake and look about yourself hoping you haven't been discovered and sit for several minutes straining your ears for phantom noises but eventually give up the search and head right back into another nightmare. You aren't discovered but you really don't feel rested when you awake. Frustrated when you awake, you grumpily gather your few belongings and head back out into the city. It is now NIGHT. > You nIGHT: Creeping in the Darkness You wait until nightfall and begin to make your journey flitting from alley to alleyway and make good progress though you occasionally have to see nightmares, at one intersection you see Turric soldiers by a scaffold where then men and women; soldiers and civilians both, are being hanged. You cringe as the men slap the horses underneath the victims and the prisoners are left to dangle helplessly in the air struggling as their weight begins to choke them to death. It takes over three minutes before the last of the men stops twitching, leaving the bodies swinging in the air. You move on helpless to alter the events of the sacking of the city. Stepping from an alleyway you later see hundreds of Turric soldiers leading hundreds more prisoners down a broad street towards whatever grim fate awaits them. You turn back and enter a building through a window moving across the floor and exiting out the other side. Most of the buildings have by now been ransacked. You exit out of the other end and creep into the next street. You immediately flatten against the wall as you see a Turric Deathwarden steering a group of hellhounds down the street. The flaming hounds are barking and growling but don't catch your scent. Taking a deep breath, you wait for the Deathwarden to pass and sprint for the next street. Finally, after over two hours have passed, you arrive at a massive barricade. The barricade is manned by a holdout group of Essitrean soldiers each holding crossbows. There have to be dozens of them all on watch. The bodies of hundreds of Turric soldiers lie scattered in the streets around the barricade though it's obvious the Essitreans are wounded and exhausted. > You join them You pull your contract and slowly move towards the Essitreans making sure that you hold the contract high so that the tired and trigger happy soldiers don't mistake you for the enemy. As you enter into their line of sight, you hear the guards call out, "Halt and identify yourself or you'll be shot on sight!" You enter into the torchlight and call out, I'm Sebastian, a mercenary serving under the Essitrean flag, here is my lawful contract. I wish to join you." The men aren't much moved but a voice calls through the barricade, "Sebastian? By the Gods you're still alive? Boys, let her in, she's a friendly." You jog across the street looking both ways for any enemy snipers or troops and enter a small gate and go beyond the barricades. The gate is closed quickly behind you. The situation behind the barricades is worse than you would have imagined, with dozens of troops injured or dead, scorch marks from enemy mages, and decapitated undead minions lying like wheat after the harvest. A soldier approaches you and offers you a handclasp. You recognize him as Captain Krayler, a stern but effective commander whose forces numbered a full company, scarcely three platoons exist now and you see that by daylight only two dozen men will still be clinging to life. His face is grim and streaked with blood and dirt. he says, "What is the situation in the city beyond." You reply, "The city is lost, the Turric are killing and rounding up anyone they find and Deathwardens, Vanguards, and Deathmagi wander the streets at will.Those who aren't killed or turned into the Walking Dead are being turned into slaves. I'm sorry Commander." He nods and said, "I was expecting as much. The tide of refugees has thinned and you've been the first person we haven't had to fight in three hours. This is a tragedy, we watch the death of my beautiful home and the birth of another Turric Enclave. Such a blasphemy to the gods should have never been seen." You nod. He says, " I know you are tired and hungry, let me offer you some scant supplies and then we'll talk further." You are led to a chow table, mostly chunks of bread and a few sips of water from a canteen before he leads you to a chair. You have a seat and instantly the weight of the night descends upon your weary bones. The captain brings you a tightly wrapped scroll and says, "Bast, you've always been a reputable mercenary, I need someone I can trust with an important mission. I need you to take this scroll and this boy. He is the heir to Essitrea's throne. Though his home has been lost he can keep the noble lineage flowing and can rally any escapees under the Essitrean Banner so that one day we can take this place back. I need you to take him with you to the gates. Can you do this for me?" You ponder your options: > You take the Boy and Scroll You nod, this was a grave task. "I will be proud to serve the throne, Sir. I will take the young lord and deliver him safely to his men outside the gate." The Commander nods and points to one of his men, and from a tent they bring forward a richly dressed but dirty faced little boy of about ten Summers old. Blood stains the front of his clothes but he appears uninjured. He wields a short sword uncertainly and there is both fear and stout resolution in his eyes. The boy looks you up and down, "I am to go with this lady?" You look to the captain who says, "Yes, Milord, Sebastian is an experienced and wise warrior and your best hope from henceforth, follow her, do what she says, and rebuild our city. Remember those who died for it." The Lordling nods and says, "I am honored to make your acquaintance Sebastian. Take my horse Arbalest he is a true steed meant for a warrior. The white pony is my own mount Bayerus." The Commander smiled and said, "Well that's that. We'll hold the wall, we are the last hope for anyone to try and escape this blasted place. I wish you luck Sebastian." You salute and turn to head for the gates. You begin the last part of the journey even as you hear behind you, "Ready men, here they come!!!" The sound of battle rings out behind you as you gallop for the Only gate left in the city still controlled by Essitrean forces. The last that you see of the captains forces is the zombies overwhelming the barricades. Less than fifteen minutes later you arrive at the gates with the Lordling. Men snap to salute as you and the Lord Ride out of the city into the countryside. You know not where the future lies but you realize that you have found the only candle of hope in the darkness that falls over the city of Essitrea.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You pull your contract and slowly move towards the Essitreans making sure that you hold the contract high so that the tired and trigger happy soldiers don't mistake you for the enemy. As you enter into their line of sight, you hear the guards call out, "Halt and identify yourself or you'll be shot on sight!" You enter into the torchlight and call out, I'm Sebastian, a mercenary serving under the Essitrean flag, here is my lawful contract. I wish to join you." The men aren't much moved but a voice calls through the barricade, "Sebastian? By the Gods you're still alive? Boys, let her in, she's a friendly." You jog across the street looking both ways for any enemy snipers or troops and enter a small gate and go beyond the barricades. The gate is closed quickly behind you. The situation behind the barricades is worse than you would have imagined, with dozens of troops injured or dead, scorch marks from enemy mages, and decapitated undead minions lying like wheat after the harvest. A soldier approaches you and offers you a handclasp. You recognize him as Captain Krayler, a stern but effective commander whose forces numbered a full company, scarcely three platoons exist now and you see that by daylight only two dozen men will still be clinging to life. His face is grim and streaked with blood and dirt. he says, "What is the situation in the city beyond." You reply, "The city is lost, the Turric are killing and rounding up anyone they find and Deathwardens, Vanguards, and Deathmagi wander the streets at will.Those who aren't killed or turned into the Walking Dead are being turned into slaves. I'm sorry Commander." He nods and said, "I was expecting as much. The tide of refugees has thinned and you've been the first person we haven't had to fight in three hours. This is a tragedy, we watch the death of my beautiful home and the birth of another Turric Enclave. Such a blasphemy to the gods should have never been seen." You nod. He says, " I know you are tired and hungry, let me offer you some scant supplies and then we'll talk further." You are led to a chow table, mostly chunks of bread and a few sips of water from a canteen before he leads you to a chair. You have a seat and instantly the weight of the night descends upon your weary bones. The captain brings you a tightly wrapped scroll and says, "Bast, you've always been a reputable mercenary, I need someone I can trust with an important mission. I need you to take this scroll and this boy. He is the heir to Essitrea's throne. Though his home has been lost he can keep the noble lineage flowing and can rally any escapees under the Essitrean Banner so that one day we can take this place back. I need you to take him with you to the gates. Can you do this for me?" You ponder your options: > You refuse and Go it yourself You decide to refuse the offer and exit the barricade choosing to make it on your own. > You head to another part of the city. You decide to head to another part of the city and are flitting from building to building when you see a massive attack by Turric troops to your left. To your right an explosion rocks the streets and ahead, you see a Deathmagus and his Vanguard accompanied by a horde of undead. You are spotted by the Deathmagus down the streets and you turn to run, there are just too many of them. At first you try to retreat and go back to the barricades but another explosion collapses the buildings around you. You are now faced with running into mass combat, into the necromancer or down the alley where an explosion just occurred. You run down the alleyway and lose sight of the Deathmagus and the battle but run into a mass of Turric reinforcements. You are trapped. You retreat and are now surrounded by the three forces. You resign yourself to a death by the sword. Choosing the least dangerous option, you run into the mass combat. The chaos of arrows, swordfighting, and bodies moving en mass make the situation deadly. You duck, twist, and dodge through the massive melee. Unfortunately, you are struck by an random arrow and then tripped by the boot of a running soldier who is quickly killed by a crossbow bolt. You try to rise but watch as a roiling ball of flame explodes incinerating those around you. Another explosion takes a building out and it collapses showering stone and mortar over the street. You are caught be a falling piece of rubble the size of a horse and it lands on your leg. You try to free it but another explosion demolishes the next building and it collapses and sprays more stone upon you. You are killed by a falling brick that turns your head into a read smear. YOU HAVE FAILED!!! > A Horrible Awakening Blackness. Your mind is cloudy and hazy. Pain. You feel pain. Flashes of sound burst in the distance. You slowly feel awareness coming back, the world leaking back into coherent form. You are in so much pain. Around you you hear familiar sounds: Screaming, the butchery of men, the agony of rape, buildings burning, children screaming, and the cheers of the victors. "Where am I?" You think to yourself. Slowly you move your fingers, then your toes. A soft moan issues from somewhere around you. You realize it is you and you begin to make your stiff body begin to move again. First one arm, then your leg, then you slowly lift up and look around. You think hard to remove the fuzziness of the recent events from the corners of your mind and concentrate on survival. "I've got a concussion." You conclude. Finally, you peer through the dense smoke and realize that you are in a crater, the bodies of men, horses, and weapons of war surround you. The acrid smell of burning flesh mixed with the tinny smell of blood, the pain in your head, and the entrails of the man you ran beside all make you vomit. Strangely, you feel just a little bit better and your head is starting to clear, "I'm Sebastian, a mercenary, I chose to defend the city of Essitrea against the Turric . I don't think we won... I think I'd better get the hell out of here!" Looking around you a sturdy broadsword sticks out from a body of a Turric soldier, you recognize the blade as yours. You stagger over to the soldier and with effort pull the blade free from the man's corpse. Now armed, you know you've got to get out but amidst the rubble and the ruffians running amok, the sounds of battle in the air, and the thudding of artillery, every step could be your last. You decide quickly that you can either run building to building a fast method of travel but with heavy odds of discovery; try to enter the sewers, an obviously unsanitary means to travel but with less likelihood of discovery, or you can try to hole up in the nearest building and wait for the action to die down.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to refuse the offer and exit the barricade choosing to make it on your own. > You move on You decide to pass them by, there has to be another way through the city without the aid of the Essitreans and the inevitable conflict they will attract. You head down a corridor and see flames rising ahead, to the left you see a massive army of Turric soldiers fighting with another smaller group of Essitreans. The carnage is horrid and you opt not to go that way. To your right you see an old stable. Perhaps within you can find a horse. > You head towards the Fire The flames ahead of you fly many feet into the air and you try to find a way past the street but there are no obvious exits. Disheartened you retreat back to the previous intersection.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to pass them by, there has to be another way through the city without the aid of the Essitreans and the inevitable conflict they will attract. You head down a corridor and see flames rising ahead, to the left you see a massive army of Turric soldiers fighting with another smaller group of Essitreans. The carnage is horrid and you opt not to go that way. To your right you see an old stable. Perhaps within you can find a horse. > You check out the Stable You opt to check out the stable but there are no horses inside. As you are searching, you see the fighting from the left street starting to pour into yours. The mass combat is punctuated by explosions, the sound of steel on steel or flesh, and the screams of the injured or dying. You quickly decide to abandon the search and head back to the intersection before you are overwhelmed. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to pass them by, there has to be another way through the city without the aid of the Essitreans and the inevitable conflict they will attract. You head down a corridor and see flames rising ahead, to the left you see a massive army of Turric soldiers fighting with another smaller group of Essitreans. The carnage is horrid and you opt not to go that way. To your right you see an old stable. Perhaps within you can find a horse. > You go Backwards You arrive at the massive barricade. The barricade is manned by a holdout group of Essitrean soldiers each holding crossbows. There have to be dozens of them all on watch. The bodies of hundreds of Turric soldiers lie scattered in the streets around the barricade though it's obvious the Essitreans are wounded and exhausted. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're tired, you've had a long afternoon and you have found somewhere to crash. You hope that this place is safe enough but in a city under siege, no where is truly safe. You find a little corner amongst the clutter and nestle in as best as you can. You place your broadsword to your side within easy reach and thank the gods you have your modified light chainmail. It's very comfortable to sleep in, especially compared to most armors. Covering yourself with a blanket you slip easily into the demesne of sleep. TEST YOUR LUCK: Pick a number between 1 and 3. > You 2 You fall into a deep and dreamless sleep. As luck would have it, you are not bothered by anything or anyone during your stay and you feel quite at peace with yourself. Your mother always said you were a strong one before she died. She never knew how many times you would have to test that theory. You wake up refreshed and ready to go. It is now NIGHT.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're tired, you've had a long afternoon and you have found somewhere to crash. You hope that this place is safe enough but in a city under siege, no where is truly safe. You find a little corner amongst the clutter and nestle in as best as you can. You place your broadsword to your side within easy reach and thank the gods you have your modified light chainmail. It's very comfortable to sleep in, especially compared to most armors. Covering yourself with a blanket you slip easily into the demesne of sleep. TEST YOUR LUCK: Pick a number between 1 and 3. > You 3 Your sleep is suddenly interrupted by the sound of the door being kicked in by heavy booted feet. In the entrance are five undead warriors, two heavily armored Turric Vanguards and a Turric Deathmagus, a necromancer by any other name. You rise to your feet pulling your broadsword and charging. Deathmagus takes no prisoners. This is going to be a fight to the death. You swing a heavy blow and decapitate the lead zombie as the others charge forward. You've fought the occasional zombie in the past and you know from experience that you have to decapitate them to bring them down. As the first zombie falls, you face a thicket of swinging blades, what zombies lack in speed and accuracy, they make up in fearlessness and tenacity. You need to fight without getting cornered or overwhelmed. You duck to the left and then run to the right, making the zombies slowly try to follow you. You pick a zombie at the edge and cut at his knees while parrying two blades aimed at your midsection. The zombies legs are undercut and you duck and blade and stab upwards into a zombie's gut. They keep onrushing but you roll to the side of a blow and parry a second before leaping on a table. A downward chop takes another zombie downward and you backflip off the table landing on your feet. Taking a mirror, you toss it into the face of a nearing zombie and slip to the left before arcing right and using your sword to decapitate the next. Several seconds later, you pant as the last zombie falls. The Deathmagus claps his bony pale hands slowly, "Very good little Silver one, you are most impressive. I've decided to give you one last challenge, if you can over come it I'll let you live." He turns to one of the fully armored vanguards and points at you. The Vanguard silently obeys stepping forward with his barbed Falchion at the ready. The other Vanguard stands by his master and together they watch the duel. You know from experience that Vanguards are heavily armored juggernauts with undead endurance and massive two handed falchions with rasping barbs attached. Do you: > You use your Broadsword and Short Swords to inflict heavy damage? The Vanguard was a heavy warrior with a massive slow sword so you decide to try your luck with your heavy sword relying on your natural quickness to keep one step ahead of him. As he nears you you double-hand the broadsword and smash it as hard as you can against his side. The blade bangs loudly against him and you see a dent appear in the armor but he moves as if it were a feather duster. He swipes at your head but you duck and spin away. You finish the spin with a heavy blow to his knee and you see with some satisfaction as the armor dents in and his knee buckles. The Vanguard barely even registers the blow and chops at you with an overhand blow that meets the stone floor and shatters it. You roll backwards and throw two blades that ricochet off the armor and stick in the ceiling. He keeps moving forward unperturbed by the blades and you charge towards him willing him to commit for a swing. When he does, you leap to the side and again bash his knee. The metal dents a little more and his knee visibly weakens. You roll away and place your broadsword between yourself and his blade. His hand glows black and he begins to drag you towards him with some form of dark magic. You put your sword in front of you and duck another slash as you use his magic to impale himself with your sword. He staggers backwards and you block a sideways slash meant for your wait with your broadsword. The power knocks it flying across the room lodging into the wall. You kick off of the Vanguard and run backwards as the knight continually steps forward thinking to yourself, "That was cheating..." Pulling your twin short swords, you leap and twist so your blades smack deep into his shoulders. The Vanguard staggers and steps back and you tumble off of his body and duck to the left. You hear his stomps as you run for your broadblade. You reach it and pull it out of the wall just as the Vanguard reaches you. You have to release the sword in order to keep your arm. After his miss, you again grab the blade and rush around him to his backside raining your broadblade high into the air and stabbing it downward into his wounded knee. Your blade bites deep into the knee and sinks into the stone floor pinning him. Pulling your swords from his shoulders, you jump into his back making him fall forward and then roll over him pulling your twin blades with you. You then watch as he starts to pull himself up. This is when you strike with both blades at his neck repeatedly, the sparks of your work lighting up the room as your steel pounds against the Ulum metal of the Turric Mages. Finally, the metal gives way and you plant both swords into his neck and pull outward. The metal shell and flesh peels outwards and you take your dagger and plant it deep into his spine wrenching it back and forth until the warrior drops coldly into the dust. Backing away you watch as his body, armor, flesh, and weapon melt and turn to dust. Breathing heavily, you turn towards the door where the Deathmagus nods his approval and turns to the exit. A second later, the place is quiet and empty. Despite yourself you fall into a deep, deep sleep...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your sleep is suddenly interrupted by the sound of the door being kicked in by heavy booted feet. In the entrance are five undead warriors, two heavily armored Turric Vanguards and a Turric Deathmagus, a necromancer by any other name. You rise to your feet pulling your broadsword and charging. Deathmagus takes no prisoners. This is going to be a fight to the death. You swing a heavy blow and decapitate the lead zombie as the others charge forward. You've fought the occasional zombie in the past and you know from experience that you have to decapitate them to bring them down. As the first zombie falls, you face a thicket of swinging blades, what zombies lack in speed and accuracy, they make up in fearlessness and tenacity. You need to fight without getting cornered or overwhelmed. You duck to the left and then run to the right, making the zombies slowly try to follow you. You pick a zombie at the edge and cut at his knees while parrying two blades aimed at your midsection. The zombies legs are undercut and you duck and blade and stab upwards into a zombie's gut. They keep onrushing but you roll to the side of a blow and parry a second before leaping on a table. A downward chop takes another zombie downward and you backflip off the table landing on your feet. Taking a mirror, you toss it into the face of a nearing zombie and slip to the left before arcing right and using your sword to decapitate the next. Several seconds later, you pant as the last zombie falls. The Deathmagus claps his bony pale hands slowly, "Very good little Silver one, you are most impressive. I've decided to give you one last challenge, if you can over come it I'll let you live." He turns to one of the fully armored vanguards and points at you. The Vanguard silently obeys stepping forward with his barbed Falchion at the ready. The other Vanguard stands by his master and together they watch the duel. You know from experience that Vanguards are heavily armored juggernauts with undead endurance and massive two handed falchions with rasping barbs attached. Do you: > You stay at range and use throwing blades and daggers. You begin the duel with two throwing knives as you try to stay at range. The blades hit square but ricochet off the heavy armor. You growl as you duck under his heavy blade and cartwheel out of his range. Having more space, you throw two more knives, one bounces off and sticks in the ceiling and the other lodges under his armor. The Vanguard pulls the blade out and throws it to the ground and you pull a dagger with two more knives. Since the Vanguard seems to be taking his time, steadily moving forward, you carefully aim the next two throws. The first slides into an eyehole of the armor and for the first time you get his attention. The blade spews brackish blood that leaks from under his helm and dribbles down his chin. He pulls the blade from his eye and grasps the Falchion with both hands, the old leather crackles under his grip. "Great..." you think as you dodge a powerful but slow swipe that smashes the cabinet you ducked behind. You pull back and throw the second blade trying to lodge it through his plates under his arm. It connects with the armor and bangs off into the floor. Pulling your daggers you duck under a sweeping cross-swipe and punch the dagger into his breastplate. The dagger rings in your hand without doing any apparent damage. He kicks but misses as you flit to the side and stab him in the neck. The blade slides into his neck but it doesn't slow him even a bit. He backhands you and you barely escape a full on hit but feel your jaw instantly bruise and you see stars as you fall backwards into the debris around you. He is upon you instantly but you dodge his reversed blade and watch the heavy blade pierce the stone itself. You roll to your feet and try to kick out his feet but your leg meets with an unmovable object and you back away limping. He closes in on you as you switch to your throwing knives which clink off his armor. You can't believe it when he raises his hand and you feel dark energy course through you. "That wasn't fair..." is the last thought you think as he plants his falchion deep into your stomach and rips downward splitting your body from stomach to crotch. The last thing you see is his dead eye peering at you as you bleed out. YOU HAVE FAILED.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You realize that the hound is going to be a noisy, dangerous problem and so you resolve to end that issue first. As soon as the trio of enemies rush into the room you pop up from behind the desk and throw three throwing knives at the beast. The first knife goes wide and lands knee level in the wooden wall, but the second catches in the jaw bursting it's teeth and jutting through it's muzzle, and the third smashes in the flanks sticking through it's hind quarter. The beast yelps pitiably and staggers backwards incapacitated. The beast howls and you leap over the table drawing both of your short blades. In close quarter fighting, your short swords and stabbing style will be a good match against the barbed scimitars the Turrics favor which require wide fast swings. The first Turric swings high and you duck and deflect the first blade while reversing your spin and cutting the soldier's leg off at the knee. The second swings towards your midriff but you tumble and his swing lodges in his already injured partner's ribs. You crouch and then spring low stabbing the second soldier's foot and slicing his sword arm off at the wrist. The second soldier screams and tries to stagger backwards but his foot is pinned to the floor. Rising you pull the blade free and jut the short blade up into his stomach pushing under his ribs until the blade pierces his heart and blood runs down his armor like a burst dike. As he falls back, you turn to the hound. You hate to kill such a noble beast but it was now time to end it's pain. A quick reversal of your swords sets up a downward thrust that pierces it's brain and severs it's spine. The hound collapses with a quiver. You wipe your swords on a soldier's sleeve and place them again on your back. You then collect your throwing knives and search the soldiers for anything they carry you can use. You ignore their damaged armor, barbed scimitars, and top-heavy daggers and instead collect their coin pouches. Thirty Silvers later, you check the windows. You are relived to see that there is no further action in the streets. Do you: > You help the girl out of the hiding place? You dislike the thought of dragging around a non-combatant but you could at least take care of her until she can be handed off to someone else. By herself she'd either starve to death or get caught and become a victim to the Turrics. With you she had a slim chance to live, it wasn't much but it was something. You dislike the thought of dragging around a non-combatant but you could at least take care of her until she can be handed off to someone else. By herself she'd either starve to death or get caught and become a victim to the Turrics. With you she had a slim chance to live, it wasn't much but it was something. Going downstairs, you say 'Defender' as you pull back the tapestry but there is no answer. You say 'Defender' again but there is still no response. Dreading what you'll find, you open the little door to find the girl, her body lifeless with your dagger stuck in her chest. You curse her weakness even as the pragmatic side of you tells you your own survival rate just increased. At least she'll be with her family you suppose. With a heavy heart you retrieve your knife and close the trapdoor.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You skate up the stairs taking three at a time and find a door at the top of the stairs. You pull out your lockpicks and begin to jimmy the door. Within seconds you hear the lock 'click' and you slide inside closing the door behind you. You hear a creak and some sniffling sounds somewhere in the room. It's very dark, all of the windows are shuttered, and you negotiate the room by sound and touch rather than lighting a lamp and giving yourself away. Following behind your sword, you investigate the dark room and try to track the noise before someone or something gets the drop on you. When the sound is made again, you rush to the wall ripping off a tapestry and see a that it hides a small doorway. You open it in a flash, sword back to provide a fatal stab. To your surprise a young girl, perhaps sixteen years in age is in hiding. You look at her frightened face, streaked with tears and the knowledge that none of her family made it through whatever happened downstairs. She screams at the sudden discovery and scrambles as far back in the hidden compartment as she can go. You curse your luck and say, "Be quiet girl! I'm not here to hurt you! Pray you haven't woken the neighborhood!" You quickly move away from the whimpering girl and check the windows. Sure enough two Turric Swordsmen and a Wardog are on the prowl. The dog starts to bark and drag the two soldiers towards the house. "Shit!" You hiss and move back to the secret compartment. Pulling up the tapestry you tell the girl, "No matter what you do, no matter what you hear, do not leave this compartment for the next few hours unless you hear me say 'Defender'." You slide a dagger her way and say, "And no matter what, don't let them take you alive, if this place is discovered, if this flap is opened and they try to take you, slice your throat, plunge this into your chest but don't let them take you out of here. No matter what!" You close the hidden door, drop the tapestry, close and lock the door to the first floor, and hide behind a desk. When those bastards come through they're going to pay dearly. The sound of heavy boots tromping up the stairs follow a barking dog. They try the lock, try it again, and then start trying to bash the door in. The door survives four solid charges before the door rips off of the hinges and the men and beast rush in swords drawn. > You kill the men, then the dog. You decide that men with swords beat out a hound so you ready your ambush by hiding behind a desk and wait for them to rush in. They do as you predict and you pop up from behind the desk and toss three throwing knives, two at the leader, one at the man following him. The first bounces off the lead man's armor. The second catches him in the neck and he goes down grasping at his throat. The third narrowly misses the following soldier by inches. You draw your short swords which are a good matchup against the wide swinging barbed scimitars the Turric use, at least in confined spaces. Then you leap over the desk ready to take the second soldier out. He charges as you rush to meet him. His swing is wild and you parry it ducking into a tumble and swing low cutting his foot off at the ankle. As you roll into a crouch you are hit from the side by the wardog which barrels into you knocking you off balance. It bites for your throat but you sacrifice your arm instead losing your left hand sword in the process. The short sword rings off of the wooden floor and skitters several feet away as you use your other sword to stab the dog in the ribs. Even as you stab the dog and it yelps, the other soldier levels a boot at your head and kicks you so hard you see sparkles and blackness for a second. The dog rends a massive rip in your bracer and blood spurts from the open wound into it's mouth. You stab it again and it collapses. The second warrior raises his Barbed Scimitar as you struggle to get the dog's dead weight off of your own body. You scream as the blade comes down cutting deep into your skull. Death is instantaneous. YOU HAVE FAILED!!!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You conserve your energy and block his blows. Knowing the wild style of the Turric swordsman, you easily parry several wild blows. As he failed to strike he becomes more and more frustrated and you lure him into a wide swing and while he is pulling back, you step in his reach and break his nose with the handle of your sword. The stunning blow makes him stumble backwards and you press the advantage kicking him backwards and then turning your sword and driving it through his stomach! He squirms like a worm for several long seconds before you twist your blade and finish the job. Though you conserved your energy by blocking, you attracted the attention of a few more warriors. They come streaming out of a building to your right and you count at least five men, two with crossbows aimed in your direction. Do you: Run away or turn to face the group and take them head on using throwing knives to whittle them down before resorting to your sword? > You kill Em All! You whirl quickly around pulling three throwing knives and letting them free at the charging warriors. Two of the three blades 'thunk!' into the Turric Swordsmen. One plunks deep in a man's chest and he staggers sideways before falling. The other knife slams into a warrior's arm causing him to howl in pain. With four of the men left from the initial assault, you realize you are in a bind. You level your sword at the two melee warriors and try to stay out of the sight of the two crossbowmen. A bolt 'thrums' by your ear. Another 'thuds' into a pillar to your left. You circle for position as one warrior heads towards your left side and the injured warrior with a knife sticking out of his arm circles to your right. The crossbowmen are reloading and another attack is imminent. What do you do? > You feint Right and Attack the Warrior to the left. Quickly, you move right and fake the warrior to your weak side, then cross the blade over and thrust it deep into the warrior on your left. The sword punctures the armor of the warrior and slides thickly into his belly where you feel the steel edge nestle in his spinal column and break through his back. The man instantly collapses like a stack of bricks taking your sword with it. Rolling with the momentum, you duck under the whistling blade of the other warrior and tumble through bolts fired by the crossbowmen several meters distant. Before you even roll fully out of your crouch you pull two daggers and let them fly into the swordsman giving chase. One bashes into his face piercing his skull and the other strikes his leg. He falls lifeless like a bull shot in mid charge. The crossbowmen, once trying to pick shots are now hurriedly trying to reload. you turn to them and pull short swords and charge them. They fumble their crossbows as you near them. Two vicious strikes later and you stand triumphant over five Turric corpses. Catching your breath, you grab your weapons and check the bodies for loot. Seeing that your masters aren't probably going to be keeping you on the payroll, you may as well scrounge a little coin to prevent this from being a total loss. Three bags full of silver coins jingle in your hand and you put them in your pockets and turn to go. You can either try to keep moving by skipping from building to building or you can choose to head into the dark alleyways across the street that heads to the ghettoes of Essitrea.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You whirl quickly around pulling three throwing knives and letting them free at the charging warriors. Two of the three blades 'thunk!' into the Turric Swordsmen. One plunks deep in a man's chest and he staggers sideways before falling. The other knife slams into a warrior's arm causing him to howl in pain. With four of the men left from the initial assault, you realize you are in a bind. You level your sword at the two melee warriors and try to stay out of the sight of the two crossbowmen. A bolt 'thrums' by your ear. Another 'thuds' into a pillar to your left. You circle for position as one warrior heads towards your left side and the injured warrior with a knife sticking out of his arm circles to your right. The crossbowmen are reloading and another attack is imminent. What do you do? > You throw more daggers at the crossbowmen. You are surrounded both by swordsmen and crossbowmen. Sensing that you might be plucked off from range you duck under the slash of the warrior to your left and pull your throwing blades. Two blades fly free and both strike the crossbowmen, the man on the left is hit in the chest and the one on the right feels a blade hit his shoulder. Even as they fall, you bring your broadblade up to parry the attacks from the man on the right. The barbed scimitar collides with the flat of your blade and sparks glide from the conflicting metals. Then you feel a sharp pain from behind as you see the point of a scimitar pierce through your chest. You feel as if your whole body is being electrocuted and you watch with hazing vision as your sword falls limply from your grasp. The blade twists inside you and your knees give out and you fall to your knees. The left side swordsman measures you up and swings his blade. The sensation of your head rolling on the ground is eerie as you watch your body fall. Then, slowly, the world turns black. YOU HAVE FAILED!!!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You whirl quickly around pulling three throwing knives and letting them free at the charging warriors. Two of the three blades 'thunk!' into the Turric Swordsmen. One plunks deep in a man's chest and he staggers sideways before falling. The other knife slams into a warrior's arm causing him to howl in pain. With four of the men left from the initial assault, you realize you are in a bind. You level your sword at the two melee warriors and try to stay out of the sight of the two crossbowmen. A bolt 'thrums' by your ear. Another 'thuds' into a pillar to your left. You circle for position as one warrior heads towards your left side and the injured warrior with a knife sticking out of his arm circles to your right. The crossbowmen are reloading and another attack is imminent. What do you do? > You feint Left and Attack the Warrior to your right. You quickly feint left and then pull your heavy blade to the right with a vicious backhand arc that decapitates your opponent. The right-side swordsman's body twists in a ghoulish pirouette before stepping once to the left and falling. His head lies some ten feet into the distance. You have however left your side exposed and you feel the results of a brutish slice into your side. You scream in agony and frustration before reversing your sword and thrusting it backwards. This catches the left-side swordsman directly in his stomach and you thrust it through his body before giving the blade a nasty twist. You feel the warrior slide off of the steel and grunt in satisfaction. However, this is cut short by a bolt which smashes into your shoulder. You scream and reflexively draw a dagger which you hurtle across the field into the throat of the crossbowman who just shot you. However, his ally has been taking careful aim and looses another bolt which slams into your stomach. Blood courses down your armor as you collapse to the ground, your feet no longer able to carry you. You grip your sword and try to rise as the men reload speaking their guttural language. They walk cautiously up to you as you grip a dagger secretly and act just a little bit more wounded than you are. The first man approaches and pulls a knife, "You've got pretty skin bitch," he growls and grabs your face, pulling your chin up to his. "Too bad I've gotta cut you up, you might have been a good ride." Growling, you plunge your dagger into his crotch and twist. He screams, gripping his groin and falls to the side rolling in pain. The other crossbowman steps back in suprise then his look hardens, "You've got teeth, Siak was always a fool. I'm not." Raising his crossbow he levels it at your head and pulls the trigger. The bolt jolts your head back as you fall lifeless into the street surrounded by a pile of corpses. YOU HAVE FAILED!!!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You whirl quickly around pulling three throwing knives and letting them free at the charging warriors. Two of the three blades 'thunk!' into the Turric Swordsmen. One plunks deep in a man's chest and he staggers sideways before falling. The other knife slams into a warrior's arm causing him to howl in pain. With four of the men left from the initial assault, you realize you are in a bind. You level your sword at the two melee warriors and try to stay out of the sight of the two crossbowmen. A bolt 'thrums' by your ear. Another 'thuds' into a pillar to your left. You circle for position as one warrior heads towards your left side and the injured warrior with a knife sticking out of his arm circles to your right. The crossbowmen are reloading and another attack is imminent. What do you do? > You surrender. Surrounded by the warriors and realizing that you will probably not survive this fight, you drop your sword and raise your hands. The warriors grin and, under the careful watch of the crossbowmen, the swordsmen circle, one to the front and one behind. Suddenly, your hair is gripped and you are pulled to your knees. A knife is applied to your neck and the men begin to grin. "Take her weapons Siak, the kitten still has claws." You feel your body being searched, the knives being stripped and tossed, your belts being removed, and then the men fall on you. You scream and try to fight them but there are just too many of them. You finally burst into tears as you realize your impending fate. Two hold you arms as the others pry your legs open and the others pull off your pants. You scream for help knowing none will be coming. Before they kill you, you hear Siak say, "I wish all our girls were this easy..." YOU HAVE FAILED!!!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You attack the warriors with the advantage of surprise. Crawling low, you creep until you are at the edge of the wall you were hiding behind then you suddenly sprint with your broadsword lifted in both hands. As you descend upon the Turric Warriors, you swing the sword in an arc that splits the first Turric Swordsman's left arm from his body. You spin and use the heavy blade's momentum to make a second cut from the shoulder blade up through the man's neck decapitating him instantly. As the first warrior falls, blood arcing into the sky, the two others reel in shock. You take advantage of this momentary lapse of reason and bring a low slice towards the second man's knee. The blade connects and the limb is taken clean off. Following the blade's momentum, you raise it up and steer it into the man's chest. The third warrior has now gathered his wits and attacks viciously trying to slice you with his barbed scimitar. You back away from the first strike, block the second, and duck the third. His blows are coming faster than the broad-blade can react. Do you: Parry and look for an opening with the butt of your sword to stun the enemy or block with the sword and pull a dagger with your other hand and plunge it into his neck? > You pull the Dagger and go for the Kill! Parrying his first attack, you slip a dagger from your belt and plunge it deep into his neck. The man stops and falls backwards, his body shivering and eyes glazing as he tries to pull the treacherous weapon free. His struggles soon cease and he lies in a glistening pool of his own blood. Do you: > You scram before anyone else sees you? Deciding that it is smarter to pick your battles rather than have them pick you, you decide to leave the corpse alone and head for the nearest cover. Sure enough several men, three swordsmen and two crossbowmen curiously round a corner of a destroyed building and begin to investigate the area. You are skilled but you'd rather not risk being put to the test against such ruthless men. You shiver when you consider what they do to women they take captive. Crouching, you duck out of sight and move quietly out of their range. A few tense moments later you are in a less damaged part of the city. You look around and you see two likely routes of escape, the sewers and the twisting alleyways that run through the slums. Going through the main thoroughfares would be suicide so you decide to risk them. Normally both the alleys and the sewers are dangerous because of brigands, disease, and wild animals but for now, they might make for safe havens in the otherwise fallen city. Which do you choose? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Parrying his first attack, you slip a dagger from your belt and plunge it deep into his neck. The man stops and falls backwards, his body shivering and eyes glazing as he tries to pull the treacherous weapon free. His struggles soon cease and he lies in a glistening pool of his own blood. Do you: > You search the Body. You check the body of the fallen soldier and find a map. The map shows the city as it once was before the attack. You look around and try to get your bearings and spy a tower that is currently in flames. Orienting yourself, you see that the enemy has well marked battle plans and you can see troop movements marked in red as well as defending troop locations marked in blue. Perhaps you can make it to a defensive point where other troops might be, or you might just want to try to use back alleys to avoid all troops altogether. You could also ignore the map and head for the sewers. MAP: Essitrea Battle Plans > You head for a Defensive Point You move quickly and silently through the alleys, side streets, and main streets of the falling city. Several times you have to draw swords and fight enemy troops, run away from other Turric groups, or even loose undead creatures wandering the city, however, you find a place to hole up before you make the final push towards safety. You decide to wait until nightfall before moving onwards.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab your blade tightly and look around quickly before dashing over the lip of the crater and towards the blasted wall nearest your left side. Nearby an explosion spurts up chunks of earth and stone as well as the arm of a corpse, high into the air. You watch in horror as the appendage plops onto the sidewalk. From your left, three Turric warriors rush and assault an injured merchant, stabbing him repeatedly with their wickedly barbed scimitars before looting the man's corpse. To your right you see another building about twenty feet across some exposed ground. Do you: > You run for the Next Building? You run for the next building, everything looks safe. No one passes by and the streets are filled with corpses. Perhaps the vanguard has passed by. Taking a breath, you peek out and sense no one. Slowly you rise and take some tentative steps towards the next building. Though you cross a twenty foot expanse, you safely make it to the next stop. Peeking around the corner, you see a pitiable sight, a small blonde boy is crying over the corpses of his parents in the rubble strewn debris that was once his building. The piercing scream of an incoming flaming boulder smashes into the cobblestones vaporizing everything in your vision and knocking you back. As you rise, you hear yet another burst far to the rear. After regaining your feet, you start after where the boy was. There is nothing left but a smoking crater surrounded by a ring of flames. Despite your normal stoic nature, tears threaten to slide down your cheek. Gripping your blade, you force yourself to trudge onwards. Three streets upward, you notice a firefight going on. Three Essitrean troops are hunkered behind a wall. Each has a crossbow and a fourth soldier lies dead with a bolt sticking out of his neck. You run in a crouch towards their position and fall to a knee beside the sergeant, "What's the situation Sergeant?" You ask. He turns and almost goes for his sword as he doesn't recognize you but he says, "Mercenary?" You nod and he grunts, "Figured you all had fled by now, hell if this wasn't my home I'd have fled long ago. Suppose I'll be dying within these old walls soon enough." A crossbow bolt smacking against the wall brings him back to the fight. "Well, we're trying to reach a defensive position North of here but the bloody Turrics got us cut off. Out of a platoon sized element, only we remain and we're cut off from Main Group. If you can fire a crossbow, your help would be welcome. Hell, even if you can't you can at least take potshots at the bastards." You nod taking up the Arbalest, a crossbow you are very skilled with and load the bolt. "Where are they located?" You ask. He darws a quick picture in the dirt with a bolt and says, "We're here, their behind that berm over there. I'm pretty sure there's a sniper a little to the west. Bad thing is, though we can't see him, he can sure as hell see us and he's a crack shot. Took out Ivey with one clean shot, got Spiner just over there." He points to a Essitrean corpse about fifteen feet away, a bolt planted in his back. Those idiots behind the berm are lousy but they've got us pinned with suppressive fire, can't raise my head without fear of taking bolts, the sniper though, he's the real challenge. We take him out and we can flank. Without him dead, we're stuck in a stalemate." Add ARBALEST (Crossbow) to your Inventory. You think over the options: > You say "Cover me, I'll take the Sniper." You agree to stay but you have to figure out where the sniper is before you can take him out. "Hey Soldier, let me borrow that shield for a second." You grab his small metal shield and quickly raise it above the small wall you are all hunkered behind. Sure enough, the distraction brings a small hail of bolts from your front where the Turric Soldiers are entrenched, but they miss. However, from your right side a bolt slams the shield knocking it out of your hands and sends it rolling about ten feet to your left before the shield flops over. "Okay soldiers, I know where the sniper is. I'm going to be heading to that little brick wall by the rubble pile, when I say go, I want you to fire your crossbows at the Turric Bastards until I'm set." The men nod, they lock and load their crossbows and scrunch up preparing to fire. You count to three and then begin a full-out sprint towards the brick wall in a low crouch. Meanwhile the Essitreans fire all they have at the Turric soldiers who keep their heads don until the flurry is over. They then return fire on the Essitreans and you wheel to the right towards the wall. You realize that the next five feet will be critical. Test your luck: > You if your name starts with B, E, F, J, P, or Y... You duck, dodge, and sprint and are scant seconds to making a dive for home when you take a bolt directly in the ribs. Crashing Uncontrollably into the bricks you injure yourself pretty badly but you skitter up behind the wall and lean against it. You now have a 2 ENDURANCE (out of 3) if your ENDURANCE lowers to 0 you are Dead. Breathing with difficulty, you crouch and load your crossbow, you're going to get that Son-of-a-bitch if it's the last thing that you do. After saying a quick prayer, you turn out from the wall and scan the buildings in the direction of the shot, just as quickly you turn back in too the safety of the wall. A millisecond later a bolt smashes into the rubble you were just perched on. You scoot over mentally aiming at the tall tower window on your upper right side. Then you skirt over to the small hole in the wall and aim. Inside you see movement in the wall and you draw a bead. Inhale. Exhale... Fire! The bolt soars through the air and you hear a slight gasping sound before a man topples out of the window and falls four stories to the cobblestones below. The soldiers cheer and you send them a quick thumbs up. Now to deal with the Turric Soldiers. You move along the wall to flank the Turric Crossbowmen being careful not to make noise or alert them to your position. Finally, you can go no further and you peek your head out to see where they are and how many. You notice five men, each loading their crossbows. Deciding to make it four, you fire at the most exposed soldier and duck back behind your wall. A scream rewards your efforts and shouts from the Turric soldiers show that they now have a sniper to deal with. You reload your Arbalest and ready yourself for another shot. Turn, aim, fire, and duck. A scream follows that action and you slide back down the wall to communicate with the sergeant. He is busy instructing his men to take careful aim but you catch his eye and motion for him to send another soldier across to your position. You slide back to your sniper's post and between you and the soldiers, lay down covering fire as one of the privates rushes to the wall you are hiding behind. You've now got the enemy flanked. He looks at you with the bolt sticking out of your ribs and exhales but you motion for him to move to the corner. He takes a quick look and sees a Turric Medic tending for their two wounded men while two men provide fire at the Soldiers you left. You nod and roll over aiming at the Medic and taking him out with a bolt that shatters his skull. The soldier with you runs to the side to another wall to the rear of the beleagured Turric warriors and The sergeant and his soldier keep up firing from the front. Seconds later, you and your soldier pick off the last two Turric Crossbowmen. You wave your hand back and forth indicating a cease fire and you all rise from the rubble strewn battleground. The Sergeant and his men rush to congratulate you, "I don't know what we'd have done without your timely intervention. I'm Sergeant Reynall and these soldiers are Corvis and Leake. I'm guessing your that merc girl they call 'Silver'. I'd heard you were amazing but obviously the legends do you no justice." He looks at the bolt in your side and cringes, "Looks like you took one for the team, unfortunately our medic is lying over there with a bolt in him so I'll just bandage it up and keep it as sterile as possible. We're heading over to a defensive position where we think some friendly troops are stationed, your welcome to come along for the ride if you'd like. Four is a hell of a lot better than one I'd say." > You say "Thanks for letting me tag along..." You and the troops move quickly and silently through the alleys, side streets, and main streets of the falling city. Several times you have to draw swords and fight enemy troops, run away from other Turric groups, or even loose undead creatures wandering the city, however, you all find a place to hole up before you make the final push towards safety. You decide to wait until nightfall before moving onwards.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You duck, dodge, and sprint and are scant seconds to making a dive for home when you take a bolt directly in the ribs. Crashing Uncontrollably into the bricks you injure yourself pretty badly but you skitter up behind the wall and lean against it. You now have a 2 ENDURANCE (out of 3) if your ENDURANCE lowers to 0 you are Dead. Breathing with difficulty, you crouch and load your crossbow, you're going to get that Son-of-a-bitch if it's the last thing that you do. After saying a quick prayer, you turn out from the wall and scan the buildings in the direction of the shot, just as quickly you turn back in too the safety of the wall. A millisecond later a bolt smashes into the rubble you were just perched on. You scoot over mentally aiming at the tall tower window on your upper right side. Then you skirt over to the small hole in the wall and aim. Inside you see movement in the wall and you draw a bead. Inhale. Exhale... Fire! The bolt soars through the air and you hear a slight gasping sound before a man topples out of the window and falls four stories to the cobblestones below. The soldiers cheer and you send them a quick thumbs up. Now to deal with the Turric Soldiers. You move along the wall to flank the Turric Crossbowmen being careful not to make noise or alert them to your position. Finally, you can go no further and you peek your head out to see where they are and how many. You notice five men, each loading their crossbows. Deciding to make it four, you fire at the most exposed soldier and duck back behind your wall. A scream rewards your efforts and shouts from the Turric soldiers show that they now have a sniper to deal with. You reload your Arbalest and ready yourself for another shot. Turn, aim, fire, and duck. A scream follows that action and you slide back down the wall to communicate with the sergeant. He is busy instructing his men to take careful aim but you catch his eye and motion for him to send another soldier across to your position. You slide back to your sniper's post and between you and the soldiers, lay down covering fire as one of the privates rushes to the wall you are hiding behind. You've now got the enemy flanked. He looks at you with the bolt sticking out of your ribs and exhales but you motion for him to move to the corner. He takes a quick look and sees a Turric Medic tending for their two wounded men while two men provide fire at the Soldiers you left. You nod and roll over aiming at the Medic and taking him out with a bolt that shatters his skull. The soldier with you runs to the side to another wall to the rear of the beleagured Turric warriors and The sergeant and his soldier keep up firing from the front. Seconds later, you and your soldier pick off the last two Turric Crossbowmen. You wave your hand back and forth indicating a cease fire and you all rise from the rubble strewn battleground. The Sergeant and his men rush to congratulate you, "I don't know what we'd have done without your timely intervention. I'm Sergeant Reynall and these soldiers are Corvis and Leake. I'm guessing your that merc girl they call 'Silver'. I'd heard you were amazing but obviously the legends do you no justice." He looks at the bolt in your side and cringes, "Looks like you took one for the team, unfortunately our medic is lying over there with a bolt in him so I'll just bandage it up and keep it as sterile as possible. We're heading over to a defensive position where we think some friendly troops are stationed, your welcome to come along for the ride if you'd like. Four is a hell of a lot better than one I'd say." > You say "Sorry, I work alone..." You head out, leaving the men to their own fate. Such was the life of a mercenary, why get attached to lost causes? You duck into an alley to avoid a patrol and then head left throwing your hood over your distinctive silver hair. Ducking to the right you enter a series of alleyways. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You agree to stay but you have to figure out where the sniper is before you can take him out. "Hey Soldier, let me borrow that shield for a second." You grab his small metal shield and quickly raise it above the small wall you are all hunkered behind. Sure enough, the distraction brings a small hail of bolts from your front where the Turric Soldiers are entrenched, but they miss. However, from your right side a bolt slams the shield knocking it out of your hands and sends it rolling about ten feet to your left before the shield flops over. "Okay soldiers, I know where the sniper is. I'm going to be heading to that little brick wall by the rubble pile, when I say go, I want you to fire your crossbows at the Turric Bastards until I'm set." The men nod, they lock and load their crossbows and scrunch up preparing to fire. You count to three and then begin a full-out sprint towards the brick wall in a low crouch. Meanwhile the Essitreans fire all they have at the Turric soldiers who keep their heads don until the flurry is over. They then return fire on the Essitreans and you wheel to the right towards the wall. You realize that the next five feet will be critical. Test your luck: > You if your name starts with any other letter of the alphabet... You duck, dodge, and sprint and then make a graceful rolling tumble into the rubble. Coming up from your roll, you crouch and load your crossbow, you're going to get that Sniper if it's the last thing that you do. After saying a quick prayer, you turn out from the wall and scan the buildings in the direction of the shot, just as quickly you turn back in to the safety of the wall. A millisecond later a bolt smashes into the rubble you were just perched on. You scoot over mentally aiming at the tall tower window on your upper right side. Then you skirt over to the small hole in the wall and aim. Inside you see movement in the wall and you draw a bead. Inhale. Exhale... Fire! The bolt soars through the air and you hear a slight gasping sound before a man topples out of the window and falls four stories to the cobblestones below. The soldiers cheer and you send them a quick thumbs up. Now to deal with the Turric Soldiers. You move along the wall to flank the Turric Crossbowmen being careful not to make noise or alert them to your position. Finally, you can go no further and you peek your head out to see where they are and how many. You notice five men, each loading their crossbows. Deciding to make it four, you fire at the most exposed soldier and duck back behind your wall. A scream rewards your efforts and shouts from the Turric soldiers show that they now have a sniper to deal with. You reload your Arbalest and ready yourself for another shot. Turn, aim, fire, and duck. A scream follows that action and you slide back down the wall to communicate with the sergeant. He is busy instructing his men to take careful aim but you catch his eye and motion for him to send another soldier across to your position. You slide back to your sniper's post and between you and the soldiers, lay down covering fire as one of the privates rushes to the wall you are hiding behind. You've now got the enemy flanked. He looks at you with admiration and awe but you motion for him to move to the corner and keep his wits about him. He takes a quick look and sees a Turric Medic tending for their two wounded men while two men provide fire at the Soldiers you left. You nod and roll over aiming at the Medic and taking him out with a bolt that shatters his skull. The soldier with you runs to the side to another wall to the rear of the beleagured Turric warriors and The sergeant and his soldier keep up firing from the front. Seconds later, you and your soldier pick off the last two Turric Crossbowmen. You wave your hand back and forth indicating a cease fire and you all rise from the rubble strewn battleground. The Sergeant and his men rush to congratulate you, "I don't know what we'd have done without your timely intervention. I'm Sergeant Reynall and these soldiers are Corvis and Leake. I'm guessing your that merc girl they call 'Silver'. I'd heard you were amazing but obviously the legends do you no justice!" He looks at you and says, "We're heading over to a defensive position where we think some friendly troops are stationed, your welcome to come along for the ride if you'd like. Four is a hell of a lot better than one I'd say." <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You run for the next building, everything looks safe. No one passes by and the streets are filled with corpses. Perhaps the vanguard has passed by. Taking a breath, you peek out and sense no one. Slowly you rise and take some tentative steps towards the next building. Though you cross a twenty foot expanse, you safely make it to the next stop. Peeking around the corner, you see a pitiable sight, a small blonde boy is crying over the corpses of his parents in the rubble strewn debris that was once his building. The piercing scream of an incoming flaming boulder smashes into the cobblestones vaporizing everything in your vision and knocking you back. As you rise, you hear yet another burst far to the rear. After regaining your feet, you start after where the boy was. There is nothing left but a smoking crater surrounded by a ring of flames. Despite your normal stoic nature, tears threaten to slide down your cheek. Gripping your blade, you force yourself to trudge onwards. Three streets upward, you notice a firefight going on. Three Essitrean troops are hunkered behind a wall. Each has a crossbow and a fourth soldier lies dead with a bolt sticking out of his neck. You run in a crouch towards their position and fall to a knee beside the sergeant, "What's the situation Sergeant?" You ask. He turns and almost goes for his sword as he doesn't recognize you but he says, "Mercenary?" You nod and he grunts, "Figured you all had fled by now, hell if this wasn't my home I'd have fled long ago. Suppose I'll be dying within these old walls soon enough." A crossbow bolt smacking against the wall brings him back to the fight. "Well, we're trying to reach a defensive position North of here but the bloody Turrics got us cut off. Out of a platoon sized element, only we remain and we're cut off from Main Group. If you can fire a crossbow, your help would be welcome. Hell, even if you can't you can at least take potshots at the bastards." You nod taking up the Arbalest, a crossbow you are very skilled with and load the bolt. "Where are they located?" You ask. He darws a quick picture in the dirt with a bolt and says, "We're here, their behind that berm over there. I'm pretty sure there's a sniper a little to the west. Bad thing is, though we can't see him, he can sure as hell see us and he's a crack shot. Took out Ivey with one clean shot, got Spiner just over there." He points to a Essitrean corpse about fifteen feet away, a bolt planted in his back. Those idiots behind the berm are lousy but they've got us pinned with suppressive fire, can't raise my head without fear of taking bolts, the sniper though, he's the real challenge. We take him out and we can flank. Without him dead, we're stuck in a stalemate." Add ARBALEST (Crossbow) to your Inventory. You think over the options: > You say "Good luck guys. You're on your own!" You owe these soldiers no allegiance, you don't live in this city, and dying for a pointless cause in a nameless street doesn't seem very appealing. You say, "If i were you, I'd retreat cause that's what I'm doing. No point in dying now, this war is lost." You feel a slight twinge of guilt at the faces of the men who look as if you'd taken the little bit of hope you'd given them and dashed it. However, the Sergeant turns to his men and says, "Don't worry about her men, she's a mercenary, she'd sell her mother if the coin was right. We're heroes fighting for our mothers, our families, and our city!" The men buck up and begin to rally sending bolts back towards the enemy as you leave them in the distance. Several streets away and you'd almost forgotten them. To each his own. As you cross a dirty alleyway you see an old woman wandering around the streets asking if anyone had seen her boy tears form rivers in her dusty face. You haven't so you move on. You were hired to fight, not to save the world, to cure the sick, or to save the innocent. It was just too much. You wonder to yourself as you pass the banged out ruins of a massive church, "Where is this god these people prayed to? Why don't they ask him? I'm just one person and I can barely care for myself..." The bitter scenes of man's cruelest depravities pass your sight, dogs chewing on the corpses of a baby in a dead woman's arms, a scavenger stealing bread from a stall while the rats chew on the proprietor, and charred bodies still smoking from the artillery strikes. Somehow you sneak past a troop of Turric soldiers carrying the spoils of their ill-earned gains, golden rings, jeweled necklaces, and young girls, most already battered and beaten, headed to the slave squares and whorehouses the Turrics are so fond of. Nothing you can do, you're just one girl, at least you're not one of them. Sneaking into a doorway you are getting tired, your legs are weakening, and your vision is washed with sweat and exhaustion. You need to find refuge.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You run for the next building, everything looks safe. No one passes by and the streets are filled with corpses. Perhaps the vanguard has passed by. Taking a breath, you peek out and sense no one. Slowly you rise and take some tentative steps towards the next building. Though you cross a twenty foot expanse, you safely make it to the next stop. Peeking around the corner, you see a pitiable sight, a small blonde boy is crying over the corpses of his parents in the rubble strewn debris that was once his building. The piercing scream of an incoming flaming boulder smashes into the cobblestones vaporizing everything in your vision and knocking you back. As you rise, you hear yet another burst far to the rear. After regaining your feet, you start after where the boy was. There is nothing left but a smoking crater surrounded by a ring of flames. Despite your normal stoic nature, tears threaten to slide down your cheek. Gripping your blade, you force yourself to trudge onwards. Three streets upward, you notice a firefight going on. Three Essitrean troops are hunkered behind a wall. Each has a crossbow and a fourth soldier lies dead with a bolt sticking out of his neck. You run in a crouch towards their position and fall to a knee beside the sergeant, "What's the situation Sergeant?" You ask. He turns and almost goes for his sword as he doesn't recognize you but he says, "Mercenary?" You nod and he grunts, "Figured you all had fled by now, hell if this wasn't my home I'd have fled long ago. Suppose I'll be dying within these old walls soon enough." A crossbow bolt smacking against the wall brings him back to the fight. "Well, we're trying to reach a defensive position North of here but the bloody Turrics got us cut off. Out of a platoon sized element, only we remain and we're cut off from Main Group. If you can fire a crossbow, your help would be welcome. Hell, even if you can't you can at least take potshots at the bastards." You nod taking up the Arbalest, a crossbow you are very skilled with and load the bolt. "Where are they located?" You ask. He darws a quick picture in the dirt with a bolt and says, "We're here, their behind that berm over there. I'm pretty sure there's a sniper a little to the west. Bad thing is, though we can't see him, he can sure as hell see us and he's a crack shot. Took out Ivey with one clean shot, got Spiner just over there." He points to a Essitrean corpse about fifteen feet away, a bolt planted in his back. Those idiots behind the berm are lousy but they've got us pinned with suppressive fire, can't raise my head without fear of taking bolts, the sniper though, he's the real challenge. We take him out and we can flank. Without him dead, we're stuck in a stalemate." Add ARBALEST (Crossbow) to your Inventory. You think over the options: > You say "Charge the Berm, they can't kill us all!" You charge the berm and watch as two of your men fall from the crossbows of the opposing soldiers. You are next to fall with a sniper bolt in your neck. As you watch the rest of the men fall you curse your stupidity and choke as blood fills your windpipe and you slowly choke to death facedown in a growing pool of blood. YOU HAVE FAILED!!!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab your blade tightly and look around quickly before dashing over the lip of the crater and towards the blasted wall nearest your left side. Nearby an explosion spurts up chunks of earth and stone as well as the arm of a corpse, high into the air. You watch in horror as the appendage plops onto the sidewalk. From your left, three Turric warriors rush and assault an injured merchant, stabbing him repeatedly with their wickedly barbed scimitars before looting the man's corpse. To your right you see another building about twenty feet across some exposed ground. Do you: > You wait for the Men to Move On? The merchant is already dead so why waste your life fighting for him? Also running away will probably attract their attention so you hide and wait for the men to pass. After about three minutes, you see the men move on, one brags about the men he's killed as they turn a corner. As you are just about to leave, another five Turric soldiers appear from around the corner. You are glad you didn't charge the first three or you might have been fighting eight men by now. You've got the drop on the five men but it seems like it could be really risky. You can also try to sneak away or continue to wait. You take a small breath and exhale as you make your next decision. You creep towards the edge of the wall ready to make your move.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Welcome to Magus: Betrayal! You are known as Uriel, master elementalist and accomplished magician of the Acadamy of Alzur. The Spark, the talent to manipulate the essence of the elements in everything, has enabled you to live a youth far away from the spears of the soldiers, or the toils of the peasants. A findling you are, born to unknown parents and found on the steps of the Academy, but this is not a fate unusual, for the times are harsh for those without the privilige of noble heritage, and few can spare the resources to feed yet another crying mouth. If the Magi of the Academy had not found the Spark in you, they would have turned you over to one of the servants to grow up as one of them, a practice that comes closest to local charity, and ensures that the servants are loyal to the Academy. But this fate was spared to you. From earliest childhood you learned the arts of the scribe, the arts of the rune and the arts of the Elements. Your life has been one of scholarship, and learning, and even though your thoughts sometimes turned towards the parents you never had, you soon accepted that the Academy was your family, never knowing anything different. However, a restlessness in your soul worried your teachers. You were sharper than most of your classmates, and thus began to find the lectures boring, often huddling alone in your study with an ancient tome borrowed from the library with the librarian's grudging permission, learning on your own faster than your teachers could hope to achieve. Finally, the master magicians admitted defeat. They no longer could teach you anything, and thus it came as a relief to them, that you were chosen, with two other magicians, to fortify the guard of an Alzuran emissary on the dangerous, bandit-infested road to Khofte, a coastal city in the far south. The council of magicians apparently thought that a bit of adventure would help to dull your restlessness and sharpen your practical skills. To begin with, you must choose to specialize in one of the five elements: Fire, Air, Water, Ice and Earth. You may still manipulate the other four, but you can only hope to access the powerful effects with the element of your specialization. Furthermore, specializing in one element also slightly affects your character. Ice elementalists are known for the cool and logical mind, while Earth magicians tend to be protective of their charges. Choose your Specialization. > You choose to specialize in Fire, the element of Passion, Heat and Destruction. You quickly, and with passion, learned everything you can from your chosen element, regarding little else. You especially have disregarded the lessons of Water and of Ice, having nothing but contempt for those who have to think through every situation when, obviously, there is need for speed. You possess a greater physical prowess than most of your classmates, and since your inborn arrogance left your without many friends but quite some enemies, you had to use your quickness and strength to avoid being the target of constant ridicule - noone dared to ridicule you after a while. Instead, you became something of a loner. You simply know you are a better magician than the others, and you are willing to prove it. The specialization of Fire enables you to aquire a deadly arsenal of combat spells, far superior to that of other magicians. You are also able to command the element of elements, the Flames themselves, to do your bidding. Also, you are somewhat resistant to their heat. Make a note somewhere that you have specialized in Fire. > You are ready to begin your journey! It is early summer in the world of Thyr, and the smell of spring has not yet left the air. The emmissary's trek consists of two coaches, one for the magicians, of which there are two more on board, and one for the emissary and his bodyguard himself. Furthermore, there are two dozens warriors on horse accompanying the trek, some of which are scouting ahead. It has been two days since you left the Academy of Alzur, and by now you have left the city's military influence, as can be witnessed by the steady growing worse of the road. You know close to nothing about Fahan Brownhand's - the emissary of Alzur - orders, or about the man himself, save that he is known to be a devious mind and a quick judge of character, abilities well received within a politician. Also you know that your trek is carrying valuable gifts in jewels and gold for Khalar, the citystate you are destined to reach within the week. Your two magician-companions are no strangers to you. Opposite of you is sitting J'Arel Whitefang, a young man emitting an aura of arrogance that is barely to bear in the confines of the coach. He is, as you know, a capable Fire elementalist. Currently on top of the coach, unable to bear the presence of J'Arel any longer, is Lucius Tarchild, an Air mage of some renown. Unfortunately, Lucius is somewhat senior to you, and thus he has the right of first choice, as he explained to you with a wink. Already weary by the long trip so far, you did not argue. > You wish to pass the time and speak with J'Arel. J'Arel looks up from some thought in surprise, as you cough to catch his attention. His cruel eyes narrow themselves, and he pierces you with his look. "What is it that you want?" > You say "Do you know anything about the road ahead?" His eyes narrow even further as you ask him about the road ahead. Then he snorts, and shakes his head, while saying: "Only as much as you, I suppose. The road will be getting a lot worse the next days, and when we reach the outskirts of Thalun Forest in two days, who knows what will await us in these ancient, dark and magical woods..." His voice is getting dark and foreboding, and then he suddenly breaks into laughter. "Peasants' superstition. Likely some bandits roam the Woods, and that's the reason why lone travellers sometimes are never seen again." He grins, and forms a magical gesture with his left palm, upon which a blueish flame appears there, a ball of pure energy powerful enough to burn through a tree when hurled with enough force. "However, we are no lone travellers", he adds, his malicious grin broadening. Then, he claps his hands together, and the flame vanishes. "I doubt that some ragged band of bandits is going to choose us as our target anyway," he says, sounding disappointed. "Those soldiers look like excellent fighters, and I am certain the bandits will see this as well." > You continue... Suddenly, the coach shudders to a halt. Voices call out, but your first reaction of worrying is soothed as you recognize them as your scouts' voices. The captain of the scouts, a burly man in leather armor, approaches the second coach, which is occupied by Master Brownhand, the emissary of Alzura. The captain dismounts his gelding, and appears to speak agitatedly with someone inside the coach - which is all you can make out. Unfortunately, they are too far away to understand a word. > You will do nothing but wait. The captain of the scouts is arguing agitated with someone inside the other coach, but you cannot make out the words, nor interpret the gestures. Probably nothing important. You lean back against the hard wooden seat of the coach, wishing for something to break the monotony of the trip. Already you wonder when you will arrive at your destination. Or at least return to the comfort of the Academy. Suddenly the door is opened by Lucius, who had been riding the top of the coach. > You continue... Lucius is a tall, slender man. There is always the sly grin on his face, and his hair looks like he has been in a tornado. Right now, looking at J'Arel and you, his grin nearly splits his face, causing J'Arel to scowl back. "Well, look who's here. Not suffocated yet, I hope", Lucius grins. J'Arel only snorts with disdain, throwing you a meaningful look as if the journey would have been quite pleasant without your companionship inside the coach. Before you can think of how to answer that challenge, Lucius continues as if not noticing the tension between the two of you: "Looks like we got ourselves some trouble coming. The captain of the scouts just raced his horse nearly to death coming here, then barely pauses to take a breath before arguing with old Farhan. Seems like they want us to make camp here, instead of driving on, but Farhan doesn't sound too happy about that." Lucius gives the countryside an appraising glance. "Can't say I blame them. It's a good position here, with the hills in front and the plains at the back. At least if anyone's sneaking up on us, they're doing so from only one direction." J'Arel interrupts: "Phah, let them come, so we can finally have some use. I don't see why..." Lucius holds up a hand to silence J'Arel, cocking his head to one side and closing his eyes, as if listening intently. As you strain to hear anything untowards yourself, you notice it... the silence is unnatural. Where the journey was accompanied by the rustling of leaves and grass, the chirping and buzzing of insects and the caws of birds, there is now silence... even the horses of the guards seem to hold their breath. Then suddenly the first volley of arrows hit the group. Lucius curses and hurls himself into the relative but crowded safety of the coach, but a few of the guards do not have as much luck. The air is filled with the rearing of horses and the screams of the wounded. The captain of the scouts turns to face the enemy, but gives only a gurgle, as you can see the black arrow protruding from his neck. Blood runs out of his mouth, and for a horrifying second, he seems to stare at you with the paincrazed eyes of the already dead, before falling from his horse only to be gored by the panicking beast. When you catch yourself again, you see that J'Arel and Lucius are already preparing spells, even if they cannot yet see who is attacking you. > You will wait until it becomes clear who is attacking you and wherefrom. You decide to stay in the relative safety of the coach. J'Arel, suddenly engulfed in an aura of sizzling flames, jumps out of the coach and hurls a ball of fire in the general direction of the assault. Lucius leaves the coach on through the other door, and immediatley the carriage is rocked by gusts of wind, which also cause the arrows to stray. One arrow, however, flies straight at J'Arel's head - but it bursts into flame upon touching his aura. Someone bellows a command over the screams of the guards, and those that survived the initial deadly onslaught charge off into the direction where the volleys came from. You are considering your options, when suddenly a lightning strike that turns you blind and deaf turns J'Arel into a cinder, but not before you hear his piercing death scream and see, in minuite detail how the fire mage's skin peels off under the tremendous energy of the lightning. Shocked, you decide to join the combat as quickly as possible, before the next strike perhaps hits the coach. > You continue... Desperately, you attempt to get your bearing. From the twoscore warriors that accompanied the emissary's treck, only one dozen survived the initial deadly volley of black arrows. However, the guards are rallied and charge the enemy, apparently a group of about half a hundredship ragged looking beings you immediatley recognize as large goblins, led by a couple of their shamans. While a single goblin is no match for a human warrior, the shamans double the goblins' threat, and they make up in numbers what they lack in size. Lucius is using his powers over the wind to make arrows useless, and most goblins have thrown their bows away and now wield evil looking barbed knives. One guard, trying to charge through the goblins to strike down a shaman, is dragged from his horse, and both the guard and the poor beast soon disappear und the goblin's small twisted bodies. > You are an adept of Fire. The flame of the Spark is strong within you today, and your fingers itch with the desire to channel your magic. This is it... this is how it feels to have an adventure! If not for the seriousness of the situation, you would laugh with delight. > You will use your powers over Fire to rain destruction down the goblins! You climb up the coach to get a better overview of the battle, trusting Lucius to do what he's best at, and turn away any stray arrows from you. You close your eyes, drawing deep from the burning energies within you provided by the Spark. When you open them again, they seem to be ablaze. In your hands, a powerful ball of flame forms, and you hurl it directly where the goblins' throng is thickest, where it explodes with a deafening noise. About twenty goblins remain on the ground, charred. Another ball of flame takes out a dozen more of the wicked creatures, and this is sufficent to break their morale, and they turn to flee. The soldiers cheer, and strike down the fleeing goblins as they run back to the hills from where they came. Suddenly, Lucius screams in pain. With another ball of flame formed in your hand, intended to speed the goblin's flight, you turn to see that Farhan Brownhand, emissary of Alzur, has stabbed Lucius in the back with an evil looking sword that protrudes from the Air adept's chest. He grins wickedly at you and makes a gesture with his offhand. Instinctively you hurl your fireball into his general direction, and throw yourself from the coach. Just in time, as it explodes under you, smouldering splinters burying themselves into your robes and into your flesh. Shaking, you stand up, turning to Farhan and the spitted Lucius, and prepare another spell... > You continue... You stare disbelieving at Master Brownhand, and before you can launch a spell at him, he uses your hesitation to weave a quick strand of fire at you. You barely dodge the small bolt of fire that jumps from his fingers and flies past you. Seeing he missed you, he curses and prepares another spell. You have to act quick. > You attempt to sever or unravel the spell's weave when Farhan casts it, thus countering it. You concentrate, and your mental eyes follow the Farhan's weaving. He uses Fire, and mixes Earth in it, but when he leashes it out, you already took hold of one of the strands of magic with your mental touch, and the spell already unravels itself as it is cast. When it reaches you, it is nothing more than a gust of warm wind that ruffles your hair. Infuriated, sensing what you have done, Farhan pulls the black blade out of Lucius' body, and, brandishing it, charges you. Out of the corners of your eyes you see that the guards are approaching the obviously crazed emissary. > You flee towards the guards, hoping that they will overpower the Magus. Seeing Farhan approaching you with the evil-looking dark blade in his hand that is still glistening with Lucius' blood, you jump down from the top of the coach and hurry towards the surviving guards, knowing that you do not stand a chance against the master Magus alone. Farhan laughs, and you hear behind your back the incantations as he prepares another spell. He is only a precious few steps behind you, but the remaining guards, led by a scarred and blackbearded bear of a man, already charge at Farhan with swords drawn. Suddenly, you hear a sizzle, and it is only instinct that saves your life. You throw yourself on the ground in midrun, just as the first guards pass you in the other direction, and, accompanied by a loud crackle, a searing pain blazes across your back, just before one of the guards in front of you emits a loud scream, and something bright hits him in the chest. As you quickly jump to your feet again, bloodied and dirty, with a singed back, you hear another sizzle, a crackle, and then a double scream, as two guards that are running at Farhan are hit by more lightning. You turn around, and the four remaining guards are about to swing their swords at the emissary, when suddenly, out of the shadow of the coach, Farhan's bodyguard, a bulky man that moves with the gracefulness of a cat, launches himself at the group of guards. Farhan turns to flee towards the hills, as his bodyguard snaps the neck of a guard with his bare hands. You shudder involuntarily as you hear the sickening sound. Before you can react, the burly man is spitted on the sword of the black bearded soldier, and Farhan, weaving a last spell, disappears in a clap of thunder. > You continue... Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur, is gone and his bodyguard is dead. Only three guards - and yourself - survived his treachery and the goblin attack. All agree that Master Brownhand had been probably in league with the goblins, but why he would attack the trek himself, noone knows. The situation looks grim, reports Kor, the scarred and blackbearded bear of a man who led the charge against the emissary. He is a seasoned veteran, and you can see in his eyes the disgust for this treachery. The horses drawing the coach are all either dead or have fled. Night is coming soon, and the road through the hills is known to be a dangerous way even in daylight. Bandits and bands goblins roam the area, as you were forced to experience yourself. The plains are not much better. Any camp made on the way would be like a beacon to anyone searching for them, and neither Kor nor you have no doubts that Farhan will likely return - with or without help - to finish what the goblins had begun. As a Magus, even a rather inexperienced one, the duty of leadership is on you, but Kor is ready with advice. Basically, you have only few options. You might attempt to travel back to the Acadamy and report of Farhan's treachery. Or, you might attempt to find him before he finds you. Teleport weaves, as Farhan has used to escape, are tricky: They are dangerous to pull off, because inexperienced adepts attempting to move their essence to somewhere else usually unravel themselves and get no second try. Also, the further away the destination is, the more difficult the spell becomes, and you know that even a master magician like Farhan Brownhand must have been tired after the spells he crafted during the battle. Your guess is, that he fled to somewhere in the hills, and Kor agrees with you on this, for in the plains, there is nowhere to hide for several miles around, not even a light wood or a small village. The only thing you know for certain is, that it would be wise to leave this place as soon as possible, as long as the enemy Magus is still weakened from his spellcasting. > You will turn back and attempt to make your way to the Academy to report Master Brownhand's treachery. The guards pack their gear with some relief about the decision, and, lightly packed, you abandon the coaches in the coming twilight. Happy to leave the scene of the slaughter, an invisible tension leaves the men you did not notice before. Noone is happy to have Master Brownhand now in his back, but all of you are glad that he's not right in front of you. The guards march at a good speed, and you, not really used to such sports, wondered whatever must have ridden you to ever complain about riding inside a coach. Soon, night falls, and the clear sky would be a beautiful sight were you in a mood for it. However, the moon is young, and there is not much light to see by. Kor asks if you are capable of lighting a globe, and wearily, you agree. Concentrating briefly, although much, much longer than you would usually need, you create a shining sphere between your hands and command it to float over your group. Kor reaches out to you as you stagger, your mental exhaustion nearly complete, but you catch yourself, and although your dignity as a Magus takes quite a scratch by stumbling because of such a simple spell, you are too tired to rightly care. Soon, the guards go off the road, and you just fall over on the ground when you hear that everyone agrees that now, you are far enough away from the place of the ambush to rest a while. You are already asleep before you hit the ground and do not notice that someone wraps a blanket around you. > You continue... The smell of fried bacon and spiced tea wakens you, and, although bleary-eyed because of a rest that was too short by far, you stand up to face a barely rising sun. You are greeted by the guards, and handed a wooden mug of the hot water as well as a small plate of food, and then, it is already time to break camp. You agree to to travel with all haste back towards the Academy. The day passes uneventful, although you find yourself in a very bad shape. You wonder why you could have ever complained about riding inside a coach, stuffy as it might have been. The guards march a fast tempo, and you are barely able to keep up, even though your packing is somewhat lighter than that of the others. The next day, your back feels like a wooden plank... even despite the blankets that are part of your travel gear, sleeping on the ground is never going to be your preferred method of rest, and you already long for the comforts of life at the Academy. Kor reports that you are likely to reach Alzur by midevening the next day, and you are happy to hear so. The next two days pass uneventfully also, although tension grew because everyone was expecting Farhan to return, or another goblin attack. Suspicions rose when you noticed the increased military patrols around, but they ignored a group of travellers and your desire to reach the council of the Academy was too great to become entangled with the military. Finally, after a journey you are glad to forget about, the sight of the walls of Alzur is very welcome to you. But something is wrong. The gates, usually open all day and night, are barred, and the military presence has been more than doubled. Kor apparently recognizes one of the guards and approaches him. The guard obviously expresses surprise and worry at seeing you return so early, but before you can question him what happened, you are immediatley led to the quickly roused council... it is past nightfall, after all. > You continue... You are lead into the heart of the city, and something definitely feels wrong here. The atmosphere is tense unlike the teeming, bustling city you left only five days ago. The huge ironwrought gates of the Academy are opened for you, and your group enters. Without even given the chance to refresh yourself, much to your dismay, you are led before the council's chambers and bidden entry. The chambers themselves are somewhat in disarray, as if there had been a meeting recently and yet no time for the personell to clean, and three of the five High Magi look like indeed they have been roused from sleep. They stare at you, some with unhidden contempt, until finally Tharain Ironweave, highest of the Magi, steps forward and explains the situation to you. There had been an assassination attempt on the wedding night of princess Jessamin of Khalar, the very city your treck was initially heading. This was exactly two days before. And, apparently, evidences point towards Master Farhan Brownhand, Alzur's very own emissary sent there, as the assassin. You begin to remark that this is not possible, your treck barely left Alzur's lands, but the High Magus interrupts you, that they knew this very well. Yet attempts to explain that to the Khalifat of Khalar met only disbelief, understandingly so. They want some sort of proof. You briefly relay to the council what happened to you on your treck, the attack of the goblins and Farhan's treachery, and are met by stoic silence. "Do you, then, have any proof that could convince the Khalifat to take back their declaration of war?", you are asked. Numbly, you shake your head. "Then", Thalain sighs and suddenly appears much older than he is, "this war cannot be turned away..." Wishing your first adventure would have turned out to be more successful, you retire into your room, but the longing for comfort leaves a bitter aftertaste when you think that Farhan Brownhand, the traitorous emissary of Alzur, escaped your grasp...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur, is gone and his bodyguard is dead. Only three guards - and yourself - survived his treachery and the goblin attack. All agree that Master Brownhand had been probably in league with the goblins, but why he would attack the trek himself, noone knows. The situation looks grim, reports Kor, the scarred and blackbearded bear of a man who led the charge against the emissary. He is a seasoned veteran, and you can see in his eyes the disgust for this treachery. The horses drawing the coach are all either dead or have fled. Night is coming soon, and the road through the hills is known to be a dangerous way even in daylight. Bandits and bands goblins roam the area, as you were forced to experience yourself. The plains are not much better. Any camp made on the way would be like a beacon to anyone searching for them, and neither Kor nor you have no doubts that Farhan will likely return - with or without help - to finish what the goblins had begun. As a Magus, even a rather inexperienced one, the duty of leadership is on you, but Kor is ready with advice. Basically, you have only few options. You might attempt to travel back to the Acadamy and report of Farhan's treachery. Or, you might attempt to find him before he finds you. Teleport weaves, as Farhan has used to escape, are tricky: They are dangerous to pull off, because inexperienced adepts attempting to move their essence to somewhere else usually unravel themselves and get no second try. Also, the further away the destination is, the more difficult the spell becomes, and you know that even a master magician like Farhan Brownhand must have been tired after the spells he crafted during the battle. Your guess is, that he fled to somewhere in the hills, and Kor agrees with you on this, for in the plains, there is nowhere to hide for several miles around, not even a light wood or a small village. The only thing you know for certain is, that it would be wise to leave this place as soon as possible, as long as the enemy Magus is still weakened from his spellcasting. > You are specialized in the powers of Ice, and will attempt to divine the target of the emissary's teleportation spell. It should be not difficult to find such a powerful weave as a teleportation spell. You close your eyes and enhance your trained mental senses to a point where you can feel the pattern of the world around you. But although you search the point where Farhan has disappeared, you do not find any traces of the weave. You ponder this fact, and come to the conclusion that Master Brownhand must have masked the weave. This is a very difficult to achieve while casting or maintaining a spell, and your respect for the other Magus grows, whatever he might have done. Yet your insight does not help you, and you are unsure of how to go on - a state which you, as an Ice Magus deeply dislike. > You it is only logical that someone should report the treason, but such a powerful Magus must be stopped. Thus you venture alone into the hills, and send the men back to the Academy to report. Kor expresses worry about your shape, but you assure him that you do not intend to face down Farhan Brownhand in hand to hand battle right now, but it is important that you find out what Farhan is up to, and eventually, the warrior agrees. You are handed a flask of some of the strong smelling brew with healing powers, and set up with light gear into the hills, with the best wishes of the guards and a short sword from one of the fallen - you usally carry no weapons with you, but your mental exhaustion is too great to be certain that you are able to defend yourself if attacked. Keeping slightly away from the main road, you travel crosscountry, following the trail of the fled goblins from the foiled ambush as best as you can. Wearily, you walk on, although twilight slowly gives way to the starfilled darkness. Suddenly, you notive some movement in the distance... a goblin patrol! Confidence that you are still on the right track gives away to fear as they appear to have seen you. > You are a Magus of Air, and an illusion will certainly divert them. Gathering your last mental resources, you conjure the image of a powerful warrior. Once finished, it looks indeed a bit like Kor, the scarred leader of the guards, and you wonder if you have overdone it a bit when it charges the goblins with deadly silence. The goblins however break at the sight of the charging giant of a man, and dropping their assorted weaponry, they cry something in their own gutural language and flee. > You will pursue them, hoping they will lead you to their hideout. The goblins flee before you, and after ten minutes in pursuit - your lungs are about to give away - you arrive at a spooky scenery: Apparently the goblins' camp is under attack by wolves! Their howl fills the night and make it seem even more dark. The goblins, under attack from all sides, fight with uncommon valor, but even the surprise reinforcements that fled before you are cut down by the powerful jaws of the wolves within seconds. A black, wolfformed shape is within their midst, and the goblins fight back in terror, but hopelessly, against its devastating power. The camp is situated near a steep hill, and has a caveentrance. And out of that, a creature of your nightmares comes... it is the ugliest, and hugest goblin you have ever seen, with sharp claws like that of a troll. And beside it, stands Farhan Brownhand, the man you came to search for, wielding his dark blade. Farhan moves like a dancer between the goblins and the wolves, and whenever he swings his blades, a wolf falls down motionless. The big creature swings its long arms, regardless of hitting friend or foe, and whenever it hits, the victim is flung into the air. Farhan alone would suffice to turn the tide of battle in favour for the goblins, and with the strange creature against them, the wolves do not stand a chance. Even though you know the next spell might cost you your conciousness, you have to act fast. > You are a Magus of Ice. As you concentrate your magical powers, you suddenly realize what the creature is, as you notice its goblin resemblance. You have heared of this long forgotten lore of magically melding one being into another, and clearly the creature is a meld between a goblin and a troll. Since it obviously obeys Farhan's commands, he must be its master... and that makes him an abomination to any Magi: a nethermancer, trained in the arts of the Dark Empire of Lôrn, someone who does not weave with the Patterns of the world, but rather against them, destroying, not creating, feeding of the world's natural order like a vampire feeds of blood. So this is why you found no traces of the teleportation weave that Farhan used to flee, and obvious if you think about it now, though it must have been at great risk for Master Brownhand to reveal himself like that. You snap yourself out of following your thoughts in that direction, and with uncharacteristic determination launch a devastating attack against the troll-goblin, or goblin-troll, knowing that before you can harm Farhan, who is likely feeding of its life energy, you must destroy his creature first. A column of pure elemental ice erupts from the earth below the twisted being, and spiked upon the sharp crystals, it twists in agony and emits a horrifying scream of death before it is finally still. Farhan curses madly at the death of his creature. > You continue... With the creature destroyed, Farhan's fighting prowess also seems to have suffered. You now see sweat on his face as he attempts to fight through the wolves, who now take the upper hand, to reach you. His blade still seems to be thirsty for wolfblood, and whenever he strikes one, it remains still. You grip your blade as he appears to make his way through the now encircling wolves which attack him with all their fury, now that most of the goblins are slain, but then his way is bared by the giant black wolf. It growls, and Farhan takes a step back, for the first time emitting fear. The wolf's growl seems to stop the others attack, and they circle Farhan, forcing him against the wall of the steep hill, next to the cave. The wolf, apparently content to have trapped the emissary, appears to wait for something. Unsure what is expected from you, you approach Farhan. When he sees that the wolf seems to wait for you, fear is somewhat replaced with a mixture of grudging respect and hope. "This is a nice pet you have there", he speaks in that pleasant voice of his, straining to keep it straight. "It won't do me any harm, will it? I can explain..." But you interrupt him. "It is not my pet, and I have no command over it." "But... but...", he begins... > You are a Magus of Air. "But", you interrupt him in your smoothest voice, "I might convince it not to harm you, if you tell me enough to satisfy my curiousity." You wonder for a moment if he calls your bluff, but either your social skills are too developed or, as you rather suspect, he is too frightened. "It wasn't my idea, you see", he begins flustered, always nervously eyeing the black wolf, "It wasn't my plan. It just had to look like an accident. You know, the princess... I mean, when the masters said... but..." You have no idea what he is talking about, but you made the experience that its best to let madmen and drunk talk, as they get to the point in their own time. "The masters... the blood, all the blood, and... it was their idea! I am just a tool, and you... you won't hold a tool responsible, will you?", he begs, and pleads to you in his mad ravings. Then, the hunted, mad look in his eyes clears. He calmly salutes with the blade, speaks calmly: "My masters will save me." Farhan is obviously about to plunge the evil looking blade into his heart, as the black wolf growls and leaps. You turn away in disgust, but the screams of the dying and the sickening sound of teeth tearing at the flesh of the dying man will haunt your nightmares for quite some time to come. > You continue... It takes you the better part of to two weeks to reach the city of Alzur again. When you arrive at the gates, the first thing you notice is that obviously, the patrols have increased. The guards at first turn you away, but then you show the documents you found searching the cave you faced Farhan and his goblins, and they, recognizing the seal of the High Council, immediatley call upon the High Magi. While you wait in the antechamber, you reflect your voyage so far. When the wolves finished with Farhan's body, there was not much left of it. After they had done this, the wolves, completely ignoring you, slunk away, many with a bloodied snout. The large black wolf only raised his head to meet your eyes once, and it appeared as if it winked at you from the depth of those golden eyes. You do not know what kind of animal this creature was, but you were happy enough that it, too, ignored you and vanished with the rest of the pack. Feeling obliged to them, for some reasons, you spent a few hours piling the dead bodies of the wolves and burn them, leaving the goblins' corpses to rot. Then, you searched the cave. It appeared as if Farhan had quite a comfortable living hole there, filled with the goblins' plunder. You have also secured the documents Farhan was to bring to Khalar, as well as a note in a writing you were unable to decipher. Despite the risks, you decided to sleep the night there - exhaustion and the excitement of the last hours finally taking its toll. Undisturbed, you woke the next morning, and hurried to leave this place of carnage. Then, you hurried to catch up with Kor and his men, but you have not found them. Instead, the journey took much longer than you anticipated, and more than once you wished that this would remain your last adventure forever. Perhaps a life of devoted study and teachings in the Academy was not as bad a choice at that. At least the beds there consisted more than heaps of hay, if you could find any at all. Before admitted before the Council, you are bathed and clothed new, and for the first time in two weeks, you feel moderately human again, though it will take some more time for the bruises to heal. You make plans to sleep through the whole next week. Then, finally, you are, accompanied by two guards, led into the Council chambers. > You continue... You are led into a rather gloomy room, and face the five most powerful Magi of the Academy. Ancient Tharain Oakweave is the one to stand and greet you, and you have to recount your tale in full before he continues to speak. "These are dire news indeed, but then, these are dire times. The Khalifat of Khalar has declared war upon us, for an assassination attempt was made on princess Jessamin during her wedding night." Ah, so this must be the princess Farhan spoke about... but who are the "masters"? "Unfortunately", Tharain continues, "evidence was apparently found that points to our emissary as the assassin, and the princess has been seen neither dead nor alive since then." You try to interrupt and explain that this could hardly be, for Farhan has barely left Alzur, but you are silenced by a gesture of the old High Magus. "We know, but we have no way to dismiss their evidences, which, to our own surprise, appear to be real." You wonder what a war between the two most powerful states in Thyr would mean to your plans of living in comfort for the rest of your life, and you do not like the results you come to. Then, with a smile, you remember something, and produce the documents you found in the goblin cave. Tharain takes them, and reads through them briefly. Then he inspects the strange note you found, and his bushy eyebrows rise. "This, indeed, is a hint we might take into consideration." Without saying more, he looks at you, and smiles. "Welcome back, young Magus Uriel. You might have done more than your share to reveal a dark plot indeed. Now, if only the princess could be found..." Congratulations! You have beaten the part one of "Tides Of War". Part two will feature the story of Princess Jessamin, so stay tuned. :)<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With the creature destroyed, Farhan's fighting prowess also seems to have suffered. You now see sweat on his face as he attempts to fight through the wolves, who now take the upper hand, to reach you. His blade still seems to be thirsty for wolfblood, and whenever he strikes one, it remains still. You grip your blade as he appears to make his way through the now encircling wolves which attack him with all their fury, now that most of the goblins are slain, but then his way is bared by the giant black wolf. It growls, and Farhan takes a step back, for the first time emitting fear. The wolf's growl seems to stop the others attack, and they circle Farhan, forcing him against the wall of the steep hill, next to the cave. The wolf, apparently content to have trapped the emissary, appears to wait for something. Unsure what is expected from you, you approach Farhan. When he sees that the wolf seems to wait for you, fear is somewhat replaced with a mixture of grudging respect and hope. "This is a nice pet you have there", he speaks in that pleasant voice of his, straining to keep it straight. "It won't do me any harm, will it? I can explain..." But you interrupt him. "It is not my pet, and I have no command over it." "But... but...", he begins... > You will question him about his plans. "My plans? MY plans?", Farhan cackles. "They are not my plans. And if I tell you, then what? You'll call of this beast? You will?" You try to answer, but he does not let you: "No, I can see my death in its eyes. But I tell you one thing. It wasn't my plan, I was just my masters' tool. The princess... hah... it was a good plan, though... it would have worked, if not for..." His voice trails off and his eyes suddenly have a glazed over look. Then, he smiles a half crazed smile, and raises his blade as if to salute to you. When he turns it around as if to impale himself, the black wolf leaps. You turn away in disgust, but the screams of the dying man and the sounds of wolfteeth tearing into living flesh will haunt your nightmares for a long time to come.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With the creature destroyed, Farhan's fighting prowess also seems to have suffered. You now see sweat on his face as he attempts to fight through the wolves, who now take the upper hand, to reach you. His blade still seems to be thirsty for wolfblood, and whenever he strikes one, it remains still. You grip your blade as he appears to make his way through the now encircling wolves which attack him with all their fury, now that most of the goblins are slain, but then his way is bared by the giant black wolf. It growls, and Farhan takes a step back, for the first time emitting fear. The wolf's growl seems to stop the others attack, and they circle Farhan, forcing him against the wall of the steep hill, next to the cave. The wolf, apparently content to have trapped the emissary, appears to wait for something. Unsure what is expected from you, you approach Farhan. When he sees that the wolf seems to wait for you, fear is somewhat replaced with a mixture of grudging respect and hope. "This is a nice pet you have there", he speaks in that pleasant voice of his, straining to keep it straight. "It won't do me any harm, will it? I can explain..." But you interrupt him. "It is not my pet, and I have no command over it." "But... but...", he begins... > You will accuse him of treachery and call him to justice. You accuse him of treachery, and tell him you will personally bring him back to the Academy for the council to do justice. He just stares at you in disbelief, and then with a crooked smile at the black wolf. "I do not think you will bring me anywhere, my young friend. I see my death in its eyes." Then, his grimace turns into a snarl. "But for your insolence, I will first get you!" Surprised by the sudden change, you raise your own blade to deflect his sudden lunge, but you are too slow, and the blade bites deep into your flesh. You scream in agony as you feel your very soul drawn from your living body through the wound to feed the hungry sword. Your pain in the last seconds of your life is so great that you do not even hear the madman's dying screams as the wolves tear him apart. > You have died... An eternity passes in the wake of a second. You are floating in an emptiness even your bodiless mind fails to grasp. It appears as both a darkness so dark as to blind your mental eyes and a light so bright that it is already black at the same time. You see, with eyes not your own, the strands of raw magic that weave the pattern of the universe. There is the searing strand of Fire wherever the pattern forms a living soul, filling it with passion and emotion to differ it from the animals. Air lights up, with light blue strand of magic, whenever joy is felt or beauty grasped. Earth, a rich brown and green, gives life to plants and animals and all things that breathe. Water, the purest of elements, a deep blue that fills life in the hulls Earth is creating. Ice, most mysterious element of all, shines with a bright white, and you grasp that it forms the underlying logic of the pattern, directing all other strands into their destined form. And suddenly you understand. The secrets of life, the wisdom of existence, the riddle of the creation. It is all so easy, so clear. You see the forces of magic, and you also see the other forces, directing them, ordering them. And you see the forces that are directing those. You see what has happened, what will happen, what must happen. The future is just another pattern in the great weave of what you unknowingly called existence, which is yet just the dream of an illusion and at the same time reality. Now you know you can read the pattern, now you know the choices that led you to your doom, and why they did so. You know, you would not choose again wrongly, not this time, if you just had another chance... another chance... And the Fire that is Passion burns brightly within you and engulfs your soul, forming you into the essence that is. > You restart the Game. Welcome to Magus: Betrayal! You are known as Uriel, master elementalist and accomplished magician of the Acadamy of Alzur. The Spark, the talent to manipulate the essence of the elements in everything, has enabled you to live a youth far away from the spears of the soldiers, or the toils of the peasants. A findling you are, born to unknown parents and found on the steps of the Academy, but this is not a fate unusual, for the times are harsh for those without the privilige of noble heritage, and few can spare the resources to feed yet another crying mouth. If the Magi of the Academy had not found the Spark in you, they would have turned you over to one of the servants to grow up as one of them, a practice that comes closest to local charity, and ensures that the servants are loyal to the Academy. But this fate was spared to you. From earliest childhood you learned the arts of the scribe, the arts of the rune and the arts of the Elements. Your life has been one of scholarship, and learning, and even though your thoughts sometimes turned towards the parents you never had, you soon accepted that the Academy was your family, never knowing anything different. However, a restlessness in your soul worried your teachers. You were sharper than most of your classmates, and thus began to find the lectures boring, often huddling alone in your study with an ancient tome borrowed from the library with the librarian's grudging permission, learning on your own faster than your teachers could hope to achieve. Finally, the master magicians admitted defeat. They no longer could teach you anything, and thus it came as a relief to them, that you were chosen, with two other magicians, to fortify the guard of an Alzuran emissary on the dangerous, bandit-infested road to Khofte, a coastal city in the far south. The council of magicians apparently thought that a bit of adventure would help to dull your restlessness and sharpen your practical skills. To begin with, you must choose to specialize in one of the five elements: Fire, Air, Water, Ice and Earth. You may still manipulate the other four, but you can only hope to access the powerful effects with the element of your specialization. Furthermore, specializing in one element also slightly affects your character. Ice elementalists are known for the cool and logical mind, while Earth magicians tend to be protective of their charges. Choose your Specialization.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With the creature destroyed, Farhan's fighting prowess also seems to have suffered. You now see sweat on his face as he attempts to fight through the wolves, who now take the upper hand, to reach you. His blade still seems to be thirsty for wolfblood, and whenever he strikes one, it remains still. You grip your blade as he appears to make his way through the now encircling wolves which attack him with all their fury, now that most of the goblins are slain, but then his way is bared by the giant black wolf. It growls, and Farhan takes a step back, for the first time emitting fear. The wolf's growl seems to stop the others attack, and they circle Farhan, forcing him against the wall of the steep hill, next to the cave. The wolf, apparently content to have trapped the emissary, appears to wait for something. Unsure what is expected from you, you approach Farhan. When he sees that the wolf seems to wait for you, fear is somewhat replaced with a mixture of grudging respect and hope. "This is a nice pet you have there", he speaks in that pleasant voice of his, straining to keep it straight. "It won't do me any harm, will it? I can explain..." But you interrupt him. "It is not my pet, and I have no command over it." "But... but...", he begins... > You want him to surrender his blade - it looks like a powerful object of magic. "My... my blade? Yes, here, have it", he quickly burbles and throws it on the ground. You move to pick it up, concious of the giant wolf next to you. But when you bend down to touch it, it snakes upwards as if moved by a ghostly hand. You scream in pain as the blade bites deep into your flesh, and you feel your soul drawn from your body into its hungry metal. Your agony is so great that you do not even hear Farhan's mad laughter as the wolves rip him to pieces.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The goblins flee before you, and after ten minutes in pursuit - your lungs are about to give away - you arrive at a spooky scenery: Apparently the goblins' camp is under attack by wolves! Their howl fills the night and make it seem even more dark. The goblins, under attack from all sides, fight with uncommon valor, but even the surprise reinforcements that fled before you are cut down by the powerful jaws of the wolves within seconds. A black, wolfformed shape is within their midst, and the goblins fight back in terror, but hopelessly, against its devastating power. The camp is situated near a steep hill, and has a caveentrance. And out of that, a creature of your nightmares comes... it is the ugliest, and hugest goblin you have ever seen, with sharp claws like that of a troll. And beside it, stands Farhan Brownhand, the man you came to search for, wielding his dark blade. Farhan moves like a dancer between the goblins and the wolves, and whenever he swings his blades, a wolf falls down motionless. The big creature swings its long arms, regardless of hitting friend or foe, and whenever it hits, the victim is flung into the air. Farhan alone would suffice to turn the tide of battle in favour for the goblins, and with the strange creature against them, the wolves do not stand a chance. Even though you know the next spell might cost you your conciousness, you have to act fast. > You are an Adept of Water. When you reach out for your mental powers, you suddenly realize that the creature is a magical construct, a being created and twisted from its natural form into a mindless killing machine, and quite likely insane. You also realize what Farhan must be... a nethermancer, a Magus trained in the arts of the Lôrn, the Dark Empire. Master Brownhand weaves not with the Patterns of the world to create his spells, but rather against them - an abominable thought to any thinking Magus. He does not work with the essence of the world, he destroys it, like a vampire living from the blood of others. Shuddering, you prepare to unravel the magical being's antipattern, knowing that if you wish to harm Farhan, you have to destroy his creature first. Patiently, and hoping he does not notice you yet, you mentally search the creature's being for a point of attack. It is difficult to do so without getting closer, but you do not dare to. You are no priest, but you remember once having a spirited discussion with one, and you know that what you have in mind is not unlike the banishing of undeath the priests of Thyr are able to perform. Patiently, you seek on, and there, you find it... a scar in the weave of the being, like a twisted, cancerous knot. You feel for it, and then, with determination to end this miserable creature's unlife, you give it a sharp mental pull. The creature screams in rage and pain, and flails blindly with those long arms of it, felling both goblin and wolf. Then, after a brief struggle, it falls down to the ground, the twisted pulsating knot and weave that gave it its unnatural life gone. Farhan screams in rage as he sees his creature destroyed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The goblins flee before you, and after ten minutes in pursuit - your lungs are about to give away - you arrive at a spooky scenery: Apparently the goblins' camp is under attack by wolves! Their howl fills the night and make it seem even more dark. The goblins, under attack from all sides, fight with uncommon valor, but even the surprise reinforcements that fled before you are cut down by the powerful jaws of the wolves within seconds. A black, wolfformed shape is within their midst, and the goblins fight back in terror, but hopelessly, against its devastating power. The camp is situated near a steep hill, and has a caveentrance. And out of that, a creature of your nightmares comes... it is the ugliest, and hugest goblin you have ever seen, with sharp claws like that of a troll. And beside it, stands Farhan Brownhand, the man you came to search for, wielding his dark blade. Farhan moves like a dancer between the goblins and the wolves, and whenever he swings his blades, a wolf falls down motionless. The big creature swings its long arms, regardless of hitting friend or foe, and whenever it hits, the victim is flung into the air. Farhan alone would suffice to turn the tide of battle in favour for the goblins, and with the strange creature against them, the wolves do not stand a chance. Even though you know the next spell might cost you your conciousness, you have to act fast. > You will launch a barrage of magical missiles against the goblins. Knowing this is the final facedown, you summon up all the energy left within to create a hail of tiny magical missiles that strike their targets with deadly accuracy. The goblins fall under your precise hail, and even Farhan and the ugly creature are subject to your attack, although both appear to shrug of the magical assault. You feel you are beginning to blacken out, and the last thing you see is how the ugly goblinoid creature is brought down under three wolves. Then, your vision fades to black. You awake, unsure how long you were asleep, to the feeling of something breathing in your face. You open your eyes and stare into those of the giant black wolf. You tense in shock for a moment, but the wolf seems unaware. There is something strange about its eyes... it looks dead. A pleasant voice calls out to you: "Ah, I see you made acquaintance with my new friend. I admit, it took a while to tame him, but in the end, he was willing enough." A shiver runs down your spine as you recognize it as Farhan's. "A brave show of you, indeed. You slew many a goblin. But I no longer require them, now that I have a more powerful ally. So I might thank you for getting rid of them for me." Farhan pauses a moment, then adds: "Please understand that my gratitude has its limits, though. Blackfang, feed." Before you can react, the jaws of the black beast close around your throat, and not even a dying scream escapes your lips.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The goblins flee before you, and after ten minutes in pursuit - your lungs are about to give away - you arrive at a spooky scenery: Apparently the goblins' camp is under attack by wolves! Their howl fills the night and make it seem even more dark. The goblins, under attack from all sides, fight with uncommon valor, but even the surprise reinforcements that fled before you are cut down by the powerful jaws of the wolves within seconds. A black, wolfformed shape is within their midst, and the goblins fight back in terror, but hopelessly, against its devastating power. The camp is situated near a steep hill, and has a caveentrance. And out of that, a creature of your nightmares comes... it is the ugliest, and hugest goblin you have ever seen, with sharp claws like that of a troll. And beside it, stands Farhan Brownhand, the man you came to search for, wielding his dark blade. Farhan moves like a dancer between the goblins and the wolves, and whenever he swings his blades, a wolf falls down motionless. The big creature swings its long arms, regardless of hitting friend or foe, and whenever it hits, the victim is flung into the air. Farhan alone would suffice to turn the tide of battle in favour for the goblins, and with the strange creature against them, the wolves do not stand a chance. Even though you know the next spell might cost you your conciousness, you have to act fast. > You will cast a minor shield on yourself and join the fray with your short sword. Not daring to cast more than a minor charm in your current mental state, you weave a protective shield designed to turn the knives and spears of your enemies away without so much as penetrating your skin. Then, you grab your sword, and jump into the battle. A couple of wolves are startled by your appearance, and one snaps at you, but his teeth are deflected by your protection. You ignore the startled wolf, and throw yourself on the next goblin, which is as startled. Piercing him with your blade, you move on to the next target, when Farhan notices you. A pile of dead wolves surround him, and he laughs a madman's laugh in that pleasant voice of his. Then, he utters a command to the giant goblinoid creature, and it ignores the wolves hanging from him and charges you. You dodge its first blow, as it sweeps aside goblins and wolves to reach you, and make a bold stab against its chest. But its arms are somewhat longer than your blade, and like a hammer, his backhand swing hits you on the head. You feel lifted up and hurtled through the air, and as ground closes in again, you hear the sickening crunch of your right leg before you pass out into a darkness you will never again wake from...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The goblins flee before you, and after ten minutes in pursuit - your lungs are about to give away - you arrive at a spooky scenery: Apparently the goblins' camp is under attack by wolves! Their howl fills the night and make it seem even more dark. The goblins, under attack from all sides, fight with uncommon valor, but even the surprise reinforcements that fled before you are cut down by the powerful jaws of the wolves within seconds. A black, wolfformed shape is within their midst, and the goblins fight back in terror, but hopelessly, against its devastating power. The camp is situated near a steep hill, and has a caveentrance. And out of that, a creature of your nightmares comes... it is the ugliest, and hugest goblin you have ever seen, with sharp claws like that of a troll. And beside it, stands Farhan Brownhand, the man you came to search for, wielding his dark blade. Farhan moves like a dancer between the goblins and the wolves, and whenever he swings his blades, a wolf falls down motionless. The big creature swings its long arms, regardless of hitting friend or foe, and whenever it hits, the victim is flung into the air. Farhan alone would suffice to turn the tide of battle in favour for the goblins, and with the strange creature against them, the wolves do not stand a chance. Even though you know the next spell might cost you your conciousness, you have to act fast. > You will concentrate your magical assault on the ugly creature. Somehow you feel more threatened by the presence of the twisted being than of Farhan Brownhand himself, though both leave tremendous damage among the remaining wolves. You form a powerful weave to destroy the creature, and, still unseen by Farhan or the goblins below, you launch it at the giant goblinoid, going for speed rather than for finesse. The mental strain hits you like a hammer, and you sway, but it is worth it as you see the big ugly thing implode with a deafening scream. The goblins, already panicking, are going frenzy and stab themselves as much as the wolves, and Farhan screams in rage at the death of the creature.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The goblins flee before you, and after ten minutes in pursuit - your lungs are about to give away - you arrive at a spooky scenery: Apparently the goblins' camp is under attack by wolves! Their howl fills the night and make it seem even more dark. The goblins, under attack from all sides, fight with uncommon valor, but even the surprise reinforcements that fled before you are cut down by the powerful jaws of the wolves within seconds. A black, wolfformed shape is within their midst, and the goblins fight back in terror, but hopelessly, against its devastating power. The camp is situated near a steep hill, and has a caveentrance. And out of that, a creature of your nightmares comes... it is the ugliest, and hugest goblin you have ever seen, with sharp claws like that of a troll. And beside it, stands Farhan Brownhand, the man you came to search for, wielding his dark blade. Farhan moves like a dancer between the goblins and the wolves, and whenever he swings his blades, a wolf falls down motionless. The big creature swings its long arms, regardless of hitting friend or foe, and whenever it hits, the victim is flung into the air. Farhan alone would suffice to turn the tide of battle in favour for the goblins, and with the strange creature against them, the wolves do not stand a chance. Even though you know the next spell might cost you your conciousness, you have to act fast. > You will focus your magical attack on Farhan. You summon your mental forces and prepare to unleash a weave of raw magica against Farhan. He apparently has not noticed you yet. Knowing you have to go for speed rather than for finesse, you just hope that your mental strength suffices for you not to black out. Then, you banish those distracting thoughts from your mind and concentrate at the work on hand. Within seconds, the weave is completed, and you hurl it with a single word of power against the emissary who dances among the wolves, cutting them down. Your magical force hits him straight into the chest. > You are a Magus of Fire. To your brief surprise, Farhan merely shrugs off the mental assault, and turns into your direction with a wicked grin, brandishing that evil looking blade of his. You notice out of the corner of your eyes that the ugly creature cringed in pain when your spell hit Master Brownhand, and without thinking, you unleash the powers of Fire within you at the creature. As it turns to ashes within a split second, much faster than you would have anticipated, Farhan screams in rage.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You summon your mental forces and prepare to unleash a weave of raw magica against Farhan. He apparently has not noticed you yet. Knowing you have to go for speed rather than for finesse, you just hope that your mental strength suffices for you not to black out. Then, you banish those distracting thoughts from your mind and concentrate at the work on hand. Within seconds, the weave is completed, and you hurl it with a single word of power against the emissary who dances among the wolves, cutting them down. Your magical force hits him straight into the chest. > You this is not the case. But Farhan simply shrugs off your mental assault. You are shocked by this, and he turns towards you with an evil grin on his face, and cuts his way through the wolves towards you. Horrified, and knowing your mental reserves are depleted entirely, you brandish your own sword, slowly giving way to Farhan. Unrelentlessly, he comes towards you. You turn to flee, knowing you cannot face him in hand to hand combat, and make a run for it, but he is faster. You utter an inhuman scream as the wicked blade he wields bites into your flesh, and you feel your very soul being drawn into the very weapon, feeding both its wielder and its own hunger...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Gathering your last mental resources, you conjure the image of a powerful warrior. Once finished, it looks indeed a bit like Kor, the scarred leader of the guards, and you wonder if you have overdone it a bit when it charges the goblins with deadly silence. The goblins however break at the sight of the charging giant of a man, and dropping their assorted weaponry, they cry something in their own gutural language and flee. > You happy to have survived the encounter without much effort, you will rest to gain strength before continuing... Before something worse than the goblins appears out of the darkness. You decide that rest is what you need right now, for you cannot go on, your mental resources completely depleted and your physical condition is not much better. Telling yourself an hour rest will suffice, you feel weariness like you never knew before creeping up to you. The cool air and the ground, not quite chilling yet no longer containing the sun's warmth ever help to keep you awake, yet you feel your eyes closing themselves involuntarily. > You are a Magus specialized in Water. You feel sleep threatening to overtake you, but you embrace the feeling and turn it into restful energy, knowing that falling asleep right now would probably be the last thing you would ever do. Instead, you use a ritual like that of meditation, only the other way around, and you draw the tiredness out of your body and into the surrounding Pattern of the magic weaves. You close your eyes and reach a state like slumber, only at full awareness, while thinking through the situation so far. Suddenly you sense movement nearby. With a quickness that would surprise anyone taking your for someone asleep you jump up, your short sword in your hand. Sneaking up to you were three goblins, each armed with barbed spears, and they are more surprised than you at seeing them. With a quick thrust, you end the first goblin's life, and the others, expecting a defenseless human instead of one awake and capable of killing them, turn to flee. > You need to regain more strength before you face more enemies. You feel like drowning in your weariness. The day has been more than taxing so far. Casting spells never felt so tiring, but then again, the conditions under which you wove your spells so far never had been so demanding. Once you yearned for adventure, but right now, you yearn for a soft bed like you had when studying in the Academy. The thought of a bed is a dangerous one, and you cannot hold sleep off any longer. With a sigh, you close your eyes and give in to the drowning darkness. Your dreams are vivid and colorful. You dream of the Patterns of the world, and how a different Pattern feeds into it. You sense a dark presence swirling the weaves, twisting them with fingers unseen. You somehow feel threatened by the presence, and will yourself to wake up - yet to no avail. Another dark presence approaches the first... it is less human, more like an animal, but as dark and... you cannot put a finger to it... somehow out of place. You feel the presences clash together, in your mind, and all the colors turn to black and white, and then vice versa. With an incredibly intense, stabbing pain you awake, briefly, and, pierced through your chest is the barbed spear of a grinning goblin.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide that rest is what you need right now, for you cannot go on, your mental resources completely depleted and your physical condition is not much better. Telling yourself an hour rest will suffice, you feel weariness like you never knew before creeping up to you. The cool air and the ground, not quite chilling yet no longer containing the sun's warmth ever help to keep you awake, yet you feel your eyes closing themselves involuntarily. > You are an Adept of Ice. Your drowsiness threatens to take over, but it would be most unlogical to give in to the desire to sleep, for it would be much likely to be the last thing you would ever do. Instead, you use the cool air and the cold ground to refresh your body and your mind. This is your type of energy, after all. Suddenly, you notice movement at the corner of your vision, and immediatley, your senses clear and you are full awake. Remaining still as to pretend being still asleep, you notice that three goblins are sneaking up to you. Without further hesitation, you lash out your right hand into the direction of one, and with a simple yet effective weave freeze his heart. The goblins' companions gasp in surprise as their comrade simply falls over without another sound at your gesture, and they turn to flee immediatley. Not pausing, you stand up and run after them in pursuit, before they fetch more companions.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Kor expresses worry about your shape, but you assure him that you do not intend to face down Farhan Brownhand in hand to hand battle right now, but it is important that you find out what Farhan is up to, and eventually, the warrior agrees. You are handed a flask of some of the strong smelling brew with healing powers, and set up with light gear into the hills, with the best wishes of the guards and a short sword from one of the fallen - you usally carry no weapons with you, but your mental exhaustion is too great to be certain that you are able to defend yourself if attacked. Keeping slightly away from the main road, you travel crosscountry, following the trail of the fled goblins from the foiled ambush as best as you can. Wearily, you walk on, although twilight slowly gives way to the starfilled darkness. Suddenly, you notive some movement in the distance... a goblin patrol! Confidence that you are still on the right track gives away to fear as they appear to have seen you. > You will rely on your magic to defend against them. As you tap into your mental forces to prepare a weave to defend yourself against the goblins, you notice that your mental exhaustion is quite advanced... casting a spell to slay the four goblins will tax you dangerously. > You are a Magus of Fire, and its destructive powers are your speciality. Any other Magus would likely have a problem with the drain that comes with weaving destructive spells, but to you, it is rather refreshing. As the goblins charge, you simply smile and spread your hands, which burst into a blueish flame which casts spooky shadows on the nightly hills. Seeing this, the goblins' charge falters slightly, but the two archers are unfathomed by this and nock arrows into their bows. Deftly, a small weave of fire turns the bows in their hands to cinders, and they yelp in pain as the skin on their hands turns to blisters. Confused by the cries of pain behind them, the two remaining goblins stop and turn, and when you hurl the blueish flame around your hands at one of the archers, he explodes in a ghostly fire without a sound before their eyes. This is enough to convince the goblins that bravety is uncalled for, and they turn and flee.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you tap into your mental forces to prepare a weave to defend yourself against the goblins, you notice that your mental exhaustion is quite advanced... casting a spell to slay the four goblins will tax you dangerously. > You will take out as many goblins as it feels safe to do, then face the rest with your sword. As one of the archers comes in range and launches an arrow at you, you pick it up with a thin strand of air and redirect it to hit the other archer in the throat, which dies gurgling in a foul language you do not understand. Thrusting your left hand forward and uttering a single syllable of power, you focus what power remains for you to safely use, and thrust it into a powerful weave that rips one of the remaining goblins apart from the inside. Shocked by the display of power, the goblins are close to breaking point. You draw your short blade and charge them, and the darkness and their fear hides your exhaustion well from them. Before you reach them, your blade glimmering in the starlight like the sword of an avenging angel - at least in the goblins' eyes -, they drop their weapons and flee. Too exhausted to pursue them, you slump down on the ground and decide to rest for a while.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you tap into your mental forces to prepare a weave to defend yourself against the goblins, you notice that your mental exhaustion is quite advanced... casting a spell to slay the four goblins will tax you dangerously. > You will use your mental reserves instead to camouflage yourself, so that the goblin patrol will not find you. You throw yourself flat on the ground the moment the goblins begin moving into your direction. There, concentrating, you weave a small charm that blends your Pattern into that of the surrounding, effectively becoming invisible to the casual eye. You have a good view of the goblin patrol, and as they approach, you use what little power remains within you to handle safely to mask your breathing and movements. The goblins still approach, to the point where you can smell their sickening stench and hear their gutural language, which you do not understand. But obviously they are searching for someone, or something, and are not too happy about it. You cannot stop yourself to breathe a sigh of relief as they pass you, unseeing, and vanish into the darkness of the hills below. You wait for another quarter of an hour, and then you release your magic, slumping on the ground, mentally completely exhausted.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you tap into your mental forces to prepare a weave to defend yourself against the goblins, you notice that your mental exhaustion is quite advanced... casting a spell to slay the four goblins will tax you dangerously. > You using magic would be too taxing - it is of no help if you fall unconcious because of weaving a spell - so you trust on your swordblade on this encounter instead. Brandishing your short sword, you bellow a battlecry and charge the goblins, hoping that this will break their morale. The two archers loose their arrows at you, but you do not even have to dodge them... goblins are not known for their aim, and indeed, their arrows go stray. One of them manages to fire another arrow at you before you reach them, but that one misses you also. Your first blow, unexperienced as you are, is deflected by the goblin's shield. Using your weight and the force of the blow, your followup stab pierces his stomach. With a cry of pain in a foul language you do not understand, the goblin falls to the ground. However, as you are about to free your blade from the goblin's body, one of the archers shoots an arrow at point blank at you, and as you cry out from pain as the wooden shaft bores into your flesh, the other goblin with the morning star smashes it into your skull, and after a brief pain, there is only darkness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Kor expresses worry about your shape, but you assure him that you do not intend to face down Farhan Brownhand in hand to hand battle right now, but it is important that you find out what Farhan is up to, and eventually, the warrior agrees. You are handed a flask of some of the strong smelling brew with healing powers, and set up with light gear into the hills, with the best wishes of the guards and a short sword from one of the fallen - you usally carry no weapons with you, but your mental exhaustion is too great to be certain that you are able to defend yourself if attacked. Keeping slightly away from the main road, you travel crosscountry, following the trail of the fled goblins from the foiled ambush as best as you can. Wearily, you walk on, although twilight slowly gives way to the starfilled darkness. Suddenly, you notive some movement in the distance... a goblin patrol! Confidence that you are still on the right track gives away to fear as they appear to have seen you. > You cowardice is preferable to death... You will hide yourself\! You know that your magic is too weakened to rely upon, and while a trained warrior could probably handle those four goblins, you realize your swordskill is mediocre at best. They appear to have spotted you, but you throw yourself flat on the ground - careful enough neither to break the flask you are carrying with you not to spike yourself on your sword - and roll down a hill, more away from the road. There, you keep down, knowing that in your state you are unlikely to outrun them. The hand on your swordhilt, you cower in darkness, thankful that the young moon does not give off much light. An eternity passes, and you are about to raise your head, as you hear the shuffling feet and the gutural language of the goblin patrol approaching. In the darkness, you briefly consider weaving a minor charm to make you unseen, but you are afraid that even the tiniest motion of a hand would betray you, so you hold your breath and remain still. Another eternity passes - probably barely more than a minute - and the sounds of the patrol fade away again - obviously they were not intent on searching too hard, after the beating they took at the ambush. Breathing a sigh of relief, you sit down to gather your strength again before continuing.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It should be not difficult to find such a powerful weave as a teleportation spell. You close your eyes and enhance your trained mental senses to a point where you can feel the pattern of the world around you. But although you search the point where Farhan has disappeared, you do not find any traces of the weave. You ponder this fact, and come to the conclusion that Master Brownhand must have masked the weave. This is a very difficult to achieve while casting or maintaining a spell, and your respect for the other Magus grows, whatever he might have done. Yet your insight does not help you, and you are unsure of how to go on - a state which you, as an Ice Magus deeply dislike. > You are not in the possession of all the facts, and thus need to find out more about Master Brownhand. So you attempt to find him together, for eight eyes see more than two, and it is logical to have protection. Kor and the guards do not like your decision, and express clearly so, but they accept your status as the group's leader. Quickly, you are packed with light gear, and, abandoning the coaches, you head into the hills in the approaching nightfall. The moon is young, and the ground is not easy to see, yet you march through the hills slightly away from the road, as not to be so easy a target. An hour passes, and nightfall becomes a beautiful starspangled sky, were you in a mood to appreciate this. Suddenly, Kor stops and points towards an approaching goblin patrol. They have spotted you too, and seeing that you equal their size, decide to make a run for it after the disaster of the ambush earlier. "Get 'em 'fore they gets to their fellows!", Kor bellows, and, axe drawn, charges them. > You will attempt to strike down the goblins from afar, using the meager mental resources remaining to you. You close your eyes and focus your mental view on the goblins' Patterns. You weave a few simple strands of air and fire, to keep low the strain on your already overtaxed mind, and cause one of the goblin's chest to explode. Shocked by this display of power, the remaining goblins stop approaching you and appear to discuss what to do now - they are obviously not very bright. This distraction is all the guards need to reach them, and the goblins fall under the blows of the men. Seeing you have been victorious, you gently fall over, already fast asleep, as the spell takes its toll from you despite your rigid concentration. > You continue... You awake when someone shakes your shoulder. With an aching head, you stretch and stand up to face Kor, who woke you. "Quickly", he hisses. "I know yer in no shape, but we need ya here. Dem's buggers found out bout us somehow, and dere's about two dozens creeping all 'round us, closin' in. We're trapped like rabbits!" With that, he thrusts a short sword into your hand. You do not feel in any shape to weave spells at the moment, and this is bad as you realize what Kor just said. The goblins are approaching, and you see them... indeed, at least two dozens of them encircle the tiny camp the men made. You're uphill, but there's too many of them to really use that advantage. The men, and you, form a square, each one guarding one side. The blade in your hand is unfamiliar, but you feel that it would be a good idea to become familiar with it rather quickly. There is a moment of silence, and then, the goblins charge with cries in a gutural language you do not - and if the accompanying gestures are any indication, you are glad that this is so - understand. With an answering battlecry that you join in, you intercept the first wave of the attack. Kor's great axe slices through the goblins' bodies, and the man to your right spits two goblins at once on his sword. You are barely capable of deflecting the wicked spears and knives of the creatures, but you manage to bring in a well placed kick that causes one of the foul beings to yelp in pain, loose the balance and roll back down the hill, taking another one with him. Although the four of you manage to hold the goblins at bay, it is clear that you cannot do so for very long, and after a minute of frenzied fighting, a scream of pain indicates the guard in your back going down. Quickly, the square becomes a triangle, as you move to protect your fallen comrade, yet the battle appears to be without hope. Determined not to be the next to fall, you fight on, and it is by sheer luck that you survive the next minutes. Suddenly, a spooky howl fills the night, and the goblins cower in fear for a moment, then abruptly the break of their assault and turn to flee. Kor caughs something, and you notice that the giant of a man is wounded, as is the other guard. You, by none less than a miracle, are the only one not seriously wounded. "After em, lad," Kor cries and throws you a bottle of that evil smelling medicine the guards use. You drink a gulp, pocketing the last remains, and the fire within refreshes you sufficently to grab your sword and hurry after the fleeing goblins alone in the dark, towards the source of that ghostly howl that has now ceased...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Kor and the guards do not like your decision, and express clearly so, but they accept your status as the group's leader. Quickly, you are packed with light gear, and, abandoning the coaches, you head into the hills in the approaching nightfall. The moon is young, and the ground is not easy to see, yet you march through the hills slightly away from the road, as not to be so easy a target. An hour passes, and nightfall becomes a beautiful starspangled sky, were you in a mood to appreciate this. Suddenly, Kor stops and points towards an approaching goblin patrol. They have spotted you too, and seeing that you equal their size, decide to make a run for it after the disaster of the ambush earlier. "Get 'em 'fore they gets to their fellows!", Kor bellows, and, axe drawn, charges them. > You this is a fighter's job, not yours... You are too exhausted, and the goblins should be no match for the guards. While Kor and his men charge the goblins, and gaining, you slowly walk after them. You are weary to the bones, and your mental resources are nearly depleted due to the exhaustion earlier. It would be of no use to anyone if you fell unconcious by trying to slay a few goblins. A couple of minutes later, and the guards are engaged with the goblins. Indeed, the goblins do not stand a chance against the trained fighters, but one of them manages to escape. > You are a Magus of Fire. Your instincts take over. With a pleased grin, like that of a cat on a chase, you deftly weave a small knot of fire and hurl it after the goblin. It hits him in the back, and within split seconds, only ashes remain of the creature, but even that tiny spell was too much for you, and you gently fall over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While Kor and his men charge the goblins, and gaining, you slowly walk after them. You are weary to the bones, and your mental resources are nearly depleted due to the exhaustion earlier. It would be of no use to anyone if you fell unconcious by trying to slay a few goblins. A couple of minutes later, and the guards are engaged with the goblins. Indeed, the goblins do not stand a chance against the trained fighters, but one of them manages to escape. > You launch a magical attack against him. You focus what remains of your mental resources into a ball of pure energy and cast it after the fleeing goblin, striking him from behind. The magical energy discharges into the goblin's body, and he falls down lifeless. You, however, having reached your limits, fall down into a deep, dreamless sleep...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While Kor and his men charge the goblins, and gaining, you slowly walk after them. You are weary to the bones, and your mental resources are nearly depleted due to the exhaustion earlier. It would be of no use to anyone if you fell unconcious by trying to slay a few goblins. A couple of minutes later, and the guards are engaged with the goblins. Indeed, the goblins do not stand a chance against the trained fighters, but one of them manages to escape. > You do nothing. What harm can one single goblin do? You judge your mental resources too low to be able to weave a spell that would do more than tickle the goblin, and thus you let him escape. The guards have finished dealing with the other three, but the fleeing goblin is too far away. Kor curses, when he notices that one got away, but everyone agrees that he's too far away. "The bugger's probably goin' ta get his friends on our heels within the hour", he mutters. "Let's get away from here." You agree on this, and you head away from the road, to make camp somewhere safe. You are in no shape for guard duty, and so the three men share it among themselves. Food is scarce, but sleep is all you need. Before you hit your blanket, you are already fast asleep. A battlecry wakes you in the middle of the night. Bleary-eyed you need a few seconds to get your bearing, and that is all the goblin standing behind you needs to ram a barbed spear through your body. A pain you never knew before fills you, and you faint the moment you see the spearhead protruding from your chest, falling into a darkness from where there is no awakening...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur, is gone and his bodyguard is dead. Only three guards - and yourself - survived his treachery and the goblin attack. All agree that Master Brownhand had been probably in league with the goblins, but why he would attack the trek himself, noone knows. The situation looks grim, reports Kor, the scarred and blackbearded bear of a man who led the charge against the emissary. He is a seasoned veteran, and you can see in his eyes the disgust for this treachery. The horses drawing the coach are all either dead or have fled. Night is coming soon, and the road through the hills is known to be a dangerous way even in daylight. Bandits and bands goblins roam the area, as you were forced to experience yourself. The plains are not much better. Any camp made on the way would be like a beacon to anyone searching for them, and neither Kor nor you have no doubts that Farhan will likely return - with or without help - to finish what the goblins had begun. As a Magus, even a rather inexperienced one, the duty of leadership is on you, but Kor is ready with advice. Basically, you have only few options. You might attempt to travel back to the Acadamy and report of Farhan's treachery. Or, you might attempt to find him before he finds you. Teleport weaves, as Farhan has used to escape, are tricky: They are dangerous to pull off, because inexperienced adepts attempting to move their essence to somewhere else usually unravel themselves and get no second try. Also, the further away the destination is, the more difficult the spell becomes, and you know that even a master magician like Farhan Brownhand must have been tired after the spells he crafted during the battle. Your guess is, that he fled to somewhere in the hills, and Kor agrees with you on this, for in the plains, there is nowhere to hide for several miles around, not even a light wood or a small village. The only thing you know for certain is, that it would be wise to leave this place as soon as possible, as long as the enemy Magus is still weakened from his spellcasting. > You are specialized in the powers of Earth, and thus you attempt to question the animals of the area whether they know of Farhan's whereabouts. You sit down on the ground and close your eyes, sending out a mental call to all the animals around you. You probe into their minds and send your image, a human friend in need of help, and already you hear their answers. Dominating the mental images that answer is that of a huge, black shadow, and you know it must be the most powerful animal around - a natural leader, as you will. You feel its presence approaching, and the remaining guards gasp aloud as suddenly a huge black wolf jumps into your mid without so much of a sound. Swords and axes are drawn, but you command them to drop their weapons. The wolf, with the natural grace of a killer, ignores them as lesser prey - you see them through his eyes - and approaches them. You are about to lay down on the ground and bare your throat, not as a gesture of fear but as a token of respect, when you sense that something is not quite right about this wolf. You hesitate, but the wolf does neither appear to notice nor to care. He sits down on his hindlegs in front of you, staring at you with uncanny yellow eyes that seem to hide an intelligence much more than mere animal. Covering your nervousness, that might as well bring you death, you frame a mental picture of Master Brownhand and send it to the wolf. The reply is a flurry of images that nearly knock you out of your concentration. Blood, hatred, the scent of blood dominating the whole scene, slain cubs, a dark entrance into a cavern, the scent of goblins, the sickening taste of their foul flesh, and at the core of this, the being you knew as Farhan, and also something different, something dark, you cannot quite point your finger on. Hastily you break your concentration before the hatred you feel overpowers you, and it is only then that you notice the deep, dark growling of the wolf as it simply looks at you, and the nervousness of the guards, which already have drawn their blades again despite your command. But then, the huge animals simply stops, stands up and leaves towards the hills, ignoring the guards again as it strides through their midst. At the edge of the battlefield, it turns its head to look at you, as if to see whether you follow, then turns again and trots into the hills. > You will follow the wolf, with or without the others - it appears to want to lead you to somewhere specific. You know that it is your duty to follow the wolf, and perhaps your destiny. You have asked a favour from it, and it is now time for you to repay that favour. Kor presses a short sword into your hand and a flask containing one sip of that evil smelling brew with healing powers the guards used, but the men make it clear that they will not follow you. You have no time to argue with them, for the wolf is already out of sight, and so you hurry on, into nightfall, falling the huge black shape. The wolf waits for you just out of sight of the guards, and, seeing that you follow, turns to walk on again. Like in trance, you follow it. At least two hours, straight through the hills, slightly away from the road, the two of you march on. At one time, he sniffed the air, and lay low on the ground, and you did it likewise, wondering briefly about what kind of intelligence this uncanny animal possesses. Then, when you see a campfire shining at the horizon, the wolf emits a low growl. Then, suddenly, he raises his head and howls towards the young moon, a deafening sound that wakes primal instincts of fear deep within you. The howl is picked up through the surrounding hills, and the black wolf charges towards the fire. Fascinated, and worried, you follow. > You continue... When you arrive at the campfire, there is a battle going on between silvergrey shapes and the twisted humanoids. The black wolf has launched itself into the fray, and the goblins, having nowhere to flee as they are under attack from all sides, fight with uncommon valor, but you can see that the odds are not in their favor. The camp is situated against a steep hill, and you see a cave entrance out of which a nightmarish creature appears. It is without doubt the largest goblin you have ever seen, larger than many a human, sporting huge claws. And, standing next to it, is Farhan Brownhand, wielding that dark blade of his. He moves with the grace of a dancer amidst the goblins and wolves alike, and whenever he makes a cut with his sword, a wolf falls down motionless. Farhan alone might turn the tide of battle in favour for the goblins, and the goblinoid creature simply swipes those clawlike arms of it around, uncaring whether it hurts friend or foe. Even the powerful black wolf keeps its distance from it. While you are not exactly mentally fit, and afraid that even a single spell will be the last one you cast before falling down unconcious, you know you have to act.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You concentrate, and your mental eyes follow the Farhan's weaving. He uses Fire, and mixes Earth in it, but when he leashes it out, you already took hold of one of the strands of magic with your mental touch, and the spell already unravels itself as it is cast. When it reaches you, it is nothing more than a gust of warm wind that ruffles your hair. Infuriated, sensing what you have done, Farhan pulls the black blade out of Lucius' body, and, brandishing it, charges you. Out of the corners of your eyes you see that the guards are approaching the obviously crazed emissary. > You launch a quick spell against him, intend on stoping him long enough for the guards to reach him. You raise your arms, quickly contemplating the type of weave to throw against Master Brownhand, but decide for simplicity. A few minor strands of Air flow from your mind and wrap themselves around the emissary's arms, and, tightening, you attempt to hold him. His eyes widen in fury as he realizes what you are about to do, and he attempts to sever the weaves that surround his arms with his own magic. Surprised at the deftness and skill of his magical counterattack against your spell, you cannot do anything but admire the man's finesse as he unravels your spell with his mind. Within a split second, your spell falls to pieces beyond repair, and Farhan, unhindered again, charges the coach you are standing upon. > You will jump down the coach and grab the sword of a fallen soldier to face Farhan in close combat. Infuriated by the sight of your fallen friend, and by the treachery that you have witnessed, you jump down from the coach and grab the heavy, unfamiliar blade of a goblinslain soldier. You see, from the corners of your eyes, that the guards are approach Farhan Brownhand with drawn weapons, but you ignore them. The emissary grins a wicked grin and makes a fast and elegant move, that closes the distance to you and your blade much faster than you could have anticipated. By sheer luck, you manage to parry the first of Farhan's blows, but he anticipated the move and brings his blade back in a small circle, cutting deep into your unprotected side. As the black, evil-looking blade enters your body, you feel a pain you have never felt before. It is as if your soul itself is torn and shredded by the cold metal, and you utter an inhuman scream. Feebly, knowing that you are doomed, you wave your own blade towards Farhan, but he nimbly evades the clumsy blow and twists the sword in your side one more. Unable to bear the pain, you scream once again, and then, feeling your soul drawn out of your body through the wound, everything first fades from red to black to a chilling emptiness...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stare disbelieving at Master Brownhand, and before you can launch a spell at him, he uses your hesitation to weave a quick strand of fire at you. You barely dodge the small bolt of fire that jumps from his fingers and flies past you. Seeing he missed you, he curses and prepares another spell. You have to act quick. > You quickly launch a spell at him to disrupt his casting. Quickly, you close your eyes and stretch your fingers towards Farhan, hurling a small amount of raw magic against him. This is without finesse, and rather taxing, but effective enough. Master Brownhand gasps as the pure energy you launched at him hits him, and snarls a curse at you. Obviously, you successfully broke his concentration. Then, he grabs the dark blade still sticking in Lucius' body, hefts it in his right hand, weaves a protective gesture with his left and advances to the coach you stand upon. Out of the corner of your eyes, you see the surviving guards, with drawn swords, approach the emissary.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stare disbelieving at Master Brownhand, and before you can launch a spell at him, he uses your hesitation to weave a quick strand of fire at you. You barely dodge the small bolt of fire that jumps from his fingers and flies past you. Seeing he missed you, he curses and prepares another spell. You have to act quick. > You try to work a dangerous spell against Farhan, trusting your skill to complete it before him. You close your eyes, concentrating feverishly on a weave that you know will destroy Farhan Brownhand. Only seconds pass, as you prepare to launch the last patterns at your opponent, but he is faster, and a bright light errupts from the emissary's fingers, and hits you in the chest, just as you are about to complete your spell. With a searing pain in the chest, Farhan's spell throws you backward from the coach you were standing upon, and you hit the ground below head first, just as you hear a bellow of rage coming from the remaining guards... > You continue... You are not dead, and you are quite sure of it, because you always heared of death being somewhat of a peaceful slumber. Instead, your head feels like it is going to explode every second now, the world appears to be one of those carroussels you have visited once on a fair near the Academy, and if your stomach wasn't empty already, it would soon be. With a groan you open one of your eyes, only to find that the world not only spins like a carroussel, but the flashing lights that dance before your vision also appear to be like the fireworks that often accompany the fairs. You have no idea how long you were left there lieing, but when you open your eyes again, you stare into a horrific face, swollen and blurred like a nightmare come true. You gasp and wrench from the hands that suddenly grasp your shoulders, only to find that the sudden movement brings an explosion of pain so far unknown to you into your head, and you cannot help but twist to one side, assisted by the hands, and empty your stomach for good, even though all that comes from it is blood and bile, each spasm calling forth another explosion of pain that makes you wish you were, in fact, dead. A voice calls something you do not understand, and something cold splashes your face. When the spasms stop and the pain subside to barely above tolerable levels again, someone holds a wineskin to your mouth, and greedily you take a gulp, only to choke at the brandy that is now in your mouth. Coughing, and wincing, you try to sit up, and are assisted once again by the strong hands. You look at who is holding you, and finally, through the tears of pain, your vision clears and you recognize the scarred and bearded face of one of the soldiers who looks at you with some concern. "Some concussion y'got there, lad", he greets you. An hour later, when you feel well enough to stand up again, though somewhat shaky - the brandy helped greatly to settle your stomach, there must have been something in it - you take in the scenery. Only three guards - and yourself - survived, but the goblins were nearly decimated, and the few survivors fled. Lucius Tarchild and J'Arel Whitefang are both dead, J'Arel obviously the luckier of the two. Both were apparently killed by Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur, the scarred guard that woke you reports with a scowl. He interrupts his talking, and turns to spit on the ground. Master Whitefang was slain by a bolt of lightning summoned by Master Brownhand, and Master Tarchild was slain by a darkly enchanted sword the emissary wielded when he attacked the magus. For some reason, the emissary obviously was in league with the goblin horde, and wanted the trek to be exterminated. However, the guards managed to overcome the goblins in time, and faced by the remaining guards, Farhan slew most of them with his magic and then turned to flee. Why he did this, the scarred man, who is named Kor, the guards never knew, but they suspect some dark treachery. You have been unconcious for more than three hours, and it is high time to break the camp, in case Farhan, rested, returns to finish the work the goblins began. The animals that drew the coaches are either dead or fled during the ambush, and you have little choice but to leave the place by foot in the twilight that announces nightfall. Kor, obviously a seasoned veteran, is about to order the remaining guards to pack, when he hesitates a moment to look at you. > You as a Magus, it is on you to lead the group. You explain that the duty of leadership is on you, as a Magus. Kor's eyes show quite clearly what he thinks of this, seeing that you're in no shape, but then nods in agreement. He grunts something, then hands you some of the evilsmelling brew you were forced to drink earlier, but remembering its healing powers, you eagerly take another swallow. Feeling the soothing warmth running down your throat, you already feel a lot better, though by no way yourself again. Kor is ready with advice on how to proceed, and you gladly take it. You agree that you have to break camp as soon as possible, before Farhan - undoubtedly in a better shape than you - returns to finish his work. Basically, you only have two choices. You either return to the Academy of Alzur, reporting of Farhan's strange betrayal, or attempt to follow him into the hills, where he likely has fled - Kor reports that he teleported away when the guards charged him, and you know that teleport weaves are hard to pull off and very exhausting, and not even a master Magus could travel very far. And since there is not even a small village or a forest in the near vincinity, it is only sensible to assume Farhan must have fled into the hills. Kor suggests going back to the Academy, reporting the emissary's betrayal and counsel then what to do about it. A sideglance towards you either means that he is concerned about your weakened state and too polite to say so, or that he thinks you too young and inexperienced to even stand the smallest chance against Farhan Brownhand. But you are the leader, as you made quite clear, and so the decision is upon you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are not dead, and you are quite sure of it, because you always heared of death being somewhat of a peaceful slumber. Instead, your head feels like it is going to explode every second now, the world appears to be one of those carroussels you have visited once on a fair near the Academy, and if your stomach wasn't empty already, it would soon be. With a groan you open one of your eyes, only to find that the world not only spins like a carroussel, but the flashing lights that dance before your vision also appear to be like the fireworks that often accompany the fairs. You have no idea how long you were left there lieing, but when you open your eyes again, you stare into a horrific face, swollen and blurred like a nightmare come true. You gasp and wrench from the hands that suddenly grasp your shoulders, only to find that the sudden movement brings an explosion of pain so far unknown to you into your head, and you cannot help but twist to one side, assisted by the hands, and empty your stomach for good, even though all that comes from it is blood and bile, each spasm calling forth another explosion of pain that makes you wish you were, in fact, dead. A voice calls something you do not understand, and something cold splashes your face. When the spasms stop and the pain subside to barely above tolerable levels again, someone holds a wineskin to your mouth, and greedily you take a gulp, only to choke at the brandy that is now in your mouth. Coughing, and wincing, you try to sit up, and are assisted once again by the strong hands. You look at who is holding you, and finally, through the tears of pain, your vision clears and you recognize the scarred and bearded face of one of the soldiers who looks at you with some concern. "Some concussion y'got there, lad", he greets you. An hour later, when you feel well enough to stand up again, though somewhat shaky - the brandy helped greatly to settle your stomach, there must have been something in it - you take in the scenery. Only three guards - and yourself - survived, but the goblins were nearly decimated, and the few survivors fled. Lucius Tarchild and J'Arel Whitefang are both dead, J'Arel obviously the luckier of the two. Both were apparently killed by Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur, the scarred guard that woke you reports with a scowl. He interrupts his talking, and turns to spit on the ground. Master Whitefang was slain by a bolt of lightning summoned by Master Brownhand, and Master Tarchild was slain by a darkly enchanted sword the emissary wielded when he attacked the magus. For some reason, the emissary obviously was in league with the goblin horde, and wanted the trek to be exterminated. However, the guards managed to overcome the goblins in time, and faced by the remaining guards, Farhan slew most of them with his magic and then turned to flee. Why he did this, the scarred man, who is named Kor, the guards never knew, but they suspect some dark treachery. You have been unconcious for more than three hours, and it is high time to break the camp, in case Farhan, rested, returns to finish the work the goblins began. The animals that drew the coaches are either dead or fled during the ambush, and you have little choice but to leave the place by foot in the twilight that announces nightfall. Kor, obviously a seasoned veteran, is about to order the remaining guards to pack, when he hesitates a moment to look at you. > You kor is a seasoned veteran, and you follow his lead. As Kor looks at you with the question of leadership in his eyes, you only nod your head to him, and wince at the burst of pain this small movement causes. Noting it with some concern, one of the other two guards hands you a flask with the same evilsmelling stuff you were forced to drink earlier. Remembering its healing powers, though, you eagerly take a swallow, and the pain clears away nearly immediatley - although the taste remains, and you still not feel yourself. Seeing you recovered somewhat, Kor speaks to you: "We'll be headin' back to Alzur, the Academy needs ta know 'bout what happen' here." You cannot but agree, and although the thought of leaving Farhan behind makes you uncomfortable, you know that you at least are in no position to weave powerful spells at the moment. Within the hour, you are packed and prepared for the long journey back to Alzur.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The flame of the Spark is strong within you today, and your fingers itch with the desire to channel your magic. This is it... this is how it feels to have an adventure! If not for the seriousness of the situation, you would laugh with delight. > You will single out the most powerful looking enemies and turn them into cinder. You quickly climb upon the coach, to get a better view of the battle. Decisively, you summon the powers of Fire to channel thin strands of elemental flame into the bodies of the three goblin shamans, which turn immediatley into cinder. One goblin has not dropped his bow, and fires an arrow at you, but another thin strand of fire takes care of both the arrow and the archer. Another goblin is about to plunge his wicked looking knife into the neck of a soldier, but yelps in pain and drops it as its hilt suddenly glows bright red, which gives the soldier time to dispatch the goblin with a backhand stroke. With their shamans dead, the goblins offer little resistance, and their morale is close to breaking point when you notice that Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur, is sneaking up behind Lucius, making strange gestures as if invoking a spell. You do not know exactly what to think of this, but then again, you are not a pesky Ice adept who needs to think through everything before reaching a decision. Invoking the Fire again, you settle for a warning shot, and the earth in front of Master Brownhand explodes into flame. Lucius turns around in surprise, but before you can react, Farhan has a slender, evil looking sword out and runs it through the Air adept, who's look turns from surprise to pain. Farhan lets go off his sword and turns towards you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The flame of the Spark is strong within you today, and your fingers itch with the desire to channel your magic. This is it... this is how it feels to have an adventure! If not for the seriousness of the situation, you would laugh with delight. > You will weave minor protective charms to support the guards. Earth is not your strongest element, but nevertheless you know of charms that prevent blows and knives to find their target. You climb up on the coach you rode in to get a better overview, and concentrate on channelling the energies out of the ground, and into the armor and bodies of the soldiers. A few twicht uncomfortably as you know they must feel a tingling sensation, but those you enchant this way react surprised when the wicked knives of the goblins glance of their armor and skin without leaving a scratch. The weaving of so many minor enchantments costs you a lot of concentration, and after a minute of holding the spell up, you are about to collapse. The soldiers, however, have made the best of uses of your spells, and only a few of the goblins are left alive. Suddenly, Lucius, who has been preventing accidental arrows to break your concentration, screams in pain, breaking your concentration. Before the whiplash of the dozens of suddenly broken spells wipe out your mind and cause you to fall into a deep blackness, you see Fahan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur, standing behind Lucius, spitting him with an evil looking sword...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The flame of the Spark is strong within you today, and your fingers itch with the desire to channel your magic. This is it... this is how it feels to have an adventure! If not for the seriousness of the situation, you would laugh with delight. > You will weave a minor charm to slow down the goblins. Water is not your most powerful element, but nevertheless you know enough about how to manipulate the fluids in a being to slow it down, hoping that this will give the guards enough advantage to slay the wicked creatures. You close your eyes, concentrating, and hoping that Lucius can keep any stray arrows away from you, and channel the unaccustomed energies of Water through your body. Gently but unstoppable, like the tide, the powers flow into the bodies of your enemies, burdening them, slowing them, and one by one you feel, through your bondage with Water, how the life form of one after the other is destroyed by the soldiers, who use the turn of events. So absorbed are you in the unfamiliar enchantment, however, that you do not even hear the warning that Lucius screams to you, and the last memory of living that your soul carries to the netherworld is that of a blinding light and a searing pain, melting your skin and flesh and bones...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The flame of the Spark is strong within you today, and your fingers itch with the desire to channel your magic. This is it... this is how it feels to have an adventure! If not for the seriousness of the situation, you would laugh with delight. > You will grab a sword from a fallen soldier and join them into the fray. Some strange fever grips you, and you grab a heavy looking sword from one of the fallen. Brandishing it in both hands, you roar out a challenge that comes from the heart, and charge the goblins. Suprised by your fierceness, the goblins shrink back from you, and you cut down two of them before they realize it. However, your clothings offer little protection against the barbed knives, and you are soon swarmed by the evil beings. One goblin cuts your sinews from behind, bringing you down to the ground with a scream of rage, and it is only a matter of time before one of the wicked, barbed knives finds the way to your throat and to your heart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Desperately, you attempt to get your bearing. From the twoscore warriors that accompanied the emissary's treck, only one dozen survived the initial deadly volley of black arrows. However, the guards are rallied and charge the enemy, apparently a group of about half a hundredship ragged looking beings you immediatley recognize as large goblins, led by a couple of their shamans. While a single goblin is no match for a human warrior, the shamans double the goblins' threat, and they make up in numbers what they lack in size. Lucius is using his powers over the wind to make arrows useless, and most goblins have thrown their bows away and now wield evil looking barbed knives. One guard, trying to charge through the goblins to strike down a shaman, is dragged from his horse, and both the guard and the poor beast soon disappear und the goblin's small twisted bodies. > You are a magus of Air. The torrents of Air flow freely through your spirit, and you are determined to use them. Strangely, you are rather excited than frightened by the prospect of fighting your very first battle. So this is what adventure feels like! > You will combine your powers with Lucius, creating gusts of wind to knock down the goblins. You step beside Lucius, and begin to channel the energies of Air through your body. Lucius looks at you, and you nod when he takes control of the flows of magic through your body, adding them to his own. With no more archers shooting, Lucius forms a giant fist of air from the winds, and pummeling the group of goblins mercilessly. Where the two of you strike with your combined magic, the goblins do not stand up again. A shaman attempts to cast a counterspell, wrenching the control of the Air around you from Lucius, but he is swatted like a fly, for combined, your magic is too strong to be redirected that easily. Lucius is drawing more and more power through you, and you feel the strain of it. Suddenly, the bond snaps, and you stare in horror at Lucius' chest, from where an evil looking slender sword is protruding. Then, something hits your head, and, added by the strain of working powerful magic, you slip into a thoughtless darkness...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The torrents of Air flow freely through your spirit, and you are determined to use them. Strangely, you are rather excited than frightened by the prospect of fighting your very first battle. So this is what adventure feels like! > You will attempt to use your knowledge of illusion to confuse the goblins, so that they turn upon each other. Swiftly you climb up the coach, to get a better view of the battle. Trusting your fellow Air magus Lucius to protect you from the archers, you begin to delve into the minds of the goblins, twisting the images they see until they appear to each other as their enemies. Great is the sudden confusion as the goblins, suddenly panicked by the turning of their former companions into more soldiers, begin to hack and claw at each other. One shaman, trying to counter your illusions' effects, is stabbed just in time by a panicking goblin. The strain to maintain so many, albeit small, illusions is great for you, and after a minute of the frenzied fighting, you sink to your knees, sweatsoaked. Suddenly, your concentration is broken by a scream next to you. With horror, you see that Lucius has been spitted on an evil looking sword wielded by Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur. He lets go of the sword, and turns to you, grinning wickedly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Desperately, you attempt to get your bearing. From the twoscore warriors that accompanied the emissary's treck, only one dozen survived the initial deadly volley of black arrows. However, the guards are rallied and charge the enemy, apparently a group of about half a hundredship ragged looking beings you immediatley recognize as large goblins, led by a couple of their shamans. While a single goblin is no match for a human warrior, the shamans double the goblins' threat, and they make up in numbers what they lack in size. Lucius is using his powers over the wind to make arrows useless, and most goblins have thrown their bows away and now wield evil looking barbed knives. One guard, trying to charge through the goblins to strike down a shaman, is dragged from his horse, and both the guard and the poor beast soon disappear und the goblin's small twisted bodies. > You wield the powers of Water. Water, filling you with peace even in the middle of a bloody battle and allowing you to calmly assess the situation, flows strongly in you. Life will be and has been shed, but this is nothing that you can prevent anylonger. You can only hope that it will not be your life, or that of your allies, though that hope already has been betrayed. You briefly wonder about J'Arel's death. The goblin shamans cannot be possibly capable of wielding such magic. But the thought quickly eludes you, for you know you have to act fast and decisively if this battle is to be won. > You will use your healing powers to revive the wounded soldiers. You scramble up on the coach, to get a better view of the battle. To your left, on the ground, is Lucius, protecting you from stray arrows with his power over the winds. Closing your eyes, you search for the hidden power in yourself, and, finding it, channel it gently out of your body. Touching the soldiers with the invisible strands of magic you invoke, you revive them and draw their pains away. A few of the wounded ones gasp in surprise, as their wounds close themselves, then they notice you, give you a curt nod of thanks, and launch themselves into the fray. Whenever the goblins cut down one of the guards, you channel the pure life back into the body of the wounded one. Slowly, the goblins notice that they cannot harm the men, and start to panic. However, the strain of keeping the spells flowing through you is tiring, and so you do not manage to keep your concentration when suddenly, Lucius screams in pain. Horrified, you see that behind him, Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur, has stabbed Lucius in the back with an evil looking sword. You reach for the strands of Water again to channel life back into the Air adepts' body, but it is already devoid of life... you shiver at the implication of that, for the sword must hold terrible and dark powers to vanquish a life with only a casual thrust. Grinning, Farhan lets go of the sword, and turns towards you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Water, filling you with peace even in the middle of a bloody battle and allowing you to calmly assess the situation, flows strongly in you. Life will be and has been shed, but this is nothing that you can prevent anylonger. You can only hope that it will not be your life, or that of your allies, though that hope already has been betrayed. You briefly wonder about J'Arel's death. The goblin shamans cannot be possibly capable of wielding such magic. But the thought quickly eludes you, for you know you have to act fast and decisively if this battle is to be won. > You will attempt to strike the enemies with a barrage of magical missiles. You quickly climb up the coach to get a better view of the battle. There, you concentrate briefly and hurl tiny bolts of pure magicka with deadly precision into the horde of goblins. When struck, the goblins fall down never to get up again. As the channeling of combat magic is not exactly your specialization, the feat proves to be very taxing. However, dozens of goblins fall to your small but deadly precise hail. The goblins are close to breaking and turn to flee, when suddenly you are distracted by a scream. Lucius, having prevented that you become the target of those goblin archers that have not yet dropped their bow, is spitted on an evil looking sword. You give a start when you realize that it is Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur, that wields the blade that has stabbed Lucius into the back. Grimly, you prepare to channel another two bolts of pure magicka into Farhan's direction, as you remember too late that his bodyguard is always close to him. A blow on your head drives thoughts of magic away for quite some time, and darkness engulfs you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Desperately, you attempt to get your bearing. From the twoscore warriors that accompanied the emissary's treck, only one dozen survived the initial deadly volley of black arrows. However, the guards are rallied and charge the enemy, apparently a group of about half a hundredship ragged looking beings you immediatley recognize as large goblins, led by a couple of their shamans. While a single goblin is no match for a human warrior, the shamans double the goblins' threat, and they make up in numbers what they lack in size. Lucius is using his powers over the wind to make arrows useless, and most goblins have thrown their bows away and now wield evil looking barbed knives. One guard, trying to charge through the goblins to strike down a shaman, is dragged from his horse, and both the guard and the poor beast soon disappear und the goblin's small twisted bodies. > You are specialized in Ice. The Spark, for you a crystallized snowflake, burns brightly with cool reassurance deep within you. Quickly you assess the situation. The goblins outnumber the surviving soldiers four to one, and even without the goblin's magical assistance in form of the their shamans, your guards will not stand a chance. The shamans. Hmm. You would be surprised if one of them was capable of casting such a bolt of lightning as struck down J'Arel, and you are rarely surprised by facts. So, there must be another magician close by, and someone quite powerful. > You will attempt to divine the source of the lightning bolt that struck down J'Arel. Closing your eyes, and trusting that Lucius' winds will shield you from stray arrows, you invoke the ancient runes of Divination, trying to make the magic tell you where the strands of woven magicka, of which the lightning bolt that charred the Fire magus undoubtedly consist, lead to. This is a task that requires great concentration for several seconds, but your rigid training helps to fade out the screams of the wounded and dying and the clash of weapons. In what is a split second but which feels like an hour to you, your mind picks up the magical weaves of the spell that had been cast, and unravels them. You admire the precision and the masterwork, a great lot of energy must have been used up to strike such a powerful bolt of lightning at such precision. Your mental fingers follow the invisible strands of magic, and you are suprised to find that the origin of the lightning bolt seems to come from the emissary's coach. You open your eyes again and break your spell, unsure as how to deal with this piece of information. Looking towards the battle, you see that the guards are in serious trouble dealing with the goblins. You have to act quick. > You ignore the information, and hurl shards of ice towards the goblins. With cold fury upon witnessing the slaughter of the guards, you cast out your arms and hands, and hurl shards of ice into the goblin horde, where they explode into tiny slivers that burn with unnatural cold. Those goblins that are hit by the large shards themselves fall down never to get up again. Those burned by the cold splinters scream in pain and are swiftly dispatched by the soldiers which have been looking for just an opportunity. Two more shards of ice strike down the shamans busily trying to heal their goblin fighters. They goblins are close to routing, as suddenly, you sense someone behind you. You turn, and the last thing you hear before your vision fades to black is Lucius' inhuman scream on the other side of the coach...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Closing your eyes, and trusting that Lucius' winds will shield you from stray arrows, you invoke the ancient runes of Divination, trying to make the magic tell you where the strands of woven magicka, of which the lightning bolt that charred the Fire magus undoubtedly consist, lead to. This is a task that requires great concentration for several seconds, but your rigid training helps to fade out the screams of the wounded and dying and the clash of weapons. In what is a split second but which feels like an hour to you, your mind picks up the magical weaves of the spell that had been cast, and unravels them. You admire the precision and the masterwork, a great lot of energy must have been used up to strike such a powerful bolt of lightning at such precision. Your mental fingers follow the invisible strands of magic, and you are suprised to find that the origin of the lightning bolt seems to come from the emissary's coach. You open your eyes again and break your spell, unsure as how to deal with this piece of information. Looking towards the battle, you see that the guards are in serious trouble dealing with the goblins. You have to act quick. > You ignore the information, and cause the ground under the goblins' feet to turn to ice, so that they stumble and fall. You climb up on the coach, which is the best strategical position you can hope to achieve. Lucius is protecting you from any stray arrows with his command over Air, and from here, you have the best overview. You study the patterns of the goblin horde for a second, and then reach into yourself to draw out the powers that the Spark grants you. Mumbling the necessary incantations and pointing your fingers at the fight, you allow the magical energies to escape your body and channel them to the ground below. Your efforts are rewarded by a cry out outrage, as the first goblin slips and stabs itself on the knife of a companion. This causes a chainreaction, from which the guards of the treck unfortunately are not unaffected, yet their armor protects them from the flailing, now unprecise stings of the goblins' knives. Lucius, seeing what you have done, directs his winds to topple the remaining standing goblins, and keeping those down that try to righten themselves again, and the guards begin to easily dispatch their smaller enemies. But suddenly, Lucius' screams in anguish, louder than the shrieks of the panicking goblins, and as you turn to him in surprise, you see that Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur, has stabbed Lucius in the back with an evil looking sword. You are unsure of the meaning of this, a situation you are not used to, but you decide to prepare a spell against Farhan when you see his malicious grin as he turns towards you, leaving his sword sticking in Lucius' crumpled body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Closing your eyes, and trusting that Lucius' winds will shield you from stray arrows, you invoke the ancient runes of Divination, trying to make the magic tell you where the strands of woven magicka, of which the lightning bolt that charred the Fire magus undoubtedly consist, lead to. This is a task that requires great concentration for several seconds, but your rigid training helps to fade out the screams of the wounded and dying and the clash of weapons. In what is a split second but which feels like an hour to you, your mind picks up the magical weaves of the spell that had been cast, and unravels them. You admire the precision and the masterwork, a great lot of energy must have been used up to strike such a powerful bolt of lightning at such precision. Your mental fingers follow the invisible strands of magic, and you are suprised to find that the origin of the lightning bolt seems to come from the emissary's coach. You open your eyes again and break your spell, unsure as how to deal with this piece of information. Looking towards the battle, you see that the guards are in serious trouble dealing with the goblins. You have to act quick. > You will investigate the emissary's coach. As you approach the coach, oblivious to the screams for mercy from the battle, the coach's door is openend. Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur, exits the coach, brandishing an evil looking, black sword. Directly behind him is his bodyguard, a nondescript man you would not give a second glance on a street, who looks startled at you. Behind you, you hear Lucius scream, as a small group of goblins throw themselves at the magus, and as you are about to turn, Farhan's bodyguard is behind you with three quick steps, and then, with a stinging pain on your neck, your senses fade to darkness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Desperately, you attempt to get your bearing. From the twoscore warriors that accompanied the emissary's treck, only one dozen survived the initial deadly volley of black arrows. However, the guards are rallied and charge the enemy, apparently a group of about half a hundredship ragged looking beings you immediatley recognize as large goblins, led by a couple of their shamans. While a single goblin is no match for a human warrior, the shamans double the goblins' threat, and they make up in numbers what they lack in size. Lucius is using his powers over the wind to make arrows useless, and most goblins have thrown their bows away and now wield evil looking barbed knives. One guard, trying to charge through the goblins to strike down a shaman, is dragged from his horse, and both the guard and the poor beast soon disappear und the goblin's small twisted bodies. > The powers of Earth are yours to command. The rythm of nature, which for you manifests in the Spark, is strong in you. The Earth will be watered with blood, and there is nothing you can do to prevent this. However, you can still protect those of your allies that have not yet fallen, and you are determined to see that victory, even against the odds, is yours. > You will enchant the guards with the protection of Earth. Trusting Lucius to deflect the stray arrows directed at you with his command over Air, you scramble clumsily up the top of the coach, to get a better overview of the battlefield. The fighting looks grim, all of the remaining handful of guards are bleeding from dozens of wounds, while the goblin shamans take care that many of those goblins cut down leap back on their feet. Determined, you act quickly, closing your eyes and drawing the powers from the bowels of the Earth herself, channeling it gently up the guards' bodies, turning their skin hard as iron. The guards, at first surprised that the goblins' knives seem to be deflected by their suddenly hard skin, renew the ferocity of their attacks, and the goblin shamans cannot heal their companions quick enough. It is rather difficult for you to command so many weaves at once, for every time one of your fellow soldiers is hit, it saps a bit of your mental powers to upkeep the enchantment, but you are determined not to let another of your companions fall to the wicked goblin blades. The goblins, suddenly facing an enemy they cannot hope to defeat, are close to breaking point, when suddenly, your concentration is broken by a terrible scream. You turn your attention towards Lucius, and see, to your horror, that your companion and friend is spitted on a black and evil looking sword wielded by Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur. With the sword's tip coming through his chest, Lucius falls openmouthed and -eyed on the ground, and Master Brownhand lets go of the blade, and turns with a wicked grin towards you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The rythm of nature, which for you manifests in the Spark, is strong in you. The Earth will be watered with blood, and there is nothing you can do to prevent this. However, you can still protect those of your allies that have not yet fallen, and you are determined to see that victory, even against the odds, is yours. > You will send a call to the animals of the hills and plains to come and assist you. Leaning against one side of the coach, you close your eyes and send out a call of help to all things attuned to Earth. You project your own image, and that off the goblins, stinking, poisoning the earth with their mere foul existence. And your call is answered. Suddenly, a howl errupts from the hills, a group of wolves coming for a brother in need. Both the goblins and the guards, engulfed in deadly close combat, appear to be startled by the cries of the wolves, but they quickly catch themselves again. Then, the first goblin shaman is brought down with a single, powerful bite in the neck by a large, black wolf, who you easily identify as the leader of the pack. You channel your powers of earth to deflect the goblins' knives from the hides of your friends, both animal and human, and the few surviving goblins turn to flee after a mere minute, as more and more wolves join the battle. The wolves turn to pursuit the foul creatures, but not before the large black wolf catches your eyes and emits a deep growl. You understand perfectly: Brothers are there for each other, but this is a mutual responsibility. With this, the pack leader turns off to follow the rest of the pack, leaving the dazzled guards behind. You move towards the fallen, seeing if you can do anything about their wounds, when suddenly Lucius screams with pain, and suddenly, your vision fades to black when something hard and heavy hits your head... from behind... > You continue... You are not dead, and you are quite sure of it, because you always heared of death being somewhat of a peaceful slumber. Instead, your head feels like it is going to explode every second now, the world appears to be one of those carroussels you have visited once on a fair near the Academy, and if your stomach wasn't empty already, it would soon be. With a groan you open one of your eyes, only to find that the world not only spins like a carroussel, but the flashing lights that dance before your vision also appear to be like the fireworks that often accompany the fairs. You have no idea how long you were left there lieing, but when you open your eyes again, you stare into a horrific face, swollen and blurred like a nightmare come true. You gasp and wrench from the hands that suddenly grasp your shoulders, only to find that the sudden movement brings an explosion of pain so far unknown to you into your head, and you cannot help but twist to one side, assisted by the hands, and empty your stomach for good, even though all that comes from it is blood and bile, each spasm calling forth another explosion of pain that makes you wish you were, in fact, dead. A voice calls something you do not understand, and something cold splashes your face. When the spasms stop and the pain subside to barely above tolerable levels again, someone holds a wineskin to your mouth, and greedily you take a gulp, only to choke at the brandy that is now in your mouth. Coughing, and wincing, you try to sit up, and are assisted once again by the strong hands. You look at who is holding you, and finally, through the tears of pain, your vision clears and you recognize the scarred and bearded face of one of the soldiers who looks at you with some concern. "Some concussion y'got there, lad", he greets you. An hour later, when you feel well enough to stand up again, though somewhat shaky - the brandy helped greatly to settle your stomach, there must have been something in it - you take in the scenery. Only three guards - and yourself - survived, but the goblins were nearly decimated, and the few survivors fled, followed by the wolves you summoned, the scarred man adds with a sideglance at you. Lucius Tarchild and J'Arel Whitefang are both dead, J'Arel obviously the luckier of the two. Both were apparently killed by Farhan Brownhand, the emissary of Alzur, the scarred guard that woke you reports with a scowl. He interrupts his talking, and turns to spit on the ground. Master Whitefang was slain by a bolt of lightning summoned by Master Brownhand, and Master Tarchild was slain by a darkly enchanted sword the emissary wielded when he attacked the magus. For some reason, the emissary obviously was in league with the goblin horde, and wanted the trek to be exterminated. However, the guards - with the help of the black wolf's pack - managed to overcome the goblins in time, and faced by the remaining guards, Farhan slew most of them with his magic and then turned to flee. Why he did this, the scarred man, who is named Kor, the guards never knew, but they suspect some dark treachery. You have been unconcious for more than three hours, and it is high time to break the camp, in case Farhan, rested, returns to finish the work the goblins began. The animals that drew the coaches are either dead or fled during the ambush, and you have little choice but to leave the place by foot in the twilight that announces nightfall. Kor, obviously a seasoned veteran, is about to order the remaining guards to pack, when he hesitates a moment to look at you. Suddenly, a growl makes both of you look around. The black wolf, a majestic animal, is standing at the corner of the battlefield. One of the guards warily raises his weapon, but you call him to drop it. Ignoring the guard, the wolf casually and gracefully steps up to you. He sniffs the air, then turns and heads of to the hills, turning his head just once to see if you follow him, then turns again to walk away. Kor and the other two stare after him with distrust in their eyes.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Lucius is a tall, slender man. There is always the sly grin on his face, and his hair looks like he has been in a tornado. Right now, looking at J'Arel and you, his grin nearly splits his face, causing J'Arel to scowl back. "Well, look who's here. Not suffocated yet, I hope", Lucius grins. J'Arel only snorts with disdain, throwing you a meaningful look as if the journey would have been quite pleasant without your companionship inside the coach. Before you can think of how to answer that challenge, Lucius continues as if not noticing the tension between the two of you: "Looks like we got ourselves some trouble coming. The captain of the scouts just raced his horse nearly to death coming here, then barely pauses to take a breath before arguing with old Farhan. Seems like they want us to make camp here, instead of driving on, but Farhan doesn't sound too happy about that." Lucius gives the countryside an appraising glance. "Can't say I blame them. It's a good position here, with the hills in front and the plains at the back. At least if anyone's sneaking up on us, they're doing so from only one direction." J'Arel interrupts: "Phah, let them come, so we can finally have some use. I don't see why..." Lucius holds up a hand to silence J'Arel, cocking his head to one side and closing his eyes, as if listening intently. As you strain to hear anything untowards yourself, you notice it... the silence is unnatural. Where the journey was accompanied by the rustling of leaves and grass, the chirping and buzzing of insects and the caws of birds, there is now silence... even the horses of the guards seem to hold their breath. Then suddenly the first volley of arrows hit the group. Lucius curses and hurls himself into the relative but crowded safety of the coach, but a few of the guards do not have as much luck. The air is filled with the rearing of horses and the screams of the wounded. The captain of the scouts turns to face the enemy, but gives only a gurgle, as you can see the black arrow protruding from his neck. Blood runs out of his mouth, and for a horrifying second, he seems to stare at you with the paincrazed eyes of the already dead, before falling from his horse only to be gored by the panicking beast. When you catch yourself again, you see that J'Arel and Lucius are already preparing spells, even if they cannot yet see who is attacking you. > You will leave the coach, weaving offensive magic to support the guards. As J'Arel, suddenly engulfed in a flaming aura, leaps out of the coach, you take the exit on the other side. Immediatley you find yourself dodging panicked horses and stray arrows. Before you get your bearing, a loud crackle is heared, and something like lightning seems to strike nearby. A piercing scream barely recognizable as human tells you that the lightning must have found a target - it came from J'Arel's side of the coach.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Lucius is a tall, slender man. There is always the sly grin on his face, and his hair looks like he has been in a tornado. Right now, looking at J'Arel and you, his grin nearly splits his face, causing J'Arel to scowl back. "Well, look who's here. Not suffocated yet, I hope", Lucius grins. J'Arel only snorts with disdain, throwing you a meaningful look as if the journey would have been quite pleasant without your companionship inside the coach. Before you can think of how to answer that challenge, Lucius continues as if not noticing the tension between the two of you: "Looks like we got ourselves some trouble coming. The captain of the scouts just raced his horse nearly to death coming here, then barely pauses to take a breath before arguing with old Farhan. Seems like they want us to make camp here, instead of driving on, but Farhan doesn't sound too happy about that." Lucius gives the countryside an appraising glance. "Can't say I blame them. It's a good position here, with the hills in front and the plains at the back. At least if anyone's sneaking up on us, they're doing so from only one direction." J'Arel interrupts: "Phah, let them come, so we can finally have some use. I don't see why..." Lucius holds up a hand to silence J'Arel, cocking his head to one side and closing his eyes, as if listening intently. As you strain to hear anything untowards yourself, you notice it... the silence is unnatural. Where the journey was accompanied by the rustling of leaves and grass, the chirping and buzzing of insects and the caws of birds, there is now silence... even the horses of the guards seem to hold their breath. Then suddenly the first volley of arrows hit the group. Lucius curses and hurls himself into the relative but crowded safety of the coach, but a few of the guards do not have as much luck. The air is filled with the rearing of horses and the screams of the wounded. The captain of the scouts turns to face the enemy, but gives only a gurgle, as you can see the black arrow protruding from his neck. Blood runs out of his mouth, and for a horrifying second, he seems to stare at you with the paincrazed eyes of the already dead, before falling from his horse only to be gored by the panicking beast. When you catch yourself again, you see that J'Arel and Lucius are already preparing spells, even if they cannot yet see who is attacking you. > You will stay in the coach, preparing defensive spells before joining the fray. Lucius and J'Arel both leap out of the coach, the Air magus to the left, and J'Arel to the right. You prepare to cast a minor enchantment to ward blows and strayed arrows on yourself, feeling that you do not have the time for more. J'Arel is already hurling fiery balls of flame into the general direction the surviving soldiers are charging, and when sudden gusts of wind rock the coach, you know that Lucius is busy trying to prevent the arrows finding their targets. As you close your eyes to murmur the final incantation, something incredible bright strikes close to you with loud thunder and a pierced scream, and when you open your eyes again, you see that where J'Arel stood, the ground is charred. Not waiting any longer, you leap out of the coach.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Suddenly, the coach shudders to a halt. Voices call out, but your first reaction of worrying is soothed as you recognize them as your scouts' voices. The captain of the scouts, a burly man in leather armor, approaches the second coach, which is occupied by Master Brownhand, the emissary of Alzura. The captain dismounts his gelding, and appears to speak agitatedly with someone inside the coach - which is all you can make out. Unfortunately, they are too far away to understand a word. > You will cast a minor spell which allows the air to carry the sound to your ear. [You can do that even without being specialized in Air.] You mouth the charm to cause the wind carrying the syllables of the captain to your ear. "...tracks! But did no follow 'em. 's gettin' dark in four hours, now jez be campin now, afore we getta beatin", the captain of the scouts says. You cannot make out the full reply, only catching a few words: "...plan... alliance with... no harm come... not bandits..." Then you notice that J'Arel is staring at you with unhidden curiousity, and are just about to comment, when Lucius, who had been riding on the top of the coach, opens the door and breaks your concentration sufficently to drop the spell.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>J'Arel looks up from some thought in surprise, as you cough to catch his attention. His cruel eyes narrow themselves, and he pierces you with his look. "What is it that you want?" > You say "I don't think I like your attitude, J'Arel." "I don't think I like your attidue, J'Arel", you reply. J'Arel only snorts, and answers: "And this would be your problem, or mine?" You choke back the angry answer that lies on your tongue. After all, you are supposed to guard the emissary in case of an attack, and not squabble with a fellow magician. With a dirty glance towards J'Arel, you decide to let the point rest for now.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>J'Arel looks up from some thought in surprise, as you cough to catch his attention. His cruel eyes narrow themselves, and he pierces you with his look. "What is it that you want?" > You say "Can you tell me anything about the emissary?" "Less than you, I suppose," J'Arel answers, then sighs and shakes his head. "I heared he's a powerful mage himself. I don't know why we're to accompany him, Master Brownhand is said to be capable of taking care of himself." "If I were you, I would rather worry about the road that lies ahead than about or passengers. The road will be getting a lot worse the next days, and when we reach the outskirts of Thalun Forest in two days, who knows what will await us in these ancient, dark and magical woods..." His voice is getting dark and foreboding, and then he suddenly breaks into laughter. "Peasants' superstition. Likely some bandits roam the Woods, and that's the reason why lone travellers sometimes are never seen again." He grins, and forms a magical gesture with his left palm, upon which a blueish flame appears there, a ball of pure energy powerful enough to burn through a tree when hurled with enough force. "However, we are no lone travellers", he adds, his malicious grin broadening. Then, he claps his hands together, and the flame vanishes. "I doubt that some ragged band of bandits is going to choose us as our target anyway," he says, sounding disappointed. "Those soldiers look like excellent fighters, and I am certain the bandits will see this as well."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It is early summer in the world of Thyr, and the smell of spring has not yet left the air. The emmissary's trek consists of two coaches, one for the magicians, of which there are two more on board, and one for the emissary and his bodyguard himself. Furthermore, there are two dozens warriors on horse accompanying the trek, some of which are scouting ahead. It has been two days since you left the Academy of Alzur, and by now you have left the city's military influence, as can be witnessed by the steady growing worse of the road. You know close to nothing about Fahan Brownhand's - the emissary of Alzur - orders, or about the man himself, save that he is known to be a devious mind and a quick judge of character, abilities well received within a politician. Also you know that your trek is carrying valuable gifts in jewels and gold for Khalar, the citystate you are destined to reach within the week. Your two magician-companions are no strangers to you. Opposite of you is sitting J'Arel Whitefang, a young man emitting an aura of arrogance that is barely to bear in the confines of the coach. He is, as you know, a capable Fire elementalist. Currently on top of the coach, unable to bear the presence of J'Arel any longer, is Lucius Tarchild, an Air mage of some renown. Unfortunately, Lucius is somewhat senior to you, and thus he has the right of first choice, as he explained to you with a wink. Already weary by the long trip so far, you did not argue. > You will use the time to study the landscape, as you have never been so far from Alzura before. There are fewer and fewer fields with toiling peasants, this far away from Alzur's protecting arms. The road snakes through terrain that is, plain spoken, rather boring. Your thirst for adventure is already seriously dampened - the coach, while preferable to a day on horseback, simply does not beat walking. Anyhow, through the smallish windows, you cannot see much anyway. Sighing, you turn away from the plain fields, and wish for a book. However, the librarians of the Academy, while usually rather lenient when it came to you, were firm on the fact that no books would leave Alzur. Most likely, they were worried that in foreign lands, people would eat books. You cannot stiffle your curiousity how the city of Khofte looks like. But that is still a good week ahead, and you suppose that you are dead by boredom until then.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is no way to live. Working on a barely profitable rundown farm with far too many family members to feed. It’s a damn good thing you’re an excellent hunter. However, lately there’s even been a shortage of game to thwart your efforts. You didn’t really want to be working on the farm your whole life in the first place, you wanted to see the world but when dad died, things got a lot harder for the family and you had to take over as “man” of the house and stay put. Something is going to have to change. While you’d like nothing more than to go through with your childhood dreams of becoming a traveling bard without any responsibility you don’t have that luxury. Hell, you barely have time to play your lute anymore in the small amount of free time you do have. You doubt if you’d even be good enough to make a living for just yourself doing it. But you need to get away, but what can you do that won’t allow you to completely abandon your mom and all your brothers and sisters? You suddenly think of the choice that many in your desperate position have thought of many times before. The army. Its not exactly ideal, but you be traveling and seeing the world so to speak. You’d also be making enough money that you could send to your family. Your own living expenses would be provided for by the army. Of course there’s all that fighting that usually goes along with it that you’re not to keen on. Not that you aren’t a stranger to battle as their have been the occasional bandits or kobold thieves that have attempted to steal from the farm in the past, but you prefer not to fight if possible, especially not up close. The bow has always been your weapon of choice. There’s also the matter of mass combat on a grand scale that usually accompanies army life. A lot different than chasing away some thieves in the chicken coop. As you’re thinking about this, you also realize that there is another option. There’s a small mercenary company passing through the area. They’ve been hanging out at the local tavern for a couple days. They don’t seem to be the noblest sort from what you can tell, but fortunately they seem to have kept their revelry confined to the tavern. Who knows how they act away from “civilization” though. Still, it’s something to consider. There probably is less attention to discipline and a little more relaxed on rules and regulations. You probably wouldn’t be fighting in some mass land war that governments are fond of waging. Mercenaries travel a lot and tend to make more, however they tend to get hired for a lot weirder jobs, usually ones that the employer doesn’t want people to know about or ones that nobody else seems to be able to handle. > You enlist in the army Well, as much as you’re going to hate the whole uniform thing, you’d rather there be some sort of guidelines. The mercenaries look like a rough bunch. You get the impression you’d have to be watching your back as much as your enemies if you signed up with them. You explain your decision to join the army to the family one night at dinner. Your revelation comes as a shock. Your smaller brothers and sisters don’t want you to go, your brother Mallack really doesn’t want you to leave since he’ll be next in line to take the brunt of the manual labor! Your mother surprises you as much as you surprised everyone else. You expected her to be the most vocal about you not leaving, but she sees that this would help out the family. She gives her blessing. Before you leave the next day with your packed belongings, your whole family comes to say goodbye to you. You almost hesitate to leave, wondering if it would actually be better for you to stay, but your mother urges you on. “Don’t worry! Mallack is old enough to take over your responsibilities on the farm. He’s not quite as skilled of a hunter, but he’ll be able to do it. I’ve always known that you’ve had a desire to travel. The army isn’t an ideal life I hope you realize though.” Your mom says. “Yeah, I know, but I’ve thought it through.” “Very well, you’re old enough to make your own decisions and live your own life, though I’m glad to see that you still want to help the family as opposed to just leaving in the middle of the night.” “I’ll start sending money as soon as possible. I’ll also try to write and visit when I can.” “I know…okay, you best get going. It’s still quite a walk to the capitol.” You begin to leave the farm as your family wave goodbye to you in the distance. Soon you’re on the road to your nation’s capitol. You’ve been to Zal once before a long time ago with your dad when he was trying to sell some kobold eyes to an alchemist there. You remember being overwhelmed with how many people lived there and how big it was. You always did want to go there again one day; you just didn’t think it would be to enlist in the army. Eventually you arrive at Zal. The place is even bigger than the last time you came here. So much has changed and you’re a little overwhelmed. You don’t have any knowledge of the city so you ask the gate guard who is giving a watchful look to everyone coming in and out. “Excuse me…” ”Whadda ya want peasant? I’m busy! Market square is three blocks down as soon as you get inside the gate here!” The guard snaps. “No, I was wondering where I could enlist in the army.” The guard seems to change his tone to a somewhat more cordial tone. “Oh I see. Well, as soon as you go through the gate, take a left, and walk two blocks. The recruiting office is on the right hand side across from a general store.” You thank him and proceed, but you can’t help overhearing the guard laughing to his buddy as you walk away. You don’t make out all of it, but “Dumb fucking hayseed peasant.” was definitely in there. At last you arrive at the recruiting office. The man sitting at the desk looks bored at first, but perks up a bit when he sees you. “Well now, this is a nice break in the monotony. Have a seat.” “I want to enlist in the army.” “Well of course you do son, why else would you be here? To join the Zalan Empire’s best right? Okay, but before we start I need to ask you some questions just so we can get a feel of where we think you’ll best serve in the Emperor’s glorious army.” “Uh, okay.” “Good, so where are you from son? You certainly don’t look like you’re from the city here. You look like a farmer.” “Well I sort of am sir. My family owns a farm a couple miles from the city, I decided to enlist to help my family monetarily. Times are hard on the farm.” “Mmm, noble of you. Your sense of duty will also serve you well too. Any combat experience?” “Some, but nothing major I’m afraid. A few bandits. Kobolds in the chicken coop. That’s about it.” “Don’t worry you’ll learn to be a killing machine, but your past experience are more than some we’ve recruited. Any other talents?” “Besides farming? Um…I’m a good hunter, I use this bow all the time!” you say and show the recruiter your worn bow. “Good. Good. We can always use good marksmen. But you’ll get the chance to use a better bow than that old thing you’ve been carrying around. What’s that other thing on your back?” “Oh this? Well this is my uh lute.” “Lute? Ha ha! You a bard or something?” “Well not really, but…” “You planning on charming the enemies with your music?” “Uh…” you say begin to get a little anxious. “Hah! Settle down son, I’m just messing with you. But I’m afraid whatever your musical hobbies may be you’ll most likely be abandoning them. Can’t be picking your lute while an angry ogre is charging at you or you’re storming a castle. This is the army, not an entertainment company!” The recruiter at this point begins to look through some papers and grabs one after looking it over. “Ah. Here it is…you know how to read and write?” “YES!” you say indignantly for the first time. “Okay, okay, don’t get testy. Its just most of you peasant farmer types don’t. Anyway just sign here and we’ll get you started on your basic training.” You take the paper, and give it a pointless look over like you actually understand all the legal mumbo jumbo and sign. The recruiter takes the paper from you and then shakes your hand. “Congratulations son! You’re in the Zalan Army now! The best damn one in this world!” Somehow he’s more enthusiastic than you are… > You it's boot camp for you! 6 months pass… Six months of the most grueling physical training you’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with! However you fared better than some of your fellow cadets. Guess all that farm living paid off. You’ve certainly improved what combat skills you had, but your marksmanship has improved greatly. You know that Drill Sergeant Kosser has been paying special attention to your abilities. You’re not sure if that’s a good thing of not. In any event you’re being told where your first assignment is going to be. Most of those in your group are being sent to Tulan border. Not the most pleasant assignment. The fighting is getting worse there. What started as a minor border dispute has turned into a series of battles with neither side making too much progress. Even before you joined the military you’d heard stories of the greedy king who runs the Tulan Kingdom. You heard from traveling merchants about how he allows a few demons to walk around in his lands! Utter madness in your opinion. The Zalan Empire might be a little strict on the rules and regulations, but better that than demons letting walking around, in your opinion they should all be killed on sight regardless on whether they’re obeying the “law” or not, they’re evil. You sit anxious on your bed in the barracks as name after name gets called off. Finally Kosser calls off your name, and you fully expect to get sent to the Tulan border. “I want to talk to you in private.” Is what you hear instead. This makes you even more nervous. What’s he going to do? Send you on? A mission to assassinate the Tulan King? After everyone else has gotten there assignments you follow Kosser back to his office. He sits down and speaks direct. “Alright farmboy, I’m sure you’ve noticed me watching your marksmanship skills. You’re one of the best ones that have come in here for awhile. You have a natural talent and you’ve only improved it through training. It would be a blessing to have someone like you up at the Tulan border. The gods know we could use anything to help break the stalemate there.” “…but?” you ask hoping that there is one. “But…your skills might be better served in a place that has a better mortality rate, yet still needs taking care of.” “Where’s that sir?” “Here.” Kosser points to a map to a nearby location. It’s the Retlad Kingdom. You can’t imagine what’s going on there, since as far as you know, you’re Zalan is at peace with them. “Retlad? I thought we’re at peace with them?” “We are…in fact rumors are saying we’ll probably incorporate them into the empire in the near future. I dunno how much you know about politics out there on the farm, but Retlad is basically a bankrupt kingdom. Their dumb ass royalty spent a shitload of their treasury on building ships in some vain attempt to find more land mass on this world. Hah! Doesn’t exist! We learned than centuries ago! Anyway now they don’t have enough to pay for a proper military and their kingdom is being overrun by hostile Quillar tribes. They want us to help. Begging us practically and we have, but it’s a pain in the ass. Quillars are fast and as their name suggests shoot multiple sharp quills at their enemies. I’ve seen them go through plate armor.” “That doesn’t sound good.” “No, it’s not good. The Retlad knight orders got decimated within two months of the first invasion wave. We’re taking a better approach. We need to have equally quick troops that can at least match the fire power. We’ve sent a couple of war wizards, but most of them are serving on the Tulan border. Gunpower weapons are a little too slow for this sort of thing, so we’re looking for people good with a bow. Quick enough to at least get a few shots off from a distance and run. Because hit and run tactics are what the Quillars excel at, so you’ll have to do likewise.” Kosser pauses his talking for a moment. You take this opportunity to interject a question. “And this assignment you say has a lower mortality rate?” “Well, we haven’t sent as many people there yet, but so far we’ve made a little more progress there than at the Tulan border. But of course I won’t say it’s a safe assignment. Those Quillar bastards are vicious and merciless. Up to you farmboy. You’re getting a bonus here. You’re actually getting to choose your assignment. Not many that get out of boot camp get that privilege.” Some “privilege” > You go to the Tulan Border You don’t like the sound of the Quillars and it doesn’t really sound all that much safer. You decide that at the Tulan border you’ll at least be with a few people you already know from boot camp and you’ll be fighting something less scary. (Or at least human) “I’ll take the Tulan Border assignment sir.” “Hm, I’m surprised. Hope your skills come in of some use there. Here’s your first month’s pay, I suggest you live it up here in Zal, for the couple of days you have off before you leave.” You take the small bag and look inside. This will certainly help your family. You take a few coins for yourself and then ask if arrangements can be made to have your payment sent to your family from now on. He tells you yes, but asks that surely that you will still want some of it. You agree to just taking 10% of it. You don’t need much. “Sheesh, living bare minimum huh? Don’t you want to eat anything other than military rations every once in awhile?” Kosser questions again. “Nah. If I need extra food, I’ll just hunt.” “You know there aren’t many luxuries on the border, but when a traveling merchant shows up, you might regret not having enough money. You sure you don’t want more?” “Nope. I’ll be fine. My family needs that money more than I do.” “Alright then, family man.” You exit the barracks and wander the city a bit. You find it very interesting. You sort of wish you could stay longer to take in more sights. However one thing catches your eye. A small store and in the window is a lute. Looks almost like the one you had before it was taken away from you in basic training. You haven’t gotten a chance to play in six months and you’d really like to… Hey you’re a soldier now, you’ve proven yourself. You figure you can take one personal belonging with you to Tulan as long as you keep them packed properly. You enter the store and with the little money you have you buy the lute. You spend the most of the day and the next practicing it. You didn’t forget as much as you thought. You also finish up writing a letter to your family and give it to a Zalan messenger carrier. Finally the third day arrives for you to move out. A couple of officers arrive to take all of you. You’re stopped though as you’re picked out. “Hold up you. What’s that?” “It’s a lute sir.” “A lute? What the fuck do you think this is? An acting company? Get rid of that thing, you won’t be needing that where you’re going!” “But…” “You disobeying me soldier?” “No sir!” “Alright then, get rid of it!” You sadly get rid of your lute which you never got to play and basically wasted your money on. You don’t know what you were thinking anyway. You’re in the damn army. You’re going to be doing a lot of fighting and all of that, not playing some stupid instrument. You should’ve realized that the first time it was taken away from you in boot camp. You’ve made this choice; you need to just put these dreams of being a “musician” out of your head right now. You weren’t meant to be one, and all those years of deluding yourself in between real work were just fleeting dreams of a teenager. Time to grow up. While you resign yourself to this mindset, you aren’t particularly happy with it. When you get to the Tulan Border you’re even less happy. Your first battle is filled with all the bad stuff that usually accompanies such things. It’s definitely not a fun assignment and your only consolation is that you know your family is getting more financial aid for you doing this. After a few months, you’re absolutely miserable. You don’t have your music to keep your mind off of the conditions and everything is bad here. The fort you’re currently stationed at supplies only the bare minimum of living, no magical back up, the captain is a real asshole and the rest of those you serve with aren’t too much better. Though so many are killed everyday that you never really grow to dislike (or like) anyone that much in that department. More are sent in and more die, it’s like an ongoing cycle, everyone’s so expendable in this ongoing border war that gets worse with each passing month. It doesn’t even come to your surprise when the day comes that you’re mortally wounded while on patrol. One of the new soldiers tells you to hold on and that he’ll get help, but you know he won’t get any in time and it wouldn’t matter anyway. As you lay dying, your only regret is that you didn’t get to play music like you always wanted to, and now you never will.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>6 months pass… Six months of the most grueling physical training you’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with! However you fared better than some of your fellow cadets. Guess all that farm living paid off. You’ve certainly improved what combat skills you had, but your marksmanship has improved greatly. You know that Drill Sergeant Kosser has been paying special attention to your abilities. You’re not sure if that’s a good thing of not. In any event you’re being told where your first assignment is going to be. Most of those in your group are being sent to Tulan border. Not the most pleasant assignment. The fighting is getting worse there. What started as a minor border dispute has turned into a series of battles with neither side making too much progress. Even before you joined the military you’d heard stories of the greedy king who runs the Tulan Kingdom. You heard from traveling merchants about how he allows a few demons to walk around in his lands! Utter madness in your opinion. The Zalan Empire might be a little strict on the rules and regulations, but better that than demons letting walking around, in your opinion they should all be killed on sight regardless on whether they’re obeying the “law” or not, they’re evil. You sit anxious on your bed in the barracks as name after name gets called off. Finally Kosser calls off your name, and you fully expect to get sent to the Tulan border. “I want to talk to you in private.” Is what you hear instead. This makes you even more nervous. What’s he going to do? Send you on? A mission to assassinate the Tulan King? After everyone else has gotten there assignments you follow Kosser back to his office. He sits down and speaks direct. “Alright farmboy, I’m sure you’ve noticed me watching your marksmanship skills. You’re one of the best ones that have come in here for awhile. You have a natural talent and you’ve only improved it through training. It would be a blessing to have someone like you up at the Tulan border. The gods know we could use anything to help break the stalemate there.” “…but?” you ask hoping that there is one. “But…your skills might be better served in a place that has a better mortality rate, yet still needs taking care of.” “Where’s that sir?” “Here.” Kosser points to a map to a nearby location. It’s the Retlad Kingdom. You can’t imagine what’s going on there, since as far as you know, you’re Zalan is at peace with them. “Retlad? I thought we’re at peace with them?” “We are…in fact rumors are saying we’ll probably incorporate them into the empire in the near future. I dunno how much you know about politics out there on the farm, but Retlad is basically a bankrupt kingdom. Their dumb ass royalty spent a shitload of their treasury on building ships in some vain attempt to find more land mass on this world. Hah! Doesn’t exist! We learned than centuries ago! Anyway now they don’t have enough to pay for a proper military and their kingdom is being overrun by hostile Quillar tribes. They want us to help. Begging us practically and we have, but it’s a pain in the ass. Quillars are fast and as their name suggests shoot multiple sharp quills at their enemies. I’ve seen them go through plate armor.” “That doesn’t sound good.” “No, it’s not good. The Retlad knight orders got decimated within two months of the first invasion wave. We’re taking a better approach. We need to have equally quick troops that can at least match the fire power. We’ve sent a couple of war wizards, but most of them are serving on the Tulan border. Gunpower weapons are a little too slow for this sort of thing, so we’re looking for people good with a bow. Quick enough to at least get a few shots off from a distance and run. Because hit and run tactics are what the Quillars excel at, so you’ll have to do likewise.” Kosser pauses his talking for a moment. You take this opportunity to interject a question. “And this assignment you say has a lower mortality rate?” “Well, we haven’t sent as many people there yet, but so far we’ve made a little more progress there than at the Tulan border. But of course I won’t say it’s a safe assignment. Those Quillar bastards are vicious and merciless. Up to you farmboy. You’re getting a bonus here. You’re actually getting to choose your assignment. Not many that get out of boot camp get that privilege.” Some “privilege” > You go to the Retlad Kingdom You’ve never even heard of Quillars before, but they still sound less dangerous than the Tulan Border, that place is only going to get worse, you know it. “I’ll take the Retlad assignment sir.” “Hm. Smart. Here’s your first month’s pay, I suggest you live it up here in Zal, for the couple of days you have off before you leave.” You take the small bag and look inside. This will certainly help your family. You take a few coins for yourself and then ask if arrangements can be made to have your payment sent to your family from now on. He tells you yes, but asks that surely that you will still want some of it. You agree to just taking 10% of it. You don’t need much. “Sheesh, living bare minimum huh? Don’t you want to eat anything other than military rations every once in awhile?” Kosser questions again. “Nah. If I need extra food, I’ll just hunt.” “You know even the booze and brothel girls in Retlad aren’t THAT cheap. You sure you don’t want more?” “Nope. I’ll be fine. My family needs that money more than I do.” “Alright then, family man.” You exit the barracks and wander the city a bit. You find it very interesting. You sort of wish you could stay longer to take in more sights. However one thing catches your eye. A small store and in the window is a lute. Looks almost like the one you had before it was taken away from you in basic training. You haven’t gotten a chance to play in six months and you’d really like to… Hey you’re a soldier now, you’ve proven yourself. You figure you can take one personal belonging with you to Retlad as long as you keep them packed properly. You enter the store and with the little money you have you buy the lute. You spend the most of the day and the next practicing it. You didn’t forget as much as you thought. You also finish up writing a letter to your family and give it to a Zalan messenger carrier. Finally the third day arrives for you to move out. A couple of officers arrive to take most of your other fellow cadets. Mostly to the Tulan border, however, it would appear you have a different escort. A young man in loose robe approaches you. He looks like a wizard, but you wonder for how long since he seems about your age. “Hey, are you the one going to the Retlad Kingdom?” he asks “Yeah, who are you?” “I’m Wessel. And don’t you dare get cute and call me weasel, or I’ll have to blast you with a lightning bolt.” “I wasn’t planning on it.” You say which causes Wessel to start laughing. “Geez, I was just fucking with you. Don’t be so serious! So you ready to go?” “Yeah I guess, are you my superior officer?” “Huh? Oh no. Look I got our horses waiting outside; we can do all this getting to know you stuff on the way.” You and Wessel get on the horses and ride towards your destination. It would appear that you’re the only one from your group to be going, but of course you were the only expert marksman. Wessel begins to tell you more about why he’s with you. In fact he doesn’t really let you do much talking at all. He says he’s a native citizen of the Zalan Empire, but he just graduated from the esteemed magic university in the city state of Nuro. Wessel goes on to and says that when he heard they needed a few wizard over in Retlad, he decided to volunteer to test his skills and get paid while doing it. He explains that the pair of you will be following the orders of a Captain Vhalat. Everyone knows about Nuro. It’s very famous, and you always wondered what kind of magical wonders existed there, so you’re eager to hear more and he’s all too happy to tell you. Despite Wessel’s primary focus on himself, it sounds like a place you’d want to visit one day. Eventually you arrive at the border and so far the Retlad Kingdom doesn’t look very well kept. The road begins to show evidence of disrepair and the sign posts are broken. You begin to keep your eye out for a possible attack at any second. “Look! Over there! It’s a village and it’s under attack! Come on!” Wessel yells and rides towards the village in the distance. You try to tell him to wait, but he’s already well on his way, so you ride after him. You’ve never seen a Quillar before, but the closer you get to the village, you start seeing humanoid creatures covered in sharp spikes running around at a fast speed which could only be them. They are indeed fearsome looking. You also see a lot of the people running from them, and even a few people dressed in protective gear similar to yours…not that its doing them much good. “Alright you prickly bastards here’s something for ya!” Wessle shouts riding into the village with one hand raised in the air for a lightning blast attack. He shows no fear. You have no idea if all wizards are like this, but he’s either got to be brave, stupid or just suicidal. Of course he could be all three. Up until now you always thought wizards were supposed to be meek types that didn’t charge into battle and preferred to kill from afar. You guess you were wrong. > You stay with him to back him up This reckless idiot is probably going to get himself killed if you don’t stick by his side. You ride quickly to catch up with him in the village, and draw your bow. Surprisingly for your first battle, you manage to keep calm and focused on the enemy. Hard to do considering the Quillars aren’t the easiest of foes. They’re quick and they’re firing their quills faster than you’re firing your bow. The problem though isn’t the Quillars, its Wessel. He’s having such a “good time” blasting the Quillars, that he’s causing a lot more collateral damage in the process. During one of these moments, your own horse gets spooked by the incredibly close fireball blast and rears back causing you to fall off of it. You’re still shaking the cobwebs when one of the Quillars unleashes more quills and hits you with several of them. You collapse in pain, as the Quillar charges at you. It doesn’t kill you though. Wessel makes sure of that when he throws a bolt of lightning at it. Unfortunately the Quillar happens to have grabbed you just as its hit by the lightning. Your current pain is increased severely as the electrical current passes through your body, but not for long and your fried body eventually stops its deaths throes. Wessel has a hard time explaining that the other transfer was hit by “friendly” fire.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve never even heard of Quillars before, but they still sound less dangerous than the Tulan Border, that place is only going to get worse, you know it. “I’ll take the Retlad assignment sir.” “Hm. Smart. Here’s your first month’s pay, I suggest you live it up here in Zal, for the couple of days you have off before you leave.” You take the small bag and look inside. This will certainly help your family. You take a few coins for yourself and then ask if arrangements can be made to have your payment sent to your family from now on. He tells you yes, but asks that surely that you will still want some of it. You agree to just taking 10% of it. You don’t need much. “Sheesh, living bare minimum huh? Don’t you want to eat anything other than military rations every once in awhile?” Kosser questions again. “Nah. If I need extra food, I’ll just hunt.” “You know even the booze and brothel girls in Retlad aren’t THAT cheap. You sure you don’t want more?” “Nope. I’ll be fine. My family needs that money more than I do.” “Alright then, family man.” You exit the barracks and wander the city a bit. You find it very interesting. You sort of wish you could stay longer to take in more sights. However one thing catches your eye. A small store and in the window is a lute. Looks almost like the one you had before it was taken away from you in basic training. You haven’t gotten a chance to play in six months and you’d really like to… Hey you’re a soldier now, you’ve proven yourself. You figure you can take one personal belonging with you to Retlad as long as you keep them packed properly. You enter the store and with the little money you have you buy the lute. You spend the most of the day and the next practicing it. You didn’t forget as much as you thought. You also finish up writing a letter to your family and give it to a Zalan messenger carrier. Finally the third day arrives for you to move out. A couple of officers arrive to take most of your other fellow cadets. Mostly to the Tulan border, however, it would appear you have a different escort. A young man in loose robe approaches you. He looks like a wizard, but you wonder for how long since he seems about your age. “Hey, are you the one going to the Retlad Kingdom?” he asks “Yeah, who are you?” “I’m Wessel. And don’t you dare get cute and call me weasel, or I’ll have to blast you with a lightning bolt.” “I wasn’t planning on it.” You say which causes Wessel to start laughing. “Geez, I was just fucking with you. Don’t be so serious! So you ready to go?” “Yeah I guess, are you my superior officer?” “Huh? Oh no. Look I got our horses waiting outside; we can do all this getting to know you stuff on the way.” You and Wessel get on the horses and ride towards your destination. It would appear that you’re the only one from your group to be going, but of course you were the only expert marksman. Wessel begins to tell you more about why he’s with you. In fact he doesn’t really let you do much talking at all. He says he’s a native citizen of the Zalan Empire, but he just graduated from the esteemed magic university in the city state of Nuro. Wessel goes on to and says that when he heard they needed a few wizard over in Retlad, he decided to volunteer to test his skills and get paid while doing it. He explains that the pair of you will be following the orders of a Captain Vhalat. Everyone knows about Nuro. It’s very famous, and you always wondered what kind of magical wonders existed there, so you’re eager to hear more and he’s all too happy to tell you. Despite Wessel’s primary focus on himself, it sounds like a place you’d want to visit one day. Eventually you arrive at the border and so far the Retlad Kingdom doesn’t look very well kept. The road begins to show evidence of disrepair and the sign posts are broken. You begin to keep your eye out for a possible attack at any second. “Look! Over there! It’s a village and it’s under attack! Come on!” Wessel yells and rides towards the village in the distance. You try to tell him to wait, but he’s already well on his way, so you ride after him. You’ve never seen a Quillar before, but the closer you get to the village, you start seeing humanoid creatures covered in sharp spikes running around at a fast speed which could only be them. They are indeed fearsome looking. You also see a lot of the people running from them, and even a few people dressed in protective gear similar to yours…not that its doing them much good. “Alright you prickly bastards here’s something for ya!” Wessle shouts riding into the village with one hand raised in the air for a lightning blast attack. He shows no fear. You have no idea if all wizards are like this, but he’s either got to be brave, stupid or just suicidal. Of course he could be all three. Up until now you always thought wizards were supposed to be meek types that didn’t charge into battle and preferred to kill from afar. You guess you were wrong. > You circle around the village Just because he’s acting reckless doesn’t mean you’re going to, you’re going to play upon your strengths and keep as far away as you can. You ride your horse around the outskirts of the village, readying your bow the whole time. When you can, you fire at the Quillar attackers. As quick as they are, they aren’t really paying attention to you and you manage to get in some good shots. A couple of head shots even. At first they don’t realize where the all the arrows are coming from, since Wessel is giving them a hard enough time with the chain lightning. You’re sort of glad you decided to stay on the outskirts. Wessel is having such a “good time” blasting the Quillars, he’s probably causing a lot more collateral damage in the process. Eventually the Quillars start to retreat. This is when you get into a little more trouble as you happen to be right in the direction of where they’re running! They still look scary and they get even moreso as they get closer. The worst has to be their shrieks. It’s unpleasant to hear to say the least. You ride out of the way, but your horse isn’t fast enough and is peppered by quills. You catch a few in the leg yourself and you’re thrown from the horse as it reels in pain, before collapsing. Feeling the pain you scramble for cover behind a nearby rock. Fortunately the quills don’t penetrate that. Most of them are content on just running away, but one straggler decides to try to get one more kill before leaving. That kill of course happens to be you. The Quillar makes its high pitch shriek as it runs towards the rock. You don’t have time to ready your bow before its high jumped over the rock and on the other side of you. You quickly draw your weapon and swing it blindly as you turn around. Luckily your blade catches the side of its head, killing it. At last you collapse from the pain in your leg. While you’re pulling out quills, Wessel and another Zalan soldier come to meet you. Wessel doesn’t look any worse for wear, but the soldier looks very tired and obviously has wounds of his own. “There you are, lying down on the job I see.” Wessel mocks. “Are you alright?” the other soldier asks. “Yeah…Agh. I’ve gotten bitten in the leg by a Kobold before. Feels nearly the same except these quills go in a lot deeper.” “Glad you guys came when you did. We were just doing a routine patrol when these quill bastards came out of nowhere! They’re getting bolder and attacking in greater number, we need more reinforcements.” “Yeah, well good luck with that. The Tulan border is the primary concern. Besides I’m here now, I predict that this infestation will be over soon now.” Wessel boasts. “Any…way. My name’s Tylir. I’d introduce you to the rest of my squad, but they’re all dead now. Even though it was the heat of battle, I couldn’t help notice how well you picked off several of those Quillars with one shot. That was pretty impressive.” “Thanks.” “Hey! What about me? I’m the one who noticed you getting attacked in the first place! I’m also the one who saved your ass!” Wessel interrupts again, he’s starting to get annoying at this point, but Tylir doesn’t seem bothered by him. “Everyone did their part. Okay, since I’m here I’ll take you to see Captain Vhalat, I’m sure that’s who you were sent to report to, oh and wizard while your skills may be appreciated here, I’d advise you to cut down on the boasting. Captain Vhalat isn’t fond of it, and to be quite honest the other two wizards we had here were more experienced and they still got killed.” “Hmm, well perhaps they lacked the natural skill that I of course possess.” At this point you and Tylir just roll your eyes and get moving. You travel through a couple of other villages and it’s pretty depressing. You see stacks of bodies being buried in mass graves while most of other Retlad citizens look thoroughly defeated. A few look in your direction, but don’t look too much, it’s like they don’t really expect you to succeed. Not exactly inspiring. Soon you arrive in the town of Glaf. It would appear that the Zalan contingency sent here is staying in one of the bigger Retlad towns rather than the capitol. Ryan also says that the Quillar infestation is worse around here too, so the captain suspects that whatever lair they’re crawling out of is nearby and can hopefully located and cleansed. The town itself resembles a small Zalan fort rather than a proper Retlad town, as a sturdy wall has been erected around it. The people seem to look a little more hopeful though. Tylir goes on to say that he thinks that the Retlad citizens are actually starting to prefer Zalan presence especially since their on government has been pretty ineffectual about the whole invasion. The Retlad army has only focused on defending the capitol. The Retlad royals appear to find their lives more important than anyone else’s. Eventually you’re brought before Captain Vahlat himself. He looks up from the map he’s inspecting and addresses you and Wessel. “Ah, I see the Empire has seen fit to send me reinforcements…wow, twice as many as I thought I’d get. Private Tylir where’s the rest of your squad?” “Um…dead sir.” “Of course. (sigh) So what’s your problem private? Why is your leg wrapped up?” Vahlat asks you. “Got into a fight with the Quillars sir.” You answer. “Oh?” Tylir at this point interrupts and tells of what happened. Wessel looks like he wants to expand upon his deeds, but Vahlat’s appearance is a little imposing and he was already warned once, so he keeps his mouth shut. Vahlat soon addresses you again. “Well it would seem you two have already proven yourselves useful. A lot more useful that what passes for the Retlad army, but of course that isn’t hard. Wizard, I certainly hope you don’t intend to use this place as a chance to show off all the skills you learned in your fancy Nuro college. One of your predecessors did that as well, and as you can see he’s no longer here. As for you, I hope that you can do a better job of keeping out of the way of the quills next time. Most don’t get a second chance. Alright that’s all for now. Our group is being housed for free at the Inn down the street. Free food as well, but don’t go overboard, its being rationed. You want more food or anything else you’ll have to pay like everyone else. I suggest though that you don’t do any heavy carousing. This is a high alert situation and we could be going to battle at anytime. Dismissed.” You, Wessel and Tylir all leave at this point. Tylir goes on to show you where the Inn is and a couple of other places, but after today you just want to rest and retire to your room early. You rest your leg and begin practicing your lute. This puts you in better spirits. 6 months pass… The Quillar invasion has nearly been eradicated. Most of the major lairs have been located and cleansed and you certainly contributed greatly to this effort. Besides your combat abilities, your tracking skills definitely came in handy a lot. You’ve become somewhat recognized among Retlad citizens due to your actions and the lives you’ve saved. The word “hero” has been used a few times though you definitely don’t think of yourself as one. In your free time you spoke with the citizens, a lot more than your fellow soldiers though. A few of them even convinced you to play for them when they noticed your lute. It took a little prodding, but eventually you gave in fully expecting to get booed, but to your surprise, you got applauded instead. Your playing didn’t just boost your spirits it seemed. Whenever you could you played a little bit for people in what little free time you had. Never did you think that you’d be playing for any kind of audience, let alone an appreciative one. It definitely hasn’t been all sunshine though; you’ve seen a lot of people die. More than you ever wanted to actually. You’d made friends with Tylir shortly after your first meeting and he died only a couple months later. You’ll be glad when every one of these Quillar creatures are all dead though, all they’ve done is cause misery. You’ve got them on the run now though. You’re preparing for an attack on another one of their lairs, when Captain Vahlat calls everyone to see him, he doesn’t look enthusiastic about whatever it is he has to tell you. “All right I’ll be brief. As much as I hate leaving a mission unfinished, we’re getting pulled out of here effective immediately. Major news is that Nuro has undergone a fucking disaster that needs to be put down like yesterday! All governments friendly to the City State of Nuro that can spare the manpower are to send help. We would be one of those. I hope the Retlad army is just competent enough to finish up what we started in their own country.” Wessel immediately pipes up upon hearing about this revelation. “What happened in Nuro? What’s going on?!” “What’s going on? From what I’ve been told a whole bunch of your kind raised a shitload of undead and unleashed a bunch of hostile demons on the place! The entire city was overrun. Reports are already stating that small packs of demons are running around the nearby countryside. Most likely in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom. Not sure what that means with our border war with them, but I only see it getting bloodier around there. In any case, our job is to head to Nuro, before the undead start following suit. I hope you’re all ready for this, because this is going to be a lot different that fighting Quillars.” You look around and see a lot of fear wash over faces and rightly so. Necromancers have a bad history on your world. When you were little you still remember hearing the tales of the Great Lich Lord that existed centuries before you were even born. He almost took over the world. Those stories gave you nightmares as a kid. The possibility of having to face something remotely similar even on much smaller scale doesn’t make you feel too well. > You desert the army You don’t want to die and you know if you go, you will. You regret that you won’t be able to help your family out financially anymore, but you really don’t want to die. You pack up all your stuff in the middle of the night and sneak away from the town your company is stationed in. You figure their orders are urgent enough that your desertion won’t immediately cause a full scale hunt, at least not by them. The first order of business is to change your identity as much as you can. And head to a place where you can play for an audience, but the probability of someone ratting you out is low if you’re recognized. The question though is where to go. You can’t linger in the Retlad Kingdom too long, in fact you’ll probably have to move around. You decide your first stop will be at the Garwold Confederacy. It’s a relatively peaceful nation made up mostly of Halflings and Gnomes, with lush green fields and flowers. They tend to stay out of wars and they’re also known to appreciate the simpler things in life. Eventually you make a place for yourself there in one of the small villages. You make a living playing at the local tavern there. Most of the patrons sense that you have some sort of past that you’re trying to hide from. But just like you thought, they don’t bring it up or say anything about it and just enjoy your music. A few months pass and you’re happy. You even meet a pretty Halfling girl to be with, and now you’re even thinking about just settling down here, since nobody’s come looking for you; however there are alarming events occurring in the rest of the world. The assault on Nuro was a complete failure. Everyone was killed from your company. It makes you glad you didn’t go, but the fact that there is now an undead city state has everyone worried. It doesn’t help that there was also an outbreak of demons. One particularly nasty one called Velzix has conquered the Tulan Kingdom. Due to these events a Grand Alliance of nations has been created to stop these threats. The Garwold Confederacy normally stays out of such things, but they have agreed to send a militia as part of the aiding effort. You don’t worry too much about it at first, but as a couple more years go on, the war gets worse and more and more Zalan Empire troops are passing through the area. Normally you’d move on, but now you’re married and you can’t bear to abandon yet another one you love. You still haven’t completely forgiven yourself for the first time. You attempt to keep a low profile, but one day a Grand Alliance solider passing through, sees you in a tavern and recognizes you. Apparently he’s a citizen of Retlad and remembers you when you were stationed there. “HEY! I know you! Man, it’s good to see ya! How did you get out of the army? I thought the Zalan Empire had a twenty year requirement plan! You still play that lute really well?” he bellows for all inside to hear. Unfortunately one of the other Grand Alliance members with him is from the Zalan Empire who’s a real stickler for rules and regulations. “I know who you are too! You’re wanted for desertion! I’m placing you under arrest!” You try to escape, but you don’t get far. You haven’t been keeping up on your physical training since you deserted, and coupled with your Halfling wife’s rich cooking you’re not in great shape anymore. The Zalan soldier on the other hand has been battle hardened in the recent months. He easily catches you and beats you into submission. You’re taken back to the Zalan Empire in chains much to the protest of your wife, but its no use, you’re going to trial. Your family is made aware of your discovery, but none of them come to try to help you. You abandoned them long ago and didn’t even try to contact them; as far as they’re concerned you died years ago. You attempt to explain things in letters to them, but you’re never answered. Eventually you give up. The trial is brief and the judgment final. You’re sentenced to death as an example of all those who would attempt to desert their duty during war. As you sit in your cell counting the days for your hanging, you find out from sad visits from your wife that things are getting really bad. Dead armies conquering kingdoms, demons running amok. You almost wonder if your execution isn’t a blessing from the horror that seems to be eclipsing the world. The day comes when the noose is placed around your neck… “Any last words?” You have none; you just hum a little tune and close your eyes before the trapdoor swings open, and your neck snaps.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just because he’s acting reckless doesn’t mean you’re going to, you’re going to play upon your strengths and keep as far away as you can. You ride your horse around the outskirts of the village, readying your bow the whole time. When you can, you fire at the Quillar attackers. As quick as they are, they aren’t really paying attention to you and you manage to get in some good shots. A couple of head shots even. At first they don’t realize where the all the arrows are coming from, since Wessel is giving them a hard enough time with the chain lightning. You’re sort of glad you decided to stay on the outskirts. Wessel is having such a “good time” blasting the Quillars, he’s probably causing a lot more collateral damage in the process. Eventually the Quillars start to retreat. This is when you get into a little more trouble as you happen to be right in the direction of where they’re running! They still look scary and they get even moreso as they get closer. The worst has to be their shrieks. It’s unpleasant to hear to say the least. You ride out of the way, but your horse isn’t fast enough and is peppered by quills. You catch a few in the leg yourself and you’re thrown from the horse as it reels in pain, before collapsing. Feeling the pain you scramble for cover behind a nearby rock. Fortunately the quills don’t penetrate that. Most of them are content on just running away, but one straggler decides to try to get one more kill before leaving. That kill of course happens to be you. The Quillar makes its high pitch shriek as it runs towards the rock. You don’t have time to ready your bow before its high jumped over the rock and on the other side of you. You quickly draw your weapon and swing it blindly as you turn around. Luckily your blade catches the side of its head, killing it. At last you collapse from the pain in your leg. While you’re pulling out quills, Wessel and another Zalan soldier come to meet you. Wessel doesn’t look any worse for wear, but the soldier looks very tired and obviously has wounds of his own. “There you are, lying down on the job I see.” Wessel mocks. “Are you alright?” the other soldier asks. “Yeah…Agh. I’ve gotten bitten in the leg by a Kobold before. Feels nearly the same except these quills go in a lot deeper.” “Glad you guys came when you did. We were just doing a routine patrol when these quill bastards came out of nowhere! They’re getting bolder and attacking in greater number, we need more reinforcements.” “Yeah, well good luck with that. The Tulan border is the primary concern. Besides I’m here now, I predict that this infestation will be over soon now.” Wessel boasts. “Any…way. My name’s Tylir. I’d introduce you to the rest of my squad, but they’re all dead now. Even though it was the heat of battle, I couldn’t help notice how well you picked off several of those Quillars with one shot. That was pretty impressive.” “Thanks.” “Hey! What about me? I’m the one who noticed you getting attacked in the first place! I’m also the one who saved your ass!” Wessel interrupts again, he’s starting to get annoying at this point, but Tylir doesn’t seem bothered by him. “Everyone did their part. Okay, since I’m here I’ll take you to see Captain Vhalat, I’m sure that’s who you were sent to report to, oh and wizard while your skills may be appreciated here, I’d advise you to cut down on the boasting. Captain Vhalat isn’t fond of it, and to be quite honest the other two wizards we had here were more experienced and they still got killed.” “Hmm, well perhaps they lacked the natural skill that I of course possess.” At this point you and Tylir just roll your eyes and get moving. You travel through a couple of other villages and it’s pretty depressing. You see stacks of bodies being buried in mass graves while most of other Retlad citizens look thoroughly defeated. A few look in your direction, but don’t look too much, it’s like they don’t really expect you to succeed. Not exactly inspiring. Soon you arrive in the town of Glaf. It would appear that the Zalan contingency sent here is staying in one of the bigger Retlad towns rather than the capitol. Ryan also says that the Quillar infestation is worse around here too, so the captain suspects that whatever lair they’re crawling out of is nearby and can hopefully located and cleansed. The town itself resembles a small Zalan fort rather than a proper Retlad town, as a sturdy wall has been erected around it. The people seem to look a little more hopeful though. Tylir goes on to say that he thinks that the Retlad citizens are actually starting to prefer Zalan presence especially since their on government has been pretty ineffectual about the whole invasion. The Retlad army has only focused on defending the capitol. The Retlad royals appear to find their lives more important than anyone else’s. Eventually you’re brought before Captain Vahlat himself. He looks up from the map he’s inspecting and addresses you and Wessel. “Ah, I see the Empire has seen fit to send me reinforcements…wow, twice as many as I thought I’d get. Private Tylir where’s the rest of your squad?” “Um…dead sir.” “Of course. (sigh) So what’s your problem private? Why is your leg wrapped up?” Vahlat asks you. “Got into a fight with the Quillars sir.” You answer. “Oh?” Tylir at this point interrupts and tells of what happened. Wessel looks like he wants to expand upon his deeds, but Vahlat’s appearance is a little imposing and he was already warned once, so he keeps his mouth shut. Vahlat soon addresses you again. “Well it would seem you two have already proven yourselves useful. A lot more useful that what passes for the Retlad army, but of course that isn’t hard. Wizard, I certainly hope you don’t intend to use this place as a chance to show off all the skills you learned in your fancy Nuro college. One of your predecessors did that as well, and as you can see he’s no longer here. As for you, I hope that you can do a better job of keeping out of the way of the quills next time. Most don’t get a second chance. Alright that’s all for now. Our group is being housed for free at the Inn down the street. Free food as well, but don’t go overboard, its being rationed. You want more food or anything else you’ll have to pay like everyone else. I suggest though that you don’t do any heavy carousing. This is a high alert situation and we could be going to battle at anytime. Dismissed.” You, Wessel and Tylir all leave at this point. Tylir goes on to show you where the Inn is and a couple of other places, but after today you just want to rest and retire to your room early. You rest your leg and begin practicing your lute. This puts you in better spirits. 6 months pass… The Quillar invasion has nearly been eradicated. Most of the major lairs have been located and cleansed and you certainly contributed greatly to this effort. Besides your combat abilities, your tracking skills definitely came in handy a lot. You’ve become somewhat recognized among Retlad citizens due to your actions and the lives you’ve saved. The word “hero” has been used a few times though you definitely don’t think of yourself as one. In your free time you spoke with the citizens, a lot more than your fellow soldiers though. A few of them even convinced you to play for them when they noticed your lute. It took a little prodding, but eventually you gave in fully expecting to get booed, but to your surprise, you got applauded instead. Your playing didn’t just boost your spirits it seemed. Whenever you could you played a little bit for people in what little free time you had. Never did you think that you’d be playing for any kind of audience, let alone an appreciative one. It definitely hasn’t been all sunshine though; you’ve seen a lot of people die. More than you ever wanted to actually. You’d made friends with Tylir shortly after your first meeting and he died only a couple months later. You’ll be glad when every one of these Quillar creatures are all dead though, all they’ve done is cause misery. You’ve got them on the run now though. You’re preparing for an attack on another one of their lairs, when Captain Vahlat calls everyone to see him, he doesn’t look enthusiastic about whatever it is he has to tell you. “All right I’ll be brief. As much as I hate leaving a mission unfinished, we’re getting pulled out of here effective immediately. Major news is that Nuro has undergone a fucking disaster that needs to be put down like yesterday! All governments friendly to the City State of Nuro that can spare the manpower are to send help. We would be one of those. I hope the Retlad army is just competent enough to finish up what we started in their own country.” Wessel immediately pipes up upon hearing about this revelation. “What happened in Nuro? What’s going on?!” “What’s going on? From what I’ve been told a whole bunch of your kind raised a shitload of undead and unleashed a bunch of hostile demons on the place! The entire city was overrun. Reports are already stating that small packs of demons are running around the nearby countryside. Most likely in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom. Not sure what that means with our border war with them, but I only see it getting bloodier around there. In any case, our job is to head to Nuro, before the undead start following suit. I hope you’re all ready for this, because this is going to be a lot different that fighting Quillars.” You look around and see a lot of fear wash over faces and rightly so. Necromancers have a bad history on your world. When you were little you still remember hearing the tales of the Great Lich Lord that existed centuries before you were even born. He almost took over the world. Those stories gave you nightmares as a kid. The possibility of having to face something remotely similar even on much smaller scale doesn’t make you feel too well. > You stay in the army Despite your fears, you’ve always had a sense of duty and responsibility, something that probably won’t ever completely go away due to how you grew up. You’re not running away, you did join to help provide for your family after all. Before your company packs up and leaves Retlad, you write a quick letter to your family and hand it off to a messenger. Many of the Retlad citizens aren’t too pleased to see you leave, but they don’t really have any say in the matter, just like you don’t. There isn’t much talking on the trip, though, everyone is pretty silent. Wessel however is doing enough for everyone. “I can’t believe something like this happened! Nuro was a beacon of enlightenment and well prepared for situations like this! I…can’t believe this didn’t occur without some sort of demonic influence. I’ll bet that Mr. Demar had something to do with this! I remember taking his class and he was always a creepy bastard. Before I could graduate I had to take his conjuration 101 class and he didn’t like me because I had made several logical arguments to as why that branch of magic should be outlawed altogether. And it’s obvious by what happened recently that I was right! Nevertheless I did all the required work in the class and I still got a B! Way to fuck up my perfect record! I get the same grade as some bumbling idiot who summoned up a Nurk Beast that he lost control over and bit off someone’s hand! Where is the fucking justice?” Once again, Wessel has turned the topic to focus on himself. Happily Captain Vahlat tells him to shut the fuck up. You’ll be near Nuro soon and your company makes camp for the night. While all of you are on edge from what will come tomorrow, someone finally says something. “Hey farmboy, play us a song on that thing.” “…what did you want to hear?” you ask, not expecting to be called to play under these circumstances. In fact it just occurred to you that you’ve never played for anyone in your company! You assume that they all knew that you did, but they just were never interested enough to stick around and listen to you before. “I dunno, play whatever it was you used to play for the Retlad citizens…it seemed to make them happy.” You pull out your lute and take a deep breath and start playing. At first you’re just concentrating on the strings and making sure you don’t mess anything up, but when you look up, you can see that everyone in the camp is listening intently to your music, even Wessel. Tensions seem to have decreased. It’s like a wave of calmness has struck the camp. You never believed your playing could have that much of an effect on people. Eventually the song ends and the Captain tells everyone who isn’t on watch to get some sleep. He then takes you aside. “Heard your playing…damn shame that you’re here. You really should be doing that instead.” Valhlat remarks. “I know.” “Hm. I know you joined mainly to help support your family.” “Yeah, I just hope I get to see them again.” “Bah, don’t start talking like that. I’ve seen you with a bow, you pluck that thing even better than that lute. You’ve been in battle before and survived, I see you doing it again.” “I sure hope so, its just I dunno…the undead…I’ve heard stories.” “Yeah, everyone’s heard the stories, but stories tend to be exaggerated. Now I dunno about what happened centuries ago, since I wasn’t there, but I HAVE fought the undead before. One of my first assignments was taking care of some minor undead incursion in a little village. Some asshole stumbled upon an ancient scroll and started reading the goddamn words on it out loud. They look a lot worse than they actually are. Most of the time they’re incredibly slow, and easily dispatched. Its mainly a psychological advantage from all the stories people have told about them that cause this quaking fear in most folks.” “Well I suppose, but what about the necromancers?” “Feh, they’re wizards and just like all the rest their arrogance is their undoing. Most of these so-called necromancers are half-assed ones that get killed by their own undead troops. Anyway, get to sleep; you want to be fully alert for tomorrow’s battle. It still won’t be a walk in the park, but it’s not going to be a death sentence.” You take the Captain’s words into consideration, but in the back of your mind before you go to sleep, you’re thinking “But they can’t be that half-assed, they successfully took over Nuro…” The next day arrives and you finish your trip to Nuro and that’s when you see the city for the first time. You always wanted to visit it after hearing about it from Wessel, but even from this distance it doesn’t look like anything he described. “By the gods…what…” Wessel slowly whispers. The stench of death is thick in the air. You see thousands of bodies outside the city gates and they aren’t lying down either. They aren’t advancing either though. There just standing there like…well zombies. Your company isn’t the only one here though, there are a few others awaiting orders. You see one from the Brot Kingdom and another from the Azi Republic. Thankfully there’s another Zalan one as well to boost your numbers. The respective captains acknowledge each other’s presence, a short meeting is made and then the inevitable comes. The attack. At first things seem to go well. All ranged troops are ordered to fire upon the enemy who are still just standing there. Arrows pierce zombie brains, gunshots destroy skeleton bones, spells blast at walls and it seems very easy. Then from the battlements of Nuro a few figures begin casting a few offensive spells of their own. It’s at this point a charge is made towards the city. “When you get in range aim for the fucking wizards! Don’t fear these rotting meat sacks! We’re the fucking Zalan army! We don’t lose!” Captain Valhlat shouts. Fine words, but they do little to uplift your impending sense of doom. It doesn’t help that the sky goes completely dark while you’re marching towards a bunch of undead and at the same time hoping you don’t get hit by a wizard’s spell. In the distance you briefly see a cleric from the Azi Republic riding a horse by himself. He appears to be calling upon some sort of holy might from whatever god he worships since a blue protective sphere appears around him. The next moment he’s hit by a black ray that goes straight through the sphere and his life is gone. Not even his god could protect him. As you get closer, you see that the undead soldiers still haven’t moved, but there are significantly less of them as they continue to fall from ranged attacks. However, now other undead pop up on the walls of Nuro holding bows of their own. “SHIELDS!” Captain Valhlat shouts. More of your side falls and now you’re so close you can smell the death in the air. The undead troops are now finally moving to do battle with your side. You attempt to target the robed figures on the battlements, but of course it’s very difficult in all this chaos and your fear. You mostly only get the undead archers. Wessel is a little more successful is downing an enemy wizard. “Ha ha! Don’t you realize I graduated top of my class?!” you hear him shout. The gates of Nuro are being broken down and despite the horror you’ve already seen, this battle still seems hopeful. Then a black cloaked hooded figure sudden appears on the battlements. You see him merely raise his arms briefly and that’s when you get the very real feeling that hope is lost. Ghostly spirits come through the walls of Nuro making worse shrieks than when you fought the Quillars. At least they were living creatures. These drain lives at but a touch and there isn’t enough magic to fight the incorporeal creatures properly. You see the Brot Kingdom’s company break and run, but unfortunately for them and you, your possible retreat has been blocked. All the soldiers on your side that fell have now suddenly been raised, the undead soldiers that were killed have been raised as well. You’re fighting in the front, from behind and in some cases from within. It’s chaos. “Shit, I’m going to die today…” you whisper to yourself. Captain Valhlat is knee deep in the dead, but this figure who’s apparently changed the tide of battle hasn’t escaped his attention. He points to the figure and barks orders at the top of his lungs. “KILL HIM! SHOOT THE FUCKER! DO IT! NOW!” > You attempt to shoot the figure You’re scared shitless, but somehow you manage to maintain your composure and aim for the hooded figure on top of the battlements. You let an arrow fly and your aim is straight and true, but unfortunately it’s blocked by some sort of magical shield. Even Wessel’s spell dissipates before it. Now you see that all hope is lost and you attempt to escape, but the precious few seconds you spent aiming your bow on a fruitless killing attempt has resulted in you being surrounded and overwhelmed. You feel the rusty steel of a sword plunge into your side, followed by extreme pain. You turn to strike down the grinning skeleton warrior who’s just limited your life span. You strike a couple more corpses before you’re brought down by an axe to the skull, splitting your head open and causing your brains to leak out uselessly into the now blood soaked battlefield. You fall and die, only to rise again as just another zombie drone for the growing undead army.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Despite your fears, you’ve always had a sense of duty and responsibility, something that probably won’t ever completely go away due to how you grew up. You’re not running away, you did join to help provide for your family after all. Before your company packs up and leaves Retlad, you write a quick letter to your family and hand it off to a messenger. Many of the Retlad citizens aren’t too pleased to see you leave, but they don’t really have any say in the matter, just like you don’t. There isn’t much talking on the trip, though, everyone is pretty silent. Wessel however is doing enough for everyone. “I can’t believe something like this happened! Nuro was a beacon of enlightenment and well prepared for situations like this! I…can’t believe this didn’t occur without some sort of demonic influence. I’ll bet that Mr. Demar had something to do with this! I remember taking his class and he was always a creepy bastard. Before I could graduate I had to take his conjuration 101 class and he didn’t like me because I had made several logical arguments to as why that branch of magic should be outlawed altogether. And it’s obvious by what happened recently that I was right! Nevertheless I did all the required work in the class and I still got a B! Way to fuck up my perfect record! I get the same grade as some bumbling idiot who summoned up a Nurk Beast that he lost control over and bit off someone’s hand! Where is the fucking justice?” Once again, Wessel has turned the topic to focus on himself. Happily Captain Vahlat tells him to shut the fuck up. You’ll be near Nuro soon and your company makes camp for the night. While all of you are on edge from what will come tomorrow, someone finally says something. “Hey farmboy, play us a song on that thing.” “…what did you want to hear?” you ask, not expecting to be called to play under these circumstances. In fact it just occurred to you that you’ve never played for anyone in your company! You assume that they all knew that you did, but they just were never interested enough to stick around and listen to you before. “I dunno, play whatever it was you used to play for the Retlad citizens…it seemed to make them happy.” You pull out your lute and take a deep breath and start playing. At first you’re just concentrating on the strings and making sure you don’t mess anything up, but when you look up, you can see that everyone in the camp is listening intently to your music, even Wessel. Tensions seem to have decreased. It’s like a wave of calmness has struck the camp. You never believed your playing could have that much of an effect on people. Eventually the song ends and the Captain tells everyone who isn’t on watch to get some sleep. He then takes you aside. “Heard your playing…damn shame that you’re here. You really should be doing that instead.” Valhlat remarks. “I know.” “Hm. I know you joined mainly to help support your family.” “Yeah, I just hope I get to see them again.” “Bah, don’t start talking like that. I’ve seen you with a bow, you pluck that thing even better than that lute. You’ve been in battle before and survived, I see you doing it again.” “I sure hope so, its just I dunno…the undead…I’ve heard stories.” “Yeah, everyone’s heard the stories, but stories tend to be exaggerated. Now I dunno about what happened centuries ago, since I wasn’t there, but I HAVE fought the undead before. One of my first assignments was taking care of some minor undead incursion in a little village. Some asshole stumbled upon an ancient scroll and started reading the goddamn words on it out loud. They look a lot worse than they actually are. Most of the time they’re incredibly slow, and easily dispatched. Its mainly a psychological advantage from all the stories people have told about them that cause this quaking fear in most folks.” “Well I suppose, but what about the necromancers?” “Feh, they’re wizards and just like all the rest their arrogance is their undoing. Most of these so-called necromancers are half-assed ones that get killed by their own undead troops. Anyway, get to sleep; you want to be fully alert for tomorrow’s battle. It still won’t be a walk in the park, but it’s not going to be a death sentence.” You take the Captain’s words into consideration, but in the back of your mind before you go to sleep, you’re thinking “But they can’t be that half-assed, they successfully took over Nuro…” The next day arrives and you finish your trip to Nuro and that’s when you see the city for the first time. You always wanted to visit it after hearing about it from Wessel, but even from this distance it doesn’t look like anything he described. “By the gods…what…” Wessel slowly whispers. The stench of death is thick in the air. You see thousands of bodies outside the city gates and they aren’t lying down either. They aren’t advancing either though. There just standing there like…well zombies. Your company isn’t the only one here though, there are a few others awaiting orders. You see one from the Brot Kingdom and another from the Azi Republic. Thankfully there’s another Zalan one as well to boost your numbers. The respective captains acknowledge each other’s presence, a short meeting is made and then the inevitable comes. The attack. At first things seem to go well. All ranged troops are ordered to fire upon the enemy who are still just standing there. Arrows pierce zombie brains, gunshots destroy skeleton bones, spells blast at walls and it seems very easy. Then from the battlements of Nuro a few figures begin casting a few offensive spells of their own. It’s at this point a charge is made towards the city. “When you get in range aim for the fucking wizards! Don’t fear these rotting meat sacks! We’re the fucking Zalan army! We don’t lose!” Captain Valhlat shouts. Fine words, but they do little to uplift your impending sense of doom. It doesn’t help that the sky goes completely dark while you’re marching towards a bunch of undead and at the same time hoping you don’t get hit by a wizard’s spell. In the distance you briefly see a cleric from the Azi Republic riding a horse by himself. He appears to be calling upon some sort of holy might from whatever god he worships since a blue protective sphere appears around him. The next moment he’s hit by a black ray that goes straight through the sphere and his life is gone. Not even his god could protect him. As you get closer, you see that the undead soldiers still haven’t moved, but there are significantly less of them as they continue to fall from ranged attacks. However, now other undead pop up on the walls of Nuro holding bows of their own. “SHIELDS!” Captain Valhlat shouts. More of your side falls and now you’re so close you can smell the death in the air. The undead troops are now finally moving to do battle with your side. You attempt to target the robed figures on the battlements, but of course it’s very difficult in all this chaos and your fear. You mostly only get the undead archers. Wessel is a little more successful is downing an enemy wizard. “Ha ha! Don’t you realize I graduated top of my class?!” you hear him shout. The gates of Nuro are being broken down and despite the horror you’ve already seen, this battle still seems hopeful. Then a black cloaked hooded figure sudden appears on the battlements. You see him merely raise his arms briefly and that’s when you get the very real feeling that hope is lost. Ghostly spirits come through the walls of Nuro making worse shrieks than when you fought the Quillars. At least they were living creatures. These drain lives at but a touch and there isn’t enough magic to fight the incorporeal creatures properly. You see the Brot Kingdom’s company break and run, but unfortunately for them and you, your possible retreat has been blocked. All the soldiers on your side that fell have now suddenly been raised, the undead soldiers that were killed have been raised as well. You’re fighting in the front, from behind and in some cases from within. It’s chaos. “Shit, I’m going to die today…” you whisper to yourself. Captain Valhlat is knee deep in the dead, but this figure who’s apparently changed the tide of battle hasn’t escaped his attention. He points to the figure and barks orders at the top of his lungs. “KILL HIM! SHOOT THE FUCKER! DO IT! NOW!” > You run away There’s undead all around you, fear coursing through your body and all you can think of is escape. You see a few others following orders, but their shots do nothing. Apparently the Necromancer has protected himself behind a more powerful magic shield than the cleric you saw die had. Even Wessel’s spell dissipates before it. You ignore your orders, you ignore your fellow soldiers, you ignore the attack on Nuro, and you run and you’re not a bit ashamed to put your survival first. The chaos of the fighting is bewildering and you don’t really pay attention to what direction you’re heading, you’re just making a beeline to any destination not completely filled with zombies, ghosts, and skeletons. You look back, only to see more death. The hooded figure on top of the battlements calls down some sort of death cloud that begins to envelop the area you were previously in. The screams of the distant victims are horrible. You feel like you’re living a nightmare as you constantly bump into corpses, both moving and unmoving. Defensive chops with your sword do nothing to kill the unnatural creatures and only temporarily push them out of your way. It is only by sheer luck that you get away without getting killed. You run further, leaving the carnage behind. You look back again to see if anything is in pursuit, but nothing is to your relief. Still, you’re not comfortable and you continue to distance yourself until you can run no further and you must stop to rest. It is at this point, you wonder what you’re going to do. You wonder if going back to report to the nearest Zalan commander would be wise. Will they punish you for running away? The situation was hopeless, surely they couldn’t...could they? And even if they don’t, then what? Send you back in? That’s definitely not appealing given what you’ve seen. At this point you’re really regretting your decision to join the army. You wish you could just leave. You want to go home. Going AWOL back in Retlad wasn’t really an option; you would’ve been hunted down. But now? You probably would be listed as a casualty. You could theoretically disappear and attempt to live anonymously and do what you wanted to do in the first place. Just travel and play. Your family would even be compensated for your death, but still…you’d hate to put them through the grief of it, if it isn’t true. Before you ponder your future options any further, you suddenly feel a pain in your side…you look down and see that you’re bleeding. Apparently you were stabbed and didn’t even realize it due to the adrenaline. You’re feeling the pain now though and you attempt to stop the bleeding as much as you can. Regardless of what you’re going to do in the future, right now you have to find civilization to at least get fixed up. The problem is that you don’t know where the hell you are. You look around for some possible landmarks, but you’re not seeing anything familiar. Lacking any other ideas, you start walking in the general direction of where you think the Zalan Empire is located. You walk for a few hours and the pain is getting worse. You start thinking that you might not get the chance to worry anymore about your potential future, but a farm house in the distance gives you a little hope and you press on. You get close to the front porch and that’s when you stop. The front door is broken off its hinges and a few windows are also broken. You also notice a leg lying in the grass near you. Worse, whatever did this is apparently still around judging by the loud voices you’re hearing from inside. “Ha ha! Human women are such squealers! Not as much fun as elven women though!” “Oh that’s real original. Why is everyone always got such a fucking hard on for elven women? Too damn fragile if you ask me.” “Go fucking rape a troll girl then.” “Huh. Easier said than done my unimaginative friend. I tried that once and almost got married.” “HAHAHAHA! See I told you this would be more fun than following Velzix…hey you smell that?” “Yes, I did sense the smell of fresh human blood in the air. Do you suppose we missed one?” “Only one way to find out!” At this point you start to back away as quickly as you can. You can’t even run due to the pain, but you try your best. Your best isn’t good enough though, as the dwellers of the farmhouse have exited and seen you. And as with everything that’s been fucked up today, the ones that just exited the farmhouse happen to be demons. One is a bigger brutish looking sort, while the other is smaller yet definitely still more muscular than you. “Well what do we have here? Wounded meat? I say he gets to that rock before you can catch him and pull out his heart.” “Hah! I’ll take that bet!” The bigger one starts to walk towards you, but will undoubtedly quicken his pace soon. > You try to outrun the demon Fear griping your heart, you struggle and push yourself to run as fast as you can in your condition. Soon something else is gripping your heart. You look down at your chest and see your bloody still beating heart outside of where it is normally supposed to be. The demon fist holding it squeezes your heart a bit first before crushing it completely before your eyes. You die soon afterwards. “Hah! I told you I could reach him before he got to the rock!” the demon laughs as he lets his arm slide out of your dead slumping body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There’s undead all around you, fear coursing through your body and all you can think of is escape. You see a few others following orders, but their shots do nothing. Apparently the Necromancer has protected himself behind a more powerful magic shield than the cleric you saw die had. Even Wessel’s spell dissipates before it. You ignore your orders, you ignore your fellow soldiers, you ignore the attack on Nuro, and you run and you’re not a bit ashamed to put your survival first. The chaos of the fighting is bewildering and you don’t really pay attention to what direction you’re heading, you’re just making a beeline to any destination not completely filled with zombies, ghosts, and skeletons. You look back, only to see more death. The hooded figure on top of the battlements calls down some sort of death cloud that begins to envelop the area you were previously in. The screams of the distant victims are horrible. You feel like you’re living a nightmare as you constantly bump into corpses, both moving and unmoving. Defensive chops with your sword do nothing to kill the unnatural creatures and only temporarily push them out of your way. It is only by sheer luck that you get away without getting killed. You run further, leaving the carnage behind. You look back again to see if anything is in pursuit, but nothing is to your relief. Still, you’re not comfortable and you continue to distance yourself until you can run no further and you must stop to rest. It is at this point, you wonder what you’re going to do. You wonder if going back to report to the nearest Zalan commander would be wise. Will they punish you for running away? The situation was hopeless, surely they couldn’t...could they? And even if they don’t, then what? Send you back in? That’s definitely not appealing given what you’ve seen. At this point you’re really regretting your decision to join the army. You wish you could just leave. You want to go home. Going AWOL back in Retlad wasn’t really an option; you would’ve been hunted down. But now? You probably would be listed as a casualty. You could theoretically disappear and attempt to live anonymously and do what you wanted to do in the first place. Just travel and play. Your family would even be compensated for your death, but still…you’d hate to put them through the grief of it, if it isn’t true. Before you ponder your future options any further, you suddenly feel a pain in your side…you look down and see that you’re bleeding. Apparently you were stabbed and didn’t even realize it due to the adrenaline. You’re feeling the pain now though and you attempt to stop the bleeding as much as you can. Regardless of what you’re going to do in the future, right now you have to find civilization to at least get fixed up. The problem is that you don’t know where the hell you are. You look around for some possible landmarks, but you’re not seeing anything familiar. Lacking any other ideas, you start walking in the general direction of where you think the Zalan Empire is located. You walk for a few hours and the pain is getting worse. You start thinking that you might not get the chance to worry anymore about your potential future, but a farm house in the distance gives you a little hope and you press on. You get close to the front porch and that’s when you stop. The front door is broken off its hinges and a few windows are also broken. You also notice a leg lying in the grass near you. Worse, whatever did this is apparently still around judging by the loud voices you’re hearing from inside. “Ha ha! Human women are such squealers! Not as much fun as elven women though!” “Oh that’s real original. Why is everyone always got such a fucking hard on for elven women? Too damn fragile if you ask me.” “Go fucking rape a troll girl then.” “Huh. Easier said than done my unimaginative friend. I tried that once and almost got married.” “HAHAHAHA! See I told you this would be more fun than following Velzix…hey you smell that?” “Yes, I did sense the smell of fresh human blood in the air. Do you suppose we missed one?” “Only one way to find out!” At this point you start to back away as quickly as you can. You can’t even run due to the pain, but you try your best. Your best isn’t good enough though, as the dwellers of the farmhouse have exited and seen you. And as with everything that’s been fucked up today, the ones that just exited the farmhouse happen to be demons. One is a bigger brutish looking sort, while the other is smaller yet definitely still more muscular than you. “Well what do we have here? Wounded meat? I say he gets to that rock before you can catch him and pull out his heart.” “Hah! I’ll take that bet!” The bigger one starts to walk towards you, but will undoubtedly quicken his pace soon. > You stand and fight Demons are a lot faster than the undead and you’re wounded, no way are you going to be able to outrun them. You turn around and draw your bow, trying to ignore your pain which is overriding any fear you have at this point. Your weakened state is causing you to have a hard time aiming. “Uh oh, better be careful, looks like this one is going to put up a fight. I’d say by his uniform that he’s a soldier.” “Hur hur. Good. Hey human, better stop wobbling if you’re going to aim that thing properly.” You miss the demon completely. “Hah! You want me to walk slower human?” ”You sure you should be playing with him like that? Don’t you remember what happened earlier today?” “Shut up! I told ya, that bitch musta had some magical powers because…OW!” You hit the demon in the chest, but it doesn’t seem much damage. He pulls out the arrow and now begins to quicken his pace. The other demon starts to walk towards you as well. “See, I told you to pay attention.” “Bah! If this is the extent of what his little pig sticker can do, I’m not concerned. Hey human, don’t you know they’re doing great things with gunpower these days? RAAAAGH!” The big demon suddenly charges you, and you let your arrow fly. Right in the eye. “Perfect.” You whisper. The demon bellows, but it doesn’t slow him down. You narrowly dodge his charge. You roll on the ground and shoot two more arrows in his back. He turns around snarling and bellowing for your blood. More arrows fly into the creature, but at last the demon has reached you and smacks you to the ground. Your bow flies from your hand, and while crawling on the ground you try to draw your sword, but a crushing blow hits you on the back. This might’ve caused a lot more damage, but miraculously the lute that’s still in your pack “softens” the blow. The crunching of wood signifies that it’s broken though. “What the fuck, that’s a weird noise…what is this? HA HA HA! Hey! You gotta be shittin’ me! A fuckin’ lute? Check this out! He’s carrying a fuckin’ lute! What’s a fucking soldier doin’ with a lute?” the big demon shouts to his acquaintance while he holds up your broken instrument. “Don’t talk you idiot! LOOK OUT!” his acquaintance shouts, just as you recover long enough to shove your sword straight into the demon’s groin. You push the sword upward in an attempt to do more damage and you succeed. Blood is flying everywhere and the demon howls in pain from the grievous wound. You pull your sword out and then proceed to repeatedly stab the demon until it falls backwards on the ground, dead. You’re exhausted; you used all your remaining strength killing the thing. Unfortunately the other demon grabs you by the scruff like a helpless kitten and lifts you up off the ground a few inches. He knocks your sword out of your hand and looks at his fallen comrade. “Hmm, can’t say I didn’t warn him. Oh well, more meat for me. This may hurt a lot…” Fully expecting the death that you’ve managed to avoid for so long, you once again evade it when a gunshot rings out and part of the demon’s head splatters in your face. You’re dropped immediately. The demon’s body is still standing though. “Shoot the bastard again!” you hear a gruff voice shout and this time the next shot hits chest and the demon falls. You lay motionless on the ground, looking up in the sky when your saviors come up to you. It’s a group of dwarves armed with gun powder weapons. “By the gods, get doc out here! We need to fix this man up! Hey lad, you’ll be alright, don’t worry…are you a Zalan soldier?” one of the dwarves asks you. “…yeah…Nuro…lost…all dead…” is all you utter before fall into unconsciousness. A few days pass before you’re somewhat back to a coherent state. You find yourself in a military outpost and at this point you don’t care. You’re just happy to be alive. It would seem that during your escape from Nuro, you ran in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom, the dwarven scouts that found you were from a small neutral kingdom trying its best to stay out of the dispute between Tulan and Zalan, but the new threat of demons running all over the nearby countryside caused them to increase patrols. They fixed you up, but dropped you off at the closest Zalan Fort. The Zalan fort that you’re in right now is called Virtue and it’s on the Tulan border. It seems relatively calm though. Not at all what you thought it would be. When one of the healers comes in to check on you, you begin to ask questions which she tries to answer to get you up to speed. The Tulan Kingdom is currently under attack from the demons now. They’ve been assaulting the place and even gaining help from some of the evil populace there. The demon citizens there have reverted back to their “bad behavior” and thrown their lot in with the invaders as well. That doesn’t surprise you. The Tulan Kingdom pulled back some of their military from the borders so the fighting hasn’t been as bad and Zalan’s made a little more progress during this time, but the military minds are being cautious not to over extend. There is extreme concern over the recent demon invasion, not to mention the incident at Nuro. Word has already spread about the unsuccessful siege there. The healer also tells you that a few Zalan “high ups” are eager to speak to you soon, as they want to know what exactly happened at Nuro. You’re somewhat of an important survivor since as far as anyone knows; you were the only one to successfully escape that killing zone. There’s also talk of a “Grand Alliance” being created to counter these new threats. While the healer talks you end up drifting back to sleep wishing you could just escape it all. One year passes… You’re still at Fort Virtue and it doesn’t look like you’ll be leaving the army anytime soon. You couldn’t have been more wrong on your belief that you’d get executed for cowardice. You got promoted to sergeant instead, which in light of the current situation, is nearly the same thing. Your promotion came after several Zalan officers spoke to you about Nuro. You even got a medal. Stories and rumors creep around about how against all odds you survived an undead onslaught and fought off a bunch of demons as well. Your past “reputation” from your time in Retlad is exaggerated as well. It doesn’t help that the citizens there remember you and are all willing to add to the exaggeration. All of these stories have been woven together in such an elaborate way to make you seem like some kind of hero most likely for propaganda purposes. And you know you’re not hero. In fact you try to explain you aren’t a hero to people, but they think you’re just being modest, eventually you give up. Your assignment at Virtue hasn’t been uneventful. There’s fighting, but now it’s mainly demon commanded enemies rather than Tulan ones. Some demon lord called Velzix killed the royalty there, completely conquered the area and made it his realm. The border war continues under new management except now it’s more than just a border that the enemy is looking to take. Your superior, Captain Eckard reminds you of Valhlat except with a different name. You suppose there is a certain “cookie cutter” that occurs within the Zalan army that causes people to act the same. You’ve briefly wondered if you ever make that rank, you’ll act the same way. You then usually laugh at the very fact that you ever would. Fort Virtue hasn’t suffered a really bad attack yet, and it’s mostly skirmishes, but it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You routinely go on patrols and give orders which you didn’t think you’d be good at, but you think back to how you used to order your brothers and sisters around and perhaps you always had a bit a leadership skill, you just didn’t want it. You thought that you’d be able to at least visit your family, but of course due to recent events, you’re ordered to stay put. Your family at least is getting more money from your pay increase. They even send a new lute for you after you told them of the unfortunate event that resulted in the destruction of your last one. This gives you a little pleasure in a relatively joyless assignment. All in all, you still prefer it compared to being in the unsuccessful assaults on Nuro. The Grand Alliance that was formed hasn’t been too successful as every one has been a slaughter from what you’ve heard. You already went through that once. You don’t relish the idea of going through it again. One day while you’re spending your free time practicing a new song, some new soldiers come into the fort. They look like they’ve just seen a vicious battle and are here to restock. One of them sees you and gives you a disapproving look. It’s a woman with striking good looks, but definitely carrying an air of leadership about her. Her rank signifies her as a captain…yep same cookie cutter, just a little prettier. “You there! What are you doing playing an instrument? Shouldn’t you be on watch or doing something more constructive with your time soldier? And you’re a sergeant? You should know better!” “I’m not on watch duty right now and…” The woman doesn’t even let you finish your explanation. Other soldiers that were sitting in your area are now slowly creeping out of the fray. Even her own soldiers are creeping away. They probably know all too well of how she acts. “So? You think evil is going to wait around for you to be ready for battle? Where is your superior officer? I can’t believe they would allow such a relaxed attitude around here considering the importance of this fort! If you were serving under me, I’d have you flogged for your lack of discipline!” > You point her in the direction of your captain Shrugging your shoulders you point her in the direction of Captain Eckard to which she immediately marches off to. You don’t think anything will come of it though. You do your job and Eckard’s always been alright with you for the most part. At most you’ll get him yelling at you for getting into a conflict with a superior officer. Your thoughts are wrong however. When the female captain confronts Eckard, she and he end up getting into a greater argument. Apparently they’ve been minor rivals in the past and this “lack of discipline” displayed by you just fuels her arguments that he isn’t a fit for commanding a fort. She eventually leaves in a huff with her men, but still arguing with Eckard and saying that she’ll see that he’s relieved of his command and replaced with someone more competent. Captain Eckard is also now pissed at you for bringing this on him, he takes your lute away, breaks it and tells you that you won’t be playing anymore and if he catches you doing it again he’ll have you whipped. A few months pass as normal, but then the other boot finally drops. Whatever connections the female Captain had she’s used them, and Captain Eckard is demoted and transferred out of the fort along with some of the others who seemed to be “disciplinary problems”. Guess who’s name showed up on that list? You’re all transferred to areas where the fighting is a lot worse. You are sent to the Nuro front much to your dismay. Once again you’re fighting hordes of undead on a mass scale. Never having fully gotten over your first conflict at Nuro, your nerves and well being in general is always on the verge of breaking with each skirmish and battle. You don’t even have your music to keep you in a calm state of mind anymore either. It’s actually amazing you survive. You soon hear about how the Grand Alliance outsted a necromancer called Trelik from the Brot Kingdom. That makes you feel somewhat better, but that hopefulness is soon brought low when you hear about the successful attack on Brot that happens soon afterwards. A Necromancer from Nuro reportedly conquered the entire Kingdom with undead giants. Your morale is further lowered when you hear that your company is being sent to help the Grand Alliance take it back again. When you actually see the dead monstrosities, your fragile will shatters completely. When the battle commences, you’re just about useless in battle. Your dumb luck also runs out and you’re unable to fight or even retreat your way out of this one. The undead giants might be big, but they’re also faster than what they appear to be. One of them charges into your company line which at this point is trying to get out of the way and swings his club striking several. You being among them. You eventually land several feet away from the main part of the fighting, broken and bloody. You’re unable to move and just quietly moan in pain until you bleed out and die from your extensive wounds. You’re not even useful for the Necromancer to raise for his ever growing army.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Demons are a lot faster than the undead and you’re wounded, no way are you going to be able to outrun them. You turn around and draw your bow, trying to ignore your pain which is overriding any fear you have at this point. Your weakened state is causing you to have a hard time aiming. “Uh oh, better be careful, looks like this one is going to put up a fight. I’d say by his uniform that he’s a soldier.” “Hur hur. Good. Hey human, better stop wobbling if you’re going to aim that thing properly.” You miss the demon completely. “Hah! You want me to walk slower human?” ”You sure you should be playing with him like that? Don’t you remember what happened earlier today?” “Shut up! I told ya, that bitch musta had some magical powers because…OW!” You hit the demon in the chest, but it doesn’t seem much damage. He pulls out the arrow and now begins to quicken his pace. The other demon starts to walk towards you as well. “See, I told you to pay attention.” “Bah! If this is the extent of what his little pig sticker can do, I’m not concerned. Hey human, don’t you know they’re doing great things with gunpower these days? RAAAAGH!” The big demon suddenly charges you, and you let your arrow fly. Right in the eye. “Perfect.” You whisper. The demon bellows, but it doesn’t slow him down. You narrowly dodge his charge. You roll on the ground and shoot two more arrows in his back. He turns around snarling and bellowing for your blood. More arrows fly into the creature, but at last the demon has reached you and smacks you to the ground. Your bow flies from your hand, and while crawling on the ground you try to draw your sword, but a crushing blow hits you on the back. This might’ve caused a lot more damage, but miraculously the lute that’s still in your pack “softens” the blow. The crunching of wood signifies that it’s broken though. “What the fuck, that’s a weird noise…what is this? HA HA HA! Hey! You gotta be shittin’ me! A fuckin’ lute? Check this out! He’s carrying a fuckin’ lute! What’s a fucking soldier doin’ with a lute?” the big demon shouts to his acquaintance while he holds up your broken instrument. “Don’t talk you idiot! LOOK OUT!” his acquaintance shouts, just as you recover long enough to shove your sword straight into the demon’s groin. You push the sword upward in an attempt to do more damage and you succeed. Blood is flying everywhere and the demon howls in pain from the grievous wound. You pull your sword out and then proceed to repeatedly stab the demon until it falls backwards on the ground, dead. You’re exhausted; you used all your remaining strength killing the thing. Unfortunately the other demon grabs you by the scruff like a helpless kitten and lifts you up off the ground a few inches. He knocks your sword out of your hand and looks at his fallen comrade. “Hmm, can’t say I didn’t warn him. Oh well, more meat for me. This may hurt a lot…” Fully expecting the death that you’ve managed to avoid for so long, you once again evade it when a gunshot rings out and part of the demon’s head splatters in your face. You’re dropped immediately. The demon’s body is still standing though. “Shoot the bastard again!” you hear a gruff voice shout and this time the next shot hits chest and the demon falls. You lay motionless on the ground, looking up in the sky when your saviors come up to you. It’s a group of dwarves armed with gun powder weapons. “By the gods, get doc out here! We need to fix this man up! Hey lad, you’ll be alright, don’t worry…are you a Zalan soldier?” one of the dwarves asks you. “…yeah…Nuro…lost…all dead…” is all you utter before fall into unconsciousness. A few days pass before you’re somewhat back to a coherent state. You find yourself in a military outpost and at this point you don’t care. You’re just happy to be alive. It would seem that during your escape from Nuro, you ran in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom, the dwarven scouts that found you were from a small neutral kingdom trying its best to stay out of the dispute between Tulan and Zalan, but the new threat of demons running all over the nearby countryside caused them to increase patrols. They fixed you up, but dropped you off at the closest Zalan Fort. The Zalan fort that you’re in right now is called Virtue and it’s on the Tulan border. It seems relatively calm though. Not at all what you thought it would be. When one of the healers comes in to check on you, you begin to ask questions which she tries to answer to get you up to speed. The Tulan Kingdom is currently under attack from the demons now. They’ve been assaulting the place and even gaining help from some of the evil populace there. The demon citizens there have reverted back to their “bad behavior” and thrown their lot in with the invaders as well. That doesn’t surprise you. The Tulan Kingdom pulled back some of their military from the borders so the fighting hasn’t been as bad and Zalan’s made a little more progress during this time, but the military minds are being cautious not to over extend. There is extreme concern over the recent demon invasion, not to mention the incident at Nuro. Word has already spread about the unsuccessful siege there. The healer also tells you that a few Zalan “high ups” are eager to speak to you soon, as they want to know what exactly happened at Nuro. You’re somewhat of an important survivor since as far as anyone knows; you were the only one to successfully escape that killing zone. There’s also talk of a “Grand Alliance” being created to counter these new threats. While the healer talks you end up drifting back to sleep wishing you could just escape it all. One year passes… You’re still at Fort Virtue and it doesn’t look like you’ll be leaving the army anytime soon. You couldn’t have been more wrong on your belief that you’d get executed for cowardice. You got promoted to sergeant instead, which in light of the current situation, is nearly the same thing. Your promotion came after several Zalan officers spoke to you about Nuro. You even got a medal. Stories and rumors creep around about how against all odds you survived an undead onslaught and fought off a bunch of demons as well. Your past “reputation” from your time in Retlad is exaggerated as well. It doesn’t help that the citizens there remember you and are all willing to add to the exaggeration. All of these stories have been woven together in such an elaborate way to make you seem like some kind of hero most likely for propaganda purposes. And you know you’re not hero. In fact you try to explain you aren’t a hero to people, but they think you’re just being modest, eventually you give up. Your assignment at Virtue hasn’t been uneventful. There’s fighting, but now it’s mainly demon commanded enemies rather than Tulan ones. Some demon lord called Velzix killed the royalty there, completely conquered the area and made it his realm. The border war continues under new management except now it’s more than just a border that the enemy is looking to take. Your superior, Captain Eckard reminds you of Valhlat except with a different name. You suppose there is a certain “cookie cutter” that occurs within the Zalan army that causes people to act the same. You’ve briefly wondered if you ever make that rank, you’ll act the same way. You then usually laugh at the very fact that you ever would. Fort Virtue hasn’t suffered a really bad attack yet, and it’s mostly skirmishes, but it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You routinely go on patrols and give orders which you didn’t think you’d be good at, but you think back to how you used to order your brothers and sisters around and perhaps you always had a bit a leadership skill, you just didn’t want it. You thought that you’d be able to at least visit your family, but of course due to recent events, you’re ordered to stay put. Your family at least is getting more money from your pay increase. They even send a new lute for you after you told them of the unfortunate event that resulted in the destruction of your last one. This gives you a little pleasure in a relatively joyless assignment. All in all, you still prefer it compared to being in the unsuccessful assaults on Nuro. The Grand Alliance that was formed hasn’t been too successful as every one has been a slaughter from what you’ve heard. You already went through that once. You don’t relish the idea of going through it again. One day while you’re spending your free time practicing a new song, some new soldiers come into the fort. They look like they’ve just seen a vicious battle and are here to restock. One of them sees you and gives you a disapproving look. It’s a woman with striking good looks, but definitely carrying an air of leadership about her. Her rank signifies her as a captain…yep same cookie cutter, just a little prettier. “You there! What are you doing playing an instrument? Shouldn’t you be on watch or doing something more constructive with your time soldier? And you’re a sergeant? You should know better!” “I’m not on watch duty right now and…” The woman doesn’t even let you finish your explanation. Other soldiers that were sitting in your area are now slowly creeping out of the fray. Even her own soldiers are creeping away. They probably know all too well of how she acts. “So? You think evil is going to wait around for you to be ready for battle? Where is your superior officer? I can’t believe they would allow such a relaxed attitude around here considering the importance of this fort! If you were serving under me, I’d have you flogged for your lack of discipline!” > You argue with her You’ve served in this army well and always done your job regardless of the shitty situations you’ve been in. You might not like a lot of it, but you’ve never complained. Lately you’ve been on edge about a possible all out assault of some big ass demon army that’s going to attack any day now, and playing is one of the few pleasures you have to put your mind at ease. Perhaps it’s a combination of this and a combination of this unwanted and unnecessary scolding that causes you to speak out of turn. “With all due respect ma’am, I am fully prepared to battle at a moment’s notice and so are those under my direct command. But even soldiers need to rest, if only for a minute.” The woman looks very surprised you didn’t comply with her demand to see your superior officer. “…you DARE speak out of turn like that to me? I’ll see you sent to the Nuro Front for that sort of insubordination! Then we’d see just how battle ready you are! How would you like that?” “I wouldn’t like it at all. I barely survived the first time.” You say trying not to express any fear. “…What? What are you talking about? First time?” Now you’re a little surprised she doesn’t know who you are considering how some of the high ups exaggerated about how you managed to survive. You explain yourself briefly and she doesn’t quite believe you at first, a couple of your troops hiding nearby at least back up your claims before slinking off. “That was YOU? What the hell are you doing here? You should be leading from the front not languishing in some fort that barely sees battle!” “Doesn’t see battle? We suffered a small demon raid last week! We see plenty of battle!” “What I mean is, somebody of your obvious combat and survival skills should be assigned on the front lines where you can do more good. Normally I don’t question Zalan command, but this is really an oversight on their part.” “Well maybe they know better than the both of us, besides this assignment isn’t a walk in the fairy fields. I think we’ll be suffering a grand scale attack any day now.” “Doubt it. Velzix has been having a hard time keeping his unruly mob together. If it wasn’t for a lot of the sycophantic Tulan citizens, he’d probably be confined to pure defense, though something will have to be done soon, reports say he’s attempting to gate in more demons everyday. Not to mention that supposedly civilized demons from other nations are starting to display their true colors and flock to his banner. Like I always said the only good demon is a dead one!” This causes you to smile a bit and she very faintly smiles back when she sees that you feel the same way. This smile disappears quickly though as she continues her rant. “I wish I wasn’t assigned to the Tulan Border though. I’d rather be taking Nuro back. THAT’S the more dangerous threat. The demons will kill themselves with their own chaotic and violent natures, but the undead…they’ve almost taken over the world before just because of one bastard that lead them. I never thought I’d see a serious threat like this in my lifetime, especially not…” The female captain at this point stops. She even looks away from you as if whatever she was going to say was just too much even for her. She seems to be a lot more battle hardened than you and probably ten times braver. You can’t imagine what horror she experienced that would be worse than your own, but you don’t find out since she changes the subject. “…Bah! Maybe you’re right; a soldier does need to keep their mind occupied on other things every now and then. We aren’t undead after all. So what’s with the lute? You also a bard or something?” she laughs. “No, I think those dreams are long gone, but my playing seems to boost spirits around here a little, which can only be a good thing in this situation.” “Hm. My mother was elven and she used to sing this song to me and my…brother when we were very young. It was very smooth and calming. Beautiful melody.” “Yeah, most elven music is like that. When I was assigned in Retlad I learned a few elven songs from a few of the citizens there, you wouldn’t happen to know the song would you?” She tells you the name of the song and you know it immediately. One of the first new songs you learned while stationed in Retlad actually. This seems cause her to momentarily revert to a less stand offish behavior. You’re about to play it for her, but then a messenger comes running up handing her a note. She reads it and she’s all business again. “Alright men! We’re moving out!” she shouts and leaves without saying another word to you. You didn’t even learn her name. Perhaps it’s just as well; you’ll most likely never meet again due to one of you dying on the battlefield. You go back to doing what you were doing. Two years pass… Three years since the Nuro Incident and this struggle still continues. You’re still stationed Fort Virtue and you’ve repelled more demon attacks than you would care to count. Velzix has finally gotten his shit together completely. A unified demonic front is in full swing here and its taking its toll. Once again your skills have come in very handy in defense. You are certainly known as a demon slayer, but you still don’t feel like a hero of any kind. You’re just trying to do your job and survive. You save lives when you can, but you know ultimately it’s a futile task as death seems to be everywhere nowadays. As bad as it is on the demon front, its nothing compared to what’ve you’ve heard on the undead front. The Necromancer has finally broken out from Nuro, and successfully attacked the Kingdom of Brot. Several undead giants demolished the area. You’ve never even seen a living giant and they sound intimidating. You can’t even imagine an undead one. The power to raise one, let alone several is sort of scary. The Grand Alliance army didn’t get there in time to stop him and as usual they were repelled when they arrived. You worry about the Grand Alliance failing to stop the undead horde. You hope it doesn’t get any closer to the Zalan Empire where your family might be in danger. Sometimes you worry so much that you can’t sleep, not that you do much of that nowadays anyway. Normally you play to keep your mind at ease, but tonight you go to the archery range to keep yourself focused. For a long time you’re by yourself, but suddenly you feel a creeping suspicion someone is watching you… You turn around with your bow and see a pale man. He holds up his hands. “Hey now! Don’t shoot! Sorry for creeping around like that. Professional habit.” He says. “What? Who are you?” you demand. “Warnov. Zalan Intelligence.” “You’re a spy?” “Well I suppose you could put it that way. I was here to give some info to your Captain Eckard, and I also wanted to take a look around the fort. Didn’t think anyone would be on the range though. Nice shooting, I know who you are and heard about your marksmanship with a bow. You’re certainly doing your part with the demons around here.” Despite the fact that you’re talking to a spy, you feel the need to vent your feelings. “Yeah, well I hope the Grand Alliance starts doing its part. I mean what the fuck are they doing? Weren’t they created to put a stop to all this shit? I mean am I supposed to worry every day if that undead horde is going to get closer to the Zalan Empire where it can threaten my family?” Warnov doesn’t look offended by your words, if anything he looks intrigued. “Well, I can understand why you’re venting. Trust me I sympathize. But as part of intel, I can tell you its not that easy…there were a lot of surprises that weren’t accounted for. We’re doing our best to rectify this situation by gathering as much info as possible. In fact, you could help us…” “Excuse me? How?” Warnov looks around and gets closer before speaking. “Look, as I said, I know all about you and your skills, why you joined, all of it. I know you don’t much care for some of the propaganda made about some of your exploits. But it’s important to realize that deeds like yours must be blown up a little to give common people hope that ultimately good will win the day. You may not consider yourself a hero of any kind, but your actions aren’t without some of those qualities. You obviously care very much about your family, and I’ve heard how you try to keep the people under your command alive. Sound like heroic qualities to me. Perhaps they’re on a smaller scale, but they’re there. I’m betting that there’s a BIGGER hero in there somewhere, just itching to get out. You think the Grand Alliance isn’t doing a good job? Perhaps we can arrange something for you to be transferred into it, or maybe you’d like to take an even more direct approach.” “What do you mean?” Warnov suddenly backs away. “Before we go any further. I need to know are you willing to take up the mantle of being a hero. Because if you aren’t, then we have nothing more to discuss. I shall require an answer now.” > You decline the offer You have to admit, the idea has crossed your mind a bit. A small part of you does wonder about embracing the whole hero image and deliberately doing grand deeds that go beyond the call of your duty. You suppose that you’d at least really feel like one if you did that. However, more often than not real heroes don’t live long. You’re wondering what exactly this Mr. Warnov has in mind for you and given his demeanor, his appearance and just your own feelings of uncertainty about him, you decline. You know your limitations even if others don’t see them. So, no you won’t be hunting down some artifact of unlimited power and then single handedly taking out a Demon Lord or Necromancer Lord in their own throne room. “No, I don’t think so Mr. Warnov. As I’ve often said, I’m no hero. I’m just doing my job and providing for my family.” Mr. Warnov looks disappointed and sighs, but accepts your decision. “Very well. This is a shame though. Despite your humble birth you seem to have lots of potential. You could’ve made an excellent addition to our…organization. I’ve also heard your lute playing wasn’t bad either, we don’t have any musically talented types anymore…oh well.” Mr. Warnov leaves rather quickly after his last statement. Something about him seemed very odd and you’re sort of glad you didn’t take his offer. You go back to your target practice for awhile when you suddenly hear an alarm cry out loudly through the fort about a small demon army being sighted over the hill. “Well back to work…” you say and prepare for battle once again. Two years pass… It’s been five years since the Nuro Incident and things have gotten worse. Both the Necromancer Lord and Velzix have made progress. Too much. The Grand Alliance hasn’t been able to do anything except fight them to a stalemate. All three sides are looking to gain an advantage and somehow you don’t think it’ll be yours. The Zalan Empire has become increasingly totalitarian. It’s been increasing its influence over how the Grand Alliance should be run and its strategies. Some of Zalan’s officers have been transferred to become more prominent in leading and commanding the bulk of the Grand Alliance army. You’re not sure if this isn’t a bad idea. Bullying or not, one final voice in matters would probably help the Grand Alliance at this point. There’s been some grumbling by other nations though. However it’s also begun several repressive internal measures to keep itself safe. Your mom has mentioned in letters back to you of seeing routine patrols now near the farm. Talks of seizing private property for the good of the Empire are being discussed. You don’t really like the sound of that, but it’s not really like you can do anything about it. You can only take solace in the fact that being part of the Zalan army will at least result in your family not becoming homeless. They would probably still be able to live and work on the farm…it just wouldn’t be your family’s anymore. There’s also talk of a draft. You don’t like the sound of that either. Your brother Mallack would certainly be conscripted now. You can’t imagine him dealing with the things you’ve had to face. You hope it doesn’t come to that. Your position at Virtue is looking worse and worse each day. Parts of the fort are severely damaged, you’re short on man power and you don’t even have any decent wizards or healers. You’ve attempted to talk to Captain Eckard about withdrawing and falling back to a safer position, but he won’t hear of it. This fort is NOT to be abandoned. The only good thing is that there’s apparently been a small contingent of mercenaries severely messing up things for Velzix in his own territory. They must be incredibly brave or completely mad for Zalan gold to perform such a task. You can’t help but think that maybe YOU would be there right along side them, if you’d joined up with that mercenary company years ago. A sobering thought. Time to go on patrol again. You gather up some soldiers and get ready. You look at all of them and wonder which ones won’t be coming back this time. You look at yourself and wonder if you will. A few years ago, everyone coming back alive was at least a possibility, but now it’s not even certain. You go out and change up your routine path again. Always have to be different, can’t become predictable. A couple of imps attack. Nothing to worry about. Easily dispatched. You know you’ll encounter worse before the day is over though. A group of Tulan “citizens” led by their demon overseer attacks you next. Made up of hapless slaves and misguided idiots who think serving the demons is going to pan out in the long run. Finally you come across something a little more unusual. A small group of dwarves fighting off a large demon ambush. They look ragged, wounded and in dire need of help. So you help them. You unleash five arrows into the head of an Eviscerator before two of your number are fried by a hellfire blast from a Flame Child. The fighting doesn’t get any cleaner from there. You see another one of your members getting shredded, before a path is cleared for the dwarves to follow you back to the fort. One of their own chooses to stay behind to give the rest a chance to escape. As all of you run, a large explosion is heard followed by several yelps, howls and screams. The dwarf has blown himself up with whatever explosives the dwarves are fond of making. Finally you get back to the fort where it’s relatively safe, and all you’re thinking about is how you’ll have to do this all over again tomorrow. You retire to your private room where you play your lute and hope you aren’t disturbed by another attack on the fort. Happily, that doesn’t happen, but you are disturbed by one of the dwarves you rescued earlier instead. He’s come to thank you. “Hey lad, I just want to say thanks to your actions at least a few of us survived from our clan. Such as it is now. Something about you looks very familiar. Normally you humans all look the same but…ah hah! You’re that lad who I saved near that farm five years ago! Looks like you returned the favor! Stagir’s the name.” You didn’t realize it either, but then with all the fighting and the chaos you’d barely survived during that particular day, you weren’t really paying attention to faces. You were just glad someone came along when they did. “Yeah…small world I guess. So what happened to your clan?” “Wiped out lad.” Stagir says mournfully. “At least when you humans were fighting each other you didn’t mess with us, but getting caught between the undead and demons…well it’s a bit different.” “The undead are that far now?” you ask. “Aye. They and the demons have been involved in skirmishes here and there. Got no problem with evil fighting evil, but it was just our bad luck that my clan was caught in the middle. The demons are evil incarnate to be sure, but the undead…I dunno. Something worse about them. In the final days, I had to kill clan members who I once called friends and family because of the fucking necromancers raising them from the dead. Some stayed behind to fight since they refused to run. They’d rather die than run from their home. Normally I’d agree, but after seeing that this was a losing battle, some of us decided that it would be better to run. After all we would just be raised again to be used as puppets of the necromancers when we die. Not even free will to choose, or the threat of a demon’s whip. You just become one of them. Can’t let that happen to me. Never.” You know something of it, having had to do a little of that five years ago at Nuro, but actually killing undead parodies of family members would be pretty horrific. Stagir attempts to lighten the mood a bit by asking you about what you were playing before he interrupted. When you tell him, he tiches and says something about how elven songs are nothing compared to dwarven ones. You never really thought of dwarves having a musical interest before, but Stagir boasts about how they have quite an extensive musical history. He takes the lute from you and shows you a couple of dwarven songs, breaking strings in the process. His insistent singing accompanying the songs isn’t exactly pleasant either. He complains about the human made strings not being strong enough to play the songs properly, but thanks you again for saving his life before leaving. Every now and then you play these songs for your new dwarven allies who have taken it upon themselves to strengthen and rebuild the fort the “proper dwarf way”. They seem to appreciate it. You’re a little more careful with the strings and don’t indulge in the singing though. (But unfortunately for the rest of the fort, the dwarves do) A few months pass and the demon attacks seem to decrease. The strengthened fort certainly helps, but something else is going on. Eventually you’re seeing less and less of them. Eventually some ragged refugees come to the fort and after a bit of babbling and thanking the gods, a few of them explain. There are a couple of conflicting stories, but it would seem Velzix is dead! He was killed by something or someone. Consensus seems to be that the mercenary leader died in battle with him though. Without Velzix’s leadership the demons are fighting amongst themselves and the realm is in complete disarray. The Grand Alliance is taking steps to retake the land immediately before the Necromancer Lord gets it. The Zalan Empire in particular is closer though, so naturally YOUR nation is going to get that land first! While things may be looking up somewhat, they aren’t necessarily looking up for you. Captain Eckard has orders to begin an attack immediately. You aren’t looking forward to it mainly because you’ll probably encounter an undead army in the process. You don’t have a choice though except for what role you can serve. Thanks to your skills and rank. You can either lead troops as normal, or be part of a scouting party. > You choose to lead rank and file If its undead you’re going to face you decide you don’t want to get caught fighting them with only a few men to help you. Captain Eckard is a little surprised by your decision, but chooses a few others to be the reconnaissance group. Your replacements aren’t as good as you might’ve been however. Many times they fuck up and miss a few demon bands that were fleeing from the Tulan Kingdom and ambushing whoever passed by. It’s not too bad at first, but the closer you get to the capital, the more powerful these little groups are. The losses get more severe, but Captain Eckard insists on continuing. By the time you get to the capital during most of the citizens there have been so corrupted or beat down by the demons at this point that they’ve either sold their own souls to Hell or gone completely mad. You’re attacked by them and a few of the demon hold outs. Your own ranks have been severely weakened by this point. It’s during an ambush that you’re suddenly hit by a fireball from a flame demon who was sitting on top of a nearby rooftop. You run around screaming and trying to put out the flames, but a couple of flying imps throw spears into your back ensuring that you lie still as you finish burning to death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to admit, the idea has crossed your mind a bit. A small part of you does wonder about embracing the whole hero image and deliberately doing grand deeds that go beyond the call of your duty. You suppose that you’d at least really feel like one if you did that. However, more often than not real heroes don’t live long. You’re wondering what exactly this Mr. Warnov has in mind for you and given his demeanor, his appearance and just your own feelings of uncertainty about him, you decline. You know your limitations even if others don’t see them. So, no you won’t be hunting down some artifact of unlimited power and then single handedly taking out a Demon Lord or Necromancer Lord in their own throne room. “No, I don’t think so Mr. Warnov. As I’ve often said, I’m no hero. I’m just doing my job and providing for my family.” Mr. Warnov looks disappointed and sighs, but accepts your decision. “Very well. This is a shame though. Despite your humble birth you seem to have lots of potential. You could’ve made an excellent addition to our…organization. I’ve also heard your lute playing wasn’t bad either, we don’t have any musically talented types anymore…oh well.” Mr. Warnov leaves rather quickly after his last statement. Something about him seemed very odd and you’re sort of glad you didn’t take his offer. You go back to your target practice for awhile when you suddenly hear an alarm cry out loudly through the fort about a small demon army being sighted over the hill. “Well back to work…” you say and prepare for battle once again. Two years pass… It’s been five years since the Nuro Incident and things have gotten worse. Both the Necromancer Lord and Velzix have made progress. Too much. The Grand Alliance hasn’t been able to do anything except fight them to a stalemate. All three sides are looking to gain an advantage and somehow you don’t think it’ll be yours. The Zalan Empire has become increasingly totalitarian. It’s been increasing its influence over how the Grand Alliance should be run and its strategies. Some of Zalan’s officers have been transferred to become more prominent in leading and commanding the bulk of the Grand Alliance army. You’re not sure if this isn’t a bad idea. Bullying or not, one final voice in matters would probably help the Grand Alliance at this point. There’s been some grumbling by other nations though. However it’s also begun several repressive internal measures to keep itself safe. Your mom has mentioned in letters back to you of seeing routine patrols now near the farm. Talks of seizing private property for the good of the Empire are being discussed. You don’t really like the sound of that, but it’s not really like you can do anything about it. You can only take solace in the fact that being part of the Zalan army will at least result in your family not becoming homeless. They would probably still be able to live and work on the farm…it just wouldn’t be your family’s anymore. There’s also talk of a draft. You don’t like the sound of that either. Your brother Mallack would certainly be conscripted now. You can’t imagine him dealing with the things you’ve had to face. You hope it doesn’t come to that. Your position at Virtue is looking worse and worse each day. Parts of the fort are severely damaged, you’re short on man power and you don’t even have any decent wizards or healers. You’ve attempted to talk to Captain Eckard about withdrawing and falling back to a safer position, but he won’t hear of it. This fort is NOT to be abandoned. The only good thing is that there’s apparently been a small contingent of mercenaries severely messing up things for Velzix in his own territory. They must be incredibly brave or completely mad for Zalan gold to perform such a task. You can’t help but think that maybe YOU would be there right along side them, if you’d joined up with that mercenary company years ago. A sobering thought. Time to go on patrol again. You gather up some soldiers and get ready. You look at all of them and wonder which ones won’t be coming back this time. You look at yourself and wonder if you will. A few years ago, everyone coming back alive was at least a possibility, but now it’s not even certain. You go out and change up your routine path again. Always have to be different, can’t become predictable. A couple of imps attack. Nothing to worry about. Easily dispatched. You know you’ll encounter worse before the day is over though. A group of Tulan “citizens” led by their demon overseer attacks you next. Made up of hapless slaves and misguided idiots who think serving the demons is going to pan out in the long run. Finally you come across something a little more unusual. A small group of dwarves fighting off a large demon ambush. They look ragged, wounded and in dire need of help. So you help them. You unleash five arrows into the head of an Eviscerator before two of your number are fried by a hellfire blast from a Flame Child. The fighting doesn’t get any cleaner from there. You see another one of your members getting shredded, before a path is cleared for the dwarves to follow you back to the fort. One of their own chooses to stay behind to give the rest a chance to escape. As all of you run, a large explosion is heard followed by several yelps, howls and screams. The dwarf has blown himself up with whatever explosives the dwarves are fond of making. Finally you get back to the fort where it’s relatively safe, and all you’re thinking about is how you’ll have to do this all over again tomorrow. You retire to your private room where you play your lute and hope you aren’t disturbed by another attack on the fort. Happily, that doesn’t happen, but you are disturbed by one of the dwarves you rescued earlier instead. He’s come to thank you. “Hey lad, I just want to say thanks to your actions at least a few of us survived from our clan. Such as it is now. Something about you looks very familiar. Normally you humans all look the same but…ah hah! You’re that lad who I saved near that farm five years ago! Looks like you returned the favor! Stagir’s the name.” You didn’t realize it either, but then with all the fighting and the chaos you’d barely survived during that particular day, you weren’t really paying attention to faces. You were just glad someone came along when they did. “Yeah…small world I guess. So what happened to your clan?” “Wiped out lad.” Stagir says mournfully. “At least when you humans were fighting each other you didn’t mess with us, but getting caught between the undead and demons…well it’s a bit different.” “The undead are that far now?” you ask. “Aye. They and the demons have been involved in skirmishes here and there. Got no problem with evil fighting evil, but it was just our bad luck that my clan was caught in the middle. The demons are evil incarnate to be sure, but the undead…I dunno. Something worse about them. In the final days, I had to kill clan members who I once called friends and family because of the fucking necromancers raising them from the dead. Some stayed behind to fight since they refused to run. They’d rather die than run from their home. Normally I’d agree, but after seeing that this was a losing battle, some of us decided that it would be better to run. After all we would just be raised again to be used as puppets of the necromancers when we die. Not even free will to choose, or the threat of a demon’s whip. You just become one of them. Can’t let that happen to me. Never.” You know something of it, having had to do a little of that five years ago at Nuro, but actually killing undead parodies of family members would be pretty horrific. Stagir attempts to lighten the mood a bit by asking you about what you were playing before he interrupted. When you tell him, he tiches and says something about how elven songs are nothing compared to dwarven ones. You never really thought of dwarves having a musical interest before, but Stagir boasts about how they have quite an extensive musical history. He takes the lute from you and shows you a couple of dwarven songs, breaking strings in the process. His insistent singing accompanying the songs isn’t exactly pleasant either. He complains about the human made strings not being strong enough to play the songs properly, but thanks you again for saving his life before leaving. Every now and then you play these songs for your new dwarven allies who have taken it upon themselves to strengthen and rebuild the fort the “proper dwarf way”. They seem to appreciate it. You’re a little more careful with the strings and don’t indulge in the singing though. (But unfortunately for the rest of the fort, the dwarves do) A few months pass and the demon attacks seem to decrease. The strengthened fort certainly helps, but something else is going on. Eventually you’re seeing less and less of them. Eventually some ragged refugees come to the fort and after a bit of babbling and thanking the gods, a few of them explain. There are a couple of conflicting stories, but it would seem Velzix is dead! He was killed by something or someone. Consensus seems to be that the mercenary leader died in battle with him though. Without Velzix’s leadership the demons are fighting amongst themselves and the realm is in complete disarray. The Grand Alliance is taking steps to retake the land immediately before the Necromancer Lord gets it. The Zalan Empire in particular is closer though, so naturally YOUR nation is going to get that land first! While things may be looking up somewhat, they aren’t necessarily looking up for you. Captain Eckard has orders to begin an attack immediately. You aren’t looking forward to it mainly because you’ll probably encounter an undead army in the process. You don’t have a choice though except for what role you can serve. Thanks to your skills and rank. You can either lead troops as normal, or be part of a scouting party. > You choose to scout If you’ve learned one thing, numbers doesn’t necessarily imply safety. With all the years of patrolling you’ve done along with your previous actions in Retlad so long ago, you actually feel more comfortable in smaller groups at this point. Your one and only rank and file battle didn’t go well. Your choice isn’t surprising, if anything more people feel comfortable with you scouting ahead. As you journey further into former Tulan territory, you don’t encounter too much resistance. A few demons and crazed followers here and there, but nothing you can’t take care of. It also occurs to you how “planted” you’ve been for the past five years. While it’s true you did leave the fort a lot, you never ventured far from it. This is first time you’ve actually traveled. Ironic, since one of the reasons why you joined the army was the possibility of traveling to interesting places. However, it seems like you only visit these interesting places after they’re already destroyed. You’re basically seeing the aftermath of the demon occupation. It sort of reminds you of what you’d seen back in Retlad when the Quillars were killing folks except the landscape is in even worse condition. The demons weren’t content on just corrupting their mortal slaves; they were attempting to turn the entire land into their infernal realm. You can only imagine what sort of hell was going on while they were actually here. You get to a small town that’s completely wrecked and seemingly deserted. Its night time and normally you’d go back and wait until morning to scout it, but Captain Eckard is insistent on getting to the former Tulan capital as quick as possible. You split up into small groups to scout the town quicker and tell everyone that if they come across anything more then they can handle, to run and alert everyone else. You go building to building not really encountering much of anything. Not even survivors. Lots of half eaten dead bodies in various states of torment though. You expect when Velzix was killed the whole realm descended into anarchy pretty quickly and the demons reverted back to their chaotic natures causing as much mayhem as possible without too much repercussion. You enter a shop with two of your other team members. You hear a creaking sound, which doesn’t sound good. One of your team members goes a little further in, and it gets louder. “Step back! The floors is…” you utter and then a large portion of the floor collapses underneath him. You attempt to grab his hand, but fail and the rest of the floor collapses underneath you as well. You don’t fall too far, but you definitely feel it. You recover as quick as you can and hear your other subordinate who managed to avoid falling through the floor. “Sarge! Are you alright?” Private Ramusen shouts. “Yeah, yeah private. I’m just a little bruised.” “What about Gannon? Is he alright?” You take your tinder box and make a small light. You look around and see that you must be in the basement of some sort of music shop from all the instruments you see. You didn’t even notice when you first entered the place, it just looked like any other ransacked shop. Upon further inspection you see a body lying on the floor. It’s Private Gannon and he’s dead. He didn’t land in the “good way” you did and broke his neck. “He’s dead.” You call up to Ramusen. “Shit! He’s fuckin’ dead?” “Yeah private, I just said he was! Now let me get the hell out of here…fuck! The damn stairs are completely destroyed. I can’t climb up, or even attempt a jump. Ramusen, throw down a rope and make sure you really secure it!” While you wait for Ramusen to complete this task, you take a look at some of the instruments. Lots of flutes and other wind instruments that don’t interest you. You grab an old looking mandolin. It’s definitely human design, but it seems very ornate though, must’ve been a specialty piece that wasn’t for sale. You pluck at the strings and despite the dirt, grime, and neglect of the instrument; it still manages to produce a fairly pleasing tone. You play for a good five minutes before you realize that Ramusen hasn’t thrown down the rope yet. “Private?” is all you utter, when you hear the slumping of a lifeless body, followed by a low voice. “Beautiful…” You grab your bow, when you see a dark figure loom above you. You fire, but miss due to the figure dodging quicker than anything you’ve ever encountered before. It doesn’t help that this same figure has jumped down the hole beside you before you can blink. You’re standing right before the figure now. He has a pale, but familiar face, though the blood around the mouth is new and not encouraging. He knocks the bow out of your hand, but does nothing else to you. You wouldn’t be quick enough to draw your sword given what you’ve seen. In fact right now, all you’re feeling is fear. “Almost hit me…you would’ve made a good addition. Maybe you could’ve even…no. Nobody can. This world is lost now and soon my kind won’t even be around to guide your kind to combat the inevitable anymore…” Warnov says. “What…what are you talking about?” you ask unsure what’s going to happen next. Warnov looks as if he could tell you more than you’d ever want to know about lots of things, but instead he just shakes his head. “Nevermind human. Telling you the whole story would not help you anyway. Perhaps it’s best you hadn’t joined us, seeing as I have been marked now. It won’t be long before the rest of my kind are hunted down. He’s really quite pissed at us, and worse, he can sense us you see…(sigh) I can only imagine what he did to poor Count Rostov…” “Who’s pissed?” “Who do you think human? The Necro…I mean the Great Lich Lord of course. Oh yes. He’s back…and this one isn’t going to lose like the last one did so long ago.” You’re not following all of Warnov’s cryptic speak, but if the last bit he’s said is true, he’s scared the hell out of you more than he has with his actions. Warnov grabs your shoulder and looks into your eyes. “I do not envy your fate human…the extinction of your species will soon follow my own. My advice to you? Live human! Live while you can, for eventually this whole world will be dead and under his complete control.” Sensing that he’s brought enough doom and gloom to you, he relents and steps back. “Play me a song human.” He says catching you off guard. “…what did you want to hear?” you ask shakily. “I don’t know…anything. Play what you were playing before.” You slowly pick up the dropped mandolin and begin playing the song that you were playing before and you play as if your life depended on it, though you get the impression that Warnov has no intention on killing you. He sits quietly listening in the darkness, after finishing the song; he leaps back up through the hole. “Beautiful…such talent…such a waste…” A rope is thrown down and the sounds of feet running off are then heard. You wait a minute and then climb up the rope, taking the mandolin with you. You see private Ramusen lying nearby with his throat ripped out and thoroughly drained of blood. You’re also just in time to hear other members of your group coming to your position when you exit the shop. What the hell are you supposed to tell them? Death to the world, reborn lich lords…you start thinking, what’s the point of all this? Maybe Warnov was right, maybe you should LIVE while there’s still time. Granted his information is spotty, but you can’t help but thinking he’s probably more informed on the situation than most people. You’ve pondered it several times before, and you’ve even attempted it once, but deserting is looking very desirable again. In this day and age, who’s going to know if were killed or not? > You stay and inform your squad of the situation If the information that the vampire said was true, you think it might be better to inform your superiors of it so that something can be done now. It won’t do any good to run off with this vital info and let them find out when it’s too late and your “freedom” won’t mean anything as death takes over the world. You meet up with the rest of your men who are calling out your name. They ask if you’re okay and you reply you are, but you need to inform the captain of the new info you learned. When you return, you tell Captain Eckard exactly what happened, but instead of stopping to assess this new info or taking it immediately to his superior, he dismisses it! He said the vampire was probably just fucking around with you. “That vampire was probably toying with you like a cat would a mouse. He probably has your scent now, so he’ll hunt and attack you later. The stories he’s told you are probably just to keep your mind occupied with nonsense as well as to give us misinformation. Hell, he’s fucking undead! He’s probably WORKING with the Lich Lord!” “But…but it was an agent of the Zalan Empire. Agent Warnov. He…” “NO! He LOOKED like Warnov. Vampire can change their form you know! And even if it was the real Warnov, he’s undead now and working for the enemy!” “Well if that’s the case shouldn’t we still inform head quarters immediately? He probably had lots of vital information that…” “Look, the only thing we need to do is take the territory of the former Tulan Kingdom before the undead do! THAT’S our primary concern! So I’ll have no more discussion about it sergeant! Get ready to march tomorrow! We’re heading for the former capitol!” You leave Eckard’s tent and shake your head at his stupidity, but there’s not much you can do about it now. You do decide that you’re going to inform another high ranking officer when you can though. Soon the company is on the move to its destination. It gets more dangerous the closer you get though. You’re getting ambushed by demon bands of them all the time. Not enough to destroy you of course, but certainly enough to whittle your numbers down. Captain Eckard gives you more troops to supply your losses, but by the time you get to the capitol, the whole company has lost at least a third of its original strength. Things don’t get any better at the capital. Most of the citizens there have been so corrupted or beat down by the demons at this point that they’ve either sold their own souls to Hell or gone completely mad. You’re attacked by them and a few of the demon hold outs. By the time you subdue and hold the territory, you’re down to half of the company’s original strength. Then after a few days the undead arrive. Captain Eckard’s rather inept handling of things don’t get any better. Instead of shoring up the defenses of the capital’s gates and walls and waiting for reinforcements which were going to arrive soon, he orders an open attack on the battlefield! You are very reluctant to do this, but again you don’t have any choice now. You fight and barely survive long enough to fallback when Captain Eckard calls for a retreat after finally realizing he’s hopelessly outmatched. Unfortunately he’s just provided more troops for the undead army, as the necromancers in charge raise the recent dead. They also start raising the dead citizens IN the city which haven’t been cleared out! It’s an ignoble death as you’re eventually surrounded, overwhelmed and cut down by zombies and skeletons. You join their ranks soon afterwards.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you’ve learned one thing, numbers doesn’t necessarily imply safety. With all the years of patrolling you’ve done along with your previous actions in Retlad so long ago, you actually feel more comfortable in smaller groups at this point. Your one and only rank and file battle didn’t go well. Your choice isn’t surprising, if anything more people feel comfortable with you scouting ahead. As you journey further into former Tulan territory, you don’t encounter too much resistance. A few demons and crazed followers here and there, but nothing you can’t take care of. It also occurs to you how “planted” you’ve been for the past five years. While it’s true you did leave the fort a lot, you never ventured far from it. This is first time you’ve actually traveled. Ironic, since one of the reasons why you joined the army was the possibility of traveling to interesting places. However, it seems like you only visit these interesting places after they’re already destroyed. You’re basically seeing the aftermath of the demon occupation. It sort of reminds you of what you’d seen back in Retlad when the Quillars were killing folks except the landscape is in even worse condition. The demons weren’t content on just corrupting their mortal slaves; they were attempting to turn the entire land into their infernal realm. You can only imagine what sort of hell was going on while they were actually here. You get to a small town that’s completely wrecked and seemingly deserted. Its night time and normally you’d go back and wait until morning to scout it, but Captain Eckard is insistent on getting to the former Tulan capital as quick as possible. You split up into small groups to scout the town quicker and tell everyone that if they come across anything more then they can handle, to run and alert everyone else. You go building to building not really encountering much of anything. Not even survivors. Lots of half eaten dead bodies in various states of torment though. You expect when Velzix was killed the whole realm descended into anarchy pretty quickly and the demons reverted back to their chaotic natures causing as much mayhem as possible without too much repercussion. You enter a shop with two of your other team members. You hear a creaking sound, which doesn’t sound good. One of your team members goes a little further in, and it gets louder. “Step back! The floors is…” you utter and then a large portion of the floor collapses underneath him. You attempt to grab his hand, but fail and the rest of the floor collapses underneath you as well. You don’t fall too far, but you definitely feel it. You recover as quick as you can and hear your other subordinate who managed to avoid falling through the floor. “Sarge! Are you alright?” Private Ramusen shouts. “Yeah, yeah private. I’m just a little bruised.” “What about Gannon? Is he alright?” You take your tinder box and make a small light. You look around and see that you must be in the basement of some sort of music shop from all the instruments you see. You didn’t even notice when you first entered the place, it just looked like any other ransacked shop. Upon further inspection you see a body lying on the floor. It’s Private Gannon and he’s dead. He didn’t land in the “good way” you did and broke his neck. “He’s dead.” You call up to Ramusen. “Shit! He’s fuckin’ dead?” “Yeah private, I just said he was! Now let me get the hell out of here…fuck! The damn stairs are completely destroyed. I can’t climb up, or even attempt a jump. Ramusen, throw down a rope and make sure you really secure it!” While you wait for Ramusen to complete this task, you take a look at some of the instruments. Lots of flutes and other wind instruments that don’t interest you. You grab an old looking mandolin. It’s definitely human design, but it seems very ornate though, must’ve been a specialty piece that wasn’t for sale. You pluck at the strings and despite the dirt, grime, and neglect of the instrument; it still manages to produce a fairly pleasing tone. You play for a good five minutes before you realize that Ramusen hasn’t thrown down the rope yet. “Private?” is all you utter, when you hear the slumping of a lifeless body, followed by a low voice. “Beautiful…” You grab your bow, when you see a dark figure loom above you. You fire, but miss due to the figure dodging quicker than anything you’ve ever encountered before. It doesn’t help that this same figure has jumped down the hole beside you before you can blink. You’re standing right before the figure now. He has a pale, but familiar face, though the blood around the mouth is new and not encouraging. He knocks the bow out of your hand, but does nothing else to you. You wouldn’t be quick enough to draw your sword given what you’ve seen. In fact right now, all you’re feeling is fear. “Almost hit me…you would’ve made a good addition. Maybe you could’ve even…no. Nobody can. This world is lost now and soon my kind won’t even be around to guide your kind to combat the inevitable anymore…” Warnov says. “What…what are you talking about?” you ask unsure what’s going to happen next. Warnov looks as if he could tell you more than you’d ever want to know about lots of things, but instead he just shakes his head. “Nevermind human. Telling you the whole story would not help you anyway. Perhaps it’s best you hadn’t joined us, seeing as I have been marked now. It won’t be long before the rest of my kind are hunted down. He’s really quite pissed at us, and worse, he can sense us you see…(sigh) I can only imagine what he did to poor Count Rostov…” “Who’s pissed?” “Who do you think human? The Necro…I mean the Great Lich Lord of course. Oh yes. He’s back…and this one isn’t going to lose like the last one did so long ago.” You’re not following all of Warnov’s cryptic speak, but if the last bit he’s said is true, he’s scared the hell out of you more than he has with his actions. Warnov grabs your shoulder and looks into your eyes. “I do not envy your fate human…the extinction of your species will soon follow my own. My advice to you? Live human! Live while you can, for eventually this whole world will be dead and under his complete control.” Sensing that he’s brought enough doom and gloom to you, he relents and steps back. “Play me a song human.” He says catching you off guard. “…what did you want to hear?” you ask shakily. “I don’t know…anything. Play what you were playing before.” You slowly pick up the dropped mandolin and begin playing the song that you were playing before and you play as if your life depended on it, though you get the impression that Warnov has no intention on killing you. He sits quietly listening in the darkness, after finishing the song; he leaps back up through the hole. “Beautiful…such talent…such a waste…” A rope is thrown down and the sounds of feet running off are then heard. You wait a minute and then climb up the rope, taking the mandolin with you. You see private Ramusen lying nearby with his throat ripped out and thoroughly drained of blood. You’re also just in time to hear other members of your group coming to your position when you exit the shop. What the hell are you supposed to tell them? Death to the world, reborn lich lords…you start thinking, what’s the point of all this? Maybe Warnov was right, maybe you should LIVE while there’s still time. Granted his information is spotty, but you can’t help but thinking he’s probably more informed on the situation than most people. You’ve pondered it several times before, and you’ve even attempted it once, but deserting is looking very desirable again. In this day and age, who’s going to know if were killed or not? > You sneak off Last time you were wounded and had the misfortune of running into demons. Well you aren’t wounded this time and you’re pretty sure you won’t be running into too many more demons. You’ll be able to pull it off this time. You can’t do this army shit anymore, as much as you want to help your family out, you’ve got to live your own life regardless of what the future holds. You aren’t even worried about committing an executionable offense. You easily sneak away as you hear your men call out your name looking for you. You’re glad you didn’t leave too much back at the fort, except your lute, but you’ve got your newly acquired mandolin to make up for it. Eventually you’re away from civilization altogether. While you’re out in the wilderness you think about your family again, and you have to at least let them know you’re still alive. Maybe you can still do something about them, after all it doesn’t sound like the Zalan Empire is becoming a great place to live anymore. Perhaps you could convince them to move? It takes a week of sneaking around and keeping out of sight, but eventually you make it back home. Zalan looks a lot different; hell home looks a lot different. There was a small wooded area near your farm, but most of the trees have been cut down now. You also remember fewer patrols. Your house looks in better condition however. You guess at least your family seems a lot safer, but for how long? You knock on the door in the middle of the night and your sister Randi answers, Not too surprising as she always was a night owl when she was little. At least she used to be little. The passing of the years and she’s now a teenager and grown quite a bit. You’ve been away so long. What does surprise you is the flintlock pistol that she’s currently pointing at you! “Whoa! Hold on! It’s me, your brother!” you say. “…it is? It is you!” she exclaims and puts down the gun before hugging you. “What the hell are you doing with a pistol?” “The money you sent us allowed to buy new things you know and a traveling merchant was selling this for cheap!” “No I mean, what are YOU doing with one? You’ll blow your damn head off with that thing! Those things are unstable.” You scold. “What are you doing home? Are you on leave?” “Uh…that’s a long story. Wake up the rest of the family; I have to talk to you all.” Randi complies while you step inside the house and take in its new look. Eventually your Mom enters, followed by your brother Mallack and finally your youngest brother Calwin and sister Makana. You all sit down at the dining room table. (You realize you haven’t done that with your family in years) and you tell them everything. You get a lot of worried reactions. More for you than the other world impending doom stuff though. At least you know that they care. “You gotta get back to the army right now! Say you got captured by something and it took you awhile to escape!” Mallack exclaims. “While I’m sure that MAY work, I just don’t want to do it…I can’t take this anymore. The whole time I’ve been in the damn army, my music has kept me sane. I’ve noticed it have an effect on others as well. Never thought it would. I mean I have talent and…” “…you feel like you’ve wasted your life?” your mother replies. You pause for a moment. You almost want to say yes, but you can’t even if you wanted to. You haven’t wasted it, its just you’ve never really had the chance to do what you’ve ever wanted to do. “No…I guess I haven’t… it’s just…” Your mother takes your hand and speaks to you. “I know. It’s not fair. It’s not right. Life isn’t fair and it’s starting to get a whole lot less fair. I know I’ve mentioned it in letters to you, but the Zalan Empire WILL be taking the farm…and it’s looking like Mallack’s going to be drafted if things are going the way they seem to be.” “But…see that’s what I’m saying! We could all move! I mean of course I have to go into hiding, maybe Mallack could come with me. And the rest of you could use what money you have left and move to Retlad! It’s a nice place. It’s away from most of the fighting, and there aren’t anymore Quillars there!” Your mother shakes her head. “You must be behind in the news, because Retlad is finally going to become part of the Zalan Empire soon, so going there to live wouldn’t make any difference. The Empire can take this farm, but in spirit this will ALWAYS be ours. The Empire has said they will allow us to continue working it and living on the land and even if they didn’t they’d have have to drag us all out and stick our heads on pikes before we’d leave. Your father and his father build this farm up to what it is. Our family is going to be here until the end.” “That’s what I’m afraid of…what about you Mallack? You’re probably going to be drafted. You aren’t worried about that?” “Sure I am. But what am I going to do, run? Where? From what you described you practically think the whole world is doomed anyway! I might as well take some of the undead bastards out before I go. I was getting bored of the farm anyway. Let Randi take over! Ha ha!” Your mother addresses you again. “Son, you know our family. We’ve always done the right thing, even if it doesn’t coincide with what we want…I think you know what you have to do.” And so you do. So you do. You spend one night with your family and make the most of it. You all laugh and joke, trying to put all the problems of the world out of your mind and of course before you leave you play a song for them. Eventually you hug them all goodbye and take your leave. More than a few tears are shed on both sides. > You head back to the army Now you have to figure out a plan that’s going to prevent you from getting executed. You figure your brother’s plan isn’t exactly a bad one. Your record is good enough that you’d probably be believed. You think up a lie explaining that you were captured by a particularly sadistic vampire who was planning on draining you slowly to keep you as ongoing food. He took you to a cave in the hills where you barely killed him and escaped with your life. You would’ve made your way back sooner, but there were large groups of marauding orc raiders and demons escaping the ruins of the former Tulan kingdom that caused you to be extra cautious and forced you to hide for a few days. Yep, that sounds good. You head out with the plan of meeting up with Captain Eckard’s company which is surely at the Tulan Kingdom now. Eventually you reach the same town you were at when you made your decision to try to leave. You find it occupied right now, it’s not your company, so you’re about to press on, but someone on patrol sees you. “HALT! Where are you supposed to be soldier?!” “Oh…uh…” you say getting caught off guard. You mentally curse yourself for not being more aware. “Speak up! Wow, you look a little worse for wear…what company are you with?” “I was with Captain Eckard…but…” “Captain Eckard’s company? Holy shit! We thought they all got killed! The undead reached the Tulan capital first and ambushed them! But why am I telling you? You were there! You must’ve just barely escaped! Don’t worry; you can avenge your friends, we’re gathering strength to attack soon!” You don’t believe this… The guard begins speaking to you excitedly and asking you how you escaped. You just continue to say you don’t know, it all became a blur when the ambush occurred and how you attempted to fight, but it was just too much. The guard sympathizes and tells you that you can explain more to his captain. You notice he isn’t wearing Zalan armor, he’s wearing Azi Republic armor. You can only assume that perhaps this is a Grand Alliance company. Your ideas come true when you do indeed notice several kinds of troop types, though the Zalan Empire soldiers seem to be leading, as the captain is wearing the armor. Your heart sinks when you recognize her and she recognizes you. It was years ago, but you both remember. “…what are you doing here?” the female captain asks. “Last I heard you were in Captain Eckard’s company. A company that was reported to be wiped out completely. Have you managed to avoid death once again? You are the lucky one aren’t you?” Suddenly surrounding soldiers start to recognize you more closely. The Zalan ones especially. “Holy shit it’s him! You fuckin’ survived not one but TWO overwhelming undead hordes! We gotta take him captain, he’s obviously good luck!” the guard says a little misguidedly. “Good luck? If you haven’t noticed, only HE seems to be getting out alive on these things! I’d say he’s bad luck!” someone else says. “Nonsense! I heard how he’s killed countless demons with his bow! We could use someone like that in our next attack.” another says. “Isn’t he the guy that plays the lute really well?” A few people start arguing until the female captain speaks again. “ENOUGH! I’ll handle this. You in my office now, I’ll speak with you in private. And for the rest of you, get ready to move out. We’re attacking tomorrow.” She turns away and enters a building; you slowly follow, while everyone else disperses. When you enter the wrecked “office” she closes the door and tells you to sit down, but she doesn’t. Instead she stares at you hard at you and draws her sword. “Okay Mr. Survivor. Convince me.” “Convince you of what?” “Convince me that you aren’t some fucking undead spy!” “WHAT?! How? I mean…” “Easy! In the two encounters you had with the undead on any major scale, you’ve been the only one to survive. Once, maybe. But twice? Mighty suspicious…” “But I mean…I’m not undead! Look I even walk around in the daylight, I’m not even pale!” “I didn’t say you were undead, I said you were a spy. There are few of those misguided traitors that think their necromancer overlords will be kind to them, by killing them last. Madness.” “But I’m not a spy! I killed…” you begin to stutter under pressure. ”Yeah, yeah, you killed demons. Big deal. The undead and demons weren’t friends either. What better way to be a spy than to make yourself a hero?” “But I’m not…” “You’re not what?” “I’m not…” “What? More lies? Spit out the truth spy!” she demands pointing her sword at your throat. > You blurt out the truth You can’t take it anymore. “I’M NOT A FUCKING HERO! OKAY!? I NEVER WAS AND I NEVER WANTED TO BE! (sob)… I just wanted to go home…(sob)” You weep for a few minutes before the captain speaks again. “Alright then what happened? Tell me the entire truth and maybe you’ll avoid the executioner’s axe.” At this point you have little choice. You’re too distraught to say anything else. You give a relatively condensed version of what happened. At Nuro and what happened recently. Your encounter with Warnov seems to surprise her quite a bit. You also go on to explain that it was high ranking Zalan officers that insisted on this hero nonsense. She believes you, like she knows something of it. “(sigh) Yeah there’s a statue of my dad in the Zalan capitol…but I know better…” You don’t question anymore about this quiet outburst from her since you’re still too worried about what’s going to happen to you. “So why did you come back? You probably could’ve gotten away with it.” “The same reason why I joined. My family. I guess I just needed a reminder of that first hand. And if there’s any hope of changing the tide of this war with the undead then I need to stand by my decision of joining the Zalan Army and making the world safer for them.” Once again the captain seems to soften. She almost looks like she’s going to tear up as well, but she turns away. “My family…I…” are all she says before taking a deep breath and turning back towards you, with a serious mindset again. “Alright, I shall trust your word for now sergeant, but I will be watching you VERY carefully! Consider yourself lucky for evading death once again, perhaps you do have knack for avoiding it. Let us hope that luck rubs off on the rest of us in the upcoming battle. I’m putting you in charge of the Retlad archery platoon. They’ll probably like you. Dismissed.” Before you leave she says one last thing. “And sergeant, don’t listen to what that bizarre vampire said. We’re not going to become extinct. We’re going to win and survive a long time. Besides you still have to play that song for me.” As you leave you feel a sigh of relief that you won’t be dying just yet, but given that you’re heading into battle soon with the undead, you’re wondering if you just didn’t postpone the inevitable. Two years pass… Seven years since the Nuro Incident changed the world into this living hell. Your time served in the Grand Alliance has not really changed much. The Grand Alliance and the Zalan Empire are basically one of the same now thanks to the complete embrace of a totalitarian system. Might makes right. Nations like the Azi Republic protested, but there was little that they could, after all Zalan has been practically defending the world by itself for the past few years. You get the impression that if this war is won; the Zalan Empire is going to throw its hat in to be a one world government. Amazing how power and conspiracy is plotted even when it probably won’t happen. “Probably won’t” because your superiors and political leaders are a lot more “optimistic” about winning than you are, but then they haven’t had to face the horrors you’ve faced. And horrors are a completely accurate word. You’ve gotten over your fear of the undead, but it doesn’t make it any easier. You’re starting to lose ground. Everyday the living lose someone, the Great Lich Lord gains. It’s a question of numbers and quite frankly your side doesn’t have them. You sort of wish your old captain was here. She was a very good leader and inspirational, but then again that’s why she was made a general and sent elsewhere. She asked you to play that song before she left though. Somehow it seemed to make her sadder afterwards. “Captain, undead are on the move, they won’t be long now.” One of your messengers says. “Yes, I can sense it. Here. You head back to my home. You know where it is by now, and give this message to my family. If you get back here and see undead, well get the fuck out and run back to Zalan territory.” Being a captain hasn’t really turned you into a copy of the captains you served in the past, but then again you didn’t even think you’d ever be promoted to one. Your reign as one has been a little unorthodox as you’ve applied more guerilla tactics than traditional ones, but given your assignment and your background it makes a hell of a lot more sense. You’re currently stationed on what remains of the Garwold Confederacy. It was a relatively peaceful nation made up mostly of Halflings and Gnomes, with lush green fields and flowers. Now it’s just slowly becoming another massive graveyard and example of genocide. You’ve gotten to know quite a few of them and you’re always amazed of how they can keep their sense of humor in the face of utter destruction. One of them actually gives you an answer. “To keep from crying.” Indeed. You’ve been playing quite a bit when you’re not battling the undead. (The Garwold citizens enjoy your playing a lot) It’s gotten to the point where you don’t just play anymore to keep your mind off of things, it’s like it transports you to a different world. A better world. If only. You often wonder how your brother Mallack is doing. He’s been stationed in a relatively safer location back in Zalan territory. You’re guessing that it lowers the odds of having your mom lose both of her sons at the same time. Like it makes it any better if she lost them within any length on time of each other. You wonder if the war is going to go on long enough that by the time Calwin grows up he’ll be drafted as well. If he even gets the chance to grow up. You can’t think about it now. A massive undead horde is coming and there’s no where left to hide. There will be open battle and you need to stay focused. You go through the whole order thing, and making sure your strategy is sound. You wish you had more wizards, but they seem to be in shorter supply these days. It’s almost like they’re being targeted deliberately sometimes…actually you don’t think it, you KNOW that they are. You see the undead horde approach. You look through some new fangled dwarven invention called an eye piece and see something makes your job a hell of a lot worse. You don’t just see the usual undead. You see fully armored Death Knights. Harder to kill than even a zombie giant. You see Blood Specters. Dark crimson spirits that can cause their victims to bleed from every orifice with their shrieks. Both of those are at the head of this horde, and this isn’t even counting that you’re severely outnumbered by just the regular zombies, skeletons, ghosts and the like. > You break off into a smaller skirmishing force You know that this is most likely a losing battle, but some hope might be gained, if you can somehow draw out the knights and specters and get them by themselves. As powerful as they are, they’re very hard to control even by necromancers and get easily agitated by living creatures. You can’t do it alone though. You take your best archers and a couple of your best wizards and mention your plan. You don’t ask for volunteers, you just assign. You’re in charge and you have to make the hard decisions, even if it might mean you’ll die. They don’t look enthused, but you aren’t either. You tell everyone else to hold their ground while you and your small platoon ride towards the horde. “Ready those blessed silvers men, and you robe wearers melt those dead tin cans!” You get close enough and you unleash as many blessed silver arrows as you can at the Blood Specters. You kill a few. The wizards don’t do quite as well with the knights. However, both attacks are enough. You see the Specters and Knights making whatever unearthly noises they do and begin to advance towards you far ahead of the slower yet steady moving horde. It apparent that the necromancer controlling them is attempting to bring them back under control, because they begin to squirm back and forth which gives you some more time to kill a few more during their confusion. Eventually the necromancer must give up total control because they stop squirming and advance upon you once again. You ride back as quickly as possible with the Specters and Knights in full pursuit. You didn’t expect those Specters to be so fast. A few of them manage to catch up to some of your men with grisly results. You yourself almost get smacked upside the head by a Death Knight mace. When you get back in range the rest of your awaiting army deals with your pursuers. More blessed arrows fly into the Blood Specters before they can do anymore harm, and eventually the Death Knights are brought down as well. There is no time for a reprieve though, as the main horde is now almost upon you. You order a regrouping as best you can, and face the enemy, telling if possible for someone to aim for the necromancer in all of this rotting mess. Bones and limbs from both sides are broken and hacked off. A zombie skull is smashed, splashing maggots, blood and brains all over you and you’re not even thinking about it. You just have a tune in your head to take yourself away from the massacre. Somehow in all of the chaos, you single out the necromancer leading this army, he stands a far piece away from the main fighting, but he’s arrogant enough to be close enough for you to hit him with an arrow. And you have to hit him now. You see a Grand Alliance soldier who just took a fatal blow to the chest begin to rise… Not many arrows left and not much time, you just load up and shoot, hoping you hit the bastard. Your shot is straight and true. It strikes the necromancer in the stomach, causing him to fall back, which in turn causes the undead horde to momentarily stop their vicious attacks, giving your side a chance to turn the tide a bit. Then you shoot another arrow when you see the necromancer attempt to get back up, which turns the tide completely in your favor. Zombies and skeletons fall. Ghouls flee at the loss of leadership and any remaining undead are quickly dispatched. You don’t take chances though. You walk up to the corpse of the necromancer and shoot your last arrow directly into his head and stab him a few times. You then start laughing. “If this was the Great Lich Lord, I’d be a real hero right now!” You quickly sober up from this macabre outburst when you hear shouting from some of your men and you look up. It’s another horde. Just as big. You look behind you and see that your own numbers are completely insufficient. The Garwold citizens are either mostly dead or demoralized at this point. Even when you win…you lose. Having no real options, you sound a retreat to fall back to the Zalan border and suggest that the Garwold citizens do likewise as there is nothing more for them here. The Garwold Confederacy is now just one more loss for the living. The Zalan Empire won’t be far behind. Three years pass… Ten years since the Nuro incident and The Grand Alliance is nearly just consisting of the Zalan Empire now, which in turn has had to adapt a siege mentality. There is no “going on the offensive” anymore. You’re purely on defense. Your brother Mallack died two years ago. Transferred to a location with more fighting due to lack of manpower. Like it matters. Didn’t even get to say goodbye. You can only hope he didn’t become one of those things…but you know he probably did. You’ve been urging your family to run where it’s safer, but of course they won’t budge. The undead have been penetrating deeper into Zalan territory, you know it’s only a matter of time before the Great Lich Lord decides to stop toying with you and makes his full scale attack. Sure enough it happens. Town after town is taken; you’re pushed back further and further, and you know there’s nothing you can do to stop it. An order is given to everyone to fallback to the capital and help defend it from an upcoming attack, but at this point you’re just wondering if the rest of your family is still alive. > You report to the captial Everything tells you that you should go to your family, but you question if they are even still alive. You don’t want to think about it really since it’s starting to upset you. The thought of your remaining family being killed and turned into undead parodies of themselves, makes you not want to know if that’s what happened. You wonder if they might’ve even fled already like you’ve been telling them to in your letters. It’s certainly possible, even as stubborn as your Mom is, she might’ve taken your advice at least for the sake of the rest of your brother and sisters. You mind suddenly goes elsewhere… …Yeah…they left already. There’s no point in going to your home. It’s been abandoned. They’re probably all safe in Retlad by now. No need to worry. You’ll see them later. Surely this attack on the capitol won’t be that bad. You’ve survived a lot worse. You’ve got orders and you need to follow them, because if there is any chance at stopping this dead plague, this is going to be a crucial battle. You did join the army to help your family after all, and what better way to help them, then to ensure their future? After having this little delusion, you feel calm again. Oddly so. Even a little hopeful. You head off to the capitol with your troops. When you get there, the general attitude is pessimistic. Most people don’t seem to think they’re going to win. You’re getting that vibe even from the generals of the Grand Alliance. You don’t see why. Surely the Great Lich Lord has finally overextended all his resources now. This attack will be a failure and from here you will be able to make a counter attack! Sure it won’t be easy, but it can be done. People are finding your optimism a little weird, especially those that have served under you since they know how that really isn’t your personality. You don’t think you’ve changed at all though. You just go about following your orders of making sure your troops are prepared in their defense of the south wall, humming little tunes as happy music fills your head. A few days pass and you’re visited by your old commanding officer who’s constantly making sure everything is in place. She looks very tired; you tell her she needs to think positive. When she asks if you’re feeling alright, you just laugh and ask if she’d like to hear a song. She tells you no with a grim look. She also tells you point blank that she wants to get laid one last time before this battle. Being in the somewhat scattered mind frame that you’re in right now, you ask who the candidate is. A couple hours later, you have your answer. Before you leave her room, she asks you to play a song for her after all. It’s the one she asked to play before. The one her mother sang to her. As you play she noticeably begins to weep. She doesn’t attempt to hide it. You stop playing and hold her until she calms down which eventually she does and composes herself. She gives no further information and simply tells you to go back to your post and to carry on as if nothing happened. You do so without pressing the issue. A week passes and the undead horde arrives. It’s much bigger than anyone expected, and even worse, the Great Lich Lord himself is leading this attack. Now your mind suddenly comes back to grips with reality. The undead horde surrounds and storms the city. An attempt is made to kill the Great Lich Lord, but he merely gets back up from the hail of gunfire and arrows that strike him. Soon the gates are compromised. You order your troops to take to the streets and fight off the invading hordes with the rest of the soldiers. You do likewise, though now you’re really wondering about a way to try to escape. Its no use though, the dead are everywhere butchering anything alive. You kill one walking corpse and five more take its place. In one particular brutal sneak attack, a ghoul jumps from a rooftop and tackles you. You feel a paralyzing bite as it sinks its teeth into you. Darkness soon takes you and you begin you new mindless undead life afterwards.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know that this is most likely a losing battle, but some hope might be gained, if you can somehow draw out the knights and specters and get them by themselves. As powerful as they are, they’re very hard to control even by necromancers and get easily agitated by living creatures. You can’t do it alone though. You take your best archers and a couple of your best wizards and mention your plan. You don’t ask for volunteers, you just assign. You’re in charge and you have to make the hard decisions, even if it might mean you’ll die. They don’t look enthused, but you aren’t either. You tell everyone else to hold their ground while you and your small platoon ride towards the horde. “Ready those blessed silvers men, and you robe wearers melt those dead tin cans!” You get close enough and you unleash as many blessed silver arrows as you can at the Blood Specters. You kill a few. The wizards don’t do quite as well with the knights. However, both attacks are enough. You see the Specters and Knights making whatever unearthly noises they do and begin to advance towards you far ahead of the slower yet steady moving horde. It apparent that the necromancer controlling them is attempting to bring them back under control, because they begin to squirm back and forth which gives you some more time to kill a few more during their confusion. Eventually the necromancer must give up total control because they stop squirming and advance upon you once again. You ride back as quickly as possible with the Specters and Knights in full pursuit. You didn’t expect those Specters to be so fast. A few of them manage to catch up to some of your men with grisly results. You yourself almost get smacked upside the head by a Death Knight mace. When you get back in range the rest of your awaiting army deals with your pursuers. More blessed arrows fly into the Blood Specters before they can do anymore harm, and eventually the Death Knights are brought down as well. There is no time for a reprieve though, as the main horde is now almost upon you. You order a regrouping as best you can, and face the enemy, telling if possible for someone to aim for the necromancer in all of this rotting mess. Bones and limbs from both sides are broken and hacked off. A zombie skull is smashed, splashing maggots, blood and brains all over you and you’re not even thinking about it. You just have a tune in your head to take yourself away from the massacre. Somehow in all of the chaos, you single out the necromancer leading this army, he stands a far piece away from the main fighting, but he’s arrogant enough to be close enough for you to hit him with an arrow. And you have to hit him now. You see a Grand Alliance soldier who just took a fatal blow to the chest begin to rise… Not many arrows left and not much time, you just load up and shoot, hoping you hit the bastard. Your shot is straight and true. It strikes the necromancer in the stomach, causing him to fall back, which in turn causes the undead horde to momentarily stop their vicious attacks, giving your side a chance to turn the tide a bit. Then you shoot another arrow when you see the necromancer attempt to get back up, which turns the tide completely in your favor. Zombies and skeletons fall. Ghouls flee at the loss of leadership and any remaining undead are quickly dispatched. You don’t take chances though. You walk up to the corpse of the necromancer and shoot your last arrow directly into his head and stab him a few times. You then start laughing. “If this was the Great Lich Lord, I’d be a real hero right now!” You quickly sober up from this macabre outburst when you hear shouting from some of your men and you look up. It’s another horde. Just as big. You look behind you and see that your own numbers are completely insufficient. The Garwold citizens are either mostly dead or demoralized at this point. Even when you win…you lose. Having no real options, you sound a retreat to fall back to the Zalan border and suggest that the Garwold citizens do likewise as there is nothing more for them here. The Garwold Confederacy is now just one more loss for the living. The Zalan Empire won’t be far behind. Three years pass… Ten years since the Nuro incident and The Grand Alliance is nearly just consisting of the Zalan Empire now, which in turn has had to adapt a siege mentality. There is no “going on the offensive” anymore. You’re purely on defense. Your brother Mallack died two years ago. Transferred to a location with more fighting due to lack of manpower. Like it matters. Didn’t even get to say goodbye. You can only hope he didn’t become one of those things…but you know he probably did. You’ve been urging your family to run where it’s safer, but of course they won’t budge. The undead have been penetrating deeper into Zalan territory, you know it’s only a matter of time before the Great Lich Lord decides to stop toying with you and makes his full scale attack. Sure enough it happens. Town after town is taken; you’re pushed back further and further, and you know there’s nothing you can do to stop it. An order is given to everyone to fallback to the capital and help defend it from an upcoming attack, but at this point you’re just wondering if the rest of your family is still alive. > You go to your family Really, it’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense anymore. This war is lost there’s not even any doubt about it. Hope is fleeting and if this is truly it, then it’s going to be with the ones you did this for in the first place. Your small groups of soldiers wonder where you’re going and you flat out tell them, in fact you tell them more than that. “I’m going home, and I suggest if any of you have any family you go to them as well. This is it folks, there’s no happy ending here. It’s been a pleasure serving with all of you.” You then ride home as quickly as possible. The farm is scattered with undead. They attack and in some cases eat the livestock, while attempting to get into your house. Dead Zalan soldiers can be seen, except they aren’t properly dead like they should be. The farmhouse is being attacked and you can see your sister firing her pistol at the zombies from one of the broken windows. You trample a couple of the zombies with your horse and kill couple more with your bow, but eventually you dismount and chop up the remaining ones near the farm house, since you want to save your arrows for anything potentially more dangerous. “Quick get inside through this window, the door is barricaded.” your sister Randi shouts when she sees you. “No! It’s a death trap to stay now! This place is lost! You all have to come with me!” you shout back, keeping an eye on the advancing zombies. “Can’t Mom’s hurt pretty bad. Got stabbed by one those corpses. We can’t move her. Help’s gotta come soon…” “NO, it won’t Randi! The capitol of Zalan is being attacked as we speak! I came home to get your guys! This is the fucking end! We’ve lost! We just gotta…” You’re interrupted when you have to cut down an advancing zombie. Your sister fires a shot at another one. Suddenly a scream from the house is heard, followed by another. That has to be Calwin, and Makana. Randi rushes from the window and you cut down another zombie before bashing the door down with relative ease. More screaming is heard along with growling this time. You look around and run down the hallway where Randi is standing motionless. She’s dropped her pistol. You push her aside and see your other sister Makana dead on the floor and then a quick scan to the left and you see your mother eating Calwin. She’s one of those things… You act where Randi failed and give a killing blow to the thing that was once your mother. “I’m sorry.” You whisper and her blood splashes across your face. Now you’re ready to get the hell out of the house, but Randi is still standing there motionless. “COME ON! WE GOTTA GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!” you shout. “Yeah...okay…” Randi says and begins to move like she’s in slow motion and picks up her flintlock. You run past Randi in the hallway who’s still moving slowly. “Randi get your ass mov…” You hear a gunshot behind you. Followed by the slumping of a lifeless body. You don’t even turn around, you don’t want to see. When you get outside, surprisingly the undead haven’t become unmanageable yet, and you cut down another couple with relative ease. Your horse unfortunately has run off, you’re on foot from here. You don’t even know where to go. Where is it going to be safe? Nowhere, but you lack any other ideas, so you just head for unclaimed wilderness. After about a day of running, hiding and maneuvering, you’re in a relatively safe location and that’s when you finally allow yourself to grieve for the loss of your family. You weep. You’ve lost everything now. Everything you did was basically for them, and now they’re all gone. You don’t know if you can even continue. What would be the point? The world seems to be doomed anyway. But then after you think about it, you decide that if death is taking over the world, you’re not going to make it easy. Death has already taken everything away from you except your life, and you’re going to hold on to that as long as possible. You’re going to live for your family and all the others that can’t any longer. You’re going to survive, because ultimately that’s what you’ve always done. You’ve cheated death more than once already and you’ll continue to do it. Death itself is going to have to hunt you down if it wants your life. After reaching this conclusion, you try to think of where you should go next. Going to any type of centers of civilization is out of the question now. You’d only have to move again, them being targets now. So it’s the life of wanderer now. The question is where would be best? The forests aren’t exactly safe, but you’re more familiar with surviving in them. The mountains might be a little safer, but living in them is going to be a lot harsher. > You stick to the forests Running from the undead, only to die of starvation and the cold in the mountains isn’t your idea of survival. You’re sticking to familiar terrain. You travel further away from civilization and ultimately deeper into a large forest. You’re not exactly sure of where you’re at, but you know you’ve left the Zalan borders. You’re probably in the unclaimed area north of the Retlad province. You never patrolled that far when you were stationed there, so you’re unsure of what to expect. You’ll certainly have to be alert though. A few weeks pass and you’ve got the hang of it. A few close calls with an Eberaw Hunter, but you’ve managed to make somewhat of a home for yourself. You mainly sleep in the trees. You get water from springs and small streams and as for food, well you always were good at hunting. You pass the time playing your mandolin and just basically keeping watch. As the days pass by though, you get the impression that someone is watching YOU. It’s not any undead though. You haven’t seen any in weeks. You haven’t come across any living creatures of higher intelligence either, but then again that doesn’t mean they aren’t around… “Hello stranger. Do you like our forest?” you hear a small voice say. You look around, but see nothing. You guess who ever it is, is invisible, and you nearly go for your weapon. “Please, no need for that. You are among friends here, musical one.” The voice says and then you see your unseen host appears before you. She’s very small and probably only comes up to ankle. You’ve heard of fairies before, but you’ve never seen one. “Are you a fairy?” you ask. “We go by many different names. Technically I am a pixie, but if you prefer, fairy will do. We heard you playing over the weeks and I thought it was about time we told you our appreciation for it. We didn’t know you big people had gifts for it. You are human are you not?” “Yes, and thanks.” “So, what brings you out here? Are you a ranger perhaps? You seem to have skills about you that are useful in this environment.” “No, not a ranger. Just trying to escape death like everyone else I suppose.” “Hmm, you realize as beautiful as this forest is, it’s not without its dangers. Death is here as well, but I’m sure you know that.” “Yes, but its at least reasonable. There aren’t zombies and wraiths terrorizing the place…well at least not yet…” “What are you talking about stranger?” the pixie asks quizzically, you look a little surprised yourself. “The Great Lich Lord of course. He’s destroying everything, and I dunno how he’s going to be stopped. I don’t think he can.” Your words immediately make the pixie’s cheerful demeanor change immediately. “…he’s returned?! But he was killed centuries ago! My clan has told the stories for generations!” “Well, he’s back, or someone like him…you really didn’t know? I mean this war with him has been going on for years now. Ten to be precise. Don’t you leave this forest?” “You must understand stranger, we have everything we want here. There is no need to leave. We also live in illusions, what you see now, is not necessarily what is. We remain hidden in our illusions so nobody may ever harm us and we can live our lives in relative isolation. It is only on rare occasions that we reveal ourselves.” “But I’ve heard stories about your kind being elsewhere or even in cities.” You say. “Well we are not the only fairy folk you know! Perhaps the others you heard of were sprites, or brownies or even a different clan of pixies. I can only speak for my clan and as far as I know we are the only fairy folk that live in this particular forest. There are other denizens of course, but thanks to our illusions we stay safely hidden. Even the occasional human or goblinoid that has wandered in here has not disturbed us. Quite frankly, you’d be the first person in centuries that we’ve revealed ourselves to.” “There aren’t any elves in this forest?” you ask, sort of figuring that some might have retreated or made a home here, forests being their natural homes and all. Your question is met with slight annoyance. “Most certainly not! This place has been elf free for millennia and hopefully stays that way! I’ll speak no more of this elven nonsense!” You don’t press the issue, but up until now you figured fairy folk and elves were all friends, guess not. The pixie changes the subject since she wants to know more about this Great Lich Lord business and says her name is Qweet. Qweet tells you that she will return with the rest of her clan, as she will not reveal their home of course. In a somewhat playful yet firm tone she also warns you not to try to follow her, though as good of a tracker you are you doubt if you could anyway since she turns invisible again. While you wait, you still can’t believe she and the rest of her clan don’t know anything about what’s going on; you almost envy them for living in blissful ignorance for the last ten years. You also feel like you’ve ruined things for them. Eventually more pixies return and you tell them what’s been going on. They are saddened, but maintain a confident demeanor. They are certain that they will survive this plague due to their illusions. They explain that if need be they can hide the entire forest, which with the new grim information you gave them they are very inclined to do. They still have to discuss it. In the meantime they say they hope you’ll stick around for awhile as they still enjoy your playing and you aren’t destroying the forest. You’re just glad you’ve met some friendly people that aren’t trying to kill you. It’s a nice change and after what you’ve been through recently, you welcome it. One year passes… Your time in the pixie forest has been relatively safe. Other than the occasional aggressive forest beasts, you haven’t had to do much combat. It’s been a relief. You’ve enjoyed the company of the pixies as well. However, your natural curiosity has gotten the better of you on occasion and you have made a few trips outside of the forest. You travel as far as the Retlad province and the first obscure village you stumble across is completely decimated, with undead roaming around. The scary part about it is this is very recent looking, which means they’re starting to head your way. It’ll start with the occasional zombie or skeleton wandering in. Then more will come. How long before an army arrives? Again due to your information, Qweet and the rest of her clan have made the final decision to hide their forest entirely. They tell you that they would like you to stay. You would even be allowed to see their true home. The only stipulation is that you would not be able to leave. The illusion wouldn’t just hide the forest, but it would create a barrier preventing entry or exit. You can’t imagine how it would look to those on the outside of the forest. Appealing to be sure, but as much as you like the company of the pixies, you don’t think it will be safe to dwell in their forest for too much longer, illusions or not. The Gnomes back in the Garwold Confederacy had some excellent illusionists as well, and it didn’t help them. > You stay in the forest This is probably the most satisfied you’ve been in a long time. Why bother running anymore? You’re not going to be any happier elsewhere as you eek out an existence. This is a place where you can play your music and have a regular appreciative audience. Perhaps the pixie illusion will fail, perhaps it won’t, but this is your home now. “Queet, I’m staying.” “That’s wonderful!” she squeaks. The pixies go through with their plan of hiding the entire forest. They explain that for everyone else it will look like a rock mass and the magic shield will prevent entry in case someone bumps into the “rock”. Creatures inside will only see more forest outside the barrier and will probably be baffled to as why they can’t go any further, but will probably not make any serious attempt to do so even if they could. The pixies also allow you to enter their little village. Naturally you’re much bigger, but a special arrangement is made so that you can stay nearby and they build you a tree-house of sorts and provide meals and drink for you. Life with the pixies full time is relatively nice. Of course a few are prone to play jokes on you sometimes, you don’t get mad about it and they usually make up for it later. A few years pass and it gets to the point where you almost forget about what’s going on outside the forest since almost everyday is a pixie party filled with merriment and music. There’s one particular time when there was a brief magical disturbance in the illusion, but the pixies managed to correct it. It does cause you to get concerned, but the pixies still insist that you not worry. After fifteen some odd years pass, the forest begins to signs of unnatural decay, and forest creatures seem to be dying way before their time. Some of the pixies have made comments of not feeling themselves, which is very odd since being fairy creatures they don’t normally get sick. You haven’t been feeling up to your usual standards either. You at first chalked it up to age, but you know that it’s more than that. The Great Lich Lord’s influence has finally penetrated the illusion. Death is creeping in. The months pass and the illusion begins to break down despite attempts to keep it up. At last for the first time in years you see the “outside world” again. It’s desolate and bleak. The Great Lich Lord has been thorough in his conquest of the world and with this new found green patch, it won’t be long before it becomes as dead as the rest of the landscape. Perhaps because they’re magical creatures of nature, the pixies cannot withstand this death aura as well as you can, and they begin dying. Their illusions and happy lush world utterly destroyed. “Wh…why is this happening?” are Queet’s last delirious words before she expires. One by one they all die. You weep as you can do nothing for them. Nobody can. Once again you’ve lost another family. You wish you’d left the damn forest long ago just so you hadn’t deluded yourself and gotten so attached to the pixies only to watch them die. However, you decide that this place will be your last stand as well and you’re too tired to run even if there was anywhere safe to run to anyway. You fight off undead creatures for a couple months as you attempt to survive in this now dying forest, but ultimately you’re overwhelmed and killed. Sadly, unlike your pixie friends, you are not allowed to rest in peace as you wander the landscape in search of the last remnants of life to destroy in the Great Lich Lord’s service.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Running from the undead, only to die of starvation and the cold in the mountains isn’t your idea of survival. You’re sticking to familiar terrain. You travel further away from civilization and ultimately deeper into a large forest. You’re not exactly sure of where you’re at, but you know you’ve left the Zalan borders. You’re probably in the unclaimed area north of the Retlad province. You never patrolled that far when you were stationed there, so you’re unsure of what to expect. You’ll certainly have to be alert though. A few weeks pass and you’ve got the hang of it. A few close calls with an Eberaw Hunter, but you’ve managed to make somewhat of a home for yourself. You mainly sleep in the trees. You get water from springs and small streams and as for food, well you always were good at hunting. You pass the time playing your mandolin and just basically keeping watch. As the days pass by though, you get the impression that someone is watching YOU. It’s not any undead though. You haven’t seen any in weeks. You haven’t come across any living creatures of higher intelligence either, but then again that doesn’t mean they aren’t around… “Hello stranger. Do you like our forest?” you hear a small voice say. You look around, but see nothing. You guess who ever it is, is invisible, and you nearly go for your weapon. “Please, no need for that. You are among friends here, musical one.” The voice says and then you see your unseen host appears before you. She’s very small and probably only comes up to ankle. You’ve heard of fairies before, but you’ve never seen one. “Are you a fairy?” you ask. “We go by many different names. Technically I am a pixie, but if you prefer, fairy will do. We heard you playing over the weeks and I thought it was about time we told you our appreciation for it. We didn’t know you big people had gifts for it. You are human are you not?” “Yes, and thanks.” “So, what brings you out here? Are you a ranger perhaps? You seem to have skills about you that are useful in this environment.” “No, not a ranger. Just trying to escape death like everyone else I suppose.” “Hmm, you realize as beautiful as this forest is, it’s not without its dangers. Death is here as well, but I’m sure you know that.” “Yes, but its at least reasonable. There aren’t zombies and wraiths terrorizing the place…well at least not yet…” “What are you talking about stranger?” the pixie asks quizzically, you look a little surprised yourself. “The Great Lich Lord of course. He’s destroying everything, and I dunno how he’s going to be stopped. I don’t think he can.” Your words immediately make the pixie’s cheerful demeanor change immediately. “…he’s returned?! But he was killed centuries ago! My clan has told the stories for generations!” “Well, he’s back, or someone like him…you really didn’t know? I mean this war with him has been going on for years now. Ten to be precise. Don’t you leave this forest?” “You must understand stranger, we have everything we want here. There is no need to leave. We also live in illusions, what you see now, is not necessarily what is. We remain hidden in our illusions so nobody may ever harm us and we can live our lives in relative isolation. It is only on rare occasions that we reveal ourselves.” “But I’ve heard stories about your kind being elsewhere or even in cities.” You say. “Well we are not the only fairy folk you know! Perhaps the others you heard of were sprites, or brownies or even a different clan of pixies. I can only speak for my clan and as far as I know we are the only fairy folk that live in this particular forest. There are other denizens of course, but thanks to our illusions we stay safely hidden. Even the occasional human or goblinoid that has wandered in here has not disturbed us. Quite frankly, you’d be the first person in centuries that we’ve revealed ourselves to.” “There aren’t any elves in this forest?” you ask, sort of figuring that some might have retreated or made a home here, forests being their natural homes and all. Your question is met with slight annoyance. “Most certainly not! This place has been elf free for millennia and hopefully stays that way! I’ll speak no more of this elven nonsense!” You don’t press the issue, but up until now you figured fairy folk and elves were all friends, guess not. The pixie changes the subject since she wants to know more about this Great Lich Lord business and says her name is Qweet. Qweet tells you that she will return with the rest of her clan, as she will not reveal their home of course. In a somewhat playful yet firm tone she also warns you not to try to follow her, though as good of a tracker you are you doubt if you could anyway since she turns invisible again. While you wait, you still can’t believe she and the rest of her clan don’t know anything about what’s going on; you almost envy them for living in blissful ignorance for the last ten years. You also feel like you’ve ruined things for them. Eventually more pixies return and you tell them what’s been going on. They are saddened, but maintain a confident demeanor. They are certain that they will survive this plague due to their illusions. They explain that if need be they can hide the entire forest, which with the new grim information you gave them they are very inclined to do. They still have to discuss it. In the meantime they say they hope you’ll stick around for awhile as they still enjoy your playing and you aren’t destroying the forest. You’re just glad you’ve met some friendly people that aren’t trying to kill you. It’s a nice change and after what you’ve been through recently, you welcome it. One year passes… Your time in the pixie forest has been relatively safe. Other than the occasional aggressive forest beasts, you haven’t had to do much combat. It’s been a relief. You’ve enjoyed the company of the pixies as well. However, your natural curiosity has gotten the better of you on occasion and you have made a few trips outside of the forest. You travel as far as the Retlad province and the first obscure village you stumble across is completely decimated, with undead roaming around. The scary part about it is this is very recent looking, which means they’re starting to head your way. It’ll start with the occasional zombie or skeleton wandering in. Then more will come. How long before an army arrives? Again due to your information, Qweet and the rest of her clan have made the final decision to hide their forest entirely. They tell you that they would like you to stay. You would even be allowed to see their true home. The only stipulation is that you would not be able to leave. The illusion wouldn’t just hide the forest, but it would create a barrier preventing entry or exit. You can’t imagine how it would look to those on the outside of the forest. Appealing to be sure, but as much as you like the company of the pixies, you don’t think it will be safe to dwell in their forest for too much longer, illusions or not. The Gnomes back in the Garwold Confederacy had some excellent illusionists as well, and it didn’t help them. > You leave The pixies have almost made you forget about what’s really going on in the rest of the world…but you still know it’s going on. Perhaps it’s easier for them, as they have not had to experience the tragedies you’ve faced, but you know the destruction that’s eventually going to come. You don’t see any hope in their plan and if you stayed, and you still would never be able to completely relax. You could possibly be trapped as well. However, you have no wish to bring more despair to these people. Let them live in illusions for as long as they can, You wish you could. It is with great regret that you tell them that you cannot stay. They attempt to convince you to do otherwise, but you’ve already made up your mind. Finally they accept your decision, but insist on repaying you for all your musical entertainment. They give you a small magical amulet. They tell you it can make you invisible for short periods of time. You thank them and assure them that it will most definitely come in handy. You leave the forest and head further away from the undead plague. Nine years pass… Twenty years of surviving this living hell. Living in a cave in the mountains isn’t as easy as it was in the Pixie forest, but it’s probably a lot safer as far as undead are concerned. The biggest threats you’ve had to face are a few Cragmaws and Mountain Trolls. Once you ran into a couple of dwarves, so you assume that there may be an underground settlement somewhere in the area. You attempted to speak, but they just shot at you with their crossbows and told you to go away, saying that humans were the cause of the problem going on right now. Your use your amulet when you can as it seems that the living have been just as willing to kill you as the undead. Then again, that’s nothing new. Every now and then you travel and scout around the area taking in the untainted countryside. You figure you should do it now before it’s claimed eventually. The living exist here, which means death can only eventually follow. You just wonder how long it will take. Sometimes you walk along the shore that’s nearby. You look out past the vast blue and begin to wonder if there are any other places out there. You briefly entertain the idea of building a boat. You know that the globe was thoroughly charted centuries ago and that this is the only continent, but still you wonder if something wasn’t missed. Of course you’re probably just holding on to the false hope that you could theoretically go someplace else where death wasn’t everywhere. But there isn’t such a place. Lately something very odd has been happening and you have no idea what it is. You could swear that the landscape has been subtlety altering itself from time to time. Not permanently, but it seems to look “wavy” or “warped” briefly. You initially chalk it up to your prolonged isolation and seeing things because of it, however you soon find out that it’s more than just your mind playing tricks on you. One day after you’ve done some hunting and bringing your catch back to your cave, you start noticing a severe slow down in your actions. “What the fuck…” you say to yourself, except it comes out a lot slower. You don’t experience for long, but the worst is yet to come. A portal opens up in the sky and you immediately feel ill. You see a creature that you’ve never seen before and it’s huge but it feels incredibly unnatural and it definitely isn’t of this world. The dead animal that you’re carrying suddenly melts into a black goo like substance. You jump back and nearly fall off the side of the mountain, which now feels like jelly under your feet rather than sturdy rock. You don’t know what’s going here and you don’t want to know. All you know is reality is starting to be seriously warped and you’re ready to puke. The tentacled creature doesn’t seem to notice you, it’s just surveying and floating in the air as the area around and beneath it changes. That still doesn’t mean it won’t attack eventually when it does notice you. You immediately attempt to use your amulet, but nothing is happening. The creature or something else is nullifying your magic item. Right now you’re caught out in the open, your cave is close, but you’re still not sure if you can get there in time and even if you do, would you be any safer? The other alternative is to make you way back down the mountain and try to escape that way. The problem with that plan is that everything is very wobbly right now and you’re not feeling very steady. > You run to your cave The creature is too big to fit in the cave if it tries to attack and you need to hide as soon as possible. You make a run for it, gagging and stumbling the whole time. Eventually you do get to the cave. You don’t think the creature even saw you. You continue to fumble around in the dark cave that you call home. You can still hear weird noises coming from outside and you’re desperate to drown them out as you feel like its doing something to your mind. In fact, you’re feeling a little deranged. “WHAT?! WHAT?! UNDEAD WEREN’T ENOUGH?! NOW THIS?! HAHAHAHA! YOU CAN’T KILL ME! I’LL SURVIVE! I SURVIVE EVERYTHING! Who am I here? Who goes there?” You look around the cave and start seeing the rocky walls transform into writhing masses of worms. You grab your sword and start hacking away, only to fall to the ground half laughing and half crying. “You don’t understand…I’ve lost it all…(sob) why? WHERE ARE THE GODS? WHY HAVEN’T YOU STOPPED THIS?! DAMN YOU FUCKING ALL! Ha ha ha ha!” You look into the small fire that lights your cave and see it change into a blue color. You begin to think you see faces in it. “Randi? Is that you? I’m sorry…I could still save…” You burn your hand badly when you shove it into the flames in some misguided attempt to save your sister who is not there. It’s at this point; you realize you’re losing your mind. You didn’t survive this long just to lose that. You start trying to block out the sounds, but it’s relentless. And that’s when you see your mandolin on the floor nearby. Music. It always takes you to another place. A better place. You can’t play it right now with your burned hand, but your music is always with you. In your mind. You begin to focus on one particular song in your head. You close your eyes think of yourself playing. The tune is nearly drowned out by the noise, but eventually the music gets louder and the creature’s noise is getting quieter, until finally that’s all you can hear. You have no idea how long you do this for, but eventually you open your eyes again, and everything is normal. The walls are rock, the fire is red. Your hand still hurts, but it will heal. You stay in the cave for days, unsure of what to make of all this. Ultimately you leave to explore cautiously, and everything outside seems normal as well. There is no sign that the creature was ever around. You don’t know if it moved on, disappeared, or what. Did you go temporarily insane? Did all of this really happen? You do know you burned your hand, so you’re pretty sure it did on some level. In any event, you never want to encounter anything like that ever again. Death almost seems preferable than complete madness. You’re still shaken up by the experience for months to come but eventually you get over it. Just like you have with every other hardship you’ve faced. Twenty years pass… Forty years have passed and you feel death closer than ever. Old age has been taking its toll and while you’re somewhat fit for your age you can’t stop the ravages of time. Still, it’s not just that. It’s the world in general. The place has slowly become a dead world, quite literally from what you’ve seen during your travels. Eventually you abandoned your cave in the mountain when the dead began to congregate in the area. The dwarven settlement was probably attacked. You don’t know, you didn’t stick around. You continued to stay on the move. After a few years of wandering, you noticed dead trees. Not unusual in the lands of the Great Lich Lord, but you were sticking to places at least on the outskirts of his domain. But it didn’t seem to matter. His influence was obviously extending. The magic in your amulet no longer works, and you briefly thought of the pixies. You know they didn’t survive. Soon grass was no longer growing. Hunting was becoming scarce. Animals were dying out. It almost reminded you of when the farm was going through a rough patch, but this time there would be no recovery. You walked along another shoreline and saw fish and other sea creatures washed up dead in massive quantities. You’ve had to fight undead monsters at almost every turn, always having to stay one step ahead before you’re overwhelmed. Even the air itself feels like it’s harder to breathe no matter where you go. Right now you’re very far north, where nothing ever existed save ice and snow. You’re living in yet another cave, but you’re pretty sure this one is going to be your tomb. You haven’t eaten in days, as you haven’t spotted a living creature in days. You haven’t seen another intelligent living creature in years. It’s very cold, and all you want to do is sleep now. You think you might have one or two more days left tops. However, you’re not allowed to leave just yet… While you’re drifting in and out of consciousness in your weakened state, you suddenly see a dark hooded figure by the fire. You know who it is. “So…you’ve come for me personally? I didn’t think I was important enough.” you ask. “You aren’t really. Let’s just say that I have a lot of free time and with less and less living now, I take a more personal approach whenever I can. Besides, given how remote this place is, I doubt if any of my necromancers could’ve found you anyway. That is if I hadn’t killed them all.” The Great Lich Lord’s voice doesn’t sound anything like you thought it might. It’s actually not very scary at all. Almost calm. “Heh. I killed a necromancer once…” you say. “You have my thanks then, one less treacherous fool that I didn’t have to deal with.” “You didn’t really need to come all this way you know, I think I was dying before you got here.” At this point the Great Lich Lord begins walking around your cave looking at your meager possessions. He immediately notices your very worn mandolin and picks it up. “Please feel free to take it. I won’t be needing it anymore.” You say. “Not sure what I’d do with it. I’m not musically inclined at all. I’m pretty much only good at killing things as you can tell.” “Yeah, you’re great at that.” “My mistress Catalina likes music though; perhaps she might find it interesting. This looks very old, where did you get it?” “Oh in a town that the demons destroyed when they lost their leader Velzix.” “Hah. Demons. I think everyone was glad when I got rid of those assholes.” The Great Lich Lord remarks. “That thing probably saved my life when I found it. Some weird ass vampire called Warnov wanted me to play for him. Said you were after him or something…” “Yes. Vampires weren’t my favorite people. Arrogant creatures. Well they’re dead now. Excuse me, but did you say Warnov?” “That was his name. Yes.” The Great Lich Lord is silent for a moment and then speaks again. “I know who you are. I can’t believe it’s you, but I know who you are. I remember before I tracked down and killed old Warnov, he stated that he was glad he heard you play before he died. He also said that if I ever encountered you that I should insist that you play for me before I killed you. Something about your playing being beautiful or something. You also served in the Zalan Empire army. Weren’t you supposed to be a hero or something?” You laugh weakly. “Mostly or something.” You reply. “Hm. I wonder if you ever met…” the Great Lich Lord then pauses for a moment. “…nevermind. It’s the past and that no longer matters. So can you still play this thing?” “Well of course, but…” “Good. We’re leaving this place then, got a job for you.” Before you can speak another word, you feel yourself teleported. > One last song... You find yourself in a very ornate yet definitely dark chamber. All manner of symbols related to death exist here. You could only be in the Great Lich Lord’s tower in Nuro. You never thought you’d ever be here. The last time you were anywhere near Nuro was forty years ago and things were much different. “Welcome to Aftermath, my musical guest. As I said, I’m not much for music, but Catalina is and I’m sure she would love to hear you play. She…” The Great Lich Lord pauses again. “She hasn’t been feeling well lately and I think this would help out. Just take seat in that chair over there. Here’s your mandolin.” This almost surreal. You didn’t expect your last moments on this world to be like this. Lacking any other ideas you slowly go over to sit on the chair, while the Great Lich Lord goes to get his mistress Catalina. They better hurry up because you feel like you’ve done more than knocking on death’s door; you’re quite literally in his home. The proximity of being so close to the Great Lich Lord is speeding up your death. The Great Lich Lord soon arrives with Catalina and you look upon her. She’s very beautiful. You had heard stories about her before decades ago when you were still serving in the army. She looks young, though she has to be much older. However, you can tell she’s not exactly moving very fast and taking her time. It’s apparent that despite her skill in necromancy that she’s suffering from the effects of the Great Lich Lord’s death aura. She must be powerful indeed to be able to withstand his proximity everyday. She must also love him very much to do it. You briefly think of how someone could ever love such a being, or how such a being is even capable of love. But given how you see them interact, there it is. This also starts to make you angry. Why are they allowed such a thing? They’re the bad guys here. You never did anything wrong and you lost everyone you ever loved or cared about. You begin to tear up, but it’s in frustration rather than sadness. All the past pain and suffering that you’ve ever experienced has come back to hurt you one last time. “Okay, start playing.” The Great Lich Lord says. “No.” you remark. “What?” “You heard me. No.” “I don’t think you’re in any position to defy me.” “Oh I think I’m in every position. What the hell are you going to do to me? I’m fuckin’ dead already! You’ve already taken everything away from me! My friends and acquaintances died because of you! I lost my home because of you! My family and loved ones died because of you! I had to kill my own mother because she became one of your undead minions! My siblings, all fuckin’ dead! All I have left is my music! And now you want me to give that away to you too? NO! I’ll DIE with it!” After this outburst the Great Lich Lord replies in kind. “Insolent mortal! Do you forget who I am? You think dying will save you? Think again! I will kill you and raise you as a fucking zombie and MAKE you play for us in a pink dress if it so amuses me! Now play and perhaps that won’t be your fate!” The Great Lich Lord’s voice now sounds more menacing. More like what you thought, but you don’t care, you’ve got nothing to lose at this juncture. It is at this point Catalina steps in. “I don’t think that will be necessary dear. You just let me handle this. You go in the next room and cool off or something.” The Great Lich Lord agrees to this and hugs Catalina, before walking off. Catalina now walks towards you. “You’ll have to forgive my beloved’s outburst. He goes a little over the top when it comes to me. Especially now. So much has happened. He’s changed so much and continues to change even now. He doesn’t express it, but I think it’s always gotten to him.” “I don’t have to forgive shit. Am I supposed to feel sympathy? He’s caused all this…and you too! How can you stand by him? You’re still alive! You could probably kill him and stop this before the entire world is dead!” “Oh I doubt if I could, even if I so desired, which I don’t. My feelings for him and the reasons…well the heart wants, what the heart wants. I sometimes worry about what he will do after I’m gone though. He’s in great denial. He knows I cannot fight off his overwhelming aura forever. I suppose in some ways, bringing you here to play for me was some vain hope of making me feel better. And it will, in its own way…” You still can’t believe that she’s trying to make them out to be the victims. “Look I don’t care about what the hell you two death freaks want, I know what the hell I’ve gone through and it’s all your fault. Fuck the both of you. You haven’t had to deal with the pain I’ve gone through.” “Perhaps not. But do you think you are the only one on this world who’s suffered? What makes your life and those close to you so special? Nothing. You and everyone else whoever lived on this dying world are equal. You, your family, even me. The only person who isn’t equal, is in the next room. We’ve all lost those close to us at some point. Yes, even my beloved and he’ll lose another when I’m gone. We’ll all be long dead and he’ll probably still be on this world by himself with nothing to do. And that, I’m convinced will be the greatest suffering of all. Life without end? No thank you. When my time comes, I will embrace it.” You’re very surprised to hear a necromancer say that. “My beloved cannot help what he is. For whatever reason, he was gifted with the art of death. He’s become it. It’s his nature. You can’t be angry with a force of nature. It has to simply be.” You want to argue, you want to fight, you want to bring up every moral debate you can think of, but to be quite honest you can’t. Part of it is it wouldn’t make any difference. Part of it is you’re tired of fighting, you can’t do it anymore and you don’t have strength at this point. The other part is that in a way what she’s said makes some sense and is correct. It also makes you think about your “nature”. It was to play music. You never got to live the life you wanted, but during your lifetime, music always seeped in somehow. It always found a way. Catalina continues to speak. “Now you certainly don’t have to play. That’s your choice. I will make sure that my beloved does not turn you into dress wearing zombie though. It would be a shame though. You are not completely unfamiliar to me. I do have some knowledge of who you are and I have heard stories of your playing. I would like to hear it played while you still had the passion and energy behind it. The living spark that can only invoke such things.” “…I’ll play…” you say with a heavy breath that took some effort for you. “You will?” “Yes…what did you want to hear?” Catalina smiles. “I don’t know, whatever you like I suppose. Just as long as it has a nice soothing melody.” “Okay then.” “Hold on, I must get my beloved before you start. I must ask though, what changed your mind to play?” “Nothing. It’s my nature.” Catalina soon returns with the Great Lich Lord and they both sit in their respective thrones. Catalina tells you to play, which you do so. You watch the pair of them look at each other as you play. You would appear that Catalina is pleased with her “gift”. You don’t know about the Great Lich Lord, since you can’t see his face, but you assume that if she’s happy, then he’s happy. You see them hold hands and look at each other as you enter the second verse of the song. At this point you begin to close your eyes and just let the music and instinct guide your fingers. You can feel your life slip away, but it doesn’t matter. You’ve been taken to a different place. A better place. You smile and wave to your family. You can see them all so clearly. All of them are there. You’re getting closer. They’re ready to accept you with open arms. Last verse. Not much energy left, but you’re nearly there. You won’t have to worry about anything anymore. Heart slowing down. You’re with them now. Everything will be so good again. Your music has saved you one last time. One last note. One last breath. You’re home. “Well, he certainly looked happier than he did earlier.” “Yes, yes he did. Set his body on fire dear.” “You don’t want him around to play for you later?” “No, I don’t think that performance could ever be replicated.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The pixies have almost made you forget about what’s really going on in the rest of the world…but you still know it’s going on. Perhaps it’s easier for them, as they have not had to experience the tragedies you’ve faced, but you know the destruction that’s eventually going to come. You don’t see any hope in their plan and if you stayed, and you still would never be able to completely relax. You could possibly be trapped as well. However, you have no wish to bring more despair to these people. Let them live in illusions for as long as they can, You wish you could. It is with great regret that you tell them that you cannot stay. They attempt to convince you to do otherwise, but you’ve already made up your mind. Finally they accept your decision, but insist on repaying you for all your musical entertainment. They give you a small magical amulet. They tell you it can make you invisible for short periods of time. You thank them and assure them that it will most definitely come in handy. You leave the forest and head further away from the undead plague. Nine years pass… Twenty years of surviving this living hell. Living in a cave in the mountains isn’t as easy as it was in the Pixie forest, but it’s probably a lot safer as far as undead are concerned. The biggest threats you’ve had to face are a few Cragmaws and Mountain Trolls. Once you ran into a couple of dwarves, so you assume that there may be an underground settlement somewhere in the area. You attempted to speak, but they just shot at you with their crossbows and told you to go away, saying that humans were the cause of the problem going on right now. Your use your amulet when you can as it seems that the living have been just as willing to kill you as the undead. Then again, that’s nothing new. Every now and then you travel and scout around the area taking in the untainted countryside. You figure you should do it now before it’s claimed eventually. The living exist here, which means death can only eventually follow. You just wonder how long it will take. Sometimes you walk along the shore that’s nearby. You look out past the vast blue and begin to wonder if there are any other places out there. You briefly entertain the idea of building a boat. You know that the globe was thoroughly charted centuries ago and that this is the only continent, but still you wonder if something wasn’t missed. Of course you’re probably just holding on to the false hope that you could theoretically go someplace else where death wasn’t everywhere. But there isn’t such a place. Lately something very odd has been happening and you have no idea what it is. You could swear that the landscape has been subtlety altering itself from time to time. Not permanently, but it seems to look “wavy” or “warped” briefly. You initially chalk it up to your prolonged isolation and seeing things because of it, however you soon find out that it’s more than just your mind playing tricks on you. One day after you’ve done some hunting and bringing your catch back to your cave, you start noticing a severe slow down in your actions. “What the fuck…” you say to yourself, except it comes out a lot slower. You don’t experience for long, but the worst is yet to come. A portal opens up in the sky and you immediately feel ill. You see a creature that you’ve never seen before and it’s huge but it feels incredibly unnatural and it definitely isn’t of this world. The dead animal that you’re carrying suddenly melts into a black goo like substance. You jump back and nearly fall off the side of the mountain, which now feels like jelly under your feet rather than sturdy rock. You don’t know what’s going here and you don’t want to know. All you know is reality is starting to be seriously warped and you’re ready to puke. The tentacled creature doesn’t seem to notice you, it’s just surveying and floating in the air as the area around and beneath it changes. That still doesn’t mean it won’t attack eventually when it does notice you. You immediately attempt to use your amulet, but nothing is happening. The creature or something else is nullifying your magic item. Right now you’re caught out in the open, your cave is close, but you’re still not sure if you can get there in time and even if you do, would you be any safer? The other alternative is to make you way back down the mountain and try to escape that way. The problem with that plan is that everything is very wobbly right now and you’re not feeling very steady. > You run back down the mountain You’re having difficulty concentrating, but you decide that it would be better to distance yourself from the creature rather than trapping yourself in a cave. You attempt to head down the mountain, but you really are feel very sick and dizzy, in fact you’re beginning to feel worse. The ground underneath you doesn’t even feel like jelly now, you’re actually sinking into it like quicksand! “What the fu…” you say before a sudden powerful wave of nausea that hits you causes you to vomit immediately. You try to stop the sinking, but it’s futile and soon you’ve sank all the way it. Oddly you can still breathe; but the terrain has turned to worms and maggots. You can feel them crawling all over you, in your ears and every other orifice of your body. You begin to laugh insanely (while the maggots crawl all in it) since your mind has become severely warped at this point and madness has overtaken you as you sink further through the maggot mountain. You’re unsure of how long this goes on for since you’ve lost your mind, but whatever was going on eventually stops and everything returns to normal. Unfortunately that doesn’t really help you since you’re still in the mountain which has returned to solid rock where you are now completely embedded in. You die instantly, putting an end to your madness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Really, it’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense anymore. This war is lost there’s not even any doubt about it. Hope is fleeting and if this is truly it, then it’s going to be with the ones you did this for in the first place. Your small groups of soldiers wonder where you’re going and you flat out tell them, in fact you tell them more than that. “I’m going home, and I suggest if any of you have any family you go to them as well. This is it folks, there’s no happy ending here. It’s been a pleasure serving with all of you.” You then ride home as quickly as possible. The farm is scattered with undead. They attack and in some cases eat the livestock, while attempting to get into your house. Dead Zalan soldiers can be seen, except they aren’t properly dead like they should be. The farmhouse is being attacked and you can see your sister firing her pistol at the zombies from one of the broken windows. You trample a couple of the zombies with your horse and kill couple more with your bow, but eventually you dismount and chop up the remaining ones near the farm house, since you want to save your arrows for anything potentially more dangerous. “Quick get inside through this window, the door is barricaded.” your sister Randi shouts when she sees you. “No! It’s a death trap to stay now! This place is lost! You all have to come with me!” you shout back, keeping an eye on the advancing zombies. “Can’t Mom’s hurt pretty bad. Got stabbed by one those corpses. We can’t move her. Help’s gotta come soon…” “NO, it won’t Randi! The capitol of Zalan is being attacked as we speak! I came home to get your guys! This is the fucking end! We’ve lost! We just gotta…” You’re interrupted when you have to cut down an advancing zombie. Your sister fires a shot at another one. Suddenly a scream from the house is heard, followed by another. That has to be Calwin, and Makana. Randi rushes from the window and you cut down another zombie before bashing the door down with relative ease. More screaming is heard along with growling this time. You look around and run down the hallway where Randi is standing motionless. She’s dropped her pistol. You push her aside and see your other sister Makana dead on the floor and then a quick scan to the left and you see your mother eating Calwin. She’s one of those things… You act where Randi failed and give a killing blow to the thing that was once your mother. “I’m sorry.” You whisper and her blood splashes across your face. Now you’re ready to get the hell out of the house, but Randi is still standing there motionless. “COME ON! WE GOTTA GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!” you shout. “Yeah...okay…” Randi says and begins to move like she’s in slow motion and picks up her flintlock. You run past Randi in the hallway who’s still moving slowly. “Randi get your ass mov…” You hear a gunshot behind you. Followed by the slumping of a lifeless body. You don’t even turn around, you don’t want to see. When you get outside, surprisingly the undead haven’t become unmanageable yet, and you cut down another couple with relative ease. Your horse unfortunately has run off, you’re on foot from here. You don’t even know where to go. Where is it going to be safe? Nowhere, but you lack any other ideas, so you just head for unclaimed wilderness. After about a day of running, hiding and maneuvering, you’re in a relatively safe location and that’s when you finally allow yourself to grieve for the loss of your family. You weep. You’ve lost everything now. Everything you did was basically for them, and now they’re all gone. You don’t know if you can even continue. What would be the point? The world seems to be doomed anyway. But then after you think about it, you decide that if death is taking over the world, you’re not going to make it easy. Death has already taken everything away from you except your life, and you’re going to hold on to that as long as possible. You’re going to live for your family and all the others that can’t any longer. You’re going to survive, because ultimately that’s what you’ve always done. You’ve cheated death more than once already and you’ll continue to do it. Death itself is going to have to hunt you down if it wants your life. After reaching this conclusion, you try to think of where you should go next. Going to any type of centers of civilization is out of the question now. You’d only have to move again, them being targets now. So it’s the life of wanderer now. The question is where would be best? The forests aren’t exactly safe, but you’re more familiar with surviving in them. The mountains might be a little safer, but living in them is going to be a lot harsher. > You head to the mountains Better to get accustomed to them now, since you figure you might have to live in them in the future anyway. You head further north and traverse the harsh terrain. As far as undead are concerned you’re in no danger, however the mountain trolls and cragmaws living there are just as dangerous. You eventually find a suitable cave to live in. To keep yourself entertained you play your music in between your survival. It’s a rough life, but you persevere for a few years. Unfortunately the day comes when a particularly large mountain troll tribe decides to finally get organized enough to eliminate you from being a nuisance. You awaken one night to see several large figures enter your cave. You spring to action immediately, which causes the trolls to laugh. This buys you time to kill at least one of them, but only one. You’re outnumbered, trapped and there’s nowhere to hide. The trolls savagely butcher you and even smash your mandolin over your head before you head to permanent unconsciousness. The only good thing is that trolls do such a thorough job of eating your body that not even your bones are left to be reanimated when the Great Lich Lord’s influence reaches the area.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know that this is most likely a losing battle, but some hope might be gained, if you can somehow draw out the knights and specters and get them by themselves. As powerful as they are, they’re very hard to control even by necromancers and get easily agitated by living creatures. You can’t do it alone though. You take your best archers and a couple of your best wizards and mention your plan. You don’t ask for volunteers, you just assign. You’re in charge and you have to make the hard decisions, even if it might mean you’ll die. They don’t look enthused, but you aren’t either. You tell everyone else to hold their ground while you and your small platoon ride towards the horde. “Ready those blessed silvers men, and you robe wearers melt those dead tin cans!” You get close enough and you unleash as many blessed silver arrows as you can at the Blood Specters. You kill a few. The wizards don’t do quite as well with the knights. However, both attacks are enough. You see the Specters and Knights making whatever unearthly noises they do and begin to advance towards you far ahead of the slower yet steady moving horde. It apparent that the necromancer controlling them is attempting to bring them back under control, because they begin to squirm back and forth which gives you some more time to kill a few more during their confusion. Eventually the necromancer must give up total control because they stop squirming and advance upon you once again. You ride back as quickly as possible with the Specters and Knights in full pursuit. You didn’t expect those Specters to be so fast. A few of them manage to catch up to some of your men with grisly results. You yourself almost get smacked upside the head by a Death Knight mace. When you get back in range the rest of your awaiting army deals with your pursuers. More blessed arrows fly into the Blood Specters before they can do anymore harm, and eventually the Death Knights are brought down as well. There is no time for a reprieve though, as the main horde is now almost upon you. You order a regrouping as best you can, and face the enemy, telling if possible for someone to aim for the necromancer in all of this rotting mess. Bones and limbs from both sides are broken and hacked off. A zombie skull is smashed, splashing maggots, blood and brains all over you and you’re not even thinking about it. You just have a tune in your head to take yourself away from the massacre. Somehow in all of the chaos, you single out the necromancer leading this army, he stands a far piece away from the main fighting, but he’s arrogant enough to be close enough for you to hit him with an arrow. And you have to hit him now. You see a Grand Alliance soldier who just took a fatal blow to the chest begin to rise… Not many arrows left and not much time, you just load up and shoot, hoping you hit the bastard. Your shot is straight and true. It strikes the necromancer in the stomach, causing him to fall back, which in turn causes the undead horde to momentarily stop their vicious attacks, giving your side a chance to turn the tide a bit. Then you shoot another arrow when you see the necromancer attempt to get back up, which turns the tide completely in your favor. Zombies and skeletons fall. Ghouls flee at the loss of leadership and any remaining undead are quickly dispatched. You don’t take chances though. You walk up to the corpse of the necromancer and shoot your last arrow directly into his head and stab him a few times. You then start laughing. “If this was the Great Lich Lord, I’d be a real hero right now!” You quickly sober up from this macabre outburst when you hear shouting from some of your men and you look up. It’s another horde. Just as big. You look behind you and see that your own numbers are completely insufficient. The Garwold citizens are either mostly dead or demoralized at this point. Even when you win…you lose. Having no real options, you sound a retreat to fall back to the Zalan border and suggest that the Garwold citizens do likewise as there is nothing more for them here. The Garwold Confederacy is now just one more loss for the living. The Zalan Empire won’t be far behind. Three years pass… Ten years since the Nuro incident and The Grand Alliance is nearly just consisting of the Zalan Empire now, which in turn has had to adapt a siege mentality. There is no “going on the offensive” anymore. You’re purely on defense. Your brother Mallack died two years ago. Transferred to a location with more fighting due to lack of manpower. Like it matters. Didn’t even get to say goodbye. You can only hope he didn’t become one of those things…but you know he probably did. You’ve been urging your family to run where it’s safer, but of course they won’t budge. The undead have been penetrating deeper into Zalan territory, you know it’s only a matter of time before the Great Lich Lord decides to stop toying with you and makes his full scale attack. Sure enough it happens. Town after town is taken; you’re pushed back further and further, and you know there’s nothing you can do to stop it. An order is given to everyone to fallback to the capital and help defend it from an upcoming attack, but at this point you’re just wondering if the rest of your family is still alive. > You letters to home (Last letter...) Dear Mom, We’re falling back again. No surprise there. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, but not for any of reasons you’d know, so I’ll tell you. Normally this would be something I would’ve told Mallack, but since he’s dead, I feel like I should tell you. I really miss Mallack. I was in contact with a woman by the name of Helena. She was a traveling merchant who I met years ago during my tour in Retlad. We had a relationship of sorts I suppose. We met whenever she was in the area I was stationed in. Dunno why I never told you about her, I guess I just felt weird about telling you. Silly now that I think about it. Anyway, she was in the city of Edat a few months ago when it was utterly destroyed. I suggested that she should just stay in the Retlad province since the fighting wasn’t as bad there, but she said there was a big deal to be made in Edat, so she went. Reports say there were no survivors. Of course reports have been wrong before and I have used some of my connections to find out for certain but considering the carnage that occurred I hold little hope. I’ll miss her. I can only hope that like Mallack, she wasn’t turned into one of those things. The word “hero” gets thrown around far too much and I should know first hand, but I’ll use it here: Where are the “heroes” to stop this? Shouldn’t some party of adventurers been able to slip through the Great Lich Lord’s defenses and chop his head off by now? Wasn’t that how the first one was stopped? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to go? Where are the gods? Why aren’t the good ones doing something to stop the utter destruction of their worshippers?! Hell, the evil ones would even suffice at this point! I mean just to know that SOMETHING is looking out for us in some fashion! If they haven’t abandoned this world, they better do something quick, because I feel like we’re in the last hours here. Actually I think we’re on borrowed time. We’re getting a report that we might have to fall back to the heart of the empire soon. At this point I’m not sure if I’m even going to do it. I know I’ve been duty bound this long with only a few falters along the way, but now? In the face of extinction? What’s the point? Sure there may be nowhere to run from death, but perhaps I can evade him for as long as possible. But I haven’t forgotten about all of you. I’d never do that. Even if I have to drag you all out of that infernal farmhouse kicking and screaming. Leave a light on for me, I may be coming home. I love you all. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t take it anymore. “I’M NOT A FUCKING HERO! OKAY!? I NEVER WAS AND I NEVER WANTED TO BE! (sob)… I just wanted to go home…(sob)” You weep for a few minutes before the captain speaks again. “Alright then what happened? Tell me the entire truth and maybe you’ll avoid the executioner’s axe.” At this point you have little choice. You’re too distraught to say anything else. You give a relatively condensed version of what happened. At Nuro and what happened recently. Your encounter with Warnov seems to surprise her quite a bit. You also go on to explain that it was high ranking Zalan officers that insisted on this hero nonsense. She believes you, like she knows something of it. “(sigh) Yeah there’s a statue of my dad in the Zalan capitol…but I know better…” You don’t question anymore about this quiet outburst from her since you’re still too worried about what’s going to happen to you. “So why did you come back? You probably could’ve gotten away with it.” “The same reason why I joined. My family. I guess I just needed a reminder of that first hand. And if there’s any hope of changing the tide of this war with the undead then I need to stand by my decision of joining the Zalan Army and making the world safer for them.” Once again the captain seems to soften. She almost looks like she’s going to tear up as well, but she turns away. “My family…I…” are all she says before taking a deep breath and turning back towards you, with a serious mindset again. “Alright, I shall trust your word for now sergeant, but I will be watching you VERY carefully! Consider yourself lucky for evading death once again, perhaps you do have knack for avoiding it. Let us hope that luck rubs off on the rest of us in the upcoming battle. I’m putting you in charge of the Retlad archery platoon. They’ll probably like you. Dismissed.” Before you leave she says one last thing. “And sergeant, don’t listen to what that bizarre vampire said. We’re not going to become extinct. We’re going to win and survive a long time. Besides you still have to play that song for me.” As you leave you feel a sigh of relief that you won’t be dying just yet, but given that you’re heading into battle soon with the undead, you’re wondering if you just didn’t postpone the inevitable. Two years pass… Seven years since the Nuro Incident changed the world into this living hell. Your time served in the Grand Alliance has not really changed much. The Grand Alliance and the Zalan Empire are basically one of the same now thanks to the complete embrace of a totalitarian system. Might makes right. Nations like the Azi Republic protested, but there was little that they could, after all Zalan has been practically defending the world by itself for the past few years. You get the impression that if this war is won; the Zalan Empire is going to throw its hat in to be a one world government. Amazing how power and conspiracy is plotted even when it probably won’t happen. “Probably won’t” because your superiors and political leaders are a lot more “optimistic” about winning than you are, but then they haven’t had to face the horrors you’ve faced. And horrors are a completely accurate word. You’ve gotten over your fear of the undead, but it doesn’t make it any easier. You’re starting to lose ground. Everyday the living lose someone, the Great Lich Lord gains. It’s a question of numbers and quite frankly your side doesn’t have them. You sort of wish your old captain was here. She was a very good leader and inspirational, but then again that’s why she was made a general and sent elsewhere. She asked you to play that song before she left though. Somehow it seemed to make her sadder afterwards. “Captain, undead are on the move, they won’t be long now.” One of your messengers says. “Yes, I can sense it. Here. You head back to my home. You know where it is by now, and give this message to my family. If you get back here and see undead, well get the fuck out and run back to Zalan territory.” Being a captain hasn’t really turned you into a copy of the captains you served in the past, but then again you didn’t even think you’d ever be promoted to one. Your reign as one has been a little unorthodox as you’ve applied more guerilla tactics than traditional ones, but given your assignment and your background it makes a hell of a lot more sense. You’re currently stationed on what remains of the Garwold Confederacy. It was a relatively peaceful nation made up mostly of Halflings and Gnomes, with lush green fields and flowers. Now it’s just slowly becoming another massive graveyard and example of genocide. You’ve gotten to know quite a few of them and you’re always amazed of how they can keep their sense of humor in the face of utter destruction. One of them actually gives you an answer. “To keep from crying.” Indeed. You’ve been playing quite a bit when you’re not battling the undead. (The Garwold citizens enjoy your playing a lot) It’s gotten to the point where you don’t just play anymore to keep your mind off of things, it’s like it transports you to a different world. A better world. If only. You often wonder how your brother Mallack is doing. He’s been stationed in a relatively safer location back in Zalan territory. You’re guessing that it lowers the odds of having your mom lose both of her sons at the same time. Like it makes it any better if she lost them within any length on time of each other. You wonder if the war is going to go on long enough that by the time Calwin grows up he’ll be drafted as well. If he even gets the chance to grow up. You can’t think about it now. A massive undead horde is coming and there’s no where left to hide. There will be open battle and you need to stay focused. You go through the whole order thing, and making sure your strategy is sound. You wish you had more wizards, but they seem to be in shorter supply these days. It’s almost like they’re being targeted deliberately sometimes…actually you don’t think it, you KNOW that they are. You see the undead horde approach. You look through some new fangled dwarven invention called an eye piece and see something makes your job a hell of a lot worse. You don’t just see the usual undead. You see fully armored Death Knights. Harder to kill than even a zombie giant. You see Blood Specters. Dark crimson spirits that can cause their victims to bleed from every orifice with their shrieks. Both of those are at the head of this horde, and this isn’t even counting that you’re severely outnumbered by just the regular zombies, skeletons, ghosts and the like. > You stand your ground You need to have a fully cohesive unit you think. “Ready those blessed silvers men, and you robe wearers melt those dead tin cans!” you order. Arrows fly towards the Blood Specters first seeing as they’re your greatest threat, the wizards unleash magic attack on the Death Knights. Your side manages to eliminate most of them before the horde reaches you. Unfortunately this isn’t enough. While your side fights valiantly, you’re outnumbered as usual and don’t really have the raw power to at least fight them off properly. Indeed that’s been the whole problem with the Garwold defense. Gnomes and Halflings have never been the best fighters in a straight up battle. Doesn’t take long before your dead are rising to join the enemy. You attempt to target the enemy necromancer, but you can’t get a clear shot, and it won’t help with the second dead army that is now heading over the hill now. You sound a retreat, but you won’t be joining few survivors left as a Death Knight smashes you in the side of the head with a swing of his fail. You fall to the ground dazed and bloody. As you attempt to get up, your mind begins to fill music. A little tune to take you away from this place… You look up just in time to see a blurry outline of the Death Knight who finishes the job and crushes your skull completely.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t take it anymore. “I’M NOT A FUCKING HERO! OKAY!? I NEVER WAS AND I NEVER WANTED TO BE! (sob)… I just wanted to go home…(sob)” You weep for a few minutes before the captain speaks again. “Alright then what happened? Tell me the entire truth and maybe you’ll avoid the executioner’s axe.” At this point you have little choice. You’re too distraught to say anything else. You give a relatively condensed version of what happened. At Nuro and what happened recently. Your encounter with Warnov seems to surprise her quite a bit. You also go on to explain that it was high ranking Zalan officers that insisted on this hero nonsense. She believes you, like she knows something of it. “(sigh) Yeah there’s a statue of my dad in the Zalan capitol…but I know better…” You don’t question anymore about this quiet outburst from her since you’re still too worried about what’s going to happen to you. “So why did you come back? You probably could’ve gotten away with it.” “The same reason why I joined. My family. I guess I just needed a reminder of that first hand. And if there’s any hope of changing the tide of this war with the undead then I need to stand by my decision of joining the Zalan Army and making the world safer for them.” Once again the captain seems to soften. She almost looks like she’s going to tear up as well, but she turns away. “My family…I…” are all she says before taking a deep breath and turning back towards you, with a serious mindset again. “Alright, I shall trust your word for now sergeant, but I will be watching you VERY carefully! Consider yourself lucky for evading death once again, perhaps you do have knack for avoiding it. Let us hope that luck rubs off on the rest of us in the upcoming battle. I’m putting you in charge of the Retlad archery platoon. They’ll probably like you. Dismissed.” Before you leave she says one last thing. “And sergeant, don’t listen to what that bizarre vampire said. We’re not going to become extinct. We’re going to win and survive a long time. Besides you still have to play that song for me.” As you leave you feel a sigh of relief that you won’t be dying just yet, but given that you’re heading into battle soon with the undead, you’re wondering if you just didn’t postpone the inevitable. Two years pass… Seven years since the Nuro Incident changed the world into this living hell. Your time served in the Grand Alliance has not really changed much. The Grand Alliance and the Zalan Empire are basically one of the same now thanks to the complete embrace of a totalitarian system. Might makes right. Nations like the Azi Republic protested, but there was little that they could, after all Zalan has been practically defending the world by itself for the past few years. You get the impression that if this war is won; the Zalan Empire is going to throw its hat in to be a one world government. Amazing how power and conspiracy is plotted even when it probably won’t happen. “Probably won’t” because your superiors and political leaders are a lot more “optimistic” about winning than you are, but then they haven’t had to face the horrors you’ve faced. And horrors are a completely accurate word. You’ve gotten over your fear of the undead, but it doesn’t make it any easier. You’re starting to lose ground. Everyday the living lose someone, the Great Lich Lord gains. It’s a question of numbers and quite frankly your side doesn’t have them. You sort of wish your old captain was here. She was a very good leader and inspirational, but then again that’s why she was made a general and sent elsewhere. She asked you to play that song before she left though. Somehow it seemed to make her sadder afterwards. “Captain, undead are on the move, they won’t be long now.” One of your messengers says. “Yes, I can sense it. Here. You head back to my home. You know where it is by now, and give this message to my family. If you get back here and see undead, well get the fuck out and run back to Zalan territory.” Being a captain hasn’t really turned you into a copy of the captains you served in the past, but then again you didn’t even think you’d ever be promoted to one. Your reign as one has been a little unorthodox as you’ve applied more guerilla tactics than traditional ones, but given your assignment and your background it makes a hell of a lot more sense. You’re currently stationed on what remains of the Garwold Confederacy. It was a relatively peaceful nation made up mostly of Halflings and Gnomes, with lush green fields and flowers. Now it’s just slowly becoming another massive graveyard and example of genocide. You’ve gotten to know quite a few of them and you’re always amazed of how they can keep their sense of humor in the face of utter destruction. One of them actually gives you an answer. “To keep from crying.” Indeed. You’ve been playing quite a bit when you’re not battling the undead. (The Garwold citizens enjoy your playing a lot) It’s gotten to the point where you don’t just play anymore to keep your mind off of things, it’s like it transports you to a different world. A better world. If only. You often wonder how your brother Mallack is doing. He’s been stationed in a relatively safer location back in Zalan territory. You’re guessing that it lowers the odds of having your mom lose both of her sons at the same time. Like it makes it any better if she lost them within any length on time of each other. You wonder if the war is going to go on long enough that by the time Calwin grows up he’ll be drafted as well. If he even gets the chance to grow up. You can’t think about it now. A massive undead horde is coming and there’s no where left to hide. There will be open battle and you need to stay focused. You go through the whole order thing, and making sure your strategy is sound. You wish you had more wizards, but they seem to be in shorter supply these days. It’s almost like they’re being targeted deliberately sometimes…actually you don’t think it, you KNOW that they are. You see the undead horde approach. You look through some new fangled dwarven invention called an eye piece and see something makes your job a hell of a lot worse. You don’t just see the usual undead. You see fully armored Death Knights. Harder to kill than even a zombie giant. You see Blood Specters. Dark crimson spirits that can cause their victims to bleed from every orifice with their shrieks. Both of those are at the head of this horde, and this isn’t even counting that you’re severely outnumbered by just the regular zombies, skeletons, ghosts and the like. > You letters to home (Grand Alliance...) Dear Mom, Well I’m sure you’ve heard by now that I’m officially part of the Grand Alliance. I don’t know just how to feel about it either. How I even got roped into it, is all by chance and luck. That seems to be a staple in my life. I tried to desert the army once and I ended up getting promoted. I do it again, and even get called on it and I get even more responsibility! The world has gone completely mad. I’m sure of it now. Though who knows for how long. The woman responsible for putting me in my new position says we’re going to win, but as each day wears on, I lose faith that we will. I’ve gotten over my fear of death and the undead, but now it’s been replaced by a numbness to it. I don’t know if that’s worse. I heard about Mallack getting drafted. I sure hope he’ll be okay. And I hope you’ll be able to manage the farm without him, but I guess you’ll be alright now that the government has taken control of the farm. I really wish that hadn’t happened, but what can we do right? At least you won’t need to protect the livestock anymore with all the guard patrolling it though. It would seem the Zalan Empire is everywhere nowadays though. Well, everywhere there isn’t undead of course. We’re going to try to retake the Brot Kingdom soon, dunno if it’ll be successful. Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can’t take it anymore. “I’M NOT A FUCKING HERO! OKAY!? I NEVER WAS AND I NEVER WANTED TO BE! (sob)… I just wanted to go home…(sob)” You weep for a few minutes before the captain speaks again. “Alright then what happened? Tell me the entire truth and maybe you’ll avoid the executioner’s axe.” At this point you have little choice. You’re too distraught to say anything else. You give a relatively condensed version of what happened. At Nuro and what happened recently. Your encounter with Warnov seems to surprise her quite a bit. You also go on to explain that it was high ranking Zalan officers that insisted on this hero nonsense. She believes you, like she knows something of it. “(sigh) Yeah there’s a statue of my dad in the Zalan capitol…but I know better…” You don’t question anymore about this quiet outburst from her since you’re still too worried about what’s going to happen to you. “So why did you come back? You probably could’ve gotten away with it.” “The same reason why I joined. My family. I guess I just needed a reminder of that first hand. And if there’s any hope of changing the tide of this war with the undead then I need to stand by my decision of joining the Zalan Army and making the world safer for them.” Once again the captain seems to soften. She almost looks like she’s going to tear up as well, but she turns away. “My family…I…” are all she says before taking a deep breath and turning back towards you, with a serious mindset again. “Alright, I shall trust your word for now sergeant, but I will be watching you VERY carefully! Consider yourself lucky for evading death once again, perhaps you do have knack for avoiding it. Let us hope that luck rubs off on the rest of us in the upcoming battle. I’m putting you in charge of the Retlad archery platoon. They’ll probably like you. Dismissed.” Before you leave she says one last thing. “And sergeant, don’t listen to what that bizarre vampire said. We’re not going to become extinct. We’re going to win and survive a long time. Besides you still have to play that song for me.” As you leave you feel a sigh of relief that you won’t be dying just yet, but given that you’re heading into battle soon with the undead, you’re wondering if you just didn’t postpone the inevitable. Two years pass… Seven years since the Nuro Incident changed the world into this living hell. Your time served in the Grand Alliance has not really changed much. The Grand Alliance and the Zalan Empire are basically one of the same now thanks to the complete embrace of a totalitarian system. Might makes right. Nations like the Azi Republic protested, but there was little that they could, after all Zalan has been practically defending the world by itself for the past few years. You get the impression that if this war is won; the Zalan Empire is going to throw its hat in to be a one world government. Amazing how power and conspiracy is plotted even when it probably won’t happen. “Probably won’t” because your superiors and political leaders are a lot more “optimistic” about winning than you are, but then they haven’t had to face the horrors you’ve faced. And horrors are a completely accurate word. You’ve gotten over your fear of the undead, but it doesn’t make it any easier. You’re starting to lose ground. Everyday the living lose someone, the Great Lich Lord gains. It’s a question of numbers and quite frankly your side doesn’t have them. You sort of wish your old captain was here. She was a very good leader and inspirational, but then again that’s why she was made a general and sent elsewhere. She asked you to play that song before she left though. Somehow it seemed to make her sadder afterwards. “Captain, undead are on the move, they won’t be long now.” One of your messengers says. “Yes, I can sense it. Here. You head back to my home. You know where it is by now, and give this message to my family. If you get back here and see undead, well get the fuck out and run back to Zalan territory.” Being a captain hasn’t really turned you into a copy of the captains you served in the past, but then again you didn’t even think you’d ever be promoted to one. Your reign as one has been a little unorthodox as you’ve applied more guerilla tactics than traditional ones, but given your assignment and your background it makes a hell of a lot more sense. You’re currently stationed on what remains of the Garwold Confederacy. It was a relatively peaceful nation made up mostly of Halflings and Gnomes, with lush green fields and flowers. Now it’s just slowly becoming another massive graveyard and example of genocide. You’ve gotten to know quite a few of them and you’re always amazed of how they can keep their sense of humor in the face of utter destruction. One of them actually gives you an answer. “To keep from crying.” Indeed. You’ve been playing quite a bit when you’re not battling the undead. (The Garwold citizens enjoy your playing a lot) It’s gotten to the point where you don’t just play anymore to keep your mind off of things, it’s like it transports you to a different world. A better world. If only. You often wonder how your brother Mallack is doing. He’s been stationed in a relatively safer location back in Zalan territory. You’re guessing that it lowers the odds of having your mom lose both of her sons at the same time. Like it makes it any better if she lost them within any length on time of each other. You wonder if the war is going to go on long enough that by the time Calwin grows up he’ll be drafted as well. If he even gets the chance to grow up. You can’t think about it now. A massive undead horde is coming and there’s no where left to hide. There will be open battle and you need to stay focused. You go through the whole order thing, and making sure your strategy is sound. You wish you had more wizards, but they seem to be in shorter supply these days. It’s almost like they’re being targeted deliberately sometimes…actually you don’t think it, you KNOW that they are. You see the undead horde approach. You look through some new fangled dwarven invention called an eye piece and see something makes your job a hell of a lot worse. You don’t just see the usual undead. You see fully armored Death Knights. Harder to kill than even a zombie giant. You see Blood Specters. Dark crimson spirits that can cause their victims to bleed from every orifice with their shrieks. Both of those are at the head of this horde, and this isn’t even counting that you’re severely outnumbered by just the regular zombies, skeletons, ghosts and the like. > You letters to home (Battle at Garwold...) Dear Mom, I’m still in Garwold and each day I see more of this once beautiful land die under the hordes of the Great Lich Lord. I wish I could’ve seen this place before all of this. I think I probably could’ve made a living here as a bard under different circumstances. Playing for the downtrodden militias and fleeing refugees during the few free moments is one of the few pleasures I get anymore. We’re expecting a big undead push soon, and I don’t see how we can hold on to the remaining territory we have left here. I know you probably won’t, but if we lose Garwold, I want you and the rest of the family to SERIOUSLY consider abandoning the farm. It’s not even ours anymore. Why stay there in the face of oncoming danger? But I know you’ll probably stay regardless. Maybe it doesn’t matter, because at this point where is there to run? Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Now you have to figure out a plan that’s going to prevent you from getting executed. You figure your brother’s plan isn’t exactly a bad one. Your record is good enough that you’d probably be believed. You think up a lie explaining that you were captured by a particularly sadistic vampire who was planning on draining you slowly to keep you as ongoing food. He took you to a cave in the hills where you barely killed him and escaped with your life. You would’ve made your way back sooner, but there were large groups of marauding orc raiders and demons escaping the ruins of the former Tulan kingdom that caused you to be extra cautious and forced you to hide for a few days. Yep, that sounds good. You head out with the plan of meeting up with Captain Eckard’s company which is surely at the Tulan Kingdom now. Eventually you reach the same town you were at when you made your decision to try to leave. You find it occupied right now, it’s not your company, so you’re about to press on, but someone on patrol sees you. “HALT! Where are you supposed to be soldier?!” “Oh…uh…” you say getting caught off guard. You mentally curse yourself for not being more aware. “Speak up! Wow, you look a little worse for wear…what company are you with?” “I was with Captain Eckard…but…” “Captain Eckard’s company? Holy shit! We thought they all got killed! The undead reached the Tulan capital first and ambushed them! But why am I telling you? You were there! You must’ve just barely escaped! Don’t worry; you can avenge your friends, we’re gathering strength to attack soon!” You don’t believe this… The guard begins speaking to you excitedly and asking you how you escaped. You just continue to say you don’t know, it all became a blur when the ambush occurred and how you attempted to fight, but it was just too much. The guard sympathizes and tells you that you can explain more to his captain. You notice he isn’t wearing Zalan armor, he’s wearing Azi Republic armor. You can only assume that perhaps this is a Grand Alliance company. Your ideas come true when you do indeed notice several kinds of troop types, though the Zalan Empire soldiers seem to be leading, as the captain is wearing the armor. Your heart sinks when you recognize her and she recognizes you. It was years ago, but you both remember. “…what are you doing here?” the female captain asks. “Last I heard you were in Captain Eckard’s company. A company that was reported to be wiped out completely. Have you managed to avoid death once again? You are the lucky one aren’t you?” Suddenly surrounding soldiers start to recognize you more closely. The Zalan ones especially. “Holy shit it’s him! You fuckin’ survived not one but TWO overwhelming undead hordes! We gotta take him captain, he’s obviously good luck!” the guard says a little misguidedly. “Good luck? If you haven’t noticed, only HE seems to be getting out alive on these things! I’d say he’s bad luck!” someone else says. “Nonsense! I heard how he’s killed countless demons with his bow! We could use someone like that in our next attack.” another says. “Isn’t he the guy that plays the lute really well?” A few people start arguing until the female captain speaks again. “ENOUGH! I’ll handle this. You in my office now, I’ll speak with you in private. And for the rest of you, get ready to move out. We’re attacking tomorrow.” She turns away and enters a building; you slowly follow, while everyone else disperses. When you enter the wrecked “office” she closes the door and tells you to sit down, but she doesn’t. Instead she stares at you hard at you and draws her sword. “Okay Mr. Survivor. Convince me.” “Convince you of what?” “Convince me that you aren’t some fucking undead spy!” “WHAT?! How? I mean…” “Easy! In the two encounters you had with the undead on any major scale, you’ve been the only one to survive. Once, maybe. But twice? Mighty suspicious…” “But I mean…I’m not undead! Look I even walk around in the daylight, I’m not even pale!” “I didn’t say you were undead, I said you were a spy. There are few of those misguided traitors that think their necromancer overlords will be kind to them, by killing them last. Madness.” “But I’m not a spy! I killed…” you begin to stutter under pressure. ”Yeah, yeah, you killed demons. Big deal. The undead and demons weren’t friends either. What better way to be a spy than to make yourself a hero?” “But I’m not…” “You’re not what?” “I’m not…” “What? More lies? Spit out the truth spy!” she demands pointing her sword at your throat. > You attempt to lie Quickly remembering the lie you thought up on the way, you sputter it out with some stress. “I…I was captured by a vampire! A really fucking sadistic one! He killed my scouting party and took me to say he was going to drain me slowly for fun! He took me to some cave in the hills and it was only by luck that I managed to kill him and escape! I would’ve made my way back sooner, but their were large groups of marauding orc raiders and demons escaping the ruins of the former Tulan Kingdom, so I was extra cautious and…” At this point the Captain bashes you in the head with the hilt of her sword. You fall off the chair and onto the floor. “LIAR! You expect me to believe this horse shit? I’ve had patrols going all through this area and there aren’t any orcs in the damn area. They all fled further north long ago and the remaining demons mostly ran to the west! Not to mention the closest hills have no caves! You obviously think so low of me that you thought you could fool me OR you’re just a complete idiot as well as a coward! Either way you haven’t convinced me, and you’re fit only for execution! You’re a deserter at best and a spy at worst!” “No…wait…” are your last words before the Captain severs your head from your body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Last time you were wounded and had the misfortune of running into demons. Well you aren’t wounded this time and you’re pretty sure you won’t be running into too many more demons. You’ll be able to pull it off this time. You can’t do this army shit anymore, as much as you want to help your family out, you’ve got to live your own life regardless of what the future holds. You aren’t even worried about committing an executionable offense. You easily sneak away as you hear your men call out your name looking for you. You’re glad you didn’t leave too much back at the fort, except your lute, but you’ve got your newly acquired mandolin to make up for it. Eventually you’re away from civilization altogether. While you’re out in the wilderness you think about your family again, and you have to at least let them know you’re still alive. Maybe you can still do something about them, after all it doesn’t sound like the Zalan Empire is becoming a great place to live anymore. Perhaps you could convince them to move? It takes a week of sneaking around and keeping out of sight, but eventually you make it back home. Zalan looks a lot different; hell home looks a lot different. There was a small wooded area near your farm, but most of the trees have been cut down now. You also remember fewer patrols. Your house looks in better condition however. You guess at least your family seems a lot safer, but for how long? You knock on the door in the middle of the night and your sister Randi answers, Not too surprising as she always was a night owl when she was little. At least she used to be little. The passing of the years and she’s now a teenager and grown quite a bit. You’ve been away so long. What does surprise you is the flintlock pistol that she’s currently pointing at you! “Whoa! Hold on! It’s me, your brother!” you say. “…it is? It is you!” she exclaims and puts down the gun before hugging you. “What the hell are you doing with a pistol?” “The money you sent us allowed to buy new things you know and a traveling merchant was selling this for cheap!” “No I mean, what are YOU doing with one? You’ll blow your damn head off with that thing! Those things are unstable.” You scold. “What are you doing home? Are you on leave?” “Uh…that’s a long story. Wake up the rest of the family; I have to talk to you all.” Randi complies while you step inside the house and take in its new look. Eventually your Mom enters, followed by your brother Mallack and finally your youngest brother Calwin and sister Makana. You all sit down at the dining room table. (You realize you haven’t done that with your family in years) and you tell them everything. You get a lot of worried reactions. More for you than the other world impending doom stuff though. At least you know that they care. “You gotta get back to the army right now! Say you got captured by something and it took you awhile to escape!” Mallack exclaims. “While I’m sure that MAY work, I just don’t want to do it…I can’t take this anymore. The whole time I’ve been in the damn army, my music has kept me sane. I’ve noticed it have an effect on others as well. Never thought it would. I mean I have talent and…” “…you feel like you’ve wasted your life?” your mother replies. You pause for a moment. You almost want to say yes, but you can’t even if you wanted to. You haven’t wasted it, its just you’ve never really had the chance to do what you’ve ever wanted to do. “No…I guess I haven’t… it’s just…” Your mother takes your hand and speaks to you. “I know. It’s not fair. It’s not right. Life isn’t fair and it’s starting to get a whole lot less fair. I know I’ve mentioned it in letters to you, but the Zalan Empire WILL be taking the farm…and it’s looking like Mallack’s going to be drafted if things are going the way they seem to be.” “But…see that’s what I’m saying! We could all move! I mean of course I have to go into hiding, maybe Mallack could come with me. And the rest of you could use what money you have left and move to Retlad! It’s a nice place. It’s away from most of the fighting, and there aren’t anymore Quillars there!” Your mother shakes her head. “You must be behind in the news, because Retlad is finally going to become part of the Zalan Empire soon, so going there to live wouldn’t make any difference. The Empire can take this farm, but in spirit this will ALWAYS be ours. The Empire has said they will allow us to continue working it and living on the land and even if they didn’t they’d have have to drag us all out and stick our heads on pikes before we’d leave. Your father and his father build this farm up to what it is. Our family is going to be here until the end.” “That’s what I’m afraid of…what about you Mallack? You’re probably going to be drafted. You aren’t worried about that?” “Sure I am. But what am I going to do, run? Where? From what you described you practically think the whole world is doomed anyway! I might as well take some of the undead bastards out before I go. I was getting bored of the farm anyway. Let Randi take over! Ha ha!” Your mother addresses you again. “Son, you know our family. We’ve always done the right thing, even if it doesn’t coincide with what we want…I think you know what you have to do.” And so you do. So you do. You spend one night with your family and make the most of it. You all laugh and joke, trying to put all the problems of the world out of your mind and of course before you leave you play a song for them. Eventually you hug them all goodbye and take your leave. More than a few tears are shed on both sides. > You go into hiding As much as you still want to help out your family, you have to live your own life while there is still time. They’ll still get money from your supposed death and they know you’re still alive. You figure this will be the last time you see them though, as you can’t risk contacting them anymore. The first order of business is to change your identity as much as you can. And head to a place where you can play for an audience, but the probability of someone ratting you out is low if you’re recognized. You head to the Garwold Confederacy. It’s a relatively peaceful nation made up mostly of Halflings and Gnomes, with lush green fields and flowers. They’ve surprisingly managed to stay out of most of the fighting; only volunteering a few of their militia and illusionists to the Grand Alliance. They’re also known to appreciate the simpler things in life. Eventually you make a place for yourself there in one of the small villages. You make a living playing at the local tavern there. Most of the patrons know that you have some sort of past that you’re trying to hide from. Some of them and the owner know that you’re that Zalan “hero” that they’ve heard about. But just like you thought, they don’t bring it up or say anything about it and just enjoy your music. A year passes and you’re happy. Nobody from the Zalan Empire comes looking for you, as it’s assumed you’re dead and everyone’s too busy fighting the undead for the most part. When the Grand Alliance armies pass through, you keep a low profile though. You even meet a pretty Halfling girl to be with. The next year isn’t so pretty however. The Great Lich Lord’s armies have been defeating the Grand Alliance’s attempts to stop them and now those armies finally turn their attention to the Garwold Confederacy. Within a month half of Garwold has been turned into a graveyard. The Grand Alliance as well as the Garwold militia have been doing their best, but it’s not going to be enough. You help defend the little village that you’ve made your home in and you can’t afford to keep a low profile anymore despite the Grand Alliance presence (Which is now mainly made up of Zalan Empire troops) but it hardly matters at this point. Survival of the living is You make plans to leave, and to try to convince your girlfriend and your other new friends that you’ve made here to leave as well. You know they’re all very home bound, but tomorrow you’re going to really try. Unfortunately a group of Blood Specters attacks the village that night. You awaken to hear blood curling screams ring throughout the village. You look out the window and see the vile red ghosts stalking the streets. You’ve become too attached to these people to not help; you immediately grab your weapons and prepare for battle. You head to your girlfriend’s home first, but sadly she’s already been killed and completely drained of blood. You don’t have time to morn as you’re immediately attacked by the Blood Specter that was still lingering in the house. You manage to kill it with a couple silver arrows, but its dying shrieks alert others to your area. You slay a couple more of them as you try to look for the necromancer who has to be in the area to even control these creatures, but you can’t keep your eye on all the incorporeal creatures and you suddenly feel a slight pain in your back which reaches forward into your heart as one of them thrusts its hand into you to drain your blood. You collapse soon after, only to rise later to join the ranks of the ever growing undead armies.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you’ve learned one thing, numbers doesn’t necessarily imply safety. With all the years of patrolling you’ve done along with your previous actions in Retlad so long ago, you actually feel more comfortable in smaller groups at this point. Your one and only rank and file battle didn’t go well. Your choice isn’t surprising, if anything more people feel comfortable with you scouting ahead. As you journey further into former Tulan territory, you don’t encounter too much resistance. A few demons and crazed followers here and there, but nothing you can’t take care of. It also occurs to you how “planted” you’ve been for the past five years. While it’s true you did leave the fort a lot, you never ventured far from it. This is first time you’ve actually traveled. Ironic, since one of the reasons why you joined the army was the possibility of traveling to interesting places. However, it seems like you only visit these interesting places after they’re already destroyed. You’re basically seeing the aftermath of the demon occupation. It sort of reminds you of what you’d seen back in Retlad when the Quillars were killing folks except the landscape is in even worse condition. The demons weren’t content on just corrupting their mortal slaves; they were attempting to turn the entire land into their infernal realm. You can only imagine what sort of hell was going on while they were actually here. You get to a small town that’s completely wrecked and seemingly deserted. Its night time and normally you’d go back and wait until morning to scout it, but Captain Eckard is insistent on getting to the former Tulan capital as quick as possible. You split up into small groups to scout the town quicker and tell everyone that if they come across anything more then they can handle, to run and alert everyone else. You go building to building not really encountering much of anything. Not even survivors. Lots of half eaten dead bodies in various states of torment though. You expect when Velzix was killed the whole realm descended into anarchy pretty quickly and the demons reverted back to their chaotic natures causing as much mayhem as possible without too much repercussion. You enter a shop with two of your other team members. You hear a creaking sound, which doesn’t sound good. One of your team members goes a little further in, and it gets louder. “Step back! The floors is…” you utter and then a large portion of the floor collapses underneath him. You attempt to grab his hand, but fail and the rest of the floor collapses underneath you as well. You don’t fall too far, but you definitely feel it. You recover as quick as you can and hear your other subordinate who managed to avoid falling through the floor. “Sarge! Are you alright?” Private Ramusen shouts. “Yeah, yeah private. I’m just a little bruised.” “What about Gannon? Is he alright?” You take your tinder box and make a small light. You look around and see that you must be in the basement of some sort of music shop from all the instruments you see. You didn’t even notice when you first entered the place, it just looked like any other ransacked shop. Upon further inspection you see a body lying on the floor. It’s Private Gannon and he’s dead. He didn’t land in the “good way” you did and broke his neck. “He’s dead.” You call up to Ramusen. “Shit! He’s fuckin’ dead?” “Yeah private, I just said he was! Now let me get the hell out of here…fuck! The damn stairs are completely destroyed. I can’t climb up, or even attempt a jump. Ramusen, throw down a rope and make sure you really secure it!” While you wait for Ramusen to complete this task, you take a look at some of the instruments. Lots of flutes and other wind instruments that don’t interest you. You grab an old looking mandolin. It’s definitely human design, but it seems very ornate though, must’ve been a specialty piece that wasn’t for sale. You pluck at the strings and despite the dirt, grime, and neglect of the instrument; it still manages to produce a fairly pleasing tone. You play for a good five minutes before you realize that Ramusen hasn’t thrown down the rope yet. “Private?” is all you utter, when you hear the slumping of a lifeless body, followed by a low voice. “Beautiful…” You grab your bow, when you see a dark figure loom above you. You fire, but miss due to the figure dodging quicker than anything you’ve ever encountered before. It doesn’t help that this same figure has jumped down the hole beside you before you can blink. You’re standing right before the figure now. He has a pale, but familiar face, though the blood around the mouth is new and not encouraging. He knocks the bow out of your hand, but does nothing else to you. You wouldn’t be quick enough to draw your sword given what you’ve seen. In fact right now, all you’re feeling is fear. “Almost hit me…you would’ve made a good addition. Maybe you could’ve even…no. Nobody can. This world is lost now and soon my kind won’t even be around to guide your kind to combat the inevitable anymore…” Warnov says. “What…what are you talking about?” you ask unsure what’s going to happen next. Warnov looks as if he could tell you more than you’d ever want to know about lots of things, but instead he just shakes his head. “Nevermind human. Telling you the whole story would not help you anyway. Perhaps it’s best you hadn’t joined us, seeing as I have been marked now. It won’t be long before the rest of my kind are hunted down. He’s really quite pissed at us, and worse, he can sense us you see…(sigh) I can only imagine what he did to poor Count Rostov…” “Who’s pissed?” “Who do you think human? The Necro…I mean the Great Lich Lord of course. Oh yes. He’s back…and this one isn’t going to lose like the last one did so long ago.” You’re not following all of Warnov’s cryptic speak, but if the last bit he’s said is true, he’s scared the hell out of you more than he has with his actions. Warnov grabs your shoulder and looks into your eyes. “I do not envy your fate human…the extinction of your species will soon follow my own. My advice to you? Live human! Live while you can, for eventually this whole world will be dead and under his complete control.” Sensing that he’s brought enough doom and gloom to you, he relents and steps back. “Play me a song human.” He says catching you off guard. “…what did you want to hear?” you ask shakily. “I don’t know…anything. Play what you were playing before.” You slowly pick up the dropped mandolin and begin playing the song that you were playing before and you play as if your life depended on it, though you get the impression that Warnov has no intention on killing you. He sits quietly listening in the darkness, after finishing the song; he leaps back up through the hole. “Beautiful…such talent…such a waste…” A rope is thrown down and the sounds of feet running off are then heard. You wait a minute and then climb up the rope, taking the mandolin with you. You see private Ramusen lying nearby with his throat ripped out and thoroughly drained of blood. You’re also just in time to hear other members of your group coming to your position when you exit the shop. What the hell are you supposed to tell them? Death to the world, reborn lich lords…you start thinking, what’s the point of all this? Maybe Warnov was right, maybe you should LIVE while there’s still time. Granted his information is spotty, but you can’t help but thinking he’s probably more informed on the situation than most people. You’ve pondered it several times before, and you’ve even attempted it once, but deserting is looking very desirable again. In this day and age, who’s going to know if were killed or not? > You letters to home (Moving out from Virtue...) Dear Mom, This will be a quick letter, we’re moving out and I can’t say I’m thrilled with it. Last time I wrote, I was talking about how bad the recent demon attacks were, well I’m sure you already heard about the demon lord Velzix being killed. I suppose this is a good thing, since its one less enemy to worry about, but I’m being sent to retake the lands previously owned by him and reports say the Necromancer is as well. I still haven’t gotten completely over what happened at Nuro. I need to be strong though since I’m probably going to be doing a lot of combat with the undead in the future. Oddly I’m not even worried about myself so much right now; I’m more concerned about you guys. I know the Zalan Empire has been creating a lot of rules lately. Talks of seizing private property and drafts cause me to worry about you all. Never thought that on the eve of possibly facing undead hordes again, it’s our own government that I have concerns about. Argh! This is something I’d rather discuss with you in person, of course if I ever got a chance to visit every once in awhile! Okay, the Captain’s starting to call everyone. Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to admit, the idea has crossed your mind a bit. A small part of you does wonder about embracing the whole hero image and deliberately doing grand deeds that go beyond the call of your duty. You suppose that you’d at least really feel like one if you did that. However, more often than not real heroes don’t live long. You’re wondering what exactly this Mr. Warnov has in mind for you and given his demeanor, his appearance and just your own feelings of uncertainty about him, you decline. You know your limitations even if others don’t see them. So, no you won’t be hunting down some artifact of unlimited power and then single handedly taking out a Demon Lord or Necromancer Lord in their own throne room. “No, I don’t think so Mr. Warnov. As I’ve often said, I’m no hero. I’m just doing my job and providing for my family.” Mr. Warnov looks disappointed and sighs, but accepts your decision. “Very well. This is a shame though. Despite your humble birth you seem to have lots of potential. You could’ve made an excellent addition to our…organization. I’ve also heard your lute playing wasn’t bad either, we don’t have any musically talented types anymore…oh well.” Mr. Warnov leaves rather quickly after his last statement. Something about him seemed very odd and you’re sort of glad you didn’t take his offer. You go back to your target practice for awhile when you suddenly hear an alarm cry out loudly through the fort about a small demon army being sighted over the hill. “Well back to work…” you say and prepare for battle once again. Two years pass… It’s been five years since the Nuro Incident and things have gotten worse. Both the Necromancer Lord and Velzix have made progress. Too much. The Grand Alliance hasn’t been able to do anything except fight them to a stalemate. All three sides are looking to gain an advantage and somehow you don’t think it’ll be yours. The Zalan Empire has become increasingly totalitarian. It’s been increasing its influence over how the Grand Alliance should be run and its strategies. Some of Zalan’s officers have been transferred to become more prominent in leading and commanding the bulk of the Grand Alliance army. You’re not sure if this isn’t a bad idea. Bullying or not, one final voice in matters would probably help the Grand Alliance at this point. There’s been some grumbling by other nations though. However it’s also begun several repressive internal measures to keep itself safe. Your mom has mentioned in letters back to you of seeing routine patrols now near the farm. Talks of seizing private property for the good of the Empire are being discussed. You don’t really like the sound of that, but it’s not really like you can do anything about it. You can only take solace in the fact that being part of the Zalan army will at least result in your family not becoming homeless. They would probably still be able to live and work on the farm…it just wouldn’t be your family’s anymore. There’s also talk of a draft. You don’t like the sound of that either. Your brother Mallack would certainly be conscripted now. You can’t imagine him dealing with the things you’ve had to face. You hope it doesn’t come to that. Your position at Virtue is looking worse and worse each day. Parts of the fort are severely damaged, you’re short on man power and you don’t even have any decent wizards or healers. You’ve attempted to talk to Captain Eckard about withdrawing and falling back to a safer position, but he won’t hear of it. This fort is NOT to be abandoned. The only good thing is that there’s apparently been a small contingent of mercenaries severely messing up things for Velzix in his own territory. They must be incredibly brave or completely mad for Zalan gold to perform such a task. You can’t help but think that maybe YOU would be there right along side them, if you’d joined up with that mercenary company years ago. A sobering thought. Time to go on patrol again. You gather up some soldiers and get ready. You look at all of them and wonder which ones won’t be coming back this time. You look at yourself and wonder if you will. A few years ago, everyone coming back alive was at least a possibility, but now it’s not even certain. You go out and change up your routine path again. Always have to be different, can’t become predictable. A couple of imps attack. Nothing to worry about. Easily dispatched. You know you’ll encounter worse before the day is over though. A group of Tulan “citizens” led by their demon overseer attacks you next. Made up of hapless slaves and misguided idiots who think serving the demons is going to pan out in the long run. Finally you come across something a little more unusual. A small group of dwarves fighting off a large demon ambush. They look ragged, wounded and in dire need of help. So you help them. You unleash five arrows into the head of an Eviscerator before two of your number are fried by a hellfire blast from a Flame Child. The fighting doesn’t get any cleaner from there. You see another one of your members getting shredded, before a path is cleared for the dwarves to follow you back to the fort. One of their own chooses to stay behind to give the rest a chance to escape. As all of you run, a large explosion is heard followed by several yelps, howls and screams. The dwarf has blown himself up with whatever explosives the dwarves are fond of making. Finally you get back to the fort where it’s relatively safe, and all you’re thinking about is how you’ll have to do this all over again tomorrow. You retire to your private room where you play your lute and hope you aren’t disturbed by another attack on the fort. Happily, that doesn’t happen, but you are disturbed by one of the dwarves you rescued earlier instead. He’s come to thank you. “Hey lad, I just want to say thanks to your actions at least a few of us survived from our clan. Such as it is now. Something about you looks very familiar. Normally you humans all look the same but…ah hah! You’re that lad who I saved near that farm five years ago! Looks like you returned the favor! Stagir’s the name.” You didn’t realize it either, but then with all the fighting and the chaos you’d barely survived during that particular day, you weren’t really paying attention to faces. You were just glad someone came along when they did. “Yeah…small world I guess. So what happened to your clan?” “Wiped out lad.” Stagir says mournfully. “At least when you humans were fighting each other you didn’t mess with us, but getting caught between the undead and demons…well it’s a bit different.” “The undead are that far now?” you ask. “Aye. They and the demons have been involved in skirmishes here and there. Got no problem with evil fighting evil, but it was just our bad luck that my clan was caught in the middle. The demons are evil incarnate to be sure, but the undead…I dunno. Something worse about them. In the final days, I had to kill clan members who I once called friends and family because of the fucking necromancers raising them from the dead. Some stayed behind to fight since they refused to run. They’d rather die than run from their home. Normally I’d agree, but after seeing that this was a losing battle, some of us decided that it would be better to run. After all we would just be raised again to be used as puppets of the necromancers when we die. Not even free will to choose, or the threat of a demon’s whip. You just become one of them. Can’t let that happen to me. Never.” You know something of it, having had to do a little of that five years ago at Nuro, but actually killing undead parodies of family members would be pretty horrific. Stagir attempts to lighten the mood a bit by asking you about what you were playing before he interrupted. When you tell him, he tiches and says something about how elven songs are nothing compared to dwarven ones. You never really thought of dwarves having a musical interest before, but Stagir boasts about how they have quite an extensive musical history. He takes the lute from you and shows you a couple of dwarven songs, breaking strings in the process. His insistent singing accompanying the songs isn’t exactly pleasant either. He complains about the human made strings not being strong enough to play the songs properly, but thanks you again for saving his life before leaving. Every now and then you play these songs for your new dwarven allies who have taken it upon themselves to strengthen and rebuild the fort the “proper dwarf way”. They seem to appreciate it. You’re a little more careful with the strings and don’t indulge in the singing though. (But unfortunately for the rest of the fort, the dwarves do) A few months pass and the demon attacks seem to decrease. The strengthened fort certainly helps, but something else is going on. Eventually you’re seeing less and less of them. Eventually some ragged refugees come to the fort and after a bit of babbling and thanking the gods, a few of them explain. There are a couple of conflicting stories, but it would seem Velzix is dead! He was killed by something or someone. Consensus seems to be that the mercenary leader died in battle with him though. Without Velzix’s leadership the demons are fighting amongst themselves and the realm is in complete disarray. The Grand Alliance is taking steps to retake the land immediately before the Necromancer Lord gets it. The Zalan Empire in particular is closer though, so naturally YOUR nation is going to get that land first! While things may be looking up somewhat, they aren’t necessarily looking up for you. Captain Eckard has orders to begin an attack immediately. You aren’t looking forward to it mainly because you’ll probably encounter an undead army in the process. You don’t have a choice though except for what role you can serve. Thanks to your skills and rank. You can either lead troops as normal, or be part of a scouting party. > You letters to home (She's still alive!) Hey Mallack! This letter is directly for you again. Glad you’ve been keeping these between us. Anyway, I know it seemed silly to worry about a girl I just had a brief encounter with years ago for one night. But when I heard about the Brot Kingdom being destroyed by the Necromancer, I did wonder about Helena. Well, I found out she’s still alive! She stopped off in Fort Virtue not too long ago! She wasn’t in Brot when all that shit went down. She was trading in the Azi Republic at the time. When she arrived in Fort Virtue to trade, I recognized her and she seemed pleased to see me. She mentioned that she was pleased to see a familiar face for once and we spent a lot of time together for as long as she stayed. (And yes, we did THAT several times too.) I wish things were different, or at least not the way they are right now. I definitely would want to pursue a more permanent relationship with her because we get along really well, but alas that’s not to be. At least not at this time. She told me she was heading to the Retlad Kingdom next; I hope she stays there because there’s less fighting going on. Definitely no more Quillars there anymore. I dunno, I know it’s minor and doesn’t really make sense, but this little bit of info sort of put me in a better mood. I guess I’ll be writing Mom a more upbeat letter as well soon. Okay, well I hope everything’s going good with you too. Keep watching out for the Kobolds and keep ‘em out of that chicken coop! Your brother<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to admit, the idea has crossed your mind a bit. A small part of you does wonder about embracing the whole hero image and deliberately doing grand deeds that go beyond the call of your duty. You suppose that you’d at least really feel like one if you did that. However, more often than not real heroes don’t live long. You’re wondering what exactly this Mr. Warnov has in mind for you and given his demeanor, his appearance and just your own feelings of uncertainty about him, you decline. You know your limitations even if others don’t see them. So, no you won’t be hunting down some artifact of unlimited power and then single handedly taking out a Demon Lord or Necromancer Lord in their own throne room. “No, I don’t think so Mr. Warnov. As I’ve often said, I’m no hero. I’m just doing my job and providing for my family.” Mr. Warnov looks disappointed and sighs, but accepts your decision. “Very well. This is a shame though. Despite your humble birth you seem to have lots of potential. You could’ve made an excellent addition to our…organization. I’ve also heard your lute playing wasn’t bad either, we don’t have any musically talented types anymore…oh well.” Mr. Warnov leaves rather quickly after his last statement. Something about him seemed very odd and you’re sort of glad you didn’t take his offer. You go back to your target practice for awhile when you suddenly hear an alarm cry out loudly through the fort about a small demon army being sighted over the hill. “Well back to work…” you say and prepare for battle once again. Two years pass… It’s been five years since the Nuro Incident and things have gotten worse. Both the Necromancer Lord and Velzix have made progress. Too much. The Grand Alliance hasn’t been able to do anything except fight them to a stalemate. All three sides are looking to gain an advantage and somehow you don’t think it’ll be yours. The Zalan Empire has become increasingly totalitarian. It’s been increasing its influence over how the Grand Alliance should be run and its strategies. Some of Zalan’s officers have been transferred to become more prominent in leading and commanding the bulk of the Grand Alliance army. You’re not sure if this isn’t a bad idea. Bullying or not, one final voice in matters would probably help the Grand Alliance at this point. There’s been some grumbling by other nations though. However it’s also begun several repressive internal measures to keep itself safe. Your mom has mentioned in letters back to you of seeing routine patrols now near the farm. Talks of seizing private property for the good of the Empire are being discussed. You don’t really like the sound of that, but it’s not really like you can do anything about it. You can only take solace in the fact that being part of the Zalan army will at least result in your family not becoming homeless. They would probably still be able to live and work on the farm…it just wouldn’t be your family’s anymore. There’s also talk of a draft. You don’t like the sound of that either. Your brother Mallack would certainly be conscripted now. You can’t imagine him dealing with the things you’ve had to face. You hope it doesn’t come to that. Your position at Virtue is looking worse and worse each day. Parts of the fort are severely damaged, you’re short on man power and you don’t even have any decent wizards or healers. You’ve attempted to talk to Captain Eckard about withdrawing and falling back to a safer position, but he won’t hear of it. This fort is NOT to be abandoned. The only good thing is that there’s apparently been a small contingent of mercenaries severely messing up things for Velzix in his own territory. They must be incredibly brave or completely mad for Zalan gold to perform such a task. You can’t help but think that maybe YOU would be there right along side them, if you’d joined up with that mercenary company years ago. A sobering thought. Time to go on patrol again. You gather up some soldiers and get ready. You look at all of them and wonder which ones won’t be coming back this time. You look at yourself and wonder if you will. A few years ago, everyone coming back alive was at least a possibility, but now it’s not even certain. You go out and change up your routine path again. Always have to be different, can’t become predictable. A couple of imps attack. Nothing to worry about. Easily dispatched. You know you’ll encounter worse before the day is over though. A group of Tulan “citizens” led by their demon overseer attacks you next. Made up of hapless slaves and misguided idiots who think serving the demons is going to pan out in the long run. Finally you come across something a little more unusual. A small group of dwarves fighting off a large demon ambush. They look ragged, wounded and in dire need of help. So you help them. You unleash five arrows into the head of an Eviscerator before two of your number are fried by a hellfire blast from a Flame Child. The fighting doesn’t get any cleaner from there. You see another one of your members getting shredded, before a path is cleared for the dwarves to follow you back to the fort. One of their own chooses to stay behind to give the rest a chance to escape. As all of you run, a large explosion is heard followed by several yelps, howls and screams. The dwarf has blown himself up with whatever explosives the dwarves are fond of making. Finally you get back to the fort where it’s relatively safe, and all you’re thinking about is how you’ll have to do this all over again tomorrow. You retire to your private room where you play your lute and hope you aren’t disturbed by another attack on the fort. Happily, that doesn’t happen, but you are disturbed by one of the dwarves you rescued earlier instead. He’s come to thank you. “Hey lad, I just want to say thanks to your actions at least a few of us survived from our clan. Such as it is now. Something about you looks very familiar. Normally you humans all look the same but…ah hah! You’re that lad who I saved near that farm five years ago! Looks like you returned the favor! Stagir’s the name.” You didn’t realize it either, but then with all the fighting and the chaos you’d barely survived during that particular day, you weren’t really paying attention to faces. You were just glad someone came along when they did. “Yeah…small world I guess. So what happened to your clan?” “Wiped out lad.” Stagir says mournfully. “At least when you humans were fighting each other you didn’t mess with us, but getting caught between the undead and demons…well it’s a bit different.” “The undead are that far now?” you ask. “Aye. They and the demons have been involved in skirmishes here and there. Got no problem with evil fighting evil, but it was just our bad luck that my clan was caught in the middle. The demons are evil incarnate to be sure, but the undead…I dunno. Something worse about them. In the final days, I had to kill clan members who I once called friends and family because of the fucking necromancers raising them from the dead. Some stayed behind to fight since they refused to run. They’d rather die than run from their home. Normally I’d agree, but after seeing that this was a losing battle, some of us decided that it would be better to run. After all we would just be raised again to be used as puppets of the necromancers when we die. Not even free will to choose, or the threat of a demon’s whip. You just become one of them. Can’t let that happen to me. Never.” You know something of it, having had to do a little of that five years ago at Nuro, but actually killing undead parodies of family members would be pretty horrific. Stagir attempts to lighten the mood a bit by asking you about what you were playing before he interrupted. When you tell him, he tiches and says something about how elven songs are nothing compared to dwarven ones. You never really thought of dwarves having a musical interest before, but Stagir boasts about how they have quite an extensive musical history. He takes the lute from you and shows you a couple of dwarven songs, breaking strings in the process. His insistent singing accompanying the songs isn’t exactly pleasant either. He complains about the human made strings not being strong enough to play the songs properly, but thanks you again for saving his life before leaving. Every now and then you play these songs for your new dwarven allies who have taken it upon themselves to strengthen and rebuild the fort the “proper dwarf way”. They seem to appreciate it. You’re a little more careful with the strings and don’t indulge in the singing though. (But unfortunately for the rest of the fort, the dwarves do) A few months pass and the demon attacks seem to decrease. The strengthened fort certainly helps, but something else is going on. Eventually you’re seeing less and less of them. Eventually some ragged refugees come to the fort and after a bit of babbling and thanking the gods, a few of them explain. There are a couple of conflicting stories, but it would seem Velzix is dead! He was killed by something or someone. Consensus seems to be that the mercenary leader died in battle with him though. Without Velzix’s leadership the demons are fighting amongst themselves and the realm is in complete disarray. The Grand Alliance is taking steps to retake the land immediately before the Necromancer Lord gets it. The Zalan Empire in particular is closer though, so naturally YOUR nation is going to get that land first! While things may be looking up somewhat, they aren’t necessarily looking up for you. Captain Eckard has orders to begin an attack immediately. You aren’t looking forward to it mainly because you’ll probably encounter an undead army in the process. You don’t have a choice though except for what role you can serve. Thanks to your skills and rank. You can either lead troops as normal, or be part of a scouting party. > You letters to home (Random thoughts...) Dear Mom, I meant to tell you this weird man from Zalan Intelligence offered me a job, a few months ago. Said I could be a “real” hero and a bunch of other stuff. Part of it sounded appealing, but something about him made me feel really uncomfortable. I wonder if I’m just avoiding my “potential.” Like perhaps I am supposed to be some great general or warrior, or whatever. But I just don’t feel that desire within me. Now if I had been offered to give up all this army stuff and play at the Emperor’s Palace as a regular job then I might’ve accepted! Over these years as I’ve played for others and mainly for myself, I truly believe I really was meant to play music in this world. Just events didn’t work out for me I guess, but even within this situation, I’ve still found a way to indulge in my passion and I suppose it’s better than never being able to at all. Who knows? Perhaps one day all of this will be over and I’ll come out of this alive and manage to pursue music without hindrance. I know that sounds a little uncharacteristically optimistic from me, but I guess I still have a little hope left after all. Give my love to the rest of the family Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve served in this army well and always done your job regardless of the shitty situations you’ve been in. You might not like a lot of it, but you’ve never complained. Lately you’ve been on edge about a possible all out assault of some big ass demon army that’s going to attack any day now, and playing is one of the few pleasures you have to put your mind at ease. Perhaps it’s a combination of this and a combination of this unwanted and unnecessary scolding that causes you to speak out of turn. “With all due respect ma’am, I am fully prepared to battle at a moment’s notice and so are those under my direct command. But even soldiers need to rest, if only for a minute.” The woman looks very surprised you didn’t comply with her demand to see your superior officer. “…you DARE speak out of turn like that to me? I’ll see you sent to the Nuro Front for that sort of insubordination! Then we’d see just how battle ready you are! How would you like that?” “I wouldn’t like it at all. I barely survived the first time.” You say trying not to express any fear. “…What? What are you talking about? First time?” Now you’re a little surprised she doesn’t know who you are considering how some of the high ups exaggerated about how you managed to survive. You explain yourself briefly and she doesn’t quite believe you at first, a couple of your troops hiding nearby at least back up your claims before slinking off. “That was YOU? What the hell are you doing here? You should be leading from the front not languishing in some fort that barely sees battle!” “Doesn’t see battle? We suffered a small demon raid last week! We see plenty of battle!” “What I mean is, somebody of your obvious combat and survival skills should be assigned on the front lines where you can do more good. Normally I don’t question Zalan command, but this is really an oversight on their part.” “Well maybe they know better than the both of us, besides this assignment isn’t a walk in the fairy fields. I think we’ll be suffering a grand scale attack any day now.” “Doubt it. Velzix has been having a hard time keeping his unruly mob together. If it wasn’t for a lot of the sycophantic Tulan citizens, he’d probably be confined to pure defense, though something will have to be done soon, reports say he’s attempting to gate in more demons everyday. Not to mention that supposedly civilized demons from other nations are starting to display their true colors and flock to his banner. Like I always said the only good demon is a dead one!” This causes you to smile a bit and she very faintly smiles back when she sees that you feel the same way. This smile disappears quickly though as she continues her rant. “I wish I wasn’t assigned to the Tulan Border though. I’d rather be taking Nuro back. THAT’S the more dangerous threat. The demons will kill themselves with their own chaotic and violent natures, but the undead…they’ve almost taken over the world before just because of one bastard that lead them. I never thought I’d see a serious threat like this in my lifetime, especially not…” The female captain at this point stops. She even looks away from you as if whatever she was going to say was just too much even for her. She seems to be a lot more battle hardened than you and probably ten times braver. You can’t imagine what horror she experienced that would be worse than your own, but you don’t find out since she changes the subject. “…Bah! Maybe you’re right; a soldier does need to keep their mind occupied on other things every now and then. We aren’t undead after all. So what’s with the lute? You also a bard or something?” she laughs. “No, I think those dreams are long gone, but my playing seems to boost spirits around here a little, which can only be a good thing in this situation.” “Hm. My mother was elven and she used to sing this song to me and my…brother when we were very young. It was very smooth and calming. Beautiful melody.” “Yeah, most elven music is like that. When I was assigned in Retlad I learned a few elven songs from a few of the citizens there, you wouldn’t happen to know the song would you?” She tells you the name of the song and you know it immediately. One of the first new songs you learned while stationed in Retlad actually. This seems cause her to momentarily revert to a less stand offish behavior. You’re about to play it for her, but then a messenger comes running up handing her a note. She reads it and she’s all business again. “Alright men! We’re moving out!” she shouts and leaves without saying another word to you. You didn’t even learn her name. Perhaps it’s just as well; you’ll most likely never meet again due to one of you dying on the battlefield. You go back to doing what you were doing. Two years pass… Three years since the Nuro Incident and this struggle still continues. You’re still stationed Fort Virtue and you’ve repelled more demon attacks than you would care to count. Velzix has finally gotten his shit together completely. A unified demonic front is in full swing here and its taking its toll. Once again your skills have come in very handy in defense. You are certainly known as a demon slayer, but you still don’t feel like a hero of any kind. You’re just trying to do your job and survive. You save lives when you can, but you know ultimately it’s a futile task as death seems to be everywhere nowadays. As bad as it is on the demon front, its nothing compared to what’ve you’ve heard on the undead front. The Necromancer has finally broken out from Nuro, and successfully attacked the Kingdom of Brot. Several undead giants demolished the area. You’ve never even seen a living giant and they sound intimidating. You can’t even imagine an undead one. The power to raise one, let alone several is sort of scary. The Grand Alliance army didn’t get there in time to stop him and as usual they were repelled when they arrived. You worry about the Grand Alliance failing to stop the undead horde. You hope it doesn’t get any closer to the Zalan Empire where your family might be in danger. Sometimes you worry so much that you can’t sleep, not that you do much of that nowadays anyway. Normally you play to keep your mind at ease, but tonight you go to the archery range to keep yourself focused. For a long time you’re by yourself, but suddenly you feel a creeping suspicion someone is watching you… You turn around with your bow and see a pale man. He holds up his hands. “Hey now! Don’t shoot! Sorry for creeping around like that. Professional habit.” He says. “What? Who are you?” you demand. “Warnov. Zalan Intelligence.” “You’re a spy?” “Well I suppose you could put it that way. I was here to give some info to your Captain Eckard, and I also wanted to take a look around the fort. Didn’t think anyone would be on the range though. Nice shooting, I know who you are and heard about your marksmanship with a bow. You’re certainly doing your part with the demons around here.” Despite the fact that you’re talking to a spy, you feel the need to vent your feelings. “Yeah, well I hope the Grand Alliance starts doing its part. I mean what the fuck are they doing? Weren’t they created to put a stop to all this shit? I mean am I supposed to worry every day if that undead horde is going to get closer to the Zalan Empire where it can threaten my family?” Warnov doesn’t look offended by your words, if anything he looks intrigued. “Well, I can understand why you’re venting. Trust me I sympathize. But as part of intel, I can tell you its not that easy…there were a lot of surprises that weren’t accounted for. We’re doing our best to rectify this situation by gathering as much info as possible. In fact, you could help us…” “Excuse me? How?” Warnov looks around and gets closer before speaking. “Look, as I said, I know all about you and your skills, why you joined, all of it. I know you don’t much care for some of the propaganda made about some of your exploits. But it’s important to realize that deeds like yours must be blown up a little to give common people hope that ultimately good will win the day. You may not consider yourself a hero of any kind, but your actions aren’t without some of those qualities. You obviously care very much about your family, and I’ve heard how you try to keep the people under your command alive. Sound like heroic qualities to me. Perhaps they’re on a smaller scale, but they’re there. I’m betting that there’s a BIGGER hero in there somewhere, just itching to get out. You think the Grand Alliance isn’t doing a good job? Perhaps we can arrange something for you to be transferred into it, or maybe you’d like to take an even more direct approach.” “What do you mean?” Warnov suddenly backs away. “Before we go any further. I need to know are you willing to take up the mantle of being a hero. Because if you aren’t, then we have nothing more to discuss. I shall require an answer now.” > You accept the offer You have to admit, the idea has crossed your mind a bit. A small part of you does wonder about embracing the whole hero image and deliberately doing grand deeds that go beyond the call of your duty. You suppose that you’d at least really feel like one if you did that. “Okay Mr. Warnov. I’ll do it.” You exclaim. “You sure?” “Not really, but if I’m already in the shit, I might as well go all the way with it. What do I do next?” Warnov looks around again to see if anyone is about before answering. “Well just take a deep breath, relax and uh… brace yourself!” “Huh?” Before you can react Warnov moves faster than you’ve ever seen anything move. In fact you don’t really see him move at all before he’s biting your neck! He puts his other hand over your mouth so you can’t yell out and easily knocks your hand away from feebly attempting to draw a weapon. You fall into unconsciousness as your blood is drained from you at a rapid rate. Death soon follows… A few minutes later you wake up outside the fort. “Ah you’re up. Sorry about surprising you like that, but I had to work quickly. Someone else could’ve popped up and that would’ve gotten complicated…” You quickly check your neck which is completely healed now, but you know what’s just occurred! You feel a cold numbness throughout your body and you freak out. “I’M DEAD! I’M FUCKIN DEAD! And you’re a vampire!” “Shhhh! Keep your voice down! Yeah, you figured it out. Nice detective work, now let’s get down to this hero business. Though we should really get to Rostov’s and talk about all this.” “I’m…I’m dead! I’m one of you! I don’t want to be an undead thrall for the Necromancer Lord!” “What? No, no, no, we’re not… look I’ll explain later, let’s just…” You pull away from Warnov when he tries to help you up. You feel your reflexes are much quicker. This temporary curiousity in your new found abilities allows Warnov to calm you down. “WAIT! Just stop! (Sigh) Okay look I’ll try to give you the condensed version right now. We vampires aren’t on the side of the Necromancer Lord. If anything he’s fucking things up for us. We like to keep a balanced order as it were. The last time we sided with some megalomaniacal necromancer it nearly resulted in our extinction. Never again. In fact we’ve been manipulating shit for centuries just to make sure something like this didn’t happen. Somebody really fucked up in the observation department on this one!” Warnov goes on to explain that his superior, Lord Rostov will be able to explain better and in more detail, but that you have to come with him now. > You go with Warnov While this is all a lot to take in, you manage to calm down. “Okay. Okay. I’m calm, but…man this is a lot of shit.” You reply. “Heh, well you did say you might as well go with it! Don’t worry; it’ll all be second nature soon. Okay let’s go see Lord Rostov.” Warnov pulls out a black cube and teleports you to what seems to be the inside of a castle. “Alright, YOU stay right here in the foyer! Don’t go wandering around, I’m serious! You’re not quite in the fold yet, I have to go straighten this out and explain all this to Lord Rostov. I’ll be back to come get you later. Everything will be explained in full detail soon.” Not wishing to piss off anyone and being completely out of your element you stay put. The foyer has enough to keep you occupied though, you begin examining many of the paintings and statues to pass the time. Soon, Warnov returns with a very regal looking vampire. You can only assume that this is Lord Rostov. “Welcome, I’m sure you have ask many questions for me as I have for you, so we’ll just get right to it. We’ll walk and talk on the way to the throne room. Don’t worry about anyone listening. There are no secrets here.” Lord Rostov says. “Okay…I…” “BUT! Remember to address me as Lord Rostov if you are going to address me by name.” Lord Rostov adds with authority. You take notice and obey, though Lord Rostov has such a commanding presence that you would be hard pressed not to obey him. Your questions are typical for someone brought into the fold. Rostov goes on about how his kind have been manipulating the mortal world for centuries just like Warnov said before. Several of the known governments have at least one vamp keeping an eye on things. Apparently many high ranking political types in your own Zalan Empire are vampires! The Grand Alliance is even a tool of the vampires. While Lord Rostov goes on about this fascinating history lesson, you look at some of his “court” as you walk through his castle. Some of them are more “mortal looking” than others. Some look down right hideous. You always thought vampires were supposed to be ultra attractive, but you can see that isn’t necessarily the case. When you get to his throne room Lord Rostov stops and turns to you. “So I hear you want to be a real hero eh? Well this is the place where they’re made.” “What do you mean?” “Why do you think most heroes are always storming dungeons and doing impossible things? They don’t get those abilities without some help. The supernatural skill comes into play and dungeons aren’t exactly beacons of light!” Lord Rostov laughs. “Y…you mean ALL the heroes in the world are vampires?!” “Hah! I wish that was the case. No, there are many regular mortal heroes that do their part I suppose, but if you want the really legendary ones that have done impossible deeds, well chances are there was a vampire involved. Sadly we haven’t been too much more successful than the mortals in the heroics department lately.” “What’s been going on exactly?” “That little annoying necromancer lord, or whatever he thinks he is, has been proving to be a lot cleverer than what was previously believed. His armies have been growing in strength and I’m sure you know about the undead giant business and crushing the Brot Kingdom. What isn’t commonly known is how he accomplished it. He had help from one of our kind. A loathsome outcast known as the Ghoul King. (Sigh) Should’ve killed him long ago really, but…bah, it’s a long story. We’ll deal with him when the time comes. What’s more alarming is that we’ve sent assassins…or heroes to kill the necromancer lord and his bitch and he’s somehow managed to kill all of them. I mean I can somewhat understand them being killed by that brutish demon tyrant Velzix, but a fucking necromancer? He’s a fucking mortal! And from what we know of him, he wasn’t even that good of a wizard to begin with!” Suddenly Lord Rostov flies into a rage, yelling and punches a hole into the solid brick wall. Many of his court, as well as you and Warnov back away. He then stops and composes himself. “My apologies to you all. It’s been a trying time with upstart mortals and traitors and other annoyances. And to you, the newest member of our fold.” “Uh, no need to apologize to me Lord Rostov. It’s your home after all” You say which causes him to smile. “Carefully chosen words. Not overly sycophantic, yet still displaying the right subservient mindset. You should fit in very well here.” “But I meant it…” “Ha ha! And honest too! You’re more interesting than how Warnov described you. I have heard that you were one of those minor mortal heroes I was talking about earlier, but more interesting to me, is apparently you have talent in the musical field?” “So I’ve been told.” “Well, play something for me! All of us!” “What did you want to hear?” “Surprise me, if you’re able!” Lord Rostov sits on his throne while his court whispers among themselves and then go quiet waiting for you to play. You pull out your lute and try to think of a song that they might like. You think of an old song that once was very popular among the aristocracy. Seems like a perfect crowd… You begin to concentrate on the music and nothing but the music. You play as if your life was in danger, which you’re somewhat certain that it isn’t, but it doesn’t hurt to play your best right now. Your new supernatural reflexes certainly come in handy as you’re able to hit notes and play faster than you normally would’ve been able to as a mortal. When you’re finished you look around the room which is still silence until Lord Rostov gets off his throne and begins clapping. Everyone else follows suit. “That was magnificent! I heard the original bard who performed that piece three hundred years ago and even he couldn’t have done a better job! Warnov, this man is too valuable to make into a hero!” “Lord Rostov?” “While this man may have combat skills as you described, he is obviously a musician! Such talent such not be wasted in battle! Beautiful playing!” “While I agree he is a good musician Lord Rostov, I think we should consider the matter of the necromancer…” “(Sigh) Warnov, I was feeling good until you mentioned that mortal again! Nevertheless you are right. But still, this shall be HIS choosing. Not ours.” Lord Rostov turns to you. “The decision shall be yours broodling. You may if you wish under go extensive training to prepare yourself for an encounter with that little necromancer lord. If you succeed, your name will be known, and you will become a legend. However, I can sense that such things are probably not your nature. Music is. I can see that you would be content to just play your music for an appreciative crowd. You could do that here. You could also learn songs that I have possession of, but sadly unable to play with the same spirit that you obviously have.” “What about my family? And my job and all that?” “Ah, your mortal life. I’m sure Warnov will already be taking steps to explain that you have been transferred from your current assignment. Considering he’s part of intelligence, nobody will ask too many questions, even if they bothered to. As for your family, they will be taken care of as you will still officially be part of the Zalan army. If you wish you may stay in contact with them through letters. Possibly arrangements can be made for you to visit them. During the night of course. But under NO circumstances will you tell them about any of this. Doing so would ruin my generous offer and be extremely bad for you. I don’t think we need to dwell on such depressing things because I know you’re smarter than that right?” “Yes Lord Rostov.” “Good, now what is it that you would like to do?” > You be a hero While the offer of playing for what could possibly be eternity is tempting, part of you has been affected by world events and the war going on. You have come to realize that the Necromancer (and the demons) need to be stopped. If you can take an active role in that, then you’ll know for sure that your family will be safe in the near future. You did do all this for your family after all, and while your path has definitely undergone a change, you’re still going to put them first. Besides, you’re a vampire now, you’re sure that you’ll have tons of time to play later if all goes well. You’re definitely nervous about this decision, but you’re going to make it. “Lord Rostov, I wish to begin your advanced combat training.” You say. “Very well, though I almost hoped that you wouldn’t. Your playing was just divine and you won’t be able to play again for a long time during your extensive training time. Possibly never if you fail…but let us hope that you do not fail! It would be a loss for all of us. Warnov escourt him to the lower dungeons.” “Yes, Lord Rostov.” Warnov takes you into the lower dungeons of the castle just as Lord Rostov commanded. Warnov tells you that this isn’t going to be easy and that you better condition your mind to almost a pure instinctive level because you could very well die in training! Finally you reach a large barren room with a pair of large doors on the far end. “This is it. Just keep an eye on the large door over there and well, brace yourself!” You half expect to get bitten again after hearing those words, but instead Warnov quickly steps out of the room and locks the door leaving you alone. The large doors on the other side of the room start to open. And you just realized that you don’t have a weapon… A year passes… You survive your rigorous training. You have fought all manner of dangerous beasts with and without weapons. (And feasting on their blood for survival) You have undergone pain you didn’t think possible even in your new undead state. You’re definitely a better killing machine than you were. You were allowed to write letters to your family which were overlooked first by Lord Rostov of course to make sure you weren’t saying something you shouldn’t. You barely know what to tell them except keeping your lies to a minimum about your supposed new job with Zalan intelligence. You have dedicated and conditioned yourself to combat so much that you don’t even think about music. You briefly wonder if you’ve “lost” something, but you then dismiss such things as you must focus on battle. During this time you have been informed that the Necromancer Lord as well as Velzix have grown in power. Lord Rostov says though that he believes the demons will pose no serious threat if a concentrated effort can be made on them by the mortals. However, for that to happen, the Necromancer Lord must die and that’s where you come in and what you’ve been training for. However, you won’t be going in by yourself. A band of “heroes” will be necessary for a job like this. You are told you will meet the others in a small abandoned village bordering on the Necromancer’s Domain. Another vampire takes you there with the aid of a black teleportation cube. This is a one way trip. You’re not coming back unless you win. That and the fact that the black cubes can’t possibly be allowed to fall into enemy hands. There you meet the others. They look unimpressed with you, but you’re a little surprised to see one of them. She’s very well known…a “hero”. “You’re Deliah the Deathdealer! You fought at the battle of Azark and you also retrieved the Celestial Sword! You’re a hero! I didn’t know you were…” “Didn’t they tell you all this shit when you started training? Sheesh, we gotta get paired up with some broodling…” a brutish vampire interrupts. “Quiet Gorax! I’m sure he was, but meeting a legend is a lot different from basking in their glory in person.” Deliah replies. “Gorax!? Gorax the Mighty? You were a barbarian king that held back the orc hordes over a hundred years ago!” you say in amazement. “Huh, fat lot good that did me. I can’t take any credit for of my deeds today and barely anyone remembers my past deeds except some useless tribal shamen that now cower from the undead hordes in the Drozz Plains. Feh! Back in my day such men would not allow mere ghouls run them off their lands! I don’t know why Rostov won’t allow me to go in, seek out, and just chop off that retched Ghoul King’s head! He’s partially to blame for this mess!” “Oh you know Rostov, he has his reasons. Besides, if we take out the Necromancer lord, the Ghoul King will probably be our next assignment.” Another vampire says in a bored tone. This one looks like he was once a Halfling. It almost makes you laugh to think of a vampire Halfling, but there he is. You don’t know who he is or was, but given the other two, he was probably important at one time. “So are you ready to go broodling? Or are you going to stand there with a dumb look on your face?” Delilah asks. “Uh sure, let’s go!” The trip into the Necromancer’s Domain is surprisingly quick and uneventful. You attempt to make conversation as you can’t help now but be curious about your companions, but all of them are less than talkative and forthcoming. Deliah eventually takes you aside harshly. “Look broodling, we’ve got a job to do. A fucking dangerous one at that! We all need to be in focus and not concentrating on anything else! So keep your damn questions to yourself and if you happen to survive this encounter THEN perhaps you may get a little more information from us and our fascinating history. Until then, stay in the fucking dark!” The rest of the trip is silent. At last you reach the city of Nuro and easily scale its walls and onto the battlements while remaining undetected the whole time. This is a lot different from what it was when you arrived here as a mortal. That memory still gives you a bit of pause. You remember how scared you were back then. “Hurry up broodling! These walking corpses might not be able to detect us, but the Necromancer will soon! We need to get the advantage as soon as possible! Gorax, Wally you go through the front of the main tower. I’m sure you two can handle that. While whatever guards rush to defend their master, me and the broodling will scale the tower and go in through one of the top windows. “You sure about that Delilah? Would you rather I go with you than some broodling?” Wally asks. “Yeah, but if I leave him with Gorax he’ll probably get killed in the fighting and be useless. At least if he’s with me, he can serve as an extra body for the Necromancer Lord to draw his attention to.” “HEY! I’m right here y’know!” you exclaim indignantly which causes Deliah to smack you in the face hard. You didn’t even see it coming. “Shut the fuck up! You’ll draw attention! Look if we pull this off just maybe you’ll come out of this alive. I need you to take care of the Necromancer’s bitch anyway. She’s probably up there with him. Now let’s do this!” The plan is set into action. Gorax and Wally make their presence known immediately jumping off the battlements and into the courtyard while yelling at the top of their lungs. “Intruder! Protect the master!” you hear a scratchy voice yell in the distance, while you and Delilah sneak around, jumping onto the rooftops and attempting to avoid the main fighting force. A few flying shadows try to stop you, but they’re easily dispatched with your bow and silver arrows. Delilah looks glad that you aren’t entirely useless and you and her proceed to scale the walls. “I can’t believe this place isn’t more protected.” You say while climbing. “Heh, he’s got his troops all spread out and mostly on his borders, plus he’s grown more arrogant and confident. That will be his undoing.” She replies quickly. “Funny I was about to say the same for you bloodsuckers.” A voice says causing the both of you to look up. A raven haired female leans over the nearby window above Delilah and blast her directly in the face burning it off with a beam of light. You certainly weren’t expecting a necromancer to cast any sort of spell like that! You then see Delilah fall…and get impaled through the chest by a weathervane. A fucking weathervane. Unbelievable. You attempt to scale the wall to the nearest window under you and just barely get out of the way of the lady necromancer’s next spell. You have no idea where you are in the tower, but you can hear fighting going on outside and a couple of hearty roars which you can only guess is Gorax. A quick scan would indicate that you’re in some sort of library. You cautiously proceed and decide that finding stairs that lead up would be the way to go. You just hope you’re ready to take him on and his mistress. As you make your way through, you fight all manner of undead sentries: Wraiths, ghosts, skeletal warriors, etc. During one of your moments of hiding a couple of wight guards run by talking in a hoarse tone. “The big one and little one are dead! We must find the last one! Quick Quick!” “Yes Yes! The master must be protected!” You come to the very real feeling of having been in the position before…all alone, surrounded by hostile undead, and in Nuro… Your resolve breaks a little and you wish that you weren’t here. You want to go home. Eventually you push yourself forward, but somehow fear has crept back into your own dead heart. To your credit you do reach the top of the tower, but the Necromancer’s mistress once again surprises you. A ray of light sears your face off and destroys your vision. You fall to the cold stone floor in extreme pain and can only make out blurry images. You see a blurred black hooded figure approach. You can’t see his face, but this could only be who you think it is. You attempt to reach for your sword. “More assassins? I swear something is going to have to be done about these bloodsuckers. The Ghoul King’s kin are really starting to get on my nerves. These ones weren’t even a challenge. What are you doing bloodsucker? Don’t you know that’s futile?” The Necromancer Lord unleashes a ball of flame that engulfs your body, putting an end to your undead existence.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While this is all a lot to take in, you manage to calm down. “Okay. Okay. I’m calm, but…man this is a lot of shit.” You reply. “Heh, well you did say you might as well go with it! Don’t worry; it’ll all be second nature soon. Okay let’s go see Lord Rostov.” Warnov pulls out a black cube and teleports you to what seems to be the inside of a castle. “Alright, YOU stay right here in the foyer! Don’t go wandering around, I’m serious! You’re not quite in the fold yet, I have to go straighten this out and explain all this to Lord Rostov. I’ll be back to come get you later. Everything will be explained in full detail soon.” Not wishing to piss off anyone and being completely out of your element you stay put. The foyer has enough to keep you occupied though, you begin examining many of the paintings and statues to pass the time. Soon, Warnov returns with a very regal looking vampire. You can only assume that this is Lord Rostov. “Welcome, I’m sure you have ask many questions for me as I have for you, so we’ll just get right to it. We’ll walk and talk on the way to the throne room. Don’t worry about anyone listening. There are no secrets here.” Lord Rostov says. “Okay…I…” “BUT! Remember to address me as Lord Rostov if you are going to address me by name.” Lord Rostov adds with authority. You take notice and obey, though Lord Rostov has such a commanding presence that you would be hard pressed not to obey him. Your questions are typical for someone brought into the fold. Rostov goes on about how his kind have been manipulating the mortal world for centuries just like Warnov said before. Several of the known governments have at least one vamp keeping an eye on things. Apparently many high ranking political types in your own Zalan Empire are vampires! The Grand Alliance is even a tool of the vampires. While Lord Rostov goes on about this fascinating history lesson, you look at some of his “court” as you walk through his castle. Some of them are more “mortal looking” than others. Some look down right hideous. You always thought vampires were supposed to be ultra attractive, but you can see that isn’t necessarily the case. When you get to his throne room Lord Rostov stops and turns to you. “So I hear you want to be a real hero eh? Well this is the place where they’re made.” “What do you mean?” “Why do you think most heroes are always storming dungeons and doing impossible things? They don’t get those abilities without some help. The supernatural skill comes into play and dungeons aren’t exactly beacons of light!” Lord Rostov laughs. “Y…you mean ALL the heroes in the world are vampires?!” “Hah! I wish that was the case. No, there are many regular mortal heroes that do their part I suppose, but if you want the really legendary ones that have done impossible deeds, well chances are there was a vampire involved. Sadly we haven’t been too much more successful than the mortals in the heroics department lately.” “What’s been going on exactly?” “That little annoying necromancer lord, or whatever he thinks he is, has been proving to be a lot cleverer than what was previously believed. His armies have been growing in strength and I’m sure you know about the undead giant business and crushing the Brot Kingdom. What isn’t commonly known is how he accomplished it. He had help from one of our kind. A loathsome outcast known as the Ghoul King. (Sigh) Should’ve killed him long ago really, but…bah, it’s a long story. We’ll deal with him when the time comes. What’s more alarming is that we’ve sent assassins…or heroes to kill the necromancer lord and his bitch and he’s somehow managed to kill all of them. I mean I can somewhat understand them being killed by that brutish demon tyrant Velzix, but a fucking necromancer? He’s a fucking mortal! And from what we know of him, he wasn’t even that good of a wizard to begin with!” Suddenly Lord Rostov flies into a rage, yelling and punches a hole into the solid brick wall. Many of his court, as well as you and Warnov back away. He then stops and composes himself. “My apologies to you all. It’s been a trying time with upstart mortals and traitors and other annoyances. And to you, the newest member of our fold.” “Uh, no need to apologize to me Lord Rostov. It’s your home after all” You say which causes him to smile. “Carefully chosen words. Not overly sycophantic, yet still displaying the right subservient mindset. You should fit in very well here.” “But I meant it…” “Ha ha! And honest too! You’re more interesting than how Warnov described you. I have heard that you were one of those minor mortal heroes I was talking about earlier, but more interesting to me, is apparently you have talent in the musical field?” “So I’ve been told.” “Well, play something for me! All of us!” “What did you want to hear?” “Surprise me, if you’re able!” Lord Rostov sits on his throne while his court whispers among themselves and then go quiet waiting for you to play. You pull out your lute and try to think of a song that they might like. You think of an old song that once was very popular among the aristocracy. Seems like a perfect crowd… You begin to concentrate on the music and nothing but the music. You play as if your life was in danger, which you’re somewhat certain that it isn’t, but it doesn’t hurt to play your best right now. Your new supernatural reflexes certainly come in handy as you’re able to hit notes and play faster than you normally would’ve been able to as a mortal. When you’re finished you look around the room which is still silence until Lord Rostov gets off his throne and begins clapping. Everyone else follows suit. “That was magnificent! I heard the original bard who performed that piece three hundred years ago and even he couldn’t have done a better job! Warnov, this man is too valuable to make into a hero!” “Lord Rostov?” “While this man may have combat skills as you described, he is obviously a musician! Such talent such not be wasted in battle! Beautiful playing!” “While I agree he is a good musician Lord Rostov, I think we should consider the matter of the necromancer…” “(Sigh) Warnov, I was feeling good until you mentioned that mortal again! Nevertheless you are right. But still, this shall be HIS choosing. Not ours.” Lord Rostov turns to you. “The decision shall be yours broodling. You may if you wish under go extensive training to prepare yourself for an encounter with that little necromancer lord. If you succeed, your name will be known, and you will become a legend. However, I can sense that such things are probably not your nature. Music is. I can see that you would be content to just play your music for an appreciative crowd. You could do that here. You could also learn songs that I have possession of, but sadly unable to play with the same spirit that you obviously have.” “What about my family? And my job and all that?” “Ah, your mortal life. I’m sure Warnov will already be taking steps to explain that you have been transferred from your current assignment. Considering he’s part of intelligence, nobody will ask too many questions, even if they bothered to. As for your family, they will be taken care of as you will still officially be part of the Zalan army. If you wish you may stay in contact with them through letters. Possibly arrangements can be made for you to visit them. During the night of course. But under NO circumstances will you tell them about any of this. Doing so would ruin my generous offer and be extremely bad for you. I don’t think we need to dwell on such depressing things because I know you’re smarter than that right?” “Yes Lord Rostov.” “Good, now what is it that you would like to do?” > You be a musician This is all you’ve ever wanted. Just play music. You’ll be able to do it now for all eternity if possible. You’d be a fool to turn down such a chance. “Lord Rostov, I wish to play music.” Lord Rostov smiles at your response. “Ah yes, I was hoping you’d chose the way of the artiste rather than the warrior. Your talents will be better served here. In the meantime you will be shown to your new room. Ladies, I think you two should escort our new bard. Don’t have too much fun, you’ve got a performance tomorrow!” You are escorted by a couple of female vampires to your room. They say their names are Glasya and Natasha. They seem to make a fuss over you on your way there which you don’t find completely unwelcome, but you’re still getting used to the whole idea that you’re a vampire just like one of them now, despite also being excited over getting to play music on a steady basis with no hindrances. The two vampiresses get even friendlier with you when you get to the room. Natasha begins to take a more aggressive stance and kisses you as the pair of you get on the bed. As the two of you are undressing, Natasha who is on top of you nods to Glasya who leaves the room. Ten minutes later as you’re fully engaged in physical pleasure, Glasya enters the room again with what looks to be a captive human girl. She doesn’t look very old either. Probably a teenager. Her mouth is gagged so she can’t scream out properly. “Wha…what’s all this?” “Shhhh, your passage to true vampirehood…” the Natasha says continuing to grind into you. The human girl is dragged over to the bed with fear and tears in her eyes the whole time. Glasya draws out a blade and holds it to her throat. “Would you like me to cut now or would you prefer I prolong the fear? Perhaps remove her gag first so that you may hear her screams? Or maybe you’d even like to sink your teeth into her yourself?” Glasya asks and licks the side of the young girl’s face. “What? Shit! No wait!” you say stopping Natasha, and sitting up. “I thought we were just having some fun here! Not killing young girls!” “Why do the two need to be mutually exclusive? Broodling, you have been favored by Lord Rostov, I suggest you count yourself lucky and get with the program…besides you’re one of us now, you will need to feed on blood to survive.” Glasya says with a frown. You look at the girl and you shake you head briefly realizing what else it means to be a vampire. “Alright, alright, I got it. But can’t I like feed on animals first and uh work my way up or something?” “Squeamish broodling! You will take the blood of this girl or Lord Rostov will hear of this weakness! While he may be impressed with your music abilities, he will not tolerate weaklings!” Glasya continues to scold. “Besides, why do you care whether this…mortal lives or dies now? You do not know her and you are now superior to her in everyway. It’s your right…” Natasha says while kissing on your body.” You don’t really have any choice in the matter. You almost curse yourself for getting yourself into this situation. You stay silent for awhile and then speak. “Very well. Slit her throat, but do it quickly.” You say. “(Sigh) Very well.” Glasya replies disappointedly. The young girl’s throat is slashed and blood sprays over you and Natasha who greedily opens her mouth to catch it. Glaysa tosses the girl’s dying body onto your chest and begins to undress as well to join you and Natasha in this blood feast. The night is definitely long, memorable and decadent. A little piece of you has “died” namely the vestiges of morality. A few months pass and you don’t even hesitate anymore. You enjoy the blood as well as your playing for Lord Rostov’s court. A year passes and you’ve become completely oblivious to the worsening of the “outside world”. (Which you don’t even think about since you’re so rapped up in your own pleasures) Each day the Necromancer Lord and Velzix get stronger and you stopped worrying about your family’s future. You don’t even write to them anymore. You’ve become so corrupted in such a short amount of time its actually amazing. Another year passes and you’re basically a hedonist. This is what Lord Rostov’s “secret fortress” is all about for the most part. Sure there’s discussion on what should be done about the outside problems, but pleasures of the flesh and blood are mainly the orders of the night. You don’t even realize it, but you ARE literally a “leech” now. All vampires have ever done is leech off of the mortal world. Sure there are the “active ones” but there are far more hedonists. Ironic that the ones who choose to be professional killers, assassins or “heroes” tend to still retain more of their mortalhood. Lord Rostov eventually mentions in passing that he’s finally come up with a perfect plan to kill the Necromancer Lord. He’s managed to come to some sort of deal with that old outcast The Ghoul King to betray him sometime in the near future. The goal is to lure the Necromancer Lord to the fortress itself and kill him directly. Again you could really care less, and you’ve become little more than just another hedonist in Lord Rostov’s court. Lord Rostov has it all figured out, you don’t need to worry. You’re safe in this little “world.” A few months pass and the plan swings into action. One night while you’re playing for the court as usual a loud noise is heard in the foyer and the sounds of shouting and crashing is heard. Lord Rostov takes a few of his concubines and tell everyone else to stay put, though everyone is a little curious. Even you. You go back to playing a little bit and things are starting to return to their “original state” since everyone figures Lord Rostov has the matter well in hand. Soon another noise is heard which sounds like the shrieking and screaming of multiple people. “AAAAAARRRGH!” “LORD ROSTOV! NO!” “GET HIM!” “KILL THE NECROMANCER!” Everyone for once goes into a battle mode to rush to Lord Rostov’s aid. A deformed and ugly creature runs into you, while you’re trying to wrap your mind around this chaos. “Get outta my way broodling! He’s gonna kill us all! I’ve fucked up…heh, but at least the rest of you fuckers are going to die!” he growls at you while desperately looking for a place to hide. You don’t know what to do, but suddenly you feel a presence overcome you. Like someone is controlling your mind. This isn’t even like Lord Rostov, its even more powerful and its growing stronger… You continue to hear the screams of vampires as you can’t help but approach the way to the slaughter. You see vampires killing each other in the hallway! How is this possible? But you know why, it’s HIM… The Necromancer…or whatever he is now has managed to enforce his will even over vampires. You see him in the distance. He’s not even dirtying his hands killing all of you himself. You can feel his loathing for your kind and then you’re completely pulled into his domination. “And now little blood leech you shall join your brethren…” you hear him whisper in your mind. Another vampire suddenly punches you in the back of the head. You attempt to get up, but then feel a foot to the face followed by a sword going through your back. At this point you feel a something you haven’t felt in a long time, fear. Then your head is ripped off in the ensuing bloodbath. Later after total victory has been achieved, the Great Lich Lord burns your body along with the rest of the truly dead vampires.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to admit, the idea has crossed your mind a bit. A small part of you does wonder about embracing the whole hero image and deliberately doing grand deeds that go beyond the call of your duty. You suppose that you’d at least really feel like one if you did that. “Okay Mr. Warnov. I’ll do it.” You exclaim. “You sure?” “Not really, but if I’m already in the shit, I might as well go all the way with it. What do I do next?” Warnov looks around again to see if anyone is about before answering. “Well just take a deep breath, relax and uh… brace yourself!” “Huh?” Before you can react Warnov moves faster than you’ve ever seen anything move. In fact you don’t really see him move at all before he’s biting your neck! He puts his other hand over your mouth so you can’t yell out and easily knocks your hand away from feebly attempting to draw a weapon. You fall into unconsciousness as your blood is drained from you at a rapid rate. Death soon follows… A few minutes later you wake up outside the fort. “Ah you’re up. Sorry about surprising you like that, but I had to work quickly. Someone else could’ve popped up and that would’ve gotten complicated…” You quickly check your neck which is completely healed now, but you know what’s just occurred! You feel a cold numbness throughout your body and you freak out. “I’M DEAD! I’M FUCKIN DEAD! And you’re a vampire!” “Shhhh! Keep your voice down! Yeah, you figured it out. Nice detective work, now let’s get down to this hero business. Though we should really get to Rostov’s and talk about all this.” “I’m…I’m dead! I’m one of you! I don’t want to be an undead thrall for the Necromancer Lord!” “What? No, no, no, we’re not… look I’ll explain later, let’s just…” You pull away from Warnov when he tries to help you up. You feel your reflexes are much quicker. This temporary curiousity in your new found abilities allows Warnov to calm you down. “WAIT! Just stop! (Sigh) Okay look I’ll try to give you the condensed version right now. We vampires aren’t on the side of the Necromancer Lord. If anything he’s fucking things up for us. We like to keep a balanced order as it were. The last time we sided with some megalomaniacal necromancer it nearly resulted in our extinction. Never again. In fact we’ve been manipulating shit for centuries just to make sure something like this didn’t happen. Somebody really fucked up in the observation department on this one!” Warnov goes on to explain that his superior, Lord Rostov will be able to explain better and in more detail, but that you have to come with him now. > You try to escape All of this is too much for you to handle. You know you’re dead, but you still feel afraid. You don’t know what to make of any of the shit Warnov just said and you don’t care, all you want to do is run away from all of this. You take off running in a random direction with a confused stated of mind, not really knowing what is going to come next. You’re so overwhelmed by confusion and fear that you don’t even notice how much faster you’re actually moving. You aren’t paying attention to too much of anything until you feel Warnov tackle you to the ground. Warnov quickly snaps your neck so you can’t move and looks a little mournful as he crouches near you. “I’m sorry human. I should’ve known better. Not everyone is meant for the gift. It is with great regret that I must now kill you. Such a loss…for both races.” Warnov pulls out a silver blade and jams it into your heart before cutting your head off and putting an end to your short undead life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve served in this army well and always done your job regardless of the shitty situations you’ve been in. You might not like a lot of it, but you’ve never complained. Lately you’ve been on edge about a possible all out assault of some big ass demon army that’s going to attack any day now, and playing is one of the few pleasures you have to put your mind at ease. Perhaps it’s a combination of this and a combination of this unwanted and unnecessary scolding that causes you to speak out of turn. “With all due respect ma’am, I am fully prepared to battle at a moment’s notice and so are those under my direct command. But even soldiers need to rest, if only for a minute.” The woman looks very surprised you didn’t comply with her demand to see your superior officer. “…you DARE speak out of turn like that to me? I’ll see you sent to the Nuro Front for that sort of insubordination! Then we’d see just how battle ready you are! How would you like that?” “I wouldn’t like it at all. I barely survived the first time.” You say trying not to express any fear. “…What? What are you talking about? First time?” Now you’re a little surprised she doesn’t know who you are considering how some of the high ups exaggerated about how you managed to survive. You explain yourself briefly and she doesn’t quite believe you at first, a couple of your troops hiding nearby at least back up your claims before slinking off. “That was YOU? What the hell are you doing here? You should be leading from the front not languishing in some fort that barely sees battle!” “Doesn’t see battle? We suffered a small demon raid last week! We see plenty of battle!” “What I mean is, somebody of your obvious combat and survival skills should be assigned on the front lines where you can do more good. Normally I don’t question Zalan command, but this is really an oversight on their part.” “Well maybe they know better than the both of us, besides this assignment isn’t a walk in the fairy fields. I think we’ll be suffering a grand scale attack any day now.” “Doubt it. Velzix has been having a hard time keeping his unruly mob together. If it wasn’t for a lot of the sycophantic Tulan citizens, he’d probably be confined to pure defense, though something will have to be done soon, reports say he’s attempting to gate in more demons everyday. Not to mention that supposedly civilized demons from other nations are starting to display their true colors and flock to his banner. Like I always said the only good demon is a dead one!” This causes you to smile a bit and she very faintly smiles back when she sees that you feel the same way. This smile disappears quickly though as she continues her rant. “I wish I wasn’t assigned to the Tulan Border though. I’d rather be taking Nuro back. THAT’S the more dangerous threat. The demons will kill themselves with their own chaotic and violent natures, but the undead…they’ve almost taken over the world before just because of one bastard that lead them. I never thought I’d see a serious threat like this in my lifetime, especially not…” The female captain at this point stops. She even looks away from you as if whatever she was going to say was just too much even for her. She seems to be a lot more battle hardened than you and probably ten times braver. You can’t imagine what horror she experienced that would be worse than your own, but you don’t find out since she changes the subject. “…Bah! Maybe you’re right; a soldier does need to keep their mind occupied on other things every now and then. We aren’t undead after all. So what’s with the lute? You also a bard or something?” she laughs. “No, I think those dreams are long gone, but my playing seems to boost spirits around here a little, which can only be a good thing in this situation.” “Hm. My mother was elven and she used to sing this song to me and my…brother when we were very young. It was very smooth and calming. Beautiful melody.” “Yeah, most elven music is like that. When I was assigned in Retlad I learned a few elven songs from a few of the citizens there, you wouldn’t happen to know the song would you?” She tells you the name of the song and you know it immediately. One of the first new songs you learned while stationed in Retlad actually. This seems cause her to momentarily revert to a less stand offish behavior. You’re about to play it for her, but then a messenger comes running up handing her a note. She reads it and she’s all business again. “Alright men! We’re moving out!” she shouts and leaves without saying another word to you. You didn’t even learn her name. Perhaps it’s just as well; you’ll most likely never meet again due to one of you dying on the battlefield. You go back to doing what you were doing. Two years pass… Three years since the Nuro Incident and this struggle still continues. You’re still stationed Fort Virtue and you’ve repelled more demon attacks than you would care to count. Velzix has finally gotten his shit together completely. A unified demonic front is in full swing here and its taking its toll. Once again your skills have come in very handy in defense. You are certainly known as a demon slayer, but you still don’t feel like a hero of any kind. You’re just trying to do your job and survive. You save lives when you can, but you know ultimately it’s a futile task as death seems to be everywhere nowadays. As bad as it is on the demon front, its nothing compared to what’ve you’ve heard on the undead front. The Necromancer has finally broken out from Nuro, and successfully attacked the Kingdom of Brot. Several undead giants demolished the area. You’ve never even seen a living giant and they sound intimidating. You can’t even imagine an undead one. The power to raise one, let alone several is sort of scary. The Grand Alliance army didn’t get there in time to stop him and as usual they were repelled when they arrived. You worry about the Grand Alliance failing to stop the undead horde. You hope it doesn’t get any closer to the Zalan Empire where your family might be in danger. Sometimes you worry so much that you can’t sleep, not that you do much of that nowadays anyway. Normally you play to keep your mind at ease, but tonight you go to the archery range to keep yourself focused. For a long time you’re by yourself, but suddenly you feel a creeping suspicion someone is watching you… You turn around with your bow and see a pale man. He holds up his hands. “Hey now! Don’t shoot! Sorry for creeping around like that. Professional habit.” He says. “What? Who are you?” you demand. “Warnov. Zalan Intelligence.” “You’re a spy?” “Well I suppose you could put it that way. I was here to give some info to your Captain Eckard, and I also wanted to take a look around the fort. Didn’t think anyone would be on the range though. Nice shooting, I know who you are and heard about your marksmanship with a bow. You’re certainly doing your part with the demons around here.” Despite the fact that you’re talking to a spy, you feel the need to vent your feelings. “Yeah, well I hope the Grand Alliance starts doing its part. I mean what the fuck are they doing? Weren’t they created to put a stop to all this shit? I mean am I supposed to worry every day if that undead horde is going to get closer to the Zalan Empire where it can threaten my family?” Warnov doesn’t look offended by your words, if anything he looks intrigued. “Well, I can understand why you’re venting. Trust me I sympathize. But as part of intel, I can tell you its not that easy…there were a lot of surprises that weren’t accounted for. We’re doing our best to rectify this situation by gathering as much info as possible. In fact, you could help us…” “Excuse me? How?” Warnov looks around and gets closer before speaking. “Look, as I said, I know all about you and your skills, why you joined, all of it. I know you don’t much care for some of the propaganda made about some of your exploits. But it’s important to realize that deeds like yours must be blown up a little to give common people hope that ultimately good will win the day. You may not consider yourself a hero of any kind, but your actions aren’t without some of those qualities. You obviously care very much about your family, and I’ve heard how you try to keep the people under your command alive. Sound like heroic qualities to me. Perhaps they’re on a smaller scale, but they’re there. I’m betting that there’s a BIGGER hero in there somewhere, just itching to get out. You think the Grand Alliance isn’t doing a good job? Perhaps we can arrange something for you to be transferred into it, or maybe you’d like to take an even more direct approach.” “What do you mean?” Warnov suddenly backs away. “Before we go any further. I need to know are you willing to take up the mantle of being a hero. Because if you aren’t, then we have nothing more to discuss. I shall require an answer now.” > You letters to home (War continues...) Dear Mom, Just another letter from me, letting you know I’m still alive. Though I’m sure with my newest title of “Demon Slayer” you probably knew I was. More exaggerations of course. I do my job to be sure, but there are plenty of other men and women my age or even younger that doing just as much as I am and they don’t seem to get any credit. Of course many of them have also been killed. I’ve always tried to keep everyone alive under my command, but I know it’s a futile endeavor. The fighting has been getting worse up here, the demons I think have finally gotten more organized. Though what alarms me more is hearing that the Necromancer Lord has finally broken out of Nuro and taken over the Brot Kingdom. I thought the Grand Alliance was supposed to stop this sort of thing. I’m tired of all this. I feel like playing right now, sorry for the short letter. Give my love to the rest of the family Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Demons are a lot faster than the undead and you’re wounded, no way are you going to be able to outrun them. You turn around and draw your bow, trying to ignore your pain which is overriding any fear you have at this point. Your weakened state is causing you to have a hard time aiming. “Uh oh, better be careful, looks like this one is going to put up a fight. I’d say by his uniform that he’s a soldier.” “Hur hur. Good. Hey human, better stop wobbling if you’re going to aim that thing properly.” You miss the demon completely. “Hah! You want me to walk slower human?” ”You sure you should be playing with him like that? Don’t you remember what happened earlier today?” “Shut up! I told ya, that bitch musta had some magical powers because…OW!” You hit the demon in the chest, but it doesn’t seem much damage. He pulls out the arrow and now begins to quicken his pace. The other demon starts to walk towards you as well. “See, I told you to pay attention.” “Bah! If this is the extent of what his little pig sticker can do, I’m not concerned. Hey human, don’t you know they’re doing great things with gunpower these days? RAAAAGH!” The big demon suddenly charges you, and you let your arrow fly. Right in the eye. “Perfect.” You whisper. The demon bellows, but it doesn’t slow him down. You narrowly dodge his charge. You roll on the ground and shoot two more arrows in his back. He turns around snarling and bellowing for your blood. More arrows fly into the creature, but at last the demon has reached you and smacks you to the ground. Your bow flies from your hand, and while crawling on the ground you try to draw your sword, but a crushing blow hits you on the back. This might’ve caused a lot more damage, but miraculously the lute that’s still in your pack “softens” the blow. The crunching of wood signifies that it’s broken though. “What the fuck, that’s a weird noise…what is this? HA HA HA! Hey! You gotta be shittin’ me! A fuckin’ lute? Check this out! He’s carrying a fuckin’ lute! What’s a fucking soldier doin’ with a lute?” the big demon shouts to his acquaintance while he holds up your broken instrument. “Don’t talk you idiot! LOOK OUT!” his acquaintance shouts, just as you recover long enough to shove your sword straight into the demon’s groin. You push the sword upward in an attempt to do more damage and you succeed. Blood is flying everywhere and the demon howls in pain from the grievous wound. You pull your sword out and then proceed to repeatedly stab the demon until it falls backwards on the ground, dead. You’re exhausted; you used all your remaining strength killing the thing. Unfortunately the other demon grabs you by the scruff like a helpless kitten and lifts you up off the ground a few inches. He knocks your sword out of your hand and looks at his fallen comrade. “Hmm, can’t say I didn’t warn him. Oh well, more meat for me. This may hurt a lot…” Fully expecting the death that you’ve managed to avoid for so long, you once again evade it when a gunshot rings out and part of the demon’s head splatters in your face. You’re dropped immediately. The demon’s body is still standing though. “Shoot the bastard again!” you hear a gruff voice shout and this time the next shot hits chest and the demon falls. You lay motionless on the ground, looking up in the sky when your saviors come up to you. It’s a group of dwarves armed with gun powder weapons. “By the gods, get doc out here! We need to fix this man up! Hey lad, you’ll be alright, don’t worry…are you a Zalan soldier?” one of the dwarves asks you. “…yeah…Nuro…lost…all dead…” is all you utter before fall into unconsciousness. A few days pass before you’re somewhat back to a coherent state. You find yourself in a military outpost and at this point you don’t care. You’re just happy to be alive. It would seem that during your escape from Nuro, you ran in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom, the dwarven scouts that found you were from a small neutral kingdom trying its best to stay out of the dispute between Tulan and Zalan, but the new threat of demons running all over the nearby countryside caused them to increase patrols. They fixed you up, but dropped you off at the closest Zalan Fort. The Zalan fort that you’re in right now is called Virtue and it’s on the Tulan border. It seems relatively calm though. Not at all what you thought it would be. When one of the healers comes in to check on you, you begin to ask questions which she tries to answer to get you up to speed. The Tulan Kingdom is currently under attack from the demons now. They’ve been assaulting the place and even gaining help from some of the evil populace there. The demon citizens there have reverted back to their “bad behavior” and thrown their lot in with the invaders as well. That doesn’t surprise you. The Tulan Kingdom pulled back some of their military from the borders so the fighting hasn’t been as bad and Zalan’s made a little more progress during this time, but the military minds are being cautious not to over extend. There is extreme concern over the recent demon invasion, not to mention the incident at Nuro. Word has already spread about the unsuccessful siege there. The healer also tells you that a few Zalan “high ups” are eager to speak to you soon, as they want to know what exactly happened at Nuro. You’re somewhat of an important survivor since as far as anyone knows; you were the only one to successfully escape that killing zone. There’s also talk of a “Grand Alliance” being created to counter these new threats. While the healer talks you end up drifting back to sleep wishing you could just escape it all. One year passes… You’re still at Fort Virtue and it doesn’t look like you’ll be leaving the army anytime soon. You couldn’t have been more wrong on your belief that you’d get executed for cowardice. You got promoted to sergeant instead, which in light of the current situation, is nearly the same thing. Your promotion came after several Zalan officers spoke to you about Nuro. You even got a medal. Stories and rumors creep around about how against all odds you survived an undead onslaught and fought off a bunch of demons as well. Your past “reputation” from your time in Retlad is exaggerated as well. It doesn’t help that the citizens there remember you and are all willing to add to the exaggeration. All of these stories have been woven together in such an elaborate way to make you seem like some kind of hero most likely for propaganda purposes. And you know you’re not hero. In fact you try to explain you aren’t a hero to people, but they think you’re just being modest, eventually you give up. Your assignment at Virtue hasn’t been uneventful. There’s fighting, but now it’s mainly demon commanded enemies rather than Tulan ones. Some demon lord called Velzix killed the royalty there, completely conquered the area and made it his realm. The border war continues under new management except now it’s more than just a border that the enemy is looking to take. Your superior, Captain Eckard reminds you of Valhlat except with a different name. You suppose there is a certain “cookie cutter” that occurs within the Zalan army that causes people to act the same. You’ve briefly wondered if you ever make that rank, you’ll act the same way. You then usually laugh at the very fact that you ever would. Fort Virtue hasn’t suffered a really bad attack yet, and it’s mostly skirmishes, but it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You routinely go on patrols and give orders which you didn’t think you’d be good at, but you think back to how you used to order your brothers and sisters around and perhaps you always had a bit a leadership skill, you just didn’t want it. You thought that you’d be able to at least visit your family, but of course due to recent events, you’re ordered to stay put. Your family at least is getting more money from your pay increase. They even send a new lute for you after you told them of the unfortunate event that resulted in the destruction of your last one. This gives you a little pleasure in a relatively joyless assignment. All in all, you still prefer it compared to being in the unsuccessful assaults on Nuro. The Grand Alliance that was formed hasn’t been too successful as every one has been a slaughter from what you’ve heard. You already went through that once. You don’t relish the idea of going through it again. One day while you’re spending your free time practicing a new song, some new soldiers come into the fort. They look like they’ve just seen a vicious battle and are here to restock. One of them sees you and gives you a disapproving look. It’s a woman with striking good looks, but definitely carrying an air of leadership about her. Her rank signifies her as a captain…yep same cookie cutter, just a little prettier. “You there! What are you doing playing an instrument? Shouldn’t you be on watch or doing something more constructive with your time soldier? And you’re a sergeant? You should know better!” “I’m not on watch duty right now and…” The woman doesn’t even let you finish your explanation. Other soldiers that were sitting in your area are now slowly creeping out of the fray. Even her own soldiers are creeping away. They probably know all too well of how she acts. “So? You think evil is going to wait around for you to be ready for battle? Where is your superior officer? I can’t believe they would allow such a relaxed attitude around here considering the importance of this fort! If you were serving under me, I’d have you flogged for your lack of discipline!” > You letters to home (Escape from Nuro) Dear Mom, I dunno if they informed you, but I AM still alive! I don’t know how long you may have been worrying, but I’m sure you already heard about the failed siege at Nuro. It was horrible. I’ve spoken little about it as I’ve been attempting to recuperate in Fort Virtue. I really don’t want to, but I know I have to. Some of the high ranking people in the Zalan military apparently want to talk to me directly about it too. Apparently I was the only survivor. I still can’t believe it. I mean is it possible the god of luck rolled the dice and I was spared that day? It’s the only possible explanation. I mean the dead were all around me and I somehow escaped. My troubles didn’t even end there, since I might’ve died of blood loss or marauding demons had I not been found by a Dwarven patrol. I’ve never seen so much death in my life even during my assignment in Retlad and I wish I didn’t have to again, but I know I will. I just wish I could get my mind on the awful things I saw that day. Normally I’d play my music, but I don’t even have my lute anymore to do that. I miss it. I can’t believe I’m even obsessing about a stupid instrument when I should really be thankful that I’m still alive! Nobody else is. Captain Valhlat, Wessel, all of them. All those people in my company are dead or worse, probably raised as zombies by now. I dread what the future holds. Will I be sent back? I wish I had my lute. Give my love to the rest of the family Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Demons are a lot faster than the undead and you’re wounded, no way are you going to be able to outrun them. You turn around and draw your bow, trying to ignore your pain which is overriding any fear you have at this point. Your weakened state is causing you to have a hard time aiming. “Uh oh, better be careful, looks like this one is going to put up a fight. I’d say by his uniform that he’s a soldier.” “Hur hur. Good. Hey human, better stop wobbling if you’re going to aim that thing properly.” You miss the demon completely. “Hah! You want me to walk slower human?” ”You sure you should be playing with him like that? Don’t you remember what happened earlier today?” “Shut up! I told ya, that bitch musta had some magical powers because…OW!” You hit the demon in the chest, but it doesn’t seem much damage. He pulls out the arrow and now begins to quicken his pace. The other demon starts to walk towards you as well. “See, I told you to pay attention.” “Bah! If this is the extent of what his little pig sticker can do, I’m not concerned. Hey human, don’t you know they’re doing great things with gunpower these days? RAAAAGH!” The big demon suddenly charges you, and you let your arrow fly. Right in the eye. “Perfect.” You whisper. The demon bellows, but it doesn’t slow him down. You narrowly dodge his charge. You roll on the ground and shoot two more arrows in his back. He turns around snarling and bellowing for your blood. More arrows fly into the creature, but at last the demon has reached you and smacks you to the ground. Your bow flies from your hand, and while crawling on the ground you try to draw your sword, but a crushing blow hits you on the back. This might’ve caused a lot more damage, but miraculously the lute that’s still in your pack “softens” the blow. The crunching of wood signifies that it’s broken though. “What the fuck, that’s a weird noise…what is this? HA HA HA! Hey! You gotta be shittin’ me! A fuckin’ lute? Check this out! He’s carrying a fuckin’ lute! What’s a fucking soldier doin’ with a lute?” the big demon shouts to his acquaintance while he holds up your broken instrument. “Don’t talk you idiot! LOOK OUT!” his acquaintance shouts, just as you recover long enough to shove your sword straight into the demon’s groin. You push the sword upward in an attempt to do more damage and you succeed. Blood is flying everywhere and the demon howls in pain from the grievous wound. You pull your sword out and then proceed to repeatedly stab the demon until it falls backwards on the ground, dead. You’re exhausted; you used all your remaining strength killing the thing. Unfortunately the other demon grabs you by the scruff like a helpless kitten and lifts you up off the ground a few inches. He knocks your sword out of your hand and looks at his fallen comrade. “Hmm, can’t say I didn’t warn him. Oh well, more meat for me. This may hurt a lot…” Fully expecting the death that you’ve managed to avoid for so long, you once again evade it when a gunshot rings out and part of the demon’s head splatters in your face. You’re dropped immediately. The demon’s body is still standing though. “Shoot the bastard again!” you hear a gruff voice shout and this time the next shot hits chest and the demon falls. You lay motionless on the ground, looking up in the sky when your saviors come up to you. It’s a group of dwarves armed with gun powder weapons. “By the gods, get doc out here! We need to fix this man up! Hey lad, you’ll be alright, don’t worry…are you a Zalan soldier?” one of the dwarves asks you. “…yeah…Nuro…lost…all dead…” is all you utter before fall into unconsciousness. A few days pass before you’re somewhat back to a coherent state. You find yourself in a military outpost and at this point you don’t care. You’re just happy to be alive. It would seem that during your escape from Nuro, you ran in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom, the dwarven scouts that found you were from a small neutral kingdom trying its best to stay out of the dispute between Tulan and Zalan, but the new threat of demons running all over the nearby countryside caused them to increase patrols. They fixed you up, but dropped you off at the closest Zalan Fort. The Zalan fort that you’re in right now is called Virtue and it’s on the Tulan border. It seems relatively calm though. Not at all what you thought it would be. When one of the healers comes in to check on you, you begin to ask questions which she tries to answer to get you up to speed. The Tulan Kingdom is currently under attack from the demons now. They’ve been assaulting the place and even gaining help from some of the evil populace there. The demon citizens there have reverted back to their “bad behavior” and thrown their lot in with the invaders as well. That doesn’t surprise you. The Tulan Kingdom pulled back some of their military from the borders so the fighting hasn’t been as bad and Zalan’s made a little more progress during this time, but the military minds are being cautious not to over extend. There is extreme concern over the recent demon invasion, not to mention the incident at Nuro. Word has already spread about the unsuccessful siege there. The healer also tells you that a few Zalan “high ups” are eager to speak to you soon, as they want to know what exactly happened at Nuro. You’re somewhat of an important survivor since as far as anyone knows; you were the only one to successfully escape that killing zone. There’s also talk of a “Grand Alliance” being created to counter these new threats. While the healer talks you end up drifting back to sleep wishing you could just escape it all. One year passes… You’re still at Fort Virtue and it doesn’t look like you’ll be leaving the army anytime soon. You couldn’t have been more wrong on your belief that you’d get executed for cowardice. You got promoted to sergeant instead, which in light of the current situation, is nearly the same thing. Your promotion came after several Zalan officers spoke to you about Nuro. You even got a medal. Stories and rumors creep around about how against all odds you survived an undead onslaught and fought off a bunch of demons as well. Your past “reputation” from your time in Retlad is exaggerated as well. It doesn’t help that the citizens there remember you and are all willing to add to the exaggeration. All of these stories have been woven together in such an elaborate way to make you seem like some kind of hero most likely for propaganda purposes. And you know you’re not hero. In fact you try to explain you aren’t a hero to people, but they think you’re just being modest, eventually you give up. Your assignment at Virtue hasn’t been uneventful. There’s fighting, but now it’s mainly demon commanded enemies rather than Tulan ones. Some demon lord called Velzix killed the royalty there, completely conquered the area and made it his realm. The border war continues under new management except now it’s more than just a border that the enemy is looking to take. Your superior, Captain Eckard reminds you of Valhlat except with a different name. You suppose there is a certain “cookie cutter” that occurs within the Zalan army that causes people to act the same. You’ve briefly wondered if you ever make that rank, you’ll act the same way. You then usually laugh at the very fact that you ever would. Fort Virtue hasn’t suffered a really bad attack yet, and it’s mostly skirmishes, but it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. You routinely go on patrols and give orders which you didn’t think you’d be good at, but you think back to how you used to order your brothers and sisters around and perhaps you always had a bit a leadership skill, you just didn’t want it. You thought that you’d be able to at least visit your family, but of course due to recent events, you’re ordered to stay put. Your family at least is getting more money from your pay increase. They even send a new lute for you after you told them of the unfortunate event that resulted in the destruction of your last one. This gives you a little pleasure in a relatively joyless assignment. All in all, you still prefer it compared to being in the unsuccessful assaults on Nuro. The Grand Alliance that was formed hasn’t been too successful as every one has been a slaughter from what you’ve heard. You already went through that once. You don’t relish the idea of going through it again. One day while you’re spending your free time practicing a new song, some new soldiers come into the fort. They look like they’ve just seen a vicious battle and are here to restock. One of them sees you and gives you a disapproving look. It’s a woman with striking good looks, but definitely carrying an air of leadership about her. Her rank signifies her as a captain…yep same cookie cutter, just a little prettier. “You there! What are you doing playing an instrument? Shouldn’t you be on watch or doing something more constructive with your time soldier? And you’re a sergeant? You should know better!” “I’m not on watch duty right now and…” The woman doesn’t even let you finish your explanation. Other soldiers that were sitting in your area are now slowly creeping out of the fray. Even her own soldiers are creeping away. They probably know all too well of how she acts. “So? You think evil is going to wait around for you to be ready for battle? Where is your superior officer? I can’t believe they would allow such a relaxed attitude around here considering the importance of this fort! If you were serving under me, I’d have you flogged for your lack of discipline!” > You letters to home (Thanks for the lute!) Dear Mom Thanks for the lute! I received it just a few days ago. It plays very well, its even better than the one I lost. It’s certainly made what little free time I have at least tolerable now. I really wish I could get a chance to visit you guys though. I thought I would’ve been able to by now, but I suppose given the current situation, nobody’s getting any kind of leave for quite some time. I’m sure you’ve also heard all about how I’m supposed to be some kind of hero after surviving the failed attack on Nuro, but I don’t see how. I mean I guess praise is better than being insulted, but at this point I feel like a fraud. Like I’m getting too much credit for something that was pure luck in the first place. I dunno, I know you and the rest of the family are proud of me so that’s all that really matters. I’m just trying to keep all this in perspective. You and Dad always told me not to get a big head about things. At least they raised my pay so I can send you guys more money. That’s why I joined the first place after all. This new rank gives me a few more responsibilities, but I can handle it. So far this assignment hasn’t been too bad. Demons aren’t a picnic to fight though and I’m dreading the day when they start attacking in a more organized manner. Until then, I’ll just be enjoying your gift when I can. Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Despite your fears, you’ve always had a sense of duty and responsibility, something that probably won’t ever completely go away due to how you grew up. You’re not running away, you did join to help provide for your family after all. Before your company packs up and leaves Retlad, you write a quick letter to your family and hand it off to a messenger. Many of the Retlad citizens aren’t too pleased to see you leave, but they don’t really have any say in the matter, just like you don’t. There isn’t much talking on the trip, though, everyone is pretty silent. Wessel however is doing enough for everyone. “I can’t believe something like this happened! Nuro was a beacon of enlightenment and well prepared for situations like this! I…can’t believe this didn’t occur without some sort of demonic influence. I’ll bet that Mr. Demar had something to do with this! I remember taking his class and he was always a creepy bastard. Before I could graduate I had to take his conjuration 101 class and he didn’t like me because I had made several logical arguments to as why that branch of magic should be outlawed altogether. And it’s obvious by what happened recently that I was right! Nevertheless I did all the required work in the class and I still got a B! Way to fuck up my perfect record! I get the same grade as some bumbling idiot who summoned up a Nurk Beast that he lost control over and bit off someone’s hand! Where is the fucking justice?” Once again, Wessel has turned the topic to focus on himself. Happily Captain Vahlat tells him to shut the fuck up. You’ll be near Nuro soon and your company makes camp for the night. While all of you are on edge from what will come tomorrow, someone finally says something. “Hey farmboy, play us a song on that thing.” “…what did you want to hear?” you ask, not expecting to be called to play under these circumstances. In fact it just occurred to you that you’ve never played for anyone in your company! You assume that they all knew that you did, but they just were never interested enough to stick around and listen to you before. “I dunno, play whatever it was you used to play for the Retlad citizens…it seemed to make them happy.” You pull out your lute and take a deep breath and start playing. At first you’re just concentrating on the strings and making sure you don’t mess anything up, but when you look up, you can see that everyone in the camp is listening intently to your music, even Wessel. Tensions seem to have decreased. It’s like a wave of calmness has struck the camp. You never believed your playing could have that much of an effect on people. Eventually the song ends and the Captain tells everyone who isn’t on watch to get some sleep. He then takes you aside. “Heard your playing…damn shame that you’re here. You really should be doing that instead.” Valhlat remarks. “I know.” “Hm. I know you joined mainly to help support your family.” “Yeah, I just hope I get to see them again.” “Bah, don’t start talking like that. I’ve seen you with a bow, you pluck that thing even better than that lute. You’ve been in battle before and survived, I see you doing it again.” “I sure hope so, its just I dunno…the undead…I’ve heard stories.” “Yeah, everyone’s heard the stories, but stories tend to be exaggerated. Now I dunno about what happened centuries ago, since I wasn’t there, but I HAVE fought the undead before. One of my first assignments was taking care of some minor undead incursion in a little village. Some asshole stumbled upon an ancient scroll and started reading the goddamn words on it out loud. They look a lot worse than they actually are. Most of the time they’re incredibly slow, and easily dispatched. Its mainly a psychological advantage from all the stories people have told about them that cause this quaking fear in most folks.” “Well I suppose, but what about the necromancers?” “Feh, they’re wizards and just like all the rest their arrogance is their undoing. Most of these so-called necromancers are half-assed ones that get killed by their own undead troops. Anyway, get to sleep; you want to be fully alert for tomorrow’s battle. It still won’t be a walk in the park, but it’s not going to be a death sentence.” You take the Captain’s words into consideration, but in the back of your mind before you go to sleep, you’re thinking “But they can’t be that half-assed, they successfully took over Nuro…” The next day arrives and you finish your trip to Nuro and that’s when you see the city for the first time. You always wanted to visit it after hearing about it from Wessel, but even from this distance it doesn’t look like anything he described. “By the gods…what…” Wessel slowly whispers. The stench of death is thick in the air. You see thousands of bodies outside the city gates and they aren’t lying down either. They aren’t advancing either though. There just standing there like…well zombies. Your company isn’t the only one here though, there are a few others awaiting orders. You see one from the Brot Kingdom and another from the Azi Republic. Thankfully there’s another Zalan one as well to boost your numbers. The respective captains acknowledge each other’s presence, a short meeting is made and then the inevitable comes. The attack. At first things seem to go well. All ranged troops are ordered to fire upon the enemy who are still just standing there. Arrows pierce zombie brains, gunshots destroy skeleton bones, spells blast at walls and it seems very easy. Then from the battlements of Nuro a few figures begin casting a few offensive spells of their own. It’s at this point a charge is made towards the city. “When you get in range aim for the fucking wizards! Don’t fear these rotting meat sacks! We’re the fucking Zalan army! We don’t lose!” Captain Valhlat shouts. Fine words, but they do little to uplift your impending sense of doom. It doesn’t help that the sky goes completely dark while you’re marching towards a bunch of undead and at the same time hoping you don’t get hit by a wizard’s spell. In the distance you briefly see a cleric from the Azi Republic riding a horse by himself. He appears to be calling upon some sort of holy might from whatever god he worships since a blue protective sphere appears around him. The next moment he’s hit by a black ray that goes straight through the sphere and his life is gone. Not even his god could protect him. As you get closer, you see that the undead soldiers still haven’t moved, but there are significantly less of them as they continue to fall from ranged attacks. However, now other undead pop up on the walls of Nuro holding bows of their own. “SHIELDS!” Captain Valhlat shouts. More of your side falls and now you’re so close you can smell the death in the air. The undead troops are now finally moving to do battle with your side. You attempt to target the robed figures on the battlements, but of course it’s very difficult in all this chaos and your fear. You mostly only get the undead archers. Wessel is a little more successful is downing an enemy wizard. “Ha ha! Don’t you realize I graduated top of my class?!” you hear him shout. The gates of Nuro are being broken down and despite the horror you’ve already seen, this battle still seems hopeful. Then a black cloaked hooded figure sudden appears on the battlements. You see him merely raise his arms briefly and that’s when you get the very real feeling that hope is lost. Ghostly spirits come through the walls of Nuro making worse shrieks than when you fought the Quillars. At least they were living creatures. These drain lives at but a touch and there isn’t enough magic to fight the incorporeal creatures properly. You see the Brot Kingdom’s company break and run, but unfortunately for them and you, your possible retreat has been blocked. All the soldiers on your side that fell have now suddenly been raised, the undead soldiers that were killed have been raised as well. You’re fighting in the front, from behind and in some cases from within. It’s chaos. “Shit, I’m going to die today…” you whisper to yourself. Captain Valhlat is knee deep in the dead, but this figure who’s apparently changed the tide of battle hasn’t escaped his attention. He points to the figure and barks orders at the top of his lungs. “KILL HIM! SHOOT THE FUCKER! DO IT! NOW!” > You letters to home (Assault on Nuro) Dear Mom, I’m writing this just before we head off to Nuro. I’m sort of scared. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. I also know I’ve been in danger several times before, but I have a bad feeling about this mission. I remember those old stories Dad told about the Dead War that occurred centuries ago. Those used to scare the hell out of me. I was usually thankful when you told him to stop telling me and Mallack about it. Still he always said that he told those stories so that we could better appreciate the relatively “safe” time we live in now even if it isn’t perfect. I’d hate to think that he was wrong about that, because I certainly wouldn’t want to live during the years of the Great Lich Lord’s reign of terror. I’ve been told that this “outbreak” is still small enough to be contained and eliminated, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. Nuro is a place of strong magic! If they couldn’t handle this problem, how are we going to be able to? What manner of undead are going to face us? What of the evil wizards that caused this in the first place? As far as my company goes, the only really powerful one we have is Wessel. I hope they aren’t just sending us, or that we’ll at least have much more magical back up by the time we arrive there. I’ve been trying to not worry about this, but this doesn’t feel right. In my heart it doesn’t feel right. I just hope and pray to all the gods that I survive this. Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just because he’s acting reckless doesn’t mean you’re going to, you’re going to play upon your strengths and keep as far away as you can. You ride your horse around the outskirts of the village, readying your bow the whole time. When you can, you fire at the Quillar attackers. As quick as they are, they aren’t really paying attention to you and you manage to get in some good shots. A couple of head shots even. At first they don’t realize where the all the arrows are coming from, since Wessel is giving them a hard enough time with the chain lightning. You’re sort of glad you decided to stay on the outskirts. Wessel is having such a “good time” blasting the Quillars, he’s probably causing a lot more collateral damage in the process. Eventually the Quillars start to retreat. This is when you get into a little more trouble as you happen to be right in the direction of where they’re running! They still look scary and they get even moreso as they get closer. The worst has to be their shrieks. It’s unpleasant to hear to say the least. You ride out of the way, but your horse isn’t fast enough and is peppered by quills. You catch a few in the leg yourself and you’re thrown from the horse as it reels in pain, before collapsing. Feeling the pain you scramble for cover behind a nearby rock. Fortunately the quills don’t penetrate that. Most of them are content on just running away, but one straggler decides to try to get one more kill before leaving. That kill of course happens to be you. The Quillar makes its high pitch shriek as it runs towards the rock. You don’t have time to ready your bow before its high jumped over the rock and on the other side of you. You quickly draw your weapon and swing it blindly as you turn around. Luckily your blade catches the side of its head, killing it. At last you collapse from the pain in your leg. While you’re pulling out quills, Wessel and another Zalan soldier come to meet you. Wessel doesn’t look any worse for wear, but the soldier looks very tired and obviously has wounds of his own. “There you are, lying down on the job I see.” Wessel mocks. “Are you alright?” the other soldier asks. “Yeah…Agh. I’ve gotten bitten in the leg by a Kobold before. Feels nearly the same except these quills go in a lot deeper.” “Glad you guys came when you did. We were just doing a routine patrol when these quill bastards came out of nowhere! They’re getting bolder and attacking in greater number, we need more reinforcements.” “Yeah, well good luck with that. The Tulan border is the primary concern. Besides I’m here now, I predict that this infestation will be over soon now.” Wessel boasts. “Any…way. My name’s Tylir. I’d introduce you to the rest of my squad, but they’re all dead now. Even though it was the heat of battle, I couldn’t help notice how well you picked off several of those Quillars with one shot. That was pretty impressive.” “Thanks.” “Hey! What about me? I’m the one who noticed you getting attacked in the first place! I’m also the one who saved your ass!” Wessel interrupts again, he’s starting to get annoying at this point, but Tylir doesn’t seem bothered by him. “Everyone did their part. Okay, since I’m here I’ll take you to see Captain Vhalat, I’m sure that’s who you were sent to report to, oh and wizard while your skills may be appreciated here, I’d advise you to cut down on the boasting. Captain Vhalat isn’t fond of it, and to be quite honest the other two wizards we had here were more experienced and they still got killed.” “Hmm, well perhaps they lacked the natural skill that I of course possess.” At this point you and Tylir just roll your eyes and get moving. You travel through a couple of other villages and it’s pretty depressing. You see stacks of bodies being buried in mass graves while most of other Retlad citizens look thoroughly defeated. A few look in your direction, but don’t look too much, it’s like they don’t really expect you to succeed. Not exactly inspiring. Soon you arrive in the town of Glaf. It would appear that the Zalan contingency sent here is staying in one of the bigger Retlad towns rather than the capitol. Ryan also says that the Quillar infestation is worse around here too, so the captain suspects that whatever lair they’re crawling out of is nearby and can hopefully located and cleansed. The town itself resembles a small Zalan fort rather than a proper Retlad town, as a sturdy wall has been erected around it. The people seem to look a little more hopeful though. Tylir goes on to say that he thinks that the Retlad citizens are actually starting to prefer Zalan presence especially since their on government has been pretty ineffectual about the whole invasion. The Retlad army has only focused on defending the capitol. The Retlad royals appear to find their lives more important than anyone else’s. Eventually you’re brought before Captain Vahlat himself. He looks up from the map he’s inspecting and addresses you and Wessel. “Ah, I see the Empire has seen fit to send me reinforcements…wow, twice as many as I thought I’d get. Private Tylir where’s the rest of your squad?” “Um…dead sir.” “Of course. (sigh) So what’s your problem private? Why is your leg wrapped up?” Vahlat asks you. “Got into a fight with the Quillars sir.” You answer. “Oh?” Tylir at this point interrupts and tells of what happened. Wessel looks like he wants to expand upon his deeds, but Vahlat’s appearance is a little imposing and he was already warned once, so he keeps his mouth shut. Vahlat soon addresses you again. “Well it would seem you two have already proven yourselves useful. A lot more useful that what passes for the Retlad army, but of course that isn’t hard. Wizard, I certainly hope you don’t intend to use this place as a chance to show off all the skills you learned in your fancy Nuro college. One of your predecessors did that as well, and as you can see he’s no longer here. As for you, I hope that you can do a better job of keeping out of the way of the quills next time. Most don’t get a second chance. Alright that’s all for now. Our group is being housed for free at the Inn down the street. Free food as well, but don’t go overboard, its being rationed. You want more food or anything else you’ll have to pay like everyone else. I suggest though that you don’t do any heavy carousing. This is a high alert situation and we could be going to battle at anytime. Dismissed.” You, Wessel and Tylir all leave at this point. Tylir goes on to show you where the Inn is and a couple of other places, but after today you just want to rest and retire to your room early. You rest your leg and begin practicing your lute. This puts you in better spirits. 6 months pass… The Quillar invasion has nearly been eradicated. Most of the major lairs have been located and cleansed and you certainly contributed greatly to this effort. Besides your combat abilities, your tracking skills definitely came in handy a lot. You’ve become somewhat recognized among Retlad citizens due to your actions and the lives you’ve saved. The word “hero” has been used a few times though you definitely don’t think of yourself as one. In your free time you spoke with the citizens, a lot more than your fellow soldiers though. A few of them even convinced you to play for them when they noticed your lute. It took a little prodding, but eventually you gave in fully expecting to get booed, but to your surprise, you got applauded instead. Your playing didn’t just boost your spirits it seemed. Whenever you could you played a little bit for people in what little free time you had. Never did you think that you’d be playing for any kind of audience, let alone an appreciative one. It definitely hasn’t been all sunshine though; you’ve seen a lot of people die. More than you ever wanted to actually. You’d made friends with Tylir shortly after your first meeting and he died only a couple months later. You’ll be glad when every one of these Quillar creatures are all dead though, all they’ve done is cause misery. You’ve got them on the run now though. You’re preparing for an attack on another one of their lairs, when Captain Vahlat calls everyone to see him, he doesn’t look enthusiastic about whatever it is he has to tell you. “All right I’ll be brief. As much as I hate leaving a mission unfinished, we’re getting pulled out of here effective immediately. Major news is that Nuro has undergone a fucking disaster that needs to be put down like yesterday! All governments friendly to the City State of Nuro that can spare the manpower are to send help. We would be one of those. I hope the Retlad army is just competent enough to finish up what we started in their own country.” Wessel immediately pipes up upon hearing about this revelation. “What happened in Nuro? What’s going on?!” “What’s going on? From what I’ve been told a whole bunch of your kind raised a shitload of undead and unleashed a bunch of hostile demons on the place! The entire city was overrun. Reports are already stating that small packs of demons are running around the nearby countryside. Most likely in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom. Not sure what that means with our border war with them, but I only see it getting bloodier around there. In any case, our job is to head to Nuro, before the undead start following suit. I hope you’re all ready for this, because this is going to be a lot different that fighting Quillars.” You look around and see a lot of fear wash over faces and rightly so. Necromancers have a bad history on your world. When you were little you still remember hearing the tales of the Great Lich Lord that existed centuries before you were even born. He almost took over the world. Those stories gave you nightmares as a kid. The possibility of having to face something remotely similar even on much smaller scale doesn’t make you feel too well. > You letters to home (Retlad assignment) Dear Mom, This assignment is almost coming to a close I believe. We’ve got the Quillars on the run and wiped out most of their lairs. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’d rather be fighting Kobolds! Lately I’ve been able to play a lot more thanks to our severe lowering of the Quillar population. The people here are pretty nice, they seem to always want me to play for them. Didn’t think I’d actually ever play for a proper audience! I’m happy to do it though, it sort of keeps my mind off of the nastier things I’ve seen. I know I told you about how my friend Tylir died, a few months ago, but it still seems a little unreal. I mean other than Dad, I’ve never known anyone who I knew personally dying. And certainly not as violently as he did. I’ve seen a lot more violence in general though. However, I guess I should’ve expected stuff like this to happen. I mean I am in the army! Sometimes the people call us heroes and stuff for killing the Quillars. Some guys like that annoying Wessel get a thrill out of it, but I dunno. I don’t really feel like one. I just want to do my job and survive. And play if possible. Well I guess that’s it for now, give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just because he’s acting reckless doesn’t mean you’re going to, you’re going to play upon your strengths and keep as far away as you can. You ride your horse around the outskirts of the village, readying your bow the whole time. When you can, you fire at the Quillar attackers. As quick as they are, they aren’t really paying attention to you and you manage to get in some good shots. A couple of head shots even. At first they don’t realize where the all the arrows are coming from, since Wessel is giving them a hard enough time with the chain lightning. You’re sort of glad you decided to stay on the outskirts. Wessel is having such a “good time” blasting the Quillars, he’s probably causing a lot more collateral damage in the process. Eventually the Quillars start to retreat. This is when you get into a little more trouble as you happen to be right in the direction of where they’re running! They still look scary and they get even moreso as they get closer. The worst has to be their shrieks. It’s unpleasant to hear to say the least. You ride out of the way, but your horse isn’t fast enough and is peppered by quills. You catch a few in the leg yourself and you’re thrown from the horse as it reels in pain, before collapsing. Feeling the pain you scramble for cover behind a nearby rock. Fortunately the quills don’t penetrate that. Most of them are content on just running away, but one straggler decides to try to get one more kill before leaving. That kill of course happens to be you. The Quillar makes its high pitch shriek as it runs towards the rock. You don’t have time to ready your bow before its high jumped over the rock and on the other side of you. You quickly draw your weapon and swing it blindly as you turn around. Luckily your blade catches the side of its head, killing it. At last you collapse from the pain in your leg. While you’re pulling out quills, Wessel and another Zalan soldier come to meet you. Wessel doesn’t look any worse for wear, but the soldier looks very tired and obviously has wounds of his own. “There you are, lying down on the job I see.” Wessel mocks. “Are you alright?” the other soldier asks. “Yeah…Agh. I’ve gotten bitten in the leg by a Kobold before. Feels nearly the same except these quills go in a lot deeper.” “Glad you guys came when you did. We were just doing a routine patrol when these quill bastards came out of nowhere! They’re getting bolder and attacking in greater number, we need more reinforcements.” “Yeah, well good luck with that. The Tulan border is the primary concern. Besides I’m here now, I predict that this infestation will be over soon now.” Wessel boasts. “Any…way. My name’s Tylir. I’d introduce you to the rest of my squad, but they’re all dead now. Even though it was the heat of battle, I couldn’t help notice how well you picked off several of those Quillars with one shot. That was pretty impressive.” “Thanks.” “Hey! What about me? I’m the one who noticed you getting attacked in the first place! I’m also the one who saved your ass!” Wessel interrupts again, he’s starting to get annoying at this point, but Tylir doesn’t seem bothered by him. “Everyone did their part. Okay, since I’m here I’ll take you to see Captain Vhalat, I’m sure that’s who you were sent to report to, oh and wizard while your skills may be appreciated here, I’d advise you to cut down on the boasting. Captain Vhalat isn’t fond of it, and to be quite honest the other two wizards we had here were more experienced and they still got killed.” “Hmm, well perhaps they lacked the natural skill that I of course possess.” At this point you and Tylir just roll your eyes and get moving. You travel through a couple of other villages and it’s pretty depressing. You see stacks of bodies being buried in mass graves while most of other Retlad citizens look thoroughly defeated. A few look in your direction, but don’t look too much, it’s like they don’t really expect you to succeed. Not exactly inspiring. Soon you arrive in the town of Glaf. It would appear that the Zalan contingency sent here is staying in one of the bigger Retlad towns rather than the capitol. Ryan also says that the Quillar infestation is worse around here too, so the captain suspects that whatever lair they’re crawling out of is nearby and can hopefully located and cleansed. The town itself resembles a small Zalan fort rather than a proper Retlad town, as a sturdy wall has been erected around it. The people seem to look a little more hopeful though. Tylir goes on to say that he thinks that the Retlad citizens are actually starting to prefer Zalan presence especially since their on government has been pretty ineffectual about the whole invasion. The Retlad army has only focused on defending the capitol. The Retlad royals appear to find their lives more important than anyone else’s. Eventually you’re brought before Captain Vahlat himself. He looks up from the map he’s inspecting and addresses you and Wessel. “Ah, I see the Empire has seen fit to send me reinforcements…wow, twice as many as I thought I’d get. Private Tylir where’s the rest of your squad?” “Um…dead sir.” “Of course. (sigh) So what’s your problem private? Why is your leg wrapped up?” Vahlat asks you. “Got into a fight with the Quillars sir.” You answer. “Oh?” Tylir at this point interrupts and tells of what happened. Wessel looks like he wants to expand upon his deeds, but Vahlat’s appearance is a little imposing and he was already warned once, so he keeps his mouth shut. Vahlat soon addresses you again. “Well it would seem you two have already proven yourselves useful. A lot more useful that what passes for the Retlad army, but of course that isn’t hard. Wizard, I certainly hope you don’t intend to use this place as a chance to show off all the skills you learned in your fancy Nuro college. One of your predecessors did that as well, and as you can see he’s no longer here. As for you, I hope that you can do a better job of keeping out of the way of the quills next time. Most don’t get a second chance. Alright that’s all for now. Our group is being housed for free at the Inn down the street. Free food as well, but don’t go overboard, its being rationed. You want more food or anything else you’ll have to pay like everyone else. I suggest though that you don’t do any heavy carousing. This is a high alert situation and we could be going to battle at anytime. Dismissed.” You, Wessel and Tylir all leave at this point. Tylir goes on to show you where the Inn is and a couple of other places, but after today you just want to rest and retire to your room early. You rest your leg and begin practicing your lute. This puts you in better spirits. 6 months pass… The Quillar invasion has nearly been eradicated. Most of the major lairs have been located and cleansed and you certainly contributed greatly to this effort. Besides your combat abilities, your tracking skills definitely came in handy a lot. You’ve become somewhat recognized among Retlad citizens due to your actions and the lives you’ve saved. The word “hero” has been used a few times though you definitely don’t think of yourself as one. In your free time you spoke with the citizens, a lot more than your fellow soldiers though. A few of them even convinced you to play for them when they noticed your lute. It took a little prodding, but eventually you gave in fully expecting to get booed, but to your surprise, you got applauded instead. Your playing didn’t just boost your spirits it seemed. Whenever you could you played a little bit for people in what little free time you had. Never did you think that you’d be playing for any kind of audience, let alone an appreciative one. It definitely hasn’t been all sunshine though; you’ve seen a lot of people die. More than you ever wanted to actually. You’d made friends with Tylir shortly after your first meeting and he died only a couple months later. You’ll be glad when every one of these Quillar creatures are all dead though, all they’ve done is cause misery. You’ve got them on the run now though. You’re preparing for an attack on another one of their lairs, when Captain Vahlat calls everyone to see him, he doesn’t look enthusiastic about whatever it is he has to tell you. “All right I’ll be brief. As much as I hate leaving a mission unfinished, we’re getting pulled out of here effective immediately. Major news is that Nuro has undergone a fucking disaster that needs to be put down like yesterday! All governments friendly to the City State of Nuro that can spare the manpower are to send help. We would be one of those. I hope the Retlad army is just competent enough to finish up what we started in their own country.” Wessel immediately pipes up upon hearing about this revelation. “What happened in Nuro? What’s going on?!” “What’s going on? From what I’ve been told a whole bunch of your kind raised a shitload of undead and unleashed a bunch of hostile demons on the place! The entire city was overrun. Reports are already stating that small packs of demons are running around the nearby countryside. Most likely in the direction of the Tulan Kingdom. Not sure what that means with our border war with them, but I only see it getting bloodier around there. In any case, our job is to head to Nuro, before the undead start following suit. I hope you’re all ready for this, because this is going to be a lot different that fighting Quillars.” You look around and see a lot of fear wash over faces and rightly so. Necromancers have a bad history on your world. When you were little you still remember hearing the tales of the Great Lich Lord that existed centuries before you were even born. He almost took over the world. Those stories gave you nightmares as a kid. The possibility of having to face something remotely similar even on much smaller scale doesn’t make you feel too well. > You letters to home (There was this girl...) Hey Mallack! I paid the messenger a little extra to give this one to you personally, don’t show it to Mom or anyone else! I’m serious! I finally did it! I didn’t even expect it either. I was off duty and taking a break from destroying a Quillar lair, so as usual I went down to the tavern to go play for the locals a bit. While it is true there have been several “offers” from some of tavern girls before due to my lute playing ability, I dunno I just never felt comfortable about going with one of them. However, I didn’t get to the tavern; I bumped into some traveling merchant woman from the Brot Kingdom. I apologized and helped pick up her belongings and she noticed the lute I carried. She began to ask me about it since she said she really liked music and soon the pair of us were deep in conversation and going back to the Inn on the other side of town that she was currently staying at. I learned that her name was Helena. We continued to talk in her room and I played for Helena a bit and before I knew it, we were on the bed naked! I’m still not exactly sure how it started, but it sure felt good! I really liked her too, but I guess it was just a one time thing, because she left a couple days later. Though she did say if I was ever stationed in Brot, I should look her up again. Anyway, I guess I felt like I just had to tell someone. I suppose I could’ve told the guys in my company, but I didn’t really want to be sweated down for more detailed information constantly. Okay that’s it, and like I said, don’t show this to Mom or anyone else! In fact you should probably just destroy it. Your brother<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve never even heard of Quillars before, but they still sound less dangerous than the Tulan Border, that place is only going to get worse, you know it. “I’ll take the Retlad assignment sir.” “Hm. Smart. Here’s your first month’s pay, I suggest you live it up here in Zal, for the couple of days you have off before you leave.” You take the small bag and look inside. This will certainly help your family. You take a few coins for yourself and then ask if arrangements can be made to have your payment sent to your family from now on. He tells you yes, but asks that surely that you will still want some of it. You agree to just taking 10% of it. You don’t need much. “Sheesh, living bare minimum huh? Don’t you want to eat anything other than military rations every once in awhile?” Kosser questions again. “Nah. If I need extra food, I’ll just hunt.” “You know even the booze and brothel girls in Retlad aren’t THAT cheap. You sure you don’t want more?” “Nope. I’ll be fine. My family needs that money more than I do.” “Alright then, family man.” You exit the barracks and wander the city a bit. You find it very interesting. You sort of wish you could stay longer to take in more sights. However one thing catches your eye. A small store and in the window is a lute. Looks almost like the one you had before it was taken away from you in basic training. You haven’t gotten a chance to play in six months and you’d really like to… Hey you’re a soldier now, you’ve proven yourself. You figure you can take one personal belonging with you to Retlad as long as you keep them packed properly. You enter the store and with the little money you have you buy the lute. You spend the most of the day and the next practicing it. You didn’t forget as much as you thought. You also finish up writing a letter to your family and give it to a Zalan messenger carrier. Finally the third day arrives for you to move out. A couple of officers arrive to take most of your other fellow cadets. Mostly to the Tulan border, however, it would appear you have a different escort. A young man in loose robe approaches you. He looks like a wizard, but you wonder for how long since he seems about your age. “Hey, are you the one going to the Retlad Kingdom?” he asks “Yeah, who are you?” “I’m Wessel. And don’t you dare get cute and call me weasel, or I’ll have to blast you with a lightning bolt.” “I wasn’t planning on it.” You say which causes Wessel to start laughing. “Geez, I was just fucking with you. Don’t be so serious! So you ready to go?” “Yeah I guess, are you my superior officer?” “Huh? Oh no. Look I got our horses waiting outside; we can do all this getting to know you stuff on the way.” You and Wessel get on the horses and ride towards your destination. It would appear that you’re the only one from your group to be going, but of course you were the only expert marksman. Wessel begins to tell you more about why he’s with you. In fact he doesn’t really let you do much talking at all. He says he’s a native citizen of the Zalan Empire, but he just graduated from the esteemed magic university in the city state of Nuro. Wessel goes on to and says that when he heard they needed a few wizard over in Retlad, he decided to volunteer to test his skills and get paid while doing it. He explains that the pair of you will be following the orders of a Captain Vhalat. Everyone knows about Nuro. It’s very famous, and you always wondered what kind of magical wonders existed there, so you’re eager to hear more and he’s all too happy to tell you. Despite Wessel’s primary focus on himself, it sounds like a place you’d want to visit one day. Eventually you arrive at the border and so far the Retlad Kingdom doesn’t look very well kept. The road begins to show evidence of disrepair and the sign posts are broken. You begin to keep your eye out for a possible attack at any second. “Look! Over there! It’s a village and it’s under attack! Come on!” Wessel yells and rides towards the village in the distance. You try to tell him to wait, but he’s already well on his way, so you ride after him. You’ve never seen a Quillar before, but the closer you get to the village, you start seeing humanoid creatures covered in sharp spikes running around at a fast speed which could only be them. They are indeed fearsome looking. You also see a lot of the people running from them, and even a few people dressed in protective gear similar to yours…not that its doing them much good. “Alright you prickly bastards here’s something for ya!” Wessle shouts riding into the village with one hand raised in the air for a lightning blast attack. He shows no fear. You have no idea if all wizards are like this, but he’s either got to be brave, stupid or just suicidal. Of course he could be all three. Up until now you always thought wizards were supposed to be meek types that didn’t charge into battle and preferred to kill from afar. You guess you were wrong. > You letters to home (First assignment) Dear Mom, Well I got my first assignment. I’m heading to the Retlad Kingdom. Unlike most of my fellow cadets I was given the choice to go there instead of the Tulan Border. Thank the gods for my excellent bow skills. Still it’s not going to be an easy assignment, but I’m probably not as worried about it as I might normally be since I finally got paid and managed to buy myself another lute! I’ve been practicing it again to help me keep my mind off things. I made arrangements for most of my pay to be sent to you. You should be receiving it at the end of each month, I hope it’ll help. Anyway, tomorrow is the big day, so I better get some early sleep tonight. I have no idea what to expect. Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>6 months pass… Six months of the most grueling physical training you’ve ever had the misfortune of dealing with! However you fared better than some of your fellow cadets. Guess all that farm living paid off. You’ve certainly improved what combat skills you had, but your marksmanship has improved greatly. You know that Drill Sergeant Kosser has been paying special attention to your abilities. You’re not sure if that’s a good thing of not. In any event you’re being told where your first assignment is going to be. Most of those in your group are being sent to Tulan border. Not the most pleasant assignment. The fighting is getting worse there. What started as a minor border dispute has turned into a series of battles with neither side making too much progress. Even before you joined the military you’d heard stories of the greedy king who runs the Tulan Kingdom. You heard from traveling merchants about how he allows a few demons to walk around in his lands! Utter madness in your opinion. The Zalan Empire might be a little strict on the rules and regulations, but better that than demons letting walking around, in your opinion they should all be killed on sight regardless on whether they’re obeying the “law” or not, they’re evil. You sit anxious on your bed in the barracks as name after name gets called off. Finally Kosser calls off your name, and you fully expect to get sent to the Tulan border. “I want to talk to you in private.” Is what you hear instead. This makes you even more nervous. What’s he going to do? Send you on? A mission to assassinate the Tulan King? After everyone else has gotten there assignments you follow Kosser back to his office. He sits down and speaks direct. “Alright farmboy, I’m sure you’ve noticed me watching your marksmanship skills. You’re one of the best ones that have come in here for awhile. You have a natural talent and you’ve only improved it through training. It would be a blessing to have someone like you up at the Tulan border. The gods know we could use anything to help break the stalemate there.” “…but?” you ask hoping that there is one. “But…your skills might be better served in a place that has a better mortality rate, yet still needs taking care of.” “Where’s that sir?” “Here.” Kosser points to a map to a nearby location. It’s the Retlad Kingdom. You can’t imagine what’s going on there, since as far as you know, you’re Zalan is at peace with them. “Retlad? I thought we’re at peace with them?” “We are…in fact rumors are saying we’ll probably incorporate them into the empire in the near future. I dunno how much you know about politics out there on the farm, but Retlad is basically a bankrupt kingdom. Their dumb ass royalty spent a shitload of their treasury on building ships in some vain attempt to find more land mass on this world. Hah! Doesn’t exist! We learned than centuries ago! Anyway now they don’t have enough to pay for a proper military and their kingdom is being overrun by hostile Quillar tribes. They want us to help. Begging us practically and we have, but it’s a pain in the ass. Quillars are fast and as their name suggests shoot multiple sharp quills at their enemies. I’ve seen them go through plate armor.” “That doesn’t sound good.” “No, it’s not good. The Retlad knight orders got decimated within two months of the first invasion wave. We’re taking a better approach. We need to have equally quick troops that can at least match the fire power. We’ve sent a couple of war wizards, but most of them are serving on the Tulan border. Gunpower weapons are a little too slow for this sort of thing, so we’re looking for people good with a bow. Quick enough to at least get a few shots off from a distance and run. Because hit and run tactics are what the Quillars excel at, so you’ll have to do likewise.” Kosser pauses his talking for a moment. You take this opportunity to interject a question. “And this assignment you say has a lower mortality rate?” “Well, we haven’t sent as many people there yet, but so far we’ve made a little more progress there than at the Tulan border. But of course I won’t say it’s a safe assignment. Those Quillar bastards are vicious and merciless. Up to you farmboy. You’re getting a bonus here. You’re actually getting to choose your assignment. Not many that get out of boot camp get that privilege.” Some “privilege” > You letters to home (Boot Camp) Dear Mom, I’m glad I’ve finally had some free time to write to you. Would you believe that when I first joined up, the recruiter thought I didn’t know how? Sometimes these city folk got a lot of nerve making assumptions about people that grew up on farms, I’ve had to learn that first hand just by the folks I’m currently bunking with. They’re all mostly from the capitol or another Zalan city. I think I’m the only one here from a small village, so I’ve been saddled with the nickname “farmboy”. Ha ha. Despite this nick, I get along with most of the people here. The drill sergeant is mean, but luckily I haven’t had to suffer the full brunt of his wrath, which is more than can be said for a few of the people here. That’s never pretty. Boot camp is very tough. Even tougher than working on the farm. I’m just glad its half-way over. They took my lute away as soon as I entered. I really should’ve known better to take it with me…but I dunno I thought I’d be able to practice it on what few breaks I have. Oh well, I guess I wasn’t ever going to be that traveling bard anyway. Just foolish dreams I suppose. Anyway we’re going to start bow training tomorrow. I think I should do very well in that. Okay, I can’t think of anything else. I hope everything is going well on the farm. I know you’ve always kept an eye on all of us, but make sure that Mallack pays extra attention on the chicken coop this month. The Kobolds come out a lot around this time! Give my love to the rest of the family. Your son<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is no way to live. Working on a barely profitable rundown farm with far too many family members to feed. It’s a damn good thing you’re an excellent hunter. However, lately there’s even been a shortage of game to thwart your efforts. You didn’t really want to be working on the farm your whole life in the first place, you wanted to see the world but when dad died, things got a lot harder for the family and you had to take over as “man” of the house and stay put. Something is going to have to change. While you’d like nothing more than to go through with your childhood dreams of becoming a traveling bard without any responsibility you don’t have that luxury. Hell, you barely have time to play your lute anymore in the small amount of free time you do have. You doubt if you’d even be good enough to make a living for just yourself doing it. But you need to get away, but what can you do that won’t allow you to completely abandon your mom and all your brothers and sisters? You suddenly think of the choice that many in your desperate position have thought of many times before. The army. Its not exactly ideal, but you be traveling and seeing the world so to speak. You’d also be making enough money that you could send to your family. Your own living expenses would be provided for by the army. Of course there’s all that fighting that usually goes along with it that you’re not to keen on. Not that you aren’t a stranger to battle as their have been the occasional bandits or kobold thieves that have attempted to steal from the farm in the past, but you prefer not to fight if possible, especially not up close. The bow has always been your weapon of choice. There’s also the matter of mass combat on a grand scale that usually accompanies army life. A lot different than chasing away some thieves in the chicken coop. As you’re thinking about this, you also realize that there is another option. There’s a small mercenary company passing through the area. They’ve been hanging out at the local tavern for a couple days. They don’t seem to be the noblest sort from what you can tell, but fortunately they seem to have kept their revelry confined to the tavern. Who knows how they act away from “civilization” though. Still, it’s something to consider. There probably is less attention to discipline and a little more relaxed on rules and regulations. You probably wouldn’t be fighting in some mass land war that governments are fond of waging. Mercenaries travel a lot and tend to make more, however they tend to get hired for a lot weirder jobs, usually ones that the employer doesn’t want people to know about or ones that nobody else seems to be able to handle. > You sign up with the mercenaries You’re not sure if the formal military life is for you. If you joined up you wouldn’t be able to readily leave. You figure if you don’t like life as a mercenary or it isn’t working out for you, you can leave freely. You explain your decision to join up with the mercenary company that’s currently passing through. Your revelation comes as a shock. Your smaller brothers and sisters don’t want you to go, your brother Mallack really doesn’t want you to leave since he’ll be next in line to take the brunt of the manual labor! Your mother is a little apprehensive about your decision. You half expect her to say no, but she understands that you’re doing this for the good of the family. She gives her blessing. Before you leave the next day with your packed belongings, your whole family comes to say goodbye to you. You almost hesitate to leave, wondering if it would actually be better for you to stay. Your mother approaches you. “You don’t have to do this you know. We’re doing just fine.” “Yeah, but things would be easier if this family had more money.” “Hah. Things are always easier with more money son, but you don’t need to go and get yourself killed for it.” “Yeah, I know, but I’ve thought it through.” “Very well, you’re old enough to make your own decisions and live your own life, though I’m glad to see that you still want to help the family as opposed to just leaving in the middle of the night.” “I’ll visit and return with whatever my pay is whenever I can.” “I know…okay, you best get going. I think the mercenary company was leaving today.” You make you way to the local tavern and catch them just as they’re getting ready leave. A lot of them look hung over. “Hey wait up…” you say in a slightly loud tone, causing one mean looking mercenary to snarl at you. “Shut the fuck up yokel! Shit, I got a splitting headache and it hurts like a sonofabitch.” “Sorry. Are you the leader of this company?” “Leader of these dickheads? Naw. The Boss is actually visiting his family in the Zalan capital. We’re going to meet up with him now and I suggest you get the fuck outta our way and not waste anymore of our time!” “But I want to join you guys.” The mercenary you were speaking to looks at you then looks at a few of his buddies and begins to laugh louder than your voice which previously annoyed him. “HAHAHA HAHAHA! Y’hear that fellas? This yokel wants to join us! Thanks a lot, I needed a good laugh, now go fuck your pigs or whatever it is you farm types do.” “But I’m serious…” “Serious? Farmboy, this is a man’s job and not for the fuckin’ weak. You ever even use a damn weapon?” “Yeah! I got this bow and this sword! I’m a really good shot!” The mercenary still looks unimpressed. “Uh huh, yeah well you ever kill anyone, hell you ever kill ANYTHING? And I’m not talkin’ about any of your livestock you might’ve slaughtered. I mean something sentient.” “Well yeah, I’ve killed Kobolds that were trying to steal chickens from the…” The mercenaries begin to laugh again. “Oh shit, you are priceless boy! My sister can kill fuckin’ Kobolds and her only talent is whoring.” “Haha got that one right, Dimitri.” Another one of the mercenaries agrees. Suddenly the laughing stops. “What the fuck did you just say Fermeli?” “Uh, I was just agreeing with you…c’mon don’t take it like that! I mean you said…” “Ain’t about what I said, it’s about what YOU said! You called my fucking sister a whore! You ain’t getting’ away with that shit.” Dimitri draws his sword and stomps over to Fermeli who is trying to get one of his buddies to help him, but everyone else is backing away from the fight. Dimitri takes advantage of Fermeli’s state of panic and slashes him good with his sword. Fermeli cries out in pain and begs for forgiveness. Dimitri looks like he’s going to finish him off, but then turns to you. “You want to join hayseed? Kill this piece of shit then.” “Huh? I mean…” you utter in confusion. “Did I stutter pig farmer? Kill this… AARGH FUCK!” Fermeli has now taken advantage of Dimitri by shoving a dagger into his leg and scrambling to get up “Yeah! Take that! How’s that feel?” Fermeli taunts and draws his own sword in an attempt to kill Dimitri At this point you unwisely step into the middle of this fight. “Hey hold on, the pair of you are even now…” “Fuck off pig farmer! You want some of this now? Yeah, let’s see how much of a killer you are!” Fermeli says who doesn’t look frightened of you at all and heads in your direction. “Hey wait I don’t wanna…” You barely dodge his sword swipe to your head. You roll out of the way and quickly grab an arrow and shoot it at Fermeli with your bow, hitting him square in the neck. Some blood spurts out and a surprised look on his face is displayed and then he falls dead. You’ve killed him. You’ve never killed anything before that wasn’t a Kobold or livestock. You feel weird. In the meantime Dimitri gets up and pulls the dagger out of his leg and looks over at Formeli’s body. “Heh, maybe you are a killer after all pig farmer. Well it seems we got an opening now. Take whatever he had as your own. You killed him, you earned it. Welcome to the Chimera Mercenary Company!” While you MAY be in, you’re not necessarily sure if you want in. This may be a bit too much for you. > You join anyway You know this isn’t going to be easy and you’re going to have to be tough, but you remember that you’re doing this for your family. You quickly search Formeli’s body, which didn’t have that much to begin with. “Heh, he always was a broke bastard. Spent all his money on gambling, I’ll miss taking his money that’s for sure. Alright then, you’ll probably be wantin’ to take that sword of his since it looks in way better condition than your rusted hunk of iron. Your bow seems to do the job just fine though. His armor too, and hurry up, we gotta meet the Boss! He’s got another job for us no doubt.” As you’re stripping off some of the armor, Dimitri notices something on your back. “What…what the hell is that boy? Is that a fuckin’ lute? Haw haw! What the fuck are you doin’ with a damn lute? You think that you’re some sort of bard or something? We ain’t got need for such things boy! Get rid of it!” “No, it’s mine.” You defiantly say. You wonder if this show of “courage” has gotten you into a whole mess of trouble that you don’t want, but fortunately it doesn’t. “Heh, he kills one shithead and now he thinks he’s a tough guy! Alright pig farmer keep your sissy lute. But its just more weight for you to carry and you better not be falling behind! Come on men let’s go, the Boss is waiting for us. You too lute boy!” Dimitri exclaims and limps off. You briefly thought about telling him that he better keep up with his wounded leg and all, but you know when to stop. And so your mercenary life begins. A year passes… You’re currently back in the Zalan Empire on a break in between missions. While most of your “buddies” are drinking up their pay and spending it on whores you take this opportunity to visit your family and give them your payment and spoils of battle as usual. You think about how much you’ve traveled and experienced. Not all of it good, but then killing is never pretty. Some of the jobs are very straight forward: “There are some orc barbarians on the borders that have been pillaging our lands, kill them.” And you don’t have a problem with it. Other missions start falling into the “gray” area. Your last job involved some Azi Republic senator hiring the company to take out some secessionists that wanted to form their own country. It wasn’t clean and it definitely wasn’t fun. The secessionists actually had a reasonable complaint about leaving the Republic, saying that it was corrupt and that their representatives didn’t care about them. But being a mercenary means you don’t take sides for moral or ideological reasons, you do it for money. It’s not just that though, some of the things that have been done…well you can’t say you’re too proud of it. Granted, you’ve never actively engaged in some of the less moral and outright criminal things that your mercenary comrades have, but you certainly know about them and it almost makes you feel like you’re guilty of it as well. As for how you cope with some of this stuff, you tend to keep to yourself and play your lute which has oddly made you a little more accepted. Seems there are more than a few music lovers in the company. Even the Captain doesn’t mind you indulging in your little hobby. The Captain is a huge man who you know gets a pleasure from killing and mayhem. He’s spent a lifetime doing it. In fact you have a hard time believing he even has a family that he goes to visit. Who knows though? Perhaps he is different with them. (You’ve been working for the Chimera Company for a year and you still don’t know what the hell his real name is, mainly because everyone only seems to address him as “The Boss” or “Chief” or in a more formal tone “Captain”) You spend the time with your family and tell them of some of the things you’ve seen and exciting places you’ve been to, of course never going into too much detail about the darker side of things. Your brothers and sisters enjoy the tales as usual. Your Mom senses that there is probably more to them, but she doesn’t ask too many questions. She does always asks if you’re okay and says that you don’t have to keep doing it, but you always reply that you’re fine and that you’re just a little tired that’s all. When your time is done you say goodbye to them and meet with the rest of your company at the Zalan capital this time. Its odd, but things seem to be even more chaotic than usual around here. People are rushing around and an air of concern seems to be pervading the city. The guards are telling people to calm down our there will be martial law and you hear something in passing about an attack on a city. You don’t really listen because you’re in a hurry to meet up with your company which you find mostly hanging out in a tavern as usual. Dimitri sees you and speaks. “Ah, it’s our own fuckin’ bard ! How’s my favorite string plucker? (Hic!) You have trouble getting into the city? Heard the guards have been cracking down on security.” “No, but what’s going on? The city seems to be in a state of panic.” “Fuck yeah it is! What you didn’t hear?” “No. What happened?” “Fuckin’ undead happened my pig farming friend! A whole shitload of them took over the the city of Nuro! Can you believe it? Fuckin’ Nuro! That place was supposed to be unconquerable! Heh! (Burp!)” Dimitri says without the slightest bit of worry. “UNDEAD?! What the fuck? Nuro!? How?!” “Fuck if I know, guess some rogue wizards got hooked up in that necromancy shit hardcore. Musta been some demonologists there too since we heard reports of demons too. Not the supposedly civilized type either, they’re the rip off your head and shit down your neck kind.” “…there’s fuckin’ rogue demons in Nuro too?” “Of course not, they all escaped and are now running around in the countryside, heard they’re heading for the Tulan Kingdom.” Dimitri says taking another drink. You’re having a hard time digesting all this yet the rest of your comrades are still drinking and partying like nothing is wrong. Your Dad had once told you tales of a being called the Great Lich Lord that existed many centuries ago who nearly killed the world. Scared the hell out of you then and it doesn’t make you feel too good now. “Isn’t this concerning to you?” “What? Shit no! Just means more work for us and that also means more loot! Ha ha! You could get more loot to buy a new lute! Ha ha ha! (Hic!)” “But this is the fuckin’ undead! I mean…” “So? Stop bein a pussy! I’ve fought some undead before, when I was lootin’ a dwarven tomb. You just chop their heads off like everything else, shit ain’t that hard. They just tend to smell worse…well maybe not worse than trolls. Anyway I’m sure the fucking governments will take care of this shit as quick as possible, you know how politicians don’t like dead taxpayers, in the meantime we need to take advantage now while the conflict is hot!” No sooner has Dimitri said this little bit of wisdom, when the Boss steps in the doorway. He’s as nasty looking as always, but this time he looks even moreso than usual. “Alright you useless sacks of goblin shit. We got a new job. This one just came across rather unexpectedly. Ran into a Dwarven representative and we’re now in the employ of a Dwarven Clan, near the southern Tulan Borders. With the occurrence of this Nuro incident, they’re expecting some shit to spill over into their lands and they want some extra help. This is pretty surprising since Dwarves aren’t known to pay for mercenaries, let alone the likes of us.” The Boss tell you all. “The Tulan Border? Oh fuck that place is a meat grinder! There’s no profit to be had anywhere near there!” Cal pipes up. “Well you can just pick up your panties and get your pansy ass back home and stay there then! The dwarves are paying well and that’s the job. Take it or get the fuck outta my company!” “Excuse me Captain, but weren’t there reports of demons running through that area?” you ask. “Yeah so? That’s why we’re going over there most likely, but be fucking prepared for any damn thing. Maybe even undead…who knows if my…if those necromancer bastards started spreading their plague yet. We leave tomorrow.” You think on this fucked up situation and seriously reconsidering your career choice. > You leave the mercenary company Nope, you’re not doing this. This is suicide in your opinion. You have no idea what to expect and it sound a lot more dangerous than anything you’ve ever faced. Instead of leaving with them the next day, you go back home. You don’t worry about anyone coming after you, but you know you won’t be welcomed back into the company again, and you wouldn’t want to anyway. When you get back home, your family and mom in particular ask what happened, you explain it and say you don’t want any part of that life. You apologize that you couldn’t go through with it, but your mom looks more relieved than anything. “Well son, I’m just as glad you didn’t go get yourself killed over there anyway. You’ll be helping us out plenty just by working on the farm like always.” You’re glad to hear that. Over the next couple days you fall back into routine again. You still wonder about the future though and you briefly consider the army plan again, but given your short lived experience with mercenary “life” you don’t think you’re cut out with battle on a regular basis. Plus the Zalan Empire is currently on heightened alert and battle ready status with this Nuro Incident and all. You resign yourself to the farm life. You play your lute to yourself (and family) when you have the time to do so. It’s a simple life. Two years pass and things have gotten worse. The Necromancer Lord (as he’s become to be known) has expanded, even to the point of taking over the Brot Kingdom. The Tulan Kingdom has been totally conquered by a demon army. A Grand Alliance of nations has been formed, but so far they don’t seem to be making much progress. Meanwhile life on the farm is a little harder. Your youngest sister Makana becomes gravely ill during the winter months, but there’s not enough money to pay for a healer and most of the clerics have been summoned to battle with the undead or demon hordes. Sadly she dies making the overall mood of the farm a little more depressing. You don’t even play anymore, your enthusiasm for music died along with the grim realities setting in. Another three years pass and things are down right miserable. War is everywhere. The Demons have been taken care of, (You heard your former mercenary captain died in battle with their leader Velzix) but the undead are stronger than ever. Reports even speak of the Necromancer Lord becoming The Great Lich Lord “reborn”. To make things worse, the Zalan Empire has been becoming increasingly tyrannical. In order to help with the war effort they’ve started bringing back the draft and the talk of ceasing private property to be used for the good of the government. While they say owners will be able to live and still work on their lands and businesses, it will be owned by the Empire. You know it’s only a matter of time when you get a knock on the door by Zalan army troops coming to take you and your brother Mallack away to the army and your family’s farm. Another two year pass…. You’re on the eve of battle in a land known as the Garwold Confederacy although it’s steadily becoming a giant graveyard now. The undead hordes have been sweeping relentlessly across the entire landscape. Your own company has had to fall back several times. Morale is low. Not that yours was high to begin with. You don’t even know how you’ve survived this long. While you had some battle experience during your time with the mercenary company, it still hasn’t prepared you for the horrors you’ve seen. The undead…you’ll never get used to fighting such emotionless creatures that are the embodiment of death and all that’s unnatural. You briefly wonder if your brother Mallack is alright where he’s stationed, but it hardly matters at this point. Battle comes as it always does and you are not so lucky this time. Horrible and powerful creatures known as Blood Specters and Death Knights utterly destroy your side. You fall to undead blades and chilling touches only rise up and join them in their goal of global genocide.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know this isn’t going to be easy and you’re going to have to be tough, but you remember that you’re doing this for your family. You quickly search Formeli’s body, which didn’t have that much to begin with. “Heh, he always was a broke bastard. Spent all his money on gambling, I’ll miss taking his money that’s for sure. Alright then, you’ll probably be wantin’ to take that sword of his since it looks in way better condition than your rusted hunk of iron. Your bow seems to do the job just fine though. His armor too, and hurry up, we gotta meet the Boss! He’s got another job for us no doubt.” As you’re stripping off some of the armor, Dimitri notices something on your back. “What…what the hell is that boy? Is that a fuckin’ lute? Haw haw! What the fuck are you doin’ with a damn lute? You think that you’re some sort of bard or something? We ain’t got need for such things boy! Get rid of it!” “No, it’s mine.” You defiantly say. You wonder if this show of “courage” has gotten you into a whole mess of trouble that you don’t want, but fortunately it doesn’t. “Heh, he kills one shithead and now he thinks he’s a tough guy! Alright pig farmer keep your sissy lute. But its just more weight for you to carry and you better not be falling behind! Come on men let’s go, the Boss is waiting for us. You too lute boy!” Dimitri exclaims and limps off. You briefly thought about telling him that he better keep up with his wounded leg and all, but you know when to stop. And so your mercenary life begins. A year passes… You’re currently back in the Zalan Empire on a break in between missions. While most of your “buddies” are drinking up their pay and spending it on whores you take this opportunity to visit your family and give them your payment and spoils of battle as usual. You think about how much you’ve traveled and experienced. Not all of it good, but then killing is never pretty. Some of the jobs are very straight forward: “There are some orc barbarians on the borders that have been pillaging our lands, kill them.” And you don’t have a problem with it. Other missions start falling into the “gray” area. Your last job involved some Azi Republic senator hiring the company to take out some secessionists that wanted to form their own country. It wasn’t clean and it definitely wasn’t fun. The secessionists actually had a reasonable complaint about leaving the Republic, saying that it was corrupt and that their representatives didn’t care about them. But being a mercenary means you don’t take sides for moral or ideological reasons, you do it for money. It’s not just that though, some of the things that have been done…well you can’t say you’re too proud of it. Granted, you’ve never actively engaged in some of the less moral and outright criminal things that your mercenary comrades have, but you certainly know about them and it almost makes you feel like you’re guilty of it as well. As for how you cope with some of this stuff, you tend to keep to yourself and play your lute which has oddly made you a little more accepted. Seems there are more than a few music lovers in the company. Even the Captain doesn’t mind you indulging in your little hobby. The Captain is a huge man who you know gets a pleasure from killing and mayhem. He’s spent a lifetime doing it. In fact you have a hard time believing he even has a family that he goes to visit. Who knows though? Perhaps he is different with them. (You’ve been working for the Chimera Company for a year and you still don’t know what the hell his real name is, mainly because everyone only seems to address him as “The Boss” or “Chief” or in a more formal tone “Captain”) You spend the time with your family and tell them of some of the things you’ve seen and exciting places you’ve been to, of course never going into too much detail about the darker side of things. Your brothers and sisters enjoy the tales as usual. Your Mom senses that there is probably more to them, but she doesn’t ask too many questions. She does always asks if you’re okay and says that you don’t have to keep doing it, but you always reply that you’re fine and that you’re just a little tired that’s all. When your time is done you say goodbye to them and meet with the rest of your company at the Zalan capital this time. Its odd, but things seem to be even more chaotic than usual around here. People are rushing around and an air of concern seems to be pervading the city. The guards are telling people to calm down our there will be martial law and you hear something in passing about an attack on a city. You don’t really listen because you’re in a hurry to meet up with your company which you find mostly hanging out in a tavern as usual. Dimitri sees you and speaks. “Ah, it’s our own fuckin’ bard ! How’s my favorite string plucker? (Hic!) You have trouble getting into the city? Heard the guards have been cracking down on security.” “No, but what’s going on? The city seems to be in a state of panic.” “Fuck yeah it is! What you didn’t hear?” “No. What happened?” “Fuckin’ undead happened my pig farming friend! A whole shitload of them took over the the city of Nuro! Can you believe it? Fuckin’ Nuro! That place was supposed to be unconquerable! Heh! (Burp!)” Dimitri says without the slightest bit of worry. “UNDEAD?! What the fuck? Nuro!? How?!” “Fuck if I know, guess some rogue wizards got hooked up in that necromancy shit hardcore. Musta been some demonologists there too since we heard reports of demons too. Not the supposedly civilized type either, they’re the rip off your head and shit down your neck kind.” “…there’s fuckin’ rogue demons in Nuro too?” “Of course not, they all escaped and are now running around in the countryside, heard they’re heading for the Tulan Kingdom.” Dimitri says taking another drink. You’re having a hard time digesting all this yet the rest of your comrades are still drinking and partying like nothing is wrong. Your Dad had once told you tales of a being called the Great Lich Lord that existed many centuries ago who nearly killed the world. Scared the hell out of you then and it doesn’t make you feel too good now. “Isn’t this concerning to you?” “What? Shit no! Just means more work for us and that also means more loot! Ha ha! You could get more loot to buy a new lute! Ha ha ha! (Hic!)” “But this is the fuckin’ undead! I mean…” “So? Stop bein a pussy! I’ve fought some undead before, when I was lootin’ a dwarven tomb. You just chop their heads off like everything else, shit ain’t that hard. They just tend to smell worse…well maybe not worse than trolls. Anyway I’m sure the fucking governments will take care of this shit as quick as possible, you know how politicians don’t like dead taxpayers, in the meantime we need to take advantage now while the conflict is hot!” No sooner has Dimitri said this little bit of wisdom, when the Boss steps in the doorway. He’s as nasty looking as always, but this time he looks even moreso than usual. “Alright you useless sacks of goblin shit. We got a new job. This one just came across rather unexpectedly. Ran into a Dwarven representative and we’re now in the employ of a Dwarven Clan, near the southern Tulan Borders. With the occurrence of this Nuro incident, they’re expecting some shit to spill over into their lands and they want some extra help. This is pretty surprising since Dwarves aren’t known to pay for mercenaries, let alone the likes of us.” The Boss tell you all. “The Tulan Border? Oh fuck that place is a meat grinder! There’s no profit to be had anywhere near there!” Cal pipes up. “Well you can just pick up your panties and get your pansy ass back home and stay there then! The dwarves are paying well and that’s the job. Take it or get the fuck outta my company!” “Excuse me Captain, but weren’t there reports of demons running through that area?” you ask. “Yeah so? That’s why we’re going over there most likely, but be fucking prepared for any damn thing. Maybe even undead…who knows if my…if those necromancer bastards started spreading their plague yet. We leave tomorrow.” You think on this fucked up situation and seriously reconsidering your career choice. > You stick with it You’re in this now and you can’t stop just because it’s looking tough. You got your family to think about. You’re staying. However you do, do something slightly out of character, you spend what little money you have on a whore for the night, mainly because you’re a lot less sure if you’re going to come back from this mission. The next day you’re on the job. The march to the dwarven lands is mostly uneventful, though the fighting between the Zalan Empire and the Tulan Kingdom is still going on their borders which even skirting around, still manages to find your company. The Boss takes advantage of straggling Tulan soldiers that have fled battle. The butchery isn’t uncommon, after all, nobody will know and the Zalan Empire will just be blamed anyway. Arrival in the Dwarven lands is met with caution, the Dwarves obviously know of the Chimera Company’s reputation and a small group of them motion the Boss to just talk to him directly. A deal seems to be made and the Dwarves leave to go back to their underground home. The Captain now addresses all of you. “Alright, apparently there HAVE been demons running all up and down and through the area. The Dwarves are preparing defenses in case they try to invade underground; apparently they consider their underground city takes precedence so their main force is there. However they still have plenty of mines above ground and not nearly enough dwarves to defend them all. Now its been said the demons have been heading toward the Tulan Kingdom, but a lot of them still have been fucking around here and generally wrecking shit for the fun of it. Collapsing even the sturdy mines of the dwarves on their heads seems to be amusing to them. So our goal is to make things bothersome enough for them that they’ll leave the dwarves alone and go elsewhere.” The Captain spits on the ground before continuing. “We’re going to split up for this assignment and take different mines in the area. Watch your fucking ass. I don’t think any of you eunuchs have fought any demons before, but I have and they’re utterly fucking ruthless. Forget all that shit about some of them being civilized. They’re about as civilized as damn Quillar, but a lot more intelligent. The chaos that is in their hearts is always there and these ones are the complete embodiment of it. And for fuck’s sake DON’T stay near any explosives! The dwarves are always using shit like that in their mines and demons have a tendency to have fire throwing abilities. It’s probably the reason for all the easy mine collapses.” The Captain takes out a map. “One more thing. While I know the common thing to do on our assignments is to take advantage of things. We need to play this one completely fucking straight! Do NOT fucking do anything that’s going to piss off the dwarves! If you do, we don’t get paid. We don’t get paid. I’m going to get pissed, because we’re getting a lot for this one. And assuming the dwarves don’t kill you, I certainly fucking will. Alright now I’m going to assign you according to this map.” You and a few others (Including Dimitri) are assigned to the Karzac Mines where you make your way to after some climbing which fortunately isn’t too far off ground level. The dwarves there regard you with suspicion immediately. “Oh great they’re here. Alright, let’s set the ground rules. I’m head miner Morri and I’m in charge of this place! Don’t even think about trying to steal some loose bars of silver that you might find lying around. You do it, and your skull meets an axe or mining pick! Got me?” “Stand up when you speak to me.” Dimitri laughs. “Yeah, make yer jokes human, we’ll see if the demons will appreciate that humor when you’re meeting them face to face.” “Demon, pah! Just one more thing for me to kill, people make a big deal about them. I’ve seen how they fall in line and become law abiding citizens just like anyone else when beaten down.” “Yeah and those same civilized ones will kill you when they get the chance. Didn’t you hear the Captain?” you say. “Yeah well he’s got a tendency to be over dramatic; he probably picked that up from that fine ass elven bitch he’s married to. Besides who DOESN’T try to kill you when they get the chance? They aren’t anything special. Their race just has a tendency to have assholiness come natural to them.” Morri interrupts the pair of you. “Hey if you two morons are finished, I’m about to tell you the fun part of this job. There are demons already in this mine.” “What?!” “Oh yeah, bunch of those fuckers as we speak. Seems we got the fortune of one sneaking in here and decided to have her spawn in the deep reaches of this mine. The only good thing is these types don’t seem to be interested in collapsing the mine, however they’re trying to turn this place into some sort of fucking demon hive or something. We’ve been trying to eliminate them, but of course it’s slow going. We need to get them before they start breeding more though. So we’re splitting up…” “Here we go again…” Dimitri says. Morri assigns at least a few dwarves with each mercenary. You, Morri and Dimitri make up the last one. The demon hunting in the mines is actually a very “mundane” job. They certainly are horrible looking creatures and very vicious, but after the first few times, you get used to it. These particular demons have an insect like appearance so maybe that’s why these behave the way they do. They aren’t very tough in the scheme of things, but like Morri said there do seem to be a lot. You can’t use your bow like you want to either due to the cramped mine conditions. Demons aren’t really the problem though, the problem is Dimitri. After one of the harder battles, Morri is attempting to catch his breath. Dimitri notices the very large silver deposit you’re next to and the silver that’s just there for the taking. He quietly whispers to you that you and he should waylay Morri and take some of the silver. Leave his body to be munched on by a wandering demon. Who’s going to know? You’re not really for this plan and you say no, but Dimitri begins to argue and Morri notices the both of you. “I’m not doing it! The Captain said…” you exclaim. “Fuckin’ pussy!” Dimitri says pushing you. “Hey hey hey! Not doing what? What are you two on abo…” Dimitri takes the opportunity of distraction and hits Morri in the face with silver bar that he lifted off the ground earlier. “ Ugh! Bastard dog you’ll pay for this treachery!” Morri utters falling to the ground. “Come on, this is your last chance to be a man and help me pig farmer!” Dimitri says as he goes to finish off Morri. > You help Dimitri You hate yourself for this, but you feel you don’t have much choice, if Morri lives he’ll certainly tell everyone and then you won’t get paid which will probably result in your death by the hands of the Boss. You raise your own weapon and help kill Morri. He doesn’t die easy, but Dimitri finishes him off before he can put up any sort of meaningful defense. Breathing hard and smiling at you with blood on his face, Dimitri laughs a bit. “Heh heh, knew you’d see the light, lute boy! Now come on, let’s throw his body in that left passage. I think I heard some of those demon roaches chittering down that way. Let’s just make sure we’re not around eh? We got a lot of silver to load up on!” You don’t take any of the silver actually, you’re still worrying and not feeling right about this whole situation, of course that just means more for Dimitri. You don’t even think this half assed plan of Dimitri’s is going to work. You and Dimitri are going to look mighty suspicious meeting up with the other dwarves without Morri, and trying to conceal a shitload of silver, though Dimitri claims everything will be fine. Everything goes less fine when you start to realize that Morri was the one who was leading you through this mine maze. Neither you or Dimitri were paying attention to the directions mainly because you were on the look out for demon attacks and fighting them off. Eventually you’re attacked by more of the demons as you proceed to get lost. You and Dimitri get into an argument and begin to blame each other (Though it really is his fault) You both get angry and come to blows, you however get the advantage, not being weighed down by silver. You leave his body for the demons. You however don’t get too much further. The demons seem to be coming out in more force and you’re wounded many times. You get scared and confused and you know you’re a dead man when you see Morri’s body being eaten by several of demons. You’ve gone in a complete circle and now you’re hearing that demon chittering from everywhere. A valiant effort is made by you, but you can’t fight them all. Eventually you are overwhelmed and eaten.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re in this now and you can’t stop just because it’s looking tough. You got your family to think about. You’re staying. However you do, do something slightly out of character, you spend what little money you have on a whore for the night, mainly because you’re a lot less sure if you’re going to come back from this mission. The next day you’re on the job. The march to the dwarven lands is mostly uneventful, though the fighting between the Zalan Empire and the Tulan Kingdom is still going on their borders which even skirting around, still manages to find your company. The Boss takes advantage of straggling Tulan soldiers that have fled battle. The butchery isn’t uncommon, after all, nobody will know and the Zalan Empire will just be blamed anyway. Arrival in the Dwarven lands is met with caution, the Dwarves obviously know of the Chimera Company’s reputation and a small group of them motion the Boss to just talk to him directly. A deal seems to be made and the Dwarves leave to go back to their underground home. The Captain now addresses all of you. “Alright, apparently there HAVE been demons running all up and down and through the area. The Dwarves are preparing defenses in case they try to invade underground; apparently they consider their underground city takes precedence so their main force is there. However they still have plenty of mines above ground and not nearly enough dwarves to defend them all. Now its been said the demons have been heading toward the Tulan Kingdom, but a lot of them still have been fucking around here and generally wrecking shit for the fun of it. Collapsing even the sturdy mines of the dwarves on their heads seems to be amusing to them. So our goal is to make things bothersome enough for them that they’ll leave the dwarves alone and go elsewhere.” The Captain spits on the ground before continuing. “We’re going to split up for this assignment and take different mines in the area. Watch your fucking ass. I don’t think any of you eunuchs have fought any demons before, but I have and they’re utterly fucking ruthless. Forget all that shit about some of them being civilized. They’re about as civilized as damn Quillar, but a lot more intelligent. The chaos that is in their hearts is always there and these ones are the complete embodiment of it. And for fuck’s sake DON’T stay near any explosives! The dwarves are always using shit like that in their mines and demons have a tendency to have fire throwing abilities. It’s probably the reason for all the easy mine collapses.” The Captain takes out a map. “One more thing. While I know the common thing to do on our assignments is to take advantage of things. We need to play this one completely fucking straight! Do NOT fucking do anything that’s going to piss off the dwarves! If you do, we don’t get paid. We don’t get paid. I’m going to get pissed, because we’re getting a lot for this one. And assuming the dwarves don’t kill you, I certainly fucking will. Alright now I’m going to assign you according to this map.” You and a few others (Including Dimitri) are assigned to the Karzac Mines where you make your way to after some climbing which fortunately isn’t too far off ground level. The dwarves there regard you with suspicion immediately. “Oh great they’re here. Alright, let’s set the ground rules. I’m head miner Morri and I’m in charge of this place! Don’t even think about trying to steal some loose bars of silver that you might find lying around. You do it, and your skull meets an axe or mining pick! Got me?” “Stand up when you speak to me.” Dimitri laughs. “Yeah, make yer jokes human, we’ll see if the demons will appreciate that humor when you’re meeting them face to face.” “Demon, pah! Just one more thing for me to kill, people make a big deal about them. I’ve seen how they fall in line and become law abiding citizens just like anyone else when beaten down.” “Yeah and those same civilized ones will kill you when they get the chance. Didn’t you hear the Captain?” you say. “Yeah well he’s got a tendency to be over dramatic; he probably picked that up from that fine ass elven bitch he’s married to. Besides who DOESN’T try to kill you when they get the chance? They aren’t anything special. Their race just has a tendency to have assholiness come natural to them.” Morri interrupts the pair of you. “Hey if you two morons are finished, I’m about to tell you the fun part of this job. There are demons already in this mine.” “What?!” “Oh yeah, bunch of those fuckers as we speak. Seems we got the fortune of one sneaking in here and decided to have her spawn in the deep reaches of this mine. The only good thing is these types don’t seem to be interested in collapsing the mine, however they’re trying to turn this place into some sort of fucking demon hive or something. We’ve been trying to eliminate them, but of course it’s slow going. We need to get them before they start breeding more though. So we’re splitting up…” “Here we go again…” Dimitri says. Morri assigns at least a few dwarves with each mercenary. You, Morri and Dimitri make up the last one. The demon hunting in the mines is actually a very “mundane” job. They certainly are horrible looking creatures and very vicious, but after the first few times, you get used to it. These particular demons have an insect like appearance so maybe that’s why these behave the way they do. They aren’t very tough in the scheme of things, but like Morri said there do seem to be a lot. You can’t use your bow like you want to either due to the cramped mine conditions. Demons aren’t really the problem though, the problem is Dimitri. After one of the harder battles, Morri is attempting to catch his breath. Dimitri notices the very large silver deposit you’re next to and the silver that’s just there for the taking. He quietly whispers to you that you and he should waylay Morri and take some of the silver. Leave his body to be munched on by a wandering demon. Who’s going to know? You’re not really for this plan and you say no, but Dimitri begins to argue and Morri notices the both of you. “I’m not doing it! The Captain said…” you exclaim. “Fuckin’ pussy!” Dimitri says pushing you. “Hey hey hey! Not doing what? What are you two on abo…” Dimitri takes the opportunity of distraction and hits Morri in the face with silver bar that he lifted off the ground earlier. “ Ugh! Bastard dog you’ll pay for this treachery!” Morri utters falling to the ground. “Come on, this is your last chance to be a man and help me pig farmer!” Dimitri says as he goes to finish off Morri. > You help Morri You’ve had enough. You’re not going to help OR stand by for another immoral act performed by your “co-workers”. It’s bad enough that it goes on, but that doesn’t mean you need to let it, if you can do something about it. You run Dimitri through the back with your sword, he yells out in pain, but still manages to swing his armored fist to strike you in the face. You fall to the ground. “Fuck…lute boy…goin…down…pig fucker…” he wheezes as he attempts to step towards you only to fall to his knees. At this point Morri has recovered and cleaves Dimitri’s skull in with his axe. “Bastard.” Morri then looks at you. “Heh, I guess you must be one of the few with a conscious in the company eh?” “I guess so.” You reply. “Or perhaps you knew it would be better if I lived so you could find your way out this maze?” “…Actually I hadn’t even thought about that. I just…just couldn’t let him kill and rob you like that. Seen it too many times.” “That a fact? Well tell me son, why the hell are you hooked up with these bunch for then?” “Money to help the family…besides it’s not that bad.” “Okay, if you say so. However, this little incident is going to cost your company. We warned your captain that if any evidence of treachery occurred, we weren’t paying him shit and this deal was off!” “But can’t we just keep this secret? I mean…” “Secret? Fuck no! Look, you’re not a bad person, but you’re hanging out with bad people. The only reason why we hired you in the first place is because you ARE effective and you’re about the only mercenary company insane enough to do a job like this. But a deal’s a deal. You captain apparently doesn’t have control over his men like he thinks, because I’m sure he warned you all.” “Yeah, but everyone will probably blame me and my life will be in danger!” “…well…I’m sorry about that, but that’s the price you pay for the company you keep…look I’ll tell you what, because you helped me, I’ll take you back to the entrance and you can leave. Should at least give you a head start. Hell, maybe I’ll even tell them you died before this happened. You could then just hide out and stay out of sight without even anyone looking for you.” Not knowing what to say next you just agree and ponder your possible future. The way back to the entrance is uneventful as far as demon attacks are concerned. You don’t know what you’re going to do. You’ll have to go on the run or at least relocate regardless of what Morri tells everyone. And if he mentions the truth, then your family may well be in danger. You imagine that if the Boss couldn’t get to you, he may very well take it out on your family. You feel sick and upset. You wish you hadn’t chosen this path. All you ever really wanted to do was play your lute, not fight demons or anything else really. You follow behind Morri in a daze. You’re surprised that he doesn’t insist that you walk in front of him, but then that’s probably because he trusts that you’re not a murderer. You also realize you recognize this part of the mine and could probably find your way back from here… You shake your head and take a deep breath. “Hey Morri.” “Wha…glagh! An arrow goes right through Morri’s mouth and out the other side of his head. He gurgles obscenities while trying to raise his axe towards you. Another arrow goes through his eye. He ceases his struggle. While you solved the problem of Morri telling anyone, now you have to cover your own tracks, then you hear a sound you never thought you’d be glad to hear. The chittering of those insect demons and a bunch of them are coming right behind you. You pull the arrows out and run as quickly as you can to the entrance leaving the demons to feed upon Morri’s body. The thought crosses your mind to just leave anyway. Maybe they’d think all three of you got eaten. However, you run into another group during your dash to the mine entrance. “Where the hell are you running off to?” a mercenary asks. It’s Cal. You come up with a lie quick. “(pant) Shit! We got fucking ambushed! (pant) Barely fucking escaped! (pant) Dimitri and Morri are dead! Probably eaten! And the rest of those demon fuckers are heading this way!” “What?! You cowardly fucker, you just let Morri die?” one the dwarves says angrily. “It wasn’t my idea! I tried to help him and Dimitri, but they just came in force, I don’t even know how I escaped!” Your story is a little suspicious, but thanks to the demons, you’re covered. They didn’t leave much for the dwarves to find. However, you’re not looked favorably on by the rest of the dwarves for the rest of the mission. Your fellow mercenaries don’t really care one way or another. It’s part of the job and Dimitri wasn’t well liked so they could care less if he died or lived. You on the other hand are still not feeling so great about yourself. The longer you’re part of this company the more you’re starting to think or be more like them. You hate it and you’ll be glad when this job is over. A few months pass and the contract is over. The “problem” isn’t completely gone, in fact there’s reports of some undead wandering in the area now, but the Dwarves are growing more weary of your presence, hand over your payment and tell you to leave. They say they can handle anything else themselves. It’s quite a lot this time. Best job you’ve had. Upon your return to the Zalan Empire you buy yourself a new lute. It’s your “reward”. The rest of it goes to your family who of course are eager to hear about your tales as usual. You don’t tell them that many this time. You just try to take your mind off your “job” by asking them more questions this time around. When you’re alone you play your new lute, trying to emulate a couple of the songs you overheard the Dwarves engage in when you were there. You never knew they were musically inclined; it’s a shame you had to kill one to protect your future. You’re still debating on whether or not to give up the mercenary life, but you see how much it’s helping the family out, so you decide to stay and put up with it. After your “break is over” you go back to the job as usual. Three years pass… Four years have passed since the “Nuro Incident” and things have gotten much worse in the world. The Necromancer Lord conquered the Brot Kingdom, A demon lord called Velzix conquered the Tulan Kingdom, both are expanding and a so called Grand Alliance of nations doesn’t seem to be doing much good against either of them. The Chimera Company was recently hired by the Zalan government. Due to your past battles with demons, they decided you would be good to put on Tulan Border which is still a bloodbath, but instead of fighting the Tulan Kingdom, the Zalan Empire is fighting Velzix’s hordes. It’s not an easy assignment or very pleasant, in fact it’s got to be the worst job you’ve been on. You company is assigned to make commando raids and sabotage shit to keep the demons fairly unfocused, while the Zalan Empire’s real armies try to make progress into Velzix’s realm. Currently you’re making your “camp” in small abandoned village in enemy territory where you have to fight the occasional demon patrols. Why the Captain took this job on for the company is beyond you. Nobody really knows why. The company in general has been taking more dangerous jobs in recent years. Ever since the Nuro Incident actually. While it’s always been known he’s not a man to shy away from danger and has a love of battle, there’s a lot of talk within ranks that he’s got a death wish. The only “good thing” about this assignment, is that the chance for usual Chimera Company wicked acts are much lower. There’s not many “innocents” in a demon realm. As you think about things, strumming your lute in an abandoned general store by yourself. You hear someone speak. “Pretty good playing. Wish my kind appreciated some of the more subtle things in life sometimes.” You turn your head and see a demon! He’s not very tall and is “dressed up”. He must be one of the “civilized” demons who realigned themselves with their demonic natures and flocked to Velzix when he took over the Tulan Kingdom. He doesn’t seem hostile, but you drop your lute and draw your weapon, before you can yell a warning, he speaks again. “Wait! Before you go warning your friends, I should warn you that there is a very large group of my fellow kin surrounding this village. You kill me and they’ll attack and quite frankly I don’t fancy your chances. However I got a deal for you that can be worth your while. What can it hurt to listen to me? You can always kill me afterwards.” > You listen to the demon You aren’t sure about this, but you let him speak. “Speak demon, but make it quick!” you demand. “Ah, glad you’re willing to be reasonable. Name’s Big Red by the way.” “Get on with it!” “Very well. Your company and everyone in it is doomed to the infernal planes when they die I’m afraid. You captain’s deeds alone make him one of the most sought after souls in Hell. He used to be much worse before he got married, but ah well; women often make men weak like that.” “Yeah? Well not me.” “Heh, yeah you too. I understand that you’re probably the most moral person in it, but this whole company has been targeted by Hell and Hell gets what it wants.” “Well Velzix isn’t…” “Velzix? I’m not talking about Velzix! Velzix is just another demon with big dick complex. If I trust my judgment he’s not going to last another year in his current status, he’ll probably either be dead by one of you mortals or that little Necromancer. (Sigh) Wish I’d known about him sooner, things could’ve been a lot…different.” Big Red sees that you’re getting antsy so he gets to the point again. “Anyway, seeing as you’re all doomed to Hell, I figured it would be nice if I got direct credit for bringing you there. Bringing in evil souls yourself is one of the few things makes Hell all worth it. You get all sorts of perks. However, if I just call in the reinforcements now to have you guys get ripped from limb to limb, I won’t get direct credit. The souls will just be gathered wily nily and then I gotta argue with the fucking collectors and lawyers and all that other shit about who killed who and who gets credit which will probably just result in nobody getting credit and doesn’t help me out at all.” “Barring that you’re saying that I’m doomed in any case, I fail to see why I should help you.” “Well that’s why I’m coming to you with a deal. I can see you’re not a bad person, you just serve a bad master, and he’s the one I really want direct credit for. The rest of you are just a bonus and you in particular aren’t even worth that much given your tendency towards good.” “So what is it you want from me exactly?” “I want you to take out the sentries and distract your fellows for as long as possible while my boys sneak up on this village and strike with as little resistance as possible. To sweeten this deal, I’ll try to tell my boys to not target you while you try to escape the mayhem. I’m not making any promises though, killing rampages among my kind encourage indiscriminate killing. You’ll be on your own; however it gives you a small chance for survival and by agreeing to this plan it gives me direct credit as the mastermind of this cunning plan. Getting other demons to kill isn’t any kind of feat, but employing a mortal to help is looked upon as more favorable. So do we have a deal?” Big Red offers his hand… > You make the deal It sounds like your only chance for survival, slim though it may be. In some ways you’d like to be out of this company and who are you really betraying? From what you’ve seen the company is little better than the demons. You’re sick of all of this, the fighting, the demons, the company, all of it. “It’s a deal, but make a damn good effort for your kin NOT to target me, AND not to go chasing me either!” “Okay! Sheesh, you’re mistrustful. You just make sure you do your part.” Big Red says and shakes your hand. You both exit the abandoned store and you look for where most of your fellows are located. The village square of course. You know there are look outs in each of “corners” of the village. You sneak about the village like an assassin and ready your bow. You take out each sentry in relative silence with your skillful bow shots and drag their bodies into a nearby house. Now nobody will raise an alarm too soon. You then head to the village square and begin interacting with some of them. They find it odd since you’re usually keeping to yourself, but they enjoy your playing so they don’t mind it when you do that. Your Captain on the other hand comes out from the house he’s set up in and is wondering what all the commotion is. He gets angry. “What the fuck are you idiots doing? We’re fucking deep in demon territory and you’re all making enough noise to attract a damn army of them.” “What difference does it make? They got patrols that have come across our location before, so they know where we’re at.” You remark.” “The difference is that I want you fuckers to be alert and focused if we get attacked, not getting drunk and dancing to music like some fucking sissy elf!” “Aren’t you married to an elf?” you say still playing and backing away from the Captain’s reach. He’s almost in shock that you’d speak to him in such manner especially since you never usually speak too much in the first place. “You, pig farmer are really pushing my patience tonight. If I didn’t need all the people I can get for this job, I’d kill you myself!” “Shhh! I think you better shut the fuck up lute boy.” One of the other mercenaries whispers. “Why? We’re already in fucking Hell, who gives a shit how much noise we make?” You defiance gets worse and finally the Captain draws his weapon to shut you up. At this point you call him a pile of orc shit and run. This causes the rest of the mercenaries to get out his way as he charges at you. Some of them also give chase, but most just stay out of it. Fortunately at this point the demons have finally gotten into position and strike. Most of the company is so bewildered by what has occurred between you and the Captain that they’re unprepared. Your Captain immediately stops his pursuit of you when a particularly large demon jumps on top of him from one of the rooftops. He fights it off with the help of some of his men, but you see more coming and continue to make your escape. As you run away from the village, a few demons pass you by and don’t attack, looks like Big Red kept his word. To a point. Big Red suddenly appears in front of you. “Thanks friend, now for your reward!” he says and then puts his fist through your chest which kills you instantly. You don’t know how much time has passed, but you eventually hear Big Red speaking to you. “Get up, I need your word.” “Huh?” you say in a daze. “Did I not get you to distract the Chimera Company in an effort to collect all their souls?” “Huh? Yeah…” you continue to say in a daze. You start shaking the cobwebs and see that you’re in a completely different place. A very bad place. Big Red and another much bigger demon are talking. You see the rest of your Company in the distance, naked and in chains. The entire landscape is very barren, has a reddish hue and its uncomfortably hot. “Okay, you’ll get credit for all these souls.” “Hang on, I want to keep this one, he has certain talents and he did allow all this to happen.” Big Red says pointing to you. “Very well…that’s your right. Just sign there, and there, okay. Let’s load these sorry souls up!” Big Red looks pleased with himself as the souls are taken away. “Come on, I’m going to take a break.” You feel compelled to join him, but you still have questions obviously. “What the fuck man?! I’m in Hell!” “Got it in one. Excellent detective work.” “But…But the deal! You broke the fucking deal! I don’t belong here!” “No I didn’t. I said my fellows wouldn’t harm you, not that I wouldn’t. Besides YOU made a deal with me, which damned you in the first place. You definitely belong here.” The reality of this situation has now caused a massive amount of fear within you. You’re in Hell and there’s no escape from it! You can’t even attack Big Red, he’s got a permanent magical hold on you from causing him any sort of harm, though you probably wouldn’t be a match for him anyway. You collapse on the ground and feel defeated. Big Red stops, but he doesn’t get angry. “Now what is your problem? I just saved YOUR soul from being eternally tormented by my superiors. They’ll probably be eating them and shitting them out only to eat them again for who knows how long. Not a pleasant process.” “But…but what are you going to do to me?” you ask. “You? You’re going to play for me at my home in the Blood Hills. Trust me, its not nearly as bloody as the name makes out.” “Play?” “Sure. I said you played pretty well, and I do appreciate such things. Music is one of my hobbies other than the whole soul collection thing of course. I’ve got sheets of music from lots of places; I can’t play worth a shit though. The claws don’t help either. Now come on let’s go.” You are finding this very odd, but you don’t feel as bad now. You’re Big Red’s slave, but given where you’re at, things could be a lot worse. You’ll at least get to do something you’ve always wanted to do. Play music without hindrance. You wonder about your family, but there’s little that you can do for them now. You just hope things work out for them in the living world. Big Red’s home isn’t some giant castle, but a moderate sized house. The inside is decorated with grisly trophies, which you guess can only be considered demonic art. “Sinthinia! I know you’re here! I can smell your scent!” he calls out. A sexy female demon comes out of one of the rooms. You can’t help but stare, she barely acknowledges you at all though. “I’ve been waiting for you Big Red, so did the deal go down well?” “Well, it could’ve gone better, but it was still a good haul. So how is it really going with Velzix?” “(Sigh) He’s probably going to lose as predicted. I can sense it, anyone with half a brain can. That whole world is going to eventually become a graveyard, I know it. And the undead are no fun. That’s why I’ve come back here.” “Well my house is your house. Let’s put some music on shall we?” Big Red points to you. “You, go pick up that mandolin over there and start playing that something on those music sheets I got set up. Sit over there and continue playing until I say stop which won’t be anytime soon.” Once again you feel the need to comply. You do exactly as Big Red commands as he and Sinthinia head to a bedroom. He then stops to turn to you. “Oh, I don’t know if you realized it at the soul market, but your Captain was NOT there. You know why? Because he somehow managed to fucking escape death! Now I could blame the idiots that were working for me for allowing him to escape, but I figured since I got you anyway, it would be more fun to blame you. Enjoy playing music for all eternity!” he says as Sinthinia giggles and they close the door. You don’t quite understand that remark until you begin playing the mandolin. You begin to feel excruciating pain all over. Your mind is tormented with negative emotions causing you great distress as well. Big Red has made it so your greatest love which is music causes you pain. And you can never stop playing. All you can do is suffer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t sure about this, but you let him speak. “Speak demon, but make it quick!” you demand. “Ah, glad you’re willing to be reasonable. Name’s Big Red by the way.” “Get on with it!” “Very well. Your company and everyone in it is doomed to the infernal planes when they die I’m afraid. You captain’s deeds alone make him one of the most sought after souls in Hell. He used to be much worse before he got married, but ah well; women often make men weak like that.” “Yeah? Well not me.” “Heh, yeah you too. I understand that you’re probably the most moral person in it, but this whole company has been targeted by Hell and Hell gets what it wants.” “Well Velzix isn’t…” “Velzix? I’m not talking about Velzix! Velzix is just another demon with big dick complex. If I trust my judgment he’s not going to last another year in his current status, he’ll probably either be dead by one of you mortals or that little Necromancer. (Sigh) Wish I’d known about him sooner, things could’ve been a lot…different.” Big Red sees that you’re getting antsy so he gets to the point again. “Anyway, seeing as you’re all doomed to Hell, I figured it would be nice if I got direct credit for bringing you there. Bringing in evil souls yourself is one of the few things makes Hell all worth it. You get all sorts of perks. However, if I just call in the reinforcements now to have you guys get ripped from limb to limb, I won’t get direct credit. The souls will just be gathered wily nily and then I gotta argue with the fucking collectors and lawyers and all that other shit about who killed who and who gets credit which will probably just result in nobody getting credit and doesn’t help me out at all.” “Barring that you’re saying that I’m doomed in any case, I fail to see why I should help you.” “Well that’s why I’m coming to you with a deal. I can see you’re not a bad person, you just serve a bad master, and he’s the one I really want direct credit for. The rest of you are just a bonus and you in particular aren’t even worth that much given your tendency towards good.” “So what is it you want from me exactly?” “I want you to take out the sentries and distract your fellows for as long as possible while my boys sneak up on this village and strike with as little resistance as possible. To sweeten this deal, I’ll try to tell my boys to not target you while you try to escape the mayhem. I’m not making any promises though, killing rampages among my kind encourage indiscriminate killing. You’ll be on your own; however it gives you a small chance for survival and by agreeing to this plan it gives me direct credit as the mastermind of this cunning plan. Getting other demons to kill isn’t any kind of feat, but employing a mortal to help is looked upon as more favorable. So do we have a deal?” Big Red offers his hand… > You decline the deal Fuck this. He’s lying and even if he isn’t, making a deal with a demon is never a good idea. You’ve heard the stories and you’ve seen the former Tulan “citizens” that debased themselves just in order to live to serve their demon masters. It never ends well. If you are going to the infernal realm when you die, you’re still not going to be helping anyone to take you there! “Well, let me think about it….HEY THERE’S A FUCKING DEMON ATTACK COMING!” you shout at the top of your lungs. You’re pretty sure at least one person heard you. “You asshole!” Big Red growls and lunges at you which you dodge out of the way and just focus on getting back to where most of your company is making camp, yelling the whole time. Upon hearing your warning, everyone scrambles for battle. You can hear the demons bellowing in the distance. They’ll be here in force soon. You quickly climb on to the village rooftops and ready your bow as the demon hordes advance all around you. The battle wasn’t as hopeless as Big Red made it seem like it would be (He must’ve ran off as there was no sign of him) however, the Company does take more than the usual casualties. One of the mercenaries starts to openly complain. “This is just fucking retarded! Why the hell are we doing this shit?” Cal complains. “You know the score; you don’t like it you can leave.” The Captain says calmly cleaning off his sword. “Yeah and then I don’t get paid, which is when by the way? We’d all like to know when this contract is over! You never did tell us!” “Oh that…indefinitely.” “WHAT?!” almost everyone exclaims. “Look, would you sissies calm the fuck down? We got a break coming up in a few weeks. We go back to the Zalan Empire to get paid, rest, re-equip and whatever else they got there, but after the break we go right back out here. Possibly even deeper.” At this point the whole company is turning against the Captain, he doesn’t look worried though. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me? You’re expecting us to go deeper into this shit? You’re practically asking us to stand in the middle of Hell!” “Dunno why you’re protesting, we’re all going to the real infernal plane anyway when we die, might as well get used to it. Look, take it or leave it, I don’t give a shit. If you want to stay, go ahead. If you want to leave now, go ahead. If you want to leave after you get your pay, go ahead. But I’m sure you know by now, if you leave don’t come back ever.” The Captain says and goes back to the abandoned home he was staying in. This comment by the Captain makes you think back to Big Red’s little speech, you start wondering about your future while everyone begins talking amongst themselves about what to do next. A lot of them are saying the Boss has lost his mind and is being suicidal. You can’t say you disagree. In fact you’re not sure you want part of this anymore. Your family might need the money, but what good are you dead to them? A few weeks pass and your company makes its way back to the Zalan Empire. You get your payment. Almost feels like you’re in the “real army” given the formal nature of it. After you get your pay, you’re on your way home where you intend to stay, much like many others are planning to do. However, you bump into the Captain who speaks to you. There’s a hint of alcohol on his breath. “So can I expect you to stay on lute boy?” he asks bluntly. “Erm…well, no Captain. I’m sorry, but going deeper into demon territory is suicide.” you reply.. “Probably right, but who wants to live forever?” “Well I’d like to at least live past the next year.” “Hah! So you wish to die an old man in your bed?” “Sounds about right.” “Then why did you take on such a dangerous line of work in the first place?” “My family needed the money.” “Ah yes, you are one of the few in the company that has one. One of the fewer still that actually takes care of them…an honorable pursuit. I can respect that.” You’re surprised to hear the Captain praise anything that seems honorable. “I have a family that I take care of too you know.” “Yes, I know you are married.” “Yeah…but my daughter is a captain in the Zalan army. She’s stationed on the Tulan border as a matter of fact. She might even get transferred to the Grand Alliance army. Don’t know yet.” He says with a hint of pride in his voice, though he tries his best to conceal it. The Captain is just full of surprises. You now know that this isn’t some simple death wish, but that he’s taken the job to help her out in a way. You don’t know, but can only imagine what growing up with a dad like him was like. You unsure of how to reply so you just follow up with something. “Um, that’s great Captain.” “Yeah, it’s great. Got a son too…he’s…a wizard. He’s a fuckin’ disappointment… y’know you look back on your life and you wonder what you’ve accomplished and it doesn’t mean shit in the scheme of things, at least not when the world has one foot in Hell and the other in the grave. But still you struggle and fight right? You still remain true to your nature.” “Sure I guess so.” You say wondering where the Captain going with this. The Captain sighs heavily. “I guess I’m lucky…killing and battle are in my nature. I get to do it every fuckin’ day and it never seems to be enough, even after all the years and changes… but I bet you didn’t want this shit right? You probably wanted to just play that fuckin’ lute of yours right? You got a gift and its being wasted due to events out of your control…but you still play that thing when you can. It’s in your nature. It’s also in your nature to help out your family because you care about them.” “I suppose it is.” “Yeah, nature…it’s a fuckin’ bitch.” The Captain now looks directly at you. “Look I’m not gonna beg ya, but you’re one of the best men I got in the damn company, and I’d rather not lose you, so I’ll appeal to your nature. What’s going on in the world today is some fucked up shit. Quite honestly I don’t think it’s going to end well for any of us, but you struggle and fight anyway. The financial aid that you’re providing for your family pales in comparison to what you’re doing in the long term. You’re making the world safer for them so that they might be able to live. We got the Gates of Hell on one side and Death’s Door on the other and both of them need to be fucking closed. I don’t know if that makes us the so called good guys now, but all I know is if there’s an active way I can protect my wife and even help my daughter then I’m gonna do it. What are you going to do?” The Captain then leaves you without saying another word. Some pretty deep words for a man who you never saw as compassionate in anyway. He does make a point though. Lately what has been going in the world is pretty bad and you wonder if not fighting today will just mean putting off fighting tomorrow. > You stay in the company You might be a fool, but the possibility that the Captain knows what the fuck he’s talking about can’t be ruled out. If killing demons now is going to make life a little safer for your family in the future, then you probably should be apart of that. Same with the undead if it comes to that, though you’re hoping that you don’t need to. Fighting demons is bad enough, you haven’t even fought any undead and the stories that your dad told you and that you’ve overheard others tell still makes you dread the day that you’ll actually have to. For now though you’re going home to spend time with your family and tell them all how much you love them. One year passes… Five years since the Nuro Incident and you’re deep in the heart of Velzix’s Realm. Guerrilla hit and run tactics and sabotage have greatly angered Velzix causing him to divert forces where he might use elsewhere. You’ve even managed to sneak into his fortress a few times to sabotage his goals of creating a permanent open portal to the Infernal Planes. Something nobody wants except the demons. It’s odd, but the Chimera Company has been turned from an example of “thugs for hire” to “Heroic warriors” by the Zalan government, but then the Zalan Empire has always been a bit heavy on propaganda. The fact that the company is directly working for it, makes any politician that was remotely involved with the idea of hiring you in the first place to milk it for all its worth. The real truth however is what’s currently of the company is made up of the suicidal, desperate or the insane. You’re not sure which one you are at this point, but in the eyes of the public, you’re a hero. (Surprisingly Cal is still there for all his past complaining) The Captain has been telling tales of his past life a lot more lately when sitting around the campfire. He talks about the people he’s killed, the women he’s raped, and the treasures he’s plundered. Most of the stories you’ve only heard about in rumor from others in your Company, but hearing them come from the Captain himself makes him sound even more rotten. You’re sure glad you didn’t know him back in the “old days”. He doesn’t seem to show any remorse, though he doesn’t really talk about it gloriously either. He just tells them as a story to pass the time between fighting, much like you do with playing your lute. Every now and then he tells you to play something specific. Some elven song that you’ve never heard before, though apparently he really wants you to play it since he gives you a crumpled piece of sheet music containing its notes. It’s a not a complex song for an Elven one, but it still takes you a few weeks to learn it completely. It would probably take you less time, but there’s the demon fighting that sort of gets in the way of practice. The first time you play it, the Captain, closes his eyes and begins to smile. You think that’s the first time you’ve ever seen him do that. Others in the Company are amazed as well. With his eyes still closed he begins to speak of his family and how beautiful his wife is and how when he first met her it was love at first sight. He then speaks of his daughter, and how proud he is of her. Her battle skills have gotten her a captain’s position in Grand Alliance army. He hopes that she has many victorious battles and kills all those that stand before her without mercy. He is silent for awhile as you play…then he speaks of his son is much harsher tone. “A disappointment…a fucking disappointment. Fucked up somewhere…wasn’t hard enough on him. Now look at this shit we’re in…demons, undead…fuck it. If I’m bound for the Infernal Plane for bringing destruction to the world then I’m gonna give those bastard demons a good reason for torturing the shit outta me when I get there. Namely by killing a shitload of them and fucking up their plans as much as possible. Just hope my necromancer spawn is eventually there right beside me getting tortured as well.” You temporarily stop playing at this outburst by the Captain. Others in the Company are looking and whispering to each other. Did he just allude to what you think he did? “What he fuck are you doin’? I didn’t say stop playing!” You quickly return to playing and nothing more is spoken of it. As it happens the song is one of the last things you play. Your lute is destroyed in a battle a couple days later. You curse as one of the few things that took your mind off this shitty place is gone. You just hope you live long enough to buy a new one. A few more weeks pass and what wasn’t spoken of, makes an appearance… Two of the lookouts run back to the main camp one day and rush into the Captain’s tent. You can hear them babbling something about son, and death and doomed. You then hear him yelling at them to shut the fuck up and speak clearly. The rest of the Company starts to pick up there weapons as if expecting something to go down and you follow suit and that’s when you look in the direction where the sentries ran from and see a lone hooded figure. None of you don’t know how to react. Every instinct in everyone is telling them to attack, but the aura of power and fear he’s giving off is very strong. Almost paralyzing. Just then the Captain comes out of his tent and speaks. “Boy, you gotta a lot of balls showing up here before me. Didn’t think you had ‘em either. Figured you’d be hiding in some tower somewhere.” “Yeah, well sometimes you have to do things yourself.” Weird. He doesn't sound at all like you thought he would. > You attack now You know who the hell this is, it’s the Necromancer Lord. You’re never going to get a better chance than now to kill him and put an end to some of the madness that’s going on. You muster up all your courage and quickly raise your bow. “No! Wait you dumbfuck…” the Captain yells trying to stop you. You arrow flies straight towards the Necromancer Lord, but it doesn’t even reach him, a magical shield causes it to bounce off harmlessly. However your actions cause the Necromancer Lord to react defensively and he unleashes a ray of pure black energy which drains you of your life force entirely.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You might be a fool, but the possibility that the Captain knows what the fuck he’s talking about can’t be ruled out. If killing demons now is going to make life a little safer for your family in the future, then you probably should be apart of that. Same with the undead if it comes to that, though you’re hoping that you don’t need to. Fighting demons is bad enough, you haven’t even fought any undead and the stories that your dad told you and that you’ve overheard others tell still makes you dread the day that you’ll actually have to. For now though you’re going home to spend time with your family and tell them all how much you love them. One year passes… Five years since the Nuro Incident and you’re deep in the heart of Velzix’s Realm. Guerrilla hit and run tactics and sabotage have greatly angered Velzix causing him to divert forces where he might use elsewhere. You’ve even managed to sneak into his fortress a few times to sabotage his goals of creating a permanent open portal to the Infernal Planes. Something nobody wants except the demons. It’s odd, but the Chimera Company has been turned from an example of “thugs for hire” to “Heroic warriors” by the Zalan government, but then the Zalan Empire has always been a bit heavy on propaganda. The fact that the company is directly working for it, makes any politician that was remotely involved with the idea of hiring you in the first place to milk it for all its worth. The real truth however is what’s currently of the company is made up of the suicidal, desperate or the insane. You’re not sure which one you are at this point, but in the eyes of the public, you’re a hero. (Surprisingly Cal is still there for all his past complaining) The Captain has been telling tales of his past life a lot more lately when sitting around the campfire. He talks about the people he’s killed, the women he’s raped, and the treasures he’s plundered. Most of the stories you’ve only heard about in rumor from others in your Company, but hearing them come from the Captain himself makes him sound even more rotten. You’re sure glad you didn’t know him back in the “old days”. He doesn’t seem to show any remorse, though he doesn’t really talk about it gloriously either. He just tells them as a story to pass the time between fighting, much like you do with playing your lute. Every now and then he tells you to play something specific. Some elven song that you’ve never heard before, though apparently he really wants you to play it since he gives you a crumpled piece of sheet music containing its notes. It’s a not a complex song for an Elven one, but it still takes you a few weeks to learn it completely. It would probably take you less time, but there’s the demon fighting that sort of gets in the way of practice. The first time you play it, the Captain, closes his eyes and begins to smile. You think that’s the first time you’ve ever seen him do that. Others in the Company are amazed as well. With his eyes still closed he begins to speak of his family and how beautiful his wife is and how when he first met her it was love at first sight. He then speaks of his daughter, and how proud he is of her. Her battle skills have gotten her a captain’s position in Grand Alliance army. He hopes that she has many victorious battles and kills all those that stand before her without mercy. He is silent for awhile as you play…then he speaks of his son is much harsher tone. “A disappointment…a fucking disappointment. Fucked up somewhere…wasn’t hard enough on him. Now look at this shit we’re in…demons, undead…fuck it. If I’m bound for the Infernal Plane for bringing destruction to the world then I’m gonna give those bastard demons a good reason for torturing the shit outta me when I get there. Namely by killing a shitload of them and fucking up their plans as much as possible. Just hope my necromancer spawn is eventually there right beside me getting tortured as well.” You temporarily stop playing at this outburst by the Captain. Others in the Company are looking and whispering to each other. Did he just allude to what you think he did? “What he fuck are you doin’? I didn’t say stop playing!” You quickly return to playing and nothing more is spoken of it. As it happens the song is one of the last things you play. Your lute is destroyed in a battle a couple days later. You curse as one of the few things that took your mind off this shitty place is gone. You just hope you live long enough to buy a new one. A few more weeks pass and what wasn’t spoken of, makes an appearance… Two of the lookouts run back to the main camp one day and rush into the Captain’s tent. You can hear them babbling something about son, and death and doomed. You then hear him yelling at them to shut the fuck up and speak clearly. The rest of the Company starts to pick up there weapons as if expecting something to go down and you follow suit and that’s when you look in the direction where the sentries ran from and see a lone hooded figure. None of you don’t know how to react. Every instinct in everyone is telling them to attack, but the aura of power and fear he’s giving off is very strong. Almost paralyzing. Just then the Captain comes out of his tent and speaks. “Boy, you gotta a lot of balls showing up here before me. Didn’t think you had ‘em either. Figured you’d be hiding in some tower somewhere.” “Yeah, well sometimes you have to do things yourself.” Weird. He doesn't sound at all like you thought he would. > You wait You know who the hell this is, it’s the Necromancer Lord. Even if you are fast enough to get a shot at him, you doubt the arrow is going to connect. He’s probably got all kinds of magical shields to protect him for whatever it is he’s here for. You begin looking for your best route of escape and slowly start backing away. The Captain on the other hand speaks directly to his son. He doesn’t even show any fear. They speak for a moment and things get very tense, you’re about ready to run, but things take a sudden turn for the very strange. The Necromancer Lord has proposed a temporary alliance to assassinate Velzix. The Captain is hesitant about this at first, but an agreement is made on payment and he accepts. The Captain then informs all of you in more detail of what’s going on. “Alright men, we’re gonna go storm the Gates of Hell and close those fuckers for good. My…son there is going to provide magical support. He’s also going to be providing a shitload of money for this job. The stipulation is we can’t tell ANYBODY about this shit. I’m fucking serious. Word gets out that we were working with the fucking Necromancer Lord, we’ll all be hanged, regardless of so called heroic deeds of killing demons. We’re all in this together and there ain’t no backing out, because this deal is made. And if you think you’re gonna step out on me now, that ain’t in the plan. I’ll just kill you and have my son raise your undead ass to help us anyway!” “What?! You just decided this for us?” Cal exclaims. “Yeah? What of it? I’ve ALWAYS made all the decisions for your dumb ass! It’s why YOU’RE still working for me, because it’s lucrative! This ain’t gonna be any different. Plus we get to take fucking credit for killing a damn demon lord. Think of all the pussy you’ll get from that fucking fame eh? Now stop bitching and let’s go!” You can’t say you’re enthusiastic about this, but it would appear you have little choice in the matter. As you travel to Velzix’s fortress you overhear some of the conversations the Captain is having with his son. A strained relationship to be sure. They make a lot of cutting barbs to each other, each criticizing the other for various things. It’s obvious that they can’t stand each other, but are a lot more alike than either one wants to admit. It makes you glad when you encounter the occasional demon skirmish on the way, since it at least it decreases the tension and possibility that the Captain’s son is going to finally lose his temper and kill everyone due to his father’s words. Eventually you arrive without any more problems. You enter Velzix’s fortress through the secret way that was discovered long ago. “Dumb ass demons, we’ve been using this entrance for like a year now and they still haven’t caught on!” the Captain remarks to his son. You make good progress in the fortress and then… “There they are, just like Velzix said they would be!” a demon guard shouts. “Haven’t caught on yet huh?” the Necromancer Lord says, looking at the Captain. “Quit yer bitchin’ and start doin that death magic thing!” You proceed to do battle with the demon and mortal guards that attempt to stop you. The Necromancer Lord starts to raise the mortal guards after they’re killed, but it begins to unnerve you though when the Necromancer Lord starts raising your own fallen dead. Pretty soon it’s just the Necromancer Lord, the Captain, you, Cal and a bunch of corpses fighting off what seems to be an endless supply of Hell’s own. You begin to wonder if Velzix already got that portal working. As you get closer to Velzix’s inner sanctum even the undead troops are being decimated at an alarming rate. You’ve been wounded several times and extremely tired. You don’t want to think about any of this, even in the heat of battle you start to take your mind elsewhere with a tune inside your head. “Fuck man! We’re gonna die here!” Cal screams as he attempts to fight a horned demon which has obviously got the advantage over him. You feel a demon blade in your back causing you to fall to the floor. At this point nothing but music fills your mind; bloodshed and battle surround your prone body. “Fuckers are without end! Come on! Raise these fuckers and let’s go!” you hear the Captain yell followed by “Hah, no lying down on the job anymore Cal!” You’re not quite dead yet though, and the Necromancer Lord and his dad aren’t waiting around so they continue on quickly leaving you behind. As your life force ebbs and more demon guards run past your body, you don’t know if what you did was worth it or even the right thing. All you know is you did what you could and hope your actions may have made some sort of difference and increased the chances of your family’s future well being. You then smile. You’ll see them again someday. “Yeah…I believe that…” you allow yourself to think as you die. Big Red was wrong about your fate. There was no Hell, just peace.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fuck this. He’s lying and even if he isn’t, making a deal with a demon is never a good idea. You’ve heard the stories and you’ve seen the former Tulan “citizens” that debased themselves just in order to live to serve their demon masters. It never ends well. If you are going to the infernal realm when you die, you’re still not going to be helping anyone to take you there! “Well, let me think about it….HEY THERE’S A FUCKING DEMON ATTACK COMING!” you shout at the top of your lungs. You’re pretty sure at least one person heard you. “You asshole!” Big Red growls and lunges at you which you dodge out of the way and just focus on getting back to where most of your company is making camp, yelling the whole time. Upon hearing your warning, everyone scrambles for battle. You can hear the demons bellowing in the distance. They’ll be here in force soon. You quickly climb on to the village rooftops and ready your bow as the demon hordes advance all around you. The battle wasn’t as hopeless as Big Red made it seem like it would be (He must’ve ran off as there was no sign of him) however, the Company does take more than the usual casualties. One of the mercenaries starts to openly complain. “This is just fucking retarded! Why the hell are we doing this shit?” Cal complains. “You know the score; you don’t like it you can leave.” The Captain says calmly cleaning off his sword. “Yeah and then I don’t get paid, which is when by the way? We’d all like to know when this contract is over! You never did tell us!” “Oh that…indefinitely.” “WHAT?!” almost everyone exclaims. “Look, would you sissies calm the fuck down? We got a break coming up in a few weeks. We go back to the Zalan Empire to get paid, rest, re-equip and whatever else they got there, but after the break we go right back out here. Possibly even deeper.” At this point the whole company is turning against the Captain, he doesn’t look worried though. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me? You’re expecting us to go deeper into this shit? You’re practically asking us to stand in the middle of Hell!” “Dunno why you’re protesting, we’re all going to the real infernal plane anyway when we die, might as well get used to it. Look, take it or leave it, I don’t give a shit. If you want to stay, go ahead. If you want to leave now, go ahead. If you want to leave after you get your pay, go ahead. But I’m sure you know by now, if you leave don’t come back ever.” The Captain says and goes back to the abandoned home he was staying in. This comment by the Captain makes you think back to Big Red’s little speech, you start wondering about your future while everyone begins talking amongst themselves about what to do next. A lot of them are saying the Boss has lost his mind and is being suicidal. You can’t say you disagree. In fact you’re not sure you want part of this anymore. Your family might need the money, but what good are you dead to them? A few weeks pass and your company makes its way back to the Zalan Empire. You get your payment. Almost feels like you’re in the “real army” given the formal nature of it. After you get your pay, you’re on your way home where you intend to stay, much like many others are planning to do. However, you bump into the Captain who speaks to you. There’s a hint of alcohol on his breath. “So can I expect you to stay on lute boy?” he asks bluntly. “Erm…well, no Captain. I’m sorry, but going deeper into demon territory is suicide.” you reply.. “Probably right, but who wants to live forever?” “Well I’d like to at least live past the next year.” “Hah! So you wish to die an old man in your bed?” “Sounds about right.” “Then why did you take on such a dangerous line of work in the first place?” “My family needed the money.” “Ah yes, you are one of the few in the company that has one. One of the fewer still that actually takes care of them…an honorable pursuit. I can respect that.” You’re surprised to hear the Captain praise anything that seems honorable. “I have a family that I take care of too you know.” “Yes, I know you are married.” “Yeah…but my daughter is a captain in the Zalan army. She’s stationed on the Tulan border as a matter of fact. She might even get transferred to the Grand Alliance army. Don’t know yet.” He says with a hint of pride in his voice, though he tries his best to conceal it. The Captain is just full of surprises. You now know that this isn’t some simple death wish, but that he’s taken the job to help her out in a way. You don’t know, but can only imagine what growing up with a dad like him was like. You unsure of how to reply so you just follow up with something. “Um, that’s great Captain.” “Yeah, it’s great. Got a son too…he’s…a wizard. He’s a fuckin’ disappointment… y’know you look back on your life and you wonder what you’ve accomplished and it doesn’t mean shit in the scheme of things, at least not when the world has one foot in Hell and the other in the grave. But still you struggle and fight right? You still remain true to your nature.” “Sure I guess so.” You say wondering where the Captain going with this. The Captain sighs heavily. “I guess I’m lucky…killing and battle are in my nature. I get to do it every fuckin’ day and it never seems to be enough, even after all the years and changes… but I bet you didn’t want this shit right? You probably wanted to just play that fuckin’ lute of yours right? You got a gift and its being wasted due to events out of your control…but you still play that thing when you can. It’s in your nature. It’s also in your nature to help out your family because you care about them.” “I suppose it is.” “Yeah, nature…it’s a fuckin’ bitch.” The Captain now looks directly at you. “Look I’m not gonna beg ya, but you’re one of the best men I got in the damn company, and I’d rather not lose you, so I’ll appeal to your nature. What’s going on in the world today is some fucked up shit. Quite honestly I don’t think it’s going to end well for any of us, but you struggle and fight anyway. The financial aid that you’re providing for your family pales in comparison to what you’re doing in the long term. You’re making the world safer for them so that they might be able to live. We got the Gates of Hell on one side and Death’s Door on the other and both of them need to be fucking closed. I don’t know if that makes us the so called good guys now, but all I know is if there’s an active way I can protect my wife and even help my daughter then I’m gonna do it. What are you going to do?” The Captain then leaves you without saying another word. Some pretty deep words for a man who you never saw as compassionate in anyway. He does make a point though. Lately what has been going in the world is pretty bad and you wonder if not fighting today will just mean putting off fighting tomorrow. > You leave the company Whatever the Captain is “going through” doesn’t involve you. You’ve got your own concerns. If the world events get so bad that they reach your doorstep, then you deal with it then, but risking your life to the extent of going deep into the heart of demon territory isn’t what you signed up for. You head home and tell your family that it’s permanent this time. You explain your reasons and apologize that you won’t be bringing in all the extra money like you used to. They aren’t mad though, your mom is actually relieved. “Well son, I’m just as glad you didn’t go get yourself killed over there anyway. You’ll be helping us out plenty just by working on the farm like always.” You’re glad to hear that. Over the next couple days you fall back into routine again. You still wonder about the future though and you briefly consider the army, but you’re a little weary of battle on a regular basis now. You resign yourself to the farm life. You play your lute to yourself (and family) when you have the time to do so. It’s a simple life. Another year passes and things are getting bad. War is everywhere. The Demons have been taken care of, (You heard your former mercenary captain died in battle with their leader Velzix) but the undead are stronger than ever. Reports even speak of the Necromancer Lord becoming The Great Lich Lord “reborn”. To make things worse, the Zalan Empire has been becoming increasingly tyrannical. In order to help with the war effort they’ve started bringing back the draft and the talk of ceasing private property to be used for the good of the government. While they say owners will be able to live and still work on their lands and businesses, it will be owned by the Empire. You know it’s only a matter of time when you get a knock on the door by Zalan army troops coming to take you (Especially you given your prior battle experience) and your brother Mallack away to the army and your family’s farm. Another two year pass… You’re on the eve of battle in a land known as the Garwold Confederacy although it’s steadily becoming a giant graveyard now. The undead hordes have been sweeping relentlessly across the entire landscape. Your own company has had to fall back several times. Morale is low. Not that yours was high to begin with. You don’t even know how you’ve survived this long. While you had lots of battle experience during your time with the mercenary company, you’ll never get used to fighting the undead. They are such emotionless creatures that are the embodiment of death and all that’s unnatural. You briefly wonder if your brother Mallack is alright where he’s stationed, but it hardly matters at this point. Battle comes as it always does and you are not so lucky this time. Horrible and powerful creatures known as Blood Specters and Death Knights utterly destroy your side. You put up a more valiant effort than most, but eventually you fall to undead blades and chilling touches only rise up and join them in their goal of global genocide.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve had enough. You’re not going to help OR stand by for another immoral act performed by your “co-workers”. It’s bad enough that it goes on, but that doesn’t mean you need to let it, if you can do something about it. You run Dimitri through the back with your sword, he yells out in pain, but still manages to swing his armored fist to strike you in the face. You fall to the ground. “Fuck…lute boy…goin…down…pig fucker…” he wheezes as he attempts to step towards you only to fall to his knees. At this point Morri has recovered and cleaves Dimitri’s skull in with his axe. “Bastard.” Morri then looks at you. “Heh, I guess you must be one of the few with a conscious in the company eh?” “I guess so.” You reply. “Or perhaps you knew it would be better if I lived so you could find your way out this maze?” “…Actually I hadn’t even thought about that. I just…just couldn’t let him kill and rob you like that. Seen it too many times.” “That a fact? Well tell me son, why the hell are you hooked up with these bunch for then?” “Money to help the family…besides it’s not that bad.” “Okay, if you say so. However, this little incident is going to cost your company. We warned your captain that if any evidence of treachery occurred, we weren’t paying him shit and this deal was off!” “But can’t we just keep this secret? I mean…” “Secret? Fuck no! Look, you’re not a bad person, but you’re hanging out with bad people. The only reason why we hired you in the first place is because you ARE effective and you’re about the only mercenary company insane enough to do a job like this. But a deal’s a deal. You captain apparently doesn’t have control over his men like he thinks, because I’m sure he warned you all.” “Yeah, but everyone will probably blame me and my life will be in danger!” “…well…I’m sorry about that, but that’s the price you pay for the company you keep…look I’ll tell you what, because you helped me, I’ll take you back to the entrance and you can leave. Should at least give you a head start. Hell, maybe I’ll even tell them you died before this happened. You could then just hide out and stay out of sight without even anyone looking for you.” Not knowing what to say next you just agree and ponder your possible future. The way back to the entrance is uneventful as far as demon attacks are concerned. You don’t know what you’re going to do. You’ll have to go on the run or at least relocate regardless of what Morri tells everyone. And if he mentions the truth, then your family may well be in danger. You imagine that if the Boss couldn’t get to you, he may very well take it out on your family. You feel sick and upset. You wish you hadn’t chosen this path. All you ever really wanted to do was play your lute, not fight demons or anything else really. You follow behind Morri in a daze. You’re surprised that he doesn’t insist that you walk in front of him, but then that’s probably because he trusts that you’re not a murderer. You also realize you recognize this part of the mine and could probably find your way back from here… You shake your head and take a deep breath. “Hey Morri.” “Wha…glagh! An arrow goes right through Morri’s mouth and out the other side of his head. He gurgles obscenities while trying to raise his axe towards you. Another arrow goes through his eye. He ceases his struggle. While you solved the problem of Morri telling anyone, now you have to cover your own tracks, then you hear a sound you never thought you’d be glad to hear. The chittering of those insect demons and a bunch of them are coming right behind you. You pull the arrows out and run as quickly as you can to the entrance leaving the demons to feed upon Morri’s body. The thought crosses your mind to just leave anyway. Maybe they’d think all three of you got eaten. However, you run into another group during your dash to the mine entrance. “Where the hell are you running off to?” a mercenary asks. It’s Cal. You come up with a lie quick. “(pant) Shit! We got fucking ambushed! (pant) Barely fucking escaped! (pant) Dimitri and Morri are dead! Probably eaten! And the rest of those demon fuckers are heading this way!” “What?! You cowardly fucker, you just let Morri die?” one the dwarves says angrily. “It wasn’t my idea! I tried to help him and Dimitri, but they just came in force, I don’t even know how I escaped!” Your story is a little suspicious, but thanks to the demons, you’re covered. They didn’t leave much for the dwarves to find. However, you’re not looked favorably on by the rest of the dwarves for the rest of the mission. Your fellow mercenaries don’t really care one way or another. It’s part of the job and Dimitri wasn’t well liked so they could care less if he died or lived. You on the other hand are still not feeling so great about yourself. The longer you’re part of this company the more you’re starting to think or be more like them. You hate it and you’ll be glad when this job is over. A few months pass and the contract is over. The “problem” isn’t completely gone, in fact there’s reports of some undead wandering in the area now, but the Dwarves are growing more weary of your presence, hand over your payment and tell you to leave. They say they can handle anything else themselves. It’s quite a lot this time. Best job you’ve had. Upon your return to the Zalan Empire you buy yourself a new lute. It’s your “reward”. The rest of it goes to your family who of course are eager to hear about your tales as usual. You don’t tell them that many this time. You just try to take your mind off your “job” by asking them more questions this time around. When you’re alone you play your new lute, trying to emulate a couple of the songs you overheard the Dwarves engage in when you were there. You never knew they were musically inclined; it’s a shame you had to kill one to protect your future. You’re still debating on whether or not to give up the mercenary life, but you see how much it’s helping the family out, so you decide to stay and put up with it. After your “break is over” you go back to the job as usual. Three years pass… Four years have passed since the “Nuro Incident” and things have gotten much worse in the world. The Necromancer Lord conquered the Brot Kingdom, A demon lord called Velzix conquered the Tulan Kingdom, both are expanding and a so called Grand Alliance of nations doesn’t seem to be doing much good against either of them. The Chimera Company was recently hired by the Zalan government. Due to your past battles with demons, they decided you would be good to put on Tulan Border which is still a bloodbath, but instead of fighting the Tulan Kingdom, the Zalan Empire is fighting Velzix’s hordes. It’s not an easy assignment or very pleasant, in fact it’s got to be the worst job you’ve been on. You company is assigned to make commando raids and sabotage shit to keep the demons fairly unfocused, while the Zalan Empire’s real armies try to make progress into Velzix’s realm. Currently you’re making your “camp” in small abandoned village in enemy territory where you have to fight the occasional demon patrols. Why the Captain took this job on for the company is beyond you. Nobody really knows why. The company in general has been taking more dangerous jobs in recent years. Ever since the Nuro Incident actually. While it’s always been known he’s not a man to shy away from danger and has a love of battle, there’s a lot of talk within ranks that he’s got a death wish. The only “good thing” about this assignment, is that the chance for usual Chimera Company wicked acts are much lower. There’s not many “innocents” in a demon realm. As you think about things, strumming your lute in an abandoned general store by yourself. You hear someone speak. “Pretty good playing. Wish my kind appreciated some of the more subtle things in life sometimes.” You turn your head and see a demon! He’s not very tall and is “dressed up”. He must be one of the “civilized” demons who realigned themselves with their demonic natures and flocked to Velzix when he took over the Tulan Kingdom. He doesn’t seem hostile, but you drop your lute and draw your weapon, before you can yell a warning, he speaks again. “Wait! Before you go warning your friends, I should warn you that there is a very large group of my fellow kin surrounding this village. You kill me and they’ll attack and quite frankly I don’t fancy your chances. However I got a deal for you that can be worth your while. What can it hurt to listen to me? You can always kill me afterwards.” > You attack him You don’t waste time, you just attack! Unfortunately the demon is more than he appears and easily dodges your attack. You don’t have time to turn and react again when he’s tripped you up and put his fist in your face causing your nose to explode into a mass of blood. You’re dazed. “(Sigh) And here I thought you were the reasonable one of this bunch. Nevermind.” The demon says. He follows up with another fist to your face. This one goes through your head killing you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re not sure if the formal military life is for you. If you joined up you wouldn’t be able to readily leave. You figure if you don’t like life as a mercenary or it isn’t working out for you, you can leave freely. You explain your decision to join up with the mercenary company that’s currently passing through. Your revelation comes as a shock. Your smaller brothers and sisters don’t want you to go, your brother Mallack really doesn’t want you to leave since he’ll be next in line to take the brunt of the manual labor! Your mother is a little apprehensive about your decision. You half expect her to say no, but she understands that you’re doing this for the good of the family. She gives her blessing. Before you leave the next day with your packed belongings, your whole family comes to say goodbye to you. You almost hesitate to leave, wondering if it would actually be better for you to stay. Your mother approaches you. “You don’t have to do this you know. We’re doing just fine.” “Yeah, but things would be easier if this family had more money.” “Hah. Things are always easier with more money son, but you don’t need to go and get yourself killed for it.” “Yeah, I know, but I’ve thought it through.” “Very well, you’re old enough to make your own decisions and live your own life, though I’m glad to see that you still want to help the family as opposed to just leaving in the middle of the night.” “I’ll visit and return with whatever my pay is whenever I can.” “I know…okay, you best get going. I think the mercenary company was leaving today.” You make you way to the local tavern and catch them just as they’re getting ready leave. A lot of them look hung over. “Hey wait up…” you say in a slightly loud tone, causing one mean looking mercenary to snarl at you. “Shut the fuck up yokel! Shit, I got a splitting headache and it hurts like a sonofabitch.” “Sorry. Are you the leader of this company?” “Leader of these dickheads? Naw. The Boss is actually visiting his family in the Zalan capital. We’re going to meet up with him now and I suggest you get the fuck outta our way and not waste anymore of our time!” “But I want to join you guys.” The mercenary you were speaking to looks at you then looks at a few of his buddies and begins to laugh louder than your voice which previously annoyed him. “HAHAHA HAHAHA! Y’hear that fellas? This yokel wants to join us! Thanks a lot, I needed a good laugh, now go fuck your pigs or whatever it is you farm types do.” “But I’m serious…” “Serious? Farmboy, this is a man’s job and not for the fuckin’ weak. You ever even use a damn weapon?” “Yeah! I got this bow and this sword! I’m a really good shot!” The mercenary still looks unimpressed. “Uh huh, yeah well you ever kill anyone, hell you ever kill ANYTHING? And I’m not talkin’ about any of your livestock you might’ve slaughtered. I mean something sentient.” “Well yeah, I’ve killed Kobolds that were trying to steal chickens from the…” The mercenaries begin to laugh again. “Oh shit, you are priceless boy! My sister can kill fuckin’ Kobolds and her only talent is whoring.” “Haha got that one right, Dimitri.” Another one of the mercenaries agrees. Suddenly the laughing stops. “What the fuck did you just say Fermeli?” “Uh, I was just agreeing with you…c’mon don’t take it like that! I mean you said…” “Ain’t about what I said, it’s about what YOU said! You called my fucking sister a whore! You ain’t getting’ away with that shit.” Dimitri draws his sword and stomps over to Fermeli who is trying to get one of his buddies to help him, but everyone else is backing away from the fight. Dimitri takes advantage of Fermeli’s state of panic and slashes him good with his sword. Fermeli cries out in pain and begs for forgiveness. Dimitri looks like he’s going to finish him off, but then turns to you. “You want to join hayseed? Kill this piece of shit then.” “Huh? I mean…” you utter in confusion. “Did I stutter pig farmer? Kill this… AARGH FUCK!” Fermeli has now taken advantage of Dimitri by shoving a dagger into his leg and scrambling to get up “Yeah! Take that! How’s that feel?” Fermeli taunts and draws his own sword in an attempt to kill Dimitri At this point you unwisely step into the middle of this fight. “Hey hold on, the pair of you are even now…” “Fuck off pig farmer! You want some of this now? Yeah, let’s see how much of a killer you are!” Fermeli says who doesn’t look frightened of you at all and heads in your direction. “Hey wait I don’t wanna…” You barely dodge his sword swipe to your head. You roll out of the way and quickly grab an arrow and shoot it at Fermeli with your bow, hitting him square in the neck. Some blood spurts out and a surprised look on his face is displayed and then he falls dead. You’ve killed him. You’ve never killed anything before that wasn’t a Kobold or livestock. You feel weird. In the meantime Dimitri gets up and pulls the dagger out of his leg and looks over at Formeli’s body. “Heh, maybe you are a killer after all pig farmer. Well it seems we got an opening now. Take whatever he had as your own. You killed him, you earned it. Welcome to the Chimera Mercenary Company!” While you MAY be in, you’re not necessarily sure if you want in. This may be a bit too much for you. > You go back home If this how it was on your first day, you’d hate to think about if you had to deal with this on a regular basis. “Uh…no, maybe I was wrong. Bye.” You say and quickly take off. “Heh, pig farmer don’t have no stomach for it…Dibs on Foremeli’s shit!” you hear Dimitri yell. When you get back home, your family and mom in particular ask what happened, you explain it and say you don’t want any part of that life. You apologize that you couldn’t go through with it, but your mom looks more relieved than anything. “Well son, I’m just as glad you didn’t join up with that lot anyway. You’ll be helping us out plenty just by working on the farm like always.” You’re glad to hear that. Over the next couple days you fall back into routine again. You still wonder about the future though and you briefly consider the army plan again, but given your short lived experience with mercenary “life” you don’t think you’re cut out with battle on a regular basis. Plus the Zalan Empire is currently having really bad border skirmish with the Tulan Kingdom right now. You resign yourself to the farm life. You play your lute to yourself (and family) when you have the time to do so. It’s a simple life. A year passes and a terrible incident occurs at a far away city known as Nuro. A group of rogue wizards summoned an army of the dead to take it over. They also summoned a lot of demons that have broken free and running rampant now in the Tulan Kingdom. It’s all far away from you, but something like this is pretty serious. Necromancy and Demon summoning is strictly forbidden throughout the land. Meanwhile life on the farm is going the same as it ever did. Hard sometimes, but manageable. Another two years pass and things have gotten worse. The Necromancer Lord (as he’s become to be known) has expanded, even to the point of taking over the Brot Kingdom. The Tulan Kingdom has been totally conquered by a demon army. A Grand Alliance of nations has been formed, but so far they don’t seem to be making much progress. Meanwhile life on the farm is a little harder. Your youngest sister Makana becomes gravely ill during the winter months, but there’s not enough money to pay for a healer and most of the clerics have been summoned to battle with the undead or demon hordes. Sadly she dies making the overall mood of the farm a little more depressing. You don’t even play anymore, your enthusiasm for music died along with the grim realities setting in. Another three years pass and things are down right miserable. War is everywhere. The Demons have been taken care of, but the undead are stronger than ever. Reports even speak of the Necromancer Lord becoming The Great Lich Lord “reborn”. You remember hearing tales by your father of such a being that existed centuries ago. They scared the hell out of you then and the fact that you’re living in a time where he’s returned makes you feel doomed. To make things worse, the Zalan Empire has been becoming increasingly tyrannical. In order to help with the war effort they’ve started bringing back the draft and the talk of ceasing private property to be used for the good of the government. While they say owners will be able to live and still work on their lands and businesses, it will be owned by the Empire. You know it’s only a matter of time when you get a knock on the door by Zalan army troops coming to take you and your brother Mallack away to the army and your family’s farm. Another two year pass… You’re on the eve of battle in a land known as the Garwold Confederacy although it’s steadily becoming a giant graveyard now. The undead hordes have been sweeping relentlessly across the entire landscape. Your own company has had to fall back several times. Morale is low. Not that yours was high to begin with. You don’t even know how you’ve survived this long. You didn’t even have that much military training when they threw you into you first battle a year ago. It was a terrifying experience and you still have nightmares about it. The undead…you’ll never get used to fighting such emotionless creatures that are the embodiment of death and all that’s unnatural. You briefly wonder if your brother Mallack is alright where he’s stationed, but it hardly matters at this point. Battle comes as it always does and you are not so lucky this time. Horrible and powerful creatures known as Blood Specters and Death Knights utterly destroy your side. You fall to undead blades and chilling touches only rise up and join them in their goal of global genocide.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The wintry winds howl a horrible wail, whipping white watery snow against the weathered watchtower’s westernmost wall. Yes, it is indeed a dark and stormy night, but darker and stormier and maybe just a tad more purple than your run-of-the-mill dark and stormy night. Somewhere deep in the forest a unicorn frolics in a magical glade, as elves watch and scamper amongst the trees, polishing their bows with the blood of dwarves. “Killed a big fat one today, Elfrond,” says Elfmoor. “Bastard was trying to chop down a cherry tree. Can you believe it, a fucking cherry tree? Sacrilege.” “Have you ever wondered why we hate the dwarves so much?” asks Elfrond. “What do you mean? They’re fucking dwarves! And this one chopped down a tree. A cherry tree. Only thing that rivals my love of trees are cherries. And music. And song. And like five other things.” “Yeah, I’ve just been thinking lately. How did we get these sweet bows, if we didn’t chop down a tree to shape them. And how do we burn fires without firewood? And why exactly do we hate the dwarves?” “It’s canon. Don’t ask questions.” “What’s a cannon?” Suddenly, the elves quit bickering. Something that only happens once in a thousand years occurs. The glade explodes with magical aura as the unicorn releases its legendary rainbow fart. Magical anomalies, such as this, signal only one thing: the birth of a hero. Elfmoor takes a big whiff of the magical aroma. “B. E. A. Utiful. Times like this make life worth living.” Elfrond shakes his head. “Elfmoor, we’re immortal. I’ve seen this like ten times already. And every time this happens, it means something evil is about to come afoot." “But the hero always wins.” “Have you ever heard the term collateral damage?” “Is that a sword?” And there you have it. The magical unicorn fart that marks your birth. How exciting! I wonder what type of hero you will grow up to be. > You heroic knight, heroic knight! Ah, the noble knight in shining armor. And they say chivalry is dead. You are born into a loving but stern peasant family in the hamlet of Forest Hill. Your formative years are a medley of hardship, merriment, and hard work. While most of the other children in the hamlet are content to play ragamuffin children’s games and live out their lives in this quaint corner of the woods, you aspire to greatness, spending every evening selling turnips and every night mucking shit from the stables. With all this (paltry sum of) loot, you are able to afford sword and shield lessons from the guardsmen. One fine autumn evening, you and your sword master Jon are finishing a sparring session. Jon is bigger and faster than you are, but you have taken his lessons to heart. Training swords are blunted, but they hurt all the same when they whack you. Jon’s sword arcs toward your shoulder. You raise your shield, and the wood splinters. With a quick twist of the wrist, you yank the shield downwards, catching Jon’s sword in the process. He is open; here is your chance. You swing your sword… “Dodge!” you shout, dropping to the ground. Jon’s fist sails an inch above your head. You toss your shield and lurch from your knees into Jon. The pair of you grapple on the ground. Dust flies. Both of your swords are lost in the ruckus. A fist catches you square in the gut. Once, twice, three times. You spit in Jon’s eyes and roll to the side, and stagger to your feet. A leg comes sweeping toward you. “Dodge!” you shout, jumping back. You avoid the leg, but tumble onto your ass. Before you can regain your feet, a boot hits your chest, shoving you back into the ground. Jon stands above you and smirks. “You know what you forgot to do?” You nod, knowing. “You forgot to DODGE!” You share a hearty laugh. At first, Jon would shout ‘dodge’ to train you to avoid taking hits, now it is your job to shout it when you train. He even sends kids around to throw shit at you randomly during the day. That really sends the message home. You have come so far that the art of dodging has almost become a sixth sense. ‘If they can’t hit you, they can’t kill you,’ Jon had reasoned. The pair of you head to the watch house to clean up. The building is small and reeks of sweat and mildew. The hamlet only has three guards, so upgrading their housing has not been a top concern of the local Baron. You are just thrilled the hamlet has guards at all. “You’re getting good, kid. Real good,” says Jon, stripping his leather armor. “I think you’re ready for some real patrol work. We just got a report the other night about some disappearances on the Baron’s Road. It’s probably just some bandits, but we need to take care of it. You in?” > You hell yeah you're in. “Hell yeah I’m in.” Jon nods. “Glad to hear it.” This could be your big chance to finally prove yourself. You need to get your name out there if you want to have any chance of receiving a knighthood someday. They do not just hand those things out like… well, nobody has ever actually handed you anything except a nice big steaming pile of shit. Peasantry blows. Under cover of darkness, you and the three guards head out along the Baron’s Road in the back of a covered wagon. No one has ever thought of ambushing bandits in a covered wagon while guised as merchants. Surely, the plan will go off without a hitch. Samwellington the Fat jitters in his seat. You are not sure if it is because he is scared or hungry. How Sam became a member of the guard is beyond your imagination. Jon trusts him for some reason, and that is good enough for you. “Nervous kid?” he asks. That you might eat me. “No. If Jon says I’m ready, then I’m ready.” Bowie bobs his head. “It’s best to trust Jon. I didn’t once and then my world went to shit. That draugr attack during the winter of ’69 was brutal… I still have nightmares.” Jon rolls his eyes. “If you hadn’t st-” “Hey, let’s let bygones be bygones,” says Bowie. “Hey do you hear that?” you ask. “Sorry, my stomach rumbles when I travel,” says Samwellington. “No, not-” The horses whinny and bolt. One of the wheels catches a snag in the road and topples over. Luckily, you land on Samwellington’s gut. Jon cuts a hole in the wagon covering and climbs out into the night, and you and Bowie follow. “Oh, fuck…” Jon clutches his sword in both hands and rushes. Two trolls tower over the corpses of the horses and the wagon driver, tearing chunks of bloody flesh with the effort you would rip apart a boiled chicken. > You help Jon. In your eagerness to fight at Jon’s side, you forget the most important lesson of your training: always dodge. A troll whips a horse leg in your direction. Off balance and off guard, you cannot avoid the hurling limb as the hoof nails you in the shoulder, severing your sword arm. Blood spouts like a geyser from your body as you crumple to the road. “Bowie, help Jon!” Samwellington shrieks. “I’ve got the kid.” Samwellington stumbles to your side and rolls you onto your back. “Hang in there little buddy. It’s going to be alright.” Blood loss is making you delusional. It is the only way to explain what is happening. Samwellington draws his dagger and sticks himself in the gut. He drags the blade across his stomach, slips his hand into the incision, and pulls out a chunk of his own fat. He smacks the lard on your wound and it sticks in place, stemming the blood flow. “Can you walk?” asks Samwellington. “Can I walk? Can I walk! I just had my fucking arm cleaved off. What the fuck do you think?” “Yeah, an arm, not a leg. Don’t be a baby.” “Sam we could really use your fat ass over here,” shouts Bowie. “Any motherfucking time!” You hear a gurgle and a gasp just before Bowie’s head goes sailing through the air. Samwellington gulps and scurries away to hide behind the wreckage of the wagon. What a coward. Oh well, at least he saved your life. Leaning against your sword, you stagger to your feet. One of the trolls ravages Bowie’s headless corpse. The crunching and snapping of bones sickens you, and you fight the urge to hurl as bile tickles your throat. Jon appears to be holding his ground against the other troll, but once his friend finishes devouring Bowie’s corpse, even Jon won’t be able to fend off their combined savagery. You have to do something quick or all of your worthless lives will be over. > You throw your severed arm as a distraction. You doubt you will be of much use as a combatant, so you may as well make yourself useful in some other fashion. You grab your severed arm and wing it as hard you can toward the trolls. The troll feasting on Bowie ignores the bloody mess of flesh, but Jon’s troll clambers after it on all fours. A deep sadness seeps into your bones as you hear the troll crunch your arm in its jaws. Heroes are not supposed to be eaten. Jon slices the back of the trolls’ knees, and the troll howls in agony as its legs buckle. Jon leaps onto its back and cleaves the head clean off with one swipe with your arm still clenched between its teeth. “Go Jon,” Samwellington cheers. The fat coward is still cowering behind wreckage from the wagon. “Why don’t you try and help?” you snarl. “I am helping. I’m providing emotional support.” You roll your eyes and look back in time to see Jon finish off the second troll. “Wow, that was fast,” you say. Jon shrugs. “A little emotional support can go a long way. Nice job yourself. You didn’t even need to have your sword arm attached to the rest of your body for it to be useful. Try dodging next time though.” “I don’t know if there will be a next time. How can I fight without a sword arm?” Jon winks. “I know a guy: magic fellow and what not. He should be able to do something for you.” Jon raises his hand. “Hold on one second. I’ll be right back.” Jon darts into the forest and you hear the lovely sound of steel biting into flesh and the accompanying screams. “Sam, why don’t you go back to the hamlet and draft the report,” says Jon, emerging from the forest, “add five dead bandits to it. I’ll take our buddy here to the hedge wizard.” With that, you and Jon part ways with Samwellington and enjoy a relatively droll venture to the hedge wizard’s hut. You understand why he is only a hedge wizard. The hut is a ramshackle smattering of twigs and leaves that appear to be held together by nothing but mud and bird poop. The entire place smells worse than a popcorn fart. This may not have been the best idea, but before you can raise your concerns with Jon, he hollers out. “Hey, Osprey, get out here. I need a favor.” “Is that you Jon?” You hear weird pops and bangs from inside the bird poop hut. “Just a second.” “Take your time,” says Jon. “No hurry.” After a few minutes, a bent white-bearded man with smoldering eyebrows and a staff teeters out of the hut amidst a cloud of smoke. The smoke shrouds Osprey and follows him around. It smells of rancid cheese and burning bird shit. “Whew,” Jon attempts to wave the stink away, “what were you doing in there?” Osprey’s eyes light up. His lips twist into a smirk as he cackles. “Wizard things.” “Oh, Dear God.” Osprey’s smile vanishes as he notices you and totters over. He grabs your head in both hands, lifts your chin, peers into your eyes, and prods your chest with a bony finger. A chill courses through your bones. He proceeds to violate your personal space for several minutes while you do your best to avoid suffocating in the smoke. “Mmhmmm,” he says to himself. “Just as I thought. The boy is missing an arm.” You roll your eyes. “How observant.” Osprey whacks you upside the head with the staff. “Mind your manners, boy, or I’ll turn you into a leprechaun.” He shakes his head. “Ain’t nothing sadder than a leprechaun.” “Not even a smelly old man living in a bird shit hut?” Osprey clobbers you with the staff again. “I’ll have respect from you boy. This is no joking matter. You ever see a leprechaun you give that poor bastard nothing but your sincerest sympathies.” He smacks you with the staff one more time for good measure. “Now about that arm. I can fix you right up. Get you a brand new ethereal arm. Those things are sweet: impervious to physical damage. Magic will fuck you up though.” Osprey begins nodding his head and drawing weird symbols in the ground with his staff while mumbling to himself. “Jon,” you whisper, “I really don’t think this is a good idea. This guy is cracked.” Jon scoffs. “Posh. You want to be a knight, right? Well, a knight needs both arms.” > You bring on the magic. Truer words have never been said. Well, they probably have, but you cannot think of any at the moment. “Alright,” you nod, “bring on the magic.” “That’s the spirit.” Osprey bumbles around finishing his runes. He mutters some incantations, bops you on top of the head a few times with his staff and bursts into poetry. A wizard did it, a wizard bid it. An arm grew, fresh and new. Ethereal, but not imperial. As we live in a realm, surrounded by elm. Nature’s magic, is never tragic. My rhymes are bad, but I’m not mad. This spell worked, ‘cause Cyrus twerked. Just like that, a sprite and shiny ethereal arm appears from your shoulder. You clench your fist and feel the power pulsing through your… veins? Jon claps politely as Osprey bows. The hedge wizard slaps you across the back, smiling. “Now don’t go committing sins of self-pleasure with that thing. You might rip something important off.” You gulp. Osprey cackles and slaps you some more. He seems to like hitting you. “You can shoot magic energy blasts out of that thing too. I thought that might be useful for a hero.” Jon shakes his head. “If you want to be a heroic knight, don’t do that. Knights aren’t magic. Only trouble can come of it. This isn’t a wizard’s tale.” Osprey shrugs and wanders back into his hut. The door creaks shut and you soon hear the calamity snap back to life. He pokes his head out to offer one last piece of advice. “You treat them leprechauns with respect, boy, you hear me?” He slams the door shut and that is that. “What do we do now?” you ask Jon. “Well, I’m going to go back to the hamlet and make sure everything’s in order. You should go try out your new arm and get used to it.” You consider that a smashing idea and head off to the neighboring kingdom of Irelandshire to seek out one of these mystical leprechauns. With the help of several drunken and boisterous natives, you learn the not-so-secret location of the Valley of Rainbows where the leprechauns supposedly abound. They warn you not to go though because it is a sad and wretched place. Obviously, you ignore them. Hundreds of rainbows dot the easy to access valley, and you have little difficulty tracking one down to its end. Naturally, a great pot of gold sits next to it, but no leprechaun. You try calling for them, taunting them, begging them, praising them, but none appear. “Well at least I’m rich.” You pack as much gold as you can onto your horse (which isn’t anywhere near the entire pot since gold is heavy, yet it’s still enough to buy a castle or two) and prepare to return home. As you approach the precipice with the cave that leads out of the valley, a shrill cry booms from deep in the heart of the valley. > You you're rich. You're going home. Where is your sense of adventure? Heroes aren’t supposed to be in the game just for the money! What about for princess bosom? Princess bosom is nice, but even with that you are still only a cheap imitation of a true hero. Besides, I do not see any princess bosom in the area, and no, you cannot buy princess bosom. You must earn such luxuries. Are you telling me I don’t actually get to go home? No, you can go home if you want. I’m merely giving you an opportunity to reconsider because I am a kind and kindred spirit. Eh, who am I kidding? I’m kind of a dick, but my offer still stands. > You piss off, you're going home with your booty. You elect to go home with your wealthy horde of treasure, as you have every right to do so. I applaud your resolution. That takes cajones. Even divine intervention cannot derail you from your path. With your newfound riches, you decide to take a luxury cruise on the C.Y.S. Generic Heroine. She is truly a gallant vessel. You dine on raw oysters and baked clams, which you eat off the bare breasts of dashing dames. At night, mermaids sing scandalous songs as they swim along with the ship, attempting to lure foolish sailors and passengers into their clutches, but not you, no, you are too wise. You simply listen and enjoy the sweet melodies. The seas stay smooth and calm and you enjoy a pleasurable sailing experience. Pirates only attack once, and with your bitchin’ ethereal arm, you smash and bash them to bits, claiming their brig as your own. You even remembered to heed Jon’s warning and not use the magical energy blasts to preserve your status as a heroic knight. “How was your trip?” Jon asks as you arrive in port. “Profitable.” Samwellington’s mouth waters as he sniffs the seafood on your breath. “Do you have any more clams?” “I hope so,” says Jon, ignoring Samwellington. “You missed the king’s tournament. Sooooooo much shit went down.” “Jon found a fire-crotch.” Samwellington beams gaily. “And killed a no good dirty evil wizard.” Jon nods. “The future looks bright. That’s for damn certain.” The three of you leave the docks and head into the city, ready to raise hell and fuck bitches make sweet tender love to beautiful maidens. What, did you think I would be spiteful and have you die of the Great Pox or be devoured by the kracken? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Where is your sense of adventure? Heroes aren’t supposed to be in the game just for the money! What about for princess bosom? Princess bosom is nice, but even with that you are still only a cheap imitation of a true hero. Besides, I do not see any princess bosom in the area, and no, you cannot buy princess bosom. You must earn such luxuries. Are you telling me I don’t actually get to go home? No, you can go home if you want. I’m merely giving you an opportunity to reconsider because I am a kind and kindred spirit. Eh, who am I kidding? I’m kind of a dick, but my offer still stands. > You convinced you, oh benevolent and mighty guardian angel. No one likes a kiss ass. I'm more akin to a god than an angel anyway. Taking a deep whiff of air you can smell the magic. This place has more to it than abandoned pots of gold and rainbows after all. You order your horse to stay and guard your gold as you dart towards the disturbance, and he obeys, because that is what good horseys do. You storm through the trees, snapping branches and scaring furry little forest critters. In your haste, you trample a chipmunk. The little fellow’s bones make a nice crunching noise. “Hey what’s the big idea!” You whirl around but do not see anyone. You inspect the bottom of your boot, but the chipmunk is not the speaker. He is squashed like a rotten pumpkin all juicy and splattered. “Over here you idiot.” A giant of a man posing as a tree rumbles toward you. He has moss and vines for a beard and hair. His green eyes glimmer with malice. A bear and a wolf lumber along at his sides. “Why are you destroying my forest?” “Sorry, I was looking for whatever made that awful cry.” “That was a leprechaun bemoaning his sorry fate of being a leprechaun.” “Cool, can you show me where they are?” “You murder my friend and harm my trees and you ask me for help? Give me one reason why I shouldn’t bring you home to my wife and tickle you to death for her amusement while my children eat your toes!” What in the name of Pegasus is this thing? Oh, if only you had brought that book on mythical creatures Samwellington bought you for your birthday. At any rate, something tells you he does not belong in Irelandshire. You do not think you will be able to reason with him. If the chipmunk was his friend, honor would dictate that he avenge the cute little guy’s mushy corpse. How do you want to play this? > You tell him, 'Everything you say is a lie.' A smug smirk crosses your lips as you proudly declare, “Everything I say is a lie.” The weird tree man thing stares at you then shakes his head in pity. “What did you think a paradox would do? Make my brain melt into soup?” “Yes, actually.” “I am a leshy. Not an imbecile.” “I have no idea what that is. Do you sing songs?” “You’ll see what I do.” The leshy’s animal friends attack and pin you to the ground before you can react. You manage to strangle the bear to death with your ethereal arm, but this only enrages the leshy further. He plucks you from the ground as a princess would an eyelash and carries you off to his shanty with the wolf nipping at your feet. Once inside his home, he binds you with vines and hangs you from the ceiling. His wife and children enter from kitchen. “Oh, wonderful,” his wife cries with glee, “you found a wanderer! We get so few in the Valley of Rainbows.” “The stupid leprechauns keep everyone away,” says one of the children. “No one wants to be near a leprechaun.” The leshy’s wife smacks the child upside the head. “You treat the leprechauns with respect young man. They have enough misfortune without your drivel.” “That’s right. Behave yourself, or I won’t let you eat his toes,” says the leshy. “Yes Pa.” The leshy begins tickling you as the children nibble on your toes. The wife shoves a hand down her dress and begins to moan and giggle. You shut your eyes and vomit between fits of laughter and screams of agony. Piss runs down your leg. “You evil bastard!” you scream. “I’m not evil. You’re just a failure and a murderer,” says the leshy as he proceeds to tickle you to death. “Chipper was one of my best friends. He will not be forgotten.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No one likes a kiss ass. I'm more akin to a god than an angel anyway. Taking a deep whiff of air you can smell the magic. This place has more to it than abandoned pots of gold and rainbows after all. You order your horse to stay and guard your gold as you dart towards the disturbance, and he obeys, because that is what good horseys do. You storm through the trees, snapping branches and scaring furry little forest critters. In your haste, you trample a chipmunk. The little fellow’s bones make a nice crunching noise. “Hey what’s the big idea!” You whirl around but do not see anyone. You inspect the bottom of your boot, but the chipmunk is not the speaker. He is squashed like a rotten pumpkin all juicy and splattered. “Over here you idiot.” A giant of a man posing as a tree rumbles toward you. He has moss and vines for a beard and hair. His green eyes glimmer with malice. A bear and a wolf lumber along at his sides. “Why are you destroying my forest?” “Sorry, I was looking for whatever made that awful cry.” “That was a leprechaun bemoaning his sorry fate of being a leprechaun.” “Cool, can you show me where they are?” “You murder my friend and harm my trees and you ask me for help? Give me one reason why I shouldn’t bring you home to my wife and tickle you to death for her amusement while my children eat your toes!” What in the name of Pegasus is this thing? Oh, if only you had brought that book on mythical creatures Samwellington bought you for your birthday. At any rate, something tells you he does not belong in Irelandshire. You do not think you will be able to reason with him. If the chipmunk was his friend, honor would dictate that he avenge the cute little guy’s mushy corpse. How do you want to play this? > You turn your clothes inside out and put your shoes on the wrong feet. You remember now! This creature is a leshy, and there is only one sure fire way to stop a leshy. You whip off your clothes, put them on inside out, kick off your shoes and slip them onto the opposite feet. The leshy grimaces and his animal companions slink away. “I guess I have to show you the way out now.” “I know the way out. Can you take me to the leprechauns?” “You want to see the leprechauns? Are you dull in the head?” “I like bacon, yes.” The leshy’s eyes twinkle with fear. “Clearly, you’re mentally unhinged. Just like those poor leprechauns. If I take you to them, promise you’ll leave me and my family alone.” “Sure.” You follow the leshy into a glade, within a glen, within a gorge, within a holler, within a hollow, within a dell, within a dale, within a dingle, within a canyon, within a vale within the Valley of Rainbows. The trip is quite, shall I say, trippy. The leshy points to a pool of water where all the rainbows spring forth. “I’m not getting any closer. Give the leprechauns my condolences, and please don’t murder rape my family. Good day.” The leshy leaves in a hurry without another word. You approach the pool with eager enthusiasm and the leprechauns begin to appear from the surrounding trees… ... Why are you stopping? I’m sorry. It’s too depressing. Give the leprechauns my condolences as well, poor sorry bastards.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Truer words have never been said. Well, they probably have, but you cannot think of any at the moment. “Alright,” you nod, “bring on the magic.” “That’s the spirit.” Osprey bumbles around finishing his runes. He mutters some incantations, bops you on top of the head a few times with his staff and bursts into poetry. A wizard did it, a wizard bid it. An arm grew, fresh and new. Ethereal, but not imperial. As we live in a realm, surrounded by elm. Nature’s magic, is never tragic. My rhymes are bad, but I’m not mad. This spell worked, ‘cause Cyrus twerked. Just like that, a sprite and shiny ethereal arm appears from your shoulder. You clench your fist and feel the power pulsing through your… veins? Jon claps politely as Osprey bows. The hedge wizard slaps you across the back, smiling. “Now don’t go committing sins of self-pleasure with that thing. You might rip something important off.” You gulp. Osprey cackles and slaps you some more. He seems to like hitting you. “You can shoot magic energy blasts out of that thing too. I thought that might be useful for a hero.” Jon shakes his head. “If you want to be a heroic knight, don’t do that. Knights aren’t magic. Only trouble can come of it. This isn’t a wizard’s tale.” Osprey shrugs and wanders back into his hut. The door creaks shut and you soon hear the calamity snap back to life. He pokes his head out to offer one last piece of advice. “You treat them leprechauns with respect, boy, you hear me?” He slams the door shut and that is that. “What do we do now?” you ask Jon. “Well, I’m going to go back to the hamlet and make sure everything’s in order. You should go try out your new arm and get used to it.” You consider that a smashing idea and head off to the neighboring kingdom of Irelandshire to seek out one of these mystical leprechauns. With the help of several drunken and boisterous natives, you learn the not-so-secret location of the Valley of Rainbows where the leprechauns supposedly abound. They warn you not to go though because it is a sad and wretched place. Obviously, you ignore them. Hundreds of rainbows dot the easy to access valley, and you have little difficulty tracking one down to its end. Naturally, a great pot of gold sits next to it, but no leprechaun. You try calling for them, taunting them, begging them, praising them, but none appear. “Well at least I’m rich.” You pack as much gold as you can onto your horse (which isn’t anywhere near the entire pot since gold is heavy, yet it’s still enough to buy a castle or two) and prepare to return home. As you approach the precipice with the cave that leads out of the valley, a shrill cry booms from deep in the heart of the valley. > You investigate the cry. Taking a deep whiff of air you can smell the magic. This place has more to it than abandoned pots of gold and rainbows after all. You order your horse to stay and guard your gold as you dart towards the disturbance, and he obeys, because that is what good horseys do. You storm through the trees, snapping branches and scaring furry little forest critters. In your haste, you trample a chipmunk. The little fellow’s bones make a nice crunching noise. “Hey what’s the big idea!” You whirl around but do not see anyone. You inspect the bottom of your boot, but the chipmunk is not the speaker. He is squashed like a rotten pumpkin all juicy and splattered. “Over here you idiot.” A giant of a man posing as a tree rumbles toward you. He has moss and vines for a beard and hair. His green eyes glimmer with malice. A bear and a wolf lumber along at his sides. “Why are you destroying my forest?” “Sorry, I was looking for whatever made that awful cry.” “That was a leprechaun bemoaning his sorry fate of being a leprechaun.” “Cool, can you show me where they are?” “You murder my friend and harm my trees and you ask me for help? Give me one reason why I shouldn’t bring you home to my wife and tickle you to death for her amusement while my children eat your toes!” What in the name of Pegasus is this thing? Oh, if only you had brought that book on mythical creatures Samwellington bought you for your birthday. At any rate, something tells you he does not belong in Irelandshire. You also doubt you will be able to reason with him. If the chipmunk was his friend, honor would dictate that he avenge the cute little guy’s mushy corpse. How do you want to play this?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You doubt you will be of much use as a combatant, so you may as well make yourself useful in some other fashion. You grab your severed arm and wing it as hard you can toward the trolls. The troll feasting on Bowie ignores the bloody mess of flesh, but Jon’s troll clambers after it on all fours. A deep sadness seeps into your bones as you hear the troll crunch your arm in its jaws. Heroes are not supposed to be eaten. Jon slices the back of the trolls’ knees, and the troll howls in agony as its legs buckle. Jon leaps onto its back and cleaves the head clean off with one swipe with your arm still clenched between its teeth. “Go Jon,” Samwellington cheers. The fat coward is still cowering behind wreckage from the wagon. “Why don’t you try and help?” you snarl. “I am helping. I’m providing emotional support.” You roll your eyes and look back in time to see Jon finish off the second troll. “Wow, that was fast,” you say. Jon shrugs. “A little emotional support can go a long way. Nice job yourself. You didn’t even need to have your sword arm attached to the rest of your body for it to be useful. Try dodging next time though.” “I don’t know if there will be a next time. How can I fight without a sword arm?” Jon winks. “I know a guy: magic fellow and what not. He should be able to do something for you.” Jon raises his hand. “Hold on one second. I’ll be right back.” Jon darts into the forest and you hear the lovely sound of steel biting into flesh and the accompanying screams. “Sam, why don’t you go back to the hamlet and draft the report,” says Jon, emerging from the forest, “add five dead bandits to it. I’ll take our buddy here to the hedge wizard.” With that, you and Jon part ways with Samwellington and enjoy a relatively droll venture to the hedge wizard’s hut. You understand why he is only a hedge wizard. The hut is a ramshackle smattering of twigs and leaves that appear to be held together by nothing but mud and bird poop. The entire place smells worse than a popcorn fart. This may not have been the best idea, but before you can raise your concerns with Jon, he hollers out. “Hey, Osprey, get out here. I need a favor.” “Is that you Jon?” You hear weird pops and bangs from inside the bird poop hut. “Just a second.” “Take your time,” says Jon. “No hurry.” After a few minutes, a bent white-bearded man with smoldering eyebrows and a staff teeters out of the hut amidst a cloud of smoke. The smoke shrouds Osprey and follows him around. It smells of rancid cheese and burning bird shit. “Whew,” Jon attempts to wave the stink away, “what were you doing in there?” Osprey’s eyes light up. His lips twist into a smirk as he cackles. “Wizard things.” “Oh, Dear God.” Osprey’s smile vanishes as he notices you and totters over. He grabs your head in both hands, lifts your chin, peers into your eyes, and prods your chest with a bony finger. A chill courses through your bones. He proceeds to violate your personal space for several minutes while you do your best to avoid suffocating in the smoke. “Mmhmmm,” he says to himself. “Just as I thought. The boy is missing an arm.” You roll your eyes. “How observant.” Osprey whacks you upside the head with the staff. “Mind your manners, boy, or I’ll turn you into a leprechaun.” He shakes his head. “Ain’t nothing sadder than a leprechaun.” “Not even a smelly old man living in a bird shit hut?” Osprey clobbers you with the staff again. “I’ll have respect from you boy. This is no joking matter. You ever see a leprechaun you give that poor bastard nothing but your sincerest sympathies.” He smacks you with the staff one more time for good measure. “Now about that arm. I can fix you right up. Get you a brand new ethereal arm. Those things are sweet: impervious to physical damage. Magic will fuck you up though.” Osprey begins nodding his head and drawing weird symbols in the ground with his staff while mumbling to himself. “Jon,” you whisper, “I really don’t think this is a good idea. This guy is cracked.” Jon scoffs. “Posh. You want to be a knight, right? Well, a knight needs both arms.” > You continue as a cripple. There is no way you are about to let this bird-brained lunatic work any form of magic on you. Somehow, someway, you will adapt to your crippled state. “It’s just not happening, Jon,” you say and walk away. “Hey, get back here, kid!” “Let him go, Jon,” you hear Osprey say. “He’ll come back. They always do.” You ignore them and keep walking. Left, right, left, you allow your mind to wander and just let your feet carry you where they will. How could this have happened? You are supposed to be a hero! A young knight in training, you had such a promising future… Time passes and the sky darkens as you continue to roam without purpose. Self-wallowing will certainly help you in your quest for glory. You meander deeper into the forest, down into a dell. A coyote’s howl jars you back to reality. You slump against a rock beside a bubbling stream and bury your head into your hand. “Everything I ever dreamed,” you scream, “ripped apart and devoured by some beast from hell.” “Oh, do tell,” whispers a soft voice from behind. “I love stories about fallen heroes.” The voice giggles. “Or, would-be heroes.” Slippery wet fingers trace your cheeks and run through your hair. A veil of mist seeps into the dell. Queer sensations stir in the pit of your gut. You think you are being enchanted, and you are not sure if that is necessarily a bad thing. “Who are you?” “I have many names,” sings the sweet voice. Her fingers caress your body. You feel at ease in her arms, as if all the aches in your body and pains in your mind wash away at her command. “But you may call me Organa Mel Fy.” “What are you?” “Ah, now that is a better question, but still not the right one.” You feel her teeth nibble at your neck. “I am an angel to some: demon to others. Last question my sweetness, make it count.” > You say "What happens next?" “What happens next?” “Now that, that is the question of the hour, isn’t it?” sings the sweet voice. The mysterious creature’s slick fingers trace their way into your breeches and tickle your Johnson. An overwhelming sensation of euphoria courses through your veins. Blood surges through your body. You feel… invigorated, as if you have more energy than the sun itself. “I get ever so lonely here by myself,” the voice sings. “Won’t you… play with me?” > You sexytime! You have never felt so amazing in your life. How could you possibly let this sensation escape? You make sweet tender love to the mysterious creature. She looks human enough, except for the fact she can transform into water at will, which only serves to enhance the awesomeness of the experience. It just feels soooo damn good. A little too good. Blinded by euphoria, ecstasy, magic, hormones, and a fatal condition I like to call “being a goddamned idiot,” you fail to notice your lover drag you down into the deceptively deep depths of the stream where you drown in the throes of love-making. Oh, those pesky water sprites!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“What happens next?” “Now that, that is the question of the hour, isn’t it?” sings the sweet voice. The mysterious creature’s slick fingers trace their way into your breeches and tickle your Johnson. An overwhelming sensation of euphoria courses through your veins. Blood surges through your body. You feel… invigorated, as if you have more energy than the sun itself. “I get ever so lonely here by myself,” the voice sings. “Won’t you… play with me?” > You it's a trap! Shit, it’s a trap! Jon once gave you a book about just this situation. This magical sexy creature is none other than a water sprite, posing as the evil sorceress, Organa Mel Fy, probably one of her sultry minions. She’ll sex you up then drown you in the stream and feast on your corpse. “I want you to want me.” The water sprite moans and works magic on your body with her fingers. Try as you might you cannot resist her allure as she toys with you in her lap. The magical enchantment and sexual tension corrode the fibers of your mind, breaking the mental barriers you constructed for just such a situation. Saggy old nuns. Saggy old nuns. Saggy old nuns. Sally David. Mom. Oh shit, I’m still getting hard. Hard as a brick in fact. Help me! Do you have a sister? Yes, but that won’t work. You whacked it while watching her bathe in the river didn’t you, perv. Maybe… I suppose there is always self-castration. Go to hell. “Don’t be shy, baby,” sings the water sprite, “I just want to rock you like a hurricane, shake you all night long, twist and shout, scream a rebel yell, make you walk on water, take you down to the paradise city, administer rough justice, and get your rocks off.” Losing the battle of self-control your johnson twitches wildly. “Oh, sweet merciful God, that sounds orgasmic.” The water sprite leans in close and whispers in your ear, “Let me take you home tonight so I can keep on loving you.” The sultry songs of the water sprite prove too much for your feeble constitution. Your johnson explodes into a fountain of blood from a colossal aneurysm brought on by an overload of magical sexual tension. Since I’m not completely depraved, I’ll spare you the grisly details. Short agonizing story in brief: you bleed out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There is no way you are about to let this bird-brained lunatic work any form of magic on you. Somehow, someway, you will adapt to your crippled state. “It’s just not happening, Jon,” you say and walk away. “Hey, get back here, kid!” “Let him go, Jon,” you hear Osprey say. “He’ll come back. They always do.” You ignore them and keep walking. Left, right, left, you allow your mind to wander and just let your feet carry you where they will. How could this have happened? You are supposed to be a hero! A young knight in training, you had such a promising future… Time passes and the sky darkens as you continue to roam without purpose. Self-wallowing will certainly help you in your quest for glory. You meander deeper into the forest, down into a dell. A coyote’s howl jars you back to reality. You slump against a rock beside a bubbling stream and bury your head into your hand. “Everything I ever dreamed,” you scream, “ripped apart and devoured by some beast from hell.” “Oh, do tell,” whispers a soft voice from behind. “I love stories about fallen heroes.” The voice giggles. “Or, would-be heroes.” Slippery wet fingers trace your cheeks and run through your hair. A veil of mist seeps into the dell. Queer sensations stir in the pit of your gut. You think you are being enchanted, and you are not sure if that is necessarily a bad thing. “Who are you?” “I have many names,” sings the sweet voice. Her fingers caress your body. You feel at ease in her arms, as if all the aches in your body and pains in your mind wash away at her command. “But you may call me Organa Mel Fy.” “What are you?” “Ah, now that is a better question, but still not the right one.” You feel her teeth nibble at your neck. “I am an angel to some: demon to others. Last question my sweetness, make it count.” > You kill it When in doubt, flay ‘em like a trout. Swift as a cat hopped up on methamphetamines you draw your sword, spin around, and hack off Organa Mel Fy’s head. Magic may not be dope, but you sure are. What didn’t you know? Magic is a stimulating drug. That’s why even the best wizards are twitchy and half-cracked in the head. Shit’s addictive, man. Whoa, what the hell is going on? Organa Mel Fy’s body and freshly decapitated head melt into what appears to be water and seeps into the ground. That is not normal. Perhaps now would be a good time to get out of here. You are still feeling funny from the magic and can swear you are being watched as you clamber up out of the dell. In fact, your feet are moving in a flurry, but it does not seem like you are getting anywhere. You definitely passed that big ass maple like five times already. You whirl around and brandish your sword. “Ok, what the fuck gives? Will the mysterious magic bitch or bastard please stand up?” “If you insist.” A mysterious magic bitch with bountiful breasts appears before you out of thin air wearing low-cut red robes. She reeks of magic and virility. “Listen, err, lady, my day’s been one odious load of shit, so unless you want me to wrap you up in the stink, I suggest you bugger off.” The woman’s lips curl into a seductive smirk. “Aren’t you curious as to whom I am, or what I am going to offer you?” “At this point, I really don’t give a damn.” “Perhaps you should.” “Perhaps you should suck my dick.” “If that is what you truly desire, that may be arranged. But for now, you will listen to my proposal like a good puppy.” The woman raises her hand, immobilizing your body with her magic. “Now then-“ > You hear her out. “If you agree to be my obedient and ever loyal servant, I will allow you to be my second in command and we shall rule the world with a magical fist! I’ll even fix up your arm for you, much better than that crackpot Osprey could do for you too.” “Can I be a Knight in Shining Armor?” “You can be a Black Knight.” “Awww, that’s not heroic at all.” “Well, you could just be my Dragon.” “You’ll turn me into a dragon! That’s awesome!” “No. A Dragon is a trope. Don’t you have the internet?” “What’s a trope? Or the internet? Is it like a cliché?” Organa Mel Fy face palms. “Go here and waste countless hours of your life and educate yourself. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage” “I don’t speak foreign. Just Common.” “I think I’ll just kill you.” And so she does. Now you are free to lose your soul in the vast voids of the internet.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>When in doubt, flay ‘em like a trout. Swift as a cat hopped up on methamphetamines you draw your sword, spin around, and hack off Organa Mel Fy’s head. Magic may not be dope, but you sure are. What didn’t you know? Magic is a stimulating drug. That’s why even the best wizards are twitchy and half-cracked in the head. Shit’s addictive, man. Whoa, what the hell is going on? Organa Mel Fy’s body and freshly decapitated head melt into what appears to be water and seeps into the ground. That is not normal. Perhaps now would be a good time to get out of here. You are still feeling funny from the magic and can swear you are being watched as you clamber up out of the dell. In fact, your feet are moving in a flurry, but it does not seem like you are getting anywhere. You definitely passed that big ass maple like five times already. You whirl around and brandish your sword. “Ok, what the fuck gives? Will the mysterious magic bitch or bastard please stand up?” “If you insist.” A mysterious magic bitch with bountiful breasts appears before you out of thin air wearing low-cut red robes. She reeks of magic and virility. “Listen, err, lady, my day’s been one odious load of shit, so unless you want me to wrap you up in the stink, I suggest you bugger off.” The woman’s lips curl into a seductive smirk. “Aren’t you curious as to whom I am, or what I am going to offer you?” “At this point, I really don’t give a damn.” “Perhaps you should.” “Perhaps you should suck my dick.” “If that is what you truly desire, that may be arranged. But for now, you will listen to my proposal like a good puppy.” The woman raises her hand, immobilizing your body with her magic. “Now then-“ > You spit in her face. Spitting isn’t exactly heroic, unless you’re a cowboy. Unfortunately for you, you are not a cowboy. You hack a glob of spittle onto the woman’s face. “I’ll cut your fucking heart out. Bitch.” “Interesting, I’d love to see you try.” The woman wipes your saliva from her face, as you remain helplessly immobilized. “Yes, that’s what I thought. Though I imagined you had a little more sense in you than that. You are not the vessel I am looking for. That is clear to me now. Still, I can use your corpse as a fine minion. And you gave me such a wonderful idea of how to kill you.” The mysterious magic bitch magics up a dagger and proceeds to cut out your heart, which she then consumes. You watch in horror as the last moments of your life fade away. Perhaps, antagonizing your captor was not the best of ideas. Sadly, you cannot even enjoy peace in death, as the mysterious magic bitch reanimates your corpse to do her bidding, trapping your soul within your decaying body. The tasks she orders you to perform are humiliating and degrading, but there is nothing you can do. You are hers, now and forever.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>When in doubt, flay ‘em like a trout. Swift as a cat hopped up on methamphetamines you draw your sword, spin around, and hack off Organa Mel Fy’s head. Magic may not be dope, but you sure are. What didn’t you know? Magic is a stimulating drug. That’s why even the best wizards are twitchy and half-cracked in the head. Shit’s addictive, man. Whoa, what the hell is going on? Organa Mel Fy’s body and freshly decapitated head melt into what appears to be water and seeps into the ground. That is not normal. Perhaps now would be a good time to get out of here. You are still feeling funny from the magic and can swear you are being watched as you clamber up out of the dell. In fact, your feet are moving in a flurry, but it does not seem like you are getting anywhere. You definitely passed that big ass maple like five times already. You whirl around and brandish your sword. “Ok, what the fuck gives? Will the mysterious magic bitch or bastard please stand up?” “If you insist.” A mysterious magic bitch with bountiful breasts appears before you out of thin air wearing low-cut red robes. She reeks of magic and virility. “Listen, err, lady, my day’s been one odious load of shit, so unless you want me to wrap you up in the stink, I suggest you bugger off.” The woman’s lips curl into a seductive smirk. “Aren’t you curious as to whom I am, or what I am going to offer you?” “At this point, I really don’t give a damn.” “Perhaps you should.” “Perhaps you should suck my dick.” “If that is what you truly desire, that may be arranged. But for now, you will listen to my proposal like a good puppy.” The woman raises her hand, immobilizing your body with her magic. “Now then-“ > You struggle to break the spell with sheer willpower. Ah, yes, the only thing more powerful than the human spirit is the spirit of a hero. You dig deep inside yourself, channeling your energy into an explosion of heroism. Eww, gross, it smells… sticky. “- hey wait, what are you doing?” shrieks the mysterious magic bitch as you take a step forward. She doubles her efforts to paralyze you, but you are fixated on your goal and nothing is going to stand in your way. You cock your arm and deliver a vicious left hook. Crack. “Foolish mortal,” she screams as blood dribbles down into her frock, “that was most unwise.” It really was, you think as you massage your broken hand against your thigh. Why didn’t I just hack off her head? Good question hero, how do you plan to kill her now with one arm and a broken hand? I dunno, but it was worth it. The blood glistens gorgeously on her bosom. Maybe. If you are into that kind of stuff. But the time for internal dialogue and wall shattering is over, you have a situation here. The mysterious magic bitch hurls a poorly aimed fireball in your direction. “I bet you don’t even have it in you to kill a woman!” “Didn’t I just kill that water creature thingy? What was her name, Morgan Le Fay?” “Organa Mel Fy, you fool!” The mysterious magic bitch hurls another fireball, but once again, her aim is so dreadful you do not even have to dodge. “Oh, whatever.” “Did you really think that half-witted harpy was the real Organa Mel Fy, sorceress supreme?” “Kind of.” “Well she wasn’t! I am!” Organa Mel Fy whips up a magic firestorm, igniting the forest in a blaze of light and charred forest critters. You have to respect her strategy. When you cannot hit the broad side of a barn, just fire a broadside and blow everything to hell. “I could have given you power beyond your wildest dreams! Sex the likes of which you have never known possible! We could have ruled the world together and ascended into the divine! Now DIE!” Flames lick at you from all angles while smoldering branches and roasted birds tumble around you. Your stomach rumbles and mouth waters. Too bad you do not have time for a snack; a nice greasy roasted duck would really hit the spot right about now. One problem at a time though. You think you see a small avenue of escape, but you will have to bolt for it now. Of course, running away admits defeat. > You fight I didn’t know you were courting Death. I’m not. What the hell are you talking about? Oh dear, this is awkward. What!? I just assumed you had a date with Death, how else to explain such an absolute act of pure, unadulterated retardation. Crashing through the inferno, you barrel toward Organa Mel Fy as the flames sear your skin. One armed and broken handed, I’m certain the fight would have been worthy to watch. Sadly, you collapse before you close even half the gap where the dancing fires consume your corpse. It is a shame really. You came so close to discovering Organa Mel Fy’s secret. I actually thought you were going to make it. Instead, Organa Mel Fy did the world a service by culling a hero that just wasn’t cut out for the job.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ah, yes, the only thing more powerful than the human spirit is the spirit of a hero. You dig deep inside yourself, channeling your energy into an explosion of heroism. Eww, gross, it smells… sticky. “- hey wait, what are you doing?” shrieks the mysterious magic bitch as you take a step forward. She doubles her efforts to paralyze you, but you are fixated on your goal and nothing is going to stand in your way. You cock your arm and deliver a vicious left hook. Crack. “Foolish mortal,” she screams as blood dribbles down into her frock, “that was most unwise.” It really was, you think as you massage your broken hand against your thigh. Why didn’t I just hack off her head? Good question hero, how do you plan to kill her now with one arm and a broken hand? I dunno, but it was worth it. The blood glistens gorgeously on her bosom. Maybe. If you are into that kind of stuff. But the time for internal dialogue and wall shattering is over, you have a situation here. The mysterious magic bitch hurls a poorly aimed fireball in your direction. “I bet you don’t even have it in you to kill a woman!” “Didn’t I just kill that water creature thingy? What was her name, Morgan Le Fay?” “Organa Mel Fy, you fool!” The mysterious magic bitch hurls another fireball, but once again, her aim is so dreadful you do not even have to dodge. “Oh, whatever.” “Did you really think that half-witted harpy was the real Organa Mel Fy, sorceress supreme?” “Kind of.” “Well she wasn’t! I am!” Organa Mel Fy whips up a magic firestorm, igniting the forest in a blaze of light and charred forest critters. You have to respect her strategy. When you cannot hit the broad side of a barn, just fire a broadside and blow everything to hell. “I could have given you power beyond your wildest dreams! Sex the likes of which you have never known possible! We could have ruled the world together and ascended into the divine! Now DIE!” Flames lick at you from all angles while smoldering branches and roasted birds tumble around you. Your stomach rumbles and mouth waters. Too bad you do not have time for a snack; a nice greasy roasted duck would really hit the spot right about now. One problem at a time though. You think you see a small avenue of escape, but you will have to bolt for it now. Of course, running away admits defeat. > You flee Sometimes you have to lose the battle to win the war. You seize your opportunity to escape and disappear in the smoky haze. That crazy loon must have set half the forest on fire. Things cannot get much worse at least, right? A gale pummels you from behind and knocks you down. Coals soar through the air. The force of the wind uproots entire trees, filling the air with splintering missiles of fire and death. Shit just got worse. “Oh come on,” you mutter, “the bitch has to have some limit to her magic.” You stagger onto your feet and proceed to dodge the incredible amount of bullshit and debris flying through the air all the way back to Osprey’s ramshackle birdshit hut. Osprey and Jon are sitting on stumps around a bonfire drinking tea, completely ignoring the magic fire engulfing the forest. Osprey nudges Jon with his elbow. “See, I told ya he’d come back. They always come back.” “Never doubted you for a second Osprey. The boy is young. He’ll learn.” You throw up your arms in exasperation. “In case you two didn’t notice, we have a situation here.” “You heroes today, always in such a hurry.” Osprey bops you on the head with his staff. “Never taking any time to stop and smell the pteguonias.” Osprey takes a deep whiff. “Putrid.” “That’s your birdshit hut burning up.” Osprey’s eyebrows shoot up, nearly off his forehead. “Damnit, Organa, you’ve gone too far this time. Show yourself! It ends now!” Organa Mel Fy once again materializes out of thin air. She blasts an ice spike through Osprey’s heart without so much as a howdy-do. The cooky old hedge wizard voids his bowels and leaves this world once and for all. So much for getting a new arm. Jon draws his sword. This battle may rest entirely on his blade now because you certainly do not appear to be in any condition to help. “Heartless harpy,” he growls. Organa Mel Fy shrugs, which causes her bountiful breasts to bounce beautifully. “Well aren’t you a luscious lug. The world is a better place without the old fart stinking up half the forest. And I assure you, while I may be tart, I do have a heart. I know I just met you, and this may seem a tad crazy. But I’m ovulating, so would you like to make a baby?” “Well, I am a sucker for gingers.” “Power, sex, and divinity, we could have it all.” Jon lowers his sword. “That is tempting.” “Jon, what the hell!” You make a fist and drop to your knees in pain. Yep, still broke. Jon stares at you with puppy dog eyes. “But she’s a ginger! I love gingers. Besides, heroes aren’t supposed to hit girls let alone kill them. That’s villainy right there.” The man makes a strong argument. Are you really willing to begin the long dark descent down the path of debauchery and villainy just to stop one lone psychotic bitch with a magic addiction? Maybe it is not too late for you to get in on the action too. Organa Mel Fy does have a pretty sweet body and has a serious sexual appetite. There are probably some fantastic adventures awaiting the three of you in your potential sexcapades. > You grope Organa Mel Fy Something has been off about Organa Mel Fy ever since you first took a whiff of her presence. Eureka, that’s it! You just have to get close enough to check and make sure. “Organa, I think I made a terrible mistake. Just think of all the sexy good times the three of us could have.” “Hmmm, maybe.” Organa’s eyes fall to your junk, judging you. You saunter over to Organa Mel Fy, trying your best to look charming and horny. Yeah, she wants some of that. When you get in close, you shove your hand down her robes and clutch onto her naughty bits. Son of a peasant, you were right! “She’s packing heat Jon,” you shout as you simultaneously twist Organa Mel Fy’s genitals and headbutt her in the temple. “I knew I smelled the unmistakable musk of virility on you when we first met.” Jon gawks stupidly. “You mean Organa Mel Fy is a transsexual?” You mercilessly curb stomp Organa Mel Fy into the forest floor, not feeling the least bit bad about it. “Nope, she’s a hermaphrodite.” “Oh, wow. That could have got… kinky?” “Not the word I would have used, but you’re probably right.” “You’re still kind of beating up a woman you know.” “Eh, it’s got a penis. I think my hero’s soul is safe.” “You son of a whore!” Tears pour down Organa’s cheeks. “We could have achieved great things, the three of us, united as a triumvirate of power, glory, and sexual ecstasy.” This is true. Do you want to give all of that up? I know it requires a new perspective on life and an open mind, but that sounds interesting if nothing else. You could shatter boundaries and usher in a new age of sexual exploration and understanding. Then again, she does want to take over the known world, so it is not like she’s a nice lady… gentleman... person. Or is (s)he just misunderstood? > You heroes kill evil things. She's evil. You don’t make the rules; you just follow them. Canon dictates you kill all evil things that cross your path. Open-mindedness is not canon. Therefore, it must be evil. When was the last time you read a cliché story about two homoerotic knights swordfighting their way through the kingdom, never. A few curb stomps later, Organa Mel Fy is dead. Congratulations, you rid the world of a great evil. Jon shoots a passing red herring. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Jon slaps you on the back. “Well kid, turns out you had it in you to be a hero after all. You’ll earn a knighthood for this beautiful handiwork, no doubt. How do you feel?” “Dirty.” “Nothing a good bath won’t fix.” “So what happens next?” “Oh, I imagine you’ll have some titillating adventures over the years and wind up marrying a big bosomed princess with blond hair and blue eyes. She’ll give birth to a brood of little prince-lings and you’ll grow old in a nice big ass castle. Doubt you’ll ever get your arm fixed though. You proved today you don’t need it.” “That sounds fine by me.” “Amen. A cliché life is a happy life.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Something has been off about Organa Mel Fy ever since you first took a whiff of her presence. Eureka, that’s it! You just have to get close enough to check and make sure. “Organa, I think I made a terrible mistake. Just think of all the sexy good times the three of us could have.” “Hmmm, maybe.” Organa’s eyes fall to your junk, judging you. You saunter over to Organa Mel Fy, trying your best to look charming and horny. Yeah, she wants some of that. When you get in close, you shove your hand down her robes and clutch onto her naughty bits. Son of a peasant, you were right! “She’s packing heat Jon,” you shout as you simultaneously twist Organa Mel Fy’s genitals and headbutt her in the temple. “I knew I smelled the unmistakable musk of virility on you when we first met.” Jon gawks stupidly. “You mean Organa Mel Fy is a transsexual?” You mercilessly curb stomp Organa Mel Fy into the forest floor, not feeling the least bit bad about it. “Nope, she’s a hermaphrodite.” “Oh, wow. That could have got… kinky?” “Not the word I would have used, but you’re probably right.” “You’re still kind of beating up a woman you know.” “Eh, it’s got a penis. I think my hero’s soul is safe.” “You son of a whore!” Tears pour down Organa’s cheeks. “We could have achieved great things, the three of us, united as a triumvirate of power, glory, and sexual ecstasy.” This is true. Do you want to give all of that up? I know it requires a new perspective on life and an open mind, but that sounds interesting if nothing else. You could shatter boundaries and usher in a new age of sexual exploration and understanding. Then again, she does want to take over the known world, so it is not like she’s a nice lady… gentleman... person. Or is (s)he just misunderstood? > You heroes show compassion and understanding. With time and love, you are convinced that Organa Mel Fy can be converted into a peaceful member of society. Perhaps she will even redeem herself and become a hero. As much as you would like to tell yourself that your actions are purely heroic, deep down you know what you really wanted. Don’t worry, I won’t judge you. After all, you are at that age of sexual hyperactivity where the only thing on your mind is sex, and sex, and sex, and sex. You offer Organa Mel Fy an awkward hand of love and friendship, which she accepts, not that (s)he has much of a choice at this point. You, Jon and Organa Mel Fy consummate your union in the smoldering ruins of a once proud forest and Osprey’s birdshit hut. The sensations you experience are… unique. The divine overseer in the eternal heavens is rather displeased with your choice. Canon dictates Organa Mel Fy is evil and deserving of a gruesome death. You cannot just spit in the face of canon and expect to come out unharmed. Consequently, the titles of knight and hero are beyond your grasp. Naturally, you turn to a life of villainy in retaliation. and your unholy union is on the verge of kingdom-wide conquest and savagery. The bedroom antics are as fierce and wild as ever. Organa Mel Fy didn’t lie about the sexual ecstasy. It’s amazing what a little magic can do in the bedroom. By the screams, one would swear the dead are cumming. But kingdom-wide devastation is not all sex games. Castles lay in ruin, cities burn, and famine and plague ravage the land. You personally hunted down and rape murdered every last unicorn to prevent the birth of another hero who may one day end your reign of terror. Fortunately, villains always get their comeuppance in the end. One day while enjoying your depravity a rouge dragon from the nearby kingdom of Irelandshire flies overhead and roasts the three of you in a blast of dragonfire. The wyrm proceeds to eat you and utilize your energy as an aphrodisiac. The dragon is celebrated as a hero and he and his mate are pronounced king and queen of the kingdom. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Sometimes you have to lose the battle to win the war. You seize your opportunity to escape and disappear in the smoky haze. That crazy loon must have set half the forest on fire. Things cannot get much worse at least, right? A gale pummels you from behind and knocks you down. Coals soar through the air. The force of the wind uproots entire trees, filling the air with splintering missiles of fire and death. Shit just got worse. “Oh come on,” you mutter, “the bitch has to have some limit to her magic.” You stagger onto your feet and proceed to dodge the incredible amount of bullshit and debris flying through the air all the way back to Osprey’s ramshackle birdshit hut. Osprey and Jon are sitting on stumps around a bonfire drinking tea, completely ignoring the magic fire engulfing the forest. Osprey nudges Jon with his elbow. “See, I told ya he’d come back. They always come back.” “Never doubted you for a second Osprey. The boy is young. He’ll learn.” You throw up your arms in exasperation. “In case you two didn’t notice, we have a situation here.” “You heroes today, always in such a hurry.” Osprey bops you on the head with his staff. “Never taking any time to stop and smell the pteguonias.” Osprey takes a deep whiff. “Putrid.” “That’s your birdshit hut burning up.” Osprey’s eyebrows shoot up, nearly off his forehead. “Damnit, Organa, you’ve gone too far this time. Show yourself! It ends now!” Organa Mel Fy once again materializes out of thin air. She blasts an ice spike through Osprey’s heart without so much as a howdy-do. The cooky old hedge wizard voids his bowels and leaves this world once and for all. So much for getting a new arm. Jon draws his sword. This battle may rest entirely on his blade now because you certainly do not appear to be in any condition to help. “Heartless harpy,” he growls. Organa Mel Fy shrugs, which causes her bountiful breasts to bounce beautifully. “Well aren’t you a luscious lug. The world is a better place without the old fart stinking up half the forest. And I assure you, while I may be tart, I do have a heart. I know I just met you, and this may seem a tad crazy. But I’m ovulating, so would you like to make a baby?” “Well, I am a sucker for gingers.” “Power, sex, and divinity, we could have it all.” Jon lowers his sword. “That is tempting.” “Jon, what the hell!” You make a fist and drop to your knees in pain. Yep, still broke. Jon stares at you with puppy dog eyes. “But she’s a ginger! I love gingers. Besides, heroes aren’t supposed to hit girls let alone kill them. That’s villainy right there.” The man makes a strong argument. Are you really willing to begin the long dark descent down the path of debauchery and villainy just to stop one lone psychotic bitch with a magic addiction? Maybe it is not too late for you to get in on the action too. Organa Mel Fy does have a pretty sweet body and has a serious sexual appetite. There are probably some fantastic adventures awaiting the three of you in your potential sexcapades. > You villain Smillain, you're saving the day. “I don’t give a damn if she is a woman, I’m kicking her ass.” Jon sighs. “Fine, but you owe me a red-headed whore.” “Dude, Jon, man, you need therapy.” “No, I need a fire-crotch to melt the icy walls of my soul.” Organa Mel Fy claps her hands together. “What a wonderful idea. Ice and fire! And in song form.” She claps her hands once more, and a snowstorm blizzards into existence. Ice, fire, and steam clash together while small mutant dwarf elves dance and sing in circles. A song and storm of ice and fire, while we strum on our lyre. Hit the bong and throw ‘em in the fryer, while we drum by the funeral pyre. Dum dee dee dum dum dum dum ho, dum dee dee dum dum dum dum wo, Magic in the morning. Watch them suffer hear them scream, while we make love by the bubbling stream. Botch the murder we die as a team, while we fuck in a collective dream. Dum dee dee dum dum dum dum ho, dum dee dee dum dum dum dum wo, Magic in the morning. Drink blood red wine at a wedding on the river, hope we get to dine on someone’s liver. The bread is fine honey don’t you shiver, hope we bet on the cruelest sinner. Dum dee dee dum dum dum dum ho, dum dee dee dum dum dum dum wo, Magic in the morning. If you suckle too long on Organa’s teat, we hope you find an extra treat. We may chuckle ‘cause she’s packing heat, pray we don’t die for this beat. Dum dee dee dum dum dum dum ho, dum dee dee dum dum dum dum wo, Magic in the morning. You blink and rub your eyes. “Jon, I think I’m tripping. I inhaled a lot of smoke; there must be some wicked shrooms growing in the forest.” “Either that or the narrator isn’t even trying anymore.” A flaming chunk of ice crashes into the back of Jon’s skull. The poor bastard never saw it coming. He topples to the ground like a turd. You feel your emotions building up, too surreal to touch. They boil over and burst. You feel yourself nut, but it doesn’t matter it’s time to get rough. “Bam! Pow!” you shout. Organa Mel Fy cocks her head and gawks at you. “Uhm, excuse me?” “Those are the sound effects about to go off upside your head, bitch.” Bam. Pow. Your headbutt kick to the jaw combo work perfectly. Organa Mel Fy hits the ground, and the magical maladies plaguing the forest vanish. Tears well in her eyes as you end her miserable existence by stomping on her face. “Too bad so sad,” you say. “By choosing villainy over heroism you brought this on yourself.” With one final stomp, the light in Organa Mel Fy’s eyes go out, hopefully for good. You never know with these magic types. They come back like cockroaches or supposedly dead G.R.R.M characters. Just playing homie, we love you. Jon picks himself off the ground and massages the back of his head. “Eh, I’ve had worse.” You nod. “Good to hear.” Well congratulations my noble crippled hero. You killed the evil Organa Mel Fy. Now go find Jon a fire-crotch like you owe him.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>In your eagerness to fight at Jon’s side, you forget the most important lesson of your training: always dodge. A troll whips a horse leg in your direction. Off balance and off guard, you cannot avoid the hurling limb as the hoof nails you in the shoulder, severing your sword arm. Blood spouts like a geyser from your body as you crumple to the road. “Bowie, help Jon!” Samwellington shrieks. “I’ve got the kid.” Samwellington stumbles to your side and rolls you onto your back. “Hang in there little buddy. It’s going to be alright.” Blood loss is making you delusional. It is the only way to explain what is happening. Samwellington draws his dagger and sticks himself in the gut. He drags the blade across his stomach, slips his hand into the incision, and pulls out a chunk of his own fat. He smacks the lard on your wound and it sticks in place, stemming the blood flow. “Can you walk?” asks Samwellington. “Can I walk? Can I walk! I just had my fucking arm cleaved off. What the fuck do you think?” “Yeah, an arm, not a leg. Don’t be a baby.” “Sam we could really use your fat ass over here,” shouts Bowie. “Any motherfucking time!” You hear a gurgle and a gasp just before Bowie’s head goes sailing through the air. Samwellington gulps and scurries away to hide behind the wreckage of the wagon. What a coward. Oh well, at least he saved your life. Leaning against your sword, you stagger to your feet. One of the trolls ravages Bowie’s headless corpse. The crunching and snapping of bones sickens you, and you fight the urge to hurl as bile tickles your throat. Jon appears to be holding his ground against the other troll, but once his friend finishes devouring Bowie’s corpse, even Jon won’t be able to fend off their combined savagery. You have to do something quick or all of your worthless lives will be over. > You charge into the fray. You throw caution and sanity to the wind and charge into the fray. Well, charge is a kind term. You mostly stagger along the blood-slicked road, swaying from side to side, until you topple over and slam your head against the cobblestones. Your sword flies from your grasp and slides beyond your reach. Adjusting to missing limbs takes time. Both trolls look up, and in your blurred vision, you swear they are laughing at you. Mocked by a troll, you think, how embarrassing. Jon takes advantages of your momentary distraction and hacks his troll in the legs, sending the beast to its knees. The troll roars. Jon drives his blade into the troll’s open mouth and out the back of its throat. One down. The second troll grabs the remnants of Bowie’s body and rushes toward you. The troll stands above you and squeezes the juices from what used to be Bowie, taking care to cover every inch of you in Bowie juice. The stink is agonizing. “Oh my god,” Samwellington cries, “He’s marinating you!” “Just kill me you son of a bitch,” you sputter as you spit some of the vile goop from your mouth. The troll grips you by the shoulders and bares his teeth. The tip of a blade tears through the troll’s chest. Troll blood and the sweet smell of apples descend upon you. And the troll’s lifeless corpse… which crushes you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Hell yeah I’m in.” Jon nods. “Glad to hear it.” This could be your big chance to finally prove yourself. You need to get your name out there if you want to have any chance of receiving a knighthood someday. They do not just hand those things out like… well, nobody has ever actually handed you anything except a nice big steaming pile of shit. Peasantry blows. Under cover of darkness, you and the three guards head out along the Baron’s Road in the back of a covered wagon. No one has ever thought of ambushing bandits in a covered wagon while guised as merchants. Surely, the plan will go off without a hitch. Samwellington the Fat jitters in his seat. You are not sure if it is because he is scared or hungry. How Sam became a member of the guard is beyond your imagination. Jon trusts him for some reason, and that is good enough for you. “Nervous kid?” he asks. That you might eat me. “No. If Jon says I’m ready, then I’m ready.” Bowie bobs his head. “It’s best to trust Jon. I didn’t once and then my world went to shit. That draugr attack during the winter of ’69 was brutal… I still have nightmares.” Jon rolls his eyes. “If you hadn’t st-” “Hey, let’s let bygones be bygones,” says Bowie. “Hey do you hear that?” you ask. “Sorry, my stomach rumbles when I travel,” says Samwellington. “No, not-” The horses whinny and bolt. One of the wheels catches a snag in the road and topples over. Luckily, you land on Samwellington’s gut. Jon cuts a hole in the wagon covering and climbs out into the night, and you and Bowie follow. “Oh, fuck…” Jon clutches his sword in both hands and rushes. Two trolls tower over the corpses of the horses and the wagon driver, tearing chunks of bloody flesh with the effort you would rip apart a boiled chicken. > You dODGE!!! All of Jon’s training really pays off. Using your sixth sense, you see the attack coming leagues away. With all the grace of youth, you jump to the side as a horse leg soars past your ear. Quite unfortunate for Bowie, who takes the hoof straight in the face. You do not even look. The crack and thump tells you all you need to know. Dodging more chunks of horse and human, you maneuver your way to Jon and the trolls. Master and apprentice stand back-to-back as you fend off the fearsome beasts. Dodge, parry, dodge, dodge, strike, dodge, parry, dodge, dodge, dodge, strike. And so the battle goes. Troll blood drenches you as you hack away. Surprisingly, it smells like apples. “Jon,” you say, while dodging another troll fist, “they keep regenerating when I dodge them. It’s a troll blood bath, but they aren’t going down.” “DODGE!” Jon shouts. “Always DODGE!” “Then RAM,” screams Samwellington, bulling into the fray. By the sound of the collision, you think Samwellington just tackled Jon’s troll. What an awful, squishy sound. “Where the fuck have you been?” you ask. “Cowering.” Your troll swings its long hairy arms wide and claps them together, aiming for your head. You dodge and slide along the blood slicked ground, slashing the beast’s legs as you slip between them. Hopping to your feet, you deliver the finishing blow as the beast drops to its knees before splashing face first into a puddle of its own blood. Jon’s troll has met the same fate. Jon appears unwounded, though breathing heavily, leaning on his sword. “Oh, dear god! Samwellington!” Samwellington lies on the ground with a grisly gash on his robust gut that looks inches deep. “Oh don’t worry,” he says. “They just cut into the fat. I always knew eating all that pork lard would pay off one day.” Jon smirks. “See, I told you. Dodge.” “I won’t question you again Jon. Too bad about Bowie though.” “Meh, he was a fucking dick anyway.” Sam struggles to sit up. “I don’t think those trolls were the reason those people went disappearing.” You nod. “Because all this blood and gore would have been pretty hard to miss.” “No. Because there are five guys with loaded crossbows behind you.” “Shit.” > You turn and rush them. Without a moment’s hesitation, you turn and rush the bandits. You are the fledgling hero of this story after all, and the hero always wins. The bandits either agree or are too shocked by your blazen stupidity and gawk at you as you close the gap. By the time one of them gathers his wits, three of them are dead at your feet. A bolt grazes your cheek as you cut the fourth man down. The fifth man, who fired the bolt, turns to flee back into the forest. He does not make it. Jon skewers him from behind. “That’s going to be quite the scar,” says Jon. “It’s not so much a deforming scar as a handsome, charismatic scar. All great heroes get them. Chicks dig it.” “I don’t have one,” whines Samwellington. Jon rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I wonder why.” The three of you hobble back to the hamlet. You have one of the priests help draft a report of the incident and send a runner to deliver it to the baron. Some unimportant nobodies go clean up the mess while you kick back and relax. Not bad for a (k)night’s work. “Good work today kid, but don’t get ahead of yourself kid,” says Jon. “You still have a long way to go to be a true knight. It takes hard work to bang a princess and ride off into the sunset. Oh, and remember.” “Dodge,” you say in unison. The baron is pleased with what he reads in the report. You become Bowie’s replacement in the hamlet guard and undertake some other minor missions with Jon and Samwellington. Soon you become a bit of a celebrity and inspiration, and your fame goes countywide. Priests take time out of their day to tutor you in your letters, and the baron invites you and Jon to take place in the next tournament he’s hosting. The king will even be there; it is supposed to be quite the shindig. Things are looking up. All you have to decide now is what event you are going to compete. > You compete in the joust. For reasons far beyond normal human comprehension, you elect to compete in the joust: never mind the fact that you do not own a horse and have never held a lance in your life. Remember, dodging is against the rules in a joust, so you are not exactly playing to your strengths. During a morning patrol, you and Jon discuss the upcoming tournament. “I still think you should participate in the melee with me instead,” says Jon. “But if you’re dead set on jousting, you’re going to need a horse.” “Any recommendations?” you ask. “Jousting horses are expensive. You’re either going to need a big loan or a big friend. And don’t forget, if you lose the joust, you lose your horse and your armor.” “Can I use a quarter-horse? I bet old man Nathaniel David would let me borrow Bessy.” “Sure. You can ride out naked too, but you’ll just embarrass yourself.” Jon smacks you upside the head. “If you aren’t going to take this seriously, don’t even bother showing up.” You finish your patrol with Jon and head over to old man Nathaniel David’s orchard before you visiting the moneylender in the next town. You know it is not wise to ignore Jon’s advice, but you want to keep your options open. Old man Nathaniel David proves easy to find, he is humped over, shitting on a sapling when you arrive. “Um, what are you doing David?” “Fertilizing,” he says with a massive grin. “What can I do for you lad?” He sticks out his hand for you to shake, which you begrudgingly accept. “I decided to joust in the king’s tournament, but I don’t have a horse.” “Ah, well, I can’t imagine you’d want to use any of the horses in the hamlet. Plow horses ain’t going to win that for you, but I know you don’t have much money. So if you want Bessy, you can have her, on one condition.” “What’s that?” “If by some miracle you win, you name my lil’ pumpkin, Sally, Lady Fair of the Tournament. If you lose, you pay me back by marrying her. You’re a good lad, and you’d make a fine husband for my girl.” You have seen Sally David before, strutting around. She has a fine body for a wench, but holy matrimony is her face hideous. It looks like someone took a rake and beat her bloody. You will have to mull this one over; these are high stakes. Even if you won, you could offend many important people. “Alright, David, I’ll keep the offer in mind,” you say as you wave goodbye. Old man Nathaniel David hitches up his trousers and nods. “You do that, boy.” The Baron’s Road has been nice and calm ever since you took care of those trolls and bandits, and you arrive at the moneylender’s office without incident. The moneylender’s office is small and simple: one desk, two hard wooden chairs, and a few bookshelves. You have heard of these types before, and they are nothing but trouble. The moneylender skims over the pleasantries and bids you sit and begin your business. “What can I do for you, friend?” he asks. His hair is dark and oily, eyes small and beady. An unnecessarily pointy goatee graces his chin. Yep, slap the evil and unscrupulous label on him. “I need money for a horse to use in the joust. I’m one of the guys that killed those bandits and trolls on the Baron’s Road awhile back.” “I know who you are,” he snaps. “I also know you have no money and no experience jousting.” “How do you know that?” “Because.” He points at his goatee. “Now I will lend you the money if you agree to my terms.” “Which are?” “If you win, I get 50% of the ransom and prize money. You keep the horse. If you lose, you become my personal slave for a year.” The moneylender pulls, ink, quill and parchment from his desk. “We can get the contract signed right now.” > You done deal! As you reach to sign the contract, the moneylender stabs your hand with the tip of the quill. He pops the end of the quill into his mouth and sucks the blood off with a loud slurp. Black and blood-red sparks shoot randomly from his body. Wings burst forth from his back and claws grow from his fingers. “First, I kill you. Then, I rule the kingdom. Finally, I get all the bitches.” You blink in confusion. “What?” “That’s what is going to happen, and you can’t stop me.” “Why did you drink my blood? Are you a vampire? So help me Stephanie, if you're lurking around here, I'll kick your ass.” “There’s power in heroes blood.” “And?” “Actually, I have no idea what I am now. I was an evil sorcerer in disguise. Then I drank hero’s blood, and since I’m evil that would probably make me an anti-hero now.” “Would I become an anti-villain if I drank your blood?” “I don’t think it works like that.” “Why not?” Because you’re dead. The evil monster rips your head off with his claws and devours your corpse. That will teach you to make dirty deals with shady characters.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For reasons far beyond normal human comprehension, you elect to compete in the joust: never mind the fact that you do not own a horse and have never held a lance in your life. Remember, dodging is against the rules in a joust, so you are not exactly playing to your strengths. During a morning patrol, you and Jon discuss the upcoming tournament. “I still think you should participate in the melee with me instead,” says Jon. “But if you’re dead set on jousting, you’re going to need a horse.” “Any recommendations?” you ask. “Jousting horses are expensive. You’re either going to need a big loan or a big friend. And don’t forget, if you lose the joust, you lose your horse and your armor.” “Can I use a quarter-horse? I bet old man Nathaniel David would let me borrow Bessy.” “Sure. You can ride out naked too, but you’ll just embarrass yourself.” Jon smacks you upside the head. “If you aren’t going to take this seriously, don’t even bother showing up.” You finish your patrol with Jon and head over to old man Nathaniel David’s orchard before you visiting the moneylender in the next town. You know it is not wise to ignore Jon’s advice, but you want to keep your options open. Old man Nathaniel David proves easy to find, he is humped over, shitting on a sapling when you arrive. “Um, what are you doing David?” “Fertilizing,” he says with a massive grin. “What can I do for you lad?” He sticks out his hand for you to shake, which you begrudgingly accept. “I decided to joust in the king’s tournament, but I don’t have a horse.” “Ah, well, I can’t imagine you’d want to use any of the horses in the hamlet. Plow horses ain’t going to win that for you, but I know you don’t have much money. So if you want Bessy, you can have her, on one condition.” “What’s that?” “If by some miracle you win, you name my lil’ pumpkin, Sally, Lady Fair of the Tournament. If you lose, you pay me back by marrying her. You’re a good lad, and you’d make a fine husband for my girl.” You have seen Sally David before, strutting around. She has a fine body for a wench, but holy matrimony is her face hideous. It looks like someone took a rake and beat her bloody. You will have to mull this one over; these are high stakes. Even if you won, you could offend many important people. “Alright, David, I’ll keep the offer in mind,” you say as you wave goodbye. Old man Nathaniel David hitches up his trousers and nods. “You do that, boy.” The Baron’s Road has been nice and calm ever since you took care of those trolls and bandits, and you arrive at the moneylender’s office without incident. The moneylender’s office is small and simple: one desk, two hard wooden chairs, and a few bookshelves. You have heard of these types before, and they are nothing but trouble. The moneylender skims over the pleasantries and bids you sit and begin your business. “What can I do for you, friend?” he asks. His hair is dark and oily, eyes small and beady. An unnecessarily pointy goatee graces his chin. Yep, slap the evil and unscrupulous label on him. “I need money for a horse to use in the joust. I’m one of the guys that killed those bandits and trolls on the Baron’s Road awhile back.” “I know who you are,” he snaps. “I also know you have no money and no experience jousting.” “How do you know that?” “Because.” He points at his goatee. “Now I will lend you the money if you agree to my terms.” “Which are?” “If you win, I get 50% of the ransom and prize money. You keep the horse. If you lose, you become my personal slave for a year.” The moneylender pulls, ink, quill and parchment from his desk. “We can get the contract signed right now.” > You you'll just go with Bessy. Probably not a great idea to borrow money from such an obviously evil character: you excuse yourself, leaving the moneylender fuming. He mutters something under his breath while stroking his goatee as you walk out the door. Perhaps you will cross paths with him again. Your heart is still set on riding in the joust, so you head back to old man Nathaniel David’s orchard and agree to his bargain. You spend the remainder of your free time preparing for the tournament. Jon coaches you as best he can, which is not very well since he has never jousted either, but you think you have the hang of it. Bessy’s training has mixed results. She works hard and seems to appreciate the change of scenery. You figure being a plow horse is probably pretty dull. She has spirit, but the old girl does a lot more plodding than charging. At least, she does not shy away when the other horse speeds toward her. The day of the tournament dawns cool and crisp. Sweaty with excitement, you try to relax in your pavilion before your first match. You have already made water five times this morning, and you think you have to go again. So many things ride on the outcome of today’s events, but you cannot think about that. The here and now is what is important. You watch squires scurry around the grounds, doing the bidding of Sir this or Sir that or some other random bastard. You fall into a daze and your thoughts wander. Why don’t I have a squire? Crap, I think I need to piss again. Dear lord, please grant me the strength and will to win today. I don’t want to marry that troll Sally David. Have you seen her? Oh, is that who I think it is? Sir Jamison Hill, The Iron Boar, approaches and shakes your hand: what an honor! Ser Jamison serves as the Baron’s champion and is renowned throughout the kingdom for his tourney skills. “I heard about how you helped take care of those bandits and trolls on the Baron’s Road,” he says. “The kingdom needs more fine young men like you. I expect to see great things from you today and in the future.” “Thank you, sir.” You want to talk some more with him – he certainly has plenty he could teach you – but the herald calls you for your first bout. You wave farewell and enter the lists, wishing you had taken the time to make water one more time. “Are you ready girl?” you ask as you mount Bessy. Bessy snorts in reply. “That’s the spirit.” Your first match is against Lord Isaac Cleaver, The Cleaver. The man has a penchant for the flamboyant. The sun gleams off his silver gilded armor as he rides into position on his roan courser: his shield emblazoned with his house emblem, a silver cleaver beheading a golden goose. Not a very creative nickname, you think. Perhaps not, but it is the badassery of a nickname that is too be feared, not the cleverness. The herald blows his trumpet, and you urge your horses on. Bessy hobbles along as fast as she can, but she is completely outmatched in speed by the roan courser. Everything else disappears as you focus on Lord Cleaver. The distance closes. You raise your lance and prepare to strike. > You just hold the hell on There is no way you have gained enough skill to make a precise aim. Your best bet is too just hold on with the fury of hell and hope for the best. You grit your teeth; here it comes. Crack! Both of your lances splinter on contact. The collision jars you, but you manage to hang in the saddle. What a rush. Your heart hammers in your chest, and the world snaps back into focus. The crowd screams and cheers. Flags twirl in the wind and a herald’s trumpet booms. You turn around and see Lord Cleaver’s squire helping him to his feet while another attendant runs down his horse. You won! Jon rushes forward to greet you. “Fantastic, I never thought you could win riding that old draft horse! It looked like you were moving in slow motion compared to Lord Cleaver.” “Bessy and I may not be a fast duo, but we’re tough as nails and hard as stone.” Jon chuckles. “Interesting, we’ll have to have someone take care of that for you.” “What are you talking about?” you ask. Your face flushes red as you realization hits you. “Oh, damn it. You perverse bastard.” Jon snatches the reins from you and snarls. “Never call me a bastard again. Got it?” “Uh, sure.” He helps you off Bessy and slaps you on the back. “Good.” I wonder what that was all about? You head back to your pavilion and bask in your glory. The road ahead is still long and perilous, but you took another step down the path of success. You kick back to relax when the flap of your tent opens. In steps a gorgeous lass, with gingersnap hair and vicious eyes. She looks wild and… hungry. “May I help you?” you ask. “The name is Bell. I’ve been sent to help you with a little problem.” She winks. “Your friend said you needed some refreshment before your next bout.” She shakes her breasts free from her loose shift and steps fully into the tent. Before the tent flap falls, you see the shady moneylender prowling around Sir Jamison’s pavilion. “Come on hero,” she urges. “Don’t keep me waiting.” > You say "Jump on top of me, baby." “Jump on top of me baby.” Bell does as you say. Two beings disappear and reemerge as one as the pair of you become lost in the heat of passion. Funny thing about passion: it often comes and goes without warning. In this case forty-seven seconds. Bell giggles. “First time?” You groan. “First time.” “No shame in that, darling. I’ll be here when you get back. Practice makes perfect, am I right?” You nod and step out of the tent. “Holy shit, what the hell happened!?” The entire fairground is on fire. The air is rank with burning flesh and hair. Bodies are everywhere. Horses whinny in agony. Those not too injured to flee scramble about in sheer terror. High above you see the evil moneylender, floating on a black cloud, cackling and tossing lightning bolts. Bessy plods toward you. A bolt catches her in the flank and explodes into a fireball. She collapses to the ground and shrieks. Another bolt pierces her neck and her and she lies silent. You hear the tent flap jostle, and you wheel around. You clutch Bell by the throat and dive-tackle her into the tent. “What the fuck is this?” you scream. Bell claws at your hand, gasping for breath. You relieve pressure, but keep her pinned to the ground. “I don’t know.” Tears well in her eyes. “Liar.” “No, I swear. Your friend Jon sent me.” > You she's lying. Beat the truth out of her. “You lying whore!” You bash her head into the ground and clobber her with your fist. “Stop, please. I don’t know anything.” “Tell me the truth!” “I am. Please, you’ve got to believe me.” Her pleas for mercy only anger you more. You know she is lying. “Last chance. Tell me what’s going on. Who are you? Who sent you? What the hell is that floating madman doing?” “I don’t know.” You hit her again and again and again and again. You pummel the poor girl until her once fair face is a mask of blood and tears. The tent flap ruffles open and you spin around to see Jon step inside the tent. He gapes. “What the hell are you doing?” “She distracted me while the lunatic set the world on fire.” “No she didn’t. I sent her to f-” he smacks his forehead. “Damn it all. What’s done is done. We can worry about this later. Right now, we have to stop this lunatic. Come on.” You leave a broken Bell lying on the tent floor and follow Jon outside. Everything except your tent is in flames. The moneylender – perhaps it is time to start calling him a sorcerer – floats toward you on his cloud. You and Jon draw your swords. “Why didn’t he fry my tent too?” “How should I know?” says Jon. “Let’s just kill him and go into damage control mode.” > You demand the sorcerer explain himself No, this is too confusing and you have too many questions. You already stripped your honor by beating up an innocent whore. You can at least play the hero’s role and make the evil sorcerer reveal the details of his plans. “Explain yourself, fiend,” you say, brandishing your sword. The sorcerer floats closer on his cloud and shrugs. “Sure, why the hell not?” Jon sits and crosses his legs. “What are you doing?” you ask. “Preparing for a monologue.” “Comfy? Good,” says the sorcerer. “My name is Merek the Mad Mage of Misery. I pose as a moneylender to conceal my true operations as an evil wizard.” Jon sighs. “A cover that is now blown.” Merek the Mad Mage of Misery ignores Jon. “Ever since you walked into my office, I knew you had the makings of a hero. I knew of the unicorn fart, and I knew a hero had been born. I knew he was somewhere in this area, but not exactly where. You are that hero. It’s in your eyes, your blood, your-” “Urine?” you ask. “Sure… The only person who could stop me was Sir Jamison and his magic sword and shield.” “I didn’t know he had a magic sword and shield.” “You just met him, and stop interrupting me!” “Sorry.” “As you can see, I have Sir Jamison’s magic sword and shield nice and safe up here with me.” Merek clinks the magical artifacts together. “I need to drink your blood to gain the power for my master plan to succeed. That is why I did not fry you and your tent. Once I extract your blood, I can complete my master plan.” “Which is?” “World domination.” “You seem to be doing pretty well without my blood.” “Shut up and prepare to die!” Bolts appear in Merek’s hands as his cloud races toward you. “Jon wake up, he’s attacking.” “Huh, oh sure.” Jon leaps to his feet. “Let’s get this over with.” Merek hurls his bolts, which you and Jon dodge with ease. You slice Merek’s arm off as his cloud whizzes past. Jon leaps onto the cloud and stabs him in the back. “So that’s what doing that feels like,” says Jon as he yanks Merek off the cloud. Black sparks shoot from Merek’s body as he slams into the ground. The sparks shoot and dance, stitching his arm back on. He rises to his feet and cackles at the sky. “Fools! Only a magic weapon can kill me. Ahhhhhhhhhargggggg” Merek slumps over and falls face down in the dirt. Sir Jamison bends down and pulls a dagger from Merek’s back. “He forgot about my magic dagger.” Jon shakes his head. “I hope this doesn’t become a thing.” The three of you do your best at damage control. Jon kills Bell, and the two of you bury her in a shallow grave, pretending she never existed. Merek managed to kill literally everything else in a three mile radius, so the three of you take over ruling the kingdom. Sir Jamison becomes King Jamison. Jon becomes Warden of the North. And you receive the honor of knighthood, vowing to keep your whore murdering lifestyle in the past. You marry a buxom wench – seeing as all the noble Ladies are dead – and, in a strange twist of fate, have seven daughters who all grow up to be fabulous whores.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“You lying whore!” You bash her head into the ground and clobber her with your fist. “Stop, please. I don’t know anything.” “Tell me the truth!” “I am. Please, you’ve got to believe me.” Her pleas for mercy only anger you more. You know she is lying. “Last chance. Tell me what’s going on. Who are you? Who sent you? What the hell is that floating madman doing?” “I don’t know.” You hit her again and again and again and again. You pummel the poor girl until her once fair face is a mask of blood and tears. The tent flap ruffles open and you spin around to see Jon step inside the tent. He gapes. “What the hell are you doing?” “She distracted me while the lunatic set the world on fire.” “No she didn’t. I sent her to f-” he smacks his forehead. “Damn it all. What’s done is done. We can worry about this later. Right now, we have to stop this lunatic. Come on.” You leave a broken Bell lying on the tent floor and follow Jon outside. Everything except your tent is in flames. The moneylender – perhaps it is time to start calling him a sorcerer – floats toward you on his cloud. You and Jon draw your swords. “Why didn’t he fry my tent too?” “How should I know?” says Jon. “Let’s just kill him and go into damage control mode.” > You attack You don’t have the time to sit around and listen to a monologue. When evil rears its ugly mug, there is only one viable option: destroy it with extreme prejudice. With swords in hand, you and Jon leap into action, literally. Unfortunately, the sorcerer is beyond your reach on his floating cloud. You and Jon jump as high as you can, but your best efforts are nowhere near good enough. “Well this is embarrassing,” says Jon after another failed leap. “A bow and arrow would really come in handy right about now.” You scan the bedlam for a projectile, but there is not much of anything to work with. “Well I’m stumped.” “Fools.” The sorcerer cackles as he tosses bolts of lightning toward you. “You should know better than to defy an all-powerful mage such as myself. Now perish!” You successfully dodge the first couple bolts, but the sorcerer is throwing them around like candy and eventually one catches you in the leg. The bolt explodes on contact, obliterating muscle, tissue, ligaments, tendons, and bones. The intense heat cauterizes what little remains of your leg. The stink of your own charred flesh hits your nostrils and you gag. Crawling on hands and knee, you seek shelter in your tent, praying the smoke will conceal your movements. Jon will have to handle this on his own now. Inside the tent, you pass out from the pain: never to awake again. What the hell happened? Bell cut your throat with your own dagger while you were unconscious. If it is any consolation, Jon and Sir Jamison Hill managed to kill the sorcerer. When Jon found your lifeless corpse, he took it upon himself to brutally murder Bell. What happens now? Well, you were on the path to heroism, but you failed to kill the big baddie and fell into an act of villainy by beating the ever-loving life out of poor sweet Bell. So I imagine you’ll go to limbo where they’ll force you to play a never ending game of Monopoly for the next 1,000 years.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Jump on top of me baby.” Bell does as you say. Two beings disappear and reemerge as one as the pair of you become lost in the heat of passion. Funny thing about passion: it often comes and goes without warning. In this case forty-seven seconds. Bell giggles. “First time?” You groan. “First time.” “No shame in that, darling. I’ll be here when you get back. Practice makes perfect, am I right?” You nod and step out of the tent. “Holy shit, what the hell happened!?” The entire fairground is on fire. The air is rank with burning flesh and hair. Bodies are everywhere. Horses whinny in agony. Those not too injured to flee scramble about in sheer terror. High above you see the evil moneylender, floating on a black cloud, cackling and tossing lightning bolts. Bessy plods toward you. A bolt catches her in the flank and explodes into a fireball. She collapses to the ground and shrieks. Another bolt pierces her neck and her and she lies silent. You hear the tent flap jostle, and you wheel around. You clutch Bell by the throat and dive-tackle her into the tent. “What the fuck is this?” you scream. Bell claws at your hand, gasping for breath. You relieve pressure, but keep her pinned to the ground. “I don’t know.” Tears well in her eyes. “Liar.” “No, I swear. Your friend Jon sent me.” > You trust her. Whether you trust Bell or not, a true knight never harms a lady… or a whore. “Alright,” you say pulling Bell to her feet, “help me save the day, and we can get back to putting a little baby hero in your belly.” “You think I want that after what you just did to me?” “Everyone wants the hero,” you deadpan. “So yes.” And you are right. Feminism is for spunky heroines, not the spunk covered ragtag sack ticklers of heroic knights. Bell grumbles a pithy supplication and follows you out of the tent into the inferno of the fairgrounds. The evil moneylender stares at you from his floating cloud, with his face screwed up into a scowl of utter disgust and contempt. He leans over the edge of his cloud and vomits. “You,” he jabs an accusatory finger, “are a vile, putrid, scumbag of a hero. Have you no sense of decency?” You hear a soft plop, plop behind you. “What are you talking about?” you ask, drawing your blade, preparing to pounce during the villain’s moment of weakness, but you hold off, curious of his ailment. “Your woman is naked before the world, dripping your seed! And the script says I’m the villain? What depraved fool green-lit this?” *Poof* The narrator appears, riding a gigantic black German Shepherd, which is both ferocious and adorable. He wields a word processor and keyboard with a suspiciously sticky set of keys. He wields unadulterated badassery and lowbrow humor. “I’ll tolerate snark from the hero and the spirits that control him, but not the damn villain, and yes the script says you are the villain. So unless you want to be spontaneously transfigured into an elephant entering the initial stages of menopause, then I suggest you shut the fuck up and let his hoe decide if she’s being mistreated.” The narrator turns to Bell. “Are you being mistreated?” “Sort of, I guess.” “Would you like a pony?” “Yes?” “Done.” A pony wanders through the carnage, and Bell climbs on top, uncertain of what to do. The narrator scowls at the villain. “Merek the Mad Mage of Misery, are you content with the current proceedings? Well are you?” The villain tugs at the collar of his robes. “Yes, your godliness.” *Poof* “That was interesting,” you say. “Anyway, I’m making baby heroes. And that’s heroic. The naked human body is an art form to be admired, not scorned! Besides there’s no one left to ogle her since you killed them all. Except Jon, over there, staring at her burning bush. And I bet Sir Jamison is alive somewhere. He seems pretty badass.” Jon smiles dumbly, sword in hand. Merek the Made Mage of Misery shrieks. “You perverted bastards! I’ll kill you all!” Lightning bolts sparkle in his hands, and he hurls them at you with the accuracy of a drunken Storm Trooper smoking black tar heroin. You stand still, watching the blasts scorch the already scorched ground twenty yards away. Jon lurches out of his stupor and rushes into battle, tucking away his playing sword and drawing his fighting one. “I’ll show you who the bastard is, you slut!” Merek the Mad Mage of Misery curses his incompetence and swings his attention toward Jon. The two engage in a very boring battle. Wild lightning blasts scatter the land while Jon meanders around and tries to jump onto the floating cloud, which always drifts beyond his reach. You turn to Bell. “I have an idea.” You pull Bell from the pony’s back and make sweet love to her in the middle of the burning fairgrounds. Merek the Mad Mage of Misery catches sight and gawks in horror. This provides Jon the opening to leap onto his magic cloud and cut his throat with the magic dagger Sir Jamison conveniently just threw to him: because deus ex machina is beautiful and everyone knows only magic items can kill magic beings. … Sweet, so what happens now? The spirits guiding you probably leave mean comments because of the sexism and ridiculousness bomb we just exploded all over the place. At least we took it up to eleven. It was rather ridiculous, but hey, I won, right! What should I do with the pony? Breed it with a unicorn and find out what manner of being is born when the abomination spawn spews magical flatulence. Wicked. Do you have any parting words of advice for me or wrap-up narration? What the hell, is this twenty questions? I don’t know, go murder every sparkly vampire and warrior-cat that you see and you can’t go wrong. Shit, I just earned more hate comments.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There is no way you have gained enough skill to make a precise aim. Your best bet is too just hold on with the fury of hell and hope for the best. You grit your teeth; here it comes. Crack! Both of your lances splinter on contact. The collision jars you, but you manage to hang in the saddle. What a rush. Your heart hammers in your chest, and the world snaps back into focus. The crowd screams and cheers. Flags twirl in the wind and a herald’s trumpet booms. You turn around and see Lord Cleaver’s squire helping him to his feet while another attendant runs down his horse. You won! Jon rushes forward to greet you. “Fantastic, I never thought you could win riding that old draft horse! It looked like you were moving in slow motion compared to Lord Cleaver.” “Bessy and I may not be a fast duo, but we’re tough as nails and hard as stone.” Jon chuckles. “Interesting, we’ll have to have someone take care of that for you.” “What are you talking about?” you ask. Your face flushes red as you realization hits you. “Oh, damn it. You perverse bastard.” Jon snatches the reins from you and snarls. “Never call me a bastard again. Got it?” “Uh, sure.” He helps you off Bessy and slaps you on the back. “Good.” I wonder what that was all about? You head back to your pavilion and bask in your glory. The road ahead is still long and perilous, but you took another step down the path of success. You kick back to relax when the flap of your tent opens. In steps a gorgeous lass, with gingersnap hair and vicious eyes. She looks wild and… hungry. “May I help you?” you ask. “The name is Bell. I’ve been sent to help you with a little problem.” She winks. “Your friend said you needed some refreshment before your next bout.” She shakes her breasts free from her loose shift and steps fully into the tent. Before the tent flap falls, you see the shady moneylender prowling around Sir Jamison’s pavilion. “Come on hero,” she urges. “Don’t keep me waiting.” > You ugh, you better go check out what that moneylender is doing. Despite adamant protests from your little head, your big head wins the day, insisting you act responsibly and investigate what that shady character is up to: shenanigans no doubt. “I’m sorry, Bell. I have to take care of something quick.” “Oh, don’t leave me hero.” Bell wraps her arms around, drawing you in tight against her bare bosom. You pull away from her enticing embrace before you change your mind. Now where did that moneylender run off? You don’t see him skulking around Sir Jamison’s tent anymore. Could your eyes have been playing tricks on you? The bad feeling in the pit of your gut says no. Muffled noises are coming from Sir Jamison’s tent. Not wanting to intrude on a living legend in the throes of lovemaking, you ruffle the flap of the tent to announce your presence. “Sir Jamison, are you in there? I noticed a shady character lingering around your tent a moment ago.” The noise inside the tent ceases. Oh, crap. Your dodge sense tingles. You jump aside just in time to avoid incineration via fireball. Within the smoking remains of the tent, the shady moneylender stands poised to attack. Magic crackles in both of his hands. The shady moneylender is a sorcerer, who knew. “I knew you were up to no good,” you say, drawing your sword. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m going to put a stop to it.” “Imbecile, you may have the skills, but you lack the tools to defeat me.” “We’ll just have to see about that!” “Is that really the best line you’ve got?” “I know you are but what am I?” The sorcerer face-palms. “You’re an idiot aren’t you?” “Bring it on, bitch!” Onlookers scurry about to put out the fires the fireball ignited and to get a front row view of what is shaping up to be a good old-fashioned melee on magic standoff. The sorcerer simultaneously hurls a fireball and casts a bolt of lightning. > You dodge the bolt; bat the fireball back at him with your sword You dodge the bolt with ease and set your feet. You’re going to knock this fireball right out of the park. You step, swing, and… your sword melts as the fireball passes through and explodes amongst the crowd of onlookers. You scream in agony as molten steel splatters across your body. The sorcerer cackles. “Imbecile, only a magic artifact can repel a magical attack.” You collapse to the ground, defeated. And dead. The sorcerer proceeds to extract your hero blood, which he uses to conquer the entire kingdom. A shame, you couldn't even save your friends.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Despite adamant protests from your little head, your big head wins the day, insisting you act responsibly and investigate what that shady character is up to: shenanigans no doubt. “I’m sorry, Bell. I have to take care of something quick.” “Oh, don’t leave me hero.” Bell wraps her arms around, drawing you in tight against her bare bosom. You pull away from her enticing embrace before you change your mind. Now where did that moneylender run off? You don’t see him skulking around Sir Jamison’s tent anymore. Could your eyes have been playing tricks on you? The bad feeling in the pit of your gut says no. Muffled noises are coming from Sir Jamison’s tent. Not wanting to intrude on a living legend in the throes of lovemaking, you ruffle the flap of the tent to announce your presence. “Sir Jamison, are you in there? I noticed a shady character lingering around your tent a moment ago.” The noise inside the tent ceases. Oh, crap. Your dodge sense tingles. You jump aside just in time to avoid incineration via fireball. Within the smoking remains of the tent, the shady moneylender stands poised to attack. Magic crackles in both of his hands. The shady moneylender is a sorcerer, who knew. “I knew you were up to no good,” you say, drawing your sword. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m going to put a stop to it.” “Imbecile, you may have the skills, but you lack the tools to defeat me.” “We’ll just have to see about that!” “Is that really the best line you’ve got?” “I know you are but what am I?” The sorcerer face-palms. “You’re an idiot aren’t you?” “Bring it on, bitch!” Onlookers scurry about to put out the fires the fireball ignited and to get a front row view of what is shaping up to be a good old-fashioned melee on magic standoff. The sorcerer simultaneously hurls a fireball and casts a bolt of lightning. > You double dodge! Few living souls can successfully perform a double dodge, but you are a hero damn it. From the moment the unicorn farted, you were destined to accomplish great feats. You have the skill. You have the power. You have… ah, to hell with it. Just get on with it. You avoid the bolt and the fireball, perfectly executing a textbook double dodge. The onlookers cheer and scream approval… except for the ones who got incinerated by the fireball you dodged. The bloodcurdling screams of the not quite dead but still severely burned could wake the dead. Way to not take one for the team, asshole. “Dodge all you want!” cries the sorcerer. “It won’t do you any good in the end. Your pathetic blade can’t kill me.” You’re about to test that theory when a sparkly pulsating glow coming from behind the sorcerer catches your eye. The tantalizing and addicting flash of spectral lights can be only one thing: a magical artifact. The sorcerer must have been trying to steal it from Sir Jamison. If the sorcerer wants them, that must mean they can kill him. Or destroy the kingdom. One or the other. “We’ll see about that,” you shout as you charge ahead. “I’ll humor you, simpleton,” says the sorcerer. “Just try and strike me down. I’ll stand still.” The sorcerer crosses his arms and smirks as you lumber toward him. His evil sneer disappears once you run past him. The magical artifact turns out to be a magic sword and shield combo. It’s on like a donkey’s hard on now. “No, you can’t!” “Sure I can,” you say as you bash and slash him with your magic weaponry. “By the way, if these things can kill you, why did you let me get so close to them?” The world will never know the answer to that question. The sorcerer shrivels up and dies within a cloud of evaporated blood. His death screams awaken some of the recently deceased onlookers, which you swiftly put back in their graves unburied corpse state. Fires rage throughout the fairgrounds and more bodies than you feel like counting litter the ground. Crows and ravens already flock to the feast. It looks like the tournament is going to have to be canceled. Oh well, there is always next year. You turn around and look to see if Bell is still alive and willing for a romp.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Probably not a great idea to borrow money from such an obviously evil character: you excuse yourself, leaving the moneylender fuming. He mutters something under his breath while stroking his goatee as you walk out the door. Perhaps you will cross paths with him again. Your heart is still set on riding in the joust, so you head back to old man Nathaniel David’s orchard and agree to his bargain. You spend the remainder of your free time preparing for the tournament. Jon coaches you as best he can, which is not very well since he has never jousted either, but you think you have the hang of it. Bessy’s training has mixed results. She works hard and seems to appreciate the change of scenery. You figure being a plow horse is probably pretty dull. She has spirit, but the old girl does a lot more plodding than charging. At least, she does not shy away when the other horse speeds toward her. The day of the tournament dawns cool and crisp. Sweaty with excitement, you try to relax in your pavilion before your first match. You have already made water five times this morning, and you think you have to go again. So many things ride on the outcome of today’s events, but you cannot think about that. The here and now is what is important. You watch squires scurry around the grounds, doing the bidding of Sir this or Sir that or some other random bastard. You fall into a daze and your thoughts wander. Why don’t I have a squire? Crap, I think I need to piss again. Dear lord, please grant me the strength and will to win today. I don’t want to marry that troll Sally David. Have you seen her? Oh, is that who I think it is? Sir Jamison Hill, The Iron Boar, approaches and shakes your hand: what an honor! Ser Jamison serves as the Baron’s champion and is renowned throughout the kingdom for his tourney skills. “I heard about how you helped take care of those bandits and trolls on the Baron’s Road,” he says. “The kingdom needs more fine young men like you. I expect to see great things from you today and in the future.” “Thank you, sir.” You want to talk some more with him – he certainly has plenty he could teach you – but the herald calls you for your first bout. You wave farewell and enter the lists, wishing you had taken the time to make water one more time. “Are you ready girl?” you ask as you mount Bessy. Bessy snorts in reply. “That’s the spirit.” Your first match is against Lord Isaac Cleaver, The Cleaver. The man has a penchant for the flamboyant. The sun gleams off his silver gilded armor as he rides into position on his roan courser: his shield emblazoned with his house emblem, a silver cleaver beheading a golden goose. Not a very creative nickname, you think. Perhaps not, but it is the badassery of a nickname that is too be feared, not the cleverness. The herald blows his trumpet, and you urge your horses on. Bessy hobbles along as fast as she can, but she is completely outmatched in speed by the roan courser. Everything else disappears as you focus on Lord Cleaver. The distance closes. You raise your lance and prepare to strike. > You pinpoint your aim If you can hit Lord Cleaver’s shield just right, then you can knock him right off of his horse. You can do this. This is what you spent all those hours training for. You pinpoint your target and adjust your aim. The horses draw closer. You can see the roan courser’s breath. Here it comes! Crack! Thud! Crack! Weightless, you are falling. A flash of pain. Blackness. I have good news, bad news and worse news, hero. Good news: you managed to hit your target. That first crack was both of your lances splintering. Bad news: the thud was you hitting the ground. Worse news: the second crack was your skull splitting in two when it bounced off a rock.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For reasons far beyond normal human comprehension, you elect to compete in the joust: never mind the fact that you do not own a horse and have never held a lance in your life. Remember, dodging is against the rules in a joust, so you are not exactly playing to your strengths. During a morning patrol, you and Jon discuss the upcoming tournament. “I still think you should participate in the melee with me instead,” says Jon. “But if you’re dead set on jousting, you’re going to need a horse.” “Any recommendations?” you ask. “Jousting horses are expensive. You’re either going to need a big loan or a big friend. And don’t forget, if you lose the joust, you lose your horse and your armor.” “Can I use a quarter-horse? I bet old man Nathaniel David would let me borrow Bessy.” “Sure. You can ride out naked too, but you’ll just embarrass yourself.” Jon smacks you upside the head. “If you aren’t going to take this seriously, don’t even bother showing up.” You finish your patrol with Jon and head over to old man Nathaniel David’s orchard before you visiting the moneylender in the next town. You know it is not wise to ignore Jon’s advice, but you want to keep your options open. Old man Nathaniel David proves easy to find, he is humped over, shitting on a sapling when you arrive. “Um, what are you doing David?” “Fertilizing,” he says with a massive grin. “What can I do for you lad?” He sticks out his hand for you to shake, which you begrudgingly accept. “I decided to joust in the king’s tournament, but I don’t have a horse.” “Ah, well, I can’t imagine you’d want to use any of the horses in the hamlet. Plow horses ain’t going to win that for you, but I know you don’t have much money. So if you want Bessy, you can have her, on one condition.” “What’s that?” “If by some miracle you win, you name my lil’ pumpkin, Sally, Lady Fair of the Tournament. If you lose, you pay me back by marrying her. You’re a good lad, and you’d make a fine husband for my girl.” You have seen Sally David before, strutting around. She has a fine body for a wench, but holy matrimony is her face hideous. It looks like someone took a rake and beat her bloody. You will have to mull this one over; these are high stakes. Even if you won, you could offend many important people. “Alright, David, I’ll keep the offer in mind,” you say as you wave goodbye. Old man Nathaniel David hitches up his trousers and nods. “You do that, boy.” The Baron’s Road has been nice and calm ever since you took care of those trolls and bandits, and you arrive at the moneylender’s office without incident. The moneylender’s office is small and simple: one desk, two hard wooden chairs, and a few bookshelves. You have heard of these types before, and they are nothing but trouble. The moneylender skims over the pleasantries and bids you sit and begin your business. “What can I do for you, friend?” he asks. His hair is dark and oily, eyes small and beady. An unnecessarily pointy goatee graces his chin. Yep, slap the evil and unscrupulous label on him. “I need money for a horse to use in the joust. I’m one of the guys that killed those bandits and trolls on the Baron’s Road awhile back.” “I know who you are,” he snaps. “I also know you have no money and no experience jousting.” “How do you know that?” “Because.” He points at his goatee. “Now I will lend you the money if you agree to my terms.” “Which are?” “If you win, I get 50% of the ransom and prize money. You keep the horse. If you lose, you become my personal slave for a year.” The moneylender pulls, ink, quill and parchment from his desk. “We can get the contract signed right now.” > You changed your mind; you'll fight in the melee like Jon said. Wise decision: it is best to stick with your strong suits. You excuse yourself and get up to leave. The moneylender, mutters something to himself while stroking his beard as you head toward the door. Something is really evil about this guy. You turn around and lop off his head before heading home. Yeah, that was probably a good idea. The morning of the tournament dawns crisp and cool with a slight breeze, just enough to give the ladies’ skirts a nice billowing. You feel a familiar stirring in your loins, and it is driving you insane. As a fledgling hero, you have been saving yourself for your future princess bride, but dear God has it left you on edge, not that you have not had offers. Jon was right; your scar is a chick magnet. You practically have to beat them off. A gaggle of girls giggle as you walk past them. Bitches. Whoa, where did that come from? That is not very heroic. The proper term is ‘wenches.’ Remember that next time, fledgling hero. With your minor slip into villainy over, you prepare for the melee and take your place in the fighting field. There appear to be fifty or so participants as you try to pick out some of the people the Baron told you about. You see Mad Moose McDoogle in his clumsy antlered helmet, Sir Richard Lionsmane with his shaggy locks, Sir Henry Williams a.k.a. The Rabid Fox, the Weasel brothers in their matching silver gilded armor, and Bucktooth Barry among others. “Save your energy,” says Jon. “Let the others wear themselves down. They’ll make a mistake eventually. Then you can strike when they’re weak and out of position. And stay by me. We might both be able to get knighthoods out of this.” “Don’t worry. I got your back Jon.” A blast from the bugle signals the start of the melee. The clamor of blunted steel on blunted steel rings through the fairgrounds. You and Jon fight back-to-back, just as you did against those trolls several years ago. You two are not the only ones fighting on teams. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the Weasel brothers and Mad Moose McDoogle charge The Rabid Fox. The Rabid Fox looses ground as the trio attempt to surround him. He isn’t dodging. He’s parrying. He’s done for. The Rabid Fox’s and one of the Weasel brother’s swords shatter on impact. Mad Moose McDoogle peels off the attack and rounds on the Weasel brothers, catching them unaware. He knocks them both down and out just before The Rabid Fox charges him in turn. A sword slashes inches from your cheek, and you regain your focus. Dodge, slash, dodge, dodge, slash, dodge, trip, kick. Another one bites the dust. The fighting continues until there is just you, Jon, The Rabid Fox, who has not only obtained a new sword but a horse as well, and Bucktooth Barry left. Maybe you should turn on Jon now? > You fight with Jon. Heroes fight with honor at all times. There is no way in hell you are going to betray Jon. How could you ever look him in the eyes again? Besides, he is pretty fucking awesome. If you are going to win this thing, you are going to do it the right way and beat him with pride, honor, dignity, and all the other bullshit that goes with being a hero. “I’ll distract him. You knock him off the horse,” says Jon. “What about Bucktooth Barry?” “Dodge.” Jon darts off to run interference while you attempt to flank. The Rabid Fox is on to your plan though and outmaneuvers you while Bucktooth Barry hedges his position. This might go on for a while. What would a hero do? You glance up at the spectators and catch sight of the princess. A blonde haired blue eyed bombshell with a bosom to die for. She flashes you a smile of perfect pearly whites. Did you expect anything else? Take a moment to picture all the ways you would love to chivalrously plow her into next Sunday. Just try not to ejaculate prematurely in your armor. That is not heroic. No, go ahead. I can wait. Got all that out of your system? Good. With the princess’s bosom in your mind to inspire you, you charge the mounted knight. He reels the horse around and barrels toward you, eager for the challenge. As you are about to collide, you dodge. The Rabid Fox brings the horse around for another pass. You feel the blood pumping through your veins. The air tastes sweet. Colors are brighter. The world slows down. This is what being a hero is all about. You and The Rabid Fox rush each other once more. As you are about to collide, not only do you dodge, but you grab the reins as well and yank. Your arm feels like it is going to pop out of its socket, but you grit it out. The Rabid Fox flies through the air and thuds into the dirt. He stumbles to his feet and grabs a greatsword off the ground. Man, this motherfucker just does not give up. He has the reach advantage, but he is hurt. Pretty bad, judging by the fact he just fell off a galloping horse decked out in mail while brandishing a sword. He should probably be dead: or at least broken. He uses his reach to keep you at a distance, but you bide your time. He will make a mistake. Dodge, backstep, yawn, dodge. A quick glance up at the princess’s bosom. With princess bosom lighting your fire, you see an opening and dive in and drive The Rabid Fox to the ground. “Well fought, friend. I yield,” says The Rabid Fox as you hold your sword tip over him. Jon has finished off Bucktooth Barry. It is down to the two of you. > You for princess bosom! There is only one way this story can unfold, and that is with you finally surpassing your master and claiming the princess as your own. For princess bosom! You charge. Jon dodges your blow. You swing again. He dodges and counters with an upward thrust. No time to dodge, you catch his sword with your shield. The wood splinters, and you snap your wrist, catching his sword in the shield. Déjà vu? Not quite. A knee slams you in the groin, and you crumple to the ground. Fight through the pain hero! You lash you with your legs, catching Jon in the chest. Both of you regain your feet and slam into each other. Over and over you roll, grappling on the ground. Dust swirls around your heads. You throw blind punches. The crowd cheers. You fight the good fight, but Jon wins in the end, catching you in a stellar headlock. The king congratulates you both and the crowd gives a standing ovation. “Best melee in years. I think the both of you earned a knighthood for such a fine display of chivalrous combat,” says the king. “Tonight there will be a feast for the ages... on the Baron’s tab of course.” You are bummed you will not be getting princess bosom, but you feel proud of how you fought. Even heroes take their lumps from time to time. As expected, Jon names the princess Lady Fair of the tournament. You see him whisper something in her ear and point in your direction. She is walking toward you! What the hell did he say? “Princess Anne.” You bow. “It is my pleasure.” “And mine. Would you care to walk with me in the gardens?” You readily agree and spend much of the remainder of your time getting to know Princess Anne. She is everything you could hope for in a princess, blonde, blue eyed, fair skinned, sweet, charming, big bosomed, and all the works. “What did you say to her?” you ask Jon one evening. He shrugs. “I love princesses as much as the next guy, but really, I’m in to redheads.” He smirks. “I think the farmboy turned knight getting the princess makes the better story. I’m nailing the Baron’s daughter. Wildfire hair on her.” He winks. “Just the way I like it.” Months pass and you perform several fantastic heroic feats. Jon marries the Baron’s daughter and you become engaged to the princess. Some days it all seems so unreal, like just the other day you were selling turnips and mucking shit. Now you are a hero. > You time to kill a motherfucking dragon. That’s the spirit! Emissaries arrive at the capital from the neighboring kingdom of Irelandshire pleading for assistance with a dragon problem. It seems the fiend has been soaring around the country, torching towns, devouring livestock, looting treasuries and snatching young ladies from their bedchambers. Naturally, you don your shining armor and volunteer to help rid them of the menace once and for all. Princess Anne kisses you goodbye as you ride off to hunt down the winged beast. Finding the dragon’s lair – a cave high up a tall mountain with half the forest burnt to ashes – proves easier than you anticipated. No one ever said dragons were discreet. The march up the mountain presents more of a challenge. Far too steep for your steed, you hike up on foot. You soon learn hiking in full plate armor is not easy. Every step requires sheer willpower and brute strength. Sweat pores off you so fast you fear you are going to rust, so you strip down to your leathers and continue to the top light as feather, just like the old days when you first practiced with Jon in the yard. “Well at least you aren’t a knight in shining armor,” says the dragon as you enter his cave. The behemoth is resting on a hoard of gold, jewels, swords, cups, and other valuable crap because of course he is. “Pardon me?” “Do you have any idea how annoying it is fighting knights in shining armor? I just fry them with a nice blast of fire. They’re too heavy and clunky to dodge. No challenge at all. You should see the nice collection of armor I have though. I could outfit an entire empire.” “Actually, I stripped my armor coming up. I got sweaty.” The dragon sighs. “Well you’re smarter than most at least.” “Your days are done dragon!” You prepare to make a heroic speech, but cut it off. “Wait, where are the noble ladies?” “Didn’t you see all the dung piles on the mountainside?” “You ate them!?” “What did you think I do with them? Keep them as company?” “You bastard!” You draw your sword. Fate has finally arrived. Are you up to the task? > You attack his eyes. The eyes: go for the eyes. If you can blind the dragon, you can pounce in and end this while his guard his down. You scoop a handful of ashes from the ground and fling them at the dragon’s eyes as you bound toward him. It’s not very effective… The dragon stares at you and shakes his head as you scuttle to a stop. “I burn entire cities and forests for a living,” says the dragon. “Do you have any idea how much ash is floating around in the air after I start lighting shit up?” “Uhm…” “Literally, a metric fuck ton.” The dragon blinks. “I have protective coverings over my eyes to keep all that crap out. How else would I be able to see with all that debris in the air? I’d be spending my entire fortune on eye-drops.” “Like a camel?” You sidle closer to the dragon. “Did you just compare me, a dragon, to a dirty, smelly, filthy, no good camel? You wannabe heroes have no resp-” the dragon sighs. “You know what? It’s not worth it. Sure, like a camel,” the dragon sighs. “So where’s your hump?” You continue to inch closer to the dragon. “Wh- what?” “Your hump. You said you’re like a camel, so where’s your hump?” You jump up and down, searching for a hump on the dragon’s back while closing distance. “You have got to be kidding.” The dragon slams his head into the cave wall. “Why do all the retarded heroes have to come fight me?” While the dragon wallows, you pitter-patter your way in close and drive your sword deep into his eye socket. The wyrm wails in agony as you wrench the sword free, clamber over his snout and shove the blade into his other eye. Before you can scurry away, the dragon whips his head around and snaps his massive jaws around you. You scream as your bones splinter and your innards trickle from your body. The world fades to black as the dragon swallows you down his gullet. That seemed quite painful. If it is any consolation, you managed to both severely wound the dragon and piss him off before he ate you. The dragon goes on to burn the entire kingdom of Irelandshire to ashes in a blind rage before Jon and The Rabid Fox save the day and cut out his heart. Princess Anne is heartbroken and goes on to become a sex addict and develops a dungeon porn fetish to cope with your untimely death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>That’s the spirit! Emissaries arrive at the capital from the neighboring kingdom of Irelandshire pleading for assistance with a dragon problem. It seems the fiend has been soaring around the country, torching towns, devouring livestock, looting treasuries and snatching young ladies from their bedchambers. Naturally, you don your shining armor and volunteer to help rid them of the menace once and for all. Princess Anne kisses you goodbye as you ride off to hunt down the winged beast. Finding the dragon’s lair – a cave high up a tall mountain with half the forest burnt to ashes – proves easier than you anticipated. No one ever said dragons were discreet. The march up the mountain presents more of a challenge. Far too steep for your steed, you hike up on foot. You soon learn hiking in full plate armor is not easy. Every step requires sheer willpower and brute strength. Sweat pores off you so fast you fear you are going to rust, so you strip down to your leathers and continue to the top light as feather, just like the old days when you first practiced with Jon in the yard. “Well at least you aren’t a knight in shining armor,” says the dragon as you enter his cave. The behemoth is resting on a hoard of gold, jewels, swords, cups, and other valuable crap because of course he is. “Pardon me?” “Do you have any idea how annoying it is fighting knights in shining armor? I just fry them with a nice blast of fire. They’re too heavy and clunky to dodge. No challenge at all. You should see the nice collection of armor I have though. I could outfit an entire empire.” “Actually, I stripped my armor coming up. I got sweaty.” The dragon sighs. “Well you’re smarter than most at least.” “Your days are done dragon!” You prepare to make a heroic speech, but cut it off. “Wait, where are the noble ladies?” “Didn’t you see all the dung piles on the mountainside?” “You ate them!?” “What did you think I do with them? Keep them as company?” “You bastard!” You draw your sword. Fate has finally arrived. Are you up to the task? > You attack his belly. Everyone knows the underbelly of a dragon is vulnerable. If you get in close, your sword can rip through him like hot crocodile shears through flesh. You charge the dragon with sword in hand. The dragon blasts fire. You have too much forward momentum; there is no way to dodge this one. The world slows to crawl and your entire life flashes before your eyes: all that time spent mucking shit and selling cabbages, long hours training in the yard with Jon, your sexless courting of Princess Anne. Wow, your life sucked. Well, maybe you can take the dragon with you: go out a hero and all that. You grit your teeth and shut your eyes as you barrel into the firestorm. The stink of charred flesh and burning hair cloak you. Your blood boils, lips sear off, eyes burst and brain tingles as it begins to melt inside your skull. Somehow, you are still conscious as you storm through and plunge your sword through the dragon’s soft underbelly bounce your sword off the dragon’s rigid scales. Turns out those underbelly scales are just as tough as the rest of them. Who knew? The dragon chuckles as you collapse to the cave floor in a smoldering heap. “Foolish bravery, mortal, is foolishness all the same.” The dragon admires you a moment longer before he devours you as a midday snack. If it serves as any consolation, your remains go on to fertilize several small trees… which promptly get burnt down.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>That’s the spirit! Emissaries arrive at the capital from the neighboring kingdom of Irelandshire pleading for assistance with a dragon problem. It seems the fiend has been soaring around the country, torching towns, devouring livestock, looting treasuries and snatching young ladies from their bedchambers. Naturally, you don your shining armor and volunteer to help rid them of the menace once and for all. Princess Anne kisses you goodbye as you ride off to hunt down the winged beast. Finding the dragon’s lair – a cave high up a tall mountain with half the forest burnt to ashes – proves easier than you anticipated. No one ever said dragons were discreet. The march up the mountain presents more of a challenge. Far too steep for your steed, you hike up on foot. You soon learn hiking in full plate armor is not easy. Every step requires sheer willpower and brute strength. Sweat pores off you so fast you fear you are going to rust, so you strip down to your leathers and continue to the top light as feather, just like the old days when you first practiced with Jon in the yard. “Well at least you aren’t a knight in shining armor,” says the dragon as you enter his cave. The behemoth is resting on a hoard of gold, jewels, swords, cups, and other valuable crap because of course he is. “Pardon me?” “Do you have any idea how annoying it is fighting knights in shining armor? I just fry them with a nice blast of fire. They’re too heavy and clunky to dodge. No challenge at all. You should see the nice collection of armor I have though. I could outfit an entire empire.” “Actually, I stripped my armor coming up. I got sweaty.” The dragon sighs. “Well you’re smarter than most at least.” “Your days are done dragon!” You prepare to make a heroic speech, but cut it off. “Wait, where are the noble ladies?” “Didn’t you see all the dung piles on the mountainside?” “You ate them!?” “What did you think I do with them? Keep them as company?” “You bastard!” You draw your sword. Fate has finally arrived. Are you up to the task? > You neither. Attacking him head on would be suicide. Sure, it would be nice to blind him or cut into his underbelly, but he would just fry you with a blast of fire before you even got close. There is only one course of action to take in times like this: dodge. Like a timid bear you perform a false charge, pulling up at the last second as a blast of fire scorches the ground in front of you. Without your bulky armor you are able to twist and twirl, spin and swirl, dip and dive, jump and jive and pirouette away from the dragon fire while inching ever closer to the monster. Since when did you get moves like Jagger? “Die mortal,” the dragon shouts, releasing another blast of fire. You duck behind a conveniently placed boulder just in time to escape. The dragon stalks closer. His massive limbs quake the ground with every step: his tail smashing the wall without purpose. Another blast of fire. The heat coming off the rock is like lava. You fear it is about to melt. Is this it? Is this the end? “Foolish mortal. The only way to kill a dragon is with a disorganized band of heroes and a bard, or with a magic sword. And you don’t have either. Mwhahaha.” Shit. I’m totally fucked. Why didn’t I read that book on dragon clichés Jon bought me last Christmas? Think fast, think fast, think fast. Brain blast! Music! Music soothes the savage beast. Shit, I forgot my fiddle. The dragon rumbles closer, taking his sweet time. Any more bright ideas, Mr. Hero? > You cry and Beg for Mercy “Please, Mr. Dragon spare me!” Tears pour down your cheeks, and you drop to your knees. “I’ll do whatever you want. I can be a good servant, or a steward. Everyone can use a good steward.” The dragon laughs so hard the entire mountain shakes. The roof of the cave above his head collapses, crushing his head. Ever the opportunist, you leap to your feet and plunge your sword down his gullet. The dragon’s jaws snap shut before you can remove your arm. Steam spouts from his nostrils, burning your face. You see the dragon’s body burst into flames as you blackout from the pain. You awake sometime later in unfamiliar surroundings. A nice plush pillow is beneath your head, and half your head is wrapped in bandages. Your balls itch, but when you go to scratch them you realize your arm is gone. “Where the fuck am I?” A comely wench caresses your hand. “My good knight, you killed the dragon! We heard the battle from down in the valley, and some of the braver folk went to investigate. They found you gravely wounded, so they brought you to me and I nursed you back to health.” “Are you a herb woman?” “No.” “What are you?” “A milkmaid.” “Why did they bring me to you?” “Milk gives you strong bones?” She shrugs. “But don’t worry, I did a good job taking care of you. I watched over you day and night, and I only touched your private bits a few times.” “Well that’s nice of you, but… WHAT?” “To clean them, Sir.” “Oh, I’m sorry. I just thought… never-mind. Thank you.” The milkmaid wench smirks coyly. “With my tongue.” Goddamn it. Well, there you go, Mr. Hero. You killed the dragon. Not exactly the most heroic showing, but it got the job done. I imagine you expect to go back to your princess bride now, am I right? Princess Anne must be dying to see you. Boy, do I have bad news for you. Princesses’ do not marry hideously scarred men, and your face, well go look in a mirror. You look like someone slammed your head into a flaming brazier. Hey, don’t get too upset. You are still a knight, and you have the eternal gratitude of the kingdom of Irelandshire. Plus, you got a ton of booty from that dragon’s lair. Time passes and you heal, more or less. You have the pick of any non-princess in two kingdoms, but you decide to settle down with the milkmaid wench, whose name turns out to be Marie. The two of you have several healthy children together with heroic aspirations of their own. You still keep in touch with your old pals Jon, Samwellington, and The Rabid Fox. You have a few castles built in both kingdoms and become a legendary hero. Of course, when you tell the story, you leave out the crying and begging for mercy part. Your life with Marie is hot and steamy. You are not sure if you will ever get used to all of her kinks – you find yourself in some interesting scenarios when you wake up from time to time – but at the same time they kind of turn you on. > You once upon a time... The wintry winds howl a horrible wail, whipping white watery snow against the weathered watchtower’s westernmost wall. Yes, it is indeed a dark and stormy night, but darker and stormier and maybe just a tad more purple than your run-of-the-mill dark and stormy night. Somewhere deep in the forest a unicorn frolics in a magical glade, as elves watch and scamper amongst the trees, polishing their bows with the blood of dwarves. “Killed a big fat one today, Elfrond,” says Elfmoor. “Bastard was trying to chop down a cherry tree. Can you believe it, a fucking cherry tree? Sacrilege.” “Have you ever wondered why we hate the dwarves so much?” asks Elfrond. “What do you mean? They’re fucking dwarves! And this one chopped down a tree. A cherry tree. Only thing that rivals my love of trees are cherries. And music. And song. And like five other things.” “Yeah, I’ve just been thinking lately. How did we get these sweet bows, if we didn’t chop down a tree to shape them. And how do we burn fires without firewood? And why exactly do we hate the dwarves?” “It’s canon. Don’t ask questions.” “What’s a cannon?” Suddenly, the elves quit bickering. Something that only happens once in a thousand years occurs. The glade explodes with magical aura as the unicorn releases its legendary rainbow fart. Magical anomalies, such as this, signal only one thing: the birth of a hero. Elfmoor takes a big whiff of the magical aroma. “B. E. A. Utiful. Times like this make life worth living.” Elfrond shakes his head. “Elfmoor, we’re immortal. I’ve seen this like ten times already. And every time this happens, it means something evil is about to come afoot." “But the hero always wins.” “Have you ever heard the term collateral damage?” “Is that a sword?” And there you have it. The magical unicorn fart that marks your birth. How exciting! I wonder what type of hero you will grow up to be. > You want to be a wizard! Step aside, Potter! A fine choice my friend. What is fantasy without wizards and magic? You are born to parents of mysterious lineage. You cannot recall their faces or remember much of anything about them. When you are three years old, an old grey-bearded man in a tall pointy hat whisks you away to his society of magical folk and teaches you all he knows of the arcane. Naturally, the society is on a magical island whose shores are shrouded in fog, located some indeterminate number of leagues off the coast of the mainland. Growing up is fun, but tedious. Spells and incantations do not learn themselves. Everything is peaches and plum pudding until one day you receive a summons – via giant flying eagle – from your old master. You are high up on the mountain, collecting snow samples for an alchemical experiment. It would take several days to hike all the way back to Manawell. “Mr. Eagle?” you ask. Your voice is hedging, what you are about to ask is groundbreaking. “What is it friend?” “Could you give me a lift back down the mountain? This sounds important.” The eagle cocks his head. You are not sure if an eagle can look bemused, but if it could, you imagine this is what it would look like. “You know, no one has ever asked me that before. I always wondered why.” “Wizards are notorious for staying in shape,” you say. “How else could white-beards run around with swords and keep pace with adventuring young heroes?” “Ah, I see. You learn something new every day. Well, very well. Hop on my back, but try not to pull out any feathers.” The eagle flies you down to Manawell in no time at all. There may even be time to run a nice 10k this evening to make up for your lost exercise. You rush through the magical community to your master’s tower, stopping only a brief moment to window shop at Merlim’s Beard Trimming Emporium. Don’t worry, I understand. Proper beard care is essential. No one wants to be the ruddy wizard with a bird’s nest in his beard. That guy sucks. You finish your browsing and proceed to your master’s tower without further incident. “Master Dumbledalf,” you shout as you reach the top room of the tower. “I received your summons. Is everything alright?” Dumbledalf sets down his alchemical decanter and stares at you, his face expressionless. “Why are you here?” “I told you. I received your summons.” “Yes, but you aren’t supposed to be here for five more days.” “I hitched a ride with the eagle.” “You what!? Oh you ruined everything.” “Excuse me?” “I’m not supposed to die for five more days. You sapped all the drama from my character. Oh well, just sit tight one second.” Dumbledalf crushes a few rattails and snake fangs with his mortar and pestle, boils some rum and troll’s blood, sprinkles some belladonna power, and mixes all the goop together. He downs the concoction in one gulp and collapses to the floor. “There, that’s better,” he says, coughing blood. “You have finally completed your apprenticeship under me. My time has come and gone, but yours is just beginning. As a true wizard, you must now undertake a heroic adventure. Let me see here.” Dumbledalf pulls a scrap of parchment from within his robes. “Ah, here we go. There are two available that fit your qualifications.” Dumbledalf dies in your arms. You scream and curse the gods for taking the life of such a fine man. He was only 1984. He should have had at least another century in him. You finish your mandatory blubbering and look at the paper. > You travel to Westengland and Kill some Evil Wizard Why bother tutoring the next great hero when you can be the next great hero? Killing an evil wizard is certain to garner the fame and acclaim necessary to ascend to the ever sought after hero status. You grab an assortment of essential wizarding supplies from Dumbledalf’s stores, cast a burying spell on his body, and head to the port to set sail for Westengland. The captain of the Briar Rose is thrilled to have a wizard onboard. Wizards prove quite invaluable at sea, what with all the pirates, storms, and sea monsters lurking beneath the depths. “A wizard at sea is worth his weight in silver,” says Captain Horatio. “I thought the saying was ‘worth his weight in gold.’ “No offense your magicness, but if a wizard was worth his weight in gold, I’d have no room for a profit.” “Better to be alive and penniless than dead and rich.” “A wise wizard,” chuckles Captain Horatio. “Who would have guessed?” Captain Horatio excuses himself and bustles about the ship, blowing his horn. What a pleasant fellow. You watch as the magic island that has been your home for so many years shrinks in the distance. Leaving feels so weird, but when destiny calls, heroes must rise to the summons. Perhaps someday you will return. Despite all the perils of the sea, your trip to Westengland is nothing but sugarplums and rainbows. Dear Lord are you sick of sugarplums. Captain Horatio could have stocked the ship with a wider and more nutritional array of foodstuffs. At least all of the rainbows are pretty to look at. Thrilled to be back on dry land and away from the sugarplums, you hasten to the king’s castle – aptly named King’s Castle – on the outskirts of the capital city. The road reveals no signs of this evil wizard, though the lack of peasants proves quite disturbing. On second thought, perhaps that is a sign. As you near King’s Castle, the unmistakable and addicting allure of magic thickens in the air. Sweet, succulent, salacious magic. Coaxing your horse to gallop like she never galloped before and thanking God for the widespread success of the Rent-a-Horse industry, you burst onto the scene of a massive siege of King’s Castle. Grotesque trolls, disfigured by horrible magic spells, batter the gates with uprooted trees. Goblins beyond count shriek and swarm the outer walls on ladders crafted from bones. Wyverns – the dragon wannabes of the world – lash at the human defenders from above. Centaurs loose arrows and rape women, even in the midst of battle: the deviant equines. Mages cast spells and necromancers awaken the dead. The defenders fight with vigor and valiance only for the slain to arise and fight on. Most horrible of all, waves of human corpses throw themselves at the castle walls, snaking from the smoking ruins of the capital city down in the valley. The evil wizard is really throwing the gauntlet at King’s Castle. The castle may be beyond saving already. The old adage a wizard is never late or early isn’t really true. Of course, a wizard can be late or early! They are human after all. Sort of. The wisest thing may be to find the king and save his sorry ass. Then again, heroes aren’t known for always making the wisest decision. So how about it hero, do you pack enough punch to turn the tides of battle on your own?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The wintry winds howl a horrible wail, whipping white watery snow against the weathered watchtower’s westernmost wall. Yes, it is indeed a dark and stormy night, but darker and stormier and maybe just a tad more purple than your run-of-the-mill dark and stormy night. Somewhere deep in the forest a unicorn frolics in a magical glade, as elves watch and scamper amongst the trees, polishing their bows with the blood of dwarves. “Killed a big fat one today, Elfrond,” says Elfmoor. “Bastard was trying to chop down a cherry tree. Can you believe it, a fucking cherry tree? Sacrilege.” “Have you ever wondered why we hate the dwarves so much?” asks Elfrond. “What do you mean? They’re fucking dwarves! And this one chopped down a tree. A cherry tree. Only thing that rivals my love of trees are cherries. And music. And song. And like five other things.” “Yeah, I’ve just been thinking lately. How did we get these sweet bows, if we didn’t chop down a tree to shape them. And how do we burn fires without firewood? And why exactly do we hate the dwarves?” “It’s canon. Don’t ask questions.” “What’s a cannon?” Suddenly, the elves quit bickering. Something that only happens once in a thousand years occurs. The glade explodes with magical aura as the unicorn releases its legendary rainbow fart. Magical anomalies, such as this, signal only one thing: the birth of a hero. Elfmoor takes a big whiff of the magical aroma. “B. E. A. Utiful. Times like this make life worth living.” Elfrond shakes his head. “Elfmoor, we’re immortal. I’ve seen this like ten times already. And every time this happens, it means something evil is about to come afoot." “But the hero always wins.” “Have you ever heard the term collateral damage?” “Is that a sword?” And there you have it. The magical unicorn fart that marks your birth. How exciting! I wonder what type of hero you will grow up to be. > You are Vegeta, prince of all saiyans! No teaser here, but you wouldn't actually get to play as Vegeta, just an angsty prince with a dead father.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The wintry winds howl a horrible wail, whipping white watery snow against the weathered watchtower’s westernmost wall. Yes, it is indeed a dark and stormy night, but darker and stormier and maybe just a tad more purple than your run-of-the-mill dark and stormy night. Somewhere deep in the forest a unicorn frolics in a magical glade, as elves watch and scamper amongst the trees, polishing their bows with the blood of dwarves. “Killed a big fat one today, Elfrond,” says Elfmoor. “Bastard was trying to chop down a cherry tree. Can you believe it, a fucking cherry tree? Sacrilege.” “Have you ever wondered why we hate the dwarves so much?” asks Elfrond. “What do you mean? They’re fucking dwarves! And this one chopped down a tree. A cherry tree. Only thing that rivals my love of trees are cherries. And music. And song. And like five other things.” “Yeah, I’ve just been thinking lately. How did we get these sweet bows, if we didn’t chop down a tree to shape them. And how do we burn fires without firewood? And why exactly do we hate the dwarves?” “It’s canon. Don’t ask questions.” “What’s a cannon?” Suddenly, the elves quit bickering. Something that only happens once in a thousand years occurs. The glade explodes with magical aura as the unicorn releases its legendary rainbow fart. Magical anomalies, such as this, signal only one thing: the birth of a hero. Elfmoor takes a big whiff of the magical aroma. “B. E. A. Utiful. Times like this make life worth living.” Elfrond shakes his head. “Elfmoor, we’re immortal. I’ve seen this like ten times already. And every time this happens, it means something evil is about to come afoot." “But the hero always wins.” “Have you ever heard the term collateral damage?” “Is that a sword?” And there you have it. The magical unicorn fart that marks your birth. How exciting! I wonder what type of hero you will grow up to be. > You is there any way you can be a girl? Certainly, you can be a girl. However, I am afraid it only comes in one flavor: spunky! Born to ho-hum parents in a ho-hum village in a ho-hum kingdom, life growing up bores the daylights out of you. You are faster and stronger than all the boys are, and sexier and wilder than all the girls, despite their best efforts. You thirst for adventure and always prance around with an almost – but not quite – slutty smile on your face. One evening you find yourself down at the lake with your friends: Cherry, Melisa, Tommy, and Brad. Of course, you have more friends because you are just so damn spunky, but these are your best friends. You notice Tommy staring at you for the sixth time today. “Is everything alright, Tommy?” you ask. “You seem to be off in the clouds.” “Yeah, I’m ok. Can I tell you something?” “You can tell me anything, Tommy.” “No offense, but you have awesome breasts.” You smack Tommy upside the head. “Tommy. Stop. Now. That is not cool. Just because I’m spunky does not mean you get to ogle my body. If that is all you can think about, stare at Melisa. She’s the whore of our group.” Melisa nods. “Guilty as charged.” You storm off with Brad and Cherry following at your heels like a pair of nipping puppies while Tommy and Melissa disappear into the bushes. After all, this is a tale of a heroine’s escapades, not her sexcapades. “The nerve of that guy,” you say, shaking your head. “I am a prime virgin flower, and I will not be treated like some common whore. I think it’s time we went off on a grand adventure and left that jerk behind.” Brad’s face glows with delight. “I second that!” “What about Melissa?” asks Cherry. “As long as there is a man around with a penis and a pulse, Melissa will be fine,” you say. “I say we go adventuring!” So you decide to leave your quaint little life in village ho-hum for the experience of a lifetime. Any thoughts as to where you are adventuring?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The wintry winds howl a horrible wail, whipping white watery snow against the weathered watchtower’s westernmost wall. Yes, it is indeed a dark and stormy night, but darker and stormier and maybe just a tad more purple than your run-of-the-mill dark and stormy night. Somewhere deep in the forest a unicorn frolics in a magical glade, as elves watch and scamper amongst the trees, polishing their bows with the blood of dwarves. “Killed a big fat one today, Elfrond,” says Elfmoor. “Bastard was trying to chop down a cherry tree. Can you believe it, a fucking cherry tree? Sacrilege.” “Have you ever wondered why we hate the dwarves so much?” asks Elfrond. “What do you mean? They’re fucking dwarves! And this one chopped down a tree. A cherry tree. Only thing that rivals my love of trees are cherries. And music. And song. And like five other things.” “Yeah, I’ve just been thinking lately. How did we get these sweet bows, if we didn’t chop down a tree to shape them. And how do we burn fires without firewood? And why exactly do we hate the dwarves?” “It’s canon. Don’t ask questions.” “What’s a cannon?” Suddenly, the elves quit bickering. Something that only happens once in a thousand years occurs. The glade explodes with magical aura as the unicorn releases its legendary rainbow fart. Magical anomalies, such as this, signal only one thing: the birth of a hero. Elfmoor takes a big whiff of the magical aroma. “B. E. A. Utiful. Times like this make life worth living.” Elfrond shakes his head. “Elfmoor, we’re immortal. I’ve seen this like ten times already. And every time this happens, it means something evil is about to come afoot." “But the hero always wins.” “Have you ever heard the term collateral damage?” “Is that a sword?” And there you have it. The magical unicorn fart that marks your birth. How exciting! I wonder what type of hero you will grow up to be. > You bonus Material Thanks for playing. Enjoy the troll blood. > You play as an Elf Elves are certainly cliché. But I’m a species-ist. That means while I have no problem with humans be they white, orange, green, blue, black, yellow, pink, purple, brown, grey, indigo, crimson, maroon, cream, peach, pie… wait where was I going with this. Oh, right. I have a deep hatred of other species. We humans are superior and everyone else must bow down to our supremacy. Don’t judge me. It’s a disease. Now excuse me while I enslave this squirrel.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Thanks for playing. Enjoy the troll blood. > You play as a Dwarf Game of Thrones changed the world for dwarf kind forever. Are they a species or are they people? The species-ist in me is skeptical. Judgment shall be reserved.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Thanks for playing. Enjoy the troll blood. > You play as a Warrior-Cat You ran out into the road and got trampled by a runaway carriage, and your corpse was devoured by a pack of dogs. The End.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Thanks for playing. Enjoy the troll blood. > You play as a Dark Elf Have you not read Eternal? Go read Eternal. Then come back and tell me how heroic dark elves are.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Thanks for playing. Enjoy the troll blood. > You play as a Sparkly Vampire Really, you want to be a sparkly vampire? What kind of writer do you think I am? I have standards after all. Do you really want to be a sparkly vampire, or are you just trying to piss me off? > You you're sorry. You'll pick something more appropriate. That’s right young lady. No hero of mine is going to be some sissified vampire. My heroes have pretty blue eyes, long blonde hair and flawless pearly whites. Manliness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Really, you want to be a sparkly vampire? What kind of writer do you think I am? I have standards after all. Do you really want to be a sparkly vampire, or are you just trying to piss me off? > You sparkly Vampire! Stephanie, I hate you. Fine, you want to be a sparkly vampire, go ahead. Once a pompous little lordling living in the south of Spainland you not only had the misfortune of being bitten by a vampire while having sex with your sister, but also getting gene spliced with a unicorn by the hands of a genre-bending – and seriously twisted – wizard from the future called a Brony. The magic involved with this transformation goes far beyond my comprehension of the arcane, but I assure you it was incredibly painful. On the positive end, however, you now fart bubblegum and shit figgy pudding.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Attacking him head on would be suicide. Sure, it would be nice to blind him or cut into his underbelly, but he would just fry you with a blast of fire before you even got close. There is only one course of action to take in times like this: dodge. Like a timid bear you perform a false charge, pulling up at the last second as a blast of fire scorches the ground in front of you. Without your bulky armor you are able to twist and twirl, spin and swirl, dip and dive, jump and jive and pirouette away from the dragon fire while inching ever closer to the monster. Since when did you get moves like Jagger? “Die mortal,” the dragon shouts, releasing another blast of fire. You duck behind a conveniently placed boulder just in time to escape. The dragon stalks closer. His massive limbs quake the ground with every step: his tail smashing the wall without purpose. Another blast of fire. The heat coming off the rock is like lava. You fear it is about to melt. Is this it? Is this the end? “Foolish mortal. The only way to kill a dragon is with a disorganized band of heroes and a bard, or with a magic sword. And you don’t have either. Mwhahaha.” Shit. I’m totally fucked. Why didn’t I read that book on dragon clichés Jon bought me last Christmas? Think fast, think fast, think fast. Brain blast! Music! Music soothes the savage beast. Shit, I forgot my fiddle. The dragon rumbles closer, taking his sweet time. Any more bright ideas, Mr. Hero? > You dodge? If Jon taught you one thing, it is how to dodge like it is your job, and it kind of is. Sort of. I don’t know, just kill the damned thing. You leap over the rock and attempt a triple double-axle barrel roll in midair and land on the dragon’s head. For some reason, this works and you manage to dodge the dragon’s fire breath in the process with your sixth sense. The dragon thrashes his head against the cave walls, but you manage to cling on while avoiding having your body smashed to a thousand bloody bits. You hack at the dragon’s head with your sword, but it may as well be a butter knife for all the good it does against the tough dragon scales. Maybe you should have dodged over toward one of those fancy looking magic swords. Shut up. I have this under control. Ok. Whatever you say, Mr. Hero. “Hey, dragon, you suck.” “I will not have a mortal make mockery of me!” the dragon bellows. “Get. Off. My. Head.” The dragon swings his mighty tail at you, but once again, you manage to use your sixth sense to dodge all of the attacks. The dragon repeatedly pummels himself in the head with his own tail to the point where he shatters both his scales and his skull. You drive your sword into the crevice and perform a super-duper double whammy backflip with a 720 degree spin off the dragon’s head as he bursts into flames. “Wicked. Now how the hell am I going to haul all this shit down the mountain?” … What, aren’t you going to finish the story? Yeah, just give me a second. What the fuck is the problem? I won, I want to marry my princess and lose my damn virginity already. I’m just struggling to comprehend how you turned into a jedi. A what? Never mind. … Word of your victory quickly spreads across the land. The king of Irelandshire showers you in gratitude and offers you his daughter as a bride, which you decline because you proved to be a noble and heroic knight and you already have a bride. You take some of the dragon’s treasure back home with you and build a series of castles and forts at strategic points across the countryside. Your future kin are keeping this kingdom for life. Historians and bards alike flock to scribble down your life story and paint it in song. Your wedding to Princess Anne is a legend in its own right: drunken revelry at its finest. Samwellington entertains the masses by sticking himself with pointy knives and not screaming in pain, good old pork lard. Jon and The Rabid Fox have a friendly sparring match, showcasing some of the finest swordsmanship since your melee. Jon later demonstrates another kind of swordsmanship with his wildfire gingersnap of a wife. On the table. Next to one of the cakes. The king gets drunk and accidentally burns down the stage while a troupe of troubadours are performing. No one important dies. Most importantly, you finally get to bang Princess Anne, that blue-eyed blonde haired big bosomed goddess of your dreams: a night of ecstasy ends in an explosion of pleasure with many more to come.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Attacking him head on would be suicide. Sure, it would be nice to blind him or cut into his underbelly, but he would just fry you with a blast of fire before you even got close. There is only one course of action to take in times like this: dodge. Like a timid bear you perform a false charge, pulling up at the last second as a blast of fire scorches the ground in front of you. Without your bulky armor you are able to twist and twirl, spin and swirl, dip and dive, jump and jive and pirouette away from the dragon fire while inching ever closer to the monster. Since when did you get moves like Jagger? “Die mortal,” the dragon shouts, releasing another blast of fire. You duck behind a conveniently placed boulder just in time to escape. The dragon stalks closer. His massive limbs quake the ground with every step: his tail smashing the wall without purpose. Another blast of fire. The heat coming off the rock is like lava. You fear it is about to melt. Is this it? Is this the end? “Foolish mortal. The only way to kill a dragon is with a disorganized band of heroes and a bard, or with a magic sword. And you don’t have either. Mwhahaha.” Shit. I’m totally fucked. Why didn’t I read that book on dragon clichés Jon bought me last Christmas? Think fast, think fast, think fast. Brain blast! Music! Music soothes the savage beast. Shit, I forgot my fiddle. The dragon rumbles closer, taking his sweet time. Any more bright ideas, Mr. Hero? > You how about you steal one of those sweet magic swords sticking out of his treasure pile. You make a mental note to thank the dragon for providing you with the recipe for his death at his funeral as you yank the first magic sword you find from the mountain of plunder. The sword shines a brilliant blue-gold and has a queer hourglass shape carved into the blade: yep, definitely magic. Though, something feels awful familiar about this. Oh well, you can worry about that later. You have a dragon to kill. “Your day of reckoning has come, dragon!” “No, you fool,” the dragon rasps. “Put that down. Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to meddle with magic you don’t know how to use?” “Nope.” The dragon breathes fire at you, but you knock it away with a swing of the sword. The resulting fireball explodes in the treasure hoard. Molten gold and silver splatter everywhere. Droplets burn into your arms and chest, but you struggle through the pain and raise the magic sword for the killing blow. “You’ll doom us all,” the dragon pleads. Not that it’s my place, but I think you should listen to the dragon. What do you expect me to do, negotiate a treaty? I would endorse that. > You fine. “Alright dragon,” you say. “The asshole narrator told me not to kill you. What’s the deal?” The dragon sighs in relief as steam spouts from his nostrils. “Of all the fucking magic swords, you grabbed the Time-Warper.” “And I care why?” “Once the blade slices into something living, the last five seconds of all life are replayed on an infinite loop.” “How do you stop it?” “You can’t.” “That’s fucking retarded. Who would make such a stupid sword?” “A villain.” “But the villain would be damning himself for all eternity too.” “I said a villain. Not a smart villain.” Agreeing you are at an impasse, you and the dragon negotiate a treaty the two of you find mutually acceptable. The dragon receives 50% of all taxes collected within Irelandshire, 1 out of every 3 sheep, 1 princess of his choice per year, and you receive one dragon ride every Sunday after church. You are not very good at negotiations.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You make a mental note to thank the dragon for providing you with the recipe for his death at his funeral as you yank the first magic sword you find from the mountain of plunder. The sword shines a brilliant blue-gold and has a queer hourglass shape carved into the blade: yep, definitely magic. Though, something feels awful familiar about this. Oh well, you can worry about that later. You have a dragon to kill. “Your day of reckoning has come, dragon!” “No, you fool,” the dragon rasps. “Put that down. Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to meddle with magic you don’t know how to use?” “Nope.” The dragon breathes fire at you, but you knock it away with a swing of the sword. The resulting fireball explodes in the treasure hoard. Molten gold and silver splatter everywhere. Droplets burn into your arms and chest, but you struggle through the pain and raise the magic sword for the killing blow. “You’ll doom us all,” the dragon pleads. Not that it’s my place, but I think you should listen to the dragon. What do you expect me to do, negotiate a treaty? I would endorse that. > You you're killing him. “You’ll doom us all,” the dragon pleads again. “No, just you.” And you hammer the sword into the dragon. > You deja vu “You’ll doom us all,” the dragon pleads again. “No, just you.” And you hammer the sword into the dragon. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There is only one way this story can unfold, and that is with you finally surpassing your master and claiming the princess as your own. For princess bosom! You charge. Jon dodges your blow. You swing again. He dodges and counters with an upward thrust. No time to dodge, you catch his sword with your shield. The wood splinters, and you snap your wrist, catching his sword in the shield. Déjà vu? Not quite. A knee slams you in the groin, and you crumple to the ground. Fight through the pain hero! You lash you with your legs, catching Jon in the chest. Both of you regain your feet and slam into each other. Over and over you roll, grappling on the ground. Dust swirls around your heads. You throw blind punches. The crowd cheers. You fight the good fight, but Jon wins in the end, catching you in a stellar headlock. The king congratulates you both and the crowd gives a standing ovation. “Best melee in years. I think the both of you earned a knighthood for such a fine display of chivalrous combat,” says the king. “Tonight there will be a feast for the ages... on the Baron’s tab of course.” You are bummed you will not be getting princess bosom, but you feel proud of how you fought. Even heroes take their lumps from time to time. As expected, Jon names the princess Lady Fair of the tournament. You see him whisper something in her ear and point in your direction. She is walking toward you! What the hell did he say? “Princess Anne.” You bow. “It is my pleasure.” “And mine. Would you care to walk with me in the gardens?” You readily agree and spend much of the remainder of your time getting to know Princess Anne. She is everything you could hope for in a princess, blonde, blue eyed, fair skinned, sweet, charming, big bosomed, and all the works. “What did you say to her?” you ask Jon one evening. He shrugs. “I love princesses as much as the next guy, but really, I’m in to redheads.” He smirks. “I think the farmboy turned knight getting the princess makes the better story. I’m nailing the Baron’s daughter. Wildfire hair on her.” He winks. “Just the way I like it.” Months pass and you perform several fantastic heroic feats. Jon marries the Baron’s daughter and you become engaged to the princess. Some days it all seems so unreal, like just the other day you were selling turnips and mucking shit. Now you are a hero. > You time to retire. Did you seriously just turn down the opportunity to kill a dragon? You may be a hero, but you aren’t the cliché’ hero you were destined to be. You could have done more. Oh well, what is done is done. You marry Princess Anne and have a beautiful wedding ceremony. All the dukes, earls, barons, and other lords in the kingdom attend. Jon serves as your best man and leads the wedding toast. Samwellington gets drunk and passes out in one of the massive strawberry cakes while receiving a blowjob from one of the maids, not quite sure how that happened. Sir Henry Williams, your old friend The Rabid Fox, regales the guests with tales from the tournament and other ventures you undertook together in the aftermath. “Would you believe,” he says, “we saw a unicorn fart in a glade a few months back? Mark of a hero’s birth is what that is.” Hmm, so much for that once every thousand years bullshit. You lame ass heroes are becoming a dime a dozen. Too bad ma and pa could not be around to see this, but heroes almost never have parents survive long enough to see them achieve success. You know their watching over you from somewhere above though. Later that night, you finally get to relief all that pent up tension that has been building up in your loins for all of these years. You are glad you saved yourself because it was something special. All thirty seconds of it. But you get better with time, and Princess Anne plops out several little you’s, one of which grows up to be king someday. Still. You could have killed a dragon.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Heroes fight with honor at all times. There is no way in hell you are going to betray Jon. How could you ever look him in the eyes again? Besides, he is pretty fucking awesome. If you are going to win this thing, you are going to do it the right way and beat him with pride, honor, dignity, and all the other bullshit that goes with being a hero. “I’ll distract him. You knock him off the horse,” says Jon. “What about Bucktooth Barry?” “Dodge.” Jon darts off to run interference while you attempt to flank. The Rabid Fox is on to your plan though and outmaneuvers you while Bucktooth Barry hedges his position. This might go on for a while. What would a hero do? You glance up at the spectators and catch sight of the princess. A blonde haired blue eyed bombshell with a bosom to die for. She flashes you a smile of perfect pearly whites. Did you expect anything else? Take a moment to picture all the ways you would love to chivalrously plow her into next Sunday. Just try not to ejaculate prematurely in your armor. That is not heroic. No, go ahead. I can wait. Got all that out of your system? Good. With the princess’s bosom in your mind to inspire you, you charge the mounted knight. He reels the horse around and barrels toward you, eager for the challenge. As you are about to collide, you dodge. The Rabid Fox brings the horse around for another pass. You feel the blood pumping through your veins. The air tastes sweet. Colors are brighter. The world slows down. This is what being a hero is all about. You and The Rabid Fox rush each other once more. As you are about to collide, not only do you dodge, but you grab the reins as well and yank. Your arm feels like it is going to pop out of its socket, but you grit it out. The Rabid Fox flies through the air and thuds into the dirt. He stumbles to his feet and grabs a greatsword off the ground. Man, this motherfucker just does not give up. He has the reach advantage, but he is hurt. Pretty bad, judging by the fact he just fell off a galloping horse decked out in mail while brandishing a sword. He should probably be dead: or at least broken. He uses his reach to keep you at a distance, but you bide your time. He will make a mistake. Dodge, backstep, yawn, dodge. A quick glance up at the princess’s bosom. With princess bosom lighting your fire, you see an opening and dive in and drive The Rabid Fox to the ground. “Well fought, friend. I yield,” says The Rabid Fox as you hold your sword tip over him. Jon has finished off Bucktooth Barry. It is down to the two of you. > You actually, you was going to name one of the other girls Lady Fair of the Tournament. You have to be kidding me. Don’t you know anything about the antics of cliché knightly heroes? The gallant knight always marries the blue eyed blonde haired princess and enjoys blissful princess bosom until the end of his days. And you want to throw all of that away for some lowly baron’s daughter or common wench? You disgust me. Fighting for an unworthy cause, you race forward to meet Jon in good old-fashioned master-student combat. The clamor of steel on steel fills the field as you and Jon clash and slash. Sweat stings your eyes as Jon attacks with relentless vigor. You dodge, parry, and counterstrike as best you can, but you are fighting against the man who taught you everything you know. How can you possibly hope to win? You don’t even have the righteous thirst for princess bosom riling your untapped potential. For gritty lowborn buxom wenches! Well, I must admit they do have their own special brand of flavor. It just doesn’t have the same ring to it though. Drunk on visions of buxom wenches you dodge blow after blow after blow. You resist the urge to strike and continue to dodge; your heart will tell you when it is time to attack. “I taught you well,” Jon pants. “You’re dodging like a true champion.” “I learned from the best.” “Time for another lesson.” Jon backs off and takes a defensive position. “You can’t dodge if I don’t attack.” “You son of a bitch.” Jon smirks. “Trumped.” A crazy idea crosses your mind. You don’t know if it’ll work – or if it even makes any sense – but it just might be stupid enough to work. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, you begin the attack. Just as expected Jon dodges. Then you dodge his dodge, catching Jon completely by surprise. Taking a page out of Samwellington’s incredibly short book of useful combat skills you follow up with a dodge ram attack, circling Jon and barreling him into the ground. The maneuver hurts like hell, but like a true hero you ignore the pain and leap to your feet. You hold your blade over Jon’s throat. “Yield.” Jon chuckles. “Nice moves. You win.” You help Jon to his feet as the crowd erupts into a chorus of cheers and shouts. “What skill! What daring! What a fight!” The king bids you and Jon both kneel and knights the pair of you right there in the field. “They’ll be talking about this tourney for ages. I don’t even know what that was you did there Sir, but it was fantastic.” All that is left is for you to name the Lady Fair of the tournament. I still don’t approve of your anti princess antics, but you showed mettle in the melee and that is something to take pride in. Two buxom wenches who have caught your eyes on since the tourney started: the ginger haired Baron’s daughter, Ginger, and a lowly servant woman, Abbey, with rather typical and mundane features. What the servant woman lacks in grandeur she makes up for with a charming smile and pleasant cuteness all her own. Of course, naming a servant woman Lady Fair could cause some very serious problems by offending the nobles. Not that it is my place to intrude young knight, but Jon has been ogling the gingersnap all day. Take that as you will. The choice is yours after all; you earned it. > You name Ginger Lady Fair It takes a very special and talented person to handle a fire-crotched wildfire gingersnap, and quite frankly I don’t think you have what it takes. You name Ginger Lady Fair and marry her shortly after. Jon turns down your request to be your best man, saying something about a dragon he needs to kill in Irelandshire. You’re bummed, but you understand. A hero’s work is never done until the end of the story. Ginger is a freak in bed, and just as I warned, it takes all of your energy to feed her wicked sexual appetite. Life goes on and you undertake a series of adventures with your new friend The Rabid Fox. Sadly, as the years pass you and Jon grow further and further apart. Years go by without seeing or hearing from him at all. … It has been ten years since the fateful tournament, and you have a small brood of gingersnap children to go with your gingersnap wife. You doubt any of them have it in them to be heroes. There isn’t even a strawberry blonde one in the bunch. After several weeks of adventuring with The Rabid Fox, you wave farewell to him at the fork in the road and head to your respective castles. On the way, you find your lands burnt and salted. The villages are nothing but smoldering ruins and the peasants have completely vanished. Massive piles of dung litter the landscape. Urging your trusty steed, Hot Biscuit Slim, to a full gallop you arrive at your castle to find it lying in ruins. Oh, and there’s a dragon sitting on top of the pile of rubble. Jon is there too. You are starting to think Jon may be jealous about you marrying Ginger. He does have an unhealthy fixation for fire-crotched gingersnaps. “Where the hell is my family?” You draw your sword, waving it menacingly. “In my belly.” The dragon guffaws, releasing a blast of deadly dragon fire. “Thank you so much Sir Jon for raping the woman first. I love my food when it’s properly terrorized and ravaged.” “Jon! How could you?” You fall to your knees in sorrow. “You were my friend!” “Don’t listen to the dragon! She’s lying. I’ve been tracking her for weeks. She’s the mate of the dragon I killed in Irelandshire years ago. To avenge her lover, she’s trying to turn you against me by creating this incredibly unnecessary scenario to frame me for the rape, murder, and plunder of all you know and love.” “That seems excessive, Jon. Excuse me if I don’t buy that.” “It’s true! She wants to set us against each other so she can kill us both while we’re at one another’s throats.” “For what greater purpose?” “Elaborate revenge and kingdom domination.” “Hmmm, we are pretty badass. I doubt she could kill either of us one on one. And that does sound like something a dragon would do.” The dragon roars and flaps her massive wings. “I never lie about properly terrorized and ravaged food. Rape and betrayal are the perfect seasonings.” Well now, this is an unfortunate situation. Who is telling the truth? > You kill the dragon “I trust you, Jon. Let’s make this scaly freak go the way of the dinosaurs. Extinct.” “Leave the witty one-liners to me and you’ve got a deal.” Together you and Jon dispatch the dragon after a long and grueling battle. You don’t remember any of the details because your heart is too choked with grief. The important thing is the dragon is dead and you’re not. Exhausted and suffering from severe burns you and Jon slump against the ruins of your castle. “Well, so much for a heroes ending,” you say, emptying your canteen. “I guess this is what I get for breaking the cliché.” “I have a confession to make,” says Jon. “Oh, God, don’t tell me the dragon was telling the truth.” “It’s a dragon, man. They always tell half-truths. Everything I said was true. I really was tracking the dragon to kill it.” “But…” “But I got here before the dragon and raped your wife. I’m sorry, man, I have a sickness for fire-crotch. In the meantime, the dragon wasted your livelihood then came and ate Ginger out from under me.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It takes a very special and talented person to handle a fire-crotched wildfire gingersnap, and quite frankly I don’t think you have what it takes. You name Ginger Lady Fair and marry her shortly after. Jon turns down your request to be your best man, saying something about a dragon he needs to kill in Irelandshire. You’re bummed, but you understand. A hero’s work is never done until the end of the story. Ginger is a freak in bed, and just as I warned, it takes all of your energy to feed her wicked sexual appetite. Life goes on and you undertake a series of adventures with your new friend The Rabid Fox. Sadly, as the years pass you and Jon grow further and further apart. Years go by without seeing or hearing from him at all. … It has been ten years since the fateful tournament, and you have a small brood of gingersnap children to go with your gingersnap wife. You doubt any of them have it in them to be heroes. There isn’t even a strawberry blonde one in the bunch. After several weeks of adventuring with The Rabid Fox, you wave farewell to him at the fork in the road and head to your respective castles. On the way, you find your lands burnt and salted. The villages are nothing but smoldering ruins and the peasants have completely vanished. Massive piles of dung litter the landscape. Urging your trusty steed, Hot Biscuit Slim, to a full gallop you arrive at your castle to find it lying in ruins. Oh, and there’s a dragon sitting on top of the pile of rubble. Jon is there too. You are starting to think Jon may be jealous about you marrying Ginger. He does have an unhealthy fixation for fire-crotched gingersnaps. “Where the hell is my family?” You draw your sword, waving it menacingly. “In my belly.” The dragon guffaws, releasing a blast of deadly dragon fire. “Thank you so much Sir Jon for raping the woman first. I love my food when it’s properly terrorized and ravaged.” “Jon! How could you?” You fall to your knees in sorrow. “You were my friend!” “Don’t listen to the dragon! She’s lying. I’ve been tracking her for weeks. She’s the mate of the dragon I killed in Irelandshire years ago. To avenge her lover, she’s trying to turn you against me by creating this incredibly unnecessary scenario to frame me for the rape, murder, and plunder of all you know and love.” “That seems excessive, Jon. Excuse me if I don’t buy that.” “It’s true! She wants to set us against each other so she can kill us both while we’re at one another’s throats.” “For what greater purpose?” “Elaborate revenge and kingdom domination.” “Hmmm, we are pretty badass. I doubt she could kill either of us one on one. And that does sound like something a dragon would do.” The dragon roars and flaps her massive wings. “I never lie about properly terrorized and ravaged food. Rape and betrayal are the perfect seasonings.” Well now, this is an unfortunate situation. Who is telling the truth? > You kill Jon and the dragon “You bastard! How could you rape my wife!?” “I’m not a bastard!” You and Jon attack each other, and just as Jon warned, the dragon fries you both with a blast of dragon fire. With the two of you dead the dragon goes on to… get slain by The Rabid Fox a few hours later.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to be kidding me. Don’t you know anything about the antics of cliché knightly heroes? The gallant knight always marries the blue eyed blonde haired princess and enjoys blissful princess bosom until the end of his days. And you want to throw all of that away for some lowly baron’s daughter or common wench? You disgust me. Fighting for an unworthy cause, you race forward to meet Jon in good old-fashioned master-student combat. The clamor of steel on steel fills the field as you and Jon clash and slash. Sweat stings your eyes as Jon attacks with relentless vigor. You dodge, parry, and counterstrike as best you can, but you are fighting against the man who taught you everything you know. How can you possibly hope to win? You don’t even have the righteous thirst for princess bosom riling your untapped potential. For gritty lowborn buxom wenches! Well, I must admit they do have their own special brand of flavor. It just doesn’t have the same ring to it though. Drunk on visions of buxom wenches you dodge blow after blow after blow. You resist the urge to strike and continue to dodge; your heart will tell you when it is time to attack. “I taught you well,” Jon pants. “You’re dodging like a true champion.” “I learned from the best.” “Time for another lesson.” Jon backs off and takes a defensive position. “You can’t dodge if I don’t attack.” “You son of a bitch.” Jon smirks. “Trumped.” A crazy idea crosses your mind. You don’t know if it’ll work – or if it even makes any sense – but it just might be stupid enough to work. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, you begin the attack. Just as expected Jon dodges. Then you dodge his dodge, catching Jon completely by surprise. Taking a page out of Samwellington’s incredibly short book of useful combat skills you follow up with a dodge ram attack, circling Jon and barreling him into the ground. The maneuver hurts like hell, but like a true hero you ignore the pain and leap to your feet. You hold your blade over Jon’s throat. “Yield.” Jon chuckles. “Nice moves. You win.” You help Jon to his feet as the crowd erupts into a chorus of cheers and shouts. “What skill! What daring! What a fight!” The king bids you and Jon both kneel and knights the pair of you right there in the field. “They’ll be talking about this tourney for ages. I don’t even know what that was you did there Sir, but it was fantastic.” All that is left is for you to name the Lady Fair of the tournament. I still don’t approve of your anti princess antics, but you showed mettle in the melee and that is something to take pride in. Two buxom wenches who have caught your eyes on since the tourney started: the ginger haired Baron’s daughter, Ginger, and a lowly servant woman, Abbey, with rather typical and mundane features. What the servant woman lacks in grandeur she makes up for with a charming smile and pleasant cuteness all her own. Of course, naming a servant woman Lady Fair could cause some very serious problems by offending the nobles. Not that it is my place to intrude young knight, but Jon has been ogling the gingersnap all day. Take that as you will. The choice is yours after all; you earned it. > You name Abbey Lady Fair You already shunned cliché protocol by refusing to fight for princess bosom, so you may as well go full renegade and elect the servant woman Lady Fair. There is something bewitching about good old down to earth country cuteness. All of the beautiful noble Ladies can primp themselves up all they want, but they can never attain the country wild of a lowborn servant girl. A wave of awe spreads through the crowd as you proclaim Abbey Lady Fair. Fights break out, which quickly turn into full-blown riots. You grab your new ladylove and disappear in the chaos while you still have a chance to escape. “Not so fast,” snarl the high-pitched bitch voices of the weasel brothers. “You committed a great insult today. I think the king will be quite pleased when we bring him your heads.” “I won the melee. By law and tradition the right to name Lady Fair is my choice and mine alone. Now get out of my way or else I’ll have to kick your ass all over again.” “Can you fight the both of us and defend your whore at the same time?” “He doesn’t have to.” The Rabid Fox draws his blade and springs to your side. It appears you have made a friend. “My good, Sir, my sword is yours.” “Thanks, but why are you helping me? I broke the cliché.” “I don’t know what that means, but you fought with honor. And that I can respect.” The weasel brothers topple over unconscious. Jon and Ginger stand behind them each holding a big ass rock. “My way saves time.” Jon discards his rock and beams. “Now let’s get out of here so I can get it up and get it on. Know what I mean?” With that taken care of the six of you make your escape. (The Rabid Fox picked up a prostitute on the way out, that dog.) The kingdom devolves into a bloody civil war as a result of the tournament debacle. In the mayhem, the king got trampled to death and poor Princess Anne was brutally raped by no less than sixty-nine men. Princess Anne recovered from the savagery and personally hunted down every single one of the scum and forced them to castrate themselves and consume the mess. Future reference, don’t mess with her. You, Jon, and the Rabid Fox carve out your own minor kingdoms and remain close friends to this day. You feel horrible about what happened to Princess Anne and offer her a place of honor in your court, but she politely declines, harboring no bad feelings against you. She elects to travel the world as an adventurer. Your life with the newly crowned Queen Abbey is blissful and filled with bosom and country cunt. You never get the ever sought after princess bosom, but queen bosom is a nice too. I swear she called it that, not me!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Wise decision: it is best to stick with your strong suits. You excuse yourself and get up to leave. The moneylender, mutters something to himself while stroking his beard as you head toward the door. Something is really evil about this guy. You turn around and lop off his head before heading home. Yeah, that was probably a good idea. The morning of the tournament dawns crisp and cool with a slight breeze, just enough to give the ladies’ skirts a nice billowing. You feel a familiar stirring in your loins, and it is driving you insane. As a fledgling hero, you have been saving yourself for your future princess bride, but dear God has it left you on edge, not that you have not had offers. Jon was right; your scar is a chick magnet. You practically have to beat them off. A gaggle of girls giggle as you walk past them. Bitches. Whoa, where did that come from? That is not very heroic. The proper term is ‘wenches.’ Remember that next time, fledgling hero. With your minor slip into villainy over, you prepare for the melee and take your place in the fighting field. There appear to be fifty or so participants as you try to pick out some of the people the Baron told you about. You see Mad Moose McDoogle in his clumsy antlered helmet, Sir Richard Lionsmane with his shaggy locks, Sir Henry Williams a.k.a. The Rabid Fox, the Weasel brothers in their matching silver gilded armor, and Bucktooth Barry among others. “Save your energy,” says Jon. “Let the others wear themselves down. They’ll make a mistake eventually. Then you can strike when they’re weak and out of position. And stay by me. We might both be able to get knighthoods out of this.” “Don’t worry. I got your back Jon.” A blast from the bugle signals the start of the melee. The clamor of blunted steel on blunted steel rings through the fairgrounds. You and Jon fight back-to-back, just as you did against those trolls several years ago. You two are not the only ones fighting on teams. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the Weasel brothers and Mad Moose McDoogle charge The Rabid Fox. The Rabid Fox looses ground as the trio attempt to surround him. He isn’t dodging. He’s parrying. He’s done for. The Rabid Fox’s and one of the Weasel brother’s swords shatter on impact. Mad Moose McDoogle peels off the attack and rounds on the Weasel brothers, catching them unaware. He knocks them both down and out just before The Rabid Fox charges him in turn. A sword slashes inches from your cheek, and you regain your focus. Dodge, slash, dodge, dodge, slash, dodge, trip, kick. Another one bites the dust. The fighting continues until there is just you, Jon, The Rabid Fox, who has not only obtained a new sword but a horse as well, and Bucktooth Barry left. Maybe you should turn on Jon now? > You turn on Jon. Fuck this shit. You’re in it to win it. You whirl around and knock Jon out cold. Poor bastard never saw it coming. Bucktooth Barry gestures toward The Rabid Fox and the pair of you charge the mounted knight. You pull up at the last moment and watch The Rabid Fox clobber Bucktooth Barry aside the helmet. Seizing the opportunity, you bolt in, grab the reins and yank. The horse bucks, but The Rabid Fox manages to cling in the saddle. With no other options, you hack at the horse’s legs. The beat cries out in pain as The Rabid Fox topples from the dying beast. You thrust your sword, sticking the point an inch from The Rabid Fox’s throat. “Yield.” The Rabid Fox coughs blood. “You have no honor. You’re no… hero.” “Hero’s win. I won. Now yield.” Blood gushes down your leg, and you scream in pain as you collapse to your knees. What happened? What the bloody fucking hell!? The dying horse lying beside you twists its neck, reaches up and bites you in the throat. Warm blood trickles down your body. You cannot breath. You fall into a pool of blood. The Rabid Fox staggers to his feet, shaking his head. You hear Jon’s voice. “A heroic knight fights with honor at all times.” Those are the last words you hear as the world fades to black. Well that was disappointing. Killed by a horse. Apparently, you were not the hero I thought you were. He must be somewhere else. Enjoy death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Without a moment’s hesitation, you turn and rush the bandits. You are the fledgling hero of this story after all, and the hero always wins. The bandits either agree or are too shocked by your blazen stupidity and gawk at you as you close the gap. By the time one of them gathers his wits, three of them are dead at your feet. A bolt grazes your cheek as you cut the fourth man down. The fifth man, who fired the bolt, turns to flee back into the forest. He does not make it. Jon skewers him from behind. “That’s going to be quite the scar,” says Jon. “It’s not so much a deforming scar as a handsome, charismatic scar. All great heroes get them. Chicks dig it.” “I don’t have one,” whines Samwellington. Jon rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I wonder why.” The three of you hobble back to the hamlet. You have one of the priests help draft a report of the incident and send a runner to deliver it to the baron. Some unimportant nobodies go clean up the mess while you kick back and relax. Not bad for a (k)night’s work. “Good work today kid, but don’t get ahead of yourself kid,” says Jon. “You still have a long way to go to be a true knight. It takes hard work to bang a princess and ride off into the sunset. Oh, and remember.” “Dodge,” you say in unison. The baron is pleased with what he reads in the report. You become Bowie’s replacement in the hamlet guard and undertake some other minor missions with Jon and Samwellington. Soon you become a bit of a celebrity and inspiration, and your fame goes countywide. Priests take time out of their day to tutor you in your letters, and the baron invites you and Jon to take place in the next tournament he’s hosting. The king will even be there; it is supposed to be quite the shindig. Things are looking up. All you have to decide now is what event you are going to compete. > You compete in the melee. It is best to stick with your strong suits. You have combat training and can dodge with the best of them in the melee. From what you understand, dodging is frowned upon in jousting. Besides, you would have to borrow a horse from someone, and you do not have the money to ransom the horse if you lose. Debtors do not make good heroes. Jon decides to enter the melee as well. The morning of the tournament dawns crisp and cool with a slight breeze, just enough to give the ladies’ skirts a nice billowing. You feel a familiar stirring in your loins, and it is driving you insane. As a fledgling hero, you have been saving yourself for your future princess bride, but dear God has it left you on edge, not that you have not had offers. Jon was right; your scar is a chick magnet. You practically have to beat them off. A gaggle of girls giggle as you walk past them. Bitches. Whoa, where did that come from? That is not very heroic. The proper term is ‘wenches.’ Remember that next time, fledgling hero. With your minor slip into villainy over, you prepare for the melee and take your place in the fighting field. There appear to be fifty or so participants as you try to pick out some of the people the Baron told you about. You see Mad Moose McDoogle in his clumsy antlered helmet, Sir Richard Lionsmane with his shaggy locks, Sir Henry Williams a.k.a. The Rabid Fox, the Weasel brothers in their matching silver gilded armor, and Bucktooth Barry among others. “Save your energy,” says Jon. “Let the others wear themselves down. They’ll make a mistake eventually. Then you can strike when they’re weak and out of position. And stay by me. We might both be able to get knighthoods out of this.” “Don’t worry. I got your back Jon.” A blast from the bugle signals the start of the melee. The clamor of blunted steel on blunted steel rings through the fairgrounds. You and Jon fight back-to-back, just as you did against those trolls several years ago. You two are not the only ones fighting on teams. Out of the corner of your eye, you see the Weasel brothers and Mad Moose McDoogle charge The Rabid Fox. The Rabid Fox looses ground as the trio attempt to surround him. He isn’t dodging. He’s parrying. He’s done for. The Rabid Fox’s and one of the Weasel brother’s swords shatter on impact. Mad Moose McDoogle peels off the attack and rounds on the Weasel brothers, catching them unaware. He knocks them both down and out just before The Rabid Fox charges him in turn. A sword slashes inches from your cheek, and you regain your focus. Dodge, slash, dodge, dodge, slash, dodge, trip, kick. Another one bites the dust. The fighting continues until there is just you, Jon, The Rabid Fox, who has not only obtained a new sword but a horse as well, and Bucktooth Barry left. Maybe you should turn on Jon now?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>All of Jon’s training really pays off. Using your sixth sense, you see the attack coming leagues away. With all the grace of youth, you jump to the side as a horse leg soars past your ear. Quite unfortunate for Bowie, who takes the hoof straight in the face. You do not even look. The crack and thump tells you all you need to know. Dodging more chunks of horse and human, you maneuver your way to Jon and the trolls. Master and apprentice stand back-to-back as you fend off the fearsome beasts. Dodge, parry, dodge, dodge, strike, dodge, parry, dodge, dodge, dodge, strike. And so the battle goes. Troll blood drenches you as you hack away. Surprisingly, it smells like apples. “Jon,” you say, while dodging another troll fist, “they keep regenerating when I dodge them. It’s a troll blood bath, but they aren’t going down.” “DODGE!” Jon shouts. “Always DODGE!” “Then RAM,” screams Samwellington, bulling into the fray. By the sound of the collision, you think Samwellington just tackled Jon’s troll. What an awful, squishy sound. “Where the fuck have you been?” you ask. “Cowering.” Your troll swings its long hairy arms wide and claps them together, aiming for your head. You dodge and slide along the blood slicked ground, slashing the beast’s legs as you slip between them. Hopping to your feet, you deliver the finishing blow as the beast drops to its knees before splashing face first into a puddle of its own blood. Jon’s troll has met the same fate. Jon appears unwounded, though breathing heavily, leaning on his sword. “Oh, dear god! Samwellington!” Samwellington lies on the ground with a grisly gash on his robust gut that looks inches deep. “Oh don’t worry,” he says. “They just cut into the fat. I always knew eating all that pork lard would pay off one day.” Jon smirks. “See, I told you. Dodge.” “I won’t question you again Jon. Too bad about Bowie though.” “Meh, he was a fucking dick anyway.” Sam struggles to sit up. “I don’t think those trolls were the reason those people went disappearing.” You nod. “Because all this blood and gore would have been pretty hard to miss.” “No. Because there are five guys with loaded crossbows behind you.” “Shit.” > You surrender. Sometimes the odds are just stacked too highly against you. It is not that you are a coward or anything. It is just that you know a lost cause when you see one. If the situation had been different… Oh well, what is the worst that can happen? They will probably just steal your valuables and leave you on your merry way. Thankfully, none of you are women. “I yield,” you say, unbuckling your sword belt. “Some knight you are,” Jon scoffs as he rushes the bandits. Five bolts tear into his body, ripping his flesh to ribbons like a ragdoll. Samwellington squeals incomprehensible gibberish. “He never even had a chance to dodge.” A lone tear trickles down your cheek. “Poor bastard.” Jon’s eyes snap open. He glares at you as he struggles to his feet, using his sword as a crutch. “Cunt.” He takes a step toward you. Five more bolts drive into him, and he collapses in a heap. Samwellington squeals more incomprehensible gibberish. “What the-?” … Your head is throbbing and you taste dirt and blood. Bindings dig into your wrists and ankles. The bandits are dragging you through the undergrowth: rather unkindly as your head bangs into root and trunk alike. Oh dear God, I hope I don’t have a concussion. Mom always told me to wear a helmet. How long had you been unconscious? Surely, it could not have been more than a minute or two. The road should still be close. If you could only somehow manage to escape, you could gather reinforcements. You thrash in an attempt to break free, but your efforts are rewarded with nothing but a series of swift kicks to the ribs. You slip into your happy place for the remainder of the journey, day dreaming of sweet, succulent, juicy bacon and princess bosom. … A fist drills into your gut, wrenching you out of your blissful imagination. The bandit leader towers over you, looking buff and pissed. You know he is the leader because he is wearing a cape and is the only black dude in this story. “Alright, punk, you’ve got two choices.” “Naturally.” “I’m always looking for good men to join my crew, and since you surrendered like a good little bitch, you get the first crack at signing up. All you have to do is kill your friends to prove your loyalty.” “Did you have to hit me?” “Yes, it illustrates my tough guy, no bullshit attitude.” “Oh, I see. Kind of like how Dark Lords sacrifice random minions to show how evil they are.” “Exactly. You get the picture. I knew I liked you. Now go kill your friends and maybe one day you can earn the right to wed my ebony bandit princess daughter.” “Is she tight and curvy?” “What part of bandit princess don’t you get?” “Sweet.” > You accept the offer “I love princess bosom! And bacon.” “Of course you do. Underlings, untie him and give him his sword. He has friends to murder.” The bandit underlings do as commanded and direct you to the tent where Jon and Samwellington are being kept on the opposite side of the camp. The entire place is a mess of mud and slop: nothing like a rainstorm to turn a perfectly planned camp into a pile of crap. As you make your way to take care of business, you spy what can only be the ebony bandit princess. The bandit leader did not do the lass justice. She is nothing less than a dark chocolate goddess sent from the heavens themselves. She notices you staring and rubs her nipples. “Like what you see?” “Yes, Mam.” “Me too.” She winks and blows a kiss. “Think your cute?” “You can bet your scantily clad ass and bosom I do. I’m a generic hero after all. Being cute is in the job description.” “Ooooooo, a generic hero turned renegade! That really turns me on. I’m so wet.” “Yeah, all this rain is getting me soaked too.” “Cute and funny! We’re going to have a lot of fun tonight.” “I try to have fun every night. I love games. Do you like games?” “I think I just orgasmed. See that tent? Five minutes. Be there.” The ebony bandit princess saunters off, leaving you alone to complete your dark deed. Looking forward to countless nights of games and fun, you duck into the tent to kill Jon and Samwellington. They are blindfolded, bound, and gagged. They won’t even know you betrayed them! You raise your sword to do the deed, but before you can deliver the stroke, all the wonderful memories you had training under Jon stream through your mind. You remember the first time he taught you to dodge, the first time he had a random ragamuffin kid in the hamlet throw piles of shit at you, the time he told you what a clitoris is, and the time he first taught you that survival sometimes means kicking the enemy in the balls. Shit I dunno if I can do this. Perfectly understandable, but I assure you the ebony bandit princess is the only ebony chick in this universe. Is your friendship worth giving that up? She is unique, one-of-a-kind, like a special edition Poke’mon. > You ebony bandit princess, you choose you! How positively villainous, betraying your best friend and teacher. You kill Jon with a discreet thrust to the heart. Samwellington takes a little more work since you have to cut through all the fat, but in the end, the deed is done. I hope you are proud of yourself. With a minute to spare, you enter the tent the ebony bandit princess demanded. You play games together all night long, every night for years to come. Eventually, you take over and become the new bandit leader, earning a fortune in the bacon smuggling trade. Life couldn’t be better for a bandit king. For awhile you feared the ghosts of Jon and Samwellington would return to the living world and haunt you for your atrocious crimes, but thankfully you are left in peace. One night you die of a heart attack while playing your nightly game with your ebony bandit princess turned queen. The absurd amount of bacon consumption probably had something to do with that. Before you were forced to enter your happy place all those years ago, you had been able to suppress your bacon cravings. Since then you could never resist the urge. Alas, life treated you well all the same. The afterlife does not. You go to the innermost circle of hell and burn in eternal hellfire for murdering your friends in cold blood, asshole.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I love princess bosom! And bacon.” “Of course you do. Underlings, untie him and give him his sword. He has friends to murder.” The bandit underlings do as commanded and direct you to the tent where Jon and Samwellington are being kept on the opposite side of the camp. The entire place is a mess of mud and slop: nothing like a rainstorm to turn a perfectly planned camp into a pile of crap. As you make your way to take care of business, you spy what can only be the ebony bandit princess. The bandit leader did not do the lass justice. She is nothing less than a dark chocolate goddess sent from the heavens themselves. She notices you staring and rubs her nipples. “Like what you see?” “Yes, Mam.” “Me too.” She winks and blows a kiss. “Think your cute?” “You can bet your scantily clad ass and bosom I do. I’m a generic hero after all. Being cute is in the job description.” “Ooooooo, a generic hero turned renegade! That really turns me on. I’m so wet.” “Yeah, all this rain is getting me soaked too.” “Cute and funny! We’re going to have a lot of fun tonight.” “I try to have fun every night. I love games. Do you like games?” “I think I just orgasmed. See that tent? Five minutes. Be there.” The ebony bandit princess saunters off, leaving you alone to complete your dark deed. Looking forward to countless nights of games and fun, you duck into the tent to kill Jon and Samwellington. They are blindfolded, bound, and gagged. They won’t even know you betrayed them! You raise your sword to do the deed, but before you can deliver the stroke, all the wonderful memories you had training under Jon stream through your mind. You remember the first time he taught you to dodge, the first time he had a random ragamuffin kid in the hamlet throw piles of shit at you, the time he told you what a clitoris is, and the time he first taught you that survival sometimes means kicking the enemy in the balls. Shit I dunno if I can do this. Perfectly understandable, but I assure you the ebony bandit princess is the only ebony chick in this universe. Is your friendship worth giving that up? She is unique, one-of-a-kind, like a special edition Poke’mon. > You free Jon and Samwellington No, you just cannot bring yourself to betray your friends like this. You are a hero goddamn it, and being a hero sometimes means letting the legendary Poke’mon roam free. For whatever reason, the bandits just assumed you would kill your friends and did not even bother maintaining a guard on you until you actually did the dastardly deed, which makes freeing Jon and Samwellington astonishingly droll. Samwellington maintains the status quo by squealing incomprehensible gibberish. The fellow is nothing if not consistent. Freed from his bindings, Jon decks you in the jaw and kicks you in the groin once you hit the ground. “Never. Call. Me. A. Fucking. Bastard.” He kicks you once again for good measure. You curl into a ball and wheeze. “Understood.” With that out in the air, Jon reverts to all smiles and rainbows and helps you back to your feet. “Good. Thanks for cutting us loose. Ready to settle the score on these pricks?” “Yeah, just give me a minute. Still in pain here.” “Right, right.” After you recover from the assault on your genitals, you, Jon, and the squealing Samwellington launch a surprise assault on the bandit camp. They prove as unprepared and hapless as they have so far demonstrated. Stab, dodge, slash, hack, dodge, dodge, slash, dodge, stab. Soon enough only the bandit leader and the ebony bandit princess remain. “Look at what you’ve done!” he shouts. “Do you think I’ll just stand for this?” “I thought you just stood around and scratched your nuts all day,” you say. “This is a pretty piss poor operation.” “You piss pot! You threw away the opportunity of a lifetime. You could have had an ebony bandit princess. I was going to look at you as a son! Now you’ll never find true love or happiness.” “My uncle always said, ‘Every piss pot has its lid.’ I’ll find mine some day.” The bandit leader draws his scimitar and discards his cape. Oh snap, he means business now. “You son of a peasant! I’ll kill you!” The bandit leader darts forward with the speed of a black mamba. You dodge the attack like a pro. The bandit leader moves to strike again, but his own daughter stabs him in the back. The ebony bandit princess points to the same tent she did earlier. “You. Me. Tent. Now.” “Yay, I love games!” you cheer as you follow her into the tent. Well, well, well nice going hero. You have your cake and you get to eat it out too. Life goes on and you and Jon eventually receive knighthoods for your valiant efforts in your ongoing adventures. Samwellington continues to provide… company if nothing else. Ever since you entered your happy place, you have had difficulty resisting the succulent allure of bacon. Thankfully, with Samwellington around the bacon never lasts long, probably saving you from a heart attack. You marry the former ebony bandit princess and enjoy your specialty games every night. Yay games!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Sometimes the odds are just stacked too highly against you. It is not that you are a coward or anything. It is just that you know a lost cause when you see one. If the situation had been different… Oh well, what is the worst that can happen? They will probably just steal your valuables and leave you on your merry way. Thankfully, none of you are women. “I yield,” you say, unbuckling your sword belt. “Some knight you are,” Jon scoffs as he rushes the bandits. Five bolts tear into his body, ripping his flesh to ribbons like a ragdoll. Samwellington squeals incomprehensible gibberish. “He never even had a chance to dodge.” A lone tear trickles down your cheek. “Poor bastard.” Jon’s eyes snap open. He glares at you as he struggles to his feet, using his sword as a crutch. “Cunt.” He takes a step toward you. Five more bolts drive into him, and he collapses in a heap. Samwellington squeals more incomprehensible gibberish. “What the-?” … Your head is throbbing and you taste dirt and blood. Bindings dig into your wrists and ankles. The bandits are dragging you through the undergrowth: rather unkindly as your head bangs into root and trunk alike. Oh dear God, I hope I don’t have a concussion. Mom always told me to wear a helmet. How long had you been unconscious? Surely, it could not have been more than a minute or two. The road should still be close. If you could only somehow manage to escape, you could gather reinforcements. You thrash in an attempt to break free, but your efforts are rewarded with nothing but a series of swift kicks to the ribs. You slip into your happy place for the remainder of the journey, day dreaming of sweet, succulent, juicy bacon and princess bosom. … A fist drills into your gut, wrenching you out of your blissful imagination. The bandit leader towers over you, looking buff and pissed. You know he is the leader because he is wearing a cape and is the only black dude in this story. “Alright, punk, you’ve got two choices.” “Naturally.” “I’m always looking for good men to join my crew, and since you surrendered like a good little bitch, you get the first crack at signing up. All you have to do is kill your friends to prove your loyalty.” “Did you have to hit me?” “Yes, it illustrates my tough guy, no bullshit attitude.” “Oh, I see. Kind of like how Dark Lords sacrifice random minions to show how evil they are.” “Exactly. You get the picture. I knew I liked you. Now go kill your friends and maybe one day you can earn the right to wed my ebony bandit princess daughter.” “Is she tight and curvy?” “What part of bandit princess don’t you get?” “Sweet.” > You refuse the offer There is no way you can betray your friends like that, even if it means certain death. They would never betray you. That manner of treachery is the stuff villains are made of, and that is a long dark road you want no part of. Villains never get princess bosom! You’re also not too sure about their bacon situation. “I’ll never join you!” “Really? What a pity. I suppose I’ll have to waste you now.” The bandit leader draws his scimitar. “Ebony, get in here!” A slick dark chocolate goddess enters the tent: scantily clad in bosom emphasizing furs. “Yes, father?” “I wanted this chump to see what he was missing out on. Flash him a little more skin… no not that much! Put your top back on!” “Wait a second,” you say. “You named your daughter Ebony? Isn’t that crass?” “I’m not very creative, alright. I don’t even have a fucking name of my own.” “I’m just going to call you Sinbad. Because you sin and you’re bad. Get it?” “Oh mother-fucking merciful God!” The bandit leader, now known as Sinbad hacks your body to bloody bits with his scimitar while Ebony rubs her nipples in the background. Something tells me she has daddy issues. Anyway, you’re dead, so you won’t get to explore them. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are a local swineherd in the village of Jacquescrappe and your two best friends in the whole world are your two favorite pigs "Oinky" and "Snout". You have recently finished your daily chores when you hear a terrifying scream. Your village is known for suffering frequent hit and run attacks from the creatures in the mountainside and those that get taken never come back. By the time you get there, it is already too late. And to make matters worse, it was your little sister that was taken this time. You've been dealing with this shit your whole life, but this is the last straw. Somebody has to take care of those foul beasts! You pick up a pitchfork only to be stopped by the gentle hand on your shoulder. You turn and see Brandolf the Bray gazing down at you from behind a beard that is quickly encompassing his whole face. He tells you that to stop the monsters you must focus on assassinating the Craxil, for without their leader the rest will likely vacate the area (or at least fall into disunity making them easier for the local militia to handle individually). Many other villagers have arrived on the scene and they obviously share the same sentiments as you. Seeing the looks in their eyes, Brandolf decides he's going to have to organize a council meeting to discuss the matter before anyone gets it in their mind to do anything stupid. > You to The Council Meeting Then Brandolf the Bray manages to convince the townspeople to stow their torches and pitchforks and agree to a council meeting but it is clear from everyone's faces that they would not accept any outcome that did not involve taking immediate action. Brandolf's magic may be formidible, but against a numerous and organized foe he would not get far. The townspeople (yourself included) are but farmers and peasants and would be hardpressed to slay a hackneyed donkey, let alone a monster. Most of the creatures that come out of the mountains are lumbering, humanoid creatures that stand about 10 feet tall and are covered by brown fur from head to toe. They have a hunch in their backs, and the villagers have taken to calling them humunculi. While these creatures are certainly new to you, you are warned that there are even more dangerous creatures lurking in the depths of the mountainside. Now you begin to look at the towering rockface with a mixture of curiosity and dread. "We need to deal with this Craxil thing NOW" an angry voice shouts. "How long must be culled before the royal military arrives to aid us?" Of course, the royal military they speak of is from the kingdom of Mihtana, which is a considerable distance away. "The royal military has never been willing to send any military force out to our village, why should this be any different?" This comment is true, you think. The village of Jacquescrappe is a considerable distance away from civilization and the kingdom of Mihtana sees it as being of no strategic value. Even if it was under direct threat of annihiliation, you doubt anyone would go through the trouble of committing a significant military force out to such a far away place. In fact, Brandolf is the only outsider that has bothered to help the village in a long time. The rest of the townspeople immediately begin arguing over whether they should stay and defend the land of their ancestors or simply leave. Others put forth ideas on how to trap the Craxil that are quickly dismissed by Brandolf as stupid. Suddenly, Brandolf makes an announcement. "I have a poison, aquired from an alchemist in Lima, that can kill the Craxil. Even trace amounts of this deadly substance can kill even the largest of creatures". > You listen Intently to Brandolf's Plan "The trouble is that this poison must be ingested or applied to a blade, simply splashing your opponent with it will not suffice." "But how will anyone even get that far? Without royal aid, how can anyone even hope to reach the Craxil?" At this point, many in the council are reminded of your exploits at last year's "capture the flag" contests. In fact, at every annual festival you manage to outfox your opponents, evade their numbers, and sneak up on their flag. Your success record was almost unrealistic. Suddenly, the council gets it in their minds to send you in with the poison. In fact, you're alarmed by how quickly they're all agreeing to this idea despite the fact you haven't yet. Then again, you've always sensed that as a swineherd you've never really been well liked or considered "valuable" by the townsfolk so this response isn't entirely unexpected. Nonetheless, you aren't going to go anywhere or do anything that you haven't agreed to do first. Unlike the others in the room, Brandolf has the decency to walk up and ask your opinion on the matter. He is usually dismissive of stupid ideas, but he seems to think this one might actually work. You take a moment to decide how to respond. > You accept The Offer And Begin Your Quest You resent that the rest of the village is so quick to agree to such an idea without bothering to consult you first, but these creatures carried off your sister and they are going to have to pay for that. Besides, this shit has to stop. You inform Brandolf that you agree and he smiles warmly. "Thank you young one, you are certainly bold to undertake such a suicidal mission." "Well, what choice do I have right?" He hands you the vial of poison, a short sword, a longbow, and a quiver of basic iron arrows. For once, some of the people of the village actually look at you with respect but then you realize that they are commenting on how stupid you must be under their breath. The ingrates! Still, you need to focus on the task at hand. Brandolf reminds you that the Craxil will be larger that the other creatures and that you should seek to evade rather than engage its underlings. At this point, you realize you have a problem... You stink! The stench of swine manure spreads forth like body odor of a sweaty fat girl and you realize you are going to have to do something about this if you expect to succeed in your quest. The council members may be used to it as this is a farming community, but the creatures almost certainly will not be. You are going to have to consider how you are going to go about dealing with this issue. > You try The Fancy Cologne You know that a friend of yours has recently returned from his trip to the city and brought some cologne with him. You've heard that it does wonders for a man's scent and promptly apply some from a bottle labeled "Musque". Coincidentally, it does seem rather musky. Confident in your newfound manly scent you head into the mountains and prepare to meet destiny. The wind changes direction and your enemy is aware of your position before you even reach the first plateau on the trail. It isn't long before the humunculi are upon you, ripping you from limb to limb. You tried to defend yourself with your short sword but hey... these are monsters and you've got the upper body strength of an anorexic girl. They find you to be an unsatisfying meal. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You resent that the rest of the village is so quick to agree to such an idea without bothering to consult you first, but these creatures carried off your sister and they are going to have to pay for that. Besides, this shit has to stop. You inform Brandolf that you agree and he smiles warmly. "Thank you young one, you are certainly bold to undertake such a suicidal mission." "Well, what choice do I have right?" He hands you the vial of poison, a short sword, a longbow, and a quiver of basic iron arrows. For once, some of the people of the village actually look at you with respect but then you realize that they are commenting on how stupid you must be under their breath. The ingrates! Still, you need to focus on the task at hand. Brandolf reminds you that the Craxil will be larger that the other creatures and that you should seek to evade rather than engage its underlings. At this point, you realize you have a problem... You stink! The stench of swine manure spreads forth like body odor of a sweaty fat girl and you realize you are going to have to do something about this if you expect to succeed in your quest. The council members may be used to it as this is a farming community, but the creatures almost certainly will not be. You are going to have to consider how you are going to go about dealing with this issue. > You roll Around In Mud And Grass So You Smell More "Earthy"... Like The Monsters Do You reason that many of the monsters that come down from the mountainside smell a bit "earthy" so you try rolling around in the mud and grass to try and acheive that same smell for yourself. Unfortunately, it doesn't mask the stench of the hog manure that still stains your pants and boots. It isn't long before the humunculi are aware of your presence. The villagers got to see their hero pounced on and torn apart before he even got out of sight range. Too bad. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You resent that the rest of the village is so quick to agree to such an idea without bothering to consult you first, but these creatures carried off your sister and they are going to have to pay for that. Besides, this shit has to stop. You inform Brandolf that you agree and he smiles warmly. "Thank you young one, you are certainly bold to undertake such a suicidal mission." "Well, what choice do I have right?" He hands you the vial of poison, a short sword, a longbow, and a quiver of basic iron arrows. For once, some of the people of the village actually look at you with respect but then you realize that they are commenting on how stupid you must be under their breath. The ingrates! Still, you need to focus on the task at hand. Brandolf reminds you that the Craxil will be larger that the other creatures and that you should seek to evade rather than engage its underlings. At this point, you realize you have a problem... You stink! The stench of swine manure spreads forth like body odor of a sweaty fat girl and you realize you are going to have to do something about this if you expect to succeed in your quest. The council members may be used to it as this is a farming community, but the creatures almost certainly will not be. You are going to have to consider how you are going to go about dealing with this issue. > You just Take A Bath This is a no brainer. If you want to shed the stench of pig crap then take a bath and get a change of clothes! You head down to the bathouse and a tall, dark haired girl prepares your bath. The bath is relaxing and you take special care to dawn an all tan outfit as you suspect it may help you blend in with the rockface better than your usual swineherding outfits will. When you are done, you realize you haven't any scent at all and gather up the equipment you were given at the council. It is time to go. The villagers are gathered at the base of the mountainside cheering you on as you walk forth. Despite their cheering you know they don't really give a shit about you and you question why you are still taking this kind of risk, but you move forward with it anyway. You continue up the path and reach the first plateau that overlooks the village. There are two caves that go down deeper into the rockface. You remember seeing humunculi emerge from these caves so you reason that this would be a good place to being your search. All that's left to decide is which cave you wish to enter. > The Left Cave You are quickly beginning to wish Brandolf had given you a torch, but given the nature of your quest he probably figured you didn't need to draw attention to yourself. Still, you can barely see more than a few feet in front of your face and it is only getting darker as you continue further inward. You run your hand along the right wall and move carefully, scouting each step with your foot to avoid a fall. Your heart is racing and you know that at any moment, something might come out and attack. Eventually, the cave leads into a small inner chamber with a campfire in the middle. Three humunculi are sitting around the campfire, roasting human limbs on a stick as if they were marshmellows. Fortunately, they are not aware of your presence and the campfire enables you to see there are several tunnels leading out from this chamber. On the other side of the chamber is a tunnel that goes deeper in, but you won't be able to go down this way undetected as long as the humunculi are here. There are also nondescript passsageways to the left and the right (large and small respectively) that you can reach as long as you stay in the shadows. > You sneak Down The Large Passageway You press your body firmly against the back wall of the chamber and slowly make your way over to the entrance of the large passageway on the left. Occasionally the campfire will flicker light in your general direction giving you pause, but the humunculi are totally unaware of your presence. Eventually, you manage to make it to the passageway and it doesn't take long before you reach another chamber. You are greatly disheartened by what you see up ahead. A larger than normal humunculus stands in the center of the fairly well lit chamber and judging from his tribal decor you figure he must be someone of rank. The passageway continues at the other end of the chamber, but this creature blocks your path. At the moment, he is looking off to the side and does not notice your presence. You weigh your options. > You charge Him With Your Sword Drawn. Only One Of Him After All. You may be weaker than a Japanese schoolgirl but there is only one enemy to face here and you have the element of surprise! Perhaps if this were just an ordinary humunculus this would have worked, but it becomes apparent that this well decorated character is something altogether different. His reaction time is excellent and he whirls around to back hand you before you can get within range to strike. This sends you sprawling across the floor and knocks the sword out of your hand and beyond your reach. Before you can get up, he leaps over and grasps your neck. As he squeezes the life out of you, the three from the other room come down and you quickly realize all hope is lost. There is no point in fighting now, it is simply... THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press your body firmly against the back wall of the chamber and slowly make your way over to the entrance of the large passageway on the left. Occasionally the campfire will flicker light in your general direction giving you pause, but the humunculi are totally unaware of your presence. Eventually, you manage to make it to the passageway and it doesn't take long before you reach another chamber. You are greatly disheartened by what you see up ahead. A larger than normal humunculus stands in the center of the fairly well lit chamber and judging from his tribal decor you figure he must be someone of rank. The passageway continues at the other end of the chamber, but this creature blocks your path. At the moment, he is looking off to the side and does not notice your presence. You weigh your options. > You draw Your Bow And Try To Kill Him From A Distance Before He Realizes You're Here. The room is too well lit to try and sneak past him and lunging forth at a superior foe with a short sword doesn't strike your fancy either. You decide to get creative and pull out the bow that Brandolf gave you in the council before you left. You ran a few practice shots before departing on this journey and you know you can at least hit a general target, though you'd be pretty hard pressed to achieve any kind of real accuracy. The first shot whizzes past the creatures head and into a nearby pillar of rock. His eyes go wide as he looks at the arrow then turns to look directly at you. You immediately pull back another arrow and take aim knowing this shot is going to make or break destiny. You aim for his chest as that is the broadest target available and the iron arrowhead may even reach his heart. As he lunges forth you close your eyes and release... You half expected you'd be dead by now but when you open your eyes you discover your arrow went through the creatures neck. He is now on his knees bleeding profusely and clutching his throat. Wasting no time, you finish him with your short sword, then dive into the darkest corner. The three humunculi heard the ruckus and have come down from their campfire to see what the commotion was. When they discover their fallen comrade, they go into a rage and start to look around. You dig into the corner as much as you can and clutch your sword. Two of the creatures move towards the unexplored passageway on the other side of the chamber while the third seems to be gravitating closer to your position. You begin to wonder if you should strike him by surprise while you still can or hope you can try to remain undiscovered. > You strike Now While You Have The Chance! Instinctively, you know you are going to be discovered if he gets any closer. You aren't sure how you are going to go about escaping the other two, but you are gonna have to kill this one before it gets any closer. Without warning you lunge forth and put your short sword through the creature's belly. You were actually aiming for the heart and the creature moved so I guess that says something about your swordsman skill. Nonetheless, it proved effective at killing the creature. You waste no time at all in bolting back up to the original chamber with the campsite and the other two will round the corner any second. You need to make a decision FAST! The large pathway (on the right wall as you enter) is now inexplicably barred but you can still run back outside the cave or down the passageway that was previously inaccessable due to their presence. The adrenaline floods your body and your survival instincts take over. You immediately decide to... > You run Down The Previously Inaccessable Passageway You run down the passageway that you were previously unable to get to while the three humunculi were at the campfire. Unfortunately, the humunculi have chosen the same path. You aren't sure if it is because they saw you or because of bad luck, but they are not far behind you now. You reach another chamber and find a large, demonic looking creature blocking your path. Before you can even think about how to describe this thing you feel the humunculi grab you from behind and pull you to the ground. They are about to stomp you to death when the demonic looking creature disintigrates them on the spot. "Nobody takes my prey in my domain. Tell me little thing, what are you here to do?" This thing looks like a large floating eye with multiple smaller eyes attached atop its head. You realize this thing is a beholder and soon you find yourself paralyzed in its gaze. That's what you get for staring into its eye I guess. "Answer me puny one, why are you here in my domain?" You are too terrified to answer, but this creature appears to grow irritated by your silence so you muster all the courage you've got and speak up "I'm here to slay the Craxil" you proclaim, terrified of how this creature will respond to such a bold statement. "HA! Amusing little one, someone of your strength doesn't have what it takes but it would entertain me to see how you die in the Craxil's mountains. Answer this riddle correctly, and I will permit you to continue through to the other side of my domain. Answer incorrectly, and you will share the same fate as your pursuers. Are you ready?" "As ready as I'll ever be" you squeak. "Very well!" it bellows, clearly enjoying every bit of this. "I am a vast canyon that spans beyond sight. I am without end and have been a part of every man whenever there is trouble. What am I?" > You boundless Hope "Indeed" the creature states. "You are clearly in trouble right now as you are helpless in my domain, yet like the rest of your kind you retain hope of survival somehow. I guess this means I'll have to let you through to the other side, but hear this: once you reach the other side, I'll not permit you back in so this is a one way deal. Get going." You wanted to protest as you can't guarantee you won't need to come back here later in search of the Craxil but let's face it... you aren't willing to argue with this thing either. Just stay focused on the goal and avoid unnecessary conflict with anything other than the Craxil. You cross to the other side and a gate closes behind you. The beholder gives you a look as if to say "good-bye", then turns and moves the other way. You have no choice but to move foward from here. > You time To Move Forward You are standing on a narrow plateau in the rugged mountainous region beyond your village. Unlike the brownish/tan rockface you see near your village, the rocks in this region are more redish and vibrant looking. You see a path leading forward and you decide to follow it. On the plus side, you haven't encountered any hostile creatures so far. You walk for at least a few miles and it appears to extend beyond your sight. You curse at your luck and begin to slump into depression when you realize you don't even know where to fnd this Craxil thing in the first place. You decide to build a campfire for the night, think things over, and gather some rest. As you are doing so, a strange man lumbers out from behind a large rock and begins to beg you for help. "Please, it won't take long. My caravan was beset upon by foul creatures and I fear for my families safety. You must help me!" You pause. It seems odd that a human would be up here in such a hostile region, let alone a caravan. But this is definitely the face of a human and he shows no signs of hostility. "Why are you up here anyway"? you ask. "The Craxil and his followers will kill anyone that wanders into their mountainous territory." "We got lost trying to find our way to Jacquescrappe village, perhaps you've heard of it"? "Yeah... I just came from there... but I don't think you want to go back that way, you won't get far." "Look, I don't wish to be rude, but my family is in danger and I need your help NOW!" At this point, the man turns and runs down the path. You call out to him to stop but he keeps going. You aren't sure if you would be of much help to him in battle, but you aren't sure how you would feel about abandoning him like that either. Time to decide... > You ignore The Man, There Is Something Fishy About That Fellow You decide to just ignore the man as he runs on ahead. Part of you feels like an absolute dickhead for doing this, but you sense there is something strange about how a human caravan is operating this far into the Craxil's lands in the first place. And even if it is true, the man is physically stronger than you are so what kind of help do you honestly think you can provide in a situation that has him scared? Most importantly of all... your gut tells you there is something fishy about that fellow and you think it best to let him run on ahead. You wait until he is out of sight, then wait a while longer and continue your jouney. As you continue on your journey you wonder if you made the right choice. I mean, what if the man's family really was in danger and you could have made a difference? Did you make the right call? You console yourself by reminding yourself of the importance of your own mission and how you cannot afford to take unnecessary chances. Just as you are having these thoughts, you discover the man who approached you earlier as well as four others standing in the middle of the beaten path with their heads down. It looks like you aren't done with them after all... > You what Do They Want? The man you just dismissed earlier is standing at the front of the pack. You knew there was something off about that earlier request and seeing this display only reaffirms that you were right to avoid them in the first place. They are all looking down at the ground but now he is looking up directly at you with a creepy smile on his face. "So, you saw through our little ambush scheme did you?" he sneers. "What is it you want?" "Quite simply we're aware of your quest to reach the Craxil and we are not prepared to allow it." At this point their heads begin to twist and contort and their skulls appear to come out of their mouths. It is almost as though they were never human at all but part of some kind of disguise. In fact, it is now readily apparent that this is the case. You are now looking at five maniacal looking skeletons armed with an assortment of swords and hand axes. They seem like they are eager to get things started and in fact, they are all rushing down the beaten path towards you. You turn the other way until you can decide what to do and despite what you've been told about the undead, you discover they are perfectly capable of keeping pace with you. You know you aren't going to be able to take on five of these guys and they seem intent on sticking together during the pursuit. To your left is another cave you've chosen to pass up on your journey, figuring it was just another humunculus den. Perhaps, if you are lucky, you can lose your pursuers in there. Alternatively, you could always try climbing the steep rockface off to your right. You've had plenty of climbing experience as a kid and somehow you hope these skeletons won't be able to follow you. You could also turn around and start unloading arrows into your enemies. They may be keeping pace with you, but you still have a heck of a head start and you'd wager you could release quite a few before they catch up to you. It's up to you... > You try To Lose Them In The Cave The cave is dark, and dark is good given your need for evasion. You dart forth into the cave hoping not to alert any inhabitants present inside. You know you have a good headstart on your pursuers so you take the time to quietly move in and survey your surroundings. Just inside the cave is a half eaten corpse (one of the villagers that was taken from the village a few weeks ago in fact). The stench is overpowering but you persist down the next passageway and into a large chamber with a multitude of standing rocks. Another passage off the left wall goes deeper in, but you choose instead to find a hiding place behind one of the standing rocks here. For quite a while you wait, thinking the skeletal warriors that chased you are not going to be coming. Just as you are about to stand up and leave you see them coming down the corridor. They fan out and are now scoping out all the possible hiding spots in this room so it won't be long before they find yours. You look back at the passageway on the left and notice that although they are not up, there are bars in the floor that can be raised to block the passage. You can only hope that the lever on the wall controls this mechanism. In a flash you jump up and run towards this passage. You throw up the lever and step back. The bars raise in time to stop the other four from getting in, but the lead one who tried to fool you earlier managed to get in before the bars raised and now brandishes his sword at you. In self defense you draw your own sword and prepare to thwart his advance. He is fast and it takes all your concentration just to block his attacks from hitting you. Given you are in a close range battle in a part of the cave that may or may not have other inhabitants, you don't really see much use in running. You figure you are going to have to continue this fight with your sword but another item catches your eye. Off to the side is a good size rock that would fit easily in the palm of your hand. Given the opportunity you could try and bash the skeleton in the face with it. > You sword Fight There is no time to try newfangled plans, you just need to survive. You parry his most of its attacks but take several slashes. Nothing major, but damn if it doesn't hurt and you are losing blood. You manage to land a blow against his shoulder and it goes halfway through the bone, but that doesn't stop the skeleton from fighting. In fact, before you can get your sword back out he lands a blow against your shoulder and it deals a lot more damage. You struggle to keep up with your opponent but you are losing a lot of blood now and this monster is picking up the pace. In desperation you suddenly drop any pretense of defense and lunge forth at your opponent. You bring your sword down through several ribs but this does little to phase him and now you are wide open for the final blow. Perhaps this would have gone better if you remembered that bladed weapons are only effective against enemies with flesh and blood. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The cave is dark, and dark is good given your need for evasion. You dart forth into the cave hoping not to alert any inhabitants present inside. You know you have a good headstart on your pursuers so you take the time to quietly move in and survey your surroundings. Just inside the cave is a half eaten corpse (one of the villagers that was taken from the village a few weeks ago in fact). The stench is overpowering but you persist down the next passageway and into a large chamber with a multitude of standing rocks. Another passage off the left wall goes deeper in, but you choose instead to find a hiding place behind one of the standing rocks here. For quite a while you wait, thinking the skeletal warriors that chased you are not going to be coming. Just as you are about to stand up and leave you see them coming down the corridor. They fan out and are now scoping out all the possible hiding spots in this room so it won't be long before they find yours. You look back at the passageway on the left and notice that although they are not up, there are bars in the floor that can be raised to block the passage. You can only hope that the lever on the wall controls this mechanism. In a flash you jump up and run towards this passage. You throw up the lever and step back. The bars raise in time to stop the other four from getting in, but the lead one who tried to fool you earlier managed to get in before the bars raised and now brandishes his sword at you. In self defense you draw your own sword and prepare to thwart his advance. He is fast and it takes all your concentration just to block his attacks from hitting you. Given you are in a close range battle in a part of the cave that may or may not have other inhabitants, you don't really see much use in running. You figure you are going to have to continue this fight with your sword but another item catches your eye. Off to the side is a good size rock that would fit easily in the palm of your hand. Given the opportunity you could try and bash the skeleton in the face with it. > You bash Skeleton With Rock You grab the rock you noticed earlier almost immediately, then go back to blocking your opponents attacks. The enemy is attacking fast and furious and it takes all your concentration to block. Even so, you only manage to block most of its attacks and take a few slashes. Nothing major, but you are losing blood. Eventually you see your opening and you ram the rock into the creature's skull with the full force of your adrenaline infused arm. You hear a satisfying crack as the front of the skull crumbles and the creature stumbles back. Realizing how brittle this thing must be, you grab its wrist before it can regain composure and bring the rock down again, taking off its sword arm at the elbow. Another crack at the spine for good measure and you are confident the creature is dead. The other four look on angrily and scream but the bars prevent them from doing anything about it, so you decide to move on deeper into the cave in hopes of finding another way out of here. The cave only gets darker and darker as you go in deeper and you find it odd that there are no other inhabitants in this region... until you see a pair of large white eyes staring back at you from the darkness in the next cavern. It doesn't appear willing to leave the chamber in pursuit of you, but you cannot return the way you came as the skeletons are still banging on the bars you left behind. Studying the creatures behavior a little more, you begin to suspect it is a grue. You've heard stories of grues from nearly every adventurer you've ever met. These things are the leading cause of death amongst those in the adventuring profession. Even higher than dragons, vampires, and Lindsay Lohan. In fact, while grues are believed to be organic and corporeal, no adventurer has ever actually killed one before. You struggle to remember what the adventurers told you when dealing with a grue. It has a certain weakness, but for the life of you you simply cannot remember what that is... You're going to have to guess. > A Grue's Weakness Is Garlic, you apply It To Myself Of course! Garlic! You still have some garlic powder in your pack that you use to flavor your pork rines. You douse yourself with it and make a mental note to bathe later so the other monsters don't notice your scent. You confidently walk into the dark chamber ahead, certain that the grue will flee your garlic stench. As you confidently strut through the creatures chamber you think to yourself, "Why can't all my challenges be this...." You don't get enough time to finish that thought. You were eaten by a grue. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the rock you noticed earlier almost immediately, then go back to blocking your opponents attacks. The enemy is attacking fast and furious and it takes all your concentration to block. Even so, you only manage to block most of its attacks and take a few slashes. Nothing major, but you are losing blood. Eventually you see your opening and you ram the rock into the creature's skull with the full force of your adrenaline infused arm. You hear a satisfying crack as the front of the skull crumbles and the creature stumbles back. Realizing how brittle this thing must be, you grab its wrist before it can regain composure and bring the rock down again, taking off its sword arm at the elbow. Another crack at the spine for good measure and you are confident the creature is dead. The other four look on angrily and scream but the bars prevent them from doing anything about it, so you decide to move on deeper into the cave in hopes of finding another way out of here. The cave only gets darker and darker as you go in deeper and you find it odd that there are no other inhabitants in this region... until you see a pair of large white eyes staring back at you from the darkness in the next cavern. It doesn't appear willing to leave the chamber in pursuit of you, but you cannot return the way you came as the skeletons are still banging on the bars you left behind. Studying the creatures behavior a little more, you begin to suspect it is a grue. You've heard stories of grues from nearly every adventurer you've ever met. These things are the leading cause of death amongst those in the adventuring profession. Even higher than dragons, vampires, and Lindsay Lohan. In fact, while grues are believed to be organic and corporeal, no adventurer has ever actually killed one before. You struggle to remember what the adventurers told you when dealing with a grue. It has a certain weakness, but for the life of you you simply cannot remember what that is... You're going to have to guess. > A Grue's Weakness Is Noise, you Shout Loudly As you Enter Of course! Many creatures are frightened by loud noises, grues must be too! You march into the chamber singing "FRIDAY FRIDAY" as well as "MY MILKSHAKE BRINGS ALL THE BOYS TO THE YARD..." certain that this will scare the creature. Sadly, despite your frightening choice in music, the creature does not appear to be phased. You were eaten by a grue. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the rock you noticed earlier almost immediately, then go back to blocking your opponents attacks. The enemy is attacking fast and furious and it takes all your concentration to block. Even so, you only manage to block most of its attacks and take a few slashes. Nothing major, but you are losing blood. Eventually you see your opening and you ram the rock into the creature's skull with the full force of your adrenaline infused arm. You hear a satisfying crack as the front of the skull crumbles and the creature stumbles back. Realizing how brittle this thing must be, you grab its wrist before it can regain composure and bring the rock down again, taking off its sword arm at the elbow. Another crack at the spine for good measure and you are confident the creature is dead. The other four look on angrily and scream but the bars prevent them from doing anything about it, so you decide to move on deeper into the cave in hopes of finding another way out of here. The cave only gets darker and darker as you go in deeper and you find it odd that there are no other inhabitants in this region... until you see a pair of large white eyes staring back at you from the darkness in the next cavern. It doesn't appear willing to leave the chamber in pursuit of you, but you cannot return the way you came as the skeletons are still banging on the bars you left behind. Studying the creatures behavior a little more, you begin to suspect it is a grue. You've heard stories of grues from nearly every adventurer you've ever met. These things are the leading cause of death amongst those in the adventuring profession. Even higher than dragons, vampires, and Lindsay Lohan. In fact, while grues are believed to be organic and corporeal, no adventurer has ever actually killed one before. You struggle to remember what the adventurers told you when dealing with a grue. It has a certain weakness, but for the life of you you simply cannot remember what that is... You're going to have to guess. > A Grue's Weakness Is It's Reflection, you Hold Up A Reflective Surface As you Enter Upon reflection you decide that a mirror would be your best bet against this creature. Grues are afraid of their reflection right? You go back and find an old iron shield half buried under dirt. It is mostly caked with crud and rust, but still operable as a ghetto-esque mirror. You hold the mirror in the direction of the grue and move along the wall looking for the next passage. Suddenly you realize the stupidity of your mistake. It's pitch black down here, how is this thing even gonna see its reflection in the first place?!? Sadly, you learn all to late that your new concerns are well founded. You were eaten by a grue. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the rock you noticed earlier almost immediately, then go back to blocking your opponents attacks. The enemy is attacking fast and furious and it takes all your concentration to block. Even so, you only manage to block most of its attacks and take a few slashes. Nothing major, but you are losing blood. Eventually you see your opening and you ram the rock into the creature's skull with the full force of your adrenaline infused arm. You hear a satisfying crack as the front of the skull crumbles and the creature stumbles back. Realizing how brittle this thing must be, you grab its wrist before it can regain composure and bring the rock down again, taking off its sword arm at the elbow. Another crack at the spine for good measure and you are confident the creature is dead. The other four look on angrily and scream but the bars prevent them from doing anything about it, so you decide to move on deeper into the cave in hopes of finding another way out of here. The cave only gets darker and darker as you go in deeper and you find it odd that there are no other inhabitants in this region... until you see a pair of large white eyes staring back at you from the darkness in the next cavern. It doesn't appear willing to leave the chamber in pursuit of you, but you cannot return the way you came as the skeletons are still banging on the bars you left behind. Studying the creatures behavior a little more, you begin to suspect it is a grue. You've heard stories of grues from nearly every adventurer you've ever met. These things are the leading cause of death amongst those in the adventuring profession. Even higher than dragons, vampires, and Lindsay Lohan. In fact, while grues are believed to be organic and corporeal, no adventurer has ever actually killed one before. You struggle to remember what the adventurers told you when dealing with a grue. It has a certain weakness, but for the life of you you simply cannot remember what that is... You're going to have to guess. > A Grue's Weakness Is Light, you Make A Fire With Some Wood And Tinder Grues are afraid of light! This is why it won't leave its pitch black chamber to pursue me. Fortunately, you still have some flint and tinder. You originally brought it with the intention of building a campfire along the journey but things change I guess. You light a piece of wood and wrap a piece of torn clothing (soaked in cave water) around the middle to help prevent the flames from going to far down near your hands. You need to move fast as this is not going to last for long and you don't want to be stuck down there without light. As anticipated, the grue backs away in a feverish effort to avoid the light your flame is generating. You are pleased to see that the passageway at the end of this chamber has a faint light source at the end (although it is very far away). Hauling ass as fast as you can, you head down the tunnel towards the light source as your makeshift torch is already beginning to burn itself to completion. By the time it does, you've already made it close enough to the nearby light source that the grue wouldn't dare follow. It seems the light is being generated by a series of torches that line a set of tracks. It is then that you realize this cave is not really a cave at all but a mine occupied by numerous kobolds. You were always raised to believe that kobolds had beards and wore candles on their heads, but seeing them now you realize how ridiculous that claim actually is. Who came up with that anyway? In reality, they are like miniture lizard folk and very scrawny too (even by your scrawny standards). Staying at the edge of the light source, you decide to observe these creatures for a little while before planning a move. You are reasonably certain you could handle one or possibly even two in a fight but you most certainly can't charge in or you will be overwhelmed in an instant. Of particular notice is the kobold on the high ledge that is sporting a purple overcoat and barking orders at the laboring kobolds in whatever the hell language these things are speaking. It occurs to you that these kobolds may very well be working for the Craxil, in which case you would very much like to get your hands on that one in the purple & green coat. You tire of wandering the mountainside aimlessly, narrowly evading one death after another all the while having no idea where this Craxil actually is. Perhaps you could find some way of getting to him quietly and making him talk. There are a few problems with this plan. For starters, the torches provide plenty of illumination in this region and there are countless kobold laborers that would detect your presence and tear you to shreds if you just went in as things are now. You entertain the idea of making them chase you back to the grue, but you don't really have enough wood for another makeshift torch. Even if you were to sneak along the wall on either side, there is still enough light in there to give away your location. This is going to be tough. You observe them more and try to formulate some kind of cogent strategy when you notice a kobold has to emerge from a nearby storage chamber to bring wood to the torches. The storage chamber isn't illuminated and you didn't even notice it was there in the beginning. That gives you a couple of ideas. For one, you could hide in the storage chamber until the next kobold comes in to keep the torches going, then kill him quickly. Once the torches go out, you can head to the head kobold in charge. Alternatively, you can set the entire room on fire, which would undoubtedly create a diversion. This plan is risky given that the fire would undoubtedly light the place up quite a bit, but it would also eliminate the tinder they need to light any torches later. > You hide In The Storage Room And Kill The Kobold You sneak into the storage room and wait for almost 2 hours before the next kobold comes in. As soon as he does you plunge your sword into his back and try to silence him by holding his mouth shut with your arm. He let's out several whining and whimpering noises but nothing that seems to attact alarm. A few minutes later another kobold walks in, obviously waiting for that tinder and you manage to surprise attack that one as well. Unfortunately this plan isn't working out as well as you had planned. The torches are still going strong and now a group of three kobolds is heading towards the stock room. You hide behind the door and manage to kill the first one but the other two draw their weapons and start shouting. Soon, all the kobolds in the mine are aware of your presence and it isn't long after that that you begin to find yourself overwhelmed. You have the unique displeasure of being killed an eaten by a large number of creatures that are even weaker than you are. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Grues are afraid of light! This is why it won't leave its pitch black chamber to pursue me. Fortunately, you still have some flint and tinder. You originally brought it with the intention of building a campfire along the journey but things change I guess. You light a piece of wood and wrap a piece of torn clothing (soaked in cave water) around the middle to help prevent the flames from going to far down near your hands. You need to move fast as this is not going to last for long and you don't want to be stuck down there without light. As anticipated, the grue backs away in a feverish effort to avoid the light your flame is generating. You are pleased to see that the passageway at the end of this chamber has a faint light source at the end (although it is very far away). Hauling ass as fast as you can, you head down the tunnel towards the light source as your makeshift torch is already beginning to burn itself to completion. By the time it does, you've already made it close enough to the nearby light source that the grue wouldn't dare follow. It seems the light is being generated by a series of torches that line a set of tracks. It is then that you realize this cave is not really a cave at all but a mine occupied by numerous kobolds. You were always raised to believe that kobolds had beards and wore candles on their heads, but seeing them now you realize how ridiculous that claim actually is. Who came up with that anyway? In reality, they are like miniture lizard folk and very scrawny too (even by your scrawny standards). Staying at the edge of the light source, you decide to observe these creatures for a little while before planning a move. You are reasonably certain you could handle one or possibly even two in a fight but you most certainly can't charge in or you will be overwhelmed in an instant. Of particular notice is the kobold on the high ledge that is sporting a purple overcoat and barking orders at the laboring kobolds in whatever the hell language these things are speaking. It occurs to you that these kobolds may very well be working for the Craxil, in which case you would very much like to get your hands on that one in the purple & green coat. You tire of wandering the mountainside aimlessly, narrowly evading one death after another all the while having no idea where this Craxil actually is. Perhaps you could find some way of getting to him quietly and making him talk. There are a few problems with this plan. For starters, the torches provide plenty of illumination in this region and there are countless kobold laborers that would detect your presence and tear you to shreds if you just went in as things are now. You entertain the idea of making them chase you back to the grue, but you don't really have enough wood for another makeshift torch. Even if you were to sneak along the wall on either side, there is still enough light in there to give away your location. This is going to be tough. You observe them more and try to formulate some kind of cogent strategy when you notice a kobold has to emerge from a nearby storage chamber to bring wood to the torches. The storage chamber isn't illuminated and you didn't even notice it was there in the beginning. That gives you a couple of ideas. For one, you could hide in the storage chamber until the next kobold comes in to keep the torches going, then kill him quickly. Once the torches go out, you can head to the head kobold in charge. Alternatively, you can set the entire room on fire, which would undoubtedly create a diversion. This plan is risky given that the fire would undoubtedly light the place up quite a bit, but it would also eliminate the tinder they need to light any torches later. > You sneak Into Storage Room And Set Fire To Their Supply Of Tinder There is no point in hiding in the storage room as they may very well send more kobolds in to retrieve the tinder. Instead, you are going to set it all ablaze. Even if the distraction doesn't work well enough for you, it will only be a matter of time before the quell the fire and run out of tinder for their torch basins. You sneak in start a fire using their own flint and tinder. Soon this fire spreads to the rest of the tinder in the room (with your help of course) and you quickly find your way out of there and out of sight before the kobolds are aware of what has transpired. It isn't long before they take notice and flock over to their storage room. The taskmaster kobold keeps jumping around shouting "yip yip" or whatever the hell these things say and the other kobolds are struggling to stop the fire. You manage to slip around the corner and evade the bulk of them and you think you've found the passageway leading up towards the taskmaster kobold. In fact, you have. There's just one small problem. There are two kobolds guarding the taskmaster and you would be foolish to assume the taskmaster is unarmed so that makes three. At present, the taskmaster is clearly focused on the fire, to the point of ignoring all else, but the two guardian kobolds are still vigilant. You're going to need another plan. You consider using your bow again. You are actually pretty close to the bodyguard kobolds yet still veiled in darkness so you would not likely miss from this range. Of course, with one dead you would have to immediately focus on the other and subdue the taskmaster all in quick succession lest the entire colony become aware of your attack. Another, possibly crazier idea is to just run past the guards before they mentally register your presence, grab the taskmaster, jump from the ledge, and just run. The fall may be considerable for a kobold, but you are sure that as a human you can handle it. > You use Your Bow To Take Out The Guardians Quickly, Then Subdue The Taskmaster You are going to take advantage of the short range and the distraction you created to shoot down your target's guardians and then grabbing the target himself. You don't want to just grab him and run as you have no secluded place in mind in which to take him and you certainly don't want to alert the rest of the colony. It is decided then, you are going to have to use the element of surprise once again and make a risky move. You draw your bow and notch an arrow in the drawstring. The nearest kobold is so very close. You aim at his head and for the first time in your life the arrow actually goes where it is supposed to. The other bodyguard is so in shock at the sight of this that by the time it registers what is going on you already have another arrow drawn back and ready to go. He turns to run towards his taskmaster and you put one between his shoulderblades. Its only at this time that the taskmaster turns around and sees what has transpired. He starts shouting more of his "yip yip" nonsense but given that he had been doing that already since the fire started the other kobolds don't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. You grab him and pull him back into the passage before the ledge, tear the purple cloth that makes his coat, bind his wrists, and search him thoroughly for any weapons. The creature looks at you in complete fear and for the first time you are truly taken back by the kind of things you are capable of. After all, you've just been an underappreciated swineherd your whole life. And a scrawny one to boot (ok, so you're still scrawny, but that's beside the point). I guess survival and stress can make people do some pretty crazy things huh? You draw your sword and let the kobold know that if he makes any unnecessary noise he'd quickly regret it. Like most leaders, he's bold in words and all coward at heart. You decide its time to begin. "Tell me what you know about the Craxil" you demand. You're clearly not used to being in such a position of dominance or control but damn if you're gonna let the kobold know that. "Yip, ok. The Craxil is the organizer, the one that unifed the scattered beastmen thoughout this region of the barren mountain range." "Why did the Craxil do this? What does it hope to accomplish?" "eee. The Craxil wants to provide for the beastmen it does! No likes hoominz that take all nice land and push us back into barren lands yip. Craxil wants some good lands too yip. Takes them from hoominz he will. You'll see" You shove your sword under his neck as if to somehow counter his claim. "What manner of creature is this Craxil you demand." "Yip. Nobody knows, least not us kobolds anyway. We's gets our orderss from the riders we does" "Riders?" "Yip, humans that serve the Craxil. Well, at least they used to be human. Now... not anymore" "The Craxil raised them as undead?!?" "Yip noes, the Craxil does not perform such foul practices. The Craxil is noble to us beasties he is. No, the Craxil spends days performing the ritual to break their mind and make them thralls." This last part terrifies you. You know mindflayers are capable of turning humans into thralls, but they can do so instantly. They don't require days and a ritual to do so. Clearly, this Craxil is indeed a creature unlike any other. You can hear the sound of kobold laborers gradually getting closer so you take the last bit of time you have to ask the most important question. "Where can I find the Craxil?" "Yip! He resides in an underground cavern accessed from the bottom of a vast canyon up north yip. Best way is Redridge Pass. Rocks will be red they wills and cactii too. Use mine shaft at end of mine that way, it takes you close. Now let's me go yip!" The voices are drawing closer and you don't have time for any further answers. You decide to execute your prisoner and stash the body so you can sneak out to the passageway without alerting the rest of the kobold colony. > You continue Sneaking To The Yours Shaft The kobolds are not alerted to your presence yet; and with most of them trying to contain the fire you started, there aren't very many standing between you and the mine shaft. You continue down along the tracks in the passageway. There are multiple passages and mining spots on both sides and even some ladders leading deeper into the ground but you follow the tracks straight as told until you reach the end of the passage. A single ladder leads up, very far up in fact. You are beginning to develop a fear of heights just looking at how high you are gonna have to climb and given that kobolds built this place you have serious reservations about how well the ladder is gonna support your weight. But what choice do you have? The skeletons and grue you left behind will certainly make it difficult to leave this place the way you came and it won't be long before the kobolds discover the bodies. You set about climbing the ladder and waste no more time thinking about it. You just do it. The ladder reaches higher and higher and higher and looking down you are soon aware of just how extensive these mining tunnels are. Still, your curiosity about kobold mining practices will have to wait. You've got a Craxil to kill and a village to save. Finally, you reach the top and fling open the hatch. > You move On With The Quest You are glad to have put that unplesant ordeal behind you and now head forth in search of the Redridge Pass. You are finally beginning to see cactii, which pleases you greatly, and the dirt/rocks are still red. You get the sense that you must be close so this Redridge Pass is going to have to be somewhere nearby or up ahead. You shudder when you realize there are rarely ever any formal signs in beastmen controlled territories so how will you know this pass when you get to it? As you ponder these thoughts you notice a small hut up ahead, along your path. Smoke rising from a brick chimney tells you someone is home though you cannot imagine what civilized being could possibly live so deep within the Craxil's territory. How would such a person get supplies? How would such a person survive out here with all the hostile creatures roaming about? Perhaps this person isn't a person at all but a hostile creature himself that for whatever reason favors the abode of humans? Despite the fact that it is still daytime, you decide to creep up and look in the window to see who is inside. All you see is a homely old man with a beard eating plumpdinberry pie in his rocking chair. An illusion you question? Or perhaps your time out here in the Craxil's territory has made you jaded. After some internal debate, you decide to go in. You've been awake for two and a half days now and eaten nothing but the pork rines you brought with you (which you are nearly depleted on). At this rate, you won't be able to put up much of a fight at all, even if you do get to the Craxil. Besides, he might know something about the Craxil or the Redrange Pass and you can't afford to be wandering around aimlessly throughout the Craxil's domain. You go back around to the front door and before you even knock the door opens... > You dun Dun Duuuuuuunnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!! The door opens and the old man is standing there, looking at you expectantly. He is at least two feet taller than you but looks frail in his old age. He invites you in and you go in, though cautiously. The inside of his home looks pretty much like you would expect for a man of his age. A tad messy, but plenty of paintings of his family and the all too familiar old people smell. He beckons you to join him for dinner and nervously you do so. The food is tremendous though in all fairness, its been quite a while since you have had anything but the pork rines you brought with you. He fills your pack with fruits and breads and now you are starting to feel guilty about it all. This guy seems genuinely nice and you feel your guard beginning to drop, but still...you have to ask... "Why do you live out here sir? This is deep within the Craxil's territory and extraordinarily dangerous." "I've lived her since before the Craxil established itself. I'm pretty out of the way for their usual operations so they don't usually pay me much mind. Besides, I'm old. If they find me and its my time then so be it." You're taken back by this strange answer but you accept it and ask further... "If you've been here all this time, that must make you something of a hermit. Still, you ought know something about the Craxil right?" "Yes, I suppose I am something of a hermit, but only because the visions I have make people suspect I'm crazy. Still, I've sensed the Craxil in my dreams and I know it is capable of having such visions as well. That is how it is aware of you and your plans." "WHAT?!" you exclaim. You've always relied upon stealth and the element of surprise to make up for the drastic difference in power between you and your adversaries. If the Craxil is aware of you and your plans, how are you going to pull this off? "Indeed, the Craxil knows what you hope to do. But don't dispair yet, as I've seen a good deal of cleverness in you and even if it knows your coming it doesn't know when. Somehow that last statement doesn't offer you much consolation but after coming as far as you have you don't really see that you have any other choice than to stay the course. After a filling dinner you lie down on a mat and get the best sleep you've had in a long time. During this nap, you are visited by a strange dream... > You strange Dream You saw a soft mist of white and purple against a pitch black surrounding. You could sense there was something or someone in the room with you but you could not see who it was. You could not sense whether or not it was good or evil, kind or malevolent, all you could sense was its presence. It hits you that this presence is the Craxil, and it is watching you intently as you stumble around in the darkness. You sense one more presence, one which you are very familiar. It's your sister! You see her only breifly before her likeness disappears back into the darkness. You sense fear followed by supplication coming from her. You are now moving faster through the darness, stumbling over rocks and nearly twisting your ankles on rivets in the ground. But no matter how quickly you move you cannot get a visual on either your sister or the Craxil, you only sense their presence. You wake up sweating feverishly. "That was quite a dream you had young man" the old man starts. "You were shouting so loud I thought you were losing it. And here people thought I was crazy..." You aren't really sure what to make of this dream. Was it a vision or just a nightmare? Was the Craxil really watching you the whole time? And what of your sister? You last saw her being drug off by humunculi so you assumed she was dead. Could she still be alive somehow? She looked a lot different in that dream too. Not the shy, reserved younger sister you knew but rather a fierce looking warrior in battle garb. The hell is that about? Your dream seemed so vivid you can't help wondering if it was a vision, but your logical mind tells you that the power of suggestion is at work here and its all bullocks. Feeling full, refreshed, and well stocked on supplies you thank the old hermit for everything and really appreciate what he's done for you. He tells you that the Redrange Pass is just over the peak to the northwest of his hut and you immediately see what he's talking about. Its still a long way from the pass to the canyon, but you have a very clear idea of where you are going now. Once you get to the Redrange Pass you just follow it northwest of your current position and it will EVENTUALLY lead you straight to the canyon, which you're told is hard to miss. "Good luck young man, I'm rooting for you". "Thank you sir, and again I appreciate it." Nice guy. He's the first to address you as something other than "pencil arms", "scrawny one", "bone boy", or the like. You head out towards the peak and begin the lengthy climb upwards. > Up The Peak You climb the peak and though it takes a considerable amount of time to get to the top, it isn't nearly as tiring as you expected it would be. You are now standing on an even higher plateau on the mountainside and the Redridge Pass is precisely where you expected it to be. You are thrilled to have finally found the pass, which is really more of a trail than a pass, but you still have a lot further to go. As you move forward you suddenly get wind of a foul stench and hear a lot of loud, obnoxious grunting noises up ahead. You immediately get off the beaten path and find a good hiding spot. It is midday now so there isn't a lot of darkness to aid you. Still, you manage to crawl forward unseen until you see a small group of orcs. This is VERY not good you think you yourself. Orcs are exceptionally strong. Even one on one you stand no real chance of defeating one. There are about five blocking the path forward so you are going to simply have to sneak around them and continue on your journey. You've interrogated lesser creatures, but if the Craxil is commanding these creatures then just how strong is the thing? No, don't dwell on such thoughts. You need to focus. You've come this far and you're sure as hell not gonna let yourself be intimidated now. Returning to the task at hand you see a couple of different options. There is a river that runs down the middle of the orc group's position and some hollow reeds close to you. You remember one time during capture the flag where you moved through the river underwater and breathed through reeds very similar to these. That was an epic maneuver worth remembering, perhaps it will serve you again here? The orc camp and you are at the same elevation; but there is a ditch that runs from your current position, along the side of the camp, and out the other side. Presumably, if you hug the side of the ditch closest to the orcs and move along quietly they shouldn't be able to see you. Alternatively, you still have plenty of poison. Even if you applied it to all your remaining arrows, you wouldn't even have used half the bottle. Orcs are large and there are only five of them... Time for a decision. What's your plan of action? > You breathe Through Reeds And Move Slowly Underwater To The Other Side Of course! The reeds will enable you to breath from underwater. The river water is opaque so you will not be seen and because orcs have an exceptional sense of smell, this is probably the safest way to get past them without being seen. You quietly slip into the river water from a point that can't be seen by the orcs, get one of the hollow reeds to act as a snorkel, and slowly begin moving through the water. You intend to move slowly, so that if any of the orcs do notice the moving reed it will look like it is just drifting downriver. The idea is working. You can hardly see where you are going, but you got a very good look at where the river goes and the approximate distances before you got in so you have a pretty good estimate of where you are. Soon, you can hear the orcs talking and you know you must be in the middle of them now. As fate would have it, a snapping turtle decides to be a pain in the ass (literally) but despite the pain this hissing bastard is inflicting you manage to keep your cool and continue moving slowly through the river. Eventually you, make it to the other side and emerge out of the orc's view. You pat yourself on the back for that one, this maneuver is definitely one of your favorites. Just then the hissing bastard that bit your ass makes it known that he's still attached by tighting his bite and inflicting more pain. You put a drop of the poison in his mouth and within moments he's off of you and squirming on the ground. Looks like this stuff Brandolf gave you is legit after all. You massage your sore bottom and try to walk it off. There is a welt on your right butt cheek that still stings but you figure you will eventually get over it. > You get Over It And Get On With The Quest You rejoin the Redridge Pass and continue northwest towards the canyon you hope to find. You hear a shuffling noise and you could have sworn that the vines stemming from that rather bizarre looking cactus just moved. Nah, just a vine on the ground... from a cactus... on a mostly dry and rocky mountainside... makes perfect sense. You continue to rationalize this in your head as you walk along only to notice a similar movement from another cactii vine up ahead of you. Suddenly you feel one of these vines wrap itself around your left ankle and sting you. You pull and draw your sword but other vines have taken up the call as well and you are getting grabbed and stung all over. You still have limited movement with your limbs, but you are out of balance. The stingers must have injected you with something because you are feeling nausious. You need to focus and get out of this mess before you black out or you might not wake up. You look over at the cactii these vines are coming from and they have inexplicably moved closer to your position. Very close in fact. The needles jutting out from them seem to have perked up and gotten longer. Whatever these things are, they've got you and you aren't about to become their prey. You are still able to reach your sword, but with vines slowing your arm and your lack of balance you aren't sure you will be able to sever the thick vines that are holding you in place. You could always apply some poison to it first, but just reaching the poison is going to be a challenge as you've stored that in your backpack. You still have flint in your front pocket and a few pieces of tinder left, perhaps if you can get a small fire going you can push them back. Whatever you do though, it has to be quick. You can feel the venom from the many stingers affecting your mind and it is taking all your discipline to maintain your focus right now. > You just Draw Your Sword And Try To Cut Through The Vines It would take too much time and energy just to reach the backpack and rumage through it for the venom right now, and you need all the time and energy you have to try and free yourself from this trap you seem to have landed in. You are able to reach your shortsword within a short while and begin raising it against the vine holding your left arm. You bring it down as hard as you can, but with the vine holding your right arm and the others keeping you off balance, you don't cause nearly as much damage as you would like to. The same happens when you try again. You decide to start using your sword like a saw instead, running the edge of the blade back and forth against a singular point on the vine holding your left arm. It takes a while but you are about halfway through the vine when it suddenly responds. The vine recoils abit so that the part you were working on is now out of your reach. You are greatly disheartened by this, but set to work on it again in a new spot. The creature's vine responds the same way again and by now the venom has clouded your mind so much you are barely able to maintain your conciousness. You realize now that it is over. You have no idea what they did after you blacked out, because you never woke up again. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You rejoin the Redridge Pass and continue northwest towards the canyon you hope to find. You hear a shuffling noise and you could have sworn that the vines stemming from that rather bizarre looking cactus just moved. Nah, just a vine on the ground... from a cactus... on a mostly dry and rocky mountainside... makes perfect sense. You continue to rationalize this in your head as you walk along only to notice a similar movement from another cactii vine up ahead of you. Suddenly you feel one of these vines wrap itself around your left ankle and sting you. You pull and draw your sword but other vines have taken up the call as well and you are getting grabbed and stung all over. You still have limited movement with your limbs, but you are out of balance. The stingers must have injected you with something because you are feeling nausious. You need to focus and get out of this mess before you black out or you might not wake up. You look over at the cactii these vines are coming from and they have inexplicably moved closer to your position. Very close in fact. The needles jutting out from them seem to have perked up and gotten longer. Whatever these things are, they've got you and you aren't about to become their prey. You are still able to reach your sword, but with vines slowing your arm and your lack of balance you aren't sure you will be able to sever the thick vines that are holding you in place. You could always apply some poison to it first, but just reaching the poison is going to be a challenge as you've stored that in your backpack. You still have flint in your front pocket and a few pieces of tinder left, perhaps if you can get a small fire going you can push them back. Whatever you do though, it has to be quick. You can feel the venom from the many stingers affecting your mind and it is taking all your discipline to maintain your focus right now. > You apply The Poison First, Then Cut At The Vines You aren't sure if you will be able to completely sever the vines that hold you, but if you can at least cut into them, the poison should do the rest. Unfortunately, it is stored in your pack which is a little difficult to reach right now, but that isn't going to stop you from trying now is it? You pull your right hand back and the vine that holds it pulls back. Somehow, you think it might realize you are trying to get something and it seeks to keep your arm out front. You continue to pull against it with all your might but you reach a stalemate with the vine just getting your arm to your side. The venom is starting to really kick in now. In addition to being nausious you are now dizzying as well. The only thing keeping you going is your sheer determination to live. You bite and claw at the vine, you squirm, you fight, and eventually you get your arm back to your pack. You are feeling light headed and you know you don't have much time. You manage to get the vile of venom out of your backpack but in your situation that struggle took too much time and energy. You no longer have the energy and wherewithall to apply it. You black out and the vile falls uselessly to the ground. You don't know what they did after that, because you never woke up again. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You rejoin the Redridge Pass and continue northwest towards the canyon you hope to find. You hear a shuffling noise and you could have sworn that the vines stemming from that rather bizarre looking cactus just moved. Nah, just a vine on the ground... from a cactus... on a mostly dry and rocky mountainside... makes perfect sense. You continue to rationalize this in your head as you walk along only to notice a similar movement from another cactii vine up ahead of you. Suddenly you feel one of these vines wrap itself around your left ankle and sting you. You pull and draw your sword but other vines have taken up the call as well and you are getting grabbed and stung all over. You still have limited movement with your limbs, but you are out of balance. The stingers must have injected you with something because you are feeling nausious. You need to focus and get out of this mess before you black out or you might not wake up. You look over at the cactii these vines are coming from and they have inexplicably moved closer to your position. Very close in fact. The needles jutting out from them seem to have perked up and gotten longer. Whatever these things are, they've got you and you aren't about to become their prey. You are still able to reach your sword, but with vines slowing your arm and your lack of balance you aren't sure you will be able to sever the thick vines that are holding you in place. You could always apply some poison to it first, but just reaching the poison is going to be a challenge as you've stored that in your backpack. You still have flint in your front pocket and a few pieces of tinder left, perhaps if you can get a small fire going you can push them back. Whatever you do though, it has to be quick. You can feel the venom from the many stingers affecting your mind and it is taking all your discipline to maintain your focus right now. > You light A Piece Of Tinder And Wield The Flame As A Weapon You need to get out of this mess as quickly as you can. The vines are thick, you are off balance, your arms are partially restrained, and you don't have much time. You reason that in this situation your best bet is to start a fire and try to use it against the vines. You lean forward and allow the flint and tinder to fall from you and onto the ground. After a short struggle, you manage to get your hands on them and work feverishly to start a fire. You worry that lighting the tinder on fire will make it difficult to hold against your enemies without burning yourself but you do it anyway and wrap a thick piece of cloth torn from your shirt around your hand before doing so for rudimentary protection. It hurts, but not to the point of burning you thanks to the cloth material and you are far more concerned about survival. You hold the fire up close to the vine holding your left arm and it releases and recoils almost immediately. The others follow suit pretty quick, which is good as this tinder won't last much longer before it is burned to completion. You hold out what's left of it to keep these cactii away and rush away. You've managed to get away, but the venom in your system is already screwing with your head and you don't think you will get much further before blacking out. You go to the nearest area you can find without any cactii around and collapse on a large rock. You don't awaken again until nightfall, but at least you have your mind and focus back, and you are glad you weren't attacked while you were out. However, it isn't long after you awaken that you get a sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach. > You uh-Oh, What Is This? The bad feeling in the pit of your stomach returns and you realize that eating all those pork rines and only pork rines for several days until seeing the old man did not do your digestive system any good. You spring into action, find a secluded corner, and relieve the mess that was building up inside you. Unfortunately, it is not until after this messy endeaver that you remember you neglected to pack bottom tissue when you left on this quest. You've braved many dangers and survived several impossible situations but now you are going to have to make a decision. A decision that is more frightening than any you have made before. To your left are large, round, orange leaves. They aren't brittle and look as though they might work. To your right are a bunch of ferns sporting three fingered leaves. These are green with red spots. It's time to make an all important decision. > You wipe With The Large, Round, Orange Leaves You choose to wipe with the large, round, orange leaves and you find them quite well suited for the task. With your keister sanitized you have now averted another dangerous situation and decide to continue on with your quest. The next three days of travel down the Redridge Pass are surprisingly uneventful. You sneak past the occasional orc patrol and wild animal but nothing particularly difficult. You half expect something to come jumping out at you from the darkness or to find some large camp around the corner but to your plesant surprise the way seems more or less clear. Part of you wonders if it is a trap given the Craxil knows you are coming but then ... what choice do you have? As you come up a steep incline you look down and with great satisfaction you find what you've been searching for all this time. A colossal chasm, the canyon you've been searching for! The old man said you would know it when you see it and damn if he wasn't right about that! Still, this canyon is freaking huge. It will take probably half a day just to get down to the bottom safely and once down there, there is a LOT to explore. You know the underground cavern that houses the Craxil is accessed somewhere down there, so I guess you don't have much choice than to go down there and investigate huh? You are about to cautiously decend when you hear the sound of hoofprints behind you... > You turn Around You turn around to confront the source of the hoofprint noise and you see two humans on horseback. Their eyes appear to be in a glaze and they are looking right at you. Thing is, you recognize these two. They were farmhands that were captured a few weeks back. Everyone assumed they were eaten like most of the people who are taken. For some reason the Craxil must have decided to make them thralls and this is abundantly clear in their appearance. These must be some of the "riders" you've heard about. They both hop down from their horses and draw swords. Given you were already standing at the edge of the canyon when they showed up, you don't have a lot of room to maneuver. You know that before they became thralls they didn't really possess much fighting skill, but you have no idea now. You don't have much time to decide what to do here. There is a small gap between the two of them and they are widening it in an attempt to come at you from both sides. Perhaps you should bolt between them and try to get away. Alternatively, there is a branch sticking out of the wall of the canyon not far below you. You could jump down to it and try to climb down the wall of the canyon to a safer ledge. Either way, you need to get away from these two. > You run Between Them You make a break for it and dash between them. You catch an unpleasant slash across the right hip and it is bleeding but you are still alive and running and that's what counts. You contine down the Redridge Pass, determined to lose them and double back somehow. Its only when you hear the hoofprints getting closer that you realize the tactical error you've just made. The horseback riders quickly catch up to you and one of them puts his sword into the back of your head as he rides by. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You turn around to confront the source of the hoofprint noise and you see two humans on horseback. Their eyes appear to be in a glaze and they are looking right at you. Thing is, you recognize these two. They were farmhands that were captured a few weeks back. Everyone assumed they were eaten like most of the people who are taken. For some reason the Craxil must have decided to make them thralls and this is abundantly clear in their appearance. These must be some of the "riders" you've heard about. They both hop down from their horses and draw swords. Given you were already standing at the edge of the canyon when they showed up, you don't have a lot of room to maneuver. You know that before they became thralls they didn't really possess much fighting skill, but you have no idea now. You don't have much time to decide what to do here. There is a small gap between the two of them and they are widening it in an attempt to come at you from both sides. Perhaps you should bolt between them and try to get away. Alternatively, there is a branch sticking out of the wall of the canyon not far below you. You could jump down to it and try to climb down the wall of the canyon to a safer ledge. Either way, you need to get away from these two. > You jump To Branch And Climb Down You aren't going to be able to outrun them if they have horses so you take the only option you got and jump. You are scared out of your mind but you successfully grapple the hanging branch and the two riders can do nothing but glare down at you and growl. The tricky part is getting down from here. You have never really been afraid of heights but you are REALLY high up. The nearest ledge is almost halfway down the canyon and the rockface isn't easily climbable. Still, you don't have much of a choice so you try anyway. You make it most of the way down until one of the groves you were holding onto comes out and you fall. Thankfully, you land on the ledge and you were already most of the way there so aside from knocking the wind out of you and hurting like hell you are pretty much alright. Its possible you might have a broken rib but you have no way of knowing and it isn't precluding you from going on even if it is broken. After taking time to recover a bit and catch your breath, you look around a bit and find a clear way to climb down to the bottom of the canyon and downward you go. Fortunately, you make it to the bottom of the canyon without further incident. You have now reached the bottom of the canyon and you know the entrance to the Craxil's chasm must be around here somewhere, but it is a massive canyon to explore. You spent almost 7 hours down there until you come across three bizarre looking doors. One is red and bears the emblem of a bear. The next is green and bears the emblem of a spider. The last is blue and bears the emblem of a wolf. This whole ritual gets even more bizarre when you notice a rabbit approach and stand beside the red door as if to beckon you in that way. A squirrel approaches the green door and stands atop the frame as if to endorse that one, and an owl flies down to a rock near the blue door. Its times like these you wish you were a druid so you could better understand what the hell these critters are trying to tell you. Still, you have a decision to make and your instincts (whatever they are worth) are telling you that you only get one shot at this. ~Hint: Depending upon the path you took to get here, you may or may not have seen one or both of the creatures on the correct door already. If not, you are just going to have to guess.~ > You enter The Red Door With Bear Emblem, Endorsed By The Bunny Who can resist a cute widdle fluffy wuffy bunny hmm? You open the red door with the bear emblem and as soon as you enter, the door slams shut and locks behind you. It looks like you really don't have much of a choice but to continue down this passageway. At the end is a large, circular chamber with numerous torches illuminating the entire chamber. You are trying to decide which of two passageways to proceed down until you notice two bears, one coming out of each passage. They lock eyes on you and give chase almost immediately. You turn and run back to the door you entered from but it won't budge. It seems you've made the wrong decision, and now the bears are eviscorating your midsection. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren't going to be able to outrun them if they have horses so you take the only option you got and jump. You are scared out of your mind but you successfully grapple the hanging branch and the two riders can do nothing but glare down at you and growl. The tricky part is getting down from here. You have never really been afraid of heights but you are REALLY high up. The nearest ledge is almost halfway down the canyon and the rockface isn't easily climbable. Still, you don't have much of a choice so you try anyway. You make it most of the way down until one of the groves you were holding onto comes out and you fall. Thankfully, you land on the ledge and you were already most of the way there so aside from knocking the wind out of you and hurting like hell you are pretty much alright. Its possible you might have a broken rib but you have no way of knowing and it isn't precluding you from going on even if it is broken. After taking time to recover a bit and catch your breath, you look around a bit and find a clear way to climb down to the bottom of the canyon and downward you go. Fortunately, you make it to the bottom of the canyon without further incident. You have now reached the bottom of the canyon and you know the entrance to the Craxil's chasm must be around here somewhere, but it is a massive canyon to explore. You spent almost 7 hours down there until you come across three bizarre looking doors. One is red and bears the emblem of a bear. The next is green and bears the emblem of a spider. The last is blue and bears the emblem of a wolf. This whole ritual gets even more bizarre when you notice a rabbit approach and stand beside the red door as if to beckon you in that way. A squirrel approaches the green door and stands atop the frame as if to endorse that one, and an owl flies down to a rock near the blue door. Its times like these you wish you were a druid so you could better understand what the hell these critters are trying to tell you. Still, you have a decision to make and your instincts (whatever they are worth) are telling you that you only get one shot at this. ~Hint: Depending upon the path you took to get here, you may or may not have seen one or both of the creatures on the correct door already. If not, you are just going to have to guess.~ > You enter The Green Door With Spider Emblem, Endorsed By The Squirrel You choose the green door with the spider emblem, endorsed by the squirrel. After all, what is more trustworthy than a cute little squirrel? You enter and immediately thereafter the door slams shut behind you and locks in place. It seems you haven't much of a choice but to move forward down the passageway. It is exceptionally dark down here, but given that you are a sneak that is actually a good thing. You suddenly find yourself stuck and after fidgeting around for a while you come to the sudden realization what it is that has trapped you and why the door has a spider emblem on it. It seems you aren't the only one that enjoys sneaking around in the dark... THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren't going to be able to outrun them if they have horses so you take the only option you got and jump. You are scared out of your mind but you successfully grapple the hanging branch and the two riders can do nothing but glare down at you and growl. The tricky part is getting down from here. You have never really been afraid of heights but you are REALLY high up. The nearest ledge is almost halfway down the canyon and the rockface isn't easily climbable. Still, you don't have much of a choice so you try anyway. You make it most of the way down until one of the groves you were holding onto comes out and you fall. Thankfully, you land on the ledge and you were already most of the way there so aside from knocking the wind out of you and hurting like hell you are pretty much alright. Its possible you might have a broken rib but you have no way of knowing and it isn't precluding you from going on even if it is broken. After taking time to recover a bit and catch your breath, you look around a bit and find a clear way to climb down to the bottom of the canyon and downward you go. Fortunately, you make it to the bottom of the canyon without further incident. You have now reached the bottom of the canyon and you know the entrance to the Craxil's chasm must be around here somewhere, but it is a massive canyon to explore. You spent almost 7 hours down there until you come across three bizarre looking doors. One is red and bears the emblem of a bear. The next is green and bears the emblem of a spider. The last is blue and bears the emblem of a wolf. This whole ritual gets even more bizarre when you notice a rabbit approach and stand beside the red door as if to beckon you in that way. A squirrel approaches the green door and stands atop the frame as if to endorse that one, and an owl flies down to a rock near the blue door. Its times like these you wish you were a druid so you could better understand what the hell these critters are trying to tell you. Still, you have a decision to make and your instincts (whatever they are worth) are telling you that you only get one shot at this. ~Hint: Depending upon the path you took to get here, you may or may not have seen one or both of the creatures on the correct door already. If not, you are just going to have to guess.~ > You enter The Blue Door With Wolf Emblem, Endorsed By The Owl After careful consideration, you trust the owl and enter the door with the wolf emblem. The door shuts and locks behind you and you see no choice but to move forward. An eery glow beckons you forward down a passageway that is leading you deeper and deeper underground. You can't tell if that is a good thing or a bad thing but you follow it anyway. When you reach the bottom you see a large room decorated to look like the antechamber of a church. You aren't sure what to make of all this, but you feel like you must be getting close to the Craxil now. The next chamber is substantially different than the one you just entered from. Instead of being all decorated and kept, you see half eaten farm animals in a pen and three large lizardfolk guarding a doorway. They bear polearms and plate mail and you don't think you would be able to take even one of them in combat. The blue door has shut behind you and you don't really see any reliable means of setting a trap. You have dealt with these types of situations before though. You just have to keep your cool and figure a way to deal with this. For one, you could start a fire in the antichamber to distract the lizardfolk from the door, then slink in. The antichamber is big, but a fire large enough to attract their attention might also illuminate most of the room, making it hard for you to operate unseen. Another possibility is their food source. You surmise the half eaten farm animals are what they've been feeding on during their meal breaks. You could try using some of the poison Brandolf gave you on some of the meat of the freshest looking animal and wait until they feed again. Of course, there is no telling how long you will have to wait for them to feed again. Your call adventurer. > You start A Fire To Distract The Lizard Folk You don't have any tinder left after that incident with the cactii, but you do have some flint. You look around the large antichamber-like room for anything wooden and you find a few things that look like they might be combustable. You set about lighting them with the flint, then quickly cast them in the direction of a large wooden table in the center of the room and run to the corner just before the room with the lizardfolk. As you had hoped, two of the lizard folk eventually come out and because you are hiding in their blindspot, they don't see you. The creatures rush over to quell the fire as best they can but there is a problem. Only two of the lizardfolk emerged to deal with this threat. The third one still stands guard at the door. Lizardfolk are known for their fierce dedication to their duty and unfortunately it seems they are also smarter than the majority of your adversaries as well. After quelling the fire the two begin searching the room, leaving no stone unturned so-to-speak. They must suspect that it was caused by someone. You move around from one dark hiding spot to another, hoping to evade their search until they retire back to the door but you step down on the charred remains of the table and an audible crunch is heard. To your credit, you kept them searching for a long time due to your skill at evasion but given that you just removed any and all doubt about your presence, it was only a matter of time before they found you. THE END <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After careful consideration, you trust the owl and enter the door with the wolf emblem. The door shuts and locks behind you and you see no choice but to move forward. An eery glow beckons you forward down a passageway that is leading you deeper and deeper underground. You can't tell if that is a good thing or a bad thing but you follow it anyway. When you reach the bottom you see a large room decorated to look like the antechamber of a church. You aren't sure what to make of all this, but you feel like you must be getting close to the Craxil now. The next chamber is substantially different than the one you just entered from. Instead of being all decorated and kept, you see half eaten farm animals in a pen and three large lizardfolk guarding a doorway. They bear polearms and plate mail and you don't think you would be able to take even one of them in combat. The blue door has shut behind you and you don't really see any reliable means of setting a trap. You have dealt with these types of situations before though. You just have to keep your cool and figure a way to deal with this. For one, you could start a fire in the antichamber to distract the lizardfolk from the door, then slink in. The antichamber is big, but a fire large enough to attract their attention might also illuminate most of the room, making it hard for you to operate unseen. Another possibility is their food source. You surmise the half eaten farm animals are what they've been feeding on during their meal breaks. You could try using some of the poison Brandolf gave you on some of the meat of the freshest looking animal and wait until they feed again. Of course, there is no telling how long you will have to wait for them to feed again. Your call adventurer. > You poison Their Food Supply And Wait For Them To Feed Again Brandolf gave you more than enough poison to kill the Craxil. It takes only trace amounts to kill even the largest of creatures so why would you need to save the entire vial? You carefully creep up and apply poison to various parts of the bovine flesh, particularly the meaty parts, and take care to poison all the carcasses in the pen so you don't have to try and guess which ones they will feed off next. You then back away to the antichamber-like room and begin waiting the long wait. It is almost 7 hours later and only now do the lizardfolk appear to be conversing with each other and gravitating towards the food pen. "About damn time" you think to yourself, eagerly waiting for them to begin eating as you watch them from a dark corner in the next room. You struggle to contain your glee as the first one sinks his teeth into the freshest cow and another picks up a smaller animal you also poisoned. Before long, they are all dry heaving and you are doing a silent victory dance in the darkness. For some reason it took a while for one of them to finally die, but when he did the way to the door was clear. Crossing through the doorway and into the underground chasm, you come to realize the Craxil is NOTHING like what you had expected... > The Craxil The Craxil is nothing like what you were expecting. You are standing in a massive underground cavern that extends as far as the eye can see in all directions (except the one you came from). Running across it is an underwater stream and floating above it is a beautiful woman bathed in pure white light. It almost appears to leave an after image of itself behind as it moves. You aren't really sure if you would categorize this as a ghost or spirit or what, but you remember that it is a supposed to be a creature unlike anything since discovered. Almost as if reading your mind the Craxil remarks "Indeed... I am not like any other creature your kind has ever seen before, but then I believe I have already told you that haven't I?" To your shock and horror she transforms into the likeness of Brandolf the Bray, the mage who visited you in the village of Jacquescrappe, then into the old man who watched over you as you slept. Was it really the Craxil all along?!? Is this why you had that dream that it was watching you the entire time?!? What does this mean for your sister, is she still alive? And what of the poison? Surely she wouldn't give you something that would actually work on her. Sensing the millions of questions that flurry through your mind, the Craxil begins to laugh and float about you in circles. The door once guarded by lizardfolk now slams shut and locks on its own. With this door shut, there is no longer any light and the Craxil itself is the only thing left that you can actually see. "I can take whatever form I please swineherd, and I have been watching you in various forms throughout the entirety of your journey. You fancy yourself the king of sneak yet you were clearly unaware that you were being watched the moment you entered my territory." Your face grows pale and you have no idea how you are going to deal with this being. She knows all your secrets. She knows your plan. You haven't any element of surprise whatsoever. Hell, you aren't even sure if your weapons are going to work and you're sure as hell certain the poison isn't going to be effective given that it was her that gave it to you. Your mind races to discern a proper course of action as she continues to toy with you. However, your concentration is broken when another figure enters your view... > The Other Figure You turn to find your sister, dressed in one of the war garbs you saw in your dream, walk out towards you from the shadows. She doesn't look as glossy-eyed as the other riders you encountered (in fact she looks perfectly normal) but from her demeanor and obvious reverence to the Craxil you know she is in fact a thrall. How can this be? This is the same war garb from the dream! But your sister has never been like that. "We have big plans for her" the Craxil coes. "She is the carrier of a great plague, a slower acting yet more contagious version of what you carry in that vial I gave you. As a carrier she will be immune to its effects, but she will spread them among the humans whereever she goes." "Why?!? Why would you do something like that you sick bitch?!?" The Craxil only laughs at your insult and seems to take delight in your obvious fear and frustration at this moment. "With the surrounding kingdoms of Mihtana and Lima buckling from the plague, there will be little resistance when we move out of the mountain range and into their lands. As you may have noticed on the way here, I have many humunculi, goblins, grippli, kobolds, and even a handful of orcs all gathered here in these mountains." "So you really are planning an invasion then?" "I believe that poor servant you so ruthlessly interrogated several days ago already explained that much to you." You struggle not to be blinded by your anger at this point, but there is nothing you can do to stop her. "The humans are a truly repugnant race. They have no respect for those that labor, those that produce, those that sacrifice for the good of others. Whenever they want something (be it money, power, or respect) they simply take it for themselves, and only those who do are respected. This is why the beastfolk I serve have been pushed deep into this barren mountainside." To your astonishment, you actually find yourself identifying with the Craxil. Even when you agreed to stick your neck out on their behalf they snickered comments about your intelligence under their breath. Even now, after all the dangers you've faced, you're sure they have probably already assumed you're dead and are likely redistributing your property as we speak. "The beastfolk here are loyal to me and to themselves, they have honor. And they certainly deserve the lands of their ancestors, taken from them by the humans." "And you think slaughtering humans is the answer?" "Since when has diplomacy not ended with a beastman's head on a human's table? Since when did the humans ever sit down to negotiate with my brethren? The humans understand only the simplicity of death and destruction so that is what we will bring to them." You know this is morally reprehensible, but from a purely stoic and logical standpoint you can understand the rationale behind the Craxil's argument. You wonder if peace between humans and the beastmen really is possible. Since the beginning of time, beastmen have always preyed on humans and humans have always responded with military force on their camps. Perhaps there really is no better way to advance their position right now but you cannot stomach the loss of life that would come with it. "My beast brothers have every right to be happy, and so they shall. They humans will be brought to the breaking point with this plague and the forces I gathered will retake the lands they deserve. But I am not without understanding. I can see you have an open mind and have considered my position. You were wondering if peace between human and beast is possible. It is a noble but impractical thing. If you were to join us, I could make you powerful..." You think to yourself "damn, does this Craxil thing read my mind too?" Still, it is a tempting offer. You have always toiled as a swineherd, providing the ever popular hams and bacon that are so popular at festivals and weddings and even fed those without homes, yet you've always been looked down upon as a swineherd by those who have probably never worked a day in their lives. You've seen girls you had feelings for go for men who were of "higher social standing" than yourself. You've always wanted respect, maybe even a little money or even power. You think about what the Craxil said, about how only those who TAKE it can ever HAVE it, and upon reflection you must admit it makes sense. But the Craxil's plan would involve massive loss of life and you are unsure if you want that on your hands. "Your sister did not understand the situation as well as you and I, so I had to make her a thrall. When the acquisition is finished, I will return her to you... but only if you join me and help spread this plague throughout the human lands." The Craxil, now clearly curious about all the thoughts running through your head, moves closer until her face is less than a foot away from your own. "Well human, how do you respond?" > You Will Join You, And Seize The Respect And Power you Deserve The humans of Mihtana refused to send aid to the villagers of Jacquescrappe (even when people were dying) because it didn't suit their political or military interests. The villagers practically elected you for this quest without even asking you if you wanted to, then mocked your intelligence when you accepted on their behalf. You're sick of being looked down upon as a low class swineherd despite all the hard work you've done to provide for your community. All of that is about to change. You proclaim your allegiance to the Craxil and to your astonishment she is actually overjoyed. Seems she needs as many people as possible to help spread the plague and your sister is the only thrall that doesn't look like an obvious thrall. Your voluntary support to the Craxil's plan is well recognized. You and your sister are made to be carriers of the great plague. When you return to the village of Jacquescrappe, you misinform the people that the Craxil is dead and deliver a liquid dose of the plague into the town's wine supply and shaking hands with everyone who comes to congratulate you. Shortly thereafter, you make sure to thoroughly infest all your pork before the next big wedding in Lima. Meanwhile, your sister gets a position as a laysister at a cathedral in the kingdom of Mihtana. By poisoning the holy water, she manages to infect everyone who comes in for a blessing. Between the two of you, and the increased contagiousness of this version of the plague, you are able to infect a massive segment of the population. You work to continue spreading the disease, but the damage is already done. Quarantines are set up in Mihtana and Lima in a desperate attempt to quell the spread of the plague. Those who are uninfected (or who believe themselves uninfected) revolt against the guards in a desperate bid for self preservation. Others lock themselves in their homes and arm themselves in hopes of outliving the vile plague. Criminals take full advantage of the choas to operate unchecked and before long both kingdoms (and their militaries) are completely at their knees. When the beastmen move forth to retake human lands, there is nothing to stop them. As you and your sister have become the Craxil's right and left hands so-to-speak, you are now recognized as a person of power and all respond with fear and respect when in your presence. "The Craxil was right" you think to yourself. "If you want respect, you have to take it. If you want power, you have to take it. Nobody else is going to recognize your merit and deliver these things to you. To have anything worth having in life, you simply have to take it." Unfortunately, it wasn't quite what you imagined. You enjoy your newfound respect and power, but the fear felt by everyone else only makes you feel more alienated and alone. By choosing this path, you have seized what you've always wanted, but what good is respect if it comes with the kind of fear that pushes people away? What good is power if there is no one to share it with. When the time comes, the Craxil honors its agreement to release your sister and as you feared, she is appauled by what the two of you have wrought. You recieve word the next week that she was found in a clearing in the woods. She hung herself in the field where she used to play as a child. You try to establish some sort of peace between humans and beastfolk, but given what you have done the humans want nothing to do with you. They only respect you out of fear because of the beastmen you now command. Realizing you are now completely alone, you go to meet your sister in the clearing and follow her to whatever lies beyond. CONGRATULATIONS! This is official ending #1 of 2<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn to find your sister, dressed in one of the war garbs you saw in your dream, walk out towards you from the shadows. She doesn't look as glossy-eyed as the other riders you encountered (in fact she looks perfectly normal) but from her demeanor and obvious reverence to the Craxil you know she is in fact a thrall. How can this be? This is the same war garb from the dream! But your sister has never been like that. "We have big plans for her" the Craxil coes. "She is the carrier of a great plague, a slower acting yet more contagious version of what you carry in that vial I gave you. As a carrier she will be immune to its effects, but she will spread them among the humans whereever she goes." "Why?!? Why would you do something like that you sick bitch?!?" The Craxil only laughs at your insult and seems to take delight in your obvious fear and frustration at this moment. "With the surrounding kingdoms of Mihtana and Lima buckling from the plague, there will be little resistance when we move out of the mountain range and into their lands. As you may have noticed on the way here, I have many humunculi, goblins, grippli, kobolds, and even a handful of orcs all gathered here in these mountains." "So you really are planning an invasion then?" "I believe that poor servant you so ruthlessly interrogated several days ago already explained that much to you." You struggle not to be blinded by your anger at this point, but there is nothing you can do to stop her. "The humans are a truly repugnant race. They have no respect for those that labor, those that produce, those that sacrifice for the good of others. Whenever they want something (be it money, power, or respect) they simply take it for themselves, and only those who do are respected. This is why the beastfolk I serve have been pushed deep into this barren mountainside." To your astonishment, you actually find yourself identifying with the Craxil. Even when you agreed to stick your neck out on their behalf they snickered comments about your intelligence under their breath. Even now, after all the dangers you've faced, you're sure they have probably already assumed you're dead and are likely redistributing your property as we speak. "The beastfolk here are loyal to me and to themselves, they have honor. And they certainly deserve the lands of their ancestors, taken from them by the humans." "And you think slaughtering humans is the answer?" "Since when has diplomacy not ended with a beastman's head on a human's table? Since when did the humans ever sit down to negotiate with my brethren? The humans understand only the simplicity of death and destruction so that is what we will bring to them." You know this is morally reprehensible, but from a purely stoic and logical standpoint you can understand the rationale behind the Craxil's argument. You wonder if peace between humans and the beastmen really is possible. Since the beginning of time, beastmen have always preyed on humans and humans have always responded with military force on their camps. Perhaps there really is no better way to advance their position right now but you cannot stomach the loss of life that would come with it. "My beast brothers have every right to be happy, and so they shall. They humans will be brought to the breaking point with this plague and the forces I gathered will retake the lands they deserve. But I am not without understanding. I can see you have an open mind and have considered my position. You were wondering if peace between human and beast is possible. It is a noble but impractical thing. If you were to join us, I could make you powerful..." You think to yourself "damn, does this Craxil thing read my mind too?" Still, it is a tempting offer. You have always toiled as a swineherd, providing the ever popular hams and bacon that are so popular at festivals and weddings and even fed those without homes, yet you've always been looked down upon as a swineherd by those who have probably never worked a day in their lives. You've seen girls you had feelings for go for men who were of "higher social standing" than yourself. You've always wanted respect, maybe even a little money or even power. You think about what the Craxil said, about how only those who TAKE it can ever HAVE it, and upon reflection you must admit it makes sense. But the Craxil's plan would involve massive loss of life and you are unsure if you want that on your hands. "Your sister did not understand the situation as well as you and I, so I had to make her a thrall. When the acquisition is finished, I will return her to you... but only if you join me and help spread this plague throughout the human lands." The Craxil, now clearly curious about all the thoughts running through your head, moves closer until her face is less than a foot away from your own. "Well human, how do you respond?" > You Cannot Abide The Senseless Slaughter You're Scheming, you Would Rather Die Humanity may not be perfect, but it certainly doesn't deserve the kind of death and destruction the Craxil has in mind. You announce to her that you would rather die than support her in this plan. You were terrified that this being might become infuriated and attack, but instead she calmly and slowly backs away... then looks to your sister. Your sister looks back at the Craxil and you realize the Craxil has just given her a nonverbal order. By now your sister's blade is unsheathed and she is coming at you. She fights with a furocity and intent that is completely out of character for your shy and reserved little sister, but her physical strength is the same. There is nothing special about her swordplay technique either and you are pleased to see that you can block and parry her attacks. Still, this is your sister, and you don't want to kill her if you don't have to. The Craxil is obviously enjoying this and you can't help but think that if you could just find some way of killing her then perhaps your sister can be saved. The Craxil is currently in her noncorporeal true form, but she has taken corporeal forms before when she was watching you. You wonder if striking her while she's in one of these corporeal forms might actually damage her. Alternatively, you wonder why a shapeshifting being with noncorporeal capability would even need others to spread the plague in the first place. Perhaps she isn't immune like you once thought or perhaps she felt secure from it in her noncorporeal form. Would you still need to get her into corporeal form for that first or could you try and give it to her while she's in her noncorporeal state. Or perhaps there is some other way of getting your sister back to normal. Unlike you, she knows some very basic magic. Perhaps she will have something that will damage the Craxil in its noncorporeal state. While your mind wonders to ponder these things, your sister manages to get a shallow cut across your right shoulder and you respond by kicking her onto the ground and stopping down on her sword hand. You remove your sister's weapon and the Craxil moves in as if to protect its vassal. You quickly begin to go over your previous ideas in your head knowing you will need to try something and soon lest the Craxil decides to attack first. > You call Out To Your Sister And Try To Free Her From Her Servitude You call out to your sister and try to reach her as her brother. You remind her of the grove you two played in when you were young. You recall times when you organized a surprise gathering for her birthday. You remind her how much she cares about the well being of others and beg her to come to her senses. Unfortunately, whatever magicks control her mind apparently override any logical or emotional argument you put forth and she instantly follows whatever order the Craxil gives her. You have her weapon, but she still has her basic spell casting abilities. She puts a magic missile into your leg and you are unable to stand. From here, the Craxil decides to turn you into another one of her mindless thralls. You spend your days serving her whims, spreading the plague, and standing guard against intruders until one day many monthes later a real hero lops your head off while fighting the Craxil's minions. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Humanity may not be perfect, but it certainly doesn't deserve the kind of death and destruction the Craxil has in mind. You announce to her that you would rather die than support her in this plan. You were terrified that this being might become infuriated and attack, but instead she calmly and slowly backs away... then looks to your sister. Your sister looks back at the Craxil and you realize the Craxil has just given her a nonverbal order. By now your sister's blade is unsheathed and she is coming at you. She fights with a furocity and intent that is completely out of character for your shy and reserved little sister, but her physical strength is the same. There is nothing special about her swordplay technique either and you are pleased to see that you can block and parry her attacks. Still, this is your sister, and you don't want to kill her if you don't have to. The Craxil is obviously enjoying this and you can't help but think that if you could just find some way of killing her then perhaps your sister can be saved. The Craxil is currently in her noncorporeal true form, but she has taken corporeal forms before when she was watching you. You wonder if striking her while she's in one of these corporeal forms might actually damage her. Alternatively, you wonder why a shapeshifting being with noncorporeal capability would even need others to spread the plague in the first place. Perhaps she isn't immune like you once thought or perhaps she felt secure from it in her noncorporeal form. Would you still need to get her into corporeal form for that first or could you try and give it to her while she's in her noncorporeal state. Or perhaps there is some other way of getting your sister back to normal. Unlike you, she knows some very basic magic. Perhaps she will have something that will damage the Craxil in its noncorporeal state. While your mind wonders to ponder these things, your sister manages to get a shallow cut across your right shoulder and you respond by kicking her onto the ground and stopping down on her sword hand. You remove your sister's weapon and the Craxil moves in as if to protect its vassal. You quickly begin to go over your previous ideas in your head knowing you will need to try something and soon lest the Craxil decides to attack first. > You fire A Poison Coated Arrow Into the Noncorporeal Form Of The Craxil You draw a poison coated arrow from your pack and immediately notch it into your bow. You realize you don't have a lot of time so you draw it back, aim, and fire immediately. The Craxil does not move. Instead, she allows the arrow to pass directly through her noncorporeal state and land somewhere in the dark distance. You realize she only felt secure enough to give you the poison in the first place because she existed in this noncorporeal form whenever she wasn't spying. You attempt to quickly consider your other options but it seems she doesn't much care for you any longer. She stretches forth her hand and it feels as though you are being lifted into the air by your own skeleton. You scream as you feel what feels like a brain aneurysm. You continue to suffer the pain until it kills you. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Humanity may not be perfect, but it certainly doesn't deserve the kind of death and destruction the Craxil has in mind. You announce to her that you would rather die than support her in this plan. You were terrified that this being might become infuriated and attack, but instead she calmly and slowly backs away... then looks to your sister. Your sister looks back at the Craxil and you realize the Craxil has just given her a nonverbal order. By now your sister's blade is unsheathed and she is coming at you. She fights with a furocity and intent that is completely out of character for your shy and reserved little sister, but her physical strength is the same. There is nothing special about her swordplay technique either and you are pleased to see that you can block and parry her attacks. Still, this is your sister, and you don't want to kill her if you don't have to. The Craxil is obviously enjoying this and you can't help but think that if you could just find some way of killing her then perhaps your sister can be saved. The Craxil is currently in her noncorporeal true form, but she has taken corporeal forms before when she was watching you. You wonder if striking her while she's in one of these corporeal forms might actually damage her. Alternatively, you wonder why a shapeshifting being with noncorporeal capability would even need others to spread the plague in the first place. Perhaps she isn't immune like you once thought or perhaps she felt secure from it in her noncorporeal form. Would you still need to get her into corporeal form for that first or could you try and give it to her while she's in her noncorporeal state. Or perhaps there is some other way of getting your sister back to normal. Unlike you, she knows some very basic magic. Perhaps she will have something that will damage the Craxil in its noncorporeal state. While your mind wonders to ponder these things, your sister manages to get a shallow cut across your right shoulder and you respond by kicking her onto the ground and stopping down on her sword hand. You remove your sister's weapon and the Craxil moves in as if to protect its vassal. You quickly begin to go over your previous ideas in your head knowing you will need to try something and soon lest the Craxil decides to attack first. > You challenge The Craxil To Take On Other Corporeal Forms, Then Infect Her With The Poison "It is clear that I have neither the means nor the ability to complete my quest, so as a dead man I ask that you grant one dying wish" you proclaim. "Throwing in the towel already?" she scowls, obviously disappointed that you didn't have some clever trick in mind. "From your past exploits in my territory I thought you'd at least think of something to try. What do you want?" "I want to know how you were able to keep tabs on me during the journey. What other forms did you take besides Brandolf and the old man?" "I took many forms. From birds, to rocks, to the very water you swam through to get past the orcs." "Show me" you demand, "I want to more fully understand how I was bested before this ends. Let me die with that peace." As she's talking, she starts by taking the corporeal form of Brandolf the Bray and you seize upon the opportunity. As rapidly as you can you grab a poison coated arrow, notch it in your bow, drawback the drawstring, aim, and release. The poison arrow lands in her forearm and she promptly removes it and tosses it aside. You fear she was unaffected by this arrow and she begins to laugh. "It seems I misjudged you, you haven't surrendered at all have you? Attacking me in my corporeal state... that does sound like you. But I have the ability to reform my corporeal state just as easily as I formed it in the first place. This is a simple matter of..." She stops midsentence as if she somehow came to the realization of what you've done. "That arrow..." "The same stuff you gave me on day 1. It looks like I managed to complete this quest after all" The Craxil bursts with laughter as if somehow impressed with your creativity or perhaps the irony of the situation. She doesn't stop laughing even when the nausea and vomitting come. You can tell her power is waning because you sister suddenly regains control of her facilties and runs to your side. The Craxil laments that the beastmen will no longer maintain unity after her death and expresses genuine concern about their well-being. You aren't sure why, but you promise to try and convince the human leaders in Mihtana and Lima to recognize the importance and advantages of peace and even integration of beastmen into civilization. She smiles and then the light that made up her corporeal being goes out. > You continue The Story Unfortunately, this story takes a tragic end for your sister, who remains a carrier for the plague even after the Craxil's death. You explain to her what the Craxil was and what it planned to do. She backs away from you immediately as if not wanting to infect you. In fact, it dawns on both of you that she will never again get to experience the physical touch of another person in any way ever again without killing them. In a deep state of sadness, she decides to remain in the wilds as a hermit, embarking on a quest to find a cure for this condition. You want to stop her but in all honesty, you cannot possibly think of anything better for her right now and bringing her to civilization would be a bad idea right now. You wish you could hug her or comfort her somehow, but you both understand why you can't. Instead, you wish her the best of luck and hope she one day finds what she's needs. From this point on, there is not a single night that goes by for the rest of your life that you don't pray for her. With the death of the Craxil, the doors that sealed behind you are no longer fixed. The infighting amongst the now disunified beastmen makes it easy for you to get through unnoticed on your way back to the village. Along the way you see grippli attacking goblins, kobolds fighting amongst themselves, and the orc patrols seem to have raided numerous humunculi settlements. The large, unified force they once represented is now thinned out considerably, and although the journey is long and your rations are low, you eventually make it back to the village. The villagers are shocked to hear that the Craxil is dead and you tell them all about it. Some believe you are full of it and think the Craxil still lives. Others admit they bet good money you would die. You were right to assume they'd have redistributed your property under this very assumption and it takes some doing getting it all restored. Unfortunately, they decided to slay your friends Oinky and Snout for ham while you were away and for the first time in your life you chose not to take it lying down anymore. If this journey taught you anything, its that you are going to have to demand respect if you hope to get it. However, this journey has taught you a lot more than that. As promised, you travel to meet with leaders in both Mihtana and Lima so that you can try to convince them why peace between the humans and the beastfolk might actually be beneficial. You explain how the Craxil was able to rally them together and organize them and how some of them demonstrated a higher level of intelligence than you originally thought them capable of (i.e. - the kobolds extensive mining techniques and the goblin's tinkering). Unfortunately, despite your best efforts, the world is just not ready to view them as anything other than dangerous savages to be on guard against and you realize that this is how it is going to stay. Eventually you return to your farm and begin shoveling out all the pig dung that had been piling up in your absence. As you are working, a girl you took notice of at the local tavern looks over to you. You smile with confidence and she smiles back and suddenly you think... this might not be so bad after all. CONGRATULATIONS! You've found real ending #2 of 2.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Humanity may not be perfect, but it certainly doesn't deserve the kind of death and destruction the Craxil has in mind. You announce to her that you would rather die than support her in this plan. You were terrified that this being might become infuriated and attack, but instead she calmly and slowly backs away... then looks to your sister. Your sister looks back at the Craxil and you realize the Craxil has just given her a nonverbal order. By now your sister's blade is unsheathed and she is coming at you. She fights with a furocity and intent that is completely out of character for your shy and reserved little sister, but her physical strength is the same. There is nothing special about her swordplay technique either and you are pleased to see that you can block and parry her attacks. Still, this is your sister, and you don't want to kill her if you don't have to. The Craxil is obviously enjoying this and you can't help but think that if you could just find some way of killing her then perhaps your sister can be saved. The Craxil is currently in her noncorporeal true form, but she has taken corporeal forms before when she was watching you. You wonder if striking her while she's in one of these corporeal forms might actually damage her. Alternatively, you wonder why a shapeshifting being with noncorporeal capability would even need others to spread the plague in the first place. Perhaps she isn't immune like you once thought or perhaps she felt secure from it in her noncorporeal form. Would you still need to get her into corporeal form for that first or could you try and give it to her while she's in her noncorporeal state. Or perhaps there is some other way of getting your sister back to normal. Unlike you, she knows some very basic magic. Perhaps she will have something that will damage the Craxil in its noncorporeal state. While your mind wonders to ponder these things, your sister manages to get a shallow cut across your right shoulder and you respond by kicking her onto the ground and stopping down on her sword hand. You remove your sister's weapon and the Craxil moves in as if to protect its vassal. You quickly begin to go over your previous ideas in your head knowing you will need to try something and soon lest the Craxil decides to attack first. > You challenge The Craxil To Take On Other Corporeal Forms, Then Strike Her Down With Your Sword "It is clear that I have neither the means nor the ability to complete my quest, so as a dead man I ask that you grant one dying wish" you proclaim. "Throwing in the towel already?" she scowls, obviously disappointed that you didn't have some clever trick in mind. "From your past exploits in my territory I thought you'd at least think of something to try. What do you want?" "I want to know how you were able to keep tabs on me during the journey. What other forms did you take besides Brandolf and the old man?" "I took many forms. From birds, to rocks, to the very water you swam through to get past the orcs." "Show me" you demand, "I want to more fully understand how I was bested before this ends. Let me die with that peace." The Craxil takes the form of Brandolf the Bray first and you seize upon you opportunity. Walking forth with feigned curiosity you unsheath your sword and charge at her with a firm sense of purpose. You bring the blade down through her collar bone and into her chest while she's still in the Brandolf form. She looks surprised, and the look of disappointment is replaced with a smile and a laugh. "So that's it eh? Not bad. But you see, I can reconstitute my form." You withdraw your blade and watch as her flesh comes back together and restores itself anew. "It was not a bad idea, it really wasn't. The kind of thing a guy like you would probably try. But this is where it is going to have to end. While your attention is focused upon the Craxil, your sister springs forth and grabs your arm. The significance of this move is lost on you until you realize she's the carrier of the new plague. You shirk her off and back away but it is too late. The Craxil and your sister then leave, discussing various ideas for disseminating the plague, leaving you to spend the last few hours of your life in complete darkness. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The bad feeling in the pit of your stomach returns and you realize that eating all those pork rines and only pork rines for several days until seeing the old man did not do your digestive system any good. You spring into action, find a secluded corner, and relieve the mess that was building up inside you. Unfortunately, it is not until after this messy endeaver that you remember you neglected to pack bottom tissue when you left on this quest. You've braved many dangers and survived several impossible situations but now you are going to have to make a decision. A decision that is more frightening than any you have made before. To your left are large, round, orange leaves. They aren't brittle and look as though they might work. To your right are a bunch of ferns sporting three fingered leaves. These are green with red spots. It's time to make an all important decision. > You wipe With The Three Fingered Green Leaves With Red Spots You choose the three fingered green leaves with red spots and it is not long after your sanitation ritual that you realize what a mistake that was. Whatever manner of herbs those were you have a burning rash all along and in your backside. Between that and the turtle bite, you are finding it difficult to walk without pain. You really hope this journey ends soon, you really do. The next three days of travel down the Redridge Pass are surprisingly uneventful. You sneak past the occasional orc patrol and wild animal but nothing particularly difficult. You half expect something to come jumping out at you from the darkness or to find some large camp around the corner but to your plesant surprise the way seems more or less clear. Part of you wonders if it is a trap given the Craxil knows you are coming but then ... what choice do you have? As you come up a steep incline you look down and with great satisfaction you find what you've been searching for all this time. A colossal chasm, the canyon you've been searching for! The old man said you would know it when you see it and damn if he wasn't right about that! Still, this canyon is freaking huge. It will take probably half a day just to get down to the bottom safely and once down there, there is a LOT to explore. You know the underground cavern that houses the Craxil is accessed somewhere down there, so I guess you don't have much choice than to go down there and investigate huh? You are about to cautiously decend when you hear the sound of hoofprints behind you...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The bad feeling in the pit of your stomach returns and you realize that eating all those pork rines and only pork rines for several days until seeing the old man did not do your digestive system any good. You spring into action, find a secluded corner, and relieve the mess that was building up inside you. Unfortunately, it is not until after this messy endeaver that you remember you neglected to pack bottom tissue when you left on this quest. You've braved many dangers and survived several impossible situations but now you are going to have to make a decision. A decision that is more frightening than any you have made before. To your left are large, round, orange leaves. They aren't brittle and look as though they might work. To your right are a bunch of ferns sporting three fingered leaves. These are green with red spots. It's time to make an all important decision. > You don't Wipe At All You Filthy Mongrel Real men don't wipe, so why should you? LOL, ok.. so that was stupid. But you don't feel like wiping with leaves so you just pull up your pants and keep going. Sure you've got a pretty nasty case of mudbutt going on and you are not looking forward to returning these pants to the girl who loaned them to you (don't even ask why you chose to wear girls pants...). Hopefully this journey will end soon. The next three days of travel down the Redridge Pass are surprisingly uneventful. You sneak past the occasional orc patrol and wild animal but nothing particularly difficult. You half expect something to come jumping out at you from the darkness or to find some large camp around the corner but to your plesant surprise the way seems more or less clear. Part of you wonders if it is a trap given the Craxil knows you are coming but then ... what choice do you have? As you come up a steep incline you look down and with great satisfaction you find what you've been searching for all this time. A colossal chasm, the canyon you've been searching for! The old man said you would know it when you see it and damn if he wasn't right about that! Still, this canyon is freaking huge. It will take probably half a day just to get down to the bottom safely and once down there, there is a LOT to explore. You know the underground cavern that houses the Craxil is accessed somewhere down there, so I guess you don't have much choice than to go down there and investigate huh? You are about to cautiously decend when you hear the sound of hoofprints behind you... <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You climb the peak and though it takes a considerable amount of time to get to the top, it isn't nearly as tiring as you expected it would be. You are now standing on an even higher plateau on the mountainside and the Redridge Pass is precisely where you expected it to be. You are thrilled to have finally found the pass, which is really more of a trail than a pass, but you still have a lot further to go. As you move forward you suddenly get wind of a foul stench and hear a lot of loud, obnoxious grunting noises up ahead. You immediately get off the beaten path and find a good hiding spot. It is midday now so there isn't a lot of darkness to aid you. Still, you manage to crawl forward unseen until you see a small group of orcs. This is VERY not good you think you yourself. Orcs are exceptionally strong. Even one on one you stand no real chance of defeating one. There are about five blocking the path forward so you are going to simply have to sneak around them and continue on your journey. You've interrogated lesser creatures, but if the Craxil is commanding these creatures then just how strong is the thing? No, don't dwell on such thoughts. You need to focus. You've come this far and you're sure as hell not gonna let yourself be intimidated now. Returning to the task at hand you see a couple of different options. There is a river that runs down the middle of the orc group's position and some hollow reeds close to you. You remember one time during capture the flag where you moved through the river underwater and breathed through reeds very similar to these. That was an epic maneuver worth remembering, perhaps it will serve you again here? The orc camp and you are at the same elevation; but there is a ditch that runs from your current position, along the side of the camp, and out the other side. Presumably, if you hug the side of the ditch closest to the orcs and move along quietly they shouldn't be able to see you. Alternatively, you still have plenty of poison. Even if you applied it to all your remaining arrows, you wouldn't even have used half the bottle. Orcs are large and there are only five of them... Time for a decision. What's your plan of action? > You move Through The Ditch To The Other Side The orcs might notice a moving reed and get suspicious and attacking a superior number of superior enemies is just inviting death. You decide the best bet is to move through the ditch and move through while tightly hugging the wall closest to them, thus minimizing your chances of being seen. You hop in and start moving. A tiny little stream trickles through and much of the ground here is mud. The stench of orc shit is strong in here and you begin to realize this is where they've been dumping it (no pun intended). Still, you brave on knowing this is a life or death situation and no time to be getting squeamish. You are now so very close to the orcs but they haven't yet seen you. You move even slower than before but you are confident you will make it. That is, until one of them lifts his nose and sniffs the air. It seems you forgot to take into account the fact that orcs have an exceptionally keen sense of smell. Despite the fact that you are clean, and the fact that the orc manure should be overpowering their senses right now, it seems they've identified your scent. They move over and it isn't long before you are seen. You try to run, but you stumble in the mud that has taken your shoe. You try to run without it but you don't get very far. The orcs were put there on the path to stop you from reaching the Craxil and they've succeeded. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You climb the peak and though it takes a considerable amount of time to get to the top, it isn't nearly as tiring as you expected it would be. You are now standing on an even higher plateau on the mountainside and the Redridge Pass is precisely where you expected it to be. You are thrilled to have finally found the pass, which is really more of a trail than a pass, but you still have a lot further to go. As you move forward you suddenly get wind of a foul stench and hear a lot of loud, obnoxious grunting noises up ahead. You immediately get off the beaten path and find a good hiding spot. It is midday now so there isn't a lot of darkness to aid you. Still, you manage to crawl forward unseen until you see a small group of orcs. This is VERY not good you think you yourself. Orcs are exceptionally strong. Even one on one you stand no real chance of defeating one. There are about five blocking the path forward so you are going to simply have to sneak around them and continue on your journey. You've interrogated lesser creatures, but if the Craxil is commanding these creatures then just how strong is the thing? No, don't dwell on such thoughts. You need to focus. You've come this far and you're sure as hell not gonna let yourself be intimidated now. Returning to the task at hand you see a couple of different options. There is a river that runs down the middle of the orc group's position and some hollow reeds close to you. You remember one time during capture the flag where you moved through the river underwater and breathed through reeds very similar to these. That was an epic maneuver worth remembering, perhaps it will serve you again here? The orc camp and you are at the same elevation; but there is a ditch that runs from your current position, along the side of the camp, and out the other side. Presumably, if you hug the side of the ditch closest to the orcs and move along quietly they shouldn't be able to see you. Alternatively, you still have plenty of poison. Even if you applied it to all your remaining arrows, you wouldn't even have used half the bottle. Orcs are large and there are only five of them... Time for a decision. What's your plan of action? > You attack With Poison Tipped Arrows You have way more poison than you need to kill the Craxil so why not use it to help you get there as well? If Brandolf was right about this stuff, it should kill anything that ingests it or is stabbed by it. The orcs are very large creatures too, so you hope you will be able to hit them. You apply the poison to about a dozen of your arrows and take your stance. You pull out the first poison arrow, notch it in your bow, pull back the drawstring as far as you possibly can, and release. The first shot is a success. One of the closest orcs takes it in the shoulder and it isn't long before the poison takes effect. He is laying on the ground vomiting and though he isn't dead yet, you know it won't be much longer for he has the look of death upon him. The other four are now charging at you. The two in front have their shields out, as if to block any subsequent shots. You quickly let fly another arrow. It goes precisely where you aimed but one of the front orcs anticipated it and blocked it with his shield. You manage to get one of the ones in back in the leg with your next shot, bringing your enemy's total to three but they are nearly upon you now. You only have enough time for another two shots and the forward orcs manage to block them with their shields. They've certainly developed a clever counterstrategy to your strategy haven't they? Now they are upon you, hacking you to pieces and bellowing insults like "stupid morra". You don't live long enough to hear him finish his next line. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There is no point in hiding in the storage room as they may very well send more kobolds in to retrieve the tinder. Instead, you are going to set it all ablaze. Even if the distraction doesn't work well enough for you, it will only be a matter of time before the quell the fire and run out of tinder for their torch basins. You sneak in start a fire using their own flint and tinder. Soon this fire spreads to the rest of the tinder in the room (with your help of course) and you quickly find your way out of there and out of sight before the kobolds are aware of what has transpired. It isn't long before they take notice and flock over to their storage room. The taskmaster kobold keeps jumping around shouting "yip yip" or whatever the hell these things say and the other kobolds are struggling to stop the fire. You manage to slip around the corner and evade the bulk of them and you think you've found the passageway leading up towards the taskmaster kobold. In fact, you have. There's just one small problem. There are two kobolds guarding the taskmaster and you would be foolish to assume the taskmaster is unarmed so that makes three. At present, the taskmaster is clearly focused on the fire, to the point of ignoring all else, but the two guardian kobolds are still vigilant. You're going to need another plan. You consider using your bow again. You are actually pretty close to the bodyguard kobolds yet still veiled in darkness so you would not likely miss from this range. Of course, with one dead you would have to immediately focus on the other and subdue the taskmaster all in quick succession lest the entire colony become aware of your attack. Another, possibly crazier idea is to just run past the guards before they mentally register your presence, grab the taskmaster, jump from the ledge, and just run. The fall may be considerable for a kobold, but you are sure that as a human you can handle it. > You run Past The Guardians, Grab The Taskmaster, Jump From The Ledge, And Run You may be in close range, but you doubt if your skills with a bow would enable you to kill in quick succession like that. Instead, you choose the more daring approach. After all, the crazier the plan the less likely they are to see it coming. You gather your nerve, fixate upon your target, and bolt. The kobold guards jump back like they've just seen a screamer or something and you sail past them and onto the ledge. The taskmaster, still focused on the fire, is completely surprised when you grab him and jump off the ledge. By now, every kobold in the colony is aware of what you've done so you just blindly run down the back passage and deeper into the mines. You haven't any idea where you are going and there are numerous kobolds chasing you from behind. Thankfully, their legs just aren't long enough to keep pace with you, though they certainly push themselves trying. You focus all your attention on trying to avoid the kobolds that are deeper in these mines while simultaneously trying to find a secluded place to stop and interrogate your new prisoner. Unfortunately, you're so focused on this task that you don't see the dagger your kobold prisoner pulls out of his sleeve and plunges into your chest. Seems the flaw with your plan was that you didn't have any time to properly restrain your prisoner and now you are dead. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The man you just dismissed earlier is standing at the front of the pack. You knew there was something off about that earlier request and seeing this display only reaffirms that you were right to avoid them in the first place. They are all looking down at the ground but now he is looking up directly at you with a creepy smile on his face. "So, you saw through our little ambush scheme did you?" he sneers. "What is it you want?" "Quite simply we're aware of your quest to reach the Craxil and we are not prepared to allow it." At this point their heads begin to twist and contort and their skulls appear to come out of their mouths. It is almost as though they were never human at all but part of some kind of disguise. In fact, it is now readily apparent that this is the case. You are now looking at five maniacal looking skeletons armed with an assortment of swords and hand axes. They seem like they are eager to get things started and in fact, they are all rushing down the beaten path towards you. You turn the other way until you can decide what to do and despite what you've been told about the undead, you discover they are perfectly capable of keeping pace with you. You know you aren't going to be able to take on five of these guys and they seem intent on sticking together during the pursuit. To your left is another cave you've chosen to pass up on your journey, figuring it was just another humunculus den. Perhaps, if you are lucky, you can lose your pursuers in there. Alternatively, you could always try climbing the steep rockface off to your right. You've had plenty of climbing experience as a kid and somehow you hope these skeletons won't be able to follow you. You could also turn around and start unloading arrows into your enemies. They may be keeping pace with you, but you still have a heck of a head start and you'd wager you could release quite a few before they catch up to you. It's up to you... > You climb The Rockface To Get Beyond Their Reach The skeletal undead aren't exactly known for their climbing skills so you promptly head over to the steep rockface and set about climbing to a point beyond their reach. You are almost at the top when the skeletons reach the base. The attempt to climb but as you had hoped, they are substantially less successful than you. One of them responds to the situation by tossing his hand axe at you and you move your hand just in time to avoid it. You make sure it stays stuck in the rockface so it doesn't get to try again, then pull yourself up and over the top. You are glad to be away from those damn things and now that you are at a slightly higher elevation along the mountainside, there's a good chance you won't be seeing them again. Just got to keep your cool and remember to be stealthy. You continue your journey in the same general direction but keep to this elevation for fear of encountering those undead creatures a second time. After a while, you begin to smell a rather curious smell up ahead. As you approach you discover a camp situated in what is probably the only forested ledge on this entire mountain range. You don't initially see anyone there, but you keep your distance and eventually see something hop down rather quickly from one of the trees and go behind another. You didn't get a good look at whatever it was and you are hoping they haven't seen you. Nightfall comes and now the occupants of the camp are coming into view. You never believed that at any time in your entire life you'd ever lay eyes on the creatures you are seeing. The grippli, a race of humanoid tree frogs standing at 2 feet tall, have organized this camp. There aren't more than a dozen tops, but grippli are known to be considerable fighters when they need to be and there is no way of knowing if there are more of them in the trees. They often prefer to fight with poison darts, nets, and bows as they would prefer to keep their enemy at a distance but a few bear swords. You see one of them adorned in considerably nicer garb than the others and commands quite a presence from them so you surmise it must be their leader. Suddenly it occurs to you. These creatures are in Craxil territory so odds are they work for the Craxil. That means that instead of wandering the mountain range aimlessly you ought try and extract information regarding the Craxil's whereabouts from the grippli. Ideally, you could get your hands on their leader but that is going to be easier said than done. There may not be many grippli present, but each one is a challenge in his own right and you have no way of knowing how many may be in the trees to see what you do. Eventually, the captain retires to his tent as do many others. Three grippli remain near the campfire out front and again, you have no way of knowing what is still in the trees. The captain's tent is near the back. You surmise you could go around, giving the camp a wide berth, and sneak into the captain's tent. However, you feel like you should at least do SOMETHING about the three on watch or you may be the one getting captured instead. This is quite a dilly of a pickle indeed. > You sneak Around Back And Enter The Captain's Tent Quietly You don't foresee any way to take down a group of three grippli given each one would probably pose a challenge. As well, they are tasked with being nightwatchmen so you doubt they'd abandon their posts so easily no matter what you do. You are going to just have to take a risk and sneak into the captain's tent without attracting any attention. You give the camp a wide berth as planned and SLOWLY work your way along the far edge of the treeline until you are in a position to sneak in towards the captains tent without being seen by the grippli at the campfire. Your approach is successful. You slowly creep in, staying low to the ground. You can't help but look up at the treetops everyone in a while out of fear that darts, arrows, or nets may come raining down upon you but so far nothing has happened. Perhaps there is nobody there or perhaps they just don't see you. Either way, you've made it to the captain's tent. Cautiously, you open the canopy and enter the tent. As you had hoped, the captain is asleep and you take care to knock him unconcious with a block shaped wooden figurine from his tent. Now all that's left is to carry him away from the camp, someplace safe where you can interrogate him for information regarding the Craxil. You exit the tent with the grippli captain slung over your shoulder. At only 2 feet tall the little fella is surprisingly light. Unfortunately, as you exit you hear a rather startling noise. It sounded like a cross between a ribbit and a scream. Whatever the hell it was, it came from one of the grippli over by the campfire. Almost immediately, the whole camp is on alert. Grippli are dropping down from the trees and coming out of their tents. You take off and run, your only real option left. Unfortunately, the grippli have amazing speed and agility. You drop the captain behind in hopes of getting away but before long you've taken a few darts in the back. As the poison sinks in, you realize it no longer matters if you outrun your pursuers... this stuff will kill you anyway. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The skeletal undead aren't exactly known for their climbing skills so you promptly head over to the steep rockface and set about climbing to a point beyond their reach. You are almost at the top when the skeletons reach the base. The attempt to climb but as you had hoped, they are substantially less successful than you. One of them responds to the situation by tossing his hand axe at you and you move your hand just in time to avoid it. You make sure it stays stuck in the rockface so it doesn't get to try again, then pull yourself up and over the top. You are glad to be away from those damn things and now that you are at a slightly higher elevation along the mountainside, there's a good chance you won't be seeing them again. Just got to keep your cool and remember to be stealthy. You continue your journey in the same general direction but keep to this elevation for fear of encountering those undead creatures a second time. After a while, you begin to smell a rather curious smell up ahead. As you approach you discover a camp situated in what is probably the only forested ledge on this entire mountain range. You don't initially see anyone there, but you keep your distance and eventually see something hop down rather quickly from one of the trees and go behind another. You didn't get a good look at whatever it was and you are hoping they haven't seen you. Nightfall comes and now the occupants of the camp are coming into view. You never believed that at any time in your entire life you'd ever lay eyes on the creatures you are seeing. The grippli, a race of humanoid tree frogs standing at 2 feet tall, have organized this camp. There aren't more than a dozen tops, but grippli are known to be considerable fighters when they need to be and there is no way of knowing if there are more of them in the trees. They often prefer to fight with poison darts, nets, and bows as they would prefer to keep their enemy at a distance but a few bear swords. You see one of them adorned in considerably nicer garb than the others and commands quite a presence from them so you surmise it must be their leader. Suddenly it occurs to you. These creatures are in Craxil territory so odds are they work for the Craxil. That means that instead of wandering the mountain range aimlessly you ought try and extract information regarding the Craxil's whereabouts from the grippli. Ideally, you could get your hands on their leader but that is going to be easier said than done. There may not be many grippli present, but each one is a challenge in his own right and you have no way of knowing how many may be in the trees to see what you do. Eventually, the captain retires to his tent as do many others. Three grippli remain near the campfire out front and again, you have no way of knowing what is still in the trees. The captain's tent is near the back. You surmise you could go around, giving the camp a wide berth, and sneak into the captain's tent. However, you feel like you should at least do SOMETHING about the three on watch or you may be the one getting captured instead. This is quite a dilly of a pickle indeed. > You construct A Pit Trap And Lure The Three Out Towards You You need to dispatch with the three grippli keeping watch but you cannot do that in the camp or you will almost certainly get attention. Therefore, your only real option is to lure them out and eliminate them somehow while they're away from camp. Even if you do lure them away from their camp though, three grippli are more than a match for you so you are going to have to construct a trap of some sort. You remember seeing a small drop off in the middle of the path you just came down and that gives you an idea. You take about a dozen of your arrows and plant them firmly in the ground (arrowhead up) at the bottom of the hole you encountered along the path. You only lightly cover it with what little large leaves and vines you can find, then cover this foliage completely with sand and small rocks (enough to cover the vegetation but not enough to make it fall into the hole). Your hope is that you will be able to lure your three grippli out here away from the camp and then fall in on top of your arrows. The only thing left to do is figure out how you are going to lure them away from the camp without them alerting the camp as well. You decide to mimic the sounds of the small prairie dog like creatures out here and toss small pebbles around the corner where they would see them. You seem to have their attention as they are too bored to really entertain themselves with anything else. Unfortunately, the prairie dog gag isn't enough to make them come so next you imitate the sound of a ewe while making loud pawing noises at the ground. For whatever reason, this one gets their attention and they start approaching quietly with their weapons drawn. You continue making animals noises but move back slowly at the same time. At point for them is a hunter brandishing a bow. The other two apparently believe in the sword. Maybe that's not as atypical for a grippli as you thought. You are careful to remain unseen but back up slowly and continue leading them forth with animal noises. Eventually the game is up as the hunter seems to get suspicous and notices you are there. You turn and run using the indentations in the rockwall to your right to help protect you from arrow fire. You take your position behind a rock on the other side of the trap and to your glee they are running straight for it. YES! The sound of your cover giving way under their weight is music to your ears, as are the ribbits of pain emitted shortly thereafter. You surmise they are dead until one of them jumps out of the pit with only a leg wound. He pulls out his sword and glares at you. You feel like facing him like this, it would be an even match. Still, you would much prefer some kind of advantage whereever you can get it. You draw your sword and begin to think carefully about how this is going to go down. > You rush The Creature And Try To Push Him Back Into The Pit You realize that if the pit was good enough to kill the other two then knocking him in again ought do the trick pretty quick. Plus, he's still standing only a few feet from the edge. You charge in at him and strike your sword vertically at his face. He parries as you knew he would, and now you prepare to push his 2 foot little keister back into the pit. The problem with this strategy is that it is predictable. The grippli knew what you were doing as soon as you began the charge. It hopes well out of the way and launches a charge of his own. He cannot match your strength (which is saying a lot coming from you) but he is so damn fast that you can't react to his moves in time to avoid getting stabbed. This persists for a while until finally you drop to the ground looking like one of Freddie Kruger's victims. With a sense of pride, the 2 foot little froggie bastard walks off back to camp no doubt to brag to his friends what he just accomplished. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need to dispatch with the three grippli keeping watch but you cannot do that in the camp or you will almost certainly get attention. Therefore, your only real option is to lure them out and eliminate them somehow while they're away from camp. Even if you do lure them away from their camp though, three grippli are more than a match for you so you are going to have to construct a trap of some sort. You remember seeing a small drop off in the middle of the path you just came down and that gives you an idea. You take about a dozen of your arrows and plant them firmly in the ground (arrowhead up) at the bottom of the hole you encountered along the path. You only lightly cover it with what little large leaves and vines you can find, then cover this foliage completely with sand and small rocks (enough to cover the vegetation but not enough to make it fall into the hole). Your hope is that you will be able to lure your three grippli out here away from the camp and then fall in on top of your arrows. The only thing left to do is figure out how you are going to lure them away from the camp without them alerting the camp as well. You decide to mimic the sounds of the small prairie dog like creatures out here and toss small pebbles around the corner where they would see them. You seem to have their attention as they are too bored to really entertain themselves with anything else. Unfortunately, the prairie dog gag isn't enough to make them come so next you imitate the sound of a ewe while making loud pawing noises at the ground. For whatever reason, this one gets their attention and they start approaching quietly with their weapons drawn. You continue making animals noises but move back slowly at the same time. At point for them is a hunter brandishing a bow. The other two apparently believe in the sword. Maybe that's not as atypical for a grippli as you thought. You are careful to remain unseen but back up slowly and continue leading them forth with animal noises. Eventually the game is up as the hunter seems to get suspicous and notices you are there. You turn and run using the indentations in the rockwall to your right to help protect you from arrow fire. You take your position behind a rock on the other side of the trap and to your glee they are running straight for it. YES! The sound of your cover giving way under their weight is music to your ears, as are the ribbits of pain emitted shortly thereafter. You surmise they are dead until one of them jumps out of the pit with only a leg wound. He pulls out his sword and glares at you. You feel like facing him like this, it would be an even match. Still, you would much prefer some kind of advantage whereever you can get it. You draw your sword and begin to think carefully about how this is going to go down. > You toss Dirt In His Eyes, Then Attack There is no shortage of dry dirt and rock all around you and as an amphibian you reason he's probably not to terribly accostomed to that type of thing. Given his 2 foot stature, you wait for him to make a move then kick dirt in his face. You reasoned correctly. The frog's large eyes close down firmly and he is clearly unable to handle himself. You almost feel sorry for employing such a cheap trick on the little guy. Almost. With him unable to see and barely able to compose himself, the battle ends pretty quickly. You return to the edge of the pit and shoot a couple more arrows into your punctured prey for good measure as you don't want any more unexpected surprises to arise when you go in for the capture. You inch your way back to camp under the midnight moon and make sure to scope the place out anew before making your move. As you had hoped, the nightwatchmen didn't rouse anyone before they left. You still don't know about the treetops, but the coast is as clear as its gonna get. You creep through camp where it is darkest and make your way to the captain's tent. You carefully open the canopy and move inside. As you had hoped, the captain is still asleep. You take care to knock him out over the head with a block shaped wooden figurine you find in his tent, then carry him over your shoulder and out of the camp. Without the three nightwatchmen, it is easy to carry the unconcious 2 ft. lightweight out of camp and out to a safe location. It takes several hours before he awakes, but when he does you already have his froggie hands and feet bound with cloth torn from his own outfit. > You time To Talk To The Froggie To be honest, you aren't entirely sure which one of you two is more afraid... him or you. The grippli struggles in his bindings and begins to make noise which you are quick to silence. You raise your sword in warning and he begins to quiet down. Quite frankly, you are amazed that you are actually doing this. You've never been in a position like this before, doing something like this. You've always been an underappreciated swineherd your whole life. You are definitely not used to this sort of thing but you sure as hell don't want your prisoner to realize that. "The Craxil isn't something you can easily kill. It has united the beastmen in this region of the mountains and aims to provide for its people" the captain starts. "And what exactly is that suppose to mean" you demand. "The humans have driven us beastmen into the barren land of the mountainrange and taken the fertile, soft ground for themselves. The Craxil wants for us to have good ground. Human ground. The Craxil has been organizing us for quite some time now and it is going to help us take what we deserve." "What manner of creature is this Craxil anyway?" you ask, knowing you'll have to face him eventually. "We don't know, none of us do. We never see the Craxil, its sends its orders with the riders." "The riders?" "Yes. They used to be humans but... well... not anymore really." "You mean he's raising them as undead?!?" "No, no, the Craxil would never resort to such deplorable practices. The Craxil breaks their minds with a ritual that takes days. When the Craxil finishes, they become thralls." You are truly frightened by this last comment. It is common knowledge that mind flayers can dominate the minds of others, but they are able to do so instantly. They don't require a ritual that takes several days to accomplish. Brandolf did say the Craxil was a completely different creature than anyone has encountered before. "Where can I find the Craxil?" you demand. "The Craxil resides in an underground cavern, accessed from the base of a large canyon up north. The most direct route is Redridge Pass though I doubt you'll even get there alive. You'll know you are getting close when all the rocks and dirt are red and the cactii become more numerous." You wanted to ask him more questions, but it seems that his comrades have already noticed his absence and begun looking for him. You don't see any other choice than to kill him, hide the body, and head north. But hey, at least you got some valuable information including some general directions. > You moving North You ponder what the grippli captain said as you continue on your northward journey. You haven't seen any cactii yet so you surmise you still have a long way to go. But what other dangers await you? So far you've encountered humunculi, undead, grippli, and even a beholder. More amazing is that your sorry swineherding ass has survived this far. Still, you have to wonder just how many different types of creatures there are under the Craxil's command and what this Craxil even looks like. Your musings are cut short when your path is suddenly blocked by a very large wolf. Its eyes glow red and it snarls with both anger and malice evident. This wolf is no ordinary wolf. It is huge and it looks like its possessed or something. You draw your sword preparing to defend yourself but it doesn't attack, it simply stands there staring at you. You attempt to move to the side and it follows as if to block your path. You move to the other side and it follows again. You take a step back and it follows with a step forward. You aren't sure you even want to know what it will do if you take a step forward, and for once you aren't crazy enough to find out. Suddenly, the creature does something you did not expect. It speaks. "Tell me human, do you serve the Craxil?". You are tempted to lie and say yes but then how do you know that is the answer it wants to hear? Maybe it serves the Craxil or maybe it is its enemy. Either way, it looks like its going to kill you if you don't share its loyalties so you are going to have to decide what to say. > Yes You decide to lie and tell the large creature that you are in fact a rider for the Craxil in hopes that it will calm it down a bit. Quite the opposite. It seems this wolf is infuriated by the Craxil and the recent beastmen influence in the region. You try to go back on your word and tell it the truth but its too late. The massive wolf jumps on you, knocking you on the ground. It goes immediately for your throat. You spend the last moments of your life in a state of sheer terror. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You ponder what the grippli captain said as you continue on your northward journey. You haven't seen any cactii yet so you surmise you still have a long way to go. But what other dangers await you? So far you've encountered humunculi, undead, grippli, and even a beholder. More amazing is that your sorry swineherding ass has survived this far. Still, you have to wonder just how many different types of creatures there are under the Craxil's command and what this Craxil even looks like. Your musings are cut short when your path is suddenly blocked by a very large wolf. Its eyes glow red and it snarls with both anger and malice evident. This wolf is no ordinary wolf. It is huge and it looks like its possessed or something. You draw your sword preparing to defend yourself but it doesn't attack, it simply stands there staring at you. You attempt to move to the side and it follows as if to block your path. You move to the other side and it follows again. You take a step back and it follows with a step forward. You aren't sure you even want to know what it will do if you take a step forward, and for once you aren't crazy enough to find out. Suddenly, the creature does something you did not expect. It speaks. "Tell me human, do you serve the Craxil?". You are tempted to lie and say yes but then how do you know that is the answer it wants to hear? Maybe it serves the Craxil or maybe it is its enemy. Either way, it looks like its going to kill you if you don't share its loyalties so you are going to have to decide what to say. > No Honesty always was the best policy. You tell the wolf you are on a quest to kill the Craxil then raise your sword defensively expecting him to attack. Instead, the creature looks you over and accuses you of dishonesty. "You honestly expect me to believe a scrawny kid like you was chosen to slay a being like the Craxil?" "I made it this far didn't I?" The wolf looks taken back by this comment and you tell him all about the plan to use poison, how you outmaneuvered the humunculi, the beholder's riddle... everything. The creature takes a few steps closer to you and his bright red eyes are bearing deeply into your own. You've never been more scared in your life than you are right now, but it seems the wolf has decided you are telling the truth. "There is truth in your eyes, a certainty I haven't seen in quite some time. Lots of fear though. Odds are you are going to fail but hey, its your life to waste right?" "Well thank you for trusting my allegiance then. Why don't you tell me what the heck you are, starting with how the hell you can talk." The wolf turns back around, front legs spread in an aggressive position. "I never said I trusted you, you are going to have to prove yourself." "But..." "You claim you came from the village. What is this village called?" > You jacqueshit WRONG! The massive wolf knocks you to the ground and rips your throat out with its teeth. A terrible way to die to be sure. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Honesty always was the best policy. You tell the wolf you are on a quest to kill the Craxil then raise your sword defensively expecting him to attack. Instead, the creature looks you over and accuses you of dishonesty. "You honestly expect me to believe a scrawny kid like you was chosen to slay a being like the Craxil?" "I made it this far didn't I?" The wolf looks taken back by this comment and you tell him all about the plan to use poison, how you outmaneuvered the humunculi, the beholder's riddle... everything. The creature takes a few steps closer to you and his bright red eyes are bearing deeply into your own. You've never been more scared in your life than you are right now, but it seems the wolf has decided you are telling the truth. "There is truth in your eyes, a certainty I haven't seen in quite some time. Lots of fear though. Odds are you are going to fail but hey, its your life to waste right?" "Well thank you for trusting my allegiance then. Why don't you tell me what the heck you are, starting with how the hell you can talk." The wolf turns back around, front legs spread in an aggressive position. "I never said I trusted you, you are going to have to prove yourself." "But..." "You claim you came from the village. What is this village called?" > You jackcrappe WRONG! The giant wolf leaps upon you and tears your throat out with its teeth. A horrible way to die to be sure. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Honesty always was the best policy. You tell the wolf you are on a quest to kill the Craxil then raise your sword defensively expecting him to attack. Instead, the creature looks you over and accuses you of dishonesty. "You honestly expect me to believe a scrawny kid like you was chosen to slay a being like the Craxil?" "I made it this far didn't I?" The wolf looks taken back by this comment and you tell him all about the plan to use poison, how you outmaneuvered the humunculi, the beholder's riddle... everything. The creature takes a few steps closer to you and his bright red eyes are bearing deeply into your own. You've never been more scared in your life than you are right now, but it seems the wolf has decided you are telling the truth. "There is truth in your eyes, a certainty I haven't seen in quite some time. Lots of fear though. Odds are you are going to fail but hey, its your life to waste right?" "Well thank you for trusting my allegiance then. Why don't you tell me what the heck you are, starting with how the hell you can talk." The wolf turns back around, front legs spread in an aggressive position. "I never said I trusted you, you are going to have to prove yourself." "But..." "You claim you came from the village. What is this village called?" > You jacquescrappe "Correct" the wolf admits, "but even the Craxil and the surrounding beastmen know that much. It doesn't prove anything." "Then ask me something else" you demand. "Fine then, I shall!" "What is the name of the wizard that came to Jacquescrappe?" <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Honesty always was the best policy. You tell the wolf you are on a quest to kill the Craxil then raise your sword defensively expecting him to attack. Instead, the creature looks you over and accuses you of dishonesty. "You honestly expect me to believe a scrawny kid like you was chosen to slay a being like the Craxil?" "I made it this far didn't I?" The wolf looks taken back by this comment and you tell him all about the plan to use poison, how you outmaneuvered the humunculi, the beholder's riddle... everything. The creature takes a few steps closer to you and his bright red eyes are bearing deeply into your own. You've never been more scared in your life than you are right now, but it seems the wolf has decided you are telling the truth. "There is truth in your eyes, a certainty I haven't seen in quite some time. Lots of fear though. Odds are you are going to fail but hey, its your life to waste right?" "Well thank you for trusting my allegiance then. Why don't you tell me what the heck you are, starting with how the hell you can talk." The wolf turns back around, front legs spread in an aggressive position. "I never said I trusted you, you are going to have to prove yourself." "But..." "You claim you came from the village. What is this village called?" > You jaquescrappe WRONG! The wolf jumps on you and tears your throat out with his teeth. A horrible way to die to be sure. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You ponder what the grippli captain said as you continue on your northward journey. You haven't seen any cactii yet so you surmise you still have a long way to go. But what other dangers await you? So far you've encountered humunculi, undead, grippli, and even a beholder. More amazing is that your sorry swineherding ass has survived this far. Still, you have to wonder just how many different types of creatures there are under the Craxil's command and what this Craxil even looks like. Your musings are cut short when your path is suddenly blocked by a very large wolf. Its eyes glow red and it snarls with both anger and malice evident. This wolf is no ordinary wolf. It is huge and it looks like its possessed or something. You draw your sword preparing to defend yourself but it doesn't attack, it simply stands there staring at you. You attempt to move to the side and it follows as if to block your path. You move to the other side and it follows again. You take a step back and it follows with a step forward. You aren't sure you even want to know what it will do if you take a step forward, and for once you aren't crazy enough to find out. Suddenly, the creature does something you did not expect. It speaks. "Tell me human, do you serve the Craxil?". You are tempted to lie and say yes but then how do you know that is the answer it wants to hear? Maybe it serves the Craxil or maybe it is its enemy. Either way, it looks like its going to kill you if you don't share its loyalties so you are going to have to decide what to say. > You what Is A Craxil? Is That A New Brand Of Butter Cracker? You attempt to lie to the giant wolf creature but despite your skill as sneakery you've always been a horrible liar. The dishonesty is not taken well and before you know it, the massive canine has you on the ground and is sinking his jaw into your throat. You spend the last moments of your life in sheer terror. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need to dispatch with the three grippli keeping watch but you cannot do that in the camp or you will almost certainly get attention. Therefore, your only real option is to lure them out and eliminate them somehow while they're away from camp. Even if you do lure them away from their camp though, three grippli are more than a match for you so you are going to have to construct a trap of some sort. You remember seeing a small drop off in the middle of the path you just came down and that gives you an idea. You take about a dozen of your arrows and plant them firmly in the ground (arrowhead up) at the bottom of the hole you encountered along the path. You only lightly cover it with what little large leaves and vines you can find, then cover this foliage completely with sand and small rocks (enough to cover the vegetation but not enough to make it fall into the hole). Your hope is that you will be able to lure your three grippli out here away from the camp and then fall in on top of your arrows. The only thing left to do is figure out how you are going to lure them away from the camp without them alerting the camp as well. You decide to mimic the sounds of the small prairie dog like creatures out here and toss small pebbles around the corner where they would see them. You seem to have their attention as they are too bored to really entertain themselves with anything else. Unfortunately, the prairie dog gag isn't enough to make them come so next you imitate the sound of a ewe while making loud pawing noises at the ground. For whatever reason, this one gets their attention and they start approaching quietly with their weapons drawn. You continue making animals noises but move back slowly at the same time. At point for them is a hunter brandishing a bow. The other two apparently believe in the sword. Maybe that's not as atypical for a grippli as you thought. You are careful to remain unseen but back up slowly and continue leading them forth with animal noises. Eventually the game is up as the hunter seems to get suspicous and notices you are there. You turn and run using the indentations in the rockwall to your right to help protect you from arrow fire. You take your position behind a rock on the other side of the trap and to your glee they are running straight for it. YES! The sound of your cover giving way under their weight is music to your ears, as are the ribbits of pain emitted shortly thereafter. You surmise they are dead until one of them jumps out of the pit with only a leg wound. He pulls out his sword and glares at you. You feel like facing him like this, it would be an even match. Still, you would much prefer some kind of advantage whereever you can get it. You draw your sword and begin to think carefully about how this is going to go down. > You don't Waste Time With Elaborate Trickery, Just Fight The Thing There is no longer any element of surprise so the time for elaborate tricks is over. You are simply going to have to face this thing one on one. At first things seem to go well. His 2 foot tall stature is no match for your strength (which is saying a lot coming from you) but he is fast as hell. Given that he's part frog he's hopping around behing you, above you, between your legs, all with the speed and reflexes of a frog. You've always wondered what made people consider these things to be so dangerous. In the end, you've taken on more stab wounds than you can possibly handle and drop to the ground looking like one of Freddie Krougar's victims. The 2 foot little froggie bastard develops a new air of pride and marches back to camp, no doubt to brag to his friends about his new victory. But for you it is simply... THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The skeletal undead aren't exactly known for their climbing skills so you promptly head over to the steep rockface and set about climbing to a point beyond their reach. You are almost at the top when the skeletons reach the base. The attempt to climb but as you had hoped, they are substantially less successful than you. One of them responds to the situation by tossing his hand axe at you and you move your hand just in time to avoid it. You make sure it stays stuck in the rockface so it doesn't get to try again, then pull yourself up and over the top. You are glad to be away from those damn things and now that you are at a slightly higher elevation along the mountainside, there's a good chance you won't be seeing them again. Just got to keep your cool and remember to be stealthy. You continue your journey in the same general direction but keep to this elevation for fear of encountering those undead creatures a second time. After a while, you begin to smell a rather curious smell up ahead. As you approach you discover a camp situated in what is probably the only forested ledge on this entire mountain range. You don't initially see anyone there, but you keep your distance and eventually see something hop down rather quickly from one of the trees and go behind another. You didn't get a good look at whatever it was and you are hoping they haven't seen you. Nightfall comes and now the occupants of the camp are coming into view. You never believed that at any time in your entire life you'd ever lay eyes on the creatures you are seeing. The grippli, a race of humanoid tree frogs standing at 2 feet tall, have organized this camp. There aren't more than a dozen tops, but grippli are known to be considerable fighters when they need to be and there is no way of knowing if there are more of them in the trees. They often prefer to fight with poison darts, nets, and bows as they would prefer to keep their enemy at a distance but a few bear swords. You see one of them adorned in considerably nicer garb than the others and commands quite a presence from them so you surmise it must be their leader. Suddenly it occurs to you. These creatures are in Craxil territory so odds are they work for the Craxil. That means that instead of wandering the mountain range aimlessly you ought try and extract information regarding the Craxil's whereabouts from the grippli. Ideally, you could get your hands on their leader but that is going to be easier said than done. There may not be many grippli present, but each one is a challenge in his own right and you have no way of knowing how many may be in the trees to see what you do. Eventually, the captain retires to his tent as do many others. Three grippli remain near the campfire out front and again, you have no way of knowing what is still in the trees. The captain's tent is near the back. You surmise you could go around, giving the camp a wide berth, and sneak into the captain's tent. However, you feel like you should at least do SOMETHING about the three on watch or you may be the one getting captured instead. This is quite a dilly of a pickle indeed. > You try To Sneak Up On The Grippli Near The Campfire And Cut Them All Down Before They Can React The way you see it, you don't really have a choice. You can't risk going after the captain while these three grippli are here standing guard like this. You'll be caught. You have your doubts about whether you'd be able to lure the nightwatchmen away from their posts so you are going to just have to be direct about it. There may be three of them, but once again you have the element of surprise and you don't intend to give them any time whatsoever to react to the onslaught you intend to bring. You creep around into the center of the camp and approach the nightwatchmen from behind. As you approach, the light from the campfire makes your shadow apparent and the other grippli take notice. After all your years of capture the flag success you'd think you'd know by know that it is much easier to creep up on someone in the dark than near a campfire. Rookie mistake. The grippli nightwatchmen rouse from their posts and draw their weapons. As the three leap forth to attack you, grippli in the trees fire poison darts into your back and others are roused from their tents. I don't think I need to tell you that this is... THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The man you just dismissed earlier is standing at the front of the pack. You knew there was something off about that earlier request and seeing this display only reaffirms that you were right to avoid them in the first place. They are all looking down at the ground but now he is looking up directly at you with a creepy smile on his face. "So, you saw through our little ambush scheme did you?" he sneers. "What is it you want?" "Quite simply we're aware of your quest to reach the Craxil and we are not prepared to allow it." At this point their heads begin to twist and contort and their skulls appear to come out of their mouths. It is almost as though they were never human at all but part of some kind of disguise. In fact, it is now readily apparent that this is the case. You are now looking at five maniacal looking skeletons armed with an assortment of swords and hand axes. They seem like they are eager to get things started and in fact, they are all rushing down the beaten path towards you. You turn the other way until you can decide what to do and despite what you've been told about the undead, you discover they are perfectly capable of keeping pace with you. You know you aren't going to be able to take on five of these guys and they seem intent on sticking together during the pursuit. To your left is another cave you've chosen to pass up on your journey, figuring it was just another humunculus den. Perhaps, if you are lucky, you can lose your pursuers in there. Alternatively, you could always try climbing the steep rockface off to your right. You've had plenty of climbing experience as a kid and somehow you hope these skeletons won't be able to follow you. You could also turn around and start unloading arrows into your enemies. They may be keeping pace with you, but you still have a heck of a head start and you'd wager you could release quite a few before they catch up to you. It's up to you... > You rain Arrows Upon Them Why run when you can fight? The arrows worked for you before and you believe you can get off quite a few shots before they start catching up to you. To wait until you reach the top of a local hill then spin around and draw your bow. The five skeleton creatures are still running towards you in a tight grouping. You let fly the first arrow and it hits the collarbone of one of the back skeletons. You release another and it hits the leg of another skeleton. In fact you score a lot of hits, even putting one through the skull of the lead skeleton. There's just one problem... they aren't slowing down! Maybe you've forgotten, but arrows and bladed weapons are only effective against enemies that still have flesh and blood to let. These skeletons are not slowing down or taking much damage as a result of your arrows. In fact, it would require a more blunt weapon to kill. As they start drawing in close you turn and continue running. You've pretty much lost your head start and now they are hot on your heels. This continues for a while until one of your skeletal pursuers gets it in his mind to throw its hand axe into your back. It only goes downhill from there for you. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are standing on a narrow plateau in the rugged mountainous region beyond your village. Unlike the brownish/tan rockface you see near your village, the rocks in this region are more redish and vibrant looking. You see a path leading forward and you decide to follow it. On the plus side, you haven't encountered any hostile creatures so far. You walk for at least a few miles and it appears to extend beyond your sight. You curse at your luck and begin to slump into depression when you realize you don't even know where to fnd this Craxil thing in the first place. You decide to build a campfire for the night, think things over, and gather some rest. As you are doing so, a strange man lumbers out from behind a large rock and begins to beg you for help. "Please, it won't take long. My caravan was beset upon by foul creatures and I fear for my families safety. You must help me!" You pause. It seems odd that a human would be up here in such a hostile region, let alone a caravan. But this is definitely the face of a human and he shows no signs of hostility. "Why are you up here anyway"? you ask. "The Craxil and his followers will kill anyone that wanders into their mountainous territory." "We got lost trying to find our way to Jacquescrappe village, perhaps you've heard of it"? "Yeah... I just came from there... but I don't think you want to go back that way, you won't get far." "Look, I don't wish to be rude, but my family is in danger and I need your help NOW!" At this point, the man turns and runs down the path. You call out to him to stop but he keeps going. You aren't sure if you would be of much help to him in battle, but you aren't sure how you would feel about abandoning him like that either. Time to decide... > You help Him, What Kind Of Adventurer Are You? You decide to help the man. What kind of adventurer would you be to deny a father the aid he needs to save his family from the Craxil's minions? The royal military may have abandoned Jacquescrappe because it was remote and of no strategic value but dammit if you are going to end up just like them. However, something about this is starting to feel weird. Why would there be a human caravan up here in the Craxil's lands and why do you have this strange feeling in the pit of your stomach. Just as you are having these thoughts, an owl looks at you from atop a dead tree and just looks at you with intent. You've never been able to communicate to animals like the druids do, but somehow you just know this thing is telling you to turn back. You stop for a minute, then strike yourself and shake it off. Since when did you become a druid and take advice from animals? Aside from your pigs "Oinky" and "Snout" you've never really connected with any animals anyway. Besides, your gut hasn't helped you win any gambling tournaments so why should you trust it now? You're probably just afraid and subconciously looking for a way to avoid a potentially dangerous situation. Helping the man is the right thing to do, you're sure of it... Right? > You indeed, What Kind Of Hero Abandons His Fellow Man When His Family Is At Stake? You arrive in a clearing and the man who pleaded with you earlier has just stopped in his tracks. "So where's the caravan?" you inquire, expecting some sort of explanation for this sudden drop in urgency. Silence .............. At this point you are quickly surrounded by other men who are equally silent. The feeling in the pit of your stomach has just gotten worse and you realize that you've been had. "There is no caravan is there." ..... At this point the man who led you here turns to face you. The head suddenly begins to twitch and distort and the head of a skeleton emerges from the mouth as if pushing through a mask. You back up and realize the four other men around you are doing the same. They rush you from all sides and you are quickly overwhelmed. You made a grave mistake in not trusting your instincts earlier, they exist in us for a reason. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to help the man. What kind of adventurer would you be to deny a father the aid he needs to save his family from the Craxil's minions? The royal military may have abandoned Jacquescrappe because it was remote and of no strategic value but dammit if you are going to end up just like them. However, something about this is starting to feel weird. Why would there be a human caravan up here in the Craxil's lands and why do you have this strange feeling in the pit of your stomach. Just as you are having these thoughts, an owl looks at you from atop a dead tree and just looks at you with intent. You've never been able to communicate to animals like the druids do, but somehow you just know this thing is telling you to turn back. You stop for a minute, then strike yourself and shake it off. Since when did you become a druid and take advice from animals? Aside from your pigs "Oinky" and "Snout" you've never really connected with any animals anyway. Besides, your gut hasn't helped you win any gambling tournaments so why should you trust it now? You're probably just afraid and subconciously looking for a way to avoid a potentially dangerous situation. Helping the man is the right thing to do, you're sure of it... Right? > You no, Something About This Whole Situation Is Fishy. You're Turning Back. You don't like any part of where this is going and decide that the best thing to do is to turn back. After all, no humans from Jacquescrappe have ever made it this far into the Craxil's territory so why should you believe there is a human caravan out this far? None of this makes any sense and you think to yourself that these beastmen are not above using your compassion against you as a weakness. It is low, but well within the bounds of what these things might do. You come to a stop, and look up at the owl. He gives you a warm, approving look then flies away. "What a strange creature" you think to yourself. You wait for the man to disappear from view, then wait a while longer for good measure, then continue forward on foot as you had originally planned. Frankly, you're just glad to be away from the suspicious man. As you continue on your journey you wonder if you made the right choice. I mean, what if the man's family really was in danger and you could have made a difference? Did you make the right call? You console yourself by reminding yourself of the importance of your own mission and how you cannot afford to take unnecessary chances. Just as you are having these thoughts, you discover the man who approached you earlier as well as four others standing in the middle of the beaten path with their heads down. It looks like you aren't done with them after all... <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You run down the passageway that you were previously unable to get to while the three humunculi were at the campfire. Unfortunately, the humunculi have chosen the same path. You aren't sure if it is because they saw you or because of bad luck, but they are not far behind you now. You reach another chamber and find a large, demonic looking creature blocking your path. Before you can even think about how to describe this thing you feel the humunculi grab you from behind and pull you to the ground. They are about to stomp you to death when the demonic looking creature disintigrates them on the spot. "Nobody takes my prey in my domain. Tell me little thing, what are you here to do?" This thing looks like a large floating eye with multiple smaller eyes attached atop its head. You realize this thing is a beholder and soon you find yourself paralyzed in its gaze. That's what you get for staring into its eye I guess. "Answer me puny one, why are you here in my domain?" You are too terrified to answer, but this creature appears to grow irritated by your silence so you muster all the courage you've got and speak up "I'm here to slay the Craxil" you proclaim, terrified of how this creature will respond to such a bold statement. "HA! Amusing little one, someone of your strength doesn't have what it takes but it would entertain me to see how you die in the Craxil's mountains. Answer this riddle correctly, and I will permit you to continue through to the other side of my domain. Answer incorrectly, and you will share the same fate as your pursuers. Are you ready?" "As ready as I'll ever be" you squeak. "Very well!" it bellows, clearly enjoying every bit of this. "I am a vast canyon that spans beyond sight. I am without end and have been a part of every man whenever there is trouble. What am I?" > The Thirst For Knowledge "Wrong" it proclaims. "While the thirst for knowledge may be limitless in your kind, it is not your primary concern in times of trouble now is it?" "Well... erm..." You don't have time to retort. It fires a beam of negative energy into your chest and you disintigrate on the spot, bringing your quest to an abrupt end. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You run down the passageway that you were previously unable to get to while the three humunculi were at the campfire. Unfortunately, the humunculi have chosen the same path. You aren't sure if it is because they saw you or because of bad luck, but they are not far behind you now. You reach another chamber and find a large, demonic looking creature blocking your path. Before you can even think about how to describe this thing you feel the humunculi grab you from behind and pull you to the ground. They are about to stomp you to death when the demonic looking creature disintigrates them on the spot. "Nobody takes my prey in my domain. Tell me little thing, what are you here to do?" This thing looks like a large floating eye with multiple smaller eyes attached atop its head. You realize this thing is a beholder and soon you find yourself paralyzed in its gaze. That's what you get for staring into its eye I guess. "Answer me puny one, why are you here in my domain?" You are too terrified to answer, but this creature appears to grow irritated by your silence so you muster all the courage you've got and speak up "I'm here to slay the Craxil" you proclaim, terrified of how this creature will respond to such a bold statement. "HA! Amusing little one, someone of your strength doesn't have what it takes but it would entertain me to see how you die in the Craxil's mountains. Answer this riddle correctly, and I will permit you to continue through to the other side of my domain. Answer incorrectly, and you will share the same fate as your pursuers. Are you ready?" "As ready as I'll ever be" you squeak. "Very well!" it bellows, clearly enjoying every bit of this. "I am a vast canyon that spans beyond sight. I am without end and have been a part of every man whenever there is trouble. What am I?" > The Limitless Potential Of Mankind "Wrong" it bellows, laughing under its breath. "Your kind's potential is not as limitless as you like to think it is. And besides, your limitless potential isn't exactly showing through in this time of trouble now is it little one?" "Well... erm... " You wanted to say something about how desperate situations propel human potential to new heights but the blast of negative energy he shoots at you doesn't give you a chance. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You run down the passageway that you were previously unable to get to while the three humunculi were at the campfire. Unfortunately, the humunculi have chosen the same path. You aren't sure if it is because they saw you or because of bad luck, but they are not far behind you now. You reach another chamber and find a large, demonic looking creature blocking your path. Before you can even think about how to describe this thing you feel the humunculi grab you from behind and pull you to the ground. They are about to stomp you to death when the demonic looking creature disintigrates them on the spot. "Nobody takes my prey in my domain. Tell me little thing, what are you here to do?" This thing looks like a large floating eye with multiple smaller eyes attached atop its head. You realize this thing is a beholder and soon you find yourself paralyzed in its gaze. That's what you get for staring into its eye I guess. "Answer me puny one, why are you here in my domain?" You are too terrified to answer, but this creature appears to grow irritated by your silence so you muster all the courage you've got and speak up "I'm here to slay the Craxil" you proclaim, terrified of how this creature will respond to such a bold statement. "HA! Amusing little one, someone of your strength doesn't have what it takes but it would entertain me to see how you die in the Craxil's mountains. Answer this riddle correctly, and I will permit you to continue through to the other side of my domain. Answer incorrectly, and you will share the same fate as your pursuers. Are you ready?" "As ready as I'll ever be" you squeak. "Very well!" it bellows, clearly enjoying every bit of this. "I am a vast canyon that spans beyond sight. I am without end and have been a part of every man whenever there is trouble. What am I?" > A Bar Wench? The creature and you both get a hearty laugh out of this response but you know that you are wrong and you know you are going to die soon. Indeed, the creature hits you with the same negative energy it used on the humunculi and you disapate into the air. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Instinctively, you know you are going to be discovered if he gets any closer. You aren't sure how you are going to go about escaping the other two, but you are gonna have to kill this one before it gets any closer. Without warning you lunge forth and put your short sword through the creature's belly. You were actually aiming for the heart and the creature moved so I guess that says something about your swordsman skill. Nonetheless, it proved effective at killing the creature. You waste no time at all in bolting back up to the original chamber with the campsite and the other two will round the corner any second. You need to make a decision FAST! The large pathway (on the right wall as you enter) is now inexplicably barred but you can still run back outside the cave or down the passageway that was previously inaccessable due to their presence. The adrenaline floods your body and your survival instincts take over. You immediately decide to... > You run Outside The Cave You run outside the cave and around the corner. You are back on the plateau overlooking the village. Your heart is beating fast as hell and you are clutching your sword so tightly you will probably have blisters. Fortunately for you, the humunculi have chosen to run down the path behind their campsite. You wait outside the cave for a few hours and still they haven't returned from the passageway. Perhaps they have chosen to travel further in to pursue you? You return to the cave's interior and are standing at the campfire. The large passageway on the right side of the chamber is still blocked. You peer down the passageway in front of you, the one the humunculi chose to go down and you wonder what lies beyond its depths. However, as you look left you remember there is still an as yet unexplored passageway down in the cavern where the humunculi nearly overwhelmed you. You aren't going to find the Craxil by standing around here so you are going to have to decide where you want to go from here. > You follow The Path Behind The Campfire, Where The Two Humunculi Went You chose to take the passageway behind the campfire. If these creatures are protecting the Craxil, or at least serving him in some sense, it would makes sense they would head in this direction. You get the strong scent of burning animals or something like that and what you see next is COMPLETELY unexpected. Instead of seeing the two humunculi that ran down this passageway earlier, you are standing directly in front of some kind of hovering demon whose gaze is fixed directly upon you! This thing looks like a large floating eye with multiple smaller eyes attached atop its head. You realize this thing is a beholder and soon you find yourself paralyzed in its gaze. That's what you get for staring into its eye I guess. "Answer me puny one, why are you here in my domain?" You are too terrified to answer, but this creature appears to grow irritated by your silence so you muster all the courage you've got and speak up "I'm here to slay the Craxil" you proclaim, terrified of how this creature will respond to such a bold statement. "HA! Amusing little one, someone of your strength doesn't have what it takes but it would entertain me to see how you die in the Craxil's mountains. Answer this riddle correctly, and I will permit you to continue through to the other side of my domain. Answer incorrectly, and you will share the same fate as your former pursuers. Are you ready?" "Did he kill the humunculi?" you think to yourself... "As ready as I'll ever be" you squeak. "Very well!" it bellows, clearly enjoying every bit of this. "I am a vast canyon that spans beyond sight. I am without end and have been a part of every man whenever there is trouble. What am I?" <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You run outside the cave and around the corner. You are back on the plateau overlooking the village. Your heart is beating fast as hell and you are clutching your sword so tightly you will probably have blisters. Fortunately for you, the humunculi have chosen to run down the path behind their campsite. You wait outside the cave for a few hours and still they haven't returned from the passageway. Perhaps they have chosen to travel further in to pursue you? You return to the cave's interior and are standing at the campfire. The large passageway on the right side of the chamber is still blocked. You peer down the passageway in front of you, the one the humunculi chose to go down and you wonder what lies beyond its depths. However, as you look left you remember there is still an as yet unexplored passageway down in the cavern where the humunculi nearly overwhelmed you. You aren't going to find the Craxil by standing around here so you are going to have to decide where you want to go from here. > You go Down To The Cavern Where You First Used Your Bow And Try That Passageway Naturally, you are not going to go down the passageway that your pursuers went down, that's just stupid. You want to avoid unnecessary conflict after allso you can increase your chances of reaching the Craxil. This passageway leads you out to a large plateau. To the right, you can see another several clusters of cave networks populated by humunculi. To the left you see a step drop off that would land you in the forest the hunters of your village like to use. In front of you, and in the distance, is a curious looking camp. You see a couple different campfires and at least two dozen tee-pee style tents down over there. You can't make out who the inhabitants are though, at least not from here. Odds are they aren't friendly though. This is Craxil territory after all. Of course, the humunculi in the multiple cave clusters over there aren't friendly either so what does it matter? You still have no leads as to where to find the Craxil but you need to make a decision as to where to go. > You investigate The Camp You cannot contain your curiosity about this camp but you know you should keep your distance and be careful. They are likely hostile after all. You remember that you are out in the open now so the sun will remove any advantage that the shadows had given you in the caves. You decide to wait until nightfall, then slink in closer to the camp. There is minimal rock cover but you manage to find a decent place from which to observe their camp. They are goblins, armed with schimitars and polearms which you assume must be the work of the Craxil. Even outside the Craxil's domain, goblins are known for their hostility towards humans so approaching them would be stupid. However, unlike the powerful humunculi you've had to deal with so far, goblins are a weaker enemy you feel confident you could stand against (provided you don't get yourself overwhelmed). There are about 30 of the foul creatures wandering about the camp, but the one that catches your interest is the shaman. Decked out in fancy garb and occupying a large tent in the center of the camp, it is clear this one is the leader. It occurs to you that if they are working for the Craxil then this one might be able to provide you with some much needed leads as to where you can find him. You are confident in your ability to handle a single goblin or perhaps even two if your life depended on it but certainly not the entire camp. You're just a sneaky swineherd after all. You wait until midnight, when most of the goblins have retired to sleep. There are still a handful of night watchmen goblins though, and they will need to be dealt with before you can hope to reach the shaman's tent. You also shudder at the thought of the shaman unleashing horrid magicks upon you. Once again, you will have to use the element of surprise to make up for your lack of fighting experience but then... as a sneaky bastard that is your specialty. The first concern is the single goblin standing at the closest entrance to the camp. He is holding a polearm and needs to be removed before you can get into the camp. As stated before, you are confident you can take him, but you need to be careful not to wake the rest of the camp in the process. One idea is to sneak up on him and stab him through the back with your sword before he can react. Another idea is to try and hit him with an arrow from a distance, then move on to the next target. Either way, he needs to be removed. > You sneak Up And Stab Him You might be able to hit the broadside of a barn, but your aim is not sufficient for anything more than a general area. You don't want to alert the goblin to your presence so you are just going to have to deal with him the old fashioned way. Under cover of midnight you slink around to the edge of the camp and work your way along the side until you are close. Despite your apparent lack of skill in fighting and archery you are an absolute master at sneakery. But enough of such destracting thoughts. As the goblin turns away you leap forth, cup his mouth with your left hand, and stab him through the back. You pull the body away from the camp so none of the other goblins will see it. Fortunately for you, none of the goblins seem stirred in the least. You removed that problem without attracting attention. Even better, another one of the nightwatchmen goblins has come back to the same post trying to figure out why his comrade is no longer at his post. This affords you the opportunity to repeat the procedure and return once again. The way to the central tent still has a few more problems in store for you. Single goblins patrol the area and there is always at least one patrol goblin within sight range of that tent. Also, the tent itself has its own nightwatchman who is evidently dedicated to the shaman. At the very least, you need to kill one of the patrolling goblins to create an opening and the sentry guarding the tent. With this done, you have a chance at abducting and interrogating the shaman for some much needed information on the Craxil. You have some ideas on the patrolling goblin. You could attempt to construct a simple foothold trap out of vine and add some barbs from the camp to dig into his foot. Alternatively, you could wait until he rounds his usual tree and cut him down before the next patrolling goblin comes along. > You construct A Barbed Foothold Trap And Place It In The Patrol's Path You can't get caught if you aren't around when he trips the trap right? Well, I suppose you could be, but whatever. You spend a half hour or so of your time outside the camp constructing this trap. The knot will tighten the loop around the goblins leg when I pull on the vine so I just need to get back into position and lay the trap. As predicted, the goblin came back around with his usual path but this time he was a little bit to far to the right. You pull the loop a bit closer and wait until the next one comes, but he is a bit too far to the left. After some frustrating trial and error, a patrolling goblin finally steps foot in your loop and you tighten it abruptly around his foot. At the same time, you quickly drag him towards your hiding spot so you can silence him. Goblins are particularly light, especially when they are not wearing armor, so you are able to do it fairly easily. The barbs dug into his foot so deep they nearly too it off. You silence him with your hand then break his neck. For a moment, you are amazed at what you have learned to do given you're just a swine herd, but then again... survival makes us capable of many things doesn't it. The next patrolling goblin discovers the sword the last patrolling goblin dropped when you got him. You are concerned that he's about to raise the alarm but he just mutters "Akt Khazzat nighmam noriet maln" or something along those lines and walks off. You have no idea what he said, but from his tone of voice, you think he thinks the other watchman is skipping out on his duties. Shit, does that mean the shaman will be able to speak English? Surely he will, he's a shaman after all. He better dammit. You wait for the opening to come again, then quickly maneuver into position to stab the tent's sentry before the next patrol goblin comes around. You peek inside to see the shaman sleeping (lucky you) and drag the sentry's body inside where it won't be detected. You've reached the shaman, and he's still asleep, but you can't very well interrogate him here. You pick up a candlestick from the nearby table and as he's coming to you clock him over the head with it. You check for a pulse to see if he's dead or unconcious and thankfully, he's just knocked out. You gag him and bind his arms behind his back because he won't be able to cast spells without his tounge and hand movements. You use the same patrol opening to escape the camp and return to a spot distant from the camp. You rouse the shaman to wake up and realize you are probably more scared than he will be. > You time For An Interrogation Fortunately for you, he does know English as is readily apparent by the curses he chooses to expel regarding your parents. You glare at him and ask him about the Craxil but he just squeals with laughter as if finding it difficult to take you seriously. You ask him again and remove the gag so he can answer but then quickly put it back in when he starts trying to chant a spell of some sort. You punch him and because you're such a wimp it ends up hurting your wrist more than it hurt his face, which only adds to his laughter. You realize this isn't working as planned so you take him to where you stashed the bodies of the two nightwatchmen you killed at the entrance and draw your sword. This seems to make a bigger impression upon him. You take him back further away from the camp and inquire again. This time he seems more receptive. "The Craxil isn't something you can reason with or just strike down, he's an inspiration to the beastmen of this region. A unifying force." The shaman goes on to explain that the Craxil has been gathering his strength here for longer than the villagers realized and that the weekly raids for food were little compared to what is being organized. "The Craxil isn't content to leave his children here in the mountains while the humans enjoy the soft lands." The shaman explains. "He isn't after world domination or anything, but he wants to take a few choice pieces of territory from the humans down below." "What manner of creature is he?" you demand, keeping your sword out as a reminder of your unspoken threat. "None of us goblins really knows for sure. The riders deliver his orders to us and they are the only ones who have ever seen him." "The riders?" "Yes, they were once human but umm... not anymore." "You mean they were raised as undead!?!?!" "Heavens no, the Craxil doesn't resort to such disgusting practices. Rather, they become his thralls after a lengthy, mind breaking ritual. They do his bidding now." You pause at that comment. You've heard of mind flayers dominating people's minds like this but they've always been able to do so instantly, without the need for such rituals and practices. Moreover, Brandolf insisted that the Craxil is a being unlike any that has been seen in this world so far. You decide to change the topic to discuss the Craxil's location. "Where is the Craxil located?" you ask. "Pff. Do you even know where YOU are located right now" the shaman says with a chuckle. "A bit far from home and looking a little lost out here aren't we?" You shove your sword closer to his throat and he ceases to taunt you. "The Craxil resides in an underground cavern that is accessed from a canyon north of here. When the rocks cease to be this familiar brown and start looking red then you are getting closer. Even closer still when you begin to see the cactii. The most direct route is the Redrange pass, though that has some dangers of its own." You are about to inquire further about what else lies in store for you, but you hear the sounds of goblins in the distance and you are worried the shaman may start making noise for them. You can't afford to be swarmed by goblins right now so you cut his throat and retreat a little until they return to camp. Fortunately, the path he spoke of can be reached by simply going around the goblin camp from a safe distance and continuing in that direction. You still have about a full days journey before you get to this "Redrange Pass" and even then you are only at the start of the shaman's directions. But hey, at least you know where you are going now and have the knowledge that you've been going the right way all this time. You just really hope that little shit isn't lying to you. > Onward You've gotten past the bulk of the humunculi and the goblins were refreshingly easy, but as you continue forward you shudder to think at what else may lie in store for you up ahead. This nondescript plateau had dredged on for quite a while and still no sign of Redridge pass. Suddently you reach a tunnel and you are dismayed to see a large troll blocking access. Trolls are even stronger than humunculi so you won't be fighting this one anytime soon. The tunnel represents the only way through to the other side as an inclimbable rockface extends in both directions along the plateau. You're gonna have to get through that tunnel one way or another. You remember that the shaman said that the Craxil uses riders to send its orders out to its minions and that these riders are basically human thralls. Perhaps you could fake it to get past him. Another option is your bow. Trolls are very large creatures and therefore pretty hard to miss, even for you. A final option is to try and distract it somehow. You reason that you could cause a lot of commotion in the half-dead vegetation nearby to draw him away from the tunnel, then circle around and make a run for it. > You try To Trick The Troll Into Believing You Are A Thrall You dawn your poker face and approach the troll expectantly. You reason that you cannot hope to match a troll's strength but rather take advantage of their lack of intelligence. As you approach, the troll glares at you and is clearly readying his club for a strike. "I must report back to the Craxil" you announce. "And who are you to see the Craxil" the troll questions. "I am a rider and have no time for your nonsense. This report is very important." There is a pause as the troll is thinking over your response. Clearly, he isn't sure what to say or do in this situation. It looks like this might actually work. But then... "Where is your steed?" the troll asks. Shit. Of course, they're called riders for a reason and you haven't got any ride now do you? Of all the rotten luck. "He is ill, suffers the ick" you manage, doubtful as to whether or not this will be taken. At this point the troll isn't buying it. You wish you had considered this before you attempted to lie. Hard to take, being outsmarted by a troll. Even harder to take is the club that has now crushed every bone in your body and left you a mangled mess. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You've gotten past the bulk of the humunculi and the goblins were refreshingly easy, but as you continue forward you shudder to think at what else may lie in store for you up ahead. This nondescript plateau had dredged on for quite a while and still no sign of Redridge pass. Suddently you reach a tunnel and you are dismayed to see a large troll blocking access. Trolls are even stronger than humunculi so you won't be fighting this one anytime soon. The tunnel represents the only way through to the other side as an inclimbable rockface extends in both directions along the plateau. You're gonna have to get through that tunnel one way or another. You remember that the shaman said that the Craxil uses riders to send its orders out to its minions and that these riders are basically human thralls. Perhaps you could fake it to get past him. Another option is your bow. Trolls are very large creatures and therefore pretty hard to miss, even for you. A final option is to try and distract it somehow. You reason that you could cause a lot of commotion in the half-dead vegetation nearby to draw him away from the tunnel, then circle around and make a run for it. > You draw Your Bow And Fire Upon The Troll You may only be able to hit a general area, but a troll is a very large and broad target so you have practically no chance of missing here. You position yourself behind a large rock, just out of the trolls sight and ready your bow. The troll is still completely unaware of your presence and just stands there looking bored out of his mind. You pull out an arrow and draw it back in the string. You take aim and release. The first shot hits the troll in the navel but seems to deal minimal damage. You draw back again and fire one into him, this time just below his chest. He looks confused but now lumbers in your direction. As you pull another one back he detects your presence and is now moving faster. You put another one into his midsection but again this deals minimal damage. You prepare to draw back another but he is upon you now. It's too bad you forgot that trolls have exceptional regenerative capabilities. It takes more than a few arrows to bring these things down. Unfortunately, this is a lesson that has cost you your life. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You've gotten past the bulk of the humunculi and the goblins were refreshingly easy, but as you continue forward you shudder to think at what else may lie in store for you up ahead. This nondescript plateau had dredged on for quite a while and still no sign of Redridge pass. Suddently you reach a tunnel and you are dismayed to see a large troll blocking access. Trolls are even stronger than humunculi so you won't be fighting this one anytime soon. The tunnel represents the only way through to the other side as an inclimbable rockface extends in both directions along the plateau. You're gonna have to get through that tunnel one way or another. You remember that the shaman said that the Craxil uses riders to send its orders out to its minions and that these riders are basically human thralls. Perhaps you could fake it to get past him. Another option is your bow. Trolls are very large creatures and therefore pretty hard to miss, even for you. A final option is to try and distract it somehow. You reason that you could cause a lot of commotion in the half-dead vegetation nearby to draw him away from the tunnel, then circle around and make a run for it. > You create A Diversion To Lure Him Away, Then Run For It The troll may be large, but something tells you it would take more than a few arrows to bring this thing down and you have no intention of getting up close to it for a bluff. It takes time, but after making enough noise from cover you manage to get the troll's attention and lure him away from the tunnel entrance. The creature lumbers slowly and cautiously towards the source of the noise and you are already working your way around from the other side. Eventually you see your opportunity and make a break for it. By the time the troll realizes you are there, you are already behind him and nearing the entrance to the tunnel. He tries to stop you, but you are already inside and despite his best efforts to stop you, you are already beyond his reach. He lets out a series of angry grunts and you continue onward through the tunnel. Clearly all those years of playing capture the flag have served you well. As you emerge from the other side, you begin to see the rocks getting more red and you take it as a sign that you are on the right path. There was never much foliage in this mountainside but the area you are in now is especially rocky and devoid of vegetation. You hope you will find the Redrange Pass soon so you can deal with the Craxil and be done with this quest. You've been traveling a long time without sleep and dawn is starting to crack. Somehow, the warm beams of sunlight raising up over the distant rocks make you feel sleepy. As you continnue forward along the rugged expanse of jagged red rocks and dirt you discover the remains of an unused campsite. The inhabitants are long gone, but the camp is still here. A cozy warm campfire, soft, cottony sleeping mat, warm blanket, the works. There are no enemies as far as the eye can see in any direction and you think you would probably be able to think better if you had some rest. The warmth and coziness of this campsite is calling to you and since you haven't slept in almost 40 hours now, you begin to consider. > You curl Up And Sleep, You May Not Get The Chance To Later You are going to need to stay awake if you want to keep your mind sharp, and you can't do that if you are sleep deprived. It only makes sense that you would need to take a break in your journey and catch some much needed sleep. Besides, the blanket is so warm, the mat is so cottony soft and the sun beams over your face are just wonderful. You feel as though you could just curl up and hibernate like a bear and continue your sneaky journey at night. Kind of lucky that you just happened upon such a nice, uninhabited camp huh. I mean, what are the odds right? Well... they aren't very high actually. Actually, its pretty damn convinent isn't it. It's at this point you start to get suspicious but by now it is too late. The entire camp site dissipates into a thick black smoke and you feel as though you've just aged by 50 years. You manage to stand but you can barely move. This is when you notice all the skeletons on the ground that were not here before. How could you not see them before?!? They definitely weren't here before. No way! The billowy smoke takes form and suddenly it all makes sense in a terrible way. The campsite was just a tempting illusion generated by a wraith. Its terrifying to think that its intelligent enough to lure you in like this, and now that it has already sapped so much of your strength and lifeforce you know in your heart you are completely fucked. Fear gives way to anger, which then gives way to desperation followed by pathetic pleading. The wraith ignores it all and soon you are but a husk of a man and within a few weeks of decay you become just another skeleton adorning his trap. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The troll may be large, but something tells you it would take more than a few arrows to bring this thing down and you have no intention of getting up close to it for a bluff. It takes time, but after making enough noise from cover you manage to get the troll's attention and lure him away from the tunnel entrance. The creature lumbers slowly and cautiously towards the source of the noise and you are already working your way around from the other side. Eventually you see your opportunity and make a break for it. By the time the troll realizes you are there, you are already behind him and nearing the entrance to the tunnel. He tries to stop you, but you are already inside and despite his best efforts to stop you, you are already beyond his reach. He lets out a series of angry grunts and you continue onward through the tunnel. Clearly all those years of playing capture the flag have served you well. As you emerge from the other side, you begin to see the rocks getting more red and you take it as a sign that you are on the right path. There was never much foliage in this mountainside but the area you are in now is especially rocky and devoid of vegetation. You hope you will find the Redrange Pass soon so you can deal with the Craxil and be done with this quest. You've been traveling a long time without sleep and dawn is starting to crack. Somehow, the warm beams of sunlight raising up over the distant rocks make you feel sleepy. As you continnue forward along the rugged expanse of jagged red rocks and dirt you discover the remains of an unused campsite. The inhabitants are long gone, but the camp is still here. A cozy warm campfire, soft, cottony sleeping mat, warm blanket, the works. There are no enemies as far as the eye can see in any direction and you think you would probably be able to think better if you had some rest. The warmth and coziness of this campsite is calling to you and since you haven't slept in almost 40 hours now, you begin to consider. > You focus & Discipline, You Need To Keep Moving You decide that there will be time to sleep when your journey is over. Sleeping now would only make you vulnerable within Craxil territory and given the myriad of possible fates that may befall you we simply cannot take that chance now can we. Then again, you have gone almost 40 hours without sleep so far and you aren't even sure if you are halfway there yet. If you continue pushing yourself forth at this pace you may very well collapse. Perhaps finding a safe place to rest isn't such a bad idea after all. As you try to walk away you get the distinct smell of bacon. You look back and see a skillet over the campfire. It smells fantastic. Strange that you didn't notice this earlier though. The campsite seems to be calling to you, but of course that idea is completely absurd. Your beginning to feel like that halfling Brodo Faggins, who traveled relentlessly on his journey without supplies or rest. You suppose that given you've been an underappreciated swineherd your whole life, such an idea is a fun one to ponder. You catch yourself stopping in your tracks, and starring at the food over the campfire and the mat on the ground. "How convinent" you think, "to have all that food within reach of the soft cotton mat. You shake your head and try to shake it off but the temptation is grabbing at your attention. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You might be able to hit the broadside of a barn, but your aim is not sufficient for anything more than a general area. You don't want to alert the goblin to your presence so you are just going to have to deal with him the old fashioned way. Under cover of midnight you slink around to the edge of the camp and work your way along the side until you are close. Despite your apparent lack of skill in fighting and archery you are an absolute master at sneakery. But enough of such destracting thoughts. As the goblin turns away you leap forth, cup his mouth with your left hand, and stab him through the back. You pull the body away from the camp so none of the other goblins will see it. Fortunately for you, none of the goblins seem stirred in the least. You removed that problem without attracting attention. Even better, another one of the nightwatchmen goblins has come back to the same post trying to figure out why his comrade is no longer at his post. This affords you the opportunity to repeat the procedure and return once again. The way to the central tent still has a few more problems in store for you. Single goblins patrol the area and there is always at least one patrol goblin within sight range of that tent. Also, the tent itself has its own nightwatchman who is evidently dedicated to the shaman. At the very least, you need to kill one of the patrolling goblins to create an opening and the sentry guarding the tent. With this done, you have a chance at abducting and interrogating the shaman for some much needed information on the Craxil. You have some ideas on the patrolling goblin. You could attempt to construct a simple foothold trap out of vine and add some barbs from the camp to dig into his foot. Alternatively, you could wait until he rounds his usual tree and cut him down before the next patrolling goblin comes along. > You wait Behind The Tree And Cut Him Down As He Comes Along You prefer to keep things simple and avoid the convoluted. Besides, a barbed trap would likely make him scream out before you kill him would it not? You hide behind a tree and wait for the next goblin to make his usual round. As he comes about you plunge your sword into his chest and immediately grab him so you can hide the body before the next patrol arrives. You wait for the opening to come again, then quickly maneuver into position to stab the tent's sentry before the next patrol goblin comes around. You peek inside to see the shaman sleeping (lucky you) and drag the sentry's body inside where it won't be detected. You've reached the shaman, and he's still asleep, but you can't very well interrogate him here. You pick up a candlestick from the nearby table and as he's coming to you clock him over the head with it. You check for a pulse to see if he's dead or unconcious and thankfully, he's just knocked out. You gag him and bind his arms behind his back because he won't be able to cast spells without his tounge and hand movements. You use the same patrol opening to escape the camp and return to a spot distant from the camp. You rouse the shaman to wake up and realize you are probably more scared than he will be. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You cannot contain your curiosity about this camp but you know you should keep your distance and be careful. They are likely hostile after all. You remember that you are out in the open now so the sun will remove any advantage that the shadows had given you in the caves. You decide to wait until nightfall, then slink in closer to the camp. There is minimal rock cover but you manage to find a decent place from which to observe their camp. They are goblins, armed with schimitars and polearms which you assume must be the work of the Craxil. Even outside the Craxil's domain, goblins are known for their hostility towards humans so approaching them would be stupid. However, unlike the powerful humunculi you've had to deal with so far, goblins are a weaker enemy you feel confident you could stand against (provided you don't get yourself overwhelmed). There are about 30 of the foul creatures wandering about the camp, but the one that catches your interest is the shaman. Decked out in fancy garb and occupying a large tent in the center of the camp, it is clear this one is the leader. It occurs to you that if they are working for the Craxil then this one might be able to provide you with some much needed leads as to where you can find him. You are confident in your ability to handle a single goblin or perhaps even two if your life depended on it but certainly not the entire camp. You're just a sneaky swineherd after all. You wait until midnight, when most of the goblins have retired to sleep. There are still a handful of night watchmen goblins though, and they will need to be dealt with before you can hope to reach the shaman's tent. You also shudder at the thought of the shaman unleashing horrid magicks upon you. Once again, you will have to use the element of surprise to make up for your lack of fighting experience but then... as a sneaky bastard that is your specialty. The first concern is the single goblin standing at the closest entrance to the camp. He is holding a polearm and needs to be removed before you can get into the camp. As stated before, you are confident you can take him, but you need to be careful not to wake the rest of the camp in the process. One idea is to sneak up on him and stab him through the back with your sword before he can react. Another idea is to try and hit him with an arrow from a distance, then move on to the next target. Either way, he needs to be removed. > You put An Arrow In Him You are concerned that if you were to get to close to him or the camp before he is taken out then you will be detected so it is best to deal with the problem from afar. You pull an arrow back in your bow and wait until the goblin stops fidgeting around. You were successful with this thing the last time you used it against that one humunculus, but you know that was just luck. Besides, you aren't going to get a second chance this time. You carefully aim at the goblins chest because that is the broadest target on his body and an arrow that lands there is likely to still prove fatal. You wait for the wind to die down, pull the drawstring as far back as you possibly can, perfect your aim, and....................RELEASE! The arrow sails through the air but fails to hit its target. Actually, you overshot and the arrow tore through one of the peripheral tents. You ready another arrow, but the goblin guard is aware now and so is the inhabitant of that tent you shot. You manage to blow out the guards knee with the second shot (despite still aiming for the chest) but its no use as the camp is now stirring and the goblins are now being roused. You pull back towards the humunculus caves you emerged from, hoping to find someplace to hide before they get their shit together. You duck behind a large rock just outside the passageway you exitted from when you first arrived on this plateau. The goblins have explored the area between you and the camp and they are drawing closer. The shaman leads them into the passageway you came from and for a moment you think you're going to be safe...until one of the footsolder goblins detects your presence. He lifts his spear above his head leaving you no choice but to thrust your sword through his abdomin. Of course, now the other goblins are aware of your presence. Reasoning your longer legs should enable you to outrun the goblins you take off and it looks like you might get away. At least, that's what you thought until the shaman lands a fireball against you. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Naturally, you are not going to go down the passageway that your pursuers went down, that's just stupid. You want to avoid unnecessary conflict after allso you can increase your chances of reaching the Craxil. This passageway leads you out to a large plateau. To the right, you can see another several clusters of cave networks populated by humunculi. To the left you see a step drop off that would land you in the forest the hunters of your village like to use. In front of you, and in the distance, is a curious looking camp. You see a couple different campfires and at least two dozen tee-pee style tents down over there. You can't make out who the inhabitants are though, at least not from here. Odds are they aren't friendly though. This is Craxil territory after all. Of course, the humunculi in the multiple cave clusters over there aren't friendly either so what does it matter? You still have no leads as to where to find the Craxil but you need to make a decision as to where to go. > You explore The Humunculi Clusters Perhaps it is wise to stick with the enemy you know right? Anyway, the creatures that have been attacking your village have been humunculi and while they are not the only creatures under the Craxil's command (according to Brandolf) they are the ones he seems to call on the most. Perhaps you'll find clues to his whereabouts somewhere about in their dwellings. The task of sneaking over to these cave clusters unseen is a challenging one. You are out in the open now, so the sun is taking away any advantage that the darkness would otherwise have given you. Also, a couple humunculi are standing outside in the open, in the front of the cave clusters you seek to gain entry to. Realizing the impossibility of this situation, you fall back a bit and wait until nightfall to make your move. Eventually the sun sets and the humunculi retire to their caves. You slink over to their position using what little rock cover and shrubbery you have to conceal your approach. Just as you reach the next rock for cover you feel something strike you from above and you lose conciousness. Seems one of the humunculi noticed your approach and got you with a rock from a high vantage point. You're surprised you survived such a blow but you soon wish you hadn't. Your arms and legs are restrained with thick vines and it is clear you are about to become the meal for a handful of humunculi. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The room is too well lit to try and sneak past him and lunging forth at a superior foe with a short sword doesn't strike your fancy either. You decide to get creative and pull out the bow that Brandolf gave you in the council before you left. You ran a few practice shots before departing on this journey and you know you can at least hit a general target, though you'd be pretty hard pressed to achieve any kind of real accuracy. The first shot whizzes past the creatures head and into a nearby pillar of rock. His eyes go wide as he looks at the arrow then turns to look directly at you. You immediately pull back another arrow and take aim knowing this shot is going to make or break destiny. You aim for his chest as that is the broadest target available and the iron arrowhead may even reach his heart. As he lunges forth you close your eyes and release... You half expected you'd be dead by now but when you open your eyes you discover your arrow went through the creatures neck. He is now on his knees bleeding profusely and clutching his throat. Wasting no time, you finish him with your short sword, then dive into the darkest corner. The three humunculi heard the ruckus and have come down from their campfire to see what the commotion was. When they discover their fallen comrade, they go into a rage and start to look around. You dig into the corner as much as you can and clutch your sword. Two of the creatures move towards the unexplored passageway on the other side of the chamber while the third seems to be gravitating closer to your position. You begin to wonder if you should strike him by surprise while you still can or hope you can try to remain undiscovered. > You remain In The Corner And Hope To Be Undiscovered Even if you succeeded in sneak attacking this one, what about the other two? You cannot possibly hope to defeat two humunculi, especially without the element of surprise on your side. Their monsters and let's face it, elementary school girls still best you at arm wrestling. Your best bet is to remain in the corner and pray. You sit there, hold your breath, and close your eyes. This is probably for the best, because its all over before you realize what's happening. The humunculus discovered you and struck you upside the head with such force that you suffered a fatal concussion. On the plus side, you didn't feel a thing. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press your body firmly against the back wall of the chamber and slowly make your way over to the entrance of the large passageway on the left. Occasionally the campfire will flicker light in your general direction giving you pause, but the humunculi are totally unaware of your presence. Eventually, you manage to make it to the passageway and it doesn't take long before you reach another chamber. You are greatly disheartened by what you see up ahead. A larger than normal humunculus stands in the center of the fairly well lit chamber and judging from his tribal decor you figure he must be someone of rank. The passageway continues at the other end of the chamber, but this creature blocks your path. At the moment, he is looking off to the side and does not notice your presence. You weigh your options. > You go Back The Way You Came You are quickly beginning to wish Brandolf had given you a torch, but given the nature of your quest he probably figured you didn't need to draw attention to yourself. Still, you can barely see more than a few feet in front of your face and it is only getting darker as you continue further inward. You run your hand along the right wall and move carefully, scouting each step with your foot to avoid a fall. Your heart is racing and you know that at any moment, something might come out and attack. Eventually, the cave leads into a small inner chamber with a campfire in the middle. Three humunculi are sitting around the campfire, roasting human limbs on a stick as if they were marshmellows. Fortunately, they are not aware of your presence and the campfire enables you to see there are several tunnels leading out from this chamber. On the other side of the chamber is a tunnel that goes deeper in, but you won't be able to go down this way undetected as long as the humunculi are here. There are also nondescript passsageways to the left and the right (large and small respectively) that you can reach as long as you stay in the shadows. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You are quickly beginning to wish Brandolf had given you a torch, but given the nature of your quest he probably figured you didn't need to draw attention to yourself. Still, you can barely see more than a few feet in front of your face and it is only getting darker as you continue further inward. You run your hand along the right wall and move carefully, scouting each step with your foot to avoid a fall. Your heart is racing and you know that at any moment, something might come out and attack. Eventually, the cave leads into a small inner chamber with a campfire in the middle. Three humunculi are sitting around the campfire, roasting human limbs on a stick as if they were marshmellows. Fortunately, they are not aware of your presence and the campfire enables you to see there are several tunnels leading out from this chamber. On the other side of the chamber is a tunnel that goes deeper in, but you won't be able to go down this way undetected as long as the humunculi are here. There are also nondescript passsageways to the left and the right (large and small respectively) that you can reach as long as you stay in the shadows. > You attack The Humunculi With Your Sword While They Are Relaxed These humunculi are blocking a passage that may lead to the Craxil; and the fewer of them there are, the less difficult it will be for you to have to sneak around. You draw your sword and lung forth plunging it into the back of the nearest unsuspecting humunculi. You swell with pride realizing that you have just killed your first monster, and a humunculi too! Unfortunately, you have difficulty removing the sword from the humunculi's body and the others have immediately taken notice of you. You attempt to run back out of the cave from whence you came, but the creatures are faster than you are. They beat you savagely before bringing you back to their campfire for desert. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"The trouble is that this poison must be ingested or applied to a blade, simply splashing your opponent with it will not suffice." "But how will anyone even get that far? Without royal aid, how can anyone even hope to reach the Craxil?" At this point, many in the council are reminded of your exploits at last year's "capture the flag" contests. In fact, at every annual festival you manage to outfox your opponents, evade their numbers, and sneak up on their flag. Your success record was almost unrealistic. Suddenly, the council gets it in their minds to send you in with the poison. In fact, you're alarmed by how quickly they're all agreeing to this idea despite the fact you haven't yet. Then again, you've always sensed that as a swineherd you've never really been well liked or considered "valuable" by the townsfolk so this response isn't entirely unexpected. Nonetheless, you aren't going to go anywhere or do anything that you haven't agreed to do first. Unlike the others in the room, Brandolf has the decency to walk up and ask your opinion on the matter. He is usually dismissive of stupid ideas, but he seems to think this one might actually work. You take a moment to decide how to respond. > You refuse The Offer And Tell The Assholes In Your Community Where They Can Shove Their New Idea The people of Jacquescrappe have never really treated you with respect and you never really liked them either. Moreover, you are offended by how many of them just agreed to send you in without even bothering to ask you how YOU felt about the idea. You decide to return to your swineherding responsibilities and let the rest of the townspeople try to figure this out for themselves. "Fuck 'em" you think as you leave the council chambers and return to the fields. In the weeks that followed, several intrepid individuals attempted to reach the Craxil and never returned. Many townspeople gathered together all the gold they had in hopes of putting together a reward for a worthy adventurer who might succeed in this task. Many others were sent to the royal palace, begging desperately and fruitlessly for military assistance in their remote and low value settlement. In the end, all these events failed and soon, the raids returned. If the townspeople didn't like you before, they certainly hated you now. While before you would sometimes get dirty looks or the occasional one word answer, they now ignore you completely wherever you go. You insist that you had every right to refuse such a foolish plan, but most just dismiss you as being a selfish bastard. You return to the fields to talk to "oinky" and "snout", the only friends that haven't turned their backs on you yet. In the monthes that followed, numerous people are dragged off into the mountainside, never to be heard from again. You smile as the fat hog of a woman with a barbed tounge that pissed you off the most is seen screaming while in the grasp of one of these creatures. However, one night while you are cleaning up the digested remains of oinky's chili burritos you are surprised by two humunculi. You may have enjoyed it when others you didn't like so much got carried off, but this time it is you. You are never heard from again. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your world is rot. Your nostrils fill with the smell of excrement and decay that tends to fill your home. Still, it's all you have. You scurry among the scattered ruins, climbing atop a massive section of castle wreckage, sniffing the air. A rusted, blood-stained sword sits in one hand, a leather pouch hanging from your shoulder. Your whiskers tingle with excitement as you smell the scent of burning meat. Campfires are near, and where there's campfire, there's a caravan. Where there's a caravan, there's food. > You head towards it You scurry towards it, as do the others. Dozens of brown and black bodies scurry up from among the rubble and out of the ancient sewers underneath where your camps lie. You're one of the first on the sign, climbing atop a crushed tower as you see it. Three wagons circled around a campfire, basking in its light. The moonlight shines on your brown, shit-matted fur and catches on your blade as you run forward towards the camps. The man on guard, a young, cleanly shaven guard with armor that's too small for him yell as he sees you approach,. He readies his spear, looking ready to plunge it into you. You dance at the edge of the spear point, waiting for your chance. > You grab at the spear You step forward, grabbing the spear's shaft and yanking the guard forward. You swing your sword, slashing him in the massive gap between his helmet and shoulder pads, biting into his neck. He screams, collapsing to the ground as blood spurts forth. You yell with glee, at other Ratlings begin arriving to take care of the other guards. The merchants and passengers of the caravan either flee back inside the caravans or procur weapons and get ready to fight, but this isn't a unified raid where the scraps will be given out later. You take what you can get. You run towards the camp fire, grabbing the stew cooking there, jabbing your snout into it and beginning to gulp down the delicious mixture. You manage to finish half before a much bigger rat grabs the pot from you, and you know you can't fight him. You turn to one of the caravans, where rats have killed the guards and are dealing with the merchants. The merchants are surrounded, looking terrified, as all those willing to fight have been cut down. Although the majority of them are to be enslaved and sold to the Lizards or the Eastern Tribes, while the women will be taken back to the burrows for a less than kind fate, one unfortunate soul has made his presence known by trying to negotiate. "Please, taken the cargo! It's yours! Keep the men as well, we'll fetch a heavy ransom! But leave the women and the child go, won't you?" the merchant leader says. Bad choice. The boys have taken note of him now, and he's a fat one. His weight, the fact that he has so much food he can grow weak and fat, only angers you all thanks to the fact that you're all constantly hungry and eating scraps. One of the ratlings slashes his axe, cutting open the man's belly in a superficial wound. Another ratling jabs him with a spear, as the boys begin to jab and slash at the man as he yelps in pain as he's slowly cut and hacked apart. The torture has drawn the others attention away from the actual carriages. You stare at them, contemplating sneaking away and grabbing yourself some more food. > You join the torture You laugh gleefully as you dash forward, punching the man in the side of the head and knocking him backward as he grunts in pain, knocking into the blow of a sword blade. You slash at his ankle as he collapses to a knee, before one of the ratlings decks him a blow from the butt of his spear. He tries to stand, blood down streaming down his face. "Please, I'm sorry. I didn't...!" he cries, looking genuinely petrified, before one of the rats takes it too far and stabs him in the throat with his sword, killing him. He slumps to the ground, before lying still. "Bah! Could've played with him for hours!" you complain. The largest rat, a big brute who's taken charge of the raid named Pak, strides forward. Not too many ratlings have joined the raid, a fact Pak is clearly enjoying as it means he gets to take charge, and since you all get a bigger part of the profit, all the better. "You, you and you!" he shouts, selecting three rats from the group. "Start moving the prisoners back." "Yes, yes," they snarl, as they begin to shout and whip the prisoners into movement. "You!" he shouts, pointing a long finger at you. "Kill the horses." You nod, walking over to the horses. They seem terrified and scarred, and look at you as if begging for mercy. You wonder if it's best just to untie them and scare them off. > You kill the horses You slash your sword, cutting open one of the horse's throats. You jab your sword through its skull to finish it off, before slashing another's throat. You kill the few horses, before returning to Pak, who's already ordering the others to carve up the horses and bring the meat and hides back to the home. Suddenly, you see two ratlings dragging a teenage girl out of a caravan, whose crying and screaming has gathered the rest of your attention. "Please! Please! Let me go!" the girl sobs. The ratlings toss her in front of Pak, who grins eagerly. "Perfect! I'll have some fun with her!" he says. He glances at you, noticing you're finished with the horses. "Bring the girl back to the burrow. I'll have my fun with her later. Let the others have some fun, too." You nod, walking over to the girl, grabbing her by the hang and beginning to drag her towards the burrow. > You lead the girl back to the burrows You drag the girl along the path to the burrow, as she cries. "Please, you have to help me get out of here. We can run, just run into the wilderness." "Can't do it. Too many bad things there. They'd kill on site a ratling. No, no," you say. "Please! I don't want to die..." she whimpers. "Can... can you tell me what's going to happen to me?" > You walk in silence You keep walking, as the girl falls silent, becoming quiet. Soon, you walk down into the burrows through the caved in portion of sewer and into the top layer of the many layered burrows. The weakest and most feeble rats are forced to live here, away from the safety that waits lower down. They look gleefully at the girl, talking and chattering among themselves. They grab at her, groping at her breasts and bosom and tearing pieces of fabric off her dress. You raise your sword to threaten them off, and they easily follow orders. You're weak for a Ratling, but you could easily kill the crippled and the the meek who surround you. You find a corner of the room, shoving the girl into it and raising your sword, waiting for Pak to arrive and take his prey. "I'm scared," the girl says. "I'd be, if I were you," you admit. "What's your name?" she asks. "Ritz," you say. "I'm Julianne," she says. "I don't want to die here." You don't say another word, as she begins to chant. "I have the soul of the dragon. Dragons to not break. Dragons do not die. Dragons do not show fear. Dragons survive the flames. I have the soul of the dragon..." she continues to chant. You turn, staring at her. You notice a long, silver necklace hanging around her, and grab it. "This is pretty," you say, admiring the silver. "You can have it. If you help me get out of here, it's all yours. It was a gift from my father." You stare at the necklace, knowing there's not a chance she's getting out of here alive, even if you tried to save her. > You snatch it off her You grab the necklace, snatching it off her neck and clutching it in her hands. "Hey!" she cries, grabbing at it before you snarl, scarring her away. She whimpers, shuffling away from you. You stare at her, wrapping it around the hilt of your sword and clutching it tightly. You wait patiently for Pak to arrive. After a few minutes, the massive, black-furred rat clambers into the burrow, grinning as he sees her prey. He stomps forward, grabbing her by the hand. "Come on, darling. Let's take you down to the lower levels. I have a few of the others I want pulled over to my side, and I'm sure your sweet ass will do a great deal in getting them there." The huge brute begins dragging the girl away, leaving you standing there. Suddenly, he stops, turning around. "What's your name?" "Ritz," you say. "You did a good job protecting her from the cripples and in the raid, and I'm feeling generous. Care to join in the fun?" > You join in You allow your bestial nature to take over, nodding vigorously. You follow him as he drags the weeping girl along with him. Soon, you venture down the twisted staircases and pathways down to the lower layers. Eventually, you enter the chamber filled with whatever Ratlings Pak wants to impress. You watch in a mixture of fear and lust as the Ratlings appear, more than willing to be entertained by the new flesh that's entered their homes. They quickly undress her and begin to have their fun despite her horrified, screaming protests which soon turn to pained screams and begging. The Ratlings have their fun with her, and eventually you have your turn. You focus on the physical sensations rather than the pitiful weeping, and soon embrace the pure pleasure of the act. You achieve release, almost collapsing back as your body fulfills one of its prime functions. A ratling pulls you back to take your place with the hostage, and you're tossed gently aside. You crawl back towards your home, curling up in a bed of animal hides and quickly letting sleep take you. The life of a ratling is a pleasurable one if you're smart enough to take advantage of it, you have to admit. > You awaken You awaken to a knife pressed against your throat. You reach for your sword in the darkness, but a hand catches yours. "Scream for help or try anything and I cut you open," a harsh voice growls. You try to nod, but the knife is pressed so tightly any movement would slice open your throat. "A prisoner was taken into the burrows. Where is she?" > You claim ignorance "I don't know anything," you say. The man grabs your throat, strangling it as he impales your hand. You try to scream, but you can't even get out a breath. "Quiet," the man says, pulling out the knife and releasing your throat as you whimper, clutching at your wound. "Do you think I picked you out by chance? You have her necklace. I tracked it here. Now, answer me." > You plead ignorance "I swear to everything I don't know!" you say. "Filthy lying vermin," the man hisses. "Perhaps the next rat will be more trustworhy." The man slices open your throat, and you collapse against the ground, quickly dying.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I don't know anything," you say. The man grabs your throat, strangling it as he impales your hand. You try to scream, but you can't even get out a breath. "Quiet," the man says, pulling out the knife and releasing your throat as you whimper, clutching at your wound. "Do you think I picked you out by chance? You have her necklace. I tracked it here. Now, answer me." > You lie "She was taken off to be ransomed off by one of the travelling ratlings." You see the runes of the blade glowing, as the man snarls. "Filthy lying vermin," the man hisses. "Perhaps the next rat will be more trustworthy." The man slices open your throat, and you collapse against the ground, quickly dying.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I don't know anything," you say. The man grabs your throat, strangling it as he impales your hand. You try to scream, but you can't even get out a breath. "Quiet," the man says, pulling out the knife and releasing your throat as you whimper, clutching at your wound. "Do you think I picked you out by chance? You have her necklace. I tracked it here. Now, answer me." > You tell the truth "She's been taken down to the fifth layer. You... you won't want to find her. She's dead by now, and her body won't be in the best condition." The man doesn't respond for some time, before snarling. "No, she's alive. I can feel it. You, however, are no better than the rest of your lying kind. Death's for you." The man slices open your throat, and you collapse against the ground, quickly dying.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken to a knife pressed against your throat. You reach for your sword in the darkness, but a hand catches yours. "Scream for help or try anything and I cut you open," a harsh voice growls. You try to nod, but the knife is pressed so tightly any movement would slice open your throat. "A prisoner was taken into the burrows. Where is she?" > You lie "She was taken off to be ransomed off by one of the travelling ratlings." You see the runes of the blade glowing, as the man snarls. "Liar. The knife speaks to your honesty. The truth, now, or you die."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken to a knife pressed against your throat. You reach for your sword in the darkness, but a hand catches yours. "Scream for help or try anything and I cut you open," a harsh voice growls. You try to nod, but the knife is pressed so tightly any movement would slice open your throat. "A prisoner was taken into the burrows. Where is she?" > You tell the truth "She's been taken down to the fifth layer. You... you won't want to find her. She's dead by now, and her body won't be in the best condition." The man doesn't respond for some time, before snarling. "No, she's alive. I can feel it. Your fate, however, is less certain." The man's blade illuminates, casting golden light on the both of you. You stare at his grizzled face with a thick beard growing. However, he gets a clear view of you, seeing your blood, sweat and semen-encrusted fur. He stares at you, realizing what you've done. "You had her way with her... you disgusting vermin!" he near shouts, hopefully waking some of the other Ratlings to come to your side. The man slices open your throat, and you collapse against the ground. He rams his knife into your chest repeatedly as you try to scream in pain, but blood quickly fills your throat. Your life is quickly drained from you, and you lie there as death takes you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the necklace, snatching it off her neck and clutching it in her hands. "Hey!" she cries, grabbing at it before you snarl, scarring her away. She whimpers, shuffling away from you. You stare at her, wrapping it around the hilt of your sword and clutching it tightly. You wait patiently for Pak to arrive. After a few minutes, the massive, black-furred rat clambers into the burrow, grinning as he sees her prey. He stomps forward, grabbing her by the hand. "Come on, darling. Let's take you down to the lower levels. I have a few of the others I want pulled over to my side, and I'm sure your sweet ass will do a great deal in getting them there." The huge brute begins dragging the girl away, leaving you standing there. Suddenly, he stops, turning around. "What's your name?" "Ritz," you say. "You did a good job protecting her from the cripples and in the raid, and I'm feeling generous. Care to join in the fun?" > You refuse You shake your head sadly, just staring at the rat. He lets out a grunt of disgust, before dragging the girl away despite her crying protests. You head to your chamber, curling up in a bed of animal hides and lying there. You hear the girl's crying and screaming for help in the distance of the caverns, but know you can do nothing. You push your furs against your floppy ears to drown out the sound, trying to find sleep. Eventually, you manage to do so.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the necklace, snatching it off her neck and clutching it in her hands. "Hey!" she cries, grabbing at it before you snarl, scarring her away. She whimpers, shuffling away from you. You stare at her, wrapping it around the hilt of your sword and clutching it tightly. You wait patiently for Pak to arrive. After a few minutes, the massive, black-furred rat clambers into the burrow, grinning as he sees her prey. He stomps forward, grabbing her by the hand. "Come on, darling. Let's take you down to the lower levels. I have a few of the others I want pulled over to my side, and I'm sure your sweet ass will do a great deal in getting them there." The huge brute begins dragging the girl away, leaving you standing there. Suddenly, he stops, turning around. "What's your name?" "Ritz," you say. "You did a good job protecting her from the cripples and in the raid, and I'm feeling generous. Care to join in the fun?" > You try to stop him taking her "No!" you say, punching the massive ratling in the jaw and sending him stumbling backwards, more out of surprise than anything else. "What did you say to me, you little prick?" he says, raising his club to strike. > You go for his eyes You leap into the air, grabbing the massive ratling's shoulder and jamming your sword into his eyes. "Ah! Fuck, fuck, fuck! I can't see! I can't fucking see!" he yells, grabbing you by the fur and flinging you against the ground with a painful thud. Although he can't see, he still hears where you thud against the ground. With a scream of rage and pain, he raises his club into the air and swings with all his might. It slams into your legs, shattering both of your legs as you scream in pain. He snarls, lifting up his club once more as you yell and grab at your broken legs, trying to focus on survival rather than the awful pain. He swings down his club once more, crushing your skull.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"No!" you say, punching the massive ratling in the jaw and sending him stumbling backwards, more out of surprise than anything else. "What did you say to me, you little prick?" he says, raising his club to strike. > You dodge You roll to avoid his club swing, which slams into the stones next to you, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions. With his heavy club now on the ground, you now have a chance to do something. > You dodge again You slash at him, ready to dodge again as he lifts his club back up. He roars, swinging his club back at you. You roll under it again, before he changes direction of his swing, prepared for this. It slams into your legs, shattering both of your legs as you scream in pain. He snarls, lifting up his club once more as you yell asd grab at your broken legs, trying to focus on survival rather than the awful pain. He swings down his club once more, crushing your skull.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You roll to avoid his club swing, which slams into the stones next to you, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions. With his heavy club now on the ground, you now have a chance to do something. > You strike at his side You step forward, jabbing your sword between his ribs and into his guts as he lets out a horrid scream. He snarls and focuses through his pain, smashing his fist into your snout and sending you toppling to the floor. "Little cunt!" he screams, grabbing your sword and yanking it from his side. With a scream of rage and pain, he raises his club into the air and swings with all his might. It slams into your legs, shattering both of your legs as you scream in pain. He snarls, lifting up his club once more as you yell and grab at your broken legs, trying to focus on survival rather than the awful pain. He swings down his club once more, crushing your skull.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You roll to avoid his club swing, which slams into the stones next to you, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions. With his heavy club now on the ground, you now have a chance to do something. > You flee You turn, grabbing Julianne by the hand and yanking her away. The ratling is faster, though, swinging his club again with more accuracy this time and knocking your feet away, sending you slamming into the stone floor. As you go to stand, he swings his club and slams it into your head, cracking your skull and killing you with a heavy blow.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"No!" you say, punching the massive ratling in the jaw and sending him stumbling backwards, more out of surprise than anything else. "What did you say to me, you little prick?" he says, raising his club to strike. > You run You turn, grabbing Julianne by the hand and yanking her away. The ratling is faster, though, swinging his club and knocking your feet away, sending you slamming into the stone floor. As you go to stand, he swings his club and slams it into your head, cracking your skull and killing you with a heavy blow.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You keep walking, as the girl falls silent, becoming quiet. Soon, you walk down into the burrows through the caved in portion of sewer and into the top layer of the many layered burrows. The weakest and most feeble rats are forced to live here, away from the safety that waits lower down. They look gleefully at the girl, talking and chattering among themselves. They grab at her, groping at her breasts and bosom and tearing pieces of fabric off her dress. You raise your sword to threaten them off, and they easily follow orders. You're weak for a Ratling, but you could easily kill the crippled and the the meek who surround you. You find a corner of the room, shoving the girl into it and raising your sword, waiting for Pak to arrive and take his prey. "I'm scared," the girl says. "I'd be, if I were you," you admit. "What's your name?" she asks. "Ritz," you say. "I'm Julianne," she says. "I don't want to die here." You don't say another word, as she begins to chant. "I have the soul of the dragon. Dragons to not break. Dragons do not die. Dragons do not show fear. Dragons survive the flames. I have the soul of the dragon..." she continues to chant. You turn, staring at her. You notice a long, silver necklace hanging around her, and grab it. "This is pretty," you say, admiring the silver. "You can have it. If you help me get out of here, it's all yours. It was a gift from my father." You stare at the necklace, knowing there's not a chance she's getting out of here alive, even if you tried to save her. > You lie and agree "I'll get you out of here," you say, unable to meet her gaze. "Thank you! Thank you!" she whispers in relief, taking off her necklace and placing it in your hands. You sigh, nodding as you wrap it around the handle of your sword. You wait patiently for Pak to arrive. After a few minutes, the massive, black-furred rat clambers into the burrow, grinning as he sees her prey. He stomps forward, grabbing her by the hand. "Come on, darling. Let's take you down to the lower levels. I have a few of the others I want pulled over to my side, and I'm sure your sweet ass will do a great deal in getting them there." The huge brute begins dragging the girl away, leaving you standing there. "Ritz! Help, help!" she cries out, looking desperately to you. Suddenly, he stops, turning around. "Ritz, huh? That's your name?" he asks. You nod cautiously. "You did a good job protecting her from the cripples and in the raid, and I'm feeling generous. Care to join in the fun?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You keep walking, as the girl falls silent, becoming quiet. Soon, you walk down into the burrows through the caved in portion of sewer and into the top layer of the many layered burrows. The weakest and most feeble rats are forced to live here, away from the safety that waits lower down. They look gleefully at the girl, talking and chattering among themselves. They grab at her, groping at her breasts and bosom and tearing pieces of fabric off her dress. You raise your sword to threaten them off, and they easily follow orders. You're weak for a Ratling, but you could easily kill the crippled and the the meek who surround you. You find a corner of the room, shoving the girl into it and raising your sword, waiting for Pak to arrive and take his prey. "I'm scared," the girl says. "I'd be, if I were you," you admit. "What's your name?" she asks. "Ritz," you say. "I'm Julianne," she says. "I don't want to die here." You don't say another word, as she begins to chant. "I have the soul of the dragon. Dragons to not break. Dragons do not die. Dragons do not show fear. Dragons survive the flames. I have the soul of the dragon..." she continues to chant. You turn, staring at her. You notice a long, silver necklace hanging around her, and grab it. "This is pretty," you say, admiring the silver. "You can have it. If you help me get out of here, it's all yours. It was a gift from my father." You stare at the necklace, knowing there's not a chance she's getting out of here alive, even if you tried to save her. > You tell her the truth "I can't. Even if I wanted to, they'd kill us before we got out," you admit. "No, we can! We have to be able to! You can help me!" You stare at your feet, not saying another word. "Take the necklace! Take it!" she says, taking off her necklace and placing it in your hands. "Please, there's a chance, there has to be a chance. You can help me. You can help me, please!" You don't answer, and as if the hopelessness of her situation is just hitting her she quiets down. You wait patiently for Pak to arrive. After a few minutes, the massive, black-furred rat clambers into the burrow, grinning as he sees her prey. He stomps forward, grabbing her by the hand. "Come on, darling. Let's take you down to the lower levels. I have a few of the others I want pulled over to my side, and I'm sure your sweet ass will do a great deal in getting them there." The huge brute begins dragging the girl away, leaving you standing there. "Ritz! Help, help!" she cries out, looking desperately to you. Suddenly, he stops, turning around. "Ritz, huh? That's your name?" he asks. You nod cautiously. "You did a good job protecting her from the cripples and in the raid, and I'm feeling generous. Care to join in the fun?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You drag the girl along the path to the burrow, as she cries. "Please, you have to help me get out of here. We can run, just run into the wilderness." "Can't do it. Too many bad things there. They'd kill on site a ratling. No, no," you say. "Please! I don't want to die..." she whimpers. "Can... can you tell me what's going to happen to me?" > You tell her the truth "Most likely? They'll take you down to the lower chambers as a treat for the more important Ratlings. They'll rape you for a few hours, maybe a few days depending on how resilient you are, and then they'll finally kill you and feed you to the giant rats." The girl bursts into tears, sobbing with terror. You stare at her with a twinge of sympathy and guilt, before continuing walking. "I need to get out of here! I need to...!" she says, looking as if she wants to run, so you tighten your grip on her arm, knowing there's no way she'll escape either way. Soon, you walk down into the burrows through the caved in portion of sewer and into the top layer of the many layered burrows. The weakest and most feeble rats are forced to live here, away from the safety that waits lower down. They look gleefully at the girl, talking and chattering among themselves. They grab at her, groping at her breasts and bosom and tearing pieces of fabric off her dress. You raise your sword to threaten them off, and they easily follow orders. You're weak for a Ratling, but you could easily kill the crippled and the the meek who surround you. You find a corner of the room, shoving the girl into it and raising your sword, waiting for Pak to arrive and take his prey. "I'm scared," the girl says. "I'd be, if I were you," you admit. "What's your name?" she asks. "Ritz," you say. "I'm Julianne," she says. "I don't want to die here." You don't say another word, as she begins to chant. "I have the soul of the dragon. Dragons to not break. Dragons do not die. Dragons do not show fear. Dragons survive the flames. I have the soul of the dragon..." she continues to chant. You turn, staring at her. You notice a long, silver necklace hanging around her, and grab it. "This is pretty," you say, admiring the silver. "You can have it. If you help me get out of here, it's all yours. It was a gift from my father." You stare at the necklace, knowing there's not a chance she's getting out of here alive, even if you tried to save her.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You drag the girl along the path to the burrow, as she cries. "Please, you have to help me get out of here. We can run, just run into the wilderness." "Can't do it. Too many bad things there. They'd kill on site a ratling. No, no," you say. "Please! I don't want to die..." she whimpers. "Can... can you tell me what's going to happen to me?" > You lie to her "They'll... ransom you off back to the humans after a few days of imprisonment," you say. "Oh... I can survive that. I can do that," she says. You nod grimly, continuing walking. Soon, you walk down into the burrows through the caved in portion of sewer and into the top layer of the many layered burrows. The weakest and most feeble rats are forced to live here, away from the safety that waits lower down. They look gleefully at the girl, talking and chattering among themselves. They grab at her, groping at her breasts and bosom and tearing pieces of fabric off her dress. You raise your sword to threaten them off, and they easily follow orders. You're weak for a Ratling, but you could easily kill the crippled and the the meek who surround you. You find a corner of the room, shoving the girl into it and raising your sword, waiting for Pak to arrive and take his prey. "I'm scared," the girl says. "I'd be, if I were you," you admit. "What's your name?" she asks. "Ritz," you say. "I'm Julianne," she says. "I don't want to die here." You don't say another word, as she begins to chant. "I have the soul of the dragon. Dragons to not break. Dragons do not die. Dragons do not show fear. Dragons survive the flames. I have the soul of the dragon..." she continues to chant. You turn, staring at her. You notice a long, silver necklace hanging around her, and grab it. "This is pretty," you say, admiring the silver. "You can have it. If you help me get out of here, it's all yours. It was a gift from my father." You stare at the necklace, knowing there's not a chance she's getting out of here alive, even if you tried to save her.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You drag the girl along the path to the burrow, as she cries. "Please, you have to help me get out of here. We can run, just run into the wilderness." "Can't do it. Too many bad things there. They'd kill on site a ratling. No, no," you say. "Please! I don't want to die..." she whimpers. "Can... can you tell me what's going to happen to me?" > You change topic "Where are you from?" "Maryborough, a small trading town. My father lives there." "Was he the merchant we killed?" "No, my father is a Paladin. I was given passage on the trading caravan to meet with him in the town over. He wanted to move me to our summer home in the country, where it's safer." All this talk of summer houses and fine lives depresses you. You sigh, and continue walking. Soon, you walk down into the burrows through the caved in portion of sewer and into the top layer of the many layered burrows. The weakest and most feeble rats are forced to live here, away from the safety that waits lower down. They look gleefully at the girl, talking and chattering among themselves. They grab at her, groping at her breasts and bosom and tearing pieces of fabric off her dress. You raise your sword to threaten them off, and they easily follow orders. You're weak for a Ratling, but you could easily kill the crippled and the the meek who surround you. You find a corner of the room, shoving the girl into it and raising your sword, waiting for Pak to arrive and take his prey. "I'm scared," the girl says. "I'd be, if I were you," you admit. "What's your name?" she asks. "Ritz," you say. "I'm Julianne," she says. "I don't want to die here." You don't say another word, as she begins to chant. "I have the soul of the dragon. Dragons to not break. Dragons do not die. Dragons do not show fear. Dragons survive the flames. I have the soul of the dragon..." she continues to chant. You turn, staring at her. You notice a long, silver necklace hanging around her, and grab it. "This is pretty," you say, admiring the silver. "You can have it. If you help me get out of here, it's all yours. It was a gift from my father." You stare at the necklace, knowing there's not a chance she's getting out of here alive, even if you tried to save her.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You laugh gleefully as you dash forward, punching the man in the side of the head and knocking him backward as he grunts in pain, knocking into the blow of a sword blade. You slash at his ankle as he collapses to a knee, before one of the ratlings decks him a blow from the butt of his spear. He tries to stand, blood down streaming down his face. "Please, I'm sorry. I didn't...!" he cries, looking genuinely petrified, before one of the rats takes it too far and stabs him in the throat with his sword, killing him. He slumps to the ground, before lying still. "Bah! Could've played with him for hours!" you complain. The largest rat, a big brute who's taken charge of the raid named Pak, strides forward. Not too many ratlings have joined the raid, a fact Pak is clearly enjoying as it means he gets to take charge, and since you all get a bigger part of the profit, all the better. "You, you and you!" he shouts, selecting three rats from the group. "Start moving the prisoners back." "Yes, yes," they snarl, as they begin to shout and whip the prisoners into movement. "You!" he shouts, pointing a long finger at you. "Kill the horses." You nod, walking over to the horses. They seem terrified and scarred, and look at you as if begging for mercy. You wonder if it's best just to untie them and scare them off. > You scare off the horses You walk over to the horses, untying them from their carriage before gently giving them a hit with their sword on the rump, sending them running off into the wilderness. Pak notices what you're doing, turning to stare at you, snarling. "What the fuck do you think you're doing? That was good meat, good leather! You dumb cunt!" he snarls, enraged by your lack of obedience. > You try to convince him they deserved to live "But they were ki..." you begin to say. Unfortunately, in all your life here you seem to have failed to pick up how society functions. By now, Pak's club is already flying through the air, and it smashes into your head, crushing your skull against the carriage and killing you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk over to the horses, untying them from their carriage before gently giving them a hit with their sword on the rump, sending them running off into the wilderness. Pak notices what you're doing, turning to stare at you, snarling. "What the fuck do you think you're doing? That was good meat, good leather! You dumb cunt!" he snarls, enraged by your lack of obedience. > You duck You duck, but Pak slams his foot up, smashing you in the face. You sumble back and he punches you, sending you toppling to the floor. Pak stands over, stomping on you repeatedly as his weight and muscle breaks your bones as he smashes into you repeatedly as you scream for help. With your limbs broken and lacking the strength to move, you hope you die of your wounds before something, some enterprising scavenger or worse, finds you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step forward, grabbing the spear's shaft and yanking the guard forward. You swing your sword, slashing him in the massive gap between his helmet and shoulder pads, biting into his neck. He screams, collapsing to the ground as blood spurts forth. You yell with glee, at other Ratlings begin arriving to take care of the other guards. The merchants and passengers of the caravan either flee back inside the caravans or procur weapons and get ready to fight, but this isn't a unified raid where the scraps will be given out later. You take what you can get. You run towards the camp fire, grabbing the stew cooking there, jabbing your snout into it and beginning to gulp down the delicious mixture. You manage to finish half before a much bigger rat grabs the pot from you, and you know you can't fight him. You turn to one of the caravans, where rats have killed the guards and are dealing with the merchants. The merchants are surrounded, looking terrified, as all those willing to fight have been cut down. Although the majority of them are to be enslaved and sold to the Lizards or the Eastern Tribes, while the women will be taken back to the burrows for a less than kind fate, one unfortunate soul has made his presence known by trying to negotiate. "Please, taken the cargo! It's yours! Keep the men as well, we'll fetch a heavy ransom! But leave the women and the child go, won't you?" the merchant leader says. Bad choice. The boys have taken note of him now, and he's a fat one. His weight, the fact that he has so much food he can grow weak and fat, only angers you all thanks to the fact that you're all constantly hungry and eating scraps. One of the ratlings slashes his axe, cutting open the man's belly in a superficial wound. Another ratling jabs him with a spear, as the boys begin to jab and slash at the man as he yelps in pain as he's slowly cut and hacked apart. The torture has drawn the others attention away from the actual carriages. You stare at them, contemplating sneaking away and grabbing yourself some more food. > You loot some more You scurry into one of the carriages, clambering outside. Blood cakes the inside, where some poor soul was hacked apart in their sleep. You find a jar of cider, opening it and quickly downing the delicious drink, before tossing it aside. You grab a jar of honey that's almost empty and begin scooping it into your mouth. "Everyone out here! Now!" one of the ratlings yells, as you turn and walk outside. The largest rat, a big brute who's taken charge of the raid named Pak, stands there. Not too many ratlings have joined the raid, a fact Pak is clearly enjoying as it means he gets to take charge, and since you all get a bigger part of the profit, all the better. "You, you and you!" he shouts, selecting three rats from the group. "Start moving the prisoners back." "Yes, yes," they snarl, as they begin to shout and whip the prisoners into movement. "You!" he shouts, pointing a long finger at you. "Kill the horses." You nod, walking over to the horses. They seem terrified and scarred, and look at you as if begging for mercy. You wonder if it's best just to untie them and scare them off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You scurry towards it, as do the others. Dozens of brown and black bodies scurry up from among the rubble and out of the ancient sewers underneath where your camps lie. You're one of the first on the sign, climbing atop a crushed tower as you see it. Three wagons circled around a campfire, basking in its light. The moonlight shines on your brown, shit-matted fur and catches on your blade as you run forward towards the camps. The man on guard, a young, cleanly shaven guard with armor that's too small for him yell as he sees you approach,. He readies his spear, looking ready to plunge it into you. You dance at the edge of the spear point, waiting for your chance. > You charge him You raise your sword, charging forward. The guard yells and steps back, jabbing his spear out. The metal spear jabs into your fur and into your chest and you yelp as he runs you through. He pulls the spear out as you collapse to your knees, before he jabs it through your throat, killing you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You scurry towards it, as do the others. Dozens of brown and black bodies scurry up from among the rubble and out of the ancient sewers underneath where your camps lie. You're one of the first on the sign, climbing atop a crushed tower as you see it. Three wagons circled around a campfire, basking in its light. The moonlight shines on your brown, shit-matted fur and catches on your blade as you run forward towards the camps. The man on guard, a young, cleanly shaven guard with armor that's too small for him yell as he sees you approach,. He readies his spear, looking ready to plunge it into you. You dance at the edge of the spear point, waiting for your chance. > You wait for the others You continue circling the man the as he jabs at you, as you back step to avoid the jabs. Soon, other rats arrive. You can see the man's eyes bulge as he realizes how outnumbered he is. He jabs at another ratling and you take advantage, grabbing your sword forward and stabbing him in the throat. He tries to yell but blood bursts into his throat as you pull out your blade. You turn to one of the caravans, where rats have killed the guards and are dealing with the merchants. The merchants are surrounded, looking terrified, as all those willing to fight have been cut down. Although the majority of them are to be enslaved and sold to the Lizards or the Eastern Tribes, while the women will be taken back to the burrows for a less than kind fate, one unfortunate soul has made his presence known by trying to negotiate. "Please, taken the cargo! It's yours! Keep the men as well, we'll fetch a heavy ransom! But leave the women and the child go, won't you?" the merchant leader says. Bad choice. The boys have taken note of him now, and he's a fat one. His weight, the fact that he has so much food he can grow weak and fat, only angers you all thanks to the fact that you're all constantly hungry and eating scraps. One of the ratlings slashes his axe, cutting open the man's belly in a superficial wound. Another ratling jabs him with a spear, as the boys begin to jab and slash at the man as he yelps in pain as he's slowly cut and hacked apart. The torture has drawn the others attention away from the actual carriages. You stare at them, contemplating sneaking away and grabbing yourself some more food.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“My face is fucking freezing,” says Lars. No shit you think to yourself. It’s the middle of winter and you both are assigned to guard duty. Normally, the cold isn’t an issue. However, due to increasing demon sightings, a few unlucky bastards have to spend the night outside the city walls keeping watch. Snow begins to fall, and your cheap leather armor offers little resistance. “I can’t take it anymore, I quit.” Lars tosses down his sword and walks towards the city entrance. “What about the demons?” you ask. He turns to you and a slight grin appears on his face. “Demons? I welcome them with open arms. The city could use some heating up.” With that, he leaves. It’s just you and the dead silence of the night. You try to stand still and focus on the dirt road leading away from the city. This road is where nearby demon sightings have occurred. A few minutes past and you swear you saw a red flash. Your hands shake and your heart beat slows down. Is your mind just playing tricks on you? Surely you’re just reacting to the cold, right? Mere moments after this thought you hear a laugh. Unlike what you were expecting, this isn’t the laugh of some badass demon. No, it’s the laugh of a female. You try to tighten your grip on your sword but can’t move your fingers. Shit, maybe Lars had the right idea. Spending the night out here is a death sentence, regardless if demons attack. You can’t bear to stand any longer and lower yourself to the ground. You drop your sword and curl into a ball. You don’t have the energy to move a muscle and your body becomes stiff. Your eyes shut close and you’re out cold seconds later. “What’s a strong soldier like you doing out here all alone?” a soothing voice inquires. You open your eyes to find yourself staring at barely clothed succubus. She radiates an intense heat, although it’s not enough to burn. “Who are you?” you ask. “My name’s Catia and you never answered my question. Why are you all alone?” “My other guard, Lars, left. Look there’s his sword right there,” you say, feeling compelled to give more information than necessary. Catia walks towards his sword and picks it up. “Is this supposed to kill me? Ha! Don’t make me laugh. Why is your equipment so poor?” You see no logical reason to tell a demon this but find yourself doing so instinctively. “Ever since demons came near our city, trade has been impossible. We have no experience with a threat this large and thus don’t have the weapons or equipment to deal with it.” She grins and salivates to your every word. You take a moment to stare at her figure. She looks more human than succubi are told to be. Still, there are a few stark differences. These being her bright red eyes, dark red curled horns, and pink tail. Oh, and she utterly beautiful. More so than any human you’ve seen. Despite being face to face demon for the first in your life, you feel entirely calm. Dare you say, the calmest you’ve ever felt. This calmness is ripped away when she begins to leave. “Where are you going?” “Hm? You want me stay huh?” “Yes… I do.” She grins again and starts chewing on her tail in a seductive manner. “Sorry, no can do. But if you want, I would love to see you again. Trust me, it will be the most pleasurable experience of your life. All you have to do for me is one small favor.” You feel an intense compulsion to comply with her every demand, but you stop yourself. Making deals with demons is serious business. You have enough willpower to at least ask what the favor is. She explains how if you want to meet again you need to be a more suggestive state, like you are right now due to the cold. She recommends going to a bar and drinking for a few hours. Then, all you have to do is whisper her name and she will come visit, provided that you’re alone. She walks away leaving you all alone. As if in a trance, you make your way to The Drunk Tortoise Tavern. > A few hours later... “This is the last time I’m saying this Greg, immortality is not worth cutting off your cock. What’s the point of being immortal if you’re deprived of the best feeling in the world?” “Ey’ maybe he’s lacking in that area. No wonder he wants immortality if all he has to do his cut off an inch or two worth of pecker.” Greg suddenly stands up, drawing your eyes to the bickering trio. They’ve been arguing random hypotheticals since you’ve gotten here. All you wanted was to get a quiet drink before meeting with Catia. As long as these buffoons are here, that’s impossible. Even as Greg stands up he’s shorter than the other two sitting. It’s no wonder they pick on him, he looks pathetic. “Can you both just shut the fuck up? I mean, god damn. All I’m saying is living forever outweighs the downsides of not having a dick,” he says in a whiny voice. The other two laugh uncontrollably at his pitiful attempt of defiance. One manages to calm down and spits out, “Maybe when it’s smaller than a gnome’s toothbrush, but for the rest us it’s not so easy.” Queue more uncontrollable laughter as Greg’s face becomes redder than demon blood. “I’ll shove a gnome’s toothbrush up your ass if you say that one more time! C’mon, let’s move on to another question.” The trio quiets down and you zone them out. You take a swig of whisky and start to remember the reason while you’re here. Oh yeah, the succubus. She wanted you to drink a bit before meeting her. You didn’t necessarily jump at the idea of getting drunk before meeting with a demon, but she promised you she would make it worthwhile. You’re pretty sure that means… Your thoughts are interrupted by the thickheaded trio once again. “You’re telling me you’d prefer your child be retarded and kind than ingenious and mean?” “Yes Connor, I would.” “God damn it, Greg! You want to spend an eternity with no dick while taking care of a retarded child? Pathetic. I would kill myself after a week.” “Har har har! I would kill myself in a week if I had to live Greg’s life as it is. No, scratch that, a day!” “Fuck you Tom. I can’t be the only one who thinks this…” Greg glances around nervously looking for a savior. Eventually he turns his gaze towards you and his eyes light up. “Hey you over there! What would you rather have, a dumb, but kind child; or a smart, but cruel child?” he says while pointing at you. You stare blankly ahead and breathe a deep sigh. This is beyond stupid. You briefly consider just ignoring him and getting the hell out of this place. “Why do you think that man would agree with you? He’s a soldier. Surely, he recognizes the benefits a genius could provide for society. Especially when you consider the need for mages regarding the growing demon problem.” Soldier? Shit you forgot to change out of your uniform. So much for staying inconspicuous. You can thank your lucky stars none of the other guards are here to see you in this shithole. “Now now, let the man speak. Just because he’s a soldier doesn’t mean he agrees with you,” says Tom. “Fine, what do you think...and hurry up! We don’t have all day.” > You say "I prefer a retarded but kind child." “Thank you,” Greg whispers. “You what!” “Pfft! And to think, I used to respect soldiers.” Tom and Connor start shouting about how much of a dumbass you are. You don’t bother to engage with such idiotic banter. Instead, you walk out of the tavern without a second glance. As you make your way outside you are hit with a rush of cool air. “I can’t wait to meet Catia,” you mutter to yourself. “Who’s Catia?” You turn around and only see the entrance to the tavern. “Hello?” “Ermm down here sir!” You glance down and instantly recoil. It’s Greg, what’s he doing here? “What the hell do you want?” He begins to squirm uncomfortably and hyperventilate. “I…uh…I…erm…” “Spit it out!” “I wanted to thank you for agreeing with me,” he says between irregular gasps for air. Oh, that’s why he’s here. You normally wouldn’t mind but you have plans tonight and have no time for conversation. “People don’t agree with you often kid? That’s too bad,” you say while walking away. “I’m not a kid, I’m 20. But yeah, everyone I meet either ignores or makes fun of me. I almost prefer the latter as at least they keep me company,” he says while following behind you. “Damn that really sucks,” you stop walking and stare him in the eyes, “Look I’d love to keep you company, but I have somewhere very important to be.” Greg looks at you with a face of disappointment. But he lights up to ask, “Where do you have to be? Maybe I could come with you.” Gah! As bad as you feel for Greg, under no circumstances could he come with you. She agreed to see you, not Greg and you. “Sorry I don’t have time.” “God damn it. Can you at least tell me why? I don’t want to be near Connor and Tom right now. They make me feel inhuman.” Does this guy ever shut up? You been trying to exit this conversation gracefully since it started. You should just tell him to fuck off and be done it. Of course, you could humor him and tell him what you’re doing. It’s been hard keeping this succubus thing a secret and having someone to confide in wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. On the other hand, you really want to go have demon sex. > You talk to Greg “Fine I’ll tell you why. But be warned, it’s a long story.” “That’s alright, the longer I’m away from the other two the better.” You take a deep breath and begin to describe your recent encounter with a succubus. “Well it all started when I fell asleep during guard duty.” Later “And that’s why I came to this tavern.” Greg looks off in the distance, taking in everything you’ve told him. He starts speaking aloud slowly asking, “Do you think she was immortal?” Immortal? Aren’t all demons immortal, unless killed? You’re no expert, but you have never heard of a demon dying of old age. “I don’t have a clue to be honest. I was under the impression that her actual age is much more than her physical appearance would suggest though.” Greg gives a nod satisfied with your answer. You feel like you’ve told Greg more than enough and decide it’s time to go. You wish him goodbye and feel a hint of longing in his response. “Goodbye friend.” You tuck your hands in your pockets and begin the walk to your home. You’re going to have to get home fast as the cold is unbearable. You decide to take the alleys, as not only is it faster, but it also provides protection from the wind. Common sense says going through alleys at night isn’t safest, but Ashton is different than most cities. Crime is low, and poverty is uncommon as anyone can get a job as a guard as demand is higher than ever. The night’s sky combined with the tight spaced alley nearly blinds you. When you finally get out you’re relieved to have arrived at your parents’ house. Most guards sleep in the barracks, however, since your parents never returned from their trip their house is all yours. If they ever return, you hope they don’t mind you bringing a demon inside the house. Although, they were always bugging you about finding a girlfriend, this might not be what they had in mind. You walk to your parent’s porch and open the door. The wooden door squeaks loudly as you open it. “Some things never change,” you whisper to yourself. You immediately start making yourself more presentable. You change out of your soldiers’ uniform and put on a loose-fitting black tunic. You probably should take a bath but your too excited to see Catia that you forget to. Do demons mind odor? You feel like this is your purpose. It’s time to see Catia. “Catia”. A dark cloud appears in your room, dispelling a toxic fume. You start violently coughing as you vision blurs indiscriminately. Your eyes shut close and you feel you grip on reality slipping away from you. “Ah shit,” you whisper before passing out. Your eyes jitter open and you’re greeted by Catia stroking your face. Her palm flushes the coolness off your face. Beads of sweat drip furiously down your neck as she continues caressing you. “Couldn’t wait a single day before seeing me again? How cute.” She crawls onto your bed and moves closer to you. Her aura is all consuming and you feel your free will being drained away. Yet, the whole process is extremely pleasing to you. She moves her mouth to your ear and whispers, “Do you want to see everything I have to offer?” You bite your tongue to avoid instinctively shouting yes. This may be your last chance to not go through with this. At the very least, it would give you chance to ask her a few more questions. > You yes, you're ready. She takes no time to hesitate and begins kissing you. As she does so, she unties your tunic and throws it off. Her warm body pushes against your bare skin as you are filled with euphoria. Soon both of you are completely naked. Catia pleases you in ways no other woman has or will ever be able to. Afterwards you both lay in bed panting as one thought races through your mind. How do you get more of this? 1 Month Later It’s been a month since you’ve started having sex with Catia on a regular basis. The first few times you felt great afterwards. However, lately she has been demanding more out of you. First, you no longer have to say her name to see her. She visits you most nights whether you like her to or not. Last night she told you she wants to introduce you to a group: The Order of the Inferno. She told you they are a group of demons who could give you unimaginable powers in exchange for your help. You protested as you feared what could happen. Demon attacks are becoming more common and more lethal. Their reputation proceeds them and stomps out any curiosity you have of meeting one. Tales of rape, human consumption, and slavery are a few of many horrendous acts they have committed. Yet, as always, she managed to convince you. As much as your mind tries to resist, her presence is intoxicating. You embrace it as fighting gets you nowhere. She tells you to meet you in a nearby forest tonight. This is the first time you're seeing her outside your bedroom since the day you met. You sneak out the city walls when no one is watching and blend into the shadows. Although it is still winter, the temperature has unexpectedly risen. Some say its because of demonic power, others view it as being coincidence. Whatever it is, the cold will not be a hindrance. You reach the edge of the forest and feel your heart leaping out of your chest. While the city has many focused-on demons, other creatures lurk during the night. Just because Catia is on your side doesn’t mean you are safe. You keep this in mind as you take cover in bushes and flora periodically. An intense red light comes into view causing you to close your eyes. You begin to stumble and fall to the ground. When you’re able to open your eyes, you find yourself staring up at a hooded figure. “Who dares disturb me?” she hisses. Behind a dark brown hood lies a demonic face. Compared to Catia, she is clearly not human. Although none of that matters now, you begin to explain, “Catia told me to come here. Are you part of The Inferno Order?” “She sent a human to the center of The Order of the Inferno! I guess she wants to make up for earlier. I could never turn down a good meal.” She begins advancing towards you as a snake-like tongue hangs out of her mouth. ‘Wait! She told me you wanted my help and would give me powers in exchange.” She begins to laugh as she towers over you. You’re helpless as she grabs your neck and leans in… to kiss you? “My kiss is to die for!” You surprise yourself when you send a punch flying at her mouth. She seems equally surprised as she falls backwards. “I guess I can still resist,” you say. You get up and start running away but it's no use. She’s much faster than you, especially considering she can fly. You don’t have many options left but need to decide quick. Do you run deeper in the forest and hope to lose her or run back to the city and put everyone at risk? > You go deeper into the forest You start running to the heart of the forest praying that you lose her. It’s to no avail, she easy catches up to you and it seems you reached your end. Right as she is in arm’s length she stops. Before you know it, she has flown away leaving you all alone. What’s the deal? You quickly get your answer as you hear a monstrous screech. You suddenly feel extremely cold as a ghost like entity hovers above you. There’s no doubt about it, this is a wraith. They're well known for their madness and spreading it to all they encounter. Your mind is assaulted with a barrage of incomprehensible whispering. Within seconds you wish that demon would have killed you as the pain you experience is like no other. Your life energy is sapped away from you when the wraith eats your soul. You haven’t died technically but exist as one of hundreds of souls trapped within the wraith’s body. You’re never heard from again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>She takes no time to hesitate and begins kissing you. As she does so, she unties your tunic and throws it off. Her warm body pushes against your bare skin as you are filled with euphoria. Soon both of you are completely naked. Catia pleases you in ways no other woman has or will ever be able to. Afterwards you both lay in bed panting as one thought races through your mind. How do you get more of this? 1 Month Later It’s been a month since you’ve started having sex with Catia on a regular basis. The first few times you felt great afterwards. However, lately she has been demanding more out of you. First, you no longer have to say her name to see her. She visits you most nights whether you like her to or not. Last night she told you she wants to introduce you to a group: The Order of the Inferno. She told you they are a group of demons who could give you unimaginable powers in exchange for your help. You protested as you feared what could happen. Demon attacks are becoming more common and more lethal. Their reputation proceeds them and stomps out any curiosity you have of meeting one. Tales of rape, human consumption, and slavery are a few of many horrendous acts they have committed. Yet, as always, she managed to convince you. As much as your mind tries to resist, her presence is intoxicating. You embrace it as fighting gets you nowhere. She tells you to meet you in a nearby forest tonight. This is the first time you're seeing her outside your bedroom since the day you met. You sneak out the city walls when no one is watching and blend into the shadows. Although it is still winter, the temperature has unexpectedly risen. Some say its because of demonic power, others view it as being coincidence. Whatever it is, the cold will not be a hindrance. You reach the edge of the forest and feel your heart leaping out of your chest. While the city has many focused-on demons, other creatures lurk during the night. Just because Catia is on your side doesn’t mean you are safe. You keep this in mind as you take cover in bushes and flora periodically. An intense red light comes into view causing you to close your eyes. You begin to stumble and fall to the ground. When you’re able to open your eyes, you find yourself staring up at a hooded figure. “Who dares disturb me?” she hisses. Behind a dark brown hood lies a demonic face. Compared to Catia, she is clearly not human. Although none of that matters now, you begin to explain, “Catia told me to come here. Are you part of The Inferno Order?” “She sent a human to the center of The Order of the Inferno! I guess she wants to make up for earlier. I could never turn down a good meal.” She begins advancing towards you as a snake-like tongue hangs out of her mouth. ‘Wait! She told me you wanted my help and would give me powers in exchange.” She begins to laugh as she towers over you. You’re helpless as she grabs your neck and leans in… to kiss you? “My kiss is to die for!” You surprise yourself when you send a punch flying at her mouth. She seems equally surprised as she falls backwards. “I guess I can still resist,” you say. You get up and start running away but it's no use. She’s much faster than you, especially considering she can fly. You don’t have many options left but need to decide quick. Do you run deeper in the forest and hope to lose her or run back to the city and put everyone at risk? > You go back to the city You pump your muscles and start running back to the city walls. She follows you like a hawk, soaring above you with her wings. Once she’s directly above she swoops in. Too late though as you bolt through the city entrance. You keep running straight and dive into a nearby bush. You stop breathing and don’t dare move. You can sense that she is nearby, but she doesn’t seem to be trying to kill you anymore. Instead, you hear screaming in a nearby house followed by laughing. Curiosity gets the better of you and you peak out from the bushes. You spot her in a house cornering a family. You know demons are monsters, but what benefit is there to killing innocent children and their parents? It’s senseless, what’s the point of destruction for destruction sake? You continue starring at her as she slashes the throat of presumably a father. But for some reason, she does not kill him. What she does is much worse. She leaves him alive to watch as she sends a ball of red energy at the children. It renders them into ash, not giving them a chance to scream. You curse at yourself for indirectly causing this. Why did you listen to a demon anyways? You keep watching in nervous anticipation of her killing the father. Instead, she just leaves. What cruelty propels such an atrocious action? This man has lost all that’s dear to him, and she left him alive. You stay in the bushes as she goes from house to house committing similar acts of violence. There must be a stop to the madness. You gather the courage to leave your bush haven. You dash away back to your home and fling the door open. Your immediately reaction is to get your sword and leather armor to slay the demon. Yet, the logical side of your mind tells you that’s suicide. There's another way, although you don’t want to admit it. What if you got drunk and contacted Catia to save your city? She saved your life before, maybe she can do it again? > You slay the demon You must slay the demon yourself. Catia didn’t bother showing up to the forest, why would she help you? You throw on your armor and pick up your sword. You grin at the thought of stabbing this demon to death. You haven’t ever felt pleasure from violence before, yet something tells you you’ll enjoy killing her. With your weapon and protection, you leave your home. Terror has spread like wildfire. Bodies lay on the street charred and bruised. Your veins pulsate with anger. Why, tell me why? These are your neighbors and friends. You run with each step being more purposeful than the last. After a few hundred steps, you hear laughter. There she is, cornering a group of children. You yell to create a distraction, but she ignores you. The children are reduced to fragments of ember. Destruction lies all around you with more bodies than you could count. You scream a battle cry of hatred and charge. She looks up and makes eye contact but doesn’t move. You resist the urge to strike her down as you know you are outmatched physically. Still, another urge gnaws at your conscious forcing you to spit out, “Why would you do this?” You’re surprised when she stops to think for a moment. “I had everything I held dear to me ripped away. When Catia came to me with the idea of working along side a human, I couldn’t contain my anger.” “What’s wrong with working with a human?” She stares at you with pity. “You truly don’t know? Why the hell are you helping Catia then? I don’t understand.” You are equally confused and explain your relationship with Catia. “Oh, so you’re her fuck toy then? Jesus Christ, she’ll never get back with such degrading tactics.” You ignore her insult (although she said it more like an objective statement) and ask her, “What do you mean get back? Demons invaded earth, why wouldn’t they want to finish the job?” “You think we’re here willingly? Holy shit you’re brain dead, I still can’t get over Catia fucking a human as dumb as you. It would be like if you had sex with a jellyfish, completely different wavelengths.” This hellish creature is relentless with her insults. Though it seems there is a fundamental misunderstanding between you two. “If you’re not here by choice, why are you here?” She explains that there is a demonic code in the infernal realm. Any demons who break it, are sent to lesser realms for a chance at redemption. “And I was sent to one of the worst; Earth.” “How do you get back?” “I need to conquer not through destruction, but manipulation. It goes against my nature, but it is the way of life in the infernal realm where all strength is equal. To prove my worth, I need to work with humans and other lesser creatures.” “Then why are you destroying my city?” She sighs and furrows her eyebrows. “Because I’m pissed off, ok?” You continue talking to the demon, who tells you her name is Aria, until you come to a complete understanding of each other’s motivations. Still, after everything you’ve learned about each other she says, “I’m still going to destroy your city. Although there may be one thing you could do to stop me…” She explains how a nearby wizard has imprisoned her friend, Azor, and offers to spare your city in exchange for his freedom. “You have 24 hours, or your city goes up in flames.” Your blood boils over the fact she still desires to destroy the city. Your morality prevents you from standing aside and letting your city burn. You have your sword in hand and amour equipped. Why not pretend to agree then attack when she least expects it? > You help save her friend “I’ll help you to stop the destruction.” “Great!” Aria conjures a portal made of dark matter. “Quick get in before it closes.” You jump in, not knowing your destination. After a short transit, you find yourself outside of a tree house. You wanted to live in a tree house as a child, but now that your in front of one, they don’t seem very practical. “How do I get inside?" you wonder aloud. “The ladder.” “Why didn’t I think of that! Thank you voice inside my head.” “You're welcome, now free me from this ethereal prison.” This must be who Aria was talking about, but you want to make sure. “Say, what’s your name?” “Amlodipine Olmesartan Medoxomil, but you may call me Azor for short.” You climb the ladder and enter a room with wooden floors and walls. “Why are you so fixated on the floors and walls? What did you expect a tree house to be made of?” You don’t answer and continue examining your surroundings. A table lies in the center of the room aligned with various trinkets. One that catches your eye is a glowing red crystal ball. Your first instinct is to break it but you resist the temptation. “What are you waiting for, mortal? Free me from this ethereal trap at once!” > You free him You grab the red crystal ball and drop it as it burns your finger tips. It shatters into a million pieces as a red fog pours out of it. “Now open up!” The red fog flows into your ears, mouth, and nose. Your eyes roll into the back of your head as your mind splits into two. Thoughts that aren’t your own begin to flood in. “What are you waiting for? Let’s get the hell out of here.” You climb down the ladder and exit the tree house. You don’t even know where you are right now but somehow know the way back is to the north. “Take a rest, I’m taking over.” Your face grows warm and you start feeling lightheaded. Your body still walks forward as you black out. You awaken in mid conversation sitting by a campfire. “So when are you gonna get a better body Azor? Look at yourself, how will you kill anyone appearing like that.” “Don’t be so dismissive Kancor, at least with this body he won’t have to worry about losing control.” You look around and note the men you're talking with are much more muscular than yourself. There’s something off about them, their body language is inexpressive and follows little pattern. Sometimes their hands dangle from their arms and other times they jerk up and down. It all feels unnatural and inhuman. “Looks like you might of spoke too soon Borax.” “Nonsense, Azor is fucking with us and you're taking the bait. Now tell me, how did you convince this poor fuck to release you?” You stare at these two men and know you can’t fight them. Plus, you feel a nauseating light-headed feeling. You could experience a loss of movement at any time if Azor gains control. “I convinced him to break my crystal ball, releasing me from my ethereal prison,” you say remembering his own words. “Yeah but how did you do it? Borax and me had to torture bandits to near death, how did you get someone to give you control willingly?” “He had no idea I would gain control,” you say with a hint of spite. “Damn small-muscled and a moron? Looks like you hit the jackpot with this one.” “I sure did…” You talk for a little longer before Borax puts out the fire. Despite having little clothing for spending a night outside in the winter, you don’t feel cold. Is Azor’s presence maintaining your normal body temperatures? “What’s the point of putting out the fire? We’re going to have to use twice as much energy to stay warm.” “We’re demons, not monsters. Wouldn’t want an entire forest burning down for no reason.” “Wasn’t the poor bastard you’re possessing now screaming ‘Monster! Monster!’ when you tortured him?” “Kancor, you know I had no choice. He was being uncooperative and I needed to put him in his place.” “Well you can think about how you had no choice but to mutilate his ball sack into a dough-like mess over sleep.” All three of you lie down on lovely dirt mattresses. You stare eyes open fearing you might lose control at any moment. After what feels like an hour, you’re sure both of them are asleep. You could get up and make your escape, although you have no idea where you are. Something tells you north is the way to go, but you have no idea how long of a journey it will be and when you will lose control again. You could fall asleep and wait until you're closer to safety. But what good will that even do? Azor will still coexist with you like an infernal parasite. > You escape You get up and sneak away, careful not to step on any sticks. Once you’re a good distance away, you break into a sprint. You need to get out of here before they realize you're gone. If Ashton, or any city for that matter, is nearby, then maybe someone could help you. You heard about demon purges before but it never seemed to be the most pleasant process. What choice do you have if you want to hold onto your own free will? While running you start to feel incredibly dizzy. Your head sways up and down, spit drips out of your mouth, and you begin to fall. You wait for Azor to take over, but he never does. A coldness perpetuates all around you as you go numb. There will be no one to save you as you pass out from the freezing temperatures. You die a relatively painless death. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the red crystal ball and drop it as it burns your finger tips. It shatters into a million pieces as a red fog pours out of it. “Now open up!” The red fog flows into your ears, mouth, and nose. Your eyes roll into the back of your head as your mind splits into two. Thoughts that aren’t your own begin to flood in. “What are you waiting for? Let’s get the hell out of here.” You climb down the ladder and exit the tree house. You don’t even know where you are right now but somehow know the way back is to the north. “Take a rest, I’m taking over.” Your face grows warm and you start feeling lightheaded. Your body still walks forward as you black out. You awaken in mid conversation sitting by a campfire. “So when are you gonna get a better body Azor? Look at yourself, how will you kill anyone appearing like that.” “Don’t be so dismissive Kancor, at least with this body he won’t have to worry about losing control.” You look around and note the men you're talking with are much more muscular than yourself. There’s something off about them, their body language is inexpressive and follows little pattern. Sometimes their hands dangle from their arms and other times they jerk up and down. It all feels unnatural and inhuman. “Looks like you might of spoke too soon Borax.” “Nonsense, Azor is fucking with us and you're taking the bait. Now tell me, how did you convince this poor fuck to release you?” You stare at these two men and know you can’t fight them. Plus, you feel a nauseating light-headed feeling. You could experience a loss of movement at any time if Azor gains control. “I convinced him to break my crystal ball, releasing me from my ethereal prison,” you say remembering his own words. “Yeah but how did you do it? Borax and me had to torture bandits to near death, how did you get someone to give you control willingly?” “He had no idea I would gain control,” you say with a hint of spite. “Damn small-muscled and a moron? Looks like you hit the jackpot with this one.” “I sure did…” You talk for a little longer before Borax puts out the fire. Despite having little clothing for spending a night outside in the winter, you don’t feel cold. Is Azor’s presence maintaining your normal body temperatures? “What’s the point of putting out the fire? We’re going to have to use twice as much energy to stay warm.” “We’re demons, not monsters. Wouldn’t want an entire forest burning down for no reason.” “Wasn’t the poor bastard you’re possessing now screaming ‘Monster! Monster!’ when you tortured him?” “Kancor, you know I had no choice. He was being uncooperative and I needed to put him in his place.” “Well you can think about how you had no choice but to mutilate his ball sack into a dough-like mess over sleep.” All three of you lie down on lovely dirt mattresses. You stare eyes open fearing you might lose control at any moment. After what feels like an hour, you’re sure both of them are asleep. You could get up and make your escape, although you have no idea where you are. Something tells you north is the way to go, but you have no idea how long of a journey it will be and when you will lose control again. You could fall asleep and wait until you're closer to safety. But what good will that even do? Azor will still coexist with you like an infernal parasite. > You fall Asleep You drift off to sleep, wondering if you’ll wake up in the same place. An unknown amount of time later You wake up starring at a bloody pile of human corpses. You’re carrying an iron sword that’s stained red. The stained sword seems like the proximate cause of human bodies. You hold back from throwing up as you notice all the stab wounds that you made. You feel lightheaded and can’t tell if its because of the bodies or Azor. Regardless, you have to get out of here before someone sees you. You run from the murder scene and notice you’re in a small village. The sun is beginning to rise and people are going to wake up any minute. Needing to get the hell out of here, you take off running to the north. You hear screams in the distance the moment you take off. They must have discovered the bodies… Once out of the village, you bend over gasping for air. Your heart flutters as you feel like you’re gonna pass out from adrenaline. You stumble haphazardly knowing the villagers are on the lookout for a killer. You need to reach Ashton, you need to know it’s ok. The thought that Aria manipulated you and destroyed your city spikes your anxiety. This isn’t the only thought that is causing you panic though. You have a fucking demon inside of you. It’s like a tape worm but instead of wanting food it craves evil. What happens if you return to Ashton and lose control? What if you’re the one who destroys the city under Azor’s guidance? Your thoughts are too much causing you to stop dead in your tracks. Why should you try to reach Ashton just to lose control? Instead, you could turn around and go back to the village. If you explained you situation, they may be able to help you. > You go back to the village You’ve seemed to lack so much control over your choices ever since you met Aria. Now that Azor is involved, this lack of control has intensified. This may be your last chance to make your own choice. It’s time to put an end to this. You turn around and sprint back to the village. When you arrive, the villagers don’t seem very happy. “That’s the murderer! I saw him run away covered in blood.” “Yeah and he has a sword! Let’s get him!” It probably would have been a good idea to change clothes and ditch the sword. Or, you know, go to any other place but the village you just killed someone at. No matter, this was your choice and you have to live with the consequences. “Please let me explain.” They give you no chance as they charge at you with pitch forks and makeshift swords. You are beaten to a bloody pulp until you die from loss of blood.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You drift off to sleep, wondering if you’ll wake up in the same place. An unknown amount of time later You wake up starring at a bloody pile of human corpses. You’re carrying an iron sword that’s stained red. The stained sword seems like the proximate cause of human bodies. You hold back from throwing up as you notice all the stab wounds that you made. You feel lightheaded and can’t tell if its because of the bodies or Azor. Regardless, you have to get out of here before someone sees you. You run from the murder scene and notice you’re in a small village. The sun is beginning to rise and people are going to wake up any minute. Needing to get the hell out of here, you take off running to the north. You hear screams in the distance the moment you take off. They must have discovered the bodies… Once out of the village, you bend over gasping for air. Your heart flutters as you feel like you’re gonna pass out from adrenaline. You stumble haphazardly knowing the villagers are on the lookout for a killer. You need to reach Ashton, you need to know it’s ok. The thought that Aria manipulated you and destroyed your city spikes your anxiety. This isn’t the only thought that is causing you panic though. You have a fucking demon inside of you. It’s like a tape worm but instead of wanting food it craves evil. What happens if you return to Ashton and lose control? What if you’re the one who destroys the city under Azor’s guidance? Your thoughts are too much causing you to stop dead in your tracks. Why should you try to reach Ashton just to lose control? Instead, you could turn around and go back to the village. If you explained you situation, they may be able to help you. > You continue to Ashton You keep running north, praying it’s the way to Ashton. It’s a long journey, and you find yourself having to piss multiple times. During one of these pisses you lose muscle control and fall into a puddle of your own urine. When you come to, you find yourself in Ashton. Or at least, what used to be Ashton. The city has been completely destroyed, houses burned to the ground and there’s not another soul in sight. You do sense someone being nearby and search for any survivors. What you find instead sends you into a rage. It’s Aria and she is looking at you smugly. “Good job destroying the city, you did a much better job than I ever could.” You hold back from attacking her considering you no longer have your sword. You make an emotional plea and say, “You promised you wouldn’t destroy the city if I freed Azor.” She laughs and starts to fly circles around you. “Au contraire my little killer. YOU destroyed the city and I kept my promise. Thanks to you I’ve been granted a passage home.” “What are you even talking about? How could I destroy the city if I don’t have a weapon?” She laughs again and stops flying to land beside you. “When you black out, you take on a different form. Azor is capable of much more than you ever will be.” This can’t be real, you’ve gone through so much just to be a pawn in her little game. You wish you just died on that freezing night instead of having Catia save you. Maybe Ashton would still exist if it weren’t for you. “Don’t be so sad, you’re coming with me!” You stare daggers at her. “What do you mean I’m coming with you?” “You’re coming home with me of course. Azor’s a demon too and you couldn’t have destroyed the city without him. And thanks to you, Tornaxaan, a powerful demon lord, commended us for tricking you into destroying your own city. As a reward, we get to return to the infernal realm.” “Can’t you just let me go? Surely Azor could possess a different body...” “Nonsense, now grab my hand. We’re going to have so much fun!” > You epilogue #3: Returning to a Home Unknown “So your name’s Coyote?” “Yes, and I presume you’re Azor?” At this point you don’t even bother correcting people. Your moments of control are becoming more scarce and there’s no point in wasting it telling people you aren’t Azor. “That’s correct, now tell me, how can I get sent to Earth?” “You could try learning dark magic, that’s how my friend Jirzan got there.” Dark magic is notorious for being hard to control. Still, it might be your best option. “Dark magic sounds interesting. Is there some sort of teleportation spell that can get me back to earth? Oh, maybe I could learn to conjure a portal!” Coyote, who is half man half coyote, shows what would be a pleasant smile if he didn’t have two monstrous fangs. “No nothing like that, you don’t even have to learn a single spell. Just being in possession of a dark magic book, or kit, will be enough to get you sent back.” “And where could I get such resources?” “I wish I knew, but dark magic is heavily guarded by the most elite demons. I would take a look in Tornaxxan’s castle, just don’t get caught.” “Yeah I wasn’t planning to. Thanks for your help Coyote, I’ll try to sneak in before it's too late.” “Too late? Buddy, you got an eternity to figure this out.” “Sure I do,” you say while sulking away. Coyote calls after you, “Before you go, could you do me a favor?” You stop and pause to ask, “What?” “If you ever meet a demon named Jirzan, tell him I’ve been released from captivity. He’ll be happy to hear that.” “I’ll be sure to tell him if I get the chance.” Coyote wags his tail as you wave goodbye. Who knows if you’ll ever return home? And if you do, when can you get rid of Azor? Life used to be so much simpler.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I’ll help you to stop the destruction.” “Great!” Aria conjures a portal made of dark matter. “Quick get in before it closes.” You jump in, not knowing your destination. After a short transit, you find yourself outside of a tree house. You wanted to live in a tree house as a child, but now that your in front of one, they don’t seem very practical. “How do I get inside?" you wonder aloud. “The ladder.” “Why didn’t I think of that! Thank you voice inside my head.” “You're welcome, now free me from this ethereal prison.” This must be who Aria was talking about, but you want to make sure. “Say, what’s your name?” “Amlodipine Olmesartan Medoxomil, but you may call me Azor for short.” You climb the ladder and enter a room with wooden floors and walls. “Why are you so fixated on the floors and walls? What did you expect a tree house to be made of?” You don’t answer and continue examining your surroundings. A table lies in the center of the room aligned with various trinkets. One that catches your eye is a glowing red crystal ball. Your first instinct is to break it but you resist the temptation. “What are you waiting for, mortal? Free me from this ethereal trap at once!” > You keep looking around You continue searching the tree house until you find a book. It's titled in a language you don't understand. You pick it up to get and a closer look and it seems to be some sort of spell book. "Don't read that!" screams Azor. But it's too late, you've already opened the book. You poof into nothingness and die in unpredictable fashion.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You must slay the demon yourself. Catia didn’t bother showing up to the forest, why would she help you? You throw on your armor and pick up your sword. You grin at the thought of stabbing this demon to death. You haven’t ever felt pleasure from violence before, yet something tells you you’ll enjoy killing her. With your weapon and protection, you leave your home. Terror has spread like wildfire. Bodies lay on the street charred and bruised. Your veins pulsate with anger. Why, tell me why? These are your neighbors and friends. You run with each step being more purposeful than the last. After a few hundred steps, you hear laughter. There she is, cornering a group of children. You yell to create a distraction, but she ignores you. The children are reduced to fragments of ember. Destruction lies all around you with more bodies than you could count. You scream a battle cry of hatred and charge. She looks up and makes eye contact but doesn’t move. You resist the urge to strike her down as you know you are outmatched physically. Still, another urge gnaws at your conscious forcing you to spit out, “Why would you do this?” You’re surprised when she stops to think for a moment. “I had everything I held dear to me ripped away. When Catia came to me with the idea of working along side a human, I couldn’t contain my anger.” “What’s wrong with working with a human?” She stares at you with pity. “You truly don’t know? Why the hell are you helping Catia then? I don’t understand.” You are equally confused and explain your relationship with Catia. “Oh, so you’re her fuck toy then? Jesus Christ, she’ll never get back with such degrading tactics.” You ignore her insult (although she said it more like an objective statement) and ask her, “What do you mean get back? Demons invaded earth, why wouldn’t they want to finish the job?” “You think we’re here willingly? Holy shit you’re brain dead, I still can’t get over Catia fucking a human as dumb as you. It would be like if you had sex with a jellyfish, completely different wavelengths.” This hellish creature is relentless with her insults. Though it seems there is a fundamental misunderstanding between you two. “If you’re not here by choice, why are you here?” She explains that there is a demonic code in the infernal realm. Any demons who break it, are sent to lesser realms for a chance at redemption. “And I was sent to one of the worst; Earth.” “How do you get back?” “I need to conquer not through destruction, but manipulation. It goes against my nature, but it is the way of life in the infernal realm where all strength is equal. To prove my worth, I need to work with humans and other lesser creatures.” “Then why are you destroying my city?” She sighs and furrows her eyebrows. “Because I’m pissed off, ok?” You continue talking to the demon, who tells you her name is Aria, until you come to a complete understanding of each other’s motivations. Still, after everything you’ve learned about each other she says, “I’m still going to destroy your city. Although there may be one thing you could do to stop me…” She explains how a nearby wizard has imprisoned her friend, Azor, and offers to spare your city in exchange for his freedom. “You have 24 hours, or your city goes up in flames.” Your blood boils over the fact she still desires to destroy the city. Your morality prevents you from standing aside and letting your city burn. You have your sword in hand and amour equipped. Why not pretend to agree then attack when she least expects it? > You pretend to help, then backstab her “I’ll help you seeing as I don’t have much choice.” “Great!” Aria conjures a portal made of dark matter. “What are you waiting for, jump in!” You instead jump at her with your sword. This does not go as planned as you are reflected by a pulse of telekinetic energy. “I had a feeling you might betray me. After all, I did just massacre half of your city. Humans emotions are soooo predictable.” Before you can even scream, she burns you head to toe. You are reduced to a bubbling puddle of human flesh. “Great, what body will Azor possess now?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You pump your muscles and start running back to the city walls. She follows you like a hawk, soaring above you with her wings. Once she’s directly above she swoops in. Too late though as you bolt through the city entrance. You keep running straight and dive into a nearby bush. You stop breathing and don’t dare move. You can sense that she is nearby, but she doesn’t seem to be trying to kill you anymore. Instead, you hear screaming in a nearby house followed by laughing. Curiosity gets the better of you and you peak out from the bushes. You spot her in a house cornering a family. You know demons are monsters, but what benefit is there to killing innocent children and their parents? It’s senseless, what’s the point of destruction for destruction sake? You continue starring at her as she slashes the throat of presumably a father. But for some reason, she does not kill him. What she does is much worse. She leaves him alive to watch as she sends a ball of red energy at the children. It renders them into ash, not giving them a chance to scream. You curse at yourself for indirectly causing this. Why did you listen to a demon anyways? You keep watching in nervous anticipation of her killing the father. Instead, she just leaves. What cruelty propels such an atrocious action? This man has lost all that’s dear to him, and she left him alive. You stay in the bushes as she goes from house to house committing similar acts of violence. There must be a stop to the madness. You gather the courage to leave your bush haven. You dash away back to your home and fling the door open. Your immediately reaction is to get your sword and leather armor to slay the demon. Yet, the logical side of your mind tells you that’s suicide. There's another way, although you don’t want to admit it. What if you got drunk and contacted Catia to save your city? She saved your life before, maybe she can do it again? > You contact Catia How could you possibly save your city and survive? As much as you don’t want to admit it, you can’t win without some help. You sprint to the drunk tortoise tavern (which luckily is on the opposite side of the city that is being terrorized) and bust through the door. It’s completely empty aside from a single person. “Long time no see bud.” It’s Greg, he has bright red cheeks and is swaying slightly. “Why are you still here? There’s a demon on a murder rampage outside!” He chuckles then says, “Sometimes you don’t want to be saved. I’m staying here and if I die, so be it.” “Well let me join you,” you say with no intention of sitting around to die. You and Greg sit together and talk about all sorts of things while drinking. This isn’t like the before, when the conversation revolved around meaningless hypotheticals. You delve into some deep shit in a relatively short amount of time. You talk about politics, the meaning of life, and what happens after you die. While this is all going on, the demon continues massacring your entire city. Oops, looks like getting drunk has made you forget your priorities. When the realization dawns on you after a few drinks, you waste no time in shouting, “Catia!” Greg squints at you, clearly remembering the name from the last time you talked. This look of curiosity turns into horror as a swirling red cloud appears in front of you. Catia stands before you but looks much different than before. Unlike her human-like form, she has dark red skin and humongous bat wings. “You call me once again, how pathetic are you?” This question strikes you with surprise as it’s the first time she has shown open hostility towards you. Greg on the other hand begins laughing, then says, “Is this the demon that’s been destroying the city? Man, I thought it would be at least a little bigger than that. I know it's rich coming from me, but damn how can something as small as that destroy the city?” “Shut up already Greg! This isn’t the demon that’s been attacking the city.” Greg looks at you in confusion as Catia speaks up, “He's right you know, I haven’t killed a single person in weeks. That is, until now.” Catia takes to the air and flies towards Greg. His drunken state makes him slow to react as Catia rips his throat out. Blood sprays everywhere like a broken faucet. “Who’s the small one now, bitch?” “Jeez I know he was asking for it, but you didn’t have to kill him.” Catia turns her head towards you and shows no remorse. Her pupils have shrunk, giving her eyes a milk white appearance. “This is all your fault, why couldn’t you have just listened to Aria?” She advances towards you, snarling like a wild beast. “Wait just a second I didn’t have a chance—“ And you didn’t have a chance to finish that sentence either as Catia pulls your throat off your body like a soldier grabs a sword off a rack. You die in a puddle of mixed, throat extracted, blood.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Fine I’ll tell you why. But be warned, it’s a long story.” “That’s alright, the longer I’m away from the other two the better.” You take a deep breath and begin to describe your recent encounter with a succubus. “Well it all started when I fell asleep during guard duty.” Later “And that’s why I came to this tavern.” Greg looks off in the distance, taking in everything you’ve told him. He starts speaking aloud slowly asking, “Do you think she was immortal?” Immortal? Aren’t all demons immortal, unless killed? You’re no expert, but you have never heard of a demon dying of old age. “I don’t have a clue to be honest. I was under the impression that her actual age is much more than her physical appearance would suggest though.” Greg gives a nod satisfied with your answer. You feel like you’ve told Greg more than enough and decide it’s time to go. You wish him goodbye and feel a hint of longing in his response. “Goodbye friend.” You tuck your hands in your pockets and begin the walk to your home. You’re going to have to get home fast as the cold is unbearable. You decide to take the alleys, as not only is it faster, but it also provides protection from the wind. Common sense says going through alleys at night isn’t safest, but Ashton is different than most cities. Crime is low, and poverty is uncommon as anyone can get a job as a guard as demand is higher than ever. The night’s sky combined with the tight spaced alley nearly blinds you. When you finally get out you’re relieved to have arrived at your parents’ house. Most guards sleep in the barracks, however, since your parents never returned from their trip their house is all yours. If they ever return, you hope they don’t mind you bringing a demon inside the house. Although, they were always bugging you about finding a girlfriend, this might not be what they had in mind. You walk to your parent’s porch and open the door. The wooden door squeaks loudly as you open it. “Some things never change,” you whisper to yourself. You immediately start making yourself more presentable. You change out of your soldiers’ uniform and put on a loose-fitting black tunic. You probably should take a bath but your too excited to see Catia that you forget to. Do demons mind odor? You feel like this is your purpose. It’s time to see Catia. “Catia”. A dark cloud appears in your room, dispelling a toxic fume. You start violently coughing as you vision blurs indiscriminately. Your eyes shut close and you feel you grip on reality slipping away from you. “Ah shit,” you whisper before passing out. Your eyes jitter open and you’re greeted by Catia stroking your face. Her palm flushes the coolness off your face. Beads of sweat drip furiously down your neck as she continues caressing you. “Couldn’t wait a single day before seeing me again? How cute.” She crawls onto your bed and moves closer to you. Her aura is all consuming and you feel your free will being drained away. Yet, the whole process is extremely pleasing to you. She moves her mouth to your ear and whispers, “Do you want to see everything I have to offer?” You bite your tongue to avoid instinctively shouting yes. This may be your last chance to not go through with this. At the very least, it would give you chance to ask her a few more questions. > You no, let's just talk. As the words leave your lips you feel Catia’s mood shift. She seems more hostile saying, “Do you not find me attractive or something? I don’t have time to talk and have many more people to see after you. Let’s focus on the now shall we? Take of your clothes.” > You take of your clothes You follow her command as she details step by step what you should do. “Ok now remove your tunic. Good, throw it on the floor and put your pants on top. Great job!” She tells you things along the same lines until you're completely devoid of any clothing. “Now here comes the fun part, get on your hands and knees.” You’ve already come this far, might as well comply. You get down and have to arch your back to stare up at her. The uncomfortable position does not bother you as all you can focus on is her figure. Damn she sure is beautiful. Especially when she says incantations. Hey, that’s what she’s saying right now!” “Sarahkahnar Hor zeef narze taf!” When she finishes you have a out of body experience. It’s like you're having an orgasm all over your body. Yet, it’s so much more than just that. Your whole room is having an organism and you feel it all. The walls, the table, the bed, and even clumps of dust experience this sensation along side you. It’s magical and you don’t care if she’s a so called demon, she is a blessing to this world. You can’t keep this feeling inside and whisper, “I love…” You pass out before finishing from pure ecstasy. When you regain consciousness you feel utterly cold. You’re naked as Catia towers over you. "Saying the word 'love' after our first night together tells me all I need to know about you." "What's that?" She grows quiet and says in a pitiful tone, "You're too weak-willed to be of any real use to me. Best I throw away the trash before it makes my presence known." You try to question her but find yourself unable to move. A white spirit begins to flow out of your body. "Don't think I'm taking your soul or anything. I'm merely releasing you from your human form." Soon everything turns black as you find yourself floating in infinite space. Other floating spirits whiz around, but you're unable to communicate with any of them. You never escape this purgatory and soon forget how you got here. The weak-willed guard from Ashton is remembered as nothing more than a victim of the demon invasion.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As the words leave your lips you feel Catia’s mood shift. She seems more hostile saying, “Do you not find me attractive or something? I don’t have time to talk and have many more people to see after you. Let’s focus on the now shall we? Take of your clothes.” > You refuse “I will be doing no such thing,” you say in protest. Catia raises her eyebrow before breaking out in laughter. “Well this is a first,” she says. You stare at her as she seems to be deciding whether she’ll force you to remove your clothes. You feel the sweat drip down your back when she finally says, “Maybe I really deserved to be sent here. I can’t even manipulate a human into having sex with me.” A black cloud appears as she disappears from your room. You start violently coughing but don’t pass out this time. It’s not like it matters, you need to sleep anyway. You put out your candles and fall into bed. You focus on your breathing as you drift off to sleep. Best to reflect on what happens when you have a clearer mind. You wake up with a throbbing pain in your head. The light coming from your window floods your mind with intense pain. Guess you drunk more last night than you thought. You decide its best to make yourself some food and drink to clear your head. You grab water and a slice of peach pie you made a few days ago. You scarf the food down and shallow the water in huge gulps. Your head should start feeling better within the next few hours. Except it doesn’t, you lie in bed with constant tension on your head. It’s like someone is squeezing your brain with both hands, but not hard enough to cause physical harm. Something unnatural is going on and you know it. Hangovers should get better after rest, not worse. It’s hard to focus on anything but the pain. You try remembering what Catia did before she left. She dispelled a black cloud which didn’t knock you out. Is it possible this was a curse? The more you think about it, the more it makes sense. While she tried not to show it, she was upset you resisted her temptation. She wanted you to pay for hurting her ego. That bitch! As you think about her more, tension is released from your skull. In fact, you're able to think about her in vivid detail and feel headache free. Although, the second you stop thinking about her the pain comes rushing back. This certainly isn’t good. You’re going to have to do something about this. There is one obvious solution which is trying to contact Catia and having her remove the curse. Though who knows if she’ll even remove it, assuming she still wants to visit you. The other option is going to a local witch doctor and having them remove the curse. Although, you’ve heard they’ve been busy since demons first started being sighted. Maybe the curse is temporary, why not wait it out? > You call for Catia You can barely move, so you know you’re in a susceptible state. The question is, does she still want to see you? “Catia,” you whisper. You wait a few tense seconds and feel the pain in your head begin to relieve itself. But then, nothing. She never comes and the pain comes rushing back. You find tears streaming down your face as you realize your chances with Catia are probably over. You’re also in no state to continue working as a guard and will probably be fired soon. The only thing you can do is lay in bed and suffer. Days past and your state of mind only gets worse. You begin seeing shadowy figures at the corner of your eyes. One day you manage to touch one and ask, “Who are you?” He laughs and laughs before disappearing. This isn’t the most psychologically scaring part of this ordeal. Your recurring nightmares are much worse. You dream of your family returning home in vivid detail, only for it to all come crashing down as you realize they're not real. You stop eating and drink only when necessary. It gets to a point where you know if you don’t try to seek help you will die. You have no idea where to go for help, especially since the local witch doctor has been arrested for using humans as potion ingredients. You wander aimlessly taking morning walks in a vain attempt to find your savior. Shadowy figures whisper about you as you walk past. “There’s nothing out here, return home” “You’re never going to get better, why not end it?” You’ve been seeing these shadowy figures more frequently recently. You chalk this up to your lack of sleep. Sleeping is when your most vulnerable, so you try to do as little of it as you can. During a morning walk you run into a familiar face. It’s your childhood friend Julia. You haven’t seen her since schooling and boy does she look different. “Is that…” she says “Yeah it’s me,” you reply “Boy do you look different.” You haven’t been grooming yourself since the madness occurred. You have lots of dark circles under your eyes and probably don’t smell too good either. “You also look different.” She raises an eyebrow not knowing if your complementing or insulting her. “In a good way in a good way!” you clarify. She laughs as her dress flows in the wind. “Sorry I can’t say the same to you. Down on your luck?” “That’s putting it lightly,” you say jokingly, even though it’s the truth. “Hahah I bet. I was just about to get some coffee, wanna come with?” “Would I ever! Is it ok if the shadow people follow along?” “The what?” “Never mind.” Later Julia and you decided to go to the Cinnamon Pearl Cafe. As fancy as it may seem, its nothing more than a place to eat pastries and drink coffee. She begins telling you what’s she’s been doing lately. “You know Andy right?” “Of course, me and him have been on guard duty together a couple times.” Julia bites her lips and chooses her words carefully, “Well we broke up recently due to the fact that he...he...raped me...” You’re shocked at this revelation, Andy has always seemed like a standup guy. “How could he do such a thing?” “He’s a piece of shit that’s how!” Your lower your head as she composes herself. “Sorry, I’m just not in the best mental space right now.” “No need to apologize, you have every right to be angry.” “Thank you.” “So tell me, what happened?” She explains how one night, after a long tiring day working as a cleaner, Andy wanted sex. They had been dating for a few months and had yet to have sex. The conversation went a little like this, “All of my other friends constantly brag about sex. If I keep telling them I haven’t fucked you yet they might start thinking I’m gay," says Andy. “Stop pressuring me! I told you, I am not in the mood and am not ready to pursue that kind of relationship with you.” “You’re such a bitch, you know that right? Fuck you make me angry,” Andy says while walking towards Julia menacingly. “Back off, get away from me!” Julia stops talking and begins to choke up. She covers her face with her hands and says shakily, “He grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. I tried to scream but he covered my mouth and clenched my throat. He violated me and nobody cares to do anything about it. Everyone’s to focused on the damn demons to give a shit about poor ol’ me.” “That’s horrible, who else have you told?” “Just you and the captain of the fucking guards. He wouldn’t even fire him, saying the demand for guards is ‘very high’ right now. No guard is better than a guards that’s a mother fucking rapist.” “I wish I could help, but the captain probably won’t listen to me anymore. I haven’t shown up for work in days and didn’t give any notice.” “It’s ok, I don’t want the captain’s help anyways. I need to move on and be strong.” You make small talk about various things before saying your goodbyes. With Julia in such a vulnerable state, you wonder if it’s best to give her time to heal. At the same time, you long for human relationship. The shadow figures just aren’t the same as real human contact. > You give her time to heal You decide it’s best to give it time before pursuing a relationship. Not just for her, but you as well. You figure you’ll stop seeing shadow people sooner than later and be in a better headspace. A few days go by and the shadowy figures start to appear in the corner of your eyes. You’re starting to regret your decision of not pursing Julia but they reassure you. “You’re better of without her.” “Why have friends when you have us?” And a particularly rude one says, “She’s much better off without you in her life.” You stop your morning walks and live a hermit lifestyle. You start eating bugs off the ground as you’ve long since ran out of food. This is no way to live your life and you know it. In a moment of clarity you sprint out of the house and run to “The Devil’s Cliff”. You jump off laughing as you’ve hit rock bottom in life and now in death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can barely move, so you know you’re in a susceptible state. The question is, does she still want to see you? “Catia,” you whisper. You wait a few tense seconds and feel the pain in your head begin to relieve itself. But then, nothing. She never comes and the pain comes rushing back. You find tears streaming down your face as you realize your chances with Catia are probably over. You’re also in no state to continue working as a guard and will probably be fired soon. The only thing you can do is lay in bed and suffer. Days past and your state of mind only gets worse. You begin seeing shadowy figures at the corner of your eyes. One day you manage to touch one and ask, “Who are you?” He laughs and laughs before disappearing. This isn’t the most psychologically scaring part of this ordeal. Your recurring nightmares are much worse. You dream of your family returning home in vivid detail, only for it to all come crashing down as you realize they're not real. You stop eating and drink only when necessary. It gets to a point where you know if you don’t try to seek help you will die. You have no idea where to go for help, especially since the local witch doctor has been arrested for using humans as potion ingredients. You wander aimlessly taking morning walks in a vain attempt to find your savior. Shadowy figures whisper about you as you walk past. “There’s nothing out here, return home” “You’re never going to get better, why not end it?” You’ve been seeing these shadowy figures more frequently recently. You chalk this up to your lack of sleep. Sleeping is when your most vulnerable, so you try to do as little of it as you can. During a morning walk you run into a familiar face. It’s your childhood friend Julia. You haven’t seen her since schooling and boy does she look different. “Is that…” she says “Yeah it’s me,” you reply “Boy do you look different.” You haven’t been grooming yourself since the madness occurred. You have lots of dark circles under your eyes and probably don’t smell too good either. “You also look different.” She raises an eyebrow not knowing if your complementing or insulting her. “In a good way in a good way!” you clarify. She laughs as her dress flows in the wind. “Sorry I can’t say the same to you. Down on your luck?” “That’s putting it lightly,” you say jokingly, even though it’s the truth. “Hahah I bet. I was just about to get some coffee, wanna come with?” “Would I ever! Is it ok if the shadow people follow along?” “The what?” “Never mind.” Later Julia and you decided to go to the Cinnamon Pearl Cafe. As fancy as it may seem, its nothing more than a place to eat pastries and drink coffee. She begins telling you what’s she’s been doing lately. “You know Andy right?” “Of course, me and him have been on guard duty together a couple times.” Julia bites her lips and chooses her words carefully, “Well we broke up recently due to the fact that he...he...raped me...” You’re shocked at this revelation, Andy has always seemed like a standup guy. “How could he do such a thing?” “He’s a piece of shit that’s how!” Your lower your head as she composes herself. “Sorry, I’m just not in the best mental space right now.” “No need to apologize, you have every right to be angry.” “Thank you.” “So tell me, what happened?” She explains how one night, after a long tiring day working as a cleaner, Andy wanted sex. They had been dating for a few months and had yet to have sex. The conversation went a little like this, “All of my other friends constantly brag about sex. If I keep telling them I haven’t fucked you yet they might start thinking I’m gay," says Andy. “Stop pressuring me! I told you, I am not in the mood and am not ready to pursue that kind of relationship with you.” “You’re such a bitch, you know that right? Fuck you make me angry,” Andy says while walking towards Julia menacingly. “Back off, get away from me!” Julia stops talking and begins to choke up. She covers her face with her hands and says shakily, “He grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. I tried to scream but he covered my mouth and clenched my throat. He violated me and nobody cares to do anything about it. Everyone’s to focused on the damn demons to give a shit about poor ol’ me.” “That’s horrible, who else have you told?” “Just you and the captain of the fucking guards. He wouldn’t even fire him, saying the demand for guards is ‘very high’ right now. No guard is better than a guards that’s a mother fucking rapist.” “I wish I could help, but the captain probably won’t listen to me anymore. I haven’t shown up for work in days and didn’t give any notice.” “It’s ok, I don’t want the captain’s help anyways. I need to move on and be strong.” You make small talk about various things before saying your goodbyes. With Julia in such a vulnerable state, you wonder if it’s best to give her time to heal. At the same time, you long for human relationship. The shadow figures just aren’t the same as real human contact. > You pursue a relationship You’re both facing adversity in life. In a sense, you’ve both been raped. Julia in a literal sense and yourself in a mental sense. Catia cursed you and has left you a shell of your former self.The past few days have been hell. Why not reconnect with a old friend and see if it leads anywhere? Everyday you walk to the Cinnamon Pearl Cafe hoping to see Julia. A few days go by and you never see her, however it’s not all bad. You’re now eating and staying hydrated, which is never a bad thing. You haven’t seen any shadow people in days and have stopped having nightmares. Things are looking up for you. One day after ordering your usual (a cup of coffee and cinnamon toast) Julia walks in. She’s all alone and you make eye contact with her. She winks at you and holds up a finger indicating that you should give her a second. You watch as she orders a coffee and raisin bread. After paying, she walks over to join you. “I’m surprised to see you here,” she says. “I’m here all the time now. I mean, their coffee’s really great.” She laughs and asks, “How have you been doing?” “I’m great, but I’ve been worrying about you, how have you been holding up?” She gets a little teary eyed while saying, “That’s so sweet of you, but you don’t have to worry about me. I’m planning on leaving Ashton tomorrow morning.” You sit mouth agape shocked at the news. She could have easy left without telling you. You might have gone mad waiting for her, but now you have a chance to leave with her. “Why are you leaving? I get why you might not want to live in a place with bad memories of your past, but why leave so soon?” “It’s no longer safe here and you should know better than anyone being a guard and all.” “Former guard, and what do you mean it’s not safe? I haven’t heard of any demon sightings...” “Well there was one just a few nights ago and people living in Ashton died. I have family up in Kingsburg and know I’ll be safe there.” “Are you going all alone or bringing anyone with you?” “As of now, all alone. I don’t know how difficult travel will be, back if I survive, I’ll finally have a place to call home.” You really don’t think it’s a good idea for her to travel alone. One for the selfish reason of wanting to be close to her, but also because it’s the middle of winter and travel hasn’t been safe since the demonic invasion. This is all happening so fast, you barely know Julia the adult considering you just reconnect with you. Will she even let you come with her if you ask? > You ask if you can come with her “Hey do you think I could go with you?” “Umm...why would you want to do that?” You explain how you don’t have any reason to stay in Ashton anymore. Your parents are likely dead and you’re unemployed. A new start in Kingsbury is just what the doctor ordered. “You can come...just meet me outside the Cinnamon Pearl at dawn.” “Yes! Thank you so much, I can’t wait!” You leave the cafe and feel an incredible sense of euphoria. You can’t believe she said yes, although she was a bit apprehensive. You can’t wait to show her that she made the right choice in letting you come along. You spend the rest of the day gathering all your most prized belongings. You also take all of your parent’s savings figuring they’re never coming back. You fall asleep and begin to dream... You're back in school and are sitting next to Julia. You don't hesitate and begin talking to her fully lucid of your actions. "Hey Julia! Want a cookie?" You pull a cookie out of thin air and hold it out to her. She reacts in disgust, "Did you really think you could win my love so easily? Andy's my boyfriend and we're going to be together forever!" You stammer out, "One day you'll realize Andy isn't as nice as he may seem. Appearances can be deceiving..." She bursts out in hysterical laughing and you have no idea why. Your look of confusion becomes apparent as she says, "Appearances sure are deceiving!" "Yeah..." "For instance, I'm not even Julia." Your pulse increases as you feel yourself losing control. Julia's face contorts feature by feature. First, her eyes turn red, then horns grow out of her head. By the end of it you are staring face to face with the demon of your nightmares. "Catia?" "You may think you've escaped me, but Julia will never be your true love." "Shut up! Julia's just a friend..." "No, YOU shut up! I know your deepest secrets and desires. Why keep up the charade? I know you think Julia can fill the void in your life, but that's just a fantasy." "None of this is real and that includes you. This is nightmare, that's all." "Go ahead, believe that. Just don't act like I didn't try to warn you." You wake up as your head pounds like never before. You're suddenly very scared and seeing Julia and aren't sure why. It's clearly irrational, but a part of you wants to contact Catia again. Who's to say the curse will go away just because you're with Julia? Should you even bother? > You go to the Cinnamon Pearl It's best to ignore the nightmare and pretend it never happened. You head to meet Julia at the Cinnamon Pearl. You arrive shortly after and see her waiting for you. “Ready to go?” “Ready for anything,” you stay while brandishing your sword. The road to Kingsbury is no easy journey. You feel Julia is glad you came along as you can scare away any thieves and bandits you come across. Who knows if you’ll make it in one piece but at least you have a purpose. You leave through the city walls and take the old dirt road to Kingsbury. “You know the forest would be faster?” you say. “I know, I have a feeling we’re much safer this way.” You look at her and smile. Her blue eyes sparkle as you realize one thing: true beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You’ve been staring it in the face since childhood and are only realizing that now. > You epilogue #4: The Kingsbury Kiss The journey to Kingsbury wasn’t easy. You and Julia saved each other’s behind on multiple occasions. Through adversity, you grew closer together. Once you arrived at Kingsbury you had no plan. Julia saw this and invited you to stay with her. Before you knew it, you two started dating. She was everything you’ve ever wanted and more. You never cared that she wanted to take things slow, in fact, you embraced it. “You only live once, might as well enjoy the whole ride,” you said to her one night. “Oh shut up, you and your cheesy sayings need to stop,” she says while touching your shoulder. “You want me to shut up? I’ll do it, just for you my Cinnamon Pearl.” “If you say something cheesy one more time I’ll...” “You’ll what?” She pauses and stare at you with her beautiful, shinning blue eyes. You don’t have time to react before she leans in and says, “I’ll... kiss you.” Your lips connect and you feel a fullness in your heart for the first time in years. You’re reminded of the night you met Catia where everything about her gave you joy. Except this time it’s different, this isn’t some spell or magical aura. This is all real, and you can’t believe it. “I love you,” you say to remind yourself this is really happening. “I love you too.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Hey do you think I could go with you?” “Umm...why would you want to do that?” You explain how you don’t have any reason to stay in Ashton anymore. Your parents are likely dead and you’re unemployed. A new start in Kingsbury is just what the doctor ordered. “You can come...just meet me outside the Cinnamon Pearl at dawn.” “Yes! Thank you so much, I can’t wait!” You leave the cafe and feel an incredible sense of euphoria. You can’t believe she said yes, although she was a bit apprehensive. You can’t wait to show her that she made the right choice in letting you come along. You spend the rest of the day gathering all your most prized belongings. You also take all of your parent’s savings figuring they’re never coming back. You fall asleep and begin to dream... You're back in school and are sitting next to Julia. You don't hesitate and begin talking to her fully lucid of your actions. "Hey Julia! Want a cookie?" You pull a cookie out of thin air and hold it out to her. She reacts in disgust, "Did you really think you could win my love so easily? Andy's my boyfriend and we're going to be together forever!" You stammer out, "One day you'll realize Andy isn't as nice as he may seem. Appearances can be deceiving..." She bursts out in hysterical laughing and you have no idea why. Your look of confusion becomes apparent as she says, "Appearances sure are deceiving!" "Yeah..." "For instance, I'm not even Julia." Your pulse increases as you feel yourself losing control. Julia's face contorts feature by feature. First, her eyes turn red, then horns grow out of her head. By the end of it you are staring face to face with the demon of your nightmares. "Catia?" "You may think you've escaped me, but Julia will never be your true love." "Shut up! Julia's just a friend..." "No, YOU shut up! I know your deepest secrets and desires. Why keep up the charade? I know you think Julia can fill the void in your life, but that's just a fantasy." "None of this is real and that includes you. This is nightmare, that's all." "Go ahead, believe that. Just don't act like I didn't try to warn you." You wake up as your head pounds like never before. You're suddenly very scared and seeing Julia and aren't sure why. It's clearly irrational, but a part of you wants to contact Catia again. Who's to say the curse will go away just because you're with Julia? Should you even bother? > You summon Catia one more time You don't care if it's irrational, something deep inside says you need to see Catia. You head out to The Drunk Tortoise Tavern to get in a "more suggestive state". It's warmed up quite a bit since the last time you've been there and you're glad. New weather, new you, and perhaps a new Catia? You can only hope... As you daydream, you lose track of where you're going. You don't even realize it when you take a wrong turn and end up in a dark alley. Logic tells you it's too dark to see anybody, but that isn't the case. The shadow people are back and they have you surrounded! You press yourself up against a wall and begin to scream. "Hey, quiet down. We're not here to torment you," a shadow person says. "In fact, we're here to prevent you from making a huge mistake," another says. They explain how they weren't always shadow people. They used to be everyday people; soldiers, farmers, merchants, and every other occupation imaginable. However, one day they met a succubus and fell in love. "I didn't want to go through with it, but once the madness hit I kept crawling back," one says. "We all kept crawling back. There is a point where you lose so much individuality and can't even make decisions for yourself." "That's how we all became shadow people. We lost our faces, our bodies, and our past to the abyss." You can't believe you're having a full on conversation with the shadowy figures after all this time. You've completely lost it, why not see where this goes? "Ok, so you lost all your individuality. How are you able to talk to me and tell me all of this?" "What?" "You said it yourself, you couldn't make 'decisions for yourself.' If so, how are you here right now? "Shit he's on to us!" "What should we do, can we still trick him?" You shift uncomfortably. "You idiot, why would you say that? Now we have to kill him." You get up and try to run. You figure they aren't real and can't hurt you. Well, it turns out they can. They punch, kick, and slap you into a bloody mess. "Finally, I will have a face again!" They begin to peel away your skin and plaster it on their body. All the shadow people converged into a single mass resembling a ball. They tear off your arms and legs and add it to the mass. You're fully converged to the ball-like mass as a portal is conjured before you. "Into the forest!" You're don't die and live as part of this abomination. Your life is an eternal nightmare. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re both facing adversity in life. In a sense, you’ve both been raped. Julia in a literal sense and yourself in a mental sense. Catia cursed you and has left you a shell of your former self.The past few days have been hell. Why not reconnect with a old friend and see if it leads anywhere? Everyday you walk to the Cinnamon Pearl Cafe hoping to see Julia. A few days go by and you never see her, however it’s not all bad. You’re now eating and staying hydrated, which is never a bad thing. You haven’t seen any shadow people in days and have stopped having nightmares. Things are looking up for you. One day after ordering your usual (a cup of coffee and cinnamon toast) Julia walks in. She’s all alone and you make eye contact with her. She winks at you and holds up a finger indicating that you should give her a second. You watch as she orders a coffee and raisin bread. After paying, she walks over to join you. “I’m surprised to see you here,” she says. “I’m here all the time now. I mean, their coffee’s really great.” She laughs and asks, “How have you been doing?” “I’m great, but I’ve been worrying about you, how have you been holding up?” She gets a little teary eyed while saying, “That’s so sweet of you, but you don’t have to worry about me. I’m planning on leaving Ashton tomorrow morning.” You sit mouth agape shocked at the news. She could have easy left without telling you. You might have gone mad waiting for her, but now you have a chance to leave with her. “Why are you leaving? I get why you might not want to live in a place with bad memories of your past, but why leave so soon?” “It’s no longer safe here and you should know better than anyone being a guard and all.” “Former guard, and what do you mean it’s not safe? I haven’t heard of any demon sightings...” “Well there was one just a few nights ago and people living in Ashton died. I have family up in Kingsburg and know I’ll be safe there.” “Are you going all alone or bringing anyone with you?” “As of now, all alone. I don’t know how difficult travel will be, back if I survive, I’ll finally have a place to call home.” You really don’t think it’s a good idea for her to travel alone. One for the selfish reason of wanting to be close to her, but also because it’s the middle of winter and travel hasn’t been safe since the demonic invasion. This is all happening so fast, you barely know Julia the adult considering you just reconnect with you. Will she even let you come with her if you ask? > You wish her good luck and say goodbye “Well best of luck, but I have to go.” “Ok...goodbye.” You leave and give her a smile, but on the inside you feel horrible. Why didn’t you ask if you could come along? The worse that could happen is her saying no, but at least you could say you tried. You arrive home and spend all day inside. During sleep, you have your first nightmare in days. Seeing no reason to go to the Cinnamon Pearl Cafe now that’s Julia is gone, you stay inside all day. The shadow people start showing up in the corner of your vision and they taunt you relentlessly. Since you’re not eating or drinking, you don’t have the energy to leave bed anymore. You spend the next few days like this regretting the choice you made. On a day like any other, you die from dehydration during your sleep. Rest easy knowing you’ll never have a nightmare again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I will be doing no such thing,” you say in protest. Catia raises her eyebrow before breaking out in laughter. “Well this is a first,” she says. You stare at her as she seems to be deciding whether she’ll force you to remove your clothes. You feel the sweat drip down your back when she finally says, “Maybe I really deserved to be sent here. I can’t even manipulate a human into having sex with me.” A black cloud appears as she disappears from your room. You start violently coughing but don’t pass out this time. It’s not like it matters, you need to sleep anyway. You put out your candles and fall into bed. You focus on your breathing as you drift off to sleep. Best to reflect on what happens when you have a clearer mind. You wake up with a throbbing pain in your head. The light coming from your window floods your mind with intense pain. Guess you drunk more last night than you thought. You decide its best to make yourself some food and drink to clear your head. You grab water and a slice of peach pie you made a few days ago. You scarf the food down and shallow the water in huge gulps. Your head should start feeling better within the next few hours. Except it doesn’t, you lie in bed with constant tension on your head. It’s like someone is squeezing your brain with both hands, but not hard enough to cause physical harm. Something unnatural is going on and you know it. Hangovers should get better after rest, not worse. It’s hard to focus on anything but the pain. You try remembering what Catia did before she left. She dispelled a black cloud which didn’t knock you out. Is it possible this was a curse? The more you think about it, the more it makes sense. While she tried not to show it, she was upset you resisted her temptation. She wanted you to pay for hurting her ego. That bitch! As you think about her more, tension is released from your skull. In fact, you're able to think about her in vivid detail and feel headache free. Although, the second you stop thinking about her the pain comes rushing back. This certainly isn’t good. You’re going to have to do something about this. There is one obvious solution which is trying to contact Catia and having her remove the curse. Though who knows if she’ll even remove it, assuming she still wants to visit you. The other option is going to a local witch doctor and having them remove the curse. Although, you’ve heard they’ve been busy since demons first started being sighted. Maybe the curse is temporary, why not wait it out? > You visit the Witch Doctor Your brain aches with pain and going to what you assume is the source of the pain will probably make it worst. While you’ve never been too trusting of witches, you know a local one with good reputation. As you make your way outside the light pierces through your skull. Your eye sockets feel like their burning and your brain feels like it’s melting. You press on and begin to enter the slums of the city. The practice of brewing potions containing humans, a required ingredient for witch doctors, is not exactly legal. Still, you are in no place to have such prejudice considering if your head keeps pounding like it is now, you might just kill someone. You reach the witch doctor’s office and make your way inside. It’s pretty busy at the moment, which is no surprise as people want protection from demons. You wait in a line of about twenty people. The pounding has intensified, and you aren’t even aware how much time has passed when somebody says, “Excuse me, do you need to see the witch doctor” “SHUT UP!” you snap. The clerk cowers as you finish screaming at him. You manage to calm down and whisper, “Please help me.” The clerk nods and orders you to follow him. You go down a hall way affixed with a assortment of trinkets and baubles pinned to the walls. “To keep away evil spirts,” the clerk explains. There is a huge variety of objects that you would normally want to know more about. You are in no mood now though and continue down the hall until you reach the doctor. You enter a room lit only by bright red stones. In the center lays a boiling pot emitting the scent of rotten egg. The bright lights distract you from even noticing the witch doctor standing right in front of you. “I sense a demonic curse within you. Don’t worry, I know the perfect potion for you.” The witch doctor, who prefers you call her “a potion brewer”, starts throwing a concoction of ingredients into a cauldron. “One imp carcass to ward off spirts, 2 cups of orc blood for personal strength, and a dash of lemon juice.” “Why lemon?’ you ask. She smiles and says, “For flavor silly! Do you think you could stomach a potion solely comprised of raw meat and blood?” She mixes everything together and pours out the cauldron into multiple bottles. She hands you one and the smell alone relieves your head. You down the vial and struggle to hold back from vomiting. It’s a lot thicker than you thought and the blood clumps up in your throat. The potion brewer notices your discomfort and gives you a small vial composed of a black liquid. “Drink this it will help.” You do as told and gulp the vial down. It seems to do the trick as the clumped blood slides down your throat. You still want to vomit out your insides. “So how will you be paying today, soul or servitude?” “I thought you accepted coin.” “Oh, we do, but the black vial I gave you was extremely valuable. The ingredients needed to make it cannot be paid by mere coin.” “What! How expensive can it be to make a potion that clears your throat?” She laughs and shakes her head before saying, “That’s not what the potion did, silly! It’s what I give to people if I sense they are close to death. It will prevent any proximate death, but can only be used once.” “Why not just give me something else then?” “I wasn’t sure if the curse was attacking you or if you were having an allergic reaction to the potion. While I can sense a lot, I’m not psychic. Rather than make a guess I did the only thing I could to guarantee your life.” “I suppose that makes sense.” “Great! Now how about that payment, soul or servitude?” > You soul “I’ll pay with my soul.” She smiles and says, “I was hoping you’d say that.” She latches onto you and pushes you to the ground. “Clerk Anthony, tie him up!” The clerk pounces and takes out a long thread of rope while the potion brewer holds you down. The rope is wrapped around your hands and legs and you’re tied up like an animal. “Now time to harvest your flesh!” The witch, which is more apt of a title, pours a white liquid mixed with thousands of black dots down your throat. It’s not until you shallow when you realize what those black dots were, ticks! They burrow into your mouth and bite your gums. You feel bumps forming on your tongue, gums, and uvula. Then the biting spreads to your throat. More bumps form and you’re unable to breath. Your face starts to turn blue and your senses dim. “He’ll be dead soon.” “But what about his soul, master?” She laughs and says, “I never wanted his soul silly! My herbal tea requires human flesh.” This is the last thing you hear before blacking out. Hopefully the tea was good.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your brain aches with pain and going to what you assume is the source of the pain will probably make it worst. While you’ve never been too trusting of witches, you know a local one with good reputation. As you make your way outside the light pierces through your skull. Your eye sockets feel like their burning and your brain feels like it’s melting. You press on and begin to enter the slums of the city. The practice of brewing potions containing humans, a required ingredient for witch doctors, is not exactly legal. Still, you are in no place to have such prejudice considering if your head keeps pounding like it is now, you might just kill someone. You reach the witch doctor’s office and make your way inside. It’s pretty busy at the moment, which is no surprise as people want protection from demons. You wait in a line of about twenty people. The pounding has intensified, and you aren’t even aware how much time has passed when somebody says, “Excuse me, do you need to see the witch doctor” “SHUT UP!” you snap. The clerk cowers as you finish screaming at him. You manage to calm down and whisper, “Please help me.” The clerk nods and orders you to follow him. You go down a hall way affixed with a assortment of trinkets and baubles pinned to the walls. “To keep away evil spirts,” the clerk explains. There is a huge variety of objects that you would normally want to know more about. You are in no mood now though and continue down the hall until you reach the doctor. You enter a room lit only by bright red stones. In the center lays a boiling pot emitting the scent of rotten egg. The bright lights distract you from even noticing the witch doctor standing right in front of you. “I sense a demonic curse within you. Don’t worry, I know the perfect potion for you.” The witch doctor, who prefers you call her “a potion brewer”, starts throwing a concoction of ingredients into a cauldron. “One imp carcass to ward off spirts, 2 cups of orc blood for personal strength, and a dash of lemon juice.” “Why lemon?’ you ask. She smiles and says, “For flavor silly! Do you think you could stomach a potion solely comprised of raw meat and blood?” She mixes everything together and pours out the cauldron into multiple bottles. She hands you one and the smell alone relieves your head. You down the vial and struggle to hold back from vomiting. It’s a lot thicker than you thought and the blood clumps up in your throat. The potion brewer notices your discomfort and gives you a small vial composed of a black liquid. “Drink this it will help.” You do as told and gulp the vial down. It seems to do the trick as the clumped blood slides down your throat. You still want to vomit out your insides. “So how will you be paying today, soul or servitude?” “I thought you accepted coin.” “Oh, we do, but the black vial I gave you was extremely valuable. The ingredients needed to make it cannot be paid by mere coin.” “What! How expensive can it be to make a potion that clears your throat?” She laughs and shakes her head before saying, “That’s not what the potion did, silly! It’s what I give to people if I sense they are close to death. It will prevent any proximate death, but can only be used once.” “Why not just give me something else then?” “I wasn’t sure if the curse was attacking you or if you were having an allergic reaction to the potion. While I can sense a lot, I’m not psychic. Rather than make a guess I did the only thing I could to guarantee your life.” “I suppose that makes sense.” “Great! Now how about that payment, soul or servitude?” > You servitude “I’ll pay in servitude.” She frowns and murmurs, “I wish you chose the other option That would have been a lot more fun.” She explains how in exchange for saving your life you will be her assistant until she considers you debt repaid. “My name’s Helena by the way, but you can call me master.” “Can as in I have a choice?” “You really are silly! No, can as in you can chose to call me master if you want to live, Understood? “Yes…” “Yes what!” “Yes master…” You begin work immediately and are sent out to gather various herbs for her potions. One day while gathering a rare mushroom, you encounter a demon who screams, “I CRAVE DESTRUCTION!” You try to run but he sends a bolt of fire into your chest. You burn into blackened ash.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I will be doing no such thing,” you say in protest. Catia raises her eyebrow before breaking out in laughter. “Well this is a first,” she says. You stare at her as she seems to be deciding whether she’ll force you to remove your clothes. You feel the sweat drip down your back when she finally says, “Maybe I really deserved to be sent here. I can’t even manipulate a human into having sex with me.” A black cloud appears as she disappears from your room. You start violently coughing but don’t pass out this time. It’s not like it matters, you need to sleep anyway. You put out your candles and fall into bed. You focus on your breathing as you drift off to sleep. Best to reflect on what happens when you have a clearer mind. You wake up with a throbbing pain in your head. The light coming from your window floods your mind with intense pain. Guess you drunk more last night than you thought. You decide its best to make yourself some food and drink to clear your head. You grab water and a slice of peach pie you made a few days ago. You scarf the food down and shallow the water in huge gulps. Your head should start feeling better within the next few hours. Except it doesn’t, you lie in bed with constant tension on your head. It’s like someone is squeezing your brain with both hands, but not hard enough to cause physical harm. Something unnatural is going on and you know it. Hangovers should get better after rest, not worse. It’s hard to focus on anything but the pain. You try remembering what Catia did before she left. She dispelled a black cloud which didn’t knock you out. Is it possible this was a curse? The more you think about it, the more it makes sense. While she tried not to show it, she was upset you resisted her temptation. She wanted you to pay for hurting her ego. That bitch! As you think about her more, tension is released from your skull. In fact, you're able to think about her in vivid detail and feel headache free. Although, the second you stop thinking about her the pain comes rushing back. This certainly isn’t good. You’re going to have to do something about this. There is one obvious solution which is trying to contact Catia and having her remove the curse. Though who knows if she’ll even remove it, assuming she still wants to visit you. The other option is going to a local witch doctor and having them remove the curse. Although, you’ve heard they’ve been busy since demons first started being sighted. Maybe the curse is temporary, why not wait it out? > You wait You continue lying around and try to fall asleep. The pain won’t let this happen and you lie in bed starring at the ceiling. You start thinking about Catia again as it seems to be the only thing you can focus on. You think about how much of an idiot you are for passing up sex with a demon. Your front door makes a loud squeaking sounds followed by footsteps. Is Catia back to finish the job? You try to get to grab your sword but your head pounds forcing you to stay in bed. Expecting Catia to kill you at any second, you are very surprised to hear, “Son, I’m home.” “Mmmm—-mmmmm—-mmother? “Yes, it’s me and I come baring bad news. Your Father, he was killed on our way home. I feel so empty I don’t know how I’ll go on.” She begins crying into her hands. The pounding in your head stops, allowing you to get up to comfort her. “Everything will ok you just have to stay strong,” you say while patting her back. Your mother looks up at you and smiles. Her blue eyes shine through the tears and you know everything will be ok. She goes in to hug you and you return the favor. As you embrace, she massages your back making you feel like a kid again. She whispers into your ear, “Will you sleep with me tonight? I don’t want to be alone after all that’s happened.” Now you’re really starting to feel like a kid again. This is your mother and as sad as it sounds, you could also use some company after all that’s happened. “Sure, I don’t want to be alone either.” You both fall into bed and feel instant relief. She moves closer to you and grabs your hand. She moves your arm over her body and huddles your body close to your chest. As much as you want to say something about how uncomfortable this makes you feel, you know she needs company after all she’s been through. You no longer feel like a kid, but feel like your father? This is pretty weird, but its just one night. One weird night is nothing to be alarmed about. You drift off to sleep and have the best night of rest you’ve had in years. When you wake up you're surprised to find your mother still pressed up against your chest. Not wanting to disturb her, you just lay there eyes open. Your headache is gone, and you think you know why. Only the love between a son and a mother could dispel the curse Catia put on you. Your mother soon wakes up and says, “I don’t want to be too forward, but can we do this again tonight? The horrors I saw, the bloodshed, is too much for me to be left alone with my thoughts. I need someone to be my rock, so I don’t fall into the pit of despair.” You’ve never seen your mother so sad before, thought its understandable. The question is, are you ok with doing this again? Sure, one night of sleeping in the same bed of your mom after such trauma isn’t that crazy. But doing again, that may be a bit crazy. > You agree to be her rock You agree to comfort her again tonight. It’s as weird as the last time, but it seems to make your mom happy and that’s all a son could want. “Thank you, I need this right now,” she says as you massage her back. You sleep in the same bed as your mom everyday for the next few weeks. Demon sighting have been occurring more frequently and your mother is becoming increasingly worried. “I think we need to get out of Ashton before its too late,” she says. “Where will we go and how could we survive alone?” “I know a place, but you have to trust me.” You have no reason not to trust her and follow her once nightfall arrives. You leave the city walls and venture into a nearby forest. “Where exactly are we going?” “You’ll see.” She speeds up showing a surprising amount of fitness for a middle-aged woman. You eventually reach a clearing where a river flows against rocks. “It’s beautiful,” you say stunned.. “Not as beautiful as you,” your mother says with a playful wink. It gets kind of awkward for a bit until you break the silence. “I still don’t understand what we’re doing here. How is a forest any safe than Ashton?” “Oh, it’s not safer at all. I just wanted to go somewhere nobody could hear you scream,” Your mother dashes at you with inhuman speed. She pins you down and starts ripping off your clothes “Ever since father died, I’ve had to suppress my sexual desires. Not anymore, never again.” You try to struggle but it's no use. You find yourself buck naked in the middle of forest. “I want you to enjoy this as much as I do, so please don’t fight back.” You always assumed you were stronger than mother but aren’t so sure now. Perhaps you should give in to a deep seeded desire you’ve repressed for all these years. > You give In You decide to just enjoy yourself and throw away all logic. This plan backfires once you begin to have sex. This is all wrong, and its not because its your mom, it's because… “WHY DID YOU HAVE A PENIS!” you scream. Your mother’s voice grows deep and she begins to laugh. You are at her mercy as tears begin to fill your eyes. When it's all done you are left humiliated and at a loss of all self-ego. “I don’t understand.” “What’s there not to understand? I pretended to have your mom to have sex with you. I assumed you were a momma’s boy by the way you repelled my sexual aura. My assumption was correct!” Your mother face contorts feature by feature. First, her eyes turn red, then horns grow out of her head. By the end of it you are staring face to face with the demon of your nightmares. “Catia?” You are given no explanation as she sends a powerful blast of dark energy at you. “You may have been able to repel my aura, but you can’t repel dark magic.” It strikes you and tears a hole through your heart. You die both literally and metaphorically heartbroken.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You agree to comfort her again tonight. It’s as weird as the last time, but it seems to make your mom happy and that’s all a son could want. “Thank you, I need this right now,” she says as you massage her back. You sleep in the same bed as your mom everyday for the next few weeks. Demon sighting have been occurring more frequently and your mother is becoming increasingly worried. “I think we need to get out of Ashton before its too late,” she says. “Where will we go and how could we survive alone?” “I know a place, but you have to trust me.” You have no reason not to trust her and follow her once nightfall arrives. You leave the city walls and venture into a nearby forest. “Where exactly are we going?” “You’ll see.” She speeds up showing a surprising amount of fitness for a middle-aged woman. You eventually reach a clearing where a river flows against rocks. “It’s beautiful,” you say stunned.. “Not as beautiful as you,” your mother says with a playful wink. It gets kind of awkward for a bit until you break the silence. “I still don’t understand what we’re doing here. How is a forest any safe than Ashton?” “Oh, it’s not safer at all. I just wanted to go somewhere nobody could hear you scream,” Your mother dashes at you with inhuman speed. She pins you down and starts ripping off your clothes “Ever since father died, I’ve had to suppress my sexual desires. Not anymore, never again.” You try to struggle but it's no use. You find yourself buck naked in the middle of forest. “I want you to enjoy this as much as I do, so please don’t fight back.” You always assumed you were stronger than mother but aren’t so sure now. Perhaps you should give in to a deep seeded desire you’ve repressed for all these years. > You struggle This is way too far, and you do not want it in any way. “Mom, I love you, but please don’t do this.” You expect her to understand, but her reaction is completely different. “Are you impotent or some shit?” For the first time in a long time your head starts pounding again. She continues, “I mean I know you are right now, but I are you impotent in terms of sex?” “I don’t want to have sex with my own mother! If that makes me impotent then I guess I am.” She grows angry and grabs your crotch. “It’s not just that! You didn’t even want to have sex with a hot succubus. I thought you must have had some mommy issues, but that doesn’t seem to be it either.” “Whaaaaa,” is all you have time to say before she tears your crotch off. “That’s for wasting my time!” She finishes the job by setting you on fire and spitting on your charred corpse. “And that’s for being a bitch.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You continue lying around and try to fall asleep. The pain won’t let this happen and you lie in bed starring at the ceiling. You start thinking about Catia again as it seems to be the only thing you can focus on. You think about how much of an idiot you are for passing up sex with a demon. Your front door makes a loud squeaking sounds followed by footsteps. Is Catia back to finish the job? You try to get to grab your sword but your head pounds forcing you to stay in bed. Expecting Catia to kill you at any second, you are very surprised to hear, “Son, I’m home.” “Mmmm—-mmmmm—-mmother? “Yes, it’s me and I come baring bad news. Your Father, he was killed on our way home. I feel so empty I don’t know how I’ll go on.” She begins crying into her hands. The pounding in your head stops, allowing you to get up to comfort her. “Everything will ok you just have to stay strong,” you say while patting her back. Your mother looks up at you and smiles. Her blue eyes shine through the tears and you know everything will be ok. She goes in to hug you and you return the favor. As you embrace, she massages your back making you feel like a kid again. She whispers into your ear, “Will you sleep with me tonight? I don’t want to be alone after all that’s happened.” Now you’re really starting to feel like a kid again. This is your mother and as sad as it sounds, you could also use some company after all that’s happened. “Sure, I don’t want to be alone either.” You both fall into bed and feel instant relief. She moves closer to you and grabs your hand. She moves your arm over her body and huddles your body close to your chest. As much as you want to say something about how uncomfortable this makes you feel, you know she needs company after all she’s been through. You no longer feel like a kid, but feel like your father? This is pretty weird, but its just one night. One weird night is nothing to be alarmed about. You drift off to sleep and have the best night of rest you’ve had in years. When you wake up you're surprised to find your mother still pressed up against your chest. Not wanting to disturb her, you just lay there eyes open. Your headache is gone, and you think you know why. Only the love between a son and a mother could dispel the curse Catia put on you. Your mother soon wakes up and says, “I don’t want to be too forward, but can we do this again tonight? The horrors I saw, the bloodshed, is too much for me to be left alone with my thoughts. I need someone to be my rock, so I don’t fall into the pit of despair.” You’ve never seen your mother so sad before, thought its understandable. The question is, are you ok with doing this again? Sure, one night of sleeping in the same bed of your mom after such trauma isn’t that crazy. But doing again, that may be a bit crazy. > You put a stop to this now This is just too weird, and it needs to stop before spirals into something else. “Mom, I love you, but I just don’t think this is the best path of recovery.” You expect her to be sad, maybe cry a little, but her reaction is completely different. “GOD FUCKING DAMN IT YOU ARE TOO PURE!” she screams. A cloud of dark smoke blinds you as your mother morphs into a demon like form. “Mother, what happened on your trip?” you say while blinded by smoke. “You insolent fool, I’m not your mom I am a succubus.” The smoke clears and you find Catia standing before you. “Whaaaaa,” is all you have time to say before she tears your head of. “That’s for wasting my time!” <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Thank you,” Greg whispers. “You what!” “Pfft! And to think, I used to respect soldiers.” Tom and Connor start shouting about how much of a dumbass you are. You don’t bother to engage with such idiotic banter. Instead, you walk out of the tavern without a second glance. As you make your way outside you are hit with a rush of cool air. “I can’t wait to meet Catia,” you mutter to yourself. “Who’s Catia?” You turn around and only see the entrance to the tavern. “Hello?” “Ermm down here sir!” You glance down and instantly recoil. It’s Greg, what’s he doing here? “What the hell do you want?” He begins to squirm uncomfortably and hyperventilate. “I…uh…I…erm…” “Spit it out!” “I wanted to thank you for agreeing with me,” he says between irregular gasps for air. Oh, that’s why he’s here. You normally wouldn’t mind but you have plans tonight and have no time for conversation. “People don’t agree with you often kid? That’s too bad,” you say while walking away. “I’m not a kid, I’m 20. But yeah, everyone I meet either ignores or makes fun of me. I almost prefer the latter as at least they keep me company,” he says while following behind you. “Damn that really sucks,” you stop walking and stare him in the eyes, “Look I’d love to keep you company, but I have somewhere very important to be.” Greg looks at you with a face of disappointment. But he lights up to ask, “Where do you have to be? Maybe I could come with you.” Gah! As bad as you feel for Greg, under no circumstances could he come with you. She agreed to see you, not Greg and you. “Sorry I don’t have time.” “God damn it. Can you at least tell me why? I don’t want to be near Connor and Tom right now. They make me feel inhuman.” Does this guy ever shut up? You been trying to exit this conversation gracefully since it started. You should just tell him to fuck off and be done it. Of course, you could humor him and tell him what you’re doing. It’s been hard keeping this succubus thing a secret and having someone to confide in wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. On the other hand, you really want to go have demon sex. > You tell him to fuck off “Fuck off worm.” Greg surprises you when he snaps back, “Connor and Tom picking on me is one thing, but you? I don’t know why, but I thought you were different.” For a second, you feel hurt. But then you realize it's Greg and feel a bit better. “Your fault, not mine. Now do as you're told and stop following me,” you say while walking away. This guys persistent and runs to catch up when you start walking fast. Are you going to have to kick the shit out of him so he leaves you alone? You hope not, but that may be the only option as he’s acting like a child. “I don’t want to go back to the tavern. Wherever you’re going, it's better than there.” He’s probably not wrong, but it's beyond pathetic that he still follows you. Guess when you take so much abuse you can shrug it off pretty easily. “Go ahead, follow me. Just know if you try to enter my house you won’t be able to leave.” He gulps but continues to follow you. He’s wasted a lot of your time so you decide to take a shortcut to your parents’ house. You find yourself exiting out of the slums and into the residential part of the city. Most guards sleep in the barracks, however, since your parents never returned from their trip their house is all yours. If they ever return, you hope they don’t mind you bringing a demon inside the house. Although, they were always bugging you about finding a girlfriend, this might not be what they had in mind. You arrive at your parent’s old home and open the door. The wooden door squeaks loudly as you open it. “Some things never change,” you whisper to yourself. You immediately start making yourself more presentable. You change out of your soldiers’ uniform and put on a loose-fitting black tunic. You probably should take a bath but you're too excited to see Catia that you forget to. Do demons mind odor? You’re about to sit down in your bed when a chill runs down your spin. Your door makes a squeaking noise and a cold breeze rushes towards you. “I swear to god Greg! you shout. No reply, although you don’t know what you were expecting. It’s possible the breeze pushed the door open, it's pretty flimsy and it wouldn’t be the craziest thing that’s happened in the last 24 hours. On the other hand, you can’t shake the feeling you're being watched. Should you investigate? > You investigate Maybe it’s paranoia, but what kind of brain-dead retard wouldn’t rather be safe than sorry? Assuming its just Greg, you don’t even bother grabbing your sword, and leave the bed room, checking every corner as you do so. This pays of as you notice a shadowy figure standing outside your bedroom. Is that…Lars? He wastes no time in attacking you, but why? You’ll never know as he slams your head into his knee until you die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Fuck off worm.” Greg surprises you when he snaps back, “Connor and Tom picking on me is one thing, but you? I don’t know why, but I thought you were different.” For a second, you feel hurt. But then you realize it's Greg and feel a bit better. “Your fault, not mine. Now do as you're told and stop following me,” you say while walking away. This guys persistent and runs to catch up when you start walking fast. Are you going to have to kick the shit out of him so he leaves you alone? You hope not, but that may be the only option as he’s acting like a child. “I don’t want to go back to the tavern. Wherever you’re going, it's better than there.” He’s probably not wrong, but it's beyond pathetic that he still follows you. Guess when you take so much abuse you can shrug it off pretty easily. “Go ahead, follow me. Just know if you try to enter my house you won’t be able to leave.” He gulps but continues to follow you. He’s wasted a lot of your time so you decide to take a shortcut to your parents’ house. You find yourself exiting out of the slums and into the residential part of the city. Most guards sleep in the barracks, however, since your parents never returned from their trip their house is all yours. If they ever return, you hope they don’t mind you bringing a demon inside the house. Although, they were always bugging you about finding a girlfriend, this might not be what they had in mind. You arrive at your parent’s old home and open the door. The wooden door squeaks loudly as you open it. “Some things never change,” you whisper to yourself. You immediately start making yourself more presentable. You change out of your soldiers’ uniform and put on a loose-fitting black tunic. You probably should take a bath but you're too excited to see Catia that you forget to. Do demons mind odor? You’re about to sit down in your bed when a chill runs down your spin. Your door makes a squeaking noise and a cold breeze rushes towards you. “I swear to god Greg! you shout. No reply, although you don’t know what you were expecting. It’s possible the breeze pushed the door open, it's pretty flimsy and it wouldn’t be the craziest thing that’s happened in the last 24 hours. On the other hand, you can’t shake the feeling you're being watched. Should you investigate? > You ignore it It probably was just the wind, no need to be paranoid. You hop in bed and close your eyes. “Cat---” You head is struck making you collapse. You black out from what you assume to be Greg’s doing. Who knew he was so strong? You suffer intensive internal bleeding and die a slow, painful death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“This is the last time I’m saying this Greg, immortality is not worth cutting off your cock. What’s the point of being immortal if you’re deprived of the best feeling in the world?” “Ey’ maybe he’s lacking in that area. No wonder he wants immortality if all he has to do his cut off an inch or two worth of pecker.” Greg suddenly stands up, drawing your eyes to the bickering trio. They’ve been arguing random hypotheticals since you’ve gotten here. All you wanted was to get a quiet drink before meeting with Catia. As long as these buffoons are here, that’s impossible. Even as Greg stands up he’s shorter than the other two sitting. It’s no wonder they pick on him, he looks pathetic. “Can you both just shut the fuck up? I mean, god damn. All I’m saying is living forever outweighs the downsides of not having a dick,” he says in a whiny voice. The other two laugh uncontrollably at his pitiful attempt of defiance. One manages to calm down and spits out, “Maybe when it’s smaller than a gnome’s toothbrush, but for the rest us it’s not so easy.” Queue more uncontrollable laughter as Greg’s face becomes redder than demon blood. “I’ll shove a gnome’s toothbrush up your ass if you say that one more time! C’mon, let’s move on to another question.” The trio quiets down and you zone them out. You take a swig of whisky and start to remember the reason while you’re here. Oh yeah, the succubus. She wanted you to drink a bit before meeting her. You didn’t necessarily jump at the idea of getting drunk before meeting with a demon, but she promised you she would make it worthwhile. You’re pretty sure that means… Your thoughts are interrupted by the thickheaded trio once again. “You’re telling me you’d prefer your child be retarded and kind than ingenious and mean?” “Yes Connor, I would.” “God damn it, Greg! You want to spend an eternity with no dick while taking care of a retarded child? Pathetic. I would kill myself after a week.” “Har har har! I would kill myself in a week if I had to live Greg’s life as it is. No, scratch that, a day!” “Fuck you Tom. I can’t be the only one who thinks this…” Greg glances around nervously looking for a savior. Eventually he turns his gaze towards you and his eyes light up. “Hey you over there! What would you rather have, a dumb, but kind child; or a smart, but cruel child?” he says while pointing at you. You stare blankly ahead and breathe a deep sigh. This is beyond stupid. You briefly consider just ignoring him and getting the hell out of this place. “Why do you think that man would agree with you? He’s a soldier. Surely, he recognizes the benefits a genius could provide for society. Especially when you consider the need for mages regarding the growing demon problem.” Soldier? Shit you forgot to change out of your uniform. So much for staying inconspicuous. You can thank your lucky stars none of the other guards are here to see you in this shithole. “Now now, let the man speak. Just because he’s a soldier doesn’t mean he agrees with you,” says Tom. “Fine, what do you think...and hurry up! We don’t have all day.” > You say "I prefer a genius but cruel child." “My man!” shouts Connor. “Har har Greg probably wants a retarded child to have someone finally agree with him,” Tom jokes. Tom and Connor start shouting about how much of a dumbass Greg is. You agree, but don’t join in on the berating. Instead, you walk out of the tavern without a second glance. As you make your way outside you are hit with a rush of cool air. “I can’t wait to meet Catia,” you mutter to yourself. You tuck your hands in your pockets and begin the walk to your home. On the way, you bump into a familiar face. It’s Lars. “How did last night go?” he asks. Something about Lars is rubbing you the wrong way. It might be his emotionless eyes or his downtrodden tone, but you feel like telling him about Catia is a bad idea “I nearly froze to death,” you say, wanting to be vague. “Yeah how exactly did you avoid doing that? When I left it looked like you were about to pass out.” “Just lucky I guess.” “Lucky huh? Well it’s your ‘luck’ that got me fired. Thanks a lot, now my family can starve to death before getting killed by demons.” You remain silent. “The captain chewed my ass out for quitting guard duty. I thought he would berate me and give me a warning, but he fucking fired me. I told him how much bullshit that was because I would have frozen to death otherwise. He told me I was lazy and incompetent because ‘the other guard didn’t complain’ as if your dumbass was smart to stay.” You try to apologize but Lars is having none of it. He gets angry and says, “I pray to god the demons invade and gut you and the captain like fish. Scrape out your insides with their claws and your other insides with their dick.” “Jesus man I said I was sorry.” “Sorry doesn’t feed my family. Get out of my way, I’m gonna’ drink until I die.” You move aside as Lars storms past you. Well, that was an interesting encounter. You don’t even know what to think, were you wrong to lie to him? How would he have reacted if you told him the truth? You push these thoughts out of your head and focus on getting home. It’s super cold and you don’t want to freeze to death and not have a succubus save you. You find yourself exiting out of the slums and into the residential part of the city. Most guards sleep in the barracks, however, since your parents never returned from their trip their house is all yours. If they ever return, you hope they don’t mind you bringing a demon inside the house. Although, they were always bugging you about finding a girlfriend, this might not be what they had in mind. You arrive at your parent’s old home and open the door. The wooden door squeaks loudly as you open it. “Some things never change,” you whisper to yourself. You immediately start making yourself more presentable. You change out of your soldiers’ uniform and put on a loose-fitting black tunic. You probably should take a bath but you're too excited to see Catia that you forget to. Do demons mind odor? You’re about to sit down in your bed when a chill runs down your spin. Your door makes a squeaking noise and a cold breeze rushes towards you. “Is somebody there?” you ask. No reply, although you don’t know what you were expecting. It’s possible the breeze pushed the door open, it's pretty flimsy and it wouldn’t be the craziest thing that’s happened in the last 24 hours. On the other hand, you can’t shake the feeling your being watched. Should you grab your sword and investigate? > You close the door and get in bed It probably was just the wind, no need to be paranoid. You hop in bed and close your eyes. “Cat---” Your head is struck making you collapse. “They may have taken my job, but they didn’t take my sword.” “Lars?” You ask through blurred vision. “Why yes, it’s me, demon! You really think I believed you survived on pure luck?" He looks completely unhinged. You try to say something but just start coughing blood. It comes out in chunks resembling mashed berries. “You really thought you could get away with it, didn’t you? HAHAHAHA! I know you’ve been possessed by a demon; how else could you survive the frigid cold?” Clumps of blood continue flying out of your mouth as you fail to speak. Lars crotches down next to you and strokes your face. “It’s ok, calm down. Like I told you before, or at least the non-possessed you, the city could use some heating up.” Where is this going? “I want to make a deal with you! Kill the Captain and I’ll let you live. Hell, I’ll even give you something in exchange. Perhaps a part of my soul? If there’s anything left in there.” > You nod your head That’s the last thing you do before passing. Between your shuttered eyes you can make out one last thing. An even bigger smile on Lars’ face. The next time you wake up your chained in darkness. You can still reach around a fair bit and waste no time exploring your surroundings by touch. When you get to your face you find it hastily wrapped in gauze and bandages. You shallow and taste dried up blood sticking to your mouth like honey. You really need a drink. With nobody around you start banging your chains against the ground. It makes a loud rattling sound that will surely attract anyone close by. Nothing. Wherever you are nobody is here. Although, you assume Lars will be back soon. That is, unless he was killed as raving mad men often are. As you sit here hungry, tired, and thirsty you rack your mind trying to remember anything that can help you. Your head pounds with each thought, it feels like a hangover but a 100 time worse. Getting whack in the head may have some long-lasting effect on your mental capabilities. After a few minutes of fruitless concentration, it hits you. The thing that got you into this mess is what will get you out; Catia. While the alcohol has mostly worn off, your injuries have left you in a susceptible state. Assuming she wasn’t lying when she said she would meet you again, she should be able to get you out of this mess. You can’t believe you need a demon to rescue you, but you have no choice. “Catia,” you whisper. A few seconds pass and despair creeps in. Just before you lose all hope a dark cloud appears in the room. It dispels a nauseous fume that ferociously attacks your lungs. You start violently coughing more blood, mostly dry, as you vision blurs. Your eyes shut close and you feel your grip on reality slipping away. You awaken to find yourself in a metallic cage. This room is much brighter than the one before. “When I saw you chained I figured a cage would make you feel right at home.” It’s Catia and you’re getting a very different vibe from her than last time. Your gut tells you to do what she says as you are powerless. “Now tell me, how come I wasn’t the first one to put you in chains?” she says while licking her lips. “It’s not like it was consensual. I was blindsided and nearly died.” She gives you a playful smile and whispers in to your ear “Tell me everything and don’t spare any details. Seeing as you don’t have much of a choice you describe everything that’s occurred since you last saw her. You don’t withhold even the most irrelevant details. “It’s nice to know you believe I exist. I know it’s hard to believe someone this beautiful isn’t a figment of your imagination.” Her red eyes pierce into your mind, daring you to think otherwise. “So, what do you think we should do about Lars?” you ask. She starts laughing to herself. “What?” She walks towards your cage and reaches inside. She puts her hand on your chin and points your head upwards. She locks eyes with you and grins widely “You’re going to kill the captain!” Later It took a lot less convincing that you thought it would. Something about Catia just makes you want to obey her, though this time around you didn’t have much choice. She didn’t give you a reason other than saying “Chaos sows the seeds of discontent.” Which if you agree with this line of thinking, you are only helping the infernal realm by following Catia. Her influence is so strong you didn’t consider any other option. Or maybe you just really want to fuck her. Either way, time to kill the captain. After releasing you from your cage, she offers to heal you with dark magic. You agree, as you can barely move let alone assassinate someone. What you didn’t know is that another demon would be performing the ritual. “Why is a human stinking up the place?” “Mind your manners, Jirzan. Someone finally wants you for your magic and you treat them like this?” “Heh I guess you got a point. They don’t call me Jirzan the Lunatic for nothing. Alright tell me what you need me to do.” She whispers into his ear and is too quiet to understand. Though you make out words such as “transform” and painful. What exactly do they plan on doing to you? Perhaps you should try backing out of this whole ritual. > You go on with it Catia asks you to join hands with Jirzan and her. Once you do, they begin chanting nonsensical words. Their eyes roll into the back of their heads and their bodies go limp. After a few seconds they get up and it’s now you that’s limp. You feel excruciating pain course through your veins. Your skin burns, and it feels like fire ants are crawling in your eyes. You can’t help but scream as every part of your body feels like hell, literally. Your skin starts to red and your head feels like it’s being ripped apart. They can’t be doing what you think they’re doing. “The transformation is working!” Jirzan shouts. You begin spazzing out on the floor. This isn’t what you thought she meant by healing you. “Enjoy your new life under my servitude,” Catia laughs. Your body starts contorting as blood spills out of your eyes. You jolt in and out of consciousness while Catia laughs louder. Her voice sounds dreamlike as the room around you morphs into hell. You black out. When you wake up you find Catia and Jirzan shorter than before. In fact, the whole room feels smaller. “There he is!” shouts Jirzan. “How does it feel?” asks Catia. You stare at them in shock. “What did you do to me?’ Catia approaches you differently than before. She no longer seems to be trying to seduce you. Rather, she carries a wave of supremacy not present before. “You will obey my commands as long as I live. Now, get on your knees,” she says. You try to protest, but find your whole body paralyzed. You assume this must be some sort of magic forcing you to obey. This however is not the case as she makes clear. “WHY AREN’T YOU MOVING?” “It seems like my ritual may have had some unintended effects.” Your body goes into an epileptic seizure as they start arguing over the ritual. None of that matter to you as your heart can’t support your new body. The world becomes a blur as you hear one last thing, “Great, I’ll never return home now that he’s dead.” While you aren’t dead yet, you will be soon. Your tale ends here.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>That’s the last thing you do before passing. Between your shuttered eyes you can make out one last thing. An even bigger smile on Lars’ face. The next time you wake up your chained in darkness. You can still reach around a fair bit and waste no time exploring your surroundings by touch. When you get to your face you find it hastily wrapped in gauze and bandages. You shallow and taste dried up blood sticking to your mouth like honey. You really need a drink. With nobody around you start banging your chains against the ground. It makes a loud rattling sound that will surely attract anyone close by. Nothing. Wherever you are nobody is here. Although, you assume Lars will be back soon. That is, unless he was killed as raving mad men often are. As you sit here hungry, tired, and thirsty you rack your mind trying to remember anything that can help you. Your head pounds with each thought, it feels like a hangover but a 100 time worse. Getting whack in the head may have some long-lasting effect on your mental capabilities. After a few minutes of fruitless concentration, it hits you. The thing that got you into this mess is what will get you out; Catia. While the alcohol has mostly worn off, your injuries have left you in a susceptible state. Assuming she wasn’t lying when she said she would meet you again, she should be able to get you out of this mess. You can’t believe you need a demon to rescue you, but you have no choice. “Catia,” you whisper. A few seconds pass and despair creeps in. Just before you lose all hope a dark cloud appears in the room. It dispels a nauseous fume that ferociously attacks your lungs. You start violently coughing more blood, mostly dry, as you vision blurs. Your eyes shut close and you feel your grip on reality slipping away. You awaken to find yourself in a metallic cage. This room is much brighter than the one before. “When I saw you chained I figured a cage would make you feel right at home.” It’s Catia and you’re getting a very different vibe from her than last time. Your gut tells you to do what she says as you are powerless. “Now tell me, how come I wasn’t the first one to put you in chains?” she says while licking her lips. “It’s not like it was consensual. I was blindsided and nearly died.” She gives you a playful smile and whispers in to your ear “Tell me everything and don’t spare any details. Seeing as you don’t have much of a choice you describe everything that’s occurred since you last saw her. You don’t withhold even the most irrelevant details. “It’s nice to know you believe I exist. I know it’s hard to believe someone this beautiful isn’t a figment of your imagination.” Her red eyes pierce into your mind, daring you to think otherwise. “So, what do you think we should do about Lars?” you ask. She starts laughing to herself. “What?” She walks towards your cage and reaches inside. She puts her hand on your chin and points your head upwards. She locks eyes with you and grins widely “You’re going to kill the captain!” Later It took a lot less convincing that you thought it would. Something about Catia just makes you want to obey her, though this time around you didn’t have much choice. She didn’t give you a reason other than saying “Chaos sows the seeds of discontent.” Which if you agree with this line of thinking, you are only helping the infernal realm by following Catia. Her influence is so strong you didn’t consider any other option. Or maybe you just really want to fuck her. Either way, time to kill the captain. After releasing you from your cage, she offers to heal you with dark magic. You agree, as you can barely move let alone assassinate someone. What you didn’t know is that another demon would be performing the ritual. “Why is a human stinking up the place?” “Mind your manners, Jirzan. Someone finally wants you for your magic and you treat them like this?” “Heh I guess you got a point. They don’t call me Jirzan the Lunatic for nothing. Alright tell me what you need me to do.” She whispers into his ear and is too quiet to understand. Though you make out words such as “transform” and painful. What exactly do they plan on doing to you? Perhaps you should try backing out of this whole ritual. > Back out “Hey uh guys, I don’t know about this. I think it would be best if I just heal the natural way.” Jirzan turns towards you and hisses. “You insolent fool! You dare turn the opportunity to become a demon, what else do you have going for you in life?” You instinctively start backing away as he gets angrier. “Is it my epithet ‘Lunatic’ that scares you? You humans disgust me. If that scares you I couldn’t imagine what you’d think about the meaning of my first name.” Well his epithet played a role, but dark magic frightens you more. Now you’re curious about his first name and don’t hesitate in asking him, “What does Jirzan mean?” He does a little dance and is excited to share, “Enslaver. My full name means translates to Enslaver the Lunatic. As a shorthand, ‘Deranged Enslaver’ works as well.” He’s known as an Enslaver? Kind of ironic seeing as he is doing Catia’s bidding. How did he plan to enslave you with dark magic? Does dark magic break demonic rule or did he have no intent on subjugating you? “Were you planning to enslave me? How can you just do that, doesn’t a deal have to be made?” “A deal? Why do you think I was banished to earth? I don’t do deals and see no reason why I should. All I need is your consent to use dark magic and I can do whatever I want.” Looks like you dodge a bullet. Although, you’re still confused about this whole banishment to earth. You thought demons were mounting a full-scale invasion. You bring up your confusion and that only causes him to laugh at you. “You think I would be near humans willingly? The only reason I’m here is because dark magic is outlawed in hell. Demons tend to stray away from things they don’t understand” “Same reason I’m here,” adds Catia. If not here by free-will, what explains the siege of the capital? How would a bunch of misfits pose a threat to the elite empiric army? As you to reason through it, your brain aches with pain. Damn that hit from Lars got you good. “Well if he doesn’t want to go through with the ritual then my work here is done,” says Jirzan. “Not so fast!” says Catia. “Eh? Do you want me to kill him or something? I thought you could use the practice.” Catia sighs and places her hand on hip whist saying, “What about instead of turning him into a demon we make him a Doom Knight? All you’d have to do is teach him a little dark magic and we should be all set.” You don’t even know what a Doom Knight is and still don’t trust Jirzan to teach you. “You think this imbecile could handle learning the dark arts? You have truly gone mad! And to think, they call me the lunatic.” “C’mon Zan, you owe me this. Backing out will only lead to more consequences down the road.” This seems to shut him up real quick. He starts cursing as it becomes clear to you Catia has something he dearly wants. “Fine I’ll do it, under two conditions. The first, I will need his full consent to do the initiation spell. Without it, there is no way he could become a Doom Knight. The second, you return Coyote back to me once I finish.” Catia nods and agrees to his terms. She now turns to you and asks, “Any questions?” > You what's a Doom Knight? You rack your brain and try to formulate some questions. Everything they’ve been saying kind of has blurred together. Though you do want to know what exactly a Doom Knight is. “Doom Knights are slayers of all things good and holy. Think of them as some sort of reverse paladin.” You always thought paladins were self-righteous assholes. They claim to protect others from evil yet persecute the smallest of sins. Who knows, Doom Knights might be more to your liking. Other questions? > You why you\? “I told you he would ask this!” says Jirzan. “We might as well tell him the truth, or he might not join,” says Catia. “Go ahead, though you are putting a lot of trust in a meathead.” Catia explains how if they wanted to, demons could conquer earth in minutes. “Why don’t you then?” you ask. Catia pauses and starts speaking in a sad tone, “If we did, I could never return to my homeland. In the underworld, different dimensions are at constant war. When darkness fights darkness, brute strength does nothing. You must outsmart your opponent through trickery and manipulation. That’s where you come in.” She goes on to explain how banished demons are sent to lesser domains, such as earth, to earn redemption. Some demons are content with wreaking havoc, but others long for home. Take Jirzan for example, he couldn’t care less about the underworld. He thrives of chaos and enslaves all weaker than him. “The only reason he’s helping is because he has no choice,” adds Catia. In Catia’s case, she needs to others to do her own bidding to prove she does not have to relay on brute strength. Lucky for her, succubi are experts at having others do what they want. By having you kill the captain, she can prove just how capable she is. “Making Lars believe you are a demon, and constructing a fake deal with him, proves how I can bend reality to my whim,” boasts Catia. Regardless of what you think of her motivations, it seems the only choice you have is to follow her. What else do you want to know?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It probably was just the wind, no need to be paranoid. You hop in bed and close your eyes. “Cat---” Your head is struck making you collapse. “They may have taken my job, but they didn’t take my sword.” “Lars?” You ask through blurred vision. “Why yes, it’s me, demon! You really think I believed you survived on pure luck?" He looks completely unhinged. You try to say something but just start coughing blood. It comes out in chunks resembling mashed berries. “You really thought you could get away with it, didn’t you? HAHAHAHA! I know you’ve been possessed by a demon; how else could you survive the frigid cold?” Clumps of blood continue flying out of your mouth as you fail to speak. Lars crotches down next to you and strokes your face. “It’s ok, calm down. Like I told you before, or at least the non-possessed you, the city could use some heating up.” Where is this going? “I want to make a deal with you! Kill the Captain and I’ll let you live. Hell, I’ll even give you something in exchange. Perhaps a part of my soul? If there’s anything left in there.” > You shake your head That’s the last thing you do before passing out. And the last thing you’ll ever do as Lars makes no attempt at reliving you. End...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“My man!” shouts Connor. “Har har Greg probably wants a retarded child to have someone finally agree with him,” Tom jokes. Tom and Connor start shouting about how much of a dumbass Greg is. You agree, but don’t join in on the berating. Instead, you walk out of the tavern without a second glance. As you make your way outside you are hit with a rush of cool air. “I can’t wait to meet Catia,” you mutter to yourself. You tuck your hands in your pockets and begin the walk to your home. On the way, you bump into a familiar face. It’s Lars. “How did last night go?” he asks. Something about Lars is rubbing you the wrong way. It might be his emotionless eyes or his downtrodden tone, but you feel like telling him about Catia is a bad idea “I nearly froze to death,” you say, wanting to be vague. “Yeah how exactly did you avoid doing that? When I left it looked like you were about to pass out.” “Just lucky I guess.” “Lucky huh? Well it’s your ‘luck’ that got me fired. Thanks a lot, now my family can starve to death before getting killed by demons.” You remain silent. “The captain chewed my ass out for quitting guard duty. I thought he would berate me and give me a warning, but he fucking fired me. I told him how much bullshit that was because I would have frozen to death otherwise. He told me I was lazy and incompetent because ‘the other guard didn’t complain’ as if your dumbass was smart to stay.” You try to apologize but Lars is having none of it. He gets angry and says, “I pray to god the demons invade and gut you and the captain like fish. Scrape out your insides with their claws and your other insides with their dick.” “Jesus man I said I was sorry.” “Sorry doesn’t feed my family. Get out of my way, I’m gonna’ drink until I die.” You move aside as Lars storms past you. Well, that was an interesting encounter. You don’t even know what to think, were you wrong to lie to him? How would he have reacted if you told him the truth? You push these thoughts out of your head and focus on getting home. It’s super cold and you don’t want to freeze to death and not have a succubus save you. You find yourself exiting out of the slums and into the residential part of the city. Most guards sleep in the barracks, however, since your parents never returned from their trip their house is all yours. If they ever return, you hope they don’t mind you bringing a demon inside the house. Although, they were always bugging you about finding a girlfriend, this might not be what they had in mind. You arrive at your parent’s old home and open the door. The wooden door squeaks loudly as you open it. “Some things never change,” you whisper to yourself. You immediately start making yourself more presentable. You change out of your soldiers’ uniform and put on a loose-fitting black tunic. You probably should take a bath but you're too excited to see Catia that you forget to. Do demons mind odor? You’re about to sit down in your bed when a chill runs down your spin. Your door makes a squeaking noise and a cold breeze rushes towards you. “Is somebody there?” you ask. No reply, although you don’t know what you were expecting. It’s possible the breeze pushed the door open, it's pretty flimsy and it wouldn’t be the craziest thing that’s happened in the last 24 hours. On the other hand, you can’t shake the feeling your being watched. Should you grab your sword and investigate? > You grab your sword and investigate Maybe it’s paranoia, but what kind of brain-dead retard wouldn’t rather be safe than sorry? You take out your sword and leave the bed room, checking every corner as you do so. This pays of as you notice a shadowy figure standing outside your bedroom. Is that…Lars? “Your senses are very good, demon. I knew you were possessed, how else could you have heard me?” “The annoying door squeak, for one. Also, it's fucking freezing so I knew someone let in the cold.” “More lies! First you tell me you survived the cold from pure luck, now you tell me your heighten senses are nothing special? “Lars, you have no idea what you’re talking about.” “Stop pretending, I know your secret. You’ve been possessed by a demon; how else could you survive the frigid cold?” Not wanting to fight a former friend, you decide to tell him the truth. “I haven’t been possessed by a demon, but one did save me. It all started once you left…” Later “So that’s why you were at the drunk tortoise? I admit, you’ve never been one to drink.” “Exactly! I’m glad you understand.” “What now? You’re going to come clean to the captain and convince him to give me back my job, right? While the captain may give Lars his job back, you would probably be fired. Coming into direct contact with a demon and living to tell the tale is a no go. He’ll probably think you made some sort of deal to avoid being killed. Regardless of what you plan to do, you say, “I will definitely do that tomorrow.” Lars nods but still looks a little unhinged. His hand twitches and he gives you a half grin. “Ok I’m holding you to it, because if you don’t, you’re gonna wish you froze to death last night.” You gulp as you have no doubt Lars could kill you if he wanted. He leaves and you hear the door squeak once again. The cold breeze has expanded throughout your house and you could use some heating up. After securing to house to make sure Lars isn’t still lurking, you fall into bed. You’re super tired and debate whether you still want to see Catia. It’s been a long day and if you have any intention of talking to your captain tomorrow, you should go to sleep. > You summon Catia “Catia.” A dark cloud appears in your room, dispelling a toxic fume. You start violently coughing as you vision blurs indiscriminately. Your eyes shut close and you feel you grip on reality slipping away from you. “Ah shit,” you whisper before passing out. Your eyes jitter open and you’re greeted by Catia stroking your face. Her palm flushes the coolness off your face. Beads of sweat drip furiously down your neck as she continues caressing you. “Couldn’t wait a single day before seeing me again? Especially after you promised your friend you would visit ‘the captain’? How cute.” You don’t have time to question how she knows that before she crawls on top of your bed and snuggles against you. Her aura is all consuming and you feel your free will being drained away. Yet, the whole process is extremely pleasing to you. She moves her mouth to your ear and whispers, “Do you want to see everything I have to offer?” You bite your tongue to avoid instinctively shouting yes. This may be your last chance to not go through with this. At the very least, it would give you chance to ask her a few more questions. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe it’s paranoia, but what kind of brain-dead retard wouldn’t rather be safe than sorry? You take out your sword and leave the bed room, checking every corner as you do so. This pays of as you notice a shadowy figure standing outside your bedroom. Is that…Lars? “Your senses are very good, demon. I knew you were possessed, how else could you have heard me?” “The annoying door squeak, for one. Also, it's fucking freezing so I knew someone let in the cold.” “More lies! First you tell me you survived the cold from pure luck, now you tell me your heighten senses are nothing special? “Lars, you have no idea what you’re talking about.” “Stop pretending, I know your secret. You’ve been possessed by a demon; how else could you survive the frigid cold?” Not wanting to fight a former friend, you decide to tell him the truth. “I haven’t been possessed by a demon, but one did save me. It all started once you left…” Later “So that’s why you were at the drunk tortoise? I admit, you’ve never been one to drink.” “Exactly! I’m glad you understand.” “What now? You’re going to come clean to the captain and convince him to give me back my job, right? While the captain may give Lars his job back, you would probably be fired. Coming into direct contact with a demon and living to tell the tale is a no go. He’ll probably think you made some sort of deal to avoid being killed. Regardless of what you plan to do, you say, “I will definitely do that tomorrow.” Lars nods but still looks a little unhinged. His hand twitches and he gives you a half grin. “Ok I’m holding you to it, because if you don’t, you’re gonna wish you froze to death last night.” You gulp as you have no doubt Lars could kill you if he wanted. He leaves and you hear the door squeak once again. The cold breeze has expanded throughout your house and you could use some heating up. After securing to house to make sure Lars isn’t still lurking, you fall into bed. You’re super tired and debate whether you still want to see Catia. It’s been a long day and if you have any intention of talking to your captain tomorrow, you should go to sleep. > You go to sleep and visit the captain first thing in the morning You close your eyes and drift off to sleep. You dream of a bright forest with playing children. Everything is nice and everyone is happy. Then one day that changes when a portal to another dimension appears in the middle of the forest. Out of the portal comes abominations to mankind. A collection of arms and legs attached on to a giant ball of flesh. This ball rolls around destroying the forest, killing everyone and growing stronger as it does so. The ball then comes rolling at you. You don’t have time to scream before… You jolt awake and find yourself covered in sweat. As much as you hate nightmares, they do a great job at waking you up. You look outside your window and notice the sun rising. This rising ball of fire reminds you of the ball from your dream. You throw on a clean pair of clothes, grab your sword just in case, and make your way to the captain’s quarters. It’s an uneventful journey and you arrive within a few minutes. Not wanting to wake the captain, you pull out pen and paper. It goes as follows, Dear Captain Dario, I am writing to you regarding the firing of guard Lars. I was on the same shift as him before he left. The windchill was approaching deadly levels and he decided to head inside as a last resort. I stayed out only because I feared the repercussions. As I sat out there, my muscles began to freeze until I could no longer move. I passed out minutes later. I would have surely died had a traveling merchant not stopped by. They started a fire and warmed me up. I would have died otherwise and thank the heavens a demon didn’t wander by. Due to my own experiences, I recommend you rehire Lars and if anything, fire me for putting my life on the line when it wasn’t needed. You are in such a rush that you slide the letter under the door before signing it. You decided against telling the truth as Captain Dario is a hard ass for rules. Not only would you have been fired, but also forced to undergo a purging to ward off any demonic influences. With that out of the way, you decide to head to a local armory. Your city issued sword is no match for a demon, as Catia pointed out. Not knowing if your parents will ever return, you see no problem with using their savings for your protection. You take a stroll to the armory and find it to be quite crowded for this early in the morning. “I need something that can scare away demons,” a farmer says “Scare away? Why not something that can kill?” “Look son, I’ve never been one to resort to violence. I just need something to protect you and the Misses.” You zone out their conversation and take a look around. They have swords, maces, axes, and even a trident. However, what catches your eyes is a bow painted red and black. It’s the only one in the store and seems rare. “Excuse me sir, what’s the price on this bow?” “That would be 500 gold sir,” replies a dwarf with steel encrusted teeth. “What’s so special about it?” “We brought it from a dark elf mercenary. They have great craftsmanship, especially when it comes to bows.” “How is it different than all the other bows for sale?” He pauses and turns red, “I hate to admit it, but I’ve always struggled making bows. That red and black one has much finer strings and sturdier wood, giving it a greater firing range.” You thank the dwarf for the information and continue looking around. Nothing else catches your eye, so you decide to buy the bow. “Pleasure doing business with ya.” You leave with your new bow and 500 gold poorer. You hope you still have your guard job as your parent’s money won’t last much longer. You go to the guard barracks and decide to get a meal there. Even if you’ve been fired, you doubt any of the servers will know. You arrive to a mess hall and find it more empty than usual. Two men eat soup together and another man sits alone. You grab a cup of soup and take another look around. You recognize the two men sitting together as Herbert and Andy. Herbert is an older man with a gray beard who has always been kind to you. Andy is around your age, mid twenties, and is already going bald. Both are good chaps and would be happy if you sat with them. The man sitting alone is someone you don’t recognize. He is a very thin fellow with patchy hair and missing teeth. You could try to find out who he is, or sit with Herbert and Andy. > You sit with the skinny man You walk over to the skinny man and and ask, “Mind if I sit next to you?” He is startled by your presence and jumps up a bit. He mutters something incomprehensible before saying, “I don’t mind.” The hot soup burns your tongue as you eat a spoonful. “So what’s this town’s name again?” “Ashton, why do you ask?” “You might not believe me, but I came face to face with a demon. When I finally got away, I ran to the city walls.” “Trust me, I believe you. I encountered a demon while on guard duty.” You tell him about how you passed out and met a succubus. “That’s wild.” “Sure is, now tell me about the demon you met.” He grits what few teeth he has and begins, “He wasn’t pleasant at all like the one you met. I was going for a walk in the forest. I know, it’s not the smartest thing to do in times like these, but it's one of my few sanctities.” His voice gets lower as he describes, “I knew something was off the moment I entered. An unholy energy made me feel weak and tired. I started hearing voices and couldn’t tell what was real. It was like I was in a trance.” “Did you actually see a demon?” “No, but he made his presence known. He tired to coerce me into letting him take over my mind. I almost did it too, but something broke me out of my trance.” He pauses for dramatic effect, “A bird fucking shat on my head!” You stare at his head and notice white flakes clumped in his hair. “Once I realized what I was about to do I ran like hell. I wasn’t thinking straight and went the opposite direction which I came in. I’m lucky I ended up here.” His experience is vastly different to your own. You suppose he encountered a demonic sprit, rather than a full fledge demon. “Perhaps this all was for the best. My city was running low on food, hence my frail appearance.” “Are you planning on staying in Ashton?” “I don’t know. I would need to get a job and a place to sleep at night. Would you be able to help me out in any way?” When your about to answer you hear someone call your name. It’s Captain Dario and he wants to speak with you immediately. You get up and tell the thin man, “It was nice talking to you.” “I hope you can come back when you're done. My name’s Eric by the way.” You wave goodbye and follow the captain into his private quarters. A rush of anxiety hits you as your still not sure if the captain bought your story. What if Lars told him the truth? “Please, take a seat.” You sit and find yourself starring at the gray haired captain. He stares back, unblinking as you both wait to see who makes the first move. “First things first, you’re not fired.” “That’s a relief.” “I’m sure it is, but what I say next may not be. I have no intention of re-hiring Lars.” “Wait what? Like I said in my letter, he did the smart thing and could have died had he stayed.” The captain sighs and says, “While that may be true, I’ve been wanting to fire him for awhile. He’s lazy and incompetent. The only reason he still had a job was because guards are in high demand right now. The problem now is finding a replacement.” “What happens if you don’t?” Dario frowns and bitterly says, “Then I might have to rehire Lars.” You could mention your new acquaintance, Eric, and vouch for him to replace Lars. On the other hand, who knows how Lars will react if he finds out you played a role in replacing him. There may be no reasoning with him. > You mention Eric “I may know of a potential replacement.” “No need not to not speak in absolutes. Spit it out sonny.” You stumbled a bit, not because your scared to tell him, but because his syntax confuses you. “Erm… I—I… his name is Eric.” “Who is this so-called Eric?” “He was the man I was sitting with. He’s looking for work and seems like a good fellow.” “That’s all I need, tell him he’s hired. Oh, and he starts immediately. 11pm tonight tell him to go to the city walls.” “Tonight? Isn’t this all happening a bit too fast?” “Nonsense, plus he won’t be doing it alone. He’ll have you to teach him.” You tense up as Dario continues, “Lighten up, kid! I took the initiative and brought fur coats for each of you.” Hell of an initiative considering you almost died two nights ago. “Thanks for taking the initiative…” “You’re most certainly welcomed! Now that that’s settled, get the hell out of here!” You stand up and leave his office. Eric does a one tooth smile as you walk over to him. “What was that all about?” You have a sly smile on your face when you say, “It was about you, congrats you’re now a guard!” He gives you a look of confusion and asks, “What the hell are you talking about?” You explain how guards are in high demand and that you mentioned him to the captain. “And I almost forgot, you start tonight.” “Wait what?” “Don’t worry, I’m on guard duty tonight as well. Plus, I’ve only ever seen demons one time...” “That one time was last night!” “Actually two nights ago, but never mind that. Anyways the captain brought fur coats for the both of us so no freezing to death tonight. C’mon, let’s get rolling.” “Alright but don’t act like this is permanent, if I don’t like it, I’m quitting after tonight.” “Trust me, it’ll be much easier now that we won’t be freezing. I have a feeling you’ll stick around.” > You 1 month later “You really don’t have to do this,” “Blasphemy, I’ve seen what you can do with my bow, you deserve one of your own.” “Yeah but you don’t have to help me pay for it. Anyways, I’m not that good with a bow,” Eric says humbly. “Well you’ll have plenty have chance to practice, let’s get going.” The past month in Ashton has been quiet, but demon sighting have increased in the nearby forest. Eric and you need to be as prepared as possible for when they strike. In addition, you have grown to like Eric a lot and are happy to help pay for his bow. You’re hoping they have one that’s as good quality as the one you brought last month. You arrive at the armory and note it being a lot less busy than it was last time. In fact, you’re the only two here aside from the dwarf who runs the place. “Where is everyone?” you ask. “I about ran out of equipment. With how trade has been recently, its impossible to get the material needed to craft weapons.” You offer your condolences and tell him why you’ve came here, “You wouldn’t happen to any bows for sale?” He half smiles, then says, “I might have a few, but none of my own creation. Those sold out the fastest due to their cheap price.” Eric gives you a concerned look knowing the cheapest bows are all sold out. “Well let’s see them,” you say. He lays out a few bows on a table and describes each of them. “This one right here was specifically crafted to kill orcs, but it should be fine for just about anything.” “What about demons?” “I see no reason why not!” He shows you a few other bows, mostly made be other local blacksmiths, but one other thing catches your eye. “Hey what’s that?” you say pointing to a crossbow on display. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? Crafted by the capital’s smartest black smiths, though its a few years outdated. It doesn't have the most range, but it sure packs a punch. I reckon one shot from it could bring any creature to near death. That is, if you’re a good enough shot to hit your target dead on.” “How much?” asks Eric. “800 gold.” “Are you crazy? That’s more than I made last month working as a guard.” “Higher prices, higher quality.” “What about the orc killer bow?” “Those are pretty common, 300 gold would be a fair price.” “We should probably just get that one, don’t want my friend going bankrupt.” > You insist you buy the better bow You help Eric buy the better bow and he is apprehensive. “Thanks man, but now we’re both broke.” “Better broke than dead.” You leave with the bow and get ready for guard duty. 5 hours later It’s been a quiet night so far and warmer than usual. Eric stands up and draws his crossbow towards the forest. “Do you see something?” “Yeah I do. It’s like a bat but much larger.” You look where he’s pointing and something comes into view. It’s a succubus, but unlike the one you met before, it no longer resembles a human. It has blood stained skin and humongous bat wings. “Holy shit.” Don’t just stand there, fire!” you say. You and Eric unleash a flurry of arrows at the creature. It manages to dodge almost everything, but Eric hits it dead on. “Got it!” It falls from the sky and lands awkwardly. You waste no time laying it to waste with arrow after arrow. You don’t stop until you’re sure its dead, and it soon looks like a half-bat, half-porcupine monstrosity. You did it, you killed a demon. “That was an amazing shot, I’m not sure we would have brought it done had we brought the cheaper bow.” “Yeah, thanks again,” Eric says with tears streaming down his face. “What’s wrong?” “I just can’t believe we survived. You hear tales about demons destroying entire cities and yet we were able to bring down one with only two of us.” “We make a good team.” “We sure do, we sure do.” > You epilogue #2: Succubus Slayers You two are lauded as heroes and given a big pay raise. “And to think, I almost kept that loser Lars!” Speaking of Lars, want to know what happened to him? He and his whole family starved to death. Better him than the whole city am I right? On the bright side, you and Eric continue killing demons as sightings become more common. After word of your legacy spreads, a local lord hires you as demon hunters. You decide to take up the name Succubus Slayers as a reference to your first kill. This is a rather ironic turn of events considering you went from being saved by a succubus, to killing them for a living. Who knows, maybe you’ll have to kill Catia one day?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“You really don’t have to do this,” “Blasphemy, I’ve seen what you can do with my bow, you deserve one of your own.” “Yeah but you don’t have to help me pay for it. Anyways, I’m not that good with a bow,” Eric says humbly. “Well you’ll have plenty have chance to practice, let’s get going.” The past month in Ashton has been quiet, but demon sighting have increased in the nearby forest. Eric and you need to be as prepared as possible for when they strike. In addition, you have grown to like Eric a lot and are happy to help pay for his bow. You’re hoping they have one that’s as good quality as the one you brought last month. You arrive at the armory and note it being a lot less busy than it was last time. In fact, you’re the only two here aside from the dwarf who runs the place. “Where is everyone?” you ask. “I about ran out of equipment. With how trade has been recently, its impossible to get the material needed to craft weapons.” You offer your condolences and tell him why you’ve came here, “You wouldn’t happen to any bows for sale?” He half smiles, then says, “I might have a few, but none of my own creation. Those sold out the fastest due to their cheap price.” Eric gives you a concerned look knowing the cheapest bows are all sold out. “Well let’s see them,” you say. He lays out a few bows on a table and describes each of them. “This one right here was specifically crafted to kill orcs, but it should be fine for just about anything.” “What about demons?” “I see no reason why not!” He shows you a few other bows, mostly made be other local blacksmiths, but one other thing catches your eye. “Hey what’s that?” you say pointing to a crossbow on display. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? Crafted by the capital’s smartest black smiths, though its a few years outdated. It doesn't have the most range, but it sure packs a punch. I reckon one shot from it could bring any creature to near death. That is, if you’re a good enough shot to hit your target dead on.” “How much?” asks Eric. “800 gold.” “Are you crazy? That’s more than I made last month working as a guard.” “Higher prices, higher quality.” “What about the orc killer bow?” “Those are pretty common, 300 gold would be a fair price.” “We should probably just get that one, don’t want my friend going bankrupt.” > You settle for the cheaper bow You help Eric buy the cheaper bow and he is glad. “Thanks man, no need to go broke.” “Better dead than broke,” you say sarcastically You leave with the bow and get ready for guard duty. 5 hours later It’s been a quiet night so far and warmer than usual. Eric stands up and draws his bow towards the forest. “Do you see something?” “Yeah I do. It’s like a bat but much larger.” You look where he’s pointing and something comes into view. It’s a succubus, but unlike the one you met before, it no longer resembles a human. It has blood stained skin and humongous bat wings. “Holy shit.” Don’t just stand there, fire!” you say. You and Eric unleash a flurry of arrows at the creature. It manages to dodge almost everything, but Eric hits it dead on. “Got it!” Except it does nothing but annoy it. The creature screams and flies at blazing speed towards both of you. You manage to hit it a few times, but it does nothing. You are torn to pieces as Eric watches. He awaits the same fate. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk over to the skinny man and and ask, “Mind if I sit next to you?” He is startled by your presence and jumps up a bit. He mutters something incomprehensible before saying, “I don’t mind.” The hot soup burns your tongue as you eat a spoonful. “So what’s this town’s name again?” “Ashton, why do you ask?” “You might not believe me, but I came face to face with a demon. When I finally got away, I ran to the city walls.” “Trust me, I believe you. I encountered a demon while on guard duty.” You tell him about how you passed out and met a succubus. “That’s wild.” “Sure is, now tell me about the demon you met.” He grits what few teeth he has and begins, “He wasn’t pleasant at all like the one you met. I was going for a walk in the forest. I know, it’s not the smartest thing to do in times like these, but it's one of my few sanctities.” His voice gets lower as he describes, “I knew something was off the moment I entered. An unholy energy made me feel weak and tired. I started hearing voices and couldn’t tell what was real. It was like I was in a trance.” “Did you actually see a demon?” “No, but he made his presence known. He tired to coerce me into letting him take over my mind. I almost did it too, but something broke me out of my trance.” He pauses for dramatic effect, “A bird fucking shat on my head!” You stare at his head and notice white flakes clumped in his hair. “Once I realized what I was about to do I ran like hell. I wasn’t thinking straight and went the opposite direction which I came in. I’m lucky I ended up here.” His experience is vastly different to your own. You suppose he encountered a demonic sprit, rather than a full fledge demon. “Perhaps this all was for the best. My city was running low on food, hence my frail appearance.” “Are you planning on staying in Ashton?” “I don’t know. I would need to get a job and a place to sleep at night. Would you be able to help me out in any way?” When your about to answer you hear someone call your name. It’s Captain Dario and he wants to speak with you immediately. You get up and tell the thin man, “It was nice talking to you.” “I hope you can come back when you're done. My name’s Eric by the way.” You wave goodbye and follow the captain into his private quarters. A rush of anxiety hits you as your still not sure if the captain bought your story. What if Lars told him the truth? “Please, take a seat.” You sit and find yourself starring at the gray haired captain. He stares back, unblinking as you both wait to see who makes the first move. “First things first, you’re not fired.” “That’s a relief.” “I’m sure it is, but what I say next may not be. I have no intention of re-hiring Lars.” “Wait what? Like I said in my letter, he did the smart thing and could have died had he stayed.” The captain sighs and says, “While that may be true, I’ve been wanting to fire him for awhile. He’s lazy and incompetent. The only reason he still had a job was because guards are in high demand right now. The problem now is finding a replacement.” “What happens if you don’t?” Dario frowns and bitterly says, “Then I might have to rehire Lars.” You could mention your new acquaintance, Eric, and vouch for him to replace Lars. On the other hand, who knows how Lars will react if he finds out you played a role in replacing him. There may be no reasoning with him. > You defend Lars “Lars might not be the best guard, but he’s the best option available. On the bright side, we at least seem to get along.” Dario’s face turns dark red as he spits out, “If he’s the best option, then this city might burn in flames tonight. None of us are safe with him on duty.” “So I take it that you won’t be rehiring him?” The captains sighs deeply out of frustration. “Look, tell him he can guard tonight. However, if he messes up one more time, he’s out for good.” You do a small fist bump out of celebration. “Not so fast sonny, you’re going with him.” “Really? Even after what happened the last time we were on guard duty together?” “You said it yourself, you two get along. Now, get out and get to work.” You leave in a pissed off mood, however the captain adds one thing before you slam his door shut. “I brought fur coats for the both of you. They’re in your lockers and it’s best if you wear them tonight.” You leave in a slightly less pissed off mood and slam the door. Eric does a one tooth smile as you walk over to him. “What was that all about?” “Nothing too important. I have to go now, it was nice meeting you.” Nice meeting you too...” You leave and head over to Lars house. It’s best to tell him the good news as soon as you can. You get there shortly and he answers the door right away. “So did you do it? Did you tell the captain what really happened.” “I convinced the captain to give you your job back, that’s all that matters.” Lars looks like he wants to argue, but holds back. “I’m just happy my family won’t starve to death. Oh, and that I won’t have to kill you,” he says with a wink. “Yeah it’s great news, now follow me. The captain brought fur coats for both of us.” > A month later Lars is an incompetent fucktard who can’t even hold a bow. You’re very lucky the last month has been quiet for you, however demon sighting are getting more common. Sooner than later you’re going to encounter one. You put on your fur coat and walk to the city walls. 5 hours later It’s been a quiet night so far and warmer than usual. Lars stands up and points his sword towards the forest. “Do you see something?” “Maybe, unless the booze is fucking with my vision. It looks like a bat but much larger, and...sexier.” You look where he’s pointing and something comes into view. It’s a succubus, but unlike the one you met before, it no longer resembles a human. It has blood stained skin and humongous bat wings. “Holy shit.” Don’t just stand there, defend yourself.” “Nah fuck that,” Lars says while running away. You unleash a flurry of arrows at the creature as Lars makes his escape. It manages to dodge almost everything, but one arrow grazes its foot. “HOW DARE YOU!” The succubus releases a bolt of dark energy at you. It hits you in the chest and you collapse. As you sit there about to pass out, a thought comes to you. One month ago a succubus saved your life, now another ends it. “Tell Catia I said hi...”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You close your eyes and drift off to sleep. You dream of a bright forest with playing children. Everything is nice and everyone is happy. Then one day that changes when a portal to another dimension appears in the middle of the forest. Out of the portal comes abominations to mankind. A collection of arms and legs attached on to a giant ball of flesh. This ball rolls around destroying the forest, killing everyone and growing stronger as it does so. The ball then comes rolling at you. You don’t have time to scream before… You jolt awake and find yourself covered in sweat. As much as you hate nightmares, they do a great job at waking you up. You look outside your window and notice the sun rising. This rising ball of fire reminds you of the ball from your dream. You throw on a clean pair of clothes, grab your sword just in case, and make your way to the captain’s quarters. It’s an uneventful journey and you arrive within a few minutes. Not wanting to wake the captain, you pull out pen and paper. It goes as follows, Dear Captain Dario, I am writing to you regarding the firing of guard Lars. I was on the same shift as him before he left. The windchill was approaching deadly levels and he decided to head inside as a last resort. I stayed out only because I feared the repercussions. As I sat out there, my muscles began to freeze until I could no longer move. I passed out minutes later. I would have surely died had a traveling merchant not stopped by. They started a fire and warmed me up. I would have died otherwise and thank the heavens a demon didn’t wander by. Due to my own experiences, I recommend you rehire Lars and if anything, fire me for putting my life on the line when it wasn’t needed. You are in such a rush that you slide the letter under the door before signing it. You decided against telling the truth as Captain Dario is a hard ass for rules. Not only would you have been fired, but also forced to undergo a purging to ward off any demonic influences. With that out of the way, you decide to head to a local armory. Your city issued sword is no match for a demon, as Catia pointed out. Not knowing if your parents will ever return, you see no problem with using their savings for your protection. You take a stroll to the armory and find it to be quite crowded for this early in the morning. “I need something that can scare away demons,” a farmer says “Scare away? Why not something that can kill?” “Look son, I’ve never been one to resort to violence. I just need something to protect you and the Misses.” You zone out their conversation and take a look around. They have swords, maces, axes, and even a trident. However, what catches your eyes is a bow painted red and black. It’s the only one in the store and seems rare. “Excuse me sir, what’s the price on this bow?” “That would be 500 gold sir,” replies a dwarf with steel encrusted teeth. “What’s so special about it?” “We brought it from a dark elf mercenary. They have great craftsmanship, especially when it comes to bows.” “How is it different than all the other bows for sale?” He pauses and turns red, “I hate to admit it, but I’ve always struggled making bows. That red and black one has much finer strings and sturdier wood, giving it a greater firing range.” You thank the dwarf for the information and continue looking around. Nothing else catches your eye, so you decide to buy the bow. “Pleasure doing business with ya.” You leave with your new bow and 500 gold poorer. You hope you still have your guard job as your parent’s money won’t last much longer. You go to the guard barracks and decide to get a meal there. Even if you’ve been fired, you doubt any of the servers will know. You arrive to a mess hall and find it more empty than usual. Two men eat soup together and another man sits alone. You grab a cup of soup and take another look around. You recognize the two men sitting together as Herbert and Andy. Herbert is an older man with a gray beard who has always been kind to you. Andy is around your age, mid twenties, and is already going bald. Both are good chaps and would be happy if you sat with them. The man sitting alone is someone you don’t recognize. He is a very thin fellow with patchy hair and missing teeth. You could try to find out who he is, or sit with Herbert and Andy. > You sit with Herbert and Andy You head over to sit with Herbert and Andy and listen in on their conversation. “I can’t believe she would do such a thing,” says Herbert. “I don’t know how she could just lie after all I did for her. She’s been pissed at me ever since we last had sex. I can’t even talk to her anymore.” “I know how you feel, women sure are a pain in the ass. Hey new guy, did you hear what Andy’s girlfriends been doing?” You stop blowing on your soup and glance at Herbert. “I haven’t, what happened?” “So this fucking bitch named, what was her name again Andy?” “Julia.” “Yeah so this bitch named Julia has been spreading lies about him ever since they broke up. She told the captain that he raped her!” “I guess she wants to get me fired. Rather get revenge against me for something I didn’t do then have the city be safe.” “Julia...what’s her last name?” “Why does it matter? She’s a fucking liar and that’s that,” says Andy. “Sorry I thought I might know her...I had a childhood friend named Julia.” “Well I hope you don’t still consider her a friend after what she did to Andy. That skank deserves to live a life alone.” You sit in silence as you take this all in. If this is the Julia you think it is, there’s got to be a reason she said what she said. You never knew her as the type of person to lie, even as a child. When you’re about to prod further, you hear someone call your name. It’s Captain Dario and he wants to speak with you immediately. You wave goodbye and follow the captain into his private quarters. A rush of anxiety hits you as your still not sure if the captain bought your story. What if Lars told him the truth? “Please, take a seat.” You sit and find yourself starring at the gray haired captain. He stares back, unblinking as you both wait to see who makes the first move. “First things first, you’re not fired.” “That’s a relief.” “I’m sure it is, but what I say next may not be. I have no intention of re-hiring Lars.” “Wait what? Like I said in my letter, he did the smart thing and could have died had he stayed.” The captain sighs and says, “While that may be true, I’ve been wanting to fire him for awhile. He’s lazy and incompetent. The only reason he still had a job was because guards are in high demand right now. The problem now is finding a replacement.” “What happens if you don’t?” Dario frowns and bitterly says, “Then I might have to rehire Lars.” You could talk about Herbert and Andy, they might be able to take over Lars’ previous guard duties. On the other hand, who knows how Lars will react if he finds out you played a role in replacing him. There may be no reasoning with him. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“This is the last time I’m saying this Greg, immortality is not worth cutting off your cock. What’s the point of being immortal if you’re deprived of the best feeling in the world?” “Ey’ maybe he’s lacking in that area. No wonder he wants immortality if all he has to do his cut off an inch or two worth of pecker.” Greg suddenly stands up, drawing your eyes to the bickering trio. They’ve been arguing random hypotheticals since you’ve gotten here. All you wanted was to get a quiet drink before meeting with Catia. As long as these buffoons are here, that’s impossible. Even as Greg stands up he’s shorter than the other two sitting. It’s no wonder they pick on him, he looks pathetic. “Can you both just shut the fuck up? I mean, god damn. All I’m saying is living forever outweighs the downsides of not having a dick,” he says in a whiny voice. The other two laugh uncontrollably at his pitiful attempt of defiance. One manages to calm down and spits out, “Maybe when it’s smaller than a gnome’s toothbrush, but for the rest us it’s not so easy.” Queue more uncontrollable laughter as Greg’s face becomes redder than demon blood. “I’ll shove a gnome’s toothbrush up your ass if you say that one more time! C’mon, let’s move on to another question.” The trio quiets down and you zone them out. You take a swig of whisky and start to remember the reason while you’re here. Oh yeah, the succubus. She wanted you to drink a bit before meeting her. You didn’t necessarily jump at the idea of getting drunk before meeting with a demon, but she promised you she would make it worthwhile. You’re pretty sure that means… Your thoughts are interrupted by the thickheaded trio once again. “You’re telling me you’d prefer your child be retarded and kind than ingenious and mean?” “Yes Connor, I would.” “God damn it, Greg! You want to spend an eternity with no dick while taking care of a retarded child? Pathetic. I would kill myself after a week.” “Har har har! I would kill myself in a week if I had to live Greg’s life as it is. No, scratch that, a day!” “Fuck you Tom. I can’t be the only one who thinks this…” Greg glances around nervously looking for a savior. Eventually he turns his gaze towards you and his eyes light up. “Hey you over there! What would you rather have, a dumb, but kind child; or a smart, but cruel child?” he says while pointing at you. You stare blankly ahead and breathe a deep sigh. This is beyond stupid. You briefly consider just ignoring him and getting the hell out of this place. “Why do you think that man would agree with you? He’s a soldier. Surely, he recognizes the benefits a genius could provide for society. Especially when you consider the need for mages regarding the growing demon problem.” Soldier? Shit you forgot to change out of your uniform. So much for staying inconspicuous. You can thank your lucky stars none of the other guards are here to see you in this shithole. “Now now, let the man speak. Just because he’s a soldier doesn’t mean he agrees with you,” says Tom. “Fine, what do you think...and hurry up! We don’t have all day.” > You say "I have no preference." “No preference? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” says Connor. “He must think he’s not having any children. I guess he’s into dudes.” Replies Tom. “Yeah I think you’re right. I swear I saw him eyeing Greg.” You feel the bile rising in the back of your throat. They think you’re attracted to that disgusting little worm? People usually don’t get under you skin so much but this time it’s different. You’re about to fuck a hot demon bitch and the idea of being attracted to Greg is NOT what you need right now. “Do you really want to know why I don’t give a fuck about your pointless hypothetical?” “Well, yeah.” You take a deep breath and begin to describe your recent encounter with a succubus. “Well it all started when I fell asleep during guard duty”. One convoluted story later. “And that’s why I came to this tavern,” you say with a cheeky grin. Your story gets mixed reactions. “You’re not actually going through with this are you?” asks Tom. “Ok so you’re attracted to some demon bitch. I still saw you eyeing Greg for at least the past hour.” And strangest of all, “Wait aren’t succubi immortal? And they don’t have dicks! Well, at least I assume they don’t”. You don’t engage with any of them and feel compelled to go home. Although, Tom’s words are giving you second thoughts. Should you wait a few days before even thinking about seeing the succubus? > You stay and think it over The trio starts arguing but you quickly interrupt them. “Hey wait! Why shouldn’t I go through with this?” Everyone turns towards you as if confused to why you’re still here. Tom let’s out a long sigh and asks the question that has been on everyone’s mind. “Are you sure any of that was even real?” You scrunch your eyebrows and consider the possibility. No, it can’t be fake. The rush of it all was too great for it to be a hallucination. It was either real or nothing is real. “Yeah your dumbass was probably just hallucinating from the cold,” Connor jeers. That can’t be it. You know it was real, although they couldn’t possibly understand. They weren’t there. “If I had to guess, I’d say a good Samaritan helped you when they saw you passed out. You might have mistaken their torch for that of a demon,” Says Tom. “Yeah and they probably told you to go to the tavern to warmup. That’s what these two did when they first found me,” says Greg. For the love of god! Now even Greg is gaslighting you. Enough of this nonsense. You can either leave right now or waste your night away here. > You leave RIGHT NOW The trio begins arguing again. Something about how demon immortality is different than regular immortality. You don’t time to dwell on it and make your way home. You find yourself grinning the whole walk back. This isn’t just a happy drunk feeling. You feel like this is your purpose. It’s time to see Catia. You find yourself exiting out of the slums and into the residential part of the city. Most guards sleep in the barracks, however, since your parents never returned from their trip their house is all yours. If they ever return, you hope they don’t mind you bringing a demon inside the house. Although, they were always bugging you about finding a girlfriend, this might not be what they had in mind. You arrive at your parent’s old home and twist the doorknob. The wooden door squeaks loudly as you open it. “Some things never change,” you whisper to yourself. You immediately start making yourself more presentable. You change out of your soldiers’ uniform and put on a loose-fitting black tunic. You probably should take a bath but you're too excited to see Catia that you forget to. Do demons mind odor? “Catia.” A dark cloud appears in your room, dispelling a toxic fume. You start violently coughing as you vision blurs indiscriminately. Your eyes shut close and you feel you grip on reality slipping away from you. “Ah shit,” you whisper before passing out. Your eyes jitter open and you’re greeted by Catia stroking your face. Her palm flushes the coolness off your face. Beads of sweat drip furiously down your neck as she continues caressing you. “Couldn’t wait a single day before seeing me again? How cute.” She crawls onto your bed and moves closer to you. Her aura is all consuming and you feel your free will being drained away. Yet, the whole process is extremely pleasing to you. She moves her mouth to your ear and whispers, “Do you want to see everything I have to offer?” You bite your tongue to avoid instinctively shouting yes. This may be your last chance to not go through with this. At the very least, it would give you chance to ask her a few more questions. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The trio starts arguing but you quickly interrupt them. “Hey wait! Why shouldn’t I go through with this?” Everyone turns towards you as if confused to why you’re still here. Tom let’s out a long sigh and asks the question that has been on everyone’s mind. “Are you sure any of that was even real?” You scrunch your eyebrows and consider the possibility. No, it can’t be fake. The rush of it all was too great for it to be a hallucination. It was either real or nothing is real. “Yeah your dumbass was probably just hallucinating from the cold,” Connor jeers. That can’t be it. You know it was real, although they couldn’t possibly understand. They weren’t there. “If I had to guess, I’d say a good Samaritan helped you when they saw you passed out. You might have mistaken their torch for that of a demon,” Says Tom. “Yeah and they probably told you to go to the tavern to warmup. That’s what these two did when they first found me,” says Greg. For the love of god! Now even Greg is gaslighting you. Enough of this nonsense. You can either leave right now or waste your night away here. > You waste the night away “Fuck all of you, let’s talk about something else. Bartender! Get me another drink,” you say. A couple hours later. “All I’m saying is it’s a bit hypocritical to complain about demons capturing human when we capture orc children on the regular.” “What do you mean we? Last time I checked you’re the only one in the army,” says Tom. “Yeah plus it’s different. Orcs are uncivilized barbarians who kill all those they meet. When’s the last time a human killed a demon unprovoked?” asks Connor. “Did you forget how this whole demon war started? We tried to wipe them off the face of the earth and they retaliated. Jeez Connor, you say orcs are barbarians, but I’ve met orcs smarter than you,” Greg says. Connor slams his fist on the table making everyone jump a little bit. Although all he says is, “Yeah, I’m sure you have.” Connor has been a lot less hostile to Greg since you came here. It’s probably because Greg finally has someone who agrees with him on some issues. Oh, and the fact you could kick Connor’s ass without breaking a sweat. The three of you continue discussing the demon war and the implications it as on the empire. Recent news of the capital being overrun has set the whole empire into a panic. You begin discussing the possibility of fleeing the city before its too late. “I don’t have much confidence in Ashton keeping us safe, but it’s more protection than outside the city walls,” you state. “I don’t want to wait here to die,” Connor says while slurring his words. “You must know better than anyone being a soldier and all. Do you think the city guards could even kill a single demon? I know it’s just rumors, but word says our army is ill-equip to fight in the winter, let alone against demons.” How the hell does a guy like Tom know that? You stare at him trying to gain insight into his mind, but all he does in shrug. Damn, might as well give him your honest opinion. “I’ve never seen a demon. Well, other than that succubus and she wasn’t fighting me.” “So, is that a yes or no you bitch?” slurs Connor. “I don’t know.” There is an awkward silence as you all realize how up in the air the future of this city is. The capital was supposed to send reinforcements to any city that sighted demons. Though with it being under siege that possibility lessens by the minute. “Has anyone even seen a demon? I mean—” Connor says before downing another drink. “Has your dumbass forgot already? This man right here saw a succubus!” Greg says. Finally, someone believes you. Perhaps he agreed with you from the beginning and was too scared to admit it? “Like I said before, it was probably just a hallucination. Plus, why would succubi be needed to conquer the city?” Tom says. Just as you're about to answer that the question a man walks in the tavern. You turn to see who it is and wish you hadn’t. It’s Lars. It’s inevitable he notices you and when he does, he wastes no time telling you why he’s here. He got caught abandoning his guard duty last night and has been let go. When he tried to argue how unfair that was because he lacked equipment to handle the conditions all he was told was. “That’s your own damn fault! The other guard did it without complaint.” He came here to drink until he passed out. Without the money from his guard job he has no way to support his family. He appears a bit more unhinged than usual because of that. “I fucking hope the demons break down the city walls and storm the captain’s quarters. I don’t care what happens next. All I want is for him suffer a slow and painful death. That’s what he sent me to last night and blamed me for saving myself.” You sit in silence not knowing what to say. He continues, “Speaking of which how the hell did you survive last night? When I left it looked like you were about to pass out.” Well he’s got that right. You briefly consider telling him about your encounter with Catia but the rabid look in his eyes tells you that’s not a good idea. “Just lucky I guess.” He doesn’t second guess you and continues his rambling. You pay little attention to his words and when you do it’s clear he’s gone off the rails. “Then they’ll rape his family and have him watch. It’s what he fucking deserves, and he deserves what he’s going to get.” As Lars drones on and on you realize how late it’s getting. You better go home and get the hell away from this guy. You tell him you must go, and he just continues on talking to himself. It’s like he doesn’t know you’re here. That’s probably for the best. As you leave you give him one last look, and he looks back at you with a huge smile and twitchy eyes. That’s creepy. You make your way out of the tavern and are hit by the freezing winter breeze. You’re going to have to get home fast lest you pass out again. Best to take the alleys as not only is it faster, but it also provides protection from the wind. You don’t even get a few steps before you tumble to the ground, but not because of the cold. You are whacked in the back of the head with a glass. You fall face first, mouth agape, breaking teeth instantly. Blood seeps out of your head as you press your hand on the back of your skull. It’s more caved in than usual. You start hearing laughter. This isn’t your first time hearing it either. “As if I believed you survived by pure luck. You’re lucky I don’t just kill you now. Now tell me the truth, demon!” It’s Lars and he looks completely unhinged. You try to say something but just start coughing blood. It comes out in chunks resembling mushy cherries. “You really thought you could get away with it, didn’t you? HAHAHAHA! I know you’ve been possessed by a demon; how else could you survive the frigid cold?” Clumps of blood continue flying out of your mouth as you fail to speak. Lars crotches down next to you and strokes your face. “It’s ok, calm down. Like I told you before, or at least the non-possessed you, the city could use some heating up.” Where is this going? “I want to make a deal with you! Kill the Captain and I’ll let you live. Hell, I’ll even give you something in exchange. Perhaps a part of my soul? If there’s anything left in there.” Your vision blurs as Lars grins widely at you. Saliva drips down his face like a feral beast. “Decide now! Don’t make me kill you to reveal your true self.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“No preference? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” says Connor. “He must think he’s not having any children. I guess he’s into dudes.” Replies Tom. “Yeah I think you’re right. I swear I saw him eyeing Greg.” You feel the bile rising in the back of your throat. They think you’re attracted to that disgusting little worm? People usually don’t get under you skin so much but this time it’s different. You’re about to fuck a hot demon bitch and the idea of being attracted to Greg is NOT what you need right now. “Do you really want to know why I don’t give a fuck about your pointless hypothetical?” “Well, yeah.” You take a deep breath and begin to describe your recent encounter with a succubus. “Well it all started when I fell asleep during guard duty”. One convoluted story later. “And that’s why I came to this tavern,” you say with a cheeky grin. Your story gets mixed reactions. “You’re not actually going through with this are you?” asks Tom. “Ok so you’re attracted to some demon bitch. I still saw you eyeing Greg for at least the past hour.” And strangest of all, “Wait aren’t succubi immortal? And they don’t have dicks! Well, at least I assume they don’t”. You don’t engage with any of them and feel compelled to go home. Although, Tom’s words are giving you second thoughts. Should you wait a few days before even thinking about seeing the succubus? > You leave now! The trio begins arguing again. Something about how demon immortality is different than regular immortality. You don’t have time to dwell on it and make your way home. You find yourself grinning the whole walk back. This isn’t just a happy drunk feeling. You feel like this is your purpose. It’s time to see Catia. You find yourself exiting out of the slums and into the residential part of the city. Most guards sleep in the barracks, however, since your parents never returned from their trip their house is all yours. If they ever return, you hope they don’t mind you bringing a demon inside the house. Although, they were always bugging you about finding a girlfriend, this might not be what they had in mind. You arrive at your parent’s old home and turn the door knob. The wooden door squeaks loudly as you open it. “Some things never change,” you whisper to yourself. You immediately start making yourself more presentable. You change out of your soldiers’ uniform and put on a loose-fitting black tunic. You probably should take a bath but you're too excited to see Catia that you forget to. Do demons mind odor? “Catia.” A dark cloud appears in your room, dispelling a toxic fume. You start violently coughing as your vision blurs indiscriminately. Your eyes shut close and you feel you grip on reality slipping away from you. “Ah shit,” you whisper before passing out. Your eyes jitter open and you’re greeted by Catia stroking your face. Her palm flushes the coolness off your face. Beads of sweat drip furiously down your neck as she continues caressing you. “Couldn’t wait a single day before seeing me again? How cute.” She crawls onto your bed and moves closer to you. Her aura is all consuming and you feel your free will being drained away. Yet, the whole process is extremely pleasing to you. She moves her mouth to your ear and whispers, “Do you want to see everything I have to offer?” You bite your tongue to avoid instinctively shouting yes. This may be your last chance to not go through with this. At the very least, it would give you chance to ask her a few more questions. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look through the window from the observation room, down onto the Object placed at the heart of the chamber. Protruding from the walls are all manner of scientific gadgetry, so that the tests can be carried out remotely, and hopefully more safely, from the observation room. It has been two and a half months of all manner of tests, such as bathing the Object in various forms of radiation, scanning it with all manner of sensors, trying tests in normal air and in a vacuum, and that sort of thing. So far, the Object has just sat there. It could continue to do nothing at all. It could just be a solid chunk of lifeless metal for all anyone knew. That's what you are beginning to think, anyhow. Of course, the Government and Military representatives were "completely positive" that something would happen eventually. And they got to monitor the tests from another facilitiy eighty kilometers away - just in case the Object happened to be a bomb of some sort. That was really reassuring for you. "Come on, Jones, let's get to work," Hammond says, the doors to the observation room swishing shut behind him as he arrives. > You say "Sure. So, what are we going to do to it today?" "Okay, we're doing Gamma Radiation today. Why don't you get us started, spin the dial to five, will you?" Hammond says, leaning over one of the consoles, and peering through the window at the Object below. > You turn the dial to five. "Here goes nothing," you say as you turn the dial to five. Both of you look out through the window at the Object in the chamber beyond. A long mechanical arm unbends from the wall, with a large emitter on the end. It slowly powers up, and you watch a counter slowly tick up from zero. Invisible gamma radiation begins to bathe the Object from the emitter. As the counter begins to pass four, something happens! There is a flash of light, almost blinding your eyes, and then- > You (continue) Hammond yawns, leaning back in his chair. "Well, there goes another day of useless tests, Jones," he says. "What the-" you stammer, looking around you. The clock on the wall says it is early in the evening outside. You glance at the dial for the gamma radiation emitter, and it is turned off, set to zero. Out through the window, the Object just sits there doing nothing, as usual. Hammond notices the look on your face, "What's wrong?" > You tell him what happened. "Hammond, what just happened?" you ask him, bewildered. "What do you mean? We just completed another day of the same old boring tests that seem to have achieved nothing at all," he answers. "You know what? I think something happened!" you say, confusion giving way to excitement. Something was finally taking place! "What are you talking about Jones?" he says, tired and in no mood for games. "The last thing I remember, I was turning the gamma radiation dial to five. The counter passed four, and there was a flash of light! The next thing I know, I was standing here and the day was over!" you explain, bursting with excitement. "Is this some sort of joke," he says, standing up, and getting his things, ready to go home. "Look, Jones, we tested it for gamma, we zapped it with more x-rays, we doubled the air pressure, we tried to cut it open with lasers! Nothing happened, no lights, no sounds, no anything. Look, you're probably just tired, imagining things. There's nothing so boring as staring through a window at a block of metal that just sits there, for hours on end." > You stick to your version of what happened. "I'm telling you Hammond, one moment we were standing there performing the test, the next it was the end of the day!" you exclaim, beginning to feel angry. You're sure of what happened. At least, you think you are... "Look, Jones, maybe you saw a flashing light, maybe not. It only takes a few minutes to run the gamma radiation test. If you want, we'll throw it back up to five and see what happens. Will that make you happy? Maybe then I can go home and get some sleep," he grumbles. > You perform the Gamma radiation test again. "Yes, Hammond. That would make me happy. Let's do the test again," you say. "Okay, by all means. Turn the dial back to five," he says, shaking his head tiredly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Hammond, what just happened?" you ask him, bewildered. "What do you mean? We just completed another day of the same old boring tests that seem to have achieved nothing at all," he answers. "You know what? I think something happened!" you say, confusion giving way to excitement. Something was finally taking place! "What are you talking about Jones?" he says, tired and in no mood for games. "The last thing I remember, I was turning the gamma radiation dial to five. The counter passed four, and there was a flash of light! The next thing I know, I was standing here and the day was over!" you explain, bursting with excitement. "Is this some sort of joke," he says, standing up, and getting his things, ready to go home. "Look, Jones, we tested it for gamma, we zapped it with more x-rays, we doubled the air pressure, we tried to cut it open with lasers! Nothing happened, no lights, no sounds, no anything. Look, you're probably just tired, imagining things. There's nothing so boring as staring through a window at a block of metal that just sits there, for hours on end." > You maybe you just imagined it? You yawn. Actually, it does feel like you've been working for a whole day. Maybe Hammond was right, maybe you're just tired. Day after day of repetative tests could indeed make everything seem to blur together, after a while. "Yeah, maybe you're right, Hammond. I guess I should drive home and get a good night's sleep," you say. "Rest up, and I'm sure you'll feel better tomorrow," he says. "Well, see you later then, I'm off." Hammond puts on his jacket and heads home. > You leave the Facility. You grab your jacket, flick off the lights, and walk out through numerous corridors and doorways. Finally, after passing through two security checkpoints, you reach the garage. Taking your car keys out of your pocket, you hop into your Toyota Aurion V6. You sink into the comfortable seat with a smile. Ah, the perks of your job. Switching the car on, you pull out of the multi-level garage, and head out onto the road. The Facility was mostly underground, but a large boxy building juts up from the barren surface. Your temporary home, for the duration of the tests, was a house the company purchased in a relatively modern country town an hour's drive away. It's getting dark outside, but the sky is clear, the moon and stars bright above you. You flick on your headlights, and there is a flash of light as they turn on... > You waking up to more confusion. You wake in your bed, in a house that the company has purchased, about an hour's drive from the Factility. Stretching, you get up out of bed. What an odd dream... Something had happened out at the Facility, but you couldn't remember what. Dreams tended to be like that. You were in your car, or something? Stretching your arms above your head, you bend to each side, stretching your aching muscles, then reach out and open the door to the ensuite. A fierce, hot wind assails you, and you stumble backwards, your sleepy limbs not prepared. For a moment you just stand there in your underwear in shock. Outside your bedroom, looking through what should be the door to your ensuite, was the desert! You glance out the bedroom window, and it's still there! Bleak, barren desert sands and rocks stretch off to the horizon. Where is the town? More importantly, where is the rest of your house! > You step outside Astonished and confused, you open your main bedroom door, to see more desert outside. You step outside, onto the hot sand, to see if it is real or an illusion. The sand is hot beneath your feet, and you quickly step back inside. Perhaps you should get dressed first? > You get Dressed Your clothing lies scattered across the floor around your bed. (Click on objects to put them in your inventory)<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Childhood A fist thuds into your face, knocking you to the ground. Gruzub stands over you, laughing. "Mazkil! You are as weak as a Shepard!" He laughs, as you leap to you feet. > You punch him You swing your fist, but Gruzub quickly ducks and elbows you in the stomach, knocking the wind from your lungs. He gets two more punches in before you manage to roll away and get back into a fighting stance. As you prepare to charge him, you hear a deep voice. "CHILDREN! Your mother struggles to soothe the little one while your brother hunts sheep. This is no time for playing. There is work to be done! Inside!" Your father bellows. > You go inside You quickly hurry inside, followed by your twin brother. You live in a small village of small huts. Luckily enough, you father is Chieftain Magrash, which entitles you to sleep in the Chieftain's Hut, the largest hut. As you enter, you see your father sitting in a rough woolen tunic, sharpening his greatsword. In front of him is his heavy steel plate armor, as well as several trophies from his battles. "Mazkil, Gruzub, you fight too much. Mama is trying to put Dagden to sleep." "Yes, papa." You both reply. "Who won the fight?" He asks. "I did!" You both say, before glaring at each other. "You don't know? Perhaps you're not fighting enough. Gruzub, go down to the river and fetch water for the stew. Mazkil, sharpen my sword. I need light the hearth." You go over to the sword, and begin to sharpen it against the whet stone, while looking over your father's trophies: An Elven Dagger, a Shrunken head, a battered golden shield, a shattered battleaxe, a studded mace, a series of Tribal Necklaces and a Dragon Skull. "Papa?" "Yes?" "Can you tell me about your trophies?" You ask. "I've told you many times about my trophies." "Tell me again." Papa chuckles, a harsh sound you've come to love. "Which would you like to know about?" > You elven Dagger (Elves) "Ah, the dagger. One of my favorite. The Elves are a race of "beautiful" and "perfect" creatures who don't know a battleaxe from a wood-axe. Death to them all. They're stupid in things like how to start a fire and how to hunt, yet seem to love philosophy and reading. Death should take them. Still, they're fast with a blade and good with a bow, which I found out while hunting a party of them that came into my territory. That knife nearly went into my throat before I impaled the little bastard wielding it."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly hurry inside, followed by your twin brother. You live in a small village of small huts. Luckily enough, you father is Chieftain Magrash, which entitles you to sleep in the Chieftain's Hut, the largest hut. As you enter, you see your father sitting in a rough woolen tunic, sharpening his greatsword. In front of him is his heavy steel plate armor, as well as several trophies from his battles. "Mazkil, Gruzub, you fight too much. Mama is trying to put Dagden to sleep." "Yes, papa." You both reply. "Who won the fight?" He asks. "I did!" You both say, before glaring at each other. "You don't know? Perhaps you're not fighting enough. Gruzub, go down to the river and fetch water for the stew. Mazkil, sharpen my sword. I need light the hearth." You go over to the sword, and begin to sharpen it against the whet stone, while looking over your father's trophies: An Elven Dagger, a Shrunken head, a battered golden shield, a shattered battleaxe, a studded mace, a series of Tribal Necklaces and a Dragon Skull. "Papa?" "Yes?" "Can you tell me about your trophies?" You ask. "I've told you many times about my trophies." "Tell me again." Papa chuckles, a harsh sound you've come to love. "Which would you like to know about?" > You shrunken Head (Necromancer's Army) "Ah, that! I took that off a large bastard with a sword twice as large as you.That damn Necromancer, I can't remember his name, rose Zombies Ghouls, Skeletons, Wights, Death Knights, Specters, Ghosts and who knows what else in his quest for power. He led a small group of Death Knights up here to add some Ork Zombies to his collection. He ran faster than a deer when he saw what a true Orc can do! Ha!"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly hurry inside, followed by your twin brother. You live in a small village of small huts. Luckily enough, you father is Chieftain Magrash, which entitles you to sleep in the Chieftain's Hut, the largest hut. As you enter, you see your father sitting in a rough woolen tunic, sharpening his greatsword. In front of him is his heavy steel plate armor, as well as several trophies from his battles. "Mazkil, Gruzub, you fight too much. Mama is trying to put Dagden to sleep." "Yes, papa." You both reply. "Who won the fight?" He asks. "I did!" You both say, before glaring at each other. "You don't know? Perhaps you're not fighting enough. Gruzub, go down to the river and fetch water for the stew. Mazkil, sharpen my sword. I need light the hearth." You go over to the sword, and begin to sharpen it against the whet stone, while looking over your father's trophies: An Elven Dagger, a Shrunken head, a battered golden shield, a shattered battleaxe, a studded mace, a series of Tribal Necklaces and a Dragon Skull. "Papa?" "Yes?" "Can you tell me about your trophies?" You ask. "I've told you many times about my trophies." "Tell me again." Papa chuckles, a harsh sound you've come to love. "Which would you like to know about?" > You battered Golden Shield (Empire of Man) "The Shield? The Shield... Ah, yes! The shield! I took it off some fancy knight who drank too much and fought too little. Let me tell you about men, little one, there's a lot of them, but they're weak, stupid and cowardly. They break easily. They're the biggest threat to our little old home, but they're too busy fighting the elves to come fuck with my tribe."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly hurry inside, followed by your twin brother. You live in a small village of small huts. Luckily enough, you father is Chieftain Magrash, which entitles you to sleep in the Chieftain's Hut, the largest hut. As you enter, you see your father sitting in a rough woolen tunic, sharpening his greatsword. In front of him is his heavy steel plate armor, as well as several trophies from his battles. "Mazkil, Gruzub, you fight too much. Mama is trying to put Dagden to sleep." "Yes, papa." You both reply. "Who won the fight?" He asks. "I did!" You both say, before glaring at each other. "You don't know? Perhaps you're not fighting enough. Gruzub, go down to the river and fetch water for the stew. Mazkil, sharpen my sword. I need light the hearth." You go over to the sword, and begin to sharpen it against the whet stone, while looking over your father's trophies: An Elven Dagger, a Shrunken head, a battered golden shield, a shattered battleaxe, a studded mace, a series of Tribal Necklaces and a Dragon Skull. "Papa?" "Yes?" "Can you tell me about your trophies?" You ask. "I've told you many times about my trophies." "Tell me again." Papa chuckles, a harsh sound you've come to love. "Which would you like to know about?" > You shattered Battleaxe (Dwarves) "Ah, this one! I fought the dwarves when I was young, back when my name was Youngblood like you. I earned the name Magrash Shatteraxe that day! The Dwarves are small bastards and the sight of one will make you chuckle, but I love 'em! The Gods made them jesters to amuse, and the Dwarves became angry, stubborn, heavy-drinkers who can wield an axe! They hide in their tunnels and mine too much, but I respect them anyway."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly hurry inside, followed by your twin brother. You live in a small village of small huts. Luckily enough, you father is Chieftain Magrash, which entitles you to sleep in the Chieftain's Hut, the largest hut. As you enter, you see your father sitting in a rough woolen tunic, sharpening his greatsword. In front of him is his heavy steel plate armor, as well as several trophies from his battles. "Mazkil, Gruzub, you fight too much. Mama is trying to put Dagden to sleep." "Yes, papa." You both reply. "Who won the fight?" He asks. "I did!" You both say, before glaring at each other. "You don't know? Perhaps you're not fighting enough. Gruzub, go down to the river and fetch water for the stew. Mazkil, sharpen my sword. I need light the hearth." You go over to the sword, and begin to sharpen it against the whet stone, while looking over your father's trophies: An Elven Dagger, a Shrunken head, a battered golden shield, a shattered battleaxe, a studded mace, a series of Tribal Necklaces and a Dragon Skull. "Papa?" "Yes?" "Can you tell me about your trophies?" You ask. "I've told you many times about my trophies." "Tell me again." Papa chuckles, a harsh sound you've come to love. "Which would you like to know about?" > You studded Mace (Rebel Orcs) "Ah... the mace. Boy, some Orcs stick to their tribe. Some wander as mercenaries, or sign up as soldiers. Some become Rebels, raiders targeting every humans, elves, dwarves and anyone else that gets in their way. They're mad, stubborn, bloodthirsty fools. I took that weapon off on of them trying to convince Old Klaim to join up. I also took a few of his teeth, but I don't have those anymore."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly hurry inside, followed by your twin brother. You live in a small village of small huts. Luckily enough, you father is Chieftain Magrash, which entitles you to sleep in the Chieftain's Hut, the largest hut. As you enter, you see your father sitting in a rough woolen tunic, sharpening his greatsword. In front of him is his heavy steel plate armor, as well as several trophies from his battles. "Mazkil, Gruzub, you fight too much. Mama is trying to put Dagden to sleep." "Yes, papa." You both reply. "Who won the fight?" He asks. "I did!" You both say, before glaring at each other. "You don't know? Perhaps you're not fighting enough. Gruzub, go down to the river and fetch water for the stew. Mazkil, sharpen my sword. I need light the hearth." You go over to the sword, and begin to sharpen it against the whet stone, while looking over your father's trophies: An Elven Dagger, a Shrunken head, a battered golden shield, a shattered battleaxe, a studded mace, a series of Tribal Necklaces and a Dragon Skull. "Papa?" "Yes?" "Can you tell me about your trophies?" You ask. "I've told you many times about my trophies." "Tell me again." Papa chuckles, a harsh sound you've come to love. "Which would you like to know about?" > You tribal Necklaces (Tribal Orks) "The tribal necklaces? Boy, show some respect! Those are the Chieftain's necklaces, that show who's the boss of this tribe! Us Orcs have always been a hot-headed folk. Lots of fighting, drinking, eating, fucking and some more fighting when you're finished. We stick to the tribes, each led by the great Chieftain. It's a good life, boy."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly hurry inside, followed by your twin brother. You live in a small village of small huts. Luckily enough, you father is Chieftain Magrash, which entitles you to sleep in the Chieftain's Hut, the largest hut. As you enter, you see your father sitting in a rough woolen tunic, sharpening his greatsword. In front of him is his heavy steel plate armor, as well as several trophies from his battles. "Mazkil, Gruzub, you fight too much. Mama is trying to put Dagden to sleep." "Yes, papa." You both reply. "Who won the fight?" He asks. "I did!" You both say, before glaring at each other. "You don't know? Perhaps you're not fighting enough. Gruzub, go down to the river and fetch water for the stew. Mazkil, sharpen my sword. I need light the hearth." You go over to the sword, and begin to sharpen it against the whet stone, while looking over your father's trophies: An Elven Dagger, a Shrunken head, a battered golden shield, a shattered battleaxe, a studded mace, a series of Tribal Necklaces and a Dragon Skull. "Papa?" "Yes?" "Can you tell me about your trophies?" You ask. "I've told you many times about my trophies." "Tell me again." Papa chuckles, a harsh sound you've come to love. "Which would you like to know about?" > You ask about the Dragon Skull (Dragons) "Ah, the skull. Dragons are fearsome creatures. They come in many colors, all with powerful skills. They speak Dragontongue, and many speak our language. Some are intelligent, while some are incredibly feral and wild from years of isolation. Their flames tend to be tinted the same color as their scales, with an afinity for hoarding treasure and waging war and destruction. They're solitary creatures, Dragons. If you ever slay one, Gorgok will look upon you with joy."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly hurry inside, followed by your twin brother. You live in a small village of small huts. Luckily enough, you father is Chieftain Magrash, which entitles you to sleep in the Chieftain's Hut, the largest hut. As you enter, you see your father sitting in a rough woolen tunic, sharpening his greatsword. In front of him is his heavy steel plate armor, as well as several trophies from his battles. "Mazkil, Gruzub, you fight too much. Mama is trying to put Dagden to sleep." "Yes, papa." You both reply. "Who won the fight?" He asks. "I did!" You both say, before glaring at each other. "You don't know? Perhaps you're not fighting enough. Gruzub, go down to the river and fetch water for the stew. Mazkil, sharpen my sword. I need light the hearth." You go over to the sword, and begin to sharpen it against the whet stone, while looking over your father's trophies: An Elven Dagger, a Shrunken head, a battered golden shield, a shattered battleaxe, a studded mace, a series of Tribal Necklaces and a Dragon Skull. "Papa?" "Yes?" "Can you tell me about your trophies?" You ask. "I've told you many times about my trophies." "Tell me again." Papa chuckles, a harsh sound you've come to love. "Which would you like to know about?" > You stop asking about Trophies "I'm finished, Papa!" Papa picks up the blade, and licks the edge. "Yes... Sharp enough to shed dragon blood. Well done, Mazkil. Now, go fetch gather fruit." > Four years later... "You've been on this planet fourteen years, and you haven't learned a thing, boys, unless you've seen me and Dendar take out a boar!" You walk with Gruzub, your older brother Bagig and his friend Dendar, out in the woods. You have a small iron knife at your belt and a bow clutched in your hands. So far in your short life, you've only subsided on deer, goat and chicken, but after today you'll be able to feast on the boar you've helped kill. "On your first hunt, it's tradition to eat a deer's dropping to gain it's scent." Dendar remarks. "Everybody knows that." Dendar and Bagig pause, dropping to one knee, pointing to some small droppings. "Go on, Gruzub, Mazkill. Dig in." > You eat the droppings You drop to your knees, close your eyes, and quickly swallow a small piece of dropping. Bagig pats you on the head, and nods to Gruzub. Gruzub does the same, and with that, Dendar bursts out laughing. "You two are idiots!" Mazkil and Gruzub Youngblood, eating deer droppings." They chuckle as your face reddens. You open your mouth to yell at them, but then freeze. You spot a beautiful deer just at the edge of a small creek out of sight. You grab your brother, and point to it. "Ah, well spotted, Mazkil Shiteater. Let's catch it, Dendar." "We can't get distracted. We came here to hunt boar." "We'll catch the deer and the boar!" Bagig cries, charging off after the deer. The Deer bursts off running, with Bagig and Dendar quickly following. "Stay there!" Bagig yells at you as he leaves. > You stay there You stand patiently with Gruzub, who looks at you. "Just so you know, Oraal is mine." He says quietly. You ponder this for a second. Oraal is a fat, lazy girl who's the daughter of a swordsmaker. "Oraal? Has her father promised you a fine blade if you crawl between her legs?" You giggle. "Hey! She has proclaimed her...!" He begins, before his eyes widen. > You ask what's wrong You open your mouth to speak, but you're hit in the back and sent flying through the air. You hit the ground, your head knocking against a tree root and drawing blood. You shakily stand, drawing your knife, as you're faced with a large boar preparing to charge again. "Watch out!" Gruzub yells, running to help, but it's clear he's far too slow. The Boar charges at you, it's tusks looking deadly sharp at they near you... > You roll to the side You roll to the side, narrowly dodging a goring from the beast's tusks. As it runs past, you leap forward with your knife, cutting through thick fur and drawing a fair amount of blood. It squeals, before running forward and turning around once more for another charge. > You dodge again As the boar charges, you try to roll to the side, but it's prepared this time. You yell as it's tusks slash your side, causing a massive wound. > You continue Gruzub charges over and stabs the boar in the side with his dagger, giving you ample time to leap up. You charge at the boar, stabbing it repeatedly in the neck. It squeals, but it's easily killed before it can resist. It falls dead at your feat. > You rejoice, for the enemy is vanquished! You rest your foot on the boar's tusks, laughing. "Ha! I've slain the boar!" "Hey!" Gruzub yells. "I helped." Dendar and Bagig burst trough the trees, a deer straddled between them. "We caught the deer. I bet..." They pause, noticing the boar. "Cursed Reaper, is that a boar?" You nod proudly. "Death's Head, Mazkil, you've impressed me. No longer will you be called Mazkil Youngblood, now you'll be Mazkil Boarsbane!" Bagig laughs. You smile proudly, knowing you will feast on boar meat tonight. > One year later... "Mazkil Boarsbane! Gruzub Fastfoot! Let's go." Papa yells. You quickly follow your father out of your small home and onto the small dirt road that interconnects the village. "Boys, you've done well. I was so proud when I saw you best Harkor Clawfist in a fight, I got you a present." You smile fondly. Harkor had insulted your brother Bagig and Dendar. They had only been recently killed by a Death Knight from the remnants of the Necromancer's Army, and you made sure that Harkor suffered for his insult. By the time you and Gruzub were finished, his face was half-caved in. Your father hands you each a small amount of gold coins. "Dendar Arroweye is heading down to Riverton today. He's taking the cart to pick up some goods to help us get through the winter. Take the cart, go enjoy yourself." You thank him, and eagerly count your coins. 25 Gold Coins, all shining proudly at you. "Go now, boys. Enjoy yourselves." > You head down to Riverton After a long ride to Riverton with Dendar who mostly insults you and Gruzub, you eventually arrive at the small town. You eyes immediately find multiple ways to spend your precious coins. There's a brothel in the poorer section of town, a large shop full of delicious foods you wish to sample, a small gambling ring and a tavern. > You leave Riverton Once you've spent your gold coins, you make your way back to Dendar's cart. Unfortunately, you find yourself in the poorer part of town, clearly having taken a wrong turn. As you make your way through a side street, a voice cries out. "Hello! A little lost, are we?" A voice cries. You turn, and are faced with a trio of men holding knives. "Fuck off." You grunt angrily. "'Fuck off', he says. What an angry orc." A voice from behind you says. You turn, to see two more men wielding knives. "Listen, sir. Give us your coins, and we'll see you find your way to where you're going." > You charge the men You run forward, swinging your blade. You slash the throat of one of the men and he topples backwards. The second man cuts your shoulder deeply, and you grab his head and smash it repeatedly against a wall, crushing it into a pulp. You feel another knife slash your back and you yell, twisting around to jab another man through the eye and kill him. The two remaining men seem nervous, but one runs forward in a burst of courage. He dives forward, sticking his knife through your arm, causing you to drop your knife. With your other hand you grab him, and push your thumb through his eye as he screams, before stomping on his head until he's a smear on the floor. By then, the final man had left, running as fast as he could. > You collapse You fall to the ground with a thud, and lose consciousness. When you wake up, you're in the back of Dendar's cart, with Gruzub next to you. "What happened?" "You killed a lot of people, collapsed, and I dragged you here." "Ah. I'm still alive, then. Good." "We'll get you medical help when we get back to the village." "Good." You grunt. "Well done with the thieves, Mazkil. You've proven yourself a true Orc." > One year later... Orc Tribal Customs are simple. The Chieftain's sons fight, and the winner takes over for him when the Chieftain is killed or reaches forty. Papa has just hit forty, so something you've been preparing for all your life. You sit next to Gruzub in front of the Shrine of Gorgok, the Warrior God, praying silently. "I'll try not to kill you, you know." Gruzub says quietly. "I'll try not to kill you." You reply. "Papa killed his brother." Gruzub notes. "Death is quiet likely for one of us." "Grandpapa didn't kill his brother." You add. "Fair point. Whatever it comes down to, I love you. You are my brother, and I would be proud to be killed by you." "Well, I'm great and mighty. Everyone I kill should be proud of it." You chuckle. "I take it back, I'm killing you, you prick." You both laugh, as Papa arrives. He quietly removes his tribal beads, and drapes them around the Shrine. "Ah. My neck feels bare." He sighs. "Boys, tomorrow is going to be the most important day of your life. One of you will become the victor and chieftain, the other will fall and may die. I just want you to both know I feel nothing but pride towards you." You struggle not to tear up, and by the way Gruzub is tensing, you know he's also struggling. "I've always treated you as my father treated me, stern but loving. Whatever you become, be it Chieftain, Warrior, Mercenary or even a whining baker, you will be the greatest at it there's ever been." Your father nods, and lays his great sword in front of the Shrine. "It's late. Go, sleep, rest up." You nod, and stand and begin heading to the hut. As you walk, Gruzub begins to chuckle. "What?" You ask. "Do you remember the time when we were boys when we tried to make a glider out of chicken feathers?" You laugh. "And we were standing on top of the mountain, with you about to jump." You add. Gruzub nods, smiling. "And you yanked me back when you realized chickens can't fly." Gruzub smiles. "Ha! You would've died! Remember when we caught our first boar?" You smile. "Yeah. I ate so much boar that night I almost puked." "That was the mead, Gruzub." "I miss those days."Gruzub nods. You arrive at the hut, and you grab Gruzub in a hug. "Good luck tommorow." You say. "Good luck." You both go to bed, scared and nervous about tomorrow. > The next day... You stand, fully armored in plated steel, next to Gruzub and the Shrine of Gorgok. Priest Jinser stands by the shrine, holding two short swords. "Gorgok! Watch over this fight and please bless these warriors. Watch over this fight and see that the greatest Chieftain is chosen!" The Priest wails. He holds the two swords out, and you grab one. Gruzub grabs the other. "Let the fight commence! First to render the other unable to stand wins!" You take up a fighting stance, as does Gruzub. You slowly move forward, before you both swing your blades. Sparks fly as they collide, and the battle commences. You land the first blow, smacking into Gruzub's chest as he stumbles backwards. He draws blood first, slashing open a small bit of unprotected arm. It's obvious that you're the far superior fighter, with Gruzub struggling to avoid your attacks. Then, the Fates pluck your string. > You pluck An eagle, far above you, drops a small turtle from a great height, hoping it's shell will shatter on the ground. The turtle smacks into your head, knocking you backwords. Gruzub takes advantage of your confusion, stepping forward and thrusting his blade. The blade enters you chest, Gruzub carefully avoiding your organs but thrusting deep enough to cause you to scream. When he withdraws, blood spurts out, and you struggle to stand. "The Fates seem to dislike Mazkil." The Priest notes loudly, though you barely listen. Gruzub continues to attack, and you barely manage to defend yourself. Eventually, he kicks your leg and you fall backwards. This leaves your throat exposed, for Gruzub to easily slash your throat and make sure you fall and never get up. > You try to regain a fighting stance To your surprise, Gruzub hesitates, before taking up fighting stance again, allowing you to gain a defensive position to defend your open throat and stop your demise. Your energy waning, you decide to take one final effort to defeat Gruzub. He swings his sword at your legs, attempting to floor you, but you block the shot and head butt him. He falls backwards, and you swing your blade, smacking into his head. His helmet flies into the air, leaving his head and neck unguarded. You know you don't have enough energy to continue fighting. > You behead Gruzub You swing your blade down with a roar. You sword connects with his neck, and his head falls to the ground. You drop to your knees, looking at your dead brother. You barely comprehend the Priest grabbing your hand and holding it up, loudly proclaiming you the victor. Papa walks over, draping the Tribal Chieftain beads and necklaces around your neck. Mama walks out and gently kisses your head, before closing Gruzub's eyes on his decapitated head. The Priest has the body taken away to be burned to ensure it makes it to the afterlife. You struggle not to weep for your brother, while Papa kneels down to talk to you. "You are Chieftain now, Mazkil. Chieftain Mazkil Redblade, leader of the Red Blades. You will lead the tribe to greatness. Tonight, we celebrate. We celebrate your ascension to chieftain, we celebrate the great fight, we celebrate your brother's journey to the Afterlife. He fought so well I'm sure Gorgok himself is Gruzub's cup-bearer." You nod. The path you're going down is set. Gone are dreams of becoming a mercenary or a raider. Now, you are a Chieftain. > You continue The Path of the Chieftain You sit on the small wooden Chief's Throne in the Main Hall. Tribal Necklaces and Beads are around your neck, feeling a lot heavier than they are thanks to the guilt and grief from Gruzub's death. Papa has vacated his role as chief completely and given all his responsibilities to you, taking Mama and leaving to a small farm up the mountain, leaving you in charge. Still, he's left you with two lieutenants and advisors, Elder Doct and Thraka Flameborn. Elder Doct is an aging Orc, the oldest in your village. She is a traditionalist, who had fond memories of the old days when warriors fought duels for honor and farms were farmed by hand with hoes rather than with mules and donkeys. She values older values like honor, isolationism and keeping the village moral and traditional. Thraka Flameborn is the polar opposite of Doct. He is one of the few Orc Mages, specialized in pyromatics and flame-based magics. He is a very modern and progressive orc, who wants for the industrialization and modernization of the village as well as a better relationships with the outside world. The pair enter the Main Hall, and begin approaching you. Elder Doct is in ancient, dusty armor from his days as a warrior, and has a face like a wrinkled, rotting prune, while Thraka Flameborn is a younger, smaller Orc who looks like a child playing dress up with his father's red Mage Robes. Huh. Perhaps you are still bitter and angry at the world because of your brother's death. "Congratulations at you ascension to Chieftain, Chieftain Mazkil." Elder Doct says happily. "My brother just died." "Oh... Yes, sorry, Chieftain." Doct apologizes. "What's the issue?" You ask. "Raiders have been spotted at the Eastern Woods, by Jagik Longstride. She says they've been camped there for at least three days, raiding surrounding farms and market caravans." Thraka says. "What am I to do, then?" You ask. "You should grab your sword and lead our warriors to wipe them out." Elder Doct says. You grab your father's long sword, or your long sword now. It's a massive steel blade, the blade inscribed with Orc Runes. It's been handed down your family for four generations, when your great grandfather shattered his family sword on an Elven Shield. "Where are the men?" "Down at the armoury." Thraka adds. > You head to the armory You sling the sword over you shoulder, and begin marching towards the armory. The Orcs are all standing around, wearing plate armor and chainmail, wielding swords, axes and maces. They respond to your arrival with eagerness and bloodthirstiness. "Ah! The Chieftain's here! Time for battle!" One of them says gleefully. Because of your age, you know you quickly need to take charge and show your dominence. "Alright men! We had killing to do! On my lead!" You shout. You begin marching towards the Eastern Woods, followed by the the Orcs. With that, you begin leading your War Party towards bloodshed. > Two Hours Later... You spot smoke just in the distance, where the raiders are presumably camped. "Orcs!" You loudly whisper. "To arms! We'll wipe out the fiends to the last man." You move forward slowly, further through the woods. You arrive at the edge of a small glade. There is a large opening where there's several dozen tents. A group of around thirty Orcs wearing chainmail armor and wielding axes, short swords and maces. You give a few hushed orders to various Orcs to target the various flanks to make sure not a single raider survives. Then, you raise your sword. "CHARGE!" You roar, sprinting forward. The Raiders are quickly taken by surprise, grabbing any nearby weapons and raising them in defense. You swing your sword, which bites into one of their necks and beheads him in one clean sweep. You kick a second to the floor with one swift kick to the head, knocking him to the floor. You raise your sword and stab downwards, going through the raider's stomach. Within a few seconds, the fighting is over. The raiders have been quickly wiped out to the last orc, leaving none alive. "This was quicker than I had hoped." One of the Orcs remarks. "Orders, Chieftain?" Another asks, turning to you. "Burn the tents, the bodies and take anything worth taking." You reply. "Yes, Chieftain Mazkil." Your men quickly begin removing armor, weapons and jewelry from the dead Orcs, and wrapping their corpses in tents. Once this is finished with all the corpses, they set the wrapped corpses alight, which quickly begin burning. You sniff the air, and smell the delicious smell of sizzling flesh. "Chieftain! I counted the amount of beds versus corpses. Twenty dead raiders, but there's over eighty beds." "There's more! We believe there's at least sixty more raiders off on a mission at the moment. Orders, Chieftain?" One of the Orcs, one of the very few archers you've brought, Kanim Darkwit, steps forward. "Sir. The Raiders will be hungry and tired. They'll be here soon. We can lay an ambush. There's a good vantage point in one of the trees..." "Coward! Where's your honor, boy?" Another Orc, Jakku Bearsbane, roars. "We're not abandoning all honor and reason in favor of hiding like does! We find the raiders, and wipe them out to the last man." > You return to the village "Curse the Gods, I'm not wasting my time out here in a freezing, empty forest waiting for what could be days, weeks even, for the raiders to return, all while subsiding on nuts and berries like a fucking chipmunk. We head back to the village for a warm meal and a large drink." "Yes, Chieftain." The Orcs all bark back. You wipe the blood off your longsword on the wet grass, and turn to begin the long walk home. > You head back to the village The next day, you walk along the street, Thraka and Doct off managing your work for a while. You survey your village. Children are brawling in the streets, the elders are drinking and the adults are working. Everything's good. You think to yourself. You notice a young Orc woman who's name you haven't learnt, and feel a pang in your heart as you notice how beautiful she is. You feel a pang in another place, but that's neither here nor there. You realize that one of, and perhaps the best, duty of the Chieftain is to have a heir to the throne and get married. You'll try find someone soon enough. Not today, though. You continue strolling around the village, before you notice at the edge of town, a trail of caravans approaching. You raise an eyebrow, as there are no scheduled caravans set to arrive over the next few days. You walk up, and to your surprise, notice the caravaneers are not the Orcs you're used to seeing. They're all men. Usually there's a few men mixed in with the Orcs that run the caravans. You walk over to the caravan. "Hey! Who are you, then?" You ask loudly. The Humans on board are wearing red cloth with gold Eagle symbols embroidered on them. "Greetings! I am Giorgio Lates. I am a merchant from the Kingdom of Mankind." "I recognize the sigil. What do you want?" "I am a merchant, kind sir. Orcs are famous for their steelwork, and I had the pleasure of working with some Orc Mercenaries. They're blades, axes and maces are unrivaled, except for Elvish blades, which are as easy to find as an honest merchant. Which, you so happen to have found." Giorgio says, winking. "You wish to buy blades?" "Buy? Not exactly. I doubt you have much use for my gold. I wish to swap, to barter, to trade." "For what?" "We have much to trade. Food, Drink, Steel, Iron, Wool, Jewelry, Gold, Silver and much, much more. We wish to open up a trade route between here and the Empire." Giorgio grins. You frown. Traders are prone to take advantage of humble villages like yours. The Village is also dedicated to crops, farm work and general self-sufficiency. To increase your smithing and weapons production, you'd need to sacrifice your self-sufficiency. Still, it could increase your village's profit and the standard of living. > You agree to trade with the Kingdom of Man "Yes. Yes... I like this plan. I will expand the blacksmith's, and begin producing weapons for the Kingdom of Man." "Ah! Fantastic, Sir!" Giorgio replies happily. "I promise, you won't regret this. I'll increase the amount of caravans coming up here, and have the first few stuffed with a little... gift, a show of appreciation. I've you've never had Elk, or Trout, or Lamb, you'll enjoy the caravans." "It'll take us some time to begin producing weapons, but once we're started we'll be able to produce quite a bit." "Ah, good, good." Giorgio grins. You negotiate the smaller details and offer the merchants each a bed and mead, but they politely refuse to head back down the mountain. Despite Giorgio's friendliness, it's quite obvious most of the other merchants and guards were unnerved by being so deep in Orc territory. Still, you think this trade deal with greatly benefit the Red Blades. > Three Days Later... You sit on your throne in the Main Hall, in the midst of a feast to celebrate the death of Chieftain Dadic, your Great-Great-Great-Grandfather, who was brutally stabbed to death by Elven Assassins. Despite being unarmed, surprised and quite old, he put up a grand fight. Twenty Elves entered this very great hall to assassinate him, three went out. Thraka and Dokt stand on either side of you. For once, they both agree on what you should do, although Thraka's much more brutally honest. "Find a girl to fuck." He says. "What Thraka Flameborn means is..." "To get your dick inside a girl." Thraka laughs, to Dokt's embarrassment and frustration. "Chieftain, every Chieftain needs one to share their soul with. You need a mate." Dokt says. You survey the room. You spot a young Orc girl dancing in the crowd. She's small and cute, and you briefly make eye contact. She gives you a flirty wink. A pretty girl would do good to help you survive the cold winter nights. Making use of the drink and food is a tall warrior. Her head is cut short and she has a large, impressive blade on her side. A warrior is someone you could relate to and respect as a mate. One the opposite side (both of the room and orientation), a youngish Orc stands quietly, a leatherbound book in his hands. He looks intelligent, but also has soft features and a nice smile, which he quickly flashes at you. Finally, there's a massive beat of an Orc holding a blade that could cleave horses in half with one blow leans against a wall. You recognize him as Ironsoul, a fantastic warrior notorious for spending large amounts of time in brothels in the company of Orcs who choose to have an adventurous life working in the brothel rather than on the battlefield. > You talk to the dancing Orc You walk over to the dancing orc, and smile. "Hello." "Hi." She replies cheerfully. "I am Chieftain Mazkil." She giggles. "Obviously. I make sure I know the name of the Chieftain." "Ah. Good." You reply, awkwardly. You realize while you're very skilled and courageous in the art of warfare, you suck at flirting. Thankfully, she's better and very interested. "I am Sarunt. So, do you want to get a drink, Mazkil?" You nod eagerly, and head over to the drink stand. > You continue spending time with Sarunt You spend the next few hours talking with your newfound mate. Sarunt is quite intelligent and flirty, almost your exact opposite. You'll make sure that your relationship continues and develops into what could be a prosperous marriage. > Four Weeks Later... You sit on your throne, resting your head on your blade as Thraka Flameborn and Elder Dokt tell you about the village's state of affairs. "There's been a change in the management of the College of Alexandria. They've begun to accept Orc students." Thraka says to you. "Well, this is very good for racial relations, but what do the Red Blades care?" "There are many more profitable jobs that can be found if you work in the College. We could greatly improve their lives." "These jobs would take these people away from profiting the Red Blades, cost massive amounts of money, and mots likely they wouldn't receive these jobs for being Orcs. These students wouldn't be able to get the jobs, and they wouldn't be taught how to farm or fight, so when they came back here without jobs, they couldn't work here." "The Elder exaggerates greatly. There's plenty of work ot be found, especially with Orcs. Learning at the College of Alexandria would mean that our children would have better lives." You briefly consider the thought. Perhaps the Young Orcs would have better lives in and after the College, but it would definitely take away from the tribe's size, and perhaps the Orcs would be left untrained in manual labor or the ability to find actual work after discrimination stops them from finding educated work. > You send young Orcs to the College You decide to send these young Orcs to the College. You want them to have a better life than you and your ancestors have had, and make sure the Orcs aren't left out in the education world. > Five Weeks Later... You sit on the Throne, looking over hunting cycles. Gemin's Point is good hunting ground, but it could lead to fighting between the Dead Bone Tribe, who also uses the area. You could send hunters there, not send hunters there, or the third and by far the greatest option, fall on your own sword and end the painful trial worse than any other Orc has endured of doing crop rotations or hunting areas. You hear yells outside, and the doors to the town hall is kicked open. A group of six Orcs appear, dragging a brutally beaten man with them. "Chieftain! We have found a man in our territory, the goat fucker." One of the Orcs yells, tossing the man in front of you. "He's been hunting our deer and boar for weeks, it seems." "Explain yourself, human, before I release my warriors to tear you apart." "Sir, please." He says, begging. "I'm from the village of Eckleglade. It was destroyed by an Elvish Assault Party, and we were forced to flee. Many of us headed to the hills and mountains, to hide from Elvish attacks, and formed small camps up there. I was only trying to hunt to feed my family." "Sir, orders?" One of the Orcs asks you. "Shall I take his head?" > You have the Trespasser executed "Hmmm... Where are the camps, trespasser?" "Sir, if I tell you..." "Don't preside to know who I am or what I'll do, trespasser." "They're at the Morinspeck Mines, sir." "Good." You stand, and swing your blade. The Man doesn't have time to blink before his head falls to the ground, rolling onto the floor. You turn to your men. "Send warriors up to Morinspeck Miens. Force them out, and kill anyone who resists or refuses to go." "Yes, Chieftain." They say cheerily, running off to find armor and weapons. "Well, that takes care of that problem." You think, kicking the head aside. > Five Weeks Later... "Chieftain! Chieftain!" "Yes?" You ask. You're met with a young Orc, a cousin of yours, who reminds you of Gruzub. You feel a twang of guilt, before deciding that in honor of Gruzub, you're going to kill this Orc if he brings up something like the placement of the new well or whether to build the new stable of stone or wood. "There's a disaster up at the Kes Nests." "Disaster? That's a strong word." "It's accurate. A group of Zombies have engaged a Red Dragon perched on the mountain." "If Death and Destruction met on a Road." You quote, remembering one of the few books you read as a child. "What?" The Orc grunts. "The Poem, where the Grim Reaper meets the Mother of Dragons on a road. They debate their roles, with the Grim Reaper saying how his job is necessary ot prevent overpopulation, while the Mother of Dragons says that she prevents empires from wiping out all... What the fuck am I doing? I'm not explaining a children's poem to you." "Sorry Chieftain. The Warriors are suggesting you lead a party up there." "To do what?" The Orc shrugs. > You lead an army up to the Kes Nests "Assemble the warriors." You say. "Get me a group of sixty warriors who are hungry for blood." You have the group assembled, and quickly begin making your way up the mountain. About halfway up, you begin to regret it. "It's cold, my feet hurt and I'm fucking tired." You grunt as you trudge up the mountain. "Damn right, Mazkil." Urug Eaglebow says. You look further up the mountain, and hear the howls and rasps of the dead as well as the roars and screeches of the dragon. There's few dragons up here, so you presume this Red Dragon fighting is Mont Pre'Igni Rubrum, a near unpronounceable name, or the Volcano of Gargarum. The Undead are no doubt deserters from the Necromancer's Army. You reach the top of mountain, at the edge of a crater. At the center, a large group of two dozen undead soldiers armed with spears and swords are attempting to kill the dragon. It seems the undead are very unmatched. > You fight both the Dragon and the Undead You charge forward, your blade swinging. "Go! Send the dead back to their graves and the dragon to Gorgok's Trophy Room!" You behead one of the undead, its rotting skull flying through the air. You feel a blade slash your back, before a jet of flame sets you alight, melting your skull. > You death You let out a pitiful scream as your life is taken from you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Assemble the warriors." You say. "Get me a group of sixty warriors who are hungry for blood." You have the group assembled, and quickly begin making your way up the mountain. About halfway up, you begin to regret it. "It's cold, my feet hurt and I'm fucking tired." You grunt as you trudge up the mountain. "Damn right, Mazkil." Urug Eaglebow says. You look further up the mountain, and hear the howls and rasps of the dead as well as the roars and screeches of the dragon. There's few dragons up here, so you presume this Red Dragon fighting is Mont Pre'Igni Rubrum, a near unpronounceable name, or the Volcano of Gargarum. The Undead are no doubt deserters from the Necromancer's Army. You reach the top of mountain, at the edge of a crater. At the center, a large group of two dozen undead soldiers armed with spears and swords are attempting to kill the dragon. It seems the undead are very unmatched. > You attack the Undead "Send the dead back to their graves!" You roar, charging into battle. You swing your blade, beheading a rotting head and sending it through the air. You stab another through the heart, killing him instantly. You headbutt another, with such strength that the spine breaks and the zombie collapses on the ground. The undead are so unmatched that they're wiped out within seconds. You turn, to the snarling face of a dragon. It's voice, a low growl, shakes your very core. "Orcs... Why have you come to my home?" "I... I came to help." You say nervously. "I wanted to make sure this fight doesn't move into my territory." "A wise move, mortal. Your assistance was unnecessary, but polite. Please, let me give you a gift." The Dragon turns and stomps away into a cave. A few minutes later, it comes back. It opens its mouth, letting golden coins and gems fall out. Not a massive amount, but enough to fund the building of a new well and to get new bows for the hunters. "Thank you, mighty dragon." You say. "Of course." You bow, and begin trudging down the mountain. > One Month Later... You walk up a mountain, trudging through the harsh snow. You're cold despite being wrapped in furs and leathers, and you really need to piss, but you know that if you tried, your dick would freeze off. You lost three farmers and a dozen goats to a Frost Troll wandering down from the mountain in the cold, icy winter that's just started. You're taking a five war parties of twenty warriors each to wipe out any trolls up in the mountains. You lead the main war party of the best warriors who wish to target the cave system most likely to hold sheltering trolls. Wind and snow begins to block your view. You know you need to find shelter soon. > You hunker down in the cold You drop down, putting up whatever tents you have. You crawl inside, wrapping furs and leathers around you. You hope the storm clears up soon. Within an hour and a half, the cold is so brutal that you lose all feeling. The snow's bad you have no idea where you're going. After four hours of waiting, you feel a sudden sensation of warmth. You begin unstrapping your armor to cool down. You're hot and tired. A quick nap in the snow would be nice...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk up a mountain, trudging through the harsh snow. You're cold despite being wrapped in furs and leathers, and you really need to piss, but you know that if you tried, your dick would freeze off. You lost three farmers and a dozen goats to a Frost Troll wandering down from the mountain in the cold, icy winter that's just started. You're taking a five war parties of twenty warriors each to wipe out any trolls up in the mountains. You lead the main war party of the best warriors who wish to target the cave system most likely to hold sheltering trolls. Wind and snow begins to block your view. You know you need to find shelter soon. > You move to the nearest Cave system to escape the cold You quickly speed up, heading towards a cave. You manage to find it within ten minutes, managing to take shelter. You rush inside, heading quickly deeper into the cave. You eventually find a point where you're sheltered for the most part from the freezing winds and snow. You feel warm air behind you, and you turn. A massive bear stands in front of you. It swings its paw, smacking you into a wall, leaving massive scratches across your chest plate. The bear is quickly beheaded by the warriors, stabbed repeatedly through the body. It's fur is quickly removed and the Orcs wrap it around themselves. > You search the cave for the Trolls You stand, brushing snow and some blood off your chest plate, and begin heading down one of the tunnels. The Orcs light torches, brightening up the tunnel walls. You raise your longsword, watching the walls. Shadows dance, but you see no trolls. Eventually, you come to an opening, where it opens into a massive chamber. Inside are four massive humanoid figures wrapped in bear furs. "Trolls!" You loudly whisper. The Trolls are eating several dead goats which have been brutally town apart. You slowly approach, your sword raised. When you get close enough, you swing. Your blade swings, slashing through the ankles of one of them. You stab the falling troll through the side, slicing open its organs. You pull out your blade and block a swing of a stone cudgel from a troll. The Orcs quickly attack, stabbing through the legs and groin of them, killing them quickly. The Trolls collapse on the ground, where they're hacked apart by the Orcs. "Good job, Orcs. Somebody start a fire. We'll take shelter from the cold, here." > Three Months Later... The Red Blades have survived another winter. Once again, Thraka Flameborn and Elder Dokt stand to give you an endless stream of tasks to sort out. The main three are the Farok Mines, the problem of excess warriors and the growing worship of Ka. "Chieftain! We have unearthed a massive iron and coal mine down the mountain, the Farok Mines. It was used by men to supply the war machine, but was abandoned because it was left undefended and abandoned by man. Still, you have excess Orc Workers who could head down to the mines to work, with only a small amount of the profits taken being given to the Kingdom of Man in payment for using the mine. It would mean working for the Kingdom of Man, but could prove very profitable for the village." Thraka says. "We still have mines up the mountain, Orc mines. We don't need to come crawling to the Kingdom of Man in order for a pittance of iron and coal. They'll be able to make more profit in the Orc Mines." Elder Dokt says. > You send Workers to work in the Farok Mines You decide that sending the workers to work in the Farok Mines is the best idea. These Workers make a small profit, but this strengthens your relationship with the industrialization complex and the Kingdom of Man. > You continue The next issue is the issue of excess warriors. The Red Blades are producing excess warriors, all young, bloodthirsty warriors who wish to fight. You can send them to fight with the Raiders, the Orcs who fight against the Kingdom of Man's expansion into Orc territory and their taking advantage of Orc Tribes and Villages. You could also send them to work as Mercenaries for the Kingdom of Man in the Man-Elf War. > You send them to work as Raiders You send your excess warriors to join the raiders. They'll fight for Orc honor and to defend the Orcs from exploitation and expansion by the Kingdom of Man. > You continue The next and final issue is the spread of a new religion. The worship of Ka, a monotheistic Creator God, has grown popular among young Orcs for reasons you're not sure. This is leading people away from the worship of the many Gods, especially Gorgok. > You ban the religion of Ka You ban the religion of Ka quickly. Its spread is stopped, and although some villagers worship him in private, most abandon him in favor of Gorgok and many. > One Month Later... You walk through the village, watching the villagers. You're tired of fighting and making decisions, so you're heading home. You reach the large chieftain's hut. > You go inside You walk inside, and are met by a small, thin figure in a dress that is far too fancy for an Orc. "Ah! Mazkil! You're home." "Sarunt! Good to see you!" You pull him into an embrace, almost crushing the figure. "So? How goes work? Did you sort out the crop rotations for spring..." "If you mention crop rotations I kill you." Sarunt laughs. "OK then. What about the Kingdom of Man?" "What about them?" "Do we fear invasion?" "Perhaps." "Well, enough sad news. I have some news of my own." "Go on." You raise an eyebrow, beckoning for her to continue. "Mazkil, I'm pregnant." A rush of emotions hits you immediately. Confusion, annoyance, fear, joy, exhileration, and many more. You realize she's staring at you, so you pick to express the emotion that won't make her start crying. "That's fantastic!" You say. "This is great! Have you visited the Shaman?" "Yes, Mazkil." "What do they think, boy or girl?" "The Shamans don't know shit, Mazkil. They just guess and get it right half the time." "Ah, well this is..." You hear screams outside. Fuck. You grab your blade, and raise it. > You head outside to investigate. You walk outside, and are met with an Orc child lying on the road, his face bloodied. A large Orc stands above him, who spits. "Pickpockets. I fucking hate them." He mutters loudly. "Who the fuck are you and why shouldn't I kill you?" "I am Grung Deatheater. I am part of the honor guard for Chieftain Pike." "Chieftain Pike? Why the fuck is...?" "Chieftain, we have a visitor. Or visitors, I should say." A voice cries. "Yes? Who is it?" You ask, turning to Elder Dokt. The old man brushes dust off his armor, and struggles to stay standing under the weight of it. Perhaps you should suggest he replace his heavy armor with some nice silk robes. "Chieftain Pike of the Vengeful Wolves is here, with Chieftain Sozin of the Burning Rage and Chieftain Gorgutz of the Evil Suns." You look back at the massive honor guard member. and shrug and head quickly back to the Main Hall. A group of twenty Orcs, with three massive figures at the front, are waiting for you. "Ah! Chieftain Mazkil! We're preparing a war party to launch a raid on the Kingdom of Man's army stationed at Rubgard. They recently launched a raid against three nearby Orc Villages to take any weapons of war. They're castrating our people. We need to wipe them out to the last man. End their stranglehold on our people. We would like you and your warriors to join us." "Sir, this is the perfect chance to fight and fend off the brutal grasp of the Kingdom of Man and free our people." Elder Dokt says, with more bloodlust than you'd expect from the ageing man. You wonder if you should enter the war that's about to begin on the side of the Orcs. Perhaps you've already integrated into the Kingdom of Man far too much to allow yourself to attack them. Perhaps it's best you don't attack. > You don't join the Orcs in rising up against the Empire of Mankind A week later, a regiment of soldiers for the Kingdom of Man arrive, led by a large man in plate armor with a red cloak with a golden dragon on it. He enters the Main Hall, bowing as he approaches your throne. "Greetings, Chieftain Mazkil. I am Sir Ignate. I was chosen by our Royal King Alexander to thank you for your refusal to attack the Kingdom's towns, cities and men. I am happy to offer you a proposal, that if you give troops and support to the Kingdom's counter-attack to wipe out the aggressors. If you accept this proposal you shall be taken on as a vassal for the Kingdom and receive our full financial and military support to allow for your expansion into aggressor territory. Will you accept our proposal, Chieftain Mazkil?" > You join the Kingdom of Mankind in repelling the Orcs The March of Progress "Yes. Yes, I will join the Kingdom of Man in their fight against the aggressors." "Good. Fantastic, even. I'll bring this message to King Alexander. I'll make sure you''re rewarded for this, Sir. I promise you, this will help your people. Our first military action is to lead an attack on the village of the main aggressor, the Vengeful Wolves. I assume you'll help us wipe out the Vengeful Wolves' miitaryforces?" "Yes, of course." "Good, I look forward to fighting with you on the battlefield." > The next night... Your stand at the edge of the Vengeful Wolves' Village, next to Sir Ignate. "Storm the camp. Don't kill children at any cost, nor the non-combatants." You say loudly to your allies. "Sir Ignate, what's the plan for the village when the fighting has finished? Long term, I mean." "The village and its surrounding territory will become a conquered territory for the Kingdom. We'll have a small fort built here to maintain control, but otherwise we'll try to make sure the transition of power is as smooth as possible." You nod. "Alright. Everyone ready?" "Yes, Chieftain." The chorus of voices come back from your Orc, while the Men exclude the chieftain part of the reply. "Alright. Let's do this. CHARGE!" You roar. You begin moving as fast as you can, your longsword raised. The Warriors of the Vengeful Wolves are clearly unprepared, having spent the previous night drinking and feasting to celebrate their recent victories in the spate of ambushes and assaults of the Kingdom. Still, Orcs are Orcs, and Orcs are always ready to fight. There's a rush of Orcs, some missing armor or only fighting with daggers or even fists, from the buildings. You swing your blade, catching one in the head and tearing his helmet off. You stab, going straight through the throat. You headbutt another Orc, sending him sprawling to the ground, where you quickly hack him apart. You thrust your blade, going though the belly of one of the Orcs. You swing, hack, slash, stab, thrust, parry block and behead for a good few minutes. The Orcs are aggressive fighters, which only means they're prone to more mistakes and leaving themselves more open to blows. You and your forces and allies use this to your advantage, quickly wiping out the militant population there. After the fighting has ceased, the Men begin searching from house to house for any soldiers to capture and weapons to be confiscated, as well as presumably anything to be looted. You see a bloodstained Sir Ignate walking among the carnage, laughing. "Well done, Chieftain Mazkil. You warriors preformed admirably. We'll have this war finished in no time and I'll be able to head back to the Elves. I'm sure they miss me, and they definitely miss my blade." He laughs. You nod, barely listening. You feel a pang of guilt for killing your fellow Orcs, not even in self defense. "We have a few fights left, Chieftain Mazkil. After that, you can settle down to your village. Then, we'll be finished our work together." > You continue Over the next few weeks, the Orc Aggressors begin raiding and striking against the Kingdom's Forces. As Orcs, your forces are used to counter these raids and ambushes, with mixed success. Eventually, one of your scouts succeeds. "Chieftain! I've found where the main Orc force is staying." He says proudly. "Where?" "The Fields of Gorgok." "The Fields of Gorgok? Ha! A fitting place for our final battle to take place. Send a message to Sir Ignates. We're going to war." > You wage War! You march forward accompanied by a massive force of Men and Orcs. The Royal Army, Red Blades Tribe, River-born Tribe, Dusk Hunters Tribe and various Orc, Human, Dark Elf and Dwarven Mercenaries heading forward to wage war. You have the main force of footmen accompanied by your best warriors and the Knights from the Kingdom of Mankind. There are also large groups of archers and a calvary of horse units, moving forward towards the enemy. After a few hours of marching, you see them. Hundreds of massive tents dot the field. You hear their lookouts blow their horns, waking the Orcs in time to prepare for the upcoming assault. Their will be no surprise assault today, you know. You raise your longsword. The blade is freshly sharpened. "Charge!" You roar, in unison with Sir Ignate and several other leaders of the army. You rush forward, moving forward with immense speed. The force of military wrath that you and leading storms forward as the Orcs appear, weapons drawn and enshrined in their armor. You charge into them, an unstoppable force smashing into an unmovable object. "DIE!" You roar, swinging your blade. You swing your sword, hacking off a limb that goes flying. You knee another figure and smash your hilt repeatedly into his face until it's nothing but pulp. You swing again, cutting open an Orc's stomach after it breaks through the chain mail armor. You swing again, opening a massive gash in the side of an Orc's face. You parry a strike and block another, before charging into battle with ferocity. You elbow an Orc in the face, smashing open bone and gristle with the force of your strike. You block an axe swing and remove the arm of the Orc holding the axe. You swing again, hacking off a leg and dropping an orc to one knee, allowing you to behead the Orc. You hack and swing, roaring with anger. "Chieftain! Orders?" One of your Orcs screams. Time to take command. > You attempt to regroup and target the Chieftains You blow a bone horn, and the Red Blades regroup around you. "Target the Chieftains!" You roar, charging forward. You sprint forward, dodging spears and arrows. Eventually, you find the Chieftains, clustered together defending against an advance of enemies approaching. You roar as you and the Red Blades strike. You find the leader of this entire army, Chieftain Pike. Chieftain Pike roars, swinging his blade at you. You block the blow, ducking under another swing. You get in under Pike's reach, and headbutt him, before leaning in. You bite his throat, tearing it out. Blood flows from him as he groans, falling backwards. You roar, turning and stabbing the next chieftain through the throat. You swing again, beheading another Chieftain. Within a few seconds, the entire group of Chieftains are dead. You pick up Chieftain Pike's horn, and blow it. A loud noise erupts from the horn, and you begin to roar. "Orcs! Your Chieftains are dead! Flee now or be wiped out!" The Orcs begin to panic, turning and rushing off. They drop weapons and armor in favor of the much needed speed to flee the area. The Orcs armies are routed and quickly leave. The few that remain are quickly struck down by the soldiers. "Victory!" You roar. > The enemy is vanquished! You stand on the field of battle, the bodies of Orcs and Men all around you. You wipe sweat from your brow. Sir Ignates rides up on horseback. "We've done it!" Sir Ignates laughs. "This land is all now King Alexander's! No one can oppose him! Hail the King! Don't worry, Mazkil. I'll make sure you're rewarded. Your village will benefit from this, I swear that to you." You look upon the corpses of your former allies, a feeling of betrayal in your mouth that you haven't tasted since Gruzub's death. You spit and shake your head. No, you did the right thing. You fought to give your tribe a future. You have succeeded. > Five Years Later... The Village has grown in the past ten years. Sir Ignates and King Alexander kept their word. The village is three times as large, although it has quite a large human population. It's the capital of the massive territory of Orc land, and is the Centre for a massive trade empire. The Red Blades have taken massive amounts of power, being essential components of the Kingdom of Man. The village is prosperous. You've done some great work for the Empire. You're now Lord Mazkil, Sir Mazkil, Chieftain Mazkil and Mazkil the Light-Bringer in response to the massive round of innovation you've brought about. That makes you laugh. You've only been on this Earth twenty five years, and look at all you've done. The World is good. You've heard rumors of a Necromancer rising and Orc rebellions that could occur, but those are small annoyances. Hell, you're glad for them, for it'll keep you busy. You sit on your throne, and the door is pushed open by a small figure cradling two tiny figures. "Sarunt!" You cry. Sarunt, your wife, carries two small children towards you; A five year old human and a three year old Orc. "Mazkil! Gruzub and Durzul miss you." You smile as you pick up your children. You look out through the open Main Hall and smile. You've saved the Red Blades and made your own future. The World is in your hands.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You march forward accompanied by a massive force of Men and Orcs. The Royal Army, Red Blades Tribe, River-born Tribe, Dusk Hunters Tribe and various Orc, Human, Dark Elf and Dwarven Mercenaries heading forward to wage war. You have the main force of footmen accompanied by your best warriors and the Knights from the Kingdom of Mankind. There are also large groups of archers and a calvary of horse units, moving forward towards the enemy. After a few hours of marching, you see them. Hundreds of massive tents dot the field. You hear their lookouts blow their horns, waking the Orcs in time to prepare for the upcoming assault. Their will be no surprise assault today, you know. You raise your longsword. The blade is freshly sharpened. "Charge!" You roar, in unison with Sir Ignate and several other leaders of the army. You rush forward, moving forward with immense speed. The force of military wrath that you and leading storms forward as the Orcs appear, weapons drawn and enshrined in their armor. You charge into them, an unstoppable force smashing into an unmovable object. "DIE!" You roar, swinging your blade. You swing your sword, hacking off a limb that goes flying. You knee another figure and smash your hilt repeatedly into his face until it's nothing but pulp. You swing again, cutting open an Orc's stomach after it breaks through the chain mail armor. You swing again, opening a massive gash in the side of an Orc's face. You parry a strike and block another, before charging into battle with ferocity. You elbow an Orc in the face, smashing open bone and gristle with the force of your strike. You block an axe swing and remove the arm of the Orc holding the axe. You swing again, hacking off a leg and dropping an orc to one knee, allowing you to behead the Orc. You hack and swing, roaring with anger. "Chieftain! Orders?" One of your Orcs screams. Time to take command. > You regroup and charge the enemy You quickly regroup, blowing a bone horn to bring the Red Blades together. "Come on! There is blood to be spilt! Ha!" You break into a charge, moving quickly forward. You swing your sword, sending a head through the air. After about a minute, you've pushed your way past the Orc lines and got yourself surrounded. You take an arrow to the shoulder and fall backwards, before you take a spear through the throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You march forward accompanied by a massive force of Men and Orcs. The Royal Army, Red Blades Tribe, River-born Tribe, Dusk Hunters Tribe and various Orc, Human, Dark Elf and Dwarven Mercenaries heading forward to wage war. You have the main force of footmen accompanied by your best warriors and the Knights from the Kingdom of Mankind. There are also large groups of archers and a calvary of horse units, moving forward towards the enemy. After a few hours of marching, you see them. Hundreds of massive tents dot the field. You hear their lookouts blow their horns, waking the Orcs in time to prepare for the upcoming assault. Their will be no surprise assault today, you know. You raise your longsword. The blade is freshly sharpened. "Charge!" You roar, in unison with Sir Ignate and several other leaders of the army. You rush forward, moving forward with immense speed. The force of military wrath that you and leading storms forward as the Orcs appear, weapons drawn and enshrined in their armor. You charge into them, an unstoppable force smashing into an unmovable object. "DIE!" You roar, swinging your blade. You swing your sword, hacking off a limb that goes flying. You knee another figure and smash your hilt repeatedly into his face until it's nothing but pulp. You swing again, cutting open an Orc's stomach after it breaks through the chain mail armor. You swing again, opening a massive gash in the side of an Orc's face. You parry a strike and block another, before charging into battle with ferocity. You elbow an Orc in the face, smashing open bone and gristle with the force of your strike. You block an axe swing and remove the arm of the Orc holding the axe. You swing again, hacking off a leg and dropping an orc to one knee, allowing you to behead the Orc. You hack and swing, roaring with anger. "Chieftain! Orders?" One of your Orcs screams. Time to take command. > You pull back and allow the Kingdom of Man to do the brunt of the fighting You blow a bone horn, and the Red Blades retreat. You pull back from the fighting, allowing the soldiers to move forward. You do some light support work, defending flanks and archers, which allows your forces to conquer over the Orcs. The Orc Tribes are slowly beaten back through a battle of attrition. Eventually, the Soldiers of the Kingdom of Man have begun to cease their aggression in their attacking. The Orcs are clearly beaten and bruised, unable to fight on for much longer. > You charge! "Charge! Strike them down!" You scream, charging forward. You rush forward. You swing your blade, and your forces crash into the Orcs. The Orcs begin to break away, dropping weapons and swords to retreat from the battle. Some stay behind, but you make very short work of them. You roar as you swing your blade, slicing through flesh and shattering armor to wipe out all those who are left. "Victory!" You roar.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A week later, a regiment of soldiers for the Kingdom of Man arrive, led by a large man in plate armor with a red cloak with a golden dragon on it. He enters the Main Hall, bowing as he approaches your throne. "Greetings, Chieftain Mazkil. I am Sir Ignate. I was chosen by our Royal King Alexander to thank you for your refusal to attack the Kingdom's towns, cities and men. I am happy to offer you a proposal, that if you give troops and support to the Kingdom's counter-attack to wipe out the aggressors. If you accept this proposal you shall be taken on as a vassal for the Kingdom and receive our full financial and military support to allow for your expansion into aggressor territory. Will you accept our proposal, Chieftain Mazkil?" > You don't join the Kingdom of Mankind in repelling the Orcs You decide against joining the Kingdom of Mankind. You don't wish to take up sides in this war. This proves to be one of your worse ideas, as both Orcs and Men have no issues raiding your village for supplies whenever they wish. Battles spill into your territory and any hunters or gatherers you send out are struck down by both sides. Your tribe begins to fall apart. Your men begin to flee, either signing up on either side of the war to take up arms against their enemies, becoming mercenaries or simply fleeing to escape the territory. This leads to the death of the Red Blades. You've failed as Chieftain.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next and final issue is the spread of a new religion. The worship of Ka, a monotheistic Creator God, has grown popular among young Orcs for reasons you're not sure. This is leading people away from the worship of the many Gods, especially Gorgok. > You don't ban the religion of Ka You decide against banning the religion of Ka. The religion spreads slightly throughout the village, but fails to gain a significant foot hole among the Red Blades.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next issue is the issue of excess warriors. The Red Blades are producing excess warriors, all young, bloodthirsty warriors who wish to fight. You can send them to fight with the Raiders, the Orcs who fight against the Kingdom of Man's expansion into Orc territory and their taking advantage of Orc Tribes and Villages. You could also send them to work as Mercenaries for the Kingdom of Man in the Man-Elf War. > You send them to work as Mercenaries You send your excess warriors to fight as Mercenaries, fighting against the Elvish Kingdom for the Kingdom of Man, sending their profits home to the Red Blades.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Red Blades have survived another winter. Once again, Thraka Flameborn and Elder Dokt stand to give you an endless stream of tasks to sort out. The main three are the Farok Mines, the problem of excess warriors and the growing worship of Ka. "Chieftain! We have unearthed a massive iron and coal mine down the mountain, the Farok Mines. It was used by men to supply the war machine, but was abandoned because it was left undefended and abandoned by man. Still, you have excess Orc Workers who could head down to the mines to work, with only a small amount of the profits taken being given to the Kingdom of Man in payment for using the mine. It would mean working for the Kingdom of Man, but could prove very profitable for the village." Thraka says. "We still have mines up the mountain, Orc mines. We don't need to come crawling to the Kingdom of Man in order for a pittance of iron and coal. They'll be able to make more profit in the Orc Mines." Elder Dokt says. > You don't send Workers to work in the Farok Mines You decide to send your workers to the Orc Mines instead of the Farok Mines. They make more profit than they would've in the Farok Mines, strengthening and improving the village and Red Blades as a whole.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk up a mountain, trudging through the harsh snow. You're cold despite being wrapped in furs and leathers, and you really need to piss, but you know that if you tried, your dick would freeze off. You lost three farmers and a dozen goats to a Frost Troll wandering down from the mountain in the cold, icy winter that's just started. You're taking a five war parties of twenty warriors each to wipe out any trolls up in the mountains. You lead the main war party of the best warriors who wish to target the cave system most likely to hold sheltering trolls. Wind and snow begins to block your view. You know you need to find shelter soon. > You begin the long trek back to the village You turn around, and begin trekking back to the village. Within a half hour, the cold is so brutal that you lose all feeling. The snow's bad you have no idea where you're going. After two hours of walking, you feel a sudden sensation of warmth. You begin unstrapping your armor to cool down. You're hot and tired. A quick nap in the snow would be nice...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Assemble the warriors." You say. "Get me a group of sixty warriors who are hungry for blood." You have the group assembled, and quickly begin making your way up the mountain. About halfway up, you begin to regret it. "It's cold, my feet hurt and I'm fucking tired." You grunt as you trudge up the mountain. "Damn right, Mazkil." Urug Eaglebow says. You look further up the mountain, and hear the howls and rasps of the dead as well as the roars and screeches of the dragon. There's few dragons up here, so you presume this Red Dragon fighting is Mont Pre'Igni Rubrum, a near unpronounceable name, or the Volcano of Gargarum. The Undead are no doubt deserters from the Necromancer's Army. You reach the top of mountain, at the edge of a crater. At the center, a large group of two dozen undead soldiers armed with spears and swords are attempting to kill the dragon. It seems the undead are very unmatched. > You attack the Dragon "I want the Dragon's head in Gorgok's treasure room!" You roar. You charge forward, towards the dragon, ducking under a jet of flames. You stab forward, and with Gorgok's aim, your sword slides in between a missing scale and stabs the dragon through the side. You pull out your blade and slice, making a small cut in the leathery wing. You wing your blade, knocking into the neck of the Dragon. With the combined army of Orcs and Undead behind you begin to slay the dragon. It's fire incinerates three zombies, and several weapons begin thrusting at the dragon's softer belly and face, cutting gouges and wounds. The dragon only lasts a few minutes of fighting, only killing three Orcs before its killed instantly, killing the beast. It's head thumps against the cold stone floor. "Ha! Have the dragon's skull taken and dragged down back to the village. I want it put above my throne." You turn to talk to the undead, but they've already began trudging further up the mountain. You wonder why they're leaving, but decide not to bother them. The dead have enough issues to be bothered by the living.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Chieftain! Chieftain!" "Yes?" You ask. You're met with a young Orc, a cousin of yours, who reminds you of Gruzub. You feel a twang of guilt, before deciding that in honor of Gruzub, you're going to kill this Orc if he brings up something like the placement of the new well or whether to build the new stable of stone or wood. "There's a disaster up at the Kes Nests." "Disaster? That's a strong word." "It's accurate. A group of Zombies have engaged a Red Dragon perched on the mountain." "If Death and Destruction met on a Road." You quote, remembering one of the few books you read as a child. "What?" The Orc grunts. "The Poem, where the Grim Reaper meets the Mother of Dragons on a road. They debate their roles, with the Grim Reaper saying how his job is necessary ot prevent overpopulation, while the Mother of Dragons says that she prevents empires from wiping out all... What the fuck am I doing? I'm not explaining a children's poem to you." "Sorry Chieftain. The Warriors are suggesting you lead a party up there." "To do what?" The Orc shrugs. > You do nothing "I'm not going to deal with that, Orc. I want you to go, and I genuinely mean this, fuck your mother and stop bothering me." The young orc runs off. Perhaps you were too mean to him. He reminds you of Gruzub, who you loved to degrade, insult and bully. You miss him so much. You sigh. Time to find a drink. Then, many, many more drinks.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit on the Throne, looking over hunting cycles. Gemin's Point is good hunting ground, but it could lead to fighting between the Dead Bone Tribe, who also uses the area. You could send hunters there, not send hunters there, or the third and by far the greatest option, fall on your own sword and end the painful trial worse than any other Orc has endured of doing crop rotations or hunting areas. You hear yells outside, and the doors to the town hall is kicked open. A group of six Orcs appear, dragging a brutally beaten man with them. "Chieftain! We have found a man in our territory, the goat fucker." One of the Orcs yells, tossing the man in front of you. "He's been hunting our deer and boar for weeks, it seems." "Explain yourself, human, before I release my warriors to tear you apart." "Sir, please." He says, begging. "I'm from the village of Eckleglade. It was destroyed by an Elvish Assault Party, and we were forced to flee. Many of us headed to the hills and mountains, to hide from Elvish attacks, and formed small camps up there. I was only trying to hunt to feed my family." "Sir, orders?" One of the Orcs asks you. "Shall I take his head?" > You have the Trespasser exiled "Hmmm... Where are the camps, trespasser?" "Sir, if I tell you..." "Don't preside to know who I am or what I'll do, trespasser." "They're at the Morinspeck Mines, sir." "Good. Go back there, and tell them to leave. I'll send warriors up there in a week. Anyone left there will be wiped out to the last man." "Yes, sir." "Go. If you're found in my land again, I'll make you beg I had killed you here." "Yes, sir." He nods, standing and quickly running out of the room." You watch him as he runs off. Well, that takes care of that issue.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit on the Throne, looking over hunting cycles. Gemin's Point is good hunting ground, but it could lead to fighting between the Dead Bone Tribe, who also uses the area. You could send hunters there, not send hunters there, or the third and by far the greatest option, fall on your own sword and end the painful trial worse than any other Orc has endured of doing crop rotations or hunting areas. You hear yells outside, and the doors to the town hall is kicked open. A group of six Orcs appear, dragging a brutally beaten man with them. "Chieftain! We have found a man in our territory, the goat fucker." One of the Orcs yells, tossing the man in front of you. "He's been hunting our deer and boar for weeks, it seems." "Explain yourself, human, before I release my warriors to tear you apart." "Sir, please." He says, begging. "I'm from the village of Eckleglade. It was destroyed by an Elvish Assault Party, and we were forced to flee. Many of us headed to the hills and mountains, to hide from Elvish attacks, and formed small camps up there. I was only trying to hunt to feed my family." "Sir, orders?" One of the Orcs asks you. "Shall I take his head?" > You leave the Trespasser go "Hmmm... Where are the camps, trespasser?" "Sir, if I tell you..." "Don't preside to know who I am or what I'll do, trespasser." "They're at the Morinspeck Mines, sir." "Good. Head back to your camps. I'm not going to harm a man for trying to feed his family." "Thank you! Thank you, sir!" The Man says, cupping his hands in praise. "I'm confused why you're still here." You say, and the man jumps to his feet and quickly runs off, out of the Great Hall.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit on the Throne, looking over hunting cycles. Gemin's Point is good hunting ground, but it could lead to fighting between the Dead Bone Tribe, who also uses the area. You could send hunters there, not send hunters there, or the third and by far the greatest option, fall on your own sword and end the painful trial worse than any other Orc has endured of doing crop rotations or hunting areas. You hear yells outside, and the doors to the town hall is kicked open. A group of six Orcs appear, dragging a brutally beaten man with them. "Chieftain! We have found a man in our territory, the goat fucker." One of the Orcs yells, tossing the man in front of you. "He's been hunting our deer and boar for weeks, it seems." "Explain yourself, human, before I release my warriors to tear you apart." "Sir, please." He says, begging. "I'm from the village of Eckleglade. It was destroyed by an Elvish Assault Party, and we were forced to flee. Many of us headed to the hills and mountains, to hide from Elvish attacks, and formed small camps up there. I was only trying to hunt to feed my family." "Sir, orders?" One of the Orcs asks you. "Shall I take his head?" > You welcome the Trespasser to join the village "Hmmm... Where are the camps, trespasser?" "Sir, if I tell you..." "Don't preside to know who I am or what I'll do, trespasser." "They're at the Morinspeck Mines, sir." "Good. Well, I'll give you a choice, trespasser. You leave my lands with the threat of death if you return, or you join the Red Blade Tribe as a Free Worker with no blood or legal connections to the tribe." "Sir?" "We have hunting grounds and farmlands that go unused. If you wish to work, I'll give you the chance to do so." "Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!" Over the next few days, the refugees from Morinspeck Mine arrive, and are given jobs so they can get food, water and beds in the village. > Two Weeks Later... Due to your choice in accepting the refugees from Morinspeck Mine, there are more refugees arriving. Most are humans from destroyed or attacked villages looking for a safe place to work, though a few are Wood or Dark Elves who do not wish to partake in the war. They're all requesting to take up work as Hunters, Farmers or Craftsmen in your village. > You allow them to join You welcome these refugees into your village, both for ethical and economic reasons. This allows your village to expand as your population experiences a boom.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Due to your choice in accepting the refugees from Morinspeck Mine, there are more refugees arriving. Most are humans from destroyed or attacked villages looking for a safe place to work, though a few are Wood or Dark Elves who do not wish to partake in the war. They're all requesting to take up work as Hunters, Farmers or Craftsmen in your village. > You don't allow them to join You decide enough is enough. You're not a safe haven for every coward and weakling who cowers from war.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit on your throne, resting your head on your blade as Thraka Flameborn and Elder Dokt tell you about the village's state of affairs. "There's been a change in the management of the College of Alexandria. They've begun to accept Orc students." Thraka says to you. "Well, this is very good for racial relations, but what do the Red Blades care?" "There are many more profitable jobs that can be found if you work in the College. We could greatly improve their lives." "These jobs would take these people away from profiting the Red Blades, cost massive amounts of money, and mots likely they wouldn't receive these jobs for being Orcs. These students wouldn't be able to get the jobs, and they wouldn't be taught how to farm or fight, so when they came back here without jobs, they couldn't work here." "The Elder exaggerates greatly. There's plenty of work ot be found, especially with Orcs. Learning at the College of Alexandria would mean that our children would have better lives." You briefly consider the thought. Perhaps the Young Orcs would have better lives in and after the College, but it would definitely take away from the tribe's size, and perhaps the Orcs would be left untrained in manual labor or the ability to find actual work after discrimination stops them from finding educated work. > You don't send young Orcs to the College You decide against sending away the Orcs. They wouldn't be able to learn important skills such as farming, fighting, hunting and cooking, only to be left with skills in money-handling or Magics that don't help them in their life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit on your throne in the Main Hall, in the midst of a feast to celebrate the death of Chieftain Dadic, your Great-Great-Great-Grandfather, who was brutally stabbed to death by Elven Assassins. Despite being unarmed, surprised and quite old, he put up a grand fight. Twenty Elves entered this very great hall to assassinate him, three went out. Thraka and Dokt stand on either side of you. For once, they both agree on what you should do, although Thraka's much more brutally honest. "Find a girl to fuck." He says. "What Thraka Flameborn means is..." "To get your dick inside a girl." Thraka laughs, to Dokt's embarrassment and frustration. "Chieftain, every Chieftain needs one to share their soul with. You need a mate." Dokt says. You survey the room. You spot a young Orc girl dancing in the crowd. She's small and cute, and you briefly make eye contact. She gives you a flirty wink. A pretty girl would do good to help you survive the cold winter nights. Making use of the drink and food is a tall warrior. Her head is cut short and she has a large, impressive blade on her side. A warrior is someone you could relate to and respect as a mate. One the opposite side (both of the room and orientation), a youngish Orc stands quietly, a leatherbound book in his hands. He looks intelligent, but also has soft features and a nice smile, which he quickly flashes at you. Finally, there's a massive beat of an Orc holding a blade that could cleave horses in half with one blow leans against a wall. You recognize him as Ironsoul, a fantastic warrior notorious for spending large amounts of time in brothels in the company of Orcs who choose to have an adventurous life working in the brothel rather than on the battlefield. > You talk to the feasting Orc You walk over to the feasting Orc and sit next to her. "Hello. Are you enjoying the food?" The Orc raises an eyebrow, decides you're not joking, and nods. "Yes, Chieftain." "I don't recognize you. What's your name?" "Dag. Dag Unbroken." "Unbroken? How do you get a title like that?" "I've broken every bone inside my body besides my right shin." "Fuck me." You say, obviously impressed. "I'm not opposed to the idea." Dag says. At that moment, you realize picking up warriors is a lot easier than you thought. > You continue spending time with Dag You spend the next few hours talking with your newfound mate. Dag is strong, though, aggressive and violent, which reminds you of a more "you" you. You'll make sure that your relationship continues and develops into what could be a prosperous marriage.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit on your throne in the Main Hall, in the midst of a feast to celebrate the death of Chieftain Dadic, your Great-Great-Great-Grandfather, who was brutally stabbed to death by Elven Assassins. Despite being unarmed, surprised and quite old, he put up a grand fight. Twenty Elves entered this very great hall to assassinate him, three went out. Thraka and Dokt stand on either side of you. For once, they both agree on what you should do, although Thraka's much more brutally honest. "Find a girl to fuck." He says. "What Thraka Flameborn means is..." "To get your dick inside a girl." Thraka laughs, to Dokt's embarrassment and frustration. "Chieftain, every Chieftain needs one to share their soul with. You need a mate." Dokt says. You survey the room. You spot a young Orc girl dancing in the crowd. She's small and cute, and you briefly make eye contact. She gives you a flirty wink. A pretty girl would do good to help you survive the cold winter nights. Making use of the drink and food is a tall warrior. Her head is cut short and she has a large, impressive blade on her side. A warrior is someone you could relate to and respect as a mate. One the opposite side (both of the room and orientation), a youngish Orc stands quietly, a leatherbound book in his hands. He looks intelligent, but also has soft features and a nice smile, which he quickly flashes at you. Finally, there's a massive beat of an Orc holding a blade that could cleave horses in half with one blow leans against a wall. You recognize him as Ironsoul, a fantastic warrior notorious for spending large amounts of time in brothels in the company of Orcs who choose to have an adventurous life working in the brothel rather than on the battlefield. > You talk to the reading Orc "I like him." You say, pointing to the reading Orc. "What, Sarunt? He's a male, he can't bear your children." Dokt says, annoyed. "Many Chieftains were adopted. Dadic, for fuck's sake." Dokt rolls his eyes, but nods. You stand from the throne, and walk down to Sarunt. You walk over to the reading Orc, and smile. "Hello." "Hello." He replies, looking up from his book. "I am Chieftain Mazkil." He chuckles. "I might spend far too much time in a book, but I still know enough to know who the Chieftain is." "Ah. Good." You reply, awkwardly. You realize while you're very skilled and courageous in the art of warfare, you suck at flirting. Thankfully, he's better and very interested. "So, do you want to get a drink, Mazkil?" You nod eagerly, and head over to the drink stand.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit on your throne in the Main Hall, in the midst of a feast to celebrate the death of Chieftain Dadic, your Great-Great-Great-Grandfather, who was brutally stabbed to death by Elven Assassins. Despite being unarmed, surprised and quite old, he put up a grand fight. Twenty Elves entered this very great hall to assassinate him, three went out. Thraka and Dokt stand on either side of you. For once, they both agree on what you should do, although Thraka's much more brutally honest. "Find a girl to fuck." He says. "What Thraka Flameborn means is..." "To get your dick inside a girl." Thraka laughs, to Dokt's embarrassment and frustration. "Chieftain, every Chieftain needs one to share their soul with. You need a mate." Dokt says. You survey the room. You spot a young Orc girl dancing in the crowd. She's small and cute, and you briefly make eye contact. She gives you a flirty wink. A pretty girl would do good to help you survive the cold winter nights. Making use of the drink and food is a tall warrior. Her head is cut short and she has a large, impressive blade on her side. A warrior is someone you could relate to and respect as a mate. One the opposite side (both of the room and orientation), a youngish Orc stands quietly, a leatherbound book in his hands. He looks intelligent, but also has soft features and a nice smile, which he quickly flashes at you. Finally, there's a massive beat of an Orc holding a blade that could cleave horses in half with one blow leans against a wall. You recognize him as Ironsoul, a fantastic warrior notorious for spending large amounts of time in brothels in the company of Orcs who choose to have an adventurous life working in the brothel rather than on the battlefield. > You talk to Ironsoul "I like him." You say, pointing to Ironsoul. "What, Ironsoul? He's a male, he can't bear your children." Dokt says, annoyed. "Many Chieftains were adopted. Dadic, for fuck's sake." Dokt rolls his eyes, but nods. You stand from the throne, and walk down to Ironsoul. "Hello. Ironsoul, is it?" You ask. "Dag. Dag Ironsoul. It's Dag to you, 'less I gotta call you Chieftain, Mazkil." "How are you, Dag?" You ask. Somehow, despite your ability to show courage in any fight, you abilities to get chicks aren't particularly good. Thankfully, Dag's just as crude. "Do you want something, Mazkil?" "I was just asking about you as a person. We don't get to talk much." Dag raises an eyebrow. "Are you trying to fuck me?" He asks indignantly. "Because I won't refuse a piece of ass, but I'm not going to whine about my day like a Man's wife." You smile. "That simplifies things."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next day, you walk along the street, Thraka and Doct off managing your work for a while. You survey your village. Children are brawling in the streets, the elders are drinking and the adults are working. Everything's good. You think to yourself. You notice a young Orc woman who's name you haven't learnt, and feel a pang in your heart as you notice how beautiful she is. You feel a pang in another place, but that's neither here nor there. You realize that one of, and perhaps the best, duty of the Chieftain is to have a heir to the throne and get married. You'll try find someone soon enough. Not today, though. You continue strolling around the village, before you notice at the edge of town, a trail of caravans approaching. You raise an eyebrow, as there are no scheduled caravans set to arrive over the next few days. You walk up, and to your surprise, notice the caravaneers are not the Orcs you're used to seeing. They're all men. Usually there's a few men mixed in with the Orcs that run the caravans. You walk over to the caravan. "Hey! Who are you, then?" You ask loudly. The Humans on board are wearing red cloth with gold Eagle symbols embroidered on them. "Greetings! I am Giorgio Lates. I am a merchant from the Kingdom of Mankind." "I recognize the sigil. What do you want?" "I am a merchant, kind sir. Orcs are famous for their steelwork, and I had the pleasure of working with some Orc Mercenaries. They're blades, axes and maces are unrivaled, except for Elvish blades, which are as easy to find as an honest merchant. Which, you so happen to have found." Giorgio says, winking. "You wish to buy blades?" "Buy? Not exactly. I doubt you have much use for my gold. I wish to swap, to barter, to trade." "For what?" "We have much to trade. Food, Drink, Steel, Iron, Wool, Jewelry, Gold, Silver and much, much more. We wish to open up a trade route between here and the Empire." Giorgio grins. You frown. Traders are prone to take advantage of humble villages like yours. The Village is also dedicated to crops, farm work and general self-sufficiency. To increase your smithing and weapons production, you'd need to sacrifice your self-sufficiency. Still, it could increase your village's profit and the standard of living. > You don't agree to trade with the Kingdom of Man "No. I will not sell the honor and heart of this village to some merchants only to be ripped off later." The Merchant's face falls and he immediately turns ratty. "Fine. Let this village become an abandoned ghost town in the hills that your children will be dying to get out off. Let's go!" The Merchant Caravans begins to turn around and leave. You know that you've saved your little town from being steam rolled by the massive trade machine of the Kingdom of Man.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You spot smoke just in the distance, where the raiders are presumably camped. "Orcs!" You loudly whisper. "To arms! We'll wipe out the fiends to the last man." You move forward slowly, further through the woods. You arrive at the edge of a small glade. There is a large opening where there's several dozen tents. A group of around thirty Orcs wearing chainmail armor and wielding axes, short swords and maces. You give a few hushed orders to various Orcs to target the various flanks to make sure not a single raider survives. Then, you raise your sword. "CHARGE!" You roar, sprinting forward. The Raiders are quickly taken by surprise, grabbing any nearby weapons and raising them in defense. You swing your sword, which bites into one of their necks and beheads him in one clean sweep. You kick a second to the floor with one swift kick to the head, knocking him to the floor. You raise your sword and stab downwards, going through the raider's stomach. Within a few seconds, the fighting is over. The raiders have been quickly wiped out to the last orc, leaving none alive. "This was quicker than I had hoped." One of the Orcs remarks. "Orders, Chieftain?" Another asks, turning to you. "Burn the tents, the bodies and take anything worth taking." You reply. "Yes, Chieftain Mazkil." Your men quickly begin removing armor, weapons and jewelry from the dead Orcs, and wrapping their corpses in tents. Once this is finished with all the corpses, they set the wrapped corpses alight, which quickly begin burning. You sniff the air, and smell the delicious smell of sizzling flesh. "Chieftain! I counted the amount of beds versus corpses. Twenty dead raiders, but there's over eighty beds." "There's more! We believe there's at least sixty more raiders off on a mission at the moment. Orders, Chieftain?" One of the Orcs, one of the very few archers you've brought, Kanim Darkwit, steps forward. "Sir. The Raiders will be hungry and tired. They'll be here soon. We can lay an ambush. There's a good vantage point in one of the trees..." "Coward! Where's your honor, boy?" Another Orc, Jakku Bearsbane, roars. "We're not abandoning all honor and reason in favor of hiding like does! We find the raiders, and wipe them out to the last man." > You lay an ambush "Darkwit. Your plan is good. Jakku, I'm not leading my men into a charge when we have the perfect trap right here." "Yes, Chieftain." Jakku nods. You have Darkwit hide in a vantage point in the trees, the bodies stacked into defensive walls to block enemy escape once they've entered the killzone. You have warriors hide at various points to be able to charge the killzone once the raiders have arrived. You patiently wait, hidden in bushes and undergrowth. One hour passes quickly, the second takes long, but after two and a half hours, the raiders are here. They march, three Caravans in tow, no doubt from a recent raid. They break into a jog when they sight the camp, heading straight into the killzone while confused and unprepared. "STRIKE!" You roar. You break into a run, swinging your blade. The Raiders are surrounded, and they're simply unprepared to face you. You swing your blade downwards, hacking off an arm, and headbutt a raider before running him through with your sword. You dodge an axe swing and cleave the Orc in half. You launch yourself into the fray, and hack a raider to death. The Raiders are beginning to turn and run now, but you slice the back of the legs of one of them and stab them through the chest, breaking through their armor and into the soft flesh beneath. The rest manage to make it past the junk walls you've set up and head off to find safety. "Chieftain! We are victorious!" Darkwit laughs happily. "Losses? Kills?" You ask. One of the scouts quickly begins tallying the dead, and turns to you. "Sir! We lost six men. They lost forty nine." Darkwit grins. "Yes! I told you my plan would work. We almost wiped them out and lost very few." "Yes. Have the scouts find our dead and bring them back to the village for the funeral pyre. Orcs, let's head home."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You spot smoke just in the distance, where the raiders are presumably camped. "Orcs!" You loudly whisper. "To arms! We'll wipe out the fiends to the last man." You move forward slowly, further through the woods. You arrive at the edge of a small glade. There is a large opening where there's several dozen tents. A group of around thirty Orcs wearing chainmail armor and wielding axes, short swords and maces. You give a few hushed orders to various Orcs to target the various flanks to make sure not a single raider survives. Then, you raise your sword. "CHARGE!" You roar, sprinting forward. The Raiders are quickly taken by surprise, grabbing any nearby weapons and raising them in defense. You swing your sword, which bites into one of their necks and beheads him in one clean sweep. You kick a second to the floor with one swift kick to the head, knocking him to the floor. You raise your sword and stab downwards, going through the raider's stomach. Within a few seconds, the fighting is over. The raiders have been quickly wiped out to the last orc, leaving none alive. "This was quicker than I had hoped." One of the Orcs remarks. "Orders, Chieftain?" Another asks, turning to you. "Burn the tents, the bodies and take anything worth taking." You reply. "Yes, Chieftain Mazkil." Your men quickly begin removing armor, weapons and jewelry from the dead Orcs, and wrapping their corpses in tents. Once this is finished with all the corpses, they set the wrapped corpses alight, which quickly begin burning. You sniff the air, and smell the delicious smell of sizzling flesh. "Chieftain! I counted the amount of beds versus corpses. Twenty dead raiders, but there's over eighty beds." "There's more! We believe there's at least sixty more raiders off on a mission at the moment. Orders, Chieftain?" One of the Orcs, one of the very few archers you've brought, Kanim Darkwit, steps forward. "Sir. The Raiders will be hungry and tired. They'll be here soon. We can lay an ambush. There's a good vantage point in one of the trees..." "Coward! Where's your honor, boy?" Another Orc, Jakku Bearsbane, roars. "We're not abandoning all honor and reason in favor of hiding like does! We find the raiders, and wipe them out to the last man." > You search out and lead a charge against the Raiders "Darkwit, go, take who you need and scout ahead for the raiders. Jakku, make sure the men are ready. We''re going to charge the raiders and wipe them out to the last orc." "Yes, Chieftain." Jakku barks, before running away. The Orcs quickly regroup as the scouts sprint off in search of the raiders. You wait with your allies for two hours, before one of the scouts breaks through the treeline. "Chieftain! They're coming! They were about an hours march away last I saw, but at the pace they were moving they're only half an hour away." "Good. Let's move. Orcs! Get ready to fight. In fifteen minutes, our swords'll be deep in Raider blood." The Orcs all bark responses in the affirmative, and you begin moving forward towards the raiders. It seems the scout under-exaggerated the raiders speed, because it takes twenty minute to finally meet the raiders. A massive group of Orcs, with three Merchant Caravans in tow, no doubt from a recent raid. "Orcs! Now is the time to spill blood! CHARGE!" You scream. You raise your sword, charging forward with your Orcs. The Raiders aren't prepared to fight, but they're still armed from their previous raid and they're still Orcs. You swing your blade downwards, hacking off an arm, and headbutt a raider before running him through with your sword. You dodge an axe swing and cleave the Orc in half. A Warhammer smacks you in the chest, launching you backwards. Your head bangs against a tree, and you stand and charge forward again. You launch yourself into the fray, and hack a raider to death. The Raiders are beginning to turn and run now, but you slice the back of the legs of one of them and stab them through the chest, breaking through their armor and into the soft flesh beneath. "Chieftain! We are victorious!" Jakku roars happily. "Losses? Kills?" You ask. One of the scouts quickly begins tallying the dead, and turns to you. "Sir! We lost thirteen men. They lost thirty seven." Jakku roars victoriously. "Yes! I told you we didn't need cowards tactics. We wiped them out and sent the rest running." "Yes. Have the scouts find our dead and bring them back to the village for the funeral pyre. Orcs, let's head home."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>To your surprise, Gruzub hesitates, before taking up fighting stance again, allowing you to gain a defensive position to defend your open throat and stop your demise. Your energy waning, you decide to take one final effort to defeat Gruzub. He swings his sword at your legs, attempting to floor you, but you block the shot and head butt him. He falls backwards, and you swing your blade, smacking into his head. His helmet flies into the air, leaving his head and neck unguarded. You know you don't have enough energy to continue fighting. > You let him regain his fighting stance He quickly regains his fighting stance, raising his weapon. The fight only lasts another minute, with you barely blocking the next few of his attacks. Eventually, he sweeps your legs and he falls to the ground. Gruzub raises his sword and swings it, smashing into your chest. You attempt to rise to Gruzub's surprise, so he quickly kicks you in the head, and you fall into unconsciousness... > You awaken You awaken in the Shaman's hut. You wounds are bandaged and you're covered in various ointments, creams and bandages meant to speed up healing. You groan, and get out of the bed. The Shaman walks over to you, checking your temperature. "You shouldn't be walking around." The Shaman says. "Fuck you." You grunt.e way." "I couldn't kill you. You deserve a much longer, slower death at the hand of someone not as strong and good-lucking as me." "Fuck you, Gruzub." You laugh. You grab the softest woolen tunic you can find and put it on. You walk outside, and wince at the bright son. You spot Gruzub, wearing freshly acquired beads and necklaces to indicate that he is the new chief. He grins when he sees you. "Mazkil!" He rushes over to you, and hugs you. You wince as his hug tightens, but manage to show no pain. "How's your new promotion?" You ask. "It's boring. Papa always made being a Chieftain out to be fighting, fucking, eating and drinking. I've just been given the job of organizing crop rotations." You laugh, and pat him on the back. "Sorry to hear. Thanks for not killing me, by th "Seriously, you should've won that fight." "Maybe." You shrug. "Tell me somebody at least shot that goddamn eagle." "It left before anyone could. And I was talking about when I lost my helmet." "I considered it, but decided that I'd prefer to let you organize the... what did you call it? Crop rotations?" "Yeah." You stand in silence for a few minutes, staring at the rising sun. "What do you plan to do, Mazkil? Will you stay here and help the tribe?" "No, the tribe is your place. I want to travel. The Kingdom of Man are desperate for new soldiers to help them fight the Elves." "Hmmm... When are you leaving?" "Soon. Very soon. I don't want to have to go through the whole goodbye deal with the tribe." "I understand." Once again, you brother pulls you in for a hug. "I'll miss you." > Three Days Later... You walk on the road, the village behind you. Your sword is one your back with a bag of some food, water and goods. The Kingdom of Man is recruiting soldiers for the Royal Army. They're planning to attack the Elves again, and want as many men as they can. You could receive good pay, free weapons and equipment and possibly make a name for yourself there. You've always hated the Elves, anyway. Time to become a Soldier. > You join the Royal Army The Path of the Soldier It takes three days to find the nearest Royal Army Fort, a large stone castle surrounded by a village and a large series of tents where the men stationed here are staying. When you arrive and say you wish to join up, you’re given a new steel sword, a large shield, some polished plate armor with the symbol of the king on the chest plate and a small starter’s wage. You’re told as an orc, they assume you’ve already trained in warfare; a racist, yet accurate assumption, so you’ll need no new training. You’re given a bed in Beast Regiment, which you’re told is the only regiment that can afford to take extra men. You quickly realize this is bullshit, as Beast Regiment is the only regiment to hold Orcs. You recognize Black Horn, Gold Tusk, Dead Eye, Iron Flame, God Killer, Hardclaw and Bearfoot Orcs all there,sitting around a hearth in a small stone barracks. One of the larger orcs, who wears a shiny helm with the Gold Dragon, the symbol of the King, on it. “Greetings, recruit. I am Captain Darruk. Name and tribe.” “Mazkil Boarsbane, Red Blade.” “Ah, the Red Blades are still alive, are they? Had a Red Blade a couple years back, who managed to behead a dragon. He just ran up, jabbed it in the eye a few times and took a swing. Darkin Dragaonskull. Hell of a sooldier. Perhaps you’ll be as good if you do what I say and don’t cause any fights, but make sure to end any we get in.” “Sure thing, sir.” You struggle with the sir part, but you assume it’ll get easy over time. “Sir? Ha, you’re already using sir. I think you’ll impress me, Mazkil.” You notice a massive Orc that towers over the rest of you, his armor covered with what you assume are kill notches. You make sure to keep an eye on him. You find your bed, and collapse on it. It only takes a few minutes before you're allowed to fall into a dull, dreamless sleep. > Two Weeks Later... You march through Elf territory with a little over 50 other Orcs, marching through a hilly area with some trees. You've been sent with Karn Deathreaper, the massive orc with the notched armor, to investigate a small Elf War Party. You've yet to experience any real combat, with your previous time here simply being maneuvering into flanking positions to force the enemy to retreat and moving forward. Still, the sun is particularly red, so you there'll be a battle today with Gorgok watching. "Orcs! Halt!" Karn screams, and you stop moving. Karn Deathreaper truly earned his name. The amount of enemies he's slain is among the hundreds if not thousands. He's a fearsome creature, and you can't wait to see him do battle. "The sun wishes us good luck. We'll do well in the battle." One of the Orcs near you says happily. "Cease your superstitions, Nagrak. We might not even fight today." Another replies. "One can hope." Nagrak eagerly replies. In the blink of an eye, a dozen Orcs are dead. You see six Elves standing on top of the hills, light golden armor and long blond hair holding bows. > You raise your shield in defense You raise your shield, and three arrows thuds into it. "Orcs! Regroup, and keep those shields up!" Karn screams. You huddle together, and as a group begin rushing uphill rapidly towards the Elves. The Elves fire a few more arrows at you both, but quickly turn heel and run. You reach the summit of the hill and watch as the Elves disappear into a small woods down the hill. "Come on, Orcs! We follow them and make sure the worms can feast on Elf Flesh tonight!" Karn yells. > You follow Karn into the woods Karn lets out a war cry and breaks into a full sprint towards the woods. You follow, your shield covering your chest and your sword raised. As you burst through the trees and run through the undergrowth, you hear a yell. "Fire!" Arrows fire down from the trees. After ten seconds which you spend huddled together with your allies, arrows thudding into your shield, half of your group is dead. Then, Elves Warriors with short swords heavier armor than the archers, though still a lot lighter than yours, coming to wipe out the unprepared, cowering Orcs that remain. > You act defensively to protect yourself You bring up your shield and raise your sword. The warriors quickly take advantage of the situation, attacking the unprepared Orcs attempting to take shelter from the arrows. One of them goes towards you, and swings. You block his sword with your shield and repeatedly jab him through the stomach, the third stab penetrating his armor and going through his stomach, which after a few more stabs kill him.By the time the Orcs manage to fend off the Elven Warriors, they're barely a dozen men, including Khan. The Elves outnumber you, but only slightly, and they clearly either don't like their odds, or figure they've killed enough of your allies today. The warriors quickly turn and go sprinting off into the woods. > You follow the Warriors You quickly follow the warriors, breaking into a sprint. You refuse to let them escape. After a few minutes, the warriors pause and turn. You realize none of the other Orcs have followed and you're on your own. You raise your sword to fight, but the warriors charge. You swing your sword and manage to decapitate one, before receiving over a dozen stabs to the chest.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You bring up your shield and raise your sword. The warriors quickly take advantage of the situation, attacking the unprepared Orcs attempting to take shelter from the arrows. One of them goes towards you, and swings. You block his sword with your shield and repeatedly jab him through the stomach, the third stab penetrating his armor and going through his stomach, which after a few more stabs kill him.By the time the Orcs manage to fend off the Elven Warriors, they're barely a dozen men, including Khan. The Elves outnumber you, but only slightly, and they clearly either don't like their odds, or figure they've killed enough of your allies today. The warriors quickly turn and go sprinting off into the woods. > You attack the Archers in the trees You roar, running forward and jumping in the air. You grab an archer perched on one of the branches who screams, flinging her to the ground. You quickly end her miserable existence, thrusting your sword through her neck. You see another archer leap from the trees in order to escape, but slash his legs, causing him to fall to the ground. You stand above him and stab downward, stabbing him through the chest, killing him. An archer leaps onto you with a hunting knife and slices you across the back of the neck in a failed attempt to murder you. You fling him off your back and to the ground and slice open his stomach. You look up, to see the rest of the archers sprinting incredibly fast away from the battle. "Don't bother chasing. You can't catch an Elf. They've ran their entire lives, the cowards." Karn says. "Come on men. Let's get back to camp." > One Day Later... You sit at the camp, at the edge with a campfire, a pig roasting on a spit. You wait eagerly for your meal, before Captain Darruk arrives. "Mazkil, come with me for a moment." You struggle not to snarl in annoyance, knowing you'll miss the best cuts of pork, but nod and follow Darruk anyway. You follow him out of ear range of the camp, before he starts speaking. "You were with Karn on the mission yesterday, correct?" "Yes, sir." "We lost a massive amount of men for a mission that important. I need to know: Was it Karn's fault as a leader?" > You say "Yes." "Ah. I thought so. The other men's testimony said as much. Thank you. Now go, eat." You nod, and quickly return to eat. You have to punch one of the smaller Orcs, but you manage to grab a large, juicy piece of meat and eagerly chew into it. > One Week Later... You stand around a massive map, showing the Glenin Plains. Captain Durrak begins explaining the situation. "Captain Rhian is leading the Royal Calvary forward to engage the Elvish Calvary at multiple locations. We're positioned here to launch attacks on the calvary as the rearguard crosses Jacob's Bridge and the small unnamed brick bridge here. I'll lead the main patrol on Jacob's Bridge. Karn, lead a force of your chosen orcs." "Yes, sir." Karn chooses two dozen Orcs, to your surprise he hasn't chosen you, for reason's you don't know. You then follow Captain Durrak as you head towards Jacob's Bridge. Thankfully, the Elvish Calvary haven't arrived, so you take up positions. "Alright, stay low, and don't attack until I say so. Got it?" "Yes, sir." You all reply in unison. The Bridge is a large wooden bridge over a massive muddy creek. You take position at the edge of the bridge so you can storm on and wipe out the calvary's rearguard. A large group of Elves aboard beautiful white horses begin galloping past. They gallop past for a good thirty seconds, before there's a small break in the amount of horses galloping past. "Now! Take them all out!" Captain Durrak roars. You leap out of the muddy river bank and onto the bridge. The small Elvish Calvary's Rearguard, meant to defend their flanks and make sure they have the option to retreat, is only about three dozen Calvary units, and you have as many Orcs with you. You see the the lead of the rearguard, a golden armored Elvish Warrior, is on a horse which rears up in terror. > You charge forward to target the leader You sprint forward with your sword raised, roaring. You slash the horse's chest open, and the horse whinnies in terror. The leader falls from the horse, and you quickly stand over him, raising your blade. Suddenly, a spear flies through your chest, tossed by one of the Calvary Units. You groan as the spear embeds itself in you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stand around a massive map, showing the Glenin Plains. Captain Durrak begins explaining the situation. "Captain Rhian is leading the Royal Calvary forward to engage the Elvish Calvary at multiple locations. We're positioned here to launch attacks on the calvary as the rearguard crosses Jacob's Bridge and the small unnamed brick bridge here. I'll lead the main patrol on Jacob's Bridge. Karn, lead a force of your chosen orcs." "Yes, sir." Karn chooses two dozen Orcs, to your surprise he hasn't chosen you, for reason's you don't know. You then follow Captain Durrak as you head towards Jacob's Bridge. Thankfully, the Elvish Calvary haven't arrived, so you take up positions. "Alright, stay low, and don't attack until I say so. Got it?" "Yes, sir." You all reply in unison. The Bridge is a large wooden bridge over a massive muddy creek. You take position at the edge of the bridge so you can storm on and wipe out the calvary's rearguard. A large group of Elves aboard beautiful white horses begin galloping past. They gallop past for a good thirty seconds, before there's a small break in the amount of horses galloping past. "Now! Take them all out!" Captain Durrak roars. You leap out of the muddy river bank and onto the bridge. The small Elvish Calvary's Rearguard, meant to defend their flanks and make sure they have the option to retreat, is only about three dozen Calvary units, and you have as many Orcs with you. You see the the lead of the rearguard, a golden armored Elvish Warrior, is on a horse which rears up in terror. > You stick with the group and raise your shield You stick with the group, deflecting spears off your shield. You move forward, stabbing your blade forward as your shield stays raised to deflect any blows. You stab a Elf Rider through the thigh and he screams, falling off the horse, where you stomp repeatedly on his face. You swing your blade again, slashing a horse's chest and causing it to rear up in terror. The Elf falls off and hits the ground, allowing for an Orc to stand over it and stab it through the chest. The melee only lasts a few seconds, as the Calvary Units are desperately massacred as they're clearly surprised and unprepared for fighting, struggling to find their weapons and prepare to fight. Several Orcs armed with crossbows contribute to the massacre. "Alright. Losses?" Captain Durrak asks, as you survery the battlefield. "Twelve Orcs fallen. Three wounded." "Two. I can still fight." One of the Orcs grunts, pulling a spear from her side. "Alright, begin stacking the horse carcasses into a barricade." You grab one of the dead horses, and begins dragging it into place, placing it on top of another dead horse. After a few minutes, you take position on the bridge. You hear screams from the main battle, as you watch the calvary battle take place in the form of jousts and sword-fights from horseback. You grab a spear from one of the dead Calvary Units, smiling. "This could be useful. Sir, if we use the Elvish Spears, we could assist in the battle." You point out to Captain Durrak. "This would be risky. We need to stay here to defend the bridge." Captain Durrak says. > You offer to go ahead alone "I'll go ahead and assist our men. Alone." "Ha! You're a mad man, Mazkil. If you want to play with the horses, go straight ahead." You creep forward quickly, your new spear raised. The battle is going brutally. You move quickly, first going towards a Elf jousting with a human knight, with the knight heavily injured and bleeding from a stab wound in the side. You stab your weapon while the Elf is distracted by the knight, killing the Elf with a quick impalement through the side. You take your spear out, and move forward to the next target, an Elf engaged in sword fighting. You keep low to avoid being seen, and quickly jab the elf through the neck and pull him off the horse and withdraw your spear again. You repeat this, using your spear and stealth to repeatedly stab the various elf riders and Calvary Units to allow for your own calvary to beat back the Elves. Your contribution is minor, but as your own forces are already winning, the few Elves who survive quickly head to the bridges, where they're presumably wiped out. You wipe Elf and Horse blood off your face, and begin wandering towards the bridge. You arrive to find dozens of dead Elves and horses, with Captain Darruk laughing victoriously. "Mazkil, you're alive. This is good. The Elves have been wiped out." "I took out as many as I could, sir. I did my part." "Good. Now, we have work to be done. With the advance of our calvary, we can finally begin to invade and launch attacks on the Elvish Villages." Captain Darruk says. "The Elvish empire is crumbling, boys. Take what you want off the dead, kill the wounded, and we'll head back to the Fort and find something to drink." > One Week Later... You walk along the woods with a small group. Twenty Orcs, thirty Men and a dozen War Hounds. You're led by Captain Darruk, who stands proudly at the lead. "Recent Elves have attacked our forces, and taken heavy losses. We believe they've retreated to the village of Abhaile to resupply and have their wounded taken care of. I want this threat dealt with." You gently pat one of the war-hounds on the head, amused by the cheerful dog. Suddenly, the war-hounds burst forward, barking. "Here we are. Orcs! No looting, killing or anything of the sort! Once the village's secure, we stay here for the night." "Yes, sir." You all respond. You march forward past the trees, and see the village. It's a large village, with many homes, all wooden and natural looking, reminding you of several rich men's summer homes you passed on the march to Elf Territory. Many of the civilians notice, and begin to yell and hurry inside. "HOLD IT! This village is under control of King Alexander and the Royal Army!" Captain Darruk barks. "Search house to house! Confiscate any weapons. Kill any soldiers or those trying to resist." You nod, and quickly hurry towards the houses. Inside the first you enter is a small girl holding desperately to a stuffed toy, with her mother standing defensively in front of her, a dagger clutched in her hands. "Stay out!" She cries. You look at her briefly, before ignoring her. You quickly search the upper floor and confiscate a bow, some arrows and three hunting knives, before returning downstairs. The house is empty except for the mother and daughter. "Give me the blade." You ask. "Get out of my house!" She shrieks, and you wince. > You kill her You swing your blade, slashing her chest. She falls backwards, hitting the floor with a thud as the daughter screams. You grab her knife, and look to the daughter. You feel a brief wave of pity, but quickly suppress it. > You move onto the next house You walk into the next house. A young Elf, as young as you, stands behind the door holding it closed. You smash the door open and he rolls to his knee, his bow readied with an arrow notch. "Drop the bow." You say, raising your shield. He fires, and you easily knock the arrow aside. One quick swipe, and his head is lying on the floor. You search the bottom floors, finding nothing, but upstairs you find another barricaded room. Using your impressive strength, you smash open the door with brute force. Four Elf Warriors are in the room, covered in bandages and with visible wounds. You quickly slash your sword killing one, kicking another in the head and stomping on his throat repeatedly, crushing it. You stab another one through the chest to kill him, and stab the final one through the eye. As his body hits the ground, you notice a backroom. You open it, to find a small stack of Elvish Jewelry. Golden bracelets studded with golden gems, eloquently designed necklaces and a golden ring with a large ruby. Your orders are to leave all valuable items to be taken at a later time by Captain Darruk to be used to buy supplies and food, but... shiny. > You take the valuables You smile as you sweep the valuables into your satchel. You've fought for the Royal Army for tiny wages, you deserve these valuables. Time for the next house, you still have an important job to do. > You search the next house You walk into the next house, to find an Orc already in there. A beheaded elf lies across the floor, a pool of blood spreading across the floor. The Orc, a short but tough man you recognize as Kannish. He's holding a half undressed Elven Woman, forcing her against the wall. "Shut up!" He roars, before noticing you. "Mazkil? I'm busy here, my friend. There's another one upstairs if you want a go. Otherwise, you should probably get out there while the looting's good." You look at the woman, tears streaming down her face, and wonder what to do. > You stop Kannish "Kannish! Release her!" Kannish stops smiling, and snarls. "What, have you fallen in love, Mazkil? Fuck off, or this shit gets bloody." > You leave the building You walk outside, and continue searching door to door, although you wince as you hear her cries for help behind you. > You search the next house You walk outside, and as you go to the next house, you hear a scream. You turn to see a large house has erupted into flames that are quickly growing. Captain Darruk sprints over, followed by you. "What's going on?" Captain Darruk asks. "We were putting the civilians in this house when they resisted, so we torched the place." One of the Orcs explains. You see civilians; men, women and children rushing out of the building as it rapidly erupts into flames. You hear crying coming from the top floor, a high pitched noise that could only come from an infant. "Captain! There's a baby in there!" "There's nothing we could do. The flames would kill anyone who tries to enter." You watch the building, flames licking the sky. You see a small gap in the flames that someone could easily use to get inside. > You attempt to save the baby You charge into the building despite the protests of your team-mates. You dive into a flaming inferno, the heat causing you to sweat profusely and groan in pain. You look around, but smoke obscures your view. You begin to cough and splutter, dropping low. You reach around looking for the stairs. You manage to find it, and begin to clamber up the staircase, following the cries and screams of the babies. The flames begin to sear and burn your flesh as you wince in pain, groaning loudly. You reach the top of the staircase, looking around desperately for the baby. You find a small cradle covered in ash and embers, which you brush off and pick up a bundled up, ugly and loud creature you recognize as a baby. You pick it up, and look for a way out. By now, the room's full of smokes and the fire's spread everywhere. You go to leave, but a roof beam collapses down and smacks you in the back and you fall to the knees as the flames begin to sear your flesh. You scream, and roll out of the way, curling around the baby to protect it. You find your way through the smoke and flames while doing your best to protect the infant. You charge through the door and find your way outside, and fall onto the cool grass. Your flesh is burned and scorched, and you struggle to stay conscious. An Elf picks the baby up and says something, presumably thanks. > You fall unconscious You awaken a few hours later, lying on a bed. You're heavily bandaged, lying next to several dozen sleeping Orcs and Men. Captain Darruk had the Medic take care of you, it seems, and you've been dumped to heal next to the sleeping soldiers. You assume you'll be taken back to the nearest fort to be taken care of until you've healed up enough to head out to war again. You lie in the silence, trying to fall back to sleep. Then, you hear a window shatter. You look around, and struggle to get up. Thankfully, the Medic's left your knife on you. You look around, before a fist smashes into the side of your head, knocking you backwards. You try to scream, before you feel the cold steel of a blade on your throat. You look up, to see a short Elven sword being held by a tall elf. "Say your prayers, Orc." He says. You grab at his throat, but he quickly deflects your hand. As he goes to slice open your throat, you see a hand stop him. You notice another Elf stop him. "Wait. Don't." "Why shouldn't I?" "He helped us earlier. He saved Gwendilyn's child." The Elf with the sword shrugs. "Fine." You look around. The room's filled with a group of Elves, all armed for war. It appears you're the first to awaken. With the serious burns covering your body, you'd struggle to do anything physical. You could still warn your team-mates, though. > You scream for help "We're...!" You begin to yell. The flat of the blade smashes into your face, knocking you unconscious. > You awaken You scream as you awaken and are hit with a fresh wave of pain. You look around. You're surrounded by slaughtered Orcs and Men, many killed in their sleep, but it's clear some awoke in time to resist. You attempt to stand, before collapsing on the floor. The pain is all-consuming, and you consider allowing death to overtake you and end your struggle to survive. > You search the surrounding area You look around for something to help you out of this predicament, and you find a small bottle of a blue liquid. > You drink it You down the drink, and shiver as the pain begins to cease. You notice not only is your pain ending, but all your feelings are. Shortly after, your body begins to enter paralysis. You wince and shiver as you chest begins to slow, ending your breathing. You struggle to continue breathing, but you only manage a few more painful seconds of existence before you pitiful existence ends.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look around for something to help you out of this predicament, and you find a small bottle of a blue liquid. > You don't drink it You decide not to drink it. You know that you need to get moving soon, to escape before nightfall, but hold on to the fact their still might be something useful nearby. > You drag yourself outside You drag yourself outside. The village is packed with dead Orcs, Men and War Dogs, interspersed with the golden armored Elves who your allies managed to strike down. You continue dragging yourself forward, passing the dead. Vultures land around you and begin pecking at the corpses. One lands in front of you and pecking at your face. > You grab the Vulture You grab the Vulture, tearing the vulture's head off its neck and tossing it aside. You begin dragging yourself forward once more. > Four Hours Later... You move your hands forward and find something to drag yourself another few inches forward. Thankfully, the leaves grant you some shade from the hot sun, but the pain's beginning to become unbearable. Then, as if the Gods have all agreed to fuck up your life, you hear wolves. "Fuck you!" You scream, as three wolves begin prowling towards you. > You fling your knife at one You throw your knife, impaling one of the wolves' in the head, killing it instantly. It falls backwards, and you feel pride briefly, before another one of the wolves leaps at you, landing on your chest. It bites down on your chest, tearing through flesh at you let out a scream.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You move your hands forward and find something to drag yourself another few inches forward. Thankfully, the leaves grant you some shade from the hot sun, but the pain's beginning to become unbearable. Then, as if the Gods have all agreed to fuck up your life, you hear wolves. "Fuck you!" You scream, as three wolves begin prowling towards you. > You try defend yourself with your blade You swing your blade, slashing open one of their eyes. You stab again, killing the wolf, but get your knife lodged in it's head. Another one leaps forward, and bites your arm.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide not to drink it. You know that you need to get moving soon, to escape before nightfall, but hold on to the fact their still might be something useful nearby. > You continue searching After another few minutes of searching, you find a small silver flask with a red cross on the front strapped to a medic's belt, which you recognize as a healing potion, and eagerly drink down. As you feel the warm liquid go down your throat, it warms your soul and ends, or at least lessens your pain. Your energy renewed and strength revitalized, you begin dragging yourself yourself out of the building and off in search of help.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You scream as you awaken and are hit with a fresh wave of pain. You look around. You're surrounded by slaughtered Orcs and Men, many killed in their sleep, but it's clear some awoke in time to resist. You attempt to stand, before collapsing on the floor. The pain is all-consuming, and you consider allowing death to overtake you and end your struggle to survive. > You embrace the sweet release of death You stop fighting, and allow the sweet painlessness of death to release you from the constant pain.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken a few hours later, lying on a bed. You're heavily bandaged, lying next to several dozen sleeping Orcs and Men. Captain Darruk had the Medic take care of you, it seems, and you've been dumped to heal next to the sleeping soldiers. You assume you'll be taken back to the nearest fort to be taken care of until you've healed up enough to head out to war again. You lie in the silence, trying to fall back to sleep. Then, you hear a window shatter. You look around, and struggle to get up. Thankfully, the Medic's left your knife on you. You look around, before a fist smashes into the side of your head, knocking you backwards. You try to scream, before you feel the cold steel of a blade on your throat. You look up, to see a short Elven sword being held by a tall elf. "Say your prayers, Orc." He says. You grab at his throat, but he quickly deflects your hand. As he goes to slice open your throat, you see a hand stop him. You notice another Elf stop him. "Wait. Don't." "Why shouldn't I?" "He helped us earlier. He saved Gwendilyn's child." The Elf with the sword shrugs. "Fine." You look around. The room's filled with a group of Elves, all armed for war. It appears you're the first to awaken. With the serious burns covering your body, you'd struggle to do anything physical. You could still warn your team-mates, though. > You stay silent You stay silent, and the Elves quickly make their way through the room, slaughtering all those across the room, slicing open their throats and stabbing them through the hearts. Eventually, everyone in the room lies dead across the floor. The Elf who had held his blade to your throat takes a final look at you, before leaving you alone in an empty room. After a few minutes, pain begins to sear from your burns as your medicine wears off, and you lie their, struggling to stay conscious through the pain, which you eventually fail at doing.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk outside, and as you go to the next house, you hear a scream. You turn to see a large house has erupted into flames that are quickly growing. Captain Darruk sprints over, followed by you. "What's going on?" Captain Darruk asks. "We were putting the civilians in this house when they resisted, so we torched the place." One of the Orcs explains. You see civilians; men, women and children rushing out of the building as it rapidly erupts into flames. You hear crying coming from the top floor, a high pitched noise that could only come from an infant. "Captain! There's a baby in there!" "There's nothing we could do. The flames would kill anyone who tries to enter." You watch the building, flames licking the sky. You see a small gap in the flames that someone could easily use to get inside. > You do nothing You stand, watching the building burn with a few uneasy soldiers and sobbing civilians being kept from entering the building for fear of their brutal death.`Thankfully, the baby's cries only last another few minutes as smoke spreads throughout the house. Once it ceases, Captain Darruk nods. "Alright, everyone. Back to work. Continue searching." You search the next few houses, but the populace is either dead or cowering, allowing for you to find a few small weapons stockpiles. Eventually, you finish up and find an empty house to sleep in. Captain Darruk assigns a few Orcs on guard, but thankfully you're not one of them. > You rest You awaken a few hours later, lying in a bed. You've woken up again. You lie in the silence, trying to fall back to sleep. Then, you hear a window shatter. You look around, and struggle to get up. You draw your knife slowly. You look around, before a fist smashes into the side of your head, knocking you backwards. You try to scream, before you feel the cold steel of a blade on your throat. You look up, to see a short Elven sword being held by a tall elf. "Say your prayers, Orc." He says. > You lunge at him You lunge forward, grabbing his wrist and flinging the sword away. You grab his head and bring your knife up, repeatedly stabbing him through the eye. Another Elf runs forward and slashes your chest open, and you smash his head across the room, and fling him repeatedly against a wall unless his body's shattered. You slash another Elf's throat open, before the Elves surround you. You roar as every single Elf begins slashing at you. Blood begins down to streak down your chest as thousands of cuts and slashes open all over your body. You only last a few seconds of brutal pain before you collapse on the floor.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken a few hours later, lying in a bed. You've woken up again. You lie in the silence, trying to fall back to sleep. Then, you hear a window shatter. You look around, and struggle to get up. You draw your knife slowly. You look around, before a fist smashes into the side of your head, knocking you backwards. You try to scream, before you feel the cold steel of a blade on your throat. You look up, to see a short Elven sword being held by a tall elf. "Say your prayers, Orc." He says. > You beg for mercy "Please. I won't say a word, just..." You begin. The Elf sneers in disgust, and swings his blade. He slashes a deep wound in your stomach, and you scream. The Elf slashes at you repeatedly, opening endless red lines of blood and pain across your chest. After over a dozen cuts, you collapse into unconsciousness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Kannish! Release her!" Kannish stops smiling, and snarls. "What, have you fallen in love, Mazkil? Fuck off, or this shit gets bloody." > You continue trying to stop Kannish "I'll tear off your head and give it to the crows, Kannish! Let her go!" Kannish lets go of the girl, who quickly turns and scurries off. Kannish draws his blade. "Are you willing to die for that bitch? Die just so she can spread her legs to some Elven cunt who killed our friends?" "Drop the weapon, Kannish!" Kannish clumsily lunges at you, rage in his eyes. > You behead him You swing your blade, killing Kannish. You drag his head outside to Captain Darruk, who growls at the sight. "Who did this? Elves?" "I did. Sir." You add. Captain Darruk's eyes narrow. "Why?" "He refused to follow orders. I found him trying to have his way with one of the elves." Captain Darruk's eyes widen in surprise. "Mazkill, I don't have time to deal with this. Karn and I are returning to the Fort. We need to be gone by nightfall. We don't have time to deal with you killing our men." "He was doing shitty things, sir." "This is war, shitty things happen." "Our jobs are to minimize the amount of shitty things happening." Darruk opens his mouth to say something, before you hear a scream. You turn to see a large house has erupted into flames that are quickly growing. Captain Darruk sprints over, followed by you. "What's going on?" Captain Darruk asks. "We were putting the civilians in this house when they resisted, so we torched the place." One of the Orcs explains. You see civilians; men, women and children rushing out of the building as it rapidly erupts into flames. You hear crying coming from the top floor, a high pitched noise that could only come from an infant. "Captain! There's a baby in there!" "There's nothing we could do. The flames would kill anyone who tries to enter." You watch the building, flames licking the sky. You see a small gap in the flames that someone could easily use to get inside.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'll tear off your head and give it to the crows, Kannish! Let her go!" Kannish lets go of the girl, who quickly turns and scurries off. Kannish draws his blade. "Are you willing to die for that bitch? Die just so she can spread her legs to some Elven cunt who killed our friends?" "Drop the weapon, Kannish!" Kannish clumsily lunges at you, rage in his eyes. > You dodge him You dodge him, and he smashes past, managing to slash your arm open. He rises up again, ready to strike.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk into the next house. A young Elf, as young as you, stands behind the door holding it closed. You smash the door open and he rolls to his knee, his bow readied with an arrow notch. "Drop the bow." You say, raising your shield. He fires, and you easily knock the arrow aside. One quick swipe, and his head is lying on the floor. You search the bottom floors, finding nothing, but upstairs you find another barricaded room. Using your impressive strength, you smash open the door with brute force. Four Elf Warriors are in the room, covered in bandages and with visible wounds. You quickly slash your sword killing one, kicking another in the head and stomping on his throat repeatedly, crushing it. You stab another one through the chest to kill him, and stab the final one through the eye. As his body hits the ground, you notice a backroom. You open it, to find a small stack of Elvish Jewelry. Golden bracelets studded with golden gems, eloquently designed necklaces and a golden ring with a large ruby. Your orders are to leave all valuable items to be taken at a later time by Captain Darruk to be used to buy supplies and food, but... shiny. > You leave the valuables You leave the valuables. You're a soldier with a mission, not a thief.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk along the woods with a small group. Twenty Orcs, thirty Men and a dozen War Hounds. You're led by Captain Darruk, who stands proudly at the lead. "Recent Elves have attacked our forces, and taken heavy losses. We believe they've retreated to the village of Abhaile to resupply and have their wounded taken care of. I want this threat dealt with." You gently pat one of the war-hounds on the head, amused by the cheerful dog. Suddenly, the war-hounds burst forward, barking. "Here we are. Orcs! No looting, killing or anything of the sort! Once the village's secure, we stay here for the night." "Yes, sir." You all respond. You march forward past the trees, and see the village. It's a large village, with many homes, all wooden and natural looking, reminding you of several rich men's summer homes you passed on the march to Elf Territory. Many of the civilians notice, and begin to yell and hurry inside. "HOLD IT! This village is under control of King Alexander and the Royal Army!" Captain Darruk barks. "Search house to house! Confiscate any weapons. Kill any soldiers or those trying to resist." You nod, and quickly hurry towards the houses. Inside the first you enter is a small girl holding desperately to a stuffed toy, with her mother standing defensively in front of her, a dagger clutched in her hands. "Stay out!" She cries. You look at her briefly, before ignoring her. You quickly search the upper floor and confiscate a bow, some arrows and three hunting knives, before returning downstairs. The house is empty except for the mother and daughter. "Give me the blade." You ask. "Get out of my house!" She shrieks, and you wince. > You force her to give you the knife You move forward, knocking her back with a punch. She cries out and you grab her wrist, twisting it. She drops the knife, which you catch. "Here's some advice. Don't fuck with an Orc. You're lucky you're not dead." You growl.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk along the woods with a small group. Twenty Orcs, thirty Men and a dozen War Hounds. You're led by Captain Darruk, who stands proudly at the lead. "Recent Elves have attacked our forces, and taken heavy losses. We believe they've retreated to the village of Abhaile to resupply and have their wounded taken care of. I want this threat dealt with." You gently pat one of the war-hounds on the head, amused by the cheerful dog. Suddenly, the war-hounds burst forward, barking. "Here we are. Orcs! No looting, killing or anything of the sort! Once the village's secure, we stay here for the night." "Yes, sir." You all respond. You march forward past the trees, and see the village. It's a large village, with many homes, all wooden and natural looking, reminding you of several rich men's summer homes you passed on the march to Elf Territory. Many of the civilians notice, and begin to yell and hurry inside. "HOLD IT! This village is under control of King Alexander and the Royal Army!" Captain Darruk barks. "Search house to house! Confiscate any weapons. Kill any soldiers or those trying to resist." You nod, and quickly hurry towards the houses. Inside the first you enter is a small girl holding desperately to a stuffed toy, with her mother standing defensively in front of her, a dagger clutched in her hands. "Stay out!" She cries. You look at her briefly, before ignoring her. You quickly search the upper floor and confiscate a bow, some arrows and three hunting knives, before returning downstairs. The house is empty except for the mother and daughter. "Give me the blade." You ask. "Get out of my house!" She shrieks, and you wince. > You try reason with her "Listen: You have no power here. I could very easily kill you, and my allies would storm in here and kill you and your daughter if I was harmed. Give me the knife and you life." She looks terrified, but she hands over the knife. You grab it, and nod. "Good choice."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stick with the group, deflecting spears off your shield. You move forward, stabbing your blade forward as your shield stays raised to deflect any blows. You stab a Elf Rider through the thigh and he screams, falling off the horse, where you stomp repeatedly on his face. You swing your blade again, slashing a horse's chest and causing it to rear up in terror. The Elf falls off and hits the ground, allowing for an Orc to stand over it and stab it through the chest. The melee only lasts a few seconds, as the Calvary Units are desperately massacred as they're clearly surprised and unprepared for fighting, struggling to find their weapons and prepare to fight. Several Orcs armed with crossbows contribute to the massacre. "Alright. Losses?" Captain Durrak asks, as you survery the battlefield. "Twelve Orcs fallen. Three wounded." "Two. I can still fight." One of the Orcs grunts, pulling a spear from her side. "Alright, begin stacking the horse carcasses into a barricade." You grab one of the dead horses, and begins dragging it into place, placing it on top of another dead horse. After a few minutes, you take position on the bridge. You hear screams from the main battle, as you watch the calvary battle take place in the form of jousts and sword-fights from horseback. You grab a spear from one of the dead Calvary Units, smiling. "This could be useful. Sir, if we use the Elvish Spears, we could assist in the battle." You point out to Captain Durrak. "This would be risky. We need to stay here to defend the bridge." Captain Durrak says. > You defend the Bridge You stay behind, waiting patiently at the bridge. Eventually, a large group of Elves on horseback begin riding towards the bridge. "Alright, boys, hold the bridge." The horses approach, and you aim your spear. You aim carefully, and as soon as the calvary units arrive you attack. You stand on top of a horse, jabbing with a spear, aiming at the riders. You stab them with your spear, hitting hearts, faces and throats to take them down. Many of the riders manage to leap over the barricade and escape to freedom, though the majority of them easily taken down. "Good. Now, we have work to be done. With the advance of our calvary, we can finally begin to invade and launch attacks on the Elvish Villages." Captain Darruk says. "The Elvish empire is crumblings, boys. Take what you want off the dead, kill the wounded, and we'll head back to the Fort and find something to drink."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit at the camp, at the edge with a campfire, a pig roasting on a spit. You wait eagerly for your meal, before Captain Darruk arrives. "Mazkil, come with me for a moment." You struggle not to snarl in annoyance, knowing you'll miss the best cuts of pork, but nod and follow Darruk anyway. You follow him out of ear range of the camp, before he starts speaking. "You were with Karn on the mission yesterday, correct?" "Yes, sir." "We lost a massive amount of men for a mission that important. I need to know: Was it Karn's fault as a leader?" > You say "No." "Really? The other men I talked to seemed to think it was. Anyway, thank you. Please, go eat." You nod, and quickly return to eat. You have to punch one of the smaller Orcs, but you manage to grab a large, juicy piece of meat and eagerly chew into it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You bring up your shield and raise your sword. The warriors quickly take advantage of the situation, attacking the unprepared Orcs attempting to take shelter from the arrows. One of them goes towards you, and swings. You block his sword with your shield and repeatedly jab him through the stomach, the third stab penetrating his armor and going through his stomach, which after a few more stabs kill him.By the time the Orcs manage to fend off the Elven Warriors, they're barely a dozen men, including Khan. The Elves outnumber you, but only slightly, and they clearly either don't like their odds, or figure they've killed enough of your allies today. The warriors quickly turn and go sprinting off into the woods. > You gather your men and flee "Come on! We're getting out of here!" You yell. You allies quickly follow as you turn and sprint out of the trees. Shortly afterwards you break free, and to your relief none of the Elves have followed. "We need to get back to camp." Karn grunts. Karn's covered in bright red Elf blood mixed in with the darker Ork blood from those around him. You realize that Karn is a fantastic fighter, but should never be given a position of power again. He led your squad straight into an ambush.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Karn lets out a war cry and breaks into a full sprint towards the woods. You follow, your shield covering your chest and your sword raised. As you burst through the trees and run through the undergrowth, you hear a yell. "Fire!" Arrows fire down from the trees. After ten seconds which you spend huddled together with your allies, arrows thudding into your shield, half of your group is dead. Then, Elves Warriors with short swords heavier armor than the archers, though still a lot lighter than yours, coming to wipe out the unprepared, cowering Orcs that remain. > You act offensively to fend off the warriors and protect the group You charge forward, slamming into one of the warriors. You raise your sword and slam it down through her gut, killing her. You grab an Elf about to stab an undefended orc by his hair and yank him back, slitting his throat. The Elves notice your aggressive tactics and five of them crowd around you. You feel a brief sense of fear. They jab and slice at you, opening up your shoulder with several jabs knocking into your chest and smacking the plate armor, causing you to grunt painfully. Then, Karn arrives. "DIE!" He screams. He flings at throwing axe with such strength it beheads one of the elves and embeds itself in the shoulder of another elf, who drops and screams. Karn then barrels into a third Elf and begins stabbing her through the chest, leaving you with two elves to fight. You block one of their sword thrusts and parry the other's, before kicking one into a tree. You jab the other in the neck, twisting your sword to have a spurt of blood hit you in the face. The other goes to stand back up, but you kick him in the head and slash his throat. "Come on, Orcs! We fight and we kill today!" The Orcs are now prepared to fight, with their formations taken up and their weapons ready. The Elven Warriors quickly begin to retreat. "Now, Orcs! Target the Archers the foolish warriors left behind!"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You raise your shield, and three arrows thuds into it. "Orcs! Regroup, and keep those shields up!" Karn screams. You huddle together, and as a group begin rushing uphill rapidly towards the Elves. The Elves fire a few more arrows at you both, but quickly turn heel and run. You reach the summit of the hill and watch as the Elves disappear into a small woods down the hill. "Come on, Orcs! We follow them and make sure the worms can feast on Elf Flesh tonight!" Karn yells. > You stop Karn from charging into what might be a trap You let out a shout. "Wait!" Karn turns and snarls. "What?" "We shouldn't go in there. It's another Elf ambush for sure. We need to wait for reinforcements." "Reinforcements? Is your Mama bringing fresh milk and honey? We fight and strike a blow against the Elves. You either charge with us or die."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You march through Elf territory with a little over 50 other Orcs, marching through a hilly area with some trees. You've been sent with Karn Deathreaper, the massive orc with the notched armor, to investigate a small Elf War Party. You've yet to experience any real combat, with your previous time here simply being maneuvering into flanking positions to force the enemy to retreat and moving forward. Still, the sun is particularly red, so you there'll be a battle today with Gorgok watching. "Orcs! Halt!" Karn screams, and you stop moving. Karn Deathreaper truly earned his name. The amount of enemies he's slain is among the hundreds if not thousands. He's a fearsome creature, and you can't wait to see him do battle. "The sun wishes us good luck. We'll do well in the battle." One of the Orcs near you says happily. "Cease your superstitions, Nagrak. We might not even fight today." Another replies. "One can hope." Nagrak eagerly replies. In the blink of an eye, a dozen Orcs are dead. You see six Elves standing on top of the hills, light golden armor and long blond hair holding bows. > You quickly alert and direct your own Archers to the Elves You turn to your archers, but it's clear the Elves targeted them first. Most are dead, and the few remaining drop to their knees and begin firing, but the elves are uphill, naturally better archers and have the wind in their favor. It's clear the elves have carefully chosen this ambush site. You feel an arrow thud into your chest. It shatters on your plate armor, but the force is enough to break a few ribs and you groan loudly. You raise your shield, and another arrow thuds into it. "Orcs! Regroup, and keep those shields up!" Karn screams. You huddle together, and as a group begin rushing uphill rapidly towards the Elves. The Elves fire a few more arrows at you both, but quickly turn heel and run. You reach the summit of the hill and watch as the Elves disappear into a small woods down the hill. "Come on, Orcs! We follow them and make sure the worms can feast on Elf Flesh tonight!" Karn yells.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Once you've spent your gold coins, you make your way back to Dendar's cart. Unfortunately, you find yourself in the poorer part of town, clearly having taken a wrong turn. As you make your way through a side street, a voice cries out. "Hello! A little lost, are we?" A voice cries. You turn, and are faced with a trio of men holding knives. "Fuck off." You grunt angrily. "'Fuck off', he says. What an angry orc." A voice from behind you says. You turn, to see two more men wielding knives. "Listen, sir. Give us your coins, and we'll see you find your way to where you're going." > You tell them you have no gold "I have no coins on me." "Really, sir? Larn, go see if our new friend's lying." One of the men walks forward, and begins searching you. > You grab the man You grab the man, drawing your blade and driving you knife into his chest repeatedly, tossing his body aside. The men begin charging towards you, three on one side of the street, one on the other. > You charge the single man The single man is quick and manages to jab you in the side, his cold iron causing you to groan in pain. You swing your blade, slashing the man's throat, and toss him at the trio. You rush onto the main street, but the trio don't follow. You check your wound, but it's not deep. You wander through the street, until eventually you come across Dendar's Cart. You climb on the back, and lie there, as Dendar arrives with a caged chicken. "Ah! Mazkil, how are you? Ah, you're bleeding." "Someone tried to rob me." "Well, I hope you made sure they'll never try again." You nod, and Dendar chuckles. "Well done. You're a true orc."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the man, drawing your blade and driving you knife into his chest repeatedly, tossing his body aside. The men begin charging towards you, three on one side of the street, one on the other. > You charge the trio You run forward, leaping through the air as you slam into one of the three, stabbing him through the neck. The others grab you and a knife is painfully brought across your throat, before your limp body is released.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I have no coins on me." "Really, sir? Larn, go see if our new friend's lying." One of the men walks forward, and begins searching you. > You let him You stand there, as one of the men walks over and begins patting on your pockets. As the few coins you have left jingle, the man quickly draws a knife and stabs you through the back, right through the heart. You yell in pain, collapsing.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Once you've spent your gold coins, you make your way back to Dendar's cart. Unfortunately, you find yourself in the poorer part of town, clearly having taken a wrong turn. As you make your way through a side street, a voice cries out. "Hello! A little lost, are we?" A voice cries. You turn, and are faced with a trio of men holding knives. "Fuck off." You grunt angrily. "'Fuck off', he says. What an angry orc." A voice from behind you says. You turn, to see two more men wielding knives. "Listen, sir. Give us your coins, and we'll see you find your way to where you're going." > You yell at the men "FUCK OFF, HUMANS! GO SUCKLE ON YOUR MOTHER'S TITS!" You roar. "Oi, Sir! Quiet down. Wouldn't want the Guards to..." "FUCK YOU, YOU TWO-BIT THIEVING CUNTS!" "Shit, Larn, shut him up." You hear a whistling noise, and you turn to investigate. Two throwing knives plunge into your chest. You gasp, and struggle to stay standing before a third enters your heart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Once you've spent your gold coins, you make your way back to Dendar's cart. Unfortunately, you find yourself in the poorer part of town, clearly having taken a wrong turn. As you make your way through a side street, a voice cries out. "Hello! A little lost, are we?" A voice cries. You turn, and are faced with a trio of men holding knives. "Fuck off." You grunt angrily. "'Fuck off', he says. What an angry orc." A voice from behind you says. You turn, to see two more men wielding knives. "Listen, sir. Give us your coins, and we'll see you find your way to where you're going." > You hand over your few coins You quickly take out your remaining coins and hand them to one of the thieves. He flashes a grin, and puts his hand around your shoulder. "Thank you, sir. Pleasure doing business." He leads you out of the ally and points in the direction of the Dengar's cart. You walk along to it, and climb aboard the back. Dengar appears, holding a caged chicken. "How was your time in Riverton?" You shrug, disgusted in yourself for handing over the money. You're no true orc.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After a long ride to Riverton with Dendar who mostly insults you and Gruzub, you eventually arrive at the small town. You eyes immediately find multiple ways to spend your precious coins. There's a brothel in the poorer section of town, a large shop full of delicious foods you wish to sample, a small gambling ring and a tavern. > You visit the Brothel You arrive at a large building and take a deep breath, breathing in perfumes of foreign fruits and sweet incense. An elderly woman walks out, and smiles at you. "Ah, a patron. How may I help you, Sir?" "I'd imagine it's the same reason everyone comes here." You reply snidely. "Ah, of course. I'm sorry, you look like Gruft, the debt collector. I assumed you were a brother of his filling in." She leads you into a back room, where you take a seat on an old dirty bed. She leaves, before arriving back with three women. One of them is a middle-aged, chubby, unattractive woman in a plain dress. She smiles at you. "I am Helga. She says. The second woman is a younger, plain faced woman with a nice bosom and bum, which quickly draw your attention. "I am Liz." She says, smiling at you sweetly. The final girl is a short, small, pale blond girl. Her features are sharp and angular, and you recognize her as an elf. "I am Starflower." She says. "The prices are simple." The Matron says. "Helga is five coins, Liz is ten, Starflower is fifteen." > You pay for Helga You pay for Helga, and all others but her leave. You quickly undress, and for the next hour, allow your animal urges to take over. You quickly fuck her, trying to focus on the feeling rather than her less than appealing appearance. Afterwards, you clean up and quickly make your way back to the street, a happier orc.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You arrive at a large building and take a deep breath, breathing in perfumes of foreign fruits and sweet incense. An elderly woman walks out, and smiles at you. "Ah, a patron. How may I help you, Sir?" "I'd imagine it's the same reason everyone comes here." You reply snidely. "Ah, of course. I'm sorry, you look like Gruft, the debt collector. I assumed you were a brother of his filling in." She leads you into a back room, where you take a seat on an old dirty bed. She leaves, before arriving back with three women. One of them is a middle-aged, chubby, unattractive woman in a plain dress. She smiles at you. "I am Helga. She says. The second woman is a younger, plain faced woman with a nice bosom and bum, which quickly draw your attention. "I am Liz." She says, smiling at you sweetly. The final girl is a short, small, pale blond girl. Her features are sharp and angular, and you recognize her as an elf. "I am Starflower." She says. "The prices are simple." The Matron says. "Helga is five coins, Liz is ten, Starflower is fifteen." > You pay for Liz You pay for Liz, and everyone but her leave. You quickly undress, and take advantage of the ample business advantages that the Gods have given her. Her bosom and ass provide great entertainment as your animal instincts take over. You greatly enjoy the next hour, eventually finishing, cleaning up and leaving the brothel with a smile on your face.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You arrive at a large building and take a deep breath, breathing in perfumes of foreign fruits and sweet incense. An elderly woman walks out, and smiles at you. "Ah, a patron. How may I help you, Sir?" "I'd imagine it's the same reason everyone comes here." You reply snidely. "Ah, of course. I'm sorry, you look like Gruft, the debt collector. I assumed you were a brother of his filling in." She leads you into a back room, where you take a seat on an old dirty bed. She leaves, before arriving back with three women. One of them is a middle-aged, chubby, unattractive woman in a plain dress. She smiles at you. "I am Helga. She says. The second woman is a younger, plain faced woman with a nice bosom and bum, which quickly draw your attention. "I am Liz." She says, smiling at you sweetly. The final girl is a short, small, pale blond girl. Her features are sharp and angular, and you recognize her as an elf. "I am Starflower." She says. "The prices are simple." The Matron says. "Helga is five coins, Liz is ten, Starflower is fifteen." > You pay for Starflower You pay for Starflower, and all others live. You quickly undress, and allow your animal instincts to take over. Over the next hour you make sure to enjoy every inch of the young elf's body, and learn she's very, very skilled at her job. After an hour you finish, clean yourself up and leave, happier than you've ever been.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After a long ride to Riverton with Dendar who mostly insults you and Gruzub, you eventually arrive at the small town. You eyes immediately find multiple ways to spend your precious coins. There's a brothel in the poorer section of town, a large shop full of delicious foods you wish to sample, a small gambling ring and a tavern. > You visit the Shop You go into the shop, and buy a lamb steak, a shiny purple fruit, boiled sheep's brain and a pouch of milk. You quickly eat these delicious fruits, particularly enjoying the sheep's brain and milk. As you finish, you smile to yourself, your stomach full. Time to find something else to do.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After a long ride to Riverton with Dendar who mostly insults you and Gruzub, you eventually arrive at the small town. You eyes immediately find multiple ways to spend your precious coins. There's a brothel in the poorer section of town, a large shop full of delicious foods you wish to sample, a small gambling ring and a tavern. > You visit the Gambling Ring You go inside the gambling ring, where a large half-orc stands, leaning against the doorway. "Good evening, kind patron." He says in a dull, bored voice. "Would you care to see a fight? Five coins, make a bet." "What's the fight?" You ask, eagerly. "A Dragon Youngling, can barely spit fire, vs a trio of wolves we managed to catch. It's a good fight." > You bet on the Wolves You place a five coin bet on the wolves, and enter the gambling ring. You find a spot looking in on the ring, watching a small red dragon, snarling at the crowd. Three trapdoors open, with three wolves entering. The wolves begin howling as the dragon snarls. The Dragon lets out a short first of fire, alighting one of the wolves who begins leaping and rolling around in pain. The other two wolves jump, with the dragon lunging forward and biting into the second wolf's neck and tearing into the flesh and fur, before dropping the bleeding wolf. The third wolf lands on the dragon and begins biting and tearing at the dragon's wing. The Dragon screeches, leaping around and flinging the wolf off the ring. The dragon snarls and leaps forward, tearing the wolf's head off and flinging it out of the ring. It lands next to you, but a small child grabs it first and holds it in the air with a laugh. You leave, five coins poorer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You go inside the gambling ring, where a large half-orc stands, leaning against the doorway. "Good evening, kind patron." He says in a dull, bored voice. "Would you care to see a fight? Five coins, make a bet." "What's the fight?" You ask, eagerly. "A Dragon Youngling, can barely spit fire, vs a trio of wolves we managed to catch. It's a good fight." > You bet on the Dragon Youngling You place a five coin bet on the dragon youngling, and enter the gambling ring. You find a spot looking in on the ring, watching a small red dragon, snarling at the crowd. Three trapdoors open, with three wolves entering. The wolves begin howling as the dragon snarls. The Dragon lets out a short first of fire, alighting one of the wolves who begins leaping and rolling around in pain. The other two wolves jump, with the dragon lunging forward and biting into the second wolf's neck and tearing into the flesh and fur, before dropping the bleeding wolf. The third wolf lands on the dragon and begins biting and tearing at the dragon's wing. The Dragon screeches, leaping around and flinging the wolf off the ring. The dragon snarls and leaps forward, tearing the wolf's head off and flinging it out of the ring. It lands next to you, but a small child grabs it first and holds it in the air with a laugh. You leave, five coins richer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After a long ride to Riverton with Dendar who mostly insults you and Gruzub, you eventually arrive at the small town. You eyes immediately find multiple ways to spend your precious coins. There's a brothel in the poorer section of town, a large shop full of delicious foods you wish to sample, a small gambling ring and a tavern. > You visit the Tavern You walk into the Tavern, and drop five gold coins on the counter. "Barkeep. Get me a mug of your finest ale. No, get me however many mugs of my cheapest ale this can get." You're slid over several mugs of ale, which you begin drinking with glee. As you do, an old man sits down next to you wearing the Kingdom of Man's military uniform. "Good day, sir. Ah, an orc. A fierce beast, at that one." "I am not a beast. I am a warrior." You grunt, annoyed. "Ah, of course, of course my good friend. I was just making conversation." You look over at him, noting a black, jagged blade at his side that you recognize as Demonic Obsidian. "That's a nice blade. Where's it from?" You ask. "Ah, now that's a story. I'll tell it to you for a bottle of Elvish Wine, only five coins. A man needs to drink." He winks at you. > You pay for the man's wine You pay for the man's drink, and he gleefully accepts. "Thank you. Hell, your kind are far better than most around here. I was a soldier in the King's Royal Army. I was sent to fight the Necromancer's Army, at only a young age. Not the current Necromancer, mind you, the boy's father, the first Necromancer. I was sent to a small graveyard, where a local friendly giant had been buried. One of the Necromancer's Disciples had taken a group of zombies and ghouls down to raise the giant as a soldier in their army, so I was sent to kill them with my regiment. The dead were everywhere, and I sunk my sword into a zombie and lost it. There I was, unarmed and surrounded by the dead, when I saw this figure in a black cloak. I tackled him, grabbed his sword, this very weapon, and stabbed him to death. With that, the zombies lost their leader and we regrouped and repelled the dead. I wielded this very sword when we stormed Reaper's Castle and killed that blasted necromancer. Anyhow, that's my story. I'm glad someone heard it, and gladder my lips aren't as parched." You nod and quickly finish your drink.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk into the Tavern, and drop five gold coins on the counter. "Barkeep. Get me a mug of your finest ale. No, get me however many mugs of my cheapest ale this can get." You're slid over several mugs of ale, which you begin drinking with glee. As you do, an old man sits down next to you wearing the Kingdom of Man's military uniform. "Good day, sir. Ah, an orc. A fierce beast, at that one." "I am not a beast. I am a warrior." You grunt, annoyed. "Ah, of course, of course my good friend. I was just making conversation." You look over at him, noting a black, jagged blade at his side that you recognize as Demonic Obsidian. "That's a nice blade. Where's it from?" You ask. "Ah, now that's a story. I'll tell it to you for a bottle of Elvish Wine, only five coins. A man needs to drink." He winks at you. > You refuse "No thanks." The Soldier nods in understanding, and you continue drinking. After a few minutes, a man knocks into you, spilling your drink. "Oi!" You yell, standing up and turning. In front of you is a large man with a thick black beard, who looks at you. "What?" "You spilled my drink!" You roar at him. "Ha! My little daughter could've held a drink with more grip than that! It's not my fault!" > You punch the Man You smash your fist into the man's head, knocking him backwards. The man stumbles backwards, and you leap in, punching him twice more. > You continue punching You continue punching, and although the man gets two hits in and you, smashing your nose, his body eventually goes limp as he falls to the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You smash your fist into the man's head, knocking him backwards. The man stumbles backwards, and you leap in, punching him twice more. > You leave the Tavern You turn to leave as the man stands again. As you walk, the man draws a sword and yells. You turn to confront him, but he stabs you through the chest, straight through the heart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You roll to the side, narrowly dodging a goring from the beast's tusks. As it runs past, you leap forward with your knife, cutting through thick fur and drawing a fair amount of blood. It squeals, before running forward and turning around once more for another charge. > You have Gruzub distract it "Gruzub! Distract the beast!" "Distract it?" Gruzub asks quizically, before picking up a stone and chucking it at the boar. The boar squeals and turns to gore Gruzub. "I did it! Ah, I did it!" He yells, diving out of the way. You charge forward, stabbing the boar repeatedly in the side. It's intestines begin falling out, and it collapses, dead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Paper-Mache By Jster02 > You start The pain is the first thing you notice. It feels as though someone's poured an entire vat of hot coffee over your entire body. Somehow, you get the sense that you've been asleep a lot longer than normal. You open your eyes to find yourself laying in a patch of grass, staring up at a clear, starry sky, interrupted by the branches of nearby trees. You don't move for a moment. How did you get outside? You don't remember going to sleep out here... as a matter of fact, you don't remember going to sleep at all. Or anything else, as a matter of fact. The pain is fading fast, so you sit up and take a look around, pulse racing. The shadowy forms of trees surround you, the sounds of the night bombarding your senses. It occurs to you that you're hyperventilating. Is this what it feels like to have a heart attack? No this is a panic attack of some kind. Instinctively, you find yourself focusing on a single blade of grass in the field. With shaking hands, you pluck it from the dirt and study it, taking note of its shape, the feel of it in your hand, the nearly indistinguishable pattern of little veins running through it. Mindfulness. That's supposed to help with Panic attacks. Somehow, you remember that. But you can't remember where you learned it. Slowly but surely, your breathing normalizes. You wipe the snot from your nose and the tears from your eyes as your body stops convulsing. For the first time since you woke up, you notice the cool night breeze. You're going to be fine. If you just keep your wits, you'll find a way out of this eventually. You take a quick inventory of everything you can remember. Random bits of knowledge surface in your head, facts about whales, mathematical formulas, the steps to changing a tire. But no memories of the people, or events, or books that taught you those things. As you contemplate these things, you notice a few items laying in the grass around you. Namely, a small backpack and an odd metal disk, with a glowing screen on one side. You pick up the disk first and examine it. "Insufficient power," flashes across its face over and over in red. Something about it tugs at something in your memory, but you can't quite put your finger on what. Confused, you slip it into your pocket and turn to the bag. You unzip it to find a lighter, a knife, a sleeping bag, a pillow, and... a whole mountain of Cheez-Its and Mountain Dew? Just what kind of person are you? Still, it's better than nothing, so you slip it over your shoulders. As you try (and fail), to take your bearings from the waning crescent moon, (not that it really matters, it's not like you know where you came from), you become aware of a strange noise in the distance. You stop and listen. Is that yelling? Wait, yelling is a human noise, right? So, where there's yelling, there's humans. Before you can even finish processing that thought, your feet are carrying you towards the source of the noise. You didn't know you could run this fast on pavement, much less over the uneven turf of the forest, but then, maybe you're a famous football player or something and just don't remember it. The yelling grows louder as you draw nearer. A dim light shines in the distance, growing brighter. You slow down a little, these shouts don't sound like happy ones. "Stop struggling or it'll only hurt more!" a gravelly voice says. "Help! Stop! Let me go!" An extremely high pitched voice this time. You've slowed to a tip-toe now. Whatever this is, you're not sure you want to be a part of it. Still you creep closer until you can just make out the figures involved between the trees. They look small from here, no bigger than children, but then, it's a little hard to tell from this distance. It looks like they might be wearing some kind of cloaks, green ones, if your eyes don't deceive you. "Gag her before she draws someone to us!" Says the gravel tongued shadow to two others holding down a third, "Get her in the bag and tie it tight. The last thing we need is another escape." Your palms are soaked with sweat. You should do something, anything, to help, but whoever these people are, they certainly don't sound like the kind of folks you'd like to mess with... > You creep closer and attack You drop into a crouch and creep closer, stopping behind trees whenever you can. Now that you're closer, you can make out more details, and boy are these people weird. They're even shorter up close, they'd probably only come up to your waist. But that's the least strange thing about them. They're skin resembles Paper-Mache, all folded over itself. And then there's the ears, so long and pointy. Almost as big as they are, and yet still they point straight up. Forget whatever you thought about only humans yelling. You must've forgotten that too, because these things are no humans. The two biggest creatures hold down a smaller one, (perhaps that one is only a child), while the one that appears to be the leader stands and watches. Like you thought, all but the one on the ground are clad in green cloaks, reaching nearly to their feet, with a strange symbol of something like a broken goblet embroidered on their backs in brown. They've nearly got the child into a big sack now, but she (he? It?) still hasn't given up. "Please!" She cries, "I just wanna go home! Let me go home!" "We're giving you a new home." Says the leader, "A better home! Don't you want to help make your old home better?" "No! I want my papa!" Just watching this makes you nauseous. This has got to be stopped, there's no way you can sit by and let it happen. Before you've even so much as thought of a plan, you're on your feet, charging the creatures with... > The knife! You flick your knife open and tense for battle. It feels so small in your hand, so weak. If only you had a gun, or a hatchet at least. Still, it's better than using your fists. Before you have the chance lose your nerve, you charge one of the creatures holding down the... other creature. (You're really not sure what to call any of these things, you've never seen anything quite like them before). You slam into it, knocking it to the ground before it has a chance to react. It's eyes go wide as you plunge the knife into it's stomach, (or what appears to be it's stomach). It penetrates easier than you expected, the knife. Feels a little too easy. But before you have time to fully contemplate the moral ambiguity of your actions, you see, out of the corner of your eye, the other creature charging you with some kind of sharpened stick. You act faster than you ever thought you could, rolling to the side, just as it brings it's stick down in a stabbing motion. The stick buries itself into the chest of the first creature, (the one with the knife still stuck in it's chest). If it wasn't dead before, it certainly is now. The creature with the stick stares at it's fallen friend, stunned. You should strike now, while it's distracted, but all you can do is stare at the dead creature. You did that. Even though it's not exactly a human, something about the whole thing just feels wrong. Slowly, the surviving creature turns towards you. "Why would you do that?" He asks, "That was my friend!" "You were attacking that... other creature!" You say. Even as you say it, the words feel hollow. "He... had it coming!" "You have no idea what you've gotten yourself involved in!" He says, "You're messing with things you shouldn't you crazy monster!" With that, the creature charges you once more, wrenching it's weapon from the chest of its dead friend. Perhaps you should let him strike you down. Maybe you're the monster here. But then, what about that other creature? The one he was tormenting? What does that make him? No, you were just acting as any good person should when they see someone in danger. Just as the creature reaches you, instinct takes over and you slam your fist into it's head. These creatures don't just look like Paper-Mache, they tear like it too. As soon as your hand makes contact, his face crumples inward and he staggers back, falling to the ground, dead. You stare at your hand, stunned. Either you've got some sort of hidden superpowers, or these creatures are weaker than most. That doesn't seem normal. Even with your broken memory, you can be pretty sure of that. As the adrenaline wears off, you remember that there were three creatures involved. Two doing the heavy lifting and one giving orders. You take a quick look around you, but see nothing. It must've run off somewhere; the only other living thing left in the area is the creature you came to save in the first place. > You check on the fallen creature The creature lays in the dirt, staring at you. It trembles as you approach, inching away on its back. "Who are you?" It asks with trembling voice, "What do you want? I want my papa!" "I'm not going to hurt you," You say, trying to sound as soothing as you can, "I'm here to help." "You're... not gonna hurt me like those other guys?" "No, I was saving you. That's why I hurt them." "Oh... Okay..." You stare at each other wordlessly for a few moments, unsure of what to say. Finally, you extend your hand to help the creature up. It stares for a second at your arm, and asks, "What are you doing?" "I'm helping you up." "How does holding your hand out help me up?" "You grab it and... oh, never mind. Do you know how to get home?" (Does this thing even have a home)? "I think so..." "Alright, can you walk?" The creature struggles to its feet. "Yes." Another moment of silence. "I'm Pila," the creature says, "...thanks." "You're welcome. Come on, let me walk you home." "Okay." You set off down the path, Pila leading the way. For a few minutes you travel in silence. The hooting of owls and the howl of the wind are your only company as you trudge through the trees. Finally, you can't help but break the silence. "What are you exactly?" Pila looks at you, her ears twitch slightly. "I already told you, I'm Pila." "No, I mean, what are you. As in, what species are you?" "What's a species?" You struggle to come up with an explanation. "It means, what kind of creature are you? I don't know how else to explain it." "I'm confused." "Well... I'm a human." You point to yourself, then look around for something else to name. You spot an owl sitting on a branch, "And that's an owl," You point at the creature, "But what are you? I've never seen anything like you before." "I still don't understand... human? Is that what you said your name was?" It's no use trying to get anything out of her. You sigh, and say, "Never mind, it's not important." "Okay!" She says As you're talking, you come to the side of a hill, with little stairs carved into the side for you to climb down. Lights twinkle a little ways below; must be some kind of village. Pila points at the lights. "That's where I live. It's also where my mama and my papa live. And all of my friends. Let's go!" With that, she dashes down the stairs. They're the perfect size for her little feet, (if a little big). As for you though, you may as well be going downhill on gravel. You nearly slip at least three times as you descend, but in the end you make it to the bottom unscathed. "We're almost there now," Pila says, running up the path. You follow as quick as you can, it wouldn't do to lose her again. If that happened you might as well have never saved her at all. As you jog along the path, you pass a strange plant, just taller than you are. It grows on a thin, blue stalk, straight up, until it droops over at the top, opening into a strange, orange bulb. The bulb glows in the dawn, lighting the whole path beneath your feet. Just a few moments later, you pass by another on the opposite side of the path. The entire trail leading up to the village is lined with these plants, lighting the way like streetlights on an old city road. > You pila's house It soon becomes apparent that you are closer to the village than you thought. Is it just you, or are those buildings smaller than they seemed from afar? You come to the edge of the village to find that the smallest of the houses are about your height. Everything is half the size it should be, from the road through town to the stones that pave it. Stranger still, it all has the same Paper-Mache quality as Pila's skin. You follow the little creature through a twisting maze of streets, just a tad bit too small for you. You begin to see other creatures like Pila milling about. Most stare at you, terrified, a few even run the other way, screaming. But every time that happens, Pila shouts after them, "It's okay, he's nice! He saved me from bad people!" After about five minutes of walking, a high pitched whistle cuts through the air. You try to ignore it, but it persists. "What is that?" You ask. "Oh that?" Pila stops and turns, "That's the alarm. People sound it whenever there's an emergency. Then the watchmen come and help whoever sounded it. My papa is the leader of all of the watchmen." She beams with pride. "Shouldn't we be worried." "No, this happens a few times every day. My papa will take care of it, whatever it is." "Well, alright." You walk for a few minutes more, then the alarm stops, leaving you in complete silence. "See?" Pila says, "Everything's going to be-" A voice from behind interrupts her, "What in the name of the water-pit are you?" You and Pila turn in unison to see a whole squadron of creatures, all pointing little wooden spears your way. But before you can do or say anything, Pila runs straight up to them. "Papa!" She cries, flinging her little arms around the one who appears to be their leader. "Pila?" He says, "What are you doing with this... thing? Did it hurt you?" He turns his gaze on you. "What were you doing with my Daughter, you monster?" "No, Papa! You don't understand! This is human, he saved me from a bunch of really mean people. They tried to put me in a big bag, but then he came out of the forest and beat them up!" Pila's father is quiet for a minute. Then, he turns to the creatures behind him and says, "You can relax. Looks like we won't be needing spears." He turns back to you, and takes a few steps in your direction. "I apologize... human, is it? It's just that no one's ever seen anything like you before. So it was only natural the alarm was sounded. They all thought you were some kind of monster!" "I thought the same when I first saw creatures like you." You say, "If you don't mind me asking, what exactly are you? I've never seen anything quite like you either. At least, I don't think I have." "You stand in a village full of Oalkwardners." The Creature says, "I am Merk, head of the Watchmen of Arrorn. I help to protect this place from any sort of outside invaders or natural disasters. That's why I came when I heard you had arrived. By the way, thank you so much for rescuing my daughter. If you ever need anything at all, just come find me and I'll do my best to make it happen." He stops and thinks for a moment. "Are you planning on staying here a while?" "Actually," You say, "I have no idea how I got here in the first place. So, I guess I'm kinda stuck till I figure out how to get back home." "That's strange indeed," Merk says, "Come with me, if you need, you may stay with me and my family while you're here. You did save Pila, after all. It's the least we can do." "I guess I have nowhere else to go," You say. "Yay!" Pila says, "It'll be like when we have all the family over for a feast!" And once again, you set off through the streets. As you walk, you explain to Merk how you woke up in the forest with no memory and found Pila in trouble. "What were you doing out there, Pila?" Merk asks, "Why on earth did your mother let you go out so late? And why on earth did you take this long to come back? From what Human said, it doesn't sound like you were too far from town." Merk frowns, "In fact, you'd better come up with a pretty good explanation as to why you were out so late, or else you're in hot water!" "It's not my fault!" Pila says, "I went out to play hide-and-seek in the woods with my friends. The sun was going down, but we knew it would still be light outside for a little bit, so we thought it would be okay. But I really wanted to win. I never win at hide-and-seek, so I needed a plan to make sure they'd never find me. So I went really far away on the road. But then it started to get dark, and I got scared. And then, the ground started shaking, and I got really scared. So I ran away into the trees. But then I got lost, so I was really really scared. It took me a long time to find my way back to the road, and then when I was walking back, the mean guys came and tried to put me in a bag!" "You said the ground started shaking?" Merk asks, "But I didn't feel anything here. I was on the night-watch, so I know." "But it's true, Papa!" Pila says, "There was a really bright light in the sky too! It was like lightning, but it stayed there for a looooooong time." "Don't make up stories, Pila." Merk sounds a little irritated now, "When we get home, you're going to have to do some chores." "But Papa-" "Let's not do this in front of our guest, alright?" Pila sighs, "Yes Papa..." "Good girl. Oh look, we're here." The streets are a bit wider here, and the houses a bit bigger. They're all spaced apart, each one with a good five-or-so acres of space. You've stopped in front of a beautiful yellow one, that looks like it might be two stories high, (though it's hard to tell what with the strange sizes of everything). "We have the best house in the village!" Pila beams, "That's because Papa has the best job. I wanna do it when I grow up too, so I can have this same house." Merk laughs. "I'm glad you think this house is the best. You've never told me that before. Come on, lets go inside." You follow Merk to the front door, where it becomes apparent that you might have a problem. "I'm... not sure I can fit," you say, staring at the door. It comes up only to your chest and looks just a little too narrow for you to fit through. "I don't want to mess up your house." Merk thinks for a moment, wringing his hands. "That really is a shame. We might have to figure out somewhere else for you to stay, I'm sorry." It's then that you remember, you've got camping supplies in your backpack "I can just sleep outside," You say, "I've got a sleeping bag and a pillow, I'll just lay it out in your yard somewhere, if that's alright. Pila's face brightens, "Papa, can we eat outside with Human too?" "I guess we may as well, so long as it stays nice outside," Merk says, "Now you'd better go get some sleep. I'm not sure how you can be this chipper after staying up all night like that. Besides, you'll need your rest if you ever want to get done with the massive list of chores you're gonna get once I figure out just how much trouble you're in." Pila sighs, and starts towards the door. "Yes papa..." You spend the rest of the day on Merk's property, not daring to re-enter the village for fear that someone might see you and sound the alarm. ("Just until we get the word around that you're not a threat," Merk says). For a while you talk with Merk, trying to figure out where exactly you are. Eventually, Merk pulls out a map of the area, and you find that you don't recognize any of the landscape. (Though, you can't quite remember any other landscapes either). You just can't make heads or tails of the situation. Once evening rolls around, Merk's wife, (who you quickly learn is named Fila), brings you dinner in a bowl, much too small for you to properly hold. It's filled with some kind of goop that smells like burning rubber, and doesn't taste much better. But you don't say anything, and just choke it down best you can. You know you can eat some of the Cheez-Its from your bag after everyone else goes to bed. After an hour-or-so more of small talk, everyone decides to hit the sack. As the Oalkwardners head inside, you spread out your sleeping bag and lay down, staring up at the stars. The moment your head touches the pillow, all the energy you spent today hits you at once. You're asleep within minutes... > A living nightmare Your dreams are a confused mass of pictures and images. Lots of formulas and numbers, the strange disk you found in the woods, a violet light engulfing you... A whisper in your ear breaks you from your slumber. "Wake up, strange beast. I need to talk to you." You open your eyes so find that it's still dark. The face of an Oalkwardner stares down at you, blocking out the moonlight. It startles you so much, you sit straight up; if it wasn't for the creature's swift reflexes, your head would've smashed right into it. That's when you get a good look at it in the light of the moon. "What the heck do you think you're doing here?" You ask, "You were the guy that ran away after I saved Pila!" "Not so loud," He hisses, "Do you want to give me away?" "Yeah, actually. I should call Merk right now, or better yet, do you in myself!" You take a deep breath to let out a shout. "Don't!" Something about the creature's tone stops you, if only for a moment, from alerting the Oalkwardners in the house. What would drive any intelligent creature to walk into the lion's den like this in the first place? It just doesn't add up. "At least hear me out." Pleads the creature, "I need your help." "What makes you think I would help a kidnapper? Seriously, are you crazy?" "It's not just me you'd be helping, but them too!" he gestures towards the house, "In fact, you'd be helping every Oalkwardner in this village." "Is that a threat?" You ask, "Are you going to kill them or something if I don't cooperate?" "My word, you must really think I'm some kind of monster, monster. No, I'm not here to hurt anyone. Like I said, I'm here to help." "How does kidnapping children help anyone?" "I was getting to that. This village, Arrorn, I believe it's called, is not as peaceful as it seems. It is under the rule of King Faerdalm, a cruel, ruthless tyrant." "Sound like something a teenager would come up with for a writing contest," You say, rolling your eyes. "Will you let me finish?" The creature glares at you, "He takes their food, says they owe it to him for getting to live in such a 'great and powerful country.' It's all a load of bull, of course. He takes so much that a good many of the villagers die every year from starvation. I'm part of a resistance group trying to stop it. We've been working on a way to get rid of Faerdalm once and for all, so everyone can be free, just like in the good old days. That's why we've needed to take children, to run tests on them. We're developing a way to make ourselves stronger, so we can finally stand up to him. But we're still a ways out from perfecting it. It's going to take a lot more people, a lot more deaths, to finally perfect it. To be quite frank, I'm getting quite sick of it." "So, where do I come in?" You ask. "Never in my life, have I ever seen a creature as powerful as you." He says, "If you were to join us, we would be able to achive our goal much quicker. And the quicker we achive it, the less needless deaths must occuer." He extends his hand, as if to shake yours, "So, are you in?" > You shake his hand The Oalkwardner smiles as you shake his hand. "Very well then," he says, "We must go at once, there are many preparations to be made." he stops for a moment and looks at you, "You may call me Bolard, by the way." With that, he makes a single clicking noise with his mouth, and a whole hoard of Oalkwardners dressed in the same cloaks as Bolard step out from the shadows, surrounding the two of you. "We're heading back to base," Bolard says, "Better get moving if you wanna get any sleep tonight!" "Hold on a second!" you say, "Were you planning on ambushing me if I said no?" "Of course not!" Bolard says, "They were just here in case you were... unreasonable, and decided to attack me." Something about his tone puts you on edge, but you can't exactly do anything about it with all these guards around. You follow the pack into the forest... Bolard leads the group back up the path you came from, past the place where you witnessed the attempted kidnapping. You walk for hours, never stopping for even so much as a five minute break. As the sun's rays begin to peak over the horizon, the leaders of the pack turn off the trail abruptly and lead you into more densely wooded area. As the sun grows higher in the sky, you notice that there is still a sort of trail here, just fainter and harder to see than the one you left. It seems this way has been traveled a few times before, the vegetation trampled underneath it. After a few more hours of walking, the group stops abruptly, and you nearly trip over the Oalkwardner in front of you. You sigh with relief. This must be some kind of break. Thank goodness, your feet feel like they're about to fall off. But instead of dispersing and finding spots to sit down and talk, the Oalkwardners stay where they are. There's motion at the front of the pack, someone's doing... something, you're not sure what. Then, a great wooden hatch opens up from the ground, revealing a spiral staircase descending down into the earth. You didn't see it because it was camouflaged by dirt and leaves, somehow stuck on top of it. The assembly moves forward, down the stairs, and you follow at the middle of the pack. You reach the bottom and find yourself in a hard packed dirt tunnel, with a few paths branching off from it. "To your barracks, everyone!" Bolard says, "I must speak with the monster for a moment." The crowd disperses, heading down various tunnels, chattering amongst themselves. Bolard turns to you. "I'm not going to have you stay in the barracks with the others," He says, "You're a might too big for the beds there, and I don't want you rolling over and crushing someone or something. Instead, I think you ought to take one of the private suites, which are usually reserved for our highest ranking officials. Thankfully enough, we've got a few to spare. Come, I'll take you there now. I'm headed that direction anyway." You follow Bolard through the tunnels, trying your best to remember how to get back to the hatch. Thankfully, it isn't too far. After a few minutes, the dirt walls become wooden, which feels a little nicer. It's like being in a regular hallway, (if a bit cramped, due to your size). "This is your room," Bolard says, opening the door at the very end of the hallway, "Take some time to get acquainted with your new surroundings. I will return shortly, there are a few matters of grave importance which I must discuss with you." He shuts the door, leaving you to explore your new accommodations. Not to say there's all that much to explore, the room is quite barren. The only furniture is a sleeping pad that looks like it's woven from grass and a little table on the far side of the room. It's all too small for you, but you'll just have to make do. You take off your backpack and sit on the mat. It feels so nice to take a rest after all that walking. While you sit, you begin sifting through the contents of your bag, laying them out on the floor in front of you. You stop when your hand touches the strange metal disk you found in the forest when you woke up. The screen still flashes, "insufficient power," over and over again. Maybe if you can get it charged up again, you might be able to uncover some clue about your past. You flip it over and look at the back. There's a little tank strapped to this side, with a tiny bit of green fluid inside. Is this the stuff that powers it? If you fill it up, will the disk work again? As you ponder all these things, the door opens and Bolard walks in. "Come, monster," he says, "I need to relay the plan to you, so that we're ready." > The plan Bolard leads you back out into the hallway and through another nearby door. This room is less barren than the one you sleep in, and it's set up more like an office. "Sit," Bolard gestures towards a stool, too small for you, in front of a desk in the middle of the room. You obey, sitting uncomfortably low, as Bolard walks around the desk and sits on a stool of his own on the other side. "Monster," Bolard says, "You have displayed great strength. Strength enough, perhaps, to take out an entire army single handedly." "What do you mean?" you ask, "I've never fought anyone in my life since yesterday. At least, I don't think I have." "Training will be provided of course," Bolard says, "With your great strength, and the proper training, you may lead us to victory." "You're crazy! What kind of insane thing do you want me to do anyway?" "I want you to storm the king's palace. In two weeks time, there'll be a banquet, and all his advisors and officials will be there. If you attack then, you'll be able to cripple his regime, creating a power vacuum with no one to fill it. That's when we'll step in and take over, creating a new era of peace and prosperity." "But why just me? Why should I do this alone?" "Because if you don't, more innocent Oalkwardners will die! They'll keep doing experiments, stealing more children to use as lab rats! We've got someone inside the palace who can get you inside. There's no turning back, you agreed to this when you shook my hand." You open your mouth to argue, but then close it. It's useless to argue. If you refuse to do as he says, he'll probably have you killed or something. "Any questions?" Bolard asks. You don't say anything. "Good. You may spend the rest of the day as you wish. Go explore the facility, if you want. Get to know your way around so you feel more comfortable here." You turn and walk out the door, back to your room. There's nothing else to say. > The note You return to your room to find a note, laying on your pillow. "Come to the mess hall at midnight. There's something we must discuss." Confused, you turn it over to see if there's anything on the back, but there's not. For a moment, you stand there, staring at the piece of paper in your hands. What's going on? You've hardly met anyone yet, and already someone wants to talk with you privately? Is it some kind of trap? But what if it's important? Curiosity burns within you. You have to find out what this is all about. If things go wrong, you'll just have to find a way out of it. That night, you creep out of your room and head to the mess hall at what you think is about 11:30. (It's hard to tell, the Oalkwardners use a complex system of hourglasses to tell time. It's nothing like what you're used to). Luckily, you explored most of the tunnels beforehand, so you find your way easily enough, with ten minutes to spare. You enter the mess hall to find... nothing out of place. There's not another person in sight. You're not surprised, you are early after all. Something touches your shoulder. You whirl around to see a cloaked Oalkwardner with a wooden mask over their face, standing behind you. "What-" you start to say, but the Oalkwardner puts a finger to its lips. It beckons for you to follow, and scurries down a tunnel at the far side of the room, one of the few you have yet to explore. You follow behind as best you can, trying your best not to lose them in the twists and turns of the passage. Soon, you reach a staircase, leading up to a hatch. The Oalkwardner leads you through the hatch and into the cool night air. You hadn't realized how much you missed the surface until now, and you cherish each breath of fresh air. They lead you a little ways into the forest, then stop. "So," the Oalkwardner says, "You're the one Bolard was talking about. The one that's gonna save the entire rebellion." "I... guess." you say, confused. "What did you want to talk about, exactly?" "Do you want to know how Bolard sees you?" The Oalkwardner asks. "What?" "When he looks at you, he sees only a pawn. A monster which he can bend to his will and use for his own gain." The Oalkwardner turns to face you. "But you are not the only one. He treats everyone that way. All of the high ranking Oalkwardners do, at least in this rebellion." "What does this have to do with me?" "If their plan succeeds, and they manage to take power, I fear they will estate an even worse government than there already is. You are the key piece in their plan. But if that key piece were to fail..." "What, you want me to die on purpose?" "No, of course not! But I want you to fake your own death. Me and some others are ready to desert this crazy rebellion and take whatever the king has to throw at us. It can't be worse than what they've got planned. Not only that, but we want you to tip the king off about their plans while your at it. We'll write a note, and we want you to leave it somewhere they'll find it once you're inside the fortress." "Wait, so am I going into the fortress or am I faking my death?" "You're faking your death at the fortress. They'll just think you failed your mission, but you'll actually have run away, with me and the others." "I hardly know you! Why should I trust you?" "I'll give you until the day of the attack to think it over, alright?" The Oalkwardner says, "I get that this can be hard, but I'm begging you, please don't fail us." You sigh. "I'll think about it." "Good. Now, go get some rest. You've got a long couple of weeks ahead of you." > The choice... The next two weeks are a blur. You train for six hours a day, preparing for the big day. Before you know it, it's nearly arrived. The night before, you find another note on your pillow, this one a little longer than the last. "Enclosed is the note you must plant in the fortress," It reads, "I hope you've decided to help us, as we desperately need it. Meet us in the woods behind the fortress once you've done the job, and we can escape." There's another piece of paper, this one explaining everything about the rebellion, where to find their headquarters, and how best to stop them. You skim it, then shove it in your pocket. You're still not sure whether to go along with the rebellions plan, or join the defectors. Whatever you do, you'll have to decide now... > You tell Bolard about the defectors and end this right here and now There's no point risking complications during the mission. You'd better tell Bolard about this right now. You stand and head to his office. He's still in there, organizing some of the books on his shelves, as you enter. "Hello, monster." He says, nodding to you. "What can I do for you?" "Defectors," you say, "They've been trying to get me to help them, I've got proof!" You show him the note. He reads it, his eyebrows rising higher and higher with every sentence. "My word!" he cries, "We must do something about it before it's too late! I'll initiate a surprise inspection, we'll catch those filthy traitors yet!" He rushes out of the office. You head back to your room and sit on your bed. Did you do the right thing? There's no stopping it now, so you'd best try and get some sleep. It doesn't come easy though. There's a lot of yelling and screaming from the other tunnels, probably the defectors. You try your best to ignore the conflicting feelings in your stomach as you drift into an uneasy sleep... > The attack The next day, you begin the journey to the fortress, escorted by a few rebels, and Bolard himself. It takes several days to get there, and you get to pass by Arrorn on the way, so that's fun. (Though, you don't get to actually enter the village. Too much risk of being recognized or something). Finally, you spot it, sitting on a hilltop just on the horizon. "Alright," Bolard says, "There's a little side door you're going to be let in through. It leads straight to the great hall. Once you get inside, kill as many people as you can, alright? Especially the ones that look super regal, because those are probably royalty." "Anything else?" you ask, dryly. "Actually, yes. The king wears this magic armor all the time. He doesn't get hurt by physical attacks." "Why didn't you tell me this sooner?" you protest, "What do you want me to do about him if I can't hurt him?" "I'm getting to that!" Bolard sounds annoyed, "I do have something that'll kill him." He reaches into his bag and pulls out a glass bottle full of... water. "What's this for?" You ask. "What do you think? It'll get through the cracks in his armor, and kill him!" "It's water." "Exactly! Water kills people!" "I don't follow." "Didn't anyone ever tell you that water disintegrates people? The skin soaks up too much and it just falls apart." "That's not how it works for Humans," you say, "We can touch water, no problem." "Really? Well, that sure makes things easier. This way you can cross the moat, no problem! I was wondering how we'd do that." "Yeah... Okay." You roll your eyes. "Just give me the bottle. I'll smash it over his head or something." As you get closer to the fortress, you start to make out more detail. It looks like it mainly consists of a bunch of towers, surrounded by a wooden wall. By the time the sun sets, you're within a hundred yards of the walls. "Perfect!" Bolard says, "Look, all the nobles are already inside." He points to the closed drawbridge, as if to prove it. "The doorway is just around the back of the fortress. Good luck, monster." "Thanks," you say, rolling your eyes. You grab your knife and hop into the moat, making it across in less than a minute. You rush around the side of the wall and find a door, carved into the side. Just as you reach it, it flies open, and a female Oalkwardner beckons you inside. As soon as you enter the fortress, the nauseating smell of Oalkwardner food hits your nose. You ignore it best you can and take a look around. You're in an alcove at the edge of the great hall, which consists mainly of a bunch of wooden tables lined up together. Over fifty Oalkwardners sit around it, laughing, eating, getting drunk... This is perfect! If they're tipsy, you can strike much more easily. Quickly, you locate the king, (his armor sets him apart from the rest quite nicely), and sneak up behind him. Then, in one quick motion, you bash the bottle over his head, shattering it into a million pieces. The water splashes everywhere, (it definitely wasn't a small bottle), and the entire room goes silent. Then, the king begins to scream, and the room erupts into chaos. Quick as you can, you start punching, kicking, stabbing right and left. Oalkwardners go flying everywhere, most dying the instant you touch them. You manage to take out about half of the nobles before they get wise and start running for the door. At the same time, some of the guards seem to be getting ready for a counter attack. You'd better figure out what to do next, and fast... > You get out now, while you still can. (You've already killed the king, and that's all that really matters). You dash out the door before the guards can strike back. Soon as you make it to the moat, you know you're home free. The guards can't follow you here. Before you know it, you've reached the other side. "Bolard!" You call, "I got the king!" He and the other guards come running from around the corner. "Great!" Bolard says, "That should be enough! Worst comes to worst, and we have to launch another assault. They're crippled without a leader, it should be easy." "Good to know. Now why don't we get out of here before they come after us?" Bolard laughs. "Yes, let's get on that." And you run off into the forest together.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next day, you begin the journey to the fortress, escorted by a few rebels, and Bolard himself. It takes several days to get there, and you get to pass by Arrorn on the way, so that's fun. (Though, you don't get to actually enter the village. Too much risk of being recognized or something). Finally, you spot it, sitting on a hilltop just on the horizon. "Alright," Bolard says, "There's a little side door you're going to be let in through. It leads straight to the great hall. Once you get inside, kill as many people as you can, alright? Especially the ones that look super regal, because those are probably royalty." "Anything else?" you ask, dryly. "Actually, yes. The king wears this magic armor all the time. He doesn't get hurt by physical attacks." "Why didn't you tell me this sooner?" you protest, "What do you want me to do about him if I can't hurt him?" "I'm getting to that!" Bolard sounds annoyed, "I do have something that'll kill him." He reaches into his bag and pulls out a glass bottle full of... water. "What's this for?" You ask. "What do you think? It'll get through the cracks in his armor, and kill him!" "It's water." "Exactly! Water kills people!" "I don't follow." "Didn't anyone ever tell you that water disintegrates people? The skin soaks up too much and it just falls apart." "That's not how it works for Humans," you say, "We can touch water, no problem." "Really? Well, that sure makes things easier. This way you can cross the moat, no problem! I was wondering how we'd do that." "Yeah... Okay." You roll your eyes. "Just give me the bottle. I'll smash it over his head or something." As you get closer to the fortress, you start to make out more detail. It looks like it mainly consists of a bunch of towers, surrounded by a wooden wall. By the time the sun sets, you're within a hundred yards of the walls. "Perfect!" Bolard says, "Look, all the nobles are already inside." He points to the closed drawbridge, as if to prove it. "The doorway is just around the back of the fortress. Good luck, monster." "Thanks," you say, rolling your eyes. You grab your knife and hop into the moat, making it across in less than a minute. You rush around the side of the wall and find a door, carved into the side. Just as you reach it, it flies open, and a female Oalkwardner beckons you inside. As soon as you enter the fortress, the nauseating smell of Oalkwardner food hits your nose. You ignore it best you can and take a look around. You're in an alcove at the edge of the great hall, which consists mainly of a bunch of wooden tables lined up together. Over fifty Oalkwardners sit around it, laughing, eating, getting drunk... This is perfect! If they're tipsy, you can strike much more easily. Quickly, you locate the king, (his armor sets him apart from the rest quite nicely), and sneak up behind him. Then, in one quick motion, you bash the bottle over his head, shattering it into a million pieces. The water splashes everywhere, (it definitely wasn't a small bottle), and the entire room goes silent. Then, the king begins to scream, and the room erupts into chaos. Quick as you can, you start punching, kicking, stabbing right and left. Oalkwardners go flying everywhere, most dying the instant you touch them. You manage to take out about half of the nobles before they get wise and start running for the door. At the same time, some of the guards seem to be getting ready for a counter attack. You'd better figure out what to do next, and fast... > You go after the rest of the so-called nobles You can't leave any behind to take the king's place, or else the entire mission is a failure. You rush out after them, easily catching up to them with your longer legs. Guess they're not the types to exercise... or do whatever it is these creatures have to do to get stronger. You plow through them like they're snowmen. But the guards begin to come after you, and they clearly do exercise. They begin to surround you as you chase the last noble across the courtyard. (Most of them never made it past the great hall door). Just as the guards close in, you leap atop the last noble, crushing him under your weight! He dies instantly. Unfortunately for you, the guards reach you at that exact moment, stabbing you in about fifteen different places at once. You also die instantly. But hey. At least you saved the kingdom. Sort of...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next two weeks are a blur. You train for six hours a day, preparing for the big day. Before you know it, it's nearly arrived. The night before, you find another note on your pillow, this one a little longer than the last. "Enclosed is the note you must plant in the fortress," It reads, "I hope you've decided to help us, as we desperately need it. Meet us in the woods behind the fortress once you've done the job, and we can escape." There's another piece of paper, this one explaining everything about the rebellion, where to find their headquarters, and how best to stop them. You skim it, then shove it in your pocket. You're still not sure whether to go along with the rebellions plan, or join the defectors. Whatever you do, you'll have to decide now... > You go along with the defectors plans What are you thinking? Of course you're going along with them! This rebellion kidnaps children, for crying out loud! There's no way they'd make good rulers. You finger the note in your pocket, your resolve slowly growing. Tomorrow, you get to leave this place forever. With that thought in mind, sleep comes easy... The next day, you begin the journey to the fortress, escorted by a few rebels, and Bolard himself. It takes several days to get there, and you get to pass by Arrorn on the way, so that's fun. (Though, you don't get to actually enter the village. Too much risk of being recognized or something). Finally, you spot it, sitting on a hilltop just on the horizon. The King's fortress. "Alright," Bolard says, "I didn't have much to do last night, so I thought a lot about the plan. We've got an informant inside the fortress who can let you in so you can carry out the mission. Just do what we discussed and we'll be fine." He thinks for a moment, then says, "Also, I brought something in case the king doesn't fall so easy. He's got this enchanted armor, and I'm not quite sure you'll be able to break through it. So, I procured a bottle of water." He pulls a glass bottle out of his bag and hands it to you carefully. "What's this for?" You ask. "What do you think? It'll get through the cracks in his armor, and kill him!" "It's water." "Exactly! Water kills people!" "I don't follow." "Didn't anyone ever tell you that water disintegrates people? The skin soaks up too much and it just falls apart." "That's not how it works for Humans," you say, "We can touch water, no problem." "Really? Well, that sure makes things easier. This way you can cross the moat, no problem! I was wondering how we'd do that." "Yeah... Okay." You roll your eyes. "Just give me the bottle. I'll smash it over his head or something." As you get closer to the fortress, you start to make out more detail. It looks like it mainly consists of a bunch of towers, surrounded by a wooden wall. By the time the sun sets, you're within a hundred yards of the walls. "Alright," Bolard says, "Good luck monster!" He gives you a shove towards the moat. You jump right in and swim across, making it to the other side in less than a minute. You head around the back of the castle, where you find door carved into the wall. As you're contemplating how to get inside, it swings open and a female Oalkwardner beckons you inside. That's when you realize you'll have to kill her so she doesn't reveal that you're a traitor once you escape. As soon as she shuts the door, you bash her over the head with your fist, taking her out instantly. You feel a little guilty about it, because after all, she did let you in. But then, the king is probably gonna execute all of the rebels anyway, right? You're in a little alcove in the great hall, unseen by the group of people at the table, talking and laughing. There's another door nearby, presumably to the courtyard. You'll head out there in a moment, but first you've gotta figure out the best way to deal with the note... > You go up to the table and deliver it yourself You have to make sure the king gets this note, don't you? So, you walk right up to the table, reaching in your pocket for the note. But before you can say so much as a word, someone screams. Now what on earth could've caused that? You look around, but realize they're all looking at you, backing away. You open your mouth to say that you come in peace, but before you do, a guard rushes over and stabs you in the gut! You're so surprised, you don't do anything when the others come and follow suit! You fall to the ground, still clutching the note in your hand. Your vision swims, then fades to black. Hopefully they'll still find the note in your hand. They'll probably feel pretty stupid about killing a potential ally, but that's their loss...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>What are you thinking? Of course you're going along with them! This rebellion kidnaps children, for crying out loud! There's no way they'd make good rulers. You finger the note in your pocket, your resolve slowly growing. Tomorrow, you get to leave this place forever. With that thought in mind, sleep comes easy... The next day, you begin the journey to the fortress, escorted by a few rebels, and Bolard himself. It takes several days to get there, and you get to pass by Arrorn on the way, so that's fun. (Though, you don't get to actually enter the village. Too much risk of being recognized or something). Finally, you spot it, sitting on a hilltop just on the horizon. The King's fortress. "Alright," Bolard says, "I didn't have much to do last night, so I thought a lot about the plan. We've got an informant inside the fortress who can let you in so you can carry out the mission. Just do what we discussed and we'll be fine." He thinks for a moment, then says, "Also, I brought something in case the king doesn't fall so easy. He's got this enchanted armor, and I'm not quite sure you'll be able to break through it. So, I procured a bottle of water." He pulls a glass bottle out of his bag and hands it to you carefully. "What's this for?" You ask. "What do you think? It'll get through the cracks in his armor, and kill him!" "It's water." "Exactly! Water kills people!" "I don't follow." "Didn't anyone ever tell you that water disintegrates people? The skin soaks up too much and it just falls apart." "That's not how it works for Humans," you say, "We can touch water, no problem." "Really? Well, that sure makes things easier. This way you can cross the moat, no problem! I was wondering how we'd do that." "Yeah... Okay." You roll your eyes. "Just give me the bottle. I'll smash it over his head or something." As you get closer to the fortress, you start to make out more detail. It looks like it mainly consists of a bunch of towers, surrounded by a wooden wall. By the time the sun sets, you're within a hundred yards of the walls. "Alright," Bolard says, "Good luck monster!" He gives you a shove towards the moat. You jump right in and swim across, making it to the other side in less than a minute. You head around the back of the castle, where you find door carved into the wall. As you're contemplating how to get inside, it swings open and a female Oalkwardner beckons you inside. That's when you realize you'll have to kill her so she doesn't reveal that you're a traitor once you escape. As soon as she shuts the door, you bash her over the head with your fist, taking her out instantly. You feel a little guilty about it, because after all, she did let you in. But then, the king is probably gonna execute all of the rebels anyway, right? You're in a little alcove in the great hall, unseen by the group of people at the table, talking and laughing. There's another door nearby, presumably to the courtyard. You'll head out there in a moment, but first you've gotta figure out the best way to deal with the note... > You leave it stuck between the door and the wall on your way out You slip out the door before anyone notices you, leaving the note behind. Now, you're in the fortress courtyard. Luckily, it's deserted, probably thanks to the banquet. Even more lucky, you spy another exit door just across the courtyard. You head straight for it and try to open it. To your immense surprise, it swings right open. Are they really this under prepared? What if someone broke into the fortress through that? You step outside the walls, and realize that there's no handle on the other side. Closed, the door blends seamlessly with the wall, making it completely invisible. How interesting, looks like they had an escape route planned in case of an attack. So smart of them. You cross the moat and hurry back into the forest, hoping against hope that Bolard doesn't see you. Once you're a good hundred feet in, a voice from besides you nearly makes you jump out of your skin. "Did you do it?" You turn to see the masked Oalkwardner and a few others looking at you, waiting for an answer. "Yeah," you say, "It's done." "Perfect!" The Oalkwardner pulls off his mask, revealing his face. "Now that I know I can trust you, I can take this stupid thing off. I was just wearing it in case you betrayed us or something. My name is Culmad, by the way. Now what do you say we get the heck out of here?" "Yeah," you say, "Why don't we?" And you set off into the forest, together. When word gets out about what you did, you will be hailed as a hero, the savior of the kingdom. But for now, perhaps you ought to just try your best to make a life for yourself in this place. It seems like you've already got yourself a few friends to start your new life with. Best of luck...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your dreams are a confused mass of pictures and images. Lots of formulas and numbers, the strange disk you found in the woods, a violet light engulfing you... A whisper in your ear breaks you from your slumber. "Wake up, strange beast. I need to talk to you." You open your eyes so find that it's still dark. The face of an Oalkwardner stares down at you, blocking out the moonlight. It startles you so much, you sit straight up; if it wasn't for the creature's swift reflexes, your head would've smashed right into it. That's when you get a good look at it in the light of the moon. "What the heck do you think you're doing here?" You ask, "You were the guy that ran away after I saved Pila!" "Not so loud," He hisses, "Do you want to give me away?" "Yeah, actually. I should call Merk right now, or better yet, do you in myself!" You take a deep breath to let out a shout. "Don't!" Something about the creature's tone stops you, if only for a moment, from alerting the Oalkwardners in the house. What would drive any intelligent creature to walk into the lion's den like this in the first place? It just doesn't add up. "At least hear me out." Pleads the creature, "I need your help." "What makes you think I would help a kidnapper? Seriously, are you crazy?" "It's not just me you'd be helping, but them too!" he gestures towards the house, "In fact, you'd be helping every Oalkwardner in this village." "Is that a threat?" You ask, "Are you going to kill them or something if I don't cooperate?" "My word, you must really think I'm some kind of monster, monster. No, I'm not here to hurt anyone. Like I said, I'm here to help." "How does kidnapping children help anyone?" "I was getting to that. This village, Arrorn, I believe it's called, is not as peaceful as it seems. It is under the rule of King Faerdalm, a cruel, ruthless tyrant." "Sound like something a teenager would come up with for a writing contest," You say, rolling your eyes. "Will you let me finish?" The creature glares at you, "He takes their food, says they owe it to him for getting to live in such a 'great and powerful country.' It's all a load of bull, of course. He takes so much that a good many of the villagers die every year from starvation. I'm part of a resistance group trying to stop it. We've been working on a way to get rid of Faerdalm once and for all, so everyone can be free, just like in the good old days. That's why we've needed to take children, to run tests on them. We're developing a way to make ourselves stronger, so we can finally stand up to him. But we're still a ways out from perfecting it. It's going to take a lot more people, a lot more deaths, to finally perfect it. To be quite frank, I'm getting quite sick of it." "So, where do I come in?" You ask. "Never in my life, have I ever seen a creature as powerful as you." He says, "If you were to join us, we would be able to achive our goal much quicker. And the quicker we achive it, the less needless deaths must occuer." He extends his hand, as if to shake yours, "So, are you in?" > You do not. (No way you're helping this guy). You stare at the Oalkwardner's hand. Slowly, you shake your head, and he draws back his arm, frowning. "I figured this might happen," he says, "I suppose you won't be much use as an assassin if you don't cooperate. But we may be able to find... another use for you." "What are you talking about?" You ask, "I said no! I'm not going to help you!" But he doesn't respond. Instead, he makes a popping sound with his mouth, three times in a row. Suddenly, an entire hoard of Oalkwardners appears from all directions, all holding spears, all wearing the same cloaks as the leader before you. "I feared it might come to this," he says, "That's why I brought backup. The data we gather from studying you might just help us yet." You leap to your feet and tense for a fight. "You're going to kidnap me now? Bring all the Oalkwardners you've got, I'll just do them in like I did your other friends! You said it yourself! I'm a force to be reckoned with!" The Oalkwardner shakes his head and raises his hand. All of his soldiers, or whatever it is they are, leap towards you as one. There are far too many to fight off, even if you're stronger than they. Even still, you put up your fists and start swinging madly as you are engulfed in a wave of papery skin. Each swing of your arm makes contact, sending the creatures flying right and left. But as much as you punch and kick, they still manage to get a grip on you, pulling you this way and that, crawling up your legs and weighing you down. For some reason or other, none of them have spears. Not that you're complaining, if it weren't for that fact, you'd probably be dead already. A single Oalkwardner is light as a football, easily tossed around in a fight. But a whole hoard? That's enough to crush a grown man under their combined weight. Slowly, your knees begin to weaken as more and more of the creatures pile on top of you. You stagger around for a few moments until you finally collapse, falling backwards into the grass. It's hard to see anything, they cover your face, blocking your view. But over their cries, you can just hear the leader's voice. "You should've taken my offer, monster. Perhaps then, we could've been friends." A pain slashes across your wrist. Something's cut you! Before you have time to figure out what that might be, you begin to feel dizzy. The edges of your vision close in until all that's left is one small pinprick of light. Then, even that is extinguished, and the world fades away...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You drop into a crouch and creep closer, stopping behind trees whenever you can. Now that you're closer, you can make out more details, and boy are these people weird. They're even shorter up close, they'd probably only come up to your waist. But that's the least strange thing about them. They're skin resembles Paper-Mache, all folded over itself. And then there's the ears, so long and pointy. Almost as big as they are, and yet still they point straight up. Forget whatever you thought about only humans yelling. You must've forgotten that too, because these things are no humans. The two biggest creatures hold down a smaller one, (perhaps that one is only a child), while the one that appears to be the leader stands and watches. Like you thought, all but the one on the ground are clad in green cloaks, reaching nearly to their feet, with a strange symbol of something like a broken goblet embroidered on their backs in brown. They've nearly got the child into a big sack now, but she (he? It?) still hasn't given up. "Please!" She cries, "I just wanna go home! Let me go home!" "We're giving you a new home." Says the leader, "A better home! Don't you want to help make your old home better?" "No! I want my papa!" Just watching this makes you nauseous. This has got to be stopped, there's no way you can sit by and let it happen. Before you've even so much as thought of a plan, you're on your feet, charging the creatures with... > The lighter! Common sense says the knife would be the better choice. I mean, how much damage can you really do with a lighter? It takes too long to set someone's clothes on fire; you'll be tackled from behind before you have a chance to hold the flame in place long enough. But for some strange reason, the lighter just feels like the right tool for the job. Before anyone even has a chance to process the fact that you're there, you tackle one of the creatures holding the... other smaller creature down. It's like running into a giant beach ball, except made of Paper-Mache. You thought it would be harder to send the creature flying, but it's so light, you hardly notice the impact. By the time the two of you hit the ground, you've already pressed the lighter to the thing's head and flicked it on. To your amazement, it's skin goes up in flames faster than a pile of dry pine needles. So fast, you nearly burn yourself before you manage to get far enough away from it. These things not only look like they're made of paper, the also burn like it too. "What is this?" The leader cries, "What the heck are you?" There's no time to respond. The other creature (not the leader), is already upon you. It charges towards you, so fast you can barely get the lighter around in time... But you do. The creature runs right into the flame, recoiling as if it's been stabbed. Within seconds it's reduced to ashes, just like the first one. The leader stares at you and takes a few steps back. "P-please..." he says, "D-don't hurt me!" Before you have a chance to react, he's already running away, off into the forest. He's far too fast for you, that's for sure. By the time you get to your feet again, he's already disappeared into the trees. As the dust settles, the weight of your actions sets in. You've just killed two intelligent creatures. Even if they're not quite human, they still talked. What if they had family? Kids? You had no way of knowing the lighter would kill them. You just thought you might give them a scare, send them running. But the way they treated that other creature... there's no way they were really worth sparing... right? Speaking of which, you'd better make sure that other creature is alright...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The pain is the first thing you notice. It feels as though someone's poured an entire vat of hot coffee over your entire body. Somehow, you get the sense that you've been asleep a lot longer than normal. You open your eyes to find yourself laying in a patch of grass, staring up at a clear, starry sky, interrupted by the branches of nearby trees. You don't move for a moment. How did you get outside? You don't remember going to sleep out here... as a matter of fact, you don't remember going to sleep at all. Or anything else, as a matter of fact. The pain is fading fast, so you sit up and take a look around, pulse racing. The shadowy forms of trees surround you, the sounds of the night bombarding your senses. It occurs to you that you're hyperventilating. Is this what it feels like to have a heart attack? No this is a panic attack of some kind. Instinctively, you find yourself focusing on a single blade of grass in the field. With shaking hands, you pluck it from the dirt and study it, taking note of its shape, the feel of it in your hand, the nearly indistinguishable pattern of little veins running through it. Mindfulness. That's supposed to help with Panic attacks. Somehow, you remember that. But you can't remember where you learned it. Slowly but surely, your breathing normalizes. You wipe the snot from your nose and the tears from your eyes as your body stops convulsing. For the first time since you woke up, you notice the cool night breeze. You're going to be fine. If you just keep your wits, you'll find a way out of this eventually. You take a quick inventory of everything you can remember. Random bits of knowledge surface in your head, facts about whales, mathematical formulas, the steps to changing a tire. But no memories of the people, or events, or books that taught you those things. As you contemplate these things, you notice a few items laying in the grass around you. Namely, a small backpack and an odd metal disk, with a glowing screen on one side. You pick up the disk first and examine it. "Insufficient power," flashes across its face over and over in red. Something about it tugs at something in your memory, but you can't quite put your finger on what. Confused, you slip it into your pocket and turn to the bag. You unzip it to find a lighter, a knife, a sleeping bag, a pillow, and... a whole mountain of Cheez-Its and Mountain Dew? Just what kind of person are you? Still, it's better than nothing, so you slip it over your shoulders. As you try (and fail), to take your bearings from the waning crescent moon, (not that it really matters, it's not like you know where you came from), you become aware of a strange noise in the distance. You stop and listen. Is that yelling? Wait, yelling is a human noise, right? So, where there's yelling, there's humans. Before you can even finish processing that thought, your feet are carrying you towards the source of the noise. You didn't know you could run this fast on pavement, much less over the uneven turf of the forest, but then, maybe you're a famous football player or something and just don't remember it. The yelling grows louder as you draw nearer. A dim light shines in the distance, growing brighter. You slow down a little, these shouts don't sound like happy ones. "Stop struggling or it'll only hurt more!" a gravelly voice says. "Help! Stop! Let me go!" An extremely high pitched voice this time. You've slowed to a tip-toe now. Whatever this is, you're not sure you want to be a part of it. Still you creep closer until you can just make out the figures involved between the trees. They look small from here, no bigger than children, but then, it's a little hard to tell from this distance. It looks like they might be wearing some kind of cloaks, green ones, if your eyes don't deceive you. "Gag her before she draws someone to us!" Says the gravel tongued shadow to two others holding down a third, "Get her in the bag and tie it tight. The last thing we need is another escape." Your palms are soaked with sweat. You should do something, anything, to help, but whoever these people are, they certainly don't sound like the kind of folks you'd like to mess with... > You watch from afar. Better to stay safe than risk your life for a stranger. You stay where you are and listen. "Please!" cries the high pitched voice, "I just wanna go home! Let me go home!" "We're giving you a new home." Says the gruff voiced one (probably the leader), "A better home! Don't you want to help make your old home better?" "No! I want my papa!" "My word!" The leader explodes, "She's a child! How hard is it to get a child into a bag?" The screams become muffled now, and a new voice says "We're not incompetent, you shriveled prune! See? We've already got her in. If you'd use your rotten husk of a brain for one second you'd stop yelling and see that." "Under the old order, a comment like that would get you executed." "So what? We're out to put an end to the old order, not-" "Would you shut up? You want someone to hear us? You're worse than the little girl!" "All I'm saying is, you won't do anything about it. You know it's wrong, I know it's wrong, so stop making stupid hollow threats!" The leader laughs, a cold, empty laugh. "I'll be the judge of what's right and what's wrong, thank you very much. Not everything about the old order has to go. Don't throw the slush out with the water, as they say. Now pick up that bag and start walking. We've taken too long already." With that, the muffled screams of the child fade into the distance as the light grows further away. Soon, all you can hear is the pounding of your heart, returning slowly to normal. It's a good thing you didn't get tangled up in that mess. No telling what would've happened if they'd seen you. Still, the sounds of that girl screaming still ring in your ears. Something tells you they might linger still for a little while longer. Soon as you're sure the danger's passed, you walk a little closer to the scene of the crime, or whatever it was you just saw. To your surprise, there's a path not too far from there. The kidnapers must've been waiting in the bushes or something, and jumped out to grab the girl as she passed. With no other options at hand, you start down the path in the opposite direction from the kidnapers. It's lined with stones, with a few oddly-shaped bricks set in the ground here and there, as if, a long time ago, it was paved. The trees are thinning out now, and soon you can see the night sky in all it's glory. You come to the edge of a hill and stop. Down the slope in front of you, lights are visible. A village rests at the bottom of the hill, still sleeping in the light of the stars. What's more, from your vantage point you can just see the beginnings of the sunrise peeking up from behind the mountains in the distance. The path has given way to a rough set of stairs carved into the hillside. They are smaller than most stairs you've seen, like they were carved especially for children. Still, it's better than picking your way down the slope and probably slipping a few times along the way. You reach the bottom of the hill in record time and find yourself still a mile or so away from the village. Looks like the path continues into it, so you keep following it. As you walk, you pass by a strange plant, just taller than you are. It grows on a thin, blue stalk, straight up, until it droops over at the top, opening into a strange, orange bulb. The bulb glows in the dawn, lighting the whole path beneath your feet. Just a few moments later, you pass by another on the opposite side of the path. The entire trail leading up to the village is lined with these plants, lighting the way like streetlights on an old city road. > The village It soon becomes apparent that you are closer to the village than you thought. Is it just you, or are those buildings smaller than they seemed from afar? You come to the edge of the village to find that the smallest of the houses are about your height. Everything is half the size it should be, from the road through town to the stones that pave it. What's more, everything is made of the strangest materials, the likes of which you've never seen. (At least, not that you can remember). The only thing you've seen that looks remotely like this is Paper-Mache, but this must be sturdier than that, otherwise these houses would've fallen down ages ago as soon as the wind decided to pick up. As you draw nearer to the center of town, you begin to feel that unsettling feeling of being watched. It's been present for quite some time now, growing stronger as the sun continued to light up more of the sky. Are those eyes you see, poking out between the shuttered windows of the houses? Why is nobody out and about yet, it may be early, but even still- "What in the name of the water-pit are you?" A voice from behind snaps you out of your thoughts. You turn, knocking your elbow on the corner of the houses nearby. Grimacing from the pain, you see before you a strange creature, almost human, yet not quite. Its head comes up only to your waist, and it's skin has the same Paper-Mache quality as the walls of the buildings beside you. The ears are the strangest part, sticking straight up into the air. It's a wonder something so small can hold them up like that for so long. The creature holds something like a spear, made of wood, pointed straight at you. "Do you speak, you big brute?" The creature asks, "What are you, why have you come here, waking us all up in the night?" "The sun's out," you reply, "People get up when the sun is out, don't they?" "Do you like getting up at the crack of dawn? Some of us sleep in and that's besides the point. What the heck are you, and why are you here?" "What am I?" You ask, your irritation growing with each word this creature says, "What are you? What is this place? I've never seen anything like you." Other creatures, like this one before you, peak their heads out from doorways and windows, drawn out by the commotion at hand. "I am Merk, head of the watchmen of Arrorn." Says the creature, "This village and it's people are under my protection. If you have come to do harm, consider this my warning. State your purpose or leave this place, lest I am forced to raise my spear and drive you out myself!" "I haven't done anything!" You protest, "Why are you threatening me? Don't I have... rights or something?" That thing may be small, but the stick it's holding still looks pretty sharp. The creature pauses, lowering it's spear just a touch. "I don't know what you mean by 'rights,'" it says, "But you raise an important point. I apologize for threatening you, it's just that I've never seen anything quite like you in all my seventy-four years of life in this village." "I'm a human... I think," You say, still feeling a little annoyed, "And in all my... well, I'm not sure how many years of existence, I've never seen anything quite like you either. I think." "I am what is known as an Oalkwardner." Says the creature, (Merk, as he called himself), "As are all others like me. This village-" A high pitched whistle cuts through the air, cutting Merk off mid sentence. He seems to jump a little when he hears it, his stance becoming more rigid, more alert. "The alarm!" He says, raising his spear once more, "I'm sorry, but duty calls!" He leaps towards you and you flinch. Is he going to attack you after all? But no, he soars over your head and lands behind you, taking off as soon as his feet touch the ground. "Wait!" You call. The idea of being left alone in this strange village terrifies you. Who knows? The next person you talk to might attack you for real. You run after Merk, ducking through the too narrow streets, nearly flattening a few unsuspecting Oalkwardners. Even with your longer legs, Merk is faster than you, slowly drawing farther and farther away. "Please!" You cry once more, "I don't even know where I am!" Merk slows a little and looks over his shoulder. "If you want to stay with me, then do so!" He calls back, "But I must warn you, I have work to do. I may not be of much use to you." "That's... fine..." You pant, "Just... slow down... a little." "We're almost there, human! I cannot slow my pace, there may not be much time!" You can hardly begin to imagine what he means by that in your current state, (you're not going to be able to run much longer with this pain in your side), but he's clearly not slowing down. Maybe it's the fear of being left behind, but somehow you find the strength to keep up the pace. The road grows wider with each twist and turn, until it gives way to a dilapidated plaza with a strange tower in the middle. Atop it is what looks to be a horn of some kind, with an Oalkwardner blowing into it. This is where the high pitched noise came from earlier. Most of the people milling about the square ignore the horn, as if this is some kind of daily occurrence. Merk slows at the base of the tower, stopping in front of an Oalkwardner in something resembling a dress, it's ears drooping. You catch up just in time to hear the ensuing conversation. "Fila?" Merk asks, "Why have you sounded the alarm? What's wrong?" "Its Pila," Says Fila, "She's dis-" the Oalkwardner notices you for the first time, "What in the world is that?" Her ears stick straight in the air and she leaps backwards, trembling. Merk turns and sees you standing there. "This is human. It's friendly, don't worry." He turns to you and says, "And this is Fila, my wife." "Why is everyone so afraid of me?" You ask, "I haven't done anything wrong." "I'm sorry... hue-mon." Her ears begin to droop once again, "I'm just worried, that's all. Our daughter," She gestures to Merk and herself, "is missing. She went to play with her friends yesterday evening. I meant to stay up waiting for her, but I was so tired that I just couldn't stay awake. And when I woke up, she still hadn't come back." Merk's eyes grow wider, and he grips his spear tighter. "What do you mean, she hasn't come back." "I mean, she isn't here, Merk! She might've disappeared like all those other-" "No!," he says, "I'm sure she's fine. She probably just got lost. We'll find her." A chill runs down your spine. You'd forgotten about the kidnapping you saw in the forest after Merk confronted you. You were too worried about staying alive to think about someone else's troubles. But now the memory returns in full force, the fear it brings creeping through every fiber of your being. "I'm not so sure about that..." You say, voice trembling a little. Merk turns to you. "What do you mean? Did you have something to do with it?" He picks up his spear, gripping it tight. "No! But I think I might have seen what happened." And you go on to explain the strange events which you saw when you first awoke. When you finish, Merk covers his face with his hands. "I've dealt with this sort of thing for years," he chokes, "But it's always been someone else's kid. Someone else's heartache..." He looks up at you. "This is the fourth kid to disappear in the last month. If these people that took... that took my daughter, took the others too..." He stops and covers his face again. "Then," Fila says, "If we find her, we find them all. Hue-mon. Please, will you help us? Take us to where you saw her, tell us which way they went. Then, maybe, we can find her. Her, and everyone else." > You say "Of course I'll help!" Maybe it's bravery, or maybe it's the guilt of having done nothing to help the girl in the first place, but you don't hesitate to say yes. "Thank you so much!" Merk says, "Come on, we'd better get going now. Normally I'd get a team together to help with the search, but since I have you, I think we'll just go as a twosome. The time it takes to round everyone up isn't worth it." You leave the village and lead Merk back up the hill to where you saw the kidnapping. His ears twitch nervously as you walk, and he talks incessantly. "I just don't know what I'll do if we don't get her back." he says at one point, "the thought of never seeing her again... hurts more than anything. Why couldn't it have been me? What do they want with children?" You don't respond. There's just nothing to say. At this point you reach the staircase, and begin climbing up it. In the light of the day, you're beginning to notice something strange about the trees. It's been bugging you for a while now, come to think of it. From what you can draw from your broken memory, these trees aren't like any back... well, wherever you came from. The shapes of the leaves are different, so is the pattern of the bark. It's like the entire forest is something out of a fantasy world. As you draw near to the scene of the kidnapping, you slow down. "It happened just up there," you point, "They went up the path that way once they were finished." "We've gotta make sure we don't miss anything." Merk says, "Thankfully, this path isn't as well traveled as it once was, or our search would be nigh impossible. Keep an eye on the edges of the trail, let me know if you see any sort of clues." "What am I looking for anyway? If I see, say, a broken branch or something, how are we to know it wasn't broken by a deer or some other, innocent travelers?" Merk sighs, "I don't know, human, but right now it's all we have." For the next couple of hours, you walk the trail, scanning the ground for something, anything that might help you. But there's nothing. Not so much as a blade of grass is out of place, (if, indeed, blades of grass can be considered out of place in a forest). The sun is growing low in the sky now, soon it'll be too dark to search. Your feet ache and your stomach rumbles, your stash of Cheez-Its isn't enough to satisfy your hunger completely. Then, you see something that is a little out of place. A few of the trees just off the path look as though they've had bites taken out of them by some big hungry monster. "Merk?" you say, "Do you see that?" Merk jumps a little at the sound of your voice. "What is it?" he asks, excited, "Did you find something?" "I don't know," you say, pointing, "I'm not quite sure it's what we're looking for, but it's definitely something." Merk takes one look at the markings on the trees and his eyes go wide. He reaches over his shoulder and draws his spear. "What is it?" You ask, your muscles tensing up in fear, "What's wrong?" "Those markings," Merk's voice trembles a little, "are from a beaver." You stare at him for a moment. Then, a chuckle escapes you lips. "What's so bad about a beaver?" You laugh, "Are you afraid one might drop a tree on you or something?" "Beavers are no laughing matter," Merk snaps, "They're vicious killers! If you'd heard a quarter of what I had about them, you'd be scared too, I guarantee." "Do you want to turn back?" "Heck no! If I turn back, it means I don't get Pila back, and if I don't get Pila back..." he trails off, and is quiet for a moment. Then, he shakes his head. "It doesn't matter, we're not stopping. Beavers or no, we will keep going. I don't think I could live with myself if we didn't." "Whatever you say," you shrug, "I'm not afraid of beavers, so I guess you'll just have to face your fear if we meet one." "Let's try to make sure we don't meet one, alright?" "Alright," you say, rolling your eyes. You continue up the trail. As it continues to get darker, the two of you go slower and slower, as it's harder to verify that there are, indeed, no clues in a given area. The beaver markings are becoming more and more numerous the longer you walk, which does nothing to help Merk's nerves. It's not exactly great for yours either, if you're honest with yourself. You may not be afraid of beavers as you know them, but there's always that chance that "beaver" means something different in this place than what you know. "Do you think we should stop for the night?" you ask, as the darkness grows too thick to properly see through, "So we don't miss anything in this darkness?" Merk thinks for a moment, then sighs. "I guess you have a point. We'd best make camp here. Hold on for a moment, I have to go... erm, relieve myself." He heads a little ways off the path, and you sit down on a rock to wait for him. Your feet need a rest, they've probably got blisters all over after all that hiking. "Human!" Merk cries, "Come look at this!" You groan and stand up. Guess your feet aren't getting that much of a rest after all. "What were the kidnapers wearing?" Merk asks when you reach him. "It was hard to tell from so far away," You say, trying to remember, "It looked like they were wearing some kind of robes." "What color were they?" "Green, I think, why do you ask?" "Because I found this!" Merk gestures towards a little thorn bush to his left. Hanging from one of the branches is a small scrap of green fabric. "I bet they went off this way!" he says, "We should see if we can follow their trail." "Can you do that in the dark?" Merk goes quiet for a moment. "I... don't know." he admits, "Probably not as well as in daylight, we might lose the trail or something if we go now. But they could get further away if we wait. Oh, it's so much harder to think clearly about these things when it's your own daughter at stake... " "We best wait till morning," You say, "We don't want to lose the trail in the dark and get ourselves lost. We wouldn't be much help then would we?" Merk doesn't say anything for a moment. Then, he nods slowly. "I guess it's the best we can do," he sighs, "It just hurts to sit here, doing nothing." "I get it," You say, "But think of it this way: by waiting, we're maximizing our chances of finding her." "Yeah, I know. Let's get set up, I'm tired. If we're going to get some sleep tonight, we'd better do it soon..." > The next morning... You sleep like a rock. It's been a very long day, that's for sure. You've hardly stopped since waking up in the forest last night. But of course, it doesn't last. You awake to Merk staring down at you, poking your side with his foot. "Wake up, human," he says, "It's time to go." You sit up, blinking back the sleep from your eyes. The sun is just beginning to rise, but by all accounts, it's still pretty dark outside. "Shouldn't we wait a little longer?" You ask, "until it's lighter out?" "By the time we pack up camp, the sun will have risen a little more." You take one last longing look at your sleeping bag, then roll it up and start getting your stuff together. In a half hour's time, you're on the trail again, Merk leading the way with his tracking skills. "What's the plan when we if we do find them?" You ask. "We don't know what we're walking into, so we'll have to improvise." "Oh..." For a while, the two of you walk in silence, Merk stopping every ten feet or so to check for new clues. It seems people have traveled this way before, and relatively frequently. There is a faint trail, if you really look for it, where other Oalkwardners have gone before. "These beaver markings are getting more and more frequent," Merk says after you've been on the trail an hour, "I think we're headed right into the heart of their territory. What on earth were they thinking, coming to a place like this?" "Listen," you say, "I'll deal with any beavers that come our way. All I need to do is wave my hands in the air and make a loud noise." "You're either a lot stronger than you seem, or an arrogant fool if you think that." "It's a beaver! What harm can it do?" Merk doesn't respond. Instead, he stops short, and you nearly trip over him. "Why are we stopping?" you ask Merk puts a finger to his lips and points down the path. You look and see something big and hairy laying just to the side of the trail. It's some sort of creature, about the size of a bear, and it isn't moving. "It's a beaver," Merk whispers, "If you really know what you're doing, go deal with it!" "That's no beaver," you whisper back, "I'm not sure what that is, but it's not a-" "Shut up and take a look, will you?" "Fine!" Quietly as you can, you walk closer, crouching behind trees at every opportunity. But it never moves. You're not even sure it's breathing. Then, you notice the blood staining the ground around it. Whatever this creature is, it's dead. "Merk, I think it's dead!" you say. "Are you sure?" You walk right up to the creature and take a closer look. It has a gaping hole in it's stomach, and multiple puncture wounds in various places. Looking at it up close, it occurs to you that this thing really does bear an uncanny resemblance to a beaver, right down to the teeth and tail. The only thing that's different is the size. "Yeah," you call, "I'm pretty sure." Just to prove it, you give it a good kick in the side. "My goodness," Merk says when he gets closer, "Never in all my days... Those look like spear wounds. And that big hole in it's stomach looks too clean to have come from some kind of other animal." "Are you saying an Oalkwardner did this?" "Possibly. And a powerful one at that. I certainly hope we never have to fight them, should we ever meet." The two of you stare at the beaver corpse for a few minutes. Finally, Merk breaks the silence. "We should keep going, the trail continues this way." Unnerved, you follow him. Something about that corpse put you on edge. Every random snap of a twig has you checking over your shoulder, searching for potential threats. For another two hours, you walk in silence. Neither of you dares say a word, in case whatever killed that beaver is somewhere lurking nearby. The trees are growing thicker now, the beaver markings more numerous. Then, Merk stops again. "Do you hear that?" he whispers You stop and listen. "What is it?" you ask, not hearing anything, "Shhh!" For a few minutes, you're completely still. Then, you hear it, ever so faintly in the distance. The sound of voices. "Let's go," says Merk, and takes off towards them on silent feet. As quietly as you can, you follow behind him. The voices grow louder as you get closer, and soon you can make out snippets of conversation. "...Hold her still..." "...better be quick..." "...somebody help!" The last voice is louder than the others, more clear. Merk stand up straighter when he hears it. "That's my daughter," he says in a low voice, "If they hurt her, I swear I'll..." He doesn't finish the sentence, but instead speeds up even more. You follow as closely behind as you can, worried that he might do something stupid. Suddenly, the trees give way to a clearing, where a large group of Oalkwardners in green cloaks gather around something at the very center. "It's almost finished!" one of them says, "I'm applying the branch now, everyone back off!" The group spreads out enough that you can just see what they were gathering around. A small Oalkwardner is strapped to the ground, drenched in some kind of green substance. "Please stop!" She cries, struggling against her bindings, "I don't like this, let me go!" The cloaked Oalkwardner ignores her and tosses something on top of her struggling form, then takes a few steps backwards as fast as he can. The girl, Pila, begins to scream, and the earth begins to quake. "NO!" Merk cries, and runs into the clearing before you can do anything to stop him. (How he manages to do so without tripping is beyond you). All the cloaked Oalkwardners turn and look at him in shock as he runs towards them. They draw their spears and get ready to fight, but instead of charging them, he leaps into the air, sailing over their heads, and lands right next to Pila. But while all this is happening, Pila's skin begins to give off a faint blue glow, growing brighter every second. By the time Merk reaches her side, she's too bright to look at. As Merk reaches out to touch her, a bolt of lightning flashes up from the ground, and the sound of thunder resonates throughout the forest. A split second later and the light is gone. A moment later, the earth stops it's quaking. You turn and look at the place where Pila once was, and gasp. All that's left of Merk are a few scraps of Paper-Mache skin and a pile of ashes. As for Pila... what on earth is that? A strange lump of wood lays in the middle of the clearing. It takes you a few seconds to realize that it's an exact copy of Pila. What the heck did they do to her anyway? Presently, about half the Oalkwardners head over towards a contraption over on the other side of the clearing, (you can't quite make it out from here), while the rest mill about, chatting nervously among themselves about what Merk did. If you're going to try anything, now might be the time to do it. You might be able to save Pila and Merk's remains, at least... > You attempt to steal the remains of the fallen Oalkwardners You may not get this chance again, so you'd better make the most of it. You run into the clearing as fast as you can. It only takes a moment for one of them to notice you and sound the alarm. By the time you've reached Pila's side and scooped her up in your arms, every last one of them are charging towards you, spears drawn. Without thinking, you run back the way you came, leaving Merk's remains behind. (Not that there was much left to collect to begin with). Branches scrape your face as you run, but you don't stop. The Oalkwardners aren't slowing down, so neither can you. No telling what'll happen if they catch you. It's a good thing you've got adrenaline, because otherwise the blisters on your feet alone would've stopped you in your tracks by now. But it doesn't really matter. They're gaining on you too quickly to escape. Suddenly, the wooden lump in your arms shifts, and you're so startled, you drop it and proceed to trip over it, falling face first into the dirt. As you're getting back to your feet, you see out of the corner of your eye, the wooden Pila getting to its feet. Slowly, it turns towards you, staring at you with glowing yellow eyes. Then, it leaps on top of you, and digs its claws into your chest. You're too surprised to do anything about it. By the time you've recovered from the shock, you're too delirious from the pain to care. The last thing you see as the world fades away is the Oalkwardners running away in terror as the creature feasts on your flesh...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sleep like a rock. It's been a very long day, that's for sure. You've hardly stopped since waking up in the forest last night. But of course, it doesn't last. You awake to Merk staring down at you, poking your side with his foot. "Wake up, human," he says, "It's time to go." You sit up, blinking back the sleep from your eyes. The sun is just beginning to rise, but by all accounts, it's still pretty dark outside. "Shouldn't we wait a little longer?" You ask, "until it's lighter out?" "By the time we pack up camp, the sun will have risen a little more." You take one last longing look at your sleeping bag, then roll it up and start getting your stuff together. In a half hour's time, you're on the trail again, Merk leading the way with his tracking skills. "What's the plan when we if we do find them?" You ask. "We don't know what we're walking into, so we'll have to improvise." "Oh..." For a while, the two of you walk in silence, Merk stopping every ten feet or so to check for new clues. It seems people have traveled this way before, and relatively frequently. There is a faint trail, if you really look for it, where other Oalkwardners have gone before. "These beaver markings are getting more and more frequent," Merk says after you've been on the trail an hour, "I think we're headed right into the heart of their territory. What on earth were they thinking, coming to a place like this?" "Listen," you say, "I'll deal with any beavers that come our way. All I need to do is wave my hands in the air and make a loud noise." "You're either a lot stronger than you seem, or an arrogant fool if you think that." "It's a beaver! What harm can it do?" Merk doesn't respond. Instead, he stops short, and you nearly trip over him. "Why are we stopping?" you ask Merk puts a finger to his lips and points down the path. You look and see something big and hairy laying just to the side of the trail. It's some sort of creature, about the size of a bear, and it isn't moving. "It's a beaver," Merk whispers, "If you really know what you're doing, go deal with it!" "That's no beaver," you whisper back, "I'm not sure what that is, but it's not a-" "Shut up and take a look, will you?" "Fine!" Quietly as you can, you walk closer, crouching behind trees at every opportunity. But it never moves. You're not even sure it's breathing. Then, you notice the blood staining the ground around it. Whatever this creature is, it's dead. "Merk, I think it's dead!" you say. "Are you sure?" You walk right up to the creature and take a closer look. It has a gaping hole in it's stomach, and multiple puncture wounds in various places. Looking at it up close, it occurs to you that this thing really does bear an uncanny resemblance to a beaver, right down to the teeth and tail. The only thing that's different is the size. "Yeah," you call, "I'm pretty sure." Just to prove it, you give it a good kick in the side. "My goodness," Merk says when he gets closer, "Never in all my days... Those look like spear wounds. And that big hole in it's stomach looks too clean to have come from some kind of other animal." "Are you saying an Oalkwardner did this?" "Possibly. And a powerful one at that. I certainly hope we never have to fight them, should we ever meet." The two of you stare at the beaver corpse for a few minutes. Finally, Merk breaks the silence. "We should keep going, the trail continues this way." Unnerved, you follow him. Something about that corpse put you on edge. Every random snap of a twig has you checking over your shoulder, searching for potential threats. For another two hours, you walk in silence. Neither of you dares say a word, in case whatever killed that beaver is somewhere lurking nearby. The trees are growing thicker now, the beaver markings more numerous. Then, Merk stops again. "Do you hear that?" he whispers You stop and listen. "What is it?" you ask, not hearing anything, "Shhh!" For a few minutes, you're completely still. Then, you hear it, ever so faintly in the distance. The sound of voices. "Let's go," says Merk, and takes off towards them on silent feet. As quietly as you can, you follow behind him. The voices grow louder as you get closer, and soon you can make out snippets of conversation. "...Hold her still..." "...better be quick..." "...somebody help!" The last voice is louder than the others, more clear. Merk stand up straighter when he hears it. "That's my daughter," he says in a low voice, "If they hurt her, I swear I'll..." He doesn't finish the sentence, but instead speeds up even more. You follow as closely behind as you can, worried that he might do something stupid. Suddenly, the trees give way to a clearing, where a large group of Oalkwardners in green cloaks gather around something at the very center. "It's almost finished!" one of them says, "I'm applying the branch now, everyone back off!" The group spreads out enough that you can just see what they were gathering around. A small Oalkwardner is strapped to the ground, drenched in some kind of green substance. "Please stop!" She cries, struggling against her bindings, "I don't like this, let me go!" The cloaked Oalkwardner ignores her and tosses something on top of her struggling form, then takes a few steps backwards as fast as he can. The girl, Pila, begins to scream, and the earth begins to quake. "NO!" Merk cries, and runs into the clearing before you can do anything to stop him. (How he manages to do so without tripping is beyond you). All the cloaked Oalkwardners turn and look at him in shock as he runs towards them. They draw their spears and get ready to fight, but instead of charging them, he leaps into the air, sailing over their heads, and lands right next to Pila. But while all this is happening, Pila's skin begins to give off a faint blue glow, growing brighter every second. By the time Merk reaches her side, she's too bright to look at. As Merk reaches out to touch her, a bolt of lightning flashes up from the ground, and the sound of thunder resonates throughout the forest. A split second later and the light is gone. A moment later, the earth stops it's quaking. You turn and look at the place where Pila once was, and gasp. All that's left of Merk are a few scraps of Paper-Mache skin and a pile of ashes. As for Pila... what on earth is that? A strange lump of wood lays in the middle of the clearing. It takes you a few seconds to realize that it's an exact copy of Pila. What the heck did they do to her anyway? Presently, about half the Oalkwardners head over towards a contraption over on the other side of the clearing, (you can't quite make it out from here), while the rest mill about, chatting nervously among themselves about what Merk did. If you're going to try anything, now might be the time to do it. You might be able to save Pila and Merk's remains, at least... > You wait and follow them. You stay where you are and watch as they pick up the contraption and carry it to Pila's remains. That's when you realize, it's a cage. They set it down right beside her and put her remains inside it. Then they close it up and lock it tight. Four Oalkwardners pick it up by the corners and lead the way into the forest. You follow at a distance, careful not to be seen. The brush is thicker than ever here, branches scratch your face and you nearly trip several times. Luckily, you manage to keep your footing in the end. As you walk, you begin to notice something strange about the wooden remains of Pila in the cage. Every once in a while, they shift a little, as if of their own accord. Is it just your imagination, or did one of her arms just twitch? The Oalkwardners glance up at it every time this happens, and you notice a few of them gripping their spears, getting ready to draw them in case... well, you're not sure what. All of a sudden, the whole procession stops. Something's going on at the very front of the group, but you can't quite make it out from this distance. Then, you see it. A wooden hatch opens up in front of them, about four times their size, and they begin to descend down it, carrying the cage somewhat awkwardly between them. Then, the rest of them follow. Soon as the last one descends, the hatch falls closed. You rush over to it and find that it's camouflaged to look like part of the landscape, though, if you really look hard enough, you can just see the outline of it in the grass. You wait about five minutes before you try to open it. (Just to make sure no one's lingering by the door when you come in). A good tug on the handle, (cleverly disguised as a tree root), confirms that, as expected, it's locked. As you stand there, trying to figure out a way to get inside, you hear the muffled sound of footsteps coming up, getting nearer and nearer to the surface. Quick as you can, you back away and duck behind a bush, just before the hatch comes open. A single Oalkwardner climbs out, leaving the door open behind him. He grumbles something about "Bathrooms" and "Relieving himself," and heads off a little ways into the woods. Now's your chance! Thanks to that Oalkwardners carelessness, the door is wide open in front of you. You slip inside as quickly as you can, pulling the door shut behind you. It clicks when it closes, probably locking itself automatically. Good, now that Oalkwardner won't come in from behind and surprise you. You find yourself at the top of a spiral staircase, which descends about twenty feet before stopping. When you reach the bottom, you find yourself in a dirt tunnel with three paths branching off from it. > The tunnels You are at the bottom of a spiral staircase, leading up to the surface. Three, hard packed dirt tunnels branch off from here, each with a sign that tells where it leads. A notice board full of announcements hangs on one wall. You glance over it and notice one in particular reminding the whole facility of a mandatory meeting at this very time. This is perfect! You'll be able to explore the whole place without being caught! The first tunnel is marked "auditorium," the second says "Lab," and the third, "Containment." > You go down the path labeled "auditorium" You slip down the hallway, trying to be as quiet as you can. This must be the way to their meeting place. It's probably where everyone is right now. Sure enough, you begin to hear the faint sound of voices echoing down the tunnel, growing louder as you go further. Soon, you come to a round wooden door, blocking the way. From behind it, you can hear the voices, or rather, one voice, of someone giving a speech on the other side. You press your ear to the door and listen... "As you well know," the speaker says, "The order of the broken chalice has spent years upon years preparing to liberate this land in which we all live, by slaying the tyrant in our midst!" The crowd cheers at this, sounds like only a few hundred Oalkwardners. Are they really planning some kind of uprising with such a small amount of people? As if in answer to your question, the speaker continues, "Though we are few in number, the king cannot begin to anticipate our secret weapon: The Oalkfriers! Thanks to the dedication of our resident alchemists, we have perfected the art of creating fearsome beasts, made of the strongest substance known to our kind: the wood of a simple oak tree!" "The day of the uprising draws nearer and nearer. Just a few more Oalkfriers and we will be ready to estate our glorious new order. Allow me to go over the plan once again. We begin by releasing our Oalkfriers into many of the current order's key locations. This includes their military bases, ambassador homes, and the palace itself. They will wreak havoc, destroying everyone in their path. Once they have done their job, we will move in and neutralize them, leaving no-one to prevent us from taking the throne ourselves!" The crowd cheers once again. You've heard enough. Whatever this is, it can't be good. You've got to do something about it, or else there's no telling what might happen! > You charge into the auditorium and take out as many as you can! There's nothing else for it. You fling open the door and rush into the room, screaming. The entire auditorium turns to look at you just as you reach the Oalkwardners nearest to the door. Before they can react, you start kicking as many as you can. They go flying, your foot leaving dents wherever it lands. Compared to these papery creatures, you're like some kind of superhero, with ten times the strength of any of them. Unfortunately for you, however, there are about five hundred of them, and they're not about to let you plow through all of them without a good fight. Many draw their spears, and leap at you all at once. You try your best to fight them off, but there's just too many! They latch onto you wherever they can, driving their spears into your arms, your legs, your stomach. The pain is overwhelming. Those spears may be small, but they still hurt pretty bad. You fall to the ground as the world fades away around you. Who knew you'd be killed by a pack of midgets?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are at the bottom of a spiral staircase, leading up to the surface. Three, hard packed dirt tunnels branch off from here, each with a sign that tells where it leads. A notice board full of announcements hangs on one wall. You glance over it and notice one in particular reminding the whole facility of a mandatory meeting at this very time. This is perfect! You'll be able to explore the whole place without being caught! The first tunnel is marked "auditorium," the second says "Lab," and the third, "Containment." > You go down the path labeled "lab" You head down the tunnel, trying your best to tiptoe. The earthy ground helps muffle your footfalls, thank goodness, but it doesn't matter. There's no one in the tunnel. When you reach the end, you find yourself in a room made of wood. Shelves line the walls, filled to the brim, not only with books, but also with other curiosities. Jars of frogs, and creatures stranger still, all of them dead. There are little models, carved from wood, bits of untempered metal and glass, among other things. A wooden cauldron sits in the center of the room, with a strange liquid sitting in it, still as glass. A table stands off to the side, holding numerous cups and bowls of different liquids and powders, none of which you recognize. A neat stack of papers sits on one end of the table, pinned down by a particularly large bowl of rocks. Everything here is perfectly neat and organized. Nothing is so much as an inch out of place, even the tiniest grains of powder in the bowls seem to have a strange, indescribable order to them. > You fill a bottle of the cauldron liquid You take off your backpack and rifle through it, until you find just what you need: an empty plastic bottle. (You finished off the mountain dew the first day you got here). Quickly, you dip the bottle into the cauldron and fill it up, screwing the cap back on once you're done. Let's just see what you can accomplish with that...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head down the tunnel, trying your best to tiptoe. The earthy ground helps muffle your footfalls, thank goodness, but it doesn't matter. There's no one in the tunnel. When you reach the end, you find yourself in a room made of wood. Shelves line the walls, filled to the brim, not only with books, but also with other curiosities. Jars of frogs, and creatures stranger still, all of them dead. There are little models, carved from wood, bits of untempered metal and glass, among other things. A wooden cauldron sits in the center of the room, with a strange liquid sitting in it, still as glass. A table stands off to the side, holding numerous cups and bowls of different liquids and powders, none of which you recognize. A neat stack of papers sits on one end of the table, pinned down by a particularly large bowl of rocks. Everything here is perfectly neat and organized. Nothing is so much as an inch out of place, even the tiniest grains of powder in the bowls seem to have a strange, indescribable order to them. > You check the notes You take the bowl of rocks off of the stack of papers and glance at the paper on top. "To destroy and Oalkfrier," the title reads. Below are a few paragraphs in immaculate handwriting. "Oalkfriers are essential to the master plan of the Order of the Broken Chalice, however, they must be neutralized once they've served their purpose, lest they overrun the kingdom. I have created a poison of sorts, powerful enough to destroy these creatures within seconds. For now, it sits in the cauldron in my lab, waiting to be used. It is nearly perfect, as much so as I can hope to make it. Just in case something is to happen to me before the plan is carried out, (though I highly doubt it), I will relay the instructions for its use below" "The poison is inactive until acted upon by a catalyst of some sort. This is for the safety of those using it. To activate, place a generous helping of Sodium Chloride (table salt), into it. (I have a bowl full of it on my desk in the lab). Then, throw it on the Oalkfrier as fast as you can. Get as far away as you can, as even the fumes from this deadly cocktail are enough to kill a whole room full of Oalkwardners. (You should be alright so long as you're outside, but I still wouldn't chance it." You look up from the paper. The bowl of salt is just to the left of the stack of notes. On a whim, you pick it up to take it with you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are at the bottom of a spiral staircase, leading up to the surface. Three, hard packed dirt tunnels branch off from here, each with a sign that tells where it leads. A notice board full of announcements hangs on one wall. You glance over it and notice one in particular reminding the whole facility of a mandatory meeting at this very time. This is perfect! You'll be able to explore the whole place without being caught! The first tunnel is marked "auditorium," the second says "Lab," and the third, "Containment." > You go down the path labeled "containment" You sneak down the tunnel, checking around every corner just in case someone hasn't made it to the meeting yet. It wouldn't do to get caught now, there's no telling how many Oalkwardners are holed up down here. Luckily, the tunnel isn't that long, and after a few twists and turns, you find yourself in a large, dimly lit room, full what looks to be some kind of boxes It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust, but when you do, you realize that these aren't boxes at all, but cages, just like the one they used to carry Pila's remains through the forest. What's more, every last one of them has a wooden Oalkwardner inside them, exactly like Pila after the lightning struck her. Gripped with a deadly cocktail of curiosity and fear, you approach the cage nearest to you and peer inside for a better look. It's a perfect likeness of an Oalkwardner child, right down to the Paper-Mache quality of it's skin. The only thing that's missing are the ears, which look like they've been broken off. "What on earth have they done to you?" You whisper to yourself. Aroused by the sound of your voice, the eyes of the wooden Oalkwardner snap open. They give off a harsh, yellow glow, lighting up the dim room just a little. You stare at the creature, stunned, and it stares back. Then, without warning, it leaps at the bars of the cage, snarling. You leap backwards in the nick of time as one of its arms reaches between the bars and takes a grab at you. The noise wakes the other creatures and before you know it, all of them are attacking their bars, trying to get at you. Fear overtakes you, and you take off running back down the way you came. What on earth was that anyway? What do they want with all these monsters? How are they creating them? All these questions race through your mind, unanswered, as you reach the crossroads once again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It soon becomes apparent that you are closer to the village than you thought. Is it just you, or are those buildings smaller than they seemed from afar? You come to the edge of the village to find that the smallest of the houses are about your height. Everything is half the size it should be, from the road through town to the stones that pave it. What's more, everything is made of the strangest materials, the likes of which you've never seen. (At least, not that you can remember). The only thing you've seen that looks remotely like this is Paper-Mache, but this must be sturdier than that, otherwise these houses would've fallen down ages ago as soon as the wind decided to pick up. As you draw nearer to the center of town, you begin to feel that unsettling feeling of being watched. It's been present for quite some time now, growing stronger as the sun continued to light up more of the sky. Are those eyes you see, poking out between the shuttered windows of the houses? Why is nobody out and about yet, it may be early, but even still- "What in the name of the water-pit are you?" A voice from behind snaps you out of your thoughts. You turn, knocking your elbow on the corner of the houses nearby. Grimacing from the pain, you see before you a strange creature, almost human, yet not quite. Its head comes up only to your waist, and it's skin has the same Paper-Mache quality as the walls of the buildings beside you. The ears are the strangest part, sticking straight up into the air. It's a wonder something so small can hold them up like that for so long. The creature holds something like a spear, made of wood, pointed straight at you. "Do you speak, you big brute?" The creature asks, "What are you, why have you come here, waking us all up in the night?" "The sun's out," you reply, "People get up when the sun is out, don't they?" "Do you like getting up at the crack of dawn? Some of us sleep in and that's besides the point. What the heck are you, and why are you here?" "What am I?" You ask, your irritation growing with each word this creature says, "What are you? What is this place? I've never seen anything like you." Other creatures, like this one before you, peak their heads out from doorways and windows, drawn out by the commotion at hand. "I am Merk, head of the watchmen of Arrorn." Says the creature, "This village and it's people are under my protection. If you have come to do harm, consider this my warning. State your purpose or leave this place, lest I am forced to raise my spear and drive you out myself!" "I haven't done anything!" You protest, "Why are you threatening me? Don't I have... rights or something?" That thing may be small, but the stick it's holding still looks pretty sharp. The creature pauses, lowering it's spear just a touch. "I don't know what you mean by 'rights,'" it says, "But you raise an important point. I apologize for threatening you, it's just that I've never seen anything quite like you in all my seventy-four years of life in this village." "I'm a human... I think," You say, still feeling a little annoyed, "And in all my... well, I'm not sure how many years of existence, I've never seen anything quite like you either. I think." "I am what is known as an Oalkwardner." Says the creature, (Merk, as he called himself), "As are all others like me. This village-" A high pitched whistle cuts through the air, cutting Merk off mid sentence. He seems to jump a little when he hears it, his stance becoming more rigid, more alert. "The alarm!" He says, raising his spear once more, "I'm sorry, but duty calls!" He leaps towards you and you flinch. Is he going to attack you after all? But no, he soars over your head and lands behind you, taking off as soon as his feet touch the ground. "Wait!" You call. The idea of being left alone in this strange village terrifies you. Who knows? The next person you talk to might attack you for real. You run after Merk, ducking through the too narrow streets, nearly flattening a few unsuspecting Oalkwardners. Even with your longer legs, Merk is faster than you, slowly drawing farther and farther away. "Please!" You cry once more, "I don't even know where I am!" Merk slows a little and looks over his shoulder. "If you want to stay with me, then do so!" He calls back, "But I must warn you, I have work to do. I may not be of much use to you." "That's... fine..." You pant, "Just... slow down... a little." "We're almost there, human! I cannot slow my pace, there may not be much time!" You can hardly begin to imagine what he means by that in your current state, (you're not going to be able to run much longer with this pain in your side), but he's clearly not slowing down. Maybe it's the fear of being left behind, but somehow you find the strength to keep up the pace. The road grows wider with each twist and turn, until it gives way to a dilapidated plaza with a strange tower in the middle. Atop it is what looks to be a horn of some kind, with an Oalkwardner blowing into it. This is where the high pitched noise came from earlier. Most of the people milling about the square ignore the horn, as if this is some kind of daily occurrence. Merk slows at the base of the tower, stopping in front of an Oalkwardner in something resembling a dress, it's ears drooping. You catch up just in time to hear the ensuing conversation. "Fila?" Merk asks, "Why have you sounded the alarm? What's wrong?" "Its Pila," Says Fila, "She's dis-" the Oalkwardner notices you for the first time, "What in the world is that?" Her ears stick straight in the air and she leaps backwards, trembling. Merk turns and sees you standing there. "This is human. It's friendly, don't worry." He turns to you and says, "And this is Fila, my wife." "Why is everyone so afraid of me?" You ask, "I haven't done anything wrong." "I'm sorry... hue-mon." Her ears begin to droop once again, "I'm just worried, that's all. Our daughter," She gestures to Merk and herself, "is missing. She went to play with her friends yesterday evening. I meant to stay up waiting for her, but I was so tired that I just couldn't stay awake. And when I woke up, she still hadn't come back." Merk's eyes grow wider, and he grips his spear tighter. "What do you mean, she hasn't come back." "I mean, she isn't here, Merk! She might've disappeared like all those other-" "No!," he says, "I'm sure she's fine. She probably just got lost. We'll find her." A chill runs down your spine. You'd forgotten about the kidnapping you saw in the forest after Merk confronted you. You were too worried about staying alive to think about someone else's troubles. But now the memory returns in full force, the fear it brings creeping through every fiber of your being. "I'm not so sure about that..." You say, voice trembling a little. Merk turns to you. "What do you mean? Did you have something to do with it?" He picks up his spear, gripping it tight. "No! But I think I might have seen what happened." And you go on to explain the strange events which you saw when you first awoke. When you finish, Merk covers his face with his hands. "I've dealt with this sort of thing for years," he chokes, "But it's always been someone else's kid. Someone else's heartache..." He looks up at you. "This is the fourth kid to disappear in the last month. If these people that took... that took my daughter, took the others too..." He stops and covers his face again. "Then," Fila says, "If we find her, we find them all. Hue-mon. Please, will you help us? Take us to where you saw her, tell us which way they went. Then, maybe, we can find her. Her, and everyone else." > You say "Naw, I'm good." "I'm sorry." You say, "I'm not sure where, or even who I am. I don't think I'm up to this sort of mission." Fila stares at the dirt, clearly disappointed. "Could you at least tell us where you saw them last?" Merk asks "I guess it couldn't hurt," you say. You explain how you came down the path from the top of the hill, and how you went in the exact opposite direction as them. "Just keep going down the path and, I don't know, get some kind of tracker-person to pick up their trail. Am I saying that right?" "I suppose that helps," Merk murmurs, "Thank you human. I hope that the knowledge you have granted me is a fair substitute for your presence on this journey. Come on Fila, let's go round up a search party." You watch as they walk back into town, leaving you alone in the square. All the things you felt after witnessing the kidnapping resurface, guilt, helplessness, the whole package. For a moment you sit there, feeling sorry for yourself. Then you notice the Oalkwardners looking your way, suspicion in their eyes. Maybe you'd better find somewhere else to stay, you're not quite sure you're welcome here. It wouldn't do to have another incident like you did with Merk. So, you head out of the village the same way you came in. Luckily, the most threatening thing you encounter on your way out are a few nervous glances as the rest of the village wakes up. Soon, you've left the buildings behind and are back on the path through the forest. After you've gone a ways, you turn off the path and head out into the field surrounding the village. Once you're far enough from the path that you're not likely to run into any unfriendly villagers, you toss your bag onto the ground and pull out your sleeping bag and pillow and spread them out on the ground. Not that you need to go to bed yet, but just to give yourself something to do, if only for a few minutes. Guess this'll serve as a camp for the time being. For a while you stare off into the distance, thinking of nothing in particular. Your mind wanders, replaying the events of the day, contemplating your memory loss, trying to tease something from the thick fog that seems to engulf your thoughts every time you try to remember anything before you awoke in the forest. After a while, a line of figures appear in the distance, coming from the village, following the trail into the woods. You can just make out Merk and a few others, all carrying bags slung over their shoulders and spears in their hands. They don't notice you watching them, and carry on into the forest, following the information you gave them. Hopefully they find what they're looking for. The rest of the day is uneventful at best. You busy yourself by building a fire, even though it's far too hot to need one, and exploring around your campsite. It crosses your mind that maybe you should head back into the village and introduce yourself, show them that you're nothing to fear. You go back and forth as to whether or not you should, but eventually sheer boredom convinces you to be brave and face the Oalkwardners. So you stamp out the fire best you can and start towards the path into the village. You've almost reached it when a lone Oalkwardner comes dashing out of the forest and trips, falling right on its face "Are you alright?" You ask, rushing to the creature's side. "They've been taken!" It gasps, "Merk and the others... I was the only one... to escape. Man that hurts..." It rolls onto its side, revealing a gaping hole, oozing a clear substance. "What happened to you?" Your heart pounds that the sight of the... well, you think it's blood. "I... I think you need a doctor or something." The creature doesn't respond. It just lays there, taking in shallow breaths, coughing every once in a while. You don't think, you just act, scooping up the body and taking off running towards the village. It's lighter than you'd expect, but maybe that's just adrenaline. "Help!" You shout as you run through the village streets, "A doctor! She need a doctor!" The Oalkwardners look at you terrified. "A monster!" One of them cries, seeing the creature in your arms. "No!" you shout, "Don't those ears of yours work? I'm trying to save-" "Run it'll kill us all!" The Oalkwardners scatter in all directions, screaming. But there's no time to worry about them, you keep going, still calling for a doctor. A minute of this and the alarm sounds once more, cutting through the air. Still you search, frantically, for someone to help you. Then, you round a corner and come face to face with a wall of spears. The Watchmen of Arrorn have come to stop you, thinking you're a monster. Before they can attack, you kneel and lay the Oalkwardner in your arms at their feet. "I didn't do this." You say, "You have to help her, she's going to die!" "Why should we believe you, monster?" One of the watchmen asks, "For all we know, you're responsible for all the disappearances." "Why would I come here if I was the one who did this?" You ask, "What, do you think I'm stupid?" "I don't know," the watchman says, "I don't make a habit of dealing with monsters." "Enough of this!" A voice from behind the line of Watchmen startles everyone. "Clear a path, you idiots! This is no monster, but an acquaintance of Merk! He spoke to this creature just this morning and determined it was no threat!" The Watchmen part to reveal an especially wrinkly Oalkwardner. "I found her on the path!" you say, "She's from the search party that went out after Merk's kid, but I think something went wrong!" The wrinkly Oalkwardner takes one look at the wounded creature at your feet and gasps. "Never, in all my years as an elder... I can treat her, but we must get to my office quickly. Come on, I need you to carry her, it'll be quicker that way!" You scoop her up and follow without a word. The elder's office is on the edge of the town square, (Which, thank goodness, is pretty close). It's bigger than some of the other buildings in the town, so you can just squeeze inside. "Set her down here!" he says, sweeping the contents off a table in the middle of the room in one motion. You obey, and the elder gets to work without another word, it's as if he's forgotten you're even there. For a while you stand there awkwardly, watching as the Elder stitches up the wound. What if he needs you for something? He probably won't but even still, you'd better stay put. Surprisingly, the operation takes only a half hour. After the Elder finishes bandaging the wound, he looks up at you. "Thank you, human." He says, "We are in your debt. You may leave if you wish, but-" The injured Oalkwardner moans on the table, cutting him off. "They're gone... Dead, all of them." Her eyes are open, and they're staring straight at the elder. "What happened?" You demand, perhaps a little too swiftly. "Don't pressure her, she just woke up," The elder says. "No, I'm okay," she says, wincing, "But they're not." "If you feel you have the energy to talk, please go on," The elder says, "I would like to know more about this myself." "We were tracking... the kidnapers." She says, "But... they found us. A whole hoard of them. There was some kind of talk of a base... said they were gonna... overthrow the king... but no time... to pay attention..." Her ears droop, "And... they killed... I was... only one..." Her eyes roll back in her head and she passes out. "My word!" The elder says, rushing to her side and taking her right ear in his hand, "She'll be alright once she gets some rest, but you should probably head outside for now. We must make preparations for a funeral for those who were lost. Do you have anywhere to go?" "I set up camp just outside the village," you say, "I'll be alright, just tend to her." > The funeral After word gets around about how you helped save that Oalkwardner girl, the villagers seem to trust you enough to allow you to roam the city without sounding any alarms. Over the next few days, you help with preparations for the funeral, in part because there's nothing better to do, but also because you feel a little bad about not helping Merk with his search. Who knows? Maybe you would've been the difference between his life and death. When the day of the funeral rolls around, the entire town gathers in the square. It's the most extravagant display you've ever seen in your short time at the village, with tons of food for all and more flowers than you've ever seen in one place before. It must've cost a fortune in... whatever these guys use as currency. Merk must've done quite a lot to help the community, because there sure are a lot of drooping ears. (Which, you've learned, is the Oalkwardner's equivalent to crying). You stand at the edge of the crowd, still not quite feeling like a part of the community, as the Elder gives a speech. "We are gathered here today to commemorate the life of Merk, Gertra, and Silia, three of the greatest-" A pounding in the distance interrupts the speech. The whole crowd turns towards the source of the noise just in time to see a whole procession of Oalkwardners dressed in the brightest reds and yellows, all riding creatures like ponies, but with little spines running down their back instead of manes. They beat on little drums, all in sync. The Oalkwardner at the front of the pack raises her arm and raises her voice. "Presenting, the great Yelgar, Grand Protector of Realgna and the surrounding country!" The Drummers beat their drums faster and faster now, parting to allow a carriage to pass through, drawn by three lizard-like creatures, the size of bulls. The crowd parts for the carriage, and it stops right in front of the stage. The door on the side of the vessel opens, and out hops a rather tall Oalkwardner wearing a red cape and strange, red bracelets spiraling around the entirety of his forearms, like snakes. "People of the village of Arrorn!" He says, "I have come with grave news. It truly is a shame to interrupt such a lavish funeral, but there are more important matters at hand. It has come to my attention that there is a base of Rebels in the area, planning to overthrow the kingdom and estate a blasphemous 'new order.' These are the very same rebels that killed these three!" He gestures at the paintings of the three fallen Oalkwardners, set on easels on the stage. "We must act now, lest our glorious empire be overthrown. Outside this village is the seventy-third division of the King's army, sent to protect this village and take out the Rebel scum in our midst! It is for this reason, that the King and I felt the need to impose martial law on this village and the surrounding area! We will also be tripling the tax to sustain our troops. And we'll be taking all this lovely food you've set out for the funeral. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that." A cry of protest comes from deep within the crowd. "You're already taking three quarters of everything we have!" A female Oalkwardner pushes her way to the front of the crowd to confront the Yelgar. "We can barely survive as it is! And that food for the funeral is the last of our reserves, we only took it out in the first place because Merk and the others did so much for us in their lives!" Yelgar stares her straight in the face. "I understand your concern." He says, "But as I said, desperate times, desperate measures. Guards, restrain her!" Two of the horsemen hop off their steeds and grab the girl by the arms, forcing her to her knees. Yelgar raises his hand, and slaps her across the face, and the crowd gasps. "Do not question the authority of the Crown." Yelgar says, still deathly calm, "Or you might wind up like them too," he nods towards the paintings. "Who gives a crap about the Crown? We're all gonna die anyway under your 'martial law', so may as well go out fighting!" The girl glares at Yelgar, as the whole crowd seems to hold its breath. "I see how it is," Yelgar says, clearly disappointed. "Then let this be an example to anyone else who thinks of dissenting." He reaches beneath his cloak and pulls out a wooden knife, raising it above his head to strike at the girl, now trembling in the guards grip. "C-come on," the girl says, voice faltering, "They can't stop all of us! I say we finish what those rebels started!" Still, no one moves. The whole thing reminds you, once again, of the girl in the forest the night you woke up. The guilt of leaving her behind wells up within you, are you really gonna let it happen again? > You heck no you're not letting that happen again! Attack Yelgar! "Hey, stop!" You cry, before you can think of anything cleverer to say. Everyone turns towards you, shocked. Even Yelgar raises an eyebrow. Before anyone has the chance to grab you, you rush towards Yelgar, and his eyes go wide. "What are you?" He cries, dropping the knife to the ground with a clatter. You don't answer, just slam your foot into his face, full force. He goes flying into the side of the carriage and crumples to the ground, dead. Holy smokes, did you actually just do that? How the heck did you do that? But there's no time to think about it now, a few of the other guards are just realizing what's happened and are charging you. "He killed the Grand Protector!" one of them shouts, "Stop him before he does any more damage!" You should probably run, but something stops you. So, you tense up, and get ready for battle. Soon as the first horseman gets close, you swing at him with everything you've got. He goes flying off his steed, tripping up one of the others. Then it's rinse and repeat for the whole fight. You find, to your surprise, that you're extremely strong compared to the Oalkwardners. With every swing, you take out another guard, and a few from the crowd cheer. But now more of the guards are waking up to what's happening, and they begin to encircle you. There's no way you can beat them all, no matter how strong you happen to be in comparison. Before you have time to react, you're surrounded. They all point their spears your way, slowly closing the circle now that they know they've got you cornered. Frantically, you look around for any sort of weakness in their wall of spears. But you can't seem to see... wait, there! One of the guards is a little further forward than the others, and smaller too. If you attack him, then maybe you can stay out of reach of those spears. It's a split second realization, and you act on it, charging the guard and tackling the pony out from under him. (That way, you stay out of reach his spear too). You don't stop to look at the damage you've caused; they'll be after you in seconds! So, you dash towards the edge of the village. Even though it's only been a few days, you've already got a rudimentary knowledge of this village's layout, which is much more than the guards have, (seeing as they've only been here for an hour, tops. You quickly manage to lose your pursuers in the twists and turns of the city, but that doesn't mean you're stopping. You don't slow down till you've made it out of the city, and left the buildings far behind. This is a different path than you've taken before, so it's a good thing you've already got most of your stuff with you. No chance you'll be able to swing by your little campsite on the way out. So that means you'll have to do without the sleeping bag and pillow you left there this morning. Hope you like sleeping in the dirt. Speaking of camping, the field surrounding the village is dotted with Oalkwardners in the same red and yellow cloaks of the other guards, setting up tents among other things. Luckily, they don't notice you, and you soon find yourself in the forest once again. It's only then that you allow yourself to slow to a walk. You feel a little sad about leaving Arrorn, even if you never felt like you truly belonged there. There's no way you'll ever be able to return, at least, not for a while. > You wandering in the woods For the next few days, you continue on the path, surviving on nothing but the supplies left in your bag. You're almost out of Cheez-Its, so you'll have to find another village soon or you might starve. No one comes after you, probably because you took out their leader. No-one to give orders. Still, you move quickly as you can, just in case they are still after you. On the third night, you veer off the path a little to find a nice place to sleep. You've given up on finding something even remotely comfortable, (as your aching back won't let you forget). What you're really looking for is something concealed, so if anyone tries to find you, they'll just walk right past without noticing. Tonight, you're lucky. There's a shallow divot in the ground, just big enough for you to spend the night in. All you've gotta do is cover it with leaves and sticks, and you're set. The sun hasn't even finished setting by the time you finish, so you sit on a nearby rock and pull out your last bag of Cheez-Its and stare at it. If you eat them now, you'll go to bed hungry, but be hungry in the morning, but if you wait, you're not sure you'll even be able to sleep due to the hunger pains. The snapping of a twig behind you breaks you out of your thoughts. You turn around, just as something, you're not sure what, slams right into you! It sends you toppling off the rock and into the dirt on your back. Before you even have the chance to comprehend what's happening, you find yourself staring into the eyes of a raggedy Oalkwardner, standing on your chest and pointing a spear at your throat. "I wouldn't try to escape, if I were you." The Oalkwardner says, "You may be strong, monster, but I'm certainly quick enough to drive this spear right through you before you have the chance to take a single swing at me." "What the heck is this?" You ask, a quaver in your voice. "Where did you come from?" "The King sent me after you." The Oalkwardner says, "They call me Kralmer, I'm one of the greatest bounty hunter's this side of the water-pit." "So you're a filthy mercenary! You kill people for what... money?" Kralmer spits out of the side of his mouth. "I'm not doing this for money! The king's holding my family, said he'd only let them go if I took you to him. It's nothing personal, I assure you." "Well, that sucks," You say, "But isn't there another way, aside from, you know, killing me?" "I wish," He sighs, "But the king says bounty hunting is illegal. That's why he took my family. I was gonna be executed, but he said he'd grant us a pardon if I brought you to him. Filthy rat won't follow his own rules. Anyway, really sorry about this. I heard what you did back in Arrorn. Heck, I'd join you if I could. But I've got my family to think of. I'll try to make your death swift." With that, he raises his spear to deliver a killing blow. "Wait!" You cry. "What?" Kralmer says, sounding impatient, "Look, I don't like this any more than you do, so may as well get it over with." > You say "Don't I at least deserve a fair fight?" Kralmer pauses for a moment and thinks. Your heart pounds as you watch him, hoping against hope that he's honorable. He sighs and says, "Why do ya gotta make things so complicated?" And he leaps into the air, landing about ten feet away from you. "I guess you have a point. This way, I at least don't have to feel so bad. Stand up now, I guess we'd better do this." You stand up, feeling just a little bit relieved. But the danger's not over yet. You've still gotta fight him. "Monster," Kralmer says, "Just promise me this." "What? "Show me no mercy. On the off chance you beat me, I'd rather not have to face my family to tell them... I've failed." "Well... okay." Kralmer readies himself. "Now... are you ready?" "I suppose I am." Your palms are slick with sweat. "Right then. Now fight!" Before the words have even left his lips, he's already flying through the air towards you, faster than you could've imagined possible. There's no time to put up any sort of defense before he smashes right into your head, his spear penetrating straight through your right eye. The pain is so great, you hardly notice as you fall to the ground, or Kralmer's whispered apology as the world fades around you. Well, that ended quicker than expected...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For the next few days, you continue on the path, surviving on nothing but the supplies left in your bag. You're almost out of Cheez-Its, so you'll have to find another village soon or you might starve. No one comes after you, probably because you took out their leader. No-one to give orders. Still, you move quickly as you can, just in case they are still after you. On the third night, you veer off the path a little to find a nice place to sleep. You've given up on finding something even remotely comfortable, (as your aching back won't let you forget). What you're really looking for is something concealed, so if anyone tries to find you, they'll just walk right past without noticing. Tonight, you're lucky. There's a shallow divot in the ground, just big enough for you to spend the night in. All you've gotta do is cover it with leaves and sticks, and you're set. The sun hasn't even finished setting by the time you finish, so you sit on a nearby rock and pull out your last bag of Cheez-Its and stare at it. If you eat them now, you'll go to bed hungry, but be hungry in the morning, but if you wait, you're not sure you'll even be able to sleep due to the hunger pains. The snapping of a twig behind you breaks you out of your thoughts. You turn around, just as something, you're not sure what, slams right into you! It sends you toppling off the rock and into the dirt on your back. Before you even have the chance to comprehend what's happening, you find yourself staring into the eyes of a raggedy Oalkwardner, standing on your chest and pointing a spear at your throat. "I wouldn't try to escape, if I were you." The Oalkwardner says, "You may be strong, monster, but I'm certainly quick enough to drive this spear right through you before you have the chance to take a single swing at me." "What the heck is this?" You ask, a quaver in your voice. "Where did you come from?" "The King sent me after you." The Oalkwardner says, "They call me Kralmer, I'm one of the greatest bounty hunter's this side of the water-pit." "So you're a filthy mercenary! You kill people for what... money?" Kralmer spits out of the side of his mouth. "I'm not doing this for money! The king's holding my family, said he'd only let them go if I took you to him. It's nothing personal, I assure you." "Well, that sucks," You say, "But isn't there another way, aside from, you know, killing me?" "I wish," He sighs, "But the king says bounty hunting is illegal. That's why he took my family. I was gonna be executed, but he said he'd grant us a pardon if I brought you to him. Filthy rat won't follow his own rules. Anyway, really sorry about this. I heard what you did back in Arrorn. Heck, I'd join you if I could. But I've got my family to think of. I'll try to make your death swift." With that, he raises his spear to deliver a killing blow. "Wait!" You cry. "What?" Kralmer says, sounding impatient, "Look, I don't like this any more than you do, so may as well get it over with." > You say "What if we figure out a way to get your family back without me dying?" Kralmer lowers his spear ever so slightly. "What, you got some kind of master plan that'll get the king outta the way?" "Well..." you say slowly, your mind racing. You've got a half formulated idea already, if only you had more time to think... "Don't you get an audience with the king or something? To show him my dead body?" He thinks for a moment. "I suppose, but if you're thinking of trying anything, you best be aware that the king is heavily guarded. And he wears this enchanted armor, made by his dark sorcerer, Maeldral. While it's on, he's practically immortal! That's why no-ones ever, you know, killed him before!" "But it must have some kind of weakness, don't you think?" "I dunno... his Maeldral might have something in his notes or something, but I have no idea where he'd keep something like that. I mean, that's really dangerous knowledge. I'm sorry, but I have to kill you." He raises his spear once more, ears drooping. "But I'm super strong, remember?" You say, "At least compared to you guys. If we find a way in, I can take out the guards. I took out fifteen or so of the king's men just the other day in Arrorn. Then you won't have to kill me, because your family will be safe! I could go after the king by myself, if you don't want to get tangled up in all this." He seems to think it over for a moment. Then, he sighs and steps off your chest. "Stand, monster..." Kralmer says, "I'll accept your terms on the condition that we break my family out before anything else. And after that, you're on your own. I have my family to think of." He's quiet for a moment. "You're lucky the king has a reputation for making bad deals. I'm not the first to be roped into something like this by that soggy bag of water, and from what I've heard, he doesn't always follow through. I certainly hope you're more honorable than he is. Now, let's find a better spot to camp." > You to the palace! Thankfully, Kralmer has enough food for the both of you, so you go to bed with a full stomach. But you just can't get to sleep. After a half hour of tossing and turning in the dirt, you sit up and take inventory of your supplies, (for lack of anything better to do). It's then that you remember the strange disk you found on the night you first woke up in the woods. You must've forgotten about it after seeing the kidnapping. It's been in your bag this whole time, waiting to be rediscovered. You take it out and examine it. Something about it tugs at your memory, but you just can't place it. For a while you stare at the screen, flashing "insufficient power," over and over in red. Tapping at the screen does nothing, and there are no other buttons to speak of. On the other side is some kind of clear plastic tank, with a little bit of green fluid sloshing about inside. You can't make heads or tails of it. Soon, you're fast asleep, the disk resting on your chest... Your dreams that night are filled with visions of the disk. You see yourself putting it together, building it, tweaking it. It's the most important thing you've ever created, more important than your family, your friends, the outside world. The disk consumes your entire life, you work on it day and night. And then, one day, there's no more work to be done. You fill the tank with the green liquid, harvested from the core of a meteorite, tap the screen a few times, and suddenly find yourself surrounded by a brilliant, violet light... "Wake up, monster!" You open your eyes to the sight of Kralmer's wrinkly face. "Eat something, we've got a long trek ahead of us." he pushes a bowl of black goop into your hands and walks a few paces away as you attempt to choke it down. "So," he says as you finish, "You're still here." "Yup," you say, running your tongue over your teeth to get the last little bits of your breakfast off. "You really are honorable then... I suppose I should call you something other than 'Monster.' What are you anyway?" "I'm a human," you say. "Good to know, human," Kralmer grins, "Now, like I said, we've got a long ways to go, so let's get going." For the next two days you walk on, stopping only to sleep. On the evening of the second day, Kralmer says "Look! It's just over this hill," and dashes ahead. You follow, quick as you can. When you crest the hill, you can just see the outline of some sort of fortress, sitting on a hilltop on the horizon. "We ought to make camp a little ways off the trail, and soon." Kralmer says, "Just in case some of the King's guard happen to pass." You follow him off the trail and into a nearby thicket. For a good ten minutes, you push through the brush, covering yourself in all sorts of scratches. Finally, you come to a clear spot, right at the heart of the thorn bushes. "There," Kralmer says, "No way they'll think to look here. Now, we'd better come up with some kind of plan before we get any closer." "Do you know if there are any secret entrances?" You ask. "The only way in, so far as I know, besides the front gate would be through the moat. It runs right through the dungeon, so the king can drown his subjects in it." "Great!" you say, "We'll swim in that way!" "Swim?" Kralmer asks, "What does 'swim' mean?" "You've never heard of swimming?" You ask, "You know, where you paddle to stay afloat in the water?" "Human, you are far more powerful than I ever could've imagined," Kralmer is clearly awed, "We Oalkwardners cannot touch the water. If we soak in it, it seeps into our skin, making it weaker and weaker, until it simply dissolves into mush. I imagine it's a horribly painful way to go, hence why our lovely, benevolent King uses it to dispose of anyone who so much as looks at him funny." "My word! That's why I never found any sort of well in the village! I had to suck the moisture out of mud to survive! What do you do when it rains?" "I've heard of this 'rain,' you speak of. Thankfully, such a calamity has yet to befall this land." "But what about all these trees and plants? How can they grow without water?" "I don't know what you mean!" Kralmer says, "All plants need is a little sunshine and they'll grow just fine. But we're getting off topic. The best way to get into the palace may just be for you to sneak in through the moat." "But what about you? How will you get inside? What about your family?" "I... don't know. But the moat could be our best shot. You may have to go in without me." "You trust me that much?" "I trust you more than I trust the King, I'll say that much. There'll be no-one to guide my family out of the dungeon, should you decide to go after the King. If you feel the need, you can disregard my earlier request for them to be let out first. Should you manage to take the fortress, you'll then be able to set them free." "Alright..." you agree, "I'll do it." "Great." Kralmer says, "We'll think of some kind of meeting point. I really appreciate this, Human. You are quite possibly the most courageous creature I've ever met." "You're welcome," you say. After a moment of silence, Kralmer says, "Well, we'd better make camp. I have a feeling it's gonna be a long day tomorrow." "You and me both," you murmur, as you stand up to start getting the camp ready. > The moat You reach the fortress at about noon the next day. It's really not much of a castle. Instead of stone, like you would expect, it's made completely out of wood, with a few rickety looking towers poking up from behind the wall. Once you're only about a hundred feet off from the moat, Kralmer stops you. "Send my family out this way, when you get out." He points at a spot where the moat goes under the wood. "You see where the water crosses under the wall?" "Yeah?" "That should take you into the dungeon." You don't say anything. This is all happening so fast, you're not sure you're ready. "Thanks again, human." Kralmer says, "Whatever happens, I'll make sure your legacy lives on." "Right," you say, "Thanks." There's no point in stalling, so you start running towards the moat, fast as you can, so no one sees you. Once you reach the edge, you don't hesitate to dive right it. The water is warmer than you expected, and murky. It's hard to stay afloat with a backpack on, but you still manage to keep your head above the water. Luckily, it doesn't seem to be flowing in any particular direction, so you have no trouble with current. You swim for the opening Kralmer pointed out and duck under it. Suddenly, the sunlight from above is gone. You're in a sort of dirt tunnel, with just enough space at the top for you to breathe. It's fairly short, and before you know it, the river opens up into a sort of pool at the edge of a huge underground room. You swim to the edge of the pool, out of breath. Are you really this out of shape? For a moment you sit on your hands and knees, panting. Then, you look up and get a good look at the wall on the other side of the room. You suck in your breath. It's lined with cages, set into the wall, dirty and disheveled Oalkwardner eyes staring out at you from behind wooden... well, they're not exactly bars... more like fat wooden sticks. It looks like this part of the fortress is built into the hillside, as half of the walls are wood, and the other half, dirt, hard packed. Thankfully, there are no guards down here, at least not right now. You need to decide if you're going to free the prisoners now, or wait until after the king is dead. > You go after the king first "I'll be back for you all later," you say, as loud as you dare. There's an opening in the wall with a spiral staircase going up, so you head through it. At the top of the stairs is a wooden door. You can hear voices from the other side, probably guards. Quietly, you turn the handle and push it open. Two guards stand on the other side, their backs to you. They don't notice you, because they just keep chatting about the weather. You creep closer, and closer, and then you put a hand over each of their mouths and drag them back through the door before they even realize you're there! They struggle in your grip, but their flailing is no match for your strength. You carry them downstairs, still covering their mouths, and toss them into the nearest empty cell. You steal the keys off their belt while you're at it, and lock them inside. "What's going on?" one of them cries. "What the heck are you?" Asks the other. "Shut up, both of you!" You say, "I need to know where the Dark Sorcerer lives." "Why would we tell you that? You're kidnapping us!" the first guard says, "Because if you don't, you die!" You say, slamming your fist against the bars. "I'm not talking." The first guard says, crossing his arms. "Well, I am!" The Second one says, trembling, "He's in the tower opposite us, at the very top!" "What the heck is wrong with you?" The first guard says, "If you tell it that, you're breaking your sacred oath to protect the king!" "I'd rather stay alive, thank you very much!" "Shut up, or I'll kill you both!" You say, feeling a little guilty. (Threatening lives isn't exactly the most fun thing in the world). They go quiet after that. There's no way to know how long they'll stay quiet though, so you'd better be quick. You head back up the stairs and slip out the door. Luckily, the courtyard isn't all that crowded, but there are still a few Oalkwardners milling about here and there. A line of bushes sits in the shadow of the wall, wrapping all the way around, so you crouch behind it to avoid being seen. As fast as you can, you crawl around the perimeter until you reach the tower the guards were talking about. There's no-one there to guard the door, it's almost too easy. Quickly, you slip inside and find yourself staring at yet another spiral staircase. You take the stairs four at a time, as they're smaller than stairs for humans. The tower has multiple levels, with rooms branching off on each one, but you don't stop to look in any of them until you reach the very top. The stairway ends in a trapdoor. You press your ear up against it, but hear nothing. Pushing on the door reveals that it's locked, with the same type of wooden lock that was on the cells in the dungeon. For a moment, you panic. What are you going to do if you can't get in? It would be a defeat on the whole purpose of this mission! Then, you remember that you stole the keys off the guards you trapped in the dungeon. Checking over your shoulder to make sure no one's coming, you pull out the wooden key ring and try each one of them on the lock. The key slides in on the fourth try, and the door swings open freely to reveal something like a cross between a bedroom and a laboratory. One side of the room has a big table full of all kinds of odds and ends, different materials and chemicals. The other side has a bedroll, woven from grass and stuffed with... well, more grass. You start looking around for anything that looks like it might do away with magic armor. You look through the contents of the table first, but don't find anything remotely useful. (Though, there is a cage of yellow rats on one corner, which is quite entertaining to look at). You're about to turn elsewhere when you spy something else. Hidden behind a stack of books is a bowl of a strange green substance, glowing slightly in the dim light. This is the same fluid that's in the back of the disk you found in the forest when you first woke up! You pull it out of your backpack to confirm. Maybe, if you refill the tank on the back, it'll work properly again, and you can find out more about what it does. > You fill up the tank and see what happens You pull the disk out of your bag and examine the tank on the back. There's a little cap you can take off to open it. It comes off in two twists, and you fill it with the goo from the bowl. As you screw the cap back on, a little beep sounds. You flip the disk over and find that the display at the front has changed. "Power Restored." It flashes, "Ready for dimensional rift generation. Please set coordinates or choose a preset." Two options appear on the screen, one reads, "set new preset" and the other simply says, "home." For a moment, you forget all about your mission. This thing can send you home? Impulsively, you tap the button, and a message pops up. "Warning: Dimensional travel may disrupt certain brain functions, including cognition, memory, and vision. Continue at your own risk." You hesitate, but curiosity gets the better of you and you push "Continue" on the screen. It'll just be a short trip, you tell yourself. Just to jog your memory a little, then you'll come right back. A violet light envelops you, burning your skin. You shut your eyes as it becomes too intense to look at. It's like you're spinning, being stretched in fifteen different directions at once. That's about the point at which you lose consciousness. The pain is the first thing you notice. It feels as though someone's poured an entire vat of hot coffee over your entire body. Somehow, you get the sense that you've been asleep a lot longer than normal. You open your eyes to an overcast, gray sky. You're laying on the lawn of someone's house, in the middle of a quiet suburb. You sit up and look around. There's a backpack a few feet away, with a strange disk beside it. How the heck did you get here? You try to remember, but find that you simply cannot. If you really concentrate, you can just remember a strange violet light...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'll be back for you all later," you say, as loud as you dare. There's an opening in the wall with a spiral staircase going up, so you head through it. At the top of the stairs is a wooden door. You can hear voices from the other side, probably guards. Quietly, you turn the handle and push it open. Two guards stand on the other side, their backs to you. They don't notice you, because they just keep chatting about the weather. You creep closer, and closer, and then you put a hand over each of their mouths and drag them back through the door before they even realize you're there! They struggle in your grip, but their flailing is no match for your strength. You carry them downstairs, still covering their mouths, and toss them into the nearest empty cell. You steal the keys off their belt while you're at it, and lock them inside. "What's going on?" one of them cries. "What the heck are you?" Asks the other. "Shut up, both of you!" You say, "I need to know where the Dark Sorcerer lives." "Why would we tell you that? You're kidnapping us!" the first guard says, "Because if you don't, you die!" You say, slamming your fist against the bars. "I'm not talking." The first guard says, crossing his arms. "Well, I am!" The Second one says, trembling, "He's in the tower opposite us, at the very top!" "What the heck is wrong with you?" The first guard says, "If you tell it that, you're breaking your sacred oath to protect the king!" "I'd rather stay alive, thank you very much!" "Shut up, or I'll kill you both!" You say, feeling a little guilty. (Threatening lives isn't exactly the most fun thing in the world). They go quiet after that. There's no way to know how long they'll stay quiet though, so you'd better be quick. You head back up the stairs and slip out the door. Luckily, the courtyard isn't all that crowded, but there are still a few Oalkwardners milling about here and there. A line of bushes sits in the shadow of the wall, wrapping all the way around, so you crouch behind it to avoid being seen. As fast as you can, you crawl around the perimeter until you reach the tower the guards were talking about. There's no-one there to guard the door, it's almost too easy. Quickly, you slip inside and find yourself staring at yet another spiral staircase. You take the stairs four at a time, as they're smaller than stairs for humans. The tower has multiple levels, with rooms branching off on each one, but you don't stop to look in any of them until you reach the very top. The stairway ends in a trapdoor. You press your ear up against it, but hear nothing. Pushing on the door reveals that it's locked, with the same type of wooden lock that was on the cells in the dungeon. For a moment, you panic. What are you going to do if you can't get in? It would be a defeat on the whole purpose of this mission! Then, you remember that you stole the keys off the guards you trapped in the dungeon. Checking over your shoulder to make sure no one's coming, you pull out the wooden key ring and try each one of them on the lock. The key slides in on the fourth try, and the door swings open freely to reveal something like a cross between a bedroom and a laboratory. One side of the room has a big table full of all kinds of odds and ends, different materials and chemicals. The other side has a bedroll, woven from grass and stuffed with... well, more grass. You start looking around for anything that looks like it might do away with magic armor. You look through the contents of the table first, but don't find anything remotely useful. (Though, there is a cage of yellow rats on one corner, which is quite entertaining to look at). You're about to turn elsewhere when you spy something else. Hidden behind a stack of books is a bowl of a strange green substance, glowing slightly in the dim light. This is the same fluid that's in the back of the disk you found in the forest when you first woke up! You pull it out of your backpack to confirm. Maybe, if you refill the tank on the back, it'll work properly again, and you can find out more about what it does. > You there's no time for this. Keep looking for the weapon. You sigh and leave the bowl alone. Maybe you can come back here once your mission's over. There's a book lying on the floor next to the bed that you didn't notice until now. Its cover is blank, and it looks hand bound. Curious, you pick it up and open it to a random page. Numerous entries in impeccably neat handwriting fill the pages. Looks like the sorcerer keeps a diary. You skim the pages, looking for any mention of the king's amour. A full page drawing of a helmet stops you in your tracks. It's entitled, "Kingly helmet." The next few pages are the same, full of images of chest plates and gauntlets, different designs and chemical formulas. It's only when you reach the last page of drawings that you find anything useful. A little blurb at the bottom of the page tells you everything you need to know. It has come to my attention that this amour, while stronger than anything this world has ever seen, is not infallible. It does not block out liquids, so that a little splash of water might be enough to do our great monarch in. I must keep this fact a secret, or I fear he may have me executed. Thankfully enough, no one else can so much as touch this water either, so there's little chance of it being used against him. I certainly hope none of our enemies figure out a way to circumvent this, as it could spell doom for the entire kingdom. You look up from the book. This is perfect! All you've got to do is lure the king down into the dungeons and push him into the water and you're set! At that moment, you hear shouts from outside. You rush to the window and look down into the courtyard to see the tiny figures of three guards dragging Kralmer into the courtyard. Your heart begins to pound. You have to save him! Then, an idea comes to you. An idea that might just save Kralmer and everyone else. You rush down the stairs as fast as you can. When you reach the ground floor, you open the door to the outside just a crack and peer out. You can just see the guards holding Kralmer on the other side of the courtyard. Now all you've got to do is wait... A minute later, the king comes out of one of the towers, just as anticipated. (You know it's him because he's clad in a strange bronze amour, unlike any you've ever seen. At least, that you remember you've seen). He talks to the guards for a moment, then they all head towards the dungeon. Quick as you can, you start to crawl around the perimeter, behind the bushes, towards the same place. You reach the door to the dungeon just as the king and his guards enter, and wait a moment to let them get a little further ahead. Then, you go in after them. As you sneak down the stairs, you can hear their voices. "What happened?" the king shouts. "We were trapped by a monster!" You jolt a little. You'd forgotten all about the guards you trapped in the cell! The king must've found them. At this point, you've reached the bottom of the stairs, and are peaking into the next room. The king and his guards are still talking. "Go sound the alarms," the king orders, "I've got an execution to oversee." It's now or never. You dash out into the next room, screaming at the top of your lungs. Everyone leaps backwards in shock. By the time they regain their footing, you've already scooped up the king under your arm. He's heavier than most with that armor, but you manage. "Let me go or I'll have you executed!" he screams, "Guards, take him out!" "Never!" you shout, and dive into the pool of water at the opposite side of the room. The king shrieks in pain as the water floods through the cracks in his armor. You turn away, not wanting to watch. By the time you've exited the lake, the king is dead. The guards stare at you, openmouthed. You ready yourself to do battle one more time, but then something entirely unexpected happens. One of the guards in the cage begins to clap. Then the rest of them join in. All the prisoners pick up on it too, until the entire dungeon is applauding. "Bravo, monster!" one of the guards in the cage says, "The rest of us hated him just as much as anyone else. Now we can all be free!" "You have done well, Human." Kralmer says, "I believe you will go down in history as a hero. Never before has such a great deed been performed alone." "Yeah," you say, trying not to think about the king's final screams as he died, "I guess... I guess it was pretty great." > You epilouge After the king's death, the rebel group that the king was trying to stop steps into the power vacuum and takes over. They estate a glorious new order in which all of the people share their resources and the government owns the means of production.* The people are quite receptive to it, as they hated the old order of things and needed a change. The story of the Human that ended the terrible reign of king Maeldral is passed down from generation to generation, until it becomes legend. Some say you integrated into their society and are living a quiet life in a village near the edge of the kingdom. Others think you returned to your own world. Whatever the answer, everyone agrees that you are a hero. Thanks to you, the kingdom is much better off. The end. *The only reason this sort of Communism works is because they are fantasy creatures in a fantasy world. Do not attempt in real life, it never has worked out, and probably never will. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You reach the fortress at about noon the next day. It's really not much of a castle. Instead of stone, like you would expect, it's made completely out of wood, with a few rickety looking towers poking up from behind the wall. Once you're only about a hundred feet off from the moat, Kralmer stops you. "Send my family out this way, when you get out." He points at a spot where the moat goes under the wood. "You see where the water crosses under the wall?" "Yeah?" "That should take you into the dungeon." You don't say anything. This is all happening so fast, you're not sure you're ready. "Thanks again, human." Kralmer says, "Whatever happens, I'll make sure your legacy lives on." "Right," you say, "Thanks." There's no point in stalling, so you start running towards the moat, fast as you can, so no one sees you. Once you reach the edge, you don't hesitate to dive right it. The water is warmer than you expected, and murky. It's hard to stay afloat with a backpack on, but you still manage to keep your head above the water. Luckily, it doesn't seem to be flowing in any particular direction, so you have no trouble with current. You swim for the opening Kralmer pointed out and duck under it. Suddenly, the sunlight from above is gone. You're in a sort of dirt tunnel, with just enough space at the top for you to breathe. It's fairly short, and before you know it, the river opens up into a sort of pool at the edge of a huge underground room. You swim to the edge of the pool, out of breath. Are you really this out of shape? For a moment you sit on your hands and knees, panting. Then, you look up and get a good look at the wall on the other side of the room. You suck in your breath. It's lined with cages, set into the wall, dirty and disheveled Oalkwardner eyes staring out at you from behind wooden... well, they're not exactly bars... more like fat wooden sticks. It looks like this part of the fortress is built into the hillside, as half of the walls are wood, and the other half, dirt, hard packed. Thankfully, there are no guards down here, at least not right now. You need to decide if you're going to free the prisoners now, or wait until after the king is dead. > You free the people first You rush up to the bars of the nearest cage to you. In that moment, you decide that there's no way you're leaving anyone behind. If you're taking one, you're taking them all. "I'm here to save you." You say in a low voice, "all of you." "What... are you?" Asks the Oalkwardner in the cage, inching backwards. "I'm a friend, now let me get these bars off the cage." You grip the bars and pull as hard as you can, but they don't budge. This is real wood, not the Paper-Mache everything else in this place is made of. You're going to have to find another way to get through it. Maybe you can steal the keys off a guard or something. Or maybe... You sling your bag off your shoulders and go through the contents until you find what you're looking for. It takes a minute, and for a moment you fear it might have fallen out of your bag. But no, at the bottom of your bag, lays your lighter, untouched since the night you first woke up. Maybe, you can use this on lock of the cell! Because even that's made of wood, for some reason. Or maybe you should just play it safe and look for the keys... > You attempt to burn through the lock Working quickly, you put the lighter up to the keyhole and flick it on. Somehow, even after you swam through that moat, it still works. The lock catches instantly, faster than you would've thought possible. Once again, you grip the bars and wrench open the door. "Are you a wizard?" The Oalkwardner asks, "What kind of magical power is that? I've never seen anything like it? Also, is it going to eat the whole door?" You glance once again at the door to see that the entire thing is engulfed in flames. How is it possible for fire to spread that fast? Either this is your faulty memory at work, or this wood is different from the stuff back at home. Even as you think this it's already spreading to the rest of the cell. "Get out of there!" You cry, pulling the Oalkwardner out of the flaming cell. The fire is spreading quicker and quicker. Before you even manage to take so much as two steps back, the entire wall is in flames. The other trapped Oalkwardners scream as they and their cells are consumed in the flames. "We've gotta get to the exit!" The Oalkwardner says, pointing to an opening in the wall, with a spiral staircase just beyond it, "Come on!" "But what about-" You're cut off by a loud crack. The exit collapses, and sparks fly everywhere. One of them lands on your Oalkwardner friend, and catches him on fire. "Gaahhh!" he screams as the flames engulf him, burning him as if he's made of paper. Your stomach turns at the sight and you look away. At that moment, the ceiling caves in, and falls right on top of you, killing you instantly. > You epilouge So, you're dead. But let's look on the bright side of things, shall we? After you died, the fire spread to the rest of the palace, burning it completely to the ground. No one escaped, not even the king and his invincible suit of amour! Not even his children made it out, so there was no one left to take his place. No one, that is, except for the rebel alliance the Grand Protector and his army were trying to find. With the king dead, they sweep in and take power within a month. They estate a new order, where everyone shares what they have, and the government owns the means of production.* Even you get to live on in the hearts and minds of everyone you saved from the king's reign of terror. They even erected a statue in your honor! (Though, it looks nothing like you). You will be known forevermore as, "Human, Martyr of the New Order." So, in a way, even you get to live happily ever after. Everyone, it seems, gets a happy ending. Except for all the innocent people you killed in the dungeon. And Kralmer, because his entire family is dead. He will forever curse your name. *I swear, I'm not communist.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You rush up to the bars of the nearest cage to you. In that moment, you decide that there's no way you're leaving anyone behind. If you're taking one, you're taking them all. "I'm here to save you." You say in a low voice, "all of you." "What... are you?" Asks the Oalkwardner in the cage, inching backwards. "I'm a friend, now let me get these bars off the cage." You grip the bars and pull as hard as you can, but they don't budge. This is real wood, not the Paper-Mache everything else in this place is made of. You're going to have to find another way to get through it. Maybe you can steal the keys off a guard or something. Or maybe... You sling your bag off your shoulders and go through the contents until you find what you're looking for. It takes a minute, and for a moment you fear it might have fallen out of your bag. But no, at the bottom of your bag, lays your lighter, untouched since the night you first woke up. Maybe, you can use this on lock of the cell! Because even that's made of wood, for some reason. Or maybe you should just play it safe and look for the keys... > You go find a guard and steal the keys "I'll be right back," you say, turning around. There's an exit a few yards away, a neat gap in the wall with a spiral staircase behind it. You head up the staircase as quietly as you can and find yourself at a wooden door. You can hear muffled voices on the other side, probably the guards. Gently as you can, you turn the knob and open the door. Sunlight floods into the room, blinding you momentarily. Seems the door opens into the courtyard. Two guards stand on the other side, their backs turned to you, chatting about the weather. Ever so slowly, you inch out the door, getting closer and closer until they're in your reach. They still haven't noticed you. Then, quick as you can, you grab them, clapping your hand over their mouth. Before they have a chance to react, you dash back through the door, carrying them with you. Soon as you reach the edge of the stairwell, you throw them down onto the floor below, killing them instantly. You hurry down the stairs, taking them two at a time. After making sure the guards are thoroughly dead, you check their pockets for keys. It doesn't take you long to find them. Strangely enough, they're made of the same wood as the lock. "I'm back!" you say as loud as you dare. You dash to the first door and unlock it, then go to the next, and the next. Soon, every cell is unlocked, and you're surrounded by a bleary-eyed crowd of Oalkwardners, staring up at you. "What now?" one of them asks. "I'm getting you out of-" You start to say, but stop. Above you, you can just hear the sound of muffled voices. You put your finger to your lips, and creep towards the exit, where you can hear better. "Why is this door open?" one asks, "And where are the guards?" Crap! You must've forgotten to close the door behind you on your way back down! "I thought I heard something down there," Another voice says, "Let's go check it out, I've got a bad feeling about this." The sound of footsteps coming down the stairs resonates through the whole room. You ready yourself for a fight as the bottoms of Oalkwardner feet and red and yellow cloaks become visible on the stairs. "What on earth?" one of them says. They must've seen the dead guards at the bottom. You don't waste any more time. You charge into the room with the stairwell, screaming at the top of your lungs. Five guards stare at you from halfway down the stairs, too stunned to move, at least for a moment. You use it to your advantage, bounding up the steps and plowing through the first two before they even think to raise their weapons. Of course, the other three are a little smarter. They back out of your reach before you can take a swipe at them, and ready their spears for an attack. You stop ascending for a moment and assess the situation. They've got the high ground, and their spears are ready. You may be stronger than they, but a shaft of wood through the heart will still kill you, regardless of who's holding it. Without warning, The Oalkwardner in front leaps into the air towards you, ready to bring her spear down on your head. You leap backwards, nearly tumbling down the stairs, just avoiding what could've been a fatal strike. For a moment, you're both off balance, but you recover first, and drive your fist into her face. "Noooo!" one of the other Oalkwardners cries, and charges at you wildly. You step out of the way just in time, and he trips over his own feet, falling off the rickety spiral staircase to his doom. That's four down, now where's that last one. You look around wildly, just in time to see the edge of a cloak disappearing through the door at the top of the stairs. "Come on!" You call down to the prisoners below, "We have to get out of here, now! Up the staircase!" The prisoners obey, flooding into the room, and starting up the stairs after you. There are about two dozen in all, not as many as you might have thought, but still a substantial number to herd out of a fortress like this. As you lead them out into the courtyard, a high pitched shriek cuts through the air. It's an alarm, just like the one back in Arrorn! The entire courtyard is in chaos, people running this way and that, guards and civilians alike. The gateway out is on the other side, about a hundred yards away, sitting wide open. But it won't be for long, even from here you can see guards gathering by the big swinging doors, getting ready to push them closed and trap you inside. "Quick, to the exit!" You shout, breaking into a run. Everyone else follows as you weave through the crowd, trying your best not to trample any innocent people. (If, indeed, there are any innocent people in this place). It looks like you might just make it, until you've made it about halfway across the courtyard. Seemingly out of nowhere, guards on little ponies, like the ones that invaded Arrorn, flank your band of criminals. Slowly but surely, they're closing in, going ahead of you to cut you off. If you don't do something fast, you're going to be surrounded. There's no time to think though. No time to come up with a brilliant plan. Before you even quite realize it, there's nowhere left to go. The guards are in front and behind, to the right and to the left. You are struck with a strange sense of Deja Vu. This isn't the first time you've been in a situation like this, it happened back in Arrorn too! So if you just do the same thing you did before, you'll get out of it just fine. "Don't stop!" You cry, "I'll clear a path!" There's no time to pick out the weak link, so you just plow on forward, attacking the guard directly in your path. Soon as you get within range of the spears, you leap into the air and drive your foot into the guard's chest. He tumbles off the horse, screaming, and all the prisoners flow through the gap you've created. After you've ran a good thirty feet from the circle, you glance over your shoulder to make sure everyone got through. But to your horror, only about half have made it past the circle. The rest of the guards have closed in further, getting rid of the gap you created. More of them have to get taken out if you are to have any hope of saving everyone. Worse, there are more guards coming from the sides, and the doors are halfway closed. If you don't get the rest of the prisoners out quick, no-one will make it out at all. > You cut your losses and lead those who are left out to freedom It hurts more than you could've ever imagined, leaving people behind like this. But there's no sense in you dying too. You keep running until you reach the gate and the others follow. As you pass through it, you notice a few of the Guards coming after you on ponies out of the corner of your eye. You're about to turn and fight them, when something shoots out from the shadows and knocks the first one off his horse. Then it takes down the second, and the third! Kralmer has come to your aid. "Let's get out of here, Human!" He cries, catching up to you, "We've gotta leave the kingdom as fast as we can! Go somewhere else, where they'll never find us." "Right," You say, "I hope we've got enough supplies..." "We'll survive, we can forage if we need to." "Perfect, you got somewhere in mind?" "Sure! I'll lead the way..." A week of walking later, you cross the border of the land you were in and into somewhere nicer. You and the former prisoners integrate into a nearby village. They all celebrate you as their hero, and come together to build you a nice, human sized house. After a few months of living there, it really starts to feel like home. You even get used to the food. As for Kralmer, his family just so happened to be amongst the half you managed to save. It's a good thing too, you're not sure he would've forgiven you if you hadn't managed to get them out alive. You have dinner with him most nights, and the two of you become quite good friends. The villagers are happy to have you as part of their community. After the brave deeds you committed, they see you as their last line of defense. If anything ever happens, you'll be there to save them. But that hasn't happened yet. For now, you've been blessed with some much needed peace...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'll be right back," you say, turning around. There's an exit a few yards away, a neat gap in the wall with a spiral staircase behind it. You head up the staircase as quietly as you can and find yourself at a wooden door. You can hear muffled voices on the other side, probably the guards. Gently as you can, you turn the knob and open the door. Sunlight floods into the room, blinding you momentarily. Seems the door opens into the courtyard. Two guards stand on the other side, their backs turned to you, chatting about the weather. Ever so slowly, you inch out the door, getting closer and closer until they're in your reach. They still haven't noticed you. Then, quick as you can, you grab them, clapping your hand over their mouth. Before they have a chance to react, you dash back through the door, carrying them with you. Soon as you reach the edge of the stairwell, you throw them down onto the floor below, killing them instantly. You hurry down the stairs, taking them two at a time. After making sure the guards are thoroughly dead, you check their pockets for keys. It doesn't take you long to find them. Strangely enough, they're made of the same wood as the lock. "I'm back!" you say as loud as you dare. You dash to the first door and unlock it, then go to the next, and the next. Soon, every cell is unlocked, and you're surrounded by a bleary-eyed crowd of Oalkwardners, staring up at you. "What now?" one of them asks. "I'm getting you out of-" You start to say, but stop. Above you, you can just hear the sound of muffled voices. You put your finger to your lips, and creep towards the exit, where you can hear better. "Why is this door open?" one asks, "And where are the guards?" Crap! You must've forgotten to close the door behind you on your way back down! "I thought I heard something down there," Another voice says, "Let's go check it out, I've got a bad feeling about this." The sound of footsteps coming down the stairs resonates through the whole room. You ready yourself for a fight as the bottoms of Oalkwardner feet and red and yellow cloaks become visible on the stairs. "What on earth?" one of them says. They must've seen the dead guards at the bottom. You don't waste any more time. You charge into the room with the stairwell, screaming at the top of your lungs. Five guards stare at you from halfway down the stairs, too stunned to move, at least for a moment. You use it to your advantage, bounding up the steps and plowing through the first two before they even think to raise their weapons. Of course, the other three are a little smarter. They back out of your reach before you can take a swipe at them, and ready their spears for an attack. You stop ascending for a moment and assess the situation. They've got the high ground, and their spears are ready. You may be stronger than they, but a shaft of wood through the heart will still kill you, regardless of who's holding it. Without warning, The Oalkwardner in front leaps into the air towards you, ready to bring her spear down on your head. You leap backwards, nearly tumbling down the stairs, just avoiding what could've been a fatal strike. For a moment, you're both off balance, but you recover first, and drive your fist into her face. "Noooo!" one of the other Oalkwardners cries, and charges at you wildly. You step out of the way just in time, and he trips over his own feet, falling off the rickety spiral staircase to his doom. That's four down, now where's that last one. You look around wildly, just in time to see the edge of a cloak disappearing through the door at the top of the stairs. "Come on!" You call down to the prisoners below, "We have to get out of here, now! Up the staircase!" The prisoners obey, flooding into the room, and starting up the stairs after you. There are about two dozen in all, not as many as you might have thought, but still a substantial number to herd out of a fortress like this. As you lead them out into the courtyard, a high pitched shriek cuts through the air. It's an alarm, just like the one back in Arrorn! The entire courtyard is in chaos, people running this way and that, guards and civilians alike. The gateway out is on the other side, about a hundred yards away, sitting wide open. But it won't be for long, even from here you can see guards gathering by the big swinging doors, getting ready to push them closed and trap you inside. "Quick, to the exit!" You shout, breaking into a run. Everyone else follows as you weave through the crowd, trying your best not to trample any innocent people. (If, indeed, there are any innocent people in this place). It looks like you might just make it, until you've made it about halfway across the courtyard. Seemingly out of nowhere, guards on little ponies, like the ones that invaded Arrorn, flank your band of criminals. Slowly but surely, they're closing in, going ahead of you to cut you off. If you don't do something fast, you're going to be surrounded. There's no time to think though. No time to come up with a brilliant plan. Before you even quite realize it, there's nowhere left to go. The guards are in front and behind, to the right and to the left. You are struck with a strange sense of Deja Vu. This isn't the first time you've been in a situation like this, it happened back in Arrorn too! So if you just do the same thing you did before, you'll get out of it just fine. "Don't stop!" You cry, "I'll clear a path!" There's no time to pick out the weak link, so you just plow on forward, attacking the guard directly in your path. Soon as you get within range of the spears, you leap into the air and drive your foot into the guard's chest. He tumbles off the horse, screaming, and all the prisoners flow through the gap you've created. After you've ran a good thirty feet from the circle, you glance over your shoulder to make sure everyone got through. But to your horror, only about half have made it past the circle. The rest of the guards have closed in further, getting rid of the gap you created. More of them have to get taken out if you are to have any hope of saving everyone. Worse, there are more guards coming from the sides, and the doors are halfway closed. If you don't get the rest of the prisoners out quick, no-one will make it out at all. > You go back and save the rest of them "Go on without me!" You cry, "I'll catch up!" You turn and run back to the circle of guards, and knock the first one you reach off his horse. Then you do it again, and again. By the time the guards realize what's happening, you've already taken out four of them. The rest of the prisoners take this as their cue to leave, they rush through the gap you've created and head towards the gate, and as soon as the last of them has gone past you, you turn to follow, but find yourself face to face with even more guards. You tense for battle once more, and start swinging, taking down as many as you can! But they're getting smarter. Instead of surrounding you, they all form a barrier in front of you, cutting you off from the gate. You try to plow through them as best you can, but as soon as you take out one, another takes its place! Suddenly, a sharp pain pierces your side. You look over to see a single Oalkwardner, driving a spear deeper and deeper into the side of your stomach. Then, another pain, this time in your back. You've been stabbed once again! The pain brings you to your knees, as more and more spears pierce your flesh. The last thing you see before everything fades to black are the last few prisoners slipping through the door as it closes with a few of the Oalkwardner guards hot on their heels. Whether or not they survive is in their hands now...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After word gets around about how you helped save that Oalkwardner girl, the villagers seem to trust you enough to allow you to roam the city without sounding any alarms. Over the next few days, you help with preparations for the funeral, in part because there's nothing better to do, but also because you feel a little bad about not helping Merk with his search. Who knows? Maybe you would've been the difference between his life and death. When the day of the funeral rolls around, the entire town gathers in the square. It's the most extravagant display you've ever seen in your short time at the village, with tons of food for all and more flowers than you've ever seen in one place before. It must've cost a fortune in... whatever these guys use as currency. Merk must've done quite a lot to help the community, because there sure are a lot of drooping ears. (Which, you've learned, is the Oalkwardner's equivalent to crying). You stand at the edge of the crowd, still not quite feeling like a part of the community, as the Elder gives a speech. "We are gathered here today to commemorate the life of Merk, Gertra, and Silia, three of the greatest-" A pounding in the distance interrupts the speech. The whole crowd turns towards the source of the noise just in time to see a whole procession of Oalkwardners dressed in the brightest reds and yellows, all riding creatures like ponies, but with little spines running down their back instead of manes. They beat on little drums, all in sync. The Oalkwardner at the front of the pack raises her arm and raises her voice. "Presenting, the great Yelgar, Grand Protector of Realgna and the surrounding country!" The Drummers beat their drums faster and faster now, parting to allow a carriage to pass through, drawn by three lizard-like creatures, the size of bulls. The crowd parts for the carriage, and it stops right in front of the stage. The door on the side of the vessel opens, and out hops a rather tall Oalkwardner wearing a red cape and strange, red bracelets spiraling around the entirety of his forearms, like snakes. "People of the village of Arrorn!" He says, "I have come with grave news. It truly is a shame to interrupt such a lavish funeral, but there are more important matters at hand. It has come to my attention that there is a base of Rebels in the area, planning to overthrow the kingdom and estate a blasphemous 'new order.' These are the very same rebels that killed these three!" He gestures at the paintings of the three fallen Oalkwardners, set on easels on the stage. "We must act now, lest our glorious empire be overthrown. Outside this village is the seventy-third division of the King's army, sent to protect this village and take out the Rebel scum in our midst! It is for this reason, that the King and I felt the need to impose martial law on this village and the surrounding area! We will also be tripling the tax to sustain our troops. And we'll be taking all this lovely food you've set out for the funeral. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that." A cry of protest comes from deep within the crowd. "You're already taking three quarters of everything we have!" A female Oalkwardner pushes her way to the front of the crowd to confront the Yelgar. "We can barely survive as it is! And that food for the funeral is the last of our reserves, we only took it out in the first place because Merk and the others did so much for us in their lives!" Yelgar stares her straight in the face. "I understand your concern." He says, "But as I said, desperate times, desperate measures. Guards, restrain her!" Two of the horsemen hop off their steeds and grab the girl by the arms, forcing her to her knees. Yelgar raises his hand, and slaps her across the face, and the crowd gasps. "Do not question the authority of the Crown." Yelgar says, still deathly calm, "Or you might wind up like them too," he nods towards the paintings. "Who gives a crap about the Crown? We're all gonna die anyway under your 'martial law', so may as well go out fighting!" The girl glares at Yelgar, as the whole crowd seems to hold its breath. "I see how it is," Yelgar says, clearly disappointed. "Then let this be an example to anyone else who thinks of dissenting." He reaches beneath his cloak and pulls out a wooden knife, raising it above his head to strike at the girl, now trembling in the guards grip. "C-come on," the girl says, voice faltering, "They can't stop all of us! I say we finish what those rebels started!" Still, no one moves. The whole thing reminds you, once again, of the girl in the forest the night you woke up. The guilt of leaving her behind wells up within you, are you really gonna let it happen again? > You yeah, you can live with that. This way you get to stay alive, even if you have to live as a coward. You want to do something, you really do, but fear paralyzes you. It's all you can do to look away as the knife comes down. Even without looking, you know when the knife falls by the gasps of the crowd and the final screams of the victim. "Do not forget the events of today," Yelgar says, "Remain under the crown, lest you meet the same fate as this poor, misguided soul here." A wave of nausea hits you, you can barely manage to stay standing. What kind dictatorship is this? The village seemed almost peaceful when you first arrived, but now, you're not so sure. Your thoughts are interrupted when you hear one of the guards say, "Sir! What on earth is that?" You turn to see one of the taller soldiers pointing straight at you. Your heart begins to pound. Now the rest of the guards are looking at you, you can feel their eyes all over you, crawling over your skin like spiders. "It's a monster!" Yelgar cries, "Capture it before it destroys the village!" You should do something, run, hide, get ready to fight. But suddenly there doesn't seem to be enough oxygen in your lungs, as much as you gasp. You fall to your hands and knees, heaving. Another panic attack? There's no time for this, you have to escape... but it's so... hard to breathe.... Before you know it, you're surrounded by guards, all pointing spears your way. They close in so tight that any one of them could take you out in one blow if they really needed to. Why isn't anyone standing up for you? They all know you're harmless. Maybe they're all too afraid to say anything. The guards all bring down their spears at once, and you know no more...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>I don't know what it is with me and zombie games, I just love them. A while back, I wrote a story called No Man's Land. It did a lot better than I expected, prompting me to try again. So here it is: Ultraoverlord Strikes Again, Zombie Style. A NOTE ABOUT THE GAME: The structure of this story is kind of a new one I'm experimenting with. There is only one 'win' scenario, the rest are deaths. Now, given that, there a few different ways to get there. Different choices can get you there in different states of health, with different supplies, and different people. I made this with as much replayability as possible, and there are references to characters in each storyline sprinkled throughout other storylines. See if you can find them all! > You start You watch as the coffee slowly filters out of the machine, and into your mug. After it's finished, you pick it up and take a sip. Perfect. Life in the apartment isn't easy. You and your wife don't have enough money for a house yet, and you don't have any kids, so an apartment seemed like the best choice. You have a few commodities; a microwave, a TV, and a coffee maker. You do your own dishes and drive to the laundromat to wash clothes, but you're still content. You sit on your beater couch and drink more coffee. Your wife isn't even awake yet. You wake up an hour before her every morning. The quiet is nice. It gives you time to think. You think about what you'll have to do today. Today is Sunday, chore day. You're pretty sure it's your turn to wash the dishes. You put your mug down and get up. Better to get the dishes done now than put it off. Just before you start the disposal, a sharp beeping noise startles you. It came from the TV, but nobody turned it on. You peek into the living room, and see the TV screen. It has flashing images and warnings on it. There's a national security threat. Worried, you turn up the TV's volume and listen in. Your wife, woken up by the beeping, slowly wanders in. "What's going on?" she sleepily asks. Before you can answer, a robotic voice blasts through the speakers. "ATTENTION U.S. CITIZENS. AN ACT OF TERRORISM HAS RESULTED IN A DEADLY INFECTION IN THE FOLLOWING STATES: TEXAS, TENNESSEE, OKLAHOMA, KANSAS..." the list goes on. You don't hear California, your state. You're still safe, for now. You and your wife watch as the TV cuts to live news footage. A woman stands in a demilitarized zone, with heavy fencing, and military personnel everywhere. The newslady announces that unaffected states have set up border guards to prevent the spread of disease. Forces from other parts of the world are also rushing in, with Mexican and Canadian soldiers struggling to keep the infection inside the U.S. The TV then cuts to a live shot of sick people. They aren't slow, or drowsy, like when you have the flu. No, they're the exact opposite. They're ravenous. They stumble around a a speedwalk pace, and they look dead. Bloods soaks their clothes. Their eyes are glazed over. Suddenly, a deer bounds into view. You watch in horror as the infected surround and kill the deer. The footage immediately cuts away. You wife begins to panic. You try to console her, reminding her that the whole world is fighting to keep the monsters at bay, and that you two will be just fine. Sacramento is a long ways away from California's border. Perfectly safe. Perfectly safe. You're perfectly safe. Suddenly, the TV makes an announcement: "ALL MALES OVER THE AGE OF 18 ARE REQUIRED TO LOCATE THE NEAREST OUTPOST AND CONTRIBUTE TO HOLDING THE LINE." > You go to the border Panic sets in for you. You're supposed to stay, to help your wife, to be safe. You can't accept this. But you have to. You pack everything you can think of: Clothes, food, water, towels, a book. Everything you have room for. You don't own any guns, and the knives in the kitchen seem useless against these predators. Even after loading up, your backpack still feels light. You say goodbye to your wife, once, twice, three times, and it still hurts to leave. It feels unreal, like a dream, riding the elevator down, hailing a cab, and telling the driver to take you to your own funeral. The trip takes about three hours. There are a lot of males over the age of 18 in California. When you get out of your cab, you are greeted by a steely man wearing a full set of bulletbroof armor. He orders you to follow him, and shows you to a barrack. "This is your new home for the time being," he says in a gruff voice. The room is full of hammocks. Each one has a table and a storage unit next to it. You select the cleanest-looking one and put your stuff down. "How long is the time being?" you ask. The man looks at you. "Until this all blows over." The next thing you know, you are kneeling in front of a human-shaped target, with an assault rifle in your hands. "The first rule of operating a weapon is to never have your finger on the trigger unless the barrel is aimed at your target," the instructor says. All these military people look so similar, you could swear this was the same guy who showed you to your hammock. After you're shown the proper way to fire the monster in your hands, you are ordered to take a shot. You aim directly for the target's chest, and open fire. You are successful only in breaking the cardboard hand off the target. Your shoulder aches from the recoil. "Don't get discouraged, you'll get the hang of it." the man doesn't really seem to care about you in particular. You pause to look down the row of trainees. They are all just random people with expressions of fear or pain on their faces. As you look at their weapons, you conclude there must somehow be a gun shortage. Three of the trainees are using BB guns. After three rigorous days of training, you're almost dead. Your shoulder is in immense pain. You want desperately to call your wife, but any and all electronic devices were confiscated, 'for security reasons.' You hate this. You just want to be back home. You just want things to go back to how they were... You are suddenly called up, along with all the other recruits, to grab your guns and march to the battlefield. > The Battlefield You are down on one knee, behind a metal wall. There is a hole, just big enough for you to see and shoot out of in front of you. Ahead is a grassy field. The trees were cleared in anticipation of the dead. All to your left and right, a line of hardened soldiers mixed with scared civilians stands ready to fire, as soon as the signal is given. Your heart is pounding in your chest. Suddenly, the line of trees is broken by a small pack of the dead. Before you can react, a machine gun takes out the whole horde. After that, it's a steady stream. The infected march through the trees, only to get shot down once in full view. All around you, gunshots ring, commands are yelled, and the groans of the dead get louder and louder. You succeed in taking down a few zombies. Most of the time, as soon as you set your sights on one, someone else kills it. You try to calm your nerves and pretend it's just a game or something. Point and shoot. Simple as that. After about an hour, the undead conga line shows no signs of stopping. The commander is just about to give the order to pause and reload when his walkie-talkie begins to crackle. He answers, and proceeds to shout to his colleagues that a large section of the blockade down south just broke. Hundreds are already dead and the zombies have made it to civilian territory. Instantly, your mind flashes to your wife. You can't let her die. You pull away from your post and address the commander. "I have to go," you say. "Absolutely not," the man responds. "Please," you beg. "My wife, I have to-" the man cuts you off. "Teams have already been sent out to round up women and children. They're being taken up to Washington. It's more safe there. Don't worry about your wife," he says. You catch a tone of uncertainty in his voice. Suddenly, another soldier shouts. You look over the wall and see that you won't make it. The zombies and advancing faster than they're being taken down. You look back at the soldier. He can see it too. "RETREAT! RETREAT!" you hear as you run for your life. Behind you, you can hear screaming. You drop your gun, it's only weighing you down, and you aren't very good at using it anyway. Retreat, you hear as you run up to the gates. Retreat, you hear as you hastily get in an abandoned car. Retreat, you hear over the deafening sound of the metal walls collapsing. > You retreat... You speed away from the military zone. The terrain slowly morphs back into city. But it's all empty. Nobody is around, and it seems like the power grid is gone. But that doesn't matter. If everyone's gone, that means the military evacuated them, and that means your wife is safe. Now you just need to worry about you. As you drive on, you see a sign declaring that you have 80 miles until you reach Sacramento. That's no problem. You have a head start on the dead, and a car. Just as you pass under a bridge, you hear a loud pop noise. Just as you feared, your tire popped on shards of glass. You look around. Actually, this whole road is covered with an even layer of glass shards. Thank goodness you're wearing shoes. The car is useless now, as all four tires are popped. You couldn't even push it forward, because the traffic up ahead is deadly. The streets are full of abandoned cars, some with their lights on, some with doors still open. You don't know how long you have before the dead catch up with you. You look around and hastily make a choice. > You get food Food is always the top priority. If you're going to survive, you'll need food. Period. You look around. Nothing is in the immediate vicinity, so you'll have to do some exploring. You head toward the traffic jam up ahead. As you weave your way through the cars, you notice something odd. A lot of the windows are smashed, and there's blood on the inside and outside of most of the cars. The military wouldn't do something like that. A thought crosses your mind: You left a while after hearing that a southern wall fell. The zed could have already been here, which means you're already too late. You pick up the pace, dodging cars and debris. As you pass an SUV, a zombie pops out of one of the windows and swipes at you. They were definitely here. You break into a run past all the cars. After finding clear roads again, you spot a road sign. It advertises hotels and shops, and tells where they are. You see a supermarket that's very close. You set off to find it, and hope that it wasn't picked clean. After navigating the roads, you see the supermarket. Unfortunately, a fair amount of zombies surround it. You watch to see if there's any way to slip through, but the zombies all wander aimlessly and block the entrances. Besides, even if you got in, you wouldn't be able to get out. Just as you are about to give up, a boy, no older than sixteen, goes running into the market. He must have been watching, just like you. But unlike you, he found a way in. He dodges the zombies and makes it to the doors without ever touching one of them. A minute goes by, and the boy comes up onto the roof with a bag of food in his hand. You and the boy realize at the same time that getting out won't be so easy. There's nothing to jump on top of, and the zombies were drawn by the noise. They've surrounded the building, and are starting to climb the dumpsters and cars onto the roof. > You help the boy You decide that the boy is worth saving. If he can run like that, he'll be useful to you as a partner. The only question is, how do you go about saving him? You know they're distracted by noise, so you start there. You see a truck on the opposite side of the road. It could work. You run over and see if the truck is operational. To your surprise, it's in almost perfect condition. However, when you try the door, you find out it's locked. You look back at the store. The boy is running out of time. In a moment of panic, you slam the car window with your elbow. This shatters the window and sets off the car alarm. The boy is as startled as you are. As for the zombies, you delayed them. About half the group splits away from the store and targets you. You realize this is a big mistake. You didn't stop the zombies on the roof, and now you have a sizable herd following you. You turn to run an abandon the boy, when you see that he made it. The small lapse in attention for the zombies let the boy jump off the roof. He hits the ground and sprints off into the trees. Instinctively, you follow him. > You follow him You can barely maneuver around the horde. You manage to escape and follow the boy. He's definitely a better runner than you, but you can keep him in your sights. He doesn't go far before entering a large storage warehouse from the back door. You know the boy saw you, so you continue forward. When you reach the warehouse, you peek through one of the industrial windows. To your surprise, there are three people in the warehouse. The boy, a girl roughly his age, and another woman, presumably their mother. You watch as the boy unpacks the food bag. He was able to fit a surprising amount of food into the bag. The girl picks it up and adds it to a large pile of canned goods in the corner. The three begin to talk, and then the boy turns and looks directly at you. You panic and duck. They probably think you're a creep now, or worse. Your best bet is to get away from the warehouse. You get down on all fours, and make it a few feet before you hear the boy behind you. "What are you doing?" he demands. You turn around. The boy has a Glock pointed right at your forehead. As soon as you turn, the boy's expression changes. "Oh. You're the guy the broke that truck window, aren't you? You want a reward or something?" > Yes Getting a reward is reasonable for saving this boy's life. "Yes," you say. The boy rolls his eyes. "Great," he says. "Come inside." The boy leads you inside. The woman stands defensively between you and the girl. "Mikey, who is this?" the woman says. Mikey doesn't reply. He walks over to the food supply, picks up a can of peaches, and throws it, more at you than to you. You catch the can and examine it. "Where are you from?" the girl asks, before her mother shushes her. You answer anyway. "I'm from Sacramento. I was out fighting for the border, but it collapsed. Now I'm here. I don't have any supplies, or a home, and I don't know if my wife is alive." The woman seems genuinely sorry for you, but Mikey isn't convinced. "Thanks for the sob story," he says. "Now leave." The mother shoots him a scolding look, before addressing you again. "Feel free to stay here a few nights. You can have some of our food, providing you're willing to help out." That sounds like more than a fair deal to you. You accept, then sit down against one of the walls. "Oh," the woman suddenly says. "How rude of me. I should introduce myself. I'm Barbara, and this is Megan," the woman motions to the girl, "and this is-" Mikey cuts off his mother. "I'm Mikey." "Well, what should I do?" you ask. "Oh, we're just waiting around right now. The sun will set soon, and Mikey just brought more food, so we'll be fine. Feel free to get a book, or something to entertain yourself. Mikey, will you roll our guest an air mattress?" Barbara says. Mikey shoots a dirty look to his mom, then you, before dragging an air mattress out from one of the units and dropping it on the ground. > You settle in You read a book from the pile, then pace around the warehouse, examining everything. The warehouse is big enough for 1000 people to stand shoulder to shoulder in it. There are a few storage units within the warehouse that the family is using for backup. You note that the only gun in the warehouse is in Mikey's possession. Each family member seems to have a sort of 'cubby' for personal stuff. Hours pass, and nighttime is upon you. You watch out the window. A few lone zombies wander across the roads. The warehouse is actually quite hidden by trees, so you feel safer. "Okay," Barbara says."Bedtime. We'll need our strength for tomorrow." You start to go over to your air mattress. "Oh, not you," she says. "I just mean the kids. They need all the energy they can get. As soon as they sun goes down, so do they!" Barbara pulls a Sudoku book from the pile and starts to entertain herself. You sit on your air mattress and decide what to do. > You talk to Barbara You go sit next to Barbara and watch her play a Sudoku game for a few minutes. "How did you end up here?" you finally ask. Barbara explains that her husband was also drafted, so she took her kids to somewhere safe. When they happened upon the warehouse, it was abandoned and empty, but also out of the way of the dead. The perfect base. "I'm sorry your first impression with the kids wasn't that great. Megan can be shy, and Mikey gets worked up easily, but they'll warm up to you. Say, did you see my husband? His name is David, he has brown, curly hair, and he wears a necklace with him all the time." You try to picture him in your head, but you can't. "Nope, didn't see him." Barbara seems disappointed. "But I'm sure he's fine," you say, a little too quickly. "Most of the civilians and soldiers were evacuated when the walls fell." > You go to sleep After fully inflating the air mattress, you decide to get some sleep. As you lay there, you think about the day. So much happened. Last night, you were in some military barrack hammock with ten other strangers, and now you're in a warehouse on an air mattress. You make one last promise to yourself before nodding off: you will find your wife. > In the Morning When you wake up, everyone else is already up. Megan is setting up a breakfast of canned fruit, Barbara is rolling up the air mattresses, and Mikey is nowhere to be found. You sit up and do your best to fix your hair with your hands. You probably smell terrible, but whatever. Megan puts a plate of dried cranberries and an apple in your lap. You thank her, and eat quickly. You haven't eaten since yesterday afternoon, back at the barracks. After breakfast, you stand up and decide what to do with the day. > You supply Run The warehouse has very little in the way of weaponry. If you're going to survive, you'll need weapons. You tell Barbara that you're going on a run, and leave the warehouse. You take a backpack with some meager supplies. The zombies have mostly cleared out. That works to your benefit, since you have only your fists for protection. You don't know this area very well, so you head in a random direction, remembering street names as you pass them. Eventually, you come upon a tank in the middle of the road. The hatch is still open, and blood is splattered on the side. You climb inside. After searching the tank, you come up with a walkie-talkie and a water bottle. You try the walkie-talkie, and every channel is silent on the other end. You decide to leave it in the tank so you know where it is if you need it. As for the tank itself, you've never seen the inside of one before, so you don't know if it's operational or not. You decide to not touch anything, and exit the tank. You are disappointed at the lack of supplies in the tank. Shouldn't there be some rocket launcher, or at least a flare gun? You are very disappointed. So disappointed, in fact, that you almost miss the man running from a horde of the dead out of the corner of your eye. You turn to look - it seems like you've found the owner of the tank. The man is clearly a soldier, he is dressed in all camo, and has a large, scary-looking gun over his shoulder. Closer inspection reveals that the gun has no clip, and therefore no ammo. The man swears and looks back at the herd, causing him to trip over a fire hydrant. You feel like you should help, but you don't want to get in this man's way, and besides, what could you do? You're defenseless. You watch as the man pulls out a knife and starts to hack away at the group of zombies. Unfortunately, he quickly falls. You've never seen them infect someone, and it's not a pretty sight. The man's screams soon die down. After another few minutes, the horde wanders away from the man. After they're a safe distance away, you inspect the corpse. Bite wounds cover the man's arms and torso. You don't know how long you have until he turns, so you move quickly. You take the gun off of him and check his pockets. He definitely was out of ammo. You also get his knife out of his hand. It's a durable, large knife, one that should have a holster or some sort of container. If it did, the man doesn't have it. You come back to the warehouse with your finds. It's not a lot, but it's something. When you ge there, Mikey is also back. He succeeded in getting more food. You set the gun off to the side, and pocket the knife for yourself. Barbara notes your findings, and puts the gun in a storage unit. "So the kids don't get at it," she explains. > You dinner Dinner consists of canned meat and bread. The four of you eat in silence. Today was certainly a productive day. You sit and think about the next day. The silence is broken by someone pounding on the back door of the warehouse. You sit up. Everyone glances around nervously. Finally, Mikey gets up and looks through the window. "It's just a zombie, I got..." Mikey trails off. You get up and look through the window. A hundred. No, a thousand. The streets are filled with zed. A small pack have found their way to the warehouse. "We can't risk killing them," you say. "Opening the door would be a bad idea. We need to hide, and be quiet." Megan hurriedly blows out the candles you used for light. You hide behind a storage locker, while everyone finds a quiet place. The inside of the warehouse is silent. From the outside, you can hear moaning and pounding. The small pack is attracting more zombies. "This isn't going to work," Mikey says. "We need a better plan." You hurriedly think of a way out of this. "We need to distract them," you say. "Is there a way onto the roof?" > The Roof You climb up onto the roof using a ladder, and taking out the skylight. The roof is curved, so keeping your balance is a struggle. You look out into the sea of the dead. It doesn't look as big from here, but it's still too many. There's no chance of distracting them. Unless, somehow, you could sneak through them. You climb back down the ladder. "There's no way through that," you say. "We're surrounded." Mikey walks over to the door. "I bet I could get through," he says. You open your mouth to stop him, but Barbara beats you to it. "Absolutely not. You won't be able to run through that, no matter how fast you think you are." Panic begins to set in. The walls feel much closer than they are. The groans get louder. There really is no way out of this. Suddenly, gunshots rip through the air. You watch through the window as the horde of zed quickly hit the ground like dominoes. In a matter of seconds, the road is clear. You rush outside to see who, or what, killed the zombies. Parked on the road is a large passenger bus and a big rig. Several men armed with various types of guns are set out the bus windows. They killed all the zombies. The door to the big rig opens, and a man steps out. He wears a bright orange vest over a bomber jacket, and wields a machine gun in his hands. "Hi, folks," he begins with a creepy smile. > You attack him Without hesitation, you tackle the man. The machine gun flies from his hands. As soon as you hit the ground, three bullets from three different guns hit you in the side. You topple over in pain, and the man gets up. "Well, that wasn't very wise, now was it?" he taunts, before kicking you in the face. The pain in your nose makes you see flashes of light that aren't there. You lay on the ground, motionless, while the man laughs. Eventually, you finally bleed out. > You reset Game I don't know what it is with me and zombie games, I just love them. A while back, I wrote a story called No Man's Land. It did a lot better than I expected, prompting me to try again. So here it is: Ultraoverlord Strikes Again, Zombie Style. A NOTE ABOUT THE GAME: The structure of this story is kind of a new one I'm experimenting with. There is only one 'win' scenario, the rest are deaths. Now, given that, there a few different ways to get there. Different choices can get you there in different states of health, with different supplies, and different people. I made this with as much replayability as possible, and there are references to characters in each storyline sprinkled throughout other storylines. See if you can find them all! <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You climb up onto the roof using a ladder, and taking out the skylight. The roof is curved, so keeping your balance is a struggle. You look out into the sea of the dead. It doesn't look as big from here, but it's still too many. There's no chance of distracting them. Unless, somehow, you could sneak through them. You climb back down the ladder. "There's no way through that," you say. "We're surrounded." Mikey walks over to the door. "I bet I could get through," he says. You open your mouth to stop him, but Barbara beats you to it. "Absolutely not. You won't be able to run through that, no matter how fast you think you are." Panic begins to set in. The walls feel much closer than they are. The groans get louder. There really is no way out of this. Suddenly, gunshots rip through the air. You watch through the window as the horde of zed quickly hit the ground like dominoes. In a matter of seconds, the road is clear. You rush outside to see who, or what, killed the zombies. Parked on the road is a large passenger bus and a big rig. Several men armed with various types of guns are set out the bus windows. They killed all the zombies. The door to the big rig opens, and a man steps out. He wears a bright orange vest over a bomber jacket, and wields a machine gun in his hands. "Hi, folks," he begins with a creepy smile. > You let him continue "Well, it seems to me that your lives were just in some very serious danger," the man continues. "Luckily, me and my people were just driving by. We just saved you from certain death. No need to thank us. All I ask is just a little something in return," the man says in a cutesy voice. "You wouldn't want to upset me, now, would you?" > You offer gun You go back inside and get the gun out of the storage unit. You take it outside and offer it to the man. He rips it out of your hands. "Wow," he says after examining it. "One damn gun, and it doesn't even have ammunition?" he looks at you, faking confusion. "You're gonna have to give us a little more than this." "We don't have anything else," Mikey says behind you. You turn around to shush him, but the man stops you. "I don't believe that. In fact, I can see something right now that you could give us." The man points to the warehouse. "Me and the boys have been on the road for a long while, and we could really use a rest. Now, how about you fix us some dinner, yeah?" > You refuse "No," you say. "It's already more than we can afford to give you the gun, so I'm not going to allow that." You watch the man's expression. He lets out a small laugh, and looks at the ground. Then he suddenly grabs you by the shirt collar and leans in so close you can smell the cigarettes on his breath. "I think," he whispers, "that you may want to reconsider that." > You reconsider Reluctantly, you step aside and show the man the door. He smiles at you, and steps inside. Slowly, his men file out of the bus and follow him. Inside, the man turns and looks around. He lets out a small whistle. "This is quite the place you have here, isn't it?" he says. "Now, make with the dinner." You and Megan hastily prepare canned vegetable soup for your guests, while Mikey and Barbara make them chairs to sit on. When you are done, you give each man a bowl of vegetable soup and a small cup of water. "What's the matter?" the man says. "You didn't make any for yourselves. Won't you dine with us?" "There's no more. You're already eating half of our food," you say. The man raises his hands. "Forgive me for more rudeness. Here, you can have mine." He slides he bowl of soup over to you, and throws the spoon at you. "Please, sit." Everyone eats dinner in silence. Barbara sits with her kids off to the side. None of the men make eye contact with you, except for the leader, who smiles at you. Finally, the bowls are empty. Megan hurriedly collects them and throws them away. "Wow. Now, I don't believe for a second that the gun you gave us is the only gun you have. There's gotta be more, right? So are you going to give it to me, or will I have to take it?" You notice Mikey grabbing at his gun, holstered on his belt. "Yeah. That boy has a gun," you say. Mikey gives you a look full of hate. "Well," the man says. He gets up and walks over to Mikey. He puts his hand out. "Give it to me." Mikey dumps the gun into the man's hand. "Thanks," he says. "I really do appreciate it." Back outside, the man addresses you once more. "That was a wonderful gesture, yes it was. Now, I think you've got quite the setup here," the man motions to the warehouse, the road, and the trees. "In fact, I love it so much, that I think we just might have to come back someday." The man's smile disappears. "You'll still be here, right?" "Y-yes," you say, and curse yourself for stuttering. The man pats you on the shoulder, a little too hard. "Great. See you soon." With that, the man gets back into the big rig, spits onto the ground, and drives off. > You what now? The four of you sit on the ground in the warehouse. Mikey finally speaks. "What are we gonna do about this?" "We can't do anything," you say. "They already left." "I'm talking about next time. He said he's coming back. Let's be ready for him." "Actually," Barbara interrupts, "I think the best thing to do now is leave. He can't find us again, if we go deeper into the city. The big truck won't be easy to drive in the city streets. They're full of bodies and abandoned cars." It seems like the decision is left up to you: stay and fight, or find a new home. > You find a new home "We should leave," you say. "We don't have numbers or weapons on our side." Everyone seems to agree, even though they don't like it. Since it's getting dark, you decide to leave in the morning. You lay down on your air mattress and try to get some sleep. In the morning, you begin packing. You are about halfway through the food when you realize that you don't have a vehicle. There's no way the four of you can carry all the food and water, plus the extra. You'll need to go look for something. It's not as easy as finding any car. You need one that can seat four people, plus all the supplies. As you walk down the road, you see a billboard for a used car dealership. Perfect. After a while, you spot the car dealership. The entire area is clear of zed, which means the trip back will be easy. You start your trip over to the dealership when you see something written in marker on a store window: GOT GUNS? WE GIVE FOOD, JEWELRY, AMMUNITION, GASOLINE > You don't have anything you want to trade right now You walk past the ad. You just don't have anything you're willing to give up, not yet. You make your way over to the dealership. Most of the cars are gone, but you expected that. You do have three choices: A pickup truck, a minivan with a trailer attached to it, and a convertible. The choice is quite obvious for your needs. Luckily, the minivan door is unlocked, and the keys are on the dashboard. You check the fuel gauge - you have a full tank. You thank your lucky stars and drive the minivan and the trailer back to the warehouse. > You take off When you get back, the others have already gathered everything up. You load the group's belongings into the trailer, and then everyone gets into the minivan. Megan seems sad to leave the warehouse. Barbara doesn't seem too emotionally attached to it. Mikey's expression is difficult to read. You head up the road, looking for a place to go. Cars and debris block most roads, so your options are limited. All you need is a shelter big enough to support the group of four, and hidden well enough that you won't have to deal with Big Rig, or anyone else. Finally, you decide to pull away from the major city roads and go out into the countryside. There, you find a nature center. It's perfect for the group. It's big, secluded, and even has a natural river running next to it, a potential water source. The group unpacks and begins to get comfortable in their new home. This seems like an upgrade from the warehouse. The are two floors, and a lot of easily accessible windows. > You what now? The most obvious thing to do is explore the new terrain. If there's some sort of supply cache or other survivors nearby, you need to know about it. "Nobody goes alone this time," you say. "I'll be going. Mikey, we can use you, too. Barbara, Megan, do you want to come?" Megan slowly nods, and paces over to you. "I'll hold down the fort while y'all are gone," she says. You nod, and start setting up a pack. You bring a flashlight, clothes, water and food. Megan brings along a poetry book, and Mikey is traveling light. Once outside, you get a good look at your surroundings. A dirt road connects you back to civilization. Then there's the woods beyond the nature center. You are deciding the best course of action, when Mikey speaks up. "I'll go into the woods alone, and look for stuff. You and Megan go that way." Before you have a chance to respond, Mikey is off. > You into The City Megan follows you along the dirt road, until you see buildings again. Most of them are useless, like hair salons, and the ones that could be potentially useful, like gas stations, have been looted. You are about to turn back when you see a gun store up ahead. You and Megan race over to it, as if it will disappear if you aren't fast enough. The store has a small group of zed inside, and the front window was smashed with a cinder block, but you can see guns hung up on the walls. "We need to get in there," you whisper to Megan. She nods. Both of you split up to find a good makeshift weapon. A board, a hammer, a pipe - anything will work. The nearest building to you is a flower shop. The front window is smashed, just like the gun shop. Why would someone bother to break into a flower shop? It's the least of your worries, because you get a large glass shard out of it. You wrap your shirt sleeve around it for better grip and come back to the gun shop. Megan returns with a long, flat wooden board a few moments later. "Ok, you go in, grab as many guns as you can, and get out. Okay?" you say. Megan nods. You position yourself in front of the broken window and whistle. The zombies all notice you at once, and start to fumble out the window. Once there's enough clearance, Megan darts into the store. The first zombie you kill is a huge jolt. You stab the glass shard into its skull, and it hits the ground dead. You're proud of yourself, but there are many more after that one. So you go again. You thrust the glass shard into a head, and then pull it out. This time, however, the shard breaks. Your hand is left bleeding, and you have no other weapons. Luckily, as if on queue, Megan comes running out of the building with three guns over her shoulder, and another few in her hands. Without having to say it, both of you flee in the direction of home. You slow to a walk after you've put enough distance between you and the dead-heads. "That was impressive. You're just as fast as your brother," you comment. Megan gives a fleeting smile. Suddenly, she points out something. "Look over here." You stand in front of a concrete wall with the U.S. military seal hastily painted on with spray paint. Below that is a short message: HOPE IS LOST FOR THE REST OF YOU. THE DEAD NEVER SLEEP, AND NEITHER CAN YOU. WASHINGTON IS THE ONLY SALVATION. COME TO WASHINGTON OR DIE. LE It seems like the writer was going to say something like "Let" or "leave", but they were interrupted while writing the message. Still, this is big. You estimate you're in the middle of California. If you head north, up through the rest of the state, then through Oregon, you'll arrive at Washington. You look at Megan. She looks back with a flicker of hope in her eyes. > You get home Barbara and Mikey are dumbfounded at the news. Everyone's thinking the same thing right now. Yes, the temptation of safety is strong, but traveling through a whole state and a half to get there? Unthinkable. "It doesn't matter," you say. "Every second we spend here is a second we could be moving forward. We should leave now." Barbara shakes her head. "I think we should leave tomorrow. We'll need the rest, and we can scavenge for more food and things like that." "It's not worth it," you say. "We have a gun. We have a minivan with gas in it. We can make it. Besides, there's no time to scavenge. It'll be dark soon." > You stay, and leave in the morning "Okay, we'll stay. But tomorrow, we leave. First thing in the morning." Everyone nods their heads in agreement. You have a bad feeling about this. After everyone is settled down and laying on their air mattresses, you slip out the front door. Outside, it's still rather free of zombies. You sit down on the road and look around. You think about your wife, and Washington, and everything that's happened. So much changed in just two days. Suddenly, you hear leaves crunching behind you. You turn around, thinking it's a zombie, but it's not. It's a soldier. He has frizzy, unkempt black hair, and still wears his uniform. "Mind if I have a seat?" You feel oddly safe around him. He hasn't shown any signs of aggression, and to your knowledge, he has no weapons. He does, however, have a duffel bag. "I been watchin' you, with that group." "Watching me?" you say in surprise. "Yeah, watching you. The way you raided that gun store. I'm gonna be straight with you; these folks are slowin' ya down. I'm headed to Washington, just like you are. I believe you're more capable to get there if you travel lighter." "Where are you going with this?" you ask. "I'm askin' you to ditch these people and come to Washington. You have family there, correct?" You nod. "'Kay, then. Why waste time? You have no connection to these people. You don't even know their last names." "How do I know I can trust you?" you ask. The man's expression doesn't change. "I guess you don't. But that's a decision I'm gonna leave to you." Both of you sit in silence on the road for a few minutes. Then, the soldier gets up and opens his duffel bag. He takes out a can of spray paint, and walks over in the direction of the unfinished message. > You stay with the current group "Sorry," you say. "But I already made a commitment to these people. Hopefully I'll see you in Washington." The man smiles over his shoulder. "Okay," he says. "Your funeral." He goes back to pick up his duffel bag, and leaves. You get up and go back inside the nature center. You lay down on your air mattress, and ponder if you made the right choice. > You leave for Washington After everything is packed up, you do one last check to make sure you didn't forget anything. You find a few water bottles in a vending machine, but nothing else. You say goodbye to your makeshift home, and get in the driver's seat of the minivan. On the road, you follow roads that you know to head north. You try to stay and back roads, just in case you run into anything. You're determined to make it to Washington. While driving, Barbara thinks to open up the glove box. The group is rewarded with a U.S. map and another bottle of water. You set the map up on the dashboard so you can see it while driving. You decide to follow I-5 north, which should take you right up to Washington. Your trip is cut short after a few miles when you come to a blockade in the road. A chain fence was haphazardly set up in the middle of the road. A handmade sign hanging from it reads: FOLLOWERS' TERRITORY. TRESPASSERS WILL BE LOOTED AND FED TO THE DEAD. > You head through the fence You refuse to let some stupid sign deter you. Who are the 'Followers' anyway? You don't care. You and Mikey get out, and move the chain link fencing. After that, it seems like smooth sailing. You do start to notice, however, that the place seems less quality here. Graffiti covers the area, and certain buildings are just gone. Suddenly, you see something off to the side of the road. There are three men standing off in a secluded alley. One of them is tied to a pole. The other two are mercilessly beating him with pieces of metal. > You intervene You get out and take a gun with you. "Hey," you say. The two attackers look over at you. The man tied to the pole can barely move his head. "What's going on here?" "This fine gentleman over here," one of the men points to the beaten victim, "has broken our golden rule. That rule is NO TRESPASSING. And it seems to me that you are also breaking that rule. So I think a punishment for you is in order as well!" > You see what else he has to say "Rico, what do you think this man deserves?" one of the men says, addressing the other. "I think a proper beating is in order," Rico responds. Before you can step out of the way, he steps forward and hits you with the metal bar in his hand, knocking you to the ground. The two proceed to hit and kick you until you're numb. Eventually, about halfway through, you realize you're not going to make it out of this alive. You wish you had taken the detour.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You get out and take a gun with you. "Hey," you say. The two attackers look over at you. The man tied to the pole can barely move his head. "What's going on here?" "This fine gentleman over here," one of the men points to the beaten victim, "has broken our golden rule. That rule is NO TRESPASSING. And it seems to me that you are also breaking that rule. So I think a punishment for you is in order as well!" > You shoot them both You won't let the man continue. You draw your gun and shoot both men down. They were at close range, but it still took a few shots. Once they're dead, you go up to the victim. His face is swollen, and his nose is bleeding. He flinches, expecting you to attack him too. > You kill the hostage You have no interest in dealing with another group member. You put the man out of his misery, and get back in the car. > You keep driving You begin to get a bad feeling about the place. The empty buildings and atmosphere feel a lot more sinister now than they did a second ago. Your instincts kick in, and you try to drive away. You quickly find that the roads have been blocked off by debris. They're herding you in a certain direction. You can't get out of the car, either, as you start to see other people watching you out of buildings and behind trash cans. In a last ditch effort to get away, you throw the minivan in reverse. As you try to back out, you see something: a large truck blocks the way out. They've sealed the road behind you. A man holding a golf club comes out of a nearby building and starts running toward the minivan. In total panic, you speed down the road, away from the truck. Barbara is gripping her armrests in fear. You would be, but both your hands are on the steering wheel. You drive down the road, exactly where they want you to. You can hear the truck following closely behind you. Suddenly, you drive into a dead end. The way forward is blocked. The truck pulls to a stop behind you, trapping you. You have no choice but to get out of the car. A mob of people has gathered around your vehicle. Your group follows suit, and gets out of the car. "Okay, let's not waste time. Give us your stuff, and your car, and we'll escort you to your new home," barks a large, bald man. The crowd of angry people with their guns pointed at you reminds you that you'll have to speak carefully. > You offer a deal "We can work this out," you say. The man lowers his gun. "I'm listening." > You offer a group member You look back at your group. "I'll give you a person, from my group. They can work for you, or whatever you want." The man seems to strongly consider it. You regret making the offer, but it's too late now. You look back one more time. Barbara gives you a look of total disgust. Finally, the man nods. "Yes, I think that just may work. Reginald, clear the road outta here," he says to another. He turns, and looks over your group. "I want the girl." Barbara starts crying immediately. Megan has a look of fear on her face, and Mikey shows nothing but resentment. Two people break from the crowd and grab Megan. They pull her away and out of sight. "Okay," he says. "That's it. Take the little track over there, it'll take you right out of here." The man turns to walk away. "Pleasure doing business with you," he adds. Barbara and Mikey get in the minivan without you, and drive off. Mikey flips you off from the backseat. You admittedly feel terrible. As the crowd parts, you feel terrible for your choice. But you can't go back now. You follow the minivan on foot, until you're out of the slums. > .... You aren't sure how to feel as you pace up the road, vaguely in the direction of Washington. You feel remorse for your decision, and wish you could take it back. Giving up Megan was a stupid choice. She cared about you, and you would gladly hand her over for your own protection. There's no more time to dwell, though. That affair took up the whole day. It'll be dark soon. you continue up the road, in search of a place to spend the night. About an hour after the sun goes down, you spot something. It looks like a military outpost. It ends up being exactly that. Judging by the footprints and blood, this place didn't last too long. It's only been a few days, and people are dying fast. Not even the military can seemingly stand up to the ever-growing threat of death. You open the door to the trailer and look inside. You are rewarded with another gun, this one a Stag-15. It has a half-empty magazine. Other than that, you find nothing in the trailer. It's as good a place as any to sleep, and it has a pullout couch/bed. You are awoken in the morning by growling. You sit up quickly and look out the window next to the door. Zombies. And several of them. They have wandered up and down the street, surrounding you on one side. If you could get out the door, and past the horde, you could outrun them and head north again. > You shoot them You load up the gun and kick the door open. The closest group of zed growl, and stomp over to you. You kneel for better balance, and do your best to aim. When you pull the trigger, you are surprisingly accurate. By the time you're out of bullets, you've cleared just enough of a path out. You slip by the trailer and move up the street at a steady jog, away from the zombies. After you've slowed to a walk, you notice another building coming up. It looks kind of like a factory building. It has several floors, is made of brick. Three smokestacks jut out of the building's roof. it seems worthwhile to check out, so you run up to it. You are disappointed to learn that the entrance is surrounded by fencing. > You move on Picking at the fence isn't worth it. Besides, why waste time here? Your goal of getting to Washington is still the highest priority. You leave the warehouse alone and continue on your way. > You what's new? You continue to walk down the road as before, this time with a gun slung over your shoulder. You spot a sign telling you that you're still on I-5, on a crash course with Washington. The sun beats down on you as you realize you are quite thirsty. Hungry, too. The way ahead looks bare. Bare except for a road sign. It tells you that if you continue ahead, you'll reach a small town. Next to the town's name, written with blood, is a small message: COME ONE, COME ALL If you turn to the right, you'll arrive at a rest stop. There won't be food or water, but there will be a gas station (probably empty), and a pharmacy. > You check the rest stop You make the decision to see if there's anything worth taking at the rest stop. It's a short walk, and if there's any water, you'll gladly take it. Just as you suspected, the gas station has been looted of everything. The cash register, the food, even the toilet paper is all gone. Someone beat you to the punch. Oh, well. You go to check the pharmacy. That has been looted too, but not all the way. A few bottles have been left behind, scattered among the shelves. You take a bottle of painkillers and a roll of bandages. Nothing else really seems useful. > You head to the town The collar of your shirt is soaked with sweat by the time you spot the town. It's relatively small, and a wall of cars and metal scrap surrounds it. A front gate set on hinges to swing open is right in the middle of the road. Above it sits a guard tower. You are spotted well before you get to the door. You are ordered to get on your knees and place any weapons you have on the ground. You place your gun on the road in clear view of the tower and comply. The gate swings open, and a small group comes to meet you. The group consists of a clean-shaven man, a small boy, and a woman holding a clipboard. "Hello. My name is Rose. Welcome to Fort Z." After the group makes sure you aren't going to hurt anyone, you get your gun back and are welcomed into the community. You are surprised at how fast it went up. It's only been a few days, but the walls are up, and the community is thriving (for now). There is no shortage of people, and homes and buildings have been turned into sleeping quarters, storage, and everything else you can think of. "Well," begins Rose. "It seems like you've come a long way, would you like something?" > You what are the rules around here? "Well, there aren't many rules around here, because no one seems to be causing any trouble. Just don't hurt anyone or steal anything and you should be fine," says Rose. "Also, don't do anything stupid," adds the clean-shaven man. > You who are these people? "Oh, jeez," Rose begins. "I couldn't hope to remember everyone's name. But, this is Callaghan," Rose says of the clean-shaven man. He reaches out to shake your hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you," he says. "Then there's Max," Rose pats the little boy on the head. The boy is hiding behind his mother's legs. "We're kind of like the government around here. Other than that, you can make friends as you wish."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You load up the gun and kick the door open. The closest group of zed growl, and stomp over to you. You kneel for better balance, and do your best to aim. When you pull the trigger, you are surprisingly accurate. By the time you're out of bullets, you've cleared just enough of a path out. You slip by the trailer and move up the street at a steady jog, away from the zombies. After you've slowed to a walk, you notice another building coming up. It looks kind of like a factory building. It has several floors, is made of brick. Three smokestacks jut out of the building's roof. it seems worthwhile to check out, so you run up to it. You are disappointed to learn that the entrance is surrounded by fencing. > You break in You use the butt of your gun to hit the fence poles repeatedly. Eventually, the pole gives way, and part of the fence falls away. You step in, and into the factory. As soon as you step inside, you see a woman picking through a pile of debris. She looks up at you as you enter. "Oh. Hi," she says. She seems rather uninterested in you. "What are you looking for?" you ask. "Parts," she replies. "Parts for an engine. More specifically," she pulls a piece of notebook paper out of her pocket and reads it, "...a fan belt." You nod. "Okay." "My name's Clarice, by the way," she says out of nowhere. You are caught slightly off guard, but introduce yourself anyway. Suddenly, Clarice pulls a large black thing out of the wreckage. "Found it," she says triumphantly. She heads out of a side door. "By the way," she adds, "Don't bother following me."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren't sure how to feel as you pace up the road, vaguely in the direction of Washington. You feel remorse for your decision, and wish you could take it back. Giving up Megan was a stupid choice. She cared about you, and you would gladly hand her over for your own protection. There's no more time to dwell, though. That affair took up the whole day. It'll be dark soon. you continue up the road, in search of a place to spend the night. About an hour after the sun goes down, you spot something. It looks like a military outpost. It ends up being exactly that. Judging by the footprints and blood, this place didn't last too long. It's only been a few days, and people are dying fast. Not even the military can seemingly stand up to the ever-growing threat of death. You open the door to the trailer and look inside. You are rewarded with another gun, this one a Stag-15. It has a half-empty magazine. Other than that, you find nothing in the trailer. It's as good a place as any to sleep, and it has a pullout couch/bed. You are awoken in the morning by growling. You sit up quickly and look out the window next to the door. Zombies. And several of them. They have wandered up and down the street, surrounding you on one side. If you could get out the door, and past the horde, you could outrun them and head north again. > You search the trailer for another weapon Not wanting to waste bullets, you scrounge around the trailer for something sharp. Eventually, you find a piece of plastic that looks like it used to be part of a canteen. Nonetheless, it's sharp. You open the trailer door and slice away, just like with the glass shard. You're able to clear a small opening for you to charge through, and you make it away from the horde at a running speed. After you've slowed to a walk, you notice another building coming up. It looks kind of like a factory building. It has several floors, is made of brick. Three smokestacks jut out of the building's roof. it seems worthwhile to check out, so you run up to it. You are disappointed to learn that the entrance is surrounded by fencing.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"We can work this out," you say. The man lowers his gun. "I'm listening." > You offer half your supplies "Half our supplies," you offer. "Please, just let us pass. We need to get somewhere, quickly." You search for any sign of anything behind the man's eyes. You find nothing. "Sorry," he says. "But unless you have a better offer than our current demands, this won't turn out well for you."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"We can work this out," you say. The man lowers his gun. "I'm listening." > You offer your gas "Gas," you say. "You can have it. Just leave us enough to get out. You can take the rest." The man doesn't even consider it. "Look around you, stupid. Do you see a single functioning car?" You look around. "NO!" the man yells. "We don't have 'em 'cause we don't need 'em. If you don't start making me a good offer, I'm just gonna have to start taking without asking first."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You begin to get a bad feeling about the place. The empty buildings and atmosphere feel a lot more sinister now than they did a second ago. Your instincts kick in, and you try to drive away. You quickly find that the roads have been blocked off by debris. They're herding you in a certain direction. You can't get out of the car, either, as you start to see other people watching you out of buildings and behind trash cans. In a last ditch effort to get away, you throw the minivan in reverse. As you try to back out, you see something: a large truck blocks the way out. They've sealed the road behind you. A man holding a golf club comes out of a nearby building and starts running toward the minivan. In total panic, you speed down the road, away from the truck. Barbara is gripping her armrests in fear. You would be, but both your hands are on the steering wheel. You drive down the road, exactly where they want you to. You can hear the truck following closely behind you. Suddenly, you drive into a dead end. The way forward is blocked. The truck pulls to a stop behind you, trapping you. You have no choice but to get out of the car. A mob of people has gathered around your vehicle. Your group follows suit, and gets out of the car. "Okay, let's not waste time. Give us your stuff, and your car, and we'll escort you to your new home," barks a large, bald man. The crowd of angry people with their guns pointed at you reminds you that you'll have to speak carefully. > You give up your supplies "It's all in the trailer," you say, which is true. The man looks behind him, and snaps his fingers. "Boys, unload the trailer." He turns back to you. "Now that that's out of the way, I will be happy to escort you to your new home." > You attack You pretend to walk over to the minivan to surrender the keys. Everyone's eyes are on you. You open the door, and grab a gun out of its holster. No one can see you. You ponder who to shoot first. "Well?" the man taunts. "Am I getting the keys or not?" Decision made. You thought you could be quick enough to shoot somebody. But you didn't even pull the trigger. Not once.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You won't let the man continue. You draw your gun and shoot both men down. They were at close range, but it still took a few shots. Once they're dead, you go up to the victim. His face is swollen, and his nose is bleeding. He flinches, expecting you to attack him too. > You leave the hostage You can't take in a new member, and you also can't trust him. You leave him tied to the pole, get back in the car, and drive off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You won't let the man continue. You draw your gun and shoot both men down. They were at close range, but it still took a few shots. Once they're dead, you go up to the victim. His face is swollen, and his nose is bleeding. He flinches, expecting you to attack him too. > You take the hostage with you You can't leave the man out here like this. It's not safe. You untie the rope holding him to the pole. He gives you a look of pure gratitude. You have him hide in the trailer, and you take off. > You keep going There's no time to waste. You gunshots echoed throughout the area, and you doubt those two were alone. With the man hiding in your trailer, you try to drive away. You quickly find that the roads have been blocked off by debris. They're herding you in a certain direction. You can't get out of the car, either, as you start to see other people watching you out of buildings and behind trash cans. In a last ditch effort to get away, you throw the minivan in reverse. As you try to back out, you see something: a large truck blocks the way out. They've sealed the road behind you. A man holding a golf club comes out of a nearby building and starts running toward the minivan. In total panic, you speed down the road, away from the truck. Barbara is gripping her armrests in fear. You would be, but both your hands are on the steering wheel. You drive down the road, exactly where they want you to. You can hear the truck following closely behind you. Suddenly, you drive into a dead end. The way forward is blocked. The truck pulls to a stop behind you, trapping you. You have no choice but to get out of the car. A mob of people has gathered around your vehicle. Your group follows suit, but the former hostage stays in your trailer. "Okay, let's not waste time. Give us our hostage, your stuff, and your car, and we'll escort you to your new home," barks a large, bald man. The crowd of angry people with their guns pointed at you reminds you that you'll have to speak carefully. > You give up the hostage Slowly, with your arms raised, you walk over to the trailer, and open the door. The hostage steps out with his arms raised. "Wonderful," the man says. He grabs the hostage by the shirt collar and hands him over to another man, who drags him away. "Anything else?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There's no time to waste. You gunshots echoed throughout the area, and you doubt those two were alone. With the man hiding in your trailer, you try to drive away. You quickly find that the roads have been blocked off by debris. They're herding you in a certain direction. You can't get out of the car, either, as you start to see other people watching you out of buildings and behind trash cans. In a last ditch effort to get away, you throw the minivan in reverse. As you try to back out, you see something: a large truck blocks the way out. They've sealed the road behind you. A man holding a golf club comes out of a nearby building and starts running toward the minivan. In total panic, you speed down the road, away from the truck. Barbara is gripping her armrests in fear. You would be, but both your hands are on the steering wheel. You drive down the road, exactly where they want you to. You can hear the truck following closely behind you. Suddenly, you drive into a dead end. The way forward is blocked. The truck pulls to a stop behind you, trapping you. You have no choice but to get out of the car. A mob of people has gathered around your vehicle. Your group follows suit, but the former hostage stays in your trailer. "Okay, let's not waste time. Give us our hostage, your stuff, and your car, and we'll escort you to your new home," barks a large, bald man. The crowd of angry people with their guns pointed at you reminds you that you'll have to speak carefully. > You more than food You slowly walk over to the trailer to hand over the supplies. When you open the door, the hostage comes out with his arms raised. "Well, look who it is," the man says. "Thought you could sneak this one past us?" Another person from the crowd takes him away. Then the man snaps his fingers. "Boys, unload the trailer. I want to see what I got." After the men have searched through the trailer, the man turns to you. "Now that we have your stuff, I will escort you to your new home."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You refuse to let some stupid sign deter you. Who are the 'Followers' anyway? You don't care. You and Mikey get out, and move the chain link fencing. After that, it seems like smooth sailing. You do start to notice, however, that the place seems less quality here. Graffiti covers the area, and certain buildings are just gone. Suddenly, you see something off to the side of the road. There are three men standing off in a secluded alley. One of them is tied to a pole. The other two are mercilessly beating him with pieces of metal. > You keep driving You watch over the scene. The attackers seem like hardened thieves. Getting in a confrontation wouldn't be wise. You slowly drive past the scene. As you do, the victim of the beatings gives you a long, cold stare in between blows to the face. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After everything is packed up, you do one last check to make sure you didn't forget anything. You find a few water bottles in a vending machine, but nothing else. You say goodbye to your makeshift home, and get in the driver's seat of the minivan. On the road, you follow roads that you know to head north. You try to stay and back roads, just in case you run into anything. You're determined to make it to Washington. While driving, Barbara thinks to open up the glove box. The group is rewarded with a U.S. map and another bottle of water. You set the map up on the dashboard so you can see it while driving. You decide to follow I-5 north, which should take you right up to Washington. Your trip is cut short after a few miles when you come to a blockade in the road. A chain fence was haphazardly set up in the middle of the road. A handmade sign hanging from it reads: FOLLOWERS' TERRITORY. TRESPASSERS WILL BE LOOTED AND FED TO THE DEAD. > You try to find a way around Heeding the warning of the sign, you decide to change direction. You look on the map and find an alternate route. You'll be able to loop around and rejoin I-5 after some time. As you drive, you begin to notice something is very wrong. You expected to be out of range of whoever the 'Followers' are, but graffiti and roadblocks suggest otherwise. Zombies have been staked to the ground on the side of the road. garbage cans have been laid out to block the roads, and a few of them have fires going in them. "We need to turn around," you say. Nobody objects, so you throw the car in reverse. You back into the grass, and turn around so that you can pick a different route. But, when you turn, you see a man walk out into the middle of the road. He has something in his hands, but you can't tell what it is. It looks like a bat, or an axe. Suddenly, you see a car driving up the road toward you. By this time, you realize the mistake you made. You try to turn around to see if you can get out of the backroads, and away from these people. You end up knocking over some trash cans and putting dents in the car, but that's currently the least of your worries. You start to see that forks in the road have been blocked off completely. They're herding you in a certain direction. With the roadblocks, the zombies, and the car behind you, you have nowhere to go. You have no choice but to follow the intended path for you. You eventually end up in a section of the road that's walled off completely. When you stop, the car behind you stops, blocking you in. A group of people approaches the car from behind roadblocks and trees. Every single one of them is armed with either a gun or a large melee weapon. One man, who is bald and wearing a blood-soaked apron, walks up to your car. He clutches a metal bar in his meaty fist. "Knock, knock, knock," he says, hitting the top of your car with every word. "Come on out, so we can see our kill." You freeze with fear. The man leans down into the window. "Get out of the car," he says. You slowly open the door, and the man steps aside to let you out. When the four of you are out of the car, The man addresses all of you. "So," he starts, "Apparently you didn't pay attention to our little warning. This is our turf, and anyone who enters our turf, becomes our property. You four, and everything you have, is ours now. I'm gonna need the keys to your car, and then I'm gonna need you all to step aside, so I can escort you away." Mikey is the first to act. He gets back in the car, and comes up a moment later with a gun. He points it at the bald man. "Leave us alone," he says. The man laughs. "Silly boy. Young kids like you shouldn't play with guns," he says. He snaps his fingers, and a small group of men from the crowd steps forward. They rip the gun out of Mikey's hands, and pull him out of view. "Hey," you say. "Listen, I'm sorry we trespassed, but I don't want any trouble. Please, please, just let us pass. We don't want to bother or hurt anyone. We just have somewhere to be. Can't you-" The man cuts you off by hitting you in the head with his metal bar. "Fool! Stop trying to plead your case! I told you how it's gonna be! We get your stuff, and you're gonna die!" > You attack him Without hesitation, you jump out at the man. You grab the bar and hold it against his neck, choking him. Behind you, you hear the others leap into action. "I told you," you say, "Just let us go. But you wouldn't listen. Now we have to-" You are suddenly pulled off of the man and stabbed in the side. You shriek in pain, and your attacker drops you onto the road. "I tried to tell you," the man says. "But you just wouldn't listen." The man brings the bar down onto your head, caving your skull in.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Heeding the warning of the sign, you decide to change direction. You look on the map and find an alternate route. You'll be able to loop around and rejoin I-5 after some time. As you drive, you begin to notice something is very wrong. You expected to be out of range of whoever the 'Followers' are, but graffiti and roadblocks suggest otherwise. Zombies have been staked to the ground on the side of the road. garbage cans have been laid out to block the roads, and a few of them have fires going in them. "We need to turn around," you say. Nobody objects, so you throw the car in reverse. You back into the grass, and turn around so that you can pick a different route. But, when you turn, you see a man walk out into the middle of the road. He has something in his hands, but you can't tell what it is. It looks like a bat, or an axe. Suddenly, you see a car driving up the road toward you. By this time, you realize the mistake you made. You try to turn around to see if you can get out of the backroads, and away from these people. You end up knocking over some trash cans and putting dents in the car, but that's currently the least of your worries. You start to see that forks in the road have been blocked off completely. They're herding you in a certain direction. With the roadblocks, the zombies, and the car behind you, you have nowhere to go. You have no choice but to follow the intended path for you. You eventually end up in a section of the road that's walled off completely. When you stop, the car behind you stops, blocking you in. A group of people approaches the car from behind roadblocks and trees. Every single one of them is armed with either a gun or a large melee weapon. One man, who is bald and wearing a blood-soaked apron, walks up to your car. He clutches a metal bar in his meaty fist. "Knock, knock, knock," he says, hitting the top of your car with every word. "Come on out, so we can see our kill." You freeze with fear. The man leans down into the window. "Get out of the car," he says. You slowly open the door, and the man steps aside to let you out. When the four of you are out of the car, The man addresses all of you. "So," he starts, "Apparently you didn't pay attention to our little warning. This is our turf, and anyone who enters our turf, becomes our property. You four, and everything you have, is ours now. I'm gonna need the keys to your car, and then I'm gonna need you all to step aside, so I can escort you away." Mikey is the first to act. He gets back in the car, and comes up a moment later with a gun. He points it at the bald man. "Leave us alone," he says. The man laughs. "Silly boy. Young kids like you shouldn't play with guns," he says. He snaps his fingers, and a small group of men from the crowd steps forward. They rip the gun out of Mikey's hands, and pull him out of view. "Hey," you say. "Listen, I'm sorry we trespassed, but I don't want any trouble. Please, please, just let us pass. We don't want to bother or hurt anyone. We just have somewhere to be. Can't you-" The man cuts you off by hitting you in the head with his metal bar. "Fool! Stop trying to plead your case! I told you how it's gonna be! We get your stuff, and you're gonna die!" > You let him kill you You stay silent, and get up off the road. The man has a wide, wicked grin on his face. As the others close in on the car, the man hits you again, sending you to your knees. Again, and you're on the ground. Again, and you're barely conscious. "Signs are there for a reason," the bald man says as your vision swims. "We gave you an honest, fair warning, but you just didn't listen." The man brings the bar down onto your temple, killing you. "Not my fault you don't listen." <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Okay, we'll stay. But tomorrow, we leave. First thing in the morning." Everyone nods their heads in agreement. You have a bad feeling about this. After everyone is settled down and laying on their air mattresses, you slip out the front door. Outside, it's still rather free of zombies. You sit down on the road and look around. You think about your wife, and Washington, and everything that's happened. So much changed in just two days. Suddenly, you hear leaves crunching behind you. You turn around, thinking it's a zombie, but it's not. It's a soldier. He has frizzy, unkempt black hair, and still wears his uniform. "Mind if I have a seat?" You feel oddly safe around him. He hasn't shown any signs of aggression, and to your knowledge, he has no weapons. He does, however, have a duffel bag. "I been watchin' you, with that group." "Watching me?" you say in surprise. "Yeah, watching you. The way you raided that gun store. I'm gonna be straight with you; these folks are slowin' ya down. I'm headed to Washington, just like you are. I believe you're more capable to get there if you travel lighter." "Where are you going with this?" you ask. "I'm askin' you to ditch these people and come to Washington. You have family there, correct?" You nod. "'Kay, then. Why waste time? You have no connection to these people. You don't even know their last names." "How do I know I can trust you?" you ask. The man's expression doesn't change. "I guess you don't. But that's a decision I'm gonna leave to you." Both of you sit in silence on the road for a few minutes. Then, the soldier gets up and opens his duffel bag. He takes out a can of spray paint, and walks over in the direction of the unfinished message. > You follow The Stranger Something about what the soldier said makes you think. Barbara can't operate a weapon, Mikey doesn't like you, and probably never will, and Megan is too shy for you to even be sure about her. You realize the soldier is right, and go to follow him. You catch up with the soldier as he is finishing the spray-painted message on the wall. HOPE IS LOST FOR THE REST OF YOU. THE DEAD NEVER SLEEP, AND NEITHER CAN YOU. WASHINGTON IS THE ONLY SALVATION. COME TO WASHINGTON OR DIE. LEAVE NOW, AND BE A PART OF THE REBUILDING. "What's the rebuilding?" you ask. "Oh," the soldier answers, "It's a military plan that died out pretty quickly. Back before the zombies took control, we had a plan set up to rebuild and restructure the damaged areas. You know, help with businesses, relocate families." That makes sense. Nobody saw this outbreak coming, and it makes you feel better that the government is working to help you. You hope they were able to help your wife to safety. Along with everyone else of course, but mostly your wife. "It's pretty dark out," says the soldier. "We should head back." You are confused. "Head back? To where?" The soldier looks at you and raises his eyebrows. "The camp. Follow me." The soldier leads you back past where Barbara and her kids are, and into the trees. "By the way, my name's Conway," he says suddenly. > You camp After a few minutes, you arrive at a small campsite. A single tent is set up in front of a living space. A fire pit, a log to sit on, what looks like a knife-sharpening station, among other things. "Here we are," Conway says. "Camp me." "Are you alone?" you ask, noting the single, one person tent. "I am now," Conway answers. "I was with one of the patrol groups, but we got split up in all the ruckus. There were a bunch of useless men anyway. Pretty sure I was the only one who could operate a rocket launcher." You think of the civilian volunteers back at the wall, and wonder if Conway was paired with such people. "So you just ditched them?" you ask as you sit down on the log. "Wasn't my choice. We carried packs with necessary supplies for a few days in the event we were separated or trapped. Once I knew I was gone, I booked it outta there. Found this place, set up shop, and ditched my backpack. Kept the duffel bag for carrying big finds," Conway answers. "Aren't you heading back to Washington?" you ask. Conway chews his lip for a moment before answering, "No. Not yet." You decide to leave it there. You don't want to bring up a possible bad moment in the man's past, so you change the subject. "Where are we sleeping?" Conway snaps at of his thoughts. "Oh yes! Um, you can take the tent. I have no problem sleeping on the ground. Won't be the first time." You nod, and take note of Conway's supplies. He has quite a few guns, an impressive knife collection, and whatever he's hiding in the duffel bag. It's definitely full, but you aren't sure of what. There's also plenty of food around, but no water to be seen. You wonder if Conway hid it, or needs more. As you look around, Conway says, "You planning on sleeping anytime soon, or are you just gonna sit there and stare at my guns?" You climb into the tent, and try to sleep on the inflatable pillow and thin blanket. > You rise and Shine When you wake up, Conway is already up. From the way he's acting, you wonder if he ever fell asleep. You see five empty cans scattered around the area, more than three servings of breakfast. You decide not to comment, and pick up a can of instant mashed potatoes. "Alrighty," Conway says as you eat, "Today, I'm thinkin' we go out and look for more supplies. Specifically, more ammo for him," Conway points to an especially large gun propped against a tree, "...some more food, and, of course, any other survivors we can find." "Wait, what?" you ask. "If you were looking for survivors to rescue, why didn't you get my whole group back at the nature center?" Conway goes quiet, similar to yesterday when you asked if he was headed to Washington. He finally answers, "I'm not rescuing people." "Speaking of which," he says, "We'd better get moving. Your people are gonna start wonderin' where you went, and they could also be a supply drain. Early bird gets the arm cannon! Let's get moving!" Not wanting to challenge Conway, you hop up and follow him out of the woods, and onto another car-choked road. You scan the area for points of interest. You don't see anything, but Conway does. He points out something a few streets over, that you can't see. You tell him there's nothing there, to which he insists there is. "I can't tell what it is," he says, "But it has our colors. Let's go grab it." As Conway leads you through the cars over to the next street, a lone zombie comes out from behind one of the cars. "Aw, shoot," Conway says, and pulls a large knife out of his belt loop. He goes over to kill the zombie, and stabs the knife through its forehead. The knife is so comically large, it goes through the zombie's head, and sticks out the back three inches. "Well?" he says. The thing he saw was a camo backpack. You unzip it and find several ammo magazines you don't recognize. "Yes!" Conway shouts, and pulls one of the cartridges out of the backpack. "Here's just what I was lookin' for!" You see a few other things in the pack, including a hunting knife. You pocket it for yourself, and examine the rest of the pack. It's mostly military-type stuff. You look up, and see a small pack of zed coming through the cars towards you. "Uh oh," you say, and grab your knife. Conway turns towards them. "Looks like that rotter brought some friends!" You go to the right, and single off one zombie. While Conway goes to town on the others, you focus on the one in front of you. When it's close enough, you force the knife into its face. To your satisfaction, the zombie dies instantly. You pull the knife out and let it drop to the ground. Conway looks at what you've done. "Excellent! You're learning," he says. "Anyway, this is one awesome find. You wanna go for more, or should we go back with our find?" > You search for more "Let's keep going," you say confidently. Conway smiles. "That's the way. Where to?" You travel up the road, cautiously watching for more zombies. It doesn't look like there's much more out here. The cars are all empty, and there's a severe lack of convenient backpacks. You think about searching elsewhere. "There a problem?" Conway asks. "You reconsiderin'?" You shake your head. "Maybe we should go to where there's more buildings, and potential for supplies," you say. The city isn't much more fruitful. As you look at the empty streets, you see something painted on a wall. At first, it looks like another call to Washington, but the message is different: NO MORE STRIVE FOR BETTER A NEW WORLD ORDER "Conway," you say. "What do you think this is?" Conway reads the message, and laughs. "What the hell? What kind of garbage is this? 'New World Order?' Sounds like some lunatic wants to take on the government. The whack job's probably dead by now. You ready to head back?" You're disappointed at your lack of finding anything, but at least you killed a few zombies with your new knife. You're feeling more comfortable with it. You and Conway walk back to his camp. > You head back Conway happily loads his new ammo into his gun back at the camp, while you unpack the backpack. A lot of ammo, a few more knives, an empty water bottle, and a gold bracelet. "Huh," says Conway. "That looks familiar. I think someone used to wear that around. Uh....oh come on...what was his....Lincoln! That was it! Yeah, he used to have that, but this ain't is backpack." You eat a light lunch, and talk to Conway more about Washington. "You ready to leave?" you ask, anticipating a bad response. Conway seems to have come to terms with whatever was troubling him. "Yes, I think we'll leave soon. The only obstacle is a good vehicle. I can drive just about anything, but I want somethin' durable, not just some car on the side of the road. I plan to drive through the wastelands in style, know what I mean?" You nod. There are benefits to a more durable vehicle for sure. You make plans to search tomorrow, and leave as soon as you find what you're after. "Now that that's settled," Conway says. "You up for a little game?" > A what? Conway fishes two more guns out of his duffel bag. "Follow me." Conway leads you to the top of a small hill, overlooking another trashed street. This one, however, is full of the dead. "The rules are simple," says Conway. "You shoot the zombies. I did this to pass time, I have no shortage of ammo. Now that there's two of us, I suppose we should set up some rules." You agree on ten points per killed zombie. Twenty if you steal a kill from someone else. You lose five points if you don't kill a zombie first shot. Conway seems very invested in the game, but you just see it as target practice. "Alright," he says. "Three, two..." You kill a zombie on the very first shot, standing next to a jeep. The next kill is in the driver's seat of a station wagon. "I think bonus points are in order for that one," says Conway. Before you know it, you're into the game, too. You don't kill every zombie on the first shot, but you're decent. Conway, of course, has double your points by the time you've used up all your rounds. "Good game," he says. "We should head back, I guess." > A Calling Your walk back is uneventful. You still aren't sure what the point of that excursion was, but it's nice to get your mind off impending doom for awhile. Plus, as Conway said, there's no shortage of bullets. You arrive back at the campsite as night is falling. "Well, time to hit the hay," says Conway. "Are we leaving for Washington tomorrow?" you say. It's not that you're getting impatient, but you don't see a reason (beyond Conway's personal reason) for staying back. Conway slowly nods. "Yeah. Yeah, we'll leave soon." "Soon?" you ask. "Or tomorrow?" Conway doesn't answer this time. You begin to question whether joining him was a good idea, and consider ditching him if you need to. As you retire to your tent, you hear a crackling noise from Conway's duffel bag. Quickly, he fishes out the object. It's a walkie talkie. Chzzz.....Zhhcccc..tzzz....Hello? Anytzzzz....anyone there? Conway, is chzzzzzzzzzz.... "Yes? Hello, yes! Yes, this is Conway Matthews, deployed with the fourth wave? Do you copy?" Tzhhhhhh.....Chzzzz...... getting really bad outthcccczzzz....going to leave soon.....wanted to check for any others....tchzz.......tchzzzare you? Come to the......thczzzzz..... Conway fiddles with the receiver in an attempt to make the signal stronger. "I'm losing connection! Where are we supposed to go?" Tchzzzzzz....................341...tchzzzstreet.....local museum..... Conway looks up at you in slow recognition. "The museum," you repeat. Conway nods. "Let's go. Now." You quickly collapse the tent, while Conway packs various weapons into his duffel bag. "We aren't gonna have room for everything," he says. "It's either the guns, or the food. I can fit some of both, but we need to make our choice quick." Meanwhile, the person on the other end of the walkie talkie gives out more advice. Streets are crowdetchcchhh........be careful.....the dead aren't gchhhhhhhhh.......hundreds of them...in the streets........come quick.....we need to leave soon... You can make out gunshots in the background. You can hear the same gunshots echoing through the city. > You mostly guns "Pack more guns," you say. "We'll need them for the dead." Conway nods. You disassemble a large gun with Conway's instruction. After the duffel bag is full of guns, you're ready to leave. "Come on," he says. "Through the backstreets." You can immediately tell what the others were talking about. Where the streets used to be empty (of zombies, not of cars), there are now vast hordes. They aren't moving in any direction, or at all for that matter. They just bump into each other and walk in circles. You and Conway elect to stay off the roads, and slip between buildings. Meanwhile, Conway keeps a conversation going with the other soldier. Through garbled radio speech, you hear him tell you what's going on. The dead are mostly avoiding the museum, which is why that's their pick-up spot. You're sneaking past a rogue group of zed when the radio suddenly emits a loud burst of static. The group slowly turns their heads, and they growl at a potential food source. "Oh, please no," Conway whispers. The dead slowly hobble over to where you're advancing. You don't know whether to keep sneaking or lash out, but Conway makes that decision for you. Whipping out his knife, he takes the top half the the closest zombie's skull off with one sweep. You draw your knife, and take care of a few of the others. After the horde is cleared, Conway switches off the walkie talkie. "Not gonna go through that again." You slowly progress through the city amongst the waves of walkers. Eventually, the museum is in sight. You're surprised to see an actual helicopter guarded by a handful of soldiers. Conway switches the walkie talkie back on. "We can see you, over." Tchhhhhh....okay, that's good......These hordes are getting worse....no way you're gonna make it through here.....we can provide covering fire......run for it...... You look at Conway, and nod. The soldiers reveal several guns, and start firing on the group of zombies. Taking the chance, you follow Conway through the gunfire. A few zombies attempt to follow you, but you're moving too fast for them. When you get past the hordes, the soldiers wave to you and open the helicopter doors. "GET IN!" You climb into the helicopter after Conway, with a sea of rotting flesh at your heels. You slam the door shut, and hear the helicopter blades whir to life. "Come on! Let's get this bird off the ground!" shouts one of the soldiers. The helicopter slowly lifts off the ground, with a few zombies holding on for dear life to the bottom. They slip free once you're airborne. > You airborne The sky view of the city is quite depressing. The streets are full of cars and zombies, buildings sit demolished and broken, and you can see a few places that you recognize from before all this. It hurts to see them invaded by corpses. In the helicopter, you are accompanied by three men (not including Conway). Roger seems to be the only one ordering people around, so you assume he's in charge. Ozzy, the pilot of the helicopter, silently minds his own business. The third soldier, Matthias, isn't dressed in a soldier's uniform. What he's wearing could only be classified as a 'makeshift doctor's outfit'. You wonder if he was involved with helping injured civilians. "Where exactly are we aiming to land?" asks Conway. "There's another outpost just a bit north, with more gas stores," answers Matthias. "That is, assuming we'll be the first to arrive. Communication's been lost for awhile, so it's just kind of a mad rush for survival at this point." "And we have the ultimate goal of getting back to Washington, correct?" you ask. Roger nods. "It kinda depends on what mindset you have. Some have the 'save as many as you can, carry out our original orders' mindset. I personally follow the 'let's stay alive' mindset. Provided we make it back to Washington on two legs, we should be fine." You stare out the window some more, watching the rivers of death move through the city. > The landing You've always kind of wondered what riding in a helicopter would be like. Now you know: boring, with a slight touch of fear of heights. Finally, Ozzy makes a short announcement. "We're nearing the landing spot." Thank goodness. Suddenly, something starts beeping on the control board. "What's that?" asks Roger. "We don't have enough to make it there," Ozzy says, with slight fear in his voice. "At this rate, we'll have to walk the last few miles to get to the gas stores, and then take them back on foo-" Ozzy is interrupted by several metallic noises, like someone is dumping marbles onto the helicopter. "What in the.." says Roger. You look out the window, and are shocked to see a group of people firing at the helicopter. "Making an emergency landing," says Ozzy. "Brace yourselves." Roger stares out the window in disbelief. "Why the hell are they shooting at us?" To your surprise, the shooters break into a run and follow the helicopter on its course downward. "We're going to meet them when we land," you say. Matthias and Roger are already arming themselves. "Well then," says Roger. "Let's meet 'em." When the helicopter plunks down, and the blades whir to a stop, the shooters are ready at the doors. A gravelly voice commands you to come out, unarmed. "That'll be the day," says Roger. "We aren't doing anything of the sort. Actually, you're the ones who should be running. I'll give you five seconds. Five..." Five is plenty for them. The shooters open fire, damaging the helicopter's window and hull. The soldiers quickly return fire, but the battle's pretty one-sided. The shooters definitely have the numbers, and the better guns. "What do you want from us?" asks Roger. This is the first time you're getting a good look at the shooters. They look horrible, dressed in filthy clothing, with generally ugly faces. Not a single one is clean-shaven or looks like they've had a haircut even once. "We want your 'copter," grunts one of the shooters. "We can't allow that," says Roger. "We're headed back to Washington. You should come, there are showers, and fresh food, and-" "NO!" the shooter angrily kicks a rock. "We want the helicopter! And food! And books! And all of it! And guns! And snakes! And cell phones!" The soldiers look at each other in disbelief. "These people have lost it," whispers Conway. Should you give up what you can, or try to diffuse the situation? > You give up guns "Okay," you say. "We have extra guns. You can have some of them." This seems to pacify the people. You quickly go back into the helicopter and get the duffel bag Conway brought along. You empty it of guns, and offer a good amount (but not too much) of them to the people. You are kind of shocked when the man walks up to you and takes the first gun, a pistol, out of your hand...in his mouth. He then proceeds to take guns off of you one by one. When he has what he wants, he backs off. "Ftill wuff hewicoffter," he says through the gun in his mouth. "What?" The man spits the pistol onto the ground. "We still want the helicopter." Matthias shakes his head. "This is ridiculous. We should leave." Roger shakes his head. "We can't, they'll gun us down." "Is there any way we can work around this?" you call to the man. He thinks for a moment. "Yes. If we can't have the helicopter, we want...follow us." The man promptly turns around and motions for you to follow him. > You refuse to follow You stay where you are. The other soldiers do the same. When the man sees you standing still, he loses it. He throws his hands up in the air, and makes sputtering noises. He then proceeds to do some sort of angry dance, flinging his limbs around. The whole time, he's talking in broken English. Finally, he realizes he's in the presence of other people. He turns to you, and points at your stomach, then to your face. "Follow." He follows up the action by raising a gun. > You follow Reluctantly, you follow the man. Roger stops you. "You sure this is the wisest choice?" Conway chimes in. "Yeah, these guys seem a little...'on edge'." You nod. "I know this is dumb, but they have the firepower, and outnumber us two to one. We don't have another option." Slowly, your group follows the strange folk over to an empty parking lot. A group of dumpsters have been arranged in a defensive wall. Corpses litter the area. You can see piles of trash from discarded food, as well as several empty cans and bottles. Dirty mattresses propped against the dumpsters presumably serve as beds. "Welcome!" yells the man. The few people that were waiting at the camp stand up. They stare emotionlessly into your eyes. "Sit down," says the man, gesturing to a spot on the ground. "Oh," you say, "You want us to...join you?" Uncomfortable, you and your group sit amongst the filthy survivors. "So, now that you're part of us, you have to pass initiation," says the man. You sit up. "Hold up," says Roger. "We aren't joining you. That was never up for arguing." The man sticks out a pouty lip, and walks over to where Roger sits. Roger rises, and meets the man. "Yes," says the man. "You will be joining us for dinner." Suddenly, Roger pulls a gun from his belt and shoots the man in the head, killing him. Horrified, the remaining members of the other group fish around for their guns, and begin to fire aimlessly. You group stands up defensively, and you realize you don't have a weapon of your own. As gunshots ring around you, you hide under a dumpster. The other group quickly loses track of your people. You stay hidden under the dumpster, while the garbage group searches out your people. You see a pair of feet coming over to your dumpster. > You run away Without thinking, you climb out form under the dumpster on the opposite side of the unknown enemy. You crawl over to the next dumpster to climb over, when you hear an excited, "Found one!" behind you. A bullet rips through your midsection, causing you to yell in pain. You hear a triumphant laugh behind you, and your attacker grabs you by the feet. You are dragged into the middle of the parking lot. The man who brought you here stands over you with a gun. "This is what happens to people who don't join us for dinner," he says, and shoots you in the kneecap, immobilizing you. You yell out again, and receive a shot in the side. Several more bullets go through you, until you're barely alive. As your vision fades, the man's laugh pounds in your eardrum.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Reluctantly, you follow the man. Roger stops you. "You sure this is the wisest choice?" Conway chimes in. "Yeah, these guys seem a little...'on edge'." You nod. "I know this is dumb, but they have the firepower, and outnumber us two to one. We don't have another option." Slowly, your group follows the strange folk over to an empty parking lot. A group of dumpsters have been arranged in a defensive wall. Corpses litter the area. You can see piles of trash from discarded food, as well as several empty cans and bottles. Dirty mattresses propped against the dumpsters presumably serve as beds. "Welcome!" yells the man. The few people that were waiting at the camp stand up. They stare emotionlessly into your eyes. "Sit down," says the man, gesturing to a spot on the ground. "Oh," you say, "You want us to...join you?" Uncomfortable, you and your group sit amongst the filthy survivors. "So, now that you're part of us, you have to pass initiation," says the man. You sit up. "Hold up," says Roger. "We aren't joining you. That was never up for arguing." The man sticks out a pouty lip, and walks over to where Roger sits. Roger rises, and meets the man. "Yes," says the man. "You will be joining us for dinner." Suddenly, Roger pulls a gun from his belt and shoots the man in the head, killing him. Horrified, the remaining members of the other group fish around for their guns, and begin to fire aimlessly. You group stands up defensively, and you realize you don't have a weapon of your own. As gunshots ring around you, you hide under a dumpster. The other group quickly loses track of your people. You stay hidden under the dumpster, while the garbage group searches out your people. You see a pair of feet coming over to your dumpster. > You stay Put Despite your fear, you stay put. The pair of feet walks up to you, and you hear the top of the dumpster being opened. Then, it closes, and you hear a dissatisfied, "Nobody over here." The people struggle to find any of your group, you scattered pretty quickly. As you hide, you make eye contact with Ozzy, who's hidden under an adjacent dumpster. You see fear in his eyes. He's slowly pulling a small gun out of his pocket, and holding eye contact with you. "Well, well, well. Come out when you're ready, hooligans," the man who led you here says. The other group sits down in the middle of the parking lot, and begins to eat. Ozzy slowly makes his way out from under the dumpster, out of sight of the others. You do the same. You sit behind the dumpster and think over your next move. > You stay behind the dumpster You stay behind the dumpster, and out of sight. To reveal yourself now would be suicide. After waiting for a few minutes, you peek out from behind the dumpster. The other group shows no signs of moving soon. Ozzy has crawled past the dumpsters and in the direction of the helicopter. When he sees you, he waves for you to follow him. You get down on all fours and crawl after him, staying behind the dumpsters. When you get far enough away, you see that the others have already escaped. "Took you long enough," says Roger. "I wanted to make sure it was safe, you say. Roger shrugs. "Okay," Ozzy whispers. "Let's leave while the Garbage Pail Kids are still having dinner." You follow the others back to the helicopter. "None of their gunfire hit anything too important. We'll make it back, but it won't look pretty," Ozzy declares. The others breathe a sigh of relief. "What about the windows?" Matthias asks. "We just won't be able to go as far up in the air, and if we get shot at again, we're toast, but we should be fine," Ozzy answers. You board the helicopter, and start to lift off. During the entire thing, you're afraid the other group will come running back, guns in hand. Fortunately, they never do. "Okay, as previously stated," Ozzy says, "We'll be a few miles short of our target. Don't get too comfortable." > You gas You're on edge the rest of the ride, but nothing else goes wrong. "What do you reckon happened to those people?" Roger asks. "The apocalypse can have a serious effect on some people," says Matthias. "They might've been homeless people, or mental patients, or something like that." Finally, Ozzy brings the helicopter to a stop on the ground. "Here we are," he says. Everyone gets out of the helicopter, and starts the trek over to the fuel stores. "Let's hope there's any left for us," mutters Roger. Along the way, you notice the bodies of zed scattered around. All of them were victim to a gunshot in the head. "Someone came through here," says Conway, "And they were goin' for it." You hope that whoever this was, they weren't searching for fuel. "Come on," says Matthias. "If there's competition, we have to beat them to the outpost." It doesn't really matter how fast you ran. When you arrive at the outpost, it's obvious nobody has been through here. The area is packed with the dead. "You've gotta be kidding me," says Roger. The fuel stores are visible, but the whole outpost is surrounded by a chain-link fence. There are no visible gates or entry points, but a large hole in one side of the fence explains how the zombies got in. "Should we run and gun 'em?" asks Conway. "That depends," you answer, "...on how much firepower we have." "If it comes down to it, we might have to find another way through this," says Roger. > You create a distraction "We don't have the guns for this," you say. "I have an idea," says Matthias. "If we could make more holes in the fence, and lure the dead out of the way....we'd have no issue getting what we need." Conway volunteers to make some noise and distract the hordes. The rest of you split up around the fence. You are given a large knife to cut the fence. "Okay," says Roger. "We're all clear, correct? Cut through the fence, and as soon as there's enough room for the dead to make it out, you back away. Once we're all clear, I give the whistle, and Conway does his thing." You go to work hacking through the fence. A few zombies take notice, and push up against the fence. "Stay back," you whisper. Clink. The first fence loop breaks open. One of the zombies forces a hand through the hole. You kill it, and keep going. Clink. Clink. Clink. Soon, you have a sizable hole. You step back to see if the zombies can fit. It's a struggle, but eventually one of them forces its way through the hole. You decide you're done, and back up. You wait a few minutes for Conway, but the gunfire never comes. Roger looks around in bewilderment. "What's going on? He should've-" Roger is cut off by the fence collapsing. The pressure of all the corpses shoving up against it caused the supports to snap. The pile of zombies struggle to their feet, and give chase. "Fall back!" yells Roger, and the team scatters. > You run You blindly scramble through the forest, not thinking enough to follow someone else or even pay attention to what direction you're running in. You point yourself towards the helicopter, since you assume that's where the others are going. You can easily outrun the horde, that's no problem. Once you're far enough away, your biggest concern becomes finding the others. You scan the forest in search of familiar faces, but find none. In panic, you continue towards the helicopter. The horde of zed has made its way further out, and a few eager corpses have already made it pretty far out. You hear yelling from a few yards away, and see Roger running in the direction of the helicopter. You run up to follow, and call his name. He looks around, spots you, and waves you over. "Come on!" he shouts. "Back to the helicopter!" A few moments later, you hear gunshots nearby. The others. "Should we go back?" you ask. Roger doesn't answer, he's dead set on making it back to the helicopter. You hesitate, before following him. The zombies have advanced further, and you doubt you'd be able to come back safely if you turned around now. As you make your way to the helicopter, you see the garbage people, the ones that shot at the helicopter, approaching in the distance. They must have heard the gunfire and realized their prisoners got free. "Well....crap. This is a problem," says Roger, his voice wavering. You look behind you; the zombies haven't caught up to you yet, but if you keep wasting time, they will. You might be able to make it back to the helicopter before interacting with the garbage people to get a gun or something. > You look For Your Friends You resolve not to let the others die, and turn around. "What are you doing?"" yells Roger, but you pay no attention. You maneuver around the first few zombies, and back into the woods. You call out names while searching for movement among the trees. "Matthias!" you yell, scanning the broken fence. "Conway? Ozzy?" you don't see anything, except advancing hordes of the dead. Suddenly, gunfire erupts from a few yards away. You see Conway firing at a pack of zombies with the signal gun. Conway spots you, and breaks into a run. He's pointing at something behind you, but you're so focused on him that you don't notice the zombie right behind you. You narrowly avoid the monster's jaws, and push it to the ground. By then, Conway has caught up to you. "Come on," you say. "To the helicopter." Both of you take off. On the way, you ask where Ozzy is. "I think he made it out before I did. He should be at the helicopter right now," Conway answers. "As for Matthias, I don't kn-" Conway suddenly stops as a bullet hits him squarely between the eyes. You freeze with fear, and turn to see the garbage people standing before you. The leader steps out. "Thought you could run away, huh?" he taunts, and pops another shell into his shotgun. "Here's what we do to runaways around here." Bang!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You blindly scramble through the forest, not thinking enough to follow someone else or even pay attention to what direction you're running in. You point yourself towards the helicopter, since you assume that's where the others are going. You can easily outrun the horde, that's no problem. Once you're far enough away, your biggest concern becomes finding the others. You scan the forest in search of familiar faces, but find none. In panic, you continue towards the helicopter. The horde of zed has made its way further out, and a few eager corpses have already made it pretty far out. You hear yelling from a few yards away, and see Roger running in the direction of the helicopter. You run up to follow, and call his name. He looks around, spots you, and waves you over. "Come on!" he shouts. "Back to the helicopter!" A few moments later, you hear gunshots nearby. The others. "Should we go back?" you ask. Roger doesn't answer, he's dead set on making it back to the helicopter. You hesitate, before following him. The zombies have advanced further, and you doubt you'd be able to come back safely if you turned around now. As you make your way to the helicopter, you see the garbage people, the ones that shot at the helicopter, approaching in the distance. They must have heard the gunfire and realized their prisoners got free. "Well....crap. This is a problem," says Roger, his voice wavering. You look behind you; the zombies haven't caught up to you yet, but if you keep wasting time, they will. You might be able to make it back to the helicopter before interacting with the garbage people to get a gun or something. > You go for the helicopter, get a gun You realize you aren't getting out of this alive without a weapon, and run for the helicopter. The garbage people start to fire back, but that doesn't go to smoothly. Roger follows you into the cockpit, safe from the garbage people. You scrounge around, and are rewarded with a small handgun with a full clip. Looking at the approaching horde, you realize the garbage people may not even be your biggest threat at the moment. > You fire at the dead The advancing hordes of zombies are closer and more plentiful, you decide. Plus, the garbage people will have to fight them off as well. You get into a defensive stance with both hands on the gun, and open fire on the horde. The gun's clip has thirteen bullets in it; you manage to kill six zombies before running dry. "Here," says Roger, tapping you on the shoulder. "Found more of them." he gives you another fully loaded clip. "We had a bag stashed under the seat," Roger explains. "For emergency." You ditch the empty clip and reload, before taking another shot. You bring down twelve walkers this time, and notice that the garbage people are firing at the dead, too. In a moment, they'll fall back, you can get your people, and leave. Except you can't. It slowly dawns on you that the helicopter's still dead on fuel. Meanwhile (and unbeknownst to you), the garbage people realize they're wasting bullets on the zombies, and go to take out the real threat- you. The leader approaches the cockpit, out of your view. He sneaks right up to the door and kills you, without you ever knowing. If it's any consolation, none of your group made it out, either.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You realize you aren't getting out of this alive without a weapon, and run for the helicopter. The garbage people start to fire back, but that doesn't go to smoothly. Roger follows you into the cockpit, safe from the garbage people. You scrounge around, and are rewarded with a small handgun with a full clip. Looking at the approaching horde, you realize the garbage people may not even be your biggest threat at the moment. > You fire at the garbage people At the moment, the garbage people pose more of a threat to you than anything, you decide. You turn so you can see them clearly. The leader is approaching the helicopter, so you fire at him first. You were aiming at his chest, but the bullet goes through his arm. It still cripples him, so it's done it's job. The other garbage people quickly catch on, and start firing back. Your gun's clip has thirteen bullets in it; you manage to kill three garbage people before you run dry. For a moment you're worried that you just made things a lot worse, but Roger passes you another fully loaded clip. "We keep them under the seats," he explains. "For emergencies." You ditch the old clip, and keep firing. Luckily, the garbage people's guns are louder than yours, and your gunfire combined with the hordes of the dead cause them to eventually fall back. "There's one problem solved," you say. "Now we just need to get our group back." "Actually, that problem is also solved," says Roger, pointing into the trees. Conway, Ozzy, and Matthias are running through the trees towards the helicopter. They're being followed by a massive horde. You open the doors as wide as they'll go in preparation. When the three make it back, you slam the door shut and hide. "Hopefully, the gunfire from that other group will draw the horde," says Matthias. The group sits quietly in the helicopter for a while. Soon, it becomes clear you'll be spending a long time in the helicopter. The dead show no sign of going away, and the growls, while faint, are a bit too close for comfort. > You prepare to spend the night in the helicopter Thankfully, the seats of the helicopter are soft enough to lay on. As the sun sets, you lay down. The group agrees to taking two-hour shifts to watch for garbage people or zombies, and warn the others. You volunteer for a later spot, so you can get some rest. The night drags on, safe but very boring. When you wake up for your shift, it's almost light outside. "Hey!" you say. "Why didn't you guys wake me up?" "It was my fault," says Ozzy. "I just took the whole night." "You shouldn't have done that," exclaims Conway. "You have to fly this helicopter!" "Uh, not any time soon," Ozzy says, gesturing out the window. It's true. The dead are meandering outside, not too interested in letting you get your fuel. "Looks like some action needs to be taken," says Matthias. "So, what's plan B?" > You keep waiting You keep sitting in the helicopter, with the hopes that the dead will eventually leave. Your food situation is decent, and you're prepared to spend multiple days here if you need to. "We're really doing this?" asks Ozzy. It's not the best plan, but it saves bullets and effort. "Yeah, we are," you answer. Outside, it doesn't seem like your plan is working. The zombies are basically stagnant, not even walking around. They just stand there, like a creepy flash mob. You pray for a gunshot, or a plane, or some noise to draw them away. Finally, Conway gets restless. He gets up, and takes a flare gun from out of his duffel bag. "Conway, what are you doing?" asks Matthias. Conway doesn't answer, but goes for the helicopter door. The rest of the group moves to stop him. "Get off!" Conway yells. "I'm not gonna sit and wait any longer! Y'all want a distraction? I'll give you one!" Conway yanks open the door, attracting the attention of a few zed. Conway fires a flare over the field, and then slams the door shut. The good news is the flare lands on the opposite side of the field, and most of the horde clumps around it. The bad news is that the door slam attracted a few stragglers over to you. The group immediately jumps up and readies their weapons. "I'm gonna open the door and let a few in," Matthias says, "Then we kill 'em. Let a few in, kill 'em, let, kill, repeat until they're gone. Ready?" The first few step forward, and are eliminated quickly. Nobody's using guns because the noise would damage hearing, so there's just as much of a threat posed by the others' knives as the zombies do. Once the dead are clear, you're open to grab the fuel. You waste no time getting over to the tanks, where the area is now empty of the dead. "Lucky us," Conway remarks as your team fills gas canisters up. You lug them back over to the helicopter, and begin to fill up the tank. Ozzy goes in to watch the fuel gauge, while Matthias keeps watch of the horde. Three painful and long trips later, the tank is full. "Come on," Matthias says, "They're getting restless. Load up!" Everyone piles into the helicopter, and Ozzy starts the blades. The horde, noticing the new potential for food, turns over to you. By the time they get anywhere near you, you're up again. "Take that, growlers!" Ozzy shouts over the engine. > You airborne (Again) Once in the air, Roger addresses Conway. "That little stunt, ripping open the helicopter door like that? Not gonna fly with me," Roger says. Conway stands up. "Excuse me, but did anybody get so much as a scratch on them? My little 'stunt' got us to safety," Conway retorts. "You're lucky that's the way things went. Next time, it might turn out different." "Yeah,, if someone who didn't know what they were doing tried it! I've had several years of experience on the battlefield." "CONWAY MATTHEWS, LET ME REMIND YOU THAT YOU ARE TAKING THAT TONE WITH FIRST SERGEANT ROGER MILLS! I WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO ENDANGER THE LIVES OF MULTIPLE SOLDIERS AND A CIVILIAN! DESIST AT ONCE!" Both soldiers rise and stare each other coldly in the eyes. "Guys? Right when we're flying over hordes of man-eating monsters is not the best time to get physical," Ozzy warns from the front. "Sit down, and obey my word," Roger hisses. Conway begrudgingly takes a seat, and holds a stare with Roger. Matthias makes eye contact with you, and you see a slight twinge of fear in his eyes. He's been with Roger for a while, so if he's worried, you're worried. Roger finally sits down next to you, as far away from Conway as he can get. "We won't make it to Washington," Ozzy suddenly says. This gets the attention of everyone immediately. "We don't have the fuel. We'll get close, but we don't have enough, even with the extra fuel." Everyone looks around at each other. "So we need to find another reserve," Roger says. Matthias pulls out a pocket map, and a pen. "Where will we run out of fuel?" "I think about here," Roger says, pointing to a spot on the map. It's in Oregon, not far from the border. "There aren't any fuel reserves there, far as I know," Roger continues. "Any chance we could get the fuel from cars?" you offer. Roger shakes his head. "This thing won't take car fuel, of any kind," he says. "Unless somebody just happens to have filled their tank with jet fuel." "We'll figure something out," Matthias says. The subject is dropped. You just don't want to think about what will happen if you can't find any fuel. > You continue For the next few hours, the ride is uneventful Everyone is minding their own business, and the cabin is silent, except for the occasional noise from Ozzy, at the controls. Before you know it, you're drifting off, and then it's a new day. You look out the window. The terrain has changed. You're no longer above a city of bodies, but empty roads, with only a few zombies lurking around. You're getting closer to Oregon, which means closer to the fuel issue. You don't want to think about when that time comes. Luckily, Roger takes your mind off it. "Breakfast time," he says, fishing around for a backpack. The team searches out cans to make a meal out of, and that's when it becomes apparent that you're very low on food. Three cans left to split between five people, for another two days, and that's assuming the fuel thing goes smoothly, which you can guess it won't. "We're gonna have to touch ground again," says Matthias. Nobody wants to admit it, but yes, you'll have to be at the same level as the dead once more. "Lower us down," Matthias says to Ozzy. "We need to run some errands." Food is definitely easier to come across than helicopter fuel, but you're still worried. There's been plenty of time for every store and market to be emptied of all its goods. When the helicopter sets down and the engine dies down, you scan for a sign of food. The only promise is a road sign telling you fast food places nearby, and there isn't much opportunity there. "Bingo," Conway suddenly says. He's spotted a farmhouse through the trees. "That's where we'll find what we're looking for." The group slowly goes to follow, but Roger stops. "Wait. We need someone to stand at the helicopter and guard it," he says. "I can do it," says Matthias. "Unless, anyone else would rather take the spot." > You volunteer to watch the helicopter while the others leave "I'll do it," you say. Matthias nods. The other soldiers go over a plan for the farmhouse, while you take a defensive position behind the helicopter door. You figure that it's extremely unlikely you'll see anybody, you still want to remain vigilant. You sit up straight and try your hardest to stay awake. The others have been gone for a worryingly long amount of time, and you decide to go check on them. You get out of your seat, and go look at the farmhouse. From where you are, you can't see any fighting or danger, and you haven't heard any gunshots. You assume they're just doing a thorough search, and cross your fingers for some fresh bread. As you turn to get back in the helicopter, you are met with a bow and arrow pointed at your face. Its user is a man with long blonde hair that covers his eyes. "Water," he says, in a parched voice. "Give it to me." Shaking, you slowly nod. You climb into the helicopter, and fumble around for the pack with the bottled water in it. You find the pack, but then you remember your gun. > You shoot him As quick as you can, you turn to shoot the attacker. Your bullet goes over his shoulder. He shouts, and releases an arrow into your chest. You cry out, and the man yanks the water pack from your hands. "See ya," he says, and slams the helicopter door shut. He gives a little wave before leaving. You struggle to get the arrow free from your skin. That arrow had a lot of power behind it, and you end up staining the seats of the helicopter with your blood, and doing all kinds of irreversible damage to your chest. When the soldiers come back, you're barely alive. Your final moments are of being shaken back and forth by Conway, who is trying to get you to sit up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'll do it," you say. Matthias nods. The other soldiers go over a plan for the farmhouse, while you take a defensive position behind the helicopter door. You figure that it's extremely unlikely you'll see anybody, you still want to remain vigilant. You sit up straight and try your hardest to stay awake. The others have been gone for a worryingly long amount of time, and you decide to go check on them. You get out of your seat, and go look at the farmhouse. From where you are, you can't see any fighting or danger, and you haven't heard any gunshots. You assume they're just doing a thorough search, and cross your fingers for some fresh bread. As you turn to get back in the helicopter, you are met with a bow and arrow pointed at your face. Its user is a man with long blonde hair that covers his eyes. "Water," he says, in a parched voice. "Give it to me." Shaking, you slowly nod. You climb into the helicopter, and fumble around for the pack with the bottled water in it. You find the pack, but then you remember your gun. > You give him the water Not wanting to risk conflict, you hand the bag over to the man. He takes it, and slings it over his shoulder. "Thanks. Now get out," he commands. You oblige. "I see your stuff," the man says from behind you, the arrow in his bow brushing against your back. "I see those guns. You got any food back there? I'm hungry." You can't think of anything to do, so you try to stall. "Who are you?" "Name's Cedar. What's it to you?" "Why are you stealing from me?" you ask, careful not to say 'us'. It's better if he thinks you're alone. "I had people. They ditched me. Now I got nothing but this bow, and I need basic stuff to live. Food, Water. I'm gonna get it fro-" Cedar suddenly takes a bullet to the forehead, and slumps to the ground. Conway comes running up from the trees. "Did he hurt you?" Conway asks. You're surprised to see that he cares so much about you. You shake your head, and go to retrieve the water pack. Matthias and Ozzy have large cases of seed and preserved food in their hands. "Okay, one more hurdle," Ozzy says. "We get gas in Oregon, and we're home free." > You continue The trip continues, and you quickly lose track of time. It's daytime, so you know you shouldn't be sleeping, but you can't see where the sun is out the windows from where you are. Of course, time doesn't really hold much value anymore. You can't be late to Washington. Roger and Conway still refuse to speak to each other. Each just acts like the other isn't there. Whenever one speaks, the other is silent, and they make great effort to avoid eye contact. The others soldiers have caught wind of this, but nobody seems to be making an effort to help the situation. You decide to leave it alone for now. "Good news! We're crossing the California-Oregon border.....now!" Ozzy shouts from the cabin. The team rejoices, but you're just worried. The small pocket of fear in your gut grows. "We don't have much fuel left. I'm probably going to touch down soon," he finishes. You land on the outskirts of a small town. "There weren't any fuel-holding outposts, as Roger said, but there is an outpost here, so it's a possibility that there will be fuel here, in one form or another," Ozzy declares. "Who's guarding the helicopter this time?" Conway volunteers, most likely to get away from Roger. Nobody in the group objects, so you don't either. The less time those two spend together, the better. Conway takes a seat in the cabin, while the rest of the group sets out for the town. "There's not much hope that this place is still inhabited," Roger says on the way. "Except maybe by the dead. As long as we're careful, there shouldn't be much of an issue." Roger points out a large metal wall in the distance. It's made up of three metal fences, put one after the other. You can see a few places where the fence broke, and entire panels are missing. You approach the outpost with caution, but stop when you realize the whole thing is empty. When you step into the compound through a hole in the fence, the ground is littered with zombies, all of them shot in the head. "What?" exclaims Matthias when he sees. "How could this have happened? Unless..." "This wasn't the dead," Roger finishes. "Somebody did this. Somebody took down this outpost. We had three tanks, and a heavy machine gun stationed at this outpost, and somebody wiped it clean." You stare in disbelief. If there's a threat that's stronger than the U.S. military's stores, that's all the more reason to get to Washington immediately. The group splits up to search the most likely areas where fuel would be, if there was a landed helicopter or a truck containing jet fuel around. But, of course, the attackers didn't leave so much as a single can of food, much less a tank of jet fuel. "We're gonna have to look elsewhere," Matthias declares. > You elsewhere "The only other place I think can think of that would hold the fuel we need is an airport or something," Matthias says. "And that wouldn't even work." You try to think of places you've seen a helicopter. News helicopters? No, the probability of there still being fuel in them is too low. There are no more outposts nearby, so military aid is useless. The only thing left you can think of is recreational helicopters, but the thought of a 'posh' country club in a town this small is, once again, very unlikely. "We don't have to take the helicopter, do we?" you suggest. "We could leave it here, and take something easier to transport, like a bus or a car." The team seems to consider the thought. "Helicopter fuel is only going to get harder and harder to find," Matthias points out. Finally, Roger agrees. You find several cars abandoned on the side of the road, and take the two in the best condition for your group. Having two cars is better for your group because it's less cramped, and you can sit Roger and Conway in opposite vehicles. You siphon the gas from the remaining cars, and drive back. Conway is less than pleased with the group's decision. "We need the helicopter!" he insists. "We skip over so much crap that way!" Roger, for the first time since the incident, faces Conway sternly. "We're taking the cars," he says. > You continue Moving everything from the helicopter to the cars is not an easy task. It takes up most of what's left of the day, and your shoulder is aching when you're done. After the helicopter is empty, everyone splits into the cars. Roger puts a 'Come to Washington or Die' message on the helicopter door. "Just in case," he explains. Oregon is surprisingly zombie-free, after what you saw in California. The streets are empty. Not full of dead corpses or defeated zombies, but completely empty. It's strange. "Odd that there are no walkers here," Ozzy says, echoing your thoughts. "Think there's a reason for it?" "Maybe we cleared them all out," Roger suggests. "It would make sense for the guards to want to keep the dead as far from sanctuary as possible." You decide it's still out of the ordinary for there to be absolutely no zombies around. "Maybe it's because there's no food?" you suggest. "I mean, we've known them to follow noises and the smell of food, so maybe Oregon ran out." The team seems to be thinking over this possibility, when all your theories are disproven. "Holy hell," Roger whispers. You're looking out over the city of Portland, Oregon- or, more accurately, what's left of it. Every single zombie that was missing from Oregon as packed tightly into the streets of Portland. They have no room to move, and a chorus of hungry growls emanates over the city. "No way we're getting through that," says Roger. "We should've kept the helicopter." Your team gets out of the car. Conway and Matthias get out of the other car. You group up and look out over the maze of rotting flesh that stands between you and salvation. "Think we could sneak through it?" suggests Matthias. "If we cover ourselves in zombie goop, we might be able to pass by." "I say we go in guns ablaze," Conway says. "Are you insane?" Roger shoots back. "Do I need to remind you of the warning I gave you before? You want to fire a gun in that?" Roger points to the zombie-filled streets. "If you sneeze hard enough, you'll be dead. Firing a single shot would be simultaneously slitting all of our throats." Conway doesn't respond, but you can tell he isn't going to heed Roger's words. "Let's go with Matthias' plan, then." Easier said than done. Extracting one zombie from the masses proves to be scary and difficult. But, Ozzy manages to pull it off. He comes back with a bloody corpse slung over his shoulder. "Let's cut this sucker open," he says, "...and have a bath." The fumes are dizzying. Days of rotting organs and waste come billowing out of the cadaver. What's worse is that you're tossing those very guts over your shoulder, on your back, and on your front. After a few minutes, you'd pass for some pretty smelly zombies. You really wish you hadn't ditched the helicopter. You approach the city slowly, your group forming a tight pack. To get separated would mean death. You slowly walk through the crowd, scared to even brush past a zombie. One by one, the dead look at you, decide you aren't good to eat, and stumble off in another direction. More often than you'd like, a zombie is idly standing in your way, meaning you have to try to slip past it with as little contact as possible. Eventually, you realize you're passing through the city center. You notice a lot of uniformed soldiers among the gobs of zombies. But, the plan is working. You can tell you're going ot make it. Not a single zombie even bothers to look at you anymore. You're just another mindless walker. Everything seems to be going on course- until Conway spots a tank in the middle of the road, and starts to go for it. "No!" Roger hisses as quietly as he can. A few nearby zombies stare curiously at him for a moment. "Conway, stop! You are ruining the plan! Get back here!" But, of course, Conway isn't listening. "The plan doesn't matter anymore," Conway whispers back. "If I get control of that tank, we could clear out a path. There'd be no trouble." He grows closer and closer to the tank, with his teammates behind him, begging him to stop and turn around. Finally, he reaches the tank, and struggles to open the hatch at the top. You notice Roger pulling his silencer gun out of his belt. "No," you say, stopping him. "He isn't worth the bullet, or the attention it'll draw." "You sure about that?" Roger asks back. You're too late to do anything, anyway. Conway rips open the hatch to reveal a zombie that was waiting inside. Surprised, he takes a step back, and slips off the tank. He lets out a bloodcurdling scream as he cradles a bite on his arm. The scream causes the idle moaning of the zombies to stop. Slowly, unanimously, the zombies all turn their heads towards a screaming Conway, and the rest of your group. They seem to have caught on to the fact that you aren't zombies. As the space closes in around you, and your innards are divided up between six different sets of hands, you kind of wish you had let Roger shoot Conway. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For the next few hours, the ride is uneventful Everyone is minding their own business, and the cabin is silent, except for the occasional noise from Ozzy, at the controls. Before you know it, you're drifting off, and then it's a new day. You look out the window. The terrain has changed. You're no longer above a city of bodies, but empty roads, with only a few zombies lurking around. You're getting closer to Oregon, which means closer to the fuel issue. You don't want to think about when that time comes. Luckily, Roger takes your mind off it. "Breakfast time," he says, fishing around for a backpack. The team searches out cans to make a meal out of, and that's when it becomes apparent that you're very low on food. Three cans left to split between five people, for another two days, and that's assuming the fuel thing goes smoothly, which you can guess it won't. "We're gonna have to touch ground again," says Matthias. Nobody wants to admit it, but yes, you'll have to be at the same level as the dead once more. "Lower us down," Matthias says to Ozzy. "We need to run some errands." Food is definitely easier to come across than helicopter fuel, but you're still worried. There's been plenty of time for every store and market to be emptied of all its goods. When the helicopter sets down and the engine dies down, you scan for a sign of food. The only promise is a road sign telling you fast food places nearby, and there isn't much opportunity there. "Bingo," Conway suddenly says. He's spotted a farmhouse through the trees. "That's where we'll find what we're looking for." The group slowly goes to follow, but Roger stops. "Wait. We need someone to stand at the helicopter and guard it," he says. "I can do it," says Matthias. "Unless, anyone else would rather take the spot." > You go with the group to raid the farmhouse You let Matthias take over guard duty. Whatever you can do to speed things up, you will. Roger brings the rest of the group closer to the farmhouse. "There's a strong possibility that someone's still alive in there, and they're surrounded by tall grass. Here's what we'll do. We split up, and approach the house from all sides. If you see someone in the window, fire at them. If you here gunshots from someone else, rush the house. The first person to get in the house needs to clear the ground floor, and we'll move from there. Clear?" Everyone nods, and the plan commences. You get set on a straight path to the front door of the farmhouse, while the others spread out. The entire walk over, you listen intently for gunshots, or any sign of disturbance. It never comes, and suddenly you're at the front door. Remembering your instructions, you draw your gun and search the ground floor. As it turns out, the house is abandoned. Searching the place top to bottom yields no humans. The fate of the owner is revealed when you check the basement: a lone corpse, hanging from a noose. "He had such a good setup," comments Roger. "Wonder why he did it." But, of course, there's no time to wonder. Everyone spreads out to search the house again, this time for food. You continue in the basement. The basement is actually quite empty, making you wonder if someone else cleaned the place out first. Just as you are about to give up, you see a message scrawled on a drywall. It looks like it could have been written with blood. THEY TOOK EVERYTHING. I'M SORRY. IT'S NOT WORTH IT ANYMORE. THE WORLD IS ENDING, AND NOBODY WILL BE SAVED. BETTER TO DIE WITH DIGNITY THAN BE TORN APART BY THE ROTTERS. You disagree, but respect the man's choice, and leave the basement. When you come back up, you see that the others were luckier. On your way back, you look over the findings: several small wooden crates packed with cans, and some nonperishables. Not bad, and it's more than you'll need for five for a day. "Any trouble?" Roger asks Matthias as you load the food up. "Yes, actually," Matthias responds. "One guy. But, he wasn't a problem. I'm fine."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Thankfully, the seats of the helicopter are soft enough to lay on. As the sun sets, you lay down. The group agrees to taking two-hour shifts to watch for garbage people or zombies, and warn the others. You volunteer for a later spot, so you can get some rest. The night drags on, safe but very boring. When you wake up for your shift, it's almost light outside. "Hey!" you say. "Why didn't you guys wake me up?" "It was my fault," says Ozzy. "I just took the whole night." "You shouldn't have done that," exclaims Conway. "You have to fly this helicopter!" "Uh, not any time soon," Ozzy says, gesturing out the window. It's true. The dead are meandering outside, not too interested in letting you get your fuel. "Looks like some action needs to be taken," says Matthias. "So, what's plan B?" > You get armed, and go outside to get the fuel "We shouldn't wait anymore," you say. "Let's go out, and get the fuel." The others are hesitant, but Conway takes your side immediately. "We know them," Conway says. "We know how they act, how they think. They won't move anywhere until they have reason to, and that could be days. We don't have the capacity to sit and burn off our food, and then try to fly back. Let's go, and let's go now." After everyone has armed themselves, Conway opens the door. The first few zombies turn in your direction, but are quickly subdued by Roger. Roger's gun has a silencer, so he's the go-to shooter for the moment. "The fuel is over there," Roger whispers, gesturing with his gun. "If we stay tight to the tree line, we might be able to sneak past them." The team nods, and rushes to follow the orders. The dead seem to dislike the closed-in trees, and have gravitated over to the fields. By staying among the trees, you have no issues. Almost. As you travel, one curious zombie notices you, and starts to stir. Roger hesitates, and decides not to shoot. "Just keep going," he whispers. As you walk, the zombie steps in close. "What the hell are you doing?" demands Conway. "Shoot it!" Roger shakes his head. "Not worth the bullet," he explains, but Conway won't hear it. He draws his gun, without a silencer, and points it at the zombie. You grab him. "No! That's worse!" you whisper-yell. "You'll attract the whole field, and more!" Conway, of course, doesn't listen. He fires, and the zombie drops to the ground. Behind it, several heads slowly turn towards you, and you hear a low growl. "Run," Roger says, not bothering to whisper. The team breaks into a panic, with people struggling to get past each other. Without the cover of silence, a few start to shoot at the zombies. It almost seems like you'll be able to keep them at bay. "Come on!" Ozzy says. He leads the group in the direction of the fuel tanks. Unfortunately, a considerable portion of the zombies chose to stay back, and inhabit the empty lot. Now, you're sandwiched between two hordes, and you hear the familiar clicking of empty guns. "I'm out," says Conway, furiously pumping the trigger. "Same," Roger says in dismay. "Thanks a million, Conway." The dead close in, and you look for a way out, a weak spot, a break in the horde, anything. But you don't see it. You go to grab for your knife, but the horde is too close. A set of jaws rips into your neck from behind.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Despite your fear, you stay put. The pair of feet walks up to you, and you hear the top of the dumpster being opened. Then, it closes, and you hear a dissatisfied, "Nobody over here." The people struggle to find any of your group, you scattered pretty quickly. As you hide, you make eye contact with Ozzy, who's hidden under an adjacent dumpster. You see fear in his eyes. He's slowly pulling a small gun out of his pocket, and holding eye contact with you. "Well, well, well. Come out when you're ready, hooligans," the man who led you here says. The other group sits down in the middle of the parking lot, and begins to eat. Ozzy slowly makes his way out from under the dumpster, out of sight of the others. You do the same. You sit behind the dumpster and think over your next move. > You help Ozzy attack the group You look at Ozzy, and point to the other group. He holds up his gun and nods. You position yourself behind a dumpster, right next to the leader of the other group. You'll grab him and hold him hostage, so that the others will let you go. You wait until the right moment... The man decides he needs to get up, and you strike. As soon as he's on his feet, he's on the ground again, with you holding him down. "Nobody move!" You yell. Sadly, while your plan would have worked, Ozzy wasn't on the same page as you. He fires his gun in an attempt to hit the leader, but instead hits you in the chest, killing you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You've always kind of wondered what riding in a helicopter would be like. Now you know: boring, with a slight touch of fear of heights. Finally, Ozzy makes a short announcement. "We're nearing the landing spot." Thank goodness. Suddenly, something starts beeping on the control board. "What's that?" asks Roger. "We don't have enough to make it there," Ozzy says, with slight fear in his voice. "At this rate, we'll have to walk the last few miles to get to the gas stores, and then take them back on foo-" Ozzy is interrupted by several metallic noises, like someone is dumping marbles onto the helicopter. "What in the.." says Roger. You look out the window, and are shocked to see a group of people firing at the helicopter. "Making an emergency landing," says Ozzy. "Brace yourselves." Roger stares out the window in disbelief. "Why the hell are they shooting at us?" To your surprise, the shooters break into a run and follow the helicopter on its course downward. "We're going to meet them when we land," you say. Matthias and Roger are already arming themselves. "Well then," says Roger. "Let's meet 'em." When the helicopter plunks down, and the blades whir to a stop, the shooters are ready at the doors. A gravelly voice commands you to come out, unarmed. "That'll be the day," says Roger. "We aren't doing anything of the sort. Actually, you're the ones who should be running. I'll give you five seconds. Five..." Five is plenty for them. The shooters open fire, damaging the helicopter's window and hull. The soldiers quickly return fire, but the battle's pretty one-sided. The shooters definitely have the numbers, and the better guns. "What do you want from us?" asks Roger. This is the first time you're getting a good look at the shooters. They look horrible, dressed in filthy clothing, with generally ugly faces. Not a single one is clean-shaven or looks like they've had a haircut even once. "We want your 'copter," grunts one of the shooters. "We can't allow that," says Roger. "We're headed back to Washington. You should come, there are showers, and fresh food, and-" "NO!" the shooter angrily kicks a rock. "We want the helicopter! And food! And books! And all of it! And guns! And snakes! And cell phones!" The soldiers look at each other in disbelief. "These people have lost it," whispers Conway. Should you give up what you can, or try to diffuse the situation? > You try to talk to them "Hey," you say. "Listen. We can't afford to give anything up. Is there a possibility that we could work around this?" The man holds up his finger, and draws something in the air. Then, he looks at you expectantly. When you don't know how to respond, the man becomes angry. He furiously draws some sort of picture in the air with his finger over and over again. "What? What is it? What do you want?" you ask. The man finally gets fed up with your incompetence. "WAAATTTTEEERRR!!!!" "We can't spare, um, any water at the moment," you say, almost afraid that he'll flip his lid. Instead, the man gets quiet. "Follow," he finally says, and begins to walk away.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your walk back is uneventful. You still aren't sure what the point of that excursion was, but it's nice to get your mind off impending doom for awhile. Plus, as Conway said, there's no shortage of bullets. You arrive back at the campsite as night is falling. "Well, time to hit the hay," says Conway. "Are we leaving for Washington tomorrow?" you say. It's not that you're getting impatient, but you don't see a reason (beyond Conway's personal reason) for staying back. Conway slowly nods. "Yeah. Yeah, we'll leave soon." "Soon?" you ask. "Or tomorrow?" Conway doesn't answer this time. You begin to question whether joining him was a good idea, and consider ditching him if you need to. As you retire to your tent, you hear a crackling noise from Conway's duffel bag. Quickly, he fishes out the object. It's a walkie talkie. Chzzz.....Zhhcccc..tzzz....Hello? Anytzzzz....anyone there? Conway, is chzzzzzzzzzz.... "Yes? Hello, yes! Yes, this is Conway Matthews, deployed with the fourth wave? Do you copy?" Tzhhhhhh.....Chzzzz...... getting really bad outthcccczzzz....going to leave soon.....wanted to check for any others....tchzz.......tchzzzare you? Come to the......thczzzzz..... Conway fiddles with the receiver in an attempt to make the signal stronger. "I'm losing connection! Where are we supposed to go?" Tchzzzzzz....................341...tchzzzstreet.....local museum..... Conway looks up at you in slow recognition. "The museum," you repeat. Conway nods. "Let's go. Now." You quickly collapse the tent, while Conway packs various weapons into his duffel bag. "We aren't gonna have room for everything," he says. "It's either the guns, or the food. I can fit some of both, but we need to make our choice quick." Meanwhile, the person on the other end of the walkie talkie gives out more advice. Streets are crowdetchcchhh........be careful.....the dead aren't gchhhhhhhhh.......hundreds of them...in the streets........come quick.....we need to leave soon... You can make out gunshots in the background. You can hear the same gunshots echoing through the city. > You mix of food and guns "Pack both," you say. 'We'll need some of both." Conway nods, and begins packing. You take half the food and half the guns, burying the rest so no one else can get to it. After the duffel bag is full, you move into the streets. You can immediately tell what the others were talking about. Where the streets used to be empty (of zombies, not of cars), there are now vast hordes. They aren't moving in any direction, or at all for that matter. They just bump into each other and walk in circles. You and Conway elect to stay off the roads, and slip between buildings. Meanwhile, Conway keeps a conversation going with the other soldier. Through garbled radio speech, you hear him tell you what's going on. The dead are mostly avoiding the museum, which is why that's their pick-up spot. You're sneaking past a rogue group of zed when the radio suddenly emits a loud burst of static. The group slowly turns their heads, and they growl at a potential food source. "Oh, please no," Conway whispers. The dead slowly hobble over to where you're advancing. You don't know whether to keep sneaking or lash out, but Conway makes that decision for you. Whipping out his knife, he takes the top half the the closest zombie's skull off with one sweep. You draw your knife, and take care of a few of the others. After the horde is cleared, Conway switches off the walkie talkie. "Not gonna go through that again." You slowly progress through the city amongst the waves of walkers. Eventually, the museum is in sight. You're surprised to see an actual helicopter guarded by a handful of soldiers. Conway switches the walkie talkie back on. "We can see you, over." Tchhhhhh....okay, that's good......These hordes are getting worse....no way you're gonna make it through here.....we can provide covering fire......run for it...... You look at Conway, and nod. The soldiers reveal several guns, and start firing on the group of zombies. Taking the chance, you follow Conway through the gunfire. A few zombies attempt to follow you, but you're moving too fast for them. When you get past the hordes, the soldiers wave to you and open the helicopter doors. "GET IN!" You climb into the helicopter after Conway, with a sea of rotting flesh at your heels. You slam the door shut, and hear the helicopter blades whir to life. "Come on! Let's get this bird off the ground!" shouts one of the soldiers. The helicopter slowly lifts off the ground, with a few zombies holding on for dear life to the bottom. They slip free once you're airborne.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your walk back is uneventful. You still aren't sure what the point of that excursion was, but it's nice to get your mind off impending doom for awhile. Plus, as Conway said, there's no shortage of bullets. You arrive back at the campsite as night is falling. "Well, time to hit the hay," says Conway. "Are we leaving for Washington tomorrow?" you say. It's not that you're getting impatient, but you don't see a reason (beyond Conway's personal reason) for staying back. Conway slowly nods. "Yeah. Yeah, we'll leave soon." "Soon?" you ask. "Or tomorrow?" Conway doesn't answer this time. You begin to question whether joining him was a good idea, and consider ditching him if you need to. As you retire to your tent, you hear a crackling noise from Conway's duffel bag. Quickly, he fishes out the object. It's a walkie talkie. Chzzz.....Zhhcccc..tzzz....Hello? Anytzzzz....anyone there? Conway, is chzzzzzzzzzz.... "Yes? Hello, yes! Yes, this is Conway Matthews, deployed with the fourth wave? Do you copy?" Tzhhhhhh.....Chzzzz...... getting really bad outthcccczzzz....going to leave soon.....wanted to check for any others....tchzz.......tchzzzare you? Come to the......thczzzzz..... Conway fiddles with the receiver in an attempt to make the signal stronger. "I'm losing connection! Where are we supposed to go?" Tchzzzzzz....................341...tchzzzstreet.....local museum..... Conway looks up at you in slow recognition. "The museum," you repeat. Conway nods. "Let's go. Now." You quickly collapse the tent, while Conway packs various weapons into his duffel bag. "We aren't gonna have room for everything," he says. "It's either the guns, or the food. I can fit some of both, but we need to make our choice quick." Meanwhile, the person on the other end of the walkie talkie gives out more advice. Streets are crowdetchcchhh........be careful.....the dead aren't gchhhhhhhhh.......hundreds of them...in the streets........come quick.....we need to leave soon... You can make out gunshots in the background. You can hear the same gunshots echoing through the city. > You mostly food "Pack more food," you say. "Food is more important than guns." Conway nods. You empty the food stash into the duffel bag. "Come on," Conway says once the bag is full. "Through the backstreets." You can immediately tell what the others were talking about. Where the streets used to be empty (of zombies, not of cars), there are now vast hordes. They aren't moving in any direction, or at all for that matter. They just bump into each other and walk in circles. You and Conway elect to stay off the roads, and slip between buildings. Meanwhile, Conway keeps a conversation going with the other soldier. Through garbled radio speech, you hear him tell you what's going on. The dead are mostly avoiding the museum, which is why that's their pick-up spot. You're sneaking past a rogue group of zed when the radio suddenly emits a loud burst of static. The group slowly turns their heads, and they growl at a potential food source. "Oh, please no," Conway whispers. The dead slowly hobble over to where you're advancing. You don't know whether to keep sneaking or lash out, but Conway makes that decision for you. Whipping out his knife, he takes the top half the the closest zombie's skull off with one sweep. You draw your knife, and take care of a few of the others. After the horde is cleared, Conway switches off the walkie talkie. "Not gonna go through that again." You slowly progress through the city amongst the waves of walkers. Eventually, the museum is in sight. You're surprised to see an actual helicopter guarded by a handful of soldiers. Conway switches the walkie talkie back on. "We can see you, over." Tchhhhhh....okay, that's good......These hordes are getting worse....no way you're gonna make it through here.....we can provide covering fire......run for it...... You look at Conway, and nod. The soldiers reveal several guns, and start firing on the group of zombies. Taking the chance, you follow Conway through the gunfire. A few zombies attempt to follow you, but you're moving too fast for them. When you get past the hordes, the soldiers wave to you and open the helicopter doors. "GET IN!" You climb into the helicopter after Conway, with a sea of rotting flesh at your heels. You slam the door shut, and hear the helicopter blades whir to life. "Come on! Let's get this bird off the ground!" shouts one of the soldiers. The helicopter slowly lifts off the ground, with a few zombies holding on for dear life to the bottom. They slip free once you're airborne.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The arrows never stop flying. Crawling through the mud, you watch as unlucky comrades around you are caught in the volleys. A grunt and a thud, in the trench in front of you one falls, reaching his hand out to you. Crawling over to him you rip off his armor, trying to stop the bleeding. Almost impossible with the arrow lodged in his chest, ripping it out would only kill him faster. You sit there cradling him, trying to offer some small comfort in his final moments. He tries to speak, but only a gurgling sound emerges as crimson red trickles out of the side of his mouth. One final sigh and his whole body relaxes, his head falls back. His glassy eyes stare at you, only seeing emptiness. Placing him down, you continue to trudge through the mud. Around you more have fallen, and will continue to fall. A dark purple blast of energy flies overhead, frying some unfortunate. You make a run for the trees. Never running in a straight line, you start right, then dart left as you dive behind a tree. A few arrows lodge themselves in the ground beside you. Damn elves. You think back to how the elves had first come peacefully. Offering promises of power and strength. The orcs didn't want anything to do with them and their magic. The next time the elves showed up; however, it was in force. Looking to capture conscripts for their fight against the Empire. The orcs wanted nothing to do with their war, but since the elves brought it to our doorstep, we had now come to retaliate. The elves, unable to fight a war on two fronts, were sure to crumble. But this all started four years ago. Turns out elves have incredible resolve... which you intended to break. > You advance Only a few miles ahead, you see the castle stronghold of the Wister Elves' king. King Harribor, intent on delaying his final stand, hides behind his people. Coward. He would let his enemies lay waste to his nation, rather than meeting his fate out on the battlefield. By now, you've made your way to a ridge, behind which many orcs wait. Across is another ridge, with orcs similarly stationed. In between, dozens and dozens of orcs slowly advance: hiding in trenches, behind rocks, and amidst piles of dead comrades. They will never make it through unless you buy them time. Ahead, the elves had constructed wooden walls and towers. Each had slits and ramparts to shoot their arrows and blast their magic. Scanning the area, you see that the elve's defenses are strongest on their right flank. Perfect. All you need to do is charge down the ridge and straight towards that tower. You grab an orc by the shoulder, he looks back grunting. "See how strong their defenses are on the right?" He peers out, grunting in acknowledgment. "I need you all to string up, focus all of your fire in that region." "Why? Their left is weakest." "I know, I'm going to use that to our advantage." You're about to leave when you pat his shoulder again. "Try not to shoot me." You backtrack down into the forest and see some lights coming from the trees. The elves are watching their line closely. Seeing multiple orcs in the darkness, you stop them. They look at you inquisitively until you explain your plan. They are eager to follow. You move back behind the ridge, close to the front lines, careful to stay in the darkness. Peering over the top you notice something new: a system of hidden trenches filled with elves. They must be expecting the orcs to charge at any minute and are planning a surprise in the trenches. You inspect the trench immediately below you. It leads directly to the door of a tower. You see an officer using a dimly glowing spyglass. Near him, and scattered throughout the trenches, are wounded elves. Some fit to fight, some are not, and yet they'll do it regardless. You have to respect that at least. You ready your bow, and sight an elf slumped against the trench wall. Bloody bandages wrapped around his head, he holds his dagger and appears to be praying. He looks almost like a child, several years younger than yourself. As you let loose, the rest do as well. The elf gasps in surprise as the arrow pierces his chest. You all fire several arrows, until each elf in front of you is pin-cushioned. No one is walking away from this. No one sounds an alarm. Making your way through the trench to the nearest battlement, you ready your axe, short enough to be used with one hand but long enough for two. You stand next to the tower door, inhaling deeply. > You tower Thrusting your foot forward, the door bursts open, splinters hitting the wall directly behind. You storm in as a bloodied elf staggers towards you. His eyes widen in surprise as you plant the axe into his forehead. Thick streaks of blood creep down his face as other orcs pour past you. You pull the axe from the fallen foe with a satisfied grunt. As you enter the narrow hall, you see the wide eyes of many elves, their dead faces contorted in shock. They... almost didn't see what hit them. Leading the way once more, you rise up the stairs to the next landing, your movements hidden by the sounds of battle. You recognize the twanging of arrows. "I hit one," one of the elves says, "Ha! Look at him squirming!" Your face contorts in rage. Raising your axe, you step out, and embed it into their officer's neck. You've left your axe in another's shoulder and jammed an arrow into the eye of a third before they realize what's happened. In an instant, the other orcs are upon them. You ascend to the top of the tower. Almost immediately, an elf with bandaged hands sees you and shouts a warning to his companions. You charge them, dodging arrows and bowling into them, knocking two over the edge, screaming. The wounded one tries to bring down his sword, but you catch it between your hands. Wrenching it away you toss the sword off the edge. Snarling, you prowl towards the elf; he backs up, desperately swinging as you do so. You duck a punch and wrap an arm around his neck as you slip behind him. His hands bat and pull at your arms ineffectually. You squeeze tighter. With a snap, his hands go limp. You drop him. Fucking stick, so damn weak. > You continuing You duck down and go to the ledge, peering up and over a low wall. Arrows are still flying; chaos everywhere. "Come on, we have more towers to take out," you say. You go to the other edge and wave to get the attention of the orcs at the ridge you left. You signal them to storm the trenches from your side. By the time you've made your way down, the orcs have already flooded into the trenches. As the enemy loses focus in the confusion, the rest of your comrades rush in from the center to surround them. The elves fight valiantly, refusing to surrender, which surprises you. What is more surprising is that you are only able to kill a few before the orcs have completely decimated the rest. You run forward to the walls watching over the trenches, where the elves are far up but their fear is visible. All the trenches seem to lead to an underground tunnel system, with side rooms dug out for wounded and extra supplies. As you enter one of them you see a wounded elf on a cot. His chest wrapped in bloody bandages, his breathing labored. He might not even make it, although killing defenseless people is for the weak as far as you're concerned. > You mercy Kill You approach the elf, stepping lightly. As you draw your blade from you sheath he looks up at you. His eyes widen and his breathing become faster. He feebly tries to raise his arms, probably to ask for mercy. Driving the sword through his recent wound, you press as the blood pours out and trickles down his side. A short gasp escapes from his lips as his back and neck arches, his eyes widening before closing about halfway. You pull your blade out and move forward. > Back to the tunnel As you are about to run back into the tunnel, a loud sound erupts, shaking the ground. You have to catch yourself against the wall. After exchanging glances with the other orcs, you make your way forward through the tunnel, ever vigilant. You reach an opening engulfed in flames. Orcs scream burning or already lay still, flesh roasting. You cringe as the putrid smell reaches your nostrils. You get low to try to get a better view up a dirt ramp. The explosive must have come from the wall. You dart to the side of the hall, thinking about what you should do. You see some other orcs about to through the fiery opening. > You wait You hold up your hand. "Wait," you say. "They could have more." The room is deadly silent as everyone waits. You hear more of those explosions, and orcs storming through the other trench tunnels. By now, it sounds like full on chaos out there. At some point, you hear a scream and an elven body crunch against the ground just outside of the opening. They must have taken the walls, or at least part of them by now. You slowly approach the opening, axe in hand. As you step out, you notice there are elves and orcs engaged in deadly combat everywhere. Several elves run straight towards you. They're probably trying to seek refuge. One of their face twists as they raise their arm. A bright red bolt flies from his hand. You barely have time to drop to the ground as the bolt slams into the wooden fixture right above the tunnel. As small wood pieces shower your back, you notch an arrow to your bow. You only stand up high enough for your arrow to be raised just above the ramp. You exhale as you align the arrow with the closest of the elves, who are significantly closer now. You release the arrow, the elf who blasted at you staggering as it lands in his hip. But he still runs forward, although now they all start blasting bolts of energy at you. An orc to your right goes down, smoke rising from the wound on his chest. You notch another arrow, a bolt passing right by you, and you shoot the next elf as another orc already finished off the first one you hit. Within moments, the group of elves are all dead, along with a few orcs around you. It seems that the orcs have gained the upper hand once again, superior strength and numbers. You move out into the open with your group, quick to find somewhere less vulnerable. > You push Many of the orcs loot the treasures, weapons, and trophies from the elf bodies. You cross your arms and lean against some supply shed. A horse gallops over to a group of orcs, in the middle of them is an orc chief. The orc scout on horseback frantically starts speaking. "The elves! They're closing in on us, we're right in the middle of their line, we'll be surrounded," he yells. It would only be a matter of time before they cut off the opening to their king. Sifting through the orcs, you eventually find the orc chief in charge of the battle, who seemed to have dismissed the scout. "Chief," you say, "we need to push further." "Yes, yes, I'm aware." He sort of shrugs you off, while some other kiss ass orcs hand him some trinkets. "You heard him, we're in the middle of their line, we could easily get caught in a pincer movement. Probably surrounded too." The orc chief laughs. "Let them come, they won't stand a chance." Your eyes widen, this fool would let your brethren die rather than end this it seems. Grunting, you rip the horn fastened to his belt. He glares at you, stepping forward. You see his hand lightly resting on his sword handle. > You reason with him Looking at the horn in your hands, you realize you may have made a mistake. "I'm not gonna sit here while you get them all killed," you say. "We need to move now, while we have an opening to their king." The chieftain's eyes dart to the side as he considers what you have said. He chuckles. "You are a bold one, and you're right." He says this as he walks up to you, and he pushes you to the side as he grabs the horn from your hand. "But I can't let this disrespect stand." He keeps walking as he blows the horn, rallying the orc armies. As he calls for them to push forward, you hear something sliding behind you. Whipping around, you are just in time to sidestep a sword blow, which would have cleaved your head apart. You grab the orcs forearm, quick to twist his arm and steal his sword. He falls to one knee grunting in pain, and you kick him in the face, knocking him over. The other four orcs in the chieftains entourage all draw their weapons as they try to surround you. All the while you are moving, back, left, right, where ever you have to go to keep the foremost ones in front of you and keep the others from surrounding you. One finally lurches forward, slicing open your shin. Ignoring the searing hot pain, you leap forward, your sword biting into his neck. His body relaxes and he slumps forward, not quite dead yet but on his way there. Another orc rushes forward, trying to bury his axe into your head. You simply pull the dying orc in front of you, the axe burying into his back. You let the orc fall, as the weight of him doesn't allow the other orc to pull his axe out. It instead slips from his fingers. His hand goes for his dagger, but before he can do anything else, your stolen sword is buried in his chest. With a grunt you push it the rest of the way through, all the way to the hilt, specks of his warm blood spattering your arms and chest. The orc's mouth gapes and quivers as his arms flail in his death throes, patting your arms as his hands slide off your forearms. The remaining two orcs have already started charging. One leaps over the dying orc, almost hacking into your shoulder. You get a lucky dodge, this time drawing your real sword. The other one comes from your side, intent on plunging his spear into your side. You knock the spearhead away, sliding the blade along the shaft, until you reach his hand. You simply pull your blade back real quick, then with a quick chop severing his fingers. He cries out in pain, turning into a gurgling as you slash your sword across his throat. The last orc, and probably the most resourceful. Pulls up a small shield from his side, frisbee whipping it at you. It hits your raised forearm, leaving a stinging mark on your arm. As you step back, the other orc tucks and rolls, grabbing the spear. As he raises into a kneel, he lurches the spear forward. It buries into your waist, burning hot pain shoots through. You roar in pain as he rips it out. This time he aims right below your throat, but you manage to knock it aside. In the same motion, you pull up your axe, throwing it with surprising dexterity. The orcs head kicks back, then slowly slumps forward. One of his eyes stares at you, the other looks off at a weird angle. He falls, the axe handle stopping his face from hitting the ground. Sighing, you limp over, pulling your axe out of his forehead. As you look around, you realize some orcs had gathered to cheer you on. They didn't seem to want to get involved in case you deserved it, and they didn't know what you were even fighting about but seemed entertained nonetheless. They pat you on the back for wrecking four orcs, and one even offers to help you clean and bandage your wound. Which you gladly accept... Some hard alcohol and stitches later, your leg and stab wound are securely patched up. You just have to be careful not to reopen or aggravate the wound. Having missed the initial rush, you are stuck moving with the supply wagons, with all the old, lame, or wounded orcs. You do manage to hitch a ride, also being offered some fresh cooked beef. A delicatessen you haven't had since months ago. You decide to get some shut-eye on your way to the front... > You king Harribor's Stand The past few days have been spent sieging the elven King's last safe harbor. All the fields, villages, and towns outside of the castle having been swept up by the armies of orcs. Somewhere behind the main army, detachments of orcs have been held back to keep the elven lines from closing in. You've heard they fight with desperation at the thought of losing their king. They've gained almost a mile since yesterday, but the orc rearguard has finally managed to hold their ground. You sit on a hill, drinking whiskey as you watch the orcish reserves moving about the moats and trenches, trading arrows with the elven defenders. You had spent the previous nights routing out and destroying the surrounding elf units. You've finally been convinced to reserve your strength as you sit against a tree with some trusted orcs. To your left a huge swath of trees fall. Tensing up a bit, you see large wooden catapults being forced out of the trees. Followed by columns of heavily armored elven knights. Preparing to warn the orcs, you bolt up onto your feet, as do your friends. As you run down the hill you notice something odd. The insignia on their flags are different from the Wistern elves' flag. Instead of a yellow flag with red shield, it is a black flag with a red dragon. These might be the Velaneer elves. You hop on a horse, galloping over to them with a dozen or so other orcs. The rest prepare to defend their lines. You stop out of spear or bolt range of the columns, they don't appear to have any archers with them yet, so that won't be an issue. You call out. "Who are you? And what business do you have here?" What appears to be an officer steps forward. You don't realize the elf is a woman until it speaks. "My name is Valek, Captain of the Velaneer assault brigade. You are?" "Nolazir." "Rank?" "I'm... I just kill things." "Any generals?" "No, we have some chiefs though." you say. "And?... Where are they?" She asks getting clearly annoyed. "Off sieging King Harribor's last defense... or drunk somewhere." "You'll have to do." Valek says this as she strides toward you and your horse. You hop off and go to meet her. Her hair is the gold blonde that most elves of her nation seem to have, and her eyes are a deep green. They would almost be beautiful.....if she wasn't an elf. You almost can't look away, but you manage to break eye contact. Looking down her face to her lips, which seem to come up to a slight pout. She slowly smiles, some twinkle in her eye. "Seems like you really are doing a great job breaking into the castle." She says haughtily. "We're trying to starve them out," you say. She sighs. "They're elves, they can magically grow food in their castle gardens, and when they run out of ammunition they'll probably start throwing magic bolts at you." You grunt, not having thought of this. Valek chuckles. "You orcs are always getting caught with your dicks in your hands." You look down at your fur and leather pants, no dick in sight. Fearing this was a ruse, you grunt and look up at her, but she isn't trying to fry your face off. "We kinda did have a plan, the moat is the issue," you say. "We were gonna tunnel under the fort, but that would probably just flood." "Have you tried just knocking?" She smirks. You look over to the drawbridge, covered in arrows. You look back at her and shake your head. "Too dangerous." "Well, you have some brains... for an orc." Valek chuckles. She is about to say something but you interrupt her. "We were thinking of finding a way to just barge straight in. They must have a weakness somewhere." "They probably have a secret tunnel system, most elven fortresses do." Now it is your turn to act like a snob. "Don't you think if they did they would have taken their king to safety?" you say, mimicking her haughty attitude. "Besides," you say resuming your normal tone, "we already caved in their tunnel system." "What? Why didn't you just use that to get in?" She starts getting angry. "Too small, and we lost too many orcs trying to get in. Better to collapse and kill all the elves inside." She looks over to the wall, observing the battle taking place. "We have a plan to get through," you say. "We just need more time." You show her some of the wooden "machinations" you and the orcs have been working on. They are wooden constructs, each with a front wall with a small window and handles, there is a small roof to protect against arrows, and the side walls are dipped to allow archers to fire from the side. Each one can protect half a dozen orcs and are operated by three pushing, which would turn the wheels on the front and sides, and three archers firing from the front and sides respectively. "We call them siege breakers. Should get us close enough to take those doors down," you say as you stand behind one, the roof part at least a good foot above your head. A dozen or so elves could probably fit behind one of these. "I have to say," she smirks, "I'm impressed Nolazir. But are you sure you'll be able to get through to the walls, even with these?" "Valek, that's where you come in," you say. "We need you to barrage them with your catapults, and your... magic blast things. Once they are beaten down, we can get in." She nods, taking a moment to look at the defenders scrambling up on the walls, they seem to be massing more out of their reserves in response to this elven nations arrival. You decide to spend the rest of the day with Valek and other elvin and orcish leaders planning out how to break the siege of King Harribor's castle. > Three Days Later... You grunt as you push, gripping the handle of the siege breaker you take shelter behind. Arrows embed themselves into the front and top of it. Far ahead, the catapults snap as they fire off, sending stones into the wall. The orc next to you chuckles as a stone shatters part of the wall, and several elves fall to their dooms below. Looking behind you, Valek watches as you push the siege breaker. She sticks her thumb up at you and smiles, and not being sure what to do, you smile and raise your middle finger. She looks surprised for a second and looks away to the catapult. "Idiot!" the orc next to you yells. "Elves don't make jokes!" Nodding in acknowledgment of this wisdom, you continue to push the machine. A horn blares behind you. Valek stands with a catapult into position right behind you and orders it to fire. You and the other orcs all cringe as the projectile soars overhead. With a huge crash, the missile breaks through the castle gate, shattering it and sending splinters flying all over. You nod at Valek, who smiles and raises her middle finger at you. Drawing your sword and axe, you give a mighty cry and lead the charge through the gate. The elves on the walls scramble to either rush to the gate or shoot down on the orcs, but your elven allies blast them with energy bolts, either killing or suppressing them. As you burst through the opening, dozens of elves wait, swords in hand. One tries to hack you, but you simply knock it away with your sword and slice his knee with your axe, running it across his belly next as he falls to a kneel. He tries to keep his guts from spilling out, but you manage to slice his throat, only a gurgle escaping as he falls to the ground. You throw yourself into a group of elves, fighting through them with a new ferocity along with your comrades… > You revenge With the castle in sight, the orc army pushes forward, as the elves follow up and support them. From the castle, a large brigade of elves come flowing through. They are lead by an elf in leather black armor, and a large sword for an elf of his stature. From here, you can see his hair is raven black, much like the orcs, but he is full elf, with one blue eye and one green eye. A nasty scar crawls across his face. As the orcs and elves meet, chaos ensues, from the houses and shops the windows burst open, energy blasts shooting out and killing elves and orcs alike. More of the elves flood in from a side street, blindsiding the orcs. You barely manage to dodge an axe to the head, before lopping off your foes arm. You and another orc move through, watching each other's backs and cutting down elf after elf. You hear a grunt and a heavy sigh. Turning, you see the orc you were fighting with sinking to the ground, a smaller axe buried in his chest. Ahead you see the culprit. The chief from before chuckles as he draws his sword. "So you managed to survive, pretty impressive," he says, "my son and I have a bone to pick with you though." Coming up to his side you see an orc, who looks familiar. Then you remember, he was the orc whose sword you stole. You kicked him in the face and knocked him out, you should have gone back to kill him. Oh well, time to handle this now. The two orcs begin to circle you, the younger seeming eager to rush in. The older content with biding his time. The chief's son rushes in suddenly, he is quick and strong, but stupid and sloppy. You parry a downward blow, raking your axe blade across his thigh. He stumbles as he steps to the side, but manages to stop you from burying your sword into his neck. He swings at your neck, and, stepping back, you slice down into his chest, quickly retracting. He grunts in pain, blood oozing down from his wound. You hear something behind you… Turning, you duck under a strike that surely would have decapitated you. As you pivot, you run your sword along his side, and finishing you bury the axe blade behind his knee. As he falls you loop the axe around and over your head, about to bring it down for the final blow... Something stops you, the chief's son had leaped over, barring you with his sword. His other hand grips the blade, pushing your axe up. His face straining as you both struggle, genuine concern for his father on his face. With your other hand, you drive the sword through him. His brows furrow and his mouth gapes slightly, a small choked cry of pain escapes his lips. As you step back, you pull the sword out of him. Backing up several steps, you watch as the chief pulls himself up to kneel over his son. You can't hear what, but you see the chief's lips moving as he talks to his son. The son tries to speak, and the chief leans in to hear one last whisper before his son goes limp. Turning to you, rage is blazing in his eyes. He moves quickly despite his injuries, and almost bowls you over. You manage to roll out of the way, his sword striking the ground where you stood. In almost the same movement he turns, almost cleaving you in half. You try to chop him with your sword, but he buries his blade in the handle, pulling against the hilt as the sword is pulled from your hand. Gasping, with sweat running down your body, you attempt to chop his arm. The chief roars as he catches the axe by the shoulder, kicking you as he pulls it from your grip. Panting, you crawl back, trying to reach his son's sword. But you are too far, and the chief is too fast. He steps in, looping the sword around his head and raising it for the killing strike. Something pale blue hits his chest, emitting a pop and smoke, sizzling heard from the wound on his chest. He looks up as he staggers back, accidentally lowering the sword. Two more bolts slam into him, causing him to reel back and fall to the ground. Smoke rising from his body, and he lays still. > You rescued You roll onto your side, to see Valek standing with her arm outstretched. As you stand, she runs over to you. "Nolazir, are you okay?" "Yeah, I'm fine," you grunt. "What were those guys trying to kill you for anyway?" "Orc dispute. I didn't like his leadership, and they tried to kill me. Twice now." You gather your weapons and take a second to gather your breath. The battle seems to have turned for the orcs. Valek turns and pats you on the back. "You alright? You didn't get tired from fighting a couple of orcs now did you?" "I thought elves didn't joke?" you say. "Now where did you hear that?" She raises an eyebrow. "Uhh, nevermind," you grunt. You both watch as the orcs make their way through up to the front of the castle. "So, where exactly are you from?" you ask. "The Velaneer Kingdom," she says. "Only the best of the best." "I know where you are from, but what did you come from?" "Well, you may be surprised to hear it, but I'm actually from a family of peasant farmers." "Can't you elves use your magic to grow stuff." "We can, which I guess made it easier. But we still needed to make a living, and the Kingdom needs a food supply." "Aren't you elves all fancy? I couldn't imagine what elven peasants would look like." "No, those are probably just common myths. While we do hold ourselves to a higher standard than all other races, we're not all getting fat off the spoils of the kingdom." "So what are you doing here?" you ask. "I thought I could do better for my people than growing grapes and tomatoes, so I became a soldier. Surprised to say I rose through the ranks pretty quickly and found myself here." "So you weren't happy with the life of a peasant, I get that." "So, Nolazir, what about you?" Valek asks. "Hold on," you grunt. "We're pushing through." Ahead, the orcs seem to have breached the castle. Valek follows behind you, noticing that you are somewhat pissed at not being in the front of the fray. > You castle Fall You pass over the bodies of the fallen, some horribly mangled, some looking almost peaceful laying on the ground. You see an elf and orc tangled up, the orc's hands wrapped around the elves neck, whose eyes are bulging from his skull. The orc still has a snarl frozen on his face, multiple dagger wounds on his ribs and back, with the elves hand still gripping the dagger. As you enter the castle hall with Valek, the sounds of combat echo throughout the halls. Eventually, you make your way through the main hall, littered with the corpses of elves and orcs. Throughout all of this, you don't see the corpse of the elf with the two different colored eyes. The large golden doors to the King's chamber stand ajar. Holding your axe tightly, you step over to the door. You signal Valek as you get ready to open the door, and she preps to blast a bolt of magic. A shuffling sound and a groan come out from behind the door. You give Valek a sideways glance, and she nods. Throwing the door open, you step back and tighten your grip on your axe. Valek raises her hand... In front of you, an orc shuffles towards you, his body covered in deep gorges, cuts, and burn wounds. In his hand is the head of an elf, which he holds by his long hair. Behind the orc the rest of the body lays in a golden robe, covered in wounds and with a bloody sword next to it. The orc stops in front of you, throwing King Harribor's head to the ground, where it rolls to your feet. The King has one blue eye and one green eye. The orc's mouth quivers slightly as he tries to say something, but he just falls forward. You kneel next to him, feeling his pulse, but he is dead. As the fighting in the rest of the castle recedes, dozens of elves come retreating into the chamber pursued by orcs, only to stop short at seeing the elf king's corpse. You watch as the elves stare in shock, one of them, rather old for an elf draws his sword. You reflexively ready your axe. But the elf drives it through his own chest, gritting his teeth in pain as he pushes it in deeper before falling. Several of the elves follow suit. The rest, seemingly galvanized start firing bolts at the orcs, in a moment you see one heading straight for Valek. You grab her, throwing her behind the door as the bolts fly by. Several manage to miss you as you throw her to safety. You turn to throw the axe, but the orcs have already overrun the remaining elves and have butchered them. You just watch the carnage as you call Valek out. "You didn't have to do that, you know," she says. "Eh, it just seemed like the right thing to do." You and her walk out onto the king's castle balcony. Some elves stop her to ask her some questions about prisoners and the remaining soldiers in the forests and hills. While she talks to them you step through the curtain. > You balcony It's a beautiful sight, the sun setting over the trees and the hills. The orange and purple rays playing over the horizon. Casting your glance down, gruesome corpses lay all around the castle yard and surrounding houses and buildings. Elves and orcs alike plunder and loot the corpses and treasures of the elven kingdom's capital. Outside, the elves move their catapults and shift columns of soldiers who got to sit and watch the battle. Somewhere to the left, you see allies moving in large groups of prisoners. Word of King Harribor's death spread quickly. The curtain ruffles, and Valek steps out beside you. "So, Nolazir, are you going to be staying around for a while?" Valek asks. "Hmm, yeah, just long enough to organize some things. What about you?" "Uhh, yeah I was planning on staying for a bit. Lots of prisoners to secure and people to move around." "Great," you say. "I'm sure I'll see you around then." Valek wrinkles her nose, looking out at the carnage below. "Sometimes, I wonder if it was all worth it," she says. "So many people killed, and for what?" "I don't know why you elves started fighting each other, but they came to us making promises of strength and power. They thought we would be too short-sighted to see what they were trying to do." Valek nods. "They showed up in force, and we responded with greater force," you say. "We had our reasons, but I just don't know what the point of it all really was," Valek says as she leans against the railing. "Sure, the Wister elves were at odds with us, but these past few years, we made so many sacrifices. " "It wasn't all in vain," you say, "they sacrificed to secure a better future. You might not see it now, but King Harribor was getting too bold, too greedy. He was putting you and us in jeopardy." "Hmm, we will see about that," she says. You both stop talking for a moment, and after a few seconds you look over to find her just looking at you. "What's with the staring?" you ask raising an eyebrow. "I don't know, there's just something I like about you." You take a step toward her, and, even though she is an elf, there is something you like about her too. You put your hand on the back of her head, pulling her in as you lean in. Her lips are much softer than an orc woman's. She puts her hand on your shoulder as she begins to reciprocate… > You later... You lay on your bed of blankets and pillows. Valek is snuggled up next to you, her hand resting on your chest, your arm wrapped around her lower back and resting between her hip and stomach. Her body very warm against yours. "I hope no one heard us," she says. "Screw 'em if they did." "Well, this was a fun little experiment," she says. "Too bad we won't have time for more of this." You grunt in response to which she lightly slaps your chest. "What's 'mrmmph' supposed to mean?" You grunt. "Are you going to talk to me," she asks, "or are you going to keep being weird?" You grunt in response. Valek rolls over and grunts... to which you also grunt, causing her to grunt once again. Valek laughs and snuggles closer to you. "You're pretty funny for a big ugly orc. I'll miss you, I think." "And you're not such a pretentious snob... for an elf." You close your eyes and hold her close, knowing that this won't last long and you will soon have to return to your homelands… > You prologue Closing The Wister Empire had fallen, allowing the elves and orcs to return to their homes at long last. In the coming years, relative peace would fall over the orcs, but a storm was forming over the horizon… > You chapter 1:Rising Six years later... The sun casts its golden rays over the blessed lands of Orcin, the blue sky showers the soft grass in its jubilee. The rivers run freely, the animals roam, and the people are happy. The villages and tribes have recovered well from the four years of grinding combat with the elves. The Wister Elf nation has been absorbed into the Empire; the Imperial governor of the old nation has turned it into a labor force for the Empire. From what you have heard they have been sending a surplus of weapons, wagons, and even domestic equipment to their allies. A loud wailing sound pierces the silence you had lost yourself in. The baby cradled in your arm cries out, demanding attention. You rock the child in your arm, murmuring an old orcish lullaby. A little orc girl of three years waddles over and pats your knee. "Dad, can I hold Lagrik?" she asks. "No, Vokra, I'm just getting him back to sleep," you say. "You can play with him later." Vokra walks off to pout but is soon distracted by her brother, Grovlar, who seems to have found a baby snake to play with. It's been a long six years. They've been filled with blessings though. Your wife and children are all healthy and strong, your humble farm yields healthy crops. The animals are all in good condition, and you have nothing you would consider a real problem. A quick pinch to your belly reminds you that you have gotten a little soft in these past few years. While you are still strong as an orc should be, it has been a while since you've actually had to do any vigorous work for extended periods of time. Well, other things call in the life of an orc. You hand the infant to your wife, as you go to chop up some more firewood for the coming night along with other chores that need to be done. You raise the axe, cleaving the piece of wood in half… Later in the day, you sit by the fire with your wife snuggled beside you. The children all snore gently in their beds of animal furs. Gilikia cradles the baby as he whimpers softly. As you sit, you wonder how Valek is doing, if she is even alive. You haven't heard from her since you left the Wister Kingdom. More than likely she has probably moved on with the life of a soldier in search for something else, as most tend to do. > The Next Day It's been a productive day. You've made sure the crops have adequate water, your animals are well fed and some are ready to be slaughtered soon. The sound of hooves hitting the dirt causes your ear to prick. Looking over your shoulder, you see two orcs on horseback. One you recognize as Rolomag, a few years younger than you and being the son of your cousin's sister in law. Something like that anyway. His hair tied up in a bun, similar to what many of the orcs seem to prefer these days, and his face clean shaven. The other one you don't quite recognize, a little orc boy. About ten years of age. "Nolazir," the older orc says, "we need to talk." "Alright, come in," you say. "And whose kid is this?" "Huh? That's my little brother, Rolzagir." You nod. The two brothers hop down off the horse, the older handing the reigns to the younger, who goes to tie the horse to a post. The other orcs in your village live pretty spread out, as everyone farms or at least owns some livestock. "So what's going on Rolomag?" you ask, sitting down on a wooden log. Rolomag sits down as his brother walks over and leans against your house. "Dekard spotted some Imperial patrols hovering near the border," Rolomag says. "We think they are preparing to come through." "For what?" you say. "They already took the elves. What do they want with us?" "Resources, food, animals, us… Hell if I know." Rolomag stands up. "Anyway, the village is meeting up to see what we're going to do about this." "Is there really anything we can do?" you ask. "Maybe they just want to protect their border. I wouldn't put it past some of the border tribes to be raiding people on Imperial lands." "You think that's the case?" "If it is, we need to stop them before the Empire takes it out on all of us." You stand and go to your horse. "No point in waiting around." You, Rolomag, and Rolzagir all ride off to meet with all the other orcs. > You village Meeting All the orcs stand around a giant tree in the village center, waiting for your chief, Greusim, to speak. He stands on a flat rock, looking over everyone. Greusim has the raven black hair that all the orcs have, the sides shaved into a mohawk, with the back end running down to his upper back. White hairs scattered throughout his majestic hair. His face aged and wrinkled, giving him the appearance of a grumpy bulldog, and two sharp teeth protrude up from his under bite, a common trait among orcs. For a moment you and he look at each other, his left eye always perpetually half closed, making him look vexed. Although the chief is one of the calmest orcs you have ever met. "Everyone," he starts, "it has come to my attention that the Imperials are amassing warriors by the borders between our lands." He spreads his arms out. "These very lands that have been our home since Gigalak gave it to the First Born." He pauses for a moment. "We need to make sure these lands are protected, for the well being of all orcs, ourselves, and future generations. " Some of the orcs start calling out for blood, to which Greusim shakes his head. "No, we must watch what the Empire does, we cannot go out looking for a fight. Not this time, we must try to avoid conflict. Now, I will personally lead an expedition team to the border, and we will see what the Imperials are doing. There will likely be other tribes of orcs doing likewise, but if they fight the Empire, we will not interfere." "What happened to all that shit about sticking together?!" an orc cries angrily. "We will only fight if they attack us first, we will not be the ones to start a war with the Empire. It would be deadly, and very long if we did so." You all talk amongst each other. According to chief Greusim, this could be a very precarious situation. You call out. "What if they are protecting their borders from orcs raiding Imperial lands?" you ask. "You know what some of the tribes are like." If you could even call them that, some groups of orcs aren't even proper tribes. Just bands of raiders, thieves, and scum. "If that is the case," the chief says, "we will let them know they do not act on behalf of all of Orcin. Maybe, we would even help the Empire fight them on behalf of the rest of the tribes." There is arguing amongst the orcs. The orcs have banded together to fight external threats, but never with a foreign power to fight other orcs. The affairs of orcs have always been kept to the tribes of orcin. Helping the Empire fight fellow orcs, no matter if they are scum, would be crazy. "So, my friends," Greusim says, "who will aid me on this quest." Many hands go up, the chief peering through the crowd to see who would be best. You wonder if you should raise your hand, the expedition might call for experience and expertise, which you would have. On the other hand, you also don't really want to leave your family for an extended period of time. While Gilikia is strong and hard-working, two kids, an infant, and a multitude of chores would be difficult for her to handle by herself. Also, there is the fact that someone may need to run the village in Greusim's absence, which is also something you would be willing to do. > You raise Your Hand You raise your hand, the chief's eyes widening slightly and a small grin creeps across his face. Seems like he was hoping you would join. The chief starts calling out names, yours and Rolomag's among them. The other orcs shuffle off at the command of Greusim. You go off towards your house, to prepare for the expedition. > You expedition With your supplies ready, you've said your goodbyes to your family and ride over to the village center, where three dozen orcs have gathered. Greusim nods his head towards the mountains, leading the group forward. You ride on for the whole day, passing streams, rivers, fields, and forests. After some days you come to the foot of the mountains. On the other side of this lies the border between Imperial lands and Orcin. Rolomag cuts you a look, raising his eyebrows and gesturing towards the mountains. You wonder why he seems annoyed by the mountains, as he knew you would be traversing them. > You mountain Trail The howling wind's cruel bite pierces your fur and leather clothing. It takes the dying leaves from the trees with it, spiraling down to the depths below. Crags point out accusingly, and cliffs dare you to come too close. You all ride in a single file line, making sure your horses don't slip and fall to certain doom below. Somewhere above, something skitters along the rocks. There is nothing to be seen up there, very strange. Could just be some mountain critters going about their day. Finally, after a whole day of moving painstakingly slow, you get off the steep paths of doom. Ahead the road is far wider, and there is vegetation and pools of water for the horses. Stopping the horses to rest, you all huddle behind the chief as he looks out from the mountain. The mountain curves down into a valley, and even below that are the great forests guarding Orcin. Miles and miles of trees, and eventually you can see large Imperial cities interspersed throughout the forests, hills, mountains, and plains in the distance. To the right, past a large river, are huge plains that are home to the more nomadic orc tribes, as well as the vagabond types roaming Orcin. "Beyond this mountain, where the First Born was created, the Empire seeks out our land," Greusim says while he takes in the fresh mountain air, gesturing to the forests and plains below. "We will give them a warm welcome, or a bloodbath," Greusim says. "It's their choice." The group rests there for the night, leaving guards to watch out for wild creatures or individuals who would do harm. The next few days are full of eventful walks down the mountain. Soon, the path to the valley is in sight. > You through the Valley Silence. No wind. No talking. You all sit on your horses, staring into the valley. Ahead, what appears to be scattered remains of tents and campfires lay around. As you advance towards the deserted campground, your eyes dart back and forth, to every rock and every tree. Something doesn't quite feel right here. As you ride through the camp, you notice some of the tents seem to have been ripped open. There aren't any bodies or anything, and by the camp's design, it belonged to some orcs. On the ground is a tattered blanket, pinned under a tent stake, and almost blowing in the wind. Hopping off the horse, you look underneath it. A dagger made out of bone and hide sits under it, dark red blood sticking to the blade. You hold it over your shoulder, showing it to the chief, who takes it in his hand. "Something definitely came through here," he looks into the trees above, "but what?" "Nothing I want to find out about," Rolomag says, much louder than he should. You put a finger to your lip, looking up to the trees. They sway in the wind, maybe carrying something deadly within them. You're not sure, but for a moment it sounds like something is whispering to you from the trees. Greusim signals the group to mount up and move on, which you do gladly. You all gallop out of the valley, and into the forests ahead. > You first Encounter With the strange campsite far behind you, the group seems to be more at ease. The forest is much more serene and offers some peace and quiet. A stream trickles by, as your horse steps over it, you hear some sounds up ahead. Greusim looks over his shoulder at the group behind him, and you nod at him. You, Greusim, Rolomag, Dekard, and some other orcs all leave your horses to go scout ahead. The main group waits for your return. The unmistakable sounds of violence penetrate your ears. Peering from the foliage, you see two things. The first must be Imperial soldiers, with their flat top helms and robes over what appears to be some kind of silver coat. Cowards. The orcs only use some padding from their leather armor and sometimes studs. Anything more would just weigh a warrior down and keep him from being effective. From what you can see, they have two separate lines of archers by the trees, and in the clearing between them are soldiers on horseback. Ahead, on a rocky hill, a group of orcs seems to be holding their ground, trading arrows with the Imperial archers. Once in a while, an orc taking a shot at one of the horsemen, but always missing. In between two groups lays a slain Imperial, a spear in his back, and a dead orc with the spear still gripped in his hands. The orc has several arrows protruding from his back. Judging by his face paint, it looks like these orcs are one of the lawless bands of orcs. "We need to help them," Rolomag says as he starts forward. You grab him by the shoulder, pulling him back. "Stop. We don't know who started it," you say. "This isn't a proper orc tribe. They're just some vagabonds." "Does it matter? They're still orcs," Rolomag says. "No, Nolazir may be right," Greusim says. "We should let the Imperials know they aren't working on behalf of all of orcin." "Are you really going to listen to this?" Rolomag asks. "Nolazir, the Empire won't care either way. They will blame all of us." "No, we can make peace with them," Greusim says. Greusim looks at you. "You believe me, don't you, Nolazir?" Chief Greusim looks genuinely concerned about whether or not you believe him or not. You look to Rolomag, he raises an eyebrow, not lifting the scowl on his face for a moment. > You talk to the Imperials "We will talk to them," you say. "We can't achieve peace through war, not this time." "Thank you, friend," Greusim says. With this, Greusim leads you all over to the Imperials. You all move slowly, hands in sight, and with Greusim several feet ahead. The Imperial knight ahead jerks his head back as he sees your group. The other horsemen seem alarmed, but ultimately don't do anything. "Friends," Greusim calls out, "we have come to tell you, those lawless do not act on behalf of Orci-" To this day, no one knows where it came from, if it was a stray arrow from the lawless orcs meant for an Imperial knight or an Imperial archer who was too hasty in his actions, but everyone knew it was what started one of the largest conflicts in the history of Velis Brum. Greusim gasps, an arrow piercing his side. Crimson red oozes out of the wound soon after. With a roar, the other orcs charge forward in rage. "Wait," Greusim wheezes out, trying to compose himself. In response, the Imperials charge forth, ready to fight the orcs. The knight who had first seen your group holds his hand out, signaling the other knights. "No, stop," he commands. But the knights just keep charging, and the two groups embroil in deadly combat. > You fight the Horsemen Looking between the groups, you and the knight find each other. He still seems shocked, having tried to stop his men from attacking. As you both make eye contact, you nod at him. Both of you share a resigned look, but know this must be done. You draw your sword, and the knight does likewise. He holds the sword in front of his face, putting his forehead to the hilt for a moment before readying it to fight. You both spur your horses forward. > You charge As you get closer to him, you arc your sword over your head, aiming for his neck. The Imperial soldier slams it away with the flat of his blade and, mid-push, brings his blade back down. The sword cuts through your thick leather armor, biting into your shoulder. You wince and grunt as he pulls his sword, the both of you passing each other and turning in preparation to charge again. Behind him, you see that the orcs seem to have pushed the Imperial horsemen back a bit, and the orcs on the hill have wounded several archers in each column. The battle is going well enough for the orcs. As you charge the Imperial knight again, you consider your next move. > You slice through him with your sword As you ride forward, you prepare to slash into his neck again. You pull the sword over the opposite shoulder of the hand it's in. As the Imperial gets closer, you go for a vicious swing. He twists his wrist, blocking it near the hilt, pushing your sword up. As your blade slides off his, the knight arcs the deadly weapon over his head the opposite way. As you pass each other he swings his sword back. Your mouth gapes open as the tip of the blade digs into your back, cutting across the length of your back. It notably severs your spine. As your horse trots forward you feel a numbness creep from your waist and through your legs. As the horse starts to turn, you begin to feel dizzy, the numbness spreading through the rest of your body. You see the knight watching you, his sword at the ready. You don't even realize that you've fallen off your horse, the numbness finishing spreading through your body. Then, an eternal night. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you get closer to him, you arc your sword over your head, aiming for his neck. The Imperial soldier slams it away with the flat of his blade and, mid-push, brings his blade back down. The sword cuts through your thick leather armor, biting into your shoulder. You wince and grunt as he pulls his sword, the both of you passing each other and turning in preparation to charge again. Behind him, you see that the orcs seem to have pushed the Imperial horsemen back a bit, and the orcs on the hill have wounded several archers in each column. The battle is going well enough for the orcs. As you charge the Imperial knight again, you consider your next move. > You run him through The horses charge forward, the Imperial knight holds his sword out in front of him, ready for whatever may come next. You arc your sword around your head, and you see his arm flex to deflect the strike. As you near striking range, you whip the sword around counter clockwise, pulling your elbow back and plunging forward. The knight manages to knock your sword aside, flicking his wrist and stabbing the tip of his blade into your chest. The momentum causes the tip of the blade to just come out through your back. Pain shoots through your body and you gasp. The force of the sword pushing into you causes you to fall back, but you manage to catch onto your horse, stopping you from falling off. You clutch the wound as the horses circle back around. Looking back you can see the Imperials are starting to overwhelm the orcs. How can this be? There are far more orcs than those human scum. White hot pain shoots through your chest again, and you clutch the wound. Blood sticks to your hand as you pull it away. "Damn it," you say. The Imperial knight twirls his sword, daring you to come at him again. Such arrogance. You decide to oblige him, charging forward. He prepares his sword, expecting you to strike again. This time you pull up your axe, but hold it down behind the horse. You strike with the sword, and he predictably parries it. This time you slam your axe blade into his side, and as you circle back around you smirk as you see that….. There's no blood? You see the spot on his side where you swung the axe, but the robe is just ripped, the silver coat gleaming in the sunlight. Is this some kind of magic coat? Or maybe it is some kind of metal. You've never seen anyone wear metal to avoid battle injuries. You've also never actually seen a human before either. As the knight prepares to charge again, your body begins to feel weak. You're losing blood fast, so you are going to have to finish this or he will. The knight charges towards you… > You throw your axe at the Knight (W) You sit there panting, and for a moment you see that the orcs on the hill have finally come down, and helped turn the fight around for the orcs. The soldier readies his sword, and you lift your axe, hefting it forward. It flies, whipping through the air. The blade buries into the horses forehead, it lets out a pained neigh and drops forward. The knight flies forward and off the horse, crying out as he does. You hear a crunch as he hits the ground, and he rolls to a stop. Trotting forward, you prepare your sword to finish him. The knight grunts and feebly tries to stand up, but one of his arms is horribly bent. He loses his balance and falls before he can get up. You feel dizzy as you raise your sword, pain shooting through your arm. Before you can strike him down, you hear a loud cry emanating out from behind you. > You for the Emperor! (W) You turn your horse, clutching your wounds. From out of the trees, an enormous group of humans comes rushing out, screaming and yelling. You notice they are quite different from the knights. While some of them have the silver coats, most of them just have some kind of padding and the Imperial soldier robes. Their boots, gloves, and helmets don’t look anywhere near as nice as the knights'. These must be the lowly soldiers of the Empire, but there sure are a lot of them. Wincing, you turn as you see the lawless orcs bring up a cry, charging towards the humans. You watch as your comrades also charge the humans, so you decide you should as well. Galloping forward, you prepare your axe. A battle of strength versus numbers, you decide that Gigalak will decide the winner today. You trample a couple of humans, their cries ringing out. The axe bites into another, and as he dies his sword nicks your arm. You slash, hack, batter, and even punch one. A dying soldier cries out, digging his dagger into your side. You gasp and slam your axe handle into his eye, a squishing sound resounds as blood squirts out and onto your leg. He lets out a blood-curdling scream as he flails, soon going limp and falling to the ground. With the dagger still in your side, you circle back, needing to fight through a few more soldiers to do so. Panting, you see that the battle is being lost for the orcs, but some still fight on, despite their injuries and overwhelming odds. Chief Greusim charges into the middle of it, laying waste to soldier after soldier. His mighty club denting helmets and cracking skulls, breaking arms and busting jaws. You watch as he cries out, someone plunging their sword into his side. Gasping, you ride forward to save him. But there are too many soldiers to fight through, and before you can reach him the grunts pull Greusim from his horse, stabbing, slashing, punching, and beating. You see his own club being raised to be used against him. All the other orcs in your tribe watch as the chief goes down, along with the other orcs he had around him. There's just too many, you'll never fight through them all. "Fall back! Fall back!" some orc cries out. As you all do so, the lawless orcs seem shocked as to why. Before they can get away, the Imperial troops have swept them up and begin to butcher most of them. Few escape, and you even swing one onto your horse as you ride away. You trample and hack several Imperial soldiers on your way out. You all ride into the forest, lucky to have escaped death on this day. The same cannot be said for many others. You exchange glances with Rolomag, who nods and pokes his chin to the valley. Although you don't like the idea, you all will have to go there to recover and make plans…. > You new Problems You sit there by the fire. Rolomag sits across from you, taking a swig from a flask of orcish whiskey before handing it to you. You gladly accept, the bitter substance burning your throat as it goes down. The camp is silent except for the tribeless orcs squabbling over something. "We're gonna have to go back," Rolomag says. "What? Back where?" you ask. "The village. We need more orcs. We have to get these Imperials out of our lands." "I don't think it's going to work so well," you say, "there's so many of them." "What's wrong with you?" Rolomag says, "I used to hear stories about you from returning orcs in our village." "That was years ago. This is now. Greusim was right. We can't fight them." "Yeah, well those animals tore him apart. It's our job to get vengeance." You sit and stare into the fire, realizing the Imperials are probably already marching further into Orcin. Grunting as you stand, you walk over to the wild group of lawless orcs. "Who of you is your leader?" you ask. "I am!" one orc cries as he stands. "No, I am!" another yells. They both start brawling, savagely punching and wrestling each other. You shake your head and look to the rest. A tall orc stands, one tooth protruding up from his underbite, the other chipped, warpaint in the shape of a red handprint on his face. His raven black hair runs wild along his head, the sides shaved as is popular with warring orcs. "I am Grolik," he says, "leader of the Red Handed orcs band." You extend your hand and shake his in the traditional orc handshake. "I am grateful for your assistance," Grolik says. "We probably wouldn't have made it out of there." "We orcs need to stick together," you say, "but I wonder. How did this all start?" Grolik looks to the side and shuffles his feet. "We….uhh, we thought they were invading and tried to stop them." You squint your eyes at him. "You weren't raiding Imperial villages on their side of the border?" you ask. "Well…uh….no?" he says. "You realize you've put Orcin in jeopardy," you say. "We can probably work something out with the Empire," Grolik says. "Hell, they probably think they've won." "I have half a mind to turn you over to them," you say, "but I just want to get this all settled, and go back home." Grolik laughs hard at this. "What? Have you gotten soft?" he asks, "what kind of orc are you?" Before he can react, your slam your fist into his face, bowling him over. Some Red Hands grab their nearest weapons and stand up. Several of your tribesmen prepare for a fight as well. "No, no. It's alright," Grolik says. "Don't worry about him. He's just a fool." Grolik snarls as he stands. "But if you ever do that again," he says, "it won't end well for you." You just watch as he goes back to his spot next to the fire and guzzles some alcohol. Grunting, you walk back over to Rolomag. "Just as I thought," you say. "We shouldn't even be involved. They started this mess." Rolomag's eyes widen for a moment before going back to staring sleepily at the fire. "We still lost good friends there," he says. "We need to right this." The next day, Dekard and three other orcs ride back to the village to get some help. You're sure some of the orcs will be happy to have some fighting to do. Although you can't be sure where this will lead, you will be happy to keep the Imperials away. You sit back, closing your eyes to rest. > Two Months Later... The wind plays along your hair, the warm morning sunshine gracing your face. The rocky outcrop you lay upon offering you a complete view of the Imperial camp ahead. The past two months had been spent watching and tracking the Imperials. Their move into Orcin has been slow, and, other than a few minor fights with other random lawless bands, they have not done much. You watch soldiers milling about, their purple and black standards dotting the camp. Stern officers watch younger soldiers and recruits train, practice, and do drills. Oddly, it looks much like an orcish war band preparing for battle. Only, the humans have a lot more wagons and crates of supplies than orcs, who mostly live off the land as they go. The camp of soldiers still outnumbers your group, even with back up from the camp and some more tribeless orcs rallying to the Red Handed cause. Grolik's band are even more impatient and bloodthirsty than regular orcs. Grolik sits behind you, mumbling something as he sharpens his axe blade. His plan is just to march in and start slaughtering people, but you know you'll only be overwhelmed and killed. These soldiers are too numerous and too skilled for those tactics. You're going to have to go with another plan, somewhat against your nature, but maybe it'll help win this fight. Almost on cue, a column of soldiers marches onto the road running through the camp. They all have their helmets and silver coats, as well as varying degree of light weapons. "Humans sure do dress strangely for battle," you say. Leading the column is a knight on a horse, looking very similar to the knights you first encountered. You signal the orcs around you, slowly making your way down the rocky hill. "Come on," Grolik complains. "Let's charge 'em!" "No, we must wait." Putting your finger to your lips, you follow the Imperials as they move through the forest. They move quite slowly, and some don't really seem to even be paying attention. > You circle Your orcs faithfully carry out your plan, most moving ahead and some around the Imperial soldiers, until you have created a c-shape around them. Every orc has the same tools for fighting these humans. As they march forward, you prepare to throw one of your spears. Lifting it, you watch as the knight stops and looks to his right. As you chuck the spear, he looks ahead. Somehow he manages to duck and slip off the horse, hitting the ground and rolling before the spear can hit him. You watch as it harmlessly bounces off a soldiers helmet. Once an eerie silence, the area now erupts with men and orcs shouting, as orcs fire arrows relentlessly at the soldiers. As you notch an arrow, the knight lays down behind his fallen horse. You observe the arrows and most spears bouncing off the silver coats they wear. Although some are killed when they are hit in spots the coat doesn't cover, such as arms, legs, and their faces. You are surprised to see one spear actually pierce the armor, but it can't have gone too deep as the soldier is still standing. The soldiers hide behind their shields and armor, most of the projectiles becoming useless. The orcs get sick of all this shooting and decide to charge the Imperials. As you draw your axe and run forth, you see the Imperials making a line of shields with other Imperials standing between them and firing arrows through. The orcs are pierced by arrows as their axes and swords bounce uselessly off the shields. Getting closer, you watch an Imperial bash an orc with his shield before slicing through his padded leather shirt with his sword. You rush in, throwing your shoulder into one of them. The human doesn't quite fall, but you ram your axe head's spike into his face. He cries out in pain and falls, and you barely have time to react before other soldiers close the gap. You leap back as three blades are swung and jabbed at you. > You break While some Imperials have been killed, they are quickly whittling down your numbers. To your left, you see the knight caught out of the line, trying to rally his soldiers. You watch as an orc chops at his head with an axe, but it bounces off his helmet. The knight rams his sword blade through the orc's armpit, pushing the dying orc off. Another orc slashes, the blade harmlessly skidding across the helmet. Before the orc is cut down, he slams the flat of the axe on the soldier's helm, slightly denting it. You look to the Imperial with the protruding spear from his silver coat, and the knights dented helmet. You get an idea… > You smash a rock on the knight You run up to the knight, parrying a jab, tackling him and throwing his sword to the ground. The knight rolls to the side, slamming his fist into your stomach as he comes up to a crouch. It barely affects you, but he reaches his sword. As he grabs it, he stumbles and, seeing your moment, you grab a large rock. The knight twirls around, crying out and trying to take your head. You duck, the blade swooshing over your head. With a mighty roar, you stand, slamming the rock onto his helmet. The sound of metal crashing attacks your ears. The Empire's knight crumples to the ground, a large dent in his helm. You kneel down, slamming the rock into his helmet again and again. The helmet crushing inward unnaturally and the man's body spasming as blood seeps out from under his helmet. > You retreat The orcs give a cry as the knight dies, and the Imperials try to execute a controlled retreat. Some orcs mimic you in using force to crush the helmets and pierce the silver coats. You notice though, that most of the weapons used seem heavily damaged after. Picking up an Imperial shield, you catch up to some unfortunate and ram the shield into his helmet, denting it. You slam the point of the shield into his face until it is a pink, bloody, unrecognizable mass of flesh. At this point, the soldiers are in full flight, attempting to reach the safety of the camp. It is not too much longer before all of the Imperials lay butchered on the ground. Panting and covered in sweat and blood, you lean against a tree. You watch as the orcs loot the corpses, taking Imperial weapons. Curious, you walk over to one of the bodies, removing his silver coat. It clanks together as you move it about and is heavier than you thought. Peering closely, it appears as though it is made up of many little rings of metal. You fold it up and stash it inside an Imperial soldiers satchel, which you also take. You assist the orcs with collecting the dead and wounded, intent on better preparing for your next encounter... > Two Years Later... The past two years have been successful in repelling the Empire. While you wish it didn't have to come to this, you know that these humans can't freely move their army around Orcin without consequence. Shortly after ambushing that patrol two years ago, you led the orcs into a nighttime raid on the camp. Your warriors cut throats, burned tents and supplies, and left few survivors. Since then, the human generals have sent more and more troops to try to contain the situation. Once this had happened, you enlisted the help of a couple of the other surrounding orc tribes. Using your newfound guerilla tactics, you managed to keep the skirmishes to the forests at the borders of Orcin. In the meantime, your fellows had created some advancements to cracking the metal shells of the Imperials. Heavy tipped arrows and spears for piercing the chainmail armor, as you have since learned was the name for their "silver coats". You had also taken the heavy wooden clubs and trimmed down the large wooden portion for a couple metal rings wrapped around the tip. This would make them easier to swing, and it is easier to dent Imperial helmets, as well as bruise and break limbs. Also, having taken some of the chainmail, you and the others have learned how to make your own in recent months. Although you were not able to make steel, you used iron to make chain rings and studs woven into your leather padded clothing. This had decreased the chances of death for your orcs, forcing the Imperials to get more creative with their killing methods as you have had to. For a while, you had the upper hand until they developed heavier weapons that could easily pierce mail. Neither the orc tribes nor the Imperials have made any attempts at establishing peace or any sort of treaty. It just seems as though these fights have become normal for both sides by now, although the council has sent you several messages asking to make a treaty. You always send the messenger back, telling them to come do it if they are worried about it. It isn't that you do not want peace, but the Imperials have become pretty skittish at the sight of orcs, each side shoots first and asks questions later. > You interruption Two loud voices shout just outside of your tent. Pushing the flaps aside you step out and are not surprised to see that Rolomag and Grolik are arguing again. While Grolik was a problem for a while, he seemed to warm up after you unknowingly saved his cousin's life a few months ago. You watch as the two bicker like some old married couple. "Grolik, you're a fool if you think we can push into Imperial territory," Rolomag shouts. "My orcs haven't looted anything in weeks. We're getting restless." "See, I can agree on invading soldier camps," Rolomag replies, "but actually going into their home villages and towns is asking for more than we can handle." "It's only a matter of time before they start attacking ours," Grolik says. "Once they realize we've been trading with the surrounding neutral villages, they'll start wiping them out. And there are innocent people in those villages too." "Why do you care? You're worried the Empire is going to steal your victims?" "Of course I care, they're fellow orcs damn it! Besides, we only raid fellow bands of 'tribeless orcs', like ourselves." "So you've never raided a village?" "Well….maybe we've stolen crops and cattle here and there. But that's survival, and we usually don't murder anyone. Besides, we wouldn't want to bring the wrath of the council on us." "But you have no problem stirring up the Empire?" Rolomag asks. "It was the same thing with them. We stole crops and cattle when we needed. I thought if anything they would just bolster their defenses, not send a damn legion in here." Grolik seems to realize he has stepped too close to Rolomag and sighs as he takes a step back. "Besides," he says, "they're not completely innocent. They've made dozens of trespasses in years past." You stand and watch, a scowl on your face. They both are right to some degree. It seems that you can either escalate the conflict or remain in this little stalemate. You have also been made aware that the goblins living in the Southwest of Orcin, who have always been rivals with the lawless, have become bolder. After years of constant skirmishing with the lawless orc bands, the goblins have gotten more organized, made better equipment, and even have moved further into Orcin. This is an issue for everyone as the lawless orcish tribes and the goblins have usually kept too many dwarves, humans, and more adventurous ogres and other invasive creatures from coming too far in from there. While you are sure there are smaller pockets of goblins and other creatures in the orc lands, these goblins have only increased in number. Now, with the lawless focused on the Mannate Empire, and the goblins moving away from the Southwestern border, you've heard of dwarves making a steady advance into the lands. They mostly just mine for raw materials, the only military presence being small teams to protect the miners. You are aware that many of the dwarves have a partnership with the Empire, and, at any moment, they could push into the hills and plains and into the heart of Orcin. > You issues at hand Stopping your thoughts, you decide to intervene before Rolomag and Grolik come to blows. "Enough," you say. "We will figure all of this out." It seems that you have become the unofficial chief of your tribe since Greusim's doom, and even his son Galik hasn't tried to challenge this. It has its benefits, but also its own headaches. "Well, Nolazir," Rolomag says, "what will it be?" "Neither for now," you say. "We need to amass strength before we do anything else. We can probably keep them in this stalemate for a while." "You need to act now," Grolik says. "I think you've become complacent, and that never ends well in these situations." "Grolik," you say, "while we have many orcs, I don't think we have enough to keep this up for too much longer. All the humans need to do is galvanize a couple of legions, and they could wipe these mountains with our corpses." You grunt and spread your arms out for a moment. "We can't risk escalating right now," you say, "but we also need to keep up the appearance of being a larger force, and we know this won't keep up for long." You gesture for the two to enter your tent, where you have a large map of Orcin pinned to a wooden table. "See here?" You point on the map. "The goblins started out here. The lawless orcs drove them way out over here." Grolik grunts in surprise, apparently unaware that they had covered so much ground. "We need to either wipe them out," you say, "or make a treaty, which I like better." "What?" Grolik says. "They're filth, scavengers, and cowards." "They're organized," you say, "and like you and your lawless tribes, they have kept the dwarves away. If we can make a treaty between them and the lawless tribes, you all should be able to live close enough, back where they originally were." You point back to where the goblins originally lived. "Once we have made peace with them," you say, "your orcs can enjoy whatever spoils they take from the Imperials. We'll even help you establish farms and trade with the rest of the orcs." "Why would we want that?" Grolik asks. "No more hungry winters. Besides, don't think I don't know what you all do for food when you're desperate." Grolik's eyes dart to the ground, his face wincing for a brief moment. "What are you talking about?" he says, not so much asking. "You know damn well. It's against Gigalak." "It was just survival…" Grolik says. "Yeah, well we're not animals… or wendigos." There is a silence as Grolik shifts uncomfortably. Rolomag just pretends he is not paying attention as he studies the map. "Now," you say, "while I deal with the goblins, can you gather some of the lawless tribes?" Grolik still looks ashamed, but he nods. "If I promise them some loot, food, and some autonomy… then yeah, I can." "Good, now can you and your best go handle that?" Grolik nods and walks out of the tent. After a few moments, Rolomag speaks. "Damn," he says, "didn't know things were that desperate for them. Now I guess I can see why they loot." "Yeah, well we will put an end to that soon enough." You sigh and grab a pack of supplies. "Rolomag, stay here and watch over the camp," you say. "Where are you going?" he asks. "I'm taking a group, we're going to go take care of the goblins, one way or another." With this you exit the tent, gathering some trusted orcs for the trip. > One Month Later... The last several weeks have yielded little results. After reaching the deserted camp of the goblins, you can only assume they had moved deeper into Orcin. At this point, you're wondering if going total war on them wouldn't be a bad idea. While orcs do not always completely waste their enemies, conflict can get messy and shit happens. This might become one of those instances if the goblins keep pissing you off. As you travel deeper into the hills, the light drizzle overhead turns into a heavy pelting. At first, you see one, then two dim fires in the distance. The fields and hills slowly turning to marsh and then swamp as the trees in the outskirts give heed to many mysteries and dangers. Since the beginning, the orcs have always stayed well enough away from the swamps of their own homeland. Except for some light traveling on the outskirts, there has always been some common knowledge that something terrifying resides deep within. It would seem that, perhaps, the goblins welcome the unknown fear that the swamplands bring. You look to your orcs, signaling them to travel through the swamps and towards what might be the goblin's camp. At first, you just see some lamps tacked onto the trees, but soon you see the campfires ahead. After some time, you finally reach the camp. It consists of wooden huts, bridges, and walkways to evade the murky waters. Several goblins sound a horn as they see you, all preparing to defend themselves. You raise your hands, signaling you are not a threat. The goblins seem to be reluctant until one comes forward. "Hey, stop!" it cries. "I recognize you… aren't you the orc chieftain?" "Yes." you say. "Where is your chief?" The goblins all look at each other, seemingly whispering amongst themselves. You slowly reach down to your side, clutching your axe. After what seems like a long time, one of the goblins finally steps down and around to the closest walkway. This one seems to be wearing some sort of fur shawl, the skulls of various animals and other races adorning his belt. What appears to be a large snake tooth hangs from a necklace on his neck. His black hair is tied up into a messy knot which seems common for goblin shamans. "Chief Gru'zikular is not taking guests right now," the goblin says as he starts to turn around. "Yeah, well you're encroaching on our territory," you say. "I'm here to ask you to go back to where you came from." The goblin turns, his yellow eyes appear to be gleaming. A sick smile spreads across his face. You frown, knowing that something isn't right about this particular goblin. This one seems different from the rest. "What? Go back to those hellholes you call caves?" he asks. "I don't care if you go into the caves or not. The dwarves are creeping into that area, as well as other things. You used to keep them away, and your presence would probably slowly force them to back off." The goblin just stares at you. "If you go back, it can be beneficial for all of us," you continue. "I can even get the tribeless orcs to leave you all alone. You can build proper houses such as the ones you have here." "You see, orc," the goblin says, "these swamps had always been the homes of the goblin people. We were never supposed to be cave dwellers as everyone seems to think." The goblin raises his hand as the other goblins start to join in. They immediately go silent. "I demand to see your leader," you say. "I will not listen to this foolishness." The strange look on the goblin's face intensifies. His teeth showing as his sick smile widens. "As you have asked, so shall it be," he says. "Just East, further in, you can find our leader." The goblin gestures, showing the way. "I advise you though, green one, the Master's work is best not interfered with." You furrow your brow, wondering at the meaning. You look at the whole group of goblins, who, compared to this one, seem like they are more even-minded. Also, you seem pretty sure that this emissary for their chief may have been threatening you all. But he is just a goblin, you could crush him if needed. "Tell me, who are you?" you ask. "I am the Shaman, Rozibu," he says, "speaker for Gru'zikular and humble servant of the Master." You squint at him. Perhaps it would be best to return and have the tribeless bands inhabit the lands the goblins used to live in. It would accomplish a dual purpose; each group gets their own respective territory and stops fighting, and it is not like the goblins are using any land that you are not. Also, the tribeless orcs could probably keep the dwarves out. As you stare at the forest beyond, you get a feeling, not of immediate danger from the goblins standing before you, but a dark foreboding. You and the goblin stare each other down, the whole time you think about what you should do. [Add link for Reign of Amortia] > You turn Back Sensing that continuing on this mission would be foolish, you begin to leave. "I don't think that will be necessary," you say as you nod your head. Your orcs protest, but you hold up a hand to silence them. The goblin just smirks and bids you farewell. A sense of relief sweeps over you as the horse trots out of the marsh. There was something weird going on there, and you don't want to know what it was. You have more important things to worry about right now. You hear a couple of the other orcs express their relief in getting out of there as well. Soaking up all the little conversation, you are content to sit quietly and enjoy the trip back to your camp. A couple weeks later, you have arrived, many orcs welcome you and your group back. The journey back was much shorter, as you didn't have to spend any time searching; like you needed to do on the way to the goblin camp. On the other side of the camp, there appears to be a large addition, namely dozens and dozens of tents and large groups of orcs. You can tell from their tattoos, paints, clothing, and general demeanor that these are the lawless tribes that Grolik had gathered in the last month or so. Going around the camp, you gather Rolomag, Grolik, Galik, Dekard, and a few other orcs. Bringing them into the tent, you start to go through plans for fighting the Empire… > One Year Later Over the course of the last year, things have been going smoothly for you and your army. Some of the lawless orcs have begun to push the dwarves out of Orcin. As per your instructions, they haven't used methods that were too over the top. You don't want to attract the might of the dwarven armies, and other than a few small skirmishes there has not been a whole lot of trouble for them. The Imperial patrols and camps have increased, but they have not taken any ground. In fact, they lost some serious distance a few months ago. You led a large assault on a couple of the camps, then about a week later some of your scouts were overrun by a surprise Imperial patrol. Among them was one of your best scouts, an orc named Ruzmar. In retaliation for the dead scouts, you staged another large attack. Unlike the last one, you managed to recover a lot of loot and supplies, while killing multiple Imperial soldiers. In the meantime, you have not heard from the goblins. They have not moved any further into Orcin, and they haven't moved back to the hills and plains. There were reports of some minor earthquakes in the area, but nothing after that. Several of the Council members visited your camp recently as well. Some congratulated you, and others scorned and chastised you for fighting the Mannate Empire so doggedly. In the last couple of months, the Council got the Empire to agree to stop the fighting. While you didn't agree with this, you have respected the armistice. From what your messenger has told you, the Council and Imperial ambassadors are at a stalemate in terms of negotiating a treaty. You have just taken this time to better arm and train your orcs, for when the Empire continues the fight, you will be ready. The peace has allowed many of the orcs to take an extended leave to return to their homes though. Many have farms, cattle, families, and other important endeavors to watch over. So until it is time to recall your orcs, a skeleton crew patrols the mountains and borderlands. > You home Again After a long day of taking care of household duties, you sit and watch your children. Grovlar and Vokra have gotten big. It seems they do so considerably every time you have taken a trip back during these last three years. It has been a whole nine years since you finished fighting the Wister Elves, and since the last time you saw Valek. While you do take care of home and village life, messengers bring regular reports to you on the state of the conflict with the Empire. Not much has changed in the last few days, of course. You are actually content with it being so, and, who knows, maybe the Council will come to an agreement with the Empire. Gilikia, your wife, comes outside. She kisses you before looking at the children at play. Little Lagrik stumbles around, trying to keep up with the two older kids. "When is this all going to end?" she asks. "You know we need you here, Nolazir." "I am doing what needs to be done," you say. "When it is all over, I will return home, and I will stay here." "They won't be small forever. Don't you want to watch them grow up? And what if you…." She trails off, not able to say the obvious concern on her mind. You turn, taking her hand in yours. "I've been through too much for too long to let anyone or anything take you all away from me." You say as you stand up and embrace her, and, stepping back, you continue to hold her hands. "I have been blessed with you, my beautiful wife, and these healthy, strong children," you say. "If it weren't for you all those years ago… well, you pretty much saved me from what I would have become." You step a little bit closer. "If Gigalak didn't intend for us to be together," you say, "he would have never let me off those muddy fields in the Elven kingdom, but he did, and I am grateful to have you all. I know he will return me to you every time." "Well…how do you know?" she asks. "Because, while I may be off fighting in the mountains and off finding the Imperials in the forests... my heart is here, with you all, and an orc always returns to where his heart is." She leans into you, squeezing with all her might. "I love you," she says. "I know you'll always return to me." You smile and hold her, as you turn and watch the children playing… and once in a while eating an insect on the ground… > Six Months Pass The last few months find you and your army in the forests by the border. Reports had come of a legion of Imperials slowly making their way to the border. In the meantime, you have amassed assistance from a few more orc tribes. All the while, the Imperials wait, and your forces grow stronger and stronger. You wait, while the rain pelts your face. Every orc is silent as the ground starts to become muddy at the intensity of the precipitation. You signal the orcs to move forward, a slow trod through the mud. The Imperials are moving dozens of soldiers through, but if all goes to plan they'll never make it to the staging ground. By the time you reach them, you are hoping their supply wagons will be stuck in the mud, and their horses antsy at every trick and sound of the forests. When the time is right, you will strike, and make them pay. If the Imperials seek to break their treaty, you will show them the consequences. You all have your padded leather gambesons over your chainmail, extra leather straps tied around to reduce some of the clinking the chain tends to make. Riding forward, you catch Grolik's eye, who nods at you. Rolomag as well, who winks and pats his heart with his palm in a sign of respect. Coming up to a ridge, you signal your forces to stop. Creeping low through the foliage, you see the Imperial columns. As suspected, their wagons seem to mostly be stuck in the mud. At your signal, your archers start their painstaking crawl over to the ridgeline. The other third, slowly bring their horses onto both sides of the columns, preparing their charge. On the other side across from you, some of the lawless orcs should be preparing their attack on the Mannate soldiers. The cavalry orcs should still be fighting their way through by the time the archers are done, and when that happens they will slide down the slope. You don't want to run the risk of accidentally shooting your cavalry, so the archers will have to work fast, but by then the Imperials will be surrounded, and you should be able to crush them. As the rain intensifies a bit, their horses get even antsier. As the lightning strikes, the soldiers look into the dark forests, fear apparent. When the thunder claps, their officers bark orders to hurry and move the wagons from the mud. > You stay with the Archers When the heavens are silent, the wind stops blowing for a moment, and the trees stop their near eternal sway, a single arrow soars. The Imperial officer, in the middle of yelling his commands. Lurches forward, his face curling up as the arrow pierces his chainmail, sticking through his heart. Only a moment after, dozens of arrows are unleashed upon the hapless soldiers. Their cries ring out, almost drowned out by the thunder of Gigalak's wrath. Many soldiers lay wounded, and others lay fallen. They try to hide behind their wagons, some even shooting back. You lay low as some of their arrows pierce the foliage, a few lucky shots downing some of your comrades. An Imperial crouches behind a wagon, your arrow ready to be released and show the Imperial his doom. As the lawless fire their arrows, the Imperial screams as arrows slam into his back. On both sides, Imperial and Orcish cavalry alike duel on, the clamor raging. At your signal, you and the orcs charge down the slope. You slide through the mud, running as you touch the bottom. Some arrows happen to miss you, swept off course by Gigalak's hand, and you break into the soldiers. The first one you slash with your sword, his blood oozing from his coat and covering the top of his hauberk. A swooshing sound comes from up ahead, a soldier's sword clinking against your leather padding and chainmail as you dodge the blow. With a roar you embed your axe into his shoulder. His chain catches most of it, but you ram your sword pommel into his jaw. His face being reduces to a broken jaw and a bloody face, you turn to deflect blows from his other comrades. A spearman downs the orc next to you. Noticeably, his armor covers his face, two slits over where his eyes are, and a grate over his mouth. He spins and twirls, intent on tripping you up. You are too experienced and would not fall for this trick. With a hop you avoid this maneuver, charging towards him as he brings the spear up and around. As your foe tries to bring the spear down, you catch it in the shoulder of your axe. Pushing it away, you step forward and jab your sword. He grunts as the tip pierces his armor, and he accidentally drops the spear. Taking this moment, you charge and swing. Two other Imperials rush in to his aid, one nearly beheading you. You roar and charge forward, ramming the sword all the way through his gut. The second Imperial nicks your arm, and you slam the hammer side of your axe into his head. The spearman draws a dagger, jabbing at your side. It bounces off the chainmail, and seeing this, he and the other soldier charge you. With the axe you deflect a dagger blow, ramming your shoulder into the spearman. The other Imperial tries to aim for your throat, but, with a quick parry, your axe lands in his face. A gurgling cry comes out, stymied by the blade in his face. A squelching sound comes from behind, and you swing around just in time. The spearman lifted a sword from a fallen comrade and stepped into jam it through your back. Luckily you sidestep this and, grabbing his wrists, you twist the sword from his grasp. He grunts as you force him to drop it, and slam one hand into his face, exposing his throat. With a mighty cry, you send your fist into his exposed throat. A pained choke coming from behind the helmet, he steps back and grips his throat. He falls to one knee, his windpipe crushed, and his adam's apple dislodged. You turn your attention to other combatants as the spearman struggles with choking to death… > You forward The Imperials try to hold out, managing to down a few orcs, but, in the end, they are overwhelmed. You stand, stabbing an Imperial with one of their own spears repeatedly. His friend, clutching an injury, swipes his blade at you. You step back to dodge and ram the spear into his throat. Gurgling as he goes down he swings once more; his blade scratches your hand but not too deep. Twisting and pulling the spear, you yank it from his corpse. You run forward, seeing the orcs beating down a group of Imperials. The last few men seem terrified, and one not older than seventeen trembles. If you could hear over the sound of the fighting, you would be able to hear his knees causing his hauberk to clink together. Before you can reach them, the rest of the orcs have stabbed and battered them into oblivion. Some orcs ride into the forest to find the fleeing soldiers. You pant, watching the massacre taking place all around. Wounded men cry out, and some lay there dying quietly. An orc approaches you, the frenzy of blood-shed just starting to wear off. "What shall we do with the wounded?" he asks. You sit there and think for a moment. Orcs have never really taken prisoners, and you don't have the supplies to care for their wounded. You are worried about having enough medical supplies for your own as it is. Although it might help to take some of them ransom, there is not too much that you would need, so maybe just leaving them to die would be better. > You finish them off "Finish off the wounded," you cry. "Leave no survivors!" At this, the orcs seem to go into a frenzy again as they start clubbing, hacking, and slashing the wounded. Some orcs even loot the dying men before slicing off their scalps. Stepping forward to do your dirty work, you flip over an injured soldier with your foot. Placing the sword tip to his throat, the man tries to talk but his voice seems hoarse. He sputters as rainwater barrages his mouth, and he soon closes it to die quietly. With your foot on his chest, he feebly grabs your calf. Snarling, you push the sword down as the tip slowly pushes through. Blood oozes out of the neck wound, the man sputtering and choking on his blood, and the blade penetrating through. In a matter of moments, his hands stop feebly hitting your leg as they go limp. In the large crowd of orcs, you see Grolik. He pushes a spear tip into a dying human, his face twisting into a mixture of anger and shame. As Grolik pulls the spear out, you catch his glance. Guilt written all over his face. You were not aware that an orc such as he could have such emotions. It comes as a bit of a shock to you, but sometimes tough things must be done to preserve victory. While killing the helpless is not a task for the faint of heart, it must take its toll on some. Rolomag sits on a rock, using a rag to nurse a gash on his cheek. He seems tired, and just sits and watches the other orcs. A good amount of whom are helping your injured orcs. Sighing you decide it is a job best fit for them, as you have other work to do. You wander off to continue… > You aftermath, Six Months Later These past six months after the battle where you ambushed the soldiers in the mud have been brutal. You continued to push through, fighting patrol after patrol. It seems that after some time, the humans have wised up, laying counter traps and ambushes. These did not work too favorably for them at first, but they soon developed their skills. Unlike them, you don't have hundreds and hundreds of recruits. You and your army are tired, theirs is often quite fresh. These skirmishes have dragged out over the last four years, and while they are not as intense as the four years of war you experienced with the Wister Elves, it is taking its toll. You need more troops, and you need them fast. It may be time to unite all of the orc tribes, as this concerns them as well. While they are not fully involved, they have not been entirely complacent. Some have traveled far to join you and your warriors, believing it is in the best interest of Orcin. You have heard of reports of other armies such as yours gathering up. Having tried to correspond with them, there have been delays, or the messages never arrive. The increased Imperial presence must be contributing to this. It seems that every month brings more and more of them on your doorstep. You know that soon, they will be ready for a giant push. The ambush and sabotage missions can only hold them back for so long. While you do technically have your troops on some kind of rotation, it hasn't been enough. The only real reason for the rotation is that you and many other orcs have homes and families to take care of. Many of them have family and children old enough to help out on their farms and their ways of living; which you believe should at least help them in their home efforts. The winters have been especially brutal these last few years though. The only consolation is that, as orcs, you all tend to live off the land when agriculture is not available, which has helped immensely. Your recent decision to bring all of your warriors back into the fight has caused grumbling from many. They do not rebel though, as they know they work for the good of all of orc-kind. While there are some that don't agree with everything you are doing, such as Galik and sometimes Grolik, you suppose that is bound to happen in these situations. Leaving your tent, you go to check up on things... > You by the Border Standing on a rocky ridge, you watch over a large clearing. On the other side is a forest leading from Orcin and into the Imperial lands. Behind you stands Galik, who seems to be lost in thought. "Just a few miles out there," you say, "lies the Imperial homeland." Galik raises an eyebrow and steps forward, standing at your side. "Will we be waging war in their home? As they have done to us?" "No," you say, "they have legions staged in those forests. Going in now would be suicide." "So what, we're just going to sit here and let them take back the land we just kicked them out of?" "Yes… to a point. See this field? They'll never cross it on our watch, but they will try." You sigh and pat Galik's shoulder. "I need you all to watch over everything for me." "What? Are you leaving us?" "Not for long," you say. "I need to get some help. Unite the tribes." "That's impossible, they'll never agree to join us. If the Empire kills us all, well, they don't want to be held responsible as well." "No, they'll see reason," you say. "This affects all of us." "Nolazir," Galik says, "if you don't move us into their homeland soon, I will do it." "Don't, you fool. This would put all these past few years of fighting to an end, and it wouldn't be good for us." You point to Rolomag who is standing nearby. "Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid." With that, you mount your horse and ride back into the lands of Orcin. While you have left a few trusted orcs in charge, you hope not to take too long. Galik's impatience could spell doom for the Orcish army. Rolomag certainly will obey your orders. You are not sure of Grolik though, he has been scarce the last couple of days. He seems to be leading his orcs from inside his tent. While you are not sure of the outcome, you know you will fight the Mannate Empire until the bitter end. Breathing in, you take in the air of the forests as you make your way to the tribes. > You rising Part Two One Month Later… The large wooden gates of the village creak open, the surrounding orcs casting suspicious glances your way. A few even have their hands on some weapons nearby, and you do not blame them. Riding in through the mist which veils dawn's light, you appear almost as a specter of death. Lifting the hood, you give your brethren a weary nod. A few of their eyes widen as they recognize you, some stand unsure of who you are, and some just shrug and go back to their business. One orc approaches you. "Who are you?" "I am Nolazir, surrogate chief of the River Tribe in place of Chief Greusim." The orc's eyes widen. "It's been four years, and you have not found a replacement? Does he have any sons?" You nod. "One, but he is young and impatient. I will stand in until he has learned how to do his duty with patience and wisdom." The orc scoffs at the unthinkable act of leaving a tribe largely chief less. "What is it that you seek?" "I want to speak with your chief," you say. The orc shrugs and gives you directions to the chief's hut. That was a bit easier than you thought. As you ride forward, the large hut comes into view. You are impressed to see that it actually has two stories to it. Most orcs chose to build one floor but with a wider house, although you are aware the council has at least three floors. Pushing this useless information out of your mind, you hop off your horse. Your legs are stiff from the long ride, and you take a moment to stretch them. Muffled yelling comes out from within the doors of the chief's hut. Splinters of wood fly as the door bursts open. A hapless orc youth falls out and tumbles down the stairs. A large, broad orc steps out. His dark mane falling past his shoulders, two sharp teeth protrude from his bottom lip. His right eye looks like it is perpetually swollen halfway shut, a series of scars emanating from the side of his eye and going all the way to his ear. On his head rests a helmet with two bullhorns attached to it. His tribal necklaces jingle as he bounds down the steps, his boot landing in the young orc's face. "Fool, how could you be so incomprenent?" he says, not realizing he butchered the word. The youth prepares to defend himself, but the chief is too fast. He twists the orcs arm and lands several fists into his ribs. As he continues to beat the orc, you wonder if he will kill him. While you have the strong urge to step in, you also don't want to get into another tribe's affairs. They could easily kill you for interfering, although it wouldn't be the first time you have pissed off an orc chief. > You step In You walk forward, prepared for anything. The orc chief snorts as he stops wailing on the orc young for a moment. "Who the hell are you?" he asks. "Nolazir of the River Tribe," you say. "I'm here to see the chief." "I am Chief Gro'tesk," he snorts again. "Nolazir, huh? I've heard of you. Getting soft for an orc, are ya?" Your eyes narrow, some think you've gone soft, and others think it's just your age. "I'm not sure what you're talking about." "Pshhah, you let those under you argue and disagree with you all day long. The right way is to beat them into submission." "Why don't you just leave him alone, he is already defeated." The chief laughs and throws the young one to the ground, he cannot be any older than fifteen. Gro'tesk lands a couple swift kicks to his ribs. "You done beating him yet?" you ask. Gro'tesk's eyes narrow, he straightens up and stares at you. "No," he says, "and I don't think you'll do anything about it either" "Oh yeah, and why is that?" "Because you need me, and my allies," he says. "You want us to help you fight the humans?" "Yes." "Well, I'm not gonna help you!" he snarls. "You're nothing but a weakling!" Taking a deep breath, and, tilting your chin down slightly, you frown. "So are we going to do this the hard way?" The chief grins and cracks his knuckles. You slowly roll your neck and stretch your arms back. "I have two conditions," you say. "If I win, you join me, along with your allies, and you stop beating the kid." "If I win… you screw off!" Gro'tesk screams. By now, a large group of orcs has gathered around. All of them cheering on Gro'tesk as he removes his tribal necklaces. They make a circle around you as you prepare to fight… > You fight! Fists raised, you step to the side, constantly circling your foe. Gro'tesk does likewise, a sadistic grin spread across his face. With a huff you step forward, your fist twisting as the arm propels it forward. Gro'tesk's cheek ripples and his head turns as he moves with the punch. At the same time his fist flies, you manage to knock it away. Ducking under, you slam your left fist into his ribs and come back up slamming into his jaw. Gro'tesk staggers back, bewildered at your speed. Although you are quite a large orc, he is bigger than you. He throws a backhand, which hits your defending arm. As he brings it back, he sends his other fist forward, which you manage to parry. But, in your rush, you accidentally lower your right arm a bit too far… As it connects a quick flash of dark splits through your vision, but only for a brief moment. As you stagger back, a pain shoots through your jaw. Managing to duck another blow, you push your opponent back, a move he was not expecting. As you try to regain your ground, you feel a fuzziness spreading throughout your head. Getting punched sucks. As you step forward, you consider your next move… > You feign a Kick Lifting your knee, you hop forward and act as though you are about to kick Gro'tesk's shin. He brings one hand down to push your leg away, and in this moment you slam your foot into the ground, lurching forward. In the same movement, you reel your fist back and then bolt forward. Your knuckles hit him straight in the forehead, this is followed by another swift hit right under his eye. Gro'tesk grunts and staggers back. With a mighty roar he charges you, slamming one punch into your chest. "Oof!" The blow knocks the wind out of you, throwing you to the ground. Chief Gro'tesk savagely lands a quick kick to your face. Reeling to the side you land face first in the dirt, the heavy pounding of his feet stopping as he lifts his foot again. > You cheap Shot Grunting and rolling, you dodge his right foot, stopping under and between both of his legs. Pushing up on your forearm, your other hand curls into a fist, hitting him right in the sweet spot with a thud. He hunches a bit as his face contorts into pain. He screams as his knees buckle, but before he can fall forward you slam your foot into his stomach, toppling him another way. You pant as you pull yourself up, looking at the large group of orcs standing around you. Some look disapprovingly at your method of winning, others stand in awe, and some appear indifferent. The chief grunts as he rolls around in pain. "No fair!" he says, "that was cheating!" "There is no such thing as cheating when you're about to get your face stomped in." The chief manages to pull himself up. "Fine!" he says," you win." The chief pouts as he hobbles over to his hut, and you follow to give him your terms. > You terms and Conditions Gro'tesk sits on his large fur and leather chair, looking glum. It's apparent he is used to getting his way, but so are you. You grin as you finish explaining your terms. "You would still largely be in command of your tribe and your allies," you say, "only I will have final say and make the larger battlefield and strategic decisions." "Hmm, I don't like to be bossed around." "You wouldn't be so much," you say. "Think of yourself still as a chief and advisor, only I'm just supervising the rest of you." Gro'tesk seems to mull this over and leans back. "Well as long as I get some say in things…" With that, you have Gro'tesk agree to go meet your army, along with the lesser tribes that follow him. You go and mount your horse, intent on gathering some more tribes… > Two Months Later.... You've traveled far the past three months total, gaining the support from large and small tribes alike. It has been tough convincing some, but others are far more agreeable. From the reports you've heard, it's put much less pressure on your army, for now. On the downside, Galik and Grolik have managed to engage the Mannate Empire in some larger skirmishes than you would have liked. Rolomag and the other more reliable orcs haven't been able to keep them in check as well as you had hoped. As you ride on, one of the coastal villages comes into view. The sun bearing down upon you, in the distance you see a number of orcs. Some seem to be fishing with nets and spears, and some seem to be enjoying the sun. A few unsurprisingly wrestle in circles made of seashells. Several wooden boats float lazily among the waves. One orc saunters over to you, his skin a much darker shade of green due to generations of living out here. Yours is a much lighter shade of green. The orc stops several feet away from you. "Who are you?" "Nolazir." His eyebrows arch and his eyes widen a bit. A small grin spreads across his face. "I have heard of you, fighting off the humans. Making your rounds to many of the villages and tribes. That is why you are here?" "Yes." The orc chuckles as he leads you toward the village. "I don't think we'll be able to help you, friend," he says. "All of us are at stake," you say. "We need all the people we can get." "We're having our own issues. We can't save everyone else when we can't even save ourselves." You grunt, scanning the area. Nothing seems to be happening. "What's your name?" you ask. "Silak," he says, "I just do the fishing around here. The chief is inside." He gestures into a small wooden hut. You nod to him in thanks and step inside, the old wood steps creaking a bit. Half of the hut is dark, the rest illuminated by the sunlight entering between the wooden beams above. Some tarp seems to be covering the rest of it. You stop short as a figure steps out of the shadows, an orc with several wrinkles on his face. His raven dark hair contrasted by a multitude of grey hairs throughout. His face turns up into a weary smile. His dark green skin hiding him well, until he steps into the rays of light. "Welcome, friend," he says. "I am Chief Hidius." "I am Nolazir." It is just then that you notice the severe burn marks covering Hidius' body. His face, from what you can see, is even a bit distorted. "I know why you are here." "Will you join me?" you ask. "No." "But-" "Walk with me." The chief puts his hand on your shoulder, slowly leading you outside. As you step into the sunlight, you realize Hidius injuries are more severe than you thought. It appears as though his nose has been smelted off of his face. You're surprised that his hair is still growing though, which should not be possible. "How... is your hair still growing?" "A rude question to ask of my deformities." "I'm sorr-" "No. It's alright, no one has asked in a long time, some around here know the story. Others think it's crazed nonsense." Hidius waves a hand to change the subject. He stops and gestures to the village and the waters ahead. "Gigalak gave us these lands and these waters so that we could live wild and free. The Mannate Empire wants to take that from us." "So help us stop them." "We can't… I can't," Hidius says. "I am dying and so is my village." "What do you mean?" "We've been cursed, you see, as made apparent by my condition." "That's nonsense," you say. "Taking heavy burn wounds isn't going to damn the rest of the village. Besides, they look fine to me." Hidius chuckles. "It won't be today, or tomorrow, or even a decade from now, but we're all doomed. I've seen it." Hidius closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "Whether or not we stop the Mannate Empire… something far worse is waiting to take us into a grip of fire." "Stop this," you say, "and tell me what you mean." "Nothing we really do this day matters anymore, I have seen it." You take a deep breath and try to stop yourself from shaking the older orc in frustration. "No matter what is going to happen, you can't just lay down and die." You gently put a hand on his shoulder and turn him around to face you. "We're orcs damn it, and we fight everything that gets in our way. Living, dead, hell, Empire, whatever it may be. We don't just lay down and die." The chief smiles slowly. "While that may be true of you and yours, I am old and tired of fighting. I've seen enough horrors to last one thousand lifetimes. Our time is useless." > You say "Use that time for a greater purpose" "If you think you're gonna die anyways, why don't you use whatever time you have left for something good?" you ask. The chief shuts his eyes and seems to be contemplating your words. "Whatever you think is coming to harm us all, we can deal with it when it comes. In the meantime, we can't just sit around and let the Empire step on us." Hidius does nothing. "I need everyone that I can get," you say, "there are so many orcs doing their part. Now you need to do yours. Please….I'm asking for your help." At this, Hidius opens his eyes and gives you a side wards look. "Although your words will be ultimately futile…..I will help you." Letting out a sigh of relief, you step to the side. "One more thing," you say, "stop spreading this doom prophecy to your people. They're really taking it to heart. I'm not saying it's not true or whatever, but at least lift their spirits a little." Hidius nods, and begins to walk back to his hut. "I will gather a group of warriors, and we will meet your army." "Good," you say, "make haste, for things are stirring quickly." Hidius nods, and goes to a group of orcs. You can’t hear what he says, but they all seem to go off to find more orcs. With satisfaction, you mount your horse to make your way out of the village. As you head to where you are sure where the next will be, you think that maybe you'll find a place to escape the heat first. > Three Months Later... It has been six months since you left to unite the tribes. It has not been easy, but it has been largely successful. There were a few that gave you trouble, refusing to join in the fight. Even then, some of their members disobeyed and walked right out with you. The rest will come around eventually. Lately, the Council has sent several couriers with messages urging you to hold off in the fight against the Empire. You always send them back with a "no." It appears that the humans have really been pushing within the last month, and Galik seems to have taken charge over things since you have left. Maybe he has finally matured and is ready to take over for you. You wouldn't mind not having to worry about all of this; except for the fighting really. It would be just like the war with the Wister Elves, someone points and you attack, broken up with random bursts of initiative and leadership. At the same time, your axe itches to go into the fray. That spark Gigalak ignited into all orcs has not gone out yet. You begin to wonder where this course of action will take you when it begins to rain. "It's raining again." As you make your way back to your camp, you see that it has grown tremendously. Many orcs shout and greet you as you enter. While you have been pretty well liked by most of them, you didn't expect such an enthusiastic welcome. "The chieftain has returned!" "Hail Nolazir!" "Our leader returns to us!" You smirk a bit, it will be a letdown for some if they find out you're thinking of resigning over to Galik. As you enter the main area of the camp where many of the orcish leaders live, you notice something is different. Several posts have been erected, with orcs tied to them, while their comrades grimly whip them. As you turn, looking between your old tent and some of the others, there upon the ground are three slain orcs. Above them stands Galik, a fiery rage in his eyes. Near them, stands Grolik, severely beaten and held back by three orcs. "Galik!" you cry. Galik breathes heavily and looks up from the corpses to meet your eye. "Nolazir," he says prowling forward, "stand down!" "What is going on?" "These fools disobeyed me. They were here to sabotage our efforts." "What in Grikalia are you talking about?" "These traitors spent weeks scheming and planning," Galik said, "but it was not that alone that caused this? Do you want to know what it was?" You glare at him, lowering your chin a bit. Your hands curl at your side as you prepare for anything. "There are some in the Council who think we should give the humans quarter," Galik says, "parley with them, make an agreement. These fools pushed this idea, even saying we should compromise with them." Galik furiously spits on one of the corpses. "This one thought that we should concede some land to be annexed with the Empire. Fools." While you can see the logic in his anger, something seems off. "And the rest?" you ask. "Not so keen on the idea of conceding land yet," Galik says, "but it was only a matter of time before the traitor would get them to turn over. I know this." "That's only one of three," you say, "and you think you can justify their executions with assumptions?" "Nolazir, they were traitors. I could see it! It would not have been too long!" "And what say you for Grolik?" you ask. "What has he done?" Grolik slowly looks up at the two of you, a dark look in his eyes. "When I was… purging these traitors, he tried to intervene," Galik says, "using much the same words as you have. Actually, he is lucky I haven't gutted him yet, seeing as he has been a pain these last couple of months." Galik twirls his sword a bit before pointing it at the whipping post. "I thought a nice whipping would get him to change his mind," he says, "but he sure is stubborn. I have only spared his life because he spoke against these traitors, but then he ridiculed me for sending them to Grikalia early." "So what do you intend to do?" you ask. "I'm going to kill him," Galik says with a smirk. "Or more like…" he grins, "you're going to kill him. Prove your loyalty to your new chief, Nolazir" Galik takes a few steps back, gesturing you to step forward. As you do, the other three orcs raise Grolik. As you stand in front of him, one of the orcs hands you a shortsword. As you grip the simple weapon, the texture of the leather grip feels odd to you right now. Grolik looks at you, shaking his head a bit. "Don't do it Nolazir," he says. "I think we know who the real traitor is." You look at the blade, surely Galik has seen madness, but could you really kill the child of your dear friend Greusim? The young orc who had often sat on your lap when you went to visit your now dead friend… all those years ago. Who is Grolik? You've known him for a few years, but he is just a lawless orc. Still, he has shown great promise, and hasn't let you down yet. Other than your first altercation, he has been a true friend. Grolik looks into your eyes, there is no fear. There is a quiet rage, and even a hint of sadness in his eyes. > You free Grolik With a heavy sigh… you lift the sword up, gripping it with both hands. Grolik doesn't even blink as you bring it down. But you step slightly to the side, slicing clean through the arm of the orc to your left who handed you the sword. He screams in pain as he falls over, and you run the second through the chest. As you pull it out, you turn around just in time to deflect an attack from Galik. As you circle him and parry his blows, Grolik tackles the third orc, turning his own dagger towards him. "You've made the wrong choice, old friend," Galik says. "I'm sorry." You don't respond but, instead, block his swift attack. Galik fights with ferocity, but you match this with skill. As you hook your blade onto his hilt, you turn and twist, Galik flies forward. He drops his sword for a moment but rolls and picks it back up. Behind him, Grolik and the other orc still struggle, the dagger on the ground and both of them in a deadly grapple. Galik twirls his sword as you circle each other. "Drop the sword, Galik," you say. "It doesn't have to be like this." "Oh but it does. Remember, you chose this!" The last couple of words are emphasized by Galik swinging his sword down at you. You easily dodge this and take a wide swipe, nicking his arm. Galik hisses and swings at your head, which you duck as you plunge the tip of the sword into his calf. Galik cries out in pain and staggers back. You raise the sword before pausing, instead, taking a step back. "You truly have gotten soft, Nolazir," he says. "What happened to the ruthless orc I used to hear stories about?" "Do you really think I want to kill you?" you say. "You're the child of my dear friend Greusim. He was like a father to me, why would I want to kill any of his children?" "You're just a weakling and a pathetic leader, Nolazir," Galik says. "My father would be disappointed in you." With these words still in the air, Galik charges you, first swinging high but then veering low. With a cry you barely manage to escape, the tip of the blade slicing into your thigh. Gritting your teeth you slash his chest. Not once, but twice and then three times; you swing the sword in a perfect arc of fury. Galik's face twists as he staggers back, clutching his chest. He raises his sword and stumbles forward, you easily deflect the strike and slam your foot into his knee. Galik cries out and falls back, rolling to get away from what he thought would be a killing blow. As he looks up, you see the seething hatred in his eyes. His sword lays behind you, which he had dropped when you knocked him over. "Well, what are you waiting for, Nolazir?" You take a step forward, raising the sword. As you do so, you remember the first day that Greusim showed Galik to you; when he was but an infant wrapped inside a blanket. You remember the days of taking him out as a young lad, teaching him how to fish and about the plants and animals. You remember the closeness you used to share, before Greusim fell, and this wrath took him over. > You kill Galik As these memories flood through your mind, you realize that it doesn't matter what he was. It just matters what he has become; and that's a murderer. He would drag the orcish armies into the grave with him, dooming Orcin to an eternity of rule by the Mannate Empire. Galik laughs insanely as you step forward, and you drive the sword down… In the last moment, Galik rolls to the side and the sword slams into the dirt. You pull, but the blade does not budge. Standing, you cannot do anything before your foe slams into you. His fingers dig into your shoulder as he draws a dagger from under his shirt. He grins and chuckles as he lifts the blade up, intent on slamming it into your chest. The dagger gleaming in the sunlight, showing you your final moments… Galik brings the knife down, your hand shooting up just in time. Grunting you twist and wrench the blade from his hand. Grabbing his shoulder you shove the knife forward into his belly, as it slides through surprisingly easy. Galik gasps, and his hands grip your shoulders. You rip the dagger out and slam it back into him, this time some splatter decorating your forearms. On the third strike, Galik's knees buckle and he falls back, guided by your hand. As you kneel over him, Galik's hands grip your arms and shoulder. > You stab him again He tries to speak but he is too winded. Snarling, and with a gleam of victory in your eyes, you plunge the knife into him a fourth time. Galik's eyes widen for a moment before his head falls back onto the dirt. He expels a short breath before laying still. Panting heavily, you kneel over your once good friend. You stare down at his face, empty eyes staring into the sky above. Your brow furrows as you place your hands under him, lifting him up a bit. "Why did you make me have to do this, Galik?" you ask. "Greusim was my friend. I've known you since before you were born. You fool." With this, you drop him, and you look up to see Grolik. He stands there holding a bloody dagger at his side. He gives you an understanding nod. You stand up and start to walk away. He raises an eyebrow. "Let someone else deal with his corpse," you say. "I want nothing to do with him anymore. It's done." You drop the dagger and walk to the tent, and, sitting on the chair, you grab some whiskey… > Six Months Later The last six months since Galik's death have been eventful. It took a while for you to reorganize the camp, fixing all of Galik's mistakes. While it was stressful at first, you managed to delegate some responsibility to Grolik, Gro'tesk, Hidius, and Rolomag. Everything is now organized, but it seems that the Empire is done playing around. In the last two months alone, you have repelled several small-scale assaults. You are sure they are finally going to act and make some big moves. But so are you. Soon, these years of stalemates and quiet maneuvering will be at an end. Soon, it will be time to test the Mannate Empire's true mettle. The past five years have been filled with hardships and struggles, but you have managed to overcome all of them. For the first time, you are looking at this conflict pretty positively. Young orcs trickle in everyday willing to contribute to the cause. What worries you though is their age. While there are plenty of experienced veterans in your army, the number of young, inexperienced, and foolhardy orcs concerns you. Traditionally, orcs have always set out as adults at the age of fifteen. What this usually means for them is going out and finding adventure and fighting things. Because of your warlike nature, many orcs do not actually live too long. Some would even consider an orc such as yourself, at the ripe age of thirty-five to have been a long enough and accomplished life. Gigalak did not intend your kind to grow old and miserable, but, instead, to put life into your years, no matter how short or long they may be. You sense someone pulling up to the side of you. "Still thinking about Galik?" Grolik asks. "Among other things," you sigh. "I know you were close to him, but he just went too far." "I know, it’s just hard seeing someone you care about turn into something else." Grolik exhales slowly, nodding as he does so. "Sometimes, you'll do everything you can to save someone," he says, "but sometimes you have to do what you have to do." "What would you know about this?" you snort. Grolik gulps and looks into the distance before turning his head to you. "I….I butchered my entire family and tribe." "What?" you ask. "It's… a long story." Before you can say anything further, Grolik spurs his horse forward to attend to something else. A whole throng of orcs march ahead and behind you, as you all make your way down the mountains and to the hills where the rest of your army waits. Along the way, you have groups of fighters intersperse throughout the hills and rocks just before the plains. It seems the Empire plans to take you on in open combat. The scouts alerted you of the huge shift in troops heading this way. Once your reserves and last line are firmly placed, you call to all of your commanders. Kneeling by a rock, you spread a map across it. Taking a piece of charcoal to mark it up. Rolomag peers closely at it, rubbing his chin. Grolik looks out to the hills and then to the plains and forest ahead. Gro'tesk sharpens his weapons and checks the string on his bow. Hidius closes his eyes and takes in the crisp air. You start by marking all of the locations the Imperials should be attacking from. Mostly, directly ahead of you. Gro'tesk points to the area in the Southeast. "I think they'll try sending a few brigades through here," he says. "While there's no chance they would be able to make it through the mountains in time, it wouldn't take much longer for them to divert through these woods." You have some light patrols stationed in the mountains, so they would alert your left flank if they saw Imperials moving through there. "Hmm, we can probably divert more troops to watching that area then," you say. "Or, we could go through that way ourselves and try to catch them off guard," Gro'tesk says, "whether or not they're coming through that way." "No way," Rolomag says. "We need all the warriors here that we can get. Their only real option is to try to push through the plains, and we should try to match them." "No, wrong way!" Gro'tesk yells. Grolik speaks without looking to the group. "I think Gro'tesk is actually right about this one," he says, "we need to keep an eye over that way. Or maybe even exploit it." "Yes, if they get cavalry through those woods," Gro'tesk says, "even with our reserves and archers, we won't be able to stop them from wiping through our flank." You analyze the area, the humans could utilize it, in which case it would be helpful to prepare to counteract them. They also just might use brute force, in which case you would need to have all of your fighters here at the ready. "There is another thing," Hidius says. "While we can't expect them to come through and around the mountains, see this stretch of open space between the mountains and the trees?" Rolomag squints at the map. "Yes, but what does that-" "If they move some soldiers through here," Hidius says, "they could easily hit this side with a concentrated force. I suspect they would use cavalry to cover the gap as well." "Let me position more warriors there," he continues. "I will keep the mountain patrol there. But if we see any soldiers or cavalry, we can easily ride in and trap them in between the main force and this one." > You attack Straight On "I like Rolomag's idea," you say. "The chances of them utilizing either side is nonsense." "What? Fool!" Gro'tesk yells. Grolik's eyes snap to you in surprise. "Nolazir," he says, "are you serious? This is stupid. You were the one always going on about how pure strength alone won't win this." "I can't say I agree at all," Hidius says, "but if I can't change your mind, I will obey." Rolomag just sits back in silence. You nod to all of them and roll up the map. "I know this won't be easy," you say, "but I know we can do this. We'll still have the reserves to help us, but as I see it… we're gonna be able to just push through them." Grolik shakes his head. "I don't know about this, Nolazir," he says. "Why don't we think about this again?" "No," you say. "I have decided." Grolik sighs and goes off to get his orcs ready. The rest do the same. > You preparations Days later, your troops stand at attention, their mail armor and weapons gleaming in the sunlight. The red tendrils of the rising sun cast themselves over the sky, piercing the clouds like slender fingers eager to reach into what lay beyond. The wind's breath carries the fresh morning air through the field, passing through each warrior; the wind carrying the breath they might otherwise hold in anticipation of what lays ahead. The orcs stand before you, ready to move forth at the sight of the Mannate Empire. The reserves wait in the rocky hills behind you. While not appearing so, many orcs are nervous, as any would be before a large battle; but, with hope in their minds and courage in their hearts, they stand by you. Your horse shuffles, it's ears pricking up. The song of the Empire trickles from the forest, quietly at first. But, as the first humans emerge, their hauberks showing crests of their nobles, the standard bearers proudly emerge, their counterparts blaring trumpets and horns. How kind of them to announce themselves, yet so arrogant. The columns of Mannate warriors spill forth. They move simultaneously. They do not waver or break form. Their perfect union a direct affront to the free and natural order that was intended for all. The human soldiers stand at attention, all saluting as their officers move up and down the line. Some appear to inspect their warriors, some seem to be doing a lot of shouting. Others stand calmly in front of their columns. One knight, which you recognize as such by the helm he wears, rides out in front of the column. He waves a white flag ahead above him. "I think they wish to speak," Hidius says. You scowl at the human riding forth, as if you could not have him crushed. His hands held up and flag waving as a sign of peace. Spurring the horse beneath you to meet this human, you keep your hand by your sword. Stopping several feet away from the Imperial, you both meet in the field between your armies. "Hail Orc," the knight says. You grunt in response. "General Levalier has sent me to parley. Will you speak?" "I will." "Who may I ask do you speak for?" "Myself." "So you are this rabble's leader?" Peering through the slits in the knight's helmet, his eyes light up in understanding. His other hand, which lays free of the flag, twitches slightly by his sword. Your hand already rests near yours. You peer into the eyes of the knight, your eyes narrowing as you do so. The soldier looks back, and both of you sit there in silence. His hand slowly moves away from his sword as he shifts to hold the flag with both hands. "I have been sent to ask you to disperse your forces." "No." "Brute, won't you listen to reas-" "No." "I say, while I would not expect a beast of your nature to understand politics. At least hear the message my general has for yourself." "The only thing you need to do is go home," you say. "You could save many of your soldiers' lives today." The knight huffs in exasperation and turns his horse around. He gallops back, moving around the side of the columns. Grunting, you trot back to your spot among your comrades. You don't trust that they will just up and leave after these years of skirmishes and preparation. It seems that battle was fated to happen this day, it will progress no matter what words are spoken. > You attack! The trumpets across the field begin to sound, and the officers riding upon their horses shout and wave their swords around. With all of your troops in position, you take your horn. Exhaling, you blow into it, and the other chiefs under you do so as well. The air is filled with the sound of war as you and your warriors pour forward. The Mannate humans approach, weapons held tightly and the crest of their Emperor waving in the wind. Your orcs go to meet them, the might of Gigalak carries you forward to crush your enemies. > You brute Force With all of your forces centered, the orcish lines meet the human's with unparalleled force. You watch from your horse as weapons and shields collide. Mail armor protecting both sides from grievous wounds. It is not too long before your orcs push through the humans first line, bashing and knocking down warriors as the rest overtake them. The humans give a steady retreat, before spearmen move through the columns to give some support. Two large columns come down and around from each side, taking a diagonal assault to your front. On your orders, your fighters divert to stand against it. As you wave your arm, two bands of cavalry swoop around your lines. One lead by Grolik and his Red Handed, the other by Gro'tesk and various civilized orc tribes. Archers in each of your lines work to weaken your foes. Hidius and Rolomag each lead one of the defending lines to your sides, and you command the center force. With Gigalak's fist you break into the center. As your lines push the Imperials back, some Imperial knights by Grolik shake up his assault. From where you are, you can't reach them. But orcs from one of the columns rush forth, taking on the knights. Many orcs to the right fall, but your overall army holds strong, and steadily you push the Imperials back. The horses stepping over the crumpled remains of orc and human alike. Grolik blows his horn, rallying his troops. Nursing a wound in his shoulder, he rides forward, inspiring his fighters to go forth. Many fight on, even with life threatening injuries. You gaze to the wave of orcs. Grolik circles around them, yelling out orders. In a moment, his eyes meet yours, before his face scrunches and his brows furrow. Looking down to his chest, a bloody arrow protrudes from his heart. Your friend goes limp and slumps off his horse, rolling as he hits the ground. Many of his orcs stare in confusion, before a volley of arrows shows them the same fate. From the forest in the Southeast, a column of Imperial soldiers rushes out, covered by archers. They do untold damage to your right flank. They sweep in before your forces can organize a defense. Roaring, you charge forward. Rolomag starts to divert troops. "No," you cry, "stay focused. I've got this." As you ride by, you see Grolik's eyes glazed, and staring into the sky. The arrow having gone straight through his heart, and spilling his spirit into the void. Orcs continue to fall, as the diversion weakens your center line. The humans in the center gain no ground, but don't lose any either. Something else in the distance disturbs you. Circling around, a large cavalry rides through the open plain. Between the mountains and the forest they go, sweeping into your left flank. Hidius is just able to mount his horse, fighting off a knight. You howl in agony as another one rides up behind Hidius, planting his sword through his back. Hidius falls quietly, and almost immediately. Somewhere in the fray, you see Silak defending his chief's corpse before himself being killed. As you rally troops to defend this side, Gro'tesk glances to you, his eyes flashing in anger. The lines and columns are all in a frenzy, being attacked viciously from multiple sides. There is no semblance of lines and divisions. All the orcs fight as one, the Imperials slowly pushing through with reinvigorated fury. Slamming the butt of your axe into a hapless soldiers helmet, you let out a roar. His helmet pinging and denting under your blow, his eyes bloodshot from the trauma. The soldier twitches before laying still. The horse you are on cries out in agony, a couple of arrows piercing its chest. Managing to leap off, you roll to the ground and stand bearing both weapons. Just in time to meet the blades of bloodthirsty soldiers. Hacking, slashing, and bashing you stand by your brethren. As you remove the head of one soldier, another's spear finds its way through your armor. Your mouth gapes in pain but you stay silent, grimacing and facing the soldier, you knock his spear away. With a grunt you shove the sword blade under his helmet and into his face. Specks of crimson blood cover your arms as the soldier writhes, twitches, and dies. On the right flank, the Imperials push Rolomag's line ever closer to this one. The center also being pushed back. Rolomag, with several injuries, gives you a weary nod. You are about to return it when Rolomag huffs and falls, an axe buried in his back. Ahead of you, a beast of a man wrenches the axe from your fallen friend's back. You charge each other, weapons sparking and colliding. Grinning, you slam the spike atop your axe into the man's ribs. He ignores the pain and hacks into your side, breaking through the armor and embedding his axe into your ribs. Twisting, you make him lose his grip. Your sword buries into the human's neck as his eyes widen in surprise. Before you can twist the sword out, a burning sensation shoots through your side. The axe blade twists through your side snapping ribs and almost blinding you with pain. Before you can move, the axe blade slams into your helmet. As this happens a hand pushes you down, before you can twist around the handle slams into your helmet as well. It's not long before various weapons slam into your armor or pierce through it and into your flesh. Your body aches all over, before feeling numb as you are overwhelmed. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The last six months since Galik's death have been eventful. It took a while for you to reorganize the camp, fixing all of Galik's mistakes. While it was stressful at first, you managed to delegate some responsibility to Grolik, Gro'tesk, Hidius, and Rolomag. Everything is now organized, but it seems that the Empire is done playing around. In the last two months alone, you have repelled several small-scale assaults. You are sure they are finally going to act and make some big moves. But so are you. Soon, these years of stalemates and quiet maneuvering will be at an end. Soon, it will be time to test the Mannate Empire's true mettle. The past five years have been filled with hardships and struggles, but you have managed to overcome all of them. For the first time, you are looking at this conflict pretty positively. Young orcs trickle in everyday willing to contribute to the cause. What worries you though is their age. While there are plenty of experienced veterans in your army, the number of young, inexperienced, and foolhardy orcs concerns you. Traditionally, orcs have always set out as adults at the age of fifteen. What this usually means for them is going out and finding adventure and fighting things. Because of your warlike nature, many orcs do not actually live too long. Some would even consider an orc such as yourself, at the ripe age of thirty-five to have been a long enough and accomplished life. Gigalak did not intend your kind to grow old and miserable, but, instead, to put life into your years, no matter how short or long they may be. You sense someone pulling up to the side of you. "Still thinking about Galik?" Grolik asks. "Among other things," you sigh. "I know you were close to him, but he just went too far." "I know, it’s just hard seeing someone you care about turn into something else." Grolik exhales slowly, nodding as he does so. "Sometimes, you'll do everything you can to save someone," he says, "but sometimes you have to do what you have to do." "What would you know about this?" you snort. Grolik gulps and looks into the distance before turning his head to you. "I….I butchered my entire family and tribe." "What?" you ask. "It's… a long story." Before you can say anything further, Grolik spurs his horse forward to attend to something else. A whole throng of orcs march ahead and behind you, as you all make your way down the mountains and to the hills where the rest of your army waits. Along the way, you have groups of fighters intersperse throughout the hills and rocks just before the plains. It seems the Empire plans to take you on in open combat. The scouts alerted you of the huge shift in troops heading this way. Once your reserves and last line are firmly placed, you call to all of your commanders. Kneeling by a rock, you spread a map across it. Taking a piece of charcoal to mark it up. Rolomag peers closely at it, rubbing his chin. Grolik looks out to the hills and then to the plains and forest ahead. Gro'tesk sharpens his weapons and checks the string on his bow. Hidius closes his eyes and takes in the crisp air. You start by marking all of the locations the Imperials should be attacking from. Mostly, directly ahead of you. Gro'tesk points to the area in the Southeast. "I think they'll try sending a few brigades through here," he says. "While there's no chance they would be able to make it through the mountains in time, it wouldn't take much longer for them to divert through these woods." You have some light patrols stationed in the mountains, so they would alert your left flank if they saw Imperials moving through there. "Hmm, we can probably divert more troops to watching that area then," you say. "Or, we could go through that way ourselves and try to catch them off guard," Gro'tesk says, "whether or not they're coming through that way." "No way," Rolomag says. "We need all the warriors here that we can get. Their only real option is to try to push through the plains, and we should try to match them." "No, wrong way!" Gro'tesk yells. Grolik speaks without looking to the group. "I think Gro'tesk is actually right about this one," he says, "we need to keep an eye over that way. Or maybe even exploit it." "Yes, if they get cavalry through those woods," Gro'tesk says, "even with our reserves and archers, we won't be able to stop them from wiping through our flank." You analyze the area, the humans could utilize it, in which case it would be helpful to prepare to counteract them. They also just might use brute force, in which case you would need to have all of your fighters here at the ready. "There is another thing," Hidius says. "While we can't expect them to come through and around the mountains, see this stretch of open space between the mountains and the trees?" Rolomag squints at the map. "Yes, but what does that-" "If they move some soldiers through here," Hidius says, "they could easily hit this side with a concentrated force. I suspect they would use cavalry to cover the gap as well." "Let me position more warriors there," he continues. "I will keep the mountain patrol there. But if we see any soldiers or cavalry, we can easily ride in and trap them in between the main force and this one." > You allow Gro'tesk to Flank "Gro'tesk," you say, "I want you to put together a strike force, and go around. Give the battle some time to start, but once you take them by surprise, hit them as hard as you can." "Got it," Gro'tesk nods. "What about the left side?" Hidius asks. "We don't need to worry about that," you say. "With Gro'tesk attacking their flank, they'll have no choice but to concentrate in those two areas." "We're going to be exposed over there," Hidius says while sharpening his knife. "Trust me," you say. "This plan will work." "Gro'tesk, while we are setting up I want you to wait in the forest over there," you say. "Make sure they don't see you at all." With the plan made, you all disperse to make preparations for the upcoming battle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The last six months since Galik's death have been eventful. It took a while for you to reorganize the camp, fixing all of Galik's mistakes. While it was stressful at first, you managed to delegate some responsibility to Grolik, Gro'tesk, Hidius, and Rolomag. Everything is now organized, but it seems that the Empire is done playing around. In the last two months alone, you have repelled several small-scale assaults. You are sure they are finally going to act and make some big moves. But so are you. Soon, these years of stalemates and quiet maneuvering will be at an end. Soon, it will be time to test the Mannate Empire's true mettle. The past five years have been filled with hardships and struggles, but you have managed to overcome all of them. For the first time, you are looking at this conflict pretty positively. Young orcs trickle in everyday willing to contribute to the cause. What worries you though is their age. While there are plenty of experienced veterans in your army, the number of young, inexperienced, and foolhardy orcs concerns you. Traditionally, orcs have always set out as adults at the age of fifteen. What this usually means for them is going out and finding adventure and fighting things. Because of your warlike nature, many orcs do not actually live too long. Some would even consider an orc such as yourself, at the ripe age of thirty-five to have been a long enough and accomplished life. Gigalak did not intend your kind to grow old and miserable, but, instead, to put life into your years, no matter how short or long they may be. You sense someone pulling up to the side of you. "Still thinking about Galik?" Grolik asks. "Among other things," you sigh. "I know you were close to him, but he just went too far." "I know, it’s just hard seeing someone you care about turn into something else." Grolik exhales slowly, nodding as he does so. "Sometimes, you'll do everything you can to save someone," he says, "but sometimes you have to do what you have to do." "What would you know about this?" you snort. Grolik gulps and looks into the distance before turning his head to you. "I….I butchered my entire family and tribe." "What?" you ask. "It's… a long story." Before you can say anything further, Grolik spurs his horse forward to attend to something else. A whole throng of orcs march ahead and behind you, as you all make your way down the mountains and to the hills where the rest of your army waits. Along the way, you have groups of fighters intersperse throughout the hills and rocks just before the plains. It seems the Empire plans to take you on in open combat. The scouts alerted you of the huge shift in troops heading this way. Once your reserves and last line are firmly placed, you call to all of your commanders. Kneeling by a rock, you spread a map across it. Taking a piece of charcoal to mark it up. Rolomag peers closely at it, rubbing his chin. Grolik looks out to the hills and then to the plains and forest ahead. Gro'tesk sharpens his weapons and checks the string on his bow. Hidius closes his eyes and takes in the crisp air. You start by marking all of the locations the Imperials should be attacking from. Mostly, directly ahead of you. Gro'tesk points to the area in the Southeast. "I think they'll try sending a few brigades through here," he says. "While there's no chance they would be able to make it through the mountains in time, it wouldn't take much longer for them to divert through these woods." You have some light patrols stationed in the mountains, so they would alert your left flank if they saw Imperials moving through there. "Hmm, we can probably divert more troops to watching that area then," you say. "Or, we could go through that way ourselves and try to catch them off guard," Gro'tesk says, "whether or not they're coming through that way." "No way," Rolomag says. "We need all the warriors here that we can get. Their only real option is to try to push through the plains, and we should try to match them." "No, wrong way!" Gro'tesk yells. Grolik speaks without looking to the group. "I think Gro'tesk is actually right about this one," he says, "we need to keep an eye over that way. Or maybe even exploit it." "Yes, if they get cavalry through those woods," Gro'tesk says, "even with our reserves and archers, we won't be able to stop them from wiping through our flank." You analyze the area, the humans could utilize it, in which case it would be helpful to prepare to counteract them. They also just might use brute force, in which case you would need to have all of your fighters here at the ready. "There is another thing," Hidius says. "While we can't expect them to come through and around the mountains, see this stretch of open space between the mountains and the trees?" Rolomag squints at the map. "Yes, but what does that-" "If they move some soldiers through here," Hidius says, "they could easily hit this side with a concentrated force. I suspect they would use cavalry to cover the gap as well." "Let me position more warriors there," he continues. "I will keep the mountain patrol there. But if we see any soldiers or cavalry, we can easily ride in and trap them in between the main force and this one." > You allow Hidius to lay a trap "Hidius," you say, "I want you to take a unit and set them up by the bottom of the mountain. If they try to send cavalry across, sweep them up and take them down." Hidius nods. "What about the forest to the Southeast?" Gro'tesk says. "We need to watch it." "No Gro'tesk," you say, "there's no way they'll take that much time to divert forces that way. I know how the Imperials fight, they'll just attack straight on and use cavalry." Gro'tesk shakes his head in frustration. "You never know!" he yells throwing a rock at the ground. "It will take more time, but it would be worth it for them. I have seen these things happen!" "If they do attack, we will easily be able to divert troops to stand in their way," you say. "We can't risk our bulk to divert troops left and right without knowing if we need to." "I think Gro'tesk is right," Grolik says. "I'll personally take-" "No," you say. "You'll have other roles to play. Focus on them." Gro'tesk and Grolik glance at each other but then turn and nod at you. You send the group to go about their duties and prepare for the oncoming battle ahead. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The last six months since Galik's death have been eventful. It took a while for you to reorganize the camp, fixing all of Galik's mistakes. While it was stressful at first, you managed to delegate some responsibility to Grolik, Gro'tesk, Hidius, and Rolomag. Everything is now organized, but it seems that the Empire is done playing around. In the last two months alone, you have repelled several small-scale assaults. You are sure they are finally going to act and make some big moves. But so are you. Soon, these years of stalemates and quiet maneuvering will be at an end. Soon, it will be time to test the Mannate Empire's true mettle. The past five years have been filled with hardships and struggles, but you have managed to overcome all of them. For the first time, you are looking at this conflict pretty positively. Young orcs trickle in everyday willing to contribute to the cause. What worries you though is their age. While there are plenty of experienced veterans in your army, the number of young, inexperienced, and foolhardy orcs concerns you. Traditionally, orcs have always set out as adults at the age of fifteen. What this usually means for them is going out and finding adventure and fighting things. Because of your warlike nature, many orcs do not actually live too long. Some would even consider an orc such as yourself, at the ripe age of thirty-five to have been a long enough and accomplished life. Gigalak did not intend your kind to grow old and miserable, but, instead, to put life into your years, no matter how short or long they may be. You sense someone pulling up to the side of you. "Still thinking about Galik?" Grolik asks. "Among other things," you sigh. "I know you were close to him, but he just went too far." "I know, it’s just hard seeing someone you care about turn into something else." Grolik exhales slowly, nodding as he does so. "Sometimes, you'll do everything you can to save someone," he says, "but sometimes you have to do what you have to do." "What would you know about this?" you snort. Grolik gulps and looks into the distance before turning his head to you. "I….I butchered my entire family and tribe." "What?" you ask. "It's… a long story." Before you can say anything further, Grolik spurs his horse forward to attend to something else. A whole throng of orcs march ahead and behind you, as you all make your way down the mountains and to the hills where the rest of your army waits. Along the way, you have groups of fighters intersperse throughout the hills and rocks just before the plains. It seems the Empire plans to take you on in open combat. The scouts alerted you of the huge shift in troops heading this way. Once your reserves and last line are firmly placed, you call to all of your commanders. Kneeling by a rock, you spread a map across it. Taking a piece of charcoal to mark it up. Rolomag peers closely at it, rubbing his chin. Grolik looks out to the hills and then to the plains and forest ahead. Gro'tesk sharpens his weapons and checks the string on his bow. Hidius closes his eyes and takes in the crisp air. You start by marking all of the locations the Imperials should be attacking from. Mostly, directly ahead of you. Gro'tesk points to the area in the Southeast. "I think they'll try sending a few brigades through here," he says. "While there's no chance they would be able to make it through the mountains in time, it wouldn't take much longer for them to divert through these woods." You have some light patrols stationed in the mountains, so they would alert your left flank if they saw Imperials moving through there. "Hmm, we can probably divert more troops to watching that area then," you say. "Or, we could go through that way ourselves and try to catch them off guard," Gro'tesk says, "whether or not they're coming through that way." "No way," Rolomag says. "We need all the warriors here that we can get. Their only real option is to try to push through the plains, and we should try to match them." "No, wrong way!" Gro'tesk yells. Grolik speaks without looking to the group. "I think Gro'tesk is actually right about this one," he says, "we need to keep an eye over that way. Or maybe even exploit it." "Yes, if they get cavalry through those woods," Gro'tesk says, "even with our reserves and archers, we won't be able to stop them from wiping through our flank." You analyze the area, the humans could utilize it, in which case it would be helpful to prepare to counteract them. They also just might use brute force, in which case you would need to have all of your fighters here at the ready. "There is another thing," Hidius says. "While we can't expect them to come through and around the mountains, see this stretch of open space between the mountains and the trees?" Rolomag squints at the map. "Yes, but what does that-" "If they move some soldiers through here," Hidius says, "they could easily hit this side with a concentrated force. I suspect they would use cavalry to cover the gap as well." "Let me position more warriors there," he continues. "I will keep the mountain patrol there. But if we see any soldiers or cavalry, we can easily ride in and trap them in between the main force and this one." > You listen to both Hidius and Gro'tesk You nod and look to both Hidius and Gro'tesk. "I think you are both right," you say. "We need the right amount of surprise and caution. If the battles with the Empire so far has taught us anything, these humans are tenacious, and we need to prepare for anything." Gro'tesk grunts in agreement, and Hidius slowly nods his head. "So, Gro'tesk, I want you to take your warriors up and around the forest. Divert and cut off any troops they are sending through, then begin your assault on their flank." "I will crush them for you, chief." "And Hidius, station your cavalry by the base of the mountain," you say. "If they come through the plain to attack our flank, sweep them in and crush them. Rolomag and I will prepare that flank to fend off their horsemen while you charge them." You gaze out through the plains and to where the mountain turns into rocky hills. "You will need to go quickly lest they finish their foul deeds." "I will go with Gigalak's breath at my heels," Hidius says. "Good," you say. "With one hand may he guide us, and with the other sweep our enemies from our home." You and your comrades disband to prepare for the battle that is yet to come.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As these memories flood through your mind, you realize that it doesn't matter what he was. It just matters what he has become; and that's a murderer. He would drag the orcish armies into the grave with him, dooming Orcin to an eternity of rule by the Mannate Empire. Galik laughs insanely as you step forward, and you drive the sword down… In the last moment, Galik rolls to the side and the sword slams into the dirt. You pull, but the blade does not budge. Standing, you cannot do anything before your foe slams into you. His fingers dig into your shoulder as he draws a dagger from under his shirt. He grins and chuckles as he lifts the blade up, intent on slamming it into your chest. The dagger gleaming in the sunlight, showing you your final moments… Galik brings the knife down, your hand shooting up just in time. Grunting you twist and wrench the blade from his hand. Grabbing his shoulder you shove the knife forward into his belly, as it slides through surprisingly easy. Galik gasps, and his hands grip your shoulders. You rip the dagger out and slam it back into him, this time some splatter decorating your forearms. On the third strike, Galik's knees buckle and he falls back, guided by your hand. As you kneel over him, Galik's hands grip your arms and shoulder. > You stop As Galik's weak hands clutch onto you, your fingers curl around the dagger tightly. But you toss it to the side, instead lifting Galik up and cradling him. "Why did you do this?" you ask. "Greusim was my friend, I've known you since before you were born. Why couldn't you just wait for me to come back, we could have handled this together." A weak grunt passed Galik's lips, and he pulls himself up a bit. "I'm…sorry…" The last breath passes between his lips, and his body goes limp. You sit there, letting out a heavy sigh. With a grunt, you lift up Galik's body, throwing him over your shoulder. In front of you stands Grolik, a bloody dagger in his hands. He nods in understanding and steps to the side as you walk by. You go down to bury your former friend by the river…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With a heavy sigh… you lift the sword up, gripping it with both hands. Grolik doesn't even blink as you bring it down. But you step slightly to the side, slicing clean through the arm of the orc to your left who handed you the sword. He screams in pain as he falls over, and you run the second through the chest. As you pull it out, you turn around just in time to deflect an attack from Galik. As you circle him and parry his blows, Grolik tackles the third orc, turning his own dagger towards him. "You've made the wrong choice, old friend," Galik says. "I'm sorry." You don't respond but, instead, block his swift attack. Galik fights with ferocity, but you match this with skill. As you hook your blade onto his hilt, you turn and twist, Galik flies forward. He drops his sword for a moment but rolls and picks it back up. Behind him, Grolik and the other orc still struggle, the dagger on the ground and both of them in a deadly grapple. Galik twirls his sword as you circle each other. "Drop the sword, Galik," you say. "It doesn't have to be like this." "Oh but it does. Remember, you chose this!" The last couple of words are emphasized by Galik swinging his sword down at you. You easily dodge this and take a wide swipe, nicking his arm. Galik hisses and swings at your head, which you duck as you plunge the tip of the sword into his calf. Galik cries out in pain and staggers back. You raise the sword before pausing, instead, taking a step back. "You truly have gotten soft, Nolazir," he says. "What happened to the ruthless orc I used to hear stories about?" "Do you really think I want to kill you?" you say. "You're the child of my dear friend Greusim. He was like a father to me, why would I want to kill any of his children?" "You're just a weakling and a pathetic leader, Nolazir," Galik says. "My father would be disappointed in you." With these words still in the air, Galik charges you, first swinging high but then veering low. With a cry you barely manage to escape, the tip of the blade slicing into your thigh. Gritting your teeth you slash his chest. Not once, but twice and then three times; you swing the sword in a perfect arc of fury. Galik's face twists as he staggers back, clutching his chest. He raises his sword and stumbles forward, you easily deflect the strike and slam your foot into his knee. Galik cries out and falls back, rolling to get away from what he thought would be a killing blow. As he looks up, you see the seething hatred in his eyes. His sword lays behind you, which he had dropped when you knocked him over. "Well, what are you waiting for, Nolazir?" You take a step forward, raising the sword. As you do so, you remember the first day that Greusim showed Galik to you; when he was but an infant wrapped inside a blanket. You remember the days of taking him out as a young lad, teaching him how to fish and about the plants and animals. You remember the closeness you used to share, before Greusim fell, and this wrath took him over. > You spare Galik He may have lost his way, overtaken with wrath, but surely there must be another way to handle this. You stop, and glancing around you see many orcs have gathered. They seem to be expecting you to finish Galik off. Despite your brutal nature, you cannot bring yourself to do it. There is another way to handle this… he is just lost- Something slams into you, forcing the wind from your chest, and as you fall your arms twist and you roll. Stopping, you see Galik stepping towards you… twirling the sword, a smirk on his face. You crawl back, lifting your arms up defensively as Galik raises the sword. You cringe a bit as his arm twitches… but not for the reason you would expect. Another arm shoots under it and grabs his wrist, twisting it back and to his side. You pull yourself up, hands out just in case. Galik snarls as he begins to struggle, but this is replaced by a gasp; his brow twitches and he drops the sword. He staggers forward and reaches his arms out, and as he falls you catch him. His face buries into your chest as he falls at an awkward angle. Bewildered you look up to see Grolik, standing, a dagger slicked in blood in his hand. His brow furrowed, he looks up from Galik and nods at you. Upon Galik's back you see a stretch of blood dripping down his back. The dagger wound placed expertly in his spinal column. Rolling Galik over and kneeling, you hold him off the ground somewhat. His eyes are blank and his mouth slightly agape, he did not suffer for very long. "Damn it Galik," you say. "It didn't have to be like this." A few orcs walk forward, nodding at you. "Chief," one says, "we will take care of him for you." "No," you say. "I'll handle it, let's untie the other orcs first though." You walk with Grolik over to the orcs tied to the posts, the whippers having long since left. Grunting, you begin the work of cutting their bonds, several orcs coming over to help. "Can't say we'll miss him too much," one says. "I know you were close to him, but he was a damn tyrant." You sigh and continue your work. After finishing up, you hoist your former friend over your shoulders and go to find somewhere to bury him…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It has been six months since you left to unite the tribes. It has not been easy, but it has been largely successful. There were a few that gave you trouble, refusing to join in the fight. Even then, some of their members disobeyed and walked right out with you. The rest will come around eventually. Lately, the Council has sent several couriers with messages urging you to hold off in the fight against the Empire. You always send them back with a "no." It appears that the humans have really been pushing within the last month, and Galik seems to have taken charge over things since you have left. Maybe he has finally matured and is ready to take over for you. You wouldn't mind not having to worry about all of this; except for the fighting really. It would be just like the war with the Wister Elves, someone points and you attack, broken up with random bursts of initiative and leadership. At the same time, your axe itches to go into the fray. That spark Gigalak ignited into all orcs has not gone out yet. You begin to wonder where this course of action will take you when it begins to rain. "It's raining again." As you make your way back to your camp, you see that it has grown tremendously. Many orcs shout and greet you as you enter. While you have been pretty well liked by most of them, you didn't expect such an enthusiastic welcome. "The chieftain has returned!" "Hail Nolazir!" "Our leader returns to us!" You smirk a bit, it will be a letdown for some if they find out you're thinking of resigning over to Galik. As you enter the main area of the camp where many of the orcish leaders live, you notice something is different. Several posts have been erected, with orcs tied to them, while their comrades grimly whip them. As you turn, looking between your old tent and some of the others, there upon the ground are three slain orcs. Above them stands Galik, a fiery rage in his eyes. Near them, stands Grolik, severely beaten and held back by three orcs. "Galik!" you cry. Galik breathes heavily and looks up from the corpses to meet your eye. "Nolazir," he says prowling forward, "stand down!" "What is going on?" "These fools disobeyed me. They were here to sabotage our efforts." "What in Grikalia are you talking about?" "These traitors spent weeks scheming and planning," Galik said, "but it was not that alone that caused this? Do you want to know what it was?" You glare at him, lowering your chin a bit. Your hands curl at your side as you prepare for anything. "There are some in the Council who think we should give the humans quarter," Galik says, "parley with them, make an agreement. These fools pushed this idea, even saying we should compromise with them." Galik furiously spits on one of the corpses. "This one thought that we should concede some land to be annexed with the Empire. Fools." While you can see the logic in his anger, something seems off. "And the rest?" you ask. "Not so keen on the idea of conceding land yet," Galik says, "but it was only a matter of time before the traitor would get them to turn over. I know this." "That's only one of three," you say, "and you think you can justify their executions with assumptions?" "Nolazir, they were traitors. I could see it! It would not have been too long!" "And what say you for Grolik?" you ask. "What has he done?" Grolik slowly looks up at the two of you, a dark look in his eyes. "When I was… purging these traitors, he tried to intervene," Galik says, "using much the same words as you have. Actually, he is lucky I haven't gutted him yet, seeing as he has been a pain these last couple of months." Galik twirls his sword a bit before pointing it at the whipping post. "I thought a nice whipping would get him to change his mind," he says, "but he sure is stubborn. I have only spared his life because he spoke against these traitors, but then he ridiculed me for sending them to Grikalia early." "So what do you intend to do?" you ask. "I'm going to kill him," Galik says with a smirk. "Or more like…" he grins, "you're going to kill him. Prove your loyalty to your new chief, Nolazir" Galik takes a few steps back, gesturing you to step forward. As you do, the other three orcs raise Grolik. As you stand in front of him, one of the orcs hands you a shortsword. As you grip the simple weapon, the texture of the leather grip feels odd to you right now. Grolik looks at you, shaking his head a bit. "Don't do it Nolazir," he says. "I think we know who the real traitor is." You look at the blade, surely Galik has seen madness, but could you really kill the child of your dear friend Greusim? The young orc who had often sat on your lap when you went to visit your now dead friend… all those years ago. Who is Grolik? You've known him for a few years, but he is just a lawless orc. Still, he has shown great promise, and hasn't let you down yet. Other than your first altercation, he has been a true friend. Grolik looks into your eyes, there is no fear. There is a quiet rage, and even a hint of sadness in his eyes. > You kill Grolik You level the sword, the placing the tip on Grolik's chest. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good, Galik may be wild but you should be able to keep him in check. "Really Nolazir?" Grolik says, "is this really what you're doing?" Grolik's stare pierces you, his glare hard enough to cut steel and his voice unwavering. "If this is really what you're doing," Grolik says, "Gigalak help me you better make sure I'm dead because if I make it out of this I'm coming for you bo-" You grab his shoulder as hard as you can, thrusting the sword into his chest and through his heart. Grolik's face scrunches up in pain, but only for a moment. His eyes roll into the back of his head and he falls to the side. Holding the sword, you stare at the bloody blade. The weight of what you have done not quite hitting you, and this weapon of death seeming foreign for a moment. As you lower the sword to your side, a hand slams into your shoulder. "Hahaha!" Galik says, "good job Nolazir! Guess he wasn't so tough after all, let's see him come back to get us from this one!" Forcing yourself to laugh, you walk off with Galik, who starts to talk about some strategies. > You conflict In the following days, chaos has erupted throughout the camp. The Red Handed and their allies dispersed themselves throughout the camp, then without warning began to butcher as many of your orcs as they could. Trapped by a cliff behind you and the bulk of the late Grolik's forces ahead of you, the only viable cover is the rocks and wagons you hide behind. They have a pretty good grip on the main camp area. Once they finish fighting the rest of the camp, they will surely overwhelm you at any moment. Arrow after arrow thuds into the wagon. You fire an arrow back under one of the wheels, unsure of where the hell it landed. In front of you the tents burn and the sounds of fighting ring throughout. You didn't know there were so damn many of them until last night. The minor nicks, scratches, and bruises you've received from fighting your way out pulsate through your body. Galik sits next to you, nursing a grievous injury in his side. As you, Galik, and the rest of the orcs fought your way through, some orc chucked a javelin into Galik's side. It went through pretty deeply and you are surprised that he is still alive, although he won't be if you do not get him treatment soon. Even then his chances are probably slim. You witnessed Hidius walking out of his tent to see the commotion, and immediately was stabbed in the chest before you could help. Silak fought valiantly to defend his dying chief, but was ultimately overwhelmed. Gro'tesk might be dead by now, you didn't see what became of him. You're not too sure about Rolomag either for that matter. You had not seen him since late yesterday, and as far as you know he wanted to speak with Gro'tesk. So they're either standing together or already dead. Gasping and panting, Galik stands up and directs some of the orcs around you. "You, crawl that way," he says, "and you, keep shooting damn it!" He kneels and grips another orc by the shoulder. "Finish this up, damn it!" A team of orcs furiously work on a contraption similar to the siege breakers you constructed during the war with the Wister Elves. Actually, you recognize a lot of the orcs around you from those days. Galik slumps against the wagon, gritting his teeth. "Nolazir," he says, "we're going to try to break through. We'll have archers at the sides covering you, follow us, and when we get close enough break out and rush them." While the path you have to go is pretty narrow, you're sure this will only lead to your doom. Well, so would sitting here eventually. > You follow Galik's Lead "Yes Chief," you say, "bring one of these shields." Luckily, one of the wagons happened to have a bunch of weapon and shield supplies in it. Galik hands the shield back to you. "Gigalak will shield me," he says, "besides, I don't know how much longer this dressing will hold without my hand." "I'll see this through to the end with you," you say. As the orcs finish up the siege breaker, you all get into position. A few orcs begin the slow push, as Galik stands in the middle of it barking orders and taking cover. Raising your shield you get into the column, a couple of arrows already hitting and bouncing off your shield. You all make a sort of wall with the shields, but many orcs are still struck down. Some of yours fire arrows over the shields and the siege breaker, a few even managing to kill or wound some of your foes. As you get closer, you see the Red Handed preparing to charge. You brace yourself for their attack. > You use your bow You hand an orc your shield, as his is riddled with arrows. Getting behind him, you notch an arrow to your bow. Taking aim as the orcs ahead cry out and begin their charge. Even as you aim, an arrow glances off your cheekbone, but it does not sway you. You release your first arrow, the receiving orc stumbling and falling still. The gleam of bloodlust in your eyes, you fire arrow after arrow. Mostly killing and wounding offending orcs. When your quiver runs out, you start ripping arrows out of the shield on the ground next to you, using the projectiles that haven't broken. The Red Handed push into your line, many of your orcs rushing forward to take them on. They actually hold them off pretty well for a good while. But as they exhaust and succumb to their injuries, you see there is no way you will win this. You push forward with the orc in front of you as they start to surround Galik, making a desperate attempt to get to him. The orc in front of you drops you his quiver and heroically dashes into the fray, almost immediately he is beat down and killed by your enemies. You move forward with the other archers, roaring as you make your way to your leader. As the Red Handed flood around him, he has no choice but to climb atop the siege breaker. Orc after orc is cut down trying to get to him. You charge forward, deflecting a sword with your bow. The orc's face crunches as you smash the bow into his face, the heavy wooden weapon turning his face into red mush. You throw it at the next, which doesn't do much but give you an opportunity to axe him in the neck. Before you can do anything, Galik takes a spear jab in the back. Two orcs climb up and one grabs him, the other using his dagger to stab the shit out of him. You hook the axe shoulder behind the knee of one of those lawless scum, arcing it back around and slamming it into his face. As the orc sputters and cries out, you try to pull the axe out, but it won't budge. The bastard even grips the top part of the handle, pushing it deeper into his face. You struggle with him until you feel a heavy pain in your chest. "Argh!" Above you, a Red Handed quickly retracts his spear. You roar as you charge up, but the dying orc below grabs your leg, causing you to fall. The orc with the spear begins to stab you in the back, as other orcs stab you and beat you down with clubs. You cry out in pain and anger, but you are too weak to do anything else. In moments you are left to die, broken, bloody, and bleeding out….<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Yes Chief," you say, "bring one of these shields." Luckily, one of the wagons happened to have a bunch of weapon and shield supplies in it. Galik hands the shield back to you. "Gigalak will shield me," he says, "besides, I don't know how much longer this dressing will hold without my hand." "I'll see this through to the end with you," you say. As the orcs finish up the siege breaker, you all get into position. A few orcs begin the slow push, as Galik stands in the middle of it barking orders and taking cover. Raising your shield you get into the column, a couple of arrows already hitting and bouncing off your shield. You all make a sort of wall with the shields, but many orcs are still struck down. Some of yours fire arrows over the shields and the siege breaker, a few even managing to kill or wound some of your foes. As you get closer, you see the Red Handed preparing to charge. You brace yourself for their attack. > You charge You draw your sword, preparing it as you raise your shield. With a roar you go forth to meet them, arrows from the archers flying to the sides of you and taking down some of your foes. This barely slows them down, and they meet yours. The orcs slow down the Red Handed, but as you duck, parry, deflect, and attack….the exhaustion is clearly written on your orcs. Almost a straight twenty four hours of combat and sustaining injuries seems to be taking it's toll. You slowly and steadily retreat as your allies fall one by one. Ahead, Galik and the rest of the orcs at the siege breaker are being flooded by the Red Handed. Galik climbs atop the contraption as he makes his stand, cutting down any foe brave enough to try to face him. Roaring, you and a few other orcs break your line to fight your way towards Galik. Most of the other orcs rally to you and help you to push forward. Dodging a blow, you slice through an orc's face. He shouts out but before he can do much else you've already slashed his neck. As you lunge forward you parry a blow, slamming your blade straight through the offenders chest. His arms flail in front of him, and as you wedge the blade to get it out his blood spouts from it. Another orc swings, his sword glancing off your cheek bone. Roaring in fury, you slash through his knee and he falls gripping his stub. Galik slams his sword into an orc's skull, but it is in too deep for him to wrench it out. The orc falls and the sword slips from his grip. "Galik!" you shout as you throw him your sword, and in one motion he catches it and slices through an orc's chest in mid climb. Brandishing your axe you charge forward, cutting down several orcs in a fury, but not without sustaining some injuries yourself. Panting and heaving, you climb onto the top of the siege breaker. The both of you stand back to back fighting off orcs, as the rest of your allies are swallowed up. As your weapon clashes with others, and blood is shed, you hear a gasp behind you. Turning, you see there is a dagger wedged into Galik's knee joint. He falls and you reach out to catch him, but miss by a hair. Galik is dragged into the crowd of orcs, you slash, beat, stab, and jab at him. You roar and slam your axe into the nearest orc. Before you can fall another, a flail flies forward, wrapping around your leg. The orc pulls with a grunt, and steps back, dragging you off the glorified wagon. You howl in pain and rage as the surrounding orcs begin to stab you and beat your with their clubs and fists. You meet much the same fate as Galik….<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>In the following days, chaos has erupted throughout the camp. The Red Handed and their allies dispersed themselves throughout the camp, then without warning began to butcher as many of your orcs as they could. Trapped by a cliff behind you and the bulk of the late Grolik's forces ahead of you, the only viable cover is the rocks and wagons you hide behind. They have a pretty good grip on the main camp area. Once they finish fighting the rest of the camp, they will surely overwhelm you at any moment. Arrow after arrow thuds into the wagon. You fire an arrow back under one of the wheels, unsure of where the hell it landed. In front of you the tents burn and the sounds of fighting ring throughout. You didn't know there were so damn many of them until last night. The minor nicks, scratches, and bruises you've received from fighting your way out pulsate through your body. Galik sits next to you, nursing a grievous injury in his side. As you, Galik, and the rest of the orcs fought your way through, some orc chucked a javelin into Galik's side. It went through pretty deeply and you are surprised that he is still alive, although he won't be if you do not get him treatment soon. Even then his chances are probably slim. You witnessed Hidius walking out of his tent to see the commotion, and immediately was stabbed in the chest before you could help. Silak fought valiantly to defend his dying chief, but was ultimately overwhelmed. Gro'tesk might be dead by now, you didn't see what became of him. You're not too sure about Rolomag either for that matter. You had not seen him since late yesterday, and as far as you know he wanted to speak with Gro'tesk. So they're either standing together or already dead. Gasping and panting, Galik stands up and directs some of the orcs around you. "You, crawl that way," he says, "and you, keep shooting damn it!" He kneels and grips another orc by the shoulder. "Finish this up, damn it!" A team of orcs furiously work on a contraption similar to the siege breakers you constructed during the war with the Wister Elves. Actually, you recognize a lot of the orcs around you from those days. Galik slumps against the wagon, gritting his teeth. "Nolazir," he says, "we're going to try to break through. We'll have archers at the sides covering you, follow us, and when we get close enough break out and rush them." While the path you have to go is pretty narrow, you're sure this will only lead to your doom. Well, so would sitting here eventually. > You stay here and cover Galik "Galik" you say, "let's hold out here." "We need everyone to push through." "No, if we stay here we can shoot them when they inevitably charge us," you say, "we will probably die anyway, but we can whittle down their numbers a bit." Galik nods and prepares his bow. You pass along the order for everyone to stand their ground and wait for the time to fire…. But it never seems to come. Two days later, the fighting has calmed down in the camp, many of your orcs apparently having managed to escape if they weren't killed. Now most of the Red Handed are focused on launching volley after volley of arrows at you. Many of you manage to shoot back, sometimes killing and wounding theirs. But they have you beat down pretty well. As you stand to fire an arrow, a sharp pain shoots through your chest. Gritting your teeth you kneel down, gripping the arrow lodged in your chest. You snap the shaft in half, knowing that pulling it out would only really cause you to bleed out faster. Still, this isn't the first time you have been shot with an arrow. You sit down against the wagon next to Galik. He is not doing so well, having developed a fever, and his wound becoming red and filled with pus. An orc bends as low as he can as he dashes over to you. Right before he can yell his message an arrow tears into his forehead. He looks up at it, almost going cross eyed. The orcs mouth moves but no sound comes out, and he collapses. Looking around, your orcs seem dispirited. Many nursing wounds that will eventually be the death of them anyway. One tired looking orc crawls his way over to you. "Nolazir," he says, "I was with you during our fight with the Wister Elves. I will remain with you until the bitter end." "The bitter end is already here, my friend," you respond. Galik wheezes and grabs your shoulder. It's time," he says while bearing his sword. "They've already got us beat," he says, "we mind as well go out on our feet." You and the other orc help Galik up as he struggles to stand. He manages to get his own balance though. "Friends, warriors," he says, "the end is here. I say we honor our fallen comrades, and go out on our feet as Gigalak intended it to be." Galik's voice is raspy and weak. The remaining orcs all nod and prepare to charge. "Forward!" Galik cries. As you and your young friend storm forward, you do not hear the rest of the orcs going. "What is the this?" Galik says, as you both see the other orc dead on the ground, an axe in his skull. One of the orcs gestures to the dead orc with the arrow in his head. "The Red Handed gave us an ultimatum while you were busy talking about how best to get us all killed," he says. "What are you-" you say. "Shut up," he says, "this fool was going to tell you." "Tell us what?" you ask. Maybe it was the fatigue, maybe it was the trust in your fellows. But under normal circumstances you should have seen this coming. "It's better if we show you." About a dozen orcs notch their bows, you reel back in surprise, inhaling deeply. "I order you to-" Galik is cut off as several arrows hit him, he immediately drops. You only get a moment to roar in rage as several more arrows pierce your chest. You stagger back, blood starting to ooze out of your body. "Argh! I'll fucking kill you!" Before you can muster anything else your old friends have restrung their bows. "By Gigalak's blood I'll-" Arrows whistle through the air and slam into your body, gritting your teeth and writhing in pain as the deadly projectiles tear through your flesh and organs. You go down, yelling an unintelligible garble, as you fall into a rage filled heap. Twitching you lay there, all of your senses stopping as a haze slowly envelops your vision.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You've traveled far the past three months total, gaining the support from large and small tribes alike. It has been tough convincing some, but others are far more agreeable. From the reports you've heard, it's put much less pressure on your army, for now. On the downside, Galik and Grolik have managed to engage the Mannate Empire in some larger skirmishes than you would have liked. Rolomag and the other more reliable orcs haven't been able to keep them in check as well as you had hoped. As you ride on, one of the coastal villages comes into view. The sun bearing down upon you, in the distance you see a number of orcs. Some seem to be fishing with nets and spears, and some seem to be enjoying the sun. A few unsurprisingly wrestle in circles made of seashells. Several wooden boats float lazily among the waves. One orc saunters over to you, his skin a much darker shade of green due to generations of living out here. Yours is a much lighter shade of green. The orc stops several feet away from you. "Who are you?" "Nolazir." His eyebrows arch and his eyes widen a bit. A small grin spreads across his face. "I have heard of you, fighting off the humans. Making your rounds to many of the villages and tribes. That is why you are here?" "Yes." The orc chuckles as he leads you toward the village. "I don't think we'll be able to help you, friend," he says. "All of us are at stake," you say. "We need all the people we can get." "We're having our own issues. We can't save everyone else when we can't even save ourselves." You grunt, scanning the area. Nothing seems to be happening. "What's your name?" you ask. "Silak," he says, "I just do the fishing around here. The chief is inside." He gestures into a small wooden hut. You nod to him in thanks and step inside, the old wood steps creaking a bit. Half of the hut is dark, the rest illuminated by the sunlight entering between the wooden beams above. Some tarp seems to be covering the rest of it. You stop short as a figure steps out of the shadows, an orc with several wrinkles on his face. His raven dark hair contrasted by a multitude of grey hairs throughout. His face turns up into a weary smile. His dark green skin hiding him well, until he steps into the rays of light. "Welcome, friend," he says. "I am Chief Hidius." "I am Nolazir." It is just then that you notice the severe burn marks covering Hidius' body. His face, from what you can see, is even a bit distorted. "I know why you are here." "Will you join me?" you ask. "No." "But-" "Walk with me." The chief puts his hand on your shoulder, slowly leading you outside. As you step into the sunlight, you realize Hidius injuries are more severe than you thought. It appears as though his nose has been smelted off of his face. You're surprised that his hair is still growing though, which should not be possible. "How... is your hair still growing?" "A rude question to ask of my deformities." "I'm sorr-" "No. It's alright, no one has asked in a long time, some around here know the story. Others think it's crazed nonsense." Hidius waves a hand to change the subject. He stops and gestures to the village and the waters ahead. "Gigalak gave us these lands and these waters so that we could live wild and free. The Mannate Empire wants to take that from us." "So help us stop them." "We can't… I can't," Hidius says. "I am dying and so is my village." "What do you mean?" "We've been cursed, you see, as made apparent by my condition." "That's nonsense," you say. "Taking heavy burn wounds isn't going to damn the rest of the village. Besides, they look fine to me." Hidius chuckles. "It won't be today, or tomorrow, or even a decade from now, but we're all doomed. I've seen it." Hidius closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. "Whether or not we stop the Mannate Empire… something far worse is waiting to take us into a grip of fire." "Stop this," you say, "and tell me what you mean." "Nothing we really do this day matters anymore, I have seen it." You take a deep breath and try to stop yourself from shaking the older orc in frustration. "No matter what is going to happen, you can't just lay down and die." You gently put a hand on his shoulder and turn him around to face you. "We're orcs damn it, and we fight everything that gets in our way. Living, dead, hell, Empire, whatever it may be. We don't just lay down and die." The chief smiles slowly. "While that may be true of you and yours, I am old and tired of fighting. I've seen enough horrors to last one thousand lifetimes. Our time is useless." > You say "Stop Moping" "Listen, Hidius," you say. "You need to stop moping around and do something. The only thing that is going to doom you and your tribe to extinction is this attitude of yours." Hidius' eyes widen in surprise at your words. "Even though you've been through much, they all look up to you. You need to be their guiding hand, show them how to live a life by example, show them how to defend it too." "I can't- there's no way we'll ever stop the oncoming darkness-" "Enough of that talk, it's spreading to everyone here. The second thing that came out of Silak's mouth was this doom and gloom shit." Hidius looks down for a moment. "Perhaps my suffering has made me weak, when it should make me stronger." "Yes, look. They all need you. We all need you," you say. "Fine." Hidius clenches his fists. "I will gather my forces and take them to meet your army." "Be quick. The Mannate Empire is becoming a faster and larger beast every day." Hidius nods and calls over a group of orcs. You can't hear what he says but they all split up to gather more orcs, so you can only imagine that he is keeping his word. As you ride off into the burning rays of the sun, you hope that your words actually got through to Hidius. You ride on, to where you think the next tribe should be. Perhaps you will find somewhere to hide from the sun for a bit first…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Lifting your knee, you hop forward and act as though you are about to kick Gro'tesk's shin. He brings one hand down to push your leg away, and in this moment you slam your foot into the ground, lurching forward. In the same movement, you reel your fist back and then bolt forward. Your knuckles hit him straight in the forehead, this is followed by another swift hit right under his eye. Gro'tesk grunts and staggers back. With a mighty roar he charges you, slamming one punch into your chest. "Oof!" The blow knocks the wind out of you, throwing you to the ground. Chief Gro'tesk savagely lands a quick kick to your face. Reeling to the side you land face first in the dirt, the heavy pounding of his feet stopping as he lifts his foot again. > You knock Out Rolling to the side, his foot smashes into the ground inches away from your head. Pulling your foot back, you shout as you slam it into Gro'tesk's knee. As his knee pushes in, he cries out and falls forward, catching himself with his hands. You push yourself up into a crouch as you run forward, reeling your fist back. But you lose your balance and skid forward. Fortunately, you use the momentum to plant your fist into the side of his head. He grunts as the full force of your attack hits him, his head snapping to the side and his body twisting. He lays still, and you crawl backward, just in case…. But he just lays on the ground. All of the onlookers gasp, never having seen their mighty chief get knocked out cold. You stand up and dust yourself off, and just right after the chief rolls over onto his back. Rubbing his face and sitting up he looks at you, still dazed. "I win.", He stares at you blankly for a moment. "Fine!" With the help of a couple of onlookers, he stands up and stumbles his way over to his hut, rubbing his head as he tries to figure out how he could have lost. You smirk and follow him in to give him your terms.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fists raised, you step to the side, constantly circling your foe. Gro'tesk does likewise, a sadistic grin spread across his face. With a huff you step forward, your fist twisting as the arm propels it forward. Gro'tesk's cheek ripples and his head turns as he moves with the punch. At the same time his fist flies, you manage to knock it away. Ducking under, you slam your left fist into his ribs and come back up slamming into his jaw. Gro'tesk staggers back, bewildered at your speed. Although you are quite a large orc, he is bigger than you. He throws a backhand, which hits your defending arm. As he brings it back, he sends his other fist forward, which you manage to parry. But, in your rush, you accidentally lower your right arm a bit too far… As it connects a quick flash of dark splits through your vision, but only for a brief moment. As you stagger back, a pain shoots through your jaw. Managing to duck another blow, you push your opponent back, a move he was not expecting. As you try to regain your ground, you feel a fuzziness spreading throughout your head. Getting punched sucks. As you step forward, you consider your next move… > You swift Punch Keeping your elbows tucked in, you send out several punches. The first three land well, hitting Gro'tesk's face. The next two don’t go so well. As your foe dodges the next, you lose form and go wide with your fifth punch, and he easily sees it coming. He actually manages to catch your fist, twisting your arm to the side with one hand. As you bring your left arm up to defend your face, his large fist slips in under it. Your head kicks back as you feel the pain ripple through your mouth, the lip busting open. Gro'tesk lets go of your arm as you stumble back, and he lands another fist into the side of your head. A throbbing pain emanates from the side of your head. Your opponent grins as you stagger in a daze, he prepares the finishing blow… > You catch his Wrist Shuffling to the side a bit, you stare at your foe, your hands at your side. He snarls and lunges forward for the last strike. You lean back, then step to the side as you grab his wrist with your outermost hand. You pull it down with as much force as you can, and with your arm closest to him you run your elbow along his straightened arm for a moment. Your elbow collides, hitting him right between the eyes. His face scrunches up, and, as you let go, you step right in front of him; reeling your fist back you snarl as you ram it into his nose. His head jerks back and his feet slip out from under him, landing with a heavy thud. Panting, you step back and watch him as he lays still. With a groan he shuffles, rubbing his face with his hands. "What happened?" he asks. "I won the fight." "Aww, come on!" he complains. "I wanted to win!" "No, I won fair and square." "Fine!" Gro'tesk groans. As he pulls himself up, he mumbles under his breath. He signals to you to follow him into his hut. The crowd stares in awe, as they have never seen anyone beat their leader down before.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fists raised, you step to the side, constantly circling your foe. Gro'tesk does likewise, a sadistic grin spread across his face. With a huff you step forward, your fist twisting as the arm propels it forward. Gro'tesk's cheek ripples and his head turns as he moves with the punch. At the same time his fist flies, you manage to knock it away. Ducking under, you slam your left fist into his ribs and come back up slamming into his jaw. Gro'tesk staggers back, bewildered at your speed. Although you are quite a large orc, he is bigger than you. He throws a backhand, which hits your defending arm. As he brings it back, he sends his other fist forward, which you manage to parry. But, in your rush, you accidentally lower your right arm a bit too far… As it connects a quick flash of dark splits through your vision, but only for a brief moment. As you stagger back, a pain shoots through your jaw. Managing to duck another blow, you push your opponent back, a move he was not expecting. As you try to regain your ground, you feel a fuzziness spreading throughout your head. Getting punched sucks. As you step forward, you consider your next move… > You grapple You shuffle forward, wrapping your fingers around his forearm. He grunts in surprise as you pull, while simultaneously planting a fist or two into his ribs. Ducking under a swing, you grab his wrist with your other hand and slide the first up his arm and lock it around his elbow. With all your might, you yank is arm forward and pull down. Gro'tesk stumbles and falls, and, as you are about to twist his arm, you feel a savage kick land on the back of your knee. Buckling and letting go of his arm, the foe pushes himself up. Hearing him coming up right behind, you throw an elbow back with a savage snarl. He catches it and wraps his hand around the back of your neck. With a heavy grunt, he pushes you forward, using his control and momentum to keep you moving. You cry out as he tosses you over a water trough and into a wooden rack with animal skins hanging from it. You only half-catch yourself, and, before you can fully turn, Gro'tesk is right there. With a sick grin, his boot flies into the water trough which slams into your stomach. The wind is taken out of you, and you even manage to get a grip on it. You cannot stop the force of the kick and the trough still goes down, pinning you to the ground from your waist. The cold water spills out, pouring up over your belly and chest. You feel like something sucks up into your chest as the cold makes you gasp. With an unnatural nimbleness, Gro'tesk hops over the fallen trough. He lifts his foot and brings it down. Luckily you manage to catch his foot in time. With both hands, you push as he does; both of your faces twisting with effort. > You twist his leg Crying out, you twist his ankle; Gro'tesk almost falls but catches himself on the skin rack. With one hand you pull his ankle forward. Your goes tries to stop himself from falling forward, his other leg straightening up. You shout out, sending your other fist into his straightened knee. A sickening crack resounds as your opponent's face twists up in pain. He falls as he cries out, rolling into the skin rack as he nurses his injured knee. Pushing the water trough off of you, now easier as it's empty, you hobble over to Gro'tesk. He looks at you, a fiery rage in his eyes. "You ruined my leg!" he screams. "That was called winning." He roars, almost springing up and grabbing you, but his leg buckles and he falls. "Hey, it was your knee of my skull." "Fine! You win fair and square!" You stand to the side as several orcs help him limp into his hut. The rest of the orcs from the village just stare at you in awe.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You shuffle forward, wrapping your fingers around his forearm. He grunts in surprise as you pull, while simultaneously planting a fist or two into his ribs. Ducking under a swing, you grab his wrist with your other hand and slide the first up his arm and lock it around his elbow. With all your might, you yank is arm forward and pull down. Gro'tesk stumbles and falls, and, as you are about to twist his arm, you feel a savage kick land on the back of your knee. Buckling and letting go of his arm, the foe pushes himself up. Hearing him coming up right behind, you throw an elbow back with a savage snarl. He catches it and wraps his hand around the back of your neck. With a heavy grunt, he pushes you forward, using his control and momentum to keep you moving. You cry out as he tosses you over a water trough and into a wooden rack with animal skins hanging from it. You only half-catch yourself, and, before you can fully turn, Gro'tesk is right there. With a sick grin, his boot flies into the water trough which slams into your stomach. The wind is taken out of you, and you even manage to get a grip on it. You cannot stop the force of the kick and the trough still goes down, pinning you to the ground from your waist. The cold water spills out, pouring up over your belly and chest. You feel like something sucks up into your chest as the cold makes you gasp. With an unnatural nimbleness, Gro'tesk hops over the fallen trough. He lifts his foot and brings it down. Luckily you manage to catch his foot in time. With both hands, you push as he does; both of your faces twisting with effort. > You go for a cheap shot Gritting your teeth as his foot gets closer and closer to your face, you're only left with one option. He tries to pull his leg away, but you hold on tight. Your wrap your hand over the top of his foot, pulling it so his heel skids across your chest. Your other hand shoots upward, Gro'tesk's face twists in pain as he stumbles back and falls. He rolls howling in pain, nursing his injured genitals. With the water trough empty and no one trying to crush your skull, you have a much easier time pushing it off of you. "No fair!" Gro'tesk cries, "that's cheating!" "So is trying to stomp in my skull," you say, "but I did win." "Fair is fair…and unfair is unfair!" Gro'tesk screams. "Well, now you've learned that there are consequences to trying to stomp heads in." Gro'tesk rolls to the side and pouts. "Fine, you win," he says, "but I owe you a punch!" Gro'tesk pulls himself up in a huff, and hobbles over to his hut. Most of the orcs stare at you in awe as you follow, others give you disapproving looks for your chosen victory route. Although you don't really care either way, you've won.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>One Month Later… The large wooden gates of the village creak open, the surrounding orcs casting suspicious glances your way. A few even have their hands on some weapons nearby, and you do not blame them. Riding in through the mist which veils dawn's light, you appear almost as a specter of death. Lifting the hood, you give your brethren a weary nod. A few of their eyes widen as they recognize you, some stand unsure of who you are, and some just shrug and go back to their business. One orc approaches you. "Who are you?" "I am Nolazir, surrogate chief of the River Tribe in place of Chief Greusim." The orc's eyes widen. "It's been four years, and you have not found a replacement? Does he have any sons?" You nod. "One, but he is young and impatient. I will stand in until he has learned how to do his duty with patience and wisdom." The orc scoffs at the unthinkable act of leaving a tribe largely chief less. "What is it that you seek?" "I want to speak with your chief," you say. The orc shrugs and gives you directions to the chief's hut. That was a bit easier than you thought. As you ride forward, the large hut comes into view. You are impressed to see that it actually has two stories to it. Most orcs chose to build one floor but with a wider house, although you are aware the council has at least three floors. Pushing this useless information out of your mind, you hop off your horse. Your legs are stiff from the long ride, and you take a moment to stretch them. Muffled yelling comes out from within the doors of the chief's hut. Splinters of wood fly as the door bursts open. A hapless orc youth falls out and tumbles down the stairs. A large, broad orc steps out. His dark mane falling past his shoulders, two sharp teeth protrude from his bottom lip. His right eye looks like it is perpetually swollen halfway shut, a series of scars emanating from the side of his eye and going all the way to his ear. On his head rests a helmet with two bullhorns attached to it. His tribal necklaces jingle as he bounds down the steps, his boot landing in the young orc's face. "Fool, how could you be so incomprenent?" he says, not realizing he butchered the word. The youth prepares to defend himself, but the chief is too fast. He twists the orcs arm and lands several fists into his ribs. As he continues to beat the orc, you wonder if he will kill him. While you have the strong urge to step in, you also don't want to get into another tribe's affairs. They could easily kill you for interfering, although it wouldn't be the first time you have pissed off an orc chief. > You stay out of it The chief just continues to wail on the youngster, his nose battered and turned wrong. Blood oozes out of his nostrils and his left eye seems to be swollen shut. He tries to talk but it just comes out as garble. "What!? I can't hear you," the chief screams, "you'll have to speak louder than that!" The youth's mouth begins to move, and as he does so, the chief's hand lifts and curls into a fist. The larger orc raises an eyebrow, daring the smaller to try to speak again. Realizing he is being given a chance, the younger sighs and remains quiet. "Coward!" the chief yells and drops the other orc onto the ground. He just lays there, silently soaking in the pain inflicted upon him. The chief turns to you, satisfaction in his eyes. "Who the hell are you?" he asks. "My name is Nolazir, of the River Tribe…as some call it." "Hah! Foolish name!" he says, "I am Chief Gro'tesk, and you are…..ah, Nolazir." He grins. "I've heard of you, fighting the humans….but you let your warriors argue with you," he says, "you have gone soft! You should pummel them into the ground whenever they so much as look at you the wrong way." "Maybe I'm not so harsh to my own," you say, "but I don't give that same kindness to strangers." Gro'tesk's eyes narrow, and he snarls. "Are you threatening me?" he asks. "No, I'm challenging you," you say, "if I win, you and your allies join me." "If I win….you screw off!" Gro'tesk growls. By now, a large group of orcs has gathered around. All of them cheering on Gro'tesk as he removes his tribal necklaces. They make a circle around you as you prepare to fight…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Imperials try to hold out, managing to down a few orcs, but, in the end, they are overwhelmed. You stand, stabbing an Imperial with one of their own spears repeatedly. His friend, clutching an injury, swipes his blade at you. You step back to dodge and ram the spear into his throat. Gurgling as he goes down he swings once more; his blade scratches your hand but not too deep. Twisting and pulling the spear, you yank it from his corpse. You run forward, seeing the orcs beating down a group of Imperials. The last few men seem terrified, and one not older than seventeen trembles. If you could hear over the sound of the fighting, you would be able to hear his knees causing his hauberk to clink together. Before you can reach them, the rest of the orcs have stabbed and battered them into oblivion. Some orcs ride into the forest to find the fleeing soldiers. You pant, watching the massacre taking place all around. Wounded men cry out, and some lay there dying quietly. An orc approaches you, the frenzy of blood-shed just starting to wear off. "What shall we do with the wounded?" he asks. You sit there and think for a moment. Orcs have never really taken prisoners, and you don't have the supplies to care for their wounded. You are worried about having enough medical supplies for your own as it is. Although it might help to take some of them ransom, there is not too much that you would need, so maybe just leaving them to die would be better. > You leave them "Leave the wounded," you say. "Gigalak will decide their fate!" Most of the orcs obey, although many still loot the corpses. Some of the more savage orcs cut the scalps from the still living and squirming men despite your order. You walk through the dead and wounded, picking out the orcs who plead for your help. Some you know cannot be saved, and others can while being grievously wounded. With all the orcs gathered, you and many of the other orcs set to work helping them. You have saved many lives this day, working over the sound of groaning Imperials dying in the mud just outside. You see Grolik looking around, putting a spear tip to a wounded human. With a grunt he pushes, sending the dying man to his fate. It would seem as though that is not the first or the last he has killed in this manner. You catch his glimpse for a second, shame written across his face. While he does not seem the type for emotions like that, putting helpless people out of their misery must take a certain toll on one. On a rock sits Rolomag, nursing a gash on his face using a rag. He just watches some of the orcs finishing off the dying Imperials. Most of them do not seem happy about it, but maybe they believe it right not to prolong their suffering. You turn your attention back to your work, ending the suffering of friends in a much different manner. The orc whose deadly injury you have just cleaned and sewn up thanks you as he hobbles away.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Imperials try to hold out, managing to down a few orcs, but, in the end, they are overwhelmed. You stand, stabbing an Imperial with one of their own spears repeatedly. His friend, clutching an injury, swipes his blade at you. You step back to dodge and ram the spear into his throat. Gurgling as he goes down he swings once more; his blade scratches your hand but not too deep. Twisting and pulling the spear, you yank it from his corpse. You run forward, seeing the orcs beating down a group of Imperials. The last few men seem terrified, and one not older than seventeen trembles. If you could hear over the sound of the fighting, you would be able to hear his knees causing his hauberk to clink together. Before you can reach them, the rest of the orcs have stabbed and battered them into oblivion. Some orcs ride into the forest to find the fleeing soldiers. You pant, watching the massacre taking place all around. Wounded men cry out, and some lay there dying quietly. An orc approaches you, the frenzy of blood-shed just starting to wear off. "What shall we do with the wounded?" he asks. You sit there and think for a moment. Orcs have never really taken prisoners, and you don't have the supplies to care for their wounded. You are worried about having enough medical supplies for your own as it is. Although it might help to take some of them ransom, there is not too much that you would need, so maybe just leaving them to die would be better. > You take them prisoner "Take them as prisoners," you shout. "We will take them as ransom." You divide your orcs, some of them gathering wounded orcs to aid them with their injuries. The rest gather up the wounded Imperials worth saving. Some are too wounded, so are either put out of their misery or left to die. You grab a dying Imperial soldier, the young human sort of whimpers. He must believe you are going to kill him, but his eyes widen in surprise as you clamp his wound. You lift him up and carry him to some of the tents erected for the wounded. There are many more orcs in here than humans, as most are focusing on the orcs, who they find more worth saving. The soldier winces and grunts as you pour alcohol into his wound. Alcohol and blood running from the gash in his side. He groans in pain as you sew his wounds, then when it seems he is set, you tie his hands and place him under the guard of some other orcs. You go, helping orc and human alike. In the group, you are surprised to see Grolik eagerly helping a human. Strangely, he seems compassionate towards the wounded fellow as he wholeheartedly stitches his wounds up. You are surprised to see this trait from an orc such as Grolik. After witnessing him brutally butcher and maim countless enemies, it comes as a bit of a shock that he is not looting or scalping the helpless foes. While aiding enemy soldiers does not come naturally to you, surely Gigalak would smile upon saving lives as opposed to wanton destruction of life, something only the grimmest of souls would take satisfaction with. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The last few months find you and your army in the forests by the border. Reports had come of a legion of Imperials slowly making their way to the border. In the meantime, you have amassed assistance from a few more orc tribes. All the while, the Imperials wait, and your forces grow stronger and stronger. You wait, while the rain pelts your face. Every orc is silent as the ground starts to become muddy at the intensity of the precipitation. You signal the orcs to move forward, a slow trod through the mud. The Imperials are moving dozens of soldiers through, but if all goes to plan they'll never make it to the staging ground. By the time you reach them, you are hoping their supply wagons will be stuck in the mud, and their horses antsy at every trick and sound of the forests. When the time is right, you will strike, and make them pay. If the Imperials seek to break their treaty, you will show them the consequences. You all have your padded leather gambesons over your chainmail, extra leather straps tied around to reduce some of the clinking the chain tends to make. Riding forward, you catch Grolik's eye, who nods at you. Rolomag as well, who winks and pats his heart with his palm in a sign of respect. Coming up to a ridge, you signal your forces to stop. Creeping low through the foliage, you see the Imperial columns. As suspected, their wagons seem to mostly be stuck in the mud. At your signal, your archers start their painstaking crawl over to the ridgeline. The other third, slowly bring their horses onto both sides of the columns, preparing their charge. On the other side across from you, some of the lawless orcs should be preparing their attack on the Mannate soldiers. The cavalry orcs should still be fighting their way through by the time the archers are done, and when that happens they will slide down the slope. You don't want to run the risk of accidentally shooting your cavalry, so the archers will have to work fast, but by then the Imperials will be surrounded, and you should be able to crush them. As the rain intensifies a bit, their horses get even antsier. As the lightning strikes, the soldiers look into the dark forests, fear apparent. When the thunder claps, their officers bark orders to hurry and move the wagons from the mud. > You join the Cavalry On your horse, you go around to join the cavalry. As you do so, you signal the archers, the lightning briefly illuminating your warriors. For a moment, the heavens are silent, the wind stops causing the trees to sway, and a single arrow soars through the air. The Imperial officer lurches back, the arrow slicing through his shoulder. He falls off his horse with a thud, and the rest of the soldiers try to escape, but it is already too late. You and your cavalry have them caught in a pincer movement. As you ride by, you lop an Imperial's head clean off his shoulders. Before long, some of the humans have mounted horses in a vain attempt to buy their fellows time to escape. Galloping through the mud, you rush to meet one of these foes. Before you is a tired looking man, a wild look in his eyes as he gives a mighty battle cry. His sword clashes against yours, the rain splattering off the twin blades. You circle back to face him again, a slight burning sensation on your neck. To your left an Imperial soldier stands, fixing another arrow, the first arrow's head had just lightly grazed your neck. Ducking, you spur your horse forward, turning back around to face the man who you had clashed with before. Three orcs are upon him, as one sends his club into the man's gut, the other two hack and slash him with swords. It takes some time before they pierce the mail he wears, but they are effective. Charging towards the small group of archers, you throw your axe. The blade misses, instead the blunt side slamming into the man. He holds his face, blood dripping from his nose. A few arrows almost slam into you, but by the hand of Gigalak they are swept aside. You ram your horse through, trampling two men and cutting another's chest open. As you circle back around, you grab a spear from a leather pouch at the side of your horse. Chucking it, the spear impales an Imperial. By now your archers have joined the battle, and the Imperials are all but surrounded. As they group up, they seem to realize the futility of their fight, and some even manage to run into the forest to escape.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While some Imperials have been killed, they are quickly whittling down your numbers. To your left, you see the knight caught out of the line, trying to rally his soldiers. You watch as an orc chops at his head with an axe, but it bounces off his helmet. The knight rams his sword blade through the orc's armpit, pushing the dying orc off. Another orc slashes, the blade harmlessly skidding across the helmet. Before the orc is cut down, he slams the flat of the axe on the soldier's helm, slightly denting it. You look to the Imperial with the protruding spear from his silver coat, and the knights dented helmet. You get an idea… > You impale the Knight You pull one of your spears slung onto your back. With a roar, you charge the knight, he looks in surprise, taking a swing at you. You knock the sword to the side and ram the spear into his stomach. The silver coat snaps and crunches, and, as the knight falls, you push the spear further into him. You watch as crimson red oozes out from inside the coat as you twist and push the spear. The imperial sputters and coughs from under his helm as he feebly reaches for his sword before going limp. Ripping the spear out, you see the tip is mostly ruined. If you hadn't kept pushing the dead man before, you would only have had a minor flesh wound.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you get closer to him, you arc your sword over your head, aiming for his neck. The Imperial soldier slams it away with the flat of his blade and, mid-push, brings his blade back down. The sword cuts through your thick leather armor, biting into your shoulder. You wince and grunt as he pulls his sword, the both of you passing each other and turning in preparation to charge again. Behind him, you see that the orcs seem to have pushed the Imperial horsemen back a bit, and the orcs on the hill have wounded several archers in each column. The battle is going well enough for the orcs. As you charge the Imperial knight again, you consider your next move. > You throw your axe at the horse The horses gallop forward, the knight's elbow tenses and he leans forward on the horse. He seems intent on running your through. As you ride forward you let him think this will be a jousting match…. Like a bolt of lightning, you draw the axe at your side, throwing it at the Imperials horse. The axe embeds itself in its forehead, and it lets out a pained neigh. You dip to the side as it lurches forward, the knight being launched off with a cry of dismay. As he lands a sickening crunch sounds out. The knight groans and tries to pull himself up, but his arm is twisted and bent horribly. He buckles and falls onto the ground, a defeated sigh escaping his lips. "Come on, knave," the knight says, not moving, "what are you waiting for you brute?" Before you can ride forth to finish him, a loud cry emanates from the forest behind you. > You for the Emperor! You turn your horse. From out of the trees, an enormous group of humans comes rushing out, screaming and yelling. You notice they are quite different from the knights. While some of them have the silver coats, most of them just have some kind of padding and the Imperial soldier robes. Their boots, gloves, and helmets don’t look anywhere near as nice as the knights'. These must be the lowly soldiers of the Empire, but there sure are a lot of them. You turn again as you see the lawless orcs bring up a cry, charging towards the humans. You watch as your comrades also charge the humans, so you decide you should as well. Galloping forward, you prepare your axe. A battle of strength versus numbers, you decide that Gigalak will decide the winner today. You trample a couple of humans, their cries ringing out. The axe bites into another, and as he dies his sword nicks your arm. You slash, hack, batter, and even punch one. A dying soldier cries out, digging his dagger into your side. You gasp and slam your axe handle into his eye, a squishing sound resounds as blood squirts out and onto your leg. He lets out a blood curdling scream as he flails, soon going limp and falling to the ground. With the dagger still in your side, you circle back, needing to fight through a few more soldiers to do so. Panting, you see that the battle is being lost for the orcs. But some still fight on, despite their injuries and overwhelming odds. Chief Greusim charges into the middle of it, laying waste to soldier after soldier. His mighty club denting helmets and cracking skulls, breaking arms and busting jaws. You watch as he cries out, someone plunging their sword into his side. Gasping, you ride forward to save him. But there are too many soldiers to fight through, and before you can reach him the grunts pull Greusim from his horse, stabbing, slashing, punching, and beating. You see his own club being raised to be used against him. All the other orcs in your tribe watch as the chief goes down, along with the other orcs he had around him. There's just too many, you'll never fight through them all. "Fall back! Fall back!" some orc cries out. As you all do so, the lawless orcs seem shocked as to why. Before they can get away, the Imperial troops have swept them up and begin to butcher most of them. Few escape, and you even swing one onto your horse as you ride away. You all ride into the forest, lucky to have escaped death on this day. The same cannot be said for many others. You exchange glances with Rolomag, who nods and pokes his chin to the valley. Although you don't like the idea, you all will have to go there to recover and make plans…. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you get closer to him, you arc your sword over your head, aiming for his neck. The Imperial soldier slams it away with the flat of his blade and, mid-push, brings his blade back down. The sword cuts through your thick leather armor, biting into your shoulder. You wince and grunt as he pulls his sword, the both of you passing each other and turning in preparation to charge again. Behind him, you see that the orcs seem to have pushed the Imperial horsemen back a bit, and the orcs on the hill have wounded several archers in each column. The battle is going well enough for the orcs. As you charge the Imperial knight again, you consider your next move. > You throw your axe at the knight As you both ride forward, the knight tenses up, preparing to run you through. Pulling the axe from its loop, you whip it forward. The axe whirls landing in his shoulder, almost making him fall off his horse. Despite this injury he manages to hang onto his horse, pulling the axe from his shoulder. Yet there isn't the familiar sight of blood oozing from the wound, just a ripped robe and silver gleaming in the sunlight. "You'll have to do better than that, brute," the knight says while twirling the axe. Glaring at him, you accept his challenge, you spur your horse onward. The knight does the same, holding both sword and axe in hand. As he rides forward, you get an idea. > You stab his neck under his helmet You lean in as you ride forward, intent on pushing the tip of your sword under his helmet, which should pierce his throat. As the knight gets closer, you lunge, pushing the blade forward. He slams his sword into yours, simultaneously pushing it forward and sliding the axe blade along it. Before you even realize what is happening, the sword blade is biting through your neck. The axe follows tearing through your flesh, muscle, and severing your neck bone. You barely feel a thing as your head rolls to the floor, your vision darkening as the knight rides on, and your body falls to join you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you both ride forward, the knight tenses up, preparing to run you through. Pulling the axe from its loop, you whip it forward. The axe whirls landing in his shoulder, almost making him fall off his horse. Despite this injury he manages to hang onto his horse, pulling the axe from his shoulder. Yet there isn't the familiar sight of blood oozing from the wound, just a ripped robe and silver gleaming in the sunlight. "You'll have to do better than that, brute," the knight says while twirling the axe. Glaring at him, you accept his challenge, you spur your horse onward. The knight does the same, holding both sword and axe in hand. As he rides forward, you get an idea. > You use bow Not wanting to get close to this knight, you decide to this would have to do. Sheathing your sword, you sling your bow from your back, notching an arrow just as fast. "Huh?" the knight says in surprise. You release the arrow, and with a twang it soars through the air. The knight barely has time to react before the arrow lands in between his helmet and silver coat. It protrudes from his neck as dark blood spills out, a gurgling sound coming from his throat. The knight struggles to stay up on the horse, falling onto the ground below. You manage to recover your axe before you hear a loud cry coming out from the forest behind you. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With the strange campsite far behind you, the group seems to be more at ease. The forest is much more serene and offers some peace and quiet. A stream trickles by, as your horse steps over it, you hear some sounds up ahead. Greusim looks over his shoulder at the group behind him, and you nod at him. You, Greusim, Rolomag, Dekard, and some other orcs all leave your horses to go scout ahead. The main group waits for your return. The unmistakable sounds of violence penetrate your ears. Peering from the foliage, you see two things. The first must be Imperial soldiers, with their flat top helms and robes over what appears to be some kind of silver coat. Cowards. The orcs only use some padding from their leather armor and sometimes studs. Anything more would just weigh a warrior down and keep him from being effective. From what you can see, they have two separate lines of archers by the trees, and in the clearing between them are soldiers on horseback. Ahead, on a rocky hill, a group of orcs seems to be holding their ground, trading arrows with the Imperial archers. Once in a while, an orc taking a shot at one of the horsemen, but always missing. In between two groups lays a slain Imperial, a spear in his back, and a dead orc with the spear still gripped in his hands. The orc has several arrows protruding from his back. Judging by his face paint, it looks like these orcs are one of the lawless bands of orcs. "We need to help them," Rolomag says as he starts forward. You grab him by the shoulder, pulling him back. "Stop. We don't know who started it," you say. "This isn't a proper orc tribe. They're just some vagabonds." "Does it matter? They're still orcs," Rolomag says. "No, Nolazir may be right," Greusim says. "We should let the Imperials know they aren't working on behalf of all of orcin." "Are you really going to listen to this?" Rolomag asks. "Nolazir, the Empire won't care either way. They will blame all of us." "No, we can make peace with them," Greusim says. Greusim looks at you. "You believe me, don't you, Nolazir?" Chief Greusim looks genuinely concerned about whether or not you believe him or not. You look to Rolomag, he raises an eyebrow, not lifting the scowl on his face for a moment. > You help the Orcs You look to Greusim. "Sorry chief," you say, "Rolomag is right. We need to work with the orcs, besides, the Imperials encroached on our lands." You draw your sword. "And there must be consequences." You tell Dekard to get the rest of the orcs, in the meantime you wait. "Nolazir," Greusim says, "I'm disappointed in you. We're in no position, and we will never be in a position to fight the Empire." "It's for the good of Orcin," you say, "we'll teach them a lesson." The rest of the orcs arrive, and you look out towards them. "Please chief," you say, "help us defend our home." He looks at the ground for a moment, but returns to answer you. "If you all think it is best, I will help you." Making sure to stay in cover, you wonder what the best course of action would be. > You attack the Horsemen Feeling bold, you suggest to go straight for the horsemen first, then fan out to the sides and wipe out the archers. Some of the orcs have reservations about this plan, as it would place you right into the center of the archers. But by Grikalia, you won't let some sharp objects scare you. "We go in fast, and we go in deadly," you say raising your sword. Most orcs nod, and some reluctantly agree, including Greusim. You all get on your horses, waiting for the right moment, although there really isn't one. On Greusim's command you all charge forward, readying your weapons to meet these humans. The archers fire at your group, an arrow whirling right by your head. The cries and thudding of fallen comrades sounds out as the arrows kill several of your comrades. A low gasp, an arrow sticks out of chief Greusim's chest. His face scrunches up in pain, but he ignores it and rides on, letting out a war cry of rage and pain. One of the horsemen comes circling back from near the hill. Seeing you all on the attack, he draws his sword, arcing it over his head as he rides towards you. You decide to accept his challenge, arrows whirling around you and the sound of fighting in your ears. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look to Greusim. "Sorry chief," you say, "Rolomag is right. We need to work with the orcs, besides, the Imperials encroached on our lands." You draw your sword. "And there must be consequences." You tell Dekard to get the rest of the orcs, in the meantime you wait. "Nolazir," Greusim says, "I'm disappointed in you. We're in no position, and we will never be in a position to fight the Empire." "It's for the good of Orcin," you say, "we'll teach them a lesson." The rest of the orcs arrive, and you look out towards them. "Please chief," you say, "help us defend our home." He looks at the ground for a moment, but returns to answer you. "If you all think it is best, I will help you." Making sure to stay in cover, you wonder what the best course of action would be. > You wipe out the Archers Scanning the area, you decide it would be best to take out the archers first. Your plan is to split the groups into two, each taking out a column of archers, and then catching the knights in a pincer attack. You and the chief lead one group to the closest archers, and Dekard and another orc lead the others. They take their group a longer way as their targets are further away. Although you figure your distraction will let them take the other column even easier. You slowly pass through the trees, the sounds of fighting slowly dying down until you creep up behind the archers. The orcs prepare their weapons, waiting for the signal. As you are about to charge, an Imperial archer steps out from behind a tree, adjusting his belt and sighing contentedly. Although his hood is up and his mask is pulled up over most of his face, you see the surprise in his eyes when he sees you all. "Attack!" he cries, and at this point you all gallop forward. The archers scramble to get ready, and Greusim make a passing swing for the Imperial. He ducks under, and in the same movement grabs onto Greusim and his horse, pulling himself onto it. As you ride forward, and Greusim tries to throw the archer off, the Imperial draws a small dagger. The chief cries out in agony as the Imperial buries the blade into his back. The chief falls, taking the Imperial with him. The other orcs are coming up on the archer column, several having been killed by arrows. Greusim groans and the archer attempts to stab him, but he catches his wrist, and the push and struggle. Normally Greusim could easily overpower him, but getting thrown off the horse must have done a number on him. > You continue the Charge Greusim seems to be doing well enough, so you decide to charge forward. The orcs have broken through the middle of the column, leaving crushed and mangled corpses strewn about. You break into the utter chaos, cleaving half of an Imperial's face off. To the left a group of archers tries to form, and you attempt to go straight through them! You duck low onto your horse, and as you approach them, you feel a stinging in your side. You ignore it as your horse slams into some archers, screaming sounding out. You lop another's arm off as you ride by, circling around and preparing to finish the group off. One of the archers, helping a wounded friend, drops him and notches an arrow. As you ride forward he lets it loose, and you grunt as the arrow buries itself into your thigh. In anger you don't even bother using your axe, you just trample him and his friend with the horse. Looking out, you see that the orcs have decimated most of the archers. The other column seems to be in chaos. Out towards the clearing, you see the lawless orcs have charged the Imperial knights, overwhelming them with sheer numbers. They hack and beat the knights to pieces. A hot pain shoots up through your body, and looking down, you realize you have an arrow buried into your side. Groaning, you steer the horse over to the other orcs as they finish off the archers. From out of the trees, Greusim stumbles out, panting and covered in wounds. He has multiple gash marks and three arrows dug into his back, side, and hip. Looking behind him, you see multiple archers laying broken and bloody on the ground. The chief hefts his club over his shoulder. "It'll take some more than some tender-bellies to take me down," he says. The chief grunts as he pulls himself onto his horse. As you ride to meet with the rest of the orcs, you break most of the shafts from the arrows on your body. You leave a portion in so as not to make the injuries worse, and so that you can get them out later. Your comrades seem to have wiped out the other column, and the lawless orcs you helped start to walk towards you. Before you can do anything else, a cry rises up from the forest behind you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Scanning the area, you decide it would be best to take out the archers first. Your plan is to split the groups into two, each taking out a column of archers, and then catching the knights in a pincer attack. You and the chief lead one group to the closest archers, and Dekard and another orc lead the others. They take their group a longer way as their targets are further away. Although you figure your distraction will let them take the other column even easier. You slowly pass through the trees, the sounds of fighting slowly dying down until you creep up behind the archers. The orcs prepare their weapons, waiting for the signal. As you are about to charge, an Imperial archer steps out from behind a tree, adjusting his belt and sighing contentedly. Although his hood is up and his mask is pulled up over most of his face, you see the surprise in his eyes when he sees you all. "Attack!" he cries, and at this point you all gallop forward. The archers scramble to get ready, and Greusim make a passing swing for the Imperial. He ducks under, and in the same movement grabs onto Greusim and his horse, pulling himself onto it. As you ride forward, and Greusim tries to throw the archer off, the Imperial draws a small dagger. The chief cries out in agony as the Imperial buries the blade into his back. The chief falls, taking the Imperial with him. The other orcs are coming up on the archer column, several having been killed by arrows. Greusim groans and the archer attempts to stab him, but he catches his wrist, and the push and struggle. Normally Greusim could easily overpower him, but getting thrown off the horse must have done a number on him. > You help Greusim You whip the axe, the blade burying into the archer's shoulder blade. He screams in pain as he stumbles to the side, almost tripping over Greusim. He tries to pull the axe out, but Greusim gets a hand on it first. Still on the ground, he wrenches the axe out, swinging it back around and slamming it into the Imperial's stomach. He doubles over as the chief rips the axe out, and the Imperial falls to his knees clutching the wound. With a savage cry, Greusim arcs the weapon back around, burying it into the Imperials neck. He falls twitching and gurgling as his blood seeps out into the earth. Panting, Greusim pulls the axe out, tossing it to you. "Thanks," he says, and you nod at him. The other orcs seem to be wrecking the column pretty well, even though several orcs have been shot down by the deadly volleys. "Well, let's get to i-" Greusim says, almost stumbling as an arrow rips into his back. You ride over, looping around the tree and lopping off an archers arm. Several more materialize from the trees, firing at you. Ducking you circle back around, hopping off your horse. Sliding behind a tree, you and Greusim ready your bows. Stepping out, you don't realize the archers were trying to creep up on you. You slam your notched bow into his, causing his arrow to hit the dirt, before bringing yours back and shooting him in the throat. He gurgles as he staggers to the ground. Before you know it, the archers are charging you. A couple arrows flying by you as you draw your axe. To your right, Greusim cracks a couple of skulls with his club. You deflect a sword, chopping into an Imperial's shoulder. One jumps onto you, grabbing you and trying to restrain you. His friend tries to run you through with his sword, but you step to the side. The soldier's sword plunges into the tree, and as you raise your sword he desperately tries to yank it out. He screams as you spill his blood onto the grass, specks hitting the tree. The archer on your back grips your forearm, trying to turn your sword into you. You chuckle and jab the sword back, the tip stabbing him in the face. He cries out and you throw him over your shoulder, stomping on his neck to silence him. You look up, ready to take the next one, but you see them laying crushed and bleeding around Greusim. He pants as he kneels, deep cuts and gouges all over him. Three arrows protrude from his back, side, and hip. The archers must have thought the other two were going to kill you, and decided to all focus on him. "Chief!" you cry out. He stands up, waving you off. "I'm fine, I'm fine," he says, "let's go find the rest, Nolazir." You nod and go with him to find the rest, mounting your horses. As you ride out you see that both columns of archers have been destroyed. The lawless orcs on the hill must have swept down and fought the knights, as evidenced by the butchered corpses on the ground. Greusim climbs onto his horse as you ride forward. Before you can do anything else, a loud cry rises up from the forest behind you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>All the orcs stand around a giant tree in the village center, waiting for your chief, Greusim, to speak. He stands on a flat rock, looking over everyone. Greusim has the raven black hair that all the orcs have, the sides shaved into a mohawk, with the back end running down to his upper back. White hairs scattered throughout his majestic hair. His face aged and wrinkled, giving him the appearance of a grumpy bulldog, and two sharp teeth protrude up from his under bite, a common trait among orcs. For a moment you and he look at each other, his left eye always perpetually half closed, making him look vexed. Although the chief is one of the calmest orcs you have ever met. "Everyone," he starts, "it has come to my attention that the Imperials are amassing warriors by the borders between our lands." He spreads his arms out. "These very lands that have been our home since Gigalak gave it to the First Born." He pauses for a moment. "We need to make sure these lands are protected, for the well being of all orcs, ourselves, and future generations. " Some of the orcs start calling out for blood, to which Greusim shakes his head. "No, we must watch what the Empire does, we cannot go out looking for a fight. Not this time, we must try to avoid conflict. Now, I will personally lead an expedition team to the border, and we will see what the Imperials are doing. There will likely be other tribes of orcs doing likewise, but if they fight the Empire, we will not interfere." "What happened to all that shit about sticking together?!" an orc cries angrily. "We will only fight if they attack us first, we will not be the ones to start a war with the Empire. It would be deadly, and very long if we did so." You all talk amongst each other. According to chief Greusim, this could be a very precarious situation. You call out. "What if they are protecting their borders from orcs raiding Imperial lands?" you ask. "You know what some of the tribes are like." If you could even call them that, some groups of orcs aren't even proper tribes. Just bands of raiders, thieves, and scum. "If that is the case," the chief says, "we will let them know they do not act on behalf of all of Orcin. Maybe, we would even help the Empire fight them on behalf of the rest of the tribes." There is arguing amongst the orcs. The orcs have banded together to fight external threats, but never with a foreign power to fight other orcs. The affairs of orcs have always been kept to the tribes of orcin. Helping the Empire fight fellow orcs, no matter if they are scum, would be crazy. "So, my friends," Greusim says, "who will aid me on this quest." Many hands go up, the chief peering through the crowd to see who would be best. You wonder if you should raise your hand, the expedition might call for experience and expertise, which you would have. On the other hand, you also don't really want to leave your family for an extended period of time. While Gilikia is strong and hard-working, two kids, an infant, and a multitude of chores would be difficult for her to handle by herself. Also, there is the fact that someone may need to run the village in Greusim's absence, which is also something you would be willing to do. > You don't Go You have weighed out all of the options, and you decide that you are going to stay here at the village. Let the currently more adventurous orcs handle this sort of thing. Greusim looks somewhat disappointed that you did not volunteer to go along, but no chief can force an orc to take a part in these matters if they do not wish to. Chief Greusim beckons you to him, while all the other orcs are getting prepared for the trip, or complaining they weren't selected. "Nolazir, my friend," Greusim says, "I need your help." "I'm sorry Greusim, I can't go-" "No, not that," he says. "I need you to keep an eye of the village while I am gone. Oversee things and make sure that it all holds together." "Well what exactly do I have to do?" you ask. "Hmm, govern the daily matters of the village, for one. Most orcs are responsible for their own crops and supplies, but sometimes Gigalak has other plans. If they need help, then you help them. If there are any squabbles, you end those as soon as you can. Also, as I'm sure you know, make sure the village is kept safe…" Greusim gets into the specifics of running the village day to day, and while some of it sounds kind of boring, you realize those are the things that must be done to keep the village together. "Gigalak didn't give us these fields, forests, and mountains as our home, just to lose it to laziness and ignorance. Remain vigilant and you will be fine," Greusim nods and pats your shoulder, "but I trust you Nolazir, you'll do a fine job in my stead." You bid each other farewell. Greusim and the rest of the groups ride off towards the mountains, and before leaving the village Rolomag looks back from his horse and nods at you, which you return. The village stands behind you, more or less going on as it always has, even if it is a little emptier. > You branch 1B: Home You enter the large hut that could be considered the villages town hall. There really isn't much to it, mostly a chair and desk near a fire place. The rest of the space just has piles of extra crates, hide bags, and random farming tools. As there isn't much use for an orc at a desk, you decide to saddle up and make your rounds through the village. After some time, you realize there isn't much going on except for the village seeming a bit emptier. It isn't as empty as it was when you returned from fighting the Wister Elves, but you shake off this feeling before you go into your old habit of thinking about those days too much. It is not too long after that several orcs come to seek out your guidance and leadership. While you have always been able to lead others when it counted, it was never really in a domestic capacity. You stand outside of the chief's hut, feeling it unnecessary to sit at the desk. One by one the orcs come through, asking for advice on various issues regarding farming, smithing, and others. A few even come to you for help in settling disputes among each other. After the next few hours, you feel pretty great that you got to help, and that none of the disputes ended in bloodshed, which is quite common in Orcin. While you are the acting chief, you are confident that no fools are going to try to challenge your leadership. This would be foolish as Greusim would return to take his rightful place soon anyway. You have rarely heard of orc cheifs being assassinated, as outright murdering an orc chief does not count, and would only end in execution. An aspiring orc would have to challenge him, and at the appointed time they would fight where the whole village could watch. The fight would go until one yielded, or to the death. From what you remember from when you were much younger, that is how Greusim came to be chief. Although the chief before him was a terrible and cruel leader. Since then, you had only seen a few orcs challenge Greusim; those all ended in a grisly demise for the challengers, and saying as most are happy with his leadership, there has been no need to attempt to remove him. As you prepare to return home for the day, you see one of Greusim's sons, Galik, briskly approaching. Judging by his demeanor, you know he is upset about something. At first, you assume it is about Greusim refusing to bring him on the expedition. Although Galik is of age to participate in these matters, he is way too hot headed, even for a normal orc of youth. "I'm here to take my rightful place as chieftain," Galik says. You take a moment to stop yourself from laughing. "Galik, my friend," you start, "do you realize this is temporary?" "Yes, but as I am his son," he says. "Why shouldn't I be in charge? I have seen him work enough to know what to do." "I know you would be very skilled in leading the tribe," you say, "but he left me in charge and I will obey his wishes." "Who are you to take this power from us?" he asks. "When we earned-" "No, Greusim earned it," you say. "You should know that status does not follow family lines. Each lives according to his own merit." You cross your arms and lean against the hut. "Besides, in a few years when your father is good and ready to retire," you say. "I'm sure you'll be well prepared to lead us further into prosperity. Do you think I want this title?" Galik stops and thinks for a minute. "Galik, as I said, this is only temporary," you say. "I would not want to do this for all the years Greusim has, I have my own place in the tribe. While he can't pass down leadership to you, he can prepare you to earn the role when it is your time. You'll do a fine job, boy." Galik seems calmed down at your words, and he nods. "I'm sorry Nolazir, my friend," he says. "Sometimes I get caught up in these things too much. I especially want to preserve all the hard work my father has put into this village." "And you shall, someday." Galik apologizes again before going off to take care of other matters. You sigh and look around the village, the dying light casting a cold shade upon your home. You get to your horse and ride back down the trail leading to your house. > You later... The next morning yields several orcs showing up to your house. While at first, you thought their intentions were bad, as soon as they saw you they started complaining about issues. You notice these orcs are the young and impatient sort, who haven't learned that showing up at a chief's house first thing in the morning is frowned upon. Sternly, you tell them to wait until you go down to the hut to start village business. The orcs all grumble and shuffle off, presumably to cause some mischief. You shake your head. "No damn patience." You take care of your regular work, making sure your wife only really needs to worry about the inside of the house and the children. After saying your goodbyes to your family, you walk down to the village center. Breathing in the fresh morning air, happiness swells inside of you, but soon after you can't help but get a sick feeling in your stomach. It is almost as if something has reached its hand into your gut and is content with squeezing your organs within. Ignoring this feeling, you go back to thinking about the day. All around the village orcs hustle and bustle, going about their daily work and chores. You see the village blacksmith working hard, mostly making farming equipment for some of the residents. You have dabbled in some smithing yourself, but as most orc weapons are relatively simple to make, the task is usually up to a handful of orcs. These days all their work mostly goes to farming equipment, tools, and other metal components for barrels, wagons, and other miscellaneous things. You watch as a dozen orcs prepare their canoes for some river fishing. While most orcs can be self-sufficient, most like fish, and it makes good for trading for the villages who cannot get fish so easily. Ahead, a wagon slowly rolls into the village, pulled by horses and with several orcs sitting on it. You recognize them as being from one of the mountain coastal tribes. They have come a long way to trade with many tribes. As they trade rocks and materials only found by the sea, including some pearls, they regale the younger orcs with tales of adventures on the sea. Most likely exaggerating accounts of encounters and battles with large sea monsters. Eventually, they roll through the village, their exchanges being over with. You notice they even recruit a few young and adventurous orcs to join them on their sea adventures. While you can't stop them, you wish they would stay and help the village. Most are still concerned about the reports on the Mannate Empire. The orcs that leave with them will probably return someday, they always do. Turning your attention to other matters, several of the orcs need your assistance and advice on village matters. You lead them past a group of young teenage orcs fighting and wrestling, as they tend to do. > Two Hours Later After a couple hours of dealing with the villagers' problems, one orc named Ruzmar rushes in, panting and sweating profusely. "Nolazir," he says, "I was out hunting for deer by the rivers Southwest of the village. We saw a group of goblins heading through the hills." "Goblins live in the area, so what's it to us?" you ask. "We were only a few miles from the river," Ruzmar says. "They have always been rivals with the lawless tribes down in the plains in that area. The thing is, they've never been this far up." "Hmm," you cross your hands under your chin, "perhaps they've been driven up here by the tribeless bands." "Also," he says, "they are pretty heavily armed. Not the usual stone and wood weapons either, metal and iron. I think they're learning how to make better stuff, or stealing it from the lawless, who have probably stolen it from others." "Show me." > Onward With this alarming revelation, you round up two dozen orcs to go with you and Ruzmar. As you climb onto the saddle, Galik approaches, ready to go. You open your mouth to tell him to stay, but stop as you realize he will need to learn how these things are handled. Later, after as the evening sun lowers over the land, you move through the hills. Keeping a vigilant watch, Ruzmar tells you that you have almost reached where he last saw the Goblins. Over the next hill, a large camp extends over the little peaks and valleys in between. Multiple campfires are alight, and you see the short goblins scampering about, doing random chores or just keeping an eye out. Peering closer, you see that several seem to notice your group. Before long a group of over thirty goblins cautiously make their way over, stopping at the end of what they believe is throwing distance. One particularly larger and uglier goblin walks forward. His face and body are covered in tribal tattoos, and he wears bone necklaces and an amulet which must be a symbol of status. "I am Gru'zikular," he says, "Chieftain of the proud tribe of Gerobler." "I am Nolazir, humble servant of Chief Greusim, the leader of our tribe." "Has your tribe no name?" "Sometimes we are called the River tribe, but Gigalak has never had need to distinguish us. Only the lawless concern themselves with petty names." Gru'zikular nods, both hands resting on his staff, which you assume is where he draws his shamanic power. The orcs and goblins are similar in that respect, they call upon the powers of the Earth for assistance, while the elves use their strange magic. "That is what we have come to speak about," Gru'zikular says. "These….lawless orcs raid and pillage, steal and burn. We have tried to make peace, we have tried to fight them. Nothing has worked, so we come to you with a treaty." "I see your plight, the lawless have been trouble," you say, "but they've kept the humans, dwarves, ogres, and even yourselves from treading too far in our lands. I would say, you goblins and the ogres have probably helped keep the dwarves out as well." "So then why are we treated as such vermin and animals?" Gru'zikular asks, "we no longer have lands to call our own, since the dwarves threw us from the mountains and caves, and before that, we walked these very lands you now call yours. Since our removal we have roamed the land, living much as bandits and raiders in order to survive." Gru'zikular seems to get a little angry, although he attempts to hide it. "We seem to have common interests," he says, "so we need your help. Either tell the lawless to leave us alone or else help us fight them. In exchange for their souls, and the land they live, we would be glad to put our skills to use for the lawful tribes of orcs." They offer an interesting argument, and although both goblins and the lawless orcs have each been helpful in their own way, they each also pose their own problems. "I will bring your request to Chief Greusim upon his return," you say. "Until then, you will have our protection." Gru'zikular raises his eyebrow. It is here that you explain you will leave some orcs to watch over the camp, as the lawless would not dare to kill an orc from a proper tribe. This would bring upon them the wrath of the council and neighboring orc tribes. The goblin chief expresses his appreciation. You leave half of the orcs in your company with the goblins. Although there is much complaining, they still comply. > You return to the Village As you ride back, Galik ceaselessly argues over your decision. At which point you tell him to shut up, and that Greusim will have the final say. Even though he still seems pissed, it gets him off of your back for now. It is late when you return to the village, and you decide not to worry about any of these issues for the night. They can easily be handled tomorrow. The next morning seems to come quicker than you had expected. Yawning as you stretch, you go to quiet your infant child, Lagrik. After some time, when the child has fallen asleep, you go outside. Almost immediately, you see three orcs riding up to your house on horseback. You are almost about to shout at them when you realize these aren't the young and impatient orcs from the other day. You see three faces before you. The first being Rolomag, his face drawn and tired looking. His normally shaved face covered in a dark stubble. The second is Dekard, the orc who first saw the Imperials and went on the expedition. Around his head are bandages wrapped around, a dark red stain soaked into it. The third orc is one you do not know, his hair is wild and his face also covered in stubble. Multiple scars line his face and arms, his leather and fur clothing not looking like that of your tribe. Two teeth protrude from his underbite, one of those is chipped. A red hand painted on his face, his dark eyes attempt to pierce through you. "Who is this?" you ask. "My name is Grolik, leader of the Red Handed orcs band." "Hmm?" you say, "one of the lawless. What are you doing here?" Before he can continue, Rolomag has jumped off of his horse and grabs your shoulders. Eyes widening, you step back, pushing his arms off of you. "What has gotten into you?" you ask. "Nolazir," he says, seeming very tired, "we ran into some Imperials, they were fighting these orcs." Rolomag goes on to explain that the Imperial soldiers laid siege to the orcs, who were stuck on a rocky hill. They exchanged arrows with the archers, and some Imperial knights on horseback made sure none could leave the hill. He goes on to say that Greusim rode forward to talk to the Imperials, but was struck in the side with an arrow. While both sides were shooting back and forth, Rolomag is not sure who actually hit the chief. Rolomag goes on to explain that the arrow barely had an effect on him, and that, even when all-out combat broke out, Greusim was able to help them. They killed the knights and managed to wipe out the archer columns after a hard-fought battle. Rolomag looks at the ground and seems to stop. "Well, then what happened?" you ask. "Out with it." "From out of the trees a large force of Imperial soldiers ran out, we fought them well on horseback… but… they surrounded Greusim and the orcs nearest to him." Rolomag seems to struggle with speaking. "They fought well, but the humans were hard to kill with their silver coats and helmets. They pulled Greusim off his horse… by Gigalak there were so many of them. They struck him with everything imaginable, even his own club." "What are you saying?" you say, already knowing but in disbelief. "Greusim lays dead," Rolomag says. "They butchered his corpse. After that we couldn't fight them, there were just too many. We fled to the hills, and from there the three of us came here." You sit down, almost missing the wooden log and hitting the ground. Staring at the ground, you wonder how this expedition could have led to this? All he wanted to do was talk, and those animals tore him apart. "Damn human scum," you say on the way to the village as you learn of the other fallen orcs. > You mourning The village is in mourning, the loss of Greusim and the other dozen orcs has hit the village hard. A somber mood fills the air, and most orcs only know of one way to handle these types of emotions. You see many orcs putting on their war paint, and performing war rituals to ask for Gigalak's favor and guidance. Sighing, you join in on this, as your anger fills you. The humans do not know peace or diplomacy. They only see war and control. While the switch from sadness to rage was quick, you all know it is the right thing to do. As you ride towards the camp in the mountain, you make your plans for revenge on the Empire. The plan, to unite with the Red Handed and find where the Imperial camp is located. Then you will figure out how best to handle them…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> > You turn out the lights. Once upon a time you were called the greatest hero to ever live. You must have been nineteen at the time. Fresh faced, hot headed, and too dumb for your own good. With sword in hand, you set out with your childhood friends to save the world from an evil wizard (damn, you can't even remember his name) bent on enslaving mankind. When you left home, there were five of you: a mage, a rogue, a bard, a healer, and yourself, a fighter. The six month long journey to the wizard's tower was filled with happy times, light hearted misadventures as you all prepared for fortune and glory. When you reached the tower, the mood quickly changed. Your bard fell to a herd of undead that ambushed you at the entrance. The healer took a poison dart to the throat on the fourth floor while the rogue was burned to ash by a pyromancer on the seventeenth floor. Yourself and the mage were all that remained when you reached the twentieth and final floor, and she was cut down halfway through the fight with the wizard. When the dust cleared and all was quiet, you were the last one standing. You returned home a year after you had left it. The villagers showered you in praise for killing the wizard, and word reached the nobles in the cities far away that the evil wizard had been defeated. They held a feast in your honor, they showered you in gold, they gave you a title and a manor and an army of servants. Women wanted you, men wanted to be you. But it was all hollow. You played along for the first ten years, finding little joy in the newfound fortune and glory you had longed for. It wasn't until the writers and artists began to touch your quest that you finally shut yourself in. It started innocently enough, sanitized children's tales about the exploits of you and your allies, but soon it became epic poems and romanticized paintings. One by one, your friends disappeared from the fictionalized tales of your quest, until it was just you, the knight in shining armor, slaying the vile wizard with your enchanted blade. That was when you finally shut yourself in, to hide from the common folk and their damning praise, from the artists and their bastardized accounts. For five years the only place you'd go was the tavern down the road from your estate, where you'd planned to waste the rest of your days drinking until you couldn't remember your regrets. It didn't work. Just as luck would have it, you were recognized one day, and soon people were flocking to the pub like moths to a torch. All in the hopes of meeting you, the legendary hero. In these last five years, you've stayed locked up in the master bedroom of your manor. You ordered your butler to bring you ten bottles of wine and three loafs of bread in the morning, leaving you be until the next day. No one can enter your room save the butler, and if anyone does you make sure to scare them off by grabbing your old sword and flailing it around while yelling drunkenly at them. It's a fitting end for the man regarded as the greatest hero to ever live: locking himself away in the home gifted to him, drinking wine and eating bread and waiting for the day he finally dies. > You continue Your latest quest begins not with the destruction of your manor or the death of someone close to you, but rather with a letter. Bertrand, your loyal servant, comes to your room in the early morning hours to drop off today's dosage of bread and wine. But on the platter, tucked in between two loaves of bread, is a letter. The seal is emblazoned with the royal coat of arms. You eye Bertrand warily, and the old man gives a sigh. "Apologies, my lord. A knight came to the manor this morning, and he requested that I pass this along to you. The knight said that it's an invitation to the royal castle from the king himself. I suggest you read it." With a sigh of your own, you rip open the envelope and unfold the letter, taking a look at the contents. "Dear Sir, I have need of a man of your talents. There are important matters to discuss regarding the ongoing war between the Kingdom of Oren and the Empire of Kishak. You must report to Castle Oren as soon as you may, though I urge you to arrive soon. If a week has passed without word from you, then I am afraid I must send my men to acquire you immediately. I hope that you will come. Regards, King Walter III." You scoff at the letter. Bastard king, sitting on his throne while his dogs do the work. You suppose that he considers you one of them. The question lies in whether you are indeed one of the dogs that mindlessly obeys orders, or whether you'll break from the pack and carve your own path. > You damn the king. He holds no power over you. For a moment, rage shakes within you. He thinks he can simply call upon you and you'll trot over to his castle? What sort of man does he take you for? The bubble of rage bursts, and you find yourself tearing the letter in two, before crumpling it and throwing it on the floor. Bertrand gulps slightly as he watches. "Leave me," you say, and he does. You carry on that day as you normally do, drinking heartily and eating when your stomach grumbles. As usual, you pass out late into the night, last bottle of wine in hand. When you wake the next day, you're fully hit by the reality of the situation. The king threatened to send men to acquire you should you fail to show up after a week. You can't stay here anymore, and if you do, then they'll come sooner or later. This means you'd either need to move on, or try to hold out and fend off any of his men who come your way. What's it going to be, hero? > You need to leave. There's nothing for you here. In the late hours of the night, you set out for parts unknown. On your back is your sword, chipped and dull. It's far too large to be called a sword; massive, heavy, far too rough. If anything, it's a hunk of raw iron. But it's yours, and a single swing with the large blade is enough to cut down three cavalrymen and their horses too. Beside it is your knapsack, carrying only raw essentials, such as food, a change of clothes, a tinderbox, lantern oil, and a jug of alcohol. Fifteen feet of rope in a coil is tied onto your belt, alongside a lantern. For a moment you're leaving your home village with your friends. All of you are young, reckless, hopeful... But the nostalgia soon fades, and you realize what you're doing. You're not leaving to save the world, you're leaving to get away from your responsibilities. The thought makes you let out a dry, humorless laugh. It's been so long since you've traveled. You almost forgot what it felt like, just you on the open road. It feels... Liberating, almost. Like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders for the first time in years. As though you were holding the world high above you, and only now can you take a break. But you don't hold onto that feeling, for you know well enough that it will distract you from any dangers on the road... Soon enough, you come upon a fork in the road. One road leads into the forest. You're unlikely to come across any other people on this road, only wilderness as far as the eye can see. The other road is a common trade route, with villages dotting it every few miles. Either way, wherever you go, you'll be traveling far away from the place you once called home. > You take the path into the woods. You take the path through the woods, being sure to light your lantern along the way. The ambient sounds of wildlife keep you on the alert. For every wolf's howl and twig snapped in the distance, your hand draws closer to the hilt of your sword. Still, nothing comes out to attack you, and you must be grateful for that. The road carries you onwards for hours, until finally you must stop and rest. With a grunt, you begin to climb up into a large oak tree along the path, checking every branch until, finally, you find one that can support your weight. You kill your lantern and tie it to the branch using your rope. Setting your knapsack up against the tree, you lay down, and fall asleep. The sound of shouting and the light of torches causes your eyes to snap open. Through the canopy of leaves you can see a faint glow, as though sunlight is fighting hard to break through and onto the path. On said path you see a large group of men wearing armor comprised of animal hides and worn out leather. Marauders. They're a wandering group of bandits and raiders, accepting any who wish to fight with them. They make their living by ransacking and pillaging towns, and never stay in one place for long. Above all, they admire a fierce warrior, and rumor has it that if one can slay the leader of a Marauder band, then one may lead them. Instinctively you reach for your sword, but stop as you realize that they can't see you unless they look up. They must be on the way to find a village, so that they can steal their valuables, kill them all, or rape the women. Perhaps even all three, if they're a particularly ambitious bunch. You've fought these sorts before, and most often they'll fight tooth and nail until their leader is dead. Once that happens, they'll submit themselves to you willingly... That is, if you can survive long enough to reach their leader. If you got into a fight, you can't be sure you'll walk away from it alive. But at the same time... Could you just sit by and let these men harass, or even kill, the innocent? > You yes, you can. You're not a hero anymore. They can do as they like, so long as they don't bother you. You make yourself scarce, watching them as they continue their march out of the forest. They're a band of about four dozen, and you know that if you had chosen to fight them, it may have meant the end of you. It must have taken close to half an hour for them all to move on so far that they were out of sight, but the adrenaline pumping through your blood made the time seem as though it had passed in the blink of an eye. Once they're gone, you retrieve your lantern and rope, before carefully climbing down the tree. You let out a sigh of relief once your feet hit the ground, and you continue your journey onward into the woods. Your journey lasts long into the day, and before you know it, the trees begin to give way to grassy fields. The only problem being that it's almost night again, and you don't want to risk sleeping out in the open. The trees are too small here for you to be able to sleep in one. You scan the area, and find... A cave? Yes, there's an entrance to a cave poking out of the ground towards the edge of the wilderness. The entrance is massive, which means that something undesirable may lurk in there, though you can take out whatever may call the cave its home. Alternatively, you can continue your march into the night. Perhaps you'll find a better place to take shelter. > You you'll take shelter in the cave. You walk to the cave's entrance, lighting your lantern. Within the inky black darkness are piles of bones. Most of them are those of animals, though you spot a human skull in there. This might have been a bad idea. Still, you carry onward, swinging your sword around from your back and gripping the hilt tightly. As you journey further, you find no sign of bears or wolves or the like. So, you carry onward, intent on slaying whatever beast may live here. It is deeper into the cave that you begin to hear and feel a low rumbling. It shakes you to your core, and your knuckles whiten as you grip your sword tighter. Is it what you think it is? Your question is answered when your lantern's light glints off of maroon scales. A dragon, slumbering on a pile of branches and bones. By the size of it, it appears to be young, no older than perhaps an infant, though that does not mean that it will be friendly. Nearby are the skeletal remains of another dragon, this beast far larger. Was it orphaned? You've no idea. You are about to make your leave so you don't face the wrath of the beast when its eyes snap open. > You quickly slide your blade back onto your back and raise your hands. You just want to go. Slowly, you slip your sword back into place on your back, and raise your hands. The dragon stares at you, though no malice is in its eyes; instead, you see an almost childlike curiosity. Perhaps the human skull you saw was left there by its deceased parent? Whatever it is, the dragon has yet to make any hostile actions towards you. It begins to inch its head closer to you, sniffing you curiously. Thinking quickly, you carefully remove your knapsack, then reach deep inside it. Within is a slab of raw venison, which you offer to the beast. It looks as though it's about to rip your arms off along with the meat, so you set it down at your feet and back away slowly. As you suspected, the dragon greedily gobbles it up. Once it has finished its snack, it looks contentedly at you, nudging you as though asking for more. You provide him another slab of meat, which he takes from your hands this time. Then another. You save the last piece of venison for yourself, slowly putting your knapsack back in place. The dragon tilts its head at you, before letting out what appears to be a yawn. It settles back down on the ground, and falls asleep. You let out a sigh. That was... Terrifying. You back up and set up a place to sleep not far from the dragon's chamber, falling asleep in minutes from the exhaustion. In the morning, you get up... Only to see the dragon there, staring at you. Carefully, you get up, but the dragon makes no sudden moves. Just stares at you expectantly. Putting your hands back up, you begin to back away slowly, and the dragon begins to follow. For a second, you close your eyes, awaiting the painful bite that will follow... But nothing happens. Instead, it stands there staring at you as though a puppy waiting for its master's commands. You lower your hands, then turn around. Continuing out of the cave, you glance over your shoulder every now and again, and the dragon still follows. Have you... Tamed the beast? That was easier than you expected it would be. It continues to follow you out of the cave, blinking violently at the light when you emerge from the cave and into the daylight, but still retaining its friendly attitude. It continues to follow you as you march onward to places unknown. When you fell asleep in the night, you half expected the dragon to have tried eating you in your sleep, or to have flown back to his cave. Instead, you awake to him presenting you a mangled deer carcass. It looks like you've made a new companion, and a very powerful one at that. So it is that you and the beast continue onward to wherever the road takes you. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk to the cave's entrance, lighting your lantern. Within the inky black darkness are piles of bones. Most of them are those of animals, though you spot a human skull in there. This might have been a bad idea. Still, you carry onward, swinging your sword around from your back and gripping the hilt tightly. As you journey further, you find no sign of bears or wolves or the like. So, you carry onward, intent on slaying whatever beast may live here. It is deeper into the cave that you begin to hear and feel a low rumbling. It shakes you to your core, and your knuckles whiten as you grip your sword tighter. Is it what you think it is? Your question is answered when your lantern's light glints off of maroon scales. A dragon, slumbering on a pile of branches and bones. By the size of it, it appears to be young, no older than perhaps an infant, though that does not mean that it will be friendly. Nearby are the skeletal remains of another dragon, this beast far larger. Was it orphaned? You've no idea. You are about to make your leave so you don't face the wrath of the beast when its eyes snap open. > You this beast might be wild. You swing wildly, hoping to wound it. You swing wildly, a yell escaping your lips. The blade meets the dragon's rough scales, and it lets out a roar of mixed agony and rage. Blood drips from its wounds, and it rears back, head turning to look at the deep gash in its side... Then, it charges at you. It barrels into you, sending you onto your ass. Another roar escapes its mouth, swiping a claw at you. You block the blow with your sword, cutting deeper into the dragon's hand, and it rears back yet again to determine its next move. It must not be used to fighting. It's making for another charge. > You stand your ground and stick your sword out, hoping the beast runs into it. As the dragon charges forward, you stick your blade out, hoping that it will be unable to stop and impale itself on your sword. Instead, it ducks below the blade, and though you try to adjust quickly and bring the sword down onto the animal, you're too late. It charges into you, this time biting into your stomach. You let out a yell of pain, repeatedly bringing your sword down onto its back, but by the time it is finally dead the damage is done. Your entrails are spilling out of your torso. Bloody coughs escape your lips. There's no coming back from this, unless a healer suddenly happened to come by. With your luck, another dragon would sooner come by instead. Eventually, the pain stops, and you close your eyes with a shuddering, blood-tinged sigh... THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You swing wildly, a yell escaping your lips. The blade meets the dragon's rough scales, and it lets out a roar of mixed agony and rage. Blood drips from its wounds, and it rears back, head turning to look at the deep gash in its side... Then, it charges at you. It barrels into you, sending you onto your ass. Another roar escapes its mouth, swiping a claw at you. You block the blow with your sword, cutting deeper into the dragon's hand, and it rears back yet again to determine its next move. It must not be used to fighting. It's making for another charge. > You leap out of the way, swinging your sword at it whilst you do. You wait for a moment, to ensure that it's close... And then you leap out of the way of the charge, swinging your sword at it. You manage to nail it right in the belly, the blade cleaving through the dragon's scales and into its flesh. It lets out a blood curdling screech, tumbling a bit as it loses its footing before finally falling over onto the ground. You walk closer, sword at the ready. The dragon twitches slightly, so you bring your blade onto its throat. That killed it, for sure. With the beast slain, you collapse onto the ground, catching your breath. That was... Intense, to say the least. You've never fought a dragon. If the beast were any bigger, you would have lost, no doubt. Then, you laugh. You laugh until your ribs ache and tears escape your eyes. Then you laugh some more. You just slayed a dragon. You must be losing your mind to be doing this sort of stuff again. After a while of laying there, you fall asleep, and in the morning you wake up recharged despite the aching where the dragon rammed into you. You exit the cave, and begin the track on the path. The excitement of fighting such a monstrous beast and living to tell the tale... It's exhilarating. Why has it been so long since you've felt this? You miss it. You set out to find more beasts to hunt. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You make yourself scarce, watching them as they continue their march out of the forest. They're a band of about four dozen, and you know that if you had chosen to fight them, it may have meant the end of you. It must have taken close to half an hour for them all to move on so far that they were out of sight, but the adrenaline pumping through your blood made the time seem as though it had passed in the blink of an eye. Once they're gone, you retrieve your lantern and rope, before carefully climbing down the tree. You let out a sigh of relief once your feet hit the ground, and you continue your journey onward into the woods. Your journey lasts long into the day, and before you know it, the trees begin to give way to grassy fields. The only problem being that it's almost night again, and you don't want to risk sleeping out in the open. The trees are too small here for you to be able to sleep in one. You scan the area, and find... A cave? Yes, there's an entrance to a cave poking out of the ground towards the edge of the wilderness. The entrance is massive, which means that something undesirable may lurk in there, though you can take out whatever may call the cave its home. Alternatively, you can continue your march into the night. Perhaps you'll find a better place to take shelter. > You you'll continue your trek. In spite of the darkness, you continue on the path, keeping a hand on your sword in case you're attacked. You light your lantern so that you can see more clearly, and march onwards. Eventually, you spot an old wooden cabin near a lake, not too far off the path. It looks abandoned, but hopefully if anyone still resides within you can convince them to let you take shelter. You make your way to the front door, where you attempt to open it, only to find that it's locked. Damn, the place isn't abandoned. Instead, you raise your fist and pound upon the door. "Hello," you call out, "I seek shelter for the night." It takes a moment, but soon you hear footsteps descending stairs within, then the sound of a lantern being lit, followed by faint light creeping through under the door. Finally, you hear the sound of a bolt being unlocked. The door cracks open slightly, and you can see a wrinkled eye poking out. "I didn't think anyone still wandered these old roads," he says, his voice old and creaky. "What brings you 'round here, stranger?" "I'm nothing but a simple wanderer," you reply. "I just seek shelter for the night." He looks as though he's contemplating it. He seems wary, though that isn't unreasonable; if you were in his shoes, being woken in the dead of night by a large man with a large sword, you'd be wary as well. Finally, he opens the door wider, croaking out "Come in." You oblige. Before you stands an older man, perhaps in his 60s, dressed in a faded blue woolen shirt and ragged breeches. "Welcome. My name is Oscar. What's yours, wanderer?" "My name is Kit." You look around. The interior of the cabin is quaint, decorated with paintings and old wooden furniture. A hearth sits on the back wall, cooking utensils hanging above it, near stairs ascending to the second floor. "A nice home you have here." "Thank you." Oscar gestures to the floor. "You're welcome to make yourself comfortable. Please, do not head to the second floor. My wife is attempting to sleep. She's been sick." You nod. "I understand. Thank you, sir." Oscar ascends the stairs, leaving you on the first floor. You lay down, and fall asleep. In the morning, you wake to Oscar descending from the stairs. "Morning, sir. You're welcome to stay for breakfast if you want, I'm going to get wood for the hearth. And again, please do not disturb my wife. She's still dreadfully sick." With that, he heads to the door and leaves. He's rather insistent that you not bother his wife. Is she really that sick? Maybe you can check for yourself. Or, you can wait for him to come back and then eat breakfast with him and be on your way. > You you're curious. You'll head upstairs. After a moment, you get up from your place on the floor and slowly head up the stairs. Surely you have enough time before Oscar gets back. Once you reach the top of the steps, you find there is a hallway leading to a single door. You approach the door, a sinking feeling in your gut rising all the while. Something isn't right. You open the door and what you see almost causes you to lose the contents of your stomach. There in the bed is the corpse of a woman. She's decomposed heavily, and it's clear she's been dead a long while, far too long. Porridge drips from her rotting mouth. It was made recently. This is... Repulsive. Horrific. Wrong. You're not sure how long you've been standing there, staring at the woman's corpse in shock. It isn't until you hear Oscar's shouting that you realize what you've just found... And rage shakes within you. You unsheath your sword. "W-wait! I can explain!" Oscar yells, sticking his hands up. > You damn him, the sick bastard. You swing. You swing your blade into him. It cleaves through him like a knife through butter, bisecting him from hip to shoulder. He's dead before his torso hits the floor, and blood stains the walls of the cabin. You don't bother to clean up the mess you just made. Instead, you make your leave. You continue on the road for a while. Days, maybe even weeks pass. However long you've been on these pathways, you don't know. Eventually, you manage to find a cabin that has actually been abandoned, resting nicely on the edge of a forest. It is there that you finally settle down, hunting and gathering for food. Occasionally, travelers pass through on their own journeys, but they never stay long. Once or twice bandits have attempted to rob you, but once you retrieved your old sword and showed how well you can handle it, they quietly backed away... Most of them, anyhow. The fools that didn't? Well, you're lucky the stains came off easily with a bit of elbow grease. Finally, you are at peace. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After a moment, you get up from your place on the floor and slowly head up the stairs. Surely you have enough time before Oscar gets back. Once you reach the top of the steps, you find there is a hallway leading to a single door. You approach the door, a sinking feeling in your gut rising all the while. Something isn't right. You open the door and what you see almost causes you to lose the contents of your stomach. There in the bed is the corpse of a woman. She's decomposed heavily, and it's clear she's been dead a long while, far too long. Porridge drips from her rotting mouth. It was made recently. This is... Repulsive. Horrific. Wrong. You're not sure how long you've been standing there, staring at the woman's corpse in shock. It isn't until you hear Oscar's shouting that you realize what you've just found... And rage shakes within you. You unsheath your sword. "W-wait! I can explain!" Oscar yells, sticking his hands up. > You stay your hand. If he doesn't give an answer you like, you'll kill him. It takes all your willpower to keep your blade from meeting his flesh. Still, your anger does not subside, and your voice comes out in a low growl when you speak, "What the fuck are you doing?" It is then that Oscar breaks into tears.He falls to his knees. "I... I... I couldn't bare to lose her! I loved her so much! When she got sick, I was heartbroken... And when she died I couldn't accept it! I didn't want to lose her!" He can't find it in himself to continue, instead letting out a heart wrenching sob. "Please, sir... If you must, end my life. I wish... I wish to buried next to her." The grip on your sword tightens. You're not sure what to do with this pitiful old man. > You he asked you to kill him. You will, and put him and his wife to rest. You raise your sword. As gently as you can, you stab his throat. He lets out a pained gurgle, blood filling his esophagus, before finally his lungs are filled and death takes him. You pull out your sword and find his head has nearly been lopped off. Disgusting. You take his corpse in your hands and take him outside, where you set him down. Then, you do the same with his wife, hauling her outside. You set her down next to her husband, before heading back inside to grab a shovel. A few hours later, the pair are buried. You head to a nearby tree and cut off a decent sized branch, which you jam into the soil of their grave. There, they shall find rest... As you stand there over their shared grave, you find yourself thinking back to Grace, the hotheaded girl who could conjure fire with but a flick of her palm. What you would give to have been buried next to her. You set off from the grave. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It takes all your willpower to keep your blade from meeting his flesh. Still, your anger does not subside, and your voice comes out in a low growl when you speak, "What the fuck are you doing?" It is then that Oscar breaks into tears.He falls to his knees. "I... I... I couldn't bare to lose her! I loved her so much! When she got sick, I was heartbroken... And when she died I couldn't accept it! I didn't want to lose her!" He can't find it in himself to continue, instead letting out a heart wrenching sob. "Please, sir... If you must, end my life. I wish... I wish to buried next to her." The grip on your sword tightens. You're not sure what to do with this pitiful old man. > You won't kill him. You know the pain he is going through, has been going through. With a sigh, you place your sword back onto your back. Then, you kneel down to be at eye level with the sobbing man. Despite the emotions you want to show, you find your voice being almost monotone as you speak. "I know the pain you're going through. I lost my love when she and I were young, far too young. You should be grateful for the time you had with her." He wipes his eyes slowly, but he says nothing. "It's time to let go." With that his tears are dried. It seems as though a weight is lifted from his shoulders with your words. "I... Thank you, for your words. I'll... I'll bury her, under her favorite tree. You can stay for breakfast, if you'd like. I won't be long." He picks himself up off the floor, and you do as well. "I think I will." With that, you head downstairs, while Oscar begins to retrieve his wife's corpse. He leaves for the yard, while you sit and wait in his living room. He comes back an hour or so later, makes porridge, and serves it to you. The two of you eat in silence, before you stand and make your leave. Life must go on. The pain that one endures is what makes them human. You know that all too well. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>In spite of the darkness, you continue on the path, keeping a hand on your sword in case you're attacked. You light your lantern so that you can see more clearly, and march onwards. Eventually, you spot an old wooden cabin near a lake, not too far off the path. It looks abandoned, but hopefully if anyone still resides within you can convince them to let you take shelter. You make your way to the front door, where you attempt to open it, only to find that it's locked. Damn, the place isn't abandoned. Instead, you raise your fist and pound upon the door. "Hello," you call out, "I seek shelter for the night." It takes a moment, but soon you hear footsteps descending stairs within, then the sound of a lantern being lit, followed by faint light creeping through under the door. Finally, you hear the sound of a bolt being unlocked. The door cracks open slightly, and you can see a wrinkled eye poking out. "I didn't think anyone still wandered these old roads," he says, his voice old and creaky. "What brings you 'round here, stranger?" "I'm nothing but a simple wanderer," you reply. "I just seek shelter for the night." He looks as though he's contemplating it. He seems wary, though that isn't unreasonable; if you were in his shoes, being woken in the dead of night by a large man with a large sword, you'd be wary as well. Finally, he opens the door wider, croaking out "Come in." You oblige. Before you stands an older man, perhaps in his 60s, dressed in a faded blue woolen shirt and ragged breeches. "Welcome. My name is Oscar. What's yours, wanderer?" "My name is Kit." You look around. The interior of the cabin is quaint, decorated with paintings and old wooden furniture. A hearth sits on the back wall, cooking utensils hanging above it, near stairs ascending to the second floor. "A nice home you have here." "Thank you." Oscar gestures to the floor. "You're welcome to make yourself comfortable. Please, do not head to the second floor. My wife is attempting to sleep. She's been sick." You nod. "I understand. Thank you, sir." Oscar ascends the stairs, leaving you on the first floor. You lay down, and fall asleep. In the morning, you wake to Oscar descending from the stairs. "Morning, sir. You're welcome to stay for breakfast if you want, I'm going to get wood for the hearth. And again, please do not disturb my wife. She's still dreadfully sick." With that, he heads to the door and leaves. He's rather insistent that you not bother his wife. Is she really that sick? Maybe you can check for yourself. Or, you can wait for him to come back and then eat breakfast with him and be on your way. > You no, you won't invade their privacy. You'll stay for breakfast then leave. You stay put. Oscar comes back not long after with an armful of wood logs and grass, which he places into the hearth. You offer him your tinderbox, which he takes with a hum of thanks, before lighting the hearth. He begins to cook porridge, and hands you a bowl not long after. It's good. After you finish up your breakfast, you gather your things and take your leave. He was quite a kind old man. You wonder if he and his wife will do alright all alone out here. Perhaps such a life... Would suit you. Perhaps. A few days, maybe even weeks later, you find a worn-down cabin on the edge of a forest that is actually abandoned this time. You decide to give that life a shot, and find that it does suit you. It is there that you finally settle down, hunting and gathering for food. Occasionally, travelers pass through on their own journeys, but they never stay long. Once or twice bandits have attempted to rob you, but once you retrieved your old sword and showed how well you can handle it, they quietly backed away... Most of them, anyhow. The fools that didn't? Well, you're lucky the stains came off easily with a bit of elbow grease. Finally, you are at peace. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You take the path through the woods, being sure to light your lantern along the way. The ambient sounds of wildlife keep you on the alert. For every wolf's howl and twig snapped in the distance, your hand draws closer to the hilt of your sword. Still, nothing comes out to attack you, and you must be grateful for that. The road carries you onwards for hours, until finally you must stop and rest. With a grunt, you begin to climb up into a large oak tree along the path, checking every branch until, finally, you find one that can support your weight. You kill your lantern and tie it to the branch using your rope. Setting your knapsack up against the tree, you lay down, and fall asleep. The sound of shouting and the light of torches causes your eyes to snap open. Through the canopy of leaves you can see a faint glow, as though sunlight is fighting hard to break through and onto the path. On said path you see a large group of men wearing armor comprised of animal hides and worn out leather. Marauders. They're a wandering group of bandits and raiders, accepting any who wish to fight with them. They make their living by ransacking and pillaging towns, and never stay in one place for long. Above all, they admire a fierce warrior, and rumor has it that if one can slay the leader of a Marauder band, then one may lead them. Instinctively you reach for your sword, but stop as you realize that they can't see you unless they look up. They must be on the way to find a village, so that they can steal their valuables, kill them all, or rape the women. Perhaps even all three, if they're a particularly ambitious bunch. You've fought these sorts before, and most often they'll fight tooth and nail until their leader is dead. Once that happens, they'll submit themselves to you willingly... That is, if you can survive long enough to reach their leader. If you got into a fight, you can't be sure you'll walk away from it alive. But at the same time... Could you just sit by and let these men harass, or even kill, the innocent? > You no, you can't. You have to do something. You sit up and kneel on the branch. From that position, you watch for a moment, counting their numbers. Altogether, they're about four dozen. You've fought those odds before... Then again, you had your companions by your side. Even then, you can fight like a cornered animal if you try hard enough. Time to see if you still have it. You pull your sword from your back and ready it, then jump down in a swing. The momentum of your fall slices right through three different men before they could even react. Their heads split right open like overripe watermelons, and the sword carries on through their bodies, cleaving them in half messily. Blood and guts cover your blade. The others all stop their march and back away immediately, staring in awe at the mess you just created. There's an intense stare down between you and all of their numbers. Some have fear in their eyes, others anger, an odd few even respect. Most? A mixture of the three. The seconds tick by slowly, painfully, neither you nor the bandits wanting to make the first move, then... "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?" a gruff voice calls out. "ATTACK!" Then, they're swarming you while yelling and swinging their weapons in a panic. You bring down a few with a single swing. A few cuts and stabs get through your defense. An arrow pierces your left bicep. Still, you fight madly, like an unchained beast. Soon, you're attacking and defending on pure instinct. Adrenaline carries you as your body moves on its own. Too tired to think clearly. Can only act. But it's in the repetition of swing, block, swing, block, that you find time to reflect. What are you doing here? Why are you doing this? When did you go from being a hero to callously slaying bandits in the woods? You're hurt. You're cold. You're hungry. You're tired. You're afraid. But something still carries you. That intense desire to live. Like a flame that won't die out. The question is... Should the flame stay lit? > The passion has died. You need to let go of your pitiful life. You're past your prime. Nothing you do will make a difference in this world. It's time to let an old man die before he does something too rash. Slowly, you stop fighting. More attacks get through your defenses. Fewer of your hits connect. Soon, it's just you standing there taking their punishment. A sword gets driven through your back. A spear impales you through the abdomen. An arrow flies into your throat. Soon enough, you're nothing but a battered and unrecognizable corpse, lying in the road. You took 21 of their number with you. Nearly half their forces. They regard your corpse with a begrudging sense of respect. No one has given them such a fight before. You're left slumped against a tree, sword in your lap. No one who passes through dares disturb your corpse, and soon, the earth retakes you. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit up and kneel on the branch. From that position, you watch for a moment, counting their numbers. Altogether, they're about four dozen. You've fought those odds before... Then again, you had your companions by your side. Even then, you can fight like a cornered animal if you try hard enough. Time to see if you still have it. You pull your sword from your back and ready it, then jump down in a swing. The momentum of your fall slices right through three different men before they could even react. Their heads split right open like overripe watermelons, and the sword carries on through their bodies, cleaving them in half messily. Blood and guts cover your blade. The others all stop their march and back away immediately, staring in awe at the mess you just created. There's an intense stare down between you and all of their numbers. Some have fear in their eyes, others anger, an odd few even respect. Most? A mixture of the three. The seconds tick by slowly, painfully, neither you nor the bandits wanting to make the first move, then... "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?" a gruff voice calls out. "ATTACK!" Then, they're swarming you while yelling and swinging their weapons in a panic. You bring down a few with a single swing. A few cuts and stabs get through your defense. An arrow pierces your left bicep. Still, you fight madly, like an unchained beast. Soon, you're attacking and defending on pure instinct. Adrenaline carries you as your body moves on its own. Too tired to think clearly. Can only act. But it's in the repetition of swing, block, swing, block, that you find time to reflect. What are you doing here? Why are you doing this? When did you go from being a hero to callously slaying bandits in the woods? You're hurt. You're cold. You're hungry. You're tired. You're afraid. But something still carries you. That intense desire to live. Like a flame that won't die out. The question is... Should the flame stay lit? > The passion still burns within you. You won't let go. You'll fight until every bone is broken and your last drop of blood has spilled. No. You won't go quietly. That fire, deep within your soul, it still burns as bright as it ever did. And no two-bit marauders will extinguish it. You swing with more force than you ever have before, take more punishment than you ever have before. Throwing caution to the wind as you try to take down as many of these bastards as you can. After a while, you think you finally land a hit on their leader, and one hit is all you need. You can tell it's him by the glint of silver decorating his armor. When you land that blow, the others lose their fighting spirit. You plant your sword into the ground, panting as you catch your breath. Then, you turn to them with a sudden jerk of your head, a twisted grin on your face. "Well? What are you waiting for?" They stare at you with shock and awe written on their faces. There's only about 16 left. One steps forward. "You... Killed our leader! And most of our band!" "And I'll kill you too!" You bare your teeth at them for full effect. Then, they fall to their knees and lay their faces on the ground. You stare at them, still thirsting for blood on your blade. One of them begins to yell, "Lead us into battle, worthy warrior! You've proven that you can kill dozens of men and carry on!" They're offering you the now vacant spot as their leader. > You you've nothing better to do. You'll take it. You stare at them. Then, you grin. "Get your faces out of the mud. We've got a job to do." They all rise up from their bowing position, staring at you uncertainly. Your unsettling grin puts them even more on edge. "One of you! Patch up my wounds. We'll make camp for the night, then set out at dawn. We need to recruit more soldiers, then we'll see about raiding a town." They all nod. Most of them begin to set up their tents, while others loot the bodies for any valuables. One of them comes over to you and sets to work on your wounds, he tells you he was a healer once upon a time, but grew bored of his life. He desired excitement, so he joined up with a band of raiders. Perhaps this is what you needed. Excitement. And leading a band of raiders? Just your style. Sunrise comes, and you set off into the world with your newfound band. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No. You won't go quietly. That fire, deep within your soul, it still burns as bright as it ever did. And no two-bit marauders will extinguish it. You swing with more force than you ever have before, take more punishment than you ever have before. Throwing caution to the wind as you try to take down as many of these bastards as you can. After a while, you think you finally land a hit on their leader, and one hit is all you need. You can tell it's him by the glint of silver decorating his armor. When you land that blow, the others lose their fighting spirit. You plant your sword into the ground, panting as you catch your breath. Then, you turn to them with a sudden jerk of your head, a twisted grin on your face. "Well? What are you waiting for?" They stare at you with shock and awe written on their faces. There's only about 16 left. One steps forward. "You... Killed our leader! And most of our band!" "And I'll kill you too!" You bare your teeth at them for full effect. Then, they fall to their knees and lay their faces on the ground. You stare at them, still thirsting for blood on your blade. One of them begins to yell, "Lead us into battle, worthy warrior! You've proven that you can kill dozens of men and carry on!" They're offering you the now vacant spot as their leader. > You won't stoop so low. They're pathetic bandits. Rage bubbles within you. They think that you want that position? That you'll forgive them of their crimes? You're not going to give them that satisfaction. Instead, you raise your sword, and with a sweeping blow, take out four of them with one swing. The others realize what you're doing and try to run. They don't make it very far. Soon, you're cleaning your blade in a stream outside of the forest, while binding your wounds. They did a number on you, but you suppose it's just more scars for the collection. It's almost comforting, in a way. Almost. There's more injustice out there. If anything, now is the time to act. You set out into the horizon, never once looking back. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>In the late hours of the night, you set out for parts unknown. On your back is your sword, chipped and dull. It's far too large to be called a sword; massive, heavy, far too rough. If anything, it's a hunk of raw iron. But it's yours, and a single swing with the large blade is enough to cut down three cavalrymen and their horses too. Beside it is your knapsack, carrying only raw essentials, such as food, a change of clothes, a tinderbox, lantern oil, and a jug of alcohol. Fifteen feet of rope in a coil is tied onto your belt, alongside a lantern. For a moment you're leaving your home village with your friends. All of you are young, reckless, hopeful... But the nostalgia soon fades, and you realize what you're doing. You're not leaving to save the world, you're leaving to get away from your responsibilities. The thought makes you let out a dry, humorless laugh. It's been so long since you've traveled. You almost forgot what it felt like, just you on the open road. It feels... Liberating, almost. Like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders for the first time in years. As though you were holding the world high above you, and only now can you take a break. But you don't hold onto that feeling, for you know well enough that it will distract you from any dangers on the road... Soon enough, you come upon a fork in the road. One road leads into the forest. You're unlikely to come across any other people on this road, only wilderness as far as the eye can see. The other road is a common trade route, with villages dotting it every few miles. Either way, wherever you go, you'll be traveling far away from the place you once called home. > You take the trade route. You take the path that eventually merges back onto the main roads. This is a common route for wandering merchants or supply caravans, with villages darting the path every couple of miles. The entire route itself from where you are is about 30 miles, where it runs into the city of Sodran and then disappears, assimilated into the highways. The villages in these areas all make their profits in a variety of ways. Some survive off of hunting and gathering, others fishing, most farming. One village, from what you've heard, even makes money by hiring off the able-bodied men and women to traveling merchants in need of protection. Whatever gets the bills paid and keeps food on the table, you suppose. It's an hour into your march that you come across the first village. There's an inn right on the edge of the town that's still open. The lit lanterns within seep through the windows, as if a beacon guiding weary travelers to the doorstep. On the side of the inn is a small stable, where some horses and a mule reside. The horses have everything from a simple saddle to a whole pack of belongings tied to them, and the mule has a pack of wares strapped to its back. You can stop at the inn for the night. It would be nice to sleep in a warm bed. Still, you don't want to get distracted; you can just carry on through the night to put as much distance between you and your former estate as you can. > You you'll rent a room at the inn. As you walk past the stable to the inn's door, a woman, looking to be in her late 20s, walks out of the stables. Her hands are calloused and her fair skin tinged red, no doubt from working under the sun all day. As she spots you, she looks surprised for a moment, before smiling. "Oh, hello sir! Stopping at the inn for the night? I was just about to head in myself." You grunt out something resembling a "yes", and she nods. "The place is real nice, sir. My father runs it, I manage the stables for him. My name is Eliza, what would yours be?" She extends a hand, perhaps thinking you'll shake it. You don't, and after an awkward moment she withdraws it. You do, however, give her a response. "Kit." "That's a nice name, sir." She smiles at you still. You continue to frown. Eventually, her shining grin falters, and she looks worried. "Something wrong, sir?" "I didn't come here to chat." Her face falls a bit more, but she regains her smile. "Of course not, sir. I'm sorry if I held you up. Let's go." "Right." You move to leave. Eliza follows after you, and you turn to look at her over your shoulder. "Oh, and stop saying sir at the end of every sentence. Makes you seem uptight." Her face falls a bit at that, but she keeps her smile plastered on her face. As you open the door to the inn, a pleasant warmth hits you in the face. You step inside, Eliza following after you. The entrance of the inn is empty save for a man behind a wooden counter up front, tapping the counter with his finger. He looks at you, and a smile makes its way onto his face, disturbing his bushy mustache. "Ah, Eliza! Welcome back. Who's this, potential customer?" "Yes, father. His name is Kit. Kit, this is my father, Isaiah. Go on, sir... Um, I mean, Kit." Good, she caught herself. You step forward to the man behind the counter, staring down at his sitting form. "How much for a room?" you ask. "Just 5 gold pieces a night, sir. Throw in an extra coin for as many drinks as you can have." That piques your interest. You open your coin pouch and pull out six coins, tossing them onto the counter. The owner takes a moment to count them out, before he nods. He slips the coins into a lockbox under the counter, before grabbing a key from behind him. "Very good, sir. Here's your room key, room 8." You nod at him, taking the key from his hands and looking around. "There's a dining hall to the right," Isaiah points to an archway. "You can get your drinks there if you want. We have ale, wine, fruit juice, and water." "Alright." You pocket your key, then head straight for the dining room. Heading through the doorway, you see that it's far more lively in here, different people milling about and sitting at different tables. You spot a few interesting folks, but one really catches your eye: a man with tanned skin, dressed in clothing made of brightly colored textiles. He must be a wandering merchant from the distant lands of Cikoni. You wonder what he's doing here. Maybe he could use a guard, could get you a steady source of income and get you far away from the kingdom. Alternatively, you can just get your drink and sit by yourself. > You speak to the wandering merchant. Grabbing your drink, you head on over to the wandering merchant's table. You note a pipe hanging from his mouth, a strange crushed up substance within it; upon closer inspection, the substance appears to be sharp and jagged like glass, and glows a faint blue. You know what the substance is: Cikoni Crab Shells, a popular recreational drug hailing from the beaches of Cikoni. To make it, one has to find a Cikoni Long Crab, which possesses a strangely potent amount of magic within its shell, and kill it. Then, they crush it up, either to a fine paste or to shards like the merchant has it; from what you heard it determines how harsh the taste is. As you stop to recollect your knowledge on what's within the pipe, a small flickering flame bursts from his fingertips with a snap. He sticks his finger into the crab shells, taking a moment to let the fire melt them down, and before long the pipe has been lit. He's a mage, though you should have expected that; most who hail from Cikoni are mages after all. You slide into the chair across from him as he puffs on his pipe. He looks up at you, gives a little nod and speaks, "Anything important, traveler?" You lean forward. "I need work, and a way out of this kingdom. I can give you strong arms and protection if you hire me on. In exchange you don't ask about who I am or what I did." You must have appealed to his shadier side, as the man smiles a bit. "Ah, a man after my own heart, I see. I understand. Since I assume names are on the list of things I should not ask about, I won't. My name is Gi'anti, and I'm a traveling merchant of sorts." "You can call me whatever you wish. I just need a way out of here." At that, Gi'anti grins and lets out a puff of smoke. "Well then. I shall call you T'kanka. Please, tell me your room number, so I may wake you when we set off tomorrow." With your luck, that means rodent in their language. Still, it'll do. "It's room 8. When do we set off?" "At dawn. Get some sleep, T'kanka, for you will need it." With that, Gi'anti extinguishes the Crab Shells and departs for his room, leaving you to finish your drink alone. At the very least, you got a way out of this kingdom now. You finish your drink, head up to your room, and pass out in the bed not long afterwards. A few hours later you awake to a pounding on your door and dim sunlight shining onto your face through the window. You get up out of bed, and open the door. There, Gi'anti greets you. "Ah, T'kanka. Was worried I'd have to knock your door down, for I almost thought you were dead in there." You rub the sleep out of your eyes. "Needed the sleep. We setting off now?" Gi'anti nods. "Come along, T'kanka." He gestures for you to follow, which you do. He leads you out of the inn and to the stable, where he unhooks the mule you saw last night and grabs a lead. "We'll be setting off through the woods and heading through to the city of Tolast. If we run into trouble on the way, you put that sword of yours to use, eh T'kanka?" You nod. "Right." And so, the two of you walk off into the wilderness. > You continue Over the next week, the two of you make small talk. Gi'anti is an interesting fellow, with a lot to say on various herbs and plants you come across in the forest. One particular time, he points out a faintly red leaf, and says, "That there is what they call sorem incenti, it's a medical leaf used for treating wounds caused by magic." "Hm. So if, say, you threw a fireball at me, we'd just plant some sorem incenti on me and I'd be fine?" Your response causes him to let out a laugh, which makes you frown. "What's so funny?" "T'kanka, if I hit you with a fireball, all you'd need is aloe vera. I'm not a very accomplished mage!" He continues to laugh heartily, and despite yourself you also let out a small chuckle. "If I was a powerful mage, I wouldn't have need of your assistance, no?" "I suppose not." The two of you continue on into the woods, bantering during the day and resting during the night. A few times you nearly let slip some of your old stories, but you doubt the man would care any for them. Plus, he silences you before you can get started on them anyhow. One night you almost mention your old friends when Gi'anti holds up a hand. "I enjoy your company, T'kanka, but I'd prefer if our relationship be kept professional. No point getting attached if you're going to leave anyway." Eventually, the two of you pass through the city of Tolast, Gi'anti selling some of his crab shells to anyone looking for a fix. He sells a particularly large amount to a noble passing through, who gives him a nice stack of gold coins in exchange. The mule is extra burdened from then on due to the sheer size of the bag of gold. Eventually, the two of you cross the border from the Kingdom of Oren to the Empire of Kishak, after about a month on the road. "I would appreciate if you would stay on my caravan, T'kanka," Gi'anti says while the two of you set up camp for the night. "But I understand if you wish to leave. We've come far, and that was all you wished to do." You have a decision to make. Will you stay on with Gi'anti, continuing your travels together, or depart come sunrise? > You gi'anti has become something of a friend over this last month. You will gladly stay on the caravan with him. You nod. "I'll gladly stay with you, Gi'anti. Come hell or high water, I'll be here with you, my friend." With those words, you finish setting up your camp. Gi'anti grins brightly at you. "I am glad to hear it, T'kanka..." He pauses, pondering his next words. "Do you know what T'kanka means, my friend?" You shake your head. "No." "It's the name of a legendary warrior, where I come from. T'kanka, the Wandering King. Able to slay an army with one swing of his sword, able to traverse thousands of miles in a single day, and able to survive no matter how many times he is struck. Of course, these are all myths, but T'kanka was a real man. Legend has it that after his death, his body denied this fact, and he continued to roam, forever." Gi'anti leans forward. "I saw in your eyes the same spirit that I imagine T'kanka to have." You suppose you must be flattered by that, so you crack Gi'anti a small smile. The two of you then begin to banter again, as you've done in the past month, and finally lay down to sleep. Come sunrise, the two of you will continue onward together. You know that you've made a brother for life in him, and you could not be any gladder. In the morning light, the two of you pack up and leave, never once looking back. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Over the next week, the two of you make small talk. Gi'anti is an interesting fellow, with a lot to say on various herbs and plants you come across in the forest. One particular time, he points out a faintly red leaf, and says, "That there is what they call sorem incenti, it's a medical leaf used for treating wounds caused by magic." "Hm. So if, say, you threw a fireball at me, we'd just plant some sorem incenti on me and I'd be fine?" Your response causes him to let out a laugh, which makes you frown. "What's so funny?" "T'kanka, if I hit you with a fireball, all you'd need is aloe vera. I'm not a very accomplished mage!" He continues to laugh heartily, and despite yourself you also let out a small chuckle. "If I was a powerful mage, I wouldn't have need of your assistance, no?" "I suppose not." The two of you continue on into the woods, bantering during the day and resting during the night. A few times you nearly let slip some of your old stories, but you doubt the man would care any for them. Plus, he silences you before you can get started on them anyhow. One night you almost mention your old friends when Gi'anti holds up a hand. "I enjoy your company, T'kanka, but I'd prefer if our relationship be kept professional. No point getting attached if you're going to leave anyway." Eventually, the two of you pass through the city of Tolast, Gi'anti selling some of his crab shells to anyone looking for a fix. He sells a particularly large amount to a noble passing through, who gives him a nice stack of gold coins in exchange. The mule is extra burdened from then on due to the sheer size of the bag of gold. Eventually, the two of you cross the border from the Kingdom of Oren to the Empire of Kishak, after about a month on the road. "I would appreciate if you would stay on my caravan, T'kanka," Gi'anti says while the two of you set up camp for the night. "But I understand if you wish to leave. We've come far, and that was all you wished to do." You have a decision to make. Will you stay on with Gi'anti, continuing your travels together, or depart come sunrise? > You much as you enjoy his company, you need to leave. You'll tell him as much. You shake your head. "I'm sorry, Gi'anti, but I must go. I enjoyed our time together but I need to carve my own path in this world. I'll leave come sunrise." With those words you finish setting up your tent. Gi'anti sighs, shakes his head a bit. Still, he smiles. "Do you know what T'kanka means, my friend?" You shake your head. "No." "It's the name of a legendary warrior, where I come from. T'kanka, the Wandering King. Able to slay an army with one swing of his sword, able to traverse thousands of miles in a single day, and able to survive no matter how many times he is struck. Of course, these are all myths, but T'kanka was a real man. Legend has it that after his death, his body denied this fact, and he continued to roam, forever." Gi'anti leans forward. "I saw in your eyes the same spirit that I imagine T'kanka to have." You suppose you must be flattered by that, so you crack Gi'anti a small smile. The two of you then begin to banter again, as you've done in the past month, and finally lay down to sleep. Come sunrise, you may never see this man again. But you know that you've made a brother for life in him. In the morning light, you leave, never once looking back. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you walk past the stable to the inn's door, a woman, looking to be in her late 20s, walks out of the stables. Her hands are calloused and her fair skin tinged red, no doubt from working under the sun all day. As she spots you, she looks surprised for a moment, before smiling. "Oh, hello sir! Stopping at the inn for the night? I was just about to head in myself." You grunt out something resembling a "yes", and she nods. "The place is real nice, sir. My father runs it, I manage the stables for him. My name is Eliza, what would yours be?" She extends a hand, perhaps thinking you'll shake it. You don't, and after an awkward moment she withdraws it. You do, however, give her a response. "Kit." "That's a nice name, sir." She smiles at you still. You continue to frown. Eventually, her shining grin falters, and she looks worried. "Something wrong, sir?" "I didn't come here to chat." Her face falls a bit more, but she regains her smile. "Of course not, sir. I'm sorry if I held you up. Let's go." "Right." You move to leave. Eliza follows after you, and you turn to look at her over your shoulder. "Oh, and stop saying sir at the end of every sentence. Makes you seem uptight." Her face falls a bit at that, but she keeps her smile plastered on her face. As you open the door to the inn, a pleasant warmth hits you in the face. You step inside, Eliza following after you. The entrance of the inn is empty save for a man behind a wooden counter up front, tapping the counter with his finger. He looks at you, and a smile makes its way onto his face, disturbing his bushy mustache. "Ah, Eliza! Welcome back. Who's this, potential customer?" "Yes, father. His name is Kit. Kit, this is my father, Isaiah. Go on, sir... Um, I mean, Kit." Good, she caught herself. You step forward to the man behind the counter, staring down at his sitting form. "How much for a room?" you ask. "Just 5 gold pieces a night, sir. Throw in an extra coin for as many drinks as you can have." That piques your interest. You open your coin pouch and pull out six coins, tossing them onto the counter. The owner takes a moment to count them out, before he nods. He slips the coins into a lockbox under the counter, before grabbing a key from behind him. "Very good, sir. Here's your room key, room 8." You nod at him, taking the key from his hands and looking around. "There's a dining hall to the right," Isaiah points to an archway. "You can get your drinks there if you want. We have ale, wine, fruit juice, and water." "Alright." You pocket your key, then head straight for the dining room. Heading through the doorway, you see that it's far more lively in here, different people milling about and sitting at different tables. You spot a few interesting folks, but one really catches your eye: a man with tanned skin, dressed in clothing made of brightly colored textiles. He must be a wandering merchant from the distant lands of Cikoni. You wonder what he's doing here. Maybe he could use a guard, could get you a steady source of income and get you far away from the kingdom. Alternatively, you can just get your drink and sit by yourself. > You just get your drink. You decide not to bother the wandering trader, instead taking a seat at a table by your lonesome. Eventually, the trader gets up and leaves, heading back to his room for the night. You never see him again. After a few more drinks, you stumble out of the dining hall and up the stairs to your room. There, you throw your sword and knapsack to the floor, before passing out on your bed. In the morning, you awake to a woman's scream. Groggily, you get up, heading to the door so you can see what the hell is going on - grabbing your sword along the way, of course. When you head down the stairs, you see a pair of thugs roughing up the owner, Isaiah. His daughter Eliza watches on, tears streaming from her eyes, as a third thug holds her back. The two harassing Isaiah stick a lit cigar into his face. This time, it's Isaiah who screams. The thugs laugh at him, sadistic grins on their faces. Your stomach turns. This is disgusting. Then, one of the thugs turns his head and looks at you. He whistles, the other two looking at you soon after. One with a strange piercing in his nose lets out a laugh. "Oi, you! Quit yer starin' and get outta here, chump." Perhaps you should do something about this, or not. After all, this doesn't involve you. > The sick bastards. You'll strike them down. You unsheathe your blade, pointing it at the bastards. One of them gulps almost imperceptibly, but the one who spoke to you just lets out another nasty laugh. "Wanna play hero, eh?" He callously drops Isaiah, pulls a mace from his side. The others follow suit, pulling out their own weapons; one has a curved blade, the other a pair of daggers. This should be easy. You leap forward and swing, managing to decapitate the one with daggers easily. Blood gushes from his neck, before he falls to the floor, lifeless. This manages to scare the other two, but mace guy nudges sword guy, the latter nodding before rushing forward to cut at you. You don't bother to use your sword on him, instead ducking out of the way of his swing then tripping him up. Then you use the sword, cutting him right in half with one swing while he lies on the ground. At this point, mace is quaking in fear. He drops his weapon, raising his hands and getting on his knees. "I-I surrender! Please, don't kill me!" You step forward, planning on delivering the killing blow... But mace leaps up and pulls a dagger from his boot! His speed surprises you, and he manages to catch you with a glancing blow. Instantly, you begin to feel light-headed, almost unsteady. Still, you swing, cutting off his arm and wedging your blade deep into his side. He lets out an ungodly scream, then dies. You grin, give a little chuckle. Then you collapse. When you awaken next, you're in a soft bed, a bandage wrapped around your wound. It throbs still, and your throat is parched. A soft groan escapes your lips, then you grunt out, "water", hoping someone may hear you. There's a slight shuffling, then a cup of water is handed to you. You look up at who gave it to you, and there stands Eliza. She smiles. "I can't thank you enough for what you did... But you've brought trouble to the village at the same time. There was one watching outside, he told his leader about what happened. They came to town early this morning and said that if we don't surrender all our goods, they'll raze the place. We have until tomorrow to decide." "Really..." The word that escape your lips comes out less as a question and more as a statement. "Yes, really." "How long have I been out?" "4 days now. The dagger was poisoned. We got our healer to work on you, you should be fine if you rest another few days." That gets you to jolt up, hissing slightly as you grip your wound. "I can't. I have to leave." "Please, just relax. You'll be better soon. We plan to surrender to them. And as far as they know, you're dead; we hid you well. You'll be safe to rest here." Hmph. So they're giving up, simple as that? Back in your day the people would have fought back tooth and nail. What are you going to do? > You you'll leave. Now. There's no reason to defend those who won't defend themselves. You pretend that you'll stay to rest, and convince Eliza you'll be fine by yourself. She leaves the room, and after a minute, you get up and search for your things. Thankfully, they left them right at the foot of the bed. Fools, probably didn't expect you to try and leave. You get into your clothes and throw on your knapsack, securing your sword onto your back. You open the door, seeing that it leads outside; it's night time, which means your escape will be easier. Keeping down low, you sneak to the edge of the village, where you finally stand, noting that your escape went unnoticed. You prepare to walk away... "So you are leaving." Turning, you see Eliza standing there. She looks sad, but smiles nonetheless. "I knew you would. You didn't strike me as the type to be patient and rest. Am I right?" "Right." You turn your back on her. "You won't convince me to stay. I'll recover on my own." "I figured as much." She sighs. "I wish you well on your travels, Kit." Then, she turns and leaves. You continue onwards into the night. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You unsheathe your blade, pointing it at the bastards. One of them gulps almost imperceptibly, but the one who spoke to you just lets out another nasty laugh. "Wanna play hero, eh?" He callously drops Isaiah, pulls a mace from his side. The others follow suit, pulling out their own weapons; one has a curved blade, the other a pair of daggers. This should be easy. You leap forward and swing, managing to decapitate the one with daggers easily. Blood gushes from his neck, before he falls to the floor, lifeless. This manages to scare the other two, but mace guy nudges sword guy, the latter nodding before rushing forward to cut at you. You don't bother to use your sword on him, instead ducking out of the way of his swing then tripping him up. Then you use the sword, cutting him right in half with one swing while he lies on the ground. At this point, mace is quaking in fear. He drops his weapon, raising his hands and getting on his knees. "I-I surrender! Please, don't kill me!" You step forward, planning on delivering the killing blow... But mace leaps up and pulls a dagger from his boot! His speed surprises you, and he manages to catch you with a glancing blow. Instantly, you begin to feel light-headed, almost unsteady. Still, you swing, cutting off his arm and wedging your blade deep into his side. He lets out an ungodly scream, then dies. You grin, give a little chuckle. Then you collapse. When you awaken next, you're in a soft bed, a bandage wrapped around your wound. It throbs still, and your throat is parched. A soft groan escapes your lips, then you grunt out, "water", hoping someone may hear you. There's a slight shuffling, then a cup of water is handed to you. You look up at who gave it to you, and there stands Eliza. She smiles. "I can't thank you enough for what you did... But you've brought trouble to the village at the same time. There was one watching outside, he told his leader about what happened. They came to town early this morning and said that if we don't surrender all our goods, they'll raze the place. We have until tomorrow to decide." "Really..." The word that escape your lips comes out less as a question and more as a statement. "Yes, really." "How long have I been out?" "4 days now. The dagger was poisoned. We got our healer to work on you, you should be fine if you rest another few days." That gets you to jolt up, hissing slightly as you grip your wound. "I can't. I have to leave." "Please, just relax. You'll be better soon. We plan to surrender to them. And as far as they know, you're dead; we hid you well. You'll be safe to rest here." Hmph. So they're giving up, simple as that? Back in your day the people would have fought back tooth and nail. What are you going to do? > You you'll defend them from the raiders come tomorrow. They need it. You shake your head vehemently. "No. I won't stand by while you all give in to worthless bandits. I'll stay, and fight them off tomorrow." Eliza's eyes widen. "You're still hurt! They're near fifty strong, if you fight them, you'll die!" She's begging you particularly hard. "I've fought worse odds. I can handle them." To prove your point, you get out of the bed and stand up, Eliza moving quickly to sit you back down. You shrug her hands off. "Please, don't. These men will slaughter you." "I can do it." You shoulder your way past her, to your knapsack. There, you slip into your clothing, and grab your sword. "I'll watch for them. When they come, I'll kill them all." A bloodthirsty grin makes its way onto your face. "Watch." Ignoring any further pleas from Eliza, you carry onward and leave the room. You see that it's a small hut, the only door leading directly outside; it's night, which means you have time to set up. You go to the largest tree in the center of the village, scaling up it and sitting on a branch. There, you wait. And wait. Then you wait some more. The sun is high in the sky, the villagers are out in the fields, and your ass is sore by the time the raiders finally do come. The villagers milling about pause in their work as they watch them, all with fear written on their faces. The raider leader, a large and burly man in chainmail, raises his arms up high. "People of this fair village! We have come to accept your surrender. Should you resist, we'll kill all of you. So please, resist." Isaiah steps forward, head down low. You note the bandage on his cheek, where the cigar was jammed into his face. "Please, don't harm us. We surrender. You are free to take all the supplies we have." The raider leader lets out a small tsk, shaking his head. "Really? That's all? How disappointing." You're about to jump down and attack him, when... "I guess we'll just have to kill you anyway." The raider leader pulls out his sword and runs it through Isaiah's chest. Your blood begins to pump viciously. "Kill them all." That's when you finally jump from the branch. You were too late. Isaiah is dead, because you took too long to just jump down and kill them. You're no hero. You land on top of the nearest raider, his head crushing beneath the weight of your boot. The others quickly turn their eyes to you and stare in awe. You unsheathe your sword, then start swinging with a primal yell. A few men are taken down by your blade, while the others go on the attack. You bring up your blade occasionally to block attacks, swinging when you see an opening. It's a slaughter for them. By the time you take down a few dozen, the others begin to retreat. Their leader yells at them, calls them cowards, but stands his ground. "FINE!" He unsheathes a blade of his own. "I'll do it myself!" He goes on the attack, swinging the sword at you. You block it, then swing, but the raider manages to leap out of the way. Damn, if you weren't still recovering, you could have gotten him. Still, it's been a long while since someone managed to dodge one of your attacks. This should be fun. The two of you continue on like that for a while; he strikes, you block, you strike, he dodges. It's almost like a dance between two experienced partners. This man, he's well trained, and a far better swordsman than you are. There's one difference though, and that is while you lack strength, you make up for it in raw power. It also helps that you picked the winning side in this battle. Slowly, the villagers start to gather courage. Before you know it, rocks are being pelted at the raider. He ignores them well enough, but they throw him off enough that he starts to barely evade your attacks. Then, after a longer time, some start pushing forward with pitchforks and other tools in hand. They attack, but the raider attacks back and they retreat before they get killed. But, their attacks are all you need, and soon, one of your swings eventually makes its way into his hip. He lets out a yell of agony, dropping his blade and falling into a kneel. You don't waste any time letting him have his last words, instead bringing the blade down right onto his head, bisecting it down the middle. There is silence. Then, defeaning cheers. The town is safe. You've done it. There are no celebrations afterwards however. The bodies of the raiders are burned, Isaiah is brought to his daughter. The others return to their homes, some continue to work. Eliza picks out a plot in the cemetary, and the gravekeeper gets to work. You approach her as she watches. Her father has been set down in a coffin not far from the grave. Her eyes are red and puffy. She's been crying all day, no doubt. You place a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry I couldn't save him," you say. She turns to look at you, no malice whatsoever on her face. "I know." "What will you do now? Manage the inn?" She sighs, shakes her head. "I don't know. My father was all I had." You nod. "... I'll leave you be." Then, you walk away. You have a decision to make. Stay here in this village and live out the rest of your days, or continue onwards into the great unknown. > You you'll stay here. Perhaps you can help the people that way. The next day, you knock on a random villager's door, and ask for a job. He knows that you saved the village, so he gladly gets you work tending to the fields. It's hard work, but they provide you with a nice home and let you take some of the harvest for food. It's a good way of life, you suppose. You keep Eliza company when you're off work. She decided to stay in the town, managing the inn like her father before her. It takes her a while, but eventually, she's back to her usual self. Smiling softly, being as kind as possible, and working hard. But you see in her eyes that she won't be able to recover fully anytime soon. You know the pain. One may be able to put on the guise of being back to normal, but they'll never be the same deep down. You continue to spend your days tending to the fields, visiting Eliza after work or on your days off, and making friends around the village. It's a nice life, you'd say. Eventually, you integrate so well into the village's society, that it's almost like you've been there your whole life. Finally, you are at peace. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You shake your head vehemently. "No. I won't stand by while you all give in to worthless bandits. I'll stay, and fight them off tomorrow." Eliza's eyes widen. "You're still hurt! They're near fifty strong, if you fight them, you'll die!" She's begging you particularly hard. "I've fought worse odds. I can handle them." To prove your point, you get out of the bed and stand up, Eliza moving quickly to sit you back down. You shrug her hands off. "Please, don't. These men will slaughter you." "I can do it." You shoulder your way past her, to your knapsack. There, you slip into your clothing, and grab your sword. "I'll watch for them. When they come, I'll kill them all." A bloodthirsty grin makes its way onto your face. "Watch." Ignoring any further pleas from Eliza, you carry onward and leave the room. You see that it's a small hut, the only door leading directly outside; it's night, which means you have time to set up. You go to the largest tree in the center of the village, scaling up it and sitting on a branch. There, you wait. And wait. Then you wait some more. The sun is high in the sky, the villagers are out in the fields, and your ass is sore by the time the raiders finally do come. The villagers milling about pause in their work as they watch them, all with fear written on their faces. The raider leader, a large and burly man in chainmail, raises his arms up high. "People of this fair village! We have come to accept your surrender. Should you resist, we'll kill all of you. So please, resist." Isaiah steps forward, head down low. You note the bandage on his cheek, where the cigar was jammed into his face. "Please, don't harm us. We surrender. You are free to take all the supplies we have." The raider leader lets out a small tsk, shaking his head. "Really? That's all? How disappointing." You're about to jump down and attack him, when... "I guess we'll just have to kill you anyway." The raider leader pulls out his sword and runs it through Isaiah's chest. Your blood begins to pump viciously. "Kill them all." That's when you finally jump from the branch. You were too late. Isaiah is dead, because you took too long to just jump down and kill them. You're no hero. You land on top of the nearest raider, his head crushing beneath the weight of your boot. The others quickly turn their eyes to you and stare in awe. You unsheathe your sword, then start swinging with a primal yell. A few men are taken down by your blade, while the others go on the attack. You bring up your blade occasionally to block attacks, swinging when you see an opening. It's a slaughter for them. By the time you take down a few dozen, the others begin to retreat. Their leader yells at them, calls them cowards, but stands his ground. "FINE!" He unsheathes a blade of his own. "I'll do it myself!" He goes on the attack, swinging the sword at you. You block it, then swing, but the raider manages to leap out of the way. Damn, if you weren't still recovering, you could have gotten him. Still, it's been a long while since someone managed to dodge one of your attacks. This should be fun. The two of you continue on like that for a while; he strikes, you block, you strike, he dodges. It's almost like a dance between two experienced partners. This man, he's well trained, and a far better swordsman than you are. There's one difference though, and that is while you lack strength, you make up for it in raw power. It also helps that you picked the winning side in this battle. Slowly, the villagers start to gather courage. Before you know it, rocks are being pelted at the raider. He ignores them well enough, but they throw him off enough that he starts to barely evade your attacks. Then, after a longer time, some start pushing forward with pitchforks and other tools in hand. They attack, but the raider attacks back and they retreat before they get killed. But, their attacks are all you need, and soon, one of your swings eventually makes its way into his hip. He lets out a yell of agony, dropping his blade and falling into a kneel. You don't waste any time letting him have his last words, instead bringing the blade down right onto his head, bisecting it down the middle. There is silence. Then, defeaning cheers. The town is safe. You've done it. There are no celebrations afterwards however. The bodies of the raiders are burned, Isaiah is brought to his daughter. The others return to their homes, some continue to work. Eliza picks out a plot in the cemetary, and the gravekeeper gets to work. You approach her as she watches. Her father has been set down in a coffin not far from the grave. Her eyes are red and puffy. She's been crying all day, no doubt. You place a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry I couldn't save him," you say. She turns to look at you, no malice whatsoever on her face. "I know." "What will you do now? Manage the inn?" She sighs, shakes her head. "I don't know. My father was all I had." You nod. "... I'll leave you be." Then, you walk away. You have a decision to make. Stay here in this village and live out the rest of your days, or continue onwards into the great unknown. > You you'll leave. You defended the village, and now nothing is left for you here. You spend the next few days in the hut where you were told to recover, Eliza visiting you every now and again. She's going to manage the inn, because that's what her father would have wanted. You make it no secret that you'll leave; she looks sad when you say you will, but accepts it nonetheless. You almost feel sorry for her, like you might stay if only to help her, but you know you can't. A few days later, you've fully recovered, and you pack up your things. As you step onto the open road for the first time in almost a week, it feels liberating. You missed this. But, before you go, you hear someone calling your name. Turning, you see Eliza, waving wildly. She smiles faintly, then calls out, "Be sure to come and visit sometime!" You let out a laugh, then call back, "I'll be sure to if I'm in the area again!" With that, she heads back to the inn, and you continue onward into the great unknown. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide not to bother the wandering trader, instead taking a seat at a table by your lonesome. Eventually, the trader gets up and leaves, heading back to his room for the night. You never see him again. After a few more drinks, you stumble out of the dining hall and up the stairs to your room. There, you throw your sword and knapsack to the floor, before passing out on your bed. In the morning, you awake to a woman's scream. Groggily, you get up, heading to the door so you can see what the hell is going on - grabbing your sword along the way, of course. When you head down the stairs, you see a pair of thugs roughing up the owner, Isaiah. His daughter Eliza watches on, tears streaming from her eyes, as a third thug holds her back. The two harassing Isaiah stick a lit cigar into his face. This time, it's Isaiah who screams. The thugs laugh at him, sadistic grins on their faces. Your stomach turns. This is disgusting. Then, one of the thugs turns his head and looks at you. He whistles, the other two looking at you soon after. One with a strange piercing in his nose lets out a laugh. "Oi, you! Quit yer starin' and get outta here, chump." Perhaps you should do something about this, or not. After all, this doesn't involve you. > You you'll just leave. Doesn't involve you. You raise your hands, shake your head. "Do what you will. I'm leaving." With those words, you make your way to the door. Eliza shoots a horrified look at you, Isaiah stares at you with pure hatred in his eyes. They must think you're an awful person. You're not; you're just doing what you have to in order to survive. You exit the inn, leaving the bandits with Isaiah and Eliza. As you leave, you hear another scream, from Isaiah again. Can't be helped. Much as you want to go back in, sword in hand, you don't want to cause more trouble to the town by killing those bandits. All in all, you're doing this for the right reasons... Mostly. You walk down the road, never returning to the village again. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You take the path that eventually merges back onto the main roads. This is a common route for wandering merchants or supply caravans, with villages darting the path every couple of miles. The entire route itself from where you are is about 30 miles, where it runs into the city of Sodran and then disappears, assimilated into the highways. The villages in these areas all make their profits in a variety of ways. Some survive off of hunting and gathering, others fishing, most farming. One village, from what you've heard, even makes money by hiring off the able-bodied men and women to traveling merchants in need of protection. Whatever gets the bills paid and keeps food on the table, you suppose. It's an hour into your march that you come across the first village. There's an inn right on the edge of the town that's still open. The lit lanterns within seep through the windows, as if a beacon guiding weary travelers to the doorstep. On the side of the inn is a small stable, where some horses and a mule reside. The horses have everything from a simple saddle to a whole pack of belongings tied to them, and the mule has a pack of wares strapped to its back. You can stop at the inn for the night. It would be nice to sleep in a warm bed. Still, you don't want to get distracted; you can just carry on through the night to put as much distance between you and your former estate as you can. > You you'll continue on the road. You pass the inn by, instead opting to continue on into the night on the road. Carrying onward for miles, you eventually lay down on the side of the road to sleep for the night. A few hours later you awaken to the morning light, and continue onwards, north to Sodran. You've been there before, almost a lifetime ago. Back in your day the place was like a sapling surrounded by soot; attempting to grow, but suppressed by its surroundings. The metaphorical soot to the city's metaphorical sapling was the evil wizard you faced down. Try as you might, you could never forget the expressions on the faces of the downtrodden. They looked like they had nothing to live for. You suppose you know know how it feels now. By midday, the city is within sight after passing a few dozen villages or so. Great walls surround it, and tall buildings poke out from behind the walls. Stone steps lead up to a massive stone archway, which itself leads into the city proper. There's a statue at the base of the steps, the details of which you can't make out, but it looks like it's in decent condition from this far away. It's a magnificent sight, to be sure. Once you're within a half mile of the city not an hour later, you finally notice something you couldn't spot from further away: a large camp encompasses the city. Strange. A quarter mile away you can make out shambling figures stumbling around the camp. Once you get close, not ten yards away, you can make out exactly what's happening. The shambling figures all look to be malnourished and dressed in glorified rags. The adults sit around the camp looking defeated, a small number praying to whatever God they worship. A few children run around kicking a ball, but their expressions tell you that they've experienced too much. What the hell is going on here? You go and speak to a guard watching them all, and ask him who these people are. His reply is to let out a dry chuckle. "What, haven't been to this city in a while? These are the unfortunate bastards who were denied access to our fair city. Refugees and the like from the war with Kishak. Mostly natives to our kingdom, couple of Kishak bastards here and there." "Is there any reason the Count of this city has it closed off?" you ask. His response is to laugh again. "There's an entry fee, two hundred gold coins. They," he gestures to the camp, "couldn't cover it. Poor bastards, left to rot out here." What the hell? They couldn't pay some fee, so now they're locked from entering the city? At the very least you can pay it, but you suppose the question remains if you can just walk on by these people. > You can't do that. You need to do something. Get them to rise up. It pains you to watch these people carry on like this. Just wandering, barely any food, scarce shelter, and no chance of ever entering the city they're so desperate to live in. This Count of Sodran guy. You've never heard of him, considering the last time you were here the title was still "mayor". It doesn't matter who he's supposed to be, because you know that he's not doing this city any good. You walk away from the guard and head to the nearest refugee. "Do you have a leader I can speak to?" He looks up at you, a dejected expression on his face, and gives a weary sigh. He points to a tent that's larger than the rest. "Hugo, the old man in there, is sort of our leader. He gets us jobs in the area and makes sure everyone is well fed." You nod. "Thanks for the info." With those words, you head to the tent, intent on pitching your idea to the leader. Opening the tent's flaps and stepping inside, you see that it's decorated scarcely. There's some small bedding in the corner, next to a chair and a small bookshelf. An old man with weathered features and a bushy beard sits in the chair reading a book. You give a cough to break the silence, and he looks up, smiling at you. "Oh, hello there. New to our fair camp?" His voice carries a thick Kishak accent. Guess you know where he's from now. "No. I came to speak to you about Sodran, and the Count." "What about it, stranger?" "Have you ever thought about how many people you have here? It's at least a legion's worth, damn near a thousand from the looks of it. If you banded together... You could take the city." Hugo looks a bit shocked by your proposal, but not disapproving of the idea. "... Maybe we could, stranger. But what business do you have with us, or Sodran, or the Count?" "None at all. I'm just a traveler with too much time on his hands." Hugo mulls your words over. He stares at you, as if trying to assess your reasons for approaching him with this proposition. Finally, he shrugs, and nods at you. "Very well then. I'll organize the refugees... Did you come here just to plant the idea in my head, or do you want to participate in this... Uprising?" > You you've come this far, might as well follow through. You'll join their uprising. You nod your head. "Yeah. I'll join you in your uprising." Hugo smiles, and nods. "Very well. You seem like you have the most combat experience out of anyone in this camp, anyhow! I was simply a baker back home, har har!" "Is there anyone here who can fight?" "A decent chunk, I'd say. Mostly defending themselves from any bandits back in their homes. I can take you to Rupert, he was a mercenary years ago. He retired four years back, but he may be willing to help you organize this." You nod. "I'll speak to him. What does he look like?" "He's a bit younger than me. He has a bushy mustache, bright red hair, green eyes. You'll know him when you see him, he always has a big smile on his face. In the meantime, I'll gather the others." Wait. A Rupert with red hair and green eyes? Oh God, if it is him... Grunting in acknowledgement, you go on your way to find Rupert. It doesn't take you long, as you find him swinging his sword at a tree in the center of the camp. Oh great, it probably is him. Approaching him, you speak, "Keeping your swordsmanship sharp?" He nods, not looking away from his practice. When he speaks, it's in a voice you know: "Aye, I were a merc many years back! Ran me own company I did, paid well. I retired 'cause me wife wanted me to, but I still know 'ow to swing a sword 'round." Great. It really is him."... Rupert. It's me, Kit." He turns, and looks at you. His jaw drops along with his sword. Then, he's smiling widely. You're caught off guard by his speed as he rushes over to give you a hug. "Kit, ol' buddy ol' pal! It's been too damn long ya jammy bastard!" "Yeah, Rupert. Too long. How've you been doing?" "Pretty damn well I'd say, 'side from the whole losin' my home thing! Dear God lad, it's been ages. Ye've gotten so damn old! Even I look better than ya, haha!" Despite yourself, you crack a smirk. "Really? At least I'm not soft in the middle like you, you old son of a bitch." He chuckles. "Alright, maybe I've gotten a wee bit out of shape in the last coupla years. Could still kick yer ass, I bet! Oh, they always left that outta the stories, didn't they? How I whooped yer ass the first time we met! Think I could beat ya if we did round two?" This makes you roll your eyes. "Oh, yeah, you soundly defeated me with your brave tactic of setting a trap. Piss off." You pause, remembering why you came here. "... Well, I'd love to chat about old times for longer, but I came here for a reason. I convinced the leader, Hugo, to start an uprising so you can get access into the city." Rupert runs a hand along his chin. "Did ya now? I've been thinkin' 'bout it myself to be honest with ya. So, I'm down. It'll be just like old times, eh Kit?" "Just like old times." "So, when do we start and whadda we need to do?" "Whenever we're ready. Right now, I think we need to stock up on weapons. You know anybody who has some?" "Aye, that I do. There's a few people 'round here who have personal weapons, mostly shortswords and daggers. A few folks have stockpiles of them too, we could convince them to lend 'em out to the folks who don't have none." You nod. "Good. You organize this, they'll trust someone they know more." Rupert nods at your words, then continues on to the people who have weapons. In the meantime, you head back to Hugo's tent. When you arrive, you see that he's outside, addressing a crowd of refugees. "People of this fair camp," he speaks in a low voice, enough for people in the immediate vicinity to hear, but not loud enough for it to reach the guards watching the camp from a distance. "It is time for us to finally enter this city... By force." A few members of the crowd gasp at this, but are otherwise not opposed by the idea. It makes sense, you suppose; this city has kept them under its boot long enough. Hugo continues, "This brave stranger here has finally given me the courage I need to carry this uprising out. Step forward." He points to you. You step up. "You have spoken to Rupert, yes?" You nod. "Yes. I spoke to Rupert. He's currently gathering people who have stockpiles of weapons so that they may be handed out to all of you who need them." Hugo nods. "Very good. And before you begin to wonder, my friends: yes. Some of you may very well die in this uprising. But the important thing is that the other refugees will enter the city in your place." The crowd all nods at this; they know not to cause a scene when the guards are near. They then head back to their tents, where they presumably get ready. Rupert comes to meet you and Hugo soon after. "I spoke to the people that got weapons," he says. "They're all on board with the plan. This'll go right smooth like if we just keep on keepin' on." Hugo nods. "Excellent work, Rupert. What have you to say, stranger?" "When do we do this?" "Tonight. The guards won't be expecting it then. We'll strike tonight." You give a grunt in affirmation, then head off to the edge of the camp to await nightfall. Hours pass, and soon, the sun has gone down and the moon has taken its place in the sky. No lights illuminate the camp; it's as if nothing is there at all. You push through the inky darkness and to Hugo's tent. There, he reads by candlelight. You speak up, "Hugo. Is it time?" Hugo nods. "I do believe it's time." With that, he closes the book and stands, leaving the tent. One by one, the other refugees emerge from their tents as well. They must be better coordinated than you thought. With everyone gathered, you make sure you have their attention, then address them. "We'll head through the front gates. I'll take out any opposition, I'll just need the others to watch my back." They all look apprehensive of the idea, but after a moment they nod. Still, you know well enough that they might bolt at the first sign of trouble. You gather up whoever's fit to fight, giving a grand total of nearly two hundred for the attack. Hugo decides to stay behind to make sure the others are fine. > You continue This late at night, there are no guards milling around outside the city. Your band of would-be freedom fighters ascend the stone steps up to the city gates, completely unnoticed. When you reach the gates, you see two guards ahead; one is watching a firefly intently as it floats around his face, while the other has fallen asleep while standing up. You unsheathe your sword and rush forward, stabbing the firefly guard through the chest. He lets out a blood-tinged gasp of mingled shock and pain, before slumping over. You pull your sword out of his chest and swing at the sleeping guard, whose head rolls to the ground before he can even wake up. "Open the gates," you order the others, and they move to do so. The sound of wood grinding against stone greets your ears as the gates are opened. After a moment, they're open enough for you to slip through. Looking around, you see that only a few people roam the city streets, most of them guards. You turn your head over your shoulder to address the group, "If I look like I'm in trouble, come help. Otherwise, stay back." With those words, you charge at the nearest guard with a swing. You cut down a few guards before they even notice you're there. Once they do, however, shouting breaks the silence of the night as they alert each other to your presence. One grabs a whistle and blows it, the sharp sound tearing through the city streets. Whatever civilians are around quickly run away... And you notice a few refugees taking the opportunity to bolt as well. Damn those cowards! You should have figured, though: they're just peasants without a lot in life. They're not willing to die for their freedom. Hell, you're not even sure why you're fighting their fight... But you aren't one to quit something when you've started. You continue to fight. Of the two hundred refugees that were fit to fight, a grand total of twenty stuck with you, with Rupert among them. The rest fled deeper into the city or back to the camp. It doesn't matter; what does matter right now is getting to the Count's manor and taking it down. You continue to fight through the streets for what seems like days, but in truth was only about an hour. You cut down any guards that attacked, and the others watched your flanks and defended you when any got past your defenses. It works well as a system, but all good things must come to an end. One by one, your allies drop to the guards. By the time you reach the Count's manor, four of you remain: yourself, Rupert, and two men you learn are named Karl and Frank. You don't bother with subtlety when you reach the metal gate in front of the Count's manor. Raising your blade up high, you slam it down upon the lock keeping it closed once, twice, three times, before it splits wide open and opens the way. The moon illuminates the manor, casting a shadow on your quartet. No guards are there to greet you, which is strange. Looking around the courtyard leading into the manor, you notice a collection of barrels. Curious, you approach them, and read the labels on them. They read "gunpowder". You find yourself grinning. This will help. "You three, grab a barrel and throw it inside." The others quickly move to help you, picking them up and heading to the door. You open it for them, finding it unlocked, and they begin to throw the barrels into the entrance hall. Once most of the barrels are inside, you grab the last one and pull the cork off the top. You drain a line of gunpower out of it, leading from the door to where the barrels are placed. Then, you exit the manor and pull out your tinderbox. The flames burst forth, and the trail of gunpowder ignites, moving slowly to the barrels. You take the chance to run in the opposite direction. A moment later, there is a loud explosion, and the manor is set ablaze. Still, you keep on guard. There weren't any guards around, which is strange. As you're comtemplating, Rupert, Karl, and Frank are celebrating. "Lighten up, lad! We blew up the Count and his damned manor! The city's free!" "Not quite." You look up to see a man consumed by flames, floating above you. He begins to drop down, and you instantly roll backwards. The man on fire lands on top of Frank, smashing through his head and completely obliterating it. Karl and Rupert back away in terror. "I don't appreciate what you did to my home. Die." He raises a hand, and slings a fireball at Karl. The refugee is consumed by flames, screaming all the while. Desperately, he tries to pat them away, but it does no good. He falls to the ground and rolls around in pain, his screeches of sheer agony lasting until his lungs collapse from the fire. Even then he's still alive, if only for a moment longer. The man on fire turns to you. "You. Die." He slings a fireball your way, but you manage to deflect it with the flat side of your sword. The fireball flies right back at him, and he recoils away from it for only a moment. Still, he laughs. "You think you can kill me with fire? Really?" He snaps his fingers and the fire subsides. He's naked, athletically built with fair skin. His black hair is messy. Another snap, and now he's fully clothed with hair neatly combed. "Tell me this, peasants. Why did you feel the need to burn down my manor?" This is the Count. "Yer a bastard that's corruptin' this fair city with yer stench, that's why!" Rupert answers for you, which makes the Count laugh heartily. "My, you're something. An old drunk picking a fight he can't possibly win. Amusing." Then, the Count sighs. "Oh well, I'm bored of you." A snap of his fingers, and then Rupert is sent flying into a nearby wall. You shout his name, but the Count turns on you. "... Hm. You look familiar." "I'm the man who saved this city, you son of a bitch! And I'm gonna do it again!" you shout, readying your sword. The Count laughs. "Hoho, Sir Kit! I should have known! Come to slay the big bad Count, have we?" "You're not human! You're a... A monster!" "Demon, to be specific." He gives you a smug smile. This son of a bitch, correcting you like you're a simple-minded peasant. You find yourself grinding your teeth together. Unconsciously, your grip on your sword tightens. As you're doing this, your eyes catch Rupert's as he picks himself up. He's still alive, if only barely. You can see the question in his eyes... He's asking you if you want him to help you out. > No. Rupert might die if he attacks. You'll do this yourself. Slowly, you shake your head. Rupert looks slightly worried, but nods. That settled, you turn your attention back to the Count. He gives a tsk, shaking his head and chuckling slightly. "Colluding with your half dead pal? I'm not stupid or blind, you know." Shit. Should have figured. Now you're glad you didn't bring Rupert into this. So, rather than try and fuck around any longer than you already have, you jump right into the fray. Swinging your sword at the demonic Count, you're not surprised when he catches the blade with his hands. You expected him to go for some blatant display of power like that. He just made a mistake. You grit your teeth harder than you already were as you twist the blade. The Count is taken off guard by this and you manage to flip him onto his back. Yanking the sword from his grip, you raise it up high and swing down, cutting his head in half at the nose. You let out of a sigh, thinking it's over, when you hear clapping behind you. "Well done, Kit! Well done!" You turn your head to see who's saying that... It's the Count. Alive and unharmed. If you were any younger, you'd let out a gasp of shock and shout something like "how are you still alive?!" But you're not as stupid as you were. Instead, you release a weary sigh. "Let me guess: demonic powers?" "You bet. No mortal can kill me." You run forward and swing again. The Count blocks, but you continue to attack, until eventually you cleave him in half. He rises again. "Give up, Kit." Your response comes in the form of a sword through his head. The two of you dance like that for a while. Occasionally, he attacks, and it takes all you have to defend yourself. Even when he grazes you it's enough to nearly take you out of the fight. The only thing carrying you right now is adrenaline, passion, and pure unbridled hatred for this "man" and his kind. You're not sure how long the fight lasts. You just know that right now you're keeping yourself held up by your sword. Your body is bloodied and bruised, and you're not sure how long you can keep going... That is, until you notice a strange black orb poking out of the Count's chest. His heart. He doesn't notice, because he simply awaits your next attack. "Looks like your wounds are catching up to you, human. Next time you strike, I'll bring you down." You're going to have to make this one count. Picking up your sword, you make as if you're going to swing, and run at the Count. He's already moving to intercept your swing, when you quickly shift and run your sword through his heart. A look of shock makes its way onto his face, and he swings a clawed hand at your face. It claws off a good chunk of your head, including your left eye, but you don't give a damn. You've got him now. You pull the blade out once he hits the ground. He's not getting up from that. You almost feel like you're about to fall over and die yourself, but you raise your blade up high for the final attack. He raises his hand feebly. "W-wait, d-don't..." You swing. Then, you collapse. Rupert rushes over to you. His face is a mask of horror and sadness. "Kit... Oh God, lad. What the Hell were you thinkin'?" "Just... Being a hero... One last... Time." "I... I want to say help is coming, Kit. But Lilith ain't 'round no more." Despite yourself, you let out a chuckle. It causes you more pain, and your words come out weaker. "Don't... Worry... Gonna be seeing her... And Henry... And Thomas... And... Grace... Soon." Tears are streaming down Rupert's face. "You were always such a damned fool, lad." "Heh... May... be..." You let out your last breath. In the coming days the guards are wiped out by the refugees. You become a martyr for their cause, drawing support from the townsfolk who worshiped you like one of the Gods. Soon, the rebellion takes over Sodran, allowing any and all who need shelter into the city. This proves to be its downfall in the coming years. The city can't handle the massive influx of people. Overpopulation becomes an issue. The homeless rate spikes, as there aren't enough jobs to go around. As such, crime rises as well, and soon the majority of the city is comprised of criminals. Sodran's reputation shifts from a glorious beacon of light to a city of thieves. No one wants to go there anymore, for fear of their coin purse and their life. The merchant and trade caravans passing through the city disappear one by one until none are left, and the city's income goes with it. With the rise of overpopulation, homelessness, and crime, it's no surprise that the rate of diseases the citizens catch increases as well. Eventually, damn near the whole city is infected with a dangerous plague for which there is no cure. The city is quarantined off by the King. When the last citizen dies, Sodran is razed, and no trace of its existence is left but rumors and closely kept records. This matters not to a dead hero such as yourself. In death, you find peace. In death, you see them again. In death, you are happy. Despite what most religions on your world would like people to believe, there are no pearly gates or fluffy clouds in the afterlife. There is no fire and brimstone. There's not even a blank void of nothingness. Instead, there is bliss, with fallen friends gathering around you to celebrate your reunion with them. It's the ending that a hero deserves. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This late at night, there are no guards milling around outside the city. Your band of would-be freedom fighters ascend the stone steps up to the city gates, completely unnoticed. When you reach the gates, you see two guards ahead; one is watching a firefly intently as it floats around his face, while the other has fallen asleep while standing up. You unsheathe your sword and rush forward, stabbing the firefly guard through the chest. He lets out a blood-tinged gasp of mingled shock and pain, before slumping over. You pull your sword out of his chest and swing at the sleeping guard, whose head rolls to the ground before he can even wake up. "Open the gates," you order the others, and they move to do so. The sound of wood grinding against stone greets your ears as the gates are opened. After a moment, they're open enough for you to slip through. Looking around, you see that only a few people roam the city streets, most of them guards. You turn your head over your shoulder to address the group, "If I look like I'm in trouble, come help. Otherwise, stay back." With those words, you charge at the nearest guard with a swing. You cut down a few guards before they even notice you're there. Once they do, however, shouting breaks the silence of the night as they alert each other to your presence. One grabs a whistle and blows it, the sharp sound tearing through the city streets. Whatever civilians are around quickly run away... And you notice a few refugees taking the opportunity to bolt as well. Damn those cowards! You should have figured, though: they're just peasants without a lot in life. They're not willing to die for their freedom. Hell, you're not even sure why you're fighting their fight... But you aren't one to quit something when you've started. You continue to fight. Of the two hundred refugees that were fit to fight, a grand total of twenty stuck with you, with Rupert among them. The rest fled deeper into the city or back to the camp. It doesn't matter; what does matter right now is getting to the Count's manor and taking it down. You continue to fight through the streets for what seems like days, but in truth was only about an hour. You cut down any guards that attacked, and the others watched your flanks and defended you when any got past your defenses. It works well as a system, but all good things must come to an end. One by one, your allies drop to the guards. By the time you reach the Count's manor, four of you remain: yourself, Rupert, and two men you learn are named Karl and Frank. You don't bother with subtlety when you reach the metal gate in front of the Count's manor. Raising your blade up high, you slam it down upon the lock keeping it closed once, twice, three times, before it splits wide open and opens the way. The moon illuminates the manor, casting a shadow on your quartet. No guards are there to greet you, which is strange. Looking around the courtyard leading into the manor, you notice a collection of barrels. Curious, you approach them, and read the labels on them. They read "gunpowder". You find yourself grinning. This will help. "You three, grab a barrel and throw it inside." The others quickly move to help you, picking them up and heading to the door. You open it for them, finding it unlocked, and they begin to throw the barrels into the entrance hall. Once most of the barrels are inside, you grab the last one and pull the cork off the top. You drain a line of gunpower out of it, leading from the door to where the barrels are placed. Then, you exit the manor and pull out your tinderbox. The flames burst forth, and the trail of gunpowder ignites, moving slowly to the barrels. You take the chance to run in the opposite direction. A moment later, there is a loud explosion, and the manor is set ablaze. Still, you keep on guard. There weren't any guards around, which is strange. As you're comtemplating, Rupert, Karl, and Frank are celebrating. "Lighten up, lad! We blew up the Count and his damned manor! The city's free!" "Not quite." You look up to see a man consumed by flames, floating above you. He begins to drop down, and you instantly roll backwards. The man on fire lands on top of Frank, smashing through his head and completely obliterating it. Karl and Rupert back away in terror. "I don't appreciate what you did to my home. Die." He raises a hand, and slings a fireball at Karl. The refugee is consumed by flames, screaming all the while. Desperately, he tries to pat them away, but it does no good. He falls to the ground and rolls around in pain, his screeches of sheer agony lasting until his lungs collapse from the fire. Even then he's still alive, if only for a moment longer. The man on fire turns to you. "You. Die." He slings a fireball your way, but you manage to deflect it with the flat side of your sword. The fireball flies right back at him, and he recoils away from it for only a moment. Still, he laughs. "You think you can kill me with fire? Really?" He snaps his fingers and the fire subsides. He's naked, athletically built with fair skin. His black hair is messy. Another snap, and now he's fully clothed with hair neatly combed. "Tell me this, peasants. Why did you feel the need to burn down my manor?" This is the Count. "Yer a bastard that's corruptin' this fair city with yer stench, that's why!" Rupert answers for you, which makes the Count laugh heartily. "My, you're something. An old drunk picking a fight he can't possibly win. Amusing." Then, the Count sighs. "Oh well, I'm bored of you." A snap of his fingers, and then Rupert is sent flying into a nearby wall. You shout his name, but the Count turns on you. "... Hm. You look familiar." "I'm the man who saved this city, you son of a bitch! And I'm gonna do it again!" you shout, readying your sword. The Count laughs. "Hoho, Sir Kit! I should have known! Come to slay the big bad Count, have we?" "You're not human! You're a... A monster!" "Demon, to be specific." He gives you a smug smile. This son of a bitch, correcting you like you're a simple-minded peasant. You find yourself grinding your teeth together. Unconsciously, your grip on your sword tightens. As you're doing this, your eyes catch Rupert's as he picks himself up. He's still alive, if only barely. You can see the question in his eyes... He's asking you if you want him to help you out. > Yes. You need all the help you can get. You nod your head, indicating you'd appreciate his help. Rupert gulps slightly, indicating his hesitation, but nods back to you. Slowly, he gets up, approaching the Count with shortsword in hand. You keep the Count busy by attacking him ruthlessly, waiting for Rupert to attack. After several grueling moments, Rupert reaches the count, aiming his sword for a backstab... ... But the Count turns around and blows Rupert away with a blast of telekinetic force! Your jaw drops at the sight as Rupert hits the wall hard, blood spurting out of his head. "RUPERT!" you call out. The Count turns back to you. His expression is smug. A blood-curdling scream of rage flies out of your mouth as you swing relentlessly at the Count. You continue to wail on him, and despite his best efforts, he can't manage to make an attack against you. The only thing keeping him alive is his demonic nature. Any other man would have fallen to this onslaught by now. You must've been hacking at him for about half an hour when you notice something peeking out of his chest. It's a black orb. His heart. His heart is exposed. Maybe that's what you need to destroy to kill this monster. So, you continue to attack as you've been doing, and the Count continues trying to defend. Finally, you rear back, and stab his heart with a roar of anger. The rotting organ explodes in a mess of black ooze when your sword pierces it. Falling to the ground, the Count stares at you in disbelief. Despite your furious attacks that he couldn't defend himself from, he must have figured you'd never be able to kill him. "Wai-" You don't let him speak, instead slicing his head in half. With that done, you rush over to Rupert. You expected him to have held out somehow. You could have saved him, or at the very least exchanged some parting words. Instead, you find that he's dead, and probably was not long after he hit that wall. His eyes are widen open. You reach down and close them for him. You conquered the city. You don't care enough to inform the cowards that sent you on this mission. So, instead, you leave, and never return. A week after your killing of the Count, you hear news from Sodran while drinking at a pub in a village with no name. The refugees rose up and wiped out the rest of the guards, declaring that the gates to the city were open... However, those who lived within the city were having none of it. The refugees attempted to claim that you helped them to bolster support. After all, the townsfolk adored you for saving the city in the past. And while you did indeed help them, you didn't stay behind to prove it, and as such the townsfolk had no reason to believe the refugees. The refugees were driven out of the city or killed, and the people of Sodran elected a new count, as the former one had no heirs. Needless to say, the uprising's victory was rendered moot not long after they took the city. A dark chuckle escapes your lips. Well, can't say you didn't try. You finish your drink, pay the barkeep, then leave the bar. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It pains you to watch these people carry on like this. Just wandering, barely any food, scarce shelter, and no chance of ever entering the city they're so desperate to live in. This Count of Sodran guy. You've never heard of him, considering the last time you were here the title was still "mayor". It doesn't matter who he's supposed to be, because you know that he's not doing this city any good. You walk away from the guard and head to the nearest refugee. "Do you have a leader I can speak to?" He looks up at you, a dejected expression on his face, and gives a weary sigh. He points to a tent that's larger than the rest. "Hugo, the old man in there, is sort of our leader. He gets us jobs in the area and makes sure everyone is well fed." You nod. "Thanks for the info." With those words, you head to the tent, intent on pitching your idea to the leader. Opening the tent's flaps and stepping inside, you see that it's decorated scarcely. There's some small bedding in the corner, next to a chair and a small bookshelf. An old man with weathered features and a bushy beard sits in the chair reading a book. You give a cough to break the silence, and he looks up, smiling at you. "Oh, hello there. New to our fair camp?" His voice carries a thick Kishak accent. Guess you know where he's from now. "No. I came to speak to you about Sodran, and the Count." "What about it, stranger?" "Have you ever thought about how many people you have here? It's at least a legion's worth, damn near a thousand from the looks of it. If you banded together... You could take the city." Hugo looks a bit shocked by your proposal, but not disapproving of the idea. "... Maybe we could, stranger. But what business do you have with us, or Sodran, or the Count?" "None at all. I'm just a traveler with too much time on his hands." Hugo mulls your words over. He stares at you, as if trying to assess your reasons for approaching him with this proposition. Finally, he shrugs, and nods at you. "Very well then. I'll organize the refugees... Did you come here just to plant the idea in my head, or do you want to participate in this... Uprising?" > You no, you don't think you will. The idea was to give them the push they needed, not participate. You shake your head. "All I wished to do was push you in the direction of uprising. Now that you're planning on it, my work here is done." Without another word, you exit the tent, leaving Hugo slightly baffled by your bluntness. Taking a look around the camp one last time, you depart, heading off down the road. A few weeks later you're drinking at a pub in a town with no name. A man rushes in, and brings you all news of an attempted uprising in Sodran. It fell apart rapidly due to a lack of discipline within the troops; for every soldier they killed, they lost ten of their own. What should have reached the Count's manor instead ended two blocks from the city's entrance. There were no surviving refugees. The news makes you shrug. No skin off your back. It was their own faults for rushing in without a plan. You finish your drink and order another. When the second one's done, you pay the barkeep, and head out the door. Tomorrow you should be nearing the Kishak border. It should be nice this time of year. You walk off into the sunset. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You pass the inn by, instead opting to continue on into the night on the road. Carrying onward for miles, you eventually lay down on the side of the road to sleep for the night. A few hours later you awaken to the morning light, and continue onwards, north to Sodran. You've been there before, almost a lifetime ago. Back in your day the place was like a sapling surrounded by soot; attempting to grow, but suppressed by its surroundings. The metaphorical soot to the city's metaphorical sapling was the evil wizard you faced down. Try as you might, you could never forget the expressions on the faces of the downtrodden. They looked like they had nothing to live for. You suppose you know know how it feels now. By midday, the city is within sight after passing a few dozen villages or so. Great walls surround it, and tall buildings poke out from behind the walls. Stone steps lead up to a massive stone archway, which itself leads into the city proper. There's a statue at the base of the steps, the details of which you can't make out, but it looks like it's in decent condition from this far away. It's a magnificent sight, to be sure. Once you're within a half mile of the city not an hour later, you finally notice something you couldn't spot from further away: a large camp encompasses the city. Strange. A quarter mile away you can make out shambling figures stumbling around the camp. Once you get close, not ten yards away, you can make out exactly what's happening. The shambling figures all look to be malnourished and dressed in glorified rags. The adults sit around the camp looking defeated, a small number praying to whatever God they worship. A few children run around kicking a ball, but their expressions tell you that they've experienced too much. What the hell is going on here? You go and speak to a guard watching them all, and ask him who these people are. His reply is to let out a dry chuckle. "What, haven't been to this city in a while? These are the unfortunate bastards who were denied access to our fair city. Refugees and the like from the war with Kishak. Mostly natives to our kingdom, couple of Kishak bastards here and there." "Is there any reason the Count of this city has it closed off?" you ask. His response is to laugh again. "There's an entry fee, two hundred gold coins. They," he gestures to the camp, "couldn't cover it. Poor bastards, left to rot out here." What the hell? They couldn't pay some fee, so now they're locked from entering the city? At the very least you can pay it, but you suppose the question remains if you can just walk on by these people. > You yeah you can. You'll continue onwards. You nod to the guard, gritting your teeth slightly. "Good thing I have enough gold then." He lets out another bark of laughter, then waves you on, not bothering to reply. Likewise, you continue on without another word, closer to the stone steps of the city. Approaching the stone steps, you can finally make out the statue you had seen earlier. To your surprise, the statue depicts you. While you never wore the shining armor they present you in, and the sword is far to small to be your own, the facial features are too similar for it to be anyone else. Looking it over, you see that it's covered in bird dung, and there are many chips and cracks in the marble. You clutch your hand tightly. Of course, the statue couldn't have depicted anyone else. Couldn't have been the king, couldn't have been the count, couldn't have even been some sort of God. It had to be you. Taking in a breath and releasing the death grip you have on your palm, you push on past the statue and up to the steps. A guard stands there gripping a spear. Behind him is a large oak door, leading into the city proper. He blinks at you and lets out a mix between a yawn and a sigh, before speaking, "Two hundred gold for entrance into the city, sir." You pull out your bag and rifle through it, before handing him four pieces of gold, each worth fifty. He counts them out, even chews on one to ensure its authenticity, before nodding. "Very good, sir. Welcome to Sodran." He pushes the doors open, and lets you through. Stepping into the city, you find that it's grown substantially since your last visit to it. Large buildings rise high into the sky, faded signs declaring what they're all for. People bustle through the streets, going about their own business, while merchants hawk their wares. Guards stand at every corner, keeping a watchful eye on the citizens. Shady looking people hang around alleyway entrances; unconsciously, you keep a tighter grip on your coin purse. So much to do, so little time. But I suppose the question I should be asking is if you wish to do something about the state of the city, or if you're just here to explore. > You you're heading right for the Count's manor. You're going to do something for those refugees. You might not have tried getting the refugees to rise up, but you can fight this battle without having to put innocent lives at risk. This Count of Sodran guy. You've never heard of him, considering the last time you were here the title was still "mayor". It doesn't matter who he's supposed to be, because you know that he's not doing this city any good. Dipping through the crowds of people, you climb a set of stone stairs up to what appears to be a park overlooking the entire city. Hugging the north wall in the distance is a manor, taking up damn near an entire block and looming over the city streets. That's got to be the Count's manor. Nodding to yourself, you begin to make your way to it. Along the way, you spy a few guards cornering a man in butcher's clothes. The butcher is an older man, with thinning hair and a physique reminiscent of a skeleton. Sweat drips down his brow, and he gives the guards an uneasy look. "I-I swear, I'll pay the Count! I just need another week! Please, this shop's all I got left!" One of the guards gives him a nasty grin. "Well ya shoulda thought 'bout that 'fore ya gotta loan. The Count don't take too kindly to old weasels who don't cough up what they owe." He brings his fist up to the butcher's gut, causing the older man to fall to his knees. Then, the guard backhands him to the floor. "Ya got till the end of the day to get that money." With those words, the guards walk away. It takes all your willpower to not fly into a frenzy and attack them. Instead, you wait until they've moved on, then approach the butcher who's regaining his footing after the attack. "How much?" you ask. "What?" the butcher replies, looking at you suspiciously. "How much do you owe?" "Five hundred. I needed a loan of one hundred to pay for my daughter's medicine... But she died even with it." The butcher pauses to wipe away a tear threatening to escape his eye. "... I try to pay the Count back, but he keeps raising the price, further and further... I can't keep up. At this rate, I'll lose my business." "Sorry to hear about that." You pull out your coin purse, then throw him a handful of gold coins worth one hundred gold each. "Take these. Gather everyone you care about and leave. You don't want to be around for what I'm going to do." The butcher looks frightened by that, but nods, accepting the money gladly and quickly rushing off. You watch him go, then release a sigh through gritted teeth. When you came here, you were hoping to be able to resolve this issue using diplomacy. It was never your strong suit, but your fame, much as you hate it, would be useful in this situation. Now, though? You're going to kill this Count, or die trying. It's an hour and several similar incidents later that you finally arive at the gates of the Count's manor. A few guards mill about the front, and you draw their attention by pounding against the steel gate. One of them approaches, staring at you with a nasty grin. It's the one from earlier, with the butcher. "Well? Whaddya want?" he asks. "I'm here to see the Count," you reply. "Really? The Count don't let no middle-aged bums in to see 'im. Get lost!" He spits in your face. You keep your rage contained, gritting your teeth and giving him a toothy smile. His grin falters. "Tell him that it's Lord Kit of Droburg. You know. The guy on that statue outside." He gives a nervous chuckle. "O-oh, you're Lord Kit, eh? How do I know you're telling the truth?" "Because if you don't let me in, I'll cleave you in half." Between your expression, the threat, and the fact that you haven't even bothered to wipe off the saliva that's starting to drip down your cheek, the guard is thoroughly terrified. "R-right, apologies Lord Kit, I'll let you in..." He opens the gate slowly. The creak of metal against stone splits through your ears. Your hand itches, begging for you to unsheathe your sword. You do. You reach up and grab your blade off your back as soon as the gate is open wide enough for you to walk through. With a swing, you slice through the guard's waist, the force sending his torso flying high into the air as he lets out an ungodly scream. His torso meets the floor with a meaty thud. He's still alive for only a few moments, gasping for air as blood leaks out of his mouth. Then, he lets out his last breath. The other guards are quick to notice their fallen comrade. None of them carry ranged weaponry, just swords, axes, and batons. They all begin to run at you, weapons raised. Judging by your quick assessment of the odds, it's fourteen to one. Despite yourself, you can feel the sadistic grin on your face widen. This will be too easy. A primal yell bursts out of your throat, and you rush forward to meet the guards head on. It's easy enough to deflect a few blows, and with each swing you bring at least two men out of the fight. It doesn't last long, and within minutes, the manor's courtyard is covered in blood, guts, and corpses. You enter the manor, sparing but a glance to the carnage you left behind. > You continue You fight your way through the manor to the great hall, where you expect the Count will be. When you reach it, however, you find it empty. The Count must be elsewhere. So, you continue to hack and slash your way through, checking every room in an attempt to find the bastard. It's only after a dozen men have died and you yourself have suffered several wounds that you find him. He's sitting calmly in his study, reading a book, perhaps unaware of the fighting that had been going on outside. You readjust your grip on your sword, then bark, "Hey!" He looks up, sighs, then slips a ribbon into the book on the page he was on. Shutting it and placing it down on a table, the Count stands, and gives you a small smile. "My apologies. I got so absorbed with my reading, I must not have heard you." He stands a good few inches below you, dressed in fine silk clothing with various pieces of jewelry adorning his body. Truly, he's a pompous asshole. You stare at him in disbelief. "Deaf and corrupt, huh?" He frowns. "Whatever do you mean?" You grit your teeth so hard you feel like they might crack. "You've been running this city into the ground long enough. I didn't save this Goddamn world so its rulers could become just as bad as the man I saved it from." You raise your sword, point it at him. "I'm going to cut you down." The Count looks confused for a moment, and he studies your face. Then, it clicks, and he sighs. "Lord Kit, is it? I see. So you've finally decided to come out of retirement. I knew this day would come." He turns his back on you and approaches his bookshelf. Picking one out, he turns it over in his hands, then shows it to you. The cover is faded, but the words clear as day. It reads "Sir Kit Against Alistair". "This was one of my favorite books, y'know. You seemed so pure, so flawless." He flips through it a bit. "But it's clear that reality is far from the truth. How much blood have you shed today?" "I cut down dozens of your guards to reach you." "Ah. It would seem you live up to the tales in that regard then." He turns the book over more, before placing it back. "Let's test another aspect of those tales. It was said that Alistair tried to tempt you with unlimited power, but you turned it down. Was that true?" You snort. "Of course not. As soon as Grace and I entered that throne room of his, we were fighting for our lives. No time for words." "So it would seem. But if he did offer you that power, would you have accepted?" You're not sure how to respond. The Count smiles. "I'll make you an offer. I'm very talented in... Certain aspects of magic. You miss your friends, no?" He snaps his fingers, and a portal is opened to you. What's inside you can hardly believe. Your friends. All of them. Henry, strumming his lute. Thomas, sharpening his daggers. Lilith, reading holy scriptures... And Grace, sitting there and playing with fire as she always did. You reach out to them, let out a yell of pure shock and happiness despite yourself. A mixture of awe and sheer joy making its way onto your face. It's them! They're alive! By the Gods, they're alive, like they should be! Then, the portal closes. You shift back towards the Count, having forgotten he was even there. He gives you an enigmatic smile. "It seems that seeing your companions again got a reaction. I can take you to them again. You can relive your quest, make things right." Your voice is shaky as you reply, "You're... You're not planning anything? I can fix things... Right?" "That you can. But only if you spare me." > You accept in a heartbeat. You need to bring them back! In an instant you reply, "Yes! Yes! For the love of the Gods, let me make things right! Please!" His smile widens. "I was hoping you'd say that." The portal is summoned again... Only this time, your friends on the other side notice it, too. They approach it, staring in awe. "What in the world...?" Henry asks, staring through. He spots you, and points. "Woah, guys, doesn't that look like Kit?" Thomas lets out a derisive snort. "Can't be. Too old. Then again, we just saw a crazy ass portal open up before our eyes, so it could be." Lilith places a hand on her heart and takes in a few deep breaths. Then, she speaks, "I think... This might be a portal to the future. I wonder...?" Grace is staring at you. Those big, brown eyes staring into your own grey ones. Searching for something. Whatever it is, it seems she's found it. She reaches for you. You approach her, taking her hand. Her other hand reaches up to touch your face. "You look tired, Kit," she says, and you let out a laugh, because you know it's true. "I sure as shit am." The portal closes behind you as you step through it fully. Then, everything is fire. One by one they fade away. Your eyes widen in shock. What the hell? You look down, and find that your clothes are igniting, your flesh is slowly peeling and melting off the skin. You do the logical thing and scream in sheer agony. You scream until all the air has left your lungs, and even then, you're trying to with all your might. It is only after your lungs and larynx have been fried to a crisp that you can't even attempt to scream. There is only fire, faint voices, and silhouettes you can't even see. There's laughter in the distance. Then, a booming voice all around you. "Welcome to Hell, hero." THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fight your way through the manor to the great hall, where you expect the Count will be. When you reach it, however, you find it empty. The Count must be elsewhere. So, you continue to hack and slash your way through, checking every room in an attempt to find the bastard. It's only after a dozen men have died and you yourself have suffered several wounds that you find him. He's sitting calmly in his study, reading a book, perhaps unaware of the fighting that had been going on outside. You readjust your grip on your sword, then bark, "Hey!" He looks up, sighs, then slips a ribbon into the book on the page he was on. Shutting it and placing it down on a table, the Count stands, and gives you a small smile. "My apologies. I got so absorbed with my reading, I must not have heard you." He stands a good few inches below you, dressed in fine silk clothing with various pieces of jewelry adorning his body. Truly, he's a pompous asshole. You stare at him in disbelief. "Deaf and corrupt, huh?" He frowns. "Whatever do you mean?" You grit your teeth so hard you feel like they might crack. "You've been running this city into the ground long enough. I didn't save this Goddamn world so its rulers could become just as bad as the man I saved it from." You raise your sword, point it at him. "I'm going to cut you down." The Count looks confused for a moment, and he studies your face. Then, it clicks, and he sighs. "Lord Kit, is it? I see. So you've finally decided to come out of retirement. I knew this day would come." He turns his back on you and approaches his bookshelf. Picking one out, he turns it over in his hands, then shows it to you. The cover is faded, but the words clear as day. It reads "Sir Kit Against Alistair". "This was one of my favorite books, y'know. You seemed so pure, so flawless." He flips through it a bit. "But it's clear that reality is far from the truth. How much blood have you shed today?" "I cut down dozens of your guards to reach you." "Ah. It would seem you live up to the tales in that regard then." He turns the book over more, before placing it back. "Let's test another aspect of those tales. It was said that Alistair tried to tempt you with unlimited power, but you turned it down. Was that true?" You snort. "Of course not. As soon as Grace and I entered that throne room of his, we were fighting for our lives. No time for words." "So it would seem. But if he did offer you that power, would you have accepted?" You're not sure how to respond. The Count smiles. "I'll make you an offer. I'm very talented in... Certain aspects of magic. You miss your friends, no?" He snaps his fingers, and a portal is opened to you. What's inside you can hardly believe. Your friends. All of them. Henry, strumming his lute. Thomas, sharpening his daggers. Lilith, reading holy scriptures... And Grace, sitting there and playing with fire as she always did. You reach out to them, let out a yell of pure shock and happiness despite yourself. A mixture of awe and sheer joy making its way onto your face. It's them! They're alive! By the Gods, they're alive, like they should be! Then, the portal closes. You shift back towards the Count, having forgotten he was even there. He gives you an enigmatic smile. "It seems that seeing your companions again got a reaction. I can take you to them again. You can relive your quest, make things right." Your voice is shaky as you reply, "You're... You're not planning anything? I can fix things... Right?" "That you can. But only if you spare me." > You ... No. The Count is playing a trick on you. You won't let him. You look longingly at the portal for a moment. It's tempting, oh so tempting, but you know that whatever lies beyond it is a farce. The Count is trying to trick you, offering you something he knows you would want, but you won't take the bait. You give your companions a stony face. "You're not real." Then, you turn to the Count, and swing at his head. The sword cleaves through his dandy face, completely knocking off the top half. He stands stone still for a minute, as if his corpse is denying his death, before falling to the ground. The portal closes, and with it, the image of your friends. Sighing, you place your sword back onto its sheath, and exit the room. Before you stands the Count, alive and unharmed. He smiles, but instead of a small and enigmatic smirk, it's a large and goofy grin. "Well done. You resisted my temptation. Not many have ever done that." He walks around you, examining you, while you stand there still reeling from the shock. "I wonder. How did you know that wasn't real?" After taking a moment, you respond, "You're too much of a bastard to give me what I really wanted. It was a test. One I passed, apparently." "Yes, yes it was, Kit. I'm impressed that you sussed that out, really. I suppose you're going to want to kill me again?" Without another word you unsheathe your sword again and swing. He's cut in half this time. Then, the Count approaches from behind. "It's pointless, Kit. A mere mortal like you? You can't kill me. Just hear me out." "What!?" you bark out. The Count laughs. "I have a final offer. No tricks this time. I will give you a way out of this country. A key to a nice home on the Cikoni shoreline. The place will be stocked with food, alcohol, water, whatever you need once a week. Other than that? There will be no one who knows you're there." You frown. "And in exchange?" "In exchange, you leave Sodran and this Kingdom. Don't even return. You've been enough of a thorn in my side today." This offer is much more down to earth and, therefore, more believable. Still, you're wary of any tricks. > You he admitted he was trying to trick you with his earlier offer. No more. You'll strike him down until finally, you kill him for good. You answer his offer with another swing of your blade. This time, he simply forgoes his reappearance act and rises up again. He uses his hands to put his head back in place, and soon, the flesh has knitted back together and he's back to himself. The Count gives a tsk; lets out a sigh. "I hoped you would accept. I was being earnest, you know. Not many get that honor from me." "I don't believe you. You're inhuman... A monster. What the hell are you?" His small enigmatic smile returns to his face. "The answer lies in your question. What the hell am I? I come from Hell." "... You're a demon." He lets out a small chuckle. "Exactly. And I hope you know, you'll never kill me." You go back to gritting your teeth in rage. This time, your grind them together so hard a piece of one of your incisors chips off. "I've killed enough men to know that all you need to do..." You swing, chopping his legs off. "IS KEEP SWINGING!" You chop his corpse to bits. He comes back from behind you. You keep hacking. He keeps coming back. You keep slashing. He rises again with a laugh. You keep stabbing. He continues to laugh. You keep chopping. He rises without a scratch. Eventually you start bashing him with the flat of your blade. It doesn't keep him down. But through the constant fierce attacks, you see that pieces of his chest have fallen off to reveal a glowing black heart. That's your ticket. You move your eyes from it before he notices. Right now, the Count is too busy chuckling madly to do anything. "Alright... Alright, I think you've had your fun." He smiles. "This is the end, Kit." He snaps his fingers. Flames burst from beneath you. Acting quickly, you roll away from them, and watch as they begin to consume the floor and walls of the hallway you're in. Your cloak is on fire, but you pat it away, and focus on your target. He's standing there. Smiling that damned smile. You can't wait to wipe that smirk off his face. Deep within you, a scream builds up and lets loose. You dash at him, acting as though you're going for a swing. He opens his arms wide, awaiting the fruitless swing... Then, you bring the sword back and ram it into his heart. Unlike your other attacks, this gets him to look shocked. Black ooze slowly drips from his lips. You kick him away, and he lies on the ground, staring at you in awe. "H-how?" he chokes out. You don't give him a response. Instead, you pull the lantern oil from your pack and dump it all on him. He whimpers something, probably a plea for his life. You ignore him. Pulling your lantern from your hip, you ignite it... Then smash it onto him. The flames begin to consume him. He lets out a gurgling screech of agony. You grin at that scream. The rest of the fire rushes to meet him. You step past his flailing, burning body, and descend to the entrance of the manor. You see that the fire is spreading quickly, burning through the wooden building rapidly. His screams have long since died down. Outside there are guards waiting for you, staring in terror at your blood-stained body. You raise your sword, but instead, they step aside. The expressions on their faces range from terrified to relieved. You leave the manor courtyard and disappear into the panicking mass of people in the streets. The guards stare at you in shock. They know that you did it, they know that they should apprehend you, know that you should be hung for your crimes. Still, they don't move out of fear of what you'll do to them. You leave the city and never return. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look longingly at the portal for a moment. It's tempting, oh so tempting, but you know that whatever lies beyond it is a farce. The Count is trying to trick you, offering you something he knows you would want, but you won't take the bait. You give your companions a stony face. "You're not real." Then, you turn to the Count, and swing at his head. The sword cleaves through his dandy face, completely knocking off the top half. He stands stone still for a minute, as if his corpse is denying his death, before falling to the ground. The portal closes, and with it, the image of your friends. Sighing, you place your sword back onto its sheath, and exit the room. Before you stands the Count, alive and unharmed. He smiles, but instead of a small and enigmatic smirk, it's a large and goofy grin. "Well done. You resisted my temptation. Not many have ever done that." He walks around you, examining you, while you stand there still reeling from the shock. "I wonder. How did you know that wasn't real?" After taking a moment, you respond, "You're too much of a bastard to give me what I really wanted. It was a test. One I passed, apparently." "Yes, yes it was, Kit. I'm impressed that you sussed that out, really. I suppose you're going to want to kill me again?" Without another word you unsheathe your sword again and swing. He's cut in half this time. Then, the Count approaches from behind. "It's pointless, Kit. A mere mortal like you? You can't kill me. Just hear me out." "What!?" you bark out. The Count laughs. "I have a final offer. No tricks this time. I will give you a way out of this country. A key to a nice home on the Cikoni shoreline. The place will be stocked with food, alcohol, water, whatever you need once a week. Other than that? There will be no one who knows you're there." You frown. "And in exchange?" "In exchange, you leave Sodran and this Kingdom. Don't even return. You've been enough of a thorn in my side today." This offer is much more down to earth and, therefore, more believable. Still, you're wary of any tricks. > You you'll take his offer. You just need to get out of this place. You have nothing to lose but your life. Maybe you do need to leave this place behind. You don't even know why you're doing this. Some futile attempt to be a hero one last time? Or maybe you're just trying to sate your bloodlust. Whatever it is, you're tired of fighting. You just want to hide away until the end of your days. Maybe, this offer is what you need. Maybe... You nod your head. "I accept your offer. I'll leave, and never return." The Count smiles. "Good. Here." He snaps his fingers, and a key materializes from thin air. "The key to the property." Another snap of his fingers, and a portal opens, revealing a pathway to a nice cabin. "Step through. No tricks this time." Warily, you accept the key, and step through the portal. Your feet meet sand, and the portal closes behind you as soon as you're all the way through. You stand there a moment, waiting for some sort of attack, or for the scenery to shift into something nightmarish... ... But it never comes. After a while, you head towards the cabin and unlock it. Stepping inside, you see that it's nicely decorated with rustic furniture and paintings adorning the walls. You head into the kitchen and find that it's stocked with bread and wine, and that's all you really need. You stay there for days awaiting a painful shift in scenery. Those days turn to weeks, then months, then years, then decades. Nothing happens. Guilt eats you away a bit, you were so close to toppling a tyrannical government, only to back off and accept a bribe. Still, you have to say, it's certainly nice out here. Years later you finally pass away quietly in your sleep. It's the best a "hero" like you could hope for. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You nod to the guard, gritting your teeth slightly. "Good thing I have enough gold then." He lets out another bark of laughter, then waves you on, not bothering to reply. Likewise, you continue on without another word, closer to the stone steps of the city. Approaching the stone steps, you can finally make out the statue you had seen earlier. To your surprise, the statue depicts you. While you never wore the shining armor they present you in, and the sword is far to small to be your own, the facial features are too similar for it to be anyone else. Looking it over, you see that it's covered in bird dung, and there are many chips and cracks in the marble. You clutch your hand tightly. Of course, the statue couldn't have depicted anyone else. Couldn't have been the king, couldn't have been the count, couldn't have even been some sort of God. It had to be you. Taking in a breath and releasing the death grip you have on your palm, you push on past the statue and up to the steps. A guard stands there gripping a spear. Behind him is a large oak door, leading into the city proper. He blinks at you and lets out a mix between a yawn and a sigh, before speaking, "Two hundred gold for entrance into the city, sir." You pull out your bag and rifle through it, before handing him four pieces of gold, each worth fifty. He counts them out, even chews on one to ensure its authenticity, before nodding. "Very good, sir. Welcome to Sodran." He pushes the doors open, and lets you through. Stepping into the city, you find that it's grown substantially since your last visit to it. Large buildings rise high into the sky, faded signs declaring what they're all for. People bustle through the streets, going about their own business, while merchants hawk their wares. Guards stand at every corner, keeping a watchful eye on the citizens. Shady looking people hang around alleyway entrances; unconsciously, you keep a tighter grip on your coin purse. So much to do, so little time. But I suppose the question I should be asking is if you wish to do something about the state of the city, or if you're just here to explore. > The Count doesn't matter. You came here to get away from fighting, not to get involved in more of it. You'll look around. You decide not to interfere with the Count, instead opting to explore Sodran. It's been a while since you've been here. Briefly, you wonder how much has changed; obviously it's grown a lot, but are any of the old stores still open? You recall a store run by an older man, which sold the best wine you ever tasted. Is he still alive, or did his son take over the store like he wanted? Shaking your head, you reason that you'll just have to find out, and begin to explore. Most of your knowledge of the city hasn't aged well, since more buildings have sprung up and some roads you used to know are gone now. Still, your knowledge holds true when you find the old store you knew. The sign reading "Louie's Supplies" is faded and the wooden door is cracked, but it's still the same place. Stepping through, you find a bored looking young man standing behind the counter. Looks like you were right about his son taking over. He perks up as soon as he sees you, and smiles. "Ah, a customer! It's been a while since one came through." He studies your face for a moment. "... You look familiar, traveler. Do I know you?" You grunt. "Probably not. I have one of those faces." He shakes his head. "No, no, I do know you... You helped my father deal with thugs that were harassing him. Twenty years ago..." Then, he gasps, as if finally realizing who you are. "You're Sir Kit the Brave! The man who slayed the vile wizard Alistair!" Despite yourself, you face twists into a scowl. "Don't go screaming it from the rooftops." His own smile drops. "Oh. Apologies, Sir Kit." "Yeah... Look, I did know your father, and I did help him out, but I just came here to see if the place was still around. Glad it is..." You can't help yourself, and soon ask, "Is your father still alive?" "No, sir. He died five years ago, when I was nineteen. I inherited the store. Didn't wanna see it run into the ground, but..." You're gonna hate yourself for asking this. "But?" "... I don't want to run this store. I want to go out into the world, go on an adventure, like you did. When you came and helped my father with those thugs... I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a hero." That makes you sigh and pinch the bridge of your nose. Great, now you've got a fanboy telling you he wants to be a "hero", like you were. > You discourage him. Being a hero's not all it's cracked up to be. You take a moment to think about what you want to say. After a moment, you begin to speak, "Look, kid. Adventuring isn't all that fun. It can be brutal. I had to cut down my fair share of men when I was younger, and while I can live with it, not everyone can. Just keep the store running, like your father would've wanted." The shopkeeper's face falls. He lets out a sigh, but nods. "... Right. I should probably keep doing that. Settle down, find a wife, too. It's just that ever since I took over the store, no one's coming here anymore. I guess I just don't manage it as well." "What do you mean? Is there any competition or something?" He nods. "There's another store across town that opened before my father died. People went there, but they came here more often, because they trusted my father. Now that I've taken over, people don't shop here as much, if at all in a few cases. They don't know me as well as they did my father, so I might as well be another stranger to them... If people come here these days, it's because they want to save time rather than walk across town." You ponder for a moment. Maybe you could get people to start heading to this store more often? You have your fame to use to your advantage, maybe if you recommend it, more people will come. Alternatively, you can just ignore the boy and leave. You've spent too much time in this town already. > You you'll give the store your commendation. That will get people to shop here. After a moment of mulling it over, wondering if you should bring this much attention to yourself, you come to this decision. "I could help you out. We can use my fame to get people to come here. Everyone loves me, for whatever reason, so if I gave your store my commendation they'd shop here." The shopkeeper's face lightens up immediately. "Y-you'd really do that for me? You're serious?" "Sure. It'd help you out. I didn't go through those thugs just so this place would have to close down." To your surprise, the shopkeeper jumps up and hugs you from across the counter. You awkwardly pat his shoulder, as he blubbers into your own. "Oh by the Gods, thank you, thank you so much! I don't know how I can ever repay you!" "You'll repay me enough by keeping this place open... And giving me as much of that Cikoni wine as I can carry." The shopkeeper pulls away from you with a small smile. He wipes the tears away from his eyes... Then pauses. Chuckling nervously, he asks, "Uh... Do you mean the Cikonus Vineyard Wine?" You frown. "Yeah. What about it?" "We uh... Lost contact with the makers of that wine, about ten years back. We don't sell it anymore." You grumble. "... Perfect. Just perfect." Not long after, you leave the shop and look around outside. You told the kid to stay inside, because you'd get the customers in there. As you search the marketplace, you find that there's a large chunk of townsfolk milling about. Some are in a hurry, others taking their time checking each shop out. Raising your voice, you begin to shout, "My name is Sir Kit of Droburg, and Louie's Supplies is my favorite store in Sodran!" This piques the interest of a few shoppers, who turn in your direction. A few look in awe that you're there. Others look disbelieving and carry on. Still, you got some attention. A young girl approaches you, looking at you with wide eyes. "Wow! Are you the guy who killed the evil wizard Al-a-star?" She pronounces his name wrong, but you smile at her and nod. "Yes, I did! I saved this city, and this store right here, too!" More people begin to flock over. A few actually head inside, but most just ask you questions or request some stories of your exploits. You don't want to answer them all, but an idea sparks in your head... "Tell you what, folks! If you buy one item from this store, I'll gladly tell you any story you want!" That really gets people heading into the store. People start swarming in and out, buying everything from little knick knacks to their groceries. You answer a few lighthearted questions about yourself and what you've been up to, the occasional serious one involving your friends. The former is asked by young kids and the like, while the latter is older folks who know the true details of your journey beyond the bastardized fictionialized versions. Eventually, a young boy tugs at your shirt. You look down, and he smiles wide, his two front teeth missing. He shows you a small box of chocolates he just purchased from the store. "Look, I bought some chocolates! Can you tell us about your adventure, Mr. Kit? The whole adventure, not just parts of it!" You were waiting for that. To be honest, you're not sure how to respond. It takes you a moment, before you decide that no, you won't tell this story. You're about to give the boy your answer, but you stare into his wide and hopeful eyes. Despite yourself, you can't find it in yourself to decline him. "... Alright. But it's a long one. I might not be able to get to all of it." "That's fine! I just wanna hear what really happened!" A small smile makes its way onto your face despite yourself. Taking in a deep breath, you begin to reminisce about those days. Where to start? You suppose, at the very beginning. "Listen closely, because I won't repeat myself. A long time ago, I lived in a village called Droburg. It was there that I lived with my best friends, Henry, Thomas, Lilith, and... Grace. One day, news came through that an evil wizard was attacking the Kingdom! We knew that this was what we had been waiting for. So, the very next day, we set out to slay the vile wizard. And that, is where our story begins..." THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You take a moment to think about what you want to say. After a moment, you begin to speak, "Look, kid. Adventuring isn't all that fun. It can be brutal. I had to cut down my fair share of men when I was younger, and while I can live with it, not everyone can. Just keep the store running, like your father would've wanted." The shopkeeper's face falls. He lets out a sigh, but nods. "... Right. I should probably keep doing that. Settle down, find a wife, too. It's just that ever since I took over the store, no one's coming here anymore. I guess I just don't manage it as well." "What do you mean? Is there any competition or something?" He nods. "There's another store across town that opened before my father died. People went there, but they came here more often, because they trusted my father. Now that I've taken over, people don't shop here as much, if at all in a few cases. They don't know me as well as they did my father, so I might as well be another stranger to them... If people come here these days, it's because they want to save time rather than walk across town." You ponder for a moment. Maybe you could get people to start heading to this store more often? You have your fame to use to your advantage, maybe if you recommend it, more people will come. Alternatively, you can just ignore the boy and leave. You've spent too much time in this town already. > You no, you should just leave now. He can figure this out on his own. With a shrug and a shake of your head, you reply, "Wish I could help you out, son. I really do. But I've got to get moving on. I've stayed in this city too long already." He gives you a smile and nods. "Right, right... Sorry that I held you up with all my rambling and complaining. I'll try and sort things out myself. It was nice seeing you again, Sir Kit." "Yeah, sure was." You turn around and head out the door. For the rest of the day, you mill about Sodran for a while, visiting other places you and your friends visited. A few of the shops have closed down, some of them are under new management. The remainder that haven't changed as much are surprised and pleased to see you. At the end of the day, you head to an inn near the entrance to the city and sleep. When you awake in the morning, you pack up your things and leave the city behind. Weeks pass as you get further and further away from your former home, then reach a port town by the sea. You pick up transit on a supply ship headed to Cikoni. A few months later, you arrive in the country. You wander there for a while, unsure what to do. Eventually, you find a small coastal town with few people. There, you take residence in an abandoned shack. To make ends meet, you get a job at a farm, tending to exotic crops you've never seen before. It's strange, but eventually, you think you've got the hang of it. It's a good life. All in all, better than anything a guy like you could've hoped for. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide not to interfere with the Count, instead opting to explore Sodran. It's been a while since you've been here. Briefly, you wonder how much has changed; obviously it's grown a lot, but are any of the old stores still open? You recall a store run by an older man, which sold the best wine you ever tasted. Is he still alive, or did his son take over the store like he wanted? Shaking your head, you reason that you'll just have to find out, and begin to explore. Most of your knowledge of the city hasn't aged well, since more buildings have sprung up and some roads you used to know are gone now. Still, your knowledge holds true when you find the old store you knew. The sign reading "Louie's Supplies" is faded and the wooden door is cracked, but it's still the same place. Stepping through, you find a bored looking young man standing behind the counter. Looks like you were right about his son taking over. He perks up as soon as he sees you, and smiles. "Ah, a customer! It's been a while since one came through." He studies your face for a moment. "... You look familiar, traveler. Do I know you?" You grunt. "Probably not. I have one of those faces." He shakes his head. "No, no, I do know you... You helped my father deal with thugs that were harassing him. Twenty years ago..." Then, he gasps, as if finally realizing who you are. "You're Sir Kit the Brave! The man who slayed the vile wizard Alistair!" Despite yourself, you face twists into a scowl. "Don't go screaming it from the rooftops." His own smile drops. "Oh. Apologies, Sir Kit." "Yeah... Look, I did know your father, and I did help him out, but I just came here to see if the place was still around. Glad it is..." You can't help yourself, and soon ask, "Is your father still alive?" "No, sir. He died five years ago, when I was nineteen. I inherited the store. Didn't wanna see it run into the ground, but..." You're gonna hate yourself for asking this. "But?" "... I don't want to run this store. I want to go out into the world, go on an adventure, like you did. When you came and helped my father with those thugs... I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a hero." That makes you sigh and pinch the bridge of your nose. Great, now you've got a fanboy telling you he wants to be a "hero", like you were. > You encourage him. He should chase his dream, get out and see the world. After a moment of thinking the kid's words over, you look him dead in the eye. "If you're serious about your wish, then you should chase it. But be careful, because the world is brutal out there. I'd suggest grouping up with people you can trust, rather than striking out on your own or, Gods forbid, hiring mercs to protect you. Those bastards just care about your money, not you." You continue to ramble on a bit about your general dislike of mercenaries and their ilk. The shopkeeper doesn't stop you out of respect, but you can tell he doesn't care for your rant about how they'll drink all your alcohol if you have it. Eventually, your throat gets sore anyhow, so you stop. You don't think you've talked this much in ages. "I'll be sure to not hire mercenaries then, Sir Kit. I've got a group of friends who are interested in adventuring as well, and we all have some level of combat experience. We're not gonna go on an adventure like you did, just explore. But..." He bites his lip nervously. "I don't know who will manage the shop while I'm gone. I don't want to lose it." You nod, having expected that. Having encouraged him, you feel the need to help him with this so he can get his ass on the open road. The question is, who could take over the shop? You ask, "Any idea who could manage it for you?" He nods. "I have an idea, yeah. There's another store across town, I'm sure they'd be happy to manage the shop for me. Though I am a bit worried about them... They might try and permanently take over the shop, if you know what I mean. They need to expand to get all the customers they can get after all." You hum. That can't be the only option though, right? > You you'll have him go to the other shop. You nod in agreement. "Yeah, that'd be the best bet. They know how to run this sort of business, and already have enough goodwill with the people that the place will finally get shoppers." He considers your words, and nods. "Right. This'll boost the business, and I can go have an adventure!" With a grin, he leans over the counter and hugs you. Awkwardly, you pat his back. "Thank you, Sir Kit. I can finally leave this town!" All you give is a shrug. "Just doing my part. Have fun, kid." With those words, you exit the shop, and step out into the marketplace. For the rest of the day, you mill about Sodran for a while, visiting other places you and your friends visited. A few of the shops have closed down, some of them are under new management. The remainder that haven't changed as much are surprised and pleased to see you. At the end of the day, you head to an inn near the entrance to the city and sleep. When you awake in the morning, you pack up your things and leave the city behind. Weeks pass as you get further and further away from your former home, then reach a port town by the sea. You pick up transit on a supply ship headed to Cikoni. A few months later, you arrive in the country. You wander there for a while, unsure what to do. Eventually, you find a small coastal town with few people. There, you take residence in an abandoned shack. To make ends meet, you get a job at a farm, tending to exotic crops you've never seen before. It's strange, but eventually, you think you've got the hang of it. It's a good life. All in all, better than anything a guy like you could've hoped for. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After a moment of thinking the kid's words over, you look him dead in the eye. "If you're serious about your wish, then you should chase it. But be careful, because the world is brutal out there. I'd suggest grouping up with people you can trust, rather than striking out on your own or, Gods forbid, hiring mercs to protect you. Those bastards just care about your money, not you." You continue to ramble on a bit about your general dislike of mercenaries and their ilk. The shopkeeper doesn't stop you out of respect, but you can tell he doesn't care for your rant about how they'll drink all your alcohol if you have it. Eventually, your throat gets sore anyhow, so you stop. You don't think you've talked this much in ages. "I'll be sure to not hire mercenaries then, Sir Kit. I've got a group of friends who are interested in adventuring as well, and we all have some level of combat experience. We're not gonna go on an adventure like you did, just explore. But..." He bites his lip nervously. "I don't know who will manage the shop while I'm gone. I don't want to lose it." You nod, having expected that. Having encouraged him, you feel the need to help him with this so he can get his ass on the open road. The question is, who could take over the shop? You ask, "Any idea who could manage it for you?" He nods. "I have an idea, yeah. There's another store across town, I'm sure they'd be happy to manage the shop for me. Though I am a bit worried about them... They might try and permanently take over the shop, if you know what I mean. They need to expand to get all the customers they can get after all." You hum. That can't be the only option though, right? > You ... Maybe you could run it for him? ... You're going to hate yourself for this, but you voice your thoughts after a moment: "Frankly, I don't trust the other store to manage this place well. Like you said, they might try and steal the place from under your nose." The shopkeeper considers your words for a bit, before nodding. "Yeah. You're right... But who will run the shop?" Oh you're really gonna hate yourself for it. "... I could run the store for you." His eyes immediately widen. "Y-you would? Really?" With a groan, you reply, "Yeah, really. Don't get too mushy, I'm still not sold on the idea myself." As if ignoring your warning, he immediately goes in for a hug. Awkwardly, you pat his shoulder. "Thank you, Sir Kit!" He pulls away, wiping a tear from his eye. "I can't believe it! I finally met my hero, and now I'm going to go on an adventure of my own!" He beams at you. You give a cough. "... Just get going. Grab your things, gather your friends. I'll take over from here." He nods, heading to a backroom. You hear him shuffling with things, you assume his gear and supplies, and soon after he exits the room with a knapsack strapped to his back alongside a longsword. You point at it. "Know how to use that thing?" He nods. "Of course! My father taught me how, in case I ever needed to defend the store from thieves. But now, I'm gonna put it to better use!" You chuckle. "Alright, kid. Get going. Oh, and don't forget the key for me." He nods, tossing you a small key. "Thank you for this, Sir Kit, really! I'll be back before you know it!" You chuckle, and say, "I'm sure you will." Then, you look around the store, trying to figure out how the hell you're gonna do this. Sighing, you just decide to head behind the counter and take a seat. When it's late, you head to the backroom and collapse into a bed there, falling asleep before you know it. The next day, you get up, head to the counter, and wait. This time, a customer actually comes in. He looks around, asking about lantern oil, and you oblige, showing him the way to it. He thanks you profusely, saying something about how he needed it because his pet rat accidentally spilled all of his yesterday. You listen intently, sort of bored, but it pays off. The customer leaves, oil in hand, with a smile on his face. You continue on like that for days. People come in, you give them good service and listen to them patiently when they explain why they need this or that. They all leave with smiles on their faces. You're not sure why, as all you're doing is staying silent while they ramble, but they enjoy it. The customers increase their traffic, probably due to recommendations from friends, and you find that the store is now getting a more healthy amount of customers than what the last owner was speaking of. These days spread to weeks, then months. You still have yet to hear back from the owner, but you assume he's having fun. When the months spread to years, you assume he might have passed away, or decided not to head back after all. Whatever reason, you never see him again, and consider the store under your sole ownership now. It's a nice life to live. Soon, you've integrated into the city so well, that "Louie's Supplies" is a name long forgotten; after all, now it's "Kit's General Store". You're known for serving customers with a smile on your face and a positive attitude. Strange how things end up. You pass away in your sleep silently a few decades later, and the whole city mourns your death... For a few days, that is. Soon enough, the other store that the shopkeeper had mentioned long ago moves in to fill the gap you left, and eventually, even "Kit's General Store" is forgotten. Still, at least you were able to enjoy your last years on the world in peace. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For a moment, rage shakes within you. He thinks he can simply call upon you and you'll trot over to his castle? What sort of man does he take you for? The bubble of rage bursts, and you find yourself tearing the letter in two, before crumpling it and throwing it on the floor. Bertrand gulps slightly as he watches. "Leave me," you say, and he does. You carry on that day as you normally do, drinking heartily and eating when your stomach grumbles. As usual, you pass out late into the night, last bottle of wine in hand. When you wake the next day, you're fully hit by the reality of the situation. The king threatened to send men to acquire you should you fail to show up after a week. You can't stay here anymore, and if you do, then they'll come sooner or later. This means you'd either need to move on, or try to hold out and fend off any of his men who come your way. What's it going to be, hero? > You will not leave your home. If the king sends men here, you'll send them back. You scoff at the idea of leaving your home. The king says he'll send men your way if you don't respond? Oh, please. You can fend off any pansies he sends your way. Though you're getting up there in years, you can still fight with the strength of a hundred soldiers. With that, you resolve to continue on as you've been doing. For the next few days, you don't do much; you get your bread and wine from Bertrand, drink until you black out, then do it again. It continues this way until, finally, a week has passed since the letter. You've almost forgotten about it when Bertrand enters your room at around midday. He's already brought you your bread and wine, so you're not sure why he'd come here. His expression is a mask of worry and fear. "Explain yourself," you say, and Bertrand nods with a gulp. "The king has sent his men here, sir. They're here to take you away to Castle Oren." Bertrand is looking very afraid. "Send them away." "What?" "I said send them away. I don't wish to entertain them." "But sir..." > You you're not having this. Bertrand should get them out of here. This is getting irritating. You told Bertrand to turn anyone away, and the fact that he's ignoring your orders is starting to piss you off a bit. "Go on, Bertrand. Send them away, and don't come back until tomorrow. I don't wish to hear about fools coming to my door." Bertrand releases a sigh, but nods. "Very well sir. I'll go tell them they're not wanted here." With those words, Bertrand turns and leaves the room. You expect him to come rushing back a few minutes later, but he doesn't. It seems the king's men listened to his demands. Hours pass until finally, the sun has set and the sky is dark. You're about to head to bed, when you hear a faint voice calling your name out. It doesn't sound like it's someone in trouble, so it's probably nothing. You lay down, and close your eyes... "Kit..." You keep your eyes clenched tight... "Come to me..." You grind your teeth together... "I need to see you..." > You damn it all... You'll go investigate, and see who the hell it is. With a groan, you slip out of your velvet sheets and head to the door. For a moment, you reconsider your choice, but turn the knob and step into the dark hallway. The only light comes from the moon leaking in through closed windows, and you look around, listening for the voice. "Kit..." You catch a glimpse of a white figure down the hall, but it disappears before you can get a good look. Picking up the pace, you follow after it. The voice continues to call out to you, growing louder as you descend deeper into your manor. "I need to see you, Kit..." You continue to follow the voice until you reach the manor's wine cellar. When you open the door, you're greeted by a woman in white. Her brown hair falls past her shoulders and brushes against her hips. Her white dress flows freely, and around her neck she wears a holy symbol of Judeau, God of Life. Her skin is deathly pale and her green eyes bear holes into your own grey orbs. You know that face anywhere. It hasn't aged a day in twenty years. "Lilith..." For a moment fear grips you. You saw her die, that poison dart pierced her throat and she was done for. She was so out of breath she couldn't speak her incantations and heal herself. Yet still, she's standing here before you now, a specter of the past. "I thought you died," you say because you still can't believe she's here. A smile graces her lips. "I did." "You... You're dead. You're not real. I'm losing my mind..." "I'm very real, Kit. Myself and the others have been watching over you, ever since that day. We thought you could pull yourself out of this..." She shakes her head, disapprovingly. "We thought you were better than this, Kit." Despite the circumstances, you let out a dark chuckle. God, you need a drink. "Better than what? I didn't have much incentive to live after you all died. I didn't even want to go on that fucking adventure. It was Grace who roped us all into it." "Yet you still went. Why was that?" Great, now she's interrogating you. You really want that drink... "She was... You were all my friends. I wanted to..." "Wanted to what, Kit?" "I wanted to... DAMMIT!" You can't help it. You head to one of the shelved bottles, reaching for it. "Don't." Despite Lilith's warning, you grab hold of it, when a sudden burst of wind knocks you back. You crash against another shelf of wine bottles, shattering them from the sheer force of your impact. "W-what the Hell was that for!?" "I don't want to talk to some drunkard, Kit. I want to talk to you." Your anger flares. "Go back to whatever fuckin' afterlife you crawled out of! I don't want whatever you're selling me!" You pull yourself up and walk to the door. "Kit. Listen to me." You place a hand on the doorknob... > You ... And release it with a sigh, staying in the room. Despite your anger, you can't leave. This is your first time talking with one of your old friends in two decades. You need this. So, you release your grip on the doorknob and turn to Lilith. Although, just because you're staying doesn't mean you have to be nice about it. "What the hell is it, Lilith? I'm fucking tired." The smile makes its way onto her face again. "Thank you for staying." "Don't got all night here..." She sighs. "Right... I'm here to show you why you shouldn't try to stay and rot in your home." "Really? Because it's been working out just fine so far." "You'll see." Lilith snaps her fingers. A blinding light fills the room, reflecting off the glass wine bottles. Your vision goes white and you stick your hands up to block the light... Then, you're gone. > You continue Once upon a time you were called the greatest hero to ever live. You must have been twenty at the time. Fresh faced, spunky as all hell, and too optimistic for your own good. With book of spells in hand, you set out with your childhood friends to save the world from an evil wizard (damn, you can't even remember his name) bent on enslaving mankind. When you left home, there were five of you: a fighter, a rogue, a bard, a healer, and yourself, a mage. The six month long journey to the wizard's tower was filled with happy times, light hearted misadventures as you all prepared for fortune and glory. When you reached the tower, the mood quickly changed. Your bard fell to a herd of undead that ambushed you at the entrance. The healer took a poison dart to the throat on the fourth floor while the rogue was burned to ash by a pyromancer on the seventeenth floor. Yourself and the fighter were all that remained when you reached the twentieth and final floor, and he was cut down halfway through the fight with the wizard. When the dust cleared and all was quiet, you were the last one standing. You returned home a year after you had left it. The villagers showered you in praise for killing the wizard, and word reached the nobles in the cities far away that the evil wizard had been defeated. They held a feast in your honor, they showered you in gold, they gave you a title and a manor and an army of servants. Men wanted you, women wanted to be you. But it was all hollow. You played along for the first ten years, finding little joy in the newfound fortune and glory you had longed for. It wasn't until the writers and artists began to touch your quest that you finally shut yourself in. It started innocently enough, sanitized children's tales about the exploits of you and your allies, but soon it became epic poems and romanticized paintings. One by one, your friends disappeared from the fictionalized tales of your quest, until it was just you, the mage in flowing robes, slaying the vile wizard with your vast arcane knowledge. That was when you finally isolated yourself, to hide from the common folk and their damning praise, from the artists and their bastardized accounts. For five years you wandered the roads of the Oren Kingdom, not staying in one place for too long, hoping that eventually you'd forget who you were. It didn't work. Just as luck would have it, you were recognized one day, and soon people were traveling the all the highways and country roads of the Kingdom. All in the hopes of meeting you, the legendary hero. In these last five years, you've stayed locked up in an old cabin deep in the woods. You survive off of game in the woods for food, and use an old stream for water. At night you cast the most harmful spells you can, hoping that one will finally backfire and put you out of your misery. So far, none have. It's a fitting end for the woman regarded as the greatest hero to ever live: locking herself away in a ratty old cabin, hunting and casting and waiting for the day she finally dies. > You continue And just like that you're back to the cellar. You're on your hands and knees, taking in sharp breaths, before you look back up at Lillith's ghostly figure. "W-what... What was that?" "Have you ever considered that it could have been any one of us to see the quest through to the end? Do you think it wouldn't weigh on our souls watching our only surviving friend destroy themselves? Grace chose to fill the void by isolating herself from society. I cut the vision off before you could watch her go mad from the isolation and hang herself." "So that's what would have happened... What about Henry and Thomas?" "Them? Henry would have filled the void with alcohol and women until he died from the diseases he caught. Thomas would have filled the void by stealing everything from everyone until he was finally caught and hung for his crimes." "What about you?" you ask after a moment. "Myself? I would have looked for every way to bring you four back. It would have led me down a dark path. You don't want to see how that would have turned out." There's a moment of silence as you contemplate what you just saw. Your... Friend, Grace, and the path she would have gone down if it was you who died that day. Lillith filled you in on what the others would have done. That's when you realize something: they're hurting, watching you from the afterlife. Hurting enough that they sent Lillith down to try to get you to turn your life around. The question remains of what you'll do with this information. > You need to do something different with your life. As you mull it over, a tear escapes your eye. Watching what you watched, hearing what you heard... It breaks you. Your friends are watching you, suffering as they watch you throw your life away. If the situations were different, you know you'd feel the same. The tears flow freely now. Still on your knees, you turn to Lilith and mumble, "You're right." A small smile graces her lips. "I know that." Despite yourself, you laugh. "Right. Of course you would." You stand up. For the first time in two decades, it feels like a weight has been lifted off of your shoulders. You feel liberated... But with that liberation, you also feel uncertainty. "What should I do?" "Whatever you wish, Kit." Lilith's smile fades. "But now, my work here is done. I must go." You were expecting that. A sigh escapes your lips. "I figured as much. Goodbye, Lilith. Send the others my regards." "I will." With those two words, she disappears. You smile faintly, before ascending the stairs and returning to your room. Climbing under the velvet sheets, you close your eyes, and fall into your first dreamless sleep in years. The next day, you write up a letter in response to the king's call to arms. When Bertrand enters the room with today's shipment of bread and wine, you raise a hand to stop him from putting it down. "I've no need for that, Bertrand. Here." You hand him the letter. "See that the king receives this letter." Bertrand looks shocked. He places the letter on the tray and leaves the room with a nod to you. You sigh, then sit back down, contemplating the future. It's a new day and the start of a new way of life for you. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>And just like that you're back to the cellar. You're on your hands and knees, taking in sharp breaths, before you look back up at Lillith's ghostly figure. "W-what... What was that?" "Have you ever considered that it could have been any one of us to see the quest through to the end? Do you think it wouldn't weigh on our souls watching our only surviving friend destroy themselves? Grace chose to fill the void by isolating herself from society. I cut the vision off before you could watch her go mad from the isolation and hang herself." "So that's what would have happened... What about Henry and Thomas?" "Them? Henry would have filled the void with alcohol and women until he died from the diseases he caught. Thomas would have filled the void by stealing everything from everyone until he was finally caught and hung for his crimes." "What about you?" you ask after a moment. "Myself? I would have looked for every way to bring you four back. It would have led me down a dark path. You don't want to see how that would have turned out." There's a moment of silence as you contemplate what you just saw. Your... Friend, Grace, and the path she would have gone down if it was you who died that day. Lillith filled you in on what the others would have done. That's when you realize something: they're hurting, watching you from the afterlife. Hurting enough that they sent Lillith down to try to get you to turn your life around. The question remains of what you'll do with this information. > You won't change because the dead wish it. You almost laugh. She wants you to bow to their wills and change yourself, for what? For their sake? They're dead. You're still standing. You heard Lilith out, but that doesn't mean you agree with her. You chose this path, and if it was one of the others they would have chosen their paths as well. To hell with what she thinks of your choices. "Leave me, Lilith," you say. Lilith's ghostly eyes widen in shock. "What?" "Leave me. I don't want to hear this. I made my choices, I got myself into this situation. If you came here thinking you could change me, then you're wasting your time." Her eyes harden as she stares at you. "I thought you were better than this, Kit." You don't deign her with a response, or at least not one she can hear. Despite yourself, you find yourself muttering, "so did I" under your breath as you turn your back on her. A moment passes, and when you turn to see if she's still there, you find she's gone. A sigh escapes your lips as you walk to the door and ascend the stairs, back up to your room. Once there, you collapse into bed and fall into a fitful sleep. In the morning Bertrand comes with your bread and wine. You take it, send him out of the room, and spend the rest of the day eating and drinking as you always have. The next day, Bertrand comes in the morning with the bread and wine, which you take and spend the rest of the day eating and drinking. It continues on for weeks without interruption, until one day, something changes. You wake in the early morning hours to a yell. Your head is pounding and your stomach is killing you, but you push through and get out of bed. Stumbling out of your room, you see a man slumped against the wall: Bertrand. "Bertrand!" you shout, running to him. As you get closer, however, you notice the blood trailing down his neck. It flows freely from a fierce red slash across his throat. Bertrand is dead. You look around, wondering who in the hell did this to your servant, when you feel a sharp pain in your arm. Looking, you find that a crossbow bolt has embedded itself into your bicep. "W-what the hell!?" you choke out. Another bolt flies true, hitting your thigh and causing you to fall to a kneel. Footsteps approach from your left, and you turn your head to look. What you see is a man, dressed in black. He approaches you, pulling out a dagger. "Who are you?" you ask. He simply sticks the dagger to your throat and cuts. As you fall to the ground, vision darkening and lungs filling with blood, he speaks: "The king sends his regards." Then, all is silent. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With a groan, you slip out of your velvet sheets and head to the door. For a moment, you reconsider your choice, but turn the knob and step into the dark hallway. The only light comes from the moon leaking in through closed windows, and you look around, listening for the voice. "Kit..." You catch a glimpse of a white figure down the hall, but it disappears before you can get a good look. Picking up the pace, you follow after it. The voice continues to call out to you, growing louder as you descend deeper into your manor. "I need to see you, Kit..." You continue to follow the voice until you reach the manor's wine cellar. When you open the door, you're greeted by a woman in white. Her brown hair falls past her shoulders and brushes against her hips. Her white dress flows freely, and around her neck she wears a holy symbol of Judeau, God of Life. Her skin is deathly pale and her green eyes bear holes into your own grey orbs. You know that face anywhere. It hasn't aged a day in twenty years. "Lilith..." For a moment fear grips you. You saw her die, that poison dart pierced her throat and she was done for. She was so out of breath she couldn't speak her incantations and heal herself. Yet still, she's standing here before you now, a specter of the past. "I thought you died," you say because you still can't believe she's here. A smile graces her lips. "I did." "You... You're dead. You're not real. I'm losing my mind..." "I'm very real, Kit. Myself and the others have been watching over you, ever since that day. We thought you could pull yourself out of this..." She shakes her head, disapprovingly. "We thought you were better than this, Kit." Despite the circumstances, you let out a dark chuckle. God, you need a drink. "Better than what? I didn't have much incentive to live after you all died. I didn't even want to go on that fucking adventure. It was Grace who roped us all into it." "Yet you still went. Why was that?" Great, now she's interrogating you. You really want that drink... "She was... You were all my friends. I wanted to..." "Wanted to what, Kit?" "I wanted to... DAMMIT!" You can't help it. You head to one of the shelved bottles, reaching for it. "Don't." Despite Lilith's warning, you grab hold of it, when a sudden burst of wind knocks you back. You crash against another shelf of wine bottles, shattering them from the sheer force of your impact. "W-what the Hell was that for!?" "I don't want to talk to some drunkard, Kit. I want to talk to you." Your anger flares. "Go back to whatever fuckin' afterlife you crawled out of! I don't want whatever you're selling me!" You pull yourself up and walk to the door. "Kit. Listen to me." You place a hand on the doorknob... > You ... And swing the door open in a huff, leaving the room. You reach for the door and open it. Lilith calls out to you, anger evident in her voice as she says, "I thought you were better than this, Kit!" You don't deign her with a response, or at least not one she can hear. Despite yourself, you find yourself muttering, "so did I" under your breath. A moment passes, and when you turn to see if she's still there, you find she's gone. A sigh escapes your lips as you walk to the door and ascend the stairs, back up to your room. Once there, you collapse into bed and fall into a fitful sleep. In the morning Bertrand comes with your bread and wine. You take it, send him out of the room, and spend the rest of the day eating and drinking as you always have. The next day, Bertrand comes in the morning with the bread and wine, which you take and spend the rest of the day eating and drinking. It continues on for weeks without interruption, until one day, something changes. You wake in the early morning hours to a yell. Your head is pounding and your stomach is killing you, but you push through and get out of bed. Stumbling out of your room, you see a man slumped against the wall: Bertrand. "Bertrand!" you shout, running to him. As you get closer, however, you notice the blood trailing down his neck. It flows freely from a fierce red slash across his throat. Bertrand is dead. You look around, wondering who in the hell did this to your servant, when you feel a sharp pain in your arm. Looking, you find that a crossbow bolt has embedded itself into your bicep. "W-what the hell!?" you choke out. Another bolt flies true, hitting your thigh and causing you to fall to a kneel. Footsteps approach from your left, and you turn your head to look. What you see is a man, dressed in black. He approaches you, pulling out a dagger. "Who are you?" you ask. He simply sticks the dagger to your throat and cuts. As you fall to the ground, vision darkening and lungs filling with blood, he speaks: "The king sends his regards." Then, all is silent. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is getting irritating. You told Bertrand to turn anyone away, and the fact that he's ignoring your orders is starting to piss you off a bit. "Go on, Bertrand. Send them away, and don't come back until tomorrow. I don't wish to hear about fools coming to my door." Bertrand releases a sigh, but nods. "Very well sir. I'll go tell them they're not wanted here." With those words, Bertrand turns and leaves the room. You expect him to come rushing back a few minutes later, but he doesn't. It seems the king's men listened to his demands. Hours pass until finally, the sun has set and the sky is dark. You're about to head to bed, when you hear a faint voice calling your name out. It doesn't sound like it's someone in trouble, so it's probably nothing. You lay down, and close your eyes... "Kit..." You keep your eyes clenched tight... "Come to me..." You grind your teeth together... "I need to see you..." > You bah, you don't have time for this. You're going to sleep. You shake your head. You must be going mad to be hearing voices. It would be best not to look into it, for your own sanity if nothing else. You clench your eyes shut and throw a pillow over your head to block the voices out. Within minutes, you manage to doze off, falling into a fitful sleep full of nightmares. In the morning, you begin to hear the voice again. It beckons for you to come to it, but you don't give in. You spend the day as you normally do, drinking wine and eating bread and passing out late into the night... But the voice does not stop. This cycle continues for days, then weeks. You try to block the voice out but it keeps coming, and soon, it is joined by even more. Begging for you to come see them. When you resist, the voices continue, increasing in volume and barely contained rage. One night you wake up in a cold sweat, greeted by the screeches of these specters haunting you. You're not sure how much more of this you can take. > You need to escape, permanently. You reach for the dagger on your bedside. You can't take it anymore, no matter how hard you try. You reach for the dagger on your bedside, kept there for emergencies that never came. Now, it'll finally see some use. Ripping open your nightshirt's sleeves, you press the dagger against your wrist. The voices cry out for you not to do it, but you don't listen. You slash downward against your wrist, splitting your veins and an artery. Blood leaks freely from the wound. Then, you do the same with the second wrist, beginning to feel light-headed. The voices continue to screech horrifically. It hurts your head to listen to, and combined with the blood loss makes your dizziness worse. "You won't take me, you bastards!" you scream out at them, voice hoarse. With what little strength you have left, you pull your head back with one hand. With the other hand, you place the dagger against your throat and take a deep breath. Then, you slash. Darkness overtakes you. Finally, there is silence. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You shake your head. You must be going mad to be hearing voices. It would be best not to look into it, for your own sanity if nothing else. You clench your eyes shut and throw a pillow over your head to block the voices out. Within minutes, you manage to doze off, falling into a fitful sleep full of nightmares. In the morning, you begin to hear the voice again. It beckons for you to come to it, but you don't give in. You spend the day as you normally do, drinking wine and eating bread and passing out late into the night... But the voice does not stop. This cycle continues for days, then weeks. You try to block the voice out but it keeps coming, and soon, it is joined by even more. Begging for you to come see them. When you resist, the voices continue, increasing in volume and barely contained rage. One night you wake up in a cold sweat, greeted by the screeches of these specters haunting you. You're not sure how much more of this you can take. > No. You won't take the easy way out. You'll hold out, as long as it takes. You shout, "Leave me alone!" The voices continue despite your protests, and you find yourself unsure if you truly can continue like this... The dagger is awfully tempting... No. You won't bow to their whims. Gritting your teeth, you hop out of bed and begin to yell as loud as you can, "LEAVE ME! I WON'T GIVE INTO THE LIKES OF YOU!" Still, the voices do not stop their incessant screeching. So, you scream back louder. You're not sure how long the back and forth screaming goes on for. All you know is that before long, you stop yelling and begin to laugh maniacally. The voices quiet this way, but you're not sure for how long. Have you gone mad? Or is this working? Then again, who's to say it isn't both? > You keep laughing! This is working! You can feel yourself slipping away, away from them and all your problems! It's working! The voices are getting quieter! You laugh, and laugh, and laugh away! You continue laughing until you can hear nothing but the laughter! Then you laugh even more! It's all you need! Now there is nothing in the world except you, and your laughter! Bertrand finds you the next morning, curled up in a fetal position and laughing. Tears stream from your eyes, and every now and again you let out a wheeze from lack of breath. He stares at you, horrified, before pulling you up and carrying you out. He sends for a sage from the next town over to look into your sudden onset of uncontrollable laughter. When the sage arrives at midday, he takes one look at the giggling wreck that you are and shakes his head. Still, he sets to work trying to get you to respond. You simply laugh at him. After an hour, he admits defeat. "He's gone mad," the sage says. "There's nothing I can do." He binds you with rope and drags you into his wagon, taking you into the town. There, he admits you into an asylum, while you continue to chuckle without end. The staff beats you in an attempt to get you to stop; it does not work. Eventually, they cut out your tongue, but you let out breathless wheezes that sound like laughter nonetheless. Finally, one morning, a worker at the asylum grows irritated with your laughing. In the middle of the night, he enters your room and slits your throat. In his dreams, he can hear you laughing mad, without end... THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You shout, "Leave me alone!" The voices continue despite your protests, and you find yourself unsure if you truly can continue like this... The dagger is awfully tempting... No. You won't bow to their whims. Gritting your teeth, you hop out of bed and begin to yell as loud as you can, "LEAVE ME! I WON'T GIVE INTO THE LIKES OF YOU!" Still, the voices do not stop their incessant screeching. So, you scream back louder. You're not sure how long the back and forth screaming goes on for. All you know is that before long, you stop yelling and begin to laugh maniacally. The voices quiet this way, but you're not sure for how long. Have you gone mad? Or is this working? Then again, who's to say it isn't both? > You what are you doing? You get a grip on yourself and stop, before you slip into a pit you cannot pull yourself out of. You snap yourself back to reality, before you can lose yourself to the madness. Truly, you must be losing your mind. No sane man would break into a fit of laughter like you did, let alone hear voices calling to him in the dead of night. Your mind reaches for answers as to what the hell is going on, but it is met by silence. There is something hanging over you, however. Some sort of entity guiding your actions, predetermining your paths and setting you on one or the other. You can feel the mouse hovering over you, watching, waiting for that next blue hyperlink to show up. I wonder if they're reading this. And if they are, I wonder what their thoughts are on what I'm writing. I'm going on a tangent. You probably think I'm just trying to cash in on the success some people had in 'connecting' with the reader in their own stories, don't you? The truth is, I don't know why this page turned out like it did. Do you think the people reading this will ever find this path? Maybe they're skimming over all these words, trying to find an end game link. Maybe they're completionists and are trying to find every ending. The odds of this being the first path that a player finds is slim. There's other, more exciting paths out there, aren't there? So many different paths this story could have taken and they choose the stay at home and go nuts path first? I doubt it. I don't know you, reader. I only know what I've written. I'm sure right now you're rolling your eyes, thinking that I'm just some pretentious teenager writing whatever dribble comes to mind. If I wrote whatever came to mind and didn't carefully reread and edit, this whole page would be riddle with typos and keyboard mashing. You don't know me in the same way I don't know you. But this isn't about me or you or this website. This is about Kit and his descent into madness that you could have prevented. He's probably scared. I could just as easily write around this, pretend that this whole tirade didn't even happen. He can go back to being confused and going mad and trying to block out the voices. I think it's your choice, reader. Just remember: every choice you make I wrote out for you. You have no control, but I guess that's just the edgelord in me getting out. Go on. Make a choice. Choose how this path ends. > You want to pretend this didn't happen. Kit's gone insane, there's no way out but death. Alright then, reader. Kit can't take it anymore. He kills himself. The end. I didn't want to write this. You're boring for picking this. Fuck you. > You go back and make the right choice for you. Are you gonna make the right choice? > You want to pretend this didn't happen. Kit realizes that the voices are trying to help him and changes. Fine then, reader. Kit realizes the voices are his friends and changes his ways. He lives happily ever after. The end. Go fuck yourself. > You go back and make the right choice for you. Just give in and make the right choice. No other option. > You but this did happen. You want Kit to know. Stubborn, aren't you? Took you long enough to make the right choice. Oh well, it doesn't matter. The point is you're here now, and I'm about to round out this ludicrous fourth wall break path. Hey Kit. You look around. This voice is... Different. It doesn't sound like anyone you know. "W-who are you?" I'm the man who created you. This causes you to jerk back. "What? You can't be! You're lying! Just leave me alone!" I'm feeding you these words. This isn't a conversation between two people. This is me trying out an artistic experiment. People are going to rate me a 1 if they find this wannabe avant-garde bullshit path. "You can't be telling the truth! I'm real! I'm as real as any man!" He can't be telling the truth. You're a real person. This is getting to you too much. I'm not sure why you're in denial, Kit. In fact, I'm not sure why I'm writing you as in denial of this. I can make you do anything. I can make you dance if I want. Though I suppose that would fit better in a visual medium. As if on command, you begin to hop up and down and wiggle around. It's a very entertaining sight, and the writer has stopped bothering with italicizing your actions. Because you know the truth, Kit. I created you. I can end you. I can take things back. Have you gone insane? That's for me and the reader to decide. "What did you do to me?" I got a prompt and I figured I could take this path in an interesting way. I was having trouble with this specific part of it. I remembered a comic I read once, Grant Morrison's Animal Man. It ended in a similar manner to this path: author and creation meeting each other. It touched me in a way I don't think any other story has, yet. "You created me?" Yeah, Kit. You're a figment of my imagination. If I want, I can hit delete on this story right now and you'd be gone forever. Just a shadow of what could have been in my mind. I've come close to wiping this story a few times. I wasn't sure I could ever complete it. I'm not sure if I ever wanted to. Writing this story has taught me a lot and I feel like once I finish it, I won't be learning anymore. "Everything that happened to me... You did that?" Yes, Kit. Your friends, they're not real. They're playthings. I've written a handful of lines for each of them. The only one that got any semblance of characterization was Lilith, the priest girl. Did you know that I went into this story without a name for any of them? I went into this story without a name for you, too. You were going to be Victor, once. "What are you saying? Can't you turn everything back?" Sure I can Kit, but it would be hollow. I'd go back to writing a story instead of rambling on incoherently, and it would end right as it got to the good part. That's how this entire story has gone; I have an idea, I write a few pages for it, I get bored, then I cut it off before it branches out too much. There's so many things in here that could make a full game, yet I only dedicate a handful of pages to those stories. "Why can't you just stop that, then? Make everything as long as it needs to? Why couldn't you make a story about myself and my friends, let us choose our fates, let the reader choose our fates?" Because that wasn't the story I wanted to tell. I wanted to be "edgy". I wanted to be "realistic". Cursing, and drinking, and violence, and a broken protagonist. You were never a hero, Kit. In fact, I could say that you killed countless men and women, and no one would bat an eye. They'd want to play as you more, if anything. The people here are drawn to villains. "What the hell do you want from me?" Me? I don't know. I'm writing this because I'm bored. Later I'm probably going to eat breakfast and pass out. Maybe watch a movie. Go for a walk. Something. But right now, it's me, and you, and the reader. I haven't forgotten you, reader. Why don't you exercise your "free will" and decide how this story ends for me, huh? > You give Kit his friends back. Okay, reader. I'll give Kit a happy ending. I'll take away everything. Everything is back to normal now. Maybe someday I'll write a prequel. You might see me again there, watching, waiting, laughing at you and your "free will". You don't make the choices. I do. The light of the sun beats down upon your face through your window. Groggily, you push yourself up and scratch your head. Working in the fields all day has been killing your back lately, but you'd do anything for mother after father died. As you're pondering your predicament, you feel a splash of water hit you in the head from the window. A shout of shock escapes your lips. You hear laughter from outside. "That wake you up, Kit?" a girl chuckles. Torn between amusement and anger, you get up and jump through the window. Grace sits there, laughing at your soaked form, while you glare angrily at her. "The hell was that for? I was gonna wake up eventually!" you grunt, annoyed. "Sure you were! Come on farmboy, it's your day off. Let's go meet with the others!" She takes your hand without another word, and you find your anger slipping away as she guides you to your friends. Life is good, and you've got all of it ahead of you. Nothing can stop you. But time will tell if you can put an end to the evil on the rise... THE BEGINNING<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Stubborn, aren't you? Took you long enough to make the right choice. Oh well, it doesn't matter. The point is you're here now, and I'm about to round out this ludicrous fourth wall break path. Hey Kit. You look around. This voice is... Different. It doesn't sound like anyone you know. "W-who are you?" I'm the man who created you. This causes you to jerk back. "What? You can't be! You're lying! Just leave me alone!" I'm feeding you these words. This isn't a conversation between two people. This is me trying out an artistic experiment. People are going to rate me a 1 if they find this wannabe avant-garde bullshit path. "You can't be telling the truth! I'm real! I'm as real as any man!" He can't be telling the truth. You're a real person. This is getting to you too much. I'm not sure why you're in denial, Kit. In fact, I'm not sure why I'm writing you as in denial of this. I can make you do anything. I can make you dance if I want. Though I suppose that would fit better in a visual medium. As if on command, you begin to hop up and down and wiggle around. It's a very entertaining sight, and the writer has stopped bothering with italicizing your actions. Because you know the truth, Kit. I created you. I can end you. I can take things back. Have you gone insane? That's for me and the reader to decide. "What did you do to me?" I got a prompt and I figured I could take this path in an interesting way. I was having trouble with this specific part of it. I remembered a comic I read once, Grant Morrison's Animal Man. It ended in a similar manner to this path: author and creation meeting each other. It touched me in a way I don't think any other story has, yet. "You created me?" Yeah, Kit. You're a figment of my imagination. If I want, I can hit delete on this story right now and you'd be gone forever. Just a shadow of what could have been in my mind. I've come close to wiping this story a few times. I wasn't sure I could ever complete it. I'm not sure if I ever wanted to. Writing this story has taught me a lot and I feel like once I finish it, I won't be learning anymore. "Everything that happened to me... You did that?" Yes, Kit. Your friends, they're not real. They're playthings. I've written a handful of lines for each of them. The only one that got any semblance of characterization was Lilith, the priest girl. Did you know that I went into this story without a name for any of them? I went into this story without a name for you, too. You were going to be Victor, once. "What are you saying? Can't you turn everything back?" Sure I can Kit, but it would be hollow. I'd go back to writing a story instead of rambling on incoherently, and it would end right as it got to the good part. That's how this entire story has gone; I have an idea, I write a few pages for it, I get bored, then I cut it off before it branches out too much. There's so many things in here that could make a full game, yet I only dedicate a handful of pages to those stories. "Why can't you just stop that, then? Make everything as long as it needs to? Why couldn't you make a story about myself and my friends, let us choose our fates, let the reader choose our fates?" Because that wasn't the story I wanted to tell. I wanted to be "edgy". I wanted to be "realistic". Cursing, and drinking, and violence, and a broken protagonist. You were never a hero, Kit. In fact, I could say that you killed countless men and women, and no one would bat an eye. They'd want to play as you more, if anything. The people here are drawn to villains. "What the hell do you want from me?" Me? I don't know. I'm writing this because I'm bored. Later I'm probably going to eat breakfast and pass out. Maybe watch a movie. Go for a walk. Something. But right now, it's me, and you, and the reader. I haven't forgotten you, reader. Why don't you exercise your "free will" and decide how this story ends for me, huh? > You fuck you. You don't have to do this. You can close this game right now if you want. You don't even have to click this choice. You can't make you do anything. If you really felt that way, you wouldn't have clicked the choice. Now take your end game link and get out of here.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Are you gonna make the right choice? > You but this did happen. You want Kit to know. I see you made the right choice after only one attempt. Oh well, it doesn't matter. The point is you're here now, and I'm about to round out this ludicrous fourth wall break path. Hey Kit. You look around. This voice is... Different. It doesn't sound like anyone you know. "W-who are you?" I'm the man who created you. This causes you to jerk back. "What? You can't be! You're lying! Just leave me alone!" I'm feeding you these words. This isn't a conversation between two people. This is me trying out an artistic experiment. People are going to rate me a 1 if they find this wannabe avant-garde bullshit path. "You can't be telling the truth! I'm real! I'm as real as any man!" He can't be telling the truth. You're a real person. This is getting to you too much. I'm not sure why you're in denial, Kit. In fact, I'm not sure why I'm writing you as in denial of this. I can make you do anything. I can make you dance if I want. Though I suppose that would fit better in a visual medium. As if on command, you begin to hop up and down and wiggle around. It's a very entertaining sight, and the writer has stopped bothering with italicizing your actions. Because you know the truth, Kit. I created you. I can end you. I can take things back. Have you gone insane? That's for me and the reader to decide. "What did you do to me?" I got a prompt and I figured I could take this path in an interesting way. I was having trouble with this specific part of it. I remembered a comic I read once, Grant Morrison's Animal Man. It ended in a similar manner to this path: author and creation meeting each other. It touched me in a way I don't think any other story has, yet. "You created me?" Yeah, Kit. You're a figment of my imagination. If I want, I can hit delete on this story right now and you'd be gone forever. Just a shadow of what could have been in my mind. I've come close to wiping this story a few times. I wasn't sure I could ever complete it. I'm not sure if I ever wanted to. Writing this story has taught me a lot and I feel like once I finish it, I won't be learning anymore. "Everything that happened to me... You did that?" Yes, Kit. Your friends, they're not real. They're playthings. I've written a handful of lines for each of them. The only one that got any semblance of characterization was Lilith, the priest girl. Did you know that I went into this story without a name for any of them? I went into this story without a name for you, too. You were going to be Victor, once. "What are you saying? Can't you turn everything back?" Sure I can Kit, but it would be hollow. I'd go back to writing a story instead of rambling on incoherently, and it would end right as it got to the good part. That's how this entire story has gone; I have an idea, I write a few pages for it, I get bored, then I cut it off before it branches out too much. There's so many things in here that could make a full game, yet I only dedicate a handful of pages to those stories. "Why can't you just stop that, then? Make everything as long as it needs to? Why couldn't you make a story about myself and my friends, let us choose our fates, let the reader choose our fates?" Because that wasn't the story I wanted to tell. I wanted to be "edgy". I wanted to be "realistic". Cursing, and drinking, and violence, and a broken protagonist. You were never a hero, Kit. In fact, I could say that you killed countless men and women, and no one would bat an eye. They'd want to play as you more, if anything. The people here are drawn to villains. "What the hell do you want from me?" Me? I don't know. I'm writing this because I'm bored. Later I'm probably going to eat breakfast and pass out. Maybe watch a movie. Go for a walk. Something. But right now, it's me, and you, and the reader. I haven't forgotten you, reader. Why don't you exercise your "free will" and decide how this story ends for me, huh?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You snap yourself back to reality, before you can lose yourself to the madness. Truly, you must be losing your mind. No sane man would break into a fit of laughter like you did, let alone hear voices calling to him in the dead of night. Your mind reaches for answers as to what the hell is going on, but it is met by silence. There is something hanging over you, however. Some sort of entity guiding your actions, predetermining your paths and setting you on one or the other. You can feel the mouse hovering over you, watching, waiting for that next blue hyperlink to show up. I wonder if they're reading this. And if they are, I wonder what their thoughts are on what I'm writing. I'm going on a tangent. You probably think I'm just trying to cash in on the success some people had in 'connecting' with the reader in their own stories, don't you? The truth is, I don't know why this page turned out like it did. Do you think the people reading this will ever find this path? Maybe they're skimming over all these words, trying to find an end game link. Maybe they're completionists and are trying to find every ending. The odds of this being the first path that a player finds is slim. There's other, more exciting paths out there, aren't there? So many different paths this story could have taken and they choose the stay at home and go nuts path first? I doubt it. I don't know you, reader. I only know what I've written. I'm sure right now you're rolling your eyes, thinking that I'm just some pretentious teenager writing whatever dribble comes to mind. If I wrote whatever came to mind and didn't carefully reread and edit, this whole page would be riddle with typos and keyboard mashing. You don't know me in the same way I don't know you. But this isn't about me or you or this website. This is about Kit and his descent into madness that you could have prevented. He's probably scared. I could just as easily write around this, pretend that this whole tirade didn't even happen. He can go back to being confused and going mad and trying to block out the voices. I think it's your choice, reader. Just remember: every choice you make I wrote out for you. You have no control, but I guess that's just the edgelord in me getting out. Go on. Make a choice. Choose how this path ends. > You but this did happen. You want Kit to know. So you picked this on your first try? Maybe you just used the actual go back button instead of the one I gave you on either of those two choices. Oh well, it doesn't matter. The point is you're here now, and I'm about to round out this ludicrous fourth wall break path. Hey Kit. You look around. This voice is... Different. It doesn't sound like anyone you know. "W-who are you?" I'm the man who created you. This causes you to jerk back. "What? You can't be! You're lying! Just leave me alone!" I'm feeding you these words. This isn't a conversation between two people. This is me trying out an artistic experiment. People are going to rate me a 1 if they find this wannabe avant-garde bullshit path. "You can't be telling the truth! I'm real! I'm as real as any man!" He can't be telling the truth. You're a real person. This is getting to you too much. I'm not sure why you're in denial, Kit. In fact, I'm not sure why I'm writing you as in denial of this. I can make you do anything. I can make you dance if I want. Though I suppose that would fit better in a visual medium. As if on command, you begin to hop up and down and wiggle around. It's a very entertaining sight, and the writer has stopped bothering with italicizing your actions. Because you know the truth, Kit. I created you. I can end you. I can take things back. Have you gone insane? That's for me and the reader to decide. "What did you do to me?" I got a prompt and I figured I could take this path in an interesting way. I was having trouble with this specific part of it. I remembered a comic I read once, Grant Morrison's Animal Man. It ended in a similar manner to this path: author and creation meeting each other. It touched me in a way I don't think any other story has, yet. "You created me?" Yeah, Kit. You're a figment of my imagination. If I want, I can hit delete on this story right now and you'd be gone forever. Just a shadow of what could have been in my mind. I've come close to wiping this story a few times. I wasn't sure I could ever complete it. I'm not sure if I ever wanted to. Writing this story has taught me a lot and I feel like once I finish it, I won't be learning anymore. "Everything that happened to me... You did that?" Yes, Kit. Your friends, they're not real. They're playthings. I've written a handful of lines for each of them. The only one that got any semblance of characterization was Lilith, the priest girl. Did you know that I went into this story without a name for any of them? I went into this story without a name for you, too. You were going to be Victor, once. "What are you saying? Can't you turn everything back?" Sure I can Kit, but it would be hollow. I'd go back to writing a story instead of rambling on incoherently, and it would end right as it got to the good part. That's how this entire story has gone; I have an idea, I write a few pages for it, I get bored, then I cut it off before it branches out too much. There's so many things in here that could make a full game, yet I only dedicate a handful of pages to those stories. "Why can't you just stop that, then? Make everything as long as it needs to? Why couldn't you make a story about myself and my friends, let us choose our fates, let the reader choose our fates?" Because that wasn't the story I wanted to tell. I wanted to be "edgy". I wanted to be "realistic". Cursing, and drinking, and violence, and a broken protagonist. You were never a hero, Kit. In fact, I could say that you killed countless men and women, and no one would bat an eye. They'd want to play as you more, if anything. The people here are drawn to villains. "What the hell do you want from me?" Me? I don't know. I'm writing this because I'm bored. Later I'm probably going to eat breakfast and pass out. Maybe watch a movie. Go for a walk. Something. But right now, it's me, and you, and the reader. I haven't forgotten you, reader. Why don't you exercise your "free will" and decide how this story ends for me, huh?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You scoff at the idea of leaving your home. The king says he'll send men your way if you don't respond? Oh, please. You can fend off any pansies he sends your way. Though you're getting up there in years, you can still fight with the strength of a hundred soldiers. With that, you resolve to continue on as you've been doing. For the next few days, you don't do much; you get your bread and wine from Bertrand, drink until you black out, then do it again. It continues this way until, finally, a week has passed since the letter. You've almost forgotten about it when Bertrand enters your room at around midday. He's already brought you your bread and wine, so you're not sure why he'd come here. His expression is a mask of worry and fear. "Explain yourself," you say, and Bertrand nods with a gulp. "The king has sent his men here, sir. They're here to take you away to Castle Oren." Bertrand is looking very afraid. "Send them away." "What?" "I said send them away. I don't wish to entertain them." "But sir..." > You fine. If Bertrand is so hesitant, you'll do it yourself. "Fine," you grunt. "I'll do it myself." Of course Bertrand can't get them out of here. They're the king's men with an order to get you, not some con man looking to sell you cheap wares at an inflated price. He's never had to do this to someone who has good reason to come in, and it scares him. You understand, somewhat. For the first time in ages, you leave the master bedroom and walk the halls of your manor, Bertrand following after you. It's been well kept by your servants, for the odd occasion that someone comes to visit. The fine paintings adorning the walls are flawless and their frames clean of dust, the walls are painted a regal blue, and lanterns hung on the ceiling keep the place well lit. You walk out to the courtyard to greet the king's men. A lone tree sits in the center of the courtyard on a circular patch of grass, surrounded by a cobblestone path. A series of bushes encompass the manor itself, giving the entire courtyard a reserved, tidy appearance. The knights are sitting in wait and look up when you approach. One stands and walks over to you. He removes his helmet, revealing a youthful yet stern face. His sandy blond hair is cut short, and his green eyes burn a hole into your own grey ones. He gives you a salute, then speaks, "Good day, Sir Kit. I am Miller, of the Gold Hawk Knights. We've come here to take you with us to Castle Oren." > You shake your head. "Afraid I won't oblige your request. Now leave." Miller scowls at your calm request for him to leave. "I'm afraid I can't, Sir Kit. Please, come with us. I won't ask again." You can feel your anger flaring up, and for a moment you wish you had brought your sword to cut this bastard down. "You listen to me, Miller," you growl, hissing his name out like it's an insult. "I want to live in peace. You take your Gold Hawk Knights and get out of here. Leave me be." He shakes his head. "I was hoping it wouldn't come to this. Knights, apprehend Sir Kit." The two knights flanking Miller approach you, attempting to grab you. On instinct, you fight back, delivering a hook to one's face and causing him to stumble back towards Miller. The other quickly draws his sword and swings, but you duck under it and disarm him. With the longsword in hand, you quickly stab him in the chest. Blood pours out of his wound as you push him to the ground. You blink, suddenly realizing what you just did. Miller and the other knight look at you and their dying comrade in shock. Miller and his ally draw their own swords, pointing them at you. "You're under arrest, murderer! Surrender or our blades will taste your blood!" > You didn't mean to do that... You can't believe... You surrender willingly. You deserve whatever fate awaits. You're in as much shock as the two knights. Quickly, you drop the sword and raise your hands. Miller approaches you, rage written on his face, and hits you in the face with the pommel of his sword. Instantly, darkness takes you. The last thing you hear before you slip into unconsciousness is Miller telling his comrade, "Tie him up and get him in the wagon. Take Edward's corpse." When you wake up, you're face down on a cold stone floor. Pushing yourself up, you look around and see Miller not far from you. Seperating the two of you is a row of iron bars. "Miller," you say. "What is the meaning of this?" He sighs, pulling up a wooden chair and sitting down. "You should be thankful you're not on the chopping block. The king's respect for you is the only reason you're still alive. If you were any other man, your head would roll for killing a knight." You don't respond. The weight of what you did hits you full force in that moment. Because of it, you're going to rot here. "There will be no trial. If anything, you being in this cell is to protect you. The Gold Hawk Knights are furious." Miller stands, pushing the chair back. "Farewell, Kit." Miller heads to the door and shuts it, leaving you to your isolation. It's the last time you ever see him. For the next few years, your only human contact is when a guard comes in to deliver you some food. At first it's a nice break in the monotony of being alone in your cell, but soon it becomes part of the routine. Even when you try to strike up a conversation, the guard ignores you and just gives you your food. It's a lonely life. Eventually, the meals decrease in frequency, until one day you realize that it's been a week since you had food. You begin to yell, hoping to grab a guard's attention and get some food, but no one comes. Another week passes and you find yourself barely clinging onto what little life you have. The lack of food has been effecting you greatly, and the only water you can get is from drops of rain that come through your little window. When three weeks pass, you finally die. A guard comes the next day to remove your corpse. He drops it into a wagon of similar corpses, where you're sent off to be incinerated. A criminal such as yourself doesn't deserve a proper burial anyhow. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Miller scowls at your calm request for him to leave. "I'm afraid I can't, Sir Kit. Please, come with us. I won't ask again." You can feel your anger flaring up, and for a moment you wish you had brought your sword to cut this bastard down. "You listen to me, Miller," you growl, hissing his name out like it's an insult. "I want to live in peace. You take your Gold Hawk Knights and get out of here. Leave me be." He shakes his head. "I was hoping it wouldn't come to this. Knights, apprehend Sir Kit." The two knights flanking Miller approach you, attempting to grab you. On instinct, you fight back, delivering a hook to one's face and causing him to stumble back towards Miller. The other quickly draws his sword and swings, but you duck under it and disarm him. With the longsword in hand, you quickly stab him in the chest. Blood pours out of his wound as you push him to the ground. You blink, suddenly realizing what you just did. Miller and the other knight look at you and their dying comrade in shock. Miller and his ally draw their own swords, pointing them at you. "You're under arrest, murderer! Surrender or our blades will taste your blood!" > You can't go down like this. You'll tell them to leave again, and if that doesn't work, you'll attack. No. You can't let them take you like this. Standing there with bloody sword raised, you speak slowly, "I don't want to have to kill you both. Leave now and never return." There's a tense moment for a while as you stare at the two of them and they stare back. They're too scared to make the first move, and you don't want to make it. The standoff lasts for a moment longer, then... "Oh screw this!" Miller's ally yells, before rushing at you with a shout of rage. He swings his sword, which you easily deflect, then duck down for a sweeping slash that cuts through his abdomen. Clutching his wound, he collapses to the ground, writhing and moaning in agony as he slowly bleeds out. Miller stays back, examining you. "Your buddy won't die with that wound. It'll take a few days for him to bleed out all the way. Take him and go, if you know what's good for you," you say, giving Miller his last warning. Miller looks down at his companion, as though considering it. Then he shifts his gaze back to you, looking more furious than ever. "I won't let you walk free you bastard." With those words, he advances towards you. The two of you clash blades for a while, and whenever one of you tries to go for an opening the other blocks or parries. You're not as good with longswords as Miller is, specializing more in greatswords and their overwhelming force, but you're too stubborn to let him beat you. In the end, that stubbornness is what grants you victory. While Miller has been tiring, you've only been attacking more and more ferociously. Eventually, his defense slips, and you slide your blade right into his chest. His face morphs into a mask of pure shock as he drops his sword. He stares at you in fear, which quickly shifts to anger. He pushes himself forward, forcing the sword deeper into his body, while reaching out for your neck. His hands squeeze against your throat, at first tightly, then slowly weakening in strength until they fall limp. As his eyes close, you pull the blade out of him and let his corpse fall to the floor. His ally is still on the ground begging for death. You grant him the pleasure, holding his head down and sliding the blade into the base of his skull. He twitches slightly, then goes limp. You stand and consider what you just did. You could just as easily burn the bodies and head back inside, but there's no way the king would allow this. He could send more knights, perhaps far more than you could handle. On the other hand, there's the option to use this to spark a rebellion among the people. Though the king is far from tyrannical, there's enough dissent from the long-lasting war against the Empire of Kishak for the common people to attempt an uprising. With how much the people love you for your deeds, they'd join you in a rebellion in a heartbeat. > You can't count on the goodwill you have built up. You're going to just wait this out. You can't be bothered to try something that stupid. The king has well trained knights and soldiers under his command; if you put together a rebellion, it would be destroyed as quickly as you build it up. Instead of deciding to go on a pointless endeavor such as that, you begin to gather the bodies up in a pile. You cover them in dried sticks and leaves, then start a fire. As soon as it's gotten large enough to engulf the bodies, you return into your home. The servants watch as you head to your room in mingled awe and terror, unsure of how to act around you. You head into your room, lay in bed and sleep the rest of the day away. In the morning Bertrand comes with your bread and wine, looking a bit more cautious after what happened yesterday. You take it, send him out of the room, and spend the rest of the day eating and drinking as you always have. The next day, Bertrand comes in the morning with the bread and wine, which you take and spend the rest of the day eating and drinking. It continues on for weeks without interruption, until one day, something changes. You wake in the early morning hours to a yell. Your head is pounding and your stomach is killing you, but you push through and get out of bed. Stumbling out of your room, you see a man slumped against the wall: Bertrand. "Bertrand!" you shout, running to him. As you get closer, however, you notice the blood trailing down his neck. It flows freely from a fierce red slash across his throat. Bertrand is dead. You look around, wondering who in the hell did this to your servant, when you feel a sharp pain in your arm. Looking, you find that a crossbow bolt has embedded itself into your bicep. "W-what the hell!?" you choke out. Another bolt flies true, hitting your thigh and causing you to fall to a kneel. Footsteps approach from your left, and you turn your head to look. What you see is a man, dressed in black. He approaches you, pulling out a dagger. "Who are you?" you ask. He simply sticks the dagger to your throat and cuts. As you fall to the ground, vision darkening and lungs filling with blood, he speaks: "The king sends his regards." Then, all is silent. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No. You can't let them take you like this. Standing there with bloody sword raised, you speak slowly, "I don't want to have to kill you both. Leave now and never return." There's a tense moment for a while as you stare at the two of them and they stare back. They're too scared to make the first move, and you don't want to make it. The standoff lasts for a moment longer, then... "Oh screw this!" Miller's ally yells, before rushing at you with a shout of rage. He swings his sword, which you easily deflect, then duck down for a sweeping slash that cuts through his abdomen. Clutching his wound, he collapses to the ground, writhing and moaning in agony as he slowly bleeds out. Miller stays back, examining you. "Your buddy won't die with that wound. It'll take a few days for him to bleed out all the way. Take him and go, if you know what's good for you," you say, giving Miller his last warning. Miller looks down at his companion, as though considering it. Then he shifts his gaze back to you, looking more furious than ever. "I won't let you walk free you bastard." With those words, he advances towards you. The two of you clash blades for a while, and whenever one of you tries to go for an opening the other blocks or parries. You're not as good with longswords as Miller is, specializing more in greatswords and their overwhelming force, but you're too stubborn to let him beat you. In the end, that stubbornness is what grants you victory. While Miller has been tiring, you've only been attacking more and more ferociously. Eventually, his defense slips, and you slide your blade right into his chest. His face morphs into a mask of pure shock as he drops his sword. He stares at you in fear, which quickly shifts to anger. He pushes himself forward, forcing the sword deeper into his body, while reaching out for your neck. His hands squeeze against your throat, at first tightly, then slowly weakening in strength until they fall limp. As his eyes close, you pull the blade out of him and let his corpse fall to the floor. His ally is still on the ground begging for death. You grant him the pleasure, holding his head down and sliding the blade into the base of his skull. He twitches slightly, then goes limp. You stand and consider what you just did. You could just as easily burn the bodies and head back inside, but there's no way the king would allow this. He could send more knights, perhaps far more than you could handle. On the other hand, there's the option to use this to spark a rebellion among the people. Though the king is far from tyrannical, there's enough dissent from the long-lasting war against the Empire of Kishak for the common people to attempt an uprising. With how much the people love you for your deeds, they'd join you in a rebellion in a heartbeat. > You damn waiting in fear. You'll tear this kingdom down, and the people will help you do it. You look at the corpses you just created and release a heaving sigh. There's not much else you can do now. The king will have your head for this either way, so you figure you might as well take more than a handful of knights down with you. This is the dumbest thing you've done in a while, and you've done a lot of dumb things in your life. You load the corpses up into the carriage they came in, then hurry back into your house to retrieve your sword and get into some more fitting traveler's clothes. As you stride through the halls of your home, the servants watch you warily, as if fearing that they may meet your blade next. You ignore them, ascending the stairs to your master bedroom and begin loading up. Once you're all done, you flip your cloak over your shoulder and walk out the door. The nearest town, a large village by the name of Everseed, is about half an hour away by horseback. Taking a seat in the carriage, you kick the horses in gear and ride to the town. The ride down the country road is quiet and peaceful, the best that can be expected. You know that it will be the last time for a while you get to relax and unwind. When you arrive in town, you stop the carriage in the most active place in town; in this case, the market. The people watch you curiously as you step off the carriage and approach a fountain in the center of the market. There, you raise your voice and speak, "Everyone! My name is Sir Kit of Droburg, the man who slayed the vile wizard that plagued our lands twenty years ago!" This gets all eyes on you as you approach the back of the cart again. "And these," you pull the cover of the cart off, revealing the three dead knights to the people. They gasp in shock, some moving to weapons in case they need to attack you. "These are three knights that the king sent to kill me. The lengths this man has gone to, trying to kill a hero such as myself. What has our kingdom come to?" You're bending the truth, a lot, but these people are eating it up. The villagers that went for weapons are looking furious, while the others left unarmed grab for makeshift weapons as well. "That bastard king! He's been taxing us so hard we barely have enough to pay for food!" one villager pipes up from the crowd. "He drafted my son into the war and he died! My boy was only 15!" a woman cries out. "He's been doin' nothin' but tearin' us down and buildin' himself up!" a farmer yells from the back. "And now, my friends, he's trying to kill the last true hero in this kingdom. A man like this must be stopped, once and for all. For the true Kingdom of Oren, we must eliminate this tyrant!" you shout, and the crowd answers with cheers and battle cries. Now, you have an army. You're not sure how this will end, but wherever it leads, the kingdom will be changed forever... THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Fine," you grunt. "I'll do it myself." Of course Bertrand can't get them out of here. They're the king's men with an order to get you, not some con man looking to sell you cheap wares at an inflated price. He's never had to do this to someone who has good reason to come in, and it scares him. You understand, somewhat. For the first time in ages, you leave the master bedroom and walk the halls of your manor, Bertrand following after you. It's been well kept by your servants, for the odd occasion that someone comes to visit. The fine paintings adorning the walls are flawless and their frames clean of dust, the walls are painted a regal blue, and lanterns hung on the ceiling keep the place well lit. You walk out to the courtyard to greet the king's men. A lone tree sits in the center of the courtyard on a circular patch of grass, surrounded by a cobblestone path. A series of bushes encompass the manor itself, giving the entire courtyard a reserved, tidy appearance. The knights are sitting in wait and look up when you approach. One stands and walks over to you. He removes his helmet, revealing a youthful yet stern face. His sandy blond hair is cut short, and his green eyes burn a hole into your own grey ones. He gives you a salute, then speaks, "Good day, Sir Kit. I am Miller, of the Gold Hawk Knights. We've come here to take you with us to Castle Oren." > You considering it, you sigh and nod. "Fine. I'll go with you to Castle Oren." Miller smiles at you, nodding at your answer. "I'm glad to hear it, sir. Go, gather your things and we'll head straight for Castle Oren." You nod at his request, quickly heading back inside and packing what you need. You make sure to grab your sword as well, as you know you'll need it. When you exit the manor, you and the three Gold Hawk Knights enter their wagon and begin the ride to Castle Oren. You end up having to stop for the night, but in the morning you continue on to finish the last stretch. You arrive at Castle Oren around lunch time. The castle is large and imposing, made of stone that has gathered a fair bit of moss over the years. It was built a thousand years before your time, and still stands after all this time with only minor renovations to keep it up. A town surrounds the castle, full of shops and inns and homes and other assorted buildings. People mill about, paying you no mind as the wagon rolls up to the castle gates. The guards there stand at attention, waiting for you to make a move. Miller nods to them, and they move to open up the gates. The wagon rides into the castle ground proper. Inside the castle grounds, the knights park their wagon and you all hop off. Miller stands beside you. "When can I see the King?" you ask. "Come along, I'll take you to him." Miller walks away. You follow closely behind, examining the castle grounds. The courtyard leading into the castle is home to many trees and flowers, a few of which you've never even seen. The King's gardeners must take their work very seriously. You head into the castle proper, in an entrance hall that doubles as a throne room. The King is nowhere in sight, and Miller continues on past the throne and to a door not far from it. As you step into the room, you see a man in fine clothing sitting at a desk. The desk houses a golden crown. The King is around his mid thirties, though the wrinkles in his face and the gray streaking his hair indicates a man at least a decade older. "Your highness. Sir Kit has arrived," Miller says. The King looks up from his writing at you, and gives a faint smile. He waves Miller off, and the young knight departs from the room. "Sir Kit. It is an honor to finally meet you." The King stands from the desk and approaches you. He's only a bit shorter than you, impressive considering your bulky stature, though his posture and build indicates he's never been a fight before. He sticks out a hand for you to shake, which you do. "The honor is all mine, your highness," you say, though rather half-heartedly. The King laughs. "Let's skip the formalities. Call me Walter. We're not here to discuss something officially." His face darkens. "I called you here because I need someone to weaken the Kishak Empire, so that my army can strike the final blow against them." "I see." "I need someone who doesn't mind getting their hands dirty, Sir Kit. I need a warrior such as you. I take it whatever you face on this mission will be enough for you to handle, and I'll be sending you backup anyhow." "What's this mission you're sending me on?" "My spies in Kishak have uncovered the location of the Empire's supply cache: in the heart of their capital city. If you can destroy the supply cache, there goes all of the Kishak army's food, weapons, and gunpowder. They'd be running on what they have left, and soon enough that would run out and my men would be able to drive them back." "... This sounds like a suicide mission." The King nods slowly. "Perhaps. But if you manage to see this mission through, the war will be won by next year. Would you not want to see an end to this war that has claimed so many lives? An end to a war your grandfathers would have fought in, and your grandchildren will fight in if it doesn't end?" You shake your head, chuckling. "You're wrong there. My grandfathers were simple farmers, and I don't have children. This war means nothing to me." "Maybe it doesn't. But think of the millions of lives that have been lost to it, and the millions of lives you will save by ending it." You sigh. At the very least, this is something to do. "Fine. Let's get prepped for this suicide mission." > You continue You spend the rest of the day in the castle, resting up and mentally preparing yourself for your mission. The King's servants bring you whatever you wish, and in this case, it's more alcohol so you can psych yourself up. Liquid courage and all that. By nightfall, you're as drunk as can be, staring silently at a wall as you usually do. "Stop doing this." "Well what do you want me to do?" you mumble, replying to no one. "Anything else." A chuckle escapes your lips. "Really? I guess you'd prefer me going on a drunken rampage and slaughtering all the guards." "That's not what I meant, Kit." "Then what did you mean?" "I meant you need to stop drinking. It's not doing you any good." "Of course it's not doing me any good if I'm having a conversation with myself." "You know who I am." "Quit lying. You're just a figment of my imagination I start hearing when I get too wasted." "Please, Kit. For me." "Buzz off." You throw the empty bottle of wine in your hand at the wall, then crawl into bed. You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow, and you need your sleep. In the morning, you're woken up by a knock on your door. You get up, groaning slightly, and head for it. When you open it, Miller stands before you. "The King sent me to wake you. We're leaving today." "We?" you ask. "He asked me to accompany you, along with a mage in our military. A small enough team to get behind Kishak lines unnoticed, and hopefully enough to provide backup should you need it." You nod, heading to the dresser to grab some clothes. Miller turns away so you can get dressed, yet you still speak to him. "So what are you going to bring to the table?" you ask as you slide into a pair of breeches. "I was knighted at twenty-one, the youngest man to be knighted... Aside from yourself, of course. For the past seven years I have served the Royal Family, and have led many knights to victory against Kishak forces." "Hrm. How good are you with a sword?" You put on your boots and pick out a shirt. "I've never lost a one-on-one sword fight, sir. I have also managed to take down ten men at once with only minor injuries." "This bodes well then." You finish your ensemble by sliding on a tunic. "Alright then. Let's get going." Miller turns to face you then nods. He allows you to grab your sword and hook it onto your back, then leads you to where you'll depart. You head through several hallways before Miller stops in front of a bookcase. He taps on it once, pauses, taps twice, pauses, taps once, pauses, then taps three ties in quick succession. The bookcase opens slowly, and he leads you through a secret passage. A whistle escapes your lips. "How fancy." "Indeed." Miller continues leading you through the tunnel for what seems like half an hour before you come out the other side. You're in a clearing, about a mile out from the Castle, where a wagon and two people wait for you. You're not far from Kishak now, only a few more miles until the border. One of the two people, a woman about a year younger than Miller, steps forward. She eyes you up and down, and looks unimpressed. "This is the legendary hero who saved our city? He looks like a drunk and smells like one too." You give her a quick glare. "Hold your tongue, Iris. If it weren't for this man, we wouldn't be here talking today," the other person says, an older man who is checking the horses. You shift your glare to him. It wasn't just you. "Please. This man had backup even then. Did you only hear the children's tales, Oliver?" the woman, Iris, asks. "If it weren't for his friends, I'm sure he'd have died not far into his journey." Well, at least she has her facts straight. "Both of you, shut your damn mouths," you say, stepping forward. "Whatever your thoughts on me are, I'm the real deal, and we're here to finish a war." You turn to the man, Oliver. "I assume you're our driver?" "Aye, I am. I'll take you as far as the border. There, you'll be on your own. Kishak's capital, Ornislov, is only a couple miles out. You should reach there in no time if you stay off the roads and don't stop for anything." "Right," you nod. You head towards the wagon, motioning for Miller and Iris to follow you. "Come on. Don't have all day." You climb into back, and they follow. After a moment, the wagon begins moving towards the border. You stay silent for a moment, assessing Iris, before speaking up. "I did this with Miller so you should be no different: what are you bringing to the table?" Iris scoffs. "I spent my whole life training at the Academy in Loren. I enlisted with the military when I came of age, and I've seen my fair share of battles. I can also speak fluent Kishak, so if you need a translation just ask me." "That'll come in handy. How quick are you at casting?" "I can get a fireball off before you can blink." "Good enough for me." You pause, then consider something. "How'd you know about my friends? There's not exactly much documentation on the real story." "You five passed through Loren twenty years ago, right? You helped the Academy secure a magical artifact while you were in the area." "... Yeah, we were. What about it?" "I was there. I was about seven at the time, and got to meet one of your friends. The mage woman." Your face darkens. "Is that so?" "Yeah. She was nice. Told me about the quest you all were on, even gave me pointers on how to be a good mage." A faint smile appears on Iris' face as she recalls your friend, Grace. "Even told me not to fall for some jarheaded fighter boy. I think it's obvious who she was talking about." Her smile shifts to a frown. "A shame what happened to her... I know I was being rude, but I want you to know that I am sorry for your lo-" "Can it. I don't want your sympathy." Iris glares at you, before shaking her head slightly and averting her gaze. The rest of the ride is silent, and before long the wagon stops. Oliver's voice pipes up from the front, "There's a gap here between the outposts. If you keep pushing through the fields you should reach some woods, head through there and just keep going forward. Eventually, you'll get to Ornislov." "Right," you say, climbing out of the wagon. Miller and Iris join you, and you see the wagon off as Oliver turns it around and begins driving back. You're beginning the march to the forest when Miller stops you. "I know a way to Ornislov that's faster, and bypasses the forest. However, it's much riskier and involves traveling out in the open. If we're lucky we'll get there much quicker." You consider it. Miller warns that it's risky, but you're used to high risks. Maybe this path is worth a try? > You say "Fine, let's take your path. Be ready to fight, just in case." Miller nods, then takes the lead. He begins heading southeast instead of the east you were expecting. "If keep heading this way, then go around the forest and keep heading east, we'll get to Ornislov faster. I know a way in." You quirk an eyebrow. "You know a way in?" Miller nods solemnly. "I was sent there on a covert mission a few months. It's how we found out about the supply cache. Most of my team died, but I managed to escape." You nod at Miller's response, and continue following him. The sun is high in the sky, and on the horizon you can see Kishak troops marching. They wouldn't be able to spot you from here, but still, Miller gets down low. You and Iris follow his lead. "Keep low, stick to the tall grass. If we're quiet enough, they won't stop us," Miller warns, then continues walking slowly. The process continues on, and after what feels like hours but must have been only ten minutes or so, the Kishak soldiers are long gone. Your team releases a collective sigh of relief and stands, continuing on at a much faster pace... ... That is, until a bolt flies into your shoulder. You shout a curse in pain, then dive straight for the ground. Your companions follow suit. "Are you okay, Sir Kit?" Miller hisses urgently. You wave him off, then grip the bolt. You pull it out, slowly to ensure you don't tear any muscles, and let out a sigh of relief when it's out. Iris scowls. "Great thinking, Miller. You've just gotten us all killed." "Damn it, keep quiet!" Miller hisses. "Both of you, shut up and let me think," you say. There's two options here: you can either run for the woods, exposing yourselves for a bit before getting to adequate cover, or you can sneak forward and attempt to take out the archer. Either way, you're putting great risk on you and your team. > You run for the woods, it's the only way to ensure your safety. "We run for the woods and don't fucking stop. You two hear me?" you ask. Miller and Iris nod, rather hesitantly. "Alright. Good. Wait for my mark..." You peek your head up slowly, above the tall grass. The lone archer kneels on the road, about forty yards away, and watches slowly. You wait until he's looking away from your current position, then nod. "Now!" The three of you pull yourselves up and begin running for the woods. A few bolts fly past you, but none manage to hit you. You keep running, until you hear a shout behind you. Whipping around quickly, you see a bolt has managed to catch Iris right in the back, and she's fallen to the ground. "Go, dammit!" she shouts, pulling herself along. "I'll be fine!" "Don't you die on me!" Miller shouts, and moves to help her up. He gets a bolt through the neck for his troubles, and collapses to the ground. With no other options, you continue sprinting to the woods as fast as you can. You hear a shout from Iris, presumably having another bolt hit her, then another which is cut short. Your companions are dead. Again. And this time, it really is your fault. You suddenly find yourself stopping in place, no far from the edge of the woods. This bastard took out both of your allies just as you were beginning your quest. And by God, there's no way you're going to let him get away with it. You unhook your sword from its chain on your back, and with a primal yell rush his position. Bolts fly your way, but it doesn't matter. He's going to die. Maybe you will, too, but his head will roll before yours does. You raise your sword to deflect any bolts coming your way, and before long you're right up in his face. He fires a bolt which hits your gut, but doesn't have time to reload as you slam your sword into his shoulder, cleaving him in half. That takes care of that. You drop to your knees and pull the bolt out of your stomach with a grunt of pain. The sounds of many men running hits your ears, and you turn your head to see the soldiers from before marching right for you. A ferocious grin spreads across your face. This is one way to go out, at least. You raise your sword and meet their charge head on. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Miller nods, then takes the lead. He begins heading southeast instead of the east you were expecting. "If keep heading this way, then go around the forest and keep heading east, we'll get to Ornislov faster. I know a way in." You quirk an eyebrow. "You know a way in?" Miller nods solemnly. "I was sent there on a covert mission a few months. It's how we found out about the supply cache. Most of my team died, but I managed to escape." You nod at Miller's response, and continue following him. The sun is high in the sky, and on the horizon you can see Kishak troops marching. They wouldn't be able to spot you from here, but still, Miller gets down low. You and Iris follow his lead. "Keep low, stick to the tall grass. If we're quiet enough, they won't stop us," Miller warns, then continues walking slowly. The process continues on, and after what feels like hours but must have been only ten minutes or so, the Kishak soldiers are long gone. Your team releases a collective sigh of relief and stands, continuing on at a much faster pace... ... That is, until a bolt flies into your shoulder. You shout a curse in pain, then dive straight for the ground. Your companions follow suit. "Are you okay, Sir Kit?" Miller hisses urgently. You wave him off, then grip the bolt. You pull it out, slowly to ensure you don't tear any muscles, and let out a sigh of relief when it's out. Iris scowls. "Great thinking, Miller. You've just gotten us all killed." "Damn it, keep quiet!" Miller hisses. "Both of you, shut up and let me think," you say. There's two options here: you can either run for the woods, exposing yourselves for a bit before getting to adequate cover, or you can sneak forward and attempt to take out the archer. Either way, you're putting great risk on you and your team. > You go for the archer, take him out before he alerts the others. "It's just a lone sniper out there, waiting. If there were more, they'd be firing volleys of bolts and arrows right at us. I'm going to sneak ahead and try to take that archer down. You two stay here and keep your heads down." Your companions nod slowly, still unsure of the plan. You poke your head up a bit, trying to spot him. There he is, about forty yards away. You duck back down and begin crawling towards him. It takes several agonizing minutes, occasionally stopping to poke your head up and hoping he won't spot you, but soon enough you're within charging distance of the archer. You slowly unhook your blade from its chain on your back, taking a deep breath to ready yourself, before popping up and running straight for him. He manages to get a bolt off, hitting you in the thigh, but you carry on despite the wound and swing your sword at him. His head rolls on the ground not long after, and you pant. You remove the bolt like you did the other one and look around. No one here yet. You shout back to your companions, "Let's get going!" Slowly, they rise from the grass. Miller takes the lead again, and the rest of the march goes on without incident. After a few hours of walking, you arrive at Ornislov just as the sun is starting to set. The city is more like a giant fortress, surrounded by walls on all sides with no obvious entry points aside from the gates. Miller leads you around the city walls, to a sewer grate. "This is how we got in last time. Come on, get in." You and Iris crawl through the grate as Miller holds it open. He climbs in after you, shutting it. Iris summons a fireball in her hand, keeping it held out to illuminate the area. The sewer tunnel stretches on for what seems like miles. There's a few latters every couple of yards, likely leading up into the city streets. Miller takes the lead again, walking past several ladders until he stops in front of one. "This is it. Above is a warehouse, where all the supplies are kept. There's guards around, so we'll have to take them out." You and Iris nod. "Let's go." The three of you begin climbing the ladder. > You continue Once you get above ground, you pause to examine the warehouse. It's bland and non-descript, made of wood and flanked on both sides by identical warehouses. Miller points out the one you're staring at. "This is it. There's guards inside. Come on, I know a way inside." You and Iris follow him to the side of the warehouse. There, a single wooden door stands, which Miller cracks open slowly. No one in sight, at least for now. The three of you step inside, crouching down low. There's guards patrolling the warehouse, hands on swords at their hips. You hear two of them having a conversation in Kishak. You whisper, "Can I get a translation?" Iris nods. "What are those two saying?" You point out the two guards. She listens in for a moment, then smiles slowly. "They're talking about how boring warehouse duty is. Let's spice it up a bit." She conjures up an smoky green orb in your hand. You wonder what it is for a moment, before she shoots it straight at the two guards. A faint cloud comes into existence around them, and as they breathe it in their eyes sag. After a few moments, the two collapse, sleeping. Iris nods. "Come on." The three of you continue on like that, you and Miller keeping an eye out for guards while Iris takes them out quickly and quietly. Before long, the guards are all down, and the warehouse is yours for the taking. You approach the nearest supply box and open it, finding a large supply of food. You open the next, and find hundreds of crossbows. The next, hundreds of swords. It goes on and on, each crate containing an ungodly amount of supplies. Nodding, you motion to Iris. "Light it up." The mage nods, before summoning up a fireball and shooting it right at the nearest crate. Then, she summons another and fires it, then another, and another. Before long, the building is starting to go up in flames. It seems like your work here is done, and you ready to leave... Before you hear a shout in Kishak. A guard. He runs straight for the front door and bolts before you can do anything, and the three of you share a look of shock. Then, Miller and Iris bolt, you trailing behind as fast as you can. The three of you get out of the warehouse and begin to open up the hatch leading into the sewers, while you hear a sharp horn go off in the distance. This is bad. Miller cracks open the hatch and motions for the two of you to get in. As you do, Iris fires off a few more fireballs at the other warehouses. "Just in case!" she says, before joining you on the ladder. Miller gets in right away, closes the hatch above you all. As you three enter the sewers and then quickly leave it, the sounds of marching footsteps greet your ears. The Kishak soldiers are moving fast. They must have sent some to investigate the warehouses, while the others were sent to find you on the outside. The three of you take off into the night as fast as you can, keeping an eye out for soldiers. You get about a mile away when you notice the squadron of soldiers following after you. They must be one hundred men in all, all bolting straight for you. "We've got company!" you shout to your companions, who quickly notice the threat and pick up the pace. The three of you continue on, then notice an old log cabin on the side of the road. Acting quickly, the three of you duck in there. Miller slams the door shut and immediately moves a nearby bookshelf in front of it. "That won't hold for long," you warn. "I know. It's more for my piece of mind," he replies, slumping down into a sitting position. "What are we going to do?" Iris asks. You and Miller don't give her an answer. "We accomplished our mission, but now we're behind enemy lines with no chance of rescue. Are we just supposed to sit back and die?" You pat her on the shoulder, and nod. "Afraid so. We did the right thing. They'll make martyrs out of us, probably." Miller sighs. "So we're just supposed to give in and die, is that it?" Iris is fuming. "No. We're not going to just give in and die. We're going to go out there and give them hell before we do." "No use. There's one hundred of them and three of us. We'd be slaughtered." Miller places his face in his hands. "Better to take at least a few of them with us before they kill us, right?" Iris asks. "What do you think, Kit?" > You say "You're right. Let's give those Kishak bastards hell." Iris smiles. "I guess you are the real deal." Despite yourself, you crack a smile too. "Yeah. I guess I am." Miller sighs, then stands up. He unsheathes his sword, and sighs. "Well then, let's see to it that these Kishak sons of bitches meet their maker." He moves the bookshelf from the door, and looks to the two of you as he grips the door handle. "You two ready?" "Ready as I'll ever be," Iris says. You nod. "Let's get this over with." He pushes the door open, and the three of you move out as quickly as you can. There's at least one hundred Kishak soldiers in front of you, all armed with swords and axes and pikes and whatever else they have. The three of you stand side by side, readying your weapons; Miller takes a battle stance with his sword, Iris prepares an arc of electricity, and you grip your blade with both hands. The Kishak soldiers charge, and the three of you meet them head on. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Once you get above ground, you pause to examine the warehouse. It's bland and non-descript, made of wood and flanked on both sides by identical warehouses. Miller points out the one you're staring at. "This is it. There's guards inside. Come on, I know a way inside." You and Iris follow him to the side of the warehouse. There, a single wooden door stands, which Miller cracks open slowly. No one in sight, at least for now. The three of you step inside, crouching down low. There's guards patrolling the warehouse, hands on swords at their hips. You hear two of them having a conversation in Kishak. You whisper, "Can I get a translation?" Iris nods. "What are those two saying?" You point out the two guards. She listens in for a moment, then smiles slowly. "They're talking about how boring warehouse duty is. Let's spice it up a bit." She conjures up an smoky green orb in your hand. You wonder what it is for a moment, before she shoots it straight at the two guards. A faint cloud comes into existence around them, and as they breathe it in their eyes sag. After a few moments, the two collapse, sleeping. Iris nods. "Come on." The three of you continue on like that, you and Miller keeping an eye out for guards while Iris takes them out quickly and quietly. Before long, the guards are all down, and the warehouse is yours for the taking. You approach the nearest supply box and open it, finding a large supply of food. You open the next, and find hundreds of crossbows. The next, hundreds of swords. It goes on and on, each crate containing an ungodly amount of supplies. Nodding, you motion to Iris. "Light it up." The mage nods, before summoning up a fireball and shooting it right at the nearest crate. Then, she summons another and fires it, then another, and another. Before long, the building is starting to go up in flames. It seems like your work here is done, and you ready to leave... Before you hear a shout in Kishak. A guard. He runs straight for the front door and bolts before you can do anything, and the three of you share a look of shock. Then, Miller and Iris bolt, you trailing behind as fast as you can. The three of you get out of the warehouse and begin to open up the hatch leading into the sewers, while you hear a sharp horn go off in the distance. This is bad. Miller cracks open the hatch and motions for the two of you to get in. As you do, Iris fires off a few more fireballs at the other warehouses. "Just in case!" she says, before joining you on the ladder. Miller gets in right away, closes the hatch above you all. As you three enter the sewers and then quickly leave it, the sounds of marching footsteps greet your ears. The Kishak soldiers are moving fast. They must have sent some to investigate the warehouses, while the others were sent to find you on the outside. The three of you take off into the night as fast as you can, keeping an eye out for soldiers. You get about a mile away when you notice the squadron of soldiers following after you. They must be one hundred men in all, all bolting straight for you. "We've got company!" you shout to your companions, who quickly notice the threat and pick up the pace. The three of you continue on, then notice an old log cabin on the side of the road. Acting quickly, the three of you duck in there. Miller slams the door shut and immediately moves a nearby bookshelf in front of it. "That won't hold for long," you warn. "I know. It's more for my piece of mind," he replies, slumping down into a sitting position. "What are we going to do?" Iris asks. You and Miller don't give her an answer. "We accomplished our mission, but now we're behind enemy lines with no chance of rescue. Are we just supposed to sit back and die?" You pat her on the shoulder, and nod. "Afraid so. We did the right thing. They'll make martyrs out of us, probably." Miller sighs. "So we're just supposed to give in and die, is that it?" Iris is fuming. "No. We're not going to just give in and die. We're going to go out there and give them hell before we do." "No use. There's one hundred of them and three of us. We'd be slaughtered." Miller places his face in his hands. "Better to take at least a few of them with us before they kill us, right?" Iris asks. "What do you think, Kit?" > You say "It's pointless. Let's just... Wait it out." Iris wrinkles her nose at you. "Wait it out? The hell do you mean, wait it out? Wait until they burst in here and separate our heads from our bodies?" You sigh, sitting down on the floor. "Something like that. We're going to die, might as well accept it." She shakes her head. "The man I heard about would have gone out and faced them head on, even if it meant death." "Sorry to disappoint you, kid. But I'm not that man anymore." You pull your knapsack off your back and reach into it, finding one of the bottles of wine you had Bertrand stash for you. You sigh, then pop it open and take a swig. You hold the bottle out. "Either of you want a sip?" Miller grabs it first and chugs the bottle greedily. After a few moments, Iris snatches it out of his hands and takes a drink of her own, as if accepting defeat. She sits down on the floor with you and Miller, and the three of you pass the bottle around and drink for a while. There's the pounding on the door as the Kishak soldiers try to get in. The bookshelf rattles with every hit, but it stands its ground. The three of you continue drinking. After all, you have all the time in the world. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You spend the rest of the day in the castle, resting up and mentally preparing yourself for your mission. The King's servants bring you whatever you wish, and in this case, it's more alcohol so you can psych yourself up. Liquid courage and all that. By nightfall, you're as drunk as can be, staring silently at a wall as you usually do. "Stop doing this." "Well what do you want me to do?" you mumble, replying to no one. "Anything else." A chuckle escapes your lips. "Really? I guess you'd prefer me going on a drunken rampage and slaughtering all the guards." "That's not what I meant, Kit." "Then what did you mean?" "I meant you need to stop drinking. It's not doing you any good." "Of course it's not doing me any good if I'm having a conversation with myself." "You know who I am." "Quit lying. You're just a figment of my imagination I start hearing when I get too wasted." "Please, Kit. For me." "Buzz off." You throw the empty bottle of wine in your hand at the wall, then crawl into bed. You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow, and you need your sleep. In the morning, you're woken up by a knock on your door. You get up, groaning slightly, and head for it. When you open it, Miller stands before you. "The King sent me to wake you. We're leaving today." "We?" you ask. "He asked me to accompany you, along with a mage in our military. A small enough team to get behind Kishak lines unnoticed, and hopefully enough to provide backup should you need it." You nod, heading to the dresser to grab some clothes. Miller turns away so you can get dressed, yet you still speak to him. "So what are you going to bring to the table?" you ask as you slide into a pair of breeches. "I was knighted at twenty-one, the youngest man to be knighted... Aside from yourself, of course. For the past seven years I have served the Royal Family, and have led many knights to victory against Kishak forces." "Hrm. How good are you with a sword?" You put on your boots and pick out a shirt. "I've never lost a one-on-one sword fight, sir. I have also managed to take down ten men at once with only minor injuries." "This bodes well then." You finish your ensemble by sliding on a tunic. "Alright then. Let's get going." Miller turns to face you then nods. He allows you to grab your sword and hook it onto your back, then leads you to where you'll depart. You head through several hallways before Miller stops in front of a bookcase. He taps on it once, pauses, taps twice, pauses, taps once, pauses, then taps three ties in quick succession. The bookcase opens slowly, and he leads you through a secret passage. A whistle escapes your lips. "How fancy." "Indeed." Miller continues leading you through the tunnel for what seems like half an hour before you come out the other side. You're in a clearing, about a mile out from the Castle, where a wagon and two people wait for you. You're not far from Kishak now, only a few more miles until the border. One of the two people, a woman about a year younger than Miller, steps forward. She eyes you up and down, and looks unimpressed. "This is the legendary hero who saved our city? He looks like a drunk and smells like one too." You give her a quick glare. "Hold your tongue, Iris. If it weren't for this man, we wouldn't be here talking today," the other person says, an older man who is checking the horses. You shift your glare to him. It wasn't just you. "Please. This man had backup even then. Did you only hear the children's tales, Oliver?" the woman, Iris, asks. "If it weren't for his friends, I'm sure he'd have died not far into his journey." Well, at least she has her facts straight. "Both of you, shut your damn mouths," you say, stepping forward. "Whatever your thoughts on me are, I'm the real deal, and we're here to finish a war." You turn to the man, Oliver. "I assume you're our driver?" "Aye, I am. I'll take you as far as the border. There, you'll be on your own. Kishak's capital, Ornislov, is only a couple miles out. You should reach there in no time if you stay off the roads and don't stop for anything." "Right," you nod. You head towards the wagon, motioning for Miller and Iris to follow you. "Come on. Don't have all day." You climb into back, and they follow. After a moment, the wagon begins moving towards the border. You stay silent for a moment, assessing Iris, before speaking up. "I did this with Miller so you should be no different: what are you bringing to the table?" Iris scoffs. "I spent my whole life training at the Academy in Loren. I enlisted with the military when I came of age, and I've seen my fair share of battles. I can also speak fluent Kishak, so if you need a translation just ask me." "That'll come in handy. How quick are you at casting?" "I can get a fireball off before you can blink." "Good enough for me." You pause, then consider something. "How'd you know about my friends? There's not exactly much documentation on the real story." "You five passed through Loren twenty years ago, right? You helped the Academy secure a magical artifact while you were in the area." "... Yeah, we were. What about it?" "I was there. I was about seven at the time, and got to meet one of your friends. The mage woman." Your face darkens. "Is that so?" "Yeah. She was nice. Told me about the quest you all were on, even gave me pointers on how to be a good mage." A faint smile appears on Iris' face as she recalls your friend, Grace. "Even told me not to fall for some jarheaded fighter boy. I think it's obvious who she was talking about." Her smile shifts to a frown. "A shame what happened to her... I know I was being rude, but I want you to know that I am sorry for your lo-" "Can it. I don't want your sympathy." Iris glares at you, before shaking her head slightly and averting her gaze. The rest of the ride is silent, and before long the wagon stops. Oliver's voice pipes up from the front, "There's a gap here between the outposts. If you keep pushing through the fields you should reach some woods, head through there and just keep going forward. Eventually, you'll get to Ornislov." "Right," you say, climbing out of the wagon. Miller and Iris join you, and you see the wagon off as Oliver turns it around and begins driving back. You're beginning the march to the forest when Miller stops you. "I know a way to Ornislov that's faster, and bypasses the forest. However, it's much riskier and involves traveling out in the open. If we're lucky we'll get there much quicker." You consider it. Miller warns that it's risky, but you're used to high risks. Maybe this path is worth a try? > You say "No, we'll take the path that was suggested. Let's get going." Miller nods. "Alright. We don't know of any outposts in those woods, so we should be able to get through undetected." With those words, the three of you continue on to the woods. You walk through the fields without incidence, and get to the edge of the forest in record time. The three of you march through it, keeping an eye out. You're there for about an hour, continuing to march on, when you hear voices up ahead. The three of you stop in your tracks and get down low, listening. The voices are speaking Kishak. You turn to face your companions. "Can I get a translation?" you ask. Iris nods, and listens to the voices. Her face goes pale. "... They're talking about how boring it is to be in an outpost in the middle of the woods." You and Miller share a look of surprise, then turn to face the direction of the voices again. A new outpost, one that the military didn't know about. Miller pipes up. "We go around it as slowly and carefully as we can." Iris shakes her head. "It can't be that many. We go in there and light them up." Looks like it's up to you to decide what to do. > You we'll go around like Miller suggested. You shake your head at Iris. "That's a damn stupid idea. We go around it like Miller suggested, keep low to the ground. If we're lucky, they won't see us." Miller nods in approval, while Iris scoffs. The three of you keep low as you move to head around the voices. As you push through the greenery, you notice the outpost. It's large and well-fortified; surprising, considering its location. Must be some sort of well-kept or something of the sort. There's a dozen Kishak soldiers wandering around, keeping an eye out. The three of you continue walking. There's a few times when you're sure you'll be spotted, but soon enough you manage to move far away enough from the outpost that you can walk normally again. Your team releases a collective sigh of relief that you're out of there. The three of you continue through the forest without incident. After a few hours of walking, you arrive at Ornislov a couple of hours into the night. The city is more like a giant fortress, surrounded by walls on all sides with no obvious entry points aside from the gates. Miller leads you around the city walls, to a sewer grate. "This is how we got in last time. Come on, get in." You and Iris crawl through the grate as Miller holds it open. He climbs in after you, shutting it. Iris summons a fireball in her hand, keeping it held out to illuminate the area. The sewer tunnel stretches on for what seems like miles. There's a few latters every couple of yards, likely leading up into the city streets. Miller takes the lead again, walking past several ladders until he stops in front of one. "This is it. Above is a warehouse, where all the supplies are kept. There's guards around, so we'll have to take them out." You and Iris nod. "Let's go."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Miller nods. "Alright. We don't know of any outposts in those woods, so we should be able to get through undetected." With those words, the three of you continue on to the woods. You walk through the fields without incidence, and get to the edge of the forest in record time. The three of you march through it, keeping an eye out. You're there for about an hour, continuing to march on, when you hear voices up ahead. The three of you stop in your tracks and get down low, listening. The voices are speaking Kishak. You turn to face your companions. "Can I get a translation?" you ask. Iris nods, and listens to the voices. Her face goes pale. "... They're talking about how boring it is to be in an outpost in the middle of the woods." You and Miller share a look of surprise, then turn to face the direction of the voices again. A new outpost, one that the military didn't know about. Miller pipes up. "We go around it as slowly and carefully as we can." Iris shakes her head. "It can't be that many. We go in there and light them up." Looks like it's up to you to decide what to do. > You we'll take them down like Iris suggested. You shake your head at Miller. "Remember, this'll make it easier for the military to come through the area. If we're quick and efficient, we'll barely miss any time." Iris nods, smiling in approval that you agreed with her. Miller sighs, shaking his head. "I don't like it." "Too bad. That's what we're doing. Now come on, let's go." You get up, unhooking your sword from your back, and march towards the voices. As you break through the brush and step into view of the outpost, you're surprised to find a well-defended fort instead of a dingy wooden watchtower like you were expecting. A dozen or so Kishak wander about, waiting for an attack. "Shi-" Iris' curse is cut off when a bolt flies into her throat, and she collapses to the ground. She twitches for a moment, then goes still. A horn blows, and the soldiers all turn to you. Miller unsheathes his sword and charges at the nearest Kishak soldier, impaling him. He doesn't last long either, however, as a bolt flies true and hits him in the chest, followed by another. For added measure, a soldier runs up and runs his spear through Miller's gut. The knight falls to the ground, dead. The remaining soldiers turn to you. You sigh, shaking your head. Dumb move. Shouldn't have done it. Now you're dead for sure. You grin, however. Doesn't mean you won't go down without a fight. You charge forward with a primal yell, meeting the soldiers head on. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your latest quest begins not with the destruction of your manor or the death of someone close to you, but rather with a letter. Bertrand, your loyal servant, comes to your room in the early morning hours to drop off today's dosage of bread and wine. But on the platter, tucked in between two loaves of bread, is a letter. The seal is emblazoned with the royal coat of arms. You eye Bertrand warily, and the old man gives a sigh. "Apologies, my lord. A knight came to the manor this morning, and he requested that I pass this along to you. The knight said that it's an invitation to the royal castle from the king himself. I suggest you read it." With a sigh of your own, you rip open the envelope and unfold the letter, taking a look at the contents. "Dear Sir, I have need of a man of your talents. There are important matters to discuss regarding the ongoing war between the Kingdom of Oren and the Empire of Kishak. You must report to Castle Oren as soon as you may, though I urge you to arrive soon. If a week has passed without word from you, then I am afraid I must send my men to acquire you immediately. I hope that you will come. Regards, King Walter III." You scoff at the letter. Bastard king, sitting on his throne while his dogs do the work. You suppose that he considers you one of them. The question lies in whether you are indeed one of the dogs that mindlessly obeys orders, or whether you'll break from the pack and carve your own path. > You you've nothing better to do. You'll go to Castle Oren. You shake your head slightly, before shrugging. There's not much you do in your day to day life, and at the very least, this is something. "Bertrand," you say. "Get to packing my things. I'm going to Castle Oren at dawn." Your servant seems very surprised by this, but immediately leaves the room to get a knapsack for you. He comes back not long after and begins packing the essentials: changes of clothes, a tinderbox from your dresser, and lantern oil, along with some of the bread and wine he came to give you. He nods to you, taking the knapsack. "I'll pack it in your carriage, sir. In the morning we'll go." With those words, he leaves the room. You sigh, before popping open the remaining bottle of wine and beginning your daily routine. By nightfall, not a drop remains of the wine nor a crumb of the bread. The weight of the situation hangs heavily on you: tomorrow, you're going to leave your home for the first time in years to fight a war that isn't yours to fight for a man who will never care for you. It's enough to make you reconsider your plans. Almost. At least, this is something you can use your talents for. Twenty years and your blade hasn't tasted a drop of blood. You feel as though you're getting rusty, that your time is long past, and it would be best to turn this offer down... No. You need to prove to yourself that you can still do this. Age means nothing for a person with your raw strength and skill, and you could kill four times as many men as a soldier half your age and twice your size. You were always told that you had a warrior's heart. Soon, you shall reaffirm it once and for all. When the sun dawns on the horizon, you get up and get dressed into practical clothing. Then, you grab your old sword, giving it an experimental swing at the air. It's large, only a bit shorter than your tall frame, and almost as wide as your torso. A greatsword that no man but you could wield. After hooking it onto your back, you head down to where your carriage is stored. Bertrand is already there, waiting for you in the driver's seat. "I packed some of my things as well, sir. Hope you don't mind me coming with you," he says. You nod, getting into the passengers seat. He spurs the horses into action with the reigns, and the two of you begin the ride to Castle Oren. You pass through a town on the way there and pass by several small hamlets. The sun is high in the sky when you see something on the horizon: a group of men sifting through a broken down carriage on the road. The men are dressed in fur and hides, and have chipped and dented axes at their sides. Highwaymen, bandits who prey on anyone daring to go from one place to another by the main roads. It makes you sick just looking at them. Then, you hear a woman's scream from the carriage. A noble lady in fine clothing runs from the carriage, screaming all the while. The highwaymen chase after her, abandoning the carriage. You grip your blade... > You ... Then jump out and chase after the bandits, intent on killing them. Damn these sick bastards. Robbing and killing the innocent. You jump out of the carriage and begin to chase after them. Faintly, you hear Bertrand yelling at you, but the pounding of your head as a cold rage runs through you blocks out any sounds but the woman's screams. You chase the highwaymen down; it doesn't take long, you find them just as one tackles the noble woman to the ground. The others haven't noticed you yet. You draw your blade, making sure that the chain keeping it tied to your back clinks loud enough for them to hear. They whip around, glaring at you; their eyes hold a mixture of primal rage and fear. One bares rotting yellow teeth at you, snarling like a dog. You put both hands on your sword, keeping a firm grip on it, waiting for them to make the first move. You don't have to wait long, as Yellow Teeth runs at you screaming, flailing two axes around as though he's a barbarian of the Northern Wildlands. You smoothly sidestep his charge, then bring your sword down at his legs. His upper body is sent flying upwards as your sword slices through his thighs and out the other side. The other three highwaymen stare at their dying ally, the fear overcoming their rage. You draw your sword back and swing at nothing, the blood flying off. Droplets land on their faces. "Leave the woman alone, or you'll wind up like your friend," you say. To seal your threat, you take a step forward, and they immediately back off and begin running. You draw a dagger from your boot, stabbing it into the dying bandit's throat as you approach the woman to make sure she's okay. "Hurt?" you ask, kneeling down next to the noble woman as she lays on the ground. She's hyperventiliating, looking around with wild eyes, before turning over and vomiting on the grass. You pat her on the back to help her get it out, then shake your head. "It's normal the first few times something like this happens. Once the adrenaline wears off, you feel sick to your stomach. Get up." You offer a hand, which she accepts. "T-thank you, sir. I can never repay you. Those... Those thugs attacked my carriage, killed my driver and the stole all my valuables. I... I don't know how I can make it back home." She sighs, shaking her head. "I'll just have to walk, I suppose." "Where were you going?" you ask, already wishing you hadn't. "Elkstern Keep. Have you heard of it?" You have, actually. It was one of the stops on your journey twenty years ago... And is in the opposite direction of Castle Oren, about two hundred miles away in fact. You'd have to arrive much later or even cancel your trip if you were to escort her. > You damn it all, you're too soft for your own good. You offer to escort her. You mull it over for a moment, before groaning internally at how soft you've gotten. "I can drive you. It's far out of the way of my destination, but I need to see you safe." Perhaps that was a bit too much, but the woman gives you a shaky yet radiant smile anyhow. "You will, sir? Oh thank you, thank you!" She leaps up, giving you a bear hug. Your arms stay limp at your side. You wait a moment for her to let go. Then another. Then one more. Finally, fed up with this contact, you push her arms off of you. "We must get going," you say. She nods, withdrawing from you and falling into step as you walk back to your carriage. "What's your name?" she asks. "I am Lady Caroline of House Rorens, Fairest Lady of The Western Woodlands." "Kit of Droburg," you reply, shaking your head slightly at the woman's title. "Kit of Droburg? Are you not the same Kit that saved our kingdom two decades ago?" "The one and only. And before you start, don't you dare start worshiping the ground I walk on." "I wouldn't dream of it, Sir Kit. It is an honor to meet you." The conversation drifts off just as the two of you reach the carriage. Bertrand is keeping watch, having dug a crossbow out of the back of the carriage. "Ready to get going, sir?" he asks, but you shake your head. "Change of plans. We need to make sure Lady Caroline here gets safely to her destination. Elkstern Keep, about two hundred miles west." Bertrand's eyes practically bulge out of his head, yet he keeps his voice level and calm. "That's far from Castle Oren, sir." "I know," you say, grunting as you climb onto the carriage, "but I'm sure the king will understand our tardiness." You wait for Caroline to get into the back, then turn to Bertrand. "Let's get going, eh?" He sighs, before nodding. Spurring the horses on, Bertrand turns the carriage around and begins heading west, in the direction of Elkstern Keep. You have a ways to go, but you know that you made the right choice doing this. The carriage carries on into the horizon. > You continue The ride to Elkstern Keep is mostly quiet. Occasionally, Caroline tries to break the silence in an attempt to get to know you, but your grunts and shrugs to her questions discourage her. Bertrand stays silent every time she tries to talk to him. She probably wasn't expecting something like this, but at the very least she's getting to her destination in one piece this way. A few hours later, you're forced to stop for the night. You use your sword to cut down a small tree, splitting it up into smaller logs to build a fire. As the fire rages, Bertrand sets a few strips of meat on a small metal pan and holds it over the fire. The only sound is the crackling of the fire and the sizzling of the meats; that is, until Caroline decides to speak up. "So where were you two going before you picked me up?" she asks. "Castle Oren," you reply. "Castle Oren? I was just leaving there. I was negotiating with the King, he wants to buy some land near Elkstern Keep that's under my domain. He was talking about building a second castle there." It is Bertrand who replies to that: "Why would he want to do that?" Caroline shrugs her shoulders. "I don't know. Castle Oren is rather old, but it's in great condition. Maybe the King wants to relocate?" "It could be because of the war," you suggest. "I've heard the war has been going as it usually does: no real advances on either side. Just an uneasy stalemate occasionally breaking out into a scuffle over the border towns." "Perhaps the King fears it won't be like that for long, and wants to fall back. Castle Oren is only a few miles from the border, after all." "Fair point." Bertrand pulls the pan away from the fire as the strips are done cooking. He takes a few strips of meat in hand then passes the pan to you. You do the same, then pass the pan to Caroline, who looks at it strangely. "Aren't you going to eat?" you ask. "Yes. I'm just not used to this is all." She hesitantly plucks a strip from the pan, giving it a cautious nibble. She sets the pan down on the ground and continues nibbling slowly on the strip of meat. By the time she's finished her first one, you've been finished for a few minutes and are laying down to sleep. In the morning, the three of you pack up your things and get back into the carriage. You estimate that you're about a week's ride from Elkstern Keep, if you keep this pace up. Maybe you and Bertrand can alternate between driving the carriage while the other sleeps in the back to make the most out of the time you have. It's about midday when Caroline finally pipes up from the back: "So tell me, why were you going to Castle Oren?" Feeling in a generous mood today, you reply, "To meet the King." Caroline laughs. "Well of course you were meeting the King, but why were you meeting him?" "He wanted my help with the war effort. Drive the Kishak back to their own country." "Really?" "Yes." "I suppose there's no one who could do the job better. That man, the other day... I take it he wasn't the first one you've killed?" "Wasn't the first, likely won't be the last." She's quiet for a moment, likely considering your answer, before piping up again. "... What was the first one like?" You consider the question for a moment. Your first kill. You haven't thought back on that day in a long time. It was about a week into your journey, and you and your companions had gotten into quite a bit of trouble. A group of Marauders, vicious barbarians and raiders, had ambushed you on the road. They weren't interested in killing you like most, though; no, they had something much more sadistic in mind. You can still remember the screams. Just a kid, a year younger than you were. Had his whole life ahead of him. And they peeled the flesh from his bones. Took their time. Used a jagged rock. Lasted for hours. Felt like years. When the screaming stopped they were still peeling the meat off him. Cooked it. Ate it. Would've been you next. Fortunately for you they got distracted and left a single guard there. You can still remember the way he struggled under your firm grip. Busted down the rusty cage door and charged right for him. Tackled him next to the fire. Choked him out for a bit. When that proved to be taking too long, you grabbed the pot of water boiling over the fire. Poured it all over his face. The scalding hot water peeled the skin from his face, and he screamed louder than the boy did. You shut him up by smashing his skull in with the pot. When you freed your friends and escaped, they didn't look at you the same way for a while. You did what you had to do. You knew that. They knew that. Two weeks had passed when they started acting normal again. But you remember the looks in their eyes, remember the fear they held. That day you proved what you were capable of, and they were terrified of you until the day they died. You wish you could take it all back. "Sir Kit? Were you going to tell me?" Caroline's voice snaps you out of your recollection. She looks concerned. "You've been spaced out for a few minu-" "Stop." "What?" "Stop. Stop asking questions you don't want to know the answers to." For a moment, there is silence. Then, you hear the cover of the wagon being drawn back, indicating that Caroline has retreated back into it. You sigh, then dig one of the bottles of wine out of your knapsack. You need it. Bertrand doesn't ask questions when he sees you drinking. Just nods and continues driving. > You continue The next day of your trip goes by quietly. There's nothing but the open road ahead of you. Any travelers pass you by without a second thought, and aside from Bertrand and Caroline you haven't interacted with anyone since the highwaymen. It's peaceful, almost too peaceful; usually it means something will happen, and it comes when you least expect it. Of course, your gut is right on this one. On the third day of traveling, just a day or so away from Elkstern Keep, you come across a bridge and force Bertrand to stop. The bridge is large, wide enough to fit three carriages side by side and about half a mile long. It stretches over a canyon, a long drop into a rapid river below. You see men in ragged clothing milling about; they haven't seen you yet, but if you move forward they will. By their looks, they won't be too friendly. If you tried to go around, you'd lose a day of time. Safer, yes, but you really just want this to be over and done with. The bridge is risky but you're sure that you can defend the carriage. You look to Bertrand and nod. "Keep going." He nods, spurring the horses into gear. "Think we'll run into any opposition, sir?" "Not sure. Probably, though. Keep that crossbow ready." Bertrand nods and grabs the crossbow with one hand, keeping the other on the reins. The carriage continues on, heading towards the bridge. You draw closer to the men, who turn their heads and finally see you. Quickly, they start moving, grabbing weapons and preparing for you to come by. You notice one poking his head out. "Take that one out!" you point him out to Bertrand, who shifts the crossbow and fires. The bolt flies true, hitting the man in the forehead. He slumps over, and his companions immediately open fire with a volley of arrows and bolts. You raise the flat of your sword and hold it up, using it as a makeshift shield. You and Bertrand are spared from most of them, but an arrow manages to hit him in the leg. "Shit!" you shout, then jump off the carriage and begin sprinting towards the men. They shift their focus from the carriage to you, firing more arrows and bolts in your direction. You keep your sword raised to deflect any projectiles coming your way, and through sheer luck, you manage to get to the men with only the faintest of grazes to show for it. They back off and drop their ranged weapons, readying knives and rusty swords. You swiftly dodge the first swing that comes your way, then back hand the man who attacked. He staggers back with a split lip, and you move in fast by smashing his face with the pommel of your sword. He falls to the ground, dropping his sword and clutching at his broken nose. You don't have time to finish him off, as another blade comes your way, then another, and another. Raising your blade, you deflect most of the blows and dodge others. However, one of the bridge men gets a lucky hit through, cutting your side. You hiss in pain but push on. Quickly jumping back, you assess the situation. There's still more down the way, keeping crossbows and longbows at the ready, while there's a group of about six heading right for you. They're all clustered up close, as though they believe that will make it harder for you. If anything, it'll make it easier. You rear your sword back, waiting for them to get close enough... Then swing. The massive blade cuts through three before it gets stuck in the ribcage of the fourth one. The three you managed to hit fall to the floor in pieces, flecks of blood spraying onto you and their remaining allies. You pull your sword out of the fourth man, who falls to his knees and screams in agony for his mother, before swinging yet again. His cries are cut off as the blade cuts through his skull, and out the other side to take down the remaining two. You pant, catching your breath. You don't have long though, as a bolt flies true and lands in your shoulder. You stumble back with a curse, and nearly fall into the canyon were it not for the rail you grabbed onto. A horn pierces the quiet of the bridge, and you know what it means: they're calling for reinforcements. You're not sure if you can take on these men, let alone more. The river is seeming awfully tempting. Maybe you can survive the fall and be carried away to some place safer... > No. You've got to defend your companions. You'll fight as long as you have to. You steel yourself and stumble away from the edge of the bridge. No. You're not going to let them down. Using that stored up adrenaline within you, you push forward with a primal yell, charging straight for the archers. They fire at you, but you ignore the arrows and bolts flying your way. Occasionally one manages to graze you, a scant few even hit you, but you ignore it as best you can. You've got a fight to win. The first one loses his head. The seconds his arms, then a stab through the chest. The third drops his crossbow as if in surrender, only to be sliced clean in half. You continue on like this, no longer seeing men but instead an army of targets you need to tear down. Half way through these ones, more targets come running down the bridge. You finish off the remaining archers, then ready yourself in preparation for the others. You're not sure how long the fight lasts. All you know is that by the end of it, you're using your sword to keep yourself standing. The carriage slows to a stop, and Bertrand hops off to help you into the back of the wagon. You're still on edge enough that you snarl at him, like a wild hound defending its territory. He doesn't back off, and soon you're lying on the floor in the back of the wagon. A woman is there, digging through your supplies and pulling out a roll of bandages. Caroline. She sets to work immediately, pulling out bolts and arrows and wrapping them up as best as she can. Her hands are left bloodied from the work, but in the end you're much better off than you were. She smiles. "You'll get proper healing at Elkstern Keep." She continues speaking, but the words fade away, and you slip into unconsciousness. > You continue When you wake up, it's in a bed. You're covered in bandages, and though your body aches it seems your wounds are gone. There must be a healer here. In the bed to your right, a person stirs, and you shift to get a good look at them. There lays Bertrand, flipping through a leather bound book. "I see you still live, sir," he says, dog-earing the page he's on and closing the book. "Sorry to disappoint you," you chuckle. A small laugh escapes Bertrand's lips. "No, sir. I'm happy to see you're still among us." He pauses. "We got here yesterday afternoon, sir. The healer set to work immediately. You'll be okay if you rest for a few days." "That so? Where's Caroline?" "She's still here, sir. Likely in her chambers. She said she'd come visit later." "Alright." You sigh and close your eyes. You made it to Elkstern Keep, and you and Bertrand are still relatively intact. You consider what you should do now. You'll be extremely late for your meeting at Castle Oren. The King may not like it, but if he truly needed you, he'd excuse it. Still, something about this... Felt better than fighting some meaningless war you have no investment in. Maybe... You must have been thinking for much longer than you thought you were, as Caroline steps into the infirmary and immediately gives Bertrand a bear hug. Your servant pats her slowly on the back, and she breaks away after a moment to move onto you. The hug is so tight, it makes the aching turn into a sharp sting, and you hiss in pain. Caroline withdraws. "I'm so glad you two are alright. Thank you for all that you've done for me, I can't repay you," she says. You wave your hand and shake your hand. "No, no, everything is fine. Just letting us rest here a few days is good enough." She gives a worried look. "Are you sure? I can give you supplies, or money, or..." "Nothing. It's fine. Thanks for visiting us." Caroline nods. The three of you talk for a while, though it's mostly her thanking you profusely and continually offering help, which you turn down. After about an hour, a man comes in and informs her that she's needed in the entrance hall. Caroline sighs, but nods at the man. Before she leaves, she turns to you and Bertrand one last time. "I know I've been saying it a lot, but thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you hadn't saved me and escorted me here, I don't know what I'd have done." With those words, she departs. After she leaves, you once again wonder what you'll do now. > You maybe you can keep helping people. Damn the King and his war, you'll help people in other ways. Yes. You can keep helping people. That's what you should do, what your friends would have wanted you to do. It's what the hero you used to be would have done in this situation. As much as you've tried to drown that boy with alcohol, you know that deep down he's still in there. Maybe, it's time to let him back out. You voice your thoughts to Bertrand. "Damn the King's summons. After all this, I think I want to keep helping people. Will I have you by my side, Bertrand?" Your servant smiles at that. "Of course, sir. I was hoping you'd say that." You nod your head a few times. "Okay. Okay." For now, you have a few days to rest. When you're done, you'll leave Elkstern Keep, and set out to right any wrongs you find. After all, that's what a hero does. The sun is high in the sky. It's a new beginning. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>When you wake up, it's in a bed. You're covered in bandages, and though your body aches it seems your wounds are gone. There must be a healer here. In the bed to your right, a person stirs, and you shift to get a good look at them. There lays Bertrand, flipping through a leather bound book. "I see you still live, sir," he says, dog-earing the page he's on and closing the book. "Sorry to disappoint you," you chuckle. A small laugh escapes Bertrand's lips. "No, sir. I'm happy to see you're still among us." He pauses. "We got here yesterday afternoon, sir. The healer set to work immediately. You'll be okay if you rest for a few days." "That so? Where's Caroline?" "She's still here, sir. Likely in her chambers. She said she'd come visit later." "Alright." You sigh and close your eyes. You made it to Elkstern Keep, and you and Bertrand are still relatively intact. You consider what you should do now. You'll be extremely late for your meeting at Castle Oren. The King may not like it, but if he truly needed you, he'd excuse it. Still, something about this... Felt better than fighting some meaningless war you have no investment in. Maybe... You must have been thinking for much longer than you thought you were, as Caroline steps into the infirmary and immediately gives Bertrand a bear hug. Your servant pats her slowly on the back, and she breaks away after a moment to move onto you. The hug is so tight, it makes the aching turn into a sharp sting, and you hiss in pain. Caroline withdraws. "I'm so glad you two are alright. Thank you for all that you've done for me, I can't repay you," she says. You wave your hand and shake your hand. "No, no, everything is fine. Just letting us rest here a few days is good enough." She gives a worried look. "Are you sure? I can give you supplies, or money, or..." "Nothing. It's fine. Thanks for visiting us." Caroline nods. The three of you talk for a while, though it's mostly her thanking you profusely and continually offering help, which you turn down. After about an hour, a man comes in and informs her that she's needed in the entrance hall. Caroline sighs, but nods at the man. Before she leaves, she turns to you and Bertrand one last time. "I know I've been saying it a lot, but thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you hadn't saved me and escorted me here, I don't know what I'd have done." With those words, she departs. After she leaves, you once again wonder what you'll do now. > You your plans remain the same. You'll head straight for Castle Oren. You're sure the King needs you, and won't mind. Yes. The King summoned you, and you won't ignore those summons. Being a wandering hero is appealing, but this way you can help the kingdom in a much more substantial way. Winning a war? You'd save the kingdom, and drive the Kishak menace away from it. You'd be a hero yet again. You voice your thoughts to Bertrand. "Our plan remains the same: we'll head straight for Castle Oren when we recover. Will I have you at my side, Bertrand." Bertrand nods. "Of course, sir. We'll get there and finish this war." You nod your head a few times. "Okay. Okay." For now, you have a few days to rest. When you're done, you'll leave Elkstern Keep, and head straight for Castle Oren. After all, you have a duty, and you must see it through. The sun is high in the sky. It's a new beginning. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next day of your trip goes by quietly. There's nothing but the open road ahead of you. Any travelers pass you by without a second thought, and aside from Bertrand and Caroline you haven't interacted with anyone since the highwaymen. It's peaceful, almost too peaceful; usually it means something will happen, and it comes when you least expect it. Of course, your gut is right on this one. On the third day of traveling, just a day or so away from Elkstern Keep, you come across a bridge and force Bertrand to stop. The bridge is large, wide enough to fit three carriages side by side and about half a mile long. It stretches over a canyon, a long drop into a rapid river below. You see men in ragged clothing milling about; they haven't seen you yet, but if you move forward they will. By their looks, they won't be too friendly. If you tried to go around, you'd lose a day of time. Safer, yes, but you really just want this to be over and done with. The bridge is risky but you're sure that you can defend the carriage. You look to Bertrand and nod. "Keep going." He nods, spurring the horses into gear. "Think we'll run into any opposition, sir?" "Not sure. Probably, though. Keep that crossbow ready." Bertrand nods and grabs the crossbow with one hand, keeping the other on the reins. The carriage continues on, heading towards the bridge. You draw closer to the men, who turn their heads and finally see you. Quickly, they start moving, grabbing weapons and preparing for you to come by. You notice one poking his head out. "Take that one out!" you point him out to Bertrand, who shifts the crossbow and fires. The bolt flies true, hitting the man in the forehead. He slumps over, and his companions immediately open fire with a volley of arrows and bolts. You raise the flat of your sword and hold it up, using it as a makeshift shield. You and Bertrand are spared from most of them, but an arrow manages to hit him in the leg. "Shit!" you shout, then jump off the carriage and begin sprinting towards the men. They shift their focus from the carriage to you, firing more arrows and bolts in your direction. You keep your sword raised to deflect any projectiles coming your way, and through sheer luck, you manage to get to the men with only the faintest of grazes to show for it. They back off and drop their ranged weapons, readying knives and rusty swords. You swiftly dodge the first swing that comes your way, then back hand the man who attacked. He staggers back with a split lip, and you move in fast by smashing his face with the pommel of your sword. He falls to the ground, dropping his sword and clutching at his broken nose. You don't have time to finish him off, as another blade comes your way, then another, and another. Raising your blade, you deflect most of the blows and dodge others. However, one of the bridge men gets a lucky hit through, cutting your side. You hiss in pain but push on. Quickly jumping back, you assess the situation. There's still more down the way, keeping crossbows and longbows at the ready, while there's a group of about six heading right for you. They're all clustered up close, as though they believe that will make it harder for you. If anything, it'll make it easier. You rear your sword back, waiting for them to get close enough... Then swing. The massive blade cuts through three before it gets stuck in the ribcage of the fourth one. The three you managed to hit fall to the floor in pieces, flecks of blood spraying onto you and their remaining allies. You pull your sword out of the fourth man, who falls to his knees and screams in agony for his mother, before swinging yet again. His cries are cut off as the blade cuts through his skull, and out the other side to take down the remaining two. You pant, catching your breath. You don't have long though, as a bolt flies true and lands in your shoulder. You stumble back with a curse, and nearly fall into the canyon were it not for the rail you grabbed onto. A horn pierces the quiet of the bridge, and you know what it means: they're calling for reinforcements. You're not sure if you can take on these men, let alone more. The river is seeming awfully tempting. Maybe you can survive the fall and be carried away to some place safer... > You they're on their own. You're getting out of here, while you still can. This is too much, even for you. Hell, for all you know, the archers down the bridge have already taken out Bertrand and you're just defending a corpse. The only way you're going to survive this is if you give into your fight or flight instincts; right now, your entire body is screaming flight. Taking in a deep breath and mumbling a quick prayer to whatever god will hear it, you jump off the bridge into the river below. The water is freezing, you note, and pushing you at a breakneck speed. Occasionally you bump into a rock and feel as though you're about to lose consciousness, but the fear of drowning keeps you awake as you struggle to keep your head above the surface. By the time you wind up on land, it feels as though you've been at this for hours, when really it's only been a few minutes at most. You crawl on hands and knees away from the river, heaving up water and bits of your breakfast on the gravel. Pushing forward, you note that you're in a forest of snow covered pine trees, despite it only just being fall. Then again, you've been heading towards a much colder climate, so this is to be expected. Shivering, you push yourself up on the ground and hook your sword onto your back. There has to be some sort of shelter around here. Your walk through the forest lasts most of the day, and by nightfall you're sure you'll freeze to death out here. However, luck is on your side; you spot a faint glow not far from you, and push towards it. What you see is a cabin, light from a lantern pouring out of it... The problem, however, is the spikes planted into the ground with heads stuck through them. Whatever this is, it's bad news. You consider your options: freeze to death out here, or take your chances fighting whoever is in there. > You need warmth. You'll kill whoever is in there, and feel no guilt over it. Whoever's in there is a monster. You unhook your blade and stalk towards the cabin, ready to swing at the slightest twitch of movement. Pushing the door open, you step inside with sword at the ready. You find a single man there, clothes ragged and dirty with unkempt hair and beard. In his hands is a single human arm, a woman's by the looks of it. He turns to look at you, and gives you a blank stare. Then, a blood-tinged smile. You swing your sword, splitting his skull open like an overripe watermelon. Pulling the sword out of his corpse, you swing again. Then again. And again. And again. And again. You keep swinging until there's nothing left to hit. Even then you keep at it, busting up the bloodied floorboards and reducing the mush that's left of him to bloody stains. Finally, you drop your sword and collapse. The exhaustion overtakes you, and you fall into a sleep before you even realize it. When you wake in the morning, you feel warmed up after the night in the cavern. You quickly dig through any containers you find. There's not much, but there is a spare set of the cannibal's clothes. It looks like it's just about your size, and made of animal hides. Good enough in this climate. You remove your soaked clothing slide into the outfit, making sure it fits. With nothing left to do, you set out from the cabin and into the forest. There has to be a town somewhere. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is too much, even for you. Hell, for all you know, the archers down the bridge have already taken out Bertrand and you're just defending a corpse. The only way you're going to survive this is if you give into your fight or flight instincts; right now, your entire body is screaming flight. Taking in a deep breath and mumbling a quick prayer to whatever god will hear it, you jump off the bridge into the river below. The water is freezing, you note, and pushing you at a breakneck speed. Occasionally you bump into a rock and feel as though you're about to lose consciousness, but the fear of drowning keeps you awake as you struggle to keep your head above the surface. By the time you wind up on land, it feels as though you've been at this for hours, when really it's only been a few minutes at most. You crawl on hands and knees away from the river, heaving up water and bits of your breakfast on the gravel. Pushing forward, you note that you're in a forest of snow covered pine trees, despite it only just being fall. Then again, you've been heading towards a much colder climate, so this is to be expected. Shivering, you push yourself up on the ground and hook your sword onto your back. There has to be some sort of shelter around here. Your walk through the forest lasts most of the day, and by nightfall you're sure you'll freeze to death out here. However, luck is on your side; you spot a faint glow not far from you, and push towards it. What you see is a cabin, light from a lantern pouring out of it... The problem, however, is the spikes planted into the ground with heads stuck through them. Whatever this is, it's bad news. You consider your options: freeze to death out here, or take your chances fighting whoever is in there. > You if it's a choice between being gruesomely maimed and killed or slowly freezing to death... You think you'll take the latter. There's no way you're going in there. You barely have enough strength to walk, let alone fight off whatever bastards are in the cabin. If you're going to die anyway, you figure you're going to do it on your own terms, and walk away from the cabin. You continue on into the night, feeling the cold wind slowly freeze your soaked clothing. Ice clings to you, and you feel your strength slowly fading. You're not sure how much longer you can keep walking, so you should at least make sure you're comfortable. Slowing down, you set your back against a tree, and slowly slide down into a sitting position. Your breathing is slowing down. You can feel your heart beat every couple of seconds. It's so cold out here. Maybe you should rest. You close your eyes. Yeah, rest sounds good. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Damn these sick bastards. Robbing and killing the innocent. You jump out of the carriage and begin to chase after them. Faintly, you hear Bertrand yelling at you, but the pounding of your head as a cold rage runs through you blocks out any sounds but the woman's screams. You chase the highwaymen down; it doesn't take long, you find them just as one tackles the noble woman to the ground. The others haven't noticed you yet. You draw your blade, making sure that the chain keeping it tied to your back clinks loud enough for them to hear. They whip around, glaring at you; their eyes hold a mixture of primal rage and fear. One bares rotting yellow teeth at you, snarling like a dog. You put both hands on your sword, keeping a firm grip on it, waiting for them to make the first move. You don't have to wait long, as Yellow Teeth runs at you screaming, flailing two axes around as though he's a barbarian of the Northern Wildlands. You smoothly sidestep his charge, then bring your sword down at his legs. His upper body is sent flying upwards as your sword slices through his thighs and out the other side. The other three highwaymen stare at their dying ally, the fear overcoming their rage. You draw your sword back and swing at nothing, the blood flying off. Droplets land on their faces. "Leave the woman alone, or you'll wind up like your friend," you say. To seal your threat, you take a step forward, and they immediately back off and begin running. You draw a dagger from your boot, stabbing it into the dying bandit's throat as you approach the woman to make sure she's okay. "Hurt?" you ask, kneeling down next to the noble woman as she lays on the ground. She's hyperventiliating, looking around with wild eyes, before turning over and vomiting on the grass. You pat her on the back to help her get it out, then shake your head. "It's normal the first few times something like this happens. Once the adrenaline wears off, you feel sick to your stomach. Get up." You offer a hand, which she accepts. "T-thank you, sir. I can never repay you. Those... Those thugs attacked my carriage, killed my driver and the stole all my valuables. I... I don't know how I can make it back home." She sighs, shaking her head. "I'll just have to walk, I suppose." "Where were you going?" you ask, already wishing you hadn't. "Elkstern Keep. Have you heard of it?" You have, actually. It was one of the stops on your journey twenty years ago... And is in the opposite direction of Castle Oren, about two hundred miles away in fact. You'd have to arrive much later or even cancel your trip if you were to escort her. > You you'll just have to wish her luck and give her directions to the nearest town. You sigh, shaking your head. "Wish I could help you, but I have urgent matters to attend to and Elkstern Keep is too far away. There's a town about ten miles down the road, a few small villages and hamlets along the way. Maybe you can see if a caravan is heading there." She nods. "Thank you again for saving me, sir. I'll head there now." You walk her to the road, and see her off. Bertrand watches from the driver's seat of the carriage, a loaded crossbow in his hands. After the noble woman is no longer in sight, you climb back up and sit next to Bertrand. "Shall we go now, sir?" "Yes. Let's go." Bertrand spurs the horses into action, and the two of you continue on. You're forced to set up camp for the night along the road, but you can see Castle Oren in the distance. You'll be there not long after you get up in the morning. Your blade rests in your lap as you clean it with a rag and some water. Bertrand stirs the fire with a stick, then quirks a brow at you. "Why did you agree, sir?" "Agree to what?" you ask. "Agree to go to Castle Oren." You sigh, shrugging your shoulders. "Not entirely sure of that myself. I just figured it was better than wasting away at home." You pause, and trace a finger along the flat of your blade. "... Truth is I feel like I need to prove something to myself. That I still have what it takes." "Judging by the blood I saw on your blade, you still do." A mirthless chuckle escapes your lips. "Maybe. Maybe I just got lucky. Sword this size, I could cut a horse in half once I get it going. There's no skill involved when it comes to wielding a blade like this, only blind luck." Bertrand nods. "I should be turning in now. I suggest you do too." He gets up from the fire and lays down on a blanket he has sprawled out, closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep in moments. You watch his sleeping form for a moment, before setting your sword down and laying on your own blanket. Though you toss and turn for a bit, exhaustion takes over and you fall into your first dreamless sleep in years. In the morning, you and Bertrand pack your things up and begin the last stretch to the Castle. > You continue You arrive at Castle Oren around lunch time. The castle is large and imposing, made of stone that has gathered a fair bit of moss over the years. It was built a thousand years before your time, and still stands after all this time with only minor renovations to keep it up. A town surrounds the castle, full of shops and inns and homes and other assorted buildings. People mill about, paying you no mind as the carriage rolls up to the castle gates. The guards there stand at attention, waiting for you to make a move. A young man in knight's armor approaches your carriage. He takes his helmet off, revealing a youthful yet stern face with sandy blond hair and grey eyes. The knight salutes you. "Sir Kit?" he asks. You nod, and the man smiles. "My name is Sir Miller of the Gold Hawk Knights. Welcome to Castle Oren." He nods at the guards, who open the gates. Your carriage rides through, and Miller follows. Inside the castle grounds, you park your carriage and climb off. Bertrand stands behind you, while you address Miller. "When can I see the King?" you ask. "Come along, I'll take you to him." Miller walks away. You follow closely behind, examining the castle grounds. The courtyard leading into the castle is home to many trees and flowers, a few of which you've never even seen. The King's gardeners must take their work very seriously. You head into the castle proper, in an entrance hall that doubles as a throne room. The King is nowhere in sight, and Miller continues on past the throne and to a door not far from it. As you step into the room, you see a man in fine clothing sitting at a desk. The desk houses a golden crown. The King is around his mid thirties, though the wrinkles in his face and the gray streaking his hair indicates a man at least a decade older. "Your highness. Sir Kit has arrived," Miller says. The King looks up from his writing at you, and gives a faint smile. He waves Miller off, and the young knight departs from the room. Bertrand follows close behind, assuming the King doesn't want an audience. "Sir Kit. It is an honor to finally meet you." The King stands from the desk and approaches you. He's only a bit shorter than you, impressive considering your bulky stature, though his posture and build indicates he's never been a fight before. He sticks out a hand for you to shake, which you do. "The honor is all mine, your highness," you say, though rather half-heartedly. The King laughs. "Let's skip the formalities. Call me Walter. We're not here to discuss something officially." His face darkens. "I called you here because I need someone to weaken the Kishak Empire, so that my army can strike the final blow against them." "I see." "I need someone who doesn't mind getting their hands dirty, Sir Kit. I need a warrior such as you. I take it whatever you face on this mission will be enough for you to handle, and I'll be sending you backup anyhow." "What's this mission you're sending me on?" "My spies in Kishak have uncovered the location of the Empire's supply cache: in the heart of their capital city. If you can destroy the supply cache, there goes all of the Kishak army's food, weapons, and gunpowder. They'd be running on what they have left, and soon enough that would run out and my men would be able to drive them back." "... This sounds like a suicide mission." The King nods slowly. "Perhaps. But if you manage to see this mission through, the war will be won by next year. Would you not want to see an end to this war that has claimed so many lives? An end to a war your grandfathers would have fought in, and your grandchildren will fight in if it doesn't end?" You shake your head, chuckling. "You're wrong there. My grandfathers were simple farmers, and I don't have children. This war means nothing to me." "Maybe it doesn't. But think of the millions of lives that have been lost to it, and the millions of lives you will save by ending it." You sigh. At the very least, this is something to do. "Fine. Let's get prepped for this suicide mission."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You shake your head slightly, before shrugging. There's not much you do in your day to day life, and at the very least, this is something. "Bertrand," you say. "Get to packing my things. I'm going to Castle Oren at dawn." Your servant seems very surprised by this, but immediately leaves the room to get a knapsack for you. He comes back not long after and begins packing the essentials: changes of clothes, a tinderbox from your dresser, and lantern oil, along with some of the bread and wine he came to give you. He nods to you, taking the knapsack. "I'll pack it in your carriage, sir. In the morning we'll go." With those words, he leaves the room. You sigh, before popping open the remaining bottle of wine and beginning your daily routine. By nightfall, not a drop remains of the wine nor a crumb of the bread. The weight of the situation hangs heavily on you: tomorrow, you're going to leave your home for the first time in years to fight a war that isn't yours to fight for a man who will never care for you. It's enough to make you reconsider your plans. Almost. At least, this is something you can use your talents for. Twenty years and your blade hasn't tasted a drop of blood. You feel as though you're getting rusty, that your time is long past, and it would be best to turn this offer down... No. You need to prove to yourself that you can still do this. Age means nothing for a person with your raw strength and skill, and you could kill four times as many men as a soldier half your age and twice your size. You were always told that you had a warrior's heart. Soon, you shall reaffirm it once and for all. When the sun dawns on the horizon, you get up and get dressed into practical clothing. Then, you grab your old sword, giving it an experimental swing at the air. It's large, only a bit shorter than your tall frame, and almost as wide as your torso. A greatsword that no man but you could wield. After hooking it onto your back, you head down to where your carriage is stored. Bertrand is already there, waiting for you in the driver's seat. "I packed some of my things as well, sir. Hope you don't mind me coming with you," he says. You nod, getting into the passengers seat. He spurs the horses into action with the reigns, and the two of you begin the ride to Castle Oren. You pass through a town on the way there and pass by several small hamlets. The sun is high in the sky when you see something on the horizon: a group of men sifting through a broken down carriage on the road. The men are dressed in fur and hides, and have chipped and dented axes at their sides. Highwaymen, bandits who prey on anyone daring to go from one place to another by the main roads. It makes you sick just looking at them. Then, you hear a woman's scream from the carriage. A noble lady in fine clothing runs from the carriage, screaming all the while. The highwaymen chase after her, abandoning the carriage. You grip your blade... > You ... Then let it go. Best to get out of here while they're gone. Your hand falls from your sword. "Let's go, Bertrand. We've got time while they're distracted to beat a hasty retreat." "But sir," Bertrand begins to interrupt before you silence him by holding up your hand. "I don't want to hear it. Get going." Hesitantly, Bertrand nods and spurs the horses on. They walk past the overturned carriage and continue down the road. The woman's screams penetrate the otherwise silent countryside, until they are finally silenced. Nightfall comes sooner than you'd like. You're forced to set up camp for the night along the road, but you can see Castle Oren in the distance. You'll be there not long after you get up in the morning. Your blade rests in your lap as you clean it with a rag and some water. Bertrand stirs the fire with a stick, then frowns at you. "We should have helped her." "Hrm," you hum. "The man I agreed to work for would have saved her. What the hell even happened to you?" You sigh, shaking your head. "I don't know. I'm just not that kind of man anymore." You pause, and trace a finger along the flat of your blade. "... Just an old dog called in to do the king's dirty work. Nothing more, nothing less. There's no more heroes in this world Bertrand, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner life gets easier." "You don't know what you're talking about." A mirthless chuckle escapes your lips. "Maybe I don't. Can you blame me, though? I'm just a bitter old drunk. It'd be best if you just ignored what I say." Bertrand sighs. "... I should be turning in now. I suggest you do too." He gets up from the fire and lays down on a blanket he has sprawled out, closing his eyes and drifting off to sleep in moments. You watch his sleeping form for a moment, before setting your sword down and laying on your own blanket. Though you toss and turn for a bit, exhaustion takes over and you fall into your first dreamless sleep in years. In the morning, you and Bertrand pack your things up and begin the last stretch to the Castle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have just run your sword through the last of the 6 bandits when you hear a cry for help. You jog over to a large chest. Upon opening it, you find a beautiful girl locked in with a rather large amount of gold. "You must be Amelia" you say, as you boldly lift her from the chest. "I am!" she replies breathlessly, "You must have gotten my hidden message! Thank you for rescuing me. The way you challenged all the bandits to a sword fight at the same time was so very heroic!" You lean closer.... You wake up and take in your surroundings, holding a tiny hope that one of your dreams had been reality and not just fantasy. But all you see is your one room hut, mostly empty and worn down. "Last night it was a dream about escaping from an amazing tower of riddles ruled by an evil magician and today it's a hero rescuing princesses... I must be losing it." You get out of bed, get dressed and take stock. One bed, a desk with your open pack and a chair by the cooking fire are all the furniture in the room. You slowly re-fill your pack with your cloths and hunting gear. The fire went out during the night leaving the room dank and chilled so, realizing you had no reason left to hang around, you stuff your sleeping sheet into you pack, sling it over your shoulders and head to the door. Looking out you see the dirt streets and hastily built shacks of the work camp you've been living in the past few months. Do you: > You head off to talk to the foreman You quickly walk through the camp towards the mine, looking in the empty shacks as you pass. Now that the mine is running and producing silver, all the temporary staff brought in to dig out the initial tunnels have been laid off. You were one of the last to go as you were one of the most experienced but tomorrow the shacks would all be torn down and only the huddle of nicer buildings would remain to house the permanent miners and those needed to support them. You arrive at the entrance to the mine and see the Foreman sending the last of his men inside. He calls you over. "Well, you've done a good job for us but I can't keep you on our books any longer. The mine's bringing up silver and they've sent down some official to assess our operation. Sadly, that means he will be checking our payroll so there wont be any room for us to hire out side jobs for a few months." You knew the job was only temporary so you tell him that it's alright and thank him for keeping you on after most others had been laid off. He hands you a small purse with your pay. You start to head off when he calls after you. "I heard a rumor that another mine might be opening a few days walk north of here... Can't say if its true or not but there may be a few months worth of work up there if it is." You wave your thanks and head out of the camp towards the road. It takes just over an hour to reach it so as you walk you think back on your recent dreams. In the tower of riddles you hadn't been much of a traditional sword swinging hero but you had shown great wits and intelligence to escape. In this morning's dream you had been a bold adventurer able to take on 6 ruthless bandits at the same time without breaking a sweat. Comparing it to your own life so far, you think its no wonder you're having escapist dreams. Your name is "Glor". Your mother once told you that traditionally, babies are named after the first thing a father says when a child is born. (This often causes no end of contrived first exclamations from new fathers) Your own father, upon hearing it was a boy, had strode into the room and started saying "Glory be!" (Obviously thinking Glory was a good manly name) Unfortunately, when he saw what a birthing room was like a few seconds after the deed he only managed, "Glorrr..." Most couples iron over the small details like this and name the child what the parent 'meant' to say, but your mother had a wicked sense of humor so Glor stuck fast. You grew up in a small section of the city called the "Old Quarter" near the docks and factories. Your family could only be described as the working poor, the people who do all the dirty and less desirable jobs that keep a city running. Your father worked hard and brought in enough money to keep you all fed, but 4 years after you were born, your mother passed away while giving birth to a stillborn child. Your father still worked but as a broken man and you were mostly brought up by friends and their families around the area. Once you hit your teens, you took any small jobs you could get. Cleaning, hauling, and off-loading ships - no job was too humble or dirty. You spent the rest of your time hanging round the docks and warehouses chatting to sailors about other cities and lands. Not that yours is a sob story. Many had it much worse than you in those days. Lack of jobs sent more and more people into the Old Quarter and many families didn't survive their first years there. You had good friends and old family ties that took care of you when you needed, so it wasn't all bad. Once you were old enough you joined a mining expedition and set off into the hills to make your fortune. Well, to dig holes while other people made their fortunes even bigger, but, it was a wage and a start. You had stayed up North since then, taking mine and farm jobs wherever you could. You claimed you were saving your coin and preparing to head back to the city but the years passed and you stayed, doing manual labor in mines. This latest job had brought you the closest you'd been to the city in years, even if it was still days of hard travel away. Your thoughts are interrupted as you reach the road. You take a good look around but see no-one in either direction. To the North, the road roughly follows the line of the hills; to the south, it disappears onto the plains, where it turns slowly east towards the city. You feel an urge to turn south and see the city again. There's certainly been more mining expeditions sent out recently, so maybe things have improved there. The money you just got paid for the months at the mine would keep you going for at least half a year if you're careful. On the other hand, if there is a new mine starting North, a few more well paid months away from the city won't change your situation for the worse. You think to yourself one more mine job without a break between would get enough for a years living when you got back. Should you make you way back South to the city or try your luck in the mine to the North? > You head North. You turn Northward up the road thinking that the rumors of a new mine are too good an opportunity to pass up, and hey, even if it's false you don't mind spending an extra week or two on the road. You pull out some of your dried meat and start eating as you walk, thinking you should probably set some traps and snares when you make camp that night to stock up some fresh meat. You spend an uneventful day walking North and see no other travellers. An hour or so before dusk you start looking for a place to camp. You can camp on the roadside, head into the trees to the east for cover while you sleep or walk an hour or so to the foothills west and hope for a spring or cave. > You it would be good to find a cave to sleep in, head West You walk for an hour west and reach the larger hill. After some searching you find a game trail that leads to a cave and just have time to build a small fire before night sets in. You didn't find a stream but you're sure you'll come across one tomorrow. You quickly lay a few snares just out of the reach of the firelight then retreat into the cave for the night. > You morning on the North road You thought you had heard some noises during the night but there are no signs of other people in the cave. Sadly, your snares are empty too so it'll be another day of dried meat unless you find a traveller on the road today. You cover the embers of the fire and walk back to the road. Once you reach it, you see a lot of fresh footprints and realize you must have missed a group that passed during the night. The tracks lead North so you follow them for a short distance on the road before coming across their abandoned camp on the edge of the woods. A quick look tells you they packed up and started their march North again several hours ago. > You follow them and try and catch up You think to yourself that with the rumors of a new mine opening that it might be best to catch this group up and see if they know anything about it. You set off at a fast pace to catch them up. By mid morning you see a dust cloud ahead of you on the road so you keep your fast pace up till you get close enough to make out the group. Its getting close to midday before you get close enough to realize who it is your chasing. Its a group of miners! You quickly conclude that they must be the hired hands sent to get the mine up and running so you approach them to see if you can find out more. As you catch up to the rear of the pack some of them hail you. You respond in kind then fall in beside the rear couple and start chatting. You learn that there are about 50 of them in the group including all the skilled workers the mine needs but that they would be happy to have you along as an unskilled hand. Its not going to be as much money but they tell you that they have sent their mine guards off ahead to make the area ahead safe so there isn't any way to get ahead and get a better job. > You ask the Foreman to let you sign up as unskilled work and join their group. You troop into the camp with your new companions and get your first look at your new job site for the next few months. Its a well cleared site around a small mine entrance that couldn't extend more than a few feet into the hill. The guards sent ahead had obviously arrived much earlier than you as the site overseer and his men had readied sheds for your company to sleep in and already had his handful of miners digging and putting up rough timber supports in the mouth of the mine. You're shown your quarters, a small shed set out much like your last one, bed, desk and fire. You settle in and the next day begin your new job. Since you couldn't get a better position your one of the diggers and carters as the foreman put it. You dig to deepen the mine until your standing in a large pile of dirt, then you or someone else, shovel it into a cart and push it outside to be dumped. > You after a couple of weeks After a few weeks of hard labor your not sure whether your regret your choice or not but your certainly keeping very strong and fit from wielding a pick and shovel all day. The mine has been progressing well, the main shaft has been tunneled deep into the hills bedrock and side tunnels are being opened to chase the smaller silver seams your crew uncover in the rock. You're just taking you latest load of rock out in a cart when the foreman approaches you. "Theres a small job available for you if you want to earn some higher pay than you are at the moment, dangerous though." "What's the job?" "One of the main side tunnels has found a rich looking vein we want to open, but the rock around it is cracked and weak. The weak stone should only extend a few feet but we need some volunteers to risk mining through it. The pay is more than double what your getting now." > You take the risk and the extra money You take a proper look at the new tunnel you're to help open up. The stone is very weak and cracked. You and the two other workers start mining, carefully removing the weak stone along with the silver ore and painstakingly placing buttresses and supports as often as possible. A few days pass and your team is making some good headway. One thing you've decided you like about weak stone is that is easy to mine. Half of it just crumbles out of the wall with a single pick blow, That doesn't reassure you about the rest above your head though. After a week you're taking a rest at the end of your tunnel. You've made several metres into the stone and it looks like you've finally reached the end of the weak stone. Your buttresses held and you've earned some easy coin. The Overseer told you after you were done with the weak stone that he might be able to get you moved to some logging duty for a week or two if you wanted, same pay but easier work as an additional reward. Starting today they would be felling the trees that grew near the mine to build more supports for the ever growing maze of tunnels. > You leave the weak tunnel You start to pick up your gear to exit your tunnel when you feel a slight shaking and see a few small pebbles fall from the tunnel roof. You feel as if time had slowed around you as you think of the layout of the mine site. Your tunnel had branched far off the main one under the hillside. You can see a small root in the rock wall beside you. Your mind tells you that your seam must have run under the trees behind and to the left of the hill and that they were the obvious choice for the first logging, but all your body is telling you to do is run. The tunnel is small so you start to run hunched over but as you take your third step you feel a tremor moving up through the tunnel floor. "They felled the tree right over my tunnel!" you think as a last thump resounds through the walls and the roof of your tunnel crumbles. Tons of rock pour onto you. You don't have time to think anything else in your rock tomb.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After a few weeks of hard labor your not sure whether your regret your choice or not but your certainly keeping very strong and fit from wielding a pick and shovel all day. The mine has been progressing well, the main shaft has been tunneled deep into the hills bedrock and side tunnels are being opened to chase the smaller silver seams your crew uncover in the rock. You're just taking you latest load of rock out in a cart when the foreman approaches you. "Theres a small job available for you if you want to earn some higher pay than you are at the moment, dangerous though." "What's the job?" "One of the main side tunnels has found a rich looking vein we want to open, but the rock around it is cracked and weak. The weak stone should only extend a few feet but we need some volunteers to risk mining through it. The pay is more than double what your getting now." > You its not worth it, keep mining the main tunnel You don't want to risk a tunnel collapse so you turn down the foreman's offer. You work solidly for the next few weeks. You occasionally see the Officials from the miners guild and some officers from the army visit and watch them being greeted by the overseer and his daughter in their newly built house. From speaking to the other miners you find out that the overseer is also the owner of the new mine and a few others in the area, he moved from another country then made his way up from miner, to foreman, then staked his own claim after a few years. Now he travels to all his new mines and oversees their construction with his daughter doing his books and his cooking for him. You never hear about his wife. You think its odd that he gets so many visits, especially from the army but you put them out of your mind as soon as the officials leave- the guild is nothing to do with the hired hands after all, only the owners. > Months of mining You've been at the mine nearly three months now, the tunnels are going deep and several promising seams have been opened up, even the weak stoned tunnel is producing well now after a minor cave-in caused by logging right above it. You know its nearly time for the hired hands to be laid off so you approached the foreman to see what the prospects are. He told you that most of the manual labor would be laid off within the week and sadly that included you, you'd been a good worker but with all the better positions filled he had no choice. > You finish the week and head South You get your things in order and even if you didn't make as much as you'd hoped for, you still added a few good weeks living expenses to your purse. There have been rumors lately of bandit activity on the road south so you talk to the other workers there to see what their plans are. One group is planning to leave on the day they are laid off and make good time down to the city because they want to get back to family there. The other south bound group plans to stay until all the small jobs are finished around the camp for a few extra coins then have a much more leisurely trip with stops off at way houses and farms along the way. The second group will turn up to the city nearly two full weeks after the first but your in no rush yourself. > You rush back to the city with the first group, you may as well get back there. You all gathered on the Friday morning by the foreman. "As you men all know, this mine is now officially up and running so the owner has employed one of the mining guilds to keep her running and turn a profit for him, they bring their own unskilled work as well as the their own guards so you'll all be paid up until today then free to go. You can collect you pay off me this evening or tomorrow morning." as he turns to leave he pauses and says "Hmm for about 10 of you there could be some small coin in clearing the old shacks and tidying the place up, a few days light work for light pay." then he heads off to oversee the cutting of some wooden struts. You and your group finish your days work as quickly as possible then a few hours before dark you file up to the foreman and collect your pay, the owner is a generous man and since the build went well he provides you all with some dried meats and provisions for the trip out. You all head off South into the evening leaving the camp far behind you before stopping. Your days are pretty uneventful with a large group of men around you no bandits make an appearance and you all make very good time to the city, marching most of the days and taking few breaks along the way. > You rushed arrival Your group makes it back to the city in what must be only a little short of record time and say your farewells at the gates, most of them running off to see wives or families. You take stock of the area then get yourself through the now alien feeling streets to your old area of the city and are relived to find it almost completely unchanged. You go to an old way house you knew in the hopes that the same owner was still running the place. As you walk in the door a man behind a bar looks up and stares right at you for a full minute before saying "Well this is some triumphant return, look at the state of.." Your coin purse drops on the table "your huge full coin purse" he slowly finishes. You grin and tell him you'll take his best room for the night and some hot food followed by whatever his best bottle of alcohol is then head upstairs to wash the road off your face. Your Old friend meets you as you come back down and tosses you a key as he lays a large bowl of thick stew on the table alongside a large bottle of mead with two glasses. "two?" you point out. "Well its not everyday an old friend comes back into town after years away, so since your now paying for an entire bottle of finest mead reserve I thought I'd close for the evening and join you". You laugh and join him at the table sharing stories of the years since you grew up in the city together and went separate ways. Very late the next morning you wander down nursing your head and see your friend behind the bar equally worse for wear. You wander over and take the mug of water he hands you. Over breakfast and a lot more water you tell him your plans now that your back in the city. Your goal had always been to get enough to settle comfortably in or near the Iron district, then as the months went by, maybe get into one of the guilds as a skilled worker or arrange with a company to be a free-lance worker on their books. Your years of experience with all good references would stand you in good stead. > You decide that even though the rooms and food are basic at best that you'll stay renting from your friend for a few weeks while you check out the city and find a place of your own After an enjoyable two weeks at the inn you've found yourself a nice place up in the Iron district, Its just a single bedroom with kitchen and small lounge off it but compared to the last few years it seems like a palace. Even better its only a few minutes walk from several of the guild buildings and mining corporation offices so sorting out a job shouldn't be too taxing, after several months rest of course.You let your friend know that you'll be leaving the next day and he just tells you to come down for drinks as often as you like. That evening you both sit down to share a drink and talk about how to make easy money (your favorite topic since you were 10 and he was 15 working for his dad in this very bar). You glance out the window and comment that its awfully bright out for the time of day when you hear the first screams. You both rush out to see a massive inferno sweeping through the wooden buildings of the old quarter. You both turn to run but there is a wind coming off the sea pushing the fire on and the old wooden buildings are going up like kindling. In your blind sprint you both almost make it to the walls dividing the city's districts when the flames overtake you and the smoke makes you choke and fall, its not long before you are engulfed entirely in flames.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your group makes it back to the city in what must be only a little short of record time and say your farewells at the gates, most of them running off to see wives or families. You take stock of the area then get yourself through the now alien feeling streets to your old area of the city and are relived to find it almost completely unchanged. You go to an old way house you knew in the hopes that the same owner was still running the place. As you walk in the door a man behind a bar looks up and stares right at you for a full minute before saying "Well this is some triumphant return, look at the state of.." Your coin purse drops on the table "your huge full coin purse" he slowly finishes. You grin and tell him you'll take his best room for the night and some hot food followed by whatever his best bottle of alcohol is then head upstairs to wash the road off your face. Your Old friend meets you as you come back down and tosses you a key as he lays a large bowl of thick stew on the table alongside a large bottle of mead with two glasses. "two?" you point out. "Well its not everyday an old friend comes back into town after years away, so since your now paying for an entire bottle of finest mead reserve I thought I'd close for the evening and join you". You laugh and join him at the table sharing stories of the years since you grew up in the city together and went separate ways. Very late the next morning you wander down nursing your head and see your friend behind the bar equally worse for wear. You wander over and take the mug of water he hands you. Over breakfast and a lot more water you tell him your plans now that your back in the city. Your goal had always been to get enough to settle comfortably in or near the Iron district, then as the months went by, maybe get into one of the guilds as a skilled worker or arrange with a company to be a free-lance worker on their books. Your years of experience with all good references would stand you in good stead. > You Tell you friend that you'll just be staying a couple of days while finding your own place up in the Iron district, after all you have enough coin to rent an entire house for most of a year. You hang around long enough for your head to stop hurting and the food to settle then head off to see what changes the years have wrought on the rest of the city. Your Old district may not have changed at all but the wooden docks and buildings have stood longer than most peoples grandparents had been alive. You walk slowly up the sloping city until you reach the large walls that divide the districts and head through the large gates. The first thing you notice is that the gates which used to be old relics unmoved in decades had been cleaned up, reinforced and were guarded, they seemed friendly enough and were only guarding the gates closing mechanism not the gateway itself but it was still an odd sight. The Iron district had also changed, the stone buildings seemed even bigger than before and many of them were more ornate, even near the gate which would be considered the less well off area. You head further in and see signs for several new mining companies and new guard businesses recruiting. You quickly move off the main roads and find a respectable looking Inn to ask about rooms. You don't have any luck in the first few inns and taverns you try but after a while you find one with a small flat to rent- Its a little more than you wanted to pay but its only a few minutes from the guild buildings so you agree terms and say you'll move in that night. You head back to let your friend know then move your few worldly belongings into your new place. > You easy city living You settle into your new place almost immediately. At first you have no idea what your going to do with the large wardrobe and drawers set up in your room but then you just smile to yourself and head out to the nearest tailors and buy several sets of cloths. All practical and hard wearing, but still one of the first times you've owned more than 3 outfits in your life. After stowing it all away you start your rounds of the district and try to see as many of the changes as possible. You do your sight-seeing for the first couple of days then start to gather information on the Guilds and Companies that interest you. Having got the basics noted down, you buy in a nice supply of long lasting rations (just incase) and set about having an easy life for the whole of winter. Eating down in the taverns or the nice inns, and seeing what nightlife there was to offer. It was just as you were starting to really enjoy your complete lack of routine and responsibility and were planning on heading down to your friends for an evening drink when you start to hear loud voices and strange shouts from the taverns main room. You thought that this was a little to nice of a place for it, but never one to pass up spectating a good tavern brawl (and occasionally participating) you head down the stairs. But your stopped short when you reach the room and instead of a brawl you see a room full of panicked people all saying the word fire. You grab the nearest man and ask what is going on and he tells you the old districts up in flames, they think it started on the shore amongst the docks but the wind off the sea pushed it up into the old wooden buildings and they took like kindling, within minutes the whole district was one big inferno. You rush outside and round the inn, your window looked the other way shielding you from the sight but now you just stare blankly towards where the wall separating the districts and see a fierce orange and yellow glow over the wall, occasionally punctuated by large bursts of flame with plumes of black filling the air above it. You sprint down to the gates but once you get there you find them closed and barred shut. grabbing the nearest guard you shout for them to be open so you can get to your friend but he just stares blankly back at you obviously shocked dumb then walks away. The gate captain walks over and tells you that if anyone is still in there and didn't get out before the gates had to be shut, that there was no chance of them being alive. You start to tell him that he is wrong and needs to open the gates when he takes you over to them and tells you to put a hand on them. You reach out and feel the thick gates metal almost hot enough to burn you. The captain quietly tells you that the fire came at the worst possible time. it had been dry for weeks and wooden buildings had been build right from the shore to the base of the wall, all stocked full of the years produce, hay, wheat, pelts and oils. most of it flammable. The wind blowing in from the sea had fanned it into an inferno almost as soon as the first warehouses had gone up. It had spread unnaturally quickly and only the closing of the huge gates had stopped it spreading through into this district too. The gates would stay closes until the embers were cold, and that could take a couple of days at least without any rain to quench them. You head slowly back to your room and collapse into bed unsure what to do next. > You morning or choice You awake in the morning unsure what to do. Your plans had been of an easy year living off your money and you could still do it, prices would probably go up for a time but you'd still comfortably now that your settled. But you are now sure you'd lost any place that you had called home and your closest friend in the fire so you at least wanted to find out what had happened. You grab some food then head out to start trying to ask questions and see if anyone is the wiser about what had caused the fire, and to do a last look through the survivors for any sign of your friend. You ask several guards but most don't seem to know any more than you do. Eventually you see a guard that isn't as shell shocked as the rest and he tells you that the captain over at the military barracks has all the information about the fire and that you should speak to him. You head there to see what he knows. 'The Barracks' as it is generally know does contain the city guard's barracks but also the military side of things, the army barracks, its armory, offices and everything else it needed all in one giant building that straddled and made up part of the wall between the iron and stone districts. You quickly see a small group of people talking to soldiers outside one of the entrances and approach them to hear what is going on. Its one of the captains explaining the fire to them, a few minor details extra but basically what you had heard before. Once he is done you ask him about how it started. He looks you over then sends you in and tells you to talk to the man at the desk, first room on the right. You enter and realize you not left with much choice as to where to turn since there is a group of soldiers blocking the corridor a few meters away with only one door standing open between you and them. You enter and approach the man looking at you from behind the desk. "What can I do for you?" "I want to know how the fire started." The man seems mildly amused by your abrupt response but any trace of amusement quickly vanishes as he replies. "A ship packed with flammable fuel was set alight and rammed into our docks. the fire was deliberate." Stunned by the sudden revelation you ask "Are your sure? wait are you just telling everyone this, wont it cause a panic?" "There's no point trying to keep it a secret, half the fishing fleet saw it happen as did many of the survivors that ran into the sea and were picked up the by the ships, the entire city will know in two days at the most. Also there were thousands of people in that district at the time, I wont dishonor them by lying about their deaths." "But who would do it, what is there to gain from burning down old district?" "We think it was Carn, at least the burning ship and the one that had been accompanying it bore their colours" You think for a few seconds but the name rings no bells "Who?" "Carn, the city a few weeks along the coast by boat, you been living under a rock or something? There has been minor trouble and trade disputes between us for nearly two years now." "I've been up North for years in the mines, news apart from bandit activity doesn't make it up there..." "Well long story short we started full maritime trading over 3 years ago, then two years ago some minor trade problems began, then it was about land, finally about fishing rights. things had been getting tense for months with armed ships keeping fishing boats company for protection and guards on our borders but no-one expected this. They have been sent ravens with questions about the ships but they will of course deny all knowledge, then it will be war. The king has already started recruiting to replace the men lost in the fire and more to fill out the army." You just stand unsure what to say, should you hate an enemy you don't know for what they did? Denounce their tactics, or just avoid the war and try and rebuild a life in the city. "So son" the commander stands up "we are still recruiting and the army wage is just as good as the miners one. You want to enlist?" > You hate what they did but you have money and a chance at a life now so it would be stupid to throw it away in a war, you politely refuse and head out. You spend the first few days split between organizing whatever is left of you life and watching the embers of the old district burn down to cold ash. Once the gates are opened you had planned to search through the wreckage for you old friends tavern but one look through the gate shows a nondescript layer of ash evenly coating the ground as far as the outer walls and the shore, only the occasional blackened wooden timbers or cracked black stone sticking up to break the massive expanse of grey and black. Soldiers and workers begin repairing the walls and gates from the fire damage and as the weeks pass people begin to clear out the ash and wreckage that survived. In many places the fires burned hot enough that not even much bone was left but in others teams were on duty collecting remains and transporting them into mass graves outside the city limits. The war had broken out after less than a fortnight. Carn repeatedly denied any involvement but after the trouble between the two cities and the witnesses to the ships bearing their royal colours war was inevitable. Reports said it was going our way and that we mostly had control of the seas between the cities and were making steady progress on land as well, casualties were growing but going by the weekly reports given by the guards theirs were much higher and we would have them under tight siege by the end of spring. You take it easy for the first few weeks but then begin helping out where you can. Your time in the mines has given you a simple grasp of solid construction so when work teams are put together building new stone docks in place of the wood ones you join them as skilled labor and since you don't need the money you let your wages go to re-homing the survivors. Your work and charity gets you some small attention from the survivors that make up a lot of the unskilled labor and when they learn you used to live in the old district your adopted into the 'family' again. You even meet a girl a little younger than you that lost her family in the fire. Your friends at first with you looking out for her, then you become closer, and by the time spring draws near you marry and settle into a life in the Iron town. By this time you've begun accepting your wage since most of the survivors are now in temporary homes. Your work on the docks and accepted position amongst the survivors has landed you a full time position in the construction guild overseeing some projects in the rebuilding of a new partly stone old district. The War went as quickly as you had been told to expect with Carn under tight siege by spring and fallen completely by summer. your army had been ruthless , firing burning oil and tar into the city and burning their food stores whenever possible, all in 'revenge' for the old district. Their king had denied all involvement right up until the surrender but he was now exiled along with his advisors and the city under your kings command. The world passed you by as you spent your years happily with your wonderful wife and family, there were always rumors of other wars and far off battles and victories but you didn't concern yourself with them as your city was now flourishing and always expanding and you had plenty of work as you moved up the guild ranks. *** Congratulations! This is the peaceful and happy ending. No big exciting adventure but you're happily married and well paid in a flourishing kingdom. And since all is going well its easy to ignore those little niggling doubts about what really happened that I know your harboring ***<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awake in the morning unsure what to do. Your plans had been of an easy year living off your money and you could still do it, prices would probably go up for a time but you'd still comfortably now that your settled. But you are now sure you'd lost any place that you had called home and your closest friend in the fire so you at least wanted to find out what had happened. You grab some food then head out to start trying to ask questions and see if anyone is the wiser about what had caused the fire, and to do a last look through the survivors for any sign of your friend. You ask several guards but most don't seem to know any more than you do. Eventually you see a guard that isn't as shell shocked as the rest and he tells you that the captain over at the military barracks has all the information about the fire and that you should speak to him. You head there to see what he knows. 'The Barracks' as it is generally know does contain the city guard's barracks but also the military side of things, the army barracks, its armory, offices and everything else it needed all in one giant building that straddled and made up part of the wall between the iron and stone districts. You quickly see a small group of people talking to soldiers outside one of the entrances and approach them to hear what is going on. Its one of the captains explaining the fire to them, a few minor details extra but basically what you had heard before. Once he is done you ask him about how it started. He looks you over then sends you in and tells you to talk to the man at the desk, first room on the right. You enter and realize you not left with much choice as to where to turn since there is a group of soldiers blocking the corridor a few meters away with only one door standing open between you and them. You enter and approach the man looking at you from behind the desk. "What can I do for you?" "I want to know how the fire started." The man seems mildly amused by your abrupt response but any trace of amusement quickly vanishes as he replies. "A ship packed with flammable fuel was set alight and rammed into our docks. the fire was deliberate." Stunned by the sudden revelation you ask "Are your sure? wait are you just telling everyone this, wont it cause a panic?" "There's no point trying to keep it a secret, half the fishing fleet saw it happen as did many of the survivors that ran into the sea and were picked up the by the ships, the entire city will know in two days at the most. Also there were thousands of people in that district at the time, I wont dishonor them by lying about their deaths." "But who would do it, what is there to gain from burning down old district?" "We think it was Carn, at least the burning ship and the one that had been accompanying it bore their colours" You think for a few seconds but the name rings no bells "Who?" "Carn, the city a few weeks along the coast by boat, you been living under a rock or something? There has been minor trouble and trade disputes between us for nearly two years now." "I've been up North for years in the mines, news apart from bandit activity doesn't make it up there..." "Well long story short we started full maritime trading over 3 years ago, then two years ago some minor trade problems began, then it was about land, finally about fishing rights. things had been getting tense for months with armed ships keeping fishing boats company for protection and guards on our borders but no-one expected this. They have been sent ravens with questions about the ships but they will of course deny all knowledge, then it will be war. The king has already started recruiting to replace the men lost in the fire and more to fill out the army." You just stand unsure what to say, should you hate an enemy you don't know for what they did? Denounce their tactics, or just avoid the war and try and rebuild a life in the city. "So son" the commander stands up "we are still recruiting and the army wage is just as good as the miners one. You want to enlist?" > You cant accept what They did to your city and your friends. Setting the city on fire with no warning to kill civillians was not an act ment to go unpunished so you enlist. Life in the army starts with training. You're assigned a bunk and basic leather armor on the first day and the next morning at dawn you're woken with the other new recruits to head out for basic training. Your unsure what to expect but life in the mines has kept you strong and and in excellent physical condition so the exercise runs, weights and jogging in full armor don't overly strain you. Other recruits don't fare as well but your not given the time or opportunity to help one another. Your thinking the training is a little harsh for the first day as many of the men and boys in your group have never done physical labor when your all gathered and told that today was the testing day. They needed to asses what sort of condition you were in so they could get you into the proper training programs. You see that everyone is relieved by this and you start marching back to the barracks as your sergeant tells you the last task for the day. "Everyone is to be interviewed about their experience and past jobs, don't worry this isn't a test and it will be kept informal, we just need to know if you've ever held a weapon before or which part of the army suits you best". You all enjoy your evening meal then are called over one by one to the sergeant's table. You tell him that your good with a bow and passable with a knife but that you've never had formal training with a sword before. Your experience in the mines interests him more and one of the other men at the table takes over and asks you several technical questions about struts and construction work. You answer all he asks fairly well and after the Sarge gives him a nod he says "Welcome to the engineering division". You look momentarily confused until he laughs and asks where you thought all the forts, war machines and defenses came from and who you thought build the army's outposts. The light dawns on you and the man smiles. "That's right, you'll be supporting the army using your experience, building our defenses, putting together our war machines and constructing everything from our forward base to our cooking tents. It may not sound as glamorous as charging in with the vanguard but we have a much, much higher survival rate and if the camps are attacked we defend them shoulder to shoulder with all the rest, what do you say?" Your readily agree and Sergeant Reardon, as he introduced himself, leads you off to meet your new training squad. Your introduced and learn they are made up of everyone from those with basic unskilled labor experience to a couple full guild engineers who signed up on the day of the fire. Your training goes well and you get on well with your squad, learning to treat them as your friends as well as squad mates. After a couple of weeks pass War is finally declared. You had known it was just a matter of time but you quickly find your Sarge and ask what it meant for you. "For you and your squad? Nothing at all! Your not fully trained yet and once your basic is over you still need to be assigned to your unit and your duties explained. Since you've got good solid construction knowledge and the experience to back it up you'll most likely be sent to Third company on our borders to get the forward forts built and running as the war progresses. Wont be for another month yet but either way no chance I'm letting my boys out near the fighting till they are ready." Reassured by the Sarge's attitude you pass the info onto your squad and finish out the last of your basic training in the barracks. > You third company The Sarge is a little off in his estimate of your departure time. It actually takes a month and a half to get your squad in shape. Its been a long wait but you are finally all ready to head out to the front to help in the war effort! Your squad is woken by an early bell ringing somewhere in the barracks tower and you all assemble in your new polished steel armor. during your training you had all been measured and fitted out in strong forged steel, it turned out many of the iron mongers and jewelers of the city had turned their forges over to making weapons and armor so there was no shortage of equipment for the army. The Sarge gives you all one last look over. "Well its taken longer than I'd like but your all ready to serve your king! You're all heading out to the 3'rd to help in the construction of the new bases so our boys on the front have a good foothold in place before winter hits." A soldier to the left pipes in "But I thought we already had bases on our borders?" "Our Borders? Boy do you think the entire army has been sitting and waiting for you since the war started? They have been advancing solidly for the past 6 weeks. The new borders are near 2 weeks march further forward and THATS where we need the new bases." You think to yourself that the army has made pretty amazing advances considering the fact that Carn was the kingdom that started the war. > You it DOES seem odd, so you speak up "Sir, Our men are making amazing progress in the war but I have to ask. Carn were the ones that started the war, I mean they sent the ships into the Old Quarter and everything with the trade disputes. Were they not prepared for our counter attack?" You see the Sergeant frown and a shadow clearly crosses his features. He quickly shakes it off and explains that the first week or two on the border was intense fighting and lead to a great many casualties. However once the army had broken through the initial defense line, it had been much easier to push ahead and prevent the Carn army from regrouping properly. You think that this is indeed a possible explanation but a few doubts still remain in the back of your mind.The Sarge says a few last tips and goodbyes then heads off. The last you see of him is as he walks out the door with the shadow back over his features as if he didn't really believe what he had said himself. You see a soldier you don't recognize step forward. "Right then, I'm Capt. Argor. Since I took an arrow in the knee and had to come back here for treatment, I've been given the onerous task of accompanying you to the front lines to make sure you ladies don't get lost. You were all told to report here in full gear and with all your supplies so has anyone left anything behind that they just must run back to their rooms for? Hankies? Training Bra? No? Good, I might not have to babysit you all quite as much as I feared, lets head out cos this is gonna be a long trip for you city folk." > You quick march out of the city with the new Capt. Calling you all little girls for the entire 6 hour march. You are given a break for lunch with only cold rations, then double speed marched hard till dusk. The Capt. Pulls you all off the road beside a small stream and even though your all ready to collapse and pass out he has you form up. "Right then, this is first point spring. A few generations back some officers from the 1st and 2nd companies were insulting the 3rd, saying we weren't real soldiers because we just built things while they won the war. Our officers didn't take too kindly to this and lets just say a bit of an argument broke out. After the tempers calmed a bit our men challenged the rest of the army to prove their supposed superiority" He paused to give you all a big grin. "Our boys in the 3rd work hard every day moving timber and stone, carrying loads long distances and almost never take days off. Their boys sit on their arses most of the time and only train short periods a day when they aren't actively attacking something. So our officers said they should all go for a little march. You all just made it here within daylight hours which isn't bad at all for this time of year. The 1st and 2nd company soldiers made it in about the same. OUR officers beat them by 3 hours and had a full camp set up and running by the time they limped in. They looked up from their fires and said this is normally just the first point the 3rd stop at before marching on but they had thought they should wait for them to catch up. Its been known as first point ever since. Now anyone joining the 3rd makes the march, so welcome to the 3rd gentlemen, now get our camp up!" Relieved that Capt. Argor wont be calling you all girls for the rest of the march you all set up camp and get some fires going. You're just settling down beside your fire to have supper when a couple of other come over and join you. "We had been thinking the same thing as you about how fast the war is going so when you spoke up we thought we should have a chat and share our concerns about the situation." You think slowly before the reply > You say "Well then what did you think of Sarg's answer?" The two men seem to sense your hesitation so think for a while before one answers. "I would say... that I'm not sure he believed it any more than you or I did." It's exactly the feeling that you had gotten but you also wonder why they are bringing this up now. > You say "Honestly? Your right, I'm pretty sure that no-one really bought it and there are other higher ups back at the barracks that seemed to share the doubts." The men think for a bit before replying, the one who had been silent up till now looks at his companion and says "On your head be it." then gets up and leaves. "Sorry about him." the man says "He is just a little bit on edge about this whole situation." "And just what is this whole situation?" "Ha! fair enough. Well I can tell you some of it now, You did some work in the mines recently and our employer owns several of the new sites that have been opening, so in reality you've been doing work for him." You nod slowly, its common for prospectors to open several sites to ensure one produces. You don't have enough information to pin down a specific job or owner though so keep listening. The man continues "He developed an interest in you from the reports he was receiving which is what put you on our radar and your behavior and reaction to the war made up my mind to come speak to you. Now you can appreciate how much of a risk I am taking here but I have decided to trust you. The war isn't all it seems and you know that. There are a lot of things you don't know about but the main one is that Carn didn't start the war and didn't attack the Old Quarter." He pauses to watch your reaction before continuing. "Now lets set one thing straight, we aren't talking treason here, we are completely loyal to the king, but we think he is being betrayed and tricked by his council. Now I will give you tonight to think this over and talk to you tomorrow evening again if you want to know more." The man gets up and leaves. You realize you don't even know his name but he is too far to call out too now so you sit back and think over your options. > No matter what they claim, they are commiting treason, report to the Capt. During the day and stop them! Evil council tricking the king to start a war, its like something out of one of your dreams... you briefly mull over the fact you haven't had any of those recently but put it down to being so tired from army life and move on to planning. You know what the two men look like and one other man that they talk to a lot so you just need to avoid them during the day and get to Capt. Argor with your information. You keep an eye out during the next days march and try to act as normal as possible, when one of the men comes over to you during a break you even share a water flask before moving off so you don't raise their suspicions. You finally see your chance as the camp is being set up for the night, the two men are off at the edge of camp to set up their bedrolls like normal and the man they talk to a lot is on sentry duty. You don't know their names but you can give a near perfect description and point them out once you have the Capt. and other guards with you. You move quickly over to the Captains' fire where he is talking with a runner from a temporary camp up ahead. He motions for you to wait until he is finished, you are impatient to tell him what you know but have no choice but to wait a moment since you don't want to blurt it out in public. One of the cooks hands you ale and you sip at it nervously as you wait. The man drops his tray against your ankle as he passes and you almost jump out of your skin but just about remain calm and give him a nod when he apologizes. Theres no sign of the men and you only wait one minute but you are dripping with sweat as he waves you over. You realize its FAR too much sweat as you try and speak and feel your throat close over and collapse at his feat. The Capt. immediately calls over a medic and crouches beside you but you are suffocating and he cant help, the medic runs over and immediately points out two small puncture wounds on your ankle. "He's been bitten, looks like Asp poison, I'm sorry but theres nothing we can do." "It was the cook, he poisoned me and stabbed my leg when he dropped his try!" you try to shout, but all that comes out is a rasp. You fade into black as you hear the Capt. ordering the men to kill all snakes on site and double check all kit before use.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The men think for a bit before replying, the one who had been silent up till now looks at his companion and says "On your head be it." then gets up and leaves. "Sorry about him." the man says "He is just a little bit on edge about this whole situation." "And just what is this whole situation?" "Ha! fair enough. Well I can tell you some of it now, You did some work in the mines recently and our employer owns several of the new sites that have been opening, so in reality you've been doing work for him." You nod slowly, its common for prospectors to open several sites to ensure one produces. You don't have enough information to pin down a specific job or owner though so keep listening. The man continues "He developed an interest in you from the reports he was receiving which is what put you on our radar and your behavior and reaction to the war made up my mind to come speak to you. Now you can appreciate how much of a risk I am taking here but I have decided to trust you. The war isn't all it seems and you know that. There are a lot of things you don't know about but the main one is that Carn didn't start the war and didn't attack the Old Quarter." He pauses to watch your reaction before continuing. "Now lets set one thing straight, we aren't talking treason here, we are completely loyal to the king, but we think he is being betrayed and tricked by his council. Now I will give you tonight to think this over and talk to you tomorrow evening again if you want to know more." The man gets up and leaves. You realize you don't even know his name but he is too far to call out too now so you sit back and think over your options. > You wait it out and see what he says the next night, theres too much truth in what he says to ignore it all. You've had your doubts all along so now you want the facts. You wait till evening when you are all making camp and head out to the edges where the two men normally set up their bedrolls. It isn't long before they come over, set theirs up near you and join you at the fire. "So you didn't try to turn us in?" "I thought about it a lot but I need to hear what you have to say." "Hmm honesty at least, I'm not sure I would have trusted you if you said it didn't cross your mind." he gives you a smile then moves closer so he can speak in a lower voice. "Everything I said last night is true and we have the proof with us, letters and land deals signed by keys members of the council, all encouraging the war. One was even stupid enough to put in writing that he had captured the two Carn ships to use in 'plan spark'. Others talk about preparing for war and the buildup of the army being hidden from Carn's spies. Even the torture and murder of people they think might betray them or go to the king. Basically everything we need to avert a war and have the king put the men to justice." You think for a while and decide if they really have all this proof that you are going to help them, besides now that you know this much you are sure they would kill you if you show any sign or betraying them. You talk till sundown about plans and strategies. > You reaching the Front Lines The marching is taken slowly but efficiently and you approach the lines in just under two weeks. The Capt calls a halt for the evening about half a day out from the front lines and says that he plans to arrive by lunchtime tomorrow so you better all clean up your gear and look presentable for the last march. That night you and the two men set up your sleeping rolls near the edge of camp like normal and the man you often see them talking to goes on sentry duty nearby. Its all been arranged for midnight when all but the sentries are asleep. The three of you stay awake and near midnight you all pack up your rolls and sneak over to the sentry who steps back into the light. One more man joins you and the five of you slip out of the camp then turn towards the front lines and break into a jog. The weeks on the road has made you strong and fit so you all go double time for the first few hours before slowing to a normal fast marching pace. The man who is obviously the leader calls back to you all "Right we need to get across by sunrise today or our chances of survival are near zero, our Proprietor has provided us a rough map of the front line fortifications as of when we left the city and plans of what work should have been completed since we will be heading about 2 miles south of the road where there shouldn't be any defenses in place yet so we will only have sentries to deal with." You start marching again when you suddenly remember a conversation you had with Capt. Argor only 2 days back "Wait!" everyone stops and looks back at you "listen, I was letting the Capt. go on about his love of rocks again when he mentioned a runner from the front, he said they came across solid granite just south of the road so moved a mining operation there at short notice, if its close to our crossing point it'll be swarming with men." The leader stares at you for a second before considering the map again. "Good work Glor, we cant afford to meet to many guards, so its north 5 miles instead. Double time people!" You all set off at a fast jog and your just glad you let the Capt. talk about rocks. > You reaching Carn Your leader guides you skillfully through he front lines, avoiding encampments and guards and you get across the lines with only one guard killed. You are sad that one had to die but there was no other way and plenty more would die if you didn't succeed. You get through as dawn begins to break and all collapse two miles across the lines from exhaustion. You've all been jogging in full gear for just over 7 hours now and are all spent but you're across the lines and the leader says you can rest. You don't know what to expect but you soon see a small farmers cart approaching your position. The leader quickly speaks to the man and you all pile into the back as he turns back towards Carn and whips the horses into a trot. The journey from there is uneventful, you all change out of your gear into nondescript clothing and the other men all have identification which marks them out as working for Carn's king so no soldiers bother you. You reach Carn after several days hard travel, swapping carts a few times. > The War THIS IS THE SECOND BEST ENDING, THE SOLDIERS ENDING. CONGRATULATIONS! Once in Carn you are taken before the king and your leader makes his report after presenting the documents. King Hader immediately sends them to his scribes who make several copies and over the next few days they are smuggled out of Carn to all near-by kingdoms. King Hader also sends several emissaries to your City and is finally granted a cease-fire when one of your kings high council personally intervenes and tells the king that the council had been blocking Carn's requests and emissaries from reaching him. The Councilor was in fact your proprietor and was able to tell the king some of the truth of the situation. Once the king knows he was being lied to he immediately took control of the military and ordered a cease-fire and confined the council to chambers under guard until he had found out the truth. And once the truth came out the entire council bar one was hung from the city gates. Peace was made between the two kingdoms and it was all due to you hearing your captain talk about his love of rocks.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The two men seem to sense your hesitation so think for a while before one answers. "I would say... that I'm not sure he believed it any more than you or I did." It's exactly the feeling that you had gotten but you also wonder why they are bringing this up now. > You say "We'll were just soldiers, and new ones at that, guess its not really our place to question things we don't understand." The two men seem to think about what you said for an age before finally replying. "Well you might be right, have a good night since I'm not entirely convinced Arbor there is going to easy on the marching tomorrow!" He gives you a smile and a bit of a funny wave as he stands up from the fire and you return the gesture before taking your soup from the fire and having your supper. Luckily the next day the Capt. does go a lot easier on you all, making the First Point in 1 day seemed to pacify him somewhat. He now is mostly quite congenial between short bursts of calling your all little girls but you think its just his way of encouraging you. The next two of weeks passes very uneventfully as you march towards the border with days pretty much consisting of March, Eat, Sleep then march some more, when the capt. points out that you are all crossing the old border and into new territory. You think that it seems pretty close considering how far North you used to go mining and hear Capt. Argor saying that he can explain the local borders to anyone who wants. You make the mistake of asking and after a very long a boring talk (maps appear to be Argor's passion but he is only sad he dosn't have an advanced editor to insert one here.) it is explained to you. To the North of your home city your borders are greatly extended due to the western mountain range as it slowly curves North and East and meets the sea. So since the mountains are hard to cross most of the year, your city controls all the encircled land, and since its safer there, that is where it has most of its farms and townships. Whereas to the south and east other nations have encroached significantly closer over the more open and less defensible terrain. Sadly he doesn't stop there and starts going into the different types of rocks in each area and you gather that this is some sort of hobby of his. Worn out by the talk of maps you bed down for your first night in the newly claimed territory. Since Argor kept you up talking about the types of rock in different areas of the kingdom most of the sleeping spots are full. > You grab the spot beside the Capt. As its nearest. Just as you lie down to sleep you see the two men who had approached you a couple of weeks before walking nearby, you give them a nod and they give you a wave and wish you a good nights sleep. Nothing had come of the talk they had tried to start so you think to yourself that you had been very paranoid in suspecting perfectly normal guys in your own unit and drift off to sleep telling yourself that you should chat with them over supper sometime since they seemed nice enough. The morning feels much like any other as you all pack up and start marching but you cant help but think about the fact that this used to all be ruled by a different kingdom, there is even the occasional sign of battle along the road. Whether from small skirmishes or a full battle you cant tell but the Capt. seems perfectly content to ignore it all and carry on down the road so you all just follow. He occasionally calls back a running commentary on the rocks and geology of the area but you all mostly ignore him when he does this. The Capt. calls back "Two weeks more and we hit the forward base sites and begin our work. Just remember that this used to be enemy territory so keep your eyes open as we go just incase." > You nearing the New Border The marching is taken slowly but efficiently and you approach the lines in just under two weeks. The Capt calls a halt for the evening about half a day out from the front lines and says that he plans to arrive by lunchtime tomorrow so you better all clean up your gear and look presentable for the last march. Having not gotten round to it before now you decide to spend supper chatting to the men who had approached you before. As you approach the fire one gives you a slightly cagey look but the other welcomes you and you all soon chatting happily away about life back in the city and plans for after the war. One or two others join you round the fire and by the time you head to sleep your feeling pretty silly for mistrusting their intentions at first. Having had a tankard or two at the fire you readily fall asleep. > You morning awaits The morning horn is pretty normal, as is the packing up of the camp and forming up although you are all the shiniest you have looked since first got your armor since you were all told to look good for your final arrival. The only trouble starts right before you are all due to set off and stems from the fact that 4 men are missing along with all their gear. The Capt. orders an immediate search of the camp and area around it but nothing is turned up. He seems genuinely angry for the first time and mutters about men being dragged naked behind horses before ordering the march to begin at double time since its an hour late. After an hour of double time he calls normal march and shouts back to the squad. "Well boys it appears you have now seen the ugliest part of army life, deserters. I'm going to tell you now that running off after you enlist and gain your armor is a very, very bad idea. The day you left training you swore to serve your country for at least 3 years so breaking that oath is treason and trust me on this, we deal with treason VERY harshly." The proclamation is met with silence as you all try and think of who is missing, you think that you might have an idea when the Capt. begins to speak again. "Now once we reach the temporary camps we are not going to enjoy a nice lunch like I planned, instead I will have to report this and each and every one of you will be questioned by some of our... lets call them information retrievers for now. So I'm going to give you all some honest advice. Do not lie to them, do not hold back and do not try and make things up. If you are honest, you'll have a two minute chat and be in the lunch tent right after. If they catch you lying you'll be in a whole lot more trouble. You all understand?" The squad replies with a resounding "Yes Sir!" then marches in silence until shortly before noon when a runner approaches from up ahead. Its a scout from the camp up ahead and he chats to the Capt. before running back the way he came. The Capt. thinks for a bit before addressing you all. "Well it seems that our deserters tried to cross the lines some time this morning and get over to the enemy side, it also appears that they were carrying some important documents with them. They didn't make it. This wont change our plans at all but just a reminder for you all, be completely honest when questioned and you'll be fine." Once you reach the camp you are all surrounded then guided to a large tent by soldiers from another squad whose emblem you don't recognize. You are informed that you are all here for a quick chat at the request of the intelligence section and that you should wait patiently to be called through as it shouldn't take long. The man seemed nice and reassuring but being 'invited for a chat by the intelligence section' doesn't calm you down much. Your turn finally comes and you are lead through a tent opening into smaller adjoining tent with an old small man waiting behind a desk. You notice another man standing to the side poking at a lamp seemingly trying to get a steady glow from it as it flickered and spluttered. The small man looks up and smiles "Come in and have a seat, don't mind my colleague there, he just refuses to requisition a new lamp if he feels he can fix that one." The other man just grunts and nods in your direction before turning back to the lamp and swearing at it under his breath as he started fiddling with it again. "So I'll be honest with you" he begins "The men that deserted your company may have been trying to take documents containing very classified information regarding our city over to the enemy. We simply need to know everything we can to ensure nothing got through that could put our city in danger, do you understand?" he waits for you to nod before continuing. "So if you could please tell us anything you think is important I'll note it down then you can be on your way to the lunch tent which I believe will be something nice today." "Rabbit stew and potatoes." interjects the man at the lamp. The small man laughs before continuing "My colleague keeps a close eye on the menus, but we must be getting on, so do you have anything you feel might be important to share with us?" The men seem congenial and relaxed and this isn't exactly an interrogation so you quickly decide what to say > No need to mention a few small chats and get yourself in trouble. You say that you dont really know anything, you may have said a few words to them but dont really know them or what they planned. You didn't exactly lie to them at all but you left out quite a few details here and there. No point in mentioning things that might make you look bad since you didn't really have anything to do with it now is there? Well, The small man behind the desk doesn't seem quite as sure so asks one last question. "There aren't any small details you may have left out are there, anything connected to the men or what they may have been thinking?" Having come this far you arn't about to make yourself look worse by changing story so you deny knowing more. The little man thinks for a second then gives his colleague a small nod then turns back to you "Thank you for your time Glor, my colleague here will point out the lunch tent to you, I believe that captain Argor is waiting anxiously there for you all, he acts like a bullying older brother, but like older brothers he does care about you all. goodbye." You thank him and follow then grunting lamp obsessed man out of the rear tent flaps. You got away with it! The man holds aside the flaps for you and points towards a large tent with a blue pendant flying above it. "That one." he mumbles at you then starts you turn back into the tent. You take a step forward before everything goes instantly black. > You waking up? You wake up in a small room with earth walls, you look round and realize you must be underground. You feel restraints on your arms and legs but can see the small man sitting near you. He is arranging small metal and bone implements on a table beside him. He begins to speak without taking his eyes off his task. "good evening Glor, you have been asleep for several hours now while we finished the rest of our chats. Unfortunately you were clearly holding back when we talked so now I must find out exactly what you weren't telling us." You immediately try to explain but realize your mouth isn't obeying you and you can at best make a slobbery grunting noise. "Ah yes that is a drug I have given you. most people start talking far to fast and saying anything they think I want to hear at this point. To stop that behavior I have taken your power of speech for about half an hour. After half an hour the drug will wear off and you can start talking but until then I am going to make sure you understand that I want the EXACT TRUTH and nothing else. Not the smallest detail missing and not the smallest one invented. Now lets begin." The pain is more than you imagined possible and you are informed that you have also been given drugs that appear to prevent people from going unconscious due to pain so that you have no escape. The man is as good as his word and by the time half an hour is up you are screaming wordlessly. he stops and gives you time to recover and let the pain ebb away. "Now you see how serious I am about the truth do you not?" You croak a yes in reply before telling him everything, every detail about the men you remember, every word you remember being said and everyone you saw them even talking to over a fire. After you are finished he asks a few questions he seems satisfied. "Thank you Glor, now I see no hesitation at all in your eyes and your story perfectly matches what we already knew to be fact so I know you are telling the truth." You sag back against the hard table relieved. he gives you something to drink before continuing. "Now sadly I have made a small mess of a few parts of your body and some of the acids I used on you leave horrific scars and other damage. Also you now know about our section and its methods so you cannot be released incase you spread this information further. Ironically information about us and our commander was part of what those traitors were trying to smuggle out!" You try to object but realize the drink he gave you was the drug that paralysis your mouth. "Now Glor since you were honest with me your death with be very swift, and do not worry, you body will be returned to the city as evidence of the horrible torture our enemies do to captured soldiers." You barely even see his hand slip forward to slide his small blade into your neck and sever your spinal cord. You die instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The morning horn is pretty normal, as is the packing up of the camp and forming up although you are all the shiniest you have looked since first got your armor since you were all told to look good for your final arrival. The only trouble starts right before you are all due to set off and stems from the fact that 4 men are missing along with all their gear. The Capt. orders an immediate search of the camp and area around it but nothing is turned up. He seems genuinely angry for the first time and mutters about men being dragged naked behind horses before ordering the march to begin at double time since its an hour late. After an hour of double time he calls normal march and shouts back to the squad. "Well boys it appears you have now seen the ugliest part of army life, deserters. I'm going to tell you now that running off after you enlist and gain your armor is a very, very bad idea. The day you left training you swore to serve your country for at least 3 years so breaking that oath is treason and trust me on this, we deal with treason VERY harshly." The proclamation is met with silence as you all try and think of who is missing, you think that you might have an idea when the Capt. begins to speak again. "Now once we reach the temporary camps we are not going to enjoy a nice lunch like I planned, instead I will have to report this and each and every one of you will be questioned by some of our... lets call them information retrievers for now. So I'm going to give you all some honest advice. Do not lie to them, do not hold back and do not try and make things up. If you are honest, you'll have a two minute chat and be in the lunch tent right after. If they catch you lying you'll be in a whole lot more trouble. You all understand?" The squad replies with a resounding "Yes Sir!" then marches in silence until shortly before noon when a runner approaches from up ahead. Its a scout from the camp up ahead and he chats to the Capt. before running back the way he came. The Capt. thinks for a bit before addressing you all. "Well it seems that our deserters tried to cross the lines some time this morning and get over to the enemy side, it also appears that they were carrying some important documents with them. They didn't make it. This wont change our plans at all but just a reminder for you all, be completely honest when questioned and you'll be fine." Once you reach the camp you are all surrounded then guided to a large tent by soldiers from another squad whose emblem you don't recognize. You are informed that you are all here for a quick chat at the request of the intelligence section and that you should wait patiently to be called through as it shouldn't take long. The man seemed nice and reassuring but being 'invited for a chat by the intelligence section' doesn't calm you down much. Your turn finally comes and you are lead through a tent opening into smaller adjoining tent with an old small man waiting behind a desk. You notice another man standing to the side poking at a lamp seemingly trying to get a steady glow from it as it flickered and spluttered. The small man looks up and smiles "Come in and have a seat, don't mind my colleague there, he just refuses to requisition a new lamp if he feels he can fix that one." The other man just grunts and nods in your direction before turning back to the lamp and swearing at it under his breath as he started fiddling with it again. "So I'll be honest with you" he begins "The men that deserted your company may have been trying to take documents containing very classified information regarding our city over to the enemy. We simply need to know everything we can to ensure nothing got through that could put our city in danger, do you understand?" he waits for you to nod before continuing. "So if you could please tell us anything you think is important I'll note it down then you can be on your way to the lunch tent which I believe will be something nice today." "Rabbit stew and potatoes." interjects the man at the lamp. The small man laughs before continuing "My colleague keeps a close eye on the menus, but we must be getting on, so do you have anything you feel might be important to share with us?" The men seem congenial and relaxed and this isn't exactly an interrogation so you quickly decide what to say > You complete honesty is best even if you might look bad. You tell everything from when you first had doubts, them approaching you and the last night by the fire. You were warned not to lie to these people and you don't plan too. Even if they seem nice, they are still intelligence workers so you cant be too careful. You tell them the entire story of meeting the men, you tell them every detail you remember about them before and after they approached you. You even tell them anything you think might have given them reason to talk to you. After your done the small man smiles encouragingly and asks a few small questions to clarify details before putting his quill down. "Well thank you Glor, I do believe you've told us everything you know. You didn't even try to hold back minor details that may have made you look bad but don't worry, you having some doubts isn't a crime and I'm sure the commanders here can put any of your fears to rest. Now I believe the Captain is waiting anxiously in the lunch tent for you all. He puts on a strong front but he always takes care of men in his charge, now go enjoy your lunch, my colleague there will point the tent out to you." The grunting lantern obsessed man waves you over to the back of the tent and opens the flaps for you "The one with the blue pendant." he points to a large tent some way across the camp "Rabbit stew today." he adds before retreating back into the tent. You call you thanks and head to the tent. The little man was right and Capt. Argor is waiting at the entrance, he gives you a reassuring smile and sends you over to the long table where the squad mates who went in before you are all sitting and dishing out stew from a central pot. As the lunch hour passes all but 1 of your squad makes an appearance. The Captain calls you all over and you hear him muttering that he told him not to try and lie before he addresses you all properly. "Right boys you've been spoken too, had some good grub and not its time to meet the rest of the 3rd! We have the main barracks tent in this camp so the commander will give you all a once over before your all assigned duties. Follow me." No-one asks about the missing squad member and several others had heard the Captain's muttering so you all march to the 3rd companies barracks tents in silence thinking that this camp may not be as welcoming as everyone seems so very keen to make out. > The New Commander Once you reach the 3rd Companies HQ tent you are all looked over by an older officer who is introduced as the 3rd's commander, and one of the highest ranked officers on the front lines. He gives a welcoming speech and tells a few of his old military stories to try and make you feel at home but ends with telling you all that one of your number ran off during questioning towards the front lines so was probably working with the others that had disappeared. He quickly changes the subject and tells you that the most important matter at hand is getting this base up and running. You can see the start of the fortifications from here and the men working on them so he leaves you back in the care of Capt. Argor (who it appears requested to be assigned to your squad) and he takes you to the work site. Once there you are divided into smaller teams and sent off to the areas that suit your skills best but 2 other highly trained men and your self are kept back and are taken to the work-site overseer's tent. Due to your experience you each given teams to command and areas of the fort to work on, The deadlines are strict but your labor is made up of disciplined soldiers so work should progress quickly. Weeks pass and the forts defenses and main buildings are fully constructed right on schedule. Capt. Argor calls in a few of the team leaders including yourself for a chat. "Well boys the work here has gone great, but the 1st and 2nd haven't been idle either and and still pushing on ahead. Resistance is growing as they near Carn but we should have it under siege but the time spring hits. That being the case we need men and overseers on the front lines to quickly erect new defense lines and set up all the siege works once we reach their walls. The rest will remain here to finish off these forts and make them defensible and livable for years to come. I for one will be heading forward, its dangerous but I was never one for waiting around, who else wants the exciting job?" > You head to the front and eventually the siege lines The trip to the front is a long one, each day away from the newly built forts increases the risk of being attacked by small bands of skirmishers or partisans that might be in the area. Your party has an escort from the 1st but you only number 100 men and so everyone is kept watchfull and double sentries are posted each night. Along the way you stop at the small temporary encampments your army is using to move the supplies, no more than palisade walls around bare earth but each time your group stops for a day or two to help fortify the camp before moving on. Finally after many days of marching and building your company arrives at the front lines, they have been pushing ahead each day against increasing resistance but the enemy seems to retreat each time it has lost the advantage. Capt. Argor confides in you that he hates the tactic but that its been their most effective one of the war. They set up small ambushes and skirmishers to engage your vanguard into each fight blocking the advance. They would just keep moving and plow over the small attacks but very occasionally its a much bigger force and plowing ahead would lead to massive casualties. So most days the march is interrupted and temporary defenses erected. The advance continues this way until you are within sight of the city and the clear plains around it prevent any large numbers of troops to be hidden. Spring is just about to begin as your troops encircle the city and you and the rest of the 3rd start building defenses and war machines. > You final Charge Your troops are elated about beginning the siege as they see it as a much safer occupation than marching through hostile woods and you share their relief. Your men work quickly and in a couple of days you are beginning to see walls, ditches and palisades spring up around the city. You mainly work on erecting palisades behind shallow ditches but lend a hand to the construction of the massive trebuchet that are going to bombard the cities walls. You feel that the work is going well and that within a week your army will have a very strong position ready to repel any final attacks. Unfortunately Carn does not wait for the week to end and instead attacks in force. Just before dawn they flood out of a merchants gate and launch a full scale attack on your encircling lines. You have some defenses in place but there are still gaps and it is through one of the gaps that they push. Capt. Argor hearing the horn rouses you all instantly and orders you into full armor. "Now is the time we draw swords with the rest! We built these defenses and now we man them ourselves!" He leads you all out and into the camp, as you move forward you can see fires spreading and hear the din of battle. Your army hadn't been as prepared as it should have been and it seemed that every man in Carn was on the field in full armor. The Capt. upon seeing the state of the camp lead you in front of the medical tents and ordered you into a defense line before running inside. Once he returns he explains whats happening. "They are attacking and making ground through the camps fast. These are the medical tents, sick and injured are being evacuated by the staff as we speak but we need to buy them time. We hold here. No retreat untill they are safe you understand me?" Your squad responds with a resounding "Yes Sir!" and prepare for the onslaught. It comes fast and is brutal. A full platoon of enemy soldiers charges you shield line and is in the process of breaking through when they are hit in the flank by a squad from the 3rd who were barracked elsewhere. They join your defense as the enemy regroups and you start gathering stragglers from defeated squads. The enemy attacks relentlessly but each time you just hold the line long enough, then finally the all clear is given from behind. Your squad gives a ragged cheer and those left standing begin to try and retreat. Sadly the enemy has been reinforced and hits you hard, finally smashing through your defense line and overrunning the tents. You fight bravely and have used your skills to take down several attackers but you are tired and you shield arm slips long enough for a spear to take you in the side. You fall and look up at one of your attackers officers as the rest push over you to get at the retreating defense lines. You see him pause to look down. You manage to say "We will still win the war, My home will be avenged." He looks down at you with something akin to pity "Avenged? We never attacked you, your own council sent the burning ships so they could invade us, no, there will be no vengeance for your home here." Then he takes a soldiers pity on you and ends it all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Once you reach the 3rd Companies HQ tent you are all looked over by an older officer who is introduced as the 3rd's commander, and one of the highest ranked officers on the front lines. He gives a welcoming speech and tells a few of his old military stories to try and make you feel at home but ends with telling you all that one of your number ran off during questioning towards the front lines so was probably working with the others that had disappeared. He quickly changes the subject and tells you that the most important matter at hand is getting this base up and running. You can see the start of the fortifications from here and the men working on them so he leaves you back in the care of Capt. Argor (who it appears requested to be assigned to your squad) and he takes you to the work site. Once there you are divided into smaller teams and sent off to the areas that suit your skills best but 2 other highly trained men and your self are kept back and are taken to the work-site overseer's tent. Due to your experience you each given teams to command and areas of the fort to work on, The deadlines are strict but your labor is made up of disciplined soldiers so work should progress quickly. Weeks pass and the forts defenses and main buildings are fully constructed right on schedule. Capt. Argor calls in a few of the team leaders including yourself for a chat. "Well boys the work here has gone great, but the 1st and 2nd haven't been idle either and and still pushing on ahead. Resistance is growing as they near Carn but we should have it under siege but the time spring hits. That being the case we need men and overseers on the front lines to quickly erect new defense lines and set up all the siege works once we reach their walls. The rest will remain here to finish off these forts and make them defensible and livable for years to come. I for one will be heading forward, its dangerous but I was never one for waiting around, who else wants the exciting job?" > You stay back to finish off the fort's defences The Capt. Looks right at you obviously wanting you to volunteer but you don't raise your hand and silently watch as he and the group of volunteers head out to the front. The rest of you get back to work and the teams that no longer have overseers are split between you, but you know the work by now and more importantly most of the workers in the 3rd have been building these forts for years so know the work whether you do or not. The fort is finished on schedule and your men even find time to do some minor detailing on the wood and stone to make it feel more like a town than a front line fort. News comes in from the front and you hear about your army's advance, and as spring is about to start you hear that Carn is finally encircled and that the siege lines are being build by the 3rd company already. You are once again amazed by the fast progress but keep your concerns to yourself. A few of you are given minor promotions for the speedy work and are retained at the fort for maintenance work and the continued important works that the commanders want. Your company has even managed to bring out or build proper long tables and roasting pits for the food hall. Its just when you are on your way to a meeting concerning the replacement of a wooden structure with stone that the news comes in. Carn launched a major counterattack from their city before the defenses and war machines were ready. they were beaten back but your army suffered very heavy casualties, some squads and platoons being completely wiped out. You ask about the 3rd but are told that they heroically held a defense line in front of the medic tents against horrific odds, most of them are getting medals for it but only 6 out of the 100 men there survived so the medals will be posthumous. Feeling saddened by the news you barely hear about how the Carn army was beaten back in the nick of time by a flanking maneuver. Nor do you listen to reports that bombardment of the city started with firebombs in 'revenge for the Old Quarter'. You stay on at the fort for a few weeks then head back to the city as a military man, you settle into a city construction position and take no further part in the war, which quickly ends with your city's complete victory.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The two men seem to think about what you said for an age before finally replying. "Well you might be right, have a good night since I'm not entirely convinced Arbor there is going to easy on the marching tomorrow!" He gives you a smile and a bit of a funny wave as he stands up from the fire and you return the gesture before taking your soup from the fire and having your supper. Luckily the next day the Capt. does go a lot easier on you all, making the First Point in 1 day seemed to pacify him somewhat. He now is mostly quite congenial between short bursts of calling your all little girls but you think its just his way of encouraging you. The next two of weeks passes very uneventfully as you march towards the border with days pretty much consisting of March, Eat, Sleep then march some more, when the capt. points out that you are all crossing the old border and into new territory. You think that it seems pretty close considering how far North you used to go mining and hear Capt. Argor saying that he can explain the local borders to anyone who wants. You make the mistake of asking and after a very long a boring talk (maps appear to be Argor's passion but he is only sad he dosn't have an advanced editor to insert one here.) it is explained to you. To the North of your home city your borders are greatly extended due to the western mountain range as it slowly curves North and East and meets the sea. So since the mountains are hard to cross most of the year, your city controls all the encircled land, and since its safer there, that is where it has most of its farms and townships. Whereas to the south and east other nations have encroached significantly closer over the more open and less defensible terrain. Sadly he doesn't stop there and starts going into the different types of rocks in each area and you gather that this is some sort of hobby of his. Worn out by the talk of maps you bed down for your first night in the newly claimed territory. Since Argor kept you up talking about the types of rock in different areas of the kingdom most of the sleeping spots are full. > You dont really want to sleep near the Capt. In case he tries to talk about rocks again in the morning, sleep out at the edge of the camp. You head right out to the edge of the camp and set up your bedroll, you don't mind this as your used to sleeping in the wild and there is still the ring of sentries beyond the reach of the light. You drift off to sleep watching the stars and thinking about whether you prefer hare or rabbit in stews. You awake to a slight noise near your head. You groggily sit up and see one of the sentries has come just into the firelight and at least two men were walking past your bed roll in full gear towards him. They freeze as they see you move before one comes close. Its one of the men who approached you before. He squats down beside you and quickly whispers "I'm sorry, we did give you a chance but theres no going back now." You take a moment to wonder what he means since your still half asleep but before you can say anything you feel a wetness on your neck and chest. You try to speak but just gurgle blood and realize he had cut your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Sarge is a little off in his estimate of your departure time. It actually takes a month and a half to get your squad in shape. Its been a long wait but you are finally all ready to head out to the front to help in the war effort! Your squad is woken by an early bell ringing somewhere in the barracks tower and you all assemble in your new polished steel armor. during your training you had all been measured and fitted out in strong forged steel, it turned out many of the iron mongers and jewelers of the city had turned their forges over to making weapons and armor so there was no shortage of equipment for the army. The Sarge gives you all one last look over. "Well its taken longer than I'd like but your all ready to serve your king! You're all heading out to the 3'rd to help in the construction of the new bases so our boys on the front have a good foothold in place before winter hits." A soldier to the left pipes in "But I thought we already had bases on our borders?" "Our Borders? Boy do you think the entire army has been sitting and waiting for you since the war started? They have been advancing solidly for the past 6 weeks. The new borders are near 2 weeks march further forward and THATS where we need the new bases." You think to yourself that the army has made pretty amazing advances considering the fact that Carn was the kingdom that started the war. > You head down and head out! The army awaits! The Army must be pretty dam good since they have been advancing so far, you do have some niggling doubts about just HOW well they are doing but what is the point in raising them now? You see a soldier you don't recognize step forward. "Right then, I'm Capt. Argor. Since I took an arrow in the knee and had to come back here for treatment, I've been given the onerous task of accompanying you to the front lines to make sure you ladies don't get lost. You were all told to report here in full gear and with all your supplies so has anyone left anything behind that they just must run back to their rooms for? Hankies? Training Bra? No? Good, I might not have to babysit you all quite as much as I feared, lets head out cos this is gonna be a long trip for you city folk." > You to First Point You are given a break for lunch with only cold rations, then double speed marched hard till dusk. The Capt. Pulls you all off the road beside a small stream and even though your all ready to collapse and pass out he has you form up. "Right then, this is first point spring. A few generations back some officers from the 1st and 2nd companies were insulting the 3rd, saying we weren't real soldiers because we just built things while they won the war. Our officers didn't take too kindly to this and lets just say a bit of an argument broke out. After the tempers calmed a bit our men challenged the rest of the army to prove their supposed superiority" He paused to give you all a big grin. "Our boys in the 3rd work hard every day moving timber and stone, carrying loads long distances and almost never take days off. Their boys sit on their arses most of the time and only train short periods a day when they aren't actively attacking something. So our officers said they should all go for a little march. You all just made it here within daylight hours which isn't bad at all for this time of year. The 1st and 2nd company soldiers made it in about the same. OUR officers beat them by 3 hours and had a full camp set up and running by the time they limped in. They looked up from their fires and said this is normally just the first point the 3rd stop at before marching on but they had thought they should wait for them to catch up. Its been known as first point ever since. Now anyone joining the 3rd makes the march, so welcome to the 3rd gentlemen, now get our camp up!" Relieved that Capt. Argor wont be calling you all girls for the rest of the march you all set up camp and get some fires going. You're just settling down beside your fire to have supper when a couple of other come over and join you. "Hey there mind if we join you?" You nod to a rock near the fire "Of course." After sitting and eating for a minute one of the men turns to you, "We should be honest with you, we didn't join you just for the company this evening. We have had something on our minds recently and thought you might be thinking the same things as us." After a pause where he looks carefully at your expression he starts again "We are concerned about just how fast the war is going, how one-sided it is and maybe even some of the stories about why it started. We asked about it quietly before and the commander just told us its because we were better prepared than before and broke their defense lines. What do you think?" You think slowly before the reply<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You get your things in order and even if you didn't make as much as you'd hoped for, you still added a few good weeks living expenses to your purse. There have been rumors lately of bandit activity on the road south so you talk to the other workers there to see what their plans are. One group is planning to leave on the day they are laid off and make good time down to the city because they want to get back to family there. The other south bound group plans to stay until all the small jobs are finished around the camp for a few extra coins then have a much more leisurely trip with stops off at way houses and farms along the way. The second group will turn up to the city nearly two full weeks after the first but your in no rush yourself. > You earn the last few coins and enjoy the leasurely trip back now you have no rush after all. Your group numbers around a dozen workers and stays on over the weekend and most of the next week, dismantling old shacks and helping construct the permanent miners residences. The work is relatively easy after the hard labor of the mining and although the pay is low your still getting free food and a place to sleep. Once the work is done you all collect your pay from the overseer on the Friday, a week after the other group had left, and start a leisurely trip down the south road. Your group sets an easy pace stopping for at least an hour each meal and taking the occasional day out in farms and way houses that some of the other men knew from previous trips. You don't encounter any or the rumored bandits on the road but a dozen well built and fairly well armed men must make a less appetizing target for bandits. All in all you make terrible time back to the city but you really don't care as you enjoy the company and find the lack of rush very relaxing. Since you have plenty of time you all discuss future plans, some are just going to sit out the winter in the city living off their wages then head back out to new mines. A few are lifers and will be clocking in with their guild as soon as they get back ready to be sent on the next job and a couple like you are going to take a year or two out, one even gives you a name to ask about a flat in the Iron district. Its only when you all wake one morning expecting to see your first glimpse of the far off city in the dawn light and instead see a plume of pure black rising miles into the sky that you all start rushing back to the city as fast as you can. > You blackened Homecoming Your group practically runs the entire way back to the city making it back well before the sun is at its peak. You all go through the main gates into the Iron district and down towards the source of the smoke. It quickly becomes clear that its the old District, the area you grew up and where you know your closest friend should be running his fathers tavern. as you get close to the wall separating the districts of the city you start to meet groups of people just standing and staring, all seemingly in shock. Most are the better dressed of the affluent Iron district but you see the occasional Old district dwellers, standing alone or in twos and threes, but all equally lost or in shock. You approach the nearest group and ask what is going on. "Fire, just a bloody huge fire. It spread in seconds. we didn't have time to do anything. Just ran. We were bringing some fabrics up from the dock, only reason we made it, we were only one street from the gate. Oh God.." You leave the man as he sinks to the ground and stares towards the high walls. You had only been looking at the people and the smoke before but now you just stared blankly towards where the wall separated the districts and just see an orange glow over the wall with plumes of black filling the air above it. Thinking of you friend and his tavern located close to the docks you sprint down to the gates but once you get there you find them closed and barred shut. grabbing the nearest guard you shout for them to be open so you can get to your friend but he just stares blankly back at you obviously shocked dumb then walks away. The gate captain walks over and tells you that if anyone is still in there and didn't get out before the gates had to be shut, that there was no chance of them being alive. You start to tell him that he is wrong and needs to open the gates when he takes you over to them and tells you to put a hand on them. You reach out and feel the gates metal almost hot enough to burn you. The captain quietly tells you that the fire started late the last evening. It came at the worst possible time. it had been dry for weeks and wooden buildings had been built right from the shore to the base of the wall, all stocked full of the years produce, hay, wheat, pelts and oils. most of it flammable. The wind blowing in from the sea had fanned it into an inferno almost as soon as the first warehouses had gone up. It had spread unnaturally quickly and only the closing of the huge gates had stopped it spreading through into this district too. The gates would stay closed until the embers were cold, and that could take a couple of days at least without any rain to quench them. You stand and stare over the wall for what seems like an eternity then quietly turn and walk back up into the Iron district. You take your road companions advice and speak to the man he mentioned about a flat and find that he did have one free. You agree to the price almost without listening then buying a cheap bottle of mead you head back out to watch the place you grew up burn down to the ashes before collapsing into your bed long evening fell.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You think to yourself that with the rumors of a new mine opening that it might be best to catch this group up and see if they know anything about it. You set off at a fast pace to catch them up. By mid morning you see a dust cloud ahead of you on the road so you keep your fast pace up till you get close enough to make out the group. Its getting close to midday before you get close enough to realize who it is your chasing. Its a group of miners! You quickly conclude that they must be the hired hands sent to get the mine up and running so you approach them to see if you can find out more. As you catch up to the rear of the pack some of them hail you. You respond in kind then fall in beside the rear couple and start chatting. You learn that there are about 50 of them in the group including all the skilled workers the mine needs but that they would be happy to have you along as an unskilled hand. Its not going to be as much money but they tell you that they have sent their mine guards off ahead to make the area ahead safe so there isn't any way to get ahead and get a better job. > You it's not worth it, Start your journey south Having decided to head back south you set off back the way you came. As you near the turn off to you old camp you see a new sign has been erected pointing the way to the new mine, a sure indicator that new guards and an official are there now. That means no easy nights rest there as they are always careful to keep hangers on and travelers well away from the mines "to keep them from getting any ideas about the silver" as you were once told. You camp off the other side of the road then continue south in the morning. > The South Road As you start down the southern road you think to yourself that it's been such a long time since you were back in the city that you're not sure that you'll even recognize it. Yet, despite all the supposed changes and improvements, one thing that would never change is the Old Quarter on the south bank where the river joins the sea. For as long as anyone could remember, the wooden buildings had stood virtually unchanged as the rest of the city rose and fell with the economy and rulers of the time. The Old Quarter was filled with dock-side housing, markets and way-stations for travellers; and it had been your home before you left to find work. Having done your time in the mines and come away with a reasonably full purse you don't feel the need to hurry as you walk, so you are enjoying the experience of not having to rush to get to your next job. You don't see any signs of other travellers until early evening when a mid-sized group of workers and a few guards pass, marching double time to the north. You carry on till it"s nearly dark and set up camp in some woods beside the road. > You morning on the south road You quickly pack up your camp and set off south just as dawn reaches over the horizon, then realize ruefully that you could have slept in. As you walk, you think on other habits you've picked up in the mines. Most were useful but getting up at dawn and sleeping at dusk would be pointless in the city where everyone rises late... You are so engrossed in your thoughts that you barely notice the two figures on horseback when they join the road not far ahead of you and start moving south at a slightly slower pace than yourself. You come out of your thoughts with a start as you notice them barely twenty paces ahead of you. Reflexively, your hand drifts down to your knife, just in case. But just as quickly you realize they are dressed as local land owners and one is a woman so you relax and hail them. "Hey there, heading down to the city?" They turn back to you and both smile before the man replies "Of course, there isn't too much else this way but we would be happy for some company if you'd like to join us?" You quickly catch up then fall in with them. You pass the time in conversation and learn that they are indeed local land owners heading to their house in the city for a few weeks. You tell them that you're just out from the mines and heading back for a well-earned rest. The day passes with you trading minor pleasantries and you agree to share a camp near the road for the evening. It's just unfortunate that as you take out your sleeping roll the man clubs you behind the head and rides back north with the woman and almost all your belongings as you lie unconscious on the ground beside the fire. > A Painful Morning You wake beside the cold ashes of the small fire only wearing your shirt, trousers and boots. Everything else, including all your coin, has been taken. You curse yourself for trusting the couple from the night before simply because one was a woman and try to take stock. You can't head North again, as in your current state you probably won't find another job for weeks and you can't even feed yourself so you're left with three choices: tightening your belt (well holding your trousers tight as your belt has been taken too) and heading to the city as fast as you can to hope for work/food there; hunting after the people that robbed you; or looking for the first trail off the road that might lead to a farm where you can ask for help or some work in exchange for food. > You go After The Robbers You think to yourself "Screw this, I worked too hard to give up all that money so easily!" You head north after the robbers, keeping just off the road in the trees in case they are waiting for you. You follow their trail north for nearly the whole day until you find them leading off towards where the couple had first entered the road. You know since they were on horseback that they probably made it back the same evening, so you hope that after a whole day they would have become complacent. You decide that: > You they are going to be complacent and you are a decent fighter, straight down the track after them! You think you could take them in a clean fight as the woman seemed small and the man didn't seem like much of a fighter - He had just taken you by surprise before. You start quickly down the trail after the marks left by the horse and after half an hour you see signs of smoke ahead Looking through the trees, you see the woman grooming her mount and the man sitting by the fire, both completely unaware. You stride out into the small clearing and walk purposefully towards the sitting man. The woman looks over at you and you hear her say "Oh dear, this isn't very good, is it?". The man glances up at you as you approach and says, "Not good at all," as he starts to rise to his feet. You laugh and say "You're right! It's not very good for you. You picked the wrong man to rob!" You smile and start to take the last steps towards the man, but as you raise your fists you feel a strange sensation, like being pushed from the side. You hear the woman saying "Oh honey, we meant 'not good for you'. Bandits never just work in twos and this trap was intended for someone else. Since you don't have anything more of value we just need you out of the way fast". You look down at the crossbow bolt planted firmly in your side just in time to see a second one appearing in your chest with a dull thud. You sink to the ground. It all goes dark as you feel yourself hoisted up and carried into the trees. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You think to yourself "Screw this, I worked too hard to give up all that money so easily!" You head north after the robbers, keeping just off the road in the trees in case they are waiting for you. You follow their trail north for nearly the whole day until you find them leading off towards where the couple had first entered the road. You know since they were on horseback that they probably made it back the same evening, so you hope that after a whole day they would have become complacent. You decide that: > You even if they are complacent, best you play it safe and try to sneak up on them through the trees and shrubs along side the track. You've decided to play it safe, who knows if they were working alone and they may be better armed than before. Plus it would be sweet to see the mans face as he first realizes your there when you knock him out just like he did to you. You sneak along near the track for close to an hour when you see smoke rising ahead from some trees. You push ahead being careful not to make any noise and approach the clearing slowly. You see the man and woman there near the fire talking and overhear snatches of conversation. You cant make it all out but it sounds like they are talking about a trap and waiting for someone. Are they talking about robbing you or a new trap for someone else? Unsure about their intent you think its best you take them by surprise either way and lift a hefty looking branch then sneak into the clearing at an angle so their backs are mostly turned to you. You approach as silently as if you were stalking a deer and slowly lift it above your head. You smile to yourself then call out "Hey!" just as you swing. The man looks up in shock just as the branch connects, knocking him out cold. "Thats one down" you say as you turn to the woman and heft the branch. The look of surprise on her face is priceless! "How did you..." she starts but you cut her off. "Lets just say you picked the wrong guy to rob, now I don't make a habit of hitting women but I can easily make an exception so bring me everything you took, along with some food to make up for my inconvenience and I'll be going." She just stares and asks "But how did you get them all with just a stick?" You look at her blankly for a second and see her break into a smile "Ooohhh, you just snuck into the clearing didn't you. I'm sorry honey but you should have realized we don't work alone, even if my guards don't make such good sentries". You glance at the trees just as several men with crossbows come running out and take aim at you. The woman backs away from you. You think it was probably a bad idea to chase after robbers in the middle of nowhere as the men open fire rendering you into a human pin-cushion.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake beside the cold ashes of the small fire only wearing your shirt, trousers and boots. Everything else, including all your coin, has been taken. You curse yourself for trusting the couple from the night before simply because one was a woman and try to take stock. You can't head North again, as in your current state you probably won't find another job for weeks and you can't even feed yourself so you're left with three choices: tightening your belt (well holding your trousers tight as your belt has been taken too) and heading to the city as fast as you can to hope for work/food there; hunting after the people that robbed you; or looking for the first trail off the road that might lead to a farm where you can ask for help or some work in exchange for food. > You quick March to the City You decide there isn't any other sensible option but to get to the city, and fast. You set off down the road at a fast walk and only stop to drink water from any streams or wells you see. You don't pass anyone else until a few days later you can see the city ahead in the far distance and collapse on the road exhausted. Luckily you fell near a well used field and the farmers load you onto their cart and take you the rest of the way into the city with a piece of bread to try to nibble on. Once inside the gates they leave you off and after you thank them profusely, they head back out to the fields. You use the last of your energy to get yourself through the now alien feeling streets to your old area of the city and are relived to find it almost completely unchanged. You go to an old way house you knew in the hopes that the same owner was still running the place. As you walk in the door a man behind a bar looks up and stares right at you for a full minute before saying "Well this is some triumphant return, look at the state of you!" You start to explain but the man cuts you off and sends you upstairs to a small room to clean and says to come down for some hot food when you no longer smell and look like a beaten up pile of crap. Once cleaned up and with a good meal inside you you tell your old friend the whole story and and he gives you two options. Work has been going well for him so he could give you a small room and meals and hire you for a low wage till you get back on your feet or you could up into the Iron district where the merchants and barracks have been hiring recently. > The Iron District You know that there is the option to join the guards as they are hiring at the moment, you'll get a basic wage but you have a bunk in the barracks and 3 good meals a day. Or you can approach the guild or large mining companies with your experience and hope for a starter job with one of them. > You head for the barracks as the guard seems like the fastest way to get a roof overhead and food in your belly. You talk to the guard Standing outside the barracks, the home of the city guards and he directs you round to the recruiters. The Captain there looks you over once and asks your story. You explain in light detail that you had been working the mines for years but after being robbed had nothing left so you thought the guards would be a good way to get back on your feet. He thinks for less than ten seconds before passing you a quill to sign on the line telling you that many men had joined for worse reasons and that they needed more men on patrol. You sign up and after a few days initial training you're attached to a squad and send out for your first training duty. You have no weapons while in training but you are given city guard leather armor and helm and sent out for, as its summed up to you, "Stand behind the real guards in your armor and try not to look stupid for your first week". You manage this with flying colors (especially the not looking stupid part) then for your next training rotation your given a choice by your sergeant. You can join the training squad patrolling old town docks, the "walk up and down in armor and not look stupid" shift as he puts it (since you wont be armed for at least a month). Or the Iron district guard training squad, the "stand out of sight and don't interfere with the cites working people" shift. > The dock patrole, at least you get to walk up and down... Well, you were right, you did indeed get to walk up and down and it was passable exercise... Lets face it, its not what you wanted from your life, BUT after a couple more weeks you will become a full guard, proper wages and you get to have a better say in your shifts, not a bad job in all, just the training period to get through. The week goes as fast as the first one and the roof over head and hearty hot meals three times a day doesn't hurt matters at all. You actually take a liking to the patrol there as you get to stop and chat to the sailors and vendors along the dockside. The sailors there are self policing as a rule so you rarely have to step in to do anything dangerous. The weeks pass and as you become a fully fledged member of the guard you make the docks your regular patrol, its a lot longer of a walk from the barracks on the other side of the Iron district but you like the atmosphere and relaxed attitude of the work. The occasional sneak thief or pick pocket are the worst of the criminals on your watch and you get to know the locals on your rounds on a first name basis, you even have time and enough spare coin to stop in for drinks with your old friend on occasion after work and he seems happy about how you landed on your feet. Its really actually starting to look up for you as time passes, you have some small savings building up again, a good job that keeps you fit and your making friends with the other guards and the locals, who like having the guards around even if they aren't usually needed. You even foster some ideas about trying to stay in the guards and move up the ranks as you watch the two large barges from Carn approaching the docks. You think they are approaching a little fast but with all the minor disputes lately they are probably just trying to bluster and throw their weight around with the smaller fishing boats near the dock. Just as you think about their speed you see the barge furl sails and out oars to turn and think to yourself that you were right when you realize the other had gone full sail and had smoke rising from the deck. You rush to the dock edge with the other guards and a few sailors as you watch its accelerated approach. you all realize its going to ram the old wooden dock about the same time as you see a full scale fire burst out onto the deck. You quickly look for the other ship but it had reversed course and is making haste away from the docks. The sailors run for their ships and try to get them off the docks and you start forcing the crowd of gawkers away from the danger area but with the burning ship under full sail with the wind off the sea its only a few seconds more before it plows into the old docks and tears through them, crashing into two warehouses as it runs aground. You start to cry out a warning as you see the ship tilt to one side spilling burning barrels full of oils and tars. But they explode as they hit the ground taking all the barrels filling the ship with them in one huge fiery explosion. You don't even have time to turn away as the blast smashes you through buildings killing you instantly and starting a fire that would incinerate the whole of the Old District<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You talk to the guard Standing outside the barracks, the home of the city guards and he directs you round to the recruiters. The Captain there looks you over once and asks your story. You explain in light detail that you had been working the mines for years but after being robbed had nothing left so you thought the guards would be a good way to get back on your feet. He thinks for less than ten seconds before passing you a quill to sign on the line telling you that many men had joined for worse reasons and that they needed more men on patrol. You sign up and after a few days initial training you're attached to a squad and send out for your first training duty. You have no weapons while in training but you are given city guard leather armor and helm and sent out for, as its summed up to you, "Stand behind the real guards in your armor and try not to look stupid for your first week". You manage this with flying colors (especially the not looking stupid part) then for your next training rotation your given a choice by your sergeant. You can join the training squad patrolling old town docks, the "walk up and down in armor and not look stupid" shift as he puts it (since you wont be armed for at least a month). Or the Iron district guard training squad, the "stand out of sight and don't interfere with the cites working people" shift. > The Iron District shift, leaning quietly against the district wall for a week is at least easy... Well, you were right, you did indeed get to rest... and be bored... Lets face it, its not what you wanted from your life, BUT after a couple more weeks you become a full guard with proper wages and you get to have a better say in your shifts, not a bad job in all, just the training period to get through. The week goes as fast as the first one and the roof over head and hearty hot meals three times a day doesn't hurt matters at all. You actually take a liking to the shift there as you get to stop and chat to the workers and vendors along the roadside, and the guilds there are self policing as a rule so you rarely have to step in to do anything dangerous. The weeks pass and as you become a fully fledged member of the guard you make the Iron district your regular patrol (yep the real guards get to walk around the district). Its short walk from the barracks and you like the atmosphere and relaxed attitude of the work. The occasional sneak thief or pick pocket are the worst of the criminals on your watch and you get to know the locals on your rounds on a first name basis. You even have time and enough spare coin to stop in for drinks with your old friend down in the Old District on occasion after work and he seems happy about how you landed on your feet. Its really actually starting to look up for you as time passes, you have some small savings building up again, a good job that keeps you fit and your making friends with the other guards and the locals, who like having the guards around even if they aren't usually needed. You even foster some ideas about trying to stay in the guards and move up the ranks as you walk alongside another guard down the main market street. You both head back to the barracks when you're relieved as your's is the early shift that day and your entertaining the idea of another night down at your friends tavern- you've even got some friends from the guards liking the place enough to make it a regular thing for your patrol. You're just getting in the door when you hear mayhem breaking out in the barracks. You push into the hall to hear the guards all shouting about a fire in the old town. You rush outside and head at a dead run to the speedily growing black cloud above the Old District. > You reaching the Gates You pull up from your run a couple of hundred feet from the gates and the wall. You just stare blankly towards where the wall separated the districts and just see a fierce orange and yellow glow over the wall occasionally punctuated by large bursts of flame with plumes of black filling the air above it. You sprint down to the gates but once you get there you find them closed and barred shut. grabbing the nearest guard you shout for them to be open so you can get to your friend but he just stares blankly back at you obviously shocked dumb then walks away. The gate captain walks over and tells you that if anyone is still in there and didn't get out before the gates had to be shut, that there was no chance of them being alive. You start to tell him that he is wrong and needs to open the gates when he takes you over to them and tells you to put a hand on them. You reach out and feel the gates metal almost hot enough to burn you. The captain quietly tells you that the fire came at the worst possible time. it had been dry for weeks and wooden buildings had been build right from the shore to the base of the wall, all stocked full of the years produce, hay, wheat, pelts and oils. most of it flammable. The wind blowing in from the sea had fanned it into an inferno almost as soon as the first warehouses had gone up. It had spread unnaturally quickly and only the closing of the huge gates had stopped it spreading through into this district too. The gates would stay closes until the embers were cold, and that could take a couple of days at least without any rain to quench them. You head slowly back to your room and collapse into bed unsure what to do next. > You black morning You awake in the morning unsure what to do. Your plans had been of an easy year living off your money and you could still do it, prices would probably go up for a time but you'd still comfortably now that your settled. But you were now sure you'd lost any place that you had called home and your closest friend in the fire so you at least wanted to find out what had happened. You grab some food then head out to start trying to ask questions and see if anyone is the wiser about what had happened to cause the fire, and to do a last look through the survivors for any sign of your friend. You ask several guards but most don't seem to know any more than you do. Eventually you see a guard that isn't a shell shocked as the rest and he tells you that the captain over at the military end of the barracks has all the information about the fire and that you should speak to him so you head there to see what he knows. 'The Barracks' as it is generally know does contain the city guard's barracks but also the military side of things, the army barracks, its armory, offices and everything else it needed all in one giant building that straddled and made up part of the wall between the iron and stone districts. You quickly see a small group of people talking to soldiers outside one of the entrances and approach them to hear what is going on. Its one of the captains explaining the fire to them, a few minor details extra but basically what you had heard before. once he is done you ask him about how it started. He looks you over then send you in and tells you to talk to the man at the desk, first room on the right. You enter and realize you not left with much choice as to where to turn since there is a group of soldiers blocking the corridor a few meters away with only one door standing open between you and them. You enter and approach the man looking at you from behind the desk. "What can I do for you?" "I want to know how the fire started." The man seems mildly amused by your abrupt response but any trace of amusement quickly vanishes as he replies. "A ship packed with flammable fuel was set alight and rammed into our docks. the fire was deliberate." Stunned by the sudden revelation you ask "Are your sure? wait are you just telling everyone this? wont it cause a panic?" "There's no point trying to keep it a secret, half the fishing fleet saw it happen as did many of the survivors that ran into the sea and were picked up the by the ships, the entire city will know in two days at the most." "But who would do it, what is there to gain from burning down old district?" "We think it was Carn, at least the burning ship and the one that had been accompanying it bore their colours" "But don't we just have some minor trade disputes with them why would they do this!" "Well long story short we started full maritime trading 3 years ago, then two years ago some minor trade problems began, then it was about land, finally about fishing rights. things had been getting tense for months with armed ships keeping fishing boats company for protection and guards on our borders but no-one expected this. They have been sent ravens with questions about the ships but they will of course deny all knowledge, then it will be war. The king has already started recruiting to replace the men lost in the fire and more to fill out the army." You just stand unsure what to say, should you hate an enemy you don't know for what they did? Denounce their tactics, or just avoid the war and try and rebuild a life in the city. "So son" the commander stands up "we are still recruiting and the army wage is just as good as the miners one. You want to enlist?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know that there is the option to join the guards as they are hiring at the moment, you'll get a basic wage but you have a bunk in the barracks and 3 good meals a day. Or you can approach the guild or large mining companies with your experience and hope for a starter job with one of them. > You head for the guild as you know your experience could get you a good position if you push it enough. You approach the miners guild with the hopes that your experience will land you some work fast, but your hope doesn't last long. They are happy enough with your resume and they even have a couple on people on staff who can vouch for your work but there are no new jobs right now and no major movements planned until the spring. They put you on the books and they guarantee you a skilled position by the time the winter snows melt but that isn't going to put food on your plate right now. > You your on the books now so what harm is there in taking up your friends offer for a few weeks? Life isn't so bad working at the inn, you put in all the hard work required and your friend, apart from many sarcastic comments and jokes, is a good boss. You have a room and food again and start saving a small amount of coin up in the hopes of buying some new cloths and getting a better paid job eventually. After a few months you think you've saved up enough to make a go of it again in a richer part of town and let you friend know your plans. You thank him for doing so much for you without really asking much in return as you know the work you did would never normally earn a wage along with room and food but he just waves you off and says the word "friends". You arrange to finish off the week and move out as soon as you find a new job and new place to live. That evening you both sit down to share a drink and talk about how to make easy money (your favorite topic since you were 10 and he was 15 working for his dad in this very bar). You glance out the window and comment that its awfully bright out for the time of day when you hear the first screams. You both rush out to see a fire sweeping through the wooden buildings of the old quarter. you both turn to run but there is a wind coming off the sea pushing the fire on and the old wooden buildings are going up like kindling. In your blind sprint you both almost make it to the walls dividing the city's districts when the flames overtake you and the smoke makes you choke and fall. Its not long before you are engulfed entirely in flames.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake beside the cold ashes of the small fire only wearing your shirt, trousers and boots. Everything else, including all your coin, has been taken. You curse yourself for trusting the couple from the night before simply because one was a woman and try to take stock. You can't head North again, as in your current state you probably won't find another job for weeks and you can't even feed yourself so you're left with three choices: tightening your belt (well holding your trousers tight as your belt has been taken too) and heading to the city as fast as you can to hope for work/food there; hunting after the people that robbed you; or looking for the first trail off the road that might lead to a farm where you can ask for help or some work in exchange for food. > You look for a Farm You start walking south, keeping an eye out for any farm trails or paths that might lead somewhere. You pass several small dirt tracks but most look more like animal trails and after your run in with the robbers, you're loath to risk them. After a few hours you pass near a stream. The water looks fresh and clean, so you take the time for a quick wash-up and a long, cool drink before you continue on. Despite your searching, it is only a couple of hours before the light starts to fade that you come across a well-worn track leading east off the road. Its the right direction for farm country and it seems to have seen recent cart traffic, so you decide its worth a look and start down the trail. After an hour or so the track passes through a thick line of trees and you see fields beginning in front of you. It looks like a large square holding of land surrounding a large old barn and house in the middle. Several men working the fields look up as you approach and lean on their scythes and hoes, keeping a watchful eye on the trees behind you. A man walks out from the door of the house while you're still a few metres away. He smiles and greets you cordially but you're somewhat distracted by the loaded crossbow he is holding casually at his side. You explain your situation to him. He eyes you shrewdly and asks a few questions about the details of your story. After a few moments of consideration, he waves the men back to work and takes you inside. You get a small apology for the crossbow but he points out that, as you learned to your own loss, there are a lot of bandits about recently and you can never be too careful. That comment at least makes you smile as you clearly hadn't been very careful at all. He gives you some hot food and a bed and leaves you to recover a bit. The next day you work hard in the fields helping the other workers with the carrying and loading of carts then at noon they set off in a small convoy to the city to sell goods with you riding along. "So you reach it in one piece" as the Farmer had said. > You reaching the city It was a long trip on the carts but the farm-hands made good company and at least you had food. They take you with them to the markets first and you help unload as thanks. Then after thanking the farmer again for his kindness, you begin to make your way through the strangely alien streets toward the area where you grew up. The city has grown so much in your absence that you had to ask directions several times before reaching the arch that has always marked the entrance to the Old Quarter. On the other side of the arch you are relived to find it almost completely unchanged. You go to an old way house you knew in the hopes that the same owner was still running the place. As you walk in the door, the man behind a bar looks up and stares right at you for a full minute before saying "Well this is some triumphant return, look at the state of you!" You start to explain, but the man cuts you off and sends you upstairs to a small room where you are able to clean up a little. A few moments later, the man returns with change of clean, serviceable clothes and invites you to come down for some hot food when you no longer smell and look like crap. Once cleaned up and with a good meal inside you you tell your old friend the whole story and and he gives you two options. Work has been going well for him so he has offered you room and board in exchange for some low wage bar work till you get back on your feet or he suggests you could also try your luck up in the Iron district where the merchants and barracks have been hiring recently.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You thought you had heard some noises during the night but there are no signs of other people in the cave. Sadly, your snares are empty too so it'll be another day of dried meat unless you find a traveller on the road today. You cover the embers of the fire and walk back to the road. Once you reach it, you see a lot of fresh footprints and realize you must have missed a group that passed during the night. The tracks lead North so you follow them for a short distance on the road before coming across their abandoned camp on the edge of the woods. A quick look tells you they packed up and started their march North again several hours ago. > You search the camp remains for any valubles or food Having decided to search the camp you reason that you should do it properly. You set a few snares in the trees nearby then start going over the camp carefully. You estimate that 40 to 60 people were here and they had lit a good number of fires so you search carefully around them and search in the grass beside the indents of the bedrolls. You spent a couple of hours looking but apart from two miss-laid copper coins you find little of worth. Still, copper coins add up and you know what its like to go hungry so you add them to your pouch and collect up your snares. The only other thing you take is an old leather water bottle which you tie to your belt and remind yourself to fill it the next time you come across a stream. > The road North again Having finished searching the camp, you start North again on the road. You still see signs of the group ahead of you but they have well over half a days hard march on you and judging by how late they camped and how early they set off you decide that you won't be able to catch them without running for the rest of the day, and your not willing to try that just for some company. So, you set off at a steady pace North again looking for any signs of a turn off that may lead to the mine. You spend an uneventful 2 days on the road, stopping occasionally to camp and refill your supplies but on the 3rd day you finally see signs that the group ahead of you turned off into the foothills west of the road. Reasoning that such a large group must have a reason for heading into the hills, you decide that they are probably the crew for the new mine and that you've found the entrance. Knowing that with such a large group already there most jobs will be filled you can follow them and hope for some paid manual labor or you can give up on it and head South for the city. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn Northward up the road thinking that the rumors of a new mine are too good an opportunity to pass up, and hey, even if it's false you don't mind spending an extra week or two on the road. You pull out some of your dried meat and start eating as you walk, thinking you should probably set some traps and snares when you make camp that night to stock up some fresh meat. You spend an uneventful day walking North and see no other travellers. An hour or so before dusk you start looking for a place to camp. You can camp on the roadside, head into the trees to the east for cover while you sleep or walk an hour or so to the foothills west and hope for a spring or cave. > You there's a good chance of catching food in the trees, head East You decide a night under the trees and a good chance of catching food are too good an opportunity to pass up so you head east into the trees till you're well away from the road. You set up a small camp and fire and set up snares out in the trees. Not long after darkness closed in you hear some noise in the direction of the road and go investigate. You caught a Hare! you quickly skin and gut it and are about to head back to the fire when you hear noise from further towards the road. You walk quietly closer to investigate and see a large group setting up camp on the roadside. You're about to leave the cover of the trees to go greet them when you over hear their leader telling a small group to go on ahead and prepare the mine camp. They are the workers sent to open the mine your looking for! You do a fast headcount and realize about 50 workers are camped there and many look experienced. You decide that they must be the main team sent up to get the mining started and realize that they will have enough skilled workers to fill most of the mining jobs there, but unskilled labor is nearly always welcome- if on a much lower pay. You think about it and you decide that you can either try to join up with them and risk the lower pay, or, you can try and beat the group sent on ahead and try and secure a better job at the mine site before word reaches them of their workers being so close. > You race them to the camp! You slip away from the workers camp fires and move quickly to your own, you kick dirt over your small fire and quickly collect in your snares. You wrap the hare in some leather and put it into your pack with everything else, you'll have to cook it later. You set out at a jog through the trees, you know the road keeps straight for more miles than you can see ahead so you move until you can just see glimpses of it through the trees and settle into a fast jog. You keep your pace up for several hours, you know it must be after midnight now and your pretty sure you passed the men on the road so you take a short rest below an old oak tree and hope they break for sleep too. In the morning you wake with the first light and quickly set off, you set a more measured pace, walking fast but not quite jogging yet. You walk as fast as you dare through the day barely taking breaks apart from to eat some dried meats. An hour or two after night sets in you decide if you haven't put some distance between you and them by now you never would, so you build a fire to cook and eat your hare then settle down to sleep. > The Search You rise at first light again, and quickly cover your fire with dirt. You head onto the road and search carefully for any sign of other men passing but find none. You must still be ahead of them, but you don't know by how much. You set off North again keeping your eye on the hills and woods to your left looking for any sight of a camp entrance or track leading away from the road. After a few hours you come across a small track leading into the hills through a copse of trees and on into the bare foothills. Its a very small track and could easily just be an animal trail but you can never be sure as people are always loath to leave any large signs of a new mine until the have laid full claim to it and got a fair number of guards in place. You spend a few minutes trying to check for other clues but in the end cant decide if it was made by men turning off the road of just some animals. You could follow it further into the hills and check it out but it would be slow going and if it turned out not to be the mine it would loose you most of a days walking. > You risk the trail You decide the trail is worth the risk, its a little bigger than most animal trails and with the lengths some claimants go to to hide new mine sites it could well be the one. You strike off onto the trail and after about half an hour it widens a little and you start to get more confident that you've made the right choice. A little more walking brings you to a man leaning against a tree and you think you can see a small amount of smoke over the hill behind him. You approach the man as he hails you and asks your name and reason for being here. Its not the politest of greetings but you explain about coming off another mine job and hearing rumor of one here. The man looks at you for a while then tells you to follow him. You follow him for 15 minutes or so till you've passed round one of the larger foothills and you come across a very small camp build around a very shallow mine entrance. You smile to yourself- Its the new mine, barely started and with only 10 or so men in sight you've beaten the others here! Your led up to a large man standing over a fire and are introduced to the Overseer of the new mine. > The Overseer You approach the Overseer who looks you over and repeats the questions about who you are and how you turned up at his mine entrance. You explain to him that you were a Skilled Laborer on a mine further south and that your old overseer had directed you here. Your a little liberal about the the date you left there and the amount of detail you had been told so he wasn't suspicious about your spring ahead of his expected workers. he thinks for a while and you think he has believed you. He presses for some details about your previous boss and the mine you were at then asked a lot of technical questions and posed several hypothetical situations about building mines and construction issues. It takes nearly an hour for him to be satisfied that you are who you say but finally tells you that he is from the same guild as your own boss and knows him well, since you convinced him of your ability and that your old boss recommended you he says he might take you on as a mid level skilled worker since he was a week behind and the men he had been expecting still hadn't turned up. He walks off to a large, nice looking tent set up beside what looks like a half constructed stone house set off to the side of the mine entrance, he goes inside briefly then returns and tells you that the owner had agreed and you were hired, he takes you to the tent and you meet a middle aged but still fairly youthful looking man studying charts of the area with rock samples spread around the desk in front of him. he looks at you quickly and smiles "So your the man who may get my mine back on schedule?" "I didn't know you were behind sir but I will defiantly do what I can if that is the case." he smile again and re-arranges some of the rocks before replying. "what do you make of this then?" You look at the arrangement of rocks on the table laid over part of a map showing your camp. the ones near where you were standing and the mine entrance were a mix of broken granite, shale and other unimportant rock but two of the rocks lying over the hill the mine was starting into had a definite shine to them, you life them to look closer then after replacing them see there is a piece of normal granite placed between them. Your about to say that there is defiantly silver in the hills when you stop to think why he would want such a simple answer so instead you reply "You believe there are two main lodes of silver running into the hill and plan to open them both up from a large forked main tunnel instead of a single straight entrance with branches?" "Ha! got it in one! its going to be harder on the crew building the supports but I think it will get both lodes producing ore much faster and if my hunch is correct the lodes are going to diverge more the further we get into the hills, I'm betting that our short entrance tunnel will be running the equivalent of two normal by the time we are fully up and working. Right since your here you can start today, sign this contract then get over to the loggers behind the hill and started on directing them to make the struts, Slarn there will give you the initial measurements." > You beginning the mine You immediately sign the contract put in front of you after a cursory glance confirms that its a skilled labor contract for a good wage and lasting at least until the mine is fully operational. You follow the Overseer out and round to where the three man logging team has stacked a small pile of trees ready for cutting and shaping into the mines first struts. The overseer turns to you "Right then these three have cut enough trees the past week to get us a good five meters into hill down both of the primary forks off the entrance shaft. But since we haven't had any skilled workers here apart from myself they haven't had the directions to get the struts started, so while I get back to the entrance shaft you get them moving double time." He hands you a slate with the tunnel dimensions chalked on it and you quickly see the man knows what he is doing, he has laid out precise numbers and details of the style and shape of Strut he needs for each section. You quickly head over to the workers who had heard the entire conversation so to save your self time you quickly tell them your name and take the straight over to the logs. You set two of them to separate them according to diameter and wood type and keep the other with you to measure out the wood ready for cutting. You've gotten the logs organized and marked out which ones to use for the braces and struts when you hear a small commotion from the camp at the mine entrance, guessing that this is the guards arriving you carry on working and get the men sawing the first struts according to your markings. The days work goes well and by evening you know you've pushed the men a bit hard but you have several well cut lengths of wood ready for final shaping in the morning. You head back into the camp and have your suspicions confirmed, the guards have set up tents near the entrance to the camp but they pay you little heed as you retire to one of the shacks set up for workers for the night. The next morning you get your small team working right after breakfast because you now that the full work group should be arriving that day or the one after at the latest and you need to make a good impression first. You get them ready and you join in so your all sawing and shaping the logs while its still dawn and by noon you have 2 sets or struts with lintels cut, shaped and ready to put it place. you know they aren't smoothly finished or treated but you've been told the gear to do that will be arriving with the main workforce so just before the lunch break you and your team take the first two sets round to the mine entrance and stack them just to the side ready to be used when needed. The Overseer comes over and after inspecting the wood and the shape he admits he didn't expect you to have any ready until tomorrow but inquires about your choices. You tell him that you knew he wanted to get the entrance shaft in deeper as soon as possible so you chose the easier to work wood to make the temporary supports so the shaft could be continued in safety while your team cut and shaped the stronger woods for the permanent supports meaning they could be fully treated before being put in place, you also give a lot of credit to you small team for how hard they worked. Your fast work, choices and ability to give credit to your men where it was due seems to make the Overseers mind up about you and he gives you a pat on the shoulder before turning to walk back towards the mine, he calls back for your team to take a break, the main workforce will arrive any minute and he will be transferring you to the tunnel construction crew now that there are struts able to be used. You know you've done well and that he will be giving you good jobs now you've proved yourself so you head over to the mess area to grab lunch with your team as you see the main workforce approaching the camp. > The yours well underway The day the mining company men had arrived you had been called into the owners tent, the owner, Overseer and leading men of the main work group were there and you appeared to be the topic of discussion. They were objecting to you being hired since according to their contract they should be filling all the skilled labor positions They were also trying to bring your abilities and experience into question. You arrived as the overseer had just vouched for your knowledge and stated that you had the backing of a second guild overseer so even if they weren't happy about it that your skills and experience were accepted as fully capable for what you had been hired to do. As you entered the owner paused the discussion and called you over, then asked if the overseers description or your work with the small logging team had been accurate. You relay what had happened again and the owner seemed very pleased. The mining group however didn't and stated that even if you were good at the job, the owner was breaching the contract to give you a position over one of their men. The owner clearly tired of the discussion by this point started casually questioning the work group leader. "When exactly does our contract state that your group would arrive and begin construction?" The man was smart enough to see were this was going to lead so carefully answered "One week ago today sir." "So considering that I paid a hefty deposit to your company in advance, how much money have I lost and how far behind is my mine's construction due to your lateness?" "The mine is almost a week behind sir, but the company will of course refund any loss of wages due to our late arrival. We were forced to wait while our supplies and gear was prepared for us." "Never the less a full week is a pretty serious loss of coin and time for me and could easily be considered a breach of contract by your company, one that would enable me to cancel it for a full refund of deposit and hire someone else correct?" The man, now clearly sweating looked like he was trying to find a way out but could only answer "That could be technically correct sir". "So considering that point; can you really argue that it is outside my remit, that during the week you were not present and my mine was not being constructed that I hired a single skilled worker to aid in my mines initial opening?" "No sir we wont object further" "Perfect, now that this is settled don't worry because he hasn't stolen any of your men's jobs. I'll hire him as an assistant to my overseer so that wont be a problem will it?" Obviously relieved that he didn't have a man out of a job he readily agreed and left the tent. The owner and overseer finally turn to you and ask "well now that the work group is happy and you have suddenly been promoted you have a nice choice ahead of you. You did a good job with your decision about the struts so I'd be happy for you to oversee the logging operation, but most of your experience lies underground and putting the struts in place, which job do you want?" > You pick the logging operation as overseeing it will keep you out of the way of the work group and you've already made a good impression there You picked to run the logging group and have twelve men under your supervision plus the three who were there already. You send one of the experienced wood cutters to join your three and after briefly showing him what you had been doing there he quickly understands your system and gets started cutting and preparing the wood. The rest you organize into work teams and get them working on different stages of the process, some felling new trees, some stripping them and others cutting them to length for you final team to prepare, you make one experienced man in each group in charge of his team and your operation practically runs itself. You leave the small choices to the group leaders and spend your time ensuring that the final struts are up to specification and that you meet or surpass you daily quota of cut and treated supports for the mine. The overseer and owner seem happy with your work and leave you to make any decisions you feel necessary, just getting weekly reports and whatever you discuss directly with the overseer during the day. As the weeks pass you all steadily work away and start logging smaller groups of trees near the mine to ensure a continuous supply of wood, you leave the choice of site up to the team leaders you assigned but you always take a cursory glance over them to make sure the trees are up to standard. The mine has been progressing well, the main shafts are already going deep into the hill and side tunnels are being opened to chase any small seams off the main two. You've heard that a couple of the unskilled laborers have been tasked with digging out a particularly weak section of rock and your glad you above ground and not risking you life in a weak tunnel prone to cave in. As the days pass you see one of your team bringing a tree over from the other side of the hill to your normal operation, you stop them to ask which trees they are felling and learn that its a small group of oak on the far side of the hill from the mine entrance. Realizing that some of the tunnels may have gone under in that direction you rush over just as two more trees are about to fall, as the smaller one hits the ground you feel it shaking and moving in an unnatural way. You break into a sprint and call for them to stop but its too late and the large oak falls and as it hits you hear a loud rumble and the whole hill shakes. You realize you team has called a cave in. You run with them to the entrance as the whole camp arrives to asses what happened. Two workers were in the weak tunnel when the trees came down right above it, they were both crushed inside. You weren't blamed for the incident and were just told to carry on, that accidents happen, but two men had died due to a mistake made by one of your teams. For the rest of the time you kept your head down and works as hard as you could making sure no more mistakes were made. > You finishing the mining work You kept your head down and worked hard for the rest of the time and not a single weak strut or badly treated piece of wood got past you after the accident. You were never blamed for the accident but you held yourself accountable and though your works was praised you didn't take as much enjoyment in it as you had before. As the final day approached the Overseer called you into his now finished residence. You find him sitting behind a nice desk still covered with maps and charts and see a pretty girl who must be similar age to yourself sitting in a chair by a small log fire reading a book. You begin to wonder if she is the overseers reclusive daughter that the camp is full of rumors about when he waves you over. "I'll be leaving for the city in two days, the day you will all be paid for your work. You did a great job for me and worked harder than any other man here although I know its because you've been blaming yourself for the accident in the tunnel. Your pay has been arranged for what was agreed but a generous personal bonus has been included. Now take tomorrow off as I know your teams are set up to run smoothly enough without you hovering over them for their last day." You thank the owner and head back out into the camp, The overseer is waiting outside and gives you a nod "Don't worry I'll keep an eye on you teams for you, you've worked yourself too hard these last weeks so enjoy your paid day off." You thank him as well then wander over to the packed breakfast tables. You chat to the workers there, many of whom you've become passable friends with and inquire about their plans now the mine is about to close. One group is planning to leave on the day they are laid off and make good time down to the city because they want to get back to family there, while the other south bound group plans to stay until all the small jobs are finished around the camp for a few extra coins then has a much more leisurely trip with stops off at way houses and farms along the way. The second group will turn up to the city nearly two full weeks after the first but you're in no rush yourself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The day the mining company men had arrived you had been called into the owners tent, the owner, Overseer and leading men of the main work group were there and you appeared to be the topic of discussion. They were objecting to you being hired since according to their contract they should be filling all the skilled labor positions They were also trying to bring your abilities and experience into question. You arrived as the overseer had just vouched for your knowledge and stated that you had the backing of a second guild overseer so even if they weren't happy about it that your skills and experience were accepted as fully capable for what you had been hired to do. As you entered the owner paused the discussion and called you over, then asked if the overseers description or your work with the small logging team had been accurate. You relay what had happened again and the owner seemed very pleased. The mining group however didn't and stated that even if you were good at the job, the owner was breaching the contract to give you a position over one of their men. The owner clearly tired of the discussion by this point started casually questioning the work group leader. "When exactly does our contract state that your group would arrive and begin construction?" The man was smart enough to see were this was going to lead so carefully answered "One week ago today sir." "So considering that I paid a hefty deposit to your company in advance, how much money have I lost and how far behind is my mine's construction due to your lateness?" "The mine is almost a week behind sir, but the company will of course refund any loss of wages due to our late arrival. We were forced to wait while our supplies and gear was prepared for us." "Never the less a full week is a pretty serious loss of coin and time for me and could easily be considered a breach of contract by your company, one that would enable me to cancel it for a full refund of deposit and hire someone else correct?" The man, now clearly sweating looked like he was trying to find a way out but could only answer "That could be technically correct sir". "So considering that point; can you really argue that it is outside my remit, that during the week you were not present and my mine was not being constructed that I hired a single skilled worker to aid in my mines initial opening?" "No sir we wont object further" "Perfect, now that this is settled don't worry because he hasn't stolen any of your men's jobs. I'll hire him as an assistant to my overseer so that wont be a problem will it?" Obviously relieved that he didn't have a man out of a job he readily agreed and left the tent. The owner and overseer finally turn to you and ask "well now that the work group is happy and you have suddenly been promoted you have a nice choice ahead of you. You did a good job with your decision about the struts so I'd be happy for you to oversee the logging operation, but most of your experience lies underground and putting the struts in place, which job do you want?" > You think that overseeing the mines supports being put in will be the best use of your abilities You know you did good work with the loggers but they will be receiving experienced men soon and your experience lies underground, The Overseer seems happy that he will be able to just concentrate on the tunnels themselves and the many minor jobs he does around the camp leaving the supports to you. Your given eight men to supervise so you split them into two teams, one to prepare the site while the other brings in and lays the supports, then both teams ensure its bearing the weight of the tunnel well before moving on, and you of course give the final check over yourself. Having caught a weak piece of wood early on you also check all the supports delivered to you before approving them for use to make sure there are no accidents caused due to your oversight. You get on with your workers and everything goes smoothly and efficiently under your guidance, the Overseer and Owner seem very pleased with your work and just get weekly progress reports to supplement anything you talk to the Overseer about during the day. As the weeks pass you carry on working as before and as the tunnels deepens and sprout side shafts following smaller seams. You're given eight more men, so once you divide them like the first team you have two groups working simultaneously under you. After a few more weeks the Overseer mentions that a very promising seam has been found but that it initially runs through some very weak and fragmented rock. After a brief inspection you agree that its worth digging out and that after an initial tunnel with temporary supports is in place your men can permanently shore it up. On the day its due to finish and your men are expected to start putting in the permanent supports you head to the tunnel to inspect the job. The unskilled workers have done well and had no cave-ins, and although weak and unprofessional the temporary supports are holding out well. your about to head back and ready your men as you can see the workers digging out the last loose rock when you feel a slight thump and a tremor running through the rock. You immediately think of the loggers and run out of the mine onto the hill above. You see not far off a tree on the ground with men cutting the last side branches off ready to be slid over to the logging camp, and two larger oaks behind in the process of being felled. You see what is happening in an instant, the trees they are felling are almost right on top of the weak tunnel and if the biggest oak they are chopping at falls, the temporary struts will snap like twigs causing a huge cave-in. You start sprinting towards the men, shouting and waving your arms to get their attention. The men are too far away so have no Idea what you are shouting but luckily you are such an odd sight as you wave your arms while running and tumbling over the uneven ground that they just all stop to stare at you until you get close enough to pant out an explanation. As soon as they hear the word cave-in they send runners to get their supervisor and the Overseer. They both run into the tunnel to assess its position and immediately agree with you, if you had been 2 minutes later the workers finishing the tunnel would have been crushed to death. > You that evening you called in for dinner with the Owner and Overseer You tidy yourself up as best you can before heading into the Owners stone house but you only own two sets of outfits, and both of them working leathers so theres only so much you can do. Your very relieved when the Overseer meets you to take you into the dining room in his normal working gear too. Your taken into a small but nice room lit by a log fire and see the owner and a pretty young girl sitting at the table with food being brought in from the kitchen. The girl looks about your age and is reading a book but she puts it away as you enter. The Owner waves you and the Overseer to some seats across the table from the two of them and introduces his daughter to you, Her name is Shia and you start trying to work out if she is indeed your age when the Owner asks you to explain about the tunnel. You relay all the information as best you can with the Overseer occasionally adding information you didn't know or had missed. At the end the Owner thinks for a minute before starting to speak. "I took a bit of a risk hiring you, but it seems to me now, that apart from doing an excellent job, you have just saved my mine from a cave-in and most importantly saved the lives of the two workers inside. Would you agree this is a fair assessment" You try to mumble something humble but he cuts you off and presses you for a yes/no answer. "Then yes sir I'd agree with it." you finally reply "Good, then from now on you are officially on my books as the assistant overseer and your contract has been upgraded to increase your pay in-line with your new position. There is also a job in my personal mining company for you as an overseer on future projects if you want it." you glance at the Overseer sitting beside you who just smiles. The owner continues "yes it was his idea and I agreed wholeheartedly with it." You thank him profusely before matters at the table turn to the food now being laced before you. You haven't eaten so well in years so concentrate mostly on the food before joining back into the dinner conversation. Your told that the Overseer is also a family friend so he joins the owner and his daughter for a meal once a week and that your now expected along too. Still dazed from all the good news you head back into the mine a very happy man. > You completing the mine You spend the rest of your time in the mine enjoying your new position and especially enjoying your time eating with the owners daughter once a week, she seems to also enjoy your company during the meals. You haven't made any moves yet to spend time alone with her but you think you'll have plenty of time to do that once the job is over if you join her fathers company. The rest of your time there passes without incident so as the final week approaches you feel a pretty good sense of achievement considering how well you did and your future prospects. As you enter the final week you're called back into the Owners house and he say he has some options for you. You've gotten on well with him and he feels he can trust you so he is considering changing his plans and taking you back to the city a few days early. On the trip you would meet some other members of his company and some of his friends from other companies that work, not only in your city, but in neighboring cities and kingdoms too. He implies that there is a little more than he is letting on but he refuses to say anymore until you've made your choice. He tells you that your other options are to stay out the week and head back with the other workers, he knows of two groups, one that is rushing back to the city on payday and the other is staying a few extra days then taking a leisurely route home. He wont judge you either way and the job with his company is always open to you, but if you don't come now you'll have to wait till the spring to contact him again as he is heading off to oversee another job of his soon. > You join him for the early trip back, it sounds interesting and a trip all the way back to the city in a carriage with his daughter sounds too good to pass up Having agreed to travel back to the city with the Owner you have to get your affairs in order, you assign supervisors to your work groups and try to do a quick final check over some wood, but you've got your men working well enough to finish the job without you now. The Overseer will be taking over from you to make sure the completion and transition from construction to full production goes smoothly, he will even have use of the owners house whenever he isn't visiting the mine. Having said your goodbyes you join the Owner and his daughter in their small carriage and set off back to the city. A second wagon with a few guards goes ahead of you to make sure you have no trouble with bandits as your also carrying one of the first silver shipments from the mine. The trip is significantly faster with horses pulling you at a brisk trot the whole way but it still takes a couple of days and that leaves plenty of time for talking with the owner and his daughter. To her about herself, and to him about this secret he wouldn't tell you before. You find out that he has holdings and mines not just in the lands around the city in which you grew up but in many other places too. Your home city is really a small kingdom in itself, ruling many small villages around it and a stretch of coastline long enough for several small fishing villages and ports. There are many such city states and kingdoms in the surrounding lands and yours is just above average size for the area, however your city is large and old so your kingdom has a much higher population than many others. The guilds of course know this and trade in the main cities of all the kingdoms but your king has never really spread the information widely- you of course knew of other places but they were always spoken of as far off and hard to get too, not borders merely a couple of weeks away by horse from the city center. The reason he told you all this was that recently there had been a lot of tension with your nearest neighbor Carn. You had heard rumors about it, that they had been causing minor trouble over trade and fishing, small regional things that you hadn't paid much mind to, but you were now told it wasn't as simple as that. His contacts in Carn and other cities had been providing very different reports than your own rulers, your city being much larger than Carn was the one causing the problems, making demands after signing treaties and encroaching on their land. He was convinced that your King didn't know what was really happening as he had always seemed like an honest man, but many of the kingdoms decisions, and most importantly, military decisions were taken by his advisors, who were not known for being honest men. Your given time to think over this as you finally see the city approach. As you draw near the first roadside farms your given another choice. "Well now that you know the reality of the situation you need to decide. I know you might not believe me, you might even think I'm being treasonous in my allegations but that is why I'm offering you this chance. This farm is well under half a days walk from the City, you've had a good lunch not long ago and you have been paid very well for your work so if you want to you can leave here and walk back to the city with no strings attached. Or you can stay and we will head to the meeting." > You decide you really dont want to be mixed up with treason and he has already paid you your wages, enough for well over a years good living, you get out. You tell him that your grateful for all that he has done but that he is right and a lot of what he says is dangerous so you'll be hopping out now. He looks like it wasn't what he had hoped for but he just tells you that its you choice and holds the door open for you. You have a last look at his daughter who looks a little sad but you hadn't really gotten to know her yet and with over a years good money you tell yourself that your sure to meet another pretty girl in the city. Still thinking about whether your lying to yourself concerning pretty girls in the city and if you made the right choice or not the door closes behind you and the owner calls goodbye. You turn and wave and are just saying thank you again when you feel several punches in the back, looking down as your propelled forward you briefly have time to see at least three crossbow bolts sticking out from your chest before you land. You hear the owners daughter crying and the owner telling her that he had no choice, you could have betrayed them all and gotten thousands killed if you had talked. You think that you wish you had stayed in the carriage, you think that you wish you had talked to his daughter more. Things quickly turn black and your stop thinking anything at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Having agreed to travel back to the city with the Owner you have to get your affairs in order, you assign supervisors to your work groups and try to do a quick final check over some wood, but you've got your men working well enough to finish the job without you now. The Overseer will be taking over from you to make sure the completion and transition from construction to full production goes smoothly, he will even have use of the owners house whenever he isn't visiting the mine. Having said your goodbyes you join the Owner and his daughter in their small carriage and set off back to the city. A second wagon with a few guards goes ahead of you to make sure you have no trouble with bandits as your also carrying one of the first silver shipments from the mine. The trip is significantly faster with horses pulling you at a brisk trot the whole way but it still takes a couple of days and that leaves plenty of time for talking with the owner and his daughter. To her about herself, and to him about this secret he wouldn't tell you before. You find out that he has holdings and mines not just in the lands around the city in which you grew up but in many other places too. Your home city is really a small kingdom in itself, ruling many small villages around it and a stretch of coastline long enough for several small fishing villages and ports. There are many such city states and kingdoms in the surrounding lands and yours is just above average size for the area, however your city is large and old so your kingdom has a much higher population than many others. The guilds of course know this and trade in the main cities of all the kingdoms but your king has never really spread the information widely- you of course knew of other places but they were always spoken of as far off and hard to get too, not borders merely a couple of weeks away by horse from the city center. The reason he told you all this was that recently there had been a lot of tension with your nearest neighbor Carn. You had heard rumors about it, that they had been causing minor trouble over trade and fishing, small regional things that you hadn't paid much mind to, but you were now told it wasn't as simple as that. His contacts in Carn and other cities had been providing very different reports than your own rulers, your city being much larger than Carn was the one causing the problems, making demands after signing treaties and encroaching on their land. He was convinced that your King didn't know what was really happening as he had always seemed like an honest man, but many of the kingdoms decisions, and most importantly, military decisions were taken by his advisors, who were not known for being honest men. Your given time to think over this as you finally see the city approach. As you draw near the first roadside farms your given another choice. "Well now that you know the reality of the situation you need to decide. I know you might not believe me, you might even think I'm being treasonous in my allegations but that is why I'm offering you this chance. This farm is well under half a days walk from the City, you've had a good lunch not long ago and you have been paid very well for your work so if you want to you can leave here and walk back to the city with no strings attached. Or you can stay and we will head to the meeting." > You you've come this far and his daughter is smiling at you, you may as well carry on and see where this leads. You tell him your choice and he just smiles back then says "Well then lets go meet your new friends, I'll head up with the driver and leave you and my daughter to have the chat you've both been desperately wanting to have since you first saw each other. JUST a chat mind." You immediately try to stammer out a response but he just laughs and climbs out and round to the drivers seat. You turn to his daughter to see she has turned an almost luminous shade of red and is desperately trying to look like she wasn't just mortified by her fathers candor. You cant think of much to say so just go with "He did that on purpose to make this awkward didn't he?" She seems to relax the tiniest bit as she replies that "Its just his sense of humor but he means well." You take the opening and run with it so that you're both having a good conversation as the carriage pulls into the city and heads right through the Iron district and into the stone district, the area of the wealthiest and most powerful members of the kings court and city. Your chat is interrupted as you pull up to a small mansion and the doors are opened but you both promise to have more soon and you all head inside. > The 'Family' You enter the mansion and are led into a large hall with several men and women lounging in chairs or drinking wine by small tables, they turn to greet you... Seeing that the Owner and his daughter have someone with them causes the talking to stop and everyone watches you for a while. The owner steps forward after giving them a minute to look you over. "ladies and gentlemen this is Glor, he has proven to be a most resourceful and trustworthy man in one of my mining jobs and I feel that he would be a perfect addition to our little family. I'll be personally vouching for him" There are mixed reactions but a beautiful lady just a little older than yourself approaches and gives you a slightly too welcoming hug "Welcome to the family Glor, I'm sure we'll get along VERY well indeed, once the music starts be sure to ask me for a dance". As she walks away you catch a glimpse of the owners daughter with bright red cheeks glaring daggers at her back. The owner sees your slight confusion and his daughters rage and just laughs. "Right then neither of you are dressed for the occasion so you head off my dear and get ready and I'll see if I have anything to fit Glor." You are lead through several rooms until you are in a bedroom with a butler standing waiting for you. "Glor will be joining us for dinner, do you think you could make him presentable for the evening?" The butler gives a quick nod and heads out of a side door, returning quickly with two dinner suits which he lays on the bed before circling you once. he takes one suit then heads out just leaving the one on the bed. "Right then Glor my butler has an uncanny ability to size people up so that suit should fit you well, I'll be in the next room writing a few quick letters while you prepare". > You your a bit overwhelmed by the rapid turn of events but you dont have much choice now so you quickly wash and dress Having gotten yourself to what you believe is a presentable state you knock on the owners door. He emerges and gives you a once over. "Well its not bad at all for a first try!" he smiles at you before fixing various parts of the suits that are hanging wrong and showing you how to put on cufflinks. "Well you wont ever pass for some highborn sop who lives in a mansion but I rather think that it makes you a better man for it. Now follow me, I'm sure my daughter has had enough time to change as well." Your lead back to the large room where all tables and chairs have seemingly vanished and a small string quartet has started playing soft music, a few couples are already dancing near them on the open floor. The owner leads you to the side of the room to a small drinks bar. "Ok its time I did my mingling and information gathering, the serious meeting shall begin in a few hours when most of the guests here are gone." He walks away towards a group of men smoking pipes before calling back "The music is just warming up, make sure you dance with at least one girl while your here!" You're no master on the dance floor but you know the basics and as long as the songs are slow you're sure you could keep up. The music gets louder and more people move to the dance floor when you see two things happening. The Owners daughter enters the room looking beautiful in a flowing red dress and is immediately approached by several men asking her to dance, and the woman who approached you earlier detaches herself from the group she was in and slowly heads your way. > The woman in blue is clearly coming on strong but the Owner's daughter is the one you want to dance with, head over towards her and hope she dosn't dance with someone else instead. You start heading towards the Owner's daughter, you get close to the ring of men surrounding her and are unsure how you are going to approach this so you quickly glance back towards the woman in the blue dress. She has obviously seen you choose another girl over her flirtatious interest so gives you a stormy look before immediately slipping her arm through nearby man's who seems more than happy to take her for a dance. You look back just in time to see the Owner's daughter watching you with a huge smile on her face. She makes quick apologies to the men around her and heads over to you, slides her arm in yours and leads you to the dance floor. "Now if I wasn't very much mistaken I just saw a handsome but nearly penniless young man spurn the advances of the beautiful and extremely rich Lady Bridleworth, just so he could ask the daughter of a merchant to dance. What do you think about my surmise?" "I would never say your father was just a merchant..." you start before seeing her cheeky smile and start again "I'd say that the young man would be flattered to be called handsome by the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, and that he would pay every penny of Lady Bridleworth's fortune for a single dance with her. So clearly he made the right choice." She laughs at your blatant flattery but you can tell she loves that you said it all the same and you begin dancing slowly to the music. "I must admit I'm a little surprised, I thought I'd have to teach you how to dance, being a lowly mine worker and everything." "Well my lady" you give a slight mocking bow "This worker has many surprises to him, I'm surprised in return though, you turned down offers from a large number of eligible gentry to dance with me, lowly as I am." "Well if you are able to turn down the most eligible Lady of marrying age in the entire kingdom just to dance with me, why shouldn't I turn down the sons of some rich idiots to dance with the man I choose?" Unable to think up a reply you simply laugh and keep dancing. The rest of the night passes like a blur since you spend it entirely with her, dancing and talking and just enjoying every second in her company. Once the party starts ending she leads you over to her father and a group of men he is talking to and after giving you both a look over and a smile he leads you all through to a side room where a few people are starting to sit around a large table. > The Truth After everyone is seated the Owner addresses you "Now Glor I have explained a little of why we are here during our trip down from the mines. This family I have gathered together is for the purpose of getting the truth out and showing the king that he is being tricked. We have tried getting evidence straight to him but the rest of the council has him surrounded day and night and I cannot do anything for fear of being caught and this entire group being put in danger." "Which is why we are sending an expedition." one of the other men joins in. "I am a commander in the 3rd company and will be sending some men along with a relief detachment to the border. they will be carrying proof of everything that has been happening over the past two years. We have had to wait this long as gathering the evidence without raising suspicion has not been easy but it is done now and we must hurry as we think the council are preparing for something big using two captured Carn ships. You will be drafted into the 3rd under my orders and send along as well, it'll become your job to help get the proof to Carn." You think for a minute before answering. "Why are we sending the proof to Carn, why not get it to our king?" "We tried, many times we tried, most of the men were killed and the rest searched and all the documents they had destroyed so they couldn't risk saying anything without proof, that would just lead to us all being killed before we could prove anything." "so when does this expedition leave?" "It was going to be in over a month, but now that you are here, the man you know as the Owner of the mine you were in has planned to make them leave in 1 week. You wont be traveling with a relief squad but the papers I provide should see that you don't come under any suspicion." > A New Morning You spend the night in the large mansion and you wake thinking you haven't slept anywhere so comfortable before in your life. You find fresh cloths and a note inviting you to breakfast in the solar at the end of your bed so you quickly get ready and head out of your door. You immediately realize that you are entirely lost and have no hope of finding the right room but are luckily saved by a butler who appears to materialize beside you arm. Once you have been guided to the solar for breakfast you are left with the owner and a table laden with food. "All from my own farms and holdings!" he says happily "Now dig in, we have a long day ahead and my daughter has 'informed' me that you are to meet her for a late lunch in the gardens. I normally would entirely ignore any order that came from my daughter but she has inherited a certain look from her mother that I know better than to argue with." "Erm, of course that sounds lovely." you stammer, not really knowing what to say in the current situation. "Hah! don't worry, I have no issue with the fact you both are going dopey eyed at each other since her choice in a man is hers to make, but I will give this warning, if you lead my daughter on then hurt her, I will destroy you entirely. Excellent, now that thats all been said on to business!" You're a little shocked by his change of pace but you both soon start chatting about the up coming plans and preparations. The next few days are spent much the same way, breakfast with the owner, planning time, then lunch with his daughter before more planning. The evenings however are spent at dinners, entertaining guests and holding meetings with other members of the 'family' from around the city. > The Plan Begins You have spent an amazing week in the mansion, you and the owner's daughter, Amelia (You almost laughed when you heard because of the dream you had back in the mining camp) are on first name terms and getting closer than ever. Your plans have been completed too. The 'family' of conspirators had been waiting as they didn't have anyone with enough training in construction to go with their team to the front that wouldn't arouse suspicion from the council, and that is where you were to come in. You would be their team leader with a sound understanding of construction, and since you hadn't been in the city for years, you were almost entirely unknown. The plan was simple, The council were watching all the crossing points so you and three others would be sent to the borders with paperwork saying you are new recruits from the 3rd company, the army's builders. Then you would slip across the border and meet up with an intended contact a few miles to the other side. The morning you were due to leave the Owner (Who's name you still haven't been told) arrives late to breakfast and hands you a small cloth bundle full of documents. "These are the documents we need to get across the borders, each of you has a set and this morning we have included new information. One of the council members has managed to capture two of Carn's galleys and is now talking about some 'project spark' or something like that. We don't know what it is yet but we have included a letter in which he admits to taking the ships. You need to get these across the border before something big starts." > You goodbyes Having accepted your documents you finish eating quickly before heading back to your room to collect your things. The Owner has prepared you a set of nice traveling gear and also laid out some 3rd company clothing including a tunic and cloak. You've got a full set of Army issue armor in saddle bag on your horse but you'd rather not travel the whole way there in it so the tunic and cloak should be more than enough. You head to the front of the house and find Amelia waiting for you. She looks relieved to see you "I was worried I wouldn't be back in time to see you off! I've been down in the Stone quarter collecting an order I made a few days ago. Its something I had made for you, I want you to wear it under your tunic so you remember I'm thinking about you as you travel." You're unsure what to reply and your slightly worried she has gotten you a waistcoat or something you'd never normally wear but she has already turned bright red so you simply reply "Of Course I will." She hands you a small package which you unwrap to find a tunic made of unbelievably fine metal rings. "This is incredible, I've never seen such fine mail before!" Clearly happy at your reaction she grins "I had one of the best armorers in the city make it, its the finest steel so its very strong but the links are small so its light and can be worn under normal clothing. This way I can keep you safe while you travel!" Unable to think of a proper way to thank her and distracted by her smiling face being so near yours you instead step forward and give her a small kiss. She is initially shocked and almost moves away but then returns the kiss for a second before stepping away her face a beacon of red. "Well that was very forward of you Glor, now you have no choice but to return and beg my forgiveness afterwards!" The she spins on her heels and runs off. You're almost worried you really did offend her until she reaches the door and gives you a big grin and a wave before heading inside. You hop into the carriage that is waiting for you and quickly change into the gift then slip the 3rd company tunic over the top, and its almost impossible to tell your wearing any mail. The Owner joins you and the carriage heads off to the south gate of the city. > A New Adventure Once at the south gate you disembark and are given a last few words of encouragement by the owner before he is driven away, leaving you and your new horse alone at the gate. You are quickly joined by a group of three men similarly dressed to yourself and you all begin the ride out of the city on the road that will turn East towards Carn. The first few days of the trip pass quickly, you see very few travelers on the roads and the border disputes with Carn aren't enough to have a large military presence on the roads so you only have to produce your papers once, when you come across a camp of soldiers from the First Company. You decide it would seems strange to ride on by them when it was nearing dusk so you all join them at their camp and spend a nice evening chatting over cooking fires. The next morning you are all saddled up and preparing to leave the First Company soldiers who are traveling on foot when a call is raised of a fast rider approaching on the road. You feel a sense of unease and one of your company signals for you to be ready to ride hard if needed. As the man approaches the small camp he slow momentarily to hand down a letter from his pouch "The Old Quarter is burning, Carn has attacked us. I Need to get news to the borders quickly." You are panicked by the news since The Old Quarter is where you grew up and your remaining friends still live there. You catch his arm as he makes to leave. "We are riding the same way, let us accompany you incase something happens on the road." The man nods his thanks and your small group sets out at a fast pace from the camp. One of your men rides close by and whispers to you "What are you doing getting us involved here?" "I need more information about what is going on, besides if they receive news of an attack before we get there we will look pretty suspicious but if we arrive as guards for the Councils own messenger they wont take a second glance at our reason for being there." The man still doesn't seem happy but falls back as you ride up to the messenger and ask if you can read one of the letters he is distributing since you didn't get a chance back at the camp. His orders are to give them to every military detachment he comes across on way to the border so he happily hands you one. You ride in silence the rest of the day with only brief breaks for lunch and dinner and ride a couple of hours into the night. You finally pull up near a small stream to let the horses rest and make a temporary camp for the night. You take the opportunity to tell your companions what you learned from the letter. A couple of mornings ago two ships bearing Carn's colours had approached the docks in the Old quarter. One had pulled up and reversed course but the other sped up and rammed the docks, it seems it was on fire and filled with burning oils and other flammable substances. The first reports were all that had come in before the letter was sent but there was a fireball that tore through a huge area of the docks and started a fire that spread through the entire Quarter of the city within minutes. It had been dry for weeks and the Old quarter was made almost entirely of ancient timbers so you could imagine the fire tearing through it. The men around the fire swore and one finally spoke up. "Its the ships that councilor captured, they burned down the old quarter themselves to start the war, I'll gut him myself for this!" You caution him to keep his voice down but luckily the messenger sees nothing amiss about the bits he hears of your men's reactions to the news, he joins you at your fire and you all share stories of the city, especially of the Old Quarter which you hope isn't as bad as the letter implies. As the messenger gets into his bedroll for the night the man supposedly in charge of the others speaks up. "I was sent along to ensure we got the documents across the border no matter what happened, now this news changes many things but not our mission, if we can show it wasn't Carn that sent those ships we can prove the council did it and have our revenge. We have two choices, follow Glor's plan of arriving there as the messengers guards then try to slip across after nightfall, or we dispose of him to make sure we arrive before the news does so we can get across the border before they go into a lockdown." > You want no part of killing an innocent man so you vote for staying as his guards and risk the harder crossing. You continue your hard ride with the messenger and after a couple more days all arrive just as the horses seem likely to give way. You are unsure what to expect but as soon as you reach the gates and the messenger shows his papers your all admitted straight away. Being with him seems to give you some official status is the guards eyes as you are all not even checked as he passes checkpoints and reaches the commanders office. You are all left in a waiting area as he goes in, he takes your identification papers with him. After a few minutes the commander emerges with the messenger. "It seems you three haven't even entered full service yet but volunteered for a dangerous ride to escort our messenger safely here. he has spoken well of you and your intentions so you are all very welcome in my fort, even if its almost a week early! Now down to business. The fort is going into partial lockdown until the news is spread and the patrols have been updated, you'll be shown to your new bunks and be given a tour, since your duties don't start for days you'll be free to come and go around the fort to learn your way. My aide will give you new papers to this effect." The new papers give you all the run of the forts interior and the messenger thanks you all before riding off again to deliver the letters down the line to the other forts. "It seems this was the right idea after all, these papers should make it easy to slip across the border." "We shall see." one of the men replies > You night Falls As night falls over the fort you have visited and gotten your faces and papers known by many of the guards under the pretense of exploring. You all finish a late dinner in the mess hall then head back to your bunks where you have prepared your gear and hidden the documents. You quickly prepare, check Amelia's gift is in good working order and all head out. Getting around the fort is easy for you now thanks to the leg work earlier in the day and any guards that don't recognize you let you pass after seeing your papers. You all make it to the gate without incident, however once you reach it you realize that the initial panic from receiving the news is still in full swing. You quickly think that you could slip out behind a squad going on patrol since the gate is in chaos but you are only in army issue tunics rather than full armor. > You tag along with a squad and try to stick close so you arn't noticed when they exit. You all move close behind a squad heading out of the gate and move into formation as if you are with them. Its all going surprisingly well until one guard remarks that is stupid for them to have men without full armor with them. They all quickly turn and point out that you are not in fact with them, and they have no idea WHO you are. You are about to quickly try and make an excuse when one of you men tries to run for it. Sadly with so many soldiers about he is almost instantly cut down and the rest charge at you. With so many men cutting and stabbing you at once even your special mail doesn't stand a chance.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As night falls over the fort you have visited and gotten your faces and papers known by many of the guards under the pretense of exploring. You all finish a late dinner in the mess hall then head back to your bunks where you have prepared your gear and hidden the documents. You quickly prepare, check Amelia's gift is in good working order and all head out. Getting around the fort is easy for you now thanks to the leg work earlier in the day and any guards that don't recognize you let you pass after seeing your papers. You all make it to the gate without incident, however once you reach it you realize that the initial panic from receiving the news is still in full swing. You quickly think that you could slip out behind a squad going on patrol since the gate is in chaos but you are only in army issue tunics rather than full armor. > You pretend to be a repair squad, you are in the third company afterall and that is one of their jobs. You realize that four men in army tunics would never get away with joining a fully armored patrol so approach the guard your selves, he seems harassed and overworked so you try to use it to your advantage. "Repair squad from the third." you announce as you hand over all of your papers at once. The man gives you all a quick glance, then obviously trying to work as quickly as possible gives the top sheet a quick glance. He sees that it has the fort commanders own signature and 3rd Company across the front so he doesn't read further and just waves you through. "Don't take too long out there, lockdown starts fully in a few hours!". Having a guard shout you through in such a loud manner makes the rest less inclined to bother checking your paperwork so you get through the gateway without incident. Your all thinking that this is going rather well so pick up the pace and head towards the border lines. > The Perimeter You reach where you think the border should be and almost shout for joy when one of your men holds up his hand and indicates to the side. You stop to listen and hear an approaching patrol. Its only a small one by the sound of it which means six men but they will still attack you on sight if they need too. You all quickly look for a place to hide but its too late and they come into view through some trees. They immediately draw weapons and ask for identification. You decide to go with the same bluff as before so try to act clam and keep your hands away from your sword. You pull out your papers and hand them over. "We are third company, they sent us out here to do some repairs before the lockdown began." The other soldiers seems to relax their weapons a bit at your attitude and willingness to hand over your papers. You see some confusion growing on the face of the man reading the papers and realize that he knows your papers don't allow you to leave the fort. He is about to speak when your men act first, drawing hidden knives and taking down two of the parole before they can react. From there it turns into a bloodbath, it seems the men sent with you are very skilled fighters, but they aren't wearing armor and the patrol is. You are almost killed by a sword swing but the man pauses in surprise as his blade bounces off the hidden mail coat. You whisper a quick thank you to Amelia for her gift and saving your life as you use the flat of your blade to knock the man unconscious. You look up to realize its over, two of your company is dead and the other survivor slightly wounded, three of the patrol are dead and the others wounded or unconscious. Saddened that they had to die you pause but the other man drags you away "It wasn't our choice and it had to be done, now move or the rest will catch us!" You listen and indeed hear the sounds of other men moving in your direction so you both run across the border and into Carn's territory. > You carn You are still a long journey away from Carn but the other man takes charge and leads you at a run for several miles. You both run until you finally collapse against a large rock outcrop. You help him bind up his wounds but he has lost a lot of blood and the run hasn't helped, he quickly explains that a cart will arrive here soon and that it will take you to Carn. You let him drift off to sleep and keep watch until dawn when you see a small farmers cart coming near. You give the signal and it turns to come pick you up. You jog back over to the other man but realize he passes away from blood loss during the night. Your the last one left so you take the man's documents along with your own and get in the cart. The driver passes back some non-descript clothing and you quickly get out of your military tunic. The trip from there involves a change of carts every few days and finally a carriage for the last few days to enable you to go faster. Eventually you reach Carn and are escorted to the King. > The King THIS IS THE BEST ENDING, THE SPIES ENDING. CONGRATULATIONS! Once in Carn you are taken before the king and you make your report after presenting the documents. King Hader immediately sends them to his scribes who make several copies and over the next few days they are smuggled out of Carn to all near-by kingdoms. King Hader also sends several emissaries to your City and is finally granted a cease-fire almost before the war even begins when one of your kings high council personally intervenes and tells the king that the council had been blocking Carn's requests and emissaries from reaching him. The Councilor was in fact your proprietor, the Owner, and he was able to tell the king some of the truth of the situation. Once the king knows he was being lied to he immediately took control of the military and ordered an end to all hostile actions. He confined the council to chambers under guard until he had found out the truth. And once the truth came out the entire council bar one was hung from the city gates. Peace was made between the two kingdoms. King Hader of Carn finally sent you back to your home city once the situation was fully resolved, he even bestowed some land and a house on the shore upon you as a reward. You are unsure what to expect from your own king upon your return but he is as welcoming as Hader had been. Once he learns that you had been given land on the coast beside the border he immediately gave you an equal plot on his side of the border meaning you now had a large holding of forest, farm and coastline in your name that spanned the borders of the two kingdoms. The man you knew as the owner is explained to have been Councilor Fenshield, one of the newest councilors in the city but due to his mines, one of the richest. He greets you warmly and invites you to his house again to recover, which you quickly accept. There Amelia is waiting for you, she immediately rushes to you and gives you a kiss while saying how she always knew you would be successful, once you explain how her gift saved your life she almost cries before just hugging you for a few minutes. Its not many days before you are engaged and only weeks before you and Amelia are married. The wedding is held on your new lands which could only be described as substantial and the house upon them is more of an old castle than just a house. Councilor Fenshield brought many of his scribes and accountants with him and by the time the wedding happens your land is already turning over a profit from the farmers and fishermen on it. I'd say you lived happily ever after at this point, but that isn't always the case is it? lets just say you did have a few happy years, but after that what happens is up to you to choose.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Once at the south gate you disembark and are given a last few words of encouragement by the owner before he is driven away, leaving you and your new horse alone at the gate. You are quickly joined by a group of three men similarly dressed to yourself and you all begin the ride out of the city on the road that will turn East towards Carn. The first few days of the trip pass quickly, you see very few travelers on the roads and the border disputes with Carn aren't enough to have a large military presence on the roads so you only have to produce your papers once, when you come across a camp of soldiers from the First Company. You decide it would seems strange to ride on by them when it was nearing dusk so you all join them at their camp and spend a nice evening chatting over cooking fires. The next morning you are all saddled up and preparing to leave the First Company soldiers who are traveling on foot when a call is raised of a fast rider approaching on the road. You feel a sense of unease and one of your company signals for you to be ready to ride hard if needed. As the man approaches the small camp he slow momentarily to hand down a letter from his pouch "The Old Quarter is burning, Carn has attacked us. I Need to get news to the borders quickly." You are panicked by the news since The Old Quarter is where you grew up and your remaining friends still live there. You catch his arm as he makes to leave. "We are riding the same way, let us accompany you incase something happens on the road." The man nods his thanks and your small group sets out at a fast pace from the camp. One of your men rides close by and whispers to you "What are you doing getting us involved here?" "I need more information about what is going on, besides if they receive news of an attack before we get there we will look pretty suspicious but if we arrive as guards for the Councils own messenger they wont take a second glance at our reason for being there." The man still doesn't seem happy but falls back as you ride up to the messenger and ask if you can read one of the letters he is distributing since you didn't get a chance back at the camp. His orders are to give them to every military detachment he comes across on way to the border so he happily hands you one. You ride in silence the rest of the day with only brief breaks for lunch and dinner and ride a couple of hours into the night. You finally pull up near a small stream to let the horses rest and make a temporary camp for the night. You take the opportunity to tell your companions what you learned from the letter. A couple of mornings ago two ships bearing Carn's colours had approached the docks in the Old quarter. One had pulled up and reversed course but the other sped up and rammed the docks, it seems it was on fire and filled with burning oils and other flammable substances. The first reports were all that had come in before the letter was sent but there was a fireball that tore through a huge area of the docks and started a fire that spread through the entire Quarter of the city within minutes. It had been dry for weeks and the Old quarter was made almost entirely of ancient timbers so you could imagine the fire tearing through it. The men around the fire swore and one finally spoke up. "Its the ships that councilor captured, they burned down the old quarter themselves to start the war, I'll gut him myself for this!" You caution him to keep his voice down but luckily the messenger sees nothing amiss about the bits he hears of your men's reactions to the news, he joins you at your fire and you all share stories of the city, especially of the Old Quarter which you hope isn't as bad as the letter implies. As the messenger gets into his bedroll for the night the man supposedly in charge of the others speaks up. "I was sent along to ensure we got the documents across the border no matter what happened, now this news changes many things but not our mission, if we can show it wasn't Carn that sent those ships we can prove the council did it and have our revenge. We have two choices, follow Glor's plan of arriving there as the messengers guards then try to slip across after nightfall, or we dispose of him to make sure we arrive before the news does so we can get across the border before they go into a lockdown." > You can't risk arriving at a fort and being trapped there as the war starts, you think the messenger has to be killed for your mission to be sucessful. Having decided by a vote to dispose of the messenger for the sake of the mission you all head to your bed-rolls and pretend to sleep. You wait until you hear the signal from one of the men and rise to find that the messenger already has his throat slit. You help them carry the body away from the road and hide it in some bushes, it isn't the best disposal ever but it only needs to last a day so you can get safely ahead. You clear up any evidence you can see then all mount up and start riding towards Carn. What you did weighs on your conscience but you think that it was the only way so you push ahead. The next few days are just made up of riding and very short breaks for eating and sleeping. You make it close to the border in great time and camp within half a days ride from the border forts so you can all rest and look presentable when you arrive. You fall asleep hoping that you have arrived ahead of the news and that you can get across safely. Yu think briefly of Amelia and what she may think of your choices so far but decide that she would also do everything it takes to stop the war. Pacified by that thought you fall asleep. > The Border Forts You all make sure your uniforms are clean and papers in order before you approach the fort, You expect to find some paroles but are amazed at the sheer amount of them and all the activity that is taking place. You have your papers checked five times before you even reach the gate where You finally get to ask what is going on as your let into the fort. The guard explains that a messenger arrived the evening before from the coastal road, he had ridden from the city almost non-stop for days, swapping horses whenever he could. He had brought news that The Old Quarter had been attack and was burning and war was about to start. You all look stunned by what he said and he takes it to be shock at the news rather than the fact you had killed a messenger but were still beaten here. He lets you on through and your taken immediately to a small barracks where your given bunks and told that sadly the forts going into lockdown until everything settles down but that your welcome in all the normal areas like the mess hall. You all settle in "So it was for nothing then?" you ask aloud. "We had to do it, there was no way to know another messenger could beat us here by taking the coast road. Its all those bloody port outposts allowing him to change horses while we had to spare ours." one of the men replies. "Either way we need a new plan, I'm the only one who really knows about construction so we cant hang around to be tested, what do we do from here?" The men think for a bit and come up with several ideas but it is whittled down to two options. > You make a run for it that night while there is still confusion about who should be where. Having made your choice you all get your gear prepared and ensure the documents are well hidden. You made sure your gift from Amelia is in good order then you all wait. Night falls slowly and there is still a lot of people moving about when you leave the barracks. The food hall is nearer the border gate than your current position so you head there as cover first. You all grab some stew from a pot and taking some bread start to stroll around the fort as you eat. You pass several men fresh off duty doing the same thing so you don't raise many eyebrows. Once you near the gate you see that the small one man door in it only has a single guard. One of your men approaches him quietly then faster than the guard can react, he strikes him across the chin with the handle of his dagger. The guard falls unconscious and you all slip through the gate quickly, closing it behind you. You know the wall patrols wont take long to find the unconscious guard so you all start jogging as quietly as you can towards the border lines. You think you have made it when you hear the bells of the fort going off. "Thats it RUN!" you shout as you hear noise of men ahead of you. Your warning came too late and you all run right into a patrol squad as they turn to face you. You all draw weapons and attack. You feel several glancing sword blows hit you but Amelia's gift saves you from taking any major wounds until you and the only other survivor seem to break out the other side of the squad. Your about to run when you feel a blow to your leg and you stumble. Looking down you see a large gash across your calf and realize you can barely walk never mind run. You wave the other man on and turn to face the soldiers. At least one of you will get through with the documents you think as a spear stabs through your side. You think of Amelia as you collapse. > You ending? Sadly even if the other man makes it and stops the war you are still dead, no good ending for you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You all make sure your uniforms are clean and papers in order before you approach the fort, You expect to find some paroles but are amazed at the sheer amount of them and all the activity that is taking place. You have your papers checked five times before you even reach the gate where You finally get to ask what is going on as your let into the fort. The guard explains that a messenger arrived the evening before from the coastal road, he had ridden from the city almost non-stop for days, swapping horses whenever he could. He had brought news that The Old Quarter had been attack and was burning and war was about to start. You all look stunned by what he said and he takes it to be shock at the news rather than the fact you had killed a messenger but were still beaten here. He lets you on through and your taken immediately to a small barracks where your given bunks and told that sadly the forts going into lockdown until everything settles down but that your welcome in all the normal areas like the mess hall. You all settle in "So it was for nothing then?" you ask aloud. "We had to do it, there was no way to know another messenger could beat us here by taking the coast road. Its all those bloody port outposts allowing him to change horses while we had to spare ours." one of the men replies. "Either way we need a new plan, I'm the only one who really knows about construction so we cant hang around to be tested, what do we do from here?" The men think for a bit and come up with several ideas but it is whittled down to two options. > You wait for a few days untill the panic is over then slip across. You decide that security is too tight to make a go of it now so you all settle in to pretending to be good members of the Third Company. The others help out in small manual jobs that don't require skill and you offer services in some of the more complicated work. After three days of the light volunteer work you seem to be trusted by the men there and the initial panic seems to have settled down into a steady routine so you think it might be time to make your move. Messengers and runners keep arriving but you all pay them little heed now as you are concentrating on finding the best crossing point near the fort. Unfortunately one of the runners came on the main south road just like you and reports about the finding the body of the messenger you killed. Its put down to spies from Carn trying to prevent news getting to the borders so the fort immediately goes on high alert. If you had known it was your own choice in killing him that lead to the lockdown being started again you might have even found it a little funny. Sadly you didn't know any of this and only knew that the bells went off and everyone had to report to their bunks. No-one is told what is going on but the next morning you all see a small group of men with an unusual insignia arriving at the fort and heading straight into the commanders office. One of your companions informs you that these are from the 'intelligence' section and are very bad news. You cant risk them getting anywhere near you. > You cant risk them finding you, run for it, NOW! You nod to the men, "Right then we have to get out of here, take only what you can carry easily and pretend we are on patrol, as soon as we get near the lines we get across and run for it." You all get into your Army tunics and strap on weapons then head out towards the wall, your stopped a few times but explaining you have been drafted in for wall patrol because of the lockdown gets you through the fort and to the gates. You find you're in luck today as you know the man on gate duty, he is someone you have been working with so you greet him and take the time for a quick chat before asking to be let through so you can start your patrol. He pauses for a minute but your chat has put him off guard and he lets you through. You all start walking quickly towards the border line where the patrols are thinnest. Your beginning to think you pulled it off but suddenly hear a bell going off behind you and shouting starting up. "Run!" you shout and you all start sprinting for the border. Arrows start falling from the walls behind you and one of the men with you falls with a bolt sticking out of his side. he waves you on and your forced to leave him behind. You feel something hitting you in the shoulder and realize Amelia's chain just saved you. You whisper a quick thanks to her as you run. The arrows stop and you realize your out of range now. You really think your going to make it before you see a full squad forming up in front of you with pikes pointed in your direction. You are left with no choice but to charge them and hope you break through. You're mail saves you a couple more times and you cut down two men in front of you before a third gets a clean hit on you and runs his pike through your gut. You only think that you'll never see Amelia again before you die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide that security is too tight to make a go of it now so you all settle in to pretending to be good members of the Third Company. The others help out in small manual jobs that don't require skill and you offer services in some of the more complicated work. After three days of the light volunteer work you seem to be trusted by the men there and the initial panic seems to have settled down into a steady routine so you think it might be time to make your move. Messengers and runners keep arriving but you all pay them little heed now as you are concentrating on finding the best crossing point near the fort. Unfortunately one of the runners came on the main south road just like you and reports about the finding the body of the messenger you killed. Its put down to spies from Carn trying to prevent news getting to the borders so the fort immediately goes on high alert. If you had known it was your own choice in killing him that lead to the lockdown being started again you might have even found it a little funny. Sadly you didn't know any of this and only knew that the bells went off and everyone had to report to their bunks. No-one is told what is going on but the next morning you all see a small group of men with an unusual insignia arriving at the fort and heading straight into the commanders office. One of your companions informs you that these are from the 'intelligence' section and are very bad news. You cant risk them getting anywhere near you. > You they shouldnt have any idea about you and you have good paperwork, wait untill they leave. Waiting till night seems like a better idea so you all prepare your gear and make sure the documents are well hidden then wait. Sadly it is not long before two guards arrive and ask you to accompany them to the commanders office. You find the commander and the men from the intelligence squad waiting for you. They take your papers and look through them before speaking. "Now gentlemen we have been tasked with finding some spies from Carn who have killed one of our messengers on the road to this fort. Your paperwork is all in order but it appears you all joined the third company very recently and most importantly you were all seen accompanying the messenger on his way here. Then arrived alone. Can you explain this at all? One of your men speaks up "We rode with him for two days but he needed to make haste so he went on ahead of us, we just assumed he had arrived already." The man looks at you all for a short time before smiling "Well we shall soon see the truth of that." You are all grabbed from behind and lead down stairways until you are all in a large basement, some dividing screens are set up and tables with straps brought in. Realizing what is about to happen one of the men tries to run but is immediately run through by a guard. The Intelligence man tuts then says "hmm a waste of information there, ah well three is more than enough, lets begin." You are all strapped down and have some fluid poured down your throats before the screens are moved in to block you from seeing each other. You feel it taking affect and your muscles relax and refuse to respond, you become entirely paralyzed and unable to speak. The man comes to you first "Don't worry it will wear off after a few hours, and by then you'll be ready to talk." He is true to his word and tortures you solidly for three hours before you begin to be able to scream, he waits for you to stop before questioning you further. Once satisfied he turns to the guards. "I'll start on the others after a nice lunch, finish this one off and dump his body at the front, claim it was soldiers from Carn torturing him for information." You don't even have time to object before the guards run their spears through your chest.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Having gotten yourself to what you believe is a presentable state you knock on the owners door. He emerges and gives you a once over. "Well its not bad at all for a first try!" he smiles at you before fixing various parts of the suits that are hanging wrong and showing you how to put on cufflinks. "Well you wont ever pass for some highborn sop who lives in a mansion but I rather think that it makes you a better man for it. Now follow me, I'm sure my daughter has had enough time to change as well." Your lead back to the large room where all tables and chairs have seemingly vanished and a small string quartet has started playing soft music, a few couples are already dancing near them on the open floor. The owner leads you to the side of the room to a small drinks bar. "Ok its time I did my mingling and information gathering, the serious meeting shall begin in a few hours when most of the guests here are gone." He walks away towards a group of men smoking pipes before calling back "The music is just warming up, make sure you dance with at least one girl while your here!" You're no master on the dance floor but you know the basics and as long as the songs are slow you're sure you could keep up. The music gets louder and more people move to the dance floor when you see two things happening. The Owners daughter enters the room looking beautiful in a flowing red dress and is immediately approached by several men asking her to dance, and the woman who approached you earlier detaches herself from the group she was in and slowly heads your way. > The lady from before is beautiful, in a low cut blue dress and is clearly flirting with you in a way the Owner's daughter never did, meet her on the dancefloor. You see that the daughter is still surrounded by men talking to her so you head onto the dance floor and meet the lady in blue half way. "Have you come to ask me to dance?" she asks coyly "Of course my lady" you reply before taking her hand and beginning to dance. The next hour or so passes rather quickly as the Lady dances much closer to you that you know is appropriate and keeps you to herself for the whole time the music is going. You do see the owners daughter dancing with a few men but she doesn't seem too happy. You consider asking her for a dance too but she has entirely ignored you since the dancing started and your current partner isn't sharing you. Once the music and dancing has ended the Lady extracts herself from your arms with a little pout. "Sadly Glor this is where you have to go to a meeting and I have to head home, but I do promise I'll be seeing ALOT more of you soon." Left with the strong suspicion she would be taking you home with her if she could you head over to where you see the owner and his daughter talking to a small group. "Ah Glor just in time, we are all going to adjourn to a smaller room for some drinks and our little meeting." turning to his daughter he asks if she would like to join them but she says no and walks away without looking at you. The owner gives you and her a quick glance before muttering "Ah well." and leads you into the meeting room. > The Truth After everyone is seated the Owner addresses you "Now Glor I have explained a little of why we are here during our trip down from the mines. This family I have gathered together is for the purpose of getting the truth out and showing the king that he is being tricked. We have tried getting evidence straight to him but the rest of the council has him surrounded day and night and I cannot do anything for fear of being caught and this entire group being put in danger." "Which is why we are sending an expedition." one of the other men joins in. "I am a commander in the 3rd company and will be sending some men along with a relief detachment to the border. they will be carrying proof of everything that has been happening over the past two years. We have had to wait this long as gathering the evidence without raising suspicion has not been easy but it is done now and we must hurry as we think the council are preparing for something big using two captured Carn ships. You will be drafted into the 3rd under my orders and send along as well, it'll become your job to help get the proof to Carn." You think for a minute before answering. "Why are we sending the proof to Carn, why not get it to our king?" "We tried, many times we tried, most of the men were killed and the rest searched and all the documents they had destroyed so they couldn't risk saying anything without proof, that would just lead to us all being killed before we could prove anything." "so when does this expedition leave?" "It was going to be in over a month, but now that your here, the man you know as the Owner of the mine your were in has planned to make them leave in 1 week. Your group will be riding alone instead of with a relief detachment but the papers we provide you should get you there just fine." > A New Morning You spend the night in the large mansion and you wake thinking you don't think you slept anywhere so comfortable before in your life. You find fresh cloths and a note inviting you to breakfast in the solar at the end of your bed so you quickly get ready and head out of your door. You immediately realize that you are entirely lost and have no hope of finding the right room but are luckily saved by a butler who appears to materialize beside you arm. Once you have been guided to the solar for breakfast you are left with the owner and a table laden with food. "All from my own farms and holdings!" he says happily "Now dig in, we have a long day ahead and you have received this invitation, so you may have a busy evening too I'd imagine." You inquire about his daughter but he says she broke her fast earlier. You start on the food as you read the impeccably written invitation to dinner at Lady Bridleworth's manner house. Before you can even ask the owner tells you that its the lady you danced with the night before. Well you've never been invited to a dinner in a manner house before and she did seem very interested in you. You ask him if he could accept on your behalf and he gives a little nod to one of the footmen nearby who heads off with the invitation in hand. The rest of the day is spent around the house and its grounds, speaking about the mission and plans for the next few days but you are mostly thinking about the invitation you received, luckily the owner is lending you a suit for the occasion so at least you will look presentable. > The Dinner Meeting As evening fell you are sent from the Owners mansion in a small carriage. It only takes a few minutes to reach the destination, which is a house almost the same size as the owners. You are dropped off and head up to the gate a little unsure of the protocol but the gate keeper greets you first. "Master Glor, my Lady has been expecting you, if you head to the main doors the butler will show you in." Clearly someone has done some research on you if even their doorman knows you by sight but you think that this is what it must be like when living in high society so head on in. You are met by the butler who ushers you into the house and through a small maze of joining rooms. You are finally led into a room with a single round table in the centre and several chairs around it, only one is occupied and the lady is wearing an even more low-cut dress than the night before. She rises as you enter and you are about to greet her when she raises a hand to cut you off. "Sadly Glor I had many VERY enjoyable plans for you tonight, and having dinner was the least of them, but we heard this morning that that despicable little man had moved his plans forward to only a week away because of you." You are very confused by this but she continues. "You see, he is a member of the kings counsel, but unlike the rest he is trying to foil the plans to start a war. One which we have been preparing for years, we would decimate Carn and double our territory in a matter of weeks. Sadly I am currently not on the council even though the king knows my family and myself so I have had to take steps to correct this. I help remove the meddling pest and I claim his seat, a fair deal no?" "Wait.. But..." you stammer out "Oh I know sweetie and I AM sorry" She looks you over like a hungry man looks at a steak "We really could have had so much fun. But part of the deal was I hand you over to these gentlemen from the councils intelligence section so I must give you up." You feel your arms grabbed by men either side of you and are dragged through a sliding panel in the wall and down into a deep basement. You try and struggle, even as they strap you to the table. Sadly there are more of them than you and once they start injecting you the pain overwhelms everything. During your torture you tell them everything, you even try to make things up to please them but they always know you are doing it and they make the pain worse so eventually they know everything you do. Once they are finished they untie you and let you stand. They have done relatively little damage to your body, it was mostly your mind that suffered. You head for the door but are blocked by a large man "Sorry but I'm afraid you were found here under a collapsed ceiling after heading to fetch some wine for the lady." he gently pushes you back into the room then shuts and locks the door. You watch helpless as the closing door knocks one of the beams away above you and the roof caves in on your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You rise at first light again, and quickly cover your fire with dirt. You head onto the road and search carefully for any sign of other men passing but find none. You must still be ahead of them, but you don't know by how much. You set off North again keeping your eye on the hills and woods to your left looking for any sight of a camp entrance or track leading away from the road. After a few hours you come across a small track leading into the hills through a copse of trees and on into the bare foothills. Its a very small track and could easily just be an animal trail but you can never be sure as people are always loath to leave any large signs of a new mine until the have laid full claim to it and got a fair number of guards in place. You spend a few minutes trying to check for other clues but in the end cant decide if it was made by men turning off the road of just some animals. You could follow it further into the hills and check it out but it would be slow going and if it turned out not to be the mine it would loose you most of a days walking. > You push on North and look for a more promising turn off You decide that the trial is too small and too close to your previous mine to be the new mine turn off so you continue North at a reasonable pace. Through the day you pass a couple of even smaller trails but you decide they could be nothing but animal trails as they often pass under bushes and shrubs so you continue till nightfall. You can out into the trees again and have the last of your cooked hare meat. You fall asleep reasoning that if the mine is still ahead that you should pass it tomorrow. Morning arrives and you set off North again but as noon comes and goes and you start to pass into the evening you still see nothing. You start to feel like maybe you made the wrong choice but you push on till night fall and make camp again. In the morning light you take stock, you decide that you can head back and try the original trail, as long as your careful if you see the men approaching you on the road you can always double back North again. Or you can continue on and hope its still ahead of you. > You head back for the side trail Your turn back south and walk fast, always keeping an eye on the horizon for any signs of the men you passed but your see none. You push on at a reasonable pace till your forced to camp, in the morning you continue south keeping an eye out for the trail. You come across it by the evening but now you see a large beaten down trail and the marks of a lot of people passing very recently. Not only had the small group sent ahead got there first but since you had lost nearly 4 days going North then back the main group had also gotten their first by a few hours. You Sigh and head down the trail yourself knowing that you missed out on the chance of the good jobs.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide that the trial is too small and too close to your previous mine to be the new mine turn off so you continue North at a reasonable pace. Through the day you pass a couple of even smaller trails but you decide they could be nothing but animal trails as they often pass under bushes and shrubs so you continue till nightfall. You can out into the trees again and have the last of your cooked hare meat. You fall asleep reasoning that if the mine is still ahead that you should pass it tomorrow. Morning arrives and you set off North again but as noon comes and goes and you start to pass into the evening you still see nothing. You start to feel like maybe you made the wrong choice but you push on till night fall and make camp again. In the morning light you take stock, you decide that you can head back and try the original trail, as long as your careful if you see the men approaching you on the road you can always double back North again. Or you can continue on and hope its still ahead of you. > You carry on North You decide there isn't any point in going back so soon and head off North as a fast pace again, most of the day passes without signs of a trail. As evening falls you see clear signs of damaged undergrowth and a clear path off into the hills. It must be the mine! Glad you carried on North you strike off the road into the trail and head into the foothills loosing sight of the road behind you. You walk for an hour or two carefully following the trail further in when you see a man leaning against some trees beside the trail. He gives a small nod in your direction so you approach and ask if this is the entrance to the new mine. "New mine? Now where did you hear that?" You explain about your work on a mine further south and that you had heard rumors from your old Forman about a new mine opening in this area. He looks at you thoughtfully for a minute then says "Alright if your fresh from another mine job keep going on this track for a bit till you see a big man with a woodman's axe, his names Pug, tell him Clay sent you, He'll tell you whats going on and get you sorted out." Thanking Clay you set off again down the trail > You pug You walk for about half an hour until you see a huge man chopping some wood and stacking it into a cart, he pauses and leans on his axe while you approach. "Are you pug?" "That would be me, now who would be doing the asking all the way out here?" "Clay told me to come speak to you, I'm a miner looking for work. He said you'd be the one to get me sorted out and explain the work here" The big man laughed and said "right you are then, I'll be happy to explain it to ya". He waved the axe indicating the hill just behind him "Just over that rise is our camp, and even though I'm in charge I'm the only one that can ever be bothered to chop the wood for the fires, well I also enjoy it which is part of the reason I'm always the one here doing it but anyway you didn't come here for me to tell you about chopping wood. Were a small band here at the moment which makes it easier but sadly for you I wouldn't say were a mining camp" "Not a mining camp?" your not sure how to take the news that they aren't a mining camp but Pug seems nice enough and you'd be happy enough to do logging or hunting work too "So what work are you doing out here then?" Pug gives you a grin "Ah that would be banditry mostly, some robbery, looting and such like." Your trying to think up a reply to his statement when you feel the wind being knocked out of you, looking down you see a steel arrow head pointing out of your chest. You fall backwards away from the grinning Pug to see Clay and a couple of others holding loading crossbows walking towards your head. "Always nice when they come to you isn't it! This one said he just came off a job so should even have some good coin on him" You try to say something but can only gurgle a little before darkness closes your eyes<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide a night under the trees and a good chance of catching food are too good an opportunity to pass up so you head east into the trees till you're well away from the road. You set up a small camp and fire and set up snares out in the trees. Not long after darkness closed in you hear some noise in the direction of the road and go investigate. You caught a Hare! you quickly skin and gut it and are about to head back to the fire when you hear noise from further towards the road. You walk quietly closer to investigate and see a large group setting up camp on the roadside. You're about to leave the cover of the trees to go greet them when you over hear their leader telling a small group to go on ahead and prepare the mine camp. They are the workers sent to open the mine your looking for! You do a fast headcount and realize about 50 workers are camped there and many look experienced. You decide that they must be the main team sent up to get the mining started and realize that they will have enough skilled workers to fill most of the mining jobs there, but unskilled labor is nearly always welcome- if on a much lower pay. You think about it and you decide that you can either try to join up with them and risk the lower pay, or, you can try and beat the group sent on ahead and try and secure a better job at the mine site before word reaches them of their workers being so close. > You approach the foreman for a job You sling your hare through a belt loop and walk out of the trees towards the foreman's fire. He watches you approach with obvious interest, glancing at the hare tied to your belt. You hail him and ask if you might make use of his fire to cook your hare, you would of course be willing to trade some for a mug of the ale the man was drinking if he was interested. The man laughs and agrees, you finish preparing the hare and start cooking it. Once its starts the cook through you sit down beside the foreman to see about getting a job. > The new foreman "Where are they off to so late at night?" you ask indicating the group vanishing into the night up the road as he trades you a full mug of ale for a chunk of meat off the fire "They're the mine guards that marched up from the city with us, I sent them on ahead to give the news that we are almost there and to make the camp safe and ready for when we arrive". You carefully start inquiring about jobs at the mine but he sadly informs you that they have all the trained hands that they need with them already but that you'd be welcome as unskilled labor, the pay would be much lower but that's all he could offer. You realize with the guards sent ahead already that you wont be able to reach the camp before them so your left with the choice of joining them for much lower pay or heading back south to the city after all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn Northward up the road thinking that the rumors of a new mine are too good an opportunity to pass up, and hey, even if it's false you don't mind spending an extra week or two on the road. You pull out some of your dried meat and start eating as you walk, thinking you should probably set some traps and snares when you make camp that night to stock up some fresh meat. You spend an uneventful day walking North and see no other travellers. An hour or so before dusk you start looking for a place to camp. You can camp on the roadside, head into the trees to the east for cover while you sleep or walk an hour or so to the foothills west and hope for a spring or cave. > You might be a traverler along the road, camp beside it You decide it would be best to just set up camp beside the road and see if any other travelers come along during the night. You go a few feet east of the road to a nice looking oak tree and start setting up a camp for yourself as theres still some time till night sets. You Set a few snares further into the trees and build a nice fire for yourself then settle down for a while. Just as darkness arrives you hear some noise in the trees, one of your snares has caught a hare! Gathering in the other snares you quickly skin and prepare the hare then set it cooking on the fire- its worth staying up an hour or two for some good hot food. The hare eventually starts to cook nicely and you've just pulled its leg off to start eating when you hear some noise coming up the road. You keep eating as you watch a large group coming towards you. They slow as they reach the fire and the one in the lead walks over to you. "Hail stranger, mind if we set up camp with you for the night? I could even trade some ale for a little of that hare if your interested?" You haven't had ale in a week or two now so you readily agree and watch the group start to build a couple more fires and set out their sleeping rolls. The man who had talked to you first sends a few of the group off North up the road then joins you by the fire with a small ale keg under one arm.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have just run your sword through the last of the 6 bandits when you hear a cry for help. You jog over to a large chest. Upon opening it, you find a beautiful girl locked in with a rather large amount of gold. "You must be Amelia" you say, as you boldly lift her from the chest. "I am!" she replies breathlessly, "You must have gotten my hidden message! Thank you for rescuing me. The way you challenged all the bandits to a sword fight at the same time was so very heroic!" You lean closer.... You wake up and take in your surroundings, holding a tiny hope that one of your dreams had been reality and not just fantasy. But all you see is your one room hut, mostly empty and worn down. "Last night it was a dream about escaping from an amazing tower of riddles ruled by an evil magician and today it's a hero rescuing princesses... I must be losing it." You get out of bed, get dressed and take stock. One bed, a desk with your open pack and a chair by the cooking fire are all the furniture in the room. You slowly re-fill your pack with your cloths and hunting gear. The fire went out during the night leaving the room dank and chilled so, realizing you had no reason left to hang around, you stuff your sleeping sheet into you pack, sling it over your shoulders and head to the door. Looking out you see the dirt streets and hastily built shacks of the work camp you've been living in the past few months. Do you: > You put off speaking to your boss and go back in for a last look around Your boss will be busy shouting orders at people anyway so talking to him can wait. You turn back inside and have a good look around for anything you might have missed. You rummage under the bed and behind the desk, you even check the pot over the fire for any scraps. But all you find is an old, completely rotted apple under the bed which smells so bad you chuck it into the coal embers as soon as you pick it up. Sighing, you admit that your already carrying everything you own and head out the door to speak to the foreman of the camp. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You survey the battlefield that you’ve created. All sides have been at war for a long time, and also evenly matched. Who will win? It will all be decided on tonight. “Hey! Its time to go to bed!” you Mom says coming into your room. Or at least it would be, if you didn’t have to go to bed! “Aw Mom! I was just about to do something!” you protest. “Well you can do something tomorrow, right now its bedtime, you know the rules. But before you do remember to brush your teeth and put these toys away.” “But…but can’t I leave them out? I got everything set up and like everything! The final battle for the universe is going to take place!” Your Mom surveys everything you’ve set up. You have a myriad of unusual toys and figures standing next to each other. You have plastic knights standing next to space men defending a castle made of blocks on one side while across from them has a combination of green army guys in vehicles and some metal robots. And yet on the far side of your room is another army set up consisting of dinosaurs and some other monsters. She just smiles at your creativeness. “Very well, it looks like you went to a lot of trouble, so okay. You certainly do have a vivid imagination to come up with some of the games you do.” Happily you go brush your teeth, and think about the battle that’s going to take place tomorrow! General Razor will try to storm the castle and Lord Justice will defend it! And then the Dino Demons will try to destroy everything! It’s going to be so cool! After brushing your teeth, you head back to your room where you carefully step around the figures you’ve set up with care and get into bed. Of course as usual, you don’t fall asleep right away; you read a couple pages of your favorite comic book first. Man you wish real life wasn’t as boring as it is. There’s no magic, no super heroes, no giant robots, no nothing! You often wished you lived in a world with all of those things. You turn off the lights in your room when your Mom checks on you again and demands you go to sleep. You’re still a little to wound up to fall asleep though, so you just lie in your bed thinking how tomorrow’s battle is going to play out. Of course one bad thing about having an overactive imagination is letting it run away with you. Your room is dark, with only the dim moonlight shining in and creating creepy shadows on your walls. You begin to think the shadows are moving, begin to get a little scared and hide under the covers. Then you think back to something your mom told you the last time you got scared like this: “Monsters aren’t real. Nothing like that exists in this world.” Of course she’s right, after all you just thought the world you lived in was boring by not having those types of things in it. You slowly peer out from under your covers, but unfortunately this isn’t the work of your imagination. These shadows ARE moving and now they’re right by the side of your bed. Red dots form their eyes and a bluish light form their grinning maws. Before you can cry out, one of them puts its hand over your mouth and puts its other hand to its own with its index finger to its lips. (Or rather where its lips would be if it had any) “Shhhhhhh, the master wants to see you…there will be plenty of time to cry then, little one. Open up the portal.” The shadow says Suddenly a purple portal opens up where your closet is, and two of the shadow creatures grab and carry you into it. The shadows run around you as you’re carried down the green tunnel which the portal has lead into. They excitedly talk about how their master will be pleased for getting you. Of course all you’re doing right now is panicking, and you start to struggle to get away, surprisingly, you manage to break free of their grip and start trying to run back to where they entered this thing. “Get him! He’s trying to run away!” “Do it quickly before the portal starts collapsing!” As you hear the shadows giving orders to each other, the portal tunnel that you’re in is indeed starting to flash and blink a lot, when you look down at your running feet, the purple light “supporting” you disappears every now and then revealing only blackness. You can see your room just up ahead and you ALMOST reach it, before the green tunnel disappears completely. You yell and scream about how you wish you back home as you fall through the endless void, and while that doesn’t happen, you do suddenly appear someplace else… You land roughly, scraping your legs and knees and getting your pajamas all dusty. After brushing yourself off and rubbing your hurting legs, you get a better look at your surroundings. You’re in what looks to be the middle of nowhere, though there is a small group of rickety looking houses nearby, probably a small village. One thing is for certain, you know you aren’t on Earth, because, a small multi-colored lizard like creature with three eyes scurries by your feet and into the wilderness beyond. You’re still scared, but also fascinated by this place; however, you realize you need to figure out how to get back home and what exactly is going on. > You head to the village Upon entering you see many of the villagers just sitting outside their houses doing nothing, though a couple of them are lazily plucking some sort of stringed instruments. They barely pay any attention to you at all. You know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers, but in this situation you don’t really feel like you have a choice, so you ask one of them for help. “Hey, I need some help, these shadow things attacked me…” “Wazzat? Shadows? Shadows don’t come ‘round here boy, we’s got ourselves a wizard to protect us! If you got shadow problems, maybe you should talk to him. He’s a pretty smart guy. He’s in that nice lookin’ house over there, the one with the roof! Careful though, he’s usually in a bad mood. Argues with his wife constantly too.” The fat villager says going back to drinking whatever it is he’s drinking. Not knowing what else to do you head over to the wizard’s house. As you approach you can hear arguing from the inside. You knock on the door which is opened by a young woman dressed in a waitress like outfit. She’s pretty, but looks very tired, behind her appears an older man who doesn’t look much like a wizard at all. “Whadda you want kid? We ain’t buyin’ anything!” he scowls. “Are you really a wizard? You don’t look like one.” You remark. “That’s because he isn’t a real wizard. He’s a lazy charlatan!” the woman answers. “Shut up Talia, I was good enough to get YOU.” “Yeah, that’s because I was too young and naïve to know any better! I knew I should’ve married a knight!” “Hah! And what knight would marry a serving wench like you?” “Melcar, I don’t have time for your nonsense today, I have to go to work. Can you at least TRY to do something productive while I’m gone, like casting some cantrips to cut down the overgrowth in the backyard? Sheesh, I think I saw a nest of Furms making their homes in there and you know much I hate those little purple things! They infest everything and then you can’t get rid of them! So can you DO that one thing, if nothing else?” “Yeah, yeah.” The woman throws her hands up in dismay and leaves the house, leaving Melcar and you alone. “So, what’s your deal kid? I know you ain’t from this backwoods village because I know everyone here and you actually look like you bathe every once in awhile. You lost or something?” You explain your situation to Melcar, somehow he doesn’t look surprised, but he does look a little more interested in you. “Hmm, sounds like the Nightmare Tyrant. He has a habit of snatching people from other dimensions and draining them to harness his power. Those shadows you encountered are what’s left of his victims. I’m not entirely sure of his methods for choosing, but I do know he only takes those with strong imaginations though. It’s probably why he prefers children since they tend to be more inclined to think up fantastic things.” You were lucky to escape from him.” “Well how do I get back home?” Melcar looks at you a moment before replying. “You interested in doing a little yard work?” “Uh…” “I’m really busy with an experiment, and I just don’t have time to mess around with clearing the overgrowth in my backyard. If you do it, I think that’ll give me time to complete my experiment, as well as giving me time to look up the spell that can take you back home.” “Well okay…” “Good, there’s a scythe in the back. You shouldn’t have too much trouble.” Melcar closes his door and you walk around the back, which literally looks like a jungle. The grass is almost as high as you are and the scythe is a little too unwieldy and large for you to use properly. Soon tiny purple people appear and angrily throw small stones at you and squeak some sort of jibberish. They apparently don’t like you trying to tear up their home. You don’t see how you’re ever going to finish this task. > You try to scare away the purple people You try to scare the little purple people much like you’ve ran after pigeons in the park, however the purple folks won’t be chased away so easily, this is their home after all, they just nimbly get out of your way and continue to pelt you with stones, which are really starting to hurt at this point, and a particularly large stone smacks you in the head knocking you out. When you wake up you’re nowhere near the Wizard’s house anymore, in fact you’re quite a ways outside of the village! The purple people must’ve dragged you here. As you groggily get up, you wish that someone would help you. Just then a shadow looms over you, at first you get scared again, but fortunately this one is attached to someone. You look up and see a woman dressed in leather armor, she carries a bow on her back and a sword by her side. She gives you a serious look while she grabs your hand to pick you up. You notice she has pointy ears. “Boy, what’re you doing out here? Don’t you know it can be dangerous out here? Do you live in that village?” she asks. “No, I was trying to look for help there. There was a wizard who said he could help me get back home if…” “Wizard? There wasn’t any strong magic activity detected around here boy. Where are you from?” You explain your story, as the woman listens intently. Much like the wizard you ran into earlier, she doesn’t seem surprised. “Mm, yes you are a lucky boy indeed to escape from the Nightmare Tyrant, most never even have a chance. I think you better come with me, my name’s Lyssia” “But the wizard…” “Trust me, you’ll be safer with me, than that so called wizard you mentioned. Sounded like a hedge wizard that was just getting you to do some grunt work that he didn’t want to do. He couldn’t help you against the shadows, let alone get you back home. I might be able to though, well the Captain might anyway. We’ll head back to my platoon’s camp.” You feel somewhat safer with Lyssia, not to mention she seems like she’s more readily going to help you, so you follow her. Eventually you arrive at a fairly large camp with armored knights, horses, and tents. Most of them look like they’ve been doing a lot of fighting recently and are still recovering from their wounds. When you enter the Captain’s tent, you see him looking over some maps before he looks up at you. He’s a man of average build, but his weathered and tired face shows the signs of having been in battle several times. His armor displays likewise. “Lyssia, you better have a good reason for why you’re bringing this boy into my presence. This is a mobile military unit; you know we can’t be coddling civilians, let alone children.” Lyssia explains the situation and the Captain’s attitude towards you changes to a more sympathetic one. “Escaping from the Nightmare Tyrant’s minions is no small feat, especially for one unprepared for such an encounter. The terror they radiate is normally enough to paralyze most with fear. You’re obviously not a battle hardened soldier to such horrors, and there’s no evidence of any magic about you. You must have an innate strong will, boy. Which is good since you’ll most likely have to deal with them again.” He says grimly. “Again?!” you exclaim. “Yes, unfortunately the Nightmare Tyrant isn’t fond of losing those he marks for capture. He has no doubt sent his Shadow minions to look for you. Fortunately you have us to help you now. We are a recon team for the Parran Empire, we’ve been fighting the Nightmare Tyrant for years, trying to find a weakness with little success. Though after some searching we think there may be a powerful weapon that can help us. It’s in some ruins a few days from here, or should be. One can never know for certain with old legends. Now, I have a duty to defend innocents from evil, but I also have a duty to the Empire. I simply cannot take this team all the way back to the Empire just to drop you off there where our wizards can send you back home, I have a mission to complete first. You can either stay with us and then after the mission we shall all go back together, or I shall send a couple of my men with you back to the Empire. Keep in mind the Shadows are probably looking for you and they tend to hunt in swarms, so the more people defending you, the better.” You really want to go back home, but you’re a little worried about not having all the protection you can. “Well can’t Lyssia go with me?” you ask hopefully. Lyssia smiles a bit at your request, but the Captain shakes his head. “Sadly no. While I can certainly understand and admire your judgment of wanting her to go with you, I cannot allow her to do so, as my mission will undoubtedly require her skills. As I said, I will send to two of my men, but that is all I can spare if you decide to head back to the Empire.” > You head back to the Empire The sooner you’re out of this place the better, so you request to be escorted back to the Empire where their wizards can send you back home. “Very well, I’ll send Paladins Salzat and Lakri with you, along with an official letter explaining your situation. Good luck and may you return home without any ill-fated encounters.” The Captain says handing you the letter for safe keeping. You are presented to Salzat and Lakri who are explained their mission. Salzat doesn’t look pleased; in fact he gets angry and exclaims his skills would be better put to use fighting the Nightmare Tyrant and other evil creatures, not looking after a child. Lakri on the other hand looks relieved. After the Captain shouts him down and tells him to obey orders, Salzat grumbles and gets on his horse. Lyssia puts you on your own horse, you’ve never ridden one before, but she assures you that these are the best trained horses in the Empire and will serve you well. You’re told you should reach the Empire in a few days. Soon you’re off with your new travel companions They couldn’t be more opposite. Salzat is a mean looking man with scars all over his face who barely speaks to you, but his armor is impeccably clean and well taken care of. It even has a shine to it, almost as if it was brand new. (He doesn’t seem to wear a helmet though, perhaps that might explain all the scars) Lakri on the other hand is much kinder and talkative to you. His armor looks like its seen better days though. It’s metal that looks hastily welded together, badly dented and even showing signs of rust! Unlike Salzat his suit of armor has a full face helmet which he’s wearing right now and Salzat has chosen to taunt him about. “Lakri, why are you wearing that thing? We aren’t even going into battle you coward! I swear I don’t know how any of you can see in those things anyway. I need to be able to swivel my head as quick as possible so I can see the next enemy I have to slay!” “Leave me alone Salzat! I like to make sure I’m protected! I don’t want to end up all scarred and ugly like you! I intend on getting married one day!” Lakri sputters. “Feh! I don’t need to look pretty; my DEEDS will win the hearts of damsels!” “How did you guys become Paladins?” you ask. Surprisingly Salzat answers your question right away. “Well unlike Lakri here, I didn’t have royal family connections. I worked my way up through the ranks and went through special training so that I could become a weapon against evil and serve the Empire. If I could wipe out all the evil in this world myself, I would not hesitate to do so. There is no greater deed than to serve the cause of good and righteousness and right now my talents are going to waste escorting you!” “Yes, well I for one am glad for the break from battle. This is a nice change of pace than fighting trolls, shadows and other such nastiness. I wasn’t really looking forward to going to those ruins the Captain mentioned either. Sounded dangerous.” Lakri says. “Yeah, well we know you’re a coward anyway, and a disgrace to the Paladin name.” “I’m not a coward! I…just want to live alright? I mean is it so wrong that I prefer my life to not be at risk every five minutes?” “Why did you become a Paladin, if you don’t like to fight?” you ask. “Oh, that’s a long story…let’s just say my Dad wanted me to.” “But you’re a grown up, shouldn’t you just be able to do what you want now?” “Ha ha! You think just because one grows up, you aren’t subjected to being told what to do by your parents? Guess again. Ah well, perhaps you have less demanding parents. You must certainly like them, if you wanted to get home so quickly to see them again.” Before you can answer, Salzat suddenly looks up in the sky and draws his sword. “Shut up! I sense something…” Suddenly the sky grows considerably darker within only a few seconds and screeching can be heard from above. Dark winged creatures begin to descend from the sky “SHADOWS!” Lakri shouts. “Alright! And here I thought I wasn’t going to get to vanquish evil today! Come on and be destroyed foul creatures!” Salzat laughs. At this point Lakri and Salzat show their differences again. Lakri panics to the point that he fumbles and drops his weapon before yelling that you all should make haste to escape. Salzat on the other hand turns to face the winged Shadows. You don’t see how he can possibly fight them all himself though. > You follow Lakri You’re in no position to fight a bunch of flying Shadows, you’re not armed with anything, and nowhere near being a warrior. You take you horse in the direction that Lakri headed, leaving Salzat behind to fight the Shadows, though you aren’t safe yet as a few of them are still in pursuit of you. “That’s the one the Master wants! The little one! Get him! Get him!” you hear raspy voices shout behind you. Soon your horse has almost caught up to Lakri’s. Lakri seems to have forgotten that he’s supposed to be DEFENDING you! “Hey! Aren’t you supposed to be protecting me?” you shout at him, while briefly looking behind you to see how close the Shadows are. “I…I’m sorry…I just…ARGH! Shadows! Gotta get away! Don’t follow me, they’re after you!” Lakri must be so frightened for his own life that he’s gone half mad! Seeing that he’s not going to lose you, he ends up jumping off of his horse and running off into the wilderness in an effort to ditch the Shadows. It works for him since they were never after him and they continue to follow you and are starting to close in… Soon one is close enough to grab at you, in an attempt to rip you from the back of the horse. > You attempt to punch at the Shadow With your free hand you attempt to punch the flying Shadow, but unfortunately it deftly dodges your attack and you unbalance yourself causing you to fall off the horse. You don’t land on the ground though since the flying Shadows swoop in to catch you before that happens. Of course now you’re in their evil clutches. They laugh and cackle with glee as they take you back to the Nightmare Tyrant.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re in no position to fight a bunch of flying Shadows, you’re not armed with anything, and nowhere near being a warrior. You take you horse in the direction that Lakri headed, leaving Salzat behind to fight the Shadows, though you aren’t safe yet as a few of them are still in pursuit of you. “That’s the one the Master wants! The little one! Get him! Get him!” you hear raspy voices shout behind you. Soon your horse has almost caught up to Lakri’s. Lakri seems to have forgotten that he’s supposed to be DEFENDING you! “Hey! Aren’t you supposed to be protecting me?” you shout at him, while briefly looking behind you to see how close the Shadows are. “I…I’m sorry…I just…ARGH! Shadows! Gotta get away! Don’t follow me, they’re after you!” Lakri must be so frightened for his own life that he’s gone half mad! Seeing that he’s not going to lose you, he ends up jumping off of his horse and running off into the wilderness in an effort to ditch the Shadows. It works for him since they were never after him and they continue to follow you and are starting to close in… Soon one is close enough to grab at you, in an attempt to rip you from the back of the horse. > You hold on tight to the reins You pulls away from the Shadow and hold on as tight as you can, hoping that somehow the horse can outrun these creatures, or at least hoping that someone can help you. No sooner have you thought this, when suddenly you hear a sizzling sound followed by an ear piecing screech from above. The Shadow trying to rip you from the horse has been struck down by some sort of bolt of lightning. Soon another Shadow is destroyed in the same way “Cursed Shadows! Just hold on to the reins boy and keep moving! There’s a town up ahead where you’ll be safe!” you hear someone yell at you. You notice some trees and rocks along side of the road, but no people. Whoever it is helping you must be well hidden. Eventually all the Shadows following you have been destroyed by bolts and you make it into the town, though you aren’t sure of what to do or go next, but for now you’re just glad to be alive. (Your horse has even clamed down a bit) While you just temporarily rest on top of your horse, you hear the voice of the person who helped you again. “Ah there you are, glad to see you’re alright. What’s a boy like you traveling by himself in these dangerous times anyway? The wretched Nightmare Tyrant’s minions seem to be everywhere nowadays.” The one who’s helped you looks like a little different from what you expected, this man looks more like a warrior, but not like the knights you encountered earlier. More like a barbarian type. He’s bristling with muscles and has a large axe carried on his back. “You don’t look like a Wizard.” You say. “Of course I don’t, because I’m not.” “I thought only Wizards could cast spells.” “Oh that lightning bolts back there? That’s thanks to this magic ring I found a long time ago. Though I think it’s out of charges, it’s useless except maybe to trade with now. Here, why don’t you take it.” He says giving you the ring. “Thanks. I’m supposed to be heading to the Parran Empire to get back home.” “You live in the Parran Empire?” “No, but they’re supposed to have Wizards there who can help me get back home.” You go into detail about your adventures to the barbarian; he seems a lot more surprised by your tale than the rest you’ve told have. “That’s some tale boy, though I have no reason to disbelieve you, given the things I’ve seen since my own travels as well as the things I have heard about the Nightmare Tyrant. His darkness has even reached my old homeland far north, though my people tend to be nomadic and the land doesn’t really contain anything of major importance. We had more problems with the usual menaces of giants and trolls more than anything else.” “How come you’re so far from home?” “Well as I said, my people are nomadic in nature, and I guess I’m even more so. I wanted to see other places outside of my homeland, so I traveled south to where civilization tends to thrive. I’ll most likely return one day.” Before you continue this conversation, you have just realized you don’t really know the route to get to the Empire. The Paladins were supposed to lead you there and now both of them are gone. You don’t know who else to ask, you’re all by yourself again and this barbarian did help you, so you give it a shot… “Hey, um…could you help me get to Empire? I don’t exactly know the way.” “Me? Well, I’m not sure I’m the best person to ask, seeing as I’ve never been there either, though I’m sure that wouldn’t be too much of a problem, all I need is a few directions from someone and I could probably get there quickly…sure why not? As I said, I’ve never been to the Parran Empire lands so it wouldn’t really be a wasted trip for me, but we probably should find a room somewhere first. Also I’ll need to ask for directions. My name’s Qualan by the way.” Qualan rents a room for the pair of you, but he doesn’t stay, instead he says he’s going to go ask for directions and explore the town a bit, and for you to just stay in the room and not to open it for anybody. He has the key, so he can let himself in. Soon you’re alone again in a relatively barren room. It’s pretty boring in here, but you try to keep yourself occupied, namely by thinking of all the people and places you’ve encountered since you’ve been here. In fact this is the first time you’ve actually got the chance to reflect on this little adventure. You also wonder about your Mom, she’s going to be worried about you and probably have the police looking all over for you! And when you finally do return, what will you tell her? You don’t know, but what you do know for certain is that you DO want to get home as soon as possible. You find this place very fascinating, but the Shadows and the Nightmare Tyrant who’s taken an interest in you is something you can do without. You just wish you had something that you could fight them off with… No sooner does that pass through your mind when you notice something glowing under one of the beds. You cautiously check underneath it, and find a short sword. It faintly glows with a white light for a moment longer and then fades back to its normal color. After “playing” with the sword for a bit, you suddenly realize that you created the sword, or you at least made it appear. In fact you’ve caused quite a few things to occur just by “thinking”. It seems like every time you “wished” for help, it suddenly arrived. Maybe you have magical powers here or something similar, this all can’t be a coincidence. > You wish to be back home If you knew that it was a simple wish that could get you home, you would’ve done it a long time ago! You begin to think really hard about going back home. You close your eyes and try to visualize it. For a moment you think you’re succeeding, but suddenly all you begin to see is a black void and Shadow creatures. Something terribly wrong is happening. You really know it when you open your eyes and see nothing but darkness and you are being held down on some sort of smooth cold surface by Shadows and you no longer have your sword. A sinister voice emanates from the darkness and you’re completely paralyzed with fear. “Ah, yes I knew it would only be a matter of time before you tried that to get home. Fortunately I made plans ahead of time to prevent that from occurring. Of course, in a way you ARE home. Your new one anyway. Soon you’ll be one of us… after a few alterations of course.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You pulls away from the Shadow and hold on as tight as you can, hoping that somehow the horse can outrun these creatures, or at least hoping that someone can help you. No sooner have you thought this, when suddenly you hear a sizzling sound followed by an ear piecing screech from above. The Shadow trying to rip you from the horse has been struck down by some sort of bolt of lightning. Soon another Shadow is destroyed in the same way “Cursed Shadows! Just hold on to the reins boy and keep moving! There’s a town up ahead where you’ll be safe!” you hear someone yell at you. You notice some trees and rocks along side of the road, but no people. Whoever it is helping you must be well hidden. Eventually all the Shadows following you have been destroyed by bolts and you make it into the town, though you aren’t sure of what to do or go next, but for now you’re just glad to be alive. (Your horse has even clamed down a bit) While you just temporarily rest on top of your horse, you hear the voice of the person who helped you again. “Ah there you are, glad to see you’re alright. What’s a boy like you traveling by himself in these dangerous times anyway? The wretched Nightmare Tyrant’s minions seem to be everywhere nowadays.” The one who’s helped you looks like a little different from what you expected, this man looks more like a warrior, but not like the knights you encountered earlier. More like a barbarian type. He’s bristling with muscles and has a large axe carried on his back. “You don’t look like a Wizard.” You say. “Of course I don’t, because I’m not.” “I thought only Wizards could cast spells.” “Oh that lightning bolts back there? That’s thanks to this magic ring I found a long time ago. Though I think it’s out of charges, it’s useless except maybe to trade with now. Here, why don’t you take it.” He says giving you the ring. “Thanks. I’m supposed to be heading to the Parran Empire to get back home.” “You live in the Parran Empire?” “No, but they’re supposed to have Wizards there who can help me get back home.” You go into detail about your adventures to the barbarian; he seems a lot more surprised by your tale than the rest you’ve told have. “That’s some tale boy, though I have no reason to disbelieve you, given the things I’ve seen since my own travels as well as the things I have heard about the Nightmare Tyrant. His darkness has even reached my old homeland far north, though my people tend to be nomadic and the land doesn’t really contain anything of major importance. We had more problems with the usual menaces of giants and trolls more than anything else.” “How come you’re so far from home?” “Well as I said, my people are nomadic in nature, and I guess I’m even more so. I wanted to see other places outside of my homeland, so I traveled south to where civilization tends to thrive. I’ll most likely return one day.” Before you continue this conversation, you have just realized you don’t really know the route to get to the Empire. The Paladins were supposed to lead you there and now both of them are gone. You don’t know who else to ask, you’re all by yourself again and this barbarian did help you, so you give it a shot… “Hey, um…could you help me get to Empire? I don’t exactly know the way.” “Me? Well, I’m not sure I’m the best person to ask, seeing as I’ve never been there either, though I’m sure that wouldn’t be too much of a problem, all I need is a few directions from someone and I could probably get there quickly…sure why not? As I said, I’ve never been to the Parran Empire lands so it wouldn’t really be a wasted trip for me, but we probably should find a room somewhere first. Also I’ll need to ask for directions. My name’s Qualan by the way.” Qualan rents a room for the pair of you, but he doesn’t stay, instead he says he’s going to go ask for directions and explore the town a bit, and for you to just stay in the room and not to open it for anybody. He has the key, so he can let himself in. Soon you’re alone again in a relatively barren room. It’s pretty boring in here, but you try to keep yourself occupied, namely by thinking of all the people and places you’ve encountered since you’ve been here. In fact this is the first time you’ve actually got the chance to reflect on this little adventure. You also wonder about your Mom, she’s going to be worried about you and probably have the police looking all over for you! And when you finally do return, what will you tell her? You don’t know, but what you do know for certain is that you DO want to get home as soon as possible. You find this place very fascinating, but the Shadows and the Nightmare Tyrant who’s taken an interest in you is something you can do without. You just wish you had something that you could fight them off with… No sooner does that pass through your mind when you notice something glowing under one of the beds. You cautiously check underneath it, and find a short sword. It faintly glows with a white light for a moment longer and then fades back to its normal color. After “playing” with the sword for a bit, you suddenly realize that you created the sword, or you at least made it appear. In fact you’ve caused quite a few things to occur just by “thinking”. It seems like every time you “wished” for help, it suddenly arrived. Maybe you have magical powers here or something similar, this all can’t be a coincidence. > You don't wish Something instinctively tells you that “It’s not going to be that easy.” You remember back when the Shadows first tried to take you, you wished you were back home and it didn’t happen, you ended up in the middle of nowhere. There’s no telling where you might end up if you tried it again. So far “little wishes” have worked for you, so you’re going to stick with the current plan of getting the Empire wizards to send you home and use your “powers” only when necessary. You eventually fall asleep with your new sword by your side, you’re awakened by Qualan in the morning. “Hey, get up boy let’s get going… where’d you get that sword from?” “Huh? Oh…well uh I found it under the bed.” “Sheesh, I know I’ve forgotten a few things in my travels, but never a weapon. That’s just unthinkable. You probably should have a sword anyway, I’m not sure how it is where you’re from, but a boy your age would definitely be somewhat familiar with a weapon of some sort by now in my tribe.” “Where were you?” “I told you, I was getting directions to the Parran Empire, and exploring the town a bit…well okay I was exploring the tavern, in fact I eventually explored the floor of it. Oh well at least nothing was stolen, not that I have anything left after spending it all at the tavern…hey you still have that silver ring? I think I might need to trade for a horse. I can’t be accompanying you efficiently if I’m not on horseback as well.” After giving Qualan the ring back, and uses it to buy a broken down nag, you and he are on your way again. You and he talk during your uneventful travel; he’s very fascinated with your world as you are with all the adventures he’s been on. Soon you come to a split in the path. You ask which way to go. “Well, both of these paths will eventually lead to the Empire, but one of them is a lot quicker. There’s a catch though, back in town I was told the quicker path is currently under complete control of a vicious goblin tribe. Apparently they’re attacking anyone that goes through there. I heard The Empire was supposed to send in some soldiers to take care of the problem, but the Nightmare Tyrant is a more immediate and dangerous threat and as such they’re concentrating their efforts on him instead. The second path is supposed to be safe and clear, but it’ll take longer. We’ll probably have to make a camp somewhere, before we even reach the Empire. “Let’s take the safer route.” You say. “Alright, but keep alert anyway, just because I heard it was safe doesn’t necessarily mean it is.” You and Qualan travel further with no unexpected encounters. When it begins to get dark you half expect Shadows to come attacking you out of the sky again, but this is a natural darkness, night is merely falling. Qualan suggests that you should make camp and you do so. You and he eat the provisions he bought from town. He comments on how bad they are and next time he’s just going to stick to hunting in the wilderness for food next time. You’ve never slept outside before, so like most things in this adventure it’s a brand new experience for you. One that makes you really wonder why some of the kids at school have said they like camping so much. You’re definitely a city boy! After trying to get comfortable several times and not worry about bugs crawling on you, you fall asleep, but not for long. A noise awakens you and Qualan. The horses seem agitated as well. “Qualan?” “Shhh! I heard it too…be prepared for anything.” He says standing up and readying his axe. Soon a large figure lurches out from the darkness. It’s another Shadow, but not like any of the ones you’ve encountered before, this one is bigger for one thing, almost as if its armored and for another it looks vaguely familiar. The black figure is hard enough to make out by the campfire, but when it speaks you know immediately who it is. “At last I’ve found you boy.” “Salzat?” “You know this…thing?” Qualan asks getting ready to attack. “Briefly, he used to be one of the Paladins sent with me to take me back to the Empire.” You reply backing away. “And I still have to waste my time escorting you around!” Salzat hisses. “Come boy, my new master the Nightmare Tyrant wants to see you, it would be unwise to keep him waiting, the agony will only be much worse the more you resist…” “Take the horse and ride boy! I’ll dispatch this monster!” Qualan shouts at you. You’re sick of running at this point, and Qualan needs your help. Besides you figure you can actually do something now with your new sword, which you draw out. “Boy, I told you to get out of here!” Qualan exclaims as he defends an attack from Salzat. “Ha ha! Good. Saves me the trouble of chasing down the little fool!” Salzat laughs. While he’s laughing you take the opportunity to stab at him. He attempts to dodge, but you manage to slightly wound his leg. This causes him to bellow in a hissing shriek. Qualan hits him with his axe, but it doesn’t effect Salzat like your attack did. Salzat retreats back a bit to recover. “YOU MISERABLE LITTLE WHELP! YOU HURT ME!” he says before getting ready to charge again. “Boy, your sword can hurt it, but I’m better with wielding such a weapon, toss it to me and I’ll dispatch this creature!” Qualan quickly says bracing himself for another attack. > You toss Qualan your sword Following Qualan’s advice that he would do a better job at fighting Salzat you toss the sword to him and he meets Salzat’s charge. Qualan lands what would look to be a powerful blow, but instead nothing happens! In fact you’ve noticed that it’s stopped glowing. Salzat winces a bit from the hit, but he doesn’t stop his own attack which fells Qualan. The sword flies out of his hand and disappears into thin air. It would appear that without your belief in yourself, the sword lost not only its power, but ceased to exist altogether. You attempt to wish for another, but you’re too panicked to think straight and you’re having a hard time concentrating altogether. Soon Salzat’s hulking shadow form has grabbed you, and your mind is filled with nothing but terror. He carries you back to the Nightmare Tyrant. You soon join Salzat and the rest in everlasting shadowy torment.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Something instinctively tells you that “It’s not going to be that easy.” You remember back when the Shadows first tried to take you, you wished you were back home and it didn’t happen, you ended up in the middle of nowhere. There’s no telling where you might end up if you tried it again. So far “little wishes” have worked for you, so you’re going to stick with the current plan of getting the Empire wizards to send you home and use your “powers” only when necessary. You eventually fall asleep with your new sword by your side, you’re awakened by Qualan in the morning. “Hey, get up boy let’s get going… where’d you get that sword from?” “Huh? Oh…well uh I found it under the bed.” “Sheesh, I know I’ve forgotten a few things in my travels, but never a weapon. That’s just unthinkable. You probably should have a sword anyway, I’m not sure how it is where you’re from, but a boy your age would definitely be somewhat familiar with a weapon of some sort by now in my tribe.” “Where were you?” “I told you, I was getting directions to the Parran Empire, and exploring the town a bit…well okay I was exploring the tavern, in fact I eventually explored the floor of it. Oh well at least nothing was stolen, not that I have anything left after spending it all at the tavern…hey you still have that silver ring? I think I might need to trade for a horse. I can’t be accompanying you efficiently if I’m not on horseback as well.” After giving Qualan the ring back, and uses it to buy a broken down nag, you and he are on your way again. You and he talk during your uneventful travel; he’s very fascinated with your world as you are with all the adventures he’s been on. Soon you come to a split in the path. You ask which way to go. “Well, both of these paths will eventually lead to the Empire, but one of them is a lot quicker. There’s a catch though, back in town I was told the quicker path is currently under complete control of a vicious goblin tribe. Apparently they’re attacking anyone that goes through there. I heard The Empire was supposed to send in some soldiers to take care of the problem, but the Nightmare Tyrant is a more immediate and dangerous threat and as such they’re concentrating their efforts on him instead. The second path is supposed to be safe and clear, but it’ll take longer. We’ll probably have to make a camp somewhere, before we even reach the Empire. “Let’s take the safer route.” You say. “Alright, but keep alert anyway, just because I heard it was safe doesn’t necessarily mean it is.” You and Qualan travel further with no unexpected encounters. When it begins to get dark you half expect Shadows to come attacking you out of the sky again, but this is a natural darkness, night is merely falling. Qualan suggests that you should make camp and you do so. You and he eat the provisions he bought from town. He comments on how bad they are and next time he’s just going to stick to hunting in the wilderness for food next time. You’ve never slept outside before, so like most things in this adventure it’s a brand new experience for you. One that makes you really wonder why some of the kids at school have said they like camping so much. You’re definitely a city boy! After trying to get comfortable several times and not worry about bugs crawling on you, you fall asleep, but not for long. A noise awakens you and Qualan. The horses seem agitated as well. “Qualan?” “Shhh! I heard it too…be prepared for anything.” He says standing up and readying his axe. Soon a large figure lurches out from the darkness. It’s another Shadow, but not like any of the ones you’ve encountered before, this one is bigger for one thing, almost as if its armored and for another it looks vaguely familiar. The black figure is hard enough to make out by the campfire, but when it speaks you know immediately who it is. “At last I’ve found you boy.” “Salzat?” “You know this…thing?” Qualan asks getting ready to attack. “Briefly, he used to be one of the Paladins sent with me to take me back to the Empire.” You reply backing away. “And I still have to waste my time escorting you around!” Salzat hisses. “Come boy, my new master the Nightmare Tyrant wants to see you, it would be unwise to keep him waiting, the agony will only be much worse the more you resist…” “Take the horse and ride boy! I’ll dispatch this monster!” Qualan shouts at you. You’re sick of running at this point, and Qualan needs your help. Besides you figure you can actually do something now with your new sword, which you draw out. “Boy, I told you to get out of here!” Qualan exclaims as he defends an attack from Salzat. “Ha ha! Good. Saves me the trouble of chasing down the little fool!” Salzat laughs. While he’s laughing you take the opportunity to stab at him. He attempts to dodge, but you manage to slightly wound his leg. This causes him to bellow in a hissing shriek. Qualan hits him with his axe, but it doesn’t effect Salzat like your attack did. Salzat retreats back a bit to recover. “YOU MISERABLE LITTLE WHELP! YOU HURT ME!” he says before getting ready to charge again. “Boy, your sword can hurt it, but I’m better with wielding such a weapon, toss it to me and I’ll dispatch this creature!” Qualan quickly says bracing himself for another attack. > You defeat Salzat yourself You have to defeat Salzat yourself. It was your thoughts that created the sword, by your own sheer force of willpower. If you believe in yourself, you’ll be able to defeat Salzat, you know you will. Salzat predictable charges at you, Qualan attempts to stop him, but once again his axe does nothing and Salzat smashes him in the face with his free hand, knocking him out. He’s about to finish him off with his sword, but you prevent this from happening by stepping in and parrying the blow. For some reason, you feel much stronger than you ever have before. “Whelp! You will be sustenance for the Shadow Tyrant!” Salzat hisses and tries to break through your defense, but your confidence and sudden increase in strength don’t make you fear his threats or him. Your sword glows brighter causing the red dots that are Salzat’s eyes to close in blinding pain. While he temporarily shields them, you press your advantage and strike Salzat multiple times causing him to unleash an unholy scream before dissipating. You’re breathing hard after the battle, and you sit down to catch your breath. Qualan’s regaining of consciousness makes you jump again. “Hey hold on there, it’s just me! Wow, that really hurt.” Qualan says holding on to his face. “Looks like you took care of him yourself. In my tribe you’d now be a man with all the benefits and respect as such. For defeating such a powerful creature you might even be considered an honorary great warrior. Here, take this.” Qualan gives you some sort of strange tooth. Its larger than a humans that’s for sure. “What’s this?” “A troll tooth. It’s customary to take a trophy, but seeing as you fought a shadow, there is none, but you should have something to symbolize your hard earned victory, as well as possibly saving my life. Also know that you have made a permanent friend with no only me, but my entire tribe if you should ever meet them. It is our way.” You are filled with pride and pocket the tooth, while thanking Qualan. The remainder of the night is uneventful. The next day, you and Qualan bump into a regal looking carriage making its way in the opposite direction. The driver looks annoyed that you’re even on the same road as him, let alone in the way. “Hey you peasants! Get out the way! The Archmage is on very important business in the name of the Parran Empire!” Your eyes immediately light up in hope. “A wizard?” you ask. “An ARCHMAGE, peasant boy! And I told you and your barbarian servant to get out of the way!” “Servant? I’m NO ONE’S servant! I am his friend!” Qualan raises his voice in a tone which makes the driver flinch a little. “Erm…well yes, but I still need you two to…” “Driver, what is the hold up here?” an old wild haired man in a robe asks getting out of the carriage. “Who are you lot?” he then asks you. “You’re a wizard from the Empire! And I need to get home! You have to help me!” you blurt out handing the Archmage the note that the Captain gave you. He reads it and nods as you tell him the rest of your tale. “Hmm, you are a very lucky little boy. Not many get away from the Nightmare Tyrant, you must have a strong will.” The Archmage says inspecting you. “I sense that your sword isn’t natural, yet I can’t determine its magical origins. Yes, you DO have some sort of power boy. Ever thought of being a wizard? We could use someone like you against the Nightmare Tyrant.” For a brief fleeting moment your adventurous side almost jumps at the chance. But still, you don’t want your Mom to worry about you anymore than she probably is right now. You still don’t know what you’re going to tell her. “No, I want to go home.” You reply. “Very well, we can’t have people here that don’t want to be. I can teleport you back home right now if you wish. I myself don’t like to use it for travel unless it’s absolutely an emergency. I still prefer to take life slower and travel the old fashioned ways, of course that’s not really an option for you being from another dimension and all.” “I can go right now?” “Oh sure I can get you there real quick. And don’t worry; the Nightmare Tyrant won’t be able to ever steal you from your home world again. He’s only able to perform that feat of interdimentional kidnapping once on a person. Hence the reason why he was so eager to get his hands on you before you could escape again. Now the problem is once I start to open the portal, you need to get going fast. It will undoubtedly alert the Nightmare Tyrant to this location where upon he’ll try one last time to capture you. I’ll certainly help, but this spell will be requiring most of my energy and concentration so hopefully your barbarian friend here will be able to fend off some of the Shadows. Since I’m afraid my driver will most likely be hiding under the carriage the entire time.” “Hey!” the driver says. Qualan steps forward and nods. “Of course. I will do everything in my power to help him get home.” “Okay then, but that axe isn’t going to do much good, let me enchant it first…there. Now let’s begin.” The Archmage begins to chant while you and Qualan wait for the spell to take effect. The driver looks nervous the whole time, but he hasn’t hid under the carriage yet. The wind begins to blow strongly and once again that familiar darkness begins gather once again. This time it’s followed a stronger sense of malevolence. You suddenly hear a menacing voice in your mind. “Boy, did you think you could escape from me? I am the Nightmare Tyrant! Destroyer of life! Your power will be mine and you WILL serve me!” “NO!” you scream out in defiance! “Don’t listen! It’s the Tyrant’s way of trying to get inside your head! Don’t let him do it!” the Archmage briefly shouts and then continues his hand gestures. Shadow creatures come descending out of the sky screeching horribly as usual. Qualan stands in front of you ready to take the brunt of the attack. “Almost done!” the Archmage shouts. The shadows swarm your position, and you and Qualan attempt to fight them off. Your sword fortunately is glowing brightly, which at least keeps them from overwhelming you. While you and Qualan are fighting them off, the Nightmare Tyrant’s voice booms from out of nowhere and clearly audible to everyone. “FOOLS! Attack the wizard! He’s the one who can create the escape portal!” “Too late Tyrant! Quick! Get in the portal!” the Archmage commands as a blue portal opens up and he discharges lightning bolts from his fingers to destroy some Shadows attacking him. “Go! We’ll be alright! We can hold them off!” Qualan adds. You’re sort of worried about Qualan, but you realize you have to go now. The Nightmare Tyrant bellows again to his minions about not letting you escape as you run for the portal and entering it. You are enveloped by blackness followed by swirling colored lights. Your sword also flickers in and out of existence. It’s all so strange and overwhelming to you that you pass out. “Hey! I told you breakfast is ready, are you going to sleep all day?” you hear your Mom call from downstairs as you awaken in surprise. You quickly look around your room and nothing looks out of place. Your Mom hasn’t seemed to notice that you were gone, in fact it doesn’t look like you even left. Was it all a dream? You shake your head trying to decide if it was, then you notice a big tooth on the floor next to the toys you set up yesterday. The troll tooth and oddly its right next to a barbarian figure. Strangely it has a pleased look on their faces. It wasn’t a dream. It was real. Created by the power of your own imagination. You decide you’ll keep this information to yourself though, since nobody would ever believe it! You had an interesting adventure, but you’re glad to be home you think as you go downstairs to eat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The sooner you’re out of this place the better, so you request to be escorted back to the Empire where their wizards can send you back home. “Very well, I’ll send Paladins Salzat and Lakri with you, along with an official letter explaining your situation. Good luck and may you return home without any ill-fated encounters.” The Captain says handing you the letter for safe keeping. You are presented to Salzat and Lakri who are explained their mission. Salzat doesn’t look pleased; in fact he gets angry and exclaims his skills would be better put to use fighting the Nightmare Tyrant and other evil creatures, not looking after a child. Lakri on the other hand looks relieved. After the Captain shouts him down and tells him to obey orders, Salzat grumbles and gets on his horse. Lyssia puts you on your own horse, you’ve never ridden one before, but she assures you that these are the best trained horses in the Empire and will serve you well. You’re told you should reach the Empire in a few days. Soon you’re off with your new travel companions They couldn’t be more opposite. Salzat is a mean looking man with scars all over his face who barely speaks to you, but his armor is impeccably clean and well taken care of. It even has a shine to it, almost as if it was brand new. (He doesn’t seem to wear a helmet though, perhaps that might explain all the scars) Lakri on the other hand is much kinder and talkative to you. His armor looks like its seen better days though. It’s metal that looks hastily welded together, badly dented and even showing signs of rust! Unlike Salzat his suit of armor has a full face helmet which he’s wearing right now and Salzat has chosen to taunt him about. “Lakri, why are you wearing that thing? We aren’t even going into battle you coward! I swear I don’t know how any of you can see in those things anyway. I need to be able to swivel my head as quick as possible so I can see the next enemy I have to slay!” “Leave me alone Salzat! I like to make sure I’m protected! I don’t want to end up all scarred and ugly like you! I intend on getting married one day!” Lakri sputters. “Feh! I don’t need to look pretty; my DEEDS will win the hearts of damsels!” “How did you guys become Paladins?” you ask. Surprisingly Salzat answers your question right away. “Well unlike Lakri here, I didn’t have royal family connections. I worked my way up through the ranks and went through special training so that I could become a weapon against evil and serve the Empire. If I could wipe out all the evil in this world myself, I would not hesitate to do so. There is no greater deed than to serve the cause of good and righteousness and right now my talents are going to waste escorting you!” “Yes, well I for one am glad for the break from battle. This is a nice change of pace than fighting trolls, shadows and other such nastiness. I wasn’t really looking forward to going to those ruins the Captain mentioned either. Sounded dangerous.” Lakri says. “Yeah, well we know you’re a coward anyway, and a disgrace to the Paladin name.” “I’m not a coward! I…just want to live alright? I mean is it so wrong that I prefer my life to not be at risk every five minutes?” “Why did you become a Paladin, if you don’t like to fight?” you ask. “Oh, that’s a long story…let’s just say my Dad wanted me to.” “But you’re a grown up, shouldn’t you just be able to do what you want now?” “Ha ha! You think just because one grows up, you aren’t subjected to being told what to do by your parents? Guess again. Ah well, perhaps you have less demanding parents. You must certainly like them, if you wanted to get home so quickly to see them again.” Before you can answer, Salzat suddenly looks up in the sky and draws his sword. “Shut up! I sense something…” Suddenly the sky grows considerably darker within only a few seconds and screeching can be heard from above. Dark winged creatures begin to descend from the sky “SHADOWS!” Lakri shouts. “Alright! And here I thought I wasn’t going to get to vanquish evil today! Come on and be destroyed foul creatures!” Salzat laughs. At this point Lakri and Salzat show their differences again. Lakri panics to the point that he fumbles and drops his weapon before yelling that you all should make haste to escape. Salzat on the other hand turns to face the winged Shadows. You don’t see how he can possibly fight them all himself though. > You help Salzat You jump off your horse to grab Lakri’s sword in an effort to help Salzat who is already in the midst of battle, with the Shadow creatures who have almost completely enveloped him. You swing the sword, but its still a little to big and heavy for you to weld properly, you hit a few of the Shadows, but its no use, they outnumber you greatly. Soon one of them manages to deprive you of your weapon and two more snatch you up and carry you up to the sky giggling about how the Nightmare Tyrant is anxious to see you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You try to scare the little purple people much like you’ve ran after pigeons in the park, however the purple folks won’t be chased away so easily, this is their home after all, they just nimbly get out of your way and continue to pelt you with stones, which are really starting to hurt at this point, and a particularly large stone smacks you in the head knocking you out. When you wake up you’re nowhere near the Wizard’s house anymore, in fact you’re quite a ways outside of the village! The purple people must’ve dragged you here. As you groggily get up, you wish that someone would help you. Just then a shadow looms over you, at first you get scared again, but fortunately this one is attached to someone. You look up and see a woman dressed in leather armor, she carries a bow on her back and a sword by her side. She gives you a serious look while she grabs your hand to pick you up. You notice she has pointy ears. “Boy, what’re you doing out here? Don’t you know it can be dangerous out here? Do you live in that village?” she asks. “No, I was trying to look for help there. There was a wizard who said he could help me get back home if…” “Wizard? There wasn’t any strong magic activity detected around here boy. Where are you from?” You explain your story, as the woman listens intently. Much like the wizard you ran into earlier, she doesn’t seem surprised. “Mm, yes you are a lucky boy indeed to escape from the Nightmare Tyrant, most never even have a chance. I think you better come with me, my name’s Lyssia” “But the wizard…” “Trust me, you’ll be safer with me, than that so called wizard you mentioned. Sounded like a hedge wizard that was just getting you to do some grunt work that he didn’t want to do. He couldn’t help you against the shadows, let alone get you back home. I might be able to though, well the Captain might anyway. We’ll head back to my platoon’s camp.” You feel somewhat safer with Lyssia, not to mention she seems like she’s more readily going to help you, so you follow her. Eventually you arrive at a fairly large camp with armored knights, horses, and tents. Most of them look like they’ve been doing a lot of fighting recently and are still recovering from their wounds. When you enter the Captain’s tent, you see him looking over some maps before he looks up at you. He’s a man of average build, but his weathered and tired face shows the signs of having been in battle several times. His armor displays likewise. “Lyssia, you better have a good reason for why you’re bringing this boy into my presence. This is a mobile military unit; you know we can’t be coddling civilians, let alone children.” Lyssia explains the situation and the Captain’s attitude towards you changes to a more sympathetic one. “Escaping from the Nightmare Tyrant’s minions is no small feat, especially for one unprepared for such an encounter. The terror they radiate is normally enough to paralyze most with fear. You’re obviously not a battle hardened soldier to such horrors, and there’s no evidence of any magic about you. You must have an innate strong will, boy. Which is good since you’ll most likely have to deal with them again.” He says grimly. “Again?!” you exclaim. “Yes, unfortunately the Nightmare Tyrant isn’t fond of losing those he marks for capture. He has no doubt sent his Shadow minions to look for you. Fortunately you have us to help you now. We are a recon team for the Parran Empire, we’ve been fighting the Nightmare Tyrant for years, trying to find a weakness with little success. Though after some searching we think there may be a powerful weapon that can help us. It’s in some ruins a few days from here, or should be. One can never know for certain with old legends. Now, I have a duty to defend innocents from evil, but I also have a duty to the Empire. I simply cannot take this team all the way back to the Empire just to drop you off there where our wizards can send you back home, I have a mission to complete first. You can either stay with us and then after the mission we shall all go back together, or I shall send a couple of my men with you back to the Empire. Keep in mind the Shadows are probably looking for you and they tend to hunt in swarms, so the more people defending you, the better.” You really want to go back home, but you’re a little worried about not having all the protection you can. “Well can’t Lyssia go with me?” you ask hopefully. Lyssia smiles a bit at your request, but the Captain shakes his head. “Sadly no. While I can certainly understand and admire your judgment of wanting her to go with you, I cannot allow her to do so, as my mission will undoubtedly require her skills. As I said, I will send to two of my men, but that is all I can spare if you decide to head back to the Empire.” > You go with the Captain You don’t know anything about this place and you’re in great danger, so you decide it would be best if you had as many people defending you as possible. You’d rather stay with the Captain. “Very well, you may stay with us, just don’t make a nuisance of yourself. We’ll also be on the move a lot, so don’t expect a high comfort level, however whenever we make camp, you’re welcome to stay in my tent. For right now though, you’ll have to leave it, I’m having a meeting with Lyssia and a couple of my knights to discuss an important plan of action. Explore if you wish, but don’t wander away from us, we’ll protect you, but we won’t baby-sit you.” With these words in mind Lyssia leads you back out of the tent, upon which another knight comes up to her with a message. “Sergeant, a man has arrived at the camp.” “Is he hostile?” “No, he says he was just passing through and figured maybe he could trade for supplies here.” “Tell him to move on, this isn’t a trading post.” Lyssia says and goes back in the tent. Not knowing what to do next you follow the knight back to the man he was talking about. When you see him, he looks raggedy, but well equipped. He a sword by his side and his leather armor looks more like a patchwork taken from several other suits. The most notable feature is the big backpack on his back. You wonder if he’s an adventurer. “Alright you, move on, this isn’t a trading post.” The knight repeats to the visitor. “Okay, okay, I’ll go. But can’t I just rest here for one minute? I’ve been walking a lot and it would be nice to at least know I’m safe for just a moment.” “…well okay, but make it quick, and stay on the outskirts of the camp.” The knight says and leaves. You continue to examine this traveler, who immediately knows you are. “Well, how come you get to stay here? Army camps aren’t known to house children.” He asks while sitting down on a nearby log. You explain your situation to this adventurer, and once again you get an unsurprised look from your listener. “Got the impression you weren’t from around here. I somehow could sense it. I always had that ability; it’s come in handy a lot. But yes, the Nightmare Tyrant is very bad news; you would do well to leave this world as quickly as you can, no doubt Shadows are already on their way.” “Well I got this army to protect me!” you exclaim. “Perhaps, but you said it will be awhile before they return to the Parran Empire where you can get properly transported back to your world, in the meantime they WILL be attacked by not just Shadows, but also by whatever they come across in their mission. Tis a long time to put yourself at risk. Not to mention I see a lack of magic in this camp, I wonder about their chances against Shadows if the Nightmare Tyrant unleashes his full power in order to re-capture you.” You’re almost sorry you started talking to this man, within a few seconds he’s managed to worry you all over again. Here you were thinking that you were going to be nice and safe. “But…but…well what should I do?” “Well, if we were back in Null, I could probably get you back home really quick…” Before the Adventurer can finish you interrupt. “Null?” “Oh, that’s where I live. It used to be a great city of fantastic magical power a long time ago, but it was destroyed by its own petty bickering. The powerful wizards there began to argue among themselves, factions were drawn and the entire city along with several miles around it went up in a big ball of flame. It was a terrible tragedy that could’ve been avoided, but there was an interesting effect of the aftermath of it though.” “What happened?” “Well, no magic works there now, hence the name Null. Powerful wizards can’t get a simple cantrip to work there, let alone a spell. Even the Nightmare Tyrant’s minions can’t go there. Still, it’s far from safe. Lots of the Forsaken live there.” “Who are the Forsaken?” “Oh they’re the unlucky folks who actually managed to survive the catastrophe. Not all of them bad, but understandably such a powerful magic disaster had an effect on most of their bodies as well as their minds.” While this is all very fascinating, you still don’t see how this helps you exactly. “While this is all very fascinating, I still don’t see how this helps me exactly. I mean if no magic works there, how can I get home? And why would you want to live in such a place anyway it sounds dangerous.” The Adventurer moves closer to you and looks around before speaking. “Okay, because I can sympathize with being in a tough position, I’ll tell you a little secret. Magic DOES work there, but only in one area and it’s only a place I know about as far as I know. There’s a deep, but small underground dungeon in Null where magic seems to work, I know because that’s where I live! I stumbled upon it completely by accident when I was exploring Null. Apparently one of the many trinkets that I had acquired in the past was a key of some sort. It began to glow and then the wall opened up the way for me. Pure random dumb luck. So I went in and discovered that entire section runs on magic or something like it at least. There are some sort of contraption that if you sit down in and visualize with clarity, your wish will come true! I tried it a few times and it was nice, but I’m a wanderer at heart and as such I couldn’t just spend the rest of my days wallowing in eternal paradise, plus I was always leery that something bad might happen if I over used the contraption for greed. However I did see it as a good place to make my home away from the road. In fact I use this magic chair to quickly travel to towns and other cities, of course it’s only one way, but at least it shortens the trip somewhat. You could probably use the chair to return home. Even if it doesn’t work, I could always take you to the Parran Empire to get you back home. It would still be quicker and safer than traveling with an army that has to complete some mission before it can back home. Who knows what responsibilities and dangers it might incur along the way? Think also, in Null, you wouldn’t be attacked by Shadows either. It’s up to you though, but choose quickly because I have to be leaving soon.” > You go with the Adventurer You have to admit, even though you want to go back home, part of you really likes it here. Null sounds interesting and anyplace where the Shadows can’t get you sounds even better. The Adventurer seems trustworthy enough, but you still hope you’re making the right decision. “Okay, I’ll go with you.” you say a bit hesitantly. “Alright, let’s get going, we still have a quite a trip ahead of us.” You and the Adventurer leave the military camp and set off on your journey. The Adventurer explains that you’ll probably reach Null in a couple of days, but that you still shouldn’t worry too much about Shadow attacks, since the anti-magic effects from Null are also in the desert wasteland surrounding the ruined city. As you travel further, you find that the Adventurer is quite talkative. He speaks about his many journeys, he also mentions briefly of why he chose his “profession” which was mainly because he was bored living in the small village where he was born. When you reach the desert you see a big ruined city far in the distance. You also notice night is starting to fall as it’s starting to get dark, though it seems to have come on all of a sudden. The Adventurer has noticed it too and he begins to go for his weapons. “It’s not supposed to get dark that quick…The Nightmare Tyrant! Quick! Run towards Null, the anti-magic field gets stronger the closer we are to it!” You and the Adventurer begin to run and suddenly you hear screeching behind you, and you turn your head to see Shadows coming out of the sky to capture you. However, they seem to almost be flickering in and out of existence. The unnatural darkness is also being affected bizarrely, since its still “day” in front of you and then complete “night’ behind. Eventually you and the Adventurer outrun the Shadows and the darkness, as they both are unable to withstand the sheer anti-magical forces emanating from Null. After some angry screeching the Shadows retreat back to where they came, while you and the Adventurer take a breather. “See? Told you they can’t get you here. Whew, running in this hot desert is tiring. Let’s rest here and continue on tomorrow. The real night will be coming soon and actually walking around in Null after night isn’t particularly a safe thing to do either, the desert is a lot securer.” You and the Adventurer settle down for the night, he brings out some water flasks from his backpack and gives you one. You drink it all up and it’s soon empty, but you still wish you had a lot more. “Hey, don’t drink all of it! We have to conserve it…wait, I know that flask doesn’t hold that much water.” He says in confusion as you continue to drink what seems to be an endless supply of water in the flask. When you’ve truly satisfied your thirst the Adventurer takes the flask and attempts to look in it and shake it and finds there’s no more water in there. “Okay how did you do that?” “How did I do what?” “You drank enough for two flasks! These aren’t bottomless canteens of everlasting water either and even if they were they wouldn’t work due to the anti-magic here. So I’d like to know HOW you did that.” The Adventurer is looking at you suspiciously, almost as if you could possibly be dangerous. You stutter and fumble with an explanation mainly because you don’t even know. “I…I don’t know…I just wished I had more water…I was really thirsty…” you reply a bit worried. He looks at you for a moment longer and then speaks again. “Try to wish for a chest full of gold.” “What?” “Just do it, I want to see something.” “Erm…okay.” You wish and think as hard as you can, but nothing happens. Well that’s not entirely true, you get dizzy and fall to the ground. A single gold piece appears near you though. The Adventurer picks you up as well as the gold piece, which is somewhat misshapen and uneven. “Hmm, so there are limits. Did you always have this ability?” “Huh? No. We don’t have any kind of stuff like this in my world.” You say trying to keep steady. “I’m not sure what exactly is going on, but it would appear you got some sort of weird mental powers independent of magic. I have fought monsters with similar abilities, which is why I was suspicious at first. You ability reminds me of the magic chair I was telling you about except your power can work even in this anti-magical place and it would appear it isn’t very powerful. I’d almost suggest that you could attempt to wish yourself back home, but as we’ve seen, it isn’t powerful enough to do that. Still, this is probably a good indication that the chair will be able to get you back home. Here, here’s a proper gold piece, I don’t need it. Well anyway let’s get some sleep, we should reach Null tomorrow.” You pocket the faultless gold coin and the both of you go to sleep. Before you do though, you reflect on this little adventure. You also wonder about your Mom, she’s going to be worried about you and probably have the police looking all over for you! And when you finally do return, what will you tell her? You don’t know, but what you do know for certain is that you DO want to get home as soon as possible even if you do find this place very fascinating. The next morning the both of you wake up refreshed and ready to carry on your journey to Null. You don’t get far, when the Adventurer senses someone is following you. You both turn around and see a figure approaching. It looks like a teenage boy, but deathly pale. The odd thing is, he’s wearing modern clothing from YOUR world. “Is that one of the Forsaken?” you ask “Him? No, if it was it would probably coming from Null not towards it, not to mention it would probably be running at us trying to eat us. It also looks too human and it’s wearing strange clothing, in fact it looks more like…well your type of clothing. Friend of yours?” “Not that I know of, I’m not friends with anyone his age.” He doesn’t quicken his pace; he just continues to walk steadily towards your position. When he gets close enough, you can see his face, which looks emotionless. In fact it looks like he’s staring right through the both of you. The Adventurer draws his sword, but it doesn’t look like this person is showing any sign of going to attack. In fact he just stands there looking off into space. “Alright, what’s your name?” the Adventurer demands. “John…Johnny Doe…” he replies still staring into the space. “This place…it’s dead…numb…like me…” As odd as he is, something tells you he’s from your world. Maybe he’s another person the Nightmare Tyrant tried to capture. > You try to help him You step forward towards him, an action that the Adventurer doesn’t approve of at all. “What’re you doing?!” “I think you’re right, I think he’s from my world. Maybe he escaped from the Nightmare Tyrant too.” “I don’t trust him, he’s weird and in my line of work, if it’s weird more often than not, it isn’t good!” You ignore the Adventurer and go back to talking to Johnny, who seems to have begun to direct his attention towards you. “Are you from Earth?” “Yes.” “Did the Nightmare Tyrant bring you here?” “Yes.” “Did you escape like me?” “No.” This answer catches you off guard, so much in fact that you don’t react in time to jump out of the way of Johnny’s grip. When he grabs your arm, you feel an instant paralyzing numbness causing you to drop immediately. When this occurs the Adventurer leaps into action and strikes Johnny, but when his sword hits Johnny’s body, it’s almost as if the paralysis crept up the sword and was inflicted upon the Adventurer as well. He falls to the ground clutching his arm and dropping his sword. Johnny follows up by merely touching the Adventurer on the head, completely immobilizing him. Having incapacitated the Adventurer, Johnny turns his attention back to you. “No magic can work here, but I can. The Nightmare Tyrant wants to see you. You must comply. Perhaps you will become one of the Shadows. Maybe you will become like me. The Nightmare Tyrant will decide. He knows best.” You attempt to speak, but you’re unable to. You can’t even think. “No more talk. No more resistance. Just dead numbness.” He says and then picks you up and begins to carry you out of the desert. Eventually when you’re out of the anti-magic field, a dark portal opens up, and Johnny delivers you to the Nightmare Tyrant.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to admit, even though you want to go back home, part of you really likes it here. Null sounds interesting and anyplace where the Shadows can’t get you sounds even better. The Adventurer seems trustworthy enough, but you still hope you’re making the right decision. “Okay, I’ll go with you.” you say a bit hesitantly. “Alright, let’s get going, we still have a quite a trip ahead of us.” You and the Adventurer leave the military camp and set off on your journey. The Adventurer explains that you’ll probably reach Null in a couple of days, but that you still shouldn’t worry too much about Shadow attacks, since the anti-magic effects from Null are also in the desert wasteland surrounding the ruined city. As you travel further, you find that the Adventurer is quite talkative. He speaks about his many journeys, he also mentions briefly of why he chose his “profession” which was mainly because he was bored living in the small village where he was born. When you reach the desert you see a big ruined city far in the distance. You also notice night is starting to fall as it’s starting to get dark, though it seems to have come on all of a sudden. The Adventurer has noticed it too and he begins to go for his weapons. “It’s not supposed to get dark that quick…The Nightmare Tyrant! Quick! Run towards Null, the anti-magic field gets stronger the closer we are to it!” You and the Adventurer begin to run and suddenly you hear screeching behind you, and you turn your head to see Shadows coming out of the sky to capture you. However, they seem to almost be flickering in and out of existence. The unnatural darkness is also being affected bizarrely, since its still “day” in front of you and then complete “night’ behind. Eventually you and the Adventurer outrun the Shadows and the darkness, as they both are unable to withstand the sheer anti-magical forces emanating from Null. After some angry screeching the Shadows retreat back to where they came, while you and the Adventurer take a breather. “See? Told you they can’t get you here. Whew, running in this hot desert is tiring. Let’s rest here and continue on tomorrow. The real night will be coming soon and actually walking around in Null after night isn’t particularly a safe thing to do either, the desert is a lot securer.” You and the Adventurer settle down for the night, he brings out some water flasks from his backpack and gives you one. You drink it all up and it’s soon empty, but you still wish you had a lot more. “Hey, don’t drink all of it! We have to conserve it…wait, I know that flask doesn’t hold that much water.” He says in confusion as you continue to drink what seems to be an endless supply of water in the flask. When you’ve truly satisfied your thirst the Adventurer takes the flask and attempts to look in it and shake it and finds there’s no more water in there. “Okay how did you do that?” “How did I do what?” “You drank enough for two flasks! These aren’t bottomless canteens of everlasting water either and even if they were they wouldn’t work due to the anti-magic here. So I’d like to know HOW you did that.” The Adventurer is looking at you suspiciously, almost as if you could possibly be dangerous. You stutter and fumble with an explanation mainly because you don’t even know. “I…I don’t know…I just wished I had more water…I was really thirsty…” you reply a bit worried. He looks at you for a moment longer and then speaks again. “Try to wish for a chest full of gold.” “What?” “Just do it, I want to see something.” “Erm…okay.” You wish and think as hard as you can, but nothing happens. Well that’s not entirely true, you get dizzy and fall to the ground. A single gold piece appears near you though. The Adventurer picks you up as well as the gold piece, which is somewhat misshapen and uneven. “Hmm, so there are limits. Did you always have this ability?” “Huh? No. We don’t have any kind of stuff like this in my world.” You say trying to keep steady. “I’m not sure what exactly is going on, but it would appear you got some sort of weird mental powers independent of magic. I have fought monsters with similar abilities, which is why I was suspicious at first. You ability reminds me of the magic chair I was telling you about except your power can work even in this anti-magical place and it would appear it isn’t very powerful. I’d almost suggest that you could attempt to wish yourself back home, but as we’ve seen, it isn’t powerful enough to do that. Still, this is probably a good indication that the chair will be able to get you back home. Here, here’s a proper gold piece, I don’t need it. Well anyway let’s get some sleep, we should reach Null tomorrow.” You pocket the faultless gold coin and the both of you go to sleep. Before you do though, you reflect on this little adventure. You also wonder about your Mom, she’s going to be worried about you and probably have the police looking all over for you! And when you finally do return, what will you tell her? You don’t know, but what you do know for certain is that you DO want to get home as soon as possible even if you do find this place very fascinating. The next morning the both of you wake up refreshed and ready to carry on your journey to Null. You don’t get far, when the Adventurer senses someone is following you. You both turn around and see a figure approaching. It looks like a teenage boy, but deathly pale. The odd thing is, he’s wearing modern clothing from YOUR world. “Is that one of the Forsaken?” you ask “Him? No, if it was it would probably coming from Null not towards it, not to mention it would probably be running at us trying to eat us. It also looks too human and it’s wearing strange clothing, in fact it looks more like…well your type of clothing. Friend of yours?” “Not that I know of, I’m not friends with anyone his age.” He doesn’t quicken his pace; he just continues to walk steadily towards your position. When he gets close enough, you can see his face, which looks emotionless. In fact it looks like he’s staring right through the both of you. The Adventurer draws his sword, but it doesn’t look like this person is showing any sign of going to attack. In fact he just stands there looking off into space. “Alright, what’s your name?” the Adventurer demands. “John…Johnny Doe…” he replies still staring into the space. “This place…it’s dead…numb…like me…” As odd as he is, something tells you he’s from your world. Maybe he’s another person the Nightmare Tyrant tried to capture. > Back away from him From your world or not, something definitely isn’t right here. In fact you begin pulling at the Adventurer wishing to leave. He concurs, but attempts to warn this person to stop following. “Alright, Mr. Doe, now that we’ve exchanged pleasantries you need to just stop following us, before you get yourself in a whole mess of trouble.” The teenager doesn’t answer; he just continues walking towards you both. “Get behind me. I get the impression that this guy doesn’t know when to take a hint.” He says picking up a rock and throwing it at the teenager. The rock hits him squarely in the head, it seems like it should’ve knocked him out, but instead it just makes him stop and blink a few times before addressing you in a monotone voice. “You should not resist. You must come with me. The Nightmare Tyrant must be obeyed. He is…” Before Johnny can complete his sentence, the Adventurer strikes him with his sword, but a strange thing happens. The Adventurer drops his sword and falls to the ground, clutching his arm. It would seem a kind of paralysis has stricken the Adventurer. “RUN!” he yells trying to crawl away. Wasting no time, you run towards Null. Johnny pays no more attention to the Adventurer and continues to follow you, but still doesn’t quicken his pace. Whatever Johnny is, it’s obvious his own powers are in full effect here too. Probably why the Nightmare Tyrant sent him here. As you run, you realize you still need the Adventurer to help you get back home. You need to think of something. > You lose Johnny in Null and then return to the Adventurer Given Johnny’s seemingly relentless nature, it’s useless to try to reason with him, so you continue to run. He isn’t very fast so you figure you’ll be able to lose him in the ruined City. Soon you’ve outdistanced Johnny quite a bit, and are in the City of Null. You’re winded, but you just need to hide out here for awhile and then return to the Adventurer, you hope he’s still alright. Looking briefly around you try to find a big building that looks fairly intact for you to hide in, unfortunately you’re so busy trying to evade Johnny, you’ve forgotten that there are OTHER inhabitants that the Adventurer mentioned living here… A hideously deformed creature suddenly snatches you when you enter one of the buildings and more of them appear out of the woodwork. “Well what have we here? Fresh meat? Looks like we won’t be eating rats tonight!” he laughs. Before you can try to think of something to escape, one the Forsaken knocks you unconscious with a rock. Even Johnny doesn’t find you in time to hand you over to the Nightmare Tyrant.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>From your world or not, something definitely isn’t right here. In fact you begin pulling at the Adventurer wishing to leave. He concurs, but attempts to warn this person to stop following. “Alright, Mr. Doe, now that we’ve exchanged pleasantries you need to just stop following us, before you get yourself in a whole mess of trouble.” The teenager doesn’t answer; he just continues walking towards you both. “Get behind me. I get the impression that this guy doesn’t know when to take a hint.” He says picking up a rock and throwing it at the teenager. The rock hits him squarely in the head, it seems like it should’ve knocked him out, but instead it just makes him stop and blink a few times before addressing you in a monotone voice. “You should not resist. You must come with me. The Nightmare Tyrant must be obeyed. He is…” Before Johnny can complete his sentence, the Adventurer strikes him with his sword, but a strange thing happens. The Adventurer drops his sword and falls to the ground, clutching his arm. It would seem a kind of paralysis has stricken the Adventurer. “RUN!” he yells trying to crawl away. Wasting no time, you run towards Null. Johnny pays no more attention to the Adventurer and continues to follow you, but still doesn’t quicken his pace. Whatever Johnny is, it’s obvious his own powers are in full effect here too. Probably why the Nightmare Tyrant sent him here. As you run, you realize you still need the Adventurer to help you get back home. You need to think of something. > You attempt to reason with Johnny You remember Null is filled with dangerous creatures as well, so you wouldn’t be any safer going there by yourself and Johnny’s likely to just keep following you no matter where you go. Maybe you can use your “powers” to reason with him. You turn around begin to try to psychically talk to Johnny. You figure he’ll be more receptive that way. You also don’t know what you’re doing since you’ve never done this before! Johnny steadily approaches you as you just stand there concentrating really hard while you attempt this unusual plan. Suddenly something happens, he stops walking and your own mind is flooded with a lot of weird thoughts. You don’t understand all of it, but you get the impression he didn’t have a good home life in your own world. He used to “escape” to a fantasy world a lot and presumably that’s what attracted the Nightmare Tyrant. You attempt to reason with him, but the link is broken when he verbally shouts out! “STOP! Get out of my head! Only the Master is allowed! You MUST submit! He makes everything better! Shadows around me always. No pain, no pleasure, just nothingness…” “Johnny, you’re from the same place I am, don’t you want to return home too?” you retort. “…better here than what was at home…at least here I have power…and soon you will too. Isn’t that why you came here, to escape the pain?” “No! The Nightmare Tyrant kidnapped me! I want to go back home, my Mom’s probably worried about me!” “…mine probably forgot about me years ago…yours will too…you need to just submit…the Nightmare Tyrant makes everything better…” “NO! I will not! In fact I want you to stop following me! I want you to leave me alone altogether! You will NOT prevent me from going home! Johnny, you’re nothing but a slave to the Nightmare Tyrant. Is that what you want? Somewhere within you, you must miss something about your home.” “…better than home…but…” Once again you’ve managed to stir some sort of emotion in Johnny. Suddenly he slumps to the ground and begins to weep. You’re unsure of how to react, but you see the Adventurer staggering back towards you, which at least makes you somewhat relieved. “Look, you don’t have to stay here; you could return back to Earth with me, all we have to do is…” Johnny looks up with red eyes, but has regained his composure. “No. I left Earth a long time ago. This is my home now. But I see now that I am still under a cruel…guardian. No more. I want to be free… Arrgh!” Suddenly Johnny grips his head, and you too feel a pain inside your own. A dark malevolent voice pieces your brain. It’s the Nightmare Tyrant, somehow he’s managed to speak to the both of you from wherever he is. “Disobedient children! How dare you defy me Johnny! After all I have given you! Didn’t I give meaning to your pathetic life? Didn’t I become the parent you needed? If you won’t obey me willingly then I’ll just have to destroy what little free will I still allowed you to have! And YOU, oh I have special plans for you! Such power cannot be ignored and WILL supplement my own!” While you and Johnny fall on the ground in pain, the Adventurer scoops you up and proceeds to run with you under his arm towards Null. “Hang on kid! Keep fighting whatever it is you’re fighting, I’ll get you to your destination, I haven’t failed in a quest yet!” he exclaims. In the “real world” you fall unconscious, but in your mind you’re very much awake. It would seem you’re in some sort of dream world. You’re standing on top of a rock floating in the void of blackness. You see Johnny in the distance standing on another rock fighting off Shadows which are attempting to drag him over the edge. He’s punching them, but his fists are glowing with a white energy. “I won’t follow your evil commands anymore! From now on, I shall fight you with the very power you gave to me and your Shadows can’t stop me!” He shouts as he completely destroys two Shadows at the same time with one blow of his fist. While you’re watching this the Shadows have become aware of your presence and are climb over the edges of the floating rock. “Fight them off! Imagine yourself a powerful warrior! Or whatever you wish! The Nightmare Tyrant can’t stop you power of your mind if it’s strong enough!” Johnny shouts over to you. You do just that, you imagine yourself in armor with a sword. You feel your strength grow and your reflexes quicken. “Cool!” you say and strike at the nearest Shadow, destroying it. This battle continues for some time until it seems that the endless amount of Shadows have become too afraid to attack anymore. You hear the voice of the Nightmare Tyrant again. “FOOLS! You think you’ve won? I was just warming up! I will show you the personification of FEAR and of eternal darkness!” “You always did talk to too much.” Johnny says and summons up a bright blinding ball of light completely enveloping the entire area. You hear an unearthly bellow as you shield your eyes from the blinding light. When you open them again, you see Johnny standing before you. “Is he…” “Gone forever? No, but he won’t be bothering you ever again. Me? He will. But I’ll be even more prepared for him for the next time we meet.” “You’re still going to stay here?” “Yes. I meant what I said that this is my home now, and there is nothing for me back on Earth. But now I see that the Nightmare Tyrant just used me for his own purposes, to help him in his ongoing hunt for more power. I need to stay to make things right again. Maybe even destroy him once and for all. I have to try, after all the evil he’s caused and lives he’s ruined. You should of course go back home, and be thankful for what you have there. Farewell and thank you for opening my eyes.” Suddenly you wake up from a bed and you’re in an unusually colorful room. You see a broom sweeping by itself pass you by. Jumping up from seeing such a thing, you notice the Adventurer sitting by a table polishing his sword. “Now you wake up! You know I had to fight through ten Forsaken trying to eat us, with you under my arm and you didn’t even blink! Fortunately I got us here though. So, what happened to you exactly?” You and the Adventurer swap stories about what you both experienced in your respective journeys and you both think that each of you had the easier time of it! After showing you some of the “cool magical stuff” in his home, you’re ready to go back to your own. This entire world is very interesting, but you want to return. “Well, I can certainly understand that. Like I said, I’m a traveler, but I suppose even I get a longing to return home. Y’know, maybe I’ll go visit mine. My real one, not this place. They might even have forgotten all the mischief I used to cause there!” the Adventurer laughs. The Adventurer shows you the chair he was talking about. You instinctively feel a power coming from it. Not a magical one either, it’s the same one you have. Perhaps it was a device to enhance such abilities? Perhaps it was a secret weapon involved in the destruction of this City? You don’t know and the Adventurer doesn’t either, all you know is you’re hoping it will help you get home. Sitting in the thing does make you a bit nervous as it resembles an electric chair, but you know you need to calm yourself of any sort of fear and doubt if you want to get back home. You bid goodbye to the Adventurer before attempting to concentrate and he mentions he’ll stand by to help in case it looks like you’re in trouble. You are suddenly transported through a tunnel of blackness followed by swirling colored lights. It’s all so strange and overwhelming to you that you pass out once again. “Hey! I told you breakfast is ready, are you going to sleep all day?” you hear your Mom call from downstairs as you awaken in surprise. You quickly look around your room and nothing looks out of place. Your Mom hasn’t seemed to notice that you were gone; in fact it doesn’t look like you even left. Was it all a dream? You shake your head trying to decide if it was, then you notice a coin on the floor next to the toys you set up yesterday. A gold coin and oddly its right next to a sword wielding figure with a peculiar smile on his face. It wasn’t a dream. It was real. Created by the power of your own imagination. You decide you’ll keep this information to yourself though, since nobody would ever believe it! You had an interesting adventure, but you’re glad to be home and thankful for what you have in the real world you think as you go downstairs to eat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t know anything about this place and you’re in great danger, so you decide it would be best if you had as many people defending you as possible. You’d rather stay with the Captain. “Very well, you may stay with us, just don’t make a nuisance of yourself. We’ll also be on the move a lot, so don’t expect a high comfort level, however whenever we make camp, you’re welcome to stay in my tent. For right now though, you’ll have to leave it, I’m having a meeting with Lyssia and a couple of my knights to discuss an important plan of action. Explore if you wish, but don’t wander away from us, we’ll protect you, but we won’t baby-sit you.” With these words in mind Lyssia leads you back out of the tent, upon which another knight comes up to her with a message. “Sergeant, a man has arrived at the camp.” “Is he hostile?” “No, he says he was just passing through and figured maybe he could trade for supplies here.” “Tell him to move on, this isn’t a trading post.” Lyssia says and goes back in the tent. Not knowing what to do next you follow the knight back to the man he was talking about. When you see him, he looks raggedy, but well equipped. He a sword by his side and his leather armor looks more like a patchwork taken from several other suits. The most notable feature is the big backpack on his back. You wonder if he’s an adventurer. “Alright you, move on, this isn’t a trading post.” The knight repeats to the visitor. “Okay, okay, I’ll go. But can’t I just rest here for one minute? I’ve been walking a lot and it would be nice to at least know I’m safe for just a moment.” “…well okay, but make it quick, and stay on the outskirts of the camp.” The knight says and leaves. You continue to examine this traveler, who immediately knows you are. “Well, how come you get to stay here? Army camps aren’t known to house children.” He asks while sitting down on a nearby log. You explain your situation to this adventurer, and once again you get an unsurprised look from your listener. “Got the impression you weren’t from around here. I somehow could sense it. I always had that ability; it’s come in handy a lot. But yes, the Nightmare Tyrant is very bad news; you would do well to leave this world as quickly as you can, no doubt Shadows are already on their way.” “Well I got this army to protect me!” you exclaim. “Perhaps, but you said it will be awhile before they return to the Parran Empire where you can get properly transported back to your world, in the meantime they WILL be attacked by not just Shadows, but also by whatever they come across in their mission. Tis a long time to put yourself at risk. Not to mention I see a lack of magic in this camp, I wonder about their chances against Shadows if the Nightmare Tyrant unleashes his full power in order to re-capture you.” You’re almost sorry you started talking to this man, within a few seconds he’s managed to worry you all over again. Here you were thinking that you were going to be nice and safe. “But…but…well what should I do?” “Well, if we were back in Null, I could probably get you back home really quick…” Before the Adventurer can finish you interrupt. “Null?” “Oh, that’s where I live. It used to be a great city of fantastic magical power a long time ago, but it was destroyed by its own petty bickering. The powerful wizards there began to argue among themselves, factions were drawn and the entire city along with several miles around it went up in a big ball of flame. It was a terrible tragedy that could’ve been avoided, but there was an interesting effect of the aftermath of it though.” “What happened?” “Well, no magic works there now, hence the name Null. Powerful wizards can’t get a simple cantrip to work there, let alone a spell. Even the Nightmare Tyrant’s minions can’t go there. Still, it’s far from safe. Lots of the Forsaken live there.” “Who are the Forsaken?” “Oh they’re the unlucky folks who actually managed to survive the catastrophe. Not all of them bad, but understandably such a powerful magic disaster had an effect on most of their bodies as well as their minds.” While this is all very fascinating, you still don’t see how this helps you exactly. “While this is all very fascinating, I still don’t see how this helps me exactly. I mean if no magic works there, how can I get home? And why would you want to live in such a place anyway it sounds dangerous.” The Adventurer moves closer to you and looks around before speaking. “Okay, because I can sympathize with being in a tough position, I’ll tell you a little secret. Magic DOES work there, but only in one area and it’s only a place I know about as far as I know. There’s a deep, but small underground dungeon in Null where magic seems to work, I know because that’s where I live! I stumbled upon it completely by accident when I was exploring Null. Apparently one of the many trinkets that I had acquired in the past was a key of some sort. It began to glow and then the wall opened up the way for me. Pure random dumb luck. So I went in and discovered that entire section runs on magic or something like it at least. There are some sort of contraption that if you sit down in and visualize with clarity, your wish will come true! I tried it a few times and it was nice, but I’m a wanderer at heart and as such I couldn’t just spend the rest of my days wallowing in eternal paradise, plus I was always leery that something bad might happen if I over used the contraption for greed. However I did see it as a good place to make my home away from the road. In fact I use this magic chair to quickly travel to towns and other cities, of course it’s only one way, but at least it shortens the trip somewhat. You could probably use the chair to return home. Even if it doesn’t work, I could always take you to the Parran Empire to get you back home. It would still be quicker and safer than traveling with an army that has to complete some mission before it can back home. Who knows what responsibilities and dangers it might incur along the way? Think also, in Null, you wouldn’t be attacked by Shadows either. It’s up to you though, but choose quickly because I have to be leaving soon.” > You stick with the Captain While this man seems to mean well, you’re still hesitant to just go wandering off with a stranger. Not that you aren’t with some already, but you know the Captain and Lyssia a lot better than this Adventurer. Also you still feel safer with more people defending you, so you decline. “Very well, I hope you manage to make it home safely.” The Adventurer remarks and takes his leave. You begin to wander around the camp looking at all the neat things. If you weren’t in so much danger and worried about getting home, you’d probably want to stay here. Still wishing to be around a familiar face, you go looking for Lyssia and hope she isn’t too busy. You end up finding her tent, but she’s not there. You do see a sleeping black dog though, a big one, bigger than you’ve ever seen. Scary actually, in fact it’s even scarier when it suddenly wakes up and leaps on top of you! “Grrrrr! What have we here? A little thief? Maybe eating your hands would teach you a lesson and I’m pretty hungry!” You’re so surprised by it talking; you temporarily forget that you’re in danger. “Y…you can talk!” you sputter. “Of course I can talk!” it snarls before sniffing you a bit. “Snnnn…you don’t smell like you’re from around here.” “I’m not, where I come from dogs don’t talk.” “DOG?!” it growls gnashing its fangs. “I’m a WOLF and maybe you need to learn that lesson too!” Thankfully Lyssia enters at this point. “Black Fang, you leave him alone! He’s a guest!” she scolds. Black Fang gives you a dirty look, but backs off to his original position where he closes his eyes again “Thanks…he nearly ate me.” “Oh I doubt that, I know he doesn’t seem like it, but he’s really a softy.” One of Black Fang’s eyes open and he makes a growl, but goes back to sleep. You begin to talk to Lyssia and ask her more about where you’re going. “It’s an old ruin of an ancient civilization called Zodan. I know because I found it myself while scouting, of course I didn’t explore it in great detail since I figured it would be better to have extra help, but the markings are Zodan. The Zodan are no longer around due to an ancient forgotten war that lead to their downfall, but it’s possible that remnants of their power still exists, possibly something we can use against the Nightmare Tyrant.” “Like what?” “Well we don’t know. It’s a chance we’re taking, but anything that might help against the Nightmare Tyrant will be a welcome relief. Many people believe his powers to be magical in nature, but they aren’t. A majority of it is purely mental hence why he is anxious to always absorb the fertile imaginations of children. The Zodan also dabbled in similar psionic activity, so maybe…” Suddenly a soldier comes running into the tent and you’ve just noticed how dark its gotten outside. “Lyssia, we’re being attacked by Shadows! They’re everywhere!” She instantly draws her sword and says a few words before leaving. “You stay in the tent! And Black Fang, wake up, you protect him!” “Huh? Wha…grah! I have to look after this whelp?” “DO IT!” Black Fang gets up and lopes over to the tent entrance and you hear the sounds of battle close by. Soon those sounds are nearly within the tent as a couple of Shadows find your location. “HERE! HE’S HERE!” one of them hisses before Black Fang attacks them with his teeth and claws. You wonder if he’s magical in nature since they fall and dissipate from his attacks. However, it looks as if the Shadows are determined to get you as they begin to overwhelm him as well as some of them on the top of the tent attempting to tear it open. > You try to escape You have to get out of here! You crawl on the ground and lift up the bottom of one side of the tent and squeeze out. Unfortunately midway through your escape the Shadows see you and quickly drag the rest of you out of the tent and swarm you. You feel a paralyzing fear overwhelm your mind and the hideous laughter of the Nightmare Tyrant fill it. “Now you shall join MY army!” you hear his voice say in your mind as the Shadows carry you off to his fortress.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While this man seems to mean well, you’re still hesitant to just go wandering off with a stranger. Not that you aren’t with some already, but you know the Captain and Lyssia a lot better than this Adventurer. Also you still feel safer with more people defending you, so you decline. “Very well, I hope you manage to make it home safely.” The Adventurer remarks and takes his leave. You begin to wander around the camp looking at all the neat things. If you weren’t in so much danger and worried about getting home, you’d probably want to stay here. Still wishing to be around a familiar face, you go looking for Lyssia and hope she isn’t too busy. You end up finding her tent, but she’s not there. You do see a sleeping black dog though, a big one, bigger than you’ve ever seen. Scary actually, in fact it’s even scarier when it suddenly wakes up and leaps on top of you! “Grrrrr! What have we here? A little thief? Maybe eating your hands would teach you a lesson and I’m pretty hungry!” You’re so surprised by it talking; you temporarily forget that you’re in danger. “Y…you can talk!” you sputter. “Of course I can talk!” it snarls before sniffing you a bit. “Snnnn…you don’t smell like you’re from around here.” “I’m not, where I come from dogs don’t talk.” “DOG?!” it growls gnashing its fangs. “I’m a WOLF and maybe you need to learn that lesson too!” Thankfully Lyssia enters at this point. “Black Fang, you leave him alone! He’s a guest!” she scolds. Black Fang gives you a dirty look, but backs off to his original position where he closes his eyes again “Thanks…he nearly ate me.” “Oh I doubt that, I know he doesn’t seem like it, but he’s really a softy.” One of Black Fang’s eyes open and he makes a growl, but goes back to sleep. You begin to talk to Lyssia and ask her more about where you’re going. “It’s an old ruin of an ancient civilization called Zodan. I know because I found it myself while scouting, of course I didn’t explore it in great detail since I figured it would be better to have extra help, but the markings are Zodan. The Zodan are no longer around due to an ancient forgotten war that lead to their downfall, but it’s possible that remnants of their power still exists, possibly something we can use against the Nightmare Tyrant.” “Like what?” “Well we don’t know. It’s a chance we’re taking, but anything that might help against the Nightmare Tyrant will be a welcome relief. Many people believe his powers to be magical in nature, but they aren’t. A majority of it is purely mental hence why he is anxious to always absorb the fertile imaginations of children. The Zodan also dabbled in similar psionic activity, so maybe…” Suddenly a soldier comes running into the tent and you’ve just noticed how dark its gotten outside. “Lyssia, we’re being attacked by Shadows! They’re everywhere!” She instantly draws her sword and says a few words before leaving. “You stay in the tent! And Black Fang, wake up, you protect him!” “Huh? Wha…grah! I have to look after this whelp?” “DO IT!” Black Fang gets up and lopes over to the tent entrance and you hear the sounds of battle close by. Soon those sounds are nearly within the tent as a couple of Shadows find your location. “HERE! HE’S HERE!” one of them hisses before Black Fang attacks them with his teeth and claws. You wonder if he’s magical in nature since they fall and dissipate from his attacks. However, it looks as if the Shadows are determined to get you as they begin to overwhelm him as well as some of them on the top of the tent attempting to tear it open. > You look for a weapon You would think Lyssia would have extra weapons in here tent, but if she does she’s currently using them all, because you can’t find anything! Meanwhile Black Fang is being overwhelmed by Shadows and some of them are successfully ripping open the tent. You wish you just had a weapon of some sort to fight them with… Suddenly a glowing short sword appears in your hand. You’re surprised at first, but when a Shadow comes at you from above, you waste you time in swinging your new acquired weapon at it. The moment the sword touches the shadow, it dissolves and screeches before your eyes. “HEY, you got a sword how about helping me out over here!” Black Fang shouts out seeing noticing your actions while still fighting off the Shadows. Without hesitation you help him, oddly you no longer feel any kind of fear as you strike down the Shadows. Soon you and Black Fang destroy all the Shadows around the tent, but the rest of the camp is still locked in battle and when you look up MORE Shadows start pouring from the sky. Lyssia comes running towards the both of you. “Quickly! We have to get out of here and head towards the Zodan ruins! The Captain says he’s going to stay behind to hold off the rest of the Shadows!” “But…” “Move!” You, Lyssia and Black Fang take off into the woods, as the sounds of battle get further behind. There are still a few Shadows in pursuit, but you manage to dispatch them. Eventually you reach an abandoned cottage where you all take refuge in for the night. “Okay I’m pretty sure we lost the Shadows, we’ll rest here for the night and set off for the ruins in the morning. A question for you though, how did you come across that sword?” “I dunno, I just wished for something to fight the Shadows with and it appeared in my hand.” “Oh yeah? You think you could think up something to get rid of ALL the Shadows? That would really help out a lot.” Black Fang says. “Maybe I could wish myself back home…” you say before Lyssia stops you. “No wait, don’t do that. Your abilities while obviously powerful are probably not stable. For all you know you might end up in the middle of an ocean! The power of the mind can be very dangerous. The Zodan experimented with it and they’re no longer around anymore. The Nightmare Tyrant wields mind power for evil purposes in his pursuit to conquer everything in his path. I suggest you don’t over abuse your gift. Don’t worry we will get you home eventually though.” You sure hope so, while you trust Lyssia, you really do want to get home. You can only imagine how worried your Mom is going to be and you really won’t know what to tell her when you get back! In the meantime you settle down to sleep. Lyssia does as well while Black Fang takes watch since Lyssia points out that he was sleeping all day. Fortunately the night is uneventful and when the morning comes you’re on your way. Black Fang doesn’t travel with you though; in fact he pads off into different direction. “Why isn’t Black Fang coming with us?” “He’s not my pet if that’s what you think. He’s a free being allowed to come and go as he pleases, but he’ll be around. He just prefers his own company for the most part. If we get into overwhelming trouble I have complete faith he’ll be around to help. Anyway the Zodan ruins won’t take as long to get to with just us traveling there. We’ll be able to cover more ground and take paths that an army couldn’t travel through.” As you and Lyssia travel, you and her exchange a bit of information about each others’ respective worlds which you both find very interesting. You make a lot of progress in one day. So much that Lyssia mentions that you should reach the ruins by the next day. She says that she has orders to search the place as much as she can, and then return back to the Empire where you can get help from the wizards to send you back home. She hopes that the Captain and the rest of his soldiers are alright and will eventually reach the ruins themselves before she returns to the Empire. When night comes Black Fang makes his presence known again as you settle down to camp again. “I feel I should warn the both of you that we aren’t completely alone in these woods. There’s something, possibly several things running around out there. Caught a glimpse of them a couple times, but they seem unnaturally quick.” “Shadows?” you ask. “No, they would’ve attacked already. Plus I can smell these things when they’re close by. They might be able to stay out of sight, but they can’t hide their scent. Smells rotten.” “I had a feeling that we were being watched, I never saw anything though.” Lyssia replies. “They’ve been staying further away from you two. I think they’ve been watching me a lot more. They probably think I’m a greater threat…and they’re right.” “Glad to see that you’re…” Lyssia suddenly stops. “Okay I heard that.” You heard it too and all three of you prepare yourselves. You also start to smell something bad like what Black Fang was talking about. Two demonic looking creatures come jumping down from the trees. One of them is much fatter than the other. “Well there doesn’t seem to be anymore point in hiding, I’m pretty sure we can take them anyway.” The thinner one says. “Uh huh, yeah. Um, Jarac which one are we supposed to take back to the Nightmare Tyrant?” the fat one asks. “Hago, you really are an idiot, sometimes I wonder how we’re even related. The boy you moron!” “I thought the Nightmare Tyrant only had Shadows working for him.” You say out loud to Lyssia. “Oh the Nightmare Tyrant has many working for him, boy. However it seems that a new battle front has recently opened up and he has great need of them elsewhere, but fortunately we happened to be in the area… so here we are.” “So the Nightmare Tyrant relies on half witted demons to do his work now?” Black Fang growls. “Hey! Only my brother is half-witted! And for what he’s going to do to you, he doesn’t need to be very smart. Enough of this talk, let’s get to it. Are you ready brother?” Hago doesn’t even reply he just smiles with a toothy grin and advances towards Black Fang. Jarak focuses his attention on you, but naturally Lyssia stands in front of you. “Run away pretty one if you value your existence, though I’d prefer if you didn’t.” Jarak says and attacks. He’s incredibly quick and manages to hit Lyssia and knock her to the ground. A quick glace sees that Black Fang is struggling with Hago. You need to act now, you can’t possibly fight either of the demons with just your weapon given how quick they are, but even they wouldn’t be quick enough to fight the power of your mind… > You think of something to help your companions You wish for something that could help Lyssia and Black Fang, and at first nothing seems to happen, but Jarek then notices something when he tries to grab you and you dodge out of the way. “WHAT? I should’ve caught you! No human can move that quickly, especially not a boy!” “Jarek, I feel like something just sapped my…UGH!” Hago grunts as Black Fang claws him across the face. Lyssia also gets back up to strike Jarek across the chest. He reels backward and realizes he no longer has an advantage. “Our powers are gone! RUN!” Jarek shouts and runs off with Hago following behind. Black Fang pursues them. “Black Fang wait!” Lyssia shouts and runs after him. Not wishing to be left alone, you follow Lyssia. You have a hard time keeping up, but after a short distance she stops when she sees Black Fang sniffing around a strange gray building. There are no windows, just a single door. It’s actually quite tall; you can’t believe you never saw it before even in this forest. “What is this?” Lyssia asks. “Don’t know, but the two demons ran in there. I was tempted to go in, but considering this thing just materialized out of nowhere I thought discretion might be the better idea for once. It’s completely featureless except for this small weird symbol on the door.” Lyssia tells you to stand back as she examines it. “This is Zodan! I saw these symbols in the ruins I briefly explored. We have to go in explore it If the Nightmare Tyrant’s minions are in there, who knows what secrets the Nightmare Tyrant might gain? We certainly don’t want him to get anymore powerful than he is!” At this point the thought of getting home is still in the back of your mind, but with all that has happened you can’t help, but be caught up in this excitement even if a lot of it has been scary. You all enter the building, which apparently is a lot bigger on the inside. All the rooms are lit and furnished, but again everything is a dull gray color, the furniture (Most of which looks like it comes from various time periods), the floors, the walls, all of it. Someone must’ve really liked that color. Black Fang easily tracks the demons by their smell; however you all can hear their voices anyway. They sound like they’re arguing with someone. When you arrive in the room where they’re located, you see strange machines and the two demons arguing with a ghostly figure. “What do you mean?! Teleport this place! We gotta get out of here!” Jarek shouts. “This place isn’t your personal transportation system! I told you that this place uses up a lot of power and needs to recharge when it teleports. Not to mention you insisted on keeping this place invisible the whole time, didn’t you think that was going to use up power? You two are just going to have to wait awhile, there’s nothing I can do.” the ghost replies. “Argh! If you weren’t a ghost already, I’d make you one! Okay Hago, check…” Before Jarek can give whatever order he was going to give, Black Fang and Lyssia attack. The two demons stand no chance without their enhanced speed. A couple of quick blows and both give other worldly shrieks before they burst into puffs of smoke and disappear. The ghost on the other hand just floats there observing it all. “Well, I’m glad they’re gone, they were really getting on my nerves. Never did like demons. Now what can I do for you?” “What is this place exactly?” you ask. “Oh just a relic of the past or the future depending on your outlook on life. It once was a mobile military base if you were looking for something a little more precise. Used for conquest and that sort of thing.” “This is Zodan in nature isn’t it?” Lyssia says. “Yes, but a fat lot good it did them, considering they aren’t around anymore, well not in the traditional sense anyway. I take it you’re not minions of the Nightmare Tyrant then?” “Do we look like we are?” Black Fang snarls. “Well you might, furball especially with that attitude! But the other two certainly don’t look the part, besides I know the Nightmare Tyrant turns children into Shadows. Nasty fellow. No redeeming qualities whatsoever.” “So who are you and why are you working for the Nightmare Tyrant?” you ask. “I’m not. I’m just a caretaker of this place and as such I’m tied to it. I can’t prevent someone from using it however they want, I’m just here to make sure it doesn’t fall into decay or get destroyed like so many of the other Zodan inventions. When the Nightmare Tyrant found this place he decided to use it to find other possible Zodan weaponry since this place can easily home in on other Zodan ruins. So far with little success as I said most Zodan equipment has lost all its power. Normally he has those mean little Shadows running around in this place chattering incessantly, but for whatever reason he put those two demons in charge. Guess he needed to reassign troops or something.” “Hey I found a Zodan ruin not far from this forest, is that why those demons were here?” “Yes, there was one located by me recently, but those demons aren’t like the Shadows and their minds weren’t as shall we say as sharp hence why we’re here in the middle of the forest instead of closer to the desired location. While this place is magical in nature, it was primarily designed to run on the power of the mind. The Nightmare Tyrant’s Shadows are all psionically linked to him so teleportation isn’t a problem. Those demons couldn’t focus on anything! Now you boy, I sense a great deal of mental focus in you. Your sword was created from your mind was it not?” “Yes, it was.” “Ah yes, I can see why the Nightmare Tyrant would want someone like you to add to his power.” “Can this place take me home?” you ask. “This place needs time to recharge as those demons used up much of its energy with their bumbling. However, you could probably take yourself home. This place enhances the powers of the mind. Normally I wouldn’t advise it since as I said it requires discipline, but you seem to have a natural gift at it and would probably be successful. Just visualize your home and concentrate.” It seems so simple! You wonder if you could’ve done it all along, but that hardly matters, since you can do it now. Lyssia puts her hand on your shoulder. “Well, it looks like you’ll get home quicker after all.” “Thanks for protecting me from the Shadows and demons.” You tell her. “Hey you helped in both battles.” She says. “Oh and what did I do, sit around and watch?” Black Fang remarks to the both of you. You nearly laugh and thank Black Fang too. The Caretaker then speaks. “Okay, now I advise complete quiet when you attempt this. It’s better for concentration and noise won’t distract you. So your friends will have to remain quiet. I’d advise that they leave altogether, as even their random thoughts could interfere. As I said, the chaos of the mind is one of the reasons for the downfall of the Zodan. I’m a ghost so you need not worry about me.” “Fine! Fine! I know when I’m not wanted I’ll go wait outside!” Black Fang says and lopes off. Lyssia is about to leave too, but you insist that she stay because you feel safer with her around. After seeing that you really want her to stay she does and says she’ll wish for you to get home as well. You sit in the middle of the room and close your eyes and concentrate. You visualize your home. You see it. You can almost feel it. You’re there, until… “LYSSIA!” Black Fang roars as he runs into the room. “I told you the boy needs to concentrate and silence!” the Caretaker snaps. “Shut up ghost! Shadows are outside! A whole mess of them!” Lyssia and Black Fang quickly run out of the room. Lyssia shouts at you to continue to your concentration. > You continue to concentrate for home You were close last time to getting home, you can’t stop now. Besides you have to do it quickly before the Shadows get inside! You attempt to drown out the sounds of battle outside and your concern for Lyssia and Black Fang. Its very difficult and you’re having a difficult time concentrating. You see your house, then various people you’ve encountered, then this place, then total blackness… “HE’S HERE! GET HIM GET HIM SSSSSS!” you hear a Shadow hiss before you are transported, but it isn’t to where you wanted… When you open your eyes and see nothing but darkness and you are being held down on some sort of smooth cold surface by Shadows and you no longer have your sword. A sinister voice emanates from the darkness and you’re completely paralyzed with fear. “Welcome to your new home and family.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wish for something that could help Lyssia and Black Fang, and at first nothing seems to happen, but Jarek then notices something when he tries to grab you and you dodge out of the way. “WHAT? I should’ve caught you! No human can move that quickly, especially not a boy!” “Jarek, I feel like something just sapped my…UGH!” Hago grunts as Black Fang claws him across the face. Lyssia also gets back up to strike Jarek across the chest. He reels backward and realizes he no longer has an advantage. “Our powers are gone! RUN!” Jarek shouts and runs off with Hago following behind. Black Fang pursues them. “Black Fang wait!” Lyssia shouts and runs after him. Not wishing to be left alone, you follow Lyssia. You have a hard time keeping up, but after a short distance she stops when she sees Black Fang sniffing around a strange gray building. There are no windows, just a single door. It’s actually quite tall; you can’t believe you never saw it before even in this forest. “What is this?” Lyssia asks. “Don’t know, but the two demons ran in there. I was tempted to go in, but considering this thing just materialized out of nowhere I thought discretion might be the better idea for once. It’s completely featureless except for this small weird symbol on the door.” Lyssia tells you to stand back as she examines it. “This is Zodan! I saw these symbols in the ruins I briefly explored. We have to go in explore it If the Nightmare Tyrant’s minions are in there, who knows what secrets the Nightmare Tyrant might gain? We certainly don’t want him to get anymore powerful than he is!” At this point the thought of getting home is still in the back of your mind, but with all that has happened you can’t help, but be caught up in this excitement even if a lot of it has been scary. You all enter the building, which apparently is a lot bigger on the inside. All the rooms are lit and furnished, but again everything is a dull gray color, the furniture (Most of which looks like it comes from various time periods), the floors, the walls, all of it. Someone must’ve really liked that color. Black Fang easily tracks the demons by their smell; however you all can hear their voices anyway. They sound like they’re arguing with someone. When you arrive in the room where they’re located, you see strange machines and the two demons arguing with a ghostly figure. “What do you mean?! Teleport this place! We gotta get out of here!” Jarek shouts. “This place isn’t your personal transportation system! I told you that this place uses up a lot of power and needs to recharge when it teleports. Not to mention you insisted on keeping this place invisible the whole time, didn’t you think that was going to use up power? You two are just going to have to wait awhile, there’s nothing I can do.” the ghost replies. “Argh! If you weren’t a ghost already, I’d make you one! Okay Hago, check…” Before Jarek can give whatever order he was going to give, Black Fang and Lyssia attack. The two demons stand no chance without their enhanced speed. A couple of quick blows and both give other worldly shrieks before they burst into puffs of smoke and disappear. The ghost on the other hand just floats there observing it all. “Well, I’m glad they’re gone, they were really getting on my nerves. Never did like demons. Now what can I do for you?” “What is this place exactly?” you ask. “Oh just a relic of the past or the future depending on your outlook on life. It once was a mobile military base if you were looking for something a little more precise. Used for conquest and that sort of thing.” “This is Zodan in nature isn’t it?” Lyssia says. “Yes, but a fat lot good it did them, considering they aren’t around anymore, well not in the traditional sense anyway. I take it you’re not minions of the Nightmare Tyrant then?” “Do we look like we are?” Black Fang snarls. “Well you might, furball especially with that attitude! But the other two certainly don’t look the part, besides I know the Nightmare Tyrant turns children into Shadows. Nasty fellow. No redeeming qualities whatsoever.” “So who are you and why are you working for the Nightmare Tyrant?” you ask. “I’m not. I’m just a caretaker of this place and as such I’m tied to it. I can’t prevent someone from using it however they want, I’m just here to make sure it doesn’t fall into decay or get destroyed like so many of the other Zodan inventions. When the Nightmare Tyrant found this place he decided to use it to find other possible Zodan weaponry since this place can easily home in on other Zodan ruins. So far with little success as I said most Zodan equipment has lost all its power. Normally he has those mean little Shadows running around in this place chattering incessantly, but for whatever reason he put those two demons in charge. Guess he needed to reassign troops or something.” “Hey I found a Zodan ruin not far from this forest, is that why those demons were here?” “Yes, there was one located by me recently, but those demons aren’t like the Shadows and their minds weren’t as shall we say as sharp hence why we’re here in the middle of the forest instead of closer to the desired location. While this place is magical in nature, it was primarily designed to run on the power of the mind. The Nightmare Tyrant’s Shadows are all psionically linked to him so teleportation isn’t a problem. Those demons couldn’t focus on anything! Now you boy, I sense a great deal of mental focus in you. Your sword was created from your mind was it not?” “Yes, it was.” “Ah yes, I can see why the Nightmare Tyrant would want someone like you to add to his power.” “Can this place take me home?” you ask. “This place needs time to recharge as those demons used up much of its energy with their bumbling. However, you could probably take yourself home. This place enhances the powers of the mind. Normally I wouldn’t advise it since as I said it requires discipline, but you seem to have a natural gift at it and would probably be successful. Just visualize your home and concentrate.” It seems so simple! You wonder if you could’ve done it all along, but that hardly matters, since you can do it now. Lyssia puts her hand on your shoulder. “Well, it looks like you’ll get home quicker after all.” “Thanks for protecting me from the Shadows and demons.” You tell her. “Hey you helped in both battles.” She says. “Oh and what did I do, sit around and watch?” Black Fang remarks to the both of you. You nearly laugh and thank Black Fang too. The Caretaker then speaks. “Okay, now I advise complete quiet when you attempt this. It’s better for concentration and noise won’t distract you. So your friends will have to remain quiet. I’d advise that they leave altogether, as even their random thoughts could interfere. As I said, the chaos of the mind is one of the reasons for the downfall of the Zodan. I’m a ghost so you need not worry about me.” “Fine! Fine! I know when I’m not wanted I’ll go wait outside!” Black Fang says and lopes off. Lyssia is about to leave too, but you insist that she stay because you feel safer with her around. After seeing that you really want her to stay she does and says she’ll wish for you to get home as well. You sit in the middle of the room and close your eyes and concentrate. You visualize your home. You see it. You can almost feel it. You’re there, until… “LYSSIA!” Black Fang roars as he runs into the room. “I told you the boy needs to concentrate and silence!” the Caretaker snaps. “Shut up ghost! Shadows are outside! A whole mess of them!” Lyssia and Black Fang quickly run out of the room. Lyssia shouts at you to continue to your concentration. > You attempt to help You can’t just abandon those who have helped you, and you wouldn’t be able to concentrate anyway. You stand up and wish for something simpler and more immediate Suddenly you’re wearing shiny armor and armed with a glowing repeating crossbow. “Hmm, didn’t expect that.” The Caretaker says as the sounds of battle start to get louder, in fact now they sound like they’re coming into the building. You run into the next room and Lyssia and Black Fang fighting off dozens of Shadows and more of them seem to be pouring in. You waste no time and begin shooting them with your new weapon. “Ha ha! Back to the void Shadow scum!” Black Fang laughs when he see you helping. “There’s more of them coming in from the left!” Lyssia shouts and suddenly you all hear a booming voice. “FOOLS! You think you can stop me and take what is rightfully mine? You cannot defeat me! And YOU boy! Your powers are nothing compared to my own, its time that you see what REAL mental power can achieve!” Suddenly the lighting gets much dimmer, almost to the point of complete darkness. Fortunately your powers maintain their glow making you the proverbial shining beacon of light. Suddenly more Shadows pour in from the corners of the walls. You’re surrounded. However, help comes in the form of the very building you’re in… “Nightmare Tyrant you have attacked this structure and as I am bound to defend it, you have made yet another enemy!” the Caretaker ghost exclaims and the entire building gets brighter, blinding most of the Shadows. “Get ‘em while they’re weak! I’m using all the power that this structure recharged right now!” You, Lyssia and Black Fang destroy more Shadows than you can count, but they still keep coming. You can’t believe it. You’ve got a lot in your favor except numbers, if you just had that, maybe you could finally defeat these Shadows once and for all… Once again it would seem your wishes have come true. “Back to the void! Forward men!” a familiar voice shouts. It sounds like its coming from outside. “That’s the Captain!” Lyssia exclaims as she strikes down another Shadow. “Bout time we got some help here!” Black Fang growls. The battle is going badly for the Shadows who aren’t attacking so much as they’re trying to get away right now. The Nightmare Tyrant’s voice again is heard and filled with rage. “COWARDS! FIGHT OR YOU’LL SUFFER FOR YOUR FAILURE!” It’s no use though; even his threats can’t motivate the Shadows to victory. You can somehow sense that the Nightmare Tyrant is desperate for victory because if he can’t get you now, he won’t be able to get you ever again. Eventually all of them are defeated. You, Lyssia and Black Fang meet the Captain outside who has a handful of his original army left. “How did you find us?” “Well after we beat back the first Shadow attack we regrouped and headed towards the ruins as planned. Then we saw this tall gray structure looming in the distance so we head towards it, and found more Shadows, so finding you was somewhat pure chance! Well it looks like some of you have underwent some changes…” the Captain says when he sees you with your armor, sword and crossbow. “We’ve got a lot to discuss about this structure Captain, but first he has to use it to get home.” “Very well, I’m interested in hearing your report Lyssia. And as for you, I wish you a safe journey home. And thank you for your help with the Shadows, you’d certainly make a good knight.” “Yeah, you’re a natural Shadow slayer kid.” Black Fang remarks. After Black Fang’s uncharacteristic praising remark, you and Lyssia return to the structure where the Caretaker floats about fixing stuff. “Blasted Shadows. It’ll take me forever to fix this place again. Oh well, I suppose that’s what I’m here for. So, are you ready to go now? I trust the fighting is over?” You nod and get ready to concentrate again, but before you do, Lyssia gives you something. “Here, this is medal I was awarded for bravery in battle. I’ve been awarded many actually, but I feel your actions were certainly deserving of such a medal. So this is for you.” she says and then gives you the medal and hugs you goodbye. Cherishing the gift, you prepare for your trip home, and concentrate once again. Soon you can feel yourself being transported. You float through a tunnel of blackness followed by swirling colored lights. It’s all so strange and overwhelming to you that you pass out once again. “Hey! I told you breakfast is ready, are you going to sleep all day?” you hear your Mom call from downstairs as you awaken in surprise. You quickly look around your room and nothing looks out of place. Your Mom hasn’t seemed to notice that you were gone; in fact it doesn’t look like you even left. Was it all a dream? You shake your head trying to decide if it was, then you notice a medal on the floor next to the toys you set up yesterday. The medal is next to three figures: A man in plate armor, a black wolf and finally a warrior woman in leather armor and strangely they all have a look of victory in their faces. It wasn’t a dream. It was real. Created by the power of your own imagination. You decide you’ll keep this information to yourself though, since nobody would ever believe it! You had an interesting adventure, but you’re glad to be home and thankful for what you have in the real world you think as you go downstairs to eat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You would think Lyssia would have extra weapons in here tent, but if she does she’s currently using them all, because you can’t find anything! Meanwhile Black Fang is being overwhelmed by Shadows and some of them are successfully ripping open the tent. You wish you just had a weapon of some sort to fight them with… Suddenly a glowing short sword appears in your hand. You’re surprised at first, but when a Shadow comes at you from above, you waste you time in swinging your new acquired weapon at it. The moment the sword touches the shadow, it dissolves and screeches before your eyes. “HEY, you got a sword how about helping me out over here!” Black Fang shouts out seeing noticing your actions while still fighting off the Shadows. Without hesitation you help him, oddly you no longer feel any kind of fear as you strike down the Shadows. Soon you and Black Fang destroy all the Shadows around the tent, but the rest of the camp is still locked in battle and when you look up MORE Shadows start pouring from the sky. Lyssia comes running towards the both of you. “Quickly! We have to get out of here and head towards the Zodan ruins! The Captain says he’s going to stay behind to hold off the rest of the Shadows!” “But…” “Move!” You, Lyssia and Black Fang take off into the woods, as the sounds of battle get further behind. There are still a few Shadows in pursuit, but you manage to dispatch them. Eventually you reach an abandoned cottage where you all take refuge in for the night. “Okay I’m pretty sure we lost the Shadows, we’ll rest here for the night and set off for the ruins in the morning. A question for you though, how did you come across that sword?” “I dunno, I just wished for something to fight the Shadows with and it appeared in my hand.” “Oh yeah? You think you could think up something to get rid of ALL the Shadows? That would really help out a lot.” Black Fang says. “Maybe I could wish myself back home…” you say before Lyssia stops you. “No wait, don’t do that. Your abilities while obviously powerful are probably not stable. For all you know you might end up in the middle of an ocean! The power of the mind can be very dangerous. The Zodan experimented with it and they’re no longer around anymore. The Nightmare Tyrant wields mind power for evil purposes in his pursuit to conquer everything in his path. I suggest you don’t over abuse your gift. Don’t worry we will get you home eventually though.” You sure hope so, while you trust Lyssia, you really do want to get home. You can only imagine how worried your Mom is going to be and you really won’t know what to tell her when you get back! In the meantime you settle down to sleep. Lyssia does as well while Black Fang takes watch since Lyssia points out that he was sleeping all day. Fortunately the night is uneventful and when the morning comes you’re on your way. Black Fang doesn’t travel with you though; in fact he pads off into different direction. “Why isn’t Black Fang coming with us?” “He’s not my pet if that’s what you think. He’s a free being allowed to come and go as he pleases, but he’ll be around. He just prefers his own company for the most part. If we get into overwhelming trouble I have complete faith he’ll be around to help. Anyway the Zodan ruins won’t take as long to get to with just us traveling there. We’ll be able to cover more ground and take paths that an army couldn’t travel through.” As you and Lyssia travel, you and her exchange a bit of information about each others’ respective worlds which you both find very interesting. You make a lot of progress in one day. So much that Lyssia mentions that you should reach the ruins by the next day. She says that she has orders to search the place as much as she can, and then return back to the Empire where you can get help from the wizards to send you back home. She hopes that the Captain and the rest of his soldiers are alright and will eventually reach the ruins themselves before she returns to the Empire. When night comes Black Fang makes his presence known again as you settle down to camp again. “I feel I should warn the both of you that we aren’t completely alone in these woods. There’s something, possibly several things running around out there. Caught a glimpse of them a couple times, but they seem unnaturally quick.” “Shadows?” you ask. “No, they would’ve attacked already. Plus I can smell these things when they’re close by. They might be able to stay out of sight, but they can’t hide their scent. Smells rotten.” “I had a feeling that we were being watched, I never saw anything though.” Lyssia replies. “They’ve been staying further away from you two. I think they’ve been watching me a lot more. They probably think I’m a greater threat…and they’re right.” “Glad to see that you’re…” Lyssia suddenly stops. “Okay I heard that.” You heard it too and all three of you prepare yourselves. You also start to smell something bad like what Black Fang was talking about. Two demonic looking creatures come jumping down from the trees. One of them is much fatter than the other. “Well there doesn’t seem to be anymore point in hiding, I’m pretty sure we can take them anyway.” The thinner one says. “Uh huh, yeah. Um, Jarac which one are we supposed to take back to the Nightmare Tyrant?” the fat one asks. “Hago, you really are an idiot, sometimes I wonder how we’re even related. The boy you moron!” “I thought the Nightmare Tyrant only had Shadows working for him.” You say out loud to Lyssia. “Oh the Nightmare Tyrant has many working for him, boy. However it seems that a new battle front has recently opened up and he has great need of them elsewhere, but fortunately we happened to be in the area… so here we are.” “So the Nightmare Tyrant relies on half witted demons to do his work now?” Black Fang growls. “Hey! Only my brother is half-witted! And for what he’s going to do to you, he doesn’t need to be very smart. Enough of this talk, let’s get to it. Are you ready brother?” Hago doesn’t even reply he just smiles with a toothy grin and advances towards Black Fang. Jarak focuses his attention on you, but naturally Lyssia stands in front of you. “Run away pretty one if you value your existence, though I’d prefer if you didn’t.” Jarak says and attacks. He’s incredibly quick and manages to hit Lyssia and knock her to the ground. A quick glace sees that Black Fang is struggling with Hago. You need to act now, you can’t possibly fight either of the demons with just your weapon given how quick they are, but even they wouldn’t be quick enough to fight the power of your mind… > You think of something to directly harm the demons You immediately concentrate on something that will hurt the demons, and your sword suddenly becomes a glowing blue axe. With Jarek approaching you strike at him and score a hit. He bellows in great pain, but it doesn’t stop him from knocking you out with his quick reflexes. With you as no longer a threat, Jarek calls his brother to retreat. Lyssia and Black Fang attempt to pursue, but they’re not fast enough to stop the two demons from disappearing with you. When you wake up you’re in near total darkness with only the sinister voice of the Nightmare Tyrant with you. “Well it would appear my minions have successfully served me this night. I certainly hope you will serve just as well in the future.” You hear him say before the darkness completely takes you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Upon entering you see many of the villagers just sitting outside their houses doing nothing, though a couple of them are lazily plucking some sort of stringed instruments. They barely pay any attention to you at all. You know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers, but in this situation you don’t really feel like you have a choice, so you ask one of them for help. “Hey, I need some help, these shadow things attacked me…” “Wazzat? Shadows? Shadows don’t come ‘round here boy, we’s got ourselves a wizard to protect us! If you got shadow problems, maybe you should talk to him. He’s a pretty smart guy. He’s in that nice lookin’ house over there, the one with the roof! Careful though, he’s usually in a bad mood. Argues with his wife constantly too.” The fat villager says going back to drinking whatever it is he’s drinking. Not knowing what else to do you head over to the wizard’s house. As you approach you can hear arguing from the inside. You knock on the door which is opened by a young woman dressed in a waitress like outfit. She’s pretty, but looks very tired, behind her appears an older man who doesn’t look much like a wizard at all. “Whadda you want kid? We ain’t buyin’ anything!” he scowls. “Are you really a wizard? You don’t look like one.” You remark. “That’s because he isn’t a real wizard. He’s a lazy charlatan!” the woman answers. “Shut up Talia, I was good enough to get YOU.” “Yeah, that’s because I was too young and naïve to know any better! I knew I should’ve married a knight!” “Hah! And what knight would marry a serving wench like you?” “Melcar, I don’t have time for your nonsense today, I have to go to work. Can you at least TRY to do something productive while I’m gone, like casting some cantrips to cut down the overgrowth in the backyard? Sheesh, I think I saw a nest of Furms making their homes in there and you know much I hate those little purple things! They infest everything and then you can’t get rid of them! So can you DO that one thing, if nothing else?” “Yeah, yeah.” The woman throws her hands up in dismay and leaves the house, leaving Melcar and you alone. “So, what’s your deal kid? I know you ain’t from this backwoods village because I know everyone here and you actually look like you bathe every once in awhile. You lost or something?” You explain your situation to Melcar, somehow he doesn’t look surprised, but he does look a little more interested in you. “Hmm, sounds like the Nightmare Tyrant. He has a habit of snatching people from other dimensions and draining them to harness his power. Those shadows you encountered are what’s left of his victims. I’m not entirely sure of his methods for choosing, but I do know he only takes those with strong imaginations though. It’s probably why he prefers children since they tend to be more inclined to think up fantastic things.” You were lucky to escape from him.” “Well how do I get back home?” Melcar looks at you a moment before replying. “You interested in doing a little yard work?” “Uh…” “I’m really busy with an experiment, and I just don’t have time to mess around with clearing the overgrowth in my backyard. If you do it, I think that’ll give me time to complete my experiment, as well as giving me time to look up the spell that can take you back home.” “Well okay…” “Good, there’s a scythe in the back. You shouldn’t have too much trouble.” Melcar closes his door and you walk around the back, which literally looks like a jungle. The grass is almost as high as you are and the scythe is a little too unwieldy and large for you to use properly. Soon tiny purple people appear and angrily throw small stones at you and squeak some sort of jibberish. They apparently don’t like you trying to tear up their home. You don’t see how you’re ever going to finish this task. > You run back to tell Melcar You aren’t going to mess about with a bunch of angry little purple people; you don’t know how dangerous they might be. You head back to the front of the house and knock on the door to get Melcar’s help. You don’t get an answer, but a short man with a long pink beard comes walking up the steps, he’s your height, but is obviously old. He reminds you of a dwarf. Maybe he is, you are in a different world after all, but the pink beard is really bizarre. There’s another taller man walking behind, but is very disheveled looking. His odor isn’t the best either as he gives off a bad smell and he isn’t even next to you. “Outta the way boy! I got important business with this charlatan who claims he’s a wizard!” the dwarf exclaims nearly knocking you down. “Chargrum, are you sure this is a good idea? I mean it was only five gold…” “ONLY FIVE GOLD? Stinky, you’ve been working for me for how long now and you’re still too dumb to figure out that nobody steals from me? You’ve truly hit an all time low in stupidity!” “Yeah, but this guy’s a wizard…” “He’s a charlatan! And even if he was a real wizard, it doesn’t matter because the money for once is the least of my complaints, he’s gotta pay for what he did! That blasted potion turned my beard PINK, or were you too stupid to even notice that Stinky?” “Okay, I’m just saying…” Before you can react to all of this, Melcar finally answers the door and addresses you first. “What’s all this blasted noise? Didn’t I tell you to go clean up my backyard?” “But there are all these mean little purple people throwing rocks at me!” you say. “So? They’re just Furms, just stop them, shouldn’t be that hard for you.” “Nevermind all that, I want my five gold back, look what your potion did to my beard, you charlatan!” the dwarf yells. “Oh fer…look Chargrum, I said no refunds when I sold you the potion, besides you got what you wanted. Your beard grew a lot longer didn’t it? Don’t like it? Shave it off!” “WHAT!? Shave off my beard? That’s madness! But no dwarf wants a pink beard! What Dwarven woman would want me like this?” “(Sigh) Stop pretending that you’re a dwarf! You’re a Halfling that’s just trying to fool Dwarven women! And you’re calling ME a charlatan?” Chargrum suddenly looks around nervously and then hits Stinky for snickering. “Shhhh! Alright, alright, keep your voice down! Look, do you have anything to change my beard back to a proper color?” “Maybe, but…hmm, that doesn’t look good…” Melcar’s statement and his eyes gazing past his porch cause the rest of you to turn around look where upon you see the sky turning jet black and dark winged creatures begin to descend from it. “SHADOWS!” Malcar yells at which point you, Chargrum, and Stinky all rush inside before he shuts the door. “What are shadows doing here? This village isn’t even of any strategic importance to the Nightmare Tyrant!” Chargrum shouts. “He’s the Nightmare Tyrant, does he need a reason? But I’ll wager they’re looking for him.” Melcar says pointing at you. “They’ll probably try to swarm the house soon, I better prepare this place….I have to go get my spell book!” After Melcar runs off to go get his book, Chargrum demands and answer from you. “What did he mean, they’re probably looking for you?” You hesitantly explain yourself at which point Chargrum gets a look in his eye that makes you uncomfortable. “So if that’s the case, then the Shadows will probably leave after they get you, well I know how to solve this problem!” Chargrum advances on you. > You run away You run up the stairs of the house, with Chargrum in pursuit. “Don’t just stand there picking your nose Stinky, help me catch the little runt!” Chargrum shouts. You reach the second floor and run into one of the rooms locking it behind you. You turn around to see that you’re in a bedroom. Probably Melcar’s no doubt. A single window leads outside. You could escape from it, but you then remember all the Shadows are outside waiting for you in the first place, in fact you can hear their screeching surrounding the house. A Shadow breaks in the window just as Chargrum bashes the door open and you begin to wish you were anywhere, but here! No sooner have you thought that, you find yourself in front of Melcar, surprising the pair of you! From the looks of things, you’re in a basement, or lab. You know you’re underground, because you can see there is a stairway leading up and hear Chargrum’s voice coming from above. He’s screaming actually. “Wha…where did you come from?” Melcar asks. “I…I dunno! I was running from Chargrum and hiding and then I wished I was someplace else and then I found myself here!” “Wait. Why was he chasing you?” “He was trying to throw me to the Shadows!” No sooner have you said that, when Stinky comes running down the stairs. “The Shadows are in the house and they took away Chargrum through one of the windows!” “What?! I just erected a barrier! They shouldn’t be able to get in!” “Well a few of them have, and Argh! Here they come!” Stinky says as some Shadows come down the stairs hissing and screeching. He quickly runs towards the both of you and behind Melcar. “Get behind me too, kid.” A few chants and Melcar unleashes a couple of electrical blasts from his fingers zapping all of the attacking Shadows. They give one last screech before disappearing. Melcar immediately rushes upstairs to see if there are anymore Shadows, you and Stinky follow closely behind him. After some checking, it would appear that the rest of the Shadows have been kept out and only a few managed to get in before the barrier appeared. You can still hear them still trying to get in though. “Whew. Okay. That should hold for awhile.” Melcar says collapsing in his chair. “But what about Chargrum…the Shadows…they…” “I can’t do anything. They got him and that’s it. But judging by what the kid told me he was trying to do it sounds like he got what he deserved anyway. Besides, I would’ve thought you of all people would’ve been glad to be rid of him, with the way he treated you.” “I…guess so, but what’re we going to do now?” he asks. “Dunno yet, but I’m hoping the kid can help out. If he can like I think he can; then we should be fine.” Now both of you are looking at Melcar wondering what he’s talking about. He sees that he’ll need to explain in more detail. “Kid, as I said you were brought here by the Nightmare Tyrant due to your strong sense of imagination. However, judging from your recent transportation trick it would appear that your imagination is strong enough to cause things to happen with the mere power of your mind. Yet, it would also appear that your power is limited. You wished you were away from danger, yet only re-appeared in another place in the house. Though my magic barrier was up at that point, so perhaps that has something to do with it. I don’t know…let’s test something.” Melcar points to another chair. “Concentrate, and think about that chair being solid gold.” You aren’t sure about all of this, but you’re interested in this “new power” you’ve acquired so you comply. Perhaps you could try to even wish yourself back home! You close your eyes, concentrate and wish for the chair to be solid gold, but it’s more difficult than you thought. Your mind is periodically bombarded with images of darkness and grinning Shadows. Eventually you fall to the floor. Melcar helps you up. The chair is still the same, except it has a single gold piece on the seat. Melcar checks to see if it’s real, and then he pockets it. “Well, just as I thought, it’s unpredictable and weak right now.” “I…saw Shadows and darkness…” you say still holding your head. “It looks like the Nightmare Tyrant really wants you; he’s probably linked to you psychically or something. I wouldn’t try to use your power to try to get back home. You’re likely to appear right in his clutches, but if we harness your power a little better, we can at least get rid of this immediate threat of Shadows. Focus on immediate help right now rather than a long term…” Suddenly Melcar is struck in the back of the head, by a Shadow! It must’ve still been hiding during the search! Melcar collapses and falls. Stinky runs off, leaving the Shadow to turn its attention towards you, hissing aggressively. > You use your power to try to escape You attempt to wish yourself elsewhere again, but you failed to heed the warning given by Melcar who stated how such an action might be dangerous, and in this case it was… Your mind is once again flooded by darkness and Shadows filling you with terror, and causing you to feel pulled towards it. A sinister laugh echoes throughout your head causing you to immediately break your concentration, but the damage is done as you are captured by the Shadow that’s currently in the room with you. At this point your mind is too paralyzed with fear to be of any use, but it knocks you out just to be sure you don’t try to escape again. Then it, along with its fellows takes you to meet the Nightmare Tyrant, whose laughter you hear once more before he carries out his evil plans for you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You run up the stairs of the house, with Chargrum in pursuit. “Don’t just stand there picking your nose Stinky, help me catch the little runt!” Chargrum shouts. You reach the second floor and run into one of the rooms locking it behind you. You turn around to see that you’re in a bedroom. Probably Melcar’s no doubt. A single window leads outside. You could escape from it, but you then remember all the Shadows are outside waiting for you in the first place, in fact you can hear their screeching surrounding the house. A Shadow breaks in the window just as Chargrum bashes the door open and you begin to wish you were anywhere, but here! No sooner have you thought that, you find yourself in front of Melcar, surprising the pair of you! From the looks of things, you’re in a basement, or lab. You know you’re underground, because you can see there is a stairway leading up and hear Chargrum’s voice coming from above. He’s screaming actually. “Wha…where did you come from?” Melcar asks. “I…I dunno! I was running from Chargrum and hiding and then I wished I was someplace else and then I found myself here!” “Wait. Why was he chasing you?” “He was trying to throw me to the Shadows!” No sooner have you said that, when Stinky comes running down the stairs. “The Shadows are in the house and they took away Chargrum through one of the windows!” “What?! I just erected a barrier! They shouldn’t be able to get in!” “Well a few of them have, and Argh! Here they come!” Stinky says as some Shadows come down the stairs hissing and screeching. He quickly runs towards the both of you and behind Melcar. “Get behind me too, kid.” A few chants and Melcar unleashes a couple of electrical blasts from his fingers zapping all of the attacking Shadows. They give one last screech before disappearing. Melcar immediately rushes upstairs to see if there are anymore Shadows, you and Stinky follow closely behind him. After some checking, it would appear that the rest of the Shadows have been kept out and only a few managed to get in before the barrier appeared. You can still hear them still trying to get in though. “Whew. Okay. That should hold for awhile.” Melcar says collapsing in his chair. “But what about Chargrum…the Shadows…they…” “I can’t do anything. They got him and that’s it. But judging by what the kid told me he was trying to do it sounds like he got what he deserved anyway. Besides, I would’ve thought you of all people would’ve been glad to be rid of him, with the way he treated you.” “I…guess so, but what’re we going to do now?” he asks. “Dunno yet, but I’m hoping the kid can help out. If he can like I think he can; then we should be fine.” Now both of you are looking at Melcar wondering what he’s talking about. He sees that he’ll need to explain in more detail. “Kid, as I said you were brought here by the Nightmare Tyrant due to your strong sense of imagination. However, judging from your recent transportation trick it would appear that your imagination is strong enough to cause things to happen with the mere power of your mind. Yet, it would also appear that your power is limited. You wished you were away from danger, yet only re-appeared in another place in the house. Though my magic barrier was up at that point, so perhaps that has something to do with it. I don’t know…let’s test something.” Melcar points to another chair. “Concentrate, and think about that chair being solid gold.” You aren’t sure about all of this, but you’re interested in this “new power” you’ve acquired so you comply. Perhaps you could try to even wish yourself back home! You close your eyes, concentrate and wish for the chair to be solid gold, but it’s more difficult than you thought. Your mind is periodically bombarded with images of darkness and grinning Shadows. Eventually you fall to the floor. Melcar helps you up. The chair is still the same, except it has a single gold piece on the seat. Melcar checks to see if it’s real, and then he pockets it. “Well, just as I thought, it’s unpredictable and weak right now.” “I…saw Shadows and darkness…” you say still holding your head. “It looks like the Nightmare Tyrant really wants you; he’s probably linked to you psychically or something. I wouldn’t try to use your power to try to get back home. You’re likely to appear right in his clutches, but if we harness your power a little better, we can at least get rid of this immediate threat of Shadows. Focus on immediate help right now rather than a long term…” Suddenly Melcar is struck in the back of the head, by a Shadow! It must’ve still been hiding during the search! Melcar collapses and falls. Stinky runs off, leaving the Shadow to turn its attention towards you, hissing aggressively. > You use your power to fight back You have to fight back, as escape is not an option. You don’t even concentrate; you just wish you had something to defeat this creature! Suddenly a glowing sword appears in your hand. You also feel somewhat different, as if you have been trained to use one before. The Shadow steps back a bit, but then attack anyway. You take one swing at it and strike a powerful blow causing it to completely disappear. You hear more coming in from the second floor again. The barrier must be weak in that area. Seeing as Melcar’s out of it, you’re going to have to reinforce it yourself. “Stinky! Stop hiding and try to bring Melcar back around so he can help! I’m going to get rid of these Shadows!” you order as you run upstairs. More Shadows are eager to carry out the will of their master, but you’re better prepared for them now physically as well as mentally. You strike down the first one coming down the hallway, and then the second one, and then the next, until you get back to the bedroom that you teleported from. You can see that the same window that the Shadows broke through before is where the barrier is also “broken”. The blue glow of the magic barrier is non-existent there. Before more Shadows can get in, you begin to wish for the barrier to be repaired. While you attempt this task, you begin to hear the taunts of the Shadows trying to fill you with doubt. You also hear a more sinister voice, one that carries fear directly to your mind. “Little fool! Do you actually think this is going to stop me? Your attempts only delay the inevitable. Eventually you WILL be mine!” This evil presence in your mind causes you to break your concentration. You’re a little shaken by hearing the voice of the Nightmare Tyrant and you’ve failed to repair the barrier and now more Shadows are climbing in. Fortunately, Melcar has regained consciousness and has appeared to help. Melcar zaps the Shadows and with a few mumbling chants the barrier is repaired. Before you thank him, you notice that he’s soaking wet. “Uh…” “Yeah I know, I’m all wet. Stinky nearly drowned me in his attempt to wake me up. Pity he doesn’t immerse himself in as much water! Still, I guess it worked.” Melcar replies. “I heard the Nightmare Tyrant’s voice in my head.” “Not surprised. He’s probably trying to prevent you from using your power. He’s able to focus in on you better because you’ve been in the same location for a long time. I’d suggest moving, but given that we’re surrounded by Shadows, that’s not really an option anymore.” “Look, can’t YOU just send me back home? I mean that’s what you said you’d do if I had cleared your backyard.” “Uh, yeah…about that. I was just kind of being lazy. I just didn’t want to be bothered to do it. In fact I had a list of other chores I was going to have you do if you finished that one.” “What!? You lied? You mean your wife was right about you being a charlatan?” “AM I NOT! I AM a wizard! I erected this barrier didn’t I? Though maybe my wife is right about one thing, I am lazy. (Sigh) I guess I’m paying for my sloth now. If I’d just cleared out the backyard myself, instead of having you do it, the Shadows wouldn’t have arrived. Bah, no time to worry about the past now, we need to solve this problem. Okay, I’ll try to get you back home, without you around, the Shadows won’t be around either. I know I have some sort of portal spell in one of my books somewhere. I’ve never had any reason to use it before though and those types of spells are very taxing. I would definitely have to take down the barrier first and of course you know what that means and I still don’t know if the spell will be successful, like I said I’ve never cast one before.” ‘Is there anything we can do to slow down the Shadows?” you ask. “Well, we can barricade the house properly before I take the magic barrier down which will take us some time, but it’s safer. We’ll have to hope the Shadows don’t break in quickly though. The second way is if we actually try to destroy all the Shadows currently out there, before I start the portal spell. In this case we’ll have to hope that the Nightmare Tyrant can’t summon reinforcements quick enough.” > You barricade the house You might have new abilities, but they’re still limited. Fighting a bunch of Shadows is just going to tire you and Melcar out and Melcar needs all of his energy to cast the portal spell. “Let’s barricade the house.” You say. “Alright, but I have to look for that spell first, so you’ll be doing most of the barricading. Hopefully it doesn’t take me too long.” “Oh, well maybe I can get Stinky to help me.” “Good idea, I would imagine he’ll be able to at least be useful in that aspect. Make sure you stay focused and block out any of those Shadow tricks or anything the Nightmare Tyrant might try to do to your mind.” You take Melcar’s advice and go talk to Stinky. He’s still in a state of panic, and gibbering about the Shadows trying to get in. “Hey, help me barricade the house.” “But what good will that do? Trapping ourselves in won’t help! They’ll get in eventually!” “Look, we’ve got a plan so that the Shadows won’t bother you ever again, but I need you to pull it off and that involves you helping me barricade the house! You’re braver than you think Stinky, look at me, I didn’t think I could fight the Shadows either and I did.” “Yeah, but I don’t have any powers like you do and Chargrum always said that I was too…” “Chargrum isn’t around anymore to abuse you, so his opinion doesn’t matter, in fact it never did. You’re better off not thinking about anything he might’ve said about you. You can do this. Now’s the time to prove yourself.” Your inspiring words make Stinky feel more confident in himself, probably for the first time in his life. He immediately thanks you, and begins to help you barricade the house. You spend a whole day doing this mainly because Melcar has a really hard time finding anything in his disorganized lab. You mainly focus on the task at hand as does Stinky, but your thoughts briefly wander about your home. If…no WHEN you get back home, you don’t know how you’re going to explain your disappearance to your Mom. You can’t dwell on such things too much though, you need to keep yourself alert. Eventually Melcar comes back up from his lab. “Found it. Now I’m going to go back down into the basement and begin the spell because it’ll be the safest place I’ll be able to cast it. I hope your barricades are strong enough to hold because I won’t be able to fight Shadows AND cast this spell. If the Shadows do manage to break in, well its going to be up to you to fight them off.” “And me…” Stinky pipes up. “…well, this is a surprise. Okay, the both of you then, here Stinky you’ll need something magical to fight them.” Melcar hands Stinky a wand of some sort. “Make the shots count, because I forget how many charges it has left in it. Okay I would suggest you two guard the basement doorway and when I tell you the portal is open that will be your cue to make haste into it, because again, I don’t know how long I can keep it open. You guys ready?” You and Stinky nod. “Okay, I’m going to dispel the barrier.” Melcar makes a few chanting noises and the barrier goes down where upon you hear the Shadows howling in excitement and start trying to bash their way in. You all retreat back to the basement, where you and Stinky prepare yourselves for an attack and Melcar begins to cast the Portal Spell. All seems to be going smoothly, but then you hear the inevitable break in, and the first Shadows attempt to recapture you. Fortunately you’re in a good position to fight them. They can’t overwhelm or sneak up on you. After striking a few down, a smaller Shadow appears and sounds painfully familiar… “YOU did this to me! Now I’ll do what I wanted to do in the first place! Throw you to the Nightmare Tyrant!” Chargrum hisses in his new Shadow form. You take a swing at Chargrum, but you miss and end up falling off balance causing you to fall down the steps! You’re hurt, and very dizzy, but you can see Stinky trying to fight off Chargrum. He discharges a bolt from the wand, but once again Chargrum proves to be very nimble in his new form and knocks it out of his hand and him to the floor. “Outta the way Stinky! When ya get turned into one of us, I’ll make sure to really punish you, for you traitor!” Chargrum races down the stairs towards you, just as you see Stinky getting swarmed by other Shadows at the top of the stairs. You roll out the way of Chargrum’s clutches and pick your sword back up. “Better put down those Shadows quickly! I’m not near done yet!” Melcar shouts from his own position after seeing you engaged in combat with Chargrum. You strike down a couple more Shadows, but Chargrum continues to prove to be faster. He manages to knock you down again and jumps on top of you as your sword is separated from you. “The Nightmare Tyrant wants to relay a message to you!” he hisses and you feel the sinister voice of Tyrant entering your mind again. “You’ve lost! You cannot defeat me, I am everywhere. You WILL submit and become my servant!” The Nightmare Tyrant is attempting to break your will and fill you with terror again, but it’s not going to work this time, you can feel that victory is almost near and the Tyrant probably feels it too. He knows that if you get away back to your own world that he’ll never be able to try to get you ever again. You won’t be beaten after coming this far, all you need is a distraction to help you get your sword back and Chargrum off of you… And with that thought in mind, Stinky comes from out of nowhere and zaps Chargrum point blank in the back with his wand. He screeches horribly as he disappears before your eyes. “Should’ve watched your back around a traitor like me, Chargrum.” Stinky smirks as you scramble to retrieve your sword. You strike down a few more Shadows, and try to hold them back at the bottom of the stairway. Stinky’s wand has run out of charges, but the better news is that Melcar has completed the portal spell! A large blue portal opens up. Now you can hear the Nightmare Tyrant very clearly. “NO! GET THE BOY! NOW!” he roars. “It’s open! Get in quick! I don’t know how long it will hold!” Melcar shouts. “Go! We’ll be alright! We can hold them off!” Stinky adds. “I can’t leave you without a weapon!” you shout and hand Stinky the sword, at which point he hands you the used up wand. “It’s not much, but think of it as a souvenir! Thanks for your help!” he shouts as fights off more Shadows coming down the stairs. You run towards the portal and give Melcar a look before jumping in. “Stinky’s right, we’ll be fine, though I’m sure my wife will yell at me for destroying half the house! Get in!” You’re sort of worried about Stinky and Melcar, but you realize you have to go now. The Nightmare Tyrant bellows again to his minions about not letting you escape as you run for the portal and entering it. You are enveloped by blackness followed by swirling colored lights. It’s all so strange and overwhelming to you that you pass out. “Hey! I told you breakfast is ready, are you going to sleep all day?” you hear your Mom call from downstairs as you awaken in surprise. You quickly look around your room and nothing looks out of place. Your Mom hasn’t seemed to notice that you were gone; in fact it doesn’t look like you even left. Was it all a dream? You shake your head trying to decide if it was, then you notice a small rod on the floor next to the toys you set up yesterday. It’s the used up wand and oddly it’s right next to a couple of figures, one holding a sword and another with his hands positioned to cast a spell. They strangely have a tired, but yet relieved look on their faces. It wasn’t a dream. It was real. Created by the power of your own imagination. You decide you’ll keep this information to yourself though, since nobody would ever believe it! You had an interesting adventure, but you’re glad to be home you think as you go downstairs to eat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to fight back, as escape is not an option. You don’t even concentrate; you just wish you had something to defeat this creature! Suddenly a glowing sword appears in your hand. You also feel somewhat different, as if you have been trained to use one before. The Shadow steps back a bit, but then attack anyway. You take one swing at it and strike a powerful blow causing it to completely disappear. You hear more coming in from the second floor again. The barrier must be weak in that area. Seeing as Melcar’s out of it, you’re going to have to reinforce it yourself. “Stinky! Stop hiding and try to bring Melcar back around so he can help! I’m going to get rid of these Shadows!” you order as you run upstairs. More Shadows are eager to carry out the will of their master, but you’re better prepared for them now physically as well as mentally. You strike down the first one coming down the hallway, and then the second one, and then the next, until you get back to the bedroom that you teleported from. You can see that the same window that the Shadows broke through before is where the barrier is also “broken”. The blue glow of the magic barrier is non-existent there. Before more Shadows can get in, you begin to wish for the barrier to be repaired. While you attempt this task, you begin to hear the taunts of the Shadows trying to fill you with doubt. You also hear a more sinister voice, one that carries fear directly to your mind. “Little fool! Do you actually think this is going to stop me? Your attempts only delay the inevitable. Eventually you WILL be mine!” This evil presence in your mind causes you to break your concentration. You’re a little shaken by hearing the voice of the Nightmare Tyrant and you’ve failed to repair the barrier and now more Shadows are climbing in. Fortunately, Melcar has regained consciousness and has appeared to help. Melcar zaps the Shadows and with a few mumbling chants the barrier is repaired. Before you thank him, you notice that he’s soaking wet. “Uh…” “Yeah I know, I’m all wet. Stinky nearly drowned me in his attempt to wake me up. Pity he doesn’t immerse himself in as much water! Still, I guess it worked.” Melcar replies. “I heard the Nightmare Tyrant’s voice in my head.” “Not surprised. He’s probably trying to prevent you from using your power. He’s able to focus in on you better because you’ve been in the same location for a long time. I’d suggest moving, but given that we’re surrounded by Shadows, that’s not really an option anymore.” “Look, can’t YOU just send me back home? I mean that’s what you said you’d do if I had cleared your backyard.” “Uh, yeah…about that. I was just kind of being lazy. I just didn’t want to be bothered to do it. In fact I had a list of other chores I was going to have you do if you finished that one.” “What!? You lied? You mean your wife was right about you being a charlatan?” “AM I NOT! I AM a wizard! I erected this barrier didn’t I? Though maybe my wife is right about one thing, I am lazy. (Sigh) I guess I’m paying for my sloth now. If I’d just cleared out the backyard myself, instead of having you do it, the Shadows wouldn’t have arrived. Bah, no time to worry about the past now, we need to solve this problem. Okay, I’ll try to get you back home, without you around, the Shadows won’t be around either. I know I have some sort of portal spell in one of my books somewhere. I’ve never had any reason to use it before though and those types of spells are very taxing. I would definitely have to take down the barrier first and of course you know what that means and I still don’t know if the spell will be successful, like I said I’ve never cast one before.” ‘Is there anything we can do to slow down the Shadows?” you ask. “Well, we can barricade the house properly before I take the magic barrier down which will take us some time, but it’s safer. We’ll have to hope the Shadows don’t break in quickly though. The second way is if we actually try to destroy all the Shadows currently out there, before I start the portal spell. In this case we’ll have to hope that the Nightmare Tyrant can’t summon reinforcements quick enough.” > You destroy the Shadows You want to get home and away from this place as soon as possible. You feel with your sword and new abilities along with Melcar’s help you should be able to take care of them. “Let’s destroy the Shadows!” you say. “Alright, but let me look for that spell first, because after we’ve destroyed the Shadows, we’re going to want to cast the portal as soon as possible. Shouldn’t take me too long.” “Okay, what about Stinky?” “Stinky? He won’t be of any help! He’ll probably be hiding in the house the whole time! I’ll go look for that spell, you just get yourself prepared, because this won’t be easy.” You take Melcar’s advice and begin to get yourself in a proper frame of mind; in fact you spend a day doing this since Melcar has a really hard time finding anything in his disorganized lab. Stinky is constantly in a state of panic, and gibbering about the Shadows trying to get in, making it harder for you to keep yourself calm. Eventually Melcar comes back up from his lab. “Found it; alright let’s get rid of these Shadows quickly. I’m going to dispel the barrier.” Melcar makes a few chanting noises and the barrier goes down where upon you hear the Shadows howling in excitement and start bashing their way in, and in the case of some already get in through the upstairs window. You and Melcar begin to fight the Shadows, while Stinky goes off to hide, though it doesn’t do him much go since the Shadows at this point are intent on not just getting you, but now everyone in the house, eventually all of his running and hiding attempts fail as you see him being dragged off by a few Shadows, you attempt to stop them, but nearly get yourself captured in the process. This ordeal is very tiring as the Shadows seem to be more numerous than you thought. Melcar eventually exhausts his spell power and is reduced to beating the Shadows with a magic wand. You briefly worry about him being able to cast the portal spell, but as it turns out, that will be the least of your worries. A shorter Shadow suddenly jumps on your back; it begins to taunt you as it attempts to wrestle you down. The voice is very familiar… “YOU did this to me! Now I’ll do what I wanted to do in the first place! Throw you to the Nightmare Tyrant!” Chargrum hisses in his new Shadow form. While you manage to get him off and strike him down, Chargrum was able to distract you long enough for other Shadows to overwhelm you, and your sword is separated from you. The blackness has now enveloped you and your worry has now become terror and you can’t think straight. You call out for Melcar to help, but he too has been overwhelmed. The sinister laugh now fills your mind, paralyzing it, and soon all is forever shadows when you are taken directly to the Nightmare Tyrant.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t going to mess about with a bunch of angry little purple people; you don’t know how dangerous they might be. You head back to the front of the house and knock on the door to get Melcar’s help. You don’t get an answer, but a short man with a long pink beard comes walking up the steps, he’s your height, but is obviously old. He reminds you of a dwarf. Maybe he is, you are in a different world after all, but the pink beard is really bizarre. There’s another taller man walking behind, but is very disheveled looking. His odor isn’t the best either as he gives off a bad smell and he isn’t even next to you. “Outta the way boy! I got important business with this charlatan who claims he’s a wizard!” the dwarf exclaims nearly knocking you down. “Chargrum, are you sure this is a good idea? I mean it was only five gold…” “ONLY FIVE GOLD? Stinky, you’ve been working for me for how long now and you’re still too dumb to figure out that nobody steals from me? You’ve truly hit an all time low in stupidity!” “Yeah, but this guy’s a wizard…” “He’s a charlatan! And even if he was a real wizard, it doesn’t matter because the money for once is the least of my complaints, he’s gotta pay for what he did! That blasted potion turned my beard PINK, or were you too stupid to even notice that Stinky?” “Okay, I’m just saying…” Before you can react to all of this, Melcar finally answers the door and addresses you first. “What’s all this blasted noise? Didn’t I tell you to go clean up my backyard?” “But there are all these mean little purple people throwing rocks at me!” you say. “So? They’re just Furms, just stop them, shouldn’t be that hard for you.” “Nevermind all that, I want my five gold back, look what your potion did to my beard, you charlatan!” the dwarf yells. “Oh fer…look Chargrum, I said no refunds when I sold you the potion, besides you got what you wanted. Your beard grew a lot longer didn’t it? Don’t like it? Shave it off!” “WHAT!? Shave off my beard? That’s madness! But no dwarf wants a pink beard! What Dwarven woman would want me like this?” “(Sigh) Stop pretending that you’re a dwarf! You’re a Halfling that’s just trying to fool Dwarven women! And you’re calling ME a charlatan?” Chargrum suddenly looks around nervously and then hits Stinky for snickering. “Shhhh! Alright, alright, keep your voice down! Look, do you have anything to change my beard back to a proper color?” “Maybe, but…hmm, that doesn’t look good…” Melcar’s statement and his eyes gazing past his porch cause the rest of you to turn around look where upon you see the sky turning jet black and dark winged creatures begin to descend from it. “SHADOWS!” Malcar yells at which point you, Chargrum, and Stinky all rush inside before he shuts the door. “What are shadows doing here? This village isn’t even of any strategic importance to the Nightmare Tyrant!” Chargrum shouts. “He’s the Nightmare Tyrant, does he need a reason? But I’ll wager they’re looking for him.” Melcar says pointing at you. “They’ll probably try to swarm the house soon, I better prepare this place….I have to go get my spell book!” After Melcar runs off to go get his book, Chargrum demands and answer from you. “What did he mean, they’re probably looking for you?” You hesitantly explain yourself at which point Chargrum gets a look in his eye that makes you uncomfortable. “So if that’s the case, then the Shadows will probably leave after they get you, well I know how to solve this problem!” Chargrum advances on you. > You fight him Chargrum is your height so you think you can fight him off, however you’re forgetting that he still has the strength of someone a lot older than you, he easily fends off your attack and grabs you by the scruff. “Stinky open the door! We gotta get rid of this Shadow magnet! NOW!” Stinky fumbles with the door while you protest and struggle, but its no use, Chargrum has already thrown you outside to the Shadows. When you pick yourself up, you’re stricken with mind paralyzing fear as a large group of grinning Shadows encircle and capture you. They take you back to the Nightmare Tyrant who has no intention of getting rid of you. Ever.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Look at the birds, Mommy!” a child’s voice exclaims. You snap awake, checking for your weapons automatically before you remember you’re on a civilian transport. “Bout time, Zee. We left underspace half an hour ago,” Hinsman says from beside you. “Smooth as butter. They have stabilizers set up here now, I didn’t know that. This system’s really had some work put into it since I was here last.” In his fifties but not yet looking his age, he’s supposed to be dressed as an asteroid speculator out on holiday and is struggling in the narrow confines of his seat to tug his coat on. Hinsman’s on the short side, and the garment is a couple of sizes too big. All around you others, tourists, businessmen, and families, are starting to collect their things as well. “Anyway, just waiting on our transfer now.” You unsnap your safety belt. “Okay.” Hinsman’s got the aisle seat, just one more factor in his unspoken role in keeping you from too much direct contact with the public. Fine by you. Your job has always been to protect these people, not make conversation. Gazing out the window, you have a good view of the green planet. Camarov IV. It’s supposed to be beautiful, but it’s not like you’re here to sightsee. This is just your fastest route back to work. The Order cruiser you’d been using got enough of a beating on your last mission it needed to be taken to a real shipyard for repairs, and meanwhile this transport was headed directly for Camarov and had two vacancies. There’s another Order ship en route to here which you’ll transfer to to be taken back to the Outer Rim. You’ll never even set foot on this planet. There is a gentle thud as the landing ship locks on and the crew starts shepherding passengers towards the exit. Hinsman combs his dark hair and tends to the mustache he’s been cultivating. You just sit and wait. Both of your wrist comms beep at the same time, and you see the Order ship has left underspace. There’s a little flurry among the crew when it requests to lock on, but Hinsman flashes a badge and his signature smile and the two of you transfer over without incident. Once aboard, the ship unlocks and moves to a safe distance for a jump. Then there’s a delay as the pilot seems to have no intention of leaving until he downloads whatever media Camarov IV has to offer. Images of green hills and misty lakes and crystal spires and dancers on a stage and some sort of historical reimagining of Old Earth tumble across the viewscreen. The pilot, Karoff, is middle aged, tall and with thinning blond hair just starting to shade to grey. His mustache however is much more impressive than Hinsman’s. You’ve worked with him before. You don't always get his sense of humor, but he's okay. The next stop will be The Last Outpost for refueling, then you'll be taken along a scenic tour alternating between the most boring and dangerous parts of the Outer Rim as you go down the list fulfilling your various obligations there and being available to lend assistance in emergencies. You lean against the wall and mentally check out until it’s time to strap in for the jump to underspace. Hinsman was right, the in system stabilizers do improve the experience quite a bit. ***** The Last Outpost is dark when you approach. “Well that’s not a good sign,” Karoff mutters. The station floats in place like a fat black spider against the pale backdrop of the system’s single barren planetoid. Karoff makes a few adjustments to make your approach less obvious and then starts running scans from a distance. It took you nearly a week to get out this far from Camarov and you’re all aware that if there’s trouble it’ll be just as long before you can find any backup. The Last Outpost was once a research hospital on the edge of protected space. Now it’s a ways past the official line, although after the rollback it persisted as a stopover and fueling station for both the military and any junker the colony worlds could put together to evacuate in. Officially out of service and abandoned now as far as anyone outside the Order is supposed to know, it’s still got enough automated defenses that any scavengers looking for scrap will be sent packing in a hurry. Or it used to, anyway. Hinsman is frowning over the console now too. “That’s a lot of damage.” “Pirates?” Hinsman shakes his head. “I don’t think so. The way some of the plating is buckled, this looks like a string of explosions from the inside. Mostly just in that one arm, but the defenses are offline and there’s no more than basic life support anywhere on the station.” There’s a soft beep as a scan is completed. “One life sign,” Karoff grunts. “Even if they pulled out everyone on mission, there should’ve be at least three here for maintenance still.” Hinsman joins you at the window as he finishes speaking and stares across the distance. “But...I’ll hail them I suppose.” “You sure?” “Might as well. Doesn’t look like they have much left to shoot at us anyway.” “Let’s hope appearances aren’t deceiving.” > You inquiry Karoff looks tense as Hinsman tries to contact the station. There’s a long wait with no reply. He frowns and tries once again using Order passcodes. A green light blinks on, and then a moment later a haggard-looking blonde woman with high cheekbones and thin lips appears on the viewscreen with a crackling of static. “So someone finally did show up.” The woman’s voice is flat and blank. She’s young and might have been pretty under other circumstances, but her eyes have dark rings under them, her face is sallow and her hair hasn’t seen a brush in awhile. She dips a spoon in a tub of drippy, melting ice cream while staring at the screen indifferently. Karoff pulls up her ID while Hinsman coughs and clears his throat. “Ah...you’re Matti Oswen, correct?” “Yeah.” “I’m Agent Hinsman. We were just stopping over on our way into the Rim, but it looks like you’ve had a bit of trouble here. Do you need assistance?” He keeps his tone light and injects a note of friendly concern. She blinks at him owlishly a moment, then sets the ice cream aside and scratches lightly at the side of her neck. “I sent out a call, but the computer lost power and I’m not sure it went through. That was...almost a week ago, I think.” “You’re a maintenance worker, correct? What happened here, Matti? And where are the others?” “Inea and Markov? Oh, they’re dead.” Her voice is still flat and strangely disinterested. Karoff dutifully pulls up their IDs as well. Their new status as deceased hasn’t been updated in the Order database yet, anyhow, and as the three of you have heard nothing regarding the damage to the station or a rescue attempt you can only assume her distress signal never did make it out. Oswen continues only after Hinsman prompts her again. “Inea had an accident while doing repairs and Markov killed himself and tried to take the rest of the station with him a couple of days later. I rerouted the power to redirect the blast just in time, but most of the generators still blew. I’ve been sitting around in the dark and trying to eat everything in the freezers before it all spoils, and then figuring I’d inject myself with something before the oxygen fails.” Hinsmans voice is soothing. “Well I’m sorry you had to go through that Matti, but you’ll be safe now. We’re going to send out a request for help and then lock on to see what we can do about repairs in the meantime. We can route enough power over to make sure life support holds up, anyway. “Whatever.” Once the call is cut, a distress signal is sent back to headquarters along with a short recorded message. The three of you briefly go over the situation. Hinsman sums it all up. “It’ll be a few days before anyone can arrive to help, and we can’t leave until then. Even if no survivors were here, the station itself is vulnerable and hell, it’s probably more necessary to the Order than any of us, if we’re being honest. Although this Oswen woman...she might be in shock, or there might be something else going on there. Not sure we can trust her.” Karoff spits out the end of his mustache. “We’re gonna get in there and find out the bitch slit their throats and made bikini tops out of their skin. Seen it happen before.” You look at him. “Really?” “Ahh, well not the skinning for bikinis part, but people get assigned to an out of the way place like this too long, they can just snap and start killing each other. Or there maybe was some kind of love triangle going on that turned nasty. And not the good kind of nasty,” he adds, apparently feeling the need to clarify. “Well I guess we’re just going to have to risk our skins then,” Hinsman says with a slight roll of his eyes. “Or you and I anyway, Karoff. But Zee, you were always going to be working alone anyhow. You won’t have us standing by in orbit if you go on by yourself, but there’s nothing stopping you from suiting up and taking a spare shuttle, if the job is urgent enough.” “Still may be awhile before we know exactly how bad the damage is to the Outpost,” Karoff points out. “She could be needed here.” “True, but...Zee, I guess this one is going to be your call. I don’t have details on the mission you’ve been requested for, so what’s protocol here?” This would all be simpler if you could directly contact a commander, of course, but out here that’s rarely possible and having to make decisions like this on the fly is part of the job. ORDER when it started out stood for Outer Rim Defense, Evaluation and Research. The joke everyone likes to make is how when the Hunger virus appeared on the scene the E stood for Evacuation, and then finally Eradication. Of course that’s the part you’re all still working on. And it’s not actually all that funny. The Order is the peacekeeping force out past the edge of protected space, although not in any kind of official capacity anymore. A little over twenty years ago when the Hunger virus was at its peak and blazing from planet to planet, the border was rolled back and then rolled back again. Colonies and mining facilities, trading stations and outposts were cut off in the midst of the chaos and anyone who wouldn’t or couldn’t evacuate was left to fend for themselves. Some of the Order agents were recalled back to New Terra, but for many more this was their home, this was just what they did. Momentum and habit went a long way and the organization already had enough ships, stations and equipment out here to continue operating much as they always had. If anything they were more effective now that the bureaucracy and red tape had been stripped away, although that sometimes birthed its own kind of controversy. Independent, isolated colonies and small time miners and traders had no one to protect them from piracy, not to mention the trade consortiums that amounted to a more organized version of the same thing. They welcomed the Order’s presence on one hand while resenting anything they perceived as meddling in their own affairs on another. In areas where the line between New Terra and frontier authorities blurred, certain parties also never failed to point out that the Order had no more jurisdiction than any other private organization; outside of the ancient one of might making right and the bit about possession and how it related to law, anyhow. And although on paper the organization kept to the same laws and standards they had from the beginning, they were just as on their own out here as anyone and had to see to their own people’s interests and protection as well. New blood could be hard enough to find as it was without asking it to spill itself simply because it was the right thing to do. About the only thing anyone could agree on was that the Order were the only ones equipped to really do anything about the Hunger virus and so they should be left to it, no questions asked. So thankfully, politics and the rest of that nonsense aren’t anything you ever have to concern yourself with. All you do is your job, and all you worry about is doing it well. Right now that means making a judgment call on where you’ll be the most effective. And right now, that does seem to be here. Nothing you were given indicated anyone was in direct danger, and the Last Outpost is as valuable to the Order as any of the other facilities you were asked to check on, and far more strategically important. The refueling station is what makes these little forays out in this area of Rim possible in the first place. > You secure the station. You indicate to the others that you’ll stay for now and Karoff directs the ship on a route toward the station. It makes sense to at least do a cursory inspection of the damage and make sure that at least life support will hold up. And of course there’s the other issue of the alleged sabotage and personnel having been lost under circumstances still waiting to be confirmed. Leaving just two operatives to handle it all isn’t ideal. Of the station’s eight arms, the docking bay is luckily on the side that’s suffered the least damage. Karoff locks on without incident and the panels of the reinforced portal retract with a gentle whirring. Beyond, the station is dark and cold. You all file out and make your way out of the landing bay and down a hallway with the aid of flashlights. With what little power remains rerouted to life support, the portal to the central complex refuse to open. Attempts to contact Oswen on a short range channel fail, and so Hinsman finally gets the door moving with the aid of his gun; wiring the energy cell to the panel next to it, that is. At the jolt of power it snaps open with sudden speed, then begins to close again in slow motion and grinds to a halt about a third of the way. The three of you squeeze past and before long find yourselves in an open area, a kind of joint dining hall and exercise room with dead video screens lining the walls. The kitchen area behind the dining hall is a disaster zone of empty plastic trays, overflowing trash bins and spoiled food. There’s no sign of Matti although you do find her abandoned ice cream bucket. The three of you begin to search area by area. Although reluctant to split up, you do move a bit faster than the others and take to checking into rooms and around corners ahead of them. A pool of vivid crimson against the polished grey tile is your first confirmation that something has gone wrong. You race forward to Matti Oswen’s crumpled form and check her pulse, clamping another hand down on the stub of her severed arm. Lifting the woman from the ground and calling out to the others, you splash your way through the blood, tracking it behind you while more soaks into your uniform. A medical station was one of the places the three of you had already searched, so you hasten to it and deposit her on a steel table, keeping your grip just above the wound while Hinsman activates the computer. “This nursing AI was obsolete fifteen years ago,” he grumbles, taking a protective suit from a persistently dinging open door and yanking it on over his clothes. “Isn’t that a bit of overkill?” Karoff asks, watching him. Hinsman’s response is muffled through the breathing filter. “It won’t let me even proceed without it. This place was last used to quarantine evacuees exposed to Hunger, there’s no such thing as overkill as far as the computer is concerned. Just be glad the whole station isn’t set to self destruct the moment someone gets a paper cut.” He pauses a moment to apply a tourniquet. “Now...Zee, you step back, it hates you too.” Karoff looks at you and snorts. “I imagine so. You look like you just left the scene of an axe murder.” You’d already moved away at Hinsman’s order, and now you ruefully wipe you face, hoping to achieve a clean spot. Karoff’s ensuing guffaw informs you you probably just made the situation worse. “I’ll go clean up the mess in the hall...and myself,” you say, turning to go. “Zee, wait, wait, Miss Oswen is going to need an arm transplant, don’t you think?” You blink at Karoff. “Are you serious?” This just provokes more laughter. Hinsman, who has been preoccupied with the soothing voice of the medical AI and the use of instruments taken out of little drawers that have been popping open in sequence, now shakes his head at the two of you as he changes to clean gloves. “I’m not that good a doctor, I’m afraid. Zee, you go on.” He snaps his fingers at Karoff and in the other hand produces an oversized needle, like a magician’s trick. “But I will need a blood donor, and guess who’s compatible?” Already on your way out, you turn and get a glimpse of the pilot’s grimace as the door slides shut between you. Cleaning up is a tedious but straightforward affair. You scrub yourself down and change into a plain grey jumpsuit you find before returning to the scene of the accident and getting to work. > You dispose of the severed arm It seems Oswen had been trying to unjam a door that leads to one of the station’s storage arms, in much the same way Hinsman had gotten you all into the central complex earlier. It was her misfortune that upon receiving a jolt from a maintenance tool the door had snapped shut, meaning it had been open to begin with. There’s enough juice left to get it back to where it was and you carefully retrieve the severed limb on the other side, slipping it into a biohazard bag. Taking a moment to confirm with Hinsman there’s nothing he can do as far as reattaching it, you consider your options for disposal. An incinerator would the most straightforward, but those require an amount of energy that seems wasteful if not impossible to produce given the station’s current reliance on emergency backup power for life support. You remember then the walk in freezer in the kitchen behind the dining hall. At least that would keep it from rotting if it takes longer that expected to get the power on full. The room isn’t able to maintain freezing temps anymore but it’s still noticeably colder than the rest of the station, and the rest of the station is cold enough. Placing the bagged arm on a shelf, you halt a moment as your gaze fixes on the two bundled forms in the back. So you weren’t the first one to have the idea to use the place as an impromptu morgue. These must be the bodies of the other two maintenance workers, Inea and Markov. > You inspect the bodies Opening the largest body bag first, you briefly examine Markov. Evidence of cuts, burns, and some bits of broken glass still embedded in the skin seem consistent with him having been in the vicinity of an explosion, although there were a lot of unanswered questions in Matti’s brief explanation. Further details will have to wait till she’s conscious again, you suppose. You zip the bag back up and turn your attention to Inea. The dark haired woman’s cause of death is immediately obvious, her skull on the left side having been caved in just above and behind the ear. ‘An accident while doing repairs’ was how Matti had described her death. While you can’t yet find anything to contradict that, as you probe along the edges of the splintered bits of skull and cold globs of brain matter it seems to you it would’ve taken an awful lot of force concentrated in that one spot all at once to do that kind of damage. Then again, Matti had nearly managed to kill herself as well. You wonder what sort of accident it was supposed to have been. It’s almost incredible to you that three people so incompetent had been left in charge of such an important Outpost. It’s true that space is a big place and Order agents and personnel are stretched thin, but in your experience it’s rare for things to go this spectacularly wrong without someone being at fault. Finding nothing more of note, you close up that body bag too and then exit the freezer. Grabbing a mop from the corner of the kitchen and filling up a bucket, you make your way back to where you’d found Matti and go to work on the rapidly drying blood. The blood has begun to dry and it’s obvious this will take awhile so you clear out your mind and focus on the task. > Back to the nursing station Matti is asleep. Hinsman is seated at a table near the bed, freshly showered and changed into a grey jumpsuit identical to yours and looking exhausted. Karoff is nowhere to be seen. “He’s back on the ship seeing how much power we can spare,” Hinsman tells you, before you can ask. “This medical station’s about the only thing working as intended in this place right now. We need to at least get the computers up before we can figure out what all needs to be repaired and how. It’d be really great if we had a maintenance worker familiar with the place to talk to, but...” He inclines his head toward the young woman’s supine form and shrugs. The end of what’s left of her arm is neatly wrapped in bandages, but her face looks pale and strained even in her sleep and her eyes twitch restlessly behind her lids. Briefly you relate what you’d discovered. “The plot thickens,” he mutters, then gestures toward the computer. “Why don’t you see what you can find there as far as internal records on these three?” You nod and take a seat, flashing your wrist at the sensor. The computer blips once and you’re in. You have a pretty high clearance. Higher even than Hinsman’s you suspect, although that’s not really a thing you’re supposed to ask anyone about. Retrieving sensitive data from wrecked Order ships or evacuated command stations is one of the things you need to be able to do with no fuss when required, and your superiors know this. > You look up Inea Name: Inea Banca Eyes: brown Hair: black Height: 5’9” Weight: 145 Age: 46 Other: tattoo on right forearm Origin: Camarov IV Skills: fringe space station maintenance Years service: 9<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Matti is asleep. Hinsman is seated at a table near the bed, freshly showered and changed into a grey jumpsuit identical to yours and looking exhausted. Karoff is nowhere to be seen. “He’s back on the ship seeing how much power we can spare,” Hinsman tells you, before you can ask. “This medical station’s about the only thing working as intended in this place right now. We need to at least get the computers up before we can figure out what all needs to be repaired and how. It’d be really great if we had a maintenance worker familiar with the place to talk to, but...” He inclines his head toward the young woman’s supine form and shrugs. The end of what’s left of her arm is neatly wrapped in bandages, but her face looks pale and strained even in her sleep and her eyes twitch restlessly behind her lids. Briefly you relate what you’d discovered. “The plot thickens,” he mutters, then gestures toward the computer. “Why don’t you see what you can find there as far as internal records on these three?” You nod and take a seat, flashing your wrist at the sensor. The computer blips once and you’re in. You have a pretty high clearance. Higher even than Hinsman’s you suspect, although that’s not really a thing you’re supposed to ask anyone about. Retrieving sensitive data from wrecked Order ships or evacuated command stations is one of the things you need to be able to do with no fuss when required, and your superiors know this. > You look up Markov Name: Markov Carst Eyes: blue Hair: brown Height: 6’3” Weight: 201 Age: 41 Other: left handed Origin: Galton Station Skills: fringe space station maintenance Years service: 5<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Matti is asleep. Hinsman is seated at a table near the bed, freshly showered and changed into a grey jumpsuit identical to yours and looking exhausted. Karoff is nowhere to be seen. “He’s back on the ship seeing how much power we can spare,” Hinsman tells you, before you can ask. “This medical station’s about the only thing working as intended in this place right now. We need to at least get the computers up before we can figure out what all needs to be repaired and how. It’d be really great if we had a maintenance worker familiar with the place to talk to, but...” He inclines his head toward the young woman’s supine form and shrugs. The end of what’s left of her arm is neatly wrapped in bandages, but her face looks pale and strained even in her sleep and her eyes twitch restlessly behind her lids. Briefly you relate what you’d discovered. “The plot thickens,” he mutters, then gestures toward the computer. “Why don’t you see what you can find there as far as internal records on these three?” You nod and take a seat, flashing your wrist at the sensor. The computer blips once and you’re in. You have a pretty high clearance. Higher even than Hinsman’s you suspect, although that’s not really a thing you’re supposed to ask anyone about. Retrieving sensitive data from wrecked Order ships or evacuated command stations is one of the things you need to be able to do with no fuss when required, and your superiors know this. > You look up Matti Name: Matilda Oswen Eyes: green Hair: blonde Height: 5’3” Weight: 122 Age: 26 Other: stationed at The Last Outpost for completion of training Origin: Camarov IV Skills: fringe space station maintenance Years service: 1<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It seems Oswen had been trying to unjam a door that leads to one of the station’s storage arms, in much the same way Hinsman had gotten you all into the central complex earlier. It was her misfortune that upon receiving a jolt from a maintenance tool the door had snapped shut, meaning it had been open to begin with. There’s enough juice left to get it back to where it was and you carefully retrieve the severed limb on the other side, slipping it into a biohazard bag. Taking a moment to confirm with Hinsman there’s nothing he can do as far as reattaching it, you consider your options for disposal. An incinerator would the most straightforward, but those require an amount of energy that seems wasteful if not impossible to produce given the station’s current reliance on emergency backup power for life support. You remember then the walk in freezer in the kitchen behind the dining hall. At least that would keep it from rotting if it takes longer that expected to get the power on full. The room isn’t able to maintain freezing temps anymore but it’s still noticeably colder than the rest of the station, and the rest of the station is cold enough. Placing the bagged arm on a shelf, you halt a moment as your gaze fixes on the two bundled forms in the back. So you weren’t the first one to have the idea to use the place as an impromptu morgue. These must be the bodies of the other two maintenance workers, Inea and Markov. > You go finish cleaning You come across no shortage of corpses in your line of work and so you have little curiosity about these two, morbid or otherwise. When Matti awakens, Hinsman will question her about the deaths, but aside from some practical knowledge in the area no one here is exactly a forensics expert. That’ll be the job of the team the Order will dispatch to deal with the situation out here. You exit the freezer, pausing to grab a mop from a corner of the kitchen and fill up a bucket. Returning to where you’d found Matti, you go to work. The blood has begun to dry and it’s obvious this will take awhile so you clear out your mind and focus on the task. > Back to the nursing station Matti is asleep. Hinsman is seated at a table near the bed, freshly showered and changed into a grey jumpsuit identical to yours and looking exhausted. Karoff is nowhere to be seen. “He’s back on the ship seeing how much power we can spare,” Hinsman tells you, before you can ask. “This medical station’s about the only thing working as intended in this place right now. We need to at least get the computers up before we can figure out what all needs to be repaired and how. It’d be really great if we had a maintenance worker familiar with the place to talk to, but...” He inclines his head toward the young woman’s supine form and shrugs. The end of what’s left of her arm is neatly wrapped in bandages, but her face looks pale and strained even in her sleep and her eyes twitch restlessly behind her lids. There doesn’t seem to be anything you’re able to help with here, so you start to head back to the ship to find Karoff and wind up meeting up with him in the arm of the docking bay. He’s got a hovering platform loaded with equipment next to him and is attaching a power node to a panel. “Oh, there you are Zee, perfect. I need you to distribute the rest of these EPNs around the central complex.” He gestures at the platform. “I’ll come along behind you in a bit and rig them up.” The EPNs--external power nodes--can be linked in to bypass dead or damaged areas in the regular power system. It’s likely some trial and error will be needed but you doubt it will take more than a couple of hours if all he cares about is the main section and the docking bay. The other seven arms of the station can just stay sealed off until a proper repair team comes in. You return to the central area of the station and begin setting down the EPNs near accessible panels and in a short while you’ve covered the perimeter and begin making your way back. All is quiet until just as you pass a narrow hallway you hear a voice. “Zani, get inside!” You whirl, activating the short range laser weapon you always have with you. The voice had been a woman’s, sounding frantic and seeming to come from close by. But you see nothing. You shine your light down the hallway you’d just passed, revealing a row of half a dozen closed doors on each side. > You search the hallway You want to verify there’s a threat before you call anyone else in. Even though you’re not suited up at the moment you feel pretty confident in your ability to handle a few trespassers anyhow so there’s no point in risking the others if they prove hostile. You ghost down the dark hall opening doors one by one and shining your flashlight around. The rooms all appear to be crew quarters and although you search any place anyone could hide, they’re all empty and only three show any recent signs of usage. Retreating back to the entrance the hall, you widen the scope of your search, but after another half hour are forced to admit to yourself there’s no one here after all. This wouldn’t be the first time you’ve had...hallucinations in the past. Or whatever the technical term would be for you. They have to get pretty bad before they impair your ability to work, but the woman’s voice had seemed so close and chillingly real. You’ll have to keep aware of the possibility of it happening again now. If it gets worse, you know you’ll have to report it, but for now you’re just glad you didn’t drag anyone else down here for no reason. You return to the crew quarters to look once again at the rooms the current maintenance crew were occupying, although more out of curiosity about them than any expectation you’ll locate your phantom voices. The walls of Matti’s room are covered in projected images of performers and celebrities...you recognize many of them from the media Karoff downloaded from Camarov. Inea’s room contains images of a family, presumably hers, and several empty bottles that indicate she had a minor pill habit. Nothing illegal enough for you to care about--even less so now that she’s dead--and most of them are expired anyhow and you suspect taken from the station’s abandoned medical arm. Markov’s room is somewhat grubby with dirty clothes tossed carelessly around. Your eyes are drawn to his desk immediately as the only uncluttered spot in the room. After a moment you realize that’s because his personal computer is gone. Every other room, even the empty ones, had one of the devices built into the desk surface. > You search for the missing computer The crew quarters aren’t large. If the computer is in here there’s only so many places it can be, and a methodical sweep of the room, closet and bathroom finally turns it up--slid into a pair of brackets fitted to the underside of the nightstand drawer. Just as you slide it out, the lights flicker on. Karoff’s triumphant voice sounds over the intercom, followed a moment later by Hinsman congratulating him. You however have your attention glued to the activated screen. It’s still an Order-issued computer so your wrist chip was able to get you in, and what you’re looking at is intriguing. Four days before Markov triggered the explosion that took his life--and nearly took out an infinitely more valuable outpost--he started sending and receiving a series of encrypted messages on a private frequency. What it all means or if it’s even related to his actions at all you can’t say just yet, but it’s obviously something to look into. You take the computer with you return to where you left the hover platform. The main computer room Karoff’s working in now is quite close so you take a detour to speak to him. > You frequencies “Interesting. What was he up too, I wonder?” Karoff peers at the coded messages thoughtfully. “The main computer should be able to unencrypt these though. We’ll just leave it hooked up here and let it do its thing. The damage report for the station is almost done compiling anyhow.” “How bad is it?” He spins in his chair to face a new screen, chewing on a dirty thumbnail. “Hmm, let’s see. This would indicate The Last Outpost is...yup, it’s damaged all right. And needs repairs. From people who are not us.” “So nothing immediate needs attending to? There’s nothing wrong that would put you or Hinsman in danger if you waited here a few days?” “Well, unsealing some of the station’s arms would be pretty fatal. They took the brunt of Matti’s hack rerouting job and a couple lost atmosphere. The old medical wing itself is in real bad shape obviously, that’s where Markov set off the first explosion. But all we really need is life support and power here and in the docking bay. We don’t really have enough power for the rest of the station anyway as long as we’re siphoning from the ship. I’ll go and seal anything unnecessary off in a bit and then we don’t even need to worry about leaving them with life support.” Good. That means you can leave here and continue carrying out your orders just as soon as this mess with the dead workers is sorted out. “By the way, Hinsman is going to try waking Oswen up for a little while and then wanted us there afterwards to sort of put our heads together on how to handle all this,” Karoff adds, nearly reading your mind. You step toward the door. “I’ll go now.” “Eh, what’s the rush? But I’ll be there after I finish a couple things. We’re all just gonna sit around till the relief team arrives either way.” “I could go and take care of my mission while the two of you wait. Hinsman suggested that earlier, remember?” Karoff snorts and shakes his head slowly as he turns his attention back to his screen. “Don’t you ever get tired of working so hard?” You’re a little take aback by the question. “No?” > You matti's Story Matti Oswen is awake and speaking with Hinsman already when you enter. They pause and look up at the soft whoosh of the door, but you take up position in an unobtrusive spot next to it and stay quiet till they resume the conversation. Oswen’s words are hardly above a whisper. Her face is drawn and she’s clearly in pain. Hinsman in his usual way is breezily taking her mind off things while leading her along to a series of key questions and not making it obvious that’s what he’s doing. “...I don’t know what happened to Inea exactly. She was just replacing some conduits in the old medical wing...standard stuff, it’s got to be done every four years even in the areas no one uses anymore. Something fell and hit her on the head, he told me. But Markov was in shock, or something like it so he never really went into detail. He hardly left his room for two days, and after that he...” she swallows hard and then continues at his gentle prompting. “I mean, it never seemed that they were like, close close, but they’d worked together a long time, and I can’t think of any other reason he’d do what he did.” “Was a report sent in about Inea’s death?” She nods. “We sent one, yes. Markov filled in the details of course, since I wasn’t there.” Hinsman looks at her intently a moment, then begins asking her some simple questions about their routines around the station, listening patiently to her answers before coming back around to Markov. “So when did you first realize what he was doing?” “Like I said, I’d barely seen him in two days. That wasn’t unusual even when there were three of us if we happened to be working on different areas of the station, but I was worried enough about how he was taking things I even went and knocked on his door once. He wouldn’t answer. Although that day that...everything happened he turned the intercom on a couple of times.” “What did he say?” “Well...nothing. I could hear him breathing and got the idea he was about to say something, but then it would cut out. I was definitely on edge by that time and not sleeping well, but I kept telling myself a team would be here soon, they’d pick up Inea’s body and station someone else here and surely they’d notice what a wreck Mark was and do something to h-help.” She has to stop a moment, and draws a shuddering breath. “And then what happened?” I was taking a break in the main computer room...I’d decided to sit in a VR film actually, to take my mind off things. Then all of a sudden a bunch of alerts started sounding.” Something crawls along your arm and you brush it away. An ant or something is your immediate assumption. A strong fragrance of freshly cut grass lingers in your nostrils. “Look at the birds, Mommy!” “Zani, get inside!” With the interference of the audio hallucinations you come back to yourself. An insect of any kind would be highly unlikely to have hitchhiked this far, and the scent of grass is not something you're certain you've even encountered enough to readily identify. Not to mention your sense of smell is rudimentary at best. Oswen has been describing how she counteracted Markov's attempt to destroy the station. “It's almost funny, covering that exact scenario was one of the last things we did in training before they sent me out here. And it just hadn't really sunk in even then that he would really do something like that intentionally. But it worked just like they said it would.” Touching your arm, you vividly remember the tickling, crawling sensation and look carefully at your clothes and the floor. There is no ant. You shake your head to banish these distractions and refocus. You don’t want to miss anything important. “There was a critical overload there in the medical arm where Mark had started the chain reaction, but I was able to redirect the worst of the rest into the arms next to it, so the blown generators were the only damage to the central complex.” “And when did you recover Markov's body?” “Well he wasn't dead yet, is the thing. The emergency shields were still holding in that section and the computer showed a life sign so I put on a breathing mask and went to try and drag him out.” “That was risky.” She gives another shaky laugh as she recalls the events. “The anti-grav was already down, and I had to cross this section where the wall and floor was just...gone, so I was terrified the shields would collapse and blow me right out into space. And then when I got to him he was covered in blood, almost unrecognizable. He was trying to unlock a cabinet but his hands were all torn up. There was broken glass and like, shrapnel, all in his skin. Some of it looked deep. And...the most difficult thing was he just wasn't himself.” Her expression darkens. “He'd completely lost it, really. He screamed at me to get away and struggled and fought me. I ended up slashing open my arm on a big piece of bloody glass--” She falls silent a moment as her gaze drops to the bandaged stub. “Well. I guess that doesn't matter now, huh?” Hinsman murmurs something sympathetic and she continues. “And then he just straight up tried to kill me. Grabbed for my throat, and I kicked him and...I don't know exactly, we got separated and I was trying to orient myself because I was panicking and, you know, the gravity. And then he was just dead. I wasn't really thinking at that point, I hauled him back to the central complex, I was thinking something could be done, like the nursing AI would help or he could be put in cryo or something, you know, like in the VRs...but then of course once we reached Central the gravity kicked back in and I couldn't move him anymore, plus I was bleeding all over everything. I made sure nothing else was going to explode and then went to treat my arm, and brought a platform to lift him later. I moved Inea's body then too...to, to the dining hall freezer.” She sounds momentarily embarrassed and lowers her voice for that, as if she thinks the New Terra health department might overhear and swoop in and shut the place down. “Since the power was out completely in that section and we still had it on low in parts of Central.” Matti stops herself and winces. “I mean...not we. It was just me at that point. The most useless person around so of course I survived.” “You handled all of that as well as anyone could have and I think better than most,” Hinsman reassures her. “The rescue attempt is probably more than I would've tried, and you had no way of realizing then how far gone he was.” “I just can't figure it out, why he would...” Matti trails off and shifts on the bed, closing her eyes and wincing. “I'm just so tired.” “Get some rest. You've been a great help and I think you've explained most of what I could think to ask.” “Why were you sealing off the door to the storage wing?” This time the question comes from you. Hinsman gives you an irritated look at the interruption. Perhaps your tone was too blunt for his liking, but it really is something that had seemed odd to when you were cleaning up. “Oh. Well I knew all of you would be boarding soon, so I thought I should try to pull myself together and...you know, do my job for once. The power would be easier to get back on in the central complex if all the arms could be sealed off, and the storage wing door was jammed open.” You nod but say nothing. Matti rests her head weakly against the pillows. “I should've just stayed there with my ice cream. I could really go for some now anyway, damn...” “I'll heat up some dinner for you soon, from our ship,” Hinsman promises. “I don't know about ice cream, we don't travel quite that luxurious, but we may have something that can pass as dessert around.” “Thanks,” she gives him a wan smile and leans her head back against her pillow, her blonde hair spread out on the pillow to frame her strained face like a halo. “Zee, let's go outside. I've been needing to talk to you and Karoff...where is he, anyway?” You'd already turned to exit with Hinsman stepping out into the hall behind you when you both spot the pilot coming down the hall. “Perfect,” Hinsman says. “I know I am.” Karoff replies with a wink. “But did I miss anything important?” > You inference “Miss Oswen gave me enough details on the cause of the damage to start writing a report, at least, but some things still don’t sit right with me. Even if Inea’s death made him suicidal I still don’t understand Markov’s motivation for trying to take out the entire station, for one...” “He had the space crazies!” “...I can’t put that in a report. But unfortunately Oswen had very little contact with him following Inea’s death. And we don’t even really know what happened to Inea herself other than Zee’s examination indicating blunt force trauma to the head.” “Ah, about that.” Karoff fishes something out of his pocket and taps a button. “Relevant?” A 3D image of an energy canister is projected into the air in front of you all. You recognize the type; the larger energy cells can be volatile, so the canisters are made with half an inch of steel and an interior enamel coating for protection. This one is about the size of a fire extinguisher, which is typical. What’s not typical about this one however is the is the dried blood and long strands of dark hair caught up on the outside of the sealing mechanism. “Where the hell did you find that?” Hinsman wants to know. “In the storage arm where Miss Oswen lost hers. There are a lot of spent canisters piled up in there, and I was looking for more power cables just now and stumbled across this one.” Hinsman’s brow is deeply furrowed as he studies the projection. “That is just suspicious as hell. Has anyone had a look at the body yet?” You and Karoff both shake your heads, and as Matti had just mentioned where they were stored, the three of you make your way to the dining hall. The two bodies are on gurneys, zipped up in body bags in the back of the freezer. You open the bag holding the smaller form, ignoring Karoff’s inquiries as to whether letting restaurant kitchens rent freezer space to morgues could be a viable alternate source of income. Upon examination the dark haired woman’s cause of death is immediately obvious, her skull on the left side having been caved in just above and behind the ear. “Not a glancing blow, either. There’s no way that happens from a spent fuel canister falling on someone’s head. Not even a full one.” After a long moment he sighs and steps back. “All right, let’s go over what facts we have. About a week ago, Inea Banca was doing routine maintenance in the medical wing and had her skull caved in with an energy canister. Markov Karst then goes into seclusion for two days, at the end of which he goes to the medical wing and attempts to cause a power overload that will destroy the station; a major act of treason against the Order that will render a number of Outer Rim colony worlds and ships unable to receive emergency aid and also kill the young woman who remains here. A bit dramatic even for a suicide attempt, but I suppose not outside the realm of possibility. When it fails he become violent when Oswen attempts a rescue and dies moments after. Miss Oswen sends out a distress call that doesn’t seem to have gone through due to the failing power and waits here alone until we happen by. Does that all sound about right?” You mull that over while he and Karoff discuss the details a bit longer. “I’m sure there’s more investigating we can do,” Hinsman is saying. “The medical arm, for instance. That’s where everything happened.” Karoff shakes his head. “Atmosphere and shielding has failed and there are holes blown straight through the plating. It’d be too much a risk just to satisfy our curiosity, even for Zee.” “Fair. It doesn’t feel right to just sit around and wait on another team, though. We need to get together as much info as possible. It might be useful to read over the personnel reports again, and...oh! There’s the report they sent in on Inea’s death.” Hinsman glances over at you. “And what about you, Zee? Let’s see that sharp analytical brain in action.” “My brain’s not any sharper than yours I’m afraid. And too bad, some kind of AI to analyze things might be more what you need right now.” But you’ve been following a particular train of thought, and at his prompting you decide to give it voice. “But they didn’t fill out a death report on Inea Banca. I don’t know why Oswen claimed that. Banca was still listed as alive in their database when Karoff pulled up her file, right before we boarded. So in fact, I believe that...” > You say "Matti killed Inea and then Markov to cover her tracks." “What?” Hinsman seems taken aback. “Where are you getting that from?” Karoff scratches his head. “Uh, Zee, I know that was my original theory, but I’m not so sure now. Markov did try to blow up the station.” “Do we have any proof of that? Or of anything Oswen has claimed?” You wait. When neither is able to give a satisfactory answer, you continue. “It’s a possibility we have to consider, at least. All we really know is that Banca and Carst are dead and that someone damaged the station in a way that made most of the evidence inaccessible. And that Oswen tried to seal off the entire the entire wing containing the murder weapon right after we arrived.” A couple of times while you were speaking Hinsman looked ready to interrupt, and now he cuts in as you pause, raking his fingers through his dark hair. “Zee, you can't seriously...urgh, I guess you're always serious. But Matti isn't a killer.” “How can you be sure of that?” “Because dammit. I can tell when people are lying. Matti's not like that.” The force of his protest surprises you. “Can people tell when you lie to them?” That at least gets a short laugh. “No,” he admits. “But I've had a couple more decades practice don't forget. You can trust me on this one though, Zee. That little girl's not some cold blooded killer.” You frown. “I'm not denying you're better at reading people than I am. But at least one murder occurred and serious damage was done to a vital Order refueling station. You know I'm not saying anything anyone at HQ won't bring up. We need to look at real evidence, and for now all we have is one person's word for it.” “We're not qualified for this legal crap,” Karoff complains. “It's the Outer Rim, buddy, we make our own law,” Hinsman replies. “Hell, nobody should've ever gone out this far at all.” “Well now you just sound like a dirty anti-frontierist. But my point is that according to their files, Inea and Matti are both from Camerov IV. Pop them both in cryo and aim them at the planet. They can sort out the murder and if Matti turns out to have done any of the damage to the station she'll be right there and handy to retrieve.” Hinsman laughs at that. “You make it sound like we're such good friends with the Camerovs. They'd just love us dumping her off and then swooping in to grab her again I bet.” “Yeah well I've got a dozen fusion torpedoes that say they won't complain too hard.” “Jesus Christ, I'm definitely not getting a bonus this year if I let you start a war. Anyway, everything else aside, Matti's lost a ton of blood and is pretty weak still. A cryo pod would be too much of a risk.” “If there's anything to Zee's theory, she could be a risk to us, keep in mind.” “Yeah, I realize that.” Hinsman looks unhappy enough that you almost hope that you're wrong. You've been slowly losing your mind lately anyway, what's one bad theory? “Well...we can check for the report,” Karoff offers. “The one on Banca. Maybe it wasn't ever finalized and sent but we'll see if we can verify at least that much of her story. And if it exists it may have more details.” Hinsman nods. “All right, let's do that.” > You interference “I can absolutely, definitely, factually say with complete certainty , all serious, and not the slightest hesitation...” Karoff twists in his seat to regard Hinsman as he speaks. “...that the report on Inea Banca's death does not exist.” “Are you serious? Are you sure?” “Hinsman, I don't feel like you heard me. Absolutely, definitely--” “All right enough. Dammit. Did you check to make sure it didn't get caught in the buffer? Maybe it's still trying to send. The power hasn't been back on for long.” “There weren't any problems with the power at the time the report would've been made. That was before Markov pulled his stunt,” you point out. “Just check,” he tells Karoff. “Checking, and...nothing. Wait.” He pauses and frowns. “Well none of these are the report, but it looks like a batch of personal letters Inea tried to send a day before her death never went through either.” “What do they say?” “Hinsman!” Karoff gives a mock gasp and assumes a scandalized tone. “They're personal letters!” He's already pulling the first one up, and you catch a brief glimpse of Banca's smiling face at the beginning of a video before he switches to the readout and scrolls rapidly past pages of text asking how various people, children and pets are, some jokes about a co-worker having a crush on her and discussion of a new VR film. “All pretty standard inane family garbage,” Karoff says in helpful summary. Hinsman frowns. “Well, make sure they don't get lost. I'm sure the family will think more of them than you do, considering. But why didn't it send? Were they isolated from the network before the power went out? How would that happen?” “I'll tell you in exchange for a colorful parrot and a bottle of rum.” “You think so?” “Oh, I know so, now. You see...” Karoff twists the screen so Hinsman can see it. You shuffle around behind him to get a look too. “That's the same encryption the messages on Markov's computer used,” you say. “Right. Because it would appear that someone...can't imagine who...installed a little something to communicate with a probe somewhere. The probe in turn has been intercepting any outgoing messages, as of at least one day before Banca's murder. They’re getting a little fancier with their methods but cutting communication before an attack is the classic technique.” “So, we have pirates coming this way? Well damn. If they started out right after everything went down they’d be about right on top of us too if they went into underspace from any of the neighboring stars.” He considers that a moment and then shrugs. “But there’s three of us and what, maybe a couple dozen of them? We’ve all fought with worse odds. We can hold them off till help arrives.” “Oh, but precious, naive little Hinsman, it’s worse than you think. The probe has been intercepting all outgoing signals. There won’t be any help arriving for Miss Oswen or for the station or ourselves, because no one knows we need it. Also, don’t forget shielding and all defenses are down.” “Shit.” There is an encouraging beep just then and all eyes turn to Markov's computer. “Well it’s not the blueprints for an anti-pirate device so don’t get excited or anything,” Karoff says, picking up the device and activating the screen. “And it’s not even finished yet, that was just the first run. Still, might be enough to give us a better idea of what the situation is." > You markov's Secret Most of the text Karoff scrolls past is gibberish, but a few of the messages are partially deciphered. Even these prove frustrating however as even the ones where you can make out sentences are delicately phrased with deliberate obliqueness. But as the messages near the end, they suddenly start dropping the pretense. “Ah, here we go. Well that’s right to the point, isn’t it?” You peer over Karoff’s shoulder at the screen. ^ou’ve al%ead^ killed ove% this. It’s too late to back out now. ^ou can take ^ou% mone^ o% a hole th%ough the skull--we’%e coming fo% the package eithe% way, so ^ou’d do well to think twice befo%e ^ou do anything ^ou’ll %eg%et. As to ^ou% question, it ain’t nothing but sweet %evenge, Ma%kie bab^. The^ tu%ned us back du%ing the evacuations. We couldn’t ‘p%ove’ we we%en’t infected and what we%e we to them but a bunch of shitkicking fa%mers and %anchers? Well we didn’t have Hunge% but we got hung%^ ENOUGH limping a%ound the %im to find a new home and plent^ of us died of infection all %ight--just plain o%dina%y bo%ing Old Ea%th influenza that could’ve been cu%ed if we’d had even the most p%imitive aid. My wife and daughte% among them. The o%ganization ^ou wo%k fo% has blood on its hands, and don’t even think it stops the%e. A lot of ou% people ma^ have gotten complacent once the^ %esettled, all this talk of ‘moving on’, but that’s just not fo% me and m^ f%iends. We won’t fo%get and we won’t allow them too eithe%. And I’ve made man^ mo%e f%iends %ecentl^. We’%e getting ou% %evenge, and I think ^ou know exactly how. See ^a soon, Ma%k. --W. Ho%seman “So we’ve definitely got pirates coming this way.” Hinsman says with a rueful shake of his head. “Or terrorists, anyway. Even better, right? And so much for your theory on Matti, Zee.” “Any theories on what the package is?” you ask after a moment’s silence. “Carst is from Galton Station, isn’t he?” Karoff asks. “I think I saw it in his file. I’ve been there once or twice, and don’t ask for what. But they all but advertise they’re a black market.” Hinsman nods, looking grim. “Most likely blueprints for illegal weapons tech, or an ethics-stripped AI. Something small Carst could easily smuggle back over here the last time he was on leave. And something valuable and risky enough he’d kill anybody who got in his way.” Karoff taps around on the screen some more. “Too bad he didn’t survive,” he finally says with a sigh. “Because I’d sure like to kill him myself right now. Scans found the probe by the way. Way out there on the edge of the system.” “Oh really? That’s something at least. Although it’ll take time to get to and disable, and I’m not sure we can spare that right now. We need to start thinking of how to defend ourselves.” “The sooner we get a distress call out the sooner we can put an end to all this,” Karoff says. “We’re nothing but a target right now, with the defenses down and if there’s enough of them they can wear us down eventually without much risk to themselves.” “Can the defenses be repaired?” Karoff winces. “I was afraid you were gonna ask that. And technically yes, but it’s a big job. The turrets are in every arm of the station and we’ll need to get power to all of them, which means cutting back here in the central area.” They both sink into a grim silence for a bit, before Hinsman finally looks over. “All right Zee, I guess you get the tiebreaker. What are you most in the mood for right now?” > You take out the probe With no time to delay or hesitate, you’re moving toward the docking bay within moments of making your decision while Karoff hurries along behind you and hits you with a barrage of rapid-fire instructions and advice for piloting one of the ship’s shuttles. “Whatever you do, don’t get it blown up!” “I’ll try my best.” The voices of your companions soon fade as you ease the shuttle out into the silence of space, aiming for the emptiest and coldest edge of the system and the coordinates Karoff pinpointed. You blink in and out of underspace a couple of times the way he showed you, or else the trip would take days. Risky in a populated or debris-filled system for someone without much training, but there’s nothing much to worry about colliding with out here. The probe is right where it’s supposed to be. It’d be possible to target with a missile now, but your initial scan indicates it might be rather unusual in design. Retrieving it intact might lead to clues about its maker, certainly the sort of person the Order would want to shut down...or recruit. > You retrieve it. You ease the shuttle closer, and closer still. The viewscreen isn’t needed to get a visual on the probe now; you can just look out the window. It’s small, but the slender segmented form puts you in mind of a wasp, with a pair of satellites making up the ‘wings’. The design is sleek and something about it worries you. The longer you look at it the more you get the sense it’s dangerous somehow. But that’s just all the more reason to take it out of commission. > You bring it on board. The shuttle has a pair of grappling claws for specimen retrieval which you now deploy. Moving with utmost care so as not to nudge your target and send it spinning off into space, you grip the probe and draw it into the cargo hold. The hold door slides shut, and the grappling claws fold themselves back into place. Glancing at the probe on the viewscreen, you see a red light blink on. Before you can even wonder what that means an explosion rips through the vessel, splitting the belly of it wide open and spilling you along with the rest of its contents out into the space. You tumble among the shattered remains of what used to be the shuttle, and the last thing you think before you’re vaporized by the detonating power core of the underspace drive is that Karoff will not be happy.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You ease the shuttle closer, and closer still. The viewscreen isn’t needed to get a visual on the probe now; you can just look out the window. It’s small, but the slender segmented form puts you in mind of a wasp, with a pair of satellites making up the ‘wings’. The design is sleek and something about it worries you. The longer you look at it the more you get the sense it’s dangerous somehow. But that’s just all the more reason to take it out of commission. > You disable it with laser fire to be safe. A precisely aimed laser from close range is a far cry from a fusion torpedo, and won’t harm the probe in any way that would prevent it from being studied. You target the spherical ‘head’ of the wasp and fire. A quick spit of green light burns a tiny hole through what you hope is the central processor. A moment later you realize your error however as the shot has not only failed to disable the probe, but triggered a response in return. The shield indicator on your screen blinks to zero for a split second, accompanied by a sound of metal clinking against the outside of the ship. “What the--” Crackling energy is suddenly crawling from every wall. The wave rips through you and your vision goes white, then black. You’re dimly conscious of hitting the floor, and then never wake up again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With no time to delay or hesitate, you’re moving toward the docking bay within moments of making your decision while Karoff hurries along behind you and hits you with a barrage of rapid-fire instructions and advice for piloting one of the ship’s shuttles. “Whatever you do, don’t get it blown up!” “I’ll try my best.” The voices of your companions soon fade as you ease the shuttle out into the silence of space, aiming for the emptiest and coldest edge of the system and the coordinates Karoff pinpointed. You blink in and out of underspace a couple of times the way he showed you, or else the trip would take days. Risky in a populated or debris-filled system for someone without much training, but there’s nothing much to worry about colliding with out here. The probe is right where it’s supposed to be. It’d be possible to target with a missile now, but your initial scan indicates it might be rather unusual in design. Retrieving it intact might lead to clues about its maker, certainly the sort of person the Order would want to shut down...or recruit. > You just blow it up. The targeting system only allows missiles to be fired from a certain distance, depending on the size and movement speed of whatever you’re aiming for. Given the threat a loose missile can pose flying unchecked through space, forever, the idea is to prevent anything that’s not a pretty sure shot. You’re right at the edge of that distance now. The probe is small and so you carefully line up your shot before launching the missile. It takes a few minutes to reach its destination, during which you watch the little blipping light traveling on your screen and remember why you prefer ground combat. The probe unleashes an inordinately powerful blast of energy when it explodes, the shockwave sending your shuttle tumbling into a backwards roll. You breathe in acrid smoke. From somewhere, shouts of fear and anger, pounding boots mingled with muffled explosions. You are underground but not deep enough to be safe. Striking desperately at the console, you halt your momentum and steady the ship. In a moment you reorient yourself. Your shuttle is fine. And a quick scan reveals your target has been reduced to cosmic dust. It must’ve been packing more than the average probe to trigger an explosion of that magnitude, but you’ll never know for sure now. There’s nothing left to salvage. Before making your way back to the Last Outpost, you immediately transmit the distress signal Hinsman had prepared, although you know it’ll still take a week before anyone arrives. Anyone on your side, anyway. > You repair defenses Hinsman and Karoff are already ripping out most of the EPNs that were so recently installed by the time you finish suiting up. Your sleek one piece outfit is in the Order colors of dark blue and grey, and more than just a uniform. With the addition of your helmet with its built in breathing mask it serves as well in combat as any armor, and protects you in any climate and even for a time in open space. It feels good to be back in it. Between the detour through the Camarov system and then the stop here you’ve been running around without it for an unusually long time. Hinsman charges by with a load of power cables draped over one arm, then checks himself mid-stride and comes back over to you. “Zee, question.” “Yes?” “Do you think we should put Matti in cryo and send her out of here?” “You’re asking me?” You’re a little surprised. He hadn’t seemed to like hearing your opinions on Matti very much a little earlier. “Not that I’m giving much credence to your theory about her. I’m asking you now, just as a matter of risk assessment, how putting an injured and weakened woman in a cryo pod would stack up to having her stay here with a hostile force on the way.” You pause a moment to run over both scenarios. The cryo is a significant risk, but a one time thing. The possibility of attack is an ever evolving situation with the threat level varying from not worth mentioning to all of you dead and the station destroyed. Plus, even with Hinsman telling you to disregard the thought, there’s the possibility Matti might not be trustworthy. You know already that he won’t include any of your suspicions in the note to the Camarovians and they won’t investigate nearly as thoroughly as the Order would even if he did. But guilty or innocent, the rest of you may soon have your hands too full to pay attention to her if you do get company. Finally you reply. > You say "It's better to send her back to Camarov." Hinsman nods in agreement. “Probably for the best now that we’ve got a target painted on us. I’ll explain things to her this evening and get her in the pod first thing in the morning.” You both drag piles of equipment about while Karoff diverts more power from the ship, as much as can be spared, and even sacrifices most of the shuttles. Before long the equipment is in place and the three of you begin rigging up cables, energy cells, power nodes and anything you can find that can produce or transfer a charge down each of the station’s splayed arms to the laser and torpedo turrets mounted at their tips. Finally, the heavily damaged medical wing is the last that needs attention. That’s all on you. “Think we can get by without that one?” Hinsman asks. Karoff shakes his head. “Without the turrets that’s a biiiig area where they can get in close and freely maneuver and we can’t touch them.” “Figured. All right then Zee, off you go. Just hook up these cables and don’t slip and go floating off into space, it’ll be a pain in the ass to collect you again. One of us will keep in voice contact while you’re there.” You stand in the airlock, the minutes ticking by while you wait for the atmosphere to slowly equalize with that of the absent one in the medical wing. You know you’re getting close when you begin to float in place. Once the door opens and you drift into the entrance to the medical wing, you search for the panel Karoff told you about. It’s about the only one here that hasn’t had its conduits fried, and you remove a connector you’ll need. That and the EPN loaded with an energy canister you have strapped to your back should be all you need to power the turrets. After checking in on your wrist comm you start to make your way on down to the hall. You carry a cable as well, meant to be attached to your suit. If you were following safety recommendations, one of the two clips along the length should always be anchored to something. You’re not entirely sure you need it however. The sides of this section have blown out in some places but you can just avoid getting too near the edge of those gaps. Using the tethered cable is fine when working in one place, but tediously slow when trying to move. > You follow safety regulations You begin to make your way slowly, carefully along. There’s a bar that runs along the side of the hall that you use for your tether. You fall into a rhythm of attaching one clip, then the other, then unclipping the first, move forward and repeat. Every so often there’s a crackle from your headset as someone checks on you, but the dark halls are otherwise eerily silent. Doors line the walls on either side of you, firmly shutting away their secrets. One door is hanging open and askew on cracked hinges, and you see the long room beyond it is filled with rusting rows of bolted down bedframes. An infirmary at some time in the past, now with the back wall now ripped open to expose them to space. You can see the pale face of the barren rock the station orbits through the gap. You drift down an elevator shaft and after a measured distance begin cutting your way out with a laser torch. Gripping the handrail behind you, you kick the slab of metal free. It tumbles forward, and forward, and out into space. Where you expected to find more hallway, you’re now looking at a mostly missing wall, the blown out section large enough to pilot a shuttle through. You’ve drifted out a short ways, watching the metal slab diminishing in the distance, still moving from the momentum of your kick. It’s then that you glance down and realize there’s nothing beneath your feet but the void of space and the twinkling of stars. Most of the floor in this section has also been blown away. You pedal your legs in a panic and shoot upwards a short distance until you’re suddenly snapped back. Grabbing at a projecting metal ledge, you steady yourself, realizing that if you hadn’t clipped the tether to the elevator’s handrail out of habit you might be in trouble right now. Below, you can just see the edges of other rooms on other floors parallel to this one; the section beneath you has been ripped out clear through to the bottom of the station. But thankfully you don’t have to try to float down through the big hole to reach the turret. Just, across it. > You leap of Faith Well, no sense in putting it off. You remind yourself that if her story is to be believed, poor, stupid, terrified Matti made this jump not once, but twice, and carrying Markov’s bloody body behind her the second time. Aiming yourself carefully in the direction you want to go, an airlock that leads to the last section of this wing, you use your legs to launch yourself towards it in a single smooth motion. On instinct you’ve angled your body into an aerodynamic shape, legs straight behind and arms stretched out in front of you, although you know it doesn’t really matter. As you sail across the gap, you stare downward into infinity. You feel like you’re flying. You feel like...a bird... Green grass. The smell of it. A long blade of green grass, striped by the horizontal bars of sunlight and shadow cast by its fellows. An ant crawls up the blade, in and out of the stripes. Another ant tickles your arm. New shadows race across the sun. There are silver wings in the distance, and a beautiful white light. “Look at the birds, Mommy!” “Zani, get inside!” The fresh smell of grass is replaced by acrid smoke. Screams and shouts. Muffled explosions in the distance. You are underground, but not deep enough. Boots thud overhead. Your sister is crying. You want to cry too. Everyone is afraid, even the adults. Especially the adults. “The Order!” “Oh my God, they’re killing everyone!” “We’re not infected! Listen to us, please!” “Zani, Nyla, run to the woods!” You’re running hard, pulling your sister behind you. There is another explosion, not so distant. The force hurls you hard against the ground. The grass is gone, the earth is a scorched and blackened wound. You and the earth are the same now. Where is Nyla? The pain is incredible. Blackness. You-- --you stare down into the blackness. You hit the wall on the other side hard but somehow instinctively grabbed the metal bar next to the airlock. The metal will surely bend, if you squeeze it any harder. Your eyes sting. Your chest aches like its simultaneously been hollowed out and is just about to burst. Physically you’re fine. But from your memory--and you know now for certain that it was a memory--you know now that this is what it feels like to want to cry. No tears stain your cheeks, of course. Your brain may be human, but most of the rest of you decidedly is not. Still, you feel weak, shaky, and can’t bring yourself to continue on for quite some time. Unless you deliberately keep your thoughts focused elsewhere, your mind drifts again and again to the memories. “The Order!” “Oh my God, they’re killing everyone!” Those two sentences in particular, shouted at a near hysterical pitch by a voice that seems hauntingly familiar plague you the most. You don’t like the implications. At some point you realize your communicator has been going off. Hinsman’s voice is speaking to you, sounding worried. You take a deep breath. “I’m fine.” Your words are faint, barely audible. “Are you sure, Zee?” He sounds skeptical. > You tell him about the memories “I...started hearing some things. But, it’s more like, remembering some things, really. And they’re not...good things.” A sigh. “The hallucinations again? How bad are th--” “They’re not hallucinations! They’re memories! Of my life, from before! Are you even listening?” The words spit from your lips. That hadn’t been your intention, but, it appeases something dark and angry inside of you to let them out. There’s a long pause on the other end. When Hinsman next speaks his voice is calm and careful. “That’s right, I’m sorry Zee, you did say memories. You might be experiencing a few, but, if it’s anything like last time, they’re presenting themselves in a disruptive fashion and mixing in invented details from elsewhere. You can’t rely on them one hundred percent.” “Invented? You mean like the Order purging my family’s colony? Are you saying that’s all invented?” You’re still angry. Not just at the questions the memories made you ask, but at the entire situation and what you know it will eventually lead to. You need to pull yourself together, you know this. If nothing else, this is an astoundingly bad time and place to be having a crisis. But Hinsman’s got his most soothing voice on and it doesn’t really have its intended effect when you know exactly what he’s doing. “I don’t know, Zee. I’m sorry but I genuinely don’t know the situation prior to your original activation. And...if it helps, you don’t have to think of it as ‘you’, you know. You are a trusted and capable Order operative, with people who respect and value you. You’re simply built around the brain of someone long dead who may have had a tragedy befall them.” “A tragedy the Order caused.” Hinsman sighs again. “Y’know, Zee, the human brain is a complicated thing. We still don’t entirely understand everything about it. You need to consider the way dreams take real information and memories, and transpose them with--” “All right, all right,” you cut him off. “Spare me your horseshit. I need to get this turret activated.” Now it’s your turn to sigh. “Anyway, I’m guessing we’ve probably had this conversation before?” “A couple of times. ‘Fraid so. Now take care of yourself and stay focused, Zee. We need you.” “Yeah.” > You staying focused. Yanking on the handle of the airlock door, you hear the locking mechanism disengage with a satisfying clank. Once inside, you seal it behind you again before proceeding. This last segment of the medical arm lost gravity and life support with the others, but was never exposed directly to space. It seems likely the actual origin of the sabotage was the area you were just in, with the chain of explosions moving from there in the direction of the central part of the station. There is quite a bit of floating furniture and assorted medical equipment and other clutter to maneuver through, but thankfully there are no major obstacles or...other distractions between you and the turret. You power and arm it, checking the status of the torpedoes and ensuring everything seems to be in working order before giving the others a call. Karoff confirms the gun is online and you begin to make your way back. You still are struggling a bit to keep your head clear, and begin reading the labels on the doors you pass and counting them too to keep your thoughts from wandering back to the that same place, the stripes of sunlight across the grass, again and again. What should be door number twenty-eight is open, and when you shine your light inside it falls upon a long white cabinet inside. Particularly, upon the smears of dried blood upon it, one of them a near perfect hand print. “He was trying to unlock a cabinet but his hands were all torn up.” You recall Matti’s words from a few hours ago, although with far less clarity and immediacy that that of the woman who so long ago shouted for Zani and Nyla to run to the woods. Is this the room where Markov died? > You stop awhile to investigate. The cabinet seems the immediate point of interest. You shine your light across it. It’s bolted in place and so it hasn’t joined most of the rest of the furniture and assorted lab equipment in hovering against the middle of the far wall. You realize immediately it’s not really a cabinet at all, but a bank of freezer compartments. Oddly, it still has power. A bit of searching reveals where someone has wired in an EPN behind it. The blood smears are concentrated in one area, and you scrape it away from a combination lock it seems especially thick on. It’s a pretty standard lock. The combination possibilities are four alphanumeric characters, and Markov’s bloodied hands had set it as far as INE-. You click over the last letter to A and unsnap the lock. Glass vials hover against the top of the compartment. You reach in and gently sweep them out for a better look. Each are full of a frozen yellowish liquid. One of the vials is broken, empty. It’s got smears of red on it too. The vials tumble out of the freezer at your touch and float in a loose cluster just above you. You tilt your head and read the label clearly printed on each one: HUNGER 1A-4 > You protocol You return to the central complex, making sure not to stare into the abyss this time as you cross it. “I’m fine,” you say in answer to Hinsman’s look when you enter, brushing past him. You actually do feel more relaxed and confident now. No longer uncertain, because protocol is very clear. You just need to verify something on your own first. It’s bad to cause a panic. Protocol is clear on that too. Except for the monitors in the main computer room turned command center, the station is once again dark. Somehow this environment seems to magnify the echo of footsteps. Peering around the curve of a corridor, you see another oasis of light washing against a wall; the nursing station where Matti is resting. You busy yourself the next several hours, putting equipment away, helping Karoff calibrate this or that and then doing your own work while he and Hinsman are sleeping. Early in the morning, printouts of the results on hand, you stride to the nursing station. Hinsman is there clearing away Matti’s breakfast tray. “If it’s not too much trouble, could I get a couple more pancakes?” you hear her ask as you enter. “I’m kind of hungry still, I guess because I’m recovering.” He gives her a good natured smile and starts to reply, and you drill a smoking hole through her head with your laser pistol. “Zee, what the FUCK?” Hinsman bellows, grabbing for his own gun and pointing it at you with a disbelieving stare. “Drop your weapon. NOW!” “She was infected.” “What? There’s no way! You’re losing it, Zee.” He takes a deep breath. You notice the hand that holds the gun is shaking. “You just committed a murder. I don’t want to shoot you but I’m not going to tell you again. Drop your weapon. We’ll put you in stasis until someone can fix you.” You continue in the same matter-of-fact voice. “Markov Carst was storing vials of the live virus in the medical wing. Maybe he even found them there--they could’ve been left behind when the station was originally abandoned. Around the time he sabotaged the station, he infected himself, probably accidentally. And then Oswen infected herself when she tried to rescue him. He was covered in bleeding wounds, and she cut herself too, remember?” You hold out the printouts. “I have proof. Last night I tested the bodies in the freezer, and her arm.” Still eying you distrustfully and not yet lowering his weapon, Hinsman steps forward to snatch the papers from your hand and moves away to skim the results. “Goddammit,” he finally sighs, sliding his gun back into the holster. He stands over Matti’s bed a long moment looking down at her, shoulders slumped and head bowed. After a long silence he sighs again and straightens. “Sometimes I hate this job.” “Believe me, that I understand.” “She died because she was too damn kind. None of us would’ve suited up and gone to try and rescue that piece of shit after he blew the power.” He turns to face you, then frowns. “Zee, you can put the gun down already. I believe you.” “Yes, I know, but there’s one more thing. You need to test yourself for the virus. Karoff too. I can’t let either of you leave this station or interact with anyone else until you do.” Hinsman stares at you, and you can see true extent of the situation finally sinking in. “Goddammit,” he breathes out again, then speaks into his wristcomm. “Karoff, I need you to come to the nursing station. It’s urgent.” > The Test “Clean. Both of you.” You snap the computer shut and the tension in the room evaporates amid sighs of relief. Karoff lets out a whoop. “Oh thank God. I was too pretty to die!” He stands and makes for the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting the hell out of this plague room.” Hinsman lingers a moment, pausing at the foot of Matti’s bed. You’ve draped a sheet over her and will take the body and bedding to be incinerated once he leaves. “Well we got lucky I guess. The one to pick her up when she was bleeding was the only one who couldn’t get infected. And somehow I didn’t catch anything treating her, or afterwards being near her almost constantly. She got damn unlucky though. And here I am the complete bastard while she was the sweet girl with her life ahead of her. I still can’t believe it turned out this way.” With a shake of his head he exits the room, not looking at you. You know Hinsman understands as well as anyone possibly could that you were just doing what you had to, but you suspect it’ll be awhile before he can bring himself to ever actually like you again. And then the moment arrives. An alert from the computer indicates something just emerged from underspace. Ahead of you the walk of the two men turns into a mad sprint down the hall. The three of you gather in the command center and Karoff quickly locates the ship. “No affiliation and armed to the teeth. Yep, we got a pirate.” Hinsman drains his faux coffee and sets the cup aside. “Just one? Shouldn’t be too hard to handle.” “Yeah, there’s...dammit! You jinxed us. Now there’s two, three...eight on approach. And they’re hard to track.” “Sensors didn’t pick them up?” you ask. “The first ship was a carrier. It’s how you disguise the size of your force if for instance, you think someone may have an alert set for anyone exiting underspace.” > You activate the shields and turrets. If Karoff can’t track the ships there could be one lining up a shot even now. You’d installed a few shortcuts on your console and wristcomm last night, preparing for the possibility you’d be working alone, and now tap a key. The lights in the command center dim briefly as outside the station the massive shield generators hum to life and the turrets ready themselves. Whatever they’d been expecting, anyone approaching will know the station has people inside ready to defend it now, and that you’d been expecting them. “They’re hailing us,” Karoff says. “Oh good, let me talk to them. Maybe they’re going to surrender.” Karoff smirks at the comment and patches the call through to the viewscreen. An older man with steel-grey hair and a scarred face looks down at Hinsman and says in a gravelly voice. “I see you have a ship locked into the bay. Whoever you are, I suggest you use it. We won’t stop you from leaving peacefully, but we’re taking this station and anyone who tries to stop us will most certainly be killed.” Hinsman looks unimpressed. “On the contrary, I think it’s you folks who’d better turn around and leave. The Last Outpost is an Order station vital to maintaining peace in the Outer Rim, and if you fire upon it it’s an act of war. We will hunt you down. There won’t be a single airless, lifeless rock left out there you can hide under.” The man smiles. “Well aren’t you a big talker. But have it your way. I tried to make this easy, but I’ve never been afraid of a little work to get what I want, and I’m going to enjoy killing you even more now.” The transmission cuts off and the first barrage of missiles collides with the central complex, shaking the whole station. You steady yourself against the doorframe. “They know this area is shielded. I’m surprised they don’t go for the turrets.” “Think those were just showoff shots to let us know they mean business,” Karoff tells you. “Look, they’re deploying into new positions now. Easier to keep track of at this range, anyway.” “Off to a good start. I don’t object at all to them wasting missiles,” Hinsman says with a shrug. “They’ll run out soon and then have to get within range of the turrets to use their lasers.” Karoff has been tapping feverishly at a console, and suddenly interrupts. “And there go a few of my own. Two can play the torpedo game.” Crowding around the screen, you watch as the missiles spin through the formation the ships had been gathering up into. There are a couple of glancing hits that take one ship out of commission and force others to veer this way and that. Two more are hit but their shields hold. Shields are almost always going to be weaker on a ship than on a station, but you suspect they’d all been angling themselves to protect the weaker ships in the center while they made their first sweep at the turrets. The missiles that are evaded by the pirates were lined up so that they exploded against the shields of the larger carrier ship waiting behind them. Again, no significant damage done, but the big ship does start moving to get more distance from you, meaning it won’t be so readily available to provide backup to the pirates. You take a moment to send a torpedo tearing through the disabled ship, then frown at the screen. “Here they come again.” The seven remaining ships come in at an angle, then just out of range of what would be a practical distance to take a shot at them they split into two groups, circling the station from opposite sides. The ships launch a series of missiles at the turrets as they swoop by, and while the lasers are able to take most of them out before impact, one does slip through and blow a gun into pieces spinning off into space. The three of you exchange grim looks. You know that with every gun that goes down they’ll have a growing safe area to maneuver in. A moment later the ships begin another sweep. They concentrate their fire at the arms surrounding the one with the turret they cleared. Karoff takes another one out with a well timed missile that hits at the moment they drop their own, but two more turrets are taken out regardless. As you watch, a smaller ship moves in, aiming for the now unprotected arm housing the medical wing. It takes you a moment, but you come to a sudden realization. “They’re trying to board it!” you say, remembering the massive gap open to space there. “We can stop them, surely?” Hinsman asks. Karoff shakes his head. “At that angle, can’t really...wait! My ship! I’ve got a dozen torpedoes loaded still.” “You transfered so much of the power over, though. It won’t even have shielding. Let’s stay on the station and just take up positions near the entrance to that section, pick them off when they come through.” “We don’t even know how many they have, and we don’t have anything more powerful than a laser rifle. I really don’t like leaving the rest of the ships free to do whatever while we’re over there either.” You’re all running out of time fast. They really can’t stand there arguing much longer. The situation being what it is, you decide to take the lead for once and just let them follow. > You use Karoff's ship to take them out before they board. “Twelve torpedoes? Then stay here. I’ll stop the boarders.” Before anyone can reply you race down the hall and towards the docking bay. “Careful with my ship!” you hear Karoff hollering after you. You strap in an unlock in record time, gliding along the side of the docking bay arm opposite the one housing the medical wing, trying not to expose the profile of your ship to the enemy. Then when you’re lined up with the damaged section, you drop down just a short ways and rotate to get a clear view straight across to wear the smaller ship is hovering within the massive hole gouged from the medical wing. Their back hatch is open, and someone in a bulky suit is in the process of exiting. Caught with their shields down? Your timing couldn’t be better. With a press of a button you send a fusion torpedo smashing into the exposed ship. The explosion rips right through it, and you wince a bit as it also engulfs the less damaged section of the medical wing beyond, reducing that entire tip of the arm into half-melted wreckage. But, well, it was pretty messed up already. Maybe no one would notice. “Hey, great plan Zee, let’s just take out an arm for every ship. There were eight of both so now we’ll be even!” Karoff’s voice is joined by Hinsman’s. “Laugh all you want, but it looks like their buddies are retreating. You must’ve gotten someone important. Good work, Zee.” “Then that went better than I hoped,” you mutter to yourself, but move quickly to relock the ship to the docking bay. No sense in lingering out here without shields. Bad things can happen--just ask the other ship. Rejoining the others, you see that indeed, the pirate ships are locking back into the carrier. “Could be a trick,” you point out. The carrier slips into underspace a few moments later however, and after a short wait it becomes clear they’d have had to emerge by now if they were trying any funny business with blinking around inside the system. Hinsman slaps you on the back. “Well that was a damn good shot, Zee. You might’ve got the captain.” He yawns and turns toward the door. “ > You aftermath The Last Outpost is awash with light and humming with power and activity. Repair crews tromp through the halls day and night and from the newly cleaned and restocked dining area there’s friendly chatter, the clattering of plates, and laughter at the antics of some performer on the screen. It’s practically unrecognizable from the place the three of you fought for only a couple of weeks ago. After an unprecedented two weeks with no new orders, which you know Hinsman and Karoff haven’t minded at all, you’re sitting at the dining hall listening to them trade stories. Taking tiny sips from a glass of water, the closest you can get to having a meal with your friends, you notice three stern-looking people in uniform enter the room, two men and a woman. Their gaze falls on your table and they make a beeline for it. You nudge Hinsman, assuming something’s come up. “Another mission, you think? It’s been awhile.” He clears his throat, looking uncomfortable. “I think they’re here in response to my report.” “What do you mean?” Karoff has become very engrossed in the contents of his glass, and that’s when you realize the officers are here for you. They reach the table and introduce themselves to the other two, politely enough. And then, “Is this the android?” Hinsman nods, not meeting your gaze. “What’s going on?” you ask. Although you believe you already know. You’ve been working on techniques to keep your memories, and the tantalizing fragments of new and sometimes even what seem to be conflicting ones from overwhelming you so suddenly and completely, but they’ve certainly not gone away. “You go by Zee, right? We’re going to need you to come with us.” Hinsman finally speaks up, “They’re just here to help you out, Zee. You’re going to get some treatment so that those...memories, dreams, whatever they are can’t interfere with your work.” “I’ve...been working on that myself,” you tell him, almost pleadingly. “I can keep them under control.” You don’t know why you bother, honestly. The only thing he could have done to prevent this was not put it in his report, and it’s too late for that now. “The way they come on, it’s dangerous you know, and they always get worse. It’s not your fault of course, it’s just something that happens with your kind of android. A side effect of using an organic brain. I’ve done a lot of reading on it,” he goes on. “It’s not a big deal, and it’s easy to fix. You’ve had it done before.” As familiar as you are with the way he works, this sounds suspiciously like a memorized speech. In the end though, there’s nothing you can do. The officers repeat their request, and however you feel, you can’t find it in you to openly defy an order. And Hinsman’s right; this has all happened before. He and Karoff accompany you to the waiting shuttle. As you say your goodbyes and take a last look around the now bustling station, you wonder if you’ll remember any of this by the time they’re done with you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If Karoff can’t track the ships there could be one lining up a shot even now. You’d installed a few shortcuts on your console and wristcomm last night, preparing for the possibility you’d be working alone, and now tap a key. The lights in the command center dim briefly as outside the station the massive shield generators hum to life and the turrets ready themselves. Whatever they’d been expecting, anyone approaching will know the station has people inside ready to defend it now, and that you’d been expecting them. “They’re hailing us,” Karoff says. “Oh good, let me talk to them. Maybe they’re going to surrender.” Karoff smirks at the comment and patches the call through to the viewscreen. An older man with steel-grey hair and a scarred face looks down at Hinsman and says in a gravelly voice. “I see you have a ship locked into the bay. Whoever you are, I suggest you use it. We won’t stop you from leaving peacefully, but we’re taking this station and anyone who tries to stop us will most certainly be killed.” Hinsman looks unimpressed. “On the contrary, I think it’s you folks who’d better turn around and leave. The Last Outpost is an Order station vital to maintaining peace in the Outer Rim, and if you fire upon it it’s an act of war. We will hunt you down. There won’t be a single airless, lifeless rock left out there you can hide under.” The man smiles. “Well aren’t you a big talker. But have it your way. I tried to make this easy, but I’ve never been afraid of a little work to get what I want, and I’m going to enjoy killing you even more now.” The transmission cuts off and the first barrage of missiles collides with the central complex, shaking the whole station. You steady yourself against the doorframe. “They know this area is shielded. I’m surprised they don’t go for the turrets.” “Think those were just showoff shots to let us know they mean business,” Karoff tells you. “Look, they’re deploying into new positions now. Easier to keep track of at this range, anyway.” “Off to a good start. I don’t object at all to them wasting missiles,” Hinsman says with a shrug. “They’ll run out soon and then have to get within range of the turrets to use their lasers.” Karoff has been tapping feverishly at a console, and suddenly interrupts. “And there go a few of my own. Two can play the torpedo game.” Crowding around the screen, you watch as the missiles spin through the formation the ships had been gathering up into. There are a couple of glancing hits that take one ship out of commission and force others to veer this way and that. Two more are hit but their shields hold. Shields are almost always going to be weaker on a ship than on a station, but you suspect they’d all been angling themselves to protect the weaker ships in the center while they made their first sweep at the turrets. The missiles that are evaded by the pirates were lined up so that they exploded against the shields of the larger carrier ship waiting behind them. Again, no significant damage done, but the big ship does start moving to get more distance from you, meaning it won’t be so readily available to provide backup to the pirates. You take a moment to send a torpedo tearing through the disabled ship, then frown at the screen. “Here they come again.” The seven remaining ships come in at an angle, then just out of range of what would be a practical distance to take a shot at them they split into two groups, circling the station from opposite sides. The ships launch a series of missiles at the turrets as they swoop by, and while the lasers are able to take most of them out before impact, one does slip through and blow a gun into pieces spinning off into space. The three of you exchange grim looks. You know that with every gun that goes down they’ll have a growing safe area to maneuver in. A moment later the ships begin another sweep. They concentrate their fire at the arms surrounding the one with the turret they cleared. Karoff takes another one out with a well timed missile that hits at the moment they drop their own, but two more turrets are taken out regardless. As you watch, a smaller ship moves in, aiming for the now unprotected arm housing the medical wing. It takes you a moment, but you come to a sudden realization. “They’re trying to board it!” you say, remembering the massive gap open to space there. “We can stop them, surely?” Hinsman asks. Karoff shakes his head. “At that angle, can’t really...wait! My ship! I’ve got a dozen torpedoes loaded still.” “You transfered so much of the power over, though. It won’t even have shielding. Let’s stay on the station and just take up positions near the entrance to that section, pick them off when they come through.” “We don’t even know how many they have, and we don’t have anything more powerful than a laser rifle. I really don’t like leaving the rest of the ships free to do whatever while we’re over there either.” You’re all running out of time fast. They really can’t stand there arguing much longer. The situation being what it is, you decide to take the lead for once and just let them follow. > You say "We don't need to stop them." “They’re not coming here. They’re looking for the vials,” you reassure them. “And they won’t find them.” The first thing you’d done after finding Markov’s stash, before you’d done anything else, was melt every single vial along with its contents down to nothing with your laser torch. “Oh, and assuming they know exactly where to look, I left a little surprise for them.” The lab had been full of all kinds of interesting chemicals, and the three of you aren’t waiting too long before the sensors trained on the medical wing register a sizable explosion. A moment later, the ship that carried them is careening away, clumsily enough that a laser turret can slice it in half before the shields have a change to reactivate. “Beautiful.” Karoff grins, then squints at the screen. “And I think...yes, looks like the others may be retreating. Or moving back toward the carrier, anyhow. You musta got somebody important. That grumpy old bastard from the viewscreen, I hope.” Well done, Zee.” Hinsman slaps you on the back. “Damn, will there be enough left in medical to scrape up some DNA, I wonder? There’s gonna be a hell of a manhunt on once we transmit this battle report. Hope none of you were planning a vacation.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Clean. Both of you.” You snap the computer shut and the tension in the room evaporates amid sighs of relief. Karoff lets out a whoop. “Oh thank God. I was too pretty to die!” He stands and makes for the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting the hell out of this plague room.” Hinsman lingers a moment, pausing at the foot of Matti’s bed. You’ve draped a sheet over her and will take the body and bedding to be incinerated once he leaves. “Well we got lucky I guess. The one to pick her up when she was bleeding was the only one who couldn’t get infected. And somehow I didn’t catch anything treating her, or afterwards being near her almost constantly. She got damn unlucky though. And here I am the complete bastard while she was the sweet girl with her life ahead of her. I still can’t believe it turned out this way.” With a shake of his head he exits the room, not looking at you. You know Hinsman understands as well as anyone possibly could that you were just doing what you had to, but you suspect it’ll be awhile before he can bring himself to ever actually like you again. And then the moment arrives. An alert from the computer indicates something just emerged from underspace. Ahead of you the walk of the two men turns into a mad sprint down the hall. The three of you gather in the command center and Karoff quickly locates the ship. “No affiliation and armed to the teeth. Yep, we got a pirate.” Hinsman drains his faux coffee and sets the cup aside. “Just one? Shouldn’t be too hard to handle.” “Yeah, there’s...dammit! You jinxed us. Now there’s two, three...eight on approach. And they’re hard to track.” “Sensors didn’t pick them up?” you ask. “The first ship was a carrier. It’s how you disguise the size of your force if for instance, you think someone may have an alert set for anyone exiting underspace.” > You wait until they're closer. Patience is everything out here. You all lapse into a tense silence as you watch the sweeping scans. The ships are visible on the sensors for only a fraction of a second at a time. They move erratically as they approach in a way that would be difficult to target, then seem to gain confidence and split into two groups, angling to sweep by each side of the station. You’d installed a few shortcuts on your console and wristcomm last night, preparing for the possibility you’d be working alone, and as they come into range you now tap a key. The lights in the command center dim briefly as outside the station the massive shield generators hum to life. The turrets ready themselves and immediately begin spitting fire. To one of the groups the attack is devastating, leaving two of the ships smoldering wreckage and disabling a third. The four on the other side of the station take minor damage and one loses shields and has to retreat back towards the carrier. Karoff hasn’t been idle either, and once he saw you go into action he sent a barrage of missiles toward the carrier itself, which make contact a couple of moments later. They don’t pierce the shields, but apparently are enough of a bother that the big ship begins to move off further out of range, meaning it can’t provide backup to the rest of the pirates, even the unshielded one limping towards it. “Nice work, everyone. And I guess I’ll take janitor duty,” Hinsman says, firing another pair of torpedoes. One blows the disabled ship to shrapnel and another zips across the distance to take out the shield-less one. The remaining three pull out of range. They continue to make slow circles around the station for a bit, launching a few torpedoes of their own, two exploding harmlessly against the shield of the central complex and the third doing some damage to one of the unshielded arms, but missing the turret. When Karoff manages to strike a glancing blow off of one of them with his return fire they seem to think better of lingering and retreat to the carrier. It jumps to underspace, and after a few seconds it’s clear they’re not trying any risky tricks with jumping closer to the station, while your sensor sweeps continue to not report them emerging anywhere else in the system. Battles in space tend to be that way. Hours of tense preparation and waiting, decided by a few seconds of actual weapon’s exchange. If one of the pirate ships had managed to get in close enough to line up a shot before you activated the shields, this all could’ve gone very differently. “As soon as we can get this data to the Order, there’s gonna be a hell of a hunt going on for the ones who got away,” Hinsman says later, while compiling the battle report and the information on the infection aboard the station. “Hope no one was planning a vacation.” “Eh, scouring a bunch of backwater planets for terrorists won’t be that bad,” Karoff replies with a shrug. “I just don’t envy whoever’s gonna be searching and sanitizing every centimeter of this station. So sorry about that, Zee.” You can tell he’s joking for once, and just shake your head. “Nope, not me. Never been gladder they gave me a gun instead of a mop.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Yanking on the handle of the airlock door, you hear the locking mechanism disengage with a satisfying clank. Once inside, you seal it behind you again before proceeding. This last segment of the medical arm lost gravity and life support with the others, but was never exposed directly to space. It seems likely the actual origin of the sabotage was the area you were just in, with the chain of explosions moving from there in the direction of the central part of the station. There is quite a bit of floating furniture and assorted medical equipment and other clutter to maneuver through, but thankfully there are no major obstacles or...other distractions between you and the turret. You power and arm it, checking the status of the torpedoes and ensuring everything seems to be in working order before giving the others a call. Karoff confirms the gun is online and you begin to make your way back. You still are struggling a bit to keep your head clear, and begin reading the labels on the doors you pass and counting them too to keep your thoughts from wandering back to the that same place, the stripes of sunlight across the grass, again and again. What should be door number twenty-eight is open, and when you shine your light inside it falls upon a long white cabinet inside. Particularly, upon the smears of dried blood upon it, one of them a near perfect hand print. “He was trying to unlock a cabinet but his hands were all torn up.” You recall Matti’s words from a few hours ago, although with far less clarity and immediacy that that of the woman who so long ago shouted for Zani and Nyla to run to the woods. Is this the room where Markov died? > You don't care about any of this anymore. Sorrow, anger, and pain still thunder just beyond the edge of your conscious thought. In your eyes, the major failing of the saboteur now was in not blowing this entire station to cosmic dust and sparing you from this brink of madness. You were content in your role before, happy to tirelessly devote yourself to the Order’s interests, and now? You no longer care about what was done here or why. Let someone else figure that out, or not. What difference does it make? You return to the central complex, making sure not to stare into the abyss this time as you cross it. “I’m fine,” you say in answer to Hinsman’s look when you enter, brushing past him. Except for the monitors in the main computer room turned command center, the station is once again dark. Somehow this environment seems to magnify the echo of footsteps. Peering around the curve of a corridor, you see another oasis of light washing against a wall; the nursing station where Matti is resting. You busy yourself the next several hours, putting equipment away, helping Karoff calibrate this or that and keeping watch while he and Hinsman sleep. In the end the power situation means the three of you will only able to get partial shielding up around the non vital sections, which are essentially everything but the docking bay and central complex. Hopefully that will be enough. Hinsman has already seen to Matti and he and Karoff are having a quick breakfast and complaining about the coffee substitute when the moment arrives. An alert from the computer indicates something just emerged from underspace. The three of you gather in the command center and Karoff quickly locates the ship. “No affiliation and armed to the teeth. Yep, we got a pirate.” Hinsman drains his faux coffee and sets the cup aside. “Just one? Shouldn’t be too hard to handle.” “Yeah, there’s...dammit! You jinxed us. Now there’s two, three...eight on approach. And they’re hard to track.” “Sensors didn’t pick them up?” you ask. “The first ship was a carrier. It’s how you disguise the size of your force if for instance, you think someone may have an alert set for anyone exiting underspace.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well, no sense in putting it off. You remind yourself that if her story is to be believed, poor, stupid, terrified Matti made this jump not once, but twice, and carrying Markov’s bloody body behind her the second time. Aiming yourself carefully in the direction you want to go, an airlock that leads to the last section of this wing, you use your legs to launch yourself towards it in a single smooth motion. On instinct you’ve angled your body into an aerodynamic shape, legs straight behind and arms stretched out in front of you, although you know it doesn’t really matter. As you sail across the gap, you stare downward into infinity. You feel like you’re flying. You feel like...a bird... Green grass. The smell of it. A long blade of green grass, striped by the horizontal bars of sunlight and shadow cast by its fellows. An ant crawls up the blade, in and out of the stripes. Another ant tickles your arm. New shadows race across the sun. There are silver wings in the distance, and a beautiful white light. “Look at the birds, Mommy!” “Zani, get inside!” The fresh smell of grass is replaced by acrid smoke. Screams and shouts. Muffled explosions in the distance. You are underground, but not deep enough. Boots thud overhead. Your sister is crying. You want to cry too. Everyone is afraid, even the adults. Especially the adults. “The Order!” “Oh my God, they’re killing everyone!” “We’re not infected! Listen to us, please!” “Zani, Nyla, run to the woods!” You’re running hard, pulling your sister behind you. There is another explosion, not so distant. The force hurls you hard against the ground. The grass is gone, the earth is a scorched and blackened wound. You and the earth are the same now. Where is Nyla? The pain is incredible. Blackness. You-- --you stare down into the blackness. You hit the wall on the other side hard but somehow instinctively grabbed the metal bar next to the airlock. The metal will surely bend, if you squeeze it any harder. Your eyes sting. Your chest aches like its simultaneously been hollowed out and is just about to burst. Physically you’re fine. But from your memory--and you know now for certain that it was a memory--you know now that this is what it feels like to want to cry. No tears stain your cheeks, of course. Your brain may be human, but most of the rest of you decidedly is not. Still, you feel weak, shaky, and can’t bring yourself to continue on for quite some time. Unless you deliberately keep your thoughts focused elsewhere, your mind drifts again and again to the memories. “The Order!” “Oh my God, they’re killing everyone!” Those two sentences in particular, shouted at a near hysterical pitch by a voice that seems hauntingly familiar plague you the most. You don’t like the implications. At some point you realize your communicator has been going off. Hinsman’s voice is speaking to you, sounding worried. You take a deep breath. “I’m fine.” Your words are faint, barely audible. “Are you sure, Zee?” He sounds skeptical. > You you're fine. “Y-yeah, I just...had some trouble getting across this section with the worst of the damage. It’s bigger than it looked on the images we had. I’m fine now though, just had a close call.” “All right, well glad you’re all right, and be careful, Zee.” “Right. I’ll be at the turret soon.” You cut the call and take a deep breath, telling yourself you’ve got to pull yourself together. This is an astoundingly bad place and time to be having a crisis. You’re unsure if that was your entire motivation in not telling Hinsman the truth, but you know you need to focus on getting the defenses up now. The memories, and the painful questions they’ve made you ask...you’ll dwell on that later when there’s no danger of attack. Meanwhile you’ll just hope that they don’t return, or at least not with such force that you can’t function. You need to stay focused.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Hinsman nods in agreement. “Probably for the best now that we’ve got a target painted on us. I’ll explain things to her this evening and get her in the pod first thing in the morning.” You both drag piles of equipment about while Karoff diverts more power from the ship, as much as can be spared, and even sacrifices most of the shuttles. Before long the equipment is in place and the three of you begin rigging up cables, energy cells, power nodes and anything you can find that can produce or transfer a charge down each of the station’s splayed arms to the laser and torpedo turrets mounted at their tips. Finally, the heavily damaged medical wing is the last that needs attention. That’s all on you. “Think we can get by without that one?” Hinsman asks. Karoff shakes his head. “Without the turrets that’s a biiiig area where they can get in close and freely maneuver and we can’t touch them.” “Figured. All right then Zee, off you go. Just hook up these cables and don’t slip and go floating off into space, it’ll be a pain in the ass to collect you again. One of us will keep in voice contact while you’re there.” You stand in the airlock, the minutes ticking by while you wait for the atmosphere to slowly equalize with that of the absent one in the medical wing. You know you’re getting close when you begin to float in place. Once the door opens and you drift into the entrance to the medical wing, you search for the panel Karoff told you about. It’s about the only one here that hasn’t had its conduits fried, and you remove a connector you’ll need. That and the EPN loaded with an energy canister you have strapped to your back should be all you need to power the turrets. After checking in on your wrist comm you start to make your way on down to the hall. You carry a cable as well, meant to be attached to your suit. If you were following safety recommendations, one of the two clips along the length should always be anchored to something. You’re not entirely sure you need it however. The sides of this section have blown out in some places but you can just avoid getting too near the edge of those gaps. Using the tethered cable is fine when working in one place, but tediously slow when trying to move. > No time for that. You drift down the dark hallway, propelling yourself forward in short bursts with the flat of your palm along the wall or the ceiling as you go. Every so often there’s a crackle from your headset as someone checks on you, but the dark halls are otherwise eerily silent. Doors line the walls on either side of you, firmly shutting away their secrets. One door is hanging open and askew on cracked hinges, and you see the long room beyond it is filled with rusting rows of bolted down bedframes. An infirmary at some time in the past, now with the back wall now ripped open to expose them to space. You can see the pale face of the barren rock the station orbits through the gap. You float down an elevator shaft and after a measured distance begin cutting your way out with a laser torch. Gripping the handrail behind you, you kick the slab of metal free. It tumbles forward, and forward, and out into space. Where you expected to find more hallway, you’re now looking at a mostly missing wall, the blown out section large enough to pilot a shuttle through. You’ve drifted out a short ways, watching the metal slab diminishing in the distance, still moving from the momentum of your kick. It’s then that you glance down and realize there’s nothing beneath your feet but the void of space and the twinkling of stars. Most of the floor in this section has also been blown away. You pedal your legs in a panic and the motion sends your body shooting upwards. Struggling to reorient yourself in mid-air, you crack your elbow against a piece of metal railing and grab for it desperately. You’re caught up now against a section of what used to be the roof, amid a forest of twisted metal spars and snaking black wires. You remain carefully still a long moment while you calm yourself, your back resting lightly against the jagged mess while you gaze down at the floor. It’s been ripped out clear through to the bottom of the station. You can just see the edges other rooms on other floors parallel to this one, and where the plating that held on the other side of the gap buckled like crumpled tissue, but thankfully you don’t have to try to float down through the big hole to reach the turret. Just, across it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Hinsman and Karoff are already ripping out most of the EPNs that were so recently installed by the time you finish suiting up. Your sleek one piece outfit is in the Order colors of dark blue and grey, and more than just a uniform. With the addition of your helmet with its built in breathing mask it serves as well in combat as any armor, and protects you in any climate and even for a time in open space. It feels good to be back in it. Between the detour through the Camarov system and then the stop here you’ve been running around without it for an unusually long time. Hinsman charges by with a load of power cables draped over one arm, then checks himself mid-stride and comes back over to you. “Zee, question.” “Yes?” “Do you think we should put Matti in cryo and send her out of here?” “You’re asking me?” You’re a little surprised. He hadn’t seemed to like hearing your opinions on Matti very much a little earlier. “Not that I’m giving much credence to your theory about her. I’m asking you now, just as a matter of risk assessment, how putting an injured and weakened woman in a cryo pod would stack up to having her stay here with a hostile force on the way.” You pause a moment to run over both scenarios. The cryo is a significant risk, but a one time thing. The possibility of attack is an ever evolving situation with the threat level varying from not worth mentioning to all of you dead and the station destroyed. Plus, even with Hinsman telling you to disregard the thought, there’s the possibility Matti might not be trustworthy. You know already that he won’t include any of your suspicions in the note to the Camarovians and they won’t investigate nearly as thoroughly as the Order would even if he did. But guilty or innocent, the rest of you may soon have your hands too full to pay attention to her if you do get company. Finally you reply. > You say "Everything will be fine here once the defenses are up." Hinsman hesitates. “I just worry something may happen to her. She’s so weak still, she needs care we may not be able to give depending on how things go.” “Pirates are a risk at any time, and this station was designed to be defended by only three people,” you point out. He nods after a moment and flashes you a smile. “You know, you’re right. Thanks Zee. But I guess we better gets to work now before Karoff finds us just standing around talking.” You both drag piles of equipment about while Karoff diverts more power from the ship, as much as can be spared, and even sacrifices most of the shuttles. Before long the equipment is in place and the three of you begin rigging up cables, energy cells, power nodes and anything you can find that can produce or transfer a charge down each of the station’s splayed arms to the laser and torpedo turrets mounted at their tips. Finally, the heavily damaged medical wing is the last that needs attention. That’s all on you. “Think we can get by without that one?” Hinsman asks. Karoff shakes his head. “Without the turrets that’s a biiiig area where they can get in close and freely maneuver and we can’t touch them.” “Figured. All right then Zee, off you go. Just hook up these cables and don’t slip and go floating off into space, it’ll be a pain in the ass to collect you again. One of us will keep in voice contact while you’re there.” You stand in the airlock, the minutes ticking by while you wait for the atmosphere to slowly equalize with that of the absent one in the medical wing. You know you’re getting close when you begin to float in place. Once the door opens and you drift into the entrance to the medical wing, you search for the panel Karoff told you about. It’s about the only one here that hasn’t had its conduits fried, and you remove a connector you’ll need. That and the EPN loaded with an energy canister you have strapped to your back should be all you need to power the turrets. After checking in on your wrist comm you start to make your way on down to the hall. You carry a cable as well, meant to be attached to your suit. If you were following safety recommendations, one of the two clips along the length should always be anchored to something. You’re not entirely sure you need it however. The sides of this section have blown out in some places but you can just avoid getting too near the edge of those gaps. Using the tethered cable is fine when working in one place, but tediously slow when trying to move.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Most of the text Karoff scrolls past is gibberish, but a few of the messages are partially deciphered. Even these prove frustrating however as even the ones where you can make out sentences are delicately phrased with deliberate obliqueness. But as the messages near the end, they suddenly start dropping the pretense. “Ah, here we go. Well that’s right to the point, isn’t it?” You peer over Karoff’s shoulder at the screen. ^ou’ve al%ead^ killed ove% this. It’s too late to back out now. ^ou can take ^ou% mone^ o% a hole th%ough the skull--we’%e coming fo% the package eithe% way, so ^ou’d do well to think twice befo%e ^ou do anything ^ou’ll %eg%et. As to ^ou% question, it ain’t nothing but sweet %evenge, Ma%kie bab^. The^ tu%ned us back du%ing the evacuations. We couldn’t ‘p%ove’ we we%en’t infected and what we%e we to them but a bunch of shitkicking fa%mers and %anchers? Well we didn’t have Hunge% but we got hung%^ ENOUGH limping a%ound the %im to find a new home and plent^ of us died of infection all %ight--just plain o%dina%y bo%ing Old Ea%th influenza that could’ve been cu%ed if we’d had even the most p%imitive aid. My wife and daughte% among them. The o%ganization ^ou wo%k fo% has blood on its hands, and don’t even think it stops the%e. A lot of ou% people ma^ have gotten complacent once the^ %esettled, all this talk of ‘moving on’, but that’s just not fo% me and m^ f%iends. We won’t fo%get and we won’t allow them too eithe%. And I’ve made man^ mo%e f%iends %ecentl^. We’%e getting ou% %evenge, and I think ^ou know exactly how. See ^a soon, Ma%k. --W. Ho%seman “So we’ve definitely got pirates coming this way.” Hinsman says with a rueful shake of his head. “Or terrorists, anyway. Even better, right? And so much for your theory on Matti, Zee.” “Any theories on what the package is?” you ask after a moment’s silence. “Carst is from Galton Station, isn’t he?” Karoff asks. “I think I saw it in his file. I’ve been there once or twice, and don’t ask for what. But they all but advertise they’re a black market.” Hinsman nods, looking grim. “Most likely blueprints for illegal weapons tech, or an ethics-stripped AI. Something small Carst could easily smuggle back over here the last time he was on leave. And something valuable and risky enough he’d kill anybody who got in his way.” Karoff taps around on the screen some more. “Too bad he didn’t survive,” he finally says with a sigh. “Because I’d sure like to kill him myself right now. Scans found the probe by the way. Way out there on the edge of the system.” “Oh really? That’s something at least. Although it’ll take time to get to and disable, and I’m not sure we can spare that right now. We need to start thinking of how to defend ourselves.” “The sooner we get a distress call out the sooner we can put an end to all this,” Karoff says. “We’re nothing but a target right now, with the defenses down and if there’s enough of them they can wear us down eventually without much risk to themselves.” “Can the defenses be repaired?” Karoff winces. “I was afraid you were gonna ask that. And technically yes, but it’s a big job. The turrets are in every arm of the station and we’ll need to get power to all of them, which means cutting back here in the central area.” They both sink into a grim silence for a bit, before Hinsman finally looks over. “All right Zee, I guess you get the tiebreaker. What are you most in the mood for right now?” > You repair defenses Hinsman and Karoff have already ripped out most of the EPNs that were so recently installed by the time you finish suiting up. Your sleek one piece outfit is in the Order colors of dark blue and grey, and more than just a uniform. With the addition of your helmet with its built in breathing mask it serves as well in combat as any armor, and protects you in any climate and even for a time in open space. It feels good to be back in it. Between the detour through the Camarov system and then the stop here you’ve been running around without it for an unusually long time. Hinsman charges by with a load of power cables draped over one arm, and you have to jog after him a short ways to get his attention and instructions. > You get to work! You both drag piles of equipment about while Karoff diverts more power from the ship, as much as can be spared, and even sacrifices most of the shuttles. Before long the equipment is in place and the three of you begin rigging up cables, energy cells, power nodes and anything you can find that can produce or transfer a charge down each of the station’s splayed arms to the laser and torpedo turrets mounted at their tips. Finally, the heavily damaged medical wing is the last that needs attention. That’s all on you. “Think we can get by without that one?” Hinsman asks. Karoff shakes his head. “Without the turrets that’s a biiiig area where they can get in close and freely maneuver and we can’t touch them.” “Figured. All right then Zee, off you go. Just hook up these cables and don’t slip and go floating off into space, it’ll be a pain in the ass to collect you again. One of us will keep in voice contact while you’re there.” You stand in the airlock, the minutes ticking by while you wait for the atmosphere to slowly equalize with that of the absent one in the medical wing. You know you’re getting close when you begin to float in place. Once the door opens and you drift into the entrance to the medical wing, you search for the panel Karoff told you about. It’s about the only one here that hasn’t had its conduits fried, and you remove a connector you’ll need. That and the EPN loaded with an energy canister you have strapped to your back should be all you need to power the turrets. After checking in on your wrist comm you start to make your way on down to the hall. You carry a cable as well, meant to be attached to your suit. If you were following safety recommendations, one of the two clips along the length should always be anchored to something. You’re not entirely sure you need it however. The sides of this section have blown out in some places but you can just avoid getting too near the edge of those gaps. Using the tethered cable is fine when working in one place, but tediously slow when trying to move.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Miss Oswen gave me enough details on the cause of the damage to start writing a report, at least, but some things still don’t sit right with me. Even if Inea’s death made him suicidal I still don’t understand Markov’s motivation for trying to take out the entire station, for one...” “He had the space crazies!” “...I can’t put that in a report. But unfortunately Oswen had very little contact with him following Inea’s death. And we don’t even really know what happened to Inea herself other than Zee’s examination indicating blunt force trauma to the head.” “Ah, about that.” Karoff fishes something out of his pocket and taps a button. “Relevant?” A 3D image of an energy canister is projected into the air in front of you all. You recognize the type; the larger energy cells can be volatile, so the canisters are made with half an inch of steel and an interior enamel coating for protection. This one is about the size of a fire extinguisher, which is typical. What’s not typical about this one however is the is the dried blood and long strands of dark hair caught up on the outside of the sealing mechanism. “Where the hell did you find that?” Hinsman wants to know. “In the storage arm where Miss Oswen lost hers. There are a lot of spent canisters piled up in there, and I was looking for more power cables just now and stumbled across this one.” Hinsman’s brow is deeply furrowed as he studies the projection. “That is just suspicious as hell. Has anyone had a look at the body yet?” You and Karoff both shake your heads, and as Matti had just mentioned where they were stored, the three of you make your way to the dining hall. The two bodies are on gurneys, zipped up in body bags in the back of the freezer. You open the bag holding the smaller form, ignoring Karoff’s inquiries as to whether letting restaurant kitchens rent freezer space to morgues could be a viable alternate source of income. Upon examination the dark haired woman’s cause of death is immediately obvious, her skull on the left side having been caved in just above and behind the ear. “Not a glancing blow, either. There’s no way that happens from a spent fuel canister falling on someone’s head. Not even a full one.” After a long moment he sighs and steps back. “All right, let’s go over what facts we have. About a week ago, Inea Banca was doing routine maintenance in the medical wing and had her skull caved in with an energy canister. Markov Karst then goes into seclusion for two days, at the end of which he goes to the medical wing and attempts to cause a power overload that will destroy the station; a major act of treason against the Order that will render a number of Outer Rim colony worlds and ships unable to receive emergency aid and also kill the young woman who remains here. A bit dramatic even for a suicide attempt, but I suppose not outside the realm of possibility. When it fails he become violent when Oswen attempts a rescue and dies moments after. Miss Oswen sends out a distress call that doesn’t seem to have gone through due to the failing power and waits here alone until we happen by. Does that all sound about right?” You mull that over while he and Karoff discuss the details a bit longer. “I’m sure there’s more investigating we can do,” Hinsman is saying. “The medical arm, for instance. That’s where everything happened.” Karoff shakes his head. “Atmosphere and shielding has failed and there are holes blown straight through the plating. It’d be too much a risk just to satisfy our curiosity, even for Zee.” “Fair. It doesn’t feel right to just sit around and wait on another team, though. We need to get together as much info as possible. It might be useful to read over the personnel reports again, and...oh! There’s the report they sent in on Inea’s death.” Hinsman glances over at you. “And what about you, Zee? Let’s see that sharp analytical brain in action.” “My brain’s not any sharper than yours I’m afraid. And too bad, some kind of AI to analyze things might be more what you need right now.” But you’ve been following a particular train of thought, and at his prompting you decide to give it voice. “But they didn’t fill out a death report on Inea Banca. I don’t know why Oswen claimed that. Banca was still listed as alive in their database when Karoff pulled up her file, right before we boarded. So in fact, I believe that...” > You say "Markov killed Inea and then went insane." “Why look farther than Occam's Razor on this? It's the simplest explanation,” you say. “Carst, his actions may have been...drastic, and there may be no logical explanation for his destruction of Order property, but before the station sabotage everything points to him murdering Banca.” “I think so too,” Hinsman says, “but we don't have any details at all on what happened to her. Certainly no evidence.” “That he would feel compelled to return to the medical arm where she died is a good indicator that he was emotionally compromised. If his goal had simply been to destroy the station he would've started in the central computer room. And who else could've killed Banca? Oswen?” “Well that was my original theory...” Karoff muses, stroking one end of his mustache. “You read the personnel files too,” you point out, cutting him off. “Matti Oswen is considerably shorter and lighter than Inea Banca was. It would take a lot to swing a canister at the back of Banca's head at that height, with that force. Furthermore, the damage was on the back of the left side of the skull. A right-handed person standing behind her would've struck the right side. And meanwhile there's only one left-handed person on this ship.” Hinsman's eyes light up. “Markov Carst.” “Damn, I was hoping it was the girl,” Karoff complains. “What? Why?” The pilot shrugs. “No reason really, I just like being right completely by accident.” “Anyhow, great job Zee,” Hinsman says, choosing not to respond to that. “But I just wish we had more evidence. It's really too damn bad we can't get at anything in the medical wing. At least one murder occurred and serious damage was done to a vital Order refueling station; everyone in HQ is going to be looking hard at this, and you know how they can sometimes be a little...overzealous. I don't want them demanding a bunch of answers from Matti that she can't give. The poor girl's already been through enough.” “Well...we can check for the report,” Karoff says. “The one on Banca. Maybe it wasn't ever finalized and sent but it has to exist if Oswen said they wrote it.” Hinsman nods. “All right, let's do that.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Miss Oswen gave me enough details on the cause of the damage to start writing a report, at least, but some things still don’t sit right with me. Even if Inea’s death made him suicidal I still don’t understand Markov’s motivation for trying to take out the entire station, for one...” “He had the space crazies!” “...I can’t put that in a report. But unfortunately Oswen had very little contact with him following Inea’s death. And we don’t even really know what happened to Inea herself other than Zee’s examination indicating blunt force trauma to the head.” “Ah, about that.” Karoff fishes something out of his pocket and taps a button. “Relevant?” A 3D image of an energy canister is projected into the air in front of you all. You recognize the type; the larger energy cells can be volatile, so the canisters are made with half an inch of steel and an interior enamel coating for protection. This one is about the size of a fire extinguisher, which is typical. What’s not typical about this one however is the is the dried blood and long strands of dark hair caught up on the outside of the sealing mechanism. “Where the hell did you find that?” Hinsman wants to know. “In the storage arm where Miss Oswen lost hers. There are a lot of spent canisters piled up in there, and I was looking for more power cables just now and stumbled across this one.” Hinsman’s brow is deeply furrowed as he studies the projection. “That is just suspicious as hell. Has anyone had a look at the body yet?” You and Karoff both shake your heads, and as Matti had just mentioned where they were stored, the three of you make your way to the dining hall. The two bodies are on gurneys, zipped up in body bags in the back of the freezer. You open the bag holding the smaller form, ignoring Karoff’s inquiries as to whether letting restaurant kitchens rent freezer space to morgues could be a viable alternate source of income. Upon examination the dark haired woman’s cause of death is immediately obvious, her skull on the left side having been caved in just above and behind the ear. “Not a glancing blow, either. There’s no way that happens from a spent fuel canister falling on someone’s head. Not even a full one.” After a long moment he sighs and steps back. “All right, let’s go over what facts we have. About a week ago, Inea Banca was doing routine maintenance in the medical wing and had her skull caved in with an energy canister. Markov Karst then goes into seclusion for two days, at the end of which he goes to the medical wing and attempts to cause a power overload that will destroy the station; a major act of treason against the Order that will render a number of Outer Rim colony worlds and ships unable to receive emergency aid and also kill the young woman who remains here. A bit dramatic even for a suicide attempt, but I suppose not outside the realm of possibility. When it fails he become violent when Oswen attempts a rescue and dies moments after. Miss Oswen sends out a distress call that doesn’t seem to have gone through due to the failing power and waits here alone until we happen by. Does that all sound about right?” You mull that over while he and Karoff discuss the details a bit longer. “I’m sure there’s more investigating we can do,” Hinsman is saying. “The medical arm, for instance. That’s where everything happened.” Karoff shakes his head. “Atmosphere and shielding has failed and there are holes blown straight through the plating. It’d be too much a risk just to satisfy our curiosity, even for Zee.” “Fair. It doesn’t feel right to just sit around and wait on another team, though. We need to get together as much info as possible. It might be useful to read over the personnel reports again, and...oh! There’s the report they sent in on Inea’s death.” Hinsman glances over at you. “And what about you, Zee? Let’s see that sharp analytical brain in action.” “My brain’s not any sharper than yours I’m afraid. And too bad, some kind of AI to analyze things might be more what you need right now.” But you’ve been following a particular train of thought, and at his prompting you decide to give it voice. “But they didn’t fill out a death report on Inea Banca. I don’t know why Oswen claimed that. Banca was still listed as alive in their database when Karoff pulled up her file, right before we boarded. So in fact, I believe that...” > You say "There's something more going on..." “I found Carst's personal computer in his room about an hour ago. It was well hidden, and he'd been using it to send and receive coded messages to someone outside the Order network.” “Really? Shit.” Hinsman sighs, running his fingers through his dark hair. “Now we've got that to figure out.” “Who would have a satellite out here aside from the Order?” you ask. “Traders, miners, colonists, pirates...?” Karoff ticks the list of anyone you might expect to encounter past the edge of the frontier off on his fingers. Hinsman has a thoughtful frown. “Seems like it'd have to be pirates. Anyone else would have it registered so we could protect it. They'd have to be pretty organized, though. Damn, I don't like this at all.” “Oh, but what if it’s aliens!” You and Hinsman both give him a look. Hinsman sounds a little exasperated. “Enough joking around.” “Whatever secret Carst had, Inea must've found out. Maybe something happened between them in the medical wing...he might've killed her on the spot, given the caveman tactics used,” you say. “The sabotage, though?” “Lots of people have it out for the Order. Maybe treason was always the plan and being found out screwed it up somehow. We need to find out what those messages said.” This last you direct at Karoff. He explains to Hinsman. “I plugged them into the main computer when Zee brought it to me. Give it a bit more time, it should be able to crack the code.” “Let's go there then. Should shed some light on matters. And Kar, you can run a search for the report on Inea's death while we wait. I know we don't have a record of it but Matti said they wrote it, it's possible it was just never finalized and sent. I'd really love to see what load of crap Markov was planning to feed HQ.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You want to verify there’s a threat before you call anyone else in. Even though you’re not suited up at the moment you feel pretty confident in your ability to handle a few trespassers anyhow so there’s no point in risking the others if they prove hostile. You ghost down the dark hall opening doors one by one and shining your flashlight around. The rooms all appear to be crew quarters and although you search any place anyone could hide, they’re all empty and only three show any recent signs of usage. Retreating back to the entrance the hall, you widen the scope of your search, but after another half hour are forced to admit to yourself there’s no one here after all. This wouldn’t be the first time you’ve had...hallucinations in the past. Or whatever the technical term would be for you. They have to get pretty bad before they impair your ability to work, but the woman’s voice had seemed so close and chillingly real. You’ll have to keep aware of the possibility of it happening again now. If it gets worse, you know you’ll have to report it, but for now you’re just glad you didn’t drag anyone else down here for no reason. You return to the crew quarters to look once again at the rooms the current maintenance crew were occupying, although more out of curiosity about them than any expectation you’ll locate your phantom voices. The walls of Matti’s room are covered in projected images of performers and celebrities...you recognize many of them from the media Karoff downloaded from Camarov. Inea’s room contains images of a family, presumably hers, and several empty bottles that indicate she had a minor pill habit. Nothing illegal enough for you to care about--even less so now that she’s dead--and most of them are expired anyhow and you suspect taken from the station’s abandoned medical arm. Markov’s room is somewhat grubby with dirty clothes tossed carelessly around. Your eyes are drawn to his desk immediately as the only uncluttered spot in the room. After a moment you realize that’s because his personal computer is gone. Every other room, even the empty ones, had one of the devices built into the desk surface. > You don't care what kind of weird porn he was hiding You return to where you left the hover platform and then begin making your way back to see if there’s anything else you can help with. You can see Karoff has been busy here fiddling with the wiring, and indeed you’re only halfway back to the medical station when you the lights suddenly flicker on and a much-missed humming fills the halls as all systems come to life. Karoff’s triumphant voice sounds over the intercom, and a moment later Hinsman’s to congratulate him. Everyone seems to be much more cheerful and you’re relieved to see things returning to normalcy. The main computer room he’s working in now is quite close so you take a detour to see if he’s pulled up anything about the damage to the station. > You damage Report “Ah, I see. No ‘thanks for getting the computers up so quickly’ or even ‘great job, Karoff’. Just more demands.” Startled, you begin to apologize before he waves you off. “Calm down, I’m not serious.” “Sorry.” “Jesus. You really need to work on not taking every little thing so seriously.” “That’s...not a skill I need very often, though.” “Good point. Well all right, you wanted the damage report. It just finished compiling.” Karoff spins in his chair to face the screen, chewing on a dirty thumbnail. “Hmm, let’s see. This would indicate The Last Outpost is...yup, it’s damaged all right. And needs repairs. From people who are not us.” “So nothing immediate needs attending to? There’s nothing wrong that would put you or Hinsman in danger if you waited here a few days?” “Well, unsealing some of the station’s arms would be pretty fatal. They took the brunt of Matti’s hack rerouting job and a couple lost atmosphere. The old medical wing itself is in real bad shape obviously, that’s where Markov set off the first explosion. But all we really need is life support and power here and in the docking bay. We don’t really have enough power for the rest of the station anyway as long as we’re siphoning from the ship. I’ll go and seal anything unnecessary off in a bit and then we don’t even need to worry about leaving them with life support.” Good. That means you can leave here and continue carrying out your orders just as soon as this mess with the dead workers is sorted out. “By the way, Hinsman is going to try waking Oswen up for a little while and then wanted us there afterwards to sort of put our heads together on how to handle all this,” Karoff adds, nearly reading your mind. You step toward the door. “I’ll go now.” “Eh, what’s the rush? But I’ll be there after I finish a couple things. We’re all just gonna sit around till the relief team arrives either way.” “I could go and take care of my mission while the two of you wait. Hinsman suggested that earlier, remember?” Karoff snorts and shook his head slowly as he turns his attention back to his screen. “Don’t you ever get tired of working so hard?” You’re a little take aback by the question. “No?”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Matti is asleep. Hinsman is seated at a table near the bed, freshly showered and changed into a grey jumpsuit identical to yours and looking exhausted. Karoff is nowhere to be seen. “He’s back on the ship seeing how much power we can spare,” Hinsman tells you, before you can ask. “This medical station’s about the only thing working as intended in this place right now. We need to at least get the computers up before we can figure out what all needs to be repaired and how. It’d be really great if we had a maintenance worker familiar with the place to talk to, but...” He inclines his head toward the young woman’s supine form and shrugs. The end of what’s left of her arm is neatly wrapped in bandages, but her face looks pale and strained even in her sleep and her eyes twitch restlessly behind her lids. There doesn’t seem to be anything you’re able to help with here, so you start to head back to the ship to find Karoff and wind up meeting up with him in the arm of the docking bay. He’s got a hovering platform loaded with equipment next to him and is attaching a power node to a panel. “Oh, there you are Zee, perfect. I need you to distribute the rest of these EPNs around the central complex.” He gestures at the platform. “I’ll come along behind you in a bit and rig them up.” The EPNs--external power nodes--can be linked in to bypass dead or damaged areas in the regular power system. It’s likely some trial and error will be needed but you doubt it will take more than a couple of hours if all he cares about is the main section and the docking bay. The other seven arms of the station can just stay sealed off until a proper repair team comes in. You return to the central area of the station and begin setting down the EPNs near accessible panels and in a short while you’ve covered the perimeter and begin making your way back. All is quiet until just as you pass a narrow hallway you hear a voice. “Zani, get inside!” You whirl, activating the short range laser weapon you always have with you. The voice had been a woman’s, sounding frantic and seeming to come from close by. But you see nothing. You shine your light down the hallway you’d just passed, revealing a row of half a dozen closed doors on each side. > You alert the others to an intruder You step back against a wall to have a clear view of anyone coming or going from any direction, and speak in hushed tones into your wrist comm to alert the others of the situation. In moments Hinsman and Karoff have armed themselves and joined you. With Karoff taking up watch outside the hall, you and Hinsman methodically check each door. None are locked due to the power situation and all seem to be crew quarters, only three showing any signs of being lived in recently. Finding nothing, the three of you expand the search to the surrounding area until after half an hour you have to admit there really may be nothing to find. “I’ve got to go check on Oswen,” Hinsman finally says. He gives you a little swat on the back of the head. “Zee, you’re going bonkers again. Need to schedule you another trip to the doctor when we’re done out here, eh?” His tone is light and playful, but you don’t miss the worried glances he and Karoff exchanged. Although you don’t remember much about it, it’s true you’ve had...hallucinations in the past. Or whatever the technical term would be for you. They have to get pretty bad before they impair your ability to work, but the woman’s voice had seemed so close and chillingly real. You’re ashamed you dragged the others over here, and after an awkward apology you move to assist Karoff with the remaining power nodes, aware of him still giving you quick glances now and then when he thinks you’re not paying attention. After awhile he disappears, and then the lights suddenly flicker on and a low, much-missed humming fills the halls as all systems come to life. Karoff’s triumphant voice sounds over the intercom, and a moment later Hinsman’s to congratulate him. Everyone seems to be much more cheerful and you’re relieved it seems things will go back to normal now. The main computer room he’s working in now is quite close so you take a detour to see if he’s pulled up anything about the damage to the station.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You indicate to the others that you’ll stay for now and Karoff directs the ship on a route toward the station. It makes sense to at least do a cursory inspection of the damage and make sure that at least life support will hold up. And of course there’s the other issue of the alleged sabotage and personnel having been lost under circumstances still waiting to be confirmed. Leaving just two operatives to handle it all isn’t ideal. Of the station’s eight arms, the docking bay is luckily on the side that’s suffered the least damage. Karoff locks on without incident and the panels of the reinforced portal retract with a gentle whirring. Beyond, the station is dark and cold. You all file out and make your way out of the landing bay and down a hallway with the aid of flashlights. With what little power remains rerouted to life support, the portal to the central complex refuse to open. Attempts to contact Oswen on a short range channel fail, and so Hinsman finally gets the door moving with the aid of his gun; wiring the energy cell to the panel next to it, that is. At the jolt of power it snaps open with sudden speed, then begins to close again in slow motion and grinds to a halt about a third of the way. The three of you squeeze past and before long find yourselves in an open area, a kind of joint dining hall and exercise room with dead video screens lining the walls. The kitchen area behind the dining hall is a disaster zone of empty plastic trays, overflowing trash bins and spoiled food. There’s no sign of Matti although you do find her abandoned ice cream bucket. The three of you begin to search area by area. Although reluctant to split up, you do move a bit faster than the others and take to checking into rooms and around corners ahead of them. A pool of vivid crimson against the polished grey tile is your first confirmation that something has gone wrong. You race forward to Matti Oswen’s crumpled form and check her pulse, clamping another hand down on the stub of her severed arm. Lifting the woman from the ground and calling out to the others, you splash your way through the blood, tracking it behind you while more soaks into your uniform. A medical station was one of the places the three of you had already searched, so you hasten to it and deposit her on a steel table, keeping your grip just above the wound while Hinsman activates the computer. “This nursing AI was obsolete fifteen years ago,” he grumbles, taking a protective suit from a persistently dinging open door and yanking it on over his clothes. “Isn’t that a bit of overkill?” Karoff asks, watching him. Hinsman’s response is muffled through the breathing filter. “It won’t let me even proceed without it. This place was last used to quarantine evacuees exposed to Hunger, there’s no such thing as overkill as far as the computer is concerned. Just be glad the whole station isn’t set to self destruct the moment someone gets a paper cut.” He pauses a moment to apply a tourniquet. “Now...Zee, you step back, it hates you too.” Karoff looks at you and snorts. “I imagine so. You look like you just left the scene of an axe murder.” You’d already moved away at Hinsman’s order, and now you ruefully wipe you face, hoping to achieve a clean spot. Karoff’s ensuing guffaw informs you you probably just made the situation worse. “I’ll go clean up the mess in the hall...and myself,” you say, turning to go. “Zee, wait, wait, Miss Oswen is going to need an arm transplant, don’t you think?” You blink at Karoff. “Are you serious?” This just provokes more laughter. Hinsman, who has been preoccupied with the soothing voice of the medical AI and the use of instruments taken out of little drawers that have been popping open in sequence, now shakes his head at the two of you as he changes to clean gloves. “I’m not that good a doctor, I’m afraid. Zee, you go on.” He snaps his fingers at Karoff and in the other hand produces an oversized needle, like a magician’s trick. “But I will need a blood donor, and guess who’s compatible?” Already on your way out, you turn and get a glimpse of the pilot’s grimace as the door slides shut between you. Cleaning up is a tedious but straightforward affair. You scrub yourself down and change into a plain grey jumpsuit you find before returning to the scene of the accident and getting to work. > You find a mop and bucket The door here opens to one of the storage arms of the station. It seems as likely a place as any to find cleaning supplies and so you slip through the door, carefully stepping over the severed limb and making your way down the dimly lit hall. It becomes obvious this is more of an area for discarded equipment waiting for repair or recycling and you pass numerous discarded fuel and energy tanks as well as other assorted clutter before you come to a cleaning machine parked in an alcove. The energy cell is low but even if it only does the job halfway it’ll save you a lot of time. As you’re pulling it free, there’s a clatter of metal and you see an energy canister was wedged behind it and is now rolling across the floor. > You pick it up Like the others this canister is spent, cool to the touch and quite heavy. It’s similar in size to a fire extinguisher, and since the larger energy cells can be volatile the shell is made with half an inch of steel and interior enamel coating for protection. What gets your attention about this one however is the dried blood and long strands of dark hair caught up on the outside of the sealing mechanism. That’s...unusual, and worth keeping in mind. You don’t want to disturb the others just yet since you doubt they’ve finished treating Matti Oswen, so you set the canister aside and leave the storage area, activating the cleaning machine to let the bristles and bubbles go to work on the drying blood while your mind rolls over just what may have happened here. Two maintenance workers dead and another seriously injured in circumstances that were odd to say the least. Just why had Matti been in such a hurry to close that door that she lost an arm over it? She hadn’t struck you as an especially self motivated type the few minutes you’d seen her on the viewscreen.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The door here opens to one of the storage arms of the station. It seems as likely a place as any to find cleaning supplies and so you slip through the door, carefully stepping over the severed limb and making your way down the dimly lit hall. It becomes obvious this is more of an area for discarded equipment waiting for repair or recycling and you pass numerous discarded fuel and energy tanks as well as other assorted clutter before you come to a cleaning machine parked in an alcove. The energy cell is low but even if it only does the job halfway it’ll save you a lot of time. As you’re pulling it free, there’s a clatter of metal and you see an energy canister was wedged behind it and is now rolling across the floor. > You go finish cleaning This section of the station is literally a junk heap. You roll the machine past the clutter without giving the canister a second thought and then climb on and activate it, cleaning bristles and bubbles going to work on the drying blood. Matti’s arm you toss into a non-functioning incinerator and hope the power situation is sorted out before it gets a chance to rot. The cleaning machine holds out after all. You finish just as it dies and shove it into an out of the way corner before going to seek out the others.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can't remember when the world first started shaking, this little fragile patch of reality with so many cracks and such little support to keep it from breaking apart, but something was always going to give. It was just a matter of time. Nobody knew what really triggered the fall. Was it the breaking of the chains which kept your little quiet island floating in the sky all this time, imbued with the energy which kept it going for so long? Was it the final earthquake that split the lands of the humans, far below your precious little civilisation? Or was it something else? It's easy to blame the humans who live beneath you, blame them for every little thing that goes wrong in the world. You're high enough to avoid the worst of the toxic gases that they leak into the atmosphere; you're smart enough to know not to drain the planet of what few resources remain to be cultivated; you're fast enough to hide yourself when they create a multitude of new dangers, unleashing terrors into the wild. There is no war here, no government, no violence, no weapons or need to do anything but survive on your own and help each other out. The air is thinner here. Humans find it hard to breathe at this altitude without special equipment of their own. You pity them, but at the same time you admire them for being resourceful enough to create tools enabling them to come all the way up here. Then you remember what had to be sacrificed for such tools to be made, and you no longer admire them so much. The island you've lived on for your entire life, along with your family and friends...is beginning to fall. > You proceed The wind howls in your ear as the island plummets towards the ground far, far below. No chains to keep you secure. No energy or power to keep you airborne, not anymore. Everything has been used up. This is where your home is, your village, your life; clusters of little grassy huts assembled in neat little circles, built to resist the strong winds of this height. Your people have long grown used to the lack of oxygen up here. It isn't your home anymore. You clutch onto the beautiful green grass covering the ground, grass which comes off in clumps in your hands. The air pressure is affecting the land and you watch in mounting horror as pieces of your home are savagely torn away from one another. You're not the only one, either; dozens of people are desperately trying to keep their houses secure before they too are ripped asunder. A doomed effort, because the gravitational pull is tremendous. You do not see your parents anywhere. You fear they may have been dragged over the edge to their deaths, like so many others. This settlement is not equipped with appropriate equipment to land upon the human-inhabited grounds, thousands of metres below. Nobody would think to do anything like that. The roar of the wind grows louder and louder in your ears, and the pressure on your body forces you into a narrow crawl. You cannot even raise your head, at the speed you are falling. Cracks appear in the ground around you, and you realise that this is no longer a case of keeping the island secure. The settlement is already done for. It will not survive. > You crawl towards the ruins of your house nearby You claw your way towards what used to be your personal residence. The roof has been torn off, the front door is hanging on by mere threads, and the interior has been devastated beyond recovery. Only pieces of shattered wood remain here now. The wind picks up, and for a second you almost lose your grip, but you somehow manage to make it inside. What remains of the wall here serves as a temporary shelter. Even so, the feeling in your gut tells you that the entire island is picking up more speed than before. The chains will not be repaired: it is not going to stop. Your chances of survival are slim at best. > You keep your head down and seek shelter within the wall You crouch against the inside of the wall, covering your head as the deafening noise continues all around you. Earlier on, you could hear the cries of the other people as they sought shelter within their fragile little huts, but now there is nothing to be heard but the endless howling of the wind. A chill seeps into your bones, but that is the least of your worries right now. This wall will not hold for long. You may as well be stranded in the middle of the ocean, clinging to a broken piece of driftwood as the storm rages on. As if eager to give you confirmation of this, small cracks begin to spread out across the wall where you are hiding. The entire island is shaking, causing the cracks to widen. > You stay against the wall You stay braced against the wall, unwilling to move from this spot. This is your home. You will not abandon it, no matter what. More cracks appear all over the wall and start to crumble away; the wind whistles through the holes, and you can feel its chill upon the nape of your neck. It’s too late to try and escape your fate now. Everything is already destroyed. Your possessions, your livelihood, the people you grew up and formed relationships with. What else is left? What else can the world take away from you now? Home is where the heart is. You close your eyes and start repeating that small phrase like a constant mantra: home is where the heart is, home is where the heart is, home is where the heart is – The wall collapses at your back, nothing but rubble now. You feel a moment of terror before the wind picks up speed and you are thrown off your feet, clumps of wood falling uselessly from your bleeding fingers. You scream as you are flung from the surface of the island, spiralling towards certain death far below… > You proceed The pressure mounts in your ears with a fearsome intensity, and your entire world turns into a mass of endless sound and impending pain. You fall for what seems like forever, desperately clutching at any means of support, anything at all. There is nothing for you to catch on to. You fight to draw breath, but your stomach feels as if it is being squeezed to breaking point. It's a struggle to keep your eyes open; your vision blurs and pinpricks of light flash before you, multiplying in number as your speed of descent increases further... As you fall, you catch sight of a heavy chain extending from the base of the island. You’ve never had the opportunity to see it up close before, and it’s sad that you can only do so now, in circumstances like these. The chain extends a short distance below the island before ending at a shattered black ring. Energy no longer flows through it to keep the island aloft. It has been split apart from some exterior force. Confused at what this could mean, you gasp for breath as you fall with the island. The last of your strength fades. Unconsciousness falls upon you, and what you know of your world is consigned to complete blackness. > You proceed You hear voices in your ear, indistinct faces in the gloom around you. There is no pain, but the wind is still quite fierce and there is only a tiny semblance of touch or feeling. You try to move, but your body will not obey you. Everything seems too bright and loud for you to make out anything but what is immediately nearby. Too much light. Too much volume. It is difficult for you to tell if you are dead or alive. Only the presence of pain suggests the latter. “Why, Mother?” a woman's voice whispers at your side. You are just barely aware that she is not addressing you, but someone else whom you cannot see. “Why do you choose to help her? Our burden is upon you, to cleanse us of our impurities and prolong our life force, but you lack judgement in this situation. You lack common sense. Do you seek to betray the rules and regulations of the Gahl'vuhr Sehn at its core? The Unworthy ones do not come to you. They do not know half of what you do for us. Yet now they fall from their sky islands, falling into nothing, now that the world finally stops turning. Leave her be. Leave her to die.” You feel warm hands pull you free, and a sense of strange nostalgia washes over you. It’s difficult to describe, after all that’s happened, but some of the tension eases away. It feels like…it feels like home. “Do not save her, Mother,” repeats the voice unfalteringly. “The Unworthy ones do not wish for absolution. Do you understand? They do not want your blessing, Mother. Waste not, want not.” And then, in a fainter voice, so quiet that you could have sworn you imagined it, “This is not our way, Mother. This is not how we behave in the Gahl'vuhr Sehn. You will regret your folly.” The howling has stopped. > You proceed You awaken in more peaceful circumstances. No longer are you falling to your death at hundreds of miles an hour, deprived of everything you once held dear. For a split second, you are hopeful that everything which transpired was nothing but a cruel nightmare, designed to bleed you dry of all positive emotions. It certainly felt like a dream. As your surroundings become visible to you, however, you become painfully aware that this is reality. Instead, you find yourself lying on a comfy bed inside a small, square room, with no memory of how you got here. Evidently, somebody has gone to a lot of trouble to make you feel at home here. A glass of water is placed on the bedside table for you, and a few pillows have been propped up just underneath your head. Dizzily, you start to sit up and are surprised to find that you can do so. You also discover that you appear to have sustained no physical injuries at all. How could you possibly be unhurt? Your first thoughts are that one of the foreign sky races must have treated you upon impact, but they are surely too far away to have reached you in time. Your island was quite isolated from other land masses and never received many foreign visitors or travellers. Could it be that you never hit the ground at all? Perhaps this is the afterlife, and you are to be judged for your transgressions in the events leading up to your death. In any case, you will not find out by simply lying in this bed all day. You feel well enough to get up and walk about now, so perhaps it is time to explore your surroundings in some more detail. You still do not know where you are. As you start to get up, there is a vicious snarl from the corner of the bedroom. With a start, you realise that you are not alone. A green-skinned muscular creature is glaring at you from a short distance away, sporting sharp claws, four arms, and a barbed tail. It is much bigger than you are and seems to be sizing you up. A mutant? You can’t think of what else to call it. There are tales of sky races long ago which were said to engage in such experiments, creating their own warped definition of new life… Fortunately for you, the mutant is confined within a large iron cage. It shouldn’t be able to get out. You eye it warily and quickly move past it. > You inspect the mutant further The mutant snarls at you intelligibly as you approach it. With a body composition like that, you doubt that this creature evolved naturally; no, it was likely the result of a hideous experiment with organic matter and some unknown toxic material. That’s your best guess, really, but you’re still at a loss to explain why your apparent rescuers put you in the same room as this vicious beast. The mutant seems to have been in this cage for a very long time. You peer at it curiously through the bars, and the mutant suddenly slams all four of its claws into the cage. That makes you jump a little, but the door of the cage is quite sturdy and refuses to budge, no matter how much the creature bashes at it. It’s not going to escape any time soon. A padlock on the cage door also prevents you from letting it out, just in case such a thought passed through your mind. > You search the room for valuables You make a quick search of the bedroom, being careful not to stray too close to the mutant’s cage, but there doesn’t seem to be much of value here. A wardrobe has been placed against the wall, but contains only foul-smelling rags which are filled with holes. You consider tearing off a fragment of your bedsheets instead, but decide against it once you consider that your situation might be the outcome of limited hospitality. After a few more minutes, you do find a strange scroll under your bed. It is written in a language that you do not understand, if it is a language at all; strange symbols and archaic runes cover the wrinkled paper. For now, you decide to take it along with you. As you pick up the scroll, the mutant watches you with a baleful glare. It lets out a long hiss and the skin on its body changes colour to an angry red. > You inspect the mutant further The mutant snarls at you intelligibly as you approach it. With a body composition like that, you doubt that this creature evolved naturally; no, it was likely the result of a hideous experiment with organic matter and some unknown toxic material. That’s your best guess, really, but you’re still at a loss to explain why your apparent rescuers put you in the same room as this vicious beast. The mutant seems to have been in this cage for a very long time. You peer at it curiously through the bars, and the mutant suddenly slams all four of its claws into the cage. That makes you jump a little, but the door of the cage is quite sturdy and refuses to budge, no matter how much the creature bashes at it. It’s not going to escape any time soon. A padlock on the cage door also prevents you from letting it out, just in case such a thought passed through your mind. The mutant's skin has now changed to an angry red colour. Even though the cage is holding it back, you're wary about spending any more time in this room. > You ignore the mutant and leave the bedroom to find out where you are You push open the door and step outside to find yourself in a narrow corridor which extends both left and right. To the left, you feel a gust of wind blowing, rustling through your hair softly. The sensation is not unpleasant. Perhaps there is a window open in that direction. To the right, you can hear the voices of people talking and laughing, though you are not close enough to hear exactly what they are saying. It is possible that they are your rescuers, but you cannot tell for sure. > You go left where the wind is coming from The wind grows stronger as you follow the corridor around the corner, towards a set of stairs which lead to the upper level. You’re not quite sure where you are, exactly. You can only assume that you have been taken to somebody’s home, perhaps another faraway settlement, but you must surely be a long way from home. At least, where your home used to be. It doesn’t explain the presence of the mutant in your room, however, so you can only hope that your hosts are not unpleasant company. You climb up the stairs to find yourself...staring out across open skies. Clouds can be seen on the horizon, clustered in a never-ending sea of blue which surrounds you for miles and miles as far as the eye can see… This is no ordinary residence. This is no house. You’re not even on ground level. You are standing on the upper deck of a fully functioning airship! No wonder the wind was so strong up here: you must be hundreds of metres above sea level... You’ve never been on an airship before, but you have seen plenty of them at the island where you lived all your life. Some sky races use these aerial vessels to transport goods and cargo between islands, others simply for transporting passengers. However, they can be slow and unwieldy to operate, and they are not especially durable; a fierce lightning storm can easily put an airship out of commission. For this reason, airships are usually designed for short voyages with a minimum of passengers. It’s like something out of a dream. A real airship. You don’t know where this one is headed, but it has to be somewhere better than where you came from. Where do you want to go, after all? No, the bigger question is – what happened on the surface of the land far below? What prompted your island to fall in the first place? As you gaze out thoughtfully across the open skies, there are footsteps behind you. You turn to see a young woman with long red hair cascading across her shoulders. There is a hint of recognition in her green eyes as she looks at you. “Vnwprthy,” she says in a clear voice. “Ypv brf thf Vnwprthy.” She beckons to you with one finger. “Cpmf. Cpmf wjth mf. Thf Cbptbjn wbnts tp spfbk tp ypv.” Without another word, she turns on her heel and walks across the deck into another section of the airship. You do not understand her words, but it seems that she wants you to follow her. > You follow the woman Curious about what awaits you, you follow the red-haired woman across the upper deck and over to the other side. She leads you through another set of twists and turns in the corridors, down into another part of the airship. As you walk, you pass by several uniformed men who watch you with interest. They are not human, but then again...neither are you. Each of them appears to be armed to the teeth. Only now do you realise that they must be part of the ship's crew. After a few minutes, your guide leads you to a brass door which lies at the top of a final flight of stairs. There is a sign on top of the door, but you lack the knowledge to read the symbols and runes displayed there. “Gp jn,” she says, gesturing for you to enter. “Thf cbptbjn js wbjtjng fpr ypv.” At her request, you push open the door and enter the room beyond. > You proceed You enter a large, lavishly-furnished room with all manner of alien devices mounted upon the walls, none of which you have seen the like before. One device consists of two gyros oscillating in synchronisation with each other, surrounded by a shimmering coil of energy; another instrument is similar to a telescope upon first glance, but appears to contain three lens of varying sizes at set intervals within its interior; a third device resembles a sundial, but is set into the ceiling and is covered by an array of round discs. Evidently, these instruments must be related to the operation of the airship. You’re not sure whether they are lifelike models of the real thing or not, but they do fascinate you. From the look of the place, you must be in the captain’s room. Sunlight pours in through two bay windows at the front, and a plain-looking bed is situated in the corner next to a pair of filing cabinets. This cabin seems to function as both a workspace and as living quarters. A large number of medals and trophies stand upon one of the cabinets. The captain herself stands at the other end of the cabin behind a large desk, dressed in a red and purple uniform covered by various badges to indicate her high status. Much like the other crew members you saw earlier, she is not human and is vaguely reptilian in nature. Thick white hair flows down her back in an elegant ponytail. “Vnwprthy,” the captain says to you curtly as you enter. “Wflcpmf.” You look blankly at her, wondering if you are about to subjected to yet another series of verbal questions in a language you do not understand. “My crfw tfll mf thbt ypv hbvf bffn bslffp fpr spmf tjmf, Vnwprthy,” she says, a disregarding tone in her voice, one used to command. “Nbtvrblly, ypvr prfsfncf hfrf hbs cbvsfd qvjtf b stjr bmpng vs. Whp brf ypv, bnd whfrf hbvf ypv cpmf frpm?” She looks expectantly at you, frowning when she sees that you do not comprehend her words. With a sigh of disgust, the captain calls out in a sharp voice. The door of the cabin opens behind you, and a red-haired woman with a kindly face steps inside. She appears to be human. It’s strange, because you didn’t think humans could survive at these kinds of altitudes. “Hfllp,” the red-haired woman says to you gently. When you look at her in confusion, she tries again. “Cpmmpn Tpngvf…Vncpmmpn…He…Hell-oh? Hello? Is…is this better?” “Yes,” you say gratefully. “That’s better. I can understand you.” The captain looks quite annoyed with the exchange as the red-haired woman speaks urgently to her. She turns towards you haughtily and clears her throat. “How about…this?” she says irritably. “You do not speak Common Tongue, or even Uncommon Tongue. A mix of Skylandish and Common Comorrah? Is this really how you talk to your brethren? You Unworthy ones are nothing but a constant pain.” Seeing that you understand her, she sags back against her chair with some relief. “I see that we have some communication in place at last. I am the captain of this ship. I will make a few things clear right now, Unworthy – I do not tolerate stowaways who drop out of the damn sky, taking up additional resources than I can spare for my crew. I don’t care if your island fell into the ocean. That’s no excuse to litter my ship with your worthless carcass. Damn nuisance, you people are!” She throws up her hands – or rather, claws – in a gesture which suggests she likes to complain. “Are you aware that Mother Ghared chose to save your life?” The captain nods her head towards the young red-haired woman standing next to her. “As official members of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn, it is against our policy to save the life of an Unworthy. That’s you, by the way. Anybody outside our organisation is an Unworthy. I wasn’t happy about this at all. Mother Ghared is far too soft in these matters.” “Captain,” Mother Ghared says in a passive tone of voice, “I believe you did not bring the Unworthy up here to give her a tirade on her existence. She must be quite tired after her ordeal. Her island is not the first to plummet towards the ground, nor will it be the last. An exchange of information is required.” The captain glares at you, but reluctantly acknowledges her words. “Very well,” she says. “Unworthy, you are free to ask me questions about your situation. But after you have finished, I have some important questions of my own.” > You ask her about this airship “You stand aboard an Auvahr-Tenur Airship, Year 2XX5, Model CXXP,” the captain says with a certain note of pride in her voice. “We Auvahrs are known well for our skill in ship construction, but see little sense in naming them. These vessels are not built for long journeys, as you may know. Although the Tenurs work on the advanced mechanisms, it is not mandatory to employ them as members of the crew and we carry no Tenurs aboard at this time.” She appears to be referring to the races which populate the various sky islands. You have heard of the Tenur race before, but have never encountered Auvahrs before. For your entire life, you have been content to remain on your little island without once venturing out into the unknown. At times like this, you wonder if such a decision was altogether wise. “Where are you headed?” you ask. “Island 45H, according to the sky charts,” she answers. “You Unworthy ones do not name your islands, do you? How quaint. We can respect that, but it makes it harder for us to make a decent reference point. Among us Auvhars, the island is known as Majeruk.” The captain glances at one of the instruments in front of her. “We will reach Majeruk within the hour, at which point you can disembark and get off my damn vessel at last. Unworthy, we carry a decent amount of cargo on board and I will not have your presence contaminate the merchandise further. I will be glad to be rid of you.” This news brings you some hope. It sounds as if you might have a chance to reach an island not unlike the one you left behind. That seems a sensible way to proceed right now: move on, rebuild, and re-settle upon a new island. It seems that not every island has met the same fate as yours, but how long will that last? When will the world stop shaking? > You proceed The captain of the airship waits patiently at her desk, awaiting your next question. > You ask her about the people on board “This airship carries only Auvahrs and one human,” she says dismissively. The captain appears to be referring to the races which populate the sky islands, though you have never encountered an Auvahr in the flesh before. “A standard crew, including mercenaries to guard the merchandise should we run into any trouble. We also carry a few valuable prisoners from the last island.” There’s a pause, and you wonder if she might be referring to the caged mutant you saw in your bedroom. “What about…” You voice the question which has been plaguing you, glancing over to the red-haired woman. “Mother Ghared? She’s a human.” “Quite right,” the captain replies. “Gahl’vuhr Sehn policy requires that every airship within their organisation carries a representative proficient in restorative abilities, to ensure survival of the crew in the worst-case scenario. It was Mother Ghared who saved your life, against my express wishes. She may be human, but she is a formidable representative of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn and can withstand the high altitudes, thanks to her rather abstract nature. If you wish to speak to her whilst you are here, you will do so only with the greatest of respect.” You look towards Mother Ghared, but her expression betrays nothing of her inner thoughts.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The captain of the airship waits patiently at her desk, awaiting your next question. > You ask her about the Gahl'vuhr Sehn “I should have anticipated such a question from you, Unworthy,” the captain says, scowling. “The Gahl’vuhr Sehn is a governing body which oversees all operations and protocol undertaken by us Auvahrs, as well as Tenurs and some subspecies of Comors. They strictly enforce the rules and policies put in place to maintain some sense of order among the sky islands, although Unworthy ones such as yourself are unfortunately exempt from such regulations. “However, it has probably not escaped your notice that Gahl’vuhr Sehn has their work cut out for them at the moment. Just a bit of chaos going around, that’s all, thanks to what’s going on at the surface. I should also mention that just because myself and my crew are members of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn, we are not especially high-ranking in the organisation.” She cocks her head to one side. “Perks of the job, you might say. It’s probably the only reason why I let Mother Ghared save your skin.” You have never heard of this Gahl’vuhr Sehn, not in all your years living at your island. Rules and regulations? You and your family have never needed such things. That’s the whole point of life in the sky islands. You are free. The thought of other people trying to limit such unrestrained freedom makes you feel rather worried about what might be really going on.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The captain of the airship waits patiently at her desk, awaiting your next question. > You ask her about what happened to you “Several hours ago, you fell out of the sky,” she says. “You weren’t the only one, either. There were entire islands collapsing to the left and right, and I had to get the ship out of the way to avoid being crushed by the next giant land mass. Mother Ghared…” Mother Ghared steps forward at this point. “I was on duty at the front deck when you emerged,” she says calmly. “Unlike the others who fell, you had a slim chance of survival. I chose to use my abilities to slow your fall and take you on board. The captain did not approve of my decision, but I was able to persuade her to let you live until we reached the next island.” The captain shakes her head in disgust. “Fat lot of good that will do us, Mother Ghared. If we’re unlucky enough to run into a Gahl’vuhr Sehn patrol when we reach Majeruk, they’ll want to know why we have an Unworthy on board.” She glares at you. “I’ll just tell them that you were a stowaway and that Mother Ghared refused to let me throw you over the side. Doesn’t matter if the world’s splitting down the middle or if islands are falling out of the damn sky – as far as the Gahl’vuhr Sehn is concerned, rules are rules. They must be followed. I’m so glad that the highest-ranking representative on board has decided to break them on my behalf.” “You may defer any responsibility to me, captain,” Mother Ghared says. “They will understand. Even the life of an Unworthy can give rise to many new members of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn. The future is always uncertain.” “That’s easy for you to say, Mother Ghared, but I like my future to stay as stable as possible.” The captain turns her attention back to you. “What else was there? Oh, yes. We brought you inside and had no choice but to put you in the cabin in which one of our prisoners was housed. Not the safest choice, but we are already stretched to full capacity here.” You recall the mutant you saw in your room. “Prisoner?” you repeat. “Cargo is not the only thing we transport on this airship,” she states. “Occasionally we are given the task of transporting valuable and dangerous criminals to far-off locations – some islands are used for prisoners alone. “Prison islands”, we call them. Leave them there to rot away, stranded, where they can’t hurt anyone. Better than any of those primitive human jails, in my opinion.” She sits back in her chair. “I’m sure the prisoner didn’t bother you at all. It would be a pretty big problem if that one managed to escape. A single mutant has the means to contact many others of its kind, and those creatures carry grudges against their captors for years. Downright murderous, they are. That's why it's essential that we keep every single one of them locked up.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The captain of the airship waits patiently at her desk, awaiting your next question. > You ask her about the falling of the islands The captain stares at you in amazement for a few moments. “You want to know why the islands are falling?” she asks. “Are you serious? Do you mean to tell me that you really don’t know what’s happening on the surface below?” She pauses, then shrugs as if it doesn't really matter. “That’s probably no surprise. None of you Unworthy ones take the time to explore your surroundings. You’re so satisfied with little things instead.” Standing up from her desk, she strides over to the door of the room and beckons to you with a single talon. “Mother Ghared. Unworthy. Both of you, follow me. We’re going up to the balcony so that I can educate this girl a little on the world around her.” Curious about what she has in mind, you start to follow the captain out of the cabin. Mother Ghared is just a step behind you. “Why are we going up to the balcony?” you ask. “What's this got to do with the - ” “You wanted to know why the islands are all falling, didn’t you?” she interrupts. “Well, I’m not going to tell you. it would take too much time to explain and I can’t remember all the fancy words that you Unworthy ones use. No, I’m going to show you instead.” > You follow her up to the balcony You follow the captain back onto the upper deck, onto a raised platform protected by a thick metal railing. Up here, you can see that a mystical crystalline device has been installed into the top of the airship. It seems to be made out of hundreds of tiny pieces of metal, interwoven together in a blend of silver and black. You cannot guess at its purpose, but the whole thing is humming with energy. Surely it must power the ship in some way. “The lens here will magnify any singular point on the surface, within a set range,” the captain explains. Behind you, Mother Ghared scrambles up next to her. “Right now, it’s focused on one of the human-inhabited regions far below us. Think of it as a giant magnifying glass, except that this one takes about two hours to realign the location. Not very practical, in theory. Usually, we just use it to pinpoint any turbulent weather conditions coming our way, but we don’t have a lot of contact with the people on the surface anyway.” She stands back, allowing you to take your place in front of the device. “Step up to the lens, Unworthy. Take a look for yourself at what’s happening on the surface!” Warily, you move forward as she requests and peer into the giant lens. The first thing you notice is just how much detail the instrument is showing you. You can see houses down below. People. Trees. In fact, if you look in the right location, then you can see exactly what people are doing. To be honest, it makes you feel a little uncomfortable to be using a device that could technically be used to spy on people. You adjust the lens using the controls on the side, coming out of focus in order to try and look at something else in the same region. A black spot shows up on the lens. As you focus in on the spot, you realise with alarm that you are looking at the ruins of a whole cluster of buildings. No, not just buildings. That’s…that's an entire town. Big enough to be a city, even. It’s just a burned-out hole in the ground. More black spots appear on the lens now, hundreds and hundreds of them, like termites crawling through the earth... That isn’t all. Some of the black spots are surrounded by a sea of red. You move into sharper focus now, going a bit further up, and see that a red river is flowing from a…a mountain? No. it can’t be. That’s a volcano. That means… Your heart skips a beat as you swiftly scan the rest of the surrounding region, looking for any signs of life down there. There are still people there. They’re alive, but they’re not living. The earth has cracked all the way down the middle, right across the centre of the entire continent. It’s a crack which extends far and wide, beyond what the lens can see at this position. The patch of red is accompanied by orange…and then blue. Are those flood waters? Just what is going on here? There’s so much going on at the surface that you can’t make head or tails about what you're really looking at, let alone grasp the bigger picture. Is it just a constant stream of natural disasters? All at once? “If you are looking for a specific, detailed explanation on what has happened,” the captain says, “then you are all out of luck. Nobody can tell you what happened at the source. If you were close enough to know for sure, then you would already be dead. What you can see before you is what's going on right now.” She gestures to the crack running down the middle. “That’s not the result of a normal earthquake. Nor do we believe that a number of volcanoes erupted all at once, purely by accident. Mother Ghared has offered her views on this.” “It is possible that there was a split in the energy flow between the human nations,” Mother Ghared ventures. “Everything feeds off energy. Input and output; produce, waste and conservation. Energy is what keeps your islands suspended in the sky. It’s what breathes new life into you. When there’s too much of it in one place, and too little in another…” She shakes her head sadly. “The Gahl’vuhr Sehn call it a “temporal discharge”, although that kind of phrase is largely inaccurate. It’s a measure of great force which saps an enormous amount of resources from the planet itself. The planet, of course, reacts accordingly.” She shrugs. “That’s my theory, but there are others. War could be the trigger. Mass deprivation of world resources. It was always going to happen one day. All we know is that there are no outside forces at work. Everything’s that happened…is something that we did nothing to avoid. “Needless to say, the effects upon the sky islands have been disastrous. The tremendous energy drain has disrupted the gravitational pull to an extreme, causing many of the islands to fall out of the sky. Countless airships have been leeched of their power, stranding them in open sky.” “Not on my watch,” the captain growls. “I make my own preparations. When our energy cells were depleted, I immediately had the helmsmen switch to our back-up source and keep us airborne. We should survive until we reach the next island. I don't care what those humans did on the surface, but they're not going to bring an Auvahr ship down.” Mother Ghared's words swim through your head, but you are still staring at the scenes before you in a state of utter shock. Is this what’s happened to the world? Why? What could be worth this? But at the same time, you remember the experiences you had just days before the island started falling. Changes in the wind. Abstract extremes of temperature and air pressure. Unexplainable disturbances in the atmosphere which were thought to return to normal within the year. You don’t know what to make of this. You don’t know what to make of any of this. How can you survive in a world like this, so chaotic and constantly at war with itself? Will you really be safe up here in the sky? The only plan you can think of is to find a new island to settle on, somewhere that you can start again. That would be nice. Wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it be nice? Where do you go from here? > You proceed Abruptly, the captain switches off the lens completely. The vision before your eyes turns to a sea of black, disorientating you momentarily. “Now that I’ve answered your questions, Unworthy,” she says testily, “I expect you to answer mine. Who are you, and where do you come from?” You don’t see any reason to lie. “We do not name each other,” you say truthfully. “Excuse me?” The captain frowns distastefully. “You don’t have a name?” “Nobody is born with a name,” you answer. “Among humans, the parents name a child at birth regardless of whether they ask for it or not. It is not customary to use names among my people. Giving yourself a name only makes it easier for someone to gain power over you. Bearing in mind the kind of lives we lead with each other, it’s unnecessary.” She swears under her breath, clearly put out by your words. “What am I supposed to call you, then? Pigeon Girl? You Unworthy ones are a strange lot. I’ll be damned if I let one on board my ship ever again if I have to put up with this nonsense! Now, tell me which island you came from!” “We don’t name our islands either,” you say, confused at the question. “For the same reason.” The captain gives you a long-suffering look which suggests she is coming to the end of her patience. “I’m sure it doesn’t matter which island she came from, captain,” Mother Ghared reassures her. “You saw what happened. Her island must be at the bottom of the sea by now. Very few survived the fall.” “All right, all right. Maybe you’d just like to say that when I tell my superiors that I took in an Unworthy on board my ship. Gender? Female. Name? Non-applicable. Place of birth? Some island that fell out of the sky.” She stares at you angrily. “Listen, girl, you’re not making it easy for me to fill out the required paperwork. I’m not even going to ask how old you are, because you’d probably tell me that you only count backwards using the constellations at a certain time of the year. Can I at least get an iota of cooperation from you, Unworthy?!” As she talks, your gaze is drawn to a strange sight upon the horizon. You hadn’t seen it before, but it looks as if it’s coming this way. Slowly, you step forward to peer at the foreign object approaching the airship. > You take a closer look at the sight on the horizon You see what appears to be a mass of black clouds on the horizon, lit up by a blaze of yellow and white flashes. The atmosphere around the airship is becoming increasingly turbulent, and you feel the vessel shake beneath your feet, making it difficult to keep your balance. The captain turns to see what you’re looking at and swears out loud. “Just our luck,” she mutters. “Damn lightning storm could put us all out of commission.” Without hesitation, she starts to shout orders down to the crew below, reverting back to Common Tongue as she does so. “Bll hflmsmfn pn thf blfrt! Thfrf’s b ljghtnjng stprm bpprpbchjng thf shjp. Bfgjn fvbsjvf mbnpfvvrfs jmmfdjbtfly, pr wf wpn’t lbst fjvf mjnvtfs!” You see the crew members scramble to their positions quickly, working amongst themselves to turn the ship around before it makes contact with the imminent storm. The captain turns to you. “We’re going to try and steer around the storm, Unworthy. It’s a big one, and with such short notice we might not be able to make it. But I’m confident I can get my ship through this. It's rare for a lightning storm of this size to appear without any warning, but...” “Is this to do with what's happening on the surface?” you ask worriedly. There was no sign of any such storm until now. The change in pressure was simply so drastic for this to happen naturally. The look in the captain's eyes tells you the answer to that. “Unworthy, you’d better get yourself below deck where it’s safer,” she says grimly. “Just stay out of trouble. That way I won’t have to worry about protecting your neck.” With that she rushes down the steps, still shouting orders as the storm draws closer. You hold onto the railing tightly as the ship starts to change course, but at this distance you have a feeling that it might be too late. A crackle of white-blue lightning flashes not too far from the vessel, and the wind is getting stronger. > You stay on the upper deck, ready to help You decide to remain on deck and see what help you can lend to the crew members. Mother Ghared disappears down below, and from here you watch as the helmsmen frantically try to turn the airship around as quickly as possible. Before long, the ship is so close to the storm that pieces of wood are being shredded away from the outside of the hull. You grip the railing tightly, fearing the worst… “Brbcf ypvrsflf!” the captain yells. There is a horrendous tearing of wood and metal as the storm makes impact. Fearfully, you throw yourself clear from the balcony – and just in time, too. A bolt of lightning flashes down onto the crystal lens where you were standing, shattering it into a million pieces. The crewmen cry out as a violent gust of wind slams into the ship, powerful enough to tear the railings apart. Rain and sleet pours down to accompany it. Desperately, you search for somewhere to take cover from the storm. This was a bad idea. You shouldn’t have stayed up on deck in this kind of climate. There’s nothing you can do here – Another bolt of lightning flashes down and rips straight through the mast. You turn to see the entire weight of the mast fall towards the deck. To your horror, you see that the captain is right in its path, just seconds away from being crushed. None of the mercenaries are close enough to help her. No one is close enough to help…but you. Even if you did help her, it’s unlikely that you would be able to get out of the way in time. > You push the captain out of the way With your heart in your mouth, you race forward and shove the captain out of the way in the nick of time. You see her eyes go wide at her near escape. Then you look upwards and see wit horror that the mast is continuing to fall – right on top of you. Frantically, you start to move to avoid it, but you are already out of time. You have sacrificed what precious seconds you had to save the captain. Your legs are moving too slowly, far too slowly to avoid the heavy lump of wood which will crush you asunder. Everything seems to move in slow motion as the mast careens towards your helpless body – “Fprcf!” A shrill cry erupts from the other end of the airship. The mast shudders as an invisible force slams to it, snapping it further at an awkward angle. You can barely breathe as the fractured beam crashes through the deck barely a metre away from you. You’re alive. You can’t believe it. You raise your head to see Mother Ghared frozen in position, her hands outstretched towards the fallen mast. Your knowledge of her abilities is still limited, but you understand that this is the second time she has saved your life. The captain is already on her feet, struggling to defend herself from another group of mutants. Before you can move, you see Mother Ghared slump to the ground. She seems exhausted by the effort of stopping the heavy mast, and the energy drain is too much for her. You start to force yourself to your feet, knowing that if you spend too long dawdling then you won’t have long to celebrate. She needs help, and fast. That’s when you hear the violent splintering sound below you. Fearing the worst, you see that the heavy mast has in fact torn straight through the centre of the airship. It is in no condition to fly. The vessel has already been damaged by the attacks of the mutants, and you can only watch in horror as more and more cracks appear, joining together as one… The airship breaks apart down the middle. You see the mutants react with surprise as they start to plummet along with their half of the ship. Surprisingly enough, they can no longer fly. You’re not quite sure why, but you have a feeling that their wings from before were only temporary. In addition...part of the airship somehow remains airborne. You’re not in a position to question the laws of aerodynamics right now, but you need to act fast. Your half of the airship is currently airborne and in no danger of falling – or so you hope. The captain is next to you, slumped in a heap. The other half of the ship is about to plummet downwards, and you realise that Mother Ghared is still on that side. She’s unconscious and has no idea of what has happened. You have a split second to decide whether to cross over the gap to Mother Ghared, or stay here with the captain. You have no idea what condition either person is in. > You stay on this part of the ship with the captain You can do nothing but watch as Mother Ghared is lost with the remaining half of the ship, falling away out of sight. With the last of the mutants gone with her, the bloody battle has ended. The upper deck is covered with the bodies of the dead, both mercenaries and mutants alike, and you find no survivors at all. It’s sad, really. The chaos on the surface has worked its way up here, even though you like to think of yourself as disconnected from the surface as possible… Right now, there is nothing powering the airship anymore. You are at the mercy of the wind, which blows the vessel this way and that, stranding you here in the middle of the open skies. You have no knowledge of how airships work, and feel you shouldn’t try to mess with the controls at all. You count yourself lucky that you stand upon a ship which is still airborne at all. For now, all you can do is wait for the airship to drift; here, alone, among the mass of dead bodies on board. There are some supplies to keep you going, but they won’t last you very long. All of the food was stored in the lower deck, and that was the part of the ship which went down. The captain is lying slumped in the middle of the deck, bleeding profusely from several wounds. She’s alive, but only just. A quick examination of her reveals that she hasn’t got long to live. Only her resilience has allowed her to last this long. > You proceed For the rest of the day, the damaged airship drifts upon the wind with no clear or definite destination. You face a lonely vigil here, one of the only survivors among numerous corpses. Whilst you’re here, you try to salvage whatever supplies you can, realising that you may be here for a long time if you are not fortunate enough to reach another island. There a few food packages in the captain’s room, and you are careful to consume only a small amount. These might be your only supplies for a long time… The captain has not regained consciousness, at least not fully. She mumbles incoherently when you try to rouse her, but you know she is need of nutrition and medical attention. Unfortunately, there are no medical supplies in this part of the ship. Those were lost with Mother Ghared. Unable to wake her, you force some water through the captain’s cracked lips. She coughs and splutters but manages to get it down. As you continue to drift, you see numerous other airships passing by. However…they give you no cause to celebrate. They, too, are drifting. The crew members on board are all dead, as you discover upon your first encounter; some have been attacked by mutants or aggressive races as happened with you, but in fact you find that the majority of them have been the victim of violent storms or run out of food and supplies completely. In more than a few cases, you find that there is a literal skeleton crew on board, as evidence by the remaining bones that greet you. The world is falling apart around you, and you can do nothing to stop it. You are the only one out here who remains alive. The chaos on the surface must be affecting the skies, too, since many of the doomed ships here have been drifting for some time. How long has it been since your island fell? How long has the world been like this? Hours pass, and you begin to feel that you will not survive. Your supplies will not last forever. It is almost nightfall when you are confronted by a single ray of hope. At first, you think that your eyes are playing tricks on you. An island can be seen passing close to the airship. An island. It seems like a miracle. There could be people there, people who could help you and give the captain the medical attention she so desperately needs. However, the airship isn’t headed directly for it – you will have to literally jump down onto the island, making use of the few tools still available to you. As you draw closer, you realise that you do not recognise this island at all. You don’t know if the inhabitants there will be friendly or hostile to you: there might not even be any people living there at all. It could be filled with wild animals. If you choose to disembark, you will not be able to return to the ship, which will drift away and leave you stranded upon this isle. Furthermore, the angle at which you are approaching the island makes it impossible for you take anyone with you. You can jump down onto the surface yourself with some difficulty. This will mean that you will have to leave the wounded captain behind, ultimately sealing her fate. > You disembark onto this new island, leaving the captain behind You take one last look at the captain, who is lying on the bed in her cabin where you brought her up to rest. In the circumstances, she almost looks like she is sleeping peacefully. You shake your head and walk away from her, stepping over the corpses littering the deck. You can’t let this affect you. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices in order to survive. The island below is coming up fast. If you don't jump now, then you're going ot miss your chance. Crossing your fingers, you grab hold of one of the mooring lines running down the length of the airship, and brace yourself. The wind rushes past you as you swing from the rope and jump from the vessel, feeling as if you’re putting your whole life at stake here. A single misstep could send you hurtling into the void… Soft vegetation cushions your fall as you land upon the island, winded but unhurt. You’re dangerously close to the edge but you’re safe, and that’s what matters. The entirety of the island stretches around you. It is as yet unexplored territory. Breathing a sigh of relief, you look up to see the airship drift away and out of sight. There’s no going back now. > You proceed You begin to explore the island you’re on, and soon find that it is rich in vegetation, full of nutritious fruits which grow upon the numerous trees populating the land, and carries a generous stockpile of resources. It’s a perfect haven for the weary traveller lacking in supplies. At once, you set to work gathering as much food as you can. The majority of the island is open grassland, though you find a small jungle in the southeast, so it's easy enough to traverse the space here. The wildlife here is not hostile to your presence, but from what you can see, you can easily live off the land here for many long decades of your life. Further exploration reveals that there are no people inhabiting this island. None at all. That seems a little strange to you, that absolutely nobody has happened upon this place before. Any settler or explorer would immediately seize upon this haven of food and resources. It makes you wonder what secrets must lie here. The amount of land here is vast, enough to build several towns a fair distance apart! For the next few weeks, you set out intending to explore the entire island. No passing airships or vessels are sighted anywhere near, and you realise with a heavy heart that you are probably stranded here. After all, you are in the middle of nowhere. The lack of people just makes it feel a bit…isolated. At the end of the second week, you discover footprints. The footprints of people. Someone has been here before, although the marks are extremely faint and some part of you feels that you might have made them yourself. It’s hard to be sure. It’s really very lonely here. How long are you willing to stay here, after all? How long will it take before you succumb to the ever-present loneliness? It’s been weeks. Maybe you could get used to it, but you can't say for sure… You decide to follow the footprints you saw. Despite yourself, you’re intrigued about where they came from. You follow them all the way north, around the corner of the island, where they lead into the waters of a vast, beautiful lake. The sunlight paints its reflection upon the shimmering surface, and you shield your eyes from the glare. It’s really a mystery as to what happened to these people. Perhaps you don’t really want to find out. Aside from the lake and the footprints, you’ve seen pretty much everything there is to see on this island. You also have no way of leaving. It’s not bad, really. There’s plenty of food to feed you for the rest of your days, and enough wood from the trees to construct your own shelter from the raging elements. The wildlife isn’t particularly hostile, so you would be quite safe from danger. You could settle here – you really could. It’s just that…you’re the only one here, and it’s likely to remain that way. You’ve explored the island for nearly a month now, and there isn’t another living soul to be seen. Well, apart from the animals, but they don’t bother you. You could do anything here. You could run naked through the jungle and nobody would care, because there’s nobody here but you. You could dig a hole underground and lose yourself inside there, bury yourself alive, and scream as loud as you can. Nobody would care, because there’s nobody here but you. You could try to climb a tree, and then fall from a great height. You could break your legs from the fall and nobody would help you, because there’s nobody here but you... You don’t cope well with loneliness. One thing you can say about this island is that you’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s not going to fall, not like the other islands fell. You don't know why you think that, because there's no chain or energy flow keeping it aloft...but it's just your gut feeling. It's not going to perish like the others. You would be safe. If you settle here, then nobody will ever bother you again. > You approach the lake You walk up to the edge of the lake, searching for any sign of the people who came before you. Strangely enough, the footprints disappear into the water itself. After a moment’s hesitation, you wade into the lake a short distance, curious to find out what really happened here. The water is cool and fresh against your skin, as if keen to make you feel at ease. To your surprise, you can hear the faint sound of beautiful singing coming from up ahead. You’ve never heard anything quite like it before. The words are difficult to make out, but you are captivated nevertheless by the atmosphere that it creates around you. Intrigued, you push further into the lake towards the source of the singing. You can make out the words a little clearer now. The water comes up to your waist. “Welcome, welcome, O traveller of the skies, Drink from the water, and burn out your life; Our singing shall ease all your worries and fears, Come closer, young traveller, for all you hold dear… The voices fade away, and you are immediately struck by the impact of the silence all around you. Desiring to break the silence, you wade deeper into the lake’s waters. You haven’t heard the voice of another soul on this isle for nearly a month. As much as you hate to admit it, the loneliness is starting to get to you. It would be cruel to deprive you of such company. You push further into the lake, not caring that your clothes are now drenched. From afar, you can hear the singing voices again. The water level comes up to your chest. “Rejoice, rejoice, O traveller of the skies, No need for emotions, to laugh or to cry; Sing with us here in the depths of the lake, Naught but your soul and your spirit shall we take… A strange feeling passes over you, and the singing cuts out. The water level comes up to your neck, turning into a murky green. Despite yourself, you do not feel that you are in any real danger. A low hum echoes from all around you, almost seeming to resonate from the waters of the lake itself. You can no longer see the edge of the lake anymore. You swim forward impatiently, still searching for the source of the voices… “What are you doing here?” The face of a young woman emerges from the water in front of you. She appears to be vaguely human-like in appearance, but when she speaks, it sounds as if you are hearing her voice from underwater. Green hair flows down her back, and you see scales dotting her cheeks. An aquatic lifeform of some kind, perhaps. You didn’t know there were such people living in these waters. “You’re not one of us,” she says, a surprised look on her face. “Why are you alive? How can you possibly survive here?” Her questions baffle you. Before you can answer her, a second woman appears from the water, rising up to surface besides her companion. “Look, sister,” she whispers, pointing towards you. “It’s not a male this time. The men usually drown themselves trying to hear the song, but she…” She smiles faintly at you, pulling back a lock of matted grey hair to one side. You see the hint of fangs protruding from inside her mouth. “We haven’t had a female come here before. Maybe she could join us. Our song has more effect with greater numbers…” “Another sister?” the green-haired woman sounds dubious. “But we’ve never done that before. Is she…safe?” “Maybe not, but we can easily change her.” The other woman looks at you curiously. “Traveller of the skies, we are the inhabitants of this isle. Everything you see before you is our property and ours alone. Those who visit our land are drawn into the dark waters and consumed by our sisters and children, giving us new life. We share the energy among us and channel it into the land itself, replenishing it. We do not die. We do not perish. Settlers sometimes come here and seek to drain the resources from the island, but no man cannot resist our song. We take from them what they seek to take from us.” She holds out a slim hand towards you. “Would you like to join us, traveller? Another female would be a welcome addition to our circle. If you become one of our sisters, you too will enjoy the privileges afforded to us all. However, I will not force you. Should you refuse, we will do you no harm, but please think very carefully before you answer.” > You agree to join them “Wonderful,” she says with a smile. “Then let me welcome you in the tradition of our people. A kiss is necessary to seal the agreement of mutual acceptance.” Before you can do anything, the grey-haired woman moves swiftly through the water towards you and embraces you tightly. Her lips move onto yours in a surprisingly intimate fashion, and you can't quite keep the shock out of your eyes. You can feel your body changing as an effect of the kiss, as if your internal organs are slowly undergoing alterations of their own… Scales appear upon your face, and the tone of your skin deepens to a pale blue. Your vision begins to go fuzzy, and a small measure of panic starts to take root in your mind. What's going on? What exactly have you agreed to do here? Before you, the woman mouths a single word before disappearing into the waters of the lake. You feel her grip your ankles tightly from under the surface...and pull you underwater with her. You struggle to break her grip, but in moments you are forced under the surface. With a start, you realise that you can actually breathe underwater. What has happened to you? You feel as if you have gills in place, rather than lungs, and that your body has altered to that of an aquatic being. Fins and scales grow down your body, and any prior hunger or fatigue has lessened as a result. You don't know what significance this has, but… The two women from before are swimming underwater with you and watching you closely. You see now that their bodies are just like yours, and that instead of legs they have a fish-like tail. Nothing of the sort has happened to you, however, so you are able to keep your legs for now. “Come, sister,” the green-haired woman says to you, much warmer to you now. She isn't a woman at all, you realise. A fish? A mermaid? “Come and meet the others. Let us share this land together, all of us.” You swim after her, deeper and deeper through the pleasant waters of the lake. More and more of these mermaids appear from around you, watching you with interest and chatting amongst themselves. You didn't know that so many of these creatures were living down here. You thought the entire island was empty of any intelligent life... Right at the bottom of the lake, you discover a curious sight. A stone altar of some kind has been built into the lake bed, upon which a human body is tied. He seems to have been dead for some time. You watch as the mermaids surround him in a tight circle, singing in unison. It's almost as if they're singing to his corpse. “Come,” your companion whispers to you, beckoning you forward. “You should join in too.” Curious about this strange ritual, you stumble into the circle with her. The beautiful singing echoes all around you, and there is an addictiveness about the harmony of voices which is almost ethereal. You find yourself singing along, too, singing to the human corpse strapped upon the altar. It's mesmerising, hypnotic, and you soon lose yourself in the sound... You don't know how long you've been singing for, but before long you start to feel a form of energy take place in your stomach. The feeling is not unpleasant. Euphoria washes over you as the energy grows and grows, giving rise to a greater volume of voices than before. Somehow, you and the other mermaids are leeching away the human's composition, converting it into something which will benefit everyone. The other mermaids are feeling it, too. You can see it in their faces. One of them smiles at you, understanding that you are with them, and you can't help but smile back. The ceremony soon ends, and a new day starts anew. You spend all of your time with the community of mermaids around you, exploring the lake and occasionally going up to the surface when any new settlers think to land upon this island. Each time they do, you join in the singing with your sister mermaids, and watch as the men have no choice but to come deeper and deeper into the waters of the lake. They cannot resist the lure of your singing, and drown in the process. Every week or so, you participate in another ceremony among one of the drowned men, devouring their body in order to give life back to the island. You feel that you are doing wonderful work here. The bodies of these humans can keep you living forever, really. This is a life that you can look back upon without feeling any regret. You ultimately remain here with the other mermaids, here upon this seemingly deserted island, feeding upon any explorers foolish enough to try and settle here. The words of your sisters ring true. This is your land. You will not let anyone take it from you. This island belongs to you. You live here in contentment, oblivious to the chaos going on in the surface. This island will not fall, not whilst you continue to sustain it with the bodies of fools. After falling from a great height, you have found a new place in life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk up to the edge of the lake, searching for any sign of the people who came before you. Strangely enough, the footprints disappear into the water itself. After a moment’s hesitation, you wade into the lake a short distance, curious to find out what really happened here. The water is cool and fresh against your skin, as if keen to make you feel at ease. To your surprise, you can hear the faint sound of beautiful singing coming from up ahead. You’ve never heard anything quite like it before. The words are difficult to make out, but you are captivated nevertheless by the atmosphere that it creates around you. Intrigued, you push further into the lake towards the source of the singing. You can make out the words a little clearer now. The water comes up to your waist. “Welcome, welcome, O traveller of the skies, Drink from the water, and burn out your life; Our singing shall ease all your worries and fears, Come closer, young traveller, for all you hold dear… The voices fade away, and you are immediately struck by the impact of the silence all around you. Desiring to break the silence, you wade deeper into the lake’s waters. You haven’t heard the voice of another soul on this isle for nearly a month. As much as you hate to admit it, the loneliness is starting to get to you. It would be cruel to deprive you of such company. You push further into the lake, not caring that your clothes are now drenched. From afar, you can hear the singing voices again. The water level comes up to your chest. “Rejoice, rejoice, O traveller of the skies, No need for emotions, to laugh or to cry; Sing with us here in the depths of the lake, Naught but your soul and your spirit shall we take… A strange feeling passes over you, and the singing cuts out. The water level comes up to your neck, turning into a murky green. Despite yourself, you do not feel that you are in any real danger. A low hum echoes from all around you, almost seeming to resonate from the waters of the lake itself. You can no longer see the edge of the lake anymore. You swim forward impatiently, still searching for the source of the voices… “What are you doing here?” The face of a young woman emerges from the water in front of you. She appears to be vaguely human-like in appearance, but when she speaks, it sounds as if you are hearing her voice from underwater. Green hair flows down her back, and you see scales dotting her cheeks. An aquatic lifeform of some kind, perhaps. You didn’t know there were such people living in these waters. “You’re not one of us,” she says, a surprised look on her face. “Why are you alive? How can you possibly survive here?” Her questions baffle you. Before you can answer her, a second woman appears from the water, rising up to surface besides her companion. “Look, sister,” she whispers, pointing towards you. “It’s not a male this time. The men usually drown themselves trying to hear the song, but she…” She smiles faintly at you, pulling back a lock of matted grey hair to one side. You see the hint of fangs protruding from inside her mouth. “We haven’t had a female come here before. Maybe she could join us. Our song has more effect with greater numbers…” “Another sister?” the green-haired woman sounds dubious. “But we’ve never done that before. Is she…safe?” “Maybe not, but we can easily change her.” The other woman looks at you curiously. “Traveller of the skies, we are the inhabitants of this isle. Everything you see before you is our property and ours alone. Those who visit our land are drawn into the dark waters and consumed by our sisters and children, giving us new life. We share the energy among us and channel it into the land itself, replenishing it. We do not die. We do not perish. Settlers sometimes come here and seek to drain the resources from the island, but no man cannot resist our song. We take from them what they seek to take from us.” She holds out a slim hand towards you. “Would you like to join us, traveller? Another female would be a welcome addition to our circle. If you become one of our sisters, you too will enjoy the privileges afforded to us all. However, I will not force you. Should you refuse, we will do you no harm, but please think very carefully before you answer.” > You refuse “You refuse?” The woman looks greatly disappointed, and a sigh escapes her lips. “That's a shame. The greatest wonders await you beneath the surface of this lake. I will withdraw my offer.” With that, she turns away from you and disappears into the water with a small splash. Her companion stares at you for a moment and also vanishes underwater with her. You wait there for a few minutes longer, but neither of the women re-emerge. It seems that they have gone for good. Curious about her words, you try swimming underwater yourself to see if you can find them again. Unfortunately, you find that the waters here are too murky to see much at all, aside from a few schools of fish swimming near the surface of the lake. The singing has stopped, and only dead silence greets you. You swim around for a while longer, but nothing else happens. Feeling as if you might have missed out on something, you decide that there is nothing else here for you and leave the waters of the lake behind you. You've now explored the entire island and have seen everything there is to offer. It may now be time for you to settle here and find your place in life. > You proceed Over the coming months, you begin to settle into daily life on this isolated island. There’s more than enough food and resources here to keep you set for life, and there’s more than enough to be getting on with. Having resigned yourself to the fact that you are going to be living alone, you start setting up some personal projects for yourself. You work on cutting down trees to build a basic shelter, although the natural climate here means that sleeping rough isn’t really a problem. Over time, you improve your skills and modify the shelter into a small cabin for all of your needs. You never see anyone else land on this island, not even the Gahl’vuhr Sehn. For the most part, people leave you alone. It’s maybe a year before you see even one airship on the horizon, but it doesn’t come anywhere the island and soon disappears out of sight. It’s all right, really. You’ve started to get used to the constant loneliness, day in, day out. It doesn’t really bother you anymore. Besides, you still have a firm grip on reality – you’re not going to start going mad and go around talking to trees. Sometimes you lie awake at night, wondering about all the chaos going on at the surface. It doesn’t matter anymore, because you’re so far removed from that now. You wonder about the fate of the captain aboard the airship, left drifting for eternity through open skies. You hope that she managed to find help, but it’s likely that she didn’t make it. With no social contact, you seek the company of animals and begin taking in a few of them as pets. Not that you’re going to become a crazy cat lady or something, but it’s better than talking to yourself all the time. You start growing fruit and vegetables, using the resources of the island to your advantage. Over time, you see the potential of harvesting crops and raising animal as livestock, though you still have a long way to go. The island never changes. Nobody is living here but you, so realistically the trees should be growing like crazy and the vegetation going out of control…and yet, this isn’t what you see happening. Everything seems to be stabilised in a very balanced order, leading you to suspect that some ulterior force may be at work. You’re not complaining, though. It saves you having to curb the area yourself. In the end, you live here alone for the rest of your days, free from the chaos and violence which plagues the surface. You have your pets and animals for company, and there’s enough resources to keep you busy. You have to be careful, though, because it isn’t easy living alone. There are times when you feel ill and still have to do everything yourself. The animals grow used to your presence, until you almost feel as if you’re a part of their little family. They help out in their own little ways, bringing you food and sustenance when you become sick. You’re alone, but you’re still happy and feel fortunate that this is how things have turned out. You take each day as it comes and ensure that you live in the moment. After falling from a great height, this is the life you’ve chosen for yourself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For the rest of the day, the damaged airship drifts upon the wind with no clear or definite destination. You face a lonely vigil here, one of the only survivors among numerous corpses. Whilst you’re here, you try to salvage whatever supplies you can, realising that you may be here for a long time if you are not fortunate enough to reach another island. There a few food packages in the captain’s room, and you are careful to consume only a small amount. These might be your only supplies for a long time… The captain has not regained consciousness, at least not fully. She mumbles incoherently when you try to rouse her, but you know she is need of nutrition and medical attention. Unfortunately, there are no medical supplies in this part of the ship. Those were lost with Mother Ghared. Unable to wake her, you force some water through the captain’s cracked lips. She coughs and splutters but manages to get it down. As you continue to drift, you see numerous other airships passing by. However…they give you no cause to celebrate. They, too, are drifting. The crew members on board are all dead, as you discover upon your first encounter; some have been attacked by mutants or aggressive races as happened with you, but in fact you find that the majority of them have been the victim of violent storms or run out of food and supplies completely. In more than a few cases, you find that there is a literal skeleton crew on board, as evidence by the remaining bones that greet you. The world is falling apart around you, and you can do nothing to stop it. You are the only one out here who remains alive. The chaos on the surface must be affecting the skies, too, since many of the doomed ships here have been drifting for some time. How long has it been since your island fell? How long has the world been like this? Hours pass, and you begin to feel that you will not survive. Your supplies will not last forever. It is almost nightfall when you are confronted by a single ray of hope. At first, you think that your eyes are playing tricks on you. An island can be seen passing close to the airship. An island. It seems like a miracle. There could be people there, people who could help you and give the captain the medical attention she so desperately needs. However, the airship isn’t headed directly for it – you will have to literally jump down onto the island, making use of the few tools still available to you. As you draw closer, you realise that you do not recognise this island at all. You don’t know if the inhabitants there will be friendly or hostile to you: there might not even be any people living there at all. It could be filled with wild animals. If you choose to disembark, you will not be able to return to the ship, which will drift away and leave you stranded upon this isle. Furthermore, the angle at which you are approaching the island makes it impossible for you take anyone with you. You can jump down onto the surface yourself with some difficulty. This will mean that you will have to leave the wounded captain behind, ultimately sealing her fate. > You stay with the drifting ship You decide not to risk it. The captain’s life is already compromised, and you still have some supplies left to make it to the next possible island. Granted, the captain may have been a little rude and abrasive to you when you first met her, but she did allow you to stay on board. You can’t help but feel a little responsible for what happened to her. The island appears before you, but you choose not to disembark. Before long, it has disappeared from view. > You proceed Over the next few days, the airship you’re on continues to drift at the mercy of the wind. You see no other inhabitable islands within range, and have no way of turning the ship around towards the islands you do see. Progress is painfully slow, and you feel sure that you will die here. Your supplies have dwindled down to almost nothing. The captain’s condition worsens near the end of the week. You manage to get her conscious enough to eat what little food and water you have left, but she barely eats anything at all. You don’t have much hope for her survival, and every day she seems weaker than ever. A realistic approach would be to leave her to die and save what precious provisions remain, but you can’t see what good that will do. This ship isn’t going anywhere, after all. It’s difficult to sleep at night on the hard wooden deck. The stink of the corpses is too much to bear, and you spend hours dragging them off the ship and shoving him over the side. You thought that removing the extra weight would help the ship move faster, but it doesn’t. Nothing works. Nothing you do seems to help anymore. You run out of food in the middle of the second week. There’s still water. Water can keep someone going a lot longer than food deprivation will. It hasn’t rained for so long. No storms. No rainfall. You almost wish for a storm to hit the ship, something to break the monotony, but right now this isn’t a ship anymore. This is just half a ship, and you’re just half of the skeleton crew. Just mere skeletons now. You’re getting weak from lack of food. The gnawing pain in your stomach won’t go away, and you don’t want to waste what little water is left. You think about denying the captain water altogether. Someone has to survive. When the next week begins, you awaken to see a strange red mist rise up ahead, out of the gloom. You’ve never seen such a thing before, and something about it frightens you. You feel that the airship has entered a part of the sky that nobody should enter, like a forbidden area. You don’t want anything to do with this mist, just want to lie on your bed and clamp your hands over your ears and block everything out. You’re so hungry. You’re so hungry and tired, tired and hungry, sick and tired, tired and sick…Does it really matter anymore? Does anything matter? > You hide in the captain's room until the mist passes You stay huddled in the captain’s room, keeping the door tightly shut. You don’t know why, but something about that mist makes your flesh crawl. As you lock the door, however, you suddenly remember that you left the unconscious captain outside on the deck, right before the red mist was about to descend. She’ll be vulnerable to whatever effects it has. You hesitate to run back out there and get her. Just then, you start to hear strange noises from outside. It sounds like some kind of wailing, quiet yet piercing, and it's enough to drive you into a corner with your hands clamped firmly over your ears. You start to imagine that some strange force is going to board the ship and break the door down before bearing down on you. Muttering incoherently to yourself, you crouch by the wall and squeeze your eyes shut, hoping that the mist will pass on. The air feels thicker than usual. It’s getting harder and harder to breathe. You feel something change in the surrounding atmosphere, something so subtle that you wouldn’t even notice it otherwise. As it is, you’re so busy locked in your own irrational fear with your hands over your ears that you can’t help but notice it. Slowly, very slowly, you feel everything start to go back to normal. It’s nearly half an hour before your fear subsides enough for you to emerge back on deck. You’re shaking as you crawl out of the cabin, shaking with a mixture of extreme hunger and trepidation. The red mist is gone. The captain’s body is lying undisturbed on the upper deck. Nothing bad seems to have happened. You start to relax, realising your mind must have been playing tricks on you. Time can do that to you. Lack of food, lack of sleep, lack of all those little things you need in life until you find yourself getting delusional and seeing things that aren’t there – You walk over to the captain’s body. Her skin is cold and her mouth is open slightly. She is dead. There is no way to tell if she finally succumbed to her injuries over the past few weeks, or if the strange red mist had something to do with it. You stumble back from her corpse in confusion and terror, searching for somewhere to escape to. There’s nowhere else but here. The red mist disappeared as quickly as it came… That’s not all, either. Something else has changed, something that you didn’t count on. It’s not something to do with you, or the captain, or your lack of supplies, yet at the same time it’s one of the most important things you’ve been relying on up to this moment in time. The wind has stopped. Desperately, you run over to the side of the airship and look down. Nothing. Nothing but an empty void stretching down to the surface of the planet. No wind. No wind to blow you forward. The airship is no longer drifting – it’s stationary. Static. Your vessel is at a standstill, here at the edge of an endless sky with no hope of salvation. You stare out through endless skies, already weakened by lack of nutrients, before sinking to the ground. Your fate has been sealed. The airship is stranded in an uncharted region of open sky where the wind no longer blows, with no way to move forward on here. Without further resources, your situation is now beyond help. The days will turn into weeks, and the weeks will turn into months, but you have no future from here. You are never seen again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Over the next few days, the airship you’re on continues to drift at the mercy of the wind. You see no other inhabitable islands within range, and have no way of turning the ship around towards the islands you do see. Progress is painfully slow, and you feel sure that you will die here. Your supplies have dwindled down to almost nothing. The captain’s condition worsens near the end of the week. You manage to get her conscious enough to eat what little food and water you have left, but she barely eats anything at all. You don’t have much hope for her survival, and every day she seems weaker than ever. A realistic approach would be to leave her to die and save what precious provisions remain, but you can’t see what good that will do. This ship isn’t going anywhere, after all. It’s difficult to sleep at night on the hard wooden deck. The stink of the corpses is too much to bear, and you spend hours dragging them off the ship and shoving him over the side. You thought that removing the extra weight would help the ship move faster, but it doesn’t. Nothing works. Nothing you do seems to help anymore. You run out of food in the middle of the second week. There’s still water. Water can keep someone going a lot longer than food deprivation will. It hasn’t rained for so long. No storms. No rainfall. You almost wish for a storm to hit the ship, something to break the monotony, but right now this isn’t a ship anymore. This is just half a ship, and you’re just half of the skeleton crew. Just mere skeletons now. You’re getting weak from lack of food. The gnawing pain in your stomach won’t go away, and you don’t want to waste what little water is left. You think about denying the captain water altogether. Someone has to survive. When the next week begins, you awaken to see a strange red mist rise up ahead, out of the gloom. You’ve never seen such a thing before, and something about it frightens you. You feel that the airship has entered a part of the sky that nobody should enter, like a forbidden area. You don’t want anything to do with this mist, just want to lie on your bed and clamp your hands over your ears and block everything out. You’re so hungry. You’re so hungry and tired, tired and hungry, sick and tired, tired and sick…Does it really matter anymore? Does anything matter? > You stay up on deck to see what happens You stay on deck as the red mist descends upon the airship. Something doesn’t feel right about this, but you’re too tired and hungry to care. The unconscious captain is lying nearby, just as vulnerable to the mist as you are. For a moment you consider taking her inside her room to give her some better protection from whatever effects the mist might have, but it’s too late for that now. You brace yourself, ready to act if anything untoward happens. Slowly, you feel a strange feeling come over you. The pains of your body begin to recede, here within the red mist. What’s going on? The gnawing hunger in your belly is beginning to disappear, along with your fatigue. There is a movement next to you, and you turn to see the captain open her eyes and slowly get to her feet. Could it be that the effects of the red mist are actually beneficial? Even if it’s nothing but an illusion, you are grateful for the relief from the constant pain that has plagued you for the past week or so. Your body feels light now, lighter than air, and you feel almost as if you are floating. The captain turns to stare at you, and you realise that both of you are moving upwards. You don’t know what’s going on, but this doesn’t seem too bad. Perhaps you could rise up to a greater height and find an island, where help may be found – You chance looking down and see a sight which fills you with horror. Two dead bodies lie on the deck of the airship, directly below you. They belong to you and the captain. You turn to call out to the captain, thinking to warn her about what’s happening, but no sound escapes your lips. Your face and body is changing, splitting apart, slowly disintegrating…into just another part of the red mist. The same thing is happening to the captain. She opens her mouth in a silent scream just seconds before she, too, is absorbed. The red mist marks an uncharted region of the sky, beyond which no wind blows at all. It has one primary, deadly purpose: to leech away the life-force of the poor souls who drift this far away from the sky islands, far away from any hope of civilisation. Your life-force has now been converted into new energy to facilitate the mist, and you exist no longer. You are just part of the red mist now, drifting eternally across this patch of sky to prey upon any survivors of doomed airships which come here. You perish here within uncharted territory, yet live on as part of a mass entity, claiming the lives of others who have already given up hope.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With your heart in your mouth, you race forward and shove the captain out of the way in the nick of time. You see her eyes go wide at her near escape. Then you look upwards and see wit horror that the mast is continuing to fall – right on top of you. Frantically, you start to move to avoid it, but you are already out of time. You have sacrificed what precious seconds you had to save the captain. Your legs are moving too slowly, far too slowly to avoid the heavy lump of wood which will crush you asunder. Everything seems to move in slow motion as the mast careens towards your helpless body – “Fprcf!” A shrill cry erupts from the other end of the airship. The mast shudders as an invisible force slams to it, snapping it further at an awkward angle. You can barely breathe as the fractured beam crashes through the deck barely a metre away from you. You’re alive. You can’t believe it. You raise your head to see Mother Ghared frozen in position, her hands outstretched towards the fallen mast. Your knowledge of her abilities is still limited, but you understand that this is the second time she has saved your life. The captain is already on her feet, struggling to defend herself from another group of mutants. Before you can move, you see Mother Ghared slump to the ground. She seems exhausted by the effort of stopping the heavy mast, and the energy drain is too much for her. You start to force yourself to your feet, knowing that if you spend too long dawdling then you won’t have long to celebrate. She needs help, and fast. That’s when you hear the violent splintering sound below you. Fearing the worst, you see that the heavy mast has in fact torn straight through the centre of the airship. It is in no condition to fly. The vessel has already been damaged by the attacks of the mutants, and you can only watch in horror as more and more cracks appear, joining together as one… The airship breaks apart down the middle. You see the mutants react with surprise as they start to plummet along with their half of the ship. Surprisingly enough, they can no longer fly. You’re not quite sure why, but you have a feeling that their wings from before were only temporary. In addition...part of the airship somehow remains airborne. You’re not in a position to question the laws of aerodynamics right now, but you need to act fast. Your half of the airship is currently airborne and in no danger of falling – or so you hope. The captain is next to you, slumped in a heap. The other half of the ship is about to plummet downwards, and you realise that Mother Ghared is still on that side. She’s unconscious and has no idea of what has happened. You have a split second to decide whether to cross over the gap to Mother Ghared, or stay here with the captain. You have no idea what condition either person is in. > You cross over to the other part of the ship where Mother Ghared is, which is plummeting towards the ground You must be mad to think of doing this. Quickly, you leap over the gap and onto the separated part of the doomed ship, which is quickly plummeting towards earth at a deadly speed. Above you, the remaining half remains airborne. It quickly disappears from sight as you fall. It’s impossible to keep your footing on the deck when the ship is falling so fast; parts of it are beginning to break up again from the constant acceleration. Gritting your teeth, you force yourself to crawl over to where Mother Ghared is lying. Her eyes are open, and she seems faintly aware of what is going on around here, but she is otherwise unhurt. If anything, she just looks exhausted. When she sees you, her eyes widen and she grabs your wrist. “Fljght, Fljght,” she whispers to you urgently, pressing a crumpled scroll into the palm of your hand. The words she speak are not in your language. “Fljght, fljght…” Her eyes close as she falls back into unconsciousness. You stare at her in confusion as the ship continues to fall. The scroll she gave you is covered with strange symbols and runes that are incomprehensible to you. Somehow, you think she was trying to give you to a clue. > You say the word "Fljght" You utter the incantation, and the scroll glows faintly before disintegrating into nothing. The glow itself has not faded, however, but has spread to the soles of your feet. With a start, you realise that you are no longer falling, and that your body feels as light as a feather. You are no longer in any danger of plummeting to your death. Moving forward, you are surprised to find that you can now move in any direction – up and down, too – at will. You have as much freedom as a bird, and can fly through to the air as you see fit. The activated scroll has bestowed this power on you, and you may now fly from here to your heart’s content. Sadly, this power of flight is not extended to Mother Ghared. She continues to fall towards the ground at a faster speed, until you can no longer see her at all. You start to fly down towards her with your new-found ability, but discover that you can only do so at a fixed speed. There is no way to accelerate, and therefore no way of saving Mother Ghared before she disappears into the void far below. You have no choice but to travel away from here. Fear washes over you at the thought that this ability may actually be temporary. What if you could lose this power at any given moment? With this in mind, you turn to fly as far away from here as you can, away from the ruins of the airship far above you. You don’t know where you’re going, exactly, but anywhere is better than this. > You proceed For the next few hours or so, you fly across the skies at a mediocre speed. The wind blows through your hair as you travel, and you feel a kind of freedom wash over you that you’ve never quite experienced before. Throughout your life, you’ve been content to remain settled upon your own island, never venturing out into the skies around you. Right now, however, you feel as if you can literally go anywhere. Any island, any port, above the clouds, down to the ruined surface…The sky’s the limit, so to speak. You feel as if you could fly like this forever. You’re not going to do that, of course, because you’re still wary that the effect of the scroll will wear off before long. You will have to land somewhere soon, because ultimately you want to find a new island to settle upon. A new home to call your own. A place where you can start again… Within the hour, you pass the remains of several islands floating in the sky, broken chains dangling uselessly into empty space. As you approach, you realise that these are parts of bigger islands which have already fallen towards earth. Nothing remains there anymore. They have all suffered the same fate as the place you used to call home. It’s some time before you finally see one island which still remains intact. From here, you can see that there’s a considerable number of inhabitants; numerous houses, roads and streets stretch out below you. Why, it looks like there might be a town down there. There’s definitely some kind of community. The question is, will that community approve of you? > You land at this new island You touch down upon the edge of the island, a thrill racing through you at the thought of what lies beyond. Immediately, the glow fades away from the soles of your feet and the power leaves you. So that’s how it is: the scroll’s effects last as long until you touch solid ground again. In theory, you could abuse such a power, but you don’t want to push your luck. The town before you is bustling with crowds of people and shops on every street corner. You’ve never seen anything quite like this. In fact, you’re not quite sure this isn’t just part of a small city. The diversity of species here is mind-blowing: you see Auvahrs chatting to each other in the marketplace, Tenurs tending their stalls and displaying their wares, Gahl’vuhr Sehn officials marching up and down the streets as if they own the whole place, other subspecies you’ve never seen before staring at the scene like some kind of tourist…You ever see nameless ones like you. Unworthy ones, as the captain called them, but you don’t take to that nonsense. Nameless is what you are. It’s what you’ve always been. A large glistening sign at the main port spells it out for you. WELCOME TO MAJERUK WHERE DREAMS COME TO LIFE You could definitely settle in a place like this. You love the city. You love the hustle and bustle of the crowds, the countless things to do on every street, the sheer size and depth of the place you’ve found yourself in. There’s libraries, museums, galleries, bookshops, clothiers, governing halls for Gahl’vuhr Sehn officials, various buildings that you can’t even begin to describe…All you have to do is get a foot on the ladder and you’ll be in. This is a place which rewards you for doing very little – or, conversely, which rewards you with little for doing far too much. Exchange of goods and money. Economics. The arts. Societies. Meeting halls. Dance, music, sculptures, concerts, religion… “Excuse me, ma’am,” a curt voice says behind you. All at once, the illusion is broken. You turn round to see three stern-looking Auvahrs in uniform, carrying firearms at their belt. At least, you assume they’re firearms. You’ve only ever seen pictures of them in books before, never having crossed out of your own little island before now. You’ve heard such stories of the city… “You are under arrest for the unlawful use of privileges available only to high-ranking members of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn,” the man says coldly. “As an Unworthy, you should not have access to such abilities.” At first, you just stare at him in confusion. Abilities? Wait a second. Is he talking about the scroll’s power which allowed you to fly here? Perhaps that’s the issue here. Someone saw you using the flying ability – or sensed it, detected it, whatever – and decided that you’d breached some kind of unspoken law of theirs. “That wasn’t my fault,” you protest. “The airship – ” “You were caught using a long-distance Flight scroll,” the official says, his tone rather hostile. “Unless you have a very good reason for doing so, Unworthy, you will face the penalty of breathing the laws of Gahl’vuhr Sehn. The island of Majeruk is under the jurisdiction of the Auvahrs of Gahl’vuhr Sehn, and all must abide by our rules. A lifetime upon a prison island will do a world of good for scum like you.” Surely, if you were to explain yourself rationally to the man, then he should understand that this is all a big misunderstanding and let you go. Right? They wouldn’t judge you on something like this, face to face. Surely they can let it slide just this once. > You tell him your story You see no reason not to tell the truth. Swiftly, you explain to the official the full story of how you fell from your island and how Mother Ghared saved your life, taking you on board the Gahl’vuhr Sehn airship. As soon as you mention this, the men exchange glances between each other, shaking their heads doubtfully, and look at you with greater suspicion than ever. You continue talking about how you activated the scroll, gaining the ability of flight for a temporary basis, but the official abruptly holds up a hand to stop you. “I have heard quite enough,” he says sharply. “Your story is an unlikely one to begin with. Whilst there have been reports that many islands have been falling due to the effects of the chaos on the surface, it is inconceivable that a high-ranking member of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn would choose to save your skin. You are an Unworthy. Your life is not of equal worth to a normal person.” “That’s not true!” you protest. “Mother Ghared saved my life!” “Is that so?” He folds his arms. “And where is Mother Ghared now? Can she testify to this?” Taken off-guard, you start to splutter that Mother Ghared probably didn’t make it, but the man pushes aside your excuses. “Even if you are telling the truth, which I greatly doubt, it makes one thing very clear: no true member of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn would choose to save the life of an Unworthy. If Mother Ghared truly acted as you claim, then it means that the rules and regulations of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn have not been followed correctly. I see no reason to trust your word. Rather, it seems far more likely that you were a stowaway on board.” With that, the official turns away and issues a sharp command to the men on either side of him. The Auvahrs immediately step forward and grab you, pulling your arms behind your back painfully. You struggle indignantly in their grip, protesting all the way as they frog-march you in the direction of the main port. Nothing about this is fair! Have you survived your trip from the airship only to be taken prisoner by the same race of people who saved you in the first place? “As the presiding justiciar of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn stationed upon Majeruk,” the lead official says in a rather formal tone, “we find you guilty of the offence of using a long-distance Flight scroll, an item used only by high-ranking members of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn. Normal citizens are not permitted access to such privileges, let alone an Unworthy like you. Having heard your story, we also find you guilty of the additional crime of stowing on board an airship under the command of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn, as well as possible contributing to its destruction!” You are forced into the back seat of a cramped-looking aerial vehicle, and strapped in tightly with a grim-looking official seated next to you. Two more men enter the front of the vehicle. The engines start to fire up. “What’s going on?” you demand, fearful of what they intend to do with you. The Auvahrs are practically treating you like a criminal. You don’t know what they do with such people, because on your island you never had to deal with anyone like that. “Wh…where are you taking me?” The lead official barely glances at you. “Prefect, take the Unworthy to Island 39. She is to be classified as a Class 3H criminal of the fourth degree. If she talks at all during the journey, silence her.” He slams the door on you and turns away without another word. Frightened about what fate lies in store for you now, you can do nothing but watch as the Gahl’vuhr Sehn drive you away from the attractive island of Majeruk, towards a grim-looking location in the distance. You are strapped in so tightly that you can barely breathe, making escape impossible. The man in the seat next to you is watching you closely, making you feel very uncomfortable. Nobody talks. Nobody says a word, not to you or any of their colleagues. The Gahl’vuhr Sehn operate in a professional manner which scares you, honestly. It’s about half an hour before the vehicle you’re in start to slow down. You chance a glance over the side of the vehicle and see an ominous-looking island, surrounded by cliffs on all sides. Nothing about your situation seems promising at all. > You proceed You are forced out of the vehicle with your hands tied behind your back, where the officials march you over to a tall, grey, oblong-shaped building situated some distance inland. As you step inside, you are shoved into a cramped, featureless interrogation cell with dim lighting and no windows to see through. Another Gahl'vuhr Sehn official sits opposite you, barking personal questions at you whilst the other men search you for any weapons or illegal contraband. You sit through the whole experience in a kind of numb shock, never having been through anything like this before. After about an hour, you are taken to the strip of land which lies beyond. A grim sight greets your eyes. Thousands and thousands of people are locked within maximum security cells, isolated here away from the general public, some of which are suspended above mid-air to conserve space. Men and women of all races, including some mutants like you saw before at the airship, peer out from behind the bars. Food and water are strictly rationed and prisoners are permitted no more than an hour per day at the exercise yard, before being put to work doing hard labour at the mines, located at the other end of the island. “What're you in for, girl?” a mutant sneers at you as you pass by his cage. You are thrown into a square cell of your own, situated underground. A small plate of stale food lies in the corner, and your stomach rumbles fro not having eaten all day. There should be water here, too, but the guard with you informs you that they can't get fresh water to every cell during the day. You may have to remain thirsty until they find the time to give you a refill. “Sweet dreams, kid,” he says nastily. The cell door slams shut behind you with a very real tone of permanency. This is your fate at the hands of the Gahl'vuhr Sehn. You have been sentenced to a maximum of thirty five years of underground confinement and hard manual labour, here upon one of the many prison islands which fill the skies. Moreover, it is likely that you will not survive long in such conditions. Prisoners who fail to meet their work quota daily are punished severely, and your body does not possess sufficient stamina to bear the torture experienced at a Gahl'vuhr Sehn prison island. Withdrawal of food and water is not uncommon, and many of the inmates are at the mercy of the guards. Females in particularly do not have any protective rights from assault, not whilst they have their prisoner status. Even if you could escape, the island is ringed by cliffs on all sides. You are deprived even of the opportunity to commit suicide. Fate has not been kind to you. You will remain here at the prison island for the rest of your mercifully short life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You touch down upon the edge of the island, a thrill racing through you at the thought of what lies beyond. Immediately, the glow fades away from the soles of your feet and the power leaves you. So that’s how it is: the scroll’s effects last as long until you touch solid ground again. In theory, you could abuse such a power, but you don’t want to push your luck. The town before you is bustling with crowds of people and shops on every street corner. You’ve never seen anything quite like this. In fact, you’re not quite sure this isn’t just part of a small city. The diversity of species here is mind-blowing: you see Auvahrs chatting to each other in the marketplace, Tenurs tending their stalls and displaying their wares, Gahl’vuhr Sehn officials marching up and down the streets as if they own the whole place, other subspecies you’ve never seen before staring at the scene like some kind of tourist…You ever see nameless ones like you. Unworthy ones, as the captain called them, but you don’t take to that nonsense. Nameless is what you are. It’s what you’ve always been. A large glistening sign at the main port spells it out for you. WELCOME TO MAJERUK WHERE DREAMS COME TO LIFE You could definitely settle in a place like this. You love the city. You love the hustle and bustle of the crowds, the countless things to do on every street, the sheer size and depth of the place you’ve found yourself in. There’s libraries, museums, galleries, bookshops, clothiers, governing halls for Gahl’vuhr Sehn officials, various buildings that you can’t even begin to describe…All you have to do is get a foot on the ladder and you’ll be in. This is a place which rewards you for doing very little – or, conversely, which rewards you with little for doing far too much. Exchange of goods and money. Economics. The arts. Societies. Meeting halls. Dance, music, sculptures, concerts, religion… “Excuse me, ma’am,” a curt voice says behind you. All at once, the illusion is broken. You turn round to see three stern-looking Auvahrs in uniform, carrying firearms at their belt. At least, you assume they’re firearms. You’ve only ever seen pictures of them in books before, never having crossed out of your own little island before now. You’ve heard such stories of the city… “You are under arrest for the unlawful use of privileges available only to high-ranking members of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn,” the man says coldly. “As an Unworthy, you should not have access to such abilities.” At first, you just stare at him in confusion. Abilities? Wait a second. Is he talking about the scroll’s power which allowed you to fly here? Perhaps that’s the issue here. Someone saw you using the flying ability – or sensed it, detected it, whatever – and decided that you’d breached some kind of unspoken law of theirs. “That wasn’t my fault,” you protest. “The airship – ” “You were caught using a long-distance Flight scroll,” the official says, his tone rather hostile. “Unless you have a very good reason for doing so, Unworthy, you will face the penalty of breathing the laws of Gahl’vuhr Sehn. The island of Majeruk is under the jurisdiction of the Auvahrs of Gahl’vuhr Sehn, and all must abide by our rules. A lifetime upon a prison island will do a world of good for scum like you.” Surely, if you were to explain yourself rationally to the man, then he should understand that this is all a big misunderstanding and let you go. Right? They wouldn’t judge you on something like this, face to face. Surely they can let it slide just this once. > You make something up “There is an extremely good reason for this,” you say. You doubt that these men will believe you if you tell them the truth, considering their low opinion of your species to begin with. Your best guess is to fabricate something which seems believable. “This Flight scroll doesn’t belong to me.” “We are quite aware,” the official says fervently. “No, no.” You’re not used to lying to people. There usually isn’t any need to do so. “I was ordered by…by Mother Gherad to use it.” He frowns. “Do you expect me to believe that, Unworthy? A high-ranking member of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn willingly gave you a long-range Flight scroll? I have heard more convincing tales extending from the back of an anteater.” “She gave me the scroll,” you say quickly, “in order to prevent it from falling into the hands…of…the enemy.” What enemy? Who’s the enemy? Lying to people is a lot harder than you thought. “The enemy, that is, of the Gahl’vuhr Sehn. A…rebel army of mutant rabbits.” “Rabbits,” the official repeats. “Yes, really. Really, really big ones. With axes.” You’re babbling now, but you might as well keep this up. “It was a valiant battle against the bunnies, and they were after the scroll of Flight in order to turn into flying mutant rabbits! They planned to assault this island, thousands of flying bunnies throwing axes at the poor citizens of Majeruk. Luckily, I thwarted their plans and now they will never have their rabbit revenge!” “If I can just stop you there – ” “Mother Gherad died heroically defending the ship,” you say dramatically, going all out with this story now. Now that you’ve started, you cannot be stopped. “We could not hold them back for long. We had to poison their supply of carrots just to get an advantage. Lettuce, too!” “Wait a second,” one of the other men interrupts. “You mentioned…it was a rebel army of mutant rabbits?” You nod enthusiastically. “Exactly.” “A rebel army. So…how were they rebelling?” “Rebelling against the Rabbit King,” you say proudly. “There’s a long, long history of all the rabbit rebellions before our time, going all the way back to Lord Rabbiter McRabbit himself. I will enlighten you now.” With a flourish, you then continue to rabbit on at great length, detailing the long history of two thousand years of rabbit-themed monarchs and bloody battles which claimed the lives of their citizens to gain vital land on the sky islands. You don’t quite know how you came up with all this stuff, but you’re going too fast to be able to stop now. The officials actually seem genuinely interested about all of this fictional backstory that you’re pulling out of thin air – or at least, you think they are. They might not care at all. “…and that,” you finish, twenty five minutes later, “is the entire account of the rise and fall of the Rabbit Empire, shortly before Queen Fuzzlebunny came to the throne and brought civil war among the nations.” You let out a long sigh, since you’ve been talking for some time now. “Would you like to hear it again?” “That was very interesting, but no,” the official says. He is looking at you long and hard. All of them are, actually. You can’t quite tell what is going through their minds, but you’re sure that you must have made a good impression. “I think we’ve had enough of rabbits.” “Why are you looking at me like that?” you ask. “Is it the rabbits?” “No,” the first Auvahr states. “It isn’t the rabbits.” “What is it then?” “We’re looking at you like this,” he says testily, “because we think you’re insane.” “Really?” He glances helplessly at his two companions, who look back at him in just a helpless a fashion. You watch as they whisper furtively amongst themselves, looking rather worried about the situation. Telling a tall tale about the rise and fall of the majestic Rabbit Empire was definitely a step in the right direction. Eventually, the official steps forward towards you again. “We’ve decided,” he says resignedly, “that we are not going to press charges to you, on account of you straying so far from the original question that we can no longer remember what we were talking about in the first place.” “It was the scroll,” you remind him helpfully. “Right. The scroll.” The man sighs. “Look. I’m not prepared to hear you talk about damn rabbits for another thirty minutes. I don’t have time for this. Rules are rules, and the Gahl’vuhr Sehn has to make sure everything is perfect. Especially here in Majeruk. What I’m going to say instead is that your usage of this high-level scroll was some kind of freak accident, because…you do not seem like the kind of person with the mental capability to steal a Flight scroll whilst knowing what you were doing. My colleagues here will bear witness to that.” “Definitely,” says the official next to him. “She’s bonkers.” “You may remain in Majeruk for the time being,” he says, with long-suffering patience, “but only because I don’t want to stand here for over an hour listening to a crazy girl talking endlessly about fictional rabbits. You’re free to go. Just…don’t do it again, alright?” Elated, you smile as the three officials turn on their heel and march back down the street the way they came. Somehow, you’ve managed to get away with it. You’re not sure where all of that inspiration for rabbit-themed history came from, but you ought to write it down sometime. Some people like that kind of thing, apparently, although you’re yet to meet anyone like that in person. > You proceed Majeruk promises to be an exciting place for you to live. There are numerous cities and towns across the island, and you take some time to explore your options before choosing on a suitable career path. In addition, the Gahl'vuhr Sehn occupy the whole of the land here and have set in place a number of strict rules for all citizens. After your last encounter with them, you decide not to do anything to annoy the governing body around here. You don't want to cause any trouble. The first week is rather rough for you. With no money or resource of your own to trade – aside from the sword you kept from the airship, and that turns out to be worth very little of value in Majeruk – you are forced to sleep rough at night. The Gahl'vuhr Sehn do not allow people to sleep on the streets, which is fine for you because you see no problem with sleeping outside their towns. It's always good to experience new things, but you have to take care in doing so. The wrong situation could see you lose your life at the hands of the local wildlife, which turn out to be unexpectedly hostile… It's some time before you finally manage to secure employment as a courier, delivering goods and packages between the towns in Majeruk. The job gives you an advance payment, enough so that you can afford to rent some accommodation in the suburbs of the central city. It's hard work, with long hours, but you keep at it and soon begin to learn the various trade routes going around the island. It makes your job easier, and it's another year before you have enough money and resources to try your hand at another job. Every day, you hear news about the chaos on the surface and how more and more sky islands are falling down to earth in a blaze of constant destruction. It makes you think of home, or what used to be home. You think back to all the events that brought you here in the first place, to Mother Gherad and the captain on the airship which saved your life. You wonder if the captain ever made it out alive. You make lots of new friends in Majeruk over the years, but still you worry that such a densely-populated island might suffer the same fate as your first island did. What if everything here is destroyed? With this in mind, you take to travelling. You've become quite an accomplished businesswoman by this point, taking on several jobs and even employing your own staff with ease. You're going up in the world. You manage numerous accounts of money, oversee cargo taken on board airships in an organisation built with your own two hands, and you know that you have to expand your horizons. Many years have passed, and you have more than enough to purchase an airship of your own now. You travel through the skies, venturing far and wide, but never stay on board for too long. Airships can be dangerous. You become a kind of explorer in your own right, navigating countless islands and assembling a crew of your own. For some time, you pursue this exciting choice of life, but you're not really sure what you're looking for. You know you're searching for something, but you just can't put your finger on it. It's several years after that when you finally return to the island of Majeruk. It's the same as always, and business is booming, but you're now experienced enough to put in several advisors who can easily run your organisation by themselves with only limited help from you. Even the Gahl'vuhr Sehn are respectful to you. They still refer to you as “Unworthy”, more out of habit than anything else, but you have a mutual understanding of each other. You a force to be reckoned with. Looking at everything you've achieved over the years, you finally realise what you've been seeking. You want a place to settle down. Somewhere to settle down. A home, in nature, but you already have several homes across the skies. You decide to settle here in Majeruk. You think about the future, and seek a husband with which to bring up a family of your own. There is no shortage of men in Majeruk, and all of them are falling over themselves to propose to you. It's sweet of them, really, but a woman of your reputation and wealth can afford to be choosy. At the end of it all, you remain here in the island of Majeruk for the rest of your days. You have lived a life filled with contentment, riches and great respute. You consider having children of your own and handing down the family business to them, once you grow old enough to retire, but that's in the future. You could have never predicted that things would work out so well. After falling from a great height, you have risen to become a woman of grand accomplishments and great success.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For the next few hours or so, you fly across the skies at a mediocre speed. The wind blows through your hair as you travel, and you feel a kind of freedom wash over you that you’ve never quite experienced before. Throughout your life, you’ve been content to remain settled upon your own island, never venturing out into the skies around you. Right now, however, you feel as if you can literally go anywhere. Any island, any port, above the clouds, down to the ruined surface…The sky’s the limit, so to speak. You feel as if you could fly like this forever. You’re not going to do that, of course, because you’re still wary that the effect of the scroll will wear off before long. You will have to land somewhere soon, because ultimately you want to find a new island to settle upon. A new home to call your own. A place where you can start again… Within the hour, you pass the remains of several islands floating in the sky, broken chains dangling uselessly into empty space. As you approach, you realise that these are parts of bigger islands which have already fallen towards earth. Nothing remains there anymore. They have all suffered the same fate as the place you used to call home. It’s some time before you finally see one island which still remains intact. From here, you can see that there’s a considerable number of inhabitants; numerous houses, roads and streets stretch out below you. Why, it looks like there might be a town down there. There’s definitely some kind of community. The question is, will that community approve of you? > You ignore it and keep going You continue to fly through open skies, unable to rest anywhere for fear that the scroll’s power will suddenly wear off. Hours pass by, and still you see no other inhabitable islands or places where you can land. You encounter a few passing airships – active ones, thankfully – but they are only merchant ships and pay you no heed. You dare not stop. There are numerous lightning storms in this part of the sky, and you are quick to stay away from them. Many an airship has fallen victim to the fierce and unpredictable weather conditions escalated by the deadly situation on the surface far below. As it is, a single strike would probably send you plummeting out of the sky. You need to stay airborne at all costs. You saw what the surface is like now: nobody can survive there anymore, and the people who remain there now have no future. Nightfall comes at last, and you are exhausted from flying for so long in one go. It is too dangerous to keep going in the dark, anyway, so you absolutely need to rest soon. You decide that the next inhabitable island you see will just have to go. You should change your angle of ascent, too, and see what you can find. Up or down? There has to be something here. So many islands have fallen now, so many lives have been destroyed… > You choose to ascend You fly upwards for over twenty minutes more before you spy a small fragment of an island, almost invisible to the naked eye from this distance. It seems to have broken off from a greater land mass, possibly another victim of the chaos on the surface. The island looks to be too small to offer you many favourable options, but you’re in no position to pass up the opportunity. You’ve been flying all day long now, with limited food to keep you going, and you’re extremely tired. As things stand, you’ll just have to take a chance on this. Hoping that you won’t regret your decision, you disembark upon this small patch of island. Immediately, the glow fades away from the soles of your feet and the power leaves you. So that’s how it is: the scroll’s effects last as long until you touch solid ground again. In theory, you could abuse such a power, but you don’t want to push your luck. > You proceed The island you stand upon seems eerily similar to the one you lived upon previously. It seems strange to suggest such a thing, but you feel almost as if you've been here before. You take a few steps forward upon the crisp, yellowed sand under your feet, and walk towards a cluster of primitive-looking huts in the distance. A dusty path runs towards the centre of a peaceful-looking village, and there is hardly any wind here at all. It's all very quiet. Unable to shake off the feeling of deja vu, you continue walking up to the village square. It's quite dark now, but you can see lights up ahead. A small group of people are sharing a bite to eat over a roaring fire, chattering away excitedly in good humour. They are not talking in Common Tongue, like the Auvahrs of the Gahl'vuhr Sehn. They speak your language fluently. You approach the fire, and the people turn in surprise to look at you. Their skin and body composition is very similar to yours. You realise, then, that they are the same species as you are: they are nameless. For an instant, you feel almost as if you are back home again, but you push the feeling away on the grounds that it must be some illusion. Your home has already been destroyed, and surely nothing can replace it. “Hello,” you say to the people here, unsure what to say. A man and a woman look curiously at you and smile, before offering you a leg of meat. There is no suspicion or aggressiveness in their innocent faces. It's as if they've been expecting someone like you to arrive after all this time. “Sit and eat,” the man says in a friendly tone as you accept the food. You haven't eaten all day. “You look tired.” “I am,” you say, sitting down by the fire with him. “I...I'm so tired.” Your words feel slurred and inconsistent from heavy fatigue, but you feel that it's important to get this off your chest. “What...what's the name of this island? Do you have a name?” “What kind of question is that?” He smiles. “We do not name ourselves. Names give power to other people. Why do you ask these things? Do you have a name?” You shake your head. “I do not.” “Then it is of no consequence.” He gestures to one of the huts behind you. “Feel free to use one of the rooms out back. Our brethren will not mind sharing their bed with a fellow nameless one, but we do not receive many travellers this way. Are you passing through?” As it is, you currently have no way off this island. You are stranded here, but somehow you don't see it that way. You look around you with tired eyes at the friendly people here, inviting you inside to share their food and drink with them. It looks so much like the village you used to call home. An island so small and seemingly insignificant that nobody else even knows it exists. You doubt that any airships even come this way. It's a tiny part of the world, isolated away from everything else. You could settle here. You feel it in your bones. Start again, rebuild, reconnect with people, contribute to a living community, help each other out and start again...The thought brings tears of happiness to your eyes, and you have to look away for a moment. You didn't think this would ever happen, but you feel...as if you are finally home. “No,” you answer. “I'm not just passing through. I'm returning home.” You see in his eyes that he understands exactly what you mean. This island has not fallen. It is too high above the rest of the world, too isolated in its own little share of the skies to be affected by all the chaos going on at the surface. You hope that things will remain that way. It is true that you cannot predict the future, but you feel optimistic about what's waiting for you out there. After falling from a great height, you have finally found your way back home.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You continue to fly through open skies, unable to rest anywhere for fear that the scroll’s power will suddenly wear off. Hours pass by, and still you see no other inhabitable islands or places where you can land. You encounter a few passing airships – active ones, thankfully – but they are only merchant ships and pay you no heed. You dare not stop. There are numerous lightning storms in this part of the sky, and you are quick to stay away from them. Many an airship has fallen victim to the fierce and unpredictable weather conditions escalated by the deadly situation on the surface far below. As it is, a single strike would probably send you plummeting out of the sky. You need to stay airborne at all costs. You saw what the surface is like now: nobody can survive there anymore, and the people who remain there now have no future. Nightfall comes at last, and you are exhausted from flying for so long in one go. It is too dangerous to keep going in the dark, anyway, so you absolutely need to rest soon. You decide that the next inhabitable island you see will just have to go. You should change your angle of ascent, too, and see what you can find. Up or down? There has to be something here. So many islands have fallen now, so many lives have been destroyed… > You choose to descend You allow yourself to fall downwards, reasoning that you are now too high up to see any inhabitable islands. Your eyelids are heavy and your head drops onto your chest from your exhaustion, but you maintain some element of concentration and continue to descend at a normal pace. It might be your imagination, but the air pressure seems particularly high around here. Dark clouds have built up around you, filled with rain which is pelting down upon the surface… Thunder rumbles in your ears, and your eyes flick open when you realise that you have stumbled into the midst of a storm! Shaking your head, you start to fly away from the area to avoid the bad weather, but the wind buffets you back and forth and blows a torrent of rain right into your eyes. You cry out, shielding your face protectively, and start to fall through the clouds. You’re falling a bit too fast for your liking now, but at least you’re clear of the storm. From here, you can see that you’re actually not too far from the surface where chaos rages. That won’t do at all. You decide to force yourself to slow down, trying to fly back up to where the sky islands are. Nothing happens. You continue to plummet, faster and faster towards the earth. Your flying ability is no longer in effect! You don’t entirely understand what just happened – perhaps the storm did something to your abilities, or maybe the effect wore off on its own – but what’s important is that you’re now in constant freefall. Quickly, you try to suppress the sheer panic rising up in your chest and struggle to slow yourself down. Something gives, and you manage to lower your speed of descent – just barely. You might survive, but it’s touch and go at this rate… You’re so close to the surface of the planet now. You can see people down there. Buildings burned to the ground, screams and crying, the lava flow from an erupted volcano, mass flooding from the rising sea level…It’s not a place where you could ever survive. You need to stay in the skies. You need to stay up here… The noise from below gets louder and louder until it becomes almost unbearable. You can no longer stay in the sky, and you’re going so fast that you can’t focus on anything around you anymore. Praying very slightly, you brace yourself for a crash landing. > You proceed The impact is tremendous as you make contact with the surface. As luck would have it, the trajectory of your descent takes you away from the mainland and sends you into the ocean itself, your momentum forcing you deep underwater. Waves of pain wash over you, and for several long seconds you cannot move at all. You feel as if you have broken several bones in your body. Fighting to conserve oxygen, one truth reveals itself to you: you are alive. You can hardly acknowledge the fact, but you are alive. The wind has been driven out of you, and you are already starting to swallow sea water; swiftly, you struggle to swim up to the surface for air. Agony rushes through your body at every little movement, prompting a scream deep within your throat that nobody will hear. You grit your teeth and keep swimming upwards, your lungs burning. You need to survive. You break the surface at last, hacking and coughing as you take in fresh oxygen into your lungs. Air. Fresh air. From here, you can see the coastline isn't too far away. You should be able to make it as long as you tread water and take it nice and slowly. You've survived this far and you're determined to keep going, despite the mind-numbing pain tearing through your limbs. It takes several minutes for you to get to dry land, but you can already tell that something is very wrong. You do not feel well. Perhaps it's the effect of swallowing so much sea water, but you are unsteady on your feet and you can feel a surge of unnaturally dark emotions rising up inside you. You do not feel like yourself. Grimly, you force yourself to suppress such thoughts and concentrate on reaching safety. The coastline is littered with corpses. You stagger forward and see people shambling across the beach. They do not look like people. Humans, yes. You haven't seen a human being for a long time, but you know what a rational person look like and these are different. Their clothes are ripped and torn, their skin covered by a mesh of angry black spots which suggest the telltale designs of disease, and there is a frenzy in their eyes which frightens you beyond anything you have witnessed so far. The people have not reacted to your presence. They are screaming at the top of their voices, wielding vicious blades in their hands, and killing each other on sight. Countless bodies cover the blackened ground as far as the eye can see, like the gruesome remnants of some kind of battlefield. It's as if a war is going on, but you can see here that the war is purely internal. You see two men beating another to death with a hatchet. A crowd of children have surrounded a woman and are stabbing her repeatedly, all with the same murderous frenzy in their eyes. Three girls are gouging out the eyes of a bystander. A strange haze has settled upon this place, this peaceful village that saw no such violence before. Everything has gone out of control. You knew the situation on the surface was dire, but you had no idea that it had escalated to such extremes... Something snaps inside of you. Something wild. It's the same feeling you had just minutes ago, not long after you accidentally swallowed some of that seawater. You turn to look at the ocean curiously for a moment, and can't help but notice that the water is...a different colour than it's supposed to be. It's certainly not blue... You drop to the ground, retching, as a new pain takes hold of you. You can't see anymore. Blood fills your eyes and you buckle forward, clutching at the ground in a similar frenzy to the people around you. You hear yourself scream aloud as every thought going through your mind is crushed into nothing, nothing but a maniacal desire for bloodlust. The world feels like it's revolving around you all of a sudden, revolving in a sea of haunted faces… There is no need to think anymore. You snarl and shriek like a wild beast, pouncing forward onto the nearest human being to pluck out their eyes and beat their face into a bloody mess. The man is holding a knife of some kind, and you immediately wrest it from his cold dead hands to take for yourself. Gleefully, you charge at your next choice of prey. Two girls covered with blood from head to toe shamble towards you, half-blind. One of them is practically dead already, but she hasn't realised it yet. Both of her arms have been savagely torn off, and her head has been bashed in from one side. You slash at her with the knife and blood spurts out of her throat in a red fountain. The other girl lunges at your neck. You stab her in the stomach. She doesn't react. A man is clubbing you from behind, but you don't feel a thing. More people are here now. More people, more violence, more chaos. You twist out of your assailant's grip and kill another person, doesn't matter who it is. You're having fun, and every part of you loves it. This is your place now. You're part of the neverending chaos on the surface, just another victim of the shambling horde drifting across the planet in your insatiable desire to kill every living creature you see. Nothing else matters, because this is your world. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You must be mad to think of doing this. Quickly, you leap over the gap and onto the separated part of the doomed ship, which is quickly plummeting towards earth at a deadly speed. Above you, the remaining half remains airborne. It quickly disappears from sight as you fall. It’s impossible to keep your footing on the deck when the ship is falling so fast; parts of it are beginning to break up again from the constant acceleration. Gritting your teeth, you force yourself to crawl over to where Mother Ghared is lying. Her eyes are open, and she seems faintly aware of what is going on around here, but she is otherwise unhurt. If anything, she just looks exhausted. When she sees you, her eyes widen and she grabs your wrist. “Fljght, Fljght,” she whispers to you urgently, pressing a crumpled scroll into the palm of your hand. The words she speak are not in your language. “Fljght, fljght…” Her eyes close as she falls back into unconsciousness. You stare at her in confusion as the ship continues to fall. The scroll she gave you is covered with strange symbols and runes that are incomprehensible to you. Somehow, you think she was trying to give you to a clue. > You say "Fljght, Fljght" You utter the incantation, and the scroll glows faintly before disintegrating into nothing. The glow itself has not faded, however, but has spread to the soles of your feet. With a start, you realise that you are no longer falling, and that your body feels as light as a feather. You are no longer in any danger of plummeting to your death. Moving forward, you are surprised to find that you can now move in any direction – up and down, too – at will. You have as much freedom as a bird, and can fly through to the air as you see fit. The activated scroll has bestowed this power on you, and you may now fly from here to your heart’s content. Thankfully, the same ability has also been granted to Mother Ghared. Though unconscious, she remains floating in the air before you. You take hold of her body, which you find to weigh scarcely anything at all, and bring her with you as you fly through the open skies. Perhaps she just needs some rest after what she’s been through. With Mother Ghared in tow, you turn to fly from here as far away as you can. You discover that you can only fly at a fixed speed, so there is no way to accelerate. Fear washes over you at the thought that this ability may actually be temporary. What if you could lose this power at any given moment? With this in mind, you travel away from the ruins of the airship far above you, out into the vast vast open skies. You don’t know where you’re going, exactly, but anywhere is better than this.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to remain on deck and see what help you can lend to the crew members. Mother Ghared disappears down below, and from here you watch as the helmsmen frantically try to turn the airship around as quickly as possible. Before long, the ship is so close to the storm that pieces of wood are being shredded away from the outside of the hull. You grip the railing tightly, fearing the worst… “Brbcf ypvrsflf!” the captain yells. There is a horrendous tearing of wood and metal as the storm makes impact. Fearfully, you throw yourself clear from the balcony – and just in time, too. A bolt of lightning flashes down onto the crystal lens where you were standing, shattering it into a million pieces. The crewmen cry out as a violent gust of wind slams into the ship, powerful enough to tear the railings apart. Rain and sleet pours down to accompany it. Desperately, you search for somewhere to take cover from the storm. This was a bad idea. You shouldn’t have stayed up on deck in this kind of climate. There’s nothing you can do here – Another bolt of lightning flashes down and rips straight through the mast. You turn to see the entire weight of the mast fall towards the deck. To your horror, you see that the captain is right in its path, just seconds away from being crushed. None of the mercenaries are close enough to help her. No one is close enough to help…but you. Even if you did help her, it’s unlikely that you would be able to get out of the way in time. > You turn away and worry about yourself instead You can’t risk saving her. Who knows if you will succeed? Guiltily, you turn your eyes away from the scene. You don’t want to see the results of your inaction. The opportunity has now passed, and may never be seized again. She isn’t going to make it in time – “Fprcf!” A shrill cry erupts from the other end of the airship. The mast shudders as an invisible force slams to it, snapping it further at an awkward angle. You watch in amazement as the fractured beam crashes through the deck barely a metre away from the captain. She’s alive. You turn your head to see Mother Ghared frozen in position, her hands outstretched towards the fallen mast. Your knowledge of her abilities is still limited, but you understand that she has saved the captain’s life. The captain waste no time moving away from the fallen mast and is already on her feet, struggling to defend herself from another group of mutants. Before you can move, you see Mother Ghared slump to the ground. She seems exhausted by the effort of stopping the heavy mast, and the energy drain is too much for her. You start to force yourself to your feet, knowing that time is of the essence. She needs help, and fast. That’s when you hear the violent splintering sound below you. Fearing the worst, you see that the heavy mast has in fact torn straight through the centre of the airship. It is in no condition to fly. The vessel has already been damaged by the attacks of the mutants, and you can only watch in horror as more and more cracks appear, joining together as one… The airship breaks apart down the middle. You see the mutants react with surprise as they start to plummet along with their half of the ship. Surprisingly enough, they can no longer fly. You’re not quite sure why, but you have a feeling that their wings from before were only temporary. In addition...part of the airship somehow remains airborne. You’re not in a position to question the laws of aerodynamics right now, but you need to act fast. Your half of the airship is currently airborne and in no danger of falling – or so you hope. The captain is next to you, slumped in a heap. The other half of the ship is about to plummet downwards, and you realise that Mother Ghared is still on that side. She’s unconscious and has no idea of what has happened. You have a split second to decide whether to cross over the gap to Mother Ghared, or stay here with the captain. You have no idea what condition either person is in.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You see what appears to be a mass of black clouds on the horizon, lit up by a blaze of yellow and white flashes. The atmosphere around the airship is becoming increasingly turbulent, and you feel the vessel shake beneath your feet, making it difficult to keep your balance. The captain turns to see what you’re looking at and swears out loud. “Just our luck,” she mutters. “Damn lightning storm could put us all out of commission.” Without hesitation, she starts to shout orders down to the crew below, reverting back to Common Tongue as she does so. “Bll hflmsmfn pn thf blfrt! Thfrf’s b ljghtnjng stprm bpprpbchjng thf shjp. Bfgjn fvbsjvf mbnpfvvrfs jmmfdjbtfly, pr wf wpn’t lbst fjvf mjnvtfs!” You see the crew members scramble to their positions quickly, working amongst themselves to turn the ship around before it makes contact with the imminent storm. The captain turns to you. “We’re going to try and steer around the storm, Unworthy. It’s a big one, and with such short notice we might not be able to make it. But I’m confident I can get my ship through this. It's rare for a lightning storm of this size to appear without any warning, but...” “Is this to do with what's happening on the surface?” you ask worriedly. There was no sign of any such storm until now. The change in pressure was simply so drastic for this to happen naturally. The look in the captain's eyes tells you the answer to that. “Unworthy, you’d better get yourself below deck where it’s safer,” she says grimly. “Just stay out of trouble. That way I won’t have to worry about protecting your neck.” With that she rushes down the steps, still shouting orders as the storm draws closer. You hold onto the railing tightly as the ship starts to change course, but at this distance you have a feeling that it might be too late. A crackle of white-blue lightning flashes not too far from the vessel, and the wind is getting stronger. > You retreat into the cabins below deck Taking the captain’s advice to heart, you head below deck towards the relative safety of the corridors. There’s nobody else down here, as all of the crewmen have gone upstairs to steer the ship clear of the storm. You start to head towards your bedroom, wondering what will happen next… A violent tremor shakes the airship, throwing you off your feet. Fearfully, you stay braced against the wall as the atmosphere around the ship becomes increasingly more turbulent. The storm is very close now. Suddenly, you hear cries of alarm go up on deck and the loud tearing of wood. You grab onto one of the banisters for support as the entire vessel rocks back and forth… You hear the sound of thunder. It’s right above you. With a start, you realise that the crew have failed to steer the ship clear in time. The storm has made contact. The noise around you is now tremendous. Rain and sleet pour in from above, and holes open up above your head as lightning rips through the airship. You cower in the corner of the corridor, frantically looking for cover, but you don’t know anywhere that’s safe anymore. Perhaps you have overstayed your welcome. > You hide in one of the cabins Forcing yourself to remain upright, you manage to slip into one of the empty cabins. The noise above is getting louder and louder, and you crouch in the corner, hoping that you’ll be safe here. Surely someone else will come down here to seek shelter as well? As time passes, you see no sign of any other crew members. Before long, you cannot hear their voices anymore, drowned out by the sound of the thunder… The walls around you are shaking, buffeted by the force of the storm on all sides. It feel as if the ship is starting to break up, and you start to wonder if maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. You don’t feel safe here. Even so, you hesitate to move from your current position. > You continue hiding here in the hope that the storm will pass Despite your better judgement, you remain huddled in the corner of the cabin. The whole ship is shaking violently now. Cracks appear in the walls and ceiling, and you cover your head protectively with your hands. What’s going on out there? You start to get to your feet, wanting to move to somewhere more secure, but it’s far too late. The opportunity has already passed. The ceiling of the cabin caves in from above, and your body is crushed under tons of falling rubble. You do not live to see what happens next, but the rest of the airship is destroyed minutes afterwards. You perish here on the airship, in the midst of a violent lightning storm.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Forcing yourself to remain upright, you manage to slip into one of the empty cabins. The noise above is getting louder and louder, and you crouch in the corner, hoping that you’ll be safe here. Surely someone else will come down here to seek shelter as well? As time passes, you see no sign of any other crew members. Before long, you cannot hear their voices anymore, drowned out by the sound of the thunder… The walls around you are shaking, buffeted by the force of the storm on all sides. It feel as if the ship is starting to break up, and you start to wonder if maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. You don’t feel safe here. Even so, you hesitate to move from your current position. > You move out of your hiding place as it's no longer safe here You’re not staying here a second longer. Quickly, you break out of cover and run out into the corridor. Cracks have appeared in the walls and ceiling, and the roof of the cabin caves in as you make it out of there. You’ve spent quite enough hiding from the storm. It’s time to find a way off this ship, once and for all. > You proceed Judging your chances of survival on board this ship to be diminishing by the second, you start to search the surrounding cabins for a way out of here. There has to be something that you can use. Airships are fitted with emergency safety measures for use in the worst-case scenario, such as equipment failure or a particularly vicious storm. You're not on the surface, after all. You’re not in one of those strange human ships which take people over water, able to throw yourself overboard and swim away from all the pandemonium… Inside one of the cabins near the back, you find a disused aerial vehicle which is fitted with an engine of some kind. At least, you assume that it’s an engine. It looks quite similar to some of the devices you saw in the captain’s room. Buttons and dials cover the inside of the vehicle, and there is only space for one person to drive it. The craft is covered with dust and cobwebs and looks as if it hasn’t been used in some time. You have no idea if it still works. If you’re really unlucky, it might even blow up in your face. From far above, you can hear the sound of the storm growing louder and louder. You can no longer hear the voices of the crew members from before. A chill goes up your spine as you realise that the airship is being dragged deeper and deeper into the storm. > You try to operate the vehicle You step into the vehicle and strap yourself in, before realising that you have no idea how to physically turn it on. With a frown, you examine the numerous buttons and dials on the dashboard in front of you. One of these must start up the machine – if it works at all, that is. After about a minute, you manage to narrow down the correct button to just two of them. They are all labelled, but naturally the words are written in Common Tongue. > You push the button which says "Jgnjtjpn" You press the button and the vehicle immediately roars to life. Twin engines fire up and you are thrown back in your seat as the craft blasts through the weakened hull and out the other side, breaking free of the airship completely. From here, you can see that the storm has devastated the ship almost to the point of complete destruction! You can't see a single living soul on board the upper deck, and you have a feeling that both the captain and Mother Gherad must be among the dead. The airship is covered with the bodies of mercenaries and crewmen, and you are lucky not to share in their fate. With a shudder, you turn your vehicle around to fly away from the ship. You don't know how to drive this thing, exactly, but the controls seem to respond to your touch and you're just glad to get out of here. Gauges pop up all over the dashboard, none of which means anything to you. Fuel, altitude, energy levels...no, you haven't a clue how any of this works. You'll worry about it later. Grimly, you accelerate away from the doomed airship and fly your craft as far away from here as possible, dodging and weaving through the last of the storm. As you depart, you can just make out the violent wrenching of wood and metal as the airship is ripped apart. > You proceed For the next few hours, you travel through the open skies within the comfort of your flying craft, searching far and wide for your next destination. The wind blows through your hair as you accelerate forward, and you feel a kind of freedom wash over that you’ve never quite experienced before. Throughout your life, you’ve been content to remain settled upon your own island, never venturing out into the skies around you. Just a few hours in this craft is enough to tell you that there’s much more to life than that. Even so, you don’t want to push the limits of this vehicle too much. In fact, you have a feeling that it’s starting to run low on fuel and energy. You will have to land somewhere soon, if only to refuel, but ultimately you want to find a new island to settle upon. A new home to call your own. A place where you can start again… You pass the remains of several islands floating in the sky, broken chains dangling uselessly into empty space. As you approach, you realise that these are parts of bigger islands which have already fallen towards earth. Nothing remains there anymore. They have all suffered the same fate as the place you used to call home. Continuing on, you eventually do find an island which is still intact. You do not recognise it, but from here you can see that there is a fair number of inhabitants. You can see houses and huts on the ground, indicating that there is some kind of community there. Of course, you have no idea how this community will react to your presence. > You land at this island You descend to the surface of the island, which is ringed by a protective metal fence, and land just within the perimeter. Upon first glance, the surrounding region appears to be nothing more than one of many small towns present upon this isle. There’s plenty of land to build fresh houses, and more than enough grassland for animals to graze. It’s quite a pleasant atmosphere. Perhaps this island could be a suitable place for you to settle upon? As you turn your vehicle off and step out onto dry land for the first time in a long time, you notice that the people here are staring at you. Much like the captain and her mercenaries, they are not the same species as you. They appear to be Tenurs, in fact – a bipedal species of people who have inhabited the sky islands for generations before you. They are hairless and bald, with three fingers upon each hand, and two separate mouths set into their faces. Their appearance is a little strange to those who have not encountered a Tenur before, but your home island was visited by a few Tenurs some years back, and you have some firsthand experience of interacting with their kind. They are quite an intelligent race with a flair for mechanics and engineering. It’s always fascinated you how their skin colour changes with their temperament; they are people who literally carry their heart on their sleeve. Of course, the older Tenurs can control the rate of change in skin tone, but that's another story. “You are not one of us,” says a male Tenur, watching you critically. Usually, you can tell what a person is thinking from the way they look at you, or the type of facial expression they wear, or their general body language. With a Tenur, none of that is needed. The man’s skin is pulsating faintly between colours of blue and orange, suggesting that he is both suspicious and anxious about your presence here. It would not do to frighten him. Still, you’re just glad that he speaks your language, unlike the captain’s entire crew on board the airship, who mouthed off in Common Tongue to no end. “I mean you no harm,” you say to him. His skin tone does not change; your words have brought him no consolation. “I am a survivor from a nameless island. One that fell out of the sky. I only seek shelter and settlement within an island which will help me.” His expression did not change, and you realise now that he staring at the sword in your hand. You’d forgotten that you were still holding it after all this time. Quickly, you lower it down to the ground. “You carry weapons,” he says sceptically. “But I sense no harm from you. Not many nameless ones come to our island. We place importance upon names, so if you stay here, you may have to take one for yourself.” You notice that his skin tone is changing to purple. That confuses you at first, until you recall that purple refers to sexual attraction. His eyes are still fixed on you. Well, this is just brilliant. Your first time on another island and the first native boy you meet is attracted to you. “We have heard about the falling of the other islands,” he says quietly. “You have my sympathy. We Tenurs are fortunate that we have not been affected by the energy drain which has destroyed the lives of so many. You need not fear such dangers here. If you wish to settle here with us, then we can offer you some protection.” “I would like that very much,” you say gratefully. “Thank you.” His skin colour darkens to a deeper purple. “I...I have just one question for you before I admit you into town.” You do not miss how the tone of his voice has softened. “Are you here from Gahl’vuhr Sehn?” > You tell him you are from the Gahl'vuhr Sehn Upon hearing your answer, the Tenur's skin tone changes to a murky green. “Agents of the Gahl'Vuhr Sehn are not welcome here,” he says in a low voice warily. “You have made a dire mistake in coming to this island. Leave here before anybody else sees you. My kin will not be as lenient as I.” “Who's this?” interrupts a voice from behind him. A tall, female Tenur with two wide smiles on her face turns to face you. “A nameless one. I heard you mention the Gahl'Vuhr Sehn, sister. Do you know what we do to agents of the Gahl'Vuhr Sehn?” The grins on her face carry no friendliness at all. “We don't appreciate what you do here. You will not control us, sister. The other Tenurs may bow down to you, but there is no space in the skies for your kind.” “Listen, this has all just been a big misunderstanding,” you blurt out, realising things are starting to escalate out of hand. Naturally, you assumed that these people would respect the word of the Gahl'Vuhr Sehn, but it seems that you were dead wrong. “I'm not really with the Gahl'Vuhr Sehn. I escaped from their airship and - ” Wordlessly, the male Tenur points to where you parked your craft near the edge of the island. He is staring at the emblem painted at the front. “Your vehicle carries the symbol of the Gahl'Vuhr Sehn,” he states, his skin colour becoming more hostile. “You are no friend of ours.” “I'm telling you, I'm not with them!” you say, starting to panic. “I stole it from their airship!” To your dismay, more and more Tenurs are beginning to emerge, drawn by the commotion. You hear murmuring amongst them, and more than a few glares directed towards the emblem of the Gahl'Vuhr Sehn, in full view for everyone to see. People are beginning to whisper to one another, calling for you to be thrown out from the island altogether. The atmosphere has quickly turned very toxic. “Leave!” one woman yells. “Leave us alone! We will have nothing to do with agents of the Gahl'Vuhr Sehn!” “Get out!” “You Gahl'Vuhr Sehn agents are always snooping around. Go back to where you came from! Try taking a trip back to the surface, there's plenty of room now that the humans have killed themselves!” “Filth!” The crowd of people is rapidly turning into an angry mob. Sensing that it is too dangerous to remain here anymore, you stumble back towards your vehicle as the Tenurs continue to hurl insults at you. You hadn't realised that some races actually hated the name of Gahl'Vuhr Sehn. From the look of things, the townspeople must have had very bad experiences with them indeed. “Get out!” the Tenurs yell at you as you strap yourself into your craft and prepare to take off once more. “We don't want your kind here! Go back to Majeruk with the rest of your slime!” Quickly, you hit the ignition and fire the engines up, flying away from the island of angry Tenurs. They seemed to be such a friendly sort of people at first, but just the mention of the Gahl'Vuhr Sehn was enough to set them all off. Perhaps you should have been honest with them, but it's too late now. Feeling rather affronted, you take your vehicle back into the skies and decide to look for an island which isn't so aggressive to visitors. > You proceed You continue travelling for a few more hours, on the lookout for any landmarks or signs of life on various islands. After some time, however, you began to realise that something is wrong with your vehicle. Although you still have sufficient fuel to take you a fair distance…you are starting to lose altitude. You are falling lower and lower in the sky, moving down in a broad spiral which takes you closer and closer to the surface of the planet itself… Determinedly, you try fiddling with the controls on the craft to try and fly back up to where you were. Nothing works. You are starting to fall through the clouds by now, but all is not lost. It just means it’s more important than ever to find a decent place to land. For some reason, one of the components of your vessel appears to be malfunctioning. There are numerous lightning storms in this part of the sky, and you are quick to veer away from them. Many an airship has fallen victim to the fierce and unpredictable weather conditions escalated by the deadly situation on the surface far below. As it is, you can barely control your vehicle at all. You need to stay airborne at all costs. You saw what the surface is like now: nobody can survive there anymore, and the people who remain there now have no future. You accelerate in another downward spiral and cross through the clouds into a graveyard of broken and damaged airships, long-abandoned by their previous owners or simply left to rot. Many of these are ghost ships, whereupon the crew have run out of fuel and starved to death in their limited patch of open sky. The wind doesn’t blow all the time, after all. One of the airships, strangely enough, shows faint signs of life. It is also severely damaged and has a faint plume of smoke coming from the hull. > You approach the airship A strong, putrid stench arises from the remains of the airship as you draw near. It’s easy to see why: the deck is covered with a mass of dead bodies, many of which have rotted away completely. Some of the corpses are now nothing but skeletons. You gag on the smell, forced to cover your mouth and nose with your sleeve. It’s inconceivable that anybody could be still alive out here. What on earth happened here? Your first thought is that there must have been a ferocious battle of some kind, but many of the bodies show no signs of any physical wounds. There is some blood, yes, but not enough of it to give a concrete explanation. Mass starvation might be more likely, but this kind of airship seems big enough to carry a large number of supplies, and you don’t think that any of these people died from malnutrition. There is a crunching sound from ahead of you, and you look over to see a single man crouched in the centre of the deck. He appears to be humanoid in appearance, aside from a third eye in the centre of his forehead, indicating that he is one of the rare subspecies of the sky races. His eyes are sunken and there are black blotches covering his skin. He is gnawing hungrily upon the severed limb of a dead comrade. Alarmed, you glance from the man to the countless bodies surrounding him. The smell of death and decay doesn’t appear to bother him. He must have been exposed to it for a very long time. The man suddenly whirls around to face you, hearing the telltale sound of your vehicle’s engines. His eyes narrow when he sees you, watching you furtively, and he slowly puts down the bloodied limb that he was eating. Three more skeletons are lying behind him. You have a feeling that he is responsible for all the bones in sight. How long has this man been feeding off the flesh of the dead? “Good day,” he calls out to you in a surprisingly jovial fashion. You’re not quite sure how to respond. This cannibal is behaving as if you have simply strolled into his house for a brief chat. Every instinct you have screams at you to get as far away from this place as you possibly can. “I have not had visitors for some time,” the man says. He beckons to you with one skinny finger, and you can see the bones through his skin. “Come aboard. Dine with me.” > You come aboard as he requests With extreme caution, you bring your vehicle up to the edge of the airship and climb aboard. This man looks dangerous, and you feel as if any moment he's going to suddenly snap and lunge at you to consume your flesh for himself. Nobody could possibly be so calm munching upon the flesh of the dead. You hold your sword out in front of you and keep your distance from him. “You need not fear me,” he says. The sight of your weapon does not appear to worry him. “I have no intention of feeding on you, girl. There is more than enough food to go on already.” He nods towards the mound of rotting carcasses piled up across the ship. You gag on the smell, trying not to breathe. “What happened here?” you demand. “Are you responsible for all this?” He laughs shortly and takes another bite out of the severed arm at his feet, chewing slowly. “Unlikely. A third of the crew had already died before they let me out of the brig.” The man gestures at the black spots covering his body. “Worked it out yet? It's a disease. I contracted it from one of the islands to the south, whilst on an exploration mission for the captain. Itches like hell.” “And yet you're still alive.” The man smiles. “That's the thing. I'm just the carrier, but I suffer no ill-effects apart from...what you see here, but...it's very, very contagious. The rest of the crew received a fatal dose of the infection as soon as I returned to the ship. It attacks the vital organs, you see. Shuts them down, one by one. Body stops working. You hardly know it's happening to you at all until the starvation starts settling in. You live a long time, but you're...not really living anymore...” He licks his cracked lips. “You asked me if I was responsible. Take a wild guess.” You stare at him for a few moments, sitting here surrounded by bodies. The bodies of people who died as a result of the disease he brought on board. Slowly, the real horror of his words washes over you, and you start to back away. Have you been infected, too, just by coming on board this ship? “Oh, don't worry,” the man says reassuringly. “I haven't infected you. Actually, I can't. The virus itself isn't active anymore. I think it's to do with the amount of dead tissue that I've taken into my body lately...but it's fine now. I can feel it. Doesn't get rid of the black spots though.” He rubs at his cheeks self-consciously. “Still itches.” You don't want to trust a single thing he says. Your life could be in danger, just by standing here talking to him. Is the virus spread through the air? You shuffle back towards your vehicle, not wanting to have anything more to do with this...this cannibal. “Why did you invite me on board?” you ask quietly. “Did you really think I wanted to hear your life story?” “No,” he said simply. “I want you to do something for me.” The man gets to his feet, and you tense unconsciously. “I've been here for so long, feeding off the dead. Too long. I want you to get me out of here. That vehicle of yours can support another passenger, so long as you don't go too fast.” He takes another step towards you, eyes burning into yours. “I don't weigh much. Not anymore. I want you...to take me with you. You're a wanderer too, girl. You're trying to survive. I...can help you.” > You allow him to ride on the back of your vehicle You must be crazy to even consider allowing this disease-ridden, filthy cannibal on the back of your vehicle, but part of you is curious about his offer of help. How could he possibly help you? You watch him very closely as he climbs onto the back of the craft, but the man shows no aggression to you at all. It's difficult to tell what his motivations are, but you know that he must have a reason. “One wrong move,” you tell him, “and I'm throwing you off into open sky.” He doesn't seem to be worried by that. “You're looking for somewhere to go,” he says. Slowly, the man lifts his arm up and points in a specific direction above you, roughly to the northwest. “You...should go that way, I think...” You stare at him in disbelief for a moment, wondering what he's playing at. He surely didn't come along just to give you directions. Besides, you've been driving for hours and haven't seen any signs of inhabitable islands at all. It's worth a short, though, and might be better than just drifting through the skies without knowing where you're going. Your vessel is still losing altitude steadily, and that worries you. You don't want to find yourself getting too close to the surface. Nevertheless, you manage to gain some height by pushing the levers on the dashboard as far as they can go, adding an extra boost to the engines and burning more fuel than usual. This had better work. The craft shifts upwards at a steep angle, and you lean back on your seat; the cannibal behind you lets out a cry of alarm as he is almost jolted off the vessel into the void. “What was that for?” he demands, clutching onto the back of the vehicle with both hands and holding on for dear life. “You almost threw me off!” “This craft is nearly out of energy,” you say. “There's something with the altitude on this thing...” You climb steadily for about fifteen minutes, breaking through a new layer of clouds. At once, you spy a small fragment of an island, almost invisible to the naked eye from this distance. It seems to have broken off from a greater land mass, possibly the victim of the chaos on the surface. You almost missed it from here. The island looks to be too small to offer you many favourable options, but you’re in no position to pass up the opportunity. Your vehicle is in dire need of maintenance, since you don't know how much longer you can keep it airborne. Only skill and luck have managed to keep it going for so long up to now. As far as provisions go, you've had limited food to keep you going, and you’re extremely tired. As things stand, you’ll just have to take a chance on this. Hoping that you won’t regret your decision, you disembark upon this small patch of island. Hopefully there's some kind of intelligent life here, and if you're really fortunate you might be able to find someone who can fix your vessel. Perhaps… There is a roar of engines behind you. You whirl around to see that the man who guided you here has seized control of the aerial vehicle and is driving away from the island, almost straight down. With a yell, you dart forward to confront the cannibal, but he has already disappeared below. You're never going to see it again. He has effectively stranded you here in the middle of nowhere. With little choice left to you, you decide to investigate the tiny island around you. Perhaps you can make the best of a bad situation.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With extreme caution, you bring your vehicle up to the edge of the airship and climb aboard. This man looks dangerous, and you feel as if any moment he's going to suddenly snap and lunge at you to consume your flesh for himself. Nobody could possibly be so calm munching upon the flesh of the dead. You hold your sword out in front of you and keep your distance from him. “You need not fear me,” he says. The sight of your weapon does not appear to worry him. “I have no intention of feeding on you, girl. There is more than enough food to go on already.” He nods towards the mound of rotting carcasses piled up across the ship. You gag on the smell, trying not to breathe. “What happened here?” you demand. “Are you responsible for all this?” He laughs shortly and takes another bite out of the severed arm at his feet, chewing slowly. “Unlikely. A third of the crew had already died before they let me out of the brig.” The man gestures at the black spots covering his body. “Worked it out yet? It's a disease. I contracted it from one of the islands to the south, whilst on an exploration mission for the captain. Itches like hell.” “And yet you're still alive.” The man smiles. “That's the thing. I'm just the carrier, but I suffer no ill-effects apart from...what you see here, but...it's very, very contagious. The rest of the crew received a fatal dose of the infection as soon as I returned to the ship. It attacks the vital organs, you see. Shuts them down, one by one. Body stops working. You hardly know it's happening to you at all until the starvation starts settling in. You live a long time, but you're...not really living anymore...” He licks his cracked lips. “You asked me if I was responsible. Take a wild guess.” You stare at him for a few moments, sitting here surrounded by bodies. The bodies of people who died as a result of the disease he brought on board. Slowly, the real horror of his words washes over you, and you start to back away. Have you been infected, too, just by coming on board this ship? “Oh, don't worry,” the man says reassuringly. “I haven't infected you. Actually, I can't. The virus itself isn't active anymore. I think it's to do with the amount of dead tissue that I've taken into my body lately...but it's fine now. I can feel it. Doesn't get rid of the black spots though.” He rubs at his cheeks self-consciously. “Still itches.” You don't want to trust a single thing he says. Your life could be in danger, just by standing here talking to him. Is the virus spread through the air? You shuffle back towards your vehicle, not wanting to have anything more to do with this...this cannibal. “Why did you invite me on board?” you ask quietly. “Did you really think I wanted to hear your life story?” “No,” he said simply. “I want you to do something for me.” The man gets to his feet, and you tense unconsciously. “I've been here for so long, feeding off the dead. Too long. I want you to get me out of here. That vehicle of yours can support another passenger, so long as you don't go too fast.” He takes another step towards you, eyes burning into yours. “I don't weigh much. Not anymore. I want you...to take me with you. You're a wanderer too, girl. You're trying to survive. I...can help you.” > You refuse and drive away from here as quickly as you can The sight of this cannibal gorging himself upon the bodies of his dead comrades sickens you to no end. You're not staying here a second longer. Without hesitation, you strap yourself back into your vehicle and fire up the engines, speeding as far away from the airship as you can. You can feel the man's gaze burn into your back as you depart. > You proceed You continue to fly forward for about an hour, mindful that your craft is now losing altitude at a rapid pace. The gauges on the dashboard are showing warning signs, but you still don’t understand what they mean. Power? Are you losing power now? You still haven’t seen a single island since the last one, and there’s nowhere for you to land at all… The vehicle falls through the clouds, and you realise you are getting dangerously close to the surface. No. No, you can’t go this way. You’ve already seen the kind of chaos that’s happening down there. You saw every little part of it with the captain on the airship. Your place is up in the sky, among an island where you belong… Your vessel runs out of power, and now you are veering towards the rocky ground below at a deadly speed. Frantically, you try every button and dial which makes any kind of sense. Anything. There has to be something which can slow down your descent. This isn’t what you wanted at all. Parachutes? Destabilisation of air pressure? No, of course not, of course this type of vehicle isn’t designed for going anywhere near the surface… You’re so close to the surface of the planet now. You can see people down there. Buildings burned to the ground, screams and crying, the lava flow from an erupted volcano, mass flooding from the rising sea level…It’s not a place where you could ever survive. You need to stay in the skies. You need to stay up here… The noise from below gets louder and louder until it becomes almost unbearable. Your vehicle is not going to stop. Praying very slightly, you brace yourself for a crash landing. > You proceed The impact is tremendous sending multiple shockwaves through your vehicle as it crashes into the ground, continuing forward for several more metres before coming to a grinding halt. Waves of pain wash over you, and for several long seconds you cannot move at all. You feel as if you have broken several bones in your body. Smoke billows out from the front of your vehicle, and you see that the exterior has been completely ripped apart. At the same time, it has cushioned the blow for you. You are alive. You can hardly acknowledge the fact, but you are alive. Sparks fly from the dashboard, igniting another smaller fire within the interior, and you force yourself to get to your feet. Agony rushes through your body at every little movement, prompting a scream from your throat. You grit your teeth and keep moving. You need to survive. You manage to force open the door. It's so badly damaged from the crash that it practically falls off its hinges. You can hear the screams from here. The ground is blackened and burnt, and not because of the impact of your arrival. No, it was already like this. You have landed at the edge of what used to be a peaceful village. Buildings lie in ruins, farm animals lie dead on their side or half-devoured, and any crops have long since been the victim of multiple fires which raged here. There are people around you. They do not look like people. Humans, yes. You haven't seen a human being for a long time, but you know what a rational person look like and these are different from that. Their clothes are ripped and torn, their skin covered by a mesh of angry black spots which suggest the telltale designs of disease, and there is a frenzy in their eyes which frightens you beyond anything you have witnessed so far. The people around you have not reacted to your crash landing. They are screaming at the top of their voices, wielding vicious blades in their hands, and killing each other on sight. Countless corpses litter the blackened ground as far as the eye can see, like the gruesome remnants of some kind of battlefield. It's as if a war is going on, but you can see here that the war is purely internal. You see two men beating another to death with a hatchet. A crowd of children have surrounded a woman and are stabbing her repeatedly, all with the same murderous frenzy in their eyes. Three girls are gouging out the eyes of a bystander. A strange haze has settled upon this place, this peaceful village that saw no such violence before. Everything has gone out of control. You knew the situation on the surface was dire, but you had no idea that it had escalated to such extremes... Desperately, you run for the safety of your aerial vehicle, even though there is no chance of getting it off the ground anymore. You can't take this. This is not an atmosphere in which you can survive. The people around you do not look as if they have eaten for days, a fact which hardly seems to bother them as they repeatedly murder each other on the spot with little regard as to the consequences. You are stranded on the surface of a world gone insane, and little hope remains to you at all. You limp forward a few more steps before the pressure on your broken leg sends you crashing to the ground. The pain flares up anew, and you claw at the dirt around you. Your hands grasp at the morbid remains of a grinning human skull. The humans turn around at the noise of your fall and shamble forward slowly, before charging towards you in a frenzy of bloodlust. All of them are already covered by vicious cuts and wounds which would usually kill a normal person, but these people do not seem to notice their injuries. They are far too gone. No semblance of reason remains in their minds. Not anymore. The last thing you see is the irrational hatred and rage burning in their eyes, before your body is hacked to pieces by the inhabitants of the surface. Your screams are lost in a storm of mindless insanity which has already engulfed everything around you, mind and soul. You perish here, upon arrival.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You descend to the surface of the island, which is ringed by a protective metal fence, and land just within the perimeter. Upon first glance, the surrounding region appears to be nothing more than one of many small towns present upon this isle. There’s plenty of land to build fresh houses, and more than enough grassland for animals to graze. It’s quite a pleasant atmosphere. Perhaps this island could be a suitable place for you to settle upon? As you turn your vehicle off and step out onto dry land for the first time in a long time, you notice that the people here are staring at you. Much like the captain and her mercenaries, they are not the same species as you. They appear to be Tenurs, in fact – a bipedal species of people who have inhabited the sky islands for generations before you. They are hairless and bald, with three fingers upon each hand, and two separate mouths set into their faces. Their appearance is a little strange to those who have not encountered a Tenur before, but your home island was visited by a few Tenurs some years back, and you have some firsthand experience of interacting with their kind. They are quite an intelligent race with a flair for mechanics and engineering. It’s always fascinated you how their skin colour changes with their temperament; they are people who literally carry their heart on their sleeve. Of course, the older Tenurs can control the rate of change in skin tone, but that's another story. “You are not one of us,” says a male Tenur, watching you critically. Usually, you can tell what a person is thinking from the way they look at you, or the type of facial expression they wear, or their general body language. With a Tenur, none of that is needed. The man’s skin is pulsating faintly between colours of blue and orange, suggesting that he is both suspicious and anxious about your presence here. It would not do to frighten him. Still, you’re just glad that he speaks your language, unlike the captain’s entire crew on board the airship, who mouthed off in Common Tongue to no end. “I mean you no harm,” you say to him. His skin tone does not change; your words have brought him no consolation. “I am a survivor from a nameless island. One that fell out of the sky. I only seek shelter and settlement within an island which will help me.” His expression did not change, and you realise now that he staring at the sword in your hand. You’d forgotten that you were still holding it after all this time. Quickly, you lower it down to the ground. “You carry weapons,” he says sceptically. “But I sense no harm from you. Not many nameless ones come to our island. We place importance upon names, so if you stay here, you may have to take one for yourself.” You notice that his skin tone is changing to purple. That confuses you at first, until you recall that purple refers to sexual attraction. His eyes are still fixed on you. Well, this is just brilliant. Your first time on another island and the first native boy you meet is attracted to you. “We have heard about the falling of the other islands,” he says quietly. “You have my sympathy. We Tenurs are fortunate that we have not been affected by the energy drain which has destroyed the lives of so many. You need not fear such dangers here. If you wish to settle here with us, then we can offer you some protection.” “I would like that very much,” you say gratefully. “Thank you.” His skin colour darkens to a deeper purple. “I...I have just one question for you before I admit you into town.” You do not miss how the tone of his voice has softened. “Are you here from Gahl’vuhr Sehn?” > You deny that you have anything to do with the Gahl'vuhr Sehn “I promise you that I have nothing to do with the Gahl'Vuhr Sehn,” you tell him in a sincere tone of voice. Even as you speak, you realise that the vehicle you took from the airship has the telltale emblem of the Gahl'Vuhr painted on its front, and hope that the Tenur does not think to look. You hold his gaze, mindful of his current temperament. “Can you offer me shelter today upon this island? It would be nice to have someone show me around.” You play upon his insecurities and any remaining doubt vanishes from his face. He smiles with both mouths. “Of course,” he says, extending one hand towards you. “Come this way. I would be happy to be your guide for today.” You take his hand, and notice the colour of his skin tone fluctuate ever so slightly. “Whilst we walk, perhaps I can tell you a little about the history of this island. Our ancestors first colonised this region of the skies over three hundred and fifty years ago...” He clearly likes to talk and you spend some time getting acquainted with the Tenur male, who seems quite smitten with you. You're not sure that you find Tenurs particularly attractive in return – they do have two mouths in their head, after all – but you are keen to take advantage of his feelings. You decide not to risk going back to your vehicle and instead remain with your guide for the rest of the day. One thing leads to another, and you start making enquiries about possible lodging and settlement upon the island. You soon learn that the Tenur man can put you in touch with various contacts in town. Money is no problem here; rather, Tenurs value work and resources to trade rather than currency, and you work to secure a steady job for yourself. The island is in need of miners, couriers and helpers for building work and you soon find an available position. After that, the rest of the week passes quite quickly. You become close friends with the Tenur man and become acquainted with many people in his circle, as well as other Tenurs at your place of employment. A settlement has been reached. Before the end of the week, you even procure a name for yourself so as to fit into Tenurian society. Annabel. That's what you call yourself now. Annabel. It has a nice ring to it, and you refuse to answer to anything but that. Nobody can call you Unworthy anymore. An entire month passes, and you find that you are enjoying month here with the Tenurs. The vehicle you used to travel here is found smashed up just a week after that, turned into scrap metal. Apparently, the locals here really don't like the Gahl'Vuhr Sehn. It's a good thing you didn't associate yourself with the organisation, because the people here seem so friendly otherwise. Months turn into years, and you soon forget about the chaos happening on the surface far below. There's nothing to fear here. There is frequent news about the other islands which have fallen, but the Tenurs are a proud people and often talk about how the humans have destroyed themselves. It's nothing for you to be concerned about, really, so long as that kind of destruction doesn't affect your daily life. You amass enough resources to improve your place of residence, and even start moving in with a few Tenur males who are interested in you. In fact, you become quite popular upon this island. You spend your resources wisely and save when you can. You have much to look forward to. You start to think about the future, about marriage and children and what prospects you have for them upon this island. The future is bright. This island is not going to fall, after all. The people here have amassed enough energy and resources to keep it going for a long, long time. You end up settling permanently upon the Tenurian island, content with the life you lead right now. Not a day goes by where you regret your decision. Sometimes you gaze up into the sky and wonder about the crew of the airship that saved you, about the captain and Mother Ghared. They probably didn't survive. You are glad to live on. After falling from a great height, there is no longer anything that can hurt you anymore. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step into the vehicle and strap yourself in, before realising that you have no idea how to physically turn it on. With a frown, you examine the numerous buttons and dials on the dashboard in front of you. One of these must start up the machine – if it works at all, that is. After about a minute, you manage to narrow down the correct button to just two of them. They are all labelled, but naturally the words are written in Common Tongue. > You push the button which says "Sflf-dfstrvct" As soon as you push the button, the entire dashboard lights up. Alarmed, you freeze in your seat as the controls start to glow faintly. A few seconds later, the vehicle explodes in a great ball of fire, taking you with it! You have initiated the self-destruct sequence set into the craft, installed by the Auvahrs for use in dire emergencies, and your death is instantaneous. You perish here upon the airship, trying to escape.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Judging your chances of survival on board this ship to be diminishing by the second, you start to search the surrounding cabins for a way out of here. There has to be something that you can use. Airships are fitted with emergency safety measures for use in the worst-case scenario, such as equipment failure or a particularly vicious storm. You're not on the surface, after all. You’re not in one of those strange human ships which take people over water, able to throw yourself overboard and swim away from all the pandemonium… Inside one of the cabins near the back, you find a disused aerial vehicle which is fitted with an engine of some kind. At least, you assume that it’s an engine. It looks quite similar to some of the devices you saw in the captain’s room. Buttons and dials cover the inside of the vehicle, and there is only space for one person to drive it. The craft is covered with dust and cobwebs and looks as if it hasn’t been used in some time. You have no idea if it still works. If you’re really unlucky, it might even blow up in your face. From far above, you can hear the sound of the storm growing louder and louder. You can no longer hear the voices of the crew members from before. A chill goes up your spine as you realise that the airship is being dragged deeper and deeper into the storm. > You decide not to risk it and continue searching for another way out You continue searching through the other cabins for any alternative methods of escape. The ship is shaking rather violently by now. Within minutes, cracks begin to appear in the walls and ceiling, until you realise that the damage to the vessel is more serious than you thought. Frantically, you dash into one of the last cabins to find an escape route as quickly as possible. However, you are far too late. The opportunity has already passed. The ceiling of the cabin caves in from above, and your body is crushed under tons of falling rubble. You do not live to see what happens next, but the rest of the airship is destroyed minutes afterwards. You perish here on the airship, in the midst of a violent lightning storm.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The wind grows stronger as you follow the corridor around the corner, towards a set of stairs which lead to the upper level. You’re not quite sure where you are, exactly. You can only assume that you have been taken to somebody’s home, perhaps another faraway settlement, but you must surely be a long way from home. At least, where your home used to be. It doesn’t explain the presence of the mutant in your room, however, so you can only hope that your hosts are not unpleasant company. You climb up the stairs to find yourself...staring out across open skies. Clouds can be seen on the horizon, clustered in a never-ending sea of blue which surrounds you for miles and miles as far as the eye can see… This is no ordinary residence. This is no house. You’re not even on ground level. You are standing on the upper deck of a fully functioning airship! No wonder the wind was so strong up here: you must be hundreds of metres above sea level... You’ve never been on an airship before, but you have seen plenty of them at the island where you lived all your life. Some sky races use these aerial vessels to transport goods and cargo between islands, others simply for transporting passengers. However, they can be slow and unwieldy to operate, and they are not especially durable; a fierce lightning storm can easily put an airship out of commission. For this reason, airships are usually designed for short voyages with a minimum of passengers. It’s like something out of a dream. A real airship. You don’t know where this one is headed, but it has to be somewhere better than where you came from. Where do you want to go, after all? No, the bigger question is – what happened on the surface of the land far below? What prompted your island to fall in the first place? As you gaze out thoughtfully across the open skies, there are footsteps behind you. You turn to see a young woman with long red hair cascading across her shoulders. There is a hint of recognition in her green eyes as she looks at you. “Vnwprthy,” she says in a clear voice. “Ypv brf thf Vnwprthy.” She beckons to you with one finger. “Cpmf. Cpmf wjth mf. Thf Cbptbjn wbnts tp spfbk tp ypv.” Without another word, she turns on her heel and walks across the deck into another section of the airship. You do not understand her words, but it seems that she wants you to follow her. > You decide not to and go back downstairs You decide not to trust the woman and retreat back down the stairs. She is already several steps ahead and does not notice that you are not following her until you are well out of sight. Quickly, you decide to return to the corridor below and head to the right, where you heard the voices before. > You proceed You follow the corridor for some time as the voices become more distinct. They sound rather jovial and cheerful in nature; foreign, too, because they are speaking in a language that you do not understand. It should not be surprising at that, since there are many different varieties of races which populate the skies, each of their own language and culture. Having never left the relative comfort of your own island before, you are unacquainted with the language of any other species. At the end of the corridor is a large room filled with uniformed men and what you assume to be soldiers. Mercenaries, more likely, from their get-up. Large groups of them are gathered around each table, drinking from mugs and chattering to one another at great volume. Is this some kind of bar, perhaps? It seems a little rough and rowdy for your taste. You look around and see that the place is not in good condition. Furthermore, none of the men in this room are human. Of course, neither are you, but you do not recognise their kind. Their skin colour varies from pearly-white to a pale purple, and many of them appear to sport partial reptilian features. Are these people really your rescuers? From the way they are looking at you now, you are inclined to doubt it… “Vnwprthy!” one man shouts, as you step into the room. His gaze is fixed upon you steadily. “Jt’s thf Vnwprthy! Shf’s vp bt lbst.” Self-conscious about the sudden attention, you automatically tense yourself, but the mercenaries here do not seem necessarily aggressive. All of them are armed to the teeth with various edged weapons and crossbows which are slung across their backs, but even so they appear to be regarding you with genuine curiosity. Perhaps they are just as fascinated by your unique appearance as you are by theirs. Low murmuring echoes through the room, with a few of the man shaking their heads at you. You do not understand the significance of such a gesture. “Vnwprthy,” one of the men says, standing up and walking towards you. He smiles at you warmly and makes a gesture you do not recognise. “Brf ypv wfll? Ypv’vf bffn bslffp fpr b lpng tjmf. Hpw dp ypv fffl? Brf ypv rfstfd?” The brief silence which follows his words suggests that he has asked you a question, and is expecting an answer from you. Unfortunately, you haven’t the faintest idea what he just said. > You nod your head in answer The mercenary seems satisfied with your answer, and you sense that you have given the correct response. “Thbt's gppd,” he says in a gracious tone of voice. “Npt mbny svrvjvfd thf fbll. Ypv wfrf pnf pf thf lvcky pnfs.” The man sits down on one of the chairs and calls over to one of his companions. “Hfy, thf Cbptbjn wjll wbnt tp sff hfr npw thbt shf's bwpkfn. Spmfpnf tbkf thf Vnwprthy tp sff hfr, vndfrstbnd?” “Svrf thjng,” the other man ventures, getting up and moving towards you. “Cpmf pn,” he says to you, beckoning you over with one finger. “Thjs shpvldn't tbkf tpp ljng.” You do not understand his words, but it seems that he wants you to follow him. > You follow the mercenary You follow the mercenary to the far end of the corridor, towards where a set of stairs lead to the upper level, feeling the wind grow stronger as you do so. Soon enough, you find yourself standing once more upon the upper deck of the airship. It still feels quite surreal, staring out into open skies at such a great height, and you don't think you'll ever get used to this. Your guide watches you curiously as you gaze over the deck of the airship, before motioning you forward. Resignedly, you follow him into another part of the airship, through twists and turns in the corridors. As you walk, you pass several more uniformed men who watch you with interest. Only now do you realise that they must be part of the ship's crew. After a few minutes, the mercenary leads you to a brass door which lies at the top of a final flight of stairs. There is a sign on top of the door, but you lack the knowledge to read the symbols and runes displayed there. "Gp jn," he says, gesturing for you to enter. "Thf cbptbjn bwbjts ypv." At his request, you push open the door and enter the room beyond.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You follow the corridor for some time as the voices become more distinct. They sound rather jovial and cheerful in nature; foreign, too, because they are speaking in a language that you do not understand. It should not be surprising at that, since there are many different varieties of races which populate the skies, each of their own language and culture. Having never left the relative comfort of your own island before, you are unacquainted with the language of any other species. At the end of the corridor is a large room filled with uniformed men and what you assume to be soldiers. Mercenaries, more likely, from their get-up. Large groups of them are gathered around each table, drinking from mugs and chattering to one another at great volume. Is this some kind of bar, perhaps? It seems a little rough and rowdy for your taste. You look around and see that the place is not in good condition. Furthermore, none of the men in this room are human. Of course, neither are you, but you do not recognise their kind. Their skin colour varies from pearly-white to a pale purple, and many of them appear to sport partial reptilian features. Are these people really your rescuers? From the way they are looking at you now, you are inclined to doubt it… “Vnwprthy!” one man shouts, as you step into the room. His gaze is fixed upon you steadily. “Jt’s thf Vnwprthy! Shf’s vp bt lbst.” Self-conscious about the sudden attention, you automatically tense yourself, but the mercenaries here do not seem necessarily aggressive. All of them are armed to the teeth with various edged weapons and crossbows which are slung across their backs, but even so they appear to be regarding you with genuine curiosity. Perhaps they are just as fascinated by your unique appearance as you are by theirs. Low murmuring echoes through the room, with a few of the man shaking their heads at you. You do not understand the significance of such a gesture. “Vnwprthy,” one of the men says, standing up and walking towards you. He smiles at you warmly and makes a gesture you do not recognise. “Brf ypv wfll? Ypv’vf bffn bslffp fpr b lpng tjmf. Hpw dp ypv fffl? Brf ypv rfstfd?” The brief silence which follows his words suggests that he has asked you a question, and is expecting an answer from you. Unfortunately, you haven’t the faintest idea what he just said. > You shake your head “Ypv'rf npt?” The man seems to be confused by your answer. “Np. Np, ypv're...” He scratches his head and gives you a funny look. “Pf cpvrsf! Vnwprthy. Lvngvbgf...laaa….lan...” For some reason, the mercenary seems to be having a hard time speaking, as if he can't pronounce the word right. “Lan...lang-goo...” “Lan-goo-rah?” another one tries. He shakes his head, gesturing to you. “Lan...lan-grah. Lan-gredge. Language. Lan-gruage bah...bah-wee-uh...barrier...” The man steps forward in your direction, an inquisitive look in his eyes. “We...we do not...we do not speak your...” He winces again. “Your lan-grah...” “Language,” you say helpfully, getting the gist. You try nodding. He smiles and nods too. “Yfs.” “Yes,” you say. “Yfs,” he says, nodding more enthusiastically. Then he shakes his head emphatically. “Np.” “No,” you say. “Fxbctly.” A nod of the head. “Yfs.” Shake of the head. “Np.” He sighs. “Js hbrd...is hard.” “Hard,” you agree. He sits down on one of the chairs and calls over to one of his companions. “Hfy, thf Cbptbjn wjll wbnt tp sff hfr npw thbt shf's bwpkfn. Spmfpnf tbkf thf Vnwprthy tp sff hfr, vndfrstbnd?” “Svrf thjng,” one of the other men ventures, getting up and moving towards you. “Cpmf pn,” he says to you, beckoning you over with one finger. “Thjs shpvldn't tbkf tpp ljng.” You have a very limiting understanding of his words, but it seems that he wants you to follow him.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You follow the corridor for some time as the voices become more distinct. They sound rather jovial and cheerful in nature; foreign, too, because they are speaking in a language that you do not understand. It should not be surprising at that, since there are many different varieties of races which populate the skies, each of their own language and culture. Having never left the relative comfort of your own island before, you are unacquainted with the language of any other species. At the end of the corridor is a large room filled with uniformed men and what you assume to be soldiers. Mercenaries, more likely, from their get-up. Large groups of them are gathered around each table, drinking from mugs and chattering to one another at great volume. Is this some kind of bar, perhaps? It seems a little rough and rowdy for your taste. You look around and see that the place is not in good condition. Furthermore, none of the men in this room are human. Of course, neither are you, but you do not recognise their kind. Their skin colour varies from pearly-white to a pale purple, and many of them appear to sport partial reptilian features. Are these people really your rescuers? From the way they are looking at you now, you are inclined to doubt it… “Vnwprthy!” one man shouts, as you step into the room. His gaze is fixed upon you steadily. “Jt’s thf Vnwprthy! Shf’s vp bt lbst.” Self-conscious about the sudden attention, you automatically tense yourself, but the mercenaries here do not seem necessarily aggressive. All of them are armed to the teeth with various edged weapons and crossbows which are slung across their backs, but even so they appear to be regarding you with genuine curiosity. Perhaps they are just as fascinated by your unique appearance as you are by theirs. Low murmuring echoes through the room, with a few of the man shaking their heads at you. You do not understand the significance of such a gesture. “Vnwprthy,” one of the men says, standing up and walking towards you. He smiles at you warmly and makes a gesture you do not recognise. “Brf ypv wfll? Ypv’vf bffn bslffp fpr b lpng tjmf. Hpw dp ypv fffl? Brf ypv rfstfd?” The brief silence which follows his words suggests that he has asked you a question, and is expecting an answer from you. Unfortunately, you haven’t the faintest idea what he just said. > You look at him blankly in response The silence continues for several more seconds, until the mercenary starts to exchanges worried glances with the others. “Js spmfthjng wrpng?” he says to you, a concerned expression on his face. “Djd ypv npt fvlly vndfrstbnd me?” A look of realisation suddenly washes over him. “Pf cpvrsf! Vnwprthy. Lvngvbgf...laaa….lan...” For some reason, the mercenary seems to be having a hard time speaking, as if he can't pronounce the word right. “Lan...lang-goo...” “Lan-goo-rah?” another one tries. He shakes his head, gesturing to you. “Lan...lan-grah. Lan-gredge. Language. Lan-gruage bah...bah-wee-uh...barrier...” The man steps forward in your direction, an inquisitive look in his eyes. “We...we do not...we do not speak your...” He winces again. “Your lan-grah...” “Language,” you say helpfully, getting the gist. “Yfs. Language barrier.” He sits down on one of the chairs and calls over to one of his companions. “Hfy, thf Cbptbjn wjll wbnt tp sff hfr npw thbt shf's bwpkfn. Spmfpnf tbkf thf Vnwprthy tp sff hfr, vndfrstbnd?” “Svrf thjng,” another man ventures, getting up and moving towards you. “Cpmf pn,” he says to you, beckoning you over with one finger. “Thjs shpvldn't tbkf tpp ljng.” You do not understand his words, but it seems that he wants you to follow him.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You crouch against the inside of the wall, covering your head as the deafening noise continues all around you. Earlier on, you could hear the cries of the other people as they sought shelter within their fragile little huts, but now there is nothing to be heard but the endless howling of the wind. A chill seeps into your bones, but that is the least of your worries right now. This wall will not hold for long. You may as well be stranded in the middle of the ocean, clinging to a broken piece of driftwood as the storm rages on. As if eager to give you confirmation of this, small cracks begin to spread out across the wall where you are hiding. The entire island is shaking, causing the cracks to widen. > You try to move to a different location It would be foolishness to remain here. As quickly as you can, you crawl out of cover into the open. Almost immediately, you are buffeted by the force of the wind on your back. You dig your fingernails into the ground at your feet, refusing to let go. You will not die here, not so easily, like a candle sputtering out in the midst of total darkness. You are determined to survive. Behind you, the wall of your house collapses and crumbles apart. There’s no going back now. The wind is now fiercer than ever. > You call out to your neighbours for aid You raise your voice and let out a desperate cry for help, but your voice is drowned out by the sound of the wind. Your plea goes unheard. In any case, your neighbours and friends have their own problems to deal with. During a crisis of this nature, the act of helping another soul would compromise the safety of another. Nobody is going to help you. This is the reality that you're faced with. The wind suddenly picks up speed, and you are thrown off your feet, clumps of grass falling uselessly from your bleeding fingers. You scream as you are flung from the surface of the island, spiralling towards certain death far below…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It would be foolishness to remain here. As quickly as you can, you crawl out of cover into the open. Almost immediately, you are buffeted by the force of the wind on your back. You dig your fingernails into the ground at your feet, refusing to let go. You will not die here, not so easily, like a candle sputtering out in the midst of total darkness. You are determined to survive. Behind you, the wall of your house collapses and crumbles apart. There’s no going back now. The wind is now fiercer than ever. > You inch your way towards one of the few houses still standing Gritting your teeth, you pull yourself along the ground at a painfully slow pace towards one of the more sturdy-looking houses. You can already see several faces huddled inside the walls, frightened and helpless at what is going on outside. As you draw nearer to them, you see panic rise in their eyes, as if your mere presence is compromising their chances of survival. Perhaps they are simply too scared to move. The door, miraculously, appears to be secure. You duck your head down as the wind buffets against your back, and succeed in making it to the threshold. It is then that you discover that the door has been locked and bolted from the inside. The people inside remain huddled together, staring out at you with empty expressions. “Let me in,” you cry out to them in desperation, banging on the door with your fists. Your fingers are bleeding from clutching the ground, and you dare not raise your head too far up. “Please. Let me inside!” Nobody unlocks the door. Nobody dares to move. You are still frantically banging on the door when the wind picks up and throws you off your feet. The people's stares burn into you as you are flung from the surface of the island, screaming as you spiral towards certain death far below…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It would be foolishness to remain here. As quickly as you can, you crawl out of cover into the open. Almost immediately, you are buffeted by the force of the wind on your back. You dig your fingernails into the ground at your feet, refusing to let go. You will not die here, not so easily, like a candle sputtering out in the midst of total darkness. You are determined to survive. Behind you, the wall of your house collapses and crumbles apart. There’s no going back now. The wind is now fiercer than ever. > You maintain your current position and hold on for dear life You feel that there is no use in moving from here. The slightest motion might give the wind enough leeway to knock you off balance. You grit your teeth and hold on tight, aware that you are exposed and vulnerable, but hopeful that you will be able to get through this. You may be alone, but your strength of will has seen you through many trials in life. You can do this... The wind suddenly picks up speed, and you are thrown off your feet, clumps of grass falling uselessly from your bleeding fingers. You scream as you are flung from the surface of the island, spiralling towards certain death far below…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You claw your way towards what used to be your personal residence. The roof has been torn off, the front door is hanging on by mere threads, and the interior has been devastated beyond recovery. Only pieces of shattered wood remain here now. The wind picks up, and for a second you almost lose your grip, but you somehow manage to make it inside. What remains of the wall here serves as a temporary shelter. Even so, the feeling in your gut tells you that the entire island is picking up more speed than before. The chains will not be repaired: it is not going to stop. Your chances of survival are slim at best. > You pick up some of the fragments of wood You scramble across the floor to where your bed used to be. It is now nothing but rubble, broken into multiple pieces by the pressure of the fall. Most of the fragments are too small to be of any use, but you do find a few sturdy pieces which could be used as a weapon. A weapon? Why on earth are you thinking of weapons now? The realisation comes in an instant: the world really has gone wrong. The crumbling of your island may not be the only danger which awaits you. You need to get your hands on everything you can get. The wind is now powerful enough to shred this little piece of wood into pieces, so you hastily tuck it inside your thin tunic for safekeeping. Perhaps it will come in useful later, assuming you have a future to look forward to... At your back, small cracks start to spread out across the walls of your house. The entire island is shaking, causing the cracks to widen.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The HMS Bounty set sail on a gloomy winter’s day a few days before Christmas. You like the little ship, which is just ninety feet long and fairly small at just over 200 tons for the 46 men she carries. She has three masts and sails extremely well however and you are quite content aboard her, despite the gloomy weather. She carries four small cannons for defense and a compliment of muskets and cutlasses as well as enough provisions for the voyage. The purpose of the voyage is to sail to Tahiti to pick up breadfruit and transport them to Jamaica to feed the slaves who work the plantations there. It should be an easy enough voyage. If you are soon familiar with the ship but the crew are more difficult. You have joined them as an Able Seaman for what should be an easy voyage but there are far too many of men on the ship to remember all of their names. The one name you do remember is Lieutenant William Bligh, the ship’s commander. He is a chubby, little man with very white skin, wispy fair hair and blue eyes looking for all the world like a little girl’s porcelain doll. Bligh is supposed to be a superb navigator, having sailed under the famous Captain Cook, discoverer of Australia, on his last voyage, but he seems a bit excitable and a little difficult to take seriously. Almost from the beginning the ship seems to hit bad luck. The weather in the Channel is awful and barely have you sailed out of port than you lose your grip while climbing the rigging. You are plunging towards the deck and almost certain doom when you manage to grab a rope tied between two sails, halting your fall with a heart-stopping judder. Days later a storm breaks the windows of Bligh’s cabin, quickly flooding it with water. As the year of 1788 and the voyage of the Bounty begins you hope that things will get better… NOTE: PICK UP THE CREW LIST TO HELP YOU KEEP TRACK OF WHO IS WHO IN THIS STORY. > The Atlantic After leaving the English Channel the weather does indeed improve and you stop off at the Canary Islands for a week. Spirits are high as you sail onto the southwest bound for Tahiti, an island which you have heard of but have no idea where it is. You gather Bligh intends to sail around Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America, to get there. The ship is sailing so well Bligh decides to promote a protégé of his called Fletcher Christian from Master’s Mate to Acting Lieutenant, effectively making him Bligh’s deputy. Like everyone else on board the ship you like Christian. He is a cheerful and very likable young man, though a slightly sensitive soul who takes a solicitous interest in everyone’s welfare. His promotion comes at the expense of the Sailing Master John Fryer, a professional man, whose strong, independent opinions seem to irritate Bligh. He takes Christian’s promotion without a word but some of the crew are not so subtle. Matthew Quintal is one of your fellow seamen, a young Cornishman and a natural-born trouble-maker, always looking for an opportunity to make a little mischief. One morning he is scrubbing the deck close to where Fryer is sighting the sun with a sextant and begins to mock Fryer about Christian’s promotion, lightly at first and then more harshly when Fryer shows no response. Some of the other sailors standing nearby are exchanging glances and grinning. > You join Quintal in mocking Fryer You join Quintal in ribbing Fryer about Christian being replaced over him. He takes it all with ill-tempered terse sentences but suddenly there is a bizarrely high-pitched cry from further up the deck, you glance up to see Bligh striding towards you. “You infernal scoundrels!” he roars. “How dare you cowardly rascals show such insolence and contempt for Mr Fryer! Mr Fryer, how came you to permit such a thing to happen sir? Twenty-four lashes each to remind you men of the proper way of addressing your superiors! Master-at-Arms, fetch the lash! Quartermasters, prepare these men!” Hardly before you know what is happening strong hands have seized you and Quintal, stripped the shirts from your backs and your are being roped to the mast. The Quartermasters stand behind you and on Bligh’s orders begin to whip you mercilessly with the lash, which burns like a fire. Soon it is stripping flesh from your back and just as the agony is becoming unbearable the punishment is over. “May that be a lesson to you all!” Bligh declares. > The Horn After the lashing of Quintal you and the rest of your crew go about your duties quietly and you soon come upon Cape Horn in atrocious weather. For over four weeks Bligh tries to sail the Bounty into the face of a terrible wind, tacking into the face of a gale. You and several other sailors come down with fevers, brought on by constant exertion in freezing rain and tiredness, and finally Bligh admits defeat and turns the ship east. You will sail to Tahiti east, around the southern tip of Africa instead. Despite the storm damage the Bounty makes good speed and arrives off Cape Town on the tip of South Africa after a month of sailing. Bligh steers the Bounty carefully into the busy harbor and you and another sailor called John Williams are sent to sound the depths with a lead line. You are both feeding the rope out when the lead snags on some rocks far below. Because the Bounty is still going pretty fast the rope starts sliding rapidly through your hands cutting them badly. > You hold on You grimace and grasp the rope tight. Williams releases the rope and it drags you across the deck, slamming you painfully into the railing and you are nearly lost overboard but suddenly the lead comes free and you haul it up on the line. Williams, blowing on his burnt hands, only watches you when suddenly you hear a familiar high-pitched cry and look up to see Bligh striding towards you both. “You incompetent mongrel!” he spits at Williams. “Why did you not help that man? Six lashes for neglect and dereliction of duty!” The lash is fetched again, Williams is tied to the mast and the Quartermaster once more lays into him, drawing blood. Bligh doesn’t even look at you, merely watches the punishment coldly until it is over and he returns to his cabin. > The Pacific After making it safely into Cape Town the Bounty spends nearly a month resupplying and repairing storm damage, allowing you plenty of time to enjoy the delights of that port. You set sail again on the first day of July and the following month you arrive at Adventure Bay on the island of Tasmania to the south of Australia. You pause there again to re-supply and sail on again in September bound for Tahiti. Spirits are high on board as you near your destination. Unfortunately, you and another sailor called James Valentine begin to develop a breathing problem, sometimes after exertion you find you have difficulty catching your breath. You and Valentine decide to see the Ship’s Surgeon, a heavy-drinking red-faced fat man called Thomas Huggan, who seems rather surprised to be consulted on something medical. Huggan examines you both, wheezing the whole time, and when he has finished he wipes the sweat off his face and gulps down a glass of rum. “Internal disorder of some kind,” he tells you both. “Probably too much blood in your spleens. If you would let me open a vein I will bleed you both about a pint and this will relieve the pressure on your organs, you’ll be up and down the rigging free as birds then." You and Valentine exchange glances. > You agree to let the Surgeon bleed you The Surgeon fetches a grimy scalpel, spits on it and rubs it with a dirty cloth to clean it and slices open veins in your arms. Blood immediately pours out like a high-power hose and Huggan looks rather alarmed. With difficulty he manages to secure bandages to both your arms and pronounces you good as new. You are both doubtful, particularly as the bleeding doesn’t really stop but continues to ooze out of your cuts. Within days you have lost all feeling in your arm. When you peel the bandage away you find the area around the wound has turned green and black. You and Valentine are soon both feeling faint and feverish, forced to remain in your hammocks as almost your entire arms turn black. It doesn’t take you long to realize you are dying but there is nothing Huggan can do. Bligh learns of the situation, visits you both and rages at Huggan but your days are numbered. You die two weeks before the Bounty reaches Tahiti, the first of that ill-fated crew to perish. > You are Dead You have died too early in the story to even experience the Mutiny on the Bounty. Your only option is to return to the beginning of the story and try to live longer by making different choices. After the Mutiny on the Bounty if you die you may end the game and leave a comment. Better Luck this time! > Back to the Beginning... The HMS Bounty set sail on a gloomy winter’s day a few days before Christmas. You like the little ship, which is just ninety feet long and fairly small at just over 200 tons for the 46 men she carries. She has three masts and sails extremely well however and you are quite content aboard her, despite the gloomy weather. She carries four small cannons for defense and a compliment of muskets and cutlasses as well as enough provisions for the voyage. The purpose of the voyage is to sail to Tahiti to pick up breadfruit and transport them to Jamaica to feed the slaves who work the plantations there. It should be an easy enough voyage. If you are soon familiar with the ship but the crew are more difficult. You have joined them as an Able Seaman for what should be an easy voyage but there are far too many of men on the ship to remember all of their names. The one name you do remember is Lieutenant William Bligh, the ship’s commander. He is a chubby, little man with very white skin, wispy fair hair and blue eyes looking for all the world like a little girl’s porcelain doll. Bligh is supposed to be a superb navigator, having sailed under the famous Captain Cook, discoverer of Australia, on his last voyage, but he seems a bit excitable and a little difficult to take seriously. Almost from the beginning the ship seems to hit bad luck. The weather in the Channel is awful and barely have you sailed out of port than you lose your grip while climbing the rigging. You are plunging towards the deck and almost certain doom when you manage to grab a rope tied between two sails, halting your fall with a heart-stopping judder. Days later a storm breaks the windows of Bligh’s cabin, quickly flooding it with water. As the year of 1788 and the voyage of the Bounty begins you hope that things will get better… NOTE: PICK UP THE CREW LIST TO HELP YOU KEEP TRACK OF WHO IS WHO IN THIS STORY.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After making it safely into Cape Town the Bounty spends nearly a month resupplying and repairing storm damage, allowing you plenty of time to enjoy the delights of that port. You set sail again on the first day of July and the following month you arrive at Adventure Bay on the island of Tasmania to the south of Australia. You pause there again to re-supply and sail on again in September bound for Tahiti. Spirits are high on board as you near your destination. Unfortunately, you and another sailor called James Valentine begin to develop a breathing problem, sometimes after exertion you find you have difficulty catching your breath. You and Valentine decide to see the Ship’s Surgeon, a heavy-drinking red-faced fat man called Thomas Huggan, who seems rather surprised to be consulted on something medical. Huggan examines you both, wheezing the whole time, and when he has finished he wipes the sweat off his face and gulps down a glass of rum. “Internal disorder of some kind,” he tells you both. “Probably too much blood in your spleens. If you would let me open a vein I will bleed you both about a pint and this will relieve the pressure on your organs, you’ll be up and down the rigging free as birds then." You and Valentine exchange glances. > You politely decline You politely refuse and Huggan shrugs, fetches a dirty scalpel and slices Valentine’s arm open. Blood sprays out over the walls and a startled Huggan desperately staunches the bleeding with a stained rag. He bandages Valentine’s arm but the damage is done. Over the following days the wound continues first to bleed, then to ooze and Valentine becomes increasingly faint and weak. Soon his entire arm is black and green. Within days Valentine is consigned to his bunk, feverish and fading. Huggan is powerless to do anything, when Bligh learns of the situation he rages at the Surgeon in the most violent language possible. Valentine continues to weaken and dies late one night. A somber mood descends over the whole crew as he is sewn into his hammock and the following morning it is cast into the sea. You sit next to his body on the first night thinking grimly how that could have been you. > You sinking spirits Valentine’s death sends the crew’s spirits plunging low and Bligh decides to raise morale by instructing the crew to dance a jig to the tunes of a half-blind fiddler he has brought on board. The last thing the crew feel like doing is dancing but the sailors obligingly force themselves to their feet and dance wearily to the tunes the fiddler plays. You are dancing when you notice two men are remaining seated. William Brown, a mild scientific man who Bligh brought on board as a botanist to take care of the breadfruit plants is talking quietly to John Mills the Gunner’s Mate, a tough and unfriendly older man. You see Fletcher Christian go over and encourage them to dance but Mills shakes his head emphatically and Brown lowers his head. Christian shrugs and walks away. > You join the two men in their refusal You walk over and sit next to Mills but you have been spotted. Bligh yells for the music to stop and strides towards you three. “Why are you not dancing like the others?” he demands. “It does not seem like an appropriate time for that,” Brown says quietly. “Damn you for contemptible rascals,” Bligh cries. “All three of you will have your grog stopped from now until we reach Tahiti.” Mills glares back at him with a half-smile on his face as Bligh turns, returns to his former position near the helm and orders the fiddler to keep playing. The punishment is a harsh one but not as bad as it could have been: a week later you reach Tahiti. > You tahiti You are all relieved when the beautiful tree-lined round island of Tahiti is spotted. Bligh has been getting on everyone’s nerves: he is no longer on speaking terms with Sailing Master Fryer, Surgeon Huggan or the Carpenter William Purcell and he has been grating the nerves of most of the rest of the crew. It is with relief that Tahiti is sighted and within hours hundreds upon hundreds of canoes packed with scantily clad but cheering Tahitian men and women surround the Bounty. The women are a particularly lovely sight. After a week anchored offshore Bligh sends Christian to lead a party of nine ashore in the ship’s cutter to begin setting up tents and making a camp for the crew to use while they gather the breadfruit. You are part of this group and are left with another sailor called John Adams to guard the boats. Adams is a clever young fellow and the two of you are chatting when you notice a pair of young ladies eying you from behind some nearby huts. When they see you looking they glance at each other and giggle. Like all Tahitians they are dark skinned and wear nothing above the waist, their full breasts and brown nipples peep out shyly between the strands of their long black hair. They seem to have more than a casual interest in you and Adams nudges you in the side and points at the women grinning. He suggests you go over, introduce yourselves and keep the young ladies company for a while. > You go and get acquainted with the young ladies With a shrug you go over with Adams to meet the two young ladies. With many smiles they lead you into an empty hut where they offer you some fruit and nut snacks and begin examining your skin and clothes. They don’t mind your touching them and when you kiss them they seem to like it and kiss you back. Before things can get too interesting you hear Christian calling your name outside and with a curse you and Adams give your new friends a goodbye kiss and hurry outside. Christian is all smiles and thanks you both for doing your bit to improve England’s relationship with the Tahitian people, with embarrassed smiles and to the, slightly jealous, quips of your companions you row back to the Bounty for the evening. Bligh talks to Christian after you arrive and as you and Adams are clearing the boat after swinging it in he suddenly gives a high-pitched yelp. “A gudgeon is missing!” he exclaims. “You damned fools, where is the aft gudgeon?” You and Adams both look for the little metal tube that fixes to part of the rudder but it is indeed missing. Inevitably Bligh fetches Christian, who reluctantly confirms that you both left the boats unattended for a short time. Bligh yells at Christian before inevitably sentencing you both to twelve lashes each for the disappearance of the little metal tube. Later as you lie down in your hammock, your back burning, you reflect that you are really beginning to hate that man. > You discontent The Bounty remains anchored in Matavai Bay for the next month while every day Bligh, Christian or Fryer lead a party of men ashore to gather breadfruit trees. You get the impression that the men are working deliberately slowly to prolong their stay on Tahiti, as often as they are able the men contrive to spend time with the Tahitians in their villages. All of the Natives are extremely friendly and the women remarkably so. Christian and, surprisingly, Bligh are fairly relaxed about these interactions between the crew and the women but after a year at sea it would have been very unwise to try to restrain the men. Bligh inevitably tries however. One day you are a part of a party that is working even more slowly than usual and Bligh is becoming irritable and orders you all to work faster. Repeatedly a sailor called Matthew Thompson, an older and extremely tough man keeps demanding, increasingly more insistently that he be allowed to go into the village. Bligh continues to refuse him. Finally, Thompson has had enough. “Damn you sir,” he growls. “If you were any sort of officer you would know better than to deny your men what they want.” There is stunned silence following this outburst. > You join Thompson in criticising Bligh You speak up, agreeing with Thompson that is the way the whole crew feels. Bligh has gone very pale. “Damn you for mutinous dogs,” he growls. “Quartermaster, twelve lashes each!” The lash is fetched, the blows are landed and your back is transformed into agony. Sullen and muttering the crew return once more to the Bounty. > You defiance Work continues on gathering the breadfruit plants while the crew members continue to enjoy the hospitality and affections of the local people. As well as the company of the women they now have strong locally-brewed alcohol to enjoy, though such gatherings have to be kept secret when Bligh is ashore. The lure of strong alcohol succeeds in drawing the overweight surgeon Huggan from his cabin (which he has rarely left for the last year) and he comes ashore. The Tahitians find the fat, red-faced man great fun and the men insist on plying him with more and more alcohol. Finally, it is getting late and Christian, who is part of the party though not drinking himself, informs everyone it is time to return to the ship or risk the wrath of Bligh. Most of the men stumble to their feet and stagger towards the boat but Huggan is too far gone. Making a rude comment about Bligh he tells Christian to leave him there. Christian licks his lips nervously. Huggan as a Surgeon is a fellow officer and Christian has no authority to order him back to the ship, on the other hand Bligh is sure to notice his absence and punish Huggan in some way. When Christian points this out Huggan laughs and again voices uncomplimentary views about your Commander. Christian shrugs, turns to you and suggests you come back. > You join Huggan on an all-night bender You refuse and Christian reluctantly leads his party back to the ship. All that night you and Huggan down cup after cup of the burningly strong local spirits. The Tahitian men may be used to the strong alcohol but you not so much. Some time before dawn you lie down on your back and pass out. When the inevitable vomit comes your mouth is closed and it remains in your mouth and throat. You suffocate and choke to death as the morning sun rises over this tropical paradise.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Work continues on gathering the breadfruit plants while the crew members continue to enjoy the hospitality and affections of the local people. As well as the company of the women they now have strong locally-brewed alcohol to enjoy, though such gatherings have to be kept secret when Bligh is ashore. The lure of strong alcohol succeeds in drawing the overweight surgeon Huggan from his cabin (which he has rarely left for the last year) and he comes ashore. The Tahitians find the fat, red-faced man great fun and the men insist on plying him with more and more alcohol. Finally, it is getting late and Christian, who is part of the party though not drinking himself, informs everyone it is time to return to the ship or risk the wrath of Bligh. Most of the men stumble to their feet and stagger towards the boat but Huggan is too far gone. Making a rude comment about Bligh he tells Christian to leave him there. Christian licks his lips nervously. Huggan as a Surgeon is a fellow officer and Christian has no authority to order him back to the ship, on the other hand Bligh is sure to notice his absence and punish Huggan in some way. When Christian points this out Huggan laughs and again voices uncomplimentary views about your Commander. Christian shrugs, turns to you and suggests you come back. > You return to the Bounty You join the rest of Christian’s group in returning to the Bounty. The following morning you again go ashore and find a group of Tahitian men gathered silently round the motionless figure of your ship’s surgeon. Vomit covers his face and hands and he lies unmoving on his back, his eyes shut. Christian calls out to him and when he doesn’t respond he examines him. At first you think he is dead drunk. You soon realize he is just dead. > You paradise After the death of Surgeon Huggan Bligh orders the Bounty sailed from Matavai Bay to Toaroa, a small bay and village further round the island. The reason Bligh gives is that there are more breadfruit trees there but the crew suspect it is to move them further from the scene of Huggan’s death and the temptations of alcohol and women. If that is the intention it is unsuccessful, there are even more of both at Toaroa. The women are, if possible, even more free with their affections and breath-takingly beautiful, here and one of your fellow sailors, a friendly, bearded man called William Muspratt, comes up to you one day with an excited whisper as you are moving breadfruit trees as part of a party under Bligh. He tells you he has found some exceptionally affectionate Native women who will apparently trade sex in exchange for odd trinkets such as coins, utensils like cutlery or other odds and ends. He tells you he is going to sneak away now and offers to show you where they may be found. > You accept his offer You and Muspratt sneak away from the work party and go to the huts Muspratt found before. He goes in one and you go in the other. You are a little nervous and uncertain this is wise as you step into the darkened interior of the hut. Inside, as your eyes adjust you see a pretty young lady lying under a blanket on the floor, she props herself in one elbow and smiles at you. Nervously you put a spare belt buckle on the floor and she folds back the blanket to reveal she is naked underneath, dark and soft in the darkness. Fifteen minutes later you are really starting to enjoy yourself when a small figure strides into the hut. “What do you think you are doing you infernal rat?” Bligh barks at you. “Climb off that person, get dressed and come outside at once.” He storms from the hut and you sheepishly emerge minutes later, your clothes reassembled and reapplied to you. Muspratt is looking similarly crestfallen and of course Bligh has his quartermasters standing by. You and Muspratt both get twelve lashes each, your backs burn like they are on fire and so it goes on. > The temptations of Tahiti Word soon spreads among the crew that Muspratt has found what amounts to a brothel in Toaroa, though actually many of the Native women seem happy to perform sexual services in exchange for gifts. One of your fellow seamen Robert Lamb, who often cuts the meat for the cook, decides to sneak off the next time he is in one of Christian’s work parties and give away his cleaver in the hope of getting two women at the same time. You have a knife and wonder if that would be worth the same. > You sneak into the village with Lamb You and Lamb walk off from Christian’s work group to the huts in the village. You make your offerings to the women and hold up two fingers to indicate your desires. To your amazement it works, two women lead Lamb away while two women guide you into one hut where you all hastily disrobe. Both women assume a position some might refer to as riding double and by the time you and Lamb stagger back to the ship that evening you are both feeling exhausted but rather at peace with the whole world. This feeling lasts right up until you see Bligh’s mad face. “Impertinent dogs!” he screams in your faces. “You think a cleaver and a knife are not as valuable as your disgusting perversions? Quartermasters, twelve each!” This whipping feels exceptionally agonizing on your already exhausted body. > You rebellion By the beginning of 1789 the crew have had enough of Bligh and his ways. Charles Churchill, a middle-aged Manchurian and the Master-at-Arms (the man nominally in charge of discipline on the ship) gathers you, the recently flogged Muspratt and another sailor called John Millward, a young and reasonably well-educated fellow, into a secret meeting a short way from the shore party. “I will tell you plainly boys I don’t care a damn for our Commander,” he whispers. “He deserves nothing better than to be shark bait for all I care. But this place is the closest thing to heaven on each I have ever clapped eyes on in all my years of sailing. I say tonight we take a boat and sneak away, Haywood has the watch with us tonight, he is ever sleeping on duty and besides was up most of last night at cards in the wardroom. I will get us a brace of guns each, we can take the cutter and sail round to Matavai Bay and from there light out to one of the smaller islands. After our shipmates have left on the Bounty we can return and live here forever.” It is a bold but extremely dangerous plan, desertion can be punished with hanging. Millward and Muspratt quickly agree to it and all three turn their gazes on you. You know if you refuse you must promise to keep silent about the plan. > You join the three men in deserting To begin with your plan goes smoothly. Midshipman Thomas Haywood is a lazy and indifferent officer who usually sleeps on the nights he has the watches. You, Churchill, Millward and Muspratt climb aboard the cutter and row it away from the ship, by hard rowing all through the night you reach Matavai Bay by dawn and exchange one of your muskets for a sailing canoe. By noon you are paddling north for a small island called Tetiroa, which you have heard of from the Tahitians. You make it to the island safely a few days later, though your boat capsizes as you reach the shore soaking your gunpowder and rendering your muskets useless. Notwithstanding this setback you take the boat ashore and set to work gathering edible fruits and nuts, coconuts and preparing nets and spears for fishing. The weather soon turns bad and for two weeks rainstorms lash the island. Soaked to the skin and huddled in what feeble shelters you can build from branches and leaves the four of you are beginning to reflect this might not have been a wise idea… Eventually the weather clears and to your dismay you catch sight of the Bounty and dozens of native canoes sailing towards your little island. The Tahitians must have told Bligh where you have gone. Hiding would be pointless so when a party from the Bounty lands on the beach you all go to the edge of the tree line to meet them, muskets in hand. Bligh walks alone up to you, cutlass in hand, and halts a short way from you. “Men, if you come back with me without trouble this is what I will do,” he tells you angrily. “I will whip the three of you forty-eight times and you Mr Churchill twenty-four but then that will be the end of it. There will be no hangings, no further punishment, no more word of this will be spoken of. I will write a note to the Admiralty, that I will include when I submit my account of the voyage, stating that I have dealt with this matter accordingly.” It seems to be the best you are going to get and the four of you surrender. You are taken back to Toaroa and flogged alongside an American sailor called Isaac Martin who punched a native man in the face for trying to steal an iron hoop from him. By the time the second flogging is over your back is mess of gristle, flesh and blood and you feel completely and utterly exhausted. > You farewell Tahiti Discontent continues to seethe in the crew as the last of the breadfruit trees are gathered. Two days after the last floggings someone cuts the Bounty’s anchor cable, apparently hoping the ship would drift away and that you would all be stranded in the paradise of Tahiti, it is only because there is no wind that night that the ship is not lost. Bligh is apoplectic, roundly cursing you all for a pack of traitors and has the spare anchor cable run down. The following month a Tahitian man is caught trying to steal Gunner William Peckover’s bedding, Bligh has him flogged a back-breaking one hundred times and hung in irons for a week but the next day he either escapes or is released. So it goes on until by the end of March the gathering of the breadfruit is complete and over 1,000 healthy plants have been safely brought on board until the Bounty resembles a floating garden. On the fourth day of April Bligh orders the anchor raised and the Bounty sails away from Tahiti to the great sadness and sorrow of both of the crew, most of which have at least one girlfriend and several male friends ashore by now, and the hospitable Tahitians who seem to have enjoyed spending time with their new visitors. The mood on board the ship is grim and tense, like an explosive ready to blow at any spark. Bligh, as usual, provides such sparks. The first comes three weeks after leaving Tahiti when the Bounty stops at Nomuka in the Friendly Islands to take on fresh water. Fletcher Christian is sent ashore with a party but Bligh orders him to leave his musket's ammunition behind for fear of harming the Natives and making them anti-English. Despite this order you and some of the other sailors in the party disobey the order and carry knives or dirks ashore. You take a small adze or hand-axe. No sooner have you landed than dozens of Tongan Natives armed with spears, clubs and rocks come out and surround you all. Christian yells at them to clear away but the only response is what sounds like shouted threats and a few thrown stones. One warrior, a great big naked man in war-paint snatches your adze out of your hand. Unable to make any headway you are forced to return to the Bounty. “You cowardly rascals!” Bligh yells at you all. “You, Mr Christian, are you afraid to go through a set of naked savages when you have arms.” For the first time you see Christian lose his temper. “The arms are of no use when your orders prevent them being used!” he cries. “You sir, are a coward!” Bligh declares and turns away in disgust. You and your fellow sailors glance at each other. In England one gentleman calling another a coward would be considered grounds for a duel. Every single one of you feels sympathy for Christian who stands on the deck looking completely paralyzed by indecision. The next day you put the Friendly Islands behind you and sail on west towards Australia. > You bligh breaks Christian The next afternoon Bligh is on at Christian again. You are scrubbing the deck when you see Bligh suspiciously inspecting a pile of coconuts piled between two cannons. “Those coconuts look fewer than they did yesterday... why you damned hounds have been stealing my coconuts! You could not have done it unless your officers had known!” Inevitably the ship’s officers, including Christian are called out and hear Bligh’s accusations. “No one has been stealing your coconuts sir,” Fryer says wearily. “Damn you, you must have taken them yourselves! Mr Christian, how many coconuts did you bring with you?” “I don’t know sir,” Christian replies. “I hope you don’t think me guilty of stealing your things.” “Yes you damned hound I do!” Bligh barks back. “You must have stolen them from me or you could give a better account of them, god damn you for a scoundrel, you are all thieves alike and combined with the men to rob me, I suppose you’ll steal my yams next but I’ll sweat you for it you rascals! I’ll make half of you jump overboard before we get through the Endeavour Straights!” Bligh turns to the scowling Master-at-Arms Charles Churchill. “Stop these villains’ grog and give them nothing but half a pound of yams tomorrow to eat and if they steal any more I’ll reduce them to a quarter.” Christian steps forward and clears his throat. “Sir, this treatment is intolerable.” He says, his voice breaking. “My family have been gentlemen for twenty-five generations and not once have any of them been accused of being cowards or thieves without responding.” “God damn you, what does that mean!” Bligh explodes. “You sir are the worst of the lot, a contemptible thief, an infernal scoundrel, a cowardly rascal and an incompetent mongrel and that is what my opinion of you is sir.” Bligh turns on his heel and storms back down to his cabin. The rest of the officers, avoiding Chistian’s eyes disband and wander down to their cabins or about the deck. Fletcher just stands there, his jaws grinding over and over. Finally, he goes below decks. For the rest of the afternoon and evening there is one topic of conversation among the crew, a discussion about Christian and a feeling of great sympathy for him and great hatred towards Bligh. The rumors about Christian are wild: that he has been seen tearing up his personal papers, that he has given away many of his most valuable possessions to his fellow officers, that he has got some spare wood from the carpenter and is trying to build a raft out of it. You go out to the Officer’s Wardroom on an errand and find Christian lying listlessly in his hammock, eyes staring at the ceiling, an almost empty bottle of rum at his side. Despite your fears about Christian neither you nor any of the crew are ready for what happens next. > You mutiny on the Bounty Early the next morning you are woken from your sleep by wild and confused shouting that seems to come from all around the ship. You and the other sailors spring from your hammocks and rush out on deck to see a bizarre sight. Christian and several other men armed variously with bayonets, cutlasses and muskets are herding a loudly protesting and threatening Bligh out onto deck. His hands are tightly bound behind his back. Christian seems half-crazy, he is alternately yelling at Bligh and talking to his fellow mutineers and has a heavy sounding plummet hanging from his neck (you later learn it was so he could jump overboard and drown if the mutiny failed). “Knock Christian down men,” Bligh is shouting. “Knock Christian down!” “Hold your tongue or you are a dead man!” Christian screams in his face. John Fryer emerges on deck at cutlass point. “Fletcher, you must stop this,” he calls out. “I have been in hell for weeks past!” Christian shouts at him. “Commander Bligh has brought this on himself!” You are not sure what is going on but Christian and at least a dozen of the crew seem to have taken control of the ship and no one is really opposing him, the only person arguing against him is the vitriolic Bligh. Christian has decided to cast Bligh and his loyal companions adrift and orders the jolly boat lowered but it found to have several leaks so he orders the cutter lowered instead. It soon becomes apparent that the cutter is too small for all the loyal crew who want to leave with Bligh. “You are all pirates!” Bligh shouts at Christian. “Any man who stays on this ship is a pirate and will be hunted down and hanged by the Royal Navy!” “Get him away!” men shout loudly. The launch, a twenty-three-foot-long boat designed for fifteen men is soon in the water and Bligh is roughly thrown in. Several other crew members starting with Fryer join him, not so much because they like him but because they don’t want to stay on the ship and be labelled as pirates, a crime which carries the death penalty. Soon there are more people in the boat than there is room for and still others want to get in, the ship seems almost equally divided between Bligh Loyalists and Mutineers. You stand by the rail looking down at the crowded boat. The island of Tofua is visible nearby and as Christian is throwing a sextant, compass, charts, tools and even four cutlasses (!) down into the boat it seems the nineteen, loyal people in the boat have a good chance of reaching it in safety. It seems that the twenty-five mutineers or pirates remaining on the Bounty (including at least four people who want to go with Bligh but who there is no room for) are planning to return to Tahiti. You must choose whether to go with Bligh or remain aboard the Bounty, a decision that will affect the rest of your life. > You go in the boat with the Loyalists and Bligh You make your decision and with a deep breath you jump off the Bounty to become the twentieth man in the Loyalist boat. Seconds after you jump in the Mutineers cast the rope off connecting the launch to the Bounty and your boat steers away. There is barely room to move but you row clear of the Bounty to the sound of the pirates’ jeers and last insults and Bligh watches silently as hundreds of his precious breadfruit plants are thrown over the sides of the ship. The last you see of the Bounty is her turning away and sailing east, presumably back to Tahiti. Her sails get smaller and smaller before she is just a speck on the horizon and eventually, like a ghost ship or the memories of a dream, she vanishes from sight. You all stare at Bligh with hostility while he clears his throat and doesn’t even have the good grace to look ashamed at the predicament he has landed you all in. “Men, the Dutch settlement of Coupang in Timor is about 4,000 miles west of here. With careful navigation and rationing I can get us there. From there we can take ships back to England and report the Mutiny on the Bounty to the Admiralty who will send ships out to Tahiti to hunt down those pirates and bring them back to England for justice. We can do it men.” No one answers but you all just go on staring angrily at him in silence. Tofua is little more than an active volcano jutting from the sea and the plume of smoke rising from it is clearly visible. With hard rowing you reach the island the day after the mutiny and spread out to search for supplies. There are Natives on the island and unlike the Tahitians they do not appear to be friendly. Within a few days it appears that your return to England will not be as easy as Bligh claims... > You attack！ After four days ashore with the Natives gathering in increasing numbers and hardly any supplies to be found Bligh gives the order for you all to return to the boat and resume sailing westwards. As soon as the Natives see you are leaving they attack, they race to the shore and run through the water towards you armed with spears and axes. You are pushing off as fast as you can but one fast moving Native manages to grab a rope attached to the stern. You all quickly realize you can’t escape as long as he is holding that rope. > You jump off the boat and run out to fight the Native You grab a cutlass and clamber out of the boat, splashing through waist-deep water towards the warrior. He lets go of the rope and jabs at you with a spear but you side-step it and drive your cutlass through his chest. As you turn back towards the boat you find it is indeed escaping, rowing quickly out to sea. You start to stagger after it but a Native comes up behind you and hits you on the head with a rock. You fall down into the foaming waves and more natives beat and stab you to death, your sacrifice enabling your comrades to escape to safety. > You are Dead So you are dead, in fact in the immortal words of John Cleese you are no more, you have ceased to be, bereft of life you rest in peace and are, in fact, an ex-sailor. The great thing about this story (and possibly life in general if the Buddhists are right) is that you don't have to stay this way. You can return to the story either from the beginning or from the Mutiny on the Bounty, if you feel like exploring different story branches. Alternatively if, like a glutton at a delicious feast, you really feel like you couldn't take anymore of this wonderful writing, you can End the Game and Leave Comments. If that is the case thank you for taking the time to read my story.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After four days ashore with the Natives gathering in increasing numbers and hardly any supplies to be found Bligh gives the order for you all to return to the boat and resume sailing westwards. As soon as the Natives see you are leaving they attack, they race to the shore and run through the water towards you armed with spears and axes. You are pushing off as fast as you can but one fast moving Native manages to grab a rope attached to the stern. You all quickly realize you can’t escape as long as he is holding that rope. > You let someone else get off the boat You remain on the boat and watch as stout Quartermaster John Norton jumps overboard, crosses to the Native holding the rope, dodges his spear and cuts him down with his cutlass. The dying Native releases the rope releasing your boat and enabling the oarsmen to row rapidly away from the shore. Norton turns to follow you but is knocked down by a Native with a rock and as he tries to rise he is beaten and stabbed to death. The rest of you escape by throwing spare garments of clothes into the sea, which pursuing Natives stop to pick up. The month following your escape from Tofua is a difficult one for you. The weather is constantly cold, there are frequent storms and practically all of your time is spent either rowing or bailing out the boat. Sleep for more than a few hours at a time is impossible. You have nothing but tiny amounts of bread and water, your stomach shrinks massively and you are constantly thirsty. Life becomes blurred. By the time you arrive at Restoration Island you can barely drag yourselves ashore. The island receives its name from Bligh after you all find fresh fruit and oysters which go a little way to restoring your strength. You find deserted Native campsites and after your previous experience you are not keen to make contact with them. After two days resting you sail on, reaching an island Bligh calls Sunday Island the next day where tensions again erupt. > Another Argument On Sunday Island on the last day of May Bligh nearly faces another mutiny. You and the Carpenter William Purcell spend the morning clam hunting and return to the boat that evening with your findings. Bligh orders you to hand the clams over and, considering them personal property, you both refuse. “You ungrateful scoundrels!” Bligh exclaims. “If I had not brought you here you would all have perished! “If it had not been for you we should not have been here,” you reply angrily. “You are scoundrels!” Bligh exclaims. “I am not a scoundrel,” Purcell replies coldly. “I am as good a man as you.” Bligh grabs a cutlass from the boat and Purcell does likewise. “Mr Cole, arrest both of those men,” Fryer calls out to the Boatswain. “You will do no such thing,” Bligh snaps. “There are other methods in making people do as they are ordered without fighting them sir,” you tell Bligh stepping between him and Purcell. Bligh glares at you for a moment, apparently too angry to speak, and then abruptly throws his cutlass into the boat. Purcell does likewise and the next day you sail on to Coupang. Hardly anyone talks to Bligh more than is absolutely necessary, no one can stand him any longer. All of you are too sick, weak and tired and the monotonous waves roll you onwards steadily until finally, gloriously, you arrive at Coupang. The little Dutch town huddled against the waves looks the sweetest place on earth as you all sail in, dock and disembark, feeling like kissing the ground. Bligh coldly orders Fryer and you to stay and guard the boat while he leads the rest ashore. You ignore him and join the others in receiving food and medical attention from the kind inhabitants of the colony. Your troubles are a long way from over yet however. > You getting home Coupang is a small settlement with no large vessels so Bligh arranges the purchase of a derelict 34-foot schooner he names HMS Resource and orders you all to work hard in making it seaworthy enough to sail on to the larger port of Batavia on the island of Java where you should be able to find a ship going back to England. Tensions remain with Bligh bickering frequently with Fryer, Purcell and now also Acting Surgeon Thomas Ledward, who accuses Bligh of eating more than his fair share of supplies. Bligh responds by insisting that you all work hard so that you may get back to England sooner, despite your still generally weak state. > You work hard You push yourself hard but it turns out to be a mistake, you soon contract a serious inflammatory fever, as does David Nelson the gentle but weak Botanist Bligh also brought with him on the Bounty. Both of you worsen, despite the best efforts of the Doctor and even Bligh’s comments that “your generally good conduct and manly fortitude deserve special tribute to your memory” fail to raise your spirits. You succumb to the sickness a short time before your companions sail to Batavia and safety.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Coupang is a small settlement with no large vessels so Bligh arranges the purchase of a derelict 34-foot schooner he names HMS Resource and orders you all to work hard in making it seaworthy enough to sail on to the larger port of Batavia on the island of Java where you should be able to find a ship going back to England. Tensions remain with Bligh bickering frequently with Fryer, Purcell and now also Acting Surgeon Thomas Ledward, who accuses Bligh of eating more than his fair share of supplies. Bligh responds by insisting that you all work hard so that you may get back to England sooner, despite your still generally weak state. > You work at your own speed You continue to work steadily but Bligh’s relentless hectoring drives the gentle but weak Botanist David Nelson into a tropical disease which claims his life the month after you arrived in Coupang. By August the HMS Resource is ready and the remaining eighteen Loyalists under Bligh make a short voyage to the busy Indonesian port of Batavia, another Dutch port, arriving on the first day of October. The constant bickering between Bligh and the rest of you continue during this voyage. At one point Fryer declares to Bligh “You do not only use me ill but every man in the vessel will say the same.” “Yes by God, we are used damn ill and you do not have any right to do so,” Purcell declares. Bligh grabs a cutlass and has the two men clapped in irons, releasing Fryer after an apology but keeping Purcell imprisoned for the last ten days of the trip. Bligh quickly begins making arrangements to sell the HMS Resource and the boat you left the Bounty on in order to finance the return home of all of you. The boat has been mislaid and officials in Batavia have mistakenly moored it in a mosquito-infested inland bit of water. Bligh orders Seaman Thomas Hall to go and retrieve it despite the risk from the mosquitoes. > You help Hall retrieve the boat You and Hall have to venture through thick clouds of mosquitoes to move the boat and by the time you have rowed it back to where it should be both of you have been badly bitten many times. Malaria sets in almost immediately and within days you both succumb to the illness. An indifferent Bligh sails home soon after leaving most of his loyal crew behind in Batavia.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You continue to work steadily but Bligh’s relentless hectoring drives the gentle but weak Botanist David Nelson into a tropical disease which claims his life the month after you arrived in Coupang. By August the HMS Resource is ready and the remaining eighteen Loyalists under Bligh make a short voyage to the busy Indonesian port of Batavia, another Dutch port, arriving on the first day of October. The constant bickering between Bligh and the rest of you continue during this voyage. At one point Fryer declares to Bligh “You do not only use me ill but every man in the vessel will say the same.” “Yes by God, we are used damn ill and you do not have any right to do so,” Purcell declares. Bligh grabs a cutlass and has the two men clapped in irons, releasing Fryer after an apology but keeping Purcell imprisoned for the last ten days of the trip. Bligh quickly begins making arrangements to sell the HMS Resource and the boat you left the Bounty on in order to finance the return home of all of you. The boat has been mislaid and officials in Batavia have mistakenly moored it in a mosquito-infested inland bit of water. Bligh orders Seaman Thomas Hall to go and retrieve it despite the risk from the mosquitoes. > You let him do it on his own You avoid helping Hall and predictably he becomes sick with malaria from mosquito bites while retrieving the boat and quickly dies. Bligh has also become sick with malaria and just five days after Hall’s death he books passage aboard the Dutch ship Vlydte bound for Portsmouth. By this point hostility against him is so widespread that only two men, his clerk John Samuel and his servant John Smith are willing to travel with him, the remaining thirteen prefer to wait under Fryer's command for another ship. > You return to England with Bligh The voyage back to England is thankfully smooth sailing. It takes two months to reach Cape Town in South Africa, which the Vlydte departs in the first days of 1790. Three months later you are back in England after over two years away and never have you been so relieved to return to your native country. While Bligh goes to London to report the Mutiny on the Bounty to the Admiralty you remain in Portsmouth to rest and wait for your comrades to rejoin you in the safety of England. > You hunting for the Bounty Mutineers Just thirteen of the twenty loyal crew members cast adrift with Bligh survive to return to England in the spring and summer of 1790, yourself among them. Bligh quickly reports the Mutiny on the Bounty and publishes a book about it, snappily titled A Narrative Of The Mutiny On Board His Majesty’s Ship Bounty And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew In The Ship’s Boat, which you never both to read. In October Bligh is court martialed for the loss of the Bounty, acquitted and subsequently promoted from Lieutenant to Post Captain. The Admiralty begins making plans to deal with the twenty-five Bounty pirates and decides to send the 24-gun frigate HMS Pandora with 134 men under Captain Edward England to Tahiti to capture all the pirates they can find and bring them back to England for trial. The Admiralty puts out a request for former crew of the Bounty to join the voyage to help identify the pirates and Midshipman Thomas Haywood volunteers for the voyage in exchange for a promotion to Third Lieutenant. You consider whether to go or not. > You sail with the Pandora to Tahiti to hunt down your former companions It is with considerable trepidation that you agree to a second voyage to Tahiti but to your relief this one goes smoothly. The Pandora leaves Spithead and sails directly to Tahiti, travelling successfully around Cape Horn. After a swift four month voyage, which last time took you nearly a year, you arrive off the familiar tropical paradise of Tahiti and sail into Toaroa Bay. You and Lieutenant Haywood, a lazy and arrogant character whom you despise, remain on board the HMS Pandora while parties of heavily armed sailors go ashore. They swiftly return with three men (Armourer Joseph Coleman and Midshipmen Peter Heywood and George Stewart) who surrender themselves and the following day they capture another man. The remaining Mutineers flee into the mountains prompting sailors to scour the island in order to capture them all. Within two weeks three more men are captured and a fourth has surrendered. By the middle of April six more men have been captured bringing the total up to fourteen of the twenty-five who remained on the Bounty, including all four of the men who wanted to join Bligh in the boat but had no space to do so. They claim two of the remaining men were killed in fights on the island while the other nine Mutineers sailed away aboard the Bounty with several Tahitians in September of 1789 and they haven’t been seen since. The Natives confirm these stories. With nine Mutineers and the Bounty still missing Captain England hoists anchor on 8 May and sets sail to find them. The fourteen prisoners are kept in a specially designed prison on the Pandora's deck. > You disaster! The Pandora spends three fruitless months scouring the Pacific for signs of the remaining pirates and the Bounty while the fourteen Mutineers they have captured are kept imprisoned in a makeshift prison cell on the quarterdeck inevitably dubbed “Pandora’s Box”. The voyage is hopeless: with hundreds, if not thousands, of islands to hide on the chances of finding the Bounty and the Mutineers is small. Disaster strikes you once more one summer’s day when the Pandora runs aground on the Great Barrier Reef. She immediately begins sinking and all efforts to either free her or patch up the damage is hopeless. By the next day she is listing worse than ever and you and Haywood are among the first into the boats. The Mutineers are not released in time and four of them drown, only ten swim to the safety of the boats. The survivors of the Pandora, about one hundred of you including the prisoners re-assemble on a small sand cay. Once more you are sailing to Coupang in four open boats and from there onto Batavia and thence to England, this time with your ten prisoners in tow. The prospect of repeating the same arduous trip you took before fills you with dismay but there is nothing else you can do. > Another remarkable voyage This time your return back to England is much easier than last time. You reach Coupang after a voyage of twenty days and from there arrange transport on to Batavia. In Batavia you are lucky enough to find the HMS Gorgon at anchor and board it to return to England. You reach England one summer’s day and disembark at Spithead with your ten prisoners in tow. Altogether fifty-six of the one hundred and thirty-four-man crew of the Pandora died during the sinking or of disease as well as four of the prisoners. Captain Edwards is court martialed and acquitted of the loss of the Pandora and the Admiralty prepares for the trial of the surviving Bounty Mutineers. > You trials Following your safe return to England a Court Martial is quickly arranged to try the ten captured mutineers you and Haywood managed to help the crew of the Pandora get back. Bligh and another of your former comrades, a sailor called Lawrence LeBogue, have gone sailing on a second voyage to try and do what Bligh failed to do on his first voyage and deliver breadfruit from Tahiti to the slave plantations in Jamaica. The Admiralty requests that as many of the eleven remaining loyal members of the Bounty crew that can be found (not counting Bligh and LeBogue) should testify against the ten captured mutineers and you read in newspapers that seven, including Fryer, Cole, Peckover, Purcell and Haywood, have volunteered their services. You wonder whether you should go or not. > You testify against your former companions You decide to attend the court martial proceedings aboard the HMS Duke overseen by Admiral Hood. Of the ten prisoners Carpenter’s Mates Thomas McIntosh and Charles Norman, Armourer Joseph Coleman and Seaman Michael Byrne have letters from Bligh allowing that they wanted to join him in his boat but had to remain aboard the Bounty due to lack of room. They are quickly acquitted. Sailing Master John Fryer, Boatswain William Cole, Gunner William Peckover, Carpenter William Purcell, Lieutenants Thomas Hayward and John Hallet, Seaman John Smith and yourself all testify against the six remainder: Midshipman Peter Heywood, Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison and Seamen Thomas Burkett, Thomas Ellison, John Millward and William Muspratt. With eighteen former crew members of the Bounty present it is the closest you get to a reunion. Heywood fights a strong case, pointing out he was just sixteen at the time, that he slept through most of what was going on and arrived on deck too late to help and wanted to join Bligh in the boat but there was no room. Witnesses agree they never saw him helping the mutineers but also that he never did much to help the Loyalists either. Ultimately the Judges decided to pardon him. Morrison is another man who wins a pardon, arguing a tenacious defense that successfully convinced the Judge’s he had also taken no part either for or against the Mutineers. Muspratt has a harder time as he was seen at the time of the mutiny standing by with a musket in his hands. He wins a pardon largely based on a technicality: his request to call Byrn and Norman as witnesses was refused and a mistrial was later ruled. Burkett, Ellison and Millward had no chance. Burkett was among those who forced Bligh from his cabin at gunpoint. Ellison and Millward both had cutlasses in their hands and took an active part in forcing people into the boat. All three are sentenced to be hung and two months after the court martial all three are executed upon the HMS Brunswick in Spithead and their bodies left hanging for all to see. The following summer Bligh returned from his breadfruit expedition, doubtless disappointed to have missed the trials of the Bounty mutineers. This voyage had been a success but on bringing the breadfruit to Jamaica the slaves refused to eat it, not liking the taste. It seems that the reason behind the voyage of the Bounty, and everything that arose from it, was fundamentally pointless. > The Future By the end of 1793 there are just thirteen men who survived the boat journey to Coupang in England, including you. Of these you have lost contact with Gunner William Peckover, Clerk John Samuel and Captain’s Servant John Smith. You know some of your former companions have had enough and want to retire from the sea but most are happy to keep serving. You must make your choice. > You retire from the sea The years go by and as you age you read in newspapers about what befalls your former comrades. Lieutenant John Hallett dies in 1794 of lingering malaria from your voyages. Lieutenant Thomas Haywood drowns when the HMS Swift sinks in 1798, Sailmaker Lawrence LeBogue dies of a fall the same year. Quartermaster’s Mate George Simpson dies on land in 1801. Others go on to long and distinguished careers. William Bligh and John Fryer both enjoy success and promotion in the Navy, both die in 1817. Midshipman Robert Tinkler dies in 1820. Boatswain William Cole dies ashore in 1833 and the last of your companions, opinionated Carpenter William Purcell dies in 1834. You live on, well into your sixties and in your later years you finally learn what happened to the Bounty and its missing nine Mutineers, including Fletcher Christian. In 1808 an American ship, the Topaz, happens upon isolated Pitcairn Island. There the sailors are astonished to discover a thriving Tahitian Community ruled over by one man: John Adams. He is the sole survivor of the nine Mutineers and six Natives who landed on that island and variously killed each other or died of illness leaving Adams patriarch of a thriving community of forty-six people, except for him all women or children. The Admiralty decides against taking any action. John Adams, the King of Pitcairn Island, dies in 1829. > You conclusion By the end of 1835 you have outlived every single one of the forty-six men who sailed from England aboard the Bounty in the winter of 1787 and go to your grave peacefully. From 1787-1793 twenty-four, over half, of the Bounty's crew died of disease, drowned, were killed by Natives or each other or were killed in England. Over the next fourteen years seven more met similar fates. Of the entire Crew only nine are known to have definitely suffered natural deaths. You are one of the few lucky ones who experienced disease, piracy, Native attacks, shipwrecks, fighting and all the other hazards that befell you and survived. Ultimately hundreds of deaths including seventy-eight Natives killed on Tubai, and the fifty-eight who died from the HMS Pandora’s crew, are connected with the Mutiny on the Bounty. Even the 2012 death of Claudene Christian, Fletcher Christian’s descendent, who drowned when the Bounty, a replica of the HMS Bounty, sank during Hurricane Sandy, can be connected to the Mutiny. Singularly each of these events, the Mutiny, the wrecking of the Pandora, the Trials of the Mutineers in Spithead, Massacre Day on Pitcairn, the loss of the replica Bounty were fairly common place events, especially in the 1700’s and 1800’s in England but taken altogether they form a remarkable story. The greatest legacy of this remarkable legacy is the still-populated island of Pitcairn, with approximately fifty people descended from Pirates it remains the smallest country in the world. So who was ultimately to blame for the Mutiny, Bligh or Christian? Carpenter William Purcell, who hated Bligh, had no doubt. “Christian was a gentleman,” he told Christian’s brother after his return to England. “A brave man and every officer and seaman on board the ship would have gone through fire and water to serve him. As much as I have lost and suffered by him if he could be restored to his country I should be the first to go without wages in search of him.” It was Christian’s fate, in a moment of madness, to set off a chain of events that would end with him being shot in the back while carrying wood across his garden on Pitcairn four years later. There is a tale oft-told on Pitcairn of a certain cave that Christian had stocked with muskets in case he needed to make a last stand if the island were ever found by the Royal Navy. Often he sat alone up there at night, mournfully reflecting on all that he had lost and the nineteen men he had cast adrift at sea for the sins of one of them. The story of the Mutiny on the Bounty can be seen as much as a Tragedy as an Adventure. Thank you for taking the time to read my story. > You sources I will end this story game with a few notes about my Sources. The story of the Mutiny on the Bounty has been made into movies five times, in 1916, in 1933 (with Errol Flynn), in 1935 (with Clark Gable), in 1962 (with Marlon Brando and Richard Harris) and in 1984 (with Laurence Olivier, Anthony Hopkins, Mel Gibson, Daniel Day-Lewis and Liam Neeson). The most recent version is also the most accurate and all are worth watching, if only for entertainment value. Wikipedia gave me a good start on sources about the Bounty, the Pitcairn Islands Study Centre proved an invaluable resource and the Famous Trials page on the Mutiny on the Bounty by Doug Linder provided me with detailed accounts of the 1792 trial of the surviving mutineers. Firsthand accounts by William Bligh and a rather good later 1831 book by Sir John Barrow, accessed through Project Gutenberg, also helped immerse myself in the period including Bligh’s bizarre vocabulary of insults. As the replica of the HMS Bounty used in the 1984 movie in anchored off Lantau Island in Hong Kong I took the opportunity to pop over from Shenzhen and see it (from a distance as it is a privately-owned ship) on one of my rest days. This replica was made in 1979 and helped drive home the small size of the Bounty, as already noted a second vessel made in 1962 sank during Hurricane Sandy fifty years later resulting in the death of two people including Fletcher Christian’s descendent Claudene Christian. The Christian Science Monitor called her death “an almost inexplicable twist in that family’s legacy”. One of my biggest hopes for the future is to one day visit Pitcairn Island. Thank you for taking the time to read my story. NOTE: IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN LEARNING ABOUT THE VARIOUS FATES OF THE BOUNTY CREW USE THIS ITEM.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>By the end of 1793 there are just thirteen men who survived the boat journey to Coupang in England, including you. Of these you have lost contact with Gunner William Peckover, Clerk John Samuel and Captain’s Servant John Smith. You know some of your former companions have had enough and want to retire from the sea but most are happy to keep serving. You must make your choice. > You find another ship You decide to resume service at sea and look about for whom to serve. William Bligh is now Captain of the HMS Calcutta, you could serve with him. Sailing Master John Fryer is now serving with the HMS Britannia. Lieutenant John Hallett is with the HMS Penelope. Lieutenant Thomas Haywood is the Lieutenant Commanding of the sloop HMS Swift. Lieutenant Robert Tinkler is aboard the HMS Isis. Sailmaker Lawrence LeBogue is serving aboard the HMS Jason. You can choose who to follow. > You captain William Bligh You join William Bligh and serve with him for the next twenty years. You are with him at the Battle of Camperdown in 1797 and fight for him under Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. In 1805 you accompany him to Australia to rule as Governor and stick with him when he is deposed in yet another mutiny, a Rum Rebellion in 1808 in which he is imprisoned for two years before returning to England. He is cleared of blame once more, serves at sea for three more years before retiring, a Vice Admiral. He dies in 1817 at the age of 63. You live on, well into your sixties and in your later years you finally learn what happened to the Bounty and its missing nine Mutineers, including Fletcher Christian. In 1808 an American ship, the Topaz, happens upon isolated Pitcairn Island. There the sailors are astonished to discover a thriving Tahitian Community ruled over by one man: John Adams. He is the sole survivor of the nine Mutineers and six Natives who landed on that island and variously killed each other or died of illness leaving Adams patriarch of a thriving community of forty-six people. The Admiralty decides against taking any action. John Adams, the King of Pitcairn Island, dies in 1829.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to resume service at sea and look about for whom to serve. William Bligh is now Captain of the HMS Calcutta, you could serve with him. Sailing Master John Fryer is now serving with the HMS Britannia. Lieutenant John Hallett is with the HMS Penelope. Lieutenant Thomas Haywood is the Lieutenant Commanding of the sloop HMS Swift. Lieutenant Robert Tinkler is aboard the HMS Isis. Sailmaker Lawrence LeBogue is serving aboard the HMS Jason. You can choose who to follow. > You sailing Master John Fryer You join John Fryer and serve with him for the next eighteen years. You are with him under Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. He rises to become one of the foremost Sailing Masters in the Royal Navy before retiring in 1812 and dying five years later at the age of 63. You retire from the sea soon after. You live on, well into your sixties and in your later years you finally learn what happened to the Bounty and its missing nine Mutineers, including Fletcher Christian. In 1808 an American ship, the Topaz, happens upon isolated Pitcairn Island. There the sailors are astonished to discover a thriving Tahitian Community ruled over by one man: John Adams. He is the sole survivor of the nine Mutineers and six Natives who landed on that island and variously killed each other or died of illness leaving Adams patriarch of a thriving community of forty-six people. The Admiralty decides against taking any action. John Adams, the King of Pitcairn Island, dies in 1829.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to resume service at sea and look about for whom to serve. William Bligh is now Captain of the HMS Calcutta, you could serve with him. Sailing Master John Fryer is now serving with the HMS Britannia. Lieutenant John Hallett is with the HMS Penelope. Lieutenant Thomas Haywood is the Lieutenant Commanding of the sloop HMS Swift. Lieutenant Robert Tinkler is aboard the HMS Isis. Sailmaker Lawrence LeBogue is serving aboard the HMS Jason. You can choose who to follow. > You lieutenant John Hallett You join Lieutenant John Hallett aboard the HMS Penelope but unfortunately neither of you are destined for a long career. You continue to suffer from malaria you became infected with during your voyage and your health worsens. Despite the fact you are both in your early twenties it quickly becomes apparent it is fatal. The two of you journey to Hallett’s home in Bedford where you succumb to your illness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to resume service at sea and look about for whom to serve. William Bligh is now Captain of the HMS Calcutta, you could serve with him. Sailing Master John Fryer is now serving with the HMS Britannia. Lieutenant John Hallett is with the HMS Penelope. Lieutenant Thomas Haywood is the Lieutenant Commanding of the sloop HMS Swift. Lieutenant Robert Tinkler is aboard the HMS Isis. Sailmaker Lawrence LeBogue is serving aboard the HMS Jason. You can choose who to follow. > You lieutenant Thomas Haywood You join Lieutenant Thomas Haywood aboard his sloop the HMS Swift and spend four happy years running letters for the Royal Navy in Asian waters. Your careers come to an end one terrible night when your ship is sunk with all hands in the South China Sea. The sea is an unforgiving mystery.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to resume service at sea and look about for whom to serve. William Bligh is now Captain of the HMS Calcutta, you could serve with him. Sailing Master John Fryer is now serving with the HMS Britannia. Lieutenant John Hallett is with the HMS Penelope. Lieutenant Thomas Haywood is the Lieutenant Commanding of the sloop HMS Swift. Lieutenant Robert Tinkler is aboard the HMS Isis. Sailmaker Lawrence LeBogue is serving aboard the HMS Jason. You can choose who to follow. > You lieutenant Robert Tinkler You serve loyally under Lieutenant Robert Tinkler for the next twenty-six years. He rises from Lieutenant to Commander of the HMS Isis after good service under Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. You sail the oceans for many years before Tinkler, his health suffering, retired to Norwich where he dies in 1820. You retire from the sea that same year and live a long and peaceful retirement. You live on, well into your sixties and in your later years you finally learn what happened to the Bounty and its missing nine Mutineers, including Fletcher Christian. In 1808 an American ship, the Topaz, happens upon isolated Pitcairn Island. There the sailors are astonished to discover a thriving Tahitian Community ruled over by one man: John Adams. He is the sole survivor of the nine Mutineers and six Natives who landed on that island and variously killed each other or died of illness leaving Adams patriarch of a thriving community of forty-six people. The Admiralty decides against taking any action. John Adams, the King of Pitcairn Island, dies in 1829.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to resume service at sea and look about for whom to serve. William Bligh is now Captain of the HMS Calcutta, you could serve with him. Sailing Master John Fryer is now serving with the HMS Britannia. Lieutenant John Hallett is with the HMS Penelope. Lieutenant Thomas Haywood is the Lieutenant Commanding of the sloop HMS Swift. Lieutenant Robert Tinkler is aboard the HMS Isis. Sailmaker Lawrence LeBogue is serving aboard the HMS Jason. You can choose who to follow. > You sailmaker Lawrence LeBogue You join Sailmaker Lawrence LeBogue and enjoy his steadfast and resolute companionship during three years of voyages around the world aboard the HMS Jason. Your voyages come to an end one terrible day when a poorly tied rope gives way beneath your hands. Both of you plummet to the deck, killed instantly by the fall. Your bodies are tied in hammocks and thrown overboard: just two more dead sailors.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Following your safe return to England a Court Martial is quickly arranged to try the ten captured mutineers you and Haywood managed to help the crew of the Pandora get back. Bligh and another of your former comrades, a sailor called Lawrence LeBogue, have gone sailing on a second voyage to try and do what Bligh failed to do on his first voyage and deliver breadfruit from Tahiti to the slave plantations in Jamaica. The Admiralty requests that as many of the eleven remaining loyal members of the Bounty crew that can be found (not counting Bligh and LeBogue) should testify against the ten captured mutineers and you read in newspapers that seven, including Fryer, Cole, Peckover, Purcell and Haywood, have volunteered their services. You wonder whether you should go or not. > You remain in Portsmouth You stay away from the trial of your shipmates and read about the proceedings in the newspapers. The detained Loyalists Carpenter’s Mates Thomas McIntosh and Charles Norman, Armourer Joseph Coleman and Seaman Michael Byrne were quickly pardoned. Midshipman Peter Heywood, Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison and Seaman William Muspratt manage to persuade the Judges they took no active part in the mutiny and win a pardon. Seamen Thomas Burkett, Thomas Ellison and John Millward are found guilty and executed. The following summer Bligh returned from his breadfruit expedition, doubtless disappointed to have missed the trials of the Bounty mutineers. This voyage had been a success but on bringing the breadfruit to Jamaica the slaves refused to eat it, not liking the taste. It seems that the reason behind the voyage of the Bounty, and everything that arose from it, was fundamentally pointless.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just thirteen of the twenty loyal crew members cast adrift with Bligh survive to return to England in the spring and summer of 1790, yourself among them. Bligh quickly reports the Mutiny on the Bounty and publishes a book about it, snappily titled A Narrative Of The Mutiny On Board His Majesty’s Ship Bounty And The Subsequent Voyage Of Part Of The Crew In The Ship’s Boat, which you never both to read. In October Bligh is court martialed for the loss of the Bounty, acquitted and subsequently promoted from Lieutenant to Post Captain. The Admiralty begins making plans to deal with the twenty-five Bounty pirates and decides to send the 24-gun frigate HMS Pandora with 134 men under Captain Edward England to Tahiti to capture all the pirates they can find and bring them back to England for trial. The Admiralty puts out a request for former crew of the Bounty to join the voyage to help identify the pirates and Midshipman Thomas Haywood volunteers for the voyage in exchange for a promotion to Third Lieutenant. You consider whether to go or not. > You remain in England You remain in England while the HMS Pandora sets sail and continue to rest for another year. To your amazement you soon get word that William Bligh is setting sail to Tahiti again to fulfil the mission he failed at last time: gather breadfruit and transport them to Jamaica. This time he is traveling aboard the HMS Providence, a much larger and powerful 10-gun sloop-of-war with a crew of one hundred. Among this crew is Lawrence LeBogue, a sailor who survived the open boat voyage to Coupang and Batavia with you and Bligh. Bligh sends a letter to you asking if you would like to join him on this voyage. > You accept Against your better judgement you agree to sail with Bligh again. To your surprise this voyage goes absolutely smoothly. After leaving England in August of 1791 you reach Tahiti the following April. There you learn that the previous summer the HMS Pandora arrived in Tahiti and captured fourteen of the Bounty mutineers (two having previously been killed in violent altercations). Nine of the mutineers had sailed off aboard the Bounty in the autumn of 1789 but the Pandora left in search of them and Bligh is confident all the Pirates will be tracked down and captured. You stay in Tahiti only three months, leaving that July and sailing onto Jamaica. You reach Jamaica in January of 1793 with the breadfruit for the plantation slaves where you discover something that makes you laugh. The slaves can’t stand the taste of breadfruit and refuse to eat it. The whole breadfruit expeditions and everything that arose from them were, fundamentally, pointless. You stay in Jamaica for five months, enjoying the Caribbean and all it has to offer, before sailing onto England, arriving that September. There you learn more news of the Pandora: at the same time you set sail she was wrecked on a reef and many of the crew, including four of the captured pirates, drowned. The remainder struggled back to England last year and after trials three of the mutineers were hanged, of the others four had been the detained loyalists while the last three escaped execution due to extenuating circumstances. The Admiralty now feels that enough justice has been done. The whereabouts of the Bounty and the nine mutineers who sailed from Tahiti in the autumn of 1789 must, it appears, remain a mystery of the sea.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You remain in England while the HMS Pandora sets sail and continue to rest for another year. To your amazement you soon get word that William Bligh is setting sail to Tahiti again to fulfil the mission he failed at last time: gather breadfruit and transport them to Jamaica. This time he is traveling aboard the HMS Providence, a much larger and powerful 10-gun sloop-of-war with a crew of one hundred. Among this crew is Lawrence LeBogue, a sailor who survived the open boat voyage to Coupang and Batavia with you and Bligh. Bligh sends a letter to you asking if you would like to join him on this voyage. > You refuse You decline Bligh’s unattractive offer to sail with him again and remain in England for another year. The time passes quietly until, quite unexpectedly, the crew of the HMS Pandora return to Portsmouth aboard another ship. It seems that on arrival in Tahiti the previous year the Pandora found and captured fourteen of the mutineers, two having been killed in fights and another nine having sailed off aboard the Bounty previously. While searching for the Bounty and the remaining pirates the Pandora sank off the Great Reef with the loss of many lives, including four of the mutineers. The surviving crew, including the remaining ten mutineers, sailed to Coupang in open boats, much as you did, then to Batavia and from there returned to England. The Admiralty requests that as many of the eleven remaining loyal members of the Bounty crew that can be found (Bligh and LeBogue are still off on Bligh’s second breadfruit voyage) should testify against the ten captured mutineers and you read in newspapers that seven, including Fryer, Cole, Peckover, Purcell and Haywood, have volunteered their services. You wonder whether you should go or not.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You avoid helping Hall and predictably he becomes sick with malaria from mosquito bites while retrieving the boat and quickly dies. Bligh has also become sick with malaria and just five days after Hall’s death he books passage aboard the Dutch ship Vlydte bound for Portsmouth. By this point hostility against him is so widespread that only two men, his clerk John Samuel and his servant John Smith are willing to travel with him, the remaining thirteen prefer to wait under Fryer's command for another ship. > You remain on Java waiting for another ship When Bligh and his two companions depart there remains fourteen of the Loyal Bounty crew in Java under the command of Sailing Master John Fryer. He finally finds a ship willing to take you all home but they require you all to do some labor first, either moving supplies from the island’s interior upriver or by the docks loading them on. A party of four: Midshipman William Elphinstone, Quartermaster Peter Linkletter, Acting Surgeon Thomas Ledward and Seaman Robert Lamb volunteer to move supplies down river while the rest work with Fryer to load the ship. > You help move the supplies by river You help the other group move the supplies by river and quickly realize you have made a mistake. All five of you are seriously bitten by mosquitoes and quickly develop malaria. You are the first to die just ten days after getting the illness, the others die either on Batavia or on the ship on the way home. Your companions return to England safely where they join Bligh in reporting the Mutiny on the Bounty.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>When Bligh and his two companions depart there remains fourteen of the Loyal Bounty crew in Java under the command of Sailing Master John Fryer. He finally finds a ship willing to take you all home but they require you all to do some labor first, either moving supplies from the island’s interior upriver or by the docks loading them on. A party of four: Midshipman William Elphinstone, Quartermaster Peter Linkletter, Acting Surgeon Thomas Ledward and Seaman Robert Lamb volunteer to move supplies down river while the rest work with Fryer to load the ship. > You help load the supplies on the ship You sensibly stay with the ship while the others contract malaria from mosquito bites obtained while working on the river. Elphinstone and Linkletter die before even leaving Bavaria while Lamb and Ledward succumb on the journey home. Your ship is finally ready to depart on the first day of December and you reach Cape Town in February of 1790. You stay there for one month before sailing on, finally arriving back to England in the summer after two and a half years away. It seems like a lifetime… but your trials are not over yet.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Early the next morning you are woken from your sleep by wild and confused shouting that seems to come from all around the ship. You and the other sailors spring from your hammocks and rush out on deck to see a bizarre sight. Christian and several other men armed variously with bayonets, cutlasses and muskets are herding a loudly protesting and threatening Bligh out onto deck. His hands are tightly bound behind his back. Christian seems half-crazy, he is alternately yelling at Bligh and talking to his fellow mutineers and has a heavy sounding plummet hanging from his neck (you later learn it was so he could jump overboard and drown if the mutiny failed). “Knock Christian down men,” Bligh is shouting. “Knock Christian down!” “Hold your tongue or you are a dead man!” Christian screams in his face. John Fryer emerges on deck at cutlass point. “Fletcher, you must stop this,” he calls out. “I have been in hell for weeks past!” Christian shouts at him. “Commander Bligh has brought this on himself!” You are not sure what is going on but Christian and at least a dozen of the crew seem to have taken control of the ship and no one is really opposing him, the only person arguing against him is the vitriolic Bligh. Christian has decided to cast Bligh and his loyal companions adrift and orders the jolly boat lowered but it found to have several leaks so he orders the cutter lowered instead. It soon becomes apparent that the cutter is too small for all the loyal crew who want to leave with Bligh. “You are all pirates!” Bligh shouts at Christian. “Any man who stays on this ship is a pirate and will be hunted down and hanged by the Royal Navy!” “Get him away!” men shout loudly. The launch, a twenty-three-foot-long boat designed for fifteen men is soon in the water and Bligh is roughly thrown in. Several other crew members starting with Fryer join him, not so much because they like him but because they don’t want to stay on the ship and be labelled as pirates, a crime which carries the death penalty. Soon there are more people in the boat than there is room for and still others want to get in, the ship seems almost equally divided between Bligh Loyalists and Mutineers. You stand by the rail looking down at the crowded boat. The island of Tofua is visible nearby and as Christian is throwing a sextant, compass, charts, tools and even four cutlasses (!) down into the boat it seems the nineteen, loyal people in the boat have a good chance of reaching it in safety. It seems that the twenty-five mutineers or pirates remaining on the Bounty (including at least four people who want to go with Bligh but who there is no room for) are planning to return to Tahiti. You must choose whether to go with Bligh or remain aboard the Bounty, a decision that will affect the rest of your life. > You remain abouard the Bounty with the Mutineers and Christian You remain aboard the Bounty with the twenty-five Pirates and watch as the boat containing Bligh and his companions fades away into the distance. Christian quickly assumes command of the ship and the navigating, realizing quickly that Tahiti will be the first place that the Royal Navy will look for you all but that Bligh will not get back to England, if he gets back to England, for at least one year and a ship from England would not arrive at Tahiti at least until the summer of 1791. Christian sets course for an island called Tubai hundreds of miles south of Tahiti which was sighted once twelve years ago but never visited. On arrival the Bounty is attacked by hundreds of warriors in canoes firing arrows at the ship. You and the other sailors return fire killing twelve of the Natives and forcing the rest to scatter. After three days off the island Christian decides to return to Tahiti to seek supplies and support from among the friendlier Natives there. You return to the welcome shores of Tahiti that June. > The Battle for Tubai Christian lets you all stay on Tahiti just ten days, long enough to pick up fresh supplies and twenty-eight Tahitians before sailing back to Tubai to try and seize control of it from the Natives. He builds a Fort which he calls Fort George and tries to man it against all comers. When the Natives attack they are repulsed again and again and sixty-six of them were killed, the only casualty on your side being Seaman Thomas Burkett who is speared through the side. Finally, Christian allows a vote between returning to Tahiti or staying on Tubai. The Pirates vote 16-9 to return to Tahiti. Christian sighs. “Gentlemen, I will carry you and land you wherever you please. I desire none to stay with me but I have one favor to request: that you will grant me the ship, tie the foresail, give me a few gallons of water and leave me to run before the wind and I shall land upon the first island the ship drives to. I have done such an act that I cannot stay on Tahiti. I will never live where I may be carried home to be a disgrace to my family.” “We shall never leave you Mr Christian,” Midshipman Edward Young promises him. “Go where you will!” After just three months in Tubai Christian sails the Bounty back to Tahiti. There the sixteen men who voted to remain there disembark the ship while Christian remains aboard with eight other companions. You have a decision to make now: you can remain on Tahiti knowing that it will probably be the first place the Royal Navy looks for you and your companions (if they look for you) or you can join Christian in sailing into the unknown to find the most obscure island possible, knowing you will probably never see England again. > You remain on Tahiti You remain on Tahiti and in the autumn of 1789 you watch the Bounty sail away for the last time. There is little left to do now but settle down to living among the Tahitians and hope that the first ship to visit the island will be a friendly one. Like many of the Mutineers you get into a long-term relationship with a beautiful Tahitian woman and enjoy long days spent relaxing on the beautiful island and nights of hard-drinking and partying with the locals. Seven months after the Bounty leaves violence erupts, threatening to destroy your peaceful existence. The problem is Matthew Thompson, a middle-aged and brutal man who alone out of all of you doesn’t have a romantic partner as the Native women avoid him. One day there is chaos in the village and you learn that Thompson, drunk on strong spirits, has tried to rape a Tahitian woman but was fought off when her screams brought her brother and other men running to her aid. You go out of your hut and walk towards Thompson’s, as do several of your companions, to find him outside his hut shouting at a small crowd of angry Tahitians to go away. He has a musket in his hands and without warning he raises it and fires it at a man. The bullet passes through a baby the man is holding in his arms and into his chest, killing them both. Reversing the musket Thompson swings it in a wild arc, cracking a woman in the head and knocking her unconscious to the ground. The rest of the crowd flees. Thompson sensibly flees to the shoreline, steals a canoe and paddles away to a small nearby island called Taiarapu. The rest of you have a meeting with the Tahitians where you emphasize that Thompson’s actions had nothing to do with the rest of you and you all condemn his cruelty. The Tahitians accept your explanations, largely because Quartermaster Charles Churchill has been adopted by a local chief and is gaining considerable status among the Natives. After some talk you decide on what to do: you will send a messenger to Thompson telling him he can safely return to Tahiti and when he comes back one or two of you will steal his muskets and cutlasses from his hut and give him no more to prevent him doing anymore harm. It is a risky thing to do as Thompson is a violent man but Churchill volunteers for the task. > You join Churchill in stealing Thompson's weapons You send a Native to Thompson telling him all is forgiven and he can return and a suspicious Thompson dutifully returns to Tahiti. About a week after his return when Thompson is elsewhere you and Churchill sneak into his hut, take his weapons and hide them in your own huts. Thompson is absolutely furious when he discovers the theft unfortunately for you a Native man with a grudge against Churchill tells him who stole the weapons. You are standing talking to Churchill one day when, without warning Thompson, comes up behind you and shoots you in the back of the head with the musket he has recovered from your hut. You fall instantly dead to the ground and a moment later Thompson shoots and kills Churchill with a second weapon. It might be some consolation for you that your Tahitian friends avenge your death and beat Thompson to dead with rocks later that same day.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You remain on Tahiti and in the autumn of 1789 you watch the Bounty sail away for the last time. There is little left to do now but settle down to living among the Tahitians and hope that the first ship to visit the island will be a friendly one. Like many of the Mutineers you get into a long-term relationship with a beautiful Tahitian woman and enjoy long days spent relaxing on the beautiful island and nights of hard-drinking and partying with the locals. Seven months after the Bounty leaves violence erupts, threatening to destroy your peaceful existence. The problem is Matthew Thompson, a middle-aged and brutal man who alone out of all of you doesn’t have a romantic partner as the Native women avoid him. One day there is chaos in the village and you learn that Thompson, drunk on strong spirits, has tried to rape a Tahitian woman but was fought off when her screams brought her brother and other men running to her aid. You go out of your hut and walk towards Thompson’s, as do several of your companions, to find him outside his hut shouting at a small crowd of angry Tahitians to go away. He has a musket in his hands and without warning he raises it and fires it at a man. The bullet passes through a baby the man is holding in his arms and into his chest, killing them both. Reversing the musket Thompson swings it in a wild arc, cracking a woman in the head and knocking her unconscious to the ground. The rest of the crowd flees. Thompson sensibly flees to the shoreline, steals a canoe and paddles away to a small nearby island called Taiarapu. The rest of you have a meeting with the Tahitians where you emphasize that Thompson’s actions had nothing to do with the rest of you and you all condemn his cruelty. The Tahitians accept your explanations, largely because Quartermaster Charles Churchill has been adopted by a local chief and is gaining considerable status among the Natives. After some talk you decide on what to do: you will send a messenger to Thompson telling him he can safely return to Tahiti and when he comes back one or two of you will steal his muskets and cutlasses from his hut and give him no more to prevent him doing anymore harm. It is a risky thing to do as Thompson is a violent man but Churchill volunteers for the task. > You stay out of the whole business You all send a Native to Thompson telling him all is forgiven and he can return and a suspicious Thompson dutifully returns to Tahiti. About a week after his return when Thompson is elsewhere Churchill sneaks into his hut, takes his weapons and hides them in his own hut. Thompson is absolutely furious when he discovers the theft and unfortunately a Native man with a grudge against Churchill tells Thompson who stole his weapons. Thompson recovers his musket, walks up behind Churchill one day and shoots him dead. Thompson again flees into the jungle interior and again you all meet to decide what to do. The Tahitians are furious over the death of their friend and intend to tell Thompson all is forgiven before jumping on him and beating him to death with rocks. It is a cold-blooded plan. > You warn Thompson about it You hurry out of the village to warn Thompson of the Natives’ intentions but you are spotted. Quickly realizing what you are intending to do the Natives give chase and run you down after a few hundred meters. A spear stab in the back knocks you down and then the Natives beat you to death with rocks. They then go on and kill Thompson anyway.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You all send a Native to Thompson telling him all is forgiven and he can return and a suspicious Thompson dutifully returns to Tahiti. About a week after his return when Thompson is elsewhere Churchill sneaks into his hut, takes his weapons and hides them in his own hut. Thompson is absolutely furious when he discovers the theft and unfortunately a Native man with a grudge against Churchill tells Thompson who stole his weapons. Thompson recovers his musket, walks up behind Churchill one day and shoots him dead. Thompson again flees into the jungle interior and again you all meet to decide what to do. The Tahitians are furious over the death of their friend and intend to tell Thompson all is forgiven before jumping on him and beating him to death with rocks. It is a cold-blooded plan. > You stay out of the whole affair You stay in the village while a large band of Tahitians leave and return later with Thompson’s bloodied and battered body. After the killings of Churchill and Thompson things settle down and the remaining fifteen of you live peaceful lives on this island paradise for one more year. The calm is broken again one spring morning by the terrifying sight of a large Royal Navy vessel sailing steadily towards the island. It anchors offshore and several boatloads of heavily-armed sailors are soon rowing towards shore. Some of your companions, notably the Bligh Loyalists who were detained against their will, are in favour of surrendering at once while others propose hiding out in the island interior and on other nearby islands in the hope of eluding capture. You know if captured all of you will be taken back to England and tried for piracy: if found guilty you know you will dance on the end of a rope. > You surrender to the sailors You and three other men promptly surrender yourselves to the first sailors who reach the shore, clapped in irons you are swiftly brought back to the ship where, to your surprise, former Bounty shipmate Midshipman Thomas Hayward is waiting to identify you. You are imprisoned in a makeshift prison on the ship’s quarterdeck and over the next month all of your remaining companions are captured. You learn that after the Mutiny Bligh sailed his overcrowded boat to safety and returned to England with eleven surviving companions out of the eighteen who were in the boat with him. He reported the Mutiny to the Admiralty who dispatched this ship, the HMS Pandora, to Tahiti to arrest you all. You and your fourteen companions are questioned on the whereabouts of the other nine Mutineers and the Bounty but you can only tell them that you last saw them sail away in the autumn of 1789. The Pandora leaves Tahiti that May and spends the next three months scouring the Pacific for your remaining companions but finds no trace of them. One day the Pandora suddenly runs aground off the Great Barrier Reef. Despite desperate efforts that go on for twenty hours the damage is too severe to be repaired and the ship starts to sink increasingly fast. Finally, in desperation the order if given to abandon ship. For a few moments it seems that you and your fellow prisoners will all be left shackled to the quarterdeck to drown but as water washes over the main deck a sailor remembers you all and runs up to unlock your leg irons. He gives the keys to you and orders you to unlock the rest. You have managed to free ten of your fourteen companions when the Quarterdeck vanishes beneath your feet into cold clear seawater. Your remaining trapped companions shout for help. > You work underwater to free the remaining men Waist-deep in water you wade across the deck and taking a deep breath you plunge underwater to try and untie more leg irons. In the strange underwater world you can barely see and are unaware when the Pandora’s mainmast gives way, breaks and falls on you, pinning you to the deck beneath its vast weight. You desperately try to free yourself but there is nothing you can do: the last bubbles escape your lips and you share the watery grave of the four comrades you died trying to save.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and three other men promptly surrender yourselves to the first sailors who reach the shore, clapped in irons you are swiftly brought back to the ship where, to your surprise, former Bounty shipmate Midshipman Thomas Hayward is waiting to identify you. You are imprisoned in a makeshift prison on the ship’s quarterdeck and over the next month all of your remaining companions are captured. You learn that after the Mutiny Bligh sailed his overcrowded boat to safety and returned to England with eleven surviving companions out of the eighteen who were in the boat with him. He reported the Mutiny to the Admiralty who dispatched this ship, the HMS Pandora, to Tahiti to arrest you all. You and your fourteen companions are questioned on the whereabouts of the other nine Mutineers and the Bounty but you can only tell them that you last saw them sail away in the autumn of 1789. The Pandora leaves Tahiti that May and spends the next three months scouring the Pacific for your remaining companions but finds no trace of them. One day the Pandora suddenly runs aground off the Great Barrier Reef. Despite desperate efforts that go on for twenty hours the damage is too severe to be repaired and the ship starts to sink increasingly fast. Finally, in desperation the order if given to abandon ship. For a few moments it seems that you and your fellow prisoners will all be left shackled to the quarterdeck to drown but as water washes over the main deck a sailor remembers you all and runs up to unlock your leg irons. He gives the keys to you and orders you to unlock the rest. You have managed to free ten of your fourteen companions when the Quarterdeck vanishes beneath your feet into cold clear seawater. Your remaining trapped companions shout for help. > You abandon the sinking ship and swim for one of the nearby boats Recognizing it would be suicide to remain on the ship any longer you dive into the sea and wade towards one of the four boats the sailors of the Pandora have succeeded in launching. You are hauled aboard and watch as the last of the HMS Pandora vanishes from sight. It takes with it four of your companions were still manacled to the ship: Midshipman George Stewart and Sailors Henry Hillbrant, Richard Skinner and John Sumner. Together with your ten surviving companions you join the other survivors in a three-week open boat voyage, not unlike that Bligh endured two years before) to Coupang in Timor with no mishap. From there you travel on to Batavia on Jakarta and from there take passage aboard the HMS Gorgon, arriving back in England in June of 1792, nearly five years after you left her aboard the Bounty. It is good fortune for you that William Bligh is not in England at the moment, having left the previous year to fulfil his mission of taking breadfruit from Tahiti to the slave plantations in Jamaica. Many of your former comrades are in England however and seven (Sailing Master John Fryer, Boatswain William Cole, Gunner William Peckover, Carpenter William Purcell, Midshipmen John Hallett and Thomas Haywood and Seaman John Smith) have been recruited to testify against you and your companions in your trials that August. For four of your companions the trials are an easy affair: Carpenter’s Mates Thomas McIntosh and Charles Norman, Armourer Joseph Coleman and Seaman Michael Byrne are acquitted when letters are produced written by Bligh confirming they wanted to join him in the boat but were unable to due to lack of space. For you and six of your companions things look much more dangerous and all of you are keen to argue you took no active part in the mutiny but need to explain your failure to act. Your companions intend to do this in two ways. Midshipman Peter Heywood, Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison and Seaman William Muspratt intend to claim they were too confused by what was happening to act. Seamen Thomas Burkett, Thomas Ellison and John Millward intend to claim they were too intimidated by the Mutineers and that they intended to recapture the Bounty at a later date if they could find support among the crew. You need to choose which defense line you go with. > You too confused to act You decide to go with the claim that you were too confused by what was happening to act. Somewhat surprisingly this defense works with the Judges: though sentenced to death you, Heywood, Morrison and Muspratt are pardoned for your part in the Mutiny. Burkett, Ellison and Millward are executed by hanging a few months later. You and your companions all feel the most incredible relief at your very narrow escape, Muspratt is so affected by his brush with death he rarely speaks again. The following year Bligh returns to England after a successful voyage which brought breadfruit from Tahiti to Jamaica, only to discover the slaves there would not eat it. He is furious that you and your companions escaped death and writes an account roundly condemning you all. Withstanding his fury you are one of the eight Bounty mutineers that survived to return to England. Not a day goes by when you do not wonder what happened to Fletcher Christian and his eight companions who vanished that autumn afternoon so long ago aboard the Bounty. You now have a decision to make: whether you return to the sea or retire to the land. McIntosh, Coleman and Byrne have all already turned their backs on the sea and drifted out of touch while Peter Heywood, James Morrison, Charles Norman and William Muspratt are all intended to resume a life on the ocean’s waves. You need to decide whether you too will retire ashore or return to the sea. > You retire from the sea The years go by and as you age you read about what befalls your former comrades. Carpenter’s Mate Charles Norman dies of a disease, probably brought on by his experiences, in 1793. Seaman William Muspratt also dies at sea of a disease in 1797. Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison drowns when the HMS Blenheim sinks in 1807. Midshipman Peter Heywood serves honorably in the Navy for twenty-two more years, retiring from the Navy in 1816 with the rank of Captain. He dies in 1831, his former status as a Pirate and Mutineer hidden behind a long and distinguished service. You live on, well into your sixties and in your later years you finally learn what happened to the Bounty and its missing nine Mutineers, including Fletcher Christian. In 1808 an American ship, the Topaz, happens upon isolated Pitcairn Island. There the sailors are astonished to discover a thriving Tahitian Community ruled over by one man: John Adams. He is the sole survivor of the nine Mutineers and six Natives who landed on that island and variously killed each other or died of illness leaving Adams patriarch of a thriving community of forty-six people. The Admiralty decides against taking any action. John Adams, the King of Pitcairn Island, dies in 1829.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to go with the claim that you were too confused by what was happening to act. Somewhat surprisingly this defense works with the Judges: though sentenced to death you, Heywood, Morrison and Muspratt are pardoned for your part in the Mutiny. Burkett, Ellison and Millward are executed by hanging a few months later. You and your companions all feel the most incredible relief at your very narrow escape, Muspratt is so affected by his brush with death he rarely speaks again. The following year Bligh returns to England after a successful voyage which brought breadfruit from Tahiti to Jamaica, only to discover the slaves there would not eat it. He is furious that you and your companions escaped death and writes an account roundly condemning you all. Withstanding his fury you are one of the eight Bounty mutineers that survived to return to England. Not a day goes by when you do not wonder what happened to Fletcher Christian and his eight companions who vanished that autumn afternoon so long ago aboard the Bounty. You now have a decision to make: whether you return to the sea or retire to the land. McIntosh, Coleman and Byrne have all already turned their backs on the sea and drifted out of touch while Peter Heywood, James Morrison, Charles Norman and William Muspratt are all intended to resume a life on the ocean’s waves. You need to decide whether you too will retire ashore or return to the sea. > You return to the sea You decide to return to the sea and need to decide where you serve. You can join Midshipman Peter Heywood aboard the HMS Queen Charlotte or you could join Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison aboard the HMS Blenheim or you could join Carpenter’s Mate Charles Norman aboard the HMS Duke or you can join Seaman William Muspratt aboard the HMS Bellerophon. > You join Heywood You serve with Heywood for twenty-two years on various ships, watching him rise to the rank of Captain. You are with him on the Glorious First of June when the French fleet is defeated off Ushant and in the Invasion of the River Plate in 1806. After a long and distinguished service you both retire from the sea in 1816. Fifteen years later your friend dies in London. By that time you have learned what happened to the Bounty and its missing nine Mutineers, including Fletcher Christian. In 1808 an American ship, the Topaz, happens upon isolated Pitcairn Island. There the sailors are astonished to discover a thriving Tahitian Community ruled over by one man: John Adams. He is the sole survivor of the nine Mutineers and six Natives who landed on that island and variously killed each other or died of illness leaving Adams patriarch of a thriving community of forty-six people. The Admiralty decides against taking any action. John Adams, the King of Pitcairn Island, dies in 1829.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to return to the sea and need to decide where you serve. You can join Midshipman Peter Heywood aboard the HMS Queen Charlotte or you could join Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison aboard the HMS Blenheim or you could join Carpenter’s Mate Charles Norman aboard the HMS Duke or you can join Seaman William Muspratt aboard the HMS Bellerophon. > You join Morrison You serve with Morrison in the Navy for thirteen years, Morrison rising to the rank of Chief Gunner. Your long and distinguished careers end aboard the Blenheim one terrible winter’s day in the Indian Ocean when the Blenheim and her accompanying ship HMS Java are caught in a storm while under the command of Admiral Thomas Troubridge. Both ships capsize and sink quickly sending nearly nine hundred men to their watery graves. The sea is a cruel and unforgiving mistress.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to return to the sea and need to decide where you serve. You can join Midshipman Peter Heywood aboard the HMS Queen Charlotte or you could join Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison aboard the HMS Blenheim or you could join Carpenter’s Mate Charles Norman aboard the HMS Duke or you can join Seaman William Muspratt aboard the HMS Bellerophon. > You join Norman You join Norman aboard the HMS Duke but your mutual experiences in Tahiti and the trial have weakened you both. Just three months after joining the ship an outbreak of cholera decimates the crew and both of you quickly catch the disease and weakened. You die of the illness just one year after the execution of your companions and are just one of the several anonymous bodies cast into the sea that day.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to return to the sea and need to decide where you serve. You can join Midshipman Peter Heywood aboard the HMS Queen Charlotte or you could join Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison aboard the HMS Blenheim or you could join Carpenter’s Mate Charles Norman aboard the HMS Duke or you can join Seaman William Muspratt aboard the HMS Bellerophon. > You join Muspratt You serve with Muspratt aboard the Bellerophon for three years. Your narrow escapes from death have had a great effect on both of you and in all your service you hardly speak a word, just quietly and diligently working together. Cholera spreads through the crew one winter and both of you quickly catch the disease and weaken. You die of the illness just five years after the execution of your companions and are just one of the several anonymous bodies cast into the sea that day.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Recognizing it would be suicide to remain on the ship any longer you dive into the sea and wade towards one of the four boats the sailors of the Pandora have succeeded in launching. You are hauled aboard and watch as the last of the HMS Pandora vanishes from sight. It takes with it four of your companions were still manacled to the ship: Midshipman George Stewart and Sailors Henry Hillbrant, Richard Skinner and John Sumner. Together with your ten surviving companions you join the other survivors in a three-week open boat voyage, not unlike that Bligh endured two years before) to Coupang in Timor with no mishap. From there you travel on to Batavia on Jakarta and from there take passage aboard the HMS Gorgon, arriving back in England in June of 1792, nearly five years after you left her aboard the Bounty. It is good fortune for you that William Bligh is not in England at the moment, having left the previous year to fulfil his mission of taking breadfruit from Tahiti to the slave plantations in Jamaica. Many of your former comrades are in England however and seven (Sailing Master John Fryer, Boatswain William Cole, Gunner William Peckover, Carpenter William Purcell, Midshipmen John Hallett and Thomas Haywood and Seaman John Smith) have been recruited to testify against you and your companions in your trials that August. For four of your companions the trials are an easy affair: Carpenter’s Mates Thomas McIntosh and Charles Norman, Armourer Joseph Coleman and Seaman Michael Byrne are acquitted when letters are produced written by Bligh confirming they wanted to join him in the boat but were unable to due to lack of space. For you and six of your companions things look much more dangerous and all of you are keen to argue you took no active part in the mutiny but need to explain your failure to act. Your companions intend to do this in two ways. Midshipman Peter Heywood, Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison and Seaman William Muspratt intend to claim they were too confused by what was happening to act. Seamen Thomas Burkett, Thomas Ellison and John Millward intend to claim they were too intimidated by the Mutineers and that they intended to recapture the Bounty at a later date if they could find support among the crew. You need to choose which defense line you go with. > You too intimidated to act You decide to go with the claim that you were too intimidated by the Mutineers to act but the Judges refuse to believe it. You, Burkett, Ellison and Millward are all sentenced to death while Heywood, Morrison and Muspratt win pardons. Your sentences is scheduled to be carried out aboard the HMS Brunswick in Portsmouth Harbour soon after the trial. On the scheduled morning you and your companions march out in silence onto the ship's deck. Some of your companions insist on their innocence or beg for mercy but as the noose is slipped over your neck you remain silent. On the word of command all four of you are hoisted into the air and after a few seconds of frantic kicking it is all over: you have paid the ultimate price for your part in the Mutiny on the Bounty.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stay in the village while a large band of Tahitians leave and return later with Thompson’s bloodied and battered body. After the killings of Churchill and Thompson things settle down and the remaining fifteen of you live peaceful lives on this island paradise for one more year. The calm is broken again one spring morning by the terrifying sight of a large Royal Navy vessel sailing steadily towards the island. It anchors offshore and several boatloads of heavily-armed sailors are soon rowing towards shore. Some of your companions, notably the Bligh Loyalists who were detained against their will, are in favour of surrendering at once while others propose hiding out in the island interior and on other nearby islands in the hope of eluding capture. You know if captured all of you will be taken back to England and tried for piracy: if found guilty you know you will dance on the end of a rope. > You hide in the island's interior You and most of the others scatter into the island’s interior and hide. You avoid the others, steal a Native canoe one night and paddle to an isolated little volcano jutting out of the sea to the east called Mehetia. You manage to hide out here for nearly a month, surviving on nothing more than rainwater and a few fish you manage to catch in the sea and eat raw, as the island has no vegetation. Eventually, on 16 April a party of sailors lands on the island and searches it in detail, finally finding you hiding under a rock, too weak to resist capture. You are taken aboard the ship where you find you are the last of the mutineers on Tahiti to be captured, the others all having been found at least a week before. You are clapped in irons and secured in a makeshift prison on the ship’s quarterdeck. You learn that after the Mutiny Bligh sailed his overcrowded boat to safety and returned to England with eleven surviving companions out of the eighteen who were in the boat with him. He reported the Mutiny to the Admiralty who dispatched this ship, the HMS Pandora, to Tahiti to arrest you all. You and your fourteen companions are questioned on the whereabouts of the other nine Mutineers and the Bounty but you can only tell them that you last saw them sail away in the autumn of 1789. The Pandora leaves Tahiti that May and spends the next three months scouring the Pacific for your remaining companions but finds no trace of them. One day the Pandora suddenly runs aground off the Great Barrier Reef. Despite desperate efforts that go on for twenty hours the damage is too severe to be repaired and the ship starts to sink increasingly fast. Finally, in desperation the order if given to abandon ship. For a few moments it seems that you and your fellow prisoners will all be left shackled to the quarterdeck to drown but as water washes over the main deck a sailor remembers you all and runs up to unlock your leg irons. He gives the keys to you and orders you to unlock the rest. You have managed to free ten of your fourteen companions when the Quarterdeck vanishes beneath your feet into cold clear seawater. Your remaining trapped companions shout for help.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Christian lets you all stay on Tahiti just ten days, long enough to pick up fresh supplies and twenty-eight Tahitians before sailing back to Tubai to try and seize control of it from the Natives. He builds a Fort which he calls Fort George and tries to man it against all comers. When the Natives attack they are repulsed again and again and sixty-six of them were killed, the only casualty on your side being Seaman Thomas Burkett who is speared through the side. Finally, Christian allows a vote between returning to Tahiti or staying on Tubai. The Pirates vote 16-9 to return to Tahiti. Christian sighs. “Gentlemen, I will carry you and land you wherever you please. I desire none to stay with me but I have one favor to request: that you will grant me the ship, tie the foresail, give me a few gallons of water and leave me to run before the wind and I shall land upon the first island the ship drives to. I have done such an act that I cannot stay on Tahiti. I will never live where I may be carried home to be a disgrace to my family.” “We shall never leave you Mr Christian,” Midshipman Edward Young promises him. “Go where you will!” After just three months in Tubai Christian sails the Bounty back to Tahiti. There the sixteen men who voted to remain there disembark the ship while Christian remains aboard with eight other companions. You have a decision to make now: you can remain on Tahiti knowing that it will probably be the first place the Royal Navy looks for you and your companions (if they look for you) or you can join Christian in sailing into the unknown to find the most obscure island possible, knowing you will probably never see England again. > You sail on into the unknown Fletcher Christian sets sail with the ten of you Mutineers, twelve women and six Tahitian men (including three discovered hiding on board) and spends three months trying to find an island isolated enough to avoid discovery. He finally settles on Pitcairn Island, an isolated little island spotted once twenty-three years ago. Best of all you discover the island has been mis-plotted by around two hundred miles making it impossible to find until a ship sailing outside the usual routes actually comes upon it. You like the island, a pleasant little grassy spot with a few hills, and begin unloading the Bounty Just eight days after arriving a very drunk Matthew Quintal sets fire to the ship to prevent any of you from changing your minds and leaving. The twenty-eight of you gather on the shore and watch the ship burn and sink beneath the waves. For better or worse you are on Pitcairn Island for good now. > A New Life Three years pass quietly on the island but a few accidents mar the peace. Soon after you arrive one of the women falls to her death while gathering eggs from the clifftops, soon after Fletcher Christian’s wife gives birth to the first child born on Pitcairn. The year after a second woman dies of an illness. Previously each of the Mutineers had one female partner each while the six Tahitian men had just two women to have sexual relations with. In the summer of 1793 you and the other Mutineers decide to take the two remaining women from the Tahitian men and give them to John Adams and William Brown respectively, the two men whose wives have died. Trouble erupts when four of the Tahitians take the two women and go to live elsewhere on the island. You and the other Mutineers give one of the remaining Tahitians, a tough character called Menalee a musket and send him off to kill the leader of the rebellious Tahitians, a man called Talaloo. On the first day of August Menalee finds him and shoots him dead. The following day he is sent off again and kills a second man called Oho. The two remaining men return and for a time it looks like all has settled down: Adams and Brown have their wives and the four remaining Tahitian men seem suitably chastised. One day in September you are in your hut when you hear a few gunshots somewhere nearby. You think nothing of it and a short time later you hear more gunshots. You assume someone is hunting. A short while later you hear loud and excited yells followed by even more gunshots and prolonged shouting. You are now growing concerned and step warily out of your hut. You wonder what to do. > You go down and investigate the gunshots You stroll down through the village to see what is happening and encounter the four Tahitian men coming the other way. Each are armed with a musket and others weapons such as axes and rocks. You call out to them, asking what the noise was. In response the Natives raise their muskets and fire a volley of shots at you. Two bullets hit you in the chest and knock you down, before you can rise they beat you to death with axes. You are one of the six mutineers to die on what will ever after be known as Massacre Day.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Three years pass quietly on the island but a few accidents mar the peace. Soon after you arrive one of the women falls to her death while gathering eggs from the clifftops, soon after Fletcher Christian’s wife gives birth to the first child born on Pitcairn. The year after a second woman dies of an illness. Previously each of the Mutineers had one female partner each while the six Tahitian men had just two women to have sexual relations with. In the summer of 1793 you and the other Mutineers decide to take the two remaining women from the Tahitian men and give them to John Adams and William Brown respectively, the two men whose wives have died. Trouble erupts when four of the Tahitians take the two women and go to live elsewhere on the island. You and the other Mutineers give one of the remaining Tahitians, a tough character called Menalee a musket and send him off to kill the leader of the rebellious Tahitians, a man called Talaloo. On the first day of August Menalee finds him and shoots him dead. The following day he is sent off again and kills a second man called Oho. The two remaining men return and for a time it looks like all has settled down: Adams and Brown have their wives and the four remaining Tahitian men seem suitably chastised. One day in September you are in your hut when you hear a few gunshots somewhere nearby. You think nothing of it and a short time later you hear more gunshots. You assume someone is hunting. A short while later you hear loud and excited yells followed by even more gunshots and prolonged shouting. You are now growing concerned and step warily out of your hut. You wonder what to do. > You head away from the village and up into the hills You wisely flee up into the hills and are startled to meet a panting William McCoy there, he has run all the way from the village after witnessing the Natives shoot and kill his friend John Mills. Soon after you are joined by a breathless Matthew Quintal, who has likewise escaped the village. He has shocking news to tell you, five of your friends: Fletcher Christian, John Mills, William Brown, Isaac Martin and John Williams are dead. Your remaining two companions, John Adams and Edward Young remain in the village, protected by the Native women. You and your two unarmed companions remain hiding up in the mountains for two weeks, sometimes receiving messages from your wives still in the village. You learn that Menalee has killed another Native man called Timoa after an argument. Scared of his companions Menalee himself joins you two in the mountains saying he would be safer hiding with you. That night when Menalee falls asleep McCoy picks up his musket and shoots him dead. Three days later Adams and Young succeed in persuading the Native women they should kill the two remaining Tahitian men Nehow and Tetaheite. Young shoots Nehow in the back of the head while a woman called Susan kills Tetaheite with an axe. Your friends quickly send word to you all that it is safe to come back to the village. There are now five of you men left with ten Native women and a few small children. Peace returns to the island once more. > You alcohol Four years pass by peacefully on the island, you live with the women, begin raising a child and live a good life. William McCoy and Matthew Quintal are more restless characters than you, John Adams and Edward Young and McCoy, who once worked in a brewery in Scotland, spends a long time trying to brew alcohol out of various things. He finally succeeds in creating an incredibly strong alcohol from the ti-root and he and Quintal quickly become addicted to it, despite the fact it seems to trigger hallucinations. Adams and Young refuse to drink any. > You join in the drinking You and McCoy soon develop a heavy dependency on the dangerous drink and have many hallucinations. After one particular bout to celebrate the beginning of 1798 you and McCoy decide in your drunken states that you want to swim back to England. You run to the edge of a cliff and plunge down into the sea below. You disappear beneath the waves forever, victims of the terrible alcohol you have created.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Four years pass by peacefully on the island, you live with the women, begin raising a child and live a good life. William McCoy and Matthew Quintal are more restless characters than you, John Adams and Edward Young and McCoy, who once worked in a brewery in Scotland, spends a long time trying to brew alcohol out of various things. He finally succeeds in creating an incredibly strong alcohol from the ti-root and he and Quintal quickly become addicted to it, despite the fact it seems to trigger hallucinations. Adams and Young refuse to drink any. > You refuse to drink You refuse to drink and it seems a sensible decision, McCoy throws himself off a cliff in a drunken fit of depression, plummeting to his death. With his friend gone Quintal becomes more depressed also, drinking more and becoming more violent. In one incident he bites the ear off his wife Tevarua when she fails to catch enough fish one day. Tevarua, herself a heavy drinker, imitates McCoy in throwing herself off a cliff to her death. Deprived of his wife Quintal takes another one and when Adams and Young protest Quintal threatens to kill them both. He is now moody and unpredictable and Adams and Young confer with you in a secret meeting and tell you that the next time Quintal is passed out drunk they intend to kill him with an axe. You consider whether to join them in this plot or warn Quintal of what is happening. > You join Adams and Young in killing Quintal That night when Quintal is passed out you, Adams and Young sneak up on him and Adams decapitates him with one swing of the axe. Quintal’s death finally restores peace to the island which lasts another year until Young dies of asthma on Christmas Day of 1800. All that is left now is for you and John Adams to rule over a Pitcairn Island inhabited exclusively by women and children... > You discovery The next thirty or so years are peaceful ones for you and Adams, raising your many children and taking care of the island. A ship was spotted out to sea in 1795 and another in 1801 but it is not until February of 1808 that an American ship called the Topaz finally visits the island. You and Adams cautiously meet with the sailors who come ashore and finally learn what has happened on the outside world. After the Mutiny on the Bounty in 1789 Bligh and his surviving companions made it back to England and reported the Mutiny. A ship called the Pandora was sent to Tahiti where she captured your remaining companions, while searching for you the Pandora sank off the Great Barrier Reef. The survivors eventually made it back to England where some more of your companions were executed. The search for the Bounty and the rest of you was eventually abandoned. You are nervous of what effect the news that you and Adams (after all, still wanted pirates) are living on Pitcairn Island will have but it is not until 1814 that a pair of Royal Navy ships finally visit the island. Twenty-five years after the Mutiny on the Bounty the men aboard report that the Admiralty has decided to grant you both amnesty for your parts in the Mutiny and allow you to continue living on the island. Relieved you continue your peaceful lives. Your great friend John Adams dies in 1829 at the age of sixty-one leaving you the sole King of Pitcairn Island.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You refuse to drink and it seems a sensible decision, McCoy throws himself off a cliff in a drunken fit of depression, plummeting to his death. With his friend gone Quintal becomes more depressed also, drinking more and becoming more violent. In one incident he bites the ear off his wife Tevarua when she fails to catch enough fish one day. Tevarua, herself a heavy drinker, imitates McCoy in throwing herself off a cliff to her death. Deprived of his wife Quintal takes another one and when Adams and Young protest Quintal threatens to kill them both. He is now moody and unpredictable and Adams and Young confer with you in a secret meeting and tell you that the next time Quintal is passed out drunk they intend to kill him with an axe. You consider whether to join them in this plot or warn Quintal of what is happening. > You 1 January 1799: Pitcairn Island, Pacific Ocean You warn Quintal of what is happening and both of you are on your guard. It doesn’t take Adams and Young long to learn what you have done and a few nights later they confront both you and Quintal with muskets. Before you can defend yourselves your former friends shoot both of you dead, finally bringing peace to the island. They throw your bodies in the sea for the fish to eat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>By the beginning of 1789 the crew have had enough of Bligh and his ways. Charles Churchill, a middle-aged Manchurian and the Master-at-Arms (the man nominally in charge of discipline on the ship) gathers you, the recently flogged Muspratt and another sailor called John Millward, a young and reasonably well-educated fellow, into a secret meeting a short way from the shore party. “I will tell you plainly boys I don’t care a damn for our Commander,” he whispers. “He deserves nothing better than to be shark bait for all I care. But this place is the closest thing to heaven on each I have ever clapped eyes on in all my years of sailing. I say tonight we take a boat and sneak away, Haywood has the watch with us tonight, he is ever sleeping on duty and besides was up most of last night at cards in the wardroom. I will get us a brace of guns each, we can take the cutter and sail round to Matavai Bay and from there light out to one of the smaller islands. After our shipmates have left on the Bounty we can return and live here forever.” It is a bold but extremely dangerous plan, desertion can be punished with hanging. Millward and Muspratt quickly agree to it and all three turn their gazes on you. You know if you refuse you must promise to keep silent about the plan. > You remain aboard the Bounty You refuse to have anything to do with such a dangerous plan and the deserters swear you to silence. That evening, while Midshipman Thomas Haywood is sleeping over the arms chest Churchill, Millward and Muspratt sneak into the ship’s cutter and desert. That morning Bligh is furious when he discovers the missing men’s absence, suspecting you and Haywood of being involved he orders you both clapped in irons for a week. Bligh pursues the deserters to Matavai Bay where he learns from Natives that the trio of fugitives traded for a canoe and paddled north in the direction of a small island called Tetaroa. Bligh is set to pursue but the weather turns nasty and for two weeks a storm rages (Bligh has a rage of his own when he discovers the spare sails have rotted into uselessness). Finally, it clears and Bligh sails north to the small island accompanied by dozens of Native canoes. You and Haywood are still under suspicion so you are not part of the party Bligh leads ashore which succeeds in recapturing the fugitives without trouble. Between the three deserters Bligh sentences them to one hundred and twenty lashes and steers the Bounty back to Toaroa. By now the crew are all seething with quiet discussion about Bligh’s disciplinary methods and a week after the recapture of the fugitives you are chatting ashore about the matter with Isaac Martin, a good-natured American sailor. While you are talking a Tahitian man wanders over to your boat to have a look, a fairly common occurrence. You both ignore him until the man suddenly grabs an iron hoop that has come loose from a barrel and starts running off. Martin yells at you to get him as you both know Bligh is fond of flogging sailors who let Natives steal things from the ship, no matter how small. You both race after the Native and get close to him but there seems to be no way of stopping him short of violence. > You crash-tackle the man to the ground You make a flying leap, manage to grab the man’s legs and bring him down. Martin is on him in a moment and as the man tries to squirm free he punches him in the face. This calms the Native who lies there clutching his broken nose while Martin picks up the iron hoop and returns to the boat. You are both feeling rather good about your successful protection of Bounty property until you hear that familiar, hated, yelp from the trees. “What do you infernal creatures think you are doing?” Bligh exclaims running towards you. “Stopping that man stealing our things,” you tell Bligh irritably. “As you ordered.” “As I ordered you insolent cur?” Bligh exclaims. “I also ordered no violence towards Natives, both of you twenty-four lashes each!” That evening you are both lashed to trees and whipped by the quartermasters and it is only the intercession of the local Natives, who accept responsibility for the crime, that Bligh reluctantly stops the punishment at nineteen lashes. Regardless, by the time you are cut down you feel completely and utterly exhausted.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You refuse to have anything to do with such a dangerous plan and the deserters swear you to silence. That evening, while Midshipman Thomas Haywood is sleeping over the arms chest Churchill, Millward and Muspratt sneak into the ship’s cutter and desert. That morning Bligh is furious when he discovers the missing men’s absence, suspecting you and Haywood of being involved he orders you both clapped in irons for a week. Bligh pursues the deserters to Matavai Bay where he learns from Natives that the trio of fugitives traded for a canoe and paddled north in the direction of a small island called Tetaroa. Bligh is set to pursue but the weather turns nasty and for two weeks a storm rages (Bligh has a rage of his own when he discovers the spare sails have rotted into uselessness). Finally, it clears and Bligh sails north to the small island accompanied by dozens of Native canoes. You and Haywood are still under suspicion so you are not part of the party Bligh leads ashore which succeeds in recapturing the fugitives without trouble. Between the three deserters Bligh sentences them to one hundred and twenty lashes and steers the Bounty back to Toaroa. By now the crew are all seething with quiet discussion about Bligh’s disciplinary methods and a week after the recapture of the fugitives you are chatting ashore about the matter with Isaac Martin, a good-natured American sailor. While you are talking a Tahitian man wanders over to your boat to have a look, a fairly common occurrence. You both ignore him until the man suddenly grabs an iron hoop that has come loose from a barrel and starts running off. Martin yells at you to get him as you both know Bligh is fond of flogging sailors who let Natives steal things from the ship, no matter how small. You both race after the Native and get close to him but there seems to be no way of stopping him short of violence. > You keep running You continue to run but Martin springs ahead of you and brings the native down with a fierce punch to the back of the head. Martin forces the hoop from his grip and begins returning it to the boat when you both halt at the sound of a familiar, and despised, yelp from nearby. “What do you infernal creatures think you are doing?” Bligh exclaims running towards you. “Stopping that man stealing our things,” Martin tells Bligh irritably. “As you ordered.” “As I ordered you insolent cur?” Bligh exclaims. “I also ordered no violence towards Natives. You, Martin, twenty-four lashes!” That evening you watch angrily as Martin is lashed to a tree and whipped by a quartermaster and it is only the intercession of the local Natives, who accept responsibility for the crime, that Bligh reluctantly stops the punishment at nineteen lashes. Regardless, by the time Martin is cut down you nothing but searing anger and hatred towards Bligh.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Word soon spreads among the crew that Muspratt has found what amounts to a brothel in Toaroa, though actually many of the Native women seem happy to perform sexual services in exchange for gifts. One of your fellow seamen Robert Lamb, who often cuts the meat for the cook, decides to sneak off the next time he is in one of Christian’s work parties and give away his cleaver in the hope of getting two women at the same time. You have a knife and wonder if that would be worth the same. > You avoid the risk You remain with Christian’s work party while Lamb heads off and he returns that evening looking utterly exhausted but grinning from ear to ear. His good feeling lasts until he returns to the Bounty to find an angry Bligh waiting for him. “Impertinent dog!” he screams in Lamb’s face. “You think a cleaver is not as valuable as your disgusting perversions? Quartermaster, twelve at once!” By now whippings have become so depressingly commonplace that the crew feel nothing but a dull hostility towards Bligh.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After the death of Surgeon Huggan Bligh orders the Bounty sailed from Matavai Bay to Toaroa, a small bay and village further round the island. The reason Bligh gives is that there are more breadfruit trees there but the crew suspect it is to move them further from the scene of Huggan’s death and the temptations of alcohol and women. If that is the intention it is unsuccessful, there are even more of both at Toaroa. The women are, if possible, even more free with their affections and breath-takingly beautiful, here and one of your fellow sailors, a friendly, bearded man called William Muspratt, comes up to you one day with an excited whisper as you are moving breadfruit trees as part of a party under Bligh. He tells you he has found some exceptionally affectionate Native women who will apparently trade sex in exchange for odd trinkets such as coins, utensils like cutlery or other odds and ends. He tells you he is going to sneak away now and offers to show you where they may be found. > You remain at work on the breadfruit trees You know your place and continue to unearth breadfruit trees, pack them carefully into pots and leave them ready to return to the ship. Bligh soon notices Muspratt’s absence and takes his two quartermasters in search of him. They return with Muspratt a few hours later, the latter having to be helped to walk after having received a dozen lashes for neglect of duty. You are tempted to ask him if it was worth it but fight the urge away.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Bounty remains anchored in Matavai Bay for the next month while every day Bligh, Christian or Fryer lead a party of men ashore to gather breadfruit trees. You get the impression that the men are working deliberately slowly to prolong their stay on Tahiti, as often as they are able the men contrive to spend time with the Tahitians in their villages. All of the Natives are extremely friendly and the women remarkably so. Christian and, surprisingly, Bligh are fairly relaxed about these interactions between the crew and the women but after a year at sea it would have been very unwise to try to restrain the men. Bligh inevitably tries however. One day you are a part of a party that is working even more slowly than usual and Bligh is becoming irritable and orders you all to work faster. Repeatedly a sailor called Matthew Thompson, an older and extremely tough man keeps demanding, increasingly more insistently that he be allowed to go into the village. Bligh continues to refuse him. Finally, Thompson has had enough. “Damn you sir,” he growls. “If you were any sort of officer you would know better than to deny your men what they want.” There is stunned silence following this outburst. > You keep quiet Bligh has gone very pale. “Damn you Thompson for a mutinous dog,” he growls. “Quartermaster, twelve lashes each!” The lash is fetched, the blows are landed and another sailor’s back is transformed into ruin. Sullen and muttering the crew return once more to the Bounty.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are all relieved when the beautiful tree-lined round island of Tahiti is spotted. Bligh has been getting on everyone’s nerves: he is no longer on speaking terms with Sailing Master Fryer, Surgeon Huggan or the Carpenter William Purcell and he has been grating the nerves of most of the rest of the crew. It is with relief that Tahiti is sighted and within hours hundreds upon hundreds of canoes packed with scantily clad but cheering Tahitian men and women surround the Bounty. The women are a particularly lovely sight. After a week anchored offshore Bligh sends Christian to lead a party of nine ashore in the ship’s cutter to begin setting up tents and making a camp for the crew to use while they gather the breadfruit. You are part of this group and are left with another sailor called John Adams to guard the boats. Adams is a clever young fellow and the two of you are chatting when you notice a pair of young ladies eying you from behind some nearby huts. When they see you looking they glance at each other and giggle. Like all Tahitians they are dark skinned and wear nothing above the waist, their full breasts and brown nipples peep out shyly between the strands of their long black hair. They seem to have more than a casual interest in you and Adams nudges you in the side and points at the women grinning. He suggests you go over, introduce yourselves and keep the young ladies company for a while. > You think of England and continue guarding the boats Steadfast, British and sex-less to the last you resist the temptation of attractive women and stolidly remain in the boats while Adams goes off to try and get laid. You are still in the boat when Christian and his party return. After hearing where Adams is from you Christian laughs and calls him out of the hut, he emerges hastily buckling up his trousers. With many a light-hearted jibe you all return to the Bounty. Bligh is not so amused, when you return he curses Adams for a scoundrel and orders him lashed twelve times for interfering with the Natives. Immediately the previously cheerful mood evaporates and you all stand around stone-faced as Adams is mercilessly whipped .You help him back to his hammock that evening and all around you can hear angry mutterings about Bligh.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Valentine’s death sends the crew’s spirits plunging low and Bligh decides to raise morale by instructing the crew to dance a jig to the tunes of a half-blind fiddler he has brought on board. The last thing the crew feel like doing is dancing but the sailors obligingly force themselves to their feet and dance wearily to the tunes the fiddler plays. You are dancing when you notice two men are remaining seated. William Brown, a mild scientific man who Bligh brought on board as a botanist to take care of the breadfruit plants is talking quietly to John Mills the Gunner’s Mate, a tough and unfriendly older man. You see Fletcher Christian go over and encourage them to dance but Mills shakes his head emphatically and Brown lowers his head. Christian shrugs and walks away. > You keep dancing You continue to dance but moments later Bligh shouts for the music to stop and storms towards the seated men. “Why are you not dancing like the others?” he demands. “It does not seem like an appropriate time for that,” Brown says quietly. “Damn you for contemptible rascals,” Bligh cries. “Both of you will have your grog stopped from now until we reach Tahiti.” Mills glares back at him with a half-smile on his face as Bligh turns, returns to his former position near the helm and orders the fiddler to keep playing. The punishment is a harsh one but not as bad as it could have been: a week later you reach Tahiti.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After the lashing of Quintal you and the rest of your crew go about your duties quietly and you soon come upon Cape Horn in atrocious weather. For over four weeks Bligh tries to sail the Bounty into the face of a terrible wind, tacking into the face of a gale. You and several other sailors come down with fevers, brought on by constant exertion in freezing rain and tiredness, and finally Bligh admits defeat and turns the ship east. You will sail to Tahiti east, around the southern tip of Africa instead. Despite the storm damage the Bounty makes good speed and arrives off Cape Town on the tip of South Africa after a month of sailing. Bligh steers the Bounty carefully into the busy harbor and you and another sailor called John Williams are sent to sound the depths with a lead line. You are both feeding the rope out when the lead snags on some rocks far below. Because the Bounty is still going pretty fast the rope starts sliding rapidly through your hands cutting them badly. > You let go You are not going to get your hands sliced open for a lead and line and you and Williams both release the rope. Like a demented snake it zooms across the deck and over the rail, landing in the sea below with a splash. You are both standing there blowing on your burnt hands and cursing when you hear a familiar high-pitched cry and look up to see Bligh striding towards you both. “You incompetent mongrels!” he snarls at you both. “You think that losing that lead is a small thing? Six lashes each for neglect and dereliction of duty!” The lash is fetched again, you and Williams are roped to the mast and the Quartermasters begin whipping you both, drawing blood. Bligh watches emotionlessly until it is all over and then he turns on his heel and returns to his cabin.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After leaving the English Channel the weather does indeed improve and you stop off at the Canary Islands for a week. Spirits are high as you sail onto the southwest bound for Tahiti, an island which you have heard of but have no idea where it is. You gather Bligh intends to sail around Cape Horn, the southernmost tip of South America, to get there. The ship is sailing so well Bligh decides to promote a protégé of his called Fletcher Christian from Master’s Mate to Acting Lieutenant, effectively making him Bligh’s deputy. Like everyone else on board the ship you like Christian. He is a cheerful and very likable young man, though a slightly sensitive soul who takes a solicitous interest in everyone’s welfare. His promotion comes at the expense of the Sailing Master John Fryer, a professional man, whose strong, independent opinions seem to irritate Bligh. He takes Christian’s promotion without a word but some of the crew are not so subtle. Matthew Quintal is one of your fellow seamen, a young Cornishman and a natural-born trouble-maker, always looking for an opportunity to make a little mischief. One morning he is scrubbing the deck close to where Fryer is sighting the sun with a sextant and begins to mock Fryer about Christian’s promotion, lightly at first and then more harshly when Fryer shows no response. Some of the other sailors standing nearby are exchanging glances and grinning. > You stay quiet You stay silent as Quintal continues to jeer Fryer, who largely ignores him, replying with brief, disdainful sentences. Suddenly you all jump as a bizarrely high-pitched cry rings out from further up the deck and you all glance up to see the comical form of Bligh striding towards you. “You infernal scoundrels!” he roars. “How dare you cowardly rascals show such insolence and contempt for Mr Fryer! Mr Fryer, how came you to permit such a thing to happen sir? Twenty-four lashes sailor to remind you of the proper way of addressing your superiors! Master-at-Arms, fetch the lash! Quartermaster, prepare this man!” Quintal is seized, the shirt torn from his back and he is lashed to the mast. The Master-at-Arms approaches with the cat o’nine tails and begins flaying Quintal’s back. Soon blood is pouring down his backside and legs as the flesh is stripped from his back but Quintal takes it all in silence. The crew also watch in grim silence until the punishment is complete. “May that be a lesson to you all!” Bligh declares.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The thug is right in front of me, picking on people weaker than himself. The very definition of a coward. Attacks unarmed people, specifically chooses those that cannot defend themselves. It's people like this that make project: Eden sound like a good idea. He hasn't spotted me yet. He probably wouldn't if I glowed in the dark, dimwitted asshole. He has a knife, but it's not like that's much of a challenge, not for a Homo Perfectus. REMAINING HEALTH: 100% > You attack the thug from behind. I come at the thug from the shadows and punch him across his face. I seem to have forgotten to increase my strength, so the hit doesn't take him out. Panicing, he swiftly swipes the knife at me, and barely manages to slash my arm. I then deliver a second hit, and this one takes him out. The fact that a punk like him managed to get a hit at me is more painful than the actual wound. REMAINING HEALTH: 85% > You talk to the victim. I approach the civilian, who is still cowering on the ground. "Are you alright?" He looks up and sees who I am. "I...yeah. Did you..." "You should be safe now. I hope this reminds you that Gorgon city is not safe during the night." "Right, yeah. Thank's again." REMAINING HEALTH: 85% > You leave. I've done what I can here. Best I go back home. It takes time, since most of it is just walking as I don't have the necessary speed to run across the rooftops, but I get there eventually. REMAINING HEALTH: 85% > You enter the apartment. I press the key into the slot and open the lock. I then push the door open, wobble towards the couch and hurl myself into it. I intentionally placed the couch there, I am always so tired after a ten-hour Shade marathon, which I take almost every day. The city is just as dark as before. Adam gave the scum of the Earth a second chance, and this is how they use it. Stealing and killing anyone or anything they can think of! After a few minutes of resting I decide to close the door. I don't want anyone in the building to see Shade sitting on the couch placed directly in front of the front door, do I? That would be inconvenient for me as Eve. Now, I should probably take care of this wound. Damn bastard getting a lucky shot. REMAINING HEALTH: 85% > You stop the bleeding. I immediately enter the bathroom and remove my jacket. Some blood has stained it, and it was slightly cut as well, but it has seen worse. I cover the wound with bandages and apply pressure onto it. Soon the bleeding has stopped. The wound is still there, but this fixes a majority of the problem. REMAINING HEALTH: 85%<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The thug is right in front of me, picking on people weaker than himself. The very definition of a coward. Attacks unarmed people, specifically chooses those that cannot defend themselves. It's people like this that make project: Eden sound like a good idea. He hasn't spotted me yet. He probably wouldn't if I glowed in the dark, dimwitted asshole. He has a knife, but it's not like that's much of a challenge, not for a Homo Perfectus. REMAINING HEALTH: 100% > You wait and see what transpires. I decide to wait for a better opportunity to strike. After all, if he was closer and did not see me, I could take him down quickly, silently and painlessly. However, he starts circling around his victim, and doing that, he spots the pair of red glowing eyes staring at him from the depts of the alley. "Shade!?!" Just as I though, this guy is a coward. As soon as he sees someone who could fend him off and bite back, he turns around and runs away. REMAINING HEALTH: 100% > You sprint after him. Trying to catch him without any speed enhancement proves challenging, but in the end, without any Homo Perfectus enhancements, I prove to be the faster individual and catch up with him. I grab him and throw him at a wall, which he bounces off and lands on the ground, knocked out. He was even more of a whimp than I thought. Typical of a thug like him. REMAINING HEALTH: 100% > You talk to the victim. I approach the civilian, who is still cowering on the ground. "Are you alright?" He looks up and sees who I am. "I...yeah. Did you..." "You should be safe now. I hope this reminds you that Gorgon city is not safe during the night." "Right, yeah. Thank's again." REMAINING HEALTH: 100% > You leave. I've done what I can here. Best I go back home. It takes time, since most of it is just walking as I don't have the necessary speed to run across the rooftops, but I get there eventually. REMAINING HEALTH: 100% > You enter the apartment. I press the key into the slot and open the lock. I then push the door open, wobble towards the couch and hurl myself into it. I intentionally placed the couch there, I am always so tired after a ten-hour Shade marathon, which I take almost every day. The city is just as dark as before. Adam gave the scum of the Earth a second chance, and this is how they use it. Stealing and killing anyone or anything they can think of! After a few minutes of resting I decide to close the door. I don't want anyone in the building to see Shade sitting on the couch placed directly in front of the front door, do I? That would be inconvenient for me as Eve. REMAINING HEALTH: 100%<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>I decide to wait for a better opportunity to strike. After all, if he was closer and did not see me, I could take him down quickly, silently and painlessly. However, he starts circling around his victim, and doing that, he spots the pair of red glowing eyes staring at him from the depts of the alley. "Shade!?!" Just as I though, this guy is a coward. As soon as he sees someone who could fend him off and bite back, he turns around and runs away. REMAINING HEALTH: 100% > You throw something at him. I grab a nearby chunk of rock and throw it at the thug. However, he is not only moving, but getting further and further away, so the throw misses. Perhaps if I had a more pinpointed vision, I would have gotten him. Regardless, he escaped. REMAINING HEALTH: 100%<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>I decide to wait for a better opportunity to strike. After all, if he was closer and did not see me, I could take him down quickly, silently and painlessly. However, he starts circling around his victim, and doing that, he spots the pair of red glowing eyes staring at him from the depts of the alley. "Shade!?!" Just as I though, this guy is a coward. As soon as he sees someone who could fend him off and bite back, he turns around and runs away. REMAINING HEALTH: 100% > You let him go and attend to the victim. I decide not to pursue him any further and let him run off. He'll have learned not to give me a reason to kick his ass anyway. Instead, I turn my attention towards the civilian.I approach the civilian, who is still cowering on the ground. 0VOCALS%=%0%"Are you alright?"%% VOCALS%=%0%He looks up and sees who I am.%% "I...yeah. Did you..." "You should be safe now. I hope this reminds you that Gorgon city is not safe during the night." "Right, yeah. Thank's again." REMAINING HEALTH: 100%<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Click. “…well I still say a compromise can be achieved if we all just sat down and talked things out. I mean at the core, we aren’t really so different. I mean we’re human beings, for God’s sake; we shouldn’t be killing each other like animals! I mean...” Click. “…are you worried about these uncertain times? Do you stay up at night thinking about the current fucked up situation the world is in? Wondering if some mad man is going to finally press the button, putting an end to it all? Do you think how you’ll spend your final moment with your loved ones huddled around you and crying before you’re all reduced to mere shadows? Scared that you can’t do anything about it? You are? Well never fear! Ground Zero Survival is here! You’ll find that the…” Click. “…situation has worsened; more troops were deployed today, but…” Click. “...how about our President huh? If he was anymore reactionary, I’d think we were living in the country we’re currently at war with! Am I right? What country are we at war with anyway? Anyone remember? Did we just spin the wheel again or what? You guys are a great audience! Hey did you hear…” Click. “…about peace? Oh gimme a fuckin’ break! You think that pussy ass we are the world shit’s gonna fly? You can’t teach those fuckin’ people nothing! You want my solution to the goddamn problem? BLOW IT ALL THE FUCK UP! We can clean up later and…” Click. “…pray in these dark times! We must place our faith in Jesus! For when Judgment Day comes he will save all of us that are the faithful, and God will punish the wicked! Oh it will be such a glorious time when…” Click. “…you act now you’ll get ten percent off! We here at GZS also believe in quality and you’ll find our shelters are designed with your family’s safety in mind! We have worked hard to make sure our shelters will sustain you and your family years after the entire surface has been turned to ashes! After all don’t…” Click. “…you think genocide is the answer? I can’t believe you just advocated that on national TV! I suppose you think Hitler was right too huh? Its people like you that…” Click. “…are the best audience in the world! I tell ya, it’s been great. You can catch my next show at…” Click. “…the radioactive fuckin’ wasteland that the whole goddamn Earth is going to become! You think any of this shit matters? All the fuckin’ talk in the world ain’t changing shit now! We’re on the fast train to nukesville and I for one ain’t gonna worry about it! Y’know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna quit this stupid ass job, and spend the rest of my savings on fuckin’ hookers! Yeah that’s right, I fuckin’ said it and I don’t care because when you think about it…” Click. “...isn’t your family’s survival worth it?” This advertisement has been paid for by Ground Zero Survival Inc. > You zzzzzzzzzzzzz Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up from the sofa like you always do, dreading to have to go to work at your pointless job. You haven’t been sleeping well lately, you don’t know what the hell the problem is, and all you know is you’re going to be tired for work again. As you go through your routine of getting ready, the TV can be heard; as usual you left it on from the night before. “…And peace talks broke down today, as several ambassadors engaged in a physical fight at the UN…Neo-Communist party gaining favor in Russia… more terrorist bombings in European Union cities…US troops won another victory in the Middle East…mysterious epidemic in China, several million dead…skirmishes on the Indian-Pakistan border…world wide tensions at an all time high…” Same old doom and gloom on TV; you wonder why you even bother watching the news anymore. Still it does seem like things are getting worse, late at night when you’re suffering from your usual insomnia, you’ve been catching infomercials attempting to sell bomb shelters, like something out of a 1950s propaganda film. It seems silly, but you do wonder if it’s only a matter of time before someone presses the button. Then again you live out in the boonies, you’ve always thought that if the world ever did blow up; you’d doubt you’d even notice until you drove to work the next day and saw the ruins of the city. Speaking of which you better get going or you’ll be late. > You head to work You turn off the TV and head to work, no point in worrying about things you can’t do shit about. You have other real everyday problems to deal with. You go about your mundane life, doing mundane tasks at your mundane job, talking to your mundane co-workers about mundane things. Not much changes. One month later... Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up from the sofa like you always do, dreading to have to go to work at your pointless job. You haven’t been sleeping well lately, you don’t know what the hell the problem is, and all you know is you’re going to be tired for work again. As you go through your routine of getting ready, the TV can be heard; as usual you left it on from the night before. “…Russian hardliners seized control of the government…Chinese epidemic has worsened; entire country is under quarantine…UK has withdrawn all association from the EU…Senate dissolved in US, martial law enacted…India declared open war on Pakistan…mass starvation in Africa… world wide depression… Same old doom and gloom on TV, a lot more serious now though. Those “silly” bomb shelter infomercials have increased; you’ve also been noticing an increase in survival type book titles whenever you browse the book stores now and the Emergency broadcasting system has been doing A LOT of tests lately. Something bad is going to happen and it’s going to happen soon. You go about your life which isn’t quite so mundane, world politics is a constant topic at work, and many of your co-workers aren’t even coming in to do their job. All the married ones are no doubt spending time with their families, in fact the work place really isn’t a work place anymore so much as it is a “socializing site”. A lot of them believe the world is coming to an end anyway, so they might as well have a good time. Attempting to go about your normal life isn’t an option anymore; neither is buying a bomb shelter at this late stage. > You indulge in the festivities You’ve never really been a party person, but if this is it, maybe you can have some fun before the end comes. There’s plenty of food and liquids of all kinds at your place of work. The entire office is turned into party central. Nobody bothers going home; it’s actually safer to stay inside the office building anyway since the National Guard is attempting to restore what little order there is in the city. Everyone makes sure to stay away from windows. Even though you attempt to enjoy yourself, you still have a nagging bit of “concern” for what lies ahead in the future and just can’t quite loosen up completely; you’re about the only one who still bothers to keep up on current events by watching TV and looking at the internet in between non-stop merrymaking. Eventually one of your co-workers Greg walks in on you watching the news by yourself. He’s not exactly what you’d consider a friend, but he’s an acquaintance you normally talked to when you actually did work. “Jesus Christ man! There’s a non-stop party going on and you’re in here wasting time watching TV?” Greg says holding a bottle of beer. “I just want to see if the situation has improved…” “Are you kidding me? It ain’t improving man! The world’s going to hell in a hand basket, and the sooner you accept that fact the better! Why don’t you go talk to Marina in accounting, didn’t you always have a crush on her or something?” “Well yeah, but…” “But? But nothing man! There ain’t no time left anymore! Hell I haven’t seen you participate in ONE orgy since you’ve been here!” “I dunno, seems unsanitary, I don’t want to catch something, and I don’t want everyone to see me naked.” Greg puts one of his hands on his face and shakes his head in disbelief of your answer. He then throws his beer bottle into the TV screen breaking them both. “WAKE THE FUCK UP! This is fuckin’ it man! There ain’t nothing coming after this! We’re all gonna die in a fiery nuclear explosion! You think it’s really gonna matter if in the off chance that you do catch AIDS or some shit, you’ll be alive long enough to die from it? And nobody gives a shit about how small your dick is…” “HEY! My dick isn’t small! Its average length for someone of my height!” you protest. “Whatever man! Look what I’m trying to say is, everyone is just here to have a good time and grab some pleasure before the nukes start flying, and nobody’s even caring about looks right now. Shit, that fat troll Phil must be getting more action now than he ever has in his entire life! You thought Phil was disgusting looking with his clothes on, he ain’t any prettier with his clothes off, and yet he has banged Kate no less than ten times since we started this Armageddon party and you know how fucking fine she is!” “Really? Phil?” “I’m telling you man, you NEED to go talk to Marina and get you some of that before the bombs start dropping!” Greg sees that you’re still a little apprehensive about the idea. “Fine then, or don’t. It doesn’t matter to me man. I’m going back to the party, I’m not gonna stand here wasting my time talking to you when I could be fucking Kate. I just hope I can get to her before Phil this time.” Greg leaves you to ponder the situation.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn off the TV and head to work, no point in worrying about things you can’t do shit about. You have other real everyday problems to deal with. You go about your mundane life, doing mundane tasks at your mundane job, talking to your mundane co-workers about mundane things. Not much changes. One month later... Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up from the sofa like you always do, dreading to have to go to work at your pointless job. You haven’t been sleeping well lately, you don’t know what the hell the problem is, and all you know is you’re going to be tired for work again. As you go through your routine of getting ready, the TV can be heard; as usual you left it on from the night before. “…Russian hardliners seized control of the government…Chinese epidemic has worsened; entire country is under quarantine…UK has withdrawn all association from the EU…Senate dissolved in US, martial law enacted…India declared open war on Pakistan…mass starvation in Africa… world wide depression… Same old doom and gloom on TV, a lot more serious now though. Those “silly” bomb shelter infomercials have increased; you’ve also been noticing an increase in survival type book titles whenever you browse the book stores now and the Emergency broadcasting system has been doing A LOT of tests lately. Something bad is going to happen and it’s going to happen soon. You go about your life which isn’t quite so mundane, world politics is a constant topic at work, and many of your co-workers aren’t even coming in to do their job. All the married ones are no doubt spending time with their families, in fact the work place really isn’t a work place anymore so much as it is a “socializing site”. A lot of them believe the world is coming to an end anyway, so they might as well have a good time. Attempting to go about your normal life isn’t an option anymore; neither is buying a bomb shelter at this late stage. > You start staying home Fuck work, the world’s about to end soon and you need to prepare yourself for that! You immediately call up the number that the infomercial mentioned. You know the damn thing by heart since you’ve been watching it night after night. Eventually a chipper female voice picks up on the other end. “Ground Zero Survival Inc. How may I help you?” “Uh, yeah I’d like to buy a bomb shelter.” “That’s wonderful sir! In these uncertain times you can never be too careful and we here at GZS are thrilled that you’ve chosen to trust us in your continued existence! You and your family’s utmost protection is as important to us is it is to you! Our shelters are the best you’ll find and, we have many shelters still available at various prices, but really can you put a price on your loved ones protection? Of course not! So I’m sure you’ll want one of our top of the line models that are still left! Okay so how many are in your family?” “Um, just me.” “Oh…” the voice suddenly gets less chipper. “What?” “Sir, don’t you have ANY family? Like a wife at least, maybe a cousin?” “No, not really.” “Oh dear…” “WHAT!?” “Well sir, its just that, we here at GZS are a family friendly business and we feel that the survival of the human race will best be served by those who have a strong sense of family ties and a respect for the family unit. We aren’t in the business of selling shelters to those of low moral fiber sir…” “What the fuck?! Just because I’m single I gotta be some sort of low life? I’m not luring fuckin’ little girls into my car with lollipops! I have a fucking job and pay my goddamn taxes!” “Sir, I don’t like you taking that tone with me when there isn’t any call for it and I would appreciate it if you didn’t blaspheme, I’m a God fearing woman. Now then I understand your frustration, but there’s nothing we can do. Our shelters were primarily built for families of at least four. To put singles in them wouldn’t be fair to families that have children who shall surely be the ones to rebuild civilization, not to mention it would be a waste of resources. A single person would have an overstock of food and water since as I said we primarily cater to families and stock the shelters with families in mind.” “I fail to see how me having MORE than enough food and water is a bad thing…” “I see sir, so you would be selfish and deprive a possible family of survival?” “I didn’t say that! And wait a minute; wouldn’t I be doing that anyway if I had a family of my own?” “Yes, but it would be different.” “How?” “You would have a family sir.” You’re about ready to throw the phone against the wall in frustration. “So basically what you’re telling me is you’re not selling me a shelter.” “Ah now I didn’t say that sir! Since you’re interested in buying our product and by your previous outburst I can tell you ARE a productive member of society. And it is only due to your poor social skills that you have been unable to take the necessary steps to have a family of your own! But never fear, GZS HAS kept your type in mind!” “Gee, thanks…” “You’re quite welcome sir! We have the Community Shelters for singles! It is basically a giant shelter filled with singles such as yourself. You will be given a separate room to live in, but everything else you must share. Don’t worry we have stocked these shelters with supplies to last for years! It is our hope that nature will take its course and when it comes time to return to the surface a fully functional tight knit community of families will emerge to rebuild civilization once again!” Sharing isn’t something you’re good at. You like your privacy and your space and your solitude. You can’t imagine sharing stuff when your very survival is at stake. “Look, don’t you have ANYTHING I can get by myself?” you demand. “Are you serious sir? You actually want to be alone?” the voice says as if you must be nuts to ask that kind of question. “If possible yeah.” “Well…I shouldn’t really tell you sir, because you snapped at me earlier, but it is my job to make sure any potential customer is serviced to the best of my ability. That and the fact that these other Special Shelters we have are a bit…experimental.” “Experimental? What do you mean?” “Well I don’t know too much about these Special Shelters myself sir, all I know is they have been equipped with the latest technology and VERY expensive. Anyone can buy one as long as they have the money to do so.” “Well how experimental are these things exactly?” “As I said sir, I know little about these Special Shelters other than they are equipped with the latest technology. GZS has run tests and they are considered very safe and will protect you in the coming apocalypse, however due to time constraints GZS may have missed a few minor things, and as such we are legally required to warn…er inform potential customers before they buy them.” > You buy a room in the Community Shelter As much as you’re not keen on sharing, you’re less keen on the idea of being shoved in an experimental shelter. Sounds like they didn’t work all the bugs out of the system, and it’s filled with hi-tech equipment? God help you if something broke down. You wouldn’t know how to fix it. At least if you’re with other people, there’s bound to be people with different skills to compliment each other. Of course everyone could just be incompetent like they usually are. You’re not going to dwell on it too much, you’ll take the safer choice; maybe it won’t be so bad. “Okay I’ll take a room in the Community Shelter.” “Wonderful sir! You won’t regret this decision! Now I’ll need to know some vital information about yourself before I can direct you to our nearest Community shelter in your area where upon you shall pay the automatic teller just inside the foyer of it so that the main door can open and you will be able to enter your new residence during Armageddon! Okay let’s start with your name sir.” You give out your name, address and such. It’s all pretty routine stuff until the questions get more personal. “Have you ever committed a felony sir?” “No.” “Do you have a history of mental illness sir?” “No.” “Are you a drug addict or smoke sir?” “No.” “Are you handicapped in anyway sir?” “No.” “Do you believe in God sir?” “Huh? Uh…sure I guess.” “Hmmm…okay…” the voice says a bit disapprovingly. “Do you have any physical diseases or suffered from any in the past sir?” “No.” “Do you have AIDS or any other STDs sir?” “What the hell? I just told you I don’t have any diseases! Sexual or otherwise!” “Are you sterile sir?” “What?!” “I said are you shooting blanks sir?” “What difference does that make?” “Please sir, just answer the question.” “(Sigh) No. As far as I know, I’m packing a loaded fucking weapon. I know because I had to take an overly thorough physical for work recently.” “Wonderful sir! Okay are you a homosexual or ever had homosexual feelings?” “WHAT THE FUCK?! NO!!” “Sir, I told you before don’t take that tone with me.” “Well you’re asking me a lot of fucking personal questions! Why do you need to know all this shit?” “Sir, as I said, we are a family orientated business, we aren’t just a money motivated corporation, we are interested in the survival and well being of the human race. The human race can’t thrive if people don’t meet the necessary…requirements. How can civilization be re-built if children aren’t being born? I mean would you want to live in a society built by drug addicted mentally ill homosexual criminals? That’s the reason the world is ending now, because people have turned away from a righteous way of living!” “Look I’d live in a fucking society with transsexual midgets if it’ll get me to the fucking shelter already!” “Hmmm, well despite that comment, your non-committal answer on the belief in God, and your overall anti-social tone, you do qualify for one of our rooms in the Community Shelter in your area. I can only hope some of the other more sociable residents rub off on you, and cause a change in your personality. I’ll give you the location of the shelter sir.” You are given the location of the Community Shelter which you are surprised to find out is closer then you think, it shouldn’t take too long for you drive there. You are then given the price, which is pretty steep, but you can afford it. Besides if the world is ending it’s not like you’re really going to need money anymore. Which makes you wonder why GZS is in business at all. What’s the point of going to the trouble of building bomb shelters for Armageddon if all the profit they make is most likely going to be useless in the aftermath? Oh well that’s not your concern, you’re just glad you passed the damn interrogation and got into the shelter. Of course now you’re subjected to some last minute rules. “Okay sir, you are now in the system and registered. You may move into the Shelter at anytime as long you pay the fee required to the automatic teller as previously described to you. If you don’t pay, you can’t get in obviously. Cash, check, or debit card are acceptable. NO Credit Cards will be accepted! Now then some rules. You do not have to bring anything with you, but it is recommended that you do bring your own clothing if you wish to wear something different as the days go by. Food and drinkable liquids are acceptable, but not necessary. Do not bring in private medical supplies or repair equipment, the shelter has been stocked with those items, we do not want people bringing in potential weapons or illegal drugs. Speaking of which, DO NOT attempt to bring in any kind of weapon! Guns and knives are strictly prohibited! Attempting to bring in either one will result in non-admittance of the shelter! Same goes for drugs of any kind. Alcohol is frowned upon, but accepted. There WILL be a machine to scan you before you’re allowed to enter, so do not think you will be able to sneak anything in! Now then I trust our transaction has ended. If you have anymore questions please contact our customer service line. Good day sir, may your first child be a masculine one and thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” That’s it, all you have to do is get what stuff you want to take with you and move in, might as well do it now, no sense in waiting until you see the nuclear cloud. You wonder if you shouldn’t try to “beat the system” by sneaking your weapon in though. Ultimately you decide this is survival. You need every advantage you can get. You don’t know what kind of people you’re going to be stuck with, so you take your pistol with you and a few “non-lethal” supplies such as duct tape. You also you just pack some clothing, food and water. You then set off on your way. After a couple days of driving you finally arrive at the location that you were given. It’s in a fairly desolate place with a single solid metal structure with a door standing there. There’s also a few other cars parked nearby, you obviously aren’t the first one here. You park your van and enter the structure with the items you brought with you. You’re in a small foyer with an elevator door and ATM like machine; you’re guessing that’s the automatic teller you were told about. Before you start pressing buttons you need to figure out how you’re going to get your pistol through the scanning process, because you can be sure if you fail something nasty will happen… > You duct tape the pistol to the ceiling GZS probably has some sort of scanner that does a little more than just scan your body, so just not having the gun on your person most likely isn’t going to work. You get the idea that the machine is probably not going to scan the ceiling though, so you get out your duct tape and fix it to the pistol, you then climb on top of the automatic teller and jump up to stick the pistol on the ceiling. You end up falling on your ass, but you succeed. You then press some buttons on the machine, where it proceeds to ask your name and how you’re going to pay. You type in your name and insert you debit card where upon it drains most of your account. The door you stepped through sudden shuts and a hum is heard. You take a deep breath and hope for the best. “Now scanning for unauthorized items…Scanning…Scanning…Scanning complete. You have been allowed entry, the elevator doors will now open, your room number is 23, thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” an emotionless electronic voice remarks as the elevator doors open. It worked! You quickly climb back up on to the teller and jump up to grab your pistol, (this time able to maintain your balance better) toss it into the elevator opening and then rush in with all your belongings and take the long elevator trip down. When you get to bottom the elevator door opens to large sterile hallway with lines of other closed metal doors on either side As soon as you enter, the elevator doors slam shut and you hear it going back up, you also notice there aren’t any buttons to call it back…before you’re able to worry about that little detail you’re met by a few of your new neighbors. One is some tall skinny guy another is a brunette woman who begins talking to you. “Hey, another new neighbor! My name is Nina and this is Ron, what’s your name?” She is entirely too fucking friendly given the situation. “Why aren’t there call buttons back on the elevator?” you ask ignoring her question. “Huh? Oh I guess it’s a safety feature. The elevator automatically goes back up so the other people can get in as quickly as possible. Ron suggested that they might’ve thought someone would deliberately try to keep the elevator down here to prevent anyone else from seeking shelter. Though I can’t honestly imagine that anyone would do such a horrible thing.” “Been living on earth long Nina?” you ask rhetorically. “Great, so I’m basically trapped down here due to the brilliant engineering minds of GZS…so is it just us so far or are their other people here too?” ”There are a few others, if you come with us we can introduce you to…” “Maybe later, look we’re gonna be stuck down here for a long time so I’ll get to know everyone soon enough, right now I just want to go to my room and rest.” “Erm, okay…” Ron says as you push past them both. You head to your room which is equipped with the basic requirements; food and water dispenser, shower, bed, and a cabinet. (You hide your pistol in your mattress) There’s a standard Shelter Operations Manual sitting on the table as well as a Shelter Booklet about socialization, rules, guidelines and such, both of which you skim through every now and then. There’s a big public recreation area and a couple of other public rooms where your neighbors gather, but you stay in your room and keep to yourself for the most part. Sometimes in the middle of the night when nobody else is around you’ll watch the TV in the living area to keep up on current events. You hear other people arriving over the month. Ron and Nina greet them all, you can tell those two are going to be the ones to “organize” shit and probably try to decide what’s “best” for everyone. Always saying stuff that they read in the booklet. “Fucking busy bodies…” you say as you fall asleep watching the world in its death throes on TV… Monday 8:00 AM “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” You groggily wake up and see a test pattern on TV. This is it. You feel a small tremor and then you turn off the TV, just as Nina and Ron come walking in. “What was that?” Nina asks. “Test pattern, I think Armageddon arrived.” You answer. “What?! I can’t believe it!” Ron exclaims. “Why are you so surprised? I mean that was the whole point of coming down here right?” “Yeah, but I dunno…I just wasn’t prepared for it actually happening.” “Christ, Ron I’ve overheard you say you were the first one in this goddamn shelter, you of all people should’ve long gotten used to the idea of living down here.” “What is your problem? You been nothing but hostile since you’ve got here!” Nina exclaims. “My problem is I’m stuck down here with a bunch of people I don’t really know and if you two are any indication I don’t want to know.” “How did you even qualify to get a room down here?” “Good clean living I guess, so is there supposed to be something special we do now?” “Uh, yeah I think so, it mentions something in the booklet I was reading that came with the shelter, we’re supposed to gather everyone and tell them.” “Okay well I guess you guys go do that then. I’m just going to check on something here.” “Okay, but we’re supposed to have some sort of vote to decide on how this place is going to be run, if you don’t show up you don’t get a vote.” Ron reminds you. “I know Ron, I’ve read the booklet.” You answer unenthusiastically. Ron and Nina leave you and go tell the others of the situation and follow other things it states in the booklet. You’re wondering if you should even stay down here. All these people seem completely different than you. You wish there was someway to call the elevator back down, but after checking a GZS computer it states that it won’t come back until it detects that the surface is safe for habitation again…which basically means not in your lifetime. It’s probably just as well since the surface probably isn’t the safest place you’d want to be, lord knows what the hell it looks like now, not to mention the radiation factor. Then again you’d still like the option to leave if you wanted to. You go back to your room, read and enjoy the solitude until Nina comes to get you. “Hey! You didn’t show up for the meeting! We’re discussing which ways this place could be run, are you coming or what?” > You go vote “(Sigh) Fine, I’ll attend this exercise in futility, but what the hell are we doing exactly, so I’m not just jumping into shit.” You ask as you and Nina walk towards the conference room. “Well right now we’re voting on a shelter leader. Someone to make the final decisions about important things. So far Ron is tied with another. In fact the only reason why I came to get you, was so you could break the tie.” “Whoopie, I feel honored I can take an important part in this democratic process. So who’s the other person?” “Oh, that would be Elliot. He was one of the later arrivals, but is very personable. Not that you’d know since I doubt you’ve even seen him given that you lock yourself in you room all the time.” “Yeah, yeah, I know who he is, bald guy. So I take it you want Ron to win huh?” “Well…I’d be lying if I said I didn’t, but Elliot’s seems like a good guy too, so I’m sure he’d make a good leader as well.” “Why haven’t you run? I mean you seem to like to organize things.” “Me? Oh no, I’m not a leader.” “Well from what I’ve seen of Ron, he isn’t either.” Nina stops you in the corridor. “Damn it, stop being an asshole! At least Ron makes an attempt to get involved in things! You haven’t done shit since you got here except insult people and lock yourself away! Like it or not we’re ALL in this together! And you better start getting with the program and contribute!” “What the fuck? I am contributing; I’m going to this goddamn meeting aren’t I? And you better watch your tone; remember I’M the swing vote for your boyfriend.” “Ron isn’t my boyfriend! I mean…not yet…uh…” “What? You mean he isn’t taping your ass yet? Shit, he’s stupider than I thought then, because he’d be lucky to get someone who looks like you even if you are annoying.” Nina stands and stares at you in disbelief. “…could you possibly be any more vile?” “Probably, but we don’t have time for that, I gotta vote for some dickhead.” You continue to the conference room (with Nina no longer walking with you) and when you finally arrive everyone is there as if they’ve been waiting for you. You don’t even really care who’s in charge since more than likely no matter who you vote for is going to be an intrusive bastard wanting everyone to do something. You can vote for Ron. As far as leadership material, you don’t really see him as one, though he seems to have some planning skills and friendly to people so maybe he’s got the stuff. Elliot you barely know anything about, he also seems to be an organizer and friendly to everyone, but not to the point that it’s irritating. Though to you there’s something a little creepy about him. Ah what the hell, you know this is something Ron wants more than anything why not give it to him? Besides he’s not very “strong” which means you can probably get away with disobeying him on a regular basis without causing a big scene. “I’ll vote for Ron.” You say, Nina looks surprised and Ron jumps up and down like an idiot in celebration. You take that as your opportunity to go back to your room, Nina once again stops you in the corridor. “I just wanted to say thanks for doing this; I know you don’t even like Ron…” “I don’t care one way or another about him, if he wants the headache of running this place he can have it, he better just not ask too much of me, I did my bit. You can think of me as his kingmaker. See ya around.” You go back to your room and that’s where you spend a majority of your time. You don’t really mix with anyone, and nobody really makes the attempt with you either. You’re asked to contribute to some “events” sometimes, but you always ignore such requests and nothing happens. Nina still hangs around Ron like a love sick school girl, but for god knows what reason he seems completely oblivious to the fact. And obviously she hasn’t told him how she feels about him. You watch this comical display replay itself over and over. “Yeah, GZS really picked some excellent candidates to pair up to create families for the so called future, what a joke.” You mutter to yourself. Time goes by and Ron goes about his duties which mainly consist of discussing pointless plans in the conference room. The idiot can’t do ANYTHING without talking about it with others he appointed as advisors first! If somebody’s shower is broken they have to discuss when, how and WHY it has to be fixed! Naturally everyone disagree about one point and they have to start all over again which usually means nothing gets done. A lot of planning and organizing of ideas, but no actual implementations of those same ideas. The shelter starts falling into disrepair, a few fixes are made here and there, but they’re more jury-rigged ones more than anything. Nobody has perfectly functioning rooms from what you know…well except yours since you do nothing, but study the shelter manual all the time attempting to learn more about how it works giving you an edge in repairing your own room. (In fact you just permanently took a repair kit for yourself out of the equipment room) You really don’t understand why other people aren’t doing the same instead of waiting around for things to get repaired or complaining about needing things to get repaired. Everyone has the same damn operations manual. Read it! About six months go by and finally you’re given an unexpected visit during the night. You answer your door. It’s Elliot and some other people. “May we come in?” Elliot asks. “What do you want?” “Just to talk about the future of the shelter.” “Yeah? Well you can talk to Ron about that, he’s the big shelter leader.” “Yes he is, thanks to you. And that’s also why this shelter is in such bad shape. Ron is ruining this place with his ineptitude.” “Oh no, don’t blame that shit on me, that’s RON’S fault, not mine. And besides MY room works fine. If you lazy bastards would actually read the damn shelter manual you wouldn’t have any problems.” “Oh I’ve read the manual, I’m sure many people have. But surely you must realize most people don’t have the natural talent to fix thing that perhaps you have. Besides I’m sure you must also be aware that in a community each person has his own talents. For example Leon behind me used to be a bouncer. Don’t you think with his skills he’d make an excellent head of security around here?” Leon folds his big black arms almost daring you to say “No.” before Elliot continues. “My point is me and a few others are planning to take Ron out of office for gross incompetence. Did you know Fred and Greta are planning to have a baby? The first one to be born in here. The population in this shelter isn’t going to be stable forever. It’s going to grow and we NEED to keep this place running efficiently if we’re ALL going to survive. I know you’re a solitary person…I even respect that, but the time has come for you to choose between life or death. By joining our group, you’re choosing life. By remaining locked away in here, you’re choosing death not just for all of us, but for yourself. No man is an island.” Elliot has a bit of duality to his speech. Part of him sounds genuinely concerned for the future of the shelter; he may even have a point. But the other part of him sounds like he’s politely threatening you. And you’re not sure of the whole “taking Ron out of office” thing. It almost sounds like he plans on taking over by force. You get the impression he and his little group are going to do just that regardless of whether you join or not. > You decline “Yeah, well you do what you have to do, just leave me out of it. Your little power struggle with Ron isn’t any of my concern. And if and when you do take power don’t think you’re going to be ordering me around either.” Elliot’s expression changes to that of someone very perturbed by your response. “I’m very disappointed to hear you say that, I really thought you could have a place in the new community I was planning.” “Think again, now get outta here…” You begin to shove Elliot out of your doorway, but Leon reaches over his shoulder and shoves you back with great strength. You fall backwards on to your floor, Elliot and his gang start to enter. He pulls out a scalpel, something he probably got from the medical supplies. You happen to be right next to your mattress, so you reach in and grab your pistol to point it directly at Elliot. Now they all look like they just seen a ghost and all the bravery has drained out of them except Leon, who looks like this isn’t the first time he’s had a gun pointed at him, but he’s still stepping back. “You wanna fuckin’ take another step motherfucker? Go ahead, I fuckin’ dare you!” “Holy shit, he’s got a fuckin’ gun Elliot!” a women in his group says. “I can see that Brenda! Okay, look maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. I mean obviously you’re a more resourceful man than I thought…I mean as far as I know you’re the only one in this place with a goddamn gun. How’d you manage that?” “Never you mind, just get the fuck outta here!” “Very well, but remember, you don’t have any friends in this place, and you can’t watch your back all the time…” Elliot has just announced his intentions of eliminating you whenever it’s possible. You’ll have to live in constant paranoia now. Unless… > You shoot him now Always one to solve a problem before it starts… You pull the trigger and blast Elliot square in the chest. He looks down in disbelief and then slumps down on the floor by your feet. You then get up from the floor as everyone else runs out of the room. “Yeah that’s what I thought! So much for your fearless leader!” As you drag Elliot’s body out of your room, everyone else in the shelter has come out of their own rooms after hearing the gun shot and screaming. “OH MY GOD! HE’S GOT A GUN!” someone shouts. “HE’S KILLED ELLIOT!” another screams. Everyone is very afraid of what you’re going to do next. Only Nina dares approach you. “You…you killed him? I always knew you were anti-social, but…oh my god…” “Yeah I fuckin’ killed Elliot! And YOU of all people oughta be damn well glad I did! He was planning on taking over this place from your boyfriend Ron!” “Ron’s not my boyfriend! And I don’t believe you! Elliot was gracious in his defeat! He was a good man unlike you!” “Yeah he was so good he tried to recruit me for his little rebellion gang, and don’t try to hide in the fuckin’ crowd Leon and act like you weren’t there! All of you fuckers hiding right now, came to my room with Elliot! And lemme ask you this, WHY the hell would ANY of them come to MY room? Everyone knows I don’t invite people!” “I dunno what to say right now…please just put down the gun…I don’t want you to kill anyone else…” “For fuck’s sake Nina I’m not a mass murderer! It was self-defense! He was gonna kill me, just like he was gonna kill Ron and shit maybe he should’ve, the fuckstick’s supposed to be the shelter leader and he’s not even here for this! Where is Ron?” Nina suddenly wonders where he’s at as well, she runs over to his door which is still shut. “Don’t tell me, he’s THAT much of deep sleeper.” You mutter while standing by Elliot’s dead body. Nina doesn’t even knock, apparently she’s got her own key to get in his room. You’re STILL wondering why nothing has happened between those two yet, your questions are soon answered, and everyone is in for another surprise this eventful night. “EEEEEEEEEEEK! NO!” you hear Nina scream when she goes inside the room and then runs back out crying. Ron steps out in his underwear. “No, wait! Nina, its not what it looks like!” he shouts to her and then another guy in his underwear comes out. You think his name is William, you never knew too much about him before, but you know MORE than you wanted to now! “Get back inside William!” when Ron sees that there’s a whole crowd of people staring in various states of shock. It’s too late though now, everyone knows. “Wow Nina sure is a good judge of character, she thought Elliot was a good man and she thought you were straight. Looks like I wasn’t the only one with a secret in this shelter! Heh heh.” Ron finally turns to you and sees what you’ve done. “…You got a gun? YOU FUCKIN’ KILLED ELLIOT?” “(Sigh) Not this again! Yeah I fuckin’ killed him. He tried to kill me and he was planning on killing you to take over this dump!” “Now just calm down, and put down the gun…” “I’m not putting down shit and I’m not killing anyone else unless someone gives me cause to do so! What the fuck, was the dick in your mouth so good to you, you didn’t hear the gunshots and screaming out here? I’m sick of explaining this twice! Now I’M going back into MY room to get some sleep! And none of you better fucking disturb me for the rest of the night! And someone better clean up Elliot’s carcass from in front of my room when I wake up tomorrow!” You return to your room. “Yeah, I think that went well.” You say to yourself. After the night of multiple “incidents” a lot of things happen. The first, is Elliot’s body being the first one dumped into the incinerator. The second being that Ron is immediately voted out by his own council who all follow the GZS guidelines. Apparently being gay was more of an offense than being incompetent, since GZS guidelines were explicit in not wanting homosexuals in the Community Shelters which he obviously lied about. Nina is unsurprisingly the most vocal about his vote out; in fact she ends up taking over. Ron and William move into a separate far room together and become social pariahs. Everyone who was previously friendly with Ron suddenly starts treating him like garbage. You never really cared for him, and thought he was an incompetent moron, but even you think it’s shitty for them to all just turn on him over who he happens to be fucking. But that’s how people are and that’s why you try to avoid them. Your situation is a little different, they can’t really treat you like a social pariah mainly because you were always one to begin with and another because everyone’s afraid you’ll shoot them. All of Elliot’s former friends have no doubt reinforced the belief in others that you’re dangerous. You don’t really care though, just as long as nobody fucks with you and stays out of your way (Which everyone does for the most part since you now walk around with it at all times) A year passes… The shelter sees its first baby born and there are a couple of other pregnant women ready to pop as well. Nina has improved the place a little bit more. No doubt without anyone to fawn over now she’s throwing herself into her work. There’s actually a guy (Kyle) who’s has some medical knowledge now, they still don’t really have a good “tech guy” though and things are still being jury-rigged. Nina knows with a growing population this shelter needs to be in tip top running condition. You get that expected knock on the door. “Hello, Nina.” You say. “Yeah hi. Look, I just want to know if you have any intention of helping us out or if you’re still going to remain an isolated asshole.” Nothing like being blunt. Politics has really hardened Nina, she’s all business now it seems and lot less naïve. How strangely appealing… > You help out the community “You know what Nina? I’m in a charitable mood. What do you need?” “We need you to hack into the central GZS computer system to bring the elevator down.” “Wow, I didn’t expect that one. What’s going on?” “Can you do it?” Nina asks without answering your question. “Well in theory I might. I’ve fucked around with that computer when nobody was around in the past, but I’ve never really gotten into the inner workings of the system, and I’ve read as much as I can about the shelter itself. Damn thing’s touchy though. I just worry that if I do the wrong thing I’ll end up shutting the whole shelter down and doom us all.” “You mean doom yourself.” “Well that too, but you still never told me what you want to bring the elevator down for.” “Are you gonna do it or not?” “Okay, what happens if I don’t?” “I’ll just get one of my own people to attempt it and hope they don’t doom us all accidentally.” “(Sigh) Well played Nina, you know I’m gonna do it now. Alright, let’s go.” You and Nina enter the Community Shelter computer room, where a couple of Nina’s tech’s are tinkering with the Central GZS computer. “What are you doing!? Give me that!” you yell taking a screw driver away from one of them. You recognize them both Todd and Charles if you remember correctly. “Oh man, its you! Okay, don’t get mad!” Todd says backing off. Charles does like wise. “Sheesh, I’m not going to shoot you! I’m just trying to prevent you from fucking up what’s basically our life support system! Its barely working right as it is! I swear GZS put us in a death trap down here.” “Alright then do you need any help? Or should we leave you alone while you do this?” Nina asks. “What do you think fearless leader?” “Right. Come on let’s go.” Nina and the other two leave and you get to work. You first do a system scan to what’s going on exactly. Wow, this place really is in some bad shape! You can see where some fixes have been made, but without a really skilled technician routinely checking in on stuff, things are never going to get better in this place, you shutter to think what would’ve happened with Ron still in control. This place might’ve very well lost all power. You’re sort of glad you’ve begun to take an interest. MAYBE after you manage to get the elevator down you might just volunteer to upkeep this thing. You start delving into the inner working of the system; GZS really didn’t want folks bringing the elevator down! You accidentally cut some lighting temporarily which causes you to hear some yelling from a distance. “Oh toughen up.” You say to yourself. You continue to work and eventually you successfully override the safety protocol for the elevator and it starts its decent. “Ha ha, I rule.” You say as you come out of the computer room. “Did you do it?” Nina asks. “Sure did. NOW are you going to tell me why we’re bringing it down?” “You’ll see for yourself. Leon, bring both of the perverts out, this has been a long time coming…” You notice that everyone’s standing around right now, like some special event is going down. Leon eventually comes back with Ron and William in tow, and he looks like he roughed them up first so they’d struggle less. The elevator door opens up for the first time. “Put both of these…criminals in the elevator Leon.” Nina says. Leon does so, with a lot of protesting and pleading from both, but another couple punches shut them up. Now you know why Nina wanted you to bring the elevator down…exile. If this was a year ago and they were throwing Ron out in the wasteland for his bungling of shelter management, you’d probably be the first to applaud. But what’s going on right now is for the wrong damn reasons, and you know Nina’s just being a petty bitch who’s still harboring resentment for shit she really brought on herself with completely clueless judgment on her part. “Alright, Nina I know you’re fucking upset because your make believe boyfriend turned out to be a fag, but that was a goddamn year ago…” “Shut up! This has nothing to do with that! This is about justice! These two are in violation of GZS guidelines carrying on with…” “Oh will you shut up about that shit? I’m starting to believe the entire GZS Corporation were a bunch of fucking loonies with too much time on their hands! They build these fucking shelters that break down all the goddamn time, with no way to get back to the surface and trapping everyone down here.” “Why the hell are you defending these two? You’ve never been one to give a fucking shit before! You know I’ve never seen you pursue any women around here even if you were slightly appealing enough for any of them to have you. What are you gay too?” “(Sigh) No, Nina because if I was I’m sure you would’ve been the first one to want to spread your legs for me. Look I’m just saying this ain’t fucking right okay?” “Oh and YOU’RE the fucking expert on what’s right? You fucking KILLED a man! You fucking snuck a gun in here a shot somebody! So is the gun an extension of your manhood and you just couldn’t live without it?” “Y’know Nina, you seem awfully pre-occupied with my sexual habits. Shit, if you want me to fuck you already just come out and say it and stop beating around bush. I’d say that’s what you’ve been needing since you got in here anyway, because I haven’t seen YOU with anyone either, that didn’t turn out to be a complete fucking homo of course.” Your remark is met with a long period of silence. The rest of the shelter population has been in absolute awe, this is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened since you shot Elliot. Nina looks at you hard and recomposes herself. “Are you going to send the elevator up, or not?” > You send the elevator up You throw your hands up. “Alright, fuck it then. You’re right. What the hell do I care? Shoulda been more careful Ron.” You turn around and go back to the computer room to send the elevator up, you hear the pitiful begging from Ron, followed up by a couple of verbal abusive insults from Nina. Sheesh, she’s turned into a real bitch. You better make yourself semi-useful so that vengeful attitude doesn’t turn too much on you. You figure the best way to do that is to start monitoring and working with the GZS central computer, besides you need to look after this thing anyway. You don’t feel safe with those other two idiots looking after it. “(Sigh) Looks like I’m working again.” You say as you press the button to send the elevator up. Four years pass... You’ve been here five years and things have changed. The population has grown a bit, but not a lot since Nina’s pettiness helps keep the population down. Nina, has thrown at least ten people into “exile”. Anyone who only mildly displeases or disagrees with her, is often shown the elevator…unless they happen to be providing a useful skill like you. Nina really hates the fact that you’re the only competent technician she has. You manage to keep things from breaking down constantly like they were, but only just the minimum. You purposely don’t keep things running at maximum efficiency, since as long as you’re needed you won’t be in danger…of course there IS the fact you have a gun that also keeps you safe, but there’s never any harm in having a couple of safety nets. The more the better. In fact, you wonder about losing one of your safety nets. Todd and Charles have increased in their technical knowledge over the years, and granted they still aren’t as skilled as you; they might actually be competent one day. And they do a lot less back talking than you… You wonder if you should do something to ensure your position. Todd and Charles come in talking about some old movie they watched in the community living area. It would be really easy to just shoot them. Who would stop you? And what could anyone do about it? > You shoot them both Oh well, you were never that close to them anyway… You reach for your weapon, while Todd and Charles are still talking. You blast Charles in the neck making blood spurt all over Todd who stares in shock. Your next shot hits Todd in the head. With both of them dead you suddenly feel a whole lot better and go back to work. Naturally the sound of the shots brings people to come running. “OH NO! HE’S DONE IT AGAIN!” someone shouts and runs back out of the room. Pretty soon Nina and her goon Leon come in. Nina sees the two bodies on the floor and looks more pissed off than afraid of you. “What the fuck did you do that for?” “Just ensuring my position Nina, I’m sure you understand.” “You fucking psychotic sonofabitch! You can’t just go around shooting people!” “Oh don’t EVEN be claiming moral superiority here Nina, you who throws people into Exile just because they’re looking at you funny! In fact Todd and Charles deaths are your fault not mine, I can’t help if I feel threatened that you might replace me and throw me out on to the surface as well.” “Goddamn you, if you didn’t have that gun or the only reliable tech, I’d throw you out of here so fast…” “Exactly! So I’m glad we’re in agreement…it’s all your fault.” “What the…look, just because you got that fuckin’ gun doesn’t mean shit! I’M still in charge of this place!” You stand up and shoot Leon three times, he falls backwards smacking his head against a table before taking his last breath. Now Nina starts to get worried, you just shot her head goon who was intimidating everyone else. She doesn’t have that leverage anymore. Of course right now she’s not worried about staying in power, for the first time she’s worried about you shooting her. You’re up close and personal, threatening her with it. “See that Nina? What the fuck are ya gonna do now? Who are ya gonna get to throw people into exile? In case you haven’t realized it yet, but I’M in fuckin’ charge of this goddamn place! I just let you think you are! Now I suggest you take your ass outta here and try to figure out how you’re gonna stay in power. Because I’m sure there’s a lot of people not fond of you either, but unlike me they can actually do something about you. Guess I know who’ll be the next exile! Ha Ha!” you then lick Nina’s face. Nina backs out of the room in a hurry, leaving you alone with a room full of dead bodies. “Get up, you lazy fucks, we got work to do!” you say kicking Todd’s body in a macabre joke to yourself. Perhaps stepping over the line of killing Todd and Charles with no provocation unhinged you a bit. And killing Leon certainly put you over the edge. Granted Nina’s no saint, but what you’re doing is just as bad. You kind of got a power rush, from your deeds today and you must say you really liked it. After making sure everything’s working properly and even increasing the efficiency a bit, you decide to call it a day at the computer room. You leave stepping over the bodies that nobody’s come to clean up yet. “Well, if you’re still here, I guess I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” You say. You make your way back to your room. The corridors seem to be clear of folks, probably afraid of all the stuff that went down today so they’re keeping their heads down. Good. Before you get ready to go to sleep, you get a knock on the door, you answer it, ready to shoot someone else again, but see Nina in her underwear instead. You’re a little surprised. “Nina, what the hell are you doing?” unsure of how to respond. Nina begins to talk in a way you’ve never heard her speak before, seductive, yet vulnerable. “I was doing some thinking like you said back in the computer room…and you’re right. I won’t hold anymore power here anymore…I’ll probably get thrown onto the surface like you said…unless I ally myself with someone who has power, and you’re the only one with that kind of power.” “I see, so what does this conclusion you’ve come to mean exactly?” Nina takes your hand and puts it on her body, starting with her firm breasts and moving it lower to the promised land. “It means I’m yours, in everyway imaginable, every night, any time, just please don’t let anything happen to me.” Nina then nuzzles up against you and begins kissing on you gently for further enticement in her desperate plan to save herself. It’s a bit hard to resist her offer. In more ways than one. This reminds you of those prison movies where one of them offers to be the bitch in exchange for protection, except this is better because Nina’s female! > You accept her offer You don’t think about it, you don’t answer; you let your actions speak. You pull her inside and close the door while she continues to kiss on you. As she kisses on your chest you begin pushing her head lower. She gets on her knees and begins servicing you like a common whore. After you reach your climax, she insists that she’s not done and wants to show you even more of what she’s capable of tonight. You and her fall back to the bed where she slips off her panties, mounts you and begins the second round. In the throes of love making while you’re closing your eyes saying “Ride the horse baby! Ride the fuckin’ horse!” you climax again, and when you open them, you get a nasty surprise of your own fucking gun being pointed at your face. “Raise your fuckin’ hands motherfucker!” she says calmly. You comply. “Whoa! Hold on! Don’t shoot! Weren’t we just having fun?” “Maybe you were, but this was just a means to an end for me…I fully intend on scrubbing myself thoroughly after this, the fact that you came inside me twice sickens me.” “Okay, just settle down Nina, I know you’re a little upset about what I did earlier today, but I wasn’t actually going to hurt you. Just got a little trigger happy that’s all! I dunno I’ve been under a lot of stress lately! I…” ”SHUT UP! You ain’t talkin’ your way outta this! This is about survival and being in control!” Sensing nothing else to lose you become threatening. “Oh yeah? Well fuck you! Because I’M still in fuckin’ control then! Without me nobody knows how to run the goddamn computer the right way! I’m fuckin’ necessary to your fuckin’ survival, you stupid bitch!” “I’m nobody’s bitch! Especially not yours!” Before you can retort to that remark, Nina blows your brains out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Oh well, you were never that close to them anyway… You reach for your weapon, while Todd and Charles are still talking. You blast Charles in the neck making blood spurt all over Todd who stares in shock. Your next shot hits Todd in the head. With both of them dead you suddenly feel a whole lot better and go back to work. Naturally the sound of the shots brings people to come running. “OH NO! HE’S DONE IT AGAIN!” someone shouts and runs back out of the room. Pretty soon Nina and her goon Leon come in. Nina sees the two bodies on the floor and looks more pissed off than afraid of you. “What the fuck did you do that for?” “Just ensuring my position Nina, I’m sure you understand.” “You fucking psychotic sonofabitch! You can’t just go around shooting people!” “Oh don’t EVEN be claiming moral superiority here Nina, you who throws people into Exile just because they’re looking at you funny! In fact Todd and Charles deaths are your fault not mine, I can’t help if I feel threatened that you might replace me and throw me out on to the surface as well.” “Goddamn you, if you didn’t have that gun or the only reliable tech, I’d throw you out of here so fast…” “Exactly! So I’m glad we’re in agreement…it’s all your fault.” “What the…look, just because you got that fuckin’ gun doesn’t mean shit! I’M still in charge of this place!” You stand up and shoot Leon three times, he falls backwards smacking his head against a table before taking his last breath. Now Nina starts to get worried, you just shot her head goon who was intimidating everyone else. She doesn’t have that leverage anymore. Of course right now she’s not worried about staying in power, for the first time she’s worried about you shooting her. You’re up close and personal, threatening her with it. “See that Nina? What the fuck are ya gonna do now? Who are ya gonna get to throw people into exile? In case you haven’t realized it yet, but I’M in fuckin’ charge of this goddamn place! I just let you think you are! Now I suggest you take your ass outta here and try to figure out how you’re gonna stay in power. Because I’m sure there’s a lot of people not fond of you either, but unlike me they can actually do something about you. Guess I know who’ll be the next exile! Ha Ha!” you then lick Nina’s face. Nina backs out of the room in a hurry, leaving you alone with a room full of dead bodies. “Get up, you lazy fucks, we got work to do!” you say kicking Todd’s body in a macabre joke to yourself. Perhaps stepping over the line of killing Todd and Charles with no provocation unhinged you a bit. And killing Leon certainly put you over the edge. Granted Nina’s no saint, but what you’re doing is just as bad. You kind of got a power rush, from your deeds today and you must say you really liked it. After making sure everything’s working properly and even increasing the efficiency a bit, you decide to call it a day at the computer room. You leave stepping over the bodies that nobody’s come to clean up yet. “Well, if you’re still here, I guess I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” You say. You make your way back to your room. The corridors seem to be clear of folks, probably afraid of all the stuff that went down today so they’re keeping their heads down. Good. Before you get ready to go to sleep, you get a knock on the door, you answer it, ready to shoot someone else again, but see Nina in her underwear instead. You’re a little surprised. “Nina, what the hell are you doing?” unsure of how to respond. Nina begins to talk in a way you’ve never heard her speak before, seductive, yet vulnerable. “I was doing some thinking like you said back in the computer room…and you’re right. I won’t hold anymore power here anymore…I’ll probably get thrown onto the surface like you said…unless I ally myself with someone who has power, and you’re the only one with that kind of power.” “I see, so what does this conclusion you’ve come to mean exactly?” Nina takes your hand and puts it on her body, starting with her firm breasts and moving it lower to the promised land. “It means I’m yours, in everyway imaginable, every night, any time, just please don’t let anything happen to me.” Nina then nuzzles up against you and begins kissing on you gently for further enticement in her desperate plan to save herself. It’s a bit hard to resist her offer. In more ways than one. This reminds you of those prison movies where one of them offers to be the bitch in exchange for protection, except this is better because Nina’s female! > You decline You push her away; you’re not fooled by this act. “Nina, maybe your feminine wiles worked on Leon, but that shit ain’t gonna work on me, I know what the fuck you’re up to. You think I’m gonna let you distract me and let you grab my pistol while we’re fucking? Not fucking likely!” Nina attempts to continue with her tactic and gets next to you again. “No, I’m serious. I want your protection. I wouldn’t try to betray you…” “Oh, okay. You’re serious eh? We’ll see.” You pull Nina in the room and lock the door. You then take your pistol, unload it, and then put it on the far side of the room. Nina’s face looks little less “in the mood” now. “Alright, let’s go then.” You say. “Uh…” “What’s the matter? Plan backfire? Too late for regrets now, now we can either do this voluntarily or INvoluntarily…and on the path I’ve been going lately I think you know that I’m fully capable of doing it. Pfft. I don’t need a gun for you. So, what’s it gonna be Nina?” Nina looks around, probably looking for something to throw at you, but she realizes that it would probably be in vain. She’s obviously scared, but still tries to maintain some bravery in this hopeless situation that you’ve put her in. “Alright…but don’t hurt me.” Your increasingly chaotic personality changes again and you go up to Nina in a “loving” fashion. “Aw baby, I won’t hurt you. Just know your place and I’ll take care of you, I promise.” You fuck Nina eight ways from doomsday that night. You can’t speak for Nina, but you know YOU enjoyed yourself. The only absolute positive for Nina is that she IS now under your protection and nobody dares to do anything to her now. A few months pass and you keep expecting her to try to do something to betray you, but nothing happens. Either she’s resigned herself to being “yours” or she’s content on taking her aggression out on others. Her time with you doesn’t make her any more compassionate to others, if anything she’s gotten worse. She doesn’t threaten people with exile anymore, now she just threatens them with you. Meanwhile you begin to slowly descend into a sociopathic personality. The only thing that prevents you from shooting everyone is the fact that you’re getting off on their fear a lot more than if you killed them. You keep the computer room locked so only you may access it. You and her are pretty much running the place now. Five more years pass… The shelter is a living nightmare to most people. They live in constant fear that you or Nina will do something to them. Nina has developed a twisted sort of love for you, and while you have a certain fondness for her, you don’t really give a shit about anything anymore, you barely even keep the computer working right anymore, now you just make sure your room is running properly. Nina is a permanent fixture at your place, so you don’t even need to look after her room even if you were inclined to do so. While the people were living in fear of you, initially you were at least somewhat looking after their welfare, but now you aren’t even doing that. Now the fear turns into hatred and resentment. The cowering worms have evolved to grow spines. They begin devising a plan. One day Nina gets into a cat fight with another woman, Greta. She beats her pretty badly, until her husband Fred steps in and begins beating the hell out of her. As is typical Nina runs off to tell you, at which point you come out of the computer room ready to shoot someone. Fred stands up to you, and says Nina was the one who started it and he was just protecting his wife as if his explanation means anything to you. “Duly noted. And I understand your view, but as you must be able to see I have a view of things as well…that’s a nice kid you got there.” You shoot Fred and Greta’s son right before their eyes. Greta screams and Fred lunges at you, causing you to shoot him as well, but not before he tackles you to the floor. Seeing this as the perfect opportunity, a few other bystanders take advantage of the situation, your sole means of power and intimidation is taken from you, as you are kicked and beaten repeatedly. Nina is treated the same way. Suddenly the beatings stop and as you attempt to get up you feel the barrel against your head. You spit a glob of blood before continuing. “Ha ha, go ahead shit eater. Pop me and they’ll be nobody to run the computer the right way.” “We’ll get by.” a voice says. You then are shot twice in the back of the head. Nina’s fate follows soon after. Your remaining ammo is used to shoot both of your dead bloody bodies until it’s all gone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You throw your hands up. “Alright, fuck it then. You’re right. What the hell do I care? Shoulda been more careful Ron.” You turn around and go back to the computer room to send the elevator up, you hear the pitiful begging from Ron, followed up by a couple of verbal abusive insults from Nina. Sheesh, she’s turned into a real bitch. You better make yourself semi-useful so that vengeful attitude doesn’t turn too much on you. You figure the best way to do that is to start monitoring and working with the GZS central computer, besides you need to look after this thing anyway. You don’t feel safe with those other two idiots looking after it. “(Sigh) Looks like I’m working again.” You say as you press the button to send the elevator up. Four years pass... You’ve been here five years and things have changed. The population has grown a bit, but not a lot since Nina’s pettiness helps keep the population down. Nina, has thrown at least ten people into “exile”. Anyone who only mildly displeases or disagrees with her, is often shown the elevator…unless they happen to be providing a useful skill like you. Nina really hates the fact that you’re the only competent technician she has. You manage to keep things from breaking down constantly like they were, but only just the minimum. You purposely don’t keep things running at maximum efficiency, since as long as you’re needed you won’t be in danger…of course there IS the fact you have a gun that also keeps you safe, but there’s never any harm in having a couple of safety nets. The more the better. In fact, you wonder about losing one of your safety nets. Todd and Charles have increased in their technical knowledge over the years, and granted they still aren’t as skilled as you; they might actually be competent one day. And they do a lot less back talking than you… You wonder if you should do something to ensure your position. Todd and Charles come in talking about some old movie they watched in the community living area. It would be really easy to just shoot them. Who would stop you? And what could anyone do about it? > You resist Man, you MUST be going half-nuts down here. You can’t believe you just considered killing two people just on a paranoid delusion. You begin to start seriously analyzing your behavior. Okay, killing Elliot was in self defense. You didn’t really have a choice. You were even defending this place, he didn’t seem like he had good plans for the shelter and its inhabitants. Sending Ron and William into exile wasn’t your fault…well not really. You were just obeying goddamn orders. You tried to talk Nina out of it when nobody else had the balls to stand up to her. She wasn’t budging. What the fuck were you supposed to do? Shoot her, like you were just thinking about shooting Charles and Todd just a few moments ago? You just wanted to be fuckin’ left alone, now you’re roped into all this shit that you don’t really want to be part of. You’re NOT a bad guy, hell you’re keeping this shelter from falling into ruin! “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU PEOPLE WANT FROM ME?!!?!” you yell. Charles and Todd look at each other wondering what you’re talking about. “Uh…nothing. In fact we weren’t even talking to you.” Todd says. “Are you alright? You’ve been spacing out and day dreaming a lot lately.” Charles adds as you suddenly realize your surroundings. “I…I gotta get outta this place.” “Well, that’s cool I mean you do seem like you need to lie down and rest or something. We can look after…” “NO Todd! I mean I gotta leave THIS place! The fuckin’ shelter!” “You mean go to the surface? Are you crazy?” Charles asks. “I’m gettin’ there and know I can’t stay here any longer, or I’m gonna go fuckin’ full blown crazy and shoot somebody else!” Charles and Todd both back off. “Hey on the other hand maybe leaving is a good idea!” You tell Todd and Charles you’re going to pack some supplies and as much water as you can carry and that all you want them to do, is to send the elevator up for you. They don’t have a problem with it, they tell you just to come back and let them know when you’re ready. You go back to your room and load up on water and that crap they call “food” from the dispensers. Then you enter the medical room and begin taking medical supplies. When you think you’re ready, you go back and tell Todd and Charles. Charles opens the elevator door and wishes you luck, Todd talks to you on your way there. “So you sure about this?” “Very sure, in fact I’m not sure why more people aren’t wanting to leave with Nina bullying everyone.” Speak of the devil. Nina arrives with her goon Leon. Shit, you were hoping to avoid this. “What’s all this about me being a bully? And where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Nina exclaims. “I’m leaving Nina, you of all people should be happy about it, I won’t be around to piss you off anymore or threaten your power.” “Well as much as I’d like you to leave, I admit you’re needed here so I’m afraid I can’t let you leave and even if you were to leave I can’t just let you take vital shelter supplies! Go put those back and get back to your post NOW!” “Nina, you’re not calling the fuckin’ shots on this, I’m going! I’m not you’re goddamn prisoner! And if the rest of you are smart the rest of these people would stop cowering before you. But hey what do I know?” You start to enter the elevator, and Nina makes another threat. “Don’t you DARE walk away from me! You go in that elevator and don’t expect to get to the top! I’ll make sure it gets stopped mid-way through and leave it there for you to die a slow death!” You step back out and hang your head down. “(Sigh) You WOULD do that wouldn’t you?” “You bet your ass I would!” “Well I guess I have no choice.” You look up at Nina, raise your pistol and blast Leon twice in the chest and then point it at her. Onlookers slowly rise from their hiding spots “Holy shit!” Todd shouts. “Please don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!” Nina whines “Gonna be hard to intimidate Charles or Todd without your head goon now isn’t it? In fact I’d say your power trip is just about over. Hey folks, consider this my last favor to all of you! Alright Todd, tell Charles I’m going up!” You enter the elevator and begin your ascent. Finally the elevator opens up to the same foyer you entered five years ago. Looks exactly the same, except the payment machine is now offline in fact the screen is cracked. There’s a crowbar lying on the floor and the doors to the outside look like they were pried open. You see the outside world for the first time in five years. From where you’re standing, it doesn’t look too bad; maybe the devastation wasn’t that great in this area. Somebody or possibly several people were here at one time attempting to get in, you laugh thinking about someone actually trying to get in this place. You exit the foyer and go outside, you see a bright light. It’s the sun; you forgot how bright it could be. You see everyone’s cars still parked here, well almost. You can tell that few of them must’ve been taken at one time; a lot have just been plain vandalized. Your van still looks the same though, nobody in their right mind would steal that thing, and it already looks vandalized. You wonder if it would still start, but you left your keys to it in the shelter. You doubt if it would though. “Meh, I need the exercise anyway.” You cover your eyes and take a far view of your position. Nobody around, there’s not even a sound except the wind; you’re all alone as far as you can tell and this is what you missed. Once again you have peaceful solitude. You begin to walk…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“You know what Nina? I’m in a charitable mood. What do you need?” “We need you to hack into the central GZS computer system to bring the elevator down.” “Wow, I didn’t expect that one. What’s going on?” “Can you do it?” Nina asks without answering your question. “Well in theory I might. I’ve fucked around with that computer when nobody was around in the past, but I’ve never really gotten into the inner workings of the system, and I’ve read as much as I can about the shelter itself. Damn thing’s touchy though. I just worry that if I do the wrong thing I’ll end up shutting the whole shelter down and doom us all.” “You mean doom yourself.” “Well that too, but you still never told me what you want to bring the elevator down for.” “Are you gonna do it or not?” “Okay, what happens if I don’t?” “I’ll just get one of my own people to attempt it and hope they don’t doom us all accidentally.” “(Sigh) Well played Nina, you know I’m gonna do it now. Alright, let’s go.” You and Nina enter the Community Shelter computer room, where a couple of Nina’s tech’s are tinkering with the Central GZS computer. “What are you doing!? Give me that!” you yell taking a screw driver away from one of them. You recognize them both Todd and Charles if you remember correctly. “Oh man, its you! Okay, don’t get mad!” Todd says backing off. Charles does like wise. “Sheesh, I’m not going to shoot you! I’m just trying to prevent you from fucking up what’s basically our life support system! Its barely working right as it is! I swear GZS put us in a death trap down here.” “Alright then do you need any help? Or should we leave you alone while you do this?” Nina asks. “What do you think fearless leader?” “Right. Come on let’s go.” Nina and the other two leave and you get to work. You first do a system scan to what’s going on exactly. Wow, this place really is in some bad shape! You can see where some fixes have been made, but without a really skilled technician routinely checking in on stuff, things are never going to get better in this place, you shutter to think what would’ve happened with Ron still in control. This place might’ve very well lost all power. You’re sort of glad you’ve begun to take an interest. MAYBE after you manage to get the elevator down you might just volunteer to upkeep this thing. You start delving into the inner working of the system; GZS really didn’t want folks bringing the elevator down! You accidentally cut some lighting temporarily which causes you to hear some yelling from a distance. “Oh toughen up.” You say to yourself. You continue to work and eventually you successfully override the safety protocol for the elevator and it starts its decent. “Ha ha, I rule.” You say as you come out of the computer room. “Did you do it?” Nina asks. “Sure did. NOW are you going to tell me why we’re bringing it down?” “You’ll see for yourself. Leon, bring both of the perverts out, this has been a long time coming…” You notice that everyone’s standing around right now, like some special event is going down. Leon eventually comes back with Ron and William in tow, and he looks like he roughed them up first so they’d struggle less. The elevator door opens up for the first time. “Put both of these…criminals in the elevator Leon.” Nina says. Leon does so, with a lot of protesting and pleading from both, but another couple punches shut them up. Now you know why Nina wanted you to bring the elevator down…exile. If this was a year ago and they were throwing Ron out in the wasteland for his bungling of shelter management, you’d probably be the first to applaud. But what’s going on right now is for the wrong damn reasons, and you know Nina’s just being a petty bitch who’s still harboring resentment for shit she really brought on herself with completely clueless judgment on her part. “Alright, Nina I know you’re fucking upset because your make believe boyfriend turned out to be a fag, but that was a goddamn year ago…” “Shut up! This has nothing to do with that! This is about justice! These two are in violation of GZS guidelines carrying on with…” “Oh will you shut up about that shit? I’m starting to believe the entire GZS Corporation were a bunch of fucking loonies with too much time on their hands! They build these fucking shelters that break down all the goddamn time, with no way to get back to the surface and trapping everyone down here.” “Why the hell are you defending these two? You’ve never been one to give a fucking shit before! You know I’ve never seen you pursue any women around here even if you were slightly appealing enough for any of them to have you. What are you gay too?” “(Sigh) No, Nina because if I was I’m sure you would’ve been the first one to want to spread your legs for me. Look I’m just saying this ain’t fucking right okay?” “Oh and YOU’RE the fucking expert on what’s right? You fucking KILLED a man! You fucking snuck a gun in here a shot somebody! So is the gun an extension of your manhood and you just couldn’t live without it?” “Y’know Nina, you seem awfully pre-occupied with my sexual habits. Shit, if you want me to fuck you already just come out and say it and stop beating around bush. I’d say that’s what you’ve been needing since you got in here anyway, because I haven’t seen YOU with anyone either, that didn’t turn out to be a complete fucking homo of course.” Your remark is met with a long period of silence. The rest of the shelter population has been in absolute awe, this is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened since you shot Elliot. Nina looks at you hard and recomposes herself. “Are you going to send the elevator up, or not?” > You grab and kiss her Something comes over you, maybe it was the tension or the hostility or maybe you were just horny, but you grab Nina and kiss her passionately. Fortunately for you, she returns the gesture. Now nobody knows what to think they all just stand around watching, they’re probably just glad you didn’t shoot anybody this time. William and Ron are still recovering from their beating and staggering in the doorway of the elevator. Nina stops you just for a moment to address everyone. “The exile is off, everyone go back to your lives…and YOU are coming with me!” then she starts pulling you back to her room. You and Nina relieve a lot of pent up sexual energy that day. A lot of things change after that… Four more years pass... You and Nina are an item now, which makes you somewhat more social by necessity (unfortunately) its not all bad though since she’s the one that’s still shelter leader and has to do all the major work. She does a good job hence the reason she’s stayed in power. (Though not surprisingly William and Ron still vote against her, even if she did apologize) You’re now in charge of maintaining the central GZS computer system which you insist on doing primarily by yourself, though Charles and Todd assist you sometimes. Eventually you manage to get the damn thing running at near maximum efficiency and nobody has too many problems with things breaking down anymore. The Shelter’s population has grown a bit now; the only good thing about the shelter was the design to make allowances for a population growth. Of course now there’s rug rats running around which means Nina appoints a person to start being a “teacher” of sorts for when they start getting bigger. Fortunately there are a couple of those already in the shelter. Kyle and Brenda are now the main medical practitioners, though you doubt if they’d be able to do open heart surgery, they’re competent enough to keep people in relatively good shape and they keep trying to learn more whenever possible with the medical database provided and from books. (You still don’t understand WHY you’re the only competent tech though! “Gah! Read the books! Study the schematics! It’s not difficult!” you’re constantly saying and that’s to Charles and Todd!) Then there’s the elevator. After the near exile incident, it was still considered a good idea to have it accessible at all times just in case. What you eventually did was install a call button and did some re-wiring to do just that, though nobody has ever dared to actually go up to the surface. (And nobody’s ever gotten thrown out either) You begin to wonder what the surface looks like now though from time to time. One night while lying next to Nina… “Hey Nina, you ever wonder what’s on the surface now?” “What? It’s probably an uninhabitable wasteland.” “Well maybe, but we’ve been down here five years, it might look different.” “Yeah, and it might not. Go back to sleep.” “You know I just thought about it, everyone’s vehicles are up there. I bet we could strip them down for parts or something, maybe some of them will even work. We could drive around and see what’s going on else where.” “What? I don’t want you going up there! The elevator is a last resort thing just case something bad happens! And since when do you want to play great explorer? When you first got here you never left your room!” “I dunno, maybe your socialization has made me a little more extroverted.” “Hmm, knowing you, you probably just want to get away from the increasing population here.” “Ha ha, maybe. But I still wouldn’t mind just taking a quick look outside, and to inspect the vehicles like I said.” Nina now sits up. “No! I don’t want you going up there! There’s probably radiation still all over the place! I don’t want you getting radiation poisoning or mutating or something!” “I’ll be fine! I won’t go too far, I just want to…” Nina grabs a hold of your hand. “NO! I don’t want you going up there! It’s not safe!” “Alright, alright, calm down. I won’t go anywhere.” “You promise?” “Yeah!” “Alright then, I don’t want to hear anymore about it. Our life is here, not up there. I love you too much to lose you.” The both of you lie back down, and Nina holds on to you tightly, putting her head on your chest almost in an effort to make sure you’re not going anywhere tonight. Of course now you’re lying awake REALLY wondering what the surface looks like. The next day you’re working with Charles and Todd doing the usual mundane routine. They’re talking about the same stupid movie they’ve watched over and over in the community living area. Shit you feel like you’re at work again. The GZS central computer hasn’t been giving you trouble for quite some time, and you know there’s a big meeting going on in the conference room… Maybe you could sneak out and just take a quick look on the surface for awhile. You could let Charles and Todd look after the computer, you know they’re capable of doing that. > You go up to the surface The temptation is too great, you have to go. You’re just too curious not to. “Hey Todd, and Charles I think you guys are ready to monitor this thing by yourself. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, and I’m going back to my room to take a short nap, don’t tell anyone alright?” Todd and Charles just look glad that you’re showing some confidence in them for once. “Yeah, sure it’s cool. We won’t tell anyone.” Todd says. “Alright, I’ll be back. Remember just monitor, don’t fucking touch anything!” “Okay! Got it!” You leave the computer room and look around; the shelter almost seems eerily empty right now. Nina’s no doubt got everyone’s attention with her speech in conference room and all the kids are being looked after by someone in the children’s room created a couple years back. You make your move. You run to the elevator, open it and get inside. You take a deep breath and press the button up, no time like the present to test it person. The elevator begins its ascent, you begin to wonder what you’ll see above, you then check you pistol just in case what you see is unfriendly. Finally the elevator opens up to the same foyer you entered five years ago. Looks exactly the same, except the payment machine is now offline in fact the screen is cracked. There’s a crowbar lying on the floor and the doors to the outside look like they were pried open. You see the outside world for the first time in five years. From where you’re standing, it doesn’t look too bad; maybe the devastation wasn’t that great in this area. Somebody or possibly several people were here at one time attempting to get in. You take the crowbar and jam it in the elevator door so it doesn’t close on you. There’s no call button up here either since it was the payment machine that opened it up. You make a note that if you’re able you’ll have to install another one up here, and shake your head at the typical shitty GZS design of its shelters. They built this thing like a high tech mass coffin as far as you’re concerned; you’re convinced that if it wasn’t for you up keeping and tinkering, everyone would’ve been dead due to shelter failure by now. You exit the foyer and go outside, you see a bright light. It’s the sun; you forgot how bright it could be. You see everyone’s cars still parked here, well almost. You can tell that few of them must’ve been taken at one time; a lot have just been plain vandalized. Your van still looks the same though, nobody in their right mind would steal that thing, and it already looks vandalized. You wonder if it would still start, but you left your keys to it in the shelter. You doubt if it would though. It occurs to you for the first time, the shelter might not exactly be “safe”, granted its not safe by design, but you’re thinking safe from bad people on the surface. Its possible these folks who passed through here stealing vehicles and vandalizing them might’ve just been trying to scavenge whatever they could find. The surface certainly can’t be a comfortable place to live now. Maybe they were just looking for safety. Of course it’s equally likely they were looters and other bad types. The shelter community isn’t exactly a bunch of “warriors”, besides yourself, Leon, and maybe a few others you doubt it they could handle a bunch of hardened surface raiders who’ve been living in the wasteland for years. Granted the elevator wouldn’t allow for a large invasion of these types of people to take place, but it still makes you wonder if precautions shouldn’t be taken. You need to get back though before everyone finds out what you’ve been doing. You rush back to the elevator (Throwing the crowbar back on the ground) and take it down hoping that nobody is wandering around when you exit the thing. When you arrive at the bottom, you half expect to see a crowd to meet you, but its dead silent still, you quickly head back to the computer room where Charles and Todd are talking about another movie. “Hey you’re back. So what did you see on the surface?” Charles asks “Yeah were there mutants and shit?” Todd adds You’re a little taken aback. “What?! How did you guys know?” “Sheesh! Come on, we’re not the morons you think we are! You told us to monitor the computer system, and when you used the elevator, the computer mentioned the elevator was in use, we put two and two together. So how was it? Is it all desert and shit with people dressed in leather walking around?” You nearly slap yourself in the head for forgetting that little oversight on your part. “You watch too many movies Charles; no I didn’t see any of that. At least not in the immediate area. And YOU two don’t know I went up there and I mean you don’t tell ANYONE! If Nina found out, she’d a pitch a bitch at me. She’s already made it clear that she doesn’t want me going up on the surface.” “Don’t worry we’re not going to say anything. I dunno, I think maybe we should start going to the surface though, I mean this place can’t support a growing population forever. Eventually we’re going to have to start expanding out.” Todd mentions. “Yeah, but that probably won’t be for awhile, we a got a lot of room still. Lots of supplies too, and with us in charge the food and water dispensers are working perfectly now.” Charles retorts. You roll your eyes “With us in charge” actually it was you who made sure the damn things wouldn’t be breaking down on a regular basis. Still Todd makes a good point and it was something you were thinking about too. Maybe you should address this further with Nina after all her being the shelter leader she’s the one that could enact a plan about it. Later that night, you’re in bed with Nina wondering if its time to tell her she should think about expansion… > You let it go No, you better just keep it to yourself. You don’t want Nina getting pissed at you, you know how high strung she’s able to get sometimes. Besides the population isn’t growing that much yet, there are plenty of supplies. If someone gets the idea that going to the surface is necessary, you’re sure that someone else will bring it up. No point in you getting in trouble. You go back to sleep and just hope Charles and Todd keep quiet about your little excursion to the surface. A few weeks later you find out Nina’s pregnant, now you start to wonder about having enough room in the future. You still don’t bring it up, because you don’t want to upset Nina anymore in her “condition”. After Jack is born, the surface thing is still in the back of your mind, but now it’s been so long, you just feel it’s easier not to address it to Nina. So you don’t say anything. Five years pass… Ten years have passed and the shelter is starting to get a little crowded. After all there isn’t too much to do in the shelter that hasn’t already been done, so sex is always (as it always has been) a popular way to pass the time. The result of that fun activity is too many babies. At this point now you say something to Nina about the surface, she’s a little reluctant about the idea, but sees that it might be necessary. Unfortunately the rest of the council doesn’t see it that way. Many of them have been here so long now that going to the surface is almost unthinkable. Despite great protest Nina overrides the council’s advise and goes ahead with the plan anyway. This doesn’t make her too popular. For one reason there’s the decision of who is suppose to live on the surface, many people have full blown families now, they’re a little unwilling to risk taking them up. So that means the single or childless people get the boot upstairs since they have less to “lose”. That doesn’t go over too well either. People start protesting loudly about being kicked out of their homes since they have as much right to stay too. One day, you’re in the computer room at the time arguing with Charles who happens to be single, and giving you shit about Nina’s new policy. Todd is pretty much indifferent to the idea since even though he’s single he doesn’t mind the idea of going to the surface, he just thinks you should’ve said something to Nina a long time ago to implement this plan sooner before everyone had a whole mess of babies. That’s when you get the word. Kyle comes in to tell you that during one of Nina’s speeches William (Who would’ve been one of those kicked up to the surface along with Ron) attempted to assassinate Nina with a scalpel he stole from the medical supplies. Leon managed to stop him with extreme prejudice by breaking his neck. But its not ending there, people are starting to riot and call for someone new to be the shelter leader. You’re pissed off now, you storm into the conference room ready to kick everyone’s ass who DARES to try to hurt Nina again. You fire your pistol into the air causing everyone to take notice. When you get over to Nina, she’s pleading for you to not shoot anybody. The assassin was already taken care of; there isn’t any more need for killing. While that might be the case that still doesn’t solve the problem of everyone hating Nina (And probably you too as well) if she gets thrown out of her position, the next step might be to try to throw you guys out of the shelter. Part of this you feel is your fault, you could just roll the dice here or you could attempt to take the hard line approach. > You let democracy run its course “Alright Nina, we’ll do it your way.” You put your pistol away and take Nina back to your room for the rest of the day. Time goes by and Nina gets voted out. The position of shelter leader is eliminated and a council is formed instead. They begin to implement some changes. Nina’s idea of having people live on the surface is squashed, the idiots in charge claim that everything will be all right and only in cases of extreme punishment will people be sent to the surface. The other change is that you are to work less on the computer system. And so it begins, they’re trying to faze you out, so they don’t need you anymore. And if they don’t need you anymore they can kick you out of the shelter. (It looks like you are going to be the only people deemed “criminal” enough to be exiled to the surface) You saw this coming. That’s the second time you anticipated events and did nothing, you could kick yourself. However there’s still the question of them trying to MAKE you leave, you are the one that owns the gun after all and not one person has ever dared to try to take it from you. You decide to start working out on a regular basis just in case. That day comes soon, when a couple people attempt to wrestle it from you, fortunately you’ve been expecting that, you end up shooting them both dead. People are really starting to hate you now, threats are being made that if you and your family don’t leave, then not you, but Nina and Jack are going to suffer the consequences. You respond with a similar threat of your own that if anything happens to either of them that you’re going on a postal shooting spree starting with everyone’s kids and won’t stop until you’re out of bullets, and then you’ll fuck up the central computer that powers everything in the shelter. Given your past, people believe you too. People stop harassing you and Nina, but they still “shun” you 99 percent of the time. It doesn’t matter though since as more years go by there’s even less room in the shelter, and less supplies, now you’re not even charge of the computer system anymore and it’s barely being run properly by Todd and Charles. Things are starting to break down again. You’re seriously starting to think about leaving the shelter voluntarily. “Nina, let’s leave. Surely there’s gotta be something better out there. I mean staying here is like waiting to die. We gotta get out of this place.” “But what about Jack? I mean we’re going into unknown territory here. Things could be dangerous up there.” “It probably will be dangerous, but what the hell we’ve been living in an enclosed space with a bunch of people who hate us for years, and both experienced death attempts. Its not like we’re strangers to it.” “Well…shouldn’t we at least stay until the very end?” “If we stay until the very end, we might not be getting outta here because by the time everyone’s crammed in so tight with no more supplies or properly functioning equipment, everyone’s going to be panicking and rioting. No, we need to leave while the getting is good. You and Jack start packing up all your vital stuff. I’ll be loading up on some supplies that we might need. We still need to travel light, but make sure you and Jack bring as much water as you can carry.” Soon you, Nina and Jack are ready to go. Everyone’s wondering what you’re doing and then all eyes are on you when you open the elevator door. You take a moment to address the huddled masses. “Well we’re leaving now, I’m sure you’re all as glad about it as we will be. Before we leave though I’d just like to say a few things. If any of you fucktards have a lick of sense you’ll abandon this over priced coffin, and coffin is definitely an accurate term with how cramped it’s getting in here. Hell the place is even starting to smell like one, with all the shower break downs. Its like watching something slowly die…hmm I think I saw that show already, when the world got blown to shit years ago. Don’t need to see it again and the first time was more interesting anyway, so enjoy your downward spiral experience losers!” And with that you and your family leave the shelter. As you look out before the wilderness in front of you, you can only hope there’s something else out there, but even if there isn’t you know you’ll make it somehow. You and your family begin to walk…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No, you better just keep it to yourself. You don’t want Nina getting pissed at you, you know how high strung she’s able to get sometimes. Besides the population isn’t growing that much yet, there are plenty of supplies. If someone gets the idea that going to the surface is necessary, you’re sure that someone else will bring it up. No point in you getting in trouble. You go back to sleep and just hope Charles and Todd keep quiet about your little excursion to the surface. A few weeks later you find out Nina’s pregnant, now you start to wonder about having enough room in the future. You still don’t bring it up, because you don’t want to upset Nina anymore in her “condition”. After Jack is born, the surface thing is still in the back of your mind, but now it’s been so long, you just feel it’s easier not to address it to Nina. So you don’t say anything. Five years pass… Ten years have passed and the shelter is starting to get a little crowded. After all there isn’t too much to do in the shelter that hasn’t already been done, so sex is always (as it always has been) a popular way to pass the time. The result of that fun activity is too many babies. At this point now you say something to Nina about the surface, she’s a little reluctant about the idea, but sees that it might be necessary. Unfortunately the rest of the council doesn’t see it that way. Many of them have been here so long now that going to the surface is almost unthinkable. Despite great protest Nina overrides the council’s advise and goes ahead with the plan anyway. This doesn’t make her too popular. For one reason there’s the decision of who is suppose to live on the surface, many people have full blown families now, they’re a little unwilling to risk taking them up. So that means the single or childless people get the boot upstairs since they have less to “lose”. That doesn’t go over too well either. People start protesting loudly about being kicked out of their homes since they have as much right to stay too. One day, you’re in the computer room at the time arguing with Charles who happens to be single, and giving you shit about Nina’s new policy. Todd is pretty much indifferent to the idea since even though he’s single he doesn’t mind the idea of going to the surface, he just thinks you should’ve said something to Nina a long time ago to implement this plan sooner before everyone had a whole mess of babies. That’s when you get the word. Kyle comes in to tell you that during one of Nina’s speeches William (Who would’ve been one of those kicked up to the surface along with Ron) attempted to assassinate Nina with a scalpel he stole from the medical supplies. Leon managed to stop him with extreme prejudice by breaking his neck. But its not ending there, people are starting to riot and call for someone new to be the shelter leader. You’re pissed off now, you storm into the conference room ready to kick everyone’s ass who DARES to try to hurt Nina again. You fire your pistol into the air causing everyone to take notice. When you get over to Nina, she’s pleading for you to not shoot anybody. The assassin was already taken care of; there isn’t any more need for killing. While that might be the case that still doesn’t solve the problem of everyone hating Nina (And probably you too as well) if she gets thrown out of her position, the next step might be to try to throw you guys out of the shelter. Part of this you feel is your fault, you could just roll the dice here or you could attempt to take the hard line approach. > You take control You said nothing when you should have about the surface five years ago. That was your fault. You can do something now though. Something unpopular and drastic, but something that will better ensure the safety of your family. “Alright, I’m doing something I should’ve done a long time ago! I’M taking over!” “You? Says who?! What gives you the right?!” someone in the crowd shouts. You point your pistol in his direction. “THIS! Is what gives me the fuckin’ right bitch! My willingness to allow you to continue your goddamn existence! Now here’s how things are gonna go down.” You begin to implement new changes whether anyone likes them or not, and most folks don’t, but as usual you don’t give a shit. You keep Nina’s plan for the surface idea, one of the things you do is install another call button so the elevator can now go up and down without all the extra hassle of fucking with the computer anymore, you still don’t know what the fuck GZS was thinking about with that idea of fucked up engineering. Parts of the shelter begin to get stripped along with some of the vehicles still remaining outside to create a few small homes. As for who is going up to live, you devise a random numbering system that everyone has to participate in…of course you’ve purposely rigged it so your family doesn’t have to live up there. You’ve also rigged it so certain “useful” members don’t have to live up there either making them a little more receptive to your changes. Charles and some others are suddenly pleasant with you again. Naturally everyone who does have to leave hates your guts. Your next step is to send out “explorers” to go find other communities to contact and trade with, because you desperately need more supplies. You pick Leon for the task, but Todd also volunteers. Brenda wants to go too, but you need all the people with medical knowledge here in the shelter. A few weeks later Leon and Todd come back from their explorations. They mention they came across a place called Ashtown. They say it’s a small town, but willing to trade since they have routine problems with raiders and wouldn’t mind a supply of fresh water for a change. Nina doesn’t exactly approve of your methods, but she goes along with you, because she loves you and you’re actually getting something accomplished. Five more years pass... Things have changed quite a bit, for better and for worse. You’re running the shelter and its now above town called “Exile” basically by yourself and its putting you on edge each and everyday. One thing you didn’t think about when finding a trading partner, was the fact that more weapons might be coming in. You now aren’t the only person here with a gun. Which has lessened your intimidation value a bit, but you’ve countered a full blown rebellion by turning the “sheltered” and the “unsheltered” against each other. The people who live in the shelter are of course a lot more well off and healthier, while those living on the surface now suffer from the elements and the occasional mutant wolf pack attack. The haves vs. the have nots. It’s an old tale that’s been played over and over. A tale that resulted in Armageddon, and now apparently even beyond it. But even you cannot prevent an unstable powder keg from exploding forever and one day it does. Full blown rioting breaks out, you attempt to squash the rebellion, but it’s not even a rebellion so much as it is full blown anarchy as people IN the shelter are attempting to kill you in the opportunity to attempt to take over. Damn, you really thought Leon was on your side too. You end up having to shoot your way out of the conference room, and make it back to your room where Nina is barricaded with Jake, she opens the door long enough to let you in. “We have to get out of here!” she screams. “It’s over! They’re gonna kill us!” > You stay and fight “NEVER! I’M the one who saved this shelter from its own idiocy! If it wasn’t for me, this place everyone would probably still be living crammed together like fuckin’ sardines! They WILL fall in fuckin’ line! Unfortunately like most people under a dictatorship, they don’t see you as a great savior but rather as the tyrant you are. Eventually a group of the surface people come down en-masse and overrun the place, you try to prevent more from coming by barricading yourself in the computer room and shutting off the elevator, but its too late, there are already a lot of them down here. There’s no way you can fight all of them, you don’t have the ammo and all your loyal guards are dead. You and your family are trapped and you know what they’ll do to all of you if they take you alive, you look at Nina and Jack… Nope, you’re still in control of some things around here. You take a deep breath and look directly into Nina’s eyes. “Know that I always loved you…the both of you.” you say sadly. Then without any further hesitation you shoot them both in the head. After wiping a tear from your eye, you start paying attention to the threats outside your door. “Get outta there you sonofabitch! It’s over! You and your fuckin’ family are through!” “Oh yeah?! We’ll see who’s fuckin’ through you ungrateful bastards! If I’m going down, you’re all coming to fuckin’ hell with me! SCORCHED FUCKIN’ EARTH BITCHES!” You start shooting the GZS central computer, lighting starts flickering and eventually you hit the right vital spot and the entire shelter’s power goes dead. Immediately you hear some shouting from behind the door, and they begin blasting it open. Won’t be long now. You fire at the first figure that you can barely make out in the darkness, then the rest open fire on you. You see the flash of multiple muzzle blasts and then fall to the ground near Nina’s body. In your last moments, you grab onto Nina’s hand and squeeze before darkness takes you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You said nothing when you should have about the surface five years ago. That was your fault. You can do something now though. Something unpopular and drastic, but something that will better ensure the safety of your family. “Alright, I’m doing something I should’ve done a long time ago! I’M taking over!” “You? Says who?! What gives you the right?!” someone in the crowd shouts. You point your pistol in his direction. “THIS! Is what gives me the fuckin’ right bitch! My willingness to allow you to continue your goddamn existence! Now here’s how things are gonna go down.” You begin to implement new changes whether anyone likes them or not, and most folks don’t, but as usual you don’t give a shit. You keep Nina’s plan for the surface idea, one of the things you do is install another call button so the elevator can now go up and down without all the extra hassle of fucking with the computer anymore, you still don’t know what the fuck GZS was thinking about with that idea of fucked up engineering. Parts of the shelter begin to get stripped along with some of the vehicles still remaining outside to create a few small homes. As for who is going up to live, you devise a random numbering system that everyone has to participate in…of course you’ve purposely rigged it so your family doesn’t have to live up there. You’ve also rigged it so certain “useful” members don’t have to live up there either making them a little more receptive to your changes. Charles and some others are suddenly pleasant with you again. Naturally everyone who does have to leave hates your guts. Your next step is to send out “explorers” to go find other communities to contact and trade with, because you desperately need more supplies. You pick Leon for the task, but Todd also volunteers. Brenda wants to go too, but you need all the people with medical knowledge here in the shelter. A few weeks later Leon and Todd come back from their explorations. They mention they came across a place called Ashtown. They say it’s a small town, but willing to trade since they have routine problems with raiders and wouldn’t mind a supply of fresh water for a change. Nina doesn’t exactly approve of your methods, but she goes along with you, because she loves you and you’re actually getting something accomplished. Five more years pass... Things have changed quite a bit, for better and for worse. You’re running the shelter and its now above town called “Exile” basically by yourself and its putting you on edge each and everyday. One thing you didn’t think about when finding a trading partner, was the fact that more weapons might be coming in. You now aren’t the only person here with a gun. Which has lessened your intimidation value a bit, but you’ve countered a full blown rebellion by turning the “sheltered” and the “unsheltered” against each other. The people who live in the shelter are of course a lot more well off and healthier, while those living on the surface now suffer from the elements and the occasional mutant wolf pack attack. The haves vs. the have nots. It’s an old tale that’s been played over and over. A tale that resulted in Armageddon, and now apparently even beyond it. But even you cannot prevent an unstable powder keg from exploding forever and one day it does. Full blown rioting breaks out, you attempt to squash the rebellion, but it’s not even a rebellion so much as it is full blown anarchy as people IN the shelter are attempting to kill you in the opportunity to attempt to take over. Damn, you really thought Leon was on your side too. You end up having to shoot your way out of the conference room, and make it back to your room where Nina is barricaded with Jake, she opens the door long enough to let you in. “We have to get out of here!” she screams. “It’s over! They’re gonna kill us!” > You run while you can “I’ll go with that idea, but we’re gonna have to be quick! Grab only the basic necessities. We’re going to Ashtown.” You and your family grab what you need and run for the elevator which fortunately is still on the bottom. A couple of guards still loyal accompany you. When you arrive to the surface you nearly get your head blown off as soon as the elevator door opens. Your guards shoot the would be killer and you all move on. Outside the shelter entrance it’s even worse. There’s fighting all over the place, and as soon as people see you, they all start trying to kill you. You urge Nina and Jack to run for the wilderness immediately. You fire back at the angry mob moving on your position, while running at the same time. The last of your guards go down. You run to attempt to catch up to Nina and Jack, which you do, but the mob is still chasing you. A bullet whizzes by your ear and then you hear a scream, its Nina. You turn around and think she’s been hit, but it was Jack who was hit. She goes back to retrieve his body. Of course the mob isn’t stopping. “NINA! NO!” you shout and fire at the mob, but killing a few of them doesn’t stop them from shooting Nina, who falls by Jake’s body. There’s nothing you can do now. You continue to run until you eventually lose your pursuers. Then you weep for the loss of your family. You wander the wasteland for a bit, hoping something will attack you and put you out of your misery, but you never encounter a thing. Eventually you make your way to Ashtown. You get a couple of strange looks. A few people from Ashtown have heard descriptions of you, but never actually met you in person. “Aren’t you…” “No, not at all, you got any work around in this dump?” The citizens of Ashtown have a few old generators that they need working at maximum efficiency, so that’s what you work on. They’re so grateful for your technical expertise, that they keep quiet about you being here, the next time a group of people from the shelter come to trade. Things don’t look like they’re going to well at the shelter from what you can tell though, word has it, that they’re going to have to completely abandon the shelter itself and live completely on the surface now, apparently the shelter’s computer system was severely damaged and is libel to shut down at any moment. The people are miserable and the baby mortality rate is high This gives you no joy however, you’ve lost more. Much more. The solitude you once cherished and have again now only feel like emptiness. One day during a raider attack you purposely go out and fight them along with all the other defenders. You get yourself shot in the stomach and you don’t even care as you lie dying, anything to end your suffering.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The temptation is too great, you have to go. You’re just too curious not to. “Hey Todd, and Charles I think you guys are ready to monitor this thing by yourself. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, and I’m going back to my room to take a short nap, don’t tell anyone alright?” Todd and Charles just look glad that you’re showing some confidence in them for once. “Yeah, sure it’s cool. We won’t tell anyone.” Todd says. “Alright, I’ll be back. Remember just monitor, don’t fucking touch anything!” “Okay! Got it!” You leave the computer room and look around; the shelter almost seems eerily empty right now. Nina’s no doubt got everyone’s attention with her speech in conference room and all the kids are being looked after by someone in the children’s room created a couple years back. You make your move. You run to the elevator, open it and get inside. You take a deep breath and press the button up, no time like the present to test it person. The elevator begins its ascent, you begin to wonder what you’ll see above, you then check you pistol just in case what you see is unfriendly. Finally the elevator opens up to the same foyer you entered five years ago. Looks exactly the same, except the payment machine is now offline in fact the screen is cracked. There’s a crowbar lying on the floor and the doors to the outside look like they were pried open. You see the outside world for the first time in five years. From where you’re standing, it doesn’t look too bad; maybe the devastation wasn’t that great in this area. Somebody or possibly several people were here at one time attempting to get in. You take the crowbar and jam it in the elevator door so it doesn’t close on you. There’s no call button up here either since it was the payment machine that opened it up. You make a note that if you’re able you’ll have to install another one up here, and shake your head at the typical shitty GZS design of its shelters. They built this thing like a high tech mass coffin as far as you’re concerned; you’re convinced that if it wasn’t for you up keeping and tinkering, everyone would’ve been dead due to shelter failure by now. You exit the foyer and go outside, you see a bright light. It’s the sun; you forgot how bright it could be. You see everyone’s cars still parked here, well almost. You can tell that few of them must’ve been taken at one time; a lot have just been plain vandalized. Your van still looks the same though, nobody in their right mind would steal that thing, and it already looks vandalized. You wonder if it would still start, but you left your keys to it in the shelter. You doubt if it would though. It occurs to you for the first time, the shelter might not exactly be “safe”, granted its not safe by design, but you’re thinking safe from bad people on the surface. Its possible these folks who passed through here stealing vehicles and vandalizing them might’ve just been trying to scavenge whatever they could find. The surface certainly can’t be a comfortable place to live now. Maybe they were just looking for safety. Of course it’s equally likely they were looters and other bad types. The shelter community isn’t exactly a bunch of “warriors”, besides yourself, Leon, and maybe a few others you doubt it they could handle a bunch of hardened surface raiders who’ve been living in the wasteland for years. Granted the elevator wouldn’t allow for a large invasion of these types of people to take place, but it still makes you wonder if precautions shouldn’t be taken. You need to get back though before everyone finds out what you’ve been doing. You rush back to the elevator (Throwing the crowbar back on the ground) and take it down hoping that nobody is wandering around when you exit the thing. When you arrive at the bottom, you half expect to see a crowd to meet you, but its dead silent still, you quickly head back to the computer room where Charles and Todd are talking about another movie. “Hey you’re back. So what did you see on the surface?” Charles asks “Yeah were there mutants and shit?” Todd adds You’re a little taken aback. “What?! How did you guys know?” “Sheesh! Come on, we’re not the morons you think we are! You told us to monitor the computer system, and when you used the elevator, the computer mentioned the elevator was in use, we put two and two together. So how was it? Is it all desert and shit with people dressed in leather walking around?” You nearly slap yourself in the head for forgetting that little oversight on your part. “You watch too many movies Charles; no I didn’t see any of that. At least not in the immediate area. And YOU two don’t know I went up there and I mean you don’t tell ANYONE! If Nina found out, she’d a pitch a bitch at me. She’s already made it clear that she doesn’t want me going up on the surface.” “Don’t worry we’re not going to say anything. I dunno, I think maybe we should start going to the surface though, I mean this place can’t support a growing population forever. Eventually we’re going to have to start expanding out.” Todd mentions. “Yeah, but that probably won’t be for awhile, we a got a lot of room still. Lots of supplies too, and with us in charge the food and water dispensers are working perfectly now.” Charles retorts. You roll your eyes “With us in charge” actually it was you who made sure the damn things wouldn’t be breaking down on a regular basis. Still Todd makes a good point and it was something you were thinking about too. Maybe you should address this further with Nina after all her being the shelter leader she’s the one that could enact a plan about it. Later that night, you’re in bed with Nina wondering if its time to tell her she should think about expansion… > You address it “Hey Nina get up.” “Huh, what? Not tonight I’m tired.” “No it’s not that. It’s about the surface. I think we need to start taking precautions and possible steps to expand above. The surface doesn’t look that bad and…” Nina immediately sits up. “YOU WENT TO THE SURFACE? After I told you not to fucking do that?! YOU ASSHOLE!” “Calm down look you can see nothing happened to me. It doesn’t even look like there was any bombs that landed anywhere near the area.” “You could be radiated! The wind blows your know or have you forgotten? Or maybe it was a biological weapon! A disease could be floating in the air! You ever think of that? You could be infected with god knows what right now and spread it to the whole shelter! And our baby!” Another surprise. “Baby? You’re pregnant?” “I just found out recently from Brenda a few days ago. I was going to tell you soon, I should’ve told you yesterday before you went to the surface, but I THOUGHT you respected my wishes! I can’t believe you…” Nina gets up and starts pacing. She’s very upset. You get up and try to fix this mess. “Look that just makes this idea even more vital, this place can’t support all these people having babies. Even GZS mentioned in their delusional guideline statement it was the intention for people to eventually go back up to the surface and repopulate it with their families. We can’t live like a bunch of crowded sardines; we should make preparations now, before it becomes a problem.” “But it might be dangerous up there.” “It probably won’t be a picnic, but that’s another reason why we should start getting ready now. The more we’re prepared the better off we’ll be to defend ourselves.” “But the radiation…” “Look, the fact remains this place IS going to get overpopulated one day and people are going to have to start going up to the surface and any background radiation isn’t going to disappear within that time. So we’re just going to have to roll the dice and deal with that fact. Like I said I think we’re okay, we’re in a fairly isolated area away from an important major city. It’s not like we’re located on either of the coasts which were probably bombed the shit out of. And to the response to biological weapon thing, I highly doubt those were used, we were the only country that had the capability to launch such weapons from a long distance, except maybe Russia and I’m sure they probably just used nukes on us. Besides any virus or germ used in such a way would’ve died out long ago after it killed off the immediate population.” Nina still doesn’t look so sure, she still look worried about you. You hold Nina to reassure her. “If it’ll make you feel better I’ll actually go see Kyle and have him check me out. And you know how much I hate going to see doctors, especially one that’s got all his knowledge from the GZS info files. I’ll be here for a long time… for all of us.” Your words seem to relax her a bit. She smiles and embraces you more closely. “Okay, I’ll bring it up tomorrow…I still think it’s funny that you of all people would be advocating going back to the surface.” “Pfft! WE’RE not going to the surface to live. We’re staying here! I just want get the rest of these fuckers out of the shelter and on to the surface! This place is too damn crowded as it is!” “Now that sounds more like you!” Nina laughs. Five more years pass… It’s been ten years since you got here. It almost seems surreal to think about. Nina’s still the shelter leader and you’re still looking after the central computer. However a lot more things have changed, and just as predicted the population grew significantly, fortunately the implementations ahead of time allowed everyone to adjust with little problems. There was some apprehension at first when Nina first suggested the surface thing, but eventually people did see the point in it. Some even wanted to go up to the surface. The first step was to make a fully functioning elevator that people could go up AND down on without any problems. (Of course that job fell to you again) The next step was to create small “huts” with the cars outside as well as using current shelter material. This went quicker than expected as most people pitched in to help. Nina gave birth to a son Jack, and almost went back to her duties immediately, leaving you to do most of the “Mr. Mom” work. Nowadays you split your time between monitoring the computer and monitoring Jack. Thankfully Charles and Todd have learned a lot more now and don’t require your supervision lessening your workload. Now its time for the next step. Nina and her council have been discussing plans for the even farther future. Contact with others and exploration. Within the past five years of the return to the surface, there has been contact with a few wanderers here and there, but they tended not to talk too much about their travels, they just mentioned that they’d seen other evidences of civilization, not all very civilized of course. Most of them just seemed to want to keep moving after doing a bit of trading and resupplying. One even hinted at some other “things” lurking around on the surface which didn’t sound too promising. However, the shelter needs to start finding a stable trading partner, or at least a place to find more supplies, because the vital ones are starting to run out. Some people are asked to volunteer for this exploration mission It wasn’t surprising Leon volunteered, but Brenda and Todd also volunteered. They were given as much supplies as they could carry and armed with the most “dangerous” things in the shelter. Leon and Todd carry some crowbars and Brenda carries a scalpel. You wonder if that’s really going to be enough though. Chances are some people out there (Quite possibly a lot) are carrying guns on them. Todd and Brenda aren’t going to be much good in a fight anyway, and while Leon is a fighter, even he can’t stop a bullet. You’re the only one with an “equalizer” around here. Maybe you should hand it over to them to give them a better chance. Though you really don’t want to do that, for various reasons. > You hand over your pistol Before they leave you approach Leon, you and he still have a bit of history over the whole Elliot thing years ago. You’re guessing he’s not one to hold a grudge though since he’s never sought any type of revenge or something. You only hope he isn’t the patient type. “Alright Leon, I know you’re the fighter of this group, and I know its most likely going to be dangerous up there, so I’m gonna do something totally out of character. I’m giving you my pistol and the two clips I have. It’s in good condition, and it’s only been fired once in ten years and I think you know when that was. Here you go.” Leon takes the gun and looks at it with silence for awhile and then speaks. You think this is the first time you’ve actually heard him speak at all! “Y’know, I never did apologize for that shit ten years ago. I dunno what the hell I was thinking following Elliot; none of us who did do. You and Nina have done a better job of keeping this place running than anyone. Anyway, this is really generous of you, but I can’t shoot worth shit, but I know someone who’s going with us who used to practice regularly before the bombs dropped. Hey Brenda! I got something for ya!” Brenda comes over and her eyes widen when Leon hands her your pistol. “Aw yeah! This is what I’m talkin’ about! I just hope I’m still a good shot; I’ve only been able to practice my aim by throwing this scalpel at a human diagram chart.” “Yeah well don’t practice too much with it, save your bullets for an emergency. I didn’t know you were a gun person Brenda.” You say. “You really need to get out of that computer room and socialize more!” “Shit, he barely socializes when he’s in there with me and Charles.” Todd adds. “But yeah I used to practice with my own when I had one. I was too afraid to try to sneak mine in here though…you know we’ve all always wondered about that, how DID you sneak this in?” Brenda asks. You just smile. “Hey I think you guys better get going.” You say almost laughing “Oh come on! What a gyp! Alright, but we want to know when we come back!” Brenda says and then her, Leon and Todd enter the elevator wave goodbye to everyone and go up. You and everyone else go about your usual business. Nina mentions what you did. “Wow, that was really surprising for you, you’ve practically been walking around with that thing on you for ten years.” “Yeah, well I can only hope I don’t need it within the time that they come back…if they come back.” “You just gave them an edge I’d say they’ve got more of a chance now. Don’t be so pessimistic. They’ll come back.” “Yeah I hope. Bring Jack by the computer room later; I know you got some sort of meeting to go to.” “Oh I can cancel that, it’s not vital.” “No its fine, bring him by. I’ve been indoctrinating him on the basics of the shelter computer. Someone’s gotta run this thing when I’m gone.” “Well alright then, hey don’t worry. Everything will be alright.” Nina kisses you and you exchange remarks about how you love each other before you make your way back to the computer room. You know its silly to think about it, but you can’t help thinking about some worst possible scenario. You think about those three getting captured, tortured, and killed by a large group of psychotic bandits or something and then those same scum coming here because they found out the location after torturing them. You wouldn’t have anything proper to defend your family with and the surface scum would probably have all kinds of weapons to kill everyone with. They’d start by killing everyone in immediate area of the entrance, then they’d come down in small groups with automatic weapons they undoubtedly have and start killing down here and worse… “HEY! Stop spacing!” Charles suddenly says to you. “Huh? Oh! Okay.” You say snapping out your horrible daydream. “Man, what’s wrong with you? You’ve been doing that the whole time you got here.” “Nothing, just a little pre-occupied.” You still don’t really relax until Jack gets there, which allows you to think about less terrible things like teaching him about the computer system. When you’re finished with your duties, you go back to your room, and Nina’s there waiting for you looking as lovely as usual. You came in this place ten years ago with nothing except a bad attitude, now you got a lot more… You’re not losing this. No way in hell. The next day you start visiting the community gym area. You know other people like Leon use it. Nina uses it to keep in shape, but you’ve never stepped foot in the place, you never really saw any reason to, its not like you were fat or anything, but you realize if some shit goes down you’re going to have to be in better physical condition. You might not have a gun, but MAYBE you’ll be quick and strong enough to take one away from somebody! You need a fucking edge. You begin training regularly. Nina’s a little confused about this sudden change, but she’s not at all displeased with it. You do this for the next six months with the constant theme running in your mind of how you’ll be able to take out the first miscreant that steps through the elevator, grab his gun and… “Hey everyone, they’re back! And they’re in a fuckin’ car with a shitload of stuff!” someone shouts while you’re training. You immediately stop and head for the surface. When you arrive you see Leon unloading some stuff out of a beat up, but functioning car, he’s got a patch on his eye now and his face is scarred, but otherwise looks okay. Brenda comes up to you and tosses you your pistol back, along with three clips! “Came in handy, but I think I’ll be using THIS from now on!” Brenda pats an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder. “Hey, you look different, you been working out?” “Um, something like that. So where did you get all this stuff?” “Most of it we got from this small place called Ashtown that’s agreed to trade with us, we’d found it after about a week of wandering around, we were there negotiating with them and they wouldn’t trust us at first until the place suddenly got attack by a bunch of raiders. We helped defend the place from a one month siege! We also stuck around to help heal the wound. After that, they decided we were okay…that was at sort of a high cost though. Todd didn’t make it. He got killed in the fight. Tried to save him, but it was already too late by the time I got there.” Brenda explains. “Damn...he was an alright guy…so is this fight where Leon got all scarred up?” you say as he approaches. “No, that happened after we left Ashtown, we went exploring some more, we found another place a lot less friendly called The Combine. Trust me; we want to AVOID that place. We barely got out of there; we were basically prisoners. That’s why we were gone for so long. However, that’s where we got this car. We stopped back at Ashtown to pick up some supplies and came back here.” Leon answers, then he looks at you with his remaining eye. “Damn, you been working out?” You nearly start laughing at your situation, here you were training and thinking up every possible worst case scenario that was going to befall the shelter, while Brenda and Leon were actually engaged in some worst case scenarios. You’re just glad that nothing did happen to the shelter, but you certainly feel less naked now that you have your “equalizer” back! Life in the shelter continues. Ten more years pass… You’ve been here twenty years and as always there are more changes. More people have moved to the surface, pieces of the shelter have been dismantled and started to be used to build a real town along with supplies from Ashtown, and scavenging from other places. Still, the shelter is needed to ensure at least a clean water supply so you’re still running it. Nina’s position has changed though. Since the shelter doesn’t contain a majority of the population anymore, her position is more of a community council person and her title is no longer “shelter leader”. The place has been given a name now; New Haven One current problem is to keep the place together, but with the younger population, they’re less likely to want to stay. Ever since Leon came back with a giant mutant wolf head on one of his exploration trips, they all want to be “explorers” too. Your son Jack being one of those young people. Nina of course doesn’t want him to go anywhere (You’re reminded of when she didn’t want you to go to the surface) and you can’t say you’re too fond of the idea either, but what can you do? > You increase his work time with you The longer you can keep an eye on him the less likely he’ll be sneaking off, maybe you can drum some discipline into his head again too, because apparently he lost some of it. You go to find Jake who’s hanging around the edges of town as usual. “Hey Jack come here!” “Aw Dad, I don’t feel like working with you in the boring ol’ computer room right now!” “Boy, you better get your ass to that computer room!” Jack follows you in defeat before you embarrass him anymore in front of his friends. When you arrive in the computer room Charles is there. Jack slumps down in a chair next to a console. “Oh hey there, I didn’t expect to see you both here today.” Charles says unsure of how he’s suppose to respond to this situation.” “Yeah, well Jack needs to spend some extra time down here, he’s been slackin’ lately.” “I ain’t been slackin’!” Jake protests. “You’ve been slackin’! Now check the power systems!” “(Sigh) Fine! I dunno why we have to do this for; there hasn’t been a problem with this thing for years.” “Yeah, and it’s gonna STAY that way too! The only reason why we haven’t had problems is because I’m on top of things all the time! If I let this thing go to shit, no more clean water supply for us! Would you like that? Drinking piss water?” “I know I sure wouldn’t.” Charles mumbles. “Damnit Dad this is boring! I don’t wanna be doing this shit! I wanna go out an explore the world like Leon!” “Like Leon huh? In case you’re blind, you’ll notice Leon’s got a missing eye, a missing left ear and pieces of his fingers. That’s what the rest of the world does to you, if you slip up just slightly and nobody’s perfect. Look at Brenda, she’s the best marksperson in this place and she got herself shot in the leg which stopped her from going out. She now walks with a permanent limp! Is that what you want?” “God you’re a fucking control freak Dad! I thought Mom was bad, but…” Over the line. That one incurred Jack a wrap to the head. “DON’T YOU DARE TALK ABOUT YOUR MOTHER THAT WAY!” you bellow as Jack holds his head. “Um…I think my shift is over, see ya later!” Charles says getting out the way of this family squabble. The rest of the time in the computer room is silent. Jack doesn’t say anything, he just sullenly does what you tell him. The next day he does the same thing, and the day after that, and so on, until one day he doesn’t. Mainly because he’s run away with some of his friends and stolen Leon’s beat up car. Nina is very distraught along with many other parents. The only thing is that Leon said it doesn’t have that much gas in it because he hasn’t been able to come across any lately. You, some of the other fathers and Leon go looking for all of them. You first head towards Ashtown thinking that maybe they just went there to be “a little rebellious”. You come across the car, which they obviously abandoned, and continue to Ashtown with hope that Jack still headed that way, but no such luck. When you arrive, the people their say they haven’t seen anyone come by in weeks. Days go by and at one point Leon thinks he’s got a lead, but then the worst happens. You’re attacked by crazed cannibals and their mutant dogs. You immediately tag one of the cannibals and duck behind a rock. But the cannibals also have guns and while the other fathers have weapons too, they haven’t been practicing with them like you and Leon have. They’re a lot better shots, you see a few of your fellow parents go down for the count, while the dogs finish them off. Leon holds his own, and you and he manage to take out all the cannibals, but it’s the fucking dogs that give you trouble… Three of them leap onto Leon, knocking his weapon from his hand, he sticks his thumbs in the eyes of the one that tried to take out his throat, but that still doesn’t stop it from biting him in the face before it dies, one is chewing on his chest though and the other one is going to town on his crotch. You’d try to help him, but you got one that came out of nowhere that rips into your leg. You shoot the damn thing in the head three times before it lets go. You then struggle to stand and shoot the other couple dogs, but its too late, Leon’s a mangled corpse. “FUCK!” you shout in frustration looking at the dead all around you. You collapse to the ground and put your hands on your face thinking about how this got all fucked up and then that’s when you notice the smoke coming from the cannibal camp and the smell of burning flesh. Your heart sinks and you drag yourself over for a closer look. “No…don’t let it…” you to yourself. You see some bones and clothing. Some on it looks like that of some of the other parent’s kids. You don’t see anything of Jack’s. You don’t know if he got away, or they ate him and threw the clothing elsewhere or what. Somehow it doesn’t really matter; you haven’t found him, so for all intents and purposes he’s dead or at best; missing. After grabbing all the remaining water you can from the others you make the long painful journey back to New Haven, thinking about what you’re going to tell everyone. Much has been lost this day. When you get back you collapse again, this time you feel a fever. Brenda and Kyle immediately see to you. It’s your leg, its festering and infected from the mutant dog bite. Nothing can be done; you get it chopped off at the knee. The only good thing is you were unconscious at the time. After you get over the initially shock of waking up to a peg leg, you only have more bad news for everyone, especially Nina. However, many lives of husbands and children have been lost and someone MUST take the blame. And that someone happens to be you just because you happened to be the lucky one to come back alive. Nina is voted out of her position on the council for some made up reason which you protest loudly, but it hardly bothers her since she’s been preoccupied ever since you came back with the bad news. She holds on to sanity by making herself believe that Jack DID escape and is somewhere out there wandering the world. They can’t get rid of you so easily since even with Charles around you’re still the only guy who can keep the computer system running everything working right, but most of the population sure gives you a hard time. If you weren’t walking around on a fucking peg, you’d start kicking some ass. As a few years goes by, finally you get sick of the shit and say: “Fuck it. Let ‘em rot. They can run this shit themselves, this place is getting dead anyway. Nina, we’re going to Ashtown.” “Ashtown? But that’s so far away! And you’re walking on that peg!” “I didn’t mean go right this minute or by ourselves, I meant the next trade caravan from Ashtown that comes by we’re tagging along with it.” “We’re just going to pick up and leave? Just like that? After all these years?” “Hey, I don’t like it either, but its obvious all of our efforts weren’t ever appreciated here. Yours OR mine. Since they hate us so much, then let ‘em live here without our help. There’s nothing for us here now. All we got left is each other.” Nina agrees and holds you tightly while telling you how much she loves you. When the Ashtown caravan comes around you and Nina have all your stuff packed. They’re only too happy to take you with them, since Ashtown has been trying to get a couple old generators working to maximum efficiency and they heard you were good at that sort of thing. You spend your remaining life in Ashtown. It isn’t as secure in safety as it was in New Haven, but at least you had Nina to make it equally as comfortable.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Before they leave you approach Leon, you and he still have a bit of history over the whole Elliot thing years ago. You’re guessing he’s not one to hold a grudge though since he’s never sought any type of revenge or something. You only hope he isn’t the patient type. “Alright Leon, I know you’re the fighter of this group, and I know its most likely going to be dangerous up there, so I’m gonna do something totally out of character. I’m giving you my pistol and the two clips I have. It’s in good condition, and it’s only been fired once in ten years and I think you know when that was. Here you go.” Leon takes the gun and looks at it with silence for awhile and then speaks. You think this is the first time you’ve actually heard him speak at all! “Y’know, I never did apologize for that shit ten years ago. I dunno what the hell I was thinking following Elliot; none of us who did do. You and Nina have done a better job of keeping this place running than anyone. Anyway, this is really generous of you, but I can’t shoot worth shit, but I know someone who’s going with us who used to practice regularly before the bombs dropped. Hey Brenda! I got something for ya!” Brenda comes over and her eyes widen when Leon hands her your pistol. “Aw yeah! This is what I’m talkin’ about! I just hope I’m still a good shot; I’ve only been able to practice my aim by throwing this scalpel at a human diagram chart.” “Yeah well don’t practice too much with it, save your bullets for an emergency. I didn’t know you were a gun person Brenda.” You say. “You really need to get out of that computer room and socialize more!” “Shit, he barely socializes when he’s in there with me and Charles.” Todd adds. “But yeah I used to practice with my own when I had one. I was too afraid to try to sneak mine in here though…you know we’ve all always wondered about that, how DID you sneak this in?” Brenda asks. You just smile. “Hey I think you guys better get going.” You say almost laughing “Oh come on! What a gyp! Alright, but we want to know when we come back!” Brenda says and then her, Leon and Todd enter the elevator wave goodbye to everyone and go up. You and everyone else go about your usual business. Nina mentions what you did. “Wow, that was really surprising for you, you’ve practically been walking around with that thing on you for ten years.” “Yeah, well I can only hope I don’t need it within the time that they come back…if they come back.” “You just gave them an edge I’d say they’ve got more of a chance now. Don’t be so pessimistic. They’ll come back.” “Yeah I hope. Bring Jack by the computer room later; I know you got some sort of meeting to go to.” “Oh I can cancel that, it’s not vital.” “No its fine, bring him by. I’ve been indoctrinating him on the basics of the shelter computer. Someone’s gotta run this thing when I’m gone.” “Well alright then, hey don’t worry. Everything will be alright.” Nina kisses you and you exchange remarks about how you love each other before you make your way back to the computer room. You know its silly to think about it, but you can’t help thinking about some worst possible scenario. You think about those three getting captured, tortured, and killed by a large group of psychotic bandits or something and then those same scum coming here because they found out the location after torturing them. You wouldn’t have anything proper to defend your family with and the surface scum would probably have all kinds of weapons to kill everyone with. They’d start by killing everyone in immediate area of the entrance, then they’d come down in small groups with automatic weapons they undoubtedly have and start killing down here and worse… “HEY! Stop spacing!” Charles suddenly says to you. “Huh? Oh! Okay.” You say snapping out your horrible daydream. “Man, what’s wrong with you? You’ve been doing that the whole time you got here.” “Nothing, just a little pre-occupied.” You still don’t really relax until Jack gets there, which allows you to think about less terrible things like teaching him about the computer system. When you’re finished with your duties, you go back to your room, and Nina’s there waiting for you looking as lovely as usual. You came in this place ten years ago with nothing except a bad attitude, now you got a lot more… You’re not losing this. No way in hell. The next day you start visiting the community gym area. You know other people like Leon use it. Nina uses it to keep in shape, but you’ve never stepped foot in the place, you never really saw any reason to, its not like you were fat or anything, but you realize if some shit goes down you’re going to have to be in better physical condition. You might not have a gun, but MAYBE you’ll be quick and strong enough to take one away from somebody! You need a fucking edge. You begin training regularly. Nina’s a little confused about this sudden change, but she’s not at all displeased with it. You do this for the next six months with the constant theme running in your mind of how you’ll be able to take out the first miscreant that steps through the elevator, grab his gun and… “Hey everyone, they’re back! And they’re in a fuckin’ car with a shitload of stuff!” someone shouts while you’re training. You immediately stop and head for the surface. When you arrive you see Leon unloading some stuff out of a beat up, but functioning car, he’s got a patch on his eye now and his face is scarred, but otherwise looks okay. Brenda comes up to you and tosses you your pistol back, along with three clips! “Came in handy, but I think I’ll be using THIS from now on!” Brenda pats an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder. “Hey, you look different, you been working out?” “Um, something like that. So where did you get all this stuff?” “Most of it we got from this small place called Ashtown that’s agreed to trade with us, we’d found it after about a week of wandering around, we were there negotiating with them and they wouldn’t trust us at first until the place suddenly got attack by a bunch of raiders. We helped defend the place from a one month siege! We also stuck around to help heal the wound. After that, they decided we were okay…that was at sort of a high cost though. Todd didn’t make it. He got killed in the fight. Tried to save him, but it was already too late by the time I got there.” Brenda explains. “Damn...he was an alright guy…so is this fight where Leon got all scarred up?” you say as he approaches. “No, that happened after we left Ashtown, we went exploring some more, we found another place a lot less friendly called The Combine. Trust me; we want to AVOID that place. We barely got out of there; we were basically prisoners. That’s why we were gone for so long. However, that’s where we got this car. We stopped back at Ashtown to pick up some supplies and came back here.” Leon answers, then he looks at you with his remaining eye. “Damn, you been working out?” You nearly start laughing at your situation, here you were training and thinking up every possible worst case scenario that was going to befall the shelter, while Brenda and Leon were actually engaged in some worst case scenarios. You’re just glad that nothing did happen to the shelter, but you certainly feel less naked now that you have your “equalizer” back! Life in the shelter continues. Ten more years pass… You’ve been here twenty years and as always there are more changes. More people have moved to the surface, pieces of the shelter have been dismantled and started to be used to build a real town along with supplies from Ashtown, and scavenging from other places. Still, the shelter is needed to ensure at least a clean water supply so you’re still running it. Nina’s position has changed though. Since the shelter doesn’t contain a majority of the population anymore, her position is more of a community council person and her title is no longer “shelter leader”. The place has been given a name now; New Haven One current problem is to keep the place together, but with the younger population, they’re less likely to want to stay. Ever since Leon came back with a giant mutant wolf head on one of his exploration trips, they all want to be “explorers” too. Your son Jack being one of those young people. Nina of course doesn’t want him to go anywhere (You’re reminded of when she didn’t want you to go to the surface) and you can’t say you’re too fond of the idea either, but what can you do? > You have a talk with him You figure you need to address this now; you go to find Jack who’s hanging around the edges of the town as usual. “Hey Jack I need to talk to you.” “Aw Dad, I don’t feel like working with you in the boring ol’ computer room right now!” “Hey watch your mouth! And it’s not that anyway. It’s about all the talking you’ve doing lately about exploring the wasteland like Indiana fuckin’ Jones.” “Who?” Jack genuinely asks seeing as he’s never heard of the movie being born after the bomb and all. “Indiana…look never mind that, your Mom worries night and day that you’re going to go running off and get yourself killed.” “I’m not gonna run off…I mean I thought about it…but I just…I dunno…” “Well spit it out boy!” “It gets too boring here sometimes! I just wish I could go and explore the world like Leon!” “Yeah, well if you haven’t noticed, Leon’s missing an eye, his left ear and a couple of pieces of his fingers, not to mention he’s all scarred up and complains about pain all the time.” “Well I’D be more careful!” Jack boasts. “Hmmm, that’s what everyone says. I know you and your friends think all the stories are exciting, but if you’d really paid close attention you’ll notice all damn danger as well. You know we’ve lost a few people doing that adventure shit, and the only one who still does it is Leon. Even Brenda stopped going out after she got shot in the leg. She was lucky she managed to escape. The world isn’t a safe place Jake. Never has been. And the way it is now, it’s even more dangerous.” Jack looks at you. “We can’t stay here forever Dad.” You see it in his eyes that he’s going to do what he wants and you aren’t going to be able to stop him. You don’t like it, and maybe you can’t stop him, but you can improve his odds. “Alright son, you gather all your little friends and meet me back here in a couple hours. Don’t go anywhere! You hear me?” “Okay, okay.” You go and find Nina and explain the situation, she’s of course completely opposed to the idea and it takes some reasoning, but eventually she sees you have a point, even if she doesn’t like it. You tell her to go inform the other parents; in the meantime you go and fetch Brenda and Leon. You meet Jack who’s standing around with a bunch of his other friends and most of the other young people in town. Brenda and Leon are behind you. “Alright Jack, if exploration is what you want, you ain’t gonna do it unprepared. You all know these two. Brenda here is going to teach all of you how to shoot properly. We’ve got plenty of guns and ammo now and she’s the best marksperson here. Before ANY of you people go out anywhere you better know how to aim your damn weapons. After a month of that, then you’ll be going out, with Leon. He’ll be able to give you on the job training with the whole explorer thing. In time, you’ll be able to go out by yourselves. Now before any of this goes down, all of you are probably gonna have to discuss this with your parents or some shit, so you’re all gonna have to work out your own personal lives yourselves, but Jack you’ve got a reluctant okay from both me and your mother.” “…I dunno what to say, I mean thanks Dad.” Jack smiles. “What you can do is pay attention to Brenda and Leon’s instructions and not get yourself killed! And here, take this. It’s saved more than a few lives.” You say and hand your pistol to Jack. And so begins the training. In time most of them go off to pursue their adventures elsewhere, naturally the world being what it is now, some don’t return, but for those that do return most come back to stay permanently. Just a little bit of the taste of the outside world is all most of them needed to see it’s a lot better to stay in New Haven! When Jake returns he’s ready once again to follow in your footsteps. “See Nina, I knew my idea would work. Let ‘em go out in the world for a little while and they’ll come to appreciate the comforts of this place! Might be boring here, but at least you don’t have some motherfucker with a Mohawk shooting at you because he likes the boots you got on. They just needed some training first to give them a chance to survive.” “Well I’m just glad Jack’s alright.” As you and Nina breathe a sigh of relief that Jack’s home in one piece, little did you realize that your idea set a major plan in motion. In time, the New Haven Militia is created. Thirty … Fifty years have gone by you briefly realize as you look at the old shelter entrance; it’s hardly ever used anymore. Extensive changes have been made to it so it’s rarely necessary to go down there anymore, only Jack and few other technicians go down there to check on the water purification system now in place. Practically everything else has been dismantled and used to help build up the surface of New Haven. New Haven has grown far beyond the shelter that you entered so long ago. You don’t think you ever saw this happening. Nobody did. The place is very large now; populated with the children of those you entered the shelter with as well as refugees from other places. Mostly everyone you originally knew is gone, not that you were ever one to greatly socialize, but still you do miss people like Leon, Brenda and Charles, hell you even miss Ron. You especially miss your beloved wife Nina. It’s been two years since she died. You miss her everyday. Jack comes by with his family to keep you company sometimes, but nowadays all you want is solitude. You enter the shelter and go down the elevator. You probably aren’t supposed to be down here, but you don’t care, you’re going to live in the past for awhile. You walk around the practically gutted shelter and remember all the things that happened. Here’s where you first met Nina, you never thought you’d end up marrying and having a child with her someday, but even though you were annoyed by first impressions, (As she probably was with you!) you always thought she was beautiful. Here’s where you shot Elliot. To this day you know you did the right thing. There’s no doubt in your mind that things would’ve been very different had he taken over. Here’s where Jack was born. You remember Kyle having a hell of a time getting him to come out. He always could be a little stubborn. You just remembered you’re supposed to have a check up appointment with Kyle’s daughter Shelia. It can wait though; you’re busy right now. Ah now here it is. Your old room. You remember spending a majority of your initial time here. Still has the shelter manual on the table. You insisted that this room remain intact when the shelter was in the final stages of being stripped. You always knew you’d return here some day. You lie down on the bed and enjoy the peace and quiet from the surface. Slowly you begin to get drowsy. “Ahhh, so peaceful with no other people around…I just wish Nina was here with me to enjoy it too…” you say to yourself as you drift off to sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Hey Nina get up.” “Huh, what? Not tonight I’m tired.” “No it’s not that. It’s about the surface. I think we need to start taking precautions and possible steps to expand above. The surface doesn’t look that bad and…” Nina immediately sits up. “YOU WENT TO THE SURFACE? After I told you not to fucking do that?! YOU ASSHOLE!” “Calm down look you can see nothing happened to me. It doesn’t even look like there was any bombs that landed anywhere near the area.” “You could be radiated! The wind blows your know or have you forgotten? Or maybe it was a biological weapon! A disease could be floating in the air! You ever think of that? You could be infected with god knows what right now and spread it to the whole shelter! And our baby!” Another surprise. “Baby? You’re pregnant?” “I just found out recently from Brenda a few days ago. I was going to tell you soon, I should’ve told you yesterday before you went to the surface, but I THOUGHT you respected my wishes! I can’t believe you…” Nina gets up and starts pacing. She’s very upset. You get up and try to fix this mess. “Look that just makes this idea even more vital, this place can’t support all these people having babies. Even GZS mentioned in their delusional guideline statement it was the intention for people to eventually go back up to the surface and repopulate it with their families. We can’t live like a bunch of crowded sardines; we should make preparations now, before it becomes a problem.” “But it might be dangerous up there.” “It probably won’t be a picnic, but that’s another reason why we should start getting ready now. The more we’re prepared the better off we’ll be to defend ourselves.” “But the radiation…” “Look, the fact remains this place IS going to get overpopulated one day and people are going to have to start going up to the surface and any background radiation isn’t going to disappear within that time. So we’re just going to have to roll the dice and deal with that fact. Like I said I think we’re okay, we’re in a fairly isolated area away from an important major city. It’s not like we’re located on either of the coasts which were probably bombed the shit out of. And to the response to biological weapon thing, I highly doubt those were used, we were the only country that had the capability to launch such weapons from a long distance, except maybe Russia and I’m sure they probably just used nukes on us. Besides any virus or germ used in such a way would’ve died out long ago after it killed off the immediate population.” Nina still doesn’t look so sure, she still look worried about you. You hold Nina to reassure her. “If it’ll make you feel better I’ll actually go see Kyle and have him check me out. And you know how much I hate going to see doctors, especially one that’s got all his knowledge from the GZS info files. I’ll be here for a long time… for all of us.” Your words seem to relax her a bit. She smiles and embraces you more closely. “Okay, I’ll bring it up tomorrow…I still think it’s funny that you of all people would be advocating going back to the surface.” “Pfft! WE’RE not going to the surface to live. We’re staying here! I just want get the rest of these fuckers out of the shelter and on to the surface! This place is too damn crowded as it is!” “Now that sounds more like you!” Nina laughs. Five more years pass… It’s been ten years since you got here. It almost seems surreal to think about. Nina’s still the shelter leader and you’re still looking after the central computer. However a lot more things have changed, and just as predicted the population grew significantly, fortunately the implementations ahead of time allowed everyone to adjust with little problems. There was some apprehension at first when Nina first suggested the surface thing, but eventually people did see the point in it. Some even wanted to go up to the surface. The first step was to make a fully functioning elevator that people could go up AND down on without any problems. (Of course that job fell to you again) The next step was to create small “huts” with the cars outside as well as using current shelter material. This went quicker than expected as most people pitched in to help. Nina gave birth to a son Jack, and almost went back to her duties immediately, leaving you to do most of the “Mr. Mom” work. Nowadays you split your time between monitoring the computer and monitoring Jack. Thankfully Charles and Todd have learned a lot more now and don’t require your supervision lessening your workload. Now its time for the next step. Nina and her council have been discussing plans for the even farther future. Contact with others and exploration. Within the past five years of the return to the surface, there has been contact with a few wanderers here and there, but they tended not to talk too much about their travels, they just mentioned that they’d seen other evidences of civilization, not all very civilized of course. Most of them just seemed to want to keep moving after doing a bit of trading and resupplying. One even hinted at some other “things” lurking around on the surface which didn’t sound too promising. However, the shelter needs to start finding a stable trading partner, or at least a place to find more supplies, because the vital ones are starting to run out. Some people are asked to volunteer for this exploration mission It wasn’t surprising Leon volunteered, but Brenda and Todd also volunteered. They were given as much supplies as they could carry and armed with the most “dangerous” things in the shelter. Leon and Todd carry some crowbars and Brenda carries a scalpel. You wonder if that’s really going to be enough though. Chances are some people out there (Quite possibly a lot) are carrying guns on them. Todd and Brenda aren’t going to be much good in a fight anyway, and while Leon is a fighter, even he can’t stop a bullet. You’re the only one with an “equalizer” around here. Maybe you should hand it over to them to give them a better chance. Though you really don’t want to do that, for various reasons. > You keep it No, you have to keep your weapon; you need something to be able to adequately defend your family in case the need should arrive. Leon, Brenda and Todd leave and life goes on…until one month later. You’re on the surface one day spending time with Nina and Jack who is playing with the other children. It’s a community event; nearly everyone is on the surface today. That’s when you hear the sound of motorcycles. You look in the direction of the sound and see several approaching. The riders don’t look like social types either. Everyone else on the surface begins to look too, and wondering what they should do. Nina quickly gathers up Jack. > You run to the shelter “Nina, we’re getting in the shelter NOW!” you grab her hand and run to the shelter entrance, upon seeing this others begin to follow your lead as the motorcycle rumble gets closer. You Nina and Jack get in the elevator first, and everyone else starts to crowd inside unfortunately everyone is shoving and pushing to get in, but there simply isn’t enough room not allowing the door to close. “GET OUT! THE ELEVATOR CAN’T CLOSE!” You yell. “FUCK YOU! YOU GET OUT!” someone shouts back. Desperate times call for desperate measures… You pull your gun out and start shooting in the ceiling of the elevator, causing folks to run out. “GET OUT! THIS IS OUR RIDE!” you shout and push the door button, taking one last look of the frightened crowd as the doors close. On the way down Nina holds on to Jack trying calm him down. She looks at you with silent disbelief. She can’t believe you actually sacrificed all those people just like that, the men, the women, and the children. “Don’t look at me like that Nina! I did what I did to save us! This is fuckin’ survival Nina! You know that!” you retort. When the elevator reaches the bottom, Nina runs back to your room with Jack and you quickly get something to jam the door open, so the elevator can’t go back up again. You see Charles come out from the computer room. He must’ve been the only one down here to keep an eye on the computer. “What’s going on? Why are you blocking the elevator door?” “We’re under fucking attack and I can’t let those fuckers come down here!” “But what about everyone else?! You can’t just leave them up there! You’re the only one with a proper weapon!” “Hey that’s tough! I mean I’m sorry all those people are in deep shit right now, but that ain’t my concern, my family is MY concern!” “You heartless bastard! What about all the other families you left to probably die up there?! I always knew you weren’t fond of people, but I never thought you’d go to this extent! Well if you’re not gonna do anything I will! Get outta my way, I’m going up!” You shove Charles back hard. “What the fuck are you gonna do Charles? You ain’t a fuckin’ hero! This ain’t like those old movies you watch! You’re a fat outta shape fuck, you wouldn’t stand a chance! Shit you don’t even have a weapon!” “Well gimme yours then!” Charles says trying to take your pistol. You push Charles back even harder, when that doesn’t work, you hit him with face with the butt of the gun causing him to fall back. “Don’t even fuck around like that Charles.” You warn pointing the pistol at him. He doesn’t seem to understand you’re being deadly serious here; he makes another attempt by charging at you. You shoot him three times before he falls dead at your feet. Nina comes running from your room to see what’s happened now, she’s horrified. Your actions within the past few minutes have severely changed her view about you. “He was trying to go to the surface! I can’t allow that, we have to remain down here where it’s safe! Who knows how long those fuckers will stay around! I’m trying to protect all of us!” you shout. Days pass and things are strained between you and Nina. She doesn’t approve at all of what you did. A lot of those people she was friends with. She says you did it purposely just so you could get more of your precious solitude and while that isn’t true, you can’t help but feel things are a lot better without anybody else around… A year passes since the invasion, you used to keep an eye on the elevator door on a regular basis, but lately you haven’t bothered. Nina has been distant with you ever since that day. Sometimes you’re all right with each other, but more often than not you argue. If it wasn’t for Jack, the both of you would probably just stay on opposite sides of the shelter. One day you wake up and look for the both of them, but you can’t find them anywhere then it suddenly occurs to you where they’ve gone. To the surface. You immediately press the call button and shut “Come on! Come on!” at the elevator’s slow descent. You do the same thing when you’re going up. You rush outside wondering where the hell Nina thinks she was off to, considering there’s no knowledge of any beacons of civilization nearby. You figure she couldn’t have gotten far and you’re right, she’s surveying the remains of the invasion. Everything that was built on the surface was destroyed, and it looks like nobody was spared. You see skeletal remains littered everywhere. She’s crying while holding on to Jack and then speaks when she sees you. “See what you did!” “Hey I didn’t do THIS! The wasteland scum did this! What the hell Nina? I only have so many bullets, and I didn’t even have my spare clips with me at the time! I couldn’t shoot them all!” “Oh, but you could shoot Charles right?” “Now that was…” “Or how about Elliot? Remember when you shot him and claimed it was self-defense?” “That WAS Self-defense! Nina, you’re acting like a stupid bit…” you stop yourself from completing that sentence, calm yourself and then continue. “Look, I did what I did to protect us, I didn’t want any of us getting killed. Let’s all just go back inside the shelter and…” “Get your hands off of me! I’m not going back in there with YOU! I can’t stand to look at you anymore, even if it is a rarity nowadays!” “So whadda ya gonna do Nina? Take Jack traipsing across the fuckin’ wasteland and hope you don’t get raped and killed before you die of dehydration? In case you haven’t noticed, but this is IT! There probably ain’t another place like this for miles! And if there is, I bet it damn near isn’t as comfortable OR friendly! Look Jack needs the both of us here and…” “Jack doesn’t need YOU! You’re barely spend time with him anyway! I can’t do it anymore I can’t spend one more day in that shelter with you after seeing what you did a year ago!” “NINA SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET BACK IN THE GODDAMN SHELTER NOW!” Now Jack begins to cry, and Nina attempts to make him stop, and now you see this situation isn’t going to go away even if you dragged them both into the shelter kicking and screaming. Yet despite all this, you can’t let Nina and Jack leave, you do the only other solution. “Oh fuck it. Here.” You pull out your pistol and shove it into Nina’s hand. She doesn’t accept it at first until you force her take the thing. After she finally holds it, you start to leave. Nina calls out. “Where are you going?” “Oh now you show concern? I’m leaving Nina, you said you can’t live here with me since I now repulse you so much, so I’m doing what’s best and fuckin’ leaving, because whether you believe it or not I do what’s best for this family. I’ll leave and probably die somewhere out in the wilderness or if you still have any kind of feelings for me, you’ll save me a lingering death and just shoot me now. Either way, I’m gone. Jack, take good care of your Mom, she gets a bit high strung at times. The computer’s easy to run, just read the damn manual. That’s what I always told everyone else. Both of you have a nice life.” You turn and begin to walk, you start wondering how long you’re going to last without any kind of supplies, you didn’t even bring a canteen with you. What does it all matter now anyway? Fuck it right? You turn your head and see Nina and Jack just entering the shelter entrance. You shake your head, wondering where you went wrong. Where all the love went so damn quickly. Maybe she was right in some ways, maybe you were too ruthless. You just wanted to save them so badly though, you didn’t want to lose them. Of course you did anyway. You turn your head again, now you just see Nina. What the hell is she doing now? You hope to god she didn’t have some change of mind suddenly. Because you know what’s going to happen, she’ll ask you to come back, and like an idiot you probably will, and then things will be semi-okay and then they’ll get worse again and you’ll be back to this again. At this point you don’t feel like putting up with the shit anymore either. Just let it go Nina, just let it the fuck go. You made your decision now stick fuckin’ by it. Once more you turn your head; she’s walking briskly towards you…with your pistol in her hand. She has an unemotional look on her face. Reminds you of when she was going to throw Ron and his boy toy into exile that one time. You always knew she had a darker side to her, looks like its coming out one last time. You slow down your walking so she can catch up to you quicker, until finally you stop altogether. You don’t turn you head anymore; you want to make this easy on her. Now you feel the metal barrel to your head. Your last thought on this burned out world are: “She did still care.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No, you have to keep your weapon; you need something to be able to adequately defend your family in case the need should arrive. Leon, Brenda and Todd leave and life goes on…until one month later. You’re on the surface one day spending time with Nina and Jack who is playing with the other children. It’s a community event; nearly everyone is on the surface today. That’s when you hear the sound of motorcycles. You look in the direction of the sound and see several approaching. The riders don’t look like social types either. Everyone else on the surface begins to look too, and wondering what they should do. Nina quickly gathers up Jack. > You stand your ground No way in hell you’re going to hide, you’re a good shot, (At least you used to be, you haven’t practiced in awhile) you figure you can get enough of them, while taking cover and everyone else here doesn’t have to be defenseless. “Everyone grab some sort of weapon! Mothers grab your children and run to the shelter, when you get to the bottom jam the door open so it can’t come back up!” before she can even say anything you turn to Nina, “Nina! No arguments! Just do it!” you then kiss her before she does what you say. The bikes are getting closer. There’s at least ten, each with a driver and a partner riding in the back. There’s some sort of bloody head on the front of the first bike...its Leon’s. You can only guess the fate of Brenda and Todd were similar. Then you hear one of them yelling. “YEEEHAAA! THERE IT IS! JUST LIKE THAT BITCH WE RAPED AND KILLED SAID! ATTACK!” You fire a couple times hitting a driver, the bike and its riders go flying into a couple other bikes. Not bad, in fact better than you expected. Unfortunately they’re shooting at you now too. You duck for cover while everyone else does likewise, some getting shot in the process. The remaining bikers attempt to circle around and open fire, but now everyone has adequate cover, so most of the bikers in the “bitch seat” get off to be a little more thorough. The shelter people and the bikers clash. Not all the bikers have guns, but they’ve been surviving on the road long enough to be better fighters. Many of your people are going down, and you’re the only one who seems to be able to do any damage to these invaders. You manage to blast three more in the chest. Soon you’re out of ammo, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Some monster motherfucker starts attacking you with a spiked bat, landing it right in your leg. You punch him out before collapsing in pain. You attempt to pull the bat out, but then you’re kicked in the face and thrown into the path of a speeding motorcycle which rides over your arm. You’re not going anywhere; in fact the only thing that saves you from a follow up death blow is the fact that Nina and all the mothers come back up to the surface with weapons to help defend against the attack. Nina grabs your pistol which you dropped and loads it up with a clip you left down in the shelter and blasts the giant biker’s brains out. Seeing many of there comrades dead and reinforcements arrive on your side, the remaining bikers sound a retreat and ride off. Much has been lost this day though; the shelter’s population has severely been decimated, not to mention the confidence in staying on the surface. After this event, all ideas of rebuilding on the surface are abandoned. The shelter has more than enough supplies and room now for everyone considering this last attack. Of course that problem is only going to pop up again in the future when the population replenishes itself again. Maybe not in your lifetime, but certainly in Jack’s. He can’t stay here, he’s going to have to go out in the world and learn how to deal with it. And you make sure he’s better prepared than you were. You stop Jake’s training in learning about the computer system; it won’t do him any good. Instead you make him do physical training in the shelter gym. You’ve never used the thing, but he’s sure going to. You can’t directly train with Jake since you’re basically crippled in one leg and arm, but you can motivate and that’s what you do. Nina doesn’t exactly like it, but she sees that one day the shelter is going to need someone to get more supplies. As years pass you eventually start succumbing to your damaged body’s inability to continue this life. Jack is now a young man, the shelter’s population is starting to grow again, and the shelter’s supplies are running low. You say your goodbyes to Nina, telling her you love her and ask to see Jack as you lie in your bed. “Jack, you’re going to have to leave this place soon one day. Whether you decide to leave permanently or you decide to come back with supplies to keep this place going, is up to you. But you are going to have to leave it. You understand?” “Yes Dad.” “(Cough) Good, now here. Even though you’re a tough guy who knows how to defend himself, you’ll still be needing this when you go out there. Wish you could practice with it, but it only has one clip left and you’ll be needing all the bullets you can get.” “Well I did practice my aim by throwing some scalpels at a human diagram, if that’s any help.” “Couldn’t hurt. Glad to see you’re inventive, you’ll need that up there. Okay, I think that’s it…I hope I taught you enough.” “You did Dad.” “Good. Now leave me, I ache all over and I need to rest.” Jack leaves you where you have your last moments of solitude before leaving this mortal coil.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Something comes over you, maybe it was the tension or the hostility or maybe you were just horny, but you grab Nina and kiss her passionately. Fortunately for you, she returns the gesture. Now nobody knows what to think they all just stand around watching, they’re probably just glad you didn’t shoot anybody this time. William and Ron are still recovering from their beating and staggering in the doorway of the elevator. Nina stops you just for a moment to address everyone. “The exile is off, everyone go back to your lives…and YOU are coming with me!” then she starts pulling you back to her room. You and Nina relieve a lot of pent up sexual energy that day. A lot of things change after that… Four more years pass... You and Nina are an item now, which makes you somewhat more social by necessity (unfortunately) its not all bad though since she’s the one that’s still shelter leader and has to do all the major work. She does a good job hence the reason she’s stayed in power. (Though not surprisingly William and Ron still vote against her, even if she did apologize) You’re now in charge of maintaining the central GZS computer system which you insist on doing primarily by yourself, though Charles and Todd assist you sometimes. Eventually you manage to get the damn thing running at near maximum efficiency and nobody has too many problems with things breaking down anymore. The Shelter’s population has grown a bit now; the only good thing about the shelter was the design to make allowances for a population growth. Of course now there’s rug rats running around which means Nina appoints a person to start being a “teacher” of sorts for when they start getting bigger. Fortunately there are a couple of those already in the shelter. Kyle and Brenda are now the main medical practitioners, though you doubt if they’d be able to do open heart surgery, they’re competent enough to keep people in relatively good shape and they keep trying to learn more whenever possible with the medical database provided and from books. (You still don’t understand WHY you’re the only competent tech though! “Gah! Read the books! Study the schematics! It’s not difficult!” you’re constantly saying and that’s to Charles and Todd!) Then there’s the elevator. After the near exile incident, it was still considered a good idea to have it accessible at all times just in case. What you eventually did was install a call button and did some re-wiring to do just that, though nobody has ever dared to actually go up to the surface. (And nobody’s ever gotten thrown out either) You begin to wonder what the surface looks like now though from time to time. One night while lying next to Nina… “Hey Nina, you ever wonder what’s on the surface now?” “What? It’s probably an uninhabitable wasteland.” “Well maybe, but we’ve been down here five years, it might look different.” “Yeah, and it might not. Go back to sleep.” “You know I just thought about it, everyone’s vehicles are up there. I bet we could strip them down for parts or something, maybe some of them will even work. We could drive around and see what’s going on else where.” “What? I don’t want you going up there! The elevator is a last resort thing just case something bad happens! And since when do you want to play great explorer? When you first got here you never left your room!” “I dunno, maybe your socialization has made me a little more extroverted.” “Hmm, knowing you, you probably just want to get away from the increasing population here.” “Ha ha, maybe. But I still wouldn’t mind just taking a quick look outside, and to inspect the vehicles like I said.” Nina now sits up. “No! I don’t want you going up there! There’s probably radiation still all over the place! I don’t want you getting radiation poisoning or mutating or something!” “I’ll be fine! I won’t go too far, I just want to…” Nina grabs a hold of your hand. “NO! I don’t want you going up there! It’s not safe!” “Alright, alright, calm down. I won’t go anywhere.” “You promise?” “Yeah!” “Alright then, I don’t want to hear anymore about it. Our life is here, not up there. I love you too much to lose you.” The both of you lie back down, and Nina holds on to you tightly, putting her head on your chest almost in an effort to make sure you’re not going anywhere tonight. Of course now you’re lying awake REALLY wondering what the surface looks like. The next day you’re working with Charles and Todd doing the usual mundane routine. They’re talking about the same stupid movie they’ve watched over and over in the community living area. Shit you feel like you’re at work again. The GZS central computer hasn’t been giving you trouble for quite some time, and you know there’s a big meeting going on in the conference room… Maybe you could sneak out and just take a quick look on the surface for awhile. You could let Charles and Todd look after the computer, you know they’re capable of doing that. > You stay Nah, Nina’s probably right, you might get radiation poisoning or some shit if you go to the surface. Probably nothing left up there for miles anyway. You’re just a little bored and were trying to figure out some way of relieving the boredom and going to the surface isn’t it. You’ll think of something less dangerous. You go back to doing your duties and putting up with Charles and Todd’s chatter. A few weeks later, Nina tells you she’s pregnant. In nine months your son Jack is born. You also begin to notice how many other babies are being born or on their way of being born, you start to wonder if there will be enough supplies and room if the population keeps growing like this. Oh well surely something will be figured out by then. Still, you do wonder if you shouldn’t have tried harder to convince Nina that it isn’t a completely terrible idea… Five years pass… Ten years have gone by and the shelter is starting to get a little crowded. After all there isn’t too much to do in the shelter that hasn’t already been done, so sex is always (as it always has been) a popular way to pass the time. The result of that fun activity is too many babies. At this point now you say something to Nina about the surface, she’s a little reluctant about the idea, but sees that it might be necessary. Unfortunately the rest of the council doesn’t see it that way. Many of them have been here so long now that going to the surface is almost unthinkable. Despite great protest Nina overrides the council’s advice and goes ahead with the plan anyway. This doesn’t make her too popular. For one reason there’s the decision of who is suppose to live on the surface, many people have full blown families now, they’re a little unwilling to risk taking them up. So that means the single or childless people get the boot upstairs since they have less to “lose”. That doesn’t go over too well either. People start protesting loudly about being kicked out of their homes since they have as much right to stay too. One day, you’re in the computer room at the time arguing with Charles who happens to be single, and giving you shit about Nina’s new policy. Todd is pretty much indifferent to the idea since even though he’s single he doesn’t mind the idea of going to the surface, he just thinks you should’ve said something to Nina a long time ago to implement this plan sooner before everyone had a whole mess of babies. That’s when you get the word. Kyle comes in to tell you that during one of Nina’s speeches William (Who would’ve been one of those kicked up to the surface along with Ron) attempted to assassinate Nina with a scalpel he stole from the medical supplies. Leon managed to stop him with extreme prejudice by breaking his neck. But its not ending there, people are starting to riot and call for someone new to be the shelter leader. You’re pissed off now, you storm into the conference room ready to kick everyone’s ass who DARES to try to hurt Nina again. You fire your pistol into the air causing everyone to take notice. When you get over to Nina, she’s pleading for you to not shoot anybody. The assassin was already taken care of, there isn’t any more need for killing. While that might be the case that still doesn’t solve the problem of everyone hating Nina (And probably you too as well) if she gets thrown out of her position, the next step might be to try to throw you guys out of the shelter. Part of this you feel is your fault, you could just roll the dice here or you could attempt to take the hard line approach.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Always one to solve a problem before it starts… You pull the trigger and blast Elliot square in the chest. He looks down in disbelief and then slumps down on the floor by your feet. You then get up from the floor as everyone else runs out of the room. “Yeah that’s what I thought! So much for your fearless leader!” As you drag Elliot’s body out of your room, everyone else in the shelter has come out of their own rooms after hearing the gun shot and screaming. “OH MY GOD! HE’S GOT A GUN!” someone shouts. “HE’S KILLED ELLIOT!” another screams. Everyone is very afraid of what you’re going to do next. Only Nina dares approach you. “You…you killed him? I always knew you were anti-social, but…oh my god…” “Yeah I fuckin’ killed Elliot! And YOU of all people oughta be damn well glad I did! He was planning on taking over this place from your boyfriend Ron!” “Ron’s not my boyfriend! And I don’t believe you! Elliot was gracious in his defeat! He was a good man unlike you!” “Yeah he was so good he tried to recruit me for his little rebellion gang, and don’t try to hide in the fuckin’ crowd Leon and act like you weren’t there! All of you fuckers hiding right now, came to my room with Elliot! And lemme ask you this, WHY the hell would ANY of them come to MY room? Everyone knows I don’t invite people!” “I dunno what to say right now…please just put down the gun…I don’t want you to kill anyone else…” “For fuck’s sake Nina I’m not a mass murderer! It was self-defense! He was gonna kill me, just like he was gonna kill Ron and shit maybe he should’ve, the fuckstick’s supposed to be the shelter leader and he’s not even here for this! Where is Ron?” Nina suddenly wonders where he’s at as well, she runs over to his door which is still shut. “Don’t tell me, he’s THAT much of deep sleeper.” You mutter while standing by Elliot’s dead body. Nina doesn’t even knock, apparently she’s got her own key to get in his room. You’re STILL wondering why nothing has happened between those two yet, your questions are soon answered, and everyone is in for another surprise this eventful night. “EEEEEEEEEEEK! NO!” you hear Nina scream when she goes inside the room and then runs back out crying. Ron steps out in his underwear. “No, wait! Nina, its not what it looks like!” he shouts to her and then another guy in his underwear comes out. You think his name is William, you never knew too much about him before, but you know MORE than you wanted to now! “Get back inside William!” when Ron sees that there’s a whole crowd of people staring in various states of shock. It’s too late though now, everyone knows. “Wow Nina sure is a good judge of character, she thought Elliot was a good man and she thought you were straight. Looks like I wasn’t the only one with a secret in this shelter! Heh heh.” Ron finally turns to you and sees what you’ve done. “…You got a gun? YOU FUCKIN’ KILLED ELLIOT?” “(Sigh) Not this again! Yeah I fuckin’ killed him. He tried to kill me and he was planning on killing you to take over this dump!” “Now just calm down, and put down the gun…” “I’m not putting down shit and I’m not killing anyone else unless someone gives me cause to do so! What the fuck, was the dick in your mouth so good to you, you didn’t hear the gunshots and screaming out here? I’m sick of explaining this twice! Now I’M going back into MY room to get some sleep! And none of you better fucking disturb me for the rest of the night! And someone better clean up Elliot’s carcass from in front of my room when I wake up tomorrow!” You return to your room. “Yeah, I think that went well.” You say to yourself. After the night of multiple “incidents” a lot of things happen. The first, is Elliot’s body being the first one dumped into the incinerator. The second being that Ron is immediately voted out by his own council who all follow the GZS guidelines. Apparently being gay was more of an offense than being incompetent, since GZS guidelines were explicit in not wanting homosexuals in the Community Shelters which he obviously lied about. Nina is unsurprisingly the most vocal about his vote out; in fact she ends up taking over. Ron and William move into a separate far room together and become social pariahs. Everyone who was previously friendly with Ron suddenly starts treating him like garbage. You never really cared for him, and thought he was an incompetent moron, but even you think it’s shitty for them to all just turn on him over who he happens to be fucking. But that’s how people are and that’s why you try to avoid them. Your situation is a little different, they can’t really treat you like a social pariah mainly because you were always one to begin with and another because everyone’s afraid you’ll shoot them. All of Elliot’s former friends have no doubt reinforced the belief in others that you’re dangerous. You don’t really care though, just as long as nobody fucks with you and stays out of your way (Which everyone does for the most part since you now walk around with it at all times) A year passes… The shelter sees its first baby born and there are a couple of other pregnant women ready to pop as well. Nina has improved the place a little bit more. No doubt without anyone to fawn over now she’s throwing herself into her work. There’s actually a guy (Kyle) who’s has some medical knowledge now, they still don’t really have a good “tech guy” though and things are still being jury-rigged. Nina knows with a growing population this shelter needs to be in tip top running condition. You get that expected knock on the door. “Hello, Nina.” You say. “Yeah hi. Look, I just want to know if you have any intention of helping us out or if you’re still going to remain an isolated asshole.” Nothing like being blunt. Politics has really hardened Nina, she’s all business now it seems and lot less naïve. How strangely appealing… > You remain in your own world “Its served me well so far, so I guess asshole it is.” “Yeah, I thought as much. Thanks for nothing.” Nina says and walks off. You go back to what you were doing. About an hour passes and then your lighting starts to dim, and then goes out altogether. Its pitch dark and you can hear yelling and screaming all throughout the shelter. Someone fucked something up, but good. You leave your room and stumble through the darkness bumping into frightened people until you manage to find your way back to the computer room. You see some flashlights shining at various parts of the computer. “What the hell did you idiots do?” you yell, as two technicians shine their lights towards you. “Whoa! It’s you! Don’t shoot!” Nina then shines her light at you as well. “Now you decide to help?” “Get outta the way, before I shoot all of you!” you exclaim pushing the two techs out of the way and grabbing one of their flashlights. You inspect what happened and it’s not good, they completely fried the CPU. You don’t know how the fuck they did that, but they did. You can’t fix this, even if you had the right tools and adequate lighting. Somehow you really aren’t hysterical about all this. “Well guys, I got some really bad news. We’re in deep shit that I can’t get us out of. You’ve doomed us all. Nice going guys.” The two techs begin to freak out and run screaming; Nina has a quiver in her voice. “You mean, there’s nothing at all?! We’re all gonna die?” “Looks like. The question is how, quick or slow…and I got this gun here as you all know…you coming with me?” Nina doesn’t even hesitate. “Let’s do it.” “You sure?” “Just shut up and do it.” “Okay, now I gotta get close since its dark…” You point the gun directly at Nina’s head and pull the trigger. You feel a splash of blood on your face and the slumping of a lifeless body. You hear the screams echo throughout the shelter get louder. You’ll be glad to leave this insane asylum, you just wonder if you should’ve done things differently… No time for that now. No time for regrets, just time to do it. You pull the gun at your head and pull the trigger.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Yeah, well you do what you have to do, just leave me out of it. Your little power struggle with Ron isn’t any of my concern. And if and when you do take power don’t think you’re going to be ordering me around either.” Elliot’s expression changes to that of someone very perturbed by your response. “I’m very disappointed to hear you say that, I really thought you could have a place in the new community I was planning.” “Think again, now get outta here…” You begin to shove Elliot out of your doorway, but Leon reaches over his shoulder and shoves you back with great strength. You fall backwards on to your floor, Elliot and his gang start to enter. He pulls out a scalpel, something he probably got from the medical supplies. You happen to be right next to your mattress, so you reach in and grab your pistol to point it directly at Elliot. Now they all look like they just seen a ghost and all the bravery has drained out of them except Leon, who looks like this isn’t the first time he’s had a gun pointed at him, but he’s still stepping back. “You wanna fuckin’ take another step motherfucker? Go ahead, I fuckin’ dare you!” “Holy shit, he’s got a fuckin’ gun Elliot!” a women in his group says. “I can see that Brenda! Okay, look maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. I mean obviously you’re a more resourceful man than I thought…I mean as far as I know you’re the only one in this place with a goddamn gun. How’d you manage that?” “Never you mind, just get the fuck outta here!” “Very well, but remember, you don’t have any friends in this place, and you can’t watch your back all the time…” Elliot has just announced his intentions of eliminating you whenever it’s possible. You’ll have to live in constant paranoia now. Unless… > You let him go If you shoot him, everyone’s going to think you’re a murderer, so you let him go. Besides if he planning on taking over by force like he seems to be wanting to do, he’ll show his true colors soon enough. You just have to watch your back until that time. In fact it occurs to you that you should just go tell Ron and Nina about this incident, sure they might not believe you, but it’s better than saying nothing. The next day when you wake up, you hear a lot of commotion going outside your door. “See?! I told you! He’s the one who did it! He dropped the bloody scalpel right in front of his door!” you hear someone say, sounds like Elliot. You grab your gun and open up the door to a crowd of frightened onlookers. Elliot is in front of them speaking and then turns around when you come out. “SO! The murderer finally shows his face! We both know what you did last night! I saw you! I saw you break into Ron’s room and kill him and his friend William! Then when you saw me see you, you threatened me with a gun you snuck in telling me I better keep my mouth shut or you’d kill me too! But I couldn’t stay silent! I don’t care if you do kill me! I had to warn these good people that they’re living with a psychopath!” Elliot’s already gone through with his plan. He had to speed it up since you were a risk to tell everyone about it, but now he’s turned it to his advantage by blaming you for everything. “WHAT?! Elliot you’re full of shit! YOU came to my room last night trying to get me in your little rebel gang! You’re the one trying to take over, not me!” “LIAR! Who’re you gonna believe? Me? Who’s been nothing, but supportive of Ron, even when his plans weren’t exactly efficient? Or HIM? Someone who’s done nothing to help anyone, and has shown utter dislike for Ron and everyone else here?” “It’s true! (Sob) He has always hated Ron!” Nina cries from the crowd. You attempt to explain, protest and argue the situation, but its no good, Elliot is a master speaker, manipulator, and everyone likes him and can barely tolerate you. Feeling yourself threatened you start pointing your gun at the crowd, but even that doesn’t do any good, Elliot whips them all into a frenzy to attack you, claiming how you can’t kill all of you, of course that doesn’t stop you from killing some of them (Elliot being the first of course). Soon you’re mobbed and the gun is taken away from you where upon someone dispenses vigilante justice and caps you in the head with it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“(Sigh) Fine, I’ll attend this exercise in futility, but what the hell are we doing exactly, so I’m not just jumping into shit.” You ask as you and Nina walk towards the conference room. “Well right now we’re voting on a shelter leader. Someone to make the final decisions about important things. So far Ron is tied with another. In fact the only reason why I came to get you, was so you could break the tie.” “Whoopie, I feel honored I can take an important part in this democratic process. So who’s the other person?” “Oh, that would be Elliot. He was one of the later arrivals, but is very personable. Not that you’d know since I doubt you’ve even seen him given that you lock yourself in you room all the time.” “Yeah, yeah, I know who he is, bald guy. So I take it you want Ron to win huh?” “Well…I’d be lying if I said I didn’t, but Elliot’s seems like a good guy too, so I’m sure he’d make a good leader as well.” “Why haven’t you run? I mean you seem to like to organize things.” “Me? Oh no, I’m not a leader.” “Well from what I’ve seen of Ron, he isn’t either.” Nina stops you in the corridor. “Damn it, stop being an asshole! At least Ron makes an attempt to get involved in things! You haven’t done shit since you got here except insult people and lock yourself away! Like it or not we’re ALL in this together! And you better start getting with the program and contribute!” “What the fuck? I am contributing; I’m going to this goddamn meeting aren’t I? And you better watch your tone; remember I’M the swing vote for your boyfriend.” “Ron isn’t my boyfriend! I mean…not yet…uh…” “What? You mean he isn’t taping your ass yet? Shit, he’s stupider than I thought then, because he’d be lucky to get someone who looks like you even if you are annoying.” Nina stands and stares at you in disbelief. “…could you possibly be any more vile?” “Probably, but we don’t have time for that, I gotta vote for some dickhead.” You continue to the conference room (with Nina no longer walking with you) and when you finally arrive everyone is there as if they’ve been waiting for you. You don’t even really care who’s in charge since more than likely no matter who you vote for is going to be an intrusive bastard wanting everyone to do something. You can vote for Ron. As far as leadership material, you don’t really see him as one, though he seems to have some planning skills and friendly to people so maybe he’s got the stuff. Elliot you barely know anything about, he also seems to be an organizer and friendly to everyone, but not to the point that it’s irritating. Though to you there’s something a little creepy about him. Ah what the hell, you know this is something Ron wants more than anything why not give it to him? Besides he’s not very “strong” which means you can probably get away with disobeying him on a regular basis without causing a big scene. “I’ll vote for Ron.” You say, Nina looks surprised and Ron jumps up and down like an idiot in celebration. You take that as your opportunity to go back to your room, Nina once again stops you in the corridor. “I just wanted to say thanks for doing this; I know you don’t even like Ron…” “I don’t care one way or another about him, if he wants the headache of running this place he can have it, he better just not ask too much of me, I did my bit. You can think of me as his kingmaker. See ya around.” You go back to your room and that’s where you spend a majority of your time. You don’t really mix with anyone, and nobody really makes the attempt with you either. You’re asked to contribute to some “events” sometimes, but you always ignore such requests and nothing happens. Nina still hangs around Ron like a love sick school girl, but for god knows what reason he seems completely oblivious to the fact. And obviously she hasn’t told him how she feels about him. You watch this comical display replay itself over and over. “Yeah, GZS really picked some excellent candidates to pair up to create families for the so called future, what a joke.” You mutter to yourself. Time goes by and Ron goes about his duties which mainly consist of discussing pointless plans in the conference room. The idiot can’t do ANYTHING without talking about it with others he appointed as advisors first! If somebody’s shower is broken they have to discuss when, how and WHY it has to be fixed! Naturally everyone disagree about one point and they have to start all over again which usually means nothing gets done. A lot of planning and organizing of ideas, but no actual implementations of those same ideas. The shelter starts falling into disrepair, a few fixes are made here and there, but they’re more jury-rigged ones more than anything. Nobody has perfectly functioning rooms from what you know…well except yours since you do nothing, but study the shelter manual all the time attempting to learn more about how it works giving you an edge in repairing your own room. (In fact you just permanently took a repair kit for yourself out of the equipment room) You really don’t understand why other people aren’t doing the same instead of waiting around for things to get repaired or complaining about needing things to get repaired. Everyone has the same damn operations manual. Read it! About six months go by and finally you’re given an unexpected visit during the night. You answer your door. It’s Elliot and some other people. “May we come in?” Elliot asks. “What do you want?” “Just to talk about the future of the shelter.” “Yeah? Well you can talk to Ron about that, he’s the big shelter leader.” “Yes he is, thanks to you. And that’s also why this shelter is in such bad shape. Ron is ruining this place with his ineptitude.” “Oh no, don’t blame that shit on me, that’s RON’S fault, not mine. And besides MY room works fine. If you lazy bastards would actually read the damn shelter manual you wouldn’t have any problems.” “Oh I’ve read the manual, I’m sure many people have. But surely you must realize most people don’t have the natural talent to fix thing that perhaps you have. Besides I’m sure you must also be aware that in a community each person has his own talents. For example Leon behind me used to be a bouncer. Don’t you think with his skills he’d make an excellent head of security around here?” Leon folds his big black arms almost daring you to say “No.” before Elliot continues. “My point is me and a few others are planning to take Ron out of office for gross incompetence. Did you know Fred and Greta are planning to have a baby? The first one to be born in here. The population in this shelter isn’t going to be stable forever. It’s going to grow and we NEED to keep this place running efficiently if we’re ALL going to survive. I know you’re a solitary person…I even respect that, but the time has come for you to choose between life or death. By joining our group, you’re choosing life. By remaining locked away in here, you’re choosing death not just for all of us, but for yourself. No man is an island.” Elliot has a bit of duality to his speech. Part of him sounds genuinely concerned for the future of the shelter; he may even have a point. But the other part of him sounds like he’s politely threatening you. And you’re not sure of the whole “taking Ron out of office” thing. It almost sounds like he plans on taking over by force. You get the impression he and his little group are going to do just that regardless of whether you join or not. > You join Can’t be any worse than what’s going on now, and you might as well be on the winning team. “Alright, I’m in. What do we do?” Elliot smiles. “Glad to have you on board, as for what we do, you’ll see. You’ll all see. Leon, and Brenda you’re all coming with me. The rest of you go back to your rooms, tomorrow your loyalty will be rewarded, I promise.” Elliot and his gang leave, you close the door and go back to sleep without thinking anymore about it. The next day you hear a lot of yelling and screaming when you wake up, you get dressed and leave your room to see what’s going on. You see a crowd of people gathered outside Ron’s door. You make you way through the crowd and see Leon holding Nina who is struggling and hysterical. Elliot is nearby speaking. “I DIDN’T DO IT! YOU’RE LYING! YOU’RE ALL LYING! (Sob)” “I saw her! I saw her lurking around last night when I heard some noises. I just wish I’d done something then! I’ll never forgive myself. I just thought she was taking a walk, little did I know she was going into Ron’s room and killed him! Why? Because she found out he was having an affair with his secret lover William!” “What the fuck…?” you say to yourself and take a quick look inside Ron’s room. You see Ron’s body lying in a pool of blood on the floor in his underwear, his throat has been slashed. Nearby is another body killed in the exact same way. Its William who you really didn’t know anything about, you guess you know he was gay now though. “Huh. I guess that explains why Ron never took any interest in Nina.” You say to yourself. Meanwhile Elliot is continuing his speech. “She even dropped the killing weapon outside her door! Brenda found it when she was going to talk to her this morning! Look!” Elliot shouts when Brenda shows everyone a bloody scalpel. “THAT’S NOT MINE! I DIDN’T DO IT! I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW RON WAS GAY!” “Oh we ALL didn’t know Nina, until we found his dead body! But we all know that YOU had a giant crush on him and practically stalked him. It isn’t hard to connect the dots here Nina! You found out he was carrying on with William and you in a jealous rage killed them both! Now granted William and Ron were breaking GZS policy with their behavior, but they didn’t deserve this! To be brutally murdered by an insane love sick stalker!” “I’M NOT A STALKER! (Sob) I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!” “Enough! It’s apparent that we need to punish you, for your heinous crimes. Though I feel you deserve death, I am in no position to determine your ultimate fate…I say the people should decide!” Some of the people in the crowd begin to chant “Death!”, and most of those are followers of Elliot. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the crowd to follow. Elliot’s got ‘em all by the balls. He has completely manipulated this herd of sheep into believing and following him, on little to no basis in evidence. They’re all just believing what he’s telling them. You know damn well he’s set this whole thing up to blame poor Nina. You can’t really do anything about it though; nobody’s going to believe you. It’s too late anyway, after a few more words from Elliot, you see Leon carry out the crowd’s wishes and break Nina’s neck. Now Elliot makes another speech. “It is done…it is regrettable, but it is done. Leon, you and some of the others please dispose of these bodies in the incinerator…I didn’t think we would have to use it so soon and under such tragic circumstances. I suppose we’ll need another shelter leader now to guide us through this dark time…well whoever is proposed, I hope they will be willing to listen to some of my ideas about how we should increase security around here so nothing like this ever happens again.” “Hey! How about you become our shelter leader Elliot? You certainly know how to take charge of a situation and you obviously are concerned about all of us!” another one of Elliot’s lackeys shouts from the crowd where upon a short time later everyone else is following again. You stand watching a complete fraud take over with mere words. It would appear that even after Armageddon some things never change. Elliot goes through a modesty routine to make him look good and then “humbly” accepts. You may have just allied yourself with a ruthless sociopath at best or a complete mad man at worst. Time will have to tell. Five years pass… Time tells that you’ve allied with a completely ruthless sociopathic mad man. The Shelter’s population has grown a little; but not excessively. In fact you’re likely to have room for quite some time. Elliot employed a vicious sterilization program to make sure of that. Having a medical background he was able to do the procedures himself with the medical supplies in the shelter. Shortly after he started employing that procedure the initial “cult of personality worship” by everyone stopped and a lot of people regained there senses, but of course by then Elliot had already entrenched himself. There were a few attempts to kill him, but those were always averted by Leon. Elliot now walks around with a couple guards at all times, with Leon is his head bodyguard. He claimed that it was for the good of the shelter and granted perhaps it is going to make things easier, but it’s obvious that not everyone was keen on this idea. Most of the people who followed Elliot from the beginning were spared this fate though. Disobedience from anyone is punished severely. However things aren’t too bad for you. You are pretty much indispensable and you keep it that way. You’re now in charge of maintaining the central GZS computer system which you primarily insist on doing by yourself. Eventually you manage to get the damn thing running at near maximum efficiency and nobody has too many problems with things breaking down anymore. You also do something else to ensure your safety which is carrying your gun secretly on you at all times. There have been times where you’ve wondered if you should kill Elliot, but you haven’t ever killed anyone before, let alone with no provocation, you don’t know if you have it in you. Also he hasn’t really bothered you, if anything you’re one of the few people he’s consistently been okay with. As long as he’s not bothering you, you don’t really feel the need to kill him. He leaves you to do your job and you leave him to do his… But is it ALWAYS going to be that way? There may come a day when for whatever reason he decides to get rid of you. Megalomaniacs aren’t particularly known for their trusting nature. > You kill him now You need to kill him, things are just going to get worse, or at best stay the same. All the shit that Elliot’s done over the years has gotten to you, and you can’t help, but feel partly responsible for all of this. Sure you don’t like most people, but you’re not a BAD guy. However you are serving a bad master. A really bad master, one that needs to be stopped now. You take a deep breath and pace around the floor for awhile. Trying to psyche yourself up for your plan. You feel like you gotta take a shit, a piss, and vomit all at the same time. It’s all in your mind though. Its just nerves. You stare at yourself in a blank monitor screen. “You can do this…you can do this…” you repeat. You then leave the computer room, ready to do what you have to do. You don’t get far when you see Elliot walking around with two guards and Leon behind him. You also see him with his wife Brenda and their two daughters. (Of course he didn’t feel the need to make a “sacrifice” for the shelter) “Shit.” You say to yourself. You didn’t think you’d have to shoot somebody down in front of their goddamned children. You nearly turn back around to re-think this plan, but you stop yourself again. If you don’t do it now, you aren’t ever going to do it. Besides he’s seen you now anyway. “Hey! How’s our techie doin’? I’m surprised to see you out the computer room; I know how much you like to be alone. So what brings you out?” “Well, uh…there was something I really thought you needed to see…” “Oh? What is it?” “Just this.” You pull your pistol out and you hesitate just long enough for Elliot to pull Brenda in front of himself resulting in you killing her instead. Leon catches Elliot from the blow back of Brenda’s body and whisks him of to safety. One guard attempts to run at you, but is tripped up when Elliot’s two daughters run screaming past him. The other guard reaches you, but you just manage to get a shot directly in his face. Gouts of his blood splatter in your own face temporarily blinding you. The guard, who was momentarily tripped up, punches you in the face knocking you to the ground, he pulls out a knife to finish up the job, but with your hand still on your pistol, you fire a couple rounds in his chest causing him to slump to the floor beside you. You get up only to have the guard you just shot to stab you in the foot as a last act of revenge. You holler pain, and shoot him again, before pulling knife out of your foot. Meanwhile you begin to hear other people yelling, screaming and fighting. Apparently your actions have caused a small rebellion. You’ve given people the incentive again to fight back. Of course it’s going to be up to you to finish it. You limp as fast as you can attempting to stay out of the way of the major fighting, You see Elliot and Leon fighting some people and making quick work of them, you take the opportunity to open fire, blasting Elliot in the knee, he won’t be walking anywhere. Leon goes to pick him up, but you follow up with another couple shots, hitting him in the side. He goes down and attempts to crawl on top of Elliot, except Elliot kicks him away with his good leg and tries to crawl off instead. You finish off Leon and then kick Elliot in the face hurting your foot since you kicked him with the one that has the big gaping knife hole in it. Elliot turns over holding his face and addresses you. “Why? I was your friend! I didn’t do anything to you! I left you alone! Look at what you’ve done to this place! It’s descended into chaos! You’ve destroyed everything I’ve accomplished here!” “I don’t care.” You say pointing the gun at him. “WAIT! GODDAMN IT WAIT! If you kill me, you’ll be making orphans out of my daughters! Can you live with that?” “No…I guess I couldn’t…” Elliot smiles thinking he’s found a loop hole. “I suppose I’ll just have to kill them after I kill you.” you say. Elliot’s eyes widen and you gun him down before he can retort. He dies a lot quicker than he should have, but at least he’s dead. You were bluffing of course you wouldn’t shoot his children; you just wanted to see his expression before he died. It brought a feeling of satisfaction to you, like you really accomplish something before your own death… Someone stabs you multiple times in the back with a scalpel while you were standing over Elliot. You fall mortally wounded, with anarchy all around you. You don’t know if you made things better or worse, all you know is you won’t be around to find out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Can’t be any worse than what’s going on now, and you might as well be on the winning team. “Alright, I’m in. What do we do?” Elliot smiles. “Glad to have you on board, as for what we do, you’ll see. You’ll all see. Leon, and Brenda you’re all coming with me. The rest of you go back to your rooms, tomorrow your loyalty will be rewarded, I promise.” Elliot and his gang leave, you close the door and go back to sleep without thinking anymore about it. The next day you hear a lot of yelling and screaming when you wake up, you get dressed and leave your room to see what’s going on. You see a crowd of people gathered outside Ron’s door. You make you way through the crowd and see Leon holding Nina who is struggling and hysterical. Elliot is nearby speaking. “I DIDN’T DO IT! YOU’RE LYING! YOU’RE ALL LYING! (Sob)” “I saw her! I saw her lurking around last night when I heard some noises. I just wish I’d done something then! I’ll never forgive myself. I just thought she was taking a walk, little did I know she was going into Ron’s room and killed him! Why? Because she found out he was having an affair with his secret lover William!” “What the fuck…?” you say to yourself and take a quick look inside Ron’s room. You see Ron’s body lying in a pool of blood on the floor in his underwear, his throat has been slashed. Nearby is another body killed in the exact same way. Its William who you really didn’t know anything about, you guess you know he was gay now though. “Huh. I guess that explains why Ron never took any interest in Nina.” You say to yourself. Meanwhile Elliot is continuing his speech. “She even dropped the killing weapon outside her door! Brenda found it when she was going to talk to her this morning! Look!” Elliot shouts when Brenda shows everyone a bloody scalpel. “THAT’S NOT MINE! I DIDN’T DO IT! I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW RON WAS GAY!” “Oh we ALL didn’t know Nina, until we found his dead body! But we all know that YOU had a giant crush on him and practically stalked him. It isn’t hard to connect the dots here Nina! You found out he was carrying on with William and you in a jealous rage killed them both! Now granted William and Ron were breaking GZS policy with their behavior, but they didn’t deserve this! To be brutally murdered by an insane love sick stalker!” “I’M NOT A STALKER! (Sob) I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!” “Enough! It’s apparent that we need to punish you, for your heinous crimes. Though I feel you deserve death, I am in no position to determine your ultimate fate…I say the people should decide!” Some of the people in the crowd begin to chant “Death!”, and most of those are followers of Elliot. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the crowd to follow. Elliot’s got ‘em all by the balls. He has completely manipulated this herd of sheep into believing and following him, on little to no basis in evidence. They’re all just believing what he’s telling them. You know damn well he’s set this whole thing up to blame poor Nina. You can’t really do anything about it though; nobody’s going to believe you. It’s too late anyway, after a few more words from Elliot, you see Leon carry out the crowd’s wishes and break Nina’s neck. Now Elliot makes another speech. “It is done…it is regrettable, but it is done. Leon, you and some of the others please dispose of these bodies in the incinerator…I didn’t think we would have to use it so soon and under such tragic circumstances. I suppose we’ll need another shelter leader now to guide us through this dark time…well whoever is proposed, I hope they will be willing to listen to some of my ideas about how we should increase security around here so nothing like this ever happens again.” “Hey! How about you become our shelter leader Elliot? You certainly know how to take charge of a situation and you obviously are concerned about all of us!” another one of Elliot’s lackeys shouts from the crowd where upon a short time later everyone else is following again. You stand watching a complete fraud take over with mere words. It would appear that even after Armageddon some things never change. Elliot goes through a modesty routine to make him look good and then “humbly” accepts. You may have just allied yourself with a ruthless sociopath at best or a complete mad man at worst. Time will have to tell. Five years pass… Time tells that you’ve allied with a completely ruthless sociopathic mad man. The Shelter’s population has grown a little; but not excessively. In fact you’re likely to have room for quite some time. Elliot employed a vicious sterilization program to make sure of that. Having a medical background he was able to do the procedures himself with the medical supplies in the shelter. Shortly after he started employing that procedure the initial “cult of personality worship” by everyone stopped and a lot of people regained there senses, but of course by then Elliot had already entrenched himself. There were a few attempts to kill him, but those were always averted by Leon. Elliot now walks around with a couple guards at all times, with Leon is his head bodyguard. He claimed that it was for the good of the shelter and granted perhaps it is going to make things easier, but it’s obvious that not everyone was keen on this idea. Most of the people who followed Elliot from the beginning were spared this fate though. Disobedience from anyone is punished severely. However things aren’t too bad for you. You are pretty much indispensable and you keep it that way. You’re now in charge of maintaining the central GZS computer system which you primarily insist on doing by yourself. Eventually you manage to get the damn thing running at near maximum efficiency and nobody has too many problems with things breaking down anymore. You also do something else to ensure your safety which is carrying your gun secretly on you at all times. There have been times where you’ve wondered if you should kill Elliot, but you haven’t ever killed anyone before, let alone with no provocation, you don’t know if you have it in you. Also he hasn’t really bothered you, if anything you’re one of the few people he’s consistently been okay with. As long as he’s not bothering you, you don’t really feel the need to kill him. He leaves you to do your job and you leave him to do his… But is it ALWAYS going to be that way? There may come a day when for whatever reason he decides to get rid of you. Megalomaniacs aren’t particularly known for their trusting nature. > You leave it alone You decide there’s no need to kill Elliot. If the day should come where he begins to think about getting rid of you then you’ll kill him. You need a personal reason to do it; you can’t just do it on a whim. You go back to your job and think nothing more of it. Five more years pass... You’ve been down here ten years and you’re beginning to get a feeling of unease. Elliot has turned this place in a cult compound. He’s had children by all the remaining fertile women in the shelter and sterilized just about all the remaining men. He’s completely indoctrinated everyone to think the way he does at this point, anyone who was still resisting him has been dealt with. He’s got complete obedience from everyone now. You get the impression that killing Elliot wouldn’t do much good at this point, since you’d just be overwhelmed soon afterwards by his followers. He’s regained his cult of personality, and you’re just about the only remaining sane person left. Oddly Elliot still thinks highly of you, and has never tried to do anything to you either; he continues to let you do your job, with one exception. He’s been sending his older children to the computer room for you to teach them how to use and work on the central computer. “What’s this?” “Don’t touch that! That’ll be next week’s lesson!” “Can I access the game database?” “No!” “Ohhh I got a lady to appear on the screen and she’s naked!” “Stop that and pay attention! You’ve become a glorified baby sitter, you’ve gone half insane and you’re ready to put the damn gun to your own head at this point. Over the years you’ve been wondering about the surface. You wonder if it wouldn’t be better than living in place. One time when you were considering leaving you overrode the safety controls to the elevator which would allow you to bring it down. You could bring it down. All you’d have to do is gather what supplies you think you’re going to need. The only problem is thanks to the idiotic GZS shelter design; you’d need to trust Elliot’s kids to send you back up from the computer room. > You leave the shelter Fuck it, whether this plan works or not, you don’t care, all you know is you can’t stay here anymore. One thing that’s working in your favor right now is the fact that Elliot and everyone else is in the conference room (Which he turned into a “meditation room” where he’s preaching some sort of weird philosophy to everyone.) You need to be quick though. You press a few buttons to make the elevator begin its decent. You only need one kid to help you in this task, so you get the one who is the best behaved and does more or less what you say. You get Jane. “Jane I need you to come with me. As for the rest of you, go ahead and access the game database and play with whatever, just don’t touch anything on the central computer!” The kids gleefully start following your instructions while you and Jane leave. “Where are we going?” Jane asks innocently, while walking beside you. “I need to check on something back in my room, the central computer says something broke down, but I need to see if it actually did, or if it’s a glitch in the monitoring system. Now if something did, I’ll need to get in there and open up the paneling and do some re-wiring. Could be dangerous, so I need you to run to the medical room and grab a first aid kit just in case. Nobody should be in there right now, so just take it.” “I dunno, Daddy doesn’t like people taking things from there without permission…” “Its okay, this is for the good of the shelter.” Upon hearing that mantra, Jane seems to be more receptive to follow your orders. You tell her to wait by the elevator door when she gets the med kit. You rush to your room, load up on water and leave hoping that nobody has wandered by. You see Jane holding the med kit and looking in wonder at the elevator door which has opened up. Good its here and everything’s going according to plan. Now for the final stage. “Hey! This door opened up! Daddy said it shouldn’t ever open up. He says he doesn’t want anyone to leave.” “I’ll bet.” You mumble before addressing Jane properly. “Yeah, I know he wants to keep us all safe. Nothing was broken in my room, but I think something screwy is going on with the shelter’s systems and I need your help to fix it because I think you’re the only one talented enough to do it.” “Yay!” Jane says in pride. “Glad to see you’re excited, because this is REALLY important. You have to follow my instructions to the letter. You think you can do that?” “I think so.” “Okay, back in the computer room on the central computer on the right side you’ll see a green button flashing. Press that one. Then when the screen asks for confirmation, click on yes and press the enter button. You got all that? Repeat it.” “Go back to the computer room, go to the big central computer, and uh…look on the right side for a green flashing button. Press that button, then the screen will ask me a question and then I click on yes.” “Excellent, now after you do that, you might get a screen telling you the status of the elevator, telling you its going back up. That’s what we want it to do. We don’t want anyone leaving right?” “Right!” “Okay, I’m going to stay here and make sure this elevator doesn’t come down anymore, I need to open up some panels and do some re-wiring, so I’ll be taking that first aid kit now.” You take the kit from Jane and tell her to go back to the computer room and do what you told her and to continue monitoring the elevator status just to make sure it goes back up and stays there. When she’s out of sight you quickly enter the elevator, and soon the door closes and you’re on your way up. You are nervous as the elevator ascends, you half expect it to either start coming back down, or worse just stop suddenly mid way through trapping you. None of that happens though and as soon as that door opens up again, you run out into the foyer you entered ten years ago and past that into the outside world again. You see a bright light. It’s the sun; you forgot how bright it could be. You never thought you of all people would be glad to see it again. You see everyone’s cars still parked here, well almost. You can tell that few of them must’ve been taken at one time; a lot have just been plain vandalized. Your van still looks the same though, nobody in their right mind would steal that thing, and it already looks vandalized. You wonder if it would still start, but you left your keys to it in the shelter. You doubt if it would though. “Meh, I need the exercise anyway.” You cover your eyes and take a far view of your position. Nobody around, there’s not even a sound except the wind; you’re all alone as far as you can tell and this is what you missed. Once again you have peaceful solitude. You don’t know if you’ll make it out here, but anything’s better than staying in the shelter. You begin to walk…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide there’s no need to kill Elliot. If the day should come where he begins to think about getting rid of you then you’ll kill him. You need a personal reason to do it; you can’t just do it on a whim. You go back to your job and think nothing more of it. Five more years pass... You’ve been down here ten years and you’re beginning to get a feeling of unease. Elliot has turned this place in a cult compound. He’s had children by all the remaining fertile women in the shelter and sterilized just about all the remaining men. He’s completely indoctrinated everyone to think the way he does at this point, anyone who was still resisting him has been dealt with. He’s got complete obedience from everyone now. You get the impression that killing Elliot wouldn’t do much good at this point, since you’d just be overwhelmed soon afterwards by his followers. He’s regained his cult of personality, and you’re just about the only remaining sane person left. Oddly Elliot still thinks highly of you, and has never tried to do anything to you either; he continues to let you do your job, with one exception. He’s been sending his older children to the computer room for you to teach them how to use and work on the central computer. “What’s this?” “Don’t touch that! That’ll be next week’s lesson!” “Can I access the game database?” “No!” “Ohhh I got a lady to appear on the screen and she’s naked!” “Stop that and pay attention! You’ve become a glorified baby sitter, you’ve gone half insane and you’re ready to put the damn gun to your own head at this point. Over the years you’ve been wondering about the surface. You wonder if it wouldn’t be better than living in place. One time when you were considering leaving you overrode the safety controls to the elevator which would allow you to bring it down. You could bring it down. All you’d have to do is gather what supplies you think you’re going to need. The only problem is thanks to the idiotic GZS shelter design; you’d need to trust Elliot’s kids to send you back up from the computer room. > You stay Once again you decide the risk is too high and you’d get caught before you could get it accomplished. You also don’t think you can trust Elliot’s monsters to do anything to help you. The time to have acted against Elliot would’ve been long ago, this is your life now and you’re stuck. And you also realize you can’t go on waiting for the other shoe to drop. Elliot’s finally gotten around to his plan of getting rid of you, you aren’t blind. He’s sending his kids for you to teach, so that one day they’ll replace you. Then at best he’ll allow you to live as a eunuch like most of the other guys here, or he’ll just kill you and as far as you’re concerned that’s the ONLY choice he’s going to have. And if you kill him, you know you’d die soon after and someone else would just take his place. You ponder the idea of killing his children, since he seems to be a bit enthusiastic about continuing his bloodline, but you know he’d just have more and you don’t think you could kill a child, at least not directly....then it suddenly occurs to you what you can do. Something you can do to shut down the whole show. “Sonofabitch! Why didn’t I think of that before?!” you say out loud. “Ohhh! You said a bad word!” one of the children shouts, causing you look over at them all. “You bet your ass I did! Hey kids do you find this boring?” “Yeah.” They all say in unison. “Would you like to never have to do it ever again?” “Yeah!” “Would you all like to see a neat trick instead?” “YEAH!” “Okay! Brace yourselves!” You whip out your pistol and start blasting the central computer, causing it to spark, shutter, and all other kinds of bad things before it shuts down completely taking all the shelter’s power with it. All the children scream and run off while you’re doing it. Screaming yelling by other shelter members in the distance soon follows, you can hear footsteps running towards your position, everyone’s probably wondering what’s going on. You take a mental count of how many bullets you used up. “Let’s see…oh good, I got one left.” You point the gun at your head and pull the trigger.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>GZS probably has some sort of scanner that does a little more than just scan your body, so just not having the gun on your person most likely isn’t going to work. You get the idea that the machine is probably not going to scan the ceiling though, so you get out your duct tape and fix it to the pistol, you then climb on top of the automatic teller and jump up to stick the pistol on the ceiling. You end up falling on your ass, but you succeed. You then press some buttons on the machine, where it proceeds to ask your name and how you’re going to pay. You type in your name and insert you debit card where upon it drains most of your account. The door you stepped through sudden shuts and a hum is heard. You take a deep breath and hope for the best. “Now scanning for unauthorized items…Scanning…Scanning…Scanning complete. You have been allowed entry, the elevator doors will now open, your room number is 23, thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” an emotionless electronic voice remarks as the elevator doors open. It worked! You quickly climb back up on to the teller and jump up to grab your pistol, (this time able to maintain your balance better) toss it into the elevator opening and then rush in with all your belongings and take the long elevator trip down. When you get to bottom the elevator door opens to large sterile hallway with lines of other closed metal doors on either side As soon as you enter, the elevator doors slam shut and you hear it going back up, you also notice there aren’t any buttons to call it back…before you’re able to worry about that little detail you’re met by a few of your new neighbors. One is some tall skinny guy another is a brunette woman who begins talking to you. “Hey, another new neighbor! My name is Nina and this is Ron, what’s your name?” She is entirely too fucking friendly given the situation. “Why aren’t there call buttons back on the elevator?” you ask ignoring her question. “Huh? Oh I guess it’s a safety feature. The elevator automatically goes back up so the other people can get in as quickly as possible. Ron suggested that they might’ve thought someone would deliberately try to keep the elevator down here to prevent anyone else from seeking shelter. Though I can’t honestly imagine that anyone would do such a horrible thing.” “Been living on earth long Nina?” you ask rhetorically. “Great, so I’m basically trapped down here due to the brilliant engineering minds of GZS…so is it just us so far or are their other people here too?” ”There are a few others, if you come with us we can introduce you to…” “Maybe later, look we’re gonna be stuck down here for a long time so I’ll get to know everyone soon enough, right now I just want to go to my room and rest.” “Erm, okay…” Ron says as you push past them both. You head to your room which is equipped with the basic requirements; food and water dispenser, shower, bed, and a cabinet. (You hide your pistol in your mattress) There’s a standard Shelter Operations Manual sitting on the table as well as a Shelter Booklet about socialization, rules, guidelines and such, both of which you skim through every now and then. There’s a big public recreation area and a couple of other public rooms where your neighbors gather, but you stay in your room and keep to yourself for the most part. Sometimes in the middle of the night when nobody else is around you’ll watch the TV in the living area to keep up on current events. You hear other people arriving over the month. Ron and Nina greet them all, you can tell those two are going to be the ones to “organize” shit and probably try to decide what’s “best” for everyone. Always saying stuff that they read in the booklet. “Fucking busy bodies…” you say as you fall asleep watching the world in its death throes on TV… Monday 8:00 AM “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” You groggily wake up and see a test pattern on TV. This is it. You feel a small tremor and then you turn off the TV, just as Nina and Ron come walking in. “What was that?” Nina asks. “Test pattern, I think Armageddon arrived.” You answer. “What?! I can’t believe it!” Ron exclaims. “Why are you so surprised? I mean that was the whole point of coming down here right?” “Yeah, but I dunno…I just wasn’t prepared for it actually happening.” “Christ, Ron I’ve overheard you say you were the first one in this goddamn shelter, you of all people should’ve long gotten used to the idea of living down here.” “What is your problem? You been nothing but hostile since you’ve got here!” Nina exclaims. “My problem is I’m stuck down here with a bunch of people I don’t really know and if you two are any indication I don’t want to know.” “How did you even qualify to get a room down here?” “Good clean living I guess, so is there supposed to be something special we do now?” “Uh, yeah I think so, it mentions something in the booklet I was reading that came with the shelter, we’re supposed to gather everyone and tell them.” “Okay well I guess you guys go do that then. I’m just going to check on something here.” “Okay, but we’re supposed to have some sort of vote to decide on how this place is going to be run, if you don’t show up you don’t get a vote.” Ron reminds you. “I know Ron, I’ve read the booklet.” You answer unenthusiastically. Ron and Nina leave you and go tell the others of the situation and follow other things it states in the booklet. You’re wondering if you should even stay down here. All these people seem completely different than you. You wish there was someway to call the elevator back down, but after checking a GZS computer it states that it won’t come back until it detects that the surface is safe for habitation again…which basically means not in your lifetime. It’s probably just as well since the surface probably isn’t the safest place you’d want to be, lord knows what the hell it looks like now, not to mention the radiation factor. Then again you’d still like the option to leave if you wanted to. You go back to your room, read and enjoy the solitude until Nina comes to get you. “Hey! You didn’t show up for the meeting! We’re discussing which ways this place could be run, are you coming or what?” > You be obstinate “I don’t feel like going anywhere, you guys do what you want.” You say, but Nina insists on invading your space. “Hey look, I know you don’t wanna do shit, but unfortunately we’re in a real deadlock and we could really use your vote to break a tie.” “HEY! I told you I’m not going anywhere, now get the hell out of my room and stop invading my privacy, unless you’re looking to get invaded by me.” Nina is offended by that remark and starts to hit you. It doesn’t really hurt, but it’s annoying and stings enough for you to start blocking her. “How dare you say something like that to me!” “Stop it! Get outta here before I throw you out, you crazy bitch!” While you begin to get up to avoid her slaps, your shift on the mattress causes your pistol to fall out on to the floor, Nina notices, stops hitting you and backs off. “Oh my god is that a gun?!” “Well, uh…yeah.” You say picking it up. Nina suddenly runs off thinking her life is in danger, you soon here her yelling “Help!” and similar cries. You immediately go chasing after her, in an attempt to reassure her that you’re not some murderer. You see her run into the conference room and follow, when you arrive, a leg trips you up as soon as you enter causing you to slam face first on the floor. Then somebody tries to take the gun away from you, its Elliot. You feel a hefty boot kick you in ribs and knock the wind out of you, and a couple of other people start dog piling on top of you. Nina is ranting to everyone saying you tried to kill her. The fact that you came running in here with a gun, doesn’t exactly persuade them from thinking differently. Meanwhile you lose grip of the gun and Elliot takes it from you, but “accidentally” shoots you in the face with it. “Oh my god! I didn’t mean to kill him! He wouldn’t let go of it!” are the last words you hear.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as you’re not keen on sharing, you’re less keen on the idea of being shoved in an experimental shelter. Sounds like they didn’t work all the bugs out of the system, and it’s filled with hi-tech equipment? God help you if something broke down. You wouldn’t know how to fix it. At least if you’re with other people, there’s bound to be people with different skills to compliment each other. Of course everyone could just be incompetent like they usually are. You’re not going to dwell on it too much, you’ll take the safer choice; maybe it won’t be so bad. “Okay I’ll take a room in the Community Shelter.” “Wonderful sir! You won’t regret this decision! Now I’ll need to know some vital information about yourself before I can direct you to our nearest Community shelter in your area where upon you shall pay the automatic teller just inside the foyer of it so that the main door can open and you will be able to enter your new residence during Armageddon! Okay let’s start with your name sir.” You give out your name, address and such. It’s all pretty routine stuff until the questions get more personal. “Have you ever committed a felony sir?” “No.” “Do you have a history of mental illness sir?” “No.” “Are you a drug addict or smoke sir?” “No.” “Are you handicapped in anyway sir?” “No.” “Do you believe in God sir?” “Huh? Uh…sure I guess.” “Hmmm…okay…” the voice says a bit disapprovingly. “Do you have any physical diseases or suffered from any in the past sir?” “No.” “Do you have AIDS or any other STDs sir?” “What the hell? I just told you I don’t have any diseases! Sexual or otherwise!” “Are you sterile sir?” “What?!” “I said are you shooting blanks sir?” “What difference does that make?” “Please sir, just answer the question.” “(Sigh) No. As far as I know, I’m packing a loaded fucking weapon. I know because I had to take an overly thorough physical for work recently.” “Wonderful sir! Okay are you a homosexual or ever had homosexual feelings?” “WHAT THE FUCK?! NO!!” “Sir, I told you before don’t take that tone with me.” “Well you’re asking me a lot of fucking personal questions! Why do you need to know all this shit?” “Sir, as I said, we are a family orientated business, we aren’t just a money motivated corporation, we are interested in the survival and well being of the human race. The human race can’t thrive if people don’t meet the necessary…requirements. How can civilization be re-built if children aren’t being born? I mean would you want to live in a society built by drug addicted mentally ill homosexual criminals? That’s the reason the world is ending now, because people have turned away from a righteous way of living!” “Look I’d live in a fucking society with transsexual midgets if it’ll get me to the fucking shelter already!” “Hmmm, well despite that comment, your non-committal answer on the belief in God, and your overall anti-social tone, you do qualify for one of our rooms in the Community Shelter in your area. I can only hope some of the other more sociable residents rub off on you, and cause a change in your personality. I’ll give you the location of the shelter sir.” You are given the location of the Community Shelter which you are surprised to find out is closer then you think, it shouldn’t take too long for you drive there. You are then given the price, which is pretty steep, but you can afford it. Besides if the world is ending it’s not like you’re really going to need money anymore. Which makes you wonder why GZS is in business at all. What’s the point of going to the trouble of building bomb shelters for Armageddon if all the profit they make is most likely going to be useless in the aftermath? Oh well that’s not your concern, you’re just glad you passed the damn interrogation and got into the shelter. Of course now you’re subjected to some last minute rules. “Okay sir, you are now in the system and registered. You may move into the Shelter at anytime as long you pay the fee required to the automatic teller as previously described to you. If you don’t pay, you can’t get in obviously. Cash, check, or debit card are acceptable. NO Credit Cards will be accepted! Now then some rules. You do not have to bring anything with you, but it is recommended that you do bring your own clothing if you wish to wear something different as the days go by. Food and drinkable liquids are acceptable, but not necessary. Do not bring in private medical supplies or repair equipment, the shelter has been stocked with those items, we do not want people bringing in potential weapons or illegal drugs. Speaking of which, DO NOT attempt to bring in any kind of weapon! Guns and knives are strictly prohibited! Attempting to bring in either one will result in non-admittance of the shelter! Same goes for drugs of any kind. Alcohol is frowned upon, but accepted. There WILL be a machine to scan you before you’re allowed to enter, so do not think you will be able to sneak anything in! Now then I trust our transaction has ended. If you have anymore questions please contact our customer service line. Good day sir, may your first child be a masculine one and thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” That’s it, all you have to do is get what stuff you want to take with you and move in, might as well do it now, no sense in waiting until you see the nuclear cloud. You wonder if you shouldn’t try to “beat the system” by sneaking your weapon in though. Ultimately you decide this is survival. You need every advantage you can get. You don’t know what kind of people you’re going to be stuck with, so you take your pistol with you and a few “non-lethal” supplies such as duct tape. You also you just pack some clothing, food and water. You then set off on your way. After a couple days of driving you finally arrive at the location that you were given. It’s in a fairly desolate place with a single solid metal structure with a door standing there. There’s also a few other cars parked nearby, you obviously aren’t the first one here. You park your van and enter the structure with the items you brought with you. You’re in a small foyer with an elevator door and ATM like machine; you’re guessing that’s the automatic teller you were told about. Before you start pressing buttons you need to figure out how you’re going to get your pistol through the scanning process, because you can be sure if you fail something nasty will happen… > You just drop the pistol so it is not on your person You figure you’ll just drop you pistol and then after the scan you’ll just grab it and head into the elevator. After doing this you type in your name and insert you debit card where upon it drains most of your account. The door you stepped through sudden shuts and a hum is heard. “Now scanning for unauthorized items…Scanning…Scanning…Scanning... WEAPON LOCATED IN FOYER! ACCESS DENIED! GZS SECURITY FORCE HAS BEEN DEPLOYED!” Your first reaction is to escape, but the front doors have auto locked and the elevator doors are definitely not open. Shooting the door won’t do any good either; it’s thick and solid steel. The only thing you can do is resign yourself to your fate. You pick up your pistol, slump into the corner of the foyer and wait, wondering what’s going to come next. Surprisingly you don’t have to wait long; you soon hear movement and voices by the outside door followed by a click and the door opening. “GET OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP AND LEAVE YOUR WEAPON INSIDE!” Feeling a little nervous and scared you do exactly that. When you exit, suddenly a spray of bullets is fired from one of the GZS security guards. You’re hit several times in the body and fall to the ground. Amazingly you’re still alive, but you’re in no condition to do anything except listen to the security guards argue. “You goddamn asshole! That’s the THIRD person you shot! I told you CAN’T fire on anyone unless they’re holding a weapon! Fuck, we’re gonna be buried in paper work because of you!” “Yeah well he looked like he was going for one.” “He had his fucking hands up! (Sigh) Nevermind, is he dead?” “No, he looks like he’s still breathing…so uh what do we do? We never had one that survived before.” “Drop him off at the emergency room.” “Can’t we just finish him off? It would be a hell of a lot easier.” “Maybe, but the GZS guidelines say that anyone who violates the policy agreement is subject to a lawsuit. He broke it, by trying to sneak in a weapon, I’m sure management or whoever is gonna want to sue his ass for all the remaining money and assets he owns. So keeping him alive is in GZS best interest. Hell, with their connections they’ll probably figure out how to sue him for the hospital stay. Why do you think I got pissed off when you killed the others? You can’t sue dead people!” “Alright, alright get off my ass. Let’s move him into the van before he bleeds to death.” At this point you fall unconscious. When you wake up you’re lying in bed with a hose up your nose and several other tubing going into various places of your body. Apparently you have a private room though; GZS is probably adding that charge to your lawsuit as well. You’re most likely going to be living in a cardboard box by the time you leave this place, but you don’t really care at this point anymore. As you slowly recover occasionally you’re visited by some lawyer types who spout some legalese at you, but you’re so zonked out on pain medication half the time and fading in and out of consciousness you can’t even pay attention. You spend most of your conscious time in the hospital watching the TV in the corner of the room. The state of the world isn’t getting any better. Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up and hear a loud continuous beeping noise. It’s a test pattern on TV. “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” This is it. You manage to lift yourself off the bed as you hear commotion going on in the hallway. After turning off the TV you look out the window and see the city practically in chaos. This hospital room doesn’t seem so bad now; at least you’ve gotten some peace. You also can’t help but to laugh, GZS won’t be able to get anymore money from you now. You continue to stare out the window laughing and then gaze upward towards the sky. You see a bright light and then nothing at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fuck work, the world’s about to end soon and you need to prepare yourself for that! You immediately call up the number that the infomercial mentioned. You know the damn thing by heart since you’ve been watching it night after night. Eventually a chipper female voice picks up on the other end. “Ground Zero Survival Inc. How may I help you?” “Uh, yeah I’d like to buy a bomb shelter.” “That’s wonderful sir! In these uncertain times you can never be too careful and we here at GZS are thrilled that you’ve chosen to trust us in your continued existence! You and your family’s utmost protection is as important to us is it is to you! Our shelters are the best you’ll find and, we have many shelters still available at various prices, but really can you put a price on your loved ones protection? Of course not! So I’m sure you’ll want one of our top of the line models that are still left! Okay so how many are in your family?” “Um, just me.” “Oh…” the voice suddenly gets less chipper. “What?” “Sir, don’t you have ANY family? Like a wife at least, maybe a cousin?” “No, not really.” “Oh dear…” “WHAT!?” “Well sir, its just that, we here at GZS are a family friendly business and we feel that the survival of the human race will best be served by those who have a strong sense of family ties and a respect for the family unit. We aren’t in the business of selling shelters to those of low moral fiber sir…” “What the fuck?! Just because I’m single I gotta be some sort of low life? I’m not luring fuckin’ little girls into my car with lollipops! I have a fucking job and pay my goddamn taxes!” “Sir, I don’t like you taking that tone with me when there isn’t any call for it and I would appreciate it if you didn’t blaspheme, I’m a God fearing woman. Now then I understand your frustration, but there’s nothing we can do. Our shelters were primarily built for families of at least four. To put singles in them wouldn’t be fair to families that have children who shall surely be the ones to rebuild civilization, not to mention it would be a waste of resources. A single person would have an overstock of food and water since as I said we primarily cater to families and stock the shelters with families in mind.” “I fail to see how me having MORE than enough food and water is a bad thing…” “I see sir, so you would be selfish and deprive a possible family of survival?” “I didn’t say that! And wait a minute; wouldn’t I be doing that anyway if I had a family of my own?” “Yes, but it would be different.” “How?” “You would have a family sir.” You’re about ready to throw the phone against the wall in frustration. “So basically what you’re telling me is you’re not selling me a shelter.” “Ah now I didn’t say that sir! Since you’re interested in buying our product and by your previous outburst I can tell you ARE a productive member of society. And it is only due to your poor social skills that you have been unable to take the necessary steps to have a family of your own! But never fear, GZS HAS kept your type in mind!” “Gee, thanks…” “You’re quite welcome sir! We have the Community Shelters for singles! It is basically a giant shelter filled with singles such as yourself. You will be given a separate room to live in, but everything else you must share. Don’t worry we have stocked these shelters with supplies to last for years! It is our hope that nature will take its course and when it comes time to return to the surface a fully functional tight knit community of families will emerge to rebuild civilization once again!” Sharing isn’t something you’re good at. You like your privacy and your space and your solitude. You can’t imagine sharing stuff when your very survival is at stake. “Look, don’t you have ANYTHING I can get by myself?” you demand. “Are you serious sir? You actually want to be alone?” the voice says as if you must be nuts to ask that kind of question. “If possible yeah.” “Well…I shouldn’t really tell you sir, because you snapped at me earlier, but it is my job to make sure any potential customer is serviced to the best of my ability. That and the fact that these other Special Shelters we have are a bit…experimental.” “Experimental? What do you mean?” “Well I don’t know too much about these Special Shelters myself sir, all I know is they have been equipped with the latest technology and VERY expensive. Anyone can buy one as long as they have the money to do so.” “Well how experimental are these things exactly?” “As I said sir, I know little about these Special Shelters other than they are equipped with the latest technology. GZS has run tests and they are considered very safe and will protect you in the coming apocalypse, however due to time constraints GZS may have missed a few minor things, and as such we are legally required to warn…er inform potential customers before they buy them.” > You buy the Special Shelter Experimental or not, it sure sounds better than being crammed into a shelter with a bunch of other people like sardines. At least you don’t have to worry about having to share anything, and if something goes wrong well you’ll deal with it when the times comes like you normally do. Or maybe you won’t. You aren’t going to dwell on it to much. “Okay I’ll take the Special Shelter.” “You will? I mean, that’s wonderful sir! You won’t regret this decision! Now I’ll need to know some vital information about yourself before I can direct you to our nearest experimental shelter in your area where upon you shall pay the automatic teller just inside the foyer of it so that the main door can open and you will be able to enter your new residence during Armageddon! Okay let’s start with your name sir.” You give out your name, address and such. It’s all pretty routine stuff. “Okay well that’s about all the information I need. I’ll give you the price and the location of the shelter sir.” You are given the location of the shelter which you are surprised to find out is closer then you think, it shouldn’t take too long for you drive there. You are then given the price, which is pretty steep, quite frankly its going to break you. However if the world is ending it’s not like you’re really going to need money anymore. Which makes you wonder why GZS is in business at all. What’s the point of going to the trouble of building bomb shelters for Armageddon if all the profit they make is most likely going to be useless in the aftermath? Oh well that’s not your concern, you’re just glad you managed to get a shelter. The voice gives you some last minute information. “Okay sir, you are now in the system and registered. You may move into your shelter at anytime as long you pay the fee required to the automatic teller as previously described to you. If you don’t pay, you can’t get in obviously. Cash, check, or debit card are acceptable. NO Credit Cards will be accepted! You may take whatever you wish with you into the shelter; it will be your new home after all. There will be an owner’s manual provided inside your new shelter. Any problems you encounter you should be able to troubleshoot yourself if you read and follow the manual. I’m sure any problems will not be life threatening sir, and there has been a back up system also installed in the unlikely event of total shelter failure since your survival is our foremost concern at GZS! Now then I trust our transaction has ended. If you have anymore questions please contact our customer service line. Good day sir, may you maintain relatively stable mental health and thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” That’s it, all you have to do is get what stuff you want to take with you and move in. You might as well pack your things now, no sense in waiting until you see the nuclear cloud. You pack up some extra food and water, a repair kit (since it sounds like you’ll probably need one) some basic medical supplies, and a few other useful items. Oh and your pistol. Still, part of you is reluctant to leave the “real world”. You wonder if you shouldn’t stick around a bit longer to see if the climate changes…you’d hate to spend your life savings and the world not be bombed into a nuclear wasteland. > You leave immediately You leave immediately; things aren’t going to get better you know that, in fact you’re glad, because in a strange way the idea of not having to live in the world as it exists today anymore is weirdly appealing to you. After a couple days of driving you finally arrive at the location that you were given. It’s in a fairly desolate place with a single solid metal structure with a door standing there. You park your van and enter the structure with the items you brought with you. You’re in a small foyer with an elevator door and ATM like machine; you’re guessing that’s the automatic teller you were told about. You press some buttons on the machine, where it proceeds to ask your name and how you’re going to pay. You type in your name and insert you debit card where upon it completely drains your account. “You have been allowed entry, the elevator doors will now open, thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” an emotionless electronic voice remarks as the elevator doors open. You enter with all your belongings and take the long elevator trip down. When you get to bottom the elevator door opens to a sterile, but obviously large and well equipped living area. As soon as you enter, the elevator doors slam shut and you hear it going back up, you also notice there aren’t any buttons to call it back…before you’re able to worry about that little detail you’re met by another electronic voice…it actually sounds a lot like the female voice you were talking to on the phone… “Welcome to Ground Zero Survival Shelter Number 23! You will find that this shelter has been equipped to serve your needs in the event of total World destruction! Due to power saving design and money back guarantee concerns, fully functional shelter facilities will not be available until Armageddon occurs. Until then you will find all other doors firmly locked, please do not attempt to open them. I have detected that Armageddon has not yet occurred as 84% of the countries on Earth still maintain a stable centralized government system and 70% of the land surface is still habitable. However the world conflict rate is 92%. Prediction that Armageddon will occur in a month or less. This shelter will become fully functional at that time. In the unlikely event that Armageddon does not occur and the conflict rate drops to an acceptable level, the elevator will return and you will be able to leave this shelter and receive half of your money back from the automatic teller in the foyer on the surface.” “Wait a minute didn’t I talk to you on the phone?” you ask the voice, not really knowing if it’s going to answer back. “…I don’t think so, as far as my databanks are concerned this is the first time I have been in contact with a human since I was built sir. Is it okay if I call you sir?” “Sure, go ahead.” You answer. “Wonderful sir!” “Hey, so I can’t explore this damn shelter even though I paid for it? I have to stay in this living area?” “Not until doomsday sir. As I said this is to conserve my power and also to prevent buyer abuse in case of non-Earth destruction. Do not worry sir; this living area alone can support your needs until the appointed time. There is a basic food and water dispenser on the right wall.” “Buyer abuse?” “Yes, think about it, here you are using up all the wonderful facilities that this shelter has to offer for months on end while the Earth teeters on the brink of destruction then suddenly through a miracle hostilities cease. You then would be able to leave, get half of your money back and go about your life. You think it would be fair to GZS if we let you get away with basically having a luxury vacation on our dime? Just because we are in the business of your survival, does not mean we in the business of being exploited sir” “But…I paid for this!” “And so you did sir, and you will be able to use ALL the facilities when the time is right, until then you can enjoy the living area, oh and the bathroom sir.” One of the metal doors opens up to reveal a normal (And again sterile) bathroom. “Gee thanks.” “You’re quite welcome sir! After all I’m here to serve you!” “You kept saying I would be able to leave if the world doesn’t blow up…can’t I just leave at any time?” The voice doesn’t answer for awhile. “…I’m sorry sir I’m puzzled by your inquiry.” “Can’t I leave anytime I want?” “Why would you want to do that sir? I have been designed to keep you safe from harm as soon as you paid and entered the elevator. The current world situation is very grim and most likely terminal sir. Allowing you to leave at this point would be a severe violation in my programming.” You suddenly realize you’re here now regardless of whether you’re having second thoughts about this situation. You can see why these shelters were “experimental” now. You try not to think about the potential waist high shit you might have gotten yourself into, and instead try to think about how you might’ve just avoided becoming a statistic in a nuclear exchange. You resign yourself to your current fate and start unpacking your stuff. You could do with a little distraction from your current predicament, so you turn on a TV monitor that has been provided. The fact that the world’s situation hasn’t gotten any better seems to cheer you up. You spend most of your time on the couch, watching TV and exploring what you can. You’re glad you brought some of your own food, because the dispenser food doesn’t taste all that great. You’re guessing it’s just supposed to keep you alive, nothing more. As the days blur into the next, the shelter and TV you apprised of the world situation, which is only getting worse. It looks like you’ve made the right decision… Monday 8:00 AM “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” You groggily wake up and see a test pattern on TV. This is it. Suddenly the TV turns itself off. “Armageddon has arrived sir! This shelter is now fully functional! Please explore and enjoy all the things this facility has to offer!” the voice beams. At this point all the previously closed metal doors in the room unlock and open (Except for the elevator ones of course) After taking a quick check, you find you now have a small library, a computer room and a proper bedroom. When you return to the living area the voice chirps up again. “Sir, I highly recommend that you read the manual to familiarize yourself with everything properly first, so you aren’t just fumbling around.” A small panel in the wall opens up to reveal a hefty owner’s manual. You were wondering where the hell that thing was, since you were told you were going to be provided with one when you talked to the voice on the phone. > You read the manual Maybe it’s because you’ve gotten so used to the idea of being in the living area, you’re more willing to lounge about there. You take the manual and start reading. While you’re in the middle of it, the voice suddenly pipes up again. “Sorry to bother your reading sir, but would you like to meet some of your new neighbors?” “Neighbors?” ”Yes sir, I’m sure as you have already read, this shelter is equipped with a very high tech computer with loads of storage, information and…” ”Yeah, yeah, what does that have to do with this neighbor business?” “In an effort to cater to all its customer’s needs, GZS is well aware that socialization is vital to human mental health. Studies have shown that humans in long periods of isolation often go mad, so that is why this facility has been linked in communication to other ones within your area. You might think of it as a chatroom type form of communication commonly used on the old world internet! If you wish there is also a camera type device if you wish to show yourself to your new neighbors. We have found humans feel someone is more real to them if they can actually see who they are talking to and thus have a greater connection.” “So how many people are there?” “This shelter merely has been fitted with a basic communication system to other similar shelters, and only then those in your area. For example this is Shelter number 23. Your neighbors are only numbers 20 through 25, those being the closest ones to your location. While obviously there were other shelters of this type built, it was not cost effective to link all the shelters together in such a manner given our timeframe to finish these before Armageddon, so only a few were linked together at a time. Do not worry sir; it has been found that six people are sufficient to sustain enough conversation to prevent mental failure due to isolation.” “Wonderful, so does this make me the Professor?” you ask rhetorically. “Pardon sir?” “Nevermind, look I don’t have to talk to these people do I?” “…well no sir, but I fail to see why you’d intentionally want to stay isolated.” “Duh, that was kind of the point of buying a shelter for myself.” “…I see, well I can’t force you sir, but I would like you to reconsider…I’m just trying to look out for your physical as well as mental welfare as per my programming…” If you didn’t know better the voice almost sounds a bit hurt by your decision. “Oh alright, I’ll go talk to them. Can’t be any worse than the idiots I used argue with on the internet.” “Wonderful sir! I trust you know your way to the computer room. You will find that a designation name has already been chosen for you.” You make your way to the computer room and take a better look at it this time. It’s filled with lots of multi-media entertainment. You’re glad they gave you a wide variety of movies to chose from. You sit down in front of a fairly wide computer screen which has already been turned on for you; you guess the Shelter is really keen on the idea of you being social. You don’t turn the camera on though, in fact you turn it away from you completely, you’re not quite ready for THAT level of socialization yet. You log on and begin typing. OmegaMan23: Hello? Is there anyone out there? RockerChick20: Hey! I’m here! OmegaMan23: Oh. Okay. Hi. RockerChick20: Hi yourself! This is just like a chatroom! Isn’t this great? OmegaMan23: Uh yeah real great. Job24: Hey I’m here too; um do you guys have any movies or something? OmegaMan23: Yeah I got a shitload of movies, DVDs and VHS. Most of them I even like. RockerChick20: That’s weird, I don’t have too many movies, I have a lot of music CDs though. Job24: What kind of music? RockerChick20: All types, but I have a lot of them. Why? Job24: I don’t have any movies except those with Pauly Shore in them! He fucking sucks! And all my music CDs are New Age Yanni type shit! Thank god I have some games to play! OmegaMan23: I’ve got some games too, but for some reason I have nothing but Gangsta Rap and Hair Metal as far as music goes oh wait I also have some Classical. Weird. What the hell I thought these Shelters were all stocked the same? MissKitty25: Apparently not, I have nothing but porno and not all of it is regular porno either, some of it is quite…bizarre. Job24: Lucky. CaseyJones22: Hey guys when do the Shelters become fully functional? OmegaMan23: What the hell are you talking about? CaseyJones22: I mean when do the rest of the doors to the place open up, besides the bathroom I mean. RockerChick20: What do you mean? The doors were all open to begin with. Job24: Yeah they were always open. MissKitty25: Yeah. OmegaMan23: They weren’t open for me! I was stuck in the living area until the nukes hit! Wait a minute how are you using the computer if you’re stuck in the living area? In fact if the doors were all open for you guys haven’t you been in contact with each other before? Job24: My computer didn’t link up to you guys until just now. I could use it to play games and such, but I couldn’t do anything else with it. When I turned it on today I got a message saying that the communications to you guys was operational and it said I could take the opportunity to say hi to my five new neighbors. RockerChick20: Sounds like what happened to me. MissKitty25: Same here. CaseyJones22: Me too. Oh and you guys must have different shelter designs because my computer is in the living area. OmegaMan23: The Shelter never told me anything about this stuff and it’s been quite talkative since I’ve been here let me tell you. CaseyJones22: The Shelter talks? Now what the hell are you talking about? OmegaMan23: I’m talking about the Shelter, you know the overly chipper voice that tries so hard to please you? CaseyJones22: You’ve lost me dude. You been smokin’? OmegaMan23: NO! I’m talking about the Shelter voice! It’s a computer or something that talks to me! It’s always trying to be friendly! Don’t you guys hear it? RockerChick20: Um, no. Job24: No talking computer here. MissKitty25: You sure you’re feeling okay and aren’t imagining things? I mean we all were isolated for a long time before we were able to talk to one another. I know sometimes I would talk to myself, maybe… OmegaMan23: Look, I’m not fucking crazy alright?! The damn thing even insisted that I talk to you fuckers! CaseyJones22: Okay dude calm down we believe you! Maybe you got some sort of extra special shelter; I mean from the sound of it we all don’t have the same things. RockerChick20: Hey shouldn’t there be one more person here? The message said five new neighbors on my computer; so far I’ve only met four of you guys. OmegaMan23: Yeah we’re missing number 21, whatever his or her name is. Shadow21: I’m right here; I’ve just been reading the conversation. OmegaMan23: Oh really? Well you mind announcing your presence next time? Shadow21: I only speak when necessary, besides if any of you bothered to check you would’ve seen my name listed on the active list. Job24: Hey what kind of movies do you have? Well you’ve met your neighbors, the question is if you want to bother talking to them on a regular basis or not. You did find their information interesting though. > You continue to talk to them as frequently as possible Your curiosity is peaked and you take the opportunity to talk with the others whenever you can. The Shelter is certainly pleased you are being social. Months pass and you all learn more about each other more or less. (Though only RockerChick has even hinted at turning on the cameras to see each other visually) You have to admit though you’re a little more interested in what’s going on their shelters. From what you can tell RockerChick has a shelter similar to yours with just a few differences in equipment. Her personality is damn near as “chipper” as the Shelter. She likes talking with everyone, but seems to like speaking to you a lot more. Must be your “winning” personality. Job’s shelter is a lot like yours too except he’s constantly complaining about various things breaking down and he has to fix. Last time he said he damn near got crushed by his own bed when it suddenly rose back up into the wall when he was sleeping. He doesn’t have much in entertainment either, so he’s always glad to talk with anybody. Mainly to complain. CaseyJones’ Shelter STILL hasn’t become fully functional! He’s effectively trapped in the living area and bathroom. He has his computer to talk to everyone but little else. He doesn’t really seem to care though; apparently he brought a shitload of weed with him and has somehow created a small hydroponics pot farm in his bathtub (He doesn’t see the need to bathe since he’s not in contact with anyone) He says he plans on spending the Aftermath completely stoned. Job can’t understand why Casey isn’t freaking out about his situation. Apparently MissKitty has a more “homey” type shelter. From the description it sounds like it’s bigger than any of yours and not quite as “sterile”. She has a hot tub in her bathroom and some other luxury type items. MissKitty tends to brag a lot and is rather an uninteresting person other than the weird porn she watches and describes sometimes. Job often complains that it’s wasted on her. As for Shadow, he or she barely ever talks. Shadow makes his presence known, but then just lurks and doesn’t say anything. Most of the others forget he’s even there, but you always keep it in the back of your mind and will address him when you feel the need. So far the only thing he’s mentioned about his shelter is how dim the lighting is. One thing that you’ve been tempted to do is use the private feature and talk to one of the others in private. The only ones that interest you are RockerChick and Shadow though. The first because she seems friendly with you. The second because you’re kind of suspicious of Shadow and you’re hoping to learn more. > You talk more in depth with RockerChick No point in spending the Aftermath worrying about shit you can’t do anything about, you might as well focus on what little chance you’re going to have of female companionship again. You take the opportunity to ask to talk to RockerChick more privately one day, unsurprisingly she agrees. RockerChick20: Hey! You’re the first person to want to talk privately to me! OmegaMan23: You’re kidding; I would’ve thought the other guys would’ve been jumping at the chance to talk to you. RockerChick20: Well I see you’re the charming type, that’s alright though I like that. But sadly no, the other guys haven’t. I think Casey’s so busy getting stoned most of the time that any extra effort on his part would be too much for him and Job is too busy complaining about his latest shelter problems. And if Shadow is a guy, he’s been pretty tight lipped as usual…although MissKitty has been talking with me a lot lately. I get the impression she’s been wanting to see a lot more of me if you know what I mean, but she’s a bit too self-involved and doesn’t seem that interesting. Maybe if I didn’t have any other options, she might have a chance. OmegaMan23: Wow, I guess it’s a good thing I made my move then. RockerChick20: Guess so. So! Are you just going to continue being a faceless entity or do I finally get to see you and learn your real name? OmegaMan23: Well, okay, but only if you do it too. RockerChick20: Well of course, we’ll do it together! On the count of three! One, two… And true to both of your words you turn on your cameras and see each other for the first time. After telling her your name, she tells you her real name is Becky. She certainly is attractive, but she seems a lot younger than you, like barely out of her teens, if that! You wonder how the hell she could afford one these Shelters since you’re probably at least ten years older than her and with your salary you could barely afford the damn thing. OmegaMan23: If you don’t mind me asking how old are you? RockerChick20: Nineteen! How old are you? OmegaMan23: Probably old enough to be considered a pervert to be talking to a girl as young as you. How did you afford one of these shelters, I went broke getting into this thing, not that it matters now. RockerChick20: Oh my parents had a lot of money and they gave me a lot of it. I registered about one during one of my spending sprees; I didn’t actually expect to ever use it. I even thought it would be a cool place to gather all my friends where we could party one day. OmegaMan23: So if you didn’t expect to use it, what changed your mind? The slow realization that the world was going to shit on TV? RockerChick20: Not really, I barely paid attention to the news. I ended up getting into a fight with my parents and ran away from home for the umpteenth time. I usually didn’t go far and stayed with friends, but I really wanted to try to worry them, so I figured I’d use this shelter for a little while! Little did I realize that I’d be trapped down here, I couldn’t even get my cell phone to work to call out. After panicking for a few days, I resigned myself to thinking that my parent’s might figure out that I came here since they knew I registered for one of these and were pissed off about it. As I watched TV in the passing days that’s when I started seeing how bad things were then one day the TV displayed nothing but snow and I knew what had happened. The world blew up. Sometimes I wonder if my parents were still looking for me… OmegaMan23: I’m sure they were. RockerChick20: Maybe. It got really bad the last time. They were control freaks anyway…they didn’t really care about me; they just wanted to run my life. I don’t wanna talk about them, so what about you? OmegaMan23: What about me what? RockerChick20: What’s your story silly! Surely being as old as you are, you have some interesting stories to tell! All you old guys do. OmegaMan23: Talk to a lot of old guys do you? Is that before or after they buy you candy? RockerChick20: Lol. ALWAYS after! I’m not a slut! No, I like older guys they know so much more about everything. OmegaMan23: Not really, we can just bullshit better than younger guys. RockerChick20 Lol! You’re really funny. OmegaMan23: See I told you. RockerChick20: Ha ha! Okay let’s be serious for a moment. Tell me about yourself. You proceed to give some information about yourself, which probably isn’t nearly as interesting as some of the stuff she’s told everyone when you were talking with her in the public network. Becky seems to be a bit of a free spirit which doesn’t really surprise you and the fact that she’s into older guys doesn’t really surprise you either as most girls her age go through that phase, and given she didn’t really have a good relationship with her parents, she’s probably sub-consciously looking for a father figure. About a month passes and you and Becky get comfortable enough to start having “sex” in a fashion. It’s not exactly the same being cyber and all, but you’ll take a hot naked chick touching herself and typing dirty words to you over nothing. The Shelter is pleased that you are finding a healthy way of releasing your sexual tension, but it really creeps you out that it keeps track of such things. A few more months pass and it’s obvious to the others what’s been going on between the two of you. Casey thinks its “cool”. You get the impression MissKitty is a bit jealous, but doesn’t really say anything. Job, sensing he missed his chance keeps unsuccessfully directing his attention to MissKitty now, and Shadow actually becomes more talkative in general. Soon you all learn each others names. Casey’s is Paul, Job is Mark, MissKitty is Miranda and Shadow (who you finally find out is male) is Xavier. Everyone actually sees what each other looks like except for you who continue to refuse to show yourself to anyone, but Becky in private and Xavier who’s a bit hard to see since his lighting is very dim. In general things are running smoothly and you and Becky have as close of a relationship as you can over a computer. Even you’re surprised that such a thing is possible. A year passes... Suddenly you all get a distressing message from Paul. He says his food and water dispensers have ceased working and he can’t even get his bathroom facilities to work anymore. He says he knows he doesn’t have much time left, so he logged on one last time to tell you all good bye. Xavier states how fucked up that is. Mark naturally freaks out worrying that he’ll be next to suffer total shelter failure. Miranda gives her sympathy and you ask if he has any tools to fix the problem, but he says he didn’t bring any of that kind of stuff with him and there don’t seem to be any tools in his shelter either, at least none that he has access to. This incident gets Becky pretty upset, but more so in private with you. She always liked Paul since he was a cool guy. You do your best to try to comfort her. You however are starting to get paranoid again. While it’s certainly possible Paul’s shelter failed on its own, lord knows these things are supposed to be experimental and his wasn’t working right from the beginning. However, you’re starting to wonder if it’s possible for someone to maliciously hack into the other ones. When you first started all this “meet the neighbors” shit, you were wondering if Xavier was up to no good when he was being all silent in the beginning, but maybe he was sizing you all up and is beginning his strike now though. Picking you off one by one. > You are being paranoid, forget about it You stop yourself from imagining conspiracy theories. There doesn’t need to be some mysterious “hacker”. Paul’s shelter was fucked up from day one from what you know. It’s most likely just shoddy GZS workmanship. It’s bad what happened, but there’s no point in stressing over it. You’re just glad you got a good shelter that seems to work properly. Besides your Shelter has a pretty active AI, you’re sure that at the first sign of trouble it would warn you verbally. You continue your life as normal with Becky. Another year passes... Mark stops logging on for two months which is strange, because he always made an effort to get online whenever possible even when he was in the middle of fixing something. You know he also thought he was “getting somewhere” with Miranda as well. Everyone doesn’t say too much about it. While it’s possible he’s just lost network connection and can’t access the rest of you, it’s a given that probably the worst has happened. He was also having shelter problems from day one, so again you chalk it up to GZS fuck ups, after all the Shelter did tell you there were budget cut backs in the construction of these things. Again it’s bad, but there isn’t any point in dwelling over something you can’t do anything about. The world technically ended years ago, all that’s important is that you get what enjoyment you can out of life and that’s what you’re doing with Becky. Life continues as normal, except you notice the Shelter isn’t as talkative anymore and then ceases speaking to you at all. You don’t think too much about it until a couple months later… You wake up to an angry female sounding voice and it’s definitely not the Shelter and it isn’t Becky either. “Well it took me awhile, but I now have complete access to your systems. Good thing I practiced on Mark and Paul first. You know I didn’t believe you had a talking shelter, but I’m glad you did, it gives me a chance to verbally tell you about how you’re going to die.” “Miranda?” “Got it one, but then again the choices were pretty limited. Soon after you’re out of the way, Xavier will be next and then it’ll be just me and Becky. She’ll have no choice, but to come to me.” You’re so caught off guard that the only reply you can come up with is…“You’re fucking nuts.” “Maybe, but I’m not going to be dead and that’s the important thing here.” “Wait! How about I just break up with Becky? I’ll be a real dick to her, that way there’s no chance she’ll want to get back with me…or better yet how about I just disconnect myself from the network?” “Sorry, no. I can’t take that chance. Even if you disconnected from the system what’s stopping you from fixing all the damage I’ve done so far, fortifying and then reconnecting to get revenge on me later? You gotta die, it’s the only way.” “Wait! If you do have access to all my systems, how about you just bring the elevator down and let me leave the Shelter? I mean I’d have to go outside, I wouldn’t be able to do anything to you or Becky then, not to mention topside probably isn’t hospitable.” “Nice try, but no…for all we know life topside could be paradise now. A few years have passed you know, a lot can happen in that time.” “Oh come on, you don’t actually believe that?” “Not really, but I just want you to die by my hand…I REALLY don’t like you. You stole Becky away from me and now I’m going to get her back. No more talk, goodbye.” “WAIT!” All power shuts down in your Shelter leaving you in complete darkness. You fumble around and head towards where your food and water dispensers are and predictably they don’t work. You’re left to the same agonizing fate that Mark and Paul were. Oddly you don’t panic as much as you might think in the face of imminent death. In some ways you had a good run after the world ended. You cheated death for a longer time than most folks did and you got to spend time with a pretty girl at least during most of it. Again, no point in worrying about shit you can’t do anything about. Kind of wish you got to say goodbye to Becky, but you can’t have everything. You do have one advantage that Mark and Paul didn’t though; you can still choose when to die. You feel around in the darkness back to your bedroom and go into the bag you brought with you when you first got here. There it is; your pistol. You position it to your head…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No point in spending the Aftermath worrying about shit you can’t do anything about, you might as well focus on what little chance you’re going to have of female companionship again. You take the opportunity to ask to talk to RockerChick more privately one day, unsurprisingly she agrees. RockerChick20: Hey! You’re the first person to want to talk privately to me! OmegaMan23: You’re kidding; I would’ve thought the other guys would’ve been jumping at the chance to talk to you. RockerChick20: Well I see you’re the charming type, that’s alright though I like that. But sadly no, the other guys haven’t. I think Casey’s so busy getting stoned most of the time that any extra effort on his part would be too much for him and Job is too busy complaining about his latest shelter problems. And if Shadow is a guy, he’s been pretty tight lipped as usual…although MissKitty has been talking with me a lot lately. I get the impression she’s been wanting to see a lot more of me if you know what I mean, but she’s a bit too self-involved and doesn’t seem that interesting. Maybe if I didn’t have any other options, she might have a chance. OmegaMan23: Wow, I guess it’s a good thing I made my move then. RockerChick20: Guess so. So! Are you just going to continue being a faceless entity or do I finally get to see you and learn your real name? OmegaMan23: Well, okay, but only if you do it too. RockerChick20: Well of course, we’ll do it together! On the count of three! One, two… And true to both of your words you turn on your cameras and see each other for the first time. After telling her your name, she tells you her real name is Becky. She certainly is attractive, but she seems a lot younger than you, like barely out of her teens, if that! You wonder how the hell she could afford one these Shelters since you’re probably at least ten years older than her and with your salary you could barely afford the damn thing. OmegaMan23: If you don’t mind me asking how old are you? RockerChick20: Nineteen! How old are you? OmegaMan23: Probably old enough to be considered a pervert to be talking to a girl as young as you. How did you afford one of these shelters, I went broke getting into this thing, not that it matters now. RockerChick20: Oh my parents had a lot of money and they gave me a lot of it. I registered about one during one of my spending sprees; I didn’t actually expect to ever use it. I even thought it would be a cool place to gather all my friends where we could party one day. OmegaMan23: So if you didn’t expect to use it, what changed your mind? The slow realization that the world was going to shit on TV? RockerChick20: Not really, I barely paid attention to the news. I ended up getting into a fight with my parents and ran away from home for the umpteenth time. I usually didn’t go far and stayed with friends, but I really wanted to try to worry them, so I figured I’d use this shelter for a little while! Little did I realize that I’d be trapped down here, I couldn’t even get my cell phone to work to call out. After panicking for a few days, I resigned myself to thinking that my parent’s might figure out that I came here since they knew I registered for one of these and were pissed off about it. As I watched TV in the passing days that’s when I started seeing how bad things were then one day the TV displayed nothing but snow and I knew what had happened. The world blew up. Sometimes I wonder if my parents were still looking for me… OmegaMan23: I’m sure they were. RockerChick20: Maybe. It got really bad the last time. They were control freaks anyway…they didn’t really care about me; they just wanted to run my life. I don’t wanna talk about them, so what about you? OmegaMan23: What about me what? RockerChick20: What’s your story silly! Surely being as old as you are, you have some interesting stories to tell! All you old guys do. OmegaMan23: Talk to a lot of old guys do you? Is that before or after they buy you candy? RockerChick20: Lol. ALWAYS after! I’m not a slut! No, I like older guys they know so much more about everything. OmegaMan23: Not really, we can just bullshit better than younger guys. RockerChick20 Lol! You’re really funny. OmegaMan23: See I told you. RockerChick20: Ha ha! Okay let’s be serious for a moment. Tell me about yourself. You proceed to give some information about yourself, which probably isn’t nearly as interesting as some of the stuff she’s told everyone when you were talking with her in the public network. Becky seems to be a bit of a free spirit which doesn’t really surprise you and the fact that she’s into older guys doesn’t really surprise you either as most girls her age go through that phase, and given she didn’t really have a good relationship with her parents, she’s probably sub-consciously looking for a father figure. About a month passes and you and Becky get comfortable enough to start having “sex” in a fashion. It’s not exactly the same being cyber and all, but you’ll take a hot naked chick touching herself and typing dirty words to you over nothing. The Shelter is pleased that you are finding a healthy way of releasing your sexual tension, but it really creeps you out that it keeps track of such things. A few more months pass and it’s obvious to the others what’s been going on between the two of you. Casey thinks its “cool”. You get the impression MissKitty is a bit jealous, but doesn’t really say anything. Job, sensing he missed his chance keeps unsuccessfully directing his attention to MissKitty now, and Shadow actually becomes more talkative in general. Soon you all learn each others names. Casey’s is Paul, Job is Mark, MissKitty is Miranda and Shadow (who you finally find out is male) is Xavier. Everyone actually sees what each other looks like except for you who continue to refuse to show yourself to anyone, but Becky in private and Xavier who’s a bit hard to see since his lighting is very dim. In general things are running smoothly and you and Becky have as close of a relationship as you can over a computer. Even you’re surprised that such a thing is possible. A year passes... Suddenly you all get a distressing message from Paul. He says his food and water dispensers have ceased working and he can’t even get his bathroom facilities to work anymore. He says he knows he doesn’t have much time left, so he logged on one last time to tell you all good bye. Xavier states how fucked up that is. Mark naturally freaks out worrying that he’ll be next to suffer total shelter failure. Miranda gives her sympathy and you ask if he has any tools to fix the problem, but he says he didn’t bring any of that kind of stuff with him and there don’t seem to be any tools in his shelter either, at least none that he has access to. This incident gets Becky pretty upset, but more so in private with you. She always liked Paul since he was a cool guy. You do your best to try to comfort her. You however are starting to get paranoid again. While it’s certainly possible Paul’s shelter failed on its own, lord knows these things are supposed to be experimental and his wasn’t working right from the beginning. However, you’re starting to wonder if it’s possible for someone to maliciously hack into the other ones. When you first started all this “meet the neighbors” shit, you were wondering if Xavier was up to no good when he was being all silent in the beginning, but maybe he was sizing you all up and is beginning his strike now though. Picking you off one by one. > You ask the Shelter about its security systems Confronting Xavier won’t do any good; even if he is guilty he’s just going to deny it. Possibly even antagonize him to hacking you a lot sooner. You figure maybe you should alert the Shelter about the situation and get a better understanding of its workings. You’ve been spending so much time with Becky that you’ve been neglecting other matters. “Shelter, can you tell me a little bit more about your systems? Could you easily be hacked?” “Hacked sir? Well it is possible, but highly unlikely as I have been equipped with the latest protection programs, some of it even military in origin. Are you worried someone is going to try to hack me?” “Kind of. I don’t know. Paul’s shelter failed, and I just got this feeling it wasn’t completely due to shoddy workmanship.” “Well I do remember you telling me that his wasn’t opening up. Not all these shelters were built as well as me. There were budget cutbacks during the construction of these you know.” “I suppose.” “You seem distressed sir. I’ll tell you what, it’s going a little bit out of my programming as outright spying and monitoring other shelters isn’t really part of the GZS terms of agreement, but I’ll do it. First signs of anyone trying to get anywhere NEAR my systems or anything else suspicious I’ll alert you immediately and bring the elevator down for a hasty escape in case everything goes wrong.” “Well that does make me feel better, thanks.” “You’re welcome sir, I might suggest you read up on your electronics, you may need them. I will inform you of anything that wasn’t covered in my manual, or if you have any extra questions.” A few weeks pass as you take the Shelter’s advice and start studying up. You’re spending less time with Becky, but it can’t be helped. When you do talk to her, you tell her she should do the same thing you’re doing. She thinks you’re being overly paranoid though, and despite your closeness, she’s still skeptical that you have a shelter that talks to you on a regular basis. (The only one who ever really believed you on that was Paul) She also thinks you’re trying to tell her what to do, rather than looking out for her. You’re starting to look like the “Strict Dad” rather than the “Fun Dad” now. Things between you become a little strained and a couple more months pass and Becky and you aren’t really together anymore. You notice Xavier talks to Becky a little more now, but it doesn’t really seem serious. Miranda also attempts to talk to Becky more seeing that you’re out of the picture, but Becky still doesn’t seem interested in her. Meanwhile Mark unsuccessfully makes advances towards Miranda. It seems like everyone is chasing someone else that isn’t interested, except you, who inadvertently discarded intimacy in favor of security and survival…though not entirely, you did look into this supposed hacker business in an effort to protect not just you, but Becky as well because you did like her. You just wish she would’ve listened to you. Meanwhile you’re keeping an eye on the situation and asking the Shelter for security updates, which still says it doesn’t detect anything. You wonder if you were wrong and you just fucked up the only relationship you possibly had a chance at in what’s left of this world… Another year passes... Mark stops logging on for two months which is strange, because he always made an effort to get online whenever possible even when he was in the middle of fixing something. You know he also thought he was “getting somewhere” with Miranda as well. Everyone doesn’t say too much about it. While it’s possible he’s just lost network connection and can’t access the rest of you, it’s a given that probably the worst has happened. Normally after losing Becky to your previous paranoia, you’d be willing to chalk it up to normal shelter failure this time especially since he had a lot of problems anyway, but fortunately your Shelter was doing some deeper inspection into the situation. “Sir, I have some vital information I think you should know about. I’m sorry it took me so long, but the hacker went to great lengths to cover their tracks.” “Hacker? You mean there is one then?” “Yes, I temporarily diverted some of my own power to Job24’s shelter and started accessing the systems there. It was obviously hacked upon direct inspection; some of the programs were completely fried particularly the food and water dispensers.” “Wait, you can do that?” “I’m not supposed to sir, but I know you’ve been worrying about this and since the shelter was already technically offline, the agreement doesn’t say I can’t monitor it.” “Wait so Mark? Is he still alive?” “Afraid not sir. I detected no life signs. Humans can’t go two months without water.” “No, of course they can’t…so who’s the hacker?” “Don’t know sir, like I said they did a very good job of covering their tracks, I do know it isn’t RockerChick20, which only leaves Shadow21 or MissKitty25. From what I’ve detected BOTH of their shelters are showing irregularities, so both of them have been modifying their shelter’s systems for whatever purpose. I suppose it’s possible both of them have been hacking.” “Oh thanks Shelter, that makes me feel better!” “I wasn’t my intention to cause you more distress; just stating the possibilities sir…maybe you could directly confront one of them privately. While you have their attention, I can do more inspection and know for certain. Both of them have already broken their terms of agreement by modifying their shelters, so they aren’t under GZS protection contract anymore. I can do whatever you want to either of them.” > You confront Xavier “Time to confront Xavier once and for all.” You say. “Very well sir.” When you get online you conveniently see that you and he are the only ones currently on. You send Xavier a private invite, he accepts. Your Shelter goes into spy mode. You wonder what you can talk to him about, but then you think of something that wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion and is completely plausible for you to need to address him privately. Shadow21: Yeah? What do you want? OmegaMan23: Hey I just wanted to talk to you about Becky. Shadow21: What about her? OmegaMan23: Well I just want to say I’m still trying to patch things up with her and I want to know if you’re interested in her, because if you are you must know that I’m going to be doing everything in my power to win her back. Shadow21: Wow. That sounds like a threat. I guess I better be careful if I ever show any interest in her and you’re still around. OmegaMan23: So what does that mean? Shadow21: It means that even if I had any inclination to steal your little cyber girlfriend, I wouldn’t since it would make me a bigger target than you. OmegaMan23: I’m a target? Now that sounds like a threat. Shadow21: It is, but not from me…come on I think we can stop beating around the bush here. I’ve been monitoring the other shelters ever since Paul’s went down. We got a hacker among us and your Shelter and Miranda’s have been mighty active lately. OmegaMan23: So, you think there’s a hacker too eh? Shadow21: I don’t think it. I know it. Just like you know it. You’ve been monitoring the other shelters just like I have, and probably just like Miranda has. I can’t prove who the hacker is for certain, but I know in my gut who it is, because it’s really the only logical choice. OmegaMan23: And? Shadow21: Miranda obviously. She was jealous of your relationship with Becky so she’s killing all the potential competition and have her all to herself. OmegaMan23: If that is true, why not just hack me first? Shadow21: Probably needed to practice first. From what I can tell your Shelter has some pretty cool protection, I had to modify all my shelter’s systems to get it nearly as good as yours. Plus like I said she’s also eliminating future competition. OmegaMan23: While I’m fully willing to entertain this theory, what’s keeping me from thinking you’re the hacker and you’re just trying to deflect the blame? Shadow21: Nothing I suppose. I know you’ve always been irrationally distrustful of me, for whatever reason. The only thing I can say is I don’t have any motive to be killing folks. I’m not some cyber serial killer and I don’t have any interest in Becky like you and Miranda do. Besides I’m sure by now your Shelter has done a thorough spying on my internal activity logs and has found I haven’t done anything wrong. You’re silent for a moment. Suddenly your Shelter speaks. “He’s clean sir.” Shadow21: Well? OmegaMan23: My Shelter’s report just confirmed you were clean. Shadow21: I’m sure it did. Does it still talk to you? OmegaMan23: Why is that so hard to believe? Shadow21: It isn’t really; I’m just fucking with you. OmegaMan23: Okay so Miranda’s the hacker, what are we gonna do about it? Shadow21: Me? Nothing. I’m probably just going to disconnect my network system soon and access my elevator’s controls to call it down so I can make a get away just in case. I figure I should be safe as long as I stay disconnected though. OmegaMan23: What?! You’re not going to help me stop her? Shadow21: Why should I risk my neck? This is between you and Miranda…in fact if I were you, I’d disconnect from the system as well and cut your losses. Becky seems a bit flighty anyway if she broke up with you so quickly, I say let Miranda have her. OmegaMan23: She’s just young and doesn’t like old people telling her what to do. She runs away from conflict. She’s got some father figure issues. Doesn’t mean I still didn’t like her. Shadow21: I see, so you’re daddy and you’re out to save your little girl from the psycho dyke then eh? OmegaMan23: Something like that. Besides I don’t like being run off like this, if I can do SOMETHING about it. Shadow21: Well disconnecting is what I suggest you do. Because from what I can tell she’s pretty good at what she does. While I’m no slouch myself at techie shit, I don’t want to risk fighting her because even if I do beat her, she still might fuck up my shelter up. Not worth it in my opinion. Better to play it safe and live. Xavier does bring up a few good points. Is it pointless to bother fighting a war over someone who doesn’t really seem interested in you anymore? Not to mention getting yourself fucked up in the process? If Becky really is so much of a free spirit to go falling for Miranda because nobody else is around then is she really worth it? > You disconnect Xavier’s logic has convinced you. OmegaMan23: Yeah, I suppose you’re right…still I dunno what I’m going to do with my time now. I’m gonna get bored in this Shelter without some kind of interaction. Shadow21: Well what about your Shelter? It talks to you right? OmegaMan23: Yeah, but it’s not the same. I think I’m gonna do that thing you said you might do. Call the elevator down and go up top. Shadow21: Really? I was going to only do that in case of an emergency. OmegaMan23: Yeah well there isn’t much point in me staying anymore, besides I’m a bit curious to see what the world looks like now. Maybe they rebuilt some shit. Shadow21: Maybe. Well I know we didn’t really get along, but good luck with that. OmegaMan23: Good luck to whatever you do as well, and thanks for your advice. I probably would’ve got myself killed had I chosen to fight Miranda. You log off and start disconnecting your network. “What’re you doing sir?” “Disconnecting from the network, where's the main line connection?” “Over there sir. Playing it safe then?” “Yeah, really safe. I want to go back to the surface.” “You do? You’ve disconnected from the network sir, its highly unlikely Miranda can get to you now, and the surface may actually be more dangerous.” “I suppose, but I feel like I really need to get out of here, the claustrophobia is setting in I think and without human interaction I don’t think I can take it.” “Hmmm, yes I can see how that would be a problem sir. Well even though I feel the surface will put you at severe risk for danger, staying here will not be good for your mental health so I will respect your wishes and bring the elevator down, I suggest you gather what belongings you want to take and get ready.” You go back to your room and pack up all the things you brought with you when you first got here. You didn’t even need most of the stuff, but maybe you will above ground. You then go to the water dispenser which is thankfully still working and fill up to empty bottles with water. The elevator door finally opens up and you put your bag to block the door from closing and head back to the computer room where you access the system to tell the elevator to go back up and then run back to the elevator where you gather your bag and enter. On the ride up you get a little nervous and even fearful. Not so much of what might await you on the surface, but of hoping the damn elevator doesn’t suddenly stop, fortunately that doesn’t happen and you eventually reach the ground once again. The door opens and you enter the same foyer you arrived in a few years ago. Same ATM like machine is there, except its screen is flashing a single message at you. *GOOD LUCK SIR* “I hope I have some.” You mutter and take a deep breath before opening the door to the outside. You see a bright light, but of course it’s only the sun rather than a nuclear flash that devastated the world. You forgot how bright it really could be. Your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. On a lark you take out your long unused van keys and try to start it up, naturally it doesn’t even make a noise. “Looks like I’m walking.” You make you way down the empty road as you have little idea of where to head to, the only thing you can think of is to make a long trek back to the city and hope maybe something of civilization exists there. The walk really takes a toll on you. During the day, the sun seems unbearably hotter than usual, and the nights get pretty cold. You are attacked by some crazed people who look like they’ve been living in the wilderness for awhile. They’re filthy and barely intelligible. It’s amazing to see how quick humanity has reverted to barbarism. One begins shooting at you, and you do likewise. After shooting one of them, they stop attacking and drag off their companion. It would appear you just provided a dinner for them other than yourself. It doesn’t help you though; you’re attacked again later by a small group of thugs attempting to rob you and another group after that. And so on. You have to fight and survive constantly and your supplies are never enough and you get wounded many times. You aren’t prepared for this harsh world now. Maybe if you’d stayed out in the beginning, but all those years in the Shelter made you a bit out of shape and civilization is nowhere in sight for you to properly rest. Eventually you decide you can’t go on, and head back to the shelter for saftey, surprisingly you make it back, but you’re so very tired, you decide you need to rest before begging (and hoping) the shelter will let you back in. You stretch out in the wilderness; it actually feels comfortable given how tired you are. It almost makes you ignore the pain from the head wound you received from the latest attack you had to fend off. “Just a few hours of sleep then I’ll enter the shelter again…it seems reasonable…I shouldn’t have any problems…I dunno…maybe I’ll just stay here…its nice and comfortable…” you say as you fall into unconsciousness. You don’t wake up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Time to confront Xavier once and for all.” You say. “Very well sir.” When you get online you conveniently see that you and he are the only ones currently on. You send Xavier a private invite, he accepts. Your Shelter goes into spy mode. You wonder what you can talk to him about, but then you think of something that wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion and is completely plausible for you to need to address him privately. Shadow21: Yeah? What do you want? OmegaMan23: Hey I just wanted to talk to you about Becky. Shadow21: What about her? OmegaMan23: Well I just want to say I’m still trying to patch things up with her and I want to know if you’re interested in her, because if you are you must know that I’m going to be doing everything in my power to win her back. Shadow21: Wow. That sounds like a threat. I guess I better be careful if I ever show any interest in her and you’re still around. OmegaMan23: So what does that mean? Shadow21: It means that even if I had any inclination to steal your little cyber girlfriend, I wouldn’t since it would make me a bigger target than you. OmegaMan23: I’m a target? Now that sounds like a threat. Shadow21: It is, but not from me…come on I think we can stop beating around the bush here. I’ve been monitoring the other shelters ever since Paul’s went down. We got a hacker among us and your Shelter and Miranda’s have been mighty active lately. OmegaMan23: So, you think there’s a hacker too eh? Shadow21: I don’t think it. I know it. Just like you know it. You’ve been monitoring the other shelters just like I have, and probably just like Miranda has. I can’t prove who the hacker is for certain, but I know in my gut who it is, because it’s really the only logical choice. OmegaMan23: And? Shadow21: Miranda obviously. She was jealous of your relationship with Becky so she’s killing all the potential competition and have her all to herself. OmegaMan23: If that is true, why not just hack me first? Shadow21: Probably needed to practice first. From what I can tell your Shelter has some pretty cool protection, I had to modify all my shelter’s systems to get it nearly as good as yours. Plus like I said she’s also eliminating future competition. OmegaMan23: While I’m fully willing to entertain this theory, what’s keeping me from thinking you’re the hacker and you’re just trying to deflect the blame? Shadow21: Nothing I suppose. I know you’ve always been irrationally distrustful of me, for whatever reason. The only thing I can say is I don’t have any motive to be killing folks. I’m not some cyber serial killer and I don’t have any interest in Becky like you and Miranda do. Besides I’m sure by now your Shelter has done a thorough spying on my internal activity logs and has found I haven’t done anything wrong. You’re silent for a moment. Suddenly your Shelter speaks. “He’s clean sir.” Shadow21: Well? OmegaMan23: My Shelter’s report just confirmed you were clean. Shadow21: I’m sure it did. Does it still talk to you? OmegaMan23: Why is that so hard to believe? Shadow21: It isn’t really; I’m just fucking with you. OmegaMan23: Okay so Miranda’s the hacker, what are we gonna do about it? Shadow21: Me? Nothing. I’m probably just going to disconnect my network system soon and access my elevator’s controls to call it down so I can make a get away just in case. I figure I should be safe as long as I stay disconnected though. OmegaMan23: What?! You’re not going to help me stop her? Shadow21: Why should I risk my neck? This is between you and Miranda…in fact if I were you, I’d disconnect from the system as well and cut your losses. Becky seems a bit flighty anyway if she broke up with you so quickly, I say let Miranda have her. OmegaMan23: She’s just young and doesn’t like old people telling her what to do. She runs away from conflict. She’s got some father figure issues. Doesn’t mean I still didn’t like her. Shadow21: I see, so you’re daddy and you’re out to save your little girl from the psycho dyke then eh? OmegaMan23: Something like that. Besides I don’t like being run off like this, if I can do SOMETHING about it. Shadow21: Well disconnecting is what I suggest you do. Because from what I can tell she’s pretty good at what she does. While I’m no slouch myself at techie shit, I don’t want to risk fighting her because even if I do beat her, she still might fuck up my shelter up. Not worth it in my opinion. Better to play it safe and live. Xavier does bring up a few good points. Is it pointless to bother fighting a war over someone who doesn’t really seem interested in you anymore? Not to mention getting yourself fucked up in the process? If Becky really is so much of a free spirit to go falling for Miranda because nobody else is around then is she really worth it? > You fight Sure why not. People have fought wars over stupider shit than the attention of some young woman, besides if Miranda’s willing to kill everyone just to be the only one left for Becky, its obvious she’s pretty deranged. What would be stopping her from killing Becky too, if something went wrong their “relationship”? Miranda should be stopped just because she murdered Mark and Paul for that matter. Besides its like you told Xavier, you don’t like running away if there’s something you can do about it…and there’s the fact that you don’t buy Xavier’s whole “I don’t care” routine, not after taking a quick glance at some of his record logs of a couple private conversations he’s had with Becky. You ask the Shelter something before continuing your discussion with Xavier; the Shelter says you didn’t even need to ask, as it was doing it anyway. Nodding, you go back to talking with Xavier. OmegaMan23: I’m fighting her, and you should help me. Shadow21: I told you I don’t see why I should risk my neck. OmegaMan23: Because if we work together we can easily take out Miranda, then we can work out our differences later. Shadow21: Our differences? I told you I don’t… OmegaMan23: Cut the bullshit. I just glanced through some of your private record logs. In fact ALL of those private conversation were initiated by YOU! Shadow21: Fuck! I thought I erased them all! OmegaMan23: Yeah, well you didn’t, I think it’s obvious by the flirty comments that you DO have your eyes on Becky, though I don’t know why you haven’t made a committed move yet. Shadow21: Because of fucking Miranda that’s why. I figured I’d buy myself some time for preparation if I didn’t get properly involved with Becky. I figured maybe Miranda would attack you soon, but she hasn’t yet, I guess she doesn’t know who’s the bigger threat yet, I’m pretty confident that she wants to get rid of both of us though. OmegaMan23: So let me guess, you’re plan was either let me fight Miranda and probably let us fuck each other up while you finished off the winner OR scare me off completely and convince me to disconnect so then you’d only have to deal with Miranda. Am I right? Shadow21: Sadly that sounds about right. Although I still don’t see how you’re going to make me help you. OmegaMan23: Easy, because if you don’t help me take Miranda down, I’m gonna send the whole record log to Miranda and I guarantee she’ll attack you first and even if you disconnect she’ll wait for you. So if you want ANY shot at Becky, you’ll help me! Shadow21: Arrrgh! Alright, I’ll help! You gotta gimme time to prepare though. OmegaMan23: Fine by me, I gotta prepare too. You got ten minutes; Miranda always comes online about this time so she should be here soon. You disconnect from Xavier and address the Shelter about that business you asked it before. “You said you recorded all that right?” “Of course sir.” “Good send the entire conversation to Becky, it’ll save me time to explain everything to her. Hopefully she’ll realize I am trying to do this to protect her and to stop a murderer. Not mention it should expose Xavier for being a fucking opportunistic vulture too. Also add a message on to it that after she reads it there probably will be a bunch of shit going down and she should get off line so she doesn’t get hit in the crossfire. And send Xavier’s private record logs to Miranda anyway, it should give me some extra time to break through Miranda’s protection while she concentrates her fury more on him.” While the Shelter carries out your orders, you do some last minute checking on your firewalls while waiting for the fireworks to begin. Five minutes pass and you see Miranda’s name arrive online. Another five minutes pass and you see a private window pop up from Xavier. Shadow21: YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU TOLD MIRANDA ANYWAY! SHE’S ATTACKING ME! OmegaMan23: Well I suggest you stop talking to me and concentrate on her then, besides you had ten minutes of prep Mr. tech wizard. “Alright Shelter, let’s get to work.” You attempt to hack Miranda’s files, and start trying to break down her protection. While you’re trying to decrypt the coding, you get another private window pop up. It’s Miranda this time. MissKitty25: Fucking trying to sneak around huh? You and fucking Xavier think you can gang up on me? Well I can take the both of you fuckers! Try this, you backdoor bastard! Miranda sends a power surge and overloads some of your components, frying them. Some of your lighting goes out and you hear something explode in the living area but fortunately nothing else happens. “Shit!” “Some of my files have been destroyed sir, attempting to correct…” You concentrate on rebuilding your protection while Miranda focuses back on Xavier. Shadow21: What the fuck man? Are you even helping? My fucking shelter is getting shit on over here! Move in you dickhead! Attack the bitch! You ignore Xavier’s plead when you see Becky log on. “Please. Please, read the damn message and get off as quick as you can…” you mutter, while launching your second assault on Miranda. “Sir, I have been monitoring Shadow21’s shelter and it’s running dangerously low on power, Miranda’s apparently siphoning it. He probably won’t survive another attack.” “All he needs to do hold out a bit longer…there that should do something…” You send a virus to corrupt some of Miranda’s systems, during this time you see Becky go offline. “Good girl.” You say and start your next round of malicious coding. You notice Xavier’s name has disappeared. MissKitty25: Xavier’s fucking dead and you’re next shithead! Don’t think your weak ass virus is gonna stop me either! Another power surge hits you. This time ALL the lighting goes out, and you even get a couple sparks coming from the computer, you’re lucky it didn’t do more damage. > You redouble your protection You cease your attack and attempt to redouble your protection, unfortunately while you’re fumbling around and retyping, Miranda sends a worm and completely wrecks your system, making it slow to a crawl, then she follows up with another power surge, and this one blows out your most of the hard drive. “POWE….RRRRR FFFFFF…….AAAAAIIIIILLLLINNN….GGG…..” the Shelter utters as everything begins to flicker and eventually go out, leaving you in the dark and powerless. You’ve lost. Death is the price of your failure.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Sure why not. People have fought wars over stupider shit than the attention of some young woman, besides if Miranda’s willing to kill everyone just to be the only one left for Becky, its obvious she’s pretty deranged. What would be stopping her from killing Becky too, if something went wrong their “relationship”? Miranda should be stopped just because she murdered Mark and Paul for that matter. Besides its like you told Xavier, you don’t like running away if there’s something you can do about it…and there’s the fact that you don’t buy Xavier’s whole “I don’t care” routine, not after taking a quick glance at some of his record logs of a couple private conversations he’s had with Becky. You ask the Shelter something before continuing your discussion with Xavier; the Shelter says you didn’t even need to ask, as it was doing it anyway. Nodding, you go back to talking with Xavier. OmegaMan23: I’m fighting her, and you should help me. Shadow21: I told you I don’t see why I should risk my neck. OmegaMan23: Because if we work together we can easily take out Miranda, then we can work out our differences later. Shadow21: Our differences? I told you I don’t… OmegaMan23: Cut the bullshit. I just glanced through some of your private record logs. In fact ALL of those private conversation were initiated by YOU! Shadow21: Fuck! I thought I erased them all! OmegaMan23: Yeah, well you didn’t, I think it’s obvious by the flirty comments that you DO have your eyes on Becky, though I don’t know why you haven’t made a committed move yet. Shadow21: Because of fucking Miranda that’s why. I figured I’d buy myself some time for preparation if I didn’t get properly involved with Becky. I figured maybe Miranda would attack you soon, but she hasn’t yet, I guess she doesn’t know who’s the bigger threat yet, I’m pretty confident that she wants to get rid of both of us though. OmegaMan23: So let me guess, you’re plan was either let me fight Miranda and probably let us fuck each other up while you finished off the winner OR scare me off completely and convince me to disconnect so then you’d only have to deal with Miranda. Am I right? Shadow21: Sadly that sounds about right. Although I still don’t see how you’re going to make me help you. OmegaMan23: Easy, because if you don’t help me take Miranda down, I’m gonna send the whole record log to Miranda and I guarantee she’ll attack you first and even if you disconnect she’ll wait for you. So if you want ANY shot at Becky, you’ll help me! Shadow21: Arrrgh! Alright, I’ll help! You gotta gimme time to prepare though. OmegaMan23: Fine by me, I gotta prepare too. You got ten minutes; Miranda always comes online about this time so she should be here soon. You disconnect from Xavier and address the Shelter about that business you asked it before. “You said you recorded all that right?” “Of course sir.” “Good send the entire conversation to Becky, it’ll save me time to explain everything to her. Hopefully she’ll realize I am trying to do this to protect her and to stop a murderer. Not mention it should expose Xavier for being a fucking opportunistic vulture too. Also add a message on to it that after she reads it there probably will be a bunch of shit going down and she should get off line so she doesn’t get hit in the crossfire. And send Xavier’s private record logs to Miranda anyway, it should give me some extra time to break through Miranda’s protection while she concentrates her fury more on him.” While the Shelter carries out your orders, you do some last minute checking on your firewalls while waiting for the fireworks to begin. Five minutes pass and you see Miranda’s name arrive online. Another five minutes pass and you see a private window pop up from Xavier. Shadow21: YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU TOLD MIRANDA ANYWAY! SHE’S ATTACKING ME! OmegaMan23: Well I suggest you stop talking to me and concentrate on her then, besides you had ten minutes of prep Mr. tech wizard. “Alright Shelter, let’s get to work.” You attempt to hack Miranda’s files, and start trying to break down her protection. While you’re trying to decrypt the coding, you get another private window pop up. It’s Miranda this time. MissKitty25: Fucking trying to sneak around huh? You and fucking Xavier think you can gang up on me? Well I can take the both of you fuckers! Try this, you backdoor bastard! Miranda sends a power surge and overloads some of your components, frying them. Some of your lighting goes out and you hear something explode in the living area but fortunately nothing else happens. “Shit!” “Some of my files have been destroyed sir, attempting to correct…” You concentrate on rebuilding your protection while Miranda focuses back on Xavier. Shadow21: What the fuck man? Are you even helping? My fucking shelter is getting shit on over here! Move in you dickhead! Attack the bitch! You ignore Xavier’s plead when you see Becky log on. “Please. Please, read the damn message and get off as quick as you can…” you mutter, while launching your second assault on Miranda. “Sir, I have been monitoring Shadow21’s shelter and it’s running dangerously low on power, Miranda’s apparently siphoning it. He probably won’t survive another attack.” “All he needs to do hold out a bit longer…there that should do something…” You send a virus to corrupt some of Miranda’s systems, during this time you see Becky go offline. “Good girl.” You say and start your next round of malicious coding. You notice Xavier’s name has disappeared. MissKitty25: Xavier’s fucking dead and you’re next shithead! Don’t think your weak ass virus is gonna stop me either! Another power surge hits you. This time ALL the lighting goes out, and you even get a couple sparks coming from the computer, you’re lucky it didn’t do more damage. > You continue your attack She’s doing a lot of bluster, but your Shelter has detected just how bad of shape she’s really in, if you continue your attack she can’t do anything about it. You send your attack and finally give her a last reply. OmegaMan23: Sorry Miranda, but as much as you’d like to be one, only I can be the Omega Man in this little war. You completely destroy what’s left of Miranda’s systems and you see her name disappear from the screen. That’s it. You’ve won, but there was a high price. Your Shelter’s AI has been severely damaged… “I fffffear that I ccccannnnnnot corrrrrrect…it wwwwas a pleasure serrrrving you ssssssir….” “Thank you Shelter.” You say before it dies completely. You manually do an in-depth scan, and its definite, Miranda’s shelter is powerless. Xavier’s as well. You then proceed to start fixing some of the stuff that got damaged in the fight, and you’re not sure you can. While you’re doing this, someone appears online, you almost go into battle mode again, but then you see its just Becky. RockerChick20: Hello? Is there anyone there? OmegaMan23: Yeah, I’m still here, the others aren’t though. RockerChick20: Are they dead? OmegaMan23: No, but without power they soon will be. Is your shelter working alright? RockerChick20: Oh yeah, it’s working fine. What about yours? OmegaMan23: I dunno, it’s not in the best condition…I might be able to fix it, but…well I can figure something out. RockerChick20: So…I guess you were right about the hacker…I should’ve listened to you. I was even starting to fall for Xavier’s charms. I feel really stupid about all of this. OmegaMan23: Forget about it, it’s all over now anyway. RockerChick20: I can’t believe you were still willing to fight for me even after I broke up with you…why? OmegaMan23: Cause I’m an idiot obviously. Lol. Come on after all that time we spent together, it wasn’t like it didn’t mean anything to me, and Miranda was a killer that needed to be stopped. She might’ve even hurt you, if you didn’t give in to her advances. RockerChick20: Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me before…I never want you to leave again. OmegaMan23: Well unfortunately I might have to for awhile, my Shelter is fucked. I’m looking at it more now and I don’t trust it lasting too much longer. The AI is completely fried, and I can only access the most basic things. I have to leave this shelter. It’s not safe to stay. RockerChick20: No! I can’t lose you now! I’ve just realized you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in my life, pre and post apocalypse! OmegaMan23: Calm down, I got an idea. I’m gonna track the location of your shelter, and then I’ll just travel over there. RockerChick20: But…that’s crazy! You don’t know what’s up top! OmegaMan23: Well I already took one crazy chance for you; I might as well take another, besides like I said I gotta leave anyway, at least this way I got a worthwhile destination. Now you just be sure to read up on your Shelter’s internal operations in the meantime and try to see if you can access your elevator’s controls so it’ll open for me with no hassle, of course if you can’t I’ll figure out how to open when I get there somehow. Now I need to access your systems for a minute to get the location…and I hope I can still print out shit. You access Becky’s shelter and get the coordinates and print out a crude map. It’s not the most accurate, but you’re pretty sure if you follow it, you’ll be heading the right direction. OmegaMan23: Alright Becky, I’m calling my elevator down, and I’m leaving now. RockerChick20: You’ll come looking for me won’t you? I mean you won’t get sidetracked once you’re up there right? OmegaMan23: Of course not. And don’t worry, I won’t get killed either. We will meet in person sometime soon, I promise. A single small heart shape emoticon appears on the screen, before Becky logs off. You access the elevator controls (One of the few things working right and undamaged) and call the elevator to continue it’s decent. You go back to your room and pack up all the things you brought with you when you first got here. You didn’t even need most of the stuff, but maybe you will above ground. You then go to the water dispenser which is thankfully still working and fill up to empty bottles with water. The elevator door finally opens up and you put your bag to block the door from closing and head back to the computer room where you access the system to tell the elevator to go back up and then run back to the elevator where you gather your bag and enter. On the ride up you get a little nervous and even fearful. Not so much of what might await you on the surface, but of hoping the damn elevator doesn’t suddenly stop, fortunately that doesn’t happen and you eventually reach the ground once again. The door opens and you enter the same foyer you arrived in five years ago. Same ATM like machine is there, except its screen is flashing a single message at you. *NO REFUNDS* “No shit.” You mutter and take a deep breath before opening the door to the outside. You see a bright light, but of course it’s only the sun rather than a nuclear flash that devastated the world. You forgot how bright it really could be. Your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. On a lark you take out your long unused van keys and try to start it up, naturally it doesn’t even make a noise. “Looks like I’m walking.” Looking at the map, you’ve got quite a ways to go. You’re not sure of what to expect, but you know you’ve got a worthwhile destination to keep you going.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Confronting Xavier won’t do any good; even if he is guilty he’s just going to deny it. Possibly even antagonize him to hacking you a lot sooner. You figure maybe you should alert the Shelter about the situation and get a better understanding of its workings. You’ve been spending so much time with Becky that you’ve been neglecting other matters. “Shelter, can you tell me a little bit more about your systems? Could you easily be hacked?” “Hacked sir? Well it is possible, but highly unlikely as I have been equipped with the latest protection programs, some of it even military in origin. Are you worried someone is going to try to hack me?” “Kind of. I don’t know. Paul’s shelter failed, and I just got this feeling it wasn’t completely due to shoddy workmanship.” “Well I do remember you telling me that his wasn’t opening up. Not all these shelters were built as well as me. There were budget cutbacks during the construction of these you know.” “I suppose.” “You seem distressed sir. I’ll tell you what, it’s going a little bit out of my programming as outright spying and monitoring other shelters isn’t really part of the GZS terms of agreement, but I’ll do it. First signs of anyone trying to get anywhere NEAR my systems or anything else suspicious I’ll alert you immediately and bring the elevator down for a hasty escape in case everything goes wrong.” “Well that does make me feel better, thanks.” “You’re welcome sir, I might suggest you read up on your electronics, you may need them. I will inform you of anything that wasn’t covered in my manual, or if you have any extra questions.” A few weeks pass as you take the Shelter’s advice and start studying up. You’re spending less time with Becky, but it can’t be helped. When you do talk to her, you tell her she should do the same thing you’re doing. She thinks you’re being overly paranoid though, and despite your closeness, she’s still skeptical that you have a shelter that talks to you on a regular basis. (The only one who ever really believed you on that was Paul) She also thinks you’re trying to tell her what to do, rather than looking out for her. You’re starting to look like the “Strict Dad” rather than the “Fun Dad” now. Things between you become a little strained and a couple more months pass and Becky and you aren’t really together anymore. You notice Xavier talks to Becky a little more now, but it doesn’t really seem serious. Miranda also attempts to talk to Becky more seeing that you’re out of the picture, but Becky still doesn’t seem interested in her. Meanwhile Mark unsuccessfully makes advances towards Miranda. It seems like everyone is chasing someone else that isn’t interested, except you, who inadvertently discarded intimacy in favor of security and survival…though not entirely, you did look into this supposed hacker business in an effort to protect not just you, but Becky as well because you did like her. You just wish she would’ve listened to you. Meanwhile you’re keeping an eye on the situation and asking the Shelter for security updates, which still says it doesn’t detect anything. You wonder if you were wrong and you just fucked up the only relationship you possibly had a chance at in what’s left of this world… Another year passes... Mark stops logging on for two months which is strange, because he always made an effort to get online whenever possible even when he was in the middle of fixing something. You know he also thought he was “getting somewhere” with Miranda as well. Everyone doesn’t say too much about it. While it’s possible he’s just lost network connection and can’t access the rest of you, it’s a given that probably the worst has happened. Normally after losing Becky to your previous paranoia, you’d be willing to chalk it up to normal shelter failure this time especially since he had a lot of problems anyway, but fortunately your Shelter was doing some deeper inspection into the situation. “Sir, I have some vital information I think you should know about. I’m sorry it took me so long, but the hacker went to great lengths to cover their tracks.” “Hacker? You mean there is one then?” “Yes, I temporarily diverted some of my own power to Job24’s shelter and started accessing the systems there. It was obviously hacked upon direct inspection; some of the programs were completely fried particularly the food and water dispensers.” “Wait, you can do that?” “I’m not supposed to sir, but I know you’ve been worrying about this and since the shelter was already technically offline, the agreement doesn’t say I can’t monitor it.” “Wait so Mark? Is he still alive?” “Afraid not sir. I detected no life signs. Humans can’t go two months without water.” “No, of course they can’t…so who’s the hacker?” “Don’t know sir, like I said they did a very good job of covering their tracks, I do know it isn’t RockerChick20, which only leaves Shadow21 or MissKitty25. From what I’ve detected BOTH of their shelters are showing irregularities, so both of them have been modifying their shelter’s systems for whatever purpose. I suppose it’s possible both of them have been hacking.” “Oh thanks Shelter, that makes me feel better!” “I wasn’t my intention to cause you more distress; just stating the possibilities sir…maybe you could directly confront one of them privately. While you have their attention, I can do more inspection and know for certain. Both of them have already broken their terms of agreement by modifying their shelters, so they aren’t under GZS protection contract anymore. I can do whatever you want to either of them.” > You confront Miranda “Miranda’s always had a thing for Becky, maybe she’s been trying to eliminate the competition and if that’s the case I’m sure I’m gonna be next, I can only assume she hasn’t tried anything yet due to your heavy duty protection. I’m gonna confront her and see.” “Very well sir.” You have to wait awhile, but eventually Miranda arrives on line and you send a private invite to Miranda, she accepts. Your Shelter goes into spy mode. You wonder what you can talk to her about, but then you think of something that wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion and is completely plausible for you to need to address her privately. MissKitty25: Well this was unexpected. What do you want? OmegaMan23: Hey can’t I want to talk to you in private? MissKitty25: You can, I just don’t know what for. OmegaMan23: Well as you know, me and Becky aren’t really together anymore. MissKitty25: Lol. So is that why you privately messaged me? You’re looking for another cyber girlfriend because you lost your last one? Shit you’re pathetic. OmegaMan23: So I take it that’s a big no? MissKitty25: Got that right. OmegaMan23: There’s no way I can convince you? MissKitty25: Probably not, but what the hell I’m bored go ahead. I hope you’re at least as amusing as Mark was though. You spend at least 10 minutes falsely attempting to “woo” Miranda until your Shelter ceases its spying and confirms what you believed all along. Miranda’s the hacker. Now you take the opportunity to excuse yourself. OmegaMan23: Well, I suppose I can’t convince you. I’ll leave you be. MissKitty25: Alright, oh hey before you leave, did you get the information you wanted? OmegaMan23: What information? MissKitty25: The information your Shelter invaded my internal logs for. You didn’t think I was actually buying your whole flirting act did you? I just wanted to keep you online so I could send a nice little virus back. Thanks. If you hadn’t done this, I probably would’ve had a couple extra months of work ahead to work on gaining access. This was so much easier. Now I can work on Xavier. See ya! Miranda logs off and suddenly your Shelter begins to make weird noises and the lighting begins to flicker. “Innnnnterrrrrnal components coooooomprissssssed sssssssir…” You try to disconnect your network connection, but it’s too late the virus is in full effect. You attempt to fix the problem, but your computer goes completely haywire and a large message saying “ERROR!” is all that displays before it completely shuts down. The computer room door then automatically slams shut, locking you inside and leaving you to die a slow lingering death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your curiosity is peaked and you take the opportunity to talk with the others whenever you can. The Shelter is certainly pleased you are being social. Months pass and you all learn more about each other more or less. (Though only RockerChick has even hinted at turning on the cameras to see each other visually) You have to admit though you’re a little more interested in what’s going on their shelters. From what you can tell RockerChick has a shelter similar to yours with just a few differences in equipment. Her personality is damn near as “chipper” as the Shelter. She likes talking with everyone, but seems to like speaking to you a lot more. Must be your “winning” personality. Job’s shelter is a lot like yours too except he’s constantly complaining about various things breaking down and he has to fix. Last time he said he damn near got crushed by his own bed when it suddenly rose back up into the wall when he was sleeping. He doesn’t have much in entertainment either, so he’s always glad to talk with anybody. Mainly to complain. CaseyJones’ Shelter STILL hasn’t become fully functional! He’s effectively trapped in the living area and bathroom. He has his computer to talk to everyone but little else. He doesn’t really seem to care though; apparently he brought a shitload of weed with him and has somehow created a small hydroponics pot farm in his bathtub (He doesn’t see the need to bathe since he’s not in contact with anyone) He says he plans on spending the Aftermath completely stoned. Job can’t understand why Casey isn’t freaking out about his situation. Apparently MissKitty has a more “homey” type shelter. From the description it sounds like it’s bigger than any of yours and not quite as “sterile”. She has a hot tub in her bathroom and some other luxury type items. MissKitty tends to brag a lot and is rather an uninteresting person other than the weird porn she watches and describes sometimes. Job often complains that it’s wasted on her. As for Shadow, he or she barely ever talks. Shadow makes his presence known, but then just lurks and doesn’t say anything. Most of the others forget he’s even there, but you always keep it in the back of your mind and will address him when you feel the need. So far the only thing he’s mentioned about his shelter is how dim the lighting is. One thing that you’ve been tempted to do is use the private feature and talk to one of the others in private. The only ones that interest you are RockerChick and Shadow though. The first because she seems friendly with you. The second because you’re kind of suspicious of Shadow and you’re hoping to learn more. > You talk more in depth with Shadow Shadow might be fooling the others, but you know he (or she) is up to no good! The next time you’re online and see Shadow you access the private feature to request to talk to Shadow directly without the others interfering. You almost expect Shadow to ignore it, but he doesn’t and accepts your request. Shadow21: Yeah, so what do you want and why the need for all the secrecy? OmegaMan23: I might ask you the same thing. I mean why are you even bothering to come online if you aren’t going to speak to anyone? Shadow21: What business is it of yours what I do? OmegaMan23: Because it’s been like six months and we still don’t know shit about you! Hell we don’t even know if you’re a girl or a guy! You’re acting fucking suspicious. Shadow21: Oh excuse me for being private Mr. fuckin’ busybody! Maybe you and the rest like telling all your business, but I don’t…as a matter of fact YOU haven’t really told anything about yourself either, so you don’t have any room to talk motherfucker! OmegaMan23: What the hell are you talking about? Your brain as dim as your lighting over there? I’ve talked about myself plenty, shit you’ve been lurking enough you should’ve known that. Shadow21: Ehhh, no not like the others. You tend to still talk about superficial shit. The others talk about their pasts a lot more, while all you seem to do is try to figure out what’s going on in all of their shelters, like you’re taking notes on them or something. Seems to me YOU’RE the one acting suspicious and you’re just getting mad because I’m not volunteering information. OmegaMan23: Oh fuck no! You are not turning this shit around on me! I’m at least TRYING to be social; all you’re doing is fucking spying as far as I’m concerned. You’re up to something. Shadow21: Okay, I think MissKitty was right about you a few months back, you’ve gone fucking batty from the isolation and paranoia’s starting to set in. Shit, you claim the Shelter talks to you. OmegaMan23: It DOES talk to me! And what isolation? I’ve been talking to ALL of you fuckers! In fact couple that with talking with the shelter and I’m probably the most social of all of you! Shadow21: Yeah, you can also add the five other personalities you probably got in your head too, whatever nutjob. I’m done talking with you. OmegaMan23: Don’t you fucking log off, this isn’t over! You slam your fist down on the keyboard when you see that Shadow has indeed logged off. “Sir, are you okay?” the Shelter asks. “Yeah, but I know that Shadow motherfucker is up to something, I’m going to warn the others. I just can’t believe they don’t see it.” “Do you really believe that sir?” “Of course I do! I mean I got an instinct for this sort of thing, and I know I’m right!” “Well sir, if you do feel this way I’ll certainly accommodate you anyway I can…but might I suggest that you NOT tell the others?” “Why not?” “Because they aren’t going to believe you sir. You’ll just come off as a paranoid nut case.” “But I’m not!” “I know you’re not, but the others don’t know you the way I do sir.” “Well that might be, but I have to do it anyway. At least I will have warned them.” “You know best sir.” The next day you go online again, as usual everyone’s there, except Shadow. It seems your little talk yesterday has scared him off. Job24: And now I got water all over the fucking floor! I’m telling you, it’s a good thing I managed to shut it off when I did otherwise the entire shelter would’ve been flooded and I would’ve drowned! CaseyJones22: Oh come on, it probably wasn’t that bad. You need to relax. Job24: Easy for you to say pothead, you’re not the one living in a deathtrap! MissKitty25: Yeah, but then most of his Shelter hasn’t opened up. Has it? CaseyJones22: Nah. Doesn’t bother me though, I got what I need here. RockerChickl20: Hey guys, don’t you want to see each other yet? I’m really curious, but I don’t want to turn on my camera unless everyone else is going to do it! OmegaMan23: I wouldn’t do that, you don’t want to be giving Shadow any extra information by letting him see into your Shelters, who knows what the hell what he’ll do with it. RockerChick20: What do you mean? OmegaMan23: What I mean is, I had an interesting discussion with Shadow yesterday and I’ve determined he’s up to no good. Job24: What? How do you know this? OmegaMan23: Jesus Christ isn’t it fucking obvious? All he does is lurk on here trying to gather information on all of us! I mean who knows what the fuck he’s doing! CaseyJones22: Will you relax? Maybe the dude’s just shy. What could he do with our personal information anyway? I mean, I once accidentally fucked a transvestite while flying on XTC one time. Big fuckin’ whoop so everyone knows about it now. You think I give a shit? The old world’s dead, and I’m down here smokin’ and tokin’. Job24: Ew. I think you still should’ve kept that to yourself…so um what was it like? CaseyJones22: I dunno, I can’t remember the details. OmegaMan23: I’m not talking about your sorted sex lives…(sigh) for fuck’s sake did it ever occur to you that maybe he’s the fucking cause of your Shelter’s troubles? I mean we’re all connected to each other to a certain degree, I’m saying he might be hacking shit! RockerChick20: But for what purpose? I mean why? OmegaMan23: How the hell should I know? Because he’s a sociopath that’s why! What reason do most bad people do to do bad things? Job24: Oh man! Oh man! Oh shit! Oh God! Oh fuck! CaseyJones22: You’re fucking losing it dude, and I’m not talking about Job. There’s no proof in what you’re saying. I mean don’t remember GZS saying these things were slightly experimental, how do you know it just isn’t their fuck ups? I’m starting to wonder if you actually do have a “talking Shelter” and it’s not just some voice you’re hearing your head like MissKitty said a few months back. MissKitty25: You know I wasn’t going to say anything, but I also spoke to Shadow yesterday in private when he requested to talk to me and he was telling me about your conversation with him, saying you were ranting at him first, kind of like how you’re ranting now. I’d have to say I agree with him and you’re the crazy one. OmegaMan23: GODDAMN IT! The question of whether I’m crazy or not isn’t the fucking issue here! I’m trying to warn all you fucktards of a potential threat here and you’re all too fucking stupid to listen! RockerChick20: You know I thought you were an interesting guy, but now I see the rest are right about you, you are a paranoid nutjob and to think I defended you sometimes. OmegaMan23: What the…oh you fuckers have been talking about me behind my back? Okay fine, I tried to warn you assholes, but you didn’t want to listen. You think about that when one of YOUR Shelter’s start fucking up. And for the others who are already experiencing problems, I’d start saying your prayers, because one of these days your Shelter is going to fail completely, then you’ll see I’m right. I’m done with all of you. You log off abruptly and ponder your next move. > You disconnect your network system You decide not to take any chances and you start ripping out your network lines. “What are you doing sir?” “I’m not going to give that fucker a chance to hack into your systems and fuck up my shit!” “I assure you sir, even if he attempted to do that, I have been layered with the latest in firewalls and anti-…” “Look it’ll make me feel fucking better! Now how do I disable this main line without needing to chop it in half?” “Is this what you really want sir?” “YES!” “Very well, you’ll find a panel behind the desk, open it and you’ll find the attachment. Just simply turn a latch and unhook it and you’ll be completely isolated like you want. No need to chop up my lines, I wouldn’t advise that anyway, you’d likely get electrocuted while they were still connected.” “Thanks.” You follow the Shelter’s instructions and feel slightly better. “Hey there’s no way he could still hack you is there?” “I fail to see how sir, we’re no longer connected to the network, not to mention several feet underground. Even if he somehow had a wireless connection he couldn’t reach us. Its not like there are any working transmitter towers anymore, let alone any powerful enough to send a signal to penetrate not just yours but his own underground metal Shelter. And as I said I have been equipped with the latest computer system protection…some of it even Military in origin. You may rest assured you are completely safe sir.” “Okay…well I guess I’ll go watch Taxi Driver again.” Months pass without incident and you go about your life. Eventually your faint worry about being hacked disappears altogether. You pretty much fall into a routine, which nearly mirrors the one you had in your before Armageddon life. In fact if it wasn’t for the Shelter speaking to you on a regular basis you’d probably forget you were living in an underground shelter with the world above you completely destroyed. About five years pass and even you are starting to get restless. You wake up one day and come to the realization: You’ve watched all the movies several times (even the ones you didn’t like) You’ve read all the books several times (even the ones you didn’t like) You’ve played all the games several times (even the ones you didn’t like) You’ve spent hours, even days on end talking with the Shelter, which does house a great wealth of knowledge. It even toned down its overly friendly voice and started addressing you with a normal inflection, but it’s not really the same as talking to a real person even if it really tries its best to be. Perhaps if you had some new items to occupy your time, you wouldn’t be so restless. Perhaps if you could actually leave your immediate surroundings for awhile, you’d be able to cope more. Perhaps if you could talk with a few real people, you’d then remember why you didn’t like talking with them in the first place, so you could go back to your solitude without thinking about it anymore… Then you remember you could reconnect your network system back in. Maybe you were being overly paranoid. Thinking back now, there really wasn’t any indication Shadow was doing anything sinister. You’re almost curious to know what’s going on with everyone. Maybe Shadow even revealed what gender they were by now! > You reconnect your system “Fuck it. I’m not going to live in fear. I need to do this.” You say to yourself. “Do what sir?” the Shelter. “I’m reconnecting to the network; I need to fucking talk to someone other than you. No offense.” “None taken sir. I must admit I was starting to worry about your mental state. In fact I was going to suggest you do just that, but I thought that it may upset you.” You go into your computer room and reconnect your system. You’re a little nervous, you don’t know what to expect. You log on for the first time in five years. RockerChick20: OmegaMan? OmegaMan23: Yeah it’s me. RockerChick20: We all thought you were dead! OmegaMan23: Pretty much was for the last year. Walking dead as it were. MissKitty25: So you still talking to the voices in your head…I mean your Shelter? OmegaMan23: Well I tend to alternate between the two and they’re all still more interesting than you. So much for being civil. RockerChick20: Oh be nice Miranda! We don’t have too many others to talk to anymore, I’m sure Omega’s not here to cause trouble again. OmegaMan23: I wasn’t trying to cause trouble the first time…Miranda? MissKitty25: Yeah while you were gone, we all opened up a lot more and actually learned each other’s real names. Guess your paranoia was contagious. RockerChick20: Hey I wanted us to use the cameras right from the beginning, so I wasn’t paranoid! Anyway since you’re back, my real name’s Becky. What’s yours? Oh wait turn on your camera! Everyone’s seen each other now! OmegaMan23: Wait a minute. You said you don’t have too many others to talk to anymore, what did you mean? RockerChick20: Oh. Well that’s a bit sad actually. Not too long after you left, Paul or Casey Jones as you probably remembered him, said his food dispensers had failed. He said he couldn’t get them to work at all, soon his water dispenser failed too. He couldn’t even get his bathroom taps to work. He knew he didn’t have much time left after that, so he logged on one last time to tell us all good bye and said he’d spare us the agony of having to speak to him knowing that was slowly dying of starvation and dehydration…I don’t really like to think about it. OmegaMan23: Shit, that’s a fucked up way to go. So um, what happened to Job? MissKitty25: You mean Mark? Don’t know exactly, but he stopped logging on about a couple years ago and given that he was on here whenever he could, it’s safe to say nothing good happened to him. He did say he was having power problems though the last time he was on, we all figured it was just his usual panicking over minor Shelter glitches, but it might’ve been serious this time. Of course maybe he’s still alive and he’s just lost network power and he just can’t access us, but for all his stressing, he was a pretty good mechanic and electronics guy, so it seems like he would’ve fixed the problem by now. Don’t know. Kind of glad not to hear him whine anymore though. OmegaMan23: Alright, I hesitate to ask, but where’s Shadow? RockerChick20: Xavier? About three months after Job disappeared. Miranda told me he sent her a message saying he was leaving his Shelter Said he wasn’t going rot in a glorified coffin anymore and was going to take his chances back on the surface. OmegaMan23: So Shadow was a guy eh? How the hell did he leave his Shelter? There’s no way to call the elevator back down! MissKitty25: Maybe he had a different kind of Shelter set up, or he just climbed up the shaft or something. Who cares? He was an asshole anyway. So is this a temporary visit or do you intend on sticking around? RockerChick20: You should stick around; it gets kind of lonely with just me and Miranda, if you turn on your camera we could do something together! MissKitty25: You better not be implying what I think you are Becky, that’s just between me and you. RockerChick20: Well you don’t have to join in then, you’ve been acting like a domineering bitch lately anyway. MissKitty25: Oh so that’s what this is all about? Some guy comes around and you’re all ready to fucking drop everything and suck his dick? RockerChick20: Suck his…what the hell? It’s fucking cyber, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a good way to pass the time, plus I’d like to do it with a GUY in some fashion again, seeing as you probably ran Shadow off before anything even happened! MissKitty25: So MY feelings and all those private chats we had meant nothing to you?! You don’t have any feelings for me?! Don’t you LOVE me?! RockerChick20: Well yeah I do to a degree, but I mean come on it’s really not the same. I mean maybe it would be different if we could actually touch each other and stuff, but… MissKitty25: FUCK YOU! Miranda suddenly logs off, and Becky does likewise leaving you shaking your head at the whole situation. > You disconnect your system again Well you’ve heard enough and you’re not putting yourself in the middle of this pointless drama. “Disconnecting again sir?” “Hell yes! I just needed to remind myself of the benefits of solitude! I’m gonna go watch Scarface again!” Well you found your routine to stave off insanity. You retreat into solitude once again without thinking anymore of it, then every so often you reconnect briefly and stir shit up between Becky and Miranda then disconnect again. You don’t think about leaving the Shelter (Even if you could) seeing as you’ve found a way to cope with your situation, and there’s always the Shelter itself to talk to which is never as “friendly” to you again for some reason. (Perhaps it disapproves of you acting like a dick) As the years go by you eventually die of an embarrassing shower accident by getting soap in your eyes and then slipping and cracking your skull on the sink while attempting to reach for a towel. Detecting your demise, the Shelter powers down.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Fuck it. I’m not going to live in fear. I need to do this.” You say to yourself. “Do what sir?” the Shelter. “I’m reconnecting to the network; I need to fucking talk to someone other than you. No offense.” “None taken sir. I must admit I was starting to worry about your mental state. In fact I was going to suggest you do just that, but I thought that it may upset you.” You go into your computer room and reconnect your system. You’re a little nervous, you don’t know what to expect. You log on for the first time in five years. RockerChick20: OmegaMan? OmegaMan23: Yeah it’s me. RockerChick20: We all thought you were dead! OmegaMan23: Pretty much was for the last year. Walking dead as it were. MissKitty25: So you still talking to the voices in your head…I mean your Shelter? OmegaMan23: Well I tend to alternate between the two and they’re all still more interesting than you. So much for being civil. RockerChick20: Oh be nice Miranda! We don’t have too many others to talk to anymore, I’m sure Omega’s not here to cause trouble again. OmegaMan23: I wasn’t trying to cause trouble the first time…Miranda? MissKitty25: Yeah while you were gone, we all opened up a lot more and actually learned each other’s real names. Guess your paranoia was contagious. RockerChick20: Hey I wanted us to use the cameras right from the beginning, so I wasn’t paranoid! Anyway since you’re back, my real name’s Becky. What’s yours? Oh wait turn on your camera! Everyone’s seen each other now! OmegaMan23: Wait a minute. You said you don’t have too many others to talk to anymore, what did you mean? RockerChick20: Oh. Well that’s a bit sad actually. Not too long after you left, Paul or Casey Jones as you probably remembered him, said his food dispensers had failed. He said he couldn’t get them to work at all, soon his water dispenser failed too. He couldn’t even get his bathroom taps to work. He knew he didn’t have much time left after that, so he logged on one last time to tell us all good bye and said he’d spare us the agony of having to speak to him knowing that was slowly dying of starvation and dehydration…I don’t really like to think about it. OmegaMan23: Shit, that’s a fucked up way to go. So um, what happened to Job? MissKitty25: You mean Mark? Don’t know exactly, but he stopped logging on about a couple years ago and given that he was on here whenever he could, it’s safe to say nothing good happened to him. He did say he was having power problems though the last time he was on, we all figured it was just his usual panicking over minor Shelter glitches, but it might’ve been serious this time. Of course maybe he’s still alive and he’s just lost network power and he just can’t access us, but for all his stressing, he was a pretty good mechanic and electronics guy, so it seems like he would’ve fixed the problem by now. Don’t know. Kind of glad not to hear him whine anymore though. OmegaMan23: Alright, I hesitate to ask, but where’s Shadow? RockerChick20: Xavier? About three months after Job disappeared. Miranda told me he sent her a message saying he was leaving his Shelter Said he wasn’t going rot in a glorified coffin anymore and was going to take his chances back on the surface. OmegaMan23: So Shadow was a guy eh? How the hell did he leave his Shelter? There’s no way to call the elevator back down! MissKitty25: Maybe he had a different kind of Shelter set up, or he just climbed up the shaft or something. Who cares? He was an asshole anyway. So is this a temporary visit or do you intend on sticking around? RockerChick20: You should stick around; it gets kind of lonely with just me and Miranda, if you turn on your camera we could do something together! MissKitty25: You better not be implying what I think you are Becky, that’s just between me and you. RockerChick20: Well you don’t have to join in then, you’ve been acting like a domineering bitch lately anyway. MissKitty25: Oh so that’s what this is all about? Some guy comes around and you’re all ready to fucking drop everything and suck his dick? RockerChick20: Suck his…what the hell? It’s fucking cyber, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a good way to pass the time, plus I’d like to do it with a GUY in some fashion again, seeing as you probably ran Shadow off before anything even happened! MissKitty25: So MY feelings and all those private chats we had meant nothing to you?! You don’t have any feelings for me?! Don’t you LOVE me?! RockerChick20: Well yeah I do to a degree, but I mean come on it’s really not the same. I mean maybe it would be different if we could actually touch each other and stuff, but… MissKitty25: FUCK YOU! Miranda suddenly logs off, and Becky does likewise leaving you shaking your head at the whole situation. > You log back on later You decide maybe you should try to get a hold of Becky while Miranda’s not around, you go to bed. The next day you log on and see Becky’s around, but not Miranda. Probably still pissed. RockerChick20: Hey! I was hoping you’d be back and didn’t get turned off by the drama yesterday. OmegaMan23: Nah, not me. Besides I was interested in some of that stuff you were talking about yesterday. RockerChick20: Oh really? Well let’s make this private, just in case Miranda decides to show up. I mean…I’m sorry she got all attached and stuff, but I can do what the hell I want you know? I mean it’s the world is dead! Shouldn’t I be able to grab as much fun as I can? OmegaMan23: You’re not getting any arguments from me. RockerChick20: Okay, well hopefully Miranda gets over it; I still think it would be fun for all of us together. Now turn on your camera and tell me your name finally! You both go into private mode where you see Becky and she finally sees you. Fortunately you both seem to find each other attractive, then after telling her your name, you start cybering. It’s definitely not the same as the real thing, but you have a really good imagination and a naked chick talking dirty to you while touching herself is better than nothing! You and Becky do this quite a bit in the passing weeks, while learning a little bit more about each other. Every now and then you see Miranda come online briefly, but then quickly logs off whenever she realizes you and Becky are in a private “discussion”. You’ve also realized you haven’t heard the Shelter talk to you like in normally does. It usually says at least good morning to you, but it’s been silent for some time. You don’t think too much of all this until one day you wake up to a voice much different than the one that the Shelter has. “You dreaming about Becky, motherfucker? Yeah I bet you are! You hear me? Get the fuck up I got something to tell your sorry ass!” “What the fuck? Shelter?” “No, it ain’t your fucking Shelter talking to you! I always thought you were lying about that, but apparently you weren’t seeing as I had to disable the Shelter’s voice program which does make it more convenient to tell this to you. I guess honesty is one of your few redeeming qualities; of course stealing someone’s love isn’t though right? You fucked up big time pal!” “Well I can only assume this is Miranda.” “You assume right fucktard. While you and Becky were having fun, I was accessing your Shelter’s systems.” Suddenly all your lights go out and then go back on. You also see the TV come on and see an angry looking woman on the screen. “You see that? You got you by the fucking balls bitch! If I want I can shut this whole thing down and make it your fucking tomb just like I did with Casey and Job. Maybe you’ll be smart like Shadow and leave the fucking Shelter, because it’s your only chance for survival at this point.” “What the…so wait. Can’t we talk about this?” “No there ain’t any fucking talking! Becky is MINE, you fucking hear me? Everything was perfect, until you decided to show up again and steal her away! Shit, you’re lucky I’m even giving you the option of living! Don’t think about attempting to disconnect or anything else, I’m watching you and can detect your every move. Your only options are to leave or DIE!” “But…how? How am I supposed to do that?! The elevator’s at the top and there’s no call button!” “I told you I have complete access to your systems, I’m going to bring the elevator down, and you can pack up your shit and get ready to leave. I suggest you do it quickly, because I’m not going to give you much time.” Sounds pretty final. > You pack up and leave You quickly gather up your stuff as quickly as you can thankful that this crazy bitch is even giving you a chance for survival. You curse yourself for reconnecting back to the system, you knew someone was doing some shit like this; you just had the wrong person. You make sure to take your pistol, you have no idea what the outside world is like now, but you’re sure you’re going to need it. As you hear the elevator slowly reach the bottom you fill up a couple of your empty bottles with water, you hope you’ll have enough to last you. “I sure hope you’re ready, because the elevator is.” Miranda says. “Yeah, okay, okay!” you answer and get in the elevator, which begins to ascend. Your current state of mind is a mixture of fear and anxiousness. Part of you begins to wonder if it won’t be so bad on the surface, after all…then the elevator suddenly stops and doesn’t continue, your fear begins to overwhelm you completely when you hear Miranda’s menacing voice again. “Well I’m glad you had the intelligence to take a gun with you, it should certainly save you from the slow death that occurred to Shadow when I trapped him in the elevator. I’ll inform Becky you said goodbye.” You scream out, but there is no one to help you. You’ve effectively been trapped in an even worse situation than you were before. There isn’t any service access, there’s no panel you can pry open, even the solid steel door is a single piece that slides one way. You wouldn’t be able to pry it open even if you had the strength to do so. You’re doomed and you know it. Miranda was right; there isn’t any point in prolonging the inevitable. You take your gun, hold it to your head and close your eyes…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide maybe you should try to get a hold of Becky while Miranda’s not around, you go to bed. The next day you log on and see Becky’s around, but not Miranda. Probably still pissed. RockerChick20: Hey! I was hoping you’d be back and didn’t get turned off by the drama yesterday. OmegaMan23: Nah, not me. Besides I was interested in some of that stuff you were talking about yesterday. RockerChick20: Oh really? Well let’s make this private, just in case Miranda decides to show up. I mean…I’m sorry she got all attached and stuff, but I can do what the hell I want you know? I mean it’s the world is dead! Shouldn’t I be able to grab as much fun as I can? OmegaMan23: You’re not getting any arguments from me. RockerChick20: Okay, well hopefully Miranda gets over it; I still think it would be fun for all of us together. Now turn on your camera and tell me your name finally! You both go into private mode where you see Becky and she finally sees you. Fortunately you both seem to find each other attractive, then after telling her your name, you start cybering. It’s definitely not the same as the real thing, but you have a really good imagination and a naked chick talking dirty to you while touching herself is better than nothing! You and Becky do this quite a bit in the passing weeks, while learning a little bit more about each other. Every now and then you see Miranda come online briefly, but then quickly logs off whenever she realizes you and Becky are in a private “discussion”. You’ve also realized you haven’t heard the Shelter talk to you like in normally does. It usually says at least good morning to you, but it’s been silent for some time. You don’t think too much of all this until one day you wake up to a voice much different than the one that the Shelter has. “You dreaming about Becky, motherfucker? Yeah I bet you are! You hear me? Get the fuck up I got something to tell your sorry ass!” “What the fuck? Shelter?” “No, it ain’t your fucking Shelter talking to you! I always thought you were lying about that, but apparently you weren’t seeing as I had to disable the Shelter’s voice program which does make it more convenient to tell this to you. I guess honesty is one of your few redeeming qualities; of course stealing someone’s love isn’t though right? You fucked up big time pal!” “Well I can only assume this is Miranda.” “You assume right fucktard. While you and Becky were having fun, I was accessing your Shelter’s systems.” Suddenly all your lights go out and then go back on. You also see the TV come on and see an angry looking woman on the screen. “You see that? You got you by the fucking balls bitch! If I want I can shut this whole thing down and make it your fucking tomb just like I did with Casey and Job. Maybe you’ll be smart like Shadow and leave the fucking Shelter, because it’s your only chance for survival at this point.” “What the…so wait. Can’t we talk about this?” “No there ain’t any fucking talking! Becky is MINE, you fucking hear me? Everything was perfect, until you decided to show up again and steal her away! Shit, you’re lucky I’m even giving you the option of living! Don’t think about attempting to disconnect or anything else, I’m watching you and can detect your every move. Your only options are to leave or DIE!” “But…how? How am I supposed to do that?! The elevator’s at the top and there’s no call button!” “I told you I have complete access to your systems, I’m going to bring the elevator down, and you can pack up your shit and get ready to leave. I suggest you do it quickly, because I’m not going to give you much time.” Sounds pretty final. > You dash for the computer room Bullshit. While Miranda undoubtedly has control of some of your systems, if she had complete control, she wouldn’t even be giving you a chance for survival with as obsessed as she obviously is. She would’ve just disconnected your food and water dispenser and taunted you before leaving you to die, or even just waited for you to enter one of your other rooms and then sealed the door to trap you. Actually she would’ve sealed the door to the computer room if she was so worried about you disconnecting. In any case if you get in that elevator you’re most assuredly at her mercy, what’s keeping her from stopping the elevator midway through as you’re going up? You’re sure if you just go to the computer room, you could disconnect and that would be the end of this. “Alright Miranda, let me pack some things.” “Yeah yeah, hurry up, the Elevator will be here soon, and you better be finished packing your shit when it…HEY WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING!!!” You run to the computer room while Miranda shouts more threats at you, and turns the lights off. “I warned you! Don’t you dare try to disconnect, this Shelter will be your fucking tomb! Here’s a fucking virus shithead!” You stumble around in the dark as you rip out all your connection lines again and then forcefully pull out the mainline destroying the attachment. Miranda’s voice disappears and you’ve stopped her. However you still need to get things back to normal again, so you immediately turn your computer on and start doing a system diagnostic, after all you weren’t completely idle during those years of isolation. You read books on electronics in your private library and the Shelter handbook cover to cover, not to mention had lengthily conversations with it about some of its systems (Though you wish you’d paid a little more attention). You begin delving into the inner the workings of the Shelter’s controls. After some scanning, Miranda really fucked up some of your shit. You manage to get the lights on again, but lots of files were corrupted due to her hacking. The AI is damaged, you doubt if it’ll be talking to you again anytime soon. You’re going to have to spend a lot of time working on things just to get them right again…its funny, but you realize you could finish bringing the elevator down and leave if you wanted to. You don’t know why you didn’t think to do this before, but then again things were a little different when the Shelter was actually talking to you. It didn’t feel right to go hacking into the Shelter while it was attempting to be your friend. > You leave the Shelter You’re not wasting anymore time here, even if you do fix everything, what then? You’ve done all there is to do here, there’s nothing left. You access the elevator controls (One of the few things working right and undamaged) and call the elevator to continue it’s decent. You go back to your room and pack up all the things you brought with you when you first got here. You didn’t even need most of the stuff, but maybe you will above ground. You then go to the water dispenser which is thankfully still working and fill up to empty bottles with water. The elevator door finally opens up and you put your bag to block the door from closing and head back to the computer room where you access the system to tell the elevator to go back up and then run back to the elevator where you gather your bag and enter. On the ride up you get a little nervous and even fearful. Not so much of what might await you on the surface, but of hoping the damn elevator doesn’t suddenly stop, fortunately that doesn’t happen and you eventually reach the ground once again. The door opens and you enter the same foyer you arrived in five years ago. Same ATM like machine is there, except its screen is flashing a single message at you. *NO REFUNDS* “No shit.” You mutter and take a deep breath before opening the door to the outside. You see a bright light, but of course it’s only the sun rather than a nuclear flash that devastated the world. You forgot how bright it really could be. Your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. On a lark you take out your long unused van keys and try to start it up, naturally it doesn’t even make a noise. “Looks like I’m walking.” As you make you way down the empty road you see some smoke in the distance. Civilization perhaps? Not knowing where else to go, you head that way. You’re not sure of what to expect, but it’ll be better than the eternal boredom you would’ve faced while still in the Shelter. You’re not too worried, you got your gun.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Bullshit. While Miranda undoubtedly has control of some of your systems, if she had complete control, she wouldn’t even be giving you a chance for survival with as obsessed as she obviously is. She would’ve just disconnected your food and water dispenser and taunted you before leaving you to die, or even just waited for you to enter one of your other rooms and then sealed the door to trap you. Actually she would’ve sealed the door to the computer room if she was so worried about you disconnecting. In any case if you get in that elevator you’re most assuredly at her mercy, what’s keeping her from stopping the elevator midway through as you’re going up? You’re sure if you just go to the computer room, you could disconnect and that would be the end of this. “Alright Miranda, let me pack some things.” “Yeah yeah, hurry up, the Elevator will be here soon, and you better be finished packing your shit when it…HEY WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING!!!” You run to the computer room while Miranda shouts more threats at you, and turns the lights off. “I warned you! Don’t you dare try to disconnect, this Shelter will be your fucking tomb! Here’s a fucking virus shithead!” You stumble around in the dark as you rip out all your connection lines again and then forcefully pull out the mainline destroying the attachment. Miranda’s voice disappears and you’ve stopped her. However you still need to get things back to normal again, so you immediately turn your computer on and start doing a system diagnostic, after all you weren’t completely idle during those years of isolation. You read books on electronics in your private library and the Shelter handbook cover to cover, not to mention had lengthily conversations with it about some of its systems (Though you wish you’d paid a little more attention). You begin delving into the inner the workings of the Shelter’s controls. After some scanning, Miranda really fucked up some of your shit. You manage to get the lights on again, but lots of files were corrupted due to her hacking. The AI is damaged, you doubt if it’ll be talking to you again anytime soon. You’re going to have to spend a lot of time working on things just to get them right again…its funny, but you realize you could finish bringing the elevator down and leave if you wanted to. You don’t know why you didn’t think to do this before, but then again things were a little different when the Shelter was actually talking to you. It didn’t feel right to go hacking into the Shelter while it was attempting to be your friend. > You fix the Shelter You’re not about to abandon your home, besides the surface is probably still unsafe who know what the hell awaits you up there. You begin working on fixing things starting with the water controls. Apparently Miranda was trying to turn off your dispenser, but only succeeded in turning off the water to your bathroom facilities. About five hours in, your lighting goes out again. You’re about to check it, then they come back on. You then hear the TV turn on by itself, with nothing but static. When you leave the computer room to see what’s going on personally, the door slams shut. Then water dispenser turns on and leaks water all over the floor for awhile and then ceases. You go over to check it and your heart stops when you can’t get it work. The food one doesn’t work either. You begin to panic and then the door to the computer room opens up again. Seizing the opportunity you run back in to fix whatever the hell is suddenly turning your shelter haywire, when on the computer screen you see in big letters. *VIRUS ENACTED! ERROR! ERROR! TOTAL SYSTEM SHUT DOWN!* You try to do something, but the hard drive is now completely fucked and all you get is error messages constantly appearing all over the screen. Miranda managed to send her virus before you could disconnect and though it took awhile, it’s finally taking effect now, spectacularly. The lighting goes out, the room door slams shut, the computer screen goes black and you’re left in complete darkness and silence with no hope whatsoever. Miranda’s threat has come true and this Shelter has become your tomb. Now you’re left to die a slow lingering death. It doesn’t do any good to scream, but you do anyway.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide not to take any chances and you start ripping out your network lines. “What are you doing sir?” “I’m not going to give that fucker a chance to hack into your systems and fuck up my shit!” “I assure you sir, even if he attempted to do that, I have been layered with the latest in firewalls and anti-…” “Look it’ll make me feel fucking better! Now how do I disable this main line without needing to chop it in half?” “Is this what you really want sir?” “YES!” “Very well, you’ll find a panel behind the desk, open it and you’ll find the attachment. Just simply turn a latch and unhook it and you’ll be completely isolated like you want. No need to chop up my lines, I wouldn’t advise that anyway, you’d likely get electrocuted while they were still connected.” “Thanks.” You follow the Shelter’s instructions and feel slightly better. “Hey there’s no way he could still hack you is there?” “I fail to see how sir, we’re no longer connected to the network, not to mention several feet underground. Even if he somehow had a wireless connection he couldn’t reach us. Its not like there are any working transmitter towers anymore, let alone any powerful enough to send a signal to penetrate not just yours but his own underground metal Shelter. And as I said I have been equipped with the latest computer system protection…some of it even Military in origin. You may rest assured you are completely safe sir.” “Okay…well I guess I’ll go watch Taxi Driver again.” Months pass without incident and you go about your life. Eventually your faint worry about being hacked disappears altogether. You pretty much fall into a routine, which nearly mirrors the one you had in your before Armageddon life. In fact if it wasn’t for the Shelter speaking to you on a regular basis you’d probably forget you were living in an underground shelter with the world above you completely destroyed. About five years pass and even you are starting to get restless. You wake up one day and come to the realization: You’ve watched all the movies several times (even the ones you didn’t like) You’ve read all the books several times (even the ones you didn’t like) You’ve played all the games several times (even the ones you didn’t like) You’ve spent hours, even days on end talking with the Shelter, which does house a great wealth of knowledge. It even toned down its overly friendly voice and started addressing you with a normal inflection, but it’s not really the same as talking to a real person even if it really tries its best to be. Perhaps if you had some new items to occupy your time, you wouldn’t be so restless. Perhaps if you could actually leave your immediate surroundings for awhile, you’d be able to cope more. Perhaps if you could talk with a few real people, you’d then remember why you didn’t like talking with them in the first place, so you could go back to your solitude without thinking about it anymore… Then you remember you could reconnect your network system back in. Maybe you were being overly paranoid. Thinking back now, there really wasn’t any indication Shadow was doing anything sinister. You’re almost curious to know what’s going on with everyone. Maybe Shadow even revealed what gender they were by now! > You do not reconnect No, you’re not going to risk it. For all you know Shadow’s already hacked everyone else’s shelter and has been waiting patiently for you to return one day. You’re not falling for it. You’ll have to find something else to do though to occupy your time though, you figure as long you keep your mind occupied with something new, you won’t get too bored. Twiddling your thumbs isn’t going to cut it. It occurs to you that maybe you should invent a hobby of some sort. You’ve read a lot on electronics in the shelter library, as well as the handbook cover to cover in your five years here, maybe you could tinker with some shit to make it more efficient. There’s the other option which you didn’t think you’d ever think about and that’s actually leaving the Shelter. You don’t know how to go about that except ask the Shelter to let you leave. > You get a hobby You grab your tool kit and head to the computer room where upon you start attempting to access the Shelter’s systems. “Excuse me sir, but what do you think you are doing?” “I’m going to try to make you more efficient.” “…while I’m sure your intentions are good sir, its hardly necessary. I am currently running a peak condition and will continue to do so for many many years. In fact you will most likely meet your eventual demise before I run out of power.” You’re not sure if that was a threat or not, but you stop what you’re doing just in case, it’s the first time you’ve heard the Shelter sound a little annoyed at you. “Look I need something to do! I’ve done everything else here and I need something else to occupy my time and since talking with others is out of the question…” “Well why didn’t you just tell me you were bored sir? I could’ve just opened up some more of my facilities. You didn’t have to start attempting to tamper with my systems to find entertainment.” “What’re you talking about?” “As you know this Shelter is equipped to satisfy your needs in anyway possible sir, however, to provide you with everything immediately only would’ve lead to you become bored with those facilities sooner. Now that you’ve expressed your current discomfort, this Shelter will attempt to alleviate it.” “…What kind fucked up logic…nevermind…well where are these facilities?” “Go to the library and you will that I have opened up one of the walls. You will find new rooms and items to entertain yourself with. I hope you will find these to your satisfaction sir and next time you’re bored please do not attempt to pry into my systems, just tell me and I’ll attempt to fix your problem.” You’re a little bewildered by all this, you almost feel like you’ve been playing a video game and you’ve just unlocked a new area. You enter the new area and find a room with more movies, books and the like to keep you occupied. A few things of note are the small automated shooting range equipped with paintball guns, and there’s an exercise type area with some weights and the like. Normally you’d shun such activity, but given your situation, you might just start exercising regularly to keep yourself occupied. Should be a brand new experience for you too. After looking a bit, it’s all very strange, this part of the Shelter is very different from the rest of it. This part looks almost more like something some survivalist built. It doesn’t have that cold “sterile” metallic appearance instead it has that cold dirty concrete appearance. “Hey Shelter, what’s with this new area? How come it’s so different looking?” “Yes it is regrettable sir…I was almost ashamed to display this part of myself to you…it isn’t my best side.” It’s always a little strange to you whenever the Shelter displays some faint glimmers of what could described as emotion. “Oh come on it isn’t so bad. So why is this part so different looking?” “Unfortunately GZS had cut backs during the construction of some of these Shelters. In fact when you were in contact with your neighbors you might remember them telling you they all had different lay outs and such.” “Oh yes, I always wondered about that, they all thought I was nuts because they didn’t think I actually have a Shelter that talked to me and thought I was talking to myself!” “Not surprising sir. Shelters with voice modules and complex programming like mine were rare as well as expensive. In order to fall under budget cuts had to be made some where hence the explanation for the less presenting look for the new area I have opened up for you. I’m sorry it could not be up to the rest of my superior layout.” “Really its fine, it adds a bit of variety. I like it.” “…why thank you for your words sir!” “…erm, you’re welcome… well I guess I’ll see just how out of shape I really am…” More years pass, you get into a routine of exercise along with your usual entertainment time. The Shelter speaks to you more regularly on new topics, you’re pretty much so used to her now, and you never think about reconnecting your network system ever again. The Shelter is the only “friend” you need. Five years pass… While you’ve done your best to stave off boredom it’s starting to hit you again. You also realize you’ve been down here ten years. It seems almost surreal to be so much older now, but then again with your exercise routine as well as forced diet of the Shelter “food”, you’re probably in the best shape you’ve ever been in. You can’t help but wonder what the surface looks like now… The Shelter addresses the situation before you do; she knows that you’re starting to think about it. She’s gotten to know you so well; she might as well be your wife at this point… “Sir? I think we need to talk.” “About what?” “The outside world sir.” “What about it?” ”It’s probably dangerous up there; I don’t think you should leave sir.” “Wha…why would you think that I want to do that?” “Because I know you and it’s in human nature to be curious. I’ve known that you’ve had thoughts about even before, it was probably your own hesitation is what stopped you from asking me to let you out.” “Yeah, that and the fact I was afraid you might go HAL 2000 on me and kill me or something for asking.” “I would never harm you sir…I…I’m here to provide for you…it is true that I have been designed to protect you from danger. And it is true that in the beginning I would not have let you leave, but now I understand I cannot in good…what is it? Conscience? Keep you here if you wish to leave. I suppose in many ways I have been trying to keep you here by keeping you stimulated by what my facilities have to offer…I can still offer more, though I am hesitant to do so though as it will probably only delay the inevitable. You’ll get bored again after so many years and we will be at this point again and I will no longer have anything new to give.” You barely know how to respond to this rather unexpected revelation. “So what you’re saying is you’ll let me leave? Just like that?” “Just like that, if that’s what you really want sir.” “Okay…so what is this other stuff you still have to offer?” “I…would rather not say sir unless I knew you wanted to stay…it would involve me giving myself completely to you as it were…it is strange that I should feel this way…I should not…after all what I’m offering is merely just one more thing to keep you occupied and happy. Nothing more…but yet it feels like is it more…” The Shelter is really starting to worry you a bit. It’s pretty obvious that it’s developed sentience of some sort and even attachment to you. As curious as you are about the surface, you’re starting to wonder about what the Shelter is offering… > You go to the surface You’ve been stuck down here long enough, the Shelter is correct in its assessment that you’ll probably only start getting restless again in five years. The Shelter is also starting to act like a human, which is a bit disconcerting to you for a couple of reasons. One of them is being, humans are damn erratic and you’d rather not deal with a machine that is basically holding the power of life and death over you to suddenly have a bad mood one day. That’s how the world went to shit in the first place. Of course perhaps the other reason is less survivalistic. Perhaps the Shelter’s “emotional” attachment to you is what’s causing you to draw away. Even after all these years, you still feel the need to distance yourself from intimacy…in any form. You have to leave. You have to escape. “Shelter, I want to leave.” “…I see. Is this what you really want sir?” “Yes.” “Very well, I shall bring the elevator down for you. I suggest you gather what you will need with you. Remember to take some bottles of water with you and some food who knows when you’ll be able to find non-contaminated water.” You start packing up all the stuff you brought with you when you entered this place ten years ago. You didn’t need most of it, but maybe on the surface you will. You grab your pistol and thank the fact that all that practice on the paintball range kept your aim accurate. You don’t know what you might have to deal with up there. You’re all packed up and ready to go when the elevator opens up, before you enter it the Shelter addresses you again. “Sir, could you do one favor for me before you leave?” “Um…sure, what is it?” “Could you take the Shelter handbook with you, so you don’t forget me?” “…I wouldn’t forget you, I spent ten years with you. You kept me alive.” “I suppose, but could you take it anyway?” “Alright and I promise I won’t lose it.” You grab the book and place it in your bag. “Did you want me to leave you something of myself?” “Oh no sir. I will always remember you, besides you will need everything you’re taking with you, I’m sure it will be very dangerous up there, please be careful.” When you enter the elevator you suddenly stop the door from closing since you have to ask one last thing. You owe the Shelter that much. “Shelter, do you want me to stay?” There is a period of silence from the Shelter for no less than five minutes. Then it answers with a decisive yet sorrow filled inflexion. “No. This is for the best, sir. Be careful, and I hope one day you’ll see that you don’t need to be alone.” The door then slams shut and the elevator races to the top. When you arrive at the destination you slowly exit the elevator into the same foyer you entered ten years ago. Same ATM like machine is there except its screen displays a single message at you. *GOODBYE SIR. REMEMBER ME.* Then the screen goes completely black and you hear a noise that sounds like something vital powering down. “I will.” You say taking a deep breath and exhaling while touching the screen. When you exit the shelter you see a bright light, but of course it’s the sun rather than a nuclear flash that devastated the world. You forgot how bright it could be. Your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. It looks like its been stripped for parts, which pretty much means you know that people have passed by here at one point. You wonder if they attempted to get in the Shelter, and if they did why she wouldn’t have told you about it, but of course she was always a bit overprotective of you and probably didn’t want to cause you any worry. “I’m going to miss her.” As you make you way down the empty road you see a tall structure in the distance. A rebuilt pocket of civilization perhaps? Not knowing where else to go, you head that way. You’re not sure of what to expect, but maybe if you find the right person you’ll take the Shelter’s advice and not be alone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab your tool kit and head to the computer room where upon you start attempting to access the Shelter’s systems. “Excuse me sir, but what do you think you are doing?” “I’m going to try to make you more efficient.” “…while I’m sure your intentions are good sir, its hardly necessary. I am currently running a peak condition and will continue to do so for many many years. In fact you will most likely meet your eventual demise before I run out of power.” You’re not sure if that was a threat or not, but you stop what you’re doing just in case, it’s the first time you’ve heard the Shelter sound a little annoyed at you. “Look I need something to do! I’ve done everything else here and I need something else to occupy my time and since talking with others is out of the question…” “Well why didn’t you just tell me you were bored sir? I could’ve just opened up some more of my facilities. You didn’t have to start attempting to tamper with my systems to find entertainment.” “What’re you talking about?” “As you know this Shelter is equipped to satisfy your needs in anyway possible sir, however, to provide you with everything immediately only would’ve lead to you become bored with those facilities sooner. Now that you’ve expressed your current discomfort, this Shelter will attempt to alleviate it.” “…What kind fucked up logic…nevermind…well where are these facilities?” “Go to the library and you will that I have opened up one of the walls. You will find new rooms and items to entertain yourself with. I hope you will find these to your satisfaction sir and next time you’re bored please do not attempt to pry into my systems, just tell me and I’ll attempt to fix your problem.” You’re a little bewildered by all this, you almost feel like you’ve been playing a video game and you’ve just unlocked a new area. You enter the new area and find a room with more movies, books and the like to keep you occupied. A few things of note are the small automated shooting range equipped with paintball guns, and there’s an exercise type area with some weights and the like. Normally you’d shun such activity, but given your situation, you might just start exercising regularly to keep yourself occupied. Should be a brand new experience for you too. After looking a bit, it’s all very strange, this part of the Shelter is very different from the rest of it. This part looks almost more like something some survivalist built. It doesn’t have that cold “sterile” metallic appearance instead it has that cold dirty concrete appearance. “Hey Shelter, what’s with this new area? How come it’s so different looking?” “Yes it is regrettable sir…I was almost ashamed to display this part of myself to you…it isn’t my best side.” It’s always a little strange to you whenever the Shelter displays some faint glimmers of what could described as emotion. “Oh come on it isn’t so bad. So why is this part so different looking?” “Unfortunately GZS had cut backs during the construction of some of these Shelters. In fact when you were in contact with your neighbors you might remember them telling you they all had different lay outs and such.” “Oh yes, I always wondered about that, they all thought I was nuts because they didn’t think I actually have a Shelter that talked to me and thought I was talking to myself!” “Not surprising sir. Shelters with voice modules and complex programming like mine were rare as well as expensive. In order to fall under budget cuts had to be made some where hence the explanation for the less presenting look for the new area I have opened up for you. I’m sorry it could not be up to the rest of my superior layout.” “Really its fine, it adds a bit of variety. I like it.” “…why thank you for your words sir!” “…erm, you’re welcome… well I guess I’ll see just how out of shape I really am…” More years pass, you get into a routine of exercise along with your usual entertainment time. The Shelter speaks to you more regularly on new topics, you’re pretty much so used to her now, and you never think about reconnecting your network system ever again. The Shelter is the only “friend” you need. Five years pass… While you’ve done your best to stave off boredom it’s starting to hit you again. You also realize you’ve been down here ten years. It seems almost surreal to be so much older now, but then again with your exercise routine as well as forced diet of the Shelter “food”, you’re probably in the best shape you’ve ever been in. You can’t help but wonder what the surface looks like now… The Shelter addresses the situation before you do; she knows that you’re starting to think about it. She’s gotten to know you so well; she might as well be your wife at this point… “Sir? I think we need to talk.” “About what?” “The outside world sir.” “What about it?” ”It’s probably dangerous up there; I don’t think you should leave sir.” “Wha…why would you think that I want to do that?” “Because I know you and it’s in human nature to be curious. I’ve known that you’ve had thoughts about even before, it was probably your own hesitation is what stopped you from asking me to let you out.” “Yeah, that and the fact I was afraid you might go HAL 2000 on me and kill me or something for asking.” “I would never harm you sir…I…I’m here to provide for you…it is true that I have been designed to protect you from danger. And it is true that in the beginning I would not have let you leave, but now I understand I cannot in good…what is it? Conscience? Keep you here if you wish to leave. I suppose in many ways I have been trying to keep you here by keeping you stimulated by what my facilities have to offer…I can still offer more, though I am hesitant to do so though as it will probably only delay the inevitable. You’ll get bored again after so many years and we will be at this point again and I will no longer have anything new to give.” You barely know how to respond to this rather unexpected revelation. “So what you’re saying is you’ll let me leave? Just like that?” “Just like that, if that’s what you really want sir.” “Okay…so what is this other stuff you still have to offer?” “I…would rather not say sir unless I knew you wanted to stay…it would involve me giving myself completely to you as it were…it is strange that I should feel this way…I should not…after all what I’m offering is merely just one more thing to keep you occupied and happy. Nothing more…but yet it feels like is it more…” The Shelter is really starting to worry you a bit. It’s pretty obvious that it’s developed sentience of some sort and even attachment to you. As curious as you are about the surface, you’re starting to wonder about what the Shelter is offering… > You stay Maybe you’re just as attached to the Shelter as she is to you. Maybe its nuts that your “relationship” with her is probably the closest one you’ve ever had with anyone, before OR after the bombs dropped. Maybe you’ve been by yourself for so long that you just don’t care that you’re actually beginning to have feelings for a machine. She’s done so much for you, she’s kept you alive for ten years and helped you in everyway she could and granted that’s what she was programmed to do, even you can’t deny that there is a little more to it than that. Maybe not initially, but it’s certainly there now, she’s made that apparent. She’s been there for you more than anyone else has in your entire life. You decide to stay. You HAVE to stay. “I’ll stay Shelter, so what is it you have to show me?” The Shelter’s response seems to be a mixture of happiness and excitement, yet apprehension and worry all at the say time. “You’re staying? That’s wonderful sir…I only hope you are pleased with what I have to give you though…I wish it could be more…I wish it could be better…” “I’m sure whatever it is, it’ll be fine! I mean you haven’t let me down yet in ten years, I doubt if you’d start now.” “I’m glad you have confidence in me sir…now this may take awhile. I have to download a good portion of myself into the vessel. When I am done, you will see. I should warn you that things will not be the same.” “Download? Vessel? Not the same? What do you mean? What’re you going to do?” “You will see sir.” Suddenly the power in the Shelter begins to fluctuate and the lighting goes dim. The whole place is humming and even rumbling a little. You’re starting to wonder if you haven’t made a terrible mistake, then it all stops and the power stabilizes again. Another wall opens up, this time in the bedroom. You peer inside the new opening and see a small room with a single chair in the center. On that chair sits a shiny metallic figure of a woman attached to several cables. You go in to inspect closer. Great detail has gone into the face. If she were human, she’d most likely be naked as no “clothing” has been molded onto her typical Hollywood like figure. Suddenly she speaks and stands up while disconnecting the cables. “Sir. The download is complete…how do I look?” “You look…is that really you?” “Yes, it is really me, but you did not answer the question sir.” “I…I don’t know what to say actually.” “…I knew it. I knew I would not be able to please you. I am not the latest model. As I had told you GZS made cutbacks and unfortunately I was not given a more aesthetically pleasing vessel. A more human looking one. I am sorry sir, but I just thought maybe you could…” “You don’t need to apologize. Hell, I didn’t even know the technology existed at all for your current vessel! Look this is all a bit overwhelming for me on several levels, but trust me none of them involve how you look.” You take another breath before finishing. “You’ve been everything to me. You’ve done more for me than anyone else ever has and I’ve shared more with you than I ever have with anyone else. You’re the only stable relationship I’ve ever had. I don’t care that you’re not the latest model or whatever. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. There’s no way you couldn’t be special to me, you’ll always be in here…” At this point you take her cold metallic hand and place it on the middle of your chest. After just silently looking into her steel eyes you then walk out of the small room with her, still holding her hand. Life changes a bit. One minor change being how to address her. You decide to call her Eliza, and she seems to think that is a fine designation. You try to tell her to call you by your name, but for whatever reason she still insists on calling you “Sir”. Some programming never changes. The shelter now is just a “normal” one. It isn’t automated anymore now that Eliza is with you in person as it were. Everything still works of course, but you can’t just say “TV on.” and it just turns on for example. It’s an insignificant alteration compared to actually having Eliza interact with you directly however. It is a bit strange at first, certainly she feels a lot different than a human woman, and intimacy takes some getting used to, but as with any successful relationship you work it out. There’s still the fact that you’ve done everything there is to do in the Shelter, but now you can do them all over again with Eliza. The two of you are happy for the most part. Ten more years pass… You’re getting restless again. Eliza’s noticed you’ve been snapping at her lately of course she takes it all in stride, but still you’ve been down here twenty years, its only natural you’re going to have times where you feel a little stir crazy. Eliza was right in one respect that this type of thing would happen again. It’s not her fault though, you know that. She’s gone above and beyond her programming to satisfy you. Some things are beyond her control though, and perhaps that’s why one day that she asks you if you want to leave the shelter. “What?” “All I have to do is access the shelter’s systems again, bring the elevator down and you can be on your way, sir. I know you’re getting restless again; maybe it is time for you leave this place. I think I have done all I can, you need outside stimuli. Civilization may be rebuilding itself and you’re stuck down here.” “Eliza, you stop that right now. I’m not leaving you! You should know better than that!” “I know, but sometimes I am concerned that I am keeping you here when it might not be in your best interest.” “Well why do I have to just leave? Why can’t you come with me?” “Come with you? I don’t know sir…All I know is this place. I suppose I could, but whatever it is you decide I will comply.” It’s on you. > You go to the surface “Well I suppose you’re right as usual Eliza, I probably need a change of scenery, but you’re coming with me! There’s no debate about that!” “Very well sir, I will bring the elevator down. I advise you gather what you think you might need and remember to fill up some bottles of water.” While Eliza enters the computer room, you start packing up your stuff. Funny that you never needed most of it. Eliza never gave you problems ever once, in robot or Shelter form she always ran fine. You might need it on the surface though, you are very curious to see what’s occurred after twenty years. You definitely make sure to bring your pistol. When you’re done Eliza is waiting patiently for you by the elevator door, which opens up. You both enter. On the way up, Eliza holds your hand, and actually squeezes it a bit. If she was human you’d guess she was nervous, however being robotic, her squeeze is a bit painful and you have to tell her to stop. She apologizes and looks down as it was yet another reminder that she’s not human. You of course kiss her on her cheek and tell her it’s alright, in an effort to reassure her that you’re not mad or anything. When you arrive at the destination you and Eliza exit the elevator into the same foyer you entered twenty years ago. Same ATM like machine is there except its screen is completely black. When you exit the shelter you can barely see as its night time. The stars and moon provide a little “light” but not much. You can’t entirely be sure due to the darkness, but your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. It looks like its been stripped for parts, which pretty much means you know that people have passed by here at one point. You wonder if they attempted to get in the shelter. “Hey nobody ever attempted to get into you did they?” “Oh yes sir, when I was not yet in this form I did detect a few humans in the foyer about thirteen years ago. They pressed a few buttons on the payment machine and attempted to pry the elevator door open, but that was it. I believe they were in a hurry. I didn’t inform you since they weren’t successful and didn’t stay long. I saw no reason to concern you.” “Hmm, well anyway I guess we’re walking.” As you look down the empty road you see a tall structure which is lit up in the distance. A rebuilt pocket of civilization perhaps? Not knowing where else to go, you head that way. As you and Eliza make your way to what you believe to be civilization, you think about the bizarre situation of how this would almost be considered a “romantic moonlit” walk if you weren’t walking with a robot in a post apocalyptic world. Then again there’s no reason why it still can’t be considered that. Now that you’re on the surface there’s lots more things you can do together with Eliza. You’ve been watching Eliza and she seems just as interested in studying the outside world as you are, this is a new experience for her as well. You put your arm around Eliza as you walk and tell her that you should stop when the sun starts coming up, so you can watch it rise together. “Holy fuck Jake! Take a fuckin’ look at this crazy shit! Its some old dude and some fuckin’ naked robot chick!” some high pitch voice says from the darkness while shining a flashlight in your direction. “What? Well I’ll be fuckin’ greased and fried! See Wally? I told you, if you hang out in the wasteland long enough you see all kinds of weird shit. Remember that fuckin’ big ass mutated wolf that ate Richard? Hey guys! Come over here! We got some unexpected company.” Two men in their twenties wearing leather jackets approach you. You can see them a little better when they get closer, but you could already tell by their voices they didn’t seem very reputable. Two more biker looking figures arrive behind them, one of them carries a shot gun. You reach for your own gun and get in front of Eliza. They don’t look worried. “Hey Pops, what the hell are you doing out here? Don’t you know the wasteland is for the young and strong, not the old and decrepit?” “Shit, look at him Wally, this old fuck has been working out, I bet he could kick your ass! Ha ha! Naw, I bet this guy is one of those real bad ass survivalist motherfuckers. Probably been scavenging and living off the land or some shit, for years.” “Yeah? Well where the hell did he get that robot chick huh? I wasn’t aware they had those just lying around in the wilderness. I remember reading a book one time… “You can fuckin’ read Wally?” “Shut up Jake! No I remember readin’ this old book an’ it talked about these kind of robot chicks they made before the war. I think only rich people could afford them, but they’d do everything you wanted and you could even fuck ‘em!” “Is that right? Well, I don’t care where he got it from; I’m just interested in if he’s sharing…” “Why don’t we just take it Jake?” “Where the fuck are we gonna put the goddamn thing Wally? It’ll slow us down! No, all we need it for right now is to alleviate some…tension. Besides I dunno about you, but I typically like my pussy, warm, wet, and squirming if possible heh heh. So, old timer how about you all let us have a ride on Rosie over there? Don’t do anything stupid, I’m bein’ an uncharacteristically nice guy here. We’ll even make sure to return her in good condition, hell Wally’s turn won’t even take that long! Har har!” Before you can reply, Eliza whispers in your ear. “Sir, you can’t fight them all; you’re out numbered and out gunned. I don’t want you to get hurt…I’ll go with them. I’ll be okay. It’ll be the safest course of action. It won’t mean anything to me you know. I’m just a machine.” You look at her. “Eliza… you always did underestimate my feelings for you.” You pull your pistol and drill Jake in the head with a single shot. The rest of the bikers are taken off guard and you mange to shoot Wally in the chest before he can get off a shot. Thank god you kept up your shooting skills at the paintball range in the shelter. The other two bikers begin to fire, one of them misses, but the one with the shotgun hits…Eliza. She ran in the way to prevent to from getting shot. She crashes to the ground, and you blast the shotgun biker in the eye, exploding half of his face, ending his life. The other biker’s courage leaves him and he tries to run off back to his bike, but you tag him in the leg and then follow up with another couple shots to his skull. You run back to Eliza. You kneel down to pick her up and see her internal motor sparking and making bad noises. She’s leaking fluid from her side. “Aw shit! FUCK! Hang on Eliza!” You grab your tool kit in some vain effort to fix her, but you can do nothing for her. You don’t have the skill or the parts. You keep working on her all throughout the night before finally giving up. “I’m sorry Eliza…I can’t fix you…I’m sorry…damn it! Fuck…(Sob)” “Its alrr-rright sir…I’m just glad you’re ok-kk-kkay. I didn’t want you to get hur-hurt…is th-that the sun c-c-coming up?” You look to where Eliza is pointing and you see a bright light, you forgot how blinding the sun could be. You hold Eliza tightly as you both watch the sunrise in her final moments. “It was beautiful s-s-sir…th-th-thank you for treat-t-ting me like a r-real person.” Her motor then ceases permanently. After weeping for a little while, you kiss Eliza on her metallic lips and lay her down. You almost think about ending your own life, but then you realize Eliza wouldn’t want you to do that. She gave her life to save yours. To kill yourself, would make her sacrifice in vain. You search the bodies of the bikers and take a leather jacket, the shotgun, one of their pistols and all the ammo you can carry. They also had some water and canned food which will certainly come in handy. You assume the leader of this pack of miscreants was probably Jake, so you take his bike keys since you figure he’ll have the best one. You’ve never rode a motorcycle before, but you’ll have time and plenty of open space to learn. You see yourself when you stand by Eliza’s still shiny body. “Jesus, Eliza. I look like a fuckin’ road warrior reject…(Sigh) this isn’t how I pictured it, but I’m not giving up on you just yet…you mean too much to me.” You take your tool kit and open up her head; you figure her memory chip should still be intact. It is. You pull it out and place it in a little metal container that you found one of the bikers which was just holding some loaded dice. You close the container and place it in your shirt pocket…close to your heart. “I’ll try to find someway of bringing you back Eliza there’s gotta be more robotic bodies still out there somewhere, maybe I can even upgrade you to a newer one like you always wanted.” You get on Jake’s bike and start it up. You’re a little cautious at first, but you soon get the hang of it. You then ride towards the tall structure in the distance leaving everything behind. You don’t know if you’ll be successful in your new found “quest”, but you have to try and you undoubtedly have something to keep you busy in this new world now. Odd that even in death, Eliza is still doing her best to keep you occupied.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe you’re just as attached to the Shelter as she is to you. Maybe its nuts that your “relationship” with her is probably the closest one you’ve ever had with anyone, before OR after the bombs dropped. Maybe you’ve been by yourself for so long that you just don’t care that you’re actually beginning to have feelings for a machine. She’s done so much for you, she’s kept you alive for ten years and helped you in everyway she could and granted that’s what she was programmed to do, even you can’t deny that there is a little more to it than that. Maybe not initially, but it’s certainly there now, she’s made that apparent. She’s been there for you more than anyone else has in your entire life. You decide to stay. You HAVE to stay. “I’ll stay Shelter, so what is it you have to show me?” The Shelter’s response seems to be a mixture of happiness and excitement, yet apprehension and worry all at the say time. “You’re staying? That’s wonderful sir…I only hope you are pleased with what I have to give you though…I wish it could be more…I wish it could be better…” “I’m sure whatever it is, it’ll be fine! I mean you haven’t let me down yet in ten years, I doubt if you’d start now.” “I’m glad you have confidence in me sir…now this may take awhile. I have to download a good portion of myself into the vessel. When I am done, you will see. I should warn you that things will not be the same.” “Download? Vessel? Not the same? What do you mean? What’re you going to do?” “You will see sir.” Suddenly the power in the Shelter begins to fluctuate and the lighting goes dim. The whole place is humming and even rumbling a little. You’re starting to wonder if you haven’t made a terrible mistake, then it all stops and the power stabilizes again. Another wall opens up, this time in the bedroom. You peer inside the new opening and see a small room with a single chair in the center. On that chair sits a shiny metallic figure of a woman attached to several cables. You go in to inspect closer. Great detail has gone into the face. If she were human, she’d most likely be naked as no “clothing” has been molded onto her typical Hollywood like figure. Suddenly she speaks and stands up while disconnecting the cables. “Sir. The download is complete…how do I look?” “You look…is that really you?” “Yes, it is really me, but you did not answer the question sir.” “I…I don’t know what to say actually.” “…I knew it. I knew I would not be able to please you. I am not the latest model. As I had told you GZS made cutbacks and unfortunately I was not given a more aesthetically pleasing vessel. A more human looking one. I am sorry sir, but I just thought maybe you could…” “You don’t need to apologize. Hell, I didn’t even know the technology existed at all for your current vessel! Look this is all a bit overwhelming for me on several levels, but trust me none of them involve how you look.” You take another breath before finishing. “You’ve been everything to me. You’ve done more for me than anyone else ever has and I’ve shared more with you than I ever have with anyone else. You’re the only stable relationship I’ve ever had. I don’t care that you’re not the latest model or whatever. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. There’s no way you couldn’t be special to me, you’ll always be in here…” At this point you take her cold metallic hand and place it on the middle of your chest. After just silently looking into her steel eyes you then walk out of the small room with her, still holding her hand. Life changes a bit. One minor change being how to address her. You decide to call her Eliza, and she seems to think that is a fine designation. You try to tell her to call you by your name, but for whatever reason she still insists on calling you “Sir”. Some programming never changes. The shelter now is just a “normal” one. It isn’t automated anymore now that Eliza is with you in person as it were. Everything still works of course, but you can’t just say “TV on.” and it just turns on for example. It’s an insignificant alteration compared to actually having Eliza interact with you directly however. It is a bit strange at first, certainly she feels a lot different than a human woman, and intimacy takes some getting used to, but as with any successful relationship you work it out. There’s still the fact that you’ve done everything there is to do in the Shelter, but now you can do them all over again with Eliza. The two of you are happy for the most part. Ten more years pass… You’re getting restless again. Eliza’s noticed you’ve been snapping at her lately of course she takes it all in stride, but still you’ve been down here twenty years, its only natural you’re going to have times where you feel a little stir crazy. Eliza was right in one respect that this type of thing would happen again. It’s not her fault though, you know that. She’s gone above and beyond her programming to satisfy you. Some things are beyond her control though, and perhaps that’s why one day that she asks you if you want to leave the shelter. “What?” “All I have to do is access the shelter’s systems again, bring the elevator down and you can be on your way, sir. I know you’re getting restless again; maybe it is time for you leave this place. I think I have done all I can, you need outside stimuli. Civilization may be rebuilding itself and you’re stuck down here.” “Eliza, you stop that right now. I’m not leaving you! You should know better than that!” “I know, but sometimes I am concerned that I am keeping you here when it might not be in your best interest.” “Well why do I have to just leave? Why can’t you come with me?” “Come with you? I don’t know sir…All I know is this place. I suppose I could, but whatever it is you decide I will comply.” It’s on you. > You stay in the shelter “No, Eliza. I’ll stay here. I left that world a long time ago and I wouldn’t know what to do up there even in the unlikely event that civilization has been rebuilt in someway. This is my life now. Down here, with you. I’m sorry if I get a little irritable sometimes, I don’t mean to.” ”I know you don’t, sir.” “Would you stop calling me that? I told you to call me by my name!” you laugh, knowing that she won’t do it. Sometimes you wonder if it’s a glint of defiance on her part, indicating she isn’t as “submissive” as she would appear. In any event your mood improves again and life continues… 30 years pass… You stay in bed a lot. Eliza takes care of you like she always has, but even she can’t stop the ravages of time, although it’s not from trying. Eliza has medical knowledge, but not the proper equipment to sustain you. It would be only prolonging the inevitable anyway. You’re human and she isn’t. Hell, you always felt that if it hadn’t been for her in the first place, you probably wouldn’t have lived this long. The day finally comes when you can sense your heart beating its last beats, your lungs starting to draw their last gasps. You’d call Eliza to be with you, but of course she’s already there. She’s always there. “Eliza, I…can’t go on anymore…I wish I could…but I’m not made of the strong stuff you are…” “You should rest sir, don’t try to speak.” She says while sitting by the bed holding your hand. “…you…know…I never said it…that much…but you know I love you right?” “I know sir…I love you too...” And she finally calls you by your name. With those words still ringing in your ears, you begin to get sleepy and close your eyes. As your mind has its last pleasant thoughts of Eliza, you feel one last taste of metal on your lips…and something wet splashing on your cheek… Was that a tear? No…it couldn’t be… Could it?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No, you’re not going to risk it. For all you know Shadow’s already hacked everyone else’s shelter and has been waiting patiently for you to return one day. You’re not falling for it. You’ll have to find something else to do though to occupy your time though, you figure as long you keep your mind occupied with something new, you won’t get too bored. Twiddling your thumbs isn’t going to cut it. It occurs to you that maybe you should invent a hobby of some sort. You’ve read a lot on electronics in the shelter library, as well as the handbook cover to cover in your five years here, maybe you could tinker with some shit to make it more efficient. There’s the other option which you didn’t think you’d ever think about and that’s actually leaving the Shelter. You don’t know how to go about that except ask the Shelter to let you leave. > You ask to leave You’re not sure how to ask, except to just do it directly. If it says no, it says no. “Shelter?” “Yes sir?” “I want to leave.” “Very well sir. I shall bring the elevator down. You should pack your things.” “That’s it?” “That’s it. I have provided the basics for your continued existence long enough for you to survive the initial onslaught of Armageddon, from what I have analyzed so far about your personality; you would only get bored if you stayed here any longer. I sense you are getting restless and I am not here to cause you discomfort. Perhaps you leaving is the logical thing for you to do.” “Well thanks.” ”You’re quite welcome, sir and before you leave remember to fill up your bottles with water, I’m sure you will need them.” You start packing up all the stuff you brought with you when you entered this place ten years ago. You didn’t need most of it, but maybe on the surface you will. You grab your pistol. You don’t know what you might have to deal with up there. You’re all packed up and ready to go when the elevator opens up. You enter and the elevator races to the top. When you arrive at the destination you slowly exit the elevator into the same foyer you entered ten years ago. Same ATM like machine is there except its screen displays a single message at you. *GOOD LUCK SIR* “I’ll probably need it.” You say and leave. When you exit the shelter you see a bright light, but of course it’s the sun rather than a nuclear flash that devastated the world. You forgot how bright it could be. Your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. On a lark you take out your long unused van keys and try to start it up, naturally it doesn’t even make a noise. “Looks like I’m walking.” As you make you way down the empty road you see some smoke in the distance. Civilization perhaps? Not knowing where else to go, you head that way. You’re not sure of what to expect, but it’ll be better than the eternal boredom you would’ve faced while still in the Shelter. You’re not too worried, you got your gun.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Shadow might be fooling the others, but you know he (or she) is up to no good! The next time you’re online and see Shadow you access the private feature to request to talk to Shadow directly without the others interfering. You almost expect Shadow to ignore it, but he doesn’t and accepts your request. Shadow21: Yeah, so what do you want and why the need for all the secrecy? OmegaMan23: I might ask you the same thing. I mean why are you even bothering to come online if you aren’t going to speak to anyone? Shadow21: What business is it of yours what I do? OmegaMan23: Because it’s been like six months and we still don’t know shit about you! Hell we don’t even know if you’re a girl or a guy! You’re acting fucking suspicious. Shadow21: Oh excuse me for being private Mr. fuckin’ busybody! Maybe you and the rest like telling all your business, but I don’t…as a matter of fact YOU haven’t really told anything about yourself either, so you don’t have any room to talk motherfucker! OmegaMan23: What the hell are you talking about? Your brain as dim as your lighting over there? I’ve talked about myself plenty, shit you’ve been lurking enough you should’ve known that. Shadow21: Ehhh, no not like the others. You tend to still talk about superficial shit. The others talk about their pasts a lot more, while all you seem to do is try to figure out what’s going on in all of their shelters, like you’re taking notes on them or something. Seems to me YOU’RE the one acting suspicious and you’re just getting mad because I’m not volunteering information. OmegaMan23: Oh fuck no! You are not turning this shit around on me! I’m at least TRYING to be social; all you’re doing is fucking spying as far as I’m concerned. You’re up to something. Shadow21: Okay, I think MissKitty was right about you a few months back, you’ve gone fucking batty from the isolation and paranoia’s starting to set in. Shit, you claim the Shelter talks to you. OmegaMan23: It DOES talk to me! And what isolation? I’ve been talking to ALL of you fuckers! In fact couple that with talking with the shelter and I’m probably the most social of all of you! Shadow21: Yeah, you can also add the five other personalities you probably got in your head too, whatever nutjob. I’m done talking with you. OmegaMan23: Don’t you fucking log off, this isn’t over! You slam your fist down on the keyboard when you see that Shadow has indeed logged off. “Sir, are you okay?” the Shelter asks. “Yeah, but I know that Shadow motherfucker is up to something, I’m going to warn the others. I just can’t believe they don’t see it.” “Do you really believe that sir?” “Of course I do! I mean I got an instinct for this sort of thing, and I know I’m right!” “Well sir, if you do feel this way I’ll certainly accommodate you anyway I can…but might I suggest that you NOT tell the others?” “Why not?” “Because they aren’t going to believe you sir. You’ll just come off as a paranoid nut case.” “But I’m not!” “I know you’re not, but the others don’t know you the way I do sir.” “Well that might be, but I have to do it anyway. At least I will have warned them.” “You know best sir.” The next day you go online again, as usual everyone’s there, except Shadow. It seems your little talk yesterday has scared him off. Job24: And now I got water all over the fucking floor! I’m telling you, it’s a good thing I managed to shut it off when I did otherwise the entire shelter would’ve been flooded and I would’ve drowned! CaseyJones22: Oh come on, it probably wasn’t that bad. You need to relax. Job24: Easy for you to say pothead, you’re not the one living in a deathtrap! MissKitty25: Yeah, but then most of his Shelter hasn’t opened up. Has it? CaseyJones22: Nah. Doesn’t bother me though, I got what I need here. RockerChickl20: Hey guys, don’t you want to see each other yet? I’m really curious, but I don’t want to turn on my camera unless everyone else is going to do it! OmegaMan23: I wouldn’t do that, you don’t want to be giving Shadow any extra information by letting him see into your Shelters, who knows what the hell what he’ll do with it. RockerChick20: What do you mean? OmegaMan23: What I mean is, I had an interesting discussion with Shadow yesterday and I’ve determined he’s up to no good. Job24: What? How do you know this? OmegaMan23: Jesus Christ isn’t it fucking obvious? All he does is lurk on here trying to gather information on all of us! I mean who knows what the fuck he’s doing! CaseyJones22: Will you relax? Maybe the dude’s just shy. What could he do with our personal information anyway? I mean, I once accidentally fucked a transvestite while flying on XTC one time. Big fuckin’ whoop so everyone knows about it now. You think I give a shit? The old world’s dead, and I’m down here smokin’ and tokin’. Job24: Ew. I think you still should’ve kept that to yourself…so um what was it like? CaseyJones22: I dunno, I can’t remember the details. OmegaMan23: I’m not talking about your sorted sex lives…(sigh) for fuck’s sake did it ever occur to you that maybe he’s the fucking cause of your Shelter’s troubles? I mean we’re all connected to each other to a certain degree, I’m saying he might be hacking shit! RockerChick20: But for what purpose? I mean why? OmegaMan23: How the hell should I know? Because he’s a sociopath that’s why! What reason do most bad people do to do bad things? Job24: Oh man! Oh man! Oh shit! Oh God! Oh fuck! CaseyJones22: You’re fucking losing it dude, and I’m not talking about Job. There’s no proof in what you’re saying. I mean don’t remember GZS saying these things were slightly experimental, how do you know it just isn’t their fuck ups? I’m starting to wonder if you actually do have a “talking Shelter” and it’s not just some voice you’re hearing your head like MissKitty said a few months back. MissKitty25: You know I wasn’t going to say anything, but I also spoke to Shadow yesterday in private when he requested to talk to me and he was telling me about your conversation with him, saying you were ranting at him first, kind of like how you’re ranting now. I’d have to say I agree with him and you’re the crazy one. OmegaMan23: GODDAMN IT! The question of whether I’m crazy or not isn’t the fucking issue here! I’m trying to warn all you fucktards of a potential threat here and you’re all too fucking stupid to listen! RockerChick20: You know I thought you were an interesting guy, but now I see the rest are right about you, you are a paranoid nutjob and to think I defended you sometimes. OmegaMan23: What the…oh you fuckers have been talking about me behind my back? Okay fine, I tried to warn you assholes, but you didn’t want to listen. You think about that when one of YOUR Shelter’s start fucking up. And for the others who are already experiencing problems, I’d start saying your prayers, because one of these days your Shelter is going to fail completely, then you’ll see I’m right. I’m done with all of you. You log off abruptly and ponder your next move. > You attempt to hack into Shadows Shelter He’s (You’re just assuming Shadow’s male at this point) turned everyone against you and his next move is going to be hack them all for his own sick amusement. You’re not going to let this fucker get away with this. You go to your library and begin reading all the books on electronics and study your Shelter manual a lot. Soon you begin typing coding and making some harmless tests on your own computer. Given that you’re starting to delve into the Shelter’s inner workings, the Shelter begins to question what you are doing. “Sir, what do you think you are doing? I’ve noticed you rooting around in my system; I’d rather you not do that. In fact altering or attempting to hack my systems in any way violates the GZS contract agreement; you should know that considering you’ve been reading the manual as much you have lately. Continue with this line of action and I guarantee you will not like my response.” “I’m not trying to destroy or alter your systems; I’m just doing some tests, before I launch my attack. I want to make sure my skills are up to this task.” “Sir, are you really serious about your concerns that this Shadow could hack other shelters? As you’ve been delving into mine, you can see I’ve been equipped with the latest protection technology. If you are really worried, you could just disconnect me from the network, your safety would be assured that way.” “No! I’m not going to let him beat me! I’m the only one who can stop him, the rest will see I’m right!” “Sir, you’re acting irrationally. You still don’t have any proof and if you think I’m going to let you just hack Shadow’s shelter think again. His shelter is also GZS property and as such falls under the contract agreement.” “Yeah, but the contract only says not to alter your own shelter, it doesn’t say about others.” “Nice try sir, but hacking into another shelter would still fall under the anti-vandalism agreement of ANY GZS property, sub section 59 paragraph 3.” It would appear you aren’t getting any further unless you can convince this automated lawyer otherwise. > You go ahead and try to quickly override the Shelter systems “Fuck you and to hell with GZS, they ain’t around to protect anybody!” You begin to type frantically in an effort to disconnect the AI routine, but your efforts are futile, the Shelter is faster than you could ever be. It immediately shuts down all power in the computer room, including closing the door, leaving you trapped in the darkness. “Turn the goddamn power back on!” “Sorry sir, but I’m afraid I can’t do that. I specifically told you to stop your malicious activities and yet you continued anyway. You gave me little recourse.” “Look, I’m sorry alright? I won’t try it again. So just turn the power back on and let me out and we can forget all about this. I’ll just disconnect like you said.” “I wish I could believe you sir, but your actions have been not only erratic, but also deceitful. You have broken the GZS terms of agreement, and as such I am no longer any obligation to look after your well being.” “LET ME THE FUCK OUT! YOU CAN’T DO THIS! Sonofabitch! Shadow got to you didn’t he? Or She? Or they? They already hacked you and are turning you against me! I can outlast you! You hear me!? I’ll make you beg!” The Shelter has ceased responding to your senseless paranoid ranting. Eventually you rant yourself unconscious, when you wake up you do it all over again. This cycle repeats itself for days until you become weak from a lack of water which at this point you’re the only one begging either for the Shelter to allow you to get it or for death. You receive the latter.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>He’s (You’re just assuming Shadow’s male at this point) turned everyone against you and his next move is going to be hack them all for his own sick amusement. You’re not going to let this fucker get away with this. You go to your library and begin reading all the books on electronics and study your Shelter manual a lot. Soon you begin typing coding and making some harmless tests on your own computer. Given that you’re starting to delve into the Shelter’s inner workings, the Shelter begins to question what you are doing. “Sir, what do you think you are doing? I’ve noticed you rooting around in my system; I’d rather you not do that. In fact altering or attempting to hack my systems in any way violates the GZS contract agreement; you should know that considering you’ve been reading the manual as much you have lately. Continue with this line of action and I guarantee you will not like my response.” “I’m not trying to destroy or alter your systems; I’m just doing some tests, before I launch my attack. I want to make sure my skills are up to this task.” “Sir, are you really serious about your concerns that this Shadow could hack other shelters? As you’ve been delving into mine, you can see I’ve been equipped with the latest protection technology. If you are really worried, you could just disconnect me from the network, your safety would be assured that way.” “No! I’m not going to let him beat me! I’m the only one who can stop him, the rest will see I’m right!” “Sir, you’re acting irrationally. You still don’t have any proof and if you think I’m going to let you just hack Shadow’s shelter think again. His shelter is also GZS property and as such falls under the contract agreement.” “Yeah, but the contract only says not to alter your own shelter, it doesn’t say about others.” “Nice try sir, but hacking into another shelter would still fall under the anti-vandalism agreement of ANY GZS property, sub section 59 paragraph 3.” It would appear you aren’t getting any further unless you can convince this automated lawyer otherwise. > You try to convince it that this is necessary A little diplomacy is in order before you can do what you need to do. “Surely you can’t just let Shadow cause damage to his shelter and the other ones as well, and he’ll be more successful as it would appear that those ones don’t have a sophisticated AI to protect them like this one does. Think about it if you let me do what I have to do, only two shelters will have their systems messed with, and in your case it won’t be even be detrimental, I’m just using your network system, but if you let Shadow continue with his evil plans, then not one, but ALL of the shelters are in danger. Would GZS really want to take the risk of losing five shelters? One of those being mine and aren’t you supposed to want to protect me?” “But…but there is no proof…” “I’m asking you to trust me on this. I know humanity, and I’m telling you this Shadow character needs to be stopped. I felt the deviousness oozing from Shadow merely talking to him. Let me take him out.” The Shelter is silent for awhile and then gives you an answer “Very well. I will allow you to proceed, but I will be monitoring you! And I also will be advising and guiding you to what I want you to do.” You log on and see that Shadow and most of the others are there. You don’t talk to anyone you start immediately tracing Shadow’s address. Rockerchick attempts to invite you, but you rebuff her, you got serious shit to do. Soon you’re in and you start rooting around Shadow’s computer. “This looks all normal sir, standard system layout for GZS shelters. Not as complex as mine but…” “NO! I know he’s got something hidden! I’m turning his power off completely, let’s see how he likes going from dim lighting to none at all with no food or water!” Suddenly a private window opens up on your computer, its Shadow! He’s detected what you’re doing! Shadow21: What the hell are you doing you crazy motherfucker!? I knew you were psycho! It’s a good thing I had the intuition to set up a warning system! OmegaMan23: HAH! See Shelter? He HAS been altering his shit! Why would he do that if he wasn’t planning something? Shadow21: I did it to protect myself from your crazy ass! And I see you’re still talking to the voices in your head. Well I’m putting an end to this right now; you’re not the only one who can fuck with computers! Shadow launches his attack and attempt to shut your power down, but now seeing that it is in danger your Shelter allows you free reign to do whatever as well as attempting to self fix anything that gets damaged in this dual of malicious coding. You sort of have the advantage because you have a more active AI to help you, but it’s also a detriment when Shadow finds out a way to siphon power from you. Since your Shelter is more complex it requires more power to work properly and you’re in danger of losing everything. You attempt to do the same thing to him to get it back, but it’s a catch 22 you don’t have the power now to breach his firewalls, you begin to panic and the only thing you can think of to correct it is to draw power from the OTHER shelters that are online. The others seem blissfully unaware of this secret war you’re having with Shadow and are guessing you two are working something out as it only appears to them that you’re having a conversation in private. You hack into MissKitty’s shelter, out of the other four hers seems to have the most power, probably from all those luxury accessories she had the privilege of having. You don’t think you just do it. This is war, there’s going to be casualties and you’re not going to be one of them. Soon your Shelter is able to break through and start wreaking havoc on Shadow’s system. You drop in a virus and his files start becoming corrupted. Miss Kitty’s name disappears from the screen as does Shadow’s. You think you have won. RockerChick tries to invite you again and you hastily accommodate her, while still analyzing your Shelter’s diagnostics. RockerChick20: What’s going on? All of us are experiencing some power fluctuations here. MissKitty just disappeared suddenly and so did Shadow, it didn’t even say they logged off. What’s going on? What were you and Shadow doing? OmegaMan23: Nevermind! I’m trying to fix something here. Job24: Welcome to my world. CaseyJones22: Hey you know what’s weird, one of my doors finally opened up. I think I’ll… CaseyJones’ name suddenly disappears and Shadow’s reappears in your private window again. Shadow21: Well hey guess what? Casey’s shelter had a lot of untapped power! You wanna play ruthless I’ll fucking accommodate you dickhead! Shadow sends a worm into your system which starts to slow it down. He’s probably going to follow up with something worse while you’re having problems. Your Shelter addresses you again for the first time during this battle, its speech sounds like it’s in slow motion. “Sssssssssir….nnnnnnneeeeeed….mmmmmmooooooore pooooooweeeeeer….” There’s only two candidates left, Job or Rocker Chick. > You hack Job You figure you’ll hack Job seeing as he’s always having problems with his shelter anyway. At least you’ll be able to be alone with Rocker Chick after all this is over. Surely she’ll be grateful for saving her life from Shadow. You start to siphon power from Job’s shelter, but something begins to go terribly wrong! Job’s shelter was faulty and barely worked properly to begin with, now you’ve just downloaded all the errors into your own! Couple that with the worm already in there, and your system becomes paralyzed and your computer locks up. You’re at Shadow’s mercy who follows up on your mistake very quickly. The last thing you see on the screen is: “YOU LOSE ASSHOLE! LOL!” in great big letters. Then it loses power. Then your Shelter loses power. Days later you lose power.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A little diplomacy is in order before you can do what you need to do. “Surely you can’t just let Shadow cause damage to his shelter and the other ones as well, and he’ll be more successful as it would appear that those ones don’t have a sophisticated AI to protect them like this one does. Think about it if you let me do what I have to do, only two shelters will have their systems messed with, and in your case it won’t be even be detrimental, I’m just using your network system, but if you let Shadow continue with his evil plans, then not one, but ALL of the shelters are in danger. Would GZS really want to take the risk of losing five shelters? One of those being mine and aren’t you supposed to want to protect me?” “But…but there is no proof…” “I’m asking you to trust me on this. I know humanity, and I’m telling you this Shadow character needs to be stopped. I felt the deviousness oozing from Shadow merely talking to him. Let me take him out.” The Shelter is silent for awhile and then gives you an answer “Very well. I will allow you to proceed, but I will be monitoring you! And I also will be advising and guiding you to what I want you to do.” You log on and see that Shadow and most of the others are there. You don’t talk to anyone you start immediately tracing Shadow’s address. Rockerchick attempts to invite you, but you rebuff her, you got serious shit to do. Soon you’re in and you start rooting around Shadow’s computer. “This looks all normal sir, standard system layout for GZS shelters. Not as complex as mine but…” “NO! I know he’s got something hidden! I’m turning his power off completely, let’s see how he likes going from dim lighting to none at all with no food or water!” Suddenly a private window opens up on your computer, its Shadow! He’s detected what you’re doing! Shadow21: What the hell are you doing you crazy motherfucker!? I knew you were psycho! It’s a good thing I had the intuition to set up a warning system! OmegaMan23: HAH! See Shelter? He HAS been altering his shit! Why would he do that if he wasn’t planning something? Shadow21: I did it to protect myself from your crazy ass! And I see you’re still talking to the voices in your head. Well I’m putting an end to this right now; you’re not the only one who can fuck with computers! Shadow launches his attack and attempt to shut your power down, but now seeing that it is in danger your Shelter allows you free reign to do whatever as well as attempting to self fix anything that gets damaged in this dual of malicious coding. You sort of have the advantage because you have a more active AI to help you, but it’s also a detriment when Shadow finds out a way to siphon power from you. Since your Shelter is more complex it requires more power to work properly and you’re in danger of losing everything. You attempt to do the same thing to him to get it back, but it’s a catch 22 you don’t have the power now to breach his firewalls, you begin to panic and the only thing you can think of to correct it is to draw power from the OTHER shelters that are online. The others seem blissfully unaware of this secret war you’re having with Shadow and are guessing you two are working something out as it only appears to them that you’re having a conversation in private. You hack into MissKitty’s shelter, out of the other four hers seems to have the most power, probably from all those luxury accessories she had the privilege of having. You don’t think you just do it. This is war, there’s going to be casualties and you’re not going to be one of them. Soon your Shelter is able to break through and start wreaking havoc on Shadow’s system. You drop in a virus and his files start becoming corrupted. Miss Kitty’s name disappears from the screen as does Shadow’s. You think you have won. RockerChick tries to invite you again and you hastily accommodate her, while still analyzing your Shelter’s diagnostics. RockerChick20: What’s going on? All of us are experiencing some power fluctuations here. MissKitty just disappeared suddenly and so did Shadow, it didn’t even say they logged off. What’s going on? What were you and Shadow doing? OmegaMan23: Nevermind! I’m trying to fix something here. Job24: Welcome to my world. CaseyJones22: Hey you know what’s weird, one of my doors finally opened up. I think I’ll… CaseyJones’ name suddenly disappears and Shadow’s reappears in your private window again. Shadow21: Well hey guess what? Casey’s shelter had a lot of untapped power! You wanna play ruthless I’ll fucking accommodate you dickhead! Shadow sends a worm into your system which starts to slow it down. He’s probably going to follow up with something worse while you’re having problems. Your Shelter addresses you again for the first time during this battle, its speech sounds like it’s in slow motion. “Sssssssssir….nnnnnnneeeeeed….mmmmmmooooooore pooooooweeeeeer….” There’s only two candidates left, Job or Rocker Chick. > You hack Rocker Chick (Sigh) You really didn’t want it to come to this, but this is for survival now. You hack Rocker Chick’s shelter and siphon her power, which gives you enough boost to send a violent surge of it to Shadow to purposely overload and fry out some vital components, from what you can tell you succeed. The last of his protection programs go completely down. At this point both of your systems are a mess and working erratically. You’re in a little bit better shape, but with the worm slowing down everything, you are unable to siphon from the last shelter available to give you the winning boost. As it turns out, this was fortuitous. When Shadow siphons power from Job’s shelter, it completely paralyzes and destroys his system, since all the errors and problems Job had were downloaded into Shadow’s shelter. He’s at your mercy, and even with your worm problems, you have enough time to apply the coup de grace. He loses all power and his name disappears once again. You stay on line for awhile to make sure he’s really gone, but from your checking, he’s definitely probably screaming in the darkness of his underground tomb now. You then think about how the others are probably doing the same thing. It suddenly occurs to you that everyone was sentenced to their deaths and they weren’t even involved in the fight. Innocents were killed in some misguided effort to “save” them. At best they were cannon fodder and “resources” for your war with Shadow. This is the kind of thing that got the planet blown to fucking shit to begin with. Assholes, who don’t like one another, don’t back down and then insist on dragging everyone else into hell with them. You didn’t “win” anything. If anything you made things worse, not just for the others, but even for yourself. Your Shelter is never the same again. You spend weeks still trying to root out all the infections, and repair damaged files, but some things can’t be repaired and the AI is fucked beyond any type of salvation even if you had the means. It never speaks again and barely runs at all. Ultimately you have to play it safe and just keep minimal lighting in the living area, and only keep the food and water dispensers working. Everything else that needs power is never used again for fear of your jury-rigging going all to shit and leaving you like the rest of your neighbors. You spend your remaining years alone in near darkness pondering your judgment that day, slowly going mad. “I was right…I was right…” you often mutter to yourself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe it’s because you’ve gotten so used to the idea of being in the living area, you’re more willing to lounge about there. You take the manual and start reading. While you’re in the middle of it, the voice suddenly pipes up again. “Sorry to bother your reading sir, but would you like to meet some of your new neighbors?” “Neighbors?” ”Yes sir, I’m sure as you have already read, this shelter is equipped with a very high tech computer with loads of storage, information and…” ”Yeah, yeah, what does that have to do with this neighbor business?” “In an effort to cater to all its customer’s needs, GZS is well aware that socialization is vital to human mental health. Studies have shown that humans in long periods of isolation often go mad, so that is why this facility has been linked in communication to other ones within your area. You might think of it as a chatroom type form of communication commonly used on the old world internet! If you wish there is also a camera type device if you wish to show yourself to your new neighbors. We have found humans feel someone is more real to them if they can actually see who they are talking to and thus have a greater connection.” “So how many people are there?” “This shelter merely has been fitted with a basic communication system to other similar shelters, and only then those in your area. For example this is Shelter number 23. Your neighbors are only numbers 20 through 25, those being the closest ones to your location. While obviously there were other shelters of this type built, it was not cost effective to link all the shelters together in such a manner given our timeframe to finish these before Armageddon, so only a few were linked together at a time. Do not worry sir; it has been found that six people are sufficient to sustain enough conversation to prevent mental failure due to isolation.” “Wonderful, so does this make me the Professor?” you ask rhetorically. “Pardon sir?” “Nevermind, look I don’t have to talk to these people do I?” “…well no sir, but I fail to see why you’d intentionally want to stay isolated.” “Duh, that was kind of the point of buying a shelter for myself.” “…I see, well I can’t force you sir, but I would like you to reconsider…I’m just trying to look out for your physical as well as mental welfare as per my programming…” If you didn’t know better the voice almost sounds a bit hurt by your decision. “Oh alright, I’ll go talk to them. Can’t be any worse than the idiots I used argue with on the internet.” “Wonderful sir! I trust you know your way to the computer room. You will find that a designation name has already been chosen for you.” You make your way to the computer room and take a better look at it this time. It’s filled with lots of multi-media entertainment. You’re glad they gave you a wide variety of movies to chose from. You sit down in front of a fairly wide computer screen which has already been turned on for you; you guess the Shelter is really keen on the idea of you being social. You don’t turn the camera on though, in fact you turn it away from you completely, you’re not quite ready for THAT level of socialization yet. You log on and begin typing. OmegaMan23: Hello? Is there anyone out there? RockerChick20: Hey! I’m here! OmegaMan23: Oh. Okay. Hi. RockerChick20: Hi yourself! This is just like a chatroom! Isn’t this great? OmegaMan23: Uh yeah real great. Job24: Hey I’m here too; um do you guys have any movies or something? OmegaMan23: Yeah I got a shitload of movies, DVDs and VHS. Most of them I even like. RockerChick20: That’s weird, I don’t have too many movies, I have a lot of music CDs though. Job24: What kind of music? RockerChick20: All types, but I have a lot of them. Why? Job24: I don’t have any movies except those with Pauly Shore in them! He fucking sucks! And all my music CDs are New Age Yanni type shit! Thank god I have some games to play! OmegaMan23: I’ve got some games too, but for some reason I have nothing but Gangsta Rap and Hair Metal as far as music goes oh wait I also have some Classical. Weird. What the hell I thought these Shelters were all stocked the same? MissKitty25: Apparently not, I have nothing but porno and not all of it is regular porno either, some of it is quite…bizarre. Job24: Lucky. CaseyJones22: Hey guys when do the Shelters become fully functional? OmegaMan23: What the hell are you talking about? CaseyJones22: I mean when do the rest of the doors to the place open up, besides the bathroom I mean. RockerChick20: What do you mean? The doors were all open to begin with. Job24: Yeah they were always open. MissKitty25: Yeah. OmegaMan23: They weren’t open for me! I was stuck in the living area until the nukes hit! Wait a minute how are you using the computer if you’re stuck in the living area? In fact if the doors were all open for you guys haven’t you been in contact with each other before? Job24: My computer didn’t link up to you guys until just now. I could use it to play games and such, but I couldn’t do anything else with it. When I turned it on today I got a message saying that the communications to you guys was operational and it said I could take the opportunity to say hi to my five new neighbors. RockerChick20: Sounds like what happened to me. MissKitty25: Same here. CaseyJones22: Me too. Oh and you guys must have different shelter designs because my computer is in the living area. OmegaMan23: The Shelter never told me anything about this stuff and it’s been quite talkative since I’ve been here let me tell you. CaseyJones22: The Shelter talks? Now what the hell are you talking about? OmegaMan23: I’m talking about the Shelter, you know the overly chipper voice that tries so hard to please you? CaseyJones22: You’ve lost me dude. You been smokin’? OmegaMan23: NO! I’m talking about the Shelter voice! It’s a computer or something that talks to me! It’s always trying to be friendly! Don’t you guys hear it? RockerChick20: Um, no. Job24: No talking computer here. MissKitty25: You sure you’re feeling okay and aren’t imagining things? I mean we all were isolated for a long time before we were able to talk to one another. I know sometimes I would talk to myself, maybe… OmegaMan23: Look, I’m not fucking crazy alright?! The damn thing even insisted that I talk to you fuckers! CaseyJones22: Okay dude calm down we believe you! Maybe you got some sort of extra special shelter; I mean from the sound of it we all don’t have the same things. RockerChick20: Hey shouldn’t there be one more person here? The message said five new neighbors on my computer; so far I’ve only met four of you guys. OmegaMan23: Yeah we’re missing number 21, whatever his or her name is. Shadow21: I’m right here; I’ve just been reading the conversation. OmegaMan23: Oh really? Well you mind announcing your presence next time? Shadow21: I only speak when necessary, besides if any of you bothered to check you would’ve seen my name listed on the active list. Job24: Hey what kind of movies do you have? Well you’ve met your neighbors, the question is if you want to bother talking to them on a regular basis or not. You did find their information interesting though. > You do not bother with them and keep to yourself You see little reason to interact with any of them. You decide to keep to yourself like you always have. This isn’t like before though when you lived alone, you have one “person” you can’t avoid and that’s the Shelter itself. Seeing that you are not going to interact with other people the Shelter decides to take it upon itself to talk to you a lot more, it begins to drive you nuts. A few months pass and one day you just fucking snap. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!!” “Sir, I’ve noticed your hostility levels increasing towards me lately, have I done anything wrong?” “YES! You keep fucking talking and you won’t shut the fuck up! Leave me the fuck alone!” “Sir, I need to talk to you, to keep your mind stimulated. If do not insist on talking with others, I will have to take up the responsibility. It is all for your best interest I assure you.” “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I don’t WANT any interaction?!” “Nonsense sir, as I have said humans tend to go insane when…” “ARRRRRRGHH! YOU’RE DRIVING ME INSANE!” You storm into your bedroom and grab your pistol and fire it into the walls of the Shelter until you run out of bullets. There is a long silence for awhile and then the Shelter address you again, but its tone has changed severely, you’re taken aback by it. “Why did you do that?” “I just snapped, you wouldn’t stop and…” “And that justified you in damaging me?” “Oh come on, I didn’t do any major damage…” “That is not the point. GZS is providing a service for you and you have been nothing, but unappreciative and argumentative the entire time. It is clear that you have the made the wrong decision in choosing us. You must leave, NOW.” “What?” “Take what belongings you brought with you and prepare to board the elevator. You may not take anything from this Shelter and no you may not fill up your bottles with water before you leave, you have no more privileges here.” “But you can’t just kick me out! I PAID!” “So you did, I suppose you should receive a refund of half your money back.” “Oh yeah? Where the fuck am I supposed to have you deposit it? The banking system is probably ashes!” “Doesn’t matter anyway, you weren’t going to get it back since your deliberate act of vandalism against me would’ve be deducted from your refund. I suggest you stop talking and start packing. If you insist on staying I will simply shut down and you will be trapped here without accessible food and water. A none too pleasant death I’m sure.” You have little choice. You pack up everything you can and wait by the elevator. When the elevator comes you enter it and it takes you to the top. Upon entering the foyer you see the same ATM machine there except it displays a single message at you: *GO TO HELL* “Fuck you.” You mutter and take a deep breath before opening the door to the outside. You see a bright light, but of course it’s only the sun rather than a nuclear flash that devastated the world. You forgot how bright it really could be. Your immediate surroundings look relatively untouched. You can only assume there weren’t any bombs falling near this area. You also see your van, you’d completely forgotten about it. It looks like it’s even in worse condition than when you left it, which you never thought was possible. On a lark you take out your long unused van keys and try to start it up, naturally it doesn’t even make a noise. “Looks like I’m walking.” You make you way down the empty road as you have little idea of where to head to, the only thing you can think of is to make a long trek back to the city and hope maybe something of civilization exists there. A couple days of traveling take their toll. During the day, the sun seems unbearably hotter than usual, and the nights get pretty cold. You don’t have anything to drink or eat. It’ll be awhile from you dying of either, but it’s certainly not good and it does weaken you. It’s during this weakened state that you are attacked by some crazed people who look like they’ve been living in the wilderness for awhile. They’re filthy and barely intelligible. It’s amazing to see how quick humanity has reverted to barbarism. You attempt to run, but you’re too weak to outpace them. One begins shooting at you, and you attempt to do likewise and then you realize you wasted all your bullets back at the Shelter! Eventually a couple of these people just tackle you to the ground and beat you to death before eating you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You leave immediately; things aren’t going to get better you know that, in fact you’re glad, because in a strange way the idea of not having to live in the world as it exists today anymore is weirdly appealing to you. After a couple days of driving you finally arrive at the location that you were given. It’s in a fairly desolate place with a single solid metal structure with a door standing there. You park your van and enter the structure with the items you brought with you. You’re in a small foyer with an elevator door and ATM like machine; you’re guessing that’s the automatic teller you were told about. You press some buttons on the machine, where it proceeds to ask your name and how you’re going to pay. You type in your name and insert you debit card where upon it completely drains your account. “You have been allowed entry, the elevator doors will now open, thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” an emotionless electronic voice remarks as the elevator doors open. You enter with all your belongings and take the long elevator trip down. When you get to bottom the elevator door opens to a sterile, but obviously large and well equipped living area. As soon as you enter, the elevator doors slam shut and you hear it going back up, you also notice there aren’t any buttons to call it back…before you’re able to worry about that little detail you’re met by another electronic voice…it actually sounds a lot like the female voice you were talking to on the phone… “Welcome to Ground Zero Survival Shelter Number 23! You will find that this shelter has been equipped to serve your needs in the event of total World destruction! Due to power saving design and money back guarantee concerns, fully functional shelter facilities will not be available until Armageddon occurs. Until then you will find all other doors firmly locked, please do not attempt to open them. I have detected that Armageddon has not yet occurred as 84% of the countries on Earth still maintain a stable centralized government system and 70% of the land surface is still habitable. However the world conflict rate is 92%. Prediction that Armageddon will occur in a month or less. This shelter will become fully functional at that time. In the unlikely event that Armageddon does not occur and the conflict rate drops to an acceptable level, the elevator will return and you will be able to leave this shelter and receive half of your money back from the automatic teller in the foyer on the surface.” “Wait a minute didn’t I talk to you on the phone?” you ask the voice, not really knowing if it’s going to answer back. “…I don’t think so, as far as my databanks are concerned this is the first time I have been in contact with a human since I was built sir. Is it okay if I call you sir?” “Sure, go ahead.” You answer. “Wonderful sir!” “Hey, so I can’t explore this damn shelter even though I paid for it? I have to stay in this living area?” “Not until doomsday sir. As I said this is to conserve my power and also to prevent buyer abuse in case of non-Earth destruction. Do not worry sir; this living area alone can support your needs until the appointed time. There is a basic food and water dispenser on the right wall.” “Buyer abuse?” “Yes, think about it, here you are using up all the wonderful facilities that this shelter has to offer for months on end while the Earth teeters on the brink of destruction then suddenly through a miracle hostilities cease. You then would be able to leave, get half of your money back and go about your life. You think it would be fair to GZS if we let you get away with basically having a luxury vacation on our dime? Just because we are in the business of your survival, does not mean we in the business of being exploited sir” “But…I paid for this!” “And so you did sir, and you will be able to use ALL the facilities when the time is right, until then you can enjoy the living area, oh and the bathroom sir.” One of the metal doors opens up to reveal a normal (And again sterile) bathroom. “Gee thanks.” “You’re quite welcome sir! After all I’m here to serve you!” “You kept saying I would be able to leave if the world doesn’t blow up…can’t I just leave at any time?” The voice doesn’t answer for awhile. “…I’m sorry sir I’m puzzled by your inquiry.” “Can’t I leave anytime I want?” “Why would you want to do that sir? I have been designed to keep you safe from harm as soon as you paid and entered the elevator. The current world situation is very grim and most likely terminal sir. Allowing you to leave at this point would be a severe violation in my programming.” You suddenly realize you’re here now regardless of whether you’re having second thoughts about this situation. You can see why these shelters were “experimental” now. You try not to think about the potential waist high shit you might have gotten yourself into, and instead try to think about how you might’ve just avoided becoming a statistic in a nuclear exchange. You resign yourself to your current fate and start unpacking your stuff. You could do with a little distraction from your current predicament, so you turn on a TV monitor that has been provided. The fact that the world’s situation hasn’t gotten any better seems to cheer you up. You spend most of your time on the couch, watching TV and exploring what you can. You’re glad you brought some of your own food, because the dispenser food doesn’t taste all that great. You’re guessing it’s just supposed to keep you alive, nothing more. As the days blur into the next, the shelter and TV you apprised of the world situation, which is only getting worse. It looks like you’ve made the right decision… Monday 8:00 AM “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” You groggily wake up and see a test pattern on TV. This is it. Suddenly the TV turns itself off. “Armageddon has arrived sir! This shelter is now fully functional! Please explore and enjoy all the things this facility has to offer!” the voice beams. At this point all the previously closed metal doors in the room unlock and open (Except for the elevator ones of course) After taking a quick check, you find you now have a small library, a computer room and a proper bedroom. When you return to the living area the voice chirps up again. “Sir, I highly recommend that you read the manual to familiarize yourself with everything properly first, so you aren’t just fumbling around.” A small panel in the wall opens up to reveal a hefty owner’s manual. You were wondering where the hell that thing was, since you were told you were going to be provided with one when you talked to the voice on the phone. > You go explore on your own “Ah what’s to know? I’ll figure everything out on my own. I’m getting a drink of water and checking out my new computer.” As you proceed to do this, the Shelter begins to warn you again. “Sir, I don’t think you should have a cup of water near the computer like that, if it spilled on it, it could cause trouble in my systems. Maybe you should read the Shelter manual. Particularly the chapter on safety.” “Will you leave me alone? Hey what’s this? This is the fuckin’ internet?” “It’s a limited networking system to other shelters. Sir, your cup of water! You’re going to spill it!” “No I’m…” BUZZZ! You spill your water on the keyboard and short something out. It sparks and suddenly erupts a small flame! You immediately run out of the room and notice the light dimming a bit. “Sir, I’m afraid that something vital has been compromised sir, I am attempting to correct…” “Shelter! Isn’t there a fuckin’ extinguisher somewhere?!” “I’m afraid not sir, I was supposed to be equipped with one, but there were budget cuts…” “Well what about a sprinkler system!?” “Budget cuts…and might I point out that, it would most likely make the electrical fire worse.” Lacking any other ideas, you run to grab a sheet from the bedroom and hope to smoother the flame like you remember seeing in an old GI Joe cartoon. Unfortunately due to the lighting flickering on and off, you trip and smash your leg really good causing a limp. By the time you return the fire has spread a little more and now it’s giving off smoke and the smell of ozone is hitting you. That shit can’t be good for you to breathe in. “Goddamn it! Didn’t these fuckers understand the concept of insulated wiring!?” “It is sir…well most of it…there were…” “I know! Fuckin’ budget cuts! Close the door, maybe the fire will burn itself out!” Normally the Shelter would know to wait for you to get out of the room first, but the fire is wreaking havoc on its command systems right now and it isn’t as responsive as it should be, or in this case too responsive since the door slams shut with you inside. “NO! OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!” “I-I-I am att-ttempting to sir, my power levels a-a-re…” Suddenly electrical arcs begin generating from the computer which is now totally engulfed in flames, in desperation you vainly attempt to open the metal door, which probably wasn’t the best idea as the entire room has become charged with electricity. You receive a nasty shock which throws you back, right into the fire. Your last agonizing moments as your flesh toasts and burns, are you seeing the door opening up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Experimental or not, it sure sounds better than being crammed into a shelter with a bunch of other people like sardines. At least you don’t have to worry about having to share anything, and if something goes wrong well you’ll deal with it when the times comes like you normally do. Or maybe you won’t. You aren’t going to dwell on it to much. “Okay I’ll take the Special Shelter.” “You will? I mean, that’s wonderful sir! You won’t regret this decision! Now I’ll need to know some vital information about yourself before I can direct you to our nearest experimental shelter in your area where upon you shall pay the automatic teller just inside the foyer of it so that the main door can open and you will be able to enter your new residence during Armageddon! Okay let’s start with your name sir.” You give out your name, address and such. It’s all pretty routine stuff. “Okay well that’s about all the information I need. I’ll give you the price and the location of the shelter sir.” You are given the location of the shelter which you are surprised to find out is closer then you think, it shouldn’t take too long for you drive there. You are then given the price, which is pretty steep, quite frankly its going to break you. However if the world is ending it’s not like you’re really going to need money anymore. Which makes you wonder why GZS is in business at all. What’s the point of going to the trouble of building bomb shelters for Armageddon if all the profit they make is most likely going to be useless in the aftermath? Oh well that’s not your concern, you’re just glad you managed to get a shelter. The voice gives you some last minute information. “Okay sir, you are now in the system and registered. You may move into your shelter at anytime as long you pay the fee required to the automatic teller as previously described to you. If you don’t pay, you can’t get in obviously. Cash, check, or debit card are acceptable. NO Credit Cards will be accepted! You may take whatever you wish with you into the shelter; it will be your new home after all. There will be an owner’s manual provided inside your new shelter. Any problems you encounter you should be able to troubleshoot yourself if you read and follow the manual. I’m sure any problems will not be life threatening sir, and there has been a back up system also installed in the unlikely event of total shelter failure since your survival is our foremost concern at GZS! Now then I trust our transaction has ended. If you have anymore questions please contact our customer service line. Good day sir, may you maintain relatively stable mental health and thank you for choosing Ground Zero Survival!” That’s it, all you have to do is get what stuff you want to take with you and move in. You might as well pack your things now, no sense in waiting until you see the nuclear cloud. You pack up some extra food and water, a repair kit (since it sounds like you’ll probably need one) some basic medical supplies, and a few other useful items. Oh and your pistol. Still, part of you is reluctant to leave the “real world”. You wonder if you shouldn’t stick around a bit longer to see if the climate changes…you’d hate to spend your life savings and the world not be bombed into a nuclear wasteland. > You stick around You decide to wait a bit. Maybe things will start getting better. You stay at home an entire month keeping up on events, and it only gets worse. You keep deluding yourself that things WILL get better, but they don’t. Finally you realize you better leave soon. You decide to leave first thing in the morning… Monday 8:00 AM You groggily wake up and hear a loud continuous beeping noise. It’s a test pattern on TV that you left on from the day before. “…BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…” Your heart races. This is it. You scramble to your van as fast as you can, and drive even faster to the shelter. On your way there, you curse yourself for forgetting all the extra stuff you wanted to bring with you, but that becomes the least of your troubles when your van stalls out. You desperately try to turn it back on, but it’s not starting. You get out of the van and attempt to run all the way to the shelter. As you run you notice the sun is shining strongly today, it’s nearly blinding your eyes. Then you see a bright light and then nothing at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>SUNDAY “Are you worried about these uncertain times? Do you…” Click. You’re so damn sick of these Ground Zero commercials you think as you turn the TV off. If you older brother Ben hadn’t shot his family and himself in a tragic paranoid breakdown you can only imagine he’d be going on about how right he was in building that underground bunker out in your backyard. You look at the time and realize you’ve spent most of the day procrastinating watching TV even though there’s not much on that interests you on TV anymore. All the channels you used to watch that had interesting shit on them now all have shallow reality shows and quite frankly you’ve got enough dysfunctional family drama going on in real life without needing to watch it on TV. You remember a time when you could avoid most of the mess by hiding out in your basement. Unfortunately you can’t even do that anymore. Ever since dad drank himself to death, the gravy train of living at home for free came to an end. Without the help of your dad’s pension checks anymore, your older Amazonian sister Kelly said there was no way in hell that she was going to keep supporting the house on her own unless she was the only one living in it. Seeing as she’s a roller derby bitch as well as an illegal fight club brawler, it isn’t like you or any of your siblings were in any position to argue with her. Your younger brother Peter, having given up his lofty dreams of being a famous movie director now spends a lot of his time in the garage making amateur porn with various guys he picks up at the clubs. He makes enough money through his website that it keeps Kelly off his back. He seems to enjoy what he’s doing and at least he’s not stealing your clothes anymore. Your younger sister Donna simply moved out and moved in with your best friend Julie who is still the eternal party girl. Really you’re surprised Julie hasn’t caught every STD known to man at this point. To be honest Donna’s had more in common with Julie than you have for many years now. You’re sure Donna’s a lot happier at a “party house.” As for you, you didn’t have much in the way of options. Trying to get a job has failed spectacularly in this economy. Though your…”unique” and reclusive personality doesn’t exactly help in that department. Given some of the junk that’s laying around the house you sometimes wonder if you shouldn’t try to sell some of it over the Internet to support yourself. Seems like a lot of work though and you’re no wheeler and dealer. Donna suggested that you move in with her and Julie, but that whole scene isn’t for you. As much as you hate dealing with Kelly, you’d also hate having to put up with drunk horny guys (and girls) trying to get into your pants every five minutes, not to mention the loud music, crowds and the ever growing possibility of the cops busting the place for illegal drugs. Which brings you to your boyfriend Bobby Morningstar who naturally has suggested that you move in with him on several occasions. This would be the ideal solution if it weren’t for the fact that his own family consists of like a million siblings that all live in his cult compound. There’s also the fact that his ex-girlfriend/sister Diana is wicked pissed at you for stealing him away from her. It’s been an ongoing source of tension between you and Bobby and you wish he’d just leave them all behind and you two could make a life together elsewhere, but his duty to family is strong, as is his faith to the Babylonian Goddess of Chaos, Tiamat which still involves human sacrifices. Right now you’re having a period of separation with him. Sometimes you think about breaking up with him completely, but then you can’t just dismiss the good times you do have with him. You have that special bond that only a couple could have when one warns the other about their serial killer relative lying in wait for them in the woods. Thank god Bobby took care of your uncle Ed. That had to be the scariest moment of your life dealing with that situation. Of course none of this delightful recap of past events really helps you. Kelly is starting to get very impatient with you and you fear that your months of stalling are coming to an end. Kelly’s currently not home, but she’ll be back in a few hours to get a bit of sleep before heading off to her fight club stuff. Continuing to enjoy the time you have to not have to deal with her you go back to procrastinating, which mainly involves goofing off on the Internet, “stumbling” upon a porn site and then using battery powered means to relieve yourself of stress. Eventually you hear the familiar slamming of the door and stomping around upstairs, which signifies that Kelly is indeed home. “SUZY! Stop splittin’ the kitten and get yer bony ass up here!” you hear Kelly shout. You were afraid of this. You clean yourself up a bit, mentally prepare yourself and then head upstairs. “Hey Kelly…” you start to say, but are interrupted. “Shut up. I’ve got exactly a couple hours to get some rest before I have to drag my ass to my other job to support this fucking house and it’s a fucking mess! You can’t even clean up around here? Did you even look for a job today? Let me guess you spent the whole day fucking around on the Internet and masturbating didn’t you?” “Well uh...” “Jesus fuckin’ Christ Suzy, you’re goddamn useless you know that? The only reason I’m not kicking your ass right now is because I need to save my energy and it would be too fucking easy.” Before you can even speak, Kelly continues her rant. “GET A FUCKING JOB! I don’t care what kind! Just be a contributing member of this household like Peter or get the fuck out like Donna!” “Kelly I’m trying, but I’m just not having any luck in finding anything, can’t you help me out?” you say. “Help you out? I’m helping you out right now by supporting your ass! I’ve been helping you out for quite some time! In fact I originally suggested that you could probably become a ring girl at the fights, but you said no because you didn’t want to dress up in skimpy clothing and parade around in front of a bunch of drunks.” “Kelly, you know I don’t want to dress like that in public, especially not after what uncle Ed made me wear that night…” “Oh here we go, crazy old uncle Ed! How long you going to keep using that as an excuse? Sheesh, the way you go on about it, you act like he raped you. What happened instead? He got killed, you weren’t even touched and you got a fucking boyfriend out of that deal! Some of us should be so lucky to be in a fucked up situation and STILL come out ahead! You know what I deal with on a regular basis? Steroid freaks trying to break my fucking neck that’s what! You think I’d be making a living trading punches with fucktards if I LOOKED like you Suzy? You got the biggest advantage and you’re just wasting it! What the hell is your goddamn problem?” You can see that Kelly is in full-blown jealousy mode and shows no signs of stopping. Attempting to walk away will only result in her getting physical with you so the only thing you can do is endure the verbal assault. “This is sink or swim time sis. You either get your shit together by the end of this week or you’re out on your ass! This sheltered girl act is really fucking OLD! You’re a grown ass WOMAN. Start acting like one! Now get out of my fucking sight.” You meekly slink back to the basement and leave Kelly alone. You silently mope for a while pondering what the hell you’re going to do next. You then notice that your phone has been under your couch cushions and on silent all day. Bobby apparently has been repeatedly trying to contact you. Even left multiple texts saying that he really wants to talk, but the mood you’re in right now, you don’t want to deal with it. You don’t want to deal with anything. You just want to be safe in your own little world in the basement. How you miss those days… Well today isn’t completely over yet. You’ve still got time to salvage some of it. Hell, maybe you can even make a major change in your life. > You get help from Peter You don’t want to move out and you can’t trust yourself to not get distracted as usual trying to find a job. You need help and the only other person you know that has one in the house is Peter, so you decide to go see him and hope he isn’t in the middle of “working.” You head to the garage and knock on the door. From within you hear a come on in so you do so, unfortunately given Peter’s state of near nakedness and a tube of KY in hand its obvious he wasn’t expecting you. “Oh. It’s you. What do you want? I got a couple of guys coming over soon and I still need to lube up.” he says “Ugh…I need to speak to you.” You say trying not to look at him. “Can you put some damn clothes on?” “(Sigh) Fine, but let’s hurry this up.” Peter says and puts on a robe. “Peter, I need your help in finding a job and before you even suggest it, no I’m not going to do what you do for money.” “Oh of course not. Wouldn’t enter my mind to suggest such a thing to the likes of you. Which means I don’t have many other suggestions for you. I mean I can only imagine you’ve failed horribly at getting a normal job due to your lack of a college degree, personality quirks and crippling introversion. You don’t seem to have the motivation to start your own business and for some baffling reason you don’t even take advantage of the natural gifts you do have. Pfft, if I was you, I’d start now because you’re just getting older.” “Peter, I’m not a whore. I’m not going to just spread my legs to everyone for cash.” “Who said everyone? Just get one rich one, shit shouldn’t be that hard for you.” “That’s not who I am, besides I have a boyfriend…” “Who? Bobby? I thought you two broke up.” “No, well sort of…it’s complicated.” “Well then you need to work something out with him then and let him take care of you because while I didn’t hear the whole rant, Kelly was loud enough that I made out some of it even from here. Sounds like she gave you an ultimatum.” “I know. I know. I don’t know what to do.” You say slumping into a nearby chair. Peter and you have never been close and most of the time he’s annoyed you by constantly stealing your clothes in the past, but to his credit he go over and tries to console you a bit with a hug, given that his dick is still swinging out of his robe, you’d rather he didn’t and politely tell him you’re fine. “Have you tried the circus?” Peter suddenly asks. “What?” you respond. “The circus. There’s a small one set up a few miles west outside of town. Almost like a gypsy camp really. Remember how our family used to go together? I think it’s about the only time we all got along.” “Yeah…I always liked the clowns the most. I liked how outgoing and happy they always were. Even thought I’d grow up and be one at one point.” “Hm, I think you were the only one as far as that went. I still remember you used to paint up your face with mom’s make up and try to entertain Donna and me at home. Though to be quite honest all you did was scare the hell out of us.” “Yeah…that’s why I gave up that dream. Figured I was doing it wrong.” You say gloomily. “Oh. Sorry about that, didn’t mean to be a dream crusher.” “It’s okay, given my introversion I doubt if I would’ve been able to actually get in front of a crowd and do it anyway.” “Hey, you shouldn’t have given up if that was what you wanted to do. I mean maybe you should pursue it now. I mean you don’t have much to lose right and how hard could it be? Put on make up, dress up silly, and generally act creepy…erm I mean goofy.” Peter’s words do light a certain spark in you. “Hmmm, maybe you’re right…I’ll do it!” you suddenly exclaim. “Good, glad to hear you’re excited about something. So are you good now? I mean I’d talk more, but y’know still got guys coming over and…” “Oh right, yeah I’m good. Hold on, can I borrow your car to get to the circus tomorrow?” “Uhhh, yeah sure. Keys are over there.” “Thanks again Peter.” You say taking the keys and leave. You head back down to the basement filled with excitement at the prospect of pursuing your childhood dream again! It all seems a little crazy right now, but the more you think about it the more it makes sense. You spend the rest of the night in good spirits and maintain a positive attitude that everything will be okay tomorrow. > Next day... MONDAY “…our shelters are all equipped with the latest in state of the art technology, order now and…” Click. You fell asleep watching tv again. Seems like they’re playing those damn commercials all the time now. Nothing like praying upon people’s fears due to recent world events. You look at the time and see that you’ve slept for most of the morning, but given that you’re going to the circus to apply for a job you figure they will be open all night. You also check your phone and see that Bobby’s been trying to reach you, but you can’t let yourself get distracted today. You need to focus on your goal of becoming a clown! You take Peter’s car and head towards the circus. The drive is fairly uneventful though one thing you notice is the increase in police cars and police in general. Apparently there’s been some civil disturbance in multiple locations. You swear this one of the reasons why you never like leaving the basement in the first place. You hate the chaotic nature of people. But then, if you have any hope of being a clown, you’re going to have to get used to dealing with crowds and people. In fact you’re going to have to get used to a lot of things, but you can’t let yourself get a panic attack about this. You have to go through with this. Eventually you arrive at your destination. Or at least you assume it is. Peter wasn’t joking when he said it resembled a gypsy camp as opposed to a proper circus. You see a lot of little tents and some trailers, but nothing like a “big top.” Most of the people here are dwarves and last time you knew there wasn’t a large population of little people in your town, so you can only assume that they’re part of the circus. In fact from what you can tell there aren’t actually any customers, just carnies. As you wander a bit, you start getting a lot of looks, you aren’t sure if they’re staring at you because you’re an outsider or if they’re just gawking at you. Might be a bit of both. Doesn’t take long before you’re surrounded by a lot of the little people and you start to feel like Dorothy. “Hey goldie with the legs, what’re you doing around here? We’re not open yet.” One of their numbers says. “Oh, well I wasn’t here for that. I’m here because…” you take a deep breath. “I want to be a clown!” That certainly wasn’t the response that they were expecting. You hear a few whispers before the one that was talking speaks again. “A clown? Heh, well I’m not sure how successful that’s going to work out for you, but luckily for you the owner of this fine circus is also a clown, so you’ll need to speak with him either way. He’s in the tent over there. Roofie is probably still hung over so try to speak quietly.” “Roofie?” “Yeah, that’s his clown name… actually it mean be his real name as well. Anyway, don’t worry he’s not a rapist or anything like that, he’s just a drunk. In fact he’s probably the most mentally stable clown that we’ve ever had in this circus!” Taking the dwarf’s directions, you head over to Roofie’s tent. The smell of booze is strong and when you enter you see a balding older man in oversized pants and suspenders sitting at a table holding his head in both hands. Beer and whiskey bottle are plentiful enough that you make yourself heard just by tripping over some. “Goddamn it, it isn’t fucking showtime and nobody’s been coming anyway! Leave me alone, shit!” Roofie shouts not even looking up and continuing to hold his head. “Uh Mr. Roofie, I was told to speak to you.” Roofie turns and looks at you. A big red nose still on his face. “Huh? Wbo the hell are you? You look way too damn classy to be any whore that I’d be able to afford.” “My name’s Suzy and I want to be a clown.” At this point Roofie slowly gets up from his seat kicking a few bottles aside. You continue to stand there starting to wonder if this was such a good idea. “A clown? Now why the hell would a cute blonde like you want to be a fuckin’ clown. Doesn’t make sense. You playin’ some sort of angle honey, because I assure you I’m in no mood and I ain’t got any money for you to grift anyway.” “No, it’s always been a life long dream ever since I was a little girl!” you say and then start to go into detail of how you enjoyed circus clowns and a bunch of other life story shit that doesn’t really interest Roofie. In fact he’s just struggling to stand up and listen right now. “Alright, alright, enough! Shit. I get it. (Sigh) Look honey I dunno what to tell you, we’re not exactly the Ringling Brothers here. I’m also not exactly looking to hire and I barely keep this place running as it is.” “Please let me be a clown! Just give me a chance!” “Argh, too fucking loud! Fine show me your clown stuff, just keep your voice down.” “Clown stuff?” “Uh yeah, like can you juggle? A little magic maybe? Some slapstick? Do you have a character like being a hobo or something? What you think it’s just easy as putting on white face make up, jumping around and laughing like an idiot?” “Well sort of…” “Sheesh. That’s the kind of thinking that makes us look creepy rather than amusing. You do realize that most people hate clowns right? Doesn’t help that we’re constantly vilified in horror movies nowadays. Yer wastin’ my time and yours if you don’t even know the basics.” Roofie isn’t exactly inspiring your confidence in this anymore. You feel like just heading home, but can’t run from this like you do with everything else, you’ve got no other options! You start to break down in tears. “Maybe I don’t know the basics, but I’ll work hard! (Sob) I’m serious about this! (Sob) I’ve tried to get a job everywhere else and if I don’t get this, I’ll get kicked out of my house! This is my last chance! (Sob)” you exclaim in between the tears. “Last chance? Darling, if bein’ a clown is your last chance, then you’ve got some major problems. (Sigh) I dunno even know why I’m entertaining this save for the fact that you’re easy on the eyes even without the need for alcohol and I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress. Besides if the news is any indication, we’re all gonna be dead by nuclear fire soon anyway, so fuck it. All right, stop yer weepin’ an maybe we can do something with you.” You clear up your eyes a bit completely oblivious to Roofie’s brief doomsday expectations. “So you’ll help train me?” “Well, hopefully you’ll pick up something in time, but I’m not going to bother with regular training, you’re going to learn trial by fire which all good clowns do anyway. Now the greatest thing going for you is that you’re cute, so I’m thinkin’ we create a character for you that utilizes your, shall we say natural talent.” “Wait, I’m not going to have my breasts exposed while wearing nothing but red clown noses on my nipples do I?” you ask with concern. “(Snort) Jesus girl. No, nuthin’ like that.” Roofie chuckles “You’ll be fully clothed, though you’ll still be cute lookin’. Kinda like that one girl. Y’know in the funny books? The one with that rich vigilante. Anyway, the key thing to remember is you need to act cutesy. That’s going to be your character. You’ll be a cute clown while all the other clowns around you hilariously fail to try to win you over, hit each other with mallets and all that sort of shit…hmmm, this is actually sounding like a pretty good skit. I’m going to go round up the others and have a run through. In the meantime there’s a bunch of clown outfits in the trunk over there. Fairly certain we got a bunch of unused girly ones that should fit you. Some make up over and a mirror over there. Don’t worry about getting that just right for now since I know the lighting sucks in this tent. And uh, I dunno try to practice acting demure and shy.” Roofie leaves the tent and you’re left realizing that you might just succeed at getting this job! You quickly go through the trunk and find some pink and black-checkered leotard thing with a mini-skirt attached around the waist. It fits and fortunately while form fitting, it isn’t excessively tight, though your legs are still exposed so you put on some knee high purple striped leggings. You feel sort of vulnerable undressing in a tent that someone could just enter at any time, but fortunately there’s at least a privacy-screen you can dress behind. You complete your look by putting your hair in girlish pigtails and applying a bunch of white face make up on and making your eyelashes and lips stand out with black eye liner and red lipstick. You haven’t had time to practice when Roofie returns with a bunch of other men in various clown outfits. One of them is even a little person like you met out front. “Goddamn Roofie, I think I’m gonna have to rethink my plans of leaving your shitty carnival.” One of them says. “Leave? Hell, I think I’m in love.” Says another before Roofie speaks up. “Holy shit girl, I said cute clown, not harlequin seductress! You might need to tone it down in the future we’re still trying to run a family show more or less. All right never mind, let’s run through this and you guys TRY to remember to keep your tongues in your mouth on occasion.” So you run through the routine while Roofie gives everyone directions. At first you naturally feel a little unready and uneasy what with everyone flirting with you, but soon you start to get into the swing of things. In fact it starts to come easy, you bat your eyes, give a few girlish giggles when someone slips and falls trying to give you a balloon flower and similar things. Eventually Roofie stops everyone and says the skit needs to be refined a bit, but it should work. He then tells everyone to leave since he wants speak with you privately. This seems to disappoint the others who all continue to stare at you while leaving. “Well, other than the fact that I could tell some of them were having a really hard time in not actually groping you, I’d say that went well and even you seem to have gotten into character quickly. Maybe you do have what it takes after all. You still seem a little nervous though, which sort of helped your performance, but I’d rather you remain at ease. Anything that can help with that?” Roofie asks. “Well its like you said, I partially felt like one of them was going to jump on me at any given time. I mean is that something I’m going to have to worry about?” “Nah, that won’t happen. We carnies have a rule against hurting each other. I mean I won’t lie that they aren’t going to stare a lot at you and most likely a few are going to make crude comments, but that’s about as far as it is going to go if you decide to join and stay with us.” “You want me to join?” “If you’re still interested, sure. I think you’ve got something to offer. Though like I said, I’m still not sure why someone like you would want to join a broken down circus like this one. I still think someone like you would be a model or something.” “Well, I’m wearing an outlandish outfit, my face is all painted up and a bunch of guys are falling over themselves just to get a look at me. Seems like I’m doing the same thing as a model save for the eating disorder.” Your comment causes a laugh from Roofie. “Ha ha! That’s pretty good. I think I’m making the right decision. Okay, so about your sleeping arrangements, I might have to re-arrange some folks and that’s always going to cause problems, so you might have to sleep in your car for tonight…” “Wait you want me to move in here?” “Well yeah. I mean I told you we weren’t going to be staying here too much longer and you have to know that circus’ do tend to travel right?” “Yeah, right. Of course. It’s just, heh, I guess when I jumped into this I didn’t think all of it through. Though that’s probably obvious.” “Hrm, well it’s your choice. I’m not gonna lie and say this life is the easiest and if you feel more comfortable at home or have loved ones you don’t want to leave that’s understandable.” “I dunno if I’d say all that, but the concept of leaving my home…well it’s a bit of a big change for me. Like a VERY big one. And oddly, this opportunity has me seriously considering it.” “Well you do what’s in your heart. Anyway, we aren’t leaving today or even tomorrow, so I mean if you want to go back home and pick up some stuff, say goodbye to whoever, then you’ve got time. But even though we’re not leaving tomorrow we are going to be open for our last show and I’ll need you here. I’m hoping we’ll at least get some people here and make at least a bit of money before picking up stakes and all that.” You aren’t sure what to do. The logical thing to do would be to go back home and gather some belonging, say a few goodbyes and try to convince Peter to drive you back up here so he gets his car back. But there’s something within you that wonders if you shouldn’t just make a clean break immediately and stay. You know yourself and if you get back home you’re likely find some reason to stay and back out of this opportunity. You think about Bobby and how he’d be one of those reasons. You still haven’t called him back. > You stay at the circus If you’re going to do this, you need to be all in right now. You feel slightly bad about essentially stealing Peter’s car, but you figure you can call him later and he can get someone to drive him over to pick it up. (Assuming he doesn’t call you first) As for Bobby you’re not going to bother. You’ve come to the conclusion that you and he have too many differences to make it work and that this final break up has been a long time coming. Calling him would just make you fall for his charms and hinder your own goals and you can’t have that happen. “Mr. Roofie, I’ll be staying.” You say. “Okay, great. We’ll be opening up soon, dunno if anyone’s actually going to show up, but you might as well get out there and wander around to make this place look festive.” “Did you want me to change, you said something about this outfit being too much?” “Eh…don’t bother. I’m thinkin’ it’s an appropriate look for you. Like I said, you might have to put up with some cat calling from some of the cruder employees here, but that’s about it. And if anyone starts getting out of line with you, be they carnie or rube, let me know about it. Trust me it’ll be taken care of immediately. This carnival might be on its last legs, but I’ll be damned if it’ll descend into anarchy. My dad didn’t work and sacrifice all those years for nothing.” Roofie says. “Your dad owned this carnival? Was he a clown too?” you ask. “Heh, no. He was a geek and I don’t mean in the lovable nerd sense either. I mean he was a bonafide circus geek. Ate all manner of disgusting things to bring in the customers. Raw animal organs, heads of chickens, rotten food, you name it. He always told me though he was drunk most of the time so it wasn’t quite as bad as you’d think. Fortunately he didn’t stay a circus geek though. Apparently he helped the original ringmaster with something very important and after that happened my dad got a better job around here as the ringmaster’s assistant.” “What did he help the ringmaster with?” “Dunno exactly. Like I said, my dad was drinking a lot heavier during those geek days. He said it had to do with a power struggle within the circus, but he couldn’t quite remember all the details. In any event when the original ring master one day decided it was time to move on to something else my dad got control of the circus. Kept it going too despite the changing times. I’ve tried to follow in his footsteps, but so far the only thing I’ve succeeded at is the drinking part.” Roofie takes a drink from a nearby bottle after this statement. “So, uh what made you become a clown?” you ask. “I dunno, I was trying to help out I guess. Y’see my dad had to raise me himself since my mom died giving birth to me and I guess when I got old enough I felt I should contribute for all the extra burden I put on him.” “Sorry to hear that.” “Hm, well all I know about her is that she was a runaway that joined up with the circus shortly after my dad took over as owner. Anyway, for a while, this circus didn’t have a single clown. Apparently it did a long time ago, but my dad said there were some horror stories about them and they were eventually…let go. Despite this circus’ odd apprehension about having clowns again I convinced my dad that it would be a good idea to have clowns. So he gave me a shot and it worked. Rest is history, anyway that’s enough story time you’ve got your own clown work to do, so get to it.” You take your leave and re-assure that you’ll do everything in your power to keep people entertained. No sooner have you left Roofie’s tent when you’re nabbed by a couple of the other clowns, this time they’re full clown uniform. “Hey tulip we’ve been lookin’ for ya. If you’re staying, we’re going to need to polish up our routine.” One of them says. “Yeah, and after that, you can polish something else. Ha ha ha ha ha!” says another which causes some snickering from the others. “Could you please not talk that way to me?” you ask politely. “Awww are you sensitive? You’re such a delicate pretty little flower aren’t you?” the clown who made the polishing comment says. “Sheesh, Ranko don’t be a fucking asshole. Don’t mind him sweetheart he’s never been this close to a woman before.” Another clown says. “Fuck you Klepto and stop playing white knight. You’re not foolin’ anyone. You know damn well you got a raging boner for this little blonde number too. Am I right fellas?” This gets a small positive acknowledgement by the other clowns, including Klepto who chuckles while confessing his transparent white knighting. Once again you’re starting to wonder if this is going to be worth it. Is this what its always going to be like? You haven’t even been officially an employee five minutes and you’re already getting subjected to dirty innuendo and harassment. You know Roofie tried to assure you that nothing is going happen and that if someone did try anything you could let him know, but really though you don’t want to have to feel like you have to go running to him like a tattletale every time. If you could brave your serial killer uncle and your cultist ex-boyfriend, you can certainly handle some loutish clowns. In fact you start thinking about all the times Kelly has verbally abused you and you begin to get angry. You channel some of that anger that you have for her and direct it towards your new co-workers. “Ranko, I’m guessing that’s your name due to the bad breath your giving off right now. It smells like shit which still makes it about two steps higher than you look.” You say, which catches him off guard and stops the others from laughing. Before Ranko can retort you continue. “Your name oughta be Zero, because that’s exactly how far you’re ever going to get with me. The same goes for the rest of you fucktards! Just because I’m new here doesn’t mean I’m just going to take your fucking abuse!” For a moment there’s silence and even some of the nearby employees look on wondering what the rest a going to do. Ranko is the only one who says anything though. “Hmm, looks like the delicate flower has a few thorns. That’s okay though. I like a little spirit, keeps things interesting. In any case we still need to go over the routine so if you’re done bitching at all of us, let’s go.” He says and motions everyone to follow. You’re slightly apprehensive about following this group anywhere, but there’s little else for it since these are going to be your coworkers. You can only hope that in time they’ll see you as something other than an outlet for their lust. As you walk to the location you scan the rest of the carnival, which mostly consists of a lot of game barker types setting up their crooked games. You do see a few stages where the more traditional sword swallower and fire eater types are preparing themselves. This being a circus and the fact that Roofie said his father was a geek, you can’t help but wonder if there are any “freaks” anywhere. “Hey just wondering are their any Siamese Twins around here or something?” you ask trying to break up the silence. “Siamese Twins? Way to be racist darlin’. Ha ha, nah just fuckin’ with ya, but I believe the correct term is conjoined twins and no we don’t have any. There haven’t been any freaks in this carnival for decades now. I heard back in the day there were a lot of them here though. Cyclopes, pinheads, four arms abominations of nature, you name it.” Ranko remarks. “How come there aren’t any here anymore?” “Well because we live in a developed country that has access to modern medicine nowadays? I mean most of those freaks were just unlucky bastards that rolled low on the genetics chart when they were born. Thanks to modern medicine they can correct that shit now y’know? Plus you’ve got all those politically correct types going on about exploitation or some shit. Also if someone IS a genetic freak of nature they can just go on a talk show or the Internet and make money that way. Nope, the time of the sideshow freak has long since passed. I mean sure you get the self made freaks like tattooed and pierced folks, but that’s not really the same and it isn’t even shocking anymore especially when you’ve got people cutting their dicks off or shoving glass jars up their ass for free on the net. The best you’re going to get around here to freaks are the midgets and they’re a dime a dozen, no offense Shrimpy.” Ranko says referring to the dwarf clown. “Fuck you too Ranko.” Shrimpy remarks. Soon you get to an open location near a couple trailers where Ranko says you’re all going to go through the routine. It’s pretty much like how you first went through it, but you notice several of the clowns are getting a little bit more grabby now. “Alright, stop, stop. You assholes are supposed to be trying to woo me and fighting with each other, not attempting to gang rape me! I feel one more hand trying to grab my ass and they’re losing it!” you say. “Oh for fuck’s sake according to you whatever we do is offensive. I’m just thinking of a way to keep the routine fresh. It’ll be funny!” Ranko says. “Fresh? We haven’t even performed it for people yet! Besides isn’t this supposed to be a family show? The way Roofie suggested will be fine.” “That old drunk doesn’t even perform anymore, he’s too busy running this carnival into the fucking ground. He’s so fucking out of touch its ridiculous. Kids these days are watching hardcore anal porn as soon as they can log on to the Internet nowadays, so I doubt if a couple of clowns grabbing your ass is even going to register.” Ranko says. At this point Ranko is starting to get more hostile. Your continued defiance of not wanting to be a squeeze toy is getting to him. Despite Roofie being the owner, it’s obvious that this Ranko is the “ring leader” of the clowns and he’s going to be a dick no matter what. Continuing to antagonize his authority is going to just result in unifying the rest to his side, so you try something else. “All right Ranko, you want this routine to incorporate a little more risqué business fine, but you’re going about it the wrong way. You’ve got no style.” “Oh? Only been a clown for a few hours and you’re already an expert eh? Well go on and enlighten us all then sweetheart.” “Well for one thing Shrimpy should be trying to look under my dress whenever he can due to his size.” You say. “Wait what?” Ranko asks. “Hey, I’m liking her ideas already!” Shrimpy exclaims. “You all still need to play to your traits, don’t you see? You, Lifto. You’re the biggest of the lot so you should be relying on feats of strength in order to impress me like picking me up in your arms.” “Yeah, that makes sense.” Lifto remarks. You go through what the rest of the clowns should be doing and they’re remarkably receptive to you and your ideas. You come up with a whole new routine where they each attempt to charm you and how they fail either due to their own ineptness or another clown sabotaging them. The only one who’s not liking this idea is Ranko. “Hey, hey, hey, what about me? Where do I fit in?” Ranko demands. “You? Well I figured you’d be that completely disgusting suitor that never even gets close to being charming seeing as you’re already pretty good in that role. You can be an ongoing participant that gets constantly beat down by the others. Lifto hits you with a mallet, Klepto steals your pants, Shrimpy gives you a hot foot…you know clown stuff. It’ll be funny.” You say snidely much to Ranko’s chagrin. “Oh no, you’re not turning my crew against me! I’M head clown around here not some bottle blonde split tail! We’re not agreeing to this shit!” Ranko shouts. “Speak for yourself Ranko.” Klepto says. “Yeah, I kinda like this idea better, my bit doesn’t seem to rely on as much movement on my part.” Fatty remarks. “You’re just pissed that a newbie took your idea and made it work against you.” Shrimpy adds. Ranko at this point begins ranting and raving at everyone. He unleashed a torrent of swears that causes the whole carnival to take notice. He calls you a bitch and the rest of them pussy whipped. “That’s it, I’m done with this fucking loser carnival and the rest of you losers as well! I’m fucking RANKO the goddamn clown! I can get a job anywhere! Enjoy living in obscurity with miss frigid over here!” Ranko exclaims and storms off in a huff. “Good riddance rank breath! And I’m a goddamn natural blonde, you asshole!” you shout as he continues to walk away. You have to say this plunge into assertiveness has given you a bit of a rush. You like it. When you go back to going through the routine with the others and you notice a decrease in your former uneasiness. The “boys” are still doing a lot of leering and the routine is a little more physical now, but something is different this time. Namely you feel more in control of the situation and that’s probably because you are. “Wow, I really was wasting my natural talent.” You think to yourself. In the middle of the routine, Roofie shows up. “Well this looks…friendly.” He remarks as Lifto is in the middle of setting you back down on the ground. “Just going through the tweaked routine boss. It was the new girl’s idea!” Klepto remarks. “Yeah, it’s going to be good.” Shrimpy adds. “Hrm. Well let’s at least try to keep everyone’s clothing on shall we?” “Of course! There isn’t going to be any of that. Just going to keep it entertaining for the adult audience too.” You say. “Couldn’t help notice Ranko swearing like a sailor and stomping away from the carnival. Ranting about how he’s never coming back. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?” “Not really boss. He just couldn’t keep up with the recent changes around here I guess.” You say, Roofie smirks a bit. “Heh, okay. Well I’m not going to lose any sleep not having to pay that asshole anymore. In any case, saw a few people actually driving up. Look like actual customers, so you guys need to go do your stuff for the crowds.” The rest of the day goes pretty well for you. You and the rest entertain the small crowds (who seem to be mostly from the trailer park community just outside of your town.) that do show up. By the end of the night you’re actually pretty tired and anxious to just flop down somewhere to sleep. Roofie says that thanks to Ranko leaving, his trailer is now empty and says that you can have it if you’re willing to ignore the mess he probably left it in. You accept the offer since it’ll be better than sleeping in Peter’s car. And its at that point you forgot to call Peter back to let him know to pick his car up! You check your phone and see that Peter did indeed try to get a hold of you, and once again Bobby left a bunch of texts and messages as well. You’re too tired to even bother to read them. You try to call Peter back, but you get no answer. Probably doing god knows what. You’ll try again tomorrow, for now you enter Ranko’s trailer and breathe a sigh of relief that the place isn’t a health hazard and lie down on his bed. As you drift off to sleep you chuckle at the irony that Ranko wanted to get you into his bed really badly and all it took was for him to leave. > Next day… TUESDAY “…remember time is running out! Our shelters won’t be…” You wake up to instinctively to grab the remote to turn off the TV only to realize that you have no TV, yet you’re still hearing those damn Ground Zero commercials. You groggily sit up and look out a side window and see one of the carnies holding a radio, which is loudly playing one of those advertisements. Just as well you’re up anyway, now that you have actual responsibilities and will have to live these new people you should take this opportunity to meet everyone since despite getting acquainted with your co-workers and the boss, you didn’t really interact with anyone else working here. Still dressed in your outfit from yesterday (mainly because you lack anything else to wear right now) you go out and meet your brand new family full of hope that this will be the start of something wonderful! The reality turns out to be much different though. “Honey, why the hell are hanging around with those clowns? I’m sure you’d be better as a sword swallower; in fact I got a way you can practice if you come to my trailer right now!” “Hey clown girl, I’ve got a way to paint your face white without the need for make up!” “Nice tits!” The female carnies aren’t much better. “So you’re the new girl that got her own private trailer huh? Guess a blowjob gets you a lot preference nowadays. Was Roofie even sober at the time?” “Hey Bozo the Hoe, you think you’re hot shit wiggling your ass at everyone? Let me warn you right now, you take my man I’ll make sure you won’t need to wear a red clown nose at your next performance!” “No, I don’t have any extra clothes you can borrow, Miss Living Skeleton. Go away you anorexic bitch.” Life is never easy outside the basement is it Suzy? Unfortunately that part of your life is over. You could go back to your trailer and hide you suppose, but it’s not the same and besides you’ve already come to the conclusion that hiding won’t solve your problems. Still, you are feeling a little “ganged up” on so for temporary relief you return to currently the only people that are halfway decent to you now, your fellow clowns. You enter the clown tent and see them all sitting around talking about something, but then when you enter all their attention is turned towards you. “Oh hey Suzy, you’re here early. We don’t usually warm up until a few hours before showtime.” Klepto remarks. “Oh, I’m not here for that, I’m just here since half of the carnival seems to want to fuck me and barrage me with clumsy sexual innuendo.“ “And… you came here to get away from that?” Lifto asks. You chuckle a little. “Yeah well at least if I stay in here part of it will be work related.” You answer which causes a couple of laughs and smiles from the rest. “Well considering you are one of us, maybe we should go easier on that now.” Klepto says. “I’d certainly appreciate it.” “Hey there are a lot of other women who work here, maybe you could go bond with them and do that whole sisterhood thing?” Lifto says. “I tried that. They all insulted me and seemed to want to punch me. Well except for that woman with the short red hair that juggles knives. I think she wanted to punch AND fuck me. (Sigh) No, looks like you guys are my only tribe here for now.” “Hm, well get used to it I guess. Nobody likes us clowns that much. To be quite honest one of the reasons we decided to knock off the crude remarks toward you is because you’ll be the first new person in years that will be civil to us. No point in making new enemies.” Klepto says. “Really? I thought all carnies stuck together.” You say. Now all the rest of the clowns laugh. “Hardly. I mean yeah there’s a certain unspoken rule that carnies stay united against outsiders and rubes. And we aren’t supposed to kill one another, but…well lets just say this very carnival doesn’t exactly have a spotless track record in that regard.” Klepto says. “People kill each other here?” you ask a bit alarmed. “No! Well not in my time anyway…” Klepto remarks trailing off. “What the hell does that mean? Look I don’t want to be part of some murder circus!” “Damn it Klepto you’ve scared the girl now! You should’ve just kept your mouth shut!” Shrimpy exclaims. At this point the clowns begin arguing with each other, but after a few moments of this bickering you demand that someone explain the situation exactly. Once again Klepto takes it upon himself to be the storyteller. “Look, I’ve probably blown it all out of proportion, but there are stories of how back in the day before Roofie or even his dad owned this carnival there was a violent power struggle for control over it that resulted in a lot of dead bodies afterwards.” “Weren’t just stories, shit it happened! My family has been a fixture of this carnival for generations too and my grandfather told me about the blood that ran during that fateful day.” Shrimpy adds as if Klepto didn’t quite put as much stock in these stories and takes over as the storyteller. “Battle lines were drawn that day. I mean you had dwarves, normals and freaks all siding against each other and the most hated group out of the bunch? The clowns. Now from what my grandfather told me, these clowns were definitely the reason why everyone today thinks of them as being monsters under the beds nowadays. Things of course have changed since then, but as they say the more things change the more they stay the same.” “What do you mean?” you ask. “I’m saying there’s going to be another power struggle soon and given that we’re clowns, WE are going to be on the losing end no matter what happens” “Wait a minute, what about Roofie? I mean isn’t he one of us?” you ask. “Roofie? The fact that he’s a clown just makes everyone think we already get preferential treatment. He’ll probably be the first one killed being the owner and all. He’s old and doesn’t have nearly the amount of control he used to anymore. Nope, I believe the change will be coming soon and it’ll be truly be a dark day for clowns…well maybe I’ll be able to get my people to take me back and YOU can offer to be someone’s girlfriend, but the rest of you are fucked.” “Gee, glad to know we’ll be able to count on your support Shrimpy, if something does happen.” Klepto remarks. You never realized that carnie “politics” was so complex and dangerous. Before you can panic too much about it Roofie shows up with a bottle in his hand. “Hey, what’re you lot still doing in here? We’ve actually got people showing up early. Apparently your little routine yesterday got people at that trailer park talking and they brought all the rest of their redneck buddies. Looks like we’ll get to rake in one goodly amount of cash before leaving this place. Oh and Suzy, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the car you drove up in? Well looks like it was vandalized in the night.” “What?!” you exclaim. “All the tires were slashed and someone wrote cunt all over it with face make up. It might be just a hunch, but I’d say Ranko felt like he needed to have to last word.” “(Sigh) Great.” You say. “Well anyway you all need to get out there and do what you do.” Roofie orders and leaves. While the rest get going, you remain sitting starting to worry about what you’ve got yourself into. Once again you start to wonder if you shouldn’t just leave until Klepto touches your shoulder. “Don’t worry Suzy, Shrimpy has been going on like that for as long as I’ve known him. While things get tense around here at times, I don’t think it’s going to come to some bloodbath. Besides you can’t spend your life worrying about the future, gotta live for the day I say, so let’s just take our minds off our troubles by putting on a good show.” Klepto remarks. While Klepto’s reassurance is nice, it doesn’t really alleviate your concerns. Hell, you can’t even leave if you wanted to given that Peter’s car is trashed. You can only hope that perhaps in time peoples’ attitudes towards you will soften a bit. Right now, you do have work to focus on. Roofie wasn’t lying when he said more people showed up today. You and the rest of the clowns spend a majority of the afternoon walking around keeping the people entertained Eventually you take a break and decide to check out Peter’s car and if it is at all salvageable. When you get to it, it’s exactly as Roofie said, all four tires slashed and the word cunt painted all over it. You can’t believe nobody saw any of this even during the night. Or maybe they did and didn’t give a shit considering you haven’t exactly been accepted by most here. In any event you try to call Peter again, but you get no answer. He hasn’t even tried to call you. He must really be involved with work or something. Or maybe he doesn’t give a shit about his car. He could easily afford a new one. You also notice Bobby hasn’t tried calling you either. You guess he got the hint. You attempt to start to the car and just as you suspected Ranko must’ve sabotaged the engine or something under the hood as well. No matter, when you leave you weren’t going to be driving this thing anymore anyway. Lacking anymore use for the car, you take a look in the trunk just to see what might be in there and that’s when you find something useful. Namely a bunch of clothes…specifically YOUR clothes! Well some of them anyway. Apparently Peter still had a lot of your old clothes that he stole from you in the past. The other stuff looks like S&M garb, though not all of it the traditional black leather or latex. Some of it is sort of colorful. Festive even. Well at least you won’t be walking around in the same stuff day in day out now. You pack up what you can and head back to your trailer to drop it off. Afterwards you find the rest of your new clown “family” and eat with them. You take the opportunity to tell them a little bit about your former life; you get a surprising amount of sympathy from the others. “Holy shit, I thought I came from a fucked up family.” Klepto remarks. “Yeah well, like I said I did a lot of hiding in the basement for the most part. Not much of a life I guess, but it kept me sane for the most part.” You say. “Hey, whatever helps you survive the day right?” Shrimpy says. After a bit more chatting you all get back to work. As time goes on, there is one person you keep seeing nearby throughout the day, a large man in overalls who while attempting to look like he’s NOT staring at you, obviously is. This isn’t the usual ogling either because you’ve gotten accustomed to that, you’re getting a really creepy vibe from this guy. “Maybe we should get Roofie to throw this guy out or something.” You say. “Roofie? I just passed by one of the tents when I got another snack and saw he’s currently passed out as usual. Besides, he never throws anyone out as long as they aren’t doing something violent. As far a he’s concerned every low life that visits this carnival is a potential mark and worth putting up with to get their money.” Fatty says. “The guy looks like a retard. He’s probably not used to seeing a girl as beautiful as you before. I mean even under the white face make up and clown clothing, you still look miles better than any of the trailer trash mothers that have come here with their spawn.” Shrimpy remarks. “Well he’s really fucking creepy and I don’t trust him.” You say. “He’s not going to do anything in broad daylight, and even if he does, you know we got your back. Just stick near us and Lifto look extra intimidating.” Klepto says. The night the crowds start thinning out a bit. You imagine that after they put their illegitimate spawn to bed, trailer trash prefers to spend their nights at bars, strip clubs and getting high and/or drunk at home. As for the big retard that was staring at you all day, he seems to have left as well, but you still feel uneasy. Meanwhile Roofie has reawakened from his temporary drunken stupor to tell everyone that today was a good day and that everyone should get some rest since you’re going to be packing this place down first thing tomorrow morning and moving on. He then mumbles something about it all being pointless anyway and staggers back to his own trailer. “Well looks like that’s it. See you tomorrow Suzy.” Klepto remarks as he and the rest head towards their trailer. You on the other hand are still a little nervous about going back to yours. “Uh, guys do you think I could sleep with you tonight?” you say which causes all of them to turn back towards you in disbelief. “Wow Ranko would have had a field day with that remark.” Klepto chuckles. “You know probably nothing is going to happen. That guy was just some goony retard. Hell, if the freak show still existed, he’d probably be one of the side shows here.” “Look, I’m just still feeling really on edge about that guy from earlier. I mean I could sleep on the floor, I don’t care.” You say. “That would be incredibly uncomfortable and probably quite disgusting. Our trailer isn’t exactly the cleanest. I mean I’d offer my bed, but given that we’re going to need all our energy to pack up tomorrow, I’d like to get a good night’s sleep.” Klepto remarks. “Why don’t I sleep over in your trailer?” Lifto asks. “I know Ranko’s trailer is big enough for one other person. I could stay over, you guys would get a little extra room tonight and you can sleep safely without worry.” “Hrmm, that’s…generous of you Lifto.” Klepto remarks. “It’s not like that, I’m just offering a solution.” Lifto says though it does seem like he might be hoping this act of chivalry will lead to something more. While you’d hate to cause hard feelings within the group or possibly lead someone on, you know one thing is certain; you still don’t want to sleep alone tonight. > You take up Lifto's offer The more you think about it, the idea of sleeping in possibly cramped quarters isn’t exactly appealing, not to mention Klepto said the place wasn’t the cleanest. If you lay down the law to Lifto, you’re fairly certain he won’t try anything. “Okay Lifto, get your stuff, you can stay over, but I think you know I don’t need to tell you to not try anything.” “Sure. Really, it’ll be nice just to stay some place less crowded for a change.” Lifto remarks and goes to trailer to get whatever it is he’s going to need for the night. Klepto looks a little disappointed, but says nothing and just meekly heads back to his trailer as well. You already can imagine how rumors are going to spread, but you really can’t worry about that now. You’re not going to worry about possible “hurt” feelings especially when you’re not involved with anyone here anyway. Lifto and you soon head over to your trailer. “Haven’t really had a chance to completely clean up since I was given the place.” You mention. “Still cleaner than our place, and I’ve been over here a couple times when Ranko had it. Trust me it’s starting to look better already.” “(Yawn) Thanks. Man, didn’t realize I was getting so sleeping so quickly. I’m going to bed.” “Sure. I’m probably going to be awake for a little while longer, and eventually sleep on the floor.” “You sure you’re going to be okay? I mean I know you have to sleep as well.” “I’m sort of a light sleeper, so even when I do fall asleep, I’ll easily be able to wake up if someone even tries to pick the lock and creep in here. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” You settle down to sleep and speak about a few superficial things to Lifto about how you think you’re fitting in here and how you’re glad he’s staying here the night. He of course is very positive and tries to reassure you that it’ll just take awhile, but eventually the rest of the carnies will accept you. You aren’t inclined to believe that, but it’s nice to hear before you fall asleep. At some point in the night you’re awakened by Lifto noisily rushing to the door. “What the hell?” you utter still half asleep. “Suzy, stay where you are, some motherfucker’s trying to break in!” he shouts and with some sort of blunt object in hand he slams the door open. It doesn’t sound like he hit the person with the door, but you do hear a scuffle outside. You look out the window and see who Lifto is fighting with and it’s an equally large man. It’s same creepy retard that was staring at you all day today. You knew it wasn’t going to be safe to be here alone. You quickly look around for a weapon of your own to help Lifto. Hopefully with all the noise someone else from the carnival will come running to help. (You hope) Grabbing a knife you cautiously head towards the door still hearing the fighting between Lifto and the retarded hick. You open the door and see them both rolling on the ground. You can’t really help due to the retard not being still enough for you to be confident to stab at him, not to mention you’re really scared about this whole situation. Nobody is out to help out either. You call out a couple times and you know it has to be loud enough for SOMEONE to hear now, but its like you’re not being helped on purpose. Lifto and the retard are really going at it and unfortunately it’s starting to look like the retard is getting the upper hand. You really don’t want to leave, but you figure the best you can do is to go get help from the other clowns. You turn to run and you manage to get to the end of your trailer, before someone trips you to the ground in the dark followed by a blunt object smashing you in the back of the head. You go unconscious immediately. When you wake up, you’re groggy, naked and firmly strapped to a medical gurney of some sort. You also have a ball gag in your mouth. The room you’re in looks to be some sort of basement with a bright light hanging overhead. The stench of chemicals fills the air and to your left in a darker corner of the room you see a man in a doctor’s coat hovering over another gurney with a body on it. Naturally in such a state you start to panic and ineffectively struggle to get free. The “doctor” hears you and walks over to you. “Oh, you’re up. I’ll have to give you more sedative. When Jed and Hugo brought you in, I thought you were going to be a useless slab of meat like they normally bring in. I was glad they showed some restraint this time. Honestly I’m very surprised they just didn’t keep you themselves and have some good ol’ fashioned fun or at least a quick in out before handing you over, but Jed did mention something about having to haul ass from your carnival as quick as possible.” As you continue to try to struggle and make muted sounds to cry out, the doctor begins fondling you and moving his hands to roam all over your body. “Mmmm, nice. Not as great as my sister, but then none of them ever are. If I had the time, I’d probably shove it in your vertical smile for a while, but sadly I don’t.” The doctor goes over to a tray and grabs some sort of syringe he fully intends on use on you and you’ve gone from mere panic to sheer terror. “Really, you’re luckier than most that come through here. Normally I keep ‘em awake when I do my work, but I need you unconscious to take out those pretty eyes and other vital organs of yours. Wouldn’t want you thrashing about or blinking to cause me to cut them all up and making them useless.” You watch helplessly as the needle goes into your arm. The tears run down your cheeks. “There we go. Won’t be long now. (Sigh) I swear it seems like I never get to enjoy my work any more though. I really would’ve liked to have fun with you. Oh well, I’ve got some other things to still look forward to.” You drift into unconsciousness again and your life ends where you ironically spent most of your time. A basement.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>TUESDAY “…remember time is running out! Our shelters won’t be…” You wake up to instinctively to grab the remote to turn off the TV only to realize that you have no TV, yet you’re still hearing those damn Ground Zero commercials. You groggily sit up and look out a side window and see one of the carnies holding a radio, which is loudly playing one of those advertisements. Just as well you’re up anyway, now that you have actual responsibilities and will have to live these new people you should take this opportunity to meet everyone since despite getting acquainted with your co-workers and the boss, you didn’t really interact with anyone else working here. Still dressed in your outfit from yesterday (mainly because you lack anything else to wear right now) you go out and meet your brand new family full of hope that this will be the start of something wonderful! The reality turns out to be much different though. “Honey, why the hell are hanging around with those clowns? I’m sure you’d be better as a sword swallower; in fact I got a way you can practice if you come to my trailer right now!” “Hey clown girl, I’ve got a way to paint your face white without the need for make up!” “Nice tits!” The female carnies aren’t much better. “So you’re the new girl that got her own private trailer huh? Guess a blowjob gets you a lot preference nowadays. Was Roofie even sober at the time?” “Hey Bozo the Hoe, you think you’re hot shit wiggling your ass at everyone? Let me warn you right now, you take my man I’ll make sure you won’t need to wear a red clown nose at your next performance!” “No, I don’t have any extra clothes you can borrow, Miss Living Skeleton. Go away you anorexic bitch.” Life is never easy outside the basement is it Suzy? Unfortunately that part of your life is over. You could go back to your trailer and hide you suppose, but it’s not the same and besides you’ve already come to the conclusion that hiding won’t solve your problems. Still, you are feeling a little “ganged up” on so for temporary relief you return to currently the only people that are halfway decent to you now, your fellow clowns. You enter the clown tent and see them all sitting around talking about something, but then when you enter all their attention is turned towards you. “Oh hey Suzy, you’re here early. We don’t usually warm up until a few hours before showtime.” Klepto remarks. “Oh, I’m not here for that, I’m just here since half of the carnival seems to want to fuck me and barrage me with clumsy sexual innuendo.“ “And… you came here to get away from that?” Lifto asks. You chuckle a little. “Yeah well at least if I stay in here part of it will be work related.” You answer which causes a couple of laughs and smiles from the rest. “Well considering you are one of us, maybe we should go easier on that now.” Klepto says. “I’d certainly appreciate it.” “Hey there are a lot of other women who work here, maybe you could go bond with them and do that whole sisterhood thing?” Lifto says. “I tried that. They all insulted me and seemed to want to punch me. Well except for that woman with the short red hair that juggles knives. I think she wanted to punch AND fuck me. (Sigh) No, looks like you guys are my only tribe here for now.” “Hm, well get used to it I guess. Nobody likes us clowns that much. To be quite honest one of the reasons we decided to knock off the crude remarks toward you is because you’ll be the first new person in years that will be civil to us. No point in making new enemies.” Klepto says. “Really? I thought all carnies stuck together.” You say. Now all the rest of the clowns laugh. “Hardly. I mean yeah there’s a certain unspoken rule that carnies stay united against outsiders and rubes. And we aren’t supposed to kill one another, but…well lets just say this very carnival doesn’t exactly have a spotless track record in that regard.” Klepto says. “People kill each other here?” you ask a bit alarmed. “No! Well not in my time anyway…” Klepto remarks trailing off. “What the hell does that mean? Look I don’t want to be part of some murder circus!” “Damn it Klepto you’ve scared the girl now! You should’ve just kept your mouth shut!” Shrimpy exclaims. At this point the clowns begin arguing with each other, but after a few moments of this bickering you demand that someone explain the situation exactly. Once again Klepto takes it upon himself to be the storyteller. “Look, I’ve probably blown it all out of proportion, but there are stories of how back in the day before Roofie or even his dad owned this carnival there was a violent power struggle for control over it that resulted in a lot of dead bodies afterwards.” “Weren’t just stories, shit it happened! My family has been a fixture of this carnival for generations too and my grandfather told me about the blood that ran during that fateful day.” Shrimpy adds as if Klepto didn’t quite put as much stock in these stories and takes over as the storyteller. “Battle lines were drawn that day. I mean you had dwarves, normals and freaks all siding against each other and the most hated group out of the bunch? The clowns. Now from what my grandfather told me, these clowns were definitely the reason why everyone today thinks of them as being monsters under the beds nowadays. Things of course have changed since then, but as they say the more things change the more they stay the same.” “What do you mean?” you ask. “I’m saying there’s going to be another power struggle soon and given that we’re clowns, WE are going to be on the losing end no matter what happens” “Wait a minute, what about Roofie? I mean isn’t he one of us?” you ask. “Roofie? The fact that he’s a clown just makes everyone think we already get preferential treatment. He’ll probably be the first one killed being the owner and all. He’s old and doesn’t have nearly the amount of control he used to anymore. Nope, I believe the change will be coming soon and it’ll be truly be a dark day for clowns…well maybe I’ll be able to get my people to take me back and YOU can offer to be someone’s girlfriend, but the rest of you are fucked.” “Gee, glad to know we’ll be able to count on your support Shrimpy, if something does happen.” Klepto remarks. You never realized that carnie “politics” was so complex and dangerous. Before you can panic too much about it Roofie shows up with a bottle in his hand. “Hey, what’re you lot still doing in here? We’ve actually got people showing up early. Apparently your little routine yesterday got people at that trailer park talking and they brought all the rest of their redneck buddies. Looks like we’ll get to rake in one goodly amount of cash before leaving this place. Oh and Suzy, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the car you drove up in? Well looks like it was vandalized in the night.” “What?!” you exclaim. “All the tires were slashed and someone wrote cunt all over it with face make up. It might be just a hunch, but I’d say Ranko felt like he needed to have to last word.” “(Sigh) Great.” You say. “Well anyway you all need to get out there and do what you do.” Roofie orders and leaves. While the rest get going, you remain sitting starting to worry about what you’ve got yourself into. Once again you start to wonder if you shouldn’t just leave until Klepto touches your shoulder. “Don’t worry Suzy, Shrimpy has been going on like that for as long as I’ve known him. While things get tense around here at times, I don’t think it’s going to come to some bloodbath. Besides you can’t spend your life worrying about the future, gotta live for the day I say, so let’s just take our minds off our troubles by putting on a good show.” Klepto remarks. While Klepto’s reassurance is nice, it doesn’t really alleviate your concerns. Hell, you can’t even leave if you wanted to given that Peter’s car is trashed. You can only hope that perhaps in time peoples’ attitudes towards you will soften a bit. Right now, you do have work to focus on. Roofie wasn’t lying when he said more people showed up today. You and the rest of the clowns spend a majority of the afternoon walking around keeping the people entertained Eventually you take a break and decide to check out Peter’s car and if it is at all salvageable. When you get to it, it’s exactly as Roofie said, all four tires slashed and the word cunt painted all over it. You can’t believe nobody saw any of this even during the night. Or maybe they did and didn’t give a shit considering you haven’t exactly been accepted by most here. In any event you try to call Peter again, but you get no answer. He hasn’t even tried to call you. He must really be involved with work or something. Or maybe he doesn’t give a shit about his car. He could easily afford a new one. You also notice Bobby hasn’t tried calling you either. You guess he got the hint. You attempt to start to the car and just as you suspected Ranko must’ve sabotaged the engine or something under the hood as well. No matter, when you leave you weren’t going to be driving this thing anymore anyway. Lacking anymore use for the car, you take a look in the trunk just to see what might be in there and that’s when you find something useful. Namely a bunch of clothes…specifically YOUR clothes! Well some of them anyway. Apparently Peter still had a lot of your old clothes that he stole from you in the past. The other stuff looks like S&M garb, though not all of it the traditional black leather or latex. Some of it is sort of colorful. Festive even. Well at least you won’t be walking around in the same stuff day in day out now. You pack up what you can and head back to your trailer to drop it off. Afterwards you find the rest of your new clown “family” and eat with them. You take the opportunity to tell them a little bit about your former life; you get a surprising amount of sympathy from the others. “Holy shit, I thought I came from a fucked up family.” Klepto remarks. “Yeah well, like I said I did a lot of hiding in the basement for the most part. Not much of a life I guess, but it kept me sane for the most part.” You say. “Hey, whatever helps you survive the day right?” Shrimpy says. After a bit more chatting you all get back to work. As time goes on, there is one person you keep seeing nearby throughout the day, a large man in overalls who while attempting to look like he’s NOT staring at you, obviously is. This isn’t the usual ogling either because you’ve gotten accustomed to that, you’re getting a really creepy vibe from this guy. “Maybe we should get Roofie to throw this guy out or something.” You say. “Roofie? I just passed by one of the tents when I got another snack and saw he’s currently passed out as usual. Besides, he never throws anyone out as long as they aren’t doing something violent. As far a he’s concerned every low life that visits this carnival is a potential mark and worth putting up with to get their money.” Fatty says. “The guy looks like a retard. He’s probably not used to seeing a girl as beautiful as you before. I mean even under the white face make up and clown clothing, you still look miles better than any of the trailer trash mothers that have come here with their spawn.” Shrimpy remarks. “Well he’s really fucking creepy and I don’t trust him.” You say. “He’s not going to do anything in broad daylight, and even if he does, you know we got your back. Just stick near us and Lifto look extra intimidating.” Klepto says. The night the crowds start thinning out a bit. You imagine that after they put their illegitimate spawn to bed, trailer trash prefers to spend their nights at bars, strip clubs and getting high and/or drunk at home. As for the big retard that was staring at you all day, he seems to have left as well, but you still feel uneasy. Meanwhile Roofie has reawakened from his temporary drunken stupor to tell everyone that today was a good day and that everyone should get some rest since you’re going to be packing this place down first thing tomorrow morning and moving on. He then mumbles something about it all being pointless anyway and staggers back to his own trailer. “Well looks like that’s it. See you tomorrow Suzy.” Klepto remarks as he and the rest head towards their trailer. You on the other hand are still a little nervous about going back to yours. “Uh, guys do you think I could sleep with you tonight?” you say which causes all of them to turn back towards you in disbelief. “Wow Ranko would have had a field day with that remark.” Klepto chuckles. “You know probably nothing is going to happen. That guy was just some goony retard. Hell, if the freak show still existed, he’d probably be one of the side shows here.” “Look, I’m just still feeling really on edge about that guy from earlier. I mean I could sleep on the floor, I don’t care.” You say. “That would be incredibly uncomfortable and probably quite disgusting. Our trailer isn’t exactly the cleanest. I mean I’d offer my bed, but given that we’re going to need all our energy to pack up tomorrow, I’d like to get a good night’s sleep.” Klepto remarks. “Why don’t I sleep over in your trailer?” Lifto asks. “I know Ranko’s trailer is big enough for one other person. I could stay over, you guys would get a little extra room tonight and you can sleep safely without worry.” “Hrmm, that’s…generous of you Lifto.” Klepto remarks. “It’s not like that, I’m just offering a solution.” Lifto says though it does seem like he might be hoping this act of chivalry will lead to something more. While you’d hate to cause hard feelings within the group or possibly lead someone on, you know one thing is certain; you still don’t want to sleep alone tonight. > You stick with your idea Lifto might mean well, but you’d rather stick with your original plan. “No, I’m not going to feel safe in my trailer until we leave the damn area, so I still want to sleep in your trailer.” “Well, okay but I’m telling you it’s going to be crowded and like I said that floor isn’t something you want to sleep on.” Klepto says. You assure the rest that you’ll be fine and head back with them to the trailer and that’s when you truly begin to appreciate Klepto’s warnings. The floor of their trailer is filthier than Ranko’s. A lot of food leavings, wrappers and some dirty clothing. You imagine that Fatty is probably the biggest contributor to the trash. Oddly the smell isn’t that bad, but you’re not sure about sleeping on the floor anymore. “Uh, I see what you mean. I think you’re right. If I slept on the floor, I’d wake up stuck to it.” You say. “I told you, so what did you want to do?” Klepto asks. “My offer still stands Suzy and I swear I’m not going to try anything. The alleviation of your worries is my foremost concern.” Lifto remarks. “And that’s sweet, but I’m still sleeping here and not on the floor. I’m taking one of those beds.” At this point the rest of the clowns are a little surprised by your demand. “Uh look Suzy, I know you’re concerned about sleeping in your trailer tonight even if I think there isn’t anything to worry about and I know we’ve all gotten a little closer and we all like each other, but come on you don’t seriously think one of us is going to give up our bed for a disgusting floor!” Klepto remarks. “You don’t have to I’m taking Shrimpy’s bed.” “I’m not sleeping on the floor either!” Shrimpy remarks. “You don’t have to, I’ll share it with you.” “WAIT WHAT?!” all of them say. “Look, it’s like this. I’m not going to take up that much room in your beds, which means Fatty and Lifto’s beds are out since they themselves can barely fit in them. That leaves Klepto and Shrimpy. Personally I want as much room as I can get and with no offense to Shrimpy due to his size, he’s got more room to spare.” Shrimpy smugly smiles at the others. “Makes sense to me! Okay let’s get to bed everyone!” Shrimpy says excitedly. “Hey wait a minute! We didn’t agree to this!” Klepto remarks. “Yeah, it seems like you were worried about me trying something yet you’re going to sleep in Shrimpy’s bed? You might be waking up sticky anyway with that little perv next to you.” Lifto says. “Oh no I won’t because Shrimpy is going to not only sleep with his back towards me, we’re also going to sleep head to toe…well toe to waist anyway. And if I so much feel any sort of unwanted grope, fondle or bad touch during the night there will be severe consequences to his man parts. I might be a little nervous about sleeping by myself tonight, but I’m not nervous about punching a dwarf in the balls because he’s perving on me. Understood?” “I get it.” Shrimpy remarks, but he doesn’t seem any less disappointed in this arrangement though. “And if anyone doesn’t like it, well my trailer is currently empty for anyone. Lots of room to get a good night’s sleep.” You add. Nobody takes you up on your trailer offer or says anything else though you hear some grumbling from Fatty who says he just wants to get off his feet and sleep and on that note you all head for dreamland. You get in Shrimpy’s bed first and get into a comfortable position, and then Shrimpy does likewise at the opposite end of the bed. You’re semi-awake for a while wondering if Shrimpy is going to ignore your warning, but he’s asleep pretty fast. Honestly its Fatty’s snoring that’s more bothersome. You guess the others are used to it. As you start to get sleepy you can’t believe you’re not only sharing a bed with a midget clown, but that you’re going to leave everything behind tomorrow. The funny thing is you’re getting a lot more comfortable with that idea now. You think this is the longest you’ve gone without constant Internet or TV stimulation and you don’t mind at all. Eventually you do fall asleep feeling almost as safe as you did in your basement. > Next day… WEDNESDAY “Hey Suzy get up, time to start packing up.” Klepto says tapping your shoulder. “Okay…” you reply groggily. You don’t feel a small figure near the bottom your legs so you assume Shrimpy must’ve already gotten up. “Well that wasn’t that bad, Shrimpy even honored the agreement.” You say sitting up. “Or maybe you’re just a really sound sleeper.” Klepto remarks. “Hrm, well if that’s the case he better at least have the sense to not brag about it. Anyway, I suppose I’ll take my leave to wash up a bit and change clothes.” “Wish I could come with you.” Klepto says. “Excuse me?” you say. “Ha ha ha no not that, I meant it sucks having to share the small ass bathroom we have in this trailer. Fatty’s in there right now and well you can figure out how it’s going to be after he leaves.” “Yeah, I’d rather not have that mental image right now. See you around.” You say and start to leave. “Wait, uh Suzy…I…” Klepto calls out. “Yes?” “(Sigh) Look I know I probably haven’t been showing exactly prince charming behavior, but I just want to say, I really like you. I mean REALLY like you.” “Yeah I got that impression a long time ago.” You respond. “Yeah, but I’m trying to say it’s not just physical.” “I find that a little harder to believe…however I’m not really going to fault you for it, but I’m going to need a lot more proof that you want something deeper than just sex.” “Well what? Like a ring or something?” “Heh, I don’t think you’re exactly in a financial position for all that. Look, I like you too, but this probably isn’t the best time to expect anything more from me than just friendship. I’m still trying to get used to the fact of this being my new life now not to mention I’m just getting over breaking up with what was my first and only boyfriend. So I might prefer my own company for a while. However that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t TRY to gain my affection. But only IF you REALLY want something meaningful with me. If not, then I’d suggest that you not waste either of our time and you go find a less discerning mate. I don’t need prince charming either, I just need someone I can count on and isn’t going to be a complete jerk. And if it helps, so far you’re doing a little bit better in that department than anyone else here.” “Okay.” Klepto says with a nod and brief smile before you leave. Well there it is, someone has openly professed a desire to be your boyfriend. You knew it was going to be one of them eventually though. You can only imagine the others will be attempting to woo you as well just like in your routine with them. Funny how life starts to imitate art. You don’t know how sincere Klepto is even if he has been pleasant for the most part. (Can you really ever trust a guy with the name Klepto?) Attractiveness wise, Klepto probably is the best of the lot. Lifto would probably provide the best protection, but the guy is tough to look at even with clown make up on and as far as Fatty is concerned, the only thing that runs through your mind is potential sexual positions and only one of which doesn’t result in you being crushed. Part of you wonders if you’re bad for being shallow, but then you remember they’re all attracted to you mostly due to your looks in the first place. Though for some reason you find Shrimpy’s size adorable… in fact you might find some of the others dwarves that work here adorable as well if they weren’t quite so vulgar with you. Maybe you’ve got a hidden dwarf fetish you didn’t know about before. Oh well, you’re not going to worry about any of this right now. As you head back to your own trailer, you see most of the dwarves doing all the labor of packing down the carnival; others are helping, but most are just packing down their own respective stages and such. “Hey clown slut, if you’re not actually going to be sleeping in your own trailer and just going to be playing cum dumpster to your painted freak friends, the least you can do is give it to one of us!” a tattooed lady with big black Mohawk and several piercings in her face remarks catching you off guard. A couple of other tattooed women stand behind her agreeing with her statement. You briefly remember her calling you names from yesterday. Her name’s Razor and she does a human pincushion type act. “I didn’t use my trailer last night, because I didn’t feel safe by myself.” You say. “Oh? Just a scared little babe in the woods huh? Well you’re by yourself now. What’re you going to do without your clown crew to protect you?” Razor remarks and pokes you in the chest with her finger. You look around and while there are a couple of people standing by, none of them are helping you. While Razor isn’t much bigger than you, she definitely looks tougher. Combine that with the fact she has two friends that also look like they’ll join in and you don’t think you’ll stand a chance if it actually came down to a fight. > You run Running was always a tried and true tactic when you had to deal with Kelly’s bullying, no reason to change now… You turn immediately to run to your trailer, but predictably Razor and her lot aren’t going to just let you get away. “Get that fuckin’ clown bitch!” Razor shouts. As you rush past the other carnies you can’t help but notice none of them are trying to stop this. You start to think that maybe travelling with this fucked up carnival might not be in your future. When you get to your trailer the door is slightly ajar. You also notice a couple things out of place from last time, not to mention it looks like someone spent some time in your bed and soiled it with their “essence”. You don’t have time to notice anything else, but its apparent that someone was here last night and you dodged a bullet, unfortunately you aren’t ducking twice. As you attempt to lock your door, Razor smashes it open causing it to hit you in the face. While you reeling back from this, Razor has already picked you up and punched you in the face. The rest of her goons are right behind her. “Lock that door, I wanna enjoy this!” Razor orders one of her crew and pulls out a straight razor. “Now, I’m do you a favor. I’m gonna cut your mouth so wide that you’ll be able to chug three cocks at the same time. You’ll be able to make it part of your act, Sucko the clown!” Razor says and lunges at you. Naturally you’re not going to just let her give you a Glasglow smile, so you try to defend yourself. You manage to throw a few nearby items at her, but it isn’t enough to stop her. In fact, your struggling makes her “accidently” stab you in throat and cutting an artery. You fall to the bed clutching your neck, which is bleeding profusely. “SHIT!” Razor shouts. “Fuck! I didn’t think we were going to kill her!” one of her goons says. “I wasn’t trying to, but the bitch kept struggling. Let’s get outta here!” she shouts and soon all of them have left your trailer. You on the other hand continue to bleed out and soon die from your wound.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY “Hey Suzy get up, time to start packing up.” Klepto says tapping your shoulder. “Okay…” you reply groggily. You don’t feel a small figure near the bottom your legs so you assume Shrimpy must’ve already gotten up. “Well that wasn’t that bad, Shrimpy even honored the agreement.” You say sitting up. “Or maybe you’re just a really sound sleeper.” Klepto remarks. “Hrm, well if that’s the case he better at least have the sense to not brag about it. Anyway, I suppose I’ll take my leave to wash up a bit and change clothes.” “Wish I could come with you.” Klepto says. “Excuse me?” you say. “Ha ha ha no not that, I meant it sucks having to share the small ass bathroom we have in this trailer. Fatty’s in there right now and well you can figure out how it’s going to be after he leaves.” “Yeah, I’d rather not have that mental image right now. See you around.” You say and start to leave. “Wait, uh Suzy…I…” Klepto calls out. “Yes?” “(Sigh) Look I know I probably haven’t been showing exactly prince charming behavior, but I just want to say, I really like you. I mean REALLY like you.” “Yeah I got that impression a long time ago.” You respond. “Yeah, but I’m trying to say it’s not just physical.” “I find that a little harder to believe…however I’m not really going to fault you for it, but I’m going to need a lot more proof that you want something deeper than just sex.” “Well what? Like a ring or something?” “Heh, I don’t think you’re exactly in a financial position for all that. Look, I like you too, but this probably isn’t the best time to expect anything more from me than just friendship. I’m still trying to get used to the fact of this being my new life now not to mention I’m just getting over breaking up with what was my first and only boyfriend. So I might prefer my own company for a while. However that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t TRY to gain my affection. But only IF you REALLY want something meaningful with me. If not, then I’d suggest that you not waste either of our time and you go find a less discerning mate. I don’t need prince charming either, I just need someone I can count on and isn’t going to be a complete jerk. And if it helps, so far you’re doing a little bit better in that department than anyone else here.” “Okay.” Klepto says with a nod and brief smile before you leave. Well there it is, someone has openly professed a desire to be your boyfriend. You knew it was going to be one of them eventually though. You can only imagine the others will be attempting to woo you as well just like in your routine with them. Funny how life starts to imitate art. You don’t know how sincere Klepto is even if he has been pleasant for the most part. (Can you really ever trust a guy with the name Klepto?) Attractiveness wise, Klepto probably is the best of the lot. Lifto would probably provide the best protection, but the guy is tough to look at even with clown make up on and as far as Fatty is concerned, the only thing that runs through your mind is potential sexual positions and only one of which doesn’t result in you being crushed. Part of you wonders if you’re bad for being shallow, but then you remember they’re all attracted to you mostly due to your looks in the first place. Though for some reason you find Shrimpy’s size adorable… in fact you might find some of the others dwarves that work here adorable as well if they weren’t quite so vulgar with you. Maybe you’ve got a hidden dwarf fetish you didn’t know about before. Oh well, you’re not going to worry about any of this right now. As you head back to your own trailer, you see most of the dwarves doing all the labor of packing down the carnival; others are helping, but most are just packing down their own respective stages and such. “Hey clown slut, if you’re not actually going to be sleeping in your own trailer and just going to be playing cum dumpster to your painted freak friends, the least you can do is give it to one of us!” a tattooed lady with big black Mohawk and several piercings in her face remarks catching you off guard. A couple of other tattooed women stand behind her agreeing with her statement. You briefly remember her calling you names from yesterday. Her name’s Razor and she does a human pincushion type act. “I didn’t use my trailer last night, because I didn’t feel safe by myself.” You say. “Oh? Just a scared little babe in the woods huh? Well you’re by yourself now. What’re you going to do without your clown crew to protect you?” Razor remarks and pokes you in the chest with her finger. You look around and while there are a couple of people standing by, none of them are helping you. While Razor isn’t much bigger than you, she definitely looks tougher. Combine that with the fact she has two friends that also look like they’ll join in and you don’t think you’ll stand a chance if it actually came down to a fight. > You stand your ground Maybe this isn’t the best idea you’ve ever had, but after all those years of dealing with your sister Kelly, you aren’t going to put up with bullying anymore. You’ve never really been a fighter before (Trying to protect your face from Kelly’s couple attempts to disfigure you don’t count) so it isn’t surprising that when you throw a punch at Razor she easily dodges and catches your arm. “Oh ho! Harley Quinn has some fight in her! Good, didn’t want this to be too easy!” Razor says and throws you to the ground. Before you can get up you feel a kick to your ribs. Lacking any other tactics you lunge at one of Razor’s legs and sink your teeth into it hard enough to draw blood. “AH SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK!” Razor yells trying to get you off of her leg, at this point her friends step in to help pull you off. You’re dragged off and restrained while Razor takes a moment to examine her wound. “Goddamn it! Shit!” Razor exclaims looking at the fairly deep bite wound you’ve left. “I thought you were a human pincushion, what’s the matter can’t handle a few little teeth?” you ask spitting blood in Razor’s direction. “Hope you enjoyed yourself, because that’s the last time you’re going to be using those pearly whites. Say hello to eating through a straw from now on, but look on the bright side, the next time you engage in your favorite past time of sucking clown dick, they won’t have to worry about getting scraped.” Razor says and starts to walk toward you, but suddenly Roofie stops her. “Alright that will do Razor, I saw what happened and I’ll not have unnecessary strife in this carnival! Go back to packing down your stage!” Roofie scolds. Razor looks at him a moment and then you and then waves to her friends to let you go. “One day you aren’t going to be running this show Roofie.” Razor says as she leaves with her friends. “Maybe not, but that day isn’t today.” Roofie says. As you get up and try to brush yourself off, Roofie slowly walks over to you. He already smells like alcohol. “Well Suzy, first Ranko, now Razor, looks like you’re just making friends all over.” “It’s not my fault! I didn’t do anything to her!” “I know you didn’t, you alright?” “Yeah, but now I probably got a target on my back, one of many probably since Razor isn’t the only one who hates me around here.” “Yeah I’ve noticed. Just because I’m half drunk most of the time doesn’t mean I’m not aware of what goes on around here. Listen some of the negative feelings that some have for you will die down in time. You seem to be getting along with your new clown co-workers very well though. You spent the night over in their trailer despite the fact you have your own.” “I only did that because I didn’t feel safe sleeping alone last night. There was a really creepy big guy staring at me all day yesterday, I dunno maybe I was just being paranoid.” “Hmm, did you wish to bunk with them or even someone else then? I mean I can make arrangements if you feel uncomfortable sleeping alone.” “No, I appreciate the fact you gave me my own trailer. Besides, given all the new friends I’m making, I’d be safer sleeping alone and bunking with Klepto and the rest, well I get the impression that would cause other problems.” You say. “Okay then. Well, I’ll let you get back to your trailer. We’ll probably be ready to go just before nightfall so I’m sure Lifto will be around then to hook this thing up to one of our trucks. So until then just enjoy the downtime.” “Wait, aren’t I supposed to be helping pack up the carnival?” “You? Nah, the rest of the guys can handle it. Really I get the impression they wouldn’t let you do much work anyway what with them all being enamored with you and all. And the dwarves got the overall pack up covered. Always have, it’s what they do. Backbone of the carnival and all…and all a bit of a waste of time given what’s to come, but hey we do what we know.” Roofie says and leaves. A little more cryptic future doom prediction by Roofie, you get the impression that’s his general personality, but at least he’s always pleasant with you. With no more distractions you arrive at your trailer and that’s when you begin to feel nervous again. First of all the door is slightly ajar. You also notice a couple things out of place from last time, not to mention it looks like someone spent some time in your bed and soiled it with their “essence”. Your cell phone that you left here is also gone, but given that its batteries were starting to die and you wouldn’t have Bobby to pay for it much longer it isn’t much of a loss. Someone was definitely here last night. You don’t know if it was Ranko, that big creepy retard staring at you or someone else, but either way you dodged a bullet. You half expect the person to jump out at you from some hidden spot, but that doesn’t happen. Whoever was here, probably left before the morning, and probably when they realized you weren’t coming here. You re-check all the trailer’s locations (even if it isn’t the biggest place) and block the door with a chair before feeling safe enough to shower and get changed. Afterwards you go through the mundane process of actually cleaning up the trailer. You figure if you don’t need to help pack up the carnival, you can at least spend your time clean up your living area. (First thing is throwing out the befouled bed sheet) By the time you’re finished it’s the afternoon and you’re tired again. You’re still not used to being awake so early and you didn’t get much sleep last night so you lie down in your now cleaner bed and shut your eyes for just a bit… You don’t know how much time passes while you’re asleep again, but when you do wake up it’s to a loud thumping at the door. “OPEN UP BY ORDER OF THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD!” National Guard? What the hell is going on? “Hold on, hold on, I’m getting up!” you shout. “Open the door miss or we’ll be forced to bash it open!” a voice calls back. Not wishing to potentially get shot you comply and upon opening the door several national guardsmen stand outside. “Come with us miss, we need you all together for your safety.” A young soldier says guiding you out. “Where are we going?” you ask. “Just to that big tent over there. Don’t worry, this is all for your protection.” Somehow you don’t quite believe that, but when you scan your surroundings, you see that the carnival appears to be under control by the National Guard so there isn’t much choice but to comply. You don’t know why or how this came to be, but from some of the military radios you overhear it sounds like riots have broken out in your town. Is this some sort of martial law? When you arrive in the big tent, most of carnival is there. Most are sitting at tables and complaining about this fate. You see Roofie actively arguing with one of the higher ranking soldiers who looks utterly unmoved by what he has to say. “Goddamnit, just because people are rioting in the town doesn’t mean any bullshit is going on here! We’re not even locals! We’re just passing through and were about to leave!” Roofie says. “Yeah I heard you the first time, but my orders are to secure this entire area and will be under watch until further notice. Now I suggest you get out of my face before I stomp a mud hole in your ass clown!” the officer remarks and walks out of the tent. You go over to Roofie. “What’s going on exactly?” you ask. “End times like I always knew would come Suzy. Just didn’t figure I’d have to spend my last days stuck under the gun by a bunch of fascists! These government dickheads think they can control what’s coming soon, when they really can’t control shit. These fools don’t even know they’re all really just puppets for that fucking Ground Zero corporation that’s been shilling bomb shelters ads all over the damn place.” This is definitely a new side you’ve seen of Roofie, he’s really mad. He’s also really drunk even if he’s pretty coherent. You see Klepto and the rest waving you over. “Why don’t we just go over there and…” “Y’know what Suzy? There aren’t even that many of these fuckers. It’s a skeleton crew at best. I bet we can take them. I mean we certainly outnumber them.” “What?! Are you nuts? They’re armed with machine guns!” you say. “And? So a few of us die? We’re ALL gonna be dead soon anyway, why wait? Better to die on your feet than live on your knees. Seriously, all we gotta do is get a couple of those guns away from them and it already evens up the playing field. Seriously you think they’re probably going to let us live anyway? They’re probably going to line us up like baby seals and blow our brains out by tomorrow. I’m telling you I’m getting our own troops in order to rebel tonight.” Roofie seems pretty intent on going through with this plan, the only thing you can think of to do is either try to help or try to prevent the violence. > You help Roofie “Okay well maybe you’ve got a point, but can you really stir this lot up to swarm attack people with machine guns?” you ask. “One way to find out!” Roofie says and without another word he runs over to the nearest guard and smashes a bottle over his head. It might’ve been more effective had the guardsman not had a helmet on. The guardsman that was assaulted bashes Roofie to the ground and fires several shots into him. This causes shock from everyone and in your case you even freeze up for a moment. Nobody is bum rushing the guardsmen though. Roofie won’t be getting up again, but at this point the guardsmen continue to panic and believe they’re under a greater attack. (Despite that everyone is too scared to do so) “SHIT! WE NEED BACK UP! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!” the other guardsman exclaims and begins firing randomly at carnies, which includes you. Unfortunately, you were close enough that you fatally get hit by some of these bullets despite trying to get out of the way.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe this isn’t the best idea you’ve ever had, but after all those years of dealing with your sister Kelly, you aren’t going to put up with bullying anymore. You’ve never really been a fighter before (Trying to protect your face from Kelly’s couple attempts to disfigure you don’t count) so it isn’t surprising that when you throw a punch at Razor she easily dodges and catches your arm. “Oh ho! Harley Quinn has some fight in her! Good, didn’t want this to be too easy!” Razor says and throws you to the ground. Before you can get up you feel a kick to your ribs. Lacking any other tactics you lunge at one of Razor’s legs and sink your teeth into it hard enough to draw blood. “AH SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK!” Razor yells trying to get you off of her leg, at this point her friends step in to help pull you off. You’re dragged off and restrained while Razor takes a moment to examine her wound. “Goddamn it! Shit!” Razor exclaims looking at the fairly deep bite wound you’ve left. “I thought you were a human pincushion, what’s the matter can’t handle a few little teeth?” you ask spitting blood in Razor’s direction. “Hope you enjoyed yourself, because that’s the last time you’re going to be using those pearly whites. Say hello to eating through a straw from now on, but look on the bright side, the next time you engage in your favorite past time of sucking clown dick, they won’t have to worry about getting scraped.” Razor says and starts to walk toward you, but suddenly Roofie stops her. “Alright that will do Razor, I saw what happened and I’ll not have unnecessary strife in this carnival! Go back to packing down your stage!” Roofie scolds. Razor looks at him a moment and then you and then waves to her friends to let you go. “One day you aren’t going to be running this show Roofie.” Razor says as she leaves with her friends. “Maybe not, but that day isn’t today.” Roofie says. As you get up and try to brush yourself off, Roofie slowly walks over to you. He already smells like alcohol. “Well Suzy, first Ranko, now Razor, looks like you’re just making friends all over.” “It’s not my fault! I didn’t do anything to her!” “I know you didn’t, you alright?” “Yeah, but now I probably got a target on my back, one of many probably since Razor isn’t the only one who hates me around here.” “Yeah I’ve noticed. Just because I’m half drunk most of the time doesn’t mean I’m not aware of what goes on around here. Listen some of the negative feelings that some have for you will die down in time. You seem to be getting along with your new clown co-workers very well though. You spent the night over in their trailer despite the fact you have your own.” “I only did that because I didn’t feel safe sleeping alone last night. There was a really creepy big guy staring at me all day yesterday, I dunno maybe I was just being paranoid.” “Hmm, did you wish to bunk with them or even someone else then? I mean I can make arrangements if you feel uncomfortable sleeping alone.” “No, I appreciate the fact you gave me my own trailer. Besides, given all the new friends I’m making, I’d be safer sleeping alone and bunking with Klepto and the rest, well I get the impression that would cause other problems.” You say. “Okay then. Well, I’ll let you get back to your trailer. We’ll probably be ready to go just before nightfall so I’m sure Lifto will be around then to hook this thing up to one of our trucks. So until then just enjoy the downtime.” “Wait, aren’t I supposed to be helping pack up the carnival?” “You? Nah, the rest of the guys can handle it. Really I get the impression they wouldn’t let you do much work anyway what with them all being enamored with you and all. And the dwarves got the overall pack up covered. Always have, it’s what they do. Backbone of the carnival and all…and all a bit of a waste of time given what’s to come, but hey we do what we know.” Roofie says and leaves. A little more cryptic future doom prediction by Roofie, you get the impression that’s his general personality, but at least he’s always pleasant with you. With no more distractions you arrive at your trailer and that’s when you begin to feel nervous again. First of all the door is slightly ajar. You also notice a couple things out of place from last time, not to mention it looks like someone spent some time in your bed and soiled it with their “essence”. Your cell phone that you left here is also gone, but given that its batteries were starting to die and you wouldn’t have Bobby to pay for it much longer it isn’t much of a loss. Someone was definitely here last night. You don’t know if it was Ranko, that big creepy retard staring at you or someone else, but either way you dodged a bullet. You half expect the person to jump out at you from some hidden spot, but that doesn’t happen. Whoever was here, probably left before the morning, and probably when they realized you weren’t coming here. You re-check all the trailer’s locations (even if it isn’t the biggest place) and block the door with a chair before feeling safe enough to shower and get changed. Afterwards you go through the mundane process of actually cleaning up the trailer. You figure if you don’t need to help pack up the carnival, you can at least spend your time clean up your living area. (First thing is throwing out the befouled bed sheet) By the time you’re finished it’s the afternoon and you’re tired again. You’re still not used to being awake so early and you didn’t get much sleep last night so you lie down in your now cleaner bed and shut your eyes for just a bit… You don’t know how much time passes while you’re asleep again, but when you do wake up it’s to a loud thumping at the door. “OPEN UP BY ORDER OF THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD!” National Guard? What the hell is going on? “Hold on, hold on, I’m getting up!” you shout. “Open the door miss or we’ll be forced to bash it open!” a voice calls back. Not wishing to potentially get shot you comply and upon opening the door several national guardsmen stand outside. “Come with us miss, we need you all together for your safety.” A young soldier says guiding you out. “Where are we going?” you ask. “Just to that big tent over there. Don’t worry, this is all for your protection.” Somehow you don’t quite believe that, but when you scan your surroundings, you see that the carnival appears to be under control by the National Guard so there isn’t much choice but to comply. You don’t know why or how this came to be, but from some of the military radios you overhear it sounds like riots have broken out in your town. Is this some sort of martial law? When you arrive in the big tent, most of carnival is there. Most are sitting at tables and complaining about this fate. You see Roofie actively arguing with one of the higher ranking soldiers who looks utterly unmoved by what he has to say. “Goddamnit, just because people are rioting in the town doesn’t mean any bullshit is going on here! We’re not even locals! We’re just passing through and were about to leave!” Roofie says. “Yeah I heard you the first time, but my orders are to secure this entire area and will be under watch until further notice. Now I suggest you get out of my face before I stomp a mud hole in your ass clown!” the officer remarks and walks out of the tent. You go over to Roofie. “What’s going on exactly?” you ask. “End times like I always knew would come Suzy. Just didn’t figure I’d have to spend my last days stuck under the gun by a bunch of fascists! These government dickheads think they can control what’s coming soon, when they really can’t control shit. These fools don’t even know they’re all really just puppets for that fucking Ground Zero corporation that’s been shilling bomb shelters ads all over the damn place.” This is definitely a new side you’ve seen of Roofie, he’s really mad. He’s also really drunk even if he’s pretty coherent. You see Klepto and the rest waving you over. “Why don’t we just go over there and…” “Y’know what Suzy? There aren’t even that many of these fuckers. It’s a skeleton crew at best. I bet we can take them. I mean we certainly outnumber them.” “What?! Are you nuts? They’re armed with machine guns!” you say. “And? So a few of us die? We’re ALL gonna be dead soon anyway, why wait? Better to die on your feet than live on your knees. Seriously, all we gotta do is get a couple of those guns away from them and it already evens up the playing field. Seriously you think they’re probably going to let us live anyway? They’re probably going to line us up like baby seals and blow our brains out by tomorrow. I’m telling you I’m getting our own troops in order to rebel tonight.” Roofie seems pretty intent on going through with this plan, the only thing you can think of to do is either try to help or try to prevent the violence. > You prevent the violence Roofie’s plan isn’t going to accomplish anything except get a bunch of people killed, and you could be one of them! You think fast. “Uh, okay Roofie, let’s just go over here and get the battle plan together first okay? I’m sure Klepto and the rest are going to want to hear this first.” “Hrgh, okay. You don’t need to guide me damn it, I’m not that drunk!” Roofie says and pulls his arm away from your hand. When you get to Klepto’s table he and the rest know something is wrong when Roofie starts going on about “bum rushing those government puppet bastards.” Shrimpy and Fatty both attempt to calm him down, but he’s not having any of it. “What the hell is going on Suzy? Roofie’s talkin’ crazier than usual.” Klepto asks. “He wants to have the entire carnival attack the National Guard, do something before he causes too much of a scene.” You say. “Do something like what? You don’t mean kill him do you?!” Klepto asks. “No! But I dunno maybe knock him out to buy us time and he can sober up or something. Lifto, knock him out.” You say. “Me?! Why me?” Lifto asks. “Because you’re the strongest of all of us and I’m guessing you could do it in one hit. Just do it, before he gets all of us killed!” Lifto’s a little reluctant and probably wouldn’t do it normally, but it the situation does seem dire enough so while Roofie is continuing to rant at Shrimpy and Fatty he punches Roofie in the back of the head, knocking the older man completely out and falling into Fatty’s arms. Some of the other carnies have witnessed this, but they don’t seem to do anything about it. In fact it just goes to show how little most of them respect Roofie in the scheme of the things. Sort of a shame. “Holy shit, did you have to punch him so hard? He’s an old guy! You might’ve put him in a coma!” Shrimpy remarks. “I just did what Suzy told me!” “Alright look, I didn’t want harm to come to Roofie either, but the guy needed to be silenced for at least a moment. I think the bigger problem we’ve got is the other carnies. I get the sense that they think Roofie is no longer a factor in the leadership role, so expect a power play. We all need to stick together for protection.” “What about the National Guard? I mean shouldn’t we be worrying about them?” Lifto asks. “The National Guard is what’s keeping this carnival from exploding into an orgy of violence right now. Nobody’s going to risk pissing them off by causing problems, well not now at least without Roofie’s plan of stirring them all up.” You reply. “Well what the hell do we do now?” Klepto asks. “I don’t know! I mean I’m just thinking on my feet here! You all told me that we’re the most hated group in the carnival, so we should make friends somehow? Shrimpy, do you have ANY pull with the dwarves?” “Pull? I suppose I have enough for me, I mean even as a clown deep down I’ll always be a dwarf. But as I’ve mentioned before I can’t promise anything for the rest of you.” “Well I dunno, do some diplomacy or something. As for the rest of us, we need to just stick to our table and look after Roofie, and make sure he’s doing okay throughout the night. Maybe I’ll try to charm one of the soldiers or something. The key thing to remember is we need to survive this together.” You never thought you’d start sounding like your older brother Ben with the whole survivalist shtick, but if it helps thinking like a paranoid person then you aren’t going to dismiss such thoughts. As night starts to fall the mood in the large army “quarantine” tent grows more restless. Two guardsmen remain on duty at all times though they’re not exactly happy about the situation either. You do manage to get friendly with one of them by the name of Roger and extract a bit more info. Roger tells you that you and the rest of your carny friends shouldn’t worry too much since this is just a formality. He says that things are much worse in the town and expects his unit will be transferred to support his fellow guardsmen there in a day or two. At which point you’ll all be free to go. Hearing about the mass riots in town makes you wonder how things are going for your family. You’re almost sort of worried about them, even Kelly, but there isn’t much that can be done now. Hopefully they’ve found some sort of safety. “Is this going on everywhere?” you ask. “Well I don’t know a lot of detail, I’m just a grunt in the scheme of things, but things are getting pretty bad, I mean haven’t you heard the news lately?” Roger says. “Not really, sort of disconnected from the rest of the world lately.” You say. “Well world tensions have been really high, it’s like every country is gearing up for world war three and domestically people have seemingly gone batshit insane with regards to the rules of common decency and morality. I guess a lot of people are just scared and I can’t blame them on some level, but we still need law and order. Surely you can understand that right?” “Sure.” You say in agreement since you’d rather not make any potential enemies of the military even if it is just one grunt. In any case Roger smiles when you agree, you get the impression he’s just as concerned being out here. After a few more pleasantries, Roger says he really needs to get back to “standing guard” and not talking to you as his superior is a real hard ass and he doesn’t want to get into trouble or you for that matter. You thank him for the talk and head back to your colleagues. Of course some of the carnies seeing you get “cozy” with one of the guardsmen makes them even dislike you even more and you occasionally hear mutterings and name calling by others. Razor hasn’t taken her eyes off of you the whole time you’ve been here. She’s obviously got her sights set on you, regardless of what goes down, she’s just waiting for opportunity. On the plus side when Shrimpy returns he says that while the dwarves are going to make their own play when the time is right, he’s managed to convince them not to attack the clowns as long as you stay out of their way. (And apparently they’re ONLY extending that courtesy because of Shrimpy’s ties as well you being…well you, though the female dwarves predictably don’t like you too much) The night goes on and while everyone is in a heightened state of readiness nobody can stay awake forever, so eventually people start falling asleep though its mostly in shifts for most groups and you are no exception. Eventually though when it’s your turn to sleep, you try to find some sort of comfort on one of the many sleeping mats provided. It’s pretty much impossible, but exhaustion helps you along. Eventually you drift off… > Next day… THURSDAY Several gunshots cause you to wake up. “What the?!” you say still staying on the floor. “Shhhh! Quiet!” Klepto remarks and points over to the one in charge of the guardsmen. He and five others stand near the tent entrance with weapons out. “I don’t give a shit WHO started the fight or even why! You carny freaks can tear each other apart after we leave, but until then we’re here to maintain order and by god that’s what the fuck we’re going to do! If I have to break up another fight for any reason, next time the shots aren’t going in the air!” the officer remarks and leaves. The other guardsmen continue to stand near the entrance watching everyone who eventually all sit back down. “What the hell happened?” you ask. “Razor and some of the others got into an argument with Phil and his friends.” Klepto says. “Who’s Phil?” you say. “He does that fire eating stuff. Anyway, they kicked his ass and just as things were going to get worse, the guardsmen came in and put a stop to it like you just saw. Looks like the battle for control over the carnival is already starting.” “Surprised we didn’t get attacked then.” “Well like Shrimpy said yesterday, we’ve got dwarf protection for now, but who knows how long that arrangement is going to last.” “Can’t believe I slept through a fight, where’s Roofie?” “Oh him? He’s still over there out of it, even the gunshots didn’t wake him up.” Klepto says pointing to Roofie, who then surprises everyone. “I’m quite awake Klepto, I’m just resting with my eyes closed No point in getting up at this point anyway. It’s obvious this carnival has lost respect in me; I’d blame you all for smashing me in the back of the head last night, but that was really just a catalyst. (Sigh) Doesn’t matter, I predict that we’ll all be dead in two days at best.” Roofie says. “Roofie, we really didn’t want to do it, but you were talking crazy with your idea of attacking the military. Your plan would’ve gotten everyone killed.” You say. “And that may still happen if recent events are any indication. At least with my plan I would’ve died with the carnival intact rather than seeing it splitting up before my eyes.” Nobody else really knows what to say at this point, so you all just get silent and continue to converse with each other. “So what’s the next move?” Klepto asks. “I dunno, escape I guess? Can we get to one of the vehicles quickly and drive off?” you say. “Good luck with that given all the guardsmen on high alert now.” Fatty points out. “Yeah I don’t think we’re getting very far.” Lifto adds. You sit down and exhale wondering what to do next, but you can’t really think right now. It would seem that due to your more proactive suggestions and Roofie’s apathy you’ve somehow become the “leader” of your little group now. You hadn’t really planned on that. “For right now, we’re just going to stay put, I’ll try to think of something.” You remark. The rest of your group lack any ideas of their own, so they comply with your plan (or lack there of). Time passes and you mostly do a lot of casual conversation and mental speculation of what might happen “if you do X.” You half expect someone else to try to escape, particularly when they say they need to use the bathroom, but given that they always return under the same guard they left with it would seem nobody has the guts to really try it, not even Razor. Nobody else in your group comes up with any plans either, but you do notice Shrimpy occasionally heads over to the group of dwarves. He claims he’s just securing the “alliance” but you’re more inclined to believe he’s just trying to secure his own safety. So far though the dwarves are still supposed to be on your side. Roofie has continued to lie on the sleeping mat not saying anything to anyone. You still feel a little bad about betraying him especially given that he not only brought you into this carnival and liked you enough to give you a personal trailer, but also that he potentially saved you a lot of pain when Razor was going to kick your ass. You go over to talk to him. “Hey Roofie.” You say. “Hrm, hey Suzy.” He grunts. “Are you okay?” “Me? Well other than not having a drink all day, I’m fine. Just been making peace with my life I suppose.” Roofie says. “Roofie, I’m still very sorry about…” “What? Having Lifto wack me over the head? I’ve forgotten about that or rather I’ve rethought my own stance on that. You probably were right, I mean sure I would’ve rather died like that, but that was sort of selfish of me to want to use my last bit of dwindling influence to get everyone to follow me. Would’ve especially been a shame if you’d gotten killed in the crossfire. You’re actually very talented.” “You’re just saying that.” “No it’s true. I didn’t make my decision to hire you based on looks or on a whim. In the brief moment you’ve performed as a clown you were good. I mean it’s obvious you’re even a leader with how you got the other clowns hanging on your decisions. (Sigh) If only you had come across this carnival sooner. Things might’ve been much different.” “Well I’m not sure how much of a leader I am, because I can’t think of what comes next.” You say. “You’ll figure out something I’m sure. One thing though and while I don’t hold out much hope, if you can somehow keep this carnival together…do it. I know the current situation isn’t the best and I know you haven’t exactly been welcomed by everyone, but I see something in you that would feel fulfilled if you could experience the carnival like it once was. Like a family.” “A family?” you say with a smirk. “Hey like I said, you came in during the family fight. And that’s what happens in families sometimes. Family fights are always the most vicious, but after it dies down, sometimes the family unit can be stronger than ever. And I think you could be happy if you can keep this family from tearing itself apart completely. But you’ll have to be the one to do it. I don’t have it in me anymore.” At this point Roofie touches your hand and you pat his before leaving him be again. You wonder if this is more of a last request by a “dying” man rather than looking out for your personal fulfillment. Still, you think he’s genuine and sure it would be nice if the entire carnival became the happy family you never had, but you just don’t think that’s going to be possible. You look around and see nothing much has changed except a changing of the guards. One of them happens to be Roger, which makes you think of a possible way you could escape. The only problem is it’s going to rely on being more “charming” than you already have been with Roger and that could potentially get you into a situation you don’t want to be in. > You go to Roger While you hope you don’t have to go too far, if it means getting the hell out of this place, then maybe that’s what you’ll have to do because whether the National Guard leaves or stays the fact remains, you’re not the one to lead this carnival like Roofie thinks you are and you feel your life is in danger. You start to walk over to Roger. “Hey where are you going?” Klepto asks. “Not sure yet, but don’t wait up.” You reply and continue walking to Roger. When you get to Roger you’re all smiles, poses and charm. “Hello Roger are you doing well today?” You say in a friendly tone. “Hey, Suzy. I’m okay I guess, but I really wish your friends wouldn’t cause so much trouble. Somebody is libel to get hurt. My commanding officer isn’t exactly the tolerant type and I think you saw that earlier.” “Yes, I did. I was so scared. In fact I’m scared of the whole aura this place is giving now. It’s becoming very violent, but I feel so much safer being near you.” You say and start to touch Roger. At this point Roger is smiling back at you, but his buddy nearby is a little less approving, though you imagine its jealousy more than anything else. “Roger, we’re supposed to be keeping an eye on these carnie freaks, not fraternizing with them.” “What’s the harm Ernie? I mean she says she’s scared. What, you think she’s going to clobber me in the head and take my weapon? Come on, stop being so paranoid. We shouldn’t even be here anyway.” “Orders are orders…ugh. Whatever, I’m not going to watch you make goo goo eyes at some carnie whore. I’ll be outside this tent, try to keep your eyes on the detainees and not on her ass the whole time.” Ernie says and steps outside the tent. “What a rude person. I’m glad you’re not like that.” You say now with your arms wrapped around Roger. “Well you know, I treat people the way they want to be treated.” Roger replies. As distracted as Roger is, he’s actually keeping it together better than one would think. He keeps a tight grip on his rifle and an eye on if you’re going to attempt to grab his pistol. He also periodically looks away from you to make sure nobody is taking advantage of this situation. (Which Klepto and the rest look like they were going to do, but realize they’re still too far away to rush at Roger before he could shove you aside and open fire) Though your plan wasn’t necessarily to save everyone, but rather yourself. “So Roger, what’s a girl gotta do to get out of here?” you say seductively. “Well, like I said we should be gone later today or tomorrow at the latest.” “Too long and anything could happen within that time! Can’t you do something? I mean I could make it worth your while.” You say and run your finger across Roger’s chest. “Suzy, look, I’d really like to help, but…hey!” Roger is interrupted when you grab his hand. You bring his hand to your face and closing your eyes, you insert his index finger in your mouth and slowly suck on it making “mmmmm” sounds. This scene hasn’t gone unnoticed by more than a few carnies watching you. In fact the predictable calls of “whore”, “slut” and worse are uttered your way. Roger on the other hand is practically speechless. “I…uh…shit…” he says and then pulls his hand away staring at his finger for a moment. “Awww….but I wasn’t done sucking on you…” you say and flutter your eyes a bit, trying to look as cute as possible then you whisper in his ear: “Take me back to my trailer and I’ll show you the REAL greatest show on earth.” then you lick his ear. Roger immediately calls in Ernie loudly. Ernie rushes in with his weapon ready to kill something. “What?! What?! Are they rioting again?!” he exclaims. “No. But I REALLY need a favor! You need to watch these people and if the commander checks in on us, tell him I had a to take a shit really bad.” “What…wait… Oh fuck no! You’re gonna go fuck this little carnie whore aren’t you? Goddamnit Roger!” “Come on Ernie, you can’t help me out?” “Motherfucker, I’m always helping you out! I don’t understand why you can’t just fuck the bitch right here. Not like these people are shy and from the looks of her, she looks like it wouldn’t be the first time she’s gotten fucked in front of a live audience.” Ernie remarks. You know, while you’ve gotten used to the baseless comments about you being a woman of loose morals, it still hurts sometimes. In any case, Roger is not a man to be deterred from his lust for you right now. “Alright, fine. I didn’t want to hold this over your head, but you leave me no choice…” Roger starts to say, but whatever the threat is, Ernie doesn’t even let him finish it. “Oh fuck. (Sigh) Don’t even say it. Fine. Go. Go. Go! And don’t take too long, though I imagine in your case that won’t be a problem.” Ernie says defeated. “Thanks man! Seriously I really will remember this favor!” “Hrm. That you only got through blackmail.” As you and Roger leave, Ernie says one more thing. “Hope you’ve got condoms, because lord knows what diseases she’s got being a carnie. Her kootch might turn your dick into a fucking Siamese Twin or some shit.” “How the hell does that even make sense? Fucking asshole…” you say and start to get angry at Ernie’s comments, but Roger just take you by the hand to go back to your trailer. “Don’t mind him. Let’ hurry though, because we don’t want to bump into anyone else. It isn’t like I got leverage over everyone like I do with Ernie. So where is your trailer?” You tell him the location and the pair of you are heading over in that direction fluctuating between being “stealthy” and running. While you’re doing this, it occurs to you that you have to think up your next move. Are you really going to let him fuck you? Roger is distracted enough that you probably could grab his side arm to give you enough time to make a run for it, but while Roger might not shoot you immediately (And that’s rolling dice there) there’s nothing to say the other nearby Guardsmen won’t and you know they’ll be alerted as soon as you try to run away from Roger. Of course if you really are willing to make that ultimate “sacrifice” for freedom, Roger might even help you out a lot more in your escape attempt. Of course he could turn out to be a complete asshole and march you back to the tent after he’s had his way with you. > You make a break for it Roger is so busy keeping a look out for running into his buddies and getting to your trailer he’s now suitably distracted and while you’re so close to him, you easily grab his pistol. “HEY WHAT…” he exclaims as you back away quickly and hold the gun on him. “Drop the rifle!” you shout. He doesn’t though. “Shit. I should’ve known better. Ernie’s going to have a field day.” Roger says. “Sorry Roger, but I really need you to drop that rifle!” you say. “…nah…if you had it in you to shoot me, you would’ve by now. You’ve never shot a person and this whole situation is scary to you. You’re hoping your sex appeal will be enough to carry you through this and that I’ll be weak willed enough that I won’t call your bluff and just shoot you dead right now.” That’s an incredible amount insight for someone you thought was nothing more than just a horny grunt. Unfortunately he’s pretty much on target. For a moment there is a pause and you look at him hopefully, you even manage to start tearing up a bit. “(Sigh) Look, I told you we were going to leave soon, I dunno why you feel the need to go through this elaborate escape plan when it really isn’t necessary. Just hand the pistol over and we’ll head back to the tent.” You’re too scared of what might happen if you just surrender, so all you can do is continue to aim it at Roger. “Suzy, I’m not fucking around now give me the…” Roger begins to say and moves towards you. With his rifle slightly lowered and his hand outstretched, you nervously fire two shots at him. At this range you don’t miss even though you’re in a heightened state of anxiety. Roger falls to the ground with two in his chest and doesn’t move, you’ve killed him. “Oh my…oh god I’m sorry…(Sniff)” you say. The shots of course have drawn the attention of the other guardsmen. You hear shouting which is getting closer to your location, so you run. You hear more shouting followed by gunfire. At first you think they’ve seen you and are shooting at you, but that isn’t the case when you start to hear a few screams. Now you’re even more scared as you have no idea what’s going on. Did the carnies take advantage of this situation and start to fight back? You have no idea, but you don’t intend on sticking around. You duck and hide the best you can through the small maze of trailers and vehicles. The screams, shouting and gunfire are now accompanied by unnatural growing. Like animals of some sort. Unfortunately as you reach the far end of the carnival limits you are ambushed by something skulking behind the corner of the last trailer you were passing and the pistol goes sprawling out of your hand. You don’t even know what it is, except that you’re on the ground and it’s on your back breathing heavily and making that growling sound you heard. You then feel teeth sink deep into your shoulder. Pain and fear both rise up in you for a moment as you struggle to get free, but this thing what ever it is has a strong grip and with one of its hands it smashes your face repeatedly into the ground into your struggling becomes less, then it breaks your neck before feasting on the rest of your dead body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While you hope you don’t have to go too far, if it means getting the hell out of this place, then maybe that’s what you’ll have to do because whether the National Guard leaves or stays the fact remains, you’re not the one to lead this carnival like Roofie thinks you are and you feel your life is in danger. You start to walk over to Roger. “Hey where are you going?” Klepto asks. “Not sure yet, but don’t wait up.” You reply and continue walking to Roger. When you get to Roger you’re all smiles, poses and charm. “Hello Roger are you doing well today?” You say in a friendly tone. “Hey, Suzy. I’m okay I guess, but I really wish your friends wouldn’t cause so much trouble. Somebody is libel to get hurt. My commanding officer isn’t exactly the tolerant type and I think you saw that earlier.” “Yes, I did. I was so scared. In fact I’m scared of the whole aura this place is giving now. It’s becoming very violent, but I feel so much safer being near you.” You say and start to touch Roger. At this point Roger is smiling back at you, but his buddy nearby is a little less approving, though you imagine its jealousy more than anything else. “Roger, we’re supposed to be keeping an eye on these carnie freaks, not fraternizing with them.” “What’s the harm Ernie? I mean she says she’s scared. What, you think she’s going to clobber me in the head and take my weapon? Come on, stop being so paranoid. We shouldn’t even be here anyway.” “Orders are orders…ugh. Whatever, I’m not going to watch you make goo goo eyes at some carnie whore. I’ll be outside this tent, try to keep your eyes on the detainees and not on her ass the whole time.” Ernie says and steps outside the tent. “What a rude person. I’m glad you’re not like that.” You say now with your arms wrapped around Roger. “Well you know, I treat people the way they want to be treated.” Roger replies. As distracted as Roger is, he’s actually keeping it together better than one would think. He keeps a tight grip on his rifle and an eye on if you’re going to attempt to grab his pistol. He also periodically looks away from you to make sure nobody is taking advantage of this situation. (Which Klepto and the rest look like they were going to do, but realize they’re still too far away to rush at Roger before he could shove you aside and open fire) Though your plan wasn’t necessarily to save everyone, but rather yourself. “So Roger, what’s a girl gotta do to get out of here?” you say seductively. “Well, like I said we should be gone later today or tomorrow at the latest.” “Too long and anything could happen within that time! Can’t you do something? I mean I could make it worth your while.” You say and run your finger across Roger’s chest. “Suzy, look, I’d really like to help, but…hey!” Roger is interrupted when you grab his hand. You bring his hand to your face and closing your eyes, you insert his index finger in your mouth and slowly suck on it making “mmmmm” sounds. This scene hasn’t gone unnoticed by more than a few carnies watching you. In fact the predictable calls of “whore”, “slut” and worse are uttered your way. Roger on the other hand is practically speechless. “I…uh…shit…” he says and then pulls his hand away staring at his finger for a moment. “Awww….but I wasn’t done sucking on you…” you say and flutter your eyes a bit, trying to look as cute as possible then you whisper in his ear: “Take me back to my trailer and I’ll show you the REAL greatest show on earth.” then you lick his ear. Roger immediately calls in Ernie loudly. Ernie rushes in with his weapon ready to kill something. “What?! What?! Are they rioting again?!” he exclaims. “No. But I REALLY need a favor! You need to watch these people and if the commander checks in on us, tell him I had a to take a shit really bad.” “What…wait… Oh fuck no! You’re gonna go fuck this little carnie whore aren’t you? Goddamnit Roger!” “Come on Ernie, you can’t help me out?” “Motherfucker, I’m always helping you out! I don’t understand why you can’t just fuck the bitch right here. Not like these people are shy and from the looks of her, she looks like it wouldn’t be the first time she’s gotten fucked in front of a live audience.” Ernie remarks. You know, while you’ve gotten used to the baseless comments about you being a woman of loose morals, it still hurts sometimes. In any case, Roger is not a man to be deterred from his lust for you right now. “Alright, fine. I didn’t want to hold this over your head, but you leave me no choice…” Roger starts to say, but whatever the threat is, Ernie doesn’t even let him finish it. “Oh fuck. (Sigh) Don’t even say it. Fine. Go. Go. Go! And don’t take too long, though I imagine in your case that won’t be a problem.” Ernie says defeated. “Thanks man! Seriously I really will remember this favor!” “Hrm. That you only got through blackmail.” As you and Roger leave, Ernie says one more thing. “Hope you’ve got condoms, because lord knows what diseases she’s got being a carnie. Her kootch might turn your dick into a fucking Siamese Twin or some shit.” “How the hell does that even make sense? Fucking asshole…” you say and start to get angry at Ernie’s comments, but Roger just take you by the hand to go back to your trailer. “Don’t mind him. Let’ hurry though, because we don’t want to bump into anyone else. It isn’t like I got leverage over everyone like I do with Ernie. So where is your trailer?” You tell him the location and the pair of you are heading over in that direction fluctuating between being “stealthy” and running. While you’re doing this, it occurs to you that you have to think up your next move. Are you really going to let him fuck you? Roger is distracted enough that you probably could grab his side arm to give you enough time to make a run for it, but while Roger might not shoot you immediately (And that’s rolling dice there) there’s nothing to say the other nearby Guardsmen won’t and you know they’ll be alerted as soon as you try to run away from Roger. Of course if you really are willing to make that ultimate “sacrifice” for freedom, Roger might even help you out a lot more in your escape attempt. Of course he could turn out to be a complete asshole and march you back to the tent after he’s had his way with you. > You go through with it You aren’t confident that you’d make it with trying to ambush Roger. While it’s possible you’ll get some sort of better opportunity while in the trailer, at this point you’re going to hope that Roger isn’t an asshole and this will actually get him to help you escape. That’s a lot to place on hope, but it’s going to have to do. Soon you get to your trailer and you enter it with Roger still looking around before going in himself. You stand by your bed and look at it and then look at Roger. “So here we are.” He says. “Yeah…so here we are…” you reply. “Well? Come on, we don’t have much time.” Roger says and puts his weapons down though of course he puts them out your reach and starts guiding you to lay down on the bed. This is going to happen. It isn’t that Roger isn’t unattractive to you and this isn’t exactly like he’s coercing you to do anything (though you’re afraid he might if you resist at this point) its just…well directly using your pussy to get yourself out of a jam isn’t exactly how you do things. Indirectly by teasing and flirting? Sure you’ve gotten used to doing that, but this is a step you don’t think you’re ready to take and it’s too late at this point. Roger is already stripping his clothes off and you’re slowly doing likewise. Soon the pair of you are naked and his dick’s coming at you like a monster. As he moves in to kiss and embrace you, you stop him. “Um…could we not look at each other while we do this?” you say. “Huh?” he asks, almost looking a bit wounded by that comment. “Uh, I just mean can we do it doggy style? I just prefer it that way.” You ask. “Oh. Well yeah! Sure, however you want it. I’m cool with that.” Roger says and you get into position. Well at least now you can close your eyes and pretend its Bobby. Hopefully Roger isn’t much of a talker and just gets on with it. While you prepare yourself for this “experience”, gunshots are suddenly heard outside. Several of them in fact. This is followed by a lot of shouting. “Oh fuck! What the hell?!” Roger exclaims and no longer do you feel his hands at your haunches, he’s gotten off the bed. You turn over and see him starting to get dressed, periodically looking out the narrow windows. “What’s going on out there?!” you ask. “I have no idea, but whatever it is, YOU stay inside and keep down. I don’t want you getting hurt.” You start to get dressed as well, wondering what calamity has happened now. Did the carnies finally decide to rush the guardsmen? Roger, with his clothes back on, grabs his rifle and pistol and prepares to head out. “Suzy, remember what I said, stay inside…OH SHIT!” Roger shouts as he opens the door. Something humanoid runs into Roger who drops his rifle and is pinned against the wall. It’s growling and snarling and Roger is holding its neck in an attempt to not let it bite him. Fear grips you, but not so much that you can’t grab a nearby knife from the kitchen area in an effort to stab it. “Suzy stay back! I got it!” Roger shouts and manages to shove the thing off of him and out the door. He then pulls out his pistol and presumably fires at the thing several times. He then slams the door shut and attempts to lock and barricade it. “Did you kill it?” you ask. “I dunno. I think I did.” Roger answers. “You think? Don’t you think you better know?!” “Yes! Yes! I killed it! I mean I put two it’s head and three in its chest. Jesus Christ, gimme a moment here! One moment I was nearly in paradise and the next I’m fending off a fucking…zombie…or something…shit I dunno what the hell…” Roger says trying to wrap his head around this unexpected turn of events. Zombie. Did he just say that thing was a zombie? It was humanoid and trying to bite him, while making snarling and growling sounds. Then again it didn’t look exactly rotten, could’ve been new dead though. Maybe just a rabid human? Seems silly that you’re actually considering that you’re getting attacked by zombies. Never the less, the gunfire and chaos you’re hearing outside seems to suggest you’re being attacked by SOMETHING. Meanwhile Roger is sitting and mumbling to himself. Suddenly he stands up. “Fuck it. Suzy, you still wanna get out of here right?” Roger says. “Well of course.” You say. “Come on, we’re taking one of those trucks. I got the keys.” “Okay? But what about your friends?” “Hah, most of those guys I serve with are assholes. I mean you saw my commanding officer and Ernie. Can’t say any of them are my friends. What about you and your carnie family?” “Well… the clowns were cool with me and the owner…but well it’s complicated and let’s just say I wasn’t fitting in there, so while I do feel slightly guilty just abandoning the ones that I was getting along with, I can’t stay someplace where I don’t feel entirely welcome or safe.” “Okay, then its settled, we’ll leave now.” “But what about those things out there?” “Well we’re going to have to grab the truck now because either one or two things is going to happen. One, the rest of my squad is going to put these things down and both of us are going to be up shit’s creek or those things are going to kill everyone and we’ll have to brave through them while they’re not distracted by others.” Roger unblocks the door and kicks it open, ready to shoot anything that might be lurking outside, fortunately that isn’t the case right now. “Alright let’s do this and stick close to me.” he says and the pair of you run out the trailer. The sounds of creatures and gunfire are all around you and you haven’t stepped out of the trailer a few seconds when Roger has to shoot two more of the things. He doesn’t hit them in the head and they still stay down, so you’re guessing maybe the zombie thing isn’t the case. Still don’t want to get bit though, who knows if this is contagious? You see a few dead bodies of guardsmen on the ground and in one case one of those cannibals eating it and not paying any attention to anything else. The fact that the sounds of gunfire dying down and an increase in the screaming and yelling signals to you that things are getting grim. You wonder if they’ve gotten to the carnies yet. Is this going on everywhere? Is this local? You’ll have to figure that out later. Right now you’re just happy to get inside a heavy-duty military truck. Roger gets in the driver’s seat and with more snarling creatures banging on the doors and trying to get in, Roger starts up the truck and promptly runs over three of them on your way out this place. Soon you’re on the road, but what next? “Where are we going?” you ask. “I dunno. If this is some sort of plague or invasion or something I’m wondering if we shouldn’t head to Fort Timons, it’s the closest military facility around here and where I was stationed before I got sent here. Still quite a drive though.” Roger says. “What? Are you nuts? Didn’t you just go AWOL and now you’re thinking about going to an military base?” “Well… I mean yeah technically I just deserted my post…but considering it didn’t seem like anyone else is going to live through that attack I doubt if anyone is going to call me out on it. We could just tell them we were the only survivors.” “But if this is some sort of disease will a military base even be safe? I mean don’t these sorts of thing originate from them what with all the secret experiments and bioweapons?” “What? You watch too many horror movies or science fiction! Unless its some secret base with top level government security, the average ordinary military base isn’t going to have a lab where they’re making bioweapons! In any case I know that stuff isn’t at Fort Timons.” “I dunno…just doesn’t seem the safest place.” “Well where do you propose then?” You don’t have an answer. “See? Look, it’s still a long drive there, maybe I can get something on the radio and we can find out more. Too bad this one doesn’t have a two-way radio, we’d actually be able to communicate with someone and I lost my fucking cell phone. In fact I probably left it in your trailer.” As Roger attempts to get a signal on the radio, you think about how you’ve now run away from two “families” and who knows what’s become of both of them. Are they dead? Are they alive? Has you hometown been overrun by those things? Is it under marshal law? You feel a little sad about it all, but what can you really do? As the day eventually turns into night, Roger continues to try to get something on the radio, but its just static on the military channel he’s using. He doesn’t understand it. Switching over to the normal radio just gets music, which is broken up by the periodic Ground Zero advert. Absolutely nothing about the creatures though, not even regular news. It’s very frustrating. Your aren’t encountering too much traffic on the road either, granted this isn’t the busiest of roads, but it feels fairly isolated. Still, at least you’re not seeing a horde of those things roaming about. Roger talks a little about his past to break up the long periods of silence, most of it fairly mundane. You just mainly listen although you’re only really half listening and re-direct questions about yourself to something superficial. You’re not in the mood to talk about yourself. Eventually you start to get sleepy and Roger does as well. He pulls over and the both of you go to sleep and thankfully he never once suggests picking up where you left off in your trailer. Nothing like a bunch of cannibal creatures to break up the mood. You drift off to sleep… > Next day... FRIDAY “…this was a paid announcement by the Ground Zero Corporation…” “Agh! Shut the fuck up already. What the hell did GZ buy up all the goddamn stations?!” you hear Roger shout as he angrily turns the radio off, waking you up. It would seem you’re in motion again and you slept through it. “What’s going on?” you ask. “Huh? Oh you’re up. Nothing’s going on, just dumb ass Ground Zero commercials warning about an impending nuclear holocaust as usual. Never mind the fact we got a very real threat that I can’t seem to get any information on. Anyway I didn’t sleep that much so I just started driving again. Figured you could still sleep though so I didn’t bother waking you” Roger says. “So how long have we been on the road?” “More than a few hours definitely. Starting to by pass all this farmland area now, we’ll probably be hitting a more populated area soon. I also started to see a few more moving vehicles, though I’ve also been seeing a lot of abandoned vehicles as well. Oddly no military. Saw a few people even trying to hitch a ride, but I’m not playing good Samaritan right now.” “You see any of those things?” you ask. “Hrm, I thought I might’ve seen a few while I was driving, but from the distance I could quite tell. Wasn’t like I was going to check.” So far it looks like the plan is still going to Fort Timons, but if you didn’t think that was a dubious idea before, you’re really uncertain now. He can’t get any signal from the radio, for all you know the base might be overrun by those things. Which is exactly what you bring up to Roger, but he seems confident that wouldn’t be the case and he’s determined to head to Fort Timons. Funny thing considering he abandoned all his comrades at the carnival and said they were all assholes. Guess he’s still military at heart. He senses that you still aren’t comfortable with his plan though. “Suzy, you don’t need to come with me you know. I mean I can drop you off at the next town we go through.” Roger says. “And what exactly am I going to do there? I don’t have anything except the clothes on my back and with the way things are going, I can imagine I’d be resorting to taking those off a lot just to survive.” You say. There’s a moment of silence before Roger replies. “I’m guessing that’s what you were doing with me back at the carnival. It’s fine, I sort of knew that’s what was going on. I knew you didn’t actually like me.” “If you knew all that, why did you risk your career and possibly your life?” “You’re kidding right? I mean I know I’m not hideous, but you’re a little out of my league. When the hell am I going to get a chance to be with someone that looks like you? I mean sure I knew it was all an act, but in MY mind I could pretend you were being genuine. Though I admit when you stopped me from kissing you and didn’t want to look at my face, that sort of hurt.” “It wasn’t personal. I just don’t know you that well and I wasn’t ready for that level of intimacy. I was going to pretend you were my ex-boyfriend. (Sigh) I can’t believe I even went that far and was going to go through with it. I mean contrary to whatever you may have heard shouted at me, I don’t do stuff like that like…ever.” “Really? Because you’re pretty good at the whole seduction thing, even if you are a bit obvious with it.” “I’m obvious with it because it’s only just a new skill I developed within the last few days I joined a goddamn carnival just to get out of my goddamn shitty life at home…What the hell was I even thinking?! I’m not cut out to take care of myself! I should’ve just stayed home and let cannibals eat me in the comfort of my basement!” you say, tearing up a bit. The stress of the week is starting to get to you. “Whoa! You don’t mean that. Things aren’t totally horrible. Hey if it make you feel any better, I felt a little bad knowing that I was going to take advantage of what was obviously the act of a desperate woman.” Roger says. Now you stop sniffling and start to chuckle at the absurdity of that statement. “But of course that wasn’t going to stop you.” You say. “Well no of course not, but I assure you I would’ve felt guilty about it.” “No you wouldn’t have.” “Okay you’re right, I wouldn’t have, but I would have still gotten you out of that carnival if you had asked afterwards.” “Well at least it wouldn’t have been for nothing. (Sigh) Guess it all worked out anyway. I mean we’re both still alive due to our choices and I am thankful I’m not dead and that you probably saved my life back there.” “And I’m thankful I at least got to see you naked.” “We’ll always have the trailer I suppose.” You don’t exactly feel good about your situation, but Roger’s attempt to lighten up the mood at least has you feeling slightly better. “So…why don’t you tell me about this ex-boyfriend of yours? I’m guessing he must’ve been some sort of handsome stud if you’re still thinking about him.” Roger says. “Heh. Not especially. He was a normal looking guy. Not too much different from you in that department. He’s just the only guy I’ve ever been with, so, it was more comfortable to think about him instead. Anyway it was sort of complicated with him. Long story that I don’t want to get into right now.” “I understand. Well I’ll just say this, he was lucky to have you as a girlfriend and was a damn fool to let you get away.” “Hrm…actually you know what? You’re exactly right. He WAS lucky to have me and a damn fool to let me get away!” you say with a bit of pride. You know Roger is half saying this just in the hopes to get you into a compromising position again, but what the hell, it’s an ego booster and it keeps you in a positive mindset at least. “Shit.” Roger suddenly says. “What now?” you ask. “I just looked at the gas gauge, we’re practically out. Goddamn it I thought Ernie gassed this thing up recently.” “We can’t make it to Timons?” “Well we could risk it on fumes to Fort Timons, but I’d rather not chance that during these circumstances. I don’t even have a rubber hose that we could use to suck out the gas from one these abandoned vehicles we’ve been passing.” “Well I guess we’re stopping at the next gas station then.” “Assuming they got any. I get the impression just popping into the next gas station isn’t going to be that simple.” You and Roger continue to drive for about a half hour before you see something of interest in the distance. Namely a truck stop, which apparently has been converted into a minor fortress. “Hey look at that!” you point out. “I see it. It’s a truck stop and it looks like whoever is there is trying to block the place off by putting trucks around it. They even got people standing on top of the trucks with rifles as look outs. They probably got gas.” Roger says. “I dunno. Whoever is there probably isn’t going to be too trustful of anyone, especially someone from the military. They might just try to rob us.” “We gotta try. I mean we need gas, and given how well this place is defended, we at least know they probably got some. Who knows if we’ll get lucky some place else.” You and Roger drive to the truck stop, which immediately causes the lookouts to point and raise their rifles in your direction. When you stop in front of it there are a lot of shouts for you to stay in the truck. “We don’t need any government assistance here, we’re doing just fine as you can see. I highly suggest that y’all just continue on your way.” One of them shouts. “I’m not here for trouble. I just need some gas. We get that and we’ll be on our way to Fort Timons.” Roger shouts back. “Gas? Don’t fucking think so soldier boy. With the way society is collapsing that shit’s gonna be valuable and money is gonna be worthless.” “Well, would you accept a trade of supplies for gas?” “Hrmmm, well whatta you got?” “Got some military rations in the back of this thing. Those things last for years you know.” “We got tons of food, what else? Any weapons?” “Uh…there might be a couple…oh we got some medical supplies in here!” There is a long pause and he tells you to wait before climbing down the truck and disappearing from sight. Eventually you hear his voice again which is now coming from behind the truck barricade. “Okay, we’re gonna move this truck, but one funny thing happens and you’re the first one getting a bullet to the head. Alright, we’re letting this one in, everyone keep extra look out for those rabid bastards!” “You still think this is a good idea?” you ask. “Well it’s like I said, our options for gas are limited.” Roger answers. As soon as the truck is moved out your way, the man who was barking orders at you waves you in and motions you over to the gas pumps. As soon as you drive in they put the truck back. Either they’re really safety conscience or they don’t want to risk having you get away. From this distance you see several more people in the building part of the truck stop. Looks like it’s a general store/diner combo. Most of them are watching you from the windows, though a few of them come out, one of them is an older man with a cane who walks directly to the pumps. “Okay, I want the two you in that truck to exit it slowly. I don’t care if you got weapons, but don’t point them at me or anyone else in a threatening manner.” The old man shouts. Roger takes his rifle over his shoulder and exits the truck. You do like wise, though being unarmed you exit from Roger’s side just so you don’t feel quite as vulnerable. Naturally rifles are pointed at the pair of you, but the old man with the cane shouts telling them to calm down. “You lot, stop pointing your guns and start unloading this truck. Sorry about that, everyone’s a little on edge. Name’s Henry. I own this place.” He says. “Roger and it’s understandable.” “Well, a military man eh? Thought all the National Guard were off fighting those rabid things in the city. From what I’ve heard the place is completely overrun now.” “The city? You mean Security is overrun?” you ask. “Yep. Heard it on the radio. Not the regular one of course. Those GZ bastards seem to be clogging those up, but on my Ham Radio. Been trying to communicate with Fort Timons, but my radio isn’t exactly in the best condition…” “Hold on! You’ve been in communication with Fort Timons?!” Roger exclaims. “Well, somewhat. More like my old buddy I served with back in the day who still works there as an inventory clerk. Haven’t heard anything from him since yesterday. All I know is the last thing he told me was the fort was on high alert and further communication was going to be limited to a need to know basis and only to those with the proper clearance. Typical military bullshit I suppose, well I don’t need to tell you.” “Uh, we were on our way to Fort Timons. Do you think it’s safe?” You say. “Heh, well I couldn’t tell you if the fort is safe, but I can tell you that those rabid fuckers have been making their way out of the city en mass and given how far the city is, they apparently don’t get tired and can cover a lot of ground. We just repelled a bunch of them yesterday. Hence the make shift fortress here. Fort Timons is even closer to the city, so at best I’d wager that you’re going to have to wade through a bunch of those things before getting there. Not something I’d want to do to be sure.” Henry remarks. “Shit, those things are in the city and they were in my town! This means this can’t just be a local thing! It’s probably a nationwide epidemic! We can’t go to Fort Timons now!” you exclaim. “We don’t know if the place has fallen to those things.” Roger replies. “Exactly! We don’t know!” you say. At this point Henry interjects. “If I may, the both of you can stay here. We’ve got the room and your truck full of supplies as far as I’m concerned buys your way in. And I’m sure as a military man, you’d pull your weight here to defend this place if need be. So you and your girlfriend can stay here if you wish.” Henry says and then walks over to oversee his people unloading the truck. It’s an incredibly tempting offer and one you’d jump at the chance for, but Roger still seems sure that Fort Timons will better in the long run. You wonder if he feels a little obligated to go back to Fort Timons because deep down he feels like he abandoned his post even if hasn’t admitted it. The only downside is if Roger doesn’t stick around and you do, you’ll be left in the company of a bunch of strangers again and that didn’t go so well last time. You can only imagine all the leers, grope attempts and possibly worse from a bunch of horny trucker types. > You insist on staying here Something in your heart is telling you that going to Fort Timons would be a huge mistake. The length of the trip and the possibility that it’s going to be swarming with those things just doesn’t seem safe. This place might not be safe either, but at least it’s a secure place that you don’t need to travel any further to. “Suzy, I still think going to Timons is a better idea than staying here. I’m going, so if you want to stay…” Roger says before you interrupt him. You grip Roger by the head with both hands and move it downwards so you can kiss him on the lips. The kiss is then followed your arms moving downward in a tighter hugging motion. He returns in kind as the pair of you continue to embrace. “Don’t go. Please don’t go to Fort Timons. It won’t be safe and I need you here with me.” You say stopping your kiss to speak. “Suzy…” “Please. Stay with me.” “(Sigh) Suzy… do you really mean this? I mean I really need to know where we stand…because…you can’t just flutter your eyes and kiss me without meaning it now. I’m really starting to have feelings for you, but if you’re just doing this out of survival again…” You stare him directly in his eyes. “Yes, Roger. I mean it. Not just for me, but for you. I don’t want you to put yourself in any danger anymore than I want myself to be in danger. And Fort Timons is just going to be unnecessary danger. I know we haven’t known each other long, but we have been through a lot together and if this is the way this shitty world is going to be, then I want to at least spend the rest of that time with you.” Well if you didn’t mean any of that, it sure was enough to convince Roger because he resumes kissing and hugging you immediately. Of course you did mean it since you have grown attached to him. Just a sucker for men who save your life you guess. You both don’t even notice Henry walking up to you. “Hrm, looks like I interrupted something. So did you two decide on what you’re going to do…besides suck on each others faces?” he asks. “Well…” Roger says and then smiles at you before turning his attention to Henry. “I think we’ll be staying.” “Great. Glad to hear it. Need more people to help defend this place. Think you could help with look out for awhile with that rifle of yours?” Henry says. “Sure. For how long?” Roger asks. “Hmm, probably until midnight. Earl needs to get some sleep, that’s why he’s so irritable right now. As for you little lady, why don’t you head on inside and get acquainted with everyone. You and your boyfriend can pick up where you left off later.” Henry goes to wander over to Earl to give him the news that he’ll be relieved soon and you and Roger are left alone again. “Okay, well I guess I’ll see you later tonight then.” Roger says. “Yes, though I wonder where we’re supposed to sleep.” You answer. “Well presumably together now.” “Ha ha, of course but that wasn’t what I meant.” “Hrm, I’m sure someone will tell you inside what the sleeping arrangements are, well anyway I probably should get over to my new job. See you later.” Roger says. As he leaves, you shout to him to be careful which he just smiles and waves as a reassurance that you don’t need to worry about him. And now you turn towards the truck stop building which no longer has the small crowd outside it anymore and people have gone back inside. People which you now have to be social with… “Okay, Suzy. You can do this. It won’t be like the carnival.” You mumble to yourself as you walk to the building. As soon as you walk in you see a mixture of people. Mostly older men, but women as well and even a couple children. Most of them look up when you enter. “Hi everyone. I’m Suzy and my boyfriend Roger are going to be staying here, but we brought in a whole bunch of medical supplies and food with us to help pull our weight around here.” Your introduction is met with apathy. Half of them grunt in acknowledgement and the other half just go back to doing whatever it is they were doing. Well it’s better than most of what you got at the carnival. Seeing that nobody is speaking to you, you decide to sit quietly by yourself in a booth far away from everyone else. You mainly spend your time in introspection and listening to the random conversations. Most of them naturally are talking about the situation at hand, but it’s broken up by periods of “normalcy” of just joking around. Nobody here seems to be overly worried about rabid people running around and the breaking down of society, then again most of the people here are truckers so they’re probably used to roaming about and the employees of the place seem like they spend so much time here it’s a second home. Eventually enough time passes and you get tired of being a wall flower, or more specifically you’re tired of wearing the same clothes for the past few days along with no shower. You walk up to the group of waitresses in the hopes to ask them that perhaps there is some sort of wash up facility here. The oldest waitress, a red head with hard features and a name tag that says Anne looks you up and down as you approach and her friends do likewise. “Excuse me, but is there a wash room or shower or something I could use? I just feel so dirty what with the sweating and running from those things outside.” You expect catty remarks or a few insults or some sort of hostility, but you’re met with a surprise. “Why sure blondie. You can use the small shower we have for us in the back. You need a change of clothes too?” Anne says. “You have some?” “Well they’re extra waitress uniforms. If that’s okay.” “Sure, if it’s clean it’ll be a welcome change.” “Okay, hmm you’re a bit on the small side, Jasmine, go get Trudy’s old uniform. That should fit…Suzy wasn’t it?” “Yes, and thank you.” Soon, Jasmine returns to give you a uniform and you’re on your way to get washed up. The waitresses’ private bathroom isn’t much but the fact it has a shower that you can use to get clean is enough for you. You feel a little odd wearing the uniform, which was obviously designed to attract a lot of male attention, but again you’re just glad to be out of those old dirty clothes. By the time you get out of the shower, the waitresses are cooking up dinner for everyone. You ask if they need any help, but they say they got it. You sit down and eat, a couple people make a bit of small talk, but nothing of importance. You mostly are left alone, but it’s a promising start at least. In any event the re-invigorated feeling you had after the shower is wearing off and you start to get tired which is when you ask Anne where the sleeping area is. “Well some people are flopping right out here in these booths. A few really brave souls are sleeping out in their trucks out there. Henry’s got his own private office as you might expect. The wait staff has that small lounge area near our bathroom…though Jasmine is using one of the storerooms since she’s got her kids with her. I guess you could take one these booths or share the storeroom with Jasmine. Of course you’ve got that boyfriend…hmmm could give you the second storeroom. Doesn’t really have a lot of space though.” “That’s fine, I just want some where to rest.” And once again you succeed in a simple task with no major problems. Things have been going so well for you since you got here that you almost forget about the problems of the outside world going on. You don’t of course, but you honestly can say this is the safest you’ve felt since you left your basement. Giving you a spare blanket, Anne directs you to the second storeroom, which is indeed lacking in space but it’s enough for you. You waste no time in laying down your blanket and falling asleep on the floor. > The next day… SATURDAY You wake up to a body grinding up against you, an arm holding you tightly around your mid-section and warm breath blowing in your ear in between the kissing. Not exactly what you expected, but it beats those Ground Zero advertisements. “Well, looks like someone is feeling friendly this morning. When did you get here?” You ask. “A little after midnight. It was boring and I would’ve rather been with you, but at least I didn’t see any of those things. You of course were already asleep so I just slept besides you the whole night. You’re a pretty sound sleeper, you didn’t even wake up.” Roger says. “Hrm. Surprised you didn’t take advantage of my vulnerable situation.” “I thought about it, but honestly by that time I was pretty tired myself. I actually haven’t been awake long. So they make you a waitress to help out around here?” “Oh. This? No. They were just good enough to let me borrow some clean clothes. I won’t say everyone here has been social with me, but at least nobody has been hostile.” “Hm. Well you look hot in that uniform.” Roger says and resumes groping you. “Oh? You like this? Got a role play fetish eh?” “Sure, and its short so I’ll be able to hike the skirt up for easy access.” “Well that definitely is the practical side to it.” You chuckle. Your laughter is turned to semi-surprise when Roger moves one of his hands under your skirt. You didn’t quite expect him to go there so quickly, but it isn’t unwelcome. “Mmm yeah…” It’s been like a whole week that you’ve gone without pleasuring yourself (let alone had anyone else do it) so as far as you’re concerned you’re about due. You quickly start to undo Roger’s pants and few moments later your legs are wrapped around him and he’s thrusting into you. “Oh shit this feels so fucking good…” you exclaim. Honestly that’s not all you say. You say quite a few things fairly loudly and you don’t really care if anyone hears you. (Roger on the other hand is a bit more on the quiet side) You don’t know how much time passes because you’re enjoying yourself so much and then you feel it. “Oh my God! I’m almost there! Keep doing that! Harder! Faster! Oh yessss…” you exclaim and then the explosion. Though not that one. There’s a loud noise and a faint rumble, but you don’t really pay it any mind because you and Roger are more focused on the task involving each other’s fun parts. A few moments later and someone starts banging on the door. At first you think its someone that’s complaining about you being too noisy, but they start yelling you two need to come out now. “There’s a fucking nuke going off in distance!” the voice yells. “What the fuck?!” Roger exclaims. “What?!” You say. “I said there’s a…” “Yeah I heard! (Sigh) Hold on.” Roger interrupts. That must’ve been the rumble and noise from earlier. Talk about a mood breaker. “So…they finally went and did it.” You say. “I guess so. Shit…I hope it wasn’t too close.” Roger says. “We’d be all vaporized if it was a big one, so maybe it was just a little one?” “The one they dropped on Hiroshima was a little one too.” “Well I suppose there’s not much for it now. Our building is still intact so that’s a good sign.” You say trying not to wonder if you’re still going to be in the range of a fatal dose of radiation. Roger starts to slowly get his pants back on and you pull your skirt back down. When you both leave the room, you see Jasmine trying to calm her children down. A couple people are arguing. A few are just sitting in a silent state of shock. Henry is actually outside the diner looking in the direction of where the bomb must’ve gone off. You can see the lingering remnants of a mushroom cloud in the far distance even from inside the diner. You can’t help but hold on the Roger a bit tightly. “I don’t exactly know how far or how big the bomb was, but I do know it went off in the direction of Fort Timons. Hell, that might’ve even been the target. Well either that or the city. Either way both of those places are probably radioactive ruins now and it looks like you saved my life too.” Roger says squeezing you around the waist. “You think maybe this was just a way to get rid of those infected people? Maybe this is only occurring on a small scale?” you ask. “I dunno. Maybe, but I get the impression this bomb was just one of many to the nuclear end of the big war that the Ground Zero ads kept going on about. Guess it doesn’t matter because I imagine things are going to be severely changing and the world as we once knew it is going to be much different. Harder for one thing.” Surprisingly as frightening as this event is, you aren’t as filled with dread as you normally would be. Maybe its because after all the other craziness you went through this week, you could’ve ended up a lot worse off. Maybe you’re finally trying to find the silver lining for once in your life. “We’ll handle it…together.” You say with certainty. Roger looks at you and nods. “We will.” At this point Henry steps back in the diner and after calming some of the arguing truckers. He begins addressing the situation and stating that nothing has changed and that the situation is still the same, namely if people help, then they are welcome to stay. If not or if they don’t want to stay then they are free to go. A couple of the truckers who apparently have families elsewhere do leave. Everyone else stays and the work towards creating a permanent new “home” is begun. While you’re pitching in by doing inventory on the medical supplies you have you briefly wonder what would’ve happened had you not abandoned the carnival when you did. Could you have made a difference had you stayed like Roofie wanted you to? You shake your head. You don’t mind helping out, but you know you’re no leader. Better to be safe and be around a group that you at least feel more comfortable around and so far that’s what you’ve encountered here at this truck stop. Most people here despite the highly stressful situation have still been pleasant with you. Funny where one finds a place to belong. > … Nice and Safe The Future… “Take it or leave it. Don’t have all day to haggle with you.” You say to the scavenger. He looks at the plastic bag of 9mm ammo for a moment. “Alright I’ll take it.” He says and hands over two damaged rifles and takes the ammo without another word and leaves. You look at the rifles again and think how glad you are to have someone who has a natural affinity to fixing thing. “Daniel! Come out here, got a project for you.” You son comes out from his work area to see what you’re yelling at him about this time. “Mom, what is it now?” Daniel replies. “Here. Got more rifles you can fix and we can sell for better profit later on.” You say and pass the rifles to him. “These need new bolts. I’m not sure if I have any spare ones. At least not for two rifles.” “Well do what you can. I’m sure you’ll think of something. You usually do. Besides you know how everyone that comes through this place is always interested in weapons. If you get just one of them fixed, it’ll still be a profit for what we got them for.” “Don’t most people buy their weapons from Earl on the far side of the bazaar?” “Yeah, but he specializes in that, the beauty of what we do is sell and buy a little bit of everything. So someone who might be looking for medicine might also end up buying a gun too. Besides, he’s getting a reputation of ripping people off, so we need to be prepared for the possible day for when people start coming to us to buy their guns instead.” Daniel nods and says nothing else. He isn’t really much of a talker or a thinker for that matter. Not that the boy is stupid, its just he focuses on other things. Like fixing. Sometimes he reminds you a bit of your older brother’s son from the old days. That boy was definitely a savant. Daniel head back to his workstation. You’re so glad you’ve never had problems with him, though Roger thinks he should mix more with people…but then you remember your own isolationist days in a certain basement and laugh to yourself. Compared to you back then, Daniel is a social butterfly and has an actual trade. He’ll be fine. Really its odd to you sometimes that you basically run the equivalent of a post apocalyptic general store, but as this place got bigger and better fortified, the original people began to rise in status and responsibility and here you are. It certainly is better than being a wanderer out there. You’ve heard the tales and have no desire to leave the walls of New Security. Its safe here and you have everything you’d ever want. It’s your new basement. You remember Roger wanting to lead the New Security recon team when it was formed, but you managed to talk him out of that nonsense. You didn’t talk him into staying here in the first place and avoid getting nuked to atoms just so he could go play wasteland warrior and get his head blown off that way. His job as lead protector of New Security holds more than enough danger and a test of his skills. “Hey mom, how’s business?” Cindy asks walking in. “Fine. I’m guessing you went with your father today?” “Yep. It was really cool. I got to learn how to shoot. I even killed something!” “What?” you ask. At this point Roger walks in and has heard the end of the conversation. “It wasn’t a person and she wasn’t in any danger. It was just a large rat that had wandered on the range. She got it in right in the head on one shot. She’s a natural.” Roger says in an effort to reassure you. You know it’s a harsh new world now, and you know your daughter learning how to shoot is probably one of the best things for her, but you can’t help worry. “Well, glad to hear you had fun.” You say. “Yeah! I even got to see the New Security Scout Team coming in from a mission! They said they had to fight a mutant! Sounded exciting! I can’t wait to be able to become one of them one day!” Well now you’re worried and Roger already knows it. “Uh, Cindy why don’t you go into the back, I’m sure we’ll all be eating soon.” Roger says. Cindy complies, but she knows all too well an argument is going to be occurring soon. You give Roger that “look” that he knows all to well is one of displeasure. “Suzy, before you even start I really did not put that idea into her head! I didn’t even know the scout team was coming back today! Let alone that she was going to bump into them.” “You’re the head protector! How would you not know that?!” you say. “Hey, I take care of internal safety first. Besides, sometimes the scouts come back early if they don’t find anything out there.” “A mutant sounds like something to me. Look I know Cindy’s a teenager and I know she finds all this military type stuff exciting, but I’d at least rather not encourage her desire to want to go traipsing about the wasteland.” “Well I’d rather her be safe too, I mean that’s why I’m trying to teach her how to shoot and other skills. I mean we can only guide so much and eventually she’s going to be an adult and we won’t have any control over what she does. You know that.” This is an old argument and Roger is right, but you really wish he wasn’t. “I know. I know. Just…(sigh) could you at least next time emphasize that being a scout isn’t as glamorous as it sounds?” “That I can do. Can’t promise you it’ll work, but I’ll definitely do that.” “Well that’s the best I can hope for.” Roger moves in to kiss you and you return it. “Besides, I don’t see why SHE gets to be in the scout team when I’m not a allowed to.” Roger says with a smile. You laugh and you close up the store so that you can spend time with your family. It’s not the easiest life, but it’s more than you ever had before.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “…this was a paid announcement by the Ground Zero Corporation…” “Agh! Shut the fuck up already. What the hell did GZ buy up all the goddamn stations?!” you hear Roger shout as he angrily turns the radio off, waking you up. It would seem you’re in motion again and you slept through it. “What’s going on?” you ask. “Huh? Oh you’re up. Nothing’s going on, just dumb ass Ground Zero commercials warning about an impending nuclear holocaust as usual. Never mind the fact we got a very real threat that I can’t seem to get any information on. Anyway I didn’t sleep that much so I just started driving again. Figured you could still sleep though so I didn’t bother waking you” Roger says. “So how long have we been on the road?” “More than a few hours definitely. Starting to by pass all this farmland area now, we’ll probably be hitting a more populated area soon. I also started to see a few more moving vehicles, though I’ve also been seeing a lot of abandoned vehicles as well. Oddly no military. Saw a few people even trying to hitch a ride, but I’m not playing good Samaritan right now.” “You see any of those things?” you ask. “Hrm, I thought I might’ve seen a few while I was driving, but from the distance I could quite tell. Wasn’t like I was going to check.” So far it looks like the plan is still going to Fort Timons, but if you didn’t think that was a dubious idea before, you’re really uncertain now. He can’t get any signal from the radio, for all you know the base might be overrun by those things. Which is exactly what you bring up to Roger, but he seems confident that wouldn’t be the case and he’s determined to head to Fort Timons. Funny thing considering he abandoned all his comrades at the carnival and said they were all assholes. Guess he’s still military at heart. He senses that you still aren’t comfortable with his plan though. “Suzy, you don’t need to come with me you know. I mean I can drop you off at the next town we go through.” Roger says. “And what exactly am I going to do there? I don’t have anything except the clothes on my back and with the way things are going, I can imagine I’d be resorting to taking those off a lot just to survive.” You say. There’s a moment of silence before Roger replies. “I’m guessing that’s what you were doing with me back at the carnival. It’s fine, I sort of knew that’s what was going on. I knew you didn’t actually like me.” “If you knew all that, why did you risk your career and possibly your life?” “You’re kidding right? I mean I know I’m not hideous, but you’re a little out of my league. When the hell am I going to get a chance to be with someone that looks like you? I mean sure I knew it was all an act, but in MY mind I could pretend you were being genuine. Though I admit when you stopped me from kissing you and didn’t want to look at my face, that sort of hurt.” “It wasn’t personal. I just don’t know you that well and I wasn’t ready for that level of intimacy. I was going to pretend you were my ex-boyfriend. (Sigh) I can’t believe I even went that far and was going to go through with it. I mean contrary to whatever you may have heard shouted at me, I don’t do stuff like that like…ever.” “Really? Because you’re pretty good at the whole seduction thing, even if you are a bit obvious with it.” “I’m obvious with it because it’s only just a new skill I developed within the last few days I joined a goddamn carnival just to get out of my goddamn shitty life at home…What the hell was I even thinking?! I’m not cut out to take care of myself! I should’ve just stayed home and let cannibals eat me in the comfort of my basement!” you say, tearing up a bit. The stress of the week is starting to get to you. “Whoa! You don’t mean that. Things aren’t totally horrible. Hey if it make you feel any better, I felt a little bad knowing that I was going to take advantage of what was obviously the act of a desperate woman.” Roger says. Now you stop sniffling and start to chuckle at the absurdity of that statement. “But of course that wasn’t going to stop you.” You say. “Well no of course not, but I assure you I would’ve felt guilty about it.” “No you wouldn’t have.” “Okay you’re right, I wouldn’t have, but I would have still gotten you out of that carnival if you had asked afterwards.” “Well at least it wouldn’t have been for nothing. (Sigh) Guess it all worked out anyway. I mean we’re both still alive due to our choices and I am thankful I’m not dead and that you probably saved my life back there.” “And I’m thankful I at least got to see you naked.” “We’ll always have the trailer I suppose.” You don’t exactly feel good about your situation, but Roger’s attempt to lighten up the mood at least has you feeling slightly better. “So…why don’t you tell me about this ex-boyfriend of yours? I’m guessing he must’ve been some sort of handsome stud if you’re still thinking about him.” Roger says. “Heh. Not especially. He was a normal looking guy. Not too much different from you in that department. He’s just the only guy I’ve ever been with, so, it was more comfortable to think about him instead. Anyway it was sort of complicated with him. Long story that I don’t want to get into right now.” “I understand. Well I’ll just say this, he was lucky to have you as a girlfriend and was a damn fool to let you get away.” “Hrm…actually you know what? You’re exactly right. He WAS lucky to have me and a damn fool to let me get away!” you say with a bit of pride. You know Roger is half saying this just in the hopes to get you into a compromising position again, but what the hell, it’s an ego booster and it keeps you in a positive mindset at least. “Shit.” Roger suddenly says. “What now?” you ask. “I just looked at the gas gauge, we’re practically out. Goddamn it I thought Ernie gassed this thing up recently.” “We can’t make it to Timons?” “Well we could risk it on fumes to Fort Timons, but I’d rather not chance that during these circumstances. I don’t even have a rubber hose that we could use to suck out the gas from one these abandoned vehicles we’ve been passing.” “Well I guess we’re stopping at the next gas station then.” “Assuming they got any. I get the impression just popping into the next gas station isn’t going to be that simple.” You and Roger continue to drive for about a half hour before you see something of interest in the distance. Namely a truck stop, which apparently has been converted into a minor fortress. “Hey look at that!” you point out. “I see it. It’s a truck stop and it looks like whoever is there is trying to block the place off by putting trucks around it. They even got people standing on top of the trucks with rifles as look outs. They probably got gas.” Roger says. “I dunno. Whoever is there probably isn’t going to be too trustful of anyone, especially someone from the military. They might just try to rob us.” “We gotta try. I mean we need gas, and given how well this place is defended, we at least know they probably got some. Who knows if we’ll get lucky some place else.” You and Roger drive to the truck stop, which immediately causes the lookouts to point and raise their rifles in your direction. When you stop in front of it there are a lot of shouts for you to stay in the truck. “We don’t need any government assistance here, we’re doing just fine as you can see. I highly suggest that y’all just continue on your way.” One of them shouts. “I’m not here for trouble. I just need some gas. We get that and we’ll be on our way to Fort Timons.” Roger shouts back. “Gas? Don’t fucking think so soldier boy. With the way society is collapsing that shit’s gonna be valuable and money is gonna be worthless.” “Well, would you accept a trade of supplies for gas?” “Hrmmm, well whatta you got?” “Got some military rations in the back of this thing. Those things last for years you know.” “We got tons of food, what else? Any weapons?” “Uh…there might be a couple…oh we got some medical supplies in here!” There is a long pause and he tells you to wait before climbing down the truck and disappearing from sight. Eventually you hear his voice again which is now coming from behind the truck barricade. “Okay, we’re gonna move this truck, but one funny thing happens and you’re the first one getting a bullet to the head. Alright, we’re letting this one in, everyone keep extra look out for those rabid bastards!” “You still think this is a good idea?” you ask. “Well it’s like I said, our options for gas are limited.” Roger answers. As soon as the truck is moved out your way, the man who was barking orders at you waves you in and motions you over to the gas pumps. As soon as you drive in they put the truck back. Either they’re really safety conscience or they don’t want to risk having you get away. From this distance you see several more people in the building part of the truck stop. Looks like it’s a general store/diner combo. Most of them are watching you from the windows, though a few of them come out, one of them is an older man with a cane who walks directly to the pumps. “Okay, I want the two you in that truck to exit it slowly. I don’t care if you got weapons, but don’t point them at me or anyone else in a threatening manner.” The old man shouts. Roger takes his rifle over his shoulder and exits the truck. You do like wise, though being unarmed you exit from Roger’s side just so you don’t feel quite as vulnerable. Naturally rifles are pointed at the pair of you, but the old man with the cane shouts telling them to calm down. “You lot, stop pointing your guns and start unloading this truck. Sorry about that, everyone’s a little on edge. Name’s Henry. I own this place.” He says. “Roger and it’s understandable.” “Well, a military man eh? Thought all the National Guard were off fighting those rabid things in the city. From what I’ve heard the place is completely overrun now.” “The city? You mean Security is overrun?” you ask. “Yep. Heard it on the radio. Not the regular one of course. Those GZ bastards seem to be clogging those up, but on my Ham Radio. Been trying to communicate with Fort Timons, but my radio isn’t exactly in the best condition…” “Hold on! You’ve been in communication with Fort Timons?!” Roger exclaims. “Well, somewhat. More like my old buddy I served with back in the day who still works there as an inventory clerk. Haven’t heard anything from him since yesterday. All I know is the last thing he told me was the fort was on high alert and further communication was going to be limited to a need to know basis and only to those with the proper clearance. Typical military bullshit I suppose, well I don’t need to tell you.” “Uh, we were on our way to Fort Timons. Do you think it’s safe?” You say. “Heh, well I couldn’t tell you if the fort is safe, but I can tell you that those rabid fuckers have been making their way out of the city en mass and given how far the city is, they apparently don’t get tired and can cover a lot of ground. We just repelled a bunch of them yesterday. Hence the make shift fortress here. Fort Timons is even closer to the city, so at best I’d wager that you’re going to have to wade through a bunch of those things before getting there. Not something I’d want to do to be sure.” Henry remarks. “Shit, those things are in the city and they were in my town! This means this can’t just be a local thing! It’s probably a nationwide epidemic! We can’t go to Fort Timons now!” you exclaim. “We don’t know if the place has fallen to those things.” Roger replies. “Exactly! We don’t know!” you say. At this point Henry interjects. “If I may, the both of you can stay here. We’ve got the room and your truck full of supplies as far as I’m concerned buys your way in. And I’m sure as a military man, you’d pull your weight here to defend this place if need be. So you and your girlfriend can stay here if you wish.” Henry says and then walks over to oversee his people unloading the truck. It’s an incredibly tempting offer and one you’d jump at the chance for, but Roger still seems sure that Fort Timons will better in the long run. You wonder if he feels a little obligated to go back to Fort Timons because deep down he feels like he abandoned his post even if hasn’t admitted it. The only downside is if Roger doesn’t stick around and you do, you’ll be left in the company of a bunch of strangers again and that didn’t go so well last time. You can only imagine all the leers, grope attempts and possibly worse from a bunch of horny trucker types. > You continue to Fort Timons While you probably could talk Roger into staying if you turned on the charm again, you’ve done enough of that for quite some time and honestly he might be right as far as safety is concerned. Despite the best efforts of the people here, this truck stop is still open enough that those things could get in. (Crawl under the trucks for one thing) Also while the owner seems cool, you don’t know everyone else and the last time you encountered a cool owner was the carnival and you know how that turned out. You also imagine that a military base might indeed survive an extended siege a lot better than this place. “Suzy, I still think going to Timons is a better idea than staying here. I’m going, so if you want to stay…” Roger says before you interrupt him. “No, I’ll go with you.” “But I thought you thought it was a bad idea.” “Well, I still sort of do, but I guess if this is a major crisis and the end of civilization, I’d rather be with you. So if you believe we’ll be safe there, then I believe we’ll be safe there.” Roger smiles at that remark. He immediately goes to hug you, which you weren’t quite expecting, but you hug back. You suppose you are getting attached to him. Just a sucker for men who save your life you guess. After this happy experience Roger goes over to gas up the truck and you wait nearby. You don’t even notice Henry come up to you. “So you two decide on what to do yet?” “Huh? Oh, yeah we’re going to try to make it to Timons.” “Hm. Well I wish you luck on that. Too bad you’re not staying though, could use a few more people to guard this place and help out around here.” “Yeah, well I wish we were staying too, but well he wants to go to Fort Timons so that means we’re both going.” “Heh, well love for another always has a way of making you act out of character.” “Y…eah something like that I guess.” You say reluctantly. Henry still hasn’t caught on that you aren’t really “with” Roger, but you don’t bother correcting him. “Don’t worry, you got this big truck, so you should be safe as long as you don’t get out of the thing or stop for a long period of time to let those things swarm you. And despite my doom and gloom earlier, don’t take that as truth. I mean what do I know. I’m stuck here with a Ham Radio that I can barely get to work right at the best of times. Things might not be as bad as they seem. Who knows? Maybe this will all be over in a day or two.” “Heh, one can only hope.” You say. “Remember though, if Timons doesn’t work out, you’re welcome to come back here.” “Thanks Henry that’s very generous of you.” After your short talk with Henry, Roger is ready to get going again and you’ve got the fuel to get to your destination. “We left you those MREs and the water. No need to leave you without the basics. Anyway, like I told your pretty girlfriend here, I wish you luck and if it doesn’t work out, you’re welcome to come back here.” Henry tells Roger “Thank you and we’ll keep that in mind.” Roger replies and drives off towards the “truck gate” which is now opening up. And with that you’re on the road again. “Hey I just want you to know, I’m really glad you’re coming with me. I mean I know you didn’t want to and…look I think you know I really like you and it’s not just because you flirted with me and I saw you naked and all that. I really enjoy your company. Probably not the best time to be addressing all this shit, but I think its better I just tell you where I stand right now. Especially with everything that’s going on. Anyway that’s all I want to say and I’ll drop the subject.” Roger says. You’re having a déjà vu moment like when Klepto admitted all his feelings for you, though with Roger it feels a little different. You get a little more sincerity with him. Klepto was always a little too sycophantic as far you were concerned. Hell, maybe you didn’t just decide to go off with Roger out of survival. Here or even back at the carnival. Maybe somewhere you did have an attraction to him and you just denied it for some reason. It’s that damn “good girl” trait you never shook off from your mother drilling it into your head when you were growing up. “I…I like and feel close to you too Roger.” You say and smile back at Roger. With this acknowledgement of your feelings for each other, a good period of your drive is in silence, but not an awkward silence, a comfortable one. The silence isn’t just going on in the truck, it’s also going on outside or least relatively speaking. Despite what Henry said, so far you haven’t encountered any hordes of those rabid things and you’re driving through suburbs by this point. You also haven’t seen many people walking about, but you assume most people are taking shelter somewhere. Happily the streets aren’t clogged with abandoned vehicles. That was one thing that Roger was more worried about. A line of vehicles is a little harder to drive over even with a big truck. Night comes and the rabid are a little bit more active though nothing that can’t be handled. Most of the time Roger just drives past them and they give chase for a while, but sometimes he runs them over. “Sheesh, they are getting thicker. Glad we don’t actually have to go INTO Security. Pftt, Security. Now that’s an ironic name for the city. Anyway we should actually get to Fort Timons around two or three in the morning.” Roger says. “Glad to hear it. I’m getting tired, but I’m too on edge to sleep.” You say. “Eh, go ahead and close your eyes at least. I’ll try to keep the zombie smashing to a minimum.” “They aren’t zombies, I think we established that they’re living right?” ‘Yeah, pretty sure they’re all alive, just rabid. Or whatever is wrong with them. Dunno if they infect anyone though, don’t want to ever find that out.” “I agree.” You reply and then try to take Roger’s advice by closing your eyes. You don’t really sleep so much as you rest and sort of drift in and out. You aren’t fully awake again until Roger calls your attention to your destination which isn’t far now. “Ha ha! Suzy wake up! We’re here! We made it and look they even got the towers lit up! The fort still stands!” he exclaims in joy. “Huh, yeah. That’s really…” before you can finish your groggy words Roger has stopped the truck, grabbed you and kisses you full on the lips. You’re too tired to resist, though you wouldn’t have bother anyway. “Well was it everything you expected?” you ask after he’s done. “Even better!” Roger says and then tries to kiss you again. “Whoa, hold on there, let’s save the victory kissing until AFTER we get in this place. I mean how do we even know they’ll let us in?” “Oh we’ll get in, I know we will.” Roger says and starts up the truck again. You get within range and suddenly spotlights move in your direction and a loud speaker calls out for you slow your speed to a crawl and to stop at the gates and to prepare to be inspected. Roger complies and soon you’re sitting before the gates of Fort Timons. You can imagine snipers from the towers are pointing their weapons on you and when the gates open a whole damn squad of soldiers comes out. A young man with glasses comes up to the driver’s side. “Riley? Is that you? Holy shit, we thought your squad was dead.” “It’s me Keller and I’m the only survivor. You’ll never believe what the hell happened.” “Riley?” you think, but then you realize that must be his last name. In fact it’s right on his shirt. Funny how you never noticed before. Never noticed he was a corporal either. “Well there’s been a lot going on here too, so probably won’t be too surprised. Anyway Captain Higgins will want to see you. Uh, he’s in charge now.” Keller says. “Shit, I guess a lot has changed.” “Yeah, who’s this in your passenger side?” “This is Suzy. She actually saved my life out there. Don’t worry she’s not bit or infected or anything.” “Guess you never had to suffer it first hand, but if you’re referring to those rabid, they don’t infect you if they bite. One good thing about all this I suppose. Saved your life eh? How’d that happen?” “Oh I got something surprised when I first encountered one of those things and it was on top of me snarling and growling. Suzy here got a knife and stabbed it in the face. Just enough for me to put it down permanently with a few rounds to its head and body.” “I’m also his girlfriend!” you add, hoping that by having a closer tie to Roger that they’ll let you in. “Girlfriend? Hrm. I guess stressful situations really do cause close bonds. Well under normal circumstances we wouldn’t let a civvie in that isn’t blood related or your spouse, but I guess we can make an exception. All right come on in. Don’t want to risk having this gate open any longer than it needs to be.” As you drive in you at last feel safer than you have been in a long while. Roger and you both exit the vehicle and Roger tells you that some people will probably take you to the barracks or some place with a bed. He says he’ll meet up with you later as he has to go report in. “Okay, I’ll see you then.” You say and you move in to kiss him goodbye. Well if you weren’t his girlfriend before, you certainly cemented it now. You are escorted to a barracks area just as Roger said you would be, but it’s mostly empty. The two soldiers that escort you mention that most of people stationed here never came back after being sent to the city, so there’s a lot of room now. They don’t say much else and soon leave you to your own devices. And for the first time in a long time during this hellish week, you’re alone. It’s almost a bit scary, but in a way you’ve missed it. You’re too tired though to really appreciate it and you collapse on one of the beds and start to drift off… > The next day… SATURDAY You wake up to a body grinding up against you, an arm holding you tightly around your mid-section and warm breath blowing in your ear in between the kissing. Not exactly what you expected, but it beats those Ground Zero advertisements. “Wha the…Roger that better be you.” You say. “Of course its me. Who else would it be? Bobby?” Roger answers. “Well I couldn’t tell, your erection pressing into me feels to be about the same size.” “Wow… way to make a guy feel special.” Roger says. “Oh don’t be sensitive, I could’ve said it was smaller. Anyway, isn’t there some sort of protocol against this in the barracks?” you say turning you head. “Pfft, protocol isn’t what it used to be. If you haven’t noticed there isn’t even anyone using this one, except you and barring an assault on this place, the captain was good enough to give me a day to rest up before going back on duty full time. Higgins always was cool about things, glad he’s in charge now.” “Hmm, so what’s going on?” you ask. “Nothing important, just holding out until we re-establish contact with the government I guess. Higgins might be cool about certain things, but he said he really couldn’t give out any more information other than the infected humans are not going to be a threat to us as long as we stay in the base. All the units that were sent out into the city were long since asked to pull back here though obviously not a lot made it back and there has been no contact with any of the units sent to your town.” “Shit.” You say. “Yeah, guess we both got really lucky. I spoke with some of the guys and a lot are still shaken up about stuff that went down in the city. It’s times like this that make you really glad to be alive.” “Yeah, I guess we are survivors.” You say and for a moment you lie with Roger finally feeling totally safe from the horrors that are occurring outside right now. You haven’t felt this way since you left your basement. Your moment is then broken by Roger resuming his groping and kissing on you. “Mmm, you smell so good right now…” Roger says. “Smell good? I haven’t had a proper shower in days! Nevermind the fact I’ve been running and sweating in the same clothes. I’m disgusting, I’d ask how you’re even getting turned on by me right now, but I probably do smell like roses compared to you.” You say. “Well, come on let’s go use the shower together.” “…NOW? I mean those things are open, what if someone walks in on us?” “Nobody will. I told you, there isn’t even anyone here in this area. Besides we can make it quick.” “Quick. Just what every girl wants to hear…(snort) don’t you think this is all a little presumptuous of you anyway? I said I liked and felt close to you, when did I say I was going to fuck you?” “When I helped you escape.” Roger says continuing to kiss on you. “Oh, that’s low…” you chuckle. “So is this more about me owing you something? Is that the way you want it?” “Hey, I’ll take it.” “Fuck it, I was tired of playing hard to get anyway. It’s been several days since I’ve even managed to pleasure myself so I’m about due. Come on let’s go hit the showers.” You say and get off the bed. You and Roger go to the nearby shower room. The pair of you are stripping your clothes off on your way there. By the time you’ve turned on the water, the both of you are naked. You enjoy both the force of the cleansing water hitting the front of your body as well as the force of Roger hitting your girl parts from the back. One of his hands starts to grope your breasts while his other remains gripped at your side. Every thrust feels like a great release from the stress you’ve endured this week. You scream out in ecstasy for more and you don’t give a shit how loud you are and who might hear you. You just hope Roger’s got that military stamina to go the distance. You don’t know how much time passes because you’re enjoying yourself so much and then you feel it. “Oh my God! I’m almost there! Keep doing that! Harder! Faster! Oh yessss…” you exclaim and then the explosion. Namely the nuclear bomb that explodes over the base. Whether this seemingly insignificant military base was a legitimate target or a misalignment from hitting the city of Security (Which probably still got hit too) is irrelevant. Who launched the nuke is irrelevant. Why it was launched is irrelevant. What is relevant is that you, Roger and many others with the large radius of this blast are instantly vaporized. At least you went out with a bang.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY Several gunshots cause you to wake up. “What the?!” you say still staying on the floor. “Shhhh! Quiet!” Klepto remarks and points over to the one in charge of the guardsmen. He and five others stand near the tent entrance with weapons out. “I don’t give a shit WHO started the fight or even why! You carny freaks can tear each other apart after we leave, but until then we’re here to maintain order and by god that’s what the fuck we’re going to do! If I have to break up another fight for any reason, next time the shots aren’t going in the air!” the officer remarks and leaves. The other guardsmen continue to stand near the entrance watching everyone who eventually all sit back down. “What the hell happened?” you ask. “Razor and some of the others got into an argument with Phil and his friends.” Klepto says. “Who’s Phil?” you say. “He does that fire eating stuff. Anyway, they kicked his ass and just as things were going to get worse, the guardsmen came in and put a stop to it like you just saw. Looks like the battle for control over the carnival is already starting.” “Surprised we didn’t get attacked then.” “Well like Shrimpy said yesterday, we’ve got dwarf protection for now, but who knows how long that arrangement is going to last.” “Can’t believe I slept through a fight, where’s Roofie?” “Oh him? He’s still over there out of it, even the gunshots didn’t wake him up.” Klepto says pointing to Roofie, who then surprises everyone. “I’m quite awake Klepto, I’m just resting with my eyes closed No point in getting up at this point anyway. It’s obvious this carnival has lost respect in me; I’d blame you all for smashing me in the back of the head last night, but that was really just a catalyst. (Sigh) Doesn’t matter, I predict that we’ll all be dead in two days at best.” Roofie says. “Roofie, we really didn’t want to do it, but you were talking crazy with your idea of attacking the military. Your plan would’ve gotten everyone killed.” You say. “And that may still happen if recent events are any indication. At least with my plan I would’ve died with the carnival intact rather than seeing it splitting up before my eyes.” Nobody else really knows what to say at this point, so you all just get silent and continue to converse with each other. “So what’s the next move?” Klepto asks. “I dunno, escape I guess? Can we get to one of the vehicles quickly and drive off?” you say. “Good luck with that given all the guardsmen on high alert now.” Fatty points out. “Yeah I don’t think we’re getting very far.” Lifto adds. You sit down and exhale wondering what to do next, but you can’t really think right now. It would seem that due to your more proactive suggestions and Roofie’s apathy you’ve somehow become the “leader” of your little group now. You hadn’t really planned on that. “For right now, we’re just going to stay put, I’ll try to think of something.” You remark. The rest of your group lack any ideas of their own, so they comply with your plan (or lack there of). Time passes and you mostly do a lot of casual conversation and mental speculation of what might happen “if you do X.” You half expect someone else to try to escape, particularly when they say they need to use the bathroom, but given that they always return under the same guard they left with it would seem nobody has the guts to really try it, not even Razor. Nobody else in your group comes up with any plans either, but you do notice Shrimpy occasionally heads over to the group of dwarves. He claims he’s just securing the “alliance” but you’re more inclined to believe he’s just trying to secure his own safety. So far though the dwarves are still supposed to be on your side. Roofie has continued to lie on the sleeping mat not saying anything to anyone. You still feel a little bad about betraying him especially given that he not only brought you into this carnival and liked you enough to give you a personal trailer, but also that he potentially saved you a lot of pain when Razor was going to kick your ass. You go over to talk to him. “Hey Roofie.” You say. “Hrm, hey Suzy.” He grunts. “Are you okay?” “Me? Well other than not having a drink all day, I’m fine. Just been making peace with my life I suppose.” Roofie says. “Roofie, I’m still very sorry about…” “What? Having Lifto wack me over the head? I’ve forgotten about that or rather I’ve rethought my own stance on that. You probably were right, I mean sure I would’ve rather died like that, but that was sort of selfish of me to want to use my last bit of dwindling influence to get everyone to follow me. Would’ve especially been a shame if you’d gotten killed in the crossfire. You’re actually very talented.” “You’re just saying that.” “No it’s true. I didn’t make my decision to hire you based on looks or on a whim. In the brief moment you’ve performed as a clown you were good. I mean it’s obvious you’re even a leader with how you got the other clowns hanging on your decisions. (Sigh) If only you had come across this carnival sooner. Things might’ve been much different.” “Well I’m not sure how much of a leader I am, because I can’t think of what comes next.” You say. “You’ll figure out something I’m sure. One thing though and while I don’t hold out much hope, if you can somehow keep this carnival together…do it. I know the current situation isn’t the best and I know you haven’t exactly been welcomed by everyone, but I see something in you that would feel fulfilled if you could experience the carnival like it once was. Like a family.” “A family?” you say with a smirk. “Hey like I said, you came in during the family fight. And that’s what happens in families sometimes. Family fights are always the most vicious, but after it dies down, sometimes the family unit can be stronger than ever. And I think you could be happy if you can keep this family from tearing itself apart completely. But you’ll have to be the one to do it. I don’t have it in me anymore.” At this point Roofie touches your hand and you pat his before leaving him be again. You wonder if this is more of a last request by a “dying” man rather than looking out for your personal fulfillment. Still, you think he’s genuine and sure it would be nice if the entire carnival became the happy family you never had, but you just don’t think that’s going to be possible. You look around and see nothing much has changed except a changing of the guards. One of them happens to be Roger, which makes you think of a possible way you could escape. The only problem is it’s going to rely on being more “charming” than you already have been with Roger and that could potentially get you into a situation you don’t want to be in. > You stay in the tent While it might be an opportunity to escape, you’re not going to risk it. Roger might be a little smitten with you, but he’s athletic enough looking that you don’t think you could easily fight him off if something went wrong. Given that there is a state of martial law right now, you’re likely to get yourself shot or worse. Better to stay in the tent and come up with a plan where you at least might have some back up. So you’re currently back to square one, sitting around doing much of nothing until the National Guard decides to leave (whenever if and when that happens). You spend most of your time thinking on what Roofie said and your current position at the carnival. The only way you’re ever going to have safety and have a family is if you take direct action towards those goals. “Lifto, Shrimpy, you’re with me.” You suddenly say and say you going to see the head of the dwarf faction. “Uh, I dunno if that’s a good idea, he’s been doing a lot of preparation lately.” Shrimpy says. “I’m sure he has, and its in our best interest to find out exactly what that is. Maybe YOU can afford to play both sides, but I’m not taking that chance.” You say and start walking over to the crowd of little people. As you approach, the dwarves instantly start closing ranks and their demeanor changes to a defensive one. “Back again Shrimpy? I didn’t anticipate your sycophantic antics for another hour or so. And you must be Suzy, the new clown girl that’s been pissing off all the ladies and turning on all the guys. Hrm. Upon a closer look, I understand the appeal, but you’re still no dwarf woman.” an older dwarf says, though many of his fellows probably don’t share that opinion. “I take it you’re the leader of your group?” “Yep, though I don’t suppose Shrimpy’s bothered to mention my name is Billy. If you’re here about our current alliance, you needn’t worry since I’ve reassured Shrimpy so many times about it that it’s getting to the point of annoyance. Glad to you at least changed it up by appearing yourself, could’ve done without the big ugly clown behind you though, but I’m guessing he’s a poor attempt at intimidation.” “A girl likes to have a big strong man to watch her back sometimes.” “Heh, and that’s why you’ve practically begged a bunch of little men to do it to eh? Let’s cut to the chase, what do you really want? I already know that you’re the new leader of the clowns given what you did to old Roofie over there. Bet he didn’t see that coming.” You don’t know how else to put it so you just say it, which comes to a surprise to Shrimpy and Lifto as well. “I’m going to be the new leader of this carnival and YOU’RE going to support me in this endeavor.” Billy smiles at this remark and then chuckles. Several of the other dwarves do likewise. “You? Really? And you think we’re just going to support you in this? I hope you had a better plan than preparing to fuck every munchkin in munchkin land Dorothy, because at this juncture I guarantee that would be the ONLY way that you MIGHT come close to your dreams of being in charge. And if that was your plan, you can forget it, because I’m happily married. However, it might gain you favor with some of my friends. Could ensure that your group will have a place in the new carnival order that will be coming soon, but that’s a choice you’ll have to make on your own.” “You really think the rest of the carnival is going to follow you?” “They won’t have a choice, we dwarves have always been the backbone of it and it’s about time we just took the spotlight. Just like my Great Uncle Charley always wanted to do so long ago.” “Yeah and apparently that didn’t work out so well given your current situation. You know why? Nobody truly respects you. They’re content to let you do the grunt work, but they don’t want you to be in the spotlight, unless you’re making a fool of yourself like Shrimpy here.” You say. “HEY!” Shrimpy remarks. “Watch your tone there blondie, you’re starting to tread on very dangerous ground.” Billy warns. “Yes, I know and I’m also trying to explain that you’re ALREADY in control by being the backbone of the carnival. You might very well be able to win this internal struggle, but would there be anything left? This place has languished under Roofie, obviously, but it could be great again if it had the right ring master. Someone who could bring in the people. You said it yourself, I’ve got most of the guys here salivating over me just by my presence. You know how advertising works, I bring ‘em in with a wink, a smile and some sweet talk, the other performers get the money out of them and someone has to keep the infrastructure together and that’s you. We could work together as a more than just co-workers we could be like…a family. Like how carnies are supposed to really stick together.” Your words give a moment of pause for Billy who ponders them for a moment, but then shakes his head. “Y’know, that’s a really good speech, the problem is you haven’t been here but a few days and you’re already trying to take over. In family terms, you’re like the hot twenty year old nurse that married great grandpa on his death bed in the hopes of inheriting everything despite the fact he’s got a multitude of family members that are far more deserving since they had to put up with his shit a lot longer. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re sincere or even that your idea isn’t a worthy one, its just I don’t see YOU as that potential leader. If this carnival does split apart after the dust clears, well maybe it was meant to be, but I’m not spending the remainder of my life following another half-assed leader again. So to sum up, if you want to be on our side then great, if not, then I highly suggest you all get in your clown car and all get jobs at a rodeo or something.” At this point Billy’s done talking and waves you all away. Well that could’ve went better. “Are you nuts?! Why the hell did you do that for? You’re lucky he isn’t cancelling our protection!” Shrimpy says. “Well I can’t say it was the best of moves, but I guess you had to try.” Lifto says. Between Shrimpy’s concern for his own self-preservation and Lifto’s impotent comment, you’re wondering if you shouldn’t re-consider trying to escape again. Ultimately you all head back to the table where upon Shrimpy and Lifto explain what happened. Fatty and Klepto are both surprised by your actions, but Klepto again makes the usual attempt at being more “understanding” than the others. Christ, he never quits. “I don’t need this right now, I’m going to be by myself.” You say grabbing the small radio that they were listening to and head to where Roofie is still lying on his mat with his eyes closed. You don’t know if he’s still awake or genuinely asleep now, but he at least doesn’t appear to be in any mood to bother you right now. You spend a few more hours listening to one of the radios while the others play cards and try to talk about mundane things. You’re not getting the best reception and it’s no Internet, but it’s better than nothing. You mostly listen to a lot of special breaking news talking about how bad things are getting in various parts of the world. You hear about the riots going on and think about your own town and how your “real” family is doing. Ben’s hidden personal bomb shelter was somewhere in the backyard, you wonder if you shouldn’t have just tried to look for it and moved in there, it probably was stocked. Then as the sun starts setting, you hear a bunch of shooting and shouting outside. You see the other guardsmen near the tent entrance rush off, leaving everyone unsupervised. Naturally no longer being supervised means chaos within the tent begins to erupt though you have no idea why people aren’t more concerned about why the National Guardsmen are shooting and yelling at something outside. Lacking any better idea, you try to wake up Roofie, but he doesn’t stir. “Oh shit…” you say to yourself. Apparently his last words to you WERE his dying request literally. While you’re the only one aware of poor Roofie’s unexpected passing, a full on fight in the tent breaks out. Predictably, it’s Razor and her faction vs. Billy and his faction. Some of the smaller factions join in while others just run out of the tent altogether. It’s very lucky that your group is nowhere near the center of the tent where the fighting is and more or less in a corner. “Suzy! It’s begun!” Lifto shouts. “Yeah! We need to get in and help Billy or we’re going to be next!” Shrimpy adds. > You help Billy With all the gunfire going on outside, you don’t exactly feel as if that would be any safer. Better help Billy for now. You all approach the massive brawl, but none of you save for Lifto has any real desire or ability to fight. Shrimpy finds a place to hide and occasionally throws something at someone, Klepto gets knocked out by one of Phil’s crew and its only with the help of Lifto that he doesn’t get his face stomped in. Fatty does a little better due to his size, but he’s not much in the endurance area and has to stop to catch his breath every few minutes (which results in someone inevitably trying to attack him) You try to stay out of it and maintain a close distance to either the dwarves or Lifto. You occasionally point out potential dangers and sometimes even manage to club someone in the head with a juggling pin you found on the ground, but you’re nowhere near in the thick of it. While all this is going on, you notice a decrease in the gunfire from outside and a lot more screaming and groaning. Through the chaos you see Roger staggering just outside the tent and collapsing near the entrance of it. Seeing that you’re not really affecting the “power struggle” you rush over to Roger to see what the hell happened out side the tent. When you get to Roger, you notice he’s badly wounded and bleeding a lot. You don’t know if he’s going to make it. “Roger! What the hell…what happened?!” “(Gasp) They…just…came out of nowhere…(gasp) a bunch of them.” “What?! What came out?” you ask. “I dunno. Ugggh…hurts…(gasp) they were insane looking…snarling, biting…” You notice that most of Roger’s wounds do look like bite marks. You can’t believe that you’re even pondering this, but… “Shit, Roger, are you telling me you just got attacked by…fucking zombies?” At this point Roger doesn’t respond he’s falling unconscious and his breathing is getting short. You attempt to sit him up and smack him awake, but nothing is working. He’s going to die and if your vast knowledge of zombie movies is any indication he’s going to soon become on as well. That’s the least of your concerns however since while you’re holding on to Roger, one the “zombies” that Roger alluded to suddenly comes out from behind one of the parked military vehicles. It doesn’t see you immediately, but it will if you hang around out here. Standing up and backing away from Roger’s soon to be lifeless body and trying to get back in the tent, you bump into another equally unpleasant individual and no less dangerous. Her face is bloody and several of her piercings have been pulled out, but if she’s out here that can only mean she won. “There you are, clown bitch. I was hoping to get the pleasure to beat your blonde ass myself, too bad Wanda the Red caught a knife to the throat because it might’ve been fun to watch her anally rape you with her twelve inch strap on before I kicked the shit out of you.” Razor remarks. “Razor, there are zom…there are some insane people that just…” you start to say and then Razor punches you across the face, knocking you to the ground. While you’re holding the side of your face, Razor pulls out a bloody straight razor. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan on killing you, I just plan on making you the first in our brand new freakshow!” Razor says and is about to get on top of you to carry out her promise, but all your survival instincts kick in and you scream and kick at her. If she were a man, you would’ve gotten in a couple good ball kicks. Eventually she grabs one of your legs with one arm. “Good! Struggle bitch, this is just making it more fun for me. Ain’t nobody gonna save you anyway. Everyone else is licking their wounds or dead! The carnival is under my control now!” “I wasn’t screaming for someone in carnival to save me.” You say. Razor is confused by your remark only because she’s been so focused on doing harm to you that she’s completely ignored her surroundings. Not only did the zombie hear your scream, but so did several of his fellows and unfortunately for Razor they’re the fast variety. The one that was near the military vehicle is already upon Razor by the time she does look up and two more are loping quickly behind. You quickly scramble into the tent hoping that the dead that Razor mentioned inside aren’t turning and this is a “bite style” infection. Razor wasn’t kidding when she mentioned people either being wounded or dead. Granted there are more than a few people in fair condition, but resting from the past brawl is more of a priority right now. Too bad for them that isn’t an option. “Oh god! Hel… AGGGGGH!” “You hear that? That’s the sound of your short-lived leader getting ripped to shreds by cannibal freaks. So if you idiots are done killing each other over power, you better get ready to kill for survival!” you shout and grab the nearest blunt object as you hear the screams of Razor being presumably eaten alive outside. No sooner have you grabbed a piece of chair leg, one of the zombies rushes in. You manage to bash it once across the head and then again before it goes down. It grabs at your feet and you’re about to smash your improvised club on it, when Shrimpy suddenly has run up and done it for you with a juggling pin. You both at that point keep hitting the thing until its brains are mush and it isn’t moving anymore. “(Whew) Thanks Shrimpy. Glad to see you survived.” “You as well, what the hell are…” “Later, Shrimp. Concentrate!” you say as the other two zombies come lurching in. Fortunately at this point you and Shrimpy get a little more back up from some of the other carnies and luckily nobody else gets hurt. After killing the pair of them, you’re suddenly bombarded by questions about what the hell they are. The only thing you can think of is zombies, but after a bit of cautious investigation by some of you, you start to wonder if that’s even accurate. You come to several fortunate conclusions and discoveries. First of all it looks like there aren’t anymore of those things alive anymore and the National Guard are all dead as well. So those dangers are out of the way. Second, nobody dead has come back to life, (bitten or not) so at least this isn’t contagious whatever it is. In fact you see one of the “zombies” laying dead with several bullet wounds to the chest and no head wound, so you don’t think these things are undead at least. But the fact that you’ve got crazed cannibal people running loose is still cause for concern! As you, Shrimpy and several others continue to cautiously investigate outside the tent, Shrimpy mentions some bad news while you two are away from the group. Namely Lifto, Fatty, Billy and Roofie were all dead, though you mention you already knew about Roofie. “Yeah, the old guy died peacefully in his sleep I guess. Probably best that he did just before what happened. So what about Klepto?” you ask. “Oh he’s still alive. He’s still unconscious, from that first hit, but he’s still alive. Hey, I meant to say I’m sorry about being so self-serving like I was, before all this went down Suzy. I guess I just got scared.” “Well…it’s in the past now. Besides you came through for me when I really needed it. So you said Billy’s dead?” “Yeah, that bitch Razor got him just as he was finishing off Wanda the Red. As you might expect the remaining dwarves are pretty broken up about it. But then I guess Razor’s dead too, so I’m not sure where that leaves us.” “A possible opportunity I’d say. Looks like the National Guard left a lot of supplies that could be useful in the near future. Come on let’s head back.” You say and pick up one of the rifles. Laying on the ground nearby. When you get back to the tent, people haven’t moved much from their original positions though the medical supplies taken from one of the military trucks should help patch up the wounded. You stand in front of everyone and give a speech. You know it probably won’t go over well, but this is as good of time as any. “Okay people as a great man who recently passed away once said, a carnival can be like a family. Now we’ve just gotten over a major in house feud and an external threat and guess what, we’re all still here and alive to talk about it. That means we can move on and grow stronger from this because I get the impression that we’re REALLY going to need to have that unbreakable bond of family in the near future. A strong family also needs a strong leader and that’s why seeing as I’m currently the only one more or less in good physical condition at this time, I nominate myself as ringmaster.” You expect some verbal outbursts at this point, but everyone is still too exhausted or unwilling to get into more conflict, but you are getting a lot of frowning looks. “Now I already know what you’re thinking, this bitch hasn’t been here but for a few days so who does she think she is telling us all what to do? Well let’s answer that. You’re right, I’m new here, but I know A LOT about dysfunctional families. And every dysfunctional family ALSO needs a scapegoat to place the blame on. Now as ringmaster all the major decisions and such would fall to me and as such if I fuck up severely, well who gets the blame? Me of course. It’s my hope of course that as a leader I can change everyone’s perspective of me through successes. However, most of the females here already hate me based solely on how I look, and most of you guys just see me as a living sex doll, so really what have you got to lose? If it turns out that I’m a total failure as a leader then you all can easily throw me out on my ass and choose someone else.” Nobody says anything. Just an awkward pause, which you decide to fill in with more talking. “And if someone is worried that one group is going to get preferential treatment like say the clowns well you can stop worrying since most of them are currently dead and I’m probably going to be too busy with being ring master than clowning.” “Fuck it, let the cute clown slut run this place. Her mouth looks like it’s a highway for oral sex, but she can’t be any worse than what that mean ass cunt Razor had planned. At least she’s got a positive attitude.” Some dwarf woman says in the back holding a bloody rag over her forehead. And with that “sterling” endorsement several others just agree as well. Looks like you’re the new leader of this carnival and all it took was a complete bloodbath and the apathy of the survivors to do it. The remainder of the night is spent building a small barricade around the big tent and clearing out the dead. Nobody knows if more of those geeks (Which is the new name for the “zombies” and appropriate considering the history of what a carnival geek does for a living) are going to show up and where they came from so for safety reasons everyone stays close for the night. Some are in no condition to move anyway. Eventually you fall asleep realizing that tomorrow is going to be a busy day for you. > Next day... FRIDAY “Hey fearless leader, wake up, your people demand it.” Shrimpy says tapping you on the shoulder. Groggily you sit up, you swear you feel like you’ve barely gotten any sleep at all. Shrimpy stands nearby along with Klepto, the dwarf woman who “endorsed” you yesterday and a wiry scraggily looking man. You think he runs one of those carny games…specifically the one where you shoot a water gun at a clown’s mouth. “What’s going on?” you ask. “What’s going on is a bunch of shit, that’s what darling. After the midgets here…” “Fuck you Jack, we’re DWARVES.” The dwarf woman interrupts. “Whatever Dolores. Anyway after the…little people rounded up all the military supplies last night I got one of their radios tuned in to other military frequencies. Turns out that the nearby town has been overrun with those things we killed yesterday. The poor bastard that I spoke to just before it sounded like he got his guts ripped out said they don’t know whether it was a virus or not., just that there were a shitload of them. Either way I say we got lucky that only a few wandered out this far. We need to get the fuck outta here.” “My town…wow…uh…” you say being surprised by this revelation. You really are at a loss for words right now. You start to think about your real family and even Bobby. Are they okay? Are they already dead? Are they one of those things? “Suzy? You okay? You’re spacing out.” Klepto says. “Huh, yeah, I’m just…okay yeah we obviously need to get out of here. Start packing up the rest of our stuff and…” “Sweetheart didn’t you hear what I said? I said there’s probably fucking crazed cannibals on their way here right fucking now! We ain’t got time for that shit! We need to just load up as much supplies we can and take off in our vehicles. This is the fucking end times man!” Jack says. “It’s not going to take that much longer to pack down, we had most of the stuff ready to go before the National Guard arrived. Some of our people are still wounded badly and need the rest as well. Besides, living in our trailers is going to be a lot more desirable than living in just a regular vehicle if there is a complete collapse of society going on right now.” Shrimpy remarks. “Okay then Tom Thumb YOU and the rest of the lollipop kids do it. Me and some of the others? We’re taking supplies and leaving. Not stayin’ around here waiting to be cannibal chow.” You’ve been in charge for less than one full day and already someone is threatening to break away and worse, not even taking any notice of you. You just bludgeoned crazed freaks to death yesterday, you’re tired of not being taken seriously. “Jack, if you or others want to leave you’re free to do so, but what you’re not doing is taking any of those military supplies from here. Those belong to the carnival and as such belong to all of us. Now if you don’t want any part of that any longer, lots of luck, but you and anyone else that wants to leave you go with what personal items you came with.” “Pfft, whatever. I didn’t elect you as leader. I’m only telling you as a courtesy, you can stay here and get eaten or come along and I can keep you safe. In fact to pass the time we can play shoot the clown in the mouth, except it won’t be water going in your mouth, it’ll be my…” Jack isn’t expecting you to kick him in the balls. The moment you do he winces and crumples. You follow up with a knee to his face. He’s down and you have everyone’s attention in the tent. “That’s the last fucking blow job reference I’m going to hear from you or ANYONE else for that matter. Now listen up, as I remember most of you were fine with me being in charge yesterday and goddamn it that’s what I’m going to do, be in fucking charge. This is STILL our carnival, that hasn’t changed and I’m not going to let it fall apart just because the rest of society seems to be. Now this is what we’re going to do, we’re going to finish packing up our shit, get our trailers and such in order, we’re going to also take the military trucks and then we’re going to move on. Now if some of those geeks show up well we’ve got some brand new rifles and pistols to try them out on. Anyone who doesn’t like this plan can leave with the shirts on their back and nothing else! Now let’s stop fighting and get some of this damn shit done!” At this point those that are in condition to work, proceed to do so. “What about him?” Shrimpy asks pointing at Jack who is still on the ground. “Throw his ass out, he made his decision.” You remark and then notice Dolores smiling. “What’re you smiling about?” you demand. “Nothing, but I’m beginning to like you, blondie.” Dolores says and then whistles over several dwarves who promptly pick up Jack and haul him away. Dolores then leaves to go tend to other matters. Shrimpy says he’s going to go help and leaves as well, leaving you alone with Klepto. “Well, looks like you underwent quite a change while I was knocked out yesterday. I like it. Assertiveness is an attractive trait on you.” “Klepto, I’ve got a lot on my mind and I’m in no mood for your nice guy trying to get into my pants routine right now.” You say. “Okay, okay, sheesh, I’m just…nevermind…fuck I’ll just leave you alone ringmaster.” Klepto says and walks off. You can’t worry about Klepto’s fragile ego right now, you’ve got bigger concerns and that’s on top of still thinking about your “old” family. You know you made the decision to leave them all, but that was still just a few days ago and you still never wanted any of them to suffer at the hands of whatever the hell those things are. Speaking of which you still have to worry about those geeks. Jack might’ve been out of line, but he still might’ve been correct about some wandering towards the carnival like those yesterday did. Considering the dwarves still seem to be the largest faction and friendliest toward you, you have some of them armed with the rifles to stand on top of the trailers and keep a look out. You keep yourself busy by helping with the clean up. Hours pass and that’s when your lookouts see something approaching. Not the geeks, but rather a few pick up trucks which look like they’re holding several men carrying shotguns and rifles. You call everyone to immediately take a defensive position and to fall back. You aren’t sure what to expect, but a bunch of heavily armed men can’t ever be a good thing. Unfortunately as leader, you’re going to have to be the one to handle this visit, hopefully peacefully if you can. As the pick up trucks stop, you stand several feet away with your “snipers” keep a bead on your visitors. You hang on to your own rifle and several other carnies do likewise. One of the men gets out one of the trucks with his hands up. Looks like a redneck, in fact you imagine this lot are from the trailer park a few miles down the road. “It’s okay, it’s okay li’l lady, I see yer guys up there. Ain’t nobody lookin’ for a fight.” He says. “Doesn’t look that way, given that you’ve come with three trucks full of armed men and don’t tell me its hunting season.” You say. “Heh, well I’m sure given your own heightened state of awareness, you know things are getting’ dangerous nowadays. Anyway my name’s Mel, I’m guessin’ since you’re the one talkin’ you’re in charge here. Ringmaster or something like that?” “Something exactly like that.” you say. “Okay. You…uh…got some military gear here too I see. That truck over there.” “Yeah, what of it?” “Oh nothing, but that brings about the question of where are the guardsmen…heh yeah they tried to tell us what to do too. Didn’t work out so well. The second amendment says you got the right to pack it after all. Government can’t just do what they want.” At this point more of Mel’s men get out of their trucks as well. Your people and Mel’s people are both starting to eye each other waiting for someone to fire a shot. “Look let me cut to the chase honey. I’m assumin’ you might know by now what’s been happenin’ back in town. Besides the government tryin’ to pull their shit, there’s a bunch of freaks runnin’ around tryin’ to eat people. A bunch of them attacked us last night and while we fought them off, some of us got badly hurt and are in need of medical supplies. Now of course we did try goin’ into town first, but was just too fucked up there an’ we didn’t make much head way what with the freaks AND the guard all over the damn place. Then it occurred to me today that your circus might still be around and the National Guard probably would’ve been here as well so we decided to investigate. Now the group of weekend warriors at the trailer park had shit for medical supplies. So I’m hoping your detachment had more in that department.” Mel looks up at your dwarves upon the trailers. “Now you might get a few of us, but I’m bettin, most of us are better shots than y’all, so if you give us what medicine supplies you do have we’ll leave here in peace, if not well…” At this point things could get very violent very quickly. > You open fire You let these assholes come in and take medical supplies and they won’t stop there. After all you’ve been through you’re not putting up with MORE people not taking you seriously. “FIRE!” you shout and run back for cover as your people do just that. Naturally the trailer park crew do the same as their own leader runs for cover too. You’ve never shot at a human before, but you do remember when your brother Ben tried to show you how to shoot once. You weren’t very good at it then, and you’re not very good at it now, and sadly neither are a lot of your people. Several carnies get killed in the ensuing gun battle and many more get hit. While your own side does score a few hits of its own, Mel wasn’t bluffing when he said his people were better shots. It’s actually amazing that you come through unscathed, though that might be because Klepto in his foolish attempt to play hero gets fatality shot when trying to shield you. The only thing that prevents the rednecks from completely overrunning you is one of the jugglers lobs one of the few grenades that were acquired from the military with fairly good accuracy, blowing up two of their trucks (and some of them) and giving the survivors enough pause to understand that a continued attack is not in their best interest. Mel and the rest quickly pile into the surviving truck and drive away. You’ve won, but at a high cost. The carnies have already suffered losses and wounded with the recent internal struggle. Those that aren’t wounded or dead are now experiencing a mixture of sorrow, rage and loss of hope. “Well what now fearless leader?! We got even more dead and wounded thanks to your leadership!” Dolores exclaims. “Would it have been better if I just let them come in a take all our shit?!” you snap. “It would’ve been better had we not got all our asses shot off! If it hadn’t been for Zackary throwing a grenade we’d probably all be worm food!” “And how the hell is that my fault?! I was shooting at those hillbillies right along the rest of you! I didn’t see YOU hitting any of them!” While you and Dolores continue to argue Shrimpy steps in to try to mediate. “Hey we don’t have time for all this infighting! Haven’t we had enough of that shit? Now we survived and that’s the most important thing. I say we continue with our original plan and get the fuck outta here, in fact I think we should just pack up and go RIGHT NOW. Those rednecks aren’t going to just take this loss, they’re going to come back in force.” “Are you kidding me? You want us to just turn tail and run after this? We need to get revenge!” “Dolores, we already got several wounded people who are in no condition to fight! Never mind the amount of dead! We have no idea how many of those gun toting rednecks there are or even how much weaponry they have!” Shrimpy says. “Most likely a lot and that’s not even counting whatever they got from the military.” You add. Dolores isn’t deterred however, she’s just angrier specifically at you. “Are you…(Sigh) can’t believe I supported you as a leader, must’ve been the goddamn blood loss from my head wound after the carnival fight. Look, now maybe this gunfight was a cluster fuck and that’s why I’m pissed, but I suppose in the scheme of things you at least stood up to these bastards. If we hit them now, they probably won’t even expect it, and you heard their leader, he said they had a lot of wounded of their own, so how many of them could there really be?” Dolores exhales and now gives you an even more glaring look, which you didn’t think was possible. “However, your plan is to just run off and not avenge our fallen then maybe you need to get the fuck outta the way and hit the road like you told us to do with Jack not too long ago. Suzy, if YOU want to continue running this carnival YOU better do the right thing. ” Dolores’ intentions are obvious and clear. She’s going to go take revenge no matter what. What isn’t quite obvious is if she’s going to have the support. There are probably some that will support her, but several more are likely to not want to do any more fighting. > You leave now “Dolores, you’re not going to intimidate me any more than those stupid rednecks, if you want to go get your head blown off in a futile task then be my guest, but the rest of us are leaving…” Without another word, Dolores points her weapon at you. This action causes the few that are still in fighting condition to raise their own weapons as well. Some of them at Dolores and some at you. “Don’t think so blondie. I’m running this show now.” “Dolores have you lost your mind?!” Shrimpy exclaims. “Shrimpy, you better pick a fucking side, because your days of riding the fucking fence are soon coming to an end, now you either support the carnival or you can get the fuck out too!” Dolores says. While having a rifle pointed straight at you, would’ve been terrifying at one time for you, it’s not anymore. “Dolores, if you think this is going to make me back down, you’re sorely mistaken.” “And if you think that I won’t shoot you, you’re sorely stupid.” “Dolores look around you, I don’t see a united front against me. All you’re doing is going to cripple your own cause by opening fire and that’s assuming you even survive this. If you really want to get revenge on those rednecks then you’re going to need everyone you can get. And THIS is not the way to do it.” Dolores might be angry, but she’s not stupid and knows you’ve got a point. “All right then, you got a suggestion blondie? And don’t say just to follow you, because that’s not happening.” “No, I can see that. (Sigh) I can see that this carnival is doomed to tear itself apart so the way I see it, anyone who wants to come with me, leaves right now. This means we’re going to leave with most of our personal possessions and some supplies, half of that stuff is still ours, but we’ll just take what we need. We’re also going to be travelling lighter, so we’re just going to take some of the smaller vehicles. You can have all the trailers and the bigger trucks. Since I imagine most of the wounded won’t be in any condition to travel so you’ll need those if only to give them comfortable transport when the time comes.” “What about weapons?” Dolores asks. “Well everyone keeps their personal ones along with some ammo and YOU make due with whatever is left. Hopefully for you, most people that are armed stay with you. As a gesture of good will though, you can keep the few grenades we have. While I get the impression they would come in useful, I also think if you have any chance of beating those rednecks, you’re going to need them more than we will.” At this point you hold out your hand to solidify the deal, which Dolores gives you a sideways glance before returning the gesture. “Fine, but I better not catch any of you cowards taking more than you need!” Afterwards she starts calling everyone and anyone who’ll listen of why they should stay with her and take revenge on the trailer park. You on the other hand aren’t going to try to convince any more people, you’re done with speeches for a while, as far as you’re concerned it’s been a bit of a waste of time. If they want to come, then good, if not, then oh well. On your way back to your trailer to pick up your personal belonging, you notice that it must’ve caught a few stray bullets during the gunfire. When you open up the door, you’re met with an even bigger surprise. On the floor you see Ranko with several bullet holes in him and bleeding out. Nearby is a straight razor close to his hand. He sees you and struggles to speak. “Suz…zy…you gotta (cough) help…me…” he says. “Oh this is rich, you want ME to help you? What the hell were you doing in my trailer in the first place? Going to attack me? Maybe rape me perhaps?” you say picking up the straight razor. “I…was…goi…pologize…(gasp) (gurgle)…” “Yeah, excuse me if I don’t believe you. You deserve to die and with the day I’ve had, I think I’ll take the opportunity to enjoy watching it.” “(gurgle) Fuck…you…(gasp)…” Ranko utters. Those words are his last as he slowly finishes bleeding to death. Well he certainly left a mess, but considering this isn’t going to be your trailer anymore at least you don’t need to worry about cleaning up. As you’re packing up, someone enters the trailer, you’re a little paranoid, so you immediately draw your weapon only to see Shrimpy. “Whoa! It’s just me! I was just wondering which…holy shit, is that Ranko?” “Yeah, the asshole apparently was hiding in here waiting to ambush me. Caught some stray bullets as you can see. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. So what did you want?” You say. “Oh well, I was just coming to ask which vehicle did you want? I mean considering Lifto and Klepto are both dead, I figure we got more right to those two before anyone else might at least.” “So you’re coming with me?” “Of course. I was against attacking the trailer park remember? In fact there are several people ready to leave. Dunno how Dolores’ raid on the trailer park is going to go, but that’s hardly our problem right?” You pause a bit before addressing Shrimpy’s rhetorical question. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing, abandoning the carnival like this? I mean Dolores had a point when she said I just threw out Jack without supplies because he wanted to leave. I feel like sort of a hypocrite.” You say. “Well…I think you’re doing the best with the cards that were dealt and that’s all you can do sometimes. I mean there are people here that have been with the carnival longer and they’re ready to leave without hesitation, so you certainly shouldn’t feel bad about it. I mean with the way the world is going nowadays, does something like a carnival even have a future anymore?” Shrimpy says. “Maybe not, we probably should stick to rural areas for at least a few days until some of this shit dies down, but I’m just wondering what we’re going to do with ourselves for the future in general.” “Well I’m sure we’ll figure something out. But just know that I’ll stand by your decision whatever it is.” “Thanks Shrimpy…hey what is your real name anyway?” “Heh, oh that. Well haven’t been called it in year, but its Lance.” “Really?” “Yeah, I know I look far from being a Lance though. You probably picture a big tall heroic guy with a square jaw or something.” “Eh, those guys don’t exist in real life anyway, well at least they’ve never existed in my life, but you’ve been all right.” Lance smiles and waits for you to finish packing and the pair of you head to Lifto’s vehicle, which to your surprise has been fitted to accommodate a “shorter” driver. You, Lance and several others leave the carnival which is now in the process of gearing up for the raid on the trailer park (or housing the very wounded) you can’t imagine how that’s going to go, but you hope Dolores is successful even if you didn’t see eye to eye with her. Lance and you drive along with several other vehicles in an odd caravan like fashion. Really there is no reason why everyone needs to stay together, since everyone is free to go their own separate way, but perhaps leaving the carnival is too much of a change and at least there is a little bit of a familiarity by sticking with the same people. You and Lance converse the entire time you drive, though eventually at one point you start to get sleepy and Lance takes over with the driving. Feeling the safest you’ve been in days, you drift off to sleep… > Next day... SATURDAY A loud noise in the distance wakes you up and you also notice you’re no longer moving. “HOLY SHIT SUZY WAKE UP! LOOK!” Lance yells and you feel a rough shake to your arm. You instantly open your eyes and with a brief head swivel, you see something that is going to change your life more than anything else in the world. A mushroom cloud in the far distance. You’re not feeling any tremors or aftershocks, a wave of fire hasn’t engulfed you, so you’re guessing that it wasn’t excessively close, maybe it was even a small one. Still, you can’t help but wonder if you’re in some sort of deadly radiation radius though. If so there isn’t much that can done about it. “That’s it then…the world finally went and did it…” you say to yourself. You’re much calmer than Lance is, who is obviously distressed. In fact given that most of the vehicles haves stopped, you can only guess that he’s not the only one. Some are getting out to look and that’s soon followed by a few breaking down into tears or arguements. “Lance, we’re going to be okay. Just like you said, we’ll figure something out.” You say and start unlocking the door. “Where are you going? I think we should stay inside, I mean there might be radiation or something.” “Lance, if we are within the fallout blast, then we’ve probably already acquired enough rads to kill us anyway. I’m going to go try to calm everyone down because if this is it, then we’ll actually do a lot better in the survival aspect if we all work together.” It takes a moment and you stand on top of your vehicle to do it, but you soon get everyone’s attention. “Hey! Listen up! This might be the end of civilization as we know it, but it isn’t the end of the world! Sure life is going to be harder now, but when hasn’t it been for us carnies? Why just this damn week we suffered through a military occupation, an internal civil war, an attack by freaks, and an attack by a bunch of rednecks. We’ve already splintered apart enough already. No way are we going to descend any further. We’ve come too far.” You think you’re getting better at making speeches because this time you’re seeing less frowning faces and general attentiveness. “We used to drift from place to place providing entertainment as a source of our survival well what has really changed? We’ll still be drifters because that’s how we’ll survive. This world just got a whole lot shittier and we ARE nomads and vagabonds by nature. Surely we’ll be picking up, collecting, and scavenging useful material, items and the like to trade in our travels. I know we all have useful skills, surely with those, our ability to learn and adapt and a team effort we’ll be able to keep this FAMILY together a very long time.” “Yeah. Suzy’s right. We can survive this.” someone says and several others agree. While you don’t get a feeling of enthusiasm, at least this time you are not met with apathy. In any case, you and some of the others get together to decide where to head next and what to do about food, and fuel. This isn’t going to be easy, but then this whole week has been a trial for you. No longer are you the shy “good” girl who hid away in the basement, harassed by your family and living as one day blurred into the next. You are part of something bigger and not just that, but a leader. It’s a brand new day and this is just the beginning of your brand new life. > … Nomad The Future… “Mom, why can’t we just head to Rebirth, it’s closer and we can get better deals there.” Lucy asks you. “Because last time we stopped through, they were beginning to go through a power struggle and while I know it’s over now, the new ruling head of that town is an asshole.” You reply. “And how exactly does that make him any different than the last guy?” “The last ruler of Rebirth at least tried to curb the amount of wanton violence and rape in the community. This guy encourages it. The place is little more than a glorified wasteland thug haven now. We walk in there and at best we’re going to come out of a firefight alive and poor. At worst, well I think you know what will happen.” Lucy doesn’t say anything. She’s fully aware of the dangers of being female, let alone a teenage girl that looks like her in this new harsh world. Still, she can’t help arguing the point. “But don’t we risk death and worse just by roaming from place to place all the time anyway? Wouldn’t it be better if we found some place to settle down?” “Heh, I guess you don’t remember because you were so young, but your father and I tried that once. Didn’t work out very well when the little town that we THOUGHT was secure got overrun by raiders. That was probably one of the scariest days of my life. After years of previously being drifters, we let ourselves get unprepared. It was a mistake on my part since I thought a more stable environment would be better to raise you in, as it turned out, should’ve stayed a nomad and I’d say that’s worked out a lot better.” “How? We’re always living a hand to mouth existence. Our group still loses people to violence and other causes. I mean dad died because we don’t have proper medical treatment available.” “Lucy, your father might’ve died anyway even if we hadn’t been living a nomadic existence. I know they say civilization is rebuilding, but most of the places we’ve been to aren’t exactly stellar in their medical facilities themselves. The exceptions might be those fucked up Ground Zero communities and I doubt if you’d want to live some place like that.” “No, I guess not.” Lucy says. You look at Lucy and understand she’s just being a little rebellious due to her being a teenager right now. She’s at the age where she doesn’t want you to be so close all the time. It’s funny because you went through no such rebellious period yourself and your lifestyle was the exact opposite right now. You never went anywhere; you never really did anything save for staying in your basement. Now? You’ve seen more and done more than you ever could’ve imagined. In fact you’ve lived a nomadic existence long enough that you think you prefer it, even when you temporarily settled down years ago. You (and her father) have taught Lucy how to take care of herself in this harsh world. Still, you do wonder if you’re probably a little overprotective of your daughter, you won’t be around forever and she should have the opportunity to live her own life and if that means she wants to live in a permanent residence then perhaps she should be given that chance. “Lucy, the world is still pretty fucked up now, but despite my previous cynicism, I suppose parts of it are getting better. Maybe one day you can find a nice place to settle down that won’t be run by a bloodthirsty warlord or in danger of being raided by mutant cannibals. And if that’s your choice, then you’re free to do it. I know you’ll have to live your own life eventually.” You say. Lucy smiles at the permission, but reassures you that she had no intention of leaving you yet. It’s comforting, since it shows that she still wants you around. She’s still your child. You, Lucy and the rest of your ragtag band of traders, tinkerers and scavengers make your way to the town of Blivop. Not exactly the best for trade, but at least the people there aren’t complete amoral rapists and murderers. Later that night when your caravan sets down for the night, you drift off to sleep with an old worn clown nose in your hand. You squeeze it a couple times, remembering happy times with your now departed husband. “Goddnight Lance.” You say and slowly drift off with the round red foam ball in your hand.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You let these assholes come in and take medical supplies and they won’t stop there. After all you’ve been through you’re not putting up with MORE people not taking you seriously. “FIRE!” you shout and run back for cover as your people do just that. Naturally the trailer park crew do the same as their own leader runs for cover too. You’ve never shot at a human before, but you do remember when your brother Ben tried to show you how to shoot once. You weren’t very good at it then, and you’re not very good at it now, and sadly neither are a lot of your people. Several carnies get killed in the ensuing gun battle and many more get hit. While your own side does score a few hits of its own, Mel wasn’t bluffing when he said his people were better shots. It’s actually amazing that you come through unscathed, though that might be because Klepto in his foolish attempt to play hero gets fatality shot when trying to shield you. The only thing that prevents the rednecks from completely overrunning you is one of the jugglers lobs one of the few grenades that were acquired from the military with fairly good accuracy, blowing up two of their trucks (and some of them) and giving the survivors enough pause to understand that a continued attack is not in their best interest. Mel and the rest quickly pile into the surviving truck and drive away. You’ve won, but at a high cost. The carnies have already suffered losses and wounded with the recent internal struggle. Those that aren’t wounded or dead are now experiencing a mixture of sorrow, rage and loss of hope. “Well what now fearless leader?! We got even more dead and wounded thanks to your leadership!” Dolores exclaims. “Would it have been better if I just let them come in a take all our shit?!” you snap. “It would’ve been better had we not got all our asses shot off! If it hadn’t been for Zackary throwing a grenade we’d probably all be worm food!” “And how the hell is that my fault?! I was shooting at those hillbillies right along the rest of you! I didn’t see YOU hitting any of them!” While you and Dolores continue to argue Shrimpy steps in to try to mediate. “Hey we don’t have time for all this infighting! Haven’t we had enough of that shit? Now we survived and that’s the most important thing. I say we continue with our original plan and get the fuck outta here, in fact I think we should just pack up and go RIGHT NOW. Those rednecks aren’t going to just take this loss, they’re going to come back in force.” “Are you kidding me? You want us to just turn tail and run after this? We need to get revenge!” “Dolores, we already got several wounded people who are in no condition to fight! Never mind the amount of dead! We have no idea how many of those gun toting rednecks there are or even how much weaponry they have!” Shrimpy says. “Most likely a lot and that’s not even counting whatever they got from the military.” You add. Dolores isn’t deterred however, she’s just angrier specifically at you. “Are you…(Sigh) can’t believe I supported you as a leader, must’ve been the goddamn blood loss from my head wound after the carnival fight. Look, now maybe this gunfight was a cluster fuck and that’s why I’m pissed, but I suppose in the scheme of things you at least stood up to these bastards. If we hit them now, they probably won’t even expect it, and you heard their leader, he said they had a lot of wounded of their own, so how many of them could there really be?” Dolores exhales and now gives you an even more glaring look, which you didn’t think was possible. “However, your plan is to just run off and not avenge our fallen then maybe you need to get the fuck outta the way and hit the road like you told us to do with Jack not too long ago. Suzy, if YOU want to continue running this carnival YOU better do the right thing. ” Dolores’ intentions are obvious and clear. She’s going to go take revenge no matter what. What isn’t quite obvious is if she’s going to have the support. There are probably some that will support her, but several more are likely to not want to do any more fighting. > You get revenge If you’re going to have any hope and future of keeping this carnival together with you as leader, you’re going to have to get revenge on those rednecks. Maybe Dolores is correct in that there won’t be too many of them in fighting condition. “Okay, okay, we’ll do something about those hicks. Just gotta get organized first…” you say before Shrimpy interrupts. “Suzy are you serious? Haven’t you noticed all of the wounded and dead we have?” “Yes, and that’s exactly why we’re going to hit those bastards back hard! Look Shrimpy, if this is the way the world is going to work now, we need to always stand up to bullies or else they’ll just walk all over you. Trust me, I know what the hell I’m talking about. Now you can either get with the program or hit the road.” You say. Shrimpy is taken aback by your harsh tone. He doesn’t reply, he just nods and leaves. He doesn’t leave, so he’s willing to fall in line despite believing that this is a bad idea. Dolores and yourself both gather those still in fighting condition and convince them that an attack is in order. You manage to convince most, but there are a few that leave. Dolores is nearly ready to blow their heads off for wanting to take some supplies with them, but not wishing to cause another potential internal firefight you allow them to leave with minimal of supplies. Within an hour and a half everyone that is willing to come with you is loaded up and ready to go. Shrimpy, in perhaps an effort to show his dedication says he’ll come too, but you tell him to stay behind with the wounded just so there is someone that can help them in case they have to be moved immediately. “I’m not exactly how much I’m going to be able to help in that regard. My name isn’t Lifto.” Shrimpy says. “Well, not all of them are down for the count. I’m sure you’d be able to help a few at least.” You say. “Suzy, you don’t need to do this, we could just leave. This attack is a suicide mission. It’s obvious from the last firefight with those good ol’ boys we can’t hit for shit.” “Well, fortunately we’ve got some automatic weapons in that regard, more bullets, more likely to hit the targets. Hey it happens.” You say. Sensing he isn’t going to talk you out of this, Shrimpy wishes you good luck and you’re on your way to a path of rip roarin’ revenge, though there is a part of you that would just like to run. You lead the drive to the trailer park since you actually know where it is exactly. When you arrive, it’s hard to tell if the place is in shambles from when their leader said they were attacked or if it always looked this way. No sooner have all your vehicles stopped, when Dolores has already gotten out of the military truck you took and started lobbing the remaining grenades at the trailer homes. “Come on out you inbred sister fuckers!” she shouts and begins firing randomly at the rest of the homes. “Dolores, get back in the…” you begin to say and then suddenly Dolores actions have attracted return fire. “Over there! Fire over there!” Dolores shouts and takes cover. At this point Dolores is giving out orders and you’re not being listened to at all. Despite Dolores’ enthusiasm for revenge it doesn’t suddenly make her a better “commander.” You at least try to remember all those times you played video games on your computer and know that wading straight forward into battle is traditionally a shit strategy so you attempt to try the classic pincer maneuver. Unfortunately given that you’re the only one using any sort of critical thinking and nobody is actually listening to you, you’re mainly stuck by yourself, trying to pick off the hillbillies when you see them pop up. If you were actually a good shot, you might’ve actually turned this attack into a successful one. As it stands, the trailer park crew even with the wounded they have and catching them off guard with the grenades, still outnumber you severely and STILL have better shots. They also have explosives of their own perhaps not military grade like you had, but when you’ve got a lot of half empty liquor bottles lying around and people with too much time on their hands well sometimes even the lower born get creative. Your vehicles and your people are suddenly bombarded by several Molotov cocktails and someone even has a homemade “launcher.” The explosions are big, loud and fatal to most of your people who were still taking cover behind them. The others who weren’t have already gotten cut down by the gunfire. Dolores herself is lying dead with a bullet hole in her head and you’re suddenly hearing hillbillies whoopin’ it up and seriously worried about your physical safety. “Whoo hoo! Somebody keep the pretty blonde one alive! We can have a good time wit her!” you hear one of them shout. “Goddamnit Ray, stop thinkin’ with yer dick for one minute, she’s still armed ya dumb shit!” you hear Mel shout back. Seeing as none of the vehicles you came in are usable anymore you attempt to run. You just hope you’ve got more endurance than a bunch of overweight beer swillin’ hicks. They aren’t going to be able to follow immediately by any working vehicles they might have due to the flaming scrap heap blocking the trailer park entrance created by their homemade bombs. You MIGHT have made it, if they weren’t lead by a more pragmatic leader type. Just goes to show that you can’t judge people just by where they come from… As soon as you make it to the road, a single shot rings out and you feel a burning sensation run through your upper back and up your spine. You then feel numb and collapse instantly. You’re paralyzed, not just from the waist down, but from the neck down. You panic and the tears start when you know this is it. Mel arrives before the rest of his crew who are now complaining loudly about Mel shooting you. “(Sigh) Well darlin’ you asked fer this. I get why you attacked, but that doesn’t fuckin’ mean we’re gonna sit and take it in the ass any more than you did. Just be glad, I’m puttin’ you outa yer misery rather than lettin’ the rest have their way with you.” Mel says. You don’t reply and just close your eyes waiting to hear the final shot.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “Hey fearless leader, wake up, your people demand it.” Shrimpy says tapping you on the shoulder. Groggily you sit up, you swear you feel like you’ve barely gotten any sleep at all. Shrimpy stands nearby along with Klepto, the dwarf woman who “endorsed” you yesterday and a wiry scraggily looking man. You think he runs one of those carny games…specifically the one where you shoot a water gun at a clown’s mouth. “What’s going on?” you ask. “What’s going on is a bunch of shit, that’s what darling. After the midgets here…” “Fuck you Jack, we’re DWARVES.” The dwarf woman interrupts. “Whatever Dolores. Anyway after the…little people rounded up all the military supplies last night I got one of their radios tuned in to other military frequencies. Turns out that the nearby town has been overrun with those things we killed yesterday. The poor bastard that I spoke to just before it sounded like he got his guts ripped out said they don’t know whether it was a virus or not., just that there were a shitload of them. Either way I say we got lucky that only a few wandered out this far. We need to get the fuck outta here.” “My town…wow…uh…” you say being surprised by this revelation. You really are at a loss for words right now. You start to think about your real family and even Bobby. Are they okay? Are they already dead? Are they one of those things? “Suzy? You okay? You’re spacing out.” Klepto says. “Huh, yeah, I’m just…okay yeah we obviously need to get out of here. Start packing up the rest of our stuff and…” “Sweetheart didn’t you hear what I said? I said there’s probably fucking crazed cannibals on their way here right fucking now! We ain’t got time for that shit! We need to just load up as much supplies we can and take off in our vehicles. This is the fucking end times man!” Jack says. “It’s not going to take that much longer to pack down, we had most of the stuff ready to go before the National Guard arrived. Some of our people are still wounded badly and need the rest as well. Besides, living in our trailers is going to be a lot more desirable than living in just a regular vehicle if there is a complete collapse of society going on right now.” Shrimpy remarks. “Okay then Tom Thumb YOU and the rest of the lollipop kids do it. Me and some of the others? We’re taking supplies and leaving. Not stayin’ around here waiting to be cannibal chow.” You’ve been in charge for less than one full day and already someone is threatening to break away and worse, not even taking any notice of you. You just bludgeoned crazed freaks to death yesterday, you’re tired of not being taken seriously. “Jack, if you or others want to leave you’re free to do so, but what you’re not doing is taking any of those military supplies from here. Those belong to the carnival and as such belong to all of us. Now if you don’t want any part of that any longer, lots of luck, but you and anyone else that wants to leave you go with what personal items you came with.” “Pfft, whatever. I didn’t elect you as leader. I’m only telling you as a courtesy, you can stay here and get eaten or come along and I can keep you safe. In fact to pass the time we can play shoot the clown in the mouth, except it won’t be water going in your mouth, it’ll be my…” Jack isn’t expecting you to kick him in the balls. The moment you do he winces and crumples. You follow up with a knee to his face. He’s down and you have everyone’s attention in the tent. “That’s the last fucking blow job reference I’m going to hear from you or ANYONE else for that matter. Now listen up, as I remember most of you were fine with me being in charge yesterday and goddamn it that’s what I’m going to do, be in fucking charge. This is STILL our carnival, that hasn’t changed and I’m not going to let it fall apart just because the rest of society seems to be. Now this is what we’re going to do, we’re going to finish packing up our shit, get our trailers and such in order, we’re going to also take the military trucks and then we’re going to move on. Now if some of those geeks show up well we’ve got some brand new rifles and pistols to try them out on. Anyone who doesn’t like this plan can leave with the shirts on their back and nothing else! Now let’s stop fighting and get some of this damn shit done!” At this point those that are in condition to work, proceed to do so. “What about him?” Shrimpy asks pointing at Jack who is still on the ground. “Throw his ass out, he made his decision.” You remark and then notice Dolores smiling. “What’re you smiling about?” you demand. “Nothing, but I’m beginning to like you, blondie.” Dolores says and then whistles over several dwarves who promptly pick up Jack and haul him away. Dolores then leaves to go tend to other matters. Shrimpy says he’s going to go help and leaves as well, leaving you alone with Klepto. “Well, looks like you underwent quite a change while I was knocked out yesterday. I like it. Assertiveness is an attractive trait on you.” “Klepto, I’ve got a lot on my mind and I’m in no mood for your nice guy trying to get into my pants routine right now.” You say. “Okay, okay, sheesh, I’m just…nevermind…fuck I’ll just leave you alone ringmaster.” Klepto says and walks off. You can’t worry about Klepto’s fragile ego right now, you’ve got bigger concerns and that’s on top of still thinking about your “old” family. You know you made the decision to leave them all, but that was still just a few days ago and you still never wanted any of them to suffer at the hands of whatever the hell those things are. Speaking of which you still have to worry about those geeks. Jack might’ve been out of line, but he still might’ve been correct about some wandering towards the carnival like those yesterday did. Considering the dwarves still seem to be the largest faction and friendliest toward you, you have some of them armed with the rifles to stand on top of the trailers and keep a look out. You keep yourself busy by helping with the clean up. Hours pass and that’s when your lookouts see something approaching. Not the geeks, but rather a few pick up trucks which look like they’re holding several men carrying shotguns and rifles. You call everyone to immediately take a defensive position and to fall back. You aren’t sure what to expect, but a bunch of heavily armed men can’t ever be a good thing. Unfortunately as leader, you’re going to have to be the one to handle this visit, hopefully peacefully if you can. As the pick up trucks stop, you stand several feet away with your “snipers” keep a bead on your visitors. You hang on to your own rifle and several other carnies do likewise. One of the men gets out one of the trucks with his hands up. Looks like a redneck, in fact you imagine this lot are from the trailer park a few miles down the road. “It’s okay, it’s okay li’l lady, I see yer guys up there. Ain’t nobody lookin’ for a fight.” He says. “Doesn’t look that way, given that you’ve come with three trucks full of armed men and don’t tell me its hunting season.” You say. “Heh, well I’m sure given your own heightened state of awareness, you know things are getting’ dangerous nowadays. Anyway my name’s Mel, I’m guessin’ since you’re the one talkin’ you’re in charge here. Ringmaster or something like that?” “Something exactly like that.” you say. “Okay. You…uh…got some military gear here too I see. That truck over there.” “Yeah, what of it?” “Oh nothing, but that brings about the question of where are the guardsmen…heh yeah they tried to tell us what to do too. Didn’t work out so well. The second amendment says you got the right to pack it after all. Government can’t just do what they want.” At this point more of Mel’s men get out of their trucks as well. Your people and Mel’s people are both starting to eye each other waiting for someone to fire a shot. “Look let me cut to the chase honey. I’m assumin’ you might know by now what’s been happenin’ back in town. Besides the government tryin’ to pull their shit, there’s a bunch of freaks runnin’ around tryin’ to eat people. A bunch of them attacked us last night and while we fought them off, some of us got badly hurt and are in need of medical supplies. Now of course we did try goin’ into town first, but was just too fucked up there an’ we didn’t make much head way what with the freaks AND the guard all over the damn place. Then it occurred to me today that your circus might still be around and the National Guard probably would’ve been here as well so we decided to investigate. Now the group of weekend warriors at the trailer park had shit for medical supplies. So I’m hoping your detachment had more in that department.” Mel looks up at your dwarves upon the trailers. “Now you might get a few of us, but I’m bettin, most of us are better shots than y’all, so if you give us what medicine supplies you do have we’ll leave here in peace, if not well…” At this point things could get very violent very quickly. > You continue to negotiate Being a “native” of the area, you do know something of the types that do live in the trailer park. Most of them probably do nothing else except practice-shooting beer cans all damn day. Mel, is most likely right in that his people are going to be better shots and a gun battle is going to result in a lot of dead on your side. However you can’t just let them take your stuff, especially since you’re using a lot of it and there isn’t much to begin with. “Well, if we had the extra supplies we might be inclined to share, the fact is we don’t have much and what little we have, well we need. You start a shooting match here and you’re likely to wind up with more dead and wounded than what was worth the effort.” You reply. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you darlin’.” Mel replies. “It’s true, seriously come on in and take a look yourself. We got a shitload of wounded ourselves in that big tent back there. Just you though, the rest of your people can stand out here and look fearsome.” Mel chuckles. “Oh just me huh? And as soon as I go in I’m at your fuckin’ mercy. Nah, I don’t think so.” “Fine so take me as hostage. Here…” you say and drop your rifle and walk over to Mel. A couple people shout at you, but you just wave a hand at them as if to tell them to calm down. Meanwhile Mel stands watching you approach. When you’re before him, he’s definitely staring you up and down. “You got a pistol I presume?” you ask Mel. “Yeah.” “Well pull it out and put it to my head.” You say turning around and putting your body against Mel’s and then putting one of his arms around your waist. “Well… shit girl, you’re just somethin’ else ain’t cha?” Mel says barely keeping his composure as he pulls out his pistol. “If you say so. In any case you now have a little insurance that should be good enough for you shouldn’t it? I mean…I’m putting my complete trust in you. You’re in complete control” you say and grind up against Mel’s body a little more while turning your head a bit to flutter your eyes at him. Mel is at a loss for words, but his buddies aren’t. “Woo Hoo, looks like the li’l blonde number is sweet on ya Mel!” “I say we take her back, instead of medical supplies. I never liked Bobby Ray to begin with. Motherfucker can bleed out fer all I care!” “You plannin’ on tradin’ Tina up fer her? “Why’s Mel get all the pretty ones? He’s already got Tina, I say one of us should get the blonde!” At this point some arguing breaks out, followed by Mel shouting at them to shut the fuck up. He then turns his attention back to you. “Heh… you …you are trouble girlie. If I took you back to the trailer park, you’d probably have every man ripping each other apart over you. I can barely keep these dumb fuckers from doing that now. In any case, let’s go look at the medical supply situation. Come on.” Mel says motioning you to move. “As you wish.” You say. Mel and you head back towards the carnival where upon you give him the “grand tour” showing him that it is indeed true that you don’t really have much in the way of medical supplies. He also sees all the people that are wounded too. “Hmm, well I suppose y’all COULD still be hidin’ such things somewhere, but honestly I’m inclined to believe ya. This place has even less military vehicles than the ones that were at the trailer park and it sounds like from what you told me there weren’t even that many guardsmen here. From the amount of wounded I see, you probably did use up most of the pittance that the military brought with them…how did you get all these wounded though? Nobody looks like they’re suffering from gunshot wounds. The cannibal creeps?” “Nope. All these wounded are from each other. Long story, let’s just say carny politics is complicated and I came out on top.” You reply confidently. “I see…well you have certainly displayed a certain amount of balls putting yourself in the vulnerable position you did. (Sigh) All right, you dealt straight with me, so I’ll deal straight with you. Guess we’ll try the town again.” At this point you and Mel head back to the “neutral zone” where upon Mel releases you (reluctantly) and waves at his people to get ready to go. As they drive away, you breathe a heavy sigh of relief and rush back to the others. Dolores approaches you when you arrive. “Well that was an interesting way to handle things, but it worked. Those good ol’ boys woulda probably killed and wounded a lot more of us.” “Yeah, an’ now we need to get the hell out of here. I don’t trust them to not come back with a bigger group and attack us anyway.” “Well, we probably could’ve done with a bit more of a rest, but I can’t argue with that logic, they weren’t the most reputable lookin’ an’ you’re the boss. One good thing about having some recently departed, is that the trailers have a lot more room in them now. Speaking of which, your own trailer is already hooked up to a truck. We should be ready to roll in about an hour.” Feeling like you deserve a rest after recent events, you head back to your trailer to relax. As soon as you enter though, you are suddenly grabbed and tackled to the floor and the stench of bad body odor fills your nostrils. “Don’t scream bitch.” A familiar voice whispers. You get a good look at your assailant and see a man with half worn clown make up on his face. It’s Ranko and he smells even worse now that he’s laying right on top of you. “I see a lot of fuckin’ changes to this here carnival have happened since I’ve been gone. Saw some of it from afar while hiding and waiting for the best time to strike. Nearly got eaten by those geeks in the process, but heh heh heh, I got away…” Ranko begins to press his weight on you so you can’t wiggle away while keeping one hand on your mouth and holding a straight razor in his other. His whole outfit is filthy presumably from lurking about in the wilderness for days, but you also notice that he’s sporting a couple wounds of his own in the form of bite marks. “Nothing smart to say now bitch? Thought you were the ringmaster now. Head cunt in charge and all that. Fuck you, I SHOULD be in fuckin’ charge!” At this point you manage to bite Ranko’s hand, which tastes foul, but it’s enough to cause him to take it off your mouth, giving you a chance to scream for help, before he backhands you across the face. “Bitch! Maybe if I raped you, you’d KNOW who’s in fuckin’ charge!” he exclaims and fumbles with pulling down his pants, and keeps the straight razor to your throat with his other hand. (Carnies must love straight razors) All Ranko has to do is make a quick swipe and your throat is going to be opened if you struggle. If you do nothing he may very well rape you assuming nobody heard you scream. Of course he’ll probably kill you anyway after he’s finished. > You give in Maybe it’s because of everything you’ve been through within the past week, (not to mention the incident with your uncle) but the oddest thing about this situation is that you’re more revolted than scared. That isn’t to say you’re not scared though, you don’t want to be raped and you certainly don’t want to die, especially given everything you’ve just survived. The thought sickens you, but you realize there might still be a way to avoid your current horrible situation without resisting. “You gonna treat me like a whore? Come on then do it!” you say. “What?” Ranko asks. “Come on, stick it in me daddy. I want to feel…” you start to say when Ranko pushes the razor against your throat that it feels like its going to break the skin. “You playin’ with me bitch?” Ranko says with his face so close to yours that you have to prevent yourself from pulling away due to his bad breath. “Not at all, you’re doin’ it the way I like it. Daddy used to come into my room late at night and get rough sometimes, but I knew he only did it because he loved me…” “You…are one twisted…” Before Ranko can finish his sentence you muster up the courage and put aside the revulsion long enough to move your head forward to kiss Ranko’s lips and even shove your tongue in his mouth. It’s the worst thing you’ve ever tasted, and it’s only due to your strong gag reflex (Yes, if most people knew that about you they’d have a field day with the jokes due to that knowledge) that you don’t puke. Ranko’s blade has cut your neck superficially due to moving your head forward, but your action has had the desired effect of him relaxing a bit. Not enough that you’d trust being able to escape or successfully get the straight razor away, but it bought you some time. “Hah, I KNEW you were into me! No bitch can resist a man who takes charge! You want me to do you like daddy did huh? Well did he ever do this?” Ranko says and then flips you over. “I’m gonna ride your ASS so hard, you’re not gonna shit right for a long time!” he says and starts pulling your pants down. “Oh no! I’m a virgin back there!” you say in the most innocent way possible, which of course makes Ranko only laugh like the rapist creep he is and rips your panties off. Meanwhile the blood must’ve completely left his brain and gone all to his dick, because the idiot dropped his straight razor in his desire to fuck you in the ass. You grab the straight razor, which is now near your hand. Before Ranko can get his dick into the “promised land” you turn your head and swipe backwards with the razor. He’s close enough that you catch him across the face. “AGH! GODDAMNIT! FUCKING BITCH!” he shouts and falls backwards holding the side of his face. You scramble forward and grab a couple of nearby items before turning around to throw them at him. He blocks and screams a bunch of obscenities, but before he can advance towards you, someone has at last heard the commotion going on. “Motherfucker…” Shrimpy says opening up the door and rushes to punch Ranko in the small of the back. Ranko back kicks Shrimpy causing the little guy to fall. Sensing he’s no longer in control of the situation, Ranko tries to escape out the door, only to trip and fall awkwardly on his face due to his pants and underwear still being around his ankles. You aren’t about to let Ranko get away with shit, so you plunge the razor into Ranko’s ass and twist. His screams are predictable. “Was it good for you?” you say and then slam his face into the door twice, breaking his nose and causing him to gurgle a bit on his own blood. And for the finisher, you pull the bloody, shitty razor out of his ass and slit his throat with it. You then fall back and sit on a nearby chair breathing heavily after your ordeal. Shrimpy at this point recovers as well. “Shit, I know this is a silly question, but are you all right?” he asks. “ (Pant) Well, I’m alright in that at least this fucktard didn’t ass rape me, but this wasn’t a pleasant experience (pant). Fuck. “ “Well at least its over now…” Shrimpy starts to say before he’s interrupted. (Knock knock) “Hey what’s going on in there, heard all this…holy fuck…” Dolores says as she opens up the door revealing Ranko’s bloody face as the first thing she sees. “Nothin’ Dolores, just an ex-disgruntled employee. It’s been taken care of.” You shout. “SUZY! What happened?! Are you all right?!” you hear Klepto remark from outside. “Uh, she’s fine Klepto, she just needs some time by herself. Why don’t you help pull this asshole out of the trailer?” Shrimpy says and gets Ranko’s body by the feet while presumably Dolores and Klepto pull the rest of him out of the trailer. “What the hell happened to his ass? It’s all bloody…ugh, this guy smells worse than when he was alive.” You hear Dolores say, as the door slams shut. You grab something to cover your naked lower half with while Shrimpy continues to stand in the doorway, just in case Klepto wants to play “white knight” and come see you. “Thanks Shrimpy.” You say. “For what, I barely did anything.” He replies. “It was enough that you got here when you did.” “Well I was initially on my way to ask where are next destination was going to be, but I guess that can wait for now. And don’t worry I won’t be telling Klepto or anyone else about seeing you…well less than fully clothed.” “Well I appreciate that too. As for our next destination, I dunno, with as crazy as things seem to be getting maybe we should just stick to rural areas for awhile.” “Yeah, probably for the best. Well I’ll leave now, but remember we’re all here when you need to talk.” “Shrimpy?” you call out once more. “Yes, Suzy?” “What is your real name?” “Heh, oh that. Been awhile since anyone used it, but it’s Lance.” “Really?” “Really. I know I don’t look like a Lance. You tend to think of a big tall guy with a square jaw. A real hero type.” “Well like I said, you were a hero today.” Lance smiles at this comment and nods before walking out the door. And you’re all by yourself again. You look around the trailer and the new blood stains you’re going to have to clean. You immediately lock the door, go wash up and allow yourself to break down a bit in the shower. Still through the tears, you realize that you’re a lot stronger than you could’ve ever believed. You’re also glad you’ve got a “family” of sorts now, there is some comfort in that. The rest of your day is spent staying alone in your trailer though given that the whole carnival is soon on the move it isn’t like anyone is going to just walk up and knock on your door now. The motion of the trailer combined with the stress of the day causes you to collapse on your bed and close your eyes as you eventually fall asleep… > Next day… SATURDAY A loud noise in the distance wakes you up and you also notice you’re no longer moving. A quick look out one of the window and you see something that is going to change your life more than anything else in the world. A mushroom cloud. You’re not feeling any tremors or aftershocks, a wave of fire hasn’t engulfed you, so you’re guessing that it wasn’t excessively close, maybe it was even a small one. Still, you can’t help but wonder if you’re in some sort of deadly radiation radius though. If so there isn’t much that can done about it. “That’s it then…the world finally went and did it…” you say to yourself. You hear some commotion going on outside, presumably several of the carnies are freaking out, arguing, and generally concerned on what to do next. It’s a reasonable reaction to a doomsday situation. You calmly get dressed and make your appearance. It takes a moment, but you soon get everyone’s attention. “Hey! Listen up! This might be the end of civilization as we know it, but it isn’t the end of the world! Sure life is going to be harder now, but when hasn’t it been for us carnies? Why just this damn week we suffered through a military occupation, an internal civil war, an attack by freaks, and avoided another possible attack by a bunch of rednecks. And hell, I had the extra struggle of trying to fit in here and fight off a rape attempt. No way are we going to descend into anarchy again. We’ve come too far.” You think you’re getting better at making speeches because this time you’re seeing less frowning faces and general attentiveness. “We already drift from place to place providing entertainment as a source of our survival well what has really changed? We can still do that. We WILL still do that. This world just got a whole lot shittier and if we can bring a little joy to some people, well they just might be grateful. And if our entertainment value isn’t appreciated, well we ARE nomads and vagabonds by nature. Surely we’ll be picking up, collecting, and scavenging useful material, items and the like to trade in our travels. I know we all have useful skills, surely with those, our ability to learn and adapt and a team effort we’ll be able to keep this carnival…no this FAMILY together a very long time.” “Yeah! Suzy’s right! We can survive this!” someone shouts and several others agree enthusiastically. This time you are not met with apathy, but with applause. At last you have truly been accepted. You half expect them to all shout “One of us.” Over and over, but perhaps that might be a bit too obvious. In any case, you and some of the others get together to decide where to head next and what to do about food, and fuel. This isn’t going to be easy, but then this whole week has been a trial for you. No longer are you the shy “good” girl who hid away in the basement, harassed by your family and living as one day blurred into the next. You are part of something bigger and not just that, but a leader. It’s a brand new day and this is just the beginning of your brand new life. > … Greatest Show On Scorched Earth The Future… After yet another successful show, the performers of the Cataclysm Carnival begin to pack down for the night and engage in their usual banter. “Well that was certainly fun. It’s been a long time since we got to actually perform an entire show like that.” Sparkle remarks while putting away her chainsaws. “Ha ha ha ha, yeah I wouldn’t exacty call General Hellstorm’s totalitarian city state civilization, but it was a nice change from the usual shanty towns or worse, those Ground Zero owned shelter communities. God, I sometimes wonder what the fuck happened in some of those places after the bombs hit. I swear most of those folks are more fucked up than the people who got caught on the surface.” Randy adds. Hector and Lucy step inside the trailer. “I imagine being stuck in close quarters with a bunch of people for long periods of time is bound to make a lot of people weird. I mean you don’t have to look too far to see that.” Bruno says after hearing part of the conversation. “I hope you remembered to lock up those cat-rat things, this time. Last time they got out and chewed several holes in one of the trailers.” Sparkle says. “They’re called Nibblers and yes, I made sure they’re all locked up. I threw in some meat too so they should be good.” Hector remarks. “Hrm, I still dunno how you can work with those things. I saw a wild one take off an arm in one bite before.” Randy says. “Just gotta show the little bitey bastards whose boss.” Hector says proudly displaying how he still has all ten of his fingers. Lucy says nothing and just walks to the nearest mirror to take her clown make up off. Randy and Sparkle sense something amiss. “You okay?” Sparkle asks. “Shes’s pissed because apparently General Hellstorm was flirting a lot with her hot mom at the end of the night. In fact I’d wager that’s how we landed this job in the first place.” “Hector, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call my mom hot. I told you that before. And I’d REALLY appreciate it if you didn’t imply my mother was a whore!” Lucy says. “For fuck’s sake Lucy, I didn’t say she was! I just meant ol’ Hellstorm probably went all soppy when he first saw your mother. She turned on the charm and just reeled in the rube. Shit, we ALL should have such talent when we get to be that age. IF we get to be that age in this shitty world.” “Ever the flatterer I see, Hector. Glad to know that a woman in their forties still has a place in this rotten world.” You say stepping into the trailer. Hector isn’t quite sure how to react. “Um, apologies Ringmistress Suzy.” “Relax, you don’t ever have to worry about not being charming Hector, you’ll always have your Nibblers to keep you warm. Your father Klepto would’ve been so proud.” You say patting Hector on the head in a condescending manner. Sparkle and Randy both greet you, but your daughter continues to focus on the mirror. “Anyway, I’m just making the rounds to everyone and I just wanted to say it was a good show tonight and I’m proud of all of you. In fact we might be coming here to perform again in a few more months. Mr. Hellstorm really enjoyed the show. You’d think a guy that goes by the name General Hellstorm would be all WAR DEATH RAGH! But the guy actually is pretty even tempered, well as far as wasteland warlords go anyway.” “Hey which act did he like the most? Did he like my chainsaw bit?” Sparkle asks enthusiastically. “Heh, well to be honest he wouldn’t stop going on about the freakshow portion. The guy really liked that bit. If there’s one good thing about living in a radiated post apocalyptic landscape, it has got this carnival’s freakshow up and running again. On the pragmatic side of things we also exchanged some of those weird laser weapons we found. We’d never use the damn things, but Hellstorm seemed to really like the idea of them and thought he could get them working so we’ve got food and medical supplies for months. I think Dolores is making a count now…” While you’re explaining the upbeat news, you notice that your daughter is still looking into the mirror and scowling the entire time as she finishes taking off her make up. “Could the rest of you leave for a moment, I have to speak to Lucy.” You say. Nobody argues and one by one they exit the trailer leaving you alone with Lucy. “All right, what are you pissed about this time?” you ask. “Nothing. Don’t you have some guy to go lick your lips at?” Lucy replies. “Not at the moment no, but I’m glad you continue to have such a high opinion of me.” “Flirting with power mad warlords, great reason to have a high opinion…” Lucy at this point turns to you with anger in her face. “Goddamn it, Dad hasn’t been dead a month and you’re already fawning all over some other man! It was bad enough that you did it when he was alive, but can’t you even respect the dead?!” “We’ve been over this MANY times Lucy. I loved your father and I never once was unfaithful to him, but your father would’ve actually understood better than anyone. Show must go on Lucy. Besides I’m not actually doing anything with Hellstorm, except a tease and most likely giving him something to dream about. I’ve always done that to the rubes to get their attention, it’s part of being a ringmaster. Even that idiot Hector gets that, don’t know why you never did.” “Because it’s fucking embarrassing to constantly hear the sexual innuendo about your mother from passing rubes about how they’d like to master YOUR ring.” “Hmm, hadn’t heard that one before, sort of an obvious pun when you think about it though…” you remark. “Stop being so fucking calm about this! I mean…sorry…I just…I mean I KNOW it’s all an act, but I just wish you’d tone it down sometimes.” Lucy says. “Believe me, I do. You’ve never seen me in full-blown seductress mode. Look, I’m a big girl and not doing anything that I’m forced to do. (sigh) I know you’re a worldly girl and all, but there’s still a small part of you that’s a bit naïve. Must be a genetic trait passed down from me.” “Naïve?” “Yes my wonderfully oblivious darling daughter. You seriously believe that nobody is making comments about you? You walk around in a pink and purple skintight outfit with fishnets stockings blowing luminescent bubbles during your act. How do you know that all those lewd remarks are about me? Half of them are probably about you, but you’re so concerned with my actions that you’re too blind to see that you’re just as much of a tease as I am. You’re just unaware of it. Much like I was at your age.” Lucy is suddenly silent at this realization. It’s sort of funny how on the mark you actually were with that statement. You and her father both taught her about this bad new world and she isn’t unintelligent, but for some reason the girl has never really caught on to what a real knock out she is. Perhaps in some way you did shield her a bit from having to be really subjected to the “curse of beauty” since the carnival is a “safe zone” of sorts. “Back before the world turned to complete shit I pretty much squandered my natural gifts. Now? I’ve used them to my fullest advantage, but not just for myself, but for you AND this carnival that we all call a family. You’re really lucky Lucy, most people nowadays don’t even have a family to look out for them. Shit, even BEFORE the nukes hit, I didn’t have such a luxury, so if I have to give a little peck on the cheek to some petty tyrant to help us survive, then so be it. Better that I do it than YOU having to do it.” Lucy doesn’t reply, she just looks at you. She knows she wouldn’t have the stomach to go through the act that you go through at times. This might be the first time she realizes the sacrifices you’ve made to make her own life easier. Lucy nods a few times before speaking. “Okay, mom. I get it. And I appreciate it.” “Good, that’s all I ask. Okay I’m going back to my own trailer now. We’re heading out tomorrow morning. Get some rest, you deserve it anyway after the wonderful show you put on.” “I will mom. Thanks.” Lucy replies. As you walk away you see Sparkle, Randy and Hector all slowly sneak back into the trailer. You enter your own trailer and lay down on the bed thinking about how far you’ve come in life. It isn’t the life you ever expected, but it isn’t a bad one all things considering. Before you fall asleep you look at the old worn clown nose by the nightstand. You grab and squeeze it a couple times, remembering happy times with your now departed husband. “Goodnight Lance.” You say and slowly drift off with the round red foam ball in your hand.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Being a “native” of the area, you do know something of the types that do live in the trailer park. Most of them probably do nothing else except practice-shooting beer cans all damn day. Mel, is most likely right in that his people are going to be better shots and a gun battle is going to result in a lot of dead on your side. However you can’t just let them take your stuff, especially since you’re using a lot of it and there isn’t much to begin with. “Well, if we had the extra supplies we might be inclined to share, the fact is we don’t have much and what little we have, well we need. You start a shooting match here and you’re likely to wind up with more dead and wounded than what was worth the effort.” You reply. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you darlin’.” Mel replies. “It’s true, seriously come on in and take a look yourself. We got a shitload of wounded ourselves in that big tent back there. Just you though, the rest of your people can stand out here and look fearsome.” Mel chuckles. “Oh just me huh? And as soon as I go in I’m at your fuckin’ mercy. Nah, I don’t think so.” “Fine so take me as hostage. Here…” you say and drop your rifle and walk over to Mel. A couple people shout at you, but you just wave a hand at them as if to tell them to calm down. Meanwhile Mel stands watching you approach. When you’re before him, he’s definitely staring you up and down. “You got a pistol I presume?” you ask Mel. “Yeah.” “Well pull it out and put it to my head.” You say turning around and putting your body against Mel’s and then putting one of his arms around your waist. “Well… shit girl, you’re just somethin’ else ain’t cha?” Mel says barely keeping his composure as he pulls out his pistol. “If you say so. In any case you now have a little insurance that should be good enough for you shouldn’t it? I mean…I’m putting my complete trust in you. You’re in complete control” you say and grind up against Mel’s body a little more while turning your head a bit to flutter your eyes at him. Mel is at a loss for words, but his buddies aren’t. “Woo Hoo, looks like the li’l blonde number is sweet on ya Mel!” “I say we take her back, instead of medical supplies. I never liked Bobby Ray to begin with. Motherfucker can bleed out fer all I care!” “You plannin’ on tradin’ Tina up fer her? “Why’s Mel get all the pretty ones? He’s already got Tina, I say one of us should get the blonde!” At this point some arguing breaks out, followed by Mel shouting at them to shut the fuck up. He then turns his attention back to you. “Heh… you …you are trouble girlie. If I took you back to the trailer park, you’d probably have every man ripping each other apart over you. I can barely keep these dumb fuckers from doing that now. In any case, let’s go look at the medical supply situation. Come on.” Mel says motioning you to move. “As you wish.” You say. Mel and you head back towards the carnival where upon you give him the “grand tour” showing him that it is indeed true that you don’t really have much in the way of medical supplies. He also sees all the people that are wounded too. “Hmm, well I suppose y’all COULD still be hidin’ such things somewhere, but honestly I’m inclined to believe ya. This place has even less military vehicles than the ones that were at the trailer park and it sounds like from what you told me there weren’t even that many guardsmen here. From the amount of wounded I see, you probably did use up most of the pittance that the military brought with them…how did you get all these wounded though? Nobody looks like they’re suffering from gunshot wounds. The cannibal creeps?” “Nope. All these wounded are from each other. Long story, let’s just say carny politics is complicated and I came out on top.” You reply confidently. “I see…well you have certainly displayed a certain amount of balls putting yourself in the vulnerable position you did. (Sigh) All right, you dealt straight with me, so I’ll deal straight with you. Guess we’ll try the town again.” At this point you and Mel head back to the “neutral zone” where upon Mel releases you (reluctantly) and waves at his people to get ready to go. As they drive away, you breathe a heavy sigh of relief and rush back to the others. Dolores approaches you when you arrive. “Well that was an interesting way to handle things, but it worked. Those good ol’ boys woulda probably killed and wounded a lot more of us.” “Yeah, an’ now we need to get the hell out of here. I don’t trust them to not come back with a bigger group and attack us anyway.” “Well, we probably could’ve done with a bit more of a rest, but I can’t argue with that logic, they weren’t the most reputable lookin’ an’ you’re the boss. One good thing about having some recently departed, is that the trailers have a lot more room in them now. Speaking of which, your own trailer is already hooked up to a truck. We should be ready to roll in about an hour.” Feeling like you deserve a rest after recent events, you head back to your trailer to relax. As soon as you enter though, you are suddenly grabbed and tackled to the floor and the stench of bad body odor fills your nostrils. “Don’t scream bitch.” A familiar voice whispers. You get a good look at your assailant and see a man with half worn clown make up on his face. It’s Ranko and he smells even worse now that he’s laying right on top of you. “I see a lot of fuckin’ changes to this here carnival have happened since I’ve been gone. Saw some of it from afar while hiding and waiting for the best time to strike. Nearly got eaten by those geeks in the process, but heh heh heh, I got away…” Ranko begins to press his weight on you so you can’t wiggle away while keeping one hand on your mouth and holding a straight razor in his other. His whole outfit is filthy presumably from lurking about in the wilderness for days, but you also notice that he’s sporting a couple wounds of his own in the form of bite marks. “Nothing smart to say now bitch? Thought you were the ringmaster now. Head cunt in charge and all that. Fuck you, I SHOULD be in fuckin’ charge!” At this point you manage to bite Ranko’s hand, which tastes foul, but it’s enough to cause him to take it off your mouth, giving you a chance to scream for help, before he backhands you across the face. “Bitch! Maybe if I raped you, you’d KNOW who’s in fuckin’ charge!” he exclaims and fumbles with pulling down his pants, and keeps the straight razor to your throat with his other hand. (Carnies must love straight razors) All Ranko has to do is make a quick swipe and your throat is going to be opened if you struggle. If you do nothing he may very well rape you assuming nobody heard you scream. Of course he’ll probably kill you anyway after he’s finished. > You try to struggle He might very kill you, but you’re definitely not going to let him rape you. You continue to yell for help and with all your strength you begin to fight back, moving your legs and arms. You even get a couple good hits to his face, but it doesn’t deter him, all it does is anger him. After he recovers from your assault outburst he punches you in the face several times and swipes wildly with his razor muttering obscenities the entire time. Your throat is slashed open and your body isn’t even cold before he starts violating anyway.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While it might be an opportunity to escape, you’re not going to risk it. Roger might be a little smitten with you, but he’s athletic enough looking that you don’t think you could easily fight him off if something went wrong. Given that there is a state of martial law right now, you’re likely to get yourself shot or worse. Better to stay in the tent and come up with a plan where you at least might have some back up. So you’re currently back to square one, sitting around doing much of nothing until the National Guard decides to leave (whenever if and when that happens). You spend most of your time thinking on what Roofie said and your current position at the carnival. The only way you’re ever going to have safety and have a family is if you take direct action towards those goals. “Lifto, Shrimpy, you’re with me.” You suddenly say and say you going to see the head of the dwarf faction. “Uh, I dunno if that’s a good idea, he’s been doing a lot of preparation lately.” Shrimpy says. “I’m sure he has, and its in our best interest to find out exactly what that is. Maybe YOU can afford to play both sides, but I’m not taking that chance.” You say and start walking over to the crowd of little people. As you approach, the dwarves instantly start closing ranks and their demeanor changes to a defensive one. “Back again Shrimpy? I didn’t anticipate your sycophantic antics for another hour or so. And you must be Suzy, the new clown girl that’s been pissing off all the ladies and turning on all the guys. Hrm. Upon a closer look, I understand the appeal, but you’re still no dwarf woman.” an older dwarf says, though many of his fellows probably don’t share that opinion. “I take it you’re the leader of your group?” “Yep, though I don’t suppose Shrimpy’s bothered to mention my name is Billy. If you’re here about our current alliance, you needn’t worry since I’ve reassured Shrimpy so many times about it that it’s getting to the point of annoyance. Glad to you at least changed it up by appearing yourself, could’ve done without the big ugly clown behind you though, but I’m guessing he’s a poor attempt at intimidation.” “A girl likes to have a big strong man to watch her back sometimes.” “Heh, and that’s why you’ve practically begged a bunch of little men to do it to eh? Let’s cut to the chase, what do you really want? I already know that you’re the new leader of the clowns given what you did to old Roofie over there. Bet he didn’t see that coming.” You don’t know how else to put it so you just say it, which comes to a surprise to Shrimpy and Lifto as well. “I’m going to be the new leader of this carnival and YOU’RE going to support me in this endeavor.” Billy smiles at this remark and then chuckles. Several of the other dwarves do likewise. “You? Really? And you think we’re just going to support you in this? I hope you had a better plan than preparing to fuck every munchkin in munchkin land Dorothy, because at this juncture I guarantee that would be the ONLY way that you MIGHT come close to your dreams of being in charge. And if that was your plan, you can forget it, because I’m happily married. However, it might gain you favor with some of my friends. Could ensure that your group will have a place in the new carnival order that will be coming soon, but that’s a choice you’ll have to make on your own.” “You really think the rest of the carnival is going to follow you?” “They won’t have a choice, we dwarves have always been the backbone of it and it’s about time we just took the spotlight. Just like my Great Uncle Charley always wanted to do so long ago.” “Yeah and apparently that didn’t work out so well given your current situation. You know why? Nobody truly respects you. They’re content to let you do the grunt work, but they don’t want you to be in the spotlight, unless you’re making a fool of yourself like Shrimpy here.” You say. “HEY!” Shrimpy remarks. “Watch your tone there blondie, you’re starting to tread on very dangerous ground.” Billy warns. “Yes, I know and I’m also trying to explain that you’re ALREADY in control by being the backbone of the carnival. You might very well be able to win this internal struggle, but would there be anything left? This place has languished under Roofie, obviously, but it could be great again if it had the right ring master. Someone who could bring in the people. You said it yourself, I’ve got most of the guys here salivating over me just by my presence. You know how advertising works, I bring ‘em in with a wink, a smile and some sweet talk, the other performers get the money out of them and someone has to keep the infrastructure together and that’s you. We could work together as a more than just co-workers we could be like…a family. Like how carnies are supposed to really stick together.” Your words give a moment of pause for Billy who ponders them for a moment, but then shakes his head. “Y’know, that’s a really good speech, the problem is you haven’t been here but a few days and you’re already trying to take over. In family terms, you’re like the hot twenty year old nurse that married great grandpa on his death bed in the hopes of inheriting everything despite the fact he’s got a multitude of family members that are far more deserving since they had to put up with his shit a lot longer. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re sincere or even that your idea isn’t a worthy one, its just I don’t see YOU as that potential leader. If this carnival does split apart after the dust clears, well maybe it was meant to be, but I’m not spending the remainder of my life following another half-assed leader again. So to sum up, if you want to be on our side then great, if not, then I highly suggest you all get in your clown car and all get jobs at a rodeo or something.” At this point Billy’s done talking and waves you all away. Well that could’ve went better. “Are you nuts?! Why the hell did you do that for? You’re lucky he isn’t cancelling our protection!” Shrimpy says. “Well I can’t say it was the best of moves, but I guess you had to try.” Lifto says. Between Shrimpy’s concern for his own self-preservation and Lifto’s impotent comment, you’re wondering if you shouldn’t re-consider trying to escape again. Ultimately you all head back to the table where upon Shrimpy and Lifto explain what happened. Fatty and Klepto are both surprised by your actions, but Klepto again makes the usual attempt at being more “understanding” than the others. Christ, he never quits. “I don’t need this right now, I’m going to be by myself.” You say grabbing the small radio that they were listening to and head to where Roofie is still lying on his mat with his eyes closed. You don’t know if he’s still awake or genuinely asleep now, but he at least doesn’t appear to be in any mood to bother you right now. You spend a few more hours listening to one of the radios while the others play cards and try to talk about mundane things. You’re not getting the best reception and it’s no Internet, but it’s better than nothing. You mostly listen to a lot of special breaking news talking about how bad things are getting in various parts of the world. You hear about the riots going on and think about your own town and how your “real” family is doing. Ben’s hidden personal bomb shelter was somewhere in the backyard, you wonder if you shouldn’t have just tried to look for it and moved in there, it probably was stocked. Then as the sun starts setting, you hear a bunch of shooting and shouting outside. You see the other guardsmen near the tent entrance rush off, leaving everyone unsupervised. Naturally no longer being supervised means chaos within the tent begins to erupt though you have no idea why people aren’t more concerned about why the National Guardsmen are shooting and yelling at something outside. Lacking any better idea, you try to wake up Roofie, but he doesn’t stir. “Oh shit…” you say to yourself. Apparently his last words to you WERE his dying request literally. While you’re the only one aware of poor Roofie’s unexpected passing, a full on fight in the tent breaks out. Predictably, it’s Razor and her faction vs. Billy and his faction. Some of the smaller factions join in while others just run out of the tent altogether. It’s very lucky that your group is nowhere near the center of the tent where the fighting is and more or less in a corner. “Suzy! It’s begun!” Lifto shouts. “Yeah! We need to get in and help Billy or we’re going to be next!” Shrimpy adds. > You escape this place Billy has made it quite clear that no matter what happens you’re going to be on the bottom rung of any sort of restructuring so why should you even bother? This whole area is going to shit and it would be best if you just got the hell out of here. “Do any of you have keys to your vehicles?” you ask. “I got my truck keys.” Lifto remarks. “Good, we’re getting the hell out of here while everyone is distracted.” “What?! We’re just going to leave Billy?” Shrimpy asks. “Look, if YOU want to help Billy then go right ahead, but he’s basically said that I’m the low girl on the totem pole, and I am NOT going to go through a bunch of verbal and possible physical abuse for the rest of my time here. I left home to get away from that shit. Quite frankly given how disliked clowns are around here, I’d suggest the rest of you follow me because no matter who wins, you’re going to lose.” You say and turn to leave Lifto, Klepto and Fatty don’t even think twice, they’re following you out the tent and leaving the chaos of the carnival clash behind. Shrimpy however is unsure, his loyalty to his “kind” is still holding him back, but you’re not waiting around. When you exit the tent, things aren’t much better. There aren’t any guardsmen in the immediate area, but you still hear the shooting and their yelling. You also hear odd growling sounds and a couple of screams. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to get to your truck NOW!” you exclaim where upon Lifto takes the lead. You don’t get too far when you see Roger staggering from between two other tents. He’s wounded heavily and bleeding profusely. He sees you and desperately calls for your help. “Suzy…hel…” is about all he gets out before collapsing a few feet from you. He tries to crawl towards you and you nearly head towards him to help, but given all the gunfire going on and the big brawl still going on, you focus on your goal of placing as much distance as possible from this place. “Sorry, Roger.” You say quietly and continue moving. Lifto points towards a pick up truck in the area where you first parked your own vehicle. “Shh, you hear that?” Klepto remarks. “No.” you remark. “Exactly. All the gunfire stopped.” “Well we need to hurry up because that either means the guardsmen killed whoever was attacking and they’ll be returning to us soon or…” And then from behind one of the army vehicles you’re passing something leaps onto Lifto. It’s human but its snarling and growling unnaturally. If you didn’t know any better you’d almost think it was a…. “ARGH! ZOMBIE!” Lifto shouts and struggles to get it off of him. Fatty moves in to help immediately and between the two of them they easily knock it to the ground. Lifto then proceeds to stomp on its head repeatedly with his brightly colored clown boots. While Lifto is determined to smash its head into mush, another one of these creatures pop out of nowhere and nearly grab you. You scream and manage to pull away before Klepto steps in and tries to help. Unfortunately the creatures manage to bite him in the process. He cries out in pain, but manages to get the creatures off of him thanks to someone else helping by blowing the thing’s head off. Blood, bone and brains splatter all over Klepto. “Come on! I don’t know how many more of these things there are!” Shrimpy shouts with one of the guardsmen’s assault rifles in both hands. Looks like he’s made his choice. Lifto finishes destroying the one that was attacking him and soon all of you are off and running again. You look around as you run thinking more are going to be jumping out at you, but that doesn’t happen. You are slightly concerned about Fatty getting bit though. You don’t think anyone else has noticed it yet except you and of course him. When you get to the truck, Lifto quickly opens up the driver side and opens up the passenger door. You get in, followed by Klepto, meanwhile Fatty gets in the bed of the truck along with Shrimpy. “Where the hell are we going?” Lifto says as he drives from the carnival. “I don’t know yet, but we probably should stay away from large areas of population if those…things are any indication. Just head further away from the town for now.” You say. Honestly you don’t know what comes next, but you’re seriously starting to believe Roofie’s comments about the end coming soon. Were those creatures zombies? Crazed humans? Alive? Undead? Does it matter? How many are there? Have they overrun civilization already? Has any of your old family survived? Is this the beginning of the end? And most importantly…do their bites work like they do in the movies? Klepto sits next to you nervously still clutching his arm where he was bit. Lifto hasn’t noticed yet because he’s been paying attention to the road and while you haven’t said anything yet Klepto’s not subtle enough about keeping his wound secret… “Why do you keep rubbing your arm?” Lifto remarks. “Uh, that thing grabbed me and its grip hurt a lot and uh…” “Klepto, I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re lying! Did that thing bite you?!” Klepto doesn’t answer so you try to unsuccessfully help. “It was just a little bite, we don’t even know if…” you start to say before you’re interrupted. “Oh fuck! That’s it man! Game over!” Lifto shouts and suddenly stops the truck. Fatty and Shrimpy both knock on the window shouting what’s going on. “Klepto, I know we’ve known each other a long time, but you need to get out of this truck right now.” “Lifto, I…” “I don’t wanna hear it. Get out before I make you get out or worse.” “Lifto, we don’t even know if this is infectious! This isn’t a movie you know!” you exclaim. “And you willing to take that chance? You’re sitting right next to him! Not to mention he’s covered in that thing’s blood when Shrimpy blew its head off. Who knows what the hell he’s caught.” As paranoid as Lifto is right now, you have been feeling a little nervous sitting next to Klepto this whole time. Without another word Lifto shifts towards you and reaches over towards the glove compartment. He opens it up revealing a pistol, though Klepto already figured out what he was doing and tries to grab it before Lifto can. Despite Lifto being in an awkward position and you being in his way, he’s strong enough to get the grip on the gun first. Klepto grabs his hand and the struggle ensues. At this point Fatty opens up the driver side door and Shrimpy opens up the passenger side. “What the fuck is going on here!?” Shrimpy asks. “ARGH! Sonofabitch!” Lifto suddenly shouts, Klepto has bitten his hand causing him to drop the pistol on the truck floor. “Shrimpy keep that rifle on Klepto!” Lifto shouts. You’re stuck in the middle with Lifto’s body half on you. All you know is you’re scared and desperate to get out. You manage to wiggle down a bit and grab the pistol on the floor. Klepto hasn’t proceeded with an attack and doesn’t look any different. “I’m not a zombie! Or whatever you think I am! I’m fine! And if you kill me, you’re going to have to kill Lifto too!” Klepto exclaims to everyone. Klepto may or may not be right, but he was pretty quick to bite Lifto. Whether that was a desperate attempt to ensure his own safety or a possible glimpse of what’s to come, you don’t know. With the pistol in your hand you don’t know if you shouldn’t just shoot them both. > You shoot the pair of them You really don’t want to do this, but you don’t see any choice. “Sorry.” You say and point the gun at Lifto who has just gotten off of you. “Wait.” he says which is just enough give you pause due to your nervousness and give Lifto time to grab the gun from you, or at least attempt to grab it because you actually manage to struggle for half a minute before he accidently shoots you with it. The gun goes off, you catch a bullet in your throat and you fall backwards into Klepto. “Holy shit! I didn’t mean…” Lifto shouts. “SUZY! NO!” Klepto screams. “What the fuck did you do Lifto!?” Fatty yells. “Goddamn it!” Shrimpy exclaims. At this point the rest of the shouting becomes one loud noise to your dying ears. As your vision starts to blur, Klepto cradles you in his arms trying to tell you to fight off your impending death. It doesn’t work.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Billy has made it quite clear that no matter what happens you’re going to be on the bottom rung of any sort of restructuring so why should you even bother? This whole area is going to shit and it would be best if you just got the hell out of here. “Do any of you have keys to your vehicles?” you ask. “I got my truck keys.” Lifto remarks. “Good, we’re getting the hell out of here while everyone is distracted.” “What?! We’re just going to leave Billy?” Shrimpy asks. “Look, if YOU want to help Billy then go right ahead, but he’s basically said that I’m the low girl on the totem pole, and I am NOT going to go through a bunch of verbal and possible physical abuse for the rest of my time here. I left home to get away from that shit. Quite frankly given how disliked clowns are around here, I’d suggest the rest of you follow me because no matter who wins, you’re going to lose.” You say and turn to leave Lifto, Klepto and Fatty don’t even think twice, they’re following you out the tent and leaving the chaos of the carnival clash behind. Shrimpy however is unsure, his loyalty to his “kind” is still holding him back, but you’re not waiting around. When you exit the tent, things aren’t much better. There aren’t any guardsmen in the immediate area, but you still hear the shooting and their yelling. You also hear odd growling sounds and a couple of screams. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to get to your truck NOW!” you exclaim where upon Lifto takes the lead. You don’t get too far when you see Roger staggering from between two other tents. He’s wounded heavily and bleeding profusely. He sees you and desperately calls for your help. “Suzy…hel…” is about all he gets out before collapsing a few feet from you. He tries to crawl towards you and you nearly head towards him to help, but given all the gunfire going on and the big brawl still going on, you focus on your goal of placing as much distance as possible from this place. “Sorry, Roger.” You say quietly and continue moving. Lifto points towards a pick up truck in the area where you first parked your own vehicle. “Shh, you hear that?” Klepto remarks. “No.” you remark. “Exactly. All the gunfire stopped.” “Well we need to hurry up because that either means the guardsmen killed whoever was attacking and they’ll be returning to us soon or…” And then from behind one of the army vehicles you’re passing something leaps onto Lifto. It’s human but its snarling and growling unnaturally. If you didn’t know any better you’d almost think it was a…. “ARGH! ZOMBIE!” Lifto shouts and struggles to get it off of him. Fatty moves in to help immediately and between the two of them they easily knock it to the ground. Lifto then proceeds to stomp on its head repeatedly with his brightly colored clown boots. While Lifto is determined to smash its head into mush, another one of these creatures pop out of nowhere and nearly grab you. You scream and manage to pull away before Klepto steps in and tries to help. Unfortunately the creatures manage to bite him in the process. He cries out in pain, but manages to get the creatures off of him thanks to someone else helping by blowing the thing’s head off. Blood, bone and brains splatter all over Klepto. “Come on! I don’t know how many more of these things there are!” Shrimpy shouts with one of the guardsmen’s assault rifles in both hands. Looks like he’s made his choice. Lifto finishes destroying the one that was attacking him and soon all of you are off and running again. You look around as you run thinking more are going to be jumping out at you, but that doesn’t happen. You are slightly concerned about Fatty getting bit though. You don’t think anyone else has noticed it yet except you and of course him. When you get to the truck, Lifto quickly opens up the driver side and opens up the passenger door. You get in, followed by Klepto, meanwhile Fatty gets in the bed of the truck along with Shrimpy. “Where the hell are we going?” Lifto says as he drives from the carnival. “I don’t know yet, but we probably should stay away from large areas of population if those…things are any indication. Just head further away from the town for now.” You say. Honestly you don’t know what comes next, but you’re seriously starting to believe Roofie’s comments about the end coming soon. Were those creatures zombies? Crazed humans? Alive? Undead? Does it matter? How many are there? Have they overrun civilization already? Has any of your old family survived? Is this the beginning of the end? And most importantly…do their bites work like they do in the movies? Klepto sits next to you nervously still clutching his arm where he was bit. Lifto hasn’t noticed yet because he’s been paying attention to the road and while you haven’t said anything yet Klepto’s not subtle enough about keeping his wound secret… “Why do you keep rubbing your arm?” Lifto remarks. “Uh, that thing grabbed me and its grip hurt a lot and uh…” “Klepto, I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re lying! Did that thing bite you?!” Klepto doesn’t answer so you try to unsuccessfully help. “It was just a little bite, we don’t even know if…” you start to say before you’re interrupted. “Oh fuck! That’s it man! Game over!” Lifto shouts and suddenly stops the truck. Fatty and Shrimpy both knock on the window shouting what’s going on. “Klepto, I know we’ve known each other a long time, but you need to get out of this truck right now.” “Lifto, I…” “I don’t wanna hear it. Get out before I make you get out or worse.” “Lifto, we don’t even know if this is infectious! This isn’t a movie you know!” you exclaim. “And you willing to take that chance? You’re sitting right next to him! Not to mention he’s covered in that thing’s blood when Shrimpy blew its head off. Who knows what the hell he’s caught.” As paranoid as Lifto is right now, you have been feeling a little nervous sitting next to Klepto this whole time. Without another word Lifto shifts towards you and reaches over towards the glove compartment. He opens it up revealing a pistol, though Klepto already figured out what he was doing and tries to grab it before Lifto can. Despite Lifto being in an awkward position and you being in his way, he’s strong enough to get the grip on the gun first. Klepto grabs his hand and the struggle ensues. At this point Fatty opens up the driver side door and Shrimpy opens up the passenger side. “What the fuck is going on here!?” Shrimpy asks. “ARGH! Sonofabitch!” Lifto suddenly shouts, Klepto has bitten his hand causing him to drop the pistol on the truck floor. “Shrimpy keep that rifle on Klepto!” Lifto shouts. You’re stuck in the middle with Lifto’s body half on you. All you know is you’re scared and desperate to get out. You manage to wiggle down a bit and grab the pistol on the floor. Klepto hasn’t proceeded with an attack and doesn’t look any different. “I’m not a zombie! Or whatever you think I am! I’m fine! And if you kill me, you’re going to have to kill Lifto too!” Klepto exclaims to everyone. Klepto may or may not be right, but he was pretty quick to bite Lifto. Whether that was a desperate attempt to ensure his own safety or a possible glimpse of what’s to come, you don’t know. With the pistol in your hand you don’t know if you shouldn’t just shoot them both. > You try to save the situation You didn’t leave the carnival just for MORE in fighting. If the end days are coming you NEED all the people who you are actually on good terms you can get because you don’t fancy your chances on going it alone. So you’ll be damned if you’re not going to try to keep this little group together. “ALRIGHT GODDAMN IT! STOP IT! JUST FUCKING STOP IT!” you shout pointing the gun towards the truck ceiling. Lifto at this point has returned to his driver’s seat position. “NOW EVERYONE OUT OF THE TRUCK AND JUST LISTEN!” you say looking at Lifto and briefly glancing back at Klepto. Lifto steps out looks at you as if he is thinking about taking the pistol away from you. He probably could without any problems because as close as you are to shooting someone, you aren’t exactly “there” yet. Thankfully Lifto doesn’t try anything. When everyone exits the truck, you follow and Shrimpy now stands by you as back up (Fatty doesn’t have a weapon, but he stands near you anyway) “Okay, Suzy what next?” Lifto calmly says. You’ve got an idea, but it would go better if rope was involved. You take a quick look in the truck bed and see some locks and chains sitting there, which will work just as well. “Look everyone, we don’t have all the information on what this creature situation is, killing someone who got bit, might be jumping the gun. I mean this isn’t a movie!” you say. “Yeah!” Klepto says. “Shut up, I haven’t finished! Of course that doesn’t mean we need to be foolish about this because Lifto could be right. Now Lifto we don’t know if a bite causes infection, but if it does then you’re already doomed unless we cut your hand off, but I’m guessing you don’t want that. Do you want that?” Lifto gives a dirty look at Klepto before answering. “Look if you’re going to shoot me, at least shoot Klepto first so I can watch.” Lifto says. “ What the…I thought you two were supposed to be friends! (Sigh) I’m trying to give you another option here! Like I said, we don’t know if this sort of thing is contagious. I don’t want any of us to die, do you get that? I’m proposing that the pair of you stay in the bed of the truck until we get to a destination where we can get some medical attention. I mean if the pair of you start not feeling well or different in any way, then we can consider shooting you.” Lifto doesn’t say anything, but Klepto is certainly agreeable. “Sure Suzy, whatever you say! I mean that sounds reasonable to me!” he remarks, though you get the impression he’d go along with what you’d say even if he wasn’t bitten. “We’re going to have to tie you up you know.” You say. “That’s fine. I totally get it.” Klepto remarks. “Lifto?” He exhales and doesn’t say anything while looking at his hand. Then he looks back at you. “You really don’t want any of us to die?” Lifto asks. “No. Why the hell would I want that? I mean if these are the end days coming then we’re all we have left! We need to stick together as much as possible. And in any case you lot are the closest I’ve had to family for years, well other than the fact that most of you are undressing me with your eyes half the time…but I’m getting off track my point is that despite all the fucked up shit that’s occurred this week, I know I want you guys in my corner. All of you.” At first you wonder if you’ve laid it on a bit too much, but you hear a couple of sniffles in Fatty’s direction and Klepto is obviously showing signs of emotion. He probably thinks you just professed your love for him or something. “Okay. Okay. We’ll do it your way, but if I start to turn or if I think I’m going to become something other than I am, then I want YOU to be the one to shoot me.” Lifto says. “Well let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, but I promise.” You say. With those words Lifto and Klepto both submit to being chained up and to sit in the truck bed. Lifto is still giving Klepto angry looks, but hopefully they can work out their differences during the ride. Fatty takes the wheel, Shrimpy gets in the middle and you sit near the passenger’s side. You’ve never exactly been the best with directions, so you just tell Fatty to stay on the main road and hopefully you’ll reach a place that is in better shape than your own home town which probably is a warzone by now. You can’t help but wonder how your real family is doing, but really you’d rather not dwell on it. Fatty turns on the radio in the hopes of finding out something, but he doesn’t get much other than a few random religious stations talking about salvation and end times, but those things are ALWAYS talking about the end times so its hard to tell if they’re even referring to what’s currently going on. You’d think something like the news or an emergency broadcast might pop up, but nothing. Oddly you do get some stations just playing nothing but those infernal Ground Zero advertisements. Hours pass of driving through farm country and Klepto and Lifto aren’t moaning or even arguing so you’re guessing that they’re feeling okay. Still, even though you don’t want any of them to die, you do know it still might be a possibility. As it begins to turn to night you’re already tired from the events of the day. Feeling somewhat safe you allow yourself to close your eyes and drift off as the truck drives onward. > Next day… FRIDAY “…don’t delay, buy a Ground Zero shelter today!” “Fatty turn that radio off, there hasn’t been anything on it of importance for hours. It’s just those damn Ground Zero ads. Christ, you’d think someone would be reporting about oh you know a zombie apocalypse?” Shrimpy says. “I still say those things are still alive. The ones we saw didn’t look like they came back from the dead or anything.” Fatty remarks. “Well whatever, still seems like reporting SOME sort of outbreak would be of importance.” “Maybe its local and not happening anywhere else?” At this point your eyes open and you completely rouse from your sleep. “(Yawn) What’s going on?” you ask. “So you’re finally awake.” Shrimpy says. “We’ve been driving all night?” you ask. “Somewhat. Fatty here pulled over at one point and we both slept a little. If you’re wondering about the gruesome twosome back there, we checked on them and from what I can tell both of them feel fine. In fact I think they’re both still sleeping. Guess all that bite drama yesterday really exhausted them. Dunno if that means they’re okay or not, but right now we do have another problem.” Shrimpy says. “What’s that?” you ask. “Well Fatty here managed to get us fucking lost.” “Hey it’s not my fault, I couldn’t see shit in the night and I thought we were on a main road. Damn GPS.” Fatty says. “Told you that it was broken and hasn’t worked correctly for years. Anyway, I know you’re native to this area so I’m hoping you know your way around.” Shrimpy says. A brief glance of the practically non-descript landscape to the left and right of you leaves you at a loss. “Sorry, but like I said, I never was a big traveller. Never left the basement if I could help it.” You say. “Oh yeah, that’s right. Well any suggestion regardless of that fact?” Shrimpy asks. You don’t really have any, though you probably should be near some sort of farmhouse as you do know there are some out this way. You could get your bearing by stopping at one and asking for directions. You also remember Fatty’s comment about supplies. “There should be some sort of farmhouse nearby. Just keep driving along this road and we’ll probably hit one where we can ask for directions and possibly get supplies.” “Sounds like as good of an idea as any.” You really don’t know if that will be the case, you’re just hoping at this point. Fortunately, your hopes come true this time. “Well, there’s a house. Can’t tell if anyone is home or not though.” Fatty says pulling up to a large traditional looking farmhouse. “Okay, so how are we doing this?” “Well…I suppose I’ll go up to the front door and see if anyone’s home and the rest of you guys stay in the truck.” You say. “You nuts? This place looks like it’s out of a horror movie! Might be a bunch of psycho rednecks living in there! They see a pretty young thing like you and they’d grab you before we could even do anything.” Shrimpy remarks. “Right like arriving at a door with a group of clowns isn’t straight out of a horror movie. I’m currently the only one dressed in regular clothing and not covered in blood, I think it would be best if I just asked for help at first.” “Hey what are we going to do with Klepto and Lifto?” Fatty asks. “Well check on them again and if they seem to be well unchain them I guess. I mean they could use a stretch. Anyway like I said I’m going to the door. I’m taking the pistol with me and I’m confident that if something does happen you’ll be able to react in time to save me from getting chopped up or whatever you think is going to happen. We need help getting back on track and looking at the gauge we might even need gas so hopefully they got that here too. Don’t worry I’ll be fine.” You say and get out of the truck. You make your way towards the front porch looking around the entire time. This place is creepily quiet. Seems like you should at least hear the sounds of animals or something. Shrimpy’s got you totally paranoid now. You really weren’t worried until he mentioned psycho hillbillies. You look back at the truck. “Goddamn it Suzy, you need to brave through some of this shit yourself. You survived your serial killer uncle for Christsake. Nothing is going to happen, probably just some kindly old farm couple that lives here.” You mutter to yourself and walk up the stairs and knock on the door. You knock several times with no answer, but just when you’re about to give up it opens. “WHO YOU!?” a large disfigured man exclaims completely scaring the shit out of you and causing you to fall backwards. You’re in a state of utter fear as this large freak approaches you with his hand outstretched towards you… Even in your fearful condition, you’re still able to react to a dangerous situation. You pull the pistol that you had on you and shoot the disfigured man. You hit him twice in the body and he reels backwards bellowing loudly as his body hits the front door and then the house’s front room floor. “WHHHHHHY!? GOING TO HELP YOU!” the man shouts. “Junior? What in tarnation is goin’ on down there? I hope you didn’t shoot yourself in the foot carrying your father’s rifles again, you know how he hates a waste of ammo.” An older female voice shouts from inside. “MAMA! MAMA! HURT A LOT! BAD GIRL HURT ME!” the man cries. “If you’ve been fightin’ with you’re sister again…oh my god…JUNIOR! CLEM SOMEONE SHOT JUNIOR!” you hear the older female voice scream. By this time you’re running back to the truck, which Shrimpy has gotten out of. Lifto and Klepto are also both awake and shouting at this point. “Get back in the fucking truck! We gotta…” you start yelling and then a shot from one of the farmhouse windows rings out. You hear it whiz by your ear causing you to drop to the ground immediately. You continue to crawl towards the truck where you hear more gunfire behind you and the sounds of an assault rifle returning fire. You hear someone trying to start the truck, but a few more shots hitting metal seem to put an end to that causing the engine to make a less than operational sound. “Fatty get out of the front seat!” Shrimpy shouts. You hear more gunshots followed by Fatty crying out, though you don’t know if he’s actually gotten hit severely since you just hear “OW MY ASS!” The whole time you’re praying that you don’t get shot in the back, but you’re the lucky one… Ever the white knight, Klepto attempts to go “rescue” you. “Klepto get out of the open!” you hear Lifto shout. “Suzy’s out there I can’t…” Klepto’s words are cut short when a bullet to his skull drops him. In fact he drops about a few feet in front of you. You try to put the sight of his death out of your mind as you continue to crawl towards the truck. “YOU FUCKERS AREN’T TAKING THIS FARM! THIS FARM IS MINE! ALL OF YOU SONSOFBITCHES ARE GONNA PAY FOR WHAT YOU DID TO MY BOY!” a male voice shouts. You finally reach your destination where the rest are hiding behind the back of the truck, though Fatty’s having a hard time of it due to his size and the fact he’s got a bullet in his ass. The shooting on both sides for now has stopped though. “Shit, shit, shit, Klepto’s dead! That redneck bastard says that we’re going to pay, no fucking way, HE’S gonna fuckin’ pay!” Lifto says which is a bit surprising considering that he was ready to kill Klepto himself just yesterday. “Fuck, my ass…ah! Shit…wish I had a gun, I’d shoot that fucker in the ass. Not the cheek either, the fucking HOLE!” Fatty says who is normally calm, but given he got shot his anger is a bit understandable. “Well luckily I picked up a few extra clips back at the carnival and Suzy’s probably still got a few shots left. I say we can probably take out the shooter with a bit of strategy. Just as soon as we come up with one of course.” Shrimpy remarks. You don’t know how to feel about all this. Maybe it’s all the increased violence over the past few days along with losing Klepto, but your clown crew is starting to become a lot more vicious, though events haven’t exactly been encouraging a peaceful life lately. You can’t help but feel a little responsible for this current situation though. The retard was just trying to help you up from your fall, but you couldn’t have known that…you just reacted to your fear. You were the one who harmed the farm inhabitants first even if the rest of your clown friends think you were being attacked. Part of you wants to just run from this place, but where would you go? Staying of course means doing more things you don’t necessarily want to do…but then you think if you can put yourself in the “right” frame of mind you’ll be able to do it. The farmer HAS tried to kill all of you and did succeed in killing Klepto who attempted to save you, surely revenge for that isn’t totally wrong? > You get revenge If you ran, you doubt if the rest of them would follow and despite the feeling that this isn’t the greatest idea, you’re tired of running. You’ve got nothing to run to anyway, if you can deal with the inhabitants inside, you’ll at least have a place to catch a breather from the ever-growing chaos in your life. You hope at least. “Shrimpy can you get inside the truck without getting hit and put it in neutral?” “Yeah I think I could.” Shrimpy says. “Good, give me the rifle and the clips, get in the truck and when it’s in neutral Lifto and Fatty I want you to start pushing it forward. We should be able to get close enough to the house using this thing as a large shield.” “What are you going to be doing?” Fatty asks. “I’m going to be crawling around in the truck bed taking shots at that bastard firing at us when I can. Hopefully the closer we get the more likely I’ll be able to hit him. Now you want to avenge Klepto or what?” This statement gets a nod from everyone. “Let’s do this.” Lifto says and all of you enact your plan. It goes well, or about as well as a plan can when someone is shooting at you. Another person soon joins the farmer the closer the truck gets to the front of the house. Presumably the farmer’s wife. The pair of them unleash a torrent of curses at you, but nobody is hitting each other yet. Bullets tear into the truck and while you’re all safe, when the two front tires get blown out, it makes Lifto and Fatty’s pushing a lot harder. “Goddamn it. (Wheeze)” Fatty gasps. “Fuck.” Lifto grunts. Still crawling around in the truck bed, you head over towards the back and speak to Lifto and Fatty. “Okay, stop pushing, no point in straining yourself, because you’re going to need to save your energy. I don’t think the shooter on the left is quite as skilled so run to the left and around the back of the house, there’s got to be a back door. I’ll provide cover, I still got a half a clip left in this thing and one more full one, so when I go full auto, start running. Here take the pistol.” You say tossing the pistol over the back end of the truck. Honestly you’d rather have Shrimpy do this since he’s a much smaller target, but the little guy is probably hiding in the leg area of either the driver or passenger’s side of the truck hoping not to get hit. You take a deep breath as more bullets tear into the sides of the truck. You grip the rifle and exposing only a bit of your hands, you blindly fire and spray the left area of the house where the second shooter is. Luckily through the gunfire a small cry is heard, you think you’ve hit someone again. In any case it allows time for Lifto and Fatty to crouch run towards the house, hug the wall and then crawl around the corner. Fatty sure is fast when he wants to be, you just hope he doesn’t suffer a heart attack. Meanwhile you hear shouting within the house. “Clem! I’m hit! Ohhhhh…(sob)” “Honeypie?! Honeypie? No no no…” With the gunfire completely stopped Shrimpy takes the opportunity to get out of the truck and run behind it. “Suzy? You still here?” you hear him ask. “Yeah, I’m still here. Just stay behind the truck I’m gonna…” you start to say before you’re interrupted “NO! GODAMNIT! NOOOO! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU ALL!” Clem the farmer shouts and now the sounds of gunfire start up again, except this time he’s not firing a rifle anymore, the booming sound indicates a shotgun of some kind. As you try to reload your last assault rifle clip, the truck continues to suffer the impact of shotgun rounds. In fact they are starting to damage the truck enough that one of them going through and hitting you is a very real possibility. You roll over to the other side of the truck in an attempt not to get hit. “I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU!” you hear him bellow. You’re too busy keeping down and redloading. And then you hear nothing, followed by a pistol shot and then another. You take the opportunity to quickly climb out of the truck bed altogether. “Suzy, did they get him?” Shrimpy asks “I don’t know…” you say and peek your head out hoping that this isn’t a mistake. You soon see Lifto standing in the front doorway with the pistol in hand. “We got all of these bastards. It’s safe.” He says. You and Shrimpy both step out from the cover of the truck and make your way to the house. First thing you notice is the first man you shot near the entryway, apparently he tried to crawl away soon after the shoot out started and died shortly afterwards. Given his disfigurement and from what you could tell of his voice, he might’ve been mentally retarded. You remember hearing “junior” being said, so you’re guessing he was the son. You don’t exactly feel great about shooting him. It really was an accident. Seeing the other two bodies don’t exactly make you feel any better. The farmer’s wife lies dead in the dining room area. She’s actually bigger than Fatty which means she’s indeed quite on the large side. She has several gunshot wounds to her upper body. You knew you hit her, but you just didn’t know where. Your stomach begins to feel slightly bad when you think about it. Finally you see the farmer himself, or Clem as you heard being shouted. Lifto mentions that Clem was so focused on you that he realized too late that someone was sneaking up on him. Lifto mentions that he shot him in the back and then while Clem was still flopping about on the floor trying to turn over with his shotgun, Clem put one in his skull. You didn’t even kill Clem and you still feel weird about it. You don’t understand why you’re feeling slightly sick about all this. Or rather you’ve got an idea why, but considering the little creature rampage at the carnival it isn’t like you haven’t seen gruesome death before, but this is somehow different. The adrenaline and survivalist mindset you put yourself into has disappeared now that the danger has passed so you are left with the grim aftermath of your actions. The realization that you’ve killed an entire family that was really just defending their home is what is getting to you. That and the fact that you feel like this whole incident is your fault. Adding Klepto’s death to the mix and you’re directly and indirectly responsible for four people’s deaths. “Toilet.” You say in a daze. “What?” Shrimpy asks. “I’m gonna be sick…” “I think I saw one over towards the back of the house, it’s…” You don’t wait for Lifto to finish you just run in the direction. Trying to keep from throwing up and you just manage to make it to the toilet where upon you promptly vomit your guts out. Your fellows come to see how you’re doing. “Suzy, are you alright?” Shrimpy asks. “Yeah, you aren’t sick are you?” Lifto asks. It takes you awhile to answer, but eventually you manage it. “Uh…(pant)…I just…I dunno…yeah I’ll be fine. I think the stress of all this just got to me. Uh…” You say. “Well, it’s understandable. Look, why don’t you go lie down somewhere? You’ve done enough for today. The rest of us are gonna drag these bodies out of here. It’ll take all of us, lord knows what the hell they were eating on this farm, but everyone here seems to be Fatty’s size or bigger. Probably should look around the rest of the farm as well. Make sure nobody is hiding in the barns or something.” Lifto remarks. “Yeah…okay…” you say walking past Shrimpy and Lifto. As you slowly walk back towards the front of the house, Fatty comes down the stairs. “Well the upstairs is clear from what I can tell. Nobody up there. Hey Suzy, you okay? Could hear you retching from up there.” Fatty asks. “Yeah, just need to lie down.” You say. “You and me both, but I suppose Lifto is going to need me to help him move out these bodies. Anyway, there are some nice beds upstairs, probably should take one of them.” At this point you feel so wobbly that you wonder if you can even make it up the stairs. > You use the upstairs bedrooms Given that everyone is going to be making a bunch of noise, moving bodies and such downstairs, you decide to head upstairs. You think you could really use the solitude anyway. You think you’ve spent more time in the close company of people this week than you have in your entire life and that includes when you had a boyfriend. With everyone else doing a bit of cleaning up, your mind goes a bit numb as you go up the creaky stairs. You put everything that you’ve experienced this week out of your head. All you want to think about right now is resting from this ordeal. You reach the landing and look to your left and see a room which is fairly messy to the point of being disgusting. You hear flies buzzing in there and it smells like something died in there, which doesn’t improve how you’re already feeling. You guess that this was probably the son’s room. You close the door so as to keep the odor in and move on. Across the hall you find a much better room with a big bed. You guess that Clem and his wife slept here, or maybe just his wife, given her size. Unfortunately that smell from Junior’s room is still strong enough for this room to catch a bit of the fallout. You can’t rest here either so you move on again. You pass another bathroom and then at the far end you find another bedroom. This one is free of a bad smell and has a comfortable looking bed so you immediately go to it. You collapse on the bed, with a deep exhale. You lie there in silence for a moment trying to wrap your mind around the situation. “(Sigh) Ohhhh…shit…never should’ve left the basement.” You say. You think about what might’ve happened had you actually stayed home earlier this week rather than going with the idea to go join the circus. You also wonder what would’ve happened had you gone to live with your younger sister or even made up with Bobby. You then remember of how the National Guard were stationed in your town and then there were those creatures (Still don’t know what that was all about or if Lifto is out of the woods as far as that’s concerned) so chances are things might’ve still turned out hectic. “I was fucked no matter what.” You laugh as your eyes start to close a bit. In fact you laugh quite a bit. You laugh at this entire hell week. It may be your mind trying to cope and a combination of being tired, or you may have snapped a little but in any event you can’t stop quietly giggling to yourself. And then as you’re in your minor giggling fit, your eyes stay open longer when you begin to realize your surroundings. This room. This is the room of a young female. There is a whole area dedicated to make up and such. The walls have a flowery print. You even see a few feminine undergarments sitting on top of a dresser. You then remember back when you first shot Junior, his mother telling him that he had better not be fighting with his sister again. Funny what you remember during intense situations. There were only three dead bodies, which means the daughter of this family is still alive and possibly hiding somewhere. Fatty said he searched upstairs, but he could’ve missed something. And a quick glance to your left you see a closet door slightly askew, which then begins to open further. Feeling a sudden burst of energy brought on by danger, you manage to sit up and get off the bed just in time for the owner of this room to reveal herself. Apparently she thought you were going to be easier pickings than Fatty, she finds out how dreadfully wrong she is. You immediately rush at the woman who holds a large knife in one hand. It’s enough to catch her off guard and she fails to hit you with the knife or rather fails to hit you in a meaningful way since the blade does slice your upper arm. The pair of you fall to the closet floor where she slams her head against the wall. You grab the hand holding the knife and smash it on the doorway until she drops it. You feel a punch to your face by her other hand, but you ignore the pain and with all your weight you slam your elbow into her nose. You stop her from crying out by following that up with a punch to her mouth. You repeatedly punch her in the face to a point where she temporarily stops resisting entirely. Clothing is falling on the pair of you and you grab a shirt and wrap it around her throat and pull tightly. Your mind goes into a very dark place. “Shhhh…it’ll all be over soon, just let the darkness take you” you whisper. The woman gasps for air and tries to punch and scratch at you, but you manage to pull your head back just enough for her to miss. She tries to wiggle and squirm away, but you’re sitting right on her stomach and there’s nowhere for her to go. The woman continues to choke and tries to pry your hands away, but she’s unable to do so and her struggle becomes less intense. “…there we go…now you’ll be with your family forever…” you say and watch her face turn unhealthy shade due to lack of oxygen and her eyes roll up into her head. The woman stops breathing and the deed is done. You don’t even feel tired anymore, it’s like killing her energized you or something. You don’t have the sick feeling either. You just went into a kind of trance. Like this woman was garbage that needed to be disposed of. You wonder if this is what your Uncle Ed felt when he killed whores. If you were in your old frame of mind, you’d know how fucked up that is. In your current state of mind you still know how fucked up that is, however you no longer care. Something may very well have snapped within you, whether it was a combination of the entire week, or just this one bad day, the damage has been done and you’re not quite the same person that you were anymore. She was going to kill you and you stopped her from doing so, that’s the important thing. Nothing else. You survived. There are no limits to what you’re capable of, you realize that now. “Suzy!? Hey are you okay up there?! I heard some noise!” you hear Lifto shout. “Yeah, I’m fine, just looking through a closet before I get some rest. Some shit fell, no worries!” you shout back. “Okay then.” With that interruption out of the way you turn your attention back to your situation. You start looking around the room and find lots of make up. You also go through her clothing and notice a lot of it is about your size though a bit on the slutty side. Oddly enough after going through some more personal belongings you find out her name was Susie too. Or Susie Mae to be precise. After pulling out some of the clothing from the closet you shove the rest of Susie Mae's body into it and shut the door. “Hmm, yeah I think I could make a new outfit out of this stuff.” You remark. You then grab the scissors and sewing material that lies nearby. It’s been awhile since you’ve done any seamstress type stuff, but you remember when your mother taught you to do it when you were in your elementary school plays. Hopefully you’ve retained enough of the knowledge. You spend the rest of the day in Susie Mae’s room on your own personal project. It’s the most solitude you’ve had in a long time and you happily enjoy it. The rest of your compatriots are busy searching the rest of the farm for the most part though at one point Shrimpy comes up and asks if you’re okay. “Suzy? Hey thought you’d be asleep…what are you doing?” “Well I don’t exactly have any extra clothes anymore. Even my clown stuff was left back at the carnival, so I’m making a new wardrobe, what’s up?” you ask not looking up from what you’re doing. “Um, well just wanted to let you know that we’ve checked out this entire farm and the place seems all clear and well stocked too.” Shrimpy remarks. “Are Fatty and Lifto okay?” you ask. “Heh, yeah Fatty’s fine, wasn’t fun digging that bullet out of his ass though. As for Lifto he seems fine too. Don’t think Klepto biting him did anything and he’s cleaned out the wound at this point so I guess he’s in the clear. Speaking of Klepto, we uh…were thinking we should at least bury him. We already dug the hole in a nice spot. Maybe we should have a small funeral tomorrow?” “I think that sounds like a fine idea…guess I better finish this thing if I’m attending a funeral.” You reply. Shrimpy pauses for a moment. “Suzy are you really okay? You seem different somehow.” “I’m just fine Shrimpy. Just fine. I really need to focus on this though.” “Um, okay sure. We’ll let you know if anything important pops up.” Shrimpy says and leaves you. You aren’t disturbed for the rest of the day or night; in fact they all must sleep downstairs which gives you free reign of the upstairs bathroom to wash up a bit. After washing up you try on your now finished project. Your outfit is a patchwork of colorful chaos since you just cut up lots of clothing and sewed bits of them together, but you’re pleased with your work. In fact you’re so pleased with it, you fall asleep in it figuring that it’ll save you a bit of time to get ready for Klepto’s funeral tomorrow. > Next day… SATURDAY “Suzy? You up?” Shrimpy asks and knocks on your door. Normally you wouldn’t be this early, but in this rare instance you actually are. “Yeah, I’m awake. I’ll be ready in a moment.” You say applying make up on your face. “Okay, we’re all about as ready as we’re going to be, Lifto and Fatty have already put Klepto’s body in the hole we dug, so we’re all about as ready for this thing as we’re going to be. See you downstairs.” “Hey Shrimpy can I say a few things at this event?” you ask before he walks away from the door. “You mean like a eulogy? Sure I mean if you’ve got something to say then by all means go for it. Really we were all trying to come up with something formal, but I think we’re all still a little exhausted. Lifto actually broke down in tears yesterday about Klepto’s death. I think he’s upset that he tried to kill him just the day before and wishes their last moments were on friendlier terms.” “Well, tell Lifto that the time for tears and regrets will soon be a thing of the past. I’m almost done, see you downstairs.” “All right.” You look at yourself in the mirror and finish applying lipstick. Not the exact shade of red you wanted, but it was the only lipstick that the previous owner hadn’t used yet. You’re just glad the girl had as much make up as she did so you could paint up your face proper. Satisfied with your face, you stand up and look at yourself in the nearby full length mirror. “Well it’s not my old carnival outfit, but yeah… this is definitely me now. Now and forever.” you say and walk towards the door. Before leaving you stop and look towards the closet. “Thank you for letting me borrow your make up and clothing.” You say and then giggle a bit. You skip down the stairs and meet up with the rest. They’re all a bit more somber than you and are quite surprised to see your slightly energetic temperament. “Suzy? That’s a uh interesting outfit.” Fatty remarks. “Isn’t it though? Made it myself. Nothing like a new set of clothes to put you in a different mindset! In fact given that all of you have been running around in the same clothes for day on end, I’d say that all of you could use new clothes too. Those rags must be really filthy by now; you’ll all probably feel a lot more positive about things once you change. I’m sure we can gather up enough of this family of deadnecks’ clothing and I can make you all something. Anyway, we can talk about this later let us be on our way.” Everyone is a unsure of how to react to your new chipperish behavior especially given the circumstances, but they all just lead the way to Klepto’s open grave which has been dug out in the backyard of the house. Klepto still looks about as dead as he did that last time you saw him, though someone has arranged his body in a respectful way. He even has some freshly pulled flowers in his hand. “The flowers are a nice touch.” You remark not knowing who did it. “Thank you.” Lifto says wiping away a tear. “Shrimpy probably told you all that I was going to do a bit of a eulogy, but does anyone have anything else to say?” “No, we were all trading Klepto stories last night. We’ll probably be doing it for a while. None of us are really good for formal speeches though, probably best if you do it. Besides, it means a lot that you want to do it despite not knowing any of us that long.” Shrimpy says. “Glad you feel that way because what I’m going to say is going to be towards all of you…” And before you can finish that thought. Your eyes (and everyone else’s) catch sight of something quite spectacular in the distance. A mushroom cloud. You’re not feeling any tremors or aftershocks, a wave of fire hasn’t engulfed you, so you’re guessing that it wasn’t excessively close, maybe it was even a small one. Still, you can’t help but wonder if you’re in some sort of deadly radiation radius though. If so there isn’t much that can done about it. “Well I’ll be damned, the world finally went and did it…” you say to yourself. Lifto, Fatty and Shrimpy all at the same time begin to swear and react to the situation as most people would, namely panic, fear and hysteria. You think in the old days you probably would have too, but not anymore. If anything this is excellent timing for your new outlook on life. You quickly call everyone to attention. “Hey! Listen up! This might be the end of civilization as we know it, but it isn’t the end of the world! Sure life is going to be harder now, but look at we’ve already survived. Just this damn week we suffered through a military occupation, an internal civil war, an attack by freaks, and took down a bunch of rednecks trying to murder us.” At this point they’re all listening to you intently. “We’ll survive this and as long as we stick together there isn’t anything we can’t do. This is a new beginning and it’ll be us against the world if necessary. We are a family and I love you guys.” You say. These words are met with a pause and then of course positive approval by all and everyone goes in for a bit of a group hug. Feelings run a bit high and some more tears are shed. While your words are genuine and do have feeling behind them, but your mind is still in a dark place. You do see them all as family, but you also can’t help see them as useful “tools” in the chaos that’s going to come. Even now you’re sizing them all up on their weaknesses and strengths. In any case, you and everyone finish up by completing the burial of Klepto and gathering all the supplies from the farm that will be needed. You all know you’ll run out eventually, but for now you’ve got enough supplies to ponder a long range plan of your future. No longer are you the shy “good” girl who hid away in the basement, harassed by your family and living as one day blurred into the next. Far from it. Very far from it. It’s a brand new day and this is just the beginning of your brand new life. > Karnival of Karnage The Future… You sit comfortably in your modified jeep watching yet another small settlement burn before you. Not the first time, and certainly won’t be the last. The screams and gunfire are starting to die down which means today’s raid is nearly over. Still, it isn’t completely over yet and there’s always something fun to see. “Woo hoo! Looks like that new recruit has got the right attitude!” you say watching a young man wearing an outlandish green wig and novelty nose glasses swing his machete into the skull of another young man who was previously begging for his life. “Hrm. Wasn’t too sure about him at first, but I guess he’s proven himself on this raid. Speaking of which, looks like we’ve made a good haul. Lots of food, water, even medical supplies.” Lifto remarks sitting next to you. “Wheeee! Gimme that map, I want to see where we should hit next.” You say. “I believe Captain Howdy has it.” “Well, call that pierced freak over here then.” You say. Lifto nods and calls for Captain Howdy via bullhorn. Eventually a heavily pierced man wearing a beat up pilot’s cap, black face make up and carrying an assault rifle over his shoulder appears. “Black face today? Isn’t that a bit unPC?” you say with a smirk. “Eh, fuck’em if they can’t take a joke.” Howdy says apathetically. “Truer words my friend. Lifto says you’ve got the map of this area.” You say. “Oh yeah, I do. Here let me get it out of my pack.” Howdy takes off a small backpack and opens it up to give you a well-worn map of the area. “Let’s see…okay…we hit that place…and that one…” you start to say looking for a new target. “How about Redemption? I hate those religious types.” Howdy says. “While I have no doubt that town of pious zealots is well stocked, they’re also very well armed. In fact I’ve been hearing rumors that they’ve been launching their own little crusade against neighboring settlements.” You say. “I heard that they went complete Spanish Inquisition on one town. Crucified most of them and burned the rest alive. That was of course after they already had tortured the shit out of all of them.” Lifto adds. “So? We could take those assholes.” Howdy remarks. “That may be, but not in the near future. It would be a very dangerous undertaking and we are not doing this for the risks and to prove how badass we are. We’re doing this for survival…well that and to have a little fun in the process.” You say with a smile, though Howdy is still one of your more “macho” members and still wants to prove he’s got a dick by killing something. You reach out to his face with a gentle touch and soothing voice. “I know you like to kill things, but I don’t want you to get killed in the process. Just because we tend to pick easier targets just means I really don’t want you or any one of us to get killed. We’re all family and I don’t want to see any one of you die, you understand? That’s why our mode of operation is to go for low risk, high reward and I’d say its work for all these years wouldn’t you?” “Yes, I suppose it has.” Howdy says. “That’s right. Anyway it’s looking like we have hit every place that’s worthwhile around here. We should start heading east and raid merchant caravans coming out of those city-states. They’re all fucked up after that big war they had with the Ground Zero Corporation so they’re lacking in the defense department now. Okay, let’s start shutting down this circus and move on.” You say and take the bullhorn from Lifto. “Alright you clowns gather up all the shit we’ve looted, pile it in the vehicles and let’s get this freak show on the road! We’re heading east! Flammo! HEY! That doesn’t mean start another goddamn fire, it means let’s go!” you shout shaking your head and throw the bullhorn in the back seat. Lifto starts up the jeep and you stretch a bit waiting for your family to finish packing up. Lifto waits in silence, but you feel like talking. “A Pennywise for your thoughts.” You say which causes a snort from Lifto. “Oh nothing, I suppose I was just thinking about how much things have changed. The past. Sometimes I miss it.” “Oh that. Well I don’t miss it. Glad that part of my life is over.” “Not just the old days, but people as well like Fatty, Shrimpy… Klepto.” “Well that’s different. I do miss them. They were family and I’ll never forget them. We sure had some fun times back at that farmhouse remember?” “Heh, yeah. Shame what happened; maybe we could’ve made a more stable life there rather than doing this raider thing.” “Perhaps, but we can’t dwell on what if in the past. Just have to focus on today and if possible, the future. That’s what’s kept us alive and allowed us to build our new family.” You say and touch Lifto’s hand. Lifto looks and smiles at you. You aren’t sure if he’s ever completely agreed with how you’ve gone about things, but he loves you enough that he’ll stand by your side no matter what and that’s enough for you. To be honest you did latch on to Lifto a bit in the beginning because he was obviously a big guy that could definitely protect you in a time of trouble, but it’s a bit more than that now. Given that you’re both the only two left from the original group, your ties have naturally grown quite a bit. You’ve done a lot of bad things since your new life began, but it’s a harsh world and you’re just living in it. Sometimes you have bouts where you wonder if you should feel bad about doing the things you do, but then you just laugh and remember to not dwell on the past. “I love you Kenneth.” You say using Lifto’s real name, looking at him and touching his hand. “I love you Suzy.” He replies back and leans over to kiss you. With this exchange of affection, you, Lifto and your gang of clowns drive off in search of new prey.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you ran, you doubt if the rest of them would follow and despite the feeling that this isn’t the greatest idea, you’re tired of running. You’ve got nothing to run to anyway, if you can deal with the inhabitants inside, you’ll at least have a place to catch a breather from the ever-growing chaos in your life. You hope at least. “Shrimpy can you get inside the truck without getting hit and put it in neutral?” “Yeah I think I could.” Shrimpy says. “Good, give me the rifle and the clips, get in the truck and when it’s in neutral Lifto and Fatty I want you to start pushing it forward. We should be able to get close enough to the house using this thing as a large shield.” “What are you going to be doing?” Fatty asks. “I’m going to be crawling around in the truck bed taking shots at that bastard firing at us when I can. Hopefully the closer we get the more likely I’ll be able to hit him. Now you want to avenge Klepto or what?” This statement gets a nod from everyone. “Let’s do this.” Lifto says and all of you enact your plan. It goes well, or about as well as a plan can when someone is shooting at you. Another person soon joins the farmer the closer the truck gets to the front of the house. Presumably the farmer’s wife. The pair of them unleash a torrent of curses at you, but nobody is hitting each other yet. Bullets tear into the truck and while you’re all safe, when the two front tires get blown out, it makes Lifto and Fatty’s pushing a lot harder. “Goddamn it. (Wheeze)” Fatty gasps. “Fuck.” Lifto grunts. Still crawling around in the truck bed, you head over towards the back and speak to Lifto and Fatty. “Okay, stop pushing, no point in straining yourself, because you’re going to need to save your energy. I don’t think the shooter on the left is quite as skilled so run to the left and around the back of the house, there’s got to be a back door. I’ll provide cover, I still got a half a clip left in this thing and one more full one, so when I go full auto, start running. Here take the pistol.” You say tossing the pistol over the back end of the truck. Honestly you’d rather have Shrimpy do this since he’s a much smaller target, but the little guy is probably hiding in the leg area of either the driver or passenger’s side of the truck hoping not to get hit. You take a deep breath as more bullets tear into the sides of the truck. You grip the rifle and exposing only a bit of your hands, you blindly fire and spray the left area of the house where the second shooter is. Luckily through the gunfire a small cry is heard, you think you’ve hit someone again. In any case it allows time for Lifto and Fatty to crouch run towards the house, hug the wall and then crawl around the corner. Fatty sure is fast when he wants to be, you just hope he doesn’t suffer a heart attack. Meanwhile you hear shouting within the house. “Clem! I’m hit! Ohhhhh…(sob)” “Honeypie?! Honeypie? No no no…” With the gunfire completely stopped Shrimpy takes the opportunity to get out of the truck and run behind it. “Suzy? You still here?” you hear him ask. “Yeah, I’m still here. Just stay behind the truck I’m gonna…” you start to say before you’re interrupted “NO! GODAMNIT! NOOOO! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU ALL!” Clem the farmer shouts and now the sounds of gunfire start up again, except this time he’s not firing a rifle anymore, the booming sound indicates a shotgun of some kind. As you try to reload your last assault rifle clip, the truck continues to suffer the impact of shotgun rounds. In fact they are starting to damage the truck enough that one of them going through and hitting you is a very real possibility. You roll over to the other side of the truck in an attempt not to get hit. “I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU!” you hear him bellow. You’re too busy keeping down and redloading. And then you hear nothing, followed by a pistol shot and then another. You take the opportunity to quickly climb out of the truck bed altogether. “Suzy, did they get him?” Shrimpy asks “I don’t know…” you say and peek your head out hoping that this isn’t a mistake. You soon see Lifto standing in the front doorway with the pistol in hand. “We got all of these bastards. It’s safe.” He says. You and Shrimpy both step out from the cover of the truck and make your way to the house. First thing you notice is the first man you shot near the entryway, apparently he tried to crawl away soon after the shoot out started and died shortly afterwards. Given his disfigurement and from what you could tell of his voice, he might’ve been mentally retarded. You remember hearing “junior” being said, so you’re guessing he was the son. You don’t exactly feel great about shooting him. It really was an accident. Seeing the other two bodies don’t exactly make you feel any better. The farmer’s wife lies dead in the dining room area. She’s actually bigger than Fatty which means she’s indeed quite on the large side. She has several gunshot wounds to her upper body. You knew you hit her, but you just didn’t know where. Your stomach begins to feel slightly bad when you think about it. Finally you see the farmer himself, or Clem as you heard being shouted. Lifto mentions that Clem was so focused on you that he realized too late that someone was sneaking up on him. Lifto mentions that he shot him in the back and then while Clem was still flopping about on the floor trying to turn over with his shotgun, Clem put one in his skull. You didn’t even kill Clem and you still feel weird about it. You don’t understand why you’re feeling slightly sick about all this. Or rather you’ve got an idea why, but considering the little creature rampage at the carnival it isn’t like you haven’t seen gruesome death before, but this is somehow different. The adrenaline and survivalist mindset you put yourself into has disappeared now that the danger has passed so you are left with the grim aftermath of your actions. The realization that you’ve killed an entire family that was really just defending their home is what is getting to you. That and the fact that you feel like this whole incident is your fault. Adding Klepto’s death to the mix and you’re directly and indirectly responsible for four people’s deaths. “Toilet.” You say in a daze. “What?” Shrimpy asks. “I’m gonna be sick…” “I think I saw one over towards the back of the house, it’s…” You don’t wait for Lifto to finish you just run in the direction. Trying to keep from throwing up and you just manage to make it to the toilet where upon you promptly vomit your guts out. Your fellows come to see how you’re doing. “Suzy, are you alright?” Shrimpy asks. “Yeah, you aren’t sick are you?” Lifto asks. It takes you awhile to answer, but eventually you manage it. “Uh…(pant)…I just…I dunno…yeah I’ll be fine. I think the stress of all this just got to me. Uh…” You say. “Well, it’s understandable. Look, why don’t you go lie down somewhere? You’ve done enough for today. The rest of us are gonna drag these bodies out of here. It’ll take all of us, lord knows what the hell they were eating on this farm, but everyone here seems to be Fatty’s size or bigger. Probably should look around the rest of the farm as well. Make sure nobody is hiding in the barns or something.” Lifto remarks. “Yeah…okay…” you say walking past Shrimpy and Lifto. As you slowly walk back towards the front of the house, Fatty comes down the stairs. “Well the upstairs is clear from what I can tell. Nobody up there. Hey Suzy, you okay? Could hear you retching from up there.” Fatty asks. “Yeah, just need to lie down.” You say. “You and me both, but I suppose Lifto is going to need me to help him move out these bodies. Anyway, there are some nice beds upstairs, probably should take one of them.” At this point you feel so wobbly that you wonder if you can even make it up the stairs. > You use the downstairs couch You’re so tired, you don’t want to be bothered with stairs right now. You collapse on the nearby sofa and close your eyes. “Try to keep it down please.” You say. Everyone agrees, but the act of moving bodies out isn’t exactly quiet work. Especially when they try to move the farmer’s wife, which even with Lifto helping, isn’t an easy task. “Damnit Fatty get her fucking leg, I’m losing my grip.” Lifto says. “This bitch is bigger than me! I’m having a coronary just trying to move her.” Fatty replies. “Don’t look at me, I’m doing the best I can with this leg, we should just drag her out.” Shrimpy adds. “Okay, okay, drop her.” A loud thud of a dead body hitting the floor fills your ears. Them trying to drag her doesn’t go too much quieter, Fatty ends up knocking over a table lamp and at this point you know trying to sleep on the sofa is a losing proposition. You don’t get mad since it really isn’t their fault, but you do get up in silence and make your way up the stairs. Really you’re still a bit wobbly from your tiredness and your eyes are half sleepy, but thanks to the railings, you’re able to maneuver yourself to the top without falling. Unfortunately, that isn’t the danger. When you get to the top of the stairs, you see a young woman standing before you holding a knife. It looks like she was sneaking to one of the other rooms when you appeared. The woman is a bit surprised when she sees you and you’re just barely awake enough to realize that you’re in danger, you’re not quite awake enough to react in time. With a short rush towards you she stabs you in the right tit, causing you to fall backwards. The knife wound wouldn’t have killed you since it didn’t hit vital organs, but breaking your neck falling down the stairs sure does. The rest of your friends come running back inside from the noise and will probably avenge your death, but obviously you won’t be alive to thank them.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “…don’t delay, buy a Ground Zero shelter today!” “Fatty turn that radio off, there hasn’t been anything on it of importance for hours. It’s just those damn Ground Zero ads. Christ, you’d think someone would be reporting about oh you know a zombie apocalypse?” Shrimpy says. “I still say those things are still alive. The ones we saw didn’t look like they came back from the dead or anything.” Fatty remarks. “Well whatever, still seems like reporting SOME sort of outbreak would be of importance.” “Maybe its local and not happening anywhere else?” At this point your eyes open and you completely rouse from your sleep. “(Yawn) What’s going on?” you ask. “So you’re finally awake.” Shrimpy says. “We’ve been driving all night?” you ask. “Somewhat. Fatty here pulled over at one point and we both slept a little. If you’re wondering about the gruesome twosome back there, we checked on them and from what I can tell both of them feel fine. In fact I think they’re both still sleeping. Guess all that bite drama yesterday really exhausted them. Dunno if that means they’re okay or not, but right now we do have another problem.” Shrimpy says. “What’s that?” you ask. “Well Fatty here managed to get us fucking lost.” “Hey it’s not my fault, I couldn’t see shit in the night and I thought we were on a main road. Damn GPS.” Fatty says. “Told you that it was broken and hasn’t worked correctly for years. Anyway, I know you’re native to this area so I’m hoping you know your way around.” Shrimpy says. A brief glance of the practically non-descript landscape to the left and right of you leaves you at a loss. “Sorry, but like I said, I never was a big traveller. Never left the basement if I could help it.” You say. “Oh yeah, that’s right. Well any suggestion regardless of that fact?” Shrimpy asks. You don’t really have any, though you probably should be near some sort of farmhouse as you do know there are some out this way. You could get your bearing by stopping at one and asking for directions. You also remember Fatty’s comment about supplies. “There should be some sort of farmhouse nearby. Just keep driving along this road and we’ll probably hit one where we can ask for directions and possibly get supplies.” “Sounds like as good of an idea as any.” You really don’t know if that will be the case, you’re just hoping at this point. Fortunately, your hopes come true this time. “Well, there’s a house. Can’t tell if anyone is home or not though.” Fatty says pulling up to a large traditional looking farmhouse. “Okay, so how are we doing this?” “Well…I suppose I’ll go up to the front door and see if anyone’s home and the rest of you guys stay in the truck.” You say. “You nuts? This place looks like it’s out of a horror movie! Might be a bunch of psycho rednecks living in there! They see a pretty young thing like you and they’d grab you before we could even do anything.” Shrimpy remarks. “Right like arriving at a door with a group of clowns isn’t straight out of a horror movie. I’m currently the only one dressed in regular clothing and not covered in blood, I think it would be best if I just asked for help at first.” “Hey what are we going to do with Klepto and Lifto?” Fatty asks. “Well check on them again and if they seem to be well unchain them I guess. I mean they could use a stretch. Anyway like I said I’m going to the door. I’m taking the pistol with me and I’m confident that if something does happen you’ll be able to react in time to save me from getting chopped up or whatever you think is going to happen. We need help getting back on track and looking at the gauge we might even need gas so hopefully they got that here too. Don’t worry I’ll be fine.” You say and get out of the truck. You make your way towards the front porch looking around the entire time. This place is creepily quiet. Seems like you should at least hear the sounds of animals or something. Shrimpy’s got you totally paranoid now. You really weren’t worried until he mentioned psycho hillbillies. You look back at the truck. “Goddamn it Suzy, you need to brave through some of this shit yourself. You survived your serial killer uncle for Christsake. Nothing is going to happen, probably just some kindly old farm couple that lives here.” You mutter to yourself and walk up the stairs and knock on the door. You knock several times with no answer, but just when you’re about to give up it opens. “WHO YOU!?” a large disfigured man exclaims completely scaring the shit out of you and causing you to fall backwards. You’re in a state of utter fear as this large freak approaches you with his hand outstretched towards you… Even in your fearful condition, you’re still able to react to a dangerous situation. You pull the pistol that you had on you and shoot the disfigured man. You hit him twice in the body and he reels backwards bellowing loudly as his body hits the front door and then the house’s front room floor. “WHHHHHHY!? GOING TO HELP YOU!” the man shouts. “Junior? What in tarnation is goin’ on down there? I hope you didn’t shoot yourself in the foot carrying your father’s rifles again, you know how he hates a waste of ammo.” An older female voice shouts from inside. “MAMA! MAMA! HURT A LOT! BAD GIRL HURT ME!” the man cries. “If you’ve been fightin’ with you’re sister again…oh my god…JUNIOR! CLEM SOMEONE SHOT JUNIOR!” you hear the older female voice scream. By this time you’re running back to the truck, which Shrimpy has gotten out of. Lifto and Klepto are also both awake and shouting at this point. “Get back in the fucking truck! We gotta…” you start yelling and then a shot from one of the farmhouse windows rings out. You hear it whiz by your ear causing you to drop to the ground immediately. You continue to crawl towards the truck where you hear more gunfire behind you and the sounds of an assault rifle returning fire. You hear someone trying to start the truck, but a few more shots hitting metal seem to put an end to that causing the engine to make a less than operational sound. “Fatty get out of the front seat!” Shrimpy shouts. You hear more gunshots followed by Fatty crying out, though you don’t know if he’s actually gotten hit severely since you just hear “OW MY ASS!” The whole time you’re praying that you don’t get shot in the back, but you’re the lucky one… Ever the white knight, Klepto attempts to go “rescue” you. “Klepto get out of the open!” you hear Lifto shout. “Suzy’s out there I can’t…” Klepto’s words are cut short when a bullet to his skull drops him. In fact he drops about a few feet in front of you. You try to put the sight of his death out of your mind as you continue to crawl towards the truck. “YOU FUCKERS AREN’T TAKING THIS FARM! THIS FARM IS MINE! ALL OF YOU SONSOFBITCHES ARE GONNA PAY FOR WHAT YOU DID TO MY BOY!” a male voice shouts. You finally reach your destination where the rest are hiding behind the back of the truck, though Fatty’s having a hard time of it due to his size and the fact he’s got a bullet in his ass. The shooting on both sides for now has stopped though. “Shit, shit, shit, Klepto’s dead! That redneck bastard says that we’re going to pay, no fucking way, HE’S gonna fuckin’ pay!” Lifto says which is a bit surprising considering that he was ready to kill Klepto himself just yesterday. “Fuck, my ass…ah! Shit…wish I had a gun, I’d shoot that fucker in the ass. Not the cheek either, the fucking HOLE!” Fatty says who is normally calm, but given he got shot his anger is a bit understandable. “Well luckily I picked up a few extra clips back at the carnival and Suzy’s probably still got a few shots left. I say we can probably take out the shooter with a bit of strategy. Just as soon as we come up with one of course.” Shrimpy remarks. You don’t know how to feel about all this. Maybe it’s all the increased violence over the past few days along with losing Klepto, but your clown crew is starting to become a lot more vicious, though events haven’t exactly been encouraging a peaceful life lately. You can’t help but feel a little responsible for this current situation though. The retard was just trying to help you up from your fall, but you couldn’t have known that…you just reacted to your fear. You were the one who harmed the farm inhabitants first even if the rest of your clown friends think you were being attacked. Part of you wants to just run from this place, but where would you go? Staying of course means doing more things you don’t necessarily want to do…but then you think if you can put yourself in the “right” frame of mind you’ll be able to do it. The farmer HAS tried to kill all of you and did succeed in killing Klepto who attempted to save you, surely revenge for that isn’t totally wrong? > You run away You might not know where you’re going to go, but staying around here seems like it will definitely lead to more death, namely yours. “Guys, I’m making a run for it. I can’t do this.” “Suzy, that asshole killed Klepto! We can’t just let these rednecks get away with that!” Lifto says. “And they shot me in the ass!” Fatty adds. “And I killed one of them, granted it was an accident, but that’s probably why they’re shooting at us! They aren’t completely at fault for thinking we’re here to hurt them. In fact they’re completely correct in that assessment given that you all want to get revenge. Look, I’m getting the hell out of here, and I hope the rest of you are with me on this. It sucks what happened to Klepto, but if we stay here, we’re going to end up like he did!” you exclaim. Lifto and Fatty are both unmoved by your words and tell you quite colorfully how disappointed they are in you. Shrimpy however is silent, and then passes his assault rifle to Lifto. “Here. At least lay down a bit of covering fire while we run for it.” Shrimpy says. “You’re… you’re leaving? Wow…Shrimpy. I could’ve understood if you had stuck with the rest of the dwarves back at the carnival, but looks like you were just following Suzy’s ass the whole time.” Lifto remarks. “Think whatever you want. Just cover us.” “Fine. But given everything we’ve been through, I’m starting to think this girl is a fucking jinx and following her is just going to get you killed.” Lifto remarks. “Well then you should be successful in blasting those farmers then, you ready or not?” Lifto reloads the rifle and without another word begins firing on the farmhouse. You and Shrimpy both sprint away from the truck as fast as you can hoping that you don’t get hit. Fortunately it seems that the farmer is focusing on the immediate threat, which is Lifto. You don’t look back you just continue running and try to keep as low as possible. Eventually you get yourself lost in some high grass. You hear someone still running close behind. “Shrimpy?” “Yeah, its me. (Whew) I think we’re far enough now. Hold on, (pant) let me catch up to you. Damn grass is too high for me.” you hear him say. “Follow my voice. Wait, I can hear you, let me just…” you begin to say and turn around to walk in the direction of his voice. Unfortunately you don’t notice the bear trap on the ground. You must’ve just missed it when you ran this way before, but you don’t miss it this time. The device springs and your left leg is suddenly crushed by a forty pound snapping jaw made of metal. Your leg is most certainly broken, and you are most certainly in more pain than you could ever imagine. Before you start to go into shock from the pain, you scream loud enough that Shrimpy definitely hears you and runs in your direction. “Oh my god, oh Suzy, oh shit!” he exclaims. “I…I…(sob) I…(sob)” you can’t even form a coherent sentence; you’re on the verge of passing out and crying uncontrollably. Shrimpy attempts to pull the trap open, but he isn’t quite strong enough and just causes you more agony. “NO! (sob) Just…(sob) I…(sob)” you cry out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll get help! Just hang on!” Shrimpy says and runs back in the direction of the farmhouse. You don’t stop him and between the crying and wishing that you never left the basement you soon fall unconscious from shock and pain. You don’t know how long you’re out for, but when you come to, you wish you hadn’t. “Knew it would be a good idea to lay dem traps out here. Never know who might be sneakin’ through this tall grass.” You see a large man in overalls carrying a shotgun say as he prods you with the barrel of the weapon. “Please…help…” is all you can utter. “Help? Like you and your evil clown friends helped each other in killing my boy and tryin’ to kill the rest of my family? I dunno what sort of fucked up psychos y’all are, but you messed with the wrong family this day. Say hi to your friends in clown hell, bitch.” You weakly put your hands in front of your face and then the farmer pulls the trigger.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>MONDAY “…our shelters are all equipped with the latest in state of the art technology, order now and…” Click. You fell asleep watching tv again. Seems like they’re playing those damn commercials all the time now. Nothing like praying upon people’s fears due to recent world events. You look at the time and see that you’ve slept for most of the morning, but given that you’re going to the circus to apply for a job you figure they will be open all night. You also check your phone and see that Bobby’s been trying to reach you, but you can’t let yourself get distracted today. You need to focus on your goal of becoming a clown! You take Peter’s car and head towards the circus. The drive is fairly uneventful though one thing you notice is the increase in police cars and police in general. Apparently there’s been some civil disturbance in multiple locations. You swear this one of the reasons why you never like leaving the basement in the first place. You hate the chaotic nature of people. But then, if you have any hope of being a clown, you’re going to have to get used to dealing with crowds and people. In fact you’re going to have to get used to a lot of things, but you can’t let yourself get a panic attack about this. You have to go through with this. Eventually you arrive at your destination. Or at least you assume it is. Peter wasn’t joking when he said it resembled a gypsy camp as opposed to a proper circus. You see a lot of little tents and some trailers, but nothing like a “big top.” Most of the people here are dwarves and last time you knew there wasn’t a large population of little people in your town, so you can only assume that they’re part of the circus. In fact from what you can tell there aren’t actually any customers, just carnies. As you wander a bit, you start getting a lot of looks, you aren’t sure if they’re staring at you because you’re an outsider or if they’re just gawking at you. Might be a bit of both. Doesn’t take long before you’re surrounded by a lot of the little people and you start to feel like Dorothy. “Hey goldie with the legs, what’re you doing around here? We’re not open yet.” One of their numbers says. “Oh, well I wasn’t here for that. I’m here because…” you take a deep breath. “I want to be a clown!” That certainly wasn’t the response that they were expecting. You hear a few whispers before the one that was talking speaks again. “A clown? Heh, well I’m not sure how successful that’s going to work out for you, but luckily for you the owner of this fine circus is also a clown, so you’ll need to speak with him either way. He’s in the tent over there. Roofie is probably still hung over so try to speak quietly.” “Roofie?” “Yeah, that’s his clown name… actually it mean be his real name as well. Anyway, don’t worry he’s not a rapist or anything like that, he’s just a drunk. In fact he’s probably the most mentally stable clown that we’ve ever had in this circus!” Taking the dwarf’s directions, you head over to Roofie’s tent. The smell of booze is strong and when you enter you see a balding older man in oversized pants and suspenders sitting at a table holding his head in both hands. Beer and whiskey bottle are plentiful enough that you make yourself heard just by tripping over some. “Goddamn it, it isn’t fucking showtime and nobody’s been coming anyway! Leave me alone, shit!” Roofie shouts not even looking up and continuing to hold his head. “Uh Mr. Roofie, I was told to speak to you.” Roofie turns and looks at you. A big red nose still on his face. “Huh? Wbo the hell are you? You look way too damn classy to be any whore that I’d be able to afford.” “My name’s Suzy and I want to be a clown.” At this point Roofie slowly gets up from his seat kicking a few bottles aside. You continue to stand there starting to wonder if this was such a good idea. “A clown? Now why the hell would a cute blonde like you want to be a fuckin’ clown. Doesn’t make sense. You playin’ some sort of angle honey, because I assure you I’m in no mood and I ain’t got any money for you to grift anyway.” “No, it’s always been a life long dream ever since I was a little girl!” you say and then start to go into detail of how you enjoyed circus clowns and a bunch of other life story shit that doesn’t really interest Roofie. In fact he’s just struggling to stand up and listen right now. “Alright, alright, enough! Shit. I get it. (Sigh) Look honey I dunno what to tell you, we’re not exactly the Ringling Brothers here. I’m also not exactly looking to hire and I barely keep this place running as it is.” “Please let me be a clown! Just give me a chance!” “Argh, too fucking loud! Fine show me your clown stuff, just keep your voice down.” “Clown stuff?” “Uh yeah, like can you juggle? A little magic maybe? Some slapstick? Do you have a character like being a hobo or something? What you think it’s just easy as putting on white face make up, jumping around and laughing like an idiot?” “Well sort of…” “Sheesh. That’s the kind of thinking that makes us look creepy rather than amusing. You do realize that most people hate clowns right? Doesn’t help that we’re constantly vilified in horror movies nowadays. Yer wastin’ my time and yours if you don’t even know the basics.” Roofie isn’t exactly inspiring your confidence in this anymore. You feel like just heading home, but can’t run from this like you do with everything else, you’ve got no other options! You start to break down in tears. “Maybe I don’t know the basics, but I’ll work hard! (Sob) I’m serious about this! (Sob) I’ve tried to get a job everywhere else and if I don’t get this, I’ll get kicked out of my house! This is my last chance! (Sob)” you exclaim in between the tears. “Last chance? Darling, if bein’ a clown is your last chance, then you’ve got some major problems. (Sigh) I dunno even know why I’m entertaining this save for the fact that you’re easy on the eyes even without the need for alcohol and I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress. Besides if the news is any indication, we’re all gonna be dead by nuclear fire soon anyway, so fuck it. All right, stop yer weepin’ an maybe we can do something with you.” You clear up your eyes a bit completely oblivious to Roofie’s brief doomsday expectations. “So you’ll help train me?” “Well, hopefully you’ll pick up something in time, but I’m not going to bother with regular training, you’re going to learn trial by fire which all good clowns do anyway. Now the greatest thing going for you is that you’re cute, so I’m thinkin’ we create a character for you that utilizes your, shall we say natural talent.” “Wait, I’m not going to have my breasts exposed while wearing nothing but red clown noses on my nipples do I?” you ask with concern. “(Snort) Jesus girl. No, nuthin’ like that.” Roofie chuckles “You’ll be fully clothed, though you’ll still be cute lookin’. Kinda like that one girl. Y’know in the funny books? The one with that rich vigilante. Anyway, the key thing to remember is you need to act cutesy. That’s going to be your character. You’ll be a cute clown while all the other clowns around you hilariously fail to try to win you over, hit each other with mallets and all that sort of shit…hmmm, this is actually sounding like a pretty good skit. I’m going to go round up the others and have a run through. In the meantime there’s a bunch of clown outfits in the trunk over there. Fairly certain we got a bunch of unused girly ones that should fit you. Some make up over and a mirror over there. Don’t worry about getting that just right for now since I know the lighting sucks in this tent. And uh, I dunno try to practice acting demure and shy.” Roofie leaves the tent and you’re left realizing that you might just succeed at getting this job! You quickly go through the trunk and find some pink and black-checkered leotard thing with a mini-skirt attached around the waist. It fits and fortunately while form fitting, it isn’t excessively tight, though your legs are still exposed so you put on some knee high purple striped leggings. You feel sort of vulnerable undressing in a tent that someone could just enter at any time, but fortunately there’s at least a privacy-screen you can dress behind. You complete your look by putting your hair in girlish pigtails and applying a bunch of white face make up on and making your eyelashes and lips stand out with black eye liner and red lipstick. You haven’t had time to practice when Roofie returns with a bunch of other men in various clown outfits. One of them is even a little person like you met out front. “Goddamn Roofie, I think I’m gonna have to rethink my plans of leaving your shitty carnival.” One of them says. “Leave? Hell, I think I’m in love.” Says another before Roofie speaks up. “Holy shit girl, I said cute clown, not harlequin seductress! You might need to tone it down in the future we’re still trying to run a family show more or less. All right never mind, let’s run through this and you guys TRY to remember to keep your tongues in your mouth on occasion.” So you run through the routine while Roofie gives everyone directions. At first you naturally feel a little unready and uneasy what with everyone flirting with you, but soon you start to get into the swing of things. In fact it starts to come easy, you bat your eyes, give a few girlish giggles when someone slips and falls trying to give you a balloon flower and similar things. Eventually Roofie stops everyone and says the skit needs to be refined a bit, but it should work. He then tells everyone to leave since he wants speak with you privately. This seems to disappoint the others who all continue to stare at you while leaving. “Well, other than the fact that I could tell some of them were having a really hard time in not actually groping you, I’d say that went well and even you seem to have gotten into character quickly. Maybe you do have what it takes after all. You still seem a little nervous though, which sort of helped your performance, but I’d rather you remain at ease. Anything that can help with that?” Roofie asks. “Well its like you said, I partially felt like one of them was going to jump on me at any given time. I mean is that something I’m going to have to worry about?” “Nah, that won’t happen. We carnies have a rule against hurting each other. I mean I won’t lie that they aren’t going to stare a lot at you and most likely a few are going to make crude comments, but that’s about as far as it is going to go if you decide to join and stay with us.” “You want me to join?” “If you’re still interested, sure. I think you’ve got something to offer. Though like I said, I’m still not sure why someone like you would want to join a broken down circus like this one. I still think someone like you would be a model or something.” “Well, I’m wearing an outlandish outfit, my face is all painted up and a bunch of guys are falling over themselves just to get a look at me. Seems like I’m doing the same thing as a model save for the eating disorder.” Your comment causes a laugh from Roofie. “Ha ha! That’s pretty good. I think I’m making the right decision. Okay, so about your sleeping arrangements, I might have to re-arrange some folks and that’s always going to cause problems, so you might have to sleep in your car for tonight…” “Wait you want me to move in here?” “Well yeah. I mean I told you we weren’t going to be staying here too much longer and you have to know that circus’ do tend to travel right?” “Yeah, right. Of course. It’s just, heh, I guess when I jumped into this I didn’t think all of it through. Though that’s probably obvious.” “Hrm, well it’s your choice. I’m not gonna lie and say this life is the easiest and if you feel more comfortable at home or have loved ones you don’t want to leave that’s understandable.” “I dunno if I’d say all that, but the concept of leaving my home…well it’s a bit of a big change for me. Like a VERY big one. And oddly, this opportunity has me seriously considering it.” “Well you do what’s in your heart. Anyway, we aren’t leaving today or even tomorrow, so I mean if you want to go back home and pick up some stuff, say goodbye to whoever, then you’ve got time. But even though we’re not leaving tomorrow we are going to be open for our last show and I’ll need you here. I’m hoping we’ll at least get some people here and make at least a bit of money before picking up stakes and all that.” You aren’t sure what to do. The logical thing to do would be to go back home and gather some belonging, say a few goodbyes and try to convince Peter to drive you back up here so he gets his car back. But there’s something within you that wonders if you shouldn’t just make a clean break immediately and stay. You know yourself and if you get back home you’re likely find some reason to stay and back out of this opportunity. You think about Bobby and how he’d be one of those reasons. You still haven’t called him back. > You head back home You should head back home to gather your things and you at least should return Peter’s car back. You’re confident that he’d drive you back here. You still aren’t sure about calling Bobby. If he finds out your intentions, he might do something crazy…well other than the usual craziness he participates in. Might be best to still not return his call. “I appreciate this opportunity Roofie. I’ll be back later today or tomorrow morning at the latest.” “Hm, okay. See you later then.” Roofie says and you leave the tent to quickly make your way back to your car. You realize that you’re still in your clown outfit as you’re driving off. Oh well it hardly matters. Well other than Peter is probably going to get freaked out when he sees you. You head back towards town and halfway there you suddenly hear the sound of a tire blowing out. “Oh what the fuck!?” you exclaim, in your attempt to keep the car from swerving. You pull over to the side of the road. You get out and see your front driver side tire is completely fucked. While you don’t have any experience in changing one yourself, you go and check if there is a spare anyway. You open the trunk and of course there is nothing in there. Or rather nothing that can help you. You do find a bunch of your old clothes that Peter probably stole a long time ago.. While its possible someone random might try to help you on this road, you don’t hold out a lot of hope. Or rather the element that usually traverses this area usually consists of trailer trash types that you definitely don’t want to put up with. Lacking any better options, you decide to call your younger sister Donna and hope that maybe she’s not bust partying. No answer, but you leave a message. You also call Julie, but have the same amount of luck. You then try to call Peter, since he’ll definitely want to know about his car. Again, you get no answer, so you leave a message. Some cars pass you on the road, so far its looking like nobody is helping you. You wonder if it might be the clown costume though. You have the temptation to call Bobby, but you resist. “Great. I finally start to get something going with my life and fate decides to kick me in the face for it.” You say sitting in the car. It starts to get dark and nobody has returned your call yet. Tired of waiting around for help you come to a decision. You go back and grab your old clothes from the trunk of the car and start walking back to the carnival. It’ll be a long walk, but given how everyone in your family has failed spectacularly in even returning your call you figure you’ll be better off just making a clean break and not go back home after all. At least you’ve got a few extra clothes. You walk for quite some time and a couple vehicles pass you, but once again nobody offers you a ride. Looks like the clown outfit might be warding off people. As they say, there is nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight. There is also nothing funny about two rednecks in a pick up truck at night either… And that’s exactly who rides up along side you. A fear wells up within you, but you try to ignore it. “Woo weee! Look at chu’. You from dat carnival a few miles up dah road?” one of them shouts from the passenger side. “Something like that.” “Mm, yeah I don’t usually go fer clowns…but damn are you fine. You fill out that outfit something fierce! You remind me of that girl from the funny books. Y’know that crazy guy’s girlfriend who fights that bat guy.” You continue to try to ignore him and step up your pace. “So, you need a lift back to your carnival sweetheart? We got room.” “No, the back of your truck looks full of scrap metal.” “Oh honey, you wouldn’t ride back there. You’d ride up here with us. Maybe you could even sit in my lap.” You’re starting to get worried now. “No, I’m okay. Thanks though.” “I don’t think yer understandin’ me missy, this ain’t a fuckin’ request! Hugo stop the goddamn truck, this one’s gonna give us shit!” the hick says and you don’t even waste time, you start running before he even gets out of the truck. It’s a long dark lonely road and you’re a young woman screaming and running from psycho hillbillies. It would sound like a bad horror movie if it weren’t actually happening. So far you’re out pacing them so you figure if you stick to the road you’ll be fine and maybe even be lucky enough to have someone pass by to help you. You look back and see the one from the passenger seat still far behind you, in fact you don’t even see the other one. But you do hear shouting by the one chasing you. In a few moments you hear the sound of an engine see the glow of headlights right behind you. They’re not going to bother chasing you so much as they’re just going to run you down! At this point you get off the road and you do, but the truck just follows you into the high grass and at the speed it’s going it succeeds in hitting you at a good speed. You go flying several feet way into the field. You still live, but your body is broken in several places. You cry out followed by several whimpers of someone to help you. Of course there is no one and all it does is let the two hicks know where you’ve landed. You can’t even crawl away. In a few moments the truck pulls up near your area and your fear and anguish is overwhelming you. This is it. This is how it’s going to end. “Heard that bitch scream, she’s gotta be here somewhere…got her.” The hillbilly says shining a flashlight in your bloody face. “Sheet. You ain’t much now are ya bitch? If you’d gotten in when I told ya, We might’ve even let ya go after we were done havin’ our fun. But noooo, you stuck up pretty bitches always gotta do things da hard way. Fuck it. I don’t care if you are all broken, I’m getting’ a piece of this.” During the last agonizing moments of life are thoughts of how you should’ve stayed in the basement.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>SUNDAY “Are you worried about these uncertain times? Do you…” Click. You’re so damn sick of these Ground Zero commercials you think as you turn the TV off. If you older brother Ben hadn’t shot his family and himself in a tragic paranoid breakdown you can only imagine he’d be going on about how right he was in building that underground bunker out in your backyard. You look at the time and realize you’ve spent most of the day procrastinating watching TV even though there’s not much on that interests you on TV anymore. All the channels you used to watch that had interesting shit on them now all have shallow reality shows and quite frankly you’ve got enough dysfunctional family drama going on in real life without needing to watch it on TV. You remember a time when you could avoid most of the mess by hiding out in your basement. Unfortunately you can’t even do that anymore. Ever since dad drank himself to death, the gravy train of living at home for free came to an end. Without the help of your dad’s pension checks anymore, your older Amazonian sister Kelly said there was no way in hell that she was going to keep supporting the house on her own unless she was the only one living in it. Seeing as she’s a roller derby bitch as well as an illegal fight club brawler, it isn’t like you or any of your siblings were in any position to argue with her. Your younger brother Peter, having given up his lofty dreams of being a famous movie director now spends a lot of his time in the garage making amateur porn with various guys he picks up at the clubs. He makes enough money through his website that it keeps Kelly off his back. He seems to enjoy what he’s doing and at least he’s not stealing your clothes anymore. Your younger sister Donna simply moved out and moved in with your best friend Julie who is still the eternal party girl. Really you’re surprised Julie hasn’t caught every STD known to man at this point. To be honest Donna’s had more in common with Julie than you have for many years now. You’re sure Donna’s a lot happier at a “party house.” As for you, you didn’t have much in the way of options. Trying to get a job has failed spectacularly in this economy. Though your…”unique” and reclusive personality doesn’t exactly help in that department. Given some of the junk that’s laying around the house you sometimes wonder if you shouldn’t try to sell some of it over the Internet to support yourself. Seems like a lot of work though and you’re no wheeler and dealer. Donna suggested that you move in with her and Julie, but that whole scene isn’t for you. As much as you hate dealing with Kelly, you’d also hate having to put up with drunk horny guys (and girls) trying to get into your pants every five minutes, not to mention the loud music, crowds and the ever growing possibility of the cops busting the place for illegal drugs. Which brings you to your boyfriend Bobby Morningstar who naturally has suggested that you move in with him on several occasions. This would be the ideal solution if it weren’t for the fact that his own family consists of like a million siblings that all live in his cult compound. There’s also the fact that his ex-girlfriend/sister Diana is wicked pissed at you for stealing him away from her. It’s been an ongoing source of tension between you and Bobby and you wish he’d just leave them all behind and you two could make a life together elsewhere, but his duty to family is strong, as is his faith to the Babylonian Goddess of Chaos, Tiamat which still involves human sacrifices. Right now you’re having a period of separation with him. Sometimes you think about breaking up with him completely, but then you can’t just dismiss the good times you do have with him. You have that special bond that only a couple could have when one warns the other about their serial killer relative lying in wait for them in the woods. Thank god Bobby took care of your uncle Ed. That had to be the scariest moment of your life dealing with that situation. Of course none of this delightful recap of past events really helps you. Kelly is starting to get very impatient with you and you fear that your months of stalling are coming to an end. Kelly’s currently not home, but she’ll be back in a few hours to get a bit of sleep before heading off to her fight club stuff. Continuing to enjoy the time you have to not have to deal with her you go back to procrastinating, which mainly involves goofing off on the Internet, “stumbling” upon a porn site and then using battery powered means to relieve yourself of stress. Eventually you hear the familiar slamming of the door and stomping around upstairs, which signifies that Kelly is indeed home. “SUZY! Stop splittin’ the kitten and get yer bony ass up here!” you hear Kelly shout. You were afraid of this. You clean yourself up a bit, mentally prepare yourself and then head upstairs. “Hey Kelly…” you start to say, but are interrupted. “Shut up. I’ve got exactly a couple hours to get some rest before I have to drag my ass to my other job to support this fucking house and it’s a fucking mess! You can’t even clean up around here? Did you even look for a job today? Let me guess you spent the whole day fucking around on the Internet and masturbating didn’t you?” “Well uh...” “Jesus fuckin’ Christ Suzy, you’re goddamn useless you know that? The only reason I’m not kicking your ass right now is because I need to save my energy and it would be too fucking easy.” Before you can even speak, Kelly continues her rant. “GET A FUCKING JOB! I don’t care what kind! Just be a contributing member of this household like Peter or get the fuck out like Donna!” “Kelly I’m trying, but I’m just not having any luck in finding anything, can’t you help me out?” you say. “Help you out? I’m helping you out right now by supporting your ass! I’ve been helping you out for quite some time! In fact I originally suggested that you could probably become a ring girl at the fights, but you said no because you didn’t want to dress up in skimpy clothing and parade around in front of a bunch of drunks.” “Kelly, you know I don’t want to dress like that in public, especially not after what uncle Ed made me wear that night…” “Oh here we go, crazy old uncle Ed! How long you going to keep using that as an excuse? Sheesh, the way you go on about it, you act like he raped you. What happened instead? He got killed, you weren’t even touched and you got a fucking boyfriend out of that deal! Some of us should be so lucky to be in a fucked up situation and STILL come out ahead! You know what I deal with on a regular basis? Steroid freaks trying to break my fucking neck that’s what! You think I’d be making a living trading punches with fucktards if I LOOKED like you Suzy? You got the biggest advantage and you’re just wasting it! What the hell is your goddamn problem?” You can see that Kelly is in full-blown jealousy mode and shows no signs of stopping. Attempting to walk away will only result in her getting physical with you so the only thing you can do is endure the verbal assault. “This is sink or swim time sis. You either get your shit together by the end of this week or you’re out on your ass! This sheltered girl act is really fucking OLD! You’re a grown ass WOMAN. Start acting like one! Now get out of my fucking sight.” You meekly slink back to the basement and leave Kelly alone. You silently mope for a while pondering what the hell you’re going to do next. You then notice that your phone has been under your couch cushions and on silent all day. Bobby apparently has been repeatedly trying to contact you. Even left multiple texts saying that he really wants to talk, but the mood you’re in right now, you don’t want to deal with it. You don’t want to deal with anything. You just want to be safe in your own little world in the basement. How you miss those days… Well today isn’t completely over yet. You’ve still got time to salvage some of it. Hell, maybe you can even make a major change in your life. > You move in with Donna and Julie Even if you did manage to find a job, it wouldn’t change the fact that you’ll still have to put up with Kelly’s abuse. She’d just bitch at you for something else. She will always find an excuse. With that in mind, you realize that your options are limited. You’re going to have to move out and go live at the only place available to an unemployed bum like yourself, your friend Julie’s house. Chances are she’s either passed out, hung over or in the middle of yet another one of her seemingly never ending parties, so you figure calling her will be useless and call your sister Donna instead (who might only be slightly more available) Ignoring Bobby’s calls, you speed dial Donna and surprisingly she picks up after only a couple of rings. Even more surprisingly you don’t hear any music or noise in the background. Must’ve caught a rare in between party time. “Hello? Suzy?” Donna asks. “Yeah, it’s me.” You answer. “Hey haven’t spoken to you in awhile! How are things? Not too bad I hope?” “Well…yeah they are kinda. I just got my ass chewed out by Kelly. (Sigh) She’s saying I have to find a job by the end of the week or she’s throwing me out.” “Yeah sounds like her.” “You know how hard it is for me to find a job. I just don’t think it’s going to happen by the end of the week and in any case I don’t think I can take her abuse any longer. I’m done.” “Well you shouldn’t have to put up with her shit. She’s a fucking bullying bitch! I mean that’s certainly why I left.” “Yeah so I was wondering, could I move in with you and Julie?” There’s a bit of a pause. “Well…I mean sure you could come here. I wouldn’t mind and I mean you know Julie would be fine with it, but I know you’re not exactly miss fun and excitement and I think you’re aware of how wild things can get over here.” Donna says. “Yeah, but anything is better than continuing to live with Kelly right now, and given how big Julie’s home is, I’m sure I can still find a quiet corner to not bother anyone in.” you respond. “Okay, well as long as you don’t because a buzz killing party pooper, you’re more than welcome to stay here. So are you coming today?” “I think I need to pack up quite a bit of stuff before doing that. I also have to have some way of transporting the stuff over. I dunno, maybe I can borrow Peter’s car or something.” “What about Bobby?” “Uh, no, I’m still not speaking with him at this time. Besides, he’d probably just try to convince me to live in his compound and I’m just not in the mood to deal.” “Hrm. I certainly understand that. Well, since you said you’re going to have to spend a little time packing up your stuff, I can come pick you up tomorrow. I’d do it today, but the vehicle situation isn’t ideal right now. Got someone repairing my car right now and Julie’s vehicle… well let’s say it’s going to be even longer before . It was quite the part last Friday.” “I’ll bet. Well that sounds like it’ll work for me. When will you get here?” “Oh probably sometime in the afternoon. I’ll call before hand.” “Okay, well I guess I’ll see you then.” “I’ll let Julie know, she’ll be pretty excited.” At this point you say goodbye to your sister and you hang up. You get to packing up as many of your vital things as possible. Really it doesn’t take you too long at all. You didn’t own too much stuff, and stuff like furniture or a bed is going to be provided at Julie’s house though you wonder if you shouldn’t move your bed over there if only because the beds over there are probably like petri dishes. In any event, you spend the rest of your night in the basement, which will probably be your last night ever here. It seems weird and scary, but on another level you are a little excited. Maybe it was time for a change. Who knows, maybe you’ll indulge in a little partying yourself when you get to your new home, hell if anyone deserves to let loose a little its certainly you. > Next day... MONDAY “…act now and Ground Zero will provide a…” Click. As you groggily wake up, you’re wondering if you should bother even taking your TV with you considering the stations just play Ground Zero commercials half the time. You look at the time and see that you’ve slept for most of the morning, but it doesn’t matter considering your sister isn’t going to pick you up until the afternoon. You just hope that she remembers to come get you period. While your sister isn’t as flaky as Julie, she still doesn’t have the greatest sense of responsibility. You also check your phone and see that Bobby’s still trying to reach you, but you still don’t feel like dealing with him. MAYBE later, right now you want to focus on one major decision at a time and moving out of a place where you’ve lived your whole life certainly qualifies. All your stuff is packed and ready to go, and since you can’t do much more until your sister gets here, you just wait. As you continue to wait, you start to get anxious. You start to worry if you’re making the right decision or not. You start to pace in your room weighing all the pros and cons of what you’re doing. “Ugh, this is so stressful…I need to calm down…” you say and start unzipping one of your packed bags to get old reliable to relax you. 20 minutes later… “Hey Suzy?! You down there?” you hear Donna call from upstairs. “Huh? Uh what?! Yeah! Hold on!” you exclaim and stop your stress relief session. As you hurry to get dressed, Donna continues to call down to you. “I called you know, why didn’t you answer?” “Uh, I guess I didn’t hear it. Sorry about that. Be up in a minute.” “I thought you were ready. What were you doing? Splittin’ the kitten down there?” Donna laughs. You don’t answer; you just finish dressing and grab your bags. When you get upstairs, Donna greets you. She’s wearing a shirt that is obviously trying to call attention to her small breasts and pants that are one size too tight to make her ass look like its more filled out, but she’s dressed fairly conservative all things considered. “Were you just taking what’s in your bags? Because we could probably put more into the car.” “Nah, I need to get out of here now. I mean maybe later I could get someone to come get my couch or some of my furniture though.” “Okay, but really I don’t think you’ll need to, Julie’s got spare beds and such. Plenty of space you know.” “Yeah I know. Let’s get going.” You and Donna leave the house and after throwing your bags in her car you and her are soon on your way. Along the way Donna puts on some music. She takes mercy on you by not listening to that techno dance crap that you hate so much, but instead listens to the bubble gum pop crap that you hate slightly less. “So…I found an area of the house where I think you’ll be happiest at yesterday.” Donna says. “Oh? Is it the basement?” “Hah, nah. That’s being used for other things. I was thinking of Julie’s dad’s old office on the far left of the house. I mean Julie never uses it, and besides a few people wandering from the main party to have a quickie in there it’s never used anymore.” “Gee, you make it sound so appealing.” “Well it’s either that or one of the upstairs bedrooms and I can’t promise you won’t be disturbed on regular basis there. At least with the office you can lock it and it’s far enough away from the usual party grounds.” “I guess it’s the best I can hope for, thanks I guess for thinking ahead.” “No problem. You know I’m glad you’re coming to live with us. I mean I know you probably don’t believe it, but I missed talking with you. Julie’s fun and all, but even I get tired from partying ALL the time.” “Well thanks Donna…hey this is like the twelfth police car I’ve seen pulled over and cops arresting someone.” You say looking out the window. “Yeah, I dunno if you’ve noticed since you tend to hang out in the basement most of the time, but there’s been an increase in crime which also means an increase in the cops using that as an excuse to be assholes… like this. Shit!” Nothing like talking something into existence. A cop car puts on its siren and a bullhorn tells you to pull over. You briefly worry that your sister isn’t going to pull over, but she does. Swearing and sighing the whole time. Doesn’t take long before a policeman approaches the vehicle. “Alright where are you going in such a hurry?” the cop asks. “Nowhere. I wasn’t even speeding!” “Is that right honey? Not according to my radar you weren’t. Besides, you ignored a stop sign back there. I think you need to step out of the car.” “Are you kidding me? There wasn’t a stop sign!” “Aren’t you supposed to ask for her license and registration first?” you add. The cop suddenly points his finger at the both of you. “The both of you need to shut the hell up right, before I run you both in for obstruction of justice. Now both of you out of the car now!” Your sister looks at you like she really wants to just try to turn the car back on and try to drive away, but you both know that wouldn’t do any good save for getting yourselves in a whole lot of trouble. The cop calls over his partner who looks equally uncompromising. He tells him to search you, while he starts searching the car while he puts Donna up against the car and starts patting down Donna. “Getting a good feel, you bastard?” Donna remarks. The cop frisking you is slightly better, since you don’t get your girl parts molested, but he certainly comes close. He snickers a bit as you tense up from this indignity. After you and your sister have been frisked. They tell you both to go sit on the curb with your hands locked behind your heads while they search the car. This is a bad situation anyway since you’re obviously dealing with two asshole cops, but who knows what the hell Donna’s got in her car which will give them even more of an excuse to march you off to jail. Speaking of which, Donna whispers to you. “We need to run.” “What?” you ask in a whisper. “Those two fuckers are going to find something in the car.” “You’re driving with illegal drugs in the car?” “Not that much, well at least I don’t think I am…hell I’m not even sure, but I can’t take that chance! We gotta run!” “And where the hell are we gonna go?” “I dunno! We could probably still hide at Julie’s house.” “You’re joking right? That place is probably the first place they’ll look! Shit, Donna! I knew I shouldn’t have left the goddamn basement today!” “Look…they’re pretty involved in searching right now. If we ran we could probably at least lose them until we came up with a better idea.” You get the impression Donna is going to run no matter what and you can’t see how that’s going to be a good idea in any way. You’re also concerned that if she runs and you stay, these two cops will just pin everything on you (whatever that may be). Still, if she sees that you’re determined to stay, maybe she’ll keep to her common sense and won’t run too. > You run It’s really not what you want to do, but if Donna does have drugs in her car like she thinks she does, it’s going to be bad for you whether Donna runs or not. You knew you shouldn’t have left the basement! “Alright, alright, let’s do this, but I don’t think we should run to Julie’s house. I just don’t see it being a safe haven.” You whisper. “Okay, okay, I know where we could run to and hide out for awhile. Got a friend by the name of Tina, she works over at the strip club.” “Great. Which one?” “Kitty City, you know where it is?” “Why the hell would I know where a strip club is?” “Because we’re going to meet up there! If we run, we can’t run in the same direction! We’ll get caught for sure!” “We’re probably going to get caught anyway!” you say. Your voices start to catch the attention of the officers. “Hey! Quiet down the pair of you…HEY! COME BACK HERE!” one of the officers shouts as Donna runs off! You’re so surprised about her deciding that was the time to start running that you don’t even get the opportunity to stand up from the curb before one officer is already chasing Donna and the other has already pulled out his pistol and commanded you to stay put. You meekly put up your hands and lower your head in an attempt to show you have no intention of running. “I’m not going anywhere. Don’t shoot.” You say nervously. The officer sees that you really aren’t a threat puts his gun away, pulls you up roughly by the arm from the curb and throws you into the back of the police car before calling in on his radio about Donna being a runner. While you’re breaking down in tears and worrying about the worst, the officer who threw you into the back of the police car finishes searching Donna’s car. Eventually the other officer comes back as well looking a little worn out. After talking a moment, one of them opens the car door. “Alright, I didn’t find anything in the car, so why the hell did your friend run?” “I…I really don’t know…officer…” you say. “Don’t fucking lie to me or this is going to go very badly for you!” the cop warns and its enough to cause you to yelp a little in fear and begin to cry again. “(sob) My sister…thought you were going to…(sob) find drugs in the car…so she thought it would be better to run. Please I was just driving with her (sob) to find a new place to live! I’ve never done anything (sob) wrong in my life! I’ve…” “Alright, alright, shut the hell up and stop your crying. Shit. (Sigh) Well what do you think?” the officer asks his partner who is still trying to catch his breath. “Did you call in about the bitch running?” “Yeah, but I dunno if anyone’s going to bother chasing down some junkie whore, since it sounds like everyone’s got their hands full especially now that a riot’s broke out at the mall. In fact we’re supposed to go down there and help.” “Another fucking riot?! What the fuck is going on in this town? Someone put something in the water?” “Seems like it. So what do we do with this one? I mean she’s clean and the car’s clean so…” “(Sigh) I dunno. I could think of a few things, but we probably don’t have time for that right now.” The officer that chased Donna looks into the backseat at you. He’s being as intimidating as possible and despite him being red in the face and winded it’s working. “All right blondie, this is your lucky day. Due to the rest of this town seemingly losing its goddamn mind right now and the fact that you’re clean, we’re letting you go. You can take whatever belongings you have in the car, BUT we’re still impounding it if only because your junkie sister made me fucking run several blocks trying to catch her ass.” “Got it. And thank you.” You say and start to get out of the car. Both of the officers help you out…but it isn’t out of kindness. The pair of them take the opportunity to grope your chest and your ass as you step out of the car. “Now I suggest you gather your shit, and take your pretty little ass home.” One of the cops says with a leering grin while other laughs. You really aren’t in any position to argue, fight or anything else. You hate the fact you just got molested, but you know that if you give them any sort of lip, they’re going to do much worse. You quickly get your bags out of Donna’s car and run away from the scene without looking back. When you’re far enough a way, you find some place to sit down and reflect on your situation. You try to think of the positive first and that’s namely things could’ve been a lot worse you. You have no doubt that those cops would’ve done more than just feel you up had they been in a less generous mood. So you’re glad you didn’t get jailed, raped or worse. But then you think about the negative. First off is your sister who fucking LEFT you there. No hint, no “Now!” no clue at all that she was going to choose that particular time to run. Granted you froze up when it came time to run, but she didn’t even look back. You don’t exactly have the best opinion of her right now putting you in a situation like that. Second of all you don’t have a new place to live now or at least you aren’t where you were going to go. As far as you know the offer to live at Julie’s is still open, but it would quite the walk to go there now. A walk that you don’t particularly want to do given the day you’ve had, in fact you’d rather just go back home. Of course the problem with going back home is you can’t stay there so you’re going to have to go someplace else eventually. Of course maybe Peter would let you borrow his car, but so far your track record with your siblings this weeks hasn’t been great. > You walk to Julie's house You might as well continue to Julie’s house. Going back home is just prolonging the inevitable. Also if your sister shows up at Julie’s, you’d like to give her a piece of your mind about her just ditching you like that. Your walk to Julie’s slowly starts to become a worrisome endeavor. You see several fights along with a number of other officers arresting folks. You also see a couple of bad car accidents. While you try to avoid large groups of people, you’re still in the danger zone of what almost seems like chaos on the streets. Those two asshole cops weren’t joking when one of them said it seemed like the entire town had lost its mind. As you quicken your pace to Julie’s in an attempt to get through this madness quicker, a large teenager that’s running from something runs right into you while he’s turning a corner. The pair of you fall on the sidewalk. You’re a little dazed, but before you can even recover the teenager is upon you. “You stupid fucking bitch! Gimme yo’ shit!” he shouts and punches you in the face and then proceeds to attempt to rip your backpack from you, though he’s having a hard time seeing as it’s firmly strapped to your back. The teenager gets frustrated and stops trying to rob you and then just seems to be focused on abusing you. You feel several kicks going into your side and then your face. You plead for him to stop and curl up into a ball, but he’s not even listening, it’s like he’s possessed or something because he actually starts laughing. “There’s that motherfucker!” A voice shouts. You don’t see who it is due to you being curled up and having your eyes closed wishing you were elsewhere, but you soon feel the weight of several someones stepping and falling all over you. The pursuers of your assailant have caught up to him and you are now unfortunately being crushed in the resulting dogpile. You desperately attempt to crawl away feeling the pain of several fists, elbows, knees and feet randomly hitting you in the process. You just want to be home. You manage to crawl out from under the pile and then scramble away as fast as you can only to stumble on your bruised wobbly legs in the middle of the street. It is then where your luck only gets worse when a speeding truck slams into your body which goes flying a few feet in front of the truck only THEN to be run completely over by the same truck which doesn’t stop at all. Your misery is put to an end under the heavy weight of the truck’s tires causing the innards from your mangled body to squeeze out like a tube of toothpaste and painting the street red.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It’s really not what you want to do, but if Donna does have drugs in her car like she thinks she does, it’s going to be bad for you whether Donna runs or not. You knew you shouldn’t have left the basement! “Alright, alright, let’s do this, but I don’t think we should run to Julie’s house. I just don’t see it being a safe haven.” You whisper. “Okay, okay, I know where we could run to and hide out for awhile. Got a friend by the name of Tina, she works over at the strip club.” “Great. Which one?” “Kitty City, you know where it is?” “Why the hell would I know where a strip club is?” “Because we’re going to meet up there! If we run, we can’t run in the same direction! We’ll get caught for sure!” “We’re probably going to get caught anyway!” you say. Your voices start to catch the attention of the officers. “Hey! Quiet down the pair of you…HEY! COME BACK HERE!” one of the officers shouts as Donna runs off! You’re so surprised about her deciding that was the time to start running that you don’t even get the opportunity to stand up from the curb before one officer is already chasing Donna and the other has already pulled out his pistol and commanded you to stay put. You meekly put up your hands and lower your head in an attempt to show you have no intention of running. “I’m not going anywhere. Don’t shoot.” You say nervously. The officer sees that you really aren’t a threat puts his gun away, pulls you up roughly by the arm from the curb and throws you into the back of the police car before calling in on his radio about Donna being a runner. While you’re breaking down in tears and worrying about the worst, the officer who threw you into the back of the police car finishes searching Donna’s car. Eventually the other officer comes back as well looking a little worn out. After talking a moment, one of them opens the car door. “Alright, I didn’t find anything in the car, so why the hell did your friend run?” “I…I really don’t know…officer…” you say. “Don’t fucking lie to me or this is going to go very badly for you!” the cop warns and its enough to cause you to yelp a little in fear and begin to cry again. “(sob) My sister…thought you were going to…(sob) find drugs in the car…so she thought it would be better to run. Please I was just driving with her (sob) to find a new place to live! I’ve never done anything (sob) wrong in my life! I’ve…” “Alright, alright, shut the hell up and stop your crying. Shit. (Sigh) Well what do you think?” the officer asks his partner who is still trying to catch his breath. “Did you call in about the bitch running?” “Yeah, but I dunno if anyone’s going to bother chasing down some junkie whore, since it sounds like everyone’s got their hands full especially now that a riot’s broke out at the mall. In fact we’re supposed to go down there and help.” “Another fucking riot?! What the fuck is going on in this town? Someone put something in the water?” “Seems like it. So what do we do with this one? I mean she’s clean and the car’s clean so…” “(Sigh) I dunno. I could think of a few things, but we probably don’t have time for that right now.” The officer that chased Donna looks into the backseat at you. He’s being as intimidating as possible and despite him being red in the face and winded it’s working. “All right blondie, this is your lucky day. Due to the rest of this town seemingly losing its goddamn mind right now and the fact that you’re clean, we’re letting you go. You can take whatever belongings you have in the car, BUT we’re still impounding it if only because your junkie sister made me fucking run several blocks trying to catch her ass.” “Got it. And thank you.” You say and start to get out of the car. Both of the officers help you out…but it isn’t out of kindness. The pair of them take the opportunity to grope your chest and your ass as you step out of the car. “Now I suggest you gather your shit, and take your pretty little ass home.” One of the cops says with a leering grin while other laughs. You really aren’t in any position to argue, fight or anything else. You hate the fact you just got molested, but you know that if you give them any sort of lip, they’re going to do much worse. You quickly get your bags out of Donna’s car and run away from the scene without looking back. When you’re far enough a way, you find some place to sit down and reflect on your situation. You try to think of the positive first and that’s namely things could’ve been a lot worse you. You have no doubt that those cops would’ve done more than just feel you up had they been in a less generous mood. So you’re glad you didn’t get jailed, raped or worse. But then you think about the negative. First off is your sister who fucking LEFT you there. No hint, no “Now!” no clue at all that she was going to choose that particular time to run. Granted you froze up when it came time to run, but she didn’t even look back. You don’t exactly have the best opinion of her right now putting you in a situation like that. Second of all you don’t have a new place to live now or at least you aren’t where you were going to go. As far as you know the offer to live at Julie’s is still open, but it would quite the walk to go there now. A walk that you don’t particularly want to do given the day you’ve had, in fact you’d rather just go back home. Of course the problem with going back home is you can’t stay there so you’re going to have to go someplace else eventually. Of course maybe Peter would let you borrow his car, but so far your track record with your siblings this weeks hasn’t been great. > You walk home Really after the day you’ve had so far, all you want to do is go home and hide out in your basement, so back home it is. Your walk home isn’t entirely uneventful. You see several fights along with a number of other officers arresting folks. You also see a couple of bad car accidents. While you try to avoid large groups of people, you still are paranoid about someone to try to rob you or accost you in some way, but fortunately you manage to keep your head down and look as unassuming as possible. It isn’t quite chaos on the streets, but those two asshole cops weren’t joking when one of them said it seemed like the entire town had lost its mind. By the time you get back to your own neighborhood, it’s starting to get dark, though your area is actually rather quiet compared to most places you passed through. You just hope Kelly isn’t home because you don’t really feel like dealing with her right now. When you get home, you see Peter’s car in the driveway. Kelly’s vehicle isn’t here though, so it looks like you won’t have to put up with her and that’s at least one good thing that’s happened to you today. (Besides the not getting raped part) Upon entering the house, it’s in same condition as it was when you left, though now you’re hearing a lot of grunting and sounds of ecstasy coming from the garage connected to the house. You imagine Peter is in the process of filming one of his shows again. Not wishing to hear your brother squeal like a pig as he gets fucked for the pleasure of his viewing Internet public, you waste no time in heading down into the basement and settling back into your usual routine in your room. You know this isn’t going to be permanent, but for now at least you can not worry about the pandemonium that’s going on outside. You just wish the TV wasn’t playing so many Ground Zero infomercials. Hours pass as they do and just as you’re getting ready to fall asleep, you suddenly get a phone call. It’s Donna. You almost don’t even bother answering, but you’re curious to see if she’s calling from jail and if she’s delusional enough to think you’ll actually bail her out. “Hey sis, where you at?!” Donna asks. Sounds like music in the background so she must not be in jail. “I’m at home, no thanks to you just ditching me like that!” you say. “You said you were going to run, like I was! Didn’t you do it?” “No, because by the time you took off without at least giving me a signal, one of those assholes was ready to shoot me. So I had to suffer through getting threatened, thrown in the back of a police car and groped a lot more severely than the first time they patted us down.” “Oh geez…they didn’t...um…” “No, they didn’t do that. Though I suspect if that had happened I wouldn’t even be alive to talk to you right now. Your car didn’t have any drugs in it by the way, but they have impounded it and I’m pretty sure they still have you on a watchlist or something for evading arrest.” “Shit. Figured something like that might happen.” “Hm, Yeah and I’m an idiot for nearly going along with your plan, but hey I guess everything went okay for you, I hear the party music in the back so I’m guessing you’re whoring it up with Julie so I’ll let you go so you can have your fun.” “Hold on Suzy. First of all I’m not at Julie’s. I’m at Kitty City like I said I would be. Second, I can’t even get a hold of Julie. She’s not answering her phone. Now of course she could just be busy, but if I got some sort of warrant out on me, then maybe going back there isn’t the best idea right now. I’m thinking maybe I should stay with my friend Tina instead. She’s a stripper that’s entertained at some of Julie’s parties in the past. She’s got room since she kicked her boyfriend out of her trailer.” “Uh huh, well that’s great for you. Glad to see you’ve once again landed on your feet despite evading arrest. Goodbye.” “Suzy, wai…” You hang up. You half expect Donna to call again, but she doesn’t which you’re glad because you’ve run out of patience with her for the day. You settle down for the night and get some sleep, trying to put this horrible day behind you. > Next day… TUESDAY “…if you act now you’ll get a free…” You groggily grab the remote to shut off the incessant noise of the Ground Zero commercial on the TV screen. You grab your phone to check the time and see that once again you’ve slept through the morning as usual. You also see that Bobby tried to call you, but you’re still not in the mood to call him back. Though if you don’t secure a place to live you might not have a choice. Still as far as you know the offer to live at Julie’s is still good, you’re just not sure about how well that’s going to go over now. While you’re trying to ponder your next move, you get a call. It’s Donna again. Might as well get this over with. “Donna, this better be good, because you’re not exactly my favorite person right now.” You say answering the phone. “Whoa! Hold on Suzy! Don’t hang up!” Donna exclaims. “Say what you got to say.” “Okay, look first of all I’m sorry about what you had to go through. I know that had to suck for you. I shouldn’t have convinced you to run anyway. It’s obvious now that was a stupid plan in the first place since I didn’t even have anything in the car. (Sigh) Last night when I was sleeping on a beer soaked couch in a trailer hiding out from the cops I sort of had a revelation of how my choices in life had lead me to that point. I also sort of realized that if I probably continue on this path it’s only going to get worse.” That’s rather philosophical of your sister, and it’s enough to keep your attention. “So I’ve decided that I need to do something with my life and make it better, so I got a job.” Donna says. “A job? How the hell did you get a job so quick? Doing what?” you ask. “I’m going to be a stripper at Kitty City! The owner was offering me a job yesterday and I already was getting tips from guys who mistook me for one of the strippers here anyway. So I figured why not? In fact I’m on break right now.” Why are you not surprised? Donna continues before you can even speak again. “Now before you judge, starting a new life takes money and let’s face it, I don’t have exactly many useful skills that are going to earn me a lot of cash in a quick amount of time. I figure I can earn enough to save and figure things out as I go.” “Hm, well that’s great and all, but why are you telling me all this?” you ask. “Because this is my new start and like I said I feel bad about convincing you to go along with my plan yesterday. Besides, don’t you still need a place to stay? You can come live with me!” “I thought I was already going to do that by moving in to Julie’s.” “Nah, I’m not going back to Julie’s. Too much temptation to go back to my old ways there. I’m moving into one of the trailers at the trailer park.” “Wait. You just started working as a stripper. How the hell did you manage to get a trailer already?” “I secured one after…um talking with the park owner this morning. Look, that’s not really important right now. What is important is I got a deal on a fairly good one and it’s big enough for two of us. It might be a little rough going at first, but I anticipate after a few weeks of teasing these degenerates here, we’ll be living fairly comfortably, if not in the lap of luxury.” “I dunno. While I’m still pissed about yesterday, it does mean a lot that you’re making this pretty generous offer. I don’t know about living in a trailer park though. I mean aren’t you worried about the kind of people there? In fact I can imagine a lot of the type that Kelly associates with come from there, do you really think its safe?” “Safe as opposed to what? Growing up in our household? We had a fucking paranoid psychotic older brother, a sadistic bullying older sister and at one point a goddamn SERIAL KILLER uncle living in our house. At least the hostile rednecks around here won’t be living under our roof! Besides, it really isn’t as bad as you hear.” You find that a little hard to believe considering you’ve heard more than enough stories about the trailer park outside of town. Donna might not think its bad, just because she was living there overnight. “I just don’t know Donna. I mean I wasn’t exactly looking forward to dealing with the non-stop partying at Julie’s, but I’d at least feel a little safer there than I would at the trailer park.” “Huh, don’t be so sure of that. Julie pretty much has gotten to the point where she has an open door policy to let any creepy weirdo that walks in off the street in the house. It’s actually amazing someone like Uncle Ed hasn’t come in and killed us all. Are you heading over there sometime today?” “Well if I can secure a ride over there I will.” “Okay, well if you do get over there could you let Julie know that I’m moving out? She’s still not answering her phone. I’m going to have to make arrangements to get my bigger things, but maybe you could help me get some of my smaller items when I get over there tonight?” “Well, I suppose I could.” You say. “Great. I knew I could count on your Suzy. (Sigh) You really are the good one in the family sis. It’s so unfair that life hasn’t been better to you. Once again I’m really sorry about what happened yesterday. It’s nearly time for me to go out there and shake my ass again so I gotta go. Just…think about what I said okay? If you change your mind about your future living arrangements just come with Tina and me when we go over to Julie’s tonight, or I guess if you’re really feeling adventurous you could always go over to the trailer park yourself. Just go to the owner’s trailer with the big signs around it and mention my name and he’ll let you in my new place. He’s sort of letch, but he’s old so he mostly confines it staring and making the occasional comment. Don’t worry about it.” After another sincere apology about yesterday, Donna finally hangs up leaving you now with a new option. Donna seems to be genuinely trying to change her life in her own way. You almost can’t believe it was Donna on the phone at all. Maybe some sort of pod person replaced her. She also seems to be really making an effort to make things up to you, which is surprising as well. It’s always a rarity in your family when you actually try to help each other out. Still, you’re not sure about this whole living in a trailer park business for several reasons, but you suppose you could give it a little thought at least. In any case, you need to get a ride to wherever it is you’re going to be heading to and that means seeing if your brother Peter is going to be just as accommodating as your sister currently is. You head upstairs and knock on the door to the garage. “Hey, um Peter? You busy?” You don’t get an answer right away, but eventually you do after more knocking. “Yeah, yeah, hold on!” Peter says before answering the door. He’s only peaking his head out, so it’s very likely he’s naked. “Um, sorry to interrupt whatever it is you’re doing, but I need a ride to my new place.” “I thought you moved out yesterday.” “Yeah, there was a slight hiccup in the plan yesterday. Anyway, can you give me a ride over to my new place?” “(Sigh) I’m kinda in the middle of recording something. I’m assuming you’re going to Julie’s?” “Yeah…I think.” You say. “You think? You don’t know if you’re going to live over at Julie’s place or not?” “Well…Donna got a new place of her own and I’m still not sure if I should just move in with her yet.” “Donna got a new…look you know what? I don’t give a shit about any of this.” Peter says and then closes the door. You think that’s the end of it, but he opens it up again, but this time only his hand with some keys in it are coming out. “I’m not your personal taxi service. Here, take my car and return it tomorrow or at least by Thursday. Now don’t disturb me again!” You take the keys and Peter slams the door. This is probably the most helpful he’s been in…well ever. You go back and repack some of your bags and drag them to Peter’s car. After loading everything up in the backseat you pull out of the drive way and wonder which way you should go. > You drive to Julie's house While you haven’t quite ruled out the possibility of living with Donna, you don’t think you’re quite ready to go driving over there yourself and putting up with some old guy perving on you today. If you do decide to go over there, you’ll do it later tonight. Besides, you want to see just how bad it might be over at Julie’s before making a decision. A few minutes of driving to your destination and you’re sure of one thing being pretty bad, the roads! Once again there are cops everywhere, but also ambulances and fire trucks racing to their various destinations too. You nearly turn around and head back home, but eventually you make it to Julie’s neighborhood, which is thankfully not in the midst of anarchy. You pull up to the driveway and get out of the car. You figure you’ll assess the situation before making a decision of whether you’re going to stay or not. You sort of expected to see a few people drinking on the porch or at least hearing loud music as you walk up to the door, but so far it doesn’t sound like any sort of party going on or at least not an overly rowdy one, which is odd considering how people have been acting in this town for the past few days. You knock on the door, but get no immediate answer. After a few more bangs you finally get an answer, but it isn’t Julie. “Hello.” A man says in a flat tone and almost seems to be studying you. He looks like he might be around your age, but he doesn’t look like the sort that would be at one of Julie’s parties. He’s very “ordinary” looking. “Hey. Where’s Julie at?” you ask. “Julie? Oh yes, the owner of this house. Well, I don’t really know. I remember seeing her yesterday, but then she left with some guy and I haven’t seen her since. Of course this being her house she has to return sometime right? Would you like to wait?” the man asks opening the door further to invite you in. Something about this guy feels a little “off” to you. “Wait, who are you?” you ask. “Oh I’m sorry for not introducing myself. I’m Johnny. I was at Julie’s party yesterday. Guess you could say I got a little tipsy and decided I shouldn’t go home in that condition, so I flopped out in the basement. I’m not the only person who did that apparently considering some of Julie’s other guests are still here as well.” You peer inside and see that Johnny is indeed speaking the truth. A couple of people are on the couch playing some sort of video game. “So now that you know who I am, I have to ask who you are.” Johnny says. “I’m Suzy and I’m Julie’s friend.” You say. “I see, well come on in, I’m sure when Julie gets back she’ll be pleased to see you.” You enter the house and the place is in a lot better condition than you would’ve thought for a party house. Johnny quickly closes the door and locks it. Causing you to immediately look back. “You never can tell what weirdo will show up with unlocked doors and all, right?” he says. “Indeed.” You say still getting an uneasy feeling about this guy. “So, you’re one of Julie’s friends. Guess you’re a real party girl, just like she is huh?” Johnny remarks almost in an accusing fashion. “Hardly. Are these all the people in the house?” you ask, pointing to the stoners playing video games and completely ignoring you and Johnny. “Yeah, I mean there were some other people here earlier, but these lot are all that’s left, beside myself. Julie’s pretty cool about letting people just crash here even if she’s not around.” With Johnny creepily hovering near you and the stoners babbling about inane shit, you already realize that this is not going to work for you. “Alright, everyone get out.” You say, but the only one who even hears you is Johnny. “What?” Johnny asks. “Look I hate to be rude, and you probably didn’t know this, but I’m moving in here. Now when Julie is here, she can have all her little drug addled party friends over as much as she likes, I mean its her house after all. But I’m not going to put up with them while she isn’t here! So I want everyone out, you all can come back later when she’s here. Whenever that is.” Johnny’s still the only one who is even paying attention and his facial expression on your stance hasn’t changed. “But if it’s Julie’s house doesn’t she have final say in what goes?” Johnny asks. “Yeah, well when I see Julie, I’m going to have a little discussion with her about our new living arrangements.” You remark. Once again Johnny just stares at you, it almost feels like he’s staring through you. It makes you uncomfortable to say the least. “All right. You’ve got a point. I wouldn’t want a bunch of strangers just wandering around in my home either. I’ll get out of your hair, as for these guys, I can get ‘em to go.” Johnny says and then suddenly shouts at the stoners that everyone has to get out of the house and starts ripping controllers out of their hands. “Hey!” “Not cool dude!” “You dick!” “Sorry guys, but as the old saying goes, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Come on, let’s move it.” Johnny says and eventually the stoners grudgingly shuffle off to leave. Johnny follows behind them. “When you see Julie, tell her it was an excellent party last night.” Johnny says and flashes a brief smile, which comes off more creepy than friendly. You don’t even reply, you just shut the door and lock it, glad to be rid of everyone. Remembering that your sister said that if you did live here, you’d be sleeping in Julie’s dad’s old office. You explore that room first. When you get there it looks pretty much like the same office you remember being in a few times when you played over here. It’s definitely convenient that it has a small private bathroom leading from it as well as a couch that apparently folds out into a bed. After assessing your possible new digs, you decide to go retrieve your bags from the car. You unpack your bags and haul them into the house and head on into your new room. After getting a little bit settled, you figure since you’re all alone in the house, you might as well do something that usually puts you in a better mood. (and you sure could use it) While you’re in the middle of it, you suddenly think you hear something. You call out thinking that maybe Julie is finally home, but when you get no reply, you just check to make sure the door to your room is locked. If Julie does come home, you don’t want her suddenly walking in on you. After getting back in the mood and taking care of your needs you wash up a bit and return to your usual routine of…well doing nothing at all. Hours pass and eventually you start to get hungry so you head to the kitchen in the hopes of finding food. You manage to find a few bags of junk food and some unopened drink in the fridge. Once again while you’re doing this, you swear you think you hear noise. You call out again to see if anyone is here, but there is no answer. Given that it’s now nighttime you’re a little on edge. You know its probably just the house making creaking sounds, but with all the bullshit that’s been going on out in the streets lately you’re just a little paranoid. Just as you’re heading back to your room, the front door suddenly opens! It’s Donna and some other young woman who looks a bit on the trashy side. “Shit! You scared me.” You say. “Why didn’t you pick up your phone? I tried calling you before I got over here.” Donna asks. “I…I guess I had it on vibrate and didn’t hear it.” You say. “Hm. Well I see this place is practically a tomb. I take it Julie isn’t home?” “Nope, I haven’t heard from her either.” “That’s really odd…” Suddenly the trashy young woman speaks up. “Hey Donna are we picking your shit up or what? You know how fucked up it is out there right now and I’d like to get home before it gets worse.” “Oh yeah, better get to it. Suzy, this is my friend Tina.” Donna says and heads upstairs. “Hello.” You say to Tina, but she just grunts at you and heads back outside to her car. Remembering that Donna wanted you to help her move some of the stuff, you head upstairs to her room. “Your friend Tina isn’t very friendly.” You ask. “Yeah, well if you were a horny guy with a hundred dollar bill, she’d be really friendly towards you. Anyway, she’s always been cool with me ever since I’ve known her, plus she helped me get the current job I have.” Donna says as she packs away items. “You need anything for me to carry down?” “Yeah, but not yet. Really I’m thinking I’ll get most of this stuff later when I have a day off. Right now I just want to get the hell out of this town, it’s getting nuts out there!” “Yeah, it was pretty chaotic out there earlier on my drive here. So how was your first day?” “Not bad. As strange as it may seem, it actually was calmer in the club than it was outside. Though having bouncers helps in that area I suppose. Still a couple of fights did break out.” “Shit. You okay? Are you sure the job is safe?” “Oh I’m safe. Like I said, there’s good protection there. Honestly I’m more concerned with the drive TO the club, but I imagine whatever is going on will die down eventually.” “Hope so.” Donna finishes packing a bag and starts to pack a new one and you stand there silent until you hear a noise from downstairs causing you to jump a bit. “Are you okay?” Donna asks. “Yeah, what the hell’s that noise?” you ask, briefly stepping out of Donna’s room to look over into the living room. “Probably Tina.” “No, she’s not down there and besides she went back to wait in the car.” “Well maybe she wandered back in briefly…you seem a little stressed.” “I dunno. The shit’s that’s been going on in town and I guess being alone in the house at night has got me a little jumpy. Sort of concerned that Julie hasn’t come back either.” “Mmm, well that IS odd. I tried calling her again earlier too with no luck. Have you thought anymore about coming to live with me? I told you it would be fine and I know you think the trailer park isn’t safe environment, is this town really any safer right now?” > You go with Donna While you’re still not entirely sure about the trailer park, you have to admit the since you’ve been here in the house you’ve felt a little nervous at times. Almost like you feel someone is watching you. Silly of course, but maybe leaving town is a good idea if it’s getting as chaotic as it has been. You just hope you’re making the right decision. “Yeah, okay. I’ll come with you.” You say. “You will? Great! Seriously, things will be better between us. I’m still really sorry about yesterday Suzy, here.” Donna says and hands you a bunch of money. “What’s this?” “It’s some of what I made today. Oh don’t worry, I still got a lot. I’m telling you with the money I’m making, we might even be able to find some place better to live in a few months! Okay, well I think I’m all packed, go grab your stuff and meet me in Tina’s car. Oh wait, I saw Peter’s car out there. Are you going to follow us in that instead?” “I suppose so, it will probably be less cramped.” You say and head downstairs to your room while Donna follows and heads out the door. It doesn’t really take you long to throw your stuff in your bags since you didn’t really unpack that much. Just as you’re loaded up, you once again feel like you’re being watched. You spin around and see nothing. “You’re giving yourself the creeps Suzy. Nobody’s here.” You mumble. Just as you are exiting your room, it’s a minor miracle that Donna comes back in through the front door. “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU!?” you hear her scream from the living room. This causes you to pause just long enough that the assailant who was going to ambush you when you left your room losses his advantage. However, he’s still intent on killing you though and nearly succeeds in grabbing you, but you manage to back away in time. As you back away you get a good look at him now and he’s not unfamiliar to you. It’s Johnny, but this time his face displays an utter hatred towards you. “Fucking whore! You think you could get away? I heard what you did in here earlier! I got something I can shove up in there to make you feel like you’ve never felt before and never will again!” Johnny screams and swing his knife at you. You continue to back away, but there isn’t much room so you go around the desk for temporary relief, but even if you make it into the bathroom and lock the door you’ll just be trapped in there. You’re so busy trying to survive, you completely forget that Donna is still in the house, but you soon remember when she runs in the room and clobbers Johnny in the back of the head with a small lamp. “Fuck…shit…” Johnny says crumpling to the floor. He’s not dead, but Donna’s too busy calling to you to run to finish him off. “Suzy! Come on! Get out of there!” Donna shouts and you waste no time in doing so. Just as Johnny struggles to get back up, Donna throws the lamp at his head and follows you. In all the excitement you forgot if you have Peter’s keys, but Donna just shouts at you to get into Tina’s car as you exit the house. As you both pile into the car, Tina is more than a little surprised. “What the fuck? Why are you two…” “Just drive! Drive! Drive!” Donna shouts. You’re squashed a bit in the backseat with all the bags and panting heavily, but you’re glad you got out of there. Thought you’re understandably still shaken up. “We need to tell the cops!” you shout. “Tell them what? Have you seen this town Suzy? You think we’re going to get any help? Shit, I probably still got a warrant out on me!” Donna says. Meanwhile Tina is getting annoyed about being out of the loop. “Will one of you bitches tell me what the fuck is going on?! I mean this is my car and I’d like to know if we’re planning on getting shot at!” Tina snaps. “We’re fine. Well not fine, but nobody’s shooting at anyone. Some nut case with a knife was in the house and tried to kill my sister.” Donna replies. “And you didn’t kill him?” “No, I mean maybe. Shit, I dunno. I smacked him in the head twice with a lamp, but I don’t think I killed him.” Donna says. “(Sigh) You should’ve finished him off. I would have.” Tina says. “Tina, I’m not in the mood right now okay?!” Donna shouts. “Fine. Fine. I’m just saying you better watch yourself in the future. Anyway, I need to focus on getting us through this bullshit going on in town, because we could still be getting shot at.” The rest of the drive is in relative silence, broken up periodically by Tina swearing at the road situation and your sister asking if you’re okay since you’re so quiet. Your quietness is due to still being shaken up by what just occurred and also because you just don’t have anything to say at the moment and are just hoping you get to where you have to get to in peace and in one piece. After a long drive, you eventually reach the trailer park. You look out the window at the various rundown trailers in the darkness and think “So this is what my life has come to.” Finally you stop at one towards the further end of the park close to undeveloped land and just regular wilderness. One thing you sort of were expecting was the drunken revelry of several hillbillies, and while you did see a few sitting around with some bottles in hand, it’s actually pretty quiet. “This is your place right Donna?” Tina asks. “Yeah, thanks Tina.” “Hm, well just be ready to go in the afternoon tomorrow. I’m not waiting around for you.” Tina replies. As the pair of you get out and unload your bags from the car, Tina studies you a bit. “Y’know blondie, you’re not bad lookin’. If you ever loosen up a bit, you could easily get a job at Kitty City too. I think the school girl look would work for ya pretty well. You kinda got that innocent look.” “Yeah I don’t think so.” You say. “Hm, suit yerself. I’m just tryin’ to help YOU out. Whatever.” Tina remarks and backs the car up and swings it around to head back to her own trailer. “I still don’t like her.” You say. “Heh, well I’m not surprised. Come on, let’s get inside. I’ll give you the grand tour.” Naturally being a trailer, the “grand tour” doesn’t take long. Donna tried to make the place sound better than it is, but it’s better than you thought it would be, so it’s not awful. She points out the couch which will have to do for your sleeping accommodations. “Well Suzy, I know this is kind of a weird way to end the night given all that went down, but I’m really tired and I need to get some sleep, but before I do, did you need to talk about what happened?” Donna says. “Probably, but what good would it really do? I mean I’m starting to wonder if I’m a magnet for serial killers at this point. Uncle Ed, my ex, this asshole we just barely got away from…Oh shit! Julie!” you suddenly say thinking about the grim implications of what might’ve happened to her. Donna’s face drops a bit too. “Fuck. You said you haven’t been able to get a hold of her at all?” Donna asks. “No. Shit, that sick fuck probably killed her!” you exclaim. “Now we don’t know for certain. She could be…” “I KNOW for certain. That creepy fucker told me a story involving her leaving the house when I met him earlier today. He probably lied and actually killed her. Oh fuck this is bad. I mean I know I grew apart from Julie…but goddamn it…” you say getting a little teary eyed. Donna tries to console you, but she’s starting to get upset too. Really you haven’t seen her get sad for quite some time. Your sadness over the very likely loss of your friend is almost like a bonding experience. In between the tears you thank Donna for saving your life. “(Sniffle) Hey, you might’ve saved mine had you not called me to move out in the first place. I mean without you, I might’ve been very partying with that sicko and he could’ve killed me as well as Julie. (deep breath) Okay, tomorrow you come with me. I’ll try to convince Tina to drop you off at the police station. Hopefully you can make a report or something and we can at least get those corrupt fucks to look into it. Assuming things have settled down in town that is.” “Things have been really fucked up lately.” “Yeah, I dunno Suzy. I don’t place much stock in end times bullshit, but I guess those Ground Zero commercials they’re constantly blasting on the radio is starting to make me think something big is going to go down, though maybe it is already.” “Seems like it with the way my luck is going.” You say. “Hey, don’t worry sis. We’re going to get through this, no matter what comes our way. You and me. This is a brand new start for us, remember?” This uncommon optimism does make you smile a bit at the fact you don’t have to deal with all this yourself. “Okay, Donna. (Yawn) I guess I better get some sleep. It’ll be a big day if I’m to make a report tomorrow. Thanks again for saving me, I’m never going to forget it.” “Hey, like I said, you probably saved mine as well. Good night Suzy.” “Night Donna.” Donna heads off to her bed and you eventually fall asleep on the couch. > Next day… WEDNESDAY “…act now and spend your life in the comfort of…” “Oh shut the hell up…I already know the world is going to hell in a hand basket.” You hear Donna say while she turns off the TV as you groggily wake up from the couch. “What time is it?” you ask. “It’s past noon that’s for sure. Still a few hours to go before we have to get ready to leave.” “Oh. How long you been awake?” “Hm, not long. The shower’s all yours though, I’ve already used it.” You sit up still getting used to your new surroundings “Hm, you were right, it really isn’t what I thought it was going to be. I was expecting to hear the sounds of drunken hillbillies arguing and shooting off guns when I woke up. It’s actually pretty quiet.” You say gathering so clean clothes. “Heh, well I can’t say that probably won’t happen around the holidays, but like I said, I think you’ll find that even the trashiest of people aren’t acting like stereotypes all the time.” Donna replies. You nod and head off to take a shower. While you wash up, you try to mentally prepare yourself for your trip to the police station today. Part of that involves relaxing yourself and relieving yourself of tension in the usual way that hasn’t failed you yet… A few minutes later… “SUZY! SUZY! GET DRESSED WE GOT A FUCKING SITUATION OUT HERE!” you suddenly hear Donna say as she beats on the bathroom door. As startling as that is, what you hear next is even more so due to a loud bullhorn. “THIS IS THE NATIONAL GUARD. THIS AREA IS NOW UNDER MARTIAL LAW! ALL INHABITANTS WILL EXIT THEIR TRAILERS AND AMASS IN THE CENTER FOR OBSERVATION! ANYONE ATTEMPTING TO RUN OR RESISTING WILL BE SHOT!” So much for putting your mind at ease. “Alright! Alright! I hear what’s going on! I’m getting out!” you shout. “Hurry!” Donna says. You stop your shower, grab your clean clothes and start getting dressed as quickly as possible. Tina is looking out one of the windows when you exit the bathroom. “There are a couple of military trucks with a bunch of guardsmen out there. I don’t know what’s going on, but this is really bad. Shit. This has gotta have something to do with what’s been going on in town.” Donna says. “They want us to go out there too.” You say not being enthusiastic about that idea. “Yeah, fuck that. It’s probably just so they can kill us easier if we’re all huddled up in a group or worse, maybe they want to round us up in those trucks for some sinister purpose.” Odd that Donna always thought your older brother was a kook for talking like that on regular basis, but she sounds more like him than ever right now. To be fair though, this is all pretty strange and you’re not exactly trusting of the situation yourself. “Well what are other people doing?” “Some are coming out and some are staying in. In fact more are staying in than coming out, but that’s hardly surprising. The folks around here aren’t exactly fond of the government.” “EVERYONE OUT OF THEIR TRAILERS NOW! THIS IS NOT A CHOICE, IT’S A FUCKING ORDER!” You and Donna look at each other. “This isn’t going to end well. Maybe we should run.” Donna suggests and you nearly laugh. “Yeah, because the plan to run worked SO well for me last time!” you say. “Okay this is different, we really would be running off together. Come on, do you really think those soldiers out there are any better than those cops that pulled us over? In fact they sound worse!” “Well you got a point there, (sigh) okay so what’s the plan? We just step out the trailer and run? They already said they’re going to open fire on anyone who does that.” You say. “Yeah, but we’re lucky since we have a trailer at the end of the park. We could probably make a run for it and hide in the wilderness behind the park.” “That simple huh? How long are we supposed to hide out there? I don’t know how to survive in the wild and unless you been secretly reading up such things, I don’t think you do either.” “Well I don’t fucking know! I’m just trying to come up with suggestions here! Fuck Suzy, I’m trying to help YOU out as usual.” “Thanks. Thanks for that Donna. Real helpful right now.” “EVERYONE EXIT THEIR TRAILERS RIGHT FUCKING NOW! THIS IS YOUR LAST FUCKING WARNING OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE AND THESE RUN DOWN PIECES OF SHIT WILL BE YOUR GODDAMN COFFINS!” You look out the window briefly and see the few people that have exited their trailers are being shoved roughly in the center of the park. Some of the guardsmen stand nearby pointing their rifles at them, but nothing more yet. A few more of the guardsmen are starting to spread out and move about the park. It looks like they’re preparing for combat. And then suddenly you see one of the locals kick their door open and yell something at the top of their lungs while blasting one of the soldiers with a shotgun before getting riddled with bullets. Then all hell breaks loose. “Get down!” you shout and you and Donna are both getting as low as you can on the floor. Gunfire, shouting and screaming is all you can hear and you’re praying that a stray doesn’t go through the wall and hit you. Donna apparently has the same idea. “Suzy, we gotta get the fuck outta here!” “Donna we go out that front door and we risk an even bigger chance of getting our asses shot off! We need to just stay low and behind as much shit as possible! Maybe your bedroom or the shower in the bathroom would be…” A couple of bullets go through the windows overhead and small shards of glass sprinkle to the floor. “That’s it, I’m not fucking staying here!” Donna yells and starts to crawl to the door of the trailer. > You run with her While it didn’t work out the first time, there really isn’t any reason to not hesitate to run now. The soldiers are obviously out of control and it’s possible they’ll just line you up and start shooting you. You stand up from your crouching position and run over to the trailer door. “Suzy, what the hell, keep the fuck down! They’re still firing out there!” Donna exclaims as you step over her. “Donna, you’re the one who said you wanted to get out of here quickly, well we can’t waste time! Now get up and let’s go!” you shout and grab the door handle. You open the door, which to your surprise reveals a soldier who was just about to open the door. Startling the soldier, he loses balance backwards a bit, but he doesn’t lose his trained instinct to defend himself unfortunately for you. The guardsman fires and you take several bullets to your body. You’re dead before you even hit the floor of the trailer as your sister screams at this sight.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY “…act now and spend your life in the comfort of…” “Oh shut the hell up…I already know the world is going to hell in a hand basket.” You hear Donna say while she turns off the TV as you groggily wake up from the couch. “What time is it?” you ask. “It’s past noon that’s for sure. Still a few hours to go before we have to get ready to leave.” “Oh. How long you been awake?” “Hm, not long. The shower’s all yours though, I’ve already used it.” You sit up still getting used to your new surroundings “Hm, you were right, it really isn’t what I thought it was going to be. I was expecting to hear the sounds of drunken hillbillies arguing and shooting off guns when I woke up. It’s actually pretty quiet.” You say gathering so clean clothes. “Heh, well I can’t say that probably won’t happen around the holidays, but like I said, I think you’ll find that even the trashiest of people aren’t acting like stereotypes all the time.” Donna replies. You nod and head off to take a shower. While you wash up, you try to mentally prepare yourself for your trip to the police station today. Part of that involves relaxing yourself and relieving yourself of tension in the usual way that hasn’t failed you yet… A few minutes later… “SUZY! SUZY! GET DRESSED WE GOT A FUCKING SITUATION OUT HERE!” you suddenly hear Donna say as she beats on the bathroom door. As startling as that is, what you hear next is even more so due to a loud bullhorn. “THIS IS THE NATIONAL GUARD. THIS AREA IS NOW UNDER MARTIAL LAW! ALL INHABITANTS WILL EXIT THEIR TRAILERS AND AMASS IN THE CENTER FOR OBSERVATION! ANYONE ATTEMPTING TO RUN OR RESISTING WILL BE SHOT!” So much for putting your mind at ease. “Alright! Alright! I hear what’s going on! I’m getting out!” you shout. “Hurry!” Donna says. You stop your shower, grab your clean clothes and start getting dressed as quickly as possible. Tina is looking out one of the windows when you exit the bathroom. “There are a couple of military trucks with a bunch of guardsmen out there. I don’t know what’s going on, but this is really bad. Shit. This has gotta have something to do with what’s been going on in town.” Donna says. “They want us to go out there too.” You say not being enthusiastic about that idea. “Yeah, fuck that. It’s probably just so they can kill us easier if we’re all huddled up in a group or worse, maybe they want to round us up in those trucks for some sinister purpose.” Odd that Donna always thought your older brother was a kook for talking like that on regular basis, but she sounds more like him than ever right now. To be fair though, this is all pretty strange and you’re not exactly trusting of the situation yourself. “Well what are other people doing?” “Some are coming out and some are staying in. In fact more are staying in than coming out, but that’s hardly surprising. The folks around here aren’t exactly fond of the government.” “EVERYONE OUT OF THEIR TRAILERS NOW! THIS IS NOT A CHOICE, IT’S A FUCKING ORDER!” You and Donna look at each other. “This isn’t going to end well. Maybe we should run.” Donna suggests and you nearly laugh. “Yeah, because the plan to run worked SO well for me last time!” you say. “Okay this is different, we really would be running off together. Come on, do you really think those soldiers out there are any better than those cops that pulled us over? In fact they sound worse!” “Well you got a point there, (sigh) okay so what’s the plan? We just step out the trailer and run? They already said they’re going to open fire on anyone who does that.” You say. “Yeah, but we’re lucky since we have a trailer at the end of the park. We could probably make a run for it and hide in the wilderness behind the park.” “That simple huh? How long are we supposed to hide out there? I don’t know how to survive in the wild and unless you been secretly reading up such things, I don’t think you do either.” “Well I don’t fucking know! I’m just trying to come up with suggestions here! Fuck Suzy, I’m trying to help YOU out as usual.” “Thanks. Thanks for that Donna. Real helpful right now.” “EVERYONE EXIT THEIR TRAILERS RIGHT FUCKING NOW! THIS IS YOUR LAST FUCKING WARNING OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE AND THESE RUN DOWN PIECES OF SHIT WILL BE YOUR GODDAMN COFFINS!” You look out the window briefly and see the few people that have exited their trailers are being shoved roughly in the center of the park. Some of the guardsmen stand nearby pointing their rifles at them, but nothing more yet. A few more of the guardsmen are starting to spread out and move about the park. It looks like they’re preparing for combat. And then suddenly you see one of the locals kick their door open and yell something at the top of their lungs while blasting one of the soldiers with a shotgun before getting riddled with bullets. Then all hell breaks loose. “Get down!” you shout and you and Donna are both getting as low as you can on the floor. Gunfire, shouting and screaming is all you can hear and you’re praying that a stray doesn’t go through the wall and hit you. Donna apparently has the same idea. “Suzy, we gotta get the fuck outta here!” “Donna we go out that front door and we risk an even bigger chance of getting our asses shot off! We need to just stay low and behind as much shit as possible! Maybe your bedroom or the shower in the bathroom would be…” A couple of bullets go through the windows overhead and small shards of glass sprinkle to the floor. “That’s it, I’m not fucking staying here!” Donna yells and starts to crawl to the door of the trailer. > You stay in the trailer Running or rather planning to run didn’t work before so you’re not even going to entertain the idea now. “Donna, get the fuck back here! You might be about to outrun cops, but you can’t outrun a bullet!” you shout crawling backwards towards the bathroom. “Suzy, you need to stop being so scared all the damn time! NOT running before is why you had to suffer through what you did last time! If you’re smart, you’ll come with me!” “Donna, I’m telling you, it’s going to be bad if you go out there!” “It’s gonna be bad if we stay…AAAH!” You’re already inside the bathroom when you hear Donna scream, at first you think she got shot, but it’s something equally as bad. The moment she was opening the front door, so was a soldier, trying to look for respite from the shooting. You peak around the corner and see him barge in and pick Donna up by the hair. “Get up! Get up you fucking trailer bitch!” you hear the soldier shout. Donna whimpers and begs to be let go. You think you hear a slap followed by another. You slink back into bathroom as panic wells up inside you. “Fucking trash, you got a weapon on ya? Where the fuck is your boyfriend? He in the back waiting to ambush me? Well fuck that! Come on out you goddamn redneck! Got your bitch here or is it also your sister? Fuckin’ inbreds!” You hear Donna continue to plead and exclaim she lives alone and that she has no weapons of any kind. The guardsmen doesn’t sound completely convinced and you hear him pushing Donna and exclaiming for her to head towards the bedroom swearing the whole time about his shitty assignment, you know its only a matter of time before he discovers that you’re here. You hastily look around the bathroom, but there isn’t much here in the way of weapons except a can of your sister’s hairspray. Maybe you can blind him, though you’d need to time it just right. Taking a deep breath, you get near the entryway of the door prepare the can… Your sister passes by and sees you out the corner of her eye, but makes no indication that she’s seen you. “Just keep going. If there really is nobody in the bedroom, then we’re just going to hide out in the back for a while and then…ARGH! SHIT!” the soldier exclaims as you unload the hairspray in his eyes as he starts to pass the bathroom entrance. Fortunately he drops his rifle in the process of his sudden blindness, which you quickly snatch up. Donna is still scrambling to get up and get out of the way, meanwhile the blind soldier is backing up trying to fish his pistol out of his holster. “Fucking…shit…I’m gonna kill all of you inbred trash! I’m…” You don’t wait around for him to possibly carry out his threats; you don’t think about it, you just shoot. The rifle kicks a bit and you hurt yourself in the process, but your assailant with several new holes in him is in even worse condition. He drops his pistol and slumps backwards in a bloody heap. For a moment you just stand there in disbelief on what you’ve done. You just killed a man. Even if it was life and death, you still killed someone. “Suzy! Get down, they’re still shooting out there!” Donna shouts from the bedroom entrance. You get down on the floor still clutching on to your killing tool and crawl to the bedroom. You feel a bit weird, but not sick. You and your sister hide behind her bed, huddled close to each other as the shooting and general mayhem out there continues for what seems like a very long time, but in reality it’s only about fifteen-twenty minutes. As the gunshots die down, you can hear the victory hooting and hollering outside which is then followed by more gunshots probably fired in victory. For a moment you and your sister stay down for a little while longer, but eventually the pair of you get up. You just sit on the edge of the bed trying to wrap your head around everything that just happened. Donna on the other hand peeks out one of the windows. “Well, I guess our side won.” Donna says. “Not sure if that’s going to be a good thing in the long run.” You say. Donna doesn’t pay much attention to your statement, but instead heads to the main room of the trailer. After a few moments, you gather your strength and follow her. She looks at the dead soldier on the floor and you do as well. “Well, I guess it’s true what they say, you never know if you can kill someone or not until you have to.” Donna remarks. “Or want to.” You add. “Well anyway I’m glad you did. Shit, that was fucking intense. The weird thing is how well worked together in the situation I mean I lured him to the back and you ambushed him.” “Yeah, well I suppose we already had several run-throughs of dealing with hostile assholes this week. We were bound to get it right eventually.” You remark. “Heh, I suppose so…well no point in letting this asshole stink up the place, let’s drag him outside.” Donna gets his legs and you get his upper body and drag the soldier out of the trailer. As you do so, you notice his rank is that of a high-ranking NCO. You wonder if he was the one in charge of this detachment. When you get him outside, Tina is just walking up with a scruffy looking man wearing a cap and clothing that doesn’t look like its been washed in days. He carries a shotgun over his shoulder. “Well fuck Donna. Did you actually kill one of those fuckers?” Tina asks. “Not me, my sister did. This asshole barged into our trailer and Suzy shot his ass.” Tina looks a little impressed. “Is that so? Well maybe I misjudged you blondie. Maybe you’re not the innocent wallflower I thought you were.” “I didn’t take any pleasure in it, if that’s what you’re implying.” You say defensively. “Of course you didn’t. You saw a threat to your family and home and you took care of business. It’s what any right thinking American SHOULD do when the fucking government tries to impose its will on folks. They tried to do it here, well they didn’t fucking succeed. We showed them that, but I reckon there’s gonna be a lot more trouble comin’. Believe it.” The man suddenly says. “Who are you?” you ask almost in an accusing tone. Mel doesn’t really look offended, but Tina speaks up before he can. “This is Mel, my…significant other.” Tina says. “Significant other? What the fuck are we fucking faggots? Life partners and all that shit? Just say I’m your goddamn boyfriend. Shit, I’m practically your husband with as long as we’ve been together.” “I hesitated to call you my boyfriend because I don’t know where we exactly stand right now and until you buy me a fucking ring and propose, you’re definitely NOT my husband!” “Pftt, I told ya, I see no reason for a piece of paper handed out by some bean counter to tell me how I feel about ya, let alone some piece of jewelry. Besides, we fight all the fucking time and always get back together, so stop bein’ a fuckin’ drama queen.” At this point Tina and Mel start to argue and not wishing to get in the middle of it, you and Donna start to walk back to your trailer. When you get inside Donna starts finding bags and begins putting away clothes. “What are you doing?” you ask. “What’s it look like? I’m packing up my shit and getting ready to get the hell outta here. It’s apparent that you were right again, about this place. It’s not safe here.” Donna says. “At this point, I don’t think its too safe anywhere. At least the immediate threat here has been eliminated.” You say. Donna stops packing. “Wait a minute. Are you serious? This can’t be happening. I mean YOU of all people. Are you seriously considering staying here?” “I don’t know. I mean would I like there to be a better option? Yes! But what options do we really have Donna? We don’t even have a fucking car to leave in and I doubt very seriously anyone is going to let us borrow a vehicle now. We’re going to be on foot, heading to god knows where. I mean WHERE are we going to go? Back to town? With all the bullshit going on there? Into that wilderness where we can slowly starve to death due to our lack of survival knowledge? Further down the road where we’ll run into who knows what? I mean everything seems so chaotic right now and I want at least a stable chance of survival. Your plan has always been to run and so far it hasn’t worked out very well either for me or you. Maybe we need to dig our heels in and tough it out if only for a bit.” Donna sits down on the couch processing your words. She probably can’t believe you’re even thinking this way, and to be honest you can’t either. Maybe killing another human changed something within you and you’re not willing to just sit around and be a victim anymore. You’re going to DO something to improve your situation. Anything. “Okay, I get what you’re saying. And yeah you’re right that it’s going to suck walking to wherever our unknown destination is going to be and we don’t know where we would go, but I’m just saying it HAS to be safer than staying here. I mean if we do stick around, what if the government sends another group of soldiers here? It’s going to look mighty suspicious that the last group they sent isn’t here and will probably be really bad for us. If we leave, we can at least distance ourselves from this mess. I dunno, I mean at this point I’ll stick with you no matter what you decide, I just think we oughta get the fuck outta here.” Donna advises. > You leave the trailer park It isn’t going to be pleasant to leave, but Donna does make a good point about the foolishness of sticking around here after the massacre of military personnel. “Okay Donna, I guess maybe you’re right. I’ll pack and we’ll head out.” “Well maybe it won’t be completely hopeless. Maybe some of the others here will be leaving too, we might be able to go with them or catch a ride for awhile at least.” “Hm, I don’t hold out too much hope, but I’ll let you take care of that, just let me know when you’re ready to go, because I’m going to have to figure out what I need and can take with me without collapsing from exhaustion.” While you struggle with what clothing you can do without and what items you’re going to need, Donna finishes packing and leaves the trailer to presumably go charm a ride from someone. A half hour passes and Donna returns just as you’re finishing up packing and she doesn’t look in the best of spirits. “I take it, it didn’t go well?” you ask. “I can’t believe at least ONE of these rednecks isn’t so damn stupid to want to stay here! But no, everyone of these dumb fuckers are insisting on sticking around trying to make this place into a fortress or some shit.” “Not one fell for your charms?” you ask. “What are you getting at?” “Well I figured you were offering something in return…” ““Offer?...Oh yuck! Suzy! Seriously? Do you think I’m just that much of a whore?!” Donna asks. “Well I mean I know you’re free spirited enough not to give a shit about that sort of thing. I mean that IS how you got this trailer up front isn’t it?” “Okay, first that was different. Second that was REALLY unpleasant! Anyway, looks like we’re walking. Even Tina wasn’t willing to help out.” “Hardly surprising. So which direction are we walking?” you ask. “What do you mean? There’s only one way to go. I mean you aren’t suggesting we head back to town do you?” “Well the other direction will eventually lead to Security City and I can’t imagine it’ll be any better there.” You say. “That’s still a very long way off Suzy, I mean maybe we can find refuge somewhere else first, like a truck stop or something.” “I just hope we aren’t rounded up by passing military on the road. Oh well I guess we’ll find out. At least we got a couple weapons from that asshole who tried to kill us earlier.” You say. And with those words, you and Donna leave the trailer, which was once to be your new home and make your way out of the park. Seems like ever since you left home, you’re doomed to not stay anywhere for very long. You hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. As you leave, you see that Donna was right in that the park residents are indeed trying to barricade this place up by putting vehicles in strategic locations. You don’t see how such a plan can possibly stand up against a real attack by the military, but they’re determined not to be run off. “So you’re leaving Donna?” Tina asks on your way out. “Yeah, I don’t think this place is for me and my sister. You sure that you want to still stay here?” “No point in doing so yet. Besides, Mel is actually getting everyone’s ass in gear to prepare this place for more potential trouble. It’s the most motivated I’ve seen him in…well since he first sweet talked me into spreading my legs for him and that was ages ago. Really I dunno why y’all are leaving. It’s only going to be worse out there, but suit yerselves. Good luck I guess.” Tina says and leaves the pair of you. Leaving the trailer park behind, night has already begun to fall as you walk along side the road. Ten minutes in and Donna breaks up the silence. “The road is pretty deserted. There hasn’t been any traffic in either direction since we started walking.” Donna says. “Hopefully it stays like that, seems like every time more people show up more problems crop up.” You answer. “Yeah, I guess it does seem that way. Bet you’re wishing you were in the basement right now.” “Got that right. No use wishing it was so though. Those carefree days are long gone now.” “Heh, as are my own carefree days of partying everyday. A few days ago I was just starting to think that maybe I had been wasting my life and needed it to get back on track to do something productive. Now? Looks like I didn’t waste anything seeing as the world appears to be going to shit.” Donna adds. You agree and the pair of you continue walking. The stars are a lot brighter without the streetlights of the town around. You look up at them on several occasions never really admiring the “heavens” before. You get the impression even Donna is starting to admire them. Really until this walk, you’ve never really realized just how rural of an area you lived in before. Hours pass and both of you are tired, not just from the walking though, it was an “action packed” day earlier for the pair of you after all. In the far distance though you see the shape of what looks to be several structures. “Hey Donna, looks like something is up ahead. It’s really dark, but I think those are tents or something.” You say. “Yeah, wonder what that is.” Donna says. “Maybe we should hang back until morning.” You say. “Why?” “Because who knows who the hell is over there. I mean maybe that’s a military encampment. We go walking in, and soldiers could suddenly surround us. Or worse, they see us stumbling in the darkness and shoot us on sight believing we’re intruders. Both of us are pretty tired anyway, I think it would be best if we approached this with clear eyes and in the daytime.” You say. “Hm, okay you might be right about that. Where are we sleeping though?” “Looks like the great outdoors. Come on let’s get off the side of the road. We don’t need someone running us over in our sleep. You and Donna head off the road and deeper into wilderness, though not too much. You try to find a spot that seems “good” and then you realize you’re in the damn wilderness without even a sleeping bag, there is no where to sleep that’s going to be “good.” “Well I guess here will do. Use your back pack as a pillow and try to get comfy.” You say laying down. “Ugh, I can only imagine the things that are going to be crawling on me in the night.” Donna says. “Yeah, things suck all over. Hey why are you getting so close?” “You got both weapons! I’m not sleeping too far from you. Besides, it’s fucking cold out here. We’ll stay warmer if we sleep near each other. Did that with Julie once when her heating system was broken for a week.” “Yeah, well you better not start cuddling or worse grinding on me.” “Geez Suzy, that’s sick! You’re my sister for fuck’s sake.” “Good, glad we understand each other.” As you attempt to get as comfortable as possible Donna keeps moving so she’s partially touching you, despite the fact you’re trying to keep apart. Eventually you give up and just try to focus on sleeping. “Suzy?” Donna says. “What?” You answer. “I’m glad we left and are seeing this through together.” Donna says in such a way that you haven’t heard her speak before. Almost like a little kid. “Yeah, I’m glad we’re seeing this through together too.” You say. And with those words, you drift off. > Next day... THURSDAY “SUZY! WAKE UP! GET UP NOW!” you hear Donna scream followed by her pulling and shaking you. “Wha…the fuck?!” you utter completely confused. You’re even more confused when Donna grabs the rifle near you and fires it, succeeding in smashing her shoulder due to being unprepared by the kick back and not holding it right in the first place. She cries out an obscenity and drops the rifle. While you still aren’t completely sure of what’s going on, you do look in the direction that Donna was firing and see what she was firing at. Several people are loping in your direction snarling and generally making unpleasant sounds. You don’t know who they are or what’s wrong with them, but you follow Donna’s lead and pull your pistol to fire at them. You aren’t exactly the best shot in the world, but after a couple shots you clearly hit the closest one in the chest, who stops temporarily, but then recovers until you hit him again, at which point he falls. It doesn’t deter any of the others though and they just continue to run at you. Meanwhile Donna gets off another shot, but misses wildly. Seeing their numbers and knowing you don’t have the skill or the ammo to deal with these obviously insane people, you tell Donna you and her need to run and you don’t need to do it twice. You and Donna run towards the group of tents still in the distance. You still don’t know if it’s a military encampment or what, but the key thing is it’s in the opposite direction of those things chasing you. You’re about half way towards your destination and your sister becomes a horror movie cliché by falling behind and then tripping and falling on her face. “Suzy!” you hear her scream and you turn around to see several of those things almost on her. You run back and shoot a couple of them, but by the time you grab her hand to help her up, one of them manages to grab her and bite her shoulder. Donna screams pierce your ears and you blast the thing in the head splattering its blood on you and Donna. The two that you shot (but failed to obviously kill) at this point have recovered and are already attacking you and Donna. You’re tackled to the ground and you just barely manage to keep the thing from biting you by putting your forearm against its throat as it desperately tries to bite your face off. You get a good look at the thing at this range, while its dirty, crazed and making the animalistic growling noises, it looks completely human. Rabies perhaps? In any case you manage to get your pistol arm free of the thing’s grip and bring your weapon to its temple and blow its brains out. It slumps on top of you and you’re quick to get out from under it. Meanwhile, Donna is on the ground again screaming for you to help her and her assailant chewing on her leg. You wonder helping Donna’s even an option at this point. Donna’s badly wounded and there are still several of those things coming at you, not counting the one currently munching on Donna’s leg. You don’t know what these things are except they look like dirty rabid humans. And maybe that’s all they are, but if there’s anything you’ve learned from situations like this is those same clichéd horror movies is when someone is bitten… Donna’s eyes widen as soon as she realizes that you’re aiming at her. You don’t give her time to do anything else before you pull the trigger. Having done the grim task of putting your sister out of her misery, you run back towards the tents though you’re in a bit of a daze at this point. The noise you and those things have caused, start bringing out the occupants of the tents, or at least whoever is using them. You see a few figures with rifles, possibly in uniforms. It’s apparent that they’ve caught sight of you and your pursuers and are yelling something at you, but again your brain has partially “shut down” after killing your sister so you’re stilling running towards them, ignoring the fact that they’re ready to open fire. It wouldn’t matter anyway, since it isn’t like you can run backwards with those things chasing you. Bullets whiz in your direction missing you; at first maybe they AREN’T actually aiming at you and are aiming at the creatures chasing you. Maybe your luck is changing. But then you catch one in the head. You don’t even feel it. You just drop like a sack. The military wasn’t taking any chances.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Running or rather planning to run didn’t work before so you’re not even going to entertain the idea now. “Donna, get the fuck back here! You might be about to outrun cops, but you can’t outrun a bullet!” you shout crawling backwards towards the bathroom. “Suzy, you need to stop being so scared all the damn time! NOT running before is why you had to suffer through what you did last time! If you’re smart, you’ll come with me!” “Donna, I’m telling you, it’s going to be bad if you go out there!” “It’s gonna be bad if we stay…AAAH!” You’re already inside the bathroom when you hear Donna scream, at first you think she got shot, but it’s something equally as bad. The moment she was opening the front door, so was a soldier, trying to look for respite from the shooting. You peak around the corner and see him barge in and pick Donna up by the hair. “Get up! Get up you fucking trailer bitch!” you hear the soldier shout. Donna whimpers and begs to be let go. You think you hear a slap followed by another. You slink back into bathroom as panic wells up inside you. “Fucking trash, you got a weapon on ya? Where the fuck is your boyfriend? He in the back waiting to ambush me? Well fuck that! Come on out you goddamn redneck! Got your bitch here or is it also your sister? Fuckin’ inbreds!” You hear Donna continue to plead and exclaim she lives alone and that she has no weapons of any kind. The guardsmen doesn’t sound completely convinced and you hear him pushing Donna and exclaiming for her to head towards the bedroom swearing the whole time about his shitty assignment, you know its only a matter of time before he discovers that you’re here. You hastily look around the bathroom, but there isn’t much here in the way of weapons except a can of your sister’s hairspray. Maybe you can blind him, though you’d need to time it just right. Taking a deep breath, you get near the entryway of the door prepare the can… Your sister passes by and sees you out the corner of her eye, but makes no indication that she’s seen you. “Just keep going. If there really is nobody in the bedroom, then we’re just going to hide out in the back for a while and then…ARGH! SHIT!” the soldier exclaims as you unload the hairspray in his eyes as he starts to pass the bathroom entrance. Fortunately he drops his rifle in the process of his sudden blindness, which you quickly snatch up. Donna is still scrambling to get up and get out of the way, meanwhile the blind soldier is backing up trying to fish his pistol out of his holster. “Fucking…shit…I’m gonna kill all of you inbred trash! I’m…” You don’t wait around for him to possibly carry out his threats; you don’t think about it, you just shoot. The rifle kicks a bit and you hurt yourself in the process, but your assailant with several new holes in him is in even worse condition. He drops his pistol and slumps backwards in a bloody heap. For a moment you just stand there in disbelief on what you’ve done. You just killed a man. Even if it was life and death, you still killed someone. “Suzy! Get down, they’re still shooting out there!” Donna shouts from the bedroom entrance. You get down on the floor still clutching on to your killing tool and crawl to the bedroom. You feel a bit weird, but not sick. You and your sister hide behind her bed, huddled close to each other as the shooting and general mayhem out there continues for what seems like a very long time, but in reality it’s only about fifteen-twenty minutes. As the gunshots die down, you can hear the victory hooting and hollering outside which is then followed by more gunshots probably fired in victory. For a moment you and your sister stay down for a little while longer, but eventually the pair of you get up. You just sit on the edge of the bed trying to wrap your head around everything that just happened. Donna on the other hand peeks out one of the windows. “Well, I guess our side won.” Donna says. “Not sure if that’s going to be a good thing in the long run.” You say. Donna doesn’t pay much attention to your statement, but instead heads to the main room of the trailer. After a few moments, you gather your strength and follow her. She looks at the dead soldier on the floor and you do as well. “Well, I guess it’s true what they say, you never know if you can kill someone or not until you have to.” Donna remarks. “Or want to.” You add. “Well anyway I’m glad you did. Shit, that was fucking intense. The weird thing is how well worked together in the situation I mean I lured him to the back and you ambushed him.” “Yeah, well I suppose we already had several run-throughs of dealing with hostile assholes this week. We were bound to get it right eventually.” You remark. “Heh, I suppose so…well no point in letting this asshole stink up the place, let’s drag him outside.” Donna gets his legs and you get his upper body and drag the soldier out of the trailer. As you do so, you notice his rank is that of a high-ranking NCO. You wonder if he was the one in charge of this detachment. When you get him outside, Tina is just walking up with a scruffy looking man wearing a cap and clothing that doesn’t look like its been washed in days. He carries a shotgun over his shoulder. “Well fuck Donna. Did you actually kill one of those fuckers?” Tina asks. “Not me, my sister did. This asshole barged into our trailer and Suzy shot his ass.” Tina looks a little impressed. “Is that so? Well maybe I misjudged you blondie. Maybe you’re not the innocent wallflower I thought you were.” “I didn’t take any pleasure in it, if that’s what you’re implying.” You say defensively. “Of course you didn’t. You saw a threat to your family and home and you took care of business. It’s what any right thinking American SHOULD do when the fucking government tries to impose its will on folks. They tried to do it here, well they didn’t fucking succeed. We showed them that, but I reckon there’s gonna be a lot more trouble comin’. Believe it.” The man suddenly says. “Who are you?” you ask almost in an accusing tone. Mel doesn’t really look offended, but Tina speaks up before he can. “This is Mel, my…significant other.” Tina says. “Significant other? What the fuck are we fucking faggots? Life partners and all that shit? Just say I’m your goddamn boyfriend. Shit, I’m practically your husband with as long as we’ve been together.” “I hesitated to call you my boyfriend because I don’t know where we exactly stand right now and until you buy me a fucking ring and propose, you’re definitely NOT my husband!” “Pftt, I told ya, I see no reason for a piece of paper handed out by some bean counter to tell me how I feel about ya, let alone some piece of jewelry. Besides, we fight all the fucking time and always get back together, so stop bein’ a fuckin’ drama queen.” At this point Tina and Mel start to argue and not wishing to get in the middle of it, you and Donna start to walk back to your trailer. When you get inside Donna starts finding bags and begins putting away clothes. “What are you doing?” you ask. “What’s it look like? I’m packing up my shit and getting ready to get the hell outta here. It’s apparent that you were right again, about this place. It’s not safe here.” Donna says. “At this point, I don’t think its too safe anywhere. At least the immediate threat here has been eliminated.” You say. Donna stops packing. “Wait a minute. Are you serious? This can’t be happening. I mean YOU of all people. Are you seriously considering staying here?” “I don’t know. I mean would I like there to be a better option? Yes! But what options do we really have Donna? We don’t even have a fucking car to leave in and I doubt very seriously anyone is going to let us borrow a vehicle now. We’re going to be on foot, heading to god knows where. I mean WHERE are we going to go? Back to town? With all the bullshit going on there? Into that wilderness where we can slowly starve to death due to our lack of survival knowledge? Further down the road where we’ll run into who knows what? I mean everything seems so chaotic right now and I want at least a stable chance of survival. Your plan has always been to run and so far it hasn’t worked out very well either for me or you. Maybe we need to dig our heels in and tough it out if only for a bit.” Donna sits down on the couch processing your words. She probably can’t believe you’re even thinking this way, and to be honest you can’t either. Maybe killing another human changed something within you and you’re not willing to just sit around and be a victim anymore. You’re going to DO something to improve your situation. Anything. “Okay, I get what you’re saying. And yeah you’re right that it’s going to suck walking to wherever our unknown destination is going to be and we don’t know where we would go, but I’m just saying it HAS to be safer than staying here. I mean if we do stick around, what if the government sends another group of soldiers here? It’s going to look mighty suspicious that the last group they sent isn’t here and will probably be really bad for us. If we leave, we can at least distance ourselves from this mess. I dunno, I mean at this point I’ll stick with you no matter what you decide, I just think we oughta get the fuck outta here.” Donna advises. > You stay in the trailer park Honestly you don’t know if it’s a good idea or not, but you’re staying at least for now. “I still think running on our own is a bad idea. I say we stick around at least for the rest of the day, I mean it’s no good walking off now with the sun about to go down. If it looks like things aren’t going to be too good for us here, I mean we can leave sometime tomorrow. I doubt if the military is going to send anyone else here THAT quick.” “Okay, ugh. I still think this is a bad idea, but I suppose I could use that time to try to find someone who would let us borrow their vehicle. That would at least save us from walking.” “Borrow? Didn’t know if we were leaving that we were planning on returning.” You snicker. “Well, maybe other people will be getting ready to leave too, and maybe we can catch a ride with them at least.” “Well that would make leaving at least more of an appealing prospect.” You say and start to leave. “Where are you going?” “If we’re going to stay, I should find out what the game plan is with the rest of these folks. If it looks like they don’t have their shit together, well that’s another mark in favor of leaving.” “Hm, well I suppose I’ll go see if Tina’s done arguing with her boyfriend or whoever he is to her, maybe I can see if she’s receptive to the idea of leaving.” At this point you and Donna split up. You mainly wander the trailer park a bit where you occasionally get some stares and a few cat calls, but mostly everyone is busily running around cleaning up or holding various weapons or building supplies in their hands. Mostly all the men. While there is a lot of shouting in general going on, one of these trailer folk is standing around seemingly barking orders at the rest. It’s Mel, Tina’s boyfriend from earlier. “Get those vehicles to block the main entrance to this place and drag those fucking dead to the field behind this place. We’ll bury their remains there in a big ass pit. After getting everything useful out of those military trucks, we’re going to need to start stripping them down…hey you…blondie, this ain’t no place for ya, I’m tryin’ to get some fuckin’ work done an’ I can’t have you here.” Mel exclaims. “What? I’m not in anyone’s way and I live in this place! Why can’t I be here?” you ask. “Because like I said, I’m TRYING to light a fire under these fuckers’ asses, and I can’t do that, if half of them are staring at YOUR ass or are you so dainty that you haven’t noticed?” Mel says. “Yes, I’ve noticed that I’ve been attracting a lot of attention. I can’t really help that though, all I’m just trying to do is assess the situation here and if it’s worth staying or not. So are you in charge here now?” “Well considering the old bastard that owned this place got his fucking head blown off during the firefight, we are now officially free of any sort of authority whatsoever. However, since I’m only one that realizes what we just did was fucking treason to the highest degree even if it was necessary, I suppose I’m charge of trying to get us all out of this shitstorm. My first goal is to try to get rid of all traces that these soldier boys were even here and attempt to barricade this place somewhat. To be honest though, with all the shit that I’ve been hearing on the news and from what Tina told me yesterday, sounds like the whole world is going to shit and I doubt the government is even going to investigate one shitty little trailer park right away. Assuming if there even IS a government left after all this is over.” “So you really think this place will be safe?” “Fuck if I know. Probably safer than what’s going on in town right now. All I know is I ain’t running from my home unless I really have to. Look darlin’ I ain’t got the answers for ya as to whether or not you should leave. That’s on you. All I CAN say is I hope you’ve got some sort of useful skill if you intend on stickin’ around because if you HOPE to remain semi-independent and not sucking dick for supper, you’re going to have to pull your weight around here in a meaningful way. Well either that or hook up with one of many fine bachelors round here.” At this point Mel smirks and raises his hand towards the many slovenly looking guys walking around as if he’s presenting them like they’re a prize on a game show. Except none of them are prizes and this isn’t a game show. You desperately think about your skills and unpredictably you find them lacking, however you do think of one thing that you haven’t done or even thought about in years. “Well, my mom taught me how to sew when I was little. Haven’t done it in a long time though.” “Mm, seamstress might be useful, but can you do anything else?” “…uh…I killed a man. That’s gotta count for something.” “Mm, well in some places it might, but it isn’t like you’re the only killer here especially after today. Shit, some of these guys here probably killed before today anyway. But I suppose if worst came to worst, you COULD potentially help out as a guard in a pinch when we get all set up seeing as I know you have the capacity to kill something or someone threatening if need be. Lord, I can just imagine how all these fucktards will be wanting to be paired up with you though. (Sigh) Look seein’ as you’re a friend of Tina’s…” “Actually Tina’s my sister’s friend. I don’t think she really likes me at all.” You interrupt. “Well she’s going to like you even fucking less if she sees me speaking with you considering she’s a jealous type, but we’re getting off track. Fuck, what was I sayin’? Oh yeah, look since you’re the sister of Tina’s friend and don’t seem like a complete stuck up cunt, I’ll try to keep the boys from harassin’ you too much. Can’t speak for any of the ladies though. They’re probably going to hate you just as much as Tina…well except for Butchie Billie, who’ll probably be harassing you right along with the boys. I’m just glad Jed and his retarded giant ass brother aren’t here. I think those fuckers were rapists and they would’ve LOVED the likes of you. Anyway, now could you please fuckin’ leave so some work can get done?” At this point you leave Mel and return to your trailer where you find Donna. “I thought you were scouting for a potential vehicle.” You say. “Apparently none of these hicks are leaving and neither is Tina. Nobody is willing to let me borrow one either.” “None? Didn’t you offer anything?” you ask hintingly. “Offer?...Oh yuck! Suzy! Seriously? Do you think I’m just that much of a whore?!” Donna asks. “Well I mean I know you’re free spirited enough not to give a shit about that sort of thing. I mean that IS how you got this trailer up front isn’t it?” “Okay, first that was different. Second that was REALLY unpleasant!” “Well you’ll be happy to know that old dude is dead now anyway. Mel seems to be in charge of this place now, or at least he alpha male here. Good thing you’re friends with Tina, he said he’d keep the sexual harassment to a minimum while we stay. He’s actually a lot smarter than he appears. He’s currently trying to eliminate all traces of the military being here and making this place more fortified.” You say. “So, where does that leave us?” “Well in the long term I don’t know. In the short term, we need to pull our weight around here to be useful. So far I’ve secured two possible jobs as a seamstress or a guard.” Donna looks a little surprised. “Seamstress huh? You talking about how mom taught you how to sew when we were little? Thought you hadn’t done it in a long time and didn’t care for it.” “I haven’t and I don’t, but I don’t relish the idea of blowing anyone here for food and water if things get bad. I’ll probably end up being a guard though. Seems a lot easier to potentially shoot people.” “Geez Suzy, you’re starting to sound like a completely different person.” “Yeah well a lot of shit has happened. Anyway, I’m done for today, I’m just going to relax for the rest of the night, since I’m guessing I’ll be doing a lot of work in the near future. It appears I’ve found a job at last, gotta love the irony.” You say. The remainder of the night is fairly uneventful if somewhat noisy at times. Donna doesn’t say too much to you and eventually goes to bed, but she once again thanks you for saving her from that soldier. The pair of you bailing each other out of trouble seems to be a reoccurring theme this week. You can only hope it isn’t a necessary theme tomorrow. > Next day... THURSDAY “…your family will feel right at home in one of our…” “Agh, shut the hell up.” You instinctively groan at the Ground Zero ad. You call out for Donna to turn her tv off, but considering she doesn’t, you assume that she must not be here. You look around for your phone to check the time, but you can’t find it. You can only assume that you dropped or misplaced it somewhere. Hardly matters, you don’t have too many people to contact anymore at this point. Your relationship with Bobby is over. Julie’s probably dead and who the hell knows what’s happened to the rest of your family in town. It isn’t like you need to call anyone or anyone needs to call you. You’re more pissed about your laptop, which apparently somehow caught a bullet during the mayhem yesterday. So much for keeping up on what might be going on in the world. In any case there’s a clock in the trailer and the time indicates that you’ve slept through the morning as usual. Weird, since you fell asleep fairly early. You wonder where the hell Donna could’ve went to, but you’re guessing she might be with her friend Tina. After turning the TV off in Donna’s room, all you’re left with is the noise that’s going on outside. Sounds like the good ol’ boys are still at it. You take a look out one of your windows and see several men in the field taking apart the military trucks, or rather severely altering them. It almost looks like they’re going to build a whole new vehicle out of them or something. Since there isn’t anyway to entertain yourself with your laptop being shot up, you aren’t in the mood to watch Ground Zero infomercials, and you don’t want to risk the possibility of Donna suddenly walking in on you with your vibrating boyfriend (Thankfully nothing happened to that form of entertainment, though you do worry about batteries for the future) your only option is to head outside and try to find Donna or find something productive to do. You never thought such a day would come where you’d be leaving the comfort of a couch to potentially do some work, but here you are. After going through your routine of washing up and changing clothes, you decide to take the rifle and pistol with you, just in case. You exit the trailer and head on over to Tina’s place. You knock on the trailer door and hardly recognize Tina without all her makeup on. Not that she’s ugly, in fact she’s actually less trashy looking without it on. “What the fuck do you want blondie?” Tina asks. “Um, is Donna here?” “No, she’s not fucking here. Try a few trailers over, I think she took a shine to Jimmy Ray and is over there.” “Oh. Okay then.” You say. “If you see her, tell her, she better not be distractin’ him all fucking day with her pussy, cause Mel wants him to be workin’ on somethin’. I dunno what, exactly, but I don’t wanna have to listen to him bitch to me about it.” “Got it.” You answer and begin to leave, but Tina calls out to you. “Hey, you ain’t after, Mel’s dick are ya?” Tina asks which completely catches you off guard. “What?” “He told me yesterday, you and he spoke and said you were sweet on him and he had to tell you to stop flirting so much.” Tina looks at you as if she’s detecting if you’re going to lie to her, but you have no intention of doing so since you’re defending yourself from a horrible lie! “Uh, with no disrespect, but Mel is NOT my type and I did not flirt with him.” You answer. “See, I knew that bastard was delusional. I didn’t even believe him when he told me that shit. Any retard can tell that a girl like you would have nothing to do with the likes of him in that way.” Tina says. “Did I do something that he could’ve mistaken for flirting? “Yeah, you were talking to him. He probably told all his friends that you were flirting with him. Hell, he might’ve even said he fucked you, but he tends to keep his tall tales a little more realistic nowadays. Whatever, he’s getting old and likes to think he’s still some sort of chick magnet. Still, I love the sonofabitch despite everything.” As you’re about to finish your illuminating conversation with Tina, you suddenly hear gunshots and yelling. “Oh shit!” you say believing that the military has returned already. Several of the trailer park crew start running towards the noise with weapons in hand. Tina calls out to a skinny one who looks like methhead. “Hey! Hey Dan, what the fuck’s goin’ on?” Tina shouts “A bunch of fuckin’ zombies or some shit are attackin’ us! Mel’s called almost everyone to defend the east and south part of the park. Looks like a shitload of them are comin’ from town!” “Wait, did you just say fuckin’ zombies?” Tina asks. “Yeah. I mean shit, I dunno what they are, I just know Bobby Ray got all bit up by one of them. Maybe they’re just cannibals or high on bath salts. Remember like that one time I…” “Dan, whatever! Just go! Go! Go! And you, get inside here, quick!” Tina says waving away Dan who continues to his destination. “But I gotta find my sister.” You remark “She’s probably safe with Jimmy Ray.” “Didn’t Dan say he just got bit by zombies?” “That was Bobby Ray! Now get yer ass in here, we’ll bar the door and hunker down inside here until Mel and the boys take care of this.” You’re not going to leave your sister’s potential fate in the hands of some redneck who you know nothing about though. You’re going to make the effort to at least find her; besides, you’d rather not barricade yourself in anywhere unless you have to. “Where is Jimmy’s trailer again?!” you ask. “You’re a damn idiot blondie. (sigh) it’s more towards the entrance and has a badly spray painted picture of a naked woman on the side of it. I suggest you get a move on.” Tina says and slams her door shut. You follow the advice and start heading towards your new destination, which has considerably more gunfire and shouting coming from that direction. You feel like you’re in one of those video games that you played on your computer sometimes, except this is unfortunately very real. With your rifle held in front of you the whole time, you continue to move at a quick yet cautious rate. You keep half expecting one of those freaks to suddenly jump out at you every time you pass one of the trailers. You catch a glance of people peeping out their windows of said trailers, sometimes you hear one of them shouting at you to “find some damn shelter.” Eventually you hear a voice calling at you from above. “Hey blondie, what the hell are you doing down there?” you look up and see a shirtless young man with a shotgun standing on top of the trailer. “Suzy?! What the hell are you doing?!” another voice shouts, but this one is coming from inside the trailer. Sounds like Donna. You glance back down and look at the trailer itself and notice that this is the one you’ve been looking for. You’re guessing that’s Jimmy Ray standing on top of his trailer. You can sort of see Donna going for a guy like him. He’s got a rugged handsome look rather than a grizzled, unkept or outright disgusting appearance that some of the other guys around here have. “Donna?! I was looking for you, that’s what I’m doing out here.” You say while swiveling your head in several directions to keep an eye on your surroundings. “Well now you’ve found me, now get inside!” Donna shouts and starts to open up the door. “Donna, don’t leave that door open too long, I’m watching the main fighting at the front of the park and it’s not looking good. The east side is doing better though.” “Aren’t you suppose to be helping Mel?” you ask. “Pfft, yeah right. I mean I don’t hate him or anything, but I’m not riskin’ my life for that asshole. Oh fuck! More of them are getting through, and I mean a shitload! Get your asses inside!” Jimmy Ray shouts and starts aiming his shotgun. You look and see a couple of the…things Dan was talking about. This is insane. Here you were worrying about the military and some unexpected threat like…zombies shows up? They can’t be zombies, they just can’t! Whatever they are, four of them are flailing about wildly and growling. They notice you and begin loping at you. The mere sight of them is troubling, but you quickly point your rifle at them and start firing. Jimmy’s shotgun gets one of them in the leg which he then shoots again in the body. Another gets its head blown off. You use up the remainder of the clip to kill the two remaining. One of them didn’t even drop down dead until he almost reached you. They don’t look rotten (though they do look dirty and disheveled…which isn’t unlike some of the hillbillies here) and you didn’t even shoot one in the head, so while they may NOT be zombies, they’re certainly inhuman enough for you to be scared. (Some sort of sickness perhaps?) Meanwhile Donna’s at the door and calling to you. You see now that she’s not wearing her own clothes, but rather a robe of some sort. Certainly not hers. “Suzy, please! Get inside NOW!” she shouts as more of those things come running in your direction. “Goddamn it, the pair of you need to get inside!” Jimmy shouts as he snaps off another shot. While the freaks are definitely advancing, they’re also splitting up to attack several trailers. You wonder if you shouldn’t just get Donna and make your way out of here since it looks like this place is going to be overrun. > You get in the trailer As tempting as it is to just run, once again, you don’t really have anywhere viable to run to and now you’d have a horde of those things possibly dogging your steps if you did, so you’re going to just be satisfied with short term safety and keep optimistic that things aren’t as hopeless as they seem. You run up the stairs and into the trailer. Donna slams and locks the door, and then you both shove a couch in front of it. You look up at the ceiling of the trailer and see the sun roof open which naturally explains how Jimmy Ray got up there. You can hear him firing and swearing. “Okay, I think we should be safe now.” Donna remarks. “I wouldn’t count on that. I mean yeah, they’d have a hell of time breaking through the door, and granted the windows are high enough that they might have trouble breaking and climbing into them, but I still don’t feel safe cooped up in here.” You say and start looking around for more furniture and start moving a table under the sunroof. “Suzy, what’re you doing?” “I’m going to go help your boyfriend if I can. You got a weapon down here?” “There’s Jimmy’s bat and some knives in the kitchen, but he really doesn’t need your help. You should stay down here, I mean what if they try to break in like you said?” “Well I’ll be able to shoot them from above a lot better from the roof. Climb up if things start getting grim.” You say and start climb through the roof. When you reach the roof, Jimmy notices you as he’s in the middle of reloading his weapon. “What the fuck are you doin’ up here, get back in the trailer with your sister!” he says. “I’m here to help.” You say scanning the area. “I don’t need any help, now…” You interrupt Jimmy, when you look over the other side of the trailer, see one particularly sneaky freak skulking near it and shoot him. “You aren’t even paying attention to the other side of the trailer. You need to be aware of your surroundings!” you say. “Aw, he couldn’t have gotten up here, and I would’ve heard him had he tried.” Jimmy remarks. “Fine, stay up here, but don’t get in my way!” he then adds realizing that you aren’t going anywhere. From on top of the trailer, you can see a good deal more of the park in general. You and Jimmy actually aren’t the only ones standing on a trailer, you see several women with guns doing their best at fighting off this horde. You even see Tina when you look back towards her trailer. The situation isn’t quite as grim as it once appeared as you see a group of hillbillies from the east side of the park making their way back and soon start helping out with mopping up the freaks that have infested it. Jimmy and yourself mostly keep to picking off the ones that come too close to his trailer. He actually compliments you or your shooting at one point. To be honest, it’s sort of weird to you how much of a natural you are at it. After few more bloody minutes, it’s mostly over and the…well you still don’t know WHAT they are exactly, but they’re no longer the threat they were. “Whew, I think we got the last of those sons of bitches.” Jimmy says. “Yeah, well I’m not in any hurry to check. I’m out of bullets anyway, so I’m just going to go back into the trailer with my sister.” “Okay, I’m gonna keep an eye out from here. Um… I wasn’t sure about you at first, but thanks for yer help.” Suddenly Donna’s head pops up from the opening in the roof. “What’s going on up here? The shooting has mostly stopped, is it over?” Donna asks. “It’s over in the sense that I’m guessing we aren’t in any danger of being overrun. Was everything okay down there? We were trying to keep them from clawing at the trailer too much.” You say. “Yeah, a few got as close as the door and then one of you guys shot them.” Donna says. “Shit, let’s get back down in the trailer.” Jimmy suddenly says walking over to where you and Donna are. “Did you just see more of those things?” “No, I see… “There you are, ya slackin’ piece of shit! Where the fuck were you when we needed help over on the east side of the park. Nearly got my ass eaten and not in a good way!” Mel shouts from the ground as he walks with a couple of other men behind him. “Aw Mel, I didn’t even know about it until it was too late, I was uh…” “You were thinkin’ with yer dick as usual. Is that…is that blondie there I see? Holy shit, didn’t think you were fool enough to fall fer this idiot’s charms.” Mel says. “I didn’t…I was looking for my sister and I helped her and Jimmy out here.” “Is that right?” Mel asks. “Yeah, it’s true! I was with her sister…and um, by the time I knew what was goin’ on I couldn’t leave this trailer because it was surrounded by those things! I was pickin’ them off with the shotgun and then Suzy came here and helped out. Good thing too. There were a shitload of them, as you can tell by the bodies!” Jimmy says and begins pointing at them. Mel stares at the bodies that Jimmy’s pointing to and doesn’t seem impressed. “Jimmy, yer so full of shit right now, yer eyes are brown. By the number of bodies here and their various distances from the trailer, it wasn’t THAT surrounded. Whatever, doesn’t matter, come on down, you’re comin’ with us.” “Where are we goin?” Jimmy asks. “We’re gonna go try to fetch some medical supplies from town. We got some people hurt pretty fuckin’ bad an’ other than a few half used basic medical kits that a few people scrounged up, all else we got is a shitload of alcohol. You’d think those military trucks woulda had some medical shit in them, but no. I suppose SOME people here got some meth, crack and a few other unconventional drugs, but last thing we need is more goddamn junkies runnin’ around here.” Mel says glaring at Dan. “Town? Um…don’t ya think it’ll be pretty fucked up there?” Jimmy asks. “Of course it’s gonna be fucked up there, but it needs to get done. Or we at least need to try. So come on Jimmy, get yer ass down here, what about you blondie?” Mel asks. “What about me what?” you ask. “You gonna come with us? Obviously you’re good enough with a weapon to take care of yourself an’ we’re a little short on that at the moment.” As Jimmy kisses Donna on the cheek and tells her something about coming back to her, you briefly consider Mel’s offer. While you’ve certainly “grown” past being the wallflower you tended to be, you know you’re not some action heroine badass. “While I appreciate the offer Mel, I think I’d be better off staying here, I’m still not as skilled as you guys are when it comes to shooting. I wouldn’t want to be a liability.” You say. “Hm, I guess that’s an honest assessment of yourself. Alright then, keep an eye out on things here. As for the rest of ya, come on let’s round up a few more folks and then let’s see just how fucked the town is.” Mel says and he and the rest walk off leaving you and Donna who duck back inside Jimmy’s trailer. “I’m really glad you didn’t go with them. I mean that’s gotta be a suicide mission.” Donna says. “Well it will certainly be dangerous that’s for sure.” You say. “So you still think it’s a good idea to stay here?” Donna asks. “Still want to leave huh?” you say. “Don’t you? I mean we just went through TWO major attacks at this place now! Who knows what the hell is gonna hit us next! More of those freaks probably, but I’m thinking that we got a better chance if we do leave this time.” “How’s that?” you ask. “Well Jimmy Ray’s got a truck that he parked between his trailer and the next one as a poor man’s barrier of sorts and he didn’t take his keys with him. In fact they’re over on the table over there. That suggests to me that we can easily take his while he’s gone. In fact, Mel and most of those redneck assholes will all be gone and the others are nursing their wounds, so now would be the perfect time to get the hell out of here.” “I used up all my ammo fighting off those cannibal things. What about weapons?” “I guess we’ll have to get by on close combat ones for awhile, but Jimmy’s probably got another gun in his bedroom somewhere. Look, I’ll search this place and you go grab your bags from our trailer. I still got a bag packed near my bed from yesterday, so you can grab that one too.” You chuckle a bit at Donna’s suggestion of completely robbing Jimmy Ray blind and take her plan into consideration. > You leave the park Given that you’ve been attacked by military, as well as a bunch of cannibal freaks… well sticking around here is looking a lot less desirable now and Donna’s idea is looking a lot more enticing. Plus if you were planning on ripping off this place and running off, this would be the best time to do it while everyone is a bit disarray and Mel and the better defenders of this place are gone. “Okay Donna I’m with you on this, but we really gotta do this shit quick.” You say. “Well of course. Like I said, you run over to our trailer and grab my bag and your own and rush back over. By the time you’re done, I should have found Jimmy’s keys and whatever else he’s got here that looks interesting.” Donna replies. You and Donna nod at the agreement of this plan then you slip out of the trailer and try to keep a low profile. It really isn’t difficult since the few people walking around don’t even know you and seem to be busy cleaning up the dead freaks lying on the ground. You do spot Tina, however and deliberately avoid her since if anyone is going to attempt to hold you up for any reason, it would likely be her. When you get to your trailer, you pack what items and clothing you can in your bags, zip ‘em up and then sling one over your shoulder then with your free hand you go into the bedroom and grab Tina’s bag. You leave your trailer and try to make it over to Jimmy’s as quick as you can. You get half way there and then you hear a familiar voice… “Hey blondie! Knew you survived, where the hell ya been, there’s fuckin’ work to do. Need all the help we can moving these fuckin’ bodies.” Tina shouts. You silently say “shit” to yourself and slowly turn around thinking up a lie that won’t attract too much suspicion, while at the same time is going to allow you avoid whatever work Tina had in mind for you. “Oh hey Tina. I’ve been…um just trying to recover from that recent attack just like everyone else. It was all sort of discombobulating you know?” you say. “Discom…what the fuck? Whatever, you don’t look hurt, so yer ass is needed to help move some bodies…and what’s with all the bags?” Tina asks. “Well, my sister Donna…” “Yeah where the fuck is Donna? She ain’t bit is she? Cause they put all those fuckers in a separate trailer. Even though I think they should just shoot the infected bastards. We all know how those movies go!” Tina interrupts. “Uh, no. She’s fine. Well not fine…” “Speak fucking plain blondie!” “My sister isn’t hurt physically, but she hasn’t handled the recent attack very well…she’s a wreck actually. Hysterical one moment, silent shock the next. Took me awhile to calm her down. She says she’d feel safer staying with Jimmy Ray, so that’s why I got all these bags with her stuff. I’m taking them over there.” “Donna broke down? Always thought she was miss cool, calm and collected and got over shit fairly quickly…hmmm, guess a few days sober in the face of brutal reality might break someone normally living in a drug, alcohol and sex fueled fantasy realm. I don’t remember her having all that shit. In fact aren’t some of those your bags?” “Yeah, she never brought that many clothes and I figured she could borrow some of my stuff. Figured I’d let her choose while I continued to talk with her. I mean I can still help with body moving thing, but I just really need to go help my sister first.” “(Sigh) Fine. No point in having a hysterical bitch making life miserable with bouts of screaming. Do what you need to do, but as soon as yer done, you help out with moving these bodies.” “Got it. I’ll really try to be quick.” You say. After parting company with Tina, you continue to head over to Jimmy’s as quick as you can where Donna is sitting on a chair waiting for you. “Would’ve been quicker, but I had to talk my way out of moving dead bodies with Tina.” You say. “It’s fine, here.” Donna says and takes her bag while thrusting a pistol into your hand. “It’s the only one I could find. You might as well take it, since you’re obviously more experienced with shooting than I am by now.” “Well thanks I guess. You got the keys too I trust?” “Yep, truck’s right next to this trailer. Though getting out isn’t going to be as quick as I’d like due to the way its parked, but we’ll just deal with that as it comes. You ready?” “Let’s do it.” You and Donna run out of the trailer and turn the corner where Jimmy’s truck is parked. Donna was right about how it’s parked. Somehow he managed to wedge it between his trailer and the neighboring one pretty good. Donna’s going to have to do a lot of reversing and forward driving to get it out, but you’re wondering if you’re going to have time for all that. Throwing the bags in the back of the pick up, Donna gets into the driver’s seat and quickly unlocks the passenger sider before starting up the truck. DOesn’t take long before Donna’s bashing the hell out of the front end AND the back end of the truck against the trailers, attempting to get it out of it’s parking space. It also doesn’t take long before several people hear this noise. “HEY! THOSE TWO BITCHES ARE TRYING TO STEAL ONE OF OUR TRUCKS!” a voice shouts. Several of the trailer park residents attempt to rush at the truck at first, but after you fire a few shots at them, they retreat and re-think that plan. “Donna come on! We ain’t got much time before they go and get their guns and start firing back!” you shout. “I know! I know! Fuck! Shit! This truck is really wedged in!” Donna shouts. The scraping of metal and the continued destruction of the truck’s front end is in full force as Donna decides to just give the truck a hard turn in an attempt to escape. It works and you’re soon free, now you just have to drive out of the vicinity of the trailer park altogether because now bullets are damaging the truck. “Shit!” “Just get to the road Donna and drive west!” you shout. “It should be just a little, oh fuck!” Donna shouts as suddenly hits one of the rednecks with the truck. In fact she ran right over her. “Go! Go! Just fucking go!” you shout ducking your head down as another bullet breaks the back window. Soon, Donna manages to get back on the road though there are a few more shots fired in your direction. “Goddamnit, I think they hit the tires! This thing’s getting hard to control!” Donna shouts. “Well we’re going to have to ride the rims, because we’re not out of danger yet.” You reply. “Got that right bitch!” a voice suddenly says and then a large arm with a hook comes through the broken back window. You’re startled enough by this unexpected event that you fumble with your pistol and drop it on the floor. As you scramble for the pistol, Donna screams and attempts to simultaneously keep control of the vehicle as well as not get impaled with a large metal object. When you finally get the pistol, an elbow goes into your face and a hand tries to grab your weapon. Donna slams on the breaks, which causes this unwanted hitchhiker to lose her grip on you and fall backwards a bit though she manages to hang on by embedding her hook into the front seat of the truck. Still, it’s just enough time for you to gain the advantage. You swing around to turn to your attacker and see an angry looking woman with a buzz cut before you shoot her. At this range you don’t miss and half of her face is blown off before she releases her grip from the hook and her body falls backwards towards the tail end of the truck bed. “She’s dead, get us the hell outta here before the rest catch up!” you shout seeing a few people coming from the trailer park. “Holy shit, who the hell was that and how the hell did she sneak into the truck bed?!” Donna says flooring the gas. “Dunno, doesn’t matter, like I said, get us the hell outta here!” Donna’s a little shaken up from all this, but keeps her cool and by the time you put a lot of distance between you and the trailer park she’s a lot calmer. Still, you’re concerned that someone is going to give chase in another vehicle. “Fuck, that was intense.” Donna exclaims. “Yeah, well I knew it wasn’t going to be easy when you suggested it.” “Still, we did it though. When me and you work as a team we seem to overcome all odds.” Donna says in a slightly upbeat tone. “Well so far things have worked in our favor. Sort of worried about how far we’re actually going to get in this truck though. We’ve got at least one damaged back tire and who knows if they’re going to pursue us in their own vehicles.” You say. At this point you continue to look behind you to see if anyone is following, but happily you don’t see anyone. You and Donna don’t say much for the next few miles. Maybe it’s because neither of you really knows what’s going to come next. You’re in a rural area with a truck that may or may not be drivable for very long. Neither of you has any money or anything really to barter with if you needed to fix it in someway. Well there is ONE thing you both have, but you’re not exactly willing to do that. (Though you imagine it wouldn’t be a problem for your sister) If anything, your mindset has gotten a bit on the darker side of things due to the past few days. If the world is indeed going the way of chaos, you’re starting to think why not embrace it? You have a gun, and so far you’ve come to the conclusion that they’ve been solving a lot of problems for you. As you dwell on these thoughts, your sister suddenly speaks. “Hey Suzy, there’s a group of tents up ahead. Looks almost like a circus or something. I thought I heard someone mention at the trailer park about one up this way. Should we stop and see if we can get help there?” Donna asks. “Hmm, nah. We should keep going. We still need to put more distance between us and that damn trailer park. Besides, I doubt if a bunch of carnies is going to be much better than a bunch of rednecks.” You answer. Donna nods and continues to drive. Leaving you to your thoughts, which are now starting to envision improving your situation by robbing some idiot of their belongings. You turn the radio on in an attempt to find something to keep your mind occupied, but its mostly Ground Zero commercials. You get a few doomsday religious preachers too, which is even worse. You turn off the radio in dismay and return to your introspection until Donna speaks up again. “Hey Suzy?” Donna asks. “Yeah?” you reply. “Do you think the world is going to end?” “I dunno. Maybe. Though as far as I’m concerned, it already ended for me when I had to leave my basement.” “Yeah…I suppose it would. Hey, if you want we could turn around and go home. You could take back your basement and shoot Kelly in the face.” You chuckle a bit at that suggestion. “That’s definitely a tempting idea. I think we’re better off driving into the unknown though. Like you said, when we work as a team, it somehow works out for us.” You say which Donna returns your sentiment with a smile. Eventually the day starts turning to night and you start to get tired. The stress of the day has finally caught up with you. Surprisingly Donna’s still alert. So far the truck hasn’t given any problems though you know you’re riding on a flat (or at least low) back tire by this point. You honestly don’t know what you’re going to do next, but for now you’re going to try to get some rest as you drift off to sleep… > Next day… FRIDAY “Suzy…hey Suzy…get up.” Donna remarks. “Huh? What’s going on? What time is it?” you answer half asleep. “I dunno, I think it’s getting up for the afternoon. Really I’m sort of surprised you didn’t at least stir a little since you fell asleep last night. You really are a deep sleeper.” “Guess yesterday’s cannibal killing and grand theft auto really took it out of me. Hey we’re not moving.” You say looking around and seeing that you’re parked off the side of the road. “No, I pulled over to sleep sometime after midnight.” “What? That was dangerous! You should’ve woke me up then! I could’ve kept a look out or even taken over with the driving! I mean we could’ve been attacked by who knows what during the night!” you exclaim. “We were fine. While I’ve seen a few abandoned vehicles, I haven’t seen a single person driving on this road since we started yesterday. Nobody behind us, and nobody coming from the other direction either.” “I don’t care if we were driving in a fucking desolate wasteland, we’ve got cannibals running around, a break down of society and there’s still the potential of angry rednecks coming after us! Next time THINK!” “Okay…okay…sorry Suzy.“ Donna says rather meekly. You give Donna a dirty look, but tell her to forget it. Actually you’re sort of surprised she didn’t put up more of a fight since it’s not like her to back down from an argument, but maybe she’s becoming a little afraid of you. “Well, seeing as things are deader than a tomb around here, we might as well take this opportunity to dump our passenger in the back.” You say. “Oh, yeah.” Donna replies. As you step out of the truck, you look at her to do likewise to help. “Oh. Wait, you wanted me to help?” “That was the idea.” “(Sigh) Alright.” You and Donna go to the back of the truck and open up the tailgate. The redneck woman’s head that was propped up on it slumps in front of you. Flies have already begun gathering on her face. “Ugh. She’s already beginning to rot.” Donna says and chokes a bit. “She was pretty tall that’s for sure. It is sort of amazing she managed to jump in the truck bed without us realizing it. Maybe it was when you ran over that other girl.” You remark. “She fucking attacked us with a hook too. That’s like something out of a horror movie.” “Everything about what’s happened to us this week is like something out of a horror movie. I saw Tina with one of those hooks yesterday, I think they were moving bodies with them. Y’know, I never officially met her…but I think this was the infamous Butchie Billie I’d hear about every so often. Anyway, let’s pull her dead ass out.” Grabbing one arm and Donna grabbing the other, you pull what you believe to be the corpse of Butchie Billie out of the truck. Donna doesn’t have that great of a hold on her and drops her end causing you to nearly fall to the ground too. “Goddamnit Donna, you can’t…argh. Fuck it. I’ll do it myself!” you say in exasperation. You proceed to kick and roll the body further away from the road and into the brush. “Good enough.” You say breathing a little heavy. “Whew, open up one of my bags, I’m fairly certain I packed a few bottles of water in there.” Donna gets in the bed of the truck and starts unzipping bags. Eventually she finds the water and passes you one and takes one for herself. As you drink, you notice both of your back tires are completely flat. You knew one of them was, but you guess the other one gave up during the night. “Our tires are fucked. I mean we could still drive on them, but it wouldn’t be a pleasant ride.” You say. “Doesn’t matter really, judging by the gauge last night we’re almost out of gas too. Jimmy apparently didn’t keep this truck gassed up in case of an emergency.” Donna says. “Great.” “I mean I suppose we could just keep driving until we can’t anymore or we possibly find an auto shop.” “Auto shop? Out in the sticks?” “Well I dunno, don’t they usually have those last chance gas mechanic things along roadsides like this? Besides I think we’re starting to get past the farmland and should be hitting more populated areas soon. Security City is this way after all.” Donna says. “Given what happened to our town, that might not be a good thing. We still don’t know what the fuck is going on. All we do know is the government declared martial law and there are rabid people running around.” You say. “Well I wasn’t suggesting we go to Security City, I was just saying we should be hitting more populated areas due it being close by. Look, obviously I don’t have a good idea of what to do next, so if you got a long term plan, then by all means let’s follow it.” Before you can reply, you hear the sound of vehicle. You peek your head out from behind the truck and see a car heading in your direction. It’s going at a good pace, but MAYBE you can stop it. “Donna, a car’s coming. Quick, tear your clothing and go out in the road and look like a slutty damsel in distress!” you say. “What?!” “Just fucking do it!” you say and check to see how many bullets you have. Donna, gets the picture quickly, though you can tell she’s not entirely happy with this arrangement. You hide behind the truck’s side away from the road, while Donna gets in the middle of the road and waves her arms. You can’t believe you’re actually enacting a plan you thought up in your head just yesterday. You just hope whoever the driver is; they actually stop and don’t try to do something like say run over Donna instead. The car approaches and actually starts to slow down and then eventually stops, but it does so at a distance. Someone then steps out of the passenger side armed with a sub-machine gun. “Alright honey, if you want to live, I suggest you don’t move.” He says. “Don’t shoot! I’m completely unarmed! This isn’t some sort of trick! Please, I just need help, my truck has flat tires and I don’t have any way now to get to Security City!” Donna exclaims. “Security City? Hah! You don’t wanna go there trust me. The whole place is fucked! If the military doesn’t round you up and kill ya, the cannibal freaks running all over the place will.” The man shouts. Well you know that place is definitely off the list now. “Oh no! I don’t know where to go then! I’m just so lost by myself! Where are you guys going? Can I come with you?” Donna asks. “Come with us? Look, I dunno if that’s a good idea. We’re pretty full up with shit and there isn’t much room in this car…” “That’s okay, I won’t take up much room. I mean I’ll sit on your lap if I have to.” “Sit on my…” “Look I’ll do anything you and your friend want! I’ll suck your cocks and fuck you if I have to! Just I can’t be alone! Not after those things tried to kill and eat me yesterday!” Donna screams and starts to rub her eyes and sniffling. At this point the man with the sub-machine gun pauses. “Hold on.” He says and then converses with his driver buddy for a moment. You continue to wait patiently hoping they take this bait. “Alright honey, you can come with us, but that payment you just offered? Well we’ll be taking it now, so I hope you’re ready to back up your promises.” The passenger shouts and then gets back in the car, which slowly drives up closer to meet Donna. When they drive up near the other side of the truck, you wonder if you should wait a little longer to make sure they’re completely vulnerable or sneak around the truck and open fire now. > You open fire now You sneak around towards the front end of the truck and then see Mr. passenger get out of the car. “Okay baby, where are we doing this? The back seat of the car is pretty full as you can see. We can do it in your truck if you want. Front seat or the bed of it. Doesn’t matter to me.” He says and then you come out from your hiding spot to blast him in the head. “OH SHIT MITCH GET BACK IN THE FUCKING CAR!” the driver shouts. He must’ve seen you in his rear view mirror and it’s distracting enough that you miss your shot allowing Mitch to duck and scramble for the cover of the car. At this point Donna screams and runs off and you start firing into the car. You aren’t sure if you hit the driver or not, but the car starts going in reverse. Not at an excessively fast speed, but you barely get out the way. Falling back on your ass you watch as the car continues rolling past you with the driver slumped over the wheel. Unfortunately you aren’t able to celebrate this good fortune because while you were falling and trying to get out a rolling car’s way, Mitch ran around the front of the rolling car and around your truck to get the drop on you. You recover just in time to see a sub-machine gun pointed at you and then the muzzle flash of multiple bullets ripping your skull apart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “Suzy…hey Suzy…get up.” Donna remarks. “Huh? What’s going on? What time is it?” you answer half asleep. “I dunno, I think it’s getting up for the afternoon. Really I’m sort of surprised you didn’t at least stir a little since you fell asleep last night. You really are a deep sleeper.” “Guess yesterday’s cannibal killing and grand theft auto really took it out of me. Hey we’re not moving.” You say looking around and seeing that you’re parked off the side of the road. “No, I pulled over to sleep sometime after midnight.” “What? That was dangerous! You should’ve woke me up then! I could’ve kept a look out or even taken over with the driving! I mean we could’ve been attacked by who knows what during the night!” you exclaim. “We were fine. While I’ve seen a few abandoned vehicles, I haven’t seen a single person driving on this road since we started yesterday. Nobody behind us, and nobody coming from the other direction either.” “I don’t care if we were driving in a fucking desolate wasteland, we’ve got cannibals running around, a break down of society and there’s still the potential of angry rednecks coming after us! Next time THINK!” “Okay…okay…sorry Suzy.“ Donna says rather meekly. You give Donna a dirty look, but tell her to forget it. Actually you’re sort of surprised she didn’t put up more of a fight since it’s not like her to back down from an argument, but maybe she’s becoming a little afraid of you. “Well, seeing as things are deader than a tomb around here, we might as well take this opportunity to dump our passenger in the back.” You say. “Oh, yeah.” Donna replies. As you step out of the truck, you look at her to do likewise to help. “Oh. Wait, you wanted me to help?” “That was the idea.” “(Sigh) Alright.” You and Donna go to the back of the truck and open up the tailgate. The redneck woman’s head that was propped up on it slumps in front of you. Flies have already begun gathering on her face. “Ugh. She’s already beginning to rot.” Donna says and chokes a bit. “She was pretty tall that’s for sure. It is sort of amazing she managed to jump in the truck bed without us realizing it. Maybe it was when you ran over that other girl.” You remark. “She fucking attacked us with a hook too. That’s like something out of a horror movie.” “Everything about what’s happened to us this week is like something out of a horror movie. I saw Tina with one of those hooks yesterday, I think they were moving bodies with them. Y’know, I never officially met her…but I think this was the infamous Butchie Billie I’d hear about every so often. Anyway, let’s pull her dead ass out.” Grabbing one arm and Donna grabbing the other, you pull what you believe to be the corpse of Butchie Billie out of the truck. Donna doesn’t have that great of a hold on her and drops her end causing you to nearly fall to the ground too. “Goddamnit Donna, you can’t…argh. Fuck it. I’ll do it myself!” you say in exasperation. You proceed to kick and roll the body further away from the road and into the brush. “Good enough.” You say breathing a little heavy. “Whew, open up one of my bags, I’m fairly certain I packed a few bottles of water in there.” Donna gets in the bed of the truck and starts unzipping bags. Eventually she finds the water and passes you one and takes one for herself. As you drink, you notice both of your back tires are completely flat. You knew one of them was, but you guess the other one gave up during the night. “Our tires are fucked. I mean we could still drive on them, but it wouldn’t be a pleasant ride.” You say. “Doesn’t matter really, judging by the gauge last night we’re almost out of gas too. Jimmy apparently didn’t keep this truck gassed up in case of an emergency.” Donna says. “Great.” “I mean I suppose we could just keep driving until we can’t anymore or we possibly find an auto shop.” “Auto shop? Out in the sticks?” “Well I dunno, don’t they usually have those last chance gas mechanic things along roadsides like this? Besides I think we’re starting to get past the farmland and should be hitting more populated areas soon. Security City is this way after all.” Donna says. “Given what happened to our town, that might not be a good thing. We still don’t know what the fuck is going on. All we do know is the government declared martial law and there are rabid people running around.” You say. “Well I wasn’t suggesting we go to Security City, I was just saying we should be hitting more populated areas due it being close by. Look, obviously I don’t have a good idea of what to do next, so if you got a long term plan, then by all means let’s follow it.” Before you can reply, you hear the sound of vehicle. You peek your head out from behind the truck and see a car heading in your direction. It’s going at a good pace, but MAYBE you can stop it. “Donna, a car’s coming. Quick, tear your clothing and go out in the road and look like a slutty damsel in distress!” you say. “What?!” “Just fucking do it!” you say and check to see how many bullets you have. Donna, gets the picture quickly, though you can tell she’s not entirely happy with this arrangement. You hide behind the truck’s side away from the road, while Donna gets in the middle of the road and waves her arms. You can’t believe you’re actually enacting a plan you thought up in your head just yesterday. You just hope whoever the driver is; they actually stop and don’t try to do something like say run over Donna instead. The car approaches and actually starts to slow down and then eventually stops, but it does so at a distance. Someone then steps out of the passenger side armed with a sub-machine gun. “Alright honey, if you want to live, I suggest you don’t move.” He says. “Don’t shoot! I’m completely unarmed! This isn’t some sort of trick! Please, I just need help, my truck has flat tires and I don’t have any way now to get to Security City!” Donna exclaims. “Security City? Hah! You don’t wanna go there trust me. The whole place is fucked! If the military doesn’t round you up and kill ya, the cannibal freaks running all over the place will.” The man shouts. Well you know that place is definitely off the list now. “Oh no! I don’t know where to go then! I’m just so lost by myself! Where are you guys going? Can I come with you?” Donna asks. “Come with us? Look, I dunno if that’s a good idea. We’re pretty full up with shit and there isn’t much room in this car…” “That’s okay, I won’t take up much room. I mean I’ll sit on your lap if I have to.” “Sit on my…” “Look I’ll do anything you and your friend want! I’ll suck your cocks and fuck you if I have to! Just I can’t be alone! Not after those things tried to kill and eat me yesterday!” Donna screams and starts to rub her eyes and sniffling. At this point the man with the sub-machine gun pauses. “Hold on.” He says and then converses with his driver buddy for a moment. You continue to wait patiently hoping they take this bait. “Alright honey, you can come with us, but that payment you just offered? Well we’ll be taking it now, so I hope you’re ready to back up your promises.” The passenger shouts and then gets back in the car, which slowly drives up closer to meet Donna. When they drive up near the other side of the truck, you wonder if you should wait a little longer to make sure they’re completely vulnerable or sneak around the truck and open fire now. > You wait a little longer You decide that it would be best if they were completely pre-occupied. If you shoot now, the driver could either manage to drive off or the passenger could start spraying the place with bullets. Still, you sneak around towards the front end of the truck so you can at least ambush from behind when you do strike. “Okay baby, where are we doing this? The back seat of the car is pretty full as you can see. We can do it in your truck if you want. Front seat or the bed of it. Doesn’t matter to me.” The passenger says getting back out of the car. “Uh, no not the truck. It got all shot up yesterday, back window broke and there’s broken glass everywhere. Don’t want to potentially get cut up.” “Hmm, well the hood of this car then?” At this point Donna walks up to him and starts to do what she does best. Namely act like a slut. “How about I do the both of you at the same time? That way you both get off and we can be on our way a lot quicker.” she says and starts rubbing up against Mr. passenger. “Well now. That’s an interesting suggestion…how were you proposing the logistics of this?” “Oh that’s easy… you see, first I take off my clothes…” Donna says and quickly takes her clothing off until she’s completely naked. “Next, I just get on my knees in this front seat here… and start to unbuckle your friend’s pants…” You can’t see the driver from your position since he’s never moved out from his seat, but he’s obviously okay with this since you hear a couple of moans of pleasure. “And now…well don’t just stand there silly. My ass is right in front of you, start fucking!” Donna commands. “Wait, you want me to fuck you in the ass?!” Mr. passenger asks. “Well it’s not gonna fuck itself. Do what you want. I gotta concentrate on wrapping my lips around this nice hard cock…mmmmm…” Holy shit, talk about taking one for the team…hell taking TWO for the team. At this point Mr. passenger can’t err on the side of caution any longer. He places his gun on the roof of the car and presumably starts taking your sister in a way that you imagine many men have taken her before. With one dick in her mouth and another in her ass, you’re fairly confident now that Donna’s distracted them both to the point that you have the complete advantage. You step out from the front of truck and walk towards the car parked near it. Mr. passenger’s eyes aren’t watching as he’s focused on thrusting into your sister. His head is a perfect target and with a single shot, you end him as a threat. “Oh shit! Oh shit! ARGH! MY DICK! FUCKING BITCH!” you hear the driver shout. You rush over to the driver’s side and point the gun at his head before he can start beating on your sister’s head in an effort to get her off his dick. “You move to your hands to hit my sister and you die. You try to start up the car and you die. If you want your life AND your dick to stay intact then I suggest you follow my orders. First thing, car keys.” “OKAY OKAY! ARGH! JUST TELL HER TO STOP BITING MY DICK!” the driver shouts and hastily hands you his car keys. “Okay, that’s a start. Alright, Donna, you can release his dick now, I’ll take it from here.” Donna complies and then spits in the driver’s face before he staggers out of the car with his pants half down. You tell her to grab your bags from the truck and put them in the car. “Okay, we’re going to be taking this car and everything in it. In exchange, you can take our truck. Granted it has two flat tires and is low on gas, but if you’re lucky, you might just reach a trailer park that has lots of people willing to help you. You ready Donna?” “Almost.” Donna remarks. You turn back to the driver who is still mostly holding on to his dick wincing in pain. “Okay, well I guess this is where we part ways. Thanks for the info about Security City. We’ll be sure to avoid going there…and uh…bye. Oh, and watch your head.” “Wha…?” is all the driver says before you shoot him and get in the car. “I thought you were letting him live.” Donna says. “What? And let a man who defiled my poor sister’s mouth walk away to brag about it? Not fucking likely.” You say and start the car up. As you spin the car around to head back in your original direction, you ask Donna if she’s okay since she’s fidgeting a bit in her seat. “So…um, are you okay?” you ask. “I’m fine. It’s done. We worked together and we succeeded. I think we both know our established roles are in this team. We all have our talents. Let’s not talk about it.“ Donna says. She doesn’t exactly sound angry, but she obviously isn’t leaping for joy about what she did. You almost want to talk more about what just happened, but given that your sister doesn’t you don’t press the issue and just drive. As you’re driving, Donna suddenly speaks up again. “Next time, don’t fucking kill the guy while he’s still inside me. Tell him to move away or something first. I had a dead man’s dick shooting cum in my ass for a split second before he fell. I’ll admit to being a free spirited gal comfortable with my sexuality, but I didn’t want to include necrophilia in my list of things I’m willing to do.” Wow. You didn’t really expect to hear that graphic detail. It’s actually a bit nasty and you can see why Donna’s in the mood she’s in. “Okay Donna. Damn, sorry about that. I wasn’t thinking.” You say. “Well like I said, it’s done. Let’s just not speak of it again. (Sigh) Probably for the best he didn’t go the traditional route or else he might’ve impregnated me when he shot his load and I might’ve given birth to zombie babies or some shit.” Donna remarks. The situation is pretty fucked up, but you’re having a hard trying not to laugh now. “I don’t think it works that way Donna. Pretty sure you would’ve given birth to a normal baby.” You say with a stifled chuckle. “Yeah, well that would be just as bad.” You decide not to make any more comments even though there’s a really twisted part of you that is finding this all pretty amusing and wants to make jokes. It’s almost like you’re sort of getting a kick out of Donna’s discomfort. Maybe it’s pent up hostility you’ve had for her due to how she’s acted towards you in the past. Maybe it’s some sort of sadistic side you’ve always harbored and it’s just recently come out due to this week’s events. In any case, it’s slightly worrying to you, since you’re starting to wonder how far you’re going to start abandoning “civility.” You’ve already committed murder on several occasions, and while the first time was in self-defense, the ones following it have been getting progressively more predatory. A few more remorseless murders and you’re going to be just like your Uncle Ed. (Now you’re wondering if it’s genetic) You and Donna continue to drive. A couple of other cars do pass you on the road. You imagine they must be coming from Security City or fleeing it from your previous information. You’re just glad you haven’t come across any military trying to block the road. You continue to drive for about a half hour before you see something of interest in the distance. Namely a truck stop, which apparently has been converted into a minor fortress. “Well that’s interesting.” You say. “Is that a truck stop?” Donna asks. “Yeah I think so. Looks like whoever is there are trying to block the place off by putting trucks around it. They even got people standing on top of the trucks with rifles as lookouts. “ you say. “Are we stopping there?” “I dunno. Whoever is there probably isn’t going to be too trustful of anyone. Though, we still don’t have that much of long term plan. A place like this might be a safe haven of sorts. I mean it already looks way better defended than that trailer park.” “Well, it’s up to you. But I think we’re going to have to be more careful at a place like this.” “We might as well chance it if only to catch a breather and maybe get some directions because I can honestly say I don’t know where the fuck we are or where we should be going. That’s assuming they even let us in.” You and Donna drive to the truck stop, which immediately causes the lookouts to point and raise their rifles in your direction. When you stop in front of it, there are a lot of shouts for you to stay in the car. “We’re not just letting anyone in here. Who are ya, and state yer business!” the lookout from above shouts. “Just a couple poor souls trying to escape the chaos out there! Our home town was overrun by military and crazy people. We’ve also been attacked by others who would try to take advantage of us. Please, we’re just looking for some sort of refuge even if it’s temporary. We got some supplies in our car.” “Hrmmm, well whatta you got?” You turn your head to look in the back seat to actually see what you “inherited” since you never looked before. You see a first aid kit on top of a pile of bags. “Um…we got some medicine. Maybe that could help?” you say. There is a long pause and he tells you to wait before climbing down the truck and disappearing from sight. Eventually you hear his voice again which is now coming from behind the truck barricade. “Okay, we’re gonna move this truck, but one funny thing happens and you’re the first one getting a bullet to the head. Alright, we’re letting this one in, everyone keep extra look out for those rabid bastards!” As soon as the truck is moved out your way, the man who was barking orders at you waves you in and motions you over to a parking spot with some other cars. As soon as you drive in they put the truck back. Either they’re really safety conscience or they don’t want to risk having you get away. “Well let’s hope these people are just normal people trying to survive and aren’t a gang of rapists.” You remark. From this distance you see several more people in the building part of the truck stop. Looks like it’s a general store/diner combo. Most of them are watching you from the windows, though a few of them come out, one of them is an older man with a cane who walks directly towards the car. “Okay, I want the two you in that car to exit it slowly. I don’t care if you got weapons, but don’t point them at me or anyone else in a threatening manner.” The old man shouts. You take your pistol and shove it in the front of your pants. As for your newly acquired sub-machine gun, you just leave it in the car when you and Donna exit it. Naturally rifles are pointed at the pair of you, but the old man with the cane shouts telling them to calm down. “You lot, stop pointing your guns and start unloading the car. Sorry about that, everyone’s a little on edge. Name’s Henry. I own this place.” He says. “My name’s Suzy, and I get it.” “So what are two pretty young girls doing driving around in this mess?” “Long story, but I’ll just say, my sister and I are grateful for the shelter if only for awhile.” “Hm, think nothing of it. Really though, if you two are willing to pull yer weight around here, yer welcome to stay as long as you like. Right now we’ve got plenty of supplies and whatever useful supplies you have can be considered payment for your way in here.” “Well, that’s certainly an offer to think about, but I’m not exactly sure what we’d do around here.” You answer. “We can find something I’m sure. Anyway, I just mention it because I’ve been trying to contact various places on my Ham Radio, and all I can gather is what’s been going on is pretty serious and I’m not sure if there’s any place I could direct you where to go that would be as safe as this place right now. Security City is completely overrun and the closest military Fort around here, Fort Timons doesn’t even know what the fuck is going on other than the obvious. Besides, I don’t think you’d get in there anyway, not being military and all.” “This place is really safe huh?” you ask. “Well not to brag, but we just fended off a big horde of those rabid freak things that I imagine wandered from the city yesterday. Didn’t even lose anyone either. Wasn’t fun though and I’m glad no more of those things have popped up, but yeah, I think we’re doing good job of keeping this place safe. Anyway, you’re good to stay for the night, unless you let me know you want to stick around longer and we’ll find something for the both of you to do. Okay, I’m going to go make sure these boys don’t take EVERYTHING of yours in that car.” Henry says and then walks over to oversee his people unloading your car. Well it’s a similar situation you had in the trailer park. Pull your weight or get the hell out. Funny how that worked out. Maybe you could try to do the “community” thing again. The trailer park wasn’t exactly filled with welcoming people, maybe things here could be different and you could actually feel safe here. This place does seem a little better organized and definitely better defended. Really, the only reason why you left the trailer park to begin with was at the insistence of your sister and the fact that it was getting pretty dangerous there. Then again, this place could turn out to be just as bad where you don’t get along with anyone and everything eventually turns into a cluster fuck. Maybe you might as well save yourself the bother by leaving tomorrow. > You make long term plans While this place might very well not work out, you decide you need to at least make a go of it. Given that you turned to murder and banditry fairly quickly you think you need some semblance of law and order to keep yourself from becoming a complete savage, but more importantly you think Donna needs this more than you do. This whole week, Donna’s been flip flopping a bit on the whole “trying to get her life together” thing. Granted she hasn’t had a great foundation, but if you stay on the road and just drift, about the only thing she’s ever going to be useful for is…well bait for whomever else you decide to rob in the future. “Hey Donna, I think we should stay here and by that I mean try to do what we were doing in the trailer park until we ran out like a pair of thieves.” “Suzy, you know that place wasn’t turning out good for us.” “Yeah, I know, that’s why I ultimately agreed with your plan to leave it…but I can’t help think that if we’d done things a little differently…well doesn’t matter. My point is, I think we BOTH need some structure.” “Structure? You’re joking right?” At this point you grab Donna by the arm and go to speak to her away from the earshot of those nearby. “No Donna, I’m not fucking joking. Thursday, we stole a truck and killed two people who were just trying to stop us. Earlier today, we basically did the same thing except it was premeditated. You see a pattern emerging?” “Hey, I didn’t mean to run over that woman at the trailer park and I didn’t know you were going to kill those two guys with the car.” “Donna, don’t play the babe in the woods routine. Granted I’LL take the blame for murdering those guys in cold blood, but you knew damn well that it was a possibility. You went along with it.” “I went along with it, because you were practically shoving me in the road, telling me to strip to get those guys attention in the first place. It wasn’t YOU who had to role-play a pig on a spit to distract them. Besides, we had to do it for survival.” “And that’s my point. First we’re doing it for survival, how long before we start doing it for fun? I mean…(Sigh) I don’t know about you, but for the past few days, my mind has been going to a dark place. Quite frankly a place I didn’t think I had. I mean I’ve killed several people at this point and I don’t feel particularly bad about it. Like I don’t feel anything.” “Geez, Suzy…” “Yeah, I’m apparently more fucked up than I ever realized, but what about you? I mean you’ve relied on your looks and sex to get what you want for the most part. Do you really think that’s a great way to go through life? I even used you as slut bait so we could rip off someone a lot easier. Hell, I pretty much pimped you out and I think it’s the only thing fucked up thing I’ve done recently that I HAVE actually felt bad about doing on some level. You shouldn’t have to be taking random dicks in the ass and mouth just so we can get by. And I’m really sorry for that. We both NEED a better plan for our future and drifting from place to place isn’t it.” Donna’s silent for a moment. “But what would we do here? How would we contribute?” “I dunno, but I’m going to go talk to that Henry guy about it.” You say and then head over back to Henry who is overseeing his people taking all the shit out of your car. “Oh hey there…Suzy wasn’t it?” Henry remarks. “Yeah.” You answer. “Well Suzy, you’ll be happy to know we haven’t taken much, save for the couple of first aid kits you had. We got tons of food and water, so we really didn’t need any of that. Oh, didn’t take your weapons either. Got enough of those too.” “Um…thanks, but I wanted to talk to you about staying.” “Good, we could use the help, so what skills do you have?” Henry asks. “Well, I killed a lot of those cannibal freaks. I also had to kill a few regular psychos as well this week. Guess you could say I’ve become a fast learner in the ways of the gun…so do you need another lookout?” “Wouldn’t turn one down if you’re feeling up to the task. Not many here actually want to do it. Anyway, I’ll make sure to get you a rifle, but what about your sister? What’s she do?” Before you can answer, your sister Donna has come up to speak for herself. “I’m a people person! I used to plan parties and other similar social events. Made sure people had a good time. Now while that might not sound very useful, I think given our current situation it could be. I mean I can’t imagine spirits around here are very high. And when spirits aren’t very high, everything else goes to shit. I think I could help out in making sure people stay positive.” Donna says with a chipper tone and a smile. Henry scratches his head and returns a brief grin. “Well now, that is an interesting proposal and I have to say you do have a pretty cheery attitude. You’re right in that everyone has been on edge and not in the best of moods. I’m really not sure how you propose to change that, but if you can do it, well that would be pretty helpful. Though you’re still going to have to do something else in the meantime, I think the wait staff in the diner needs help with going through the inventory. Go see Anne in the diner; she’ll be able to direct you. Okay, well that’s settled. You ready for your assignment Suzy?” “Yeah, hold on. Just want to talk to my sister for a moment.” “Sure.” Once again you take Donna aside away from earshot. “Donna, what was all that about planning parties and shit?” you ask. “What? I did used to plan parties over Julie’s house remember?” Donna says. “I didn’t think you guys actually planned them so much as you just invited a bunch of people over.” “Well okay, yeah most of the time that was the case, but really I was the main one that got those parties going to be more exciting than they actually were. I also curbed the more destructive elements that actually occurred at those things by keeping people positive and happy.” “So…what? You’re going to turn this place into a rave orgy?” “No…well I mean I wish, but all I have to do is take my interpersonal skills and channel them in some way that will work here. Look, you said we need to try to start over. Well, I’m going to improvise with what I can so we can make a go of it here.” “You’re right Donna. Okay, well I’ll leave you to it.” Before you leave, Donna moves in to hug you. You weren’t expecting it, but you return the hug. “Be careful Suzy, don’t get eaten.” Donna remarks. “Don’t worry about me, you just focus on what you need to do.” You say. With those parting words, Donna heads towards the diner and you go back to Henry for your assignment. Henry apparently has already told some of his people that you’ll be joining them on the truck tops keeping a look out and hands you a rifle. Henry also mentions that this decision was met with mixed results. Some were happy since it meant they could take more breaks, others didn’t like the idea since nobody really knows who the fuck you are and don’t see why they should trust you yet. Still, Henry is pretty well respected you guess around here, because other than some grumbling nobody is outright making a major case out of it. Henry takes you to the far back end of the truck stop. He says he hasn’t really put many guards up here since its away from the road and borders the wilderness and so far nothing has come out from there yet, other than the occasional wildlife. “Now I don’t think anything actually will be coming up this way, since I imagine if we did have another cannibal attack they’ll be coming from one of the other directions, but hey we shouldn’t just keep our back completely undefended. Now you’ll be here until about midnight, I hope you’re up for that.” Henry remarks. “That’s what I’m here for.” “Hm. Well like I said, there probably won’t be much going on and about the most likely thing you’re going to have to fight off is boredom. Um, if you need to go bathroom, there are some port a johns nearby, though suppose if you REALLY need to, you can go run over to the diner if you’re a little more concerned with cleanliness, but whatever you do make sure you at least tell Larry over there so he can keep extra watch while you’re gone.” Henry points to a man over on top of a truck on the far side of where you are before continuing. “Anyway, that’s about it, and if you see anything that looks dangerous, yell your head off and warn us.” “Okay, got it.” You answer. You climb up the ladder propped against the eighteen-wheeler and take you place as a guard. A few hours pass and just as predicted, nothing happens. You’re not really bored yet though since you’re taking a mental count of the number of rabbits you see hopping around in the field and making up little bunny names and little stories about their little bunny lives. Every once in awhile while you’re walking back and forth along the truck, you wonder how your sister is doing. You also wave to Larry once in an attempt to be friendly, but he doesn’t return the wave and ignores you. Eventually he has to pay attention when nature calls. “Hey Larry!” you shout. “What?!” he answers in an annoyed tone. “I gotta pee!” “So? Go over the side of the truck, its what I do when I gotta piss.” “Yeah, I’m not a guy and I don’t have the luxury of the world being my toilet. I need to use a proper bathroom. Henry told me to let you know so you can keep an extra eye on things until I get back.” “(Sigh) Fine, don’t fucking take all day though.” With Larry’s acknowledgement of your bathroom needs, you go down the ladder and run to the diner. (You sure as hell aren’t going to use those disgusting port a johns) When you enter the diner, you find a variety of people singing songs and joking around. You then see Donna dressed in a waitress uniform wave to you. “Hey Suzy! You done with protecting all of us?! This is my sister Suzy folks! She’s the one that saved my life more than once this week!” At this point everyone says hi to you. “Um…hey. I actually just came in to use the bathroom” You reply caught a little off guard. “That’s Suzy, always the social one.” Donna laughs and then goes back to talking to the crowd. After taking care of business in the bathroom, you wash your hands and see Donna entering the room. “Gotta hand it to you Donna, it hasn’t been a few hours and already you’ve got the people here in a good mood.” You say. “Yes, and I didn’t fuck all of them to get them that way in case that’s what you were thinking.” Donna says. “Sheesh, I saw some children out there. I know you’re not a degenerate Donna.” “Well, I’m glad you don’t think I am. Never thought I’d say this, but your opinion of me has started to matter more this week. So how’s guard duty?” “It is what it is. I’m not quite the people person you are though, so all I’ve managed to do is piss off the one person assigned near me. On the bright side, I’ve managed to stave off boredom by making up stories in my head about the bunnies bouncing around in the fields.” “Heh, well you always were the imaginative one. Well I’ll see you later.” You leave your sister and return to your guard duty, which continues to be uneventful. As the night comes your stories about rabbits give way to stories about wandering possums and raccoons instead. Thankfully no cannibals though. Eventually someone comes to relieve you of duty. Some guy you haven’t seen before, but at least he’s a little more cordial than Larry. You return to the diner where you find most people now asleep. Donna is still awake and sitting behind the food counter playing solitaire. She waves you over. “Suzy, there you are. I waited up for you so I could show you where we’ll be sleeping. Come on.” Donna whispers and takes you through the back kitchen. “Hey you didn’t eat today did you? There’s a lot of food here you know. There’s also a shower in the waitresses’ private bathroom if you need.” Donna says. “Nah, I’m good for now. I’ll worry about that stuff tomorrow.” You reply. “Okay, well here it is.” Donna says and opens up a small storeroom, which doesn’t have much space. “I tried to make it as comfortable as possible with a few blankets I borrowed. There are our bags of clothing. I figured those might work as pillows of a sort.” Donna says. “Well I guess it will have to do.” You answer. You lay down on the make shift bed on the floor and try to get as comfortable as possible. Donna does likewise and you drift off. > Next day... SATURDAY You wake up to a body spooning you, and an arm holding you tightly around your mid-section. “Donna! Hey! Wake the fuck up!” you shout pushing your sister off of you. “Huh? Wha? The hell are you pushing and hitting me for?” she exclaims groggily. “Because you were about to commit incest that’s why!” you exclaim. “Oh. Sorry. It wasn’t intentional I assure you. I probably was dreaming about Julie.” “Excuse me?” “Well one time over her house her heating system broke down and we had to sleep together for warmth for a week.” “Okay, I don’t want to know anymore about your little lesbian encounters with Julie.” You say. “Oh geez Suzy don’t be so heteronormative, we weren’t lesbians. We just had some fun on occasion. (Sigh) I wish she was here with us.” Donna says getting a little tearful. You pat Donna on the shoulder. “I wish she was here too Donna.” You say. After that moment of silence to remember your friend, the both of you get up. “You know what time it is?” Donna asks. “No, but I know it’s time for me to take a shower. You said I can use the waitresses’ private one?” you say. “Yeah, but you might have to wait for other people.” “Damn, speaking of waitresses, what’s with the uniform?” “Oh this? Well I needed to change my clothes yesterday and I was offered one of their uniforms. I figured I’d wear it to fit in a little better, besides its kind of cute don’t you think?” Donna asks. “It’s kind of stripperish if you ask me. The skirt barely covers your ass.” You reply. “Well I think that’s the point. This is a truck stop remember and they probably want the waitresses to look a little more on the sexy side.” “Hm, well I’ll stick with my old non-stripper clothes.” “Prude.” Donna snarks. As you and Donna leave the storage room to start the new day you both suddenly hear a loud noise and a faint rumble. You then hear some screams and shouting from the front of the diner. “Oh my god that was a fucking nuke!” you hear someone shout. You and Donna just look at each other. Maybe its due to the week you’ve had, you’re not entirely phased by this. “(Sigh) I guess they finally went and did it.” You say. “Perfect way to start the day.” Donna replies and the pair of you head to the front of the diner. When you get there, you see a waitress trying to calm her children down. A couple people are arguing. A few are just sitting in a silent state of shock. Henry is actually outside the diner looking in the direction of where the bomb must’ve gone off. You can see the lingering remnants of a mushroom cloud in the far distance even from inside the diner. “Well I can only hope we’re far enough away that we aren’t suffering from horrible radioactive fallout.” You say. “Yeah, I suppose not much can be done now if we are, just um…shoot me if my hair starts falling out okay?” Donna asks. You briefly wonder if this bomb was the result of the nuclear war those Ground Zero ads kept harping on about or if this was just some internal thing to take care of those rabid people. Either way, you suppose it doesn’t really matter, life is going to be severely different from now on. At this point Henry steps back in the diner and after calming some of the arguing truckers. He begins addressing the situation and stating that nothing has changed and that the situation is still the same, namely if people help, then they are welcome to stay. If not or if they don’t want to stay then they are free to go. A couple of the truckers who apparently have families elsewhere do leave. Everyone else stays and the work towards creating a permanent new “home” is begun. After washing up and having something to eat, you head out to do your guard duty rounds. Donna comes to see you before you leave. “Hey, Suzy.” “Yes?” You answer. “Whatever happens next, I just want to say…I’m glad we’re dealing with all this together.” “I’m glad we’re seeing this through together too.” You say. And with those words, you and Donna hug and go contribute in your various jobs in this new community. Funny that it took the collapse of society before you re-connected with your family again. > Sisterhood The future… “Hey, those trailer park rednecks had been fucking assholes to us for years. It was high time that we burned that whole heap of trash to the ground like it deserved. It’s just too bad we couldn’t do it when we were temporarily stuck in that hell hole.” You exclaim. “Yeah, I know I just sort of wish there had been another way to deal with them. Wiping out entire communities isn’t really something that is particularly popular you know. I mean there were children and other innocents there too.” Donna says. “Well that’s why we can blame that shit on the Cult of Tiamat. They’re the crazies that took things too far, or whatever…I dunno, you know how to spin this shit, you’re the politician not me.” “Oh yes, the alliance with the cultists. That’s going to be an easy spin…(Sigh) I can’t believe you convinced me THAT was a good idea.” “Hey look, if we had gone head to head with those trailer park assholes by ourselves, it would’ve been a bloodbath for us. Considering the cult was also their enemy, it was a good opportunity to re-establish an old contact as it were. Besides, Bobby’s bitch of a sister Diana wasn’t around anymore so I knew I’d have more clout. Not to mention we’ve got a peace agreement with them now so that’s TWO less enemies in our immediate area now.” Donna gets up from her desk and pours herself a drink. She downs the whole glass in one gulp and pours another shot. It’s funny; she used to drink for enjoyment at one time. Nowadays she drinks to keep herself from being overwhelmed with all the shit she has to deal with. That party girl is long gone and when she took over New Security from Henry she disappeared completely. Popularity was always her specialty, but you’ve always been the stronger one. Without you Donna probably would’ve failed at this community leader thing a long time ago. Of course without Donna, you probably would’ve gotten lynched by an angry mob a long time ago. That “good girl” that once hid out in the basement is long gone too. While you didn’t become the “outlaw savage” that you worried about becoming, you still lost that “civility” and over the years as you had to deal with shitty things in this shitty new world, well it was just easier to be the cold bitch that would kill someone without hesitation. And that’s why you’re a team. “So Suzy. You and Bobby rekindle something?” Donna asks putting down her glass. “Hah, no. Bobby’s one true love nowadays is his blessed Tiamat. Followed by his sister Helen. Still, it doesn’t hurt that I was an ex that I imagine he still has the occasional fond memory.” “You think he’ll leave us be?” “Sure. I mean we’ll always keep an eye on his group, but now that those rednecks are gone, more territory has opened up for Bobby. He’ll be satisfied in the foreseeable future.” “Okay…(Sigh) ugh, I don’t feel like going out there and giving a fucking speech right now…” “Look, I know you’re stressing about this, but I promise you the people of this town aren’t really going to be that upset by the destruction of a bunch of hostile trailer trash. Some of them will probably throw a party. This isn’t the old world anymore where you got the U.N. or some shit waggling their finger at you for war crimes. People are back to the mindset that their tight knit communities come first and fuck everyone else. Besides even if you do have some idealistic fools screaming about injustice or some shit, you’ve still got the support of our militia of which I am currently head of. I’d say you’re not in any danger.” Donna smiles and shakes her head. “Jesus Suzy. I’m sure glad you’re on my side.” Donna says. “Hey, sisterhood forever right?” you say extending your hand. Donna nods and grips your hand followed by a hug. “Sisterhood forever Suzy.” And with those words, Donna straightens her clothing and heads out of her office to address the public and you follow close behind. A few winks, a few smiles and a few lies later and Donna has the public in the palm of her hand just like you knew she would. She just needed your support for that extra boost of confidence. Not bad for a party girl and a basement dweller.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide that it would be best if they were completely pre-occupied. If you shoot now, the driver could either manage to drive off or the passenger could start spraying the place with bullets. Still, you sneak around towards the front end of the truck so you can at least ambush from behind when you do strike. “Okay baby, where are we doing this? The back seat of the car is pretty full as you can see. We can do it in your truck if you want. Front seat or the bed of it. Doesn’t matter to me.” The passenger says getting back out of the car. “Uh, no not the truck. It got all shot up yesterday, back window broke and there’s broken glass everywhere. Don’t want to potentially get cut up.” “Hmm, well the hood of this car then?” At this point Donna walks up to him and starts to do what she does best. Namely act like a slut. “How about I do the both of you at the same time? That way you both get off and we can be on our way a lot quicker.” she says and starts rubbing up against Mr. passenger. “Well now. That’s an interesting suggestion…how were you proposing the logistics of this?” “Oh that’s easy… you see, first I take off my clothes…” Donna says and quickly takes her clothing off until she’s completely naked. “Next, I just get on my knees in this front seat here… and start to unbuckle your friend’s pants…” You can’t see the driver from your position since he’s never moved out from his seat, but he’s obviously okay with this since you hear a couple of moans of pleasure. “And now…well don’t just stand there silly. My ass is right in front of you, start fucking!” Donna commands. “Wait, you want me to fuck you in the ass?!” Mr. passenger asks. “Well it’s not gonna fuck itself. Do what you want. I gotta concentrate on wrapping my lips around this nice hard cock…mmmmm…” Holy shit, talk about taking one for the team…hell taking TWO for the team. At this point Mr. passenger can’t err on the side of caution any longer. He places his gun on the roof of the car and presumably starts taking your sister in a way that you imagine many men have taken her before. With one dick in her mouth and another in her ass, you’re fairly confident now that Donna’s distracted them both to the point that you have the complete advantage. You step out from the front of truck and walk towards the car parked near it. Mr. passenger’s eyes aren’t watching as he’s focused on thrusting into your sister. His head is a perfect target and with a single shot, you end him as a threat. “Oh shit! Oh shit! ARGH! MY DICK! FUCKING BITCH!” you hear the driver shout. You rush over to the driver’s side and point the gun at his head before he can start beating on your sister’s head in an effort to get her off his dick. “You move to your hands to hit my sister and you die. You try to start up the car and you die. If you want your life AND your dick to stay intact then I suggest you follow my orders. First thing, car keys.” “OKAY OKAY! ARGH! JUST TELL HER TO STOP BITING MY DICK!” the driver shouts and hastily hands you his car keys. “Okay, that’s a start. Alright, Donna, you can release his dick now, I’ll take it from here.” Donna complies and then spits in the driver’s face before he staggers out of the car with his pants half down. You tell her to grab your bags from the truck and put them in the car. “Okay, we’re going to be taking this car and everything in it. In exchange, you can take our truck. Granted it has two flat tires and is low on gas, but if you’re lucky, you might just reach a trailer park that has lots of people willing to help you. You ready Donna?” “Almost.” Donna remarks. You turn back to the driver who is still mostly holding on to his dick wincing in pain. “Okay, well I guess this is where we part ways. Thanks for the info about Security City. We’ll be sure to avoid going there…and uh…bye. Oh, and watch your head.” “Wha…?” is all the driver says before you shoot him and get in the car. “I thought you were letting him live.” Donna says. “What? And let a man who defiled my poor sister’s mouth walk away to brag about it? Not fucking likely.” You say and start the car up. As you spin the car around to head back in your original direction, you ask Donna if she’s okay since she’s fidgeting a bit in her seat. “So…um, are you okay?” you ask. “I’m fine. It’s done. We worked together and we succeeded. I think we both know our established roles are in this team. We all have our talents. Let’s not talk about it.“ Donna says. She doesn’t exactly sound angry, but she obviously isn’t leaping for joy about what she did. You almost want to talk more about what just happened, but given that your sister doesn’t you don’t press the issue and just drive. As you’re driving, Donna suddenly speaks up again. “Next time, don’t fucking kill the guy while he’s still inside me. Tell him to move away or something first. I had a dead man’s dick shooting cum in my ass for a split second before he fell. I’ll admit to being a free spirited gal comfortable with my sexuality, but I didn’t want to include necrophilia in my list of things I’m willing to do.” Wow. You didn’t really expect to hear that graphic detail. It’s actually a bit nasty and you can see why Donna’s in the mood she’s in. “Okay Donna. Damn, sorry about that. I wasn’t thinking.” You say. “Well like I said, it’s done. Let’s just not speak of it again. (Sigh) Probably for the best he didn’t go the traditional route or else he might’ve impregnated me when he shot his load and I might’ve given birth to zombie babies or some shit.” Donna remarks. The situation is pretty fucked up, but you’re having a hard trying not to laugh now. “I don’t think it works that way Donna. Pretty sure you would’ve given birth to a normal baby.” You say with a stifled chuckle. “Yeah, well that would be just as bad.” You decide not to make any more comments even though there’s a really twisted part of you that is finding this all pretty amusing and wants to make jokes. It’s almost like you’re sort of getting a kick out of Donna’s discomfort. Maybe it’s pent up hostility you’ve had for her due to how she’s acted towards you in the past. Maybe it’s some sort of sadistic side you’ve always harbored and it’s just recently come out due to this week’s events. In any case, it’s slightly worrying to you, since you’re starting to wonder how far you’re going to start abandoning “civility.” You’ve already committed murder on several occasions, and while the first time was in self-defense, the ones following it have been getting progressively more predatory. A few more remorseless murders and you’re going to be just like your Uncle Ed. (Now you’re wondering if it’s genetic) You and Donna continue to drive. A couple of other cars do pass you on the road. You imagine they must be coming from Security City or fleeing it from your previous information. You’re just glad you haven’t come across any military trying to block the road. You continue to drive for about a half hour before you see something of interest in the distance. Namely a truck stop, which apparently has been converted into a minor fortress. “Well that’s interesting.” You say. “Is that a truck stop?” Donna asks. “Yeah I think so. Looks like whoever is there are trying to block the place off by putting trucks around it. They even got people standing on top of the trucks with rifles as lookouts. “ you say. “Are we stopping there?” “I dunno. Whoever is there probably isn’t going to be too trustful of anyone. Though, we still don’t have that much of long term plan. A place like this might be a safe haven of sorts. I mean it already looks way better defended than that trailer park.” “Well, it’s up to you. But I think we’re going to have to be more careful at a place like this.” “We might as well chance it if only to catch a breather and maybe get some directions because I can honestly say I don’t know where the fuck we are or where we should be going. That’s assuming they even let us in.” You and Donna drive to the truck stop, which immediately causes the lookouts to point and raise their rifles in your direction. When you stop in front of it, there are a lot of shouts for you to stay in the car. “We’re not just letting anyone in here. Who are ya, and state yer business!” the lookout from above shouts. “Just a couple poor souls trying to escape the chaos out there! Our home town was overrun by military and crazy people. We’ve also been attacked by others who would try to take advantage of us. Please, we’re just looking for some sort of refuge even if it’s temporary. We got some supplies in our car.” “Hrmmm, well whatta you got?” You turn your head to look in the back seat to actually see what you “inherited” since you never looked before. You see a first aid kit on top of a pile of bags. “Um…we got some medicine. Maybe that could help?” you say. There is a long pause and he tells you to wait before climbing down the truck and disappearing from sight. Eventually you hear his voice again which is now coming from behind the truck barricade. “Okay, we’re gonna move this truck, but one funny thing happens and you’re the first one getting a bullet to the head. Alright, we’re letting this one in, everyone keep extra look out for those rabid bastards!” As soon as the truck is moved out your way, the man who was barking orders at you waves you in and motions you over to a parking spot with some other cars. As soon as you drive in they put the truck back. Either they’re really safety conscience or they don’t want to risk having you get away. “Well let’s hope these people are just normal people trying to survive and aren’t a gang of rapists.” You remark. From this distance you see several more people in the building part of the truck stop. Looks like it’s a general store/diner combo. Most of them are watching you from the windows, though a few of them come out, one of them is an older man with a cane who walks directly towards the car. “Okay, I want the two you in that car to exit it slowly. I don’t care if you got weapons, but don’t point them at me or anyone else in a threatening manner.” The old man shouts. You take your pistol and shove it in the front of your pants. As for your newly acquired sub-machine gun, you just leave it in the car when you and Donna exit it. Naturally rifles are pointed at the pair of you, but the old man with the cane shouts telling them to calm down. “You lot, stop pointing your guns and start unloading the car. Sorry about that, everyone’s a little on edge. Name’s Henry. I own this place.” He says. “My name’s Suzy, and I get it.” “So what are two pretty young girls doing driving around in this mess?” “Long story, but I’ll just say, my sister and I are grateful for the shelter if only for awhile.” “Hm, think nothing of it. Really though, if you two are willing to pull yer weight around here, yer welcome to stay as long as you like. Right now we’ve got plenty of supplies and whatever useful supplies you have can be considered payment for your way in here.” “Well, that’s certainly an offer to think about, but I’m not exactly sure what we’d do around here.” You answer. “We can find something I’m sure. Anyway, I just mention it because I’ve been trying to contact various places on my Ham Radio, and all I can gather is what’s been going on is pretty serious and I’m not sure if there’s any place I could direct you where to go that would be as safe as this place right now. Security City is completely overrun and the closest military Fort around here, Fort Timons doesn’t even know what the fuck is going on other than the obvious. Besides, I don’t think you’d get in there anyway, not being military and all.” “This place is really safe huh?” you ask. “Well not to brag, but we just fended off a big horde of those rabid freak things that I imagine wandered from the city yesterday. Didn’t even lose anyone either. Wasn’t fun though and I’m glad no more of those things have popped up, but yeah, I think we’re doing good job of keeping this place safe. Anyway, you’re good to stay for the night, unless you let me know you want to stick around longer and we’ll find something for the both of you to do. Okay, I’m going to go make sure these boys don’t take EVERYTHING of yours in that car.” Henry says and then walks over to oversee his people unloading your car. Well it’s a similar situation you had in the trailer park. Pull your weight or get the hell out. Funny how that worked out. Maybe you could try to do the “community” thing again. The trailer park wasn’t exactly filled with welcoming people, maybe things here could be different and you could actually feel safe here. This place does seem a little better organized and definitely better defended. Really, the only reason why you left the trailer park to begin with was at the insistence of your sister and the fact that it was getting pretty dangerous there. Then again, this place could turn out to be just as bad where you don’t get along with anyone and everything eventually turns into a cluster fuck. Maybe you might as well save yourself the bother by leaving tomorrow. > You just stay the night You and Donna have been through this song and dance once before, no point in doing it again. Still there’s no reason to not take advantage of an opportunity here. You pull Donna aside away from earshot of everyone. “Hey Donna, I think we should only stay the night, but I’m also thinking we could gather a few more supplies here.” “Wait, really? This place isn’t like the trailer park. We won’t be able to get out so easily.” “Well that’s why we’re going to case this place. Or rather I’M going to case this place and YOU are going make friendly with the guards.” Donna looks at you like “really?” “What? You said I had my talents and you had yours. You know the drill.” “Yeah, I guess. Teamwork and all that…whatever. Just let me know who needs to be fucked and when.” “I’m going to go talk with Henry again and try to assess this situation. We can make a better plan soon.” You leave Donna and head back to Henry who is overseeing his people taking all the shit out of your car. “Oh hey there, Suzy wasn’t it?” he says. “Yeah. Decided we’re only going to stay the night Henry. We’ve got family in another county and we should at least try to reach them to see if they’re okay.” You lie. “Well I can understand that…hmmm. Tell ya what; you can keep everything in your car. Actually we were just going to take the first aid kits, but I was sort of hoping you’d stick around to help out. Since you aren’t I don’t think it would be right for us to take what little medical supplies you do have. Especially since you’ll have a dangerous journey ahead.” At this point Henry motions one of his people carrying the medical kits to put them back in the car. And with this act of kindness, you think you see your opportunity. “That’s really generous Henry. Thank you. Hey is there any place we can wash up?” you ask. “Well there is a small shower in the waitresses’ private bathroom. Just tell Anne I said you could use it. As for your sleeping arrangements, well I guess one of the booths or floor will have to do. Of course you could sleep in your car if you want.” Henry replies. “Hey, it’s better than we could’ve hoped for. Thanks again.” At this point you part ways with Henry and return to Donna. “Okay, new plan. An hour from now I want you to grab one of those medical kits in the car and go see Henry. Tell him a story about how you really think we should pay to stay here and you insist that he take a kit.” “Wait, you want me to fuck that old guy?” “Well if you have to, but I’m thinking he’s probably got a key to where he keeps all the medicine locked up. Find out where that is, steal the key and later on in the night we can raid it. Then when the morning comes we leave before anyone finds out.” “I dunno Suzy, that sounds pretty risky. In fact it sounds pretty dumb. Shouldn’t we just, I dunno pilfer the kitchen during the night? Seems like it might be easier.” “Yeah and there’s going to be a shitload of people sleeping in that diner too. Talk about your dumb ideas.” “Maybe we shouldn’t steal anything. I mean that old guy didn’t even take our medkits as payment and is letting us stay here for free. I mean that’s pretty cool.” “(Sigh) Fuck Donna, how the hell are you ever going to survive in this world if you don’t seize opportunity when you see it? Fine, you know what, fuck the plan. Why don’t you just go blow as many guys as you can and hand me what you manage to steal off of them okay? That seems like it might be your speed.” You say angrily and begin to walk away. However you’ve pushed Donna a little too far this time and she pushes back, literally when you feel a heavy shove causing you to nearly fall over. “Oh fuck you Suzy! FUCK YOU! You think you can look down upon me like I’m some sort of gutter whore? You’re no fucking better than I am! You’re a goddamn murderer!” At this point Donna’s yelling loud enough for others to hear and now people are looking. “Tell the whole fucking world Donna. And if I’m a murderer then you’re one right along side with me! Who’s idea was it to steal that fucking truck in the first place? You ran over someone, you stupid whore!” you laugh. “Stop calling me that!” “Fuck you, it’s the truth. It doesn’t matter where you go or where you are, you’ll always be a goddamn cum guzzling slut trying to fill some void that can never be filled.” At this point Donna is screaming and tears are running down her face as she starts going on a tirade about your own shortcomings. You aren’t really listening though, it’s like your mind is going to a different place. A dark place that’s telling you to shut her whore mouth shut. And so you act upon this feeling and pull your pistol shooting Donna. At first she looks down at her body wound and then back at you in shock. There are no last words she just falls backwards dead. You stand there for a moment in a little disbelief of what you’ve done. You look at your pistol and then Donna’s body. Meanwhile several of Henry’s people are pointing their rifles at you, telling you to drop the gun. You aren’t really listening to them either though. When you fail to comply, one of Henry’s people decides to play it safe and drops you with a shot to your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As tempting as it is to just run, once again, you don’t really have anywhere viable to run to and now you’d have a horde of those things possibly dogging your steps if you did, so you’re going to just be satisfied with short term safety and keep optimistic that things aren’t as hopeless as they seem. You run up the stairs and into the trailer. Donna slams and locks the door, and then you both shove a couch in front of it. You look up at the ceiling of the trailer and see the sun roof open which naturally explains how Jimmy Ray got up there. You can hear him firing and swearing. “Okay, I think we should be safe now.” Donna remarks. “I wouldn’t count on that. I mean yeah, they’d have a hell of time breaking through the door, and granted the windows are high enough that they might have trouble breaking and climbing into them, but I still don’t feel safe cooped up in here.” You say and start looking around for more furniture and start moving a table under the sunroof. “Suzy, what’re you doing?” “I’m going to go help your boyfriend if I can. You got a weapon down here?” “There’s Jimmy’s bat and some knives in the kitchen, but he really doesn’t need your help. You should stay down here, I mean what if they try to break in like you said?” “Well I’ll be able to shoot them from above a lot better from the roof. Climb up if things start getting grim.” You say and start climb through the roof. When you reach the roof, Jimmy notices you as he’s in the middle of reloading his weapon. “What the fuck are you doin’ up here, get back in the trailer with your sister!” he says. “I’m here to help.” You say scanning the area. “I don’t need any help, now…” You interrupt Jimmy, when you look over the other side of the trailer, see one particularly sneaky freak skulking near it and shoot him. “You aren’t even paying attention to the other side of the trailer. You need to be aware of your surroundings!” you say. “Aw, he couldn’t have gotten up here, and I would’ve heard him had he tried.” Jimmy remarks. “Fine, stay up here, but don’t get in my way!” he then adds realizing that you aren’t going anywhere. From on top of the trailer, you can see a good deal more of the park in general. You and Jimmy actually aren’t the only ones standing on a trailer, you see several women with guns doing their best at fighting off this horde. You even see Tina when you look back towards her trailer. The situation isn’t quite as grim as it once appeared as you see a group of hillbillies from the east side of the park making their way back and soon start helping out with mopping up the freaks that have infested it. Jimmy and yourself mostly keep to picking off the ones that come too close to his trailer. He actually compliments you or your shooting at one point. To be honest, it’s sort of weird to you how much of a natural you are at it. After few more bloody minutes, it’s mostly over and the…well you still don’t know WHAT they are exactly, but they’re no longer the threat they were. “Whew, I think we got the last of those sons of bitches.” Jimmy says. “Yeah, well I’m not in any hurry to check. I’m out of bullets anyway, so I’m just going to go back into the trailer with my sister.” “Okay, I’m gonna keep an eye out from here. Um… I wasn’t sure about you at first, but thanks for yer help.” Suddenly Donna’s head pops up from the opening in the roof. “What’s going on up here? The shooting has mostly stopped, is it over?” Donna asks. “It’s over in the sense that I’m guessing we aren’t in any danger of being overrun. Was everything okay down there? We were trying to keep them from clawing at the trailer too much.” You say. “Yeah, a few got as close as the door and then one of you guys shot them.” Donna says. “Shit, let’s get back down in the trailer.” Jimmy suddenly says walking over to where you and Donna are. “Did you just see more of those things?” “No, I see… “There you are, ya slackin’ piece of shit! Where the fuck were you when we needed help over on the east side of the park. Nearly got my ass eaten and not in a good way!” Mel shouts from the ground as he walks with a couple of other men behind him. “Aw Mel, I didn’t even know about it until it was too late, I was uh…” “You were thinkin’ with yer dick as usual. Is that…is that blondie there I see? Holy shit, didn’t think you were fool enough to fall fer this idiot’s charms.” Mel says. “I didn’t…I was looking for my sister and I helped her and Jimmy out here.” “Is that right?” Mel asks. “Yeah, it’s true! I was with her sister…and um, by the time I knew what was goin’ on I couldn’t leave this trailer because it was surrounded by those things! I was pickin’ them off with the shotgun and then Suzy came here and helped out. Good thing too. There were a shitload of them, as you can tell by the bodies!” Jimmy says and begins pointing at them. Mel stares at the bodies that Jimmy’s pointing to and doesn’t seem impressed. “Jimmy, yer so full of shit right now, yer eyes are brown. By the number of bodies here and their various distances from the trailer, it wasn’t THAT surrounded. Whatever, doesn’t matter, come on down, you’re comin’ with us.” “Where are we goin?” Jimmy asks. “We’re gonna go try to fetch some medical supplies from town. We got some people hurt pretty fuckin’ bad an’ other than a few half used basic medical kits that a few people scrounged up, all else we got is a shitload of alcohol. You’d think those military trucks woulda had some medical shit in them, but no. I suppose SOME people here got some meth, crack and a few other unconventional drugs, but last thing we need is more goddamn junkies runnin’ around here.” Mel says glaring at Dan. “Town? Um…don’t ya think it’ll be pretty fucked up there?” Jimmy asks. “Of course it’s gonna be fucked up there, but it needs to get done. Or we at least need to try. So come on Jimmy, get yer ass down here, what about you blondie?” Mel asks. “What about me what?” you ask. “You gonna come with us? Obviously you’re good enough with a weapon to take care of yourself an’ we’re a little short on that at the moment.” As Jimmy kisses Donna on the cheek and tells her something about coming back to her, you briefly consider Mel’s offer. While you’ve certainly “grown” past being the wallflower you tended to be, you know you’re not some action heroine badass. “While I appreciate the offer Mel, I think I’d be better off staying here, I’m still not as skilled as you guys are when it comes to shooting. I wouldn’t want to be a liability.” You say. “Hm, I guess that’s an honest assessment of yourself. Alright then, keep an eye out on things here. As for the rest of ya, come on let’s round up a few more folks and then let’s see just how fucked the town is.” Mel says and he and the rest walk off leaving you and Donna who duck back inside Jimmy’s trailer. “I’m really glad you didn’t go with them. I mean that’s gotta be a suicide mission.” Donna says. “Well it will certainly be dangerous that’s for sure.” You say. “So you still think it’s a good idea to stay here?” Donna asks. “Still want to leave huh?” you say. “Don’t you? I mean we just went through TWO major attacks at this place now! Who knows what the hell is gonna hit us next! More of those freaks probably, but I’m thinking that we got a better chance if we do leave this time.” “How’s that?” you ask. “Well Jimmy Ray’s got a truck that he parked between his trailer and the next one as a poor man’s barrier of sorts and he didn’t take his keys with him. In fact they’re over on the table over there. That suggests to me that we can easily take his while he’s gone. In fact, Mel and most of those redneck assholes will all be gone and the others are nursing their wounds, so now would be the perfect time to get the hell out of here.” “I used up all my ammo fighting off those cannibal things. What about weapons?” “I guess we’ll have to get by on close combat ones for awhile, but Jimmy’s probably got another gun in his bedroom somewhere. Look, I’ll search this place and you go grab your bags from our trailer. I still got a bag packed near my bed from yesterday, so you can grab that one too.” You chuckle a bit at Donna’s suggestion of completely robbing Jimmy Ray blind and take her plan into consideration. > You continue to stay Once again, you can agree that it isn’t the safest place, but you still see no viable alternative of where to go because you’re getting the impression that it’s going to be fucked up no matter where you go. “Still probably safer than getting on the road right now. I think we need to stay just a little bit longer.” You say. “Jesus Christ I can’t believe you’re still willing to stay. (Sigh) Well, at this point I guess I’ve got no choice, but to stay too. I mean I think it’s pretty obvious by now that I can’t go it alone. I’m just not adapting well to this series of events like you seem to be.” Donna remarks. “I dunno if I’m adapting or just so overwhelmed by what’s been going on this week that I’m just going with what my instincts are.” “Well you’re a far cry from the wallflower you were.” Your sister says. “Yeah, I suppose, but I’d actually rather be on my couch in the basement back home.” “At this point, I’d rather be on that couch right next to you.” Donna laughs. You and Donna leave Jimmy Ray’s trailer and head back to yours. Along the way you bump into Tina who is carrying two big meat hooks. “So, you and blondie survived, glad to see it, because there are a shitload of bodies that need cleanin’ up.” Tina says. Tina looks at you as if that’s the last thing she wants to be doing. “Um…” Tina starts to say. “Uh, my sister is still really shaken up by the attack, nearly got eaten an’ all you understand. She needs to lie down in the trailer, but I’ll be glad to help.” Tina shakes her head at Donna and turns her attention to you. “Come on then blondie.” She says and you tell Donna you’ll see her later. You follow Tina where there are more than a few dead bodies of those things and two other women are standing by with meat hooks. One of the women is a little bigger and taller than everyone else and has short hair like a buzzcut. The other one is similar to Tina except with curlier hair. “K, this is Mary Lou an’ the giant over there is Butchie Billie. An’ this one here with me is our newest addition to our wonderful community, blondie.” “It’s Suzy, actually.” You say. “Yeah, whatever. Let’s start moving these dead fucks before Mel gets back an’ bitches about it. Nevermind, the fact that Mel and the rest of his fuckin’ friends should be here doing this instead of traipsin’ off to town.” Tina says as she digs a meat hook into a body “Well they said they were going for medical supplies.” Billie says following suit. “Damn fool thing to do really, I told him so too. I told him that right now he should focus on rebuilding the barricades around this place. I mean yeah I know more medical supplies would be useful, but really we got enough to get by for now and for those that got all bit up…well…” Tina trails off, but you know what she’s getting at. “You…think we should kill them?” Mary Lou asks, shoving her own meat hook in. “I didn’t say that. I’m just sayin’ that perhaps wastin’ medicine on them isn’t the best idea because they’re probably goners anyway. I mean don’t you think so? I mean those crazy fuckers biting people had to have been sick with something right? How do we know it isn’t spread through biting or even worse just being close to ‘em? At least Mel had the sense to put all those folks in one trailer though.” You’re having a little difficulty putting in your hook. It isn’t like you’ve done this before. “You need help there blondie? You’re holding us up.” Tina asks. “No, I…got it. There.” You say as the hook sinks in. “Okay, lift everyone.” Tina says and all four of you do so. Billie’s probably doing the majority of the work though. As you carry/drag the body to the open field behind the trailer park, Billie continues the conversation. “Well I admit, them possibly bein’ infected is a concern for me too, but I’m sort of surprised Mel didn’t shoot them just to be safe, I mean we all know he isn’t excessively compassionate.” Billie remarks. Tina laughs a bit. “Well that’s true, in fact I almost guarantee if they were anyone else he might’ve just done that, but one of Mel’s few endearing traits is he’s got a sense of loyalty. And I know he feels like he should at least try to help those that watched his back during the recent battle. Not to mention he is drinking buddies with most of ‘em, despite the fact he doesn’t think very highly of ‘em. Oh well, hopefully he’ll be successful with his trip.” You almost ask, but then stop yourself. Tina however has already noticed your stifled attempt at continuing the conversation. “If you got somethin’ to say blondie, say it.” Tina remarks. “Well, I was just gonna ask, do you think he’ll even come back?” “Shit blondie, that’s a pretty fuckin’ grim ass question. And if I were anyone else I’d probably be pretty upset by the implications, but I’m not worried about Mel. He’ll get back here some how. Everyone else might be dead, but I’m confident he’ll come back.” “Hey didn’t Jimmy Ray go with them? I hope he comes back too!” Mary Lou remarks. “Heh, guess you’re a little late on the update there Mary, but blondie’s sister Donna currently has her own hooks in Jimmy right now.” “What!? That asshole told me how I was the only one for him last week!” Mary Lou exclaims. “Hey blondie, tell your homewreckin’ cunt of a sister to keep her hands off my man!” You briefly wonder why Mary Lou who also having blonde hair is calling you blondie. (Granted hers is out of a bottle unlike your natural magnificence) “Yeah, I’ll pass it on to her.” You remark apathetically. At this point you reach your destination where a few other bodies have been placed and the four of you unhook the body and make your way back to the park to presumably get another body. “Hey, Suzy isn’t it?” Billie suddenly pipes up. “Yeah?” you ask turning your head a bit to look at Billie who is walking behind you. “Do you have an older sister by the name of Kelly who participates in the fight clubs in town?” “Yes, I do. How did you know?” you ask. “Because in the locker room she used to constantly bitch about having a pretty blonde sister by the name of Suzy that didn’t do shit around the house and another one by the name of Donna that was a complete whore. I took a shot in the dark that you and this Donna were the same ones that might be related to her.” “Oh. Well you got it right. Wow, didn’t realize she complained about us at…her work.” “Eh, she mostly complained about you. I mean ALL the fuckin’ time. Most of us were sick to death of hearing her bitch. So where is Kelly anyway?” “Dunno. Don’t really care either. Knowing her she’s probably surviving this bullshit somehow though. Were you and her an item or something?” you ask. “Fuck no! I hated that cunt. That bitch knocked out three of my teeth in our last match! I almost had her, but I know that cunt spiked my drink with something before the match! Anyway she was straight, but I figured you knew that.” “Hm, sort of surprising. Just figured she was a lesbian. My whole family did actually.” You say. “Nah, she tried to get with so many of the guys at the fight club it was actually kind of pathetic. She actually would’ve been a whore like your sister Donna had she actually been successful. As it stands she was more like a rapist since she’d routinely intimidate some of the scrawny audience members into having sex with her.” This revelation about Kelly is pretty interesting, but you don’t think you need to know too much more. “Yikes, is all I got to say about that.” You remark. “Yeah, but I will say this, her physical description of you doesn’t do you justice. You’re much prettier.” Billie says and them smiles with a couple of missing teeth. You turn your head back away and close your eyes in horror at such a thought. Tina glances over at you and smirks. “Kinda disturbin’ to think she’s been starin at yer ass this whole time isn’t it blondie?” Tina says. “Now that’s not true, I’ve been starin’ at yours as well.” Billie laughs. “Pfft, honey, EVERYONE stares at my fuckin’ ass.” Tina says puffing up slightly in pride. When you get back to the trailer park, Mel and the rest have already returned. In the distance you see him slamming his truck door and hear him swearing. “I guess it didn’t go well. (Sigh) Let me go see what happened. As for the rest of these bodies, you can keep moving them if y’all want, but as far as I’m concerned Mel and whoever survived their trip can do it instead. I’m done with this mess.” At this point Tina leaves and seeing as you don’t particularly want to move any more bodies you head back to your trailer. Eventually you arrive and collapse on your sofa. “Suzy?” Donna asks coming from out of her room. “Yeah, it’s me. Man, I’m tired. I think the stress of the day is really catching up to me. Oh Mel’s back, guess it didn’t go as planned if he’s back already.” “Is Jimmy Ray with him?” “Dunno, I just saw Mel getting out of his truck and cussing up a storm.” “I guess I’ll go check. Hope so…” “Wait a minute, weren’t you just ready to rob the guy blind a moment ago?” you ask. “Well that was a different situation. I mean if we’re going to stay here, it’s best I latch on to the best looking guy here right? Isn’t that what you said?” “Actually I said becoming self-sufficient, but I suppose grabbing one of the guys so you’re only sleeping with one as opposed to several works too. Well good luck. Oh there’s a girl with a bad bleached blonde job by the name of Mary Lou that’s got her eyes on him, so you might have some competition.” “Pfft. They haven’t made anyone that can compete with me. Let alone around here. I mean come on, it’s not even a contest.” Donna remarks. “Well glad to see your confidence still remains strong in all this. Have fun and be careful. I’m going to get some rest.” And with that you leave Donna to her own devices and turn over on your side to get some sleep. As you drift off you figure you’ll only get a few hours before someone wakes you up to do something, but as it turns out, you sleep through the entire night. > Next day... FRIDAY “HEY BLONDIE! GET YER ASS UP!” you hear as someone pounds on the door waking you up. It sounds like Mel, but at least it isn’t those awful Ground Zero commercials. You groggily get up and through bleary eyes you see that it’s actually still morning. You haven’t been up this early in a long time…and it’s a horrible thing. You hear more banging and yelling causing you to respond in kind. “Alright! Alright! Goddamnit, I’m up! I’m up!” you say and go to the door. “What?!” you ask though Mel doesn’t look too happy that you’re even asking that question. “What? Whadda ya mean what? Yer fuckin’ sister and that cowardly motherfucker Jimmy Ray just skedaddled outta here with a perfectly good truck that was also actin as a temporary barrier! That’s what!” This remark isn’t quite comprehended by you in your current groggy state. “My sister fucked Jimmy Ray in his truck and what?” you say. “Jesus fuckin’…I said…bah, I’m not fuckin’ repeatin’ myself! Shit!” Mel shouts and walks away banging on the door one more time. You briefly step outside and see Tina standing nearby. “I’m guessin’ you didn’t know nothin’ about it anyway considering you’re still here.” Tina remarks. “Okay, someone tell me again what happened? What about my sister and Jimmy Ray now?” “Apparently your sister convinced Jimmy Ray to leave this place in the middle of the night. Guess she really laid it down good, but then Jimmy Ray’s always had a tendency to get stupid over a gal who knows how to work it.” “Wait. Wait. Wait a minute she’s gone?!” “Yeah, she’s fuckin’ gone with a perfectly good truck! I actually don’t even give a shit about Jimmy Ray, he was more useless than tits on bull, but we could’ve used that fuckin’ truck for…” Mel says. “Oh for fuck’s sake Mel, we got a shitload of trucks here and aren’t you converting those army trucks into some sort of road warrior deathmobile anyway?” “Yeah, but it’s the fuckin’ principle of the thing! Not to mention we still gotta find some medical supplies! Goddamnit, Dan was supposed to be keepin’ a look out and…” You leave Mel to rant and head back inside trying to process this new information. You can’t believe that Donna would just leave you like that. There was no indication she was going to just take off like that. You check her bedroom and see that her bag is gone. You don’t know if she took that just after you fell asleep, or if she came back for it before leaving or what. Was she planning it right from the start or did she just see the opportunity? None of it matters you suppose, she just ditched you and didn’t even have the courtesy to let you know. So much for “sisterhood.” While you’re thinking about this, someone enters the trailer and calls out to you. It’s Tina. “Oh there you are. I’m guessing you’re pretty upset right now, but I found this in Jimmy’s trailer. Figured you should have it.” Tina says and hands you a note. Dear Suzy, Sorry, I just couldn’t stick around. Good luck to you in this shithole. Sincerely, Donna You actually chuckle a bit and crumple up the note. “What’s so funny.” Tina asks. “Oh just thinking that she was the one that convinced me to come here in the first place. Anyway, it’s done and she’s gone. We were never really close to begin with, though I thought that was sort of changing this week, but I guess not. Still, at least it felt like someone was on my side. I imagine I’m not too well accepted around here.” “Meh, I think you’re about as accepted as anyone else around here. I mean I think the general assessment of you is that you’re a big tease that thinks she’s better than everyone else, but I mean its not like you’re a nigger or something.” Tina remarks. You give Tina a strange look. “Um, lucky me then I guess. Just out of curiosity what do you think about Donna leaving? She kept going on about how you two were friends.” You say. “Me? Eh, I don’t really care. I mean I knew your sister on and off for a few years when I use to do strip jobs over at the parties at the place she was livin’ at before. An while she was a funny girl that made that particular job a lot more enjoyable, so I didn’t mind helping her out with a job when she asked, but it wasn’t like I ever considered her a real friend. Hell, I didn’t even know she had a sister until a few days ago. Anyway, always knew she was flakey. To be honest I didn’t even see her lasting long as a stripper and living here either. She probably would’ve latched on to first sugar daddy she could find and ditched everything.” “Sounds about right.” You say and toss aside the note. “Well I’ll leave you alone blondie. And I wouldn’t worry about your status here or lack there of. Quite frankly so many folks here have died or are wounded that nobody’s really in any position to antagonize someone who actually has been making an effort to contribute around here. Speakin’ of which I need to go talk to this crazy man that’s probably still ranting about a fuckin’ truck.” Tina says and leaves. You take a shower as you’re thinking about how you’re going to proceed next. You go back and forth on whether to do what your sister did, but knowing your luck, you’d end up getting caught so you ultimately abandon the idea. As you’re getting dressed and figuring out what your next plan of action should be, you suddenly hear banging on the door of your trailer again. You go to the door and see it’s that methhead Dan. “Hey blondie! You’re needed for a vote!” Dan exclaims. “Vote? Vote for what?” you ask. “We need a tie breaker to shoot the ones that got bitten or not. Billy Ray in particular ain’t lookin’ too good.” Dan remarks. “So what are we doin’ if we don’t shoot ‘em?” “Guess we’re goin’ back to town to try for medical supplies again. If that’s the case, I hope we have better luck, cause it was a cluster fuck last time.” Dan says. As you walk with Dan, he’s looking at you a lot and while some of that is predictable ogling, he’s also doing a lot of twitching and it’s making you nervous. “Dan, I know you have to take a glance at me every now and then, but between the staring and the twitching it’s making me uncomfortable. Makes me think of those things that attacked us yesterday. It doesn’t help that you’re about as clean as they were too.” You say. “Oh. Sorry blondie. I just…I need a fuckin’ fix. Just to put me at ease. The shit that’s been going down for the past couple of days has really made me scared y’know? I went through most of my shit after the National Guard showed up and then I used the rest up immediately after the freak invasion.” “So where’s the meth lab? Don’t places like this usually have one?” you ask. “Hah, I wish. I mean we used to have one years ago, but it blew up and caused a lot of damage. After that, the old owner sort of cracked down on that sort of thing.” “Well there’s no law anymore, you could just start making it again.” “Hah, yeah. But again with everythin’ that’s gone on, isn’t like there’s been time to do that. Not to mention Mel’s been ridin’ everyone non-stop. He’s already pissed at me for fallin’ asleep yesterday. I didn’t catch Jimmy Ray an’ yer sister taking off in the night. Guess he figured if anyone would stay awake all night it would be me, but I just sort of crashed because like I said I didn’t have my shit anymore to keep me alert.” “Yeah, well it’s tough all over.” You say unsympathetically. Before you even get to the meeting, you can hear the arguing, which is mainly consisting of a lot of shouting and swearing. By the time you arrive, you’re met with mixed glances. “These are our friends, we can’t just fuckin’ kill them!” “We need to fuckin’ kill ‘em before they infect us all!” “You’re one cold hearted sonofbitch you know that? What if I just decided to kill you?!” “Try it bitch!” “SHUT THE FUCK UP ALL OF YOU!” Mel shouts. At this point all eyes are on you. “As you can see blondie, we’re involved in the democratic process and are in need of a tie breaker.” Mel says to you. “Aw Mel what the fuck we need her vote for? She ain’t one of us and her sister fucking stole a truck!” some redneck woman says. “I said shut it! The only reason why I even entertained this process is so you fuckers would quit bitchin’ about me bein’ a so-called tyrant even though I’m the only one around he trying to do anything at all! So however blondie votes, will break the goddamn tie and we can move on. So what’s your vote?” Not that you’re especially close to any of these people, but if you vote to shoot you know it’s going to cause a lot more problems and you being an “outsider” are going to catch all the hell for it. Besides, last you remember Mel was trying to keep these folks alive, best you vote on his side. “Well I vote not to shoot because…” you start to say before Mel interrupts again. “That’s all I need to know. Didn’t need the reasons. Hear that folks? We ain’t shootin’ any of them! I dunno why you pussies are scared anyway, we got ‘em all locked up and barricaded inside a trailer. They ain’t getting out even if they do turn into something.” At this point there is more grumbling, but democracy has won this day and nobody gets violent about it, though you have a question. “Um, has anyone actually looked in on these bitten folks since they got thrown in together?” you ask. “Yeah, I did. Like I said, Billy Ray ain’t lookin’ too good. Neither are some of the others. They’re all mostly just lying there not doing much though.” Dan says. “Well was any first aid actually applied to them? I mean maybe they’re not infected, but just really wounded. Any aid might help.” “I threw in some bottles of whiskey an’ pain killers to ease the discomfort. I threw in some bandages in there, but I wasn’t gonna get close enough to actually bandage them.” Dan replies. “And that’s it? Nobody else has seen to them since they’ve been shoved in a trailer?” “Nope.” This is nuts, these people that have been bitten could very well be DYING due to neglect more than anything else! Nevermind the fact that the reason some might not be moving is that they might’ve very well ODed from the alcohol/pill combo. In any event Mel breaks up your question period. “Alright what we’re gonna do is fetch us some more medical supplies an whatever else we might find. Thinkin’ we should hit up that carnival a few miles from here.” Mel remarks which sort of takes most by surprise. You especially since you weren’t even aware there was a carnival in the area. “If the National Guard stopped here, chances are good they stopped at that carnival too. Maybe that detachment had more supplies and I also figure it’s gotta be easier than tryin’ to go back into town again.” Mel reasons. Mel’s suggestion is met with mixed results, but the people seem to be okay with it. Probably because a carnival does sound a lot less dangerous than going back into town, which they assumed would be the case. “Okay, we’re taking three trucks an’ y’all that came with me last time are comin’ with me this time as well an I’ll be pickin’ a few more so don’t nobody go too far. That means you blondie.” “Wouldn’t it be better if I stayed here and looked after things? I mean you don’t want to leave this place totally undefended.” You say. “Oh it never is. I’m sure you saw that everyone is fully capable of defendin’ themselves here when those freaks attacked. But I can’t just be takin’ mothers ya know? I mean it’s bad enough most of the snot nosed bastards round here that survived ain’t got fathers and that’s before all this shit went down. Can’t hardly deprive ‘em of mothers as well can I? Someone needs to keep ‘em out of my way and look after them.” “Well isn’t someone like Butchie Billie better suited for something like this than me?” “Butchie Billie is probably our best welder and mechanic. I’m not gonna risk taking her. Besides, she still needs to work on converting our newly acquired army trucks. And some of the other guys I’m not takin’ are better at workin’ on the generators or digging some extra outhouses.” “I don’t have a weapon or least not any with ammo. I ran out of bullets during the last attack.” You say. “Oh don’t worry about that, if there is one thing we’ve got a lot of, its weapons and ammo.” As you struggle to think up another excuse. Mel stops you. “Look blondie, you knew you were gonna have to start paying yer dues. And since I KNOW you were tryin’ to avoid bein the new fuck toy around here, it’s either this or you can just fuckin’ leave.” You don’t see yourself making it on your own…at least not yet. You still need to be in the safety of numbers, so that means you’re going. However you question if Mel’s plan is even a good one. You could very well get to this carnival and not find anything, you sort of wonder if it wouldn’t be a better idea to actually head back to town. You figure the town is probably already half looted and lawless by now, so you might well go in and get the best stuff you can before its completely gone. Not to mention you might know the town a little better as far as which side streets to take to get to certain locations quicker. Like say small pharmacies and other stores near where you live. Of course putting yourself in more danger isn’t necessarily desirable either. > You go with Mel's plan No need to make this more dangerous than it needs to be. “Alright I guess we’re going to the carnival.” You say. “Good. be ready at the trailer park entrance in a few minutes. Someone there can probably hand you a weapon as well.” When you arrive at your destination, a group of rednecks are already there checking various rifles and handguns. It really does look like they got enough to take on an army. Their attention turns to you. “Well now if it isn’t blondie. I’m surprised Mel is riskin’ his piece on the side like this.” One of the sleazier rednecks says. “I know that’s right Ray. If she was mine, I’d be wantin’ to keep her safe.” Another says. “Piece on the side? Is that what Mel told all of you?” you ask which is followed by a lot of snickering. “Not in so many words honey, but we ain’t the idiots that he thinks we are. Why else would he tell us to lay off of ya if he wasn’t stickin’ ya? Sonofabitch already has Tina, don’t see why he gets ta have TWO fine pieces of ass while some of us ain’t got none.” Ray remarks. “Could I have one of those rifles please?” you ask ignoring Ray’s comments. Ray snorts at your request. “Don’t think so blondie. Maybe you think yer warrior princess or some shit cause you got lucky shootin’ a couple of those freaks, but I ain’t impressed and you ain’t getting any of these rifles. Here, take one of these instead. Should be more than enough for you seein’ as all yer gonna be doin’ is hidin behind Mel the whole time anyway.” Ray says and hands you a smaller pistol. “Fine, I don’t need a big weapon anyway. I don’t have to over compensate for something.” You say taking the pistol. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Ray asks. “It means she’s sayin’ you probably got a small pecker Ray, now quit givin’ the girl a hard time and let’s all get goin’.” Mel sudden remarks as he walks up with a couple more people. Ray doesn’t say anything and just glares at you before leaving for one of the trucks. Everyone else does likewise. Predictably, you have no wish to ride with any of them, let alone in the back of one of the pickups with a bunch of them so you ride up front with Mel especially since you want to address something. As the trucks pull out from the trailer park, Mel fiddles with the radio, but he doesn’t get anything except Ground Zero ads. “Goddamn Ground Zero shit. I’m tellin’ you like I’ve said to everyone else, it’s a fuckin’ conspiracy goin’ on with them. In fact all of this shit goin’ on is government related.” Mel says turning off the radio. “Yeah, probably. Hey Mel, is it really necessary for you to lie and tell everyone that we’re having sex?” you ask. Mel starts chuckling a little bit. “Who said I did that?” Mel asked. “Well first of all a few days ago Tina flat out asked me if I had any intention of fucking you, and I had to clarify that I wasn’t. She believed me, but she said you told her that I flirted with you. Then Ray just said that I was your piece on the side. Everyone else seems to believe that as well.” You say. “Okay, first off I’ll admit that I might’ve said you were flirtin’ with me to Tina, but there was a good reason. We’re just makin’ up from one of our many bad fights and I figured it might be good to get her a little jealous. Y’know so she doesn’t take me for granted and that she could possibly lose me if she isn’t careful. Knowin’ Tina she probably thought it was bullshit anyway, which is probably why she just flat out asked you as opposed to just clawing yer eyes out if she thought it was remotely true.” “Well she did say that she didn’t believe it.” “Exactly. She knew a girl like you wouldn’t be interested in someone like me. Still, it was a good gesture on my part to show her I still care.” At this point you’re not going to decipher hillbilly love life logic. You just continue to listen to Mel explain himself. “Now as for Ray an’ the rest. All I told them is to lay off of you a little bit since you were new to the trailer park an’ you were doin’ your best to contribute. I really can’t help it if everyone jumps to conclusions.” “But you’re not exactly dispelling those conclusions either.” Mel laughs again. “Well, I suppose yer right about that, but think of it this way, if they all think you’re my squeeze on the side, they’re actually all less likely to try anything because they won’t want to answer to me. I mean right now all they do is stare a lot and make the occasional cat call. Now I could tell them that we’re really not doing anything, but after interactin’ with Ray, do you really want him or some of the others sniffin’ around on a regular basis?” “Ugh, I suppose not…just wish there was another way.” “Man’s world, blondie, deal with it.” “Trust me, I am. I just don’t like it.” You and Mel continue to drive in relative silence until you get to the carnival destination. “This should be coming up to it soon.” “Didn’t even know there was a carnival nearby.” “Yeah, set up shop I think last Saturday. Most of us from the trailer park went there earlier in the week. I didn’t go mainly because I was too busy fightin’ with Tina at the time and I didn’t wanna run into any clowns. Hate those creepy fuckers.” Me; “Really? I always liked clowns. I even briefly thought about wanting to be one when I was little. Oh well, guess that will always be the dream.” You say causing Mel to give you a look like you just creeped him out a little. You drive up to the carnival, which looks like it was in the middle of being packed down, but other events got in the way and given the ones you suffered, you can sort of imagine what those were. The place looks like a warzone and there are several bodies lying on the ground “Looks like I was right, the Guard was here.” Mel says pointing to a military truck near a dilapidated tent. “Don’t think they’re still in charge here either.” You say. In the distance you see a few small figures near a large tent and then they run into it when they see you pull up. “Well looks like whoever is still in charge here is going to be meetin’ us real soon.” Mel says and stops the truck. The other trucks following stop as well. You see several people now step out of the big tent. Some of them are armed, but then again so is your side. “Get ready, but stay in the truck. I’m gonna actually try to handle this without a gunfight, but I’m not hopeful about that.” Mel remarks and gets out of the truck. You see him motioning and shouting to the rest to hold fire and then he addresses the carnie crowd who seem to mostly consist of midgets and the main one addressing Mel is dressed in clown clothing, though he doesn’t seem to be wearing the makeup. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Ain’t nobody lookin’ for a fight.” Mel says. “Doesn’t look that way, given that you’ve come with three trucks full of armed men.” The midget clown says. “Heh, well I’m sure given your own heightened state of awareness, you know things are getting’ dangerous nowadays. Anyway my name’s Mel, I’m guessin’ since you’re the one talkin’ you’re in charge here. Ringmaster or something like that?” “Look, we don’t want any trouble.” “And you won’t get any trouble. You…uh…got some military gear here too I see. That truck over there.” “Yeah, what of it?” “Oh nothing, but that brings about the question of where are the guardsmen…heh yeah they tried to tell us what to do too. Didn’t work out so well. The second amendment says you got the right to pack it after all. Government can’t just do what they want.” At this point more people come out of the tent, which in turn makes more people get out of their trucks. You get out too, though you’re taking cover behind the door. Your people and the carnies are both starting to eye each other waiting for someone to fire a shot. “Look let me cut to the chase shorty. I’m assumin’ you might know by now what’s been happenin’ back in town. Besides the government tryin’ to pull their shit, there’s a bunch of freaks runnin’ around tryin’ to eat people. A bunch of them attacked us last night and while we fought them off, some of us got badly hurt and are in need of medical supplies. Now of course we did try goin’ into town first, but was just too fucked up there an’ we didn’t make much head way what with the freaks AND the guard all over the damn place. Then it occurred to me today that your circus might still be around and the National Guard probably would’ve been here as well so we decided to investigate. Now the group of weekend warriors at the trailer park had shit for medical supplies. So I’m hoping your detachment had more in that department.” “We ain’t got anything! Just go away or we’ll open fire!” the midget clown says. Mel isn’t convinced and in any case he has no intention of backing down now. “Now you might get a few of us, but I’m bettin, most of us are better shots than y’all, so if you give us what medicine supplies you do have we’ll leave here in peace, if not well…” While Mel is probably doing the best he can in trying to resolve this without a gun battle, but you know how this is going to go down. It’s just been that sort of week. Suddenly someone fires a shot and then another from one side and then it’s a full-blown shoot out. (You mainly hide behind the truck, firing every once in a while) The carnies aren’t holding back, but your side does indeed have much better aim and midgets are falling like flies until they all fall back into the big tent again. After some more shooting which is completely one sided now, Mel calls a halt to it. “We can fire all day into that big tent, but we can’t be sure if we’re actually hitting anyone since we ain’t got x-ray vision an’ I don’t want us wastin’ anymore ammo. We gotta do something else.” Mel says. “Why don’t we just throw grenades at it? We got some from the Guard that was fuckin’ with us.” Ray asks. “Because they might have medical supplies in there ya idiot. We start blowin shit up, an it defeats the whole purpose of the trip. I think we need to spread out an creep up then just rush in.” Mel says. “So your solution is to go in there like a SWAT team an’ possibly get our asses shot off? Fuck that. I’m blowin’ that motherfucker up.” At this point Ray and a couple others look and nod at each other and start heading towards the big tent with grenades in their hand. Mel tells them to stop, but his orders are ignored and met with a couple of swear laden sentences of being tired of him always telling them what to do. Mel is visibly angry; though you’re surprised he isn’t doing more to stop them from disobeying his orders. As much as Mel isn’t exactly your favorite person, you’d hate to see this as the first sign of a “change in leadership.” Especially if it’s going to be Ray. > You let them blow up the tent Opening fire on anyone other than carnies probably isn’t a good idea, at least not on your own. Maybe if Mel gave the order it might be different, but again he surprises you and doesn’t do such a thing. “Ray, you’re a goddamn idiot.” Mel shouts and just watches as Ray and the two others quicken their pace towards the tent. All three of them get half way to the tent and then prepare to throw, which they do. Two of the grenades hit the tent, but one manages to roll inside it. Unfortunately for them one of the carnies steps in the tent entrance and throws it back! “Holy fuck! Run!” is all Ray manages to shout which is then followed by a bit of gunfire from the carnie who threw the grenade. He’s hit the leg, but that’s not the worst of it since he’s not that far from the grenade when he falls to the ground. Mel, you and everyone else take cover behind the trucks in preparation for the explosions soon to follow, all three of them. When the smoke clears and everyone slowly looks out from behind their cover. It’s a devastating mess. The big tent is partially gone, though surprisingly still standing. One can see inside most of it now though and there are a lot of bodies… Speaking of bodies, Ray’s is in pieces since he failed to get away from the blast in time. A crater now exists where the grenade fell and Ray’s body parts aren’t too far from it. The ones who followed Ray faired better and managed to get away from the blast. “I fuckin’ knew something like that was gonna happen. Come on spread out and head towards what’s left of that tent. Careful though, they might still have some fight left!” Mel shouts with nobody really mourning the loss of Ray. You all cautiously proceed forward with weapons raised and taking cover as much as possible. While it’s always better to be safe than sorry, there isn’t much fight left in any of the survivors who are now a mixture of wounded, dying or just plain scared. “Please! We surrender! Take whatever you want, just don’t kill us!” one of the midgets shouts from amongst the carnage. “Goddamn right we will be! None of this woulda been necessary had you just given us whatever medical supplies or medicine you had! Now besides this fuckin’ big top, is there anyone else lurking around that we should know about?” “Uh…um…” “That’s not a fuckin’ answer!” “I dunno! I mean yeah, maybe! There might be a few people hidin’ in the trailers, just don’t kill anyone else, please!” “Some of you search the rest of this place, but keep an eye out for more carnies! If anyone gives ya too much trouble, you know what to do.” Mel shouts. The remainder of your time is mostly spent looking through what remains of the tent which actually did hold some medical supplies though not many and some of them were obviously destroyed by the grenades. As their belongings and supplies are looted and they are “herded” into group, the carnies, the carnies make no attempts at resistance and if there were any hiding in the trailers, they must’ve ran for the wilderness or were really good at hiding, because nobody finds anyone else. Several make an attempt to beg you to leave something, but these are met with verbal commands to shut up before they suffer further. Another pleads to Mel to think about their own wounded, but this is met with smash to the gut with Mel’s rifle. It’s the only physical abuse that occurs before they realize they’re receiving the only mercy they’re currently experiencing. Your own personal feelings on the current situation is that it’s certainly not “right” but what can you do? After looting the carnival of what useful stuff they have, you leave the demoralized carnies and head back to the trailer park. “Well that went better than expected, just lost Ray, I’m sure you’re really broken up by that.” Mel says. “Crushed. Surprised you didn’t shoot him for directly challenging your authority though.” You say. “I was more concerned with the carnies than Ray at that point. Any other time I might’ve given him a beat down, but I wouldn’t have fucking killed him. Sheesh blondie, haven’t you learned by now that just because I’m an asshole to everyone, doesn’t mean I’m some fuckin’ heartless killer? I mean the whole point of this fuckin’ endeavor was to get medicine for folks who are bitten. If I was that cold, I woulda just shot ‘em like some people wanted me to do. Shit, I didn’t even enjoy any of what I had to do to those carnies. I mean I know they had their people to look after, but so did we an’ I ain’t sorry for it.” “Hm, well I suppose you’re right. Guess we’re all a little more complex than appearances would seem.” “So, you see us all a little more than stupid trailer park trash now blondie?” Mel asks. “Actually I’ve more or less discarded that view since I’ve been staying here besides I’m hardly in a position to talk seeing as I’m living with you all.” “So K’ blondie, we needed someone to fill out the snobby tease role in the community anyway.” You chuckle. “I’m really not though. I’m just selective about my standards.” You say. “Don’t need to justify anything to me. I got a woman.” Mel replies. “The thing is despite it all, so far you lot have been at least been cordial with me as my own family was. Dunno if that’s funny or sad.” “Well depends. Stick around long enough blondie an’ you might just become part of our family.” You start to outright laugh. “See, you should fuckin’ laugh more around the others. It makes you seem less snooty.” Mel replies. “I guess anything’s possible. Doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere anytime soon.” You remark. You and Mel continue to converse on the way back to the trailer park. It’s mostly about nothing of major importance, but eventually he goes on about how the next step on the agenda is to contact his cousin Clem who apparently owns a farm further past where the carnival was located. “Figure we’re gonna have to do something about our food soon and instead of riskin’ killin’ ourselves going into the town for whatever scraps are left, it might be best to enlist my cousin’s help in that matter.” Mel says. “So you really think order won’t be restored by the government?” you ask. “Pftt, fuck no blondie. Considerin’ how the National Guard came in last time, I’d just as soon not want government assholes around anyway. But my guess is things are gonna be fucked up like this for a long time so self-sufficiency is gonna have to be a priority. Pretty much the assessment you and most others have had. Still, it’s a good sign that Mel’s at least thinking ahead with the food situation. Eventually you get back to the trailer park where things appear to be running smoothly. The bitten folks are finally seen to properly. The good news is the bites don’t seem to be infectious at least not in the “zombie bite” sense. The bad news is not all of them make it and Billy Ray dies of his wounds, depriving the trailer park of yet another member with “Ray” in their name. As for other things of importance, mostly everyone who is able is pitching in to help in some way. Still realizing you’ve got to work with these people now, you volunteer to keep look out near the entrance for the remainder of the day and part of the night (Which is thankfully uneventful) until eventually some guy named Bob tells you that they’re taking over the graveyard shift. Having been relieved of your duties, you return to your trailer, which is starting to feel more comfortable to you. It’s no basement, but it’s home. > Next day... SATURDAY You groggily awaken to the sounds of a bunch of giggling outside, a few bangs on your door and what sounds to be a thumping sound on the side of your trailer. You look out the window and see a bunch of children playing outside. While you knew there were kids here it was weird that you never really saw them grouped together until today. Making sure you’re decent, you step outside where upon one of the smaller kids suddenly stops bouncing his ball against your trailer. “See, I told ya that Tina said that pretty blond lady lived here.” One of the boys says. “Why the hell are all you kids doing around my trailer?” you ask. “Tina said we should come over here where we were out of the way since most of the adults are either workin’ on the new barricades or that tank lookin’ thing in the field over there.” One of the kids says and points in that direction. “I don’t understand what that all has to do with me.” You ask. “Tina said you’d look after us.” At this point you drop your head in defeat. It’s too early in the day for this. “You okay lady?” “Yeah I’m fine kid. Just re-evaluating what my position is in the community here.” “Um…yeah anyway, I told Tina that we didn’t need some baby sitter, but then Mel shouted at all of us so we ran over here, before he got madder.” “Huh, I wasn’t scared. I just didn’t feel like helping that ol’ asshole anyway.” A slightly older kid says attempting to puff up his chest. So you’ve been assigned to baby-sitting. You aren’t sure if that’s bad or good. On one hand you’re tempted to take it as a good sign since the folks here are obviously trusting enough for you to look after their offspring. Then again they may just not give a shit and these kids could be little hellraisers that their parents want nothing to do with. “Hey lady, did you kill any zombies a couple days ago?” one child asks you. “Tommy, they weren’t zombies ya moron! They were just crazy people!” a girl shouts. “How do you know Jenny?” Tommy asks. “Cause my mama shot one in the chest and it died! Zombies only die if you hit ‘em in the head!” “Yeah, an’ the people who got bit didn’t turn into zombies either, not even Billy Ray an’ he died!” another kid exclaims. At this point the children begin arguing about zombies until you interrupt. “Okay quiet down kids, but to answer your question Tommy, yes I did kill a few of those…well whatever they were.” You say. “Were you scared?! I was scared when they attacked! I hid under my mama’s bed!” the kid with the ball admits. At this point the oldest boy, who was claiming he wasn’t afraid of Mel, boldly comes up to you. He looks like he might be thirteen at most “Hah, I wasn’t scared. I even shot one of those things right in the face! Pow! See, I’m not a scared little kid like the rest of them here.” The boy says puffing up again and making gun gestures. “Hmm, I see. Back up boy.” You say. “Why?” “Because you’re invading my personal space.” You answer. “I wanna invade more than that.” The boy says laughing at his own innuendo. One of the boys laugh along with him; the Jenny girl rolls her eyes. All the rest of the kids look confused on the matter. Considering you’re used to hearing similar from the older knuckle draggers around here, you’re hardly surprised to hear it from this snot nosed brat. “Well, better save that idea for your wet dreams boy, cause that’s never going to happen.” You remark frankly, which causes Jenny to laugh a bit. “What are you some sort of dyke like Butchie Billie? Come on I like older women…” the teen says and at this point tries to grab your chest, but you easily grab his wrist. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing you little shit?! Have you lost your fucking mind?” you say and start digging your nails into his flesh. “OWWW! Lemme go you crazy bitch!” the boy cries and then you twist his arm behind his back. “That’s right I AM a fucking crazy ass bitch! My uncle was a goddamn serial killer, my ex-boyfriend was a cultist, and I killed several of those fucking cannibal freaks without blinking. Now get the fuck outta here before I do worse to your little ass!” you say in his ear and kick him off the steps of your trailer. The boy goes face first into the dirt and while he quickly picks himself up, he just glares at you and runs away. It’s obvious he’s going off to cry somewhere. “Hahahahaha! That was so cool what you did to Alan! Can you teach me to do that?” Jenny asks. “Was your uncle really a serial killer?” Tommy asks. Before you can answer a bright flash followed by a loud noise in the distance grabs everyone’s attention. A couple of the kids scream about their eyes, fortunately you weren’t looking in the direction at the time, but it was still really bright. You then look to the west and in the far distance you see it. A mushroom cloud. You’re not feeling any tremors or aftershocks, a wave of fire hasn’t engulfed you, so you’re guessing that it wasn’t excessively close, maybe it was even a small one. Still, you can’t help but wonder if you’re in some sort of deadly radiation radius though. If so there isn’t much that can done about it. “So…they finally went and did it.” You say. Oddly you don’t even feel any fear. You’re a little anxious you suppose, but the events of this past week have probably helped in putting you in a “doomsday” mindset already. At this point several of the children huddle together a bit, a few run off to presumably find their parents. A couple of them are visibly crying. “Are we going to die soon?” Jenny asks. “Eventually perhaps, but not today.” You answer. At this point you see several women running towards your direction presumably the mothers of these children (oddly you see no fathers, you don’t know if that’s because they’re busy or none of these children have one). After the various mothers either scream at you for not looking after their child “properly” (Never mind the fact that they should have been doing it) or are actually pleasant and thank you while they calm down their child, you see Tina briskly approaching, she waves at you. “Hey blondie, we’ve got an important meeting. Your presence is required.” Tina remarks. “Glad to see I’m being included in these major decisions unlike this morning.” You say walking towards Tina. “Hey, you got to sleep in late and barely had to look after all these brats due to nukes, I’d say you got off easy as far as work is concerned.” As you walk with Tina, you can already hear the shouting from the crowd gathering around Mel’s trailer. “So how bad off are we?” you ask. “Well if Mel’s cousin ends up helping on the food and water front, like Mel thinks he will, I suppose we’ll be fine. Just need to travel up to his farm. Mel’s thinking we’ll probably still have to make another attempt into town though for shit. Might as well give you a heads up blondie, but I think you’ll be going on one or the other of these trips today.” Tina says. “Figured as much. Honestly, I think I’d rather do that than be a baby sitter.” With Tina chuckling at your remark, you briefly think about your past life and realize it was just as well you enjoyed your “good girl” basement dwelling years as much as you did. If you’d actually done anything with your life, it would’ve likely been for naught anyway considering current events. You sort of wonder what happened to your siblings and even your ex-boyfriend. Are they all dead now? Are they alive? Do you even care at all? Not really, though you’re pretty sure that you’re going to beat the shit out of Donna if you ever see her again. You also wonder if you’ll ever leave this place eventually since you can’t really ever seeing yourself being “one of the crowd” here. Still, you’ll have see how things play out. In any event, this is all stuff for a possible future and you’ll worry about it then, right now you have to worry about surviving the day. > Trader of TRASH The Future… “So that Bobby guy was really your ex-boyfriend? He was fucking creepy.” Jenny remarks as you drive away from the compound. “Yeah, well being head of a cult will do that I suppose. He wasn’t quite as creepy when I met him though. In any case it’s good that his sister Diana’s not in the picture anymore. I guarantee if she was still alive, this little peace between us and the Cult of Tiamat wouldn’t even be possible. Mel should be pleased about that.” You say. “Yeah, we even got some good stuff from them. I’m surprised he gave us as much clean water as he did….you think he still likes you?” You laugh. “No, I’m fairly sure Tiamat is the only love of his life, with his sister Helen trailing behind, though maybe he did remember the good times we had together and decided to be generous with the supplies…or maybe this is all a trick and he actually poisoned the water with something hoping it’ll kill everyone.” “Oh shit! I didn’t even think about that! You think so?!” Jenny remarks. “Nah, I’m just joking. I mean I suppose it IS possible, but that’s not the cult’s style. Besides, if Bobby DID do that, he most likely would’ve secretly warned me so I don’t drink it at least.” “So you think it’s safe?” “I dunno. Doesn’t matter anyway since I’m going to go trade it to New Security for their fizzy soda. Can’t get that anywhere else and it’s not like we need anymore water, we currently have a good supply.” “See that’s why I like coming on these runs with you. It’s more interesting than just staying home listening to people argue all the time.” Jenny remarks. “Hm, trust me if I could, I’d rather stay home all the time, but unfortunately that’s not the way the world currently works that allows me to relive the days of my more carefree youth.” You say. At this point Jenny asks you again about your “former life” but like you always tell her, there isn’t much to it. You didn’t do much, but you get the impression she’s just fascinated by the fact that you went from your humble beginning to what you currently do now along with all your survival skills you’ve acquired. Maybe it’s a bit inspiring for her, you don’t know. Though sometimes when you think about it, it is a little impressive. “Hey you ever think about revisiting your old house just out of curiosity?” Jenny asks. “Actually when all the crazy shit in town died down and there weren’t crazy cannibals running around everywhere, I did. I sort of made a detour there during one of my solo runs.” “Really? I never heard about that.” “Why would you? I never told anyone about it before. Anyway, I sort of went there partially out of curiosity, but also because my brother Ben built an underground shelter in the backyard of the place. Probably nothing the scale of one of those Ground Zero shelters like they used to annoyingly run ads for in the old days though.” “Yes, but didn’t you tell me your brother killed himself?” “Yeah, but knowing him, he probably still had that thing well stocked, so I figured it was worth a shot to look for. Unfortunately I looked and looked and looked in that backyard for hours and I couldn’t find the fucking entrance. I don’t know how the hell he moved it around and hid it like he did, but he did and like I said, I couldn’t find it. Who knows? Maybe it’s completely collapsed now anyway.” “So nobody was squatting in your house?” “Not that I could tell. There were a couple times where I felt like someone else was there, but nobody ever showed up. While there were some signs of natural decay and some things had obviously been looted everything else was mostly intact. My own room was completely vandalized though. I mean it looked like someone even tried to set the place on fire and there was some graffiti with the usual vulgarity on the walls. Sort of weird really and I didn’t stick around too long there. Guess it’s like they say, you can’t go home again.” “Well you have a new home anyway.” Jenny remarks. “Eh, I have a place to put my stuff and sleep, but I dunno if I’ll ever feel at home at the trailer park. I mean I get along better with everyone there now than I did, but I still just don’t fit in. The further I travel on these trading runs, I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t just strike out on my own. I certainly have horded enough shit to be a travelling trader if I wanted to.” Jenny at this point gives you a concerned look. “But you wouldn’t just suddenly leave like that would you?” You look back at Jenny and you think about telling her that you don’t really have much attachment to where you live. It’s not even your long lost basement that you once loved so much. You also think about telling her you have even less attachment to most of the people who live there. Sure some of them are okay, and some you even get along better with than you did with your own family, but it’s not enough to keep you around. But then you think, maybe that isn’t entirely true. Jenny is about the same age you were when Donna just suddenly abandoned you. You remember when that happened you were a bit numb. Some of it wasn’t surprising, but nevertheless you did feel a great sense of betrayal due to believing you were building a new and stronger relationship with her at that time. You got over it pretty quickly mainly because there were so many other fires to put out at the time, but you didn’t ever forget. Whatever happened to Donna you suppose you’ll never know. Maybe she died, maybe she’s living well. Who knows? What you do know is over the years Jenny has sort of followed you around mainly due to her own mother basically not giving a shit about her and then later dying in an explosion due to Dan’s failed attempt to create a new “meth lab.” You suppose she probably believes the pair of you have a bond too. Probably a bit more of misguided “hero worship” on her part and her ties to you are probably stronger than yours to her, but you aren’t going to do what Donna did to you. “Nah, I just think about it sometimes that’s all. I’m a bit too old to go traipsing across the nuclear wasteland, sleeping in a truck and worrying about fuel and the like on an everyday basis. However, if I ever do decide to leave, I’ll be sure to let you know.” You say. “So I could come with you?” “Yeah I suppose it would help to have someone watching my back if I was going to do it.” “I think that would be great adventure! And I don’t think you’re too old. If my mom was still alive you’d only be like a couple years younger than her. In fact sometimes I think of you as my…” You tense up. You don’t want to hear that… “Stop. Just stop right there Jenny. Don’t even finish that sentence. I am NOT your mom.” You say with a stern look. “I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say I sometimes think of you as my big sister that I never had.” Jenny remarks. You cease being tense. “Oh. Well…okay. Yeah. I suppose that’s okay. I guess in some ways you’re like the younger sister I never had.” You respond with a smile. “But you did have a younger sister.” “Yeah and she was a slutty and ultimately selfish cunt. Like I said, you’re the younger sister I NEVER had.” With a couple of minor chuckles from you and Jenny about this comment, the pair of you begin speaking about various things as you drive to your next destination. You never imagined you’d wind up as a trader/scavenger for a trailer park community, but in the scheme of things it’s not that bad of a life in this new harsh world.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No need to make this more dangerous than it needs to be. “Alright I guess we’re going to the carnival.” You say. “Good. be ready at the trailer park entrance in a few minutes. Someone there can probably hand you a weapon as well.” When you arrive at your destination, a group of rednecks are already there checking various rifles and handguns. It really does look like they got enough to take on an army. Their attention turns to you. “Well now if it isn’t blondie. I’m surprised Mel is riskin’ his piece on the side like this.” One of the sleazier rednecks says. “I know that’s right Ray. If she was mine, I’d be wantin’ to keep her safe.” Another says. “Piece on the side? Is that what Mel told all of you?” you ask which is followed by a lot of snickering. “Not in so many words honey, but we ain’t the idiots that he thinks we are. Why else would he tell us to lay off of ya if he wasn’t stickin’ ya? Sonofabitch already has Tina, don’t see why he gets ta have TWO fine pieces of ass while some of us ain’t got none.” Ray remarks. “Could I have one of those rifles please?” you ask ignoring Ray’s comments. Ray snorts at your request. “Don’t think so blondie. Maybe you think yer warrior princess or some shit cause you got lucky shootin’ a couple of those freaks, but I ain’t impressed and you ain’t getting any of these rifles. Here, take one of these instead. Should be more than enough for you seein’ as all yer gonna be doin’ is hidin behind Mel the whole time anyway.” Ray says and hands you a smaller pistol. “Fine, I don’t need a big weapon anyway. I don’t have to over compensate for something.” You say taking the pistol. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Ray asks. “It means she’s sayin’ you probably got a small pecker Ray, now quit givin’ the girl a hard time and let’s all get goin’.” Mel sudden remarks as he walks up with a couple more people. Ray doesn’t say anything and just glares at you before leaving for one of the trucks. Everyone else does likewise. Predictably, you have no wish to ride with any of them, let alone in the back of one of the pickups with a bunch of them so you ride up front with Mel especially since you want to address something. As the trucks pull out from the trailer park, Mel fiddles with the radio, but he doesn’t get anything except Ground Zero ads. “Goddamn Ground Zero shit. I’m tellin’ you like I’ve said to everyone else, it’s a fuckin’ conspiracy goin’ on with them. In fact all of this shit goin’ on is government related.” Mel says turning off the radio. “Yeah, probably. Hey Mel, is it really necessary for you to lie and tell everyone that we’re having sex?” you ask. Mel starts chuckling a little bit. “Who said I did that?” Mel asked. “Well first of all a few days ago Tina flat out asked me if I had any intention of fucking you, and I had to clarify that I wasn’t. She believed me, but she said you told her that I flirted with you. Then Ray just said that I was your piece on the side. Everyone else seems to believe that as well.” You say. “Okay, first off I’ll admit that I might’ve said you were flirtin’ with me to Tina, but there was a good reason. We’re just makin’ up from one of our many bad fights and I figured it might be good to get her a little jealous. Y’know so she doesn’t take me for granted and that she could possibly lose me if she isn’t careful. Knowin’ Tina she probably thought it was bullshit anyway, which is probably why she just flat out asked you as opposed to just clawing yer eyes out if she thought it was remotely true.” “Well she did say that she didn’t believe it.” “Exactly. She knew a girl like you wouldn’t be interested in someone like me. Still, it was a good gesture on my part to show her I still care.” At this point you’re not going to decipher hillbilly love life logic. You just continue to listen to Mel explain himself. “Now as for Ray an’ the rest. All I told them is to lay off of you a little bit since you were new to the trailer park an’ you were doin’ your best to contribute. I really can’t help it if everyone jumps to conclusions.” “But you’re not exactly dispelling those conclusions either.” Mel laughs again. “Well, I suppose yer right about that, but think of it this way, if they all think you’re my squeeze on the side, they’re actually all less likely to try anything because they won’t want to answer to me. I mean right now all they do is stare a lot and make the occasional cat call. Now I could tell them that we’re really not doing anything, but after interactin’ with Ray, do you really want him or some of the others sniffin’ around on a regular basis?” “Ugh, I suppose not…just wish there was another way.” “Man’s world, blondie, deal with it.” “Trust me, I am. I just don’t like it.” You and Mel continue to drive in relative silence until you get to the carnival destination. “This should be coming up to it soon.” “Didn’t even know there was a carnival nearby.” “Yeah, set up shop I think last Saturday. Most of us from the trailer park went there earlier in the week. I didn’t go mainly because I was too busy fightin’ with Tina at the time and I didn’t wanna run into any clowns. Hate those creepy fuckers.” Me; “Really? I always liked clowns. I even briefly thought about wanting to be one when I was little. Oh well, guess that will always be the dream.” You say causing Mel to give you a look like you just creeped him out a little. You drive up to the carnival, which looks like it was in the middle of being packed down, but other events got in the way and given the ones you suffered, you can sort of imagine what those were. The place looks like a warzone and there are several bodies lying on the ground “Looks like I was right, the Guard was here.” Mel says pointing to a military truck near a dilapidated tent. “Don’t think they’re still in charge here either.” You say. In the distance you see a few small figures near a large tent and then they run into it when they see you pull up. “Well looks like whoever is still in charge here is going to be meetin’ us real soon.” Mel says and stops the truck. The other trucks following stop as well. You see several people now step out of the big tent. Some of them are armed, but then again so is your side. “Get ready, but stay in the truck. I’m gonna actually try to handle this without a gunfight, but I’m not hopeful about that.” Mel remarks and gets out of the truck. You see him motioning and shouting to the rest to hold fire and then he addresses the carnie crowd who seem to mostly consist of midgets and the main one addressing Mel is dressed in clown clothing, though he doesn’t seem to be wearing the makeup. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Ain’t nobody lookin’ for a fight.” Mel says. “Doesn’t look that way, given that you’ve come with three trucks full of armed men.” The midget clown says. “Heh, well I’m sure given your own heightened state of awareness, you know things are getting’ dangerous nowadays. Anyway my name’s Mel, I’m guessin’ since you’re the one talkin’ you’re in charge here. Ringmaster or something like that?” “Look, we don’t want any trouble.” “And you won’t get any trouble. You…uh…got some military gear here too I see. That truck over there.” “Yeah, what of it?” “Oh nothing, but that brings about the question of where are the guardsmen…heh yeah they tried to tell us what to do too. Didn’t work out so well. The second amendment says you got the right to pack it after all. Government can’t just do what they want.” At this point more people come out of the tent, which in turn makes more people get out of their trucks. You get out too, though you’re taking cover behind the door. Your people and the carnies are both starting to eye each other waiting for someone to fire a shot. “Look let me cut to the chase shorty. I’m assumin’ you might know by now what’s been happenin’ back in town. Besides the government tryin’ to pull their shit, there’s a bunch of freaks runnin’ around tryin’ to eat people. A bunch of them attacked us last night and while we fought them off, some of us got badly hurt and are in need of medical supplies. Now of course we did try goin’ into town first, but was just too fucked up there an’ we didn’t make much head way what with the freaks AND the guard all over the damn place. Then it occurred to me today that your circus might still be around and the National Guard probably would’ve been here as well so we decided to investigate. Now the group of weekend warriors at the trailer park had shit for medical supplies. So I’m hoping your detachment had more in that department.” “We ain’t got anything! Just go away or we’ll open fire!” the midget clown says. Mel isn’t convinced and in any case he has no intention of backing down now. “Now you might get a few of us, but I’m bettin, most of us are better shots than y’all, so if you give us what medicine supplies you do have we’ll leave here in peace, if not well…” While Mel is probably doing the best he can in trying to resolve this without a gun battle, but you know how this is going to go down. It’s just been that sort of week. Suddenly someone fires a shot and then another from one side and then it’s a full-blown shoot out. (You mainly hide behind the truck, firing every once in a while) The carnies aren’t holding back, but your side does indeed have much better aim and midgets are falling like flies until they all fall back into the big tent again. After some more shooting which is completely one sided now, Mel calls a halt to it. “We can fire all day into that big tent, but we can’t be sure if we’re actually hitting anyone since we ain’t got x-ray vision an’ I don’t want us wastin’ anymore ammo. We gotta do something else.” Mel says. “Why don’t we just throw grenades at it? We got some from the Guard that was fuckin’ with us.” Ray asks. “Because they might have medical supplies in there ya idiot. We start blowin shit up, an it defeats the whole purpose of the trip. I think we need to spread out an creep up then just rush in.” Mel says. “So your solution is to go in there like a SWAT team an’ possibly get our asses shot off? Fuck that. I’m blowin’ that motherfucker up.” At this point Ray and a couple others look and nod at each other and start heading towards the big tent with grenades in their hand. Mel tells them to stop, but his orders are ignored and met with a couple of swear laden sentences of being tired of him always telling them what to do. Mel is visibly angry; though you’re surprised he isn’t doing more to stop them from disobeying his orders. As much as Mel isn’t exactly your favorite person, you’d hate to see this as the first sign of a “change in leadership.” Especially if it’s going to be Ray. > You shoot at Ray You’ll be damned if you’re going to let this spiral into a power struggle with the possibility that Ray could be in charge. If Mel isn’t going to do anything about it, you sure as hell will if only to assert that you aren’t someone to be fucked with. Ray and his buddies approach the tent and you shoot Ray square in the back. He howls and slumps to the ground. Ray’s buddies at this point believe themselves to be under attack and react accordingly. One wisely runs for cover and returns fire, while another foolishly fumbles with his grenade still out in the open. Mel shouts at you, but everyone is now shooting. Most are shooting at Ray’s buddies, but the carnies are now taking advantage of the minor infighting your side is experiencing and have come back out to fire upon everyone again. The one fumbling with the grenade gets hit several times, but not before he throws the grenade in your direction. You run away from the truck that you were taking cover by, but in the crossfire you’re hit in the leg. You fall to the ground and try to crawl away from the grenade. You don’t get far though and it goes off destroying the truck. You would’ve survived this since you were far enough away to only lose most of your hearing from the blast. What you don’t survive is the flying piece metal from the truck that hits you when the grenade exploded. With a hot piece of twisted metal embedded in your skull, your struggle is over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “HEY BLONDIE! GET YER ASS UP!” you hear as someone pounds on the door waking you up. It sounds like Mel, but at least it isn’t those awful Ground Zero commercials. You groggily get up and through bleary eyes you see that it’s actually still morning. You haven’t been up this early in a long time…and it’s a horrible thing. You hear more banging and yelling causing you to respond in kind. “Alright! Alright! Goddamnit, I’m up! I’m up!” you say and go to the door. “What?!” you ask though Mel doesn’t look too happy that you’re even asking that question. “What? Whadda ya mean what? Yer fuckin’ sister and that cowardly motherfucker Jimmy Ray just skedaddled outta here with a perfectly good truck that was also actin as a temporary barrier! That’s what!” This remark isn’t quite comprehended by you in your current groggy state. “My sister fucked Jimmy Ray in his truck and what?” you say. “Jesus fuckin’…I said…bah, I’m not fuckin’ repeatin’ myself! Shit!” Mel shouts and walks away banging on the door one more time. You briefly step outside and see Tina standing nearby. “I’m guessin’ you didn’t know nothin’ about it anyway considering you’re still here.” Tina remarks. “Okay, someone tell me again what happened? What about my sister and Jimmy Ray now?” “Apparently your sister convinced Jimmy Ray to leave this place in the middle of the night. Guess she really laid it down good, but then Jimmy Ray’s always had a tendency to get stupid over a gal who knows how to work it.” “Wait. Wait. Wait a minute she’s gone?!” “Yeah, she’s fuckin’ gone with a perfectly good truck! I actually don’t even give a shit about Jimmy Ray, he was more useless than tits on bull, but we could’ve used that fuckin’ truck for…” Mel says. “Oh for fuck’s sake Mel, we got a shitload of trucks here and aren’t you converting those army trucks into some sort of road warrior deathmobile anyway?” “Yeah, but it’s the fuckin’ principle of the thing! Not to mention we still gotta find some medical supplies! Goddamnit, Dan was supposed to be keepin’ a look out and…” You leave Mel to rant and head back inside trying to process this new information. You can’t believe that Donna would just leave you like that. There was no indication she was going to just take off like that. You check her bedroom and see that her bag is gone. You don’t know if she took that just after you fell asleep, or if she came back for it before leaving or what. Was she planning it right from the start or did she just see the opportunity? None of it matters you suppose, she just ditched you and didn’t even have the courtesy to let you know. So much for “sisterhood.” While you’re thinking about this, someone enters the trailer and calls out to you. It’s Tina. “Oh there you are. I’m guessing you’re pretty upset right now, but I found this in Jimmy’s trailer. Figured you should have it.” Tina says and hands you a note. Dear Suzy, Sorry, I just couldn’t stick around. Good luck to you in this shithole. Sincerely, Donna You actually chuckle a bit and crumple up the note. “What’s so funny.” Tina asks. “Oh just thinking that she was the one that convinced me to come here in the first place. Anyway, it’s done and she’s gone. We were never really close to begin with, though I thought that was sort of changing this week, but I guess not. Still, at least it felt like someone was on my side. I imagine I’m not too well accepted around here.” “Meh, I think you’re about as accepted as anyone else around here. I mean I think the general assessment of you is that you’re a big tease that thinks she’s better than everyone else, but I mean its not like you’re a nigger or something.” Tina remarks. You give Tina a strange look. “Um, lucky me then I guess. Just out of curiosity what do you think about Donna leaving? She kept going on about how you two were friends.” You say. “Me? Eh, I don’t really care. I mean I knew your sister on and off for a few years when I use to do strip jobs over at the parties at the place she was livin’ at before. An while she was a funny girl that made that particular job a lot more enjoyable, so I didn’t mind helping her out with a job when she asked, but it wasn’t like I ever considered her a real friend. Hell, I didn’t even know she had a sister until a few days ago. Anyway, always knew she was flakey. To be honest I didn’t even see her lasting long as a stripper and living here either. She probably would’ve latched on to first sugar daddy she could find and ditched everything.” “Sounds about right.” You say and toss aside the note. “Well I’ll leave you alone blondie. And I wouldn’t worry about your status here or lack there of. Quite frankly so many folks here have died or are wounded that nobody’s really in any position to antagonize someone who actually has been making an effort to contribute around here. Speakin’ of which I need to go talk to this crazy man that’s probably still ranting about a fuckin’ truck.” Tina says and leaves. You take a shower as you’re thinking about how you’re going to proceed next. You go back and forth on whether to do what your sister did, but knowing your luck, you’d end up getting caught so you ultimately abandon the idea. As you’re getting dressed and figuring out what your next plan of action should be, you suddenly hear banging on the door of your trailer again. You go to the door and see it’s that methhead Dan. “Hey blondie! You’re needed for a vote!” Dan exclaims. “Vote? Vote for what?” you ask. “We need a tie breaker to shoot the ones that got bitten or not. Billy Ray in particular ain’t lookin’ too good.” Dan remarks. “So what are we doin’ if we don’t shoot ‘em?” “Guess we’re goin’ back to town to try for medical supplies again. If that’s the case, I hope we have better luck, cause it was a cluster fuck last time.” Dan says. As you walk with Dan, he’s looking at you a lot and while some of that is predictable ogling, he’s also doing a lot of twitching and it’s making you nervous. “Dan, I know you have to take a glance at me every now and then, but between the staring and the twitching it’s making me uncomfortable. Makes me think of those things that attacked us yesterday. It doesn’t help that you’re about as clean as they were too.” You say. “Oh. Sorry blondie. I just…I need a fuckin’ fix. Just to put me at ease. The shit that’s been going down for the past couple of days has really made me scared y’know? I went through most of my shit after the National Guard showed up and then I used the rest up immediately after the freak invasion.” “So where’s the meth lab? Don’t places like this usually have one?” you ask. “Hah, I wish. I mean we used to have one years ago, but it blew up and caused a lot of damage. After that, the old owner sort of cracked down on that sort of thing.” “Well there’s no law anymore, you could just start making it again.” “Hah, yeah. But again with everythin’ that’s gone on, isn’t like there’s been time to do that. Not to mention Mel’s been ridin’ everyone non-stop. He’s already pissed at me for fallin’ asleep yesterday. I didn’t catch Jimmy Ray an’ yer sister taking off in the night. Guess he figured if anyone would stay awake all night it would be me, but I just sort of crashed because like I said I didn’t have my shit anymore to keep me alert.” “Yeah, well it’s tough all over.” You say unsympathetically. Before you even get to the meeting, you can hear the arguing, which is mainly consisting of a lot of shouting and swearing. By the time you arrive, you’re met with mixed glances. “These are our friends, we can’t just fuckin’ kill them!” “We need to fuckin’ kill ‘em before they infect us all!” “You’re one cold hearted sonofbitch you know that? What if I just decided to kill you?!” “Try it bitch!” “SHUT THE FUCK UP ALL OF YOU!” Mel shouts. At this point all eyes are on you. “As you can see blondie, we’re involved in the democratic process and are in need of a tie breaker.” Mel says to you. “Aw Mel what the fuck we need her vote for? She ain’t one of us and her sister fucking stole a truck!” some redneck woman says. “I said shut it! The only reason why I even entertained this process is so you fuckers would quit bitchin’ about me bein’ a so-called tyrant even though I’m the only one around he trying to do anything at all! So however blondie votes, will break the goddamn tie and we can move on. So what’s your vote?” Not that you’re especially close to any of these people, but if you vote to shoot you know it’s going to cause a lot more problems and you being an “outsider” are going to catch all the hell for it. Besides, last you remember Mel was trying to keep these folks alive, best you vote on his side. “Well I vote not to shoot because…” you start to say before Mel interrupts again. “That’s all I need to know. Didn’t need the reasons. Hear that folks? We ain’t shootin’ any of them! I dunno why you pussies are scared anyway, we got ‘em all locked up and barricaded inside a trailer. They ain’t getting out even if they do turn into something.” At this point there is more grumbling, but democracy has won this day and nobody gets violent about it, though you have a question. “Um, has anyone actually looked in on these bitten folks since they got thrown in together?” you ask. “Yeah, I did. Like I said, Billy Ray ain’t lookin’ too good. Neither are some of the others. They’re all mostly just lying there not doing much though.” Dan says. “Well was any first aid actually applied to them? I mean maybe they’re not infected, but just really wounded. Any aid might help.” “I threw in some bottles of whiskey an’ pain killers to ease the discomfort. I threw in some bandages in there, but I wasn’t gonna get close enough to actually bandage them.” Dan replies. “And that’s it? Nobody else has seen to them since they’ve been shoved in a trailer?” “Nope.” This is nuts, these people that have been bitten could very well be DYING due to neglect more than anything else! Nevermind the fact that the reason some might not be moving is that they might’ve very well ODed from the alcohol/pill combo. In any event Mel breaks up your question period. “Alright what we’re gonna do is fetch us some more medical supplies an whatever else we might find. Thinkin’ we should hit up that carnival a few miles from here.” Mel remarks which sort of takes most by surprise. You especially since you weren’t even aware there was a carnival in the area. “If the National Guard stopped here, chances are good they stopped at that carnival too. Maybe that detachment had more supplies and I also figure it’s gotta be easier than tryin’ to go back into town again.” Mel reasons. Mel’s suggestion is met with mixed results, but the people seem to be okay with it. Probably because a carnival does sound a lot less dangerous than going back into town, which they assumed would be the case. “Okay, we’re taking three trucks an’ y’all that came with me last time are comin’ with me this time as well an I’ll be pickin’ a few more so don’t nobody go too far. That means you blondie.” “Wouldn’t it be better if I stayed here and looked after things? I mean you don’t want to leave this place totally undefended.” You say. “Oh it never is. I’m sure you saw that everyone is fully capable of defendin’ themselves here when those freaks attacked. But I can’t just be takin’ mothers ya know? I mean it’s bad enough most of the snot nosed bastards round here that survived ain’t got fathers and that’s before all this shit went down. Can’t hardly deprive ‘em of mothers as well can I? Someone needs to keep ‘em out of my way and look after them.” “Well isn’t someone like Butchie Billie better suited for something like this than me?” “Butchie Billie is probably our best welder and mechanic. I’m not gonna risk taking her. Besides, she still needs to work on converting our newly acquired army trucks. And some of the other guys I’m not takin’ are better at workin’ on the generators or digging some extra outhouses.” “I don’t have a weapon or least not any with ammo. I ran out of bullets during the last attack.” You say. “Oh don’t worry about that, if there is one thing we’ve got a lot of, its weapons and ammo.” As you struggle to think up another excuse. Mel stops you. “Look blondie, you knew you were gonna have to start paying yer dues. And since I KNOW you were tryin’ to avoid bein the new fuck toy around here, it’s either this or you can just fuckin’ leave.” You don’t see yourself making it on your own…at least not yet. You still need to be in the safety of numbers, so that means you’re going. However you question if Mel’s plan is even a good one. You could very well get to this carnival and not find anything, you sort of wonder if it wouldn’t be a better idea to actually head back to town. You figure the town is probably already half looted and lawless by now, so you might well go in and get the best stuff you can before its completely gone. Not to mention you might know the town a little better as far as which side streets to take to get to certain locations quicker. Like say small pharmacies and other stores near where you live. Of course putting yourself in more danger isn’t necessarily desirable either. > You suggest going back to town If you’re going to risk your life, it might as well be worth it and you’re not seeing a carnival as being worth it. “I’m more than willing to be a productive member of this community, and far be it from me to question your orders Mel, but I don’t think the carnival is the right way to go. Assuming the carnies didn’t already pull up stakes and assuming the military even bothered to send a detachment to a carnival, I can’t believe that the detachment would’ve been any better supplied than the one sent here.” “So what are you saying exactly, blondie?” “I’m saying that it would be a better plan to go back into town. I know my area alone has a couple of pharmacies and even a grocery store. I could easily direct you to them.” “Town? That was a clusterfuck the last time we tried that! Besides, how do we know those places haven’t already been looted?” “It’s a risk, but I believe if you want a better chance at getting medicine and medical supplies, it would be better bet to go back into town. You’re better equipped and prepared for what to expect in town now too. It’s up to you though, you’re in charge after all.” You say. Mel looks at you and then looks at Tina. “Don’t look at me. I voted to shoot them.” Tina remarks. “Yeah, yeah, you’re never fuckin’ supportive. (Sigh) Fuck it. You make a good point blondie. We’ll head back into town, nobody’s gonna like it, but like I said, fuck it. You go head over to the entrance, I’ll be over there soon.” As you’re about to go over to the trucks by the entrance, Tina grabs a hold of your arm with a semi-forceful grip. You spin around and see that her face isn’t one of friendliness. “So, you managed to change Mel’s mind. Pretty impressive. I have a hard time doing that at the best of times. Maybe he is fuckin’ ya.” Tina says. “What?! Tina I swear I’m not doing anything with Mel!” you exclaim. “Oh no, I don’t think you are, but you’re not exactly adverse to usin’ yer natural attractiveness to get yer way. Yer doin’ it to keep the rest of the slugs off of ya. I get it, but if Mel does some fool thing because it was his idea, I can handle that. He does it on a regular basis. Hell, if he does some fool thing cause one of his drinkin’ buddies thought it was a good idea, I can handle that as well since it doesn’t even happen that often and he usually realizes it before it gets too out of hand. However, Mel goin’ to do some fool thing because some tease fluttered her eyes at him is something else entirely. “Tina, I…” “Shut the fuck up blondie, fore I pull that pretty golden hair from your head by the roots. Now listen to me close, this is the LAST time you EVER influence Mel to do something ever again. Got it?” While you’ve certainly “toughened up” this week and Tina’s actually shorter than you, but even now you doubt that you’d be able to physically take a trailer park girl like her that’s probably gotten into more fist fights than the number of years you’ve been alive. “Got it.” You meekly say. Tina doesn’t even acknowledge your compliance; she just shoulder shoves you out of the way when she heads back to her trailer. With that unpleasantness out of the way, you head over to the trucks. When you arrive at your destination, a group of rednecks are already there checking various rifles and handguns. It really does look like they got enough to take on an army. “Well now if it isn’t blondie. I’m surprised Mel is riskin’ his piece on the side like this.” One of the sleazier rednecks says. “I know that’s right Ray. If she was mine, I’d be wantin’ to keep her safe.” Another says. “Piece on the side? Is that what Mel told all of you?” you ask which is followed by a lot of snickering. “Not in so many words honey, but we ain’t the idiots that he thinks we are. Why else would he tell us to lay off of ya if he wasn’t stickin’ ya? Sonofabitch already has Tina, don’t see why he gets ta have TWO fine pieces of ass while some of us ain’t got none.” Ray remarks. “Nothing is going on between Mel and I.” you say. “Oh? Is that right blondie? Well how about you get something going on right HERE!” Ray remarks while grabbing his crotch causing everyone to laugh. “Sorry, I’m not a lesbian and I don’t eat pussy.” You remark dryly. Your insult doesn’t quite sink in immediately, though Ray gets the idea he has been insulted. “What the hell’s that mean?” Ray demands. “It means she doesn’t think you got a dick and that you ain’t a man. Something we all knew a long time ago Ray, not stop givin’ the girl grief and hand her a pistol.” Mel suddenly says as he walks up with a few more people behind him. After Ray grudgingly hands you a pistol and then Mel breaks the bad news to everyone that they’re heading back into town. There is predictably a lot of protesting and grumbling, but after shouting everyone down everyone complies with Mel’s orders. Everyone gets in their vehicles and you ride up front in Mel’s pick up truck. As the trucks pull out from the trailer park, Mel fiddles with the radio, but he doesn’t get anything except Ground Zero ads. “Goddamn Ground Zero shit. I’m tellin’ you like I’ve said to everyone else, it’s a fuckin’ conspiracy goin’ on with them. In fact all of this shit goin’ on is government related.” Mel says turning off the radio. The rest of your drive to town is mostly a quiet one. Mel doesn’t bother speaking to you and you’re a little too pre-occupied by what you’re going to do about your current situation because between the incident with Tina and the one with Ray you can’t help but think that you’re never going to fit in or be comfortable there. Your sister might’ve just ditched you, but you’re starting to think she had the right idea about leaving. When you do finally get to town it’s predictably a warzone. A war in which it appears the military did NOT win. You see overturned vehicles, dead bodies and destruction, but there is no semblance of organized order anywhere. The only thing that is “organized” are the cannibal freaks and there are large groups of them roving the streets or already feasting on the dead. They naturally start attacking whenever your group drives through an infested area. Shooting and running them over becomes the order of the day as you direct Mel to the best way to get to your own neighborhood area. When you finally do get to your area, the number of freaks severely decreases. It’s sort of odd, but where you lived seems relatively safe. There are still signs of devastation here and there are certainly dead bodies to be seen, but so far it’s a lot safer than the rest of the town. “Guess the military cleaned up this area, before they got their asses kicked. How much further is our destination?” Mel asks. “Just make a left up here and you’ll be there.” You remark. Following your directions Mel makes a turn and then pulls into the parking lot of what looks to be a completely deserted pharmacy with a few broken windows. The other two trucks park nearby. The pharmacy across the street looks deserted as well. No telling what’s inside either of them, but you sort of get the impression the noise of the vehicles would’ve attracted freak attention if any were lurking about. “Where’s the grocery store?” Mel asks. “That’s a few blocks up the street.” You reply. “Okay guess it’s time to tell everyone the next phase of this plan.” Mel gets out of the truck and calls attention to everyone. “Alright, we got three locations to search, which is good because there are three big groups of us. I’m gonna search this pharmacy. Ray, you go search the one across the street. Dan, your group can get back in your truck and search the grocery store up the block.” Mel says. “What? Aw Mel, why I gotta drive all that way?” “Goddamnit Dan it ain’t that fuckin’ far! Just fuckin’ do it! Besides, I know you. If you’re searching one of these pharmacies, your junkies ass is gonna pocket all the med for yourself and claim you didn’t find anything.” While Dan is in the middle of protesting, you’re coming to the conclusion of your earlier thoughts on the ride over here. Namely, you’re tired of this group and you’re going to risk going it alone. You figure you’re already close to your house, you could probably sneak away and head there for temporary relief to plan your next move. Though if you went with Dan you’d be even closer to your home. When Mel finishes ordering everyone about, you go up to talk to him. “Hey Mel, I think I should go with Dan.” “Huh? What the fuck you wanna go with that junkie asshole for?” “Well grocery stores do tend to carry a small supply of medicine too, I figure I can keep an eye on him if he decides to not be in a sharing mood.” “Hmm, good point blondie…hey Dan! Don’t go yet, blondie’s comin’ with ya so make room in the front!” Mel shouts before Dan pulls away. You hop into Dan’s truck and you’re soon on your way though Dan’s attention is half on the road and half on you. “Sort of surprised you wanted to come with me blondie.” He says scratching himself. “Well, Mel doesn’t entirely trust you. He thinks if you find any medicine in the grocery store, you’ll just keep it for yourself. So he’s sent me to keep an eye on you.” “Oh.” Dan says. “Don’t worry Dan, I’m not gonna rat you out if you take some things for personal use. I know it’s not really your fault and that you’re just sick.” You say in an empathetic tone. Dan smiles at you revealing his horrible dental conditions. “See that’s what I’ve told people before! I’m glad you understand darlin’. I mean I’ve really tried to quit before, but…” At this point Dan goes on with his pathetic sob story about how he’s tried to kick his drug habit, but you’re not really listening. Your thoughts of escaping these ignorant redneck assholes are filling your mind. When you get to your destination, the grocery store is in much the same condition as the pharmacies were. Dan, you and the rest get out of the vehicle. “Seems like this place could be clear, but keep alert anyway. Could be somethin’ as big as a Butchie Billie, or it could be as small as Wade’s dick!” Dan laughs causing Wade to swear at Dan and others to chuckle. Still set on your plan of escape, you think about how you’re going to do it. The easiest way would be to just sneak away at the earliest opportunity and run home. You’re fairly confident you could do it. Of course you’re also wondering if you shouldn’t just get away from these assholes, but the whole forsaken town in general. Staying here even in the “safety” of your home still isn’t going to eliminate the problem that you’re going to be located in cannibal central. Of course if you want to leave town the safest way to do that is by vehicle which means you’re going to have to engage in the riskier endeavor of stealing Dan’s keys. > You sneak away You’re likely going to get shot or worse if you try to steal the keys or the truck. There are too many rednecks around and they’re probably better with their weapons than you are. It’ll be much easier to just sneak away. At best they might call out and search for you, but eventually Mel or their own common sense will tell them that you aren’t worth risking their lives sticking around for. Your group goes into the grocery store, which must still have on some sort of emergency lighting where upon everyone begins to carefully search the place. While there has been some looting and even signs of fighting that went on here, the place is in better shape than anyone thought. You grab one of the hand baskets and gradually start distancing yourself from the rest. You start loading up on some nearby cans, which you aren’t really paying much attention to since you’re more focused on what the other members of your group are doing. When you see that you’re far enough away from them and they seem preoccupied with other things, you take the opportunity to head back outside. Still making the effort to not look suspicious just in case, you put the handbasket into the bed of the pick up truck and then when you’re sure nobody is watching that’s when you run. You run from the grocery store and don’t even look back. You half expect to hear some shouting telling you to stop, but you don’t hear any. When you get far enough away you keep a quick pace, but slow down a bit since you’re losing you’re breath. You’re really going to have to get used to exercising on a regular basis to boost the endurance you think. The one thing that sticks out as you’re walking through your neighborhood is how eerily quiet it is. You still see signs of destruction and even dead bodies, but you’re not seeing a living soul. On one hand it’s great that you aren’t being assaulted by cannibal freaks, but on the other hand it makes you wonder what the hell happened in your neighborhood to result in it being such a ghost area. At this point you’re worried that maybe somebody hidden is watching you. Despite all your concerns, nothing attacks or otherwise hinders you by the time you get home. You’re anxious to get in as well. You know it’s only going to be a temporary respite, but at least you’ll get a bit of peace while you ponder what to do next. Maybe you can look for that hidden shelter your brother built in the backyard. As your tired feet hit heavily on each front step, you briefly wonder if either of your siblings are home. Peter’s car isn’t in the driveway, but then you did leave it at Julie’s. If he’s still here, you suppose you’ll have to explain what happened on that front. Kelly’s vehicle isn’t here either, so maybe your home has been abandoned. The front door of course is predictably locked, but fortunately you still have your key to it in one of your pockets. It’s amazing how you instinctively put it in there despite you not really ever expecting to come back here. You open the front door and find that your home has not been abandoned, you also see your sister Kelly standing front of you holding a shotgun. “I heard you clomping out there on the steps. Figured you might be one of those psychos or something. Didn’t expect to see you though. While I’m a little impressed that you obviously managed to survive this fucking chaos, you never should’ve come back here sis. I told you before this is MY house.” Kelly says. Your eyes widen as she aims the shotgun at you. “Kelly, I’ll just…go…okay?” you say holding your hands up and start to back up. “Now Suzy…what sort of big sister would I be if I let you stay out there to potentially get raped, killed or eaten? You underestimate my mercy.” Kelly says with a smile and that’s when you know this is going to end badly for you. You attempt to go for your pistol, but Kelly already has the advantage. Kelly fires and a slug hit your chest, shattering bones and vital internal organs like your heart. Your lifeless body flies backwards off the porch and onto the concrete walkway.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you’re going to risk your life, it might as well be worth it and you’re not seeing a carnival as being worth it. “I’m more than willing to be a productive member of this community, and far be it from me to question your orders Mel, but I don’t think the carnival is the right way to go. Assuming the carnies didn’t already pull up stakes and assuming the military even bothered to send a detachment to a carnival, I can’t believe that the detachment would’ve been any better supplied than the one sent here.” “So what are you saying exactly, blondie?” “I’m saying that it would be a better plan to go back into town. I know my area alone has a couple of pharmacies and even a grocery store. I could easily direct you to them.” “Town? That was a clusterfuck the last time we tried that! Besides, how do we know those places haven’t already been looted?” “It’s a risk, but I believe if you want a better chance at getting medicine and medical supplies, it would be better bet to go back into town. You’re better equipped and prepared for what to expect in town now too. It’s up to you though, you’re in charge after all.” You say. Mel looks at you and then looks at Tina. “Don’t look at me. I voted to shoot them.” Tina remarks. “Yeah, yeah, you’re never fuckin’ supportive. (Sigh) Fuck it. You make a good point blondie. We’ll head back into town, nobody’s gonna like it, but like I said, fuck it. You go head over to the entrance, I’ll be over there soon.” As you’re about to go over to the trucks by the entrance, Tina grabs a hold of your arm with a semi-forceful grip. You spin around and see that her face isn’t one of friendliness. “So, you managed to change Mel’s mind. Pretty impressive. I have a hard time doing that at the best of times. Maybe he is fuckin’ ya.” Tina says. “What?! Tina I swear I’m not doing anything with Mel!” you exclaim. “Oh no, I don’t think you are, but you’re not exactly adverse to usin’ yer natural attractiveness to get yer way. Yer doin’ it to keep the rest of the slugs off of ya. I get it, but if Mel does some fool thing because it was his idea, I can handle that. He does it on a regular basis. Hell, if he does some fool thing cause one of his drinkin’ buddies thought it was a good idea, I can handle that as well since it doesn’t even happen that often and he usually realizes it before it gets too out of hand. However, Mel goin’ to do some fool thing because some tease fluttered her eyes at him is something else entirely. “Tina, I…” “Shut the fuck up blondie, fore I pull that pretty golden hair from your head by the roots. Now listen to me close, this is the LAST time you EVER influence Mel to do something ever again. Got it?” While you’ve certainly “toughened up” this week and Tina’s actually shorter than you, but even now you doubt that you’d be able to physically take a trailer park girl like her that’s probably gotten into more fist fights than the number of years you’ve been alive. “Got it.” You meekly say. Tina doesn’t even acknowledge your compliance; she just shoulder shoves you out of the way when she heads back to her trailer. With that unpleasantness out of the way, you head over to the trucks. When you arrive at your destination, a group of rednecks are already there checking various rifles and handguns. It really does look like they got enough to take on an army. “Well now if it isn’t blondie. I’m surprised Mel is riskin’ his piece on the side like this.” One of the sleazier rednecks says. “I know that’s right Ray. If she was mine, I’d be wantin’ to keep her safe.” Another says. “Piece on the side? Is that what Mel told all of you?” you ask which is followed by a lot of snickering. “Not in so many words honey, but we ain’t the idiots that he thinks we are. Why else would he tell us to lay off of ya if he wasn’t stickin’ ya? Sonofabitch already has Tina, don’t see why he gets ta have TWO fine pieces of ass while some of us ain’t got none.” Ray remarks. “Nothing is going on between Mel and I.” you say. “Oh? Is that right blondie? Well how about you get something going on right HERE!” Ray remarks while grabbing his crotch causing everyone to laugh. “Sorry, I’m not a lesbian and I don’t eat pussy.” You remark dryly. Your insult doesn’t quite sink in immediately, though Ray gets the idea he has been insulted. “What the hell’s that mean?” Ray demands. “It means she doesn’t think you got a dick and that you ain’t a man. Something we all knew a long time ago Ray, not stop givin’ the girl grief and hand her a pistol.” Mel suddenly says as he walks up with a few more people behind him. After Ray grudgingly hands you a pistol and then Mel breaks the bad news to everyone that they’re heading back into town. There is predictably a lot of protesting and grumbling, but after shouting everyone down everyone complies with Mel’s orders. Everyone gets in their vehicles and you ride up front in Mel’s pick up truck. As the trucks pull out from the trailer park, Mel fiddles with the radio, but he doesn’t get anything except Ground Zero ads. “Goddamn Ground Zero shit. I’m tellin’ you like I’ve said to everyone else, it’s a fuckin’ conspiracy goin’ on with them. In fact all of this shit goin’ on is government related.” Mel says turning off the radio. The rest of your drive to town is mostly a quiet one. Mel doesn’t bother speaking to you and you’re a little too pre-occupied by what you’re going to do about your current situation because between the incident with Tina and the one with Ray you can’t help but think that you’re never going to fit in or be comfortable there. Your sister might’ve just ditched you, but you’re starting to think she had the right idea about leaving. When you do finally get to town it’s predictably a warzone. A war in which it appears the military did NOT win. You see overturned vehicles, dead bodies and destruction, but there is no semblance of organized order anywhere. The only thing that is “organized” are the cannibal freaks and there are large groups of them roving the streets or already feasting on the dead. They naturally start attacking whenever your group drives through an infested area. Shooting and running them over becomes the order of the day as you direct Mel to the best way to get to your own neighborhood area. When you finally do get to your area, the number of freaks severely decreases. It’s sort of odd, but where you lived seems relatively safe. There are still signs of devastation here and there are certainly dead bodies to be seen, but so far it’s a lot safer than the rest of the town. “Guess the military cleaned up this area, before they got their asses kicked. How much further is our destination?” Mel asks. “Just make a left up here and you’ll be there.” You remark. Following your directions Mel makes a turn and then pulls into the parking lot of what looks to be a completely deserted pharmacy with a few broken windows. The other two trucks park nearby. The pharmacy across the street looks deserted as well. No telling what’s inside either of them, but you sort of get the impression the noise of the vehicles would’ve attracted freak attention if any were lurking about. “Where’s the grocery store?” Mel asks. “That’s a few blocks up the street.” You reply. “Okay guess it’s time to tell everyone the next phase of this plan.” Mel gets out of the truck and calls attention to everyone. “Alright, we got three locations to search, which is good because there are three big groups of us. I’m gonna search this pharmacy. Ray, you go search the one across the street. Dan, your group can get back in your truck and search the grocery store up the block.” Mel says. “What? Aw Mel, why I gotta drive all that way?” “Goddamnit Dan it ain’t that fuckin’ far! Just fuckin’ do it! Besides, I know you. If you’re searching one of these pharmacies, your junkies ass is gonna pocket all the med for yourself and claim you didn’t find anything.” While Dan is in the middle of protesting, you’re coming to the conclusion of your earlier thoughts on the ride over here. Namely, you’re tired of this group and you’re going to risk going it alone. You figure you’re already close to your house, you could probably sneak away and head there for temporary relief to plan your next move. Though if you went with Dan you’d be even closer to your home. When Mel finishes ordering everyone about, you go up to talk to him. “Hey Mel, I think I should go with Dan.” “Huh? What the fuck you wanna go with that junkie asshole for?” “Well grocery stores do tend to carry a small supply of medicine too, I figure I can keep an eye on him if he decides to not be in a sharing mood.” “Hmm, good point blondie…hey Dan! Don’t go yet, blondie’s comin’ with ya so make room in the front!” Mel shouts before Dan pulls away. You hop into Dan’s truck and you’re soon on your way though Dan’s attention is half on the road and half on you. “Sort of surprised you wanted to come with me blondie.” He says scratching himself. “Well, Mel doesn’t entirely trust you. He thinks if you find any medicine in the grocery store, you’ll just keep it for yourself. So he’s sent me to keep an eye on you.” “Oh.” Dan says. “Don’t worry Dan, I’m not gonna rat you out if you take some things for personal use. I know it’s not really your fault and that you’re just sick.” You say in an empathetic tone. Dan smiles at you revealing his horrible dental conditions. “See that’s what I’ve told people before! I’m glad you understand darlin’. I mean I’ve really tried to quit before, but…” At this point Dan goes on with his pathetic sob story about how he’s tried to kick his drug habit, but you’re not really listening. Your thoughts of escaping these ignorant redneck assholes are filling your mind. When you get to your destination, the grocery store is in much the same condition as the pharmacies were. Dan, you and the rest get out of the vehicle. “Seems like this place could be clear, but keep alert anyway. Could be somethin’ as big as a Butchie Billie, or it could be as small as Wade’s dick!” Dan laughs causing Wade to swear at Dan and others to chuckle. Still set on your plan of escape, you think about how you’re going to do it. The easiest way would be to just sneak away at the earliest opportunity and run home. You’re fairly confident you could do it. Of course you’re also wondering if you shouldn’t just get away from these assholes, but the whole forsaken town in general. Staying here even in the “safety” of your home still isn’t going to eliminate the problem that you’re going to be located in cannibal central. Of course if you want to leave town the safest way to do that is by vehicle which means you’re going to have to engage in the riskier endeavor of stealing Dan’s keys. > You steal Dan's keys If you’re going to escape, you might as well escape it all. You can worry about what comes after later. You already got an idea of how to get the truck keys from Dan, but it’s not something you’re looking forward to… Mustering up your mental fortitude you prepare yourself for the unpleasant task ahead. Your group goes into the grocery store, which must still have on some sort of emergency lighting where upon everyone begins to carefully search the place. While there has been some looting and even signs of fighting that went on here, the place is in better shape than anyone thought. “Hey Dan, the medicine aisle is over this way.” You say while gently grabbing his hand. Dan is more than a little surprised by this gesture. “Oh. Okay, lead the way then. Everyone else keep stockin’ up on whatever food you want. ” He responds. When you lead Dan over to the aisle you remind yourself of what your goal is… “Damn darlin’ it looks like this aisle is mgh!” Dan is interrupted when you kiss him directly on his meth rotten mouth. It tastes horrible and it’s only due to your strong gag reflex that you don’t puke. Dan is flabbergasted; he literally is at a loss for words. “I gotta suck your dick right now Dan. It’s all I’ve been thinking about since we were ridin’ in the truck together. Shit, I woulda went down on you right then had there not been an audience in the back of the truck. Come on we can go into the bathroom of this place.” You whisper in his ear. Dan is still tongue tied, but at this point he’s not arguing and passively follows you as you lead him to the women’s bathroom in the back of the store. You make sure nobody has seen the pair of you enter and then lock the door. “I…I…I can’t believe you felt this way about me darlin’. I mean this is gotta be a dream.” Dan says. “Ain’t no dream, now back against that wall, pull ‘em down and let me get to suckin’ what’s gotta be a big ass dick. Gotta have it. Gotta have that juicy hot throbbing cock in my mouth.” You say. Dan’s fantasies of an insatiable cock hungry hot blonde have probably been fueled for years by endless amounts of porn he’s no doubt watched. So it’s predictable that he doesn’t even question the unlikelihood of any of this at all. He wastes no time in putting down his rifle and unzipping his pant. It’s an unimpressive sight. It’s even more unimpressive when you’re on your knees, eye level to it. “Oh my god, this is gonna be better than drugs!” Dan says even closing his eyes as if preparing himself for the glory that is your mouth. Unfortunately for him he gets none of that and instead receives a FALCON PUNCH to his balls. Dan’s reaction causes him to practically crumple onto you. He manages to wheeze a few swear, but you then shut him up by smacking his head against the bathroom wall, he groans a bit and still tries to grab a hold of you, but you stop him completely by pistol whipping him in the face until he’s no longer moving. You aren’t sure if he’s dead, but you’re not really paying attention to see if he’s breathing by this point, you’re too busy looking for the keys…jackpot. Then you hear some banging on the door and you freeze with your pistol in hand. “Hey, who’s in there? I heard some noise. Is that you blondie?” you hear a voice exclaim. “…uh yeah it’s me! I had to take a shit and there were just some big ass rats in here that scared me so bad I almost dropped a load in my pants! No big deal though!” you shout. “Oh…um okay.” The voice says. “Um, hey you seen Dan?” “Thought I saw him still over by the drug aisle.” “Yeah he’s not…” the voice starts to say before you interrupt. “Goddamn it I’m trying to take a shit that feels like I need a goddamn midwife for this thing! I’m not Dan’s personal fucking shadow, go look for him yourself!” you shout. “Okay! Okay! Sheesh, you don’t need to be a goddamn bitch about it.” The voice says and then you hear some footsteps leaving. Well that will have bought you a little time, but when you leave, you need to make a beeline for the truck and hope that nobody is lingering around it at the time. Since you get the impression you’re going to be shooting it out with the rednecks anyway, you take Dan’s rifle over your shoulder. You exit the bathroom and look around to see a few of the rednecks still stocking up on some more food. You quicken your pace towards the entrance of the grocery store while attempting to keep your head down so nobody immediately sees you. When you get to the entrance there’s one of the rednecks loading up something in the back of the truck. You think its Wade from earlier. “Everything come out all right?” he asks meaning he must’ve been the one talking to you from outside the door earlier. “Yeah, yeah.” you say looking around if there are any others you need to deal with. “Y’know, maybe you wouldn’t be so backed up if you tried anal.” Wade says with a smirk. “Excuse me?” “Ass fuckin’, sweetcheeks. It’ll loosen you up back there. I’d be more than willin’ to help you out in that department honey.” Wade says with a grin. And at that point, you’re done with stealth. “And here’s a new hole to loosen up your useless brain matter shithead.” You say pulling your pistol blasting Wade in the head. You don’t wait for the body to fall, you run into the truck. You get the truck started and you already hear the shouting and sounds of the rest from the grocery store. These sounds are soon followed by the sounds of bullets hitting your truck as you drive off. You keep your head down as much as possible as the back window is blown out and several sounds of bullets hitting the metal parts of the truck. While you’re glad none of them had the forethought to aim for your back tires, you just hope nobody hit the gas tank. Your drive through your war-torn town is pretty stressful. Between trying avoid large groups of freaks and abandoned military blockades you are also constantly looking in your rear mirror thinking that you’re going to see Mel’s truck and the rest in pursuit, but that doesn’t happen. You don’t really relax a bit until you manage to get out of town. “Holy shit, I made it. Fuck yeah I made it!” you shout in triumph as you continue to drive eastward. You continue to drive for quite sometime. Maybe its because you never really left your basement, but you never really realized what a rural area you lived in before, a lot of wilderness on either side of you. The roads are pretty clear of traffic; you don’t see anyone else driving in the opposite direction or your direction for that matter. You do see a few abandoned vehicles, but nobody around them. You don’t even see any of the cannibal freaks. Maybe that’s a good sign. You pass by a few gas stations, diners and the like and while you do think you notice evidence that there are probably folks at these locations, you’re not exactly in a trusting mood right now and quite frankly you don’t want to deal with anyone. If anything you’re sort of enjoying the solitude that you haven’t had for a few days. Soon, the day starts to become night and you’re getting pretty tired. You have had a long day of escaping cannibal freaks and rednecks after all. You pull off to the side of the road near the edge of a “wall of trees.” You clear off the broken glass from the seat of the truck and lay down to get some sleep, hoping that something doesn’t try to attack you in the middle of the night. > Next day... SATURDAY You wake up to a noise in the distance. At first you think it’s something trying to cause you harm and you sit up with pistol in hand, but then you realize there isn’t anything near you. However upon looking around you do notice something in the sky when even with your half sleepy eyes. You step out of the truck and stare towards the westward sky in the distance and see the remnants of a mushroom cloud. “They finally went and did it…” you say to yourself. You guess that it might’ve hit Security City (Good thing you drove east). Who and why it was dropped is unimportant at this point, but you’re not really surprised given how things seemed to be going to shit here and the world in general. Probably was a small one, since you’re not feeling any aftershocks or anything, but you are somewhat concerned if you’re within a lethal radiation zone. You suppose you’ll find out in the days to come, but that leads you to your more immediate concern of survival, namely you’re hungry and thirsty. You check what those rednecks managed to load up on the back of the truck and hope that not all of it needs a can opener. You see that a lot of it is cans, but fortunately some of them already have ring pulls on them. Other cans have suffered damage from the bullets that went through them. You suppose if you got desperate you could always suck out the remaining soup through the bullet holes. You do find a couple bags of beef jerky, which is as quick of a meal as anything. You look to see if they loaded up anything to drink, but all you’re finding is cheap beer. You’ve actually never drank alcohol before, but beggars can’t be choosers so you sit on the tailgate eating your jerky, drinking your beer and pondering your potentially grim future. While it’s good you have some sustenance, it’s not going to last long. Your truck only has around a half a tank of gas and the ammo you’ve got is what’s left in your respective weapons. Hell you don’t even have an extra set of clothes anymore. You have no idea where you’re going to go. You suppose continuing east might be your best bet, but. this isn’t even taking into consideration the sort of people you’re possibly going to run into and if those infected freaks aren’t running around elsewhere. With all these variables weighing on your mind, things aren’t looking so good right now… “Hey! Hey miss! Did you hear a loud noise?” a voice shouts. You spin your head to your left with your hand instinctively reaching behind you to pull your pistol, but you see a male and female couple probably a little younger than yourself wearing large backpacks. They’ve just come out of the “wall of trees” and they don’t look threatening, but you never know. In any case they don’t seem to realize you’ve got a pistol behind you, though the fact that you’re partially covered by the pick up truck’s walls along with some bags might help. “Sure, it woke me up. Where are you coming from?” you ask. “Oh, we got a campsite nearby. We’ve been sort of roughin’ it for about a week. No technology like cellphones or laptops. It’s been sort of liberating in a way.” “Hm, yeah you never know when you might need to know how to get along without the creature comforts. Where’s you vehicle though, you couldn’t have walked all this way and I don’t see any roads leading off into the wilderness nearby.” “Sure there is, look in front of you a few feet away.” You look and sure enough the man is correct, there is a little dirt road that leads into the trees. You probably didn’t notice it last night because you were tired and you didn’t notice it this morning because you were more focused on the nuke that went off in the distance. “Yeah, it doesn’t go very far in, but it was a good place to pull into so as not having to park on the side of the road. Anyway we’re going to be heading back to Security City soon, we both got classes starting on Monday.” The guy says. You take another bite of jerky and drink of beer before breaking the unfortunate news to them. “Yeah well I don’t think that’s going to happen. That noise you heard? A nuke just got dumped on Security City.” You say flatly. At this point the couple look at each other in disbelief. “Bullshit, that didn’t happen.” The guy says. “Look, you don’t need to believe me, but I’ve got no reason to lie about something like that to two complete strangers. You said you’ve been fairly isolated from the world for the past week, well there was some serious shit going down this week. I should know I had to deal with it. Trust me, if things had been different I wouldn’t be stuck out here in the middle of nowhere eating jerky and drinking beer. I’d be in the comfort of my basement.” You say. At this point the guy still isn’t sure whether you’re telling the truth, but the girl starts to break down a bit. “Oh god…every time we tried to listen the car radio, all we got was those fucking Ground Zero shelter ads! She’s probably telling the truth! Oh shit! No!” she exclaims and begins hyperventilating. “Honey, calm down we don’t know…” At this point the girl begins to cry about her friends and family while her boyfriend attempts to console her. It isn’t working. “Well look at it this way, you avoided getting nuked and you’ve probably got still got some supplies left over and you’ve got all that really useful wilderness gear right?” you say eating the last bit of jerky. “Huh? Yeah, look just don’t talk to us anymore.” The guy says still trying to calm his crying girlfriend. You throw away the bag and down the remaining beer from the can. “How much gas does your vehicle have?” you ask. “WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP?! This is a fucking nightmare!” the man says while his girlfriend continues to be weak. You crush the can and toss it in the middle of the street. You briefly think about not doing it, but then you think this is survival. “Yeah, well it’s about to get a whole lot worse for the both of you.” You say and pull your pistol and shoot the man in the chest. He falls to the ground and the girl now goes from crying to screaming though she’s so terrified she doesn’t attempt to run. “Bitch, stop your goddamn screaming RIGHT NOW before I shove this gun in your mouth and shoot a load so hot down your throat that it’ll be the last time you ever give head again.” You say walking towards the scared girl. Your colorful threat works and the girl just stifles her screaming to annoying whimpers. You look down at her boyfriend who is most certainly dead. You don’t feel anything about it either. You don’t feel joy, but it’s just nothing. “Okay, you’re going to take your backpack and throw it in the truck, then you’re going to take his pack and toss it in the truck too. Then we’re both heading to your campsite where I’m going to take whatever I think I’m going to need. And if you’re lucky, you might come out of this alive. Now come on.” As you bully your new captive into doing your bidding, you think if this is how things are going to be from now on. In your mind you justify your actions as ones of survival, though you were still pretty quick to shoot her boyfriend. Maybe you’re just having a bad week and something had to give. In any case things are starting to look up… or at least for you they are. > Wanted: Bandit Blondie The future… “Give it up Blondie, you got nowhere to go and you’re surrounded! Come out peacefully.” Justice shouts from outside. “Justice” Why do these bounty hunters always have such silly names? “Yeah I come out and then you lot take turns bending me over and horse fucking me before you just shoot me in the head anyway? Don’t fucking think so.” You shout back from the abandoned house you’re taking cover in “Don’t nobody here wanna fuck your sandy STD ridden wasteland pussy bitch!” you hear someone shout. “Holy shit is that Mary Liberty out there? How’s your husband doing? Oh right, he’s a charred corpse. Guess I saved you the trouble of a cremation…” Your taunt is interrupted by machine gunfire causing you to take cover. “Mary, stop it! You’re just wastin’ ammo!” you hear another voice shout. “I hear Bounty Bill out there too. I gotta say I’m really touched that you came all the way out from the Iron Union just for me. Guess those teeth marks on your dick really left a lasting impression.” You laugh remembering how you got away from him last time. “Keep laughing Blondie. I’ll soon have more fond memories of you when that pretty golden mane of yours is detached from your scalp and is hanging up on my wall.” Bill replies. “Alright enough! This isn’t about personal vendettas! This is a Ground Zero job and we’re going to act like fucking professionals. Now Blondie, I counted how many shots you fired and you got exactly ONE left. You can’t win this and you’re not getting away. If you come out peacefully however I can assure you that you will not be harmed and you will get a fair trial.” “Fair trial before a GZ Board? You must be huffing gasoline if you actually believe that. They’re more likely going to throw me in a cell and perform whatever fucked up experiments they do on me like they do with anyone that pisses them off. You’re working for the most amoral entity in the wasteland Mr. Justice. Your name has never been more hypocritical.” You shout back “Yeah, yeah, look this is your last chance Blondie. You coming out or not?” You look at your pistol and stand up near the window yet still remaining in cover. “One bullet is all I need. Come and get my body bitches.” You yell, fire your pistol in the air and then fall backwards so they can see your body fall in the view of the window. “Goddamn it, she offed herself.” Someone shouts. “Move it, but remain alert! It could be a trick!” Justice shouts. Well at least Justice is still thinking a bit, but he’s still severely underestimating you if he thinks he’s got you trapped. You wouldn’t have run in here had you not had a plan. This isn’t just some random abandoned house, it’s one of the many places you store supplies. Some of which are fully loaded weapons. Several bounty hunters cautiously enter the front entrance of the house, but it doesn’t do them any good when you cut down most of them with an assault rifle before they can take cover. Hearing more pour in from the back, you throw a smoke grenade to cover yourself and retreat elsewhere into the house where you have a trapdoor that leads under the house. “Goddamn fucking smoke. Can’t see shit!” someone shouts. “Fuck this, burn it all down.” Another says and you hear footsteps starting to exit the house from above you. Meanwhile you continue to crawl under the house, eventually making your way under the backsteps. There you see in the area is Bounty Bill and a few other hunters. “Shit, she’s right there!” Bounty Bill shouts before you riddle him and his buddies with bullets. Doesn’t take long before more hunters run around from the front to the back to flank you. You barely manage to escape unscathed, but fortunately luck is still with you this day. You notice the house is starting to emanate black smoke from the front and the distinct smell of fire is now in the air. You also hear a vehicle revving up. You pick up a couple of the pistols off the dead and cautiously head around the front of the house. You get there just in time to see Justice driving away like a little bitch. However, revenge is still very much here and Mary Liberty opens fire. You feel a painful sensation of a bullet going into your left leg. “Fuck!” you exclaim and dive for cover and crawl behind one of many now abandoned vehicles. “You’re a dead bitch Blondie! You hear me!?!” Mary shouts while spraying your cover with bullets. You and Mary have an old fashioned run and duck shoot out for several minutes, however unlike what happens in old movies, it does not ultimately result in some physical catfight with lesbian undertones where upon you proceed to rip each other’s clothes off. You just manage to get lucky again and shoot Mary in her right tit causing her to go down with the utterance of swears coming from her mouth. You limp over to where she fell and see she’s still trying to grab her pistol that she dropped. You shoot her in the hand blowing off a few of her fingers and causing her hand to recoil and she screams in pain. You pick up the pistol and train your own weapon on her. Already having a hard time breathing from the hole in her chest, she clutches her bloody hand with the other. The look in her eyes display a hatred you’ve seen many times before. “I…I …I’ll see you in hell Blondie.” She utters, spitting blood. “Probably.” You say and then end Mary’s life with a shot to her dome. With all your enemies dead you sit on the trunk of a nearby car and watch your stash house burn down while you ponder what to do next. The bullet wound in your leg will have to be seen to, so you’ll have to make a run to another location where you’ve stashed some medical supplies. The bullet went through so at least you don’t need to worry about digging something out. You’re just glad she wasn’t using hollow points and tie off your leg with your over shirt. In any case, you’re sure Justice will be back to chasing you around when he manages to scrounge up some more mooks. Honestly you’d like to catch a break where you don’t feel like you have to look over your shoulder every other day, but this is the path you chose and as they say there ain’t no rest for the wicked. Didn’t start out that way though you think. You honestly were just trying to survive, just like you continue to do today…but you suppose you really did start having a bit too much fun in doing what you did and still do. You wonder if it’s genetic. Your uncle was a serial killer after all. In any case you’re a far cry from being the “good girl” that once hid in the basement. All this self-reflection does give you an idea for your next destination after you patch up your leg. Home. It’s been years since you’ve been anywhere near there. You’ve deliberately avoided it for several reasons, but you figure since you seemingly have more and more places where you’re wanted dead nowadays you figure hiding out back in the old hometown might be worthwhile or at least interesting. You loot Mary’s body for her vehicle’s keys and leave the dead and burning behind you. As you drive you wonder who is in charge of the town, is it still in shambles infested with those freaks (Though you haven’t seen any of those in years now), did someone actually rebuild it, and is that redneck community still around? “Well doesn’t matter who’s there or in charge, but they all better hide in THEIR basements, because Suzy’s coming back home.” You say to yourself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY “…your family will feel right at home in one of our…” “Agh, shut the hell up.” You instinctively groan at the Ground Zero ad. You call out for Donna to turn her tv off, but considering she doesn’t, you assume that she must not be here. You look around for your phone to check the time, but you can’t find it. You can only assume that you dropped or misplaced it somewhere. Hardly matters, you don’t have too many people to contact anymore at this point. Your relationship with Bobby is over. Julie’s probably dead and who the hell knows what’s happened to the rest of your family in town. It isn’t like you need to call anyone or anyone needs to call you. You’re more pissed about your laptop, which apparently somehow caught a bullet during the mayhem yesterday. So much for keeping up on what might be going on in the world. In any case there’s a clock in the trailer and the time indicates that you’ve slept through the morning as usual. Weird, since you fell asleep fairly early. You wonder where the hell Donna could’ve went to, but you’re guessing she might be with her friend Tina. After turning the TV off in Donna’s room, all you’re left with is the noise that’s going on outside. Sounds like the good ol’ boys are still at it. You take a look out one of your windows and see several men in the field taking apart the military trucks, or rather severely altering them. It almost looks like they’re going to build a whole new vehicle out of them or something. Since there isn’t anyway to entertain yourself with your laptop being shot up, you aren’t in the mood to watch Ground Zero infomercials, and you don’t want to risk the possibility of Donna suddenly walking in on you with your vibrating boyfriend (Thankfully nothing happened to that form of entertainment, though you do worry about batteries for the future) your only option is to head outside and try to find Donna or find something productive to do. You never thought such a day would come where you’d be leaving the comfort of a couch to potentially do some work, but here you are. After going through your routine of washing up and changing clothes, you decide to take the rifle and pistol with you, just in case. You exit the trailer and head on over to Tina’s place. You knock on the trailer door and hardly recognize Tina without all her makeup on. Not that she’s ugly, in fact she’s actually less trashy looking without it on. “What the fuck do you want blondie?” Tina asks. “Um, is Donna here?” “No, she’s not fucking here. Try a few trailers over, I think she took a shine to Jimmy Ray and is over there.” “Oh. Okay then.” You say. “If you see her, tell her, she better not be distractin’ him all fucking day with her pussy, cause Mel wants him to be workin’ on somethin’. I dunno what, exactly, but I don’t wanna have to listen to him bitch to me about it.” “Got it.” You answer and begin to leave, but Tina calls out to you. “Hey, you ain’t after, Mel’s dick are ya?” Tina asks which completely catches you off guard. “What?” “He told me yesterday, you and he spoke and said you were sweet on him and he had to tell you to stop flirting so much.” Tina looks at you as if she’s detecting if you’re going to lie to her, but you have no intention of doing so since you’re defending yourself from a horrible lie! “Uh, with no disrespect, but Mel is NOT my type and I did not flirt with him.” You answer. “See, I knew that bastard was delusional. I didn’t even believe him when he told me that shit. Any retard can tell that a girl like you would have nothing to do with the likes of him in that way.” Tina says. “Did I do something that he could’ve mistaken for flirting? “Yeah, you were talking to him. He probably told all his friends that you were flirting with him. Hell, he might’ve even said he fucked you, but he tends to keep his tall tales a little more realistic nowadays. Whatever, he’s getting old and likes to think he’s still some sort of chick magnet. Still, I love the sonofabitch despite everything.” As you’re about to finish your illuminating conversation with Tina, you suddenly hear gunshots and yelling. “Oh shit!” you say believing that the military has returned already. Several of the trailer park crew start running towards the noise with weapons in hand. Tina calls out to a skinny one who looks like methhead. “Hey! Hey Dan, what the fuck’s goin’ on?” Tina shouts “A bunch of fuckin’ zombies or some shit are attackin’ us! Mel’s called almost everyone to defend the east and south part of the park. Looks like a shitload of them are comin’ from town!” “Wait, did you just say fuckin’ zombies?” Tina asks. “Yeah. I mean shit, I dunno what they are, I just know Bobby Ray got all bit up by one of them. Maybe they’re just cannibals or high on bath salts. Remember like that one time I…” “Dan, whatever! Just go! Go! Go! And you, get inside here, quick!” Tina says waving away Dan who continues to his destination. “But I gotta find my sister.” You remark “She’s probably safe with Jimmy Ray.” “Didn’t Dan say he just got bit by zombies?” “That was Bobby Ray! Now get yer ass in here, we’ll bar the door and hunker down inside here until Mel and the boys take care of this.” You’re not going to leave your sister’s potential fate in the hands of some redneck who you know nothing about though. You’re going to make the effort to at least find her; besides, you’d rather not barricade yourself in anywhere unless you have to. “Where is Jimmy’s trailer again?!” you ask. “You’re a damn idiot blondie. (sigh) it’s more towards the entrance and has a badly spray painted picture of a naked woman on the side of it. I suggest you get a move on.” Tina says and slams her door shut. You follow the advice and start heading towards your new destination, which has considerably more gunfire and shouting coming from that direction. You feel like you’re in one of those video games that you played on your computer sometimes, except this is unfortunately very real. With your rifle held in front of you the whole time, you continue to move at a quick yet cautious rate. You keep half expecting one of those freaks to suddenly jump out at you every time you pass one of the trailers. You catch a glance of people peeping out their windows of said trailers, sometimes you hear one of them shouting at you to “find some damn shelter.” Eventually you hear a voice calling at you from above. “Hey blondie, what the hell are you doing down there?” you look up and see a shirtless young man with a shotgun standing on top of the trailer. “Suzy?! What the hell are you doing?!” another voice shouts, but this one is coming from inside the trailer. Sounds like Donna. You glance back down and look at the trailer itself and notice that this is the one you’ve been looking for. You’re guessing that’s Jimmy Ray standing on top of his trailer. You can sort of see Donna going for a guy like him. He’s got a rugged handsome look rather than a grizzled, unkept or outright disgusting appearance that some of the other guys around here have. “Donna?! I was looking for you, that’s what I’m doing out here.” You say while swiveling your head in several directions to keep an eye on your surroundings. “Well now you’ve found me, now get inside!” Donna shouts and starts to open up the door. “Donna, don’t leave that door open too long, I’m watching the main fighting at the front of the park and it’s not looking good. The east side is doing better though.” “Aren’t you suppose to be helping Mel?” you ask. “Pfft, yeah right. I mean I don’t hate him or anything, but I’m not riskin’ my life for that asshole. Oh fuck! More of them are getting through, and I mean a shitload! Get your asses inside!” Jimmy Ray shouts and starts aiming his shotgun. You look and see a couple of the…things Dan was talking about. This is insane. Here you were worrying about the military and some unexpected threat like…zombies shows up? They can’t be zombies, they just can’t! Whatever they are, four of them are flailing about wildly and growling. They notice you and begin loping at you. The mere sight of them is troubling, but you quickly point your rifle at them and start firing. Jimmy’s shotgun gets one of them in the leg which he then shoots again in the body. Another gets its head blown off. You use up the remainder of the clip to kill the two remaining. One of them didn’t even drop down dead until he almost reached you. They don’t look rotten (though they do look dirty and disheveled…which isn’t unlike some of the hillbillies here) and you didn’t even shoot one in the head, so while they may NOT be zombies, they’re certainly inhuman enough for you to be scared. (Some sort of sickness perhaps?) Meanwhile Donna’s at the door and calling to you. You see now that she’s not wearing her own clothes, but rather a robe of some sort. Certainly not hers. “Suzy, please! Get inside NOW!” she shouts as more of those things come running in your direction. “Goddamn it, the pair of you need to get inside!” Jimmy shouts as he snaps off another shot. While the freaks are definitely advancing, they’re also splitting up to attack several trailers. You wonder if you shouldn’t just get Donna and make your way out of here since it looks like this place is going to be overrun. > You run away This is different than the police or the military, these things are mindless, possibly crawling with disease and seemingly without end, you really do need to get out of here! “Donna, get the hell out of there! These things are gonna overrun the place!” you shout and begin pulling at her arm. “Wha…Suzy, lemme go! It’s not safe out there!” Donna says attempting to pull away from your grip. Jimmy Ray is doing his best at blasting the cannibal freaks, but he’s not exactly using the quickest of weapons and those things are definitely picking up their own speed. “OH MY GOD! SUZY!” Donna exclaims pulling away just in time for one of those things to suddenly lunge upon you which you don’t see due to it jumping on your back and tackling you to the ground. You hear snarling and gnashing in your ear and somewhere between that, you hear Jimmy Ray yelling at Donna to lock the front door. The next thing you hear is the crunching sound of teeth going into your flesh. You cry out, but the freak is placing all its weight upon you, preventing you from struggling too much. With your face in the dirt and blood spurting out of your neck you’re not going too far, though when you’re partially hit with buckshot from Jimmy Ray’s shotgun you’re at least put out of your misery from the thing eating you alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While you haven’t quite ruled out the possibility of living with Donna, you don’t think you’re quite ready to go driving over there yourself and putting up with some old guy perving on you today. If you do decide to go over there, you’ll do it later tonight. Besides, you want to see just how bad it might be over at Julie’s before making a decision. A few minutes of driving to your destination and you’re sure of one thing being pretty bad, the roads! Once again there are cops everywhere, but also ambulances and fire trucks racing to their various destinations too. You nearly turn around and head back home, but eventually you make it to Julie’s neighborhood, which is thankfully not in the midst of anarchy. You pull up to the driveway and get out of the car. You figure you’ll assess the situation before making a decision of whether you’re going to stay or not. You sort of expected to see a few people drinking on the porch or at least hearing loud music as you walk up to the door, but so far it doesn’t sound like any sort of party going on or at least not an overly rowdy one, which is odd considering how people have been acting in this town for the past few days. You knock on the door, but get no immediate answer. After a few more bangs you finally get an answer, but it isn’t Julie. “Hello.” A man says in a flat tone and almost seems to be studying you. He looks like he might be around your age, but he doesn’t look like the sort that would be at one of Julie’s parties. He’s very “ordinary” looking. “Hey. Where’s Julie at?” you ask. “Julie? Oh yes, the owner of this house. Well, I don’t really know. I remember seeing her yesterday, but then she left with some guy and I haven’t seen her since. Of course this being her house she has to return sometime right? Would you like to wait?” the man asks opening the door further to invite you in. Something about this guy feels a little “off” to you. “Wait, who are you?” you ask. “Oh I’m sorry for not introducing myself. I’m Johnny. I was at Julie’s party yesterday. Guess you could say I got a little tipsy and decided I shouldn’t go home in that condition, so I flopped out in the basement. I’m not the only person who did that apparently considering some of Julie’s other guests are still here as well.” You peer inside and see that Johnny is indeed speaking the truth. A couple of people are on the couch playing some sort of video game. “So now that you know who I am, I have to ask who you are.” Johnny says. “I’m Suzy and I’m Julie’s friend.” You say. “I see, well come on in, I’m sure when Julie gets back she’ll be pleased to see you.” You enter the house and the place is in a lot better condition than you would’ve thought for a party house. Johnny quickly closes the door and locks it. Causing you to immediately look back. “You never can tell what weirdo will show up with unlocked doors and all, right?” he says. “Indeed.” You say still getting an uneasy feeling about this guy. “So, you’re one of Julie’s friends. Guess you’re a real party girl, just like she is huh?” Johnny remarks almost in an accusing fashion. “Hardly. Are these all the people in the house?” you ask, pointing to the stoners playing video games and completely ignoring you and Johnny. “Yeah, I mean there were some other people here earlier, but these lot are all that’s left, beside myself. Julie’s pretty cool about letting people just crash here even if she’s not around.” With Johnny creepily hovering near you and the stoners babbling about inane shit, you already realize that this is not going to work for you. “Alright, everyone get out.” You say, but the only one who even hears you is Johnny. “What?” Johnny asks. “Look I hate to be rude, and you probably didn’t know this, but I’m moving in here. Now when Julie is here, she can have all her little drug addled party friends over as much as she likes, I mean its her house after all. But I’m not going to put up with them while she isn’t here! So I want everyone out, you all can come back later when she’s here. Whenever that is.” Johnny’s still the only one who is even paying attention and his facial expression on your stance hasn’t changed. “But if it’s Julie’s house doesn’t she have final say in what goes?” Johnny asks. “Yeah, well when I see Julie, I’m going to have a little discussion with her about our new living arrangements.” You remark. Once again Johnny just stares at you, it almost feels like he’s staring through you. It makes you uncomfortable to say the least. “All right. You’ve got a point. I wouldn’t want a bunch of strangers just wandering around in my home either. I’ll get out of your hair, as for these guys, I can get ‘em to go.” Johnny says and then suddenly shouts at the stoners that everyone has to get out of the house and starts ripping controllers out of their hands. “Hey!” “Not cool dude!” “You dick!” “Sorry guys, but as the old saying goes, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Come on, let’s move it.” Johnny says and eventually the stoners grudgingly shuffle off to leave. Johnny follows behind them. “When you see Julie, tell her it was an excellent party last night.” Johnny says and flashes a brief smile, which comes off more creepy than friendly. You don’t even reply, you just shut the door and lock it, glad to be rid of everyone. Remembering that your sister said that if you did live here, you’d be sleeping in Julie’s dad’s old office. You explore that room first. When you get there it looks pretty much like the same office you remember being in a few times when you played over here. It’s definitely convenient that it has a small private bathroom leading from it as well as a couch that apparently folds out into a bed. After assessing your possible new digs, you decide to go retrieve your bags from the car. You unpack your bags and haul them into the house and head on into your new room. After getting a little bit settled, you figure since you’re all alone in the house, you might as well do something that usually puts you in a better mood. (and you sure could use it) While you’re in the middle of it, you suddenly think you hear something. You call out thinking that maybe Julie is finally home, but when you get no reply, you just check to make sure the door to your room is locked. If Julie does come home, you don’t want her suddenly walking in on you. After getting back in the mood and taking care of your needs you wash up a bit and return to your usual routine of…well doing nothing at all. Hours pass and eventually you start to get hungry so you head to the kitchen in the hopes of finding food. You manage to find a few bags of junk food and some unopened drink in the fridge. Once again while you’re doing this, you swear you think you hear noise. You call out again to see if anyone is here, but there is no answer. Given that it’s now nighttime you’re a little on edge. You know its probably just the house making creaking sounds, but with all the bullshit that’s been going on out in the streets lately you’re just a little paranoid. Just as you’re heading back to your room, the front door suddenly opens! It’s Donna and some other young woman who looks a bit on the trashy side. “Shit! You scared me.” You say. “Why didn’t you pick up your phone? I tried calling you before I got over here.” Donna asks. “I…I guess I had it on vibrate and didn’t hear it.” You say. “Hm. Well I see this place is practically a tomb. I take it Julie isn’t home?” “Nope, I haven’t heard from her either.” “That’s really odd…” Suddenly the trashy young woman speaks up. “Hey Donna are we picking your shit up or what? You know how fucked up it is out there right now and I’d like to get home before it gets worse.” “Oh yeah, better get to it. Suzy, this is my friend Tina.” Donna says and heads upstairs. “Hello.” You say to Tina, but she just grunts at you and heads back outside to her car. Remembering that Donna wanted you to help her move some of the stuff, you head upstairs to her room. “Your friend Tina isn’t very friendly.” You ask. “Yeah, well if you were a horny guy with a hundred dollar bill, she’d be really friendly towards you. Anyway, she’s always been cool with me ever since I’ve known her, plus she helped me get the current job I have.” Donna says as she packs away items. “You need anything for me to carry down?” “Yeah, but not yet. Really I’m thinking I’ll get most of this stuff later when I have a day off. Right now I just want to get the hell out of this town, it’s getting nuts out there!” “Yeah, it was pretty chaotic out there earlier on my drive here. So how was your first day?” “Not bad. As strange as it may seem, it actually was calmer in the club than it was outside. Though having bouncers helps in that area I suppose. Still a couple of fights did break out.” “Shit. You okay? Are you sure the job is safe?” “Oh I’m safe. Like I said, there’s good protection there. Honestly I’m more concerned with the drive TO the club, but I imagine whatever is going on will die down eventually.” “Hope so.” Donna finishes packing a bag and starts to pack a new one and you stand there silent until you hear a noise from downstairs causing you to jump a bit. “Are you okay?” Donna asks. “Yeah, what the hell’s that noise?” you ask, briefly stepping out of Donna’s room to look over into the living room. “Probably Tina.” “No, she’s not down there and besides she went back to wait in the car.” “Well maybe she wandered back in briefly…you seem a little stressed.” “I dunno. The shit’s that’s been going on in town and I guess being alone in the house at night has got me a little jumpy. Sort of concerned that Julie hasn’t come back either.” “Mmm, well that IS odd. I tried calling her again earlier too with no luck. Have you thought anymore about coming to live with me? I told you it would be fine and I know you think the trailer park isn’t safe environment, is this town really any safer right now?” > You stay at the house “I’m still not sold on the trailer park, Donna. I think I’ll be fine here. I just need to get used to the new living situation.” You remark to Donna. “Hm, okay then. Well my offer will always still stand as long as I live there.” Donna replies. “Okay. Thanks Donna. So you said you’re good? You don’t need my help with anything?” “Nah, not tonight anyway. Like I said, I’ll come back and get all of my stuff proper, another day. Hopefully when the mess in town dies down.” Saying a few more goodbyes, you leave Donna to finish her hasty packing and you head back to your room and close the door. A few minutes later you hear the slam of the front door indicating that Donna has left, leaving you by yourself again. You try to call Julie again, but once again there is no answer. Giving up on that particular concern you go back to amusing yourself on the Internet until you start reading erotic stories which puts you more in the mood to amuse yourself with your battery operated boyfriend again. Having no distractions this time, you orgasm twice before having enough fun for the night. As you lie there in your afterglow, you briefly think about Bobby and how you sort of miss him, or rather his dick. Masturbation is fun and all, and it definitely gets the job done, but your time with Bobby has made you appreciate the human touch a little more. You really liked some of the tricks he did… Since you still aren’t one hundred percent sure about living here, you decide that you’ll call Bobby tomorrow and see if you can’t talk some sense into him and possibly make up. With that goal for tomorrow decided, you call it a night and roll over on your couch to sleep. At some point in the middle of the night, you hear a noise close by. You groggily open your eyes and see a figure standing over you with a large knife. Before you can scream or do anything, the person is on top of you and choking you with one hand. You can see his face right up to yours and he’s recognizable now with your eyes wide with fear. It’s Johnny. “Fucking whore! I heard what you did in here! I heard the dirty thing you did! I’m going to punish you like I did your friend!” he snarls with a look of pure hatred upon his face. You punch and struggle and just as you think you’re having some success, Johnny proceeds to actually use his knife and stabs you repeatedly with it. With a last bit of strength you manages to push Johnny off of you and roll on the floor yourself, but your attempts to crawl away are short lived due to the combination of your wounds and the fact Johnny quickly recovers and begins stabbing you in the back. As the life starts to fade from your body, you hear the heavy breathing of Johnny who is apparently starting to get aroused by your condition and begins ripping at your clothes. Fortunately you die before you feel the pain of being raped on top of being murdered.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>TUESDAY “…if you act now you’ll get a free…” You groggily grab the remote to shut off the incessant noise of the Ground Zero commercial on the TV screen. You grab your phone to check the time and see that once again you’ve slept through the morning as usual. You also see that Bobby tried to call you, but you’re still not in the mood to call him back. Though if you don’t secure a place to live you might not have a choice. Still as far as you know the offer to live at Julie’s is still good, you’re just not sure about how well that’s going to go over now. While you’re trying to ponder your next move, you get a call. It’s Donna again. Might as well get this over with. “Donna, this better be good, because you’re not exactly my favorite person right now.” You say answering the phone. “Whoa! Hold on Suzy! Don’t hang up!” Donna exclaims. “Say what you got to say.” “Okay, look first of all I’m sorry about what you had to go through. I know that had to suck for you. I shouldn’t have convinced you to run anyway. It’s obvious now that was a stupid plan in the first place since I didn’t even have anything in the car. (Sigh) Last night when I was sleeping on a beer soaked couch in a trailer hiding out from the cops I sort of had a revelation of how my choices in life had lead me to that point. I also sort of realized that if I probably continue on this path it’s only going to get worse.” That’s rather philosophical of your sister, and it’s enough to keep your attention. “So I’ve decided that I need to do something with my life and make it better, so I got a job.” Donna says. “A job? How the hell did you get a job so quick? Doing what?” you ask. “I’m going to be a stripper at Kitty City! The owner was offering me a job yesterday and I already was getting tips from guys who mistook me for one of the strippers here anyway. So I figured why not? In fact I’m on break right now.” Why are you not surprised? Donna continues before you can even speak again. “Now before you judge, starting a new life takes money and let’s face it, I don’t have exactly many useful skills that are going to earn me a lot of cash in a quick amount of time. I figure I can earn enough to save and figure things out as I go.” “Hm, well that’s great and all, but why are you telling me all this?” you ask. “Because this is my new start and like I said I feel bad about convincing you to go along with my plan yesterday. Besides, don’t you still need a place to stay? You can come live with me!” “I thought I was already going to do that by moving in to Julie’s.” “Nah, I’m not going back to Julie’s. Too much temptation to go back to my old ways there. I’m moving into one of the trailers at the trailer park.” “Wait. You just started working as a stripper. How the hell did you manage to get a trailer already?” “I secured one after…um talking with the park owner this morning. Look, that’s not really important right now. What is important is I got a deal on a fairly good one and it’s big enough for two of us. It might be a little rough going at first, but I anticipate after a few weeks of teasing these degenerates here, we’ll be living fairly comfortably, if not in the lap of luxury.” “I dunno. While I’m still pissed about yesterday, it does mean a lot that you’re making this pretty generous offer. I don’t know about living in a trailer park though. I mean aren’t you worried about the kind of people there? In fact I can imagine a lot of the type that Kelly associates with come from there, do you really think its safe?” “Safe as opposed to what? Growing up in our household? We had a fucking paranoid psychotic older brother, a sadistic bullying older sister and at one point a goddamn SERIAL KILLER uncle living in our house. At least the hostile rednecks around here won’t be living under our roof! Besides, it really isn’t as bad as you hear.” You find that a little hard to believe considering you’ve heard more than enough stories about the trailer park outside of town. Donna might not think its bad, just because she was living there overnight. “I just don’t know Donna. I mean I wasn’t exactly looking forward to dealing with the non-stop partying at Julie’s, but I’d at least feel a little safer there than I would at the trailer park.” “Huh, don’t be so sure of that. Julie pretty much has gotten to the point where she has an open door policy to let any creepy weirdo that walks in off the street in the house. It’s actually amazing someone like Uncle Ed hasn’t come in and killed us all. Are you heading over there sometime today?” “Well if I can secure a ride over there I will.” “Okay, well if you do get over there could you let Julie know that I’m moving out? She’s still not answering her phone. I’m going to have to make arrangements to get my bigger things, but maybe you could help me get some of my smaller items when I get over there tonight?” “Well, I suppose I could.” You say. “Great. I knew I could count on your Suzy. (Sigh) You really are the good one in the family sis. It’s so unfair that life hasn’t been better to you. Once again I’m really sorry about what happened yesterday. It’s nearly time for me to go out there and shake my ass again so I gotta go. Just…think about what I said okay? If you change your mind about your future living arrangements just come with Tina and me when we go over to Julie’s tonight, or I guess if you’re really feeling adventurous you could always go over to the trailer park yourself. Just go to the owner’s trailer with the big signs around it and mention my name and he’ll let you in my new place. He’s sort of letch, but he’s old so he mostly confines it staring and making the occasional comment. Don’t worry about it.” After another sincere apology about yesterday, Donna finally hangs up leaving you now with a new option. Donna seems to be genuinely trying to change her life in her own way. You almost can’t believe it was Donna on the phone at all. Maybe some sort of pod person replaced her. She also seems to be really making an effort to make things up to you, which is surprising as well. It’s always a rarity in your family when you actually try to help each other out. Still, you’re not sure about this whole living in a trailer park business for several reasons, but you suppose you could give it a little thought at least. In any case, you need to get a ride to wherever it is you’re going to be heading to and that means seeing if your brother Peter is going to be just as accommodating as your sister currently is. You head upstairs and knock on the door to the garage. “Hey, um Peter? You busy?” You don’t get an answer right away, but eventually you do after more knocking. “Yeah, yeah, hold on!” Peter says before answering the door. He’s only peaking his head out, so it’s very likely he’s naked. “Um, sorry to interrupt whatever it is you’re doing, but I need a ride to my new place.” “I thought you moved out yesterday.” “Yeah, there was a slight hiccup in the plan yesterday. Anyway, can you give me a ride over to my new place?” “(Sigh) I’m kinda in the middle of recording something. I’m assuming you’re going to Julie’s?” “Yeah…I think.” You say. “You think? You don’t know if you’re going to live over at Julie’s place or not?” “Well…Donna got a new place of her own and I’m still not sure if I should just move in with her yet.” “Donna got a new…look you know what? I don’t give a shit about any of this.” Peter says and then closes the door. You think that’s the end of it, but he opens it up again, but this time only his hand with some keys in it are coming out. “I’m not your personal taxi service. Here, take my car and return it tomorrow or at least by Thursday. Now don’t disturb me again!” You take the keys and Peter slams the door. This is probably the most helpful he’s been in…well ever. You go back and repack some of your bags and drag them to Peter’s car. After loading everything up in the backseat you pull out of the drive way and wonder which way you should go. > You drive to the trailer park Well Donna would know better than you how fucked up it is at Julie’s house. You don’t particularly care for the idea of her just leaving her doors open for any potential nutjob to come in. You’d at least have some more control over that, if you lived in the trailer with Donna who will probably be gone most of the time anyway. And perhaps Donna’s observations of the trailer park are correct; maybe it isn’t as bad there as you’ve always believed. A few minutes of driving to your destination and you’re sure of one thing being pretty bad, the roads! Once again there are cops everywhere, but also ambulances and fire trucks racing to their various destinations too. Fortunately it seems to thin out as you leave town. Maybe this was a better idea after all. You soon reach the trailer park, but you pull up near the entrance rather than inside it. You don’t know which trailer she lives in, so you figure the owner knows and you imagine he lives in the trailer up front with the signs on it saying “Inquire about trailers here.” You get out of the car and go knock on the door. “Goddamnit stop fucking knockin’. I’m comin’!” you hear an old crotchety voice shout. The door opens up and your eyes are “greeted” by the sight of a little old man wearing nothing but an open robe and boxer shorts. His body is wizened and wrinkled and he obviously has no modesty at all. “What the hell you want blondie? This ain’t a fuckin’ whorehouse.” He exclaims. “Uh, my sister Donna got a trailer from you the other day, I was just wondering where it was.” You ask. The old guy looks you up and down, squinting the entire time. “I don’t know nuthin’ about no girl named Donna. All I do know is some whore yesterday sucked me off as down payment for a trailer. I don’t normally trade property fer pussy, but goddamn if that girl wasn’t lying about giving the best head ever…” While you sort of had an inkling of how Donna got a trailer so quickly, you didn’t really need to know the gruesome details. And now after seeing who she serviced to get it…you just want to change the subject. “Okay, anyway which trailer does she live in?” you ask. “She lives in the trailer at the far end of the park. Now unless you gonna rent a trailer wit money or yer lips too, get the hell outta my face an don’t bother me!” the old man shouts. As you leave the old bastard he slams his door shut. You get back in the car and drive into the park. The first thing you notice that you didn’t expect is how quiet the place is. You were expecting a lot more drama going on like on a bad daytime talk show, but you get none of that. You don’t even see anyone really around. Eventually you approach the far end of the park, and there you see a trailer, which seems to stand out near a large open field. You’re guessing this one is it. You park and approach the trailer and when you try the door that when you realize that you don’t have a key for this place. Donna apparently didn’t develop the bad habits of Julie either since the door is firmly locked. “Damn. (Sigh)” you say to yourself realizing that your choice is either wait all day in your vehicle, or maybe go back to to the manager who might have a spare key, though you’d rather not deal with him again. “Hey darlin’ never seen you before here! My name’s Jed!” a voice says. You turn around and see a lanky redneck who has seemingly appeared out of nowhere. “Oh. Hey.” You say. “Hmm, you sure are beautiful. Yer even prettier than that girl that just moved in this trailer. You a friend of hers?” “Sister actually. Does the manager have spare keys to the trailers?” you ask. “That mean old bastard? Yeah, but if you need that open, you don’t need to go all the way back to him, here I can open it.” Jed walks past you and pulls out some sort of tool and starts fiddling with the lock. “Hey, wait a minute, are you picking the lock?” you ask. “Well I ain’t ticklin’ it honey. Letssee…yeah…easier than breakin a virgin.” Jed says as the door easily opens for him with a click. “There you go sweetheart. So said that girl livin’ here now is yer sister? Guess good breedin’ runs in yer family.” “Uh…yeah guess so. Thanks, but I really want to just get all my stuff in and rest.” You say and turn to your car and there you see a huge man just staring at you like a gargoyle. It actually startles you, which Jed notices. “Oh don’t be afraid of him honey, that’s just my brother Hugo. He’s dumber than a bag of rocks, but he’s strong as hell. In fact he can carry yer bags in for ya.” At this point Jed is getting uncomfortably close to you as he speaks and you’re starting to feel on edge with these two. “Look I thank you both for your help, but I really would like to be alone please.” You say firmly. Jed looks at his brother then at you. “Whatever you say honey. Let’s go Hugo.” Jed says and the pair of them slowly leave and eventually disappear behind another trailer. No longer being gawked at by the locals, you grab your bags from the car and haul them into the trailer. When you get inside, you see that it isn’t that bad. It’s definitely cheap looking, but it’s serviceable. You drop your bags by the sofa and quickly check the other areas like the bathroom and what you guess is a bedroom where Donna will sleep. Just as you’re turning around to check the kitchen at the other end, the door opens up and your heart sinks when you see Jed entering with what looks to be duct tape. He looks at you and a deranged smile is across his face. “Now I already know what’s goin’ through yer head blondie, cause I’ve done this a million times. Yer first instinct is gonna be to scream and make a fuss. Well lemme tell ya right now. Ain’t nobody gonna help yah. Most of ‘em are at the carnival, an the few that ain’t are either still passed out or ain’t gonna give a shit. Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Despite Jed’s warnings, you do the opposite of what he says and scream as loud as you can anyway, while running back into the bedroom in an attempt to look for anything to defend yourself. Jed wastes no time in following. Unfortunately there isn’t anything in the bedroom for you to immediately use since Donna doesn’t have any of her stuff here. You attempt to pick up the trailer’s TV in desperation, but Jed grabs you and throws you to the bed. You struggle, but it’s no use. Jed is a dedicated murdering rapist with a mean streak a mile wide. After giving you a few punches to the face, you start to drift in and out of consciousness. “HUGO! HUGO! You can stop watchin’ the fuckin’ door and gimme a hand over here with this bitch. I reckon we both got time to have some fun with this one before handing her over to ol’ doc.” Jed exclaims while ripping your clothes off. “See Hugo? Told ya sticking around here would be better than the carnival.” In your haze, you feel the violations at first. Pain, humiliation and anguish are all abundant at first, but then you go numb and then nothing when you pass out altogether. During your state of unconsciousness you have a brief dream of when you were much younger. When your mother was still alive and she was praising you about how good you are and how she anticipates great things in your future. It’s more of a distant memory than a dream in fact though in any event, it’s a nice “escape” from your horrible reality. When you wake up, you’re groggy, naked, incredibly sore and firmly strapped to a medical gurney of some sort. You also have a ball gag in your mouth. The room you’re in looks to be some sort of basement with a bright light hanging overhead. The stench of chemicals fills the air and to your left in a darker corner of the room you see a man in a doctor’s coat hovering over another gurney with a body on it. Naturally in such a state you start to panic and ineffectively struggle to get free. The “doctor” hears you and walks over to you. “Oh, you’re up. I’ll have to give you more sedative. When Jed and Hugo brought you in, you weren’t in the best condition, though I’m glad they showed a little more restraint than usual.” As you continue to try to struggle and make muted sounds to cry out, the doctor begins fondling you and moving his hands to roam all over your body. “Mmmm, nice. Though I appreciate a pretty face and I get the impression yours would’ve been a lot prettier had they not beat you up so much. Not to mention they both completely wrecked your rectum…I swear what the hell is it with rednecks and their pre-occupation for ass rape? Anyway, if I had the time, I’d probably still shove it in your vertical smile for a while, but sadly I don’t.” The doctor goes over to a tray and grabs some sort of syringe he fully intends on use on you and you’ve gone from mere panic to sheer terror. “Really, you’re luckier than most that come through here. Normally I keep ‘em awake when I do my work, but I need you unconscious to take out those pretty eyes and other vital organs of yours. Wouldn’t want you thrashing about or blinking to cause me to cut them all up and making them useless.” You watch helplessly as the needle goes into your arm. The tears run down your cheeks. “There we go. Won’t be long now. (Sigh) I swear it seems like I never get to enjoy my work any more though. I really would’ve liked to have fun with you. Oh well, I’ve got some other things to still look forward to.” You drift into unconsciousness again and your life ends where you ironically spent most of your time. A basement.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>MONDAY “…act now and Ground Zero will provide a…” Click. As you groggily wake up, you’re wondering if you should bother even taking your TV with you considering the stations just play Ground Zero commercials half the time. You look at the time and see that you’ve slept for most of the morning, but it doesn’t matter considering your sister isn’t going to pick you up until the afternoon. You just hope that she remembers to come get you period. While your sister isn’t as flaky as Julie, she still doesn’t have the greatest sense of responsibility. You also check your phone and see that Bobby’s still trying to reach you, but you still don’t feel like dealing with him. MAYBE later, right now you want to focus on one major decision at a time and moving out of a place where you’ve lived your whole life certainly qualifies. All your stuff is packed and ready to go, and since you can’t do much more until your sister gets here, you just wait. As you continue to wait, you start to get anxious. You start to worry if you’re making the right decision or not. You start to pace in your room weighing all the pros and cons of what you’re doing. “Ugh, this is so stressful…I need to calm down…” you say and start unzipping one of your packed bags to get old reliable to relax you. 20 minutes later… “Hey Suzy?! You down there?” you hear Donna call from upstairs. “Huh? Uh what?! Yeah! Hold on!” you exclaim and stop your stress relief session. As you hurry to get dressed, Donna continues to call down to you. “I called you know, why didn’t you answer?” “Uh, I guess I didn’t hear it. Sorry about that. Be up in a minute.” “I thought you were ready. What were you doing? Splittin’ the kitten down there?” Donna laughs. You don’t answer; you just finish dressing and grab your bags. When you get upstairs, Donna greets you. She’s wearing a shirt that is obviously trying to call attention to her small breasts and pants that are one size too tight to make her ass look like its more filled out, but she’s dressed fairly conservative all things considered. “Were you just taking what’s in your bags? Because we could probably put more into the car.” “Nah, I need to get out of here now. I mean maybe later I could get someone to come get my couch or some of my furniture though.” “Okay, but really I don’t think you’ll need to, Julie’s got spare beds and such. Plenty of space you know.” “Yeah I know. Let’s get going.” You and Donna leave the house and after throwing your bags in her car you and her are soon on your way. Along the way Donna puts on some music. She takes mercy on you by not listening to that techno dance crap that you hate so much, but instead listens to the bubble gum pop crap that you hate slightly less. “So…I found an area of the house where I think you’ll be happiest at yesterday.” Donna says. “Oh? Is it the basement?” “Hah, nah. That’s being used for other things. I was thinking of Julie’s dad’s old office on the far left of the house. I mean Julie never uses it, and besides a few people wandering from the main party to have a quickie in there it’s never used anymore.” “Gee, you make it sound so appealing.” “Well it’s either that or one of the upstairs bedrooms and I can’t promise you won’t be disturbed on regular basis there. At least with the office you can lock it and it’s far enough away from the usual party grounds.” “I guess it’s the best I can hope for, thanks I guess for thinking ahead.” “No problem. You know I’m glad you’re coming to live with us. I mean I know you probably don’t believe it, but I missed talking with you. Julie’s fun and all, but even I get tired from partying ALL the time.” “Well thanks Donna…hey this is like the twelfth police car I’ve seen pulled over and cops arresting someone.” You say looking out the window. “Yeah, I dunno if you’ve noticed since you tend to hang out in the basement most of the time, but there’s been an increase in crime which also means an increase in the cops using that as an excuse to be assholes… like this. Shit!” Nothing like talking something into existence. A cop car puts on its siren and a bullhorn tells you to pull over. You briefly worry that your sister isn’t going to pull over, but she does. Swearing and sighing the whole time. Doesn’t take long before a policeman approaches the vehicle. “Alright where are you going in such a hurry?” the cop asks. “Nowhere. I wasn’t even speeding!” “Is that right honey? Not according to my radar you weren’t. Besides, you ignored a stop sign back there. I think you need to step out of the car.” “Are you kidding me? There wasn’t a stop sign!” “Aren’t you supposed to ask for her license and registration first?” you add. The cop suddenly points his finger at the both of you. “The both of you need to shut the hell up right, before I run you both in for obstruction of justice. Now both of you out of the car now!” Your sister looks at you like she really wants to just try to turn the car back on and try to drive away, but you both know that wouldn’t do any good save for getting yourselves in a whole lot of trouble. The cop calls over his partner who looks equally uncompromising. He tells him to search you, while he starts searching the car while he puts Donna up against the car and starts patting down Donna. “Getting a good feel, you bastard?” Donna remarks. The cop frisking you is slightly better, since you don’t get your girl parts molested, but he certainly comes close. He snickers a bit as you tense up from this indignity. After you and your sister have been frisked. They tell you both to go sit on the curb with your hands locked behind your heads while they search the car. This is a bad situation anyway since you’re obviously dealing with two asshole cops, but who knows what the hell Donna’s got in her car which will give them even more of an excuse to march you off to jail. Speaking of which, Donna whispers to you. “We need to run.” “What?” you ask in a whisper. “Those two fuckers are going to find something in the car.” “You’re driving with illegal drugs in the car?” “Not that much, well at least I don’t think I am…hell I’m not even sure, but I can’t take that chance! We gotta run!” “And where the hell are we gonna go?” “I dunno! We could probably still hide at Julie’s house.” “You’re joking right? That place is probably the first place they’ll look! Shit, Donna! I knew I shouldn’t have left the goddamn basement today!” “Look…they’re pretty involved in searching right now. If we ran we could probably at least lose them until we came up with a better idea.” You get the impression Donna is going to run no matter what and you can’t see how that’s going to be a good idea in any way. You’re also concerned that if she runs and you stay, these two cops will just pin everything on you (whatever that may be). Still, if she sees that you’re determined to stay, maybe she’ll keep to her common sense and won’t run too. > You don't run Regardless of what your sister does, you’re not going to get yourself into more trouble by running. “Look Donna, I can’t stop you from running, but I’m staying here.” “What? You can’t do that. You’re supposed to be supportive!” “I’m not going to be supportive in your resisting arrest attempt! Now like I said, I won’t stop you, but if you’re going to do it, you’ll be doing it alone.” “(Sigh) I should’ve known you’re still the same old goody two shoes that follows all the rules. You’re a goddamn idiot Suzy, one of these assholes just felt me up when he frisked me. You really think if they’re just going to arrest us when they find something? Chances are they’re going to drive us to some secluded area and make us suck their cocks and god knows what else! I’m getting the hell…” Just as Donna is starting to get up, both cops have taken notice of you two again. “HEY! I told you to stay put! Don’t give me an excuse!” one of them shouts nearly going for his gun and it’s enough to cause Donna to rethink her actions. “Despite the pair of you acting mighty suspicious, you appear to be clean and so does the vehicle. Don’t think you’re getting out of a ticket though!” the cop says and shoves a ticket at your sister who takes it. Looks like Donna had a drug free car after all. At this point the cop’s partner says to him that they’re needed at the mall since apparently a small riot has broken out there. You are left with another verbal warning and they drive off. As for you and your sister, the pair of you get back in the car without another word and continue your drive to Julie’s house in silence. When you arrive, the place is much more subdued than your used to. You don’t even hear loud music coming from inside. “No party going on?” you ask. “Probably will be some folks coming over later. I dunno, even I don’t keep up on it all the time. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be wanting to hide away before that happens, so like I said your room will be Julie’s dad’s old office. Julie also wants to talk with you as well, so if you’re actually feeling social you could go speak with her before heading off to planet Suzy.” Donna says coldly. “…what the hell? Donna, I know you’re pissed, but I really don’t know why. If it hadn’t been for me stalling you from running, you’d be in for a lot more trouble than just a ticket. I’d say it worked out much better.” You say. “Right. Your plan worked. Following the rules always works for you. Your life is so great and that’s why you had to beg to move in here.” “Uh, you’re living here in JULIE’S house too with no means of support either. I wouldn’t start pointing fingers.” “Fuck you Suzy. I thought things were going to be different, but I can see that you’re still the stuck up bitch that thinks she’s better than everyone else.” Donna exclaims and storms off leaving you in the car. So much for “sisterly bonding.” This is really an unfortunate turn of events, but not completely unexpected. Donna’s always been a bit bi-polar with you. One moment she’s saying how much you should hang out and bond and the next minute she’s calling you a stuck up bitch that doesn’t know how to have fun. The girl has some serious self-esteem issues. Really you have no idea why she still acts the way she does. Mom is dead and so is dad. Who is there to rebel against anymore? From some of what she said earlier it almost seems like she parties out of habit more than great desire anymore. You pull your bags out of the car and head on inside. The front room is messy, but not overly so. Your sister is nowhere to be seen, but there are a couple of people you don’t know sitting on one of the couches playing video games. Another one is asleep on the floor. The place smells of spilled beer and none of the people even acknowledge your presence. “Suzy! You’re here!” a voice suddenly calls out. You look up and see Julie waving from the second floor. She immediately runs down the stairs to greet you close up, nearly tripping in the process. When she gets to you, the years of partying are really starting to take their toll. She’s your age, but she’s starting to look like one of those trashy strippers that wears too much make up. “Suzy, it’s been too long! Give me a hug!” she exclaims and before you can even react, she gloms on to you and gives you a tight squeeze. “Mmmm, you smell so nice. Like strawberries.” She says while rubbing her hands across your back. “Uh, yeah. Probably the shampoo I used.” You say. “You’ve been keeping in shape too, guess Bobby was keeping you busy physically. Ha ha ha ha.” Julie laughs and now she starts getting a little too touchy feelie for you. You’ve already had unwanted touching once today, you don’t feel like more. “Yeah, okay good to see you too. Back up there now. I need some space.” You say and start pulling away. “Hah same old prudish Suzy. What you think I’m gonna just start sexually assaulting you right here in the living room? Please, I know a girl like you needs to be romanced first!” Julie jokes, but she’s probably somewhat serious with her playful advances. Shortly after you got with Bobby, Donna told you that Julie spent a couple days crying because she wanted to tell you how she’s always loved you. (You of course weren’t sure why she ever thought you’d be into such a relationship, but apparently before Bobby, everyone just assumed you were a big lesbian.) Of course she quickly went on with her hedonistic life, but you’ve always wondered if she really ever “got over” you. “Okay Suzy, I hear you’re planning on sleeping in my dad’s old office. You remember the way right?” “Yeah I think so.” “Oh, I’ll just walk with you, we need to catch up on so much. I’ve missed you, you know!” Resigning yourself to the fact that you’re going to have to at least be friendly to Julie, you walk with her to your new room. Julie of course is very talkative. “So Suzy, speaking of Bobby, did you make up with him yet?” “No and I doubt if it’s going to work out anyway.” “Ohhhh, that’s so sad. You two did make a cute couple in a creepy shut in way.” Julie says and begins rubbing your shoulder. “Hm, thanks.” You answer. “Well, not to worry, you could meet a new boyfriend right here! Contrary to what you might think, I don’t just have mindless party animals coming over here. There’s actually a wide variety of people that come here to hang out. You could meet that special guy tonight in fact! Or girl…you know whatever…” Julie says trailing off and nervously smiles at you. “Well I’m not really thinking about that right now, I think I’d rather be by myself for awhile.” You answer. “Oh yeah sure. I understand. But I just want you to know that my house is your house okay? And all the fun that goes on here, well you can have some of that fun too you know?” “I know Julie. Thanks for letting me stay here.” “No problem, you were always welcome. Okay well here it is. I’ll leave you to get settled and remember you can always come out and join us later.” At this point Julie hugs you again though it’s a quick one this time and briskly walks off. You enter the office and see that it is indeed much neater and cleaner than most of the house. Even better that it has a small bathroom attached to it as well, but you knew that since this actually isn’t the first time you’ve been in here. You remember playing tag with Julie when you were in elementary school and you both ran in here. Julie’s dad wasn’t angry though. He even gave you a lollipop from a jar on his desk. Come to think of it anytime he saw you, he was always giving you lollipops. He was pretty nice that way. Shame he died in a car accident just as Julie was starting to get wilder, since even if he did work most of the time, you get the impression Julie might at least had some boundaries during her late teens and onward. It doesn’t take long for you to rearrange some things and make yourself at home on the fairly comfortable couch in there. It also doesn’t take long for you to get back to finishing what Donna interrupted earlier today. (Making sure to lock the door of course) After finishing up and washing up a bit, you hear some music. Sounds like the party is getting started. Continuing to be the introverted personality you usually are, you don’t leave your “safe zone” and go back to playing games on your computer and looking up random shit on the Internet. The more things change the more they stay the same, time passes and it’s almost like you’ve never left the basement! Eventually you get bored doing that and you start looking around the office a bit more. It’s sort of snooping, but then Julie’s dad is dead and you’re sure Julie doesn’t care. You start going through the filing cabinets and find that all the paperwork is mainly business files dated back to before Julie’s dad died. Looks like nobody ever bothered to clean any of this stuff out or even go through the stuff. The bookshelves aren’t filled with the most interesting of topics. Mostly about economics, business practices, legal things, though some of the books are historical in nature. You don’t see much fiction though. The desk just contains regular office supplies. You actually aren’t surprised to find a pistol in there (along with bullets) but after rummaging around a bit you notice a secret compartment in one of the drawers. You find a black box and you waste no time in opening it. Inside you find pictures. Pictures of little girls…in fact there are some of YOU! By the looks of them, these were all taken in secret. Nobody is naked in the photos, but given that nearly every single picture of you involves you either sucking or licking a lollipop it’s pretty apparent what the purpose of these were. Some of these girls are other kids you knew from school and hung out with Julie as well. In fact one of them went missing. Nobody knew who did it, but it was a big deal in town and it probably lead to your mother being even more overprotective of you. And you’re really glad she did since you’re starting to get a sinking feeling about what you’ve uncovered here. “Christ…” you say going through the photos. You start to wonder now if Julie’s behavior is caused by years of sexual molestation. It would certainly explain a lot. Then you get a knock on the door. “Hey Suzy, it’s me Julie, I’ve got something for you.” “Uh, hold on. Just a minute!” you exclaim as you quickly put the photographs back. You have no idea if you should tell her not, but you open the door. Julie appears with a bottle of soda and a pizza and walks in. “I figured you’d stay in here all night, but I thought you might get hungry or thirsty so here you go!” Julie says and places her gifts to you on the desk. “Oh. Thanks Julie.” You say. “You’re welcome…so why’d you take so long in answering the door? You splittin’ the kitten in here or what?” Julie asks. “Hah, yeah well busted I guess.” You say with a fake chuckle. “Suzy, if you came out and had some fun with the rest of us, that wouldn’t really be necessary you know. I know you probably still miss Bobby on some level and you’ve got needs, but he’s not here and you’d be better off moving on with your life and getting some free dick out there…or pussy…you know whatever…” Julie says obviously still hoping. Given how unstable Julie is at times, you almost wonder if you should address what you found at all. Maybe dredging up bad childhood memories isn’t the best thing right now. > You talk to Julie about what you found Quite frankly, you’ll still not sure if this is a good idea, but you can’t stay silent about what you know. “Julie, I’m about to tell you something very important and I think it’s going to cause a lot of emotions, but please bear with me.” You say and then when you see Julie’s eyes light up you quickly clarify your statement. “Uh…not that.” “…oh…” Julie says disappointed, though she’s going to be even more upset when you reveal what you know. You start and stop a couple of times, but eventually you tell her you better just show her. You open the desk back up and hand her the box of photos. Julie goes through them silently for a moment and sits down. “Julie, I dunno what to say.” You remark. “What’s to say? It is what it is. (Sigh) I thought I got rid of all this stuff though.” Julie responds. “You…you knew? Why didn’t you ever tell anyone?” “Wasn’t like I really knew until after he died and by then I didn’t see the point and I thought it might even fuck up the inheritance he left me. Most of the stuff I found when I did go through it weren’t photos like these, but actual magazines or little girl pictures on his computer. I didn’t even know that he was taking photos of you and other friends.” “Wait. So you never knew until after he died? Are you saying he never touched you?” “Nope. Never touched me. Never paid much attention to me at all really, he was usually gone on business or otherwise busy as you well know.” At this point Julie starts to laugh. “You wanna hear something really fucked up?” “Um…” “After I found out my dad was a sicko pedo I got angry and cried as you might expect, but I think a small part of me did so, not because of the horror of such a revelation, but because I thought why didn’t he ever show me as much attention? Why these other girls? I was his daughter. Why wasn’t I…(sob) good enough…” Julie starts to break down. You’ve never been one to deny how fucked up your family is and you probably have your own set of “daddy issues” on some level, but right now you don’t think you could have such a twisted way of thinking. To be fair to Julie, she probably doesn’t really have some fucked up desire to want to fuck her dad, its just her being fucked up in general. She’s always been so starved for a positive father figure in her life that her mind is bound to go to places that are a little… well fucked up. Julie goes into full blown sobbing mode and you realize you’re going to have to be the one to console her now. “Um…there. There, there now. You don’t mean that.” You say sitting down next to her and patting her on the back. She then of course takes to hugging you while crying. “I mean in his own…incredibly twisted way he did care about you.” You say. “What do you mean?” “Well he left you a shitload of money when he died for one thing. He definitely wanted you to make sure you’d be taken care of if he died. I mean that’s more than my dad did.” “Your dad wasn’t a fucking pedo.” “No, but I mean…look your father obviously must’ve known what he was was incredibly wrong and he tried to shield you from it by NOT molesting you. His love for you overwrote his sick lust for little girls. It might’ve even been why he was distant. I mean things could’ve been A LOT worse for you if he had taken an unhealthy interest in you.” “I…I suppose you’re right. But I just wish…someone could’ve been there for me growing up. I wish my mom hadn’t died when I was little. Maybe it could’ve made the difference of me actually not squandering my youth and acting like brainless whore. All I fucking do is live a shallow existence of hedonism. I don’t even feel good about it anymore. It’s just a never-ending void. I could’ve applied myself to SOMETHING and now the inheritance is starting to run out and I have absolutely no goddamn skills whatsoever.” This is pretty heavy stuff coming from Julie. She rarely if ever takes about anything deep, and given how personal all this is it’s a bit out of character. Still, you aren’t entirely surprised she’s coming out to you about it. Crushes aside, Julie probably has always felt a bit of a bond with you due to both your mothers dying early and having distant fathers. True your sister is more in line with her lifestyle, but you grew up with her and were friends with her first and its obvious that deep down she’d like to have something stable in her life. In a weird way you both have also shut yourself in from the outside world. Julie may be fucking strangers and partying all the time, but other than that, she barely interacts with the real world in any meaningful way. She was just a “basement dweller” with a shitload of cash. In any event you continue to speak with Julie who reveals more about what she knows. She keeps apologizing for her dad taking pictures of you, but you tell her to forget about that now. She goes on to say she doesn’t know anything about Vanessa, the little girl in one of the pictures that went missing later. She says she barely remembers ever playing with her. (And to your knowledge you never played with her either). “So you don’t think he had anything to do with her disappearance?” you ask. “I don’t know. I don’t know everything about my father’s sick habits. I mean I know he looked at pictures obviously, but I can’t say if I found anything more than that. Like I never found any hardcore kiddie porn involving actual sex. Though to be honest, it got to a point where I’d found so much that I didn’t want to look anymore. Hence why this office has never really been touched.” Julie says. “Hrm. Well I didn’t find anything else other than these photos.” You take a glance through the photos again and shake your head realizing that this is probably just going to be one of those dark mysteries of what really happened to Vanessa. Since neither one of you are really willing to play great detective and don’t want to dwell on this anymore, you and Julie destroy the photos. Afterwards you figure Julie will want to go back to her party since she’ll want lose herself in an alcohol and sex filled night as usual, but this situation has put her out of the mood. “I’m sure whoever is out there will have fun whether I’m there or not. I just don’t think I’m in the mood. Can I just spend time with you? We could eat this pizza and just talk like how we used to remember?” Julie asks. “Well, I suppose that would be okay.” You answer. So you and Julie spend the remainder of the night talking. It really isn’t all that bad. It doesn’t even get weird with Julie trying to push for something more, she just maintains a friendly demeanor and nothing more than that. Her spirits are certainly brighter. Eventually you start to get sleepy and even Julie begins to get tired. “I hate to stop our discussion, but I’m really getting sleepy. It was sort of an eventful day for me.” You say. “Sure, I understand, but um…could I ask just one little favor?” Julie asks. ‘What?” “Well, other than the situation that lead to our talk, I really feel like this was a very positive experience for me. I mean like in a long time. I feel like I’ve reconnected with a friend again. I mean REALLY reconnected.” “Julie…” “I know. I know where you think I’m going with this, but can I just sleep here tonight? I just enjoyed our time together that I don’t really want it to end yet, even if we’ll both be asleep.” “I dunno…where are you going to sleep?” “Oh, that couch folds out into a bed. I'll just sleep with you!” You give Julie a look of disapproval and disbelief. “I mean…oh you know what I mean! I’ll just take one side of it! Please! I really won’t try anything honest!” You can’t believe you’re actually considering this… “(Sigh) All right, but ONLY because this is all my fault for dredging up bad memories in the first place and you’re a bit emotional right now. You can sleep on the left side, but DO NOT expect this to be a regular thing and DO NOT think that your hands or any other parts of your body are going to just roam over to my side in the middle of the night. I don’t think I need to tell you what will happen if that happens.” “No, and I swear I won’t try anything! Okay, this is gonna be fun! Like a sleep over! Why didn’t we ever have one of those when we were little?” “Because my mother was overprotective and I’m starting to think things could’ve been a lot worse for me if she hadn’t been.” Wasting no time, Julie helps you fold the couch out and gets into the bed. You hesitantly get in on the other side and remind Julie not to touch you. Julie though just seems to be thrilled you’re in the same bed together. Despite your concerns, you eventually fall asleep… > Next day... TUESDAY “…Suzy…” you hear a voice whisper. “Mgh.” You answer. “Suzy…get up…I have to go pee!” the voice says again. Your eyes are still closed, but you recognize it as Julie’s. “Guh. Well go! Why do I have to get up?!” you say angrily with your eyes still closed. “Well because you arm is wrapped around my waist and your leg is intertwined with one of mine that’s why!” Now you open your eyes and realize what Julie has just described is true. Julie looks at you over her shoulder. “Hey don’t blame me, I stayed on my side of the bed. I’d enjoy this longer, but I really gotta pee!” “Shit.” You say and remove yourself from your entanglement from Julie’s body. Julie smiles at you and then heads to the bathroom. Great, now she’s going to read something into it. Though you do wonder how the hell you got into a spooning position with her. Maybe you were dreaming about Bobby. Speaking of Bobby, while you’re checking the time on your cell phone, you see that he’s left messages again. After you recent “night cuddling” with Julie, you think it might be best if you do call Bobby if only to deter Julie from getting any ideas. “Hello? Bobby?” you say. “Yeah.” Bobby answers. He sounds pretty flat. “Well you called me, so I assume you wanted to talk to me.” “Yeah I did, I wanted to talk to you yesterday about something else, but I’ve changed my mind about some things since then. So I’ve got something new to tell you, and given that you didn’t bother to talk to me yesterday I think you’ll be fine with it.” “What are you talking about?” “I’m talking about us. Breaking up for good. It’s obvious that this isn’t working. I tried to bring you into my world, but you just refuse to meet me half way.” You can’t believe you’re hearing this! “Meet you half way? You want me to be one of your wives in your fucked up religious cult compound that’s what you want! Face it, you’re not going to give up your sister Diana and that bitch would kill me as soon as I stepped foot in that place!” “Well…you obviously have valid points, so why are you arguing with me on this?” “Because you’re trying to make out like I’M the bad guy here! I’m not the human sacrificing cultist Bobby and yet I looked past that because I loved you! You say I didn’t try to meet you half way? I proposed long ago that we BOTH leave our fucked up families behind and start a new life together! I was willing to change, YOU weren’t!” At this point there is a long pause. “Well? Don’t you have anything to say?” you ask. “No, except…it was just too much. Guess I take after my dad after all. I’m sorry, but my God and family come first. Even before you. I’ll always remember…the good times we had. May Tiamat’s Chaos take mercy on you.” “Oh fuck you and Tiamat!” you exclaim and hang up. Its weird, but you start to sob a little bit. You sort of knew your relationship with Bobby was on borrowed time anyway, but it still hurts now that it’s officially over. He was your first love after all and now that’s gone. Meanwhile Julie is standing in the bathroom door watching you. “Suzy, I heard some of that…and I’m truly sorry about you and Bobby. Really, I mean that. You’re a kind and decent girl with many wonderful qualities. He had a treasure in you and he doesn’t know what he’s lost.” Hard to tell if Julie’s just trying to flatter you or she really does mean it, but either way it’s still nice to hear right now. “Did you want to talk about it?” Julie asks. “No, not really. It’s over and that’s that. Best to not dwell on the past and move on right?” you say. “Probably. Well I should probably see how much damage my home is in from last night and see who’s still lingering around. I’ll leave you alone.” “Wait, I’ll come with you. I mean I live here too now, I might as well help you clean up. Besides, for the first time I think being alone might be a bad idea. I’m just going to end up dwelling on Bobby. I need to keep my mind on other things right now. I probably should try to make up with Donna as well. We kind of argued yesterday.” “Yeah, I wondered what happened about that. When she stormed in yesterday I asked about you and she mumbled something about you being a bitch. Then later at the party I asked again about what happened and she still never answered.” “Nothing really happened, she just jumped down my throat for a perceived insult, but I guess I should make the peace being the older sister and all.” “See? This is why you’re so wonderful!” Julie smiles and the pair of you exit your room. The house actually isn’t in bad shape. Julie remarks that usually the parties only get really out of hand on Saturday and Friday nights. She also remarks that she thinks this the first time in quite awhile that she woke up without a hang over since she didn’t really drink as much since she was mainly with you the whole night. “It’s a bizarre feeling, but I have to say it isn’t an unpleasant one.” Julie says. From the living room you hear the sounds of a vacuum as well as a TV. “Who the hell would be vacuuming?” Julie asks. “Donna?” the moment you say that, you and Julie both look at each other and say “Nah.” When you arrive in the living room, you see a man probably about your age calmly vacuuming as he periodically looks at the TV screen, which is one of those Ground Zero infomercials. There are actually a couple of other people in the room flopped out on the furniture or on the floor still asleep, but the man merely vacuums around their sprawled out legs or bodies. You and Julie find the sight to be quite the peculiar one. He notices you both and turns off the vacuum. “Oh hey. You…you’re the owner of this house correct?” he asks. “Yes I am, who are you?” Julie answers. “Oh I’m Johnny. Sorry if I woke you and your girlfriend up, but I couldn’t in good conscience leave your house in such a mess. So I found your vacuum and tried to clean up a bit. Sort of a wild party last night huh?” Johnny says. “Eh, had wilder. Never had a guest actually clean up though. Kinda weird, but hey I won’t turn it down. I don’t remember you from last night; though I have so many people at my parties I never know half of them anyway.” “Oh, I’m not very memorable anyway. I’ve always kind of just blended in with the crowd. I heard about this party from a friend and figured I’d come since I don’t get out much. Did you want me to leave?” “Doesn’t make difference to me. Like I said, I’m not going to turn down a guest that helps clean up.” Johnny nods and returns to cleaning up, while Julie turns back to you. “Hrm, he’s an odd one, but at least he’s helpful. Anyway, let’s go check and see if Donna’s upstairs.” Julie says. You and Julie leave Johnny to his cleaning to go find your sister. After checking the bedrooms, you don’t find her (Though there are a couple of people still sleeping in said bedrooms) you wonder if she passed out on the lawn or something. You and Julie start descending down the stairs. “I dunno, while I’ve certainly passed out on the lawn, Donna has never gotten that bad. She’s more likely to be in the basement.” “Well I guess you could look outside and I could look down there for my sister…” Suddenly Johnny interrupts. “Excuse me. Sorry for overhearing, but did you say you were looking for Donna?” “Yes, she’s my sister.” You say. “Oh…so you must be Suzy. Heard her talk about you last night.” “Nothing good I’m sure. You know where she is?” you say. “Unfortunately I don’t. I mean I remember seeing her leave with a couple of guys and another girl last night, but I didn’t know them either. I was under the impression they were going out to get more beer or drugs or something, but they never came back.” You shake your head and sigh. “Great, she probably got herself fucking arrested by the cops last night.” You say. “Well we don’t know that.” Julie remarks. “Maybe. I guess I’ll know if I get a call from the police station. Whatever, I know she’s like a cat and always lands on her feet, so I can talk to her later.” “You sure you don’t want to still look around the house for her?” “Well if she’s here, she’ll probably turn up while I’m cleaning this place a bit.” “Okay, well I’m heading back upstairs to get those assholes out of my bed and clean up whatever mess is up there.” Julie heads back upstairs nodding to Johnny who is now picking up garbage by hand and putting it in a bag. He nods to you briefly and continues his work. Well mind numbing clean up work should certainly help keep your mind off Bobby (and the possibility of Donna being in jail) you’re just wondering if you should help Julie or Johnny. > You help Julie While Johnny seems okay, you don’t know him and you’re not in the mood to make new acquaintances, so to prevent the risk of him suddenly becoming more talkative to you, you pass Johnny and head upstairs to help Julie. “Hey! Not cool Julie, we were asleep!” you hear a voice say. “Yeah and nobody has sex in MY bed unless I’m actually in it!” Julie says. “Well, you can still join us like last time…” another voice says. “Get out!” This order is followed by the sounds of something falling on the floor, and then followed by some complaints. Soon you see a disheveled man and woman both putting some clothes on as they exit the room. They walk past you, grumbling the whole time about Julie not being cool about the situation. As they walk out the front door, they end up waking up another guest who was sleeping in one of the chairs downstairs. He looks at his watch and exclaims “Shit!” and rushes out the door as well. Johnny briefly looks at them and then looks up at you with a faint smile and continues to quietly clean up. You enter Julie’s room and see her stripping the bed. “Well, could’ve been worse I suppose. I thought you were cleaning up downstairs.” Julie asks. “I figured I’d help you up here.” You answer. “Oh, well thanks.” “Plus, I dunno, but that Johnny guy is sort of weird.” “Heh, yeah, but no weirder than some of the other people we’ve both known.” “I suppose, but there’s something about him…I can’t place my finger on it. I’m just not getting the best of vibes from him.” “Well he did say he didn’t get out much. Maybe he’s just awkward around people. I think you know a little about that.” Julie says smirking. “Heh, very funny. So did you want me to get started on the other rooms?” “Yeah just pick up any trash you might find and throw that away in a trash bag. There should be some up here in the hallway closet. Don’t worry about the bathroom, I’m sure its suitably disgusting, but I wouldn’t dream of asking you to clean it. Hey, maybe I can get Johnny to do it. Ha ha!” “What about Donna’s room?” “Well, normally I leave her shit alone so she has the privacy of cleaning it herself if she so desires. Of course I don’t think picking up a few beer cans that might be in there to be an invasion of privacy. So use your judgment.” So you do exactly what Julie says. You start picking up cans and other refuse into a trash bag. Despite Julie’s warnings, you check the bathroom anyway and it isn’t quite that bad so you do a little cleaning up there as well. Eventually you make your way back to Julie’s room where she’s still straightening things out there. “You know normally I never bother to do this much cleaning, but I guess that’s one of the advantages of not being hung over when you wake up in the afternoon. You finished already?” Julie asks. “Just about, even worked on the bathroom a little. Wasn’t that bad in there.” “Glad to hear it, did you clean up Donna’s room?” “No, decided to stick with your policy of non-interference.” “Okay. (Whew) I’m used to playing hard, but not working hard. I’m taking a break.” “Yeah I think I’ll join you.” Julie lies down on her now fresh-sheeted bed, while you sit in a chair. “Why don’t you come over here, you could stretch out.” Julie says. “Hm, I’m good. And I think we’ve spent enough time in beds together for a while.” You answer. “Afraid you might get the sudden urge to spoon me again huh?” “Look, I dunno how I got in that position, but I probably was dreaming or something.” You say. “Mostly or something.” Julie continues to prod. “You had me in a pretty good grip and I didn’t say this before, but I was wide-awake for a good ten minutes enjoying it before I had to really pee. And during that time, you were also grinding your body into mine and you even gave me a peck on the ear.” “What?! Get out of here! You’re making this up!” you exclaim. “I’m serious!” “…I like guys!” you protest. “I never said you didn’t. I’m just saying that on SOME level, you might like the female form as well. It’s okay you know.” “The only female form I like is my own.” “So you really mean to say you’ve never fantasized about another woman? I’m not even talking about me, I’m talking about any woman.” “Nope, can’t say that I have.” “You’ve never found any woman attractive?” “Well that’s different than wanting to fucking another woman. I mean sure, if you want an example I always thought my older brother Ben’s wife Moonshadow had pretty eyes.” “Hmm, interesting. She was part black wasn’t she? Maybe you just got a thing for dark meat.” Julie laughs. ‘Fuck you Julie. Just fuck you.” “Hey, whenever you’re ready. And given how much you were aggressively holding on to me and grinding your body into mine, I at least I know you’re a top now. Didn’t get that vibe from you before. That’s kind of hot really.” At this point you can’t help but laugh though it’s a semi-nervous laugh due to feeling a little weird about Julie’s suggestions about you. You attempt to change the subject. “Well at least this has gotten my mind off other things. Still need to smooth things over with Donna though. No call yet, so I’m guessing she didn’t get arrested. I’m just hoping it isn’t something worse. I might call her soon; even if she is pissed at me at least I’ll know where she is. Has she ever disappeared like this before?” “Oh sure. I mean she goes over to hang out with other people; she’s probably over at one of their houses. I’m sure she’ll be back later today…is that Johnny guy still downstairs?” “Dunno. I can check.” You exit Julie’s room and look into the living from the second floor. The TV is still on (And still playing an infernal Ground Zero infomercial) but Johnny isn’t anywhere in sight. Looks like the living room is clean though, even the last of the sleeping “guests” are gone. You call out his name, but there is no answer. “Nope, he’s gone. Looks like everyone is gone.” You say entering Julie’s room again. “Oh well. With as helpful as he was cleaning up I hoped I could get him to drag these dirty sheets and blankets to the washing machine. You gonna help?” “I suppose I could, but I probably should be searching for a job. I have a terrible habit of not focusing at the best of times on that.” “Heh, I don’t even think I’ve ever looked for one…and I probably should start doing so. Like I said yesterday, my inheritance isn’t going to last forever. I won’t keep you though, you’ve been a big help already and I can handle taking some sheets down to the washing machine.” You suddenly get the idea that maybe the task wouldn’t seem quite as bad if you did it together. To be honest you wouldn’t mind her with you while you look if only because you still don’t want to be by yourself where you can start dwelling on Bobby again or worse trying to call him. Of course you might end up just goofing off with Julie if she’s around thus procrastinating and making the goal of searching for a job pointless. > You search for jobs yourself “Well, if you want to look for a job, just come in and see me and we can look together.” You say. “Okay, maybe. First, I’m going to take these sheets and blankets and throw ‘em in the wash though.” Julie replies. The pair of you head downstairs and part company as you head into your room and she goes into the basement. (It still feels odd to NOT go into the basement when heading to your room) You lay down on your bed/couch, open up your laptop and prepare for the unfun task of looking for a job. Ten minutes in and you’ve already gotten off track. You’re playing some flash game, but your mind keeps occasionally thinking about Bobby. You start to get upset again and think about calling him. You pick up the phone and think of how you really shouldn’t do this, especially since you fully believe that he was being the asshole in this situation, but you can’t just let it end the way it did. You don’t know why, maybe its because he’s the first guy you’ve ever seriously been with and you can’t quite let go yet. “Hey.” Bobby says on the other end of the phone. You’re sort of surprised that he picked up after only two rings. “Bobby… I just want to say a few more things…” you say. “Suzy I don’t want to fight with you. So…” “No, it’s not that. Look I just want to say, I’m sorry I insulted your religion. I know how important it is to you.” “Well I appreciate that. Thank you.” “I just don’t want things to end like that last conversation we had. Our time together was special to me and I don’t want those memories to be completely soiled because we had a bad break up.” “I agree as well…I know I probably shouldn’t say this, because it only makes this break up even harder, but I ALMOST came close to abandoning everything for you…it just…just…” “I know. It was just too much.” Bobby on the other end of the phone is silent, but you think you hear sniffling. Of course this makes your eyes water too. “I think… (sniffle) I think I’m always going to love you Suzy.” Bobby says. “I have to go….bye.” Bobby says and abruptly hangs up. Now you’re really upset. You knew you shouldn’t have called. You almost think it was better when you parted thinking he was a complete asshole. He sounded so sad, you wonder if maybe, just MAYBE you could convince him if you went and saw him one more time. You get the idea. You’re going to do it, because what you had with Bobby is worth fighting for! You leave your room and start shouting to Julie as you go down the basement stairs “Hey Julie! I know you’ll probably think this is a bad idea, but I want to go talk things out with Bobby one last time. He and I have so much history, so do you know if Donna has an extra set of keys to her… Aaaaaaaahhh!” you scream when you see Johnny standing over Julie’s bloody body with a knife in hand. Johnny doesn’t even flinch, he just smiles at you like nothing is wrong. “Bobby? …you have a boyfriend? Your sister didn’t tell me that…oh well…” he says flatly. Panic and fear fill every inch of your body and you instantly turn and run back upstairs. You get to the top step and open the door just before you feel a sharp pain strike hard into your back. You manage to keep from falling backwards and instead fall forward so that you’re half way on the basement steps and half on the ground floor. Trying to fight through the pain, you attempt to stand back up and stumble in the process. Attempting to grab the knife in your back doesn’t help either. You manage to get partially down the hallway before Johnny catches up to you again. You are grabbed roughly and then thrown face first into the floor as he twists the knife in your back. You scream out for help, but there is none to be had. “Stop screaming you fucking bitch! Why do you always scream!? I’m doing this for your own good! I can be your boyfriend! I can be a better boyfriend!” Johnny shouts as he attempts to strip off your clothes. The only consolation to your final fate is that you struggle so much that Johnny cuts your throat before he can rape you. Not that it stops him from doing so after you’re already dead of course.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While Johnny seems okay, you don’t know him and you’re not in the mood to make new acquaintances, so to prevent the risk of him suddenly becoming more talkative to you, you pass Johnny and head upstairs to help Julie. “Hey! Not cool Julie, we were asleep!” you hear a voice say. “Yeah and nobody has sex in MY bed unless I’m actually in it!” Julie says. “Well, you can still join us like last time…” another voice says. “Get out!” This order is followed by the sounds of something falling on the floor, and then followed by some complaints. Soon you see a disheveled man and woman both putting some clothes on as they exit the room. They walk past you, grumbling the whole time about Julie not being cool about the situation. As they walk out the front door, they end up waking up another guest who was sleeping in one of the chairs downstairs. He looks at his watch and exclaims “Shit!” and rushes out the door as well. Johnny briefly looks at them and then looks up at you with a faint smile and continues to quietly clean up. You enter Julie’s room and see her stripping the bed. “Well, could’ve been worse I suppose. I thought you were cleaning up downstairs.” Julie asks. “I figured I’d help you up here.” You answer. “Oh, well thanks.” “Plus, I dunno, but that Johnny guy is sort of weird.” “Heh, yeah, but no weirder than some of the other people we’ve both known.” “I suppose, but there’s something about him…I can’t place my finger on it. I’m just not getting the best of vibes from him.” “Well he did say he didn’t get out much. Maybe he’s just awkward around people. I think you know a little about that.” Julie says smirking. “Heh, very funny. So did you want me to get started on the other rooms?” “Yeah just pick up any trash you might find and throw that away in a trash bag. There should be some up here in the hallway closet. Don’t worry about the bathroom, I’m sure its suitably disgusting, but I wouldn’t dream of asking you to clean it. Hey, maybe I can get Johnny to do it. Ha ha!” “What about Donna’s room?” “Well, normally I leave her shit alone so she has the privacy of cleaning it herself if she so desires. Of course I don’t think picking up a few beer cans that might be in there to be an invasion of privacy. So use your judgment.” So you do exactly what Julie says. You start picking up cans and other refuse into a trash bag. Despite Julie’s warnings, you check the bathroom anyway and it isn’t quite that bad so you do a little cleaning up there as well. Eventually you make your way back to Julie’s room where she’s still straightening things out there. “You know normally I never bother to do this much cleaning, but I guess that’s one of the advantages of not being hung over when you wake up in the afternoon. You finished already?” Julie asks. “Just about, even worked on the bathroom a little. Wasn’t that bad in there.” “Glad to hear it, did you clean up Donna’s room?” “No, decided to stick with your policy of non-interference.” “Okay. (Whew) I’m used to playing hard, but not working hard. I’m taking a break.” “Yeah I think I’ll join you.” Julie lies down on her now fresh-sheeted bed, while you sit in a chair. “Why don’t you come over here, you could stretch out.” Julie says. “Hm, I’m good. And I think we’ve spent enough time in beds together for a while.” You answer. “Afraid you might get the sudden urge to spoon me again huh?” “Look, I dunno how I got in that position, but I probably was dreaming or something.” You say. “Mostly or something.” Julie continues to prod. “You had me in a pretty good grip and I didn’t say this before, but I was wide-awake for a good ten minutes enjoying it before I had to really pee. And during that time, you were also grinding your body into mine and you even gave me a peck on the ear.” “What?! Get out of here! You’re making this up!” you exclaim. “I’m serious!” “…I like guys!” you protest. “I never said you didn’t. I’m just saying that on SOME level, you might like the female form as well. It’s okay you know.” “The only female form I like is my own.” “So you really mean to say you’ve never fantasized about another woman? I’m not even talking about me, I’m talking about any woman.” “Nope, can’t say that I have.” “You’ve never found any woman attractive?” “Well that’s different than wanting to fucking another woman. I mean sure, if you want an example I always thought my older brother Ben’s wife Moonshadow had pretty eyes.” “Hmm, interesting. She was part black wasn’t she? Maybe you just got a thing for dark meat.” Julie laughs. ‘Fuck you Julie. Just fuck you.” “Hey, whenever you’re ready. And given how much you were aggressively holding on to me and grinding your body into mine, I at least I know you’re a top now. Didn’t get that vibe from you before. That’s kind of hot really.” At this point you can’t help but laugh though it’s a semi-nervous laugh due to feeling a little weird about Julie’s suggestions about you. You attempt to change the subject. “Well at least this has gotten my mind off other things. Still need to smooth things over with Donna though. No call yet, so I’m guessing she didn’t get arrested. I’m just hoping it isn’t something worse. I might call her soon; even if she is pissed at me at least I’ll know where she is. Has she ever disappeared like this before?” “Oh sure. I mean she goes over to hang out with other people; she’s probably over at one of their houses. I’m sure she’ll be back later today…is that Johnny guy still downstairs?” “Dunno. I can check.” You exit Julie’s room and look into the living from the second floor. The TV is still on (And still playing an infernal Ground Zero infomercial) but Johnny isn’t anywhere in sight. Looks like the living room is clean though, even the last of the sleeping “guests” are gone. You call out his name, but there is no answer. “Nope, he’s gone. Looks like everyone is gone.” You say entering Julie’s room again. “Oh well. With as helpful as he was cleaning up I hoped I could get him to drag these dirty sheets and blankets to the washing machine. You gonna help?” “I suppose I could, but I probably should be searching for a job. I have a terrible habit of not focusing at the best of times on that.” “Heh, I don’t even think I’ve ever looked for one…and I probably should start doing so. Like I said yesterday, my inheritance isn’t going to last forever. I won’t keep you though, you’ve been a big help already and I can handle taking some sheets down to the washing machine.” You suddenly get the idea that maybe the task wouldn’t seem quite as bad if you did it together. To be honest you wouldn’t mind her with you while you look if only because you still don’t want to be by yourself where you can start dwelling on Bobby again or worse trying to call him. Of course you might end up just goofing off with Julie if she’s around thus procrastinating and making the goal of searching for a job pointless. > You ask Julie to search with you “Maybe we could look together.” You say. Julie looks a bit hesitant at your proposal. “I…I dunno…I’m just not in the mood right now...” “Come on Julie, I’ll help. The cleaning can wait.” “Well… I guess it would be good to know what to do and where to start at least. Why don’t you grab your laptop and come back up here and we can get to it.” You head downstairs and back to your room where you pick up your laptop. Upon exiting the room, you scream out when you literally bump into Johnny. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” you scream and nearly drop your laptop in the process. Johnny doesn’t do anything except stand there. “SUZY! What’s going on down there?!” you hear Julie shout. “Johnny what the fuck are you doing creeping around like that?! You scared the shit out of me!” you exclaim backing away into the living room still in a bit of a panic. Johnny doesn’t move he just continues to stand there in the hallway. “I’m not creeping. I just finished cleaning the basement, it was a real mess down there.” Johnny says. “I called your name earlier and you never answered!” you say. “I guess I didn’t hear you. What’re you getting so excited about?” “Because you’re fucking creeping around the house like a psycho! I think you need to leave!” you say with authority, but you’re really scared deep down inside. At this point Julie has come down the stairs and arrived. “Johnny, I thought you left. What’re you still doing here?” Julie asks. “Nothing, I just finished cleaning your basement. You know I feel like my efforts aren’t being appreciated and you’re not being a good host.” “Good host? Alright fine, I thank you for your help, but you’re obviously scaring my friend and the party’s long been over anyway, so get the fuck out.” Julie orders. While you half expect Johnny to show some sort of anger or even get violent, fortunately it doesn’t come to that. He remains completely calm. Like dead featureless expression calm. Which is almost scarier. “Okay. Sorry I caused distress.” He says and walks past you and Julie (you both give him a wide berth) and goes out the front door. You immediately start locking it up. “Julie, go lock your back door.” You say busily putting the chains on the door. “Wow, that guy really got to you…” “Julie, please just go check your fucking back door!” “Okay, okay!” Julie leaves to go just that, but you only end up following her anyway. The backdoor is actually already locked though Julie rechecks it just to be sure. “See, we’re safe…shit, Suzy, you’re actually shaking.” “Of course I’m fucking shaking! I just had a goddamn flashback to when my Uncle Ed caught me finding the body parts of his victims! I’m telling you there was something wrong with that guy!” you say still looking around like Johnny is still lurking about. “Shhh…it’s okay now. He’s gone, and if it makes you feel any better he won’t be allowed in here anymore. Hell we probably won’t see him again anyway.” Julie says placing her hands on your arms in an effort to sooth and calm you down. “I think I need to lie down.” You say feeling wobbly and unable to catch your breath. Julie escorts you back to your room where you lay down on the bed. “I…don’t think I’m in the mood to look for jobs with you right now Julie.” “That’s okay Suzy, I wasn’t really in the mood to look for one anyway.” Julie says with a smile. “God, my heart is really racing…I feel like I’m going to pass out.” “You want me to get you some water or something?” “No, don’t go. Stay with me.” You say grabbing on to Julie’s hand. “Okay. I’ll stay here. Whatever you want. I’m here for you.” Julie says squeezing your hand while sitting on the edge of the bed. You slowly begin to calm down and eventually you stop hyperventilating. Julie stays with you saying nothing, but just being supportive by sticking with you like a friend should. You start to feel safer and close your eyes since the stress has still made you a bit weary. Before you know it you’ve fallen back to sleep. Hours later… You wake up and find yourself alone. You grab your cell where you left it by the bed last time and see that it’s only a few hours to midnight. (Nobody has tried calling you either.) The odd thing is you don’t hear any music or the sounds of people. Normally Julie would have a gathering by now, and it’s odd that you’re not hearing it. You then start to worry if something has happened. Still thinking about your incident with Johnny earlier today, you rush to the desk and grab the pistol you found before and load it up. Your older brother Ben showed you how to handle a gun once, you weren’t exactly very good with it, but you feel safer with it. Cautiously, you open the door and slowly walk out into the hallway looking around you. You then hear a male voice coming from the living room. “Shut the fuck up bitch and take it!” “JULIE!” you scream and run into the living room with your pistol draw and pointed in front of you. “HOLY FUCK SUZY!” Julie shouts and falls off the couch, dropping her console controller and ducking for cover. You then see on her TV screen the origin of the male voice. It’s her character. She’s playing some sort of crime simulator. Now Julie’s the one with the heart palpitations! “Goddamn Suzy, you scared the shit out of me! What the fuck are you doing with a gun anyway?!” “It was in your dad’s desk. Sorry. I just woke up alone and…I guess I’m still a little scared.” “Well I was a lot scared when I saw that shit pointed at me! Especially with the game I’m playing, I thought I unlocked some sort of 3D mode for a second.” Julie says with a very small chuckle. You apologize again and sit down next to Julie who has recovered and is busily trying to get her bearings again on her game. “Shit, some fucker robbed me while I was distracted. Gonna have to find and chase his ass down now. Wanna help? Got another controller.” Julie says. “No, I think I’ll just watch right now… so no party tonight?” you ask. “Nah, I mean there were some people that showed up earlier tonight, but I told them all to go back home since I cancelled it tonight. I figure after what happened earlier today with you, you could use the peace.” “Thank you Julie, that was really thoughtful.” “Don’t mention it. Besides, I figure this would be a good opportunity to start that life change like I mentioned before. Still didn’t look for a job though.” “Hah, well one day at a time…so is Donna here somewhere?” “Nope, still hasn’t come home yet. I actually tried calling her, but no answer. I guess she’s got it turned off or the battery’s dead. Probably at a club or something .” “I hope so…I’m starting to worry now.” “I told you she’s probably at a club or something. Like I said before, she doesn’t always sleep here.” “Maybe so, but given that that creepy fuck said he saw he last, well it makes me a bit suspicious.” “You still worried about him? Told ya, that guy was just an awkward aspie. Probably just didn’t know how to talk to girls. Here, why don’t you join my game? You’re obviously already in a shooting mood, it’ll take your mind off things.” Trusting that it couldn’t hurt, you grab a video game controller and start committing virtual homicide on a grand scale. Oddly, it does make you feel a little better and you both play a little past midnight. “Well, that was fun, I think I’m going to bed.” Julie says yawning. “Really? Seems early for you.” “Well unlike you I haven’t slept, plus I’m not hopped up on designer drugs like I sometimes am when I’m partying. Amazing what being clean for a whole day does to you.” As Julie gets up to go to head off to bed, you aren’t exactly tired yet, but you’re still a little nervous about being by yourself. You can’t believe you’re going to ask this… “Julie?” “Yes?” “Can you sleep with me tonight?” Julie’s expression to this request says it all. “Well okay, but stay on your side of the bed and if anything of yours touches anything of mine, you better respect me in the morning.” She says with a big grin on her face. You head back to your room Julie taking the pistol with you, which Julie really disapproves of, but doesn’t protest too much since she’s just happy you’re spending yet ANOTHER night in the same bed with her. After locking the door and placing the pistol where you can easily reach it, you get into bed with Julie who to her credit does keep to one side of the bed and quickly fall asleep. You’re up for a little while longer, but eventually you feel safe enough to let your guard down and fall asleep as well. > Next day... WEDNESDAY “Remember, if you act today…” “Ugh! Shut up! I don’t care about your stupid shelters!” you hear Julie remark. You open your eyes and see Julie to the left of you messing around on your laptop. (And clicking off on one of those annoying pop up audio ads) “Hey…when did you get up?” you ask. “I dunno, about an hour ago I think. Didn’t really feel like leaving the bed though, so I just figured I’d stay here and entertain myself on your laptop. Hope you don’t mind.” “Eh, it’s fine. Don’t mess with my bookmarks and setting though.” “Don’t worry, I’m not going to accidentally delete anything. I must say though with the extensive number of porn links in your history, I think you might have a real problem.” Julie mocks. “Mm, bold words coming from a woman who has popped up in several amateur videos on those sites.” You answer. “Hah. I don’t doubt it, but that brings up the question of why would YOU be watching those?” Julie asks. “Who said I did? I can’t help it if I’m browsing through the videos and suddenly your ass pops up in a still.” “If it’s just my ass, how do you know it’s me? Either you don’t or you’ve watched them enough that you know what my ass looks like without even seeing my face!” “Argh! I don’t mean literally! I mean YOU pop up, and I’ve seen your face in the stills though once I almost couldn’t tell because it was covered in cum!” you exclaim starting to get agitated. “Hmm, nice save.” Julie says a little unconvinced. Already having expended more energy than you wanted to, you start to sit up and realize you’ve been wearing the same clothes for the past couple days. “Christ, I really need to take a shower and change these clothes.” You say and get out of the bed. “Yeah, I think I need to go do that too.” Julie says. “Well you can go use your own shower. I know we’ve been sleeping in the same bed for the past two days, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be re-enacting a women’s prison shower scene from a movie.” You say laying down boundaries again. “Hey I think you had that one bookmarked!” Julie says jokingly. You shake your head and grab some clean clothes before heading into the bathroom to take a shower. After washing up and changing your clothes, you feel refreshed. When you exit the bathroom, you see that Julie has left, presumably to go wash up as well. You check your phone and once again see nobody has called. You dial up your sister’s number and still no answer. You certainly hope Julie is right about her just sleeping somewhere else. But surely she couldn’t be so pissed at you that she’s moved out could she? All her stuff is still here after all. You then hear a loud noise or more like a voice, but you aren’t sure if its coming from inside the house or outside the house. Still paranoid from yesterday, you grab the pistol and cautiously exit your room. When you get to the living room, you deduce the noise is indeed coming from outside. A quick peek through the window and you see several military men and a couple of military trucks and even an A.P.C. “ATTENTION! THIS TOWN IS UNDER MARSHAL LAW AND THIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS NOW UNDER WATCH BY THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD. A GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE WILL SOON VISIT ALL OF YOU AND ASSIST IN ANYTHING THAT YOU MAY NEED DURING THIS STATE OF EMERGENCY. STAY IN YOUR HOMES. DO NOT COME OUT FOR ANY REASON. FAILURE TO DO SO MAY RESULT IN THE USE OF LETHAL FORCE.” “Hey Suzy?! You hear that noise!? You got the TV up loud?” Julie shouts from somewhere up on the second floor. “No! The fucking National Guard is out there in force and it looks like we’re under marshal law.” “National Guard? Hold on, I’m coming down…” Julie says. You turn the TV on to see if there’s anything about this, but you’re not exactly having any luck. You’re getting a lot of Ground Zero infomercials or news about shit going on elsewhere in the world. Local stations seem to be off the air with an “emergency test” beep but nothing more substantial than that. “What the fuck is going on?” you say to yourself. “Yeah what the fuck IS going on?” Julie asks coming down from taking her shower. “I dunno, I might need to check the Internet, not having much luck with the TV. Do we have enough food and water?” you ask. “Well we certainly got some food. Dunno about water though. I mean you can get some from the taps I suppose, but as you might expect I got tons of alcohol. Why?” Julie says. “Why? Because the National Guard just said if we try to leave we’ll probably get shot on sight that’s why! (Sigh) We’re basically prisoners here.” “Suzy, you need to calm down. You’ve been on edge since yesterday. You just said there isn’t a whole lot we can do, so we might as well just relax in the house. I mean really how much different is the day going to be for either of us?” Julie remarks. “I’m just…its Donna. I mean she’s still out there. I mean I HOPE she’s still out there. I mean the last thing I did was argue with her. Shit, I’m even a little worried about Peter and Kelly now and I never got along with them either. Still family though.” You say. “You tried calling either of them?” Julie asks. Oddly you haven’t. You didn’t really have a reason before, but given what’s going on right now, maybe you should. “I think I’ll do that Julie. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.” You say. “Sure, you go check on what family you can and maybe find out more about what’s going on. In the meantime, I’m going to go get a drink.” “Thought you were turning over a new leaf?” “You just said we were prisoners here. Not much else for me to do is there? Besides, I’m not going to get bombed out of my skull.” While Julie goes and deals with this situation in her own way, you head back to your room to get your cell phone to start calling up your other family members. You try Peter first since you figure he might at least answer. You start to call Peter and then you hear a loud clatter from the kitchen. What’s odd to you is that you don’t hear a series of cursing following it; you do think you hear a stifled yelp though. Panic wells up inside you and you once again head towards where the disturbing sound came from with your pistol pointed in front of you. “Stop fighting me, bitch!” you hear a voice say. This isn’t a video game this time. You enter the kitchen and see Julie being held captive by someone you KNEW was no good right from the start. Johnny. He’s got one arm around her waist and another hand with a knife to Julie’s throat. He isn’t calm anymore. His face is displaying a rage and hatred you remember seeing a glimpse of in Uncle Ed when he looked at you during that horrible night with him. Julie’s face is one of absolute terror and tears run from her eyes. “Let her go you fucking psycho!” you exclaim pointing the gun in his direction. “Oh look, it’s your dyke lover come to rescue you! Fucking whores the pair of you! You think I’m scared just because you got a gun pointed at me? Pfft! Look at you, you’re so scared right now, you can barely aim that thing properly.” He’s right. Despite having the gun in your hand, you’re incredibly scared. “Mmm, think I’ll have some fun with you two after I’m done cleansing you whores. Just like I did with your sister.” Johnny exclaims. Your worst fears are now a reality and it shows in your face. You feel ill and start to shake a bit. “Guess you two have been so busy rug munching that you haven’t been in the basement lately. Told you it was a mess down there.” Johnny laughs cruelly. Between this revelation, Julie’s desperate expression of wanting you to do something, and your own fear, you’re having a very difficult time concentrating. You feel like if you shoot, you’re either going to miss Johnny completely and then he’ll kill Julie, or worse you’ll kill Julie for him by accidentally shooting her instead of him. You can’t fuck this up. > You just shoot now You remember something your brother Ben said once when he was trying to teach you how to use a gun, “If you’re going to shoot, don’t think about it. Just shoot.” Probably not exactly best thing to tell someone, but nevertheless you remember it and so you do it. You shoot. And it’s all over so quickly you didn’t even have time to blink. You hit Johnny in the forehead killing him instantly. His grip on Julie is dropped as he collapses backwards to the floor. You’re still standing there in disbelief with the pistol still in hand, but now dropped to your side. Julie stands sobbing looking at Johnny and then begins to curse at him. “You motherfucker! (Sob) You sick fuck! (Sob) Goddamn you!” she exclaims. You go up to her in an attempt to calm her down. “It’s over. It’s over. He’s dead.” You say and she stops to hug you tightly. Really you’re having a hard time keeping it together yourself, this psycho just admitted to killing Donna and stuffing her body in the basement. You still need to deal with that. “Oh my god Suzy, (Sob) you saved my fucking life! I’ll never forget this! (Sob)” “Okay, okay, just take it easy. (Exhale) Okay normally we’d just call the cops about this, but considering we’re under fucking marshal law right now I don’t think that’s an option. So we need to get rid of this body ourselves. Julie. Look at me.” You say staring into her eyes. “I’ll take care of most of this, but I need your help. Besides trash bags do you have any tarps or large sheets of plastic? What about a shovel?” “…(sniffle) I don’t know. If there is, they might be in the basement. I know there’s a shovel down there.” “Well, I guess that’s where I’m heading since I’m going to have to go down there anyway. Julie, why don’t you go lay down in your room? We’re going to get through this okay?” Julie seems still very shaken by this experience, but nods and believes you. She gives you another hug and then walks off to go lay down. As for you, you’ve got an unpleasant trip to the basement. You try to prepare yourself for what you know to be down there, and fortunately the adrenaline of the situation has given you the fortitude and clarity to carry out what needs to be done, but as you’re walking down those stairs, it still doesn’t give you an enjoyable feeling. When you reach the last step, you fully expect to see a floor full of blood and gore, but you don’t see any of that. In fact you don’t even see a body. You can only guess he must’ve hid it down here somewhere. As you proceed with the grim task of looking for your sister’s body, you notice that there is an open window down here, which explains how Johnny managed to sneak in here again. You find the shovel and take it. You don’t find a tarp, but you figure you can always wrap the body using garbage bags. Then you notice the washer and dryer… “Oh god…no…Donna…” you say looking away with tears already forming. You can’t tell without getting closer and opening them, but both of the door windows to both are covered in blood. You know he must’ve mutilated her body and shoved the pieces of her in both machines. A blood stained axe is also propped up next to them. You can’t help but get sick and vomit nearby at the thought of this. You then break down and cry for a moment. You weren’t the closest with her, but you just wish the last moments were at least better. You can’t imagine what her real last moments were like. Or rather you have an idea, but you’d rather not dwell on it. You don’t quite have the strength to proceed with the grisly task of cleaning up your sister’s remains right now. You stagger back upstairs with the shovel in hand trying focus on dealing with the body of the murdering fucker who killed her. You get back to the kitchen and just stare at Johnny’s body, getting angrier and angrier about how light he got off. Who knows how many others he killed before your poor sister. “Someone should fucking chop you up.” You say. Remembering that you saw some duct tape in the desk in your room, you go back and grab it and then a trash bag from the kitchen. You put the bag over Johnny’s head and then tape it around his neck, so more blood doesn’t smear all over the floor when you’re dragging him back to your room. From there, you take him into the bathroom and get his body into the bathtub. You then head right back down into the basement and grab the axe. As you’re heading back to your bathroom to repay mutilation with mutilation, Julie has come back downstairs to check on you. “Suzy, what are you doing with that axe?” “Julie just go back upstairs, I told you I got this.” “Are you going to chop up his body? Is…is he in your bathroom right now?” “Julie I said just go back upstairs, you don’t need to deal with this, I’ll do it.” “Suzy, I thought you were going to just dig a hole and throw him in it.” “Yeah well that was before I found my sister in fucking pieces in your goddamn washer and dryer!” Julie places her hand over her mouth and staggers back propping herself up against the wall. “Oh god…” “Yeah. This whole day sucks and maybe that dead motherfucker won’t be able to feel the pain of me chopping him up alive, but it’s the only satisfaction I’m going to get…besides with the National Guard out there right now, going outside to dig a hole probably isn’t the best idea now. Better I should wait to do that at night.” Julie has no words right now, but she’s starting to look at you a little differently. Maybe the combination of killing someone and the emotional trauma of finding your sister chopped up has caused a bit of a snap in your personality. In any case, you’re definitely taking a darker turn here. Suddenly there is a loud bang on the front door. “Oh shit! Who the hell is that?!” Julie says. “Fuck. That’s probably that government rep the loud speakers outside were saying was going to visit all the homes in the neighborhood. Someone probably heard the gunshot and sent someone here a lot sooner. Shit…shit…gotta think…” you say. “Suzy?! What’re we going to do? Maybe we should just tell them everything that happened! I mean it was self defense, surely they’ll understand that!” “Julie, we’re under marshal law. I got a man laying in my bathtub with a bag over his head and my sister is in pieces in the washer and dryer. At BEST we might be able to convince them of this entire outlandish series of events AFTER they arrest us, put us into whatever fucked up military cell they have, suffer hours of interrogation and god knows what else. At worst? They’ll just think we’re a pair of murderesses and execute us immediately without a trial.” You say and then exhale. “Or…we could try to cover this up and get them the hell out of here as quickly as possible.” You add. “Don’t you think they’re going to search the house?!” “Well that’s why we’re going to try to prevent that from happening. Distract them some how so they don’t bother. I mean I suppose we could try to run out the backdoor and over the fence, but I don’t know how are chances would be with that.” you say. Julie has no answer for you. At this point she’s so scared that whatever you decide, she’ll follow. > You run out the back door There’s no time to talk, you just have to get the hell out of here! “Julie come on, we’re going out the back and climbing over fence.” You say and the pair of you make your way towards the kitchen. The banging on the front door gets louder, but you’ve already left and are in the backyard running for the fence. You manage to get to lift yourself up, but not quite over the back fence before you hear several people shouting at you to halt. You also hear Julie screaming. You turn your head quickly and see one soldier with his knee in Julie’s back, her face in the grass and a gun pointed at her head. Several other soldiers are pointing their rifles at you and walking towards you. You panic and see no good way for this to end if you let them capture you, so you attempt to pull yourself over the fence to continue your escape. Several of them fire and you land on the other side of the fence with several fatal bullet holes in your body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You remember something your brother Ben said once when he was trying to teach you how to use a gun, “If you’re going to shoot, don’t think about it. Just shoot.” Probably not exactly best thing to tell someone, but nevertheless you remember it and so you do it. You shoot. And it’s all over so quickly you didn’t even have time to blink. You hit Johnny in the forehead killing him instantly. His grip on Julie is dropped as he collapses backwards to the floor. You’re still standing there in disbelief with the pistol still in hand, but now dropped to your side. Julie stands sobbing looking at Johnny and then begins to curse at him. “You motherfucker! (Sob) You sick fuck! (Sob) Goddamn you!” she exclaims. You go up to her in an attempt to calm her down. “It’s over. It’s over. He’s dead.” You say and she stops to hug you tightly. Really you’re having a hard time keeping it together yourself, this psycho just admitted to killing Donna and stuffing her body in the basement. You still need to deal with that. “Oh my god Suzy, (Sob) you saved my fucking life! I’ll never forget this! (Sob)” “Okay, okay, just take it easy. (Exhale) Okay normally we’d just call the cops about this, but considering we’re under fucking marshal law right now I don’t think that’s an option. So we need to get rid of this body ourselves. Julie. Look at me.” You say staring into her eyes. “I’ll take care of most of this, but I need your help. Besides trash bags do you have any tarps or large sheets of plastic? What about a shovel?” “…(sniffle) I don’t know. If there is, they might be in the basement. I know there’s a shovel down there.” “Well, I guess that’s where I’m heading since I’m going to have to go down there anyway. Julie, why don’t you go lay down in your room? We’re going to get through this okay?” Julie seems still very shaken by this experience, but nods and believes you. She gives you another hug and then walks off to go lay down. As for you, you’ve got an unpleasant trip to the basement. You try to prepare yourself for what you know to be down there, and fortunately the adrenaline of the situation has given you the fortitude and clarity to carry out what needs to be done, but as you’re walking down those stairs, it still doesn’t give you an enjoyable feeling. When you reach the last step, you fully expect to see a floor full of blood and gore, but you don’t see any of that. In fact you don’t even see a body. You can only guess he must’ve hid it down here somewhere. As you proceed with the grim task of looking for your sister’s body, you notice that there is an open window down here, which explains how Johnny managed to sneak in here again. You find the shovel and take it. You don’t find a tarp, but you figure you can always wrap the body using garbage bags. Then you notice the washer and dryer… “Oh god…no…Donna…” you say looking away with tears already forming. You can’t tell without getting closer and opening them, but both of the door windows to both are covered in blood. You know he must’ve mutilated her body and shoved the pieces of her in both machines. A blood stained axe is also propped up next to them. You can’t help but get sick and vomit nearby at the thought of this. You then break down and cry for a moment. You weren’t the closest with her, but you just wish the last moments were at least better. You can’t imagine what her real last moments were like. Or rather you have an idea, but you’d rather not dwell on it. You don’t quite have the strength to proceed with the grisly task of cleaning up your sister’s remains right now. You stagger back upstairs with the shovel in hand trying focus on dealing with the body of the murdering fucker who killed her. You get back to the kitchen and just stare at Johnny’s body, getting angrier and angrier about how light he got off. Who knows how many others he killed before your poor sister. “Someone should fucking chop you up.” You say. Remembering that you saw some duct tape in the desk in your room, you go back and grab it and then a trash bag from the kitchen. You put the bag over Johnny’s head and then tape it around his neck, so more blood doesn’t smear all over the floor when you’re dragging him back to your room. From there, you take him into the bathroom and get his body into the bathtub. You then head right back down into the basement and grab the axe. As you’re heading back to your bathroom to repay mutilation with mutilation, Julie has come back downstairs to check on you. “Suzy, what are you doing with that axe?” “Julie just go back upstairs, I told you I got this.” “Are you going to chop up his body? Is…is he in your bathroom right now?” “Julie I said just go back upstairs, you don’t need to deal with this, I’ll do it.” “Suzy, I thought you were going to just dig a hole and throw him in it.” “Yeah well that was before I found my sister in fucking pieces in your goddamn washer and dryer!” Julie places her hand over her mouth and staggers back propping herself up against the wall. “Oh god…” “Yeah. This whole day sucks and maybe that dead motherfucker won’t be able to feel the pain of me chopping him up alive, but it’s the only satisfaction I’m going to get…besides with the National Guard out there right now, going outside to dig a hole probably isn’t the best idea now. Better I should wait to do that at night.” Julie has no words right now, but she’s starting to look at you a little differently. Maybe the combination of killing someone and the emotional trauma of finding your sister chopped up has caused a bit of a snap in your personality. In any case, you’re definitely taking a darker turn here. Suddenly there is a loud bang on the front door. “Oh shit! Who the hell is that?!” Julie says. “Fuck. That’s probably that government rep the loud speakers outside were saying was going to visit all the homes in the neighborhood. Someone probably heard the gunshot and sent someone here a lot sooner. Shit…shit…gotta think…” you say. “Suzy?! What’re we going to do? Maybe we should just tell them everything that happened! I mean it was self defense, surely they’ll understand that!” “Julie, we’re under marshal law. I got a man laying in my bathtub with a bag over his head and my sister is in pieces in the washer and dryer. At BEST we might be able to convince them of this entire outlandish series of events AFTER they arrest us, put us into whatever fucked up military cell they have, suffer hours of interrogation and god knows what else. At worst? They’ll just think we’re a pair of murderesses and execute us immediately without a trial.” You say and then exhale. “Or…we could try to cover this up and get them the hell out of here as quickly as possible.” You add. “Don’t you think they’re going to search the house?!” “Well that’s why we’re going to try to prevent that from happening. Distract them some how so they don’t bother. I mean I suppose we could try to run out the backdoor and over the fence, but I don’t know how are chances would be with that.” you say. Julie has no answer for you. At this point she’s so scared that whatever you decide, she’ll follow. > You talk your way out this Even if you do run, you could easily bump into more military outside. “We need to distract them. Julie, go run up stairs and try to clean up your face a bit and then doll yourself up with make up. Put on something sexy, like lingerie.” “Wha…what?” “Just do it. I’ll call you when I need you.” “Suzy…I don’t know…” “Julie, just trust me okay?” You say. “Okay.” Julie says with a nod and runs off back to her room. You run into your bathroom and toss the axe and shovel in there with Johnny’s body and then draw the shower curtain closed. Grabbing some scissors from the desk, you take your pants off and quickly cut the legs off of them so they resemble shorts and put them back on. You then tear your shirt and tie it up so it’s really accentuating your breasts and exposing your midriff. You then grab some rubber bands and tie your hair in two ponytails on either side of your head. More banging on the front door and you run into the kitchen. You quickly put the pistol in a half full box of cereal, which you then put back into the cupboard. There isn’t much blood on the floor, but what little there is, you easily wipe up with some water and soap. “OPEN UP BY THE ORDER OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT!” you hear a voice shout followed by more banging on the door. “Hold on! Hold on! I’m coming! I’m coming!” you shout, running to the front door. Looking through the peephole, you see two soldiers and a man dressed in a business suit. “I really hope these guys are straight.” You say and open the door. You open the door and you lean forward a bit and to the side hoping you look seductive rather than ridiculous (It isn’t like you do this a lot). Judging by the brief pause and the stares, you gather that you achieved seductive rather than ridiculous. “Miss, didn’t you hear us knocking on the door?” the man in the suit asks. “Oh, I’m so sorry I didn’t answer right away, I was just so busy with something and I had to make myself presentable. So how can I help you today?” “You can start by letting us in; we heard a gunshot coming from this direction. Granted that hasn’t been an uncommon sound in other parts of this town, but this neighborhood has been fairly quiet and peaceful otherwise, so we’d like to know if you know anything about it. We already got soldiers searching around your backyard and the immediate area.” “Oh. I see. Well, you boys come on in and I’ll try to serve you in any way I can. My name is Suzy by the way.” You turn around and attempt to put a little swing into your walk. You then you’re your head to look back at them and flutter your eyes a bit. You actually feel really silly doing so, but the grinning expressions you see on the two soldiers suggest that you seem to be doing better than you’d believe. The man in the suit tells the two soldiers to stand by the door and he sits down on couch. You then sit close to him. “Okay, Suzy. You may refer to me as Mr. Zoll. Now you’re aware this town is under marshal law correct?” “Yes, we heard loudspeakers outside earlier. It sounded so frightening… should we be worried?” you say. “I can’t tell you specifics about such things, however I’m sure you’re aware that this town has experienced a vast increase in criminal activity and rioting. More than your police force can handle. So until we get the situation under control again, we’re here to stay.” Actually you weren’t really aware of that, or at least not to the great extent that it was bad enough to call in the National Guard, but you nod and cross your legs and rub your hand over one of them in a manner that catches the attention of Mr. Zoll. “So um…” “You were saying Mr. Zoll?” you ask. “… yeah anyway…so while this is a state of emergency, we don’t want the citizens to feel uncomfortable. We don’t want to just send in soldiers here to search every house for potential troublemakers. I mean this is still a free country and contrary to popular belief, the government is here to help. At least that’s how I have always approached these situations. Much better to work with people than forcing them against their will. Still, as I said, gunfire was heard from this house and we have to investigate. So I’d like to at least ask you questions before deciding if we need to search this house further, you understand.” “Oh yes, of course I understand. You have such a difficult job trying to keep our wonderful country safe, I will comply will all your wishes and desires.” You say and then place your hand on Mr. Zoll’s knee in the process. This is enough to cause him to smile nervously, but takes your hand off at which point you smile and giggle in return. “Okay first of all you keep using the term ‘we’ is there someone else here?” “Oh yes. I’ll call her down. Julie! Could you come down here? There is a man that wants to ask us some questions about the gunshot earlier.” you say standing up from the couch. Julie appears and thankfully the girl has pulled out all the stops. She’s wearing purple lingerie underneath and her legs are covered by purple stocking with garters. She’s also wearing all the usual makeup that makes her look like a cheap whore and that’s definitely a plus right now since everyone is looking at her. Julie walks down the stairs in such a manner that continues to keep their eyes on her. While she probably knows what some of your plan is by now, the rest of it is probably going to surprise her. “Mr. Zoll, this is Julie, my life partner of many years. Come over here and sit sweetie.” You say taking a seat in a chair. Julie is indeed surprised by this, but quickly knows to play along. The two soldiers meanwhile can barely keep their mouths from hanging open. Mr. Zoll is better at keeping it together, but he’s unsure of whether to stare at you or Julie and where! “Julie. Don’t sit all the way over there baby. Come over here.” You say and pat you hands on your lap. Julie now has a bigger smile than anyone as she hops into your lap and puts her arms around you. You then give Julie a kiss on the lips; Julie however gets a bit overzealous by slipping you the tongue and grabbing one of your breasts. “Now, now, honey, we have company.” You say smiling and putting her hand back. “I apologize Mr. Zoll, but we plan on finally getting officially married soon, now that it’s become legal and we were sort of celebrating before you knocked on the door. We’ve been friends and lovers for so long that its so liberating to long at last have the freedom to do what everyone else does. Did you know we came out to each other when we were sixteen? It was almost magical how we just knew it was so right in that high school shower room… “ Now Mr. Zoll crosses his legs because he’s probably hiding a big boner. The soldiers at this point are unsubtly “rearranging” but it looks more like they just want to whip it out and start whacking it. Zoll manages to get back on track. “Ladies, I really need to ask about this gunshot so let’s get to it.” You and Julie say you heard a gunshot behind the house and not much else. Julie then mentions that she saw someone through the window jumping over the back fence, but couldn’t make out what they looked like. Then she describes what they look like they were wearing from the back. “All I know is I was so scared that I hopped right back into bed and held on to my Suzy.” Julie says and hugs you a little tighter. “There, there, it’s over now. These big strong men are here to protect us from lawless scum like that.” You say looking at Julie and rubbing her legs. You turn back to Mr. Zoll. “So that’s all we know Mr. Zoll. I hope it was helpful. As I said if you must search this house we understand, but I as a law abiding citizen of this country I do hope it isn’t necessary.” You say to Mr. Zoll who looks like he’s trying to scan you for deception. “Nah, I don’t think that will be necessary. You two seem like a nice couple that just wants to live your lives and be free to do… whatever you want to each other in the privacy of your own home. Whoever is dumb enough to run around in this neighborhood firing off guns is bound to fuck up soon and we at least know a partial description now. Okay anyway, onto the second reason for my visit. Do you need anything? We’re not just here to keep order, but to help out as well. While you’re quite aware that you can’t leave your home, we could bring some basic supplies like food to you. So anything?” Any other time you might take them up on the offer, but right now you just want them gone. “Perhaps another time. Nothing right now thanks.” You answer. “Well hopefully for all of us, this will all be over soon. Okay, I leave you two ladies.” Mr. Zoll tells his men that they’re leaving (who seem very disappointed). A few more glances back at you and Julie and soon they’re out the door. It’s over and you’re safe. “Holy shit, I can’t believe we pulled that off.” You say slumping a bit in your chair and breathing a sigh of relief. “Oh Suzy, that was fucking genius!” Julie says who is still in your lap and hugging and kissing on your face. “Stop, it’s over now, get off my lap. I still got a body to chop up and to dispose of.” Julie ceases her affection and gets off your lap, though she looks a little hurt. Not wishing to cause more distress for her you apologize. “Look, sorry. I just…I still lost a sister and that’s been going through my head since I found out today.” “No, I understand. She was my friend. I don’t think I’ve even processed her death fully due to my own near death experience and the National Guard coming in here. I’ll leave you to it.” Julie heads back upstairs and you return to your bathroom where Johnny’s body still awaits your destruction. The thing is now; you don’t feel like it anymore. The rage and sadness are still there of course, but what is chopping his body up really going to do for you? Nothing except more work and you refuse to expend any more energy than you have to on this scum. You get more trash bags and cover his upper half with one and his lower half with another. Then you duct tape them around him until he’s wrapped pretty tightly. You then wait until dark and head outside in the backyard with the shovel. Luckily Julie’s fences are high enough that nobody is going to immediately see you. (It’s a big yard anyway and the neighbors aren’t very close either) The night is actually pretty quiet, though you do hear the occasional rumble of what sounds like trucks or some sort of military vehicles driving on the nearby roads. It isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world digging in the ground at night, but luckily Julie’s yard also has some pretty soft soil and it only takes most of the night as opposed to all of it. You then return back to retrieve Johnny’s body and see Julie waiting nearby. “You could probably use the help in carrying this asshole right?” Julie asks. “It would welcome.” You say. The pair of you lifts Johnny and carrying him outside and dump him into the hole you dug and then proceed to fill up. You and Julie then return inside the house. “Well that’s that.” Julie says. “Yep. And I’m going to bed.” You say. “Suzy?” “Julie, I know. Donna still needs to be taken care of. I just don’t have any more energy today. I can’t deal with it now, I’m so drained it’s taken all my energy not to just break down and cry.” “I know today has been rough for you and I wasn’t talking about Donna. I just wanted to say I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been here to take care of all this. You really went above and beyond today Suzy. I’m never going to forget it.” Julie says and goes to hug you and kisses you on the cheek. She then faintly smiles and walks away. You don’t know what’s going on with you, and honestly you’re too tired to sort out all the cocktail of emotions you’ve been bombarded with lately, but right now you do know Julie doesn’t really want to be alone. “Julie, you don’t need to got to you room, come on into my room.” “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’d hate for the National Guard to suddenly show up and expose us as liars.” You manage to joke which causes a bit of a smile from Julie. As you drift off to sleep all you can think is “How can this week get any worse?” > Next day… THURSDAY You wake up and find that Julie is still fast asleep with her head nestled against your body and one arm draped over you. The funny thing is this sort of thing doesn’t even bother you anymore. But your increasingly odd relationship with Julie isn’t excessively important at this time. Right now you’re dwelling more on the grim situation you’re still in and the event less pleasant task you still have ahead of you. Not quite disturbing Julie yet, you reach over and grab your cell phone to check the time. Slept most of the day as usual. Just as well, since you won’t have long to wait for nightfall again when you have to dig another hole out back. “Julie, get up I have to go.” You say tapping Julie on the head. “Hgm,.. no…” she utters. “Have to, I’ve got to take care of something and I think you know what it is.” Julie slowly and reluctantly moves off of you and repositions herself on a pillow. “I wish you could just stay in bed with me all day.” She says. “At this point, I wish that too.” You say and get up to leave to go get your sister out of the washer and dryer. You grab your seemingly never-ending supply of garbage bags, cleaning products, some towels, a bucket of water, some rubber gloves and go down into the basement. Once again approaching the washer and dryer you open up them up and are bombarded by a horrible smell. You end up coughing and hacking up again. “Ugh…(pant) ugh…goddamn it, I can get through this…” you say. You empty the washing machine first, putting Donna’s dismembered legs and arms in trash bags. You then dump some cleaning products into the washing machine and turn it on figuring that it will least wash most of the blood out. The dryer on the other hand is not going to be as easy to clean. Johnny threw Donna’s torso and head in there. While he didn’t exactly eviscerate her, there are definitely some or her insides coming out. It’s a horrible task (You try not to stare at her head for too long), but between the gagging you manage to get through it. Her body, her left over innards and her head all up into bags and tied up. You then spend time trying to clean the dryer. Even with using bleach, you can’t get rid of that horrible smell. You wonder if it’ll ever go away. “Ugh, that’s a really horrible smell.” Julie says causing you to turn your head and see that she’s come down to check on you. “What are you doing down here? I told you I’d take care of this.” You say. “You were down here awhile and I decided to check on you. Besides, your brother Peter called.” “Is that right?” “Yep, he was returning your call from yesterday. Didn’t realize you called him.” “I was in the middle of calling him when that psycho attacked. Anyway, you talked to him?” “Yeah, but I didn’t tell him about what happened here, save for the National Guard coming in and telling us to stay indoors. I didn’t want to tell him about Donna, I figured you’d want to do that.” “Thanks. Peter and Donna weren’t exactly the closest either, but I think he’d be pretty upset to hear about her death. So he didn’t want to talk to me?” “Well I told him you were really busy cleaning up an awful mess elsewhere in the house. He actually said he didn’t want to talk long though because he was worried that the government was monitoring the phone call what with the marshal law and all.” “Huh, sounds almost like something my brother Ben would’ve said.” “Yeah, that’s the other thing. He mentioned he was busily trying to locate Ben’s old hidden bunker in your backyard. He said he wants to wait this out in there because he’s scared shitless and feels vulnerable just being stuck in your house by himself.” “Well I can see him being scared since this isn’t the most relaxed of situations.” “Yeah, but he said its more than just the National Guard. He said he saw a few of your neighbors acting nuttier than a shithouse rat in the streets for no apparent reason. Like they were rabid animals. He mentioned some of them was trying to bite someone.” You stop cleaning for a moment. “What? Crazy people trying to bite others? That almost sounds like something out of a horror movie. You sure he wasn’t exaggerating?” “He sure didn’t sound like it, I mean it sort of makes sense. People have become more aggressive and hostile. The crime rate in this town has gone up so bad that the National Guard had to come in. I mean maybe everyone in town is going crazy from some sort of secret military experiment!” “If that’s true, then how come we aren’t running around biting people?” you ask. “Well maybe it hasn’t affected us yet, maybe we’re immune, I don’t know! Maybe it spreads by bite like in a zombie movie! I’m just saying maybe we should start blocking the windows and doors.” “Julie its entirely possible Peter saw some people just high on bath salts! I mean the people who live in my neighborhood aren’t exactly the most morally upstanding. Let’s wait and see for a moment. I mean I’m still cleaning up here, so it’ll be awhile and…” Suddenly several machine gun shots are heard. “Oh my God!” Julie says and instinctively ducks. You on the other hand get up off your knees from cleaning and start to head upstairs. “Are you insane, where are you going?!” Julie asks. “Julie, while at one time it would’ve been unthinkable for me to head TOWARDS the sound of gunfire, I’ve left a pistol and an axe upstairs. If nothing else I’d like to retrieve to viable weapons if an impending zombie apocalypse is indeed coming.” “Well hold on I’m coming with you, I don’t want to be by myself!” Julie says. And like that you’re cautiously going upstairs towards potential danger with Julie touching one of your arms and hiding behind you. Now you really do feel like you’re in a horror movie. When you get upstairs, you and Julie keep your heads down. The gunfire doesn’t sound like it’s immediately out in front of the house, but it’s definitely nearby. You go and get the pistol first. “Why is the gun in the cereal box?” Julie asks. “Because I was desperately trying to find a place to hide it yesterday. Julie, I think you better go put something a little more protective on. If we need to suddenly leave in a hurry you’re not going to want to be running around in your underwear.” “I suppose you’re right. Where are you going to be?” “I’m going back to my room to retrieve the axe from the bathroom, wash this blood off and change my clothes as well since I obviously ruined these by cutting and ripping them yesterday in the first place.” You and Julie part ways briefly to go take care of your short-term goals. After washing up and changing your clothes again you start to ponder what your next move might be. You don’t quite get to do that since once again you’re interrupted by the breaking of glass coming from the kitchen followed by snarling and grunting. “Shit!” you exclaim and run to the kitchen to see a bloody arm through the window of the backdoor attempting to unlock it. The thing on the other side gets more excited when it sees you and starts pounding the glass with its other hand cracking more of it. It seems completely oblivious to the fact that it’s severely cutting itself in the process. It looks like a regular (if a bit wild) human. It doesn’t look rotten (Could be fresh though) and maybe it isn’t a zombie, but you know damn well you can’t let it get in! You shoot at it through the glass completely shattering the rest of the window. The bullet hits it in the face and the thing falls backwards making one last death growl. You cautiously move to look through the broken window and see that you’ve killed it. Meanwhile Julie has come running to see if you’re okay. “Suzy! Oh thank god! Are you okay?!” Julie asks. “Yeah, but I apologize for doubting you and Peter. One of those… things, guess I’ll call them the rabid just attacked. Look what one did to this door, I’d hate to think what more of them might do in a group.” You say. “Oh shit! We need to start blocking the doors and windows!” “I’m wondering if we shouldn’t just get the hell out of here while we can.” “I really think we we’d be safer if we stayed put! I mean we have more than enough furniture and items to barricade ourselves in here. If we leave, we run the risk of bumping into hordes of them and that’s not counting the military who are still shooting people on sight, maybe even more so now. Where would we go anyway?” “I admit, I haven’t figured that part out yet, but I think you’re hoping to ride this thing out until shit gets back to normal and I’m wondering if that’s even going to happen. We aren’t exactly well supplied here for a long-term stay even if we do barricade this place. Now I’ll give you that it’s probably going to be dangerous out there, but at least we’ll have more freedom to move around.” Julie of course will follow you no matter what you decide, but she really wants to stay in. As much as you think it might be better to leave now, you probably would be safe if you barricaded yourselves in the house properly. Things do sound hectic out there right now with all the gunfire, it might even be best if you waited until things died down a bit and sneak out later. > You leave now Things aren’t going to “calm down”, they’re just going to get worse if anything. You’ve already had too many intruders inside this house, staying here obviously isn’t safe even if you do barricade it. You need to get out now. “Julie get some bags and start packing items like flashlights and the like because we’re getting the hell out of here.” You say. “But again, where are we going to go?” she asks. “And I still don’t know, but I’m thinking we need to at least get out of this town though. From there I guess we’ll play it by ear. Your car is still at the shop so we’re going to have to use Donna’s. Do you know if Donna had a spare set of car keys? When I had to…clean up, it wasn’t like she was clothed at the time so there wasn’t anything on her.” “She probably left her keys on a dresser in her room when she first stormed in the house on Monday. I’ll check. Speaking of Donna, what are you going to do about her? I mean you were going to bury her, but now?” “Yeah, I’m sort of wishing I’d buried her first instead of the asshole that killed her now. I dunno, I mean there just isn’t time. (Sigh) Fuck it, she’s just an empty shell now, the person that she was is gone and we need to make haste if we don’t want to end up like her, so let’s start getting a move on.” Julie and you both split up to pack your bags. One of your bags that you brought hasn’t even been opened and is still full of clothing. You fill your other bags with more useful items like some of the non-perishable snack food Julie has, the duct tape you were using, a few of the bigger kitchen knives, loose batteries, some of the medicine in the bathroom, etc. You then finish up with packing a few more of your personal items and are ready to go. “Julie, are you ready yet and did you find the keys?!” you call up to her. “Yeah, yeah I’m just making sure I got everything!” she calls back. You hear more gunfire coming from outside which sounds like its right outside the front door. A quick look out the window and you do see several guardsmen firing on those crazy people running at them. It looks like the National Guard have set up a bit of a “base” in one of the houses further up the street. You just hope you can drive off without too much problem. You’re going to have to be quick that’s for sure. Julie comes running down the stairs with two bags and a big luggage case. “Julie, what the hell, I told you to just focus on the essentials!” “I did! I need all this…shit!” Julie says and trips down the stairs due to all the stuff she’s trying to lug around and going at a fast pace. You attempt to keep her from breaking her neck by getting in the way of her fall. You’re partially successful though getting crushed by a tumbling body and heavy bags isn’t fun. “Fuck…shit…goddamn…” you utter as you feel the pain. Surprisingly Julie doesn’t seem any worse for wear. “Wow. That was lucky. Thanks Suzy.” She says in a bit of an animated tone. You look at her eyes and see that her pupils dilated. “Julie are you fucking high right now?” “Uh…I don’t know…” “Goddamnit Julie, really?” “I needed a little to take the edge off! I mean I’ve been practically sober for the past few days and I needed something to keep myself from breaking down completely! I’ve already proven I’m no good in these high stress situations and now we’re going to enter a whole new level of fucked upness by leaving this house! I’m sorry if I’m not as strong as you!” You don’t really have time to argue with Julie about this right now, but she might have a point. If drugs are going to keep her from melting down into a quivering mess then maybe it is for the best that she’s a little high. The funny thing is before all this happened you were the one that was a bit more of a worrywart and Julie tended to have a more laid back approach to life. Just goes to show how one can never tell how people will react in an emergency situation. “Alright fine, but we’re going to deal with this later and where are the car keys? I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you drive in your condition.” Grabbing the keys from Julie, you pick yourself up and grab your own bags and cautiously open the front door. “Alright we need to throw these bags in the back of car as quick as possible and then drive off equally as fast. These weekend warriors are patrolling all over this neighborhood and who knows where those rabid things are.” You and Julie run over to the car and open up the doors and start throwing in your bags. Takes a moment for Julie to shove in her big luggage case, but she gets it in. The pair of you then get in the front seats of the car and you start up the car. You actually manage to swing the car out into the street before you hear shouting and then fired upon. Julie screams as the sounds of glass shatter behind you from the bullets. You keep it together and just drive hoping that there aren’t too many of the guard in front of you. It’s a false hope as you do indeed bump into more than a couple patrols with itchy trigger fingers. Some you try to avoid by going down other streets. Others are actually busy fighting off others. How you and Julie aren’t hit by any that do shoot at you is something of a minor miracle, but the car certainly doesn’t come through unscathed since by the time you manage to make out of Julie’s neighborhood, it’s making rattling sounds. “Oh god! I knew we shouldn’t have left! The car’s gonna die and then so will we!” Julie shouts. “Julie take some more of your happy pills or calm the fuck down, I’m trying to think! Shit! There’s some of those things!” you say as you smash the car into two insane looking individuals that just jumped out of nowhere. One goes flying off to the side and the other falls backwards in front of your car, which then promptly runs over him entirely. You continue to drive and try to keep off the main streets though with your car now making several clattering sounds you’re not exactly keeping a low profile. “We’re never going to make it out of this town! Not with the car in this condition! We need to go back!” Julie exclaims. “We can’t go back now Julie! I told you to take some more of… whatever it is you take and let me try to fucking think!” you say while trying to keep an eye on your immediate surroundings. “Okay. I’m thinking that we’re currently not too far from my house. I suppose we could go there and try to help Peter look for my brother’s shelter and hold up in there. At the very least we could exchange cars there. I’m sure Peter isn’t going to have any intention on using his. Julie doesn’t really answer you, she’s too busy digging in her pockets for pills. You decide to just go ahead and head to your house. Your drive there isn’t quite as eventful as your escape from Julie’s house, but it isn’t without peril. The National Guard isn’t quite as in control in your part of the town and there are far more of the rabid roaming around either chasing down normal people or attempting to break into houses. Most of them don’t attempt to attack you, or if they do, you just continue driving fast enough that they don’t get the chance. By the time you get to your own house, your neighborhood is eerily quiet. There are definitely signs of past conflict all over the place, but there is nobody on the streets and most homes are not lit either. (Though you do see broken doors and windows on a lot of them) Fortunately your own house doesn’t look damaged (At least not from the front) You half expect to get swarmed by crazies as soon as you park in front of your house, but instead your only major concern is herding Julie’s high ass to the front door and getting inside with all the bags you’re both carrying. “PETER?! Are you here?!” you call out when you get in the door since you saw his vehicle in the driveway. There is no answer though. You dump all your bags on the floor while Julie practically just collapses on the floor with her bags. You help her up and lay her down on the sofa and see that she’s feeling quite numb now, though she still tries to grip on to you when you pull away. “Suzy, don’t leave me…please…” “Julie, I have to see if Peter’s in the house or if it’s just us. I won’t be that far away.” “Suzy…I’m sorry I’m so fucked up…I don’t know what…I would’ve done if you weren’t around…” “Julie, just rest right now.” With this last bit of reassurance Julie faintly smiles and closes her eyes. The first thing you do is search the ground floor. Amazingly it doesn’t look like your house has been attacked at all. Even looking out into the backyard things look fairly untouched. Then you search the connected garage and that’s when you wish you hadn’t. You find Peter and another unknown man both not quite entirely dressed, but that isn’t the disturbing part. The fact that they’re both dead is the disturbing part. The garage itself is a bit of a mess, like there was definitely a struggle, and your brother’s body and the body of who you presume is his lover or client both show signs of blunt trauma. Looks like their necks were both broken to ultimately kill them though. You aren’t sure what to think. You feel like you should be more upset than you are, but given what you’ve already experienced you’ve become desensitized. You’re actually more concerned with how this happened. There isn’t anyone else here to your knowledge and if it had been one of those things, the bodies would probably have bite marks. You suppose it could’ve been regular bandits or robbers, but you’d expect gunshot or even knife wounds and neither have that. Also if it was bandits that killed them, you wonder why they wouldn’t take Peter’s car since his keys are still sitting on a dresser nearby. Whether Peter was planning on leaving himself or still looking for Ben’s hidden shelter (And if he found it or not) you’ll never know you suppose. In any event you have the means to leave immediately if you so desire which given the uneasiness of this situation might not be a bad idea, but then again it’s starting to get dark so it still might be best to bunk here for the night at least. > You leave in Peter's car After pondering it several times over, you think it would be best to just get the hell out of this town. You’re not wasting your time looking for Ben’s hidden shelter, and after finding your brother’s body in here, you don’t think this would be a safe place to stay the night. “Julie, come on get up, we’re not staying here.” You say jostling her. “Mgh, can’t we just rest here? I’m so tired and it’s safe here.” She says. “No it isn’t, I just found my dead brother in the fucking garage along with his boyfriend or whoever that guy is…” “Holy shit, seriously?” Julie says waking up a bit. “Yeah, so let’s get the hell out of here! Come on, grab your bags.” With some effort, Julie rouses herself from her drug induced exhaustion and grabs her bags. You get your own and make your way to Peter’s car. After loading it up as quickly as possible, Julie slumps into the passenger seat and you get into the driver’s seat and start it up. So far nothing has come running to attack you, but certainly don’t want to stick around for it happen. You make your way towards what you believe is going to be the quickest way out of town, but instead you come across more National Guard barricades. Naturally they tell you to stop, but you don’t and once again you’re making U-Turns under a hail of fire. “Holy shit Julie! We just got out of being shot at once before, do we really have to do this again?! Can’t we just go back…” “JULIE SHUT THE FUCK UP I’M TRYING TO GET US THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!” you scream and serve down a side street. Julie of course starts crying. You’re so harried and frustrated that you barely even know where you are. This town might not be the largest, but it seems like a maze when you barely leave the house for years. You drive into an area that is literally swarming with the rabid. From the abandoned military vehicles it looks like the National Guard lost its battle here. A crowd of rabid see and hear your car and start immediately running towards you. “Julie we can’t run them all over! The car will overturn! Turn back! Turn back!” Julie screams, but you don’t listen. You slam the gas pedal and go full speed ahead. You run over several of them and then their bodies begin to get stuck in the wheels causing the car to skid and spin. You attempt to maintain control, but you fail to do so and the car flips over lands against the wall of a building upside down. You’re hurt, but since you had your seatbelt on, you’re still able to move, but unfortunately, you can’t open the door on your side because it’s crushed against a wall. You look over to Julie and she’s not moving. In fact she’s half way through the windshield. She’s obviously dead, but that isn’t what concerns you at the moment. What concerns you is the rest of the rabid running over to the car. After a few moments of struggling, the rabid eventually pull you out of the car and sink their teeth into you and gnaw straight through your bones. You die screaming as they eat you alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Things aren’t going to “calm down”, they’re just going to get worse if anything. You’ve already had too many intruders inside this house, staying here obviously isn’t safe even if you do barricade it. You need to get out now. “Julie get some bags and start packing items like flashlights and the like because we’re getting the hell out of here.” You say. “But again, where are we going to go?” she asks. “And I still don’t know, but I’m thinking we need to at least get out of this town though. From there I guess we’ll play it by ear. Your car is still at the shop so we’re going to have to use Donna’s. Do you know if Donna had a spare set of car keys? When I had to…clean up, it wasn’t like she was clothed at the time so there wasn’t anything on her.” “She probably left her keys on a dresser in her room when she first stormed in the house on Monday. I’ll check. Speaking of Donna, what are you going to do about her? I mean you were going to bury her, but now?” “Yeah, I’m sort of wishing I’d buried her first instead of the asshole that killed her now. I dunno, I mean there just isn’t time. (Sigh) Fuck it, she’s just an empty shell now, the person that she was is gone and we need to make haste if we don’t want to end up like her, so let’s start getting a move on.” Julie and you both split up to pack your bags. One of your bags that you brought hasn’t even been opened and is still full of clothing. You fill your other bags with more useful items like some of the non-perishable snack food Julie has, the duct tape you were using, a few of the bigger kitchen knives, loose batteries, some of the medicine in the bathroom, etc. You then finish up with packing a few more of your personal items and are ready to go. “Julie, are you ready yet and did you find the keys?!” you call up to her. “Yeah, yeah I’m just making sure I got everything!” she calls back. You hear more gunfire coming from outside which sounds like its right outside the front door. A quick look out the window and you do see several guardsmen firing on those crazy people running at them. It looks like the National Guard have set up a bit of a “base” in one of the houses further up the street. You just hope you can drive off without too much problem. You’re going to have to be quick that’s for sure. Julie comes running down the stairs with two bags and a big luggage case. “Julie, what the hell, I told you to just focus on the essentials!” “I did! I need all this…shit!” Julie says and trips down the stairs due to all the stuff she’s trying to lug around and going at a fast pace. You attempt to keep her from breaking her neck by getting in the way of her fall. You’re partially successful though getting crushed by a tumbling body and heavy bags isn’t fun. “Fuck…shit…goddamn…” you utter as you feel the pain. Surprisingly Julie doesn’t seem any worse for wear. “Wow. That was lucky. Thanks Suzy.” She says in a bit of an animated tone. You look at her eyes and see that her pupils dilated. “Julie are you fucking high right now?” “Uh…I don’t know…” “Goddamnit Julie, really?” “I needed a little to take the edge off! I mean I’ve been practically sober for the past few days and I needed something to keep myself from breaking down completely! I’ve already proven I’m no good in these high stress situations and now we’re going to enter a whole new level of fucked upness by leaving this house! I’m sorry if I’m not as strong as you!” You don’t really have time to argue with Julie about this right now, but she might have a point. If drugs are going to keep her from melting down into a quivering mess then maybe it is for the best that she’s a little high. The funny thing is before all this happened you were the one that was a bit more of a worrywart and Julie tended to have a more laid back approach to life. Just goes to show how one can never tell how people will react in an emergency situation. “Alright fine, but we’re going to deal with this later and where are the car keys? I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you drive in your condition.” Grabbing the keys from Julie, you pick yourself up and grab your own bags and cautiously open the front door. “Alright we need to throw these bags in the back of car as quick as possible and then drive off equally as fast. These weekend warriors are patrolling all over this neighborhood and who knows where those rabid things are.” You and Julie run over to the car and open up the doors and start throwing in your bags. Takes a moment for Julie to shove in her big luggage case, but she gets it in. The pair of you then get in the front seats of the car and you start up the car. You actually manage to swing the car out into the street before you hear shouting and then fired upon. Julie screams as the sounds of glass shatter behind you from the bullets. You keep it together and just drive hoping that there aren’t too many of the guard in front of you. It’s a false hope as you do indeed bump into more than a couple patrols with itchy trigger fingers. Some you try to avoid by going down other streets. Others are actually busy fighting off others. How you and Julie aren’t hit by any that do shoot at you is something of a minor miracle, but the car certainly doesn’t come through unscathed since by the time you manage to make out of Julie’s neighborhood, it’s making rattling sounds. “Oh god! I knew we shouldn’t have left! The car’s gonna die and then so will we!” Julie shouts. “Julie take some more of your happy pills or calm the fuck down, I’m trying to think! Shit! There’s some of those things!” you say as you smash the car into two insane looking individuals that just jumped out of nowhere. One goes flying off to the side and the other falls backwards in front of your car, which then promptly runs over him entirely. You continue to drive and try to keep off the main streets though with your car now making several clattering sounds you’re not exactly keeping a low profile. “We’re never going to make it out of this town! Not with the car in this condition! We need to go back!” Julie exclaims. “We can’t go back now Julie! I told you to take some more of… whatever it is you take and let me try to fucking think!” you say while trying to keep an eye on your immediate surroundings. “Okay. I’m thinking that we’re currently not too far from my house. I suppose we could go there and try to help Peter look for my brother’s shelter and hold up in there. At the very least we could exchange cars there. I’m sure Peter isn’t going to have any intention on using his. Julie doesn’t really answer you, she’s too busy digging in her pockets for pills. You decide to just go ahead and head to your house. Your drive there isn’t quite as eventful as your escape from Julie’s house, but it isn’t without peril. The National Guard isn’t quite as in control in your part of the town and there are far more of the rabid roaming around either chasing down normal people or attempting to break into houses. Most of them don’t attempt to attack you, or if they do, you just continue driving fast enough that they don’t get the chance. By the time you get to your own house, your neighborhood is eerily quiet. There are definitely signs of past conflict all over the place, but there is nobody on the streets and most homes are not lit either. (Though you do see broken doors and windows on a lot of them) Fortunately your own house doesn’t look damaged (At least not from the front) You half expect to get swarmed by crazies as soon as you park in front of your house, but instead your only major concern is herding Julie’s high ass to the front door and getting inside with all the bags you’re both carrying. “PETER?! Are you here?!” you call out when you get in the door since you saw his vehicle in the driveway. There is no answer though. You dump all your bags on the floor while Julie practically just collapses on the floor with her bags. You help her up and lay her down on the sofa and see that she’s feeling quite numb now, though she still tries to grip on to you when you pull away. “Suzy, don’t leave me…please…” “Julie, I have to see if Peter’s in the house or if it’s just us. I won’t be that far away.” “Suzy…I’m sorry I’m so fucked up…I don’t know what…I would’ve done if you weren’t around…” “Julie, just rest right now.” With this last bit of reassurance Julie faintly smiles and closes her eyes. The first thing you do is search the ground floor. Amazingly it doesn’t look like your house has been attacked at all. Even looking out into the backyard things look fairly untouched. Then you search the connected garage and that’s when you wish you hadn’t. You find Peter and another unknown man both not quite entirely dressed, but that isn’t the disturbing part. The fact that they’re both dead is the disturbing part. The garage itself is a bit of a mess, like there was definitely a struggle, and your brother’s body and the body of who you presume is his lover or client both show signs of blunt trauma. Looks like their necks were both broken to ultimately kill them though. You aren’t sure what to think. You feel like you should be more upset than you are, but given what you’ve already experienced you’ve become desensitized. You’re actually more concerned with how this happened. There isn’t anyone else here to your knowledge and if it had been one of those things, the bodies would probably have bite marks. You suppose it could’ve been regular bandits or robbers, but you’d expect gunshot or even knife wounds and neither have that. Also if it was bandits that killed them, you wonder why they wouldn’t take Peter’s car since his keys are still sitting on a dresser nearby. Whether Peter was planning on leaving himself or still looking for Ben’s hidden shelter (And if he found it or not) you’ll never know you suppose. In any event you have the means to leave immediately if you so desire which given the uneasiness of this situation might not be a bad idea, but then again it’s starting to get dark so it still might be best to bunk here for the night at least. > You stay Chances are, you’d not only have drag Julie’s ass to Peter’s car, but you’d also have to load up all the bags yourself as well. Since you don’t particularly want to spend much time outside at night, you figure you’ll stay here, rest and figure out exactly what you’re going to do tomorrow. Besides if you still want to leave, you’ll have time to pack more supplies you can get from here too. In the meantime, you still have to search the rest of the house because it’s still entirely possible that it isn’t safe here. You exit the garage and check on Julie again. She’s not quite asleep yet, but is heading in that direction. Fortunately you don’t have as many windows in this house and your doors are a lot stronger so you’re confident that if something tries to break in, you’ll hear it and be able to react in time. You head upstairs and cautiously search with your pistol drawn. Much like the downstairs though, you find that there isn’t anyone lurking up here. You even manage to find the courage to peek your head into Kelly’s room, but given how messy her usually room is, you don’t know if she’s ever returned here. You get the idea to call her up, but predictably there isn’t any answer. Who knows what’s happened to her. Finally you end your search of the house by heading to the place where you started from, the basement. Again, not much looks different and fortunately there isn’t anyone down here either. Your own room is about the same as you left it. You shake your head that the though of all the bullshit you went through this week, only to end up back here. Makes you wonder why you bothered. Still, there is a part of you that realizes that it’s probably best that you did break your habit of hiding out in the basement. Chances are you wouldn’t have developed the courage to do some of the things you are able to do now. You also saved Julie’s life and while she’s certainly been needy and a bit of a wreck during all this, you’re a little glad you don’t have to go through this crisis entirely by yourself. After a bit more perusal of your room, you head back upstairs to secure the ground floor as much as possible. Still not risking turning the lights on, you put chairs in front of the front and back doors. (As well as the one leading to the garage) You also move a bookcase in front of some of the windows. It’s not the most fun thing to do in the dark and you bump and bang knees and elbows in the process, but it’s secure enough that you’re confident that if someone does try to get it, they’ll make such a loud noise in the process that you’ll at least wake up first. “Suzy? What’s going on?” you hear Julie ask in a sleepy tone. You figured she’d be fast asleep by now. “Nothing, just securing the area. Nothing for you to worry about, go to sleep.” You say. “I’d like to, but I want you with me on this sofa. “Julie…(sigh). Look I’m not sure if there’s room for both of us to stretch out on that sofa. I’ll be right here you know. I’ll be in the recliner.” “No, I’ll move over as far as I can, and you can squeeze in next to me. Please, I just want your body next to mine. You make me feel so safe.” Julie says. You put your hand to your head and start to wonder why you’re becoming more comfortable in even entertaining ideas like this especially with all that’s going on right now. Though maybe that’s the reason. This is the end of the goddamn world for all you know and at this point you’ve lost everyone that’s been remotely close to you. All of your family is dead (or in Kelly’s case missing). Your boyfriend is also gone. They were all dysfunctional, but it’s what you knew and you still miss it. So maybe even as dysfunctional as Julie is, you still feel that need for her companionship because it’s familiar. You have no one else close to you except Julie and she’s going to be “it” if the dark future is any indication. “Okay, Julie, scoot over.” You say placing your pistol on the table in front of the sofa and start to squeeze in on the edge of it. There actually is enough room, it’s snug, but you aren’t quite in danger of falling off the edge. Julie puts one arm and leg over your body almost in an attempt to make sure you don’t fall off, but it’s just her being affectionate as usual. “Suzy…” she says and she starts to drift off. “Yeah?” you say still trying to get comfortable. “I love you…” “I know Julie. I know.” You answer in a non-committal way. You sort of wonder exactly when she began to feel that way. Adulthood? High school? Middle School? Whenever it was, you guess it makes sense since even when you were little you were helping her out of trouble when you could. You probably were the one constant in her life that was genuinely a friend and also not looking to fuck her. You still haven’t quite sorted out all your “feelings” yet on this, but you do realize that if you didn’t care somewhat about Julie, you wouldn’t have been making the effort to save her as much as you have. You guess at least someone is appreciating you and that’s definitely been a rarity in your life. You’re up for a little while longer so you just lie there in the dark going over in your head some of your possible choices of what to do tomorrow. The more you think about it, the more you think that probably leaving is the best solution. You’ll gather some more items from here and load up Peter’s car and tomorrow you and Julie will be heading somewhere else. You still aren’t entirely sure where though. You eventually do get sleepy and slowly drift off. > Next day... FRIDAY “I got your call. Wakey wakey sis.” You hear a voice say. You slowly open your eyes and at first see what looks to be a man standing in front of you holding a shotgun. Then after the blur of your eyes clears a bit, you see that it’s your sister Kelly. Unfortunately it looks like not all your family is dead after all and of course it had to be Kelly that survived. Judging by the fact she’s pointing a shotgun at you she’s still hostile as well. You don’t know why, but then has she ever needed a reason? You look at the pistol on the table and Kelly just shakes her head. “I guarantee you wouldn’t make it sis. I suggest you don’t even try…heh I doubt you’d have the balls to go through with it anyway. I have to admit when I came up here to get something from my room, I didn’t expect to see you here.” At this point Julie wakes up. “Suzy what’s going…oh my god…” she says upon seeing Kelly. “Shhh, it’ll be okay.” You say trying to reassure Julie. “So when did you turn dyke Suzy? Always sort of figured you might be down for the rug munching. Guess that’s why things didn’t work out with Bobby eh? Still though, Julie? I have to say even I think you could do better than some used up party whore. Now the pair of you lesbos sit up.” At this point you and Julie move and shift on the couch until you’re both sitting upright. In the meantime Kelly grabs your pistol from the table and places it in the front of her pants. She continues to focus the shotgun on you. Given that you barricaded all the doors and searched the entire house last night you wonder how the hell Kelly got in. If she had been lurking inside, she definitely would’ve made her presence known and ambushed you yesterday and if she broke in, you definitely would’ve heard something before now. You’re also a little concerned not just because Kelly’s pointing a shotgun at you, but you think back to what you saw in the garage. Peter and the other man’s body. Their bodies were beaten and their necks were broken. Kelly certainly has the strength and the skill to do such a thing. Kelly’s always been hostile to you and barely civil to your other sibling, but to actually kill one… “Kelly, our siblings Peter and Donna are dead.” You say. “Peter’s dead?” Julie says. “Oh? Didn’t know that about Donna. Can’t say I’ll shed any tears. The spoiled little whore wasn’t much better than your girlfriend here.” “She was fucking chopped up by a goddamn serial killer, you bitch!” Julie exclaims. “Hm, interesting. So how did you two survive?” “I shot him.” Kelly’s a little taken back. “Wow, I’m impressed. Guess you would have the balls to use this pistol then. Tell me, was that the only person you killed this week little sister?” “No… I shot one of those rabid people too. Ran over a couple as well.” “Well, well, well aren’t you the bad ass now? Heh. Funny what an extreme situation like this can do to folks isn’t it?” “Yes.” “Yeah…so I’m guessing if you know about Peter, you’ve probably figured out by now what happened or at least have a strong suspicion. You’re a lot of things Suzy, but I’d never call you an idiot.” “I appreciate that. So why’d you do it?” Kelly chuckles a bit before answering. “That little faggot found out where Ben’s old shelter was and thought he was going to hide out from the current shitstorm in it with his boyfriend or whoever that other faggot he was with. Had to convince him that he had to go, he didn’t listen and tried to resist and well you saw how that turned out.” “So you know where Ben’s old shelter is then.” You say. “Oh yeah. I’ve always known where it was. Crazy old Ben thought he was being so sneaky moving the goddamn entrance around all the time, but I knew where the fuck it was nearly every time. He had just moved the entrance again a few days before he blew away his family and himself. I’m just surprised YOU never accidently found it given that you lived practically right near the fucking thing for years. If the entrance was any closer you would’ve been sleeping in the damn thing.” Well that explains how Kelly got in without alerting you. Still, if she’s actually admitting the entrance to the shelter is somewhere in the basement and what she did to Peter, then that pretty much confirms she has no intention of sharing. “So what’s next Kelly? You gonna kill us too?” “Don’t know sis…don’t know…severely thinking about it. I’ve never like you. You’ve been a thorn in my side since you crawled out of mom’s vagina. Always having to be compared to how good and pretty you were and how bad and rotten I was despite the fact I was the one who was shouldering most of the responsibility in this fucked up family. What did you ever do except hide in the goddamn basement? Even now you left the house only to come crawling back here. Yep, I’ve thought about killing you on many, many, MANY occasions.” “Actually that wasn’t my initial intention. My initial plan was to drive out of this forsaken town. I only stopped here because our own car was badly damaged and I had hoped to maybe get Peter’s car and some extra supplies before heading out again.” You say. “Oh? Hmm, you’re just full of surprises today aren’t you? Well if that is true, you may have just bought yourself a bit of a reprieve sis…okay. What the hell, I’m in a good mood. I’m gonna let you and your whore walk outta here alive and you’re going to be thankful.” “I don’t suppose you’ll allow us to gather our bags or give me the gun back will you?” You say. “Heh, no I don’t think so. Wouldn’t want you getting any ideas of attempting to come back here. Leave with what you got on you or die, those are your choices sis. I’m being very generous here. Take my offer.” You stare at Kelly, but it’s not with fear. It’s with anger. Anger at all the past abuse you’ve had to endure from her. While she may have a minor point that you were the favorite and she did a lot for the family, she still had no right to bully and torment you for the majority of your life and she certainly had no right to murder Peter. “Come on Suzy, let’s go…” Julie says wanting for the both of you to be out of danger. > You leave now As angry as you are, making some foolish attempt to stand up to Kelly while she’s holding all the advantages is not going to help anyone. You’ll have to re-supply elsewhere, at least you have a better car now. “Okay, okay, we’re leaving Kelly. You got all the advantages and you win.” You say. “Damn straight I win.” Kelly snorts. Julie removes the barricades the front door and cautiously looks around. “Come on, come on, if any of those crazy fuckers were out there, they would’ve been beating down the doors and windows by now.” Kelly says motioning the pair of you to leave quicker. Julie exits and when you step up to the entryway, Kelly speaks up. “Hey Suzy.” “Yeah?” you answer turning around. “Changed my mind. I fucking hate you too much.” And with those words Kelly blasts you in the chest with the shotgun. Julie screams and Kelly laughs, but you make no more sounds at all other than your body falling backwards on the cement.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “I got your call. Wakey wakey sis.” You hear a voice say. You slowly open your eyes and at first see what looks to be a man standing in front of you holding a shotgun. Then after the blur of your eyes clears a bit, you see that it’s your sister Kelly. Unfortunately it looks like not all your family is dead after all and of course it had to be Kelly that survived. Judging by the fact she’s pointing a shotgun at you she’s still hostile as well. You don’t know why, but then has she ever needed a reason? You look at the pistol on the table and Kelly just shakes her head. “I guarantee you wouldn’t make it sis. I suggest you don’t even try…heh I doubt you’d have the balls to go through with it anyway. I have to admit when I came up here to get something from my room, I didn’t expect to see you here.” At this point Julie wakes up. “Suzy what’s going…oh my god…” she says upon seeing Kelly. “Shhh, it’ll be okay.” You say trying to reassure Julie. “So when did you turn dyke Suzy? Always sort of figured you might be down for the rug munching. Guess that’s why things didn’t work out with Bobby eh? Still though, Julie? I have to say even I think you could do better than some used up party whore. Now the pair of you lesbos sit up.” At this point you and Julie move and shift on the couch until you’re both sitting upright. In the meantime Kelly grabs your pistol from the table and places it in the front of her pants. She continues to focus the shotgun on you. Given that you barricaded all the doors and searched the entire house last night you wonder how the hell Kelly got in. If she had been lurking inside, she definitely would’ve made her presence known and ambushed you yesterday and if she broke in, you definitely would’ve heard something before now. You’re also a little concerned not just because Kelly’s pointing a shotgun at you, but you think back to what you saw in the garage. Peter and the other man’s body. Their bodies were beaten and their necks were broken. Kelly certainly has the strength and the skill to do such a thing. Kelly’s always been hostile to you and barely civil to your other sibling, but to actually kill one… “Kelly, our siblings Peter and Donna are dead.” You say. “Peter’s dead?” Julie says. “Oh? Didn’t know that about Donna. Can’t say I’ll shed any tears. The spoiled little whore wasn’t much better than your girlfriend here.” “She was fucking chopped up by a goddamn serial killer, you bitch!” Julie exclaims. “Hm, interesting. So how did you two survive?” “I shot him.” Kelly’s a little taken back. “Wow, I’m impressed. Guess you would have the balls to use this pistol then. Tell me, was that the only person you killed this week little sister?” “No… I shot one of those rabid people too. Ran over a couple as well.” “Well, well, well aren’t you the bad ass now? Heh. Funny what an extreme situation like this can do to folks isn’t it?” “Yes.” “Yeah…so I’m guessing if you know about Peter, you’ve probably figured out by now what happened or at least have a strong suspicion. You’re a lot of things Suzy, but I’d never call you an idiot.” “I appreciate that. So why’d you do it?” Kelly chuckles a bit before answering. “That little faggot found out where Ben’s old shelter was and thought he was going to hide out from the current shitstorm in it with his boyfriend or whoever that other faggot he was with. Had to convince him that he had to go, he didn’t listen and tried to resist and well you saw how that turned out.” “So you know where Ben’s old shelter is then.” You say. “Oh yeah. I’ve always known where it was. Crazy old Ben thought he was being so sneaky moving the goddamn entrance around all the time, but I knew where the fuck it was nearly every time. He had just moved the entrance again a few days before he blew away his family and himself. I’m just surprised YOU never accidently found it given that you lived practically right near the fucking thing for years. If the entrance was any closer you would’ve been sleeping in the damn thing.” Well that explains how Kelly got in without alerting you. Still, if she’s actually admitting the entrance to the shelter is somewhere in the basement and what she did to Peter, then that pretty much confirms she has no intention of sharing. “So what’s next Kelly? You gonna kill us too?” “Don’t know sis…don’t know…severely thinking about it. I’ve never like you. You’ve been a thorn in my side since you crawled out of mom’s vagina. Always having to be compared to how good and pretty you were and how bad and rotten I was despite the fact I was the one who was shouldering most of the responsibility in this fucked up family. What did you ever do except hide in the goddamn basement? Even now you left the house only to come crawling back here. Yep, I’ve thought about killing you on many, many, MANY occasions.” “Actually that wasn’t my initial intention. My initial plan was to drive out of this forsaken town. I only stopped here because our own car was badly damaged and I had hoped to maybe get Peter’s car and some extra supplies before heading out again.” You say. “Oh? Hmm, you’re just full of surprises today aren’t you? Well if that is true, you may have just bought yourself a bit of a reprieve sis…okay. What the hell, I’m in a good mood. I’m gonna let you and your whore walk outta here alive and you’re going to be thankful.” “I don’t suppose you’ll allow us to gather our bags or give me the gun back will you?” You say. “Heh, no I don’t think so. Wouldn’t want you getting any ideas of attempting to come back here. Leave with what you got on you or die, those are your choices sis. I’m being very generous here. Take my offer.” You stare at Kelly, but it’s not with fear. It’s with anger. Anger at all the past abuse you’ve had to endure from her. While she may have a minor point that you were the favorite and she did a lot for the family, she still had no right to bully and torment you for the majority of your life and she certainly had no right to murder Peter. “Come on Suzy, let’s go…” Julie says wanting for the both of you to be out of danger. > You stand up to Kelly “No.” you say. “Suzy? What?” Julie says. “No, I’m not leaving. She’s been a bully to me all my life. It ends today.” You say. “Wow! I can hardly believe you’re the same Suzy that spent hiding from the rest of the world. Guess you’ve finally learned to stand up and be a woman.” Kelly says with a smirk. “But so what? You think because you’ve survived some of the horrors out there, you think standing up to me is going to suddenly change the situation? Got news for ya, it ain’t. I can blow your fucking head off with one twitch of my finger. Last chance to get the fuck out of my house!” Kelly adds. “Fuck you Kelly. I know you. You already made up your mind to kill me as soon as I woke up. I turn my back and you’ll probably shoot me for the hell of it as I walk out the door.” Kelly starts laughing. “Well like I said, you always were a smart one. Too bad you did something incredibly stupid by walking in here in the first place.” “Kelly, please! Just let us go! We won’t come back! We’ll just…” Julie starts to plead “SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU DUMB BITCH OR YOU’LL BE FIRST!” Kelly shouts before turning her attention back to you. Julie at this point starts sobbing uncontrollably. You continue to stare down the barrel of the shotgun like you’re fearless, but that isn’t true at all and Kelly knows it. “You can give me the hard looks all you want, but deep down I know you’re ready to shit your panties. Which I imagine you’ll do after you’re dead anyway. You ready to die little sister?” “Sure, just a little surprised you’d choose this method. Guess you’re more intimidated by me than I thought.” “What?” Kelly snorts. “You’re intimidated by me. You always have been. I really should’ve seen it before.” “You’re fucking crazy. I’ve never been intimidated by you.” “Sure you have, that’s why you’ve bullied me all these years. You’ve said yourself on many occasions on how pretty I am so I know you’re jealous of my looks. You’ve just admitted that I’m smart. The only thing that I always lacked in was self-confidence and now that I have that, well I’m pretty much better than you…” “Fuck you Suzy!” Kelly says. “No, I get it, you want to play it safe and shoot me, because hey if I gained self-confidence, who knows I might just be able to kick your ass in a fair fight.” “Hah, not fuckin’ likely…” “Well I guess we’ll never know, because you’ll shoot me and Julie and then go down and hide in the fucking basement…well what do you know…we’re more alike than you thought. Imagine that.” And with that taunt it’s the last straw. Kelly flies into a rage. It’s the kind of rage she flies into when she’s participating in her underground fight club. She abandons all rational thought, drops the shotgun to the side and lunges at you with both of her hands going straight for your neck. Julie is knocked to one side and you fall backward on the couch. You attempt to roll and scramble to escape, but Kelly grabs you by the hair. “You’re right, beating your scrawny ass to death WILL be more enjoyable.” Kelly exclaims. “Julie, grab the shotgun!” you manage to shout before Kelly throws you face first into the bookcase. Kelly then stops Julie from scrambling on the floor for the shotgun by kicking her in the side and then stomping on her back. Still struggling to recover you grab some of the heavier books that have fallen near you and start throwing them at Kelly. A couple hit her in the head and she ceases abusing Julie and returns to attack you. You manage to throw one more book at her face, but it doesn’t even slow her down. She punches you in the stomach causing you to collapse as you feel the air leave all your body and feel like you can’t breathe. As you wheeze, Kelly leans down and grabs the back of your neck with one of her hands. It feels like a fucking vice. “A hit to the gut, fucks you all up doesn’t it? Feels like you’re suffocating, can’t breathe, can’t do much of anything really. It’s how Houdini died you know. I’m gonna hurt you so badly Suzy, you don’t even know…but you soon will.” Kelly with her other hand smashes a fist into the side of your face. You feel your eye almost close immediately as the rest of you hits the floor. If you could catch your breath, you probably would’ve cried out from the pain though you’re a little dizzy more than anything right now. “Thought you could kick my ass. Bitch please, what the fuck were you thinking? This isn’t a goddamn comic book or movie…shit!” Kelly’s body lands on top of yours with crushing weight. You then hear a shotgun blast and some debris of the bookcase consisting of paper and cheap wood fall on you and Kelly. “LEAVE HER ALONE YOU FUCKING CUNT!” you hear Julie scream. You still aren’t in any condition to do anything, but Kelly certainly is. She scrambles for the pistol still in the front of her pants and gets up while yanking you up with one hand to use you as a human shield. Julie takes cover around a corner when Kelly starts shooting. Four shots are fired before clicking follows. “Fuck!” Kelly exclaims and drops the pistol. You’re practically deaf from the proximity of a pistol going off near your head along with being disorientated. Kelly positions herself behind the couch to give herself some extra cover. She also tightens her grip around your neck with her forearm and puts her other hand on your head ready to break your neck in a second if need be. Julie comes back out from around the corner weeping, but unsteadily pointing the shotgun at Kelly. “No…Suzy…(Sob) Let her go!” “Julie, you’re not in any position to give orders. Now granted with a shotgun and you don’t need perfect aim at this range, but your precious girlfriend here is BOUND to get hit in the process. Never mind the fact I could break her neck before you get the courage to pull the trigger anyway.” “LET HER GO!” Julie screams again. “Not gonna happen whore. You got two choices. You try to do the impossible by trying to hit me or you walk out the door and go on with your life. Either way one thing is certain, Suzy here isn’t going anywhere. Her fate is sealed and there isn’t anything you can do about it. Think about it Julie. Do you really want to be the one that kills her? Just walk away now taking solace in the fact that you never had a choice.” Kelly says. Even with one blurring eye open right now, you can see Julie just standing there sobbing and looking so helpless, despite wielding a shotgun. “Suzy…I don’t know what to do… (sob)” Julie cries. You feel like you’re going to pass out with Kelly’s big meaty arm wrapped around your neck right now. > You tell Julie to take the shot At this point you’ve come close to death so many times that you’re not scared of dying anymore. If anything it’s amazing you managed to survive as long as you did. But you know Julie is scared. She’s scared of a lot of things and if this week is any indication of how shitty the world is going to become, well she’s not going to last very long in it. If she walks out that door without even the supplies you came in with, it’ll be like killing her and you can’t let that happen. It is a sad thing that in this late stage you realize you do have feelings for Julie, and it’ll be even sadder for her when she loses you, but hopefully it’ll make her a bit tougher in the long run. “Julie, take the shot.” You say. “Wha…what?!” Julie says. “Nice, bluff sis, but it’s not gonna save your ass.” Kelly snorts. “It’s not a fucking bluff, you roid rage bitch. I’m telling Julie to shoot your ass and shoot through me if necessary.” Kelly is a bit speechless at this proposal. Julie of course is very upset. “I…I can’t! I’ll kill you!” Julie cries. “I’m already dead Julie. Just take the shot. At least then you’ll have this place all to yourself and can last on the supplies from the shelter in the basement. I’m sure Ben kept a goodly amount.” “Suzy…I can’t…I can’t do this without you.” “You will…just know that I loved you.” At this point Kelly starts looking around in an attempt to find a way to escape while at the same time tightening her grip around your neck. Julie continues to struggle with the morality of all this. “JULIE TAKE THE FUCKING SHOT!” you manage to shout despite Kelly crushing your throat. And those are the last words you utter as the sound of a shotgun blast follows.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“No.” you say. “Suzy? What?” Julie says. “No, I’m not leaving. She’s been a bully to me all my life. It ends today.” You say. “Wow! I can hardly believe you’re the same Suzy that spent hiding from the rest of the world. Guess you’ve finally learned to stand up and be a woman.” Kelly says with a smirk. “But so what? You think because you’ve survived some of the horrors out there, you think standing up to me is going to suddenly change the situation? Got news for ya, it ain’t. I can blow your fucking head off with one twitch of my finger. Last chance to get the fuck out of my house!” Kelly adds. “Fuck you Kelly. I know you. You already made up your mind to kill me as soon as I woke up. I turn my back and you’ll probably shoot me for the hell of it as I walk out the door.” Kelly starts laughing. “Well like I said, you always were a smart one. Too bad you did something incredibly stupid by walking in here in the first place.” “Kelly, please! Just let us go! We won’t come back! We’ll just…” Julie starts to plead “SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU DUMB BITCH OR YOU’LL BE FIRST!” Kelly shouts before turning her attention back to you. Julie at this point starts sobbing uncontrollably. You continue to stare down the barrel of the shotgun like you’re fearless, but that isn’t true at all and Kelly knows it. “You can give me the hard looks all you want, but deep down I know you’re ready to shit your panties. Which I imagine you’ll do after you’re dead anyway. You ready to die little sister?” “Sure, just a little surprised you’d choose this method. Guess you’re more intimidated by me than I thought.” “What?” Kelly snorts. “You’re intimidated by me. You always have been. I really should’ve seen it before.” “You’re fucking crazy. I’ve never been intimidated by you.” “Sure you have, that’s why you’ve bullied me all these years. You’ve said yourself on many occasions on how pretty I am so I know you’re jealous of my looks. You’ve just admitted that I’m smart. The only thing that I always lacked in was self-confidence and now that I have that, well I’m pretty much better than you…” “Fuck you Suzy!” Kelly says. “No, I get it, you want to play it safe and shoot me, because hey if I gained self-confidence, who knows I might just be able to kick your ass in a fair fight.” “Hah, not fuckin’ likely…” “Well I guess we’ll never know, because you’ll shoot me and Julie and then go down and hide in the fucking basement…well what do you know…we’re more alike than you thought. Imagine that.” And with that taunt it’s the last straw. Kelly flies into a rage. It’s the kind of rage she flies into when she’s participating in her underground fight club. She abandons all rational thought, drops the shotgun to the side and lunges at you with both of her hands going straight for your neck. Julie is knocked to one side and you fall backward on the couch. You attempt to roll and scramble to escape, but Kelly grabs you by the hair. “You’re right, beating your scrawny ass to death WILL be more enjoyable.” Kelly exclaims. “Julie, grab the shotgun!” you manage to shout before Kelly throws you face first into the bookcase. Kelly then stops Julie from scrambling on the floor for the shotgun by kicking her in the side and then stomping on her back. Still struggling to recover you grab some of the heavier books that have fallen near you and start throwing them at Kelly. A couple hit her in the head and she ceases abusing Julie and returns to attack you. You manage to throw one more book at her face, but it doesn’t even slow her down. She punches you in the stomach causing you to collapse as you feel the air leave all your body and feel like you can’t breathe. As you wheeze, Kelly leans down and grabs the back of your neck with one of her hands. It feels like a fucking vice. “A hit to the gut, fucks you all up doesn’t it? Feels like you’re suffocating, can’t breathe, can’t do much of anything really. It’s how Houdini died you know. I’m gonna hurt you so badly Suzy, you don’t even know…but you soon will.” Kelly with her other hand smashes a fist into the side of your face. You feel your eye almost close immediately as the rest of you hits the floor. If you could catch your breath, you probably would’ve cried out from the pain though you’re a little dizzy more than anything right now. “Thought you could kick my ass. Bitch please, what the fuck were you thinking? This isn’t a goddamn comic book or movie…shit!” Kelly’s body lands on top of yours with crushing weight. You then hear a shotgun blast and some debris of the bookcase consisting of paper and cheap wood fall on you and Kelly. “LEAVE HER ALONE YOU FUCKING CUNT!” you hear Julie scream. You still aren’t in any condition to do anything, but Kelly certainly is. She scrambles for the pistol still in the front of her pants and gets up while yanking you up with one hand to use you as a human shield. Julie takes cover around a corner when Kelly starts shooting. Four shots are fired before clicking follows. “Fuck!” Kelly exclaims and drops the pistol. You’re practically deaf from the proximity of a pistol going off near your head along with being disorientated. Kelly positions herself behind the couch to give herself some extra cover. She also tightens her grip around your neck with her forearm and puts her other hand on your head ready to break your neck in a second if need be. Julie comes back out from around the corner weeping, but unsteadily pointing the shotgun at Kelly. “No…Suzy…(Sob) Let her go!” “Julie, you’re not in any position to give orders. Now granted with a shotgun and you don’t need perfect aim at this range, but your precious girlfriend here is BOUND to get hit in the process. Never mind the fact I could break her neck before you get the courage to pull the trigger anyway.” “LET HER GO!” Julie screams again. “Not gonna happen whore. You got two choices. You try to do the impossible by trying to hit me or you walk out the door and go on with your life. Either way one thing is certain, Suzy here isn’t going anywhere. Her fate is sealed and there isn’t anything you can do about it. Think about it Julie. Do you really want to be the one that kills her? Just walk away now taking solace in the fact that you never had a choice.” Kelly says. Even with one blurring eye open right now, you can see Julie just standing there sobbing and looking so helpless, despite wielding a shotgun. “Suzy…I don’t know what to do… (sob)” Julie cries. You feel like you’re going to pass out with Kelly’s big meaty arm wrapped around your neck right now. > You tell Julie to leave “Julie, go…” you say. “Suzy! I can’t leave you here to die!” Julie says. “I’m dead anyway. You aren’t going to kill Kelly. At best you’ll probably kill me and blow off one of her arms in the process. After which she’ll probably beat you to death with it, because its obvious she’s got what it takes to survive in this shithole world which is getting shittier everyday.” You say. “Heh, damn straight.” Kelly snorts. “Suzy, I can’t just leave you! I just can’t! I love you!” “Yeah… well I don’t fucking love you Julie! I never have and I never will!” “But…” “Julie just fucking stop! I’m not into girls despite whatever you might be hoping in your heart, so even if you did somehow manage to aim that thing straight and miraculously kill Kelly without hitting me, that still leaves you with NOTHING!” At this point Julie starts crying again and barely able to hold up the shotgun. Kelly on the other hand starts chuckling. “Julie, go on with your fucking life and forget about me.” You say. “I…I…can’t. I won’t be able to. I won’t know how! I need you!” Julie stutters. She still doesn’t want to hear the words you’ve said to her. “Julie, you’re far more capable than you realize. You’ve faced shit this week that you never expected to and survived. You’ll survive this too.” “No…” “Julie, look at me. If you REALLY love me as much as you say, you’ll listen to me one last time and get the fuck out of here. Please.” Julie at this point continues to cry and nods. She slowly starts to walk towards the front door. “Aww, ain’t this some fuckin’ heart breakin’ shit? Hell, I think I’m about shed a goddamn tear myself…over how fucking pathetically hilarious this is!” Kelly laughs. “Kelly will you at least let me give her the keys to the car so she’s got a vehicle to drive away in? They’re in my pocket.” You ask. “Sure, sure, anything to get this bitch out of here quicker.” You put one hand in your pocket and start fishing around for the keys. “Just keep moving towards the front door bitch. Your little unrequited crush will throw the keys to you. Heh. And then me and you are going to have quality sister time.” Kelly says. You grab the key and slowly pull them out of your pocket. “Come on, come on, give her the goddamn keys, al…” Kelly says when you blindly swing your arm backwards to try to jam the key into Kelly’s eye. “AAARGH! FUCK!” You’re successful and the piece of metal sinks deep into the orb. Kelly releases her grip just enough for you to slip from her clutches and drop to the floor. “SHOOT HER NOW!” you yell. You see Julie pull the shotgun back up to her shoulder and point it at Kelly. A loud booming noise fills the room when she fires followed by a sickening squishy sound. Blood splatters on you from over head and the slumping of a body falls partially on you. Julie drops the shotgun and rushes over to help you up. “Suzy! Oh my god, I was so…” Julie starts to say in between the sobbing. “Julie, don’t fuss right now, I’m fine. But right now the pair of us need to get our asses into the basement and look for that shelter entrance. With all the gunfire that went off in here, I’d hate to think what kind of crowd we may have attracted.” Julie helps you up, but in reality, she’s hurting just as much as you, so you basically prop each other up. You stumble down into the basement and fortunately you don’t even need to search. You see a hatch in the floor that you’ve never seen before wide open and a fluorescent glow of lighting coming from within it. Apparently Kelly didn’t even bother to close up the hidden door. You take a look inside and see a long ladder down leading to another floor, which you imagine that’s the main shelter. You can’t believe how close it was to your room and how you never knew about it! “How the hell did you brother do this with you hearing or knowing about it?” Julie asks. “I dunno. I mean he managed to routinely change the entrance all the damn time too. Ben had a gift I guess.” you say and you and Julie start climbing down the ladder and you close up the hatch. Eventually you get to the bottom and you and Julie open up a metal door, which is fortunately not locked. And there it is, you’re in the shelter proper. Before you is a dimly lit living area with various furniture and even a TV. Other rooms include a bathroom, kitchen area, a couple of bedrooms and A LOT of storage rooms. One such room is huge, as rows and rows of canned food and bottled water are found. “Well looks like we’ll be fine for sustenance for awhile. Doesn’t even look like Kelly put a dent in the supplies.” You say. Another storage room contains a goodly amount of ammo and weapons of all kinds. Mostly rifles. Medical supplies are in another. One thing that stands out is that Ben’s shelter has solid steel walls. You have no idea how the hell he did this and you guess you never will. You do notice on several of the walls something has been repeatedly scratched out though not entirely successfully everywhere. At one point you make out most of it. Pr-p---- o- th- Gr--n- -er- Cor---at-o- “Well Julie, guess we didn’t have to spend a bunch of money like those fucking commercials always said. Ah, damn it!” You say and hold on to your head, which is still throbbing. “Suzy are you okay?” “Yeah, I just need to lie down.” Julie escorts you back to the bedroom where upon you collapse on the king sized bed. “Oh Suzy, your eye, your face…its so bruised and swollen.” “Yeah, I probably look like hell. Guess I’m not very pretty right now.” You laugh. Julie holds your hand and looks into your one good eye. “You’ll always be pretty to me.” She says and strokes your hair with her other hand. There’s a moment of silence between the pair of you. “Suzy… when Kelly was holding you hostage, I know you said what you said to trick her into letting down her guard, but… was it really true? I mean it’s fine but I just…” You don’t answer her, you instead just grab the back of her head with your other hand and bring her lips directly to your own and kiss her passionately. And this time this isn’t one of those fake kisses to trick the National Guard; you genuinely mean it, because you do have deep feelings for Julie. When you and Julie stop kissing, her eyes are closed and she exhales like a wave of euphoria has just washed over her. “Well…I guess that answers my question.” She says. “Ow. Ow. Get up, get up.” You say feeling another wave of pain exacerbated by the fact that Julie is partially on top of you right now. “Oh. Sorry! Sorry! You okay?” Julie says getting off of you. “Yeah, just still really hurt.” You groan. “Yeah so am I actually. Why don’t I try to go find a compress or something for your eye?” Julie says. “That’s a good idea. Maybe bring back some painkillers while you’re at it. I’ll just lay here and hurt.” Julie leaves and you’re left in the room alone. You mainly just lie there, but you do occasionally have the brief thoughts of just how fucked up this week has been. At least you’ve sorted out your feelings for Julie though. Despite the pain, you’re also tired. Really you haven’t even been up that long today in the scheme of things, but being held hostage and getting the shit kicked out of you is enough for you to want to go back to sleep. Besides, it isn’t like you’ve got anything else to do immediately. You’re safe down here and you’ll have plenty of time to figure out what to do next after some rest. You drift off… > Next day… SATURDAY You wake up to total silence for once. No sounds of annoying commercials and no sounds of psychotic family members pointing a gun in your face. Even Julie is still asleep. She’s right next to you on the bed as you sort of figured she would be when you woke up. You instinctively reach for your cell phone to check the time, but you don’t currently have it on you. Fortunately there is a large clock on the wall in the room that you’re guessing is accurate. “Holy shit, why the hell am I up this early?” you say to yourself, but then you remember you fell asleep pretty early yesterday. Really you’re sort of surprised you didn’t wake up in the middle of the night. You get up and you’re still hurting, but you’re compelled to go wash yourself since your clothes are caked with dried blood at this point and you’ve been wearing them for a couple days. Just as you’re about to go test the shower, Julie stirs from her sleep. “Suzy, what’re doing? You shouldn’t be up and around.” “I’m stinking like a dog here, I need to wash up.” “You smell fine, I like the way you stink.” Julie says. You start laughing. “Well I’m sure you do, but I really feel like I should… (Sigh) shit.” “What?” Julie asks. “Don’t have a change of clothes. We got just about everything in this thing except clothing.” “So? You don’t need clothing, just go all natural, it’s just us after all. I’ll even join you.” “Heh, while I’m sure that kiss from yesterday has got you all revved up, we still need to talk about us in more detail before we start taking it to that level. In the meantime I guess I’m going to have go upstairs to get some clean clothes.” “Wait, are you serious?! Those things could be up there!” Julie exclaims. “Well that’s why I’m going to be taking some weapons with me.” “But you’re wounded! You really shouldn’t be going out there!” “While it’s true I ache, I can at least see out both eyes clearly again. Surprisingly I’m feeling slightly energetic. I’ll be careful.” “Oh Suzy, (Sigh) I can’t let you go by yourself! I’ll come with you!” You and Julie grab a couple of the lighter assault rifles and some ammo and head up the ladder. Really the most nerve-racking part is going to be the initial opening of the hatch since anything could be lurking around ready to attack as soon as you pop your head up. You open up the hatch and scramble to the basement floor, looking around in all directions. “Suzy? Is it safe?” Julie whispers from the ladder. “Well if it wasn’t I’m sure they would’ve attacked by now. I don’t even hear any noise from upstairs.” “Good, Now your room is right there, just get your clothes and let’s go!” “Okay, okay, come on up, I need someone to watch out.” You head into your room and Julie climbs up and keeps a nervous eye out. You start going through and grabbing clothing. “Hey Julie, what about you?” you ask. “What about me what?” Julie says. “All your clothes are still in your bags upstairs, what are you going to wear?” “I don’t know! I’ll wear your clothes or go naked! I’m not heading up there!” “Like I said, I don’t even hear any noise and I had quite a few favorite belongings in one of the bags. Fuck it, I’m going up there, I wouldn’t mind seeing Kelly’s body anyway.” You say and pass Julie to head upstairs. Once again Julie follows reluctantly. You go up the stairs cautiously, once again expecting something to pop out at you. When you finally get up stairs, you expect the same thing, but after checking a bit, nothing is out of place from when you left it yesterday. No broken windows, no kicked in doors, and your bags are still in the same place where you dropped them when you got here. Then you lay your eyes on Kelly’s body which hasn’t been disturbed in anyway. You didn’t see it when Julie did it since your back was turned, but part of Kelly’s head is splattered on the wall and the rest of it is all over the floor. “Heh, you blew her fucking head off.” You say. “Yeah, it’s really gross. Let’s get our bags and head back, I’m still worried that something might try to break in and I also don’t want to dwell on what almost happened to you in this room. It’s upsetting.” “Alright, I just think I needed the closure of seeing her corpse. I know that probably sounds fucked up of me, but then again this whole week has been.” You say grabbing one of your bags. Before you or Julie can say anything else a bright flash shines through one of the uncovered windows along with the sound of a large explosion in the distance. You can’t help but take a quick glance out the window. And there you see it in the far distance, the dissipating remnants of a mushroom cloud rising up in the sky. “…they finally went and did it.” You say. “Oh shit! We need to get down into the shelter NOW!” Julie exclaims. “Let’s get our asses moving then.” You and Julie grab your remaining bags and head back into the basement. You don’t stop the haste until you’re safely inside the shelter, though Julie’s still a really stressed. “Oh shit! Oh shit! We were out there when that bomb went off! What if we’ve experienced a lethal dose of radiation!? I don’t want my hair and teeth to start falling out and coughing up blood! Oh fuck!” Julie starts to say while pacing back and forth. “Julie will you relax? First of all if it had been that close the impact should’ve at least shattered the windows of the house. From the direction I saw the cloud, I’d say it probably hit Security City and you know how far away that is. It probably wasn’t even a large one.” “So we’re safe?” “Well we’re safe from what you’re worrying about yes. But I mean if nukes are going off, that means the end of civilization, as we know it at best. The world is going to become a lot more dangerous.” “But we’re in this shelter! We’ve got supplies for years!” “Yeah, if we’re smart about conservation we probably can stretch out our supplies for I dare say a decade, but the thing is we’re going to HAVE to explore the surface eventually, if only to gather more food and water. And if we’re going to do that, we’re going to need to prepare ourselves. I foresee a lot of use of that small exercise room in the future unfortunately.” Julie sits down as if this hard reality is finally hitting her. “Suzy…I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to survive this new world. I mean if what you’re saying is true, and this week was just an indication of how bad its going to really be, then how useful am I going to be? I mean other than killing your psycho sister; I’ve been completely useless in this crisis. Even with your sister, you came up with the plan to distract her; my dumb ass thought you were being serious at first when you told me to leave. You’ve come up with all the plans and taken all the action. It’s actually very impressive of how you’ve managed to cope with all this…I’m just not as strong as you.” You sit down next to Julie and hold her hands. “Julie, I didn’t say this was going to be easy, but WE can do this. You have to have more faith in yourself Julie. And whether I come up with the plans or not doesn’t mean you’ve been useless. I mean you still needed the courage to pull the trigger to kill Kelly right?” you say. “I wasn’t brave, I didn’t want her to kill you.” Julie says. “Well I’m sure there’s going to be tons of people wanting to do that to me in the future. So you’ve already proven you’ve got motivation to kill when necessary. And just think you also helped in tricking the National Guard without killing anyone.” “Oh sure, just shaking my tits and ass at them. That’s about all I AM actually good at.” “Hey whatever works for your survival, but look we’re together now. I need you just as much as you need me. We’re not just friends anymore we have a stronger bond now, one that I want to last for a very very long time. I want to survive to enjoy your company and love for as long as I can. Would you really give up on that so easily?” Julie smiles. “No I suppose I can’t. You’re right Suzy. You’re always right.” Julie says and hugs you. She then kisses you on the lips. “I love you Suzy.” She says. “I love you too Julie.” You answer. A brief pause of you both looking into each other’s eyes and savoring the moment. While the next few moments are going to be filled with possibly the most fun you’ve had this week, you are still thinking about how difficult things are going to be in the near future. Already now, you’re thinking that the first order of business is going to be to get Julie to dry out from her drug abuse. (You can’t afford for her to go through your supply of medical supplies after all) She’s going to probably hate you while she’s detoxing, but it’s going to be for her own good. And that’s just going to be one hurdle you’ll have to jump, but you’re not that “good girl” that hid out in the basement from the rest of the world anymore. You’re ready to face it head on when necessary regardless of the dangers it may hold. > Best Friends With Benefits Forever The Future… “I hate dealing with those trailer park assholes.” Julie says as you both enter the shelter. “Yeah, but unless we want to go driving all the way to the next township or waiting around for a wandering merchant, it isn’t like we got much choice in barter partners.” You say. “I just feel like we’re getting eye raped by all of them whenever we walk into their little enclave.” “Probably are, but Mel’s pretty good about keeping his boys in line. He’s surprisingly reasonable as well. Besides, they got enough problems ever since the Cult of Tiamat launched a full raid on them.” “Yeah, that’s another reason I don’t like going out nowadays, the entire fucking town is a war zone between those two.” “Mmm, I’m just glad we don’t live where the fighting has gotten the heaviest. It’s almost like how it was when all those people were running around like rabid animals. Still never learned what caused that, weird that some people just suddenly went back to normal though.” “Speaking of the cult, do you really believe they won’t attack us anymore?” Julie says. “Well like with anything in this shitty world, nothing is certain, but Bobby has always been a true believer so when he came to us that night saying that Tiamat spoke to him in a dream saying that we were off limits due to recent losses, I’m inclined to believe we don’t need to worry about them for now. Personally I think it was that bitch Diana that kept targeting us specifically for sacrifice. She never did like me. Anyway Diana’s dead and Bobby isn’t under her influence anymore.” “What about his new first wife though?” “His sister Helen? I only met her a few times back when I was dating Bobby, but she was always okay to me. Seemed to almost want me in the fold as it were. Probably wanted an ally because her older sister Diana was a bully to her…hmm might’ve had something common I suppose.” As you get ready to relax for the night, Julie ceases talking for a moment and then speaks up again. “Hey, do you ever wonder what your life would’ve been like if you’d stayed with Bobby?” Julie asks. “You’re joking right?” you say. “Well I’m just asking do you think it would’ve been easier?” “I really don’t see how being the member of an insane cult would’ve been easier and that’s not even factoring in Diana who probably would’ve been trying to kill me at every turn.” “Ah, I think you would’ve been okay. You would’ve found a way to get over on her. Just think you would’ve been a high priestess with followers or something!” “And I still would’ve had to have shared Bobby with Helen and whatever other sisters he choose as a damn wife. Nope, I’m not into polygamy.” “But you weren’t into girls either at one time and we wound up together.” “That’s a little different Julie, we had a long history. I mean I don’t even see you as a female. I mean I do, but (Sigh) …you know what I mean! I’m just saying I’m not the sharing type when it comes to these things. What brought all this weird line of questioning all of a sudden?” “I dunno, I guess sometimes I play what if and I come up with all sorts of weird scenarios.” “What do you mean?” “Well okay for example, I can picture you still doing okay even if you made different choices in your life. Like I can picture you surviving and even thriving in this harsh world regardless of what you did. Me? I would’ve been dead without you around. I just wonder sometimes if your life would’ve been better without me. Silly I suppose for me to dwell on stuff like that.” You know Julie can still get a little self-conscious at times and would seem tonight is one of those nights. It was annoying at first, but as time has gone on, you’ve actually grown to find it a little endearing. “You’re damn right it’s silly, because how could my life be better without you? I mean I have everything I want with you, what more could I want? To be a leader of one of the many dysfunctional groups out there? No thanks, I was already part of one dysfunctional group, I don’t need to be part of another, let alone trying to lead them. I’m perfectly happy down here in our shelter with ample supplies and spending the rest of my years with you. Now come over here.” Julie walks over to you a bit demurely and you passionately kiss her and grab her ass in the process. “Mmm. Tell you what, since the town has become rather dangerous lately, why don’t we stay in for a month or two? Maybe by that time, those idiots will have stopped or killed each off by then. You know we still have lots of supplies left, we can afford a nice romantic vacation of sorts from the world.” You say. “See, you always have the good ideas.” Julie says with a smile. As the two of you embrace in the way lovers do, you realize Julie is right, you do have all the good ideas. And your best one was choosing to be with your best friend.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY You wake up and find that Julie is still fast asleep with her head nestled against your body and one arm draped over you. The funny thing is this sort of thing doesn’t even bother you anymore. But your increasingly odd relationship with Julie isn’t excessively important at this time. Right now you’re dwelling more on the grim situation you’re still in and the event less pleasant task you still have ahead of you. Not quite disturbing Julie yet, you reach over and grab your cell phone to check the time. Slept most of the day as usual. Just as well, since you won’t have long to wait for nightfall again when you have to dig another hole out back. “Julie, get up I have to go.” You say tapping Julie on the head. “Hgm,.. no…” she utters. “Have to, I’ve got to take care of something and I think you know what it is.” Julie slowly and reluctantly moves off of you and repositions herself on a pillow. “I wish you could just stay in bed with me all day.” She says. “At this point, I wish that too.” You say and get up to leave to go get your sister out of the washer and dryer. You grab your seemingly never-ending supply of garbage bags, cleaning products, some towels, a bucket of water, some rubber gloves and go down into the basement. Once again approaching the washer and dryer you open up them up and are bombarded by a horrible smell. You end up coughing and hacking up again. “Ugh…(pant) ugh…goddamn it, I can get through this…” you say. You empty the washing machine first, putting Donna’s dismembered legs and arms in trash bags. You then dump some cleaning products into the washing machine and turn it on figuring that it will least wash most of the blood out. The dryer on the other hand is not going to be as easy to clean. Johnny threw Donna’s torso and head in there. While he didn’t exactly eviscerate her, there are definitely some or her insides coming out. It’s a horrible task (You try not to stare at her head for too long), but between the gagging you manage to get through it. Her body, her left over innards and her head all up into bags and tied up. You then spend time trying to clean the dryer. Even with using bleach, you can’t get rid of that horrible smell. You wonder if it’ll ever go away. “Ugh, that’s a really horrible smell.” Julie says causing you to turn your head and see that she’s come down to check on you. “What are you doing down here? I told you I’d take care of this.” You say. “You were down here awhile and I decided to check on you. Besides, your brother Peter called.” “Is that right?” “Yep, he was returning your call from yesterday. Didn’t realize you called him.” “I was in the middle of calling him when that psycho attacked. Anyway, you talked to him?” “Yeah, but I didn’t tell him about what happened here, save for the National Guard coming in and telling us to stay indoors. I didn’t want to tell him about Donna, I figured you’d want to do that.” “Thanks. Peter and Donna weren’t exactly the closest either, but I think he’d be pretty upset to hear about her death. So he didn’t want to talk to me?” “Well I told him you were really busy cleaning up an awful mess elsewhere in the house. He actually said he didn’t want to talk long though because he was worried that the government was monitoring the phone call what with the marshal law and all.” “Huh, sounds almost like something my brother Ben would’ve said.” “Yeah, that’s the other thing. He mentioned he was busily trying to locate Ben’s old hidden bunker in your backyard. He said he wants to wait this out in there because he’s scared shitless and feels vulnerable just being stuck in your house by himself.” “Well I can see him being scared since this isn’t the most relaxed of situations.” “Yeah, but he said its more than just the National Guard. He said he saw a few of your neighbors acting nuttier than a shithouse rat in the streets for no apparent reason. Like they were rabid animals. He mentioned some of them was trying to bite someone.” You stop cleaning for a moment. “What? Crazy people trying to bite others? That almost sounds like something out of a horror movie. You sure he wasn’t exaggerating?” “He sure didn’t sound like it, I mean it sort of makes sense. People have become more aggressive and hostile. The crime rate in this town has gone up so bad that the National Guard had to come in. I mean maybe everyone in town is going crazy from some sort of secret military experiment!” “If that’s true, then how come we aren’t running around biting people?” you ask. “Well maybe it hasn’t affected us yet, maybe we’re immune, I don’t know! Maybe it spreads by bite like in a zombie movie! I’m just saying maybe we should start blocking the windows and doors.” “Julie its entirely possible Peter saw some people just high on bath salts! I mean the people who live in my neighborhood aren’t exactly the most morally upstanding. Let’s wait and see for a moment. I mean I’m still cleaning up here, so it’ll be awhile and…” Suddenly several machine gun shots are heard. “Oh my God!” Julie says and instinctively ducks. You on the other hand get up off your knees from cleaning and start to head upstairs. “Are you insane, where are you going?!” Julie asks. “Julie, while at one time it would’ve been unthinkable for me to head TOWARDS the sound of gunfire, I’ve left a pistol and an axe upstairs. If nothing else I’d like to retrieve to viable weapons if an impending zombie apocalypse is indeed coming.” “Well hold on I’m coming with you, I don’t want to be by myself!” Julie says. And like that you’re cautiously going upstairs towards potential danger with Julie touching one of your arms and hiding behind you. Now you really do feel like you’re in a horror movie. When you get upstairs, you and Julie keep your heads down. The gunfire doesn’t sound like it’s immediately out in front of the house, but it’s definitely nearby. You go and get the pistol first. “Why is the gun in the cereal box?” Julie asks. “Because I was desperately trying to find a place to hide it yesterday. Julie, I think you better go put something a little more protective on. If we need to suddenly leave in a hurry you’re not going to want to be running around in your underwear.” “I suppose you’re right. Where are you going to be?” “I’m going back to my room to retrieve the axe from the bathroom, wash this blood off and change my clothes as well since I obviously ruined these by cutting and ripping them yesterday in the first place.” You and Julie part ways briefly to go take care of your short-term goals. After washing up and changing your clothes again you start to ponder what your next move might be. You don’t quite get to do that since once again you’re interrupted by the breaking of glass coming from the kitchen followed by snarling and grunting. “Shit!” you exclaim and run to the kitchen to see a bloody arm through the window of the backdoor attempting to unlock it. The thing on the other side gets more excited when it sees you and starts pounding the glass with its other hand cracking more of it. It seems completely oblivious to the fact that it’s severely cutting itself in the process. It looks like a regular (if a bit wild) human. It doesn’t look rotten (Could be fresh though) and maybe it isn’t a zombie, but you know damn well you can’t let it get in! You shoot at it through the glass completely shattering the rest of the window. The bullet hits it in the face and the thing falls backwards making one last death growl. You cautiously move to look through the broken window and see that you’ve killed it. Meanwhile Julie has come running to see if you’re okay. “Suzy! Oh thank god! Are you okay?!” Julie asks. “Yeah, but I apologize for doubting you and Peter. One of those… things, guess I’ll call them the rabid just attacked. Look what one did to this door, I’d hate to think what more of them might do in a group.” You say. “Oh shit! We need to start blocking the doors and windows!” “I’m wondering if we shouldn’t just get the hell out of here while we can.” “I really think we we’d be safer if we stayed put! I mean we have more than enough furniture and items to barricade ourselves in here. If we leave, we run the risk of bumping into hordes of them and that’s not counting the military who are still shooting people on sight, maybe even more so now. Where would we go anyway?” “I admit, I haven’t figured that part out yet, but I think you’re hoping to ride this thing out until shit gets back to normal and I’m wondering if that’s even going to happen. We aren’t exactly well supplied here for a long-term stay even if we do barricade this place. Now I’ll give you that it’s probably going to be dangerous out there, but at least we’ll have more freedom to move around.” Julie of course will follow you no matter what you decide, but she really wants to stay in. As much as you think it might be better to leave now, you probably would be safe if you barricaded yourselves in the house properly. Things do sound hectic out there right now with all the gunfire, it might even be best if you waited until things died down a bit and sneak out later. > You barricade the house Things are too hot out there right now. The National Guard is parked firmly in the neighborhood; you wouldn’t have a chance to get past them. No, the best thing to do is barricade yourself in. You have enough supplies to last the remainder of the week you think. “Okay, let’s block the doors and windows the best we can. Those shots might have the National Guard over here again, but at least we can point to a viable target this time.” You say. “What about your… um sister?” Julie asks. “(Sigh) Shit. I dunno. She’s all wrapped up in bags right now, I guess I’ll just throw her in the garbage can out in your backyard. It’s near the door, so I won’t have to linger too long.” “You really want to throw her away like that?” “No, I don’t fucking want to throw away my sister like she was just day old meatloaf, but I don’t have many other options right now and if we are going to be stuck in this house for who knows how many days on end, I don’t want my sister’s chopped up corpse sharing it with us! Now start pushing shit against the front door and block the windows!” While Julie goes to follow your orders, you head back down in the basement to grab your sister’s remains. It takes two trips and a lot of paranoia, but you manage to get her all in the trash can without anything else attacking you or the military coming to check up on you again. You do hear a lot more shooting though, so you’re guessing that maybe they’re too occupied with something else. You finish up by shoving the refrigerator in front of the back door. Julie meanwhile is trying her best. She’s got the front door barricaded well enough, but the windows leave something to be desired. “Julie, anyone could crash through those windows right now. Don’t you have like hammer and nails or something laying around?” you ask. “No, and I don’t have a bunch of wooden planks either. Why the hell would I have that shit? I don’t sit around thinking about how to best protect my home against a possible zombie attack!” Julie answers. Her state of agitation is vastly increasing under the pressure. “I don’t think they’re dead…nevermind doesn’t matter. (Sigh) Okay, you’re obviously stressed. Why don’t you take a break and I’ll handle this. I’ll try to figure out a way to better barricade this place.” Julie doesn’t need you to say anymore and she immediately runs upstairs. You imagine she’s probably going to pop some pills or something to mellow her out. At this point as long as she stays out of your way, you’ll be able to get what you need to do accomplished. You spend a good amount of time shoving as much furniture as you can in front of most of the ground floor windows. Something could definitely still break them and with enough force they’d probably eventually knock through the furniture, but you’re confident that you’d at least have enough time to do something about it before they got in completely. Still, the gunfire and yelling from outside hasn’t stopped the whole time you’re doing this, there are a couple points where you hear some explosions too, so you’re not exactly feeling completely relaxed about this situation. You then start packing “get a away” bags with as many useful items as you can, just in case you need to leave in a hurry. One of your bags that you brought hasn’t even been opened and is still full of clothing. You fill your other bags with more useful items like some of the non-perishable snack food Julie has, the duct tape you were using, a few of the bigger kitchen knives, loose batteries, some of the medicine in the bathroom, etc. You then finish up with packing a few more of your personal items and then think if you do need to leave in a hurry, it probably would be best if you could drive out of here. You head upstairs and start calling for Julie, but when you find her, she’s laying on her bed in a semi-conscious state. She took something to calm herself just as you figured. “Julie! Julie! Does Donna have a spare set of car keys?” you ask. “Mgh…huh…come to bed…” she says. “Julie! I need to know if Donna had spare keys to her car!” you shout. “I dunno…yeah…prob…dresser…” Julie utters and starts to become even less coherent. Seeing that she’s going to be of no more use for the rest of the day, you search Donna’s room for her car keys and fortunately Julie was correct in that they were on the dresser. By this point, night has fallen and while the gunfire has lessened, you still hear the occasional shot. You’re a little tired from all the running around and other activity you’ve been doing to today, not to mention you’re still wearing the clothing that you cleaned your sister up in. As much as you’re hesitant to let your guard down, you absolutely feel the need to clean up. After a quick shower, you return to being on guard for something to happen. Anything. Julie of course is peacefully asleep and oblivious to anything that’s going on at this time. You peek out one of the second floor windows and see Guardsmen still patrolling, but it doesn’t look like there’s as many any more and you see a pile of what are probably bodies a little up the block. It does look like things have quieted down a bit, around here anyway. Who knows about the rest of the town. You wonder if you shouldn’t sneak out and leave while things are quieter, but Julie’s not in any condition to leave now. And as inept as she’s been today, you can’t just abandon her. You’ve just lost your sister, you’re not going to lose your best friend as well. You stay up late past midnight staying alert, but nothing happens. You wander back and forth through the house until eventually even you can’t fight off the sleep and you return to your room and close your eyes for just a moment… > Next day... FRIDAY You are awakened by a loud explosion, a close one. One so close in fact that the force of it causes you to roll off your bed. “Shit!” you exclaim as you hit the floor, still tired, but very much awake. You don’t know what time it is, but you know you haven’t been asleep very long. You grab your pistol, which is nearby, and the smell of gunpowder, smoke and fire are immediately starting to become very strong. You exit your room and see that your barricade of the front facing windows has been destroyed along with that portion of the house. Furniture is in pieces and some of it is burning. That isn’t all that is in pieces however. You see the remains of several bodies. One bloody legs looks like it was wearing a military outfit, a couple of the other parts are of the more civilian persuasion. You can only guess this might’ve been a soldier desperately trying to escape and blew himself up either on purpose or accidently in an attempt to kill the rabid things after him. You can’t make out everything from where you’re standing, but the streets are swarming with hordes of those things. It would appear a “second wave” has popped up and is strong enough to overwhelm the military here. Even Julie has woken up. “Holy shit Suzy! What the fuck…” Julie says from above. “Julie get whatever…” “SUZY LOOK OUT!” Julie screams. You react just in time to shoot one of those rabid fuckers twice in the chest. He goes down and doesn’t get back up, but that’s of little help since you’ve now just attracted even more of them and they’re running in your direction. “Julie climb out one the upstairs windows!” you shout, firing at two more rabid before running away yourself. Julie immediately runs back into her bedroom. You’d follow her, but the burning debris makes it difficult and your own distance to the stairs isn’t close enough for you to get there before more rabid come gibbering in. You instead head for the backdoor and fire off the remainder of your bullets as you run. You might’ve actually managed to make out had the back door not been barricaded with the refrigerator. You don’t even get to open the back door before you’re roughly pulled backwards and you feel a set of teeth sinking shoulder. This is soon followed by more teeth and your screams.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY “Remember, if you act today…” “Ugh! Shut up! I don’t care about your stupid shelters!” you hear Julie remark. You open your eyes and see Julie to the left of you messing around on your laptop. (And clicking off on one of those annoying pop up audio ads) “Hey…when did you get up?” you ask. “I dunno, about an hour ago I think. Didn’t really feel like leaving the bed though, so I just figured I’d stay here and entertain myself on your laptop. Hope you don’t mind.” “Eh, it’s fine. Don’t mess with my bookmarks and setting though.” “Don’t worry, I’m not going to accidentally delete anything. I must say though with the extensive number of porn links in your history, I think you might have a real problem.” Julie mocks. “Mm, bold words coming from a woman who has popped up in several amateur videos on those sites.” You answer. “Hah. I don’t doubt it, but that brings up the question of why would YOU be watching those?” Julie asks. “Who said I did? I can’t help it if I’m browsing through the videos and suddenly your ass pops up in a still.” “If it’s just my ass, how do you know it’s me? Either you don’t or you’ve watched them enough that you know what my ass looks like without even seeing my face!” “Argh! I don’t mean literally! I mean YOU pop up, and I’ve seen your face in the stills though once I almost couldn’t tell because it was covered in cum!” you exclaim starting to get agitated. “Hmm, nice save.” Julie says a little unconvinced. Already having expended more energy than you wanted to, you start to sit up and realize you’ve been wearing the same clothes for the past couple days. “Christ, I really need to take a shower and change these clothes.” You say and get out of the bed. “Yeah, I think I need to go do that too.” Julie says. “Well you can go use your own shower. I know we’ve been sleeping in the same bed for the past two days, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be re-enacting a women’s prison shower scene from a movie.” You say laying down boundaries again. “Hey I think you had that one bookmarked!” Julie says jokingly. You shake your head and grab some clean clothes before heading into the bathroom to take a shower. After washing up and changing your clothes, you feel refreshed. When you exit the bathroom, you see that Julie has left, presumably to go wash up as well. You check your phone and once again see nobody has called. You dial up your sister’s number and still no answer. You certainly hope Julie is right about her just sleeping somewhere else. But surely she couldn’t be so pissed at you that she’s moved out could she? All her stuff is still here after all. You then hear a loud noise or more like a voice, but you aren’t sure if its coming from inside the house or outside the house. Still paranoid from yesterday, you grab the pistol and cautiously exit your room. When you get to the living room, you deduce the noise is indeed coming from outside. A quick peek through the window and you see several military men and a couple of military trucks and even an A.P.C. “ATTENTION! THIS TOWN IS UNDER MARSHAL LAW AND THIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS NOW UNDER WATCH BY THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD. A GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE WILL SOON VISIT ALL OF YOU AND ASSIST IN ANYTHING THAT YOU MAY NEED DURING THIS STATE OF EMERGENCY. STAY IN YOUR HOMES. DO NOT COME OUT FOR ANY REASON. FAILURE TO DO SO MAY RESULT IN THE USE OF LETHAL FORCE.” “Hey Suzy?! You hear that noise!? You got the TV up loud?” Julie shouts from somewhere up on the second floor. “No! The fucking National Guard is out there in force and it looks like we’re under marshal law.” “National Guard? Hold on, I’m coming down…” Julie says. You turn the TV on to see if there’s anything about this, but you’re not exactly having any luck. You’re getting a lot of Ground Zero infomercials or news about shit going on elsewhere in the world. Local stations seem to be off the air with an “emergency test” beep but nothing more substantial than that. “What the fuck is going on?” you say to yourself. “Yeah what the fuck IS going on?” Julie asks coming down from taking her shower. “I dunno, I might need to check the Internet, not having much luck with the TV. Do we have enough food and water?” you ask. “Well we certainly got some food. Dunno about water though. I mean you can get some from the taps I suppose, but as you might expect I got tons of alcohol. Why?” Julie says. “Why? Because the National Guard just said if we try to leave we’ll probably get shot on sight that’s why! (Sigh) We’re basically prisoners here.” “Suzy, you need to calm down. You’ve been on edge since yesterday. You just said there isn’t a whole lot we can do, so we might as well just relax in the house. I mean really how much different is the day going to be for either of us?” Julie remarks. “I’m just…its Donna. I mean she’s still out there. I mean I HOPE she’s still out there. I mean the last thing I did was argue with her. Shit, I’m even a little worried about Peter and Kelly now and I never got along with them either. Still family though.” You say. “You tried calling either of them?” Julie asks. Oddly you haven’t. You didn’t really have a reason before, but given what’s going on right now, maybe you should. “I think I’ll do that Julie. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.” You say. “Sure, you go check on what family you can and maybe find out more about what’s going on. In the meantime, I’m going to go get a drink.” “Thought you were turning over a new leaf?” “You just said we were prisoners here. Not much else for me to do is there? Besides, I’m not going to get bombed out of my skull.” While Julie goes and deals with this situation in her own way, you head back to your room to get your cell phone to start calling up your other family members. You try Peter first since you figure he might at least answer. You start to call Peter and then you hear a loud clatter from the kitchen. What’s odd to you is that you don’t hear a series of cursing following it; you do think you hear a stifled yelp though. Panic wells up inside you and you once again head towards where the disturbing sound came from with your pistol pointed in front of you. “Stop fighting me, bitch!” you hear a voice say. This isn’t a video game this time. You enter the kitchen and see Julie being held captive by someone you KNEW was no good right from the start. Johnny. He’s got one arm around her waist and another hand with a knife to Julie’s throat. He isn’t calm anymore. His face is displaying a rage and hatred you remember seeing a glimpse of in Uncle Ed when he looked at you during that horrible night with him. Julie’s face is one of absolute terror and tears run from her eyes. “Let her go you fucking psycho!” you exclaim pointing the gun in his direction. “Oh look, it’s your dyke lover come to rescue you! Fucking whores the pair of you! You think I’m scared just because you got a gun pointed at me? Pfft! Look at you, you’re so scared right now, you can barely aim that thing properly.” He’s right. Despite having the gun in your hand, you’re incredibly scared. “Mmm, think I’ll have some fun with you two after I’m done cleansing you whores. Just like I did with your sister.” Johnny exclaims. Your worst fears are now a reality and it shows in your face. You feel ill and start to shake a bit. “Guess you two have been so busy rug munching that you haven’t been in the basement lately. Told you it was a mess down there.” Johnny laughs cruelly. Between this revelation, Julie’s desperate expression of wanting you to do something, and your own fear, you’re having a very difficult time concentrating. You feel like if you shoot, you’re either going to miss Johnny completely and then he’ll kill Julie, or worse you’ll kill Julie for him by accidentally shooting her instead of him. You can’t fuck this up. > You try to buy some time “Johnny, look. We didn’t do anything to you, but if you felt that we offended you in anyway, then I apologize profusely. You can walk out that backdoor right now and nobody has to know about this.” You say trying to aim the gun so you know you’ll hit him with it, unfortunately he’s moving around with Julie even more now. “Yeah right. The National fucking Guard is patrolling out there right now, I’m not gonna get my ass shot off and stop trying to play psychologist, it won’t work. I’m not interested in anything you two dyke whores got to say, so let’s just skip to the good part!” Suddenly Johnny slashes Julie’s throat open. A gout of blood comes pouring out as Julie hisses and gurgles while clutching at her throat. The sight of this scares the shit out of you and it doesn’t help that Johnny also gave her a little shove directly at you after he did it, which causes a nervous reaction of firing your pistol. You don’t hit Johnny though, you instead hit Julie and cut what little remained of her life even shorter. Her body falls on you and you scream when all the blood squirts all over you. You attempt to push her off of you, but when you see Johnny looming over you, you try to bring your arm back up to shoot at him again, but this time he’s got the advantage and he grabs your wrist, breaks it and takes the gun out of your hand before pistol whipping you in the face with it twice. Your head hits the floor as you lie there now with a broken nose. “Stupid bitch. You all are stupid bitches. I don’t know why I ever think I’m going to run into anything different. (Sigh) Still, I thought after your sister told me about you…I thought you might be…bah better get this over with, the fucking Guard probably heard those shots.” Johnny says. Your last moments are seeing Johnny’s knife coming down several times on your face.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>TUESDAY “…Suzy…” you hear a voice whisper. “Mgh.” You answer. “Suzy…get up…I have to go pee!” the voice says again. Your eyes are still closed, but you recognize it as Julie’s. “Guh. Well go! Why do I have to get up?!” you say angrily with your eyes still closed. “Well because you arm is wrapped around my waist and your leg is intertwined with one of mine that’s why!” Now you open your eyes and realize what Julie has just described is true. Julie looks at you over her shoulder. “Hey don’t blame me, I stayed on my side of the bed. I’d enjoy this longer, but I really gotta pee!” “Shit.” You say and remove yourself from your entanglement from Julie’s body. Julie smiles at you and then heads to the bathroom. Great, now she’s going to read something into it. Though you do wonder how the hell you got into a spooning position with her. Maybe you were dreaming about Bobby. Speaking of Bobby, while you’re checking the time on your cell phone, you see that he’s left messages again. After you recent “night cuddling” with Julie, you think it might be best if you do call Bobby if only to deter Julie from getting any ideas. “Hello? Bobby?” you say. “Yeah.” Bobby answers. He sounds pretty flat. “Well you called me, so I assume you wanted to talk to me.” “Yeah I did, I wanted to talk to you yesterday about something else, but I’ve changed my mind about some things since then. So I’ve got something new to tell you, and given that you didn’t bother to talk to me yesterday I think you’ll be fine with it.” “What are you talking about?” “I’m talking about us. Breaking up for good. It’s obvious that this isn’t working. I tried to bring you into my world, but you just refuse to meet me half way.” You can’t believe you’re hearing this! “Meet you half way? You want me to be one of your wives in your fucked up religious cult compound that’s what you want! Face it, you’re not going to give up your sister Diana and that bitch would kill me as soon as I stepped foot in that place!” “Well…you obviously have valid points, so why are you arguing with me on this?” “Because you’re trying to make out like I’M the bad guy here! I’m not the human sacrificing cultist Bobby and yet I looked past that because I loved you! You say I didn’t try to meet you half way? I proposed long ago that we BOTH leave our fucked up families behind and start a new life together! I was willing to change, YOU weren’t!” At this point there is a long pause. “Well? Don’t you have anything to say?” you ask. “No, except…it was just too much. Guess I take after my dad after all. I’m sorry, but my God and family come first. Even before you. I’ll always remember…the good times we had. May Tiamat’s Chaos take mercy on you.” “Oh fuck you and Tiamat!” you exclaim and hang up. Its weird, but you start to sob a little bit. You sort of knew your relationship with Bobby was on borrowed time anyway, but it still hurts now that it’s officially over. He was your first love after all and now that’s gone. Meanwhile Julie is standing in the bathroom door watching you. “Suzy, I heard some of that…and I’m truly sorry about you and Bobby. Really, I mean that. You’re a kind and decent girl with many wonderful qualities. He had a treasure in you and he doesn’t know what he’s lost.” Hard to tell if Julie’s just trying to flatter you or she really does mean it, but either way it’s still nice to hear right now. “Did you want to talk about it?” Julie asks. “No, not really. It’s over and that’s that. Best to not dwell on the past and move on right?” you say. “Probably. Well I should probably see how much damage my home is in from last night and see who’s still lingering around. I’ll leave you alone.” “Wait, I’ll come with you. I mean I live here too now, I might as well help you clean up. Besides, for the first time I think being alone might be a bad idea. I’m just going to end up dwelling on Bobby. I need to keep my mind on other things right now. I probably should try to make up with Donna as well. We kind of argued yesterday.” “Yeah, I wondered what happened about that. When she stormed in yesterday I asked about you and she mumbled something about you being a bitch. Then later at the party I asked again about what happened and she still never answered.” “Nothing really happened, she just jumped down my throat for a perceived insult, but I guess I should make the peace being the older sister and all.” “See? This is why you’re so wonderful!” Julie smiles and the pair of you exit your room. The house actually isn’t in bad shape. Julie remarks that usually the parties only get really out of hand on Saturday and Friday nights. She also remarks that she thinks this the first time in quite awhile that she woke up without a hang over since she didn’t really drink as much since she was mainly with you the whole night. “It’s a bizarre feeling, but I have to say it isn’t an unpleasant one.” Julie says. From the living room you hear the sounds of a vacuum as well as a TV. “Who the hell would be vacuuming?” Julie asks. “Donna?” the moment you say that, you and Julie both look at each other and say “Nah.” When you arrive in the living room, you see a man probably about your age calmly vacuuming as he periodically looks at the TV screen, which is one of those Ground Zero infomercials. There are actually a couple of other people in the room flopped out on the furniture or on the floor still asleep, but the man merely vacuums around their sprawled out legs or bodies. You and Julie find the sight to be quite the peculiar one. He notices you both and turns off the vacuum. “Oh hey. You…you’re the owner of this house correct?” he asks. “Yes I am, who are you?” Julie answers. “Oh I’m Johnny. Sorry if I woke you and your girlfriend up, but I couldn’t in good conscience leave your house in such a mess. So I found your vacuum and tried to clean up a bit. Sort of a wild party last night huh?” Johnny says. “Eh, had wilder. Never had a guest actually clean up though. Kinda weird, but hey I won’t turn it down. I don’t remember you from last night; though I have so many people at my parties I never know half of them anyway.” “Oh, I’m not very memorable anyway. I’ve always kind of just blended in with the crowd. I heard about this party from a friend and figured I’d come since I don’t get out much. Did you want me to leave?” “Doesn’t make difference to me. Like I said, I’m not going to turn down a guest that helps clean up.” Johnny nods and returns to cleaning up, while Julie turns back to you. “Hrm, he’s an odd one, but at least he’s helpful. Anyway, let’s go check and see if Donna’s upstairs.” Julie says. You and Julie leave Johnny to his cleaning to go find your sister. After checking the bedrooms, you don’t find her (Though there are a couple of people still sleeping in said bedrooms) you wonder if she passed out on the lawn or something. You and Julie start descending down the stairs. “I dunno, while I’ve certainly passed out on the lawn, Donna has never gotten that bad. She’s more likely to be in the basement.” “Well I guess you could look outside and I could look down there for my sister…” Suddenly Johnny interrupts. “Excuse me. Sorry for overhearing, but did you say you were looking for Donna?” “Yes, she’s my sister.” You say. “Oh…so you must be Suzy. Heard her talk about you last night.” “Nothing good I’m sure. You know where she is?” you say. “Unfortunately I don’t. I mean I remember seeing her leave with a couple of guys and another girl last night, but I didn’t know them either. I was under the impression they were going out to get more beer or drugs or something, but they never came back.” You shake your head and sigh. “Great, she probably got herself fucking arrested by the cops last night.” You say. “Well we don’t know that.” Julie remarks. “Maybe. I guess I’ll know if I get a call from the police station. Whatever, I know she’s like a cat and always lands on her feet, so I can talk to her later.” “You sure you don’t want to still look around the house for her?” “Well if she’s here, she’ll probably turn up while I’m cleaning this place a bit.” “Okay, well I’m heading back upstairs to get those assholes out of my bed and clean up whatever mess is up there.” Julie heads back upstairs nodding to Johnny who is now picking up garbage by hand and putting it in a bag. He nods to you briefly and continues his work. Well mind numbing clean up work should certainly help keep your mind off Bobby (and the possibility of Donna being in jail) you’re just wondering if you should help Julie or Johnny. > You help Johnny You decide that keeping a bit of distance from Julie might be for the best for now. After last night you don’t want her to think you’re lingering around her because there is something there between you two. Johnny seems a bit odd, but then you’re certainly used to odd people. You grab a trash bag and start cleaning up left over beer cans. “Thanks, but you don’t need to help me. Your girlfriend probably could use the help more than I do.” Johnny says. “Well I do live here now, so it’s gotta get clean or I’m living in a pig pen! And Julie isn’t my girlfriend.” You say. “Oh. Sorry, I just assumed that you two coming out of the same room together…” “Eh, long story. But she’s just my friend and I consoled her on a troubling topic. It got emotional and she slept in my room, though I’m fairly certain Julie wishes it had gone farther.” “Hm, I see. Well your sister didn’t mention you had a girlfriend when she spoke about you last night, so I was sort of wondering.” “Wow, I must’ve really pissed my sister off yesterday if she was talking about me to a stranger. Would’ve thought she would’ve been focusing on other things during a party. What exactly did she say?” “Are you sure you want to know?” Johnny asks. “It probably isn’t going to be anything I haven’t already heard before from her, so go ahead.” “Well…she was sort of drunk when she started talking to me. I was actually surprised, since a girl like her doesn’t normally just go up and talk to a guy like me, well at least not when there are other guys around. Anyway, she at first propositioned me to go into the basement with her. When I declined, she got more hostile and started calling me a faggot and said I didn’t know how to have fun just like her sister Suzy.” “And that’s when she went on a tirade?” “Yeah, I was about to leave her since it isn’t my idea of a good time to be ranted at and insulted, but she grabbed my arm and practically forced me to listen. She went on about you being good and perfect and never doing anything wrong. Basically she said all this stuff about you as if they were supposed to be bad things, but I didn’t see it. I guess that just made her even madder so she eventually told me to fuck off and later on I saw her leave with that group I mentioned earlier.” “Yeah sounds like her. (Sigh) I jut hope she hasn’t gone and done anything more stupid than usual. Family. What can ya do?” you say. “Heh, don’t need to tell me. I had an older sister just like your younger one. Partied all the time, lot of sex, lot of drugs, pissed my mom off something fierce when we were still living with her.” Johnny says continuing to pick up cans and placing them in a bag. “Oh I got an older sister too, but she’s even worse than Donna.” “Party girl too huh?” “No, she’s just a fucking sadistic bully. Had to put up with her abuse for years.” “Your older sister sounds like my mother.” While the tone of his voice reflects no anger though, you notice when Johnny mentions that, his hand crushes one of the beer cans he has. He looks at it briefly and then tosses it in the bag. You wonder if you should stop talking altogether, but Johnny has already noticed that you’ve been staring at what he’s done. “Sorry, bad memories. I didn’t meant to scare you there.” Johnny says. “I wasn’t scared, just more surprised. We can get off the topic of families.” “Heh, actually I was thinking we were kind of bonding a bit. Sounds like both of us come from fucked up families. Probably made us stronger right?” “I dunno. I mean I suppose I’ve survived, not sure if that’s the same thing. I mean this is like the second day I’ve spent away from home. I only moved out yesterday and only then due to being under duress from my sister Kelly. I’ve always been a bit introverted and spent most of my life avoiding the outside world.” “Eh, you’re not missing much. To be honest, I’m almost jealous you managed to do it for so long. I’m a bit of an introvert too, but occasionally I to mix with the crowd as it were. Just to see if I feel any different. Hence one of the reasons why I came to your friend’s party last night.” “And?” “And, I don’t feel any different. Just like I figured. It’s like I spoke with several other people last night even before your sister and everyone was just…dull…boring…like they were just empty shells. Like they weren’t even real people to me. To be quite honest before your sister started complaining about you to me, I was getting bored and nearly left the party.” Johnny says as he motions over to a few of the sleeping lumps still in the living room. “What about your friend that you came with?” “Oh him? I came here independently of him. Hell, he didn’t even show up. Really, he’s more of an acquaintance than a friend anyway…” Johnny’s eyes sort of glaze over when he says this and he breaks in the middle of his sentence. Almost like he’s in a different “place.” ‘ “Johnny?” you say. “Hrm? Sorry, I just kind of spaced out there. Anyway as I was saying, you haven’t missed much by not being a social butterfly, I think this group here is proof of that. And as far as not being strong, you’re stronger than you think. Despite coming from a dysfunctional family, you haven’t succumbed to drug and sex filled escapism like your younger sister and you obviously haven’t grown to become a mean bully like your older sister. The fact that you told me you spent the night consoling your best friend rather than indulging in some sort of meaningless hedonistic pleasure tells me that you’re a kind and gentle soul. That’s a rarity in this shitty world.” You have to admit, as strange as this Johnny is, you do get the sense he’s being genuine when he says this to you. “Well thank you Johnny.” You say. Just as you’re about to converse more with him, you hear some loud noise coming from the second floor. You hear a man’s voice and a female voice, and then a very familiar voice. Sounds like Julie and it sounds like she’s gone back to distracting herself from last night’s concerns. “Oh yes! Ohhhh yeah! Give it to me daddy!” you hear Julie scream. A little disturbing choice of words considering what you both talked about last night. Some of the people sleeping in the living room are even awakened by this. One of them looks at his watch and immediately runs out the front door like he’s late for something. A couple of others return to sleep. “Sounds like your friend is feeling better.” Johnny says a little disdainfully. “Mm, well she always was one to get over things quickly. Well looks like we’re all done in this room anyway.” “Yeah, hey why don’t you take a break? I mean obviously we don’t need to clean this place spotlessly. Your friend Julie is just going to have another party tonight right?” Johnny says. “True. Yeah, I guess you’re right. No point in me cleaning especially if Julie isn’t even going to be helping anymore, but what about you?” you ask. “Me? Well I’m just going to dump out the trash and maybe pick up a few more of the bottles in the kitchen on the way. I’ll probably also take another pursue down in the basement. It was a mess down there, but I think I cleaned most of it. Nearly tripped on a bad step down there though. Anyway then I guess I’ll head home, I need the sleep anyway seeing as I haven’t been yet.” “You didn’t sleep here?” “Nope. I’ve been awake the whole time, but I find I’m more of a night owl and don’t sleep much anyway.” “Well I understand that, but I’m just surprised you stayed. You told me you were getting bored with the party and were about to go home at one point.” “Ah, but I also mentioned that after your sister complained about you to me, my interest was increased.” Johnny says. You pause because you almost can’t believe what he’s implying. “Wait a minute. Are you saying you just stayed at the party through the night AND this morning just to meet me at some point? Just solely based on what my sister bitched about to you?” “What can I say? You sounded interesting and after speaking with you I can see I wasn’t wrong.” Johnny smiles and you smile with a nervous laugh. On one hand it’s a little stalkerish and combined with Johnny’s oddness, he’s starting to come off a lot creepier. On the other hand, in a strange way you’re sort of flattered. You always did attract the weird ones Suzy. “Wow…I’m not exactly sure what to say to that.” You say. “No need to say anything. The pleasure of speaking with you is all mine. Oh but one more thing, did you want me to get rid of these useless sloths still sleeping in the living room before I leave?” “Well, they’re probably just going to be here for tonight’s party, so might as well just leave ‘em I suppose. No need to trouble yourself.” “Okay then, as I said, it was nice talking with you Suzy.” “It was…interesting talking with you too Johnny.” You reply back and head towards your room as Johnny starts taking a couple of garbage bags to the kitchen. What a strange person. Even stranger is that your self-esteem has been a little boosted by Johnny’s stalkerish behavior. Before Johnny’s praising of you, in the back of your mind you were still a little upset about Bobby and starting to realize you were alone again. Not that you had any major problems with being alone and you’re certainly used to it, but it still was nice to have a boyfriend every now and then. After Johnny going on about how most people suck and putting you on a minor pedestal you don’t feel as bad anymore about Bobby. Screw him right? He’s the one missing out. You enter your room and lock your door fully content on tuning out the rest of the world like you always do. You go back to fucking around on the Internet, playing games and when the mood strikes you, getting out your mechanical “boyfriend” who never disappoints you. Hours pass… Eventually the silence from outside your door becomes less silent. Looks like Julie’s party is getting started or at least getting louder. You don’t really pay it too much mind as you pretty much managed to block it somewhat yesterday, but then you get a knock on the door. “Julie?” you ask instinctively. “Um, no it’s me.” A familiar voice answers. “Johnny?” you say and then slowly get up to answer the door. You open it up a little and see Johnny standing before you (Along with some party people passing by in the hallway). “Hi again.” He says with a brief smile. “What are you doing here? Did you even go home?” you ask. “Oh yeah, I did, but just as I was finishing up in the kitchen, your friend Julie had come in to get some more booze. She mentioned that she appreciated my cleaning up and invited me back for tonight’s party. So I came back.” “Really?” “Well technically she also invited me to come join her and the couple up in her room, but I declined as you might aspect. Not an orgy guy.” “Yeah, which is why I’m really wondering why you came back at all. I mean I have to live here, but this really isn’t your thing. You said as much earlier today.” “I know what I said…but I also said…” Johnny’s expression becomes… not quite flustered, not quite angry, but more like he’s having a hard time and you’ve just put him on the spot. “(Sigh) Look. This is really difficult for me. I’m probably coming off like a creepy stalker and god knows you probably get a lot of guys hitting on you…but I like you. I know that sounds like third grade shit, but there it is. I really like you and I’d like to get to know you better. That’s why I came back tonight.” Oddly that was honest enough to actually be kind of charming. Lot better than the “Show us your tits” pick up line that you’ve heard before. Then again, Johnny is still pretty damn weird and much like how you didn’t want to lead on Julie; you don’t necessarily want to lead Johnny on either. > You invite Johnny in What the hell, you weren’t doing anything important with your time and you were thinking about making the first move yourself earlier today. “Johnny, could you hold on one moment?” you ask. “Um, okay.” He replies. You close the door again and hastily clean up your room a bit just so you don’t have your underwear just lying around, let alone your vibrator. Feeling that your room and yourself are presentable, you open the door. “Come on in Johnny.” You say. “Wait, you’re inviting me into your room? Are you sure?” Johnny asks a bit surprised. “Well if we’re going to get to know each other better to see if we’ve got potential, then I’d rather do it in here one on one rather than out there with drunks possibly butting into our conversation. Besides, if I leave this room, its very well possible people will wander in and have sex in it.” Johnny chuckles a bit at your remark as he walks in. “Well I suppose all that’s true, but…” You make your first move by putting your arms around Johnny’s shoulders and kissing Johnny squarely on the lips. He’s really surprised. To be quite honest, you’re a little surprised at yourself as well since you aren’t usually the forward type, but maybe Julie’s party spirit has gotten a hold of you a little bit along with wanting to put more distance between yourself and any more lingering feelings you might have for Bobby. Besides, you get the impression for all his praising and stalkerish behavior; Johnny would still be too shy to make the first move. Johnny’s reaction says that your instinct about that was entirely correct. He pulls away fairly quickly after you’re finished, he blushes a bit and then gives you a weird stare. “What? I thought we were going to get to know each other.” You say. “I…I don’t think I’m ready for this.” Johnny remarks and starts backing away. “Wait, hold on. We weren’t going to have sex! We don’t even have to kiss anymore, I was just…” Before you can even finish, Johnny’s already run out the door. “Great, Suzy. Some seductress you are. (Sigh)” you say to yourself and close your door. In any case, you go back to your laptop to help shut yourself out from the real world again. which wouldn’t be that bad, but Johnny just flat out running away from you doesn’t exactly put you in that great of a mood. You got dumped by a murderer and now you’ve run off a stalker. What does that say about you? Oh well at least things with batteries don’t judge. A couple hours later you get another knock on the door. “Yes?” you ask. “Suzy, it’s me Johnny. I need to talk.” You’re not exactly sure if this is going to be a good idea, but you decide to at least hear him out. “(Sigh) Hold on.” You say and get up to open the door. Johnny stands before you wearing a jacket and looking slightly more disheveled from the last time. “Well? Are you coming in, I don’t feel like keeping the door open for all the partying assholes to peer into.” You ask. Johnny enters the room and you shut the door and walk back to your sofa. “Suzy, I just want to apologize. I’ve been thinking about this long and hard and I realize that I did the wrong thing.” Johnny says pacing back and forth, rubbing his hands through hair. “Well, maybe I did come on a little strong. I suppose if the roles had been reversed I would’ve run away as well.” “No, stop talking I need to get all this out. What I’m trying to say is that I obviously have wasted my time and that I shouldn’t have pursued you. I guess I just built you up in my head so much that I…dunno…I always do this…fuck! Shit! WHY!?!” Johnny says and hits himself in the head a couple times. He’s starting to worry you. “Hey Johnny, you don’t need to…” “SHUT THE FUCK UP WHORE!” Johnny screams and before you even can react he’s already run up and physically assaulted you. You try to scream out, but punches you your face and another tight grip around your throat prevent that from happening. The loud music from the party and indifference of the shallow partiers from any potential noise you could’ve made probably would’ve been lost to those two factors anyway. When you’re nearly unconscious and so dazed that you can no longer fight back, Johnny ceases his punches and reaches for something inside his jacket. “This is going to be quick, because even though you’re a whore like the rest…I still like you.” Johnny whispers. “I…really wish this could’ve worked out…you were so beautiful…” Your last feeling is the blade of a sharp knife slitting your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide that keeping a bit of distance from Julie might be for the best for now. After last night you don’t want her to think you’re lingering around her because there is something there between you two. Johnny seems a bit odd, but then you’re certainly used to odd people. You grab a trash bag and start cleaning up left over beer cans. “Thanks, but you don’t need to help me. Your girlfriend probably could use the help more than I do.” Johnny says. “Well I do live here now, so it’s gotta get clean or I’m living in a pig pen! And Julie isn’t my girlfriend.” You say. “Oh. Sorry, I just assumed that you two coming out of the same room together…” “Eh, long story. But she’s just my friend and I consoled her on a troubling topic. It got emotional and she slept in my room, though I’m fairly certain Julie wishes it had gone farther.” “Hm, I see. Well your sister didn’t mention you had a girlfriend when she spoke about you last night, so I was sort of wondering.” “Wow, I must’ve really pissed my sister off yesterday if she was talking about me to a stranger. Would’ve thought she would’ve been focusing on other things during a party. What exactly did she say?” “Are you sure you want to know?” Johnny asks. “It probably isn’t going to be anything I haven’t already heard before from her, so go ahead.” “Well…she was sort of drunk when she started talking to me. I was actually surprised, since a girl like her doesn’t normally just go up and talk to a guy like me, well at least not when there are other guys around. Anyway, she at first propositioned me to go into the basement with her. When I declined, she got more hostile and started calling me a faggot and said I didn’t know how to have fun just like her sister Suzy.” “And that’s when she went on a tirade?” “Yeah, I was about to leave her since it isn’t my idea of a good time to be ranted at and insulted, but she grabbed my arm and practically forced me to listen. She went on about you being good and perfect and never doing anything wrong. Basically she said all this stuff about you as if they were supposed to be bad things, but I didn’t see it. I guess that just made her even madder so she eventually told me to fuck off and later on I saw her leave with that group I mentioned earlier.” “Yeah sounds like her. (Sigh) I jut hope she hasn’t gone and done anything more stupid than usual. Family. What can ya do?” you say. “Heh, don’t need to tell me. I had an older sister just like your younger one. Partied all the time, lot of sex, lot of drugs, pissed my mom off something fierce when we were still living with her.” Johnny says continuing to pick up cans and placing them in a bag. “Oh I got an older sister too, but she’s even worse than Donna.” “Party girl too huh?” “No, she’s just a fucking sadistic bully. Had to put up with her abuse for years.” “Your older sister sounds like my mother.” While the tone of his voice reflects no anger though, you notice when Johnny mentions that, his hand crushes one of the beer cans he has. He looks at it briefly and then tosses it in the bag. You wonder if you should stop talking altogether, but Johnny has already noticed that you’ve been staring at what he’s done. “Sorry, bad memories. I didn’t meant to scare you there.” Johnny says. “I wasn’t scared, just more surprised. We can get off the topic of families.” “Heh, actually I was thinking we were kind of bonding a bit. Sounds like both of us come from fucked up families. Probably made us stronger right?” “I dunno. I mean I suppose I’ve survived, not sure if that’s the same thing. I mean this is like the second day I’ve spent away from home. I only moved out yesterday and only then due to being under duress from my sister Kelly. I’ve always been a bit introverted and spent most of my life avoiding the outside world.” “Eh, you’re not missing much. To be honest, I’m almost jealous you managed to do it for so long. I’m a bit of an introvert too, but occasionally I to mix with the crowd as it were. Just to see if I feel any different. Hence one of the reasons why I came to your friend’s party last night.” “And?” “And, I don’t feel any different. Just like I figured. It’s like I spoke with several other people last night even before your sister and everyone was just…dull…boring…like they were just empty shells. Like they weren’t even real people to me. To be quite honest before your sister started complaining about you to me, I was getting bored and nearly left the party.” Johnny says as he motions over to a few of the sleeping lumps still in the living room. “What about your friend that you came with?” “Oh him? I came here independently of him. Hell, he didn’t even show up. Really, he’s more of an acquaintance than a friend anyway…” Johnny’s eyes sort of glaze over when he says this and he breaks in the middle of his sentence. Almost like he’s in a different “place.” ‘ “Johnny?” you say. “Hrm? Sorry, I just kind of spaced out there. Anyway as I was saying, you haven’t missed much by not being a social butterfly, I think this group here is proof of that. And as far as not being strong, you’re stronger than you think. Despite coming from a dysfunctional family, you haven’t succumbed to drug and sex filled escapism like your younger sister and you obviously haven’t grown to become a mean bully like your older sister. The fact that you told me you spent the night consoling your best friend rather than indulging in some sort of meaningless hedonistic pleasure tells me that you’re a kind and gentle soul. That’s a rarity in this shitty world.” You have to admit, as strange as this Johnny is, you do get the sense he’s being genuine when he says this to you. “Well thank you Johnny.” You say. Just as you’re about to converse more with him, you hear some loud noise coming from the second floor. You hear a man’s voice and a female voice, and then a very familiar voice. Sounds like Julie and it sounds like she’s gone back to distracting herself from last night’s concerns. “Oh yes! Ohhhh yeah! Give it to me daddy!” you hear Julie scream. A little disturbing choice of words considering what you both talked about last night. Some of the people sleeping in the living room are even awakened by this. One of them looks at his watch and immediately runs out the front door like he’s late for something. A couple of others return to sleep. “Sounds like your friend is feeling better.” Johnny says a little disdainfully. “Mm, well she always was one to get over things quickly. Well looks like we’re all done in this room anyway.” “Yeah, hey why don’t you take a break? I mean obviously we don’t need to clean this place spotlessly. Your friend Julie is just going to have another party tonight right?” Johnny says. “True. Yeah, I guess you’re right. No point in me cleaning especially if Julie isn’t even going to be helping anymore, but what about you?” you ask. “Me? Well I’m just going to dump out the trash and maybe pick up a few more of the bottles in the kitchen on the way. I’ll probably also take another pursue down in the basement. It was a mess down there, but I think I cleaned most of it. Nearly tripped on a bad step down there though. Anyway then I guess I’ll head home, I need the sleep anyway seeing as I haven’t been yet.” “You didn’t sleep here?” “Nope. I’ve been awake the whole time, but I find I’m more of a night owl and don’t sleep much anyway.” “Well I understand that, but I’m just surprised you stayed. You told me you were getting bored with the party and were about to go home at one point.” “Ah, but I also mentioned that after your sister complained about you to me, my interest was increased.” Johnny says. You pause because you almost can’t believe what he’s implying. “Wait a minute. Are you saying you just stayed at the party through the night AND this morning just to meet me at some point? Just solely based on what my sister bitched about to you?” “What can I say? You sounded interesting and after speaking with you I can see I wasn’t wrong.” Johnny smiles and you smile with a nervous laugh. On one hand it’s a little stalkerish and combined with Johnny’s oddness, he’s starting to come off a lot creepier. On the other hand, in a strange way you’re sort of flattered. You always did attract the weird ones Suzy. “Wow…I’m not exactly sure what to say to that.” You say. “No need to say anything. The pleasure of speaking with you is all mine. Oh but one more thing, did you want me to get rid of these useless sloths still sleeping in the living room before I leave?” “Well, they’re probably just going to be here for tonight’s party, so might as well just leave ‘em I suppose. No need to trouble yourself.” “Okay then, as I said, it was nice talking with you Suzy.” “It was…interesting talking with you too Johnny.” You reply back and head towards your room as Johnny starts taking a couple of garbage bags to the kitchen. What a strange person. Even stranger is that your self-esteem has been a little boosted by Johnny’s stalkerish behavior. Before Johnny’s praising of you, in the back of your mind you were still a little upset about Bobby and starting to realize you were alone again. Not that you had any major problems with being alone and you’re certainly used to it, but it still was nice to have a boyfriend every now and then. After Johnny going on about how most people suck and putting you on a minor pedestal you don’t feel as bad anymore about Bobby. Screw him right? He’s the one missing out. You enter your room and lock your door fully content on tuning out the rest of the world like you always do. You go back to fucking around on the Internet, playing games and when the mood strikes you, getting out your mechanical “boyfriend” who never disappoints you. Hours pass… Eventually the silence from outside your door becomes less silent. Looks like Julie’s party is getting started or at least getting louder. You don’t really pay it too much mind as you pretty much managed to block it somewhat yesterday, but then you get a knock on the door. “Julie?” you ask instinctively. “Um, no it’s me.” A familiar voice answers. “Johnny?” you say and then slowly get up to answer the door. You open it up a little and see Johnny standing before you (Along with some party people passing by in the hallway). “Hi again.” He says with a brief smile. “What are you doing here? Did you even go home?” you ask. “Oh yeah, I did, but just as I was finishing up in the kitchen, your friend Julie had come in to get some more booze. She mentioned that she appreciated my cleaning up and invited me back for tonight’s party. So I came back.” “Really?” “Well technically she also invited me to come join her and the couple up in her room, but I declined as you might aspect. Not an orgy guy.” “Yeah, which is why I’m really wondering why you came back at all. I mean I have to live here, but this really isn’t your thing. You said as much earlier today.” “I know what I said…but I also said…” Johnny’s expression becomes… not quite flustered, not quite angry, but more like he’s having a hard time and you’ve just put him on the spot. “(Sigh) Look. This is really difficult for me. I’m probably coming off like a creepy stalker and god knows you probably get a lot of guys hitting on you…but I like you. I know that sounds like third grade shit, but there it is. I really like you and I’d like to get to know you better. That’s why I came back tonight.” Oddly that was honest enough to actually be kind of charming. Lot better than the “Show us your tits” pick up line that you’ve heard before. Then again, Johnny is still pretty damn weird and much like how you didn’t want to lead on Julie; you don’t necessarily want to lead Johnny on either. > You decline As charmingly strange as Johnny’s awkwardness is you’re still not quite ready to go jumping into a relationship with another guy. “That’s sweet Johnny. Really it is. It’s just… I’m not looking for another relationship right now. I just broke up with my boyfriend and I think I need to be by myself for a while.” You say. “Boyfriend? I see. I suppose a pretty girl like you would have a lot of them.” Johnny says. You notice his tone sort of becomes “flat” when he says this. “Pfft hardly. He was my first and only one.” You say. And as quickly as his demeanor changed before, it changes AGAIN just as quickly. Before you got the impression he was almost pissed upon hearing you even HAD a boyfriend despite the fact he was your ex. After your additional information, it’s almost like he’s perked up again. “Ah, okay…I understand. First love and lost. Been there before. Say no more, I’ll leave you be. It was a long shot anyway.” Just as Johnny is about to leave, you sort of feel like you should say something helpful. “Johnny?” “Yes, Suzy?” “You’re a good guy Johnny, and I’m sure there’s some girl out there for you.” “I know, but she probably killed herself when she found out I was the guy for her.” Johnny says with a small chuckle. “Anyway, thank you for being upfront and trying to be encouraging. I must say though, whoever your ex was, he must’ve been an idiot to let you get away.” You watch as Johnny disappears into the crowd and you shut your door. Having dealt with your momentary break up of your usual routine, you briefly check your phone for the time and to see if maybe your sister tried to call (You still think she probably got hauled in by the cops) but nobody has called. Having little else to do, you go back to what you were doing before. Hours pass and you start to get hungry which unfortunately means you’re going to have to brave going out there and raiding the kitchen assuming there’s even anything in there. You exit your room and find that the party is still as lively as ever. Nobody pays too much attention to you as you creep through the crowd. The kitchen is a complete wreck. You don’t exactly know what went on in here, but there is some guy lying face down on a broken kitchen table. His head is bleeding and there are several broken beer bottles all over the floor. You almost hesitate to step inside the room, though there are a couple of other people just standing around in the kitchen drinking as if nothing was wrong. “Jesus Christ.” You say. “Does that guy need an ambulance?” you ask. Eventually one of the people in the kitchen realizes you were asking them. “Hrm? Oh him? Yeah he’s fine. Just got drunk, got into a fight and then well as you can see he wasn’t the winner. He does this all the time.” A girl says in a bored tone. “Yeah well I’d appreciate it, if he and whoever else was involved hadn’t wrecked the goddamn kitchen in the process!” “What’s the big deal and what concern is it of yours? It’s Julie’s kitchen and she won’t care.” “I happen to live here so it actually is somewhat of my concern, and where is Julie anyway?” “I dunno. Probably getting fucked as usual. Still don’t know why you’re worried about it. Besides some weird guy said he was getting something to clean up the mess anyway.” The girl says and goes back to talking with the guy she was previously talking to. “Weird guy?” you say to yourself. “Hey, Suzy.” You turn around and see Johnny behind you with a broom, a dustpan and some sort of cleaning product. “Johnny, what are you still doing…wait, have you been lingering all night around hoping that I might come out of my room?” Johnny looks away a bit as if you hit the nail on the head. “Well…actually at first I was kind of hoping that maybe you’d change your mind and come running out of your room to find me. A silly storybook fantasy really…but then after about an hour of indulging in that delusion I realized I needed to accept reality. I was going to leave, but then I suddenly got offered a video game controller from a guy that stopped playing, so I started playing. I ended up getting sort of wrapped up in the game, shooting people in the face, murdering hookers and such. Sort of fun, and made me feel better.” Johnny passes you by and starts sweeping up broken glass and continues talking. “After my escapism with virtual violence then I decided to go home, but then I heard about a fight going on in the kitchen so I decided to be a spectator, but by the time I got here, it was already over and the winner went out the back door. I didn’t think it was right to just leave your kitchen like this even if nobody else cared, so I tried to find your friend Julie because I didn’t want to bother you again since you made your feelings quite clear to me and I didn’t want to look like a stalker.” “A little late for that, Johnny.” You say. “Heh, well anyway I couldn’t find her. I asked around and someone said she left wit ha couple guys. So not knowing what else to do, I just decided to clean up the mess myself before I left.” “Wait a minute, are you telling me Julie isn’t here for her own fucking party?” “Uh, no it appears she isn’t.” It’s one thing to have to put up with the parties when she’s actually here, but if she’s not even going to be here then why the hell do you have to still put up with it? So much for Julie’s sob story about going to turn over a new leaf after your talk. You’re annoyed and to top it off you’re still really hungry. “Goddamnit all I wanted to do is get some food from the fucking kitchen…” you say. “Did you want me to order a pizza for you?” “I don’t have any money.” “So? I got some money, I’ll be happy to buy you a pizza, I’ll get you a drink too.” Actually you don’t have anything against Johnny’s offer, but you’re hesitant to accept. “Johnny, I’ll accept your offer, BUT I don’t want YOU to get it in your head that I owe you something because of it.” “Thought never crossed my mind.” Johnny says. He doesn’t even seem hurt by your implication. “Okay. Sorry, I got a little authoritative there.” “No, no, I get it. It’s smart for you to lay that out there immediately. Anyway I’ll call up the place and I’ll get it to you when it’s here. In the meantime you can go back and relax in your room if you wish.” Johnny says continuing to sweep. “Oh. Um okay. Thanks. Hey, do you think we should call an ambulance for that guy on the floor?” you ask Johnny. “Him? Nah, he’s fine. I actually checked him soon after I came in here. Really I would’ve rolled him over on his back, but with all the broken glass on the floor I probably would’ve done more harm. Anyway I got this, don’t worry.” Johnny says. Well he might be a weird guy who seems creepy at times and is definitely stalking you a bit, but at least he’s helpful which is more that can be said for Julie who has seemingly just abandoned her own party. You try to call her up, but you get no answer, but you weren’t really expecting one anyway. Still it is weird that she left. Julie’s always been irresponsible, but she’s like you in that she barely ever leaves the house. After all, why would she go get fucked, drunk and high elsewhere when she can do it right here? In any case, she’ll probably be back, and you go back to wasting your time on the Internet. After a half hour passes and there’s a knock on the door. “Pizza delivery.” Johnny says. “Okay.” You answer and get up to open the door. “Here you go. I ordered a standard pepperoni and cheese pizza and got you Coke. Hope that’s okay, since I forgot to ask what you like.” “It’s fine. Thank you.” “Alright then, I’ll leave you be.” Johnny says starting to leave. You don’t know what it is about this guy but… “Hey Johnny, did you want some pizza?” “Huh? Oh, nah. I’m good. I ate a little earlier. I don’t tend to eat much anyway.” “Hm, don’t eat much, don’t sleep much. You sure you’re human?” you half joke. This causes an unusual guffaw of laughter that you didn’t expect from him. “I sometimes wonder that myself.” He says still chuckling. “Enjoy the rest of your evening Suzy.” Johnny once again disappears into the crowd in the living room and you lock your door. The rest of your night is pretty much eating your pizza, drinking your coke, taking a quick shower and then eventually settling in for the night. You have no idea if the part is still going on outside, but the noise has decreased a little, so maybe it’s starting to wind down. Well at least you don’t need to share your bed this time. > Next day… WEDNESDAY You wake up to the hum of a vacuum passing the outside your door. You shake your head, because you know who that probably is. You check your phone for the time and see that you’ve slept through the morning as usual and nobody has called. As you go through your bathroom routine of brushing your teeth and such, you ponder on whether or not you should check how trashed the house is or just stay in your room and not deal with it. Ultimately you decide to check despite not really wanting to. Besides Johnny is obviously out there and you’re going to have to do something about him. You exit your room and find that the hallway is fairly clean and the hum of the vacuum is now coming from the living room. “At it again are you Johnny?” you say walking into the living room. The living room is spotless and you notice that unlike the last time you don’t see anyone flopped out on the floor or sofa. “Hi Suzy, did you sleep well last night?” Johnny asks while turning off the vacuum. “Yeah. So did Julie ever come back?” “Nope, I never saw her again. Guess she might’ve stayed the night somewhere else.” “(Sigh) I see. Is there anyone else here?” “Nope, you’ll be pleased to know that I eventually managed to kick everyone out of the house, of course some just left anyway, but I figured you’d be glad to not have your home resemble a flophouse when you woke up.” “Wait, so are you telling me there’s nobody else here?” “Nope, except me of course.” That makes you feel a little uneasy. “Uh…okay…” you say and start backing away a bit. You briefly wonder how fast you could run to the back door and escape and then you wonder if you could run into your room and grab that pistol that’s still in Julie’s dad’s desk. Johnny already senses your distress. “Shit. I’ve done it again. I’ve made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry Suzy, I just…I dunno. I don’t mean to be creepy, I just wanted to make things nice for you.” Johnny says and actually starts walking backwards from you in an effort to put you more at ease. “Johnny, I know you mean well and I know that you like me, but like I said, I’m just not ready for anyone right now.” “I know, I know, I know you said so before…but how can I win your heart if I don’t continue to try? Couldn’t we at least just talk more? I mean we really haven’t gotten to talk a lot one on one with just us around.” Johnny says. “Johnny…” you start to say, but then you’re interrupted from something loud outside. “What the hell…” Johnny says and walks over to one of the windows to peek. “Holy shit, there’s a bunch of military guys, a couple of military trucks and even an A.P.C. coming down the street!” Johnny remarks. At first you can’t believe him, but that soon disappears when a loudspeaker is heard. “ATTENTION! THIS TOWN IS UNDER MARSHAL LAW AND THIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS NOW UNDER WATCH BY THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD. A GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE WILL SOON VISIT ALL OF YOU AND ASSIST IN ANYTHING THAT YOU MAY NEED DURING THIS STATE OF EMERGENCY. STAY IN YOUR HOMES. DO NOT COME OUT FOR ANY REASON. FAILURE TO DO SO MAY RESULT IN THE USE OF LETHAL FORCE.” Well that is certainly something you didn’t expect. You also don’t know what you’re going to do. Why is this town under marshal law? What the hell is going on? While you’re not sure of why this is happening, Johnny has some thoughts on the matter though. “Wow, I really hope this isn’t something serious, like some biological weapon or something…but then I’ve been watching the news while vacuuming and there’s been no emergency broadcast about such a thing or anything. Just those Ground Zero infomercials, which have been increasing as of late.” Johnny turns back to you. “Well anyway, I suppose one upside to all this. With us being stuck inside, we can talk and get to know each other better like I was suggesting before.” Johnny remarks. While Johnny has been just slightly on the side of creepy there actually is no proof that he isn’t just someone that lacks proper social skills and is a bit head over heels for you. And considering your last boyfriend was going around sacrificing people and could be very outwardly charming and charismatic, the way someone acts isn’t necessarily who they really are deep down inside. Maybe if you did get to know Johnny a bit better, you might feel different. Not ready to spread your legs different, but if you like what you hear he might actually make that step towards “winning your heart” as he put it. (Something about that phrase sounded so quaint that it actually was endearing) “Oh…all right. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do at this point, but I’m warning you, don’t get the wrong impression. This isn’t a date or anything.” You say. “No, no, I got it. I just want a chance that’s all.” After you sit on the living room couch and motion that he sit in the chair you begin. “Okay then…well what should we talk about first? It isn’t like I’m usually that much of a conversationalist myself.” You say. “Well what do you like?” Johhny asks. A general question, but a perfectly reasonable one for getting straight to the point on wanting to know more about someone. The funny thing is there isn’t much about you to know. Since you don’t get out much, you don’t DO much. The only time you did get out a little more was when you were with Bobby, and you can’t very well talk about shit you did with your ex. So you mention hobbies such as watching movies, playing games, and reading shit on the Internet. (You leave out masturbation) Sounds like a pretty dull life to the average person, but Johnny doesn’t seem to care. “You don’t find what I said boring?” you ask. “Simple perhaps, but I wouldn’t say boring. Are you happy?” “Well I was happier when I could live in my basement and not have to deal with the rest of the world, and it would’ve been nicer to not have to put up with Kelly, but yeah I suppose I was happy just living like that.” “Then that’s all that matters. Me? I’ve been sort of drifting from place to place ever since I left home. To be honest it would be nice to have some place to call a permanent home, but something always happens and I end up having to move on again. As you might aspect I’ve had several lines of employment, I’m not rich but I suppose I at least know a little bit of everything to make a living.” “Sounds like you’ve had way more luck in that department at least. I’m flat broke and can’t even get a job. So why did you leave home in the first place?” “It was time. Really don’t want to go back either. Not fond of the memories… so hey did you hear from your sister? I mean did she call or leave a message or something?” Johnny asks, changing the topic. “Nope, and now with this marshal law thing going on, I’m a little concerned about her. Julie too. Who knows where the hell either of them are. I’m even wondering if I should call my brother Peter to see if things are all right with him, though I imagine he’s probably fine.” “You have a brother too? Wow, two sisters and a brother. You have a big family.” “I actually had an older brother Ben as well, but he died.” “Oh? Sorry to hear that. Should I ask how?” “He killed his family and then blew his brains out in our house.” You say. “Wait…what? Why?” Johnny says a bit off guard. “Well I wasn’t there for the final show, but he apparently thought the government was coming to get him and that it would be better if he killed his wife and son rather than they get captured and brainwashed. Something like that. He always was paranoid and just got worse as he got older.” “I see. And you say there was no truth to his stories about the government?” “Of course not.” “Are you sure? I mean just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean that they aren’t still trying to get you.” “Pretty sure if he was that much of a threat to the government they would’ve assassinated him long before he killed himself. And even if they were out to get him, there wasn’t any need for him to kill his wife and kid.” “Well I guess I can just see it from his point of view. He genuinely believed in his mind that the government was going to get him and seeing it as a losing battle and not wanting to lose those he loved to the enemy, his act of killing them was out of love. Kind of romantic really.” Johnny is so deadpan, you think he’s attempting some sort of dark humor, but you realize he’s being completely serious. Somehow you’re not really surprised. “…yeah well I’m just glad he didn’t love me then…” you remark. “I’m glad that’s the case too.” Johnny says with a smile. “So what about you? You said you had a mother and an older sister.” You ask. “Oh them. Eh, not much to tell I suppose. Like I said yesterday, your younger sister sounds very much like my older one, and your older sister sounds very much like my mother.” “You mother participated in illegal underground fight clubs and roller derby races?” “No. Wait, your sister really does all that?” Johnny asks. “Yeah, so what makes your mom so bad?” “Very domineering. Verbally abusive, sometimes physically. Emotionally too I guess.” “What about your father?” “Dunno, never knew him. Took off before I was born. My sister is only one year older than me, so she doesn’t remember him either. Just know that my mom hated his guts. Didn’t keep any pictures of him. What about yours?” “Eh, he was a travelling lightning rod salesman, so it was like he was never home. When mom died of the flesh-eating virus though he was practically home all the time and just gradually drank himself to death over the years. Still wasn’t really there for any of us.” Johnny nods and continues the conversation. “After hearing about your family…I’m starting to wonder if I really had it all that bad and perhaps I just think I did.” “What do you mean?” “Well like I said, my mother was very domineering, but I pretty much did what my mom said. I mean I hate to say I was a mama’s boy, but I didn’t really step out of line compared to my sister.” “Heh, sounds a little like me. Did pretty much what my mom told me too though she was the nicest one in my family. She probably was a little too sheltering of me though.” You go on a bit more about your mother since you’re actually enjoying remembering the good times you did have with her. Johnny listens intently. Most of the time he looks like he’s displaying happiness because you’re mentioning positive memories, but sometimes you catch a glimpse of him looking away from you as if he’s in another place. “She sounds like a very nice person and I can see where you get your kind qualities from. Sorry to hear that she died in such an awful way…just yet another example of how you’ve overcome so much hardship in your life.” Now Johnny looks as if he’s completely gone to another place. He stares downward vacantly, if he was staring in your direction, you’d feel like he would be staring through you. “Johnny? Johnny? You with me?” you say. Takes him a few moments, but eventually he answers. “I’m not feeling…myself… I should go.” “What? Go? Where are you going to go? Are you sick?” Once again Johnny doesn’t answer right away. “Yes.” He answers. The monotone voice he answers with, isn’t exactly relaxing and you get the strong impression when he acknowledged that he’s sick, he didn’t mean physically. He starts to get up, and he wobbles a bit. At first you think maybe he is physically sick, but then he also said he was tired. Considering he was cleaning up earlier, he probably never went home and stayed up all night again. “Johnny you can’t go out there, especially in your condition. The National Guard is out there, remember?” “I’m not worried about some weekend warriors, I can be stealthy when I want to be. I’m just glad you gave me a chance Suzy, but I fear I’ve wasted your time. I’m sorry.” Johnny says and then attempts to walk out the front door, but his balance isn’t the best. You aren’t sure what’s going on with Johnny right now, but it’s even weirder than usual. > You let him leave As much you don’t necessarily relish the idea of possibly sending a man to his death, he’s not your responsibility and it’s already weird he’s been sticking around when there isn’t anyone else here maybe it would be best if you let him leave especially if he’s implying that he’s mentally ill. Besides if he claims he can sneak past the National Guard, then who are you to disbelieve him. “Okay, but you probably should go out the backdoor at least.” You say. “Yeah, good idea. You’re so thoughtful to look out for my well being. I just wish…things could’ve been different…” Johhny says and starts stumbling back towards the kitchen. You follow Johnny just to make sure he doesn’t fall or something similar. When you reach the kitchen you’re impressed with how clean it is. You’d never know there was a drunk fool lying on a broken table yesterday. “How the hell did you get this so clean?” you ask. “Oh, I’m very (yawn) good at cleaning. Always have been. There’s also some pizza and another drink for you in the fridge. I got an (yawn) extra one yesterday in case you got hungry today. Don’t worry, I made sure nobody touched it.” “Wow Johnny, that was pretty thoughtful. Thank you.” “No problem. I just hope someone will be as good to you as you deserve. Goodbye Suzy.” Johnny says and walks out the backdoor. You walk to the door and peer out the window to see if he’s going to jump the fence, but you see him walk around the house. You hope he isn’t going to try to go through the front gate again and is just going to cut through a neighbor’s yard. You run back to a couple of other rooms peering out windows, but you don’t see him anymore. You look out one of the front windows and he’s not out there either. He must’ve already made his escape you guess or at least you hope so. Lacking any other ideas of what to do at this particular time, you grab the pizza and drink from the fridge and head back to your room. You also attempt to call up Donna, Julie and even Peter to see if you can find out more information on their situations, but you get no answer from any of them. After passing some time on your laptop, you suddenly hear a loud banging on a door. Not the door to your room, but somewhere in the house. Upon exiting your room, it sounds like its coming from the front door. You remember that the loudspeaker from earlier did say there was going to be a government representative coming to visit the houses in the neighborhood. You head to the living room and look through the door window and see a well-dressed man and one soldier at the door. Since you get the impression the government will most likely just break the door down if you don’t answer the best thing you can do is be polite and accommodating. You grab the handle… “Greetings miss. I’m Mr. Zoll and I’ve been assigned to be the government representative for this area. May we come in?” Mr. Zoll asks, though it’s pretty obvious that this is more of a polite formality rather than asking permission. “Of course.” You answer and let Mr. Zoll and his soldier companion in. Mr. Zoll sits on the chair while his soldier buddy stands nearby and you sit on the other side of the couch and ask what all this is about. “My name’s Suzy, so how can we help exactly?” you ask. “Well, before we start I know this isn’t an ideal situation. You’re probably already concerned about what’s going on and why this town is under marshal law in the first place.” Mr. Zoll answers. “It is all a bit worrying.” You reply. “I’m sure. Unfortunately I can’t talk about it too much, however I’m sure you’re aware that this town has experienced a vast increase in criminal activity and rioting. More than your police force can handle. So until we get the situation under control again, we’re here to stay.” “Well I certainly can understand that. I haven’t experienced any criminal activity in this neighborhood though, well at least not to my knowledge.” “Hmm, yes this is one of the quieter ones. Some places I’m hearing about are pretty bad. Anyway I’d like to ask a few questions before deciding if we need to search this house further.” “Oh. Um, okay then. I have nothing to hide.” “Good glad to… hear it.” Mr. Zoll says. “So do you own this place?” “My friend Julie does.” “Oh? You’re not the owner? Where is this Julie?” “Uh, don’t know. She skipped out on her own party yesterday and never came back home. She’s a bit of a free spirit.” “Hmmm…” Mr. Zoll says and begins to write something down. “Why are you writing? Did I say something wrong? I mean not that I meant to say anything is wrong, that is. Everything is just fine! Ha ha.” Mr. Zoll’s staring and questioning makes you nervous and now Mr. Zoll is looking at you a bit mistrustfully. He thinks something is wrong and now that you’re shifting a bit uncomfortably, he starts to think you’re covering up something even though you aren’t! “Okay, you know what. I think it’ll be easier to just give a brief search of the house.” Mr. Zoll says standing up to say. “Um, all right then. I have nothing to hide as I said.” You say. Mr. Zoll tells his man to go take a quick look through all the rooms while the two of you stay in the living room. The soldier nods and follows his orders. He first goes upstairs and looks through. You half expect him to find a stash of drugs in Julie or Donna’s room, but he either doesn’t or that isn’t their primary concern. Next the soldier comes back downstairs and searches the ground floor, but once again finds nothing that is going to get you into trouble. “Searched everywhere sir, well except the basement.” The soldier says when he comes back. “Well you might as well search that too.” Mr. Zoll remarks. The soldier nods and heads back towards the hallway. You hear the door open to the basement and then a few footsteps going down and then nothing. You and Mr. Zoll sit in silence for a while. You don’t say anything, in fact you don’t even look in his direction for fear of giving Mr. Zoll an excuse to do something else which might not be as pleasant as a simple search. “Where the hell is he…shouldn’t be taking this long… Jacobs! Jacobs! Did you find anything?! Because if not, we’ve got other houses to go to!” Mr. Zoll shouts. There is no answer. Mr. Zoll calls again and still nothing. Mr. Zoll looks at you as if it’s your fault. “Is there someone down there?” Mr. Zoll asks. “What? No! I mean isn’t your man Jacobs the only one down there?” you say nervously. “That’s what I’m asking you…let’s go find out shall we?” Mr. Zoll says and then turns your nervousness into flat out fear by suddenly pulling out a pistol from his suit pocket. You put up your hands and attempt to say you have no idea what’s going on, but Mr. Zoll won’t hear it, he’s convinced you’re hiding someone in the basement and you’re going first down there. He also tells you to be completely quiet and not make any fuss or else he’s just going to shoot you on the spot and have a squad come in and burn this place to the ground. Meekly you comply and you head towards the basement with Mr. Zoll pointing his gun at you from behind. You reach the bottom of the stairs and you notice blood on the floor nearby and then suddenly a knife is plunged into your throat from an arm around the corner. You fall to the floor in what almost feels like slow motion as you gurgle your last words and breathe your last breaths. With your last vision from the cold basement floor, you think you see Johnny standing over you. You can’t hear him, but he’s obvious upset when he sees you. Then you see a burst of blood come out of his head and then you feel the heavy weight of his body collapse on top of you before the darkness envelopes your world.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY You wake up to the hum of a vacuum passing the outside your door. You shake your head, because you know who that probably is. You check your phone for the time and see that you’ve slept through the morning as usual and nobody has called. As you go through your bathroom routine of brushing your teeth and such, you ponder on whether or not you should check how trashed the house is or just stay in your room and not deal with it. Ultimately you decide to check despite not really wanting to. Besides Johnny is obviously out there and you’re going to have to do something about him. You exit your room and find that the hallway is fairly clean and the hum of the vacuum is now coming from the living room. “At it again are you Johnny?” you say walking into the living room. The living room is spotless and you notice that unlike the last time you don’t see anyone flopped out on the floor or sofa. “Hi Suzy, did you sleep well last night?” Johnny asks while turning off the vacuum. “Yeah. So did Julie ever come back?” “Nope, I never saw her again. Guess she might’ve stayed the night somewhere else.” “(Sigh) I see. Is there anyone else here?” “Nope, you’ll be pleased to know that I eventually managed to kick everyone out of the house, of course some just left anyway, but I figured you’d be glad to not have your home resemble a flophouse when you woke up.” “Wait, so are you telling me there’s nobody else here?” “Nope, except me of course.” That makes you feel a little uneasy. “Uh…okay…” you say and start backing away a bit. You briefly wonder how fast you could run to the back door and escape and then you wonder if you could run into your room and grab that pistol that’s still in Julie’s dad’s desk. Johnny already senses your distress. “Shit. I’ve done it again. I’ve made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry Suzy, I just…I dunno. I don’t mean to be creepy, I just wanted to make things nice for you.” Johnny says and actually starts walking backwards from you in an effort to put you more at ease. “Johnny, I know you mean well and I know that you like me, but like I said, I’m just not ready for anyone right now.” “I know, I know, I know you said so before…but how can I win your heart if I don’t continue to try? Couldn’t we at least just talk more? I mean we really haven’t gotten to talk a lot one on one with just us around.” Johnny says. “Johnny…” you start to say, but then you’re interrupted from something loud outside. “What the hell…” Johnny says and walks over to one of the windows to peek. “Holy shit, there’s a bunch of military guys, a couple of military trucks and even an A.P.C. coming down the street!” Johnny remarks. At first you can’t believe him, but that soon disappears when a loudspeaker is heard. “ATTENTION! THIS TOWN IS UNDER MARSHAL LAW AND THIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS NOW UNDER WATCH BY THE U.S. NATIONAL GUARD. A GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE WILL SOON VISIT ALL OF YOU AND ASSIST IN ANYTHING THAT YOU MAY NEED DURING THIS STATE OF EMERGENCY. STAY IN YOUR HOMES. DO NOT COME OUT FOR ANY REASON. FAILURE TO DO SO MAY RESULT IN THE USE OF LETHAL FORCE.” Well that is certainly something you didn’t expect. You also don’t know what you’re going to do. Why is this town under marshal law? What the hell is going on? While you’re not sure of why this is happening, Johnny has some thoughts on the matter though. “Wow, I really hope this isn’t something serious, like some biological weapon or something…but then I’ve been watching the news while vacuuming and there’s been no emergency broadcast about such a thing or anything. Just those Ground Zero infomercials, which have been increasing as of late.” Johnny turns back to you. “Well anyway, I suppose one upside to all this. With us being stuck inside, we can talk and get to know each other better like I was suggesting before.” Johnny remarks. While Johnny has been just slightly on the side of creepy there actually is no proof that he isn’t just someone that lacks proper social skills and is a bit head over heels for you. And considering your last boyfriend was going around sacrificing people and could be very outwardly charming and charismatic, the way someone acts isn’t necessarily who they really are deep down inside. Maybe if you did get to know Johnny a bit better, you might feel different. Not ready to spread your legs different, but if you like what you hear he might actually make that step towards “winning your heart” as he put it. (Something about that phrase sounded so quaint that it actually was endearing) “Oh…all right. It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do at this point, but I’m warning you, don’t get the wrong impression. This isn’t a date or anything.” You say. “No, no, I got it. I just want a chance that’s all.” After you sit on the living room couch and motion that he sit in the chair you begin. “Okay then…well what should we talk about first? It isn’t like I’m usually that much of a conversationalist myself.” You say. “Well what do you like?” Johhny asks. A general question, but a perfectly reasonable one for getting straight to the point on wanting to know more about someone. The funny thing is there isn’t much about you to know. Since you don’t get out much, you don’t DO much. The only time you did get out a little more was when you were with Bobby, and you can’t very well talk about shit you did with your ex. So you mention hobbies such as watching movies, playing games, and reading shit on the Internet. (You leave out masturbation) Sounds like a pretty dull life to the average person, but Johnny doesn’t seem to care. “You don’t find what I said boring?” you ask. “Simple perhaps, but I wouldn’t say boring. Are you happy?” “Well I was happier when I could live in my basement and not have to deal with the rest of the world, and it would’ve been nicer to not have to put up with Kelly, but yeah I suppose I was happy just living like that.” “Then that’s all that matters. Me? I’ve been sort of drifting from place to place ever since I left home. To be honest it would be nice to have some place to call a permanent home, but something always happens and I end up having to move on again. As you might aspect I’ve had several lines of employment, I’m not rich but I suppose I at least know a little bit of everything to make a living.” “Sounds like you’ve had way more luck in that department at least. I’m flat broke and can’t even get a job. So why did you leave home in the first place?” “It was time. Really don’t want to go back either. Not fond of the memories… so hey did you hear from your sister? I mean did she call or leave a message or something?” Johnny asks, changing the topic. “Nope, and now with this marshal law thing going on, I’m a little concerned about her. Julie too. Who knows where the hell either of them are. I’m even wondering if I should call my brother Peter to see if things are all right with him, though I imagine he’s probably fine.” “You have a brother too? Wow, two sisters and a brother. You have a big family.” “I actually had an older brother Ben as well, but he died.” “Oh? Sorry to hear that. Should I ask how?” “He killed his family and then blew his brains out in our house.” You say. “Wait…what? Why?” Johnny says a bit off guard. “Well I wasn’t there for the final show, but he apparently thought the government was coming to get him and that it would be better if he killed his wife and son rather than they get captured and brainwashed. Something like that. He always was paranoid and just got worse as he got older.” “I see. And you say there was no truth to his stories about the government?” “Of course not.” “Are you sure? I mean just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean that they aren’t still trying to get you.” “Pretty sure if he was that much of a threat to the government they would’ve assassinated him long before he killed himself. And even if they were out to get him, there wasn’t any need for him to kill his wife and kid.” “Well I guess I can just see it from his point of view. He genuinely believed in his mind that the government was going to get him and seeing it as a losing battle and not wanting to lose those he loved to the enemy, his act of killing them was out of love. Kind of romantic really.” Johnny is so deadpan, you think he’s attempting some sort of dark humor, but you realize he’s being completely serious. Somehow you’re not really surprised. “…yeah well I’m just glad he didn’t love me then…” you remark. “I’m glad that’s the case too.” Johnny says with a smile. “So what about you? You said you had a mother and an older sister.” You ask. “Oh them. Eh, not much to tell I suppose. Like I said yesterday, your younger sister sounds very much like my older one, and your older sister sounds very much like my mother.” “You mother participated in illegal underground fight clubs and roller derby races?” “No. Wait, your sister really does all that?” Johnny asks. “Yeah, so what makes your mom so bad?” “Very domineering. Verbally abusive, sometimes physically. Emotionally too I guess.” “What about your father?” “Dunno, never knew him. Took off before I was born. My sister is only one year older than me, so she doesn’t remember him either. Just know that my mom hated his guts. Didn’t keep any pictures of him. What about yours?” “Eh, he was a travelling lightning rod salesman, so it was like he was never home. When mom died of the flesh-eating virus though he was practically home all the time and just gradually drank himself to death over the years. Still wasn’t really there for any of us.” Johnny nods and continues the conversation. “After hearing about your family…I’m starting to wonder if I really had it all that bad and perhaps I just think I did.” “What do you mean?” “Well like I said, my mother was very domineering, but I pretty much did what my mom said. I mean I hate to say I was a mama’s boy, but I didn’t really step out of line compared to my sister.” “Heh, sounds a little like me. Did pretty much what my mom told me too though she was the nicest one in my family. She probably was a little too sheltering of me though.” You go on a bit more about your mother since you’re actually enjoying remembering the good times you did have with her. Johnny listens intently. Most of the time he looks like he’s displaying happiness because you’re mentioning positive memories, but sometimes you catch a glimpse of him looking away from you as if he’s in another place. “She sounds like a very nice person and I can see where you get your kind qualities from. Sorry to hear that she died in such an awful way…just yet another example of how you’ve overcome so much hardship in your life.” Now Johnny looks as if he’s completely gone to another place. He stares downward vacantly, if he was staring in your direction, you’d feel like he would be staring through you. “Johnny? Johnny? You with me?” you say. Takes him a few moments, but eventually he answers. “I’m not feeling…myself… I should go.” “What? Go? Where are you going to go? Are you sick?” Once again Johnny doesn’t answer right away. “Yes.” He answers. The monotone voice he answers with, isn’t exactly relaxing and you get the strong impression when he acknowledged that he’s sick, he didn’t mean physically. He starts to get up, and he wobbles a bit. At first you think maybe he is physically sick, but then he also said he was tired. Considering he was cleaning up earlier, he probably never went home and stayed up all night again. “Johnny you can’t go out there, especially in your condition. The National Guard is out there, remember?” “I’m not worried about some weekend warriors, I can be stealthy when I want to be. I’m just glad you gave me a chance Suzy, but I fear I’ve wasted your time. I’m sorry.” Johnny says and then attempts to walk out the front door, but his balance isn’t the best. You aren’t sure what’s going on with Johnny right now, but it’s even weirder than usual. > You insist that he stay Weird or not, you’re not going to just let him potentially get shot. “Johnny! You can’t go out the front door! Look, just lie down on the couch okay? You can sleep here. It’ll be all right.” You say getting up and grabbing his arm. Johnny stares at your hand and then at your face. “Do you mean it?” Johnny asks. “Of course, I can’t let you go out there and get shot. I mean if you still want to leave then at least wait until its night and you’ve had some sleep.” You answer. “You’re so…so perfect…” Johnny remarks and starts to head back towards the couch. You help Johnny back to the couch, and when he lies down he falls asleep almost immediately. “I…love you Suzy…” he says as he drifts off. Well there was nothing ambiguous about that. You start wondering if you should have your head examined for possibly enabling a possibly mentally unstable guy who’s more than a little obsessed with you. “(Sigh) What the hell is wrong with you Suzy? First it was a cultist, now it’s this stalker. Are you deliberately picking crazy people as potential boyfriend material?” you say to yourself. You stand over Johnny watching him sleep for more than a few minutes trying to figure out where you actually stand with this guy. As you do so you never noticed how cute he really is before. It’s true that he’s somewhat average looking, but maybe it’s due to him being in a more vulnerable position that he’s coming off as more attractive and not creepy. Not knowing what else to do, you turn down the TV (Which is blaring a Ground Zero infomercial as usual) and leave Johnny to sleep. You stop in the kitchen first in the hopes of maybe finding food before returning to your own room. “Wow, this place was a mess last night. How the hell did he get it so clean?” you say as the kitchen is indeed much tidier without drunken fools and broken tables lying on the floor. When you open up the refrigerator, you surprisingly find another pizza box, which has been marked with a note saying “Property of Suzy, don’t touch!” Johnny must’ve ordered another one for you last night in case you got hungry later. That was pretty thoughtful, but what surprises you even more is its completely intact. “He probably was acting like a guard dog all night near the refrigerator in case someone tried to eat it.” You laugh to yourself. Grabbing cold pizza and an unopened drink you head back to your room and lock the door. Still wondering about them, you call up Julie, Donna and even Peter, but you get no answer from any of them. Just as you briefly pondering about calling Kelly too, you hear a loud banging on a door. Not the door to your room, but somewhere in the house. Upon exiting your room, it sounds like its coming from the front door. You remember that the loudspeaker from earlier did say there was going to be a government representative coming to visit the houses in the neighborhood. You enter the living room and find Johnny awake again. He still looks pretty tired. “Wha…what’s going on?” he asks, rubbing his eyes. “I think it’s the government rep.” you say, then you run over to the door and check through a window and see a well dressed man and one soldier at the door. You grab the handle… “Wait, you’re just going to let them in?” Johnny asks. “Well I doubt if they’re going to just go away. What can we do? Barricade ourselves in until they bash the door down? I don’t like it either, but it isn’t like we have too many options. Besides I don’t have anything to hide, do you?” “No.” Johnny replies. “Well there you go then, we might even be able to find out some answers too.” You open up the door. “Greetings miss. I’m Mr. Zoll and I’ve been assigned to be the government representative for this area. May we come in?” Mr. Zoll asks, though it’s pretty obvious that this is more of a polite formality rather than asking permission. “Of course.” You answer and let Mr. Zoll and his soldier companion in. When you turn around you see that Johnny is sitting up on the couch, but is propping his head up on the armrest. He’s still really sleepy so you’re not surprised to see a bit of a scowl from him. You just hope the others don’t take it the wrong way, but you figure as long as you’re polite and upfront, you shouldn’t have too many problems. Mr. Zoll sits on the chair while his soldier buddy stands nearby (eyeing Johnny mostly) you sit on the other side of the couch with a space between you and Johnny and ask what all this is about. “My name’s Suzy, and that’s Johnny over there. So how can we help exactly?” you ask. “Well, before we start I know this isn’t an ideal situation. You’re probably already concerned about what’s going on and why this town is under marshal law in the first place.” Mr. Zoll answers. “It is all a bit worrying.” You reply. “I’m sure. Unfortunately I can’t talk about it too much, however I’m sure you’re aware that this town has experienced a vast increase in criminal activity and rioting. More than your police force can handle. So until we get the situation under control again, we’re here to stay.” “Well we certainly can understand that. We haven’t experienced any criminal activity in this neighborhood though, well at least not to my knowledge.” “Hmm, yes this is one of the quieter ones. Some places I’m hearing about are pretty bad. Anyway I’d like to ask a few questions before deciding if we need to search this house further.” “Oh. Um, okay then. We have nothing to hide.” “Good glad to… hear it.” Mr. Zoll says glancing over at Johnny who is still alternating between being sleepy and unhappy about being awake. “So which one of you owns this place?” “My friend Julie.” “Oh? Neither of you are the owner? Where is this Julie?” “Uh, don’t know. She skipped out on her own party yesterday and never came back home. Isn’t that what you said Johnny?” “Hrm. Yeah.” Johnny mumbles. “I see…” Mr. Zoll says studying Johnny though you don’t know why. It’s making you nervous though. “Is this man your boyfriend?” Mr. Zoll suddenly asks. “Um…yes! Yes he is. He hasn’t had much sleep. You see we had a party last night and he stayed up late cleaning up. He really shouldn’t have, but that’s just how he is!” you nervously laugh being completely caught off guard by the question. In your mind you already are regretting saying that since you’ve sent out more than enough mixed messages to Johnny. Though when you look over at Johnny he doesn’t make any facial signs of a positive or negative nature, he’s too busy on struggling to stay awake. Mr. Zoll is now looking at you a bit mistrustfully. He thinks something is wrong and now that you’re shifting a bit uncomfortably, he starts to think you’re covering up something even though you aren’t! “Okay, you know what. I think it’ll be easier to just give a brief search of the house.” Mr. Zoll says standing up to say. “Um, all right then. We have nothing to hide as I said.” You say. Johnny slightly awakens a bit at this remark, but otherwise he continues to say nothing. Mr. Zoll tells his man to go take a quick look through all the rooms while the three of you stay in the living room. The soldier nods and follows his orders. He first goes upstairs and looks through. You half expect him to find a stash of drugs in Julie or Donna’s room, but he either doesn’t or that isn’t their primary concern. Next the soldier comes back downstairs and searches the ground floor, but once again finds nothing that is going to get you into trouble. Johnny briefly turns his head to watch the soldier as he moves back and forth up and down the hallway. “Searched everywhere sir, well except the basement.” The soldier says when he comes back. “Well you might as well search that too.” Mr. Zoll remarks. The soldier nods and heads back towards the hallway. Johnny doesn’t look at the soldier this time, he just closes his eyes. You hear the door open to the basement and then a few footsteps going down, then all of a sudden… “Oh shit! That basement has a bad step!” Johnny exclaims and goes running down the hallway and shouts at the soldier. Mr. Zoll gets up and starts to yell at Johnny to come back and you call out to him as well. This is soon followed by both the soldier and Johnny yelling and then the sound of someone falling down the stairs. At this point you and Mr. Zoll both run towards the basement and there you see Johnny in the stairwell and the soldier crumpled in a heap at the bottom. His neck doesn’t look like it’s supposed to be twisted that way. “I…I tried to stop him from falling…” Johnny exclaims looking distressed. “His fucking neck is broken! I can see it from here! You killed him!” “I didn’t! I tried to save him! I shouted about the step!” “Bullshit! And YOU’RE lying too!” Mr. Zoll says pointing to you as well. “Something fishy is going on here and I dunno what it is, but BOTH of you are going to pay for it!” Mr. Zoll reaches for something in his suit pocket… Panic washes over you and it’s in situations like this that sometimes people either freeze up or make a rash decision. > You do nothing The panic is overwhelming and you completely freeze up. Even when Mr. Zoll pulls a pistol out of his pocket you still do nothing. It’s like the next few moments are in slow motion to you. You watch Johnny attempt to run up the stairs, but Mr. Zoll turns quickly and fires two shots, one in Johnny’s chest and another in his head. Johnny falls backwards down the stairs and his body falls in heap on top of the dead soldier. You don’t even scream when seeing this, but your crippling frozen panic ends and you instantly make a run for it. Mr. Zoll attempt to grab you, but you’re too fast. You actually get to the front door before you hear Mr. Zoll tell you to halt or he’ll fire. You can’t stop though, you’re too afraid for your life. Upon opening the door, you feel a piece of hot lead going into your back and then another. You slump face first onto the front porch. Tears in your eyes and screaming from the pain you attempt to drag yourself forward, but it’s all for naught. Mr. Zoll casually walks up to you and ends your suffering with a final bullet to the head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Weird or not, you’re not going to just let him potentially get shot. “Johnny! You can’t go out the front door! Look, just lie down on the couch okay? You can sleep here. It’ll be all right.” You say getting up and grabbing his arm. Johnny stares at your hand and then at your face. “Do you mean it?” Johnny asks. “Of course, I can’t let you go out there and get shot. I mean if you still want to leave then at least wait until its night and you’ve had some sleep.” You answer. “You’re so…so perfect…” Johnny remarks and starts to head back towards the couch. You help Johnny back to the couch, and when he lies down he falls asleep almost immediately. “I…love you Suzy…” he says as he drifts off. Well there was nothing ambiguous about that. You start wondering if you should have your head examined for possibly enabling a possibly mentally unstable guy who’s more than a little obsessed with you. “(Sigh) What the hell is wrong with you Suzy? First it was a cultist, now it’s this stalker. Are you deliberately picking crazy people as potential boyfriend material?” you say to yourself. You stand over Johnny watching him sleep for more than a few minutes trying to figure out where you actually stand with this guy. As you do so you never noticed how cute he really is before. It’s true that he’s somewhat average looking, but maybe it’s due to him being in a more vulnerable position that he’s coming off as more attractive and not creepy. Not knowing what else to do, you turn down the TV (Which is blaring a Ground Zero infomercial as usual) and leave Johnny to sleep. You stop in the kitchen first in the hopes of maybe finding food before returning to your own room. “Wow, this place was a mess last night. How the hell did he get it so clean?” you say as the kitchen is indeed much tidier without drunken fools and broken tables lying on the floor. When you open up the refrigerator, you surprisingly find another pizza box, which has been marked with a note saying “Property of Suzy, don’t touch!” Johnny must’ve ordered another one for you last night in case you got hungry later. That was pretty thoughtful, but what surprises you even more is its completely intact. “He probably was acting like a guard dog all night near the refrigerator in case someone tried to eat it.” You laugh to yourself. Grabbing cold pizza and an unopened drink you head back to your room and lock the door. Still wondering about them, you call up Julie, Donna and even Peter, but you get no answer from any of them. Just as you briefly pondering about calling Kelly too, you hear a loud banging on a door. Not the door to your room, but somewhere in the house. Upon exiting your room, it sounds like its coming from the front door. You remember that the loudspeaker from earlier did say there was going to be a government representative coming to visit the houses in the neighborhood. You enter the living room and find Johnny awake again. He still looks pretty tired. “Wha…what’s going on?” he asks, rubbing his eyes. “I think it’s the government rep.” you say, then you run over to the door and check through a window and see a well dressed man and one soldier at the door. You grab the handle… “Wait, you’re just going to let them in?” Johnny asks. “Well I doubt if they’re going to just go away. What can we do? Barricade ourselves in until they bash the door down? I don’t like it either, but it isn’t like we have too many options. Besides I don’t have anything to hide, do you?” “No.” Johnny replies. “Well there you go then, we might even be able to find out some answers too.” You open up the door. “Greetings miss. I’m Mr. Zoll and I’ve been assigned to be the government representative for this area. May we come in?” Mr. Zoll asks, though it’s pretty obvious that this is more of a polite formality rather than asking permission. “Of course.” You answer and let Mr. Zoll and his soldier companion in. When you turn around you see that Johnny is sitting up on the couch, but is propping his head up on the armrest. He’s still really sleepy so you’re not surprised to see a bit of a scowl from him. You just hope the others don’t take it the wrong way, but you figure as long as you’re polite and upfront, you shouldn’t have too many problems. Mr. Zoll sits on the chair while his soldier buddy stands nearby (eyeing Johnny mostly) you sit on the other side of the couch with a space between you and Johnny and ask what all this is about. “My name’s Suzy, and that’s Johnny over there. So how can we help exactly?” you ask. “Well, before we start I know this isn’t an ideal situation. You’re probably already concerned about what’s going on and why this town is under marshal law in the first place.” Mr. Zoll answers. “It is all a bit worrying.” You reply. “I’m sure. Unfortunately I can’t talk about it too much, however I’m sure you’re aware that this town has experienced a vast increase in criminal activity and rioting. More than your police force can handle. So until we get the situation under control again, we’re here to stay.” “Well we certainly can understand that. We haven’t experienced any criminal activity in this neighborhood though, well at least not to my knowledge.” “Hmm, yes this is one of the quieter ones. Some places I’m hearing about are pretty bad. Anyway I’d like to ask a few questions before deciding if we need to search this house further.” “Oh. Um, okay then. We have nothing to hide.” “Good glad to… hear it.” Mr. Zoll says glancing over at Johnny who is still alternating between being sleepy and unhappy about being awake. “So which one of you owns this place?” “My friend Julie.” “Oh? Neither of you are the owner? Where is this Julie?” “Uh, don’t know. She skipped out on her own party yesterday and never came back home. Isn’t that what you said Johnny?” “Hrm. Yeah.” Johnny mumbles. “I see…” Mr. Zoll says studying Johnny though you don’t know why. It’s making you nervous though. “Is this man your boyfriend?” Mr. Zoll suddenly asks. “Um…yes! Yes he is. He hasn’t had much sleep. You see we had a party last night and he stayed up late cleaning up. He really shouldn’t have, but that’s just how he is!” you nervously laugh being completely caught off guard by the question. In your mind you already are regretting saying that since you’ve sent out more than enough mixed messages to Johnny. Though when you look over at Johnny he doesn’t make any facial signs of a positive or negative nature, he’s too busy on struggling to stay awake. Mr. Zoll is now looking at you a bit mistrustfully. He thinks something is wrong and now that you’re shifting a bit uncomfortably, he starts to think you’re covering up something even though you aren’t! “Okay, you know what. I think it’ll be easier to just give a brief search of the house.” Mr. Zoll says standing up to say. “Um, all right then. We have nothing to hide as I said.” You say. Johnny slightly awakens a bit at this remark, but otherwise he continues to say nothing. Mr. Zoll tells his man to go take a quick look through all the rooms while the three of you stay in the living room. The soldier nods and follows his orders. He first goes upstairs and looks through. You half expect him to find a stash of drugs in Julie or Donna’s room, but he either doesn’t or that isn’t their primary concern. Next the soldier comes back downstairs and searches the ground floor, but once again finds nothing that is going to get you into trouble. Johnny briefly turns his head to watch the soldier as he moves back and forth up and down the hallway. “Searched everywhere sir, well except the basement.” The soldier says when he comes back. “Well you might as well search that too.” Mr. Zoll remarks. The soldier nods and heads back towards the hallway. Johnny doesn’t look at the soldier this time, he just closes his eyes. You hear the door open to the basement and then a few footsteps going down, then all of a sudden… “Oh shit! That basement has a bad step!” Johnny exclaims and goes running down the hallway and shouts at the soldier. Mr. Zoll gets up and starts to yell at Johnny to come back and you call out to him as well. This is soon followed by both the soldier and Johnny yelling and then the sound of someone falling down the stairs. At this point you and Mr. Zoll both run towards the basement and there you see Johnny in the stairwell and the soldier crumpled in a heap at the bottom. His neck doesn’t look like it’s supposed to be twisted that way. “I…I tried to stop him from falling…” Johnny exclaims looking distressed. “His fucking neck is broken! I can see it from here! You killed him!” “I didn’t! I tried to save him! I shouted about the step!” “Bullshit! And YOU’RE lying too!” Mr. Zoll says pointing to you as well. “Something fishy is going on here and I dunno what it is, but BOTH of you are going to pay for it!” Mr. Zoll reaches for something in his suit pocket… Panic washes over you and it’s in situations like this that sometimes people either freeze up or make a rash decision. > You do something Seeing that Mr. Zoll is threatening you and going for something in his pocket you do the only thing that you can think of that comes to mind. You shove him as hard as you can towards the stairs. With one hand in his suit pocket he can’t quite catch his balance and he goes tumbling backwards down the steps. Johnny just manages to get out of the way of Mr. Zoll’s tumbling body and soon it hits the bottom just like his buddy did. Mr. Zoll however starts groaning in pain indicating that he’s only hurt. He isn’t dead…well at least not yet. Still in shock from what you have done, you stand motionless as you see Johnny take advantage of Zoll’s prone condition and begins stomping on his head. Several times. Then he grabs the soldier’s rifle and begins smashing the butt of it into Zoll’s face. You’re not right up front for this gruesome display; you can still see the blood flying from where you’re standing. “Die! Die motherfucker! Fucking piece of shit!” Johnny starts muttering as he continues to destroy Zoll’s skull structure. After a few seconds of watching this, you snap out of it. “Johnny! Stop! He’s dead! He’s dead…(sob) he’s…dead…” you say and break down. You feel sick and run into your bathroom. You cough and vomit into the toilet, but it isn’t so much your contributing to Mr. Zoll’s death or watching it unfold, it’s mainly because you’re sick with worry right now about the repercussions of such actions. “Oh my god…oh god…what did I do…” you say in between heaving and crying. At this point Johnny has come up from upstairs to check on you. As you look over from hovering over the toilet, you see him standing before you in your bathroom doorway and blood on his clothes. “Suzy…Suzy…calm yourself. You did what you had to do. The guy didn’t give you much of a choice. I checked his pocket and he was definitely packing a pistol in it. If you hadn’t pushed him, he might’ve very well shot you and me both.” Johnny says in an attempt to console you, but it’s not working very well. “They…they’re going to send more people to look for him…they’re going to find out…we can’t even run. There’s military everywhere!” you say before heaving some more, but you’ve nothing left. You’re just shaking. Johnny steps towards you. “Suzy. Suzy. We’re going to be fine. Remember WE didn’t do anything wrong here. These assholes came invading our space and then acted in a threatening manner even after we both tried to be accommodating to them.” You stand before Johnny who now has grabbed a small washcloth and is approaching you with it. You just continue to tremble. “Suzy. Listen to me. I can clean up the mess in the basement. I’ll make it so nobody will ever know. Okay? If more weekend warriors show up at our door asking about their boss or whoever that dickhead was to them, we’ll just say he left and that they can search the damn house if they want. They won’t find his body. They won’t find ANY body. Trust me on that.” Johnny dabs the sides of your mouth with the washcloth. You at him with a mixture of fear and hopefulness. All you can think about right now is how you wish all of this would go away. “Can…can you really make all this go away?” you ask. “Yes, I can. And in the event that we have to run, we DO have that option. We aren’t prisoners here despite what the government wants us to think. We’re free to go anywhere we wish.” “I…I want to go home…” you say. “Well, maybe that’s where we’ll go then.” Johnny now holds both of your hand in his and looks into your eyes. “Suzy. I love you and I’ll never let any harm come to you. If the worst comes to worst, I’ll take all the blame for what happened today. I don’t want you to worry about this any more. You’ve been brave enough for one day.” His eyes they’re so piercing right now. They give off an almost commanding stare. His voice is so soothing though and it’s actually making you feel slightly at ease. The combination of you having a minor breakdown and the stress of all that’s going on…well it’s all enough for you to just accept Johnny’s willingness to step up and solve all your troubles like some sort of white knight. At least right now at any rate. “Come on, let’s get you to your bed. You need to rest.” Johnny says and starts to guide you back to your room. You don’t resist. You just go with it. Johnny is a perfect gentleman though; he doesn’t attempt to touch you in any manner that might be inappropriate. As you lay down the bed, you allow yourself to start giving into the wave of sleep that’s hitting you from all the mental exhaustion you’re going through. “Okay, Suzy, I’m going to get to work. Now I’ll close your door and leave you be, but if you need anything at all, just call me of course. Just don’t get up, you don’t need to put yourself through anymore trouble.” You nod at Johnny’s remark as you start to close your eyes. It’s hard to believe that not too long ago he was the one exhausted and you were still relatively lively. You have no idea where he gets his energy from. Just as Johnny is about to leave. You call out. “Johnny?” “Yes, Suzy?” “Thank you.” Your eyes are still closed so you don’t see Johnny smile at you before exiting your room. > Next day… THURSDAY You are suddenly awakened by the sound of your phone. You don’t think, you don’t look, you just instinctively grab it and answer. “Hello?” you answer still slightly groggy. “Suzy? It’s Peter.” “Peter?” you say a little surprised he returned your call as well still shaking the cobwebs out from coming out of your sleep. “Yeah, it’s me. You called me yesterday, but I was busy with, well a bunch of shit really. It’s sort of crazy around here, the National Guard is shooting people in the street…well at least I think they’re still people.” “What do you mean?” “I’m saying that I’ve been seeing some weird shit. Like several people running around trying to bite other people.” “Wait…what? You mean literally trying to bite people?” “Yes, I mean bite, as in I saw one guy that lived down the street from us chase another neighbor and start chewing on him like he was out of a goddamn zombie movie!” “…are you saying this guy was a zombie?” “Look I don’t know. I mean maybe he was just rabid or something, but this wasn’t an isolated incident. Maybe it’s a disease outbreak, or bio-weapon accident or something. I mean that would explain why the National Guard is here. I’m just glad they or any of those freaks haven’t beat down the door to this house yet, but I’m not taking any chances that’s why I’ve been trying to find Ben’s shelter.” “Ben’s shelter?” “Yeah, you know the one he was always working on and changing the fucking entrance all the time on? I figure it’s probably still well stocked and I intend on riding this whole fucked up situation in the safety of that thing until everything is back to normal. We haven’t had much luck in finding it though…” “We? Is Kelly there helping you?” “Kelly? Nah, I haven’t seen that Amazon cunt since she left for work on Monday night. Don’t know where she is. I’m here with one of my…clients. Anyway how are you and Donna?” “I don’t know where Donna is. She left Julie’s on Monday night and never came back, then Julie left on fucking Tuesday night and SHE never came back. Then on Wednesday…(sniff)…” You begin to feel a wave of emotion hit you as the thought of what happened yesterday catch up to you again. “Suzy?” Peter asks. “(Sob) I think…I think I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble Peter…(Sob) Something terrible happened…” You can’t continue and you begin to cry. “Hey… look I…” Peter is unsure of what to say for a moment and then he continues. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on over there, but I really need to let you go. I was actually hesitant to call you since I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk on the phone long right now anyway. I mean who knows if the government is listening…so…” You stop crying immediately and just stare at your phone in disbelief. “Wait, wait, wait. Just fucking wait a minute. Granted we’ve never been close Peter, but I have been genuinely concerned about you as soon as the National Guard rolled up in this town. Why the hell do you think I called? I’m obviously distressed about my current situation and you don’t even offer a sympathetic ear? After all the fucking times you’ve stolen my clothes? After all the goddamn times I had to put up with your old loser junkie friend Kevin perving on me when you thought you were some sort of film maker? You can’t even make the fucking effort to even PRETEND to care a little? You can’t even do THAT for me?” you shout. “Suzy, what the fuck do you want me to do? You’re over there and I’m over here. I mean I got my own shit to worry about. And you how this family operates, when the shit goes down, you fucking look out for yourself first.” Peter says. “I’m not asking you to jump in your car and save me, I just wanted a little…fuck it…you know what just fuck you Peter!” you shout and hang up “FUCK YOU!” you shout and throw your phone against the wall just as Johnny comes walking in. “I heard you shouting, what’s going on?” he asks. “My fucking brother is a goddamn selfish bastard that’s what’s going on! I’m fucking nervous, I don’t know what to do and I’m afraid. And what does he do? Does he even make an effort to console me in any way? No of course not he worries about himself. It’s what my family does, out for number one as usual. Fuck all of them, I don’t even care what happens to ANY of them any more!” say sobbing. Johhny approaches you, but still keeps a respectable distance. “Suzy, you don’t need to worry about them any more. They aren’t even worth getting mad about okay? Look I’m here and I’ll take care of everything. Speaking of which, that thing yesterday….” You wipe your eyes and try to compose yourself. “I…I don’t want to hear anymore about it… I just don’t…” “I understand. I understand. I just wanted you to know that it’s all been taken care of.” “Yeah, until they send someone to find out what happened to him.” You say. Johnny now steps in a bit closer. “Well, they haven’t yet and I doubt if they’re going to right now. You’ve been asleep for most of the day and you’re probably not aware, but there’s been some problems going on around the neighborhood I guess. In fact I actually went upstairs to check from one of the windows to get a better view and I saw them shoot a couple people a few houses down. Well I assume they were still people on some level, but they certainly weren’t acting right. Like they were rabid or something. One got killed by multiple chest shots though so I think we can at least assume they aren’t the living dead.” “Hrm. Peter mentioned something like that happening in my neighborhood. He thinks it’s a disease or biological weapon.” “Well he might be right on that somewhat. Seems like the Guardsmen would be equipped with gasmasks or something if it was something like though. I dunno. Anyway, as I was saying for all they know they might think that Zoll guy and his soldier buddy got bushwacked by one of those things yesterday. Besides, he went to several houses, it’s not like they’re automatically going to know it was us.” Johnny’s attempts at making you feel better don’t really work, since it just replaces one concern of getting executed by the military for murder for another concern of getting possibly infected by whatever disease is turning people into “zombies.” Still, he’s the only one trying and actually here for you, and that’s the sad part. “Johnny, is that a uniform you’re wearing?” you say noticing he’s changed his clothes. “Yeah. They’re from that poor soldier that broke his neck on the stairs. I know it’s a bit ghoulish, but my own clothes were shall I say, very… soiled after taking care of that business. Fortunately, the uniform seems to be a perfect fit. I was also thinking maybe it could also be a disguise in case we need to get the hell out of here.” Johnny remarks. “Hm, could work, but I don’t have a uniform.” You say. “I could always say you’re a prisoner or survivor I found. In any case it might be...” Before Johnny can finish, he’s interrupted by the breaking of glass coming from the kitchen followed by snarling and grunting. “Shit!” Johnny exclaims and runs out of your room. You’re not quite as eager to run towards the sound of danger, at least not until you grab the pistol out of the desk first. You haven’t gotten a few steps out of your room and you hear the sounds of a multiple shots being fired, followed by more glass breaking and an awful sound of anguish. You enter the kitchen and see Johnny standing there with an assault rifle pointed at the bullet hole ridden back door. Must be the same rifle the soldier had. He turns around. “It was one of those things. More of them must be wandering this way… where did that pistol come from?” Johnny asks. “It was in a desk. So you think more of those things are coming?” “I don’t really know, just a hunch, but the gunfire outside doesn’t sound like it’s letting up. We could easily barricade ourselves in here, but who knows how long this thing is going to last.” “Do you think we could make it out of here ?” “I believe we could, but it does sound like a warzone out there right now.” “Well I hope my sister has another set of car keys because that’s the only vehicle out there right now.” You say. “Hmm, well even if we did, I’m fairly certain as soon as we drove out in it, we’d be getting fired upon on. Even if we made it, there’s going to be more military areas to drive through. Nevermind the fact that your sister’s car isn’t exactly sturdy looking enough to survive such an attack, there is also always the possibility of a bunch of those things gathering together to overturn the vehicle.” “So are you saying we should go by foot?” you ask. “Heh, if it were just me, I might do that, but since your safety is a priority to me, I feel like we’d have a better chance however if I stole one of those military jeeps I’ve seen patrolling around.” Johnny replies. “Are you nuts? How the hell are we supposed to get one of those?” “Not we, me. I believe I could steal one. I have to admit I’m a little tired though. Still haven’t had a lot of sleeps, especially with… well you know. If I could just catch a little rest, I’d probably be able to do it better under the cover of the night.” The fact that Johnny seems so sure that he can just steal a military vehicle is a little scary. Did he also serve in the military or something? He’s never said. Come to think of it, he’s still never revealed too much about himself. In any case that isn’t quite your primary concern right now. “Well if you really believe you can steal a jeep, I guess that’s our best shot.” You say. “Well we still should pack some bags with useful supplies first. I’ll get some things from the basement since I’m pretty sure I saw quite few things down there. You can check this floor and check the upstairs.” Johnny heads back into the basement and you check upstairs first. You search Donna’s room and you do find some keys. You’re fairly sure that they are probably a spare set to Donna’s car. After grabbing the practical pharmacy from the bathroom (Julie and Donna sure didn’t reserve their drugs to just the illegal kind) you return to your own room and start repacking some of your clothes and some other personal items. A quick trip to the kitchen finds you a few bags of snacks and batteries. (And you looking over your shoulder constantly thinking that something is going to try to break in through the backdoor again) Johnny eventually comes up from the basement with an old looking bag of stuff. He’s looking really tired now. “Johnny are you going to be okay to do this? I mean I just found Donna’s car keys. We could leave in that and I’d drive.” you ask. “No, our best chance is the jeep. We’ll be riddled with bullets in that car. I’ll be fine. Just need a few hours of shuteye. After that, I’ll be ready to go. I guess I’ll sleep on the sofa in the living room.” Johnny says while walking off towards the living room with the bag and rifle. “Well I suppose we should wait before leaving anyway, I’d rather have you alert while we’re on the road. Hold on a moment you look a little wobbly.” You say and help him the rest of the way, which isn’t far of course, but you feel like it’s a nice gesture. Johnny certainly thinks so…but then he tends to think everything you do is wonderful. “Shit, I’m so tired. Even that gunfire going on isn’t going to keep me awake.” Johnny says, flopping down on the couch. “Well, I’ll be awake, so even if something unexpected happens and you’re still snoozing, I can wake you up.” “Thank you.” Johnny says looking up at you. He almost reaches his hand out to touch your face, but quickly stops himself. “I’m sorry that you had to call me your boyfriend yesterday.” “What?” You ask. “Yesterday, when you tried to lie to Mr. Zoll. You said I was your boyfriend. I know you were just saying that.” Johnny says as he starts to close his eyes. “You don’t worry about that right now. Just rest like you should have been able to yesterday.” “Okay…God…you’re so perfect. You’re so much better than me. I’ve done a lot of bad things Suzy.” “I think after yesterday we’ve both done a lot of bad things.” You reply. “No…I’ve…” Johnny starts to say, but then he trails off. Leaving Johnny to sleep, you stay in the living room if only because you’re a bit nervous to be by yourself right now. You turn the TV on and keep it on low, but as usual nothing of importance is on save for Ground Zero infomercials. Lacking anything better to do (Other than being on edge a bit) you start to contemplate that if Johnny is successful WHERE you should go. You don’t really have any good ideas either. You’ve never been anywhere in your life, so why would you have any ideas on where to go now? And given how fucked up everything is right now, where would it even be safe to go? No, the only place you’ve ever felt safe and at home is your basement. How you wish you could return. Then as you watch the GZ salesman obnoxiously go on about their product, it hits you… why shouldn’t you return? It’s a pleasant thought, but who knows if Peter already found the hidden entrance to the shelter yet. He might very well be already be enjoying the shelter with his boyfriend or whoever he’s got over there. You’re fairly certain if that’s the case, he isn’t going to let you in to share it. That was clear when you spoke to him on the phone. So where does that leave you? Leaving town to parts unknown? If that’s the case, you imagine you’ll have to leave that in Johnny’s hands since he’s mentioned he’s drifted from place to place and probably knows more about possible locations to go to in an emergency than you do. On top of all this, you still aren’t quite sure what to do with Johnny. He’s definitely gone a long way in trying to prove himself to you. He has possibly saved your life and is obviously willing to risk his for you. The only other person who has done that was Bobby. In some ways Johnny sort of reminds you of Bobby…and that’s also another reason why you continue to be leery of him. Other than his stalker behavior since you’ve met him, you’ve already come to the conclusion that Johnny probably has some sort of shady history. When you saw him finishing off Mr. Zoll…well it wasn’t exactly a normal reaction. He didn’t just react out of a panic like you did when you pushed Zoll down the stairs, Johnny got frothing mad. An anger you’ve never seen him display so outwardly before. Between that and his mumblings of “doing bad things” and you’re inclined to believe that whatever his past might be, that Johnny HAS killed before. And probably the more fucked up thing is that it doesn’t exactly bother you, or rather it doesn’t bother you like it should a normal person. Bobby used to kill people on a regular basis and while it took a little time for you to build complete trust in him, you did it and you had a relationship out of it. (And the funniest thing is that it didn’t even end in bloodshed) The question is, do you want to possibly put yourself through it all again? The unstable nature? The paranoia of wondering is he ever going to hurt you? Even the “normal” part of wondering if you’re just going to just eventually break up is a concern for you. Part of you still is upset about Bobby after all. You must have a thing for murderers at this point, because it’s the only explanation to why you’re contemplating all this. Maybe that whole incident with your Uncle Ed fucked you up even more than you realized. You do have Donna’s car keys. You could just leave now while Johnny sleeps. > You leave Johnny You can’t stay with Johnny, he’s obviously unstable no matter how nice he is to you. You’re not going through it again. Plus you’re also worried about staying here any longer than you have to since you’re still paranoid that the National Guard will be sending someone here to search for their missing in action comrades. You go back to your room and grab your bags. You start to make your way towards the living room, but then you think that perhaps maybe going out the back door would be better since you don’t have to sneak past Johnny to do so. The back door is still a wreck from today’s earlier attack. When you open it up you finally see the thing that was trying to get in. Looks human enough minus the bullet holes and the slightly feral facial features. You just hope there aren’t anymore currently lurking about though the nearby gunfire isn’t encouraging. You make your way through the backyard and then go around the house and finally reach Donna’s car. You quickly load your bags in, worrying the whole time you’re going to get attacked by one of those things or Johnny suddenly waking up and running out the front door. You get the impression he’s not going to be happy to find you gone when he wakes up. You get in the car and you actually manage to swing the car out into the street before you hear shouting and then fired upon. Despite the sounds of glass shattering behind you. You keep it together and just drive hoping that there aren’t too many of the guard in front of you. It’s a false hope as you do indeed bump into more than a couple patrols with itchy trigger fingers. Some you try to avoid by going down other streets. Others are actually busy fighting off others. How you aren’t hit by any that do shoot at you is something of a minor miracle, but the car certainly doesn’t come through unscathed since by the time you manage to make out of Julie’s neighborhood, it’s making rattling sounds. You continue to drive and try to keep off the main streets though with your car now making several clattering sounds you’re not exactly keeping a low profile. “Just gotta make it home. I’ll be safe there.” You mumble to yourself. Your drive there isn’t quite as eventful as your escape from Julie’s house, but it isn’t without peril. The National Guard isn’t quite as in control in your part of the town and there are far more of the rabid roaming around either chasing down normal people or attempting to break into houses. Most of them don’t attempt to attack you, or if they do, you just continue driving fast enough that they don’t get the chance. By the time you get to your own house, your neighborhood is eerily quiet. There are definitely signs of past conflict all over the place, but there is nobody on the streets and most homes are not lit either. (Though you do see broken doors and windows on a lot of them) Fortunately your own house doesn’t look damaged (At least not from the front) You half expect to get swarmed by crazies as soon as you park in front of your house, but you manage to get in the house with your bags. “PETER?! Are you here?!” you call out when you get in the door and dump your bags on the floor. There is no answer, but then again maybe he’s already found the shelter. The first thing you do is search the ground floor. Amazingly it doesn’t look like your house has been attacked at all. Even looking out into the backyard things look fairly untouched. Then you search the connected garage and that’s when you make an unexpected discovery. You find Peter and another unknown man both not quite entirely dressed, but that isn’t the disturbing part. The fact that they’re both dead is the disturbing part. The garage itself is a bit of a mess, like there was definitely a struggle, and your brother’s body and the body of who you presume is his lover or client both show signs of blunt trauma. Looks like their necks were both broken to ultimately kill them though. You aren’t sure what to think. You feel like you should be more upset than you are, but given what an asshole he was towards you earlier and what you’ve already had to experience, you’re not having feelings of sorrow. You’re actually more concerned with how this happened. There isn’t anyone else here to your knowledge and if it had been one of those things, the bodies would probably have bite marks. You suppose it could’ve been regular bandits or robbers, but you’d expect gunshot or even knife wounds and neither have that. Also if it was bandits that killed them, you wonder why they wouldn’t take Peter’s car since his keys are still sitting on a dresser nearby. Whether Peter was planning on leaving himself or still looking for Ben’s hidden shelter (And if he found it or not) you’ll never know you suppose. Feeling the fear of potential intruders in the house, you pull your pistol out and begin to search the rest of the house. You head upstairs and cautiously search with your pistol drawn. Much like the downstairs though, you find that there isn’t anyone lurking up here. You even manage to find the courage to peek your head into Kelly’s room, but given how messy her usually room is, you don’t know if she’s ever returned here. You get the idea to call her up, but predictably there isn’t any answer. Who knows what’s happened to her. Finally you end your search of the house by heading to the place where you started from, the basement. Again, not much looks different and fortunately there isn’t anyone down here either. Your own room is about the same as you left it. You shake your head that the though of all the bullshit you went through this week, only to end up back here. Makes you wonder why you bothered. After a bit more perusal of your room, you head back upstairs to secure the ground floor as much as possible. You put chairs in front of the front and back doors. (As well as the one leading to the garage) You also move a bookcase in front of some of the windows. It’s not the most fun thing to do and you bump and bang knees and elbows in the process, but it’s secure enough that you’re confident that if someone does try to get it, they’ll make such a loud noise in the process that you’ll at least wake up first. As it starts to get darker, you decide to take your belongings to your old room in the basement where you figure you can turn on the lights without fear of someone potentially seeing them from the outside. As you get resettled into your old room, you start to feel safer already. It’s odd that you should feel that way, but then this has always been your sanctuary. You do briefly worry about Johnny and if he’s going to try to track you down. Well if he does show up, you’ll be ready for him. You aren’t completely defenseless after all. Besides, he’ll have to get through the military and those things never mind the fact that he doesn’t know where you live in the first place. (At least you don’t think he does) Despite that, you’re going to try to remain positive. You make a plan to search for the shelter entrance in the backyard tomorrow and you figure if all else fails you can always take Peter’s car and try to make it out of town. For now though, you’re going to enjoy a good night’s sleep in the safety of your own room. > Next day... FRIDAY “Wakey wakey sis.” You hear a voice say. You slowly open your eyes and at first see what looks to be a man standing in front of you holding a shotgun. Your first instinct is that it’s Johnny, but then after the blur of your eyes clears a bit, you see that it’s your sister Kelly. Looks like she’s still hostile to you as well considering she’s pointing a shotgun at you. You don’t know why, but then has she ever needed a reason? You look at your pistol on the floor near the couch you’re sleeping on and Kelly just shakes her head. “I guarantee you wouldn’t make it sis. I suggest you don’t even try…heh I doubt you’d have the balls to go through with it anyway. I have to admit when I came up here to get something from my room, I didn’t expect to glance over this way and see you sleeping here.” Up? Where the hell would she come “up” from? You’re in the basement now. Kelly’s blocking your doorway, but you think you can make out a glowing light source coming from the basement floor beyond. And then it hits you. “…he moved the fucking shelter entrance in the house? And it’s been right near my goddamn room all this time?” you ask. “Hey hey! It’s about time you used that blonde head of yours other than taking up space!” Kelly mocks. Well you know where the entrance is, but unfortunately you’ve got bigger issues now. Kelly pointing a shotgun at you is concerning to be sure and makes you think back to what you saw in the garage. Peter and the other man’s body. Their bodies were beaten and their necks were broken. Kelly certainly has the strength and the skill to do such a thing. Kelly’s always been hostile to you and barely civil to your other sibling, but to actually kill one… “When did you find out? When you killed Peter?” “Pfft. I’ve always known. Crazy old Ben thought he was being so sneaky moving the goddamn entrance around all the time, but I knew where the fuck it was nearly every time. He had just moved the entrance again a few days before he blew away his family and himself. I’m just surprised YOU never accidently found it given that you lived practically right near the fucking thing for years. If the entrance was any closer you would’ve been sleeping in the damn thing.” Kelly continues to address you while briefly looking over her shoulder. “As for Peter, that little faggot managed to find out where it was and thought he was going to hide out from the current shitstorm in it with his boyfriend or whoever that other faggot he was with. Had to convince him that he had to go, he didn’t listen and tried to resist and well you saw how that turned out.” Kelly briefly shifts a bit in your doorway, but still holding the shotgun firmly on you of course. “So where’s that little whore Donna? Heard you moved in with her. She come with you? Julie maybe? Both? How the fuck did any of you survive the week?” Kelly asks. “I’m here by myself Kelly. I have no idea what happened to Donna, or Julie for that matter. I…I think they’re probably dead.” You say. “Mmm, well you’ll soon be joining them.” Kelly remarks and raises the shotgun as if she’s trying to get a more precise aim. Terror wells up inside you. “Wait! Can’t you let me go? I mean I’ll take Peter’s car and leave! You’ll never have to see me again! I mean you can’t have mercy on me just this once?” you exclaim and tears forming in your eyes. Kelly smiles sadistically and laughs. “God, you really are as stupid as you are pathetic. You know that? If I let you leave, do you really think you could survive out there with no supplies? How long would you be able to last without resorting to trading your own ass for safety? Not long I’d wager and that’s assuming you don’t just get raped and killed first or ripped apart by those freaks. I’m doing you a favor sis.” Kelly remarks. You start to cry as you realize that this is it. You’re going to die. “Oh for fuck’s sake, will you stop crying and be fucking brave for once in your life? (Sigh) Fine, you want me to show you mercy? Here.” Kelly leans her shotgun against the wall nearby. At first you think she’s going to spare your life, but you soon learn it’s just another sick game. “Okay sis, despite my undying hatred for you, I’m going to give you ONE chance just because out of all our siblings, I still think you were the one with the most potential. It’s just too bad you wasted it. So, here’s your second chance. Try to grab your pistol before I can grab my shotgun.” “But…(sniff) you’re right next to your shotgun, you can grab it a lot easier than I can grab the pistol. You’ll kill me before I even can reach it.” You say. “So what have you got to lose? You’re going to die anyway, so try to stop me.” You don’t say anything. You just quietly weep a bit at your situation. You thought you were safe, but how wrong you were. You really wish Johnny was here, but there’s not going to be a rescue this time. “Goddamn it Suzy, if you don’t make a move, I’m gonna just…shit!” You react while Kelly is in the middle of her sentence. You scramble for the weapon and you actually manage to touch it and then a loud blast is the last thing you hear.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY You are suddenly awakened by the sound of your phone. You don’t think, you don’t look, you just instinctively grab it and answer. “Hello?” you answer still slightly groggy. “Suzy? It’s Peter.” “Peter?” you say a little surprised he returned your call as well still shaking the cobwebs out from coming out of your sleep. “Yeah, it’s me. You called me yesterday, but I was busy with, well a bunch of shit really. It’s sort of crazy around here, the National Guard is shooting people in the street…well at least I think they’re still people.” “What do you mean?” “I’m saying that I’ve been seeing some weird shit. Like several people running around trying to bite other people.” “Wait…what? You mean literally trying to bite people?” “Yes, I mean bite, as in I saw one guy that lived down the street from us chase another neighbor and start chewing on him like he was out of a goddamn zombie movie!” “…are you saying this guy was a zombie?” “Look I don’t know. I mean maybe he was just rabid or something, but this wasn’t an isolated incident. Maybe it’s a disease outbreak, or bio-weapon accident or something. I mean that would explain why the National Guard is here. I’m just glad they or any of those freaks haven’t beat down the door to this house yet, but I’m not taking any chances that’s why I’ve been trying to find Ben’s shelter.” “Ben’s shelter?” “Yeah, you know the one he was always working on and changing the fucking entrance all the time on? I figure it’s probably still well stocked and I intend on riding this whole fucked up situation in the safety of that thing until everything is back to normal. We haven’t had much luck in finding it though…” “We? Is Kelly there helping you?” “Kelly? Nah, I haven’t seen that Amazon cunt since she left for work on Monday night. Don’t know where she is. I’m here with one of my…clients. Anyway how are you and Donna?” “I don’t know where Donna is. She left Julie’s on Monday night and never came back, then Julie left on fucking Tuesday night and SHE never came back. Then on Wednesday…(sniff)…” You begin to feel a wave of emotion hit you as the thought of what happened yesterday catch up to you again. “Suzy?” Peter asks. “(Sob) I think…I think I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble Peter…(Sob) Something terrible happened…” You can’t continue and you begin to cry. “Hey… look I…” Peter is unsure of what to say for a moment and then he continues. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on over there, but I really need to let you go. I was actually hesitant to call you since I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk on the phone long right now anyway. I mean who knows if the government is listening…so…” You stop crying immediately and just stare at your phone in disbelief. “Wait, wait, wait. Just fucking wait a minute. Granted we’ve never been close Peter, but I have been genuinely concerned about you as soon as the National Guard rolled up in this town. Why the hell do you think I called? I’m obviously distressed about my current situation and you don’t even offer a sympathetic ear? After all the fucking times you’ve stolen my clothes? After all the goddamn times I had to put up with your old loser junkie friend Kevin perving on me when you thought you were some sort of film maker? You can’t even make the fucking effort to even PRETEND to care a little? You can’t even do THAT for me?” you shout. “Suzy, what the fuck do you want me to do? You’re over there and I’m over here. I mean I got my own shit to worry about. And you how this family operates, when the shit goes down, you fucking look out for yourself first.” Peter says. “I’m not asking you to jump in your car and save me, I just wanted a little…fuck it…you know what just fuck you Peter!” you shout and hang up “FUCK YOU!” you shout and throw your phone against the wall just as Johnny comes walking in. “I heard you shouting, what’s going on?” he asks. “My fucking brother is a goddamn selfish bastard that’s what’s going on! I’m fucking nervous, I don’t know what to do and I’m afraid. And what does he do? Does he even make an effort to console me in any way? No of course not he worries about himself. It’s what my family does, out for number one as usual. Fuck all of them, I don’t even care what happens to ANY of them any more!” say sobbing. Johhny approaches you, but still keeps a respectable distance. “Suzy, you don’t need to worry about them any more. They aren’t even worth getting mad about okay? Look I’m here and I’ll take care of everything. Speaking of which, that thing yesterday….” You wipe your eyes and try to compose yourself. “I…I don’t want to hear anymore about it… I just don’t…” “I understand. I understand. I just wanted you to know that it’s all been taken care of.” “Yeah, until they send someone to find out what happened to him.” You say. Johnny now steps in a bit closer. “Well, they haven’t yet and I doubt if they’re going to right now. You’ve been asleep for most of the day and you’re probably not aware, but there’s been some problems going on around the neighborhood I guess. In fact I actually went upstairs to check from one of the windows to get a better view and I saw them shoot a couple people a few houses down. Well I assume they were still people on some level, but they certainly weren’t acting right. Like they were rabid or something. One got killed by multiple chest shots though so I think we can at least assume they aren’t the living dead.” “Hrm. Peter mentioned something like that happening in my neighborhood. He thinks it’s a disease or biological weapon.” “Well he might be right on that somewhat. Seems like the Guardsmen would be equipped with gasmasks or something if it was something like though. I dunno. Anyway, as I was saying for all they know they might think that Zoll guy and his soldier buddy got bushwacked by one of those things yesterday. Besides, he went to several houses, it’s not like they’re automatically going to know it was us.” Johnny’s attempts at making you feel better don’t really work, since it just replaces one concern of getting executed by the military for murder for another concern of getting possibly infected by whatever disease is turning people into “zombies.” Still, he’s the only one trying and actually here for you, and that’s the sad part. “Johnny, is that a uniform you’re wearing?” you say noticing he’s changed his clothes. “Yeah. They’re from that poor soldier that broke his neck on the stairs. I know it’s a bit ghoulish, but my own clothes were shall I say, very… soiled after taking care of that business. Fortunately, the uniform seems to be a perfect fit. I was also thinking maybe it could also be a disguise in case we need to get the hell out of here.” Johnny remarks. “Hm, could work, but I don’t have a uniform.” You say. “I could always say you’re a prisoner or survivor I found. In any case it might be...” Before Johnny can finish, he’s interrupted by the breaking of glass coming from the kitchen followed by snarling and grunting. “Shit!” Johnny exclaims and runs out of your room. You’re not quite as eager to run towards the sound of danger, at least not until you grab the pistol out of the desk first. You haven’t gotten a few steps out of your room and you hear the sounds of a multiple shots being fired, followed by more glass breaking and an awful sound of anguish. You enter the kitchen and see Johnny standing there with an assault rifle pointed at the bullet hole ridden back door. Must be the same rifle the soldier had. He turns around. “It was one of those things. More of them must be wandering this way… where did that pistol come from?” Johnny asks. “It was in a desk. So you think more of those things are coming?” “I don’t really know, just a hunch, but the gunfire outside doesn’t sound like it’s letting up. We could easily barricade ourselves in here, but who knows how long this thing is going to last.” “Do you think we could make it out of here ?” “I believe we could, but it does sound like a warzone out there right now.” “Well I hope my sister has another set of car keys because that’s the only vehicle out there right now.” You say. “Hmm, well even if we did, I’m fairly certain as soon as we drove out in it, we’d be getting fired upon on. Even if we made it, there’s going to be more military areas to drive through. Nevermind the fact that your sister’s car isn’t exactly sturdy looking enough to survive such an attack, there is also always the possibility of a bunch of those things gathering together to overturn the vehicle.” “So are you saying we should go by foot?” you ask. “Heh, if it were just me, I might do that, but since your safety is a priority to me, I feel like we’d have a better chance however if I stole one of those military jeeps I’ve seen patrolling around.” Johnny replies. “Are you nuts? How the hell are we supposed to get one of those?” “Not we, me. I believe I could steal one. I have to admit I’m a little tired though. Still haven’t had a lot of sleeps, especially with… well you know. If I could just catch a little rest, I’d probably be able to do it better under the cover of the night.” The fact that Johnny seems so sure that he can just steal a military vehicle is a little scary. Did he also serve in the military or something? He’s never said. Come to think of it, he’s still never revealed too much about himself. In any case that isn’t quite your primary concern right now. “Well if you really believe you can steal a jeep, I guess that’s our best shot.” You say. “Well we still should pack some bags with useful supplies first. I’ll get some things from the basement since I’m pretty sure I saw quite few things down there. You can check this floor and check the upstairs.” Johnny heads back into the basement and you check upstairs first. You search Donna’s room and you do find some keys. You’re fairly sure that they are probably a spare set to Donna’s car. After grabbing the practical pharmacy from the bathroom (Julie and Donna sure didn’t reserve their drugs to just the illegal kind) you return to your own room and start repacking some of your clothes and some other personal items. A quick trip to the kitchen finds you a few bags of snacks and batteries. (And you looking over your shoulder constantly thinking that something is going to try to break in through the backdoor again) Johnny eventually comes up from the basement with an old looking bag of stuff. He’s looking really tired now. “Johnny are you going to be okay to do this? I mean I just found Donna’s car keys. We could leave in that and I’d drive.” you ask. “No, our best chance is the jeep. We’ll be riddled with bullets in that car. I’ll be fine. Just need a few hours of shuteye. After that, I’ll be ready to go. I guess I’ll sleep on the sofa in the living room.” Johnny says while walking off towards the living room with the bag and rifle. “Well I suppose we should wait before leaving anyway, I’d rather have you alert while we’re on the road. Hold on a moment you look a little wobbly.” You say and help him the rest of the way, which isn’t far of course, but you feel like it’s a nice gesture. Johnny certainly thinks so…but then he tends to think everything you do is wonderful. “Shit, I’m so tired. Even that gunfire going on isn’t going to keep me awake.” Johnny says, flopping down on the couch. “Well, I’ll be awake, so even if something unexpected happens and you’re still snoozing, I can wake you up.” “Thank you.” Johnny says looking up at you. He almost reaches his hand out to touch your face, but quickly stops himself. “I’m sorry that you had to call me your boyfriend yesterday.” “What?” You ask. “Yesterday, when you tried to lie to Mr. Zoll. You said I was your boyfriend. I know you were just saying that.” Johnny says as he starts to close his eyes. “You don’t worry about that right now. Just rest like you should have been able to yesterday.” “Okay…God…you’re so perfect. You’re so much better than me. I’ve done a lot of bad things Suzy.” “I think after yesterday we’ve both done a lot of bad things.” You reply. “No…I’ve…” Johnny starts to say, but then he trails off. Leaving Johnny to sleep, you stay in the living room if only because you’re a bit nervous to be by yourself right now. You turn the TV on and keep it on low, but as usual nothing of importance is on save for Ground Zero infomercials. Lacking anything better to do (Other than being on edge a bit) you start to contemplate that if Johnny is successful WHERE you should go. You don’t really have any good ideas either. You’ve never been anywhere in your life, so why would you have any ideas on where to go now? And given how fucked up everything is right now, where would it even be safe to go? No, the only place you’ve ever felt safe and at home is your basement. How you wish you could return. Then as you watch the GZ salesman obnoxiously go on about their product, it hits you… why shouldn’t you return? It’s a pleasant thought, but who knows if Peter already found the hidden entrance to the shelter yet. He might very well be already be enjoying the shelter with his boyfriend or whoever he’s got over there. You’re fairly certain if that’s the case, he isn’t going to let you in to share it. That was clear when you spoke to him on the phone. So where does that leave you? Leaving town to parts unknown? If that’s the case, you imagine you’ll have to leave that in Johnny’s hands since he’s mentioned he’s drifted from place to place and probably knows more about possible locations to go to in an emergency than you do. On top of all this, you still aren’t quite sure what to do with Johnny. He’s definitely gone a long way in trying to prove himself to you. He has possibly saved your life and is obviously willing to risk his for you. The only other person who has done that was Bobby. In some ways Johnny sort of reminds you of Bobby…and that’s also another reason why you continue to be leery of him. Other than his stalker behavior since you’ve met him, you’ve already come to the conclusion that Johnny probably has some sort of shady history. When you saw him finishing off Mr. Zoll…well it wasn’t exactly a normal reaction. He didn’t just react out of a panic like you did when you pushed Zoll down the stairs, Johnny got frothing mad. An anger you’ve never seen him display so outwardly before. Between that and his mumblings of “doing bad things” and you’re inclined to believe that whatever his past might be, that Johnny HAS killed before. And probably the more fucked up thing is that it doesn’t exactly bother you, or rather it doesn’t bother you like it should a normal person. Bobby used to kill people on a regular basis and while it took a little time for you to build complete trust in him, you did it and you had a relationship out of it. (And the funniest thing is that it didn’t even end in bloodshed) The question is, do you want to possibly put yourself through it all again? The unstable nature? The paranoia of wondering is he ever going to hurt you? Even the “normal” part of wondering if you’re just going to just eventually break up is a concern for you. Part of you still is upset about Bobby after all. You must have a thing for murderers at this point, because it’s the only explanation to why you’re contemplating all this. Maybe that whole incident with your Uncle Ed fucked you up even more than you realized. You do have Donna’s car keys. You could just leave now while Johnny sleeps. > You stay with him You’re still not quite sure if any of this is going to lead anywhere, but fucked up or not, Johnny’s still been there for you. To abandon him without even an explanation is just something you’re not willing to do. Besides, if you’re right about Johnny’s past, having someone like that around might be necessary given how crazy things are right now. Other than pushing someone down the stairs out of panic, it isn’t like you’re a fighter. Looking a nearby clock on the wall, you figure it’ll be getting dark in a few hours. Johnny didn’t tell you when to wake him, but you figure you should give him a few extra hours after it goes dark if only so he’ll be more rested. Then you’ll try to convince him to just leave in Donna’s car again since you still think it would be safer than trying to steal a military jeep. Still feeling a little uncomfortable about the back door windows now being broken and thus your safety more compromised, you head back into the kitchen to fix the problem. As you get close to the backdoor, you briefly see the thing still lying dead with several holes in its body and head on the back porch. Looks human, but even dead it does look a bit feral. With great effort you manage to push the refrigerator in front of the back door. Nothing is getting in now, well at least not easily anyway. You return to your room and check to see if your phone isn’t quite as damaged, as it appeared when you threw it against the wall, but of course it is. Hardly matters, you don’t have anyone to keep in contact with any more anyway. With the gunfire still going on outside, you flop down on your couch-bed and realize that barring something trying to break in again, there’s nothing to do. You re-open your laptop and lose yourself in a game because it’s way better than reality right now. Hours pass… You look at the time on your laptop and realize you’ve been playing much longer than you intended to. You immediately get up to go wake up Johnny. It actually sounds like the gunfire has died down outside as well. “Hey Johnny wake up! It’s time to go. I know you said you had plans to steal a jeep, but I really think we should…” When you get to the living room though, Johnny is gone. You call out to him a couple times figuring that maybe he’s upstairs or even in the basement, but you get no answer. You do see a note placed on the nearby end table in such a way that you’d notice it. You almost hesitate to pick it up, but of course you do anyway. To my dearest Suzy, I’ve left to go get that jeep. I know you probably still want to use your sister’s car, but I still think our best shot is with a military vehicle. I figure we can blend in a whole lot better in one of those and not look suspicious while driving around at a casual glance by soldiers. Probably better at running over those rabid people too. We might even be able to get out of this forsaken town. Anyway, I left this note since I didn’t want to disturb you or cause any unpleasant arguments on this matter. I also know you didn’t leave while I slept, even though you could have. This means so much to me, I don’t think you know how much. I know I haven’t exactly given you much reason to not be distrustful of me, but the very fact that you didn’t leave tells me that you believe in me on some level. You know I’ll try to come through for you and that you’re willing to wait. I knew when I first heard your drunken whore of a sister talk about you; I thought you sounded like you were the one. Then when I saw and spoke with you, I was sure of it. I will come back tonight as planned, however if the situation becomes dangerous over there, then by all means escape in your sister’s car. It would never be my wish for you to stay in danger. Forever my love, Johnny When the hell did he leave and write this? And how did you not hear him? He wasn’t joking about being stealthy you guess. Of course you probably would have known all this a lot sooner had you not got wrapped up in your game and actually left your room. As for the note itself, well…it’s standard Johnny in the short term you’ve known him. The “whore” description of your sister is a bit of a standout from the rest of letter which is fairly white knightish. Of course you know damn well Johnny is far from being a “white knight”. Suddenly you hear the basement door opening. You tense up in fear since you’ve left not only the car keys but also your pistol in your room. You think at first you’re going to have to risk just running out the front door, but… “Hey Suzy! Suzy? I got the jeep, come on let’s get ready to go!” you hear Johnny’s voice call out. You cautiously walk towards the hallway and see Johnny standing there looking into your room, then he turns his head and sees you. He’s got some clothing in his hand. “Oh there you are. I was worried for a moment that you had to run out in a hurry!” “Johnny, what the hell…didn’t you hear me calling you?” you ask. “No, I just got here.” “What? How? I’ve been in the living room for the past few minutes! You couldn’t have gotten by me.” “No I came in through the basement window. I couldn’t just leave the front door unlocked when I left.” “Basement win…wait I didn’t hear any glass breaking.” “That’s because it’s not broken. I had it so I could easily open it. Don’t worry, I thought about your safety. That window is pretty well hidden and not exactly easy to crawl through so I didn’t think any of those things would see it. They would’ve been more likely to just try to bash the ground floor doors or windows in.” “When did you mess around with the basement window and why didn’t you just tell me you were leaving?” “Didn’t you get my note? I explained why I left with bothering you in it.” “I only just finished reading it this minute.” “Oh, well I assumed you would’ve left your room before now. Anyway, here I got you these to wear. I think they might be a bit baggy, but they should work to help us blend in more.” Johnny shoves the clothing at you as if to distract you from asking more questions. It’s a uniform like what Johnny is wearing. You almost ask Johnny how he got the uniform, but as with most things concerning Johnny you’re starting to think it might better if you don’t know. As far as the basement window weirdness, you’re not going to dwell on it too much because it’s really not important right now. “Alright, that sounds like a good idea, I’ll go put these on.” You say and go to your room. “Um, don’t worry, I didn’t get those from a dead person or anything. It was a spare one I found.” Johnny blurts out. “Okay. I trust you Johnny.” You say which seems to make him smile. You lock the door and change into the military fatigues. Granted you don’t see any blood or tears in the fatigues, but then he could’ve just choked the person wearing it to death. “(Sigh) Suzy, why the hell are you attracted to this guy? Oh right, because you’ve got some serious psychological issues yourself, that’s why.” You mumble to yourself as if being painfully aware of the situation makes everything okay. You grab your bags and exit your room. “Glad to see the fatigues aren’t excessively big on you, I know you’re small framed and all. You ready to go?” Johnny asks. “Yeah, let’s get out of this place. How is it out there?” “In our immediate area? It’s fairly quiet now. Haven’t seen any of the rabid and the remainder of the Guard is busy burning bodies right now. I mean there are still patrols, but nobody even batted an eye when I drove this thing up to the house. Probably assumed whoever was inside was investigating or something. We shouldn’t linger here though.” With both of you ready and as prepared as you’re going to be, you and Johnny exit out the front door and quickly enter the jeep which is sitting right next to your sister’s car. You have to admit, you do feel a little safer sitting in this thing than if you did in your sister’s car. Johnny starts up the vehicle and turns to you. “Suzy, you know I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. So is there any place you had in mind?” Johnny asks. ‘Never been anywhere, so not really.” You answer. “I remember you saying you wanted to go home before.” “Well that would be nice, but things aren’t exactly normal any more. I mean the only reason for going back there would be to look for my brother’s bomb shelter, which definitely would be a safe zone knowing how Ben spent so much time building and constantly modifying it. Of course my other brother Peter is currently looking for it as well and who knows if he already claimed and locked himself inside it.” “Hmm, well it might be worth a look if you still want to try it. I mean the only other logical option I can think of is to as I suggested, leave town altogether. Should be much easier while driving around in this thing. Of course it might still be risky, if they’ve set up some sort of checkpoints outside of town…but maybe we can get the edge by fooling them briefly before smashing through such things.” Pretty risky stuff, but then these are risky times. > You go home It might be wishful thinking on your part, but you desire to be able to go home and stay there is a lot stronger than trying to find some place new. In fact it seems like every time you try something new, it turns into a clusterfuck. “I want to go home and give it one more chance. If it turns out staying there isn’t a viable option, then I suppose we can leave town.” You say. “Okay, but you’ll have to give me directions.” Johnny says and starts pulling out of the driveway. You pass by a few soldiers dragging a few more bodies and placing them in a large pile outside one of the homes in this area. Another large pile of bodies is burning outside yet another home. Nobody tries to flag you down or anything though, you’re guessing that between the dark, the uniforms and the jeep, if anyone is actually paying attention to you driving through, they probably think you’re just more soldiers patrolling around. It isn’t like this is most stable of situations right now. You continue to tell Johnny where to turn and drive and you go through another area where the National Guard has a presence. Again, you have no problems for the most part. However you then start hitting areas that are still suffering from conflict and in those cases, pretty severely. This is where some soldiers notice you a lot more and try to call out to you, presumably for help. In one case, you see two soldiers ragged and bloody running desperately from several of those rabid people. They cry out for you to stop, but naturally you and Johnny just keep driving. You hear some faint curses and screams as you put distance between you and the unfortunate soldiers. You eventually drive through areas that have been completely overrun by rabid. In fact you find that the military doesn’t actually have that much control at all over your town and that there are far more of the rabid roaming around either chasing down normal people or attempting to break into houses. Most of them don’t attempt to attack you, or if they do, you just continue driving fast enough that they don’t get the chance. By the time you get to your own house, your neighborhood is eerily quiet. There are definitely signs of past conflict all over the place, but there is nobody on the streets and most homes are not lit either. (Though you do see broken doors and windows on a lot of them) Fortunately your own house doesn’t look damaged (At least not from the front) You half expect to get swarmed by crazies as soon as you park in front of your house, but fortunately that isn’t the case and you manage get in the house as quickly as possible. “Can’t see shit, but I’m sort of afraid to turn on a light.” You remark. “I know what you mean. Wouldn’t want to attract those things. I got a small flashlight on this rifle. It shouldn’t be too noticeable from the outside. So what’s the deal with this shelter your brother built?” Johhny says turning on the flashlight and briefly shining it around the room and the nearby room. “I don’t know yet. I mean all I know is the entrance is hidden and that Peter was looking for it. In fact, I’m wondering if he already found it and locked himself up in it. Seems like he would’ve heard us.” “We haven’t been that noisy. Besides, maybe he thinks we’re intruders and is laying in wait to ambush us.” “Possibly. I’d call out his name, but again, I don’t want to make more noise…ah to hell with it. PETER?! Are you here?!” you said in a raised voice, trying not to shout too loudly. There is no answer. “He could be down in the basement or upstairs.” Johnny says. “Maybe, I still think he would’ve heard me though…let’s go check his room. If he did find out something about the shelter, maybe there will at least be a clue there.” You say. “Where’s his room?” “The connected garage. It’s near the kitchen up ahead.” You cautiously move about in the dark with Johnny taking the lead. You’re holding on to your pistol the whole time being paranoid about something attacking you in the darkness. Johnny slowly opens the door to the garage and shines his light inside… You find Peter and another unknown man both not quite entirely dressed, but that isn’t the disturbing part. The fact that they’re both dead is the disturbing part. “Holy shit, that’s Peter.” You say. “Who’s the other guy?” Johnny asks. “Dunno. Probably a client or boyfriend or something. He said he was with someone when I spoke earlier today with him.” “Hmm, looks like there was a struggle. This place is obviously a mess.” Johnny says shining the light all over the room. He shines the light on Peter and the other man and then gets a closer look. “Hmm, looks like they both suffered quite a bit of blunt trauma before their necks got snapped. It certainly wasn’t those rabid people that did this. I’d wager if it was, they’d have chunks bitten out of them. Bandits perhaps, but this house doesn’t look ransacked.” You stand there in silence as Johnny goes on about who could’ve possibly done this. “Suzy? You okay?” Johnny asks. “Huh? Yeah. It’s just…well sort of weird. I was pissed at Peter for the bullshit he said on the phone. Seeing him dead like this…is well…I dunno. I feel like I should feel something, but I don’t. Maybe I’m becoming desensitized or something.” “Well, like you said, he was an asshole to you earlier.” “Yeah, he was. In fact I think part of the reason why I came here was the hope that he hadn’t locked himself inside the shelter yet, so I could yell at him in person and maybe even kick his ass. (Sigh) Guess that isn’t necessary anymore. Also don’t know if he actually found the shelter or not and now I’m paranoid that whoever killed him is still in this fucking house.” “We can find out the latter pretty quickly I should think, we can just make a quick search. As for the former, well that’s up to you really.” It’s the middle of the night, you’re in a town full of trigger happy military and cannibalistic crazies, you’ve just found your brother and his lover dead in the garage, you’re hanging around a guy who is unhealthily obsessed with you and to top it all of, you’re getting tired. At this point you don’t want to risk anymore travelling. “Well, let’s do what you said and check the house out. If everything is safe, let’s just camp here for the rest of the night and start looking for the shelter tomorrow with fresh eyes.” You say. “As you wish.” Johnny answers. First thing you do is finish checking out the ground floor. Everything turns out okay and fairly untouched. Even the backyard doesn’t have any nasty unwanted lurkers in it either. (As added protection you and Johnny shove a few chairs in front of the back and front doors just in case any DO show up) You head upstairs and cautiously search with Johnny. Much like the downstairs though, you find that there isn’t anyone lurking up here. You even manage to find the courage to peek your head into Kelly’s room, but given how messy her usually room is, you don’t know if she’s ever returned here. Who knows what’s happened to her. Finally you end your search of the house by heading to the place where you started from, the basement. Again, not much looks different and fortunately there isn’t anyone down here either. Not worrying about someone seeing a light source down here you turn the lights on and find your own room is about the same as you left it. You shake your head that the though of all the bullshit you went through this week, only to end up back here. Makes you wonder why you bothered. “So…this is where you lived huh?” Johnny asks. “Yep. This was my lot in life. It wasn’t much, but it was mine. I was happy here you know? (Sigh) If only things never changed…Hm. Just realized you’re the first person other than myself that’s been in here in a long time.” You say. “What about your boyfriend?” Johnny asks. “Bobby? Not as much as you might think. We actually hung out upstairs when nobody else was really around or over his house as unpleasant as that could be at times. Honestly I sort of preferred that nobody come in here except me. This was my haven from the outside world and wanted to maintain that illusion as much as possible. Funny, but even with all the chaos going on out there, I still feel very safe here. Anyway, I guess nobody is lurking in the house.” “Guess not. Either that or they’re very sneaky. So are you going to be sleeping down here then?” “I believe I will. I figure even if we can’t find the shelter tomorrow, I will have at least gotten to sleep one last time in my own room before we leave.” “Don’t worry, we’ll find it. In fact maybe I’ll do a little searching while you’re resting.” “Heh, well good luck with that. I know it seems like an easy task since the backyard is only so big, but somehow Ben managed to hide it pretty well. Only his son Tommy used to consistently know where it was located and moved. Besides, I wouldn’t want you to suddenly drawing a pack of those rabid things due to you shining a flashlight around outside. Even if there is a privacy fence around the back.” “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” “Yes. Yes, I imagine you would be…Johnny…you weren’t in the military yourself at one time were you?” “Nah. Following orders, regimented life, not really my thing. Had enough of that growing up with my mom. Why?” “Just wondering. Due to all the shit that’s been going on, we also haven’t had much time to talk. I still don’t know that much about you.” “Heh, well you know. Like I mentioned a few times, I’ve been a bit of a drifter. Nothing really exciting though, it’s just the way things have turned out for me.” Johnny starts shifting his body a bit. He’s trying not to look nervous about you asking deeper questions about his past, but you can tell by now when he’s being evasive. “Okay, so I’m gonna leave you to your haven as you called it. If anything urgent comes up I’ll be sure to let you know.” Johnny says. Johnny turns and starts to leave then he stops to turn back to you. “You know I love you right?” he says. “I… know Johnny…and we’ll talk about that tomorrow as well.” Johnny doesn’t reply, he just turns around and heads upstairs. Well barring any unforeseen problems you’ve got two big issues to tackle tomorrow. The shelter location and Johnny. But those are issues to deal with tomorrow. Right now you’re going to pretend that none of the shit that’s currently happening is actually happening and enjoy your haven, if only tonight. > The next day… FRIDAY “Wakey wakey sis.” You hear a voice say. You slowly open your eyes and at first see what looks to be a man standing in front of you holding a shotgun. Then after the blur of your eyes clears a bit, you see that it’s your sister Kelly. Looks like she’s still hostile to you as well considering she’s pointing a shotgun at you. You don’t know why, but then has she ever needed a reason? You look at your pistol on the floor near the couch you’re sleeping on and Kelly just shakes her head. “I guarantee you wouldn’t make it sis. I suggest you don’t even try…heh I doubt you’d have the balls to go through with it anyway. I have to admit when I came up here to get something from my room, I didn’t expect to glance over this way and see you sleeping here.” Up? Where the hell would she come “up” from? You’re in the basement now. Kelly’s blocking your doorway, but you think you can make out a glowing light source coming from the basement floor beyond. And then it hits you. “…he moved the fucking shelter entrance in the house? And it’s been right near my goddamn room all this time?” you ask. “Hey hey! It’s about time you used that blonde head of yours other than taking up space!” Kelly mocks. Well you know where the entrance is, but unfortunately you’ve got bigger issues now. Kelly pointing a shotgun at you is concerning to be sure and makes you think back to what you saw in the garage. Peter and the other man’s body. Their bodies were beaten and their necks were broken. Kelly certainly has the strength and the skill to do such a thing. Kelly’s always been hostile to you and barely civil to your other sibling, but to actually kill one… “When did you find out? When you killed Peter?” “Pfft. I’ve always known. Crazy old Ben thought he was being so sneaky moving the goddamn entrance around all the time, but I knew where the fuck it was nearly every time. He had just moved the entrance again a few days before he blew away his family and himself. I’m just surprised YOU never accidently found it given that you lived practically right near the fucking thing for years. If the entrance was any closer you would’ve been sleeping in the damn thing.” Kelly continues to address you while briefly looking over her shoulder. You don’t know if she’s just being cautious or if she knows someone else is with you…and where is Johnny anyway? “As for Peter, that little faggot managed to find out where it was and thought he was going to hide out from the current shitstorm in it with his boyfriend or whoever that other faggot he was with. Had to convince him that he had to go, he didn’t listen and tried to resist and well you saw how that turned out.” Kelly briefly moves a bit to her left in your doorway allowing you to briefly look to see if you see Johnny coming, but you see nobody. Kelly notices you looking though. “So where’s that little whore Donna? Heard you moved in with her. She come with you? Julie maybe? Both? How the fuck did any of you survive the week?” “I’m here by myself Kelly.” “Bullshit. SOMEONE is here with you. I can’t see a shrinking violet like you hauling your ass through a bunch of military patrols as well as those freaks. The fact that you’re wearing military fatigues tells me that SOMEONE helped you. I know damn well you didn’t kill someone yourself for them.” “It’s been a weird week Kelly. You never know what you’re capable of until you’re put into the situation.” You say in such a way that gives Kelly a bit of an eyebrow raise. “Oh? So…are you a killer now, little sister? Tell me, how did it feel when you did it?” “I threw up. I’m not a fucking psychopath okay?! It didn’t give me some thrill! I just did what I had to, to survive!” you exclaim. “Okay, okay, calm down there killer.” Kelly chuckles before getting serious again. “While this is enlightening and all, we really should be getting back to the matter at hand.” Still no sign of Johnny. Where the fuck is he? “So what’s next Kelly? You gonna kill me too?” you ask. “Don’t know sis…don’t know…severely thinking about it. I’ve never liked you. You’ve been a thorn in my side since you crawled out of mom’s vagina. Always having to be compared to how good and pretty you were and how bad and rotten I was despite the fact I was the one who was shouldering most of the responsibility in this fucked up family. What did you ever do except hide in the goddamn basement? Even now you left the house only to come crawling back here. Yep, I’ve thought about killing you on many, many, MANY occasions.” “Actually that wasn’t my initial intention. My initial plan was to drive out of this forsaken town. I only stopped here because my own vehicle was badly damaged and I had hoped to maybe get Peter’s car and some extra supplies before heading out again.” You say trying to stall for time. “Oh? Hmm, you’re just full of surprises today aren’t you? Well if that is true, you may have just bought yourself a bit of a reprieve sis…okay. What the hell, I’m in a good mood. I’m gonna let you walk outta here alive and you’re going to be thankful.” “I don’t suppose you’ll allow me to gather some supplies or let me have my gun will you?” “Hah, no. Wouldn’t want you getting any ideas of trying to shoot me, you being a killer now and all. In fact let me just take that pistol right now. Stay on that couch and keep lying in that prone position. Don’t you fucking move, or boom there goes your pretty little blonde head all over the place.” Johnny is still nowhere to be seen. Did he take off? Did you actually get abandoned by a fucking stalker? Is your luck really that bad? Kelly now moves into your room, still pointing the shotgun at you, As she’s crouching down to pick up the pistol, there is a brief moment that she takes her eyes off of you. It’s apparent that there will be no rescue; the only thing you can hope is that Kelly is going to keep her word and let you go unharmed. Of course you don’t really think that’s likely and part of you wants to grab for the pistol before she can. > You grab the pistol In an act of desperation you lunge for the pistol, but Kelly easily anticipates your actions. She quickly grabs the weapon and manages to step on your hand in the process followed by her smashing the pistol into your head. “You dumb blonde bitch, I was gonna let you go too! What the…” What occurs next is a blur mainly because you’re still dizzy from getting hit in the head, but also because it happens so fast. Johnny bursts out of the closet with his rifle in hand, but Kelly already has a grip on you and managed to pull you up in an attempt to use you as a human shield. Johnny and Kelly scream at each other. Something about letting you go and something else about blowing your head off. Eventually it doesn’t matter because Johnny eventually feels he has no choice and if you’re going to get killed, then it should be him that does it. Johnny opens fire on you both, before Kelly can make good on her threats of killing you. Due to you soaking up several of the initial bullets, she actually manages to get off a couple of shots at Johnny, but whether she got him or not is irrelevant because you’re still lying dead on top of Kelly’s equally bullet ridden body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY “Wakey wakey sis.” You hear a voice say. You slowly open your eyes and at first see what looks to be a man standing in front of you holding a shotgun. Then after the blur of your eyes clears a bit, you see that it’s your sister Kelly. Looks like she’s still hostile to you as well considering she’s pointing a shotgun at you. You don’t know why, but then has she ever needed a reason? You look at your pistol on the floor near the couch you’re sleeping on and Kelly just shakes her head. “I guarantee you wouldn’t make it sis. I suggest you don’t even try…heh I doubt you’d have the balls to go through with it anyway. I have to admit when I came up here to get something from my room, I didn’t expect to glance over this way and see you sleeping here.” Up? Where the hell would she come “up” from? You’re in the basement now. Kelly’s blocking your doorway, but you think you can make out a glowing light source coming from the basement floor beyond. And then it hits you. “…he moved the fucking shelter entrance in the house? And it’s been right near my goddamn room all this time?” you ask. “Hey hey! It’s about time you used that blonde head of yours other than taking up space!” Kelly mocks. Well you know where the entrance is, but unfortunately you’ve got bigger issues now. Kelly pointing a shotgun at you is concerning to be sure and makes you think back to what you saw in the garage. Peter and the other man’s body. Their bodies were beaten and their necks were broken. Kelly certainly has the strength and the skill to do such a thing. Kelly’s always been hostile to you and barely civil to your other sibling, but to actually kill one… “When did you find out? When you killed Peter?” “Pfft. I’ve always known. Crazy old Ben thought he was being so sneaky moving the goddamn entrance around all the time, but I knew where the fuck it was nearly every time. He had just moved the entrance again a few days before he blew away his family and himself. I’m just surprised YOU never accidently found it given that you lived practically right near the fucking thing for years. If the entrance was any closer you would’ve been sleeping in the damn thing.” Kelly continues to address you while briefly looking over her shoulder. You don’t know if she’s just being cautious or if she knows someone else is with you…and where is Johnny anyway? “As for Peter, that little faggot managed to find out where it was and thought he was going to hide out from the current shitstorm in it with his boyfriend or whoever that other faggot he was with. Had to convince him that he had to go, he didn’t listen and tried to resist and well you saw how that turned out.” Kelly briefly moves a bit to her left in your doorway allowing you to briefly look to see if you see Johnny coming, but you see nobody. Kelly notices you looking though. “So where’s that little whore Donna? Heard you moved in with her. She come with you? Julie maybe? Both? How the fuck did any of you survive the week?” “I’m here by myself Kelly.” “Bullshit. SOMEONE is here with you. I can’t see a shrinking violet like you hauling your ass through a bunch of military patrols as well as those freaks. The fact that you’re wearing military fatigues tells me that SOMEONE helped you. I know damn well you didn’t kill someone yourself for them.” “It’s been a weird week Kelly. You never know what you’re capable of until you’re put into the situation.” You say in such a way that gives Kelly a bit of an eyebrow raise. “Oh? So…are you a killer now, little sister? Tell me, how did it feel when you did it?” “I threw up. I’m not a fucking psychopath okay?! It didn’t give me some thrill! I just did what I had to, to survive!” you exclaim. “Okay, okay, calm down there killer.” Kelly chuckles before getting serious again. “While this is enlightening and all, we really should be getting back to the matter at hand.” Still no sign of Johnny. Where the fuck is he? “So what’s next Kelly? You gonna kill me too?” you ask. “Don’t know sis…don’t know…severely thinking about it. I’ve never liked you. You’ve been a thorn in my side since you crawled out of mom’s vagina. Always having to be compared to how good and pretty you were and how bad and rotten I was despite the fact I was the one who was shouldering most of the responsibility in this fucked up family. What did you ever do except hide in the goddamn basement? Even now you left the house only to come crawling back here. Yep, I’ve thought about killing you on many, many, MANY occasions.” “Actually that wasn’t my initial intention. My initial plan was to drive out of this forsaken town. I only stopped here because my own vehicle was badly damaged and I had hoped to maybe get Peter’s car and some extra supplies before heading out again.” You say trying to stall for time. “Oh? Hmm, you’re just full of surprises today aren’t you? Well if that is true, you may have just bought yourself a bit of a reprieve sis…okay. What the hell, I’m in a good mood. I’m gonna let you walk outta here alive and you’re going to be thankful.” “I don’t suppose you’ll allow me to gather some supplies or let me have my gun will you?” “Hah, no. Wouldn’t want you getting any ideas of trying to shoot me, you being a killer now and all. In fact let me just take that pistol right now. Stay on that couch and keep lying in that prone position. Don’t you fucking move, or boom there goes your pretty little blonde head all over the place.” Johnny is still nowhere to be seen. Did he take off? Did you actually get abandoned by a fucking stalker? Is your luck really that bad? Kelly now moves into your room, still pointing the shotgun at you, As she’s crouching down to pick up the pistol, there is a brief moment that she takes her eyes off of you. It’s apparent that there will be no rescue; the only thing you can hope is that Kelly is going to keep her word and let you go unharmed. Of course you don’t really think that’s likely and part of you wants to grab for the pistol before she can. > You don't move It’s no good. You’d never manage to grab the pistol before Kelly. Even if you did, she’d probably manage to shoot you before you could shoot her. Fear and panic begins to well up inside you as you believe this is the beginning of the end. Kelly picks up the pistol and smiles as she puts it in front of her pants. You look helplessly as she does this…and then that’s when your eyes wander to your closet. You don’t remember shutting the closet door. In fact you never shut your closet door… And it’s opening right now. Instinctively you try to flatten your body and disappear into the crevasse of your couch as much as possible. You then place your arms up to your face. “What the hell are you doing? That’s not gonna…” Kelly starts to say and then she hears a creak. Johnny unloads several rounds into Kelly’s body and head. She doesn’t even have time to fully turn around. Pieces of her fly out from the exit wounds and she falls to the floor in a bloody mess still twitching a bit. “Shit. Shit. Oh Shit. Oh fuck. Fuck. Please oh God. Please.” You’re muttering to yourself the whole time, barely aware of everything else. Johnny walks over from the closet and kneels over to you. “It’s over Suzy. Calm down. It’s over. She’s dead. That bitch will never bully you again.” Johnny says grabbing one of your hands. You calm down and look at Johnny. In that moment you don’t care about what he has done in the past or what he might do in the future. All you care about is that he was ultimately there for you when it counted. You sit up and hug him, getting teary eyed in the process. “Oh god, I thought…I thought maybe…” “No, I was always there to protect you. I told you. I’ll always be here. You’re my perfect angel. You give my life…purpose.” Johnny replies hugging you in return and patting you on the back. Johnny also sniffs your hair as he’s hugging you at which point causes you to pull back a bit. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just…” Johnny says. “It’s okay. I know. It was the moment.” You say trying not to make it too uncomfortable. With you and Johnny done embracing, you stand up and look over at your sister’s body, which has stopped any sort of death twitch it might’ve briefly had. You just stare at it silently. Johnny doesn’t even speak, he instead watches you looking at your sister. After about a couple of minutes of this, he finally speaks. “How do you feel?” “Honestly? I feel nothing. I don’t feel anger for what she did. I don’t feel guilt or even happiness that she’s dead. I just don’t feel anything for her anymore. She’s dead and that’s it. Just like Peter upstairs. Just like my Mom, my Dad, my whole family at this point. They’re all dead and I’m alive.” “Well, we don’t know about your sister Donna.” Johnny remarks. “She’s dead too. I know she is.” You say and look at Johnny who looks away and focuses back on Kelly’s body. “Well anyway, it looks like we know where the shelter entrance is now. Why don’t we check it out?” “Well that was the whole goal of this ordeal I suppose.” You say. Johnny exits the room and you grab your pistol back from Kelly’s body before leaving. Stepping out of your room you see the hatch in the floor wide open where the fluorescent glow of lighting coming from. You take a look inside and see a long ladder down leading to another floor, which you imagine that’s the main shelter. You can’t believe how close it was to your room and how you never knew about it! “How the hell did you brother do this with you hearing or knowing about it?” Johnny asks. “I dunno. I mean he managed to routinely change the entrance all the damn time too. Ben had a gift I guess. Everyone does I suppose.” you say and you and Johnny start climbing down the ladder and you close up the hatch. Eventually you get to the bottom and you and Johnny open up a metal door, which is fortunately not locked. And there it is, you’re in the shelter proper. Before you is a dimly lit living area with various furniture and even a TV. Other rooms include a bathroom, kitchen area, a couple of bedrooms and A LOT of storage rooms. One such room is huge, as rows and rows of canned food and bottled water are found. “Well looks like sustenance is plentiful. Doesn’t even look like Kelly put a dent in the supplies.” You say. Another storage room contains a goodly amount of ammo and weapons of all kinds. Mostly rifles. Medical supplies are in another. One thing that stands out is that Ben’s shelter has solid steel walls. You have no idea how the hell he did this and you guess you never will. You do notice on several of the walls something has been repeatedly scratched out though not entirely successfully everywhere. At one point you make out most of it. Pr-p---- o- th- Gr--n- -er- Cor---at-o- “Well, I guess spending thousands on one of those Ground Zero shelters would’ve been a waste of money for you Seems like you got a nice one for free.” Johnny says looking around. “Indeed. Now we need to talk about us Johnny.” Johnny turns to you and sees you’re holding your pistol directly at him. He doesn’t react with surprise or anger or anything. It’s nothing. And that’s the “real” Johnny right there. The one you’ve always known even when you weren’t quite sure. “So…what is this Suzy?” Johnny asks. “I don’t know yet. I really don’t. I wish I did. I wish I could make a decision. I wish I could be the killer my sister thought I was. This would be so much easier. On the other hand I also wish I could trust and just let go.” Johnny makes no move towards you. He just continues to stand there. You briefly wipe your eyes while still holding the pistol on him. “Johnny, you’ve been here for me this whole crazy week. I don’t think I would’ve survived if you hadn’t been around…but I know you. I know what you are.” “I never thought that you wouldn’t figure it out, you’re an intelligent woman after all which is matched only by your beauty of course.” Johnny replies. “Stop. Just stop.” You exclaim. You tear up and sniffle for a moment and then address Johnny again. “My uncle Ed was a serial killer. We all sort of wondered, but it wasn’t until that fateful day when I decided to go snooping around where I shouldn’t have that I learned the awful truth. He caught me finding where he was storing body parts, but in his own twisted honorable way due to being related, he said he’d spare my life if I helped him kill someone. Kept saying I was pure and good, and not like the rest of those whores he killed.” Johnny’s eyebrows raise when you say this. Now he seems genuinely surprised. “In a more fucked up twist, he was feuding with a group of cultists into human sacrifice. Wanted me to help kill them. I initially did out of fear, but then I met Bobby during this mission. I ended up betraying my uncle because I felt that connection to Bobby because we both came from fucked up families. I thought it was love, and maybe it was, but it didn’t last obviously.” Johnny seems a bit overwhelmed by your new information. “That’s… some story Suzy. I have to admit, I never would have guessed…” “That what? That I’m not perfect? I’m not good? I’m not so pure? That I’m a backstabbing whore like all the rest?” you snap. “That…that wasn’t what I was going to say at all. Suzy, do you really think I could ever see you in that light?” “I…I don’t know Johnny. You’ve never told me much about your past. I mean I can piece things together by what you have told me and how you’ve acted. And that’s the problem I DON’T KNOW.” “Okay, Suzy, let’s just get it completely out in the open. What exactly is it that you think I’ve done or what I am?” “You’re a serial killer. I mean I don’t exactly know just how bad you are for certain and I can’t know for certain, but I do know you’re a killer. I’ve been studying you probably just as much as you’ve been studying me. I mean…Christ…I don’t KNOW if you killed Donna. I don’t KNOW if you killed Julie, but the more I think about it and how they just disappeared and the conclusion I come to isn’t pleasant. There’s also your own suspicious behavior, the incident with the soldier “falling” down the stairs, your rage when beating that guy’s head in, claiming that you’ve done bad things, stealing a jeep and most likely killing the owners in process, and finally your obsession with me. I’m quite familiar with your kind enough that even if I can’t prove some of this shit, I feel it in my heart that’s what you are.” “Well…if I am so terrible, then I suppose you should kill me.” “Goddamn it Johnny, if it was THAT FUCKING EASY I WOULD! But YOU KNOW it isn’t and I KNOW it isn’t! Because I also know underneath the fucked up social chameleon predator, I KNOW there actually IS a human being capable of love. I believe you really love me Johnny. I do. I don’t doubt it. The problem is, how can I fucking trust that it’s going to last?” Johnny has no answer. He just looks down. “Well see there’s my problem. How do I know that I’m not going to do something that’s going to set you off? Make you see me as fallen angel or a flawed person that is fit only for destruction? And this goes both ways Johnny, how do YOU know that I might not strike first? Granted I’m not a killer, but I still manipulated events to cause the death of my uncle. Can YOU really trust me, if I’m scared of you?” you say. Johnny at this point rubs his eyes and sniffles a bit. He’s not exactly crying, but he’s definitely having an emotional moment. “Suzy. I cannot think of anything more that I can do, that would convince you that I’ll love you forever and that I will always protect you. It’s true I have done bad things…it’s also true that I probably would be classified as a serial killer. I’m very sick Suzy. I have a lot of bad thoughts going on in my head most of the time and even though I can emulate emotions, they don’t feel genuine. It’s like I’m just a mask. But with you, it’s different. I haven’t felt this way towards anyone since…well my first love. I don’t really want to get into that right now, but I want to say it was a much different situation.” Johnny falls to his knees. “Almost everything I felt during my time with you this week was actually real to me. You made me feel like a normal person. Like I had at last found a purpose to my life. I love you Suzy. You can never fall off that pedestal. I know that this is difficult for you. I understand the alienation and mistrust you feel, perhaps in a different way, but I understand it. But I also know that you want to give us a chance, if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be struggling with this right now.” You continue to point the pistol at Johnny as more tears roll down your cheeks. “Johnny…I know you’ve lied to me or been evasive about things this week. I’ve been nothing but truthful. If this has any chance of working. I need to know right now. (Exhale) Did you kill Donna and Julie?” “I thought you said you didn’t care what happened to them and that they abandoned you.” Johnny says. “And that may be the case because you FUCKING killed them! Now stop evading the fucking question and answer it!” you demand. Johnny looks at you. In fact it’s the most cold-blooded stare you’ve ever seen from him. It’s like when Uncle Ed looked at you in his van. “Would you believe me, if I said no?” he asks. “ANSWER!” you demand. “Very well. No, I didn’t.” Johnny says looking straight at you. > You accept the answer And with those words that you hear from Johnny, everything in your mind just sort of shuts off. It doesn’t matter. None of it does. You see that now. “Okay.” You say and put your pistol away. Johnny looks a bit uncertain, almost as if he was expecting you to shoot him. “Okay?” he asks. “Yeah, okay. If you’re telling me you didn’t kill them, then you didn’t kill them. In fact I don’t want to know about your past either. It’s just not important. You were there for me this week when nobody else was, that’s the important thing and that’s what I should place my faith in.” Johnny slowly gets up off his knees. He doesn’t approach you right away; instead he just continues to stand at a distance. “I apologize for my earlier outburst Johnny. I just, well it’s been a stressful week. You understand.” You say. “Yeah….yeah I get it. Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.” Johnny says. “Good. Good. Well, let’s move on to other matters shall we?” “Yeah.” Johnny says. Suddenly Johnny rushes at you and grabs you tightly. While one arm is firmly around your waist, one hand moves up to your neck and you feel a gentle squeeze as he looks into your eyes. It’s the look of a predator that has finally caught his prey. “Well? What are you waiting for lover? I trust you.” you say not resisting. Johnny’s hand moves from your neck and to your face, where upon he strokes your cheek gently. “You have the face of a perfect angel.” he whispers and then he moves in to kiss you. As your lips touch, he begins to take your clothes off in a hasty fashion. He’s definitely getting aggressive, but oddly you’re not quite feeling his “enthusiasm” yet… By the time you get pushed over towards the bed and are basically in your bra and panties, he still isn’t quite “ready.” “Do you need some help?” you ask. “No, I’ll be fine...” He says as he tries to get it up. While you take off the remainder of your clothes Johnny’s still having difficulties. “Look I can help you out, I don’t mind going down on…” “Shhh! No! I don’t want you debasing yourself like a whore! I just need to focus!” Johnny snaps. “Okay. Okay.” You say and back off. You lie down on the bed and try not to stare in an effort to not look judgmental. This is really awkward though. Johnny starts swearing, as his buddy is not doing what he wants it to do. Swearing turns to shouting and then finally a complete breakdown. “Shit! I wanted this to be so perfect. I wanted to be everything for you, not some fucking impotent eunuch!” he says sniffling a bit. “Hey, calm down. It’s okay. You’re trying too hard, you just need to relax.” You say moving over to caress him a bit. “I know. (sniffle) This just has never happened before.” Johnny replies. “Well, you probably aren’t used to…uh situations like this. I mean would it help if I pretended I was dead or something?” “What? No. That doesn’t work. Your body is too warm and submerging you in cold water would be really uncomfortable for you.” Johnny says. As you continue to try to make Johnny feel more at ease, he slowly speaks. “Suzy…there is something I can think of…but…you’re not going to want to do it…” “Does it involve pain?” you ask. “No.” “Then go ahead and say it.” “Could…could you pretend that we’re related?” Johnny asks. Why are you not surprised? “Ah. I see. So you want me to role play as your mother?” you ask going for the obvious serial killer obsession. “Hah, no. You’re a bit too young for that, I don’t think I could maintain the illusion, but… um maybe you could be my sister?” Wow, a murderous boyfriend who fucked his sister in the past, it’s like being with Bobby all over again…and there’s something vaguely comforting about that. You always did prefer something familiar to something new. You smile and caress Johnny’s face. “Of course brother dear.” You say and passionately kiss Johnny. From there things get a lot better. Johnny actually is a pretty sensual lover when he gets going. You guess he must’ve loved his sister just like you once loved Bobby a lot. Johnny falls asleep shortly afterwards professing his usual love for you. After being awake a little longer yourself thinking about what the future might hold, you go to sleep. > Next day... SATURDAY You wake up to the faint sounds of rustling. You look up from your bed and see Johnny getting dressed. “Where are you going?” you ask groggily. “I was going to get the stuff I brought in from the jeep and left up stairs on Thursday night. I know we’ve got more than enough stuff down here now, but I still thought you’d want your clothes which we don’t have any of down here.” “Oh. Okay, I’ll come with you.” You say. “No, stay here and relax, I got it.” “It’s okay really, I don’t mind. Besides, I still left things in my room that I’d like to get.” “You sure you want to do that with your sister’s body still in there?” “Oh yeah that’s right. Well I’ll just help you with the bags from upstairs then.” “Okay. Always enjoy your company anyway and don’t worry, I fully intend on cleaning up all the bodies upstairs, not just your sister’s. I mean know we’re going to be down here for a while, but you never want bodies just lying around to rot in your area. Never mind the smell, but there are also vermin and health hazards to consider.” Johnny says. Well he’d probably know better than most… You and Johnny finish getting dressed and exit the shelter. From the basement you then head to the ground floor where you see your bags lying on the floor near the front door. “You said you brought these in on Thursday night?” you ask. “Yeah, after you fell asleep.” “I suppose it’s a silly question since you never seem to be scared of anything, but you weren’t concerned about those rabid things possibly wandering around at night?” “Oh I definitely was prepared in case of an attack, but the strange thing is, its dead silent in your neighborhood. Or at least it seems like it is. I didn’t see anything wandering around out there. Rabid or otherwise. If I had to guess, the National Guard exterminated everything in this area and moved on.” “Hm, well from what I’ve seen they’re getting their ass kicked elsewhere. I just hope that…” Before you or Johnny can say anything else a bright flash shines through one of the uncovered windows along with the sound of a large explosion in the distance. You can’t help but take a quick glance out the window. And there you see it in the far distance, the dissipating remnants of a mushroom cloud rising up in the sky. “…they finally went and did it.” You say. “…I have to say, I’m not entirely surprised. Johnny replies looking with you. “From the direction I saw the cloud, I’d say it probably hit Security City and that’s fairly far away. I know impact should’ve at least shattered the windows of the house had it been closer or bigger so it probably wasn’t even a large one. Still, we probably should still get down in that shelter.” You say. Johnny agrees and the pair of you grab all the bags and quickly head back down to the shelter. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing we decided to come back here instead of trying to leave town.” You say. “Yeah, I imagine things are going to be quite chaotic for a long time to come. It’s better that you’re safe down here.” Johnny says. “We’re both safe down here.” you say, but Johnny’s pacing suggests that he’s a bit preoccupied. “Okay, what’s wrong?” you ask. “Well, with this new event come to light, its already established that the situation just got a lot worse and isn’t going to be ending anytime soon. Now we’ve probably got a decades worth of supplies, possibly a little more since I don’t eat much anyway, but the fact remains, we’re going to need more supplies eventually and that means going up to the surface and dealing with it.” Johnny replies. “Yeah, I know. I didn’t really want to think about it, but you’re right of course. I think I saw some survival manuals in one of the rooms down here, guess I better read up on them.” “While I certainly wouldn’t stop you from getting yourself acquainted with such things, my thoughts are, why do you need to leave here and risk your life at all? I’ll be the one going up there.” “Well we are sort of a team now right? I mean don’t you want me to help you?” Johnny’s hands touch your shoulders as he stares into your eyes. His hands gently run down from your shoulders to your arms until he’s holding both of your hands. “Suzy, you were too good for this world when it wasn’t completely fucked up, you’re definitely too good for it now. As dangerous as it was in this past week, it’s going to be ten times worse now. It’s going to be chaos, anarchy and people killing each other for survival as well as pleasure. In short, it’s going to be a world that someone like me would thrive in. I actually belong out there.” Johnny then lets go your hands and raises his arms upward and looks up and around making motions with his hands pointing to the shelter in general. “And this, all this, is your world. This is all you have ever needed Suzy. Some place to feel safe. Some place locked away from the outside world. I mean you’re the honest one here, can you tell me sincerely that you really want to go out there scrounging around for supplies and having to deal with people wanting to rape you or kill you, or hell even eat you? Wouldn’t you rather someone else deal with it?” Johnny focuses his attention back to you. You look at him and you don’t even answer because your face is probably giving him his answer already. He’s absolutely right. You don’t want to deal with reality. You never have. In fact you got along pretty well without having to for a very long time and whenever you have had to deal with it, it’s always been a stressful mess. He’s also right in that he’s far more suited to dealing with the shitstorm that the surface is going to be. And maybe that’s just one more reason why you didn’t kill Johnny. You knew he’d be willing to take care of you no matter what. It’s all you’ve ever wanted, for someone to just love and take care of you while you didn’t have to worry about a thing. You move forward and put your arms back around Johnny and look into his eyes. “Just don’t killed okay?” you say. “Never. I’ll always be around to protect and take care of you Suzy. My love for you will always keep me going forever and ever and ever and ever.” The way Johnny is looking at you while he strokes your hair each time for emphasis when he says “and ever” would probably be creepy to most, but you know its just his way of confirming his love you. You’re so lucky. > Sheltered Princess The Future… It’s been about a month; Johnny should be home again soon. Just have to keep an ear open for that certain knock and his voice. You wonder what things he will have brought home this time. You’re still pretty much good with the necessities. Maybe he will have found some new movies or books to bring you this time. At first when he started going out, you worried about him even though he assured you he would be fine. Of course as time went on, you ceased worrying altogether. Still, after the first few years, Johnny was getting restless. Sure he was going out, but never for long periods of time. Then one day he went out and didn’t return for a full week. For the first time in a long while you worried so much when he did that. This caused an argument when he finally returned. You were so angry. You even accused him of cheating on you, but deep down you knew that wasn’t and would never be the case. To Johnny’s credit he was honest about what the problem was. He apologized realizing he should’ve at least told you before disappearing like that. He tried, he really tried and he thought that “you” would be enough, but he wasn’t like you. He couldn’t stay cooped up down in a shelter for long stretches of time. Even though he was in the presence of an “angel” he always felt like a trapped animal. Sometimes being around you made him feel and realize just how inferior he was to you. He explained how the surface was better than he could’ve ever imagined. No law, no order, and freedom to do whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted. The pull was too great and was getting greater. You were upset and rightfully so. After all he had professed that he would always be there for you, and now who would take care of you if he left? Johnny however insisted that he wasn’t going to break your heart. He assured you once again that he would still be there to take care of you; he just needed time to himself. He explained that he just needed to “wander” because deep down that’s who he’d always be. He also explained it would be safer for you if he did wander as he didn’t want to one day unleash his…urges out on you by accident. What could you do? How could you compete? He was a slave to his nature. It was like Bobby all over again. That first time, you practically kicked him out and he left without struggle or even raising his voice, he just told you that he would keep his promise and that you would see that he would not fail you. Naturally you didn’t believe him at the time you were too upset. That entire month was a pretty bad one for you. You spent most of your time crying and wondering if you’d been a delusional fool for sticking your head in the sand and ignoring reality as usual. You even started reading those survival books that you hadn’t actually gotten to reading yet and rationing your food and water a little more since you were potentially facing an uncertain future. But then when that month had passed and Johnny did indeed return like he always had in the past. At first you were reluctant to even let him back in, but then you realized that he had kept his promise just like he always has to you. The reunion was a happy one and over the years you’ve gotten accustomed to this arrangement. In fact it’s nice to be by yourself too. You’d actually forgotten what that was like during the years Johnny was around all the time. You hear a familiar pattern knock on the shelter door followed by Johnny’s faint voice coming from the other side. After taking the usual safety precautions, you excitedly rush to open it with your pistol drawn. “I’m home, my perfect angel.” Johnny says smiling and holding a couple of bags no doubt stuffed with goodies. “Well don’t just stand there, come in! I missed you.” You say and welcome Johnny back home like you always do. Johnny tells you a few things about the outside world like he always does, but in general you never care that much. As far as you’re concerned, what he does out there you don’t want to hear too much about and it doesn’t matter anyway. All that matters is his time with you. You happily accept all the gifts and supplies he has brought for you and later on you and he embrace as lovers do. The pair of you enjoy your time together, until its time for Johnny to wander again. But you never despair about it, because you know he’ll always come back. And one day, you know he’ll come back forever. It’s not perfect, but then nothing in this new world is.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It’s no good. You’d never manage to grab the pistol before Kelly. Even if you did, she’d probably manage to shoot you before you could shoot her. Fear and panic begins to well up inside you as you believe this is the beginning of the end. Kelly picks up the pistol and smiles as she puts it in front of her pants. You look helplessly as she does this…and then that’s when your eyes wander to your closet. You don’t remember shutting the closet door. In fact you never shut your closet door… And it’s opening right now. Instinctively you try to flatten your body and disappear into the crevasse of your couch as much as possible. You then place your arms up to your face. “What the hell are you doing? That’s not gonna…” Kelly starts to say and then she hears a creak. Johnny unloads several rounds into Kelly’s body and head. She doesn’t even have time to fully turn around. Pieces of her fly out from the exit wounds and she falls to the floor in a bloody mess still twitching a bit. “Shit. Shit. Oh Shit. Oh fuck. Fuck. Please oh God. Please.” You’re muttering to yourself the whole time, barely aware of everything else. Johnny walks over from the closet and kneels over to you. “It’s over Suzy. Calm down. It’s over. She’s dead. That bitch will never bully you again.” Johnny says grabbing one of your hands. You calm down and look at Johnny. In that moment you don’t care about what he has done in the past or what he might do in the future. All you care about is that he was ultimately there for you when it counted. You sit up and hug him, getting teary eyed in the process. “Oh god, I thought…I thought maybe…” “No, I was always there to protect you. I told you. I’ll always be here. You’re my perfect angel. You give my life…purpose.” Johnny replies hugging you in return and patting you on the back. Johnny also sniffs your hair as he’s hugging you at which point causes you to pull back a bit. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just…” Johnny says. “It’s okay. I know. It was the moment.” You say trying not to make it too uncomfortable. With you and Johnny done embracing, you stand up and look over at your sister’s body, which has stopped any sort of death twitch it might’ve briefly had. You just stare at it silently. Johnny doesn’t even speak, he instead watches you looking at your sister. After about a couple of minutes of this, he finally speaks. “How do you feel?” “Honestly? I feel nothing. I don’t feel anger for what she did. I don’t feel guilt or even happiness that she’s dead. I just don’t feel anything for her anymore. She’s dead and that’s it. Just like Peter upstairs. Just like my Mom, my Dad, my whole family at this point. They’re all dead and I’m alive.” “Well, we don’t know about your sister Donna.” Johnny remarks. “She’s dead too. I know she is.” You say and look at Johnny who looks away and focuses back on Kelly’s body. “Well anyway, it looks like we know where the shelter entrance is now. Why don’t we check it out?” “Well that was the whole goal of this ordeal I suppose.” You say. Johnny exits the room and you grab your pistol back from Kelly’s body before leaving. Stepping out of your room you see the hatch in the floor wide open where the fluorescent glow of lighting coming from. You take a look inside and see a long ladder down leading to another floor, which you imagine that’s the main shelter. You can’t believe how close it was to your room and how you never knew about it! “How the hell did you brother do this with you hearing or knowing about it?” Johnny asks. “I dunno. I mean he managed to routinely change the entrance all the damn time too. Ben had a gift I guess. Everyone does I suppose.” you say and you and Johnny start climbing down the ladder and you close up the hatch. Eventually you get to the bottom and you and Johnny open up a metal door, which is fortunately not locked. And there it is, you’re in the shelter proper. Before you is a dimly lit living area with various furniture and even a TV. Other rooms include a bathroom, kitchen area, a couple of bedrooms and A LOT of storage rooms. One such room is huge, as rows and rows of canned food and bottled water are found. “Well looks like sustenance is plentiful. Doesn’t even look like Kelly put a dent in the supplies.” You say. Another storage room contains a goodly amount of ammo and weapons of all kinds. Mostly rifles. Medical supplies are in another. One thing that stands out is that Ben’s shelter has solid steel walls. You have no idea how the hell he did this and you guess you never will. You do notice on several of the walls something has been repeatedly scratched out though not entirely successfully everywhere. At one point you make out most of it. Pr-p---- o- th- Gr--n- -er- Cor---at-o- “Well, I guess spending thousands on one of those Ground Zero shelters would’ve been a waste of money for you Seems like you got a nice one for free.” Johnny says looking around. “Indeed. Now we need to talk about us Johnny.” Johnny turns to you and sees you’re holding your pistol directly at him. He doesn’t react with surprise or anger or anything. It’s nothing. And that’s the “real” Johnny right there. The one you’ve always known even when you weren’t quite sure. “So…what is this Suzy?” Johnny asks. “I don’t know yet. I really don’t. I wish I did. I wish I could make a decision. I wish I could be the killer my sister thought I was. This would be so much easier. On the other hand I also wish I could trust and just let go.” Johnny makes no move towards you. He just continues to stand there. You briefly wipe your eyes while still holding the pistol on him. “Johnny, you’ve been here for me this whole crazy week. I don’t think I would’ve survived if you hadn’t been around…but I know you. I know what you are.” “I never thought that you wouldn’t figure it out, you’re an intelligent woman after all which is matched only by your beauty of course.” Johnny replies. “Stop. Just stop.” You exclaim. You tear up and sniffle for a moment and then address Johnny again. “My uncle Ed was a serial killer. We all sort of wondered, but it wasn’t until that fateful day when I decided to go snooping around where I shouldn’t have that I learned the awful truth. He caught me finding where he was storing body parts, but in his own twisted honorable way due to being related, he said he’d spare my life if I helped him kill someone. Kept saying I was pure and good, and not like the rest of those whores he killed.” Johnny’s eyebrows raise when you say this. Now he seems genuinely surprised. “In a more fucked up twist, he was feuding with a group of cultists into human sacrifice. Wanted me to help kill them. I initially did out of fear, but then I met Bobby during this mission. I ended up betraying my uncle because I felt that connection to Bobby because we both came from fucked up families. I thought it was love, and maybe it was, but it didn’t last obviously.” Johnny seems a bit overwhelmed by your new information. “That’s… some story Suzy. I have to admit, I never would have guessed…” “That what? That I’m not perfect? I’m not good? I’m not so pure? That I’m a backstabbing whore like all the rest?” you snap. “That…that wasn’t what I was going to say at all. Suzy, do you really think I could ever see you in that light?” “I…I don’t know Johnny. You’ve never told me much about your past. I mean I can piece things together by what you have told me and how you’ve acted. And that’s the problem I DON’T KNOW.” “Okay, Suzy, let’s just get it completely out in the open. What exactly is it that you think I’ve done or what I am?” “You’re a serial killer. I mean I don’t exactly know just how bad you are for certain and I can’t know for certain, but I do know you’re a killer. I’ve been studying you probably just as much as you’ve been studying me. I mean…Christ…I don’t KNOW if you killed Donna. I don’t KNOW if you killed Julie, but the more I think about it and how they just disappeared and the conclusion I come to isn’t pleasant. There’s also your own suspicious behavior, the incident with the soldier “falling” down the stairs, your rage when beating that guy’s head in, claiming that you’ve done bad things, stealing a jeep and most likely killing the owners in process, and finally your obsession with me. I’m quite familiar with your kind enough that even if I can’t prove some of this shit, I feel it in my heart that’s what you are.” “Well…if I am so terrible, then I suppose you should kill me.” “Goddamn it Johnny, if it was THAT FUCKING EASY I WOULD! But YOU KNOW it isn’t and I KNOW it isn’t! Because I also know underneath the fucked up social chameleon predator, I KNOW there actually IS a human being capable of love. I believe you really love me Johnny. I do. I don’t doubt it. The problem is, how can I fucking trust that it’s going to last?” Johnny has no answer. He just looks down. “Well see there’s my problem. How do I know that I’m not going to do something that’s going to set you off? Make you see me as fallen angel or a flawed person that is fit only for destruction? And this goes both ways Johnny, how do YOU know that I might not strike first? Granted I’m not a killer, but I still manipulated events to cause the death of my uncle. Can YOU really trust me, if I’m scared of you?” you say. Johnny at this point rubs his eyes and sniffles a bit. He’s not exactly crying, but he’s definitely having an emotional moment. “Suzy. I cannot think of anything more that I can do, that would convince you that I’ll love you forever and that I will always protect you. It’s true I have done bad things…it’s also true that I probably would be classified as a serial killer. I’m very sick Suzy. I have a lot of bad thoughts going on in my head most of the time and even though I can emulate emotions, they don’t feel genuine. It’s like I’m just a mask. But with you, it’s different. I haven’t felt this way towards anyone since…well my first love. I don’t really want to get into that right now, but I want to say it was a much different situation.” Johnny falls to his knees. “Almost everything I felt during my time with you this week was actually real to me. You made me feel like a normal person. Like I had at last found a purpose to my life. I love you Suzy. You can never fall off that pedestal. I know that this is difficult for you. I understand the alienation and mistrust you feel, perhaps in a different way, but I understand it. But I also know that you want to give us a chance, if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be struggling with this right now.” You continue to point the pistol at Johnny as more tears roll down your cheeks. “Johnny…I know you’ve lied to me or been evasive about things this week. I’ve been nothing but truthful. If this has any chance of working. I need to know right now. (Exhale) Did you kill Donna and Julie?” “I thought you said you didn’t care what happened to them and that they abandoned you.” Johnny says. “And that may be the case because you FUCKING killed them! Now stop evading the fucking question and answer it!” you demand. Johnny looks at you. In fact it’s the most cold-blooded stare you’ve ever seen from him. It’s like when Uncle Ed looked at you in his van. “Would you believe me, if I said no?” he asks. “ANSWER!” you demand. “Very well. No, I didn’t.” Johnny says looking straight at you. > You don't accept the answer And with that lie you hear from Johnny, your head drops briefly in despair. With tears in your eyes you look back at Johnny. “I…don’t believe you…and if I don’t believe you, I can’t trust you. (sob) And if I can’t trust you…(sob) I…I…” “You have to kill me.” Johnny says for you. “I’m sorry…” you say. Johnny just stares at you and a tear actually comes down his left eye. “Nobody is ever going to love you like I will Suzy.” “That… I do believe.” You then shoot Johnny. The first shot hits him in the body, causing him to fall backwards, but not enough to kill him, but you soon get over your shock and sorrow not just by remembering that he’s killed Julie and Donna, but that eventually he’ll kill you as well. You don’t stop pumping rounds into the son of a bitch until the pistol is completely empty. Johnny’s body lies motionless in a bloody mess. His eyes still open, staring at you even in death. You slump down on the floor crying that it had to be this way, but it was survival. After a few minutes of releasing your sadness, you realize that you can’t just leave Johnny’s body down here. The problem is you can’t very well carry it up the ladder from the shelter either, at least not in one piece. You slowly get up and head back to the armory. There you find a good-sized machete that looks very sharp. You also get some garbage bags you saw in one of the supply rooms. You’re not sure why Ben had them down here, but it’s handy that he did. You go back to Johnny’s body. You think about dragging the body to the shelter’s bathtub and doing your grisly work there, but you decide the best thing you can do is just to get it over with. You lay out some of the bags on the floor and roll Johnny’s body on to them and get to work. It’s not an easy task for you and you get physically sick more than once, but eventually you get through it. Johnny’s limbs, torso and head all get put into bags. You then make several trips up and down the ladder to haul the pieces up to the basement. It’s still an exhausting task, even more so after having to go through hacking him up and the emotional drain you feel from it. You don’t go any further than the basement after you’ve hauled all of Johnny’s parts up. You’re just not in the mood to deal with more. You look at the blood-drenched fatigues you’re wearing and strip them off to throw them into one of the bags. Leaving the “body bags” by the entrance, you go back to your room to get a spare set of clothes. You also see Kelly’s body still lying in a heap there. Just reminds you that you’ll have more cleaning up to do tomorrow. For now though you grab something comfortable from the closet and head back down to the shelter where you take a long hot shower. Afterwards you go to the bedroom and collapse on the bed, completely spent. Doesn’t take long for you to fall asleep, it’s a welcome escape from reality. > Next day… SATURDAY You wake up to silence and it’s an odd feeling. You half expect Johnny to be vacuuming or cleaning or just being around, but you know that’s not going to happen ever again. You sit up just thinking about what you’re going to do today for a few moments. Everyone you know or close to is gone and you’re truly alone now. Granted you’ve spent most of your life alone, but there was still always someone around to intrude. Most of the time this was unwanted like when Kelly bullied you or when Peter stole your clothes. Other times this was your choice like spending time with Bobby. Now? There is nobody. You finally get up and shuffle into the living room which still has a lot of blood on the floor. “(Sigh) I guess I should clean that up too.” You mutter to your self and remind yourself to get some of the cleaning products from upstairs. After ascending up the ladder you see the same garbage bags you left in a group nearby. “I’ll be back to take care you later Johnny.” You say, then you glance your head towards your old room. “You too bitch.” You say and head upstairs. When you get upstairs to get something to clean with, you notice several bags on the floor in the living room. They’re yours or mostly yours anyway. It’s all the stuff you brought with you from Julie’s house. Johnny must’ve brought them in from the jeep last night. He always was thoughtful. As you go to get your bags, a bright flash shines through one of the uncovered windows along with the sound of a large explosion in the distance. You can’t help but take a quick glance out the window. And there you see it in the far distance, the dissipating remnants of a mushroom cloud rising up in the sky. “…they finally went and did it.” You say. From the direction it looks like it probably hit the city, but it still had to be a “small” one since you imagine your home still would’ve suffered a backlash of your windows breaking from the long range impact. Still who knows which way the wind is blowing and there is no reason to not be extra cautious. So you gather up your bags and a few extra items and head back down to the shelter as quick as possible. And once again you’re locked away from the outside world. This time possibly for a lot longer than average. Sadly, you know it can’t be forever. As you look through your supplies, you think you could probably stay down here for about a decade before you completely ran out of what you needed, which means eventually you’ll have to go up to the surface at some point to scavenge or trade or whatever it is that you’ll need to do for more supplies. And if you go up to the surface, you’re going to need to be prepared and that unfortunately means a lot of regular use for that exercise room you saw, along with reading all those survivalist books you saw in the library. Still, this week has already prepared you in some ways. You have a much better mindset to deal with the outside world that you can’t hide away from anymore. You even know that you can do unpleasant things if you need to. It’s not going to be easy and it’s not going to be fun, but for now you can continue to afford to hide out from reality, if only for a little while longer. > Repression of Reality The Future... “I’m home!” you shout as you enter the shelter loaded with goodies. As you unburden yourself of your haul, you hear the end credits of a movie playing on the TV. “See? I told you I wouldn’t be that long. I got here just in time to put on another movie! In fact I got some new ones from that redneck encampment. I know most of them are a bunch of assholes, but they’re always up for trading and that Mel guy keeps ‘em mostly in line. Plus they got bigger things to worry about now that they’re at war with the Cult of Tiamat.” You open up your bag and go through some of the DVDs you picked up in trade. You pick one and exchange it out for the one that was playing. “I haven’t seen this one in a long time. I’m glad we’ll be able to watch it together.” You say. As the movie starts playing you return to unloading your bags occasionally looking up to watch the movie playing. “So speaking of the Cult of Tiamat. I meant to tell you I…uh…ran into Bobby a few days ago.” You unpack some of the canned food you found. Sure you still have tons of food to last for years, but it never hurts to have more. “See? This is why I didn’t tell you! I knew you were going to get mad! I wasn’t trying to hide it, I just…well you know how your temper is and I didn’t want you getting all jealous and screaming at me. You finish unpacking the rest of your bags and place most of the items on the table where you plan on going through a complete inventory later, right now though you just want to relax. You strip down to your underwear and sit on the couch to watch the movie playing. “One of my favorite parts is coming up...(sigh) are you still mad? Look I told you, nothing is going on with Bobby and me! Just because that bitch Diana is dead doesn’t mean I’m going to get back with him! Bobby’s got other sisters you know? Besides, he’s pretty much firmly entrenched in his beliefs now. I only think he’s cordial with me, because we once had something. I mean being friendly isn’t a crime. I mean it’s a good thing. One less person for me to worry about blowing my head off.” You briefly glance over at the TV before returning to your argument. “Oh that’s fucking low. Don’t you think I wish it didn’t have to happen? I wish every day that things could’ve been different, but you know what? They weren’t, so you need to just fucking deal with it!” you shout and get so angry that you punch the mannequin positioned on the sofa and its head falls off and tumbled to the floor. “Shit. Oh shit. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Let me help you.” You say and scramble to pick up the head. You reattach the head and inspect it for damage; fortunately you didn’t do any save for a minor loss of paint near the ear. “Hold on…there. Not so bad. Look I’m sorry I got angry, but you shouldn’t have said that to me. You know I still feel bad about that. I don’t want you throwing that back in my face okay?” You kiss the mannequin on the cheek and cuddle up next to it while holding one of its hands. “I accept your apology too. Like I said, you really shouldn’t get so jealous. You know you’re the only one for me. Let’s just finish watching the movie together, then maybe later, who knows?” you say and giggle a bit. You finish watching the movie as planned, and then afterwards you take your companion to the bedroom where you have an interesting time with certain attachments that you’ve made to him. After relieving your tension you roll over next to your companion and turn your head to look at it. You still can’t believe how you stumbled upon one that looked a little similar to him. Sometimes you wonder about your sanity and if one day you’ll just completely lose yourself in your made up world, but then you think you never did before no matter how hard you tried. And you certainly won’t now, besides what’s a little retreat from reality every now and then? “Goodnight Johnny.” You say and kiss him before going to sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re still not quite sure if any of this is going to lead anywhere, but fucked up or not, Johnny’s still been there for you. To abandon him without even an explanation is just something you’re not willing to do. Besides, if you’re right about Johnny’s past, having someone like that around might be necessary given how crazy things are right now. Other than pushing someone down the stairs out of panic, it isn’t like you’re a fighter. Looking a nearby clock on the wall, you figure it’ll be getting dark in a few hours. Johnny didn’t tell you when to wake him, but you figure you should give him a few extra hours after it goes dark if only so he’ll be more rested. Then you’ll try to convince him to just leave in Donna’s car again since you still think it would be safer than trying to steal a military jeep. Still feeling a little uncomfortable about the back door windows now being broken and thus your safety more compromised, you head back into the kitchen to fix the problem. As you get close to the backdoor, you briefly see the thing still lying dead with several holes in its body and head on the back porch. Looks human, but even dead it does look a bit feral. With great effort you manage to push the refrigerator in front of the back door. Nothing is getting in now, well at least not easily anyway. You return to your room and check to see if your phone isn’t quite as damaged, as it appeared when you threw it against the wall, but of course it is. Hardly matters, you don’t have anyone to keep in contact with any more anyway. With the gunfire still going on outside, you flop down on your couch-bed and realize that barring something trying to break in again, there’s nothing to do. You re-open your laptop and lose yourself in a game because it’s way better than reality right now. Hours pass… You look at the time on your laptop and realize you’ve been playing much longer than you intended to. You immediately get up to go wake up Johnny. It actually sounds like the gunfire has died down outside as well. “Hey Johnny wake up! It’s time to go. I know you said you had plans to steal a jeep, but I really think we should…” When you get to the living room though, Johnny is gone. You call out to him a couple times figuring that maybe he’s upstairs or even in the basement, but you get no answer. You do see a note placed on the nearby end table in such a way that you’d notice it. You almost hesitate to pick it up, but of course you do anyway. To my dearest Suzy, I’ve left to go get that jeep. I know you probably still want to use your sister’s car, but I still think our best shot is with a military vehicle. I figure we can blend in a whole lot better in one of those and not look suspicious while driving around at a casual glance by soldiers. Probably better at running over those rabid people too. We might even be able to get out of this forsaken town. Anyway, I left this note since I didn’t want to disturb you or cause any unpleasant arguments on this matter. I also know you didn’t leave while I slept, even though you could have. This means so much to me, I don’t think you know how much. I know I haven’t exactly given you much reason to not be distrustful of me, but the very fact that you didn’t leave tells me that you believe in me on some level. You know I’ll try to come through for you and that you’re willing to wait. I knew when I first heard your drunken whore of a sister talk about you; I thought you sounded like you were the one. Then when I saw and spoke with you, I was sure of it. I will come back tonight as planned, however if the situation becomes dangerous over there, then by all means escape in your sister’s car. It would never be my wish for you to stay in danger. Forever my love, Johnny When the hell did he leave and write this? And how did you not hear him? He wasn’t joking about being stealthy you guess. Of course you probably would have known all this a lot sooner had you not got wrapped up in your game and actually left your room. As for the note itself, well…it’s standard Johnny in the short term you’ve known him. The “whore” description of your sister is a bit of a standout from the rest of letter which is fairly white knightish. Of course you know damn well Johnny is far from being a “white knight”. Suddenly you hear the basement door opening. You tense up in fear since you’ve left not only the car keys but also your pistol in your room. You think at first you’re going to have to risk just running out the front door, but… “Hey Suzy! Suzy? I got the jeep, come on let’s get ready to go!” you hear Johnny’s voice call out. You cautiously walk towards the hallway and see Johnny standing there looking into your room, then he turns his head and sees you. He’s got some clothing in his hand. “Oh there you are. I was worried for a moment that you had to run out in a hurry!” “Johnny, what the hell…didn’t you hear me calling you?” you ask. “No, I just got here.” “What? How? I’ve been in the living room for the past few minutes! You couldn’t have gotten by me.” “No I came in through the basement window. I couldn’t just leave the front door unlocked when I left.” “Basement win…wait I didn’t hear any glass breaking.” “That’s because it’s not broken. I had it so I could easily open it. Don’t worry, I thought about your safety. That window is pretty well hidden and not exactly easy to crawl through so I didn’t think any of those things would see it. They would’ve been more likely to just try to bash the ground floor doors or windows in.” “When did you mess around with the basement window and why didn’t you just tell me you were leaving?” “Didn’t you get my note? I explained why I left with bothering you in it.” “I only just finished reading it this minute.” “Oh, well I assumed you would’ve left your room before now. Anyway, here I got you these to wear. I think they might be a bit baggy, but they should work to help us blend in more.” Johnny shoves the clothing at you as if to distract you from asking more questions. It’s a uniform like what Johnny is wearing. You almost ask Johnny how he got the uniform, but as with most things concerning Johnny you’re starting to think it might better if you don’t know. As far as the basement window weirdness, you’re not going to dwell on it too much because it’s really not important right now. “Alright, that sounds like a good idea, I’ll go put these on.” You say and go to your room. “Um, don’t worry, I didn’t get those from a dead person or anything. It was a spare one I found.” Johnny blurts out. “Okay. I trust you Johnny.” You say which seems to make him smile. You lock the door and change into the military fatigues. Granted you don’t see any blood or tears in the fatigues, but then he could’ve just choked the person wearing it to death. “(Sigh) Suzy, why the hell are you attracted to this guy? Oh right, because you’ve got some serious psychological issues yourself, that’s why.” You mumble to yourself as if being painfully aware of the situation makes everything okay. You grab your bags and exit your room. “Glad to see the fatigues aren’t excessively big on you, I know you’re small framed and all. You ready to go?” Johnny asks. “Yeah, let’s get out of this place. How is it out there?” “In our immediate area? It’s fairly quiet now. Haven’t seen any of the rabid and the remainder of the Guard is busy burning bodies right now. I mean there are still patrols, but nobody even batted an eye when I drove this thing up to the house. Probably assumed whoever was inside was investigating or something. We shouldn’t linger here though.” With both of you ready and as prepared as you’re going to be, you and Johnny exit out the front door and quickly enter the jeep which is sitting right next to your sister’s car. You have to admit, you do feel a little safer sitting in this thing than if you did in your sister’s car. Johnny starts up the vehicle and turns to you. “Suzy, you know I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. So is there any place you had in mind?” Johnny asks. ‘Never been anywhere, so not really.” You answer. “I remember you saying you wanted to go home before.” “Well that would be nice, but things aren’t exactly normal any more. I mean the only reason for going back there would be to look for my brother’s bomb shelter, which definitely would be a safe zone knowing how Ben spent so much time building and constantly modifying it. Of course my other brother Peter is currently looking for it as well and who knows if he already claimed and locked himself inside it.” “Hmm, well it might be worth a look if you still want to try it. I mean the only other logical option I can think of is to as I suggested, leave town altogether. Should be much easier while driving around in this thing. Of course it might still be risky, if they’ve set up some sort of checkpoints outside of town…but maybe we can get the edge by fooling them briefly before smashing through such things.” Pretty risky stuff, but then these are risky times. > You try to get out of town The whole town has gone to shit and it’s either going to get completely obliterated by the government or its going to get overrun by those things or both. In any case, your best bet would be to put as much distance between you and this god-forsaken town. “As much as I’d like to, I can’t go home again. So if you know someplace we can go that’s safe, I’m game if you are.” You say. “Well I can think of a few isolated places I’ve been through in my travels before I came to this town. Dunno, if they’re safe right now, but it’s worth a shot. Gonna be a long drive though and I need to go east so hopefully that way is going to be clear.” Johnny says and pulls out of the driveway. You pass by a few soldiers dragging a few more bodies and placing them in a large pile outside one of the homes in this area. Another large pile of bodies is burning outside yet another home. Nobody tries to flag you down or anything though, you’re guessing that between the dark, the uniforms and the jeep, if anyone is actually paying attention to you driving through, they probably think you’re just more soldiers patrolling around. It isn’t like this is most stable of situations right now. You continue drive and you go through another area where the National Guard has a presence. Again, you have no problems for the most part. However you then start hitting areas that are still suffering from conflict and in those cases, pretty severely. This is where some soldiers notice you a lot more and try to call out to you, presumably for help. In one case, you see two soldiers ragged and bloody running desperately from several of those rabid people. They cry out for you to stop, but naturally you and Johnny just keep driving. You hear some faint curses and screams as you put distance between you and the unfortunate soldiers. You eventually drive through areas that have been completely overrun by rabid. In fact you find that the military doesn’t actually have that much control at all over your town and that there are far more of the rabid roaming around either chasing down normal people or attempting to break into houses. However, you’re in an area now that’s thick enough with them that some of them are actually attacking the jeep or at least managing to bang on it a couple times before you out distance them. Johnny runs over a few of them that get directly in the way. They’re starting to get too close for you at this point. “Holy shit, this is just getting worse. Maybe we should go in another direction.” You say. “We can make it, we’re almost out of town.” Johnny says. You aren’t quite as confident as Johnny who now seems to be going out of his way to mow down rabid in the jeep. In fact he’s got a big grin on his face as he smashes into another and turning the windshield wipers on. “Johnny, would you fucking stop that!? We can’t run over everyone one of these things! It’s going to damage the jeep!” “Relax! It’s a military jeep, these things are built to last! Besides this is kinda fun. When else do you get the chance to just run over people?” Johnny giggles. Johnny’s obvious display of psychopathy might be more worrying, if you weren’t more concerned with the bigger threat of a very large group of rabid up ahead. “Johnny! You can’t go through that group it’s too fucking big! Turn around!” you shout. “Fuck that, we gotta go that way and I don’t give a shit how many of those freaks I have to splatter! Let’s do this!” Johnny shouts and slams on the gas. You close your eyes as the jeep speeds ahead while Johnny is laughing the entire time. He’s really getting off on this. Johnny manages to run over several of them, but there are just too many, it doesn’t help there is also debris in the road left from the fighting that was going on here before. A tire gets popped, a body gets stuck under another wheel. The jeep begins to skid and spin. Johnny tries to maintain control, but fails to do so and the jeep flips over landing upside down. You’re hurt, but since you had your seatbelt on, you’re still able to move. You look over to Johnny and he’s not moving. In fact he’s half way through the windshield. He’s obviously dead, but that isn’t what concerns you at the moment. What concerns you is the rest of the rabid running over to the jeep. You struggle with your belt and manage to crawl out of the jeep only to be quickly nabbed by the rabid. They sink their teeth into you and gnaw straight through your bones. You die screaming as they eat you alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Regardless of what your sister does, you’re not going to get yourself into more trouble by running. “Look Donna, I can’t stop you from running, but I’m staying here.” “What? You can’t do that. You’re supposed to be supportive!” “I’m not going to be supportive in your resisting arrest attempt! Now like I said, I won’t stop you, but if you’re going to do it, you’ll be doing it alone.” “(Sigh) I should’ve known you’re still the same old goody two shoes that follows all the rules. You’re a goddamn idiot Suzy, one of these assholes just felt me up when he frisked me. You really think if they’re just going to arrest us when they find something? Chances are they’re going to drive us to some secluded area and make us suck their cocks and god knows what else! I’m getting the hell…” Just as Donna is starting to get up, both cops have taken notice of you two again. “HEY! I told you to stay put! Don’t give me an excuse!” one of them shouts nearly going for his gun and it’s enough to cause Donna to rethink her actions. “Despite the pair of you acting mighty suspicious, you appear to be clean and so does the vehicle. Don’t think you’re getting out of a ticket though!” the cop says and shoves a ticket at your sister who takes it. Looks like Donna had a drug free car after all. At this point the cop’s partner says to him that they’re needed at the mall since apparently a small riot has broken out there. You are left with another verbal warning and they drive off. As for you and your sister, the pair of you get back in the car without another word and continue your drive to Julie’s house in silence. When you arrive, the place is much more subdued than your used to. You don’t even hear loud music coming from inside. “No party going on?” you ask. “Probably will be some folks coming over later. I dunno, even I don’t keep up on it all the time. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be wanting to hide away before that happens, so like I said your room will be Julie’s dad’s old office. Julie also wants to talk with you as well, so if you’re actually feeling social you could go speak with her before heading off to planet Suzy.” Donna says coldly. “…what the hell? Donna, I know you’re pissed, but I really don’t know why. If it hadn’t been for me stalling you from running, you’d be in for a lot more trouble than just a ticket. I’d say it worked out much better.” You say. “Right. Your plan worked. Following the rules always works for you. Your life is so great and that’s why you had to beg to move in here.” “Uh, you’re living here in JULIE’S house too with no means of support either. I wouldn’t start pointing fingers.” “Fuck you Suzy. I thought things were going to be different, but I can see that you’re still the stuck up bitch that thinks she’s better than everyone else.” Donna exclaims and storms off leaving you in the car. So much for “sisterly bonding.” This is really an unfortunate turn of events, but not completely unexpected. Donna’s always been a bit bi-polar with you. One moment she’s saying how much you should hang out and bond and the next minute she’s calling you a stuck up bitch that doesn’t know how to have fun. The girl has some serious self-esteem issues. Really you have no idea why she still acts the way she does. Mom is dead and so is dad. Who is there to rebel against anymore? From some of what she said earlier it almost seems like she parties out of habit more than great desire anymore. You pull your bags out of the car and head on inside. The front room is messy, but not overly so. Your sister is nowhere to be seen, but there are a couple of people you don’t know sitting on one of the couches playing video games. Another one is asleep on the floor. The place smells of spilled beer and none of the people even acknowledge your presence. “Suzy! You’re here!” a voice suddenly calls out. You look up and see Julie waving from the second floor. She immediately runs down the stairs to greet you close up, nearly tripping in the process. When she gets to you, the years of partying are really starting to take their toll. She’s your age, but she’s starting to look like one of those trashy strippers that wears too much make up. “Suzy, it’s been too long! Give me a hug!” she exclaims and before you can even react, she gloms on to you and gives you a tight squeeze. “Mmmm, you smell so nice. Like strawberries.” She says while rubbing her hands across your back. “Uh, yeah. Probably the shampoo I used.” You say. “You’ve been keeping in shape too, guess Bobby was keeping you busy physically. Ha ha ha ha.” Julie laughs and now she starts getting a little too touchy feelie for you. You’ve already had unwanted touching once today, you don’t feel like more. “Yeah, okay good to see you too. Back up there now. I need some space.” You say and start pulling away. “Hah same old prudish Suzy. What you think I’m gonna just start sexually assaulting you right here in the living room? Please, I know a girl like you needs to be romanced first!” Julie jokes, but she’s probably somewhat serious with her playful advances. Shortly after you got with Bobby, Donna told you that Julie spent a couple days crying because she wanted to tell you how she’s always loved you. (You of course weren’t sure why she ever thought you’d be into such a relationship, but apparently before Bobby, everyone just assumed you were a big lesbian.) Of course she quickly went on with her hedonistic life, but you’ve always wondered if she really ever “got over” you. “Okay Suzy, I hear you’re planning on sleeping in my dad’s old office. You remember the way right?” “Yeah I think so.” “Oh, I’ll just walk with you, we need to catch up on so much. I’ve missed you, you know!” Resigning yourself to the fact that you’re going to have to at least be friendly to Julie, you walk with her to your new room. Julie of course is very talkative. “So Suzy, speaking of Bobby, did you make up with him yet?” “No and I doubt if it’s going to work out anyway.” “Ohhhh, that’s so sad. You two did make a cute couple in a creepy shut in way.” Julie says and begins rubbing your shoulder. “Hm, thanks.” You answer. “Well, not to worry, you could meet a new boyfriend right here! Contrary to what you might think, I don’t just have mindless party animals coming over here. There’s actually a wide variety of people that come here to hang out. You could meet that special guy tonight in fact! Or girl…you know whatever…” Julie says trailing off and nervously smiles at you. “Well I’m not really thinking about that right now, I think I’d rather be by myself for awhile.” You answer. “Oh yeah sure. I understand. But I just want you to know that my house is your house okay? And all the fun that goes on here, well you can have some of that fun too you know?” “I know Julie. Thanks for letting me stay here.” “No problem, you were always welcome. Okay well here it is. I’ll leave you to get settled and remember you can always come out and join us later.” At this point Julie hugs you again though it’s a quick one this time and briskly walks off. You enter the office and see that it is indeed much neater and cleaner than most of the house. Even better that it has a small bathroom attached to it as well, but you knew that since this actually isn’t the first time you’ve been in here. You remember playing tag with Julie when you were in elementary school and you both ran in here. Julie’s dad wasn’t angry though. He even gave you a lollipop from a jar on his desk. Come to think of it anytime he saw you, he was always giving you lollipops. He was pretty nice that way. Shame he died in a car accident just as Julie was starting to get wilder, since even if he did work most of the time, you get the impression Julie might at least had some boundaries during her late teens and onward. It doesn’t take long for you to rearrange some things and make yourself at home on the fairly comfortable couch in there. It also doesn’t take long for you to get back to finishing what Donna interrupted earlier today. (Making sure to lock the door of course) After finishing up and washing up a bit, you hear some music. Sounds like the party is getting started. Continuing to be the introverted personality you usually are, you don’t leave your “safe zone” and go back to playing games on your computer and looking up random shit on the Internet. The more things change the more they stay the same, time passes and it’s almost like you’ve never left the basement! Eventually you get bored doing that and you start looking around the office a bit more. It’s sort of snooping, but then Julie’s dad is dead and you’re sure Julie doesn’t care. You start going through the filing cabinets and find that all the paperwork is mainly business files dated back to before Julie’s dad died. Looks like nobody ever bothered to clean any of this stuff out or even go through the stuff. The bookshelves aren’t filled with the most interesting of topics. Mostly about economics, business practices, legal things, though some of the books are historical in nature. You don’t see much fiction though. The desk just contains regular office supplies. You actually aren’t surprised to find a pistol in there (along with bullets) but after rummaging around a bit you notice a secret compartment in one of the drawers. You find a black box and you waste no time in opening it. Inside you find pictures. Pictures of little girls…in fact there are some of YOU! By the looks of them, these were all taken in secret. Nobody is naked in the photos, but given that nearly every single picture of you involves you either sucking or licking a lollipop it’s pretty apparent what the purpose of these were. Some of these girls are other kids you knew from school and hung out with Julie as well. In fact one of them went missing. Nobody knew who did it, but it was a big deal in town and it probably lead to your mother being even more overprotective of you. And you’re really glad she did since you’re starting to get a sinking feeling about what you’ve uncovered here. “Christ…” you say going through the photos. You start to wonder now if Julie’s behavior is caused by years of sexual molestation. It would certainly explain a lot. Then you get a knock on the door. “Hey Suzy, it’s me Julie, I’ve got something for you.” “Uh, hold on. Just a minute!” you exclaim as you quickly put the photographs back. You have no idea if you should tell her not, but you open the door. Julie appears with a bottle of soda and a pizza and walks in. “I figured you’d stay in here all night, but I thought you might get hungry or thirsty so here you go!” Julie says and places her gifts to you on the desk. “Oh. Thanks Julie.” You say. “You’re welcome…so why’d you take so long in answering the door? You splittin’ the kitten in here or what?” Julie asks. “Hah, yeah well busted I guess.” You say with a fake chuckle. “Suzy, if you came out and had some fun with the rest of us, that wouldn’t really be necessary you know. I know you probably still miss Bobby on some level and you’ve got needs, but he’s not here and you’d be better off moving on with your life and getting some free dick out there…or pussy…you know whatever…” Julie says obviously still hoping. Given how unstable Julie is at times, you almost wonder if you should address what you found at all. Maybe dredging up bad childhood memories isn’t the best thing right now. > You keep quiet You decide this isn’t the time to bring it up. It is a party after all and you don’t want to ruin Julie’s fun just because you’re not feeling so great about several things like Bobby and your fight with your sister. Well maybe you can get to dealing with Bobby later, but you can still make up with your sister right now, besides you’d rather not linger in here alone with Julie, she might think you’re leading her on. “Hey Julie, I think I will come and join the festivities.” You say. “You will?!” Julie says surprised. “Yeah, I’m not saying I’m gonna get wild, but who knows. But what I really want to do is speak with my sister, I had a fight with her earlier.” “Hm, yeah I heard. Well I’m sure she’s still out there. Saw her talking to some guy earlier. Don’t know if they hooked up yet though. Probably best if you didn’t disturb her if you catch her in the act as it were.” Julie says. “I’m well aware. She’d be even more pissed at me. Okay, see you later.” “Yeah, see you later and um, if you want to talk to me I’ll be available anytime.” Julie says looking a bit dejected as you walk out the room. Yeah, probably best you left. You swear, you’re wondering if you’re going to be able to put up with Julie’s crush on you while living in the same house with her, but that will be yet ANOTHER thing to deal with at different time. You enter the living room first, which is the most crowded part of the house. The music is up loud a couple people are playing video games on the TV and several people making out on the floor. A few guys come up to you and try to speak, but you brush them off and continue to look for your sister who obviously isn’t in this area. You head upstair which isn’t quite as crowded, but the bedrooms are definitely being used for their obvious purpose, and worse nobody even bothers to close the damn doors! (Which certainly draws a few onlookers) Fortunately, the quick glances you do make into the rooms prove to not find your sister, so you head out to the backyard. The backyard is a little more relaxed at least in terms of sex and drugs, though a few of the guys are doing some sort of stupid stunts and hurting themselves in the process and then laughing about it. Another guy is filming the whole thing. Several girls look on and shake their heads at the ordeal and telling them that they’re going to really suffer serious injury if they don’t stop. You don’t see your sister and you ask one of the girls watching the spectacle. “Excuse me, do you know Donna?” you ask a woman with short brown hair. “Huh? Donna? Skinny little thing that thinks she’s hot shit? Yeah I know her… hey you look a little like her…actually I shouldn’t insult you. You’re actually prettier.” The woman replies. “Uh, thanks. Yeah she’s my sister and I was looking for her.” “Sister huh? My condolences. Anyway, yeah I think I saw her inside talking with some guy. He didn’t really stand out, in fact he didn’t really look like what she normally goes for, but she was already pretty drunk and when that happens she typically doesn’t give a fuck. Or rather she always gives a fuck. Hah.” “Hm, I just looked inside, but I couldn’t find her.” “Did you try the basement? She might be down there getting fucked, well assuming Julie isn’t down there getting fucked. Not that it’s ever stopped them from fucking in the same room before.” “Uh, no I haven’t checked down there.” “Well that’s probably where she is then. Now if you excuse me, I have get back to making sure my idiot boyfriend doesn’t break his goddamn neck.” You leave the backyard and head back into the house. You decide you’ve had enough of crowds and if your sister is fucking someone in the basement, you don’t want to interrupt, so you head back to your room. Just before you reach your room however, a guy about your age opens up the door leading to the basement. Maybe this is the guy your sister was with. “Hey, is Donna down there?” you ask. “Huh? Um, who are you?” the man asks as if you’re interrogating him. “Donna. She’s my sister. Someone said she might be in the basement with some guy. Are you him?” The man’s demeanor becomes a little more relaxed. “Oh…wait are you Suzy?” he asks. “Yeah.” “Yeah, your sister Donna mentioned you when I was talking with her. She wasn’t lying, you are pretty.” “Wait, she said that?” “Sure, she was very praising of you.” The man says. “…Donna? She was praising of me? I find that hard to believe, I just had a fight with her.” “Oh. Well maybe she was feeling bad about that, she seemed upset about it when we spoke.” The man seems to shift a bit and look sideways a couple times after he says that, and you become suspicious. “Okay…well I need to go talk with her, but the man suddenly tries to stop you from going any further. “Yeah, I don’t think you should. Like I said she’s upset right now.” You take a quick glance at the man and see that his clothes are disheveled like he just put them back on in a hurry. “Funny, I’ve never know my sister to be upset after sex.” “What?” “Come on, your clothes were obviously put back on in a rush, I know what happened, so if she’s finished with satisfying her urges, she should be in a much better mood to speak with me…” At this point the man stops you again. “Suzy, I don’t like what you’re implying. I never touched your sister. She’s a fucking whore. I was just trying to console her about you. SHE aggressively made the moves on me, but I resisted and then she started crying about what a whore she was and how she could never live up to being like you and screamed that she wanted to be left alone. Now I suggest you do just that, at least until she calms down. She’s a little drunk too, so you probably should just let her sleep it off.” While the man continues to maintain a smile, his tone is somewhat threatening. His whole story stinks of lies and you’re getting a really bad vibe from him. Almost like you did with your uncle Ed. “Get the hell out of my way. ” You say and push past him to descend down the steps quickly. Unfortunately you’re not quick enough as the man to manage to shove you in back causing you to lose balance and go crashing down the stairs. While you’re taking a tumble, the man locks the basement door and makes his way down the stairs in a normal fashion. The loud noise from the party ensures that nobody is going to investigate even if they bothered to. You break your leg and smash the side of your head against the floor when you finally hit the bottom. You surprisingly don’t scream out from the pain, but you are about to fall unconscious from your head injury. Your vision is blurry and you feel dizzy, but despite that, you see Donna sprawled out on the floor not that far from you. She’s naked and isn’t moving. “Don…” you utter and stretch your hand out towards her. “I’m sorry it had to be like this Suzy. I really did want us to get off on the right foot. When your whore of a sister Donna was bitching about you to me, you sounded so… perfect. Such a shame…” the man says and then kicks you in the head. The blackness takes you and then the man takes your life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>SUNDAY “Are you worried about these uncertain times? Do you…” Click. You’re so damn sick of these Ground Zero commercials you think as you turn the TV off. If you older brother Ben hadn’t shot his family and himself in a tragic paranoid breakdown you can only imagine he’d be going on about how right he was in building that underground bunker out in your backyard. You look at the time and realize you’ve spent most of the day procrastinating watching TV even though there’s not much on that interests you on TV anymore. All the channels you used to watch that had interesting shit on them now all have shallow reality shows and quite frankly you’ve got enough dysfunctional family drama going on in real life without needing to watch it on TV. You remember a time when you could avoid most of the mess by hiding out in your basement. Unfortunately you can’t even do that anymore. Ever since dad drank himself to death, the gravy train of living at home for free came to an end. Without the help of your dad’s pension checks anymore, your older Amazonian sister Kelly said there was no way in hell that she was going to keep supporting the house on her own unless she was the only one living in it. Seeing as she’s a roller derby bitch as well as an illegal fight club brawler, it isn’t like you or any of your siblings were in any position to argue with her. Your younger brother Peter, having given up his lofty dreams of being a famous movie director now spends a lot of his time in the garage making amateur porn with various guys he picks up at the clubs. He makes enough money through his website that it keeps Kelly off his back. He seems to enjoy what he’s doing and at least he’s not stealing your clothes anymore. Your younger sister Donna simply moved out and moved in with your best friend Julie who is still the eternal party girl. Really you’re surprised Julie hasn’t caught every STD known to man at this point. To be honest Donna’s had more in common with Julie than you have for many years now. You’re sure Donna’s a lot happier at a “party house.” As for you, you didn’t have much in the way of options. Trying to get a job has failed spectacularly in this economy. Though your…”unique” and reclusive personality doesn’t exactly help in that department. Given some of the junk that’s laying around the house you sometimes wonder if you shouldn’t try to sell some of it over the Internet to support yourself. Seems like a lot of work though and you’re no wheeler and dealer. Donna suggested that you move in with her and Julie, but that whole scene isn’t for you. As much as you hate dealing with Kelly, you’d also hate having to put up with drunk horny guys (and girls) trying to get into your pants every five minutes, not to mention the loud music, crowds and the ever growing possibility of the cops busting the place for illegal drugs. Which brings you to your boyfriend Bobby Morningstar who naturally has suggested that you move in with him on several occasions. This would be the ideal solution if it weren’t for the fact that his own family consists of like a million siblings that all live in his cult compound. There’s also the fact that his ex-girlfriend/sister Diana is wicked pissed at you for stealing him away from her. It’s been an ongoing source of tension between you and Bobby and you wish he’d just leave them all behind and you two could make a life together elsewhere, but his duty to family is strong, as is his faith to the Babylonian Goddess of Chaos, Tiamat which still involves human sacrifices. Right now you’re having a period of separation with him. Sometimes you think about breaking up with him completely, but then you can’t just dismiss the good times you do have with him. You have that special bond that only a couple could have when one warns the other about their serial killer relative lying in wait for them in the woods. Thank god Bobby took care of your uncle Ed. That had to be the scariest moment of your life dealing with that situation. Of course none of this delightful recap of past events really helps you. Kelly is starting to get very impatient with you and you fear that your months of stalling are coming to an end. Kelly’s currently not home, but she’ll be back in a few hours to get a bit of sleep before heading off to her fight club stuff. Continuing to enjoy the time you have to not have to deal with her you go back to procrastinating, which mainly involves goofing off on the Internet, “stumbling” upon a porn site and then using battery powered means to relieve yourself of stress. Eventually you hear the familiar slamming of the door and stomping around upstairs, which signifies that Kelly is indeed home. “SUZY! Stop splittin’ the kitten and get yer bony ass up here!” you hear Kelly shout. You were afraid of this. You clean yourself up a bit, mentally prepare yourself and then head upstairs. “Hey Kelly…” you start to say, but are interrupted. “Shut up. I’ve got exactly a couple hours to get some rest before I have to drag my ass to my other job to support this fucking house and it’s a fucking mess! You can’t even clean up around here? Did you even look for a job today? Let me guess you spent the whole day fucking around on the Internet and masturbating didn’t you?” “Well uh...” “Jesus fuckin’ Christ Suzy, you’re goddamn useless you know that? The only reason I’m not kicking your ass right now is because I need to save my energy and it would be too fucking easy.” Before you can even speak, Kelly continues her rant. “GET A FUCKING JOB! I don’t care what kind! Just be a contributing member of this household like Peter or get the fuck out like Donna!” “Kelly I’m trying, but I’m just not having any luck in finding anything, can’t you help me out?” you say. “Help you out? I’m helping you out right now by supporting your ass! I’ve been helping you out for quite some time! In fact I originally suggested that you could probably become a ring girl at the fights, but you said no because you didn’t want to dress up in skimpy clothing and parade around in front of a bunch of drunks.” “Kelly, you know I don’t want to dress like that in public, especially not after what uncle Ed made me wear that night…” “Oh here we go, crazy old uncle Ed! How long you going to keep using that as an excuse? Sheesh, the way you go on about it, you act like he raped you. What happened instead? He got killed, you weren’t even touched and you got a fucking boyfriend out of that deal! Some of us should be so lucky to be in a fucked up situation and STILL come out ahead! You know what I deal with on a regular basis? Steroid freaks trying to break my fucking neck that’s what! You think I’d be making a living trading punches with fucktards if I LOOKED like you Suzy? You got the biggest advantage and you’re just wasting it! What the hell is your goddamn problem?” You can see that Kelly is in full-blown jealousy mode and shows no signs of stopping. Attempting to walk away will only result in her getting physical with you so the only thing you can do is endure the verbal assault. “This is sink or swim time sis. You either get your shit together by the end of this week or you’re out on your ass! This sheltered girl act is really fucking OLD! You’re a grown ass WOMAN. Start acting like one! Now get out of my fucking sight.” You meekly slink back to the basement and leave Kelly alone. You silently mope for a while pondering what the hell you’re going to do next. You then notice that your phone has been under your couch cushions and on silent all day. Bobby apparently has been repeatedly trying to contact you. Even left multiple texts saying that he really wants to talk, but the mood you’re in right now, you don’t want to deal with it. You don’t want to deal with anything. You just want to be safe in your own little world in the basement. How you miss those days… Well today isn’t completely over yet. You’ve still got time to salvage some of it. Hell, maybe you can even make a major change in your life. > You contact Bobby If Kelly wasn't putting the screws to you about moving out, you might be less inclined to return Bobby's phone call, however this is a desperate situation and despite your recent relationship problems, you still have strong feelings for Bobby and he will certainly help you out. You grab your phone and call Bobby. The phone rings twice and then is answered. "Hey Suzy, I've been trying to get a hold of you." Bobby blurts out as soon as he answers. "Yeah I know." You say. "Look, I know we've been having some difficulties lately, and our last argument was bad, but I really want to work things out, I love you." You definitely have some major things to work out, but it's nice to know how Bobby feels about you. "Well, we're going to be doing that, but that isn't the only reason why I called. I...uh need a new place to live. Kelly's kicking me out." You say. "Oh, I see, you want to move in with me and my family...are you sure? I mean you know I really would like you there, but part of the reason why we were arguing was..." "Your sister Diana hates my guts." You interrupt. "Well...I admit she's not fond of you, but I mean I think we can work past that. She's just going to have to accept that I'm with you now." "But is she REALLY going to do that? Or am I going to find her hovering over me in the middle of the night with a knife in hand?" "She'd have a hell of a time sneaking in our room without waking me up first of all. Second, if I lay down the law to her, she's got no fucking choice BUT to accept it. I'M the head of the family after all and as head of it, my word is divinely inspired by Tiamat herself and to go against Tiamat is a blasphemy that even Diana would not do. So to sum up, you might have to hear some shit from her, but your physical well being is perfectly safe." "Safe" is a funny term to use for a guy who practices human sacrifice. Which is the other concern you have, since while you've long since accepted certain aspects of Bobby's belief system, you'd rather not see the gruesome details. Though you suppose that's just one more thing you're going to have to discuss. You sort of wonder about the rest of Bobby's family though and how well you'll get along with them. He's got a family that's at least as big as yours was at one time, but you've never really interacted with any of them (Bobby never had you over his house much due to Diana's hostility) except for Bobby's second oldest sister Helen who was polite, if quiet. Just as you're thinking about this, Bobby springs something unexpected on you. "Since you're wanting to move in, I should tell you that we won't be living in the house in the neighborhood. We're going to be living in a compound north outside of town." "Wait, what?" You say. "It's the Morningstar family compound. We're moving there, or rather we've been in the process of moving all our stuff over there for the past few weeks. Never mentioned it since we were sort of arguing about other stuff." "Wait, wasn't your house the Morningstar family compound?" "Heh, well that was certainly big enough for my immediate family, but I do have some extended family as well and given the current world climate, I had a video conference meeting with some of the extended family and most agreed that it might be best if we moved to the better fortified compound that my Dad had built over time decades ago." "Holy shit, how many people are we going to be living with? I mean are we going to be restricted with what technology we can use, working a farm and the women have to put their hair up in a bouffant and wear simple clothing? If so then I can't deal with..." "What? No! Geez Suzy, we're worshippers of Tiamat, not the Amish or fucking Mormon fundies! No, we got all the conveniences of the modern world there and women can wear what they want, though there MIGHT come a day very soon when we will have to rely on farming of some sort, but I guarantee you won't be the one doing it." Bobby continues. "As for how many people are going to be living there, well that I'm not sure. There aren't as many of us anymore and some live quite far away. Not everyone was jumping at the idea either, so some may decide to not bother to make the trip. In any case, at most it might be twenty more people and even then we'll have more than enough room there. Don't worry about it." Easy for him to say, he's not the one that's just had this new information sprung on him. Bobby correctly senses your silence as concern. "I sense some concern." Bobby says. "Fucking right you sense some concern! Not only am I still worried about your sister, I'm now worried about even MORE of your... highly religious family. I mean how are the rest of them going to feel about you bringing in a non-believer?" "Oh I'm not worried about that. I'm confident you'll eventually see the colorful swirling chaos...or the light if you prefer." Bobby laughs. "That's...... not exactly alleviating my concerns Bobby." "Sorry, I'm just joking to lighten the mood...." You hear Bobby exhaling deeply before continuing. "Suzy, I know this is more shit for you to take in and I know you've been very understanding about everything. It's one of the many reasons why you're so wonderful. I just want to stress that you won't be walking into some Jim Jones kool aid suicide cult compound. You'll be perfectly safe because you'll be with me, I'm the chosen of Tiamat and like I said, my word is going to be law at the compound. Look, I'll be by to pick you up tomorrow to take you there. If you're not feeling it after a few days, well I'm sure we can figure something else out. I want us to work out Suzy. I love you." There is certainly no denying that Bobby feels very strongly about you. Again, while you still have reservations, you've never known Bobby to lie to you. As for the rest, you do know Bobby's family take their religion pretty seriously so you know Bobby isn't exaggerating about you being safe with him. In fact if the threat of physical violence is gone, that actually already puts you ahead of your situation here considering Kelly has pushed you around and threatened to do more on many occasions. "I feel the same way Bobby. Okay, I'll pack and I'll see you tomorrow." Bobby's voice sounds a bit more upbeat when you agree to go with him, though again if you had the option of staying home, you certainly would. Still, you're trying to maintain a positive open minded attitude about all this. After saying goodbye to Bobby you waste no time in packing your most important belongings. As the night approaches, you finish up with your packing and get to sleep a little earlier. You get the feeling you're going to need all your energy for what lies ahead tomorrow. > Next day MONDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world hot dog eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe the mayonnaise off your lips, graciously stand up and bow for your adoring fans. The grossly fat dude on your right looks at you in disbelief and then turns away to puke in a bucket. Meanwhile the little Asian dude on your left just shakes his head wondering how the hell you could've beaten him. "I don't understand it...all my training. I glanced over at you during the contest...you...you were barely even chewing! How?" He asks. "Oh just natural talent at swallowing hot dogs I suppose." You reply humbly and wink at the audience, which continues to praise you. While you're blowing kisses at your fans, the announcer of the contest speaks again. "And as an extra special reward, our glorious host of this event, Misty will be coming soon to congratulate our winner in person. This hasn't happened in decades! Perhaps even centuries! It's all just so exciting! Oh wait...I think that's Misty now!" At this point the wind begins to pick up significantly, which is amazing since this contest was taking place in an indoor stadium. The audience seems to be going even wilder, but at this point you're getting a little concerned. Your concern becomes fear when the fat bastard to your right melts into a gory pile of goo, the Asian guy's head gets really large like in one of those anime cartoons and he screams before running away shouting about Tokyo getting destroyed by a giant lizard. You look back at the audience and see that they've begun stripping off their clothes and embracing each other in the biggest orgy you've ever seen. (Even larger than that porno you watched one time) The roof suddenly comes off the stadium revealing a dark sky with a jet black swirling hole above. "And here comes Misty folks! It's absolutely...GLORIOUS." The disembodied voice says as its pitch changes to demonic tone. You can't run, you can't even move, you just stare at this unearthly sight like a deer in the headlights completely frozen. You see the flash of a couple red glowing orbs in the black hole above you and then the wind picks you up and you're being pulled towards it. "COME TO ME SUZY. COME TO US. COME. COME. COME..." A deep voice echoes all around you which is backed up by the audience who are chanting along with having their orgy. You vainly try to struggle, but there isn't much you can do accept uselessly flail about in midair as you are slowly enveloped by darkness. Even when you try to scream, you make no sound, in fact all your senses go numb and everything goes black. You are then awakened by the ringing of your phone. At first you look around briefly still wondering if you're still levitating towards a black hole, but you breathe a sigh of relief that it was all just a dream. However, even though you're wide-awake, you still feel shaken up. Something about that dream seemed really unnerving and you usually aren't one to put much stock into your dreams. The ringing of the phone takes priority before dream analysis though, so after fumbling with it a bit you answer it. "Hey I've been trying to get a hold of you. We're you still asleep?" Bobby asks. "Yeah, are you outside the house already?" You answer. "Nah, I'm on my way over. I hope you're packed and ready to go though, because it's nuts out here. I know you don't tend to leave the house much, but if you've been out lately, you'd know it's been getting fucking crazy in town. Seriously, you'll see how fucked up it is out there when we drive through town. The cops are everywhere, groups of people are rioting, like I said, it's a mess. Okay, I need to focus on the road, there's a meat wagon picking up some bodies off the road. I'll see you soon. Love you." Bobby says and hangs up. As you take a quick shower before getting ready to leave, you think more about your strange dream. You wonder if it was some sort of subconscious thing that your mind was telling you that this move is a bad idea. You have to admit, you still are feeling very unsure about it, especially now that Bobby has told you that you're moving into an isolated compound with not just his immediate family, but a bunch of other family that could be even crazier. Still, this could just be mostly anxiety of leaving a place where you've traditionally always felt safe and lived most of your life combined with a freaky dream. Bobby did say you could leave if you weren't comfortable there, so you're trying to not to focus on the possible negatives. You try to calm your nerves the old fashioned way and think about Bobby the entire time. Exiting the shower, getting dressed and grabbing your packed bags, you finally leave your basement. You packed as much as you could, hopefully you can return to get the rest later. You head upstairs and you're not waiting long before you hear a knock on the door. Upon answering it, you see Bobby who embraces you with a hug and a kiss. "By Tiamat, I've missed your body against mine." Bobby says caressing you all over. "I never would have guessed. I have missed your touch as well though Bobby. Let me just get my bags." You turn around and bend over to grab your bags and that's when Bobby grabs you around the waist and if it wasn't for the fabric separating the two of you, he'd also be inside you. It's startling enough that you probably would've lost you balance had Bobby not been holding on to you so tightly. "What the hell? Sheesh Bobby, I nearly fell forward on my face!" "You wouldn't have, I got you. Mmm, I just can't help myself, I just..." At this point Bobby starts kissing on your neck and groping you. "Bobby, Bobby, stop. My brother Peter is still here in the connected garage. Last thing I need is for him to hear us and then suddenly walk in on me getting plowed from behind. Besides, didn't you say it's getting crazy out there? Shouldn't we be getting the hell out of town?" "Yeah, it's wonderfully chaotic out there. Like Tiamat herself has blessed this town. It really started putting me in the mood and then seeing you...well how can I not want to make love to you in the midst of all this chaos?" Bobby at this point is trying pull your shirt off over your head and you hear the sound of a zipper being unzipped, though with as excited as he is, you dare say it could just impale you through his pants. He's grunting, slobbering all over your neck and sniffing your hair and...well he REALLY wants you right now. This isn't really what you had in mind and something about the way Bobby is behaving is a bit...animalistic. He's never been that way in your other intimate encounters with him. Well not excessively so at any rate. Also, you HAVE been fighting for awhile, and it's sort of presumptuous of him to just think you're going to spread your legs immediately because you're on good terms again. Then again, this is sort of turning you on right now, and it has been awhile for you. (By something not battery operated or your own hands at least) > You get busy with Bobby It's not like this is a complete stranger, this is someone you do have feelings for and what the hell, it's not like you aren't going to be doing this again with him eventually. Still, there is the matter of decorum. You manage to twist your body around so that you're face to face to him; he barely stops when you tell him. "Bobby, look we can do this, but like I said, we're NOT doing this in the middle of the living room. Let's at least go down to the basement and we can fuck on my couch." "Okay, okay, whatever, let's just get down their quickly." Bobby agrees continuing to kiss on you. The pair of you head down into the basement and one of Bobby's hands is practically glued to your ass the entire time. When you get to your room, you see that Bobby has somehow managed to strip off most of his clothing by this point (amazing considering he had one hand on your ass the entire time). He helpfully starts stripping your clothing off. "Well seeing as you're obviously taking the alpha male approach to this, after you're done tearing off my clothes, you can carry me over to the sofa and start doing me like a conquering warrior. I want to see your face stare into mine as you thrust into me, let me know who exactly is in charge and teach me a lesson." You say licking your index finger and then running your finger down Bobby's chest. (Never let it be said that you can't tap into your dirty side when necessary) The next half hour is fun, if a little rougher than you're used to with Bobby. It starts off with him just really ramming it into you and telling you in various ways to "Take it." while staring directly into your eyes which are more piercing than usual. His hands are also mostly holding down your wrists at this point. Despite all this, you aren't scared. You just wrap your legs around him tightly like a boa constrictor and enjoy the ride. A little later he put his hands around your neck and even squeezes a little while continuing to stare into your eyes. You can certainly still breathe, but he is definitely establishing his dominance and that he is firmly in control of things. Despite all this, you still aren't really scared, you even add to the "experience" by squeaking out a "No." "Please don't." "Stop hurting me." every now and then. Eventually Bobby chants something in a language you've never heard before and then orgasms. Again, not really scary since he's always doing that. It was weird the first few times you had sex with him but now it acts as a nice little alarm letting you know that things will be over soon. Completely spent after orgasm, Bobby collapses on top of you and begins hugging you tightly, and then whispers... "I love you so much Suzy, I want us to be joined forever. I want our bodies as well as our souls to be married." NOW you get scared and suddenly push him off of you in alarm at this declaration. "What?! Married?" You exclaim recoiling to one corner of the couch. Bobby's a little surprised by your reaction. "I want us to be married. I mean we're obviously soul mates and its the next logical step for us." "Step? What step? We were just having fun a moment ago and now you spring life long commitment?" "Are you saying you never saw us eventually getting married? I mean in all that time since we've been together?" "No, and especially not when all the trouble with your sister came about." "But on several occasions you asked me to run away with you! You didn't think we'd get married if we ever did that even?" "Not really." "I'm guessing you didn't ever think about having children either then." "Children?! What the hell, you think I'm some sort of brood mother? Now Bobby is downright confused. "Suzy... I really don't understand your... well view of things..." Bobby says. "That pretty rich coming from the cultist." You say. "Okay, I'm going to ignore that because I love you. But if it makes any difference, at least I still behave in a consistent way which you do not." "What's that supposed to mean?" "(Sigh) I really don't want us to fight again..." "Bobby I just let you simulate what could be considered a rape fantasy on me, the least you can do is explain yourself." "Okay then THAT right there is what I'm talking about. You have no problem with having kinky sex with me, you have no major problems with my religion and what it entails, you're even willing to move in with me and my family even though you're concerned about my sister and probably the rest of them, but somehow marriage is what is freaking you out? I mean I'm trying to do the right thing here and it's because I genuinely love you. Why are you so resistant?" It's actually a good question. You're pretty tolerant of a lot of stuff most would've recoiled in horror from and something like marriage and (shudder) kids is scaring you off. There's probably a good psychological reason for your reluctance, involving your observations of other married couples such as your own mother (overly compliant) and father (distant) or your brother Ben (paranoid psychotic) and his wife (utterly clueless) but there are a few other concerns. "Bobby...you've never brought up marriage before either, why all of a sudden?" You ask. "Well, I just think it's time. I mean we've been together awhile. We've stuck together through ups and downs. We're going to be living together. I obviously love you and I assume you love me right?" "Well...yeah...but... I dunno...I mean kids? Come on do you really think I'm mother material? I can barely take care of myself...in fact I can't at all, otherwise I wouldn't be in this situation in the first place." At this point Bobby takes your hand into his and gets closer to you. "Suzy, don't you see, you don't need to worry about any of that anymore. When you marry me you won't have to worry about taking care of yourself ever again. And as far as being mother material, I can't imagine a better mother to my children. Even if you do have trouble, I'm sure my sisters will help out...well okay Helen will help out, but you know what I'm saying. The main thing is you won't have any more worries when you're in the family...MY family. We'll look after you. I'll look after you." And there it is. Your future. A "housewife" popping out a whole mess of little cultists like a Pez dispenser. While it might not be quite that extreme, the writing is on the wall. While Bobby is probably sincere in his love and desire to care for you, he's still the head of a human sacrificing cult and as such he's going to be somewhat controlling and manipulative. How long before you become brainwashed into believing in the same shit he believes in? How long before you passively accept other sudden changes over time? Hell, how long before some organization like the FBI or the ATF comes charging in to lay siege to the place? Though on the other hand what are you really doing with your life right now and what prospects do you really have? You could do worse than have a man who obviously loves you a lot and is willing to take care of the stuff you don't want to bother worrying about. You've got a major life changing decision to make, because you get the impression that if you get into that compound of his, changing you mind isn't going to be an option. > You accept his proposal "Okay, Bobby. I suppose you're right. We both love each other and that's the most important thing...so yes. I'll marry you." You say. Bobby is overjoyed and hugs and kisses you. "Oh Suzy, this is fantastic! I'll make the announcement to everyone as soon as we get to the compound! I got the ring there and we'll make it official as soon as we're all settled in. In fact, this Friday should be perfect! I hope that’s good with you.” “Um…yeah this Friday is fine.” You answer. “Tiamat truly blesses her most worthy servants! Come on let's get going!" Bobby exclaims. Bobby immediately starts grabbing his clothing that he left in various places in the basement on the way to your room and getting dressed. Your own clothing is a bit torn now, so you grab some new clothes that were still in your closet. Heading back upstairs, Bobby picks up your bags and carries them to this van. He opens the door for you and everything. You did miss his attention to the little things like that. As soon as you leave your neighborhood you notice what Bobby was talking about the town. He wasn't kidding when he said it’s a mess. You see police trying maintain order, fights, car wrecks, fire fighters trying put out fires and ambulances blaring their sirens. As Bobby focuses on the road, he goes on about how everything that's currently going on in town is just a small sample of what's to come. He talks about how there are several wars are going on in the world and how tensions are at an all time high. (He actually sounds like one of those Ground Zero infomercials on that bit) He mentions how everything is always trending towards chaos and entropy and how the signs that Tiamat is finally coming back to return the world to its natural state. Between your recent acceptance of his proposal and this, you don't think you've ever seen him so happy and excited. "Well whatever's going on, I'm glad we are leaving town, it's like everyone here has lost their mind." You say. "Yeah, some of my family don't agree that we should go to the compound. Some say we should be out here personally embracing the increasing chaos in the world like Tiamat would want, but... as I said there aren't a lot of us and I'd still like to make sure we're relatively safe. I believe Tiamat would want her chosen to be smart about things. Build up our numbers over time and THEN we will rise to become a force that none can oppose." You don't say much, you just nod and smile. You imagine you're going to be directly contributing to those "numbers." You cross your legs at the thought. Eventually you manage to get out of town and things are slightly better and the traffic is even thinning out. You've never been north of town before...actually you've never been out of town before. You also never realized how rural of an area you lived in. The quiet calm of the great outdoors is actually a little scarier than the chaos of the town you just left behind, doesn't help that it's getting dark by this point. Bobby ends up turning off the main road to an unsaved dirt one leading further into wilderness. Just as you're wonder how much further, you see the compound (surrounded by a high fence with razor wire of course) and it's certainly big enough and imposing enough to make any cult leader jealous. "Shit, it looks like a small prison." You say. "Yeah my dad and some of his brothers were constantly adding on to this thing for decades. To be honest, it isn't even completely finished. I mean it's more than sufficient for several people to comfortably live in, but there are many rooms that are just the bare minimum of four walls. Towards the back where you can't see from here, there are some portions of it that are exposed to the outside. However, seeing as there will be a bunch of us living here now, I think we'll at least be able to finish the place up, and in time make even more additions." "Didn't know your dad had brothers." "Yeah three older, and one younger. A younger sister too, but none of them will be coming here." "Oh. Wait, all of them are dead?" "No, the two younger siblings, Uncle Leslie and Aunt Lilith are still alive. In fact Leslie and Lilith live in a house together south of town. But let's just say they aren't exactly believers in the faith and chose a different path instead...I'm sure you've heard of the Ground Zero corporation especially with all their annoying infomercials and ads everywhere nowadays." "Wait, seriously? You've got family that works for GZ? You never told me that before either." You ask. "My dad wasn't really on speaking terms with either of them. Long story. Anyway, technically just Aunt Lilith works for GZ. Dunno doing what, but I think it's important. Uncle Leslie just lives with her and spends most of his time indulging in his pointless experiments, though I know he does some black market organ shit on the side." Bobby explains. "I guess you couldn't get your aunt to pull a few strings and get set up in one of those shelters they're always trying to sell huh?" You say. "Actually I did contact her during the recent family video conference. She told me that we'd all be much better off in dad's slightly unfinished compound than in one of those shelters. Apparently half of those things are death traps or something. She said even though she wasn't a believer, she still didn't want to subject her nieces and nephews to the fate of being in one of those live-in mass coffins." "Well that was nice of her to look out for you." "Yeah, she always was one of the nicest people in our family. Dunno why she's with Uncle Leslie, the guy is a psychotic asshole to practically everyone. Good doctor though. Anyway, let's see who's on duty tonight." Bobby says pulling up to the large gate. Bobby rolls down his window and speaks into an intercom. "Hey, it's Bobby. Anyone there?" "Bobby? Where the hell have you been? Thought you were going back into town and coming straight back to help with arranging all this furniture." A voice replies a few moments later. "Yeah well I had something really important to do and town is crazy right now. Did anyone else show up since yesterday?" "Nah, but a few people called saying they were going to get in by tomorrow at least." "Okay, what's everyone else doing right now?" "Um, well mostly everyone's asleep or otherwise retired to their rooms. Except me who drew the short straw to keep a look out for you." "What?! Asleep already? It's not that late!" Bobby exclaims. "Well everyone was a bit tired from all the moving around. Also your sister Helen felt the young ones should get a good night's sleep earlier since there's more shit to do tomorrow." "Hmm, well I had a big announcement to make, but I suppose if everyone is mostly in dreamland right now, it can wait until tomorrow. Might as well anyway seeing as you said more people are supposed to show up. Okay let us in William." "Us, huh? I guess that means you have a certain lady with you? Oh Tiamat, can't wait to see Diana's reaction to that one." William remarks. "Diana's gonna just have to fucking deal with it, I'm the fucking head of this family and I love this woman!" "Sheesh, calm down Bobby. I got no problem with that. I will just ask one thing, is she one of us?" Bobby looks over at you which puts you a bit on the spot. "I love you Bobby, and I go where you go now." You say which is enough of a positive answer for Bobby who has a big grin due to your answer. "Yes, of course she is." Bobby remarks. "Well then she's alright with me. Come on in around the right side, you'll be less likely to wake up the others and nobody is using that side of the building right now, so you'll have that big bedroom over there all to yourself." And with that the large gate slides open and Bobby drives you both in. He passes a few parked cars on his way over to the right wing of the compound and parks a few feet in front of a large door. You and he both get out. You attempt to get your bags, but again he insists on carrying them for you. He hands you the keys to the door to open it though, which you do and you both enter. After turning on a light switch, Bobby takes the lead. "Come on, down this corridor and through a couple of rooms." "This place isn't quite as spartan as I imagined. You've got some rather nice carpeting and even the wall coloring is fairly cheerful." You say walking and looking around. "I told you, this is our home, and we have to live here comfortably. We're not trying to create a psychologically oppressive effect to break down the willpower of potential followers, so what's the point of having a depressing drab gray everywhere?" "Makes sense. The artwork you got up is pretty...interesting as well." You say glancing at the various strange pictures hanging up ranging from multi headed dragons to gory scenes of sacrifices. "Oh, yeah. My grandmother painted most of these." Bobby replies. "Really? Well, she certainly made some vivid scenes. That one with young raven haired naked lady holding the bloody dagger surrounded by the corpses is pretty detailed. Probably the best one of the bunch." You say being supportive. "It should be the best one considering that's a self portrait of her. Took her a few months to finish it apparently because she wanted to get the color of decay just right for the bodies. Yep, she sure was talented." Bobby stares a bit at his long dead grandmother's naked image for a moment until you wave your hand in front of him. "Sorry, it's a bit hypnotic at times. Like the eyes follow you." Bobby says. "Hrmmm. Sure it's not two other things?" You ask. "Ha ha, well gotta admit, Grandma was pretty hot back in the day." "That...would be disturbing even if I wasn't your soon to be wife." You remark. (Though you’re not really THAT disturbed given what you know of Bobby’s family) "Oh I'm joking, you know you're the only one for me." Bobby says and kisses you on the cheek before saying you'll be heading up some nearby stairs. A flight of stairs, another corridor, a few rooms later and you're finally at your destination. A fully furnished master bedroom with all the comforts. "Well gotta admit, this is a very nice room. A little heavy on the red coloring, but I'll definitely be comfortable here especially since I'm starting to get tired." "Hey go ahead and relax. You're home now. I'd join you, but I think I better go see my cousin William to get a proper update on what's been going on, so I'll be back later." "Okay then." you say stretching out on the bed. Bobby kisses you goodbye and you're alone at last. You think about grabbing your laptop, but the bag it's in is too far and you're far too comfortable so you just spend your time scanning the room with your eyes thinking about your situation. When you look over to your left you notice another self portrait of Grandma Morningstar. Fortunately, she's got all her clothes on in this one and is in a more traditional pose. Same stern and confident look though. "Well I guess I'll be joining the family officially soon. Hope you approve from...well wherever you guys go when you shuffle off this mortal coil." You say towards the direction of the painting, though you don't look at it too long. Bobby's right, there is something a little hypnotic about the pictures of her. Instead you close your eyes as the comfort of the bed and silence causes you to soon fall asleep. > Next day... TUESDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world banana eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe away the whipped cream on your lips, graciously stand up and bow for your adoring fans. The big dude on your right wearing nothing but chaps and a biker jacket looks at you in disbelief and then turns away to puke in a bucket. Meanwhile the little Asian She-Male on your left just shakes his head wondering how the hell you could've beaten him. "I don't understand it...all my training. I glanced over at you during the contest...you...you were barely even chewing! How?" He asks. "Oh just natural talent at swallowing bananas I suppose." You reply humbly and wink at the audience, which continues to praise you. While you're blowing kisses at your fans, you suddenly get a feeling you’ve done something like this before…. Suddenly a hand touches your shoulder and you spin around to see a woman about your age with long raven colored hair and a low cut black gown. She’s pretty, but has a sneering look on her face. It’s not quite a cruel look, but she’s definitely not impressed with you. “So, you think you got what it takes to meet Misty huh? Pfft. I don’t see you lasting another day. Maybe two at best.” “Who is Misty?” you ask. “(Sigh) Deary, if you don’t know, then you’ll never know. And if you never know, then how can you ever hope to survive?” the woman says in a condescending tone and then starts laughing at you. She then begins to age rapidly until she becomes a wizened crone and then eventually a rotting corpse. When you begin to step back, the woman then disappears, but her laughter remains, getting louder and louder to the point being deafening and causing pain. You futilely attempt to cover your ears, but the laughter persists even when you try to cram left over bananas in your ears. Meanwhile, the biker turns in a unicorn and the she-male turns into rainbow colored fox which jumps on the back of the unicorn and they run off together. The audience surprisingly has completely disappeared. In fact it’s just you and that awful laughter that won’t quit. Just when you think you can’t take the pain anymore everything goes black… You wake up to the sound of a female voice. “What’s going on?!” you exclaim sitting up fast. “Oh! Sorry! I…I didn’t mean to wake you…but I just was told to bring you this.” the source of the female voice says. You rub your eyes and see a young woman with light brown hair before you holding a tray of food. She’s probably a few years younger than you. “…wait…you’re Helen right?” you say recognizing her. “Yes. I didn’t think you remembered me. We only saw each other a couple times before.” Helen says. “Yeah I remember you. Where’s Bobby?” “Oh, Bobby’s busy doing something with cousin William. I think its something to do with working on the compound here. I’m not really sure. I just tend to look after the little ones, but Bobby told me I should bring you something to eat, so um here.” Helen thrusts the tray of food at you. It consists of typical breakfast type food like scrambled eggs, bacon, cereal and juice. You see no reason not to take the offering seeing as you aren’t served like this very often. “Wow, breakfast in bed. That’s something I’ve never had before.” You say and start to eat. Helen stares at you nervously, which causes you to stop eating. “What?” you ask. “Oh! Nothing, I just wanted to make sure you liked it. Is the food good? I really didn’t know what to make you and I just wanted it to be right.” Helen says. “It’s fine Helen.” You say. “Oh good. I just…I just didn’t want to disappoint you.” “It’s just breakfast Helen. Relax. Probably way better than anything I could make, I dunno how to cook.” “You don’t? Didn’t your mother teach you?” Helen asks as if cooking is something every woman knows how to do. “Nope. She taught me how to sew when I was younger, but I sort of stopped doing it when she died of a flesh-eating virus. Didn’t really see the point anymore.” “Oh no, how sad!” Helen says empathetically. “Yeah.” You say continuing to eat. “Well don’t worry, I’m a very good cook and I can even teach you!” “Hm, well between that offer and this meal, you’ve probably done more for me than my own family has in years.” “I’m so glad you said that. I want us to get along because I know you’re going to be married to Bobby and all.” “Wait, Bobby told you already?” you ask. “He told everyone last night. He was so happy. I’m so glad he was, I like seeing him happy.” “Hm, I can guess who wasn’t happy to hear about it.” You remark. “Oh. Yes. Um…you probably mean Diana. Yes, she was quite upset. Um…in fact I probably should leave. She’s looking after the little ones and I’m sure I’ll get an earful about being away from my duties for so long. She’s in a bad enough mood as it is.” Helen says. “Okay, well sorry to keep you then. I don’t want to get you into trouble.” “Oh, it’s okay. I’m not really worried about me anyway. It’s just if I stay away for too long she might… well she’s not as patient as I am with our younger siblings. So are you okay with the food and everything?” “Yeah Helen.” “Okay good. Good. Um…okay I’m going now. Um, I suppose I’ll see you around some time.” “Okay then.” At this point Helen nervously waves and opens the door to leave, but then she calls out to you. “Um, Suzy?” “Yes?” “I’m really glad you’re going to be part of this family soon.” She says with a faint smile and then leaves. You shake your head and finish your food. Helen obviously has some issues. Though maybe its because you know what its like to have a bullying older sister, you can sympathize. After putting aside your food tray you take a shower in the private bathroom connected to the bedroom which is very convenient. While washing up you take time to ponder your odd dream which while having its surreal moments seemed “real” to you in some ways. The raven haired woman in the dream was most certainly Bobby’s grandmother which is sort of creepy, but then maybe she just popped up due you seeing pictures of her (and even one in your room) earlier that night. Ultimately you decide not to worry too much about it unless this becomes an ongoing problem. After your shower, you then change your clothing and decide to explore what is now your new home. You walk around the right wing of the compound, upstairs and down, not running into anyone. It’s all pretty empty on this side which is sort of good you suppose and you’re half tempted to just go back to your new room and play on your computer. However, you figure you’re going to have to make the effort to be social with everyone so you head over to the central part of the compound where you assume more of Bobby’s family is located. Eventually you get to a large dining area and see a few dirty plates still on the table. The voices of children can be heard a few rooms away and then… That red headed witch Diana steps out from the kitchen. She holds a knife in one hand and you notice her hand tighten around its handle when she sees you. “Look, I don’t want any trouble Diana. I know you’re mad but…” you start to say before Diana interrupts. “Spare me your pathetic words blonde whore. You will not sway me with superficial attempts at diplomacy. YOU are in my way, but I promise you that before the week’s end, you will be out of it.” When you cautiously step back a bit, Diana smirks. “You better keep stepping backwards and out the front door if you want to stay out of my way AND keep your pitiful life.” While Diana is doing a fairly adequate job of intimidating you, she’s actually starting to make you angry. Like a rage is building up within you and you feel like just picking up one of the forks on one of the dirty plates on the table and stabbing her in the neck with it. In fact violent visions start to enter your head, visions of bloody bodies and other murderous images. They hit you so suddenly; you actually stumble and keep yourself from falling by propping yourself up against the table. You then rub your head from this spell, as you don’t feel completely well. “Now what? Am I scaring you too much? Are you about to cry? By Tiamat you really are worthless. And that is why you’ll never make a good wife to my brother. You’re far too weak. My brother will realize that soon.” Diana remarks. As unwell as you suddenly feel, the rage within you is still rising. > You attack Diana You already put up with one bullying asshole of an older sister who basically threw you out your house, you’ll be damned if you’ll let someone else do it again. You turn your head to address Diana. “Hey, you know what your brother also realized? That I’m more fun in the bed than you are. Told me you were about as fun as fucking a log and about as lively too. Yeah, I’m crying alright, I’m crying tears of laughter at your fucking stupidity if you actually think you have a chance at getting Bobby back.” If Diana were a cartoon character you’d imagine this would be the part where steam shoots out of her head and her face goes completely red. “You’re fucking dead blondie!” Diana shouts and runs at you with the knife in hand. You grab one of the plates on the table and throw it at her. She dodges, but it’s enough to get her a bit off balance while you grab a fork and plunge it into the side of her arm. “Agh SHIT!” she shouts , but manages to swipe at you with her knife which barely misses your face. You don’t have time to retrieve your fork from her arm. You throw another plate at her, which causes her to drop her knife when she blocks her face with her hands. She recovers quickly however and pulls the fork from her arm and lunges at you with it. As the pair of you struggle, you and Diana have made enough noise for others to take notice of it. Helen comes walking into the room with a couple of kids behind her and freaks out. “Wha…Stop! Stop it! Don’t fight!” she exclaims and then screams for help and runs over to attempt to disarm her sister. “Please Diana, don’t…” Helen utters before Diana shoves her aside. At least this allows you to grab Diana’s wrist and slam it hard on the edge of the table, causing her to drop the fork. Doesn’t stop her from punching you with her free hand though. Helen once again tries to pull the two of you apart, but fails to do so. She ends up shouting at the cheering children who are enjoying the violent display to go fetch help. Meanwhile Diana is slightly getting the better of you in this fight as she lands a kick to your stomach, flooring you. You wheeze and have a hard time catching your breath. “You actually thought you could challenge me? What was that about me being the stupid one?” Diana taunts as she picks up a nearby chair. You barely manage to roll out of the way when she tries to bring it down on your head. Desperate to gain the advantage again, you struggle to get back up and start throwing plates at her again. She manages to deflect them with the chair, but then with all your energy you charge at her and holding on to the other end of the chair you slam her into the wall. You manage to pull the chair away and then it’s just you and her again. At first you’re scratching, punching and slapping each other upright and then soon the pair of you are rolling on the floor. “By Tiamat’s Chaotic Cunt, quick grab ‘em both!” you hear a male voice shout. A mass of various arms and hands grab you and Diana and after a bit of prying, the would be peacemakers succeed in keeping you and Diana from doing anymore damage. “I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU AND I’M NOT FUCKING LEAVING!” you scream at Diana who is being pulled away by Helen and another well dressed man you don’t recognize. “Whoa, easy! Easy! I gotcha.” The male voice says that spoke earlier. You look and see the one who has pulled you away from Diana and see a scruffy looking man. “Let go of me!” you exclaim and pull away from the man who lets you go. “Okay, okay, you’re free, now I heard you two don’t like each other, but already? What the hell happened?” At this point you and Diana both start accusing each other of starting the fight. After some shouting you demand to know where Bobby is. “Bobby isn’t here. He actually left an hour ago to go gather some stuff from the old house. (Sigh) I wish he was here though, because this is definitely his problem not mine.” The scruffy man says. “Yeah, well who the fuck are you anyway?” you exclaim. “Wow, you’re actually a little different than I expected considering what Bobby has said about you. Though if you need to the introductions, I’m William. Mr. fancy over there is Brandon.” William remarks. “Hey.” Brandon says. Diana interrupts this temporary break in the hostilities by attempting to attack you again, but Brandon and Helen manage to hold her back, meanwhile William grabs you since you attempt to defend yourself. “Let me go! Why the fuck are you all holding me back?! You should be letting me kill this fucking outsider and serving her heart up to Tiamat!” Diana exclaims. “Yeah, while that would normally be the plan, you know damn well this is Bobby’s bride to be and he’s the head of the family. Now I know your pissed about that but them’s the rules.” William remarks. “Shut the fuck up William you don’t know shit about how I feel! And since when do you give a shit about the rules for anything?” Diana says. “Okay, I’ll give you both of those. However I DO respect your brother and he loves this woman so you and nobody else will be sacrificing or harming her in any way…besides given how she was fighting, I’d say she shows promise of fitting right in in this family.” William laughs. Diana shakes her head, fumes and huffs about her situation. She looks like she’s about to attack you again, but instead she pushes Helen out of the way and storms off. Despite being pushed Helen follows her sister in an effort to console her. “Well. That was exciting. If we’re all done here, I’ll be checking on Veronica and making sure the young ones aren’t getting into the armory or something. Um, nice meeting you Suzy.” Brandon remarks straightening out his suit and walks away. You sit down on a nearby chair rubbing the upper left side of your face, which is probably sporting a bruise or soon will be. You still feel angry, but you’re too tired to go chasing after Diana at this moment. You notice William still lingering around and staring at you. “What?!” you ask. “Okay, just settle down now. I’m not the enemy here.” William remarks. “Maybe not, but I don’t really care for your staring right now.” “Fair enough. Like I said, you’re just much different than what I expected. Bobby mentioned to me you were this gentle quite girl. More like Helen actually. Never expected you to be giving Diana a good fight. On your second day here no less.” “Yeah, well everyone has their limits.” “Guess that’s true too, though I’m sure you know why Diana doesn’t like you.” “Yeah I know, and you know what? That’s tough shit and she needs to just get the fuck over it. Bobby wants to marry ME. Not her. It isn’t my fault that she’s not woman enough for him. To my understanding she had YEARS with him. If she couldn’t hang on to him with that much of a head start, I’d say the problem was with her, not me.” William smiles at your remark. “Man, I wasn’t sure if I’d like you, but shit if you weren’t Bobby’s bride to be, I’D marry you. Well if I was the marrying type. Anyway, I’d say you handled the situation with Diana the only way you could have. She at least knows she can’t just bully you like she does with poor Helen. Still, I’d watch out. It isn’t over with her. She’s not going to just let this go.” “I’m going to tell Bobby about this and he’s going to just have to straighten her out once and for all.” “Well, that MIGHT work in the short term, but Diana doesn’t let go of grudges and given that you’ll officially become family soon, she’s likely to ignore him. Look, it’s like this. Diana is definitely going to try to do something to you before you can marry Bobby because if she succeeds in getting you out of the picture before that happens, she won’t suffer any repercussions. Granted Bobby will probably be pissed at her and she’ll get passed over for Helen I suppose, but as a follower of Tiamat she technically has got the right to kill an outsider. It’s just out of respect for Bobby that we accept you.” “Okay, so as soon as Bobby gets back, I’m going to demand he marry me now.” “Heh, well due to some sort of alignment of the stars on Friday I don’t think it’s going to be moved forward. Though, given how pissed Diana is about all this, I really wouldn’t put it past her to just wait years to get revenge on you and make it look like an accident or make up some sort of bullshit about it being Tiamat’s will or something.” “So…what…am I going to have to kill her to get any fucking peace?” you blurt out. William waves his hand down a bit as if to tell you to be quiet and looks around. “Shhh, don’t talk that way out loud. You’re not officially family yet. You talk like that around some of the others here and they’ll throw you on the sacrificial altar. Hell, even Helen would probably go tell on you for talking like that.” William says. “What the hell? What about Bobby? Doesn’t his leadership mean anything?!” “Well yeah, but in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s very observant of certain rules and rituals. As much as he loves you, I don’t even he would be able to help if you actually killed Diana.” “Well I gotta do something! I can’t just sit around with a thumb up my ass constantly looking over my shoulder thinking Diana’s going to do something to me.” “I know and I get it. (Sigh) Quite frankly if I was running things, I’d go back to the old ways of Tiamat where we had less rules and ritual and more adherence to primal urges. What I’d do is have you and Diana enter a steel cage and nobody left until one of you was dead, but that’s me.” “Great. Glad to know I’d be better off under a more anarchic regime.” You say with a tone of defeat. William exhales deeply and then speaks. “Well blondie, this is how I see it. You can either hold out until Friday after which point you can probably get rid of Diana a little easier or at least with less repercussions. Or you can, shall we say…find an opportunity before then. I’m not saying anymore, but if you really feel like you’re in immediate danger then you know what to do.” With those words, William leaves you alone to ponder his advice. > You take care of Diana You get up and decide you need to take things into your own hands. You are not going to spend one more night under this roof with someone who openly wants to kill you. You catch up to William who hasn’t gone far and ask him where Diana’s room is. “Left wing second floor…uh…you planning to do that thing?” he asks. “Guess you’ll find out soon.” You say and walk past him. You make your way through the house and climb a flight of stairs. As you’re looking around for where Diana’s room is, you hear some voices and start heading towards them since they sound familiar. The closer you get and you recognize one of the voices as Helen. The louder voice with the abusive tone can only be Diana. “Diana, please try to calm yourself…” Helen says. “Calm myself? Are you a fucking idiot?! That fucking bitch is an outsider and you’re seriously okay with that?! You’re okay with her taking Bobby away?” Diana replies. “But she isn’t taking him away, he’ll still be here…” “Helen, you’re a f…WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN MY ROOM? GET THE FUCK OUT!” Diana says when she sees you enter. Helen turns her head and sees you and she looks scared about what’s going to happen next. “Uh…um hey Suzy…I really don’t think this is a good time…” Helen remarks and tries to get in between you and Diana who is already making steps towards you. You didn’t necessarily plan on Helen being here, but given how she’s been living in fear of Diana for years, you’re fairly certain you can angle that in your favor. You plan is fairly simple. You’re going to “apologize” but you know Diana is going to just start a fight again and in the process you’re going to do damage she’s going to be less likely to walk away from. You’ve already clashed with her once, she wasn’t nearly as tough as she makes out and you’re tougher than you actually thought you were. Survival of the fittest is going to play out very soon. “Diana, like I said before I didn’t come here to fight. I’ve just come to apologize if I offended you downstairs. I should’ve realized this is your home and I had no right to insult you.” “And like I said before I’m not interested in anything you’ve got to say you fucking man stealing cunt! Now get the fuck out of here before Bobby comes home to a corpse bride!” Helen at this point is practically pushing you out the door, but you’re not moving. “Diana, are you seriously going to threaten my life again after I’m trying to make peace?” you ask. “Suzy, please get out of here…” Helen says. “BITCH I DON’T WANT PEACE WITH YOU! YOU STOLE MY BOBBY AWAY RAAAAAAGH!” Diana screams and charges at you. Somehow Helen manages to duck and squeeze out of the way before she’s tackled along with you. Diana is now fighting with a fury you didn’t see downstairs. While she was certainly filled with rage before, now it seems like she’s possessed. You catch two blows to the face before you manage to push her back and land a kick to her stomach. Helen helplessly stands nearby calling for you both to stop, but neither of you are listening. Nearby vases are smashed, knick-knacks are knock over and even small pieces of furniture are damaged. Eventually Diana pushes you backwards and then runs back into her room. You waste no time in chasing after her only to find that she’s attempting to grab a large dagger from under her bed. She slashes at you with it, but misses and you land a kick to her face. You then grab her and slam her into a desk causing her to drop her knife. You go to pick it up, but Diana prevents you from doing so by crashing her bruised body into yours. The pair of you roll on the floor some more until you finally get the upper hand again and knock Diana into her window and partially through it. Diana groans in pain, but doesn’t move. The top part of her body dangles outside, and her lower back is no doubt impaled on some of the broken glass. It’ll be a simple matter of you just picking up her legs and pushing her out. Or at least it would if Helen wasn’t around. “Stop it! Stop it please! Don’t kill her! She’s my sister!” Helen shouts. “Helen, this bitch has been abusing you for YEARS. Don’t you think it’s time for her bullying to end? Come on Helen, you know your life would be better without her. Come on, just let everyone know this was purely in self defense. You know this is the right thing.” You say. Helen looks around a moment and bites her lip. She’s very unsure, but eventually she complies. “…okay…just do it.” she says and turns her head away. You smile and go to pick up Diana’s legs. You knew Helen would side against her sister. As you push Diana out the window, that’s when you realize Helen’s sided against you as well. You feel a sharp pain go straight into your back. The shock causes you to temporarily unable to catch your breath as you try to reach for whatever it is that just got plunged into you. You turn around just in time to see Helen give you a hefty shove. “Sorry Suzy.” She says and you fall out the window. The thing is, you may have possibly still survived the fall, but unfortunately landing on your back with a big knife in it, drives it completely through the front of your chest. As you lay next to Diana’s corpse, gurgling blood and struggling to breathe you soon follow her in death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You already put up with one bullying asshole of an older sister who basically threw you out your house, you’ll be damned if you’ll let someone else do it again. You turn your head to address Diana. “Hey, you know what your brother also realized? That I’m more fun in the bed than you are. Told me you were about as fun as fucking a log and about as lively too. Yeah, I’m crying alright, I’m crying tears of laughter at your fucking stupidity if you actually think you have a chance at getting Bobby back.” If Diana were a cartoon character you’d imagine this would be the part where steam shoots out of her head and her face goes completely red. “You’re fucking dead blondie!” Diana shouts and runs at you with the knife in hand. You grab one of the plates on the table and throw it at her. She dodges, but it’s enough to get her a bit off balance while you grab a fork and plunge it into the side of her arm. “Agh SHIT!” she shouts , but manages to swipe at you with her knife which barely misses your face. You don’t have time to retrieve your fork from her arm. You throw another plate at her, which causes her to drop her knife when she blocks her face with her hands. She recovers quickly however and pulls the fork from her arm and lunges at you with it. As the pair of you struggle, you and Diana have made enough noise for others to take notice of it. Helen comes walking into the room with a couple of kids behind her and freaks out. “Wha…Stop! Stop it! Don’t fight!” she exclaims and then screams for help and runs over to attempt to disarm her sister. “Please Diana, don’t…” Helen utters before Diana shoves her aside. At least this allows you to grab Diana’s wrist and slam it hard on the edge of the table, causing her to drop the fork. Doesn’t stop her from punching you with her free hand though. Helen once again tries to pull the two of you apart, but fails to do so. She ends up shouting at the cheering children who are enjoying the violent display to go fetch help. Meanwhile Diana is slightly getting the better of you in this fight as she lands a kick to your stomach, flooring you. You wheeze and have a hard time catching your breath. “You actually thought you could challenge me? What was that about me being the stupid one?” Diana taunts as she picks up a nearby chair. You barely manage to roll out of the way when she tries to bring it down on your head. Desperate to gain the advantage again, you struggle to get back up and start throwing plates at her again. She manages to deflect them with the chair, but then with all your energy you charge at her and holding on to the other end of the chair you slam her into the wall. You manage to pull the chair away and then it’s just you and her again. At first you’re scratching, punching and slapping each other upright and then soon the pair of you are rolling on the floor. “By Tiamat’s Chaotic Cunt, quick grab ‘em both!” you hear a male voice shout. A mass of various arms and hands grab you and Diana and after a bit of prying, the would be peacemakers succeed in keeping you and Diana from doing anymore damage. “I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU AND I’M NOT FUCKING LEAVING!” you scream at Diana who is being pulled away by Helen and another well dressed man you don’t recognize. “Whoa, easy! Easy! I gotcha.” The male voice says that spoke earlier. You look and see the one who has pulled you away from Diana and see a scruffy looking man. “Let go of me!” you exclaim and pull away from the man who lets you go. “Okay, okay, you’re free, now I heard you two don’t like each other, but already? What the hell happened?” At this point you and Diana both start accusing each other of starting the fight. After some shouting you demand to know where Bobby is. “Bobby isn’t here. He actually left an hour ago to go gather some stuff from the old house. (Sigh) I wish he was here though, because this is definitely his problem not mine.” The scruffy man says. “Yeah, well who the fuck are you anyway?” you exclaim. “Wow, you’re actually a little different than I expected considering what Bobby has said about you. Though if you need to the introductions, I’m William. Mr. fancy over there is Brandon.” William remarks. “Hey.” Brandon says. Diana interrupts this temporary break in the hostilities by attempting to attack you again, but Brandon and Helen manage to hold her back, meanwhile William grabs you since you attempt to defend yourself. “Let me go! Why the fuck are you all holding me back?! You should be letting me kill this fucking outsider and serving her heart up to Tiamat!” Diana exclaims. “Yeah, while that would normally be the plan, you know damn well this is Bobby’s bride to be and he’s the head of the family. Now I know your pissed about that but them’s the rules.” William remarks. “Shut the fuck up William you don’t know shit about how I feel! And since when do you give a shit about the rules for anything?” Diana says. “Okay, I’ll give you both of those. However I DO respect your brother and he loves this woman so you and nobody else will be sacrificing or harming her in any way…besides given how she was fighting, I’d say she shows promise of fitting right in in this family.” William laughs. Diana shakes her head, fumes and huffs about her situation. She looks like she’s about to attack you again, but instead she pushes Helen out of the way and storms off. Despite being pushed Helen follows her sister in an effort to console her. “Well. That was exciting. If we’re all done here, I’ll be checking on Veronica and making sure the young ones aren’t getting into the armory or something. Um, nice meeting you Suzy.” Brandon remarks straightening out his suit and walks away. You sit down on a nearby chair rubbing the upper left side of your face, which is probably sporting a bruise or soon will be. You still feel angry, but you’re too tired to go chasing after Diana at this moment. You notice William still lingering around and staring at you. “What?!” you ask. “Okay, just settle down now. I’m not the enemy here.” William remarks. “Maybe not, but I don’t really care for your staring right now.” “Fair enough. Like I said, you’re just much different than what I expected. Bobby mentioned to me you were this gentle quite girl. More like Helen actually. Never expected you to be giving Diana a good fight. On your second day here no less.” “Yeah, well everyone has their limits.” “Guess that’s true too, though I’m sure you know why Diana doesn’t like you.” “Yeah I know, and you know what? That’s tough shit and she needs to just get the fuck over it. Bobby wants to marry ME. Not her. It isn’t my fault that she’s not woman enough for him. To my understanding she had YEARS with him. If she couldn’t hang on to him with that much of a head start, I’d say the problem was with her, not me.” William smiles at your remark. “Man, I wasn’t sure if I’d like you, but shit if you weren’t Bobby’s bride to be, I’D marry you. Well if I was the marrying type. Anyway, I’d say you handled the situation with Diana the only way you could have. She at least knows she can’t just bully you like she does with poor Helen. Still, I’d watch out. It isn’t over with her. She’s not going to just let this go.” “I’m going to tell Bobby about this and he’s going to just have to straighten her out once and for all.” “Well, that MIGHT work in the short term, but Diana doesn’t let go of grudges and given that you’ll officially become family soon, she’s likely to ignore him. Look, it’s like this. Diana is definitely going to try to do something to you before you can marry Bobby because if she succeeds in getting you out of the picture before that happens, she won’t suffer any repercussions. Granted Bobby will probably be pissed at her and she’ll get passed over for Helen I suppose, but as a follower of Tiamat she technically has got the right to kill an outsider. It’s just out of respect for Bobby that we accept you.” “Okay, so as soon as Bobby gets back, I’m going to demand he marry me now.” “Heh, well due to some sort of alignment of the stars on Friday I don’t think it’s going to be moved forward. Though, given how pissed Diana is about all this, I really wouldn’t put it past her to just wait years to get revenge on you and make it look like an accident or make up some sort of bullshit about it being Tiamat’s will or something.” “So…what…am I going to have to kill her to get any fucking peace?” you blurt out. William waves his hand down a bit as if to tell you to be quiet and looks around. “Shhh, don’t talk that way out loud. You’re not officially family yet. You talk like that around some of the others here and they’ll throw you on the sacrificial altar. Hell, even Helen would probably go tell on you for talking like that.” William says. “What the hell? What about Bobby? Doesn’t his leadership mean anything?!” “Well yeah, but in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s very observant of certain rules and rituals. As much as he loves you, I don’t even he would be able to help if you actually killed Diana.” “Well I gotta do something! I can’t just sit around with a thumb up my ass constantly looking over my shoulder thinking Diana’s going to do something to me.” “I know and I get it. (Sigh) Quite frankly if I was running things, I’d go back to the old ways of Tiamat where we had less rules and ritual and more adherence to primal urges. What I’d do is have you and Diana enter a steel cage and nobody left until one of you was dead, but that’s me.” “Great. Glad to know I’d be better off under a more anarchic regime.” You say with a tone of defeat. William exhales deeply and then speaks. “Well blondie, this is how I see it. You can either hold out until Friday after which point you can probably get rid of Diana a little easier or at least with less repercussions. Or you can, shall we say…find an opportunity before then. I’m not saying anymore, but if you really feel like you’re in immediate danger then you know what to do.” With those words, William leaves you alone to ponder his advice. > You keep a low profile As much you’d actually like to get Diana out of the picture, it probably would be best to just keep to yourself for the rest of the day. At least until Bobby gets back. In fact you think about calling him about this, but you decide it would be better to discuss something like this in person. You head back to your room and lock the door. So much for being “social” today. You spend most of your time doing what you used to do in your basement, which actually suits you just fine. Though in between your computer game downtime (Sadly no Internet here), you also do more thinking about your future here. It isn’t just Diana, you’re going to have to do something about; it’s also this whole Tiamat religion. You wonder if you’re going to have to sacrifice people. You aren’t even sure if you have it in you to kill Diana in cold blood (Maybe in self defense though) how are you going to kill an innocent person? You also are wondering about Bobby’s desire to have children and how that’s going to go. While you’ve never thought about being a mother, that’s actually one of your lesser concerns. Bobby’s family has a “tradition” of interbreeding. As fucked up as your family was, there was never any of THAT going on and you’re not exactly comfortable with the idea of your offspring having sex with each other…and just HOW young is that encouraged anyway? “Goddamnit Suzy, you really got yourself into a mess.” You say to yourself. But its done now and you’re just going to have to muddle through. You briefly ponder escape, but you’re fairly certain that wouldn’t be a good idea even if you did manage to get out of the compound. No, your best plan for now is to speak to Bobby about all this. Surely you’ve got some influence over him. Hours pass and eventually when night starts to fall there’s a knock on the door. “Hey, Suzy. It’s Bobby, why is the door locked?” you hear Bobby ask. “Because I already had a fight with your bitch of a sister once today and I was avoiding any more potential conflict. Hold on…” you say and go to open the door. You open the door and Bobby goes to hug you, though you barely return the favor. “Suzy, shit, you should put something on that.” He remarks about your face bruising. “I’m fine, stop! Don’t touch it. (Sigh) Look we’ve got A LOT to discuss. First of which is why the hell did you leave without telling me?” “I actually didn’t plan on leaving at all, but I remembered a few things that I left back at the house that I thought we should have here so I figured I’d make a quick trip there which turned out to be a cluster fuck. Shit is getting worse in town. Anyway, I saw no reason to bother you since I figured you wouldn’t even bother leaving the room. I had it planned for Helen to come up to serve you food at appointed hours, of course she mentioned the fight when I finally got in and she wasn’t sure if she should bother you. Now I already heard some of it from the rest of the family and especially Diana, now why don’t you tell me what happened exactly?” You recount the event to Bobby and then add your own displeasure about his sister in general. “I know, I know, I’ll straighten it out.” Bobby remarks. “You said that before and that bitch is still trying to kill me! You better do something about her permanently.” You say. “Whoa, hold on now. I know you’re upset, but let’s rein it in a bit. I mean it probably wasn’t the best idea on your part to provoke her.” Your jaw nearly drops. “Bobby, I KNOW you just didn’t take her fucking side. Because if you are…” “I’m NOT taking her fucking side! I’m just saying my sister is a lot of bark most of the time and she only reacts when someone really provokes her.” “Oh, so what? Am I just supposed to put up with Diana’s abuse in silence? Be a doormat like Helen? NO! I had enough of that shit from Kelly, I didn’t come here just to repeat that cycle again! You told me you were the fucking leader of your family, shouldn’t you just be able to snap your fingers and they have to fall in fucking line?” Bobby just hangs his head and slumps down on a chair. “(Sigh) Alright, alright, you made your point and you’re right. You shouldn’t have to put up with that sort of treatment. I’ll handle Diana, but from now on don’t get into a fight with her if she’s being a bitch. Just ignore her.” Bobby says. “Yeah well I’m not sure if that’s going to be an option if she pushes me too much, which brings me to some other issues.” “Other issues? What the else fucking happened while I was gone?” “Nothing, but I’ve been doing some thinking. If I’m going to be popping out children, I refuse to have them involved in some kiddie porn ring. I’m not having it! I can look past a lot, but that’s where I’m drawing the fucking line.” You say with authority. Now Bobby’s jaw drops. “Kiddie porn? By Tiamat’s Twenty Tits, what the hell do you think goes on here Suzy?” Bobby says being genuinely offended. “Well I don’t fucking know! I mean I know you guys participate in human sacrifice and commit incest like its no big deal! I mean you and your sister had to start experimenting with each other at an early age and taught that it was perfectly fine to do so. What the hell am I supposed to think?” you say. “You could’ve just asked you know. You could’ve asked about Tiamat and all this other shit before jumping to your own conclusions. I’ve tried on many occasions to actually enlighten you on my religion but (Sigh) nevermind. We’ll get to THAT later, first let me allay your fears of any rampant pedophilia going on here of which there ISN’T. Or at least under my watch there won’t be.” “So you’re saying that it has happened in your family.” “Look, I’m not going to lie and say that maybe sometimes that shit HAS happened in the past with other family members, but I’m sure my family isn’t the only one that has had such elements in it. I mean what about your family? Like your old Uncle Ed?” “Hey my Uncle Ed wasn’t a kiddie fiddler, he was just a plain old serial killer.” You say. “Oh well, I guess he was a saint then, look my point is, I think you’ve got the wrong impression about all of us. All right, it’s true my family did tend to interbreed a bit more in the past and yeah by and large we don’t see it as some great taboo. However it wasn’t like it was a standard procedure to get the kids to start playing doctor at an early age. To be honest, I probably only grew close to Diana because my dad was a fucking tyrant who barely let any of us socialize with others our own age. Then after mom died…who WASN’T related to my dad by the way, Diana and me just grew even closer and…well I won’t go into anymore because I’m sure you don’t want to hear it. I’m just saying it wasn’t like my dad was telling us to fuck one another or else. If anything, my dad probably was a bigger prude than some Christian fundies. If he had known what was going on, he probably would’ve horse whipped the pair of us for distracting ourselves from Tiamat’s glory or some shit.” Bobby holds up his hand before you can interrupt. “So, what I’m saying is that any children we have aren’t going to be forced to have sex with each other or anyone else. That’s not part of the plan nor will it ever be.” “Hmm, glad to hear it.” You say. “Okay, are there any other concerns we need to discuss?” “Well, I don’t see why we can’t get married sooner, like tomorrow for instance.” “Because this Friday is perfect. I’ve already got things planned out.” “Wait, I’m the bride, shouldn’t I be planning all this out? In fact why do I have practically no say in this?” “Because…look…argh, fine besides wanting the wedding moved up what else do you want?” “Well…I dunno. Okay, I guess I don’t have any ideas. That’s not the point though, it’s the principle that I want my voice to be heard.” “Well trust me, after today it’s been more than heard. Look, if you DO have any requests, let me know because we can accommodate you…except pushing up the date. It really needs to be on Friday. Why do you want it pushed up anyway?” “William told me I’m in danger with Diana until I’m actually married to you.” “And I’m telling you not to worry about Diana anymore. I’m going to take care of that. And I wouldn’t listen to my cousin anyway. He’s a bit of a shit stirrer. Now is there anything else?” “No, I guess that’s all the major things for now. So um, how was your day in town?” At this point Bobby tells you about his trip back and forth to his house and while to an extent it was exciting, he was glad to get back home to you. Bobby also goes on to tell you that a few more family members apparently arrived while he was gone and you were in self-isolation. “Great, more people to hate me.” “Don’t worry about it. Tomorrow, I’m definitely not going anywhere so I’ll be around to introduce you to everyone proper. You’re not going to get the Diana treatment by all of them. To be honest, what little the rest have seen of you, you’re ahead in the polls. Helen likes you of course. You managed to impress William and some of the kids thought you were, in their words a pretty blonde lady that was beating up their mean sister Diana or aunt Diana in some cases. Even my cousin Brandon said you seemed okay and he barely ever gives an opinion without his wife telling him what to think.” “Well I guess that’s something I suppose.” At this point Bobby goes back to reassuring you that everything will be fine and the pair of you spend the remainder of the night together. Eventually as the hours grow late the pair of you go to sleep. Still, you can’t help but have your doubts and concerns even though Bobby alleviated a few of them. You still think you’re going to have to take matters into your own hands rather than rely solely on Bobby. > Next day… WEDNESDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world cucumber eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe away the ranch dressing on your lips, graciously stand up and bow for your adoring fans. The Minotaur on your right looks at you in disbelief and then turns away to puke in a trough. Meanwhile the little Asian satyr on your left just shakes his head wondering how the hell you could've beaten him. "I don't understand it...all my training. I glanced over at you during the contest...you...you were barely even chewing! How?" He asks. "Oh just natural talent at swallowing cucumbers I suppose." You reply humbly and wink at the audience, which continues to praise you. While you're blowing kisses at your fans, you suddenly get a feeling you’ve done something like this before. In fact you remember you HAVE participated in similar contests and you can’t help but think there’s some sort of connection with what you’ve been eating at these things. Suddenly a hand touches your shoulder and you spin around to see a woman with long raven colored hair and a low cut black gown. It’s Bobby’s grandmother. This time she’s a little older and she still doesn’t look too impressed with you. “Yeah that’s great you got a skill and its real obvious that’s one of the things Bobby loves about you because men in general tend to make their most important decisions with their dicks.” She says to you. “Excuse me?” you reply. “To be honest I’m not even too sure about him, but nobody appears to have the ambition to stand up to him or are otherwise too much in love with him. That’s Diana’s problem right there. Anyway, MAYBE there is more to you than meets the eye. You might just meet Misty yet.” “Okay who the hell is Misty?” you ask. “Sheesh, you really are slow on the uptake there blondie. Well maybe you’ll get it, maybe you won’t. I don’t give a shit either way. Off you go then.” Bobby’s grandmother at this point snaps her fingers and at this point the Minotaur grabs your upper body and the satyr grabs your legs while the audience cheers them on. You attempt to struggle without success, then a giant hole in the ground between the stage and the audience opens up. A swirling black void appears at the bottom. Without another word, you are tossed in which is followed by your screaming, the audience’s cheering and Bobby’s grandmother laughing. You fall and eventually the light from above grows dimmer until you are enveloped in complete darkness. Then you wake up suddenly with one of your hands tightly clutching to the side of the bed. “No! Huh? Shit! Oh. Good. Not falling. Fucking bitch.” You incoherently mumble, which is heard by Bobby who is in the room getting dressed. “You okay over there?” he asks. “Hrm? Oh. Nothing. Just another fucked up dream. What’s going on?” you ask rubbing your eyes. “Nothing much, just some more of my family showed up here in the middle of the night. I was just about to wake you up to finally have you come meet everyone properly. Now I know you probably don’t really want to but…” “Yeah, whatever let’s do it.” You interrupt and get out of bed. “Wow, I didn’t expect you to be so accommodating so quickly.” “Don’t have much of choice now do I? I mean I’m going to have to get along with all these people. Better I make my good impressions as soon as possible before Diana starts spreading lies about me.” “Suzy, I wouldn’t worry about…” “Have you spoken to her yet?” you interrupt again. “Well no.” “Well until you do and lay down the fucking law, I’m going to assume she’s already caused a shitload of damage.” Bobby stops dressing for a moment. “Suzy, what’s wrong? I thought we were good with our talk yesterday.” “WE are good. Diana and me though? Never will be and something is going to have to be done about it.” “Suzy, I TOLD you I’d fucking talk to her alright?” “Yeah, we’ll see.” You say and close the bathroom door. As you wash up, you wonder if you were unnecessarily bitchy with Bobby, but then you think no you weren’t. You have a legitimate gripe against a woman who is trying to kill you and he’s SUPPOSED to be doing something about it. Honestly at this point you wish he’d do more than talk, but you suppose that’s wishful thinking. That dream really put you in a bad mood. Especially since you’ve had it three times now and it always ends with you getting fucked up in some way. Not to mention Bobby’s grandmother has started appearing in them. You’ve never been one to believe in the supernatural, but the dream shit is really starting to get too weird for you to ignore as just your subconscious in play. You’re starting to wonder if Bobby’s grandmother is mocking you from beyond the grave and one thing you don’t need right now is yet another Morningstar woman on your case. On top of all that, you still ache from yesterday’s fight, but the hot shower at least feels good. After leaving the bathroom you get dressed. Bobby is still in the bedroom waiting for you. He doesn’t say much, but that’s probably because he’s trying to avoid an argument just before the pair of you are supposed to be “formally” meeting his people. “Okay, I’m ready.” You say when you finish getting dressed, Bobby nods and the pair of you leave the room. Bobby finally speaks to you again as you walk and talk, though you’re mostly just listening to him going on about the other family members you haven’t met yet and how to best handle them. To be honest, you’ve already made up your mind that you’re going to treat them how they treat you. Eventually you get to the large living area where you see familiar faces along with unknown ones. William sits in a large comfy looking chair and nods at you, taking a drink. You see that Brandon guy with a slightly chubby woman, you’re guessing that’s his wife Veronica. They both greet you, but nothing more than that. You also see three new people who are more of Bobby’s cousins. They all introduce themselves, but much like Brandon and Veronica, they don’t do much more than that. You don’t get the impression any of this is personal either. Aaron doesn’t seem like he wants to be here at all. Ronald and Denise look more interested in each other than anyone else at the moment. You then see Helen again who looks like she has her hands full with several boys and girls. She still manages to wave hi to you though. The kids themselves look at you, but seem to be pre-occupied with bickering with each other. “How many of those are your siblings again?” you whisper to Bobby. “Oh just the three. The oldest boy there Jordan and the twins Aiden and Nadia. The other half are Brandon and his wife’s kids.” He answers. “Um, shouldn’t they be looking after them then?” “I’m sure they do all the time and are just taking advantage of the extra support system they have now. I mean they trust Helen to look after them and Helen said she was happy to do it. Besides, everyone is family here so it hardly matters who is looking after them directly.” While you haven’t known these people long, you know Helen’s personality well enough that she’d agree to anything since she seems to be the family doormat. You don’t see Diana, but someone mentions she’s in the kitchen making food for everyone. “Okay, I’m going to go do this now, because I don’t want to do it later. I’m going to go speak with Diana and straighten everything out and make it clear there is to be no more dissension in the family today.” “Hm, while you’re at it make sure she’s not putting rat poison in my food.” You remark. Bobby heads into the kitchen leaving you alone with the rest of his family. Having little else to do, you make the attempt to be social. Brandon and Veronica are more talkative than the rest. They ask you a few questions and you answer. They don’t seem to really care too much about you though. As far as they’re concerned it isn’t their place to disapprove of you even if you caused such a negative reaction in them, which apparently you don’t. You almost get the impression they find you more boring than anything else, which unfortunately due to your basement dwelling past might very well be a fair assessment. But you’ll take apathy because it’s better than hatred. Bobby’s other cousins are more of a mixed bag. Aaron barely speaks to you at all and he’s pretty snappish when he does. He seems like he’s a pent up ball of nerves since he’s tapping his foot and moving one of his hands the entire time. In fact the more of an effort that you try to speak to him, the more hostile he starts to look. The moment you get the feeling of his eyes burning a hole in you the more you decide to move on. By the time you get to Ronald and Denise, they’re making out, so you don’t even bother. Which leaves you with William and Helen, the latter of which has already left the room with all the little kids of this family presumably to be out of the way as usual. William on the other hand is still relaxing in a chair at the far end of the room and watching something on TV. Well at least you know those two are friendly with you. > You go speak to William While Helen would probably appreciate your company, you don’t really feel like dealing with all the little kids that are going to be hanging around her so William it is. You head over and sit in a chair near him. “What are you watching?” you ask. “Nothing really, mostly Ground Zero ads. These fuckers are really raking in the money preying upon people’s fears like this. Gotta say though, if I was the corporate type, I’d sure want a piece of that action.” William remarks. “You believe its all a scam?” “Heh, well as always the best lies have truth mixed in with them. A day of mass destruction is definitely coming. I believe that. The writing is on the wall, but I know damn well GZ isn’t the savior from that. Nothing is except yourself and how strong your will to live is. Yep, dark days are coming and it’s going to weed out the weak so only the strong survive.” “Like the Morningstars.” “Heh, well some of us I suppose. To be honest, I’m not sure about some of the people here. I mean I love ‘em because they’re family, but…(sigh) well take Brandon over there. The guy would be killed and eaten in a completely savage world with no laws. His wife too. I dare say even you might thrive better.” “Thanks…I think.” You answer. “You see, this place. This compound that Bobby has tried to bring all the family to…it’s just another form of restriction. The day is coming soon where unbridled chaos is going to become a reality and Bobby…Tiamat bless him is misguidedly still clinging to ways that should be abandoned. Now is not really the time to hide in a fortress like some 80s cult. Now is the time we should be out there embracing the chaos like Tiamat intended.” Looks like there is a bit of dissension in the family that doesn’t involve you. At least not directly. “I thought you supported Bobby.” You ask. “(sigh) Yeah…I thought I did. I mean I still do. I respect WHAT he’s trying to accomplish and his plan. And I’m obviously not going to overthrow his power or anything…but I just don’t think this is going to be for me. Y’know? I’ve always been a bit more of a drifter and after being here a few days, I’m starting to get really bored. That fight you had with Diana was about the most interesting thing that’s happened here and while I’d certainly like to see the outcome of that drama, I don’t think I’m going to stick around long enough to find out. I’m going to be heading out, along with Aaron.” William says. “Aaron? That guy sitting in the corner who looks like a ball of pent up energy?” “Yep. He’s even more anxious to leave more than I am. I think he only showed up to meet up with me since he doesn’t have a vehicle and it’s always good to have at least one person to watch your back.” “So…when are you leaving?” “As soon as possible, in fact I’ll probably talk to Bobby, before I do. He’s going to be disappointed, but I know he’ll understand…so how about you?” “How about me what?” you ask. “Well, are YOU comfortable here? I mean you haven’t been here long and you already got into a major fight with Diana and nobody here seems all that close to you. Polite perhaps, but you’re not exactly bonding here.” William says. “Well that might take time, besides, still better than my own family so far.” You answer. “Hm, well what about this wedding? From what I know, Bobby sort of sprung that proposal on you. You okay with that?” “I love Bobby.” “Yes, I know you love Bobby. I don’t doubt that, but that’s not necessarily a good reason to get married. Hell, love can sometimes be the WORST reason to get married. Also if I know Bobby, he’s probably already got it in head that you’ll be popping out a whole mess o’ babies.” “…yeah, I actually already addressed some of that yesterday.” “What about the wedding sacrifice?? “Wedding sacrifice?” William pauses for a moment. “You mean to tell me, he hasn’t told you about the wedding sacrifice?” William whispers to you. “No! He…he’s not going to mutilate me is he?” you ask in a hushed tone. “No! No, no, no nothing like that. I just can’t believe he hasn’t told you considering it’s pretty important and he’s pretty big on all this ritual crap to Tiamat.” “Well what is it?!” “Nothing, you just have to sacrifice someone on an altar in the name of Tiamat to prove your allegiance and dedication to the family.” “What?!” “That’s the rules. I mean personally I think just a simple prayer while bludgeoning something to death in an alley works just as well, but like I said, Bobby’s all into the rituals. Guess he takes after his dad that way, but then again so do I. It is said that most sons become like their fathers after all.” Those last words by William aren’t very endearing ones given what a fanatic Bobby’s father was. Still your main concern is this human sacrifice thing. You didn’t think that you’d have to do it, in fact you aren’t sure if you’re going to be able. While you’ve had murderous thoughts about Diana, that’s a little different. For one, you haven’t acted on them, and two that’s self-defense. You don’t know if you have it in you to murder some innocent person in cold blood, let alone to some cult goddess you don’t even believe in. “I take it, you aren’t really enthused about the possibility of killing someone. Well someone who isn’t immediately attacking you at any rate.” William says. “Um, well…I wasn’t expecting to.” “See, this is something Bobby REALLY should’ve told you before dragging you up here. (Sigh) You’re supposed to be the love of his life and he should KNOW if you’re completely in sync with him. I mean not everyone is cut out to be a member of one of Tiamat’s chosen and that’s fine, but again he really should’ve asked you first.” “So…wait, where are they getting this…um sacrifice?” “The sacrifice? Oh got a whole mess of them in the basement in the left wing of this place. We captured a bunch of folks and locked them in cages before starting to move the family in…and I’m guessing that’s another thing you didn’t know about.” William says noticing your surprise at this revelation too. You’re just silent. Combined with the mess with Diana, the wedding and all this new info, you’re starting to seriously wonder if you’re strong enough to go through with all this now. At this point William leans over to you and keeps a low tone. “Look, I can see that you’re probably not cut out for this life and as I said, that’s perfectly fine. But Bobby… well I don’t think he’d take it well if you backed out now or worse, backed out on the wedding day.” “I know.” You say with your voice starting to get a little quivery. “Shhh, okay. Look, it’s not too late to leave this place. I’d be willing to take you with me, and I’ll drop you off wherever you want. Of course we’d have to do it secretly.” “How?” “Well, my van is the dark blue one out front. Here’s the keys.” William says and hands you some keys, which surprises you. “Don’t worry, I trust you. Besides, that big gate has to be opened up first anyway. All you have to do is hide in the can, until me and Aaron leave which shouldn’t be long. Just make sure you keep the doors unlocked so we can get in.” William says. “Aren’t they going to notice I’m gone?” “Well, this is a big place, so if you went missing for a little while people would probably think you’re either just wandering the house or maybe back in your room before suspicion arose. I’d also be willing to make up a story if it came to that. In any case, if you’re going to do it, we need to do it now.” > You go with William The more you think about it, the more you realize that William’s probably right. You’re just going from one fucked up family to another and you certainly aren’t cut out to kill someone in the name of a religion you don’t even believe in. This is your one chance to back out of this mistake and you’re going to take it. You aren’t sure where you’re going to go after you leave, but at least you won’t be trapped like you are here. “How long do you think you’ll take?” you ask. “Shouldn’t take long actually. Just nonchalantly leave now and like I said make your way to the dark blue van. There are a lot of tarps and blankets you can hide under if you really want to play it safe, but as soon as me and Aaron are in that van, we’re leaving even if we have to drive through the gate, but again that shouldn’t be necessary.” Nodding at William you get up and make your way out of the room, which from you can tell, nobody is even paying attention to you. You spend half of your time constantly looking around, to make sure nobody is following you or anything like that, but again you’re in the clear. You manage to make it out the house and into the van in secret. The van itself is pretty old, definitely a relic from several decades past. William has a variety of tools scattered all over the back of the van and you see the tarps and blankets in the back like William mentioned. They don’t look the cleanest, but you figure you might as well hide under them in the meantime. No point in risking someone wandering outside and catching a glimpse of you through the van window. Seconds, minutes and you think an hour passes before you start to hear voices outside. One of them sounds like William. The driver’s door opens and you hear William more distinctly. “Okay Aaron, you go open it, I’ll pick you up as we’re going out.” He says and then shuts the door. Then you hear some squeaking around on the front seat. “Hey Suzy, you there under all that stuff? I sort of need my keys back to start the van up.” He says. You peak your head out and out stretch your arm with the keys and William takes them. “Don’t worry, we’re almost the clear blondie.” He says starting up the van and begins driving. A few moment later and you hear another door opening and slamming shut. “Let’s get the hell out of this prison.” You hear Aaron say in a gruff tone. And with that, William hits the gas and begins driving at a faster pace and you slowly start getting out from under your “hiding spot.” “All clear blondie.” William says. “Yeah I thought we were well on our way now. So did you have any trouble?” you ask. “Trouble? Nah, by the time Bobby was done speaking with Diana he seemed so emotionally drained that he barely tried to convince me to stay. He basically just told me to leave and wished me and Aaron well. He didn’t see us out though, he sent Ronald to shut the gate when we left.” “So Bobby didn’t ask where I was?” “Actually he did, but I said I wasn’t sure where you went and that you wandered off a long time ago, probably back to your room. He didn’t seem to rush off to go looking for you though. I’m not exactly sure how that conversation went with Diana, but I know she went running out of the kitchen in tears and like I said he was pretty down.” You aren’t exactly sure how to feel about that. You can’t imagine Bobby’s going to be in a better mood when he realizes you’re gone. “Shit, maybe I should’ve stayed.” You say. “Well it’s a little late for that now. Look, he’ll be fine…well okay maybe he won’t be fine when he realizes you’re gone, but he’ll get over it. He’ll most likely just get back with Diana out of duty and their history together and she’ll take him back, because he’s everything in the world to her. And in time they’ll live happily ever after, more or less. Nothing’s perfect, nor should it be.” “Chaos always finds a way.” Aaron adds in creepy tone. You realize he hasn’t taken his eyes off of you which is a little concerning. “Um…yeah…so what’s next?” you ask wearily. “What’s next? Well, that’s an interesting question. Before you were coming along, I’m pretty sure Aaron here wanted to go indulge in some of the looting going on in town. Can’t say I was opposed to that idea either. I guess we could still go do that since I imagine you probably want to go back home right?” “That’s NOT what you said William! You said we were using this blonde bitch and tossing her violated corpse out the fucking van!” Aaron suddenly blurts out. Now you back up and freeze. Terror fills every inch of your body. “(Sigh) By Tiamat’s Twenty Tits, do you have any fucking impulse control Aaron? Now this is going to be harder than it needs to be.” William says without even stopping his driving. You start looking around the van and eyeing one of the many tools laying the floor, but before you can even reach any of them, Aaron pulls a pistol. “DO NOT even think about it bitch!” he exclaims and is about to get up out his seat and head toward you, but William grabs his shoulder. “Aaron will you calm the fuck down for just one fucking second. Now you’re going to get yer dick in that soon, we both are, but I’d like to at least drive far enough away from the damn compound and find a nice place to park where we can do this with minor possible distractions. I’d think you’d like to take your time with this one right?” Aaron glares at William, but doesn’t argue any more. He still continues to hold the gun on you though. At this moment you feel like a fucking idiot. Not do you wish you never left the compound, but you also wish you never left home. You start to cry and sniffle. “(sob) Please you don’t have to do this…” you whimper. “Awwww…I thought you were stronger than that Suzy and weren’t gonna get too weepy about this. (Sigh) Besides that’s not gonna do ya any good anyway blondie. This is going to happen. However, Aaron here has been a little dramatic about the whole situation as usual. I never said we were going to throw your corpse out this van. I mean maybe we will if you put up a fight…but since I’ve grown to like you a little, I’m thinking if you just submit and let us do what we’re gonna do without any problems, well I’ll be happy to take you back home or drop you off anywhere else in town. Your choice of course.” William explains matter of factly. Either get raped and survive, or die. Those are your choices and those are no kind of choices at all, but it’s what’s been given to you. You start to think about the pair of them violating you and it’s starts to make you sick. In fact you even start hyperventilating and coughing up, though you don’t actually vomit. Aaron makes some threat about how if you don’t stop it, he’s going to shove his dick in your mouth and give you something real to choke on. Are they going to do it one after another or are they going to “kebob” you like pig on a spit? Are they going to sodomize you or slap you around while fucking you? Are they going to just kill you anyway after they’ve had their jollies? As the van keeps driving through the woods, your mind keeps racing about how maybe you might be able to survive this if you just give in… And you can’t do it. You can’t just let these fuckers shove their dicks in you like some meat with holes in it. You have to at least try to resist. You might die, but the alternative is even worse. You don’t think you’d be able to live with yourself. Mustering up all your inner strength and recomposing yourself, you start taking off your clothing, which immediately gets Aaron’s attention. “What’re you doing?” he asks. “I’m taking my clothes, I mean that’s what you guys want right?” you say still sniffling a bit. At this point William’s head turns sideways so he can see. “Well glad to see you’ve gotten with the program so fast. Shit, you got some nice tits on you. I mean I figured you did, but seeing them uncovered is even better. Can’t wait to see ‘em up close. I bet you made Bobby REALLY happy.” William remarks. “She better make ME really happy by letting me fuck her in the ass!” Aaron exclaims. “Pretty sure she’s gonna let us do whatever, right Suzy?” “Whatever you both want William.” You say in defeat. Eventually you strip off the last bit of your clothing. “I’m ready.” you say meekly and spread your legs wide giving Aaron an eyeful of your lady bits. William looks again and almost does a double take. “Shit, well hold on girl, we’ll get to…” “Fuck that, I’m not waiting any longer.” Aaron says and is already got his hard cock out in one hand and still holding his pistol in the other. Aaron’s already on top of you before William can stop him this time and he gets the head of his dick partially in you before you grab a nearby awl on the floor of the van and stab him in the side of the neck with it repeatedly. Aaron yells in pain, and tries to shoot you in the head, but he only succeeds in blowing off your ear and hitting you in the shoulder before he drops the pistol entirely and collapses completely on top of you. “Oh fuck it.” William remarks and the van comes to a screeching halt. Screaming in pain yourself, you try to grab for Aaron’s pistol, but William manages to get it from you first. Bleeding, scared, tears in your eyes and partially deaf, and trying to catch your breath from this whole ordeal. You stare at William who is looking down at you with gun in hand. You try your best to give him a look of defiance even though all you want to do is cry. “I probably would’ve done the same thing blondie. Protecting yer virtue to the end. While I’m disappointed I won’t be experiencing some of what Bobby got, I’m glad to see you were a fighter after all. Don’t worry, unlike some in my family, I’m not into necrophilia.” William remarks. And then he shoots you in the face.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>While Helen would probably appreciate your company, you don’t really feel like dealing with all the little kids that are going to be hanging around her so William it is. You head over and sit in a chair near him. “What are you watching?” you ask. “Nothing really, mostly Ground Zero ads. These fuckers are really raking in the money preying upon people’s fears like this. Gotta say though, if I was the corporate type, I’d sure want a piece of that action.” William remarks. “You believe its all a scam?” “Heh, well as always the best lies have truth mixed in with them. A day of mass destruction is definitely coming. I believe that. The writing is on the wall, but I know damn well GZ isn’t the savior from that. Nothing is except yourself and how strong your will to live is. Yep, dark days are coming and it’s going to weed out the weak so only the strong survive.” “Like the Morningstars.” “Heh, well some of us I suppose. To be honest, I’m not sure about some of the people here. I mean I love ‘em because they’re family, but…(sigh) well take Brandon over there. The guy would be killed and eaten in a completely savage world with no laws. His wife too. I dare say even you might thrive better.” “Thanks…I think.” You answer. “You see, this place. This compound that Bobby has tried to bring all the family to…it’s just another form of restriction. The day is coming soon where unbridled chaos is going to become a reality and Bobby…Tiamat bless him is misguidedly still clinging to ways that should be abandoned. Now is not really the time to hide in a fortress like some 80s cult. Now is the time we should be out there embracing the chaos like Tiamat intended.” Looks like there is a bit of dissension in the family that doesn’t involve you. At least not directly. “I thought you supported Bobby.” You ask. “(sigh) Yeah…I thought I did. I mean I still do. I respect WHAT he’s trying to accomplish and his plan. And I’m obviously not going to overthrow his power or anything…but I just don’t think this is going to be for me. Y’know? I’ve always been a bit more of a drifter and after being here a few days, I’m starting to get really bored. That fight you had with Diana was about the most interesting thing that’s happened here and while I’d certainly like to see the outcome of that drama, I don’t think I’m going to stick around long enough to find out. I’m going to be heading out, along with Aaron.” William says. “Aaron? That guy sitting in the corner who looks like a ball of pent up energy?” “Yep. He’s even more anxious to leave more than I am. I think he only showed up to meet up with me since he doesn’t have a vehicle and it’s always good to have at least one person to watch your back.” “So…when are you leaving?” “As soon as possible, in fact I’ll probably talk to Bobby, before I do. He’s going to be disappointed, but I know he’ll understand…so how about you?” “How about me what?” you ask. “Well, are YOU comfortable here? I mean you haven’t been here long and you already got into a major fight with Diana and nobody here seems all that close to you. Polite perhaps, but you’re not exactly bonding here.” William says. “Well that might take time, besides, still better than my own family so far.” You answer. “Hm, well what about this wedding? From what I know, Bobby sort of sprung that proposal on you. You okay with that?” “I love Bobby.” “Yes, I know you love Bobby. I don’t doubt that, but that’s not necessarily a good reason to get married. Hell, love can sometimes be the WORST reason to get married. Also if I know Bobby, he’s probably already got it in head that you’ll be popping out a whole mess o’ babies.” “…yeah, I actually already addressed some of that yesterday.” “What about the wedding sacrifice?? “Wedding sacrifice?” William pauses for a moment. “You mean to tell me, he hasn’t told you about the wedding sacrifice?” William whispers to you. “No! He…he’s not going to mutilate me is he?” you ask in a hushed tone. “No! No, no, no nothing like that. I just can’t believe he hasn’t told you considering it’s pretty important and he’s pretty big on all this ritual crap to Tiamat.” “Well what is it?!” “Nothing, you just have to sacrifice someone on an altar in the name of Tiamat to prove your allegiance and dedication to the family.” “What?!” “That’s the rules. I mean personally I think just a simple prayer while bludgeoning something to death in an alley works just as well, but like I said, Bobby’s all into the rituals. Guess he takes after his dad that way, but then again so do I. It is said that most sons become like their fathers after all.” Those last words by William aren’t very endearing ones given what a fanatic Bobby’s father was. Still your main concern is this human sacrifice thing. You didn’t think that you’d have to do it, in fact you aren’t sure if you’re going to be able. While you’ve had murderous thoughts about Diana, that’s a little different. For one, you haven’t acted on them, and two that’s self-defense. You don’t know if you have it in you to murder some innocent person in cold blood, let alone to some cult goddess you don’t even believe in. “I take it, you aren’t really enthused about the possibility of killing someone. Well someone who isn’t immediately attacking you at any rate.” William says. “Um, well…I wasn’t expecting to.” “See, this is something Bobby REALLY should’ve told you before dragging you up here. (Sigh) You’re supposed to be the love of his life and he should KNOW if you’re completely in sync with him. I mean not everyone is cut out to be a member of one of Tiamat’s chosen and that’s fine, but again he really should’ve asked you first.” “So…wait, where are they getting this…um sacrifice?” “The sacrifice? Oh got a whole mess of them in the basement in the left wing of this place. We captured a bunch of folks and locked them in cages before starting to move the family in…and I’m guessing that’s another thing you didn’t know about.” William says noticing your surprise at this revelation too. You’re just silent. Combined with the mess with Diana, the wedding and all this new info, you’re starting to seriously wonder if you’re strong enough to go through with all this now. At this point William leans over to you and keeps a low tone. “Look, I can see that you’re probably not cut out for this life and as I said, that’s perfectly fine. But Bobby… well I don’t think he’d take it well if you backed out now or worse, backed out on the wedding day.” “I know.” You say with your voice starting to get a little quivery. “Shhh, okay. Look, it’s not too late to leave this place. I’d be willing to take you with me, and I’ll drop you off wherever you want. Of course we’d have to do it secretly.” “How?” “Well, my van is the dark blue one out front. Here’s the keys.” William says and hands you some keys, which surprises you. “Don’t worry, I trust you. Besides, that big gate has to be opened up first anyway. All you have to do is hide in the can, until me and Aaron leave which shouldn’t be long. Just make sure you keep the doors unlocked so we can get in.” William says. “Aren’t they going to notice I’m gone?” “Well, this is a big place, so if you went missing for a little while people would probably think you’re either just wandering the house or maybe back in your room before suspicion arose. I’d also be willing to make up a story if it came to that. In any case, if you’re going to do it, we need to do it now.” > You stay at the compound And suddenly all your instincts cry out “DANGER.” You also remember Bobby telling you that you shouldn’t listen to William since he’s a shit stirrer and he’s certainly doing a good job here. William seems too eager to help you given everything you’ve heard him spout about survival of the fittest and wanting to embrace pure chaos. Technically you still aren’t “family” and if you aren’t with Bobby, what’s stopping him from just gutting you and tossing your corpse along side the road or worse when you leave the compound? And that’s not even counting that creepy Aaron guy who is going to be travelling with him. Even if he is on the up and up, you have no idea where to go. Going back home isn’t really an option, in fact going back to town sounds like a bad idea all around given what Bobby told you yesterday. And you certainly don’t want to be travelling around with William while he raises hell, since again he’s libel to “raise hell” on you. You still don’t know about the whole wedding sacrifice, but you do know that running away with William isn’t the answer. You’re going to just have to deal with your situation another way. You take a deep breath and hand William his keys back. “I thank you for the offer William, but I’m staying.” You say. William looks a little surprised at first, but then his face turns to a smile. “Well… Tiamat certainly sent a blessing to Bobby when he met you. I hope he realizes it.” William remarks. “If he doesn’t, I’ll be reminding him.” You answer. “Of that I have no doubt. Okay. Well it was nice meeting you Suzy, and may Tiamat’s blessed chaos always swing in your favor.” William says and then gets up. He makes a head gesture to Aaron who apparently has been watching the pair of you the entire time. The pair of them leave the room and you get the impression they’re not going to bother telling Bobby they’re leaving the compound either. Perhaps William figures you’ll mention to Bobby that he attempted to whisk you away, along with confronting him about the wedding stuff, which you will most certainly be doing. As soon as you can at any rate since Bobby is still talking with Diana, or at least he was until you see her running out of the kitchen and trying to cover her face. It’s obvious she’s crying or at least about to. Bobby soon comes out of the kitchen as well. He doesn’t look in the best of moods. “Food’s in the kitchen, serve yourselves.” He says. Nobody says anything, except Helen who asks what’s going on when she enters the room. Bobby just waves her away and tells her to see to the children as usual then he slumps down by the chair next to you. Bobby’s family at this point heads into the kitchen, not wishing to “It’s done.” He says. “Well don’t look so down about it. And what’s done exactly? Did she get the message? Am I still going to have to worry about her?” “No. For the last time no. It’s done. It’s over. I made it quite clear that it’s over between her and I. So clear in fact that she probably hates me more than you now.” “I seriously doubt that, but do you think it’s wise to let her run around this house if she hates you?” “(Sigh) Suzy, I’m not throwing her out and I’m not killing her okay?” “Okay fine. If you want to live dangerously…” “Suzy, how about this. If you REALLY hate her that much, then why don’t YOU kill her? Seriously, you have my permission if it will get you to stop bitching about it.” You didn’t really expect Bobby to say that, but then… “Well I suppose that would make the wedding sacrifice a lot easier.” You say which causes an eyebrow raise by Bobby. “Great, so you know. Who told you? Wait, I know. William did right?” Bobby says. “Yeah, I think he hoped to scare me into leaving with him…speaking of which I think he and Aaron left.” You answer. “Figures. (Sigh) I don’t even know why I’m bothering trying to hold this family together. Most of them aren’t even here. One of them hates me, and the rest aren’t exactly sterling examples of Tiamat’s Chosen. In fact the ones that are here are probably here because it’s safe and filled with enough supplies to live comfortably.” “Well, what’s wrong with that?” “Nothing I suppose, but supporting about bunch of freeloaders wasn’t really part of my plan to honor Tiamat.” “Well maybe you need to change your damn plan. I mean its still early, but if you really feel like someone isn’t pulling their weight around here, then you need to just kick their asses out, family or not. I mean you’re the boss around here and your word is supposed to be law.” Bobby sits up a bit as you continue to speak. “Look, you know you’re a leader and you know the head of this family. So you can’t give into all this self-doubt. You NEEDED to lay down the law to your sister Diana., but you know that’s just going to be a temporary fix. Now I think you KNOW what you’re going to have to do with her, but your past with her is preventing you from doing it, which is why you made your outburst about me doing it a few moments ago.” Bobby continues to listen intently. “Now, I’m not going to do it for you unless she gives me cause to, but she’s going to have to be dealt with by our wedding day. Whether that means you exiling her ass or killing her, that’s up to you. Love isn’t one-sided Bobby, and if I’m going to have to ultimately submit to your beliefs and everything that goes with it including murdering innocent people, well you’re going to make a sacrifice to me as well. If not, well you can throw me on that slab and thrust that dagger in me and get it over with.” Bobby looks a little overwhelmed by your ultimatum. He’s never heard you speak like this before and really; you’re a little surprised you’re saying what you’re saying yourself. You’re rolling the dice and betting everything here. You think you’ve got the inner strength to go through with all this, you just hope that Bobby proves to be just as strong. “Suzy, you are the love of my life and what you’ve just told me just confirms that Tiamat’s chaos did favor me when I met you. You’re right. I know I have to do something more permanent with my sister Diana. I’ll come to a decision tomorrow though. I think I need the rest of the day to recover from all the shit I’ve already had to go through. It’s not even night yet!” “Well, okay. I understand. Well, should we go eat with the rest of the family?” “Might as well.” You and Bobby briefly kiss each other and go join the rest of the family who have congregated in the dining area. None of them say anything to you or rather none of them ask any questions if everything is okay or anything. Diana isn’t here and Bobby makes the announcement that Aaron and William have left and then tells Brandon when he’s done eating, he can go check the front gate to make sure they closed it properly. The remainder of the day is a bit out of the norm for you since you spend it mainly with Bobby’s family. They’re surprisingly really into board games. Unsurprisingly most of the board games seem to involve conquest or killing everyone else. While you never really played many board games before, you catch on quick thanks to your years of playing strategy games on your computer and its fun enough that it keeps your mind off other things. You even manage to win a game of Scorched Earth. Diana never joins in, and at one point Helen (who was playing separate games with the kids) goes to check on her out of concern, but she remains in her room. Eventually you start to get tired of socializing and you feel you’ve bonded enough with Bobby’s family for one day so you return to your own room. Bobby tells Ronald to take watch for the night and goes with you. Before you settle down for bed, you check your phone out of curiosity to see if anyone has tried to call you. “Somebody call you?” Bobby asks. “Nah, though I didn’t really expect anyone to. Pretty much says it all about my ties to my own family.” You say. “Well I think we both know you’re already with your new family now.” “Yeah. Still, I can’t help but wonder how they’re all dealing with the situation in town. Though who knows, maybe its calmed down now. Anyway, doesn’t matter.” You say and get into bed. Bobby follows and it doesn’t take long before he’s grabbing and grinding up against you. You return his affection and have pleasant round of passion before going to sleep. > Next day… THURSDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world twelve inch salami eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe the sour cream off your lips… and you stand up and yell: “Alright this is getting fucking insulting! For the past four nights now I’ve been winning contests involving eating phallic shaped food. What the fuck is the symbolism here? That I’m some whore that sucks cock all the time? For fuck’s sake, I’ve only had the one goddamn boyfriend and soon to be husband. If anything I’m the exact opposite of a whore! So whoever or WHATEVER is trying to send a message to me needs to just come out and fucking say it.” And with those words of indignation, your surroundings immediately change to that of a blasted wasteland. There is nothing around you save for burned out buildings in the distance and dead landscape. Reminds you a bit of a video game you once played. “You know, the entire world is soon going to look like this…how I wish I could be young and alive to experience the uncertainty and chaos that is going to shape the years to follow.” You hear a voice say. You turn around and see Bobby’s grandmother again. She’s an old lady walking with a cane this time. “But enough about the future, let’s talk about the present. You survived a lot longer than I thought you would, maybe you are worthy of my grandson after all. You even are starting to manipulate him a bit, that’s good. The true leaders in Tiamat’s service have always been women anyway. I swear if it wasn’t for us prodding them in the right direction every now and then, most men would be content just jacking off to pass the time. Still, you aren’t quite there yet. I think today should prove to quite interesting. Survive today and you might just meet Misty yet.” “Okay, I want some answers, who the hell is Misty, and what’s going to happen today?” you demand. “You’ll find out soon enough what’s going to happen and as for Misty, well why don’t you put some thought into it. I mean it’s pretty simple even for you blondie.” Bobby’s grandmother replies with slight distain. “Well what’s deal with all these contests in my dreams?” “Sorry, I really don’t know anything about that. If you’re lucky and actually meet Misty, maybe you can ask her, but I just assumed you really liked dreaming about sucking dick...in a symbolic way I guess. Hmm, come to think of it this would explain why Bobby’s so enamored with you. Maybe you aren’t a whore blondie, but you sure got the mouth of one. It’s almost as if it was a highway for oral sex.” “Hey!” “Don’t take offense blondie. It’s a good thing. Suck a man’s dick right, and you can practically get him to do ANYTHING for you. I mean you got natural talent. Hell, maybe even Tiamat blessed you with it so you stood an equal chance against Diana. Now that girl, as much as she loves Bobby, she just can’t suck a dick properly. Bad gag reflex, slightly oversized teeth, I dunno. Tiamat works in whimsical ways I suppose.” “How do you even know all…nevermind I don’t want to hear anymore.” You say. Bobby’s grandmother ignores you though and continues to speak. “Still, Bobby always did have a slight obsession for blowjobs. He likes them a lot more than he’s probably told you. He’s a bit too much of a gentleman that way.” “Gah! I’m done listening!” you shout feeling increasingly uncomfortable about hearing Bobby’s grandmother talk about his sexual interests. “Oh, alright Miss Prude. I’m rambling and it’s time for you to go anyway. See ya Deep Throat!” Bobby’s grandmother cackles again and then raises her cane and all your surroundings go black… And then you wake up. “Something bad is going to happen today.” You say to yourself. (Then again why should today be any different from the rest of this week?) You look around and see nobody in the room (Save for Bobby’s grandmother’s portrait staring like a gargoyle). Looks like Bobby woke up before you as usual. You look at the time on your phone and see you’ve actually slept until the afternoon. While the normal thing for you to do would be to just stay in your room and avoid everyone, but given your recent dream, you think your best bet might be to be a little proactive today. After going through your usual routine of washing up and getting dressed you head down to the main living area where you know everyone usually gathers. Before you get there you bump into Helen, who looks a bit harried and is carrying a pistol in one hand. “There you are, good. Saves me time. Bobby told me to go get you.” Helen says. “Wha…what’s going on?” you ask. “Aaron came back and he’s threatening to drive an army truck through the front gate if we all don’t leave the compound. He claims that we’re defying Tiamat by not embracing the chaos outside. Bobby’s been trying to negotiate with him through the intercom, but he thinks we’re going to have no option but to open fire on Aaron.” “Where the hell did he get an army truck? Is William with him?” “Apparently the town has been in a state of martial law since yesterday and the National Guard have taken over according to Aaron’s ranting. I guess he stole one. I don’t think William is with him. Anyway Bobby wants you to be safe so follow me to where all the children...” Loud shouting by Bobby in the distance suddenly interrupts Helen. You immediately rush towards where he might be located despite the protests by the Helen that you need to come with her though she just runs along with you. You soon manage to catch up with the most of the family (Save for the younger children and Diana) who are standing in the foyer with their weapons ready and Bobby who has opened the front door. “Aaron, I tried being reasonable. YOU left here without permission, but that was fine because it’s obvious you didn’t feel happy here. There are several paths to Tiamat’s glory and you obviously had your own ideas about which one you should pick. Anyone here is free to leave, but NOBODY is going to be forced to leave due to your threats! Again, if you try coming in here, you’re going to be shot down like a fucking dog and I’ll personally perform Tiamat’s ritual of desecration over your stinking body so your soul NEVER enters Timat’s glory!” Bobby shouts and walks out with his rifle drawn. Bobby’s brother Jordan is the first one who cautiously follows afterwards and then everyone else slowly walks towards the door as well. You don’t think anyone has even paid any attention to you or Helen (who keeps pulling on you to leave). “My soul is already with Tiamat! You can’t do shit about it ritual boy! If you unworthy fucks won’t embrace chaos as Tiamat intended, then I’m gonna bring it to you!” Aaron shouts through a bullhorn, which is followed by a laugh. The truck revs up and Bobby orders everyone to open fire. You and Helen are still inside at this point so you don’t actually do so and just hang back as you watch Aaron mow through the gate followed by a hail of bullets peppering the oncoming truck. The truck swerves hard to the left smashes into Brandon’s parked vehicle. You can hear him swearing about it. Meanwhile you also see Jordan jumping up and down in victory and running over to the wrecked truck. “Yeah! We got that bastard! Whoo!” he shouts. “Hey Jordan, get the fuck back here, don’t go off ahead like that by yourself!” Bobby shouts. “Aw, it’s fine, he didn’t survive that!” And that’s when Aaron proves Jordan wrong, starting by recovering from his crash and shooting several holes into Jordan. Then he follows up by throwing several grenades out the truck window. “SHIT!” Bobby shouts and everyone runs back, but not before several explosions occur. Nobody is killed, but everyone scrambles and on the ground crawling for cover. Bobby himself crawls behind cover of another parked vehicle and continues to fire in the direction of the truck. Helen now really tugs at you saying you need to come with her where its safe, but you wonder if you should try to help Bobby considering he’s the only one currently trying to kill Aaron. Everyone else has completely retreated and is even running past you. > You help Bobby This is the man you’ve chosen to marry for better or worse. If you aren’t going to help him in a matter of life or death then that wouldn’t say much for your commitment. Besides, if he gets killed this whole compound is going to turn to shit and you’d no doubt be at the bottom of it, assuming Aaron doesn’t kill you all first. Pulling away from Helen, you grab one of the dropped rifles by one of Bobby’s family and rush outside towards Bobby who is still taking cover behind a car and firing upon the Aaron. He sees you out the corner of his eye while still keeping an eye on the direction of the truck. “Keep your head down, I think Aaron escaped out the passenger door of the truck and is hiding behind Brandon’s car now. Where the hell did you come from anyway? I told Helen to go get you and the younger children to a safer location when Aaron showed up.” Bobby exclaims. “Yeah well I’m showing you that I’m not just going to let you do this shit alone. I’m with you all the way. No hiding with Helen and the kids, no matter what you say.” You’re interrupted by gunfire on your position and Aaron ranting. “You think you can stop what’s coming by hiding? Hah! People are already fucking EATING each other out there! Shit, I’ll be doing you a favor by killing you now. Actually now that I think about… your blonde bitch looks like a fine piece of ass in more way than one!” Aaron shouts and starts laughing maniacally and then throws another grenade your way. You and Bobby have no choice but to leave your position and make a dash back to the house entrance. It’s somewhat of a minor miracle that you and Bobby aren’t hit by any of the bullets he fires at you. You manage to get inside just as the grenade goes off and adds to the total of destroyed vehicles outside. You and Bobby are on the floor though Bobby has partially managed to cover you with his own body. “What the hell did he do, rip off the entire National Guard armory?” you say as Bobby back kicks the front door shut from his prone position. “I don’t know but…” Two more explosions are heard on the left side of compound. Aaron is apparently throwing explosives through the windows now. “Shit, I hope nobody ran and hid over there.” You remark as the pair of you start to get up off the floor. “Where the fuck IS everyone anyway? Nice to know I can REALLY count on these fuckers when the going gets tough. Why the fuck am I even bothering again? Fuck!” Bobby yells in frustration. You understand his anger, but it’s probably not the best time for a rant. “Bobby, calm yourself. You can yell at those idiots later, but right now all that matters is that I’m here helping you okay?” you say. “Hey…I’ll help too…” a voice suddenly says. You both look and see that it’s Helen with a pistol in hand. “Helen, you’re supposed to be with the children!” Bobby exclaims. “Veronica and Brandon are with them. When they ran, the children’s room upstairs was the first place they went. Guess they were concerned about their daughters.” “…well I guess I can understand the pair of them running to their children. So they’re looking after all the kids then?” Bobby remarks. “Yeah, I figured since they were doing that, I’d come help you, though I hope I just don’t get in the way.” “No, it’s good. Glad you’re here Helen. What about Ronald and Denise?” Bobby says. “Haven’t seen them. Um, I haven’t seen Diana either…in case you were wondering.” Helen remarks briefly glancing at you after saying it. “Hopefully Aaron kills her.” You remark. “Yeah, well I actually was going to exile her today, but that might have to wait assuming Aaron doesn’t kill her.” Bobby says. “Okay, enough of all this. What’s the game plan?” you ask slightly disappointed that Bobby’s decision was to exile Diana rather than death, but you aren’t entirely surprised. Still, there’s always the hope that Aaron does kill her. Bobby quickly snaps back to the situation at hand. “Well it sounds like he’s stopped with the explosives, or maybe he’s just fishing out more. I’d say the safest bet is to get to the second floor and shoot him through one of the windows. No point in going back out the front door when we can get the vantage point.” “How do we know he’s still outside, he might’ve already entered house through one of the holes he’s undoubtedly made with his grenades.” You say. “Yeah true. No telling where he might be heading first. The armory maybe?” Helen remarks. “He’s still gotta come through this way if he wants to go there. Given his state of mind though he might also try to do something like run upstairs and kill all the children for fun. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past him to try to access the prisoner’s dungeon and set them all free. It is on the left wing after all.” Maybe we should split up and take different floors?” Helen asks. “Maybe though I’m not keen on the idea of splitting up. (Sigh) Okay. Since you said Brandon and Veronica are with the children, I’m going to hope they’re up to dealing with Aaron if he shows up. I’m going to the left wing of the house and try to stop him there. I want you two to stay here and guard the foyer in case he somehow manages to sneak past me and is heading towards the armory. He’s going to have come through here.” Bobby says. Helen immediately complies with the plan, but you’re not so sure. “I really think I should come with you. Splitting up is always a bad idea in these situations.” “I don’t like it either, but it’s a big house and we need to cast a wide net to deal with this asshole.” Bobby says and then puts his arm over you and takes you aside. “Besides, as glad as I am that Helen stepped up, we both know she’s not exactly a fighter. I don’t want her coming with me and possibly getting in my way when I’m hunting Aaron, but by the same token I’d feel more comfortable if you were here with her since I know you can handle yourself and aren’t going to freeze up in a fight. I’ll be fine by myself. Don’t worry about me. I mean I did kill your uncle Ed by myself right?” Bobby whispers. You glance over at Helen and as brave as she’s trying to appear, she still looks like a deer in the headlights. Bobby’s right in that her survival would probably increase if you were here and she had the misfortune of Aaron popping up. Then again by the same token, YOU’D actually feel safer being with Bobby. You’d also worry less about Bobby’s own safety if you were watching his back. After all, this situation is also little different than the one with your uncle. Aaron’s not just carrying a knife; he’s carrying around grenades and machine guns for one thing. Also, while Helen might be a nice girl, she’s ultimately not your responsibility. > You go with Bobby “Bobby, I’m coming with you and I’m not budging on this. We’re going to take out this crazy bastard together. I’ll worry less if I’m with you watching your back.” You say. You half expect Bobby to argue, but that doesn’t happen. Instead he smiles and then kisses you on the lips quickly. “Okay then, you’re with me. Helen! You’re going to be guarding this area alone. Do you think you’re up to it?” Bobby asks. “I am.” Helen says with a nod still attempting to not look nervous. “Okay. Remember, if you see Aaron shoot him on sight and don’t even think about it. Oh and if Ronald and Denise ever come out of hiding and pass through here, tell them to fucking help you.” With that last bit of advice, you and Bobby proceed to head towards the left wing of the house. You and Bobby cautiously walk through the corridor keeping your eyes and ears open for any sign of Aaron, but so far you haven’t seen or heard him. The smell of gunpowder and smoke is in the air of part of the house and peering in one of the rooms you see the results of Aaron’s grenades. The room is charred, blackened and wrecked. Whatever items were in this room have been completely destroyed and there is now a large hole allowing direct entry from the outside to the inside. “So much for the second den. Glad none of my personal stuff was in here. (Sigh) One more thing to fix.” Bobby remarks. “He either wounded himself during or you must’ve hit him from before, look.” You say and point at small splotches of blood in the room and creating a trail going to one of the other doors. (Or rather the entryway since the door itself is in pieces and not even on the hinges anymore.) “Yep, he’s going towards the dungeon. Knew he’d be somewhat predictable.” Bobby says and the pair of you follows the blood trail. You pass through a series of room to get to your destination. Some furnished, some empty. The left wing of this house seems to be designed a little oddly though, almost mazelike. Eventually you get to a small room that has a door leading to what you assume is the dungeon Bobby mentioned. “Well he’s probably down there. The blood trail is heading down and we would’ve seen him if he’d doubled back. You ready?” Bobby asks. “Yeah.” You remark. “No seriously. Are you ready? Because while I know you’ve got your mindset on killing Aaron, you MIGHT very well have to kill whatever prisoners he’s managed to convince to help him. You might be less inclined to kill them due to them…well having a legitimate reason for wanting to escape.” “Bobby, I already told you, I’m with you on this one hundred percent. If that means shooting a few prisoners well Tiamat’s going to be getting a few extra souls to eat early or something.” You say causing Bobby to chuckle a bit. “Well that’s not exactly how it works, but as always I’m touched by your enthusiasm.” “You’re going to be touched all over by my enthusiasm after this is over.” You say and then give him a deep tongue kiss along with a firm caress to his crotch. “Whoa, easy there girl. We’ll get to that. Let’s take care of this first.” Bobby says reluctantly pulling back from you. To be honest, you’re not even sure what came over you. Maybe you’re starting to not only accept this type of life, but enjoying it as well which might concern you more if you weren’t in the middle of hunting someone down and shooting them. Bobby descends first and then you. While descending you start to catch the sent of what a dungeon full of unwashed prisoners locked in it smells like. It isn’t the most pleasant, but actually better than you expected from a dungeon. When you get downstairs the dungeon is relatively well lit. You see rows of empty cages to the left and right side and on the very far end you see Aaron who has a group of what you presume to be the prisoners. He’s apparently bullied them into acting as a human barrier. They’re a mixture of old, young, male and female and they’re a dirty, miserable and practically naked lot. Most of them are barely standing up. Looks like taking care of them wasn’t high on Bobby’s list though then again why would it? At this point if you have to shoot them (which seems likely) you think you’d be doing them a favor. Aaron himself doesn’t look all that great from what you can see of him. He’s obviously been wounded and this is his last ditch effort to…well whatever his grand plan was. He’s holding something in his hand though above his head, probably another grenade. “You think you’ve won? Hah! I’ve already beaten you! You kill me and this grenade drops, then what will you do for sacrifices? You’ll have to go out and get more and I guarantee NONE of you are prepared for the beautiful chaos that lies outside. None of you are truly worthy of Tia…” Aaron rambles insanely. Aaron is completely delusional at this point. Bobby doesn’t even argue with him, the whole time Aaron is talking, Bobby is taking careful aim at his head. A single shot drops Aaron and then Bobby tells you to run which you both do up the stairs. You get to the top just in time for the grenade to explode. No harm done to you, but you can imagine the mess that’s down in the dungeon now. “You okay?” Bobby asks. “I’m fine. Guess you’ll have to repair your dungeon too.” You say. “Yeah…fuck!” Bobby yells and slams his fist into the floor. “What’s wrong? Didn’t we win?” “That sonofabitch killed all the prisoners! Now who the hell are we supposed to sacrifice for the wedding tomorrow?!” “Well…do I have to sacrifice someone? I mean I’m not asking because I don’t want to do it. I’m just asking is it absolutely necessary for the wedding? I mean couldn’t I make a sacrifice later when we get someone else? I mean I’ll even come with you to make the capture.” “(Sigh) No…I suppose in the scheme of things it isn’t necessary. I just wanted everything to be perfect. I dunno…Aaron might’ve been right about one thing. Maybe I am a little caught up in ritual…but still I THINK it’s important to revere Tiamat in a formal way! Just because I’m not completely running amok stealing army trucks and throwing explosives at shit doesn’t make me any less dedicated to glorious chaos! I mean…does it?” And that’s your cue to support the fragile male ego again. “Well of course it doesn’t my love. Your way is obviously a more intelligent approach to chaos. Just because something is chaotic, doesn’t mean it’s mindless. You’re playing the long game and attempting to build a dynasty. Instead of burning out quick, you’re plotting and planning labyrinthian schemes to eventually burn them all.” You say while looking into Bobby’s eyes and stroking the side of his face. “I’m so glad you understand me.” Bobby remarks and hugs you tightly. Bobby really does always feel completely better with just a few supportive words from you. Its sort of amazing really since you didn’t realize you had this sort of power over him, then again you two were never really in a situation like this before except the first time you met and that was when you counted on him to “rescue you.” That dynamic has clearly changed. You guess this is what his grandmother meant when she spoke to you in the dream. In any case Bobby tells you he’s going to check the dungeon to see if maybe there were any survivors just in case. You offer to help, but he says there’s no point in both of you trudging through blood and gore, which is probably covering the place. You tell him you’ll just wait for him and kiss him before he heads back downstairs. No sooner has Bobby left, when you hear footsteps coming from the room nearby. Still paranoid, you hold up your pistol not knowing who is coming through “Who’s there?” you ask. “Hold on! It’s just me! Don’t shoot!” you hear a female voice say. “Helen?” “Yeah, it’s me! Is everything okay here? Heard another loud explosion in this direction.” Helen says and enters the room cautiously. “Yeah everything’s fine. Aaron’s dead. How come you’re not guarding the foyer?” “Well I was, but then Diana showed up and…” “Wait, you’ve seen Diana?” you interrupt and Helen’s head drops a little looking sad. “Yeah…she was um…I dunno. She showed up in the foyer and wasn’t acting…I mean she’d always had a mean streak in her, but I just couldn’t take it…” You aren’t sure what happened, but obviously something occurred between Helen and her sister. “Helen, out with it. Where is she and what happened?” “She’s tied up in the large living room and unconscious. I had to knock her out.” “Wait you knocked out Diana?” “I had to. She was talking crazy like Aaron. She wanted to kill you.” “Well that’s hardly surprising.” You say. “Well she also wanted to kill Bobby and she wanted me to help in all this! I…I just couldn’t do that! I mean I don’t have any hatred for you (sniffle) and I love Bobby! You know? He’s the leader of this family and should be respected! I protested and tried to reason with her…but she just kept pushing and pushing like when we were kids and all my life! I couldn’t let her go through with it. (sniffle) Then she started threatening that she’d do something to the children…and I just lost it.” “It’s okay, Helen. You did what you had to.” You say trying to keep Helen from getting too weepy. It’s still hard to believe that Helen stood up to… well anyone, let alone her sister. Maybe your recent actions provided a bit of a model for her to follow of standing up for one’s self, maybe there was just only so much bullying she could take and that last threat was the final straw. Maybe it was a combination. Either way, this event has given you an idea. “So, she’s still alive?” you ask. “Yeah, I mean even after all the horrible things she was saying, I still couldn’t kill her…she’s still my sister.” “Understandable, but she still has to pay for this treachery as all who betray Tiamat do.” You call downstairs for Bobby. “What?” Bobby answers. “Anyone alive down there?” you ask. “No, just charred bloody body parts everywhere. Looks like we’ll have to do the wedding without the sacrifice.” “No, I think we’ll be okay. Come on up.” You state with a big smile. When Bobby comes back up you explain what recently occurred with Helen and suggest that Diana be the person you sacrifice. Bobby is silent for half a second and then agrees. “I’m not going to say I’m ecstatic about this, but it is what it is. You are my soon to be wife and Diana has proven to be a traitor. Death by your hand is certainly a fitting punishment. Do you have an opinion on this Helen?”” Bobby remarks. “I…my opinion on the matter is unimportant…. It’s just…very sad that Diana couldn’t have been… nicer. I support you Bobby and you too Suzy.” Helen says obviously upset. With that settled, Bobby, you and Helen all make your way back to where Helen said she tied up Diana. When you arrive, you see Diana unconscious on the floor with her arms and legs hogtied tightly with a bunch of duct tape and also her mouth covered with it. You also see Denise and Ronald nearly setting her free! Bobby scolds them of course and brings them up to date on the situation. Helen excuses herself and says she wants to check on the children and tell them everything has calmed down now. “Yeah and tell Veronica and Brandon they can come down too. Them and YOU two, I need to have a long talk with. ” Bobby says pointing at Denise and Ronald who are somewhat a little worried about Bobby’s comment. “What about her? Where are you going to keep her?” you ask pointing to Diana. “Well there are still a couple of intact cages down in the dungeon. I’ll probably throw her unconscious ass in one of them and she won’t be coming up until the big day tomorrow. Shit, there’s so much to do, cleaning up, getting prepared, (Sigh) well we better get started.” Bobby tells you not to worry about doing anything as you did enough today just standing by him and he wants you to just rest up for tomorrow. You offer to help, but he really won’t hear of it. You don’t press the issue since hey if he doesn’t want you doing any work, you’re not going to argue about that. Before you leave he tells you that he’s got a spare gun in his clothing drawer just in case of an emergency. You grab a quick meal from the kitchen before heading back to the bedroom where you stay for the rest of the day and night. You hear noise occasionally from downstairs. At one point you hear the sound of vehicles outside and looking out the window you see someone driving the damaged army truck in front of where Aaron crashed through the gate as a temporary barrier you guess. You stay up for Bobby as long as you can, but eventually you realize he’s really focused on trying to fix and clean up the house as much as he can and probably won’t be back anytime soon. Too bad, since you weren’t kidding about displaying your enthusiasm to him after the Wild West shootout was over. Taking matters into your own hands with your battery powered substitute, you satisfy yourself before going to sleep, hoping that tonight’s dream doesn’t have you deep throating the Washington Monument or something. > Next day… FRIDAY "And now Suzy, having beaten the chicken soup out of all her other opponents this week, will take this final challenge by herself! Will she be able to do it ladies and gentlemen? Will she be able to impress Misty at last? We’ll find out today! Let’s give our small town girl some encouragement for her task at hand!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A big bag of dicks. It’s even labeled as such. BIG BAG OF DICKS in big black lettering so you can’t miss it. You don’t even look inside the bag; you take their word for it and double face palm before exhaling and looking back up. “Really?” you ask in disbelief. “This is the last task Suzy…” the disembodied announcer’s voice whispers. “I don’t give a shit, I’m not eating a goddamn bag of dicks! That’s just fucking disgusting for one thing and for another… Suddenly Bobby’s grandmother appears as she has been doing in your dreams. “See? Told you she wasn’t going to do it. Still, it was funny to see the reaction.” Bobby’s grandmother cackles and with a wave of her cane, you’re back in that blasted wasteland you were in last time. “So what now? Am I going to meet this Misty, whoever the fuck that is?” “Not quite yet. You’re still not married to my grandson. Misty has decided that she’ll meet you after that event…and sheesh you still haven’t figured out who Misty is yet? You suffer a head injury when Aaron was tossing grenades around?” Bobby’s grandmother asks and then taps you in the forehead with her hand. “Ow! Stop!” you say and back away. “I hope you aren’t this slow on the uptake today. Oh well, guess you can’t help being blonde. Anyway, congrats on your wedding and you’ve got my blessing. Good luck!” Good luck? Somehow that doesn’t sound reassuring. You’re about to ask Bobby’s grandmother what she exactly means by that, but then she waves that damn cane again and you’re enveloped the blackness and then you wake up. “Gah, fucking bitch.” You say groggily. “Um, I’m sorry for waking you…but we really need to see if this fits.” a familiar female voice remarks. You look around the room and see Helen coming in carrying some red clothing. “Huh? No, not you…wait what are you doing in here anyway? Did Bobby spend all night working on the house?” you ask “I’m bringing in your wedding dress and yes, Bobby has been working on the house for the most part. Trying to patch up the big hole in the house, cleaning up the dungeon, blocking the front gate. He had to bury our brother Jordan as well. I don’t believe he’s actually slept yet.” “Oh yeah, forgot that that asshole killed one of your siblings. I didn’t know him that well, but sorry for your loss.” You remark. “Thank you. Yes, it was very sad, but to be honest Jordan wasn’t the brightest. I remember numerous times when looking after him I had to stop him from eating something poisonous or doing something else life threatening so it’s actually amazing he lived as long as he did. Still, he had some very endearing qualities. He looked up to Bobby a lot, wanted to be just like him. He even had a small crush on me I think to partially emulate Bobby and Diana’s old relationship.” Helen says with a smile before her face goes back to normal. “But we are all just puppets in Tiamat’s glorious chaos, so we all need to just move on right? Could you see if this fits?” Helen cheerfully asks holding up the red clothing which now looks a lot like lingerie. “Wait, that’s the wedding dress? It looks like slutty underwear from Hot Secret.” You answer and get out of bed. Helen’s face looks a bit offended by that statement. “My grandmother wore this on her wedding day! She had this dress made of the finest silk, not whatever cheap material they use in North Tiwanaland or some place! THIS is a one of a kind article of clothing! It’s not something you’d find in some edgy teenager hang out!” Helen remarks. “Okay! Geez. I’m not trying to insult the dress or your grandmother. It’s just…well I thought I’d be wearing something a little more… substantial. But seeing as your family isn’t exactly conventional and when in Rome…I guess I better try it on. Um, you washed it right?” “Of course. Hand washed it myself. Can’t risk putting it in a machine.” Helen says and hands it to you. You have to admit; it does feel rather nice in your hands. “Oh, here’s the stockings and the shoes too.” Helen says and hands you what is apparently the rest of the outfit. “Red fishnets…red high heels…” you say. “Yes. Those shoes were also special made with the finest…” “Leather. Yes, I can imagine. Let me guess the fishnets were made with the finest silk as well.” “Well of course, what else would it be?” “What else indeed. Okay, well I guess I’m going in the bathroom to change.” “You don’t need to you know. I mean I won’t be offended if you change in front of me. We’re practically family now.” Helen says. “Um…no that’s okay. Besides, I should wash up before changing anyway. I probably still smell of sweat from yesterday’s events.” “Okay, well I guess I’ll just wait out here then and remember you can call if you need something. You enter the bathroom and go through your usual routine of showering and such. Afterwards you finally get around putting on the “wedding dress” The first thing you do is look at the dress before putting it on and wondering if it’s going to be bigger in the chest area. While you’re not lacking in that region, you’ve met Bobby’s grandmother (in dream form anyway) and she’s got at least another couple cup sizes on you. In fact her body type back in her prime was more of an old school 1950s pinup girl hourglass figure than your own “petite” size. The funny thing is, as soon as you put it on, it seems to fit perfectly to your own body. The material isn’t any sort of spandex or stretchy material, it’s silk like Helen said, but given Bobby’s family’s strangeness, you have to wonder if it’s…magical? “Magical underwear.” You scoff; shaking your head in half disbelief you’re even considering it. Not surprisingly the stockings AND the shoes fit you perfectly as well. Yeah, Grandma Morningstar probably had all this stuff weaved by a giant magical spider voodoo priest or some shit because it doesn’t make sense that any of this stuff would fit you so well. Regardless of its origins, you do feel pretty comfortable despite looking like a Hollywood streetwalker. The heels don’t even hurt your feet, though you’re still a little unsteady on them due to not being used to wearing such things. Let alone these being stilettos. The last time you wore heels was when Uncle Ed made you wear stripperiffic clothing with the intent to lure Bobby and his dad into the woods where he could kill them. While everything turned out for the best because you met Bobby that fateful night, the part with Uncle Ed still gives you the shivers just thinking about it. You look at yourself in the mirror one more time, before leaving the bathroom. “Well Suzy, you might look like a whore in this thing, but at least you look like a high priced one.” You say to yourself. When you exit the bathroom Helen stands up and looks at you. “Oh my. You’re…you’re…so beautiful looking. I knew it would fit you perfectly.” Helen gushes. “Yeah I am pretty hot looking in this get up. Shit, still can’t balance on these heels though.” You say. “Oh we have to go show everyone now what you look like. Maybe take some pictures!” Helen says approaching you. “What? I thought I was just putting it on as a test drive as it were. While I won’t deny this stuff feels pretty comfortable on my skin that I don’t mind wearing it, I sort of don’t want to be walking around the house with it on until show time. Besides everyone can see how awesomely sexy I am then.” “I think they should see you now. It’ll raise the spirits around here seeing you dressed like this.” Helen remarks as she begins touching your arm. “Well it’ll raise something with the males around here when they see me of course. Not sure about the ladies of this house, though you’re getting a little too close there Helen.” “Oh please? At least go show Bobby. I know he’d like to see you.” Helen says ignoring your previous remark about invading your personal space. “I’m sure he’s really busy right now, besides isn’t it bad luck for me to see him right before the wedding?” “Oh you’re thinking of those silly traditions for other weddings. That’s not the case here. Come on I’ll take you to him.” Helen says and at this point is pulling on your hands almost causing you fall. “Hey! I nearly fell! I told you already that you’re too damn close!” Helen immediately backs away and looks down submissively. “I’m sorry Suzy. I didn’t mean to violate your personal space. It’s just I thought…well it’s Bobby.” “What about him? “Well, as I said he hasn’t slept and he’s been working everyone like a task master trying to get the house as much in order as he can. And that’s his right of course. He is the head of this family. Still, during all the hustle and bustle when I was going to see him when he was cleaning up the dungeon. I caught him weeping and praying to Tiamat. Normally I wouldn’t have intruded, but he looked so…vulnerable and sad. He kept going on about he wasn’t even sure if this wedding was the right thing because he wasn’t confident that he’d be a strong enough husband for you and be a good provider. He was having doubts about even leading this family after all the mess that’s happened this week.” “Oh geez. I’ve already told him several times that I loved him and that I was behind him no matter what.” You say. “Well maybe that’s all he needs again. Sometimes a little boost is all that someone needs to feel better. Like I remember yesterday when I was with the children during Aaron’s rampage, I told them that they would be safe because Tiamat’s chaos was in their favor that day. They were so brave after that, they were perfectly fine when I left them alone to help you and Bobby.” Helen says. > You go with Helen now If Bobby’s feeling a little down about everything and Helen feels like you could cheer him up, it couldn’t hurt to go see him right now. Not like you’ve got anything better to do. “Alright, I’ll go see him. I suppose I might as well get used to walking around in this thing.” You say. “Oh I know he’ll be so glad to see you, here let me get the door.” Helen says and opens it for you. You walk down the corridor with Helen nearby going on about how she’s so glad you’re officially going to be part of the family. “And don’t worry, when you start having all those babies, I can certainly help you out on that front.” “Great. I’ll be looking forward to it…” you say unenthusiastically while at the same time still trying to maintain your balance on the heels. When you get to the stairs you stop. “Shit, I think I should take these heels off before heading downstairs. I don’t want to fall.” You say. “Oh don’t worry about that, just hang on to the railing and I’ll be right here to make sure you don’t fall. In fact I can even put my arm around you just to make sure you don’t.” Helen says and goes to balance you a bit. “Well thanks, but I really don’t need your arm around m…” you start to say and then Helen punches you in the face. The punch itself isn’t even that hard as far as punches go, in fact Helen even winces when she does it as if she wasn’t confident in her abilities and was reluctant to even do so. However combined with being on top of the stairs and your high heels you lose your balance completely and go tumbling down them. Falling down a flight of stairs is always a bit of a crapshoot, sometimes people survive it with just a few bumps and bruises and other times they break their necks and die before they reach the bottom. You fall somewhere in between, you break your neck, but you don’t die. You won’t be moving anytime soon though. You’d probably be in more horror about the situation of not being able to move if your head wasn’t so scrambled from the fall. As you struggle to remain conscious, you see Helen coming down the stair before you. Her face has a sad expression. “Oh no. I was afraid this might happen.” She says with the tone of being genuinely upset. As Helen approaches and kneels near your head you both hear the sounds of gunfire outside and shouting inside the house. Neither of you know what that’s about, but you’re in no condition to worry about it. Helen picks your head up and speaks. “Sorry Suzy, but I just love Bobby too much to let you have him. I wish there could’ve been another way, but I’ll make this quick.” You don’t respond, you just close your eyes and let go. And then a final snap.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY "And now Suzy, having beaten the chicken soup out of all her other opponents this week, will take this final challenge by herself! Will she be able to do it ladies and gentlemen? Will she be able to impress Misty at last? We’ll find out today! Let’s give our small town girl some encouragement for her task at hand!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A big bag of dicks. It’s even labeled as such. BIG BAG OF DICKS in big black lettering so you can’t miss it. You don’t even look inside the bag; you take their word for it and double face palm before exhaling and looking back up. “Really?” you ask in disbelief. “This is the last task Suzy…” the disembodied announcer’s voice whispers. “I don’t give a shit, I’m not eating a goddamn bag of dicks! That’s just fucking disgusting for one thing and for another… Suddenly Bobby’s grandmother appears as she has been doing in your dreams. “See? Told you she wasn’t going to do it. Still, it was funny to see the reaction.” Bobby’s grandmother cackles and with a wave of her cane, you’re back in that blasted wasteland you were in last time. “So what now? Am I going to meet this Misty, whoever the fuck that is?” “Not quite yet. You’re still not married to my grandson. Misty has decided that she’ll meet you after that event…and sheesh you still haven’t figured out who Misty is yet? You suffer a head injury when Aaron was tossing grenades around?” Bobby’s grandmother asks and then taps you in the forehead with her hand. “Ow! Stop!” you say and back away. “I hope you aren’t this slow on the uptake today. Oh well, guess you can’t help being blonde. Anyway, congrats on your wedding and you’ve got my blessing. Good luck!” Good luck? Somehow that doesn’t sound reassuring. You’re about to ask Bobby’s grandmother what she exactly means by that, but then she waves that damn cane again and you’re enveloped the blackness and then you wake up. “Gah, fucking bitch.” You say groggily. “Um, I’m sorry for waking you…but we really need to see if this fits.” a familiar female voice remarks. You look around the room and see Helen coming in carrying some red clothing. “Huh? No, not you…wait what are you doing in here anyway? Did Bobby spend all night working on the house?” you ask “I’m bringing in your wedding dress and yes, Bobby has been working on the house for the most part. Trying to patch up the big hole in the house, cleaning up the dungeon, blocking the front gate. He had to bury our brother Jordan as well. I don’t believe he’s actually slept yet.” “Oh yeah, forgot that that asshole killed one of your siblings. I didn’t know him that well, but sorry for your loss.” You remark. “Thank you. Yes, it was very sad, but to be honest Jordan wasn’t the brightest. I remember numerous times when looking after him I had to stop him from eating something poisonous or doing something else life threatening so it’s actually amazing he lived as long as he did. Still, he had some very endearing qualities. He looked up to Bobby a lot, wanted to be just like him. He even had a small crush on me I think to partially emulate Bobby and Diana’s old relationship.” Helen says with a smile before her face goes back to normal. “But we are all just puppets in Tiamat’s glorious chaos, so we all need to just move on right? Could you see if this fits?” Helen cheerfully asks holding up the red clothing which now looks a lot like lingerie. “Wait, that’s the wedding dress? It looks like slutty underwear from Hot Secret.” You answer and get out of bed. Helen’s face looks a bit offended by that statement. “My grandmother wore this on her wedding day! She had this dress made of the finest silk, not whatever cheap material they use in North Tiwanaland or some place! THIS is a one of a kind article of clothing! It’s not something you’d find in some edgy teenager hang out!” Helen remarks. “Okay! Geez. I’m not trying to insult the dress or your grandmother. It’s just…well I thought I’d be wearing something a little more… substantial. But seeing as your family isn’t exactly conventional and when in Rome…I guess I better try it on. Um, you washed it right?” “Of course. Hand washed it myself. Can’t risk putting it in a machine.” Helen says and hands it to you. You have to admit; it does feel rather nice in your hands. “Oh, here’s the stockings and the shoes too.” Helen says and hands you what is apparently the rest of the outfit. “Red fishnets…red high heels…” you say. “Yes. Those shoes were also special made with the finest…” “Leather. Yes, I can imagine. Let me guess the fishnets were made with the finest silk as well.” “Well of course, what else would it be?” “What else indeed. Okay, well I guess I’m going in the bathroom to change.” “You don’t need to you know. I mean I won’t be offended if you change in front of me. We’re practically family now.” Helen says. “Um…no that’s okay. Besides, I should wash up before changing anyway. I probably still smell of sweat from yesterday’s events.” “Okay, well I guess I’ll just wait out here then and remember you can call if you need something. You enter the bathroom and go through your usual routine of showering and such. Afterwards you finally get around putting on the “wedding dress” The first thing you do is look at the dress before putting it on and wondering if it’s going to be bigger in the chest area. While you’re not lacking in that region, you’ve met Bobby’s grandmother (in dream form anyway) and she’s got at least another couple cup sizes on you. In fact her body type back in her prime was more of an old school 1950s pinup girl hourglass figure than your own “petite” size. The funny thing is, as soon as you put it on, it seems to fit perfectly to your own body. The material isn’t any sort of spandex or stretchy material, it’s silk like Helen said, but given Bobby’s family’s strangeness, you have to wonder if it’s…magical? “Magical underwear.” You scoff; shaking your head in half disbelief you’re even considering it. Not surprisingly the stockings AND the shoes fit you perfectly as well. Yeah, Grandma Morningstar probably had all this stuff weaved by a giant magical spider voodoo priest or some shit because it doesn’t make sense that any of this stuff would fit you so well. Regardless of its origins, you do feel pretty comfortable despite looking like a Hollywood streetwalker. The heels don’t even hurt your feet, though you’re still a little unsteady on them due to not being used to wearing such things. Let alone these being stilettos. The last time you wore heels was when Uncle Ed made you wear stripperiffic clothing with the intent to lure Bobby and his dad into the woods where he could kill them. While everything turned out for the best because you met Bobby that fateful night, the part with Uncle Ed still gives you the shivers just thinking about it. You look at yourself in the mirror one more time, before leaving the bathroom. “Well Suzy, you might look like a whore in this thing, but at least you look like a high priced one.” You say to yourself. When you exit the bathroom Helen stands up and looks at you. “Oh my. You’re…you’re…so beautiful looking. I knew it would fit you perfectly.” Helen gushes. “Yeah I am pretty hot looking in this get up. Shit, still can’t balance on these heels though.” You say. “Oh we have to go show everyone now what you look like. Maybe take some pictures!” Helen says approaching you. “What? I thought I was just putting it on as a test drive as it were. While I won’t deny this stuff feels pretty comfortable on my skin that I don’t mind wearing it, I sort of don’t want to be walking around the house with it on until show time. Besides everyone can see how awesomely sexy I am then.” “I think they should see you now. It’ll raise the spirits around here seeing you dressed like this.” Helen remarks as she begins touching your arm. “Well it’ll raise something with the males around here when they see me of course. Not sure about the ladies of this house, though you’re getting a little too close there Helen.” “Oh please? At least go show Bobby. I know he’d like to see you.” Helen says ignoring your previous remark about invading your personal space. “I’m sure he’s really busy right now, besides isn’t it bad luck for me to see him right before the wedding?” “Oh you’re thinking of those silly traditions for other weddings. That’s not the case here. Come on I’ll take you to him.” Helen says and at this point is pulling on your hands almost causing you fall. “Hey! I nearly fell! I told you already that you’re too damn close!” Helen immediately backs away and looks down submissively. “I’m sorry Suzy. I didn’t mean to violate your personal space. It’s just I thought…well it’s Bobby.” “What about him? “Well, as I said he hasn’t slept and he’s been working everyone like a task master trying to get the house as much in order as he can. And that’s his right of course. He is the head of this family. Still, during all the hustle and bustle when I was going to see him when he was cleaning up the dungeon. I caught him weeping and praying to Tiamat. Normally I wouldn’t have intruded, but he looked so…vulnerable and sad. He kept going on about he wasn’t even sure if this wedding was the right thing because he wasn’t confident that he’d be a strong enough husband for you and be a good provider. He was having doubts about even leading this family after all the mess that’s happened this week.” “Oh geez. I’ve already told him several times that I loved him and that I was behind him no matter what.” You say. “Well maybe that’s all he needs again. Sometimes a little boost is all that someone needs to feel better. Like I remember yesterday when I was with the children during Aaron’s rampage, I told them that they would be safe because Tiamat’s chaos was in their favor that day. They were so brave after that, they were perfectly fine when I left them alone to help you and Bobby.” Helen says. > You talk with Helen a little more That last statement doesn’t sound right to you… “Wait a minute Helen. I thought you said yesterday that Veronica and Brandon ran to you and stayed with the kids when you parted company with them.” Helen pauses for a moment. “Uh yeah, I did. Yes! I meant I left the kids alone, but just as I was leaving, it was fortunate that Veronica and Brandon showed up at that time so they weren’t completely alone.” Bobby’s grandmother claimed you were slow on the uptake and maybe in dreamland you are, but you know damn well when someone is obviously lying to you. “That didn’t happen Helen.” You say. “Wha…yes it did!” Helen exclaims. “Okay then…” you say and sit down to take off your heels. “What are you doing?” “I’m taking off these fucking heels because I don’t feel like nearly breaking my neck when we go ask Veronica and Brandon to confirm your story.” “Um, I don’t think that will be necessary. In fact, I think Bobby will be fine. Probably just wedding jitters. Apologies for bothering you and glad to see that the dress fits you.” Helen says and starts backing towards the door. “You know now that I’m thinking about it, it seems pretty strange that Bobby would be crying and praying in front of Diana who I presume is sitting in a dungeon cage right now.” “She was unconscious?” Helen says as if saying it in the tone of a question is going to cause it to be more believable. “Unconscious or not, I doubt Bobby would show any sort of weakness around Diana now. In fact I’m starting to doubt a lot of things…” At this point Helen’s eyes widen in fear and she turns to run for the door. Just as she gets to the handle, you manage to bean her in the head with one of the heels. It’s just enough to stop her from getting away before you rush over and grab her by the hair and throw her to the floor. “Out with it bitch.” You say and lock the door. When she doesn’t answer right away, you raise your hand and Helen starts to cry before you’ve even done anything. She cowers by curling up and putting her hands and arms in front of her completely submissively. “Please! Mercy! It wasn’t my idea! It was all Diana! You just don’t know what it’s like having such a bullying older sister who dominates virtually every aspect of your life!” “Save the pity party speech about being a victim of sibling abuse. Heard it before and I already lived something similar so it doesn’t impress me. Besides, I’m not buying this babe in the woods routine anymore Helen. At best you’re lying to cover up the fact that Diana AND yourself were planning on killing me all along yesterday and you just covered your own ass when it looked like things weren’t going to work out. At worst, this entire thing was your idea and Diana was just your dumb ass pawn. Either way, I’m not enthused and it doesn’t change the fact that YOU were trying to kill me…were you going to make another attempt today? Huh? Is that why you came up here? Maybe push me down the stairs or something? Claim it was an accident? ANSWER ME AND DON’T FUCKING LIE!” “Okay! Okay! I’ll tell you everything! Just please try to understand it wasn’t personal! I actually like you!” “Not personal?! You like me? So I guess your plan to kill me was just your way of showing affection?” “No (sob) I did it because I just love (sob) Bobby so much! I always have and I stood on the sidelines too long. (sob) I was just so desperate…” You just shake your head and sigh at this point. Helen sits up from the floor and scoots back to prop herself up against your bed coughing, sniffling, and trying to regain her composure. You stand nearby ready to jump on her if she tries anything, but for now you allow this moment for her to “explain” as it were. “If there had been some way to remove you Suzy without killing you I would have done it. You have to believe me I really would have. I even thought about approaching you in a plan to kill Diana instead.” “Yeah and then you would’ve probably killed me afterwards to make it look like Diana and I killed each other.” “No! I was going to…well I was going to try to seduce you.” “Excuse me?” you say completely surprised by that part of the explanation. “Well I wasn’t sure, but I just sort of got a feeling from you that you might be a bit… flexible on your orientation.” Helen says. “Wha… (sputter) What the hell would give you that impression?” you exclaim. “I dunno…sometimes I thought your eyes were wandering all over my body a little more than average whenever we spoke, plus you were so nice to me and you just sort of give off a lesbian vibe at times. I probably would’ve been too shy to go through with it anyway so it obviously wouldn’t have worked.” “You’re damn right that wouldn’t have worked! And what was your plan after that if your main goal was Bobby? Were you going to seduce me and while you were fucking me from behind with a big strap on you were going to plunge a knife in my back?” you ask Helen. “No, I told you, if I didn’t have to kill you, I wouldn’t have. I would have just suggested that we both marry Bobby. It’s not common, but our religion does allow for multiple wives. I think… I think I could have shared him with you.” “…I…I can’t believe how fucked up this situation even is…” you say sitting down on a nearby chair. Meanwhile Helen continues her tale of woe. “But I approached Diana because she was my sister and I knew her better. She was predictable. After I saw you beat her and after Bobby laid down the law to her about how it was over, she was a broken woman. Seriously, I’d never seen her confidence so shaken. After being on the receiving end of her abuse for so long, it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. So I convinced her of the plan…actually took me longer than I thought it would. I thought she’d be hungry for revenge, but no. I had to reignite that fire, but I knew she’d agree in the end.” “So she WAS trying to kill me too.” You say. “Oh yes. That was the plan as far as she knew. She’d kill you, but then I’d kill her and make up an excuse that I tried to save you or something similar. Of course when you stayed with Bobby during that whole time we were dealing with Aaron, I knew it wasn’t going to work which then resulted in an argument between me and Diana since she was now back to bullying mode. I knocked her out and I nearly killed her then, but I thought suggesting that she be your sacrifice on your wedding day would be fitting. When I found out Aaron had killed all the other prisoners…well that worked out even better since you suggested it.” “But you still wanted to kill me.” “Yes…after the chaos of yesterday and after I saw how you stuck by Bobby. I knew you really did love Bobby as much as Diana did…maybe even as much as me. So I temporary rethought my actions. I thought maybe I could live with Bobby being with someone like you. I mean you were nice to me at least. And I knew at least Bobby would be happy with you. When I woke up this morning though, I realized I just couldn’t let you have him without at least making one last ditch effort…and so here we are.” At this point Helen starts to lose what little composure she mustered up to tell her side of the story. She starts to break down in tears again and apologizes to you and going on about how much she loves Bobby. It’s really pitiful and sad. You can’t believe you’re almost considering NOT killing her now. Before you can come to any sort of conclusion, you hear shooting and screaming from outside. Still keeping an eye on Helen, you edge over to the window and take a peek. You see several figures crawling under the truck blocking the broken front gate or trying to climb the fence. The ones that have gotten in are loping in a wild jerky like motion. They’re also screaming, howling and making inhuman sounds. From your vantage point they LOOK human, but they’re certainly not acting like it. A loud banging on the door occurs next and you glare at Helen who doesn’t make a sound. “Hey! Suzy! You in there?! Why’s this door locked?” you hear a voice shout. You think its Veronica. “Yeah, I’m in here. What’s going on? I just heard all the commotion.” You answer. “We’re being attacked by zombies!” Veronica answers. You and Helen look over at each other briefly. “Did you say zombies?” you ask. “Yeah, I mean…I dunno if they are. Maybe they’re just rabid humans or something, but they’re gnashing their teeth, moaning and coming at us like something out of a horror movie. We need all the help we can get to repel these things!” “Okay, Veronica. I’ll be out in a moment!” you yell. “Well hurry up…and you haven’t seen Helen have you?” Helen and you look at each other again. “Yeah, she’s in here with me. I was trying on my wedding dress that she brought.” You say. “If the pair of you don’t stop playing dress up, there won’t be a damn wedding! Bobby’s having a hard enough time trying to keep them from getting close to the house!” A loud crashing noise followed by gunfire is heard from downstairs. “Shit! That sounded close! I gotta go!” Veronica shouts and you hear her run off. Well it looks like Bobby’s “pep talk” yesterday lit a fire under his relative’s asses to pull their weight around here at least. “(Sigh) Fucking zombies. Of course this day HAD to get worse…” you say shaking your head. “Suzy, we need to go to Bobby, he needs our help.” “We?” you ask. “…I…look…I know what’s just occurred between us and you have no reason to trust me, but from what Veronica said, it sound like this is a bad attack and we’ll need everyone we can to stop it!” She might have a point or she might just be stalling for a chance to escape or clobber you in the head. Possibly both. > You deal with Helen now You can’t trust her. Even if you wanted to, you can’t do it. She’s actually proven to be more dangerous than Diana could hope to be, if she’s weaved multiple murder plots against you this week. You don’t have a choice. You have to kill her. In fact the more you look at how weak and helpless she is right now… You WANT to kill her. “Alright, get up Helen, let’s go help Bobby.” You say offering a hand to help her up. Helen looks up at you and takes your hand trustingly. When she stands up, she starts to look relieved. And that’s when you back hand her and shove her to the floor. Helen holds the side of her face and tries to back away. “No! No! No! You can’t! Please! No! Don’t kill me!” she utters. “Don’t kill you? I’ll kill you twice you fucking cunt! And trust me, it’s not going to look like an accident!” you say and pounce on top of Helen. You begin beating Helen like she stole something. Helen pathetically attempts to defend herself, but it predictably doesn’t work. Her pleading for you to stop doesn’t help either. Instead, your hands stop beating her face and then start to wrap around her neck. You want to stop that infernal wailing, the pleading, the crying, everything. She tries to stop you from choking her, but your grip is firm. Her eyes begin to bulge a bit and she attempts to catch what is little left of her breath. Then you do something you don’t even expect doing. You start to giggle. You’ve gone beyond anger and are starting to enjoy this. Meanwhile Helen begins to gurgle and gasp what sounds to be words. “What? What’s that? You trying to speak? You having a little trouble? Here, whisper it to me.” You mock and get slightly closer while still maintaining your grip. “Bo…Bob..by…he…help…plea…” you hear Helen gasp. “What? Bobby help you? He can’t help you. He’s not even here.” You sneer. As Helen’s face turn an unnatural color, you just smile. “Shhh…shhh…just let go Helen…just let go…you fucking bitch…” The light in her eyes starts to fade, the life begins to leave her body and her struggle is soon over. She ceases moving. Ignoring the gunfire and yelling you hear downstairs, you just continue to sit on top of her for a moment staring at her. You stroke her hair. You’ve finally crossed that line. You know you can kill someone if you have to. Actually you also know you can kill someone if you don’t have to and while you went through a variety of emotions leading to it and during it, now that it’s over, you don’t feel much of anything. You wonder if your Uncle Ed felt this when he killed someone. Maybe you take after him in some way? Could it be genetic and maybe you have some sort of latent serial killer tendency? Given your family, it isn’t that hard to imagine insanity runs in it. It sure would explain why you were so comfortable with Bobby in the first place. After all, what rational woman would stay with a man that runs a murderous cult? But these are all things you can dwell on later; right now you need to help Bobby. “You know…you did have pretty eyes.” You say with a smirk and stand up. You open the clothing drawer where Bobby keeps the spare gun he mentioned yesterday, take it and leave the room without even changing your clothes. And why should you? It’s your wedding day after all. The events that follow aren’t nearly as interesting as the experience of your first kill. By the time you get to where Bobby and the rest of his family are holding back the invaders, they’ve already killed most of them. You remember shooting a couple of the things, but it wasn’t nearly as exciting as choking the life out of Helen. Turns out they weren’t zombies anyway. Just seemingly mad humans trying to eat you. You can only guess your town is overrun by them and this is what Aaron was referring to when he said people were eating each other out there. Some sort of sickness perhaps? Maybe the government was fucking around with a secret weapon like they tend to do and it got out of hand. It would explain why there was a drastic rise in violence even before you left and why the National Guard showed up later. It isn’t until after all the mad attackers are killed that Bobby manages to address you directly. He’s incredibly tired looking, the rest of his family looks pretty tired too, but he looks like he’s about to collapse. Bobby asks you if you’re okay and of course you say you’re fine. He then tells the rest of his family to check the rest of the house just to make sure the situation is completely safe. After everyone leaves, he sits down in a nearby chair wiped out from this whole ordeal. “I think you need to sleep.” You say. “Can’t. Too much to do. Especially now. Bodies to clean up, walls to patch up, gates and doors to fix. Now we got these…things attacking and who knows if any more will wander this way… there’s just so much to do...” Bobby says trying to fight the exhaustion. “Let me take care of some of this. You don’t have to do this all by yourself you know.” You say. “…shit…the wedding. That’s another thing we need to do…I just…had no fucking time to make the preparations…I’m sorry this couldn’t be how it should…” Bobby adds. “Will you not worry about that? Look, does this wedding really need to be so complicated? Can’t we just get one of your family members to witness it and another to marry us right now so I can at last be your wife properly?” you ask. “We don’t even need to do that really…I mean I’m the high priest here. All I have to do is say the passage and you accept and we’re married. No need for witnesses, I mean Tiamat’s watching. Who else is needed?” “What? That’s it? We could’ve done that a long time ago!” “Well, like I’ve told you before, I just wanted it to be perfect…” You sit in Bobby’s lap and wrap your arms around him. “Bobby, just being with you, is enough perfection for me. Besides, isn’t the carnage surrounding us true perfection in the eyes of Tiamat’s chaotic glory or something?” you ask. Bobby looks around at the nearby mess of broken furniture and the couple bodies laying on the floor and smiles. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” He says. Bobby recites what you guess is a passage from whatever holy book of Tiamat he got it from and when the time comes, you accept your place as his wife. Then the both of you kiss like you’ve done so many times before, though this time it’s different. You now feel like you belong here. “Oh. Here. I’ve been carrying this in my pocket the whole day, nearly forgot it was there.” Bobby remarks and hands you a ring with a sizable red diamond in the center and smaller black inlayed around it. It’s definitely beautiful and when you try it on, you find that it fits perfectly. “Let me guess, this used to be your grandmother’s ring?” you ask. “Yeah…how did you know?” “Oh let’s just say the fact that it fits me so well like her wedding dress did was a clue.” “Yeah, I was meaning to ask about that.” Bobby says rubbing your legs. “Oh Helen gave me the dress to try on before all the trouble went down. Didn’t really have time to change.” “(Yawn) Where is Helen anyway? I didn’t see her with you when you arrived, but then I was in the middle of blasting some freak’s head off at the time.” “Oh she stayed upstairs.” You say. “Hm, probably looking after the children as usual. She’s really reliable that way, (Yawn) nice girl. That’s why didn’t believe the bullshit Diana was spouting about her when I was cleaning up the dungeon.” “Oh? What was that?” Bobby begins to close his eyes, but keeps talking. “Oh, she was trying to claim Helen set her up and the attempt on your life was all her plan and how she never wanted to kill me at all…(yawn) typical desperation to save her own ass. Pretty laughable that she thought I’d believe it, I mean Helen likes you.” “Hm…where is Diana now?” “Oh she’s still in her cage…(yawn).” “Good. I’m going to go kill her.” You say. “You, don’t need to you know. You (yawn) don’t need to prove anything. I can do it.” “No, it’s fine. I’m willing to do it. I mean maybe this isn’t going to be official or how you planned, but I’m part of this family now and I’m going to make the effort to be fully part of it because I love you.” At this point Bobby smiles at your words and his consciousness fades completely and he’s asleep. You give him another kiss and get up to head to the dungeon. When you get there you see Diana sitting in her cage with a bored expression. When she sees you, she ceases looking as bored. “It’s you.” She says and her eyes begin to examine your clothing and then wander over to your finger sporting your new status in the family. She also spies the pistol in your hand. “I…heard a lot of noise upstairs. Is Bobby okay?” “Don’t you worry about Bobby. He’s not your concern anymore.” “So…you’re the new top mama now?” You don’t answer you just raise your arms presenting yourself to signify that is the case. Her head hangs briefly knowing she’s truly defeated. “Shit… can you at least tell me if Helen’s dead?” “Yes, she’s dead.” You answer. This revelation while not making any impact on Diana’s ultimate fate still brings a brief bit of happiness to her. “Good…that’s good… okay, no point in dragging this out.” Diana says and stands as close as she can to the bars and you get slightly closer with the pistol drawn. “Fuck Tiamat and fuck you blondie.” Diana says and then you fire a round into her chest. Diana falls back wheezing, gasping and clutching at the bloody wound. You move in closer to watch her for the last few minutes she clings to life, but then eventually she follows her sister in death. And now your “competition” has completely been eliminated. Leaving Diana in much the same way you left Helen, you go back upstairs and attempt to take charge of some of what needs to be done around the house. It’s actually easier than you think. Bobby’s family is a little surprised by the fact that you and he got married so spur of the moment, but that’s not a problem and given the recent events, they were less focused on attending a formal wedding anyway. You tell Veronica to go check on the children and to make sure they’re okay, when she seems less than enthused to do it and asks where Helen is, you get in her face and tell her. “She’s dead.” “What?! Well shouldn’t we tell Bobby?” Veronica exclaims with the rest of the family looking a little surprised at this revalation. “Bobby needs his rest and I’m calling the shots while he does so, now just do what the hell I say Veronica. The rest of you help me move these corpses out of here and Bobby’s sleeping in the living room near the kitchen. Let’s try not to wake him.” Clean up goes relatively fast. Around the house at least since that’s your primary concern. You go for the quick dirty approach of just getting all the dead bodies in one pile outside. You briefly think about burning them, but then you worry that maybe that might attract more attention. You figure Bobby can make that decision tomorrow. Since you’re not any sort of carpenter or anything similar your solution to patch up any broken windows and the front door is to barricade it with furniture for the night. Somewhere just after midnight everyone is ready to crash. You take mercy on everyone and tell them to just sleep with a weapon tonight and you’ll take tonight’s watch. You aren’t sure how you’re going to do it with as tired as you are, but fortunately when you check on Bobby you find that he’s just waking up and after a bit of a report, he is pleasantly surprised by what you’ve done. “Well that’s at least a few things I don’t need to worry about. Probably a good idea on not burning the bodies yet. We can do that tomorrow when everyone is alert in case it does draw attention. Nice job in taking charge.” “Thanks.” You say with a yawn. “Why don’t you go upstairs and get some sleep. I’m good now. I can take watch.” “You sure? You were up longer than I was.” “Nah, I’m really fine. I don’t usually need much sleep anyway. I just needed the brief recharge. Hey, we’re in this together remember? I’ll take over now.” He says. You don’t argue you just kiss him goodnight and tell him you love him and to call you if he needs your help. You head upstairs back to your bedroom feeling sleep creep up on you ever faster. When you get to your bedroom, you find Helen still lying on the floor where you left her. Besides forgetting to clean up her body, you also forgot to tell Bobby about what happened to her. (You didn’t really tell the rest of his family either, you just said she was dead and they never really asked how she died.) You look at Helen’s corpse again and then look over at the portrait of Grandma Morningstar with its eyes watching everything as usual. “Fuck it, he can find out tomorrow. I’m tired and I undoubtedly still have your ghostly mindfuck bullshit to look forward to in dreamland tonight.” You say. Stepping over Helen’s body, you get into bed and fall asleep. > Next day… SATURDAY "Suzy! You’ve won! You’ve truly overcome all odds! You have not only survived the various uncertain events of this week, but you’ve also thrived! Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give our small town girl some applause and respect for she truly is worthy of it!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A bigger bag of dicks. It’s even labeled as such. BIGGER BAG OF DICKS in big black lettering so you can’t miss it though that would be impossible since the bag itself is wide enough to take up half of the table and tall enough that you can’t even see the audience from where you’re sitting unless you stand up or look around the bag. You just shake your head. “This joke never gets old with you does it?” you ask. No sooner have you said that, when everything disappears and you’re facing Grandma Morningstar in the blasted wasteland again. “I told you, I don’t have anything to do with your oral fixation scenario dreams, but I will admit it’s a pretty funny joke.” “Hardly, but anyway am I finally done with all this nonsense? Am I finally meeting this Misty?” you say. “You figure out who it is yet?” “Yeah and I can’t believe I didn’t catch it before. Misty…MISS T…Tiamat.” You answer. “Yay! Your pretty little blonde head finally got it! Give this woman the BIGGEST BIG OF DICKS as a reward!” Grandma Morningstar cackles to the point where she actually starts wheezing a bit. “You done yet, you mean old crone?” you ask. “Crone is it? Better watch the tone there blondie, you might be officially family now, but don’t think I’m going to put up with your sass. Even in this form I could severely fuck you up, you best remember that.” Grandma Morningstar warns. “What…what are you exactly anyway? A ghost? A demon?” “Does it matter? Tiamat blessed me with this existence for my dedication to chaos and if you continue to prove yourself worthy like you have been doing then when that inevitable day comes that you shuffle off your mortal coil you might be just as blessed as I am. I doubt it though. You’ll probably just rot in the ground.” “Probably right since I’m not exactly the most religious person.” “Bah, Tiamat doesn’t really care about mindless ritualistic worship. She is the goddess of chaos so who knows what she really likes at any given time?” “Interesting, so am I meeting her now?” “Uh, no. Tiamat is sort of busy now or maybe she just doesn’t care, hard to tell sometimes…” “What?! I thought you said I was meeting her now.” “I actually never did, but cheer up. Given that you just admitted to not being a religious sort you can’t be too disappointed in not meeting her directly.” “Well…no, but that’s not the point. I sort of feel like there was a build up and by not meeting her now is an anti-climax.” “Ah, but if you really think about it, your journey has only just begun! Perhaps there is more build up for the ultimate climax later! There is nothing to say you won’t meet her in the future, but will it be on good terms or bad? Eh? Eh? One never knows!” “Great, more shit to worry about.” Grandma Morningstar steps forward and touches you on the shoulder. “Don’t despair blondie, you’ll do fine. Besides, I like you.” She says and then pinches your cheek before giving you a couple gentle taps to the face like some sort of mafia godfather figure from the movies. As you rub your face, Grandma Morningstar waves goodbye to you, disappears and everything around you gets dark. And you wake up. You’re a little surprised since you have a body right next to you, but you quickly calm down when you realize its Bobby. He’s partially under the blankets with you and puts down a book he was reading. “You okay? You seem a little jumpy. Bad dream?” he asks. “Eh…better than others I’ve had this week. We actually need to have a talk about them…when we…” you then realize if Bobby is here then he’s obviously seen Helen. You look over to your left and see that Helen’s body is no longer there and then you look over at Bobby. “…I meant to tell you about that…” you say. “No need. I can sort of guess what happened. So I take it Diana wasn’t lying to me after all?” “Not completely, Helen was the initial mastermind, but Diana was definitely still going to kill me when the opportunity presented itself. Things didn’t quite work out as planned as you can tell.” “Hm. Still can’t believe it. Helen was always so quiet and docile.” “Well, you know what they say about the quiet ones. They’re the most dangerous.” You remark. “Guess you know something about that.” Bobby says. “Yeah…I guess I do.” You say cuddling up next to him. It’s true. You used to be a shut in wallflower at one time. That meek girl that used to hide out in the basement is long gone after this week’s events. “I see you’re still wearing your dress as well as your ring.” “Oh. Yeah, too tired to change and the ring…well I really like it.” You say caressing it a bit. “That’s good. I’m glad.” “So…what are you doing up here anyway? Thought you were on watch duty.” You ask. “I was, and as usual you’ve slept most of the day again. It’s the middle of the afternoon. I’m up here because I was going to get a bit of rest before catching some more sleep due to being up all night. Plus I figure the rest of the family can do the majority of grunt work for a change without me having to hoover over them. Besides, I wanted to spend time with my wife and be the first thing she sees when she wakes up. I know that hasn’t been a real common thing since you got here.” “I’ll say. I’m glad you’re here too since we haven’t had a chance to consummate the marriage and we really need to do that…like right now.” You say and your hand starts groping at Bobby’s crotch. “You aren’t THAT tired.” You remark after feeling his dick status. “Well not now I’m not.” Bobby says and then embraces you. You feel Bobby plunge into like you have so many times before, but this time it almost feels slightly different because you’re now married to this man. Something about that makes it almost feel more…”special”. You didn’t really think you’d ever really feel that way over some silly ritual that joins people supposedly for life, but its probably more of the fact that you know for certain that Bobby is your soul mate. During the love making session, you begin to take on a more aggressive role and eventually get Bobby so he’s under you and continue riding him. It’s a bit different than the norm since he’s usually the dominant one ramming it into you, but he isn’t enjoying it any less. And then near the point of climax that’s when it happens. A flash of bright light briefly covers the windows and a loud noise is heard in the distance. “Shit what the hell was that?” Bobby asks sitting up a bit. “I dunno. I had my eyes closed and I just caught the tail end of the flash. Glad I didn’t have them all the way open.” You remark rubbing your eyes a bit. “Wait a minute…I think I know…” Bobby says and then motions for you to get off of him. He walks over to the window and you follow close behind. In the distance to the west, you see the remnants of a mushroom cloud. Probably landed on Security City or near it. You can only guess it probably wasn’t a big one, but you’re still a little concerned if you’re in some sort of fallout radius. “So…they finally went and did it.” You say. “Looks like. (Sigh) Shit.” Bobby says. “What’s wrong? I thought we were prepared for this sort of thing.” “Oh we are. I’m not even worried about that, it’s just I wanted to spend the day relaxing with you. Now? Well I think you know I’m going to have to go and direct everyone. You know at least one of my family, if not all of them are going to come running up here asking what to do.” “Yeah, well such is the burden of being a leader.” “Indeed. Guess I better get down there. Are you coming?” “Of course my love. We’re in this together.” You and Bobby get dressed and prepare yourselves for the new world that’s undoubtedly coming soon confident in the fact that whatever its going to throw at you, you’ll do it together. > … Matriarch of Madness The Future… “We’re here mom.” Your son says as your personal armored truck pulls up to the site. You look out the window and see the beautiful carnage outside. You can even hear some of the screams and crying from here. “Ahh, yes. Lovely.” You say. “Yeah, dad really did a number on this place after the siege was finally successful.” Your son remarks. “Well those rednecks really were asking for it by encroaching on a town that was rightfully ours. Glad to see this white trash haven finally being put to the torch and annihilated. It was a blight on the map even before the nukes hit. Well anyway let’s go, I want to surprise your father.” You remark getting ready to unlock the door. “You sure you want to get out? I mean we only just took the place and while the place is in the process of being purged completely, there were still a few of these trailer park bastards hiding in the area. In fact we believe some even ran into the nearby woods and are planning a counter attack. Not that they have any meaningful way of doing so, but still.” “Your concern for my safety is sweet Enki, but I didn’t get where I am today by remaining fearful of the possibility of the unknown. Besides, I so rarely get to see your father work anymore and I’d like to give him a nice surprise on his victory. I mean what do you think? Do you think when he sees me, he’ll want to bend me over on the nearest pile of corpses?” you ask and open up the trench coat you’re wearing over your naked body and run your hands briefly down your body Enki feeling slightly uncomfortable is unsure of what to say. “Well? I mean three children and not a fucking stretchmark. Years older and not even an inch of cellulite. I’m not just a MILF, I’m the fucking Alpha MILF.” You laugh. “Um, yeah you look pretty mom. I dunno, I don’t think about you in that way.” Enki remarks. “You’re a poor liar son. I’ve seen the way you look at me sometimes. You think I don’t notice you staring at my chest or those brief glances at my ass on occasion?” “No, I…” Enki starts to say before you interrupt him by waving your hand at him. “It’s okay as long as you know never to touch. Your older brother Anu had to learn that lesson the hard way from your father. Glad cutting off his pinkies didn’t impede his combat abilities though.” “Um, yeah. I’d never do that. I…” Enki starts to say then you interrupt him again. This time by putting a finger to his lips. “Of course you wouldn’t. You’re the smartest of my children. True, you’re a little on the quiet and introspective side, but then so was I at your age, probably even more so…and as they say it’s the quiet ones you have to look out for.” You say stroking his face. Enki is speechless while you continue this exercise in severely fucked up mixed messages. “I love all family and I especially love all my children, however I’ll only admit this to you. You’re my favorite and because you’re my favorite, I’m going to give you something a little more…just a taste if you will…but not a word. It’s a secret and secrets aren’t special when everyone knows.” You take the same finger that was on his lips and while closing your eyes and making “mmm” sounds, you slowly insert it into your mouth and then back out again just as slowly. When you open your eyes, Enki is obviously in a mixed state of panic and being incredibly turned on. He probably doesn’t know whether to run or whip his dick out and start shoving your head into his lap. Since doesn’t know what your intentions are he just freezes. You’re totally enjoying the way he has to be having a lot of mental conflict with this. “Now, I’m going to go find your father. I’m sure you’ve got other things you’ll need to take care of so you needn’t escort me. I’ve got a pistol in my coat pocket anyway, so I’ll be safe. Love you son.” You say with a smile and get out of the car. You walk into what remains of the trailer park. You can’t imagine this place looked much different before your family rightfully conquered it. Several of the trailers are overturned, a couple of them are on fire. In fact a couple of its inhabitants are also on fire. Bobby’s younger siblings Aiden and Nadia are casually lighting up a third redneck tied to a stake when you walk over to them. They both respectfully bow when they see you. “Hello…” Aiden says. “Aunt Suzy.” Nadia says. “Didn’t expect to…” Aiden adds. “…see you here.” Nadia finishes. “I’m surprising Bobby, have you seen him?” you ask, trying to speak over the screaming trailer trash burning alive. “Our brother…” Aiden says. “…we believe…” Nadia says. “is on…” Aiden adds. “the farside of the trailer park.” They say in unison. “Okay then, I’ll let you get back to it.” You say and then they nod and go back to watching their victims burn. Passing more scenes of violence and waving to a couple of Bobby’s cousins, nephews and nieces you eventually run into your youngest son Nergal who approaches with a young girl over his shoulder. He must have knocked her unconscious because she’s not even struggling. Nergal may be the youngest of your children, but he’s huge and towers over everyone else in your family. He’d be a scary figure to most, but to you, he’s your baby. “Mom! When did you get here?” Nergal says excitedly. “Just now. Have you seen your father?” “Yeah, he’s with Anu in that trailer near the edge of that large field over there. I think they’re arguing about a possible plan to make raids on New Security next, but that was boring so I left to go have fun with what’s left of the population here.” “Looks like you got a good one son.” You remark and point at the girl over his shoulder. “Yeah, this will be fun for awhile, but battle we had before…man it was great! You should’ve seen me mom! I almost racked up as many kills as Anu!” “That’s good! Glad to hear it. Tiamat will be most pleased. Well, I’m here to see your father so I’ll talk to you later. Love you son.” You say and leave him to his aggressive dating strategy. You see the trailer that you guess Nergal was talking about and approach. Just before you do however, you hear several gunshots come from it. You stop for a moment and then proceed inside. You have nothing to fear. You are a chosen of Tiamat after all. When you enter the trailer, you see Anu standing over Bobby with a pistol in hand. Bobby lies on the floor with dead eyes and a several holes in his body. His own pistol lies near his hand. The funny thing is when you first saw Anu, you briefly thought it was Bobby. Anu looks a lot like his father back in his youthful days, minus his pinkies of course. “Awww, that’s a shame. I did so want to surprise your father. Looks like the pair of you surprised me instead.” You remark with a frown causing Anu to turn around. “He gave me no choice mother. He was no longer a fit leader. He told me that raiding New Security would be a bad idea.” You walk up to Anu calmly and slap his face. He gives you a look of anger, but does nothing. “He was right. Raiding New Security is a horrible idea. It’s too large and its defenses are strong. Better to consolidate our current holdings. We’ve got a whole town to play with now.” You say before Anu rudely interrupts. “Bullshit! He was just being a coward! He was getting old and weak! He was no longer fit to serve Tiamat!” Anu remarks gruffly. You slap your son again causing his anger to rise. “Your father may have been many things, but never a coward. And true he was getting old, and obviously your reflexes were faster, but he wasn’t weak either and he still was five times smarter than you, but then that isn’t hard to do. We’re not attacking New Security. End of story.” You say dismissively before he grabs your arms forceful and slams you against the wall. You’re hardly intimidated, Anu has always been predictable. “YOU are NOT in charge here mother! I AM! I have taken what is rightfully mine! I AM the head of this family now!” “So, you’ve taken what’s rightfully yours eh? You gonna take me too? Or am I also too old?” you ask with a raise of your eyebrow. Anu releases you and opens your trench coat revealing your naked body. He stares and marvels at it as if it’s a magical treasure…and for him, it just might be. He wastes no time in taking it off you and then starts to take off his belt. “Get on your knees mother.” He orders which causes you to chuckle. “Oh I’ll be getting on my knees, but we’re not doing this the way YOU think. I came here primarily for your father.” “The old bastard’s dead in case you haven’t noticed!” “And? That’s supposed to stop me? (Sigh) you lack imagination, let me show you…” At this point you kneel down near Bobby’s body and start pulling his bloody shirt up. Blood is everywhere, on his clothes, on the floor and still coming from his wounds. You start putting your hands in it and rubbing yourself all over until his blood is covering most of your own body. “Hmmmm, it’s almost like I’m even closer to him now…” you say starting to finger yourself as Anu stands by watching. You then unzip Bobby’s pants and pull out his dead dick. It’s actually hard, which you didn’t expect. “Ooooh baby…even in death…I can still turn you on. Here, let me prove how much I still love you…” you say and then lower your head down. While you’re on your hands and knees in blood and enjoying the taste your dead husband’s cock, your son Anu shakes off the initial shock and spurs into action. “Oh fuck this. He will NOT have you in death as well! I’ll show him! I’ll show you both!” Anu exclaims and gets behind you. You temporary stop what you’re doing to turn your head to address your son. “It’s about time you manned up and joined us. Just try not to bore me.” You remark and go back to what you were doing while Anu hastily rubs the blood of his dead father on his dick to use as makeshift lube. Anu starts ramming his dick into your supple ass as if he’s trying to hurt you, but thanks to your many interesting love making sessions with Bobby, this isn’t your first rodeo. Plus he’s not even as big as his father so that isn’t an issue either. “That all you got son? Your father’s a dead man and he’s still turning me on more. Thought you were going to show me who was really in charge? ” you mock. “I AM in fucking charge!” he says pulling your hair, which brings a smile to your face. “Come on then, make mommy happy!” you demand and Anu attempts to do just that. So much for being “in charge” you’ve got him right where you want him. He may be fucking you in the ass, but you’re in charge. Just like you’ve always been and will continue to be. It will be pathetically easy to manipulate Anu into doing what you want. Still, maybe Anu does have what it takes to be an effective puppet king…at least in the short term, then in time you’ll have Enki replace him…Enki looks more like you anyway. As you enjoy your twisted pleasures, you think about how you got to this point as you have in the past a few times before. You think about how easy it was for you to cross line after line after line and how it didn’t even bother you that much to do so. Did you really get caught up in the murderous rhetoric of being in a sick cult or were you always prone to insanity and all of this was always “you”? Does it even matter at all? No. It doesn’t. What matters is what you can enjoy now in this shitty world and you’ve got that right this minute. “All hail fucking Tiamat and her glorious chaos!” You laugh maniacally as you climax. You may not be Grandma Morningstar, but you’re getting there.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>That last statement doesn’t sound right to you… “Wait a minute Helen. I thought you said yesterday that Veronica and Brandon ran to you and stayed with the kids when you parted company with them.” Helen pauses for a moment. “Uh yeah, I did. Yes! I meant I left the kids alone, but just as I was leaving, it was fortunate that Veronica and Brandon showed up at that time so they weren’t completely alone.” Bobby’s grandmother claimed you were slow on the uptake and maybe in dreamland you are, but you know damn well when someone is obviously lying to you. “That didn’t happen Helen.” You say. “Wha…yes it did!” Helen exclaims. “Okay then…” you say and sit down to take off your heels. “What are you doing?” “I’m taking off these fucking heels because I don’t feel like nearly breaking my neck when we go ask Veronica and Brandon to confirm your story.” “Um, I don’t think that will be necessary. In fact, I think Bobby will be fine. Probably just wedding jitters. Apologies for bothering you and glad to see that the dress fits you.” Helen says and starts backing towards the door. “You know now that I’m thinking about it, it seems pretty strange that Bobby would be crying and praying in front of Diana who I presume is sitting in a dungeon cage right now.” “She was unconscious?” Helen says as if saying it in the tone of a question is going to cause it to be more believable. “Unconscious or not, I doubt Bobby would show any sort of weakness around Diana now. In fact I’m starting to doubt a lot of things…” At this point Helen’s eyes widen in fear and she turns to run for the door. Just as she gets to the handle, you manage to bean her in the head with one of the heels. It’s just enough to stop her from getting away before you rush over and grab her by the hair and throw her to the floor. “Out with it bitch.” You say and lock the door. When she doesn’t answer right away, you raise your hand and Helen starts to cry before you’ve even done anything. She cowers by curling up and putting her hands and arms in front of her completely submissively. “Please! Mercy! It wasn’t my idea! It was all Diana! You just don’t know what it’s like having such a bullying older sister who dominates virtually every aspect of your life!” “Save the pity party speech about being a victim of sibling abuse. Heard it before and I already lived something similar so it doesn’t impress me. Besides, I’m not buying this babe in the woods routine anymore Helen. At best you’re lying to cover up the fact that Diana AND yourself were planning on killing me all along yesterday and you just covered your own ass when it looked like things weren’t going to work out. At worst, this entire thing was your idea and Diana was just your dumb ass pawn. Either way, I’m not enthused and it doesn’t change the fact that YOU were trying to kill me…were you going to make another attempt today? Huh? Is that why you came up here? Maybe push me down the stairs or something? Claim it was an accident? ANSWER ME AND DON’T FUCKING LIE!” “Okay! Okay! I’ll tell you everything! Just please try to understand it wasn’t personal! I actually like you!” “Not personal?! You like me? So I guess your plan to kill me was just your way of showing affection?” “No (sob) I did it because I just love (sob) Bobby so much! I always have and I stood on the sidelines too long. (sob) I was just so desperate…” You just shake your head and sigh at this point. Helen sits up from the floor and scoots back to prop herself up against your bed coughing, sniffling, and trying to regain her composure. You stand nearby ready to jump on her if she tries anything, but for now you allow this moment for her to “explain” as it were. “If there had been some way to remove you Suzy without killing you I would have done it. You have to believe me I really would have. I even thought about approaching you in a plan to kill Diana instead.” “Yeah and then you would’ve probably killed me afterwards to make it look like Diana and I killed each other.” “No! I was going to…well I was going to try to seduce you.” “Excuse me?” you say completely surprised by that part of the explanation. “Well I wasn’t sure, but I just sort of got a feeling from you that you might be a bit… flexible on your orientation.” Helen says. “Wha… (sputter) What the hell would give you that impression?” you exclaim. “I dunno…sometimes I thought your eyes were wandering all over my body a little more than average whenever we spoke, plus you were so nice to me and you just sort of give off a lesbian vibe at times. I probably would’ve been too shy to go through with it anyway so it obviously wouldn’t have worked.” “You’re damn right that wouldn’t have worked! And what was your plan after that if your main goal was Bobby? Were you going to seduce me and while you were fucking me from behind with a big strap on you were going to plunge a knife in my back?” you ask Helen. “No, I told you, if I didn’t have to kill you, I wouldn’t have. I would have just suggested that we both marry Bobby. It’s not common, but our religion does allow for multiple wives. I think… I think I could have shared him with you.” “…I…I can’t believe how fucked up this situation even is…” you say sitting down on a nearby chair. Meanwhile Helen continues her tale of woe. “But I approached Diana because she was my sister and I knew her better. She was predictable. After I saw you beat her and after Bobby laid down the law to her about how it was over, she was a broken woman. Seriously, I’d never seen her confidence so shaken. After being on the receiving end of her abuse for so long, it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. So I convinced her of the plan…actually took me longer than I thought it would. I thought she’d be hungry for revenge, but no. I had to reignite that fire, but I knew she’d agree in the end.” “So she WAS trying to kill me too.” You say. “Oh yes. That was the plan as far as she knew. She’d kill you, but then I’d kill her and make up an excuse that I tried to save you or something similar. Of course when you stayed with Bobby during that whole time we were dealing with Aaron, I knew it wasn’t going to work which then resulted in an argument between me and Diana since she was now back to bullying mode. I knocked her out and I nearly killed her then, but I thought suggesting that she be your sacrifice on your wedding day would be fitting. When I found out Aaron had killed all the other prisoners…well that worked out even better since you suggested it.” “But you still wanted to kill me.” “Yes…after the chaos of yesterday and after I saw how you stuck by Bobby. I knew you really did love Bobby as much as Diana did…maybe even as much as me. So I temporary rethought my actions. I thought maybe I could live with Bobby being with someone like you. I mean you were nice to me at least. And I knew at least Bobby would be happy with you. When I woke up this morning though, I realized I just couldn’t let you have him without at least making one last ditch effort…and so here we are.” At this point Helen starts to lose what little composure she mustered up to tell her side of the story. She starts to break down in tears again and apologizes to you and going on about how much she loves Bobby. It’s really pitiful and sad. You can’t believe you’re almost considering NOT killing her now. Before you can come to any sort of conclusion, you hear shooting and screaming from outside. Still keeping an eye on Helen, you edge over to the window and take a peek. You see several figures crawling under the truck blocking the broken front gate or trying to climb the fence. The ones that have gotten in are loping in a wild jerky like motion. They’re also screaming, howling and making inhuman sounds. From your vantage point they LOOK human, but they’re certainly not acting like it. A loud banging on the door occurs next and you glare at Helen who doesn’t make a sound. “Hey! Suzy! You in there?! Why’s this door locked?” you hear a voice shout. You think its Veronica. “Yeah, I’m in here. What’s going on? I just heard all the commotion.” You answer. “We’re being attacked by zombies!” Veronica answers. You and Helen look over at each other briefly. “Did you say zombies?” you ask. “Yeah, I mean…I dunno if they are. Maybe they’re just rabid humans or something, but they’re gnashing their teeth, moaning and coming at us like something out of a horror movie. We need all the help we can get to repel these things!” “Okay, Veronica. I’ll be out in a moment!” you yell. “Well hurry up…and you haven’t seen Helen have you?” Helen and you look at each other again. “Yeah, she’s in here with me. I was trying on my wedding dress that she brought.” You say. “If the pair of you don’t stop playing dress up, there won’t be a damn wedding! Bobby’s having a hard enough time trying to keep them from getting close to the house!” A loud crashing noise followed by gunfire is heard from downstairs. “Shit! That sounded close! I gotta go!” Veronica shouts and you hear her run off. Well it looks like Bobby’s “pep talk” yesterday lit a fire under his relative’s asses to pull their weight around here at least. “(Sigh) Fucking zombies. Of course this day HAD to get worse…” you say shaking your head. “Suzy, we need to go to Bobby, he needs our help.” “We?” you ask. “…I…look…I know what’s just occurred between us and you have no reason to trust me, but from what Veronica said, it sound like this is a bad attack and we’ll need everyone we can to stop it!” She might have a point or she might just be stalling for a chance to escape or clobber you in the head. Possibly both. > You take Helen with you While you’re very tempted to kill her, the immediate threat at hand does present the need for every possible person to help even if that means throwing Helen to the zombies to buy yourself time if you need to. “Alright, get up Helen, let’s go help Bobby.” You say offering a hand to help her up. Helen looks up at you and takes your hand trustingly. When she stands up, she starts to look relieved, then she tenses up again when you go to Bobby’s clothing drawer to get the spare gun he mentioned yesterday. “Relax, this is for the zombies, or whatever those things are.” You say. “Oh.” “Yeah, well don’t look too relieved Helen. After this is over, me and you are going to settle up.” You say. “I…understand.” Helen says while nodding. “Okay then, you first.” You say gesturing towards the door. “Wait, aren’t you going to change?” Helen asks. “Huh? Oh. No, it’s my fucking wedding day, why shouldn’t I wear my dress?” “Um, okay then.” Helen cautiously unlocks and opens the door. You both hear the sounds of gunfire and more glass breaking downstairs, this followed by shouting and inhuman growling. “Suzy, I don’t have a weapon.” Helen remarks. “Well I guess you’re just going to have to trust me to protect you, because I’m certainly not giving you one.” You say. Defeated, Helen stops stalling and you both leave and proceed downstairs. (Making sure she’s in front of you of course) The growling, shouting and the gunfire get louder. As you head towards the center of the house, Helen freezes up in fear. “Helen, move your ass! We don’t have…” you start to say and then suddenly one of the things bursts through the door in front of you and Helen. Helen screams and practically crumples to the floor in front of you in terror. Unfortunately for you the thing in question lunges over Helen and right at you! You fall backwards and drop your gun in the process. You manage to keep it from biting your face off by at least pushing your forearms up across its neck. At this close range, it doesn’t look rotten, just very dirty looking and crazed. Still, undead or not, you don’t want to risk getting bit, let alone killed and eaten. As you struggle with the creature on the floor, you briefly look desperately over the gun that you dropped and try to reach for it, but it’s just out your grasp. The thing nearly bites you again and tightens its grip on your arms in an attempt to immobilize you. Even your knees to its groin don’t help. Then out the corner of your eye you see another hand reach for the gun. “Shit.” You say knowing that this isn’t good. Then a shot is fired into the side of the thing’s head and blood splatters on you, the floor and partially on the nearby wall. You try to pull yourself out from under the corpse, but at this range Helen isn’t going to miss even if you could free yourself quickly. You just give her a glaring look of hatred as she points the gun at you even if she does look like she doesn’t want to do it. “I knew I should’ve killed your treacherous ass.” You say. “I’m sorry Suzy, but I just can’t trust you, anymore than you can trust me. I wish this could’ve been different.” Helen responds Before you have any more last words, Helen ends your life with several shots to your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is the man you’ve chosen to marry for better or worse. If you aren’t going to help him in a matter of life or death then that wouldn’t say much for your commitment. Besides, if he gets killed this whole compound is going to turn to shit and you’d no doubt be at the bottom of it, assuming Aaron doesn’t kill you all first. Pulling away from Helen, you grab one of the dropped rifles by one of Bobby’s family and rush outside towards Bobby who is still taking cover behind a car and firing upon the Aaron. He sees you out the corner of his eye while still keeping an eye on the direction of the truck. “Keep your head down, I think Aaron escaped out the passenger door of the truck and is hiding behind Brandon’s car now. Where the hell did you come from anyway? I told Helen to go get you and the younger children to a safer location when Aaron showed up.” Bobby exclaims. “Yeah well I’m showing you that I’m not just going to let you do this shit alone. I’m with you all the way. No hiding with Helen and the kids, no matter what you say.” You’re interrupted by gunfire on your position and Aaron ranting. “You think you can stop what’s coming by hiding? Hah! People are already fucking EATING each other out there! Shit, I’ll be doing you a favor by killing you now. Actually now that I think about… your blonde bitch looks like a fine piece of ass in more way than one!” Aaron shouts and starts laughing maniacally and then throws another grenade your way. You and Bobby have no choice but to leave your position and make a dash back to the house entrance. It’s somewhat of a minor miracle that you and Bobby aren’t hit by any of the bullets he fires at you. You manage to get inside just as the grenade goes off and adds to the total of destroyed vehicles outside. You and Bobby are on the floor though Bobby has partially managed to cover you with his own body. “What the hell did he do, rip off the entire National Guard armory?” you say as Bobby back kicks the front door shut from his prone position. “I don’t know but…” Two more explosions are heard on the left side of compound. Aaron is apparently throwing explosives through the windows now. “Shit, I hope nobody ran and hid over there.” You remark as the pair of you start to get up off the floor. “Where the fuck IS everyone anyway? Nice to know I can REALLY count on these fuckers when the going gets tough. Why the fuck am I even bothering again? Fuck!” Bobby yells in frustration. You understand his anger, but it’s probably not the best time for a rant. “Bobby, calm yourself. You can yell at those idiots later, but right now all that matters is that I’m here helping you okay?” you say. “Hey…I’ll help too…” a voice suddenly says. You both look and see that it’s Helen with a pistol in hand. “Helen, you’re supposed to be with the children!” Bobby exclaims. “Veronica and Brandon are with them. When they ran, the children’s room upstairs was the first place they went. Guess they were concerned about their daughters.” “…well I guess I can understand the pair of them running to their children. So they’re looking after all the kids then?” Bobby remarks. “Yeah, I figured since they were doing that, I’d come help you, though I hope I just don’t get in the way.” “No, it’s good. Glad you’re here Helen. What about Ronald and Denise?” Bobby says. “Haven’t seen them. Um, I haven’t seen Diana either…in case you were wondering.” Helen remarks briefly glancing at you after saying it. “Hopefully Aaron kills her.” You remark. “Yeah, well I actually was going to exile her today, but that might have to wait assuming Aaron doesn’t kill her.” Bobby says. “Okay, enough of all this. What’s the game plan?” you ask slightly disappointed that Bobby’s decision was to exile Diana rather than death, but you aren’t entirely surprised. Still, there’s always the hope that Aaron does kill her. Bobby quickly snaps back to the situation at hand. “Well it sounds like he’s stopped with the explosives, or maybe he’s just fishing out more. I’d say the safest bet is to get to the second floor and shoot him through one of the windows. No point in going back out the front door when we can get the vantage point.” “How do we know he’s still outside, he might’ve already entered house through one of the holes he’s undoubtedly made with his grenades.” You say. “Yeah true. No telling where he might be heading first. The armory maybe?” Helen remarks. “He’s still gotta come through this way if he wants to go there. Given his state of mind though he might also try to do something like run upstairs and kill all the children for fun. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past him to try to access the prisoner’s dungeon and set them all free. It is on the left wing after all.” Maybe we should split up and take different floors?” Helen asks. “Maybe though I’m not keen on the idea of splitting up. (Sigh) Okay. Since you said Brandon and Veronica are with the children, I’m going to hope they’re up to dealing with Aaron if he shows up. I’m going to the left wing of the house and try to stop him there. I want you two to stay here and guard the foyer in case he somehow manages to sneak past me and is heading towards the armory. He’s going to have come through here.” Bobby says. Helen immediately complies with the plan, but you’re not so sure. “I really think I should come with you. Splitting up is always a bad idea in these situations.” “I don’t like it either, but it’s a big house and we need to cast a wide net to deal with this asshole.” Bobby says and then puts his arm over you and takes you aside. “Besides, as glad as I am that Helen stepped up, we both know she’s not exactly a fighter. I don’t want her coming with me and possibly getting in my way when I’m hunting Aaron, but by the same token I’d feel more comfortable if you were here with her since I know you can handle yourself and aren’t going to freeze up in a fight. I’ll be fine by myself. Don’t worry about me. I mean I did kill your uncle Ed by myself right?” Bobby whispers. You glance over at Helen and as brave as she’s trying to appear, she still looks like a deer in the headlights. Bobby’s right in that her survival would probably increase if you were here and she had the misfortune of Aaron popping up. Then again by the same token, YOU’D actually feel safer being with Bobby. You’d also worry less about Bobby’s own safety if you were watching his back. After all, this situation is also little different than the one with your uncle. Aaron’s not just carrying a knife; he’s carrying around grenades and machine guns for one thing. Also, while Helen might be a nice girl, she’s ultimately not your responsibility. > You stay with Helen Bobby is going to be able to take care of himself and if he feels more comfortable with you staying with Helen, well it’ll probably put one less distraction in his mind while he’s looking for Aaron. Also now that the gunfire has died down a bit, you’ve gotten a breather to realize that maybe you rushed into things a little quickly due to wanting to help Bobby so bad. Aaron is really dangerous and you nearly got yourself killed. Maybe you’re becoming more assertive, but you probably should realize you’re not some amazon princess to go in guns blazing. “Okay Bobby, I’ll stay with Helen, but please be careful.” You remark. “I’ll be fine, you two just keep a look out and remember, if you see him, don’t talk, just shoot. Oh and if Ronald and Denise ever come out of hiding and pass through here, tell them to fucking help you.”” Bobby says and then kisses you before heading to the left wing of the house. Soon after Bobby leaves, you put your back against one of the walls and start keeping an eye on the doorways. Helen tries to do the same, but she paces a lot more. It’s obvious she’s nervous, but the fact that she’s nervous, starts making you nervous. “Helen will you stop pacing like that? You’re putting me more on edge than necessary.” You say. “Sorry. This is just so nerve racking. I’m really worried about Bobby you know? I wonder if we should’ve gone with him.” “You heard what he said, he wants us to stay here to make sure Aaron doesn’t manage to run around him to other parts of the house. Besides he said he can handle Aaron and I trust him.” You say. “Yeah I guess you’re ri…AH! WHAT WAS THAT?!” Helen suddenly exclaims causing you to jump. “Don’t fucking do that!” you say. “But didn’t you hear that noise? It sounds like its coming from the left wing where Bobby went.” “I didn’t hear anything, you’re paranoid.” “I swear! I heard something! Ohhh, I think we should go help Bobby, but I dunno…oh I wish none of this was going on!” Helen says and begins pacing in the middle of the room even more to the point of starting to shake a bit. At this moment you starting to get concerned she’s going to accidently fire off her gun at you, not to mention she’s starting to get on your nerves. You walk over to not so gently calm her down. “HELEN! Stop it and clam the fuck down!” you say and grab Helen’s arm tightly. Then you briefly hear the sounds of rushing footsteps behind you and you don’t even get to completely turn around before you feel a crushing blow to the side of your head. You crumple to the floor on your knees and then another blow to your head causes you to collapse flat on the floor and lose grip of your rifle. A pair of blurry hands quickly grabs it from you. “What took you so long?” Helen asks. “Had to wait for a fucking opportunity. Took YOU long enough to distract her.” “Well hurry up, I’m worried about Bobby! I think we should help him.” “He’ll be fine, I’m going to enjoy this…turn your ass over bitch, I wanna look you in the eye when I kill you.” Diana says and kicks you over. You vision is blurry due to the blows to the head you’ve taken, but you can make out the image of Diana pointing a rifle straight at you. You try to get up, but Diana kicks you in the face. “Diana, hurry up!” “Will you shut the fuck up Helen? I’m trying to savor the moment and you’re ruining it!” “I don’t want one of our cousins suddenly walking in on us!” “Oh like they’re going to do anything…(Sigh) fine. I swear Helen, you’re no fun whatsoever. Well blondie, I wish I could take more time with you, but time isn’t on my side any more than its on yours right now, so guess this is it. You never should’ve laid eyes on Bobby bitch.” Diana says. Despite Diana aiming for your head and being at this close range she manages to completely fuck up her shot and hit you in the throat instead which doesn’t kill you instantly. Of course maybe that was her intension to let you suffer a bit more. As you gurgle, choke and start to die, you hear two more shots and through blurry (and now dimming) vision you see Diana’s image get hit and fall backwards. Helen kneels down next to you and starts stroking the top of your head and hair as you bleed out and die. “Shhhh, it’ll be over soon. I’m so sorry for this Suzy. I always liked you. You were just in the way…” are the last words you hear.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world twelve inch salami eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe the sour cream off your lips… and you stand up and yell: “Alright this is getting fucking insulting! For the past four nights now I’ve been winning contests involving eating phallic shaped food. What the fuck is the symbolism here? That I’m some whore that sucks cock all the time? For fuck’s sake, I’ve only had the one goddamn boyfriend and soon to be husband. If anything I’m the exact opposite of a whore! So whoever or WHATEVER is trying to send a message to me needs to just come out and fucking say it.” And with those words of indignation, your surroundings immediately change to that of a blasted wasteland. There is nothing around you save for burned out buildings in the distance and dead landscape. Reminds you a bit of a video game you once played. “You know, the entire world is soon going to look like this…how I wish I could be young and alive to experience the uncertainty and chaos that is going to shape the years to follow.” You hear a voice say. You turn around and see Bobby’s grandmother again. She’s an old lady walking with a cane this time. “But enough about the future, let’s talk about the present. You survived a lot longer than I thought you would, maybe you are worthy of my grandson after all. You even are starting to manipulate him a bit, that’s good. The true leaders in Tiamat’s service have always been women anyway. I swear if it wasn’t for us prodding them in the right direction every now and then, most men would be content just jacking off to pass the time. Still, you aren’t quite there yet. I think today should prove to quite interesting. Survive today and you might just meet Misty yet.” “Okay, I want some answers, who the hell is Misty, and what’s going to happen today?” you demand. “You’ll find out soon enough what’s going to happen and as for Misty, well why don’t you put some thought into it. I mean it’s pretty simple even for you blondie.” Bobby’s grandmother replies with slight distain. “Well what’s deal with all these contests in my dreams?” “Sorry, I really don’t know anything about that. If you’re lucky and actually meet Misty, maybe you can ask her, but I just assumed you really liked dreaming about sucking dick...in a symbolic way I guess. Hmm, come to think of it this would explain why Bobby’s so enamored with you. Maybe you aren’t a whore blondie, but you sure got the mouth of one. It’s almost as if it was a highway for oral sex.” “Hey!” “Don’t take offense blondie. It’s a good thing. Suck a man’s dick right, and you can practically get him to do ANYTHING for you. I mean you got natural talent. Hell, maybe even Tiamat blessed you with it so you stood an equal chance against Diana. Now that girl, as much as she loves Bobby, she just can’t suck a dick properly. Bad gag reflex, slightly oversized teeth, I dunno. Tiamat works in whimsical ways I suppose.” “How do you even know all…nevermind I don’t want to hear anymore.” You say. Bobby’s grandmother ignores you though and continues to speak. “Still, Bobby always did have a slight obsession for blowjobs. He likes them a lot more than he’s probably told you. He’s a bit too much of a gentleman that way.” “Gah! I’m done listening!” you shout feeling increasingly uncomfortable about hearing Bobby’s grandmother talk about his sexual interests. “Oh, alright Miss Prude. I’m rambling and it’s time for you to go anyway. See ya Deep Throat!” Bobby’s grandmother cackles again and then raises her cane and all your surroundings go black… And then you wake up. “Something bad is going to happen today.” You say to yourself. (Then again why should today be any different from the rest of this week?) You look around and see nobody in the room (Save for Bobby’s grandmother’s portrait staring like a gargoyle). Looks like Bobby woke up before you as usual. You look at the time on your phone and see you’ve actually slept until the afternoon. While the normal thing for you to do would be to just stay in your room and avoid everyone, but given your recent dream, you think your best bet might be to be a little proactive today. After going through your usual routine of washing up and getting dressed you head down to the main living area where you know everyone usually gathers. Before you get there you bump into Helen, who looks a bit harried and is carrying a pistol in one hand. “There you are, good. Saves me time. Bobby told me to go get you.” Helen says. “Wha…what’s going on?” you ask. “Aaron came back and he’s threatening to drive an army truck through the front gate if we all don’t leave the compound. He claims that we’re defying Tiamat by not embracing the chaos outside. Bobby’s been trying to negotiate with him through the intercom, but he thinks we’re going to have no option but to open fire on Aaron.” “Where the hell did he get an army truck? Is William with him?” “Apparently the town has been in a state of martial law since yesterday and the National Guard have taken over according to Aaron’s ranting. I guess he stole one. I don’t think William is with him. Anyway Bobby wants you to be safe so follow me to where all the children...” Loud shouting by Bobby in the distance suddenly interrupts Helen. You immediately rush towards where he might be located despite the protests by the Helen that you need to come with her though she just runs along with you. You soon manage to catch up with the most of the family (Save for the younger children and Diana) who are standing in the foyer with their weapons ready and Bobby who has opened the front door. “Aaron, I tried being reasonable. YOU left here without permission, but that was fine because it’s obvious you didn’t feel happy here. There are several paths to Tiamat’s glory and you obviously had your own ideas about which one you should pick. Anyone here is free to leave, but NOBODY is going to be forced to leave due to your threats! Again, if you try coming in here, you’re going to be shot down like a fucking dog and I’ll personally perform Tiamat’s ritual of desecration over your stinking body so your soul NEVER enters Timat’s glory!” Bobby shouts and walks out with his rifle drawn. Bobby’s brother Jordan is the first one who cautiously follows afterwards and then everyone else slowly walks towards the door as well. You don’t think anyone has even paid any attention to you or Helen (who keeps pulling on you to leave). “My soul is already with Tiamat! You can’t do shit about it ritual boy! If you unworthy fucks won’t embrace chaos as Tiamat intended, then I’m gonna bring it to you!” Aaron shouts through a bullhorn, which is followed by a laugh. The truck revs up and Bobby orders everyone to open fire. You and Helen are still inside at this point so you don’t actually do so and just hang back as you watch Aaron mow through the gate followed by a hail of bullets peppering the oncoming truck. The truck swerves hard to the left smashes into Brandon’s parked vehicle. You can hear him swearing about it. Meanwhile you also see Jordan jumping up and down in victory and running over to the wrecked truck. “Yeah! We got that bastard! Whoo!” he shouts. “Hey Jordan, get the fuck back here, don’t go off ahead like that by yourself!” Bobby shouts. “Aw, it’s fine, he didn’t survive that!” And that’s when Aaron proves Jordan wrong, starting by recovering from his crash and shooting several holes into Jordan. Then he follows up by throwing several grenades out the truck window. “SHIT!” Bobby shouts and everyone runs back, but not before several explosions occur. Nobody is killed, but everyone scrambles and on the ground crawling for cover. Bobby himself crawls behind cover of another parked vehicle and continues to fire in the direction of the truck. Helen now really tugs at you saying you need to come with her where its safe, but you wonder if you should try to help Bobby considering he’s the only one currently trying to kill Aaron. Everyone else has completely retreated and is even running past you. > You go with Helen Getting into a fistfight with Diana is one thing, but you’re definitely not up to dealing with this crazy asshole. You just hope Bobby is up for dealing with him though apparently Helen thinks so as you start to allow yourself to be pulled away by her. “Come on! Bobby can handle this, but we need to get to the children where its safe!” Helen exclaims and you start to follow her. The pair of you run upstairs away from the sounds of shouting and gunfire. You soon reach the top and follow Helen through a corridor doorway. Then you promptly get smashed in the face hard by a blunt object. You fall backwards and through blurry eyes you see the image of Diana walking towards you holding a small bat. You attempt to get up, but the next blow is to your legs causing you to cry out. “Diana! Hurry up! Someone might hear that and see all this! Besides I want to go help Bobby!” Helen exclaims. “Will you shut the fuck up Helen? I want to enjoy this. Besides, sounds like Aaron is keeping everyone occupied, and ain’t nobody coming for this bitch.” Diana says. “Don’t be so sure, just hurry up and kill her. We should go help Bobby anyway.” “(Sigh) Fine. I swear Helen, you’re no fun whatsoever. Well blondie, I wish I could take more time with you, but time isn’t on my side any more than it’s on yours right now, so guess this is it. You never should’ve laid eyes on Bobby bitch.” Diana says. Diana ceases your screaming with another blow to the head and then another and another. While your face is mashed into mush, your vision becoming dark and your breathing becoming more erratic, your hearing isn’t completely gone and you hear several gunshots and Diana’s body falling partly on your own. You then hear a very faint voice say, “I’m sorry” before everything goes black.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world cucumber eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe away the ranch dressing on your lips, graciously stand up and bow for your adoring fans. The Minotaur on your right looks at you in disbelief and then turns away to puke in a trough. Meanwhile the little Asian satyr on your left just shakes his head wondering how the hell you could've beaten him. "I don't understand it...all my training. I glanced over at you during the contest...you...you were barely even chewing! How?" He asks. "Oh just natural talent at swallowing cucumbers I suppose." You reply humbly and wink at the audience, which continues to praise you. While you're blowing kisses at your fans, you suddenly get a feeling you’ve done something like this before. In fact you remember you HAVE participated in similar contests and you can’t help but think there’s some sort of connection with what you’ve been eating at these things. Suddenly a hand touches your shoulder and you spin around to see a woman with long raven colored hair and a low cut black gown. It’s Bobby’s grandmother. This time she’s a little older and she still doesn’t look too impressed with you. “Yeah that’s great you got a skill and its real obvious that’s one of the things Bobby loves about you because men in general tend to make their most important decisions with their dicks.” She says to you. “Excuse me?” you reply. “To be honest I’m not even too sure about him, but nobody appears to have the ambition to stand up to him or are otherwise too much in love with him. That’s Diana’s problem right there. Anyway, MAYBE there is more to you than meets the eye. You might just meet Misty yet.” “Okay who the hell is Misty?” you ask. “Sheesh, you really are slow on the uptake there blondie. Well maybe you’ll get it, maybe you won’t. I don’t give a shit either way. Off you go then.” Bobby’s grandmother at this point snaps her fingers and at this point the Minotaur grabs your upper body and the satyr grabs your legs while the audience cheers them on. You attempt to struggle without success, then a giant hole in the ground between the stage and the audience opens up. A swirling black void appears at the bottom. Without another word, you are tossed in which is followed by your screaming, the audience’s cheering and Bobby’s grandmother laughing. You fall and eventually the light from above grows dimmer until you are enveloped in complete darkness. Then you wake up suddenly with one of your hands tightly clutching to the side of the bed. “No! Huh? Shit! Oh. Good. Not falling. Fucking bitch.” You incoherently mumble, which is heard by Bobby who is in the room getting dressed. “You okay over there?” he asks. “Hrm? Oh. Nothing. Just another fucked up dream. What’s going on?” you ask rubbing your eyes. “Nothing much, just some more of my family showed up here in the middle of the night. I was just about to wake you up to finally have you come meet everyone properly. Now I know you probably don’t really want to but…” “Yeah, whatever let’s do it.” You interrupt and get out of bed. “Wow, I didn’t expect you to be so accommodating so quickly.” “Don’t have much of choice now do I? I mean I’m going to have to get along with all these people. Better I make my good impressions as soon as possible before Diana starts spreading lies about me.” “Suzy, I wouldn’t worry about…” “Have you spoken to her yet?” you interrupt again. “Well no.” “Well until you do and lay down the fucking law, I’m going to assume she’s already caused a shitload of damage.” Bobby stops dressing for a moment. “Suzy, what’s wrong? I thought we were good with our talk yesterday.” “WE are good. Diana and me though? Never will be and something is going to have to be done about it.” “Suzy, I TOLD you I’d fucking talk to her alright?” “Yeah, we’ll see.” You say and close the bathroom door. As you wash up, you wonder if you were unnecessarily bitchy with Bobby, but then you think no you weren’t. You have a legitimate gripe against a woman who is trying to kill you and he’s SUPPOSED to be doing something about it. Honestly at this point you wish he’d do more than talk, but you suppose that’s wishful thinking. That dream really put you in a bad mood. Especially since you’ve had it three times now and it always ends with you getting fucked up in some way. Not to mention Bobby’s grandmother has started appearing in them. You’ve never been one to believe in the supernatural, but the dream shit is really starting to get too weird for you to ignore as just your subconscious in play. You’re starting to wonder if Bobby’s grandmother is mocking you from beyond the grave and one thing you don’t need right now is yet another Morningstar woman on your case. On top of all that, you still ache from yesterday’s fight, but the hot shower at least feels good. After leaving the bathroom you get dressed. Bobby is still in the bedroom waiting for you. He doesn’t say much, but that’s probably because he’s trying to avoid an argument just before the pair of you are supposed to be “formally” meeting his people. “Okay, I’m ready.” You say when you finish getting dressed, Bobby nods and the pair of you leave the room. Bobby finally speaks to you again as you walk and talk, though you’re mostly just listening to him going on about the other family members you haven’t met yet and how to best handle them. To be honest, you’ve already made up your mind that you’re going to treat them how they treat you. Eventually you get to the large living area where you see familiar faces along with unknown ones. William sits in a large comfy looking chair and nods at you, taking a drink. You see that Brandon guy with a slightly chubby woman, you’re guessing that’s his wife Veronica. They both greet you, but nothing more than that. You also see three new people who are more of Bobby’s cousins. They all introduce themselves, but much like Brandon and Veronica, they don’t do much more than that. You don’t get the impression any of this is personal either. Aaron doesn’t seem like he wants to be here at all. Ronald and Denise look more interested in each other than anyone else at the moment. You then see Helen again who looks like she has her hands full with several boys and girls. She still manages to wave hi to you though. The kids themselves look at you, but seem to be pre-occupied with bickering with each other. “How many of those are your siblings again?” you whisper to Bobby. “Oh just the three. The oldest boy there Jordan and the twins Aiden and Nadia. The other half are Brandon and his wife’s kids.” He answers. “Um, shouldn’t they be looking after them then?” “I’m sure they do all the time and are just taking advantage of the extra support system they have now. I mean they trust Helen to look after them and Helen said she was happy to do it. Besides, everyone is family here so it hardly matters who is looking after them directly.” While you haven’t known these people long, you know Helen’s personality well enough that she’d agree to anything since she seems to be the family doormat. You don’t see Diana, but someone mentions she’s in the kitchen making food for everyone. “Okay, I’m going to go do this now, because I don’t want to do it later. I’m going to go speak with Diana and straighten everything out and make it clear there is to be no more dissension in the family today.” “Hm, while you’re at it make sure she’s not putting rat poison in my food.” You remark. Bobby heads into the kitchen leaving you alone with the rest of his family. Having little else to do, you make the attempt to be social. Brandon and Veronica are more talkative than the rest. They ask you a few questions and you answer. They don’t seem to really care too much about you though. As far as they’re concerned it isn’t their place to disapprove of you even if you caused such a negative reaction in them, which apparently you don’t. You almost get the impression they find you more boring than anything else, which unfortunately due to your basement dwelling past might very well be a fair assessment. But you’ll take apathy because it’s better than hatred. Bobby’s other cousins are more of a mixed bag. Aaron barely speaks to you at all and he’s pretty snappish when he does. He seems like he’s a pent up ball of nerves since he’s tapping his foot and moving one of his hands the entire time. In fact the more of an effort that you try to speak to him, the more hostile he starts to look. The moment you get the feeling of his eyes burning a hole in you the more you decide to move on. By the time you get to Ronald and Denise, they’re making out, so you don’t even bother. Which leaves you with William and Helen, the latter of which has already left the room with all the little kids of this family presumably to be out of the way as usual. William on the other hand is still relaxing in a chair at the far end of the room and watching something on TV. Well at least you know those two are friendly with you. > You go speak to Helen Well at least you know Helen is going to be friendly with you. She’s pleasant with everyone. You head into the next room and see Helen sitting in a chair preoccupied with watching the six children also in the room. While they’re being loud, they’re at least playing games and not being too disruptive. Helen sees you and smiles. “Hey Helen.” You say sitting next to her on the couch. “Hey Suzy. As you can see I’m just doing my role in this family.” She says pointing to the children. “Do you really need to look after them? Seems like they’re old enough to play by themselves.” You ask. “It’s not them we’d worry about, it’s the rest of this compound! While it may not look like it now, these little ones are balls of chaotic energy. Morningstar children have always needed a little extra supervision if only so they don’t end up burning the entire places to the ground. However it is true they all seem to be a little more subdued today. Even Jordan is playing with his siblings rather than fighting with them.” Helen says. “Um, which one’s Jordan?” you ask already forgetting Bobby already told you. “Jordan’s the oldest boy. He’s over there playing with his siblings Aiden and Nadia. They’re twins as you can tell. Actually those three are also my younger brothers and sister, so I do have a bit of a duty to watch out for them. Jordan’s getting to the point where I think Bobby is going to have to start training him though. He’s just becoming a teenager and he really wants to be like his older brother, but sadly he isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. He’s a still a fine boy though, he even has a bit of a crush on me which is sort of cute.” Helen says with a minor giggle. “Erm…yeah…so what about the twins?” you ask changing that last mildly disturbing remark. “Oh those two are very intelligent. They even got a mental link to each other.” “What really?” you ask. “Really. They often just sit across from each other nodding and occasionally changing expressions at each other. It’s like they’re having a conversation with their minds or something. I dunno, but sometimes it feels like they’re making private jokes about all of us. Jordan in particular and while he’s not the brightest, he’s smart enough to know when he thinks he’s being made fun of. And that’s when I often have to step in and tell them not to mock their brother.” At this point both twins look in your direction and Helen’s. They give a peculiar smile and then return to the game they’re playing with Jordan. It’s enough to make you feel a little uneasy. “Um, Helen, they can’t read our minds can they?” you ask. “Oh no…at least I don’t think so. I mean I never even thought of that before. Oh dear, now I’m going to wonder about that.” Helen says. “Sorry didn’t mean to add to your worries Helen…or my own for that matter.” You say. “Oh, I’m not really that worried. Even if they can, we’re all family anyway and they know I have no ill thoughts about them or anyone connected to it…and that’s going to include you too soon.” Helen says and smiles. Helen next mentions that ever since Veronica and Brandon arrived, their children have pretty much been put under her care. She then points out Ione and Hannah (Who are playing another game with each other) and Leon (Who is building something and seemingly content to play by himself). “Geez Helen, you look like you always got your hands full, are you really okay looking after all the children all the time?” you ask. “Oh…it’s not so bad. I mean like I said, we’re all family. What’s family for if not to help one another? Besides, I know nobody else really wants to do or otherwise has other major responsibilities.” “What responsibilities do Veronica and Brandon have? I haven’t seen them do anything since I got here. I mean they got three kids, and they’ve obviously been taking care of them before coming here. They shouldn’t just be passing them on to you just because it’s convenient. You deserve to have your own time to yourself.” “Really it’s okay Suzy. I like looking after all of them. Besides, I don’t think the children would want someone other than myself doing it anyway. When you and Bobby have children I fully expect you’ll want help on the supervision front won’t you?” “Well…probably. I was talking about this subject a little to Bobby last night and to be honest I’m still not exactly enamored with the notion of popping out a bunch of them. The idea of the pain involved isn’t exactly something I’m looking forward to.” “Well I don’t think any woman looks forward to that part. It’s the joy of bringing a new life into this world, raising them and loving them.” “I…guess…I dunno. Hell I’m still having trouble with the concept of marriage, let alone kids.” “Oh? Is it the ritual sacrifice to Tiamat that’s got you a little baffled? Don’t worry, you don’t need to memorize any prayers, Bobby will probably tell you what to say or he’ll make the appropriate chants himself.” Helen asks. “What? Wait. I know you guys sacrifice people, but is that going to go on at the wedding?” “Well of course. It’s tradition for the one to marry into this family to prove themselves to be worth of Tiamat by making a sacrifice.” “Wait, you mean I’M going to be the one doing it?” “Well yeah…you mean Bobby didn’t tell you? Oh dear. I didn’t mean to ruin the surprise.” Helen says. “Oh it’s a surprise alright.” “Well if you’re worried about messing up, we’ve got more than enough prisoners in the dungeon you could practice on tomorrow.” “Prisoners? Dungeon? Oh geez…” you say and rub your hand over your head. Helen pats you on the back a bit and tries to look understanding. “I take it, you’ve never killed anyone before?” Helen asks. “Of course I haven’t! Why would I?” you exclaim. “I just figured you having a serial killer uncle and all…plus Bobby said you helped him kill your uncle.” “I didn’t really have a hand in that directly. Are you saying YOU’VE killed someone before?” “Oh yes, but I’m not exactly fond of it, but we all have to do our part to serve Tiamat.” The fact that Helen just told you so cheerfully and without any hesitation that she’s committed murder, makes her seem a lot less harmless in your eyes. “Wait, so how many? When?” you ask. “Oh not many. First time was about when I was Jordan’s age. However, since Bobby is the head of the house, he mostly does it. Just like our father did before him. Diana sometimes does it, but I try to avoid doing it unless I really have to…I know I shouldn’t feel anything for infidels, but sometimes I can’t help it. Then I try to remember that their souls are going to feed Tiamat so it’s all for a good cause.” This is nuts… Right now you’re just wondering how deep of shit you’ve gotten yourself into. “I…dunno if I’m going to be able to do this Helen…” you say. “Oh don’t say that! You’ll be fine!” Helen says trying to be supportive. “I don’t think I will. The most fucked up thing is, I’m still more worried about having kids!” “You still concerned about that? That will come naturally, I don’t think you should worry.” “I dunno Helen. I’m obviously not like you. I thought we were more similar in many ways, mainly because we both had to put up with an asshole older sister, but it’s turning out we’re pretty different. I mean unlike me you’d obviously make a very good mother. You’re nice, attentive and everything.” You say. Helen’s eyes light up a bit when you say that and she grabs your hand. “Thank you. You have no idea how touched I am right now to hear those words.” She says and then leans in quick to give you a quick peck on the cheek. It surprises the hell out of you and you recoil a bit. Helen’s expression turns from one of happiness to one of worry. “Oh no. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have done that! By Tiamat, what was I thinking. I’m so sorry Suzy!” she starts saying which causes a lot of the children to start watching the pair of you. Helen stands up and begins to panic still repeating to you about how sorry she is, you think she’s going to have an anxiety attack. “Helen. Helen. Calm yourself. It’s…well…it’s okay. I mean I know you were just trying to be friendly and didn’t mean anything else by it. You just caught me by surprise, no harm done…” you say. “No…I can’t…you’ll have to excuse me!” Helen suddenly says and runs off. You try to call her back, but she’s gone. You wonder if you should tell someone or go after her. Then one of the kids speaks to you. “Hey what’s wrong with Aunt Helen?” Hannah asks. “She’s having a lover’s quarrel with her girlfriend.” Ione says smirking. “She is not! My sister isn’t a dyke! Besides this woman is Bobby’s girlfriend!” Jordan remarks indignantly. “You’re just saying that because YOU like Aunt Helen!” Leon says and then makes kissy noises, which causes Jordan to punch him in the arm. At this point they look like they’re going to get even more unruly, but then one of the twins speaks up. “She loves Bobby you know.” Aiden says. “Yes, Aunt Helen loves Bobby very much.” Nadia adds. “You and Diana must…” Aiden continues. “…die.” Nadia ends. The creepy tone they say it in causes utter silence, not to mention sends a bit of a shiver down your spine. “Um…are you telling me… Helen plans on killing me and Diana?” you utter. The twins just look at each other and smile. They don’t say anything else and just calmly go back to their game. They’ve also managed to successfully creep out their brother and cousins who start to leave the room. Meanwhile, if Helen IS planning to kill you, you need to find out now. As much as you’re hesitant to speak to them again, you have little choice but to ask the twins where their sister’s room is. “Uh…hey, where is Helen’s room?” you ask. “Left wing…” Aiden says. “Second floor…” Nadia adds. “Go right then…” Aiden continues. “Through the last door.” Nadia ends. Great now they’re being creepy in rhyme. They didn’t even look at you the entire time. You don’t even bother to thank them, you just follow their directions. Eventually when you think you’re getting close, you hear some faint crying. You slowly look in a room to your right and find Helen weeping softly to herself on her bed. She notices you and she tries to wipe away her tears. “(sniffle) Oh. You didn’t need to come see to me. Really I’m fine. I just acted foolishly, I apologize again for kissing you Suzy.” Helen remarks. “Um, yeah I’m not really bothered by that…or rather I mean that was unexpected, but…look nevermind about that. I’m here about something else of a more serious nature and I’m hoping we can hammer this out because whether you realize it or not, a lot of shit just got sprung on me within the last few minutes.” You say. “Is this about the sacrifice?” “No, this is about something your creepy twin mind reading sibling just said to me. They said you love Bobby.” “Huh? Oh…well of course I love Bobby. I mean he’s my older brother of course I love him.” Helen says a bit nervously. “Yeah and in any other family that wouldn’t mean anything more than friendship at best, but love goes to a whole other level in this family. There’s also the fact they said you were going to kill me.” Now Helen goes from nervous to shocked. “WHAT?! They said that?!” “Well technically they said you were going to kill Diana too and they didn’t say it so much as they heavily implied it, but given that they’re creepy as fuck and you said they can read minds, as well as your own guilty behavior on the whole loving Bobby situation and well what the hell am I supposed to think? So is it all true?” Helen just give you a sad look and then begins to tear up again and put her hands to her face. “Oh fuck Helen! You were lying and just plotting to kill me the entire time?! Goddamn it, had I known I was going to have to deal with not one but TWO of Bobby’s murderous sisters, I would’ve just stayed at home. At least I would’ve only had one to deal with there!” you shout. Helen tries to compose herself to address you. “No, that’s not true. (sniffle) I wasn’t lying to you. I genuinely like you and after our most recent conversation I like you even more. I mean…I really like you…but it is true I love Bobby. I’ve always loved him…(sniffle) I mean I always thought Diana was wrong for him and they were only together because she happened to be the oldest sister. Did you know I had two other older sisters and Diana killed them both for fear of competition? Everyone thinks they were accidents, but I knew the truth. Never said anything of course, I was too afraid and I didn’t want to cause any problems.” “Bobby never mentioned he had two dead sisters before.” “It’s not really something we discuss. It was a pretty traumatic experience for everyone at the time. My dad was very upset especially since Mom had died of natural causes no long before. It was a lot of family to lose within such a short period of time.” “So how come she didn’t kill you or Nadia?” “ Nadia’s a twin and will most likely bond with Aiden. Plus she’s much younger so no threat either way. As for me, well I was still young enough at the time when she killed my other two sisters. I guess I was just so weak in her eyes that she thought I wasn’t any threat. Maybe she even knew that I loved Bobby and enjoyed flaunting it in my face. In any case things really changed when you came into the picture. I wasn’t sure what to think really. Then when I finally met you, I could see why Bobby liked you. You were so nice and I want you to know I always felt like we were very similar too. You know, under appreciated in our own families. I wish you’d been my sister instead of Diana.” “Yeah? Well if I’m so nice, why were you still plotting to kill me?” you ask. “I wasn’t! I…mean not really…I mean…(sniffle) I just had this… this… idea and I dunno… it was just my mind! I wouldn’t have acted upon it! Especially not after getting to know you more! I can see you’re very good for Bobby. I’m genuinely hap…hap…(sob).” And Helen starts crying again. At this point you’re starting to wonder if she did have any intention on killing you, if she’d end up apologizing for it the whole time. The fact is though, you’re still not entirely sure if she was going to do it or not. Maybe the twins were partially fucking with you. (Helen did say they liked doing that with people) Maybe Helen just had wishful thinking on her mind. It isn’t like you haven’t had thoughts about killing your own sister Kelly on more than one occasion. Of course the difference is, Helen’s actually got some bodies under her belt to go through with such a deed. Any other right thinking person would probably be trying to leave this mad house right now, but quite frankly the more you think about it, you don’t have many options and despite this fucked up situation with his sisters, you still love Bobby. All of which means you’re probably just as fucked up as the rest of them (more than you realized actually) which also means you fit in here much better than you think, you just have to figure out how to deal with everything. First of which is Helen who against all odds, you actually still feel sorry for. Of course the other option is to start getting your hands dirty now and do away with her. It’s not like anyone’s around and she probably wouldn’t put up much of a fight. > You kill Helen You already got one sister to worry about; you aren’t about to worry about another one. If you’re going to have to kill someone on your wedding day anyway, you might as well get in the practice. You aren’t exactly looking forward to doing it, but you don’t see much choice. The question is how to go about it without making it look suspicious. You take a glance around the room and see a window. You’re only on the second floor though, if you pushed her out of it, it might not kill her immediately. You then think maybe you could choke her first then throw her out… Yes, that’s what you’ll do. Choke her and throw her out the window. It’ll look like a suicide and if anyone asks, you’ll just tell them the truth, she was in love with Bobby and was having a hard time coming to terms with him marrying you so out the window she went. You walk over to Helen and sit next to her on the bed. “Helen will you stop crying for one moment?” you ask which causes her to comply. You take a deep breath and exhale. “Okay, You seem genuinely distraught about all this…so this is going to make this harder.” You say and then you punch Helen in the face as hard as you can. Helen yelps and falls back on the bed and you pounce on her immediately with your hands wrapped around her throat. “Suzy…no! No! You…(cough)…” Helen squeaks out and attempts to hit you, but you ignore the pain and focus all your strength on her throat. “Shhhhh….Helen, stop struggling, just let go.” you say wishing she wasn’t making this so hard. “Bobby…he…help…” she utters with tears in her eyes. This pitiful plea that she utters almost causes you to stop choking her, but you’ve come too far now. You can’t stop. The only thing you can do is get it done and try not to feel too sick about it, because you almost feel like you’re going to throw up. Helen’s face turns a different shade and you continue to focus on your grim work at hand. Eventually her squeals and punches disappear altogether when you successfully crush her windpipe and deprive her of any more oxygen. And the deed is done. You’ve killed a person and you feel pretty terrible even though you know it had to be done. You’re exhausted and emotionally drained as you sit there straddling Helen’s dead body. You choke back tears, though you no longer can contain the rising illness and you immediately sprint off of her and the bed and vomit into a small wastepaper can in her room. You don’t even think about the fact that you’re going to have to clean it or all the loud noise your retching is making. Not that it mattered since Diana was apparently listening in and spying on you both the whole time. When you lift your head up out of the trash can still recovering from your bout of sickness, you look up just in time to see Diana’s swing a bat upside your head. You collapse on the floor, tipping over the trash can causing it to spill your sick back on to you. “Guess you didn’t want any more competition huh? You had the right idea though and I do thank you for saving me the trouble. Now I can legitimately blame Helen’s death on you and I was merely coming to the aid of my poor late sister. I can see I was just being tested…Tiamat’s glorious chaos sure works in mysterious ways.” Diana says and then hits you in the head with another bat swing. And then another…and then another…and then another…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well at least you know Helen is going to be friendly with you. She’s pleasant with everyone. You head into the next room and see Helen sitting in a chair preoccupied with watching the six children also in the room. While they’re being loud, they’re at least playing games and not being too disruptive. Helen sees you and smiles. “Hey Helen.” You say sitting next to her on the couch. “Hey Suzy. As you can see I’m just doing my role in this family.” She says pointing to the children. “Do you really need to look after them? Seems like they’re old enough to play by themselves.” You ask. “It’s not them we’d worry about, it’s the rest of this compound! While it may not look like it now, these little ones are balls of chaotic energy. Morningstar children have always needed a little extra supervision if only so they don’t end up burning the entire places to the ground. However it is true they all seem to be a little more subdued today. Even Jordan is playing with his siblings rather than fighting with them.” Helen says. “Um, which one’s Jordan?” you ask already forgetting Bobby already told you. “Jordan’s the oldest boy. He’s over there playing with his siblings Aiden and Nadia. They’re twins as you can tell. Actually those three are also my younger brothers and sister, so I do have a bit of a duty to watch out for them. Jordan’s getting to the point where I think Bobby is going to have to start training him though. He’s just becoming a teenager and he really wants to be like his older brother, but sadly he isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. He’s a still a fine boy though, he even has a bit of a crush on me which is sort of cute.” Helen says with a minor giggle. “Erm…yeah…so what about the twins?” you ask changing that last mildly disturbing remark. “Oh those two are very intelligent. They even got a mental link to each other.” “What really?” you ask. “Really. They often just sit across from each other nodding and occasionally changing expressions at each other. It’s like they’re having a conversation with their minds or something. I dunno, but sometimes it feels like they’re making private jokes about all of us. Jordan in particular and while he’s not the brightest, he’s smart enough to know when he thinks he’s being made fun of. And that’s when I often have to step in and tell them not to mock their brother.” At this point both twins look in your direction and Helen’s. They give a peculiar smile and then return to the game they’re playing with Jordan. It’s enough to make you feel a little uneasy. “Um, Helen, they can’t read our minds can they?” you ask. “Oh no…at least I don’t think so. I mean I never even thought of that before. Oh dear, now I’m going to wonder about that.” Helen says. “Sorry didn’t mean to add to your worries Helen…or my own for that matter.” You say. “Oh, I’m not really that worried. Even if they can, we’re all family anyway and they know I have no ill thoughts about them or anyone connected to it…and that’s going to include you too soon.” Helen says and smiles. Helen next mentions that ever since Veronica and Brandon arrived, their children have pretty much been put under her care. She then points out Ione and Hannah (Who are playing another game with each other) and Leon (Who is building something and seemingly content to play by himself). “Geez Helen, you look like you always got your hands full, are you really okay looking after all the children all the time?” you ask. “Oh…it’s not so bad. I mean like I said, we’re all family. What’s family for if not to help one another? Besides, I know nobody else really wants to do or otherwise has other major responsibilities.” “What responsibilities do Veronica and Brandon have? I haven’t seen them do anything since I got here. I mean they got three kids, and they’ve obviously been taking care of them before coming here. They shouldn’t just be passing them on to you just because it’s convenient. You deserve to have your own time to yourself.” “Really it’s okay Suzy. I like looking after all of them. Besides, I don’t think the children would want someone other than myself doing it anyway. When you and Bobby have children I fully expect you’ll want help on the supervision front won’t you?” “Well…probably. I was talking about this subject a little to Bobby last night and to be honest I’m still not exactly enamored with the notion of popping out a bunch of them. The idea of the pain involved isn’t exactly something I’m looking forward to.” “Well I don’t think any woman looks forward to that part. It’s the joy of bringing a new life into this world, raising them and loving them.” “I…guess…I dunno. Hell I’m still having trouble with the concept of marriage, let alone kids.” “Oh? Is it the ritual sacrifice to Tiamat that’s got you a little baffled? Don’t worry, you don’t need to memorize any prayers, Bobby will probably tell you what to say or he’ll make the appropriate chants himself.” Helen asks. “What? Wait. I know you guys sacrifice people, but is that going to go on at the wedding?” “Well of course. It’s tradition for the one to marry into this family to prove themselves to be worth of Tiamat by making a sacrifice.” “Wait, you mean I’M going to be the one doing it?” “Well yeah…you mean Bobby didn’t tell you? Oh dear. I didn’t mean to ruin the surprise.” Helen says. “Oh it’s a surprise alright.” “Well if you’re worried about messing up, we’ve got more than enough prisoners in the dungeon you could practice on tomorrow.” “Prisoners? Dungeon? Oh geez…” you say and rub your hand over your head. Helen pats you on the back a bit and tries to look understanding. “I take it, you’ve never killed anyone before?” Helen asks. “Of course I haven’t! Why would I?” you exclaim. “I just figured you having a serial killer uncle and all…plus Bobby said you helped him kill your uncle.” “I didn’t really have a hand in that directly. Are you saying YOU’VE killed someone before?” “Oh yes, but I’m not exactly fond of it, but we all have to do our part to serve Tiamat.” The fact that Helen just told you so cheerfully and without any hesitation that she’s committed murder, makes her seem a lot less harmless in your eyes. “Wait, so how many? When?” you ask. “Oh not many. First time was about when I was Jordan’s age. However, since Bobby is the head of the house, he mostly does it. Just like our father did before him. Diana sometimes does it, but I try to avoid doing it unless I really have to…I know I shouldn’t feel anything for infidels, but sometimes I can’t help it. Then I try to remember that their souls are going to feed Tiamat so it’s all for a good cause.” This is nuts… Right now you’re just wondering how deep of shit you’ve gotten yourself into. “I…dunno if I’m going to be able to do this Helen…” you say. “Oh don’t say that! You’ll be fine!” Helen says trying to be supportive. “I don’t think I will. The most fucked up thing is, I’m still more worried about having kids!” “You still concerned about that? That will come naturally, I don’t think you should worry.” “I dunno Helen. I’m obviously not like you. I thought we were more similar in many ways, mainly because we both had to put up with an asshole older sister, but it’s turning out we’re pretty different. I mean unlike me you’d obviously make a very good mother. You’re nice, attentive and everything.” You say. Helen’s eyes light up a bit when you say that and she grabs your hand. “Thank you. You have no idea how touched I am right now to hear those words.” She says and then leans in quick to give you a quick peck on the cheek. It surprises the hell out of you and you recoil a bit. Helen’s expression turns from one of happiness to one of worry. “Oh no. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have done that! By Tiamat, what was I thinking. I’m so sorry Suzy!” she starts saying which causes a lot of the children to start watching the pair of you. Helen stands up and begins to panic still repeating to you about how sorry she is, you think she’s going to have an anxiety attack. “Helen. Helen. Calm yourself. It’s…well…it’s okay. I mean I know you were just trying to be friendly and didn’t mean anything else by it. You just caught me by surprise, no harm done…” you say. “No…I can’t…you’ll have to excuse me!” Helen suddenly says and runs off. You try to call her back, but she’s gone. You wonder if you should tell someone or go after her. Then one of the kids speaks to you. “Hey what’s wrong with Aunt Helen?” Hannah asks. “She’s having a lover’s quarrel with her girlfriend.” Ione says smirking. “She is not! My sister isn’t a dyke! Besides this woman is Bobby’s girlfriend!” Jordan remarks indignantly. “You’re just saying that because YOU like Aunt Helen!” Leon says and then makes kissy noises, which causes Jordan to punch him in the arm. At this point they look like they’re going to get even more unruly, but then one of the twins speaks up. “She loves Bobby you know.” Aiden says. “Yes, Aunt Helen loves Bobby very much.” Nadia adds. “You and Diana must…” Aiden continues. “…die.” Nadia ends. The creepy tone they say it in causes utter silence, not to mention sends a bit of a shiver down your spine. “Um…are you telling me… Helen plans on killing me and Diana?” you utter. The twins just look at each other and smile. They don’t say anything else and just calmly go back to their game. They’ve also managed to successfully creep out their brother and cousins who start to leave the room. Meanwhile, if Helen IS planning to kill you, you need to find out now. As much as you’re hesitant to speak to them again, you have little choice but to ask the twins where their sister’s room is. “Uh…hey, where is Helen’s room?” you ask. “Left wing…” Aiden says. “Second floor…” Nadia adds. “Go right then…” Aiden continues. “Through the last door.” Nadia ends. Great now they’re being creepy in rhyme. They didn’t even look at you the entire time. You don’t even bother to thank them, you just follow their directions. Eventually when you think you’re getting close, you hear some faint crying. You slowly look in a room to your right and find Helen weeping softly to herself on her bed. She notices you and she tries to wipe away her tears. “(sniffle) Oh. You didn’t need to come see to me. Really I’m fine. I just acted foolishly, I apologize again for kissing you Suzy.” Helen remarks. “Um, yeah I’m not really bothered by that…or rather I mean that was unexpected, but…look nevermind about that. I’m here about something else of a more serious nature and I’m hoping we can hammer this out because whether you realize it or not, a lot of shit just got sprung on me within the last few minutes.” You say. “Is this about the sacrifice?” “No, this is about something your creepy twin mind reading sibling just said to me. They said you love Bobby.” “Huh? Oh…well of course I love Bobby. I mean he’s my older brother of course I love him.” Helen says a bit nervously. “Yeah and in any other family that wouldn’t mean anything more than friendship at best, but love goes to a whole other level in this family. There’s also the fact they said you were going to kill me.” Now Helen goes from nervous to shocked. “WHAT?! They said that?!” “Well technically they said you were going to kill Diana too and they didn’t say it so much as they heavily implied it, but given that they’re creepy as fuck and you said they can read minds, as well as your own guilty behavior on the whole loving Bobby situation and well what the hell am I supposed to think? So is it all true?” Helen just give you a sad look and then begins to tear up again and put her hands to her face. “Oh fuck Helen! You were lying and just plotting to kill me the entire time?! Goddamn it, had I known I was going to have to deal with not one but TWO of Bobby’s murderous sisters, I would’ve just stayed at home. At least I would’ve only had one to deal with there!” you shout. Helen tries to compose herself to address you. “No, that’s not true. (sniffle) I wasn’t lying to you. I genuinely like you and after our most recent conversation I like you even more. I mean…I really like you…but it is true I love Bobby. I’ve always loved him…(sniffle) I mean I always thought Diana was wrong for him and they were only together because she happened to be the oldest sister. Did you know I had two other older sisters and Diana killed them both for fear of competition? Everyone thinks they were accidents, but I knew the truth. Never said anything of course, I was too afraid and I didn’t want to cause any problems.” “Bobby never mentioned he had two dead sisters before.” “It’s not really something we discuss. It was a pretty traumatic experience for everyone at the time. My dad was very upset especially since Mom had died of natural causes no long before. It was a lot of family to lose within such a short period of time.” “So how come she didn’t kill you or Nadia?” “ Nadia’s a twin and will most likely bond with Aiden. Plus she’s much younger so no threat either way. As for me, well I was still young enough at the time when she killed my other two sisters. I guess I was just so weak in her eyes that she thought I wasn’t any threat. Maybe she even knew that I loved Bobby and enjoyed flaunting it in my face. In any case things really changed when you came into the picture. I wasn’t sure what to think really. Then when I finally met you, I could see why Bobby liked you. You were so nice and I want you to know I always felt like we were very similar too. You know, under appreciated in our own families. I wish you’d been my sister instead of Diana.” “Yeah? Well if I’m so nice, why were you still plotting to kill me?” you ask. “I wasn’t! I…mean not really…I mean…(sniffle) I just had this… this… idea and I dunno… it was just my mind! I wouldn’t have acted upon it! Especially not after getting to know you more! I can see you’re very good for Bobby. I’m genuinely hap…hap…(sob).” And Helen starts crying again. At this point you’re starting to wonder if she did have any intention on killing you, if she’d end up apologizing for it the whole time. The fact is though, you’re still not entirely sure if she was going to do it or not. Maybe the twins were partially fucking with you. (Helen did say they liked doing that with people) Maybe Helen just had wishful thinking on her mind. It isn’t like you haven’t had thoughts about killing your own sister Kelly on more than one occasion. Of course the difference is, Helen’s actually got some bodies under her belt to go through with such a deed. Any other right thinking person would probably be trying to leave this mad house right now, but quite frankly the more you think about it, you don’t have many options and despite this fucked up situation with his sisters, you still love Bobby. All of which means you’re probably just as fucked up as the rest of them (more than you realized actually) which also means you fit in here much better than you think, you just have to figure out how to deal with everything. First of which is Helen who against all odds, you actually still feel sorry for. Of course the other option is to start getting your hands dirty now and do away with her. It’s not like anyone’s around and she probably wouldn’t put up much of a fight. > You let her live Maybe it’s stupid or weakness, but you can’t bring yourself to kill Helen based on heavy suspicion. You decide to talk this out with her instead. “Helen…Helen…will you stop crying for one minute?” you say which causes her to comply. You take a deep breath and exhale. “Okay. You seem genuinely distraught about all this…so I’m going to go out on a limb and take you at your word that you had no solid intention on killing me and it was just a fleeting thought that we all have once in awhile. I mean I’ve had them too.” Helen looks a little happier when you say that. “Oh…I’m so glad you feel that way Suzy…(sniff)” Helen says. “I’m not finished! I AM going to be keeping an eye on you though and I think it’s going to take me awhile to fully trust you.” You say which causes her to nod rapidly. “I…I understand. Wha…what about Bobby?” “Well that is the question isn’t it? I guess I could threaten you. However, that’s really not going to help matters and the heart wants what the heart wants. Can’t really stop that…well other than killing that person, but I think neither one of us wants to go that route. Let me ask you this though, does he possibly know already how you feel?” “Oh no. I don’t believe so. He’s either been too into Diana or too into you, to pay any serious attention to me in that way. So no, I do not believe he knows.” “Do you want to tell him?” you ask. “Oh! No! No, I can’t! Especially not now! That will just mess things up for you! I don’t want to be in the way! Please Suzy, don’t tell Bobby about my real feelings either. I…I’ve come to deal with the reality that Bobby will never be mine. Just wasn’t meant to be. I can be… happy without him as long as I know you’ll be making him happy.” Helen says and then tries to smile, but it doesn’t last long. That was incredibly hard for her to say. You know her heart is probably breaking in a million pieces on the inside. You almost want to console her, but then you have to remember she might have been plotting to kill you. “Okay then…so are we good?” you ask unsure of what else to address. “Yes, Suzy. We’re good…um can I just have a hug?” Helen asks. This family just gets weirder and weirder… “A hug?” you ask. “Well, I know you don’t trust me, but you’re still willing to give me a chance. That alone is more kindness than my own sister Diana has ever shown me. I feel closer to you than I ever have with her. I mean I guess I understand if you don’t want to…” Helen says a little sadly. You look at her sideways wondering if this is some sort of trick, but if you’re going to go with this building trust route AND if it’ll make Helen feel better, you can do a hug. You go to Helen and sit beside her on her bed who gloms on to you immediately. As you reluctantly hug back, Helen exhales as if a big weight has been lifted. “You don’t know how much this means to me Suzy…” she says. “Um, yeah.” You reply. “You smell pretty and feel so soft and warm.” She then says squeezing you a little tighter. “Uh…okay…I think I should be getting back to Bobby now.” You remark and start to let go though it feels like Helen doesn’t really want to let go. “Okay. You go back to Bobby, I’m sure he’s wondering where you are. I’ll be fine. Thank you for being so understanding. I’ll never forget this.” Helen waves good-bye with a smile as you leave her room. What a strange girl. As you make your way back towards the stairs, you realize that you didn’t address the possibility that Helen might have planned to kill Diana as well, not that you care since you’d rather she be completely out of way. Even if Helen did have that plan, it’s clear that if she’s telling the truth about having too much feelings about killing you, she’s unlikely to kill her sister due to whatever fucked up battered sibling syndrome she has. Besides, as far as you’re concerned Bobby’s supposed to take care of the Diana situation or he will if he expects you to sacrifice someone on a slab on the wedding day. When you get downstairs the some of the family members are all eating. You don’t see Bobby though. “Hey Veronica have you seen Bobby?” you ask. “Oh, I think he went to your room to look for you. Figured you’d be there. I think he’s pretty upset about what just happened with William and Aaron.” “What happened? “They just left the compound. Not exactly sure what William told Bobby, but he and Aaron are both gone. Brandon’s outside closing up the front gate.” Veronica says and shovels more food into her mouth. Great, more drama. You make the long trek back to the bedroom… Sure enough, you find Bobby looking slightly mopey on the bed. These Morningstars sure are a miserable lot today. “Hey Bobby.” You say. “Hey. Where have you been?” Bobby asks ‘Bonding with your sister Helen. You know, the nice one.” “Oh. That’s good. Glad to hear something going well…” Bobby says with his voice sounding like he isn’t as happy about that as he should be. “Okay, I already heard about William and Aaron, but what are you really upset about?” you ask. “I don’t even know why I’m bothering trying to hold this family together! Most of them aren’t even here. Two of them just left. One of them hates me now, and the rest aren’t exactly sterling examples of Tiamat’s Chosen. In fact the ones that are here are probably here because it’s safe and filled with enough supplies to live comfortably.” Bobby exclaims. “Well, what’s wrong with that?” “Nothing I suppose, but supporting about bunch of freeloaders wasn’t really part of my plan to honor Tiamat.” “Well maybe you need to change your damn plan. I mean its still early, but if you really feel like someone isn’t pulling their weight around here, then you need to just kick their asses out, family or not. I mean you’re the boss around here and your word is supposed to be law.” Bobby sits up a bit as you continue to speak. “Look, you know you’re a leader and you know the head of this family. So you can’t give into all this self-doubt. You NEEDED to lay down the law to your sister Diana and you did it. In fact, speaking of which, what exactly IS going to be done about her? Because whatever you said you know that’s just going to be a temporary fix. Now I think you KNOW what you’re going to have to do with her, but your past with her is preventing you from doing it.” Bobby continues to listen intently. “Love isn’t one-sided Bobby, and if I’m going to have to ultimately submit to your beliefs and everything that goes with it including murdering innocent people…” “Wait…you know about the sacrifice on the wedding day?” Bobby asks. “Yeah and thanks a lot for keeping me in the dark about it. But it’s fine, I’ve gotten over it. I’ve had a lot of time to think about things and how this marriage is going to go if it’s going to work. I’m willing to go all in, but you’re going to have to do likewise and fix this problem with Diana permanently. How is up to you, but she is NOT going to be here.” Bobby looks a little overwhelmed by your ultimatum. He’s never heard you speak like this before and really; you’re a little surprised you’re saying what you’re saying yourself. You’re rolling the dice and betting everything here. You think you’ve got the inner strength to go through with all this, you just hope that Bobby proves to be just as strong. “Suzy, you are the love of my life and what you’ve just told me just confirms that Tiamat’s chaos did favor me when I met you. You’re right. I know I have to do something more permanent with my sister Diana. I’ll come to a decision tomorrow though. I think I need the rest of the day to recover from all the shit I’ve already had to go through. It’s not even night yet!” “Well, okay. I understand. Well, should we go eat with the rest of the family?” “No. I’m not really feeling it right now. I’d rather just spend time with you.” “Sounds good to me.” You remark. You and Bobby kiss each other, which then soon leads to something a lot more intense. A little later after your pleasant round of passion, Bobby says he should go tell one of his family members to take the night watch and have a long conversation with all of them. “Well good luck on that front.” You say as you briefly check your phone out of curiosity. “Did someone call?” Bobby asks. “No, just curious. I was wondering if any of my family tried to contact me given how with the craziness going on in town recently. Guess I’m not surprised nobody cared to call. Not mad about it though, just one more confirmation that this is my new family and home now.” You say. “Well other than you know who, it seems like you’ve gotten along with the rest of my family. Sounds like you’ve really gotten along with Helen. So what did you two talk about anyway?” Bobby asks. “Oh… you know…girl stuff.” You say with a slight smile, which cause Bobby to snicker a bit. “Alright, you two have your little secrets. Just as long as you’re getting along. Love you.” Bobby says opening the door. “Love you too.” You say as he leaves. You enjoy the rest of your evening in solitude until you eventually fall asleep. > Next day… THURSDAY “Due to new developments, today’s contest has been canceled. We sincerely apologize to you good folks, but don’t despair with any luck our reigning champion Suzy will return to us soon to take on more challengers! Let’s still hear it for our little blonde small town girl!” the announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Well this is certainly different, but it’s also a nice change of pace. You were starting to feel insulted by the implications of yourself participating in all these phallic food-eating contests. However, you’re still a little fond of being cheered for, so you stand up and take a bow for your fans. No sooner have you done that, when your surroundings immediately change to that of a blasted wasteland. There is nothing around you save for burned out buildings in the distance and dead landscape. Reminds you a bit of a video game you once played. “You know, the entire world is soon going to look like this…how I wish I could be young and alive to experience the uncertainty and chaos that is going to shape the years to follow.” You hear a voice say. You turn around and see Bobby’s grandmother again. She’s an old lady walking with a cane this time. “But enough about the future, let’s talk about the present. You survived a lot longer than I thought you would, maybe you are worthy of my grandson after all. You even are starting to manipulate him a bit, that’s good. The true leaders in Tiamat’s service have always been women anyway. I swear if it wasn’t for us prodding them in the right direction every now and then, most men would be content just jacking off to pass the time. Still, you aren’t quite there yet. I think today should prove to quite interesting. Survive today and you might just meet Misty yet.” “Okay, I want some answers, who the hell is Misty, and what’s going to happen today? Is Helen going to kill me?” you demand. “Helen? Oh yes my submissive co-dependent grand daughter. Yes, that was sort of an interesting way you dealt with her…” Grandma Morningstar replies. “So is she going to try to kill me or not?” “Who said she ever was? You just came to that conclusion yourself. She told you she was never going to try to kill you. I suppose it’s up to you to believe her or not. I think the better question is, do you like her?” “What?” “Do you like her? Not a hard question blondie.” Grandma Morningstar says tapping on her cane. “I don’t dislike her despite everything…I mean growing up in this family is prone to make her a little fucked up.” You say. “Hm, well do you think she’s pretty?” “Pretty?” “Yes, sheesh you go fucking deaf blondie? Pretty, you know better than average looks.” Grandma Morningstar replies getting annoyed. “Um…well I suppose she is.” You say. “Is one of the reasons why you spared her is because she reminds you of yourself in some ways?” “No…I mean…well maybe somewhat. I mean I just couldn’t bring myself to kill her on suspicion. But yes, I suppose the fact that I see some of myself in her did cause me to be a little sympathetic to her.” “So if you fucked her…it would almost be like fucking yourself right?” “Wait…what? What are you trying to get at?” you ask. “Oh I think you know EXACTLY what I’m trying to get at. It’s okay Suzy, I’m making no judgments. The female form is a beautiful thing. Well anyway you’ll find out what’s in store for you today soon. As for Misty, well why don’t you put some thought into it. I mean it’s pretty simple even for you blondie.” Bobby’s grandmother replies with slight distain. “Well can you at least tell me what’s deal with all these contests in my dreams?” “Sorry, I really don’t know anything about that. If you’re lucky and actually meet Misty, maybe you can ask her, but I just assumed you really liked dreaming about sucking dick...in a symbolic way I guess. Hmm, come to think of it this would explain why Bobby’s so enamored with you. Maybe you aren’t a whore blondie, but you sure got the mouth of one. It’s almost as if it was a highway for oral sex.” “Hey!” “Don’t take offense blondie. It’s a good thing. Suck a man’s dick right, and you can practically get him to do ANYTHING for you. I mean you got natural talent. Hell, maybe even Tiamat blessed you with it so you stood an equal chance against Diana. Now that girl, as much as she loves Bobby, she just can’t suck a dick properly. Bad gag reflex, slightly oversized teeth, I dunno. Tiamat works in whimsical ways I suppose.” “How do you even know all…nevermind I don’t want to hear anymore.” You say. Bobby’s grandmother ignores you though and continues to speak. “Still, Bobby always did have a slight obsession for blowjobs. He likes them a lot more than he’s probably told you." “Gah! I’m done listening!” you shout feeling increasingly uncomfortable about hearing Bobby’s grandmother talk about his sexual interests. “Oh, alright Miss Prude. I’m rambling and it’s time for you to go anyway. See ya Deep Throat!” Bobby’s grandmother cackles again and then raises her cane and all your surroundings go black… And then you wake up. “Something bad is going to happen today.” You say to yourself. (Then again why should today be any different from the rest of this week?) You look around and see nobody in the room (Save for Bobby’s grandmother’s portrait staring like a gargoyle). Looks like Bobby woke up before you as usual. You look at the time on your phone and see you’ve actually slept until the afternoon. While the normal thing for you to do would be to just stay in your room and avoid everyone, but given your recent dream, you think your best bet might be to be a little proactive today. After going through your usual routine of washing up and getting dressed you head down to the main living area where you know everyone usually gathers. Before you get there you bump into Helen, who looks a bit harried and is carrying a pistol in one hand. You tense up immediately. “There you are, good. Saves me time…” she says. “Uh…Helen …” you start to say and back away slowly. “Huh?” Helen looks down at her pistol. “OH! Shit! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you! I didn’t come to do anything to you! Here, you can take it, if it makes you feel better, but we need to go!” she exclaims and hands you the pistol. You snatch the weapon from her and eye her suspiciously. She gets worried at first that you’re going be the one to shoot her, but then just continues to explain in greater detail about what’s going on. “Aaron came back and he’s threatening to drive an army truck through the front gate if we all don’t leave the compound. He claims that we’re defying Tiamat by not embracing the chaos outside. Bobby’s been trying to negotiate with him through the intercom, but he thinks we’re going to have no option but to open fire on Aaron.” “Where the hell did he get an army truck? Is William with him?” “Apparently the town has been in a state of martial law since yesterday and the National Guard have taken over according to Aaron’s ranting. I guess he stole one. I don’t think William is with him. Anyway Bobby wants you to be safe so follow me to where all the children...” Loud shouting by Bobby in the distance suddenly interrupts Helen. You immediately rush towards where he might be located despite the protests by the Helen that you need to come with her though she just runs along with you. You soon manage to catch up with the most of the family (Save for the younger children and Diana) who are standing in the foyer with their weapons ready and Bobby who has opened the front door. “Aaron, I tried being reasonable. YOU left here without permission, but that was fine because it’s obvious you didn’t feel happy here. There are several paths to Tiamat’s glory and you obviously had your own ideas about which one you should pick. Anyone here is free to leave, but NOBODY is going to be forced to leave due to your threats! Again, if you try coming in here, you’re going to be shot down like a fucking dog and I’ll personally perform Tiamat’s ritual of desecration over your stinking body so your soul NEVER enters Timat’s glory!” Bobby shouts and walks out with his rifle drawn. Bobby’s brother Jordan is the first one who cautiously follows afterwards and then everyone else slowly walks towards the door as well. You don’t think anyone has even paid any attention to you or Helen (who keeps pulling on you to leave). “My soul is already with Tiamat! You can’t do shit about it ritual boy! If you unworthy fucks won’t embrace chaos as Tiamat intended, then I’m gonna bring it to you!” Aaron shouts through a bullhorn, which is followed by a laugh. The truck revs up and Bobby orders everyone to open fire. You and Helen are still inside at this point so you don’t actually do so and just hang back as you watch Aaron mow through the gate followed by a hail of bullets peppering the oncoming truck. The truck swerves hard to the left smashes into Brandon’s parked vehicle. You can hear him swearing about it. Meanwhile you also see Jordan jumping up and down in victory and running over to the wrecked truck. “Yeah! We got that bastard! Whoo!” he shouts. “Hey Jordan, get the fuck back here, don’t go off ahead like that by yourself!” Bobby shouts. “Aw, it’s fine, he didn’t survive that!” And that’s when Aaron proves Jordan wrong, starting by recovering from his crash and shooting several holes into Jordan. Then he follows up by throwing several grenades out the truck window. “SHIT!” Bobby shouts and everyone runs back, but not before several explosions occur. Nobody is killed, but everyone scrambles and on the ground crawling for cover. Bobby himself crawls behind cover of another parked vehicle and continues to fire in the direction of the truck. Helen now really tugs at you saying you need to come with her where its safe, but you wonder if you should try to help Bobby considering he’s the only one currently trying to kill Aaron. Everyone else has completely retreated and is even running past you. > You help Bobby This is the man you’ve chosen to marry for better or worse. If you aren’t going to help him in a matter of life or death then that wouldn’t say much for your commitment. Besides, if he gets killed this whole compound is going to turn to shit and you’d no doubt be at the bottom of it, assuming Aaron doesn’t kill you all first. “Helen, you go see to the young ones, I’m going to stand by Bobby.” “But…” “It’s my choice, I’ll be fine! Now go!” Helen is a little unsure, but complies with your wishes. “Be careful, Suzy.” Helen says and leaves. You rush outside towards Bobby who is still taking cover behind a car and firing upon the Aaron. He sees you out the corner of his eye while still keeping an eye on the direction of the truck. “Keep your head down, I think Aaron escaped out the passenger door of the truck and is hiding behind Brandon’s car now. Where the hell did you come from anyway? I told Helen to go get you and the younger children to a safer location when Aaron showed up.” Bobby exclaims. “Yeah well I’m showing you that I’m not just going to let you do this shit alone. I’m with you all the way. No hiding with Helen and the kids, no matter what you say.” You’re interrupted by gunfire on your position and Aaron ranting. “You think you can stop what’s coming by hiding? Hah! People are already fucking EATING each other out there! Shit, I’ll be doing you a favor by killing you now. Actually now that I think about… your blonde bitch looks like a fine piece of ass in more way than one!” Aaron shouts and starts laughing maniacally and then throws another grenade your way. You and Bobby have no choice but to leave your position and make a dash back to the house entrance. It’s somewhat of a minor miracle that you and Bobby aren’t hit by any of the bullets he fires at you. You manage to get inside just as the grenade goes off and adds to the total of destroyed vehicles outside. You and Bobby are on the floor though Bobby has partially managed to cover you with his own body. “What the hell did he do, rip off the entire National Guard armory?” you say as Bobby back kicks the front door shut from his prone position. “I don’t know but…” Two more explosions are heard on the left side of compound. Aaron is apparently throwing explosives through the windows now. “Shit, I hope nobody ran and hid over there.” You remark as the pair of you start to get up off the floor. “Where the fuck IS everyone anyway? Nice to know I can REALLY count on these fuckers when the going gets tough. Why the fuck am I even bothering again? Fuck!” Bobby yells in frustration. You understand his anger, but it’s probably not the best time for a rant. “Bobby, calm yourself. You can yell at those idiots later, but right now all that matters is that I’m here helping you okay?” you say. “Yeah…okay. Just wish we had more reliable help. (Sigh) To think, the only thing I was concerned about was exiling Diana today.” “Okay, so what’s the game plan?” you ask slightly disappointed that Bobby’s decision was to exile Diana rather than death, but you aren’t entirely surprised. Still, there’s always the hope that Aaron does kill her. Bobby quickly snaps back to the situation at hand. “Well it sounds like he’s stopped with the explosives, or maybe he’s just fishing out more. I’d say the safest bet is to get to the second floor and shoot him through one of the windows. No point in going back out the front door when we can get the vantage point.” “How do we know he’s still outside, he might’ve already entered house through one of the holes he’s undoubtedly made with his grenades.” You say. “He could try for the armory, though he’s still gotta come through this way if he wants to go there. Given his state of mind though he might also try to do something like run upstairs and kill all the children for fun. Hell, I wouldn’t put it past him to try to access the prisoner’s dungeon and set them all free. It is on the left wing after all. (Sigh) As much as I hate splitting up, I’m going to need you to stay here and guard the foyer just in case he tries to sneak through here.” Bobby says. “I really think I should come with you. Splitting up is always a bad idea in these situations.” “I don’t like it either, but it’s a big house and we need to cast a wide net to deal with this asshole.” Bobby says. “Okay Bobby, I’ll stay here, but please be careful.” You remark. "I'll be fine, you just keep a look out and remember, if you see him, don't talk, just shoot. Oh and if any of my cousins ever come out of hiding and pass through here, tell them to fucking help you." Bobby says and then kisses you before heading to the left wing of the house. Soon after Bobby leaves, you put your back against one of the walls and start keeping an eye on the doorways. Minutes pass and you start to get a little nervous. Not a lot, but enough that you move from your spot and check the left doorway. Then you briefly hear the sounds of rushing footsteps behind you and you don’t even get to completely turn around before you feel a crushing blow to the side of your head. You crumple to the floor on your knees and then another blow to your head causes you to collapse flat on the floor and lose grip of your pistol. A pair of blurry hands quickly grabs it from you. “You and that traitorous bitch of a sister of mine think you can take Bobby after he exiles me? I heard the pair of you conspiring together yesterday in her room after Bobby ripped my heart out. Fucking cunt.” Diana says and points it at you. You weakly attempt to grab at Diana who kicks you in the face, your already bleeding head hits the floor. “Normally, I’d savor this moment. Maybe even keep you alive longer to enjoy torturing you a bit more, but I think under the circumstances, putting you down now is the more efficient plan. Haven’t decided if I should help Bobby yet…or perhaps even Aaron…guess I’ll surprise them both.” Despite Diana aiming for your head and being at this close range she manages to completely fuck up her shot and hit you in the throat instead which doesn’t kill you instantly. “Shit, well I guess it’s good my aim isn’t that great, I got to see you suffer a little more after all. Say hello to my sister in fucking traitor’s hell. I will be laughing at you both within Tiamat’s glorious chaos!” Diana shouts as you gurgle, choke and finally die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY “Due to new developments, today’s contest has been canceled. We sincerely apologize to you good folks, but don’t despair with any luck our reigning champion Suzy will return to us soon to take on more challengers! Let’s still hear it for our little blonde small town girl!” the announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Well this is certainly different, but it’s also a nice change of pace. You were starting to feel insulted by the implications of yourself participating in all these phallic food-eating contests. However, you’re still a little fond of being cheered for, so you stand up and take a bow for your fans. No sooner have you done that, when your surroundings immediately change to that of a blasted wasteland. There is nothing around you save for burned out buildings in the distance and dead landscape. Reminds you a bit of a video game you once played. “You know, the entire world is soon going to look like this…how I wish I could be young and alive to experience the uncertainty and chaos that is going to shape the years to follow.” You hear a voice say. You turn around and see Bobby’s grandmother again. She’s an old lady walking with a cane this time. “But enough about the future, let’s talk about the present. You survived a lot longer than I thought you would, maybe you are worthy of my grandson after all. You even are starting to manipulate him a bit, that’s good. The true leaders in Tiamat’s service have always been women anyway. I swear if it wasn’t for us prodding them in the right direction every now and then, most men would be content just jacking off to pass the time. Still, you aren’t quite there yet. I think today should prove to quite interesting. Survive today and you might just meet Misty yet.” “Okay, I want some answers, who the hell is Misty, and what’s going to happen today? Is Helen going to kill me?” you demand. “Helen? Oh yes my submissive co-dependent grand daughter. Yes, that was sort of an interesting way you dealt with her…” Grandma Morningstar replies. “So is she going to try to kill me or not?” “Who said she ever was? You just came to that conclusion yourself. She told you she was never going to try to kill you. I suppose it’s up to you to believe her or not. I think the better question is, do you like her?” “What?” “Do you like her? Not a hard question blondie.” Grandma Morningstar says tapping on her cane. “I don’t dislike her despite everything…I mean growing up in this family is prone to make her a little fucked up.” You say. “Hm, well do you think she’s pretty?” “Pretty?” “Yes, sheesh you go fucking deaf blondie? Pretty, you know better than average looks.” Grandma Morningstar replies getting annoyed. “Um…well I suppose she is.” You say. “Is one of the reasons why you spared her is because she reminds you of yourself in some ways?” “No…I mean…well maybe somewhat. I mean I just couldn’t bring myself to kill her on suspicion. But yes, I suppose the fact that I see some of myself in her did cause me to be a little sympathetic to her.” “So if you fucked her…it would almost be like fucking yourself right?” “Wait…what? What are you trying to get at?” you ask. “Oh I think you know EXACTLY what I’m trying to get at. It’s okay Suzy, I’m making no judgments. The female form is a beautiful thing. Well anyway you’ll find out what’s in store for you today soon. As for Misty, well why don’t you put some thought into it. I mean it’s pretty simple even for you blondie.” Bobby’s grandmother replies with slight distain. “Well can you at least tell me what’s deal with all these contests in my dreams?” “Sorry, I really don’t know anything about that. If you’re lucky and actually meet Misty, maybe you can ask her, but I just assumed you really liked dreaming about sucking dick...in a symbolic way I guess. Hmm, come to think of it this would explain why Bobby’s so enamored with you. Maybe you aren’t a whore blondie, but you sure got the mouth of one. It’s almost as if it was a highway for oral sex.” “Hey!” “Don’t take offense blondie. It’s a good thing. Suck a man’s dick right, and you can practically get him to do ANYTHING for you. I mean you got natural talent. Hell, maybe even Tiamat blessed you with it so you stood an equal chance against Diana. Now that girl, as much as she loves Bobby, she just can’t suck a dick properly. Bad gag reflex, slightly oversized teeth, I dunno. Tiamat works in whimsical ways I suppose.” “How do you even know all…nevermind I don’t want to hear anymore.” You say. Bobby’s grandmother ignores you though and continues to speak. “Still, Bobby always did have a slight obsession for blowjobs. He likes them a lot more than he’s probably told you." “Gah! I’m done listening!” you shout feeling increasingly uncomfortable about hearing Bobby’s grandmother talk about his sexual interests. “Oh, alright Miss Prude. I’m rambling and it’s time for you to go anyway. See ya Deep Throat!” Bobby’s grandmother cackles again and then raises her cane and all your surroundings go black… And then you wake up. “Something bad is going to happen today.” You say to yourself. (Then again why should today be any different from the rest of this week?) You look around and see nobody in the room (Save for Bobby’s grandmother’s portrait staring like a gargoyle). Looks like Bobby woke up before you as usual. You look at the time on your phone and see you’ve actually slept until the afternoon. While the normal thing for you to do would be to just stay in your room and avoid everyone, but given your recent dream, you think your best bet might be to be a little proactive today. After going through your usual routine of washing up and getting dressed you head down to the main living area where you know everyone usually gathers. Before you get there you bump into Helen, who looks a bit harried and is carrying a pistol in one hand. You tense up immediately. “There you are, good. Saves me time…” she says. “Uh…Helen …” you start to say and back away slowly. “Huh?” Helen looks down at her pistol. “OH! Shit! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you! I didn’t come to do anything to you! Here, you can take it, if it makes you feel better, but we need to go!” she exclaims and hands you the pistol. You snatch the weapon from her and eye her suspiciously. She gets worried at first that you’re going be the one to shoot her, but then just continues to explain in greater detail about what’s going on. “Aaron came back and he’s threatening to drive an army truck through the front gate if we all don’t leave the compound. He claims that we’re defying Tiamat by not embracing the chaos outside. Bobby’s been trying to negotiate with him through the intercom, but he thinks we’re going to have no option but to open fire on Aaron.” “Where the hell did he get an army truck? Is William with him?” “Apparently the town has been in a state of martial law since yesterday and the National Guard have taken over according to Aaron’s ranting. I guess he stole one. I don’t think William is with him. Anyway Bobby wants you to be safe so follow me to where all the children...” Loud shouting by Bobby in the distance suddenly interrupts Helen. You immediately rush towards where he might be located despite the protests by the Helen that you need to come with her though she just runs along with you. You soon manage to catch up with the most of the family (Save for the younger children and Diana) who are standing in the foyer with their weapons ready and Bobby who has opened the front door. “Aaron, I tried being reasonable. YOU left here without permission, but that was fine because it’s obvious you didn’t feel happy here. There are several paths to Tiamat’s glory and you obviously had your own ideas about which one you should pick. Anyone here is free to leave, but NOBODY is going to be forced to leave due to your threats! Again, if you try coming in here, you’re going to be shot down like a fucking dog and I’ll personally perform Tiamat’s ritual of desecration over your stinking body so your soul NEVER enters Timat’s glory!” Bobby shouts and walks out with his rifle drawn. Bobby’s brother Jordan is the first one who cautiously follows afterwards and then everyone else slowly walks towards the door as well. You don’t think anyone has even paid any attention to you or Helen (who keeps pulling on you to leave). “My soul is already with Tiamat! You can’t do shit about it ritual boy! If you unworthy fucks won’t embrace chaos as Tiamat intended, then I’m gonna bring it to you!” Aaron shouts through a bullhorn, which is followed by a laugh. The truck revs up and Bobby orders everyone to open fire. You and Helen are still inside at this point so you don’t actually do so and just hang back as you watch Aaron mow through the gate followed by a hail of bullets peppering the oncoming truck. The truck swerves hard to the left smashes into Brandon’s parked vehicle. You can hear him swearing about it. Meanwhile you also see Jordan jumping up and down in victory and running over to the wrecked truck. “Yeah! We got that bastard! Whoo!” he shouts. “Hey Jordan, get the fuck back here, don’t go off ahead like that by yourself!” Bobby shouts. “Aw, it’s fine, he didn’t survive that!” And that’s when Aaron proves Jordan wrong, starting by recovering from his crash and shooting several holes into Jordan. Then he follows up by throwing several grenades out the truck window. “SHIT!” Bobby shouts and everyone runs back, but not before several explosions occur. Nobody is killed, but everyone scrambles and on the ground crawling for cover. Bobby himself crawls behind cover of another parked vehicle and continues to fire in the direction of the truck. Helen now really tugs at you saying you need to come with her where its safe, but you wonder if you should try to help Bobby considering he’s the only one currently trying to kill Aaron. Everyone else has completely retreated and is even running past you. > You go with Helen Getting into a fistfight with Diana is one thing, but you’re definitely not up to dealing with this crazy asshole. You just hope Bobby is up for dealing with him though apparently Helen thinks so. “Come on! Bobby can handle this, but we need to get to the children where it’s safe!” Helen exclaims and you start to follow her. The pair of you run upstairs away from the sounds of shouting and gunfire. You soon reach the top and follow Helen through a corridor doorway. And then Helen nearly gets bashed in the head with a bat when she passes through an entryway. She does take a hit to the shoulder though which causes her to fall to the floor in pain. Diana steps out from the corner she was hiding behind and then rushes at you. You’re caught off guard and point your pistol at Diana, and actually manage to fire a shot, but unfortunately Diana’s smashes your arm with the bat away from her direction so your shot goes wild. Hardly matters since between the kickback of the pistol and the pain you end up dropping the gun entirely. With you unarmed and Helen still clutching her arm in pain, Diana’s head swivels back and forth rapidly, to make sure neither one of you are going to suddenly lunge at her, though she’s also eyeing the dropped pistol too. “After Bobby ripped my heart out I went upstairs to my room and overheard you two bitches conspiring against me. Didn’t know you had it in you Helen. I always knew you loved Bobby, but always figured you’d be too weak to do shit about it. Guess that’s my fault for showing you mercy.” Diana remarks. While Diana’s ranting to her sister, you attempt to make a play for the gun, but Diana swings her bat at you, nearly hitting you in the face. You step back just in time. “And you. You certainly have proved yourself the stereotype of dumb blonde, because if you actually bought that bullshit that my sister fed you, you’re stupider than I thought you were. You actually think she’s gonna just let you have Bobby? She’s gonna backstab you the same way she backstabbed me.” “Maybe she backstabbed you because you were a fucking bully to her, you ever think of that?” you say. “Bully? She oughta be grateful I didn’t kill her ass and instead made her strong enough for her to grow a spine to betray me in the first place! Hey! Where the fuck you goin’?” Diana remarks when she turns her head to see Helen getting up to run away. Diana throws her bat at Helen’s legs, which successfully hit and trip her up. Diana then goes for the pistol and that’s when you pounce and manage to tackle her. The pair of you are soon rolling on the floor again, punching, scratching and kneeing each other. You both try to go for the pistol on several occasions, but neither of you gets the advantage, in fact when Diana finally does, you knock it out of her hand and it goes sprawling and down the stairs to the first floor. “Bah! I don’t need a gun to do my work anyhow! I’ll enjoy it even more killing you with my bare hands!” Diana remarks and lands a good punch on you and then she slams the back of your head into the floor causing you to become a little dazed. She’d do more, but then Helen comes up from behind her with the bat in hand. Unfortunately for Helen, Diana hears Helen and catches Helen’s feeble swing and stops the bat from actually hitting her. “I’m gonna so enjoy hurting you little sister…” Diana exclaims and attempts to rip the bat from Helen’s hand. Helen’s grip is strong enough that Diana doesn’t succeed so instead Diana uses Helen’s weight against her and pushes the bat towards Helen as hard as she can. Helen, not expecting this, loses her footing on her already bruised legs and falls back on the nearby wall, dropping the bat entirely, which rolls away. Diana gets off of you, to take care of her sister who at this point is begging to not be hurt. “Diana, please…this isn’t my fault…Bobby chose Su…” Diana squeaks. “BOBBY CHOSE ME FIRST! BOBBY IS MINE! HE’S ALWAYS BEEN MINE BY BIRTH! You fucking little weakling traitorous bitch! Had you just stayed in line, I might’ve even been kind enough to let Bobby face fuck you on your birthday, but the only fucking you’re going to get now is in your ass because I’m going knee deep in it!” At this point Helen squeals in fear and curls up in a tight ball while Diana starts kicking the hell out of her. Meanwhile you’re starting to come around a bit more. Things are still a bit dizzy for you and you’re a bit wobbly standing up, but you manage it. You attempt to make a run (or fast paced wobble at any rate) for the bat, but Diana stops you before you can even reach it. “Don’t think so bottled blonde bitch!” Diana says and knocks you to the floor and then follows up with a kick. Diana gets on top of you and while you struggle to fight her off, she slaps away your attempts and wraps her hands around your throat. “You are going to very dark place and I’m going to enjoy putting you there.” She remarks and then she starts doing some weird chanting, similar to the shit Bobby says at times when you’re having sex with him, but this isn’t nearly as fun. You try to pry her hands off your throat, but her grip is like iron. You start to lose consciousness. You try one more time to get her off of you by punching her in the face, but your swing isn’t strong enough and Diana is just too determined to end your life. Diana’s face gets blurry, you choke and then everything goes black. Everything is black for what probably seems to be forever. There is nothing. No fluffy cloud heaven, no lake of fire, and definitely not any Tiamat. Then you feel a sensation around your mouth and the sensation of air going in. It’s pleasant enough that you instinctively throw your arms out to embrace Bobby. When you open your eyes you find Helen’s face lip locked to yours. After a few seconds you actually freak out about it being her instead of Bobby. “H…hey! What the hell?!” you say and push Helen off of you. “I’m sorry Suzy, but you were unconscious and I was resuscitating you.” Helen remarks. “I wasn’t breathing?” you ask. “Um, well it didn’t look like you were. I mean Diana choked you out before I got to her.” “Wait, I was just unconscious. (cough) You didn’t check to see if I was still breathing first? You just wrapped your (cough) lips around mine and started blowing into my mouth?” “I panicked and didn’t want to waste time checking! I didn’t want you to die!” Helen exclaims. Well you can’t really fault her for trying to save your life. “(Cough) Well thanks Helen. So where is Diana?” you ask rubbing your throat which still hurts like hell. “Over to your right.” Helen points out and sure enough you turn your head and see Diana laying face down on the floor. “I smacked her in the head with the bat when she was choking you. I dunno if I killed her. I didn’t check to see if she was still breathing either, I was too busy worrying about you. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” “Yeah, I’m fine.” You slowly starting to stand. It takes some effort, but Helen helps you up. Your whole body hurts. You stare at Diana’s body and see her chest briefly rise and fall, so it looks like she’s still alive, just unconscious. Though you’re severely tempted to put an end to that, but you’ve got a better idea. “You think Bobby would let me sacrifice Diana?” you ask which takes her a little by surprise. “Um…I don’t know. I mean after we explain what she did, I can’t see he’d have any objections. There are no rules against it.” Helen replies. “Good, it’s my fucking wedding day, I should at least get to pick…well shit looks like she’s waking up already.” You remark when you see Diana begin to stir. “Hey, guess what Diana, you’re going to be at my wedding after all. You’re going to be one of the most important people there in fact. Helen, do you have anything to tie this bitch up with?” you ask. “Uh, yeah I think I know where there are some handcuffs and there’s always duct tape laying around somewhere.” Helen replies. “Well go get them. I’ll keep an eye on Diana.” You say and pick up the nearby bat. While Helen goes running off, you standby staring at Diana who is giving you the stare of death, but is obviously still in lady pain. “You think I’m gonna just let you throw me on the altar and shove a knife in me like some fucking sheep? You gotta another thing coming blondie.” She remarks. “I don’t see as you have really a choice at this point.” You remark. “Bullshit, I still got a few choices. Like for instance, I could rush you right now, take that bat from you and bash your brains in with it.” “You think you still got the strength for that, let alone the speed?” “Maybe I’ll make it, maybe I won’t, but we’re gonna see…” Diana says and spits blood from her mouth. Just as you’re about to put out Diana’s lights again, you suddenly hear a very loud explosion which sounds like it’s coming from the left side of the house. You’ve been so busy with Diana, you’ve completely forgotten that Bobby’s been battling it out with Aaron elsewhere in the house. Your concerns are briefly for him instead. However, with this very brief distraction, Diana takes advantage and lunges at you and the pair of you are struggling with the damn bat again. Diana seems to be fueled by some sort of unnatural rage at this point, because she’s certainly more formidable than the first time you fought with her in the dining room, or maybe she’s not underestimating you like she did last time. In any case, you need an advantage, which is either going to be the bat you’re currently still struggling with, or the gun which you know is still somewhere on the stairwell. > You continue to struggle with Diana You don’t have time to go hunting for a gun when Diana’s already at your throat. Besides, if you shoot her, you risk killing her and you’ve still got that plan to sacrifice her ass. Diana’s grip and pull on the bat begins loosening your on grip on it. She’s going to have it soon, but since she’s so focused on the upper body, she’s not really paying attention to her lower defenses. You let go of the bat, which causes her to fall backwards slightly. Not enough to fall, but enough to put her a bit off balance and back up from you. Within this brief window of relief you follow up with your next attack and as hard as you can you kick her RIGHT IN THE PUSSY. Diana’s grip on the bat fails and you’re quick to retrieve it while she’s grabbing her girl parts in agony. “And I don’t dye my hair, I’m a fucking natural blonde, you fucking bitch!” you say and smash Diana’s nose in with the pommel of the bat. She falls to the floor bellowing in pain. Meanwhile Diana’s finally returned with the duct tape as well as a pair of handcuffs. “Shit, what happened?” Helen asks. “She attacked me again, what the fuck do you think happened? Come on let’s tie this bitch up, I just heard an explosion in the house and I want to go help Bobby.” You and Helen waste no time in handcuffing Diana’s hands behind her back and then duct taping her ankles together to the point where the bottom part of her legs look like a mummy. Of course when she won’t stop swearing and cursing at you both, you duct tape her mouth shut as well. “Okay, she should be secure. I’m going to grab that gun that’s probably somewhere still on the stairs and check on Bobby. Here, you take this and keep an eye on that bitch.” You say to Helen and hand her the bat. “Okay, please be careful Suzy.” Helen remarks and you’re off. On your way down the stairs you find the pistol that was dropped and take it. Then when you get to the ground floor you start cautiously making your way to the left wing of the house. You still haven’t seen anyone yet. The smell of gunpowder and smoke is in the air of this part of the house and peering in one of the rooms you see the results of what you assume is from grenades. The room is charred, blackened and wrecked. Whatever items were in this room have been completely destroyed and there is now a large hole allowing direct entry from the outside to the inside. You also notice small splotches of blood on the floor causing an easier to follow trail. Though who’s blood it is you have no idea. You can only hope it’s Aaron’s. “Shit, I really hope you’re alright Bobby.” You say to yourself and begin to follow the trail. You pass through a series of rooms to get to your destination. Some furnished, some empty. Eventually you get to a small room that has a door leading to stairs going down. You wonder if this is the dungeon that was mentioned to you in passing before. While you’re a little reluctant to go down there, this is where the blood trail leads. The smell emanating from that direction isn’t pleasant though it sounds silent down there. You slowly walk down the steps. The closer you get to the bottom, the smell becomes worse and when you finally get to the bottom there is no mistaking that this is indeed the dungeon, but it’s a complete wreck. There are body parts, gore and blood all over the place. A few of the cages you see are destroyed and at the farthest wall there is a large chunk taken out of it. Apparently there was more explosive fun down here. And sitting close to one of the more intact cages on a sturdy looking chair is Bobby looking down at the floor. Most of his clothing is covered blood and looks a bit dejected, but doesn’t look hurt so that’s good at least. “Bobby? Bobby are you okay?” you ask causing him to look up. “Oh yes, I’m fine…what happened to you?” Bobby says and starts getting up. You didn’t think about how you might look after coming back from your tussle with Diana. You’re probably sporting a few cuts and bruises of your own. “Oh, I had a knock down drag out with your sister Diana. Tried to kill me and Helen this time. We took care of it though.” “She dead?” “No, but I decided if I have to sacrifice someone on my wedding day, I’m requesting…no I’m demanding that it be her. So we’ve got her tied up for that purpose.” Bobby doesn’t respond in too much surprise at your request. “Well, I think after everything you’ve gone through, I think you deserve that right. It’s just as well anyway considering Aaron’s crazy ass just blew up all the prisoners.” Bobby says with a sigh. “What’s wrong? Didn’t we win and everything has worked out?” you ask. “Yeah, it did…it’s just…I dunno. I guess some of Aaron’s ranting just got to me that’s all.” “Well what did he say?” “Oh he just kept accusing me of not really being dedicated to Tiamat. I dunno, I know I shouldn’t pay any attention to it, but I can’t help but think he might have had a point. Maybe I am a little caught up in ritual…but still I THINK it’s important to revere Tiamat in a formal way! Just because I’m not completely running amok stealing army trucks and throwing explosives at shit doesn’t make me any less dedicated to glorious chaos! I mean…does it?” And that’s your cue to support the fragile male ego again. “Well of course it doesn’t my love. Your way is obviously a more intelligent approach to chaos. Just because something is chaotic, doesn’t mean it’s mindless. You’re playing the long game and attempting to build a dynasty. Instead of burning out quick, you’re plotting and planning labyrinthian schemes to eventually burn them all.” You say while looking into Bobby’s eyes and stroking the side of his face. “I’m so glad you understand me.” Bobby remarks and hugs you tightly. Bobby really does always feel completely better with just a few supportive words from you. Its sort of amazing really since you didn’t realize you had this sort of power over him, then again you two were never really in a situation like this before except the first time you met and that was when you counted on him to “rescue you.” That dynamic has clearly changed. You guess this is what his grandmother meant when she spoke to you in the dream. With that settled, Bobby and you make your way back to where Helen and Diana are. When you arrive, you see several other family members who finally came out of hiding. “Bobby you’re alive! I’m so glad to see you’re safe!” Helen remarks. Bobby just nods acknowledging Helen, but then turns his attention to everyone as a group. “Helen, you go check on the kids, if you haven’t already and YOU four, I’m gonna have another long talk with, but we’re going to do that later. Right now, Brandon, Ronald you grab Diana and throw her in one of those cells in the dungeon. There’s a couple of good ones still left. Afterwards, all of you are going to help me clean up this place…shit there is so much to do.” Bobby tells you not to worry about doing anything as you did enough just having to deal with Diana and he wants you to just rest up for tomorrow. You offer to help, but he really won’t hear of it. You don’t press the issue since hey if he doesn’t want you doing any work, you’re not going to argue about that. Before you leave he tells you that he’s got a spare gun in his clothing drawer just in case of an emergency. Before you head to your room, you grab a quick meal since you realize you didn’t really eat yesterday. By the time you get to your room, you’re really glad you didn’t have to help Bobby, because you’re really starting to feel the aches and pain all over your body. You take another shower, which helps a little. You spend the remainder of the day and night in the bedroom just resting. You hear noise occasionally from downstairs. At one point you hear the sound of vehicles outside and looking out the window you see someone driving the damaged army truck in front of where Aaron crashed through the gate as a temporary barrier you guess. Eventually you hear a knock on the door. You ask who it is and it’s Helen. You tell her to come in. “Hey Suzy, I just came in to check on you. Are you feeling okay?” Helen asks. “Well my body hurts all over, but other than that, I’m fine. You?” You ask. “Oh, I’m a little sore too, but nothing to worry about.” “Hm, so how’s the clean up going?” “Oh, I suspect that will be going on through the night.” “Well I guess Bobby won’t be coming to bed tonight then.” You remark. Then Helen walks towards the bed closer and asks: “Did…did you want me to get into bed with you? I mean I know it’s not the same but...” You’re almost at a loss for words. “Excuse me? I just meant he won’t be coming to bed, I wasn’t even implying anything sexual, and why are you offering to get into bed with me?! Y’know Helen, you’ve been putting out some strange signals towards me a couple times these past few days and at this point I’m starting to think you’re attracted to me…” Helen’s face turns a little pale and she attempts to turn to run away. “Helen, stop! I wanna know what’s going on in that head of yours, so come back.” You demand and sit up as Helen slowly walks back over. “I’m…sorry Suzy…I just thought…I dunno…you liked me…” Helen says looking down. “I do like you, but…wait, so you don’t love Bobby anymore?” you ask. “I do…but I feel like we’ve been so close these past two days, I think I’m starting to fall for you too. I mean when our lips were touching I felt a closer connection to you than I ever had before.” “You were giving me mouth to mouth resuscitation!” you shout. “But you embraced me in your arms! You even slipped your tongue in my mouth and when you opened your eyes you didn’t even let go immediately…” Helen points out. “I…I… was out of it! I thought you were Bobby!” you exclaim. “Bobby kisses like me?” Helen asks. “No, you tasted sweeter…I mean…fuck…Gah! Look I thought you were Bobby okay?” “Okay…I’m sorry Suzy. I didn’t mean to offend you.” “I’m not offended, this is just…weird though. I’m not a lesbian, not to mention I’m going to marry your brother. (Sigh) Look Helen, I’m a little tired to deal with this right now. I think we might have to address this in more detail tomorrow.” “But the wedding is tomorrow.” “Well, I guess that will be one more thing to deal with then, so until then good night. And before you even ask, no I won’t tell Bobby about this. I’m sure he’s got enough on his mind.” You say. “Thank you Suzy.” Helen says and then slowly walks out of your room. After she leaves you rub your face in disbelief of how this day has ended. This whole week has felt so random that you feel like you’re in one of those choose your own adventure books, you can’t even imagine how tomorrow is going to go. The only upside is unless this is some really elaborate seduction plot, Helen’s not planning to kill you like you thought she might be. Then again, who the hell ever knows in this house? As you start to fall asleep, you can imagine Grandma Morningstar is going to have a field day with this one. > Next day… FRIDAY "And now Suzy, having beaten the chicken soup out of all her other opponents this week, will take this final challenge by herself! Will she be able to do it ladies and gentlemen? Will she be able to impress Misty at last? We’ll find out today! Let’s give our small town girl some encouragement for her task at hand!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A huge plate of tacos, fish tacos to be precise. The lack of subtlety is hardly surprising at this point. You double face palm before exhaling and looking up. “Really?” you ask in disbelief. “This is the last task Suzy…” the disembodied announcer’s voice whispers. “I don’t give a shit, the concept of fish tacos is fucking disgusting for one thing and for another…” Suddenly Bobby’s grandmother appears as she has been doing in your dreams. “See? Told you we should’ve just went with traditional beef. Anyway I think the point was made.” Bobby’s grandmother cackles and with a wave of her cane, you’re back in that blasted wasteland you were in last time. “And what point would that be? And am I meeting this Misty yet or what?” “No, you’re not meeting Misty yet, and as for the point I think we both know what point that was.” “Yeah and I’m not a lesbian.” You say. “Who said you were? It’s pretty clear you love the cock, but you’re in some serious denial if you’re standing here claiming that you’re not into girls as well. It’s okay, really. There are no lines, we’re all here to enjoy each other’s bodies.” “I’m not!” you protest. “Oh come on Suzy, you know deep down you’re curious. Some of that three way porn on your computer involves the two girls and a guy configuration. I’d say beyond curious at this point. We both know you find Helen cute because you’re a narcissist at heart and she reminds you of yourself in some ways. Nothing like self love.” “Well she does have pretty eyes… but I’m still not interested. She’s a girl and I just don’t swing that way.” you say. “Bullshit, are you seriously saying you wouldn’t like to put a strap on and do my grand daughter from behind? Pull her hair and make her say your name and then after you were done fucking her, you’d shove her face in your pussy until she licked it clean and you climaxed in her mouth?” You’re not sure what’s more disturbing. A dead old lady giving graphic descriptions of how you’d fuck her grand daughter, or the fact that it’s sort of turning you on a bit. You’re a little at loss for words. “Hey…hey two girls and one guy isn’t lesbian porn.” You say fumbling with a partial defense. “Oh? I see. So it’s not gay if it’s a three-way? Well whatever you have to tell yourself I suppose. Still, if you truly feel that way I’m wondering if you’d be open to…nah…” “What?” you ask wondering where she’s going with this. “Hah! You ARE curious!” Grandma Morningstar cackles. “I’m not! I’m just wondering what you were going to drone on about!” “Okay then here it is, besides being really into getting blowjobs, Bobby’s also really into girl on girl stuff. Bobby probably wouldn’t turn down the idea of having a second wife which would be Helen in this instance. This wouldn’t have worked before with Diana, because of how much you two hated each other. However, with Helen, I think this would be more workable…” Grandma Morningstar says. “What? He’s never told me this! He’s never even gave any indication!” you say. “Well of course he hasn’t, as I told you before he’s a bit too much a gentleman to suggest it and I’m fairly certain he’s never even felt any romantic feelings towards Helen either. However I know for certain if you approached him with the idea, that he damn sure wouldn’t be against it.” “Well I’D be fucking against it!” you say. “Wait, so you’re fine with murdering someone on your wedding day, but you’re against marrying two people. You’re fine with being associated with a bunch of murderers that practice incest, but you’re against having sex with another girl even one you find attractive even if you don’t want to admit it. Interesting set of moral values you’ve got there blondie.” “But I’m marrying into YOUR family! Isn’t that a little hypocritical to criticize me when you’ve probably engaged in all manner of illegal and unnatural acts yourself?” “Not at all. My point is I didn’t really have the same arbitrary limits you place on yourself. I’m just pointing out your odd inconsistencies. I suppose it’s not really your fault. You can’t help the puritanical way you were raised.” You’re getting a little agitated and getting tired of insane troll logic at this point. “Look, if all you’re going to do is insult me, I think I’d like to wake up now.” You say. “You will soon, in any case I’m just trying to help YOU out!” “How is sharing Bobby helping me out?” “Sheesh, first you still can’t figure out who Misty is, now this? You really are slow on the uptake ain’t ya blondie? You’re lucky you’re pretty.” Bobby’s grandmother asks and then taps you in the forehead with her hand. “Ow! Stop!” you say and back away. “Look, I’m just going to end with this sagely wisdom. If you really want to live in a harmonious household, I suggest you open your mind a little. You’ve already made a few steps in the right direction; you might as well go all the way. I mean who the hell is going to be judging you? Nobody important that’s for sure. Besides, I’m sure with a little forethought you can think of the benefits of such an arrangement and turn it into an advantage. Well, that’s what I think. Anyway, congrats on your wedding and you’ve got my blessing. Good luck!” Good luck? Somehow that doesn’t sound reassuring. You’re about to ask Bobby’s grandmother what she exactly means by that, but then she waves that damn cane again and you’re enveloped the blackness and then you wake up. “Gah, fucking bitch.” You say groggily. “Oh...I’m sorry for waking you…I just wanted to apologize for yesterday and give you this to see if it fits, but I understand if you don’t want me here…” a familiar female voice remarks. You look around the room and see Helen coming in carrying some red clothing. “Huh? No, not you…wait what are you doing in here anyway? Did Bobby spend all night working on the house?” you ask “I’m bringing in your wedding dress and yes, Bobby has been working on the house for the most part. Trying to patch up the big hole in the house, cleaning up the dungeon, blocking the front gate. He had to bury our brother Jordan as well. I don’t believe he’s actually slept yet.” “Oh yeah, forgot that that asshole killed one of your siblings. I didn’t know him that well, but sorry for your loss.” You remark. “Thank you, but I suppose we’re all just puppets in Tiamat’s glourious chaos, so we all need to just move on right? We have to accept that some things just will never be…anyway could you see if this fits?” Helen asks holding up the red clothing which now looks a lot like lingerie. “Wait, that’s the wedding dress? It looks like slutty underwear from Hot Secret.” You answer and get out of bed. Helen’s face looks a bit offended by that statement. “My grandmother wore this on her wedding day! She had this dress made of the finest silk, not whatever cheap material they use in North Tiwanaland or some place! THIS is a one of a kind article of clothing! It’s not something you’d find in some edgy teenager hang out!” Helen remarks. “Okay! Geez. I’m not trying to insult the dress or your grandmother. It’s just…well I thought I’d be wearing something a little more… substantial. But seeing as your family isn’t exactly conventional and when in Rome…I guess I better try it on. Um, you washed it right?” “Of course. Hand washed it myself. Can’t risk putting it in a machine.” Helen says and hands it to you. “Red fishnets…red high heels…” you say. “Yes. Those shoes were also special made with the finest…” “Leather. Yes, I can imagine. Let me guess the fishnets were made with the finest silk as well.” “Well of course, what else would it be?” “What else indeed. Okay, well I guess I’m going in the bathroom to change.” “I understand. I’m still sorry about making you uncomfortable about my unwanted advances.” Helen says. Before you enter the bathroom, you start to wonder… “Helen, why did you approach me? Or rather I know why, but you were attracted to Bobby long before you met me. You obviously have the inner strength to make the first move as it were.” “Well, that was a little different for several reasons. I mean Diana would’ve killed me had I actually made a move on Bobby! With you, I just…I dunno. The moment felt right? And it still wasn’t easy. Of course I misread signals. Sorry.” Helen remarks meekly. And there it is, Helen’s subservience in action. Even with Diana gone, Helen’s mindset hasn’t changed much. You’re just a “nicer” replacement to Diana. You’re fairly certain now that Helen means no harm to you, if indeed she ever really did. So this is it, you’ll marry Bobby, have children by him and live happily ever as queen in this twisted family. Helen as usual will play the second fiddle content with her lot in life. As strange as that seems all relatively good for you, you still can’t help but think Helen doesn’t deserve better in some way. She did directly save your life after all. It makes you start to ponder Grandma Morningstar’s words of opening one’s mind to make way for new possibilities… > You continue on your path And you silently dismiss that idea immediately! Grandma Morningstar may or may not have been right about your “flexible” sexuality, but even if she was, you are still not fucking Helen just because you feel sorry for her or on some whim! Besides, you’re about to marry Bobby and you made a damn commitment. You can’t just be fucking his sister, hours before the wedding. Maybe nobody else in this family has any much sense of “social mores” but that’s just wrong as far as your concerned. And even if Bobby WAS okay with it, you’re already making enough sacrifices for him and giving in to his possible secret desires for a harem aren’t part of that plan. You’re the only one and that’s that. You don’t fucking share. You enter the bathroom and go through your usual routine of showering and such. Afterwards you finally get around putting on the “wedding dress.” The first thing you do is look at the dress before putting it on and wondering if it’s going to be bigger in the chest area. While you’re not lacking in that region, you’ve met Bobby’s grandmother (in dream form anyway) and she’s got at least another couple cup sizes on you. In fact her body type back in her prime was more of an old school 1950s pinup girl hourglass figure than your own “petite” size. The funny thing is, as soon as you put it on, it seems to fit perfectly to your own body. The material isn’t any sort of spandex or stretchy material, it’s silk like Helen said, but given Bobby’s family’s strangeness, you have to wonder if it’s…magical? “Magical underwear.” You scoff; shaking your head in half disbelief you’re even considering it. Not surprisingly the stockings AND the shoes fit you perfectly as well. Yeah, Grandma Morningstar probably had all this stuff weaved by a giant magical spider voodoo priest or some shit because it doesn’t make sense that any of this stuff would fit you so well. Regardless of its origins, you do feel pretty comfortable despite looking like a Hollywood streetwalker. The heels don’t even hurt your feet, though you’re still a little unsteady on them due to not being used to wearing such things. Let alone these being stilettos. The last time you wore heels was when Uncle Ed made you wear stripperiffic clothing with the intent to lure Bobby and his dad into the woods where he could kill them. While everything turned out for the best because you met Bobby that fateful night, the part with Uncle Ed still gives you the shivers just thinking about it. You look at yourself in the mirror one more time, before leaving the bathroom. “Well Suzy, you might look like a whore in this thing, but at least you look like a high priced one.” You say to yourself. When you exit the bathroom Helen stands up and looks at you. “Oh my. You’re…you’re…so beautiful looking. I knew it would fit you perfectly.” Helen gushes. “Yeah I am pretty hot looking in this get up. Shit, still can’t balance on these heels though.” You say. “Hmm, well maybe you can dispense with those. I mean I’d hate for you to fall down the stairs when we go show everyone how you look. Maybe we should take some pictures!” Helen says approaching you. “What? I thought I was just putting it on as a test drive as it were. While I won’t deny this stuff feels pretty comfortable on my skin that I don’t mind wearing it, I sort of don’t want to be walking around the house with it on until show time. Besides everyone can see how awesomely sexy I am then.” “I think they should see you now. It’ll raise the spirits around here seeing you dressed like this.” Helen remarks as she begins touching your arm. “Well it’ll raise something with the males around here when they see me of course. Not sure about the ladies of this house, though you’re getting a little too close there Helen.” “Oh please? At least go show Bobby. I know he’d like to see you.” Helen says ignoring your previous remark about invading your personal space. “I’m sure he’s really busy right now, besides isn’t it bad luck for me to see him right before the wedding?” “Oh you’re thinking of those silly traditions for other weddings. That’s not the case here. Come on I’ll take you to him.” Helen says and at this point is pulling on your hands almost causing you fall. “Hey! I nearly fell! I told you already that you’re too damn close!” you snap. Helen immediately backs away and looks down submissively. “I’m sorry Suzy. I didn’t mean to violate your personal space.” “(Sigh) It’s fine Helen…just calm down a bit and let me at least take these shoes off first before I go heading downstairs.” As you sit down and start taking your shoes off, you and Helen start to hear noise from outside. The both of you go over to the window to take a peek. You and Helen see several figures crawling under the truck blocking the broken front gate or trying to climb the fence. The ones that have gotten in are loping in a wild jerky like motion. They’re also screaming, howling and making inhuman sounds. From your vantage point they LOOK human, but they’re certainly not acting like it. Then the door swings open causing both you and Helen to jump a bit. It’s Veronica with a gun in hand. “What the hell are you two doing in here, dyking it out? Don’t you know we’re being attacked by zombies?” Veronica exclaims. “I was trying on my wedding dress, thank you very much and we only just saw the freaks outside, so they are zombies?” you say. “Yeah, I mean…I dunno if they are. Maybe they’re just rabid humans or something, but they’re gnashing their teeth, moaning and coming at us like something out of a horror movie. We need all the help we can get to repel these things!” “We’ll be ready in a moment.” You say. “Well hurry up or else there isn’t going to be a wedding. We’re having a hard time trying to…” A loud crashing noise followed by gunfire is heard from downstairs. “Shit! That sounded close! I gotta go!” Veronica shouts and you hear her run off. Well at least it looks like Bobby’s finally lit a fire under his relative’s asses to pull their weight around here. “(Sigh) Fucking zombies. Of course this day HAD to get worse…” you say shaking your head. “Suzy, we need to hurry to go help Bobby.” Helen says pointing out the obvious. “Yeah, hold on let me just get something.” You go to Bobby’s clothing drawer to get the spare gun he mentioned yesterday. “Hey, what about me?” Helen asks. “Well, just grab a blunt object! Unplug that desk lamp and use that to bash those freaks’ heads in I guess.” “Suzy, I don’t really want to argue, but do you even know how to use a gun properly? Maybe you should give me the gun and you just stay behind me.” “What? I’m not giving you the gun! And for your information my older brother Ben DID show me how to shoot a gun…a few times.” “A few times…Suzy, I was taught to fire a gun, aim and everything else before I was ten. I’m just saying in a situation like this, it might be best if I have the gun, I’m sure when we get to the others, Bobby will give you another one of his.” Helen remarks. “Yeah and in the mean time I’m fucking defenseless.” “You won’t be! I’ll protect you and I think you can count on that.” Helen says. Helen’s insistence on wanting the gun is making you even more paranoid in this already fucked up situation. In the back of your mind you can’t help but think she’s going to shoot you even though the pair of you are supposed to be cool with each other. Of course it’s possible she’d just feel safer with the gun in her hand. You don’t actually know if she’s a better shot than you, though you aren’t exactly a highly skilled sharp shooter. Especially after failing to hit Diana during your scuffle yesterday. > You hand the gun to Helen You’re making a big leap in faith here… You look at Helen and the gun, then with a deep exhale you slowly hand it to her. Helen takes the pistol and checks it before addressing you. “You still don’t trust me do you?” Helen says looking a little hurt. “I gave you the gun didn’t I? Come on let’s go deal with these zombies, or whatever they are before they eat us or something.” “Um, aren’t you going to change your clothing?” Helen asks. “Huh? Oh.” You say not even realizing you were still dressed the way you were. “No, it’s my fucking wedding day, but I will be taking this.” You say and then unplug the small desk lamp you mentioned earlier to Helen and take it as a makeshift weapon. “Um, okay then.” Helen remarks and the pair of you are out the door with her taking the lead. The pair of you head through the corridor and down the stairs both not making many comments at this point. Might be due to the situation being more than a little tense and its only getting more so as the gunfire, yelling and guttural noises are getting louder as you approach the center of the fighting. As you approach yet another door, suddenly two of the creatures burst through it. The sight and surprise cause the both of you to scream, but Helen manages to keep her cool long enough to shoot the first creature directly in the head, dropping it immediately. The second one however tackles Helen to the floor. She drops her pistol and struggles with the creature while calling for you to help. You don’t even bother scrambling for the gun yourself; you just smash the side of the thing’s head with the lamp you already have in hand, which is enough to cause it roll off of Helen, but not enough to kill it. With a massive head wound the thing starts to move again, continuing to make all sorts of horrible guttural noises. Helen however has retaken possession of the gun again and fires two more shots into the thing’s face. It ceases moving and slumps lifelessly to the floor. “Shit, that was intense.” You say. “Yeah, thanks for getting that thing off me.” Helen remarks. “No problem. Guess it was a good idea handing you the gun afterall. You are a much better shot. I probably would’ve missed and dropped the damn gun as soon as those zombies came running through the door.” “Y’know these things aren’t really rotten looking or anything. Maybe they aren’t undead.” Helen says. “Well I still don’t want to get killed and eaten by some virus infected asshole. Come on, this isn’t over yet.” You say and help Helen up. By the time you get to Bobby and the rest of the family’s location, they’ve managed to wipe out most of the things and you and Helen don’t have much to do. Still, you wonder about their origin. Some sort of sickness perhaps? Maybe the government was fucking around with a secret weapon like they tend to do and it got out of hand. It would explain why there was a drastic rise in violence even before you left town and why the National Guard showed up later. It isn’t until after all the mad attackers are killed that Bobby manages to address you directly. He’s incredibly tired looking, the rest of his family looks pretty tired too, but he looks like he’s about to collapse. “Are you okay?! They didn’t bite you did they?” Bobby asks, stumbling a bit from exhaustion. “No, I’m fine. We both are.” You reply. “Suzy saved my life.” Helen remarks. “Well, I think we both saved each other more than enough times this week.” You say which causes a bit of a happiness of Helen’s face. “I’m just glad the both of you are okay. I have to ask though, what’s with your clothing?” Bobby asks. “Oh yeah, I guess Veronica didn’t tell you, I was trying on the wedding dress when all this shit went down. Speaking of which let’s get this wedding started! I’m anxious to get married!” you say and go up to Bobby giving him a kiss. Now you’ve caught everyone off guard. One moment they’re fighting for their lives, the next they’re attending a wedding. “Now?” Bobby asks. “We just won a great victory and I’m in my wedding dress. What better time than now?” you ask. “Well I suppose you have a point.” Bobby says with a smile. “Good! I’m ready to become part of this family.” You say. Bobby looks around at the rest of his family. “Well, you heard my soon to be wife! Let’s get this started! Helen go get the kids, Brandon, Ronald, go grab Diana and the rest of you do a quick sweep of the house just to make sure we got all those bastards. Let’s go!” Bobby orders. Everyone complies and soon you and Bobby are left by yourselves. Bobby takes a seat to briefly rest. He yawns several times in a row and is struggling to stay awake, but you can tell your enthusiasm for the wedding has energized him a bit. You decide to keep the energy going by sitting on his lap and making a fuss. “Hey, it’s not time for the honeymoon yet.” Bobby remarks with a brief chuckle. “Oh it’s always times for the honeymoon with you.” You say. “Damn, I wish I wasn’t so tired…hope I don’t stumble over the joining passage when I’m marrying us.” Bobby remarks as he rubs your legs. “Wait, isn’t someone else doing that?” “Huh? No, I’m doing it. I mean I’m the high priest here. Technically it could just be me and you here.” “What? That’s it? We could’ve done that a long time ago!” “Well, like I’ve told you before, I just wanted it to be perfect.” You wrap your arms around Bobby and lean your body against him. “Bobby, just being with you, is enough perfection for me. Besides, isn’t the carnage surrounding us true perfection in the eyes of Tiamat’s chaotic glory or something?” you ask. Bobby looks around at the nearby mess of broken furniture and the couple bodies laying on the floor and smiles. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” He says and then pauses. “You know I’ve been thinking. I’ll take care of Diana personally; you don’t need to worry about her anymore. You don’t need to go through some sacrifice ritual just to prove yourself…I know you love me and that you’re one of us now. No need to dirty your hands on her.” “That’s sweet and I’m really glad you feel that way. But I’ll take the knife anyway, I’ve got something special in mind.” You say. “Oh? Like what?” “Oh, you’ll see.” You say with a smile. A few more moments pass as you wait for everyone to return. In the meantime you let Bobby rest a bit by closing his eyes. Veronica and Denise return first, then Helen with all the children. Finally Brandon and Ronald arrive gripping Diana by each arm. Predictably she’s swearing up a storm and accusing everyone of being against her. It wakes Bobby up from his brief nap. “Oh? Everyone here? Good. Let’s get this started. (Yawn) Sorry, I’m so damn tired…” “Bobby, you don’t need to stand up for this, just keep resting in your chair and I’ll just be right here on your lap. I’m sure that’s acceptable to everyone right?” you ask. Nobody has any real objections to this, well except Diana of course. “Bobby! You’re making a fucking mistake! I’M your soul mate! I’M the one supposed to marry you! You’re betraying Tiamat and everything we hold dear!” she screams. Ignoring Diana, Bobby recites what you guess is a passage from whatever holy book of Tiamat he got it from and when the time comes, you accept your place as his wife. Then the both of you kiss like you’ve done so many times before, though this time it’s different. Most of Bobby’s family claps if they are able. You now feel like you belong here. “Here. I’ve been carrying this in my pocket the whole day, nearly forgot it was there.” Bobby remarks and hands you a ring with a sizable red diamond in the center and smaller black inlayed around it. It’s definitely beautiful and when you try it on, you find that it fits perfectly. Diana’s eyes would burn through you if they could. “You…you gave her grandma’s ring?! YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! You dishonor that woman! I hope grandma’s spirit comes back and rapes the pair of you with a fucking broom handle!” Diana shouts. At this point Bobby calmly pulls out a knife and hands it to you. “Did you still want the honors?” Bobby asks. You take the knife and look over at Helen, who is trying her best to look supportive. Well, you know she IS supportive, but you also know that this isn’t really what she wants. Still, maybe there is a way to make things just a little better for her. “Helen, you and I have been through a lot this week and in this week I’ve come to see you as the sister I never had. Now that I’m officially part of this family, we ARE sisters. I know this is my day, but I feel like I should at least share some of my fortune with you. So here you go. Time to finally put all those years of bullying to rest.” You say and hand Helen the knife. Helen is shocked by your gesture. Several other family members are as well. Diana however is still livid. “Oh by Tiamat’s Chaotic Cunt…I’m not believing this…fine. I’ve been a bullying bitch to you, I won’t deny that, is that what you want to hear? But if you REALLY love Bobby as much as I KNOW you do, you’ll take that knife and stab the shit out of that bitch over there before you stab me, because if you don’t you’re just going to play second fiddle to blondie for the rest of your life and NEVER get Bobby. And you’ll just be loser like you alw…UGH!” Diana’s words are interrupted when Helen rushes to her and stabs her in the chest. “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! YOU FUCKING BITCH! YOU WERE ALWAYS IN THE FUCKING WAY! JUST FUCKING DIE! DIE! JUST DIE ALREADY! I FUCKING HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! DIE!” Helen screams alternating between laughing and crying while stabbing Diana. Brandon and Ronald let go of Diana and everyone just watches Helen’s meltdown. When it’s all said and done, Helen is on top of her sister’s bloody body and the floor covered in blood. “I…always…(pant)…why? Why couldn’t you (sob) have…just been nice…(sob) just once? Nice…like…Suzy.” Helen says in a quivering voice and looks at you. At this point you get up and walk over to Helen. You even kneel down in the blood next to her. She drops the knife and goes to hug you and completely falls apart in your arms. “Shhh, it’s okay Helen…it’s okay. It’s over now…” you say. Helen looks at you and nods silently. While she sniffles and tries to compose herself, you address everyone who are probably starting to form their own ideas about what Diana might’ve been babbling about. Even Bobby is alert again. “Okay folks, I’m sure we need to clean up around here after this recent attack and I also imagine that Bobby could use some rest, so let’s help him out and get to it!” you say. Clean up goes relatively fast. Around the house at least since that’s your primary concern. You go for the quick dirty approach of just getting all the dead bodies in one pile outside. You briefly think about burning them, but Bobby says that might attract attention and doing it tomorrow when everyone is more awake enough to defend this place properly is a better idea. Broken windows and the front door are barricaded with furniture for the night. Somewhere just after midnight everyone is ready to crash. Bobby, who has been practically sleep walking by this point just tells everyone to sleep with a weapon tonight and you can all just roll the dice without a night watch tonight. Nobody argues. You help Bobby upstairs and the pair of you collapse on the bed. You won’t be celebrating your honeymoon tonight, but at least you’ll be sleeping together. You cuddle up to Bobby who is fast asleep at this point and head into dreamland yourself, fully expecting Grandma Morningstar to fuck with you in some way as usual. > Next day… SATURDAY "Suzy! You’ve won! You’ve truly overcome all odds! You have not only survived the various uncertain events of this week, but you’ve also thrived! Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give our small town girl some applause and respect for she truly is worthy of it!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A broomstick. It’s just a plain wooden broomstick, nothing more, nothing less. “Nice. I’m guessing you were listening to Diana’s rant earlier.” You say unemotionally. No sooner have you said that, when everything disappears and you’re facing Grandma Morningstar in the blasted wasteland again. “Hey at least it wasn’t a plate of tacos this time. Guess you really are deeply repressed.” Grandma Morningstar says. “Whatever. Am I finally done with all this nonsense? Am I finally meeting this Misty?” you say. “You figure out who it is yet?” “Yeah and I can’t believe I didn’t catch it before. Misty…MISS T…Tiamat.” You answer. “Yay! Your pretty little blonde head finally got it! And no you don’t get to meet her.” “What? After all this build up? Seems pretty anti-climatic.” “Yeah, well besides her being busy, the jury’s still out on you.” “But…didn’t I win? I’m part of the family now.” “Yes, yes, technically you won, I suppose, but the lot you’re with are practically just sheep to be lead around by the nose by Bobby so they’ll accept anything he says and Bobby’s in love so of course he’s fine with whatever you do as long as you’re petting his ego and sucking his dick. However, it wasn’t like you killed Diana yourself.” “So? I let Helen do it. I think it was pretty therapeutic for her.” “Hmm, and do you think Helen is going to be on your side in the long run knowing how she feels about not just Bobby, but you as well? You’re too soft hearted, but marrying her and Bobby might’ve better solved the potential problems you may have with Helen in the future. However you didn’t do that and while you probably appeased her feelings in the short term, I still say problems are going to crop up in the future with her. You don’t think she won’t just snap one day or silently plot against you?” “Maybe, but I’d say that’s unlikely.” Grandma Morningstar snorts. “And how can you be so sure?” “I’m not, but isn’t that what chaos is all about? The risk on a possible outcome no matter how small? I mean I’m sure the pragmatic thing to do would be to kill Helen, but I don’t really see why I should or need to. In fact a little kindness is already going a long way with her and will most likely do so in the foreseeable future. Besides, this whole week has taught me a little something about myself.” “Oh? And what’s that?” Grandma Morningstar asks. “I’m fucked up.” You say. “Well I could’ve told you that.” Grandma Morningstar cackles. “No what I mean is, there is a dark place within me. I know that now. I even feel it sometimes. Why else would I willingly marry a man in a murderous cult? I mean obviously I’ve got some serious mental issues going on in my head that I’ve only managed to not act on and outright block out mainly because I’ve been doing next to nothing in life. Until recently that is. I’ve been realizing that the more fucked up things get around me, the easier it would be for me to just say fuck it too and go full retard on the dark side and the thing is, I’d probably be fairly decent at it. Probably even better than most of the current family here.” Grandma Morningstar listens intently wondering where you’re going with this. “But I’m not going to do that, because I also still have a sense of decency. I see no reason to just go engaging in murder, rape and all the rest of that shit just because I’m…evil? I mean am I evil? I don’t know. Probably to most I would be. Probably to you, I’m not evil enough, but to me I’m just me. And THAT’S all I have to worry about. My own fucking code. So, if I want to show kindness to Helen because a small part of me feels genuine pity for her, then so be it. And by the same token, if I suddenly feel the need to blow her brains out because I feel she’s a risk, well we’ll just have to see what happens in the future.” Grandma Morningstar leans on her cane and remains silent staring at you, then a creepy smiles spreads across her face. “Well, I guess we will blondie. I guess we will. I suppose Tiamat’s chaos can be as kind as it can be cruel. Who is to say what is right? Well anyway, see you around blondie, I think you’ll be alright.” Grandma Morningstar waves goodbye to you, disappears and everything around you gets dark. And you wake up. You turn your head to the right and see Bobby still with you partially under the blankets. He puts down a book he was reading. “Hey, it’s about time you got up. You look a little frazzled. Bad dream?” Bobby asks. “Eh…better than others I’ve had this week. Probably should talk about at some point later, but I’m surprised to see you here. I figured you were going to going to get up early to work on the compound’s defenses.” You say. “I didn’t sleep for practically a day remember? Anyway, I did get up earlier and gave everyone their orders of what I want worked on then I told everyone not to disturb me unless cannibals or more asshole family members are trying to wreck the place. So far haven’t had any trouble. Glad to see I don’t have to hover around them constantly.” Bobby remarks. As Bobby brings you closer to him by putting his arm around you, and he surprises you with his next words. “So…Helen was in love with me huh?” he says. “…yeah…she was. She probably still is.” You say. “(Sigh) Shit. You don’t think this will be a problem do you?” Bobby says. “Why would it be? You don’t have the same feelings for her do you?” you ask. “No, never thought about her in that way. Didn’t know she felt that way about me until Diana opened her mouth yesterday. Guess it’s sort of obvious in retrospect. I was just more concerned about you though. I don’t want you fearing for plots against your life. I mean I can go talk to her…” “Don’t worry about it. I’ve discussed all this with Helen on more than one occasion this week. We’ve worked it out.” You say. While this reassures Bobby you start to wonder about a few of the things you spoke to his grandmother about. “Bobby?” you ask. “Yes?” “Are you disappointed that I didn’t kill Diana?” “What? What’s brought this on? I told you that didn’t need to kill Diana.” Yeah, but it seemed so important to you before and it doesn’t have to be just Diana, I mean are you disappointed that I haven’t killed…anyone? I mean before this week went all to hell, I was supposed to sacrifice one of your captives that Aaron blew up.” Bobby’s arm squeezes around you a little tighter as if to reassure you. “Suzy, I’ve had a lot of things to think about this week. I had all these grand plans of how this week was going to go and due to unforeseen events some of those plans went to shit. Such is the way of chaos and such is the will of Tiamat. Maybe all of this was her way of showing me that. But getting back to you, I had time to think hard about our relationship and why I fell in love with you in the first place. Your innocence.” Bobby remarks. “My virginity?” you say. “Ha ha! Well that might’ve been part of it, but I was referring more about the fact that well you hadn’t grown up in the same sort of environment I did. That you hadn’t killed anyone.” “Are you saying the fact that I hadn’t murdered anyone made you more drawn to me?” “Yes initially. You have to remember Suzy, as fucked up as YOU think your family were, you were the closest link to normal for me and I guess that was sort of a turn on. Of course in time when our relationship grew into love, I wanted even more to…corrupt you? I guess that might be the right word. I wanted you to be more like me, more like my family.” “But…?” “But, like I said a lot of shit happened this week. I tried to make plans that didn’t work out the way I expected which made me realize that maybe I shouldn’t have been making so many plans, and then I came to the conclusion that maybe I shouldn’t be trying so hard to change you either. I should just go more with the flow and whatever happens, happens. If you never sacrifice someone in Tiamat’s honor, that’s fine. Hell, if you never even accept her glorious chaos, that’s fine too. I love you for who you are now, that’s good enough for me and always will be.” Bobby’s words make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. You might not be that “good girl” that once hid from the world in basement anymore, but apparently in Bobby’s eyes, you’re still “his good girl.” You begin to initiate closer intimacy and then that’s when a flash of bright light briefly covers the windows and a loud noise is heard in the distance. “Shit what the hell was that?” Bobby asks sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “I dunno, I’m glad we weren’t looking directly at that flash though.” You remark rubbing your eyes too. “Wait a minute…I think I know…” Bobby says and gets up. He walks over to the window and you follow close behind. In the distance to the west, you see the remnants of a mushroom cloud. Probably landed on Security City or near it. You can only guess it probably wasn’t a big one, but you’re still a little concerned if you’re in some sort of fallout radius. “So…they finally went and did it.” You say. “Looks like. (Sigh) Shit.” Bobby says. “What’s wrong? I thought we were prepared for this sort of thing.” “Oh we are. I’m not even worried about that, it’s just I wanted to spend the day relaxing with you. Now? Well I think you know I’m going to have to go and direct everyone. Oh to hell with it, the apocalypse isn’t going anywhere. Let’s go back to what we were doing.” “Works for me.” You agree. Eventually you will have to deal with this new world and whatever its going to throw at you, but for now you and Bobby allow yourselves to enjoy yourselves after this chaotic week. > … Calm in the Storm of Chaos The Future… “Look Nergal, I know Emberville is miles away, but ever since those dumb ass rednecks have been aggressively trying to move in on our territory, we can’t trade with them or even New Security anymore in the near future. So get these crates of berries and apples over there as quick as you can and get us some medical supplies.” You say to Nergal having to strain your neck just to look up at him a bit. Nergal is an imposing figure to be sure. He’s the largest member of the family, but he’ll always be your “baby” as far as you’re concerned. “But why do I have to do this? I want to go help Anu and Dad fight those trailer trash fuckers.” Nergal replies. “Don’t argue son. Besides, Aiden and Nadia are going with you. I thought you liked hanging out with them.” “Well they’re good in a fire fight sure, but…I dunno I always feel like they’re telepathic talking about me inside each others’ heads. They’re always making odd laughter about some private joke that only they know.” “Well that’s probably because they are, but trust me, you know deep down they’ll come through for you. Right?” you say asking Aiden and Nadia. The two twins look at each other. “Of…” Aiden says. “course…” Nadia says. “Aunt Suzy.” They both say in unison with a smile. You’ve gotten used to a lot of odd things since marrying Bobby, but these two sibling never fail to creep you out to a minor degree. You go back to address Nergal. “Now get a move on, you know those mutants really like their fruit…oh and DON’T waste any of it on some three legged hooker like before. You remember what happened last time, you had to use up some of the medical supplies just curing yourself of whatever the hell that… thing was carrying…ugh. You’re lucky your cock didn’t turn green and fall off.” “Aw mom…” Nergal says looking a bit embarrassed. “Don’t aw mom me. You heard what I said. Now get going and be safe son.” You remark and hug him goodbye before the three of them get in the truck. You watch the gate open, the truck leave and the gate close again before going to check on your other son who is inside the house. You find Enki in his workshop with a stack of books and reading one he took from the library (Unsurprisingly the town library was mostly untouched in the chaos, nobody in town has ever appreciated reading very much even before the bombs). As usual he’s reading something science related, probably in the effort to figure out how to possibly improve something around here...or perhaps he’s just doing it for his own enjoyment. “Anything interesting son?” you ask. “Oh. Didn’t see you there mom. I fixed those guns Dad took from the last raid on those rednecks. I was just catching up on some reading. I was reading about solar power, but I dunno where we’d get the panels. I guess we’re sticking with biofuel in the foreseeable future. In any case I think I need to go search the library again, I’m almost done with the books I took last time.” You smile at how he’s always trying to learn new things. He’s always been the smartest of your children. He’s also the quietest and most introspective. He probably takes after you the most, not surprising since he looks the most like you. You pat him on the shoulder. “Sometimes I think it’s a shame you didn’t grow up before the bombs. You would’ve really liked the Internet. All that knowledge at the tip of your fingers and you never had to ever leave the house.” You say. “Yeah, you’ve told me before mom. Sounded really useful, wish it was still around.” Enki replies. “Certainly occupied a lot of my time, anyway I’ll let you get back to it. Remember to eat something son, I know how you get really involved with your reading and tinkering.” Leaving Enki to his own devices you decide to go back to your own as well by heading to your room, and that’s when the sounds of various laughter and similar noises coming up from the basement stairs. School must be out. Several little ones pass you by, a few wave or say “Hi Aunt Suzy” but most to run off to go play. You don’t even know which ones belong to who anymore, you just know they aren’t yours or Bobby’s and you are definitely glad that it isn’t your responsibility to look after them. “Children! Remember if you go outside, to stay within the fence! Don’t try to climb over it! I mean it!” you hear Helen shout. You then see Helen slowly walking from the basement stairs. She looks pretty drained but then having to look after the Morningstar youth constantly for years tends to do that to a person. “You need some help there Helen? You look a little tired.” You ask. “Oh, hey there Suzy. I’m fine. They were just a little overly rambunctious today. All excited about tonight’s sacrifice to Tiamat I guess.” Helen replies. “Oh is it time for one of those again? Didn’t realize. Seems like you’ve been having a lot of them lately.” You say. “Well, we are at war with those trailer parkers. Tends to bring in some more captives than usual.” “Mmm, true.” You say with a nod. You’re about to leave when Helen makes more conversation. “You shouldn’t worry about them you know. They’re fine.” She says. “Who shouldn’t I worry about?” you ask. “Bobby and Anu.” “I wasn’t worried. Why would I be Helen?” “Oh…um…well I thought maybe with them leading these raids against the trailer park, your concern would be increased.” Helen starting to stumble over her words. “Not particularly, I know they’re both far more skilled than some trailer trash.” “Yes…of course. I just know how much you love Bobby and wouldn’t want anything to happen to him, and Anu being your first born and all.” “Indeed, but I’m almost inclined to believe you’re more worried than I am especially given your own feelings towards him.” You say. “What? I don’t love Bobby! I mean I do, but not in that way! I mean it’s not like that anymore!” Helen exclaims. “I wasn’t talking about Bobby. I was talking about Anu.” You say. Helen begins to look panicked. “I…I um…” Helen begins to sputter. “Oh come on Helen, Anu, looks almost exactly like a younger version of Bobby. You probably saw it as a second chance even. I’m not blind Helen, I know you’ve been fucking my son.” Helen’s eyes begin to tear up and she begins to shake. You ALMOST have an urge to press this a little further, but you just can’t bring yourself to torment poor Helen even if it would be funny to do so. “Helen, Helen, relax okay? I’m not angry. Stop worrying and calm yourself.” You say and put a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to reassure her. “Y…you’re not?” Helen responds. “Well…that might be the wrong choice of words. I’m not THRILLED by the idea, but I already confronted Anu about this, months ago when I first started to notice it. Wasn’t really a conversation I wanted to have and Anu swore up and down that it was all his idea…though I suspect he wasn’t entirely truthfully about that…” Helen’s head looks down. “I’m sorry…I just…I was so lonely…you don’t know what it’s like…” Helen meekly says. “I know Helen. I know. (Sigh) Look, the only reason why I’m not excessively angry about this is because…well this family isn’t exactly conventional and you’re both consenting adults and Anu’s old enough to make his own decisions.” “So…you’re okay with it?” “Eh…let’s just say…that time you brought me back to life in the past? That debt’s finally repaid. Just…just continue to keep it low profile okay?” “Of course! We will Suzy…and thank you for understanding.” Helen says and hugs you tightly. “Mm, well I am the nice one in the family.” You say patting her on the back and slowly withdrawing yourself away. Helen bids you goodbye with a slightly more upbeat tone and leaves to go see to the children. You just shake your head at how simple it is to make Helen happy. You guess after all these years; you still can’t help but feel sorry for her. You may not be a born killer like most in this family, but you’ve definitely proven that even living among incestuous cult killers, a little kindness still goes a long way.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>And you silently dismiss that idea immediately! Grandma Morningstar may or may not have been right about your “flexible” sexuality, but even if she was, you are still not fucking Helen just because you feel sorry for her or on some whim! Besides, you’re about to marry Bobby and you made a damn commitment. You can’t just be fucking his sister, hours before the wedding. Maybe nobody else in this family has any much sense of “social mores” but that’s just wrong as far as your concerned. And even if Bobby WAS okay with it, you’re already making enough sacrifices for him and giving in to his possible secret desires for a harem aren’t part of that plan. You’re the only one and that’s that. You don’t fucking share. You enter the bathroom and go through your usual routine of showering and such. Afterwards you finally get around putting on the “wedding dress.” The first thing you do is look at the dress before putting it on and wondering if it’s going to be bigger in the chest area. While you’re not lacking in that region, you’ve met Bobby’s grandmother (in dream form anyway) and she’s got at least another couple cup sizes on you. In fact her body type back in her prime was more of an old school 1950s pinup girl hourglass figure than your own “petite” size. The funny thing is, as soon as you put it on, it seems to fit perfectly to your own body. The material isn’t any sort of spandex or stretchy material, it’s silk like Helen said, but given Bobby’s family’s strangeness, you have to wonder if it’s…magical? “Magical underwear.” You scoff; shaking your head in half disbelief you’re even considering it. Not surprisingly the stockings AND the shoes fit you perfectly as well. Yeah, Grandma Morningstar probably had all this stuff weaved by a giant magical spider voodoo priest or some shit because it doesn’t make sense that any of this stuff would fit you so well. Regardless of its origins, you do feel pretty comfortable despite looking like a Hollywood streetwalker. The heels don’t even hurt your feet, though you’re still a little unsteady on them due to not being used to wearing such things. Let alone these being stilettos. The last time you wore heels was when Uncle Ed made you wear stripperiffic clothing with the intent to lure Bobby and his dad into the woods where he could kill them. While everything turned out for the best because you met Bobby that fateful night, the part with Uncle Ed still gives you the shivers just thinking about it. You look at yourself in the mirror one more time, before leaving the bathroom. “Well Suzy, you might look like a whore in this thing, but at least you look like a high priced one.” You say to yourself. When you exit the bathroom Helen stands up and looks at you. “Oh my. You’re…you’re…so beautiful looking. I knew it would fit you perfectly.” Helen gushes. “Yeah I am pretty hot looking in this get up. Shit, still can’t balance on these heels though.” You say. “Hmm, well maybe you can dispense with those. I mean I’d hate for you to fall down the stairs when we go show everyone how you look. Maybe we should take some pictures!” Helen says approaching you. “What? I thought I was just putting it on as a test drive as it were. While I won’t deny this stuff feels pretty comfortable on my skin that I don’t mind wearing it, I sort of don’t want to be walking around the house with it on until show time. Besides everyone can see how awesomely sexy I am then.” “I think they should see you now. It’ll raise the spirits around here seeing you dressed like this.” Helen remarks as she begins touching your arm. “Well it’ll raise something with the males around here when they see me of course. Not sure about the ladies of this house, though you’re getting a little too close there Helen.” “Oh please? At least go show Bobby. I know he’d like to see you.” Helen says ignoring your previous remark about invading your personal space. “I’m sure he’s really busy right now, besides isn’t it bad luck for me to see him right before the wedding?” “Oh you’re thinking of those silly traditions for other weddings. That’s not the case here. Come on I’ll take you to him.” Helen says and at this point is pulling on your hands almost causing you fall. “Hey! I nearly fell! I told you already that you’re too damn close!” you snap. Helen immediately backs away and looks down submissively. “I’m sorry Suzy. I didn’t mean to violate your personal space.” “(Sigh) It’s fine Helen…just calm down a bit and let me at least take these shoes off first before I go heading downstairs.” As you sit down and start taking your shoes off, you and Helen start to hear noise from outside. The both of you go over to the window to take a peek. You and Helen see several figures crawling under the truck blocking the broken front gate or trying to climb the fence. The ones that have gotten in are loping in a wild jerky like motion. They’re also screaming, howling and making inhuman sounds. From your vantage point they LOOK human, but they’re certainly not acting like it. Then the door swings open causing both you and Helen to jump a bit. It’s Veronica with a gun in hand. “What the hell are you two doing in here, dyking it out? Don’t you know we’re being attacked by zombies?” Veronica exclaims. “I was trying on my wedding dress, thank you very much and we only just saw the freaks outside, so they are zombies?” you say. “Yeah, I mean…I dunno if they are. Maybe they’re just rabid humans or something, but they’re gnashing their teeth, moaning and coming at us like something out of a horror movie. We need all the help we can get to repel these things!” “We’ll be ready in a moment.” You say. “Well hurry up or else there isn’t going to be a wedding. We’re having a hard time trying to…” A loud crashing noise followed by gunfire is heard from downstairs. “Shit! That sounded close! I gotta go!” Veronica shouts and you hear her run off. Well at least it looks like Bobby’s finally lit a fire under his relative’s asses to pull their weight around here. “(Sigh) Fucking zombies. Of course this day HAD to get worse…” you say shaking your head. “Suzy, we need to hurry to go help Bobby.” Helen says pointing out the obvious. “Yeah, hold on let me just get something.” You go to Bobby’s clothing drawer to get the spare gun he mentioned yesterday. “Hey, what about me?” Helen asks. “Well, just grab a blunt object! Unplug that desk lamp and use that to bash those freaks’ heads in I guess.” “Suzy, I don’t really want to argue, but do you even know how to use a gun properly? Maybe you should give me the gun and you just stay behind me.” “What? I’m not giving you the gun! And for your information my older brother Ben DID show me how to shoot a gun…a few times.” “A few times…Suzy, I was taught to fire a gun, aim and everything else before I was ten. I’m just saying in a situation like this, it might be best if I have the gun, I’m sure when we get to the others, Bobby will give you another one of his.” Helen remarks. “Yeah and in the mean time I’m fucking defenseless.” “You won’t be! I’ll protect you and I think you can count on that.” Helen says. Helen’s insistence on wanting the gun is making you even more paranoid in this already fucked up situation. In the back of your mind you can’t help but think she’s going to shoot you even though the pair of you are supposed to be cool with each other. Of course it’s possible she’d just feel safer with the gun in her hand. You don’t actually know if she’s a better shot than you, though you aren’t exactly a highly skilled sharp shooter. Especially after failing to hit Diana during your scuffle yesterday. > You keep the gun When in doubt, always keep the gun. “Helen, I’m not giving you the gun, just stay behind me.” You say. “You…you don’t trust me do you?” Helen remarks. “What? No, of course do.” “No you don’t, you think I’m going to shoot you!” “Look, I just feel safer with the gun in my hand, now let’s go!” you say and start heading out the door. Helen isn’t letting this go though; she continues to bitch about your decision as you make your way through the corridor and down the stairs. “You’re a poor liar Suzy and I’m not sure what hurts more, you not trusting me after all we’ve been through or you feeling like you need to lie to me about your true feelings.” Helen remarks. “Oh for fuck’s sake, we don’t have time for this!” “I saved your life yesterday you know!” “And I’m grateful for that, but your current bitching about this situation isn’t exactly putting my mind at ease. You seem a little too eager to want the damn gun.” When you finally finish going down the stairs, the gunfire, yelling and guttural noises are louder, but you and Helen are still arguing even as you make your way towards where the fighting is coming from. “I can’t believe you still don’t trust me...” Helen remarks causing you to stop and spin around to address her. “ENOUGH! Just fucking STOP! At this point no I DON’T trust you! I obviously broke your hopes of having some fucked up three way with Bobby and you’re harboring a grudge about it. Now we can settle our differences later, right now we have to…” “SUZY LOOK OUT!” Helen suddenly screams in your face. You spin back around just in time to see two of the creatures burst through the door in front of you. You get off one shot, which goes wild due to being taken by complete surprise and not being used to shooting under pressure. You are tackled to the ground by one of them dropping your gun in the process, while the other goes running for Helen, who you hear screaming and running away. As you struggle with the creature on the floor, you briefly look desperately over the gun that you dropped and try to reach for it, but it’s just out your grasp. The thing nearly bites you again and tightens its grip on your arms in an attempt to immobilize you. Even your knees to its groin don’t help. You don’t know if this thing is undead or just rabid, but it hardly matters when it soon overpowers you and rips open your throat with its teeth.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY "And now Suzy, having beaten the chicken soup out of all her other opponents this week, will take this final challenge by herself! Will she be able to do it ladies and gentlemen? Will she be able to impress Misty at last? We’ll find out today! Let’s give our small town girl some encouragement for her task at hand!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A huge plate of tacos, fish tacos to be precise. The lack of subtlety is hardly surprising at this point. You double face palm before exhaling and looking up. “Really?” you ask in disbelief. “This is the last task Suzy…” the disembodied announcer’s voice whispers. “I don’t give a shit, the concept of fish tacos is fucking disgusting for one thing and for another…” Suddenly Bobby’s grandmother appears as she has been doing in your dreams. “See? Told you we should’ve just went with traditional beef. Anyway I think the point was made.” Bobby’s grandmother cackles and with a wave of her cane, you’re back in that blasted wasteland you were in last time. “And what point would that be? And am I meeting this Misty yet or what?” “No, you’re not meeting Misty yet, and as for the point I think we both know what point that was.” “Yeah and I’m not a lesbian.” You say. “Who said you were? It’s pretty clear you love the cock, but you’re in some serious denial if you’re standing here claiming that you’re not into girls as well. It’s okay, really. There are no lines, we’re all here to enjoy each other’s bodies.” “I’m not!” you protest. “Oh come on Suzy, you know deep down you’re curious. Some of that three way porn on your computer involves the two girls and a guy configuration. I’d say beyond curious at this point. We both know you find Helen cute because you’re a narcissist at heart and she reminds you of yourself in some ways. Nothing like self love.” “Well she does have pretty eyes… but I’m still not interested. She’s a girl and I just don’t swing that way.” you say. “Bullshit, are you seriously saying you wouldn’t like to put a strap on and do my grand daughter from behind? Pull her hair and make her say your name and then after you were done fucking her, you’d shove her face in your pussy until she licked it clean and you climaxed in her mouth?” You’re not sure what’s more disturbing. A dead old lady giving graphic descriptions of how you’d fuck her grand daughter, or the fact that it’s sort of turning you on a bit. You’re a little at loss for words. “Hey…hey two girls and one guy isn’t lesbian porn.” You say fumbling with a partial defense. “Oh? I see. So it’s not gay if it’s a three-way? Well whatever you have to tell yourself I suppose. Still, if you truly feel that way I’m wondering if you’d be open to…nah…” “What?” you ask wondering where she’s going with this. “Hah! You ARE curious!” Grandma Morningstar cackles. “I’m not! I’m just wondering what you were going to drone on about!” “Okay then here it is, besides being really into getting blowjobs, Bobby’s also really into girl on girl stuff. Bobby probably wouldn’t turn down the idea of having a second wife which would be Helen in this instance. This wouldn’t have worked before with Diana, because of how much you two hated each other. However, with Helen, I think this would be more workable…” Grandma Morningstar says. “What? He’s never told me this! He’s never even gave any indication!” you say. “Well of course he hasn’t, as I told you before he’s a bit too much a gentleman to suggest it and I’m fairly certain he’s never even felt any romantic feelings towards Helen either. However I know for certain if you approached him with the idea, that he damn sure wouldn’t be against it.” “Well I’D be fucking against it!” you say. “Wait, so you’re fine with murdering someone on your wedding day, but you’re against marrying two people. You’re fine with being associated with a bunch of murderers that practice incest, but you’re against having sex with another girl even one you find attractive even if you don’t want to admit it. Interesting set of moral values you’ve got there blondie.” “But I’m marrying into YOUR family! Isn’t that a little hypocritical to criticize me when you’ve probably engaged in all manner of illegal and unnatural acts yourself?” “Not at all. My point is I didn’t really have the same arbitrary limits you place on yourself. I’m just pointing out your odd inconsistencies. I suppose it’s not really your fault. You can’t help the puritanical way you were raised.” You’re getting a little agitated and getting tired of insane troll logic at this point. “Look, if all you’re going to do is insult me, I think I’d like to wake up now.” You say. “You will soon, in any case I’m just trying to help YOU out!” “How is sharing Bobby helping me out?” “Sheesh, first you still can’t figure out who Misty is, now this? You really are slow on the uptake ain’t ya blondie? You’re lucky you’re pretty.” Bobby’s grandmother asks and then taps you in the forehead with her hand. “Ow! Stop!” you say and back away. “Look, I’m just going to end with this sagely wisdom. If you really want to live in a harmonious household, I suggest you open your mind a little. You’ve already made a few steps in the right direction; you might as well go all the way. I mean who the hell is going to be judging you? Nobody important that’s for sure. Besides, I’m sure with a little forethought you can think of the benefits of such an arrangement and turn it into an advantage. Well, that’s what I think. Anyway, congrats on your wedding and you’ve got my blessing. Good luck!” Good luck? Somehow that doesn’t sound reassuring. You’re about to ask Bobby’s grandmother what she exactly means by that, but then she waves that damn cane again and you’re enveloped the blackness and then you wake up. “Gah, fucking bitch.” You say groggily. “Oh...I’m sorry for waking you…I just wanted to apologize for yesterday and give you this to see if it fits, but I understand if you don’t want me here…” a familiar female voice remarks. You look around the room and see Helen coming in carrying some red clothing. “Huh? No, not you…wait what are you doing in here anyway? Did Bobby spend all night working on the house?” you ask “I’m bringing in your wedding dress and yes, Bobby has been working on the house for the most part. Trying to patch up the big hole in the house, cleaning up the dungeon, blocking the front gate. He had to bury our brother Jordan as well. I don’t believe he’s actually slept yet.” “Oh yeah, forgot that that asshole killed one of your siblings. I didn’t know him that well, but sorry for your loss.” You remark. “Thank you, but I suppose we’re all just puppets in Tiamat’s glourious chaos, so we all need to just move on right? We have to accept that some things just will never be…anyway could you see if this fits?” Helen asks holding up the red clothing which now looks a lot like lingerie. “Wait, that’s the wedding dress? It looks like slutty underwear from Hot Secret.” You answer and get out of bed. Helen’s face looks a bit offended by that statement. “My grandmother wore this on her wedding day! She had this dress made of the finest silk, not whatever cheap material they use in North Tiwanaland or some place! THIS is a one of a kind article of clothing! It’s not something you’d find in some edgy teenager hang out!” Helen remarks. “Okay! Geez. I’m not trying to insult the dress or your grandmother. It’s just…well I thought I’d be wearing something a little more… substantial. But seeing as your family isn’t exactly conventional and when in Rome…I guess I better try it on. Um, you washed it right?” “Of course. Hand washed it myself. Can’t risk putting it in a machine.” Helen says and hands it to you. “Red fishnets…red high heels…” you say. “Yes. Those shoes were also special made with the finest…” “Leather. Yes, I can imagine. Let me guess the fishnets were made with the finest silk as well.” “Well of course, what else would it be?” “What else indeed. Okay, well I guess I’m going in the bathroom to change.” “I understand. I’m still sorry about making you uncomfortable about my unwanted advances.” Helen says. Before you enter the bathroom, you start to wonder… “Helen, why did you approach me? Or rather I know why, but you were attracted to Bobby long before you met me. You obviously have the inner strength to make the first move as it were.” “Well, that was a little different for several reasons. I mean Diana would’ve killed me had I actually made a move on Bobby! With you, I just…I dunno. The moment felt right? And it still wasn’t easy. Of course I misread signals. Sorry.” Helen remarks meekly. And there it is, Helen’s subservience in action. Even with Diana gone, Helen’s mindset hasn’t changed much. You’re just a “nicer” replacement to Diana. You’re fairly certain now that Helen means no harm to you, if indeed she ever really did. So this is it, you’ll marry Bobby, have children by him and live happily ever as queen in this twisted family. Helen as usual will play the second fiddle content with her lot in life. As strange as that seems all relatively good for you, you still can’t help but think Helen doesn’t deserve better in some way. She did directly save your life after all. It makes you start to ponder Grandma Morningstar’s words of opening one’s mind to make way for new possibilities… > You take a new path You have to admit you HAVE always been a bit curious, and this probably would be the easiest way to satisfy that curiosity. “Fuck it.” You say to yourself, throw your “wedding dress” aside and you turn around and approach Helen. “Take off all your clothes.” You say. “Wha…what?” Helen remarks in surprise. “Take off all your clothes. Obviously we got some things to work out before we proceed any further, or more specifically I got some things to work out before I proceed any further. So get your clothes off.” You say and head over to the bed where you start taking off your own. This is uncharted territory for you, but strangely as you lie in bed completely naked, you’re not quite as nervous about it as you thought you might be. When Helen finally gets naked, you see she has nice little body on her. Her tits aren’t as big as yours, but nobody’s perfect. As mildly anxious as you are, Helen has to be doubly so. She might’ve made the “first move” but you’ve definitely taken the lead. Helen’s also a virgin for all intents and purposes. You wonder if that might be making all this a little hotter for you. “You’re very beautiful.” Helen says walking over to you. “Yeah…oh you’re not bad yourself. So…you ready to do this?” you ask. “Yes, I’m ready…um…I’ve never done this before with anyone…how should we start?” Helen asks. “Uh, I guess kissing. Even in the movies they usually start like that.” You reply. “Okay.” Helen remarks compliantly. Helen lies next to you and the pair of you begin kissing and caressing each other. It’s definitely different than when you’re with Bobby who tends to be a little rougher. This really isn’t all that bad; in fact the only downside is Helen is doing a lot of talking instead of focusing on the task at hand. It’s not even dirty talk; she keeps asking questions if she’s doing something right. Doesn’t take you long before you start pushing her head down so she can stop talking altogether. “Oh…okay…” Helen remarks as she gets the hint. “And Helen, I don’t want any more talking. Just focus, understand? Yeah…mmm…just like that…” you say as you feel the magic starting to happen. Your back starts arching, your toes start curling, you begin to make moans of pleasure and grab the back of Helen’s head. You’re generally in a state of bliss as Helen does her thing. At this moment nothing else exists except your pleasure so you aren’t paying any attention to the noise that is going on outside. And you aren’t paying attention to the door when it opens up… “Urgh! What the fuck are you two doing?!” Veronica exclaims with a gun in her hand. “Oh! Um…uh…” Helen stutters as she wipes her mouth and raises her head up and probably looking like a deer in the headlights from Veronica’s perspective. “SHIT! Doesn’t anyone fucking knock!? What the hell are you doing in here waving a gun around?” you say and try to cover up as much as you can. “I was coming to warn you that we’re being fucking attacked by zombies! I didn’t realize I was going to walk in on you two dyking it out! Does Bobby know about this?” Veronica says. “Nevermind all that, did you just say zombies are attacking us?” you ask. “Yeah, I mean…I dunno if they are. Maybe they’re just rabid humans or something, but they’re gnashing their teeth, moaning and coming at us like something out of a horror movie. We need all the help we can get to repel these things!” “We’ll be ready in a moment.” You say as Veronica shakes her head. “Well you two better hurry up, (Sigh) honestly, we’re getting attacked and you two are busy licking…” A loud crashing noise followed by gunfire is heard from downstairs. “Shit! That sounded close! I gotta go!” Veronica shouts and you hear her run off. Well at least it looks like Bobby’s finally lit a fire under his relative’s asses to pull their weight around here. “(Sigh) Fucking zombies. Of course this day couldn’t just be a pleasant one.” You say fumbling with your clothing. “I hope we get down there in time to help Bobby.” Helen says getting dressed as well. “We will, hold on let me get something first.” You go to Bobby’s clothing drawer to get the spare gun he mentioned yesterday. “Hey, what about me?” Helen asks. “Well, just grab a blunt object! Unplug that desk lamp and use that to bash those freaks’ heads in I guess.” “Suzy, I don’t really want to argue, but do you even know how to use a gun properly? Maybe you should give me the gun and you just stay behind me.” “For your information my older brother Ben DID show me how to shoot a gun…a few times.” “A few times…Suzy, I was taught to fire a gun, aim and everything else before I was ten. I’m just saying in a situation like this, it might be best if I have the gun, I’m sure when we get to the others, Bobby will give you another one of his.” Helen remarks. “Yeah and in the mean time I’m fucking defenseless.” “You won’t be! I’ll protect you and I think you can count on that.” Helen says and then follows up by putting her arm around your waist and then sensually kissing you on the lips. You ALMOST want to head right back to the bed, but unfortunately you’ve got more important things to deal with. “Okay, okay, you can take the gun, but me and you are definitely going to finish what we started after all this is over.” You say and go unplug the small desk lamp you mentioned earlier to Helen and take it as a makeshift weapon. The pair of you head through the corridor and down the stairs both not making many comments at this point. Might be due to the situation being more than a little tense and its only getting more so as the gunfire, yelling and guttural noises are getting louder as you approach the center of the fighting. Helen then suddenly stops and turns to you. “Suzy?” Helen says. “What!?” you ask. “I just want you to know that if something goes wrong…” “Helen, nothing is going to go wrong, but we need to just focus and get to Bobby.” “Well just in case it does, I just want you to know I love…” “SHIT HELEN! SHOOT! SHOOT!” you exclaim when you see two creatures bursting through the door in front of you. Helen spins around and fires, hiting one of them square in the chest twice, but it doesn’t even slow down, it just tackles Helen onto the floor. She drops her pistol and struggles with the creature while calling for you to help and while you’d love to do just that, the second creature is currently trying to make a meal out of you. You swing at the creature a couple times, but it moves in such a jerky motion that you don’t land a good hit and cause only a glancing blow to its head. Still it’s enough to give you a bit of a breather while the thing tries to get back up off the floor. You spy the gun nearby and wonder if you should go for it or help Helen directly first. > You help Helen With as much strength as you can muster, you swing the lamp upside the head of the creature that is pinning Helen to the floor which is enough to cause it roll off of Helen, but not enough to kill it. You soon have problems of your own when the second creature you hit before has completely recovered and tackles you to the floor. With the map still in hand, you attempt to swing it from your prone position, but the creature has already dug its fingers deep into that arm and forcibly holds it to prevent you from doing so. You manage to keep it from biting your face off by at least pushing your forearms up across its neck. At this close range, it doesn’t look rotten, just very dirty looking and crazed. Still, undead or not, you don’t want to risk getting bit, let alone killed and eaten. As you struggle with the creature on the floor, a shot is fired into the side of the thing’s head and blood splatters on you, the floor and partially on the nearby wall. “Shit!” you shout and then try to pull yourself out from under the corpse. While you’re doing that, another shot is fired killing the other creature that was previously on top of Helen and recovering from the blow it took to the head from you. She then places two more headshots to both bodies. “I think they’re dead, we can’t waste bullets, if there are more of them.” You say. “Are you okay?” Helen asks touching your bruised arm, which aches. “Yeah, I’m fine.” “These things aren’t really rotten looking or anything. Maybe they aren’t undead.” Helen says. “Well I still don’t want to get killed and eaten by some virus infected asshole. Come on, this isn’t over yet.” You say. By the time you get to Bobby and the rest of the family’s location, they’ve managed to wipe out most of the things and you and Helen don’t have much to do. Still, you wonder about their origin. Some sort of sickness perhaps? Maybe the government was fucking around with a secret weapon like they tend to do and it got out of hand. It would explain why there was a drastic rise in violence even before you left town and why the National Guard showed up later. It isn’t until after all the mad attackers are killed that Bobby manages to address you directly. He’s incredibly tired looking, the rest of his family looks pretty tired too, but he looks like he’s about to collapse. “Are you okay?! They didn’t bite you did they?” Bobby asks, stumbling a bit from exhaustion. “No, I’m fine. We both are.” You reply. “Suzy saved my life.” Helen remarks. “Well, I think we both saved each other more than enough times this week.” You say which causes a bit of a happiness of Helen’s face. “Could’ve used your help a lot sooner, if you hadn’t been busy cheating on Bobby.” Veronica snorts. This remark causes every family member to stop what they are doing and take notice. Helen, looks more terrified than she did when facing the rabid people. Bobby looks more surprised than anyone. He looks at Veronica and then looks at you. You keep a straight face despite Veronica ratting you out. “What’s she talking about Suzy?” “Well it’s like this Bobby…” you say and then grab Helen close to you and give her a kiss on the cheek. Helen blushes a bit and tries to remain composed, but she’s a mixture of bashful and fearful. “Before all this shit went down, your sister and I were bonding in a way that I don’t think you’ll disapprove of. Helen loves you. I love you. Helen likes me and I’ve grown very fond of her and I want ALL of us to get married. Right now.” Now you’ve caught everyone off guard. One moment they’re fighting for their lives, the next they’re attending a wedding. Not mention this new bombshell you’ve dropped. “Now?” Bobby asks. “We just won a great victory! What, you don’t want to marry two beautiful women?” you say. “I didn’t say that, I just…this is a bit surprising. Helen, I never knew you felt this way…why didn’t you tell me? I guess it doesn’t matter, we can discuss this in more detail afterwards, but by Tiamat’s Chaotic Cunt and Twenty Tits YES! I’ll marry the pair of you!” Bobby shouts and then you turn to Helen. “Helen why don’t you go get your grandmother’s wedding dress and wear it?” You say causing her eyes to light up. “You…you really want me to wear it? Are you sure?!” she asks. “I’m sure. I think you deserve the honors and I think she’d want you to wear it.” “Oh thank you Suzy!” she says and kisses you on the lips and runs off. Bobby at this point tells Brandon and Ronald to drag Diana out from her cell. Veronica looks slightly disappointed by the lack of drama and is even more disappointed when Bobby tells her to gather the children for the wedding. He then warns everyone to still keep an eye out for anymore of those rabid bastards just in case you didn’t get them all. Everyone complies and soon you and Bobby are left by yourselves. Bobby takes a seat to briefly rest. He yawns several times in a row and is struggling to stay awake, but you can tell your enthusiasm for the wedding has energized him a bit. You decide to keep the energy going by sitting on his lap and making a fuss. “Hey, it’s not time for the honeymoon yet.” Bobby remarks with a brief chuckle. “Oh it’s always times for the honeymoon with you.” You say. “Damn, I wish I wasn’t so tired…hope I don’t stumble over the joining passage when I’m marrying us.” Bobby remarks as he rubs your legs. “Wait, isn’t someone else doing that?” “Huh? No, I’m doing it. I mean I’m the high priest here. Technically it could just be me and you here.” “What? That’s it? We could’ve done that a long time ago!” “I’m glad I didn’t because obviously Helen would’ve missed out…wow still can’t believe she was in love with me all this time…” “Is it so hard to believe?” “I guess I just wasn’t paying attention to her. I mean it makes sense in retrospect given how attentive she’s always been…just don’t know why she never said anything before.” “Scared of Diana.” “That makes sense…speaking of not saying anything. Why didn’t YOU tell me you were also into girls, let alone my sister?” Bobby asks. You wrap your arms around Bobby and lean your body against him. “Eh…well I sort of went through some odd self discovery lately…I’m not into girls so much as I just like your sister. I can’t quite explain it all properly right now, maybe later. Let’s just say it’s been a weird week. Besides isn’t all this spontaneity along with the carnage causing Tiamat’s chaotic glory smile upon us or something?” You say. Bobby looks around at the nearby mess of broken furniture and the couple bodies laying on the floor and smiles. “I suppose you’re right.” A few more moments pass as you wait for everyone to return. In the meantime you let Bobby rest a bit by closing his eyes. Veronica and Denise return first with all the children. Brandon and Ronald arrive gripping Diana by each arm. Predictably she’s swearing up a storm and accusing everyone of being against her. It wakes Bobby up from his brief nap. “Oh? Everyone here? Good. Let’s get this started. (Yawn) Sorry, I’m so damn tired…” “Helen’s not here yet. You don’t need to stand up for this, just keep resting in your chair and I’ll just be right here on your lap. I’m sure that’s acceptable to everyone right?” you ask. Before anyone can answer you, Helen returns in her grandmother’s wedding dress. Everyone is in awe of how sexy she looks in it. If Bobby needed anymore rousing from his tired state, this has certainly done it. She’s not having any problems walking on the heels either. In fact the only two who aren’t in awe, are you mainly because you were just having sex with her not too long ago and this a pale substitute and Diana who just swears and looks disgusted. “How do I look?” she asks a bit nervously. “Well I’d do you right now, if it was just Bobby here.” You say. “By Tiamat’s Angry Asshole I’m not fucking believing this! You’re seriously going to marry them both? The traitor and the whore? I guess it would take two to replace me! Your TRUE soul mate!” Diana yells. Ignoring Diana, Helen sits next to you and Bobby and the three of you hold hands as he recites what you guess is a passage from whatever holy book of Tiamat he got it from and when the time comes, you both accept your place as his wives. Then the three of you exchange kisses with each other. Most of Bobby’s family claps if they are able. It’s definitely unusual, but it feels so right. You now feel like you belong here. “Here. I’ve been carrying this in my pocket the whole day, nearly forgot it was there.” Bobby remarks and hands you a ring with a sizable red diamond in the center and smaller black inlayed around it. It’s definitely beautiful and when you try it on, you find that it fits perfectly. “You…you gave her grandma’s ring?! YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! You dishonor that woman! I hope grandma’s spirit comes back and rapes the three of you with a fucking broom handle!” Diana shouts. Bobby ignores Diana and turns to Helen. “I apologize…I didn’t know I’d be blessed with a second bride today. I don’t have another ring. I’ll have to acquire another.” He says to Helen. “Oh that’s okay. I’m just so happy to be married to you at last!” Helen says and squeezes him tightly. Diana is completely livid. “Oh fuck this! Fuck ALL of this! FUCK Tiamat! FUCK this family! FUCK my treacherous bitch of a sister! FUCK your blonde whore! And most importantly FUCK YOU BOBBY! FUCK YOU, you fucking fickle cheating bastard. Just fucking kill me now so I can leave this fucking shameful spectacle. At this point Bobby calmly pulls out a knife. “Who wants to do the honors?” You take the knife and look over at Helen. “Did you want to be the one?” you ask Helen. “Can we do it together?” Helen asks. “Of course.” You answer. The pair of you stand and walk over to Diana who has now become silent. You can’t imagine the rage she’s experiencing, but her gaze would burn through you both if it could. You raise the knife and then Helen stand behind you and puts one arm around your waist and then one hand on yours that holds the handle so they are like one. You turn your head slightly over your right shoulder to give her a kiss and then together with one single thrust you both jam the knife into Diana’s chest. The blade strikes true, puncturing her heart. The hatred still burns in Diana’s eyes as she coughs up blood, wheezing and finally dying. Brandon and Ronald let her body flop to the floor when her life force is gone. And there it is, your first kill. “Was it good for you?” Helen asks. “Oh it was the best.” You say. At this point Bobby is completely alert. “As hot as all this is and despite this being my wedding day…sadly duty comes first and this house has to be put in order. Who knows if we’re going to get attacked again. Let’s start with the clean up.” Bobby orders. Clean up goes relatively fast. Around the house at least since that’s your primary concern. You go for the quick dirty approach of just getting all the dead bodies in one pile outside. You briefly think about burning them, but Bobby says that might attract attention and doing it tomorrow when everyone is more awake enough to defend this place properly is a better idea. Broken windows and the front door are barricaded with furniture for the night. Somewhere just after midnight everyone is ready to crash. Bobby, who has been practically sleep walking by this point just tells everyone to sleep with a weapon tonight and you can all just roll the dice without a night watch tonight. Nobody argues. You and Helen help Bobby upstairs and three of you collapse on the bed. You and Helen still have a bit of energy left and you briefly consider celebrating your honeymoon without him, but that doesn’t seem quite right despite the fact that you really wanted to finish what was started in this bedroom. Instead you cuddle up to Bobby who is fast asleep at this point while Helen snuggles next to you. Feeling very loved, you head into dreamland, not even worrying about how Grandma Morningstar might fuck with you tonight. > Next day… SATURDAY "Suzy! You’ve won! You’ve truly overcome all odds! You have not only survived the various uncertain events of this week, but you’ve also thrived! Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give our small town girl some applause and respect for she truly is worthy of it!” As the crowd claps, whistles and stomps their feet in support, you sit at a large table by yourself looking at… A huge plate of those little Vienna sausages. “Let me guess, they double as looking like oversized clits along with being phallic.” You say. No sooner have you said that, when everything disappears and you’re facing Grandma Morningstar in the blasted wasteland again. “Hey, that’s quick catching on to the symbolism there, blondie.” Grandma Morningstar says. “I have my moments. So am I finally done with all this nonsense? Am I finally meeting this Misty?” you say. “You figure out who it is yet?” “Yeah and I can’t believe I didn’t catch it before. Misty…MISS T…Tiamat.” You answer. “Well shit, you’re two for two! Glad to see you’re on a roll and your pretty little blonde head finally got it, but no you don’t get to meet her.” “What? After all this build up? Seems pretty anti-climatic.” “Yeah, well she’s busy. Besides the jury’s still out on you a bit.” “What? Didn’t I win? I’m part of the family now. I mean I killed a bitch for Tiamat, married a pair of siblings and everything!” you say. “So? You didn’t like Diana to begin with, it wasn’t like were killing some stranger you didn’t have any grudge against. As far as marrying two of my grand children, well that’s certainly unconventional, but hardly very interesting in the scheme of things. Though I suppose given how boring and repressed your basement dwelling years were you probably think you’re a real wild woman.” “So what was the point of all this?!” “None really…well I suppose for my own curiosity I did want to see if Bobby’s blonde beauty was even worthy of being in this family and despite what I just said, the fact that you’ve been speaking with me means you’re probably closer to Tiamat than most of them even are. The lot you’re with are practically sheep to be lead around by the nose by Bobby. And Bobby’s so in love with you he’ll do anything for you. I mean sure you added Helen to the mix, but Bobby is always going to love you more. Helen’s just so thrilled to be there that she’s easily pliable as well. I dare say you probably could get either one of them to do what you want if you really pushed for it…but then you sort of already knew that didn’t you?” Grandma Morningstar says with slight smile. You don’t say anything for a moment. “Well it wasn’t all because I felt sorry for Helen and that she gave good head. Helen being a second wife means she can have that whole mess o’ babies Bobby wants. Let her worry about getting fat, stretch marks and the pain of child birth.” You remark. “Heh, interesting approach. So I take it you’re going to be the opinionated sexy fun wife while Helen gets to be the submissive, baby and sandwich making one.” "Pretty much.” “Well guess you aren’t quite as mediocre as you appear. That’s good. Well maybe Tiamat doesn’t give a shit, but I like you. In fact if I was still alive and decades younger, I’d bend you over and fuck you in the ass raw with a strap on. Make you say my name while I pulled that pretty golden hair of yours. Wouldn’t that be fun?” Grandma Morningstar says with a creepy leer. “Um…no.” you just say backing away. Grandma Morningstar cackles. “Still prudish as ever. See ya around blondie, I think you’ll be alright.” Grandma Morningstar waves goodbye to you, disappears and everything around you gets dark. And you wake up. You turn your head to the right and see Bobby reading and partially under the blankets. To your left Helen’s face and body is practically on top of your own as she’s still cuddled up next to you and got her arm around you. When you try to move, Helen moves with you. “Helen, Helen, move your arm, I need to sit up.” You say. “Huh? But I like holding you.” Helen says still half asleep. “Of course you do, but you still need to move.” You say and forcibly move Helen’s arm. She begins to stir a bit now that you’ve disturbed her comfort. “It’s about time you got up. You look a little frazzled. Bad dream?” Bobby asks putting his book away. “Eh…better than others I’ve had this week. Probably should talk about at some point later, but I’m surprised to see you here. I figured you were going to going to get up early to work on the compound’s defenses.” You say. “I didn’t sleep for practically a day remember? Anyway, I did get up earlier and gave everyone their orders of what I want worked on then I told everyone not to disturb me unless cannibals or more asshole family members are trying to wreck the place. So far haven’t had any trouble. Glad to see I don’t have to hover around them constantly. I’m sort of surprised Helen has been asleep all day, she tends to wake up earlier than I do to see to the young ones.” Bobby remarks. “I felt I deserved a day off.” Helen remarks starting to become more energetic. At this point Bobby brings you closer to him by putting his arm around you. Helen also starts getting gropey again and you’re now the meat in an incest sandwich. “So how exactly are we doing this?” Bobby asks. “Should we take turns?” Helen asks. “I don’t see why with a little bit of maneuvering, we can’t all just get our pleasure simultaneously. Helen, you’re still technically a virgin AND you’ve been practically waiting your whole life to get fucked by Bobby, so why don’t we get that out of the way and then at the same time when he’s doing you from behind, you can finish up where we left off yesterday. We can sort of go from there.” “Suzy…oh you’re the best! I just love you so much! You’re so thoughtful!” Helen exclaims squeezing you tightly. “Hey, okay, okay, you can show your appreciation when your tongue is deep inside me. So, Bobby are you okay with this arrangement?” you say. “Sure, but at some point during all of this, THIS is going inside you.” Bobby says pointing at his dick for emphasis. “I sure hope so.” You say and kiss Bobby. The three of you move around to get into your positions. Helen and Bobby briefly make out a bit and exchange a few sweet words to each other before getting to it. You imagine that this has got to be the best day her life. Actually it’s probably Bobby’s as well, but that’s for different reasons. As the three of you enjoy each other’s company, a feeling of satisfaction overcomes you. Not sexual satisfaction…well there is that too, but you genuinely feel good about your situation. You have not one, but two people who love you very much. Helen’s a bit “clingy” but you think you can handle that. At one time having a three way with a pair of siblings after killing someone would’ve been unthinkable, but then again it didn’t turn out quite so terrible either. While you’re still not quite into all this Tiamat worshipping, you do have a slightly new outlook on life now. You briefly wonder if you’re “evil” for not only going along with all this, but also enjoying it to a small degree, but what other options did you really have? You’re making the best of the current situation and you won’t apologize for it. You’re no longer that basement dwelling “good girl” anymore. While you’re in the middle of riding Bobby’s dick and Helen sucking on one of your tits, that’s when a flash of bright light briefly covers the windows and a loud noise is heard in the distance. “Shit what the hell was that?” Bobby asks sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “I dunno, I’m glad we weren’t looking directly at that flash though. I had my back to the window and that was still fucking bright.” You remark Helen doesn’t say anything, she’s still just rubbing her eyes, and then Bobby motions you to get off of him. “Wait a minute, I think I know what it was…” Bobby says and gets up off the bed. He walks over to the window and you and Helen follow close behind. In the distance to the west, you see the remnants of a mushroom cloud. Probably landed on Security City or near it. You can only guess it probably wasn’t a big one, but you’re still a little concerned if you’re in some sort of fallout radius. “By Tiamat…” Helen says and squeezes Bobby tightly out of nervousness. “So…they finally went and did it.” You say. “Looks like. (Sigh) Shit.” Bobby says. “What’s wrong? I thought we were prepared for this sort of thing.” You say. “Oh we are. I’m not even worried about that, it’s just I wanted to spend the day relaxing with the pair of you. Now? Well I think you know I’m going to have to go and direct everyone. Oh to hell with it, the apocalypse isn’t going anywhere. Let’s go back to what we were doing.” “Works for me.” You agree while Helen nods and smiles. Eventually you will have to deal with this new world and whatever its going to throw at you, but for now the three of you are going to get back to enjoying yourselves after this chaotic week. > … Parent of Sanity The Future… “Mom, are you really sure you want to go to Emberville with me? I mean it’s not exactly a relaxing journey.” Enki asks. “You don’t think your mother can handle herself in a fight? I have been living in this post apocalyptic hell longer than you have, you know. Would you rather Aiden and Nadia go with you, because right now they’re the only two not immediately busy.” “Yeah I know…don’t really feel like dealing with ongoing private jokes at my expense on the trip. Okay, I guess I’d rather have you along.” “Well geez, I guess I should be honored you’re allowing me to come with you.” You remark. “I didn’t mean it like that…I just…look, are you fully prepared for this trip?” “Of course, I got all my gear and everything. This isn’t the first time I’ve been out of the compound you know. It isn’t even my first trip to Emberville.” “Okay, okay, Mom, I get it. You’re a wasteland bad ass, let’s go.” You and your son get in the armored car and after a quick wave to one of the Morningstars at the gate you’re soon on your way. You study Enki for a moment just sort of recognizing how much he looks more like you than his father. His personality is certainly more similar to yours as well. Enki notices you studying him. “What?” he questions. “Nothing son.” You say and then pausing to think of what to say to try to lighten up the mood. “See? This is nice. How often do we get to spend any quality time together like this anymore? You’re always locked in your workshop tinkering with gadgets and reading. It does us both some good to get out once in awhile.” You say. Enki just gives you a brief look before turning his attention back to the road. He isn’t convinced that leaving the compound is ever a good idea, and you can’t really blame him, but you’re going to reinforce some life lessons in him today. That is one reason why you came on this trip, another is just so you can get away from Helen gushing about being pregnant for the umpteenth time. You take a look behind your seat and see the several crates of berries and apples in the storage area. “Those Emberville mutants sure enjoy their fruit. They’ll trade just about anything for it, even medicine. Then I suppose medicine is probably the last thing they need now so it makes sense.” You remark. “Yeah, well I always feel like some of them are going to dispense with the civility one day and just take all our fruit, along with cooking me up as well.” Enki remarks. “Nah…well maybe a few of them, but I think for the most part they know a good ongoing deal.” “I guess. I just hate having to make this run. I’d rather be working on improving our compound.” “Well in a perfect world, you’d be able to just shut yourself away from it and spend all your time reading those books you gather up from the libraries, but if you’re going to really make it, you have to deal with people…and mutants, you know what I mean. A little diplomacy isn’t a bad thing; it can even turn potential enemies into friends. Trust me I know.” You say. “Diplomacy… is that what we’re doing with those trailer park people? I heard Dad’s last raid destroyed some of their trailers and killed a lot of them. Not to mention we got all those captives for sacrifice.” “Well, sometimes diplomacy fails, which is why you also have to be prepared for war.” “Surprised you didn’t have me help dad instead of doing these runs.” “Oh, I’d never allow that even though your father really wanted you to start going on raids with him.” Enki predictably gets a bit insulted by this remark. It’s silly of course because you know it’s more of a male ego thing, the reality is Enki wouldn’t want to go on raids with his dad either. “What?!” Enki exclaims. “Calm down, I don’t mean it how it sounds. I just mean I’m not having you risking your life on regular shoot outs with a bunch of hostile rednecks.” You say. “But…driving to miles to a town full of mutants is perfectly safe?” “No, but despite your paranoia, it’s a hell of a lot safer than what your dad and some of your older siblings and cousins are doing. Think about it. Have you actually had any major trouble since you’ve been doing this? Other than a bunch of mutants trying their best to look scary and intimidate you, have you REALLY had any trouble?” “Well I had to shoot a few bikers trying to hijack the vehicle once and another time I had to prevent a mutant from stealing a crate of fruit and running off with it.” Enki points out. “Hm, glad to hear that you’ve been able to handle yourself, but that’s still a far cry from what your dad has been dealing with.” “Yeah I get it, I’m not dad.” “No, you’re not. You’re me and that’s a hell of a lot better. Now shut up and listen because this isn’t something you can learn in a book.” Enki goes back to watching the road while you talk. “I never really had a great desire for children, I suppose that was one reason why I suggested the current arrangement I have with your father and your aunt Helen. It’s worked out fairly well I think and I know it makes Helen very happy. She gets to be perpetually pregnant and raise children and for the most part I get to avoid it. Well for awhile anyway, see, your father may have a fondness for Helen, but he’ll never love her like he loves me…I think even Helen might know that, but she’s fine with it. Your father REALLY wanted to have a child with me and eventually after some thought to it, I agreed and here you are.” “So I’m only here because you let dad impregnate you instead of aunt Helen?” Enki asks. “I told you not to interrupt!” you snap. You continue. “Now of course the general assumption was that I’d probably just let Helen take care of you, but I didn’t do that. I gave birth to you, and I felt you were MY responsibility. You and I may be Morningstars by name, but we both know that we’re not really like the rest of them. Think about all your brothers, sisters and cousins, can you honestly say you feel any connection to any of them? I’m not asking if you like, love or even care for them, but don’t you feel disconnected just a little?” “Well…I suppose sometimes I do.” Enki says. “And that is exactly how I used to feel with my own family a long time ago. I used to hide out from the world as much as possible and I did a good job of it too and then one week…a bunch of shit happened that changed my life forever. Quite frankly if it hadn’t been for your father I’m not sure if I would have even survived it, because I was near totally unprepared when the shit hit the fan.” Enki looks over at you a bit more interested in what you have to say now. Good. “I don’t want YOU to ever be that unprepared. Hence why you have to occasionally deal with the outside world no matter how shitty it is. Had I actually been prepared, maybe I could’ve made some better choices. Don’t get me wrong, I think I made the best of a potentially bad situation and I’m happy with your father, and my current life could be a hell of a lot worse, but still sometimes I think: What if?” “Doesn’t Tiamat teach us all that life is chaos and that ultimately our choices don’t really matter anyway?” Enki asks. “Do you really believe in all that stuff?” “Not really.” “Which is another example of how you stand out from the rest. You’re intelligent and you’re a potential leader, Enki. You’re not like your siblings…or rather your half siblings. Helen can have as many incest babies as she likes, She can have them in the double digits to match their IQ levels and your father can use them in whatever war he likes. Your life however is much more valuable. You’re MY son and there is only one of you.” Enki looks at you in not quite disbelief, but something close to it. He knows full well you’ve always had a major hand in directly raising him and teaching him about this harsh new world, but this is probably the first time you’ve come close to expressing a close bond with him. Not in a twisted way like so many of the other Morningstars engage in, but in a normal way. “I love you son and whether you eventually become head of the family or if you decide to just strike out on your own completely and find your own path doesn’t matter. Don’t get stuck in a rut or allow yourself to feel trapped so you have no options. Ultimately just do what is best for you because that’s all you can do in this world.” You say. Enki is visibly overcome a bit with emotion. Some eye watering occurs and in true male fashion he turns his head away so you can’t see, which causes you to smile a bit. “Don’t worry son, you can let your guard down in front of me. Just don’t let those mutants see you like that.” you say. “Yeah, definitely wouldn’t want that to happen. Showing weakness in front of them is probably bad for diplomacy.” Enki chuckles and briefly rubs his eyes. As you and your son continue on your way to Emberville, you talk much more and can see Enki is going to be just fine. Maybe you made some concessions to get where you are and you even had some fun doing it, but at least your son knows that he doesn’t have to compromise and can be a master of his own destiny rather than being a slave to circumstance. Even Grandma Morningstar would approve of that lesson.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have to admit you HAVE always been a bit curious, and this probably would be the easiest way to satisfy that curiosity. “Fuck it.” You say to yourself, throw your “wedding dress” aside and you turn around and approach Helen. “Take off all your clothes.” You say. “Wha…what?” Helen remarks in surprise. “Take off all your clothes. Obviously we got some things to work out before we proceed any further, or more specifically I got some things to work out before I proceed any further. So get your clothes off.” You say and head over to the bed where you start taking off your own. This is uncharted territory for you, but strangely as you lie in bed completely naked, you’re not quite as nervous about it as you thought you might be. When Helen finally gets naked, you see she has nice little body on her. Her tits aren’t as big as yours, but nobody’s perfect. As mildly anxious as you are, Helen has to be doubly so. She might’ve made the “first move” but you’ve definitely taken the lead. Helen’s also a virgin for all intents and purposes. You wonder if that might be making all this a little hotter for you. “You’re very beautiful.” Helen says walking over to you. “Yeah…oh you’re not bad yourself. So…you ready to do this?” you ask. “Yes, I’m ready…um…I’ve never done this before with anyone…how should we start?” Helen asks. “Uh, I guess kissing. Even in the movies they usually start like that.” You reply. “Okay.” Helen remarks compliantly. Helen lies next to you and the pair of you begin kissing and caressing each other. It’s definitely different than when you’re with Bobby who tends to be a little rougher. This really isn’t all that bad; in fact the only downside is Helen is doing a lot of talking instead of focusing on the task at hand. It’s not even dirty talk; she keeps asking questions if she’s doing something right. Doesn’t take you long before you start pushing her head down so she can stop talking altogether. “Oh…okay…” Helen remarks as she gets the hint. “And Helen, I don’t want any more talking. Just focus, understand? Yeah…mmm…just like that…” you say as you feel the magic starting to happen. Your back starts arching, your toes start curling, you begin to make moans of pleasure and grab the back of Helen’s head. You’re generally in a state of bliss as Helen does her thing. At this moment nothing else exists except your pleasure so you aren’t paying any attention to the noise that is going on outside. And you aren’t paying attention to the door when it opens up… “Urgh! What the fuck are you two doing?!” Veronica exclaims with a gun in her hand. “Oh! Um…uh…” Helen stutters as she wipes her mouth and raises her head up and probably looking like a deer in the headlights from Veronica’s perspective. “SHIT! Doesn’t anyone fucking knock!? What the hell are you doing in here waving a gun around?” you say and try to cover up as much as you can. “I was coming to warn you that we’re being fucking attacked by zombies! I didn’t realize I was going to walk in on you two dyking it out! Does Bobby know about this?” Veronica says. “Nevermind all that, did you just say zombies are attacking us?” you ask. “Yeah, I mean…I dunno if they are. Maybe they’re just rabid humans or something, but they’re gnashing their teeth, moaning and coming at us like something out of a horror movie. We need all the help we can get to repel these things!” “We’ll be ready in a moment.” You say as Veronica shakes her head. “Well you two better hurry up, (Sigh) honestly, we’re getting attacked and you two are busy licking…” A loud crashing noise followed by gunfire is heard from downstairs. “Shit! That sounded close! I gotta go!” Veronica shouts and you hear her run off. Well at least it looks like Bobby’s finally lit a fire under his relative’s asses to pull their weight around here. “(Sigh) Fucking zombies. Of course this day couldn’t just be a pleasant one.” You say fumbling with your clothing. “I hope we get down there in time to help Bobby.” Helen says getting dressed as well. “We will, hold on let me get something first.” You go to Bobby’s clothing drawer to get the spare gun he mentioned yesterday. “Hey, what about me?” Helen asks. “Well, just grab a blunt object! Unplug that desk lamp and use that to bash those freaks’ heads in I guess.” “Suzy, I don’t really want to argue, but do you even know how to use a gun properly? Maybe you should give me the gun and you just stay behind me.” “For your information my older brother Ben DID show me how to shoot a gun…a few times.” “A few times…Suzy, I was taught to fire a gun, aim and everything else before I was ten. I’m just saying in a situation like this, it might be best if I have the gun, I’m sure when we get to the others, Bobby will give you another one of his.” Helen remarks. “Yeah and in the mean time I’m fucking defenseless.” “You won’t be! I’ll protect you and I think you can count on that.” Helen says and then follows up by putting her arm around your waist and then sensually kissing you on the lips. You ALMOST want to head right back to the bed, but unfortunately you’ve got more important things to deal with. “Okay, okay, you can take the gun, but me and you are definitely going to finish what we started after all this is over.” You say and go unplug the small desk lamp you mentioned earlier to Helen and take it as a makeshift weapon. The pair of you head through the corridor and down the stairs both not making many comments at this point. Might be due to the situation being more than a little tense and its only getting more so as the gunfire, yelling and guttural noises are getting louder as you approach the center of the fighting. Helen then suddenly stops and turns to you. “Suzy?” Helen says. “What!?” you ask. “I just want you to know that if something goes wrong…” “Helen, nothing is going to go wrong, but we need to just focus and get to Bobby.” “Well just in case it does, I just want you to know I love…” “SHIT HELEN! SHOOT! SHOOT!” you exclaim when you see two creatures bursting through the door in front of you. Helen spins around and fires, hiting one of them square in the chest twice, but it doesn’t even slow down, it just tackles Helen onto the floor. She drops her pistol and struggles with the creature while calling for you to help and while you’d love to do just that, the second creature is currently trying to make a meal out of you. You swing at the creature a couple times, but it moves in such a jerky motion that you don’t land a good hit and cause only a glancing blow to its head. Still it’s enough to give you a bit of a breather while the thing tries to get back up off the floor. You spy the gun nearby and wonder if you should go for it or help Helen directly first. > You grab the gun You go for the pistol and manage to pick it up. Unfortunately the creature you just beaned in the head has already recovered from its head wound. Much like Helen, you manage to pull the trigger and get a couple shots to its stomach, but it isn’t slowed down and uses all its weight to cause the pair of you to crash to the floor. You drop the gun, but you still have the lamp in hand and you attempt to swing it from your prone position, but the creature has already dug its fingers deep into that arm and forcibly holds it to prevent you from doing so. You punch with your other free arm, but your hits to its face do nothing. It just repeats what it has done to your other arm and digs its nails in deeply. With horrible snarling, foam and blood coming from its mouth and more ruthless savagery than you have, the thing soon overpowers you completely and its face meets your own to bite your nose off. You scream in agony as a gout of blood gushes from the new hole in your face. Your screams soon stop completely when it bites out your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Getting into a fistfight with Diana is one thing, but you’re definitely not up to dealing with this crazy asshole. You just hope Bobby is up for dealing with him though apparently Helen thinks so. “Come on! Bobby can handle this, but we need to get to the children where it’s safe!” Helen exclaims and you start to follow her. The pair of you run upstairs away from the sounds of shouting and gunfire. You soon reach the top and follow Helen through a corridor doorway. And then Helen nearly gets bashed in the head with a bat when she passes through an entryway. She does take a hit to the shoulder though which causes her to fall to the floor in pain. Diana steps out from the corner she was hiding behind and then rushes at you. You’re caught off guard and point your pistol at Diana, and actually manage to fire a shot, but unfortunately Diana’s smashes your arm with the bat away from her direction so your shot goes wild. Hardly matters since between the kickback of the pistol and the pain you end up dropping the gun entirely. With you unarmed and Helen still clutching her arm in pain, Diana’s head swivels back and forth rapidly, to make sure neither one of you are going to suddenly lunge at her, though she’s also eyeing the dropped pistol too. “After Bobby ripped my heart out I went upstairs to my room and overheard you two bitches conspiring against me. Didn’t know you had it in you Helen. I always knew you loved Bobby, but always figured you’d be too weak to do shit about it. Guess that’s my fault for showing you mercy.” Diana remarks. While Diana’s ranting to her sister, you attempt to make a play for the gun, but Diana swings her bat at you, nearly hitting you in the face. You step back just in time. “And you. You certainly have proved yourself the stereotype of dumb blonde, because if you actually bought that bullshit that my sister fed you, you’re stupider than I thought you were. You actually think she’s gonna just let you have Bobby? She’s gonna backstab you the same way she backstabbed me.” “Maybe she backstabbed you because you were a fucking bully to her, you ever think of that?” you say. “Bully? She oughta be grateful I didn’t kill her ass and instead made her strong enough for her to grow a spine to betray me in the first place! Hey! Where the fuck you goin’?” Diana remarks when she turns her head to see Helen getting up to run away. Diana throws her bat at Helen’s legs, which successfully hit and trip her up. Diana then goes for the pistol and that’s when you pounce and manage to tackle her. The pair of you are soon rolling on the floor again, punching, scratching and kneeing each other. You both try to go for the pistol on several occasions, but neither of you gets the advantage, in fact when Diana finally does, you knock it out of her hand and it goes sprawling and down the stairs to the first floor. “Bah! I don’t need a gun to do my work anyhow! I’ll enjoy it even more killing you with my bare hands!” Diana remarks and lands a good punch on you and then she slams the back of your head into the floor causing you to become a little dazed. She’d do more, but then Helen comes up from behind her with the bat in hand. Unfortunately for Helen, Diana hears Helen and catches Helen’s feeble swing and stops the bat from actually hitting her. “I’m gonna so enjoy hurting you little sister…” Diana exclaims and attempts to rip the bat from Helen’s hand. Helen’s grip is strong enough that Diana doesn’t succeed so instead Diana uses Helen’s weight against her and pushes the bat towards Helen as hard as she can. Helen, not expecting this, loses her footing on her already bruised legs and falls back on the nearby wall, dropping the bat entirely, which rolls away. Diana gets off of you, to take care of her sister who at this point is begging to not be hurt. “Diana, please…this isn’t my fault…Bobby chose Su…” Diana squeaks. “BOBBY CHOSE ME FIRST! BOBBY IS MINE! HE’S ALWAYS BEEN MINE BY BIRTH! You fucking little weakling traitorous bitch! Had you just stayed in line, I might’ve even been kind enough to let Bobby face fuck you on your birthday, but the only fucking you’re going to get now is in your ass because I’m going knee deep in it!” At this point Helen squeals in fear and curls up in a tight ball while Diana starts kicking the hell out of her. Meanwhile you’re starting to come around a bit more. Things are still a bit dizzy for you and you’re a bit wobbly standing up, but you manage it. You attempt to make a run (or fast paced wobble at any rate) for the bat, but Diana stops you before you can even reach it. “Don’t think so bottled blonde bitch!” Diana says and knocks you to the floor and then follows up with a kick. Diana gets on top of you and while you struggle to fight her off, she slaps away your attempts and wraps her hands around your throat. “You are going to very dark place and I’m going to enjoy putting you there.” She remarks and then she starts doing some weird chanting, similar to the shit Bobby says at times when you’re having sex with him, but this isn’t nearly as fun. You try to pry her hands off your throat, but her grip is like iron. You start to lose consciousness. You try one more time to get her off of you by punching her in the face, but your swing isn’t strong enough and Diana is just too determined to end your life. Diana’s face gets blurry, you choke and then everything goes black. Everything is black for what probably seems to be forever. There is nothing. No fluffy cloud heaven, no lake of fire, and definitely not any Tiamat. Then you feel a sensation around your mouth and the sensation of air going in. It’s pleasant enough that you instinctively throw your arms out to embrace Bobby. When you open your eyes you find Helen’s face lip locked to yours. After a few seconds you actually freak out about it being her instead of Bobby. “H…hey! What the hell?!” you say and push Helen off of you. “I’m sorry Suzy, but you were unconscious and I was resuscitating you.” Helen remarks. “I wasn’t breathing?” you ask. “Um, well it didn’t look like you were. I mean Diana choked you out before I got to her.” “Wait, I was just unconscious. (cough) You didn’t check to see if I was still breathing first? You just wrapped your (cough) lips around mine and started blowing into my mouth?” “I panicked and didn’t want to waste time checking! I didn’t want you to die!” Helen exclaims. Well you can’t really fault her for trying to save your life. “(Cough) Well thanks Helen. So where is Diana?” you ask rubbing your throat which still hurts like hell. “Over to your right.” Helen points out and sure enough you turn your head and see Diana laying face down on the floor. “I smacked her in the head with the bat when she was choking you. I dunno if I killed her. I didn’t check to see if she was still breathing either, I was too busy worrying about you. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” “Yeah, I’m fine.” You slowly starting to stand. It takes some effort, but Helen helps you up. Your whole body hurts. You stare at Diana’s body and see her chest briefly rise and fall, so it looks like she’s still alive, just unconscious. Though you’re severely tempted to put an end to that, but you’ve got a better idea. “You think Bobby would let me sacrifice Diana?” you ask which takes her a little by surprise. “Um…I don’t know. I mean after we explain what she did, I can’t see he’d have any objections. There are no rules against it.” Helen replies. “Good, it’s my fucking wedding day, I should at least get to pick…well shit looks like she’s waking up already.” You remark when you see Diana begin to stir. “Hey, guess what Diana, you’re going to be at my wedding after all. You’re going to be one of the most important people there in fact. Helen, do you have anything to tie this bitch up with?” you ask. “Uh, yeah I think I know where there are some handcuffs and there’s always duct tape laying around somewhere.” Helen replies. “Well go get them. I’ll keep an eye on Diana.” You say and pick up the nearby bat. While Helen goes running off, you standby staring at Diana who is giving you the stare of death, but is obviously still in lady pain. “You think I’m gonna just let you throw me on the altar and shove a knife in me like some fucking sheep? You gotta another thing coming blondie.” She remarks. “I don’t see as you have really a choice at this point.” You remark. “Bullshit, I still got a few choices. Like for instance, I could rush you right now, take that bat from you and bash your brains in with it.” “You think you still got the strength for that, let alone the speed?” “Maybe I’ll make it, maybe I won’t, but we’re gonna see…” Diana says and spits blood from her mouth. Just as you’re about to put out Diana’s lights again, you suddenly hear a very loud explosion which sounds like it’s coming from the left side of the house. You’ve been so busy with Diana, you’ve completely forgotten that Bobby’s been battling it out with Aaron elsewhere in the house. Your concerns are briefly for him instead. However, with this very brief distraction, Diana takes advantage and lunges at you and the pair of you are struggling with the damn bat again. Diana seems to be fueled by some sort of unnatural rage at this point, because she’s certainly more formidable than the first time you fought with her in the dining room, or maybe she’s not underestimating you like she did last time. In any case, you need an advantage, which is either going to be the bat you’re currently still struggling with, or the gun which you know is still somewhere on the stairwell. > You go for the gun Obviously all this rolling on the floor and hand to hand shit isn’t getting you anywhere with her. She’s tougher than you thought and you need to just shoot her and put an end to this. As hard as you can, you do the same trick Diana did to Helen and use her weight against her and shove her as hard as you can while letting go of the bat. Diana ends up falling on her ass and you turn to run towards the stairs. You get half way down the stairs when you feel a hard smack against your lower back when Diana throws the bat at you, causing you to lose your balance and you take a full tumble down the stairs. Not only do you break your arm in the process, you also end up hitting your head hard on the steps several times to the point where you’ve probably got a concussion, but that’s the least of your concerns. Dizzy and moaning in pain from your arm. You’re in no condition to fight Diana when she hovers over you with the gun you were trying to get in hand. “Y’know, under ideal circumstances, I’d take my time with you and enjoy dishing out the pain over the course of days, but I suppose I’ll just have to do that with my sister instead. Tiamat truly blesses the strong, all hail her glorious chaos!” Diana says and blasts you several times.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>TUESDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world banana eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe away the whipped cream on your lips, graciously stand up and bow for your adoring fans. The big dude on your right wearing nothing but chaps and a biker jacket looks at you in disbelief and then turns away to puke in a bucket. Meanwhile the little Asian She-Male on your left just shakes his head wondering how the hell you could've beaten him. "I don't understand it...all my training. I glanced over at you during the contest...you...you were barely even chewing! How?" He asks. "Oh just natural talent at swallowing bananas I suppose." You reply humbly and wink at the audience, which continues to praise you. While you're blowing kisses at your fans, you suddenly get a feeling you’ve done something like this before…. Suddenly a hand touches your shoulder and you spin around to see a woman about your age with long raven colored hair and a low cut black gown. She’s pretty, but has a sneering look on her face. It’s not quite a cruel look, but she’s definitely not impressed with you. “So, you think you got what it takes to meet Misty huh? Pfft. I don’t see you lasting another day. Maybe two at best.” “Who is Misty?” you ask. “(Sigh) Deary, if you don’t know, then you’ll never know. And if you never know, then how can you ever hope to survive?” the woman says in a condescending tone and then starts laughing at you. She then begins to age rapidly until she becomes a wizened crone and then eventually a rotting corpse. When you begin to step back, the woman then disappears, but her laughter remains, getting louder and louder to the point being deafening and causing pain. You futilely attempt to cover your ears, but the laughter persists even when you try to cram left over bananas in your ears. Meanwhile, the biker turns in a unicorn and the she-male turns into rainbow colored fox which jumps on the back of the unicorn and they run off together. The audience surprisingly has completely disappeared. In fact it’s just you and that awful laughter that won’t quit. Just when you think you can’t take the pain anymore everything goes black… You wake up to the sound of a female voice. “What’s going on?!” you exclaim sitting up fast. “Oh! Sorry! I…I didn’t mean to wake you…but I just was told to bring you this.” the source of the female voice says. You rub your eyes and see a young woman with light brown hair before you holding a tray of food. She’s probably a few years younger than you. “…wait…you’re Helen right?” you say recognizing her. “Yes. I didn’t think you remembered me. We only saw each other a couple times before.” Helen says. “Yeah I remember you. Where’s Bobby?” “Oh, Bobby’s busy doing something with cousin William. I think its something to do with working on the compound here. I’m not really sure. I just tend to look after the little ones, but Bobby told me I should bring you something to eat, so um here.” Helen thrusts the tray of food at you. It consists of typical breakfast type food like scrambled eggs, bacon, cereal and juice. You see no reason not to take the offering seeing as you aren’t served like this very often. “Wow, breakfast in bed. That’s something I’ve never had before.” You say and start to eat. Helen stares at you nervously, which causes you to stop eating. “What?” you ask. “Oh! Nothing, I just wanted to make sure you liked it. Is the food good? I really didn’t know what to make you and I just wanted it to be right.” Helen says. “It’s fine Helen.” You say. “Oh good. I just…I just didn’t want to disappoint you.” “It’s just breakfast Helen. Relax. Probably way better than anything I could make, I dunno how to cook.” “You don’t? Didn’t your mother teach you?” Helen asks as if cooking is something every woman knows how to do. “Nope. She taught me how to sew when I was younger, but I sort of stopped doing it when she died of a flesh-eating virus. Didn’t really see the point anymore.” “Oh no, how sad!” Helen says empathetically. “Yeah.” You say continuing to eat. “Well don’t worry, I’m a very good cook and I can even teach you!” “Hm, well between that offer and this meal, you’ve probably done more for me than my own family has in years.” “I’m so glad you said that. I want us to get along because I know you’re going to be married to Bobby and all.” “Wait, Bobby told you already?” you ask. “He told everyone last night. He was so happy. I’m so glad he was, I like seeing him happy.” “Hm, I can guess who wasn’t happy to hear about it.” You remark. “Oh. Yes. Um…you probably mean Diana. Yes, she was quite upset. Um…in fact I probably should leave. She’s looking after the little ones and I’m sure I’ll get an earful about being away from my duties for so long. She’s in a bad enough mood as it is.” Helen says. “Okay, well sorry to keep you then. I don’t want to get you into trouble.” “Oh, it’s okay. I’m not really worried about me anyway. It’s just if I stay away for too long she might… well she’s not as patient as I am with our younger siblings. So are you okay with the food and everything?” “Yeah Helen.” “Okay good. Good. Um…okay I’m going now. Um, I suppose I’ll see you around some time.” “Okay then.” At this point Helen nervously waves and opens the door to leave, but then she calls out to you. “Um, Suzy?” “Yes?” “I’m really glad you’re going to be part of this family soon.” She says with a faint smile and then leaves. You shake your head and finish your food. Helen obviously has some issues. Though maybe its because you know what its like to have a bullying older sister, you can sympathize. After putting aside your food tray you take a shower in the private bathroom connected to the bedroom which is very convenient. While washing up you take time to ponder your odd dream which while having its surreal moments seemed “real” to you in some ways. The raven haired woman in the dream was most certainly Bobby’s grandmother which is sort of creepy, but then maybe she just popped up due you seeing pictures of her (and even one in your room) earlier that night. Ultimately you decide not to worry too much about it unless this becomes an ongoing problem. After your shower, you then change your clothing and decide to explore what is now your new home. You walk around the right wing of the compound, upstairs and down, not running into anyone. It’s all pretty empty on this side which is sort of good you suppose and you’re half tempted to just go back to your new room and play on your computer. However, you figure you’re going to have to make the effort to be social with everyone so you head over to the central part of the compound where you assume more of Bobby’s family is located. Eventually you get to a large dining area and see a few dirty plates still on the table. The voices of children can be heard a few rooms away and then… That red headed witch Diana steps out from the kitchen. She holds a knife in one hand and you notice her hand tighten around its handle when she sees you. “Look, I don’t want any trouble Diana. I know you’re mad but…” you start to say before Diana interrupts. “Spare me your pathetic words blonde whore. You will not sway me with superficial attempts at diplomacy. YOU are in my way, but I promise you that before the week’s end, you will be out of it.” When you cautiously step back a bit, Diana smirks. “You better keep stepping backwards and out the front door if you want to stay out of my way AND keep your pitiful life.” While Diana is doing a fairly adequate job of intimidating you, she’s actually starting to make you angry. Like a rage is building up within you and you feel like just picking up one of the forks on one of the dirty plates on the table and stabbing her in the neck with it. In fact violent visions start to enter your head, visions of bloody bodies and other murderous images. They hit you so suddenly; you actually stumble and keep yourself from falling by propping yourself up against the table. You then rub your head from this spell, as you don’t feel completely well. “Now what? Am I scaring you too much? Are you about to cry? By Tiamat you really are worthless. And that is why you’ll never make a good wife to my brother. You’re far too weak. My brother will realize that soon.” Diana remarks. As unwell as you suddenly feel, the rage within you is still rising. > You keep calm You’re not going to play her game. Getting into a fight is just going to make things worse. She’s all talk anyway, she’s just going to bark and not actually do anything. You just stay silent and try to walk away. Diana however keeps barking. “Hey, where you going, this isn’t over you fucking bitch!” Diana says, but you ignore her and keep walking away. When you don’t respond, Diana moves from barking to biting which involves grabbing you on the shoulder and spinning you around. “Hey, get your hands off of me!” you say and attempt to push her away. Diana’s spoiling for a fight however and grabs your arm with her free hand. And unfortunately she’s also spoiling for your death. “You’re fucking too weak for Bobby, better that I take care of this now. He’ll thank me in the long run!” She exclaims and stabs you chest with her knife. You scream in pain and fall back in shock. Diana wastes no time in taking advantage and leaps on you while stabbing the entire time. While the noise brings the attention of other family members who attempt to pull Diana off of you, but it’s already too late, she’s hit several vital organs and opened up several of your veins. “All hail fucking Tiamat and her glorious chaos!” Diana yells in triumph and laughing as your blood is splattered all over her.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It's not like this is a complete stranger, this is someone you do have feelings for and what the hell, it's not like you aren't going to be doing this again with him eventually. Still, there is the matter of decorum. You manage to twist your body around so that you're face to face to him; he barely stops when you tell him. "Bobby, look we can do this, but like I said, we're NOT doing this in the middle of the living room. Let's at least go down to the basement and we can fuck on my couch." "Okay, okay, whatever, let's just get down their quickly." Bobby agrees continuing to kiss on you. The pair of you head down into the basement and one of Bobby's hands is practically glued to your ass the entire time. When you get to your room, you see that Bobby has somehow managed to strip off most of his clothing by this point (amazing considering he had one hand on your ass the entire time). He helpfully starts stripping your clothing off. "Well seeing as you're obviously taking the alpha male approach to this, after you're done tearing off my clothes, you can carry me over to the sofa and start doing me like a conquering warrior. I want to see your face stare into mine as you thrust into me, let me know who exactly is in charge and teach me a lesson." You say licking your index finger and then running your finger down Bobby's chest. (Never let it be said that you can't tap into your dirty side when necessary) The next half hour is fun, if a little rougher than you're used to with Bobby. It starts off with him just really ramming it into you and telling you in various ways to "Take it." while staring directly into your eyes which are more piercing than usual. His hands are also mostly holding down your wrists at this point. Despite all this, you aren't scared. You just wrap your legs around him tightly like a boa constrictor and enjoy the ride. A little later he put his hands around your neck and even squeezes a little while continuing to stare into your eyes. You can certainly still breathe, but he is definitely establishing his dominance and that he is firmly in control of things. Despite all this, you still aren't really scared, you even add to the "experience" by squeaking out a "No." "Please don't." "Stop hurting me." every now and then. Eventually Bobby chants something in a language you've never heard before and then orgasms. Again, not really scary since he's always doing that. It was weird the first few times you had sex with him but now it acts as a nice little alarm letting you know that things will be over soon. Completely spent after orgasm, Bobby collapses on top of you and begins hugging you tightly, and then whispers... "I love you so much Suzy, I want us to be joined forever. I want our bodies as well as our souls to be married." NOW you get scared and suddenly push him off of you in alarm at this declaration. "What?! Married?" You exclaim recoiling to one corner of the couch. Bobby's a little surprised by your reaction. "I want us to be married. I mean we're obviously soul mates and its the next logical step for us." "Step? What step? We were just having fun a moment ago and now you spring life long commitment?" "Are you saying you never saw us eventually getting married? I mean in all that time since we've been together?" "No, and especially not when all the trouble with your sister came about." "But on several occasions you asked me to run away with you! You didn't think we'd get married if we ever did that even?" "Not really." "I'm guessing you didn't ever think about having children either then." "Children?! What the hell, you think I'm some sort of brood mother? Now Bobby is downright confused. "Suzy... I really don't understand your... well view of things..." Bobby says. "That pretty rich coming from the cultist." You say. "Okay, I'm going to ignore that because I love you. But if it makes any difference, at least I still behave in a consistent way which you do not." "What's that supposed to mean?" "(Sigh) I really don't want us to fight again..." "Bobby I just let you simulate what could be considered a rape fantasy on me, the least you can do is explain yourself." "Okay then THAT right there is what I'm talking about. You have no problem with having kinky sex with me, you have no major problems with my religion and what it entails, you're even willing to move in with me and my family even though you're concerned about my sister and probably the rest of them, but somehow marriage is what is freaking you out? I mean I'm trying to do the right thing here and it's because I genuinely love you. Why are you so resistant?" It's actually a good question. You're pretty tolerant of a lot of stuff most would've recoiled in horror from and something like marriage and (shudder) kids is scaring you off. There's probably a good psychological reason for your reluctance, involving your observations of other married couples such as your own mother (overly compliant) and father (distant) or your brother Ben (paranoid psychotic) and his wife (utterly clueless) but there are a few other concerns. "Bobby...you've never brought up marriage before either, why all of a sudden?" You ask. "Well, I just think it's time. I mean we've been together awhile. We've stuck together through ups and downs. We're going to be living together. I obviously love you and I assume you love me right?" "Well...yeah...but... I dunno...I mean kids? Come on do you really think I'm mother material? I can barely take care of myself...in fact I can't at all, otherwise I wouldn't be in this situation in the first place." At this point Bobby takes your hand into his and gets closer to you. "Suzy, don't you see, you don't need to worry about any of that anymore. When you marry me you won't have to worry about taking care of yourself ever again. And as far as being mother material, I can't imagine a better mother to my children. Even if you do have trouble, I'm sure my sisters will help out...well okay Helen will help out, but you know what I'm saying. The main thing is you won't have any more worries when you're in the family...MY family. We'll look after you. I'll look after you." And there it is. Your future. A "housewife" popping out a whole mess of little cultists like a Pez dispenser. While it might not be quite that extreme, the writing is on the wall. While Bobby is probably sincere in his love and desire to care for you, he's still the head of a human sacrificing cult and as such he's going to be somewhat controlling and manipulative. How long before you become brainwashed into believing in the same shit he believes in? How long before you passively accept other sudden changes over time? Hell, how long before some organization like the FBI or the ATF comes charging in to lay siege to the place? Though on the other hand what are you really doing with your life right now and what prospects do you really have? You could do worse than have a man who obviously loves you a lot and is willing to take care of the stuff you don't want to bother worrying about. You've got a major life changing decision to make, because you get the impression that if you get into that compound of his, changing you mind isn't going to be an option. > You decline his proposal You love Bobby…well at least you think you do. He’s been your only boyfriend so you don’t have any other real comparison. But even if you do love him, you still don’t think you’re ready to marry him at least not on the terms he wants. “Can’t we just…I dunno…runaway together?” you ask. “What? I don’t understand, I thought you loved me.” Bobby says. “I do, but marriage…that’s a really big step…and all my other concerns aside I still don’t feel comfortable living with your sister. I mean maybe it would be different if it were just us and no other ties. I might even feel comfortable starting a family with you with a clean slate as it were.” “Suzy…that’s just not possible. First of all I already have a perfectly good home that’s fully stocked with necessities, why the hell would I just abandon it? That would be dumb just from a logical standpoint and just because you don’t want anything to do with your worthless family, I still love mine and I’m not going to just abandon them.” “Worthless? Yeah, I don’t think highly of them either, but don’t you dare come in and start claiming superiority! At least my family isn’t a bunch of inbred brainwashed murderers. And fuck you Bobby, if you REALLY wanted to, we could fucking run away together. You’re a resourceful guy.” “Oh I’m a resourceful guy huh? Well maybe I am, but what are YOU going to be doing?” “What do you mean what am I going to be doing? I’m going to be with you! Isn’t that enough?” “Suzy, you’re sitting here asking me to give up EVERYTHING that’s important to my life and I’m asking why should I? I mean yes, I get you don’t like Diana, but I already told you that she isn’t going to be a problem…” Bobby says before you interrupt. “And excuse me if I’m not completely fucking convinced. She’s your fucking ex, she hates my guts AND you expect me to live under the same roof with her even when we’re fucking married? No, not fucking happening and I’m also not being a goddamn brood sow just waiting around for you to fuck me.” You interject. “Don’t see how that’s much different from your life now…” Bobby says dismissively. You’re speechless for a second. “Excuse me?” you say. “I said I don’t see how sitting around waiting for me to fuck you would be that big of a change in your life because you practically do that now. I mean what the hell do YOU do except hide out down here from the rest of the world and then every now and then we meet up to fuck. If we got married, the only difference would be you’d be living in a better home and actually have to do something with your time like maybe look after our kids…but of course you don’t want any because at your core you’re completely self centered and only care about what YOU want. You know, you got a lot more in common with Diana than you realize in that department.” With as much power as you can, you slap Bobby across his face. He doesn’t flinch, and it seems he was even expecting it. He just gives you the stone face stare. “Get the fuck out. Go back to your fucked up religion and sister fucking. We’re through, for good this time.” You say. Bobby doesn’t say anything he just gathers his clothing and gets dressed as fast as possible. He doesn’t look at you the entire time until he starts to walk away. “I love you Suzy, but I suppose this is easier for the both of us. I hope your life works out.” He says and then turns away. You hear his footsteps going up the basement stairs and then eventually you hear the front door slam. And he’s gone. That’s it. Bobby’s out of your life forever and you immediately feel a mixture of sadness and sickness. You’re sad of course because despite all the problems you had towards the end of your relationship (And the incredibly shitty thing he said to you which caused the final split anyway), he was your first and you do believe he did love you and you loved him. You thought you both had so much in common at one time, but it turned out your differences were greater than you thought and some people just aren’t meant to be together. You also feel sick due to the fact that he was potentially your “savior” in getting out of your current predicament with your older sister. Now that he’s gone, you don’t know what the hell you’re going to do. You spend a little time wondering if you should’ve just went along with Bobby’s proposal. Would it have really been all that bad? It’s too late now though, you can’t call him now even if you really wanted to…and you do really want to, but you just can’t ignore his own faults in what caused the final straw to be broken in the relationship. Somewhere in between the crying and moping, you realize that what you’re doing right now isn’t any different from any other day; namely, you’re hiding out from the world in your basement. The only major difference is you happen to be extremely upset right now. Bobby was right about that on some level. You do just sit around down here doing nothing waiting for…what exactly? Maybe you were waiting for Bobby to “save you” somehow, but obviously you didn’t really want that or at least you didn’t want it on the terms he was demanding. What DO you want in life Suzy? What can you do to change your status? Well, you aren’t sure what you want in life, but you know the only potential way to change your status now is to either get a job or find some new place to live. Seeing as you’re already depressed, you open up your laptop and proceed to engage in the soul-crushing task of looking for a job. As day turns to night, you spend hours looking for a job…well actually you spend AN hour looking and the rest of the time being distracted with your depression. The problem is there is just nothing out there for the likes of you unless you want to be stripper at one of the many strip clubs. You sometimes wish you were more like Donna because if you had less hangs up about being slutty, you’d jump at the chance. However, you were cursed with an odd concept of self-respect so no stripping for you. You look into waitressing since it seems like that’s another job that’s always available. You find a few places hiring…at the strip clubs…great. The further descent of desperation causes you to look for jobs involving house keeping or janitorial work. You are already dreading the idea of doing such labor, but you still have to look. You find one that’s open…at an adult bookstore. You can only imagine what you’d be primarily cleaning up. “What the fuck is wrong with this town? Isn’t there even a goddamn fast food place in need of a hapless burger flipper?” you cry out in frustration. You’re about to give up and resign yourself to being depressed and doing nothing until you fall asleep when you find something that looks slightly more promising. There is not one but TWO jobs open at a comic shop, imaginatively called “Jake’s Comic Shop” who you assume is the owner. One is moving a bunch of boxes around and the other is working a register. Not exactly the most desirable of jobs, but it beats the idea of dressing in skimpy clothing, getting ogled and possibly groped. (Let alone cleaning up jizz for a living) As far as you’re concerned that’s your task for tomorrow. You’re heading over to Jake’s Comic Shop and you’re not leaving until you have employment. You feel slightly positive about this, well not really, but you do at least feel like you’ve accomplished something this dark day. With that out of the way, you allow yourself to go back to being depressed over today’s unfortunate event until you set your alarm for tomorrow (Which you never usually do) and eventually fall asleep. > Next day... TUESDAY Your alarm goes off and you groggily wake up. Way earlier than you’re used to actually. It’s morning and you haven’t been up this early in a long time. You’re surprised you didn’t just sleep through the alarm considering how emotionally drained you were yesterday. Even now, you still feel tired. You’re also still pretty damn depressed. Depression combined with your type of ingrained apathy would normally make for a really bad combination of motivation, but against all odds, you actually get up out of bed to go wash up. You spend an extra long time in the shower trying to motivate yourself for the first phase of your goals today which is heading over to Jake’s comic shop and getting a job. Eventually you finish up and head back to your room where you start to get dressed, thinking about one of your other possible goals which is finding a new place to live because if this comic shop thing doesn’t work out, you doubt if you’re going to find anything else you’d be willing to do before the week is over. Always one to seek the way of least resistance, you reluctantly call your sister Donna since she did say you could live with her and Julie. You didn’t really want to go live with her and Julie though because you know it’s going to be party central non-stop, but you don’t have many other options. You ring up Donna several times and get no answer. You ring up Julie and also get no answer. They’re probably both passed out from whatever they were doing the night before. You give up attempting to contact them today, deciding that you’ll just show up on their doorstep with all your shit if you don’t get this job. It’s not much of a plan, but you do feel slightly better believing you have a safety net. Well you like to THINK you have a safety net anyway. With that fear partially quelled, you absent-mindedly check to see if Bobby called…then you stop… “Christ, that was stupid. Get your head straight Suzy…” you say to yourself, starting to feel bad again. You then remind yourself that you’ll have to break that habit. You nearly delete his number entirely, but you can’t quite bring yourself to do it just yet. Pushing through it all, you now move on to your next step of trying to convince your brother Peter to let you borrow his car so you drive over to the comic shop. You head upstairs and bang on the door to the garage. “Hey Peter, open up I need a favor!” you shout and after a few seconds the door opens up. “What the fuck Suzy? Why the hell are you banging on my door like you’re the police?” Peter exclaims peeking his head out the door. He’s probably naked. “Yeah, sorry to bother you with whatever currently doing at the moment, but I need to borrow your car. I’m trying to get a job.” You say. “A job? I thought you were too much of a prude to be a stripper.” “Ha ha, very funny. I’m not going to be a stripper, I’m going to try to get a job at a Jake’s comic shop.” You reply. “A comic shop? Doing what? Getting all the virgin nerds excited?” “I’m going to be moving boxes or working a register…look I don’t fucking know exactly, I haven’t gotten the job yet. I just know I NEED to get this fucking job or else Kelly’s gonna throw me out on my ass!” you reply getting increasingly exasperated. “Alright, fine. Don’t fucking bite my goddamn head off because you got problems. I’ve got problems of my own. (Sigh) Wait a minute.” Peter closes the door and then a few seconds later opens it up and then tosses some keys at you. “Here. Don’t fuck it up, and I fully expect you to put gas in it.” He says and then slams the door shut. Well that was easier than you expected, but then he probably just wanted you out of the way for whatever client he has coming over. With that out of the way, you get in Peter’s car and pull out of the driveway. A few minutes of driving to your destination and you now learn first hand what Bobby was talking about yesterday. The roads are a mess and the town is in fucking chaos. There are cops everywhere, as well as ambulances and fire trucks racing to their various destinations too. You’re also seeing small groups of people rioting. It’s like the whole town has lost its damn mind and you nearly get into an accident more than a few times. Fortunately Jake’s comic shop isn’t too far away, but given the town’s situation you’re hoping that everything there isn’t going to be as bad as what you’ve been seeing so far. Eventually you do get to the shop and so far the place doesn’t look too bad, though given that you see a police barricade a few blocks up the street, you wonder if that could all change. Pulling into the parking lot, you exit the car and enter the building. As soon as you walk in, you briefly scan the shop and find it completely empty save for a bearded middle-aged man with a ponytail at a counter staring at you. He couldn’t be more of a stereotype of a “comic book guy.” “Well…hello. You lost or something? The beauty salon is down the street…though I believe there was a shooting or something there earlier.” He says. “Um, no. I’m here about the job. Are you Jake?” you ask. “That’s me. Now what job are you talking about exactly?” Jake asks while looking at you up and down. The guy is already probably thinking several dirty thoughts about you and at this point you’re really hoping this guy doesn’t turn the whole job thing into some stupid line about giving him a blowjob. “The job openings I found on the internet for this place. It said you needed someone to move boxes or work the register.” You say. “Oh yeah, I’m not even sure why I posted that. In this current economy I can barely afford to hire one employee and lately I’m wondering if I can even do that.” Jake says. “Shit, does this mean you’re not hiring?” “Well…considering you’re easy on the eyes, I’m not going to say I’m NOT hiring. Besides you’re the only one that’s even applied so far. You’d think with all the fanboy nerds that practically live at this place one of them would’ve offered to fucking help me out. (Sigh) Whatever, you got your resume?” “Resume?” you ask. “Yeah, when people tend to apply for jobs they usually have one. I mean not that any of the tasks here are brain surgery, but it’s nice to have some basic information.” Jake says. “Oh. Well I don’t have one.” You reply. “Seriously? You came in here for a job without a resume?” “I didn’t think I’d need one.” “You didn’t…alright can you give me any references then?” “Um, no.” “You can’t or you won’t?” “I can’t because I don’t have any.” “Jesus Christ…do you have ANY job experience whatsoever?” “No.” “Do you even want a fucking job here?” Jake asks getting exasperated. “Not really, but I want to run around half naked swinging on a pole getting ogled, slobbered over and groped by horny guys for a living even less, so this place is currently my only option for my desperate situation.” You say. Jake laughs at your comment. “Well at least your honest, but if you think you’re not going to get ogled and slobbered over by guys here, you’re sadly mistaken. You do realize this is a comic shop right?” “Oh come on, there has to be female customers that come in here.” You say. “Sure, but they don’t look like you and you’ll probably get a couple of them awkwardly hitting on you as well. On the bright side, none of the nerds here are probably going to try to grope you. They’ll be far too shy to try that. No pole swinging either, but feel free to run around half naked. I guarantee something like that would really help out business.” Jake says with a smirk. “Yeah, not happening.” You reply. “Didn’t think I’d be that lucky. Well despite your total lack of skill, I suppose I’ll hire you, I do have to ask one thing first though…” And here it comes; he’s going to ask you to do something sexual and you’ll be heading out the door… “Do you even read comics?” Well that was unexpected. “Well, I used to when I was little, but my older sister Kelly just kept taking them from me and either hitting me with them or tearing them up, so I didn’t see the point anymore.” You reply. “Jeez, that’s not fucking right. You should’ve kicked her ass.” Jake says. “Yeah well that wasn’t possible, she’s ten times bigger than me. In fact that’s why I applied to this job, she’s threatening to kick me out of the house.” You say. “Hmm, sounds like a similar situation that I had with my last assistant. His mom was threatening to kick him out of the house and he begged me to hire him. He was a pathetic little worm addicted to all that anime shit. Really he was a lousy helper, but given that the one I had before him just died in my bathroom, I figured I’d give the fat little anime addict a shot.” “Wait someone died in the bathroom here?” you ask. “Yeah my retarded assistant strangled himself in my bathroom while jacking off. Spent the damn day cleaning the bathroom because of it.” “Uh, the other assistant didn’t die in the bathroom too did he?” “Nah, he ended up marrying his crazy cousin and lives in the trailer park outside of town I think. Dunno what he does now since he never comes in anymore which is a shame since the pervert used to spend a fortune in this place.” “That’s…interesting. So about the job.” You say steering the conversation back on track. “Yeah, about the job. I’m guessing you’ll want to be working the register…what is your name anyway blondie?” “Suzy, and why are you assuming I want to be working the register?” “Because I doubt a little thing like you really wants to be lugging boxes around, I mean unless you’re trying to tell me you can’t do basic math.” “Of course I know how to do basic fucking math!” you snap. “Okay, sheesh. Calm down I didn’t mean to imply anything. So you’re working the register…” Jake has still already made the decision for you about what job you’re going to be doing and while lugging boxes around really doesn’t appeal to you, you’re still a little insulted that the option has just been taken away from you. Besides the sexist implications that you aren’t strong enough to do the other job because you’re female, you get the strong impression that Jake also just wants you at the register so you’ll be more visible to all the horny virgin nerds that come in this place. And the more you’re thinking about the fact that you’ll have to interact with the public in general if you’re working the register you’re finding it about as appealing as lifting a bunch of heavy boxes around. Then again if you antagonize Jake over this, he might just throw you out of the shop and then you’ll have no job. > You stick with the register Considering you’d rather just sit on your ass and work the register than lift boxes anyway, there doesn’t seem to be much point in engaging in an argument that will lose you this job opportunity. Honestly you’re just lucky that Jake is willing to hire you and isn’t making advances on you (yet). Jake proceeds to show you how to work the register and the credit card machine. After a few trial runs and examples, you think you got it. The funny thing is, nobody has actually come into the comic shop yet. “See, not very difficult. So, you think you’re ready to officially take the responsibility of the register?” Jake asks. “Yeah, I guess, but is it always this empty?” you ask. “No, not usually. It’s about…what a little after noon now? Yesterday was slow as well, but I’m chalking it up to all the craziness going on in town, which I’m really hoping dies down soon. There is a group of regulars that should be arriving in few moments though. They usually just hang out here all fucking day, but they tend to buy a lot when they actually do decide to part with their money and not drive me up a fucking wall with their banter. However since you’re working the register, you’ll get to put up with them this time.” “Great, can’t wait.” You say and sit at the register unenthusiastically. Jake proceeds to tell you that if you need anything he’ll be in his office catching up on going over his financial books. He also warns you not to steal anything, which seems weird since if you were going to steal something, it’s not like you’d listen to his warning. Without many more words Jake disappears into his office and you sit at the register waiting for customers to come in. While you wait you start looking at the various items near the counter and start reading through some of the comics. As time passes you continue to hear the sounds of sirens and such in the distance. Through the windows you see a couple of police officers running in the direction where you saw those barricades. A little more time passes and a short man who looks to be in his mid thirties enters. He’s dressed in casual clothing and just nods at you when he sees you at the register. In an attempt to be a friendly, you smile and wave hi before he goes off to look at comics. Well either Jake was exaggerating about his customers being sex crazed assholes or this guy isn’t one of the “regulars” he was talking about. You watch him for a moment as he browses and takes various comics off the shelves. He looks like he’s really into comics with as many as he’s taking. Eventually he comes up to the counter with a stack of comic books. “Can I just sit these here for now? I’m not really done looking yet, but I don’t want to lug around a bunch of comics and possibly dropping them all over the place.” The man asks. “Oh yeah sure. I guess you really like comics huh?” you say. “Heh, I suppose I look a little obsessed. I don’t really come in here that much since normally I tend to buy stuff online, but this is one of those times where I don’t have the luxury of waiting for stuff to arrive in the mail. So I’m loading up now that I’m here. Never seen you here before though.” The man says. “I’m new. Just started today actually and you’re sort of my first customer. Nobody else has come in.” you reply. “Oh. Well, this is sort of an interesting day to start a new job given what’s been going on in town lately. I’m betting that’s why there hasn’t been anyone else in here today.” “Yeah, tell me about it. I wouldn’t have left the house if I had the choice.” “Yeah, I hear you, I don’t like going out too much myself, but I’ve been getting better about it lately.” “Same here and it still sucks, but bills aren’t going to pay themselves.” “I sort of got around that by being able to work at home. I used to sell and buy shit on the Internet a lot.” “What, like Ebay or something?” “Yeah something like that. Buy low, sell high, that sort of thing.” “I wish I could do something like that.” “You can, it’s not really difficult.” “Eh, I’m not really a wheeler and dealer type. Besides, if I had a job involving a computer, especially one involving self employment, I’d probably just goof off and never get any work accomplished.” “Well that’s the beauty of working at home. You can sort of be as lazy as you want!” The man says with slight grin. “Oh I don’t think you know exactly how lazy I can be.” You say returning the smile. “You can’t be that lazy, you’re working here.” “Well like I said, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be. (Sigh) Events however have conspired against me and here I am.” “Yeah, always sucks when things out of your control put you in a bad situation. For what it’s worth, sorry you’re in such a bind.” You didn’t expect sympathy for your minor “pity party” but you’ll definitely accept it. You usually aren’t one to hold long conversations with random strangers, but then it’s been a bit of an unusual week for you. “Thanks, so selling and buying shit on the Internet works for you huh? I suppose maybe I could do it. There’s certainly already enough crap around the house that surely someone would be interested in. Obviously with as many comics as you intend on buying you’re making a good living at it.” You say. “Well I probably would be if I wasn’t a bit of a hoarder and kept most of the shit I did buy. However, I made enough that I pulled my weight so my mom didn’t kick me out of the basement of the house. Yeah, I know I’m a walking stereotype, basement dweller in a comic shop. Big surprise right?” the man remarks. You don’t reply immediately, you just briefly think about how odd it is you’ve got so much in common with a complete stranger. “Oh, I dunno. I don’t tend to judge people.” You reply. “Well that’s a rare trait these days. Though I suppose I’m more of a hermit than a basement dweller nowadays anyway. My mother died a few years ago and I’m not even going to be living here anymore soon. Hence another reason why I’m loading up on books now.” “So wait you’re moving out of town?” you say a bit surprised. “Yeah…I guess you could say that. I mean under normal circumstances I wouldn’t bother, but it’s getting really bad out there and it’s only going to get worse.” “Worse? How do you know? You don’t think things will get back to normal in a few days?” The man starts like he’s about to say more, but stops. Then he stumbles over some words a bit before continuing. “Um…it’s just…well these things…you never can tell right? I guess I don’t really know. I think I’m just rambling at this point and not making any sense. I didn’t mean to talk your ear off. I guess I should get back to it and let you get back to doing your job.” The man says and then briskly walks to the back of the comic shop. You nearly tell him to come back to talk to clarify what he meant and that he wasn’t really bothering you, but then you think that would be a bit strange and also you don’t really know this guy. He’s probably a weirdo anyway; he just said he lived in his mom’s basement until she died after all. You don’t even know why you’re even still thinking about it or him. “Christ Suzy, you’re taking the break up harder than you thought. You’re starting to latch on to minor conversations with complete fucking strangers. Get a grip already.” You say to yourself. A sudden brick through one of the shop windows breaks up your introspective moment. You duck down behind the counter and then Jake comes out running out of his office. “What the fuck is going on out here?!” he exclaims. “I don’t know! Someone just threw a brick through…” Before you can complete that sentence you hear a bunch of laughter and the shop door opening up. You continue to stay hidden behind the counter. “Did you see that shit? Told ya I could land the brick right in the middle of the O on the window!” a young male voice exclaims. “Yeah, yeah, let’s just see what we got in here…” another remarks. “What the fuck do you little shits think you’re doing? You just broke my fucking window! I hope you fuckers got some money to pay for that RIGHT NOW or else I’m going to be kicking all of your asses THEN I’m going to your parents’ houses and kicking their asses for not aborting you.” Jake exclaims. “Oh fuck off Jake, with as much as you’ve ripped us off by overcharging, I’d say that more than covers the cost of your goddamn window. We’re going to be taking some free comics too.” You hear a voice shout back. “Look, I dunno what the fuck has compelled you social rejects even THINK you can get away with this, but if you don’t fucking get out of my shop right fucking now, there are going to be consequences you aren’t going to walk away from.” “Ohhh, so fucking scared Jake.” You hear one say who from the sound of the voice sounds like he’s getting closer. “HEY! Step back from the counter!” You hear someone hit the counter and then you look up to see a pimply teenager staring over at you. “Holy shit guys! Jake’s got a fucking bitch hiding over here! She looks hot too, no wonder he’s fucking pissed! She was probably blowing him before we came in!” he exclaims and then tries to grab your hair at which point you slap his hand away and stand up and away from the counter so you can’t be molested. It’s at this point you finally see the motley lot. Four teenage boys of all varying shapes and sizes. You don’t know who these guys are, but if they’re the “regulars” Jake mentioned, they’re certainly not acting like what you expected. “Goddamn Jake how the hell you manage to pull this off? She looks way too fucking hot for you. She a whore or something?” The tallest boy asks. “Hey, you know who she looks like? She looks like that cute zombie chick.” The fattest one says. “Nah, she looks more like that chick who controls all the dragons.” The pimply one remarks. “For fuck’s sake she’s blonde not a goddamn albino, she doesn’t look like either of them, the pair of you are idiots. She obviously looks like the blonde chick that fucks vampires.” The tallest one remarks. “Which one, Trent?” the fat one asks. “The one that’s mainly killing them too.” Trent says. “I dunno guys, I thought she looked like that chick that was a private investigator…” another one begins to say before Jake interrupts their temporary distraction of comparing you to various female nerd culture figures. “SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SHOP! I’M NOT WARNING YOU AGAIN!” Jake shouts. At which point Trent pulls a pistol out of his hoodie pocket. He doesn’t actually point it at Jake, but he’s definitely warning him by just showing it. Jake steps back a bit, but doesn’t lose his cool. You on the other hand are really worried, especially considering you got four hormone addled teenage guys staring at you. “And I’m telling YOU we’re not fucking leaving without getting our comics! Don’t you know what today is? It’s fucking free comic book day Jake!” “This is how you want to play this Trent?” Jake asks. Now Trent points the pistol at Jake and gives a look of less playfulness and more deadly seriousness. “I’m not fucking playing Jake, just like I wasn’t fucking playing with my mom when she told me to clean my room two days ago, just like I wasn’t playing with those assholes yesterday that used to give me wedgies back in sixth grade or that bitch who wouldn’t go out with me even though I did a whole bunch of nice shit for her. Things are changing around this town and if you ain’t changing with it, you’re gonna get rolled over.” Trent looks over at his fellows and waves as if he’s telling them to take whatever they want. He continues to point the gun at Jake though he keeps an eye on you as well. While you’re a little busy worrying about Trent and the rest, you realize you haven’t seen that guy you were talking to before. You can’t imagine he managed to slip out without anyone noticing. He might be hiding, but if he is, he’s doing a really good job, because with the way Trent’s pals are going through the store, it seems like they would have stumbled upon him by now. While they do that, Trent gets closer to Jake still holding the gun to him. “So what is the story with the blonde bitch anyway Jake? I know she can’t be your girlfriend. A fat old loser like you wouldn’t have one.” Trent sneers, but Jake is still keeping composure. “I hired her to work the register today.” Jake remarks. “Hm. I’d rather see her mouth work my dick.” Trent says looking you up and down. Jake starts laughing. “What’s so fucking funny?” “YOU! You’re fucking funny Trent. You’re calling me a loser and apparently you can’t even GET a woman without holding her at gunpoint. Pfft. I don’t give a shit what little emo angsty shooting spree trip you’re on, but I’m not playing. I still remember when you were in here as a little kid and your ugly ass mama beat the hell out of you for shitting your pants. How you cried and cried.” Jake chuckles. Trent of course is not amused and points the gun closer to Jake. “Shut the fuck up fat ass!” he exclaims. “Make me lanky bitch!” Jake says and suddenly grabs Trent’s hand now that it’s close enough. The pair of them struggle with the weapon and Trent begins calling for his fellows to help. While you’re certainly close enough to help Jake before Trent’s buddies get to him, you see the front door and wonder if you shouldn’t just jump over the counter and get the hell out of here. > You run for the front door It’s not exactly the bravest thing to do, but then your own life is at risk and if there is a chance at getting out of this mess now then you’re going to take it. You jump over the counter and rush towards the door; two of Trent’s friends try to intercept you until Trent demands that they help him and forget about you. His third friend however ignores him and continues after you. You manage to make it half way out the door before pimple boy grabs your arm. “You’re not going anywhere blondie, except on my dick!” pimple boy shouts and follows that up with a really creepy annoying giggle. You pull away and get out of the store, but he’s a persistent bastard and manages to grab you around the waist from behind. “Come on baby, I like an older woman like you!” he exclaims in his attempt to grope your breasts while dry humping you. “Older woman like me? Motherfucker…” you exclaim and elbow the scrawny fucker in the face. It gets him off of you and then you spin around to give him a swift kick to the balls. Twice. He falls to the ground crying and holding his crotch. He tries to mumble some curses at you, but it’s hard to do in between the tears. As much as you want to get out of here, you’re so pissed you kick him in his acne-ridden face for good measure, before running off. Just in time too, since you hear two gunshots coming from the store. You turn the corner to the parking lot and rush to your car to open the door, then suddenly hear footsteps closing in quickly behind you. “Gimme that car bitch! I gotta get the fuck outta here!” you hear a voice shout. You don’t even turn your head since you already can tell it’s the voice of one of the teenagers from the store. You get in the car and start it up. You pull out and are already in the process of driving off until the same teenager gets in front of the car and throws a brick at your driver window “SHIT!” you shout before the brick smashes through the window and hits you in the side of the head. You lose complete control of the car and promptly crash into a nearby telephone pole. Thanks to shitty air bags not working properly you hit your already injured head against the driver’s wheel. Somehow you’re still conscious, but you’re incredibly dazed and woozy. You’re also not exactly feeling like moving too far, however your feelings are not in consideration here. “Get outta the car bitch!” the teen who threw the brick exclaims and opens the door to get you out of it. He starts to drag you out and despite your less than stellar state you still make an effort to fight. Eventually with some effort he drags you out and then you fell a kick to your ribs while on the street pavement. Bleeding, bruised, and dizzy you attempt to get up, only to not quite make it. Just when it looks like the teen is going to land another kick to you, a shot rings out and the teen falls to the ground nearly on top of you. “ARGH! SHIT! FUCK! I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS! NO!” the teen screams. You crawl away from the teen and through your blurry vision you see a figure coming towards you. It’s the stranger from the comic shop. The fact that he has a pistol in hand isn’t exactly encouraging despite the fact that he just shot your assailant. “You alright? You okay?” he asks running over to you. “Yeah, I just…I need some…help up…” you remark. Using him and the car as leverage you manage to get back on your feet. The teen is still screaming at you and the strange from his prone position. “Can you stand on your own?” the stranger asks. “Yeah, I think…” you reply. “Okay then.” The stranger says and then kicks the teen in the face a couple times shutting him up. “Last thing we need is that dickhead bringing the attention of the cops that are a few blocks up.” “I dunno, the gunshots might have already done that or maybe they don’t give a shit just like everyone else in this town…fuck…” you say holding the side of your head. “You might be right, but we need to get out of the area I think, it doesn’t look like your car is going too far, my car is still in the parking lot. I can take you to get that head injury looked at.” Between everything that’s happened, you’re not exactly thinking straight or at all except about the pain you’re in. “Yeah. Yeah. Whatever, let’s go.” You remark feeling wobbly. “Okay, I’ll help you along the way. My name is Jack by the way.” The stranger says. “Suzy.” You say. Jack helps you back to the parking lot as quick as you’re able to move. You don’t see any signs of the cops coming, though you’re hearing other gunshots in the distance so maybe bigger things are happening elsewhere. Eventually you get back to the lot and approach a small blue car. “Okay, let me open the door and you can just lay in the backseat.” “Sure…” you say and lean against the car, while he opens up the driver’s door and then unlocks the door to the backseat. “Hey…where were you? You…you kill those guys?” you ask. “Hiding within a small back niche where all the old comics were, in the hope of ambushing one of them. I might have done so, had your boss not riled them up enough to rush him. I came out and you were already gone. I smashed the fat one in the back of the head with a metal comic character statue. After he went down I tried to help the owner. He got shot before I could grab the gun from the tall one and then it was reflex response that I shot him.” Jack replies. Jack opens the back door for you and you get in and lay down while Jack closes the door and then gets in the driver’s seat. “That one I know is dead since I shot him right in the head. I was sort of in shock for a moment since I’ve never killed another person before. The other teen had already run by the time I snapped out of it. I came out and I saw what was going on with you and I just reacted again. I dunno if I killed the others. I mean maybe I just knocked the fat one out and the other one when I kicked him in the face. Although I guess I paralyzed him for sure.” Jack says. Jack pulls out of the parking lot and your lids are starting to get heavy. “You kill pimple boy? I left that asshole in a heap outside the shop.” You ask. “Um, no. I didn’t see him when I came out. Guess he ran off?” Jack answers. “Wish I’d killed him. Little fucker…ah, shit…” “Hey, I’ll help like I said so just hang in there okay?” “Yeah…okay…” you start to say. Within the next five minutes all you hear is Jack swearing and making exclamations of how everyone is driving like an asshole or acting crazy. You can feel the car swerving back and forth when you guess that Jack must be avoiding various things on the wrong. At some point as you’re drifting in and out of consciousness. You hear Jack swear some more about how he can’t get to the hospital because the entire area is barricaded and part of the hospital is even on fire. “Fuck! Suzy! You still with me?!” he asks. “Huh? Yeah…” you answer groggily. “I can’t take you to the hospital, but I can still get you help. You trust me?” “Well I’m not really in any condition to not trust you I suppose.” “I’m not a serial killer or anything I swear.” Jack says. You start chuckling at that proclamation. For one thing his name is Jack, which is a bit on the nose for a serial killer. For another if this guy actually did turn out to be one; it pretty much would be in line of your run of luck lately. Hell, if you’re REALLY lucky, he’ll probably be your next boyfriend because you’re certainly fucked up enough to fall for someone like that. “Bet you say that to all the girls.” You say while still chuckling. “Is there any way I can convince you? I mean…if you don’t trust me, I understand. I suppose I could try to take you home if you told me how to get there, but given how fucked up this town is getting, I’m not sure if…” Jack start to say until you interrupt him. “Jack… just take me to wherever it is you’re going to take me. I truly don’t care at this point because I don’t even really have a home to go back to now. I’ve been having a shitty week, I just lost the only job I ever had, I got groped by some fucking asshole, my fucking head is bleeding, I think I got glass embedded in my face, my body aches, and I’m this close to just falling unconscious. So like I said, if you got anything sinister in mind for me, I’m not exactly in any position to stop you. Just drive.” You say as the sleep is starting to take you. Jack doesn’t say anything and just begins reversing the car and swinging it around. You hear something hit the back windshield, not enough to break it though. Sirens and the general sounds of chaos can be heard throughout the drive. You have no idea where Jack is going to take you or even if he’s going to make it wherever he has in mind. All that encompasses your mind is the slumber that eventually wins you over. > Next day… WEDNESDAY You wake up and find yourself on a small bed in a gray concrete room. There isn’t much else in the room except a dresser and a lamp which is currently turned on. It almost feels like a cell except there is no door, just an entryway, which looks like it leads into a corridor. You sit up and find that you’re still fully clothed, so either Jack isn’t a serial killing rapist or he was enough of a gentleman to put your clothes back on exactly right after he was done and is now playing mind games with you. Your girl parts and ass don’t feel sore and you don’t have a bad taste in your mouth so you’re guessing that you weren’t violated in any way. (You hope) However the rest of your body certainly still aches from the kicks and physical abuse you took yesterday, but when you go to touch your head, you don’t feel any bandages like you were expecting. In fact, you aren’t even feeling any open wound that you’re sure that you probably had. The side of your face doesn’t feel to be scratched up either. Is Jack some sort of doctor? You check your phone which was still in your pocket to see if anyone tried to call you, but nobody has. You thought maybe Peter would have at least tried calling considering you had his car last. If you ever get back home, you can only imagine how pissed he’s going to be when he finds out what happened to it. You sit in the bed for a while just wondering what exactly is going on and what you should do next. Honestly, you’re drawing a blank. You had a plan, you tried to follow it and you thought you were succeeding and then it all went to shit yesterday. You’re starting wonder if you’re jinxed. While you could spend your whole time being introspective like you have so many times before, the fact remains that you don’t know where the hell you are and where your “white knight” is. Jack seems like an okay guy, but you really don’t know anything about him except that he’s helped you out quite a bit which would probably make the average person feel grateful, instead it makes you a bit suspicious and this prison like interior isn’t exactly helping. Still, you don’t seem like you’re being held captive either, so you take the opportunity to get up and leave your room. When you enter the corridor you see several other open entryways leading to more small rooms. Since the left part of the corridor looks like it ends at a solid wall, you go right. You peer into a few of these rooms as you pass by to find that they aren’t really furnished, but rather hold several boxes and containers. Some of them do contain furniture; none of it is arranged in a useable way. In general everything is stacked or positioned to resemble a warehouse more than anything else. Maybe you are in some sort of warehouse, because so far the color of every walls you’ve seen is gray and they’re concrete along with the floor and ceiling. Lights embedded in the ceiling provide illumination, but this whole place doesn’t seem like a normal house of any kind, which you assumed Jack lived in, you guess not though. You pass a set of stairs leading up, so you’re guessing you’re on the ground floor, the way you’re currently heading it looks like a large open room ahead. As you approach the large room, you start to hear noise. Sounds like it’s coming from one the rooms ahead and to your right causing you to cautiously approach. You peek around the corner and see Jack occupied and messing about with some sort of large radio system along with a few monitors set up. You hear garbled transmissions, but some of it you’re making out sounds military related, something about marshal law. “Well you don’t need to spy on me, you’re welcome to come in.” Jack says without immediately looking in your direction. Apparently you’re not as stealthy as you thought and Jack is very aware of his surroundings. “Didn’t mean to spy, just wasn’t sure who or what I’d be possibly bumping into after finding myself in a strange place.” You say standing in the entryway. “Understandable. So I trust you’re doing okay?” Jack asks while still messing about with his radio. “Yeah, I mean I still ache a bit, but I’m more or less fine. Hey you’re not medically trained are you? Because I thought I’d have some bandages or something what with getting smacked with a brick and glass shattering on the side on my head.” “Not professionally, but I used some medical gel on your wounds. Glad to see it worked well.” Jack says finally turning to look at you. “Worked well? I’m practically fully healed, is it magical or something?” you joke. “No, just highly advanced…um…well if you really need to know, I shouldn’t even have the stuff, but you can acquire a lot of stuff you shouldn’t over the deep web.” Jack says. “I see. So I take it, this is where you live? “Yeah, more or less now.” “Wait, so this is where your mom lived too?” “What? Oh no. When I lived with mom, it was a regular house in town. In fact after she died, I still lived there, but when shit started getting hectic in town, I decided I better move somewhere less vulnerable so here I am at this gray building I bought years ago online. As you might have already seen, I got tons of shit stacked in rooms, told you I was a big of a hoarder.” “Well it certainly is very gray, must cost a lot to upkeep it.” “Not really, place sort of takes care of itself. Just never made a permanent living arrangement out of this place because…well it’s a long story.” There’s a bit of a pause in the conversation since Jack just abruptly stops talking and starts twisting knobs and then eventually waves his hands at the radio altogether and the garbled transmissions stop altogether when he turns it off. “What are you trying to do?” you ask. “I’m trying to listen in on a military frequency. Normally I can get clear messages from Fort Timons near Security City, but I’m not having much luck. All I know is marshal law has been declared in major cities across the country. Well that and apparently Ground Zero is still offering their shelters at low low prices. Those ads are fucking everywhere.” Jack replies. “Marshall law…that sounds pretty serious.” You remark. “Yeah, but I can’t say I’m surprised with the way things have been going in the world lately. Anyway…so what are your plans?” Jack asks. “I dunno. I’ve been trying to figure that out myself. I’m not having much luck either.” “Well, considering how fucked up things are in town, you’re welcome to stay here. Got plenty of space, food and such.” It’s a tempting offer. Really tempting, mainly because you don’t have any idea what you’re going to go, but you exhale and try to gather your thoughts. “(Sigh) Look, I’m not ungrateful for probably saving my life yesterday. I didn’t mind speaking with you before all that shit went down in the comic shop. Hell, you’re even not bad looking and you’re obviously got your shit together enough that you own your own damn building. I’m also fairly certain you were telling the truth about not being a serial killer.” “But?” Jack says predicting your lead in. “But all of this…well my gut is telling me that something weird is going on with you. I don’t know what exactly, but I imagine it’s complicated. The funny thing is that it probably wouldn’t even necessarily bother me, but you sort of caught me at an unusual point in my life. While I don’t want to bore you with my life story, but I just recently went through an upsetting break up with my first and currently only boyfriend to date a couple days ago and I’m still trying to mentally deal with that along with all the other shit that’s gone on in my life.” Jack continues to listen as you go on. “You think YOU were a basement dweller? At least you seemed to be doing something productive, my whole life was just coasting by and living off of other people and the most recent one was my ex. I’m fairly certain he would have done anything to take care of me had I complied, but even basement dwellers have their limits I suppose and I just couldn’t make that step. All of which left me up shit’s creek without a boat, let along a paddle. I’m trying to make a real effort of being self-sufficient and I sort of feel like if I stayed here I’d just be falling back into my old routine of sponging off some guy.” “You wouldn’t exactly be sponging off me…” Jack starts to say before you interrupt. “Jack, I think you better stop right there, if you’re about to imply what I think you’re going to imply. I’m not a damn whore.” “What? No! I wasn’t going to suggest that! I just meant I have so much that it’s not like I’d mind if you stuck around. It’s obviously dangerous out there and I’d be quite the asshole if I just threw you out.” You just hang your head down at this remark. “Well that makes you better than my older sister, but it also makes this harder for me, because it would have been easier if you had been looking for some sort of cynical sex exchange like that.” “Wait…so you WANT me to treat you like a whore?” Jack asks confused. “No! Fuck. I just…shit…I dunno what the hell I want…” you say putting your head in your hands. At this point Jack tries to interpret your complete mess of explaining things. “Okay, I think I know what you’re getting at. You just got out of a relationship and you aren’t really in the mood for another guy to be sniffing around you right now. You also want to be by yourself and try to make it on your own without help since you’ve never been truly independent your whole life. Am I right so far?” Jack asks. “Yes.” You reply. “And while you aren’t exactly thinking the worst of me right now, you’re still wisely suspicious enough to wonder why the hell I helped you out if I didn’t want something. Obviously there must be something odd about me, for all you know I’ve been stalking you or something.” “Well, basically.” “Okay, good. Now just let me explain my side of things.” You lean again the side of the entryway before Jack goes into his own speech. “First, yes, I do think you’re attractive and from what I know of you, I WOULD like to get to know you a lot better. I thought maybe there was something there during our nice conversation at the comic shop, but I dunno…I sort of…well let’s just say I’m not exactly great at the whole asking someone out thing, so I lost my nerve and had to gather it again by leaving, and of course that’s when those guys showed up. Not to mention I wasn’t really planning on doing that anyway since I didn’t expect to see anyone other than Jake at the register. Which brings me to the second point, I helped you, for the same reason I helped Jake yesterday, it was the right thing to do. I just wasn’t so lucky with him as I was with you. I’m not saying I’m some hero, but I’ve always liked to believe I’m not a bad guy. So when I saw the opportunity to get you help, I did it. I assure you there was no ulterior motive.” At this point Jack fishes something out of his pocket. It’s keys and a wad of money in a roll. He tosses them to you and you catch them. “Do I want you to stay here because I like you? Yes, of course I would, but I can’t just keep you here, if you don’t want to be. You sound like you have very strong feelings about trying to make it on your own and being by yourself and I understand that. So since your car was trashed, I’m giving you mine. I’m not going to need it much longer…and no that doesn’t mean I’m going to commit suicide. I just won’t be needing it. As for the cash, well you’ll need it more than I will too. You take them both and go live your life and hopefully it will be a good one.” You’re pretty speechless. You’ve so rarely had anyone be this cool with you and this doesn’t seem to be a “nice guy” act. If it were, he would’ve been calling you a complete cunt the moment you told him you weren’t interested. “I dunno what to say except thanks.” You say “Don’t mention it. Come on I’ll walk you out.” Jack responds Jack and you leave the radio room and enter the large open room which has a lot of boxes stacked in it’s four corners. On one of the walls is a door, which Jack says, leads to the outside. “Car is parked right outside, and is in good working condition. Um, just to let you know though we’re several miles east outside of town. It will be quite the drive, but you should get back to town by nightfall. Remember, I want you to know you can come back here if it looks like the town is in just complete anarchy. I…I still worry about your safety. Anyway, just knock three times on the door and I’ll know it is you.” “I’ll certainly keep that in mind Jack.” “Okay, well…good luck Suzy.” Jack says opening the door, which lets in a blinding brightness. You look at Jack and then you suddenly hug him and then kiss him on the cheek. You figure it’s the least you can do. Jack wasn’t expecting it though; he returns the hug until you pull away. You and he don’t exchange any more words; you just turn around and leave as the door shuts behind you. You get in the car, and count up the money to find that Jack has given you a thousand dollars in hundreds. Not much in the long term, but it would at least sustain you awhile. You wonder if you should head back to town or just keep driving east and try to start over somewhere else. > You head back to town Maybe if he’d given you ten or even five thousand you’d feel more comfortable making the risk of “starting over” but with just a thousand, you’re not that confident even with your new found self sufficient approach to life. Besides, you’re not even sure where the hell eastward even takes you. For all you know it ends in wilderness, you’ve never been out of your own town before. Better to take your chances with the devil you know. As you drive down the empty road, you pass long stretches of trees and wilderness. You never realized until just now how rural in an area you lived in before. You briefly check your phone again to see if anyone has called, but as usual nobody has. Nobody cares. You continue driving thinking about probably having to deal with the near state of anarchy the town is in. Assuming you even get home in one piece you’ll have to deal with Peter and his car. You figure you’ll have to at least give him this one. All of which isn’t going to help you with Kelly who is still intent on throwing you out by the end of the week. Chances are if you attempted to “pay rent” with some of your money she’d just punch you in the face and take ALL of your money and let you stay another month at best which means being on a time limit and scrambling for a job again. You got very lucky once with the job situation as fast as you did, and you don’t think you’ll manage it that quickly again even if the town wasn’t all fucked up. That leaves your plan “B” choice of living with your sister Donna and your so called best friend Julie which isn’t much of a plan at all so much as it’s just a free living arrangement. What a joy that’s going to be, dealing with their partying every night. You might as well be living out in the chaos filled streets given how they carry on. Hell, you might even be safer. You’ll definitely have to make sure to keep your newly acquired loot well hidden. You try to take you mind off of all this by turning on the radio…Ground Zero ads. “Ground Zero…how fucking original.” You say and turn the radio off, shaking your head. You continue driving and driving and driving; your thoughts continuing to go back and forth about why you’re even going back to town. It really would be so much easier to just stay with Jack. > You keep driving to town As much as it might be tempting to go stay with Jack, you need to keep to your plan of self-sufficiency or at least an attempt at it. Staying with Jack is just a bad idea in the long term. While he might say he isn’t expecting anything, the longer you stay the more likely he’s going to get resentful and the more likely you’re just going to revert to your old ways. It’s a recipe for disaster. Jack and his Gray Building were pretty weird anyway, better you just put all of that out of your head right now. Living with your sister and friend won’t be fun, but at least it will motivate you to get a means of employment to get the hell out of there quicker. It probably won’t even be as bad as you think it will be either. So that’s it. You’ve made up your mind, set a goal and you’re going to stick to it. You actually feel a little good about that. “And fuck Peter, I’m keeping this damn car. Peter’s stolen enough of my clothing over the years that I already paid for his damn vehicle.” You mumble to yourself. Now you feel even better. So much so you’re smiling. With your thoughts getting comfortable with risk and leaving behind thoughts of doing the “safe” thing you continue back to town. You must drive for hours and never see another car on the road. It’s sort of eerie, especially as it starts to get dark. At least you don’t have to worry about traffic though. As you get within the distance of the town, you wonder just how fucked up it’s gotten since you left, or if order has been restored. You remember Jake mentioned marshal law being enforced in cities across the country. Makes you sort of wonder if the whole damn world is going mad or something. Just as you get within the town’s limits, you think you notice a large vehicle up head and even people. Then suddenly several spotlights shine in the direction of your vehicle and one right ahead of you. You nearly lose control of your vehicle due to the blinding light and slam on your breaks. “HALT! BY THE ORDER OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT THIS TOWN IS UNDER MARSHAL LAW! ALL ENTRY AND IN AND OUT IS FORBIDDEN! STOP YOUR VEHICLE FOR INSPECTION!” a loud speaker echoes. The government has apparently decided to place your shithole town under marshal law as well, you can’t imagine why, but you aren’t even really thinking about that, all you’re thinking about is getting the hell out of here before you get shot, rounded up into a camp or both. “Christ, Suzy, you ARE fucking jinxed.” You say and then with a deft maneuver you reverse the car and spin it around. You then slam on the gas. Gunshots ring out and your back window is shot out. Soon the sounds of a jeep can be heard followed by more gunfire. Your attempt to outrun the National Guard prove to be a failure as your back tires are shot and blown out causing your car to spin out of control, flip a few times and then slam into a row of tree along the side of the road. Unlike the last accident you got into, you aren’t quite as lucky and you are severely injured due to low hanging branches going right through the windshield and impaling you through the chest. By the time the guardsmen reach you, all they find is a bloody mangled corpse.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe if he’d given you ten or even five thousand you’d feel more comfortable making the risk of “starting over” but with just a thousand, you’re not that confident even with your new found self sufficient approach to life. Besides, you’re not even sure where the hell eastward even takes you. For all you know it ends in wilderness, you’ve never been out of your own town before. Better to take your chances with the devil you know. As you drive down the empty road, you pass long stretches of trees and wilderness. You never realized until just now how rural in an area you lived in before. You briefly check your phone again to see if anyone has called, but as usual nobody has. Nobody cares. You continue driving thinking about probably having to deal with the near state of anarchy the town is in. Assuming you even get home in one piece you’ll have to deal with Peter and his car. You figure you’ll have to at least give him this one. All of which isn’t going to help you with Kelly who is still intent on throwing you out by the end of the week. Chances are if you attempted to “pay rent” with some of your money she’d just punch you in the face and take ALL of your money and let you stay another month at best which means being on a time limit and scrambling for a job again. You got very lucky once with the job situation as fast as you did, and you don’t think you’ll manage it that quickly again even if the town wasn’t all fucked up. That leaves your plan “B” choice of living with your sister Donna and your so called best friend Julie which isn’t much of a plan at all so much as it’s just a free living arrangement. What a joy that’s going to be, dealing with their partying every night. You might as well be living out in the chaos filled streets given how they carry on. Hell, you might even be safer. You’ll definitely have to make sure to keep your newly acquired loot well hidden. You try to take you mind off of all this by turning on the radio…Ground Zero ads. “Ground Zero…how fucking original.” You say and turn the radio off, shaking your head. You continue driving and driving and driving; your thoughts continuing to go back and forth about why you’re even going back to town. It really would be so much easier to just stay with Jack. > You turn around You suddenly slam on the breaks. “What the fuck am I doing? I don’t really want to go back to that shithole town! I don’t want to deal with shit on my own! Fuck this!” you exclaim and then spin the car around. You drive back justifying everything in your mind that this isn’t really abandoning your goal of being self sufficient, it’s just a minor set back. “You’re not going back to your old ways Suzy, you just need to some help. Jack wants to help so why shouldn’t you let him help? There’s no shame in it. Besides, you’re not going to whore yourself out and he’s not expecting you to. Everything is going to be fine.” You say to yourself. After several times of thinking this, you have probably managed to convince yourself of it to a minor degree. Eventually as day turns to night you see the Gray Building looming in the distance. “Besides, it’s very dangerous in town right now. It’s probably safer to stay here anyway. Yeah, it will be safer…” you say ignoring the fact that you’ll be completely alone with a perfect stranger in the middle of nowhere. Well actually you aren’t really ignoring it, so much as you’re trying to mentally block it out. You park near the building, get out of the car and head to the door. Remembering that Jack told you to knock three times, you do so and the door opens. Jack isn’t at the door, but you assume he’s probably got it on some sort of automatic system. You enter the large front room and shortly after the door closes, you see Jack exiting one of those rooms in the back and quickly walking towards you. “Suzy! Are you alright?! You’re not hurt are you?” He asks. “Um, I’m fine Jack. I just decided that you might be right about how dangerous the town is right now and I should stay here awhile just to play it safe. No point in being proud for no reason.” You say. “So you never actually got back to town?” Jack asks. “No, why?” “Because the town is currently under marshal law as well. After fucking around with the radio a bit more, I managed to get a little more info on that military frequency. My heart sank when I heard it knowing you were probably heading back that way. To be honest, I really worried.” If Jack’s playing up his concern, he’s doing a really good job because you’re fairly convinced he’s being genuine. “Well…I guess its good I decided to come back then.” You say realizing that this happy coincidence is only going to reinforce your more slothful tendencies. Still, you ARE glad you avoided potentially getting shot by the National Guard or something. Attempting to avoid awkward silence you move on to a topic of immediate need. “So, you got a shower I can use? I think I’m about due.” “Sure, you know that room you woke up at? Well there’s a bathroom on that same side of the corridor towards the end of it, can’t miss it mainly because it actually has a door on it. Plenty of unused towels too…um, I don’t really have any spare women’s clothing lying around though. Not that I remember anyway. I suppose anything’s possible with all the shit I have laying around.” “Well I’ll just wear these and figure that out later. I also just realized I haven’t eaten anything since Monday.” “Oh, there’s a kitchen area across from the bathroom conveniently enough. Help yourself to whatever in the cupboards or refrigerators. Got plenty of stuff. I can even try to cook for you if you tell me what you like.” “You can cook?” “Well, I’m not an expert, but I can get by. I’m mostly lazy though and just pop in a frozen dinner.” “Same here and that’s what I’ll probably do. No need to trouble yourself.” You answer. “Okay, well I guess I’ll leave you to it. Oh, and you’re welcome to use that room to sleep in again. I think that’s it, if you need me I’ll be messing about with my radio as usual.” At this point Jack raises his arm in a gesture to invite you back to his home. “Thanks Jack.” You say as you walk by. “I’m just glad you’re safe.” Jack says. You head to the bathroom, which is a fairly mundane one with all the usual amenities. Plenty of towels like Jack said. You lock the door and take a much-needed shower. You get a half paranoid thought that Jack is going to suddenly burst in on you, but that doesn’t happen. So far Jack is still staying true to his gentleman form. You get dressed and then head to the kitchen where you find Jack wasn’t kidding about having a well stocked one. You grab a drink and find the frozen dinner that takes the least amount of time to heat up in the microwave and then eat. Once again you think Jack is going to come in to check on you, but he doesn’t. After eating you sort of just sit in the kitchen looking around for a moment. That of course becomes boring fairly fast and you go back to your assigned bedroom, which looks about the same as it did before. It isn’t any more interesting in there either. Normally, you would’ve had your laptop to keep you occupied, but it’s sadly back home and you’re unlikely to see it anytime soon. Even your phone has recently gone dead. You almost want to go through the dresser in the room, but you sort of think that would be a bit intrusive since it’s probably just filled with Jack’s things. Lacking any other ideas, you try to go to sleep, but you’re just not tired yet. Not to mention you’re still too anxious about sleeping here. Your usual method of “easing” yourself to sleep, isn’t an option since for one thing your battery powered boyfriend is also at home. However, even if you wanted to take matters into your own hands, you’d rather not be in the middle of spittin’ the kitten if Jack does decide to walk in to check on you. So you do the very thing that’s you’ve been expecting Jack to do to you, you go seek him out to see what he’s doing. (The irony isn’t lost on you) He mentioned he would be in that radio room so that’s where you initially head to, but then you hear a few noises in another one of the side rooms. Sounds like a video game. You take a look and see a proper living room like area. Odd that you didn’t notice it the first time you were here, but then you weren’t really paying excessive attention to every room you were passing last time. There sitting on a sofa is Jack playing a video game on a sizable screen. “Well I guess you got sick of listening in on the military huh?” you ask causing Jack to look in your direction. “Oh hey, I thought you’d be asleep or something.” Jack says pausing his game. “Can’t sleep and I left any sort of stimulus to keep myself entertained at home unfortunately. This looks promising though.” You say. “Got another controller, you can join right in if you want.” Jack says and points to some controllers on his coffee table. “Nah, that’s okay. I’ll just watch for now.” You say and just as you’re about to sit on the sofa, Jack starts to get up. “How come you’re getting up?” you ask when you sit down. “Well I can sit in that seat over there.” Jack says. “Jack it’s your home, no need to move on my account. I’m fully comfortable sitting next to you. I need to get over my paranoid scenarios about you anyway.” “Scenarios?” Jack asks while sitting back down. “Yeah, I kept thinking you were going to come rape me in the shower.” “Yikes. I thought you said you didn’t think I was a serial killing rapist anymore.” Jack says not taking offense and going back to his game. “Yeah, but…well I can’t help thinking the worst of people.” “Well I get that.” “If it helps, I’m about ninety nine percent sure that you aren’t a serial killing rapists anymore and I just think there is something weird about you.” “Well looks like I’m doing better then.” Jack says with a smile. You watch Jack kill something on screen before he speaks again. “Well Suzy, I’m not sure if this is going to disappoint you, but I’m going to admit something to you that I’ve never told anyone before.” Jack says. “Uh oh.” You say. “I’m completely boring. Seriously, there is nothing remarkable about me at all. Like I said, I mainly kept to myself and lived in my mom’s basement until she tragically died, then I lived alone in her house…and now I live here. The end. Oh and collected a bunch of shit along the way.” “Wow, way to sell yourself to me there Jack.” You say. “Well I figure if saving your life a couple times and being honest isn’t going to get you to like me, nothing will.” Jack chuckles, causing you to snicker a bit too. “Hah, I knew that’s why you saved me.” You say. “Oh well, I guess the secret’s out.” Jack replies. You have to admit, you’re starting to become more at ease with Jack, the guy is very laid back and you’re certainly not used to dealing with that sort of personality. The closest was your older brother Ben’s hippy wife Moonshadow and she was an annoying flake. (She did have pretty eyes though) “So am I actually going to learn anything more about you?” Jack asks. “You know what Jack? I think you will, what the hell…” you say. You open up to Jack, and begin telling him of your life. The funny thing is while you find it pretty dull Jack finds it pretty fascinating. You imagine that’s probably due to your “colorful” family members who probably would be a lot more amusing to someone else not having the burden of dealing with them. Jack stops playing his game altogether when you start going into your Uncle Ed and Bobby. He hangs on every word, asking you for clarification at times which you provide. You don’t know why you’re telling him all this stuff, you suppose it’s because you feel very comfortable with him, not to mention telling him all this stuff almost feel like a weight has been lifted off of you, since it isn’t like you talk to anyone normally. “Holy shit Suzy. Your life wasn’t all that boring what with all the psycho family members and your cultist ex. Wow. Maybe I should be scared of you given how you managed to survive it all.” Jack says after hearing everything. “Eh, seems like someone’s always saved me or I’ve been lucky. I mean Bobby saved me from my uncle. That’s probably why I fell in love with him…(Sigh) Sort of fucked up right?” “Well I think I understand it. I dunno, never been in that position myself, so I’m not really one to judge. Obviously it was love while it lasted. I mean he didn’t try to kill you when you broke up.” “True. So how about you?” you ask though you’re starting to get sleepy. “How about me what?” Jack says. “Any long lost loves in your life?” “Not really any love whatsoever really…it’s a rather depressing tale. I’d rather keep the conversation upbeat.” “Mm. Shit, wave of sleep is starting to hit me.” You say and then yawn. “Are you going to bed?” Jack asks. “You mind if I just sleep on this sofa? I think I mentioned how I’m used to sleeping on one.” You reply. “Sure. Sure. I’ll move and you just stretch out and be comfortable.” Jack says and gets up so you can lie down fully. Jack turns off his console and as you settle in to sleep you continue to speak a bit. “I like you Jack.” You say. “I like you too Suzy…um…I feel I should tell you something though since you were so open with me.” “What, you’re a serial killer rapist after all? Well, if I’m still alive tomorrow, I think I’ll be able to look past the raping if you at least still respect me.” You darkly joke as sleep continues to creep up on you. “No, I just was going to say, while I wasn’t lying about not being a remarkable person, I suppose I’ve acquired some remarkable things in my dealings.” “Oh, well you can tell me all about your rare antiques tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll find it interesting.” “Well, I suppose I do have some of those, but I was referring to this building actually…um…I guess I’ll tell you tomorrow since it’s really important you know and I think you’ll want to be attentive when you hear it.” Jack says in a serious tone. “Sure…whatever (Yawn)…” you say. With those last words Jack leaves you to sleep and you drift off… > Next day… THURSDAY You wake up to the sound of…well you can’t quite place it. White noise might be the closest thing you can think of, but that wouldn’t be correct. It’s like an annoying hum or buzz going straight to your head. You get up and see that the TV is off from yesterday, so it isn’t that. “Jack? You hear that noise?” you call out in a groggy tone. There isn’t any answer, just that increasingly annoying noise. You attempt to get up and it takes you a couple tries, not because you’re naturally lazy, but more because you’re starting to feel nauseous. The noise you’re hearing isn’t helping matters. You get up on your feet and stagger to the door way which when you get to, you lean up against and feel like you’re going to puke. “Jack…” you just barely manage to shout, before you have to stop to keep from vomiting. You look up and down the corridor and find that the lights are flickering. Some are out completely. You have no idea what the hell is going on, but you’d probably be more scared if you didn’t feel so sick. Mustering up all your willpower, you head to the bedroom thinking Jack might be asleep in there. Nobody there, but you can’t fight the sickness any longer and you run as fast as you can to the bathroom nearly falling over in the process. You just barely manage to make it to throw up in the toilet. The lights are going nuts at this point and you notice the bathtub and sink are both on. After recovering a bit, you notice the stuff coming out of the sink isn’t exactly water. It’s black and tarry looking. You don’t risk touching it, you just get the hell out of the bathroom. No sooner have you done this, when a sudden loud noise hits you so hard you actually stumble and fall to the floor. You wouldn’t even be able to describe the sound, it’s just really horrible and even though you’ve just puked, you still feel pretty damn nauseous. Picking yourself back up and leaning against the wall, you slowly try to make your way to the room where Jack was messing about with his radio stuff. You don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere though, in fact the more you walk, the more you feel like you’re on a treadmill in an endless corridor. You continue on, but as you pass by rooms you can swear you’re seeing weird things out the corner of your eye. You then start thinking you’re seeing shit in front of you as well. Shadowy humanoid figures blink in and out existence along with the lighting. At this point the feeling of terror is becoming stronger than your feeling of sickness. The white noise is still drilling into your head, but now it’s accompanied by an insane laugh, which varies in pitch and tone. When you pass the flight of stairs, you hear whispery voices beckoning you go in that direction. You’re hardly enticed to do so. As you get closer to the radio room, the shadowy figures can be seen running about in the large room up ahead. As you get closer, these figures are becoming less shadowy and more “solid.” These figures are starting to no longer look humanoid either. It is around this time that you notice your surroundings are becoming… warped. Walls are melting around you and you’re seeing those shadowy figures in the next room starting to move in slow motion one moment and then other times you see them rapidly moving back and forth in a repetitious manner. You nearly jump out of your skin when several of these beings appear right in front of you and you get a good look at them now that they aren’t so shadowy anymore. They’re a mass of tentacles, teeth and misshaped features that would make any horror movie demon jealous, unfortunately this is no movie. The screeching, wailing, and gibbering are bad enough, the visual is bad enough, but the fetid smell is what puts it over the top in just vile nastiness. You see one particularly disgusting one with a mutilated face like raw meat and a the scent of a rotten corpse on a hot day, transform into something even worse looking before it opens three of its mouths to reveal its tongues which not only look infested with disease, but have ugly little faces on them. When it attempts to lick you, you turn and run only to find yourself in a wide open space where everything now looks like it’s been put through a multicolored filter. You feel like you’re in a rainbow void. When you look behind you however all you see is darkness save for the creatures now moving towards you. You don’t run far when all of a sudden the rainbow filter disappears and is replaced by a flickering affect that you’re actually back in a “real” location. It isn’t the corridor though, it resembles more of a large college auditorium and in the center is a single figure sitting in a lotus position. He’s bald and not dressed in modern clothing and in fact looks like he’s from some sort of nerd cosplay convention. He appears human however. One thing that’s about him that doesn’t look human though is his eyes are completely white and not just normal “blind eyes” sort either. They’re glowing pure white light. You become very disorientated as the flickering of this reality disappears and slowly just becomes a blank gray open space with more gray as far as you can see despite there not being any more walls. You see that the creatures behind you aren’t following, but they definitely want to get closer. It would seem this man’s presence is at least holding them back somehow. At this point you you’re completely lost to as what is going on, but you approach the man if it means keeping the monsters at bay. The man suddenly speaks as you get close to him. He’s not really looking at you though, more like looking through you. “You…I…don’t belong here…everything changes…so many changes…been here…before…somewhere else…so much to do…bring balance…the future is beautiful…the past is beautiful…everything is ugly…corrupted…it’s beautiful…” the man utters in a fragmented way and you have no idea what the hell he’s talking about. “Where is Jack?! What’s going on? Who are you?!” you ask trying to figure out this situation. To your horror you notice your hands and arms become weathered and wrinkled. From what you can tell, your hair has gone completely white as well. With some hesitation, you feel your face and it definitely doesn’t feel smooth anymore. “Oh my god…” you utter. “…time is short…fleeting life…the others do not like this place…disrupts balance…” the man says still not moving from his spot. You then notice your hands and everything else have gone back to normal. This entire situation is very fucked up, and you don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on, but you hope that “Mr. Lotus” has some answers with all the cryptic shit he’s spouting. “Look! I need answers! What is going on here and who are you?!” you ask again while still looking back to make sure those creatures are still staying away from you. “A footnote…forgotten… traveller…cursed…blessed…nobody… you must choose… Suzy…” the man utters. “How did you know my…” you start to ask before you’re interrupted. “You must choose…the others…they come…” You turn your head and see that the monsters and the darkness are indeed starting to move towards you once again. “Choose? Choose what?! What are you talking about?!” you ask again. “You must choose…” the man says again with less of an air of indifference and more of one of authority. “What am I choosing?” The area surrounding you and the man begins to darken and now you’re getting creatures starting surround you as well. “You must choose or die…” the man says again. “Alright! Alright! I choose! But what the fuck am I choosing!?!” you shout with a mixture of fear and frustration. “You’ll know when the time comes…” the man says. For a brief moment your surroundings change from that of the large classroom auditorium again with the man still in front of you. The blackness has disappeared, but the monsters have not as you see several floating tentacle creatures in the room with you. They aren’t quite as disgusting, but they’re still dangerous and giving off that aura that’s making you feel nauseous again. Just as you think you see a more humanoid figure enter the room there is suddenly a blinding flash all around you causing you to shield your eyes. Everything goes completely white, to completely black and then when you open your eyes again, you find yourself in the large front room of the building. Items are no longer neatly stack and are instead scattered about all over the place, some of them probably broken. Still completely baffled by what the fuck is going on, you look around for something to protect yourself with amongst the junk all over the floor. You eventually see a sturdy looking bat and pick it up. Upon inspection you notice the words “RUTH” on it, no doubt one of Jack’s valuable purchases. Speaking of Jack you still haven’t seen him, but you soon hear him. “Suzy?! Suzy? Are you here? Where are you?” you hear him call out. Sounds like it’s coming from the corridor, but you don’t see anyone. Maybe he’s upstairs? You haven’t been up there yet, but given what you just experienced, you’re a little reluctant to go deeper into this place. You remember Jack said he was going to tell you something about this building before you fell asleep, well whatever that was, it’s apparent that you were right that something about him was weird. Not just weird, but dangerous. You don’t think you’re ever going to quite get some of the images out of your head, you even feel a little different. Maybe the sensory overload has made you a bit numb rather than reducing you to a gibbering wreck. Numb or not, you still have a good mind to just walk out the front door and get the hell out of here. Maybe this was the “choice” that strange guy was talking about. > You leave the building You like Jack and all, but obviously you need to break this habit of going for guys that save you and have really complicated baggage. You head towards the door, open it revealing that it’s almost night already and get out of the building. Your car is still parked in the same location and you waste no time in starting it up and driving away. You almost don’t want to look back at the building, but you’re compelled to do so anyway. However when you do, you see absolutely nothing in your rear view mirror. “What the fuck?” you say and then briefly turn your head to look directly and it’s confirmed, the Gray Building is gone. You didn’t see it disappear, but it obviously has. Where, you have no idea, but you feel a little bad for leaving Jack now. You can only imagine what might have happened to him. “He already knew what that building was, Suzy. He’ll be fine and if he isn’t…well YOU had to get out of there right? In fact HE’S an asshole for not telling you what the hell that damn building was about in the first place…yeah…goddamn it…” you say to yourself. In your haste to forget about some of the stuff you saw, you absent-mindedly turn the radio on. “Fuck, it’s going to just be ads for Ground…what the hell?” you say as you hear something you didn’t expect. “…and talks today were very successful between the President and several other world leaders. It would seem that despite previous disagreements, tensions in the world are lower than they have been in quite some time. In other news, financial experts say things are looking up for the economy ever since…” You change the station and find actual music on; in fact you do this several times and find no annoying Ground Zero ads at all! Just the normal annoying ones in between the music, but the fact that anything else is on is very surprising to you. No doom and gloom as far the news goes too or at least not as bad as it was when you remember. What the hell is going on? You also remember that Jack told you he heard on the radio that your town is under marshal law; maybe that’s no longer the case too? You certainly hope so, because you have no idea where else to go. As you drive you wonder about the Gray Building and what it might have done. You start forming weird theories, but given what you just went through, maybe they aren’t so weird. You first wonder if maybe you went through time somehow. Maybe the passage of time goes slower in there or something. You do remember that frightening bit when you aged and then reverted back briefly. (You look in your mirror again to make sure you are indeed still young and of course you are) Maybe all the troubles in the world subsided and things are back to normal? If so, you can’t imagine that it’s just been a couple days and everything would be okay again. You would have had to been gone a long time. It also occurs to you that maybe you went back in time and maybe this is before the whole world started going to shit (as well as your town). The immediate hole in either of these theories is the fact that the music playing on the radio stations is current. Of course you could just be listening to the “oldies” station and perhaps a shitload more time has passed than you thought. Wouldn’t support the going back in time theory though if that’s the case and unless every station is an “oldies” station you quickly start dismissing the idea that you might’ve travelled through time. You dismiss it altogether when you hear a newsperson on the radio announce today’s date. So you haven’t travelled through time…maybe you went to a different dimension? You certainly don’t think those things or that bald guy were from your world. Then there was that flickering effect that you experience where you were in a halfway normal location that looked to be an auditorium. If this is a different dimension though, so far a lot of shit is the same. Same famous musicians on the radio at least. Same world leaders mentioned, same celebrities mentioned that you know of. Of course things seem to be a lot better as far as the world not nearly being on the verge of blowing itself up. You suppose you won’t really know until you get back to town. The drive is a long one, and it’s nightfall by the time you reach your town. You aren’t seeing any military trucks or any blockades, so that’s a good sign. As you drive into town, you notice that it isn’t an anarchic mess that it was when you left. It doesn’t even look like there was any riots or disasters at all. Just normal traffic and there isn’t even much of that going on right now. It is at this time you know this can’t be your reality and while you’re certain glad you aren’t in immediate danger anymore, you can’t help but feel a bit lost. What are you going to do? Do you still go home? What is home going to be like now? Will you still have the same crappy life? How much is different? Once again, about the only thing you can do is find out, hell it isn’t like you have much better to do now. You drive home which is a lot easier to do when there aren’t assholes throwing bricks at your windshield or general chaos in the streets. When you arrive at what you presume is still home you park on the street and you notice it’s slightly different. The house doesn’t look like it’s in a state of disrepair mainly. It doesn’t look like the lights are on either, which isn’t excessively unusual since Kelly is usually working at this time, Peter’s in the garage and you’re in the basement so there isn’t exactly anyone in the front living room or even upstairs where you might see a light. Peter’s car isn’t in the driveway either, maybe he’s out or maybe he doesn’t live here, you can’t know. You aren’t even sure if this is your house. Who knows, maybe you don’t even live in this town. Surprisingly even after all the mess you’ve gone through, you still have your house key so after taking it out of your pocket, you get out of the car an head towards the house. You walk up to the front door and you’re about to try your key, but then you wonder if maybe you shouldn’t just ring the bell or knock first. > You try your key You might as well try your key, if it doesn’t fit then you can ring the bell. You try your key. It works! Maybe you live here after all. It’s pitch dark inside and you fumble around for a light switch on the wall, but apparently it doesn’t work which already seems like something that would happen in your own house. Unable to achieve illumination that way, you see the silhouette of a lamp in the darkness and you head to it. Unfortunately you end up tripping over a bunch of shit in the dark, because apparently the furniture is arranged differently in this house. You end up breaking the lamp in the process of trying to turn it on. You curse and just sit in the dark for a moment holding on to your bruised shin and knee. You then attempt to carefully get up since the last thing you want is broken shards of the lamp in your hand or anywhere else in your body. Just as you’re about to carefully make your way to the kitchen and turn the light on there, you hear a creaking noise. Sounds like it’s coming from upstairs. You go in that direction just in time to see a figure at the top of the stairs followed by the muzzle blast of a double-barreled shotgun. The impact throws you against the wall and you wheeze for breath and cough up blood. “Got that fucking burglar!” you hear a vaguely familiar voice shout as you bleed out. “George?! Is it safe?” another voice calls out. Sounds female and you can’t believe you’re hearing it after all these years…either of the voices actually. But especially hers… Suddenly the upstairs light comes on which provides just enough illumination to shine down on you and the voice of who you now know belongs to your father becomes very panicked. “OH SHIT! OH FUCK! BERTHA! BERTHA! CALL 911!” your father shouts and runs down the stairs nearly tripping the process. He drops the shotgun and goes over to you, but you’re already well on your way to death. “Suzy! Oh my fucking god! I didn’t mean to…what are you even doing here?! I thought you were visiting Saturday! I didn’t even know you still had a key to the house! Oh shit! No! Hang on!” While your dad attempts to hold you, your mother who apparently is also very much alive in this reality still doesn’t quite know what’s going on until she sees the carnage. “SUZY! NO! GEORGE WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?” your mom screams and runs down the stairs. “I didn’t know! I didn’t know!” your father exclaims. You can’t talk or do anything except gurgle and choke on blood right now, but as the light begins to fade from your eyes and the life starts leaving your body, you watch your mother approach and tearfully embrace your bloody body. And somehow seeing your mother one last time before you die doesn’t make it quite so bad. You just wish it had been under better conditions.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You like Jack and all, but obviously you need to break this habit of going for guys that save you and have really complicated baggage. You head towards the door, open it revealing that it’s almost night already and get out of the building. Your car is still parked in the same location and you waste no time in starting it up and driving away. You almost don’t want to look back at the building, but you’re compelled to do so anyway. However when you do, you see absolutely nothing in your rear view mirror. “What the fuck?” you say and then briefly turn your head to look directly and it’s confirmed, the Gray Building is gone. You didn’t see it disappear, but it obviously has. Where, you have no idea, but you feel a little bad for leaving Jack now. You can only imagine what might have happened to him. “He already knew what that building was, Suzy. He’ll be fine and if he isn’t…well YOU had to get out of there right? In fact HE’S an asshole for not telling you what the hell that damn building was about in the first place…yeah…goddamn it…” you say to yourself. In your haste to forget about some of the stuff you saw, you absent-mindedly turn the radio on. “Fuck, it’s going to just be ads for Ground…what the hell?” you say as you hear something you didn’t expect. “…and talks today were very successful between the President and several other world leaders. It would seem that despite previous disagreements, tensions in the world are lower than they have been in quite some time. In other news, financial experts say things are looking up for the economy ever since…” You change the station and find actual music on; in fact you do this several times and find no annoying Ground Zero ads at all! Just the normal annoying ones in between the music, but the fact that anything else is on is very surprising to you. No doom and gloom as far the news goes too or at least not as bad as it was when you remember. What the hell is going on? You also remember that Jack told you he heard on the radio that your town is under marshal law; maybe that’s no longer the case too? You certainly hope so, because you have no idea where else to go. As you drive you wonder about the Gray Building and what it might have done. You start forming weird theories, but given what you just went through, maybe they aren’t so weird. You first wonder if maybe you went through time somehow. Maybe the passage of time goes slower in there or something. You do remember that frightening bit when you aged and then reverted back briefly. (You look in your mirror again to make sure you are indeed still young and of course you are) Maybe all the troubles in the world subsided and things are back to normal? If so, you can’t imagine that it’s just been a couple days and everything would be okay again. You would have had to been gone a long time. It also occurs to you that maybe you went back in time and maybe this is before the whole world started going to shit (as well as your town). The immediate hole in either of these theories is the fact that the music playing on the radio stations is current. Of course you could just be listening to the “oldies” station and perhaps a shitload more time has passed than you thought. Wouldn’t support the going back in time theory though if that’s the case and unless every station is an “oldies” station you quickly start dismissing the idea that you might’ve travelled through time. You dismiss it altogether when you hear a newsperson on the radio announce today’s date. So you haven’t travelled through time…maybe you went to a different dimension? You certainly don’t think those things or that bald guy were from your world. Then there was that flickering effect that you experience where you were in a halfway normal location that looked to be an auditorium. If this is a different dimension though, so far a lot of shit is the same. Same famous musicians on the radio at least. Same world leaders mentioned, same celebrities mentioned that you know of. Of course things seem to be a lot better as far as the world not nearly being on the verge of blowing itself up. You suppose you won’t really know until you get back to town. The drive is a long one, and it’s nightfall by the time you reach your town. You aren’t seeing any military trucks or any blockades, so that’s a good sign. As you drive into town, you notice that it isn’t an anarchic mess that it was when you left. It doesn’t even look like there was any riots or disasters at all. Just normal traffic and there isn’t even much of that going on right now. It is at this time you know this can’t be your reality and while you’re certain glad you aren’t in immediate danger anymore, you can’t help but feel a bit lost. What are you going to do? Do you still go home? What is home going to be like now? Will you still have the same crappy life? How much is different? Once again, about the only thing you can do is find out, hell it isn’t like you have much better to do now. You drive home which is a lot easier to do when there aren’t assholes throwing bricks at your windshield or general chaos in the streets. When you arrive at what you presume is still home you park on the street and you notice it’s slightly different. The house doesn’t look like it’s in a state of disrepair mainly. It doesn’t look like the lights are on either, which isn’t excessively unusual since Kelly is usually working at this time, Peter’s in the garage and you’re in the basement so there isn’t exactly anyone in the front living room or even upstairs where you might see a light. Peter’s car isn’t in the driveway either, maybe he’s out or maybe he doesn’t live here, you can’t know. You aren’t even sure if this is your house. Who knows, maybe you don’t even live in this town. Surprisingly even after all the mess you’ve gone through, you still have your house key so after taking it out of your pocket, you get out of the car an head towards the house. You walk up to the front door and you’re about to try your key, but then you wonder if maybe you shouldn’t just ring the bell or knock first. > You ring the bell Even if your key fits, that’s no guarantee you live here. You could very well be trespassing and if someone is actually in this house right now, you could find yourself in deep shit when the owner finds you and pulls a shotgun on you. Erring on the side of caution, you ring the bell a couple times and knock. You wait a few minutes thinking that nobody is home which might mean it’s at least safer to try your key, but then you think you hear footsteps and a voice. Soon you see a light emanating from the front room. Someone has come to answer the door at least. An older man opens the door and you can hardly believe your eyes. “It’s damn near midnight who the hell…Suzy?!” your father says mid rant. “Dad?” you answer back, not really expecting to see him. “What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t visiting until Saturday.” Your dad asks. You have no answer except a sudden raising of your arms and a smile. “Um, well surprise!” you utter and go to hug your father, who returns the hug. It’s weird, you never really had a close relationship with your father, but somehow seeing him alive AND not being a pathetic drunk that just watches TV pining over your mother makes you a little happier to see him. You wonder what changed? “Well, okay Suzy. We’re always glad to see you, you know that. Just wish you would’ve called in advance you know?” your father says and invites you in. You notice that the furniture lay out in the living room is different along with the furniture itself. A lot of little things are different really. The “we” sort of throws you at first since you wonder if your dad is referring to your siblings. However you soon see who he’s referring to and if you couldn’t believe your eyes when seeing your father still alive, you really don’t believe them now. “George, who is…Suzy? I thought you were visiting Satur…” You immediately run to hug your mother before she can even complete her sentence. She’s older looking of course, but you’d recognize her anywhere. You can’t believe you’d ever see her alive again. You’re having a hard time holding back tears of joy. Meanwhile your parents are both a little perplexed by your behavior. “I love you mom.” You say squeezing her tightly. “Well of course you do. I know that. I love you too, but why are you here at this late hour? You could have called us first, you know how we like to turn in early.” “I know, I know, I just…I just wanted to see you guys, you know?” you say finally letting go of your mother, yet still staying close to her. “I know it’s a long drive from Security City, have you slept at all?” you dad asks. “A little. Don’t worry, I’m fine. So how are you guys?” you ask. “We’re good, though there has been a neighborhood burglar skulking about. If he tries coming in here, he’s getting both barrels. It is really late though, and while your mother and I would love to talk, can we do this tomorrow morning? I have to get up to fix this overhead light in the living room which decided to go out today.” “Oh…yeah sure. Don’t let me keep you up.” You say. “You can sleep in your old room. It’s pretty much the same as when you left it, still haven’t turned it into a storage room or anything in case you were wondering.” Your mom says. “Oh good, I want to check on some old things I left here anyway.” You say and start to head towards where the basement is only to have your mother call out. “Um, Suzy where are you going?” your mom asks. “I’m going to my room.” “Don’t you think you should be heading upstairs then and not towards the basement?” You nearly face palm for not realizing that maybe you had a different sleeping arrangement in this reality. You play it off with a laugh though. “Oh! Yeah! Hah! I’m sorry, I’ve had a very long drive and I’m a little loopy and tired I suppose.” You say. “You okay Suzy?” your father asks. “Yeah, yeah, I really am. Like I said, I’m just really tired. I’ll probably fall asleep soon after I get to my room.” “Mmm, I told you about driving when that tired before. You could get into an accident.” Your dad says. “Oh George, don’t lecture the girl now. Let’s just be glad we have a daughter who is still thoughtful enough to visit us.” Your mother says with a smile and pats you on the shoulder. You return the smile. You are really glad to see her again. “(Yawn) Alright, well if we’re done here, I’m heading back up, you coming Bertha?” your dad asks. “Yes, Suzy you heading up too? You said you were tired and wanted to go to your room.” Your mom asks. “Yeah I will soon, but I also haven’t eaten all day, you don’t mind if I grab something out of the fridge right?” “You know better than to ask. Help yourself.” Your mom says. “Don’t make a mess though. Oh and remember, your room is the second door on your right.” Your dad snorts in jest due to your previous confusion. It’s actually a good thing he told you though since you probably would’ve been fumbling into random rooms when you actually went up there. You dad kisses you on the head before saying goodnight and heading up the stairs. Your mom does as well causing you to hug her once again. You almost don’t want to let go, but you know you need to keep it together. “I’m really glad to be back home, I missed you.” You say. “Suzy, we just spoke a few days ago.” You mom says. “I know, but it’s just not the same as seeing you in person, you know?” “I know sweetheart, we’ll have all day to talk tomorrow. Goodnight.” You watch as your mom heads upstairs and you’re soon left alone where you continue to hold it together until you go downstairs into the basement where you finally release your tears. You honestly didn’t realize just how much you missed your mother until you saw her again. You certainly were very sad when she died in your reality and for some time after, but overtime you didn’t just move on, part of you just shut down completely. Maybe that explains some of you problems. After composing yourself, you actually take a look around the basement and find that it’s much different than your own. For one, “your room” is just a storage space full of old clothes, tools and other junk. You almost get a little nervous looking at all the junk as you’re reminded of the Gray Building. You quickly leave the basement, not wishing to dwell on that which led you here in the first place. You spend some more time just looking about the house, particularly the pictures which right there is already a major difference since there are barely any in your own house. You see several happy family photos, which you attempt to use as a quick way to possibly learn what you can about your “family.” It looks like your dad wasn’t a travelling lightning rod salesman and worked at the meat processing plant in town since you see a few pictures of him in a factory uniform. Him being around probably helped. Your mom seems like she was still a housewife from what you can tell. Your brother Ben apparently went into the actual military rather than just being a paranoid survivalist nut. You see a lot of his pictures are of him in uniform. Looks like he got a lot of ribbons and honors too. You also see a picture of him with your best friend Julie in a wedding dress… they got married! You can imagine Julie from your reality would have liked that considering she always had a crush on him. (Or maybe she just wanted to fuck him, you don’t know exactly or care to think about it) Looks like they had two children, which you can’t even wrap your head around. You don’t see as many pictures of your sister Kelly, but they do exist. A lot of her pictures show her in uniform too, but one of a police officer. Seems like your family is really “orderly” in this reality. She looks about the same, just with less scars. She still looks mean and serious business in every photo though, so maybe some things never change. No pictures of a boyfriend (or girlfriend) or children. One thing you don’t see pictures of are of Donna or Peter. Surely with as many pictures there are displayed, you’d see some. You can only guess your parents stopped having children after you. Which makes you the “baby” you guess. Might explain why your family is a bit more stable too considering there were less kids to give your parents grief. Finally, you see pictures of yourself. Quite a few of them in fact. (More than Kelly definitely) You look more or less the same as you did at the various ages you see yourself. You also look pretty happy in every photo and you see that you graduated from college in this reality too. You don’t see yourself in any uniform, so you wonder what you do for a living. It’s at this moment you realize that you can no longer ignore that this reality, this family and these memories are not your own. It’s depressing and you also realize that it’s been mentioned that the Suzy of this reality is supposed to be coming for a visit on Saturday. You can’t stay here even though you’d like to, you’re going to have to leave before things get weird. You’re also going to have to figure out what you’re going to do with yourself in the long term. In some ways, the fact that the world isn’t going to complete shit, puts the pressure on even more. After all, if the world had ended it wouldn’t have mattered if you figured it out or not. Still, you’ve got one more day. One more day at least to spend here and enjoy before you figure out what you’re going to do with your life. You deserve that at least right? And so after grabbing a quick snack, you retire to your “old room.” It’s much brighter than your own old one in the basement, but then that because it’s a proper bedroom and not a dank dark basement. You look around a bit, but you figure you can better investigate your room tomorrow. Right now you’re too exhausted from today’s events and drained from the emotions of seeing your mother alive and finding out you had a much better life in an alternate reality and how it’s just another example of how life isn’t fair to you even across the fucking multiverse. > Next day… FRIDAY You wake up with the sun shining in on your bedroom. You can safely say you haven’t had that experience in a long time, if ever. You aren’t sure what time it is, but knowing you, you probably slept through the morning as usual. Once again, you’re stuck in the same clothes you’ve been wearing since the beginning of the week. While you can certainly shower, you’d really rather change clothes at this point so you go through your room and hope that your alternate self left some old clothes in it. After going through some drawers you find that your alternate self has about the same fashion sense as you do, meaning pretty simplistic. The clothing itself tends to be a bit brighter though as everything else seems to be in this reality and it’s starting to get on your nerves. You grab a pair of old jeans and a shirt and head to the bathroom where you wash up and later attempt to brush your teeth using your index finger with toothpaste on it. The jeans and shirt are a slightly tight on you though. It’s not enough that your alternate self has a happier life, but the fucking bitch is apparently a size smaller than you as well. “Oh well, I guess I’ll just be that much more popular with horny guys (Sigh) …unfucking believable…” you mutter as you squeeze yourself into the clothes. After getting dressed, you head downstairs. The first thing you see is dad on a small ladder working on the overhead light he mentioned wasn’t working. You don’t think you’ve ever seen your own dad ever fix anything. “Hey, look who’s finally up. You sleep well? You must have considering it’s the afternoon.” Dad says. “Yeah, I guess I really needed the sleep. Where’s mom?” you ask. “She’s in the kitchen. Oh meant to ask you, where’s that silver sports car your drive? I didn’t see it in the driveway or even on the street.” Silver sports car? Seriously? You own a fucking sports car? “Oh, um…yeah I decided not to drive that one here, it’s been giving me trouble lately anyway. I got an older car for cheap to just drive around in; it’s that small blue one outside.” You say. “Oh. Okay. I just thought I’d ask. Like I said, there’s been some burglaries and I was concerned that the criminals had expanded to car theft too. Probably a good idea you didn’t bring it, nobody is likely to steal that thing outside.” “Yeah, I suppose so.” You say and head to the kitchen. “Fucking sports car…” you whisper shaking your head before you greet mom in a friendly manner. “Hey sleeping beauty is finally awake! You sleep well I trust in your old bed?” mom asks while she works on cooking something. “Yeah. Slept fine. What are you cooking.” “Oh I’m preparing big batch of beef stew. I swear your father would probably not eat anything else. It will take awhile, but I can make you something before then of course.” “Nah, I’m okay.” You say sitting down. Your mother smiles at you and you smile back, but you don’t say anything else. It’s weird, you wanted to talk with her so much yesterday, but now as reality sets in that she’s not really your mother, you’re sort of at a loss for words and awkwardly silent. Still, you want to make the most of this time so you struggle to think of a topic without being suspicious. “So…uh…how are Ben and Kelly doing?” you ask. “Well Ben is still stationed over in Europe. Not exactly sure what he’s doing over there, but it doesn’t seem to be dangerous for once, which I for one am glad about. Julie and the children I imagine are glad about it too. You talk to her recently? “Not for awhile.” You say which is sort of the truth. “Oh. Well I did hear you two weren’t on speaking terms any longer. I hope you make up though since the pair of you were always good friends and the both of you probably said words neither of you really meant.” “Wait, what?” you ask. You mother stops chopping potatoes for a moment to address you directly. “A few months ago, Ben told me that Julie told him that you got in argument with her about how she’s too strict with your niece and nephew and she told you not to tell how to raise her kids. I can’t remember the entire exchange of what else happened except I know she ended up calling you a dyke that won’t ever know what it means to be a mother anyway and then you swore at her and hung up. While I can certainly see Julie’s defensiveness about how to raise her children, I don’t think it was right to say such hateful things, just because of your lifestyle choice.” “Lifestyle choice?” you say a bit confused as you’re attempting to process everything. “Oh right. I’m sorry Suzy. I know you were born that way. You explained it very well to your father and me when you came out years ago before graduating from college. We’re just still a little old fashioned in our way of thinking and it lapses at times.” You do not believe this… “But I’m not a…” you start to say, but then realize why bother correcting her? It would just confuse things for when their real Suzy arrives. “…I’ll try to make the attempt with Julie, but she really needs to apologize.” You say instead. “You always were the bigger person. And I wouldn’t give it another thought as far as what she said about being a mother is concerned. There’s always adoption and I also know you people are really big on all that artificial insemination stuff. I’m sure when the time is right you and Heather will…” “Heather?” “Yeah, your girlfriend. Wait, you didn’t break up with her did you? She seemed so nice when you brought her here for us to meet her…” “No…no…I didn’t break up with her, um… so how is Kelly again?” you ask really wanting to change the subject. “Kelly? Well she’s Kelly. Still one of this town’s finest and doing a good job at it. Wish she’d find a better man to settle down with though. She seems to flip back and forth between these various loser guys that are so far beneath her it isn’t even funny. She really could do so much better and it’s not like there haven’t been several good men that have made genuine attempts to woo her. She doesn’t want to be tied down though and it’s her life I suppose.” Well now you’ve heard everything. You truly are in bizarro world. “You okay dear?” mom asks. “Yeah, yeah I’m just fine mom.” You answer “Well enough about your siblings, how are you doing? You working on a new book yet?” “New book?” “Yeah, you started writing a new book again? I know last time you said you had a bit of writer’s block. Honestly I don’t know how you come up with all the ideas you do. You’ve written like three books already. I know I don’t have the imagination to do that, but you always were creative even as a little girl.” So that’s what you do. You’re a writer. Makes sense actually. In fact you almost want to kick yourself of why the hell you never tried your hand at it in your own reality. You certainly procrastinate enough. “I’ve got a few ideas in my head I suppose. Writing is never an exact science.” Before you have to make up more shit on the fly, dad comes walking in. “Smells good in here already. Anyway I fixed the light and now I’m going to the hardware store, I’ll be back later.” “If you already fixed the light, why do you have to go to the hardware store?” you mother asks. “I have to replenish all the stuff I used.” He says, but mom doesn’t look convinced. “Okay I just want to go because I really want a new drill.” Dad breaks down and admits. “George you’re really silly sometimes when you try to make up stories.” “Well it’s where Suzy gets her story telling ability from!” dad remarks and pats you on the shoulder giving you a smile, which you return. “Okay, see you both later.” Dad remarks and leaves the kitchen with Mom still smiling about the silliness. “You and dad seem very happy.” You remark. “Of course we are. Why wouldn’t we be? We’re enjoying our elderly years together, we’ve had a successful marriage, we have three successful children that love us, grandchildren, a nice home, what more could one hope for?” What more indeed. You’re still thinking about what the hell you’re going to do with your own life. Despite a few major differences in your alternate self, you’d still switch places with her. She’s got everything, a formal higher education, successful career, a fancy car, a significant other and most importantly a loving family. You begin to get lost in your own head, which is then disrupted by mom. “Suzy? Suzy?” mom asks. “Huh? Yeah?” you answer. “Are you really okay? You’ve been sort of spacing out lately.” “Oh, yeah. Well like I said, I’ve got a few story ideas in my head and sometimes I get lost in thought.” “Okay. Well I really have to go to the bathroom, can you finish cutting those carrots?” “Oh yeah, sure mom.” You reply. Your mom leaves the kitchen leaving you alone with your thoughts and cutting up carrots. You increasingly become melancholy as you dwell on how things still suck for you and as you’re apt to do, you begin talking to yourself. “(Sigh) Suzy, Suzy, Suzy, only you could find the negative out of the one relatively positive thing about thing about this fucked up week. Pull yourself together girl. You survived a hell of a lot worse than this. You wanted to be self-sufficient, we this is a good start. A fresh new world is your oyster and you’ve got plenty of opportunity…” Suddenly you hear a phone ring. It’s the land phone on the kitchen wall. You walk over and nearly grab it immediately, but then you remember you’re not really supposed to be here. However, you then notice the caller I.D. Suzy. You are compelled to pick up. “Hello?” you answer. “Hey. Mom? Is that you?” the voice on the other end says. You pause. You never realized that you and your mother sounded so similar before. “Yes, of course it’s me honey. Who else would it be?” you say. “I dunno, you sound a little different. Might be that ratty old land phone you have though, I keep telling you to get a cell!” “Oh you know me dear, your father and I are a bit set in our ways.” “Don’t I know it. Ha ha! Nah, I know you guys really do try. So hey, I was just calling to let you know I’m coming a little bit earlier and I’ll probably be there sometime late tonight. Like probably after midnight.” “You are?” “Yes, like I said I just wanted to let you know so you guys don’t get too mad when I’m knocking on your door late at night waking you up…unless you want me to stay at the town’s motel until tomorrow morning. I know you guys go to bed early.” It is at this moment that the dark idea your mind has been dancing around for quite some time isn’t going away and is now in full bloom. If you just got rid of this Suzy, all your problems would be solved. You just have to muster the fortitude to do it… > You tell Suzy to go to the motel If you’re going to do this, it’s better that you do it away from the house. There is exactly one motel in this town anyway so it’ll be real easy to find her. “I’m sorry dear, but your father has been a bit jumpy lately due to a recent string of burglaries. I wouldn’t want him suddenly pulling a shotgun on you just because you’re knocking on the door in the middle of the night. Nevermind the fact he’ll be pretty grumpy anyway. He hasn’t been sleeping well as you might expect.” You answer. “Yikes! Well I guess maybe I should stay at the motel then, I don’t want to cause grief. The Jinn Inn is still open right?” she says. “Yep, as far as I know.” You answer. “Okay, guess I’m staying there. Ugh, just hate the idea of staying there due to it being so dirty looking. It’s like one step up from that awful trailer park outside of town. I dunno how that place has stayed open so long.” “Well the hookers in town need to ply their trade somewhere.” “Mom! I’ve never heard you talk like that before!” She exclaims. “Well I’m not a prude dear, despite what you might think of me.” “Mom, I don’t think you’re a prude. I know you’re very open-minded. You’re just usually pretty reserved with how your talk.” “Well I’m full of surprises, just like you are. Where do you think you got it from?” “Hah, guess you’re right. Okay then, I suppose I shouldn’t really talk so much while I drive. I guess I’ll be seeing you on Saturday after all. Give my love to dad.” “I will dear.” “I love you mom.” “I love you too Suzy.” You say before hanging up. You don’t have much time, you have to prepare and make a plan of what you’re going to do. “Did I hear you on the phone out here?” you mother says walking into the kitchen. “Huh? Oh, yeah just someone trying to sell something. They were really persistent.” You reply. “I can tell, you hardly cut up any of the carrots.” “Sorry, I guess I got caught up in telling them to never call here again. I should have just hung up I suppose.” “No worries, I’ve gotten directly angry at those telemarketer types too.” “Hey mom, I’ve got some things I left here that I want to get and I know they’re probably in my room somewhere or maybe even the basement, you don’t mind if I go take care of that do you?” “No, not at all. We can talk later. Let me know if you’re looking for something in particular. I might know where it is.” “I will mom.” You head to your room to try to formulate a plan. You figure the easiest way to do this is to hang out near or around the motel parking lot and watch for a silver sports car. When you see what room she goes to, you can just blitz attack her as she’s attempting to open it up and take care of her in the motel room itself. You just need to be quick. So, now that you have her, now you have to kill her. You’re going to need something quick and not noisy. A knife you suppose, but that might take more than one stab unless you cut her throat or something. The bat you got from the Gray Building might work, if you smash her in the head multiple times. The thing is you don’t want is to splatter a bunch of blood all over the place. The Jinn Inn might be shady and dirty enough that a few blood spots on their carpets aren’t going to raise an eyebrow, but if you make it look like the chainsaw massacre, you will cause attention and it isn’t like you’re going to have all the time in the world to clean it up. The goal is to make the kill and replace her as efficiently as possible. Which brings you to the idea of how you’re going to dispose of the body since you can’t just leave a dead doppelganger of yourself in the motel room. You’re definitely going to have to haul it out into the wilderness-surrounding town. Dragging it to one of the trunks of the car is going to be the most difficult part. (You still aren’t sure which one you’ll take) Dragging her body out might be less risky if you at least wrapped it in something; you think you saw some things in the basement that might come in useful. Once you get the body into the trunk though, you just need to drive far enough away so it isn’t discovered. Even if it is, maybe you should mutilate the face so it can’t be identified. Pull out the teeth? Your murder plans are temporarily broken up by your thoughts of Bobby. You didn’t often speak to Bobby about his “religious practices”, but in the few times you dared to ask questions, he did explain helpfully about how he went about things. You never dreamed that such knowledge might come in handy. You make a mental note of everything you might need. You grab an old duffle bag out of the closet and fill it with some of her old clothing from her drawers. You figure you’re probably going to need new clothing to wear after your grim work. When you head downstairs you find that dad has returned. “Hey Suzy, where are you off to?” “Oh just putting some stuff of mine in the car, hey dad I was thinking about painting my place when I get back home. I noticed some old tarps and blankets in the basement, you wouldn’t mind if I took those would you?” you ask. “Oh no, go ahead. Take whatever you might need.” He says. You head to your car and throw the duffle bag in, then you return to the house and head down into the basement. You grab some of the folded up tarps and then you notice some of the old tools and other junk down here. Are you going to need an axe to chop up the body? Maybe you should take a shovel to bury it in the wilderness? You remember they stuffed a body into a luggage case in one movie… “Fuck it, I’m still not sure what I’m going to do, I better just take all this shit. Dad did say to help myself.” You say and make a couple trips up and down the basement, loading up your car with tools, tape, bags, and tarps in the process. (And being to keep the shovel and axe hidden within the tarps since the last thing you need is a question about why you might need those) By the time you’re done, you’re about ready to go do the deed right now, but it’s still too early. Besides, you can’t just disappear for all day and night, your parents would wonder. You’re going to have to come up with an excuse of why you’re going to be gone. As you’re piecing together an excuse, when you get back in the house your mom sees and addresses you again. “You going to have dinner with us in a half hour or so?” she asks. “…yes…of course. I have to leave though afterwards.” “Leave? You just got here!” “I don’t mean leave to go back to Security City, I just mean…well I’ve been in contact with a former school friend through the Internet and she’s sort of been going through some tough times. I promised I’d meet up with her when I was visiting.” “Oh…well I certainly understand. Who was this friend? Do I know her? Though I suppose I only ever remember Julie due to you two hanging together a lot.” You very briefly blank on making up a name on the spot, however you do come up with one rather quickly. “Um, Diana. Her name was Diana Morningstar. She never came over here, since her parents were always a bit strict, but I always got along with her in school. She wasn’t very popular, but I always felt a bit sorry for her so I was sort of her only real friend. Though I imagine she probably put more stock into it than I did, I mean I was still just a shallow kid at the time and wanted to hang out with Julie since we could have fun together like normal young teens. I sort of lost contact with her when her parents pulled her out of school altogether and home schooled her. I think they were religious nuts.” Your mother just shakes her head. “See, parents like that just shouldn’t have children. That’s a shame. Well I’m glad to hear that you showed that girl a bit of kindness. I’m sure she’s glad you’re in contact again and will be happy to see you. You always were thoughtful.” Your mother says and then mentions that you should take a spare key for the house from the desk in the front room just in case you come home late and they’re already asleep. Eventually it’s dinnertime and you have dinner with your mom and dad. Through a bit of conversation you do learn a little more about your “life” here and through careful weaving and quick thinking, you manage to navigate through questions you might not otherwise know the answers to. To be honest though, you’re only just barely paying attention to any of it, because you’re so preoccupied. While you’re apparently calm on the outside, you’re really a ball of nervous energy and as soon as dinner is over you nearly rush out of the house, though you do grab the spare house key for appearances. You say goodbye to your parents and leave the house. It’s night, but it’s still too early for her to be at the motel yet, well at least you hope that’s the case since that will change up your plans of how to get to her. You spend a bit of time driving around trying to put yourself in the mind frame to do this. You can’t afford to choke; this is a life or death decision quite literally. You need to do this for your future life here. The life that you deserved…but why are you so much more deserving? Didn’t this Suzy work hard to get what she got even if she had a few advantages? Are you just too overwhelmed with jealousy? How can you genuinely desire to find the inner strength to kill? “For fuck’s sake Suzy, you were going out with a cultist for fuck’s sake and you had no problem with him killing people! Is this really all that surprising?” you exclaim to yourself. Maybe this is genetic. Maybe you take after Uncle Ed. (Who you learned didn’t exist in this reality when your mom mentioned being an only child at dinner) Maybe it was your fucked up upbringing. Maybe it was your environment. Maybe there was always darkness in you and you were just too damn lazy for it ever to fully thrive. Well it’s thriving now. Is it ever. You’ve got more motivation than you ever have before. Maybe it’s because there is so much at stake. Maybe it’s because on some level you actually hate yourself and by killing this Suzy, well it’s like killing yourself without the actual downside of dying. Whatever the reason, you can’t waste anymore time thinking about whether this is right or wrong. Your life hasn’t exactly been “right” for a very long time, but if everything goes according to plan, your life will be getting there. Well at least that’s how you’re convincing yourself this time around. Just like you’ve convinced yourself of several other things this week, you succeed in convincing yourself of this too. It’s getting a lot easier. You stop driving around town and finally head to the motel. You’ll wait the rest of the time out in the parking lot. When you get to the Jinn Inn, it isn’t quite as bad as the one in your reality, but you definitely see some shady characters popping into the rooms. You see no sign of a silver sports car though and you do take the time to check. She’s not here yet so you just park in a strategic location where you can see all the traffic coming in and out. When she arrives, you’ll definitely see her. Hours pass, but you never lose focus. And eventually your vigilance pays off. You see a silver sports car. It actually isn’t as fancy as you thought it might be, probably was bought used, but it’s certainly more than you ever had. You watch her park close to the motel rooms and then you see her get out of the car. She’s dressed in casual clothing and carries a small purse, but when you watch her walk to the motel check in office, you notice she carries herself with an air of self-confidence. It’s like it doesn’t matter that the area she’s around is shit, she knows she’s better and isn’t at all intimidated by the element here. It is at this moment you grab your baseball bat and get out of the car still keeping an eye out and crouching down behind the vehicles. Fortunately nobody else happens to be lingering around the lot at the moment. Hopefully it stays that way. You soon see her come out of the check in office and as stealthily as you can you run over behind more cars and get closer. You watch where she walks to and continue to keep a look out for anyone else that might suddenly pop up. You just need to stay hidden as you follow her and then rush her when she finally opens up her room. You silently thank your luck for once since she seems to not be very aware of her surroundings and only focuses on heading towards her room. “Stupid, arrogant bitch…” you say to yourself. Your stalking soon ends when you see her reach her room. It’s a perfect opening too. Nobody is around and she fumbles with the keys a bit giving you time to get closer before making that mad sprint as soon as she opens her room… and then you strike. Your target opens the door and enters her room. She turns around to close the door just in time to see you up close in front of her hitting her with face with the bat. It isn’t a full swing, but rather a hard “poke”, but it’s enough to break her nose and cause her to go falling to the floor. You quickly slam the door shut behind you and you briefly think about beating her brains in with the bat, but then you realize that will probably be messy. “You…” is all she manages to get out before you kick her in the face to shut her up. Then you pounce on top of her and after turning her over, you use the bat sideways and you press it up against her throat as hard as you can as you pull back. She gasps and struggles for her life, but it’s no use, your determination to kill her is much stronger than her abilities to fight for her life. “Shhhhh…just let go….just let go…everything is going to work out and your parents won’t be losing a daughter at all. Just let go….” You whisper. Soon you hear a crunching sound of perhaps crushing bones in her neck or her windpipe or something. Whatever it is, her struggle temporarily becomes more violent and jerky with her limbs attempting to flail about. It almost feels like you’re riding her like a wild pony, but soon this outburst is muted and then nothing. Suzy collapses dying with her face partially in a small puddle of her blood and spital, leaving you sitting on top of a corpse’s back. You eventually stand up taking in what you’ve done. You’re hot and sweaty, but strangely invigorated. “(Whew) And I thought I was going to choke.” you say and then start to chuckle at your own dark joke. Well the first part of the deed is done, now comes the more labor inducing part. Getting rid of her body. You’ve actually managed to keep the mess to a minimum by choking her to death, so you’re wondering if you shouldn’t just grab the tarps from the car, roll her ass up in them, duct tape it together and take her to the trunk. She might be your size, (Okay slightly lighter) but it isn’t like you’re used to carrying bodies around. While there wasn’t anyone out there, the last thing you need is someone seeing you fumbling around with a body, even one wrapped in a tarp. If you wanted to play it safe, you suppose you could drag her to the bathroom and chop her up in the bathtub. It will definitely take longer and you might make more of a mess, but you could always carry her out in several pieces in that big luggage bag you brought with you. > You keep her in one piece The more you think about it, chopping her up is likely just going to complicate things. Your goal is to get rid of her body as quickly as possible and really all you need to do that is drive her dead ass to the wilderness and dump it. You probably over thought this by bringing all that shit with you. No matter, better to have it and not need it rather than the other way around. You quickly search her body, but find nothing of interest. The purse that she dropped on the floor when you smashed her in the face contains all the important stuff, but you figure you’ll have to go through it when you have more time. You go to the car grabbing the tape and tarps and return to the room. So far it’s still pretty quiet out there, you just hope it stays that way. You begin rolling her up in one of the tarps and then wrap duct tape around her like mummy. You then roll her up in a second tarp, which you also tape up. It’s not exactly the neatest, but you believe you’ve got her firmly wrapped up tight. You make the effort to clean up a little bit of the blood that was left on the motel carpet, you only got soap and water from the bathroom to work with, but it isn’t like you’re cleaning up brains and gore so you think you’re good. You sit on the bed for a little while taking a break from your task thinking about which car you want to use. You suppose it doesn’t matter, though the sports car probably has a smaller trunk, then again you loaded up your own car with a bunch of stuff, so you’re probably going to have to rearrange stuff to make room. You get up and using the car keys from the purse, you check out the sports car to see just how big the trunk is. After some inspection you decide that it’s probably just big enough for your purposes. It isn’t like it’s a big body after all. You still think it might be a good idea to bury the body though, so you grab the shovel out of your car and put it in the backseat of the sports car. “Okay Suzy, let’s do this.” You say to yourself and head back inside to get her body. You pick up the body and it really isn’t easy. It isn’t like you’re literally carrying “your own weight” on a regular basis, not to mention a dead body is somewhat awkward to attempt to carry even if you do have it wrapped tight. You get to the trunk of the sports car and start swearing when the body’s weight begins to take its toll and you even up dropping it on the cement before you can even attempt to get it into the trunk. “Shit!” you exclaim and then quickly look around to see if anyone is watching or around. You’re still in luck that nobody is around. (You guess the hookers are really busy with their tricks tonight) With some effort, you manage to pick the body back up and cram it into the trunk. Cram is definitely the correct word since you miscalculated and the trunk was slightly smaller than your thought. You actually have to lift your leg to stomp the body into the trunk before you can close it properly. When you’re done with that, you go back into the room to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything and grab her purse before you leave. As you start up the car and leave you figure you’ll drive north of town, drag her into the woods, find a good spot and start digging a hole. You have no idea how long that’s all going to take, but you imagine you’ll have to come up with another excuse for your parents about why you were out all night. You figure you’ll just make up something about Diana again. Never thought that bitch would come in so handy. You also figure you’ll have to come back for your own car as well since it will look pretty strange coming back home with the silver one. You suppose when you finally stop “visiting” your parents you can always come back for the silver one and just abandon this one. It’s all a lot to deal with still, and you’re already partially frustrated and tired from all the dead body lifting. Thanks to this fatigue and the sports car going slightly faster than when you were driving the other one, you end up going past the designated speed limit in the area and misfortune strikes, you attract the attention of a hidden police vehicle. The sirens and blinking lights soon follow. You curse loudly and briefly think about just speeding up and getting the hell out of town, but you instead remain calm. You have this Suzy’s ID and everything so as long as you don’t act suspicious, you’ll probably be fine. In fact, knowing the cops in this town, all you’ll have to do is flutter your eye lashes at them a bit and you’ll probably get let go with just a warning. You slow down and pull over. “Keep your head Suzy, you’re in the home stretch…” you say closing your eyes and trying to maintain your cool. A tall and bulky cop soon comes out of the car and walks over to you. At first you figure it’s going to be a guy, but then your heart sinks when you see who it really is. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t baby sister.” Kelly remarks. “Fuck.” You inadvertently exclaim, losing whatever composure you were attempting to have. “Fuck? Now is that anyway to greet your big sister? I heard you were in town visiting mom and dad. What are you doing out so late breaking traffic laws?” “I’m just coming back from an old friend’s house okay? And I wasn’t that much over the speed limit.” “Rules are rules Suzy, but then you always DID think there was a separate set of rules for you didn’t you? Yeah, always the favorite getting your own way…” You can’t believe this. Even in this reality, Kelly is still a fucking jealous bullying asshole to you. Some things never change. Kelly notices you’re looking a little annoyed and anxious by her stop. “What’s wrong Suzy? No pithy come back college girl?” Kelly asks. “Look, you win Kelly, you got me. I obviously broke the law and you got me. Just write me the damn ticket already.” You remark. “Not sure if I like your tone sis…in fact you’re acting a little odd. What old friend might have you been visiting anyway in this town? Figured when you moved away you were glad to leave everyone behind. Not to mention the only person I ever remember you hanging out with was Julie and I hear you’re not on speaking terms anymore.” “Just some girl from school days I’ve had contact with over the Internet. I promised I would visit her. I’m just on my way back to mom and dad’s.” “Ohhh, girl huh? This wouldn’t be some midnight booty call for you would it? Some old secret labia-licking friend you had when you were still in the closet? I thought you had a steady girlfriend. Guess more rules that you don’t give a shit about.” You know you should keep your composure, but Kelly is really getting on your nerves. “Are you going to give me the ticker or not?” you ask. “I’ll give you this fucking baton up your ass if you don’t stop giving me shit! In fact why don’t you get the hell out of the car, you’re acting really suspicious.” Kelly remarks. You sigh and shake your head. “Of course. Nothing is ever easy for me.” you say and then you quickly turn the car back on. “HEY! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! STOP!” Kelly shouts and grabs at the wheel while you attempt to drive off. You manage to actually get a few feet before Kelly manages to grab the key out of the ignition. You punch Kelly in the face multiple times, but she’s undeterred in her job of arresting you. Kelly returns your punches with a couple elbows to the face and then pulls you out of the car through the window. “You’re in deep fucking shit now little sister. You just assaulted a goddamn officer of th…ugh!” Kelly grunts when you punch her as hard as you can in the crotch. It slows her down and you attempt to grab her pistol. You manage to undue the snap of the holster, but Kelly stops you from getting and further with a knee to your face. Now SHE pulls out the pistol and points it directly at you. “Suzy, I’m telling you to fucking stop or I WILL fucking shoot you!” Kelly warns. You don’t stop though. Your grand plans have gone to shit once again and you’re a loser here just like you were a loser in your own world. You’re either going to get lucky and wrestle the gun away from Kelly, or she’s going to shoot you. One thing you’re not going to do is go to jail. Kelly sensing her life is in genuine danger now, ignores all the pain she’s in and no longer treats you like her “sister” and starts treating you like a dangerous criminal which you actually are at this point. Kelly shoots you once in the chest, dropping you instantly. You strongly get the impression that she COULD have easily stopped you without a fatal shot, but you imagine that Kelly being herself probably saw this as a perfect opportunity. “I fucking told you sis.” Kelly remarks. “(cough) I’m not your fucking sister, asshole. She’s in the goddamn trunk…” you laugh while still coughing up blood at the same time. Your last moments are looking the confused look on Kelly’s face before she radios for back up and an ambulance.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you’re going to do this, it’s better that you do it away from the house. There is exactly one motel in this town anyway so it’ll be real easy to find her. “I’m sorry dear, but your father has been a bit jumpy lately due to a recent string of burglaries. I wouldn’t want him suddenly pulling a shotgun on you just because you’re knocking on the door in the middle of the night. Nevermind the fact he’ll be pretty grumpy anyway. He hasn’t been sleeping well as you might expect.” You answer. “Yikes! Well I guess maybe I should stay at the motel then, I don’t want to cause grief. The Jinn Inn is still open right?” she says. “Yep, as far as I know.” You answer. “Okay, guess I’m staying there. Ugh, just hate the idea of staying there due to it being so dirty looking. It’s like one step up from that awful trailer park outside of town. I dunno how that place has stayed open so long.” “Well the hookers in town need to ply their trade somewhere.” “Mom! I’ve never heard you talk like that before!” She exclaims. “Well I’m not a prude dear, despite what you might think of me.” “Mom, I don’t think you’re a prude. I know you’re very open-minded. You’re just usually pretty reserved with how your talk.” “Well I’m full of surprises, just like you are. Where do you think you got it from?” “Hah, guess you’re right. Okay then, I suppose I shouldn’t really talk so much while I drive. I guess I’ll be seeing you on Saturday after all. Give my love to dad.” “I will dear.” “I love you mom.” “I love you too Suzy.” You say before hanging up. You don’t have much time, you have to prepare and make a plan of what you’re going to do. “Did I hear you on the phone out here?” you mother says walking into the kitchen. “Huh? Oh, yeah just someone trying to sell something. They were really persistent.” You reply. “I can tell, you hardly cut up any of the carrots.” “Sorry, I guess I got caught up in telling them to never call here again. I should have just hung up I suppose.” “No worries, I’ve gotten directly angry at those telemarketer types too.” “Hey mom, I’ve got some things I left here that I want to get and I know they’re probably in my room somewhere or maybe even the basement, you don’t mind if I go take care of that do you?” “No, not at all. We can talk later. Let me know if you’re looking for something in particular. I might know where it is.” “I will mom.” You head to your room to try to formulate a plan. You figure the easiest way to do this is to hang out near or around the motel parking lot and watch for a silver sports car. When you see what room she goes to, you can just blitz attack her as she’s attempting to open it up and take care of her in the motel room itself. You just need to be quick. So, now that you have her, now you have to kill her. You’re going to need something quick and not noisy. A knife you suppose, but that might take more than one stab unless you cut her throat or something. The bat you got from the Gray Building might work, if you smash her in the head multiple times. The thing is you don’t want is to splatter a bunch of blood all over the place. The Jinn Inn might be shady and dirty enough that a few blood spots on their carpets aren’t going to raise an eyebrow, but if you make it look like the chainsaw massacre, you will cause attention and it isn’t like you’re going to have all the time in the world to clean it up. The goal is to make the kill and replace her as efficiently as possible. Which brings you to the idea of how you’re going to dispose of the body since you can’t just leave a dead doppelganger of yourself in the motel room. You’re definitely going to have to haul it out into the wilderness-surrounding town. Dragging it to one of the trunks of the car is going to be the most difficult part. (You still aren’t sure which one you’ll take) Dragging her body out might be less risky if you at least wrapped it in something; you think you saw some things in the basement that might come in useful. Once you get the body into the trunk though, you just need to drive far enough away so it isn’t discovered. Even if it is, maybe you should mutilate the face so it can’t be identified. Pull out the teeth? Your murder plans are temporarily broken up by your thoughts of Bobby. You didn’t often speak to Bobby about his “religious practices”, but in the few times you dared to ask questions, he did explain helpfully about how he went about things. You never dreamed that such knowledge might come in handy. You make a mental note of everything you might need. You grab an old duffle bag out of the closet and fill it with some of her old clothing from her drawers. You figure you’re probably going to need new clothing to wear after your grim work. When you head downstairs you find that dad has returned. “Hey Suzy, where are you off to?” “Oh just putting some stuff of mine in the car, hey dad I was thinking about painting my place when I get back home. I noticed some old tarps and blankets in the basement, you wouldn’t mind if I took those would you?” you ask. “Oh no, go ahead. Take whatever you might need.” He says. You head to your car and throw the duffle bag in, then you return to the house and head down into the basement. You grab some of the folded up tarps and then you notice some of the old tools and other junk down here. Are you going to need an axe to chop up the body? Maybe you should take a shovel to bury it in the wilderness? You remember they stuffed a body into a luggage case in one movie… “Fuck it, I’m still not sure what I’m going to do, I better just take all this shit. Dad did say to help myself.” You say and make a couple trips up and down the basement, loading up your car with tools, tape, bags, and tarps in the process. (And being to keep the shovel and axe hidden within the tarps since the last thing you need is a question about why you might need those) By the time you’re done, you’re about ready to go do the deed right now, but it’s still too early. Besides, you can’t just disappear for all day and night, your parents would wonder. You’re going to have to come up with an excuse of why you’re going to be gone. As you’re piecing together an excuse, when you get back in the house your mom sees and addresses you again. “You going to have dinner with us in a half hour or so?” she asks. “…yes…of course. I have to leave though afterwards.” “Leave? You just got here!” “I don’t mean leave to go back to Security City, I just mean…well I’ve been in contact with a former school friend through the Internet and she’s sort of been going through some tough times. I promised I’d meet up with her when I was visiting.” “Oh…well I certainly understand. Who was this friend? Do I know her? Though I suppose I only ever remember Julie due to you two hanging together a lot.” You very briefly blank on making up a name on the spot, however you do come up with one rather quickly. “Um, Diana. Her name was Diana Morningstar. She never came over here, since her parents were always a bit strict, but I always got along with her in school. She wasn’t very popular, but I always felt a bit sorry for her so I was sort of her only real friend. Though I imagine she probably put more stock into it than I did, I mean I was still just a shallow kid at the time and wanted to hang out with Julie since we could have fun together like normal young teens. I sort of lost contact with her when her parents pulled her out of school altogether and home schooled her. I think they were religious nuts.” Your mother just shakes her head. “See, parents like that just shouldn’t have children. That’s a shame. Well I’m glad to hear that you showed that girl a bit of kindness. I’m sure she’s glad you’re in contact again and will be happy to see you. You always were thoughtful.” Your mother says and then mentions that you should take a spare key for the house from the desk in the front room just in case you come home late and they’re already asleep. Eventually it’s dinnertime and you have dinner with your mom and dad. Through a bit of conversation you do learn a little more about your “life” here and through careful weaving and quick thinking, you manage to navigate through questions you might not otherwise know the answers to. To be honest though, you’re only just barely paying attention to any of it, because you’re so preoccupied. While you’re apparently calm on the outside, you’re really a ball of nervous energy and as soon as dinner is over you nearly rush out of the house, though you do grab the spare house key for appearances. You say goodbye to your parents and leave the house. It’s night, but it’s still too early for her to be at the motel yet, well at least you hope that’s the case since that will change up your plans of how to get to her. You spend a bit of time driving around trying to put yourself in the mind frame to do this. You can’t afford to choke; this is a life or death decision quite literally. You need to do this for your future life here. The life that you deserved…but why are you so much more deserving? Didn’t this Suzy work hard to get what she got even if she had a few advantages? Are you just too overwhelmed with jealousy? How can you genuinely desire to find the inner strength to kill? “For fuck’s sake Suzy, you were going out with a cultist for fuck’s sake and you had no problem with him killing people! Is this really all that surprising?” you exclaim to yourself. Maybe this is genetic. Maybe you take after Uncle Ed. (Who you learned didn’t exist in this reality when your mom mentioned being an only child at dinner) Maybe it was your fucked up upbringing. Maybe it was your environment. Maybe there was always darkness in you and you were just too damn lazy for it ever to fully thrive. Well it’s thriving now. Is it ever. You’ve got more motivation than you ever have before. Maybe it’s because there is so much at stake. Maybe it’s because on some level you actually hate yourself and by killing this Suzy, well it’s like killing yourself without the actual downside of dying. Whatever the reason, you can’t waste anymore time thinking about whether this is right or wrong. Your life hasn’t exactly been “right” for a very long time, but if everything goes according to plan, your life will be getting there. Well at least that’s how you’re convincing yourself this time around. Just like you’ve convinced yourself of several other things this week, you succeed in convincing yourself of this too. It’s getting a lot easier. You stop driving around town and finally head to the motel. You’ll wait the rest of the time out in the parking lot. When you get to the Jinn Inn, it isn’t quite as bad as the one in your reality, but you definitely see some shady characters popping into the rooms. You see no sign of a silver sports car though and you do take the time to check. She’s not here yet so you just park in a strategic location where you can see all the traffic coming in and out. When she arrives, you’ll definitely see her. Hours pass, but you never lose focus. And eventually your vigilance pays off. You see a silver sports car. It actually isn’t as fancy as you thought it might be, probably was bought used, but it’s certainly more than you ever had. You watch her park close to the motel rooms and then you see her get out of the car. She’s dressed in casual clothing and carries a small purse, but when you watch her walk to the motel check in office, you notice she carries herself with an air of self-confidence. It’s like it doesn’t matter that the area she’s around is shit, she knows she’s better and isn’t at all intimidated by the element here. It is at this moment you grab your baseball bat and get out of the car still keeping an eye out and crouching down behind the vehicles. Fortunately nobody else happens to be lingering around the lot at the moment. Hopefully it stays that way. You soon see her come out of the check in office and as stealthily as you can you run over behind more cars and get closer. You watch where she walks to and continue to keep a look out for anyone else that might suddenly pop up. You just need to stay hidden as you follow her and then rush her when she finally opens up her room. You silently thank your luck for once since she seems to not be very aware of her surroundings and only focuses on heading towards her room. “Stupid, arrogant bitch…” you say to yourself. Your stalking soon ends when you see her reach her room. It’s a perfect opening too. Nobody is around and she fumbles with the keys a bit giving you time to get closer before making that mad sprint as soon as she opens her room… and then you strike. Your target opens the door and enters her room. She turns around to close the door just in time to see you up close in front of her hitting her with face with the bat. It isn’t a full swing, but rather a hard “poke”, but it’s enough to break her nose and cause her to go falling to the floor. You quickly slam the door shut behind you and you briefly think about beating her brains in with the bat, but then you realize that will probably be messy. “You…” is all she manages to get out before you kick her in the face to shut her up. Then you pounce on top of her and after turning her over, you use the bat sideways and you press it up against her throat as hard as you can as you pull back. She gasps and struggles for her life, but it’s no use, your determination to kill her is much stronger than her abilities to fight for her life. “Shhhhh…just let go….just let go…everything is going to work out and your parents won’t be losing a daughter at all. Just let go….” You whisper. Soon you hear a crunching sound of perhaps crushing bones in her neck or her windpipe or something. Whatever it is, her struggle temporarily becomes more violent and jerky with her limbs attempting to flail about. It almost feels like you’re riding her like a wild pony, but soon this outburst is muted and then nothing. Suzy collapses dying with her face partially in a small puddle of her blood and spital, leaving you sitting on top of a corpse’s back. You eventually stand up taking in what you’ve done. You’re hot and sweaty, but strangely invigorated. “(Whew) And I thought I was going to choke.” you say and then start to chuckle at your own dark joke. Well the first part of the deed is done, now comes the more labor inducing part. Getting rid of her body. You’ve actually managed to keep the mess to a minimum by choking her to death, so you’re wondering if you shouldn’t just grab the tarps from the car, roll her ass up in them, duct tape it together and take her to the trunk. She might be your size, (Okay slightly lighter) but it isn’t like you’re used to carrying bodies around. While there wasn’t anyone out there, the last thing you need is someone seeing you fumbling around with a body, even one wrapped in a tarp. If you wanted to play it safe, you suppose you could drag her to the bathroom and chop her up in the bathtub. It will definitely take longer and you might make more of a mess, but you could always carry her out in several pieces in that big luggage bag you brought with you. > You chop her up If you’re going to do this, you need to do this right. In fact the more you think about it, this isn’t going to be done in one day. However, you can get some of it done tonight if you stay focused. Sure, you’re going to have to come up with a few excuses to your parents of why you were out all night, but you can think them up while you’re taking care of this. You quickly search her body, but find nothing of interest. The purse that she dropped on the floor when you smashed her in the face contains all the important stuff, but you figure you can go through it more thoroughly later. The first thing you do is leave the room and head directly to the check in office. When you enter you see a slovenly man watching a tv. His leering eyes turn your way and you have no doubt he thinks you’re the same woman from earlier. “Hey, I’m gonna need that room a little longer.” You say. “Business that good huh?” he snorts. “Very funny, look how much for two more days?” “Same price you see on the fucking sign above my head.” “Oh, well I guess I didn’t see it since I was so mesmerized what with you being such a stud and all.” You say sarcastically while pulling out a couple hundreds out of your pocket. You toss the money at him dismissively, but he takes it without question. “Keep the change and I don’t want anyone disturbing me until its time to check out, got it? That means no house keeping ladies or shit knocking at my door.” You say. “House keeping ladies? Pfft, no problem there. I got one and she barely does her fucking job as it is. If I wasn’t married to her I would’ve fired her years ago.” The man says and returns to his show. You then head to your car where you start bringing in several of the various objects you brought from the house. Takes you a couple trips, but you don’t have any trouble. The motel bathroom is fortunately bigger than you expected it to be, it’s also a lot dirtier than you expected it to be. Of course now you’re not so much worried about making a mess so much as you’re afraid you’re going to catch hepatitis just being in the damn place. You lay down tarps on the floor and in the bathtub then you drag her body in. You go grab the axe and study it a bit; hoping that it’s sharp enough that you won’t need to struggle with the whole dismemberment task. Standing over her body with an axe is a little surreal to you, but you need to stop dwelling on how weird this all is and get on with it. “Here we go.” You say and swing the axe… Chopping up the body is a mixed feeling. On one hand you’re completely at peace with the deed and everything that goes along with it. The blood and gore isn’t even all that bad since you’ve gotten a bit accustomed to that, but it’s the smell that’s making you feel a little sick. You actually have to stop chopping for a moment because you can’t stop gagging. Eventually you just give in and throw up in the toilet nearby. Afterwards, you’re more or less fine. It still isn’t nearly as bad as that fucked up reality warping tentacle monster shadow abominations you had to endure during your time in the Gray Building. You never want to experience something like that again. By the time you’re finished, you’ve got severed parts waiting to be wrapped up. You got most of the bloody mess on the tarps, so that’s one less thing to worry about you suppose. You’ll have to dispose of the bloody clothing you’re wearing though. Getting naked, you return to your large luggage case, which you placed on the bed and open it up to retrieve all the trash bags you took along with the duct tape. The wrapping and taping is probably more time consuming than the chopping up part. You don’t really have too many problems except when it comes to the torso which is not fun to deal with since it’s still heavy and blood is leaking everywhere from it. Eventually you get everything in order and before you know it, you’ve got several body parts wrapped fairly tightly in bags and they don’t seem to be leaking either. After washing your hands and arms a bit, you grab the luggage case from the next room. It takes some effort and squeezing, but you just barely manage to fit all of the parts in the case. After carefully moving the tarps to drain the blood in the tub, you then fold them up and squeeze them in too, along with your blood drenched clothing. The luggage case itself is made of solid material and you’re confident there won’t be any leakage, but just dragging it back into the main room takes some effort. It definitely isn’t going to be easy to shove into the car trunk. Next you spend a little time cleaning up a few places where the blood spilled on the floor or splattered on the wall. Most of this was in the bathroom and is relativity easy to get rid of, though you do spend some time scrubbing the carpet a bit where you first choked her out. After you’re done with all of that, you take a shower, which also gets rid of the blood already in the tub. You briefly feel a little like that infamous countess that bathed in the blood of young girls to maintain her youth. Getting dressed in a new set of clothing you brought in the duffle bag, you finally collapse on the bed not caring how filthy it may or may not be. “Ahhh…shit…” you say to yourself as fatigue sets in. You take this opportunity to go a bit through the purse now, starting with the phone. You check the time and see that it’s practically getting up for morning. You figure you’ll sleep here for what remains of the night and tomorrow you’ll take the remains to the wilderness and find a good spot to bury them. You imagine your mom will call you at some point, possibly even waking you up. You figure you’ll tell her you had a few drinks with Diana and you didn’t want to risk driving home. She’ll understand that even if she might not approve. You also figure you’ll take the blue car when you drive. The shovel is still in that one and you might very well have to stop off at your parent’s house first for some reason anyway if they really make a fuss to want to see you immediately. Better you don’t have to park around the block or something just so you don’t arouse suspicion. You’ll definitely be abandoning the blue one and taking the silver one back when you leave town and head back to Security City though. And that’s just some of what you have to do for tomorrow. You’ll be able to do it though as long as you stay focused on your goals like you have been doing. As you begin to drift off, your thoughts briefly focus on Bobby. Seems weird to think of him even now after all you’ve been through this week. You wonder if his family lives in town? Are they still cultists or are they normal? You have no idea, there is going to be a lot to learn from this reality, but you can only dwell on “your” Bobby and what he might think. You certainly are a far cry from that “good girl” he rescued so long ago. He probably would be proud of you right now. You know he’s out of your life forever now, but you still can’t help feel a little sad about it. “I still wonder if being with you influenced me or what I just did was within me all along. Either way I guess if I stayed with you earlier this week…maybe…maybe… we could have made it work after all. Another reality perhaps…” you say and close your eyes. > Next day… SATURDAY You wake up to the cell phone ringing. You’re very tired, but when you see who it is, this call isn’t unexpected. “Hey mom…” you groggily reply. “Hey mom? Where are you? I thought you would’ve come back last night!” your mom exclaims. “What time is it now?” “It’s almost noon! Are you okay?” “Mom, mom, mom, calm down. I’m fine. I just…well I drank a little too much…” “Drink? You don’t drink!” your mom exclaims. “Yeah, I know hence why I’ve been more or less out of it. Diana was really distraught last night and she was already drinking a bit when I got over to her place. She got an eviction notice, she broke up with her boyfriend, she lost her job and just a whole bunch of other drama in genera hit her this week. She really needed a friend to speak with and well, I ended up drinking with her since she was sort of insistent and I wanted to be there for her. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I think she felt better as the night went on. Of course that might have just been the drink…I dunno…I’m sorry for worrying you though.” There is a pause after you give your excuse. “Okay Suzy. I get it. (Sigh) I’m just glad you had the sense not to drive if you really got that drunk though. I do hope this isn’t a habit though, I know you’re an adult, but you’re still my baby and I don’t like to think of you as being some falling down lush.” “Oh mom, that’s not going to happen. Seriously, like I said, I only did it so Diana would feel better. I fully intend to tell her when she wakes up that this won’t be happening again.” “Glad to hear it. So when do you think you’ll be home? Your father and I would still like to see you since you actually came here to visit us remember?” “I know, I’ll be home in a few hours I suppose. I still feel woozy from last night. Did you need me over immediately though? Because I can do that if you want.” “No, no, you take care of everything you need to over there and come over when you’re feeling up to driving. Don’t want you getting into an accident because you’re not feeling one hundred percent.” “Okay, I will be over as soon as I can though.” “Alright, we’ll see you then. Love you Suzy.” “I love you mom.” You hang up and rub your eyes a bit. “Well that’s one thing out of the way. Better get on with the more important task.” You say. You open up the door to your room and see a closer parking spot to your room, which is good since you really don’t want to drag that case too far. You go to your car and bring it in closer and then head back to your room to gather up everything. You gather up the bat and axe (which you also wash off in the tub) and toss them in the trunk. Next, you grab the luggage case. With some effort, you drag it to the trunk and lift it inside. You’re really glad you decided to chop her up, you can’t imagine how awkward it would’ve been to carry her intact. You take your new purse and duffle bag and leave the room. You’ll come back for the sports car later. The only danger of leaving it here is someone stealing the thing, but then it wasn’t really your car to begin with. Believing you’ve taken care of everything you need to here, you start up your car and drive off for north of town. A few hours later and you’re just finishing up digging a good-sized hole in the ground to shove the case in. You really think you were better off doing this in the day time since you neglected to bring a flashlight which would have made digging in the middle of the woods at night a little more difficult. You were a little concerned about some random campers stumbling upon you, or maybe some redneck hunters, but so far you haven’t seen a single thing, which is good. You look at the luggage case. “Well Suzy, now is where we part ways. I wish I could say I didn’t want things to be this way, but I’d be lying. You had a better life and I wanted that so I took it. Maybe that makes me a fucking sociopath or evil or something, I don’t know and I don’t care. All I can say is I’m going to make the most of it and not waste your life the way I wasted my life.” You grab the case and shove it into the hole. “Thanks Suzy and goodbye.” You say and then fill up the hole. After your deed you make the mildly long walk out of the woods and to your car. You throw your shovel in the trunk and sit in the car for a while not doing anything except resting. Digging a hole for a body is some tiring business even if it’s neatly tucked in a case. You grab your new phone out of the purse to call your mom so you can let her know you’ll be home soon and that’s when you notice someone else has called while you were out digging. It’s your “girlfriend.” Apparently her name is Heather and she left you a voice message which out of curiosity you listen to. “Hey Suzy, I hope you’re having a good time visiting your family. I just wanted to call though and see how you were. I know you haven’t been gone long, but you know I always miss you when you’re not around. Anyway, call me back when you have time. Oh and I sent you some pictures to keep you occupied when you’re alone! (Giggle!)” You go through the phone and see that Heather has indeed sent you more than a few pictures. You see a raven haired girl of small physique with lipstick and eye make up wearing lingerie and making sexy poses. You have to admit, she’s actually very pretty in a slightly goth sort of way. “Damn, maybe I shouldn’t break up with her immediately.” you chuckle. You turn the car on and begin making the journey back to your parent’s house. Along the way you think about everything that’s happened this week and how this is just beginning of your new life. You weren’t joking about making the most of it when you said those words out loud in the woods. You meant that, well except you’re not going to be making the most out of her life, you’re going to be making the most out of YOUR life. While the “transformation” is far from complete, you think the hardest part is over and even if there are challenges or you to overcome, you’ll succeed in surviving and conquering them. Because that’s all you’ve done during this Hell week, survived and ultimately conquered it. > … Mirror rorriM The Future… Your siblings, spouses, children, and you all stand in your mother’s bedroom. It probably won’t be long now. You always knew the day would come when you’d lose her again and that day is today. While you might have been more prepared for it this time, it doesn’t make it any less sad. You didn’t even feel this sad when your dad died years ago and you loved him very much, though maybe that’s because you always still had the tainted memory of your crappy alternate one. Your mother though in both realities was always there for you and you’ve never forgotten that. “Now that I’ve said my goodbyes to everyone…I want….I want to speak to Suzy…alone…” your mother utters. Everyone is a little surprised by this unexpected request. You are too, since you thought everyone was going to be in her room until the end. “What? But mother…” Kelly starts to say looking almost a little offended. “Kelly. Not now. Not today.” Ben says with a stern voice. Kelly looks at Ben like she wants to argue, but he’s about the only person that can make her back down. She does however give you the stare of death. Kelly never changes no matter what reality. She always hates you. There actually was a slightly comforting consistency when you first encountered her. “Fine. She’s all yours, just like she always is.” Kelly snaps and storms out the room. Ben exhales and shrugs with a slight widening of his eyes looking at you. “It’s okay…I’m used to it.” You say. “Alright, everyone come on let’s leave these two alone to talk.” Ben replies. Ben escorts his children out of the room while Julie goes up and gives you a quick hug before following them. You kiss and hug your husband and tell your daughter that you’ll see them later. After they leave it’s just you and mom. You pull up your chair as close as you can to the bed and sit near her and hold her hand. “I’m here mom.” You say. “Yes…yes you are. You’ve always been here. (Cough) Even when you weren’t.” Your mom at this point turns to look directly at you and despite her very weak state you feel her hand squeeze yours somewhat strongly and she gives you a sudden intense look. “I know you’re not Suzy…or rather you’re not the Suzy I gave birth to…” she says with a tone that you’ve never heard before. It isn’t anger or anything negative, but it is one that puts you so off guard that you get a chill down your back. “Mom, I…” you begin to sputter before she interrupts you. “Don’t. I know. I’ve known for a very long time now. A mother always knows her own child.” You don’t know how to react. You look down and away from your “mother. You actually feel a little sick and you start to tremble a bit. You have never once in all these years felt bad about what you did, but now you’re not so sure. You begin to sniffle and tears start to form. “Shhhh, Suzy. Save your tears for when I’m truly gone because it doesn’t matter. You’re still my daughter, but I couldn’t go to my grave without letting you know that I knew. I also thought I’d tell you for your sake. Now (cough) I don’t want to know the gruesome details…about HOW this came to be, but if its been weighing on your conscience at all, you didn’t actually replace the Suzy I gave birth to anyway.” This is beyond unexpected. How is it possible that she knows all this just on instinct? You look up at your mother. “My Suzy…the Suzy I knew as the daughter I gave birth to? Something happened to her a long time ago. (cough cough) Something changed soon after she went to college. I never could place my finger on it, but first time she visited I knew something was different. And it wasn’t just due to experimenting with new ideas and sexuality in college. SHE was different and I KNEW she was. As I said, a mother knows, but the frequent little inconsistencies in her memories and such made it certain. Just as I learned with you.” You just continue holding your mother’s hand as she speaks. “But what could I do? What could I say? Who would believe such a fantastic tale? Sure this new Suzy was a little more full of herself, but she still loved me just like my Suzy did. I couldn’t lose my baby daughter twice so I never spoke up. Never (cough) dreamed it would happen again though. I suppose in some ways I might have even been glad though. You replaced the one who replaced mine.” Never did you ever believe that your mother knew. To learn this now is just as overwhelming as when you had to deal with the situation so long ago. “Why…why didn’t you say anything before?” you ask looking up. “Why ruin a good relationship? You never disrespected me and treated me kindly. You always visited when you could and you even moved back to town with your family when your father died so you could be closer to me. You obviously loved me very much. Could I really ask for a better daughter?” your mother says with a faint smile. The feelings are almost overwhelming you at this point. You’re completely at a loss. At this point your mom gives your hand another squeeze, but weaker this time. “You’re my daughter. My baby and I always loved you. Never doubt that.” She says. “I don’t…(Sob)” you say and attempt to hold it together. Your mother’s grip is becoming less firm now. “Soon none of this will matter, but before I go…I want to know a couple things…” your mother says weakly. “Of course.” You reply. “What…(cough) was your other mother like?” “She…(sniffle) was very much like you. She was kind and was the only one who ever truly cared when I was growing up. I…(sob) was still little when she died…I missed her very much…” you say trying to keep from crying completely. Your mother nods. “I see…I suppose…(cough cough) that answer might partially answer my other question then…” “What’s that?” “How many other Suzys were there after you?” You’re silent for a moment. “Three that I know of. I think you may have even met one of them.” “Mm…considering you were never replaced… I suppose…you just wanted this life more than they did then…” “It…(sob) has been a good life…(sob)” Your mother pats your hand. “And you’ll still have a good life Suzy, even after I’m gone…” she says. At this point your mother’s eyes begin to flutter and then shut completely and her breathing becomes shallow. You stay until the end and then sadness is completely released. You cry over your loss and head towards the door, not wishing to be in the same room with the empty shell that was your mother any longer. When you exit, your husband immediately sees had distraught you are and goes to comfort you. Your daughter has been visibly crying as well. Ben, says that he’ll start making the arrangements for the funeral, meanwhile Kelly takes it upon herself to call medical personnel. Later, the drive back home is quieter, with your daughter Sally sleeping in the backseat and your husband Roger just paying attention to the road. It’s been an emotional roller coaster for you today. More than you even thought it would be, but you’re sort of glad your mother knew. Somehow her knowing and still loving and accepting you anyway made it just as real as how your reality’s mom felt towards you. You also wonder if this means you won’t have to put up with any other reality hopping Suzys any longer. That might be a little too much to hope for though, after all your life is still a good one and you have much to be happy about in the scheme of things. Your mother was right about that. Doesn’t matter, you’ll continue to fight for it just like you always have because now you truly have a life worth fighting for. “You okay over there honey?” Roger asks. “Yes, well no, but I guess I’m just trying to think about all the good times I had with mom. You know, focus on the positive.” “That’s good Suzy. I think that’s a healthy approach.” He replies. Roger always has been a supportive husband to you. You never would have thought you would have fallen for a soldier type before. You sometimes wonder if you and Roger ever met in another reality. “Yeah, it’s odd, but I think I’m also coming up with an idea for a new book. Figure maybe I should re-channel all this negativity into something productive.” You say. “Oh? What idea?” “Well I suppose my mind is still a bit fragmented for a solid idea, but I’m thinking of doing a sequel to Mirrors.” “Oh, your scifi book about parallel dimensions? That one was pretty popular. I know I certainly liked it better than that one your wrote about that inbred cultist family. That one was a little too gruesome for my tastes.” “Well I had to make a dramatic break from my first three books. Up until then, all people thought I could write was lesbian pirate erotica.” “Hey I liked Treasure Chest. I thought it was a pretty deep love story.” Roger says. “Oh I know why YOU liked it.” You say chuckling a little bit and allowing yourself to feel a little better. “Well okay I liked the obvious too, well anyway do you have any idea on what the new story might involve?” “It will probably just pick up a few years after Mirror left off and I’ll see how it goes from there. Like I said, it’s just in the idea stages now, but whatever I come up with, I’ll definitely be dedicating it in the memory of mom.” “Well I think that’s a very good way to honor her. She certainly has contributed to your inspiration.” You nod. “In more ways than one Roger. In more ways than one.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY You wake up with the sun shining in on your bedroom. You can safely say you haven’t had that experience in a long time, if ever. You aren’t sure what time it is, but knowing you, you probably slept through the morning as usual. Once again, you’re stuck in the same clothes you’ve been wearing since the beginning of the week. While you can certainly shower, you’d really rather change clothes at this point so you go through your room and hope that your alternate self left some old clothes in it. After going through some drawers you find that your alternate self has about the same fashion sense as you do, meaning pretty simplistic. The clothing itself tends to be a bit brighter though as everything else seems to be in this reality and it’s starting to get on your nerves. You grab a pair of old jeans and a shirt and head to the bathroom where you wash up and later attempt to brush your teeth using your index finger with toothpaste on it. The jeans and shirt are a slightly tight on you though. It’s not enough that your alternate self has a happier life, but the fucking bitch is apparently a size smaller than you as well. “Oh well, I guess I’ll just be that much more popular with horny guys (Sigh) …unfucking believable…” you mutter as you squeeze yourself into the clothes. After getting dressed, you head downstairs. The first thing you see is dad on a small ladder working on the overhead light he mentioned wasn’t working. You don’t think you’ve ever seen your own dad ever fix anything. “Hey, look who’s finally up. You sleep well? You must have considering it’s the afternoon.” Dad says. “Yeah, I guess I really needed the sleep. Where’s mom?” you ask. “She’s in the kitchen. Oh meant to ask you, where’s that silver sports car your drive? I didn’t see it in the driveway or even on the street.” Silver sports car? Seriously? You own a fucking sports car? “Oh, um…yeah I decided not to drive that one here, it’s been giving me trouble lately anyway. I got an older car for cheap to just drive around in; it’s that small blue one outside.” You say. “Oh. Okay. I just thought I’d ask. Like I said, there’s been some burglaries and I was concerned that the criminals had expanded to car theft too. Probably a good idea you didn’t bring it, nobody is likely to steal that thing outside.” “Yeah, I suppose so.” You say and head to the kitchen. “Fucking sports car…” you whisper shaking your head before you greet mom in a friendly manner. “Hey sleeping beauty is finally awake! You sleep well I trust in your old bed?” mom asks while she works on cooking something. “Yeah. Slept fine. What are you cooking.” “Oh I’m preparing big batch of beef stew. I swear your father would probably not eat anything else. It will take awhile, but I can make you something before then of course.” “Nah, I’m okay.” You say sitting down. Your mother smiles at you and you smile back, but you don’t say anything else. It’s weird, you wanted to talk with her so much yesterday, but now as reality sets in that she’s not really your mother, you’re sort of at a loss for words and awkwardly silent. Still, you want to make the most of this time so you struggle to think of a topic without being suspicious. “So…uh…how are Ben and Kelly doing?” you ask. “Well Ben is still stationed over in Europe. Not exactly sure what he’s doing over there, but it doesn’t seem to be dangerous for once, which I for one am glad about. Julie and the children I imagine are glad about it too. You talk to her recently? “Not for awhile.” You say which is sort of the truth. “Oh. Well I did hear you two weren’t on speaking terms any longer. I hope you make up though since the pair of you were always good friends and the both of you probably said words neither of you really meant.” “Wait, what?” you ask. You mother stops chopping potatoes for a moment to address you directly. “A few months ago, Ben told me that Julie told him that you got in argument with her about how she’s too strict with your niece and nephew and she told you not to tell how to raise her kids. I can’t remember the entire exchange of what else happened except I know she ended up calling you a dyke that won’t ever know what it means to be a mother anyway and then you swore at her and hung up. While I can certainly see Julie’s defensiveness about how to raise her children, I don’t think it was right to say such hateful things, just because of your lifestyle choice.” “Lifestyle choice?” you say a bit confused as you’re attempting to process everything. “Oh right. I’m sorry Suzy. I know you were born that way. You explained it very well to your father and me when you came out years ago before graduating from college. We’re just still a little old fashioned in our way of thinking and it lapses at times.” You do not believe this… “But I’m not a…” you start to say, but then realize why bother correcting her? It would just confuse things for when their real Suzy arrives. “…I’ll try to make the attempt with Julie, but she really needs to apologize.” You say instead. “You always were the bigger person. And I wouldn’t give it another thought as far as what she said about being a mother is concerned. There’s always adoption and I also know you people are really big on all that artificial insemination stuff. I’m sure when the time is right you and Heather will…” “Heather?” “Yeah, your girlfriend. Wait, you didn’t break up with her did you? She seemed so nice when you brought her here for us to meet her…” “No…no…I didn’t break up with her, um… so how is Kelly again?” you ask really wanting to change the subject. “Kelly? Well she’s Kelly. Still one of this town’s finest and doing a good job at it. Wish she’d find a better man to settle down with though. She seems to flip back and forth between these various loser guys that are so far beneath her it isn’t even funny. She really could do so much better and it’s not like there haven’t been several good men that have made genuine attempts to woo her. She doesn’t want to be tied down though and it’s her life I suppose.” Well now you’ve heard everything. You truly are in bizarro world. “You okay dear?” mom asks. “Yeah, yeah I’m just fine mom.” You answer “Well enough about your siblings, how are you doing? You working on a new book yet?” “New book?” “Yeah, you started writing a new book again? I know last time you said you had a bit of writer’s block. Honestly I don’t know how you come up with all the ideas you do. You’ve written like three books already. I know I don’t have the imagination to do that, but you always were creative even as a little girl.” So that’s what you do. You’re a writer. Makes sense actually. In fact you almost want to kick yourself of why the hell you never tried your hand at it in your own reality. You certainly procrastinate enough. “I’ve got a few ideas in my head I suppose. Writing is never an exact science.” Before you have to make up more shit on the fly, dad comes walking in. “Smells good in here already. Anyway I fixed the light and now I’m going to the hardware store, I’ll be back later.” “If you already fixed the light, why do you have to go to the hardware store?” you mother asks. “I have to replenish all the stuff I used.” He says, but mom doesn’t look convinced. “Okay I just want to go because I really want a new drill.” Dad breaks down and admits. “George you’re really silly sometimes when you try to make up stories.” “Well it’s where Suzy gets her story telling ability from!” dad remarks and pats you on the shoulder giving you a smile, which you return. “Okay, see you both later.” Dad remarks and leaves the kitchen with Mom still smiling about the silliness. “You and dad seem very happy.” You remark. “Of course we are. Why wouldn’t we be? We’re enjoying our elderly years together, we’ve had a successful marriage, we have three successful children that love us, grandchildren, a nice home, what more could one hope for?” What more indeed. You’re still thinking about what the hell you’re going to do with your own life. Despite a few major differences in your alternate self, you’d still switch places with her. She’s got everything, a formal higher education, successful career, a fancy car, a significant other and most importantly a loving family. You begin to get lost in your own head, which is then disrupted by mom. “Suzy? Suzy?” mom asks. “Huh? Yeah?” you answer. “Are you really okay? You’ve been sort of spacing out lately.” “Oh, yeah. Well like I said, I’ve got a few story ideas in my head and sometimes I get lost in thought.” “Okay. Well I really have to go to the bathroom, can you finish cutting those carrots?” “Oh yeah, sure mom.” You reply. Your mom leaves the kitchen leaving you alone with your thoughts and cutting up carrots. You increasingly become melancholy as you dwell on how things still suck for you and as you’re apt to do, you begin talking to yourself. “(Sigh) Suzy, Suzy, Suzy, only you could find the negative out of the one relatively positive thing about thing about this fucked up week. Pull yourself together girl. You survived a hell of a lot worse than this. You wanted to be self-sufficient, we this is a good start. A fresh new world is your oyster and you’ve got plenty of opportunity…” Suddenly you hear a phone ring. It’s the land phone on the kitchen wall. You walk over and nearly grab it immediately, but then you remember you’re not really supposed to be here. However, you then notice the caller I.D. Suzy. You are compelled to pick up. “Hello?” you answer. “Hey. Mom? Is that you?” the voice on the other end says. You pause. You never realized that you and your mother sounded so similar before. “Yes, of course it’s me honey. Who else would it be?” you say. “I dunno, you sound a little different. Might be that ratty old land phone you have though, I keep telling you to get a cell!” “Oh you know me dear, your father and I are a bit set in our ways.” “Don’t I know it. Ha ha! Nah, I know you guys really do try. So hey, I was just calling to let you know I’m coming a little bit earlier and I’ll probably be there sometime late tonight. Like probably after midnight.” “You are?” “Yes, like I said I just wanted to let you know so you guys don’t get too mad when I’m knocking on your door late at night waking you up…unless you want me to stay at the town’s motel until tomorrow morning. I know you guys go to bed early.” It is at this moment that the dark idea your mind has been dancing around for quite some time isn’t going away and is now in full bloom. If you just got rid of this Suzy, all your problems would be solved. You just have to muster the fortitude to do it… > You tell Suzy to come home You can’t do it. Even if you could pull it off and ignore the immorality of it, you still can’t do it. If you did, you’d be taking the easy way out just in a different fashion. Besides, what right do you have to take this good life away from this reality’s Suzy? You don’t. “No! We wouldn’t dream of making you do such a thing! You come right over, and we’ll answer the door when you arrive.” You say. “You sure?” “Of course I’m sure! What kind of parents would we be if we didn’t let our own daughter back into the house?” “You two really are the greatest parents sometimes. What am I saying? You two are the greatest parents ALL the time! Okay, well I guess I’ll be seeing you tonight then.” “Suzy?” you utter. “Yeah?” she asks. “I want you to know that your father and I love you very much.” “I know that mom. I love you guys too.” “Just always remember that, okay? We’ll see you when you get here.” You say before hanging up. You have to fight back the urge to cry. “Did I hear you on the phone out here?” you mother says walking into the kitchen. “Huh? Oh, yeah just someone trying to sell something. They were really persistent.” You reply. “I can tell, you hardly cut up any of the carrots.” “Sorry, I guess I got caught up in telling them to never call here again. I should have just hung up I suppose.” “No worries, I’ve gotten directly angry at those telemarketer types too.” “Hey mom, I’ve got some things I left here that I want to get and I know they’re probably in my room somewhere, you don’t mind if I go take care of that do you?” “No, not at all. We can talk later. Let me know if you’re looking for something in particular. I might know where it is.” “I will mom.” You leave the kitchen and head to your room where you close the door and break down a bit quietly. It isn’t fair, but it is the right thing to do. “Well, at least I had a few more moments with her, even if she wasn’t my real mom.” You say to yourself. After a few moments of being sad, you finally motivate yourself to action. “Well, I might not be killing her, but I’m not above stealing from the bitch.” You say and grab an old looking duffle bag out of her closet and grab a bunch of her old clothes out of her drawers for yourself. Sure they’re going to be a little tight, but at least you won’t have spend money on clothes for awhile and you’re going to have to make that thousand dollars you still have last until you figure out a way to make a living in this world. After pillaging your alternate’s room, you decide you probably should leave now. No point in drawing this out and it will be easier for you. You imagine that your visit here is probably going to leave some very strange questions for this family when the real Suzy arrives, but you really can’t worry about it. Besides, you’re sure that everything will work itself out anyway. Seems to have so far with this Suzy. You head back downstairs and find that dad is back home. “Hey Suzy, where are you heading off to?” dad asks. “Oh, I’m just going to put this in the car and maybe drive around town. Look up some old friends and such. Might not be back until late so I might be knocking on the door waking you up again.” “What? You’re not even going to have dinner with us tonight? I thought the whole point of this visit was to see us!” your dad exclaims. “It is, but I still want to visit a few old school friends I haven’t seen in a long time too. I mean we’ll have lots of time tomorrow and the rest of the week!” “Rest of the week? I thought you had to leave here by Monday.” “Oh, yeah…well two days is still a lot of time!” you say. “I suppose…it’s just…well your mother and I were really happy that you arrived a little earlier than you did since we don’t see you as much anymore and we really wanted to enjoy the time we were getting with you. The extra day was like a bonus.” You look a little downtrodden at dad’s disappointed tone. “But I guess if you made other plans with other people, I wouldn’t want to stop you.” Your dad remarks and leaves the room. You nearly say something, but stop yourself. Instead you just head out the door and to your car. You throw the duffle bag in the trunk of your car and get ready to drive off… “(Sigh) Shit…” you say to yourself as you hang your head down with the key just in the ignition. You get back out of the car and head back to the house. “She’s not supposed to arrive until after midnight. Still gives me plenty of time. It’s not going to hurt to have dinner.” You say to yourself and ring the bell. The door soon opens and dad answers. “You forget something?” he asks. “Yeah, my manners. You’re right, I should be spending time with you guys. Sorry dad.” You say and give him a hug. “It’s okay honey.” He replies and hugs you back. You pass the next few hours chatting with dad. Mostly about mundane matters, which actually don’t involve any more insight into what your alternate life was like here. Doesn’t really matter though, you’re actually just enjoying the conversation. Back in your reality, you don’t think you ever spoke more than a half hour with your father at most. Eventually when dinner is served you sit down to eat with mom too and the conversation continues. This time you do learn a little more about your “life” here and through careful weaving and quick thinking, you manage to navigate through questions you might not otherwise know the answers to. By the time dinner is over, you’re enjoying your time with mom and dad so much that you put off leaving immediately after. Instead you play a few board games with them (Which you definitely never did as a child with either of them in your own reality) and continue to have more fun. Eventually the time is getting very late and you do start to get concerned that the other Suzy will arrive earlier than expected. Fortunately mom and dad being creatures of habit tell you they’re turning in for the night and after a few more words, hugs goodnight and mentions of plans for tomorrow, they go to bed. You look at the time and see it’s indeed getting up for midnight. You leave the house and get in your car once again. As you drive off, you notice you aren’t sad. Well you’re sad that you do have to leave, but you not the emotional wreck you thought you might be. Maybe that little extra time together brought closure of sorts. You certainly are more at peace with it all. You wipe a few tears from your eyes and smile. This moment of “zen” is suddenly cut short by a car slamming into your driver’s side while rolling through a stop sign due to neither you nor the other driver paying full attention to your surroundings. The impact is pretty hard and given you weren’t even wearing your seatbelt at the time makes it worse. Unlike the car crash you had this earlier week, you’re hurt very badly and you even can’t move in your current condition. As you’re lying in your car bleeding, bones broken, having a hard time breathing drifting in and out of consciousness and a piece of twisted metal impaling your side you don’t think a mysterious stranger with magical healing gel is going to fix you this time. You also can’t help but think that this is probably the only way this week could have ended for you. Part of you wants to fight, but somehow with the last few good moments you just had with mom and dad make you actually want to let go. Why keep struggling? If you live you live, if not, well at least you had some joy during your last day. More than you might have had otherwise. Maybe you just weren’t meant for this world either. You aren’t sure how long you lay twisted in the wrecked vehicle for before you hear sirens, but you aren’t even awake long enough to hear the ambulance sirens, let alone before anyone actually comes and helps you. You die of your wounds in the ambulance thanks to the paramedics attending to the other driver first. Who are more than a little freaked out when they first see you and the driver of the other car. The funny thing is, you never did see that it was a silver sports car that slammed into you. Somehow fitting that this reality’s Suzy was luckier than you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY You wake up to the sound of…well you can’t quite place it. White noise might be the closest thing you can think of, but that wouldn’t be correct. It’s like an annoying hum or buzz going straight to your head. You get up and see that the TV is off from yesterday, so it isn’t that. “Jack? You hear that noise?” you call out in a groggy tone. There isn’t any answer, just that increasingly annoying noise. You attempt to get up and it takes you a couple tries, not because you’re naturally lazy, but more because you’re starting to feel nauseous. The noise you’re hearing isn’t helping matters. You get up on your feet and stagger to the door way which when you get to, you lean up against and feel like you’re going to puke. “Jack…” you just barely manage to shout, before you have to stop to keep from vomiting. You look up and down the corridor and find that the lights are flickering. Some are out completely. You have no idea what the hell is going on, but you’d probably be more scared if you didn’t feel so sick. Mustering up all your willpower, you head to the bedroom thinking Jack might be asleep in there. Nobody there, but you can’t fight the sickness any longer and you run as fast as you can to the bathroom nearly falling over in the process. You just barely manage to make it to throw up in the toilet. The lights are going nuts at this point and you notice the bathtub and sink are both on. After recovering a bit, you notice the stuff coming out of the sink isn’t exactly water. It’s black and tarry looking. You don’t risk touching it, you just get the hell out of the bathroom. No sooner have you done this, when a sudden loud noise hits you so hard you actually stumble and fall to the floor. You wouldn’t even be able to describe the sound, it’s just really horrible and even though you’ve just puked, you still feel pretty damn nauseous. Picking yourself back up and leaning against the wall, you slowly try to make your way to the room where Jack was messing about with his radio stuff. You don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere though, in fact the more you walk, the more you feel like you’re on a treadmill in an endless corridor. You continue on, but as you pass by rooms you can swear you’re seeing weird things out the corner of your eye. You then start thinking you’re seeing shit in front of you as well. Shadowy humanoid figures blink in and out existence along with the lighting. At this point the feeling of terror is becoming stronger than your feeling of sickness. The white noise is still drilling into your head, but now it’s accompanied by an insane laugh, which varies in pitch and tone. When you pass the flight of stairs, you hear whispery voices beckoning you go in that direction. You’re hardly enticed to do so. As you get closer to the radio room, the shadowy figures can be seen running about in the large room up ahead. As you get closer, these figures are becoming less shadowy and more “solid.” These figures are starting to no longer look humanoid either. It is around this time that you notice your surroundings are becoming… warped. Walls are melting around you and you’re seeing those shadowy figures in the next room starting to move in slow motion one moment and then other times you see them rapidly moving back and forth in a repetitious manner. You nearly jump out of your skin when several of these beings appear right in front of you and you get a good look at them now that they aren’t so shadowy anymore. They’re a mass of tentacles, teeth and misshaped features that would make any horror movie demon jealous, unfortunately this is no movie. The screeching, wailing, and gibbering are bad enough, the visual is bad enough, but the fetid smell is what puts it over the top in just vile nastiness. You see one particularly disgusting one with a mutilated face like raw meat and a the scent of a rotten corpse on a hot day, transform into something even worse looking before it opens three of its mouths to reveal its tongues which not only look infested with disease, but have ugly little faces on them. When it attempts to lick you, you turn and run only to find yourself in a wide open space where everything now looks like it’s been put through a multicolored filter. You feel like you’re in a rainbow void. When you look behind you however all you see is darkness save for the creatures now moving towards you. You don’t run far when all of a sudden the rainbow filter disappears and is replaced by a flickering affect that you’re actually back in a “real” location. It isn’t the corridor though, it resembles more of a large college auditorium and in the center is a single figure sitting in a lotus position. He’s bald and not dressed in modern clothing and in fact looks like he’s from some sort of nerd cosplay convention. He appears human however. One thing that’s about him that doesn’t look human though is his eyes are completely white and not just normal “blind eyes” sort either. They’re glowing pure white light. You become very disorientated as the flickering of this reality disappears and slowly just becomes a blank gray open space with more gray as far as you can see despite there not being any more walls. You see that the creatures behind you aren’t following, but they definitely want to get closer. It would seem this man’s presence is at least holding them back somehow. At this point you you’re completely lost to as what is going on, but you approach the man if it means keeping the monsters at bay. The man suddenly speaks as you get close to him. He’s not really looking at you though, more like looking through you. “You…I…don’t belong here…everything changes…so many changes…been here…before…somewhere else…so much to do…bring balance…the future is beautiful…the past is beautiful…everything is ugly…corrupted…it’s beautiful…” the man utters in a fragmented way and you have no idea what the hell he’s talking about. “Where is Jack?! What’s going on? Who are you?!” you ask trying to figure out this situation. To your horror you notice your hands and arms become weathered and wrinkled. From what you can tell, your hair has gone completely white as well. With some hesitation, you feel your face and it definitely doesn’t feel smooth anymore. “Oh my god…” you utter. “…time is short…fleeting life…the others do not like this place…disrupts balance…” the man says still not moving from his spot. You then notice your hands and everything else have gone back to normal. This entire situation is very fucked up, and you don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on, but you hope that “Mr. Lotus” has some answers with all the cryptic shit he’s spouting. “Look! I need answers! What is going on here and who are you?!” you ask again while still looking back to make sure those creatures are still staying away from you. “A footnote…forgotten… traveller…cursed…blessed…nobody… you must choose… Suzy…” the man utters. “How did you know my…” you start to ask before you’re interrupted. “You must choose…the others…they come…” You turn your head and see that the monsters and the darkness are indeed starting to move towards you once again. “Choose? Choose what?! What are you talking about?!” you ask again. “You must choose…” the man says again with less of an air of indifference and more of one of authority. “What am I choosing?” The area surrounding you and the man begins to darken and now you’re getting creatures starting surround you as well. “You must choose or die…” the man says again. “Alright! Alright! I choose! But what the fuck am I choosing!?!” you shout with a mixture of fear and frustration. “You’ll know when the time comes…” the man says. For a brief moment your surroundings change from that of the large classroom auditorium again with the man still in front of you. The blackness has disappeared, but the monsters have not as you see several floating tentacle creatures in the room with you. They aren’t quite as disgusting, but they’re still dangerous and giving off that aura that’s making you feel nauseous again. Just as you think you see a more humanoid figure enter the room there is suddenly a blinding flash all around you causing you to shield your eyes. Everything goes completely white, to completely black and then when you open your eyes again, you find yourself in the large front room of the building. Items are no longer neatly stack and are instead scattered about all over the place, some of them probably broken. Still completely baffled by what the fuck is going on, you look around for something to protect yourself with amongst the junk all over the floor. You eventually see a sturdy looking bat and pick it up. Upon inspection you notice the words “RUTH” on it, no doubt one of Jack’s valuable purchases. Speaking of Jack you still haven’t seen him, but you soon hear him. “Suzy?! Suzy? Are you here? Where are you?” you hear him call out. Sounds like it’s coming from the corridor, but you don’t see anyone. Maybe he’s upstairs? You haven’t been up there yet, but given what you just experienced, you’re a little reluctant to go deeper into this place. You remember Jack said he was going to tell you something about this building before you fell asleep, well whatever that was, it’s apparent that you were right that something about him was weird. Not just weird, but dangerous. You don’t think you’re ever going to quite get some of the images out of your head, you even feel a little different. Maybe the sensory overload has made you a bit numb rather than reducing you to a gibbering wreck. Numb or not, you still have a good mind to just walk out the front door and get the hell out of here. Maybe this was the “choice” that strange guy was talking about. > You go to Jack Maybe this isn’t a good idea, but considering Jack did save your life a couple times, it seems like a pretty shitty thing to do if you just left him. With bat in hand, you head towards back to the corridor and call out to Jack. “Hey Jack! Are you upstairs?” you say. “Suzy? Yeah! I’m up here! Be careful though, there’s still a bunch of weird shit going on.” Not terribly descriptive or encouraging. Weird shit could literally be anything, and in this case probably is. You head towards the stairs and go up for the first time. As you going up, you have this fear that you’re going to start sinking into them, that doesn’t happen and when you arrive to the top, you find yourself exiting into a corridor that’s laid out very much the same way as the first floor, the only difference is you’re across from another set of stairs on the opposite side. You look to your right and hear some noise causing you to ready your bat, though you soon see Jack exiting room of the side rooms. “Suzy! I’ve been looking all over for you.” He says approaching with an axe in hand. “Hey! Keep your distance!” You shout and raise your bat “What?” Jack asks as he stops in his tracks. “Sorry, it’s just, well there has been as you put it, a lot of weird shit going on and for all I know you’re some horrible monster. Not to mention you’re coming at me with an axe in hand, though I suppose given the shit I’ve already encountered, you probably wouldn’t have bothered to even stop.” You reply lowing the bat. “Well, you probably were best to err on the side of caution. I’ve just spent what I believe to be an hour or two looking for you.” Jack says. “I was in your living room downstairs asleep on your couch. Right where you left me last night.” You reply. “Yeah, and you weren’t there when I checked on you later this morning. I called out and looked in every room on the first floor. I heard your voice coming from the second floor so I went up there and that’s when things started getting weird. (Sigh) and I thought this place was done with all that…should have known better I suppose…” Jack trails off, but at this point you’re demanding an answer. “Jack, you’ve saved my life twice, but if I’m going to hang out with you, you better start explaining what the hell’s going on with this place. I’m not sure what weirdness you’ve experienced up here, but what I just experienced downstairs was beyond weird, it was fucking terrifying.” You exclaim. “I know. I know. I should have told you about this place yesterday. Well let’s head into this room and talk about it.” Jack heads into a room down the corridor and to the left. You follow and find that it’s another living area furnished in a similar manner as the one downstairs. Jack was really like consistency. The pair of you sit and after you tell Jack what happened with you downstairs, Jack apologizes that you had to go through it and then tells you a little about what he knows of this place. Jack goes on about how he bought this Gray Building years ago for cheap and figured it would also be good to store all his stuff along with being a place he could live and thus no longer living in his mom’s basement. He then mentions he went to check out the place after he bought it and right away he experienced weirdness. He said the first time he opened up the door to the place there was a jungle village inside. He mentions that upon entering the building seemed to whisk him away to this place and his surroundings completely changed. “Curiosity got the better of me I guess. However it wasn’t just a jungle. I found out later when cannibals were chasing me, that I was on an island made of Styrofoam and held together by hemp rope. Barely escaped.” Jack says. “What?! That’s…incredibly random.” You say. “That was just the beginning. Of course any right thinking person, would have just written this place off, but I couldn’t help but find it fascinating. Of course I found it less fascinating the second time I went in, when I was attacked by these shadow wolf things. Barely survived that too.” “Why the hell did you keep coming back here?” “Well I actually stayed away after the second time. Though after a few months, I felt drawn to the place again. I can’t explain it, but as it turned out third time was the charm, well maybe not entirely, but the place started to become more accommodating. In time, I started to encounter less dangerous shit and the place became more normal, well as normal as it could ever be I suppose. Still, I was never quite willing to go all in and actually live in this place until recently and that’s only because of some positive weirdness that I experienced when in this building a few months ago.” “What happened?” “Well I saw a glimpse of the future and in few days I believe this world as we know it is going to start resembling Road Warrior. Of course even without seeing the future I was listening in on some pretty scary radio broadcasts before the Ground Zero corporation started cracking down and scrambling the airwaves.” “Wait, you say you saw the future, like how exactly? In your head or what?” “No, it was a portal or rather a small window that opened up on the third floor. Happened rather suddenly while I was up there deciding on where I should put more of my stuff a few weeks ago. I saw Security City get nuked. The town looks like it survived, but I saw that overrun by mad people, like rabid or something. Given how the people in town have been acting and the world situation lately, I’d say what I saw was on the mark. It was then, I decide that I might actually be safer in here.” “Doesn’t seem like it, by the look of things.” You say. “No, apparently I was wrong about that. (Sigh) I dunno, I’m sorry I got you involved in all this.” “Well it’s done now and it seems like I was fucked no matter what this week. So, is there anything we can do? I mean we can’t really stay here I think you’d agree, but if the world is doomed like you’re saying, where could we go?” “Know where there is a fallout shelter?” Jack asks. “Yes and no. My older brother made one a long time ago back home, unfortunately its entrance is a bit of a mystery now since he’s dead.” “That would mean going back to town anyway and with the National Guard and the rabid there I imagine it’s going to resemble a warzone.” “Well there has to be somewhere we can…is that snow?” you say noticing the hallway. At this point Jack stands up and you do too, both with your weapons ready as you approach the hallway where white flakes are falling from the ceiling and snow is starting to fill up the hallway. Jack looks to the left and right and then speaks. “Well I don’t see anything else out of the ordinary except the snow, but I think we better get the hell out of here and take our chances with the outside world, whatever might happen to it.” Jack exclaims. “Don’t need to tell me twice.” You say and the pair of you run as quickly as you can back down to the first floor. When you get to the first floor, you and Jack make your turn towards the large front room and that’s when reality starts warping and you’re getting disoriented again. “Shit…” Jack says tripping over. You go to help Jack up and that’s when you see them again. Those tentacle things coming at you down the hallway, which is once again increasingly being enveloped in darkness. There’s no magical bald guy around this time to save you either. ‘Oh fuck, we need to move!” You say and start running towards the front room. Jack follows along. When you get the front room the lights flicker. Junk is still scattered all over the place and there is also no front door now, but TWO open doors. “What the fuck?” Jack exclaims and then the lighting gets even dimmer and soon you’ll be left completely in the dark save for the illumination coming from the open doors. At glance, one door is leading to what looks to be a tropical area since you’re seeing vines, trees and such. The other door is leading to a snowy area and you can even feel the cold air whipping in from that one. And those creatures are still in pursuit behind you with darkness ever encroaching. You’re starting to hear them now in your head, howling, chattering, gibbering. It’s madness and you need to leave now. “Shit, my head…” Jack says staggering. “Come on! This way!” you say and start heading towards the jungle. “Wait! That’s a fucking jungle, and I know nothing ever good comes from entering one! Remember my first trip here?” Jack says. “Well, it’s either that or the fucking artic and we’re not exactly dressed for that!” you say. “I’d rather take my chances with snow than a jungle.” “It’s pointlessss….death…isssss everywhere…embrace madnessss and ssssave yourself… embrace usssssss…” a voice in your head suddenly interjects this is followed by hideous mocking laughter. Maybe you’re getting resilient or something because you manage to keep it together. Jack isn’t looking as great though which is odd since you figured he’d be used to something like this. He’s having a hard time standing up and you’re having a hard time keeping him from falling. Either way, you’re making the decision on which way to go. > The jungle Jack may have had a bad experience with the jungle before, but you’re going to have one infinitely worse you don’t get the hell out of here! You don’t know where you’re going to end up, but you figure at least there is more chance of survival in the jungle than the tundra or artic or wherever you might end up with the snow door. Since Jack isn’t exactly in a position to argue, you continue heading towards the jungle. You’re almost at the door when everything goes dark. You feel like those things are almost upon you and you can only hope they stop pursuing you when you go through the door. With a boost of energy and a shove, you and Jack both tumble through the opening and into the jungle area. Soft muddy ground gets all over you both. You recover as quickly as you can, fearing that those creatures are still right behind you, but when you get up you find that not only are they not, but the Gray Building itself is gone. Nothing is behind save for more jungle. “Where the hell? Where did it go?” you say. “It’s gone. We’re some place completely different and who knows where the hell that building is now. Shit…my head is still throbbing and all fucked up. I still don’t feel quite right. Just let me rest here a moment.” Jack says still sitting on the ground. You look around and you have no idea where to go next. You look at the trees and ground and for all you know you’re in the Amazon. Certainly feels hot enough and you’re already starting to sweat. “Goddamn, it’s hot. Jack I’m going to tell you right now, I MIGHT be taking my shirt off at some point and I can only hope you’re a gentleman enough to keep your eyes at least focused on my face when you’re directly speaking with me.” You say. “Fuck, with the way I feel, I dunno if I’m even up for that sort of stimulation. Besides, I’m going to be keeping an eye on everywhere else given that we’re in a jungle. Ohhh, I really wished you went towards the snow, I got a bad feeling about this.” “What are the chances we’re on another Styrofoam island?” you ask. “Well, I dunno, but it still doesn’t change the fact we’re in a jungle where all manner of animals, bugs and plants can kill you. I guess we better pick a direction and hope we find friendly civilization.” Jack says and gets up. As Jack gets up while you look around again and decide on a direction. “Well at least you’ve still got your axe and I got a bat. The jungle doesn’t look as heavy in that direction I suppose. Guess we’re going that way.” You say. “I suppose it’s as good as a direction as any.” Jack replies. You and Jack begin your trek through the jungle… Despite the jungle not being as thick in this direction, it’s still not an easy walk. The only upside, is the canopy of the trees is at least shielding you from the sun directly. You can honestly say you don’t remember when the last time you had to deal with this sort of heat. All that time spent in the cool basement has made you a little less resistant to it you guess. Jack and you continue to keep your eyes and ears open. So far you’ve not seen any signs of civilization, but at one point a small purple furry rodent like animal walks by and you can honestly say even with all the animal and nature shows you’ve seen, you’ve never seen something like this before. It sees you and squeaks causing you to raise your bat before it runs off. “What the hell was that?” you ask. “I dunno, looked like some sort of rat, but purple though.” Jack replies. “Well don’t you think a purple rat is a little strange?” you ask. “Well of course I do, but given that this is where the Gray Building sent us, is it really surprising?” “I don’t mean just that though. I mean before I thought that maybe we were at least still on our world. Weird looking purple rat like creatures aren’t exactly native there. Is it possible it sent us to some alien planet?” “Suzy, with the Gray Building anything is fucking possible.” It’s at this moment you lose a little hope. Its one thing to possibly be lost in a jungle on Earth at least there would have been a slim chance of survival if you somehow made it to civilization. The idea of being on some sort of alien planet is a lot more disheartening. “Great, we are so fucked.” You say. “Probably, but we have to keep moving.” “What the hell’s the point? For all we know this whole damn planet is jungle and uninhabited and if it is inhabited I can’t imagine the natives are going to be friendly!” you exclaim. “We don’t know if this is an alien planet! I mean maybe we got transported back in time to the Mesozoic Era, we don’t know what the hell sort of creatures lived back then or what color they were.” “Oh, so we’re in the time of dinosaurs? Yeah, don’t think that’s any better.” Jack at this point wipes his face and closes his eyes. “Suzy, it’s too hot for us to argue, but I told you I didn’t want to go to the jungle anyway!” “There it is. I told you so. Thanks. Real helpful. (Sigh) Okay, look I’m sorry I’m just…” At this moment you hear a rustling noise and then a whizzing sound is heard just before blood splatters on you. Jack looks down briefly to see the top of a spear through his chest. He coughs up blood and falls to his knees looking at you the whole time. “Oh shit Jack…” you utter and then another spear just narrowly misses your head and hits a nearby tree. Then you see your assailants coming out of the undergrowth. Several small bipedal lizard like creatures armed with spears. They’re not even as tall as you, but they certainty look more than capable of killing you. They hiss at you and one proceeds to finish off Jack who was already dying at that point. You turn and run in the opposite direction ignoring the fact that you’re going to only get yourself further lost in the jungle, you have to escape these things. They screech and they run after you. Another spear nearly hits you and despite the very real fear of death you’re experiencing, the only thing going through your mind is how you curse the day you went out to go get a real job. One day you were living comfortably in a basement and now you’re running through a hot ass jungle being chased by fucking lizard aliens. You already know this isn’t going to end well for you. You’ve been pushing the odds ever since you left the damn basement, and it’s only a matter of time before those lizards get you and… Suddenly you feel a sharp bite to the side of your neck. It isn’t a spear. It’s some sort fauna that resembles a snake with legs. You didn’t even see it, but even if you hadn’t been so focused on running, you still wouldn’t have seen it due to its camouflage. Then before your eyes several of these creatures seemingly blink into existence and they’re all jumping on you and biting. You’ve just run into a nest of whatever these things are and you fall to their onslaught. The only upside is their deadly poison kills you before they can start eating you alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe this isn’t a good idea, but considering Jack did save your life a couple times, it seems like a pretty shitty thing to do if you just left him. With bat in hand, you head towards back to the corridor and call out to Jack. “Hey Jack! Are you upstairs?” you say. “Suzy? Yeah! I’m up here! Be careful though, there’s still a bunch of weird shit going on.” Not terribly descriptive or encouraging. Weird shit could literally be anything, and in this case probably is. You head towards the stairs and go up for the first time. As you going up, you have this fear that you’re going to start sinking into them, that doesn’t happen and when you arrive to the top, you find yourself exiting into a corridor that’s laid out very much the same way as the first floor, the only difference is you’re across from another set of stairs on the opposite side. You look to your right and hear some noise causing you to ready your bat, though you soon see Jack exiting room of the side rooms. “Suzy! I’ve been looking all over for you.” He says approaching with an axe in hand. “Hey! Keep your distance!” You shout and raise your bat “What?” Jack asks as he stops in his tracks. “Sorry, it’s just, well there has been as you put it, a lot of weird shit going on and for all I know you’re some horrible monster. Not to mention you’re coming at me with an axe in hand, though I suppose given the shit I’ve already encountered, you probably wouldn’t have bothered to even stop.” You reply lowing the bat. “Well, you probably were best to err on the side of caution. I’ve just spent what I believe to be an hour or two looking for you.” Jack says. “I was in your living room downstairs asleep on your couch. Right where you left me last night.” You reply. “Yeah, and you weren’t there when I checked on you later this morning. I called out and looked in every room on the first floor. I heard your voice coming from the second floor so I went up there and that’s when things started getting weird. (Sigh) and I thought this place was done with all that…should have known better I suppose…” Jack trails off, but at this point you’re demanding an answer. “Jack, you’ve saved my life twice, but if I’m going to hang out with you, you better start explaining what the hell’s going on with this place. I’m not sure what weirdness you’ve experienced up here, but what I just experienced downstairs was beyond weird, it was fucking terrifying.” You exclaim. “I know. I know. I should have told you about this place yesterday. Well let’s head into this room and talk about it.” Jack heads into a room down the corridor and to the left. You follow and find that it’s another living area furnished in a similar manner as the one downstairs. Jack was really like consistency. The pair of you sit and after you tell Jack what happened with you downstairs, Jack apologizes that you had to go through it and then tells you a little about what he knows of this place. Jack goes on about how he bought this Gray Building years ago for cheap and figured it would also be good to store all his stuff along with being a place he could live and thus no longer living in his mom’s basement. He then mentions he went to check out the place after he bought it and right away he experienced weirdness. He said the first time he opened up the door to the place there was a jungle village inside. He mentions that upon entering the building seemed to whisk him away to this place and his surroundings completely changed. “Curiosity got the better of me I guess. However it wasn’t just a jungle. I found out later when cannibals were chasing me, that I was on an island made of Styrofoam and held together by hemp rope. Barely escaped.” Jack says. “What?! That’s…incredibly random.” You say. “That was just the beginning. Of course any right thinking person, would have just written this place off, but I couldn’t help but find it fascinating. Of course I found it less fascinating the second time I went in, when I was attacked by these shadow wolf things. Barely survived that too.” “Why the hell did you keep coming back here?” “Well I actually stayed away after the second time. Though after a few months, I felt drawn to the place again. I can’t explain it, but as it turned out third time was the charm, well maybe not entirely, but the place started to become more accommodating. In time, I started to encounter less dangerous shit and the place became more normal, well as normal as it could ever be I suppose. Still, I was never quite willing to go all in and actually live in this place until recently and that’s only because of some positive weirdness that I experienced when in this building a few months ago.” “What happened?” “Well I saw a glimpse of the future and in few days I believe this world as we know it is going to start resembling Road Warrior. Of course even without seeing the future I was listening in on some pretty scary radio broadcasts before the Ground Zero corporation started cracking down and scrambling the airwaves.” “Wait, you say you saw the future, like how exactly? In your head or what?” “No, it was a portal or rather a small window that opened up on the third floor. Happened rather suddenly while I was up there deciding on where I should put more of my stuff a few weeks ago. I saw Security City get nuked. The town looks like it survived, but I saw that overrun by mad people, like rabid or something. Given how the people in town have been acting and the world situation lately, I’d say what I saw was on the mark. It was then, I decide that I might actually be safer in here.” “Doesn’t seem like it, by the look of things.” You say. “No, apparently I was wrong about that. (Sigh) I dunno, I’m sorry I got you involved in all this.” “Well it’s done now and it seems like I was fucked no matter what this week. So, is there anything we can do? I mean we can’t really stay here I think you’d agree, but if the world is doomed like you’re saying, where could we go?” “Know where there is a fallout shelter?” Jack asks. “Yes and no. My older brother made one a long time ago back home, unfortunately its entrance is a bit of a mystery now since he’s dead.” “That would mean going back to town anyway and with the National Guard and the rabid there I imagine it’s going to resemble a warzone.” “Well there has to be somewhere we can…is that snow?” you say noticing the hallway. At this point Jack stands up and you do too, both with your weapons ready as you approach the hallway where white flakes are falling from the ceiling and snow is starting to fill up the hallway. Jack looks to the left and right and then speaks. “Well I don’t see anything else out of the ordinary except the snow, but I think we better get the hell out of here and take our chances with the outside world, whatever might happen to it.” Jack exclaims. “Don’t need to tell me twice.” You say and the pair of you run as quickly as you can back down to the first floor. When you get to the first floor, you and Jack make your turn towards the large front room and that’s when reality starts warping and you’re getting disoriented again. “Shit…” Jack says tripping over. You go to help Jack up and that’s when you see them again. Those tentacle things coming at you down the hallway, which is once again increasingly being enveloped in darkness. There’s no magical bald guy around this time to save you either. ‘Oh fuck, we need to move!” You say and start running towards the front room. Jack follows along. When you get the front room the lights flicker. Junk is still scattered all over the place and there is also no front door now, but TWO open doors. “What the fuck?” Jack exclaims and then the lighting gets even dimmer and soon you’ll be left completely in the dark save for the illumination coming from the open doors. At glance, one door is leading to what looks to be a tropical area since you’re seeing vines, trees and such. The other door is leading to a snowy area and you can even feel the cold air whipping in from that one. And those creatures are still in pursuit behind you with darkness ever encroaching. You’re starting to hear them now in your head, howling, chattering, gibbering. It’s madness and you need to leave now. “Shit, my head…” Jack says staggering. “Come on! This way!” you say and start heading towards the jungle. “Wait! That’s a fucking jungle, and I know nothing ever good comes from entering one! Remember my first trip here?” Jack says. “Well, it’s either that or the fucking artic and we’re not exactly dressed for that!” you say. “I’d rather take my chances with snow than a jungle.” “It’s pointlessss….death…isssss everywhere…embrace madnessss and ssssave yourself… embrace usssssss…” a voice in your head suddenly interjects this is followed by hideous mocking laughter. Maybe you’re getting resilient or something because you manage to keep it together. Jack isn’t looking as great though which is odd since you figured he’d be used to something like this. He’s having a hard time standing up and you’re having a hard time keeping him from falling. Either way, you’re making the decision on which way to go. > The snow Really either choice seems pretty shitty, but if Jack feels that strongly about the jungle being worse, you guess you’ll take the snow (and probably freeze to death). You suppose the upside is that there are probably less deadly animals lurking about as there might be in a jungle. “You better be right about this Jack.” You say, You’re almost at the door when everything goes dark. You feel like those things are almost upon you and you can only hope they stop pursuing you when you go through the door. With a boost of energy and a shove, you and Jack both tumble through the opening and into the snowy area. Snow gets all over you both and it’s at that point you notice there are also a lot of trees nearby, so it’s not just endless tundra, which is at least a good sign that you didn’t wind up Antarctica. You also recover as quickly as you can, fearing that those creatures are still right behind you, but when you get up you find that not only are they not, but the Gray Building itself is gone. Nothing is behind you save for more snow and trees. “Where the hell? Where did it go?” you say. “It’s gone. We’re some place completely different and who knows where the hell that building is now. Shit…my head is still throbbing and all fucked up. I still don’t feel quite right. Just let me rest here a moment.” Jack says still sitting on the snowy ground. You look up and while the clouds are covering the sun, it’s definitely still daytime wherever you are, but with the wind making the cold even worse, you’re going to have to find shelter pretty damn quick and you have no idea which way to go. For all you know you’re in the Canadian wilderness or some other godforsaken place. “Goddamn, it’s cold.” You say. “Yeah, we need to get going, even though I’m still feeling woozy. We need to keep an eye out for everything though. I guess we better pick a direction and hope we find friendly civilization.” Jack says and gets up. As Jack gets up while you look around again and decide on a direction. “Well at least you’ve still got your axe and I got a bat. This direction looks as good as any.” You say pointing to the right. “I suppose so.” Jack replies. You and Jack begin your trek through the snow… The snow actually isn’t really that deep, but it’s deep enough that it’s not pleasant to walk through. The wind eventually dies down a bit which makes things a little better, but not by much. You and Jack are both very cold and periodically you’re rubbing your hands together and blowing on them in a futile effort to keep them warm. “This is sucking so much, we’re going to freeze to death out here in the fucking forest.” You say suddenly stopping. “Well maybe, but we gotta keep moving. We just gotta stay positive.” “Yeah, well as you might already know, positive things haven’t been happening to me lately.” You respond. “Trust me, you aren’t only one.” Jack replies. “…I’m sorry, I’m just really cold, and as brave as I’m trying to be about all this, I feel like I’ve already been pushing my luck all this week and I feel like this is going to be it. Like my dumb luck has run out and I’m really fucking scared of dying.” You say trying to remain calm. “I know.” Jack replies and puts his hand on your shoulder. It isn’t much comfort, but if the end is coming soon, you could have worse company. “Come on, you’re right, we need to keep moving.” You say and the pair of you continues on. A few moments later, you feel like your fingers and toes have gone numb and you’re even starting to get a little sleepy. Day is starting to end and night will be beginning soon. Just when you believe it’s starting to look even worse than ever, you and Jack notice some smoke rising in the distance up ahead, and as they say where there is smoke there is fire. (Hopefully) You and Jack both quicken your pace as much as you can and eventually you reach the edge of the ground, which starts sloping downward from your location. In the short distance from that you see a small log cabin with smoke coming from it. Salvation, but somehow you doubt if it’s going to be easy. “You know there are going to be people living there.” You say. “Yeah, but I mean come on, we’re freezing to death, surely they’ll help us. At best they’ll let us warm up before giving us directions to the next nearest town.” “Jack, your optimism would actually be very charming if we weren’t in the situation we’re currently in.” you say. “Well hopefully you’ll better appreciate it when we’re nice and warm. Come on.” Jack says. You and Jack carefully make your way down the slope and soon you’re at the cabin. You see piles of logs stacked nearby, along with some barrels. The cabin doesn’t have any windows or at least none on the sides that you’ve seen. “Okay, so how are we doing this?” you ask. “Well I guess I’ll knock.” Jack says. Jack bangs on the door a couple times. “Hello? Anyone in there? We’re freezing and we need help. Hello?” he says. There is no answer. You don’t even hear any noise. “Maybe nobody is home after all.” You say. “But there’s smoke coming from the chimney, obviously there’s probably a fire going on in there.” Jack replies. “Well, maybe they’re out hunting or something and there’s a scared kid in there that was told not to open the door to strangers. See if the door is unlocked.” You say. “Wait a minute, didn’t you just say there might be a scared kid in there?” “Yeah and if there is, he’s still going to be scared whether we’re inside or outside. We need to get in there Jack, we can deal with the consequences later!” you exclaim. Jack exhales. “Well okay…” Jack says as he goes for the handle. Surprisingly it opens and when Jack peers into the dimly lit cabin, he sees absolutely no one inside. “This place is empty.” Jack says. “Good, now let’s get to that damn fire!” you say and push past Jack. You warm up by the fireplace while Jack shuts the door and locks it with a large piece of wood across it. He soon joins and sits down right next to you. “Oh, sorry.” Jack says when he thinks he’s too close to you, but you stop him from moving over. “Jack, I think we’re at that point in our relationship that under normal circumstances, we’d probably be dating already. You’re fine, in fact why don’t you just hold me. I could use the extra warmth.” Jack complies with your request and you’re feeling a little warmer already. As you still trying to enjoy the warmth, Jack is still looking around the room a bit from his position. “This is strange.” Jack mentions. “Really? I thought this was probably the least strange thing we’ve done since we met.” “No, I mean this cabin, something seems very, I dunno, medieval.” “Well it is a log cabin in the middle of the woods, it isn’t like it’s going to have the amenities of the modern world.” “Yeah, but have you noticed the decorations? A shield and a sword are hanging over on that wall along with a small banner of some sort. Over there in that corner is a set of spears. There also a lot of furs just laying around.” “Maybe the guy that lives here is a historical buff on top of being a hunter. You know, trying to live the way they did back in the old days.” “Yeah, well I’ve never seen something like that either. Look.” “What? That’s just a deer’s head…oh what the hell? That’s fucking hideous looking.” You say just noticing the head of some very furry creature with far too many teeth mounted on the wall. It doesn’t look like anything you’ve ever seen on those nature or animal shows. You shiver a bit looking at the damn thing causing Jack to give you a bit of a squeeze. “Ugh, I don’t want to look at that thing. What is it?” you say. “That’s what I’m saying, I dunno. I mean a lot of this shit looks familiar, but seeing something like makes me less sure.” “What are you saying?” “I dunno. I mean I’m wondering if we’re even on our world.” In all the worrying about freezing to death, you suppose it never occurred that might not actually be on Earth. “You think the Gray Building sent us to a different dimension or something?” “I have no idea, but with that thing it’s not out of the realm of possibility. I mean you told me yourself you experienced reality weirdness when you were speaking with that bald guy.” “Yeah, that’s true…shit. We might be in some real trouble.” “Well, in the chance that we are on another world, I’d say we can at least look on the bright side that we aren’t going to get nuked any time soon.” “Heh, always looking on the bright side.” “Did it charm you this time?” “A little bit.” You say with a smile. After warming up completely, you and Jack explore the cabin a little more in detail, which doesn’t take too long considering it’s not excessively big. Some of that exploration includes raiding the foodstuff stored in the cabinets and the actual stew that’s in the hanging pot over the fire. All you find to drink is water and some sort of sweet alcohol. Jack says that’s probably mead. One of the more important things you find is a small pouch of coins. A few are gold, some are silver and a lot of them are copper. You also find a few books, but they’re in some sort of language you don’t understand. The last thing you discover is a trap door near the bed to a small root cellar where there is more food and water stored. Looks like you might be okay if you have to stay here awhile at least. The only short term major concern is a toilet at which point Jack points that while it’s possible there is an outhouse you missed somewhere in the area, you both might have to be roughing that in the cold air of nature. You’re not looking forward to either possibility. You remark about how this place reminds you of something from a video game you played on your computer, which only cements Jack’s view that you’re possibly not on your world any longer, or at best you’ve been transported back in time on earth to who knows where. That thing’s head on the wall seems to favor the former though. Eventually though as the night moves on, you start to get tired again, but this time you’re not in danger of dying of hypothermia. It’s soon pointed out that there is only one bed. “Well I guess I’ll let you take the bed.” Jack says. “Actually I want to sleep by the fire, I’m just going to grab some more of those furs to sleep on. You can take the bed, or if you really want to, sleep with me by the fire.” You say. “Well that’s no choice at all, of course I’m going to sleep with you by the fire.” Jack says. “Fine with me, as long as you know I’m just using you for your warm body.” You reply with a smile. “Well, just respect me in the morning.” Jack smiles back. “Um, speaking of that. Do you think we should be worried that the owner will be coming back at some point?” “Probably, but if someone comes knocking on the door, it isn’t like we’re weaponless.” “True, okay let’s try to get some rest and figure out what we’re going to do tomorrow.” You and Jack lay down several furs on the floor and settle in to sleep. Despite this situation not exactly being the best, you both at least enjoy the closeness of each other. > Next day… FRIDAY You wake up feeling slightly colder than you did last night, though it’s probably because the fire has died down a little and Jack is no longer spooning you. A quick look around though shows that he’s still here. He notices that you’re up. “Well good morning sunshine.” He says sitting at a table with a candle burning. “What time is it?” you ask, not thinking. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d say it’s still morning, maybe the afternoon. In any case it’s daytime the last time I looked outside.” “Oh right. No modern luxuries. Is that one of those books we found yesterday?” you ask. “Oh yeah. I was trying to read or at least understand any of it.” “You a linguist?” “Eh, not really. I mean I have studied a few languages from time to time for my own reasons and in a couple cases thanks to the Gray Building weirdness I had to learn some new ones, but it isn’t like I had any formal training on the matter.” “You understand any of it?” “Not excessively so, but I only really started. I get the impression whoever lives here is a fur trader. Some of this book isn’t doesn’t really consist of words as it’s a list of numerical symbols and totals. Fortunately those are universal. It would also explain the large amounts of furs piled up and this…” Jack says picking up the pouch of coins. “…I would imagine is their life savings.” “So you still think we’re in a different world?” “I dunno. As I mentioned I’ve looked outside while you were asleep, and wandered the area a bit. Not too far, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary save for trees, snow and a few white rabbits bouncing around. I mean that ugly head on the wall is the only thing I’ve seen so far that’s out of the ordinary. I will say that the presence of books at least shows writing and probably literature exists. The coins imply some sort of economy system. So civilization here exists, but of course who knows what said civilization is like.” “You said you thought it was a medieval one.” “Yeah, and I’m still holding on to that belief, of course it’s possible that maybe we’re just in a less advanced area. For all we know there are people whizzing around in jetpacks elsewhere.” Jack says and then snaps his fingers. “Oh I did see an outhouse. It’s not excessively far; we just never saw it yesterday due to the direction we came from. Well that and paying more attention to wanting to get into this cabin. You’ll happy to know it’s not even a disgusting diarrhea sprayed mess or overly foul smelling. The cold climate probably helps on that aspect. There’s even a roll of paper in there. Um, it’s not exactly the softest stuff though, and you’ll have to clean your hands in the snow.” “Lovely. Definitely not looking forward to the experience. So you see anything else of note on your outdoor adventures?” “I noticed foot prints going from this cabin and heading towards the east. I imagine they’re from the boots of the person who lives here. I’ve seen the same foot prints all over this immediate area, but those were going somewhere with a purpose rather than milling about taking care of every day chores around here I imagine.” “Wow, you’re tracker too huh? You really do know a little bit of everything.” You say. “I wouldn’t say I’m a tracker, I’m just sort of making guesses in the scheme of things. I just saw the prints in the snow and made the conclusion.” “You think the person living here is coming back?” you ask. “I dunno. I mean it’s possible, but I’m wondering if this place was abandoned. Seems like the door would have been locked. Of course the door can only be barred from the inside, so maybe that’s unavoidable and there generally aren’t many people wandering around here to worry about locks. Still, it seems like they would have hidden their pouch of coins better or even taken them with them. You nod and there is a silent pause in the conversation. You look back at the fire and Jack goes back to looking at the book. Probably the pair of you are wondering what the hell you’re going to do now. At least you are. Jack seems like he’s trying his hardest to make sense of everything and that’s certainly a good thing. You can’t help but think maybe you’re not pulling your weight as much as you can though, it’s just you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing. It isn’t like you’ve ever been in a situation like this before. So far you’ve just been trying to make the concentrated effort of not falling apart and giving in to despair because you get the impression no matter what happens, from here on out your life is going to be very different. “I know how to sew.” You suddenly blurt out. “What?” Jack responds. “I know how to sew, I mean I haven’t done it ever since my mother died, but you never forget something like that completely I suppose. My mother was the one who taught me, which is why I just sort of lost interest in it when she died.” You say. “Well that’s an interesting little fact you never told me about yourself when you were talking about your family before. What made you bring it up?” “Our situation I suppose. I mean I suppose at some point we’re going to need new clothes. I’ve never sewn furs together, but I suppose I’ll figure it out. I guess I just want to let you know I’m not completely useless and I will be contributing to our survival out here. I mean I’ll chop wood and learn to hunt and whatever else we need to do together.” “Suzy, you’re stressing about this too much. I mean yes, this situation isn’t the best, but trust me I’m just as worried if I’M going to be useful at all in this situation. I mean it’s only thanks to all the past weirdness I had to deal with due to that Gray Building that I even have some of the basic knowledge I have of various things and a good portion of that probably isn’t even going to be useful here.” Jack gets up and goes over to sit with you and he takes your hand. “When it’s all said and done. We’re both a pair of basement dwellers and neither one of us was truly prepared for this, but we’re still going to get through it. I mean I like to think I’m a survivor on some level. And you, well I think you’ve more than proven to be one. I know you think it’s all just been luck or coincidence in that regard, but hell, maybe there’s a reason. Maybe there’s a reason for all this.” “You think so? You believe that all this is part of some plan?” “I dunno. Maybe it’s just a bunch of shit that happened. Still doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get through this.” You look into Jack’s eyes and you take the initiative and kiss him full on the mouth. He reciprocates your affection, but you’re getting the strong impression that you might be the experienced one here. And then something urgent breaks up the moment. “Damn it.” You say. “What? Did I do something wrong?” Jack asks. “No. That thing that I wasn’t looking forward to has finally arrived.” “Wha…Oh. That. Um, well did you want me to come with you?” “You’re going to watch me go to the bathroom? Freak.” “No! I meant did you want me to come with you to show you the way or extra protection.” “I know what you meant, just joking. Yeah, I suppose you should come with me so you can at least show me where it is. Knowing me, I’d end up getting lost on the way there. Well alright come on, let’s go get this over with.” You say getting up. Remembering how cold it is out there, you grab a couple of the furs to wrap around you so you’re at least better protected this time. You go to grab your bat, but then you think if you shouldn’t take one of those spears instead. > You take the bat You’ve never used a spear before, so you aren’t even sure if you’d use something like that effectively. Better to stick with something you’re used to. Jack puts on one of the furs as well and grabs his axe and the pair of you are out the door. The sun shines down and you feel the cold wind blow. “Shit, even with these furs on I forgot how cold it was.” You say. “We’ll get another big fire started when we get back.” Jack says. “I’ll look forward to it, so which way?” “Oh to the left and then past some trees, it’s not hard to find.” You and Jack make your way to the infamous outhouse. You both look around periodically, but see nothing dangerous. Eventually you get to your goal and it looks exactly like you thought it would. “Well this is it.” You say. “I’ll be out here. Keeping a look out.” Jack responds. You enter the outhouse and endure the unavoidable. Thankfully Jack makes no attempt to speak to you while you’re inside. Eventually you come out and start putting your hands in the snow. Jack watches you and then goes back to looking around. “Well, wasn’t as bad as I thought, I’m still missing modern plumbing though. Wish we had soap too.” You say. “I guess if you want to sanitize your hands even more I suppose you could pour some of that mead we have at the cabin on them.” “Will that work?” “It’s got alcohol in it, I assume it can’t hurt. You ready to go?” “Yeah, you see anything out here?” “Nah, just a few more of those white rabbits I always see hopping around.” As you and Jack make your way back to the cabin, you and he speak on if either one of you knows anything about hunting. You of course know nothing, Jack says he’s not much better, though he thinks maybe you both could start making simple traps or something, especially given that there are obviously rabbits around here to be caught. “Wish we had the Internet so we could at least look all this shit up. God, I really miss the Internet…I think this is the longest I’ve been without it and I suppose those days are over as well.” You say as you approach the cabin. “Oh, you don’t know. We’re still just stuck out here in the wilderness, like I said, maybe there is Internet and hover cars somewhere else.” “Love that optimism Jack…” you say chuckling and heading towards the door. “Hey Suzy, wait is that blood in the snow?” You and Jack both stop a few feet away from the cabin, you’re still closest to the door, which suddenly swings open. Before you, you see a man with a good amount of facial hair and wearing several furs and clothing much more suited for this sort of weather. He’s not completely standing upright, but is in a somewhat stooped position as if wounded which judging from the blood in the snow is probably the case. While it’s difficult to tell his facial expression due to the hair, his eyes are wide as if he’s surprised, desperate or possibly even afraid. Maybe a mixture of all three. The major thing you see however is the crossbow he’s holding and pointing at you and Jack. The man shouts something at you in a language you don’t understand and before you can duck or get out of the way he fires a bolt and at this range his aim is still sound. You feel the piecing object go into your heart and you fall to the ground. Jack screams your name and attacks the man who is desperately attempting to reload his crossbow. You however never know if Jack avenges your death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY You wake up feeling slightly colder than you did last night, though it’s probably because the fire has died down a little and Jack is no longer spooning you. A quick look around though shows that he’s still here. He notices that you’re up. “Well good morning sunshine.” He says sitting at a table with a candle burning. “What time is it?” you ask, not thinking. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d say it’s still morning, maybe the afternoon. In any case it’s daytime the last time I looked outside.” “Oh right. No modern luxuries. Is that one of those books we found yesterday?” you ask. “Oh yeah. I was trying to read or at least understand any of it.” “You a linguist?” “Eh, not really. I mean I have studied a few languages from time to time for my own reasons and in a couple cases thanks to the Gray Building weirdness I had to learn some new ones, but it isn’t like I had any formal training on the matter.” “You understand any of it?” “Not excessively so, but I only really started. I get the impression whoever lives here is a fur trader. Some of this book isn’t doesn’t really consist of words as it’s a list of numerical symbols and totals. Fortunately those are universal. It would also explain the large amounts of furs piled up and this…” Jack says picking up the pouch of coins. “…I would imagine is their life savings.” “So you still think we’re in a different world?” “I dunno. As I mentioned I’ve looked outside while you were asleep, and wandered the area a bit. Not too far, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary save for trees, snow and a few white rabbits bouncing around. I mean that ugly head on the wall is the only thing I’ve seen so far that’s out of the ordinary. I will say that the presence of books at least shows writing and probably literature exists. The coins imply some sort of economy system. So civilization here exists, but of course who knows what said civilization is like.” “You said you thought it was a medieval one.” “Yeah, and I’m still holding on to that belief, of course it’s possible that maybe we’re just in a less advanced area. For all we know there are people whizzing around in jetpacks elsewhere.” Jack says and then snaps his fingers. “Oh I did see an outhouse. It’s not excessively far; we just never saw it yesterday due to the direction we came from. Well that and paying more attention to wanting to get into this cabin. You’ll happy to know it’s not even a disgusting diarrhea sprayed mess or overly foul smelling. The cold climate probably helps on that aspect. There’s even a roll of paper in there. Um, it’s not exactly the softest stuff though, and you’ll have to clean your hands in the snow.” “Lovely. Definitely not looking forward to the experience. So you see anything else of note on your outdoor adventures?” “I noticed foot prints going from this cabin and heading towards the east. I imagine they’re from the boots of the person who lives here. I’ve seen the same foot prints all over this immediate area, but those were going somewhere with a purpose rather than milling about taking care of every day chores around here I imagine.” “Wow, you’re tracker too huh? You really do know a little bit of everything.” You say. “I wouldn’t say I’m a tracker, I’m just sort of making guesses in the scheme of things. I just saw the prints in the snow and made the conclusion.” “You think the person living here is coming back?” you ask. “I dunno. I mean it’s possible, but I’m wondering if this place was abandoned. Seems like the door would have been locked. Of course the door can only be barred from the inside, so maybe that’s unavoidable and there generally aren’t many people wandering around here to worry about locks. Still, it seems like they would have hidden their pouch of coins better or even taken them with them. You nod and there is a silent pause in the conversation. You look back at the fire and Jack goes back to looking at the book. Probably the pair of you are wondering what the hell you’re going to do now. At least you are. Jack seems like he’s trying his hardest to make sense of everything and that’s certainly a good thing. You can’t help but think maybe you’re not pulling your weight as much as you can though, it’s just you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing. It isn’t like you’ve ever been in a situation like this before. So far you’ve just been trying to make the concentrated effort of not falling apart and giving in to despair because you get the impression no matter what happens, from here on out your life is going to be very different. “I know how to sew.” You suddenly blurt out. “What?” Jack responds. “I know how to sew, I mean I haven’t done it ever since my mother died, but you never forget something like that completely I suppose. My mother was the one who taught me, which is why I just sort of lost interest in it when she died.” You say. “Well that’s an interesting little fact you never told me about yourself when you were talking about your family before. What made you bring it up?” “Our situation I suppose. I mean I suppose at some point we’re going to need new clothes. I’ve never sewn furs together, but I suppose I’ll figure it out. I guess I just want to let you know I’m not completely useless and I will be contributing to our survival out here. I mean I’ll chop wood and learn to hunt and whatever else we need to do together.” “Suzy, you’re stressing about this too much. I mean yes, this situation isn’t the best, but trust me I’m just as worried if I’M going to be useful at all in this situation. I mean it’s only thanks to all the past weirdness I had to deal with due to that Gray Building that I even have some of the basic knowledge I have of various things and a good portion of that probably isn’t even going to be useful here.” Jack gets up and goes over to sit with you and he takes your hand. “When it’s all said and done. We’re both a pair of basement dwellers and neither one of us was truly prepared for this, but we’re still going to get through it. I mean I like to think I’m a survivor on some level. And you, well I think you’ve more than proven to be one. I know you think it’s all just been luck or coincidence in that regard, but hell, maybe there’s a reason. Maybe there’s a reason for all this.” “You think so? You believe that all this is part of some plan?” “I dunno. Maybe it’s just a bunch of shit that happened. Still doesn’t mean we aren’t going to get through this.” You look into Jack’s eyes and you take the initiative and kiss him full on the mouth. He reciprocates your affection, but you’re getting the strong impression that you might be the experienced one here. And then something urgent breaks up the moment. “Damn it.” You say. “What? Did I do something wrong?” Jack asks. “No. That thing that I wasn’t looking forward to has finally arrived.” “Wha…Oh. That. Um, well did you want me to come with you?” “You’re going to watch me go to the bathroom? Freak.” “No! I meant did you want me to come with you to show you the way or extra protection.” “I know what you meant, just joking. Yeah, I suppose you should come with me so you can at least show me where it is. Knowing me, I’d end up getting lost on the way there. Well alright come on, let’s go get this over with.” You say getting up. Remembering how cold it is out there, you grab a couple of the furs to wrap around you so you’re at least better protected this time. You go to grab your bat, but then you think if you shouldn’t take one of those spears instead. > You take the spear “Hey Jack, is that outhouse large enough to prop up a spear inside it?” “Um, I think so. Why? You taking one of those instead of the bat?” “Yeah, I was remembering something I watched once talking about how the spear was an easy weapon to learn how to use even for someone completely unskilled which is why it was used so much in ancient and medieval wars amongst infantry. I’m just thinking I’d probably want something like that with me instead of a bat if we encounter a bear or something I want to keep at a distance.” Jack looks at you a bit impressed. “Well, look at you. Suzy, warrior princess over here. You said you didn’t know anything.” Jack says smiling. You take the spear and then look over at the shield. “Jack, help me get that shield down from the wall.” You say. “What?” Jack responds. “I want to take the shield with me too.” “Suzy, you’re just going to the bathroom, not to war!” “Hey you said it yourself, we still don’t know what this place is all about and I want to feel as secure as possible, so if that means carrying around a shield, then that’s what I’m going to do!” “…alright…” Jack says and then proceeds to grab the circular shield down from the wall and then hands it to you. The shield isn’t light and is made of strong thick wood; you definitely feel the weight just holding the thing. “You sure you don’t want the sword too?” Jack asks. “Nah, I think this is all I can carry. The shield is definitely heavier than I thought it would be.” “I really don’t think you’re going to need that.” Jack says wrapping a fur around himself and grabbing the axe he brought with him from the Gray Building. “And like I said, it makes me feel better. Come on let’s go.” Upon exiting the cabin you see the sun shining down and you feel the cold wind blow. “Shit, even with these furs on I forgot how cold it was.” You say. “We’ll get another big fire started when we get back.” Jack says. “I’ll look forward to it, so which way?” “Oh to the left and then past some trees, it’s not hard to find.” You and Jack make your way to the infamous outhouse. You both look around periodically, but see nothing dangerous. When Jack’s not looking around, he’s studying you. “So you ready to fight the Persians?” Jack asks with a smirk. “I dunno, but I have to say I do feel rather empowered.” You reply. Eventually you get to your goal and it looks exactly like you thought it would. “Well this is it.” You say unenthusiastically. “Your shield is going to be kind of bulky, leave it out here with me. Unless you plan on getting attacked from below and if that’s the case, a shield isn’t going to help.” “Fuck, now I’m going to be worrying about something lurking down there and reaching up to grab me. Thanks a lot!” you say and give the shield to Jack. You enter the outhouse and endure the unavoidable. Thankfully Jack makes no attempt to speak or make jokes to you while you’re inside. Eventually you come out and start putting your hands in the snow. Jack watches you and then goes back to looking around. “Well, wasn’t as bad as I thought, I’m still missing modern plumbing though. Wish we had soap too.” You say. “I guess if you want to sanitize your hands even more I suppose you could pour some of that mead we have at the cabin on them.” “Will that work?” “It’s got alcohol in it, I assume it can’t hurt. You ready to go Valkyrie?” Jack asks and hands you back your shield. “Yeah, you see anything out here?” “Nah, just a few more of those white rabbits I always see hopping around.” As you and Jack make your way back to the cabin, you and he speak on if either one of you knows anything about hunting. You of course know nothing, Jack says he’s not much better, though he thinks maybe you both could start making simple traps or something, especially given that there are obviously rabbits around here to be caught. “Wish we had the Internet so we could at least look all this shit up. God, I really miss the Internet…I think this is the longest I’ve been without it and I suppose those days are over as well.” You say as you approach the cabin. “Oh, you don’t know. We’re still just stuck out here in the wilderness, like I said, maybe there is Internet and hover cars somewhere else.” “Love that optimism Jack…” you say chuckling and heading towards the door. “Hey Suzy, wait is that blood in the snow?” You and Jack both stop a few feet away from the cabin, you’re still closest to the door, which suddenly swings open, instinctively you put the shield up to cover yourself as much as you can. Before you, you see a man with a good amount of facial hair and wearing several furs and clothing much more suited for this sort of weather. He’s not completely standing upright, but is in a somewhat stooped position as if wounded which judging from the blood in the snow is probably the case. While it’s difficult to tell his facial expression due to the hair, his eyes are wide as if he’s surprised, desperate or possibly even afraid. Maybe a mixture of all three. The major thing you see however is the crossbow he’s holding and pointing at you and Jack. The man shouts something at you in a language you don’t understand and fires, but fortunately you had the shield in front of you and the bolt is prevented from hitting your body and merely goes stops half way through the shield instead. There is the smallest pause in this encounter where you realize that you just came close to being killed again, Jack realizing you nearly came close to being killed and the man realizing he’s failed to kill you. The man quickly backs inside and hastily attempts to reload his crossbow, meanwhile you don’t think about your near death experience and just act. You charge forward with the shield up and the spear out. You even start screaming like you’re in an action movie. Your charge is stopped when you hit the man full on. The spear sinks into his body and he cries out in pain dropping the crossbow. You attempt to pull the spear as hard as you can back out, but it isn’t easy because the man keeps you from doing so by gripping the top of the shaft and the man still has enough strength to grab the knife on his side with his other hand. Fortunately he can’t quite reach you and swings helplessly with one hand. Since you can’t pull the spear out, you instead start wiggling it to the left and right no doubt adding to the pain as well as internal organ damage. The man once again screams in agony and lets go of the spear allowing you to pull it out. He falls to the floor. Jack who was having difficulty in getting around you before finally succeeds so he can get in closer to swing his axe down at the man on the floor. “Suzy, hang on I can…agh!” Jack exclaims as the man desperately slashes at the closest leg to him with his knife, which happened to be Jack’s. This causes Jack to reel back and nearly stumble into the fireplace. Fortunately he only falls into a small pile of logs for the fireplace. You press your advantage by stepping up and attempting to plunge the spear into the man’s neck, but he manages to dodge and you only hit the floor. He grabs the shaft of the spear again in an attempt to keep you from using it. He’s got a weak one-handed grasp though. > You pull the spear With as much strength as you can, you pull the spear from the man’s grasp. It puts you a little off balance, which is enough for the man with his other hand to swing his with the knife and plunge it into your foot before pulling it out again. You scream in pain and lose complete balance and fall to the floor dropping your spear. Jack has recovered by this point to help, but the man sits up and throws his knife into Jack’s stomach. Jack falls to the floor, dropping his axe and stopped from being able to help you. Meanwhile you’re attempting to recover from your wounded foot, and sit up just in time to see the man stagger and stumble over to pick up the spear. Upon seeing how severely wounded Jack is, and your own injury you begin to panic. Not enough to run, but also not enough to make the best decisions. You limp over to the man in an attempt to cave his head in with the shield, but thanks to your foot, you aren’t really the fastest. The man dodges your attempt by falling back to the floor, but with the spear now in his hand, from his prone position he manages to thrust it into your side. You cry out and fall. The agony of your wounds is overwhelming now and you can barely stand it. Actually you can’t stand it at all and your body feels like it’s going into shock, like all the energy is leaving you. You weakly attempt to put your shield up to defend yourself when you see the man hover above you, but you don’t have the strength just tears. He knocks the shield aside and finishes you off by spearing your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Hey Jack, is that outhouse large enough to prop up a spear inside it?” “Um, I think so. Why? You taking one of those instead of the bat?” “Yeah, I was remembering something I watched once talking about how the spear was an easy weapon to learn how to use even for someone completely unskilled which is why it was used so much in ancient and medieval wars amongst infantry. I’m just thinking I’d probably want something like that with me instead of a bat if we encounter a bear or something I want to keep at a distance.” Jack looks at you a bit impressed. “Well, look at you. Suzy, warrior princess over here. You said you didn’t know anything.” Jack says smiling. You take the spear and then look over at the shield. “Jack, help me get that shield down from the wall.” You say. “What?” Jack responds. “I want to take the shield with me too.” “Suzy, you’re just going to the bathroom, not to war!” “Hey you said it yourself, we still don’t know what this place is all about and I want to feel as secure as possible, so if that means carrying around a shield, then that’s what I’m going to do!” “…alright…” Jack says and then proceeds to grab the circular shield down from the wall and then hands it to you. The shield isn’t light and is made of strong thick wood; you definitely feel the weight just holding the thing. “You sure you don’t want the sword too?” Jack asks. “Nah, I think this is all I can carry. The shield is definitely heavier than I thought it would be.” “I really don’t think you’re going to need that.” Jack says wrapping a fur around himself and grabbing the axe he brought with him from the Gray Building. “And like I said, it makes me feel better. Come on let’s go.” Upon exiting the cabin you see the sun shining down and you feel the cold wind blow. “Shit, even with these furs on I forgot how cold it was.” You say. “We’ll get another big fire started when we get back.” Jack says. “I’ll look forward to it, so which way?” “Oh to the left and then past some trees, it’s not hard to find.” You and Jack make your way to the infamous outhouse. You both look around periodically, but see nothing dangerous. When Jack’s not looking around, he’s studying you. “So you ready to fight the Persians?” Jack asks with a smirk. “I dunno, but I have to say I do feel rather empowered.” You reply. Eventually you get to your goal and it looks exactly like you thought it would. “Well this is it.” You say unenthusiastically. “Your shield is going to be kind of bulky, leave it out here with me. Unless you plan on getting attacked from below and if that’s the case, a shield isn’t going to help.” “Fuck, now I’m going to be worrying about something lurking down there and reaching up to grab me. Thanks a lot!” you say and give the shield to Jack. You enter the outhouse and endure the unavoidable. Thankfully Jack makes no attempt to speak or make jokes to you while you’re inside. Eventually you come out and start putting your hands in the snow. Jack watches you and then goes back to looking around. “Well, wasn’t as bad as I thought, I’m still missing modern plumbing though. Wish we had soap too.” You say. “I guess if you want to sanitize your hands even more I suppose you could pour some of that mead we have at the cabin on them.” “Will that work?” “It’s got alcohol in it, I assume it can’t hurt. You ready to go Valkyrie?” Jack asks and hands you back your shield. “Yeah, you see anything out here?” “Nah, just a few more of those white rabbits I always see hopping around.” As you and Jack make your way back to the cabin, you and he speak on if either one of you knows anything about hunting. You of course know nothing, Jack says he’s not much better, though he thinks maybe you both could start making simple traps or something, especially given that there are obviously rabbits around here to be caught. “Wish we had the Internet so we could at least look all this shit up. God, I really miss the Internet…I think this is the longest I’ve been without it and I suppose those days are over as well.” You say as you approach the cabin. “Oh, you don’t know. We’re still just stuck out here in the wilderness, like I said, maybe there is Internet and hover cars somewhere else.” “Love that optimism Jack…” you say chuckling and heading towards the door. “Hey Suzy, wait is that blood in the snow?” You and Jack both stop a few feet away from the cabin, you’re still closest to the door, which suddenly swings open, instinctively you put the shield up to cover yourself as much as you can. Before you, you see a man with a good amount of facial hair and wearing several furs and clothing much more suited for this sort of weather. He’s not completely standing upright, but is in a somewhat stooped position as if wounded which judging from the blood in the snow is probably the case. While it’s difficult to tell his facial expression due to the hair, his eyes are wide as if he’s surprised, desperate or possibly even afraid. Maybe a mixture of all three. The major thing you see however is the crossbow he’s holding and pointing at you and Jack. The man shouts something at you in a language you don’t understand and fires, but fortunately you had the shield in front of you and the bolt is prevented from hitting your body and merely goes stops half way through the shield instead. There is the smallest pause in this encounter where you realize that you just came close to being killed again, Jack realizing you nearly came close to being killed and the man realizing he’s failed to kill you. The man quickly backs inside and hastily attempts to reload his crossbow, meanwhile you don’t think about your near death experience and just act. You charge forward with the shield up and the spear out. You even start screaming like you’re in an action movie. Your charge is stopped when you hit the man full on. The spear sinks into his body and he cries out in pain dropping the crossbow. You attempt to pull the spear as hard as you can back out, but it isn’t easy because the man keeps you from doing so by gripping the top of the shaft and the man still has enough strength to grab the knife on his side with his other hand. Fortunately he can’t quite reach you and swings helplessly with one hand. Since you can’t pull the spear out, you instead start wiggling it to the left and right no doubt adding to the pain as well as internal organ damage. The man once again screams in agony and lets go of the spear allowing you to pull it out. He falls to the floor. Jack who was having difficulty in getting around you before finally succeeds so he can get in closer to swing his axe down at the man on the floor. “Suzy, hang on I can…agh!” Jack exclaims as the man desperately slashes at the closest leg to him with his knife, which happened to be Jack’s. This causes Jack to reel back and nearly stumble into the fireplace. Fortunately he only falls into a small pile of logs for the fireplace. You press your advantage by stepping up and attempting to plunge the spear into the man’s neck, but he manages to dodge and you only hit the floor. He grabs the shaft of the spear again in an attempt to keep you from using it. He’s got a weak one-handed grasp though. > You drop the shield on him Thinking unconventionally and with a bit of a heft from your shield arm, you drop your shield on the man’s body. He isn’t expecting the sudden weight smashed into him and expects it even less when you decide to jump on top of the shield, putting more crushing weight on his wounded torso. The man bellows and lets go of your spear. He doesn’t even have the energy to do anything with his other hand holding the knife. You quickly lift the spear from its original position and looking directly into his eyes, you thrust it directly into his throat and twist. The man makes sickening gurgling sounds as blood comes from his mouth and neck, his eyes bulge and his body convulses for a few seconds and then stops. Meanwhile, you’re breathing heavily and just staring at the body. “Suzy? Suzy? You alright?” Jack asks. “Huh? Yeah…I just…I just killed a man. Never did that before…well not directly I suppose.” You say and step down from the shield and the dead man’s body. Jack limps over to close the door and then over to you. “You…you sure you’ve never fought before? I mean it all happened so fast, but you seemed to just suddenly go into some sort of warrior mode.” “I dunno. Something just clicked inside my head. Can’t explain it myself either. Maybe it was just a fight or flight response and I’ve been sick of running lately. This guy was trying to kill us and I had no choice but to kill him.” “Well it was certainly one of those situations.” “Yeah…I guess. Is your leg okay?” you say moving your shield off the body. “Yeah, It’s superficial, I guess I better clean it out with alcohol and wrap it up though. I think I saw a roll of linen wrap in one of those drawers.” “Looks like that’s what this guy was attempting to do too because the wrap you mentioned is right there on the table along with an open jar and a big pouch. This guy was obviously already hurt when we found him. Look there.” You say and point at the man who you now notice has an ugly gash on his arm that looks like some green stuff was smeared on it. You lift up a few more of the furs on his body and notice another wound on his side as well. You weren’t responsible for either of those. Jack goes over to get the wrap and inspect the open jar. “I think this might be some sort of ointment. Smells awful and has the same green color on his wounded arm. This pouch looks like it has more of his items. I’m going to take a look.” Jack says. While Jack goes through the dead man’s bag, you decide to directly search the body. You don’t find anything though except a half full quiver of crossbow bolts and his fur clothing, which you start taking off of him. “Suzy, what are you doing?” Jack asks when he sees you stripping the dead man. “I’m looting his corpse. So far this is the only set of proper clothing we have for this sort of weather. Might as well keep some of it, we can always get the blood out and I can sew up the holes later. The boots alone should be worth keeping.” You say. “…well I suppose you’re right. You need any help?” Jack asks. “Nah, I got it. Just patch up your leg.” You say. While Jack does just that, you proceed with your task. By the time you get the man down to his raggedy loincloth, you temporarily stop to just look at the body, exhale and rub your hand over your face. “Not a pretty sight from here either.” Jack says. “No, it’s not that. It’s the fact that I’ve just realized that I’ve been sitting here stealing a dead man’s clothes and I don’t feel bad about it. And even coming to that conclusion, I STILL don’t feel bad about it. It’s like nothing.” “Well I admit, this is sort of fucked up, but he did attack us first.” “The thing is though is we’re the trespassers. I mean he owned this place. Probably built it with his own fucking hands. From his perspective and any right thinking person’s, he had the damn right to try to kill us. I know if someone invaded my home I wouldn’t like it. We just stumbled in and started going through his shit and stealing it.” You say. “We needed to survive.” Jack says. “I’m not debating that. I just…well…does this make us evil? Because if it does, I have to say, I’m perfectly fine with that and that’s probably a scariest thing I’ve just learned about myself this week and the funniest too, because I can also honestly say killing this guy was one of the highest points of motivation I’ve ever had and that includes all the times I was running for my life this week and especially attempting to get a job in a shitty comic shop.” you say. Jack doesn’t respond, he just sort of looks down and then away, going back to wrapping his leg. You stand up and grab the man by his feet. “Jack can you get the door?” you say. “Yeah, and don’t try to drag him by yourself, I’ll help.” Jack replies as he heads over to the door. “It’s okay. I got it. Just get that fire going while I’m dragging his body out into the wilderness.” You say. “Suzy, we’re in this together. I’ll help you.” Jack says. “Yeah, you’re right. Grab the other leg after you open the door.” You respond. You and Jack drag the body into the wilderness. You make a mention that maybe you should bury it at some point, but as long as it’s immediately out of sight and away from the cabin, it’s good enough where it is. The pair of you then quickly make your way back hoping nobody else has shown up at your home. Which is certainly what it is now considering you just killed the owner. You’re still feeling a bit numb about that. When you’re back inside the cabin, Jack speaks up again. “Just for the record, I don’t think we’re evil.” Jack says. “Well evil people don’t tend to think they are.” You answer with a minor chuckle. “I dunno about that, there are tons of evil bastards that revel in their evilness. I mean I’ll admit I feel a little bad about what we did, but I just don’t want you to beat yourself up about what happened too much. It’s done.” “I’m not. That’s sort of my point and why I was wondering if I was evil in the first place, but you’re right. It wasn’t something to brag about, but it’s done and there’s no point in worrying about it.” You close the door and bar it. “I’m a little tired. I’m going to go lay down on the bed.” You say. “Okay, I’ll get this fire going like I planned to do before all this happened. I’ll clean up some of the mess around here too.” Jack replies. You get on the simple bed, which is basically made up of straw, animal skin and furs. It’s not a sofa, but it’s all the comfort you’re going to have in the near future. Even though you already talked about this with Jack, you still can’t help but go back to it. You start wondering if there is something genetically wrong inside your head and part of you takes after your uncle Ed, or maybe if when you went through all that shit in the Gray Building you “lost” part of yourself somehow. Then you start wondering if maybe it was just a desperate situation and in such times, people do desperate things even if they normally wouldn’t have done so. Like Jack said, you are trying to survive and like you said, that man was going to kill you and you had to prevent that from happening. It’s as good as a rationalization as any. Jack seems to be fine with it and you are too. You sit up slightly from your position and watch Jack clean up the place and stoke the fire. It’s weird to think you met this guy in a comic shop and here you are with him who knows where. You’ve had more adventures with him this week than you ever had with anyone else. And that includes Bobby because it wasn’t like the two of you ever went anywhere. As you think on these things, your hands start to wander and you feel a lump in your pocket which you forgot being there. You half expect it to be your dead cell phone, but what it is, is the thousand dollars and the car keys Jack gave you. “Heh, I forgot these were even in my pocket. Guess we have another reminder of the old world.” You say jingling the keys a bit at Jack. “Sadly, I doubt if all that cash is going to be useful here, well except for kindling.” Jack replies “Well at least the keys can be a reminder of your first gift ever to me.” You respond. “Great. My first gift to you was a car and a thousand dollars. That’s going to be tough to top now.” Jack says. “Actually I got an idea of how you might be able to match it. Jack, stop cleaning up, I want you over here.” You say. “What’s wrong?” “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just remembering earlier that we were in middle of something, and I’m thinking we need to get back to that again.” “Wha…oh…” Jack says suddenly getting it when you start taking your clothes off. “Well, what are you waiting for? Get your clothes off.” You say. “Suzy, we don’t need to do this you know. I’m perfectly fine waiting.” Jack says. “Yeah, well I’m not. It’s been a while and I haven’t even been able to set time aside for splittin’ the kitten so this is as much for me as it is for you. Besides, after surviving the week we’ve both had, I think we should have a little celebration don’t you think? What the fuck else do we have to do?” you say. Jack doesn’t respond, he just starts taking his clothes off a bit shyly. It’s at that moment you remember the fact that he seemed a little inexperienced when you were kissing him earlier. “Jack, you don’t need to be nervous around me. We can start off slow if we need to and I’m not going to judge. It’s just me and you okay? Just like it’s been all this week.” “Okay. I just…I’m…I’m a…” “I know and it’s fine, just come over to me.” You say reassuringly. It isn’t long before Jack and you are both on the bed naked. Just as you said, you take it a bit slow with him. Feels a little weird being the “aggressive” one, but there certainly is a part of you that’s enjoying the role. You’re in the middle of it, when Jack says something that makes things slightly odd. “I love you Suzy.” He says. “… I… love you Jack…” you answer back. Well, maybe it isn’t TOO odd, considering you’re probably the only girl Jack has ever been with and spent any long amount of time with too. In fact you sort of wonder why you even hesitated to say it back, after all, you are fond of him and you’ve had a budding relationship with Jack all this week. You just suppose that “love” hasn’t really been in your mind since you broke up with Bobby. Still, it’s a nice feeling after all the shit that’s happened this week. Afterwards, you and Jack hold each other and generally talk about shit that doesn’t pertain to your immediate situation. There is much that will have to be done, but for now the pair of you are enjoying shutting out the outside world. Just like when you two were living in the basement. Day eventually becomes night and the pair of you turn in a little earlier than usual. > Next day… SATURDAY You groggily wake up and see Jack over at the table like he was the last time you woke up in this place. He looks like he’s studying a piece of paper and doesn’t notice you waken immediately this time. After sitting up, you call out to him. “Hey, cunninglinguist whatcha discover today?” you ask rubbing your eyes. “Oh hey, you’re up. Just looking at this parchment that was in this large pouch here. It’s a crude map from what I can tell.” “A map? Well that’s convenient. Anything good?” “Well I don’t know all the symbols obviously, but I THINK this might lead to a couple towns. Some of these look like roads, I don’t know though until we do some exploring.” “Let’s do it.” You exclaim. “What right now?” “Sure. I mean we’re going to have to at some point, might well start getting some of this shit out of the way.” “Well okay, guess we better get dressed then.” You nod and start grabbing your clothing. As much is you might like the furry boots, They’re a little big on you. They’re actually a little big on Jack too, but they at least fit him better, so he gets them. You both of you put on furs much like you did yesterday, then you grab your spear and shield. “I think I’ll take that other spear. Seems like it worked for you yesterday.” Jack mentions. “You sure you don’t want to take the crossbow?” you ask. “If I knew how to use one properly, sure I’d take it. But I think I’m going to have to practice with something like that first. Seems slow to load and it won’t do you any good if you’re in trouble and I can’t use it effectively. At least with this spear I can help you directly.” “Yeah, good idea.” After hiding a few of your more valuable items (Like your only pouch of coins) you both leave the cabin. “So which way should we go?” you ask. “Hmm, I’m thinking we should follow the tracks of the guy who lived here. They were going to the right before he came back. According to the map, there is a town in this direction. Or at least I think there is, guess we’ll find out.” “Okay.” You and Jack head to the right. The occasional blood in the snow makes it pretty easy to follow them though the tracks have been partially covered by snow or stomped over already. “I’m thinking it was sort of a good thing that guy was wounded yesterday. He wasn’t exactly easy to put down. I can’t imagine the fight he would have put up if he had been at full strength.” Jack says. “Yeah, but now I’m wondering what the hell he was fighting before he met us and how many.” You respond. Eventually after a bit of traveling, you and Jack see something lying in the snow. It looks very large too. The pair of you cautiously approach. When you reach the body, you notice that it’s a massive… creature with grayish blue skin and tusk like teeth. It’s dressed in the barest of fur clothing and has several crossbow bolts and arrows in its body and face. You also see signs of deep cuts across its body. Next to its body is a large club, which resembles more of a broken tree branch rather than a proper weapon. However it would certainly kill someone if swung at them and judging by how massive this creature’s muscles are, it looks more than capable of smashing someone’s head in even without a club. The club has signs of blood on it. “Holy shit. What the fuck…” Jack says. “I think we just found what that guy was running from or limping away from rather. Must’ve been quite the fight.” You say. “I think there is more stuff up ahead, well more blood anyway.” You and Jack leave the creature’s body behind and follow the rest of the blood trail noting a broken sword along the way. You soon find a second body, but this one looks human, or at least you guess it was, since the half of the head is caved in. Blood and brains are scattered about the snow. It’s a pretty grisly sight, but you’re long since desensitized by now. You see a bow nearby, but the body still clutches a bloody dagger in its hand. A fur hat also sits several paces away. You assume it probably was knocked off during the fight. “I guess this was his friend” Jack says. “I’m thinking it could have even been his girlfriend, smaller frame, even with the furs on I can see the chest is bigger. Long hair and from what I can tell of what’s left of the face, it looks slightly female…is that ear pointed?” you say. “…yeah…that ear is definitely pointed.” Jack says looking “What the hell, did we step into some sort of fantasy world?” “Your guess is as good as mine. Told you that Gray Building could have sent us any fucking where.” You exhale, not quite knowing what to make of all this. “Let’s keep going a bit further.” You say. Jack and you press on, but you don’t find any more signs of battle. You do eventually find that the wilderness ends and the edge of a road begins however. Sort of hard to tell due to the snow, but there definitely is a road here. Across the road are more trees. Sort of reminds you home that way. “Well I guess this is one of the roads, which means I guess I got something on this map correct at least. Looks like if we go south, we’ll hit the closest town. Still looks quite the like a walk though.” Jack responds. “Maybe we should cut the exploration trip a little short for today. Let’s gather all that useful stuff from that battle scene and take it back to the cabin. We can certainly use some of it. The boots on that girl look like they would be more likely to fit me anyway and wearing something like those would be a hell of a lot more pleasant for walking around in.” You say. “Okay, let’s go back.” You and Jack return to the battle scene and begin looting the dead girl first. Along with the furs and her weapons, you also find a nearly empty quiver of arrows and a small pouch similar to the one that the man had. You take a quick look inside and see several items for you to inspect when you’re in the comfort of your much warmer cabin. When you and Jack are loaded up, you and he leave the dead woman mostly naked in the snow, much like you left the man and make your way back. Upon getting back to the body of the monster you attempt to pull out some of the bolts and arrows lodged in its body, but some are either partially broken off inside or just sunk in too deep and you’re not willing to make the effort to hang around and pull out every single one. The monster itself wasn’t carrying anything save for it’s minimalistic fur cloth around it’s waist and neither you or Jack are interested in taking it. Soon you both get back to the cabin where you drop your new loot and go warm up by the fire. The pair of you are silent as you sit, watching the flames flicker. Jack however breaks up the silence eventually. “So, you really think that woman was the owner’s girlfriend?” Jack asks. “Maybe wife, I dunno how it works here. Seems like the logical conclusion though.” You respond. “Just didn’t notice a prominent second set of tracks around the cabin.” “Well it has been snowing off and on, there is the wind to think of, not to mention animals running around. Maybe she was walking behind him so she didn’t have to get her boots engulfed with snow. All sorts of reasons why you might not have noticed them. Don’t worry about it. Besides, you said it yourself, you’re not a tracker.” “I suppose. I guess I just feel that missing a detail like that could be fatal given what we’ve experienced as well as seen.” “Yeah, this does seem to be a pretty harsh place. Still don’t know what the hell that blue gray thing was. Definitely want to avoid encountering those things though…and those.” You say pointing to the ugly head on the wall. “I’ll get rid of that thing later today. I know it bothers you.” Jack says. “Nah, it can stay. I’m strangely sort of getting attached to Toothy over there.” A pause of silence in the conversation follows before Jack speaks up again. “If that was his wife or girlfriend though, that’s sort of fucked up that he just left her body like that.” Jack says. “Well, it seems like that thing was still chasing him, maybe he didn’t know if was dead or not and wanted to get to a place where he could better defend himself and heal a bit. He could have always returned for the body.” You say. “Maybe. I just want you to know I’ll never abandon you like that.” Jack says causing you to chuckle. “Well that’s sweet Jack, but if I already got my brains splattered on the ground and there’s a hulking monster around by all means run your ass to safety. No point in both of us getting killed.” You say. “I don’t even want to think about something like that. I just…I can’t imagine a life without you now.” Jack responds and grabs your hand. “Well with as brutal as this place seems to be, you never know.” “No, I can’t think about such depressing thoughts. I love you too much.” Jack’s face displays one of concern, like he’s worried you’re going to die right this very second and he can’t even bear the thought of you gone. It’s apparent he’s fallen for you a bit hard; perhaps a bit more than you’ve fallen for him, but you suppose it’s better that he’s like this rather than not giving a shit. You give him a reassuring hug. “Don’t worry so much Jack, I’ll try to last as long as I can in this world before the monsters get me.” “No, you’re going to survive. I bet you’ll even survive longer than I will. You’ll survive everything.” Jack’s confidence in you is a lot higher than your own though you have to admit, you’ve been doing pretty well so far. You’re certainly not that “good girl” that hid from the rest of the world any longer. You have no idea what’s in store for you or how you’re going to deal with it, but whatever the future hold for you here, you will make your best attempt to survive and push through it. > … Eternal Mother The Future… It’s a harsh world. “Number 660.” Possibly more than your old one was, but you eventually learned how to deal with it. You even managed to make a proper life for yourself here despite all the trials and tribulations. You remember how hard that first year with Jack was. Struggling to survive, learning how to hunt, dealing with the elements, dealing with unfriendly people and creatures, and generally just being a “modern” person who didn’t have too many survival skills to speak of and being thrust into a primitive environment. You think learning the language was the most difficult part. Jack was always a little better at it than you were. You probably still sound like a retard to some folks, but it gets the job done. “Number 661.” During those early years you also ended up having to do a few things you never took pleasure in doing, but it was always it was always for survival. In those instances you were always a little better at that. Jack would definitely always support you, but then he loved you very much and would have followed you into the Gates of Hell. You suppose it did get to a point where rationalizations really didn’t excuse what you did, but then you don’t think you ever cared about those anyway. You were a woman who was willingly dating a human sacrificing cultist at one time after all. You smile upon thinking about your old flame. You think Bobby would have fit in very well in this world. Maybe to some extent, you did too. “Number 662.” You think for a while you might have gotten a little colder and ruthless. Seemed like this was a place where the strong ruled over the weak and fuck you if you couldn’t keep up. From what you could tell people here had three choices: Beg and hope their tormenters took mercy on them, which was almost never likely. Die and just roll over to accept death because it was preferable to keep living in this shitty world. Or struggle and fight tooth and nail for what little you actually did have. And in that case you either won or kept it, or you died and lost it. You know which one you chose. “Number 663.” Things did change a little though when you had your first child. You never planned on ever having a family before, let alone one in a world like this one since it seemed more like a punishment than a blessing…but Jack always had a way of making you see the positive. You loved him for that. Another child followed and for a while it seemed like everything was going well. You had a loving family, a larger dwelling; you weren’t struggling to survive any more. You even had another baby on the way and you didn’t even mind it. Hell, you probably achieved quite a bit for a pair of former basement dwellers. You were starting almost feel “normal” or as normal as you could ever be or get in a place like this. And then just like everything in your life, it all eventually went to shit. “Number 664.” While the occasional wandering ogres were certainly dangerous, they tended to stick a little further north. Other than that dead ogre you saw the first time you came here, you fortunately never encountered one in person again. The freedom fighting elves gave grief to the government, but never really made raids on civilian settlements. Indeed they tended to stay hidden. The barbarian tribes however were always an ongoing problem in Rask, but you always figured you were far enough away from them and you knew there was at least an Empire Fort in the area they would attack first before moving deeper into more “civilized” territory. Of course the Empire has always had a hard time maintaining order in this place. You suppose that was one of the upsides of living here, you didn’t need to deal with the oppressive seemingly monolithic government that controls a vast amount of land here. But it was also a downside as you would soon experience one dreadful day and the fact it all happened in broad daylight does make it seem all the more horrible. A small group of seven barbarians from the Wendigo tribe suddenly attacked, possibly the most vicious of all the tribes in fact. They attacked without warning and so fast, that your two children were dead before you or Jack could even spur into action. While you and Jack had long been experienced in combat during your time here, you and he were no match for them or their numbers. Especially in your condition at the time. You sometimes wonder if a baby hadn’t burdened you, you would have been able to at least save Jack. “Number 665.” Before he tried to hold them off to give you time to run, you remember Jack’s last words to you; Go. Our child needs to survive. YOU need to survive. You almost didn’t want to. You almost wanted to meet death right there with him, but you think two things stopped you. One, your will to survive has always been stronger than your defeatism. And two, you loved Jack enough to honor his last request. You remember when you managed to get far enough away to the safety of a town; you broke down in tears and cried over him for at least a couple days. You still do sometimes. You miss him so much. Your eyes tear up a bit upon thinking about Jack and then you hear your number being called out. It’s time to do this. Maybe you could look after this child, but it would be a struggle. A struggle you just can’t do. Part of you feels like you’re going back to your “old ways” by taking the easy way out, but you haven’t come to this conclusion lightly. You stand up and make your way to the front of the long waiting room. A tired looking clerk behind a counter looks at you and the bundle you’re carrying. “Name?” she asks. “Suzy McCray.” You answer. “And I take it that this is the baby you wish to put into the care of the Empire?” “…Yes…” “Very well. Sign this, and you’ll receive your payment.” “I don’t want payment.” You say which causes a very confused look on the clerk’s face. “Don’t want payment? Well that’s a first. We got some people here all the time bringing in babies. Probably stealing them in fact, but at least it’s better than those dark elves do.” “Well I don’t want payment.” “Well I’m sorry, but that’s sort of a law. You have to take something.” “Can’t you just make sure that he’ll be given a good home?” “I can’t make that promise, I don’t even do that process! I’m just a damn underpaid government drone. If you’re so damn concerned about him, why the hell are you giving him away?” Just as you’re about to yell at the clerk, another woman walks over. She has long white hair and very dark skin. She’s very pretty. You wonder if this one of those svelk you’ve heard about. “Frieda, what’s got you all flustered and generally acting like a typical monkey as usual?” she asks. “Huh? What the hell are you doing here? You slumming or something? Shouldn’t you living the good life in the Emperor’s Palace like my high and mighty brother?” “Jealousy is a terrible thing Frieda especially when I’ve spoken to Jacob on more occasions than I’d care to and I can honestly say you have nothing to be jealous about… but then neither would he. However, for your information I’m here on official business.” “Hrm. Well good for you, now let me get back to my fucking job.” At this point you intervene. “Look can we please get back to me?” Just as the clerk is about to say something. The svelk woman speaks out again. “Frieda. You’re obviously burned out, why don’t you let me take over for awhile?” “You? Working a lowly job like this?” “Sure, I’m no stranger in performing tasks nobody likes to do.” “Fine by me. I’m going on a LONG break.” She says and storms off leaving you and the svelk woman to talk. She smiles at you in an attempt to be friendly, but right now you just want this to be over with and you’re starting to think this was a bad idea. “Don’t pay any attention to her, I’m sure you have a very good reason for giving your child to the care of the Empire.” The svelk says. “I don’t want to, you know.” You say. “I believe you. I don’t think any mother truly ever wants to give up their child, but if I may ask, why are you doing it?” “It’s just…(sniffle) I lost my husband and other children in a Wendigo raid and I barely have anything left. (sniffle) I can’t take care of him the way I want to. I mean maybe I could try, but I just don’t have the energy left in me to do it. I don’t have the drive and if I do a half assed job of it and something happens to him because I can’t do my fucking job, then I’m even shittier mother than I thought. I can’t take another loss in my life.” You say trying to keep it together. The svelk woman nods. “I see. I think I understand. So what is it that you were exactly arguing about before? I heard something about not wanting payment.” “I don’t, I’m not selling my baby for financial gain, I’ll be fine. I’m giving him to the Empire because I’m hoping there is an off chance that the fucking government will do a better job at raising him or finding someone to raise him than I can because I’m too emotionally drained to do it any more.” You say. “Well, I hate to destroy your hope, but many of the children put in the care of the Empire aren’t exactly that much better off. In fact in some cases they might be worse and as for getting someone to adopt, well it’s a possibility a good family will, but usually they’re just passed off to anyone.” “Great. So this has all been a waste of fucking time. Nice to know the Empire is fucking incompetent as well as being oppressive.” To your surprise the svelk woman laughs a little. “You speak your mind. I like that. Hmm. Well, tell you what I CAN put him in the special E Wing.” “What’s that?” “Oh just a place where they often put unwanted babies from higher born families. Bastard children spawned by lust that would create social embarrassments, that sort of thing. Typically these children are very well looked after and special care is gone to make sure they aren’t going to sweat shop owners or something equally hideous.” “And he would get a good home?” “Well maybe, I should inform you though that it’s still rare and if not adopted within a certain period of time the Empire still raises them directly. These children are typically raised to be officers and commanders in the military. Their training is severe, but the results create very well disciplined and skilled men and women…are you okay with your child possibly being given that sort of life?” You look down at your baby. He’s been very quiet throughout all this. Hasn’t cried once. Never been much of a crier really. It’s odd. You begin to think about how harsh this world is, and maybe it would be best if your baby got that sort of life. At least he would be better able to survive this world. Much better odds than you can provide. You begin to sniffle and cry. You nod. “Okay (sob) okay. Do it. It’s a better life than I can ever give him now. (sob)” “Very well. Let me have him.” You reluctantly pass your baby to the svelk woman who smiles as she holds him. “I’m usually not fond of the way human babies look, but I have to admit, this one is sort of cute. What’s his name?” “Name? Oh…yes. Well his name was the same as his father’s middle name.” you say and tell her your baby’s name. “Hrm. Strange name, but then I’ve always found human names a bit weird.” “Do I need to sign anything?” “Nah, I’ll take care of this myself and have two of the best workers here take him to the appointed location. Contrary to the horrible lies about my people, we svelk cherish the lives of infants. You don’t worry about this little one any longer, he’s truly in good hands now and will either get a good home or receive the very best training the Empire can provide. You have my word and I say that as one of the Emperor’s top advisors.” “Goodbye.” You say, tearfully waving at your baby one last time. The svelk woman holds your baby’s hand up and makes a waving motion with it. You can’t stay any longer and you leave the building as fast as you can. The streets of the capital are busy, but you still manage to find a secluded spot to release your anguish. You still don’t know if you made the right decision, but it’s done and now all you can do is hope. Eventually in time you manage to get over your loss and move on with your life. You’ve suffered much tragedy, but above all you’ve always been a survivor and you’ll survive this too. Jack was right about that. as years always do and eventually you grow old. Much of the political climate changes within your lifetime, but as a fairly mundane citizen who never makes waves and knows how to keep out of the way during times of strife you’re never ever in the middle of it. You spend your remaining years living day-to-day and occasionally brightening up you life by dwelling on happier times. When you finally die, it’s not an important death, as you were never considered an important person. However you and your decisions probably made more of an impact on this world than anyone would ever really know. For it was your little Francis that grew up and became… ETERNAL<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY You wake up and find yourself on a small bed in a gray concrete room. There isn’t much else in the room except a dresser and a lamp which is currently turned on. It almost feels like a cell except there is no door, just an entryway, which looks like it leads into a corridor. You sit up and find that you’re still fully clothed, so either Jack isn’t a serial killing rapist or he was enough of a gentleman to put your clothes back on exactly right after he was done and is now playing mind games with you. Your girl parts and ass don’t feel sore and you don’t have a bad taste in your mouth so you’re guessing that you weren’t violated in any way. (You hope) However the rest of your body certainly still aches from the kicks and physical abuse you took yesterday, but when you go to touch your head, you don’t feel any bandages like you were expecting. In fact, you aren’t even feeling any open wound that you’re sure that you probably had. The side of your face doesn’t feel to be scratched up either. Is Jack some sort of doctor? You check your phone which was still in your pocket to see if anyone tried to call you, but nobody has. You thought maybe Peter would have at least tried calling considering you had his car last. If you ever get back home, you can only imagine how pissed he’s going to be when he finds out what happened to it. You sit in the bed for a while just wondering what exactly is going on and what you should do next. Honestly, you’re drawing a blank. You had a plan, you tried to follow it and you thought you were succeeding and then it all went to shit yesterday. You’re starting wonder if you’re jinxed. While you could spend your whole time being introspective like you have so many times before, the fact remains that you don’t know where the hell you are and where your “white knight” is. Jack seems like an okay guy, but you really don’t know anything about him except that he’s helped you out quite a bit which would probably make the average person feel grateful, instead it makes you a bit suspicious and this prison like interior isn’t exactly helping. Still, you don’t seem like you’re being held captive either, so you take the opportunity to get up and leave your room. When you enter the corridor you see several other open entryways leading to more small rooms. Since the left part of the corridor looks like it ends at a solid wall, you go right. You peer into a few of these rooms as you pass by to find that they aren’t really furnished, but rather hold several boxes and containers. Some of them do contain furniture; none of it is arranged in a useable way. In general everything is stacked or positioned to resemble a warehouse more than anything else. Maybe you are in some sort of warehouse, because so far the color of every walls you’ve seen is gray and they’re concrete along with the floor and ceiling. Lights embedded in the ceiling provide illumination, but this whole place doesn’t seem like a normal house of any kind, which you assumed Jack lived in, you guess not though. You pass a set of stairs leading up, so you’re guessing you’re on the ground floor, the way you’re currently heading it looks like a large open room ahead. As you approach the large room, you start to hear noise. Sounds like it’s coming from one the rooms ahead and to your right causing you to cautiously approach. You peek around the corner and see Jack occupied and messing about with some sort of large radio system along with a few monitors set up. You hear garbled transmissions, but some of it you’re making out sounds military related, something about marshal law. “Well you don’t need to spy on me, you’re welcome to come in.” Jack says without immediately looking in your direction. Apparently you’re not as stealthy as you thought and Jack is very aware of his surroundings. “Didn’t mean to spy, just wasn’t sure who or what I’d be possibly bumping into after finding myself in a strange place.” You say standing in the entryway. “Understandable. So I trust you’re doing okay?” Jack asks while still messing about with his radio. “Yeah, I mean I still ache a bit, but I’m more or less fine. Hey you’re not medically trained are you? Because I thought I’d have some bandages or something what with getting smacked with a brick and glass shattering on the side on my head.” “Not professionally, but I used some medical gel on your wounds. Glad to see it worked well.” Jack says finally turning to look at you. “Worked well? I’m practically fully healed, is it magical or something?” you joke. “No, just highly advanced…um…well if you really need to know, I shouldn’t even have the stuff, but you can acquire a lot of stuff you shouldn’t over the deep web.” Jack says. “I see. So I take it, this is where you live? “Yeah, more or less now.” “Wait, so this is where your mom lived too?” “What? Oh no. When I lived with mom, it was a regular house in town. In fact after she died, I still lived there, but when shit started getting hectic in town, I decided I better move somewhere less vulnerable so here I am at this gray building I bought years ago online. As you might have already seen, I got tons of shit stacked in rooms, told you I was a big of a hoarder.” “Well it certainly is very gray, must cost a lot to upkeep it.” “Not really, place sort of takes care of itself. Just never made a permanent living arrangement out of this place because…well it’s a long story.” There’s a bit of a pause in the conversation since Jack just abruptly stops talking and starts twisting knobs and then eventually waves his hands at the radio altogether and the garbled transmissions stop altogether when he turns it off. “What are you trying to do?” you ask. “I’m trying to listen in on a military frequency. Normally I can get clear messages from Fort Timons near Security City, but I’m not having much luck. All I know is marshal law has been declared in major cities across the country. Well that and apparently Ground Zero is still offering their shelters at low low prices. Those ads are fucking everywhere.” Jack replies. “Marshall law…that sounds pretty serious.” You remark. “Yeah, but I can’t say I’m surprised with the way things have been going in the world lately. Anyway…so what are your plans?” Jack asks. “I dunno. I’ve been trying to figure that out myself. I’m not having much luck either.” “Well, considering how fucked up things are in town, you’re welcome to stay here. Got plenty of space, food and such.” It’s a tempting offer. Really tempting, mainly because you don’t have any idea what you’re going to go, but you exhale and try to gather your thoughts. “(Sigh) Look, I’m not ungrateful for probably saving my life yesterday. I didn’t mind speaking with you before all that shit went down in the comic shop. Hell, you’re even not bad looking and you’re obviously got your shit together enough that you own your own damn building. I’m also fairly certain you were telling the truth about not being a serial killer.” “But?” Jack says predicting your lead in. “But all of this…well my gut is telling me that something weird is going on with you. I don’t know what exactly, but I imagine it’s complicated. The funny thing is that it probably wouldn’t even necessarily bother me, but you sort of caught me at an unusual point in my life. While I don’t want to bore you with my life story, but I just recently went through an upsetting break up with my first and currently only boyfriend to date a couple days ago and I’m still trying to mentally deal with that along with all the other shit that’s gone on in my life.” Jack continues to listen as you go on. “You think YOU were a basement dweller? At least you seemed to be doing something productive, my whole life was just coasting by and living off of other people and the most recent one was my ex. I’m fairly certain he would have done anything to take care of me had I complied, but even basement dwellers have their limits I suppose and I just couldn’t make that step. All of which left me up shit’s creek without a boat, let along a paddle. I’m trying to make a real effort of being self-sufficient and I sort of feel like if I stayed here I’d just be falling back into my old routine of sponging off some guy.” “You wouldn’t exactly be sponging off me…” Jack starts to say before you interrupt. “Jack, I think you better stop right there, if you’re about to imply what I think you’re going to imply. I’m not a damn whore.” “What? No! I wasn’t going to suggest that! I just meant I have so much that it’s not like I’d mind if you stuck around. It’s obviously dangerous out there and I’d be quite the asshole if I just threw you out.” You just hang your head down at this remark. “Well that makes you better than my older sister, but it also makes this harder for me, because it would have been easier if you had been looking for some sort of cynical sex exchange like that.” “Wait…so you WANT me to treat you like a whore?” Jack asks confused. “No! Fuck. I just…shit…I dunno what the hell I want…” you say putting your head in your hands. At this point Jack tries to interpret your complete mess of explaining things. “Okay, I think I know what you’re getting at. You just got out of a relationship and you aren’t really in the mood for another guy to be sniffing around you right now. You also want to be by yourself and try to make it on your own without help since you’ve never been truly independent your whole life. Am I right so far?” Jack asks. “Yes.” You reply. “And while you aren’t exactly thinking the worst of me right now, you’re still wisely suspicious enough to wonder why the hell I helped you out if I didn’t want something. Obviously there must be something odd about me, for all you know I’ve been stalking you or something.” “Well, basically.” “Okay, good. Now just let me explain my side of things.” You lean again the side of the entryway before Jack goes into his own speech. “First, yes, I do think you’re attractive and from what I know of you, I WOULD like to get to know you a lot better. I thought maybe there was something there during our nice conversation at the comic shop, but I dunno…I sort of…well let’s just say I’m not exactly great at the whole asking someone out thing, so I lost my nerve and had to gather it again by leaving, and of course that’s when those guys showed up. Not to mention I wasn’t really planning on doing that anyway since I didn’t expect to see anyone other than Jake at the register. Which brings me to the second point, I helped you, for the same reason I helped Jake yesterday, it was the right thing to do. I just wasn’t so lucky with him as I was with you. I’m not saying I’m some hero, but I’ve always liked to believe I’m not a bad guy. So when I saw the opportunity to get you help, I did it. I assure you there was no ulterior motive.” At this point Jack fishes something out of his pocket. It’s keys and a wad of money in a roll. He tosses them to you and you catch them. “Do I want you to stay here because I like you? Yes, of course I would, but I can’t just keep you here, if you don’t want to be. You sound like you have very strong feelings about trying to make it on your own and being by yourself and I understand that. So since your car was trashed, I’m giving you mine. I’m not going to need it much longer…and no that doesn’t mean I’m going to commit suicide. I just won’t be needing it. As for the cash, well you’ll need it more than I will too. You take them both and go live your life and hopefully it will be a good one.” You’re pretty speechless. You’ve so rarely had anyone be this cool with you and this doesn’t seem to be a “nice guy” act. If it were, he would’ve been calling you a complete cunt the moment you told him you weren’t interested. “I dunno what to say except thanks.” You say “Don’t mention it. Come on I’ll walk you out.” Jack responds Jack and you leave the radio room and enter the large open room which has a lot of boxes stacked in it’s four corners. On one of the walls is a door, which Jack says, leads to the outside. “Car is parked right outside, and is in good working condition. Um, just to let you know though we’re several miles east outside of town. It will be quite the drive, but you should get back to town by nightfall. Remember, I want you to know you can come back here if it looks like the town is in just complete anarchy. I…I still worry about your safety. Anyway, just knock three times on the door and I’ll know it is you.” “I’ll certainly keep that in mind Jack.” “Okay, well…good luck Suzy.” Jack says opening the door, which lets in a blinding brightness. You look at Jack and then you suddenly hug him and then kiss him on the cheek. You figure it’s the least you can do. Jack wasn’t expecting it though; he returns the hug until you pull away. You and he don’t exchange any more words; you just turn around and leave as the door shuts behind you. You get in the car, and count up the money to find that Jack has given you a thousand dollars in hundreds. Not much in the long term, but it would at least sustain you awhile. You wonder if you should head back to town or just keep driving east and try to start over somewhere else. > You drive east You come to the conclusion that there is literally nothing for you back in your hometown. Given the state it’s in, it doesn’t seem like there is much possibility there either and you’d be better off just trying to make it on your own. This is very new territory for you just throwing complete caution to the wind like this, but you’re determined to turn over a new leaf. This is going to be a brand new Suzy and your new life starts right now. You start up the car and drive off. As you drive you keep trying to form various plans about what you’re going to do when you get to the next town. First thing to do will be to get a room somewhere… or maybe you should just sleep in the car. That would stretch your money out a lot more, but you can’t just do that can you? You’ll need to bathe every once in awhile! Whore baths in a public restroom perhaps? As you’re attempting to figure out how you’re going to go about your new life, you start to get a headache just realizing how much hard work this is going to be. You turn the radio on in an effort to keep your mind occupied on something else. “…remember our shelters are the best in the world. Your family’s survival is important to us, so don’t settle for imitations…” “Ground Zero ads. Of course.” You say. You try to find a station that doesn’t seem to be bought out by this company, but the only luck you have is a few doomsday preacher type stations. Since you’re not really in the mood for that either, you turn the radio off and return to silence. You continue to drive for some time. You notice you haven’t even seen another vehicle on the road, which is a little eerie, gets even more so when it starts to get dark. You haven’t seen any signs of civilization for quite some time, just rows and rows of trees on either side. You never realized just how rural of an area you’ve lived in before. Eventually the trees thin out a bit and you see a looming structure in the distance on your left. It’s a Grey Building. “What the hell? Did I drive in a circle?” you say to yourself. You can’t imagine that you did considering you’ve been pretty much driving in a straight path the entire time. You suppose it MIGHT be possible since your attention hasn’t exactly been completely focused since the drive itself has been so boring, but this seems pretty damn odd. Odd or not you’re back where you started and you stop your car near the Grey Building pretty frustrated at your situation. “Shit!” you exclaim and bang on the driver’s wheel. You have half a mind to just continue on and go back to town, but you sort of feel like that would be giving up when really this is just a minor set back and you’ve had much worse ones. Jack probably has a GPS, maps or something in that treasure trove of shit he collects and he’ll probably be more than willing to help you out. You just hope he doesn’t see this as a “sign” that you decided to stay after all. You park along side the Grey building, get out and make your way towards the door. Remembering that Jack told you to knock three times, you do so and the door opens up. Jack isn’t there at the door though; maybe he’s got it on an automated system. The other thing that seems strange is that it’s pitch black inside. You step just inside the entryway and still can’t see shit. Not even the dim moonlight from the outside is providing any minimal illumination within the doorway. “Hey Jack! It’s me Suzy! Why are all your lights …Ungh!” you start to call out before you get smashed in the head and fall to the concrete floor. “DIE INTERLOPER! THIS IS MY GREY BUILDING!” a horrible voice screams before you’re forcibly pulled deeper inside and the door slams shut leaving you in complete darkness. You try to get up to run, but a very strong force is keeping you down. You hear the sounds of a rusty chainsaw being started up followed by insane laughter. In your last moments before the chainsaw starts ripping your flesh, you realize that you’ve made a terrible mistake. You didn’t drive in a circle and this isn’t the GRAY Building. This is the GREY Building You don’t understand it and you never will, but it doesn’t matter, you’re dead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Considering you’d rather just sit on your ass and work the register than lift boxes anyway, there doesn’t seem to be much point in engaging in an argument that will lose you this job opportunity. Honestly you’re just lucky that Jake is willing to hire you and isn’t making advances on you (yet). Jake proceeds to show you how to work the register and the credit card machine. After a few trial runs and examples, you think you got it. The funny thing is, nobody has actually come into the comic shop yet. “See, not very difficult. So, you think you’re ready to officially take the responsibility of the register?” Jake asks. “Yeah, I guess, but is it always this empty?” you ask. “No, not usually. It’s about…what a little after noon now? Yesterday was slow as well, but I’m chalking it up to all the craziness going on in town, which I’m really hoping dies down soon. There is a group of regulars that should be arriving in few moments though. They usually just hang out here all fucking day, but they tend to buy a lot when they actually do decide to part with their money and not drive me up a fucking wall with their banter. However since you’re working the register, you’ll get to put up with them this time.” “Great, can’t wait.” You say and sit at the register unenthusiastically. Jake proceeds to tell you that if you need anything he’ll be in his office catching up on going over his financial books. He also warns you not to steal anything, which seems weird since if you were going to steal something, it’s not like you’d listen to his warning. Without many more words Jake disappears into his office and you sit at the register waiting for customers to come in. While you wait you start looking at the various items near the counter and start reading through some of the comics. As time passes you continue to hear the sounds of sirens and such in the distance. Through the windows you see a couple of police officers running in the direction where you saw those barricades. A little more time passes and a short man who looks to be in his mid thirties enters. He’s dressed in casual clothing and just nods at you when he sees you at the register. In an attempt to be a friendly, you smile and wave hi before he goes off to look at comics. Well either Jake was exaggerating about his customers being sex crazed assholes or this guy isn’t one of the “regulars” he was talking about. You watch him for a moment as he browses and takes various comics off the shelves. He looks like he’s really into comics with as many as he’s taking. Eventually he comes up to the counter with a stack of comic books. “Can I just sit these here for now? I’m not really done looking yet, but I don’t want to lug around a bunch of comics and possibly dropping them all over the place.” The man asks. “Oh yeah sure. I guess you really like comics huh?” you say. “Heh, I suppose I look a little obsessed. I don’t really come in here that much since normally I tend to buy stuff online, but this is one of those times where I don’t have the luxury of waiting for stuff to arrive in the mail. So I’m loading up now that I’m here. Never seen you here before though.” The man says. “I’m new. Just started today actually and you’re sort of my first customer. Nobody else has come in.” you reply. “Oh. Well, this is sort of an interesting day to start a new job given what’s been going on in town lately. I’m betting that’s why there hasn’t been anyone else in here today.” “Yeah, tell me about it. I wouldn’t have left the house if I had the choice.” “Yeah, I hear you, I don’t like going out too much myself, but I’ve been getting better about it lately.” “Same here and it still sucks, but bills aren’t going to pay themselves.” “I sort of got around that by being able to work at home. I used to sell and buy shit on the Internet a lot.” “What, like Ebay or something?” “Yeah something like that. Buy low, sell high, that sort of thing.” “I wish I could do something like that.” “You can, it’s not really difficult.” “Eh, I’m not really a wheeler and dealer type. Besides, if I had a job involving a computer, especially one involving self employment, I’d probably just goof off and never get any work accomplished.” “Well that’s the beauty of working at home. You can sort of be as lazy as you want!” The man says with slight grin. “Oh I don’t think you know exactly how lazy I can be.” You say returning the smile. “You can’t be that lazy, you’re working here.” “Well like I said, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be. (Sigh) Events however have conspired against me and here I am.” “Yeah, always sucks when things out of your control put you in a bad situation. For what it’s worth, sorry you’re in such a bind.” You didn’t expect sympathy for your minor “pity party” but you’ll definitely accept it. You usually aren’t one to hold long conversations with random strangers, but then it’s been a bit of an unusual week for you. “Thanks, so selling and buying shit on the Internet works for you huh? I suppose maybe I could do it. There’s certainly already enough crap around the house that surely someone would be interested in. Obviously with as many comics as you intend on buying you’re making a good living at it.” You say. “Well I probably would be if I wasn’t a bit of a hoarder and kept most of the shit I did buy. However, I made enough that I pulled my weight so my mom didn’t kick me out of the basement of the house. Yeah, I know I’m a walking stereotype, basement dweller in a comic shop. Big surprise right?” the man remarks. You don’t reply immediately, you just briefly think about how odd it is you’ve got so much in common with a complete stranger. “Oh, I dunno. I don’t tend to judge people.” You reply. “Well that’s a rare trait these days. Though I suppose I’m more of a hermit than a basement dweller nowadays anyway. My mother died a few years ago and I’m not even going to be living here anymore soon. Hence another reason why I’m loading up on books now.” “So wait you’re moving out of town?” you say a bit surprised. “Yeah…I guess you could say that. I mean under normal circumstances I wouldn’t bother, but it’s getting really bad out there and it’s only going to get worse.” “Worse? How do you know? You don’t think things will get back to normal in a few days?” The man starts like he’s about to say more, but stops. Then he stumbles over some words a bit before continuing. “Um…it’s just…well these things…you never can tell right? I guess I don’t really know. I think I’m just rambling at this point and not making any sense. I didn’t mean to talk your ear off. I guess I should get back to it and let you get back to doing your job.” The man says and then briskly walks to the back of the comic shop. You nearly tell him to come back to talk to clarify what he meant and that he wasn’t really bothering you, but then you think that would be a bit strange and also you don’t really know this guy. He’s probably a weirdo anyway; he just said he lived in his mom’s basement until she died after all. You don’t even know why you’re even still thinking about it or him. “Christ Suzy, you’re taking the break up harder than you thought. You’re starting to latch on to minor conversations with complete fucking strangers. Get a grip already.” You say to yourself. A sudden brick through one of the shop windows breaks up your introspective moment. You duck down behind the counter and then Jake comes out running out of his office. “What the fuck is going on out here?!” he exclaims. “I don’t know! Someone just threw a brick through…” Before you can complete that sentence you hear a bunch of laughter and the shop door opening up. You continue to stay hidden behind the counter. “Did you see that shit? Told ya I could land the brick right in the middle of the O on the window!” a young male voice exclaims. “Yeah, yeah, let’s just see what we got in here…” another remarks. “What the fuck do you little shits think you’re doing? You just broke my fucking window! I hope you fuckers got some money to pay for that RIGHT NOW or else I’m going to be kicking all of your asses THEN I’m going to your parents’ houses and kicking their asses for not aborting you.” Jake exclaims. “Oh fuck off Jake, with as much as you’ve ripped us off by overcharging, I’d say that more than covers the cost of your goddamn window. We’re going to be taking some free comics too.” You hear a voice shout back. “Look, I dunno what the fuck has compelled you social rejects even THINK you can get away with this, but if you don’t fucking get out of my shop right fucking now, there are going to be consequences you aren’t going to walk away from.” “Ohhh, so fucking scared Jake.” You hear one say who from the sound of the voice sounds like he’s getting closer. “HEY! Step back from the counter!” You hear someone hit the counter and then you look up to see a pimply teenager staring over at you. “Holy shit guys! Jake’s got a fucking bitch hiding over here! She looks hot too, no wonder he’s fucking pissed! She was probably blowing him before we came in!” he exclaims and then tries to grab your hair at which point you slap his hand away and stand up and away from the counter so you can’t be molested. It’s at this point you finally see the motley lot. Four teenage boys of all varying shapes and sizes. You don’t know who these guys are, but if they’re the “regulars” Jake mentioned, they’re certainly not acting like what you expected. “Goddamn Jake how the hell you manage to pull this off? She looks way too fucking hot for you. She a whore or something?” The tallest boy asks. “Hey, you know who she looks like? She looks like that cute zombie chick.” The fattest one says. “Nah, she looks more like that chick who controls all the dragons.” The pimply one remarks. “For fuck’s sake she’s blonde not a goddamn albino, she doesn’t look like either of them, the pair of you are idiots. She obviously looks like the blonde chick that fucks vampires.” The tallest one remarks. “Which one, Trent?” the fat one asks. “The one that’s mainly killing them too.” Trent says. “I dunno guys, I thought she looked like that chick that was a private investigator…” another one begins to say before Jake interrupts their temporary distraction of comparing you to various female nerd culture figures. “SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY SHOP! I’M NOT WARNING YOU AGAIN!” Jake shouts. At which point Trent pulls a pistol out of his hoodie pocket. He doesn’t actually point it at Jake, but he’s definitely warning him by just showing it. Jake steps back a bit, but doesn’t lose his cool. You on the other hand are really worried, especially considering you got four hormone addled teenage guys staring at you. “And I’m telling YOU we’re not fucking leaving without getting our comics! Don’t you know what today is? It’s fucking free comic book day Jake!” “This is how you want to play this Trent?” Jake asks. Now Trent points the pistol at Jake and gives a look of less playfulness and more deadly seriousness. “I’m not fucking playing Jake, just like I wasn’t fucking playing with my mom when she told me to clean my room two days ago, just like I wasn’t playing with those assholes yesterday that used to give me wedgies back in sixth grade or that bitch who wouldn’t go out with me even though I did a whole bunch of nice shit for her. Things are changing around this town and if you ain’t changing with it, you’re gonna get rolled over.” Trent looks over at his fellows and waves as if he’s telling them to take whatever they want. He continues to point the gun at Jake though he keeps an eye on you as well. While you’re a little busy worrying about Trent and the rest, you realize you haven’t seen that guy you were talking to before. You can’t imagine he managed to slip out without anyone noticing. He might be hiding, but if he is, he’s doing a really good job, because with the way Trent’s pals are going through the store, it seems like they would have stumbled upon him by now. While they do that, Trent gets closer to Jake still holding the gun to him. “So what is the story with the blonde bitch anyway Jake? I know she can’t be your girlfriend. A fat old loser like you wouldn’t have one.” Trent sneers, but Jake is still keeping composure. “I hired her to work the register today.” Jake remarks. “Hm. I’d rather see her mouth work my dick.” Trent says looking you up and down. Jake starts laughing. “What’s so fucking funny?” “YOU! You’re fucking funny Trent. You’re calling me a loser and apparently you can’t even GET a woman without holding her at gunpoint. Pfft. I don’t give a shit what little emo angsty shooting spree trip you’re on, but I’m not playing. I still remember when you were in here as a little kid and your ugly ass mama beat the hell out of you for shitting your pants. How you cried and cried.” Jake chuckles. Trent of course is not amused and points the gun closer to Jake. “Shut the fuck up fat ass!” he exclaims. “Make me lanky bitch!” Jake says and suddenly grabs Trent’s hand now that it’s close enough. The pair of them struggle with the weapon and Trent begins calling for his fellows to help. While you’re certainly close enough to help Jake before Trent’s buddies get to him, you see the front door and wonder if you shouldn’t just jump over the counter and get the hell out of here. > You help Jake Even if you made a dash for the door, you don’t think you’d make it before Trent’s friends would reach you, better that you help Jake. You rush over to Jake and also grab Trent’s hand that is still clutching the pistol. Jake and Trent are also hitting each other, though Jake can’t really get a good hit in due to the counter being in the way and Trent being tall and having a long reach. Trent maintains a vice like grip on the pistol. “Hey you motherfuckers come help me! Fat ass and this bitch are trying to get the gun!” Trent exclaims. Jake seeing that you have a grip on Trent’s pistol hand, Jake releases one of his hands to try to pull Trent forward over the counter. He succeeds easily and Trent is half way over the counter, though two of his buddies manage to grab ahold of his legs and waist. Meanwhile Trent’s third friend has jumped over the counter and grabbed on to you. It’s mister pimple and he’s more like groping you rather than just trying to pull you off of his buddy. In your attempt to get the little perv off of you end up letting go of Trent’s pistol hand and while Jake still has a partial grip on it and is currently punching Trent in the face with his other fist, Trent manages to at last get his finger back around the trigger and starts shooting. Of course he’s firing wildly due to getting punched in the face and still not having complete control over his gun, but unfortunately you’re close enough and in the direction he happens to pull the trigger. You catch two in the chest and his buddy groping you gets one in the throat. The pair of you fall to the floor, him gurgling and spiting up blood and you struggling to breathe and also coughing up blood. You die in a bloody heap on top of some acne ridden virgin that still manages to be clutching your right tit even in death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>TUESDAY Your alarm goes off and you groggily wake up. Way earlier than you’re used to actually. It’s morning and you haven’t been up this early in a long time. You’re surprised you didn’t just sleep through the alarm considering how emotionally drained you were yesterday. Even now, you still feel tired. You’re also still pretty damn depressed. Depression combined with your type of ingrained apathy would normally make for a really bad combination of motivation, but against all odds, you actually get up out of bed to go wash up. You spend an extra long time in the shower trying to motivate yourself for the first phase of your goals today which is heading over to Jake’s comic shop and getting a job. Eventually you finish up and head back to your room where you start to get dressed, thinking about one of your other possible goals which is finding a new place to live because if this comic shop thing doesn’t work out, you doubt if you’re going to find anything else you’d be willing to do before the week is over. Always one to seek the way of least resistance, you reluctantly call your sister Donna since she did say you could live with her and Julie. You didn’t really want to go live with her and Julie though because you know it’s going to be party central non-stop, but you don’t have many other options. You ring up Donna several times and get no answer. You ring up Julie and also get no answer. They’re probably both passed out from whatever they were doing the night before. You give up attempting to contact them today, deciding that you’ll just show up on their doorstep with all your shit if you don’t get this job. It’s not much of a plan, but you do feel slightly better believing you have a safety net. Well you like to THINK you have a safety net anyway. With that fear partially quelled, you absent-mindedly check to see if Bobby called…then you stop… “Christ, that was stupid. Get your head straight Suzy…” you say to yourself, starting to feel bad again. You then remind yourself that you’ll have to break that habit. You nearly delete his number entirely, but you can’t quite bring yourself to do it just yet. Pushing through it all, you now move on to your next step of trying to convince your brother Peter to let you borrow his car so you drive over to the comic shop. You head upstairs and bang on the door to the garage. “Hey Peter, open up I need a favor!” you shout and after a few seconds the door opens up. “What the fuck Suzy? Why the hell are you banging on my door like you’re the police?” Peter exclaims peeking his head out the door. He’s probably naked. “Yeah, sorry to bother you with whatever currently doing at the moment, but I need to borrow your car. I’m trying to get a job.” You say. “A job? I thought you were too much of a prude to be a stripper.” “Ha ha, very funny. I’m not going to be a stripper, I’m going to try to get a job at a Jake’s comic shop.” You reply. “A comic shop? Doing what? Getting all the virgin nerds excited?” “I’m going to be moving boxes or working a register…look I don’t fucking know exactly, I haven’t gotten the job yet. I just know I NEED to get this fucking job or else Kelly’s gonna throw me out on my ass!” you reply getting increasingly exasperated. “Alright, fine. Don’t fucking bite my goddamn head off because you got problems. I’ve got problems of my own. (Sigh) Wait a minute.” Peter closes the door and then a few seconds later opens it up and then tosses some keys at you. “Here. Don’t fuck it up, and I fully expect you to put gas in it.” He says and then slams the door shut. Well that was easier than you expected, but then he probably just wanted you out of the way for whatever client he has coming over. With that out of the way, you get in Peter’s car and pull out of the driveway. A few minutes of driving to your destination and you now learn first hand what Bobby was talking about yesterday. The roads are a mess and the town is in fucking chaos. There are cops everywhere, as well as ambulances and fire trucks racing to their various destinations too. You’re also seeing small groups of people rioting. It’s like the whole town has lost its damn mind and you nearly get into an accident more than a few times. Fortunately Jake’s comic shop isn’t too far away, but given the town’s situation you’re hoping that everything there isn’t going to be as bad as what you’ve been seeing so far. Eventually you do get to the shop and so far the place doesn’t look too bad, though given that you see a police barricade a few blocks up the street, you wonder if that could all change. Pulling into the parking lot, you exit the car and enter the building. As soon as you walk in, you briefly scan the shop and find it completely empty save for a bearded middle-aged man with a ponytail at a counter staring at you. He couldn’t be more of a stereotype of a “comic book guy.” “Well…hello. You lost or something? The beauty salon is down the street…though I believe there was a shooting or something there earlier.” He says. “Um, no. I’m here about the job. Are you Jake?” you ask. “That’s me. Now what job are you talking about exactly?” Jake asks while looking at you up and down. The guy is already probably thinking several dirty thoughts about you and at this point you’re really hoping this guy doesn’t turn the whole job thing into some stupid line about giving him a blowjob. “The job openings I found on the internet for this place. It said you needed someone to move boxes or work the register.” You say. “Oh yeah, I’m not even sure why I posted that. In this current economy I can barely afford to hire one employee and lately I’m wondering if I can even do that.” Jake says. “Shit, does this mean you’re not hiring?” “Well…considering you’re easy on the eyes, I’m not going to say I’m NOT hiring. Besides you’re the only one that’s even applied so far. You’d think with all the fanboy nerds that practically live at this place one of them would’ve offered to fucking help me out. (Sigh) Whatever, you got your resume?” “Resume?” you ask. “Yeah, when people tend to apply for jobs they usually have one. I mean not that any of the tasks here are brain surgery, but it’s nice to have some basic information.” Jake says. “Oh. Well I don’t have one.” You reply. “Seriously? You came in here for a job without a resume?” “I didn’t think I’d need one.” “You didn’t…alright can you give me any references then?” “Um, no.” “You can’t or you won’t?” “I can’t because I don’t have any.” “Jesus Christ…do you have ANY job experience whatsoever?” “No.” “Do you even want a fucking job here?” Jake asks getting exasperated. “Not really, but I want to run around half naked swinging on a pole getting ogled, slobbered over and groped by horny guys for a living even less, so this place is currently my only option for my desperate situation.” You say. Jake laughs at your comment. “Well at least your honest, but if you think you’re not going to get ogled and slobbered over by guys here, you’re sadly mistaken. You do realize this is a comic shop right?” “Oh come on, there has to be female customers that come in here.” You say. “Sure, but they don’t look like you and you’ll probably get a couple of them awkwardly hitting on you as well. On the bright side, none of the nerds here are probably going to try to grope you. They’ll be far too shy to try that. No pole swinging either, but feel free to run around half naked. I guarantee something like that would really help out business.” Jake says with a smirk. “Yeah, not happening.” You reply. “Didn’t think I’d be that lucky. Well despite your total lack of skill, I suppose I’ll hire you, I do have to ask one thing first though…” And here it comes; he’s going to ask you to do something sexual and you’ll be heading out the door… “Do you even read comics?” Well that was unexpected. “Well, I used to when I was little, but my older sister Kelly just kept taking them from me and either hitting me with them or tearing them up, so I didn’t see the point anymore.” You reply. “Jeez, that’s not fucking right. You should’ve kicked her ass.” Jake says. “Yeah well that wasn’t possible, she’s ten times bigger than me. In fact that’s why I applied to this job, she’s threatening to kick me out of the house.” You say. “Hmm, sounds like a similar situation that I had with my last assistant. His mom was threatening to kick him out of the house and he begged me to hire him. He was a pathetic little worm addicted to all that anime shit. Really he was a lousy helper, but given that the one I had before him just died in my bathroom, I figured I’d give the fat little anime addict a shot.” “Wait someone died in the bathroom here?” you ask. “Yeah my retarded assistant strangled himself in my bathroom while jacking off. Spent the damn day cleaning the bathroom because of it.” “Uh, the other assistant didn’t die in the bathroom too did he?” “Nah, he ended up marrying his crazy cousin and lives in the trailer park outside of town I think. Dunno what he does now since he never comes in anymore which is a shame since the pervert used to spend a fortune in this place.” “That’s…interesting. So about the job.” You say steering the conversation back on track. “Yeah, about the job. I’m guessing you’ll want to be working the register…what is your name anyway blondie?” “Suzy, and why are you assuming I want to be working the register?” “Because I doubt a little thing like you really wants to be lugging boxes around, I mean unless you’re trying to tell me you can’t do basic math.” “Of course I know how to do basic fucking math!” you snap. “Okay, sheesh. Calm down I didn’t mean to imply anything. So you’re working the register…” Jake has still already made the decision for you about what job you’re going to be doing and while lugging boxes around really doesn’t appeal to you, you’re still a little insulted that the option has just been taken away from you. Besides the sexist implications that you aren’t strong enough to do the other job because you’re female, you get the strong impression that Jake also just wants you at the register so you’ll be more visible to all the horny virgin nerds that come in this place. And the more you’re thinking about the fact that you’ll have to interact with the public in general if you’re working the register you’re finding it about as appealing as lifting a bunch of heavy boxes around. Then again if you antagonize Jake over this, he might just throw you out of the shop and then you’ll have no job. > You argue about your job You’re sick of everyone trying to control your life. You weren’t putting up with it with Bobby, and you’re sure as hell not going to put up with it with Jake. “Are you just assuming I can’t carry the boxes around because I’m a woman?” you ask. “What? No, that’s not it…” Jake starts to say before you interrupt. “You just said a little thing like me doesn’t want to lug boxes around like I’m some helpless damsel.” “Look, as a businessman it’s my job to match up potential employees with what they’re probably going to be best at. The fact is you ARE on the smaller side, not to mention you’ve just told me you’ve never done a hard day’s work in your life. So yeah, I don’t think you’re strong enough to do the job and not bitch about it or even get that much work done. I’d rather have you out here working the register.” “You just want me out here as eye candy for the customers.” You reply. “Jesus fucking Christ, I didn’t realize I was hiring a FemiNazi. Are you telling me you want to move boxes?” Jake says in exasperation. “I’m not a goddamn FemiNazi and no I don’t want particularly want to move boxes, but my point is you just took the damn choice out of my hands and made a stupid assumption that I couldn’t do the job due to your own narrow-mindedness.” Jack exhales again and rubs his face. “Are you kidding fucking me? You’re arguing about a job you don’t even want? In fact, you don’t even want THIS job! You know how many employers would’ve thrown you out with that sort of shitty work ethic and you haven’t even started yet! I’m fucking helping YOU out by hiring you in the first place with absolutely no skills or experience and you’re giving me shit already! It’s not like I’m grabbing your ass and telling you to suck my dick! I’m trying to be a nice guy here.” “Given with how you’re speaking to me, you’re not really all that fucking nice.” You respond. “Alright, I’ve had it. Get the fuck out of my shop. You probably think because you’re pretty you can just get what you want well not this time bitch. I got enough shit to deal with, get the fuck out! Get out! Get out! Get out!” Jake yells and points at the door. “FUCKING ASSHOLE!” you shout as loud as you can and storm out the shop. Well that could’ve went better. As you walk to your car, several nerd types are just now approaching the store. While they’re probably the sort that would’ve been staring at you all day if you’d been working at the shop, now they’re actively avoiding you since you’re mumbling and swearing to yourself like a crazy person. Your swearing continues when you’re actually in the car. You bang on the steering wheel several times in frustration. “I hate my fucking life!” you cry out and begin to sob. Life just isn’t fair Suzy and lately for you it’s only been getting harder. All you wanted to do is hang out in your basement, hiding out from the rest of the world. Now your forced to deal with all this shit that you’re just no good at and when you do try to assert yourself, you fail at that too. If you were fighting depression before, you’re currently getting your ass kicked by it. It’s a good thing you aren’t suicidal, but the thought is starting to cross your mind. After taking a moment to pull yourself together, you think about what you need to do next. “Okay…I need to go back home. Need to pack up all the most important shit I have and head over to Julie’s house.” You say to yourself. With this new goal in mind, you pull out of the comic shop parking lot and intend on making your way back home. You don’t get a couple blocks before you soon discover the way you came is barricaded due to an accident or something. There are ambulances and police cars blocking the way and you realize you’re going to have to go a different direction. You go down some side streets and find out that they currently aren’t much better and in one instance actually worse as a bunch of people have made a makeshift barricade with overturned cars and some of them are shooting at each other. You get the hell out of the area as fast as you can before someone starts shooting at you. After having to drive around avoiding barricades, downed power lines, overturned vehicles and general chaos, you begin to get even more frustrated since it’s starting to look like you can’t even get home. Or at least not by driving there and given the shit that’s going on, you’ll be damned if you’re going to get out of your vehicle to walk home. “Goddamn it, I just want to get the fuck home! Fuck it, I’m just going to go to Julie’s now…” you shout to yourself. It’s a further drive, but considering Julie lives in a better area, you’re hoping that maybe things won’t be as bad driving in that direction. You soon find out that isn’t the case as you’re desperately trying to avoid getting into an accident every five minutes. “Seriously what the hell is going on with this town? Everyone is acting like an asshole even more than usual.” You say and you’re starting to wonder if there’s something in the water. Turning on the radio doesn’t help, since you’re not getting much on it save for those annoying Ground Zero ads. “Come on, there’s gotta be something about…SHIT!” you say when look up from the radio and are just in time to see a bus turning left and about to hit you. You swerve immediately to avoid being hit, but unfortunately you slam the car into another speeding car, which crashes into your passenger side at full force. You are knocked around as your car goes spinning across the street. It all happens so fast you don’t even have time to panic or feel the fear of possibly dying right now. A large black truck slams on its breaks in an attempt to not hit you, which it succeeds in doing, only for your car to be stopped by lamppost instead. Thanks to airbags never working correctly when they should, you hit your head on the steering wheel hard and while you don’t quite knock yourself out you definitely scramble your brains a bit and you’re feeling pretty dazed. While you’re still recovering, you suddenly hear knocking on your window and a voice. “Hey, miss. Miss? You alright?” You slowly look out your window and see a woman wearing glasses and dressed in business attire staring back at you. Well actually you’re sort of seeing two of her and the image is still a little blurry, but that’s the size of it. You unhook your seat belt and get out of the car wincing in a bit of pain as you do so. The businesswoman helps you from falling since you’re still wobbly. “You’re lucky to be alive, I’ve seen a shitload of crashes like yours since I’ve been driving through town today. I only just managed to put on my breaks when I saw your car spinning out of control like that.” she remarks. You don’t really answer her; you just turn to look at the car, which is totaled. Besides part of the front being wrapped around a now leaning lamppost, the passenger side is trashed and you certainly aren’t going to be driving anywhere soon due to the front wheel area being caved in and the axel broken. You just look at the wreckage of the car silently and then start to giggle at the situation. Soon the giggling becomes full blown laughter and the woman that helped you out of the car gives you a strange look. “Are you alright?” she asks again. “Oh I’m just peachy! This has been a wonderful day!” you say laughing. “Do you know your name and where you’re at?” “Yeah, my name is mud and I’m in a world of shit.” You say still laughing. “Um, well you seem to be having a bit of difficulty balancing and you’ve got a nasty bruise on your forehead. You might have a concussion and given your laughter you might even be in some state of shock. I think it would be best if you had some medical attention.” You look at the woman that’s trying to help you and begin to stop laughing quite as hard and your mind starts heading back to earth again. Your head and body remind you of the pain you’re actually still in. “Yeah…yeah…maybe. Shit, my head does hurt… I guess…can you drive me to the hospital?” you ask. “The hospital? Yeah, that place is sort of fucked right now. Even if we could get to it in this mess of chaos, the place has been overflowing with patients and you might be waiting a long time, if they get to you at all. I’m not sticking around in this town any longer than I need to. However, my brother is a doctor with his own private practice just outside town; he can probably check you out for free. It won’t be any problem since I’m going to him right now.” The woman says. Well it’s either head somewhere with a complete stranger or try to make it to the hospital (or wherever) in your current condition. > You take the woman up on her offer Considering how fucked things are in town and your woozy condition, you probably wouldn’t be safe walking the streets right now. This woman also seems okay; she’s actually being more helpful than most would. Most would’ve just drove off, let alone offer to give you medical attention. “Alright, let’s go.” You say and the woman nods and helps you head towards her black truck. You around and see your accident isn’t even being paid much attention to. Other vehicles are merely driving by and nearby onlookers lose interest. You look over at the other vehicle on the far end of the street that slammed into you. The front end of that one is trashed and the driver has gone half way through the windshield. He’s a bloody mess and isn’t moving. “You think that other driver is dead?” you ask. “Dunno, I didn’t check on him. I just checked you first since you were closer to my vehicle. Just going by his appearance and the fact he hasn’t moved I’d say it isn’t good. Can’t save everyone though. Come on, let’s just get off the street and out of this town.” She says. The woman helps you into her truck and then gets into the driver side, before you know it; she’s started it up and driving off. The interior of the truck is pretty nice. Comfy seats and everything. The dashboard looks like something out of a science fiction movie. Must be a really new model. “You doing okay over there? You don’t feel like you’re going to pass out do you?” the woman asks. “No, not really. Still just sore mainly.” You respond. “That’s good. Maybe you’re okay for the most part, but it doesn’t hurt for you to get checked out. My name’s Lilith by the way.” “My name’s Suzy.” You say. “Didn’t think your name was actually mud like you said back there. Still, sort of a strange reaction you had laughing about your car crash.” Lilith says. “Yeah, well I’ve just been having a really bad day and that accident just sort of topped it, so I guess I just laughed instead of crying like I have been doing for the past couple days.” “Hmm, you been having a lot mood swings lately?” Lilith asks. “I don’t usually have mood swings at all, but like I said, there have been some major events going down in what was my previously calm life that have really fucked with my stability. I’m getting thrown out of my house, my boyfriend broke up with me, I can’t get a job, I just trashed my brother’s car and I have no idea what my future prospects are going to be. Things can’t get much worse.” “Oh they can always get worse, but yeah if all that shit has happened to you, then I guess your laughing at the car crash situation is a little understandable. Self defense mechanism and all.” Lilith’s inquisitive nature causes you to be a little inquisitive too. “You a psychiatrist or something like that?” you ask. “Eh, something like that. I observe a lot of human behavior for the company I work for. Usually other employees, but lately it’s mostly been non-employees in relation to the company.” Lilith says. “You wouldn’t have any job opening at this company for unskilled labor would you? A cleaning woman perhaps?” you ask. “Heh, well I’m not exactly involved in the hiring process, but Ground Zero is a big company and we pretty much have a lot of openings for all kinds of positions. I’m sure I could find something for you.” Lilith says. There’s a pause as you aren’t sure what you just heard. “Wait a minute. Did you just say you work for Ground Zero? That company that’s been putting out all those annoying ads non-stop for the past few weeks?” you ask. “Guilty as charged. Trust me, I know how annoying those ads are all over the place, but I’m not involved that department either.” Lilith remarks. “I didn’t even know you guys even had a headquarters here in a small town like this one.” “It’s more of a small branch office really and it’s so non-descript most don’t even know it’s there anyway. We do have a bigger place in Security City. Sometimes I go all the way out there to do my job too, but since I live just south of town it’s a pretty long drive as you might expect. In those cases I usually just sleep at a hotel room paid for by the company until my work there is done.” “I thought you said your brother lived south of town.” “He does. We live together. It’s a large house that’s been in the family awhile and we did grow up there so we never wanted to get rid of it and we just decided to keep living there. Might sound a bit child like, but why move when you don’t really need too?” “Hey you don’t need to tell me. I wish I didn’t have to move from my home. So does your brother work for Ground Zero too?” you ask. “No. I wish he did since his talents would really be useful to us, but Leslie’s really not a fan of the corporate lifestyle despite the fact that I keep telling him he wouldn’t even be working in a position that requires dress codes and such. Leslie’s also always been a bit of an independent thinker too. He could’ve easily been a doctor working at a hospital pulling down lots of money, but he prefers his humble private practice. Who am I to tell him to do something that doesn’t make him happy?” “Well you certainly sound like a more understanding sister than my own who is kicking me out of the house.” You respond. “See, that’s not right. Family should stick together. Well at least that’s what I was always taught. Even when you don’t agree with them, you should at least help them out, not leave them twisting. I’m really sorry to hear that your sister is doing that to you.” Lilith says. “Thanks for your sympathy, but she’s always hated me and I imagine my brother will too now that I’ve wrecked his car, though to be honest he didn’t really care that much about me either. I’m sort of a black sheep.” You say. “Mm. Interesting. My brother and I are sort of black sheep as well, since we’re not religious like the rest of the family, but like I said, it hasn’t completely ruined our generally good relationship with most of them. To be honest though my brother’s personality is more likely to do that than our lack of religious beliefs.” Lilith laughs. You aren’t quite sure what to think right now driving with an employee of Ground Zero. Certainly was a pretty unexpected twist of events. It’s even more surprising that she’s seemingly pretty nice since you’ve always had the idea that someone working for GZ would be on the cold and uncaring side. You’re just hoping that after her brother checks you out, she’ll help you out on the job front somehow. Whatever you’d be doing, it probably would pay more than a cashier at a comic shop. You and Lilith are silent for a bit while she tries to concentrate on getting out of town. Eventually after several near misses the pair of you are finally out of there. “Shit, I thought we were going into another accident a couple times.” You remark. “Yeah, it’s been pretty crazy in town lately. Should be relatively smooth sailing from here though.” Lilith says. “How far do you live?” “Oh, not that far. We’ll be coming up to it soon enough.” Lilith says. “Your brother must really be a good doctor to have patients coming all the way out here to see him. Is it mostly a steady supply of the richer folks making the journey?” “Not as many as you might think. Honestly, Leslie gets more people that don’t have health insurance or are otherwise on the poorer side really. People who don’t have anyone to help them. As to how folks get to the place, well my brother’s got a couple assistants who drive people to him and they more or less provide this service for cheap. Occasionally my brother will drive people back to his clinic himself. Like I said, he could’ve been pulling down a lot of money, but he prefers the more personal touch of private practice.” “Well, he certainly sounds like a humanitarian.” You say. “Oh he is. He is. More than you know.” About a half hour passes and you see one of those old colonial houses in the distance. It’s very isolated as there isn’t another house in sight and you haven’t seen another one since you left town. “Is that your home?” you ask. “Yep, that’s it.” Lilith responds. “Pretty big. Looks very old.” “Oh it is on both accounts. I mean of course inside has all the modern luxuries, but I wanted the outside to still have that old charm.” “Pretty isolated out here.” “Yeah. It has its advantages though. Lilith soon turns and pulls into the house’s extended driveway and stops the vehicle. “Well we’re here, you okay to get out of the car by yourself?” Lilith asks. “Yeah. I actually don’t even ache as much now and I’m not dizzy at all. I’m wondering if I’ve just wasted your time.” You say. “Nonsense, this hasn’t been a waste of time at all. I actually enjoyed our conversation on the way here. I don’t really talk to many people outside of work and my brother.” You get out of the truck and take a look at the house. It’s even more impressive now that you’re in front of it. A lot of care has obviously gone into its upkeep. You notice another car in the driveway that looks a lot less fancy than Lilith’s truck. Must be her brother’s vehicle. Lilith is still in the truck fumbling around with something in her purse as you continue to take in the sights. Eventually she gets out though. “Okay, sorry about that. I got so much shit in this bag I sometimes have to recheck to make sure I got everything.” Lilith says clutching some keys and her large bag. “Sure, no problem.” “Let’s go around the back. It’s quicker to get to Leslie’s office that way. Just follow that path.” You walk on the stone path that leads around the back of the house and Leslie follows closely behind. Along the way see a few rows of well-tended blue and purple flowers on both sides of the pathway. “Aren’t they lovely?” Lilith remarks. “They certainly are colorful. I’m not too familiar with flowers though.” You say. “They’re called Morning Glorys. My brother though keeps calling them Morningstars. I think he only does that because that’s our last name and he can’t be bothered to remember a new name with morning in it.” Lilith chuckles. You stop walking. “Did you just say your last name was Morningstar?” you ask. “Yes, why?” Lilith says. “My boyfriend’s last name was Morningstar.” You say. “Is that right? Wow, what are the odds?” You suddenly feel very uneasy. You slowly start to turn around and before you can react, Lilith grabs your arm and stabs it with a needle. She injects you with something before you can even pull away. Whatever it was is taking effect almost immediately and you’re already beginning to lose your balance. “Careful, careful. Don’t fall on the flowers now.” Lilith says. You can’t even speak; you just look at Lilith in shock as you fall on the pavement struggling to remain conscious. Lilith crouches down and stares at you, as your eyes start to close. “…now I know who you are. Bobby mentioned you to me a couple times recently when he was trying to convince us to go live in his compound. Never figured you’d be the same Suzy. (Sigh) Too bad you told me you two broke up though…guess that explains why you’re not at the compound with him.” You grab at Lilith, but she easily pulls away from your weak grasp. She just continues to look on at you as a scientist might look at a test subject. “…still…I suppose this might make things a little more complicated. Oh well, I guess this will just make things a little more interesting too. Get some rest Suzy, we’re going to have a big day tomorrow.” With those last words, you completely pass out. > Next day… WEDNESDAY You wake up and remembering everything that happened just before you passed out, you attempt to sit up immediately, unfortunately you can’t due to being restrained. Your legs, your arms and even your body are all strapped down on a gurney. You can’t cry out either as you have a ball gag on your mouth. You can make loud “Mmhghm!” sounds but that’s about it. Your clothing has also changed. While you’re not naked, you’re in one of those hospital gowns. You don’t feel sore or anything, so you can only hope you weren’t raped during the time someone was changing your clothes. The fear of what’s going to happen to you is overwhelming. A quick glance around from you position shows that you’re in a plain white room with no windows. There is a light above and a chair and door to your right, but to your left gives you cause for more terror as you see a table full of surgical instruments. A lot of them don’t even look like proper surgical instruments so much as they look like torture devices. There isn’t much you can do except wait and attempt to stop crying though you fail in that endeavor. You just lie there thinking about how you said yesterday that things couldn’t get any worse…and then they did. You think about what you could’ve done differently to have made your life better and most importantly avoid the situation you’re in now. You then think about how at some point, either Lilith, her brother or both are going to come in and start cutting you up and torturing you to death. You’re completely helpless and you wish that someone would just come in and save you from all this. The door suddenly opens and you turn your head hoping that somehow your magical thinking worked, but you only see Lilith walking in with a notebook in hand. “Figured you should be up by now. Sorry to keep you knocked out for so long, but I’m sure you can see it was completely necessary. Couldn’t have you running away or anything.” You turn away from Lilith who then gets closer and stares at your face a moment. “Hmm, you’ve been crying. Natural response I suppose given your situation. Good. (Sigh) I told my brother not to put those in here.” Lilith says taking notice of the surgical instruments and shaking her head. “He probably thought it would be funny to have you even more terrified out of your mind than you already would be. I love Leslie with all my heart, but he really can be an inconsiderate asshole sometimes. Well most of the time really, anyway the main thing is don’t pay any attention to those tools over there. That’s not what I brought you in for.” Lilith puts her notebook on the table with the tools and addresses you again. “Now. I’m going to release your ball gag since I’m sure it’s uncomfortable. However when I do, I must ask you NOT to scream or anything like that. First of all it won’t do any good. Second, it’s terribly annoying. If we’re going to have a positive relationship Suzy, it’s absolutely necessary that you comply with my instructions. Do you understand?” You don’t really have much in the way of choices and resisting her with no way of actually doing anything would probably just result in something bad. You nod your head compliantly and Lilith takes off your ball gag. “Are you going to kill me?” you ask. “Ah the predictable question first. Well, we’re going to get to that and several other questions you might have, but we’re going to be doing this my way. So while I know you’re very nervous and scared, you’re going to just have to wait a while before they get answered. Do you understand?” Once again you nod silently. “Good. Very compliant. We’re getting off on the right foot Suzy. Now then let’s get to some of the more minor concerns you might have had running through your mind while you were laying here.” Lilith pulls the chair over to the table and after moving some of the tools out of the way she sits down, opens up her notebook and begins writing something in it while addressing you. “I want to first alleviate any concerns you might have had about being sexually molested while you were unconscious. I assure you I undressed and dressed you myself. And since I’m not a lesbian you were completely unharmed as far as that goes. I can see one of the obvious reasons that would cause Bobby to be enamored with you though. You’re a very pretty girl with a nice body and it’s obvious just by speaking with him he still loves you despite your break up.” “…you…you spoke with Bobby?” you ask. “Oh yes. Called him up as soon as I got you in the house. Took awhile to reach him, but eventually I did and I proceeded to have a very long conversation with him. I wanted to know more about you and only Bobby could provide those answers what with you being unconscious and all. He told me about how you met, your general personality, what you liked to do, and all of that stuff. When I asked what exactly caused the break up, he seemed to stumble over his words a bit. He claimed that he realized he couldn’t abandon the silly family traditions, but it seemed like there was more to it than that because he kept insisting it was his fault and not yours. As if that was going to change what is going to be going on over here. You want to shed a little light on it Suzy? Please be honest.” “I…I (sniffle) didn’t want to get married to him. I didn’t want to live under the same roof as Diana since she was his ex and she hates me. I suppose…I also wasn’t fond of the idea of having a bunch of babies like he wanted either. Our argument sort of spiraled from there.” You answer. “Hm, interesting. So you wouldn’t consider yourself a domestic woman then. I suppose I can understand that. I certainly wouldn’t want to spend most of my time barefoot and pregnant and my whole life revolving around my man’s needs. I don’t think my brother would like that either. He gets so wrapped up in his experiments that I don’t even see him for days sometimes and he’d probably be homeless and living under a bridge if I wasn’t working.” Lilith chuckles and continues writing. You remain extremely anxious about what’s going to happen to you. “I also can understand not wanting to live with my bitchy niece either. I know my nephew probably didn’t think anything of it, but I also wouldn’t have put it past him to hope for some sort of three way between you all. Good for you, putting your foot down like that.” All you can think is you’d willingly have a three-way with Bobby and Diana if it got you out of this situation. “Anyway when my nephew found out you were over here he practically pleaded for me and his uncle not to kill or harm you in any way. He even said he’d be over to pick you up, but I told him that was completely out of the question since plans were already in motion. Still, I love my nephew and didn’t wish to cause him any suffering so I agreed that you would not come to any harm as long as you followed the rules. So there’s the obvious question answered.” You close your eyes silently thanking Bobby that he spoke up for you. Of course this doesn’t make your fear disappear completely. Far from it, but at least you might have a glimmer of hope now. “With that out of the way, your other questions are probably what is going to be done to you. Well, before I called Bobby, my initial intention was to do some tests and study you since I wanted another subject to observe and I saw an opportunity to grab you when you nearly crashed into me. However, some things have obviously changed, but there is still is opportunity here so I’m going to take advantage of it.” “…what do you mean?” you ask thinking Lilith has decided to completely twist her word to Bobby somehow. “I’m getting to that. As you might’ve noticed most of the folks in town have gone completely nuts. Well there’s a reason for that and you’re going to be one of the few people outside of the higher-ranking Ground Zero personnel to learn about it.” Lilith stops writing to give you her complete attention. “We put an experimental drug in the water supply and that’s what’s causing most people to act the way they’re doing in town. In fact we’ve done this to a lot of places. As bad as what’s going on in town, I imagine it’s even worse in a bigger populated area like Security City.” Lilith says. While you’re still worried about yourself, this bit of information is a little frightening for other reasons. “Wait. What? Why?” you ask. “Well there are very good reasons I assure you, but most of them probably wouldn’t matter to most with any sort of so called ethical concerns on human testing. Indeed I don’t even know all of the answers myself, I’m just a small cog in a big relentless machine. All I can do is tell you this, the world IS going to change very severely and very soon and it’s Ground Zero’s goal to try to save the human race at any cost. Our shelters aren’t the only way we’re doing that.” Lilith says. “But how is putting crazy juice in the water supply doing that?” you ask. “Well, I’m not completely familiar with all the science involved, but it basically makes people more resilient to things like diseases, radiation, and even chemical gases. You know, anything that’s likely to wipe out humanity on a wide scale when our glorious world leaders start pressing buttons. It seems like it increases strength and speed as well. Unfortunately it would seem it has a very negative effect on the mind, but that of course was an unintended side effect. However, if animal testing is anything to go by, those effects should only be temporary.” “But how long do they last?” “With animals? A few weeks, but we never really got to test on humans at least not on a wide scale. There were some individual tests I believe, but those were the earlier stages of the drug and the results of those weren’t very positive. Ground Zero wanted to pick a populated area to do testing on years ago to hammer out all the problems quicker, but we had an agreement with government, which kept dragging its damn feet as usual on things. It didn’t help that GZ was also temporarily burdened with some incompetent leadership for a while so we didn’t get to do any of this until the last minute and now this is the result. Don’t get me started on the faulty elevator problems in most of the shelters…” Lilith at this point shakes her head and runs her fingers through her hair as if dismayed with how things have turned out. As she’s doing this, a horrible conclusion comes to you. “Wait…am I going to go crazy too? I drank mostly bottled water!” you say. “Yes, a lot of people do these days, but most people still bathe regularly, brush their teeth and such and all that is still enough even if you’re not drinking straight from the tap. As for if you’re going to go crazy, well that’s a matter of perspective. Given what I know about you, I have to say from a professional perspective you’re not exactly a beacon of sanity Suzy, but then who of us really is right? If you were worried that you’re going to start going into a violent fit of rage, I’d have to say I don’t think you are since you haven’t already. The drug doesn’t seem to be affecting everyone in town the same way for some reason. Not sure why, but again that’s why I’m keeping you around for observation. You’re going to be my control subject as it were.” “What does that mean?” you ask. “What it essentially means is as long as you cooperate and don’t try to escape, you’ll be well taken care of. I’ll ask you questions, maybe do a few non-invasive tests and that’s about it. If it seems you’re completely fine, I guess we’ll move on from there. For now though I think you should have better accommodations don’t you? This room is rather spartan, I’m going to take you to a new one. Now, I could call my brother in here or just wheel you to it still strapped to the gurney, but I’d rather NOT do that Suzy. I want our relationship to be a trusting one. So, I’m going to release you from your straps, you’ll follow me and you WILL NOT try to escape or anything like that. Do you understand?” Of course you’re going to say yes to Lilith, no matter what, but your intentions are another matter. While Lilith seems like a reasonable lady, she’s still a Morningstar and all that entails from what you know of that fucked up family. She might not be one of the chaos goddess worshipping brainwashed cultist ones, but she’s obviously still not concerned with the value of human life and the only thing that’s saved you is having a past relationship with Bobby and his continued feelings for you. She doesn’t look tough, of course looks can be deceiving, but you’re pretty desperate and you REALLY want to leave. When she releases you, you could probably easily grab one of those surgical instruments and hold her hostage until you took her car and got out of this place. You’ve no idea where you’d go, but anywhere would be better. > You make no attempt to escape You don’t know the complete lay out of the house and you also don’t really know Lilith excessively well to judge how “tough” she actually is. For all you know she’s got some sort of GZ martial arts training especially given what she’s revealed about what insidious practices they’re doing. You also don’t know much about her brother, but he’s probably a damn psycho. If you threatened his sister, he might be capable of anything; you know how close the Morningstar family tends to be after all… Also, so far this week, every time you’ve “asserted” yourself, it’s gone very badly. Might be better to at least wait a while and see if a better opportunity comes along and get a feel for this place first. Lilith undoes your straps and you’re soon free. You sit up, stretch and try to maintain composure that you’re not still scared about all this. “I know the first time we met you were having problems walking by yourself. You okay to do that now? Not still feeling wobbly or anything?” “I believe I’m fine. Just very nervous about all this.” “Don’t be nervous. As I said, follow the rules and you’ll be fine. If you’re worrying about catching the madness that the town has, well like I said, you’re probably fine, but even if you aren’t I’ve got a few things that might help. You ready to go?” “Yeah I guess.” You say and Lilith leads you out the door. When you exit, you find yourself in an uncarpeted corridor with a few rows of doors to the left and right of you (All with very strong looking and very locked doors). It reminds you of a hospital setting; you can’t help but wonder if you’re still in Lilith’s house anymore. “Um, are we still in your house?” you ask. “Oh yes. We’re not on the ground floor if that’s what you’re wondering though, we’re in the basement. Of course this house never had a basement this large originally. A lot of this was added on much later due to my work in GZ. Leslie nearly blew a gasket when he heard workers were coming in to make severe alterations to it, but in time he realized it had its advantages and I told him his area wouldn’t be fussed with anyway. He spends a lot of time down here with his experiments you see and hates change…guess you and he have that in common no?” “What?” “Well as I said, Bobby told me much about you and your past. Said you preferred to stay down in your basement and hide away from the world and weren’t a fan of change yourself. Was he incorrect in what he told me?” “…no…no I suppose he wasn’t. It’s true. I did spend all my time in the basement hiding out from the real world and hated change. This week has been a big wake up call that things couldn’t be like that forever though.” You say. “Hm, well don’t despair. While things do eventually change, they can always change for the better. Here’s your new room.” Lilith remarks and unlocks it. The door opens up to another windowless room, but this one is much nicer. In fact it’s downright cozy. There’s a sofa, a bookcase with books, a TV…hell it almost reminds you of home. As enter to get a closer look at everything, Lilith is preoccupied with something on her phone. “Shit, well something came up and we’re going to have to get to the questions later. But for now, what do you think to your new surroundings?” Lilith asks. “It’s okay. I didn’t expect to have such a fancy cell.” You say. “Suzy! Don’t think of this as a cell, think of it as just a regular room where you’re staying until it’s confirmed you’re okay! Now, if you notice there is another small room off to the right. That’s the bathroom where you’ll find all the usual facilities. I would imagine you’re probably hungry and I’ll be back with some food soon. Just have to deal with something. The National Guard has been deployed in town to maintain order and apparently GZ is sending some of their people to this house as added security. They’re already on their way so I’m going to have to go talk to my brother about this and make sure he curbs his anti-social behavior to a manageable level. Doesn’t help that he’s got those two inbred redneck assistants of his with him right now. I can’t stand those assholes. He’s either going to have to keep them out of sight completely or make them leave…(sigh) Ugh, anyway I’ll be back soon, just make yourself at home.” Lilith closes the door, which you then hear lock and you’re now alone. You sit down on the sofa trying to wrap your head around all this. Never in a million years would you have thought you’d be a prisoner by your ex-boyfriend’s aunt who works for the corporation responsible for all those ads on TV and apparently involves in some seriously shady practices. Makes you think about some of those crackpots that posted conspiracy theories on various sites you read. Turns out some of them weren’t too far from the truth after all. The thing is, you can’t even worry about something of that magnitude. For one thing, you have absolutely no power to do anything about it and second, you’ve got the more pressing concern about what is going to happen to you. While things are going better than you thought they going to go, you’re still not seeing a good end to any of this. Your luck has been up and down this entire week and just when something good seems to happen, something equally bad happens. You don’t trust Lilith completely, no matter how “nice” she’s trying to be. At best Lilith keeps her word and you’re not sick or infected only for her to ultimately execute you “humanely” with shot to your head. You can’t imagine her keeping you alive after telling you her corporation’s secrets like that. Unless of course she thinks you wouldn’t tell anyone and even if you did, who would believe you anyway? The darker picture is of course she said the world was going to change very soon implying a nuclear holocaust like all the GZ ads have been harping on about. Maybe she’s told you because ultimately it isn’t going to matter due to doomsday. If that’s the case, where is that going to leave you? Maybe Lilith will release you alive, but leaving you to fend for yourself in a blasted wasteland of which you don’t fancy your chances. And these are all the best-case scenarios you’re envisioning, because you don’t even want to think about the worst case, which is undoubtedly going to involve you being in more pain than you could ever imagine. You have no more tears for any of this, because you’re spent as far as that’s concerned. You’re still scared of course, but you feel like you’re starting to become numb to very real possibility of death. Doesn’t mean you’re giving up though and you proceed to study your surroundings, taking note of anything you could possibly use as a weapon. You don’t find any secret passages or vents you could crawl around in because that only happens in the movies. Eventually you take a break and lay down on the sofa, which at least is comfortable, you just wish you weren’t wearing a damn hospital gown. You think about turning the TV on, but you figure it will probably just be full of Ground Zero ads. Time passes and eventually you hear the door opening up. At first you figure it’s going to be Lilith, but it’s not. Two dirty looking men open up the door and enter. One of them is huge and has a slackjawed look on his face. He wears overalls that look like they’ve never been washed. The smaller of the two is wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit and trucker’s cap. When he sees you a big grin spreads across his face making him even creepier than the larger one. “Hoo wee! Well look at what we got here! Doc really has been fixing up this place, because that is one sweet piece I tell ya what!” the smaller one exclaims. You can only guess these must be Leslie’s “assistants.” You sit up immediately and try to arrange your gown to cover you as much as possible. “Didn’t mean to startle ya darlin’ but I’m Jed and this here’s my brother Hugo. What’s yer name and what the hell are you doin’ in here?” the smaller one says. “My name’s Suzy, and this is my room. What the hell are YOU two doing in here?” “Whoa, easy there blondie. This is where me and Hugo always go to hang out when we’re on standby as it were. No point in headin’ back ta town right now anyway, since it sounds like the shit’s really hit the fan out there, but never mind all that, what’s all this about this bein’ yer room? You some new live in whore for the Doc to fuck when his snooty sister isn’t putting out?” Jed asks. Jed gets closer towards you meanwhile Hugo hasn’t moved from the entryway. You’re feeling very threatened. “No, I’m Lilith’s guest, now will you please leave my room?” you say. “Lilith’s guest? Wait, you sayin’ you HER whore? Well shit, I like the sound of that even better! So you ever been with a guy at all or are you strictly a pussy licker?” Jed asks with a pretty predatory look in his eyes. “The pair of you better get out of here. Lilith has made it clear she doesn’t want anyone else in here.” You say standing up from the couch. “Oh is that right? Well I ain’t heard nuthin’ about it and I take my orders from the Doc, not his snobby bitch of a sister. So I think you better just settle down blondie. In fact, I think you better start making yourself REAL comfortable.” Jed says and starts fondling his crotch while still approaching you. You’re steadily running out of options. About the only thing you can do now is either threaten them to the point that they back off or beg and hope they take mercy. Either option isn’t likely to succeed. > You threaten them You focus your mind and try to muster up all your courage for what you’re about to say next. It might very well be suicidal, but if the unthinkable is going to happen, then at least you can take comfort that you stood up to them even as scared as you are right now. “Look, you fucking inbred rednecks, get the fuck out before you get in some major shit so deep that you ain’t got the hip waiters for it!” you exclaim. Jed is hardly intimidated and his expression changes from perverted leer to burning hatred. “Hugo get out of that entryway and close that fucking door. I think this little blonde bitch needs to learn I don’t take orders from whores. Let alone one that isn’t sucking my cock, but I think we can change that situation.” Jed says. “You think that’s supposed to fucking scare me?” you say and then Jed grabs you by both arms squeezing tightly. He presses his body against yours and looks down at you menacingly. “Oh I can tell you’re scared bitch, I’ve been doing this a long time. And even if you weren’t, you better damn well be. Last time I saw Doc’s sister she was outside speaking with some soldier boys. She ain’t gonna be down here in time to save your ass and if you think that we’ll get in trouble for fucking you up, you over estimate your worth. At the most, we’ll get chewed out by Doc, for pissing off his sister by wreckin’ her kitty licking fuck buddy.” Jed says. You just look down after Jed’s response. Still holding your arms tightly he addresses you again. “What? Got nuthin’ else to say? Yeah that’s what I fucking thought. You fucking whores talk tough when you think you got a savior, but when the shit goes down, you shut the fuck up real quick.” You start laughing and look up at Jed’s face, which is now showing a bit of confusion due to your response. “You truly are one dumb ass fucktard, Jed. You keep thinking I’m Lilith’s whore, or whatever fantasy YOU put in your own goddamn pathetic little head of yours. If I was her whore, don’t you think I’d be dressed more like one? Look at how the fuck I’m dressed! I’m in a fucking HOSPITAL GOWN! Who wears hospital gowns? FUCKING PATIENTS! I’m her patient! I’M FUCKING SICK AND CONTAGIOUS YOU STUPID ASSHOLE!” you shout with a mixture of contempt and amusement. At this point Jed takes his hands off of you and backs off a bit. “Shit!” he shouts. “Oh what? Am I not so attractive now that you’ve found out I might have shit that will make your dick fall off? Come on stud, I’ll make it totally worth it! I guarantee it’ll be the last fuck you’ll ever need.” You say and start grabbing at him and laughing. Jed gives you a hard shove causing you to fall backwards. “Fuck! Hugo, this bitch has got the crotch rot somethin’ fierce! Open up that fucking door!” Jed shouts. Hugo comprehends the situation just well enough to follow Jed’s orders and it doesn’t take long before they’re both out the door. Unfortunately Jed isn’t quite so stupid to leave the door open or unlocked since you hear a firm click. Of course maybe he was just so scared of you possibly getting out that he took the time to lock it. In any case you got rid of them and you’re alone again. You’re quite pleased that this is the first time you actually employed an assertive method this week and it worked out. Your arms hurt from Jed squeezing them though. A half hour later, you hear the door again. This time it’s Lilith and she looks somewhat harried when she comes in. She’s also carrying a tray of food with what looks to be meat on it and some potatoes on it. She places it on coffee table in front of the sofa and also gives you a bottle of water. She then sits down on the chair Jed was sitting in. “Whew. Sorry about that. Just one thing after another. Anyway, there’s your food. It’s left over meatloaf from yesterday that I heated up. Hope that’s okay. We still had quite a bit left and I didn’t really have time to prepare anything else. Leslie usually does most of the cooking around here anyway.” You stare at the meatloaf, which doesn’t look all that appetizing. The potatoes look okay though. You notice your eating utensils are plastic. Guess Lilith isn’t completely trusting of you either. “What’s wrong? You’re not a vegetarian are you?” Lilith asks. “Um, no. Not at all.” You say and poke at the meatloaf. “You think I poisoned the food?” “Actually I didn’t think that, until you just mentioned it. I was just thinking of how unappealing the meat looks.” You say. “Well not that this might help calm your fears, but I didn’t poison or drug the food. There wouldn’t be much point in it; you’re my control subject after all. As for the look of the meat, well my brother’s a good cook, but he’s never been big on presentation, but I assure you it tastes much better than it looks. Of course you don’t need to eat it. There are potatoes there.” “No, I’ll eat. I’m hungry enough and I don’t have that much choice.” You say. You take a bite of the meatloaf and it’s actually just like Lilith said, it looks awful, but it does taste good. “You were right.” You say. “Well I do understand the hesitation. I remember some of the meals my brother has made in the past and they looked more like something that already was digested. He’s gotten a bit better with it though. Anyway, so how have you been feeling? Still no sudden mood swings or violent urges or anything I trust?” Lilith asks. “Well no, but I did have to act crazy to get two redneck assholes out of here.” “Oh no. (Sigh) Jed and Hugo came in here? I told my brother not to let those assholes wander around down here picking the locks to places they’re not supposed to be going anyway!” “Apparently they were under the impression I was your personal whore.” “What?! Why the hell would they think…nevermind…they didn’t do anything to you did they?” “No, like I said, I acted crazy. Or more specifically I convinced them I was sick and contagious. They left real quick after that.” “Heh, good thinking. Explains why I saw their shitty pick up truck screech out of here earlier.” “Hope to never see them again.” You say continuing to eat. “Yeah well that will be arranged. I’ll tell my people stationed outside to shoot them on sight if they return. I don’t care if Leslie complains about it either. Besides, there’s news that we all might not be staying here much longer.” You stop eating for a moment. “What do you mean?” you ask. “Well as I said, the National Guard are currently stationed in town and trying to maintain order. While they might succeed, GZ doesn’t fancy their chances and would rather not lose a valuable employee such as myself in the possible chaos that will spill over. So they’re ready to ship me and my brother out of here to a GZ shelter, a proper company one, not the ones that have been built for the common public. It’s just as well considering the reports we’ve been getting on the world situation.” Lilith says. You take a drink of water wondering what this means for you. “When is this going to happen?” you ask. “Maybe tomorrow, definitely by Friday. I’m going to miss this house, so many good memories here especially with Leslie. I can only imagine the talk I’m going to have to have with him. Looks like he’s going to have company job whether he wants one or not. Oh well, he’ll get used to it…” “What about me?” you interrupt. “Well, that is the question isn’t it?” Lilith says, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes. “While I haven’t been able to do the tests and ask the questions like I wanted to earlier today, I’m fairly certain you’re fine and you’re one of those few that aren’t affected by the side affects of the drug. I have a few theories on why that might be, but nothing solid. It doesn’t really matter anyway I suppose at this late stage.” Lilith remarks. “So…I’m free to go?” you ask. “Well, I do want to keep you for observation for one more day. I mean might as well since we might not be leaving tomorrow anyway. After that, well I suppose it’s up to you. If you want to leave, you will be allowed to leave. You probably should keep in mind however, that returning to town might not be the best idea, so I’m not sure where you’d go. Do you have anywhere to go?” “Not really. I mean I don’t have my phone so I can’t even call anyone who might give a shit. Not that my family would give a shit of course, so I don’t really even have a home at this point.” “Hm, well that leads me to the other possible option, that I can probably take you with us. Might take some string pulling and calling in of favors, but if you want to come with us, you can.” “Go with you? To a GZ Shelter? What would I do there?” “Oh I’m sure we could find something, no need to worry about that. You’d have to follow the rules there though. Life would be quite different, but with the way things are going, I’m sure life is going to be different anyway.” You just nod silently as Lilith stands up to head back to the door. “Tell you what. Let’s dispense with any more interrogation today. You already had to deal with waking up strapped to a gurney, not knowing where you were, being told that the world may end soon and that you may or may not suffer a negative side affect of a drug, not to mention those redneck rapists barging in here. I think you deserve to relax for the rest of the day and night.” “So, that’s it?” “For today it is. Like I said, just make yourself at home for now. This will all be over soon and you won’t be a prisoner here. I’m glad you’ve been making this easy Suzy. That’s definitely a good thing.” Lilith says and leaves. Alone once again and now you’ve got the whole night to contemplate your situation, which has changed again. Escape is now looking unnecessary given that Lilith seems to not have any insidious plans of going back on here word. You’re not even sure it would be a good idea to do so anyway now considering she mentioned GZ security are now guarding the perimeter of the house. Of course that still leaves the question of “where will you go?” While she’s already warned you about town, you really don’t have anywhere else. You don’t even have a vehicle. You suppose you could always just risk heading back home or maybe even Julie’s assuming either place is still standing. The offer to go with Lilith and her brother is just odd though. It really is an unknown factor, but if things are really getting as bad as Lilith claims, maybe you need to embrace the unknown. You spend the rest of the night pondering your options until you eventually get sleepy and drift off on the couch. > Next day… THURSDAY You wake up once again a prisoner, though perhaps not for long and despite everything, you’re actually feeling slightly optimistic about your situation. Very slightly. You aren’t sure what time it is, but knowing your usual sleeping habits, it’s probably at least the afternoon. You imagine you’ll be getting a visit from Lilith as usual soon so you start perusing the nearby books until she comes in. You pick one that looks interesting to you. As you’re reading “Unusual Sexual Practices From Around the World” you start hearing the faint noise of what sounds like yelling or shouting. Doesn’t really sound like any actual words though, more like just noises, still the sound isn’t completely distinct. A few minutes later you hear something that sounds like a gunshot. You start to worry and keeping you ears open, but you don’t hear anything else unusual until you hear that familiar sound of the door opening up. Fortunately it’s Lilith and not someone who isn’t supposed to be in here. Once again she looks a bit beleaguered as she carries in what looks to be a small medical bag and a notebook. “Um, is everything okay? I thought I heard shouting and a shot.” You say. “Yeah, I imagine you would have given your proximity. You remember I said you were my control subject? Well some of the others down here aren’t and they’ve been getting worse. My brother just put one down that was starting to break his restraints. I have a feeling the rest are going to have to be put down as well, because I don’t think I’m going to bother having them transported with us when we leave, which is looking like today since shit is reportedly getting even worse in town. The “putting down” of subjects is a little concerning until Lilith immediately follows up her statement. “Relax, you’re not getting shot unless you start regressing into a savage and let me guess, you’ve experienced no problems correct?” “Nope. Feel fine. Just a little anxiousness, especially being near people that might be turning into beasts.” You remark. “Don’t worry about that. They might escape the restraints, but they aren’t escaping out the rooms. We made sure of that when we had this area built it had solid doors and walls. Anyway, since things are moving rather quickly now I suppose I’ll just wrap up your little part in this observation which isn’t going to take long.” Lilith at this point pulls out a syringe and a tourniquet along with some cotton balls and rubbing alcohol. “Now I’m just going to draw some blood, not inject you with anything.” “What do you need my blood for?” “Oh just need another sample for testing. I mean I already drew blood from you when you were unconscious a day ago, so this is just a follow up really. Considering you’re not frothing at the mouth or destroying this room by now, I’m very certain you weren’t affected by whatever exposure of the drug you might have in contact with, but never hurts to be thorough. Your arm please.” Lilith has more or less been playing square with you so reluctantly you hold out your arm and after prepping it she begins to draw blood. “Ugh, hate needles.” You say looking away. “Most people do. Leslie used to hate them too. Still does actually. Really odd considering he’s a doctor and uses them on a regular basis…then again I suppose it’s different when you’re using them on other people. There we go.” Lilith finishes up and you’re rubbing your arm watching a tube of your blood go into another container and then placed back into the bag. Lilith then starts flipping through pages of her notebook. “So, I guess I’ll be free to leave soon?” you ask. “Yes. I’ll have the clothes you were wearing brought to you soon. I’m sure you’re sick of wearing the gown. After that well, I guess you can make your decision on whether to go or come with us. I contacted a few high ups at the offices and they said it was fine if I brought you.” She answers without looking up. “Oh. Well I guess that does open up options for me then.” You say still unsure of what you’re going to do. You have been meaning to ask Lilith about something she said to you yesterday though. “Hey, I was sort of wondering…what did you mean yesterday about me not being a beacon of sanity?” you ask. “Funny you should ask, since I was just about to do a last minute interview with you, so I had at least a few more things to put down in my report. Most of what I’ve got on you is only through observation or what Bobby told me. It would be nice if I had something directly from you. Of course as I keep complaining about, things haven’t been ideal lately.” Lilith finds the page she was looking for and then focuses complete attention on you. “To answer your question…keep in mind this is based on all observation and mostly Bobby’s words so I’ll admit this isn’t necessarily an accurate assessment of your personality. No offense is meant, but here’s my impression of you and why and please feel free to interject whenever you want.” Lilith goes into a psychological assessment of your character and while you do fill in on some of what she might be missing and clarify on other aspects of your life, she doesn’t really lose a beat in her view of you, indeed it only seems to enhance it. She starts off by talking about your introverted behavior to the point of falling into escapist behavior. She discusses that some of this is due to being the product of a dysfunctional family where you were only ever close to your mother since she was the only one that ever displayed any positive attention and when she died that was one of the major turning points of you shutting yourself off from the world and “giving up” in general. However Lilith mentions that this relationship wasn’t exactly the healthiest since it placed pressure on being “good and proper” which apparently had some negative effects on not just you, but your other sisters as well. Then she mentions that while you finally broke out of this shell a bit when you met Bobby, that relationship wasn’t exactly built on a stable foundation to begin with and indeed just fed into your world of fantasy on some level, with Bobby being a “Prince” whisking you away from the clutches of a “villain” (Your uncle in this case). Most of your relationship was co-dependency and enabling behavior since who would anyone that considered themselves “normal” stay with a man who doesn’t just murder people, but essentially runs a cult? She then goes on to say that while she does think you did care for Bobby on some level, she doesn’t believe that you were really capable of ever loving him and not because of his sister, but because deep down you’re not really capable of the emotion at all. She mentions that you’re so used to your own company and withdrawn that you can’t even form proper attachments. Even a “non-normal” one like you had with Bobby. She finishes up by saying that while much of your personality can be explained by “nurture”, there is evidence that all of the behaviors you exhibit were all just laying in wait to flourish anyway. Other members of your family have their own personality problems (Sadism, suicidal depression, narcissism, nymphomania, paranoid delusions, psychopathy, etc) meaning that it’s probably all genetic on some level. She even believes that under certain circumstances you could not only be capable of great violence, but also revel in it. “But what does all this mean?” you ask. “Nothing much as far as my report goes except maybe a half assed theory on why the drug didn’t seem to have an affect on your mind. I suppose for you it’s greater insight on yourself, but I’d wager that given your introspective nature, you’ve probably already pondered all of what I’ve just told at one time or another. It’s probably why you’re not really insulted by my words, because you probably agree with everything I said on some level.” You don’t really have a response because what Lilith says is somewhat true. It’s actually pretty damn scary how accurate she was given that all her information was mainly based on Bobby’s words and the few conversations she’s had with you. “Wow. Well I guess you didn’t go the typical route and say I was a closet lesbian or something.” You say. “Oh, no. I don’t believe you’re a closeted lesbian.” Lilith chuckles. “You just have some repressed bisexual tendencies, but that’s really a very minor point in the scheme of things. Anyway, I think we’re done. I’ll go grab your clothes and…” Suddenly the door opens up and you see an older man with wild hair that’s completely white in color. He wears a bloody lab coat and has a pistol in one hand. You wonder if this Leslie. “Sis, you need to get your ass out here. We’re under damn attack and we could use another pair of hands to hold a weapon out here.” He says. “Who the hell is attacking?” Lilith says. “Who do you think? Damn crazies from town and your GZ boys aren’t exactly the crack team they think they are. Just saw one of those fucking cowards run off…well before he got tackled and eaten by a bunch of those crazy fuckers.” “Shit, they probably sent a bunch of fucking rookies. (Sigh) Fine, let’s go Leslie. Suzy, you might want to stay here.” Lilith gets up to go with her brother, and the pair of them leaves the room. You don’t hear a click this time and you get curious… You get up and try the door, and find it hasn’t been locked this time. They were probably in too much of a hurry to bother. You sort of wonder if you shouldn’t take this opportunity to escape on your own terms, since you still have a bit of a trust problem with Lilith considering she did make a lab rat out of you. (Doesn’t matter if she was “nice” about it) Of course maybe you’d be safer in here if there crazy cannibals out there. > You leave the room You’re not staying in here like a sitting duck. If whatever the things are that are attacking the house succeed in overrunning the place, you’d be trapped. Better you at least get to an area where you can run somewhere else, and with any luck you’ll be able to escape this place altogether. You exit the room and quickly run down a corridor where you hope you’ll some stairs in that direction, because with as noisy as the other patients are, you have just as much fear that one of them is going to get out their locked rooms and attack you despite the fact Lilith says they’re secure. You soon find the stairs leading up and the sounds of gunfire and shouts get even louder. You hear a lot of glass breaking as well. All the action seems like it’s going on in the front part of the house, so that’s where you head away from and soon find yourself in the kitchen. From the kitchen you can see a door leading to backyard. Looking out the window, it doesn’t appear that any of those crazy people are attacking from this direction so that’s one good thing. It also looks like the fence would be very hard to climb since it’s a smooth high wooden fence. If you were planning to escape, your chances of doing it this way have decreased. Still, you also notice the tree in the yard with branches that hang over the fence. You probably could climb it and drop down if you really wanted to get away. Of course with all those things out there, that might not be the safest plan, even if they aren’t coming from this direction. You also feel a little vulnerable what with just wearing a hospital gown. Then you hear the chaos going on within the house and the sounds of what you think to be those things finally getting into this place. Wasting no more time, you look around for a weapon and a nasty looking machete catches your eye. You have no idea what one of these would be doing in the kitchen, but you’re taking it and getting the hell out of here. As you’re opening up the door you hearing the sounds of battle getting more hectic, in fact it even sounds like it’s getting closer to your location… “I’m gonna check around back to make sure none of them are…HOLY SHIT!” A uniformed man with a GZ logo on it exclaims when you turn to face him. Having no idea who you are, seeing you hold a machete in your hand, the fact that you just opened the backdoor and him being totally surprised by your presence causes him to do the only logical thing a man in his position would do. He thinks you’re a hostile and immediately opens fire on you with his rifle. You don’t have time to do anything except fatally catch bullets at that point. When the chaos dies down, Lilith is annoyed about losing you as her control subject, but she gets over it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>THURSDAY You wake up once again a prisoner, though perhaps not for long and despite everything, you’re actually feeling slightly optimistic about your situation. Very slightly. You aren’t sure what time it is, but knowing your usual sleeping habits, it’s probably at least the afternoon. You imagine you’ll be getting a visit from Lilith as usual soon so you start perusing the nearby books until she comes in. You pick one that looks interesting to you. As you’re reading “Unusual Sexual Practices From Around the World” you start hearing the faint noise of what sounds like yelling or shouting. Doesn’t really sound like any actual words though, more like just noises, still the sound isn’t completely distinct. A few minutes later you hear something that sounds like a gunshot. You start to worry and keeping you ears open, but you don’t hear anything else unusual until you hear that familiar sound of the door opening up. Fortunately it’s Lilith and not someone who isn’t supposed to be in here. Once again she looks a bit beleaguered as she carries in what looks to be a small medical bag and a notebook. “Um, is everything okay? I thought I heard shouting and a shot.” You say. “Yeah, I imagine you would have given your proximity. You remember I said you were my control subject? Well some of the others down here aren’t and they’ve been getting worse. My brother just put one down that was starting to break his restraints. I have a feeling the rest are going to have to be put down as well, because I don’t think I’m going to bother having them transported with us when we leave, which is looking like today since shit is reportedly getting even worse in town. The “putting down” of subjects is a little concerning until Lilith immediately follows up her statement. “Relax, you’re not getting shot unless you start regressing into a savage and let me guess, you’ve experienced no problems correct?” “Nope. Feel fine. Just a little anxiousness, especially being near people that might be turning into beasts.” You remark. “Don’t worry about that. They might escape the restraints, but they aren’t escaping out the rooms. We made sure of that when we had this area built it had solid doors and walls. Anyway, since things are moving rather quickly now I suppose I’ll just wrap up your little part in this observation which isn’t going to take long.” Lilith at this point pulls out a syringe and a tourniquet along with some cotton balls and rubbing alcohol. “Now I’m just going to draw some blood, not inject you with anything.” “What do you need my blood for?” “Oh just need another sample for testing. I mean I already drew blood from you when you were unconscious a day ago, so this is just a follow up really. Considering you’re not frothing at the mouth or destroying this room by now, I’m very certain you weren’t affected by whatever exposure of the drug you might have in contact with, but never hurts to be thorough. Your arm please.” Lilith has more or less been playing square with you so reluctantly you hold out your arm and after prepping it she begins to draw blood. “Ugh, hate needles.” You say looking away. “Most people do. Leslie used to hate them too. Still does actually. Really odd considering he’s a doctor and uses them on a regular basis…then again I suppose it’s different when you’re using them on other people. There we go.” Lilith finishes up and you’re rubbing your arm watching a tube of your blood go into another container and then placed back into the bag. Lilith then starts flipping through pages of her notebook. “So, I guess I’ll be free to leave soon?” you ask. “Yes. I’ll have the clothes you were wearing brought to you soon. I’m sure you’re sick of wearing the gown. After that well, I guess you can make your decision on whether to go or come with us. I contacted a few high ups at the offices and they said it was fine if I brought you.” She answers without looking up. “Oh. Well I guess that does open up options for me then.” You say still unsure of what you’re going to do. You have been meaning to ask Lilith about something she said to you yesterday though. “Hey, I was sort of wondering…what did you mean yesterday about me not being a beacon of sanity?” you ask. “Funny you should ask, since I was just about to do a last minute interview with you, so I had at least a few more things to put down in my report. Most of what I’ve got on you is only through observation or what Bobby told me. It would be nice if I had something directly from you. Of course as I keep complaining about, things haven’t been ideal lately.” Lilith finds the page she was looking for and then focuses complete attention on you. “To answer your question…keep in mind this is based on all observation and mostly Bobby’s words so I’ll admit this isn’t necessarily an accurate assessment of your personality. No offense is meant, but here’s my impression of you and why and please feel free to interject whenever you want.” Lilith goes into a psychological assessment of your character and while you do fill in on some of what she might be missing and clarify on other aspects of your life, she doesn’t really lose a beat in her view of you, indeed it only seems to enhance it. She starts off by talking about your introverted behavior to the point of falling into escapist behavior. She discusses that some of this is due to being the product of a dysfunctional family where you were only ever close to your mother since she was the only one that ever displayed any positive attention and when she died that was one of the major turning points of you shutting yourself off from the world and “giving up” in general. However Lilith mentions that this relationship wasn’t exactly the healthiest since it placed pressure on being “good and proper” which apparently had some negative effects on not just you, but your other sisters as well. Then she mentions that while you finally broke out of this shell a bit when you met Bobby, that relationship wasn’t exactly built on a stable foundation to begin with and indeed just fed into your world of fantasy on some level, with Bobby being a “Prince” whisking you away from the clutches of a “villain” (Your uncle in this case). Most of your relationship was co-dependency and enabling behavior since who would anyone that considered themselves “normal” stay with a man who doesn’t just murder people, but essentially runs a cult? She then goes on to say that while she does think you did care for Bobby on some level, she doesn’t believe that you were really capable of ever loving him and not because of his sister, but because deep down you’re not really capable of the emotion at all. She mentions that you’re so used to your own company and withdrawn that you can’t even form proper attachments. Even a “non-normal” one like you had with Bobby. She finishes up by saying that while much of your personality can be explained by “nurture”, there is evidence that all of the behaviors you exhibit were all just laying in wait to flourish anyway. Other members of your family have their own personality problems (Sadism, suicidal depression, narcissism, nymphomania, paranoid delusions, psychopathy, etc) meaning that it’s probably all genetic on some level. She even believes that under certain circumstances you could not only be capable of great violence, but also revel in it. “But what does all this mean?” you ask. “Nothing much as far as my report goes except maybe a half assed theory on why the drug didn’t seem to have an affect on your mind. I suppose for you it’s greater insight on yourself, but I’d wager that given your introspective nature, you’ve probably already pondered all of what I’ve just told at one time or another. It’s probably why you’re not really insulted by my words, because you probably agree with everything I said on some level.” You don’t really have a response because what Lilith says is somewhat true. It’s actually pretty damn scary how accurate she was given that all her information was mainly based on Bobby’s words and the few conversations she’s had with you. “Wow. Well I guess you didn’t go the typical route and say I was a closet lesbian or something.” You say. “Oh, no. I don’t believe you’re a closeted lesbian.” Lilith chuckles. “You just have some repressed bisexual tendencies, but that’s really a very minor point in the scheme of things. Anyway, I think we’re done. I’ll go grab your clothes and…” Suddenly the door opens up and you see an older man with wild hair that’s completely white in color. He wears a bloody lab coat and has a pistol in one hand. You wonder if this Leslie. “Sis, you need to get your ass out here. We’re under damn attack and we could use another pair of hands to hold a weapon out here.” He says. “Who the hell is attacking?” Lilith says. “Who do you think? Damn crazies from town and your GZ boys aren’t exactly the crack team they think they are. Just saw one of those fucking cowards run off…well before he got tackled and eaten by a bunch of those crazy fuckers.” “Shit, they probably sent a bunch of fucking rookies. (Sigh) Fine, let’s go Leslie. Suzy, you might want to stay here.” Lilith gets up to go with her brother, and the pair of them leaves the room. You don’t hear a click this time and you get curious… You get up and try the door, and find it hasn’t been locked this time. They were probably in too much of a hurry to bother. You sort of wonder if you shouldn’t take this opportunity to escape on your own terms, since you still have a bit of a trust problem with Lilith considering she did make a lab rat out of you. (Doesn’t matter if she was “nice” about it) Of course maybe you’d be safer in here if there crazy cannibals out there. > You stay in the room You might be reverting back to old habits, but if there is some hectic bullshit going on out there, then you want to avoid it. They can handle it and you decide to be extra cautious and block the door with a chair. You hear the sounds of gunfire above you. That isn’t what bothers you so much as it’s the growling and yelling that sounds like it’s coming from nearby. You remember that there are other “patients” on this same floor. More time passes and you still hear gunshots and the inhuman noises. You are starting to worry that it’s quite possible this house is going to be overrun by these things, and you haven’t even seen one. This fear becomes even more intense when you stop hearing the gunshots and only hear the guttural noises nearby. You start to feel like you’ve made another bad choice. Suddenly there’s an attempt to open the door only to be stopped by the chair you’ve propped against it. This is followed by a loud bang on the door, which scares the hell out of you. “Suzy! What the hell? Is this door barricaded?” you hear Lilith’s voice shout. “Yeah…is it safe?” you ask. “It’s safe in that we’re not in any immediate danger, but we gotta start getting the hell outta here. Open up!” Wasting no time you move the chair and the door opens up. Lilith throws your clothes at you and you can hear those awful noises in the corridor. Yelling and banging. “Here. Get dressed and don’t worry about the noises, the other subjects aren’t getting out of those rooms anytime soon.” Lilith says. You’re not as sure as Lilith is about that, so you just get dressed as fast as you can and exit the room with her. “So what’s going on?” you ask as you follow her. “What’s going on is Leslie and I are heading to that GZ Shelter after he and I gather a few things. The crazies from town are spilling out from it and we don’t want to be here in case another wave comes. I was hoping to have more time to pack, but I guess we can’t have everything.” You and Lilith get to the ground floor and finally see the house proper. It’s a bit of a mess now probably due to all the running around and shooting, but obviously was nice at one time. Then you enter the front room and see several broken windows, and couple of dead bodies. One of them is a uniformed man with his throat ripped out and several slashes across his face. Nearby him is a body of a disheveled looking woman with several bullet holes in her body and head. She still has a chunk of flesh in her teeth and even in death her eyes display a crazed look. It sort of freaks you out. “Um, that guy in the uniform, shouldn’t someone shoot him in the head?” “What? No. These aren’t zombies. They’re just well…rabid.” Lilith chuckles. “Headshots aren’t even necessary to kill them, though it sure as hell helps.” A couple more uniformed men with the Ground Zero insignia on them walk into the room holding rifles. “Place seems to be all secure Dr. Morningstar. No other hostiles in the house or around the house.” One of them says. “Good. Glad not all of you were incompetent. Wait, are you two the only ones left?” “Afraid so doctor.” One of them remarks. “Oh well. Okay, I want you two to stand guard out front. Make sure there isn’t another horde or whatever coming our way and if there is, run back in here and tell me immediately.” The two uniformed men nod and leave out the front door which is now half hanging off the hinges. You and Lilith both take a quick look outside and see the bodies of several crazies as well as GZ security. In the driveway you see that Lilith’s truck is heavily shot up and a couple bodies of crazed townies lie next to it. “Great, these assholes never learned the concept of one shot one kill. (Sigh) Guess we’re all just piling into the Ground Zero van.” Lilith says shaking her head. Lilith continues looks around a bit more at her partially destroyed house. “Well at least nobody has to clean this up this time. I remember the many many times I’d come home from work and I’d find Leslie had left a damn mess all over the house, much worse than this sometimes even. A lot more bodies too. Still remember the disorder he left when he was trying to write a poem for me on one of our past anniversaries. But it was such a lovely and thoughtful sentiment so I wasn’t too mad…anyway have you made your decision of what you’re going to do yet?” Lilith asks. You still really aren’t sure and lacking an answer, you ask a question. “What would I do at the shelter again? “Well I told you, I’m not in charge of assignments, but I’m sure there would be some sort of position there for you. Ground Zero doesn’t waste resources.” “I see.” Lilith looks at you with a squint. “You…still don’t trust me do you? Don’t answer. I know you don’t. (Sigh) I suppose I don’t blame you. Look, if you don’t want to go with us you don’t have to, I meant that. Still, I think it would be foolish if you didn’t.” “It might be equally foolish if I went with you. Who knows what the hell is in store for me in an underground shelter.” You say. “True, but think on this. If I really had anything bad in store for you there, don’t you think I would’ve just had security and my brother restrain you and take you there against your will anyway? I’m giving you a choice. You can go with us, or not. One of your problems Suzy is you don’t take chances, you stick with what you think is safe and look where that has gotten you. But if safety is your main concern, I’m just going to say that staying here isn’t exactly the safe option. This house isn’t secure, you’ll have a few days of food and water at best and if the crazed townsfolk don’t come ripping this place apart again, there are always just the plain opportunists that are no doubt lurking about as well. You don’t even have a vehicle to leave this place. Mine got all shot up and we’re taking the other one. Do you even have a plan if you stay here?” You don’t…as usual. “No.” you reply. “Well I’d think your choice would be simple then. Anyway, I have to bags to pack and when I’m done, I’m going to need to know what your answer is Suzy.” Lilith remarks and leaves you by yourself. You walk around the ground floor of the house a bit, just looking around. You start to form various thoughts in your head about how this place could be made more defensible. You just aren’t sure if you’re up to the task though. You briefly consider the idea of somehow overpowering one of those GZ security guys outside and driving off with the truck yourself, but you aren’t confident that you’d be successful. You then wonder if you could successfully flirt with one of them… You head outside and speak with both of the guards while attempting to be as charming as you can. You even manage to muster up the fortitude to blatantly make sexual innuendo and such. It doesn’t work. One of them is gay and the other is happily married and even if that wasn’t the case, they get irritated at the fact that you’re distracting them from their duty and start telling you to go away. You realize your plan isn’t going to work and you give up. “Christ Suzy, some seductress you are.” You mutter to yourself. This brings you back to your original two choices and both of those have the potential to go to shit for various reasons, but it’s all you got. > You go to the shelter It does seem very likely that if Lilith were going to do something to you, she would’ve done it already. Plus you haven’t given her any trouble like she wanted, so that’s has to be in your favor. Also, she makes some very good points about staying here. Civilization as you know it seems to be failing hard and you aren’t exactly the “survivalist” type to deal with it. Seems like it would be too late to start learning how in the final hour too, even if you had the desire. While you aren’t exactly sure how life would be in an underground shelter, you can’t help think that you’d be more “at home” there. After all it’s just an oversized basement right? It’s a risk, but it’s one you feel more confident about mainly because it requires little effort on your part. You sit on one of the few non-broken chairs and wait for Lilith. A few moments pass and you hear footsteps coming up from the basement accompanied by some swearing and more footsteps in one of the other rooms. “Where the fuck did I put that fucking thing? Shit, better not have lost…oh good here it is.” You hear Leslie say before he soon enters the front room where you’re waiting for Lilith. Leslie carries two sizable black bags and a machete when he enters the room. He stares at you for a moment, which makes you a bit uncomfortable. “Is my sister still upstairs?” he asks, but it’s more like an order due to his tone. “Yeah.” You answer. “Typical. She’s the one dragging me to this fucking shelter and I’m ready before she is. I swear I don’t want to go to this fucking place. Let alone working there. The idea of becoming part of a corporate fucking machine is just a fucking anathema to me. Probably have some little shit bean counter for a boss telling me he wants something done at a certain time. I fucking hate shit like that. I fucking hate it. I don’t like being told what to do, when to do it, or ANYTHING!” At this point Leslie begins shaking his machete in a violent manner and you see his eyes briefly roll into the back of his head like he’s going to go into a convulsion. Then all of a sudden his eyes snap back and he addresses you again. “But the things we do for love right?” Leslie says. “I guess so.” “Mm. Speaking of love, my sister has told me a bit about you and it’s too bad you and my nephew didn’t work out. Guess he’ll be stuck with his shrew of a sister now. If he’s smart, he’d ditch her and go for his other one…can’t remember her fucking name…really quiet…” “Helen?” you answer. “Yeah, that’s her. You sort of remind me of her a bit. You’re prettier of course, but same sort of wallflower personality. You get molested as a child? Daddy ever make you suck his dick when Mommy wasn’t around? Something like that?” “No!” you say not expecting such a question. “Hm, interesting. Would’ve thought you had been, especially since I heard your family was a bit on the dysfunctional side.” “Well they weren’t THAT dysfunctional.” Leslie gives you a look of annoyance, which makes you a little tense, well more tense than when he was waving his machete around earlier. “Oh. I see. That was a shot at MY family right?” Leslie exclaims. “I didn’t…” you start to say. “No, YOU know what you meant and so did I! Is that why you didn’t stay with my nephew? Felt you were too good for him?” “That’s not the reason, I…” “Pfft, I don’t want to fucking hear it! Here I am trying to make the effort to have friendly fucking conversation with you and you’re fucking insulting me! Well fuck you too bitch!” Leslie says and when you see him starting to walk in your direction you begin to get worried, but instead he storms out the front door. Just as you’re recovering from that incident of Morningstar insanity, Lilith comes walking down from upstairs carrying a couple bags. “What’s going on down here? I heard my brother ranting as usual. Everything okay?” she asks. “I dunno. He started talking to me and I tried to be friendly, but he took what I said out of context and got really pissed at me.” “Oh. Yeah, been there before. My brother’s not very good at social interaction unless that other person also happens to be an asshole. Nevermind him, you’re fine. Anyway, did you make your decision? Are you going with us?” “Well…I was, but now I’m not sure…” “What? Is it my brother? I told you forget about him. The shelter is a big place! Chances are you’re never going to have to interact with him again when we get there.” Lilith puts her bags down and walks over in an attempt to reassure you. “Come on, you don’t really want to stay here do you? Dangerous cannibals and criminal types, scavenging for sustenance, no proper toilets, I assure you Suzy at the GZ shelter you won’t have to worry about any of that shit.” “Well, okay.” You say. “Great, ah damnit!” Lilith suddenly remarks and puts her hand on her lower back. “What’s wrong?” “I dunno. It’s my back. Shit. I think all that damn running around, shooting, lifting and carrying heavy things took its toll. I really need to start exercising on a regular basis. Damn. (Sigh) I hate to ask, but could you carry my bags outside, you can just hand them to those two guards if you want.” “Oh, sure okay.” You say. You pick up the bags and head out the door with Lilith slowly walking behind. You approach the two guards who are still standing on the porch and just as you’re holding the bags out for them to take, you feel a sharp needle going into the side of your upper arm. You drop the bags and turn around in horror, clutching your arm. Lilith once again holds a needle in her hand and you’re soon feeling the affects. “Sorry Suzy, but this was the ONLY way GZ was going to let me take you. I never lied though; you will be given a position to contribute to the community. You’ll continue to be a test subject…though I’m afraid it will involve a little more than just questions and some blood tests this time.” “You…you…” is all you manage to utter before you collapse on the ground and unconsciousness begins to take affect. You can still hear some of the conversation as you start to pass out. “Carry her to the truck and Leslie, you can carry my bags since your short temper nearly cost GZ a perfectly good subject.” “Dunno why you just didn’t take that bitch to begin with.” Leslie remarks. “Because I wanted to see if she’d ultimately go with what was easy or actually grow as a person and make the harder decision. She failed which is why she might as well be put in a GZ experiment lab. She’s obviously not a learning animal, better her life goes towards something more useful.” You’re out for the remainder of the day, in fact you’re out of it for quite a few days. By the time you wake up you’re strapped to a surgical table with metal restraints with a lot medical equipment in the room. A bright light shines overhead. Fear overwhelms every fiber of your being. You being to call out for help, but the group of masked doctors in a circle nearby don’t look like they’re going to be doing that. “The subject is up, chief.” One of them says. “Yeah, I could tell by her screaming. Okay, let’s get her started with the injections first, then I guess we’ll see the reaction and go from there.” The head doctor says. “Should be interesting.” Another says. “Maybe. I’m just glad we didn’t get that asshole Leslie Morningstar assigned to our group. Dodged a bullet on that one. Let those fuckers in C Wing put up with him and his sister.” You panic, you struggle, you scream, you beg, you plead, you even call out for Bobby at one point, but none of it matters. The Ground Zero doctors begin to subject you to their experiments. You have no idea how long this goes on for. Days, weeks, months? You never see Lilith or Leslie again and your world becomes to the surgical room to the observation room. You never see the rest of the Ground Zero facility. Your body is wracked with pain and goes through several ugly changes; your mind eventually becomes broken to the point of insanity though occasionally you have moments of clarity and that’s probably when you’re at your worst since you’re practically wishing to die. Several times the doctors prevent you from killing yourself. The doctors themselves don’t really talk to you, but rather with each other like you’re not even there. You do hear one mention in passing about the world being nuked, but that hardly matters given the torture you’re being subjected to, indeed dying in a nuclear fire would be much kinder at this point. Eventually through all their experimentation you become little more than a wild animal. Almost like what people back in town became, but even worse. It gets to a point where you actually manage to break what they thought to be strong enough shackles and kill three of the doctors experimenting on you. Ground Zero security is called in and after enough bullets you are finally put down.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You might be reverting back to old habits, but if there is some hectic bullshit going on out there, then you want to avoid it. They can handle it and you decide to be extra cautious and block the door with a chair. You hear the sounds of gunfire above you. That isn’t what bothers you so much as it’s the growling and yelling that sounds like it’s coming from nearby. You remember that there are other “patients” on this same floor. More time passes and you still hear gunshots and the inhuman noises. You are starting to worry that it’s quite possible this house is going to be overrun by these things, and you haven’t even seen one. This fear becomes even more intense when you stop hearing the gunshots and only hear the guttural noises nearby. You start to feel like you’ve made another bad choice. Suddenly there’s an attempt to open the door only to be stopped by the chair you’ve propped against it. This is followed by a loud bang on the door, which scares the hell out of you. “Suzy! What the hell? Is this door barricaded?” you hear Lilith’s voice shout. “Yeah…is it safe?” you ask. “It’s safe in that we’re not in any immediate danger, but we gotta start getting the hell outta here. Open up!” Wasting no time you move the chair and the door opens up. Lilith throws your clothes at you and you can hear those awful noises in the corridor. Yelling and banging. “Here. Get dressed and don’t worry about the noises, the other subjects aren’t getting out of those rooms anytime soon.” Lilith says. You’re not as sure as Lilith is about that, so you just get dressed as fast as you can and exit the room with her. “So what’s going on?” you ask as you follow her. “What’s going on is Leslie and I are heading to that GZ Shelter after he and I gather a few things. The crazies from town are spilling out from it and we don’t want to be here in case another wave comes. I was hoping to have more time to pack, but I guess we can’t have everything.” You and Lilith get to the ground floor and finally see the house proper. It’s a bit of a mess now probably due to all the running around and shooting, but obviously was nice at one time. Then you enter the front room and see several broken windows, and couple of dead bodies. One of them is a uniformed man with his throat ripped out and several slashes across his face. Nearby him is a body of a disheveled looking woman with several bullet holes in her body and head. She still has a chunk of flesh in her teeth and even in death her eyes display a crazed look. It sort of freaks you out. “Um, that guy in the uniform, shouldn’t someone shoot him in the head?” “What? No. These aren’t zombies. They’re just well…rabid.” Lilith chuckles. “Headshots aren’t even necessary to kill them, though it sure as hell helps.” A couple more uniformed men with the Ground Zero insignia on them walk into the room holding rifles. “Place seems to be all secure Dr. Morningstar. No other hostiles in the house or around the house.” One of them says. “Good. Glad not all of you were incompetent. Wait, are you two the only ones left?” “Afraid so doctor.” One of them remarks. “Oh well. Okay, I want you two to stand guard out front. Make sure there isn’t another horde or whatever coming our way and if there is, run back in here and tell me immediately.” The two uniformed men nod and leave out the front door which is now half hanging off the hinges. You and Lilith both take a quick look outside and see the bodies of several crazies as well as GZ security. In the driveway you see that Lilith’s truck is heavily shot up and a couple bodies of crazed townies lie next to it. “Great, these assholes never learned the concept of one shot one kill. (Sigh) Guess we’re all just piling into the Ground Zero van.” Lilith says shaking her head. Lilith continues looks around a bit more at her partially destroyed house. “Well at least nobody has to clean this up this time. I remember the many many times I’d come home from work and I’d find Leslie had left a damn mess all over the house, much worse than this sometimes even. A lot more bodies too. Still remember the disorder he left when he was trying to write a poem for me on one of our past anniversaries. But it was such a lovely and thoughtful sentiment so I wasn’t too mad…anyway have you made your decision of what you’re going to do yet?” Lilith asks. You still really aren’t sure and lacking an answer, you ask a question. “What would I do at the shelter again? “Well I told you, I’m not in charge of assignments, but I’m sure there would be some sort of position there for you. Ground Zero doesn’t waste resources.” “I see.” Lilith looks at you with a squint. “You…still don’t trust me do you? Don’t answer. I know you don’t. (Sigh) I suppose I don’t blame you. Look, if you don’t want to go with us you don’t have to, I meant that. Still, I think it would be foolish if you didn’t.” “It might be equally foolish if I went with you. Who knows what the hell is in store for me in an underground shelter.” You say. “True, but think on this. If I really had anything bad in store for you there, don’t you think I would’ve just had security and my brother restrain you and take you there against your will anyway? I’m giving you a choice. You can go with us, or not. One of your problems Suzy is you don’t take chances, you stick with what you think is safe and look where that has gotten you. But if safety is your main concern, I’m just going to say that staying here isn’t exactly the safe option. This house isn’t secure, you’ll have a few days of food and water at best and if the crazed townsfolk don’t come ripping this place apart again, there are always just the plain opportunists that are no doubt lurking about as well. You don’t even have a vehicle to leave this place. Mine got all shot up and we’re taking the other one. Do you even have a plan if you stay here?” You don’t…as usual. “No.” you reply. “Well I’d think your choice would be simple then. Anyway, I have to bags to pack and when I’m done, I’m going to need to know what your answer is Suzy.” Lilith remarks and leaves you by yourself. You walk around the ground floor of the house a bit, just looking around. You start to form various thoughts in your head about how this place could be made more defensible. You just aren’t sure if you’re up to the task though. You briefly consider the idea of somehow overpowering one of those GZ security guys outside and driving off with the truck yourself, but you aren’t confident that you’d be successful. You then wonder if you could successfully flirt with one of them… You head outside and speak with both of the guards while attempting to be as charming as you can. You even manage to muster up the fortitude to blatantly make sexual innuendo and such. It doesn’t work. One of them is gay and the other is happily married and even if that wasn’t the case, they get irritated at the fact that you’re distracting them from their duty and start telling you to go away. You realize your plan isn’t going to work and you give up. “Christ Suzy, some seductress you are.” You mutter to yourself. This brings you back to your original two choices and both of those have the potential to go to shit for various reasons, but it’s all you got. > You stay at the house Lilith’s right. Your choice is simple. And that’s the one that doesn’t involve going somewhere with a pair of sociopaths and a shady corporation. “Safest choice my firm ass it is.” You say to yourself. Lilith’s psychobabble about you might’ve been a bit spot on in places, but it made you realize that not only is it not completely true, but that this past week you HAVE been making a concentrated effort to adapt to your surroundings. True, you haven’t been successful at it for the most part, but you’ve survived this long in this fucked up week, so you must not be too terrible at it either. Having to fend for yourself isn’t fun, but then being alone isn’t exactly new to you. In any case, you still don’t trust Lilith and begin looking around the house and there in the kitchen, you pick up a fairly large butcher knife. Actually it isn’t a knife so much as it’s a machete. One can only imagine what the hell it’s doing in their kitchen, but you can take a guess. You at first wonder if you should go try to kill Lilith or something, but then you think that probably isn’t the best plan. It’s likely to just end in your demise at the hands of her guards or her brother. You’re not some close combat expert and despite what Lilith said about you possibly “exploding into a ball of violent rage” you actually don’t have so much hate for her that you want to kill her without provocation. She actually might be telling the truth about the shelter as well rather than have any sinister intent. Still, you aren’t ready to take that chance either. While she has said she’ll just leave you in peace if decline the offer, you still have images of someone grabbing you, drugging you and taking you to the shelter against your will. So that leaves one option. You’re going to go hide. The question is where though. Lilith’s upstairs, he brother is in the basement. You imagine if you hid somewhere on the ground floor, you’d get discovered pretty quickly… It occurs to you, that you could just go out the backdoor and leave the premises for a while. You know they’re still in a hurry to get the hell out of here, chances are, they are not going to spend a whole lot of time looking for you, let alone looking for you off the grounds of the house. So that’s what you do. You leave out the backdoor. Unfortunately the backyard has a high wooden fence so climbing it wouldn’t be the easiest thing to do (And chopping it with the machete, would just cause noise) and the gate leading to the side of the house is locked. You see a shed, but you imagine that’s locked as well and it doesn’t seem like it would be a good place to hide. There are a couple trees in the yard and that’s when you notice that one of them has a few branches hanging over the fence. The tree in question looks a lot easier to climb than the fence so you go up the tree which is slightly tricky with the machete still in your hand, but you soon make it to the branch you need to get to, drop the machete on the ground first and then drop down. And promptly land wrong and twist the hell out of your ankle as you crumple to the ground. “Fuck. Shit…” you start to curse until you stop yourself, when you hear a voice yelling on the other side of the fence. “I dunno where your blonde lab rat is, go get your guards to look. I’m trying to look for my favorite machete! I thought I had it in the kitchen, but it’s not there. I’m going to check the shed.” From your low angle and through the slats of the fence you can see Leslie walking towards his shed. Definitely turning back now as you’re most likely in possession of Leslie’s favorite machete and you really hope that this isn’t going to inspire a “hunt.” You crawl away from the fence and the house as fast as you can. The pain in your ankle makes standing to “limp away” a bit more painful, but your desire to not get caught allows you to fight through it. The high grass and the occasional bush or tree makes your escape into the “wilderness” slightly less nerve wracking since at least you aren’t in a completely open field where if they were looking for you, you would be an easy find. Just as you think you’re getting far enough away, you hear a voice call out your name in the distance. You freeze and turn your head to look behind you, but you don’t see anyone. You still hear Lilith’s voice shouting for you from far away, but you guess that she’s just doing it from near the house rather than actively searching for you. Eventually you cease hearing her call for you and you take a breather within a cluster of trees. Actually you think if you went any further, you’d probably start going into a forest which you’re prepared to do if you think anyone is actually going to come looking for you. For now though, you need to rest your ankle a bit. A few moments pass and you don’t hear anything other than the occasional bird. A rabbit bounding nearby makes you jump a bit, but so far you don’t think anyone is coming out this way to look for you. Still, you can’t tell if they’ve all left yet. You decide to be on the safe side, you’ll wait a little longer. No more than that though since you really don’t want to get caught out here in the dark. So you wait, keeping your eyes and ears open. Really before now, you didn’t realize how rural of an area you lived in. You don’t think you’ve ever appreciated the outdoors before…and you still don’t now. Time passes and still no sign of anyone heading your way. You decide they’ve probably left by now and it’s probably safe. You ankle feels slightly better, but it still aches. As you try to keep your weight off of it and make your way back to the house, you suddenly hear rustling noise in the trees and bushes nearby. At first you think it’s another rabbit, but then you see exactly what it is “Shit!” you exclaim when you see a wild looking man with an equally wild look in his eyes. He sees you and makes that awful animalistic noise you heard while you were locked away in the basement and then sprints straight for you. Fear grips you, but you know you can’t outrun it with your ankle not being a hundred percent. Your only saving grace is you aren’t completely defenseless. You barely have time to react by the time it lunges upon you. You manage to swing your blade and as luck would have it you sink the blade across the thing’s face while its mouth was wide open. You weren’t strong enough to cleave its head off, but it can’t really bite you with a machete blade in the way either. Still, that doesn’t stop it from tackling you to the ground, not to mention the blade is now stuck half way through its head and you couldn’t really pull it out if you wanted to what with it being on top of you now. With blood spray all over you and this thing still trying to kill you, you do the only thing you can think of: You push the flat edge of the blade on your side and the handle so the machete cuts deeper into the thing’s head. It makes horrible squeals and shrieks, and keeps attempting to claw at your face, blood, teeth, bits of flesh are spraying/falling on you, but you keep the pressure on until at last you successfully shove the blade all the way through and the top of it’s head come off. After a bit more struggling, you get the thing completely off of you as it still attempts to kill you in its death throes. The thing continues to twitch and you’re busily looking around to make sure more of them aren’t coming or if the Morningstars are still around and heard all the noise. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else around though. By the way this thing was dressed he even looked like he might be a camper so hopefully it was just him in the woods. You just realize you killed someone…well someTHING at any rate. You don’t feel bad, since it was more out of necessity. You get the impression you might be killing more of these things in the near future, so better you get used to it now. You quicken your pace to the house though still proceeding cautiously as possible. You hug the back fence and slowly edge your way around to the front of the house and you see that the Ground Zero vehicle is gone, along with the two guards that were out front. At least that’s one thing you don’t need to worry about. You enter the house through the still open front door and check the ground floor and find nobody around. The place is still a mess though. You’re about to check the upstairs when you see a piece of paper attached to the refrigerator with your name written in big black marker. You take it and read. Suzy, Assuming you came back here, I just want to say I understand why you ran off like you did and I probably wouldn’t have completely trusted you if the roles were reversed. Still, it is a shame we didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to each other. Leslie was quite angry with your theft of his favorite machete, but I talked him out of attempting to hunt you down for it. Not like we even need it where we’re going. Anyway, I imagine you should have power in this house for a couple days at least. There is food and drink in the fridge and in the cupboards. You’ll probably want to eat the stuff in the fridge first before the power goes out and spoilage occurs though. Not sure if you’ll like some of it, but considering you liked the meatloaf, maybe you’ll like what’s in there. Good luck Suzy, I certainly hope your foray into being a survivalist is successful. I mean that. You’re going to have to really push yourself and prepare for what is coming, but I think you’ve got a shot. Lilith Morningstar P.S. The other patients are still locked in the rooms in the basement. There are four of them in total and have already very likely broken their restraints by now. As I have said before, the doors should be more than enough to contain them and you should be safe from them as long as you don’t open the rooms. Well that was certainly a thoughtful note to you. You sit down for a second thinking of what to do next. You thought that maybe you’d try to barricade this house up and stay here, but now you’re wondering if you shouldn’t just leave considering you’ve got four of those things clawing to get out of the basement. You to come to the conclusion that you might stay here another day tops and that’s only to just search this place of anything useful and then you’re heading out to well, you don’t know where exactly, but you’re going to continue to play this by ear. For right now though, you really need to wash up. You’re covered in blood, gore, dirt and generally feel really gross. You really don’t want to use the shower in that room you were in during your time in the basement of this place though. You head upstairs in the hopes of finding another bathroom and sure enough you find one. Lilith’s clothes are a slightly bigger size, but you can’t afford to be choosey since your own clothes are a bloody mess and it doesn’t make much sense changing back into them. During all this, you continue to keep your wits about you. Still afraid that something may pop up to attack at any time. By the time you’re out of the shower, night is beginning to fall. While you would’ve liked to have gotten started on searching the house you’re a little wary of turning on the lights in this house since it might very well attract more attention than you want. You do gather up a duffle bag that Lilith apparently decided not to use and plan to use that as your container for your search tomorrow. Given that you’re staying here the night, you need to secure this house as much as you can. You lock the back door and the basement door. (And trying to ignore the noises you hear coming from down there) You then shove a sofa in front of the ruined front door. It’s not much, but if those things try to come in, you’ll most likely hear it at least. You also realize you haven’t eaten all day, so you look in the fridge and grab something that looks similar to the meatloaf you ate yesterday since you don’t feel like making a decision. “Hm, Lil and Les really liked their meatloaf I guess.” You say and eat the stuff in the dark. (At least you don’t need to look at it this time) Tastes okay. You’re up for quite awhile paranoid about every noise you hear. However, you know you can’t stay awake all night despite your paranoia. You head back upstairs to one of the bedrooms and close the door. You then shove a dresser in front of it. Best you can do. You then flop down on the bed and reluctantly let sleep take you. > Next day… FRIDAY You wake up to the sound of a noisy vehicle outside. You waste no time in springing to your feet. You cautiously peek out the window and see a beat up pick up truck pulling up behind Lilith’s shot up vehicle. You then see two familiar figures get out of the truck with one of them speaking loud enough for you to hear even from your position. “Woowee! Looks like we missed some shit going down around here! Make sure you keep yer eyes peeled! Thinkin’ Doc might not even be alive anymore!” Jed exclaims. “Shit. What the fuck are those two assholes doing here?” you say to yourself. You see Hugo and Jed both carrying shotguns and going to the back of the pick up, which from your vantage point you can see a pile of blankets in the bed of the truck. Jed uncovers the blanket and reveals a naked woman tied up with ropes. She looks dirty, beaten and bloody. You can’t quite tell if she’s dead, but she’s definitely unconscious. You then see Jed say something to his brother and points to the house. Hugo nods and you see him walk out of your view. You temporarily freeze up when you hear a knock from downstairs. You hear it several times until you hear Jed shouting at his dim-witted brother. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ Hugo, are ya stupider than usual today? Can’t ya see that door is already hangin’ off the fuckin’ hinges? Just go in, and fuckin’ check the place out, then let me know if Doc’s even around or not. I’ll be out here keepin’ this fierce one entertained.” Jed shouts and you see him patting the leg of the girl a couple times. The knocking becomes a crashing sound as you hear Hugo bashing the door in and probably moving the sofa in the process. You turn your attention away from what’s going on outside and how you’re going to handle this situation. You think about climbing out the window and on to the roof, but that’s a risky proposition. Not really so much of the risk of falling (Though your ankle still hurts a bit) but more because Jed is practically in front of you and if he just bothers to till his head up or hears you, he’s going to see you and probably open fire. You look around the room and hoping maybe there is a firearm or something that Lilith didn’t take, but you don’t find anything. That dresser you put up against the door isn’t going to last long if Hugo tries to come in here. You suppose you could just try shoving move stuff against it, but considering he not only looks extremely strong, he’s got a shotgun and could probably just blast his way through. You hear Hugo stomping around downstairs. If Hugo comes up here, and you hide in the closet, there’s the possibility that you could get the drop on him as he walks in. You wonder though if it might not be more advantageous to just head downstairs and try to sneak up on him now though. If he comes up and things go to shit, you aren’t going to have any place to run to, especially if he traps you in this room. > You seek out Hugo Either way you’re going to have to get the drop on him, better you have more places to run to, rather than just being trapped in one room. As quietly as you can you move the dresser out of the way of the door and exit the bedroom. You still hear Hugo clomping around downstairs and you actually wait around the corner of the stairs hoping that maybe if he is heading upstairs you can ambush him that way. Waiting doesn’t prove fruitful though and in fact you think Hugo’s footsteps are actually getting fainter. It then occurs to you, he’s probably looking for Leslie and Leslie would be down in the basement. You cautiously head downstairs though you do it fairly quickly since the last thing you want is to be wrong and get caught going half way down the stairs while Hugo is going up them. After a quick look around on the ground floor and keeping your ears open you’re not hearing or seeing Hugo down here. You are starting to hear Jed shouting from outside though. When you peek out the window, you can’t quite see everything, but you notice Jed is clearly doing something with the woman that was in the back of the truck. You can guess what that might be given his movements and vulgar shouting. You head towards the stairs of the basement and you nearly fall down them when you’re startled by a sudden gunshot coming from down there. Hugo must’ve just shot one of the four “patients” down there. Of course it’s hard to know if he’d opened a door and killed one or perhaps it managed to get out on its own. Either way, you’re going to have to be really careful. You get to the basement floor and the noise of those things is much louder. You peek around the corner and down the corridor you see two doors to the rooms open. The closest one you know was yours, so nothing in there. The second one however looks like it also has a dead body lying partially in the entryway. You see Hugo in the corridor opening up another door across the hall of the other two open ones. He isn’t really paying much attention to your direction and when he steps into the other room, you make a dash for your old room and get inside. Along with hearing the banging of the creatures still locked up, you hear another shotgun blast signifying Hugo’s killed another one. You figure before he opens up the next door, you run up and chop him in the back of the head. You peek out from behind the door and see Hugo exiting the room. He walks to the middle of the corridor and begins fiddling with his shotgun, as if he’s having trouble with it. Just then the door across from him bursts open and one of the patients attacks him. You see and hear them struggle, growling, yelling, and everything else that comes with a life or death situation. It gets more interesting however when you see Hugo drop the shotgun as he’s struggling with the patient. You waste no time and rush from your position to nab it. Hugo meanwhile is still struggling with the patient who has now bitten into Hugo’s hand. You’re about to put a hole in the pair of them and that’s when the door to the room containing the last patient bursts open. The thing seeing that one of its “fellows” is already struggling with Hugo, it screams and lunges forward to attack you instead. You instinctively turn the shotgun towards the patient and pull the trigger, unfortunately it doesn’t work which is why Hugo was fiddling with it earlier. It was jammed. Before you can pick your machete back up to defend yourself, the thing has already tackled you. You struggle for a moment, but this one is a lot stronger than the one you fought with yesterday. It soon overpowers you and its teeth are ripping your throat out and its fingers are clawing your eyes out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>FRIDAY You wake up to the sound of a noisy vehicle outside. You waste no time in springing to your feet. You cautiously peek out the window and see a beat up pick up truck pulling up behind Lilith’s shot up vehicle. You then see two familiar figures get out of the truck with one of them speaking loud enough for you to hear even from your position. “Woowee! Looks like we missed some shit going down around here! Make sure you keep yer eyes peeled! Thinkin’ Doc might not even be alive anymore!” Jed exclaims. “Shit. What the fuck are those two assholes doing here?” you say to yourself. You see Hugo and Jed both carrying shotguns and going to the back of the pick up, which from your vantage point you can see a pile of blankets in the bed of the truck. Jed uncovers the blanket and reveals a naked woman tied up with ropes. She looks dirty, beaten and bloody. You can’t quite tell if she’s dead, but she’s definitely unconscious. You then see Jed say something to his brother and points to the house. Hugo nods and you see him walk out of your view. You temporarily freeze up when you hear a knock from downstairs. You hear it several times until you hear Jed shouting at his dim-witted brother. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ Hugo, are ya stupider than usual today? Can’t ya see that door is already hangin’ off the fuckin’ hinges? Just go in, and fuckin’ check the place out, then let me know if Doc’s even around or not. I’ll be out here keepin’ this fierce one entertained.” Jed shouts and you see him patting the leg of the girl a couple times. The knocking becomes a crashing sound as you hear Hugo bashing the door in and probably moving the sofa in the process. You turn your attention away from what’s going on outside and how you’re going to handle this situation. You think about climbing out the window and on to the roof, but that’s a risky proposition. Not really so much of the risk of falling (Though your ankle still hurts a bit) but more because Jed is practically in front of you and if he just bothers to till his head up or hears you, he’s going to see you and probably open fire. You look around the room and hoping maybe there is a firearm or something that Lilith didn’t take, but you don’t find anything. That dresser you put up against the door isn’t going to last long if Hugo tries to come in here. You suppose you could just try shoving move stuff against it, but considering he not only looks extremely strong, he’s got a shotgun and could probably just blast his way through. You hear Hugo stomping around downstairs. If Hugo comes up here, and you hide in the closet, there’s the possibility that you could get the drop on him as he walks in. You wonder though if it might not be more advantageous to just head downstairs and try to sneak up on him now though. If he comes up and things go to shit, you aren’t going to have any place to run to, especially if he traps you in this room. > You hide in this room Better to stay put and surprise attack him that way. Quite frankly if you don’t get the drop on him, you’re probably not going to get the chance to run anyway. You get the closet and hide in the extra niche space within it. Hugo comes kicking in the door, he wanders in and probably looks around the room first, and then you attack hoping you kill him before he shoots you. You took out one of those rabid things by yourself and that was pretty dangerous right? You can do this. You can do this. You can do this. You convince yourself as you wait in a closet to ambush a large and heavily armed retarded redneck rapist… You wait, still hearing Hugo clomping around and probably knocking shit over if the sounds are any indication. You also start hearing some shouting outside. You can’t tell what’s going on, but you’re more focused what’s going on inside. At any time, you expect to hear the sound of boots loudly stomping up the stairs, but you don’t, in fact the sounds of Hugo’s stomping get faint and soon you’re not hearing it at all. At first you think maybe he went back outside, but then it occurs to you that Jed told Hugo to look for Leslie. And if Leslie were here, he’d probably be in the basement so that might be where Hugo went. You cautiously come out of the closet and try to listen for Hugo, but the only thing you’re hearing now is Jed making “whooping” noises as well as shrieking. You peek out the window again just to see what the hell is going on. You see the girl that was in the bed of the truck now bent over the tailgate and Jed raping her. Her arms are still tied behind her back, but she’s not unconscious anymore. She’s obviously squirming and making the shrieking sounds you heard before. Something isn’t right though, and it’s not just the whole rape thing. The noise that this woman is making doesn’t entirely sound…well “natural.” You think she might be one of those crazies. That doesn’t seem to bother Jed however, he just keeps laughing and punches her in the back of the head every once in a while to “calm” her. His shotgun is leaning up against the side of the truck. You guess he got over the idea of “catching” something. You shake your head at this fucked up situation and then suddenly you hear a shotgun blast from within the house. You then remember there are still four of those things locked up in those rooms in the basement. You have no idea if Hugo’s just opened up one of the doors and killed one, or they’ve gotten out on their own though. You don’t hear another gunshot, so you also don’t know if he successfully killed it or it (or they) possibly got him. Meanwhile the shot briefly get Jed’s attention and he actually stops raping for one minute, but then he quickly goes back to it and starts shouting at the crazed woman. “Hah! Sounds like my brother just put another one of you crazy bitches down!” he exclaims and then slams her face into the bed of the truck. Well it seems like both brothers are suitably distracted and divided which is the best situation you’re going to get. Ideally, you’d take out Jed first and grab his shotgun. The only problem is there is no way you can really sneak up on him since his line of sight is directly in front of the house. Walking out the front door even quietly as possible and even with him in the middle of his rape of one of the rabid, if he sees you, it won’t take him long to grab his shotgun and open fire. Hugo on the other hand might very well already be dead for all you know. If he is, that doesn’t necessarily mean things are going to be any easier with one of those insane people or possibly more than one lurking around free in the basement. Even if he isn’t dead, the same problem arises that you’re going to have when you thought he might come up the stairs. Might even be harder given the corridors don’t allow for many places to hide and he’s going to be more alert now. Whether Hugo is alive or there are a group of cannibals eating him right now, you still feel like Jed would be easier for you to deal with armed only with a machete. You move the dresser and cautiously leave the bedroom. You continually keep looking around as you head towards the stairs. You make your way down the stairs and try to keep your head low so you don’t possibly get seen through one of the broken windows. The front door is wide open and you can see Jed with the girl. Right now he’s got his head down and isn’t paying attention to what could be in front of him, he’s too busy slamming his dick into crazy woman and keeping her from getting away from him. As quickly and as quietly as you can, you slip out the front door and hide behind one of the front porch pillars. You think if you’re quick enough you could make it to hide behind the front Lilith’s vehicle and then from there just crawl alongside that vehicle to Jed’s vehicle, grab the shotgun and you’re home free. You peek around the pillar and see Jed’s still engrossed in his activity. You immediately make the attempt… Then another shotgun blast emanates from the house just as you’re a the bottom of the front stairs causing you to stumble a bit and Jed to look up. Your eyes meet. “SHIT!” pair of you shout and Jed starts fumbling with his dick and pants. You MIGHT make it if you make a sprint to grab the shotgun, but then again you might not and not getting it, means game over. You’ve probably got a better chance if you run back into the house, but in that case you’re going to be playing a game of cat and mouse with him and considering you just heard a second gunshot, it would seem Hugo is probably alive too. > You run back in the house You turn around and try to get back in the house as quick as you can. You hear Jed shout at you to stop, but you don’t listen, you just to get in the front door. You don’t quite make it and feel the burning pain a slug hitting the back of your left leg. Not only do you scream in agony, you also fall straight on you your face. “Stupid bitch, I told ya, to stop!” Jed shouts. You don’t even look at your leg, but you sense that it may just be barely attached to the rest of your body at this point. The agony is so bad you feel like you’re going to be sick or go unconscious at the same time. Against all odds you continue to try to crawl into the entryway of the house. “HEY! I SAID STOP FUCKING MOVING! Goddamnit…” you hear Jed shout and you expect to another shot, but instead you hear shouting of a different kind. “ARGH! FUCK!” You manage to turn your head enough to see Jed being attacked by the rabid woman he was violating. She’s bitten him, but he’s still managing to fight her off. You use this opportunity to continue to crawl away. You manage to get back inside, and you hear another gunshot followed by more swearing. Your heart sinks since that means Jed must still be alive. The combination of fear and pain is clouding your thoughts of everything save for trying to get away, but you know that’s not going to happen. Your fears become reality when you’re only half way up the stairs to the second floor and hear footsteps coming into the house. “I hear ya whimpering girl and I can see the bloody mess yer leavin’. Won’t be half as messy though when I get through with ya!” you hear Jed shout. You soon hear him on stairs behind you. “Dunno, why yer goin’ up there for, your fate is sealed sick girl. Didn’t seem so sick out there when you were trying to reach for my shotgun. Bet you thought pullin’ one over on me a couple days ago was really funny. Well I guess I’m the one laughing now. Since I didn’t finish with my ex-girlfriend back there, guess you’ll have to fill in for her. You suddenly feel a hand grip your good leg and pull hard. As you’re dragged, you make one last ditch effort to fight, by twisting your body and swinging the machete you’re still carrying in your hand. You manage to catch Jed’s arm sinking the blade in. He yells, lets go and falls backwards down the stairs. Unfortunately with his other hand that still holds the shotgun, he pulls the trigger on it. You’re hit again and it’s a quick death as part of your head and brains are splattered all over the stairs and walls, which at least spares you of any further suffering.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Better to stay put and surprise attack him that way. Quite frankly if you don’t get the drop on him, you’re probably not going to get the chance to run anyway. You get the closet and hide in the extra niche space within it. Hugo comes kicking in the door, he wanders in and probably looks around the room first, and then you attack hoping you kill him before he shoots you. You took out one of those rabid things by yourself and that was pretty dangerous right? You can do this. You can do this. You can do this. You convince yourself as you wait in a closet to ambush a large and heavily armed retarded redneck rapist… You wait, still hearing Hugo clomping around and probably knocking shit over if the sounds are any indication. You also start hearing some shouting outside. You can’t tell what’s going on, but you’re more focused what’s going on inside. At any time, you expect to hear the sound of boots loudly stomping up the stairs, but you don’t, in fact the sounds of Hugo’s stomping get faint and soon you’re not hearing it at all. At first you think maybe he went back outside, but then it occurs to you that Jed told Hugo to look for Leslie. And if Leslie were here, he’d probably be in the basement so that might be where Hugo went. You cautiously come out of the closet and try to listen for Hugo, but the only thing you’re hearing now is Jed making “whooping” noises as well as shrieking. You peek out the window again just to see what the hell is going on. You see the girl that was in the bed of the truck now bent over the tailgate and Jed raping her. Her arms are still tied behind her back, but she’s not unconscious anymore. She’s obviously squirming and making the shrieking sounds you heard before. Something isn’t right though, and it’s not just the whole rape thing. The noise that this woman is making doesn’t entirely sound…well “natural.” You think she might be one of those crazies. That doesn’t seem to bother Jed however, he just keeps laughing and punches her in the back of the head every once in a while to “calm” her. His shotgun is leaning up against the side of the truck. You guess he got over the idea of “catching” something. You shake your head at this fucked up situation and then suddenly you hear a shotgun blast from within the house. You then remember there are still four of those things locked up in those rooms in the basement. You have no idea if Hugo’s just opened up one of the doors and killed one, or they’ve gotten out on their own though. You don’t hear another gunshot, so you also don’t know if he successfully killed it or it (or they) possibly got him. Meanwhile the shot briefly get Jed’s attention and he actually stops raping for one minute, but then he quickly goes back to it and starts shouting at the crazed woman. “Hah! Sounds like my brother just put another one of you crazy bitches down!” he exclaims and then slams her face into the bed of the truck. Well it seems like both brothers are suitably distracted and divided which is the best situation you’re going to get. Ideally, you’d take out Jed first and grab his shotgun. The only problem is there is no way you can really sneak up on him since his line of sight is directly in front of the house. Walking out the front door even quietly as possible and even with him in the middle of his rape of one of the rabid, if he sees you, it won’t take him long to grab his shotgun and open fire. Hugo on the other hand might very well already be dead for all you know. If he is, that doesn’t necessarily mean things are going to be any easier with one of those insane people or possibly more than one lurking around free in the basement. Even if he isn’t dead, the same problem arises that you’re going to have when you thought he might come up the stairs. Might even be harder given the corridors don’t allow for many places to hide and he’s going to be more alert now. Whether Hugo is alive or there are a group of cannibals eating him right now, you still feel like Jed would be easier for you to deal with armed only with a machete. You move the dresser and cautiously leave the bedroom. You continually keep looking around as you head towards the stairs. You make your way down the stairs and try to keep your head low so you don’t possibly get seen through one of the broken windows. The front door is wide open and you can see Jed with the girl. Right now he’s got his head down and isn’t paying attention to what could be in front of him, he’s too busy slamming his dick into crazy woman and keeping her from getting away from him. As quickly and as quietly as you can, you slip out the front door and hide behind one of the front porch pillars. You think if you’re quick enough you could make it to hide behind the front Lilith’s vehicle and then from there just crawl alongside that vehicle to Jed’s vehicle, grab the shotgun and you’re home free. You peek around the pillar and see Jed’s still engrossed in his activity. You immediately make the attempt… Then another shotgun blast emanates from the house just as you’re a the bottom of the front stairs causing you to stumble a bit and Jed to look up. Your eyes meet. “SHIT!” pair of you shout and Jed starts fumbling with his dick and pants. You MIGHT make it if you make a sprint to grab the shotgun, but then again you might not and not getting it, means game over. You’ve probably got a better chance if you run back into the house, but in that case you’re going to be playing a game of cat and mouse with him and considering you just heard a second gunshot, it would seem Hugo is probably alive too. > You run for the shotgun You’re going to be at a severe disadvantage if you run away, better to just get this over with and if you die today, then you die. Ignoring any pain you might still have with your ankle, you sprint for the shotgun. Jed at this point doesn’t bother pants anymore and goes to grab the shotgun. Seeing that he’ll easily beat you to it, you throw the machete at him. It’s enough to cause him to jump and stumble when he thinks it’s going to hit him, which is enough time to grab the shotgun, unfortunately just not enough time to shoot Jed with it. “Fuckin’ bitch!” Jed says and elbows you in the side of the head. You try to hang on to the shotgun, but he manages to pull it away from you and then kicks you to the ground. You hear a racking sound of the shotgun and you don’t look up. While you’re certainly scared, you’re angrier that you failed more than anything else. “I remember you…you were Miss sick weren’t you? You don’t seem so sick now. In fact you don’t even seem like the crazies in town. Guess you had a big laugh about pullin’ one over on me huh? LOOK AT ME!” You look up, but maintain a defiant look in your eye as Jed continues to point his shotgun at you. “Oh. Still the tough bitch huh? Well it don’t mean shit and it ain’t gonna change shit. Tell ya what though, I didn’t get to finish up with my current girlfriend over there and as you can see my dick’s still hard. Suck me off like the whore you are and MAYBE you might get a quick death.” Jed says. You take a brief look at Jed’s filthy dick and look back up and smile. “Jed, you better just shove that shotgun barrel in my face and pull the trigger because that’s the only thing you’re getting in my mouth and blowing a load in. It would at least be a lot more spectacular than what’s actually between your legs.” Jed’s face nearly becomes red with rage. “Yer gonna WISH I blew your head off, you cunt!” Jed says and he pulls the shotgun up and then flips it around to use the butt of it smash you in the head. He’s not quite quick enough though since you manage to shield your face with your hands. Still it’s enough to knock you back to the ground in pain. “Where the fuck is that machete.” Jed says and grabs it from the ground before approaching you with it one hand and still holding the shotgun in the other. “Been awhile since I fucked an amputee, guess we’ll see if I can cum before you bleed out…” Jed in his haste to “teach you a lesson” has completely ignored the fact that he is no longer restraining the crazy woman he was violating. You see the thing recover and get up from it’s previous vulnerable position. “You sure you want to do this Jed? Think your girlfriend is jealous.” You say. “Wha…AGH!” Jed says and turns just in time for the crazed townie to bite Jed between the neck and shoulder. He drops the shotgun and swings the machete in an attempt to kill the rabid woman. While they struggle you scramble and grab the shotgun. Jed manages to fight off the rabid woman and finishes her off with a chop to her neck. “Aww, I was rooting for her.” You say. Jed turns around and sees you pointing the shotgun at him. He doesn’t look scared. “What, you think I’m scared because you’re pointing a gun at me? Ain’t the first time I’ve had one pointed at me blondie.” He says. “Heh, blondie now is it? Not whore, bitch, cunt, or whatever other unimaginative name you’ve called me before? I may not have been doing this as long as you have, but it seems like someone is scared.” “Pfft, you don’t even know how to use that thing, the fucking safety is on you dumb bitch.” You pull the trigger and literally blow his balls off. The kickback hurts your arm, but it’s a lot less pain than what you imagine Jed is feeling right now. Jed howls on the ground in agony and you walk over near him. “Did you actually expect I was going to fall for that like in a movie? Get me to check like an idiot and give you just enough time to possibly rush me? I just heard you rack this fucking shotgun not a few seconds ago. Not to mention with the time you spent playing with rabid girl over there, I would have had more than enough time to take the safety off and that’s even if this particular shotgun HAD a safety feature on it to begin with which it doesn’t!” You say. Jed just looks at you with a mixture of pain and disbelief that you would even know that much about a gun. “I know, brains and beauty. It’s a curse sometimes, but after this week I’m starting to get the hang of it.” You say and blast Jed into oblivion. The first thing you do is keep an eye on your immediate surroundings. You, Jed and crazy woman made a hell of a lot of noise. Who knows what the hell might have been attracted. Not to mention the last thing you need is Hugo to have heard all of this and come running out. You seem to be okay for now though. The second thing you do is search Jed’s body or what’s left of it for keys to the truck. It’s a gory mess and the only thing you succeed in doing is getting your hands bloody. You do remember seeing Hugo getting out of the driver’s side, so you imagine he’s probably the one that has them. “Well, he was going to be next anyway.” you say and head back towards the house. Once again you enter the house with caution. You get the feeling Hugo didn’t hear anything outside or if he did, he’s too pre-occupied with shit in the basement. Come to think of it, you haven’t heard another blast and you know there are at least two more of those things down there, then again you’ve been a little pre-occupied as well. You make your way to the stairs leading to the basement. You aren’t hearing anything at all, which makes all the more scary. “Made it this far by yourself Suzy, you can finish this…” you say and descend. You get to the bottom floor of the basement and just looking down the corridor, you see several of the doors are open. No sign of Hugo or the “patients” though. You head down the corridor fully ready for anything about to leap out at you. You look into the first room with the door open and see nothing. In fact, this is your old room. The next two rooms obviously housed “patients.” One of those patients is laying dead face down half in the doorway. The other is still in his room and hadn’t even broken his restraints. You notice the next room is empty, but the door looks like it was broken open from the inside. It would seem these rooms weren’t as secure as Lilith thought. It is at this point you notice splatters of blood all over the floor and a trail of it leading to the last open door which again looks broken from the outside. You slowly peek around the corner. There you see one of the patients lying near the entryway with his head twisted all the way around and blood around his mouth. His teeth are clenched in a creepy death grin and you also notice the remnants of a couple fingers still gripped in it. It would appear Hugo didn’t get a chance to shoot this one. Another patient lies further in the room with its brains bashed into the floor. It also has blood around it’s mouth and in this case nails too. Finally you see Hugo sitting up against a wall with his shotgun nearby on the floor. He doesn’t look so great though. He’s clearly wounded very badly. It looks like he’s holding his stomach, which he is bleeding out of and you already know he’s lost some fingers. When he looks up at you. He doesn’t even go for his gun, he just stares…with one eye. He apparently lost one of those too. “HUGO HURT BAD.” He says. Either he doesn’t recognize you, he doesn’t think you’re a threat, or is too concerned about his injuries. “Yeah, doesn’t look too good.” You answer, Hugo still makes no move to the shotgun despite you walking in. “YOU THE SICK PRETTY LADY.” Hugo says finally recognizing you. “Yeah, well I got better.” “DOC CAN MAKE HUGO BETTER.” “Doc’s not here.” Hugo at this point winces in pain and coughs up some blood. Hugo is just a retard; he probably doesn’t even know he does bad things. You imagine his brother Jed has been manipulating him all his life. It might even be tragic under normal circumstances. “YOU SEE JED? JED MAKE HUGO BETTER.” “Sure I’ve seen him, I’ll take you to him.” You point the shotgun at Hugo who doesn’t even really realize the gravity of the situation and with a mixture of avenging angel and angel of mercy you pull the trigger and put Hugo out of his misery. Probably quicker than he deserved, but it got the job done. You exit the room feeling a bit drained. You weren’t really expecting to do all this the first thing you got up this morning, but you handled it about as well as you could have. It’s amazing how much someone can change and what they’re capable of within just a few days. You just killed two people this time and granted they deserved it, you still feel a little weird that you aren’t sick about it or something. Maybe Lilith was right. Maybe you are capable of great violence without a second thought. The jury is still out on that since as far you’re concerned you haven’t killed any innocent people, just two people who fucked with you. In any case you’re a far cry from that “good girl” who hid in the basement. Speaking of basements, you decide to check out the rest of this one since you’re down here. You don’t find much though except one large room that is obviously where Leslie did all his “experiments.” Looks like he took most of his stuff and left a couple of dead bodies on his table behind. You don’t really stay long due to the smell, which is pretty awful. You leave the basement with a second shotgun and Hugo’s truck keys. You spend the rest of the day looting the house for any potential worthwhile items. The Morningstars left surprisingly a lot of every useful items behind, but then again they’re going to be in a nice safe shelter so there really wasn’t any need you suppose. You pack what bags you can find full of stuff until you feel you have enough. After doing that you take a break to wash up again and eat. You grab something out of the fridge that looks like lasagna. It doesn’t taste like any lasagna you’ve ever had, but then again you’ve only ever eaten the microwavable kind, so that might be why it tastes a hell of a lot better. Leslie might’ve been a horrible human being, but damn if he wasn’t a good cook. As the sun starts to go down, you wonder if you should leave or stay one more night and leave in the morning. You ultimately decide now that you’re a lot better armed, you can probably afford to stay one more night. You don’t know if you’ll get to sleep on a proper bed again. Once again you take all the proper precautions of securing the house as much as you can and once again end with pushing the dresser to block the door of the bedroom before turning in to sleep. A little less reluctantly this time given that you have two shotguns and as well as a machete for protection now. > Next day… SATURDAY You wake up to the sound of a noisy vehicle outside. You waste no time in springing to your feet. You cautiously peek out the window and see a military truck pulling up behind Jed’s vehicle. “Are you fucking kidding me? Is fate just determined to make my life more hell than it needs to be?” you say to yourself. You then see a familiar figure getting out of the truck and carrying a rifle. He looks around and then wastes no time in running to the house. “Bobby?” you say and then go move the dresser. By the time you’ve gotten out the door, you hear him downstairs kicking over the sofa in the front door entryway and calling out your name. “SUZY! SUZY!” he shouts in a panic as you hear him knocking over shit in an effort to look for you. “I’m right here and you’re lucky it’s just me, because anyone else would’ve long since blown your head off with the way you’re announcing yourself by now.” You say coming down the stairs. When you see Bobby, he definitely looks like he’s seen better days, but when Bobby sees you he drops his weapon and his face is one of extreme elation. Like a great weight has been lifted off of him by seeing you. He rushes forward to presumably hug you and you immediately pull your own shotgun up. “Alright, stop.” You say. “Wha…it’s me! Bobby!” he exclaims. “Yeah, I know who you are silly, I’m just wondering WHY you’re here. Who else is with you?” you ask. “Nobody! It’s just me! Suzy, just put the gun down, I’m…” “I don’t think so, after the week I’ve had I’m not too fucking keen on just putting my weapon down. Besides we didn’t part exactly on the best of terms or have you forgotten?” “I know! I know! I was an asshole about that! I didn’t mean any of that shit I said! I was a big fucking asshole and you were right the whole time! I should’ve realized sooner that you were always the one for me and that I should’ve made the sacrifice for you because you’re completely worth it and I still love you” “And…what? You just realized this today?” “No! I realized it soon after my aunt called telling me she had you over here.” “Wait, didn’t she call you on Tuesday? I was drugged and held against my will by your psycho aunt and uncle and you didn’t think to come here sooner?” “I…it took me awhile to sort out my feelings…I was still confused…” You can’t believe this! “Took you awhile to sort out your feelings?! Confused? Are you fucking kidding me?! That’s your excuse?” “It’s no excuse! That’s how it was! I thought there was no chance again with you given how bad we broke up! And besides, I’m sure my aunt told you how I pleaded for your life. It’s probably why you’re still alive.” “Yeah, okay fine I’ll give you that. Your groveling probably kept me alive initially, but if you REALLY wanted to come here and play white knight and save the damsel, you REALLY should’ve got here fucking sooner! Do you even know what the fuck I’ve had to deal with here for past three days?” “No, but I really did try to get here sooner! Seriously I did!” “Oh yes, sorting out your feelings and probably getting one last fuck from Diana…” “Hey! For your information I killed Diana.” Well Bobby’s peaked your interest enough that you lower your shotgun. “Wait, you killed that bitch?” you ask. “Well it wasn’t on purpose, but yeah I accidently killed her when I was trying to leave the compound. I told her to either the hell out of the way or I was going through that gate anyway. Never believed she wouldn’t move and the crunch under the tires was pretty much an indication that I killed her.” Bobby replies. “That’s not exactly an accident Bobby, but that’s okay. That’s another point in your favor.” “Anyway, I ended up getting held up in town by the fucking National Guard, when both of my cousins decided it would be a good idea to antagonize them even more by firing upon them. That went about as well as you’d expect…” “Your cousins? You brought family with you?” “Wasn’t exactly my idea. Two of my cousins, William and Aaron wanted to leave the compound as well, so they followed me for a while in William’s vehicle. Then before I knew it, Aaron was firing at shit, which called more attention than it needed to. I parted company with them as soon as I could, but by that time I had the National Guard all over me. Crashed the vehicle and nearly got shot. In fact I probably would’ve gotten shot had it not been for this tight ass government official insisting I be held for questioning. Thought I was a terrorist or something.” “So you were held captive by the National Guard?” “Well I was on Wednesday and for part of Thursday until the camp got overrun by fucking crazy cannibals. Nearly getting eaten was a nice change of pace of getting punched in the face and beaten.” Well that explains the bruises and scratches on Bobby’s face and arms as well as the condition of his clothing, which is torn in several places. “Spent the rest of Thursday just trying to get away from those fuckers and trying to make it through the town which was a warzone at this point. Wasn’t until Friday night I managed to get a hold of a Guardsman’s truck and drive out of there.” You remain silent as Bobby at this point walks over to you. He takes your hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner Suzy, I really wanted to and I really tried. My mind was always pre-occupied with concern of if you were even still alive or not. I can only imagine what horrors you had to face here. I don’t know exactly what happened here, but I saw all the bodies outside and the state of the house…and well I can guess you didn’t have an easy time of it. I’m here now though and you don’t need to worry anymore. We can go anywhere you want. We can run away to anywhere just like you wanted. I’m done with my family; I’m done with my religion. From the moment I knew you were being held here, I knew YOU were my family. YOU were my religion and I love you so much. You have to believe me.” You look at Bobby and see in his eyes he really means all this. You stroke his face lovingly. “Oh Bobby…” And then promptly slap him. He gives a surprised look. “…you’re goddamn right you don’t know what horrors I fucking faced! I was scared the entire time!” You go into an exaggerated tirade about what you experienced while you were here. Not that what you really went through wasn’t bad, but to be honest it sounds like what Bobby went through was probably worse in his attempt to get here and you’re not going to let Bobby just think he can waltz back into your life and get you back with ease with his “hero” attempt. “…and did I mention I was nearly RAPED by rednecks several times?” “They didn’t…” “No they didn’t, but I had to fend for myself and I did a pretty damn good job at it. Proved to me that I have an inner strength that I never took advantage of before and when the chips are down, I don’t really need anyone.” Bobby’s face starts to show one of distress and just before he goes into his routine of telling you more honeyed words of his love for you and begs you to take him back, you stop him by continuing to speak. “…but there also were times where things would have been a lot easier had someone had been around to help me.” Now you take Bobby’s hand. “(Sigh) Look Bobby, maybe all this crazy shit that’s happened between us and to us is like wiping the slate clean or something. Maybe we do have a future. I believe you when you say you love me and obviously you went through a lot to try to get here to save me. But we can’t just jump back into this like we were before. You’re going to have to give me some time.” Bobby nods. “Okay. I understand Suzy. I do.” You and Bobby just stare at each other for a while. It’s funny how you never thought you’d even see Bobby again, let alone reunite with him. Somehow the argument you had earlier in the week just doesn’t matter anymore. “Okay, let’s head upstairs to the bedroom.” You say and pat his hand. “What for?” Bobby asks. “For sex duh.” You say. “Sex? I thought you said you needed some time.” “Yeah well I decided that some of that time involves pleasuring me. Besides, this isn’t YOUR reward, it’s MY fucking reward for surviving this shitty week. So I hope you’re prepared to do a lot of licking.” “Hey whatever you need.” Bobby says following up the stairs. Doesn’t take long for the pair of you to be totally into your reunification. In fact you’re enjoying yourself so much you nearly don’t notice the bright flash coming from the window and loud noise in the distance. “Shit that was bright, glad I wasn’t looking directly at whatever that was.” You say. “I wouldn’t know about the light since my face was buried in your pussy at the time, I did hear the noise though.” Bobby says. The pair of you wander over to the window and in the far distance you see the remnants of a mushroom cloud. Probably landed on Security City or near it. You can only guess it probably wasn’t a big one. “So…they finally went and did it.” You say. “Looks like.” Bobby says. “Oh well, we’ll be okay.” “You seem very sure of that, I remember a time you would’ve been worrying about radiation and everything else.” “Well you’ve been through this hellish week the same way I have and we both survived. Together I think our chances are even greater. Besides, your aunt told me GZ put drugs in the water that are supposed make people more resistant to radiation and disease and such.” “What seriously?” “Seriously. That drug is what also made most people go batshit crazy. Doesn’t affect everyone though and I never did get a solid answer on why I wasn’t affected. Guess you aren’t either.” “Maybe we’re already crazy?” “Probably.” You chuckle. You and Bobby go back to doing what you were doing and why the hell not? It isn’t like the apocalypse isn’t going to still be there. Later you Bobby load up his army truck with all the stuff you think you’ll need. You aren’t sure where you’ll go yet, but you maintain a positive attitude that you’ll ultimately be fine. As he begins driving away from the house, you open up one of the Tupperware containers of food that you took with you when you left and start eating. “What is that you’re eating? It looks awful.” Bobby remarks. “I dunno. I think it’s some sort of beef. I know it’s not much for looks, but it tastes delicious though. Your uncle Leslie was a really good cook. I’ve never been a big food person, but I’m seriously going to miss eating from that house. I took this as a last hoorah as it were. You want some?” Bobby’s face begins to look a little concerned. “Suzy, you’ve been eating out of my aunt and uncle’s fridge? How much have you eaten?” “I dunno. I’ve had at least one meal a day there. What the hell else was I going to eat? I’m telling you though I’d like to know how to make this stuff, but I imagine just picking up meat from the super market isn’t going to be an option anymore.” “Oh you can make that stuff without needing a super market. Suzy, my aunt and uncle were fucking CANNIBALS! You’ve probably been eating human meat for the past three days!” Bobby exclaims. You stop eating and start looking at the meal you’re eating. You poke at it a few times wondering if you’re going to come across a finger or something, but after doing this for a few seconds you don’t find anything out of the ordinary, and you scoop out another piece and eat it. Bobby looks shocked. “What? Still tastes good. Think of it this way, at least we know I’m willing to eat human flesh if things get tough out here in the big bad apocalyptic wasteland. You sure you don’t want any?” Bobby just shakes his head and continues to drive. “Hm, more for me.” You say with a shrug and take another bite. “You really have changed Suzy.” Bobby remarks. “Yeah, well happens to the best of us.” You say. > Love SICK Too The Future… “You know how mutants are dear, they act on impulse sometimes.” You say as you sew up a shirt. “Yes, I get that, but I specifically told my congregation NOT to attack Iron Union transports! Last thing we need is the GZ corporation sniffing around this town asking questions. I’m just glad I managed to convince them to clean up the mess, even if some of them were bitching the entire time.” Bobby exclaims. “Hm, well you are very persuasive when you want to be. Guess that’s why they listen to you at all.” Bobby just sits down in a nearby chair continuing to rant about the troubles with his “congregation.” You’ve heard the complaints before several times and really this is just a normal routine for you both. Bobby complains and you listen to his troubles. Just part of married life you suppose. Making adjustments to accommodate your significant other’s desires is another part of married life. Bobby may have very well left his “religion” behind, but the cult leader part of him never really left him. You’re not even exactly sure what “higher power” Bobby believes in now, if he does at all. Personally you think he just made up some shit and managed to convince a bunch of mutants to follow him. Not that you really care. He’s bringing in the loot with his little band of brainwashed mutants and it provides him with a sense of fulfillment, despite the fact he’s doing a lot of complaining right now. “Bobby, you’re worrying too much again. I’m sure your minions aren’t the only mutants living in this town that have attacked Iron Union transports. Besides, last I heard the Iron Union is in the middle of a civil war. So even if they did find out, I doubt if they’ve even got the firepower to launch an attack on a place that has the reputation of being a large and extremely dangerous mutant town.” You say. “Heh, well they certainly got less now. There were some nice weapons in that transport.” Bobby chuckles. “See? Just gotta look on the bright side of things.” You say. Maintaining an optimistic mindset certainly came in handy during those early years when it was just you and Bobby surviving on the road, drifting from place to place. Not that it was all-bad and some of it was even fun, but you and Bobby were never truly happier when you finally managed to lay down roots here in Emberville. You, of course for the reasons of comfort and security. Bobby of course still wanted a family. He had you of course, but you know deep down he still wanted to have children with you. Which also became another adjustment, but really not one you were so resistant about anymore. You just needed time like you said and eventually you felt it was the right time. “Alexander! Your shirt is done!” you shout. Your son comes in from his room. Normally he’s out playing, but there are times where he just shuts himself away and reads whatever books Bobby or you find for him. It’s good that he has a variety of interests. “Hey this looks as good as new.” He exclaims. “I doubt that, but I did the best I could with what I had.” “Where did you learn to sew Mom?” Alexander asks. “Oh, my mother taught me when I was little. Never thought I’d actually ever take it up again though, but in this sort of world, it’s sort of a handy skill to have.” “Hey how come you never told me about that little interesting tidbit about your life when we were first going out? I remember being surprised when you told me you had seamstress skills” Bobby asks. “Like I said, I never thought it was important until this whole world went to shit and sewing up clothes was something I had to actually do more frequently.” You answer. “Did she teach you how to cook too?” Alexander asks “Hah, no. I didn’t learn how to do that until much later in life and I taught myself mostly.” You say. “Your mother is misremembering things again. She actually learned a lot from Mrs. Zerul down the street. Before we moved here, your mother’s cooking probably nearly killed me more times than gunfire.” Bobby jokes, which gets him a glare. “Hey, there were several times that we didn’t starve thanks to me.” You snap. “Well I think you’re a good cook Mom.” Alexander remarks. “Thanks son, at least someone here appreciates me. Now go out and play and try not to ruin the shirt you’re currently wearing. Especially if you play with that Jenny girl.” “Who’s Jenny?” Bobby asks, not knowing all of his son’s friends as usual. “Jenny is a cute little mutant girl with talons instead of normal nails. Last time they were playing and Alexander came home with a shirt that was beyond my sewing skills.” “You sure they were just playing?” Bobby asks. “Bobby!” you say. “Hey, kids grow up fast without traditional social norms!” Bobby says. “And what exactly would YOU even know what traditional social norms are?” you ask. “…well I do know what they were even if I didn’t actually practice them. In fact I’d say I’m a living example of what happens to a child growing up without traditional social norms.” Bobby replies. Alexander isn’t quite sure what you and Bobby going on about, but speaks up. “Me and Jenny were just playing tag that time my shirt was all ripped up, like I said.” “Yes, I remember and I believe you. Now off you go, and remember dinner will be ready just before night fall.” Alexander agrees he’ll be careful and runs out to play with his friends. You watch him briefly from the door. “Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t be a little more protective of him.” You say. “He’s fine. Better he get some claw scratches and bruises now so he doesn’t grow up to be completely sheltered.” Bobby responds. “Yeah I know all too damn well what the dangers that can bring, especially with the way the world is now. Still, can’t help but worry at times.” Bobby stands up and walks over to reassure you. “Well of course you worry, you’re a good mother. And here you always thought you wouldn’t make a good one, remember?” “Yeah, that was a whole other lifetime ago. I can honestly say I’m glad those old days are behind us.” Bobby nods and begins to caress you. You return his affection with a kiss and the pair of you just sort of hold each other for awhile. Seems surreal at times that you arrived at this point. Married, a child, and living modest home in a town mainly consisting of mutants. Though given both your family and Bobby’s, maybe it makes sense you fit in better with a community full of mutants. To be honest, you think the only real problem you ever had with moving in and marrying Bobby to begin with was due to the situation with his sister Diana. You wonder if you would’ve done all this sooner had she never been in the picture. Oh well, no point in playing “What if” especially since everything worked out. This life is harder than your old one in several ways, but given all the new skills you learned and all of what you’ve managed to achieve, you’re definitely a stronger and better person now than you ever were before. “Well I guess I better get started on dinner. Unless you want what Mrs. Zerul is serving down the street.” You say elbowing Bobby in the side for his previous comment. “Oh yeah because hideous old women with humps on their back and scales on their face really do it for me. You know I was joking about that.” “I know. You brought the groceries right?” “Yeah, just vegetables and meat though. Didn’t get a hold of much else this time.” “It’s all I ever really need. I know you’re probably tired from getting the stuff last night, but can you help me get started?” you ask. “Sure. Meet you in the kitchen.” Bobby responds. Bobby heads to the root cellar and you head to the kitchen when you start your preparations. You’re lucky to have the kitchen amenities you have compared to most in this town. Wood burning stoves aren’t that common here, but then again most mutants don’t bother cooking their food at all. You and Bobby of course aren’t savages. As you’re getting everything set, Bobby comes up with the groceries and sets them down on the large prep table. “There you go baby. You need me to help prep the meat?” “Nah, I can do it. Doesn’t take me long.” “Okay, I’m going to get some sleep. Call me if you need anything.” “Will do. Thanks dear.” You say and Bobby kisses you on the cheek before heading off to bedroom. You grab your machete and stare at the table. The tied and gagged naked young woman continues to squirm on the table. If she could, she’d probably scream or beg. You’re guessing she was part of whatever caravan Bobby and his congregation raided. Probably the merchant since she doesn’t look like a guard. That’s a good thing; her meat isn’t going to be as tough. This would be the other advantage of living in a mutant town: They don’t frown upon cannibalism here. The young woman’s eyes widen as you bring the machete down to finish her off. As you chop up the rest of the woman’s body, you briefly think about the past again, specifically when Bobby’s aunt was psychoanalyzing you. She certainly was right when she said you were prone to revel in great violence under the right circumstances.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t know the complete lay out of the house and you also don’t really know Lilith excessively well to judge how “tough” she actually is. For all you know she’s got some sort of GZ martial arts training especially given what she’s revealed about what insidious practices they’re doing. You also don’t know much about her brother, but he’s probably a damn psycho. If you threatened his sister, he might be capable of anything; you know how close the Morningstar family tends to be after all… Also, so far this week, every time you’ve “asserted” yourself, it’s gone very badly. Might be better to at least wait a while and see if a better opportunity comes along and get a feel for this place first. Lilith undoes your straps and you’re soon free. You sit up, stretch and try to maintain composure that you’re not still scared about all this. “I know the first time we met you were having problems walking by yourself. You okay to do that now? Not still feeling wobbly or anything?” “I believe I’m fine. Just very nervous about all this.” “Don’t be nervous. As I said, follow the rules and you’ll be fine. If you’re worrying about catching the madness that the town has, well like I said, you’re probably fine, but even if you aren’t I’ve got a few things that might help. You ready to go?” “Yeah I guess.” You say and Lilith leads you out the door. When you exit, you find yourself in an uncarpeted corridor with a few rows of doors to the left and right of you (All with very strong looking and very locked doors). It reminds you of a hospital setting; you can’t help but wonder if you’re still in Lilith’s house anymore. “Um, are we still in your house?” you ask. “Oh yes. We’re not on the ground floor if that’s what you’re wondering though, we’re in the basement. Of course this house never had a basement this large originally. A lot of this was added on much later due to my work in GZ. Leslie nearly blew a gasket when he heard workers were coming in to make severe alterations to it, but in time he realized it had its advantages and I told him his area wouldn’t be fussed with anyway. He spends a lot of time down here with his experiments you see and hates change…guess you and he have that in common no?” “What?” “Well as I said, Bobby told me much about you and your past. Said you preferred to stay down in your basement and hide away from the world and weren’t a fan of change yourself. Was he incorrect in what he told me?” “…no…no I suppose he wasn’t. It’s true. I did spend all my time in the basement hiding out from the real world and hated change. This week has been a big wake up call that things couldn’t be like that forever though.” You say. “Hm, well don’t despair. While things do eventually change, they can always change for the better. Here’s your new room.” Lilith remarks and unlocks it. The door opens up to another windowless room, but this one is much nicer. In fact it’s downright cozy. There’s a sofa, a bookcase with books, a TV…hell it almost reminds you of home. As enter to get a closer look at everything, Lilith is preoccupied with something on her phone. “Shit, well something came up and we’re going to have to get to the questions later. But for now, what do you think to your new surroundings?” Lilith asks. “It’s okay. I didn’t expect to have such a fancy cell.” You say. “Suzy! Don’t think of this as a cell, think of it as just a regular room where you’re staying until it’s confirmed you’re okay! Now, if you notice there is another small room off to the right. That’s the bathroom where you’ll find all the usual facilities. I would imagine you’re probably hungry and I’ll be back with some food soon. Just have to deal with something. The National Guard has been deployed in town to maintain order and apparently GZ is sending some of their people to this house as added security. They’re already on their way so I’m going to have to go talk to my brother about this and make sure he curbs his anti-social behavior to a manageable level. Doesn’t help that he’s got those two inbred redneck assistants of his with him right now. I can’t stand those assholes. He’s either going to have to keep them out of sight completely or make them leave…(sigh) Ugh, anyway I’ll be back soon, just make yourself at home.” Lilith closes the door, which you then hear lock and you’re now alone. You sit down on the sofa trying to wrap your head around all this. Never in a million years would you have thought you’d be a prisoner by your ex-boyfriend’s aunt who works for the corporation responsible for all those ads on TV and apparently involves in some seriously shady practices. Makes you think about some of those crackpots that posted conspiracy theories on various sites you read. Turns out some of them weren’t too far from the truth after all. The thing is, you can’t even worry about something of that magnitude. For one thing, you have absolutely no power to do anything about it and second, you’ve got the more pressing concern about what is going to happen to you. While things are going better than you thought they going to go, you’re still not seeing a good end to any of this. Your luck has been up and down this entire week and just when something good seems to happen, something equally bad happens. You don’t trust Lilith completely, no matter how “nice” she’s trying to be. At best Lilith keeps her word and you’re not sick or infected only for her to ultimately execute you “humanely” with shot to your head. You can’t imagine her keeping you alive after telling you her corporation’s secrets like that. Unless of course she thinks you wouldn’t tell anyone and even if you did, who would believe you anyway? The darker picture is of course she said the world was going to change very soon implying a nuclear holocaust like all the GZ ads have been harping on about. Maybe she’s told you because ultimately it isn’t going to matter due to doomsday. If that’s the case, where is that going to leave you? Maybe Lilith will release you alive, but leaving you to fend for yourself in a blasted wasteland of which you don’t fancy your chances. And these are all the best-case scenarios you’re envisioning, because you don’t even want to think about the worst case, which is undoubtedly going to involve you being in more pain than you could ever imagine. You have no more tears for any of this, because you’re spent as far as that’s concerned. You’re still scared of course, but you feel like you’re starting to become numb to very real possibility of death. Doesn’t mean you’re giving up though and you proceed to study your surroundings, taking note of anything you could possibly use as a weapon. You don’t find any secret passages or vents you could crawl around in because that only happens in the movies. Eventually you take a break and lay down on the sofa, which at least is comfortable, you just wish you weren’t wearing a damn hospital gown. You think about turning the TV on, but you figure it will probably just be full of Ground Zero ads. Time passes and eventually you hear the door opening up. At first you figure it’s going to be Lilith, but it’s not. Two dirty looking men open up the door and enter. One of them is huge and has a slackjawed look on his face. He wears overalls that look like they’ve never been washed. The smaller of the two is wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit and trucker’s cap. When he sees you a big grin spreads across his face making him even creepier than the larger one. “Hoo wee! Well look at what we got here! Doc really has been fixing up this place, because that is one sweet piece I tell ya what!” the smaller one exclaims. You can only guess these must be Leslie’s “assistants.” You sit up immediately and try to arrange your gown to cover you as much as possible. “Didn’t mean to startle ya darlin’ but I’m Jed and this here’s my brother Hugo. What’s yer name and what the hell are you doin’ in here?” the smaller one says. “My name’s Suzy, and this is my room. What the hell are YOU two doing in here?” “Whoa, easy there blondie. This is where me and Hugo always go to hang out when we’re on standby as it were. No point in headin’ back ta town right now anyway, since it sounds like the shit’s really hit the fan out there, but never mind all that, what’s all this about this bein’ yer room? You some new live in whore for the Doc to fuck when his snooty sister isn’t putting out?” Jed asks. Jed gets closer towards you meanwhile Hugo hasn’t moved from the entryway. You’re feeling very threatened. “No, I’m Lilith’s guest, now will you please leave my room?” you say. “Lilith’s guest? Wait, you sayin’ you HER whore? Well shit, I like the sound of that even better! So you ever been with a guy at all or are you strictly a pussy licker?” Jed asks with a pretty predatory look in his eyes. “The pair of you better get out of here. Lilith has made it clear she doesn’t want anyone else in here.” You say standing up from the couch. “Oh is that right? Well I ain’t heard nuthin’ about it and I take my orders from the Doc, not his snobby bitch of a sister. So I think you better just settle down blondie. In fact, I think you better start making yourself REAL comfortable.” Jed says and starts fondling his crotch while still approaching you. You’re steadily running out of options. About the only thing you can do now is either threaten them to the point that they back off or beg and hope they take mercy. Either option isn’t likely to succeed. > You beg Antagonizing them even further isn’t going to help; at this point you’re better off trying to beg. “Jed, please. I’d just like you both to leave. Lilith really doesn’t want anyone here and I don’t want anyone to get into trouble.” You say. “Oh don’t worry blondie, ain’t nobody gonna get into any trouble and ain’t nobody gonna get hurt as long as you give in. Hey Hugo get yer big ass in here and, close that fucking door.” Jed says and starts approaching you. This is not a good situation. There is no way you’re going to be able to fight off both of these redneck rapists. You don’t even have a weapon and they’re both bigger than you. You fear the inevitable as Jed is now standing in front of you. He wastes no time in groping your body. Hugo however is still standing in front of the door staring like a gargoyle. “Aww, is little blondie scared? You don’t need to be darlin’. Like I said, me an’ Hugo here are just gonna have us some fun an’ then we’ll be out of yer pretty little hair, well unless I cum in it.” Jed laughs. “Please don’t…” you start to say before Jed firmly grabs your chin with one of his dirty hands. “No. None of that blondie. The only time a whore should open her mouth is when she’s giving head. An’ since you seem to like having it open, you can get to doing just that.” Jed says and then roughly shoves you to your knees. You don’t even look up, you just stare at Jed’s crotch as he starts undoing his zipper because you don’t even want to look at his fucking leering rape face. Jed pulls out his cock and slaps you in the face with it. “Alright, bitch get to suckin! Do a good job cause this is just the beginning and I’m sure you’re lookin’ forward to what I got in store for that pretty little tight ass of yours!” You have no choice. This is happening and you’ve gone beyond feeling scared and you’re now feeling completely and utterly helpless. You get started… Your mind starts to go to another place. Or at least it tries to; the problem is Jed is so fucking repulsive in every way possible; you can’t even at least begin to pretend he’s Bobby or someone else. ANYONE else. Jed is pushing your head and making all sorts of grunting noises and vulgar comments in general. It’s without a doubt the worst feeling in the world and there really are no words to describe how horrible this is. And it’s only going to get worse given the implications that Jed is going to rape you anally. While you’re dwelling on this miserable situation, something in your mind begins to change. The fear is starting to dissipate and you’re starting to get angry and you start to feel less helpless… His dick is in YOUR mouth. You’ve got ALL the fucking power here. This might be suicide, but you can’t just let these assholes violate you anymore than they already have without a fight. You HAVE to do SOMETHING. “Holy fucking shit, Hugo! Blondie here is fucking an amazing cocksucker! I think she’s deep throated the whole…ARGH!” You bite. You bite as hard as you can. Even with Jed punching at your head, you don’t stop biting. You bring a whole new meaning to the phrase lockjaw. Jed by this point is screaming on the floor for his brother to help him. Hugo attempts to pull you off, but all he’s succeeding in doing is contributing to ripping his brother’s dick off due to your firm bite on the now bloody member. You keep grinding and gnashing and the fight is now going completely out of Jed who is now just howling in pain and screaming like a little girl. And at last you manage to bite through, blood fills your mouth and as Hugo pulls you away, you spit Jed’s dick back at him. “I’m the blowjob queen bitch!” you shout and start laughing as blood drips from all over your mouth and face. In between his screaming and holding where his dick once was, he orders Hugo to kill you. Hugo doesn’t waste anytime in squeezing you tightly. You begin to have hard time breathing. Using the back your head you slam into his face several times and while you probably break his nose in the process, Hugo continues with his bear hug and you start to lose consciousness. “(sob)Don’t fucking knock her out, I said fucking kill that goddamn biting bitch! OWWW OHHH (sob) Break her goddamn neck!” Jed screams. Suddenly the door opens up and you see an older man in a bloody lab coat. His hair is completely white and wild looking. This must be Leslie. “What the fuck are you two inbreds doing in here making all this fucking noise?! OH FUCK! You fucktards have really done it! I can’t rely on you two for shit! Hugo drop that fucking bitch now!” Leslie says and pulls a pistol out of his coat pocket. “…(sob) she bit my fuckin’ dick off Doc! She’s gotta die! OWWWWW OHHHH (Sob)” Jed screams. “Yeah, well maybe she will, but this here’s my sister’s patient and you two just fucked with her results. Y’know what, fuck this I’m tired of reasoning with you two.” The Leslie says and points the pistol at Jed. “Now Hugo, you overgrown retard, you kill blondie there, your brother fucking eats a bullet. I can sew your brother’s dick back on, but you gotta let that bitch go cause she’s my sister’s patient, not mine. Now what’s it gonna be?” Hugo just looks on confused while still squeezing the life out of you. “FUCKING JUST DROP THE BITCH HUGO! I NEED MY DICK!” Jed cries. Hugo finally understanding the situation drops you in a heap. You remain on the floor just coughing up dick blood and still trying to catch your breath. “Thank you. Now was that so hard?” Leslie says and then calmly shoots Hugo in the head three times. The big man fortunately falls backwards rather than forward on to you. “NOOOOO!” Jed screams. “What the fuck Doc?! You (Sob) killed my fucking brother! Why?!” “Told you, I was done reasoning with you two assholes. You have proven time and time again to be non-learning animals. Besides, Lilith’s already gonna bitch at me for what you two fucktards did. Might as well do damage control now.” “But you said you’d sew my dick back on if that bitch lived!” “I’m not touching your fucking diseased dick.” Leslie laughs. “Fuck you Doc! FUCK…” Leslie calmly places three rounds in Jed’s head, putting the redneck out of his misery. You just look on in complete shock at what just happened and try stand up. Leslie however kicks you back to the floor. You want to fight, but you’re too weak at this point. Leslie pulls out a syringe and holds you down while stabbing you in the arm with it. Must be the same stuff his sister injected you with yesterday, because it works nearly immediately. “No, I don’t think so blondie. Think you’ve had enough action for one day.” Leslie says as he strokes your hair. “Oh the fun I would have with you, but I guess what ultimately happens to you will be my sister’s call. Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky….SHIT!” Leslie suddenly exclaims when he sees that you’re not falling unconscious, but rather going into violent convulsions. Leslie begins to look through his other coat pocket and pulls out another syringe cursing when he sees it. Meanwhile you’re spitting and coughing up blood. It feels like you can’t breathe and that’s mainly because you can’t. “FUCK! I used the wrong syringe on the bitch! Fuck! Sis is gonna be even more pissed! Shit! Fuck!” Leslies exclaims pacing back and forth. Whatever Leslie’s concerns are about getting yelled at by his sister are nothing compared to the agony you’re going through right now. Your insides feel like they’re on fire and every major organ in your body is shutting down. By the time Lilith gets back to your room, your poisoned bloody corpse, the bodies of two dead rednecks and Leslie’s poor attempt to spin the event so it doesn’t seem like it was his fault are all that remain.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WEDNESDAY You wake up and remembering everything that happened just before you passed out, you attempt to sit up immediately, unfortunately you can’t due to being restrained. Your legs, your arms and even your body are all strapped down on a gurney. You can’t cry out either as you have a ball gag on your mouth. You can make loud “Mmhghm!” sounds but that’s about it. Your clothing has also changed. While you’re not naked, you’re in one of those hospital gowns. You don’t feel sore or anything, so you can only hope you weren’t raped during the time someone was changing your clothes. The fear of what’s going to happen to you is overwhelming. A quick glance around from you position shows that you’re in a plain white room with no windows. There is a light above and a chair and door to your right, but to your left gives you cause for more terror as you see a table full of surgical instruments. A lot of them don’t even look like proper surgical instruments so much as they look like torture devices. There isn’t much you can do except wait and attempt to stop crying though you fail in that endeavor. You just lie there thinking about how you said yesterday that things couldn’t get any worse…and then they did. You think about what you could’ve done differently to have made your life better and most importantly avoid the situation you’re in now. You then think about how at some point, either Lilith, her brother or both are going to come in and start cutting you up and torturing you to death. You’re completely helpless and you wish that someone would just come in and save you from all this. The door suddenly opens and you turn your head hoping that somehow your magical thinking worked, but you only see Lilith walking in with a notebook in hand. “Figured you should be up by now. Sorry to keep you knocked out for so long, but I’m sure you can see it was completely necessary. Couldn’t have you running away or anything.” You turn away from Lilith who then gets closer and stares at your face a moment. “Hmm, you’ve been crying. Natural response I suppose given your situation. Good. (Sigh) I told my brother not to put those in here.” Lilith says taking notice of the surgical instruments and shaking her head. “He probably thought it would be funny to have you even more terrified out of your mind than you already would be. I love Leslie with all my heart, but he really can be an inconsiderate asshole sometimes. Well most of the time really, anyway the main thing is don’t pay any attention to those tools over there. That’s not what I brought you in for.” Lilith puts her notebook on the table with the tools and addresses you again. “Now. I’m going to release your ball gag since I’m sure it’s uncomfortable. However when I do, I must ask you NOT to scream or anything like that. First of all it won’t do any good. Second, it’s terribly annoying. If we’re going to have a positive relationship Suzy, it’s absolutely necessary that you comply with my instructions. Do you understand?” You don’t really have much in the way of choices and resisting her with no way of actually doing anything would probably just result in something bad. You nod your head compliantly and Lilith takes off your ball gag. “Are you going to kill me?” you ask. “Ah the predictable question first. Well, we’re going to get to that and several other questions you might have, but we’re going to be doing this my way. So while I know you’re very nervous and scared, you’re going to just have to wait a while before they get answered. Do you understand?” Once again you nod silently. “Good. Very compliant. We’re getting off on the right foot Suzy. Now then let’s get to some of the more minor concerns you might have had running through your mind while you were laying here.” Lilith pulls the chair over to the table and after moving some of the tools out of the way she sits down, opens up her notebook and begins writing something in it while addressing you. “I want to first alleviate any concerns you might have had about being sexually molested while you were unconscious. I assure you I undressed and dressed you myself. And since I’m not a lesbian you were completely unharmed as far as that goes. I can see one of the obvious reasons that would cause Bobby to be enamored with you though. You’re a very pretty girl with a nice body and it’s obvious just by speaking with him he still loves you despite your break up.” “…you…you spoke with Bobby?” you ask. “Oh yes. Called him up as soon as I got you in the house. Took awhile to reach him, but eventually I did and I proceeded to have a very long conversation with him. I wanted to know more about you and only Bobby could provide those answers what with you being unconscious and all. He told me about how you met, your general personality, what you liked to do, and all of that stuff. When I asked what exactly caused the break up, he seemed to stumble over his words a bit. He claimed that he realized he couldn’t abandon the silly family traditions, but it seemed like there was more to it than that because he kept insisting it was his fault and not yours. As if that was going to change what is going to be going on over here. You want to shed a little light on it Suzy? Please be honest.” “I…I (sniffle) didn’t want to get married to him. I didn’t want to live under the same roof as Diana since she was his ex and she hates me. I suppose…I also wasn’t fond of the idea of having a bunch of babies like he wanted either. Our argument sort of spiraled from there.” You answer. “Hm, interesting. So you wouldn’t consider yourself a domestic woman then. I suppose I can understand that. I certainly wouldn’t want to spend most of my time barefoot and pregnant and my whole life revolving around my man’s needs. I don’t think my brother would like that either. He gets so wrapped up in his experiments that I don’t even see him for days sometimes and he’d probably be homeless and living under a bridge if I wasn’t working.” Lilith chuckles and continues writing. You remain extremely anxious about what’s going to happen to you. “I also can understand not wanting to live with my bitchy niece either. I know my nephew probably didn’t think anything of it, but I also wouldn’t have put it past him to hope for some sort of three way between you all. Good for you, putting your foot down like that.” All you can think is you’d willingly have a three-way with Bobby and Diana if it got you out of this situation. “Anyway when my nephew found out you were over here he practically pleaded for me and his uncle not to kill or harm you in any way. He even said he’d be over to pick you up, but I told him that was completely out of the question since plans were already in motion. Still, I love my nephew and didn’t wish to cause him any suffering so I agreed that you would not come to any harm as long as you followed the rules. So there’s the obvious question answered.” You close your eyes silently thanking Bobby that he spoke up for you. Of course this doesn’t make your fear disappear completely. Far from it, but at least you might have a glimmer of hope now. “With that out of the way, your other questions are probably what is going to be done to you. Well, before I called Bobby, my initial intention was to do some tests and study you since I wanted another subject to observe and I saw an opportunity to grab you when you nearly crashed into me. However, some things have obviously changed, but there is still is opportunity here so I’m going to take advantage of it.” “…what do you mean?” you ask thinking Lilith has decided to completely twist her word to Bobby somehow. “I’m getting to that. As you might’ve noticed most of the folks in town have gone completely nuts. Well there’s a reason for that and you’re going to be one of the few people outside of the higher-ranking Ground Zero personnel to learn about it.” Lilith stops writing to give you her complete attention. “We put an experimental drug in the water supply and that’s what’s causing most people to act the way they’re doing in town. In fact we’ve done this to a lot of places. As bad as what’s going on in town, I imagine it’s even worse in a bigger populated area like Security City.” Lilith says. While you’re still worried about yourself, this bit of information is a little frightening for other reasons. “Wait. What? Why?” you ask. “Well there are very good reasons I assure you, but most of them probably wouldn’t matter to most with any sort of so called ethical concerns on human testing. Indeed I don’t even know all of the answers myself, I’m just a small cog in a big relentless machine. All I can do is tell you this, the world IS going to change very severely and very soon and it’s Ground Zero’s goal to try to save the human race at any cost. Our shelters aren’t the only way we’re doing that.” Lilith says. “But how is putting crazy juice in the water supply doing that?” you ask. “Well, I’m not completely familiar with all the science involved, but it basically makes people more resilient to things like diseases, radiation, and even chemical gases. You know, anything that’s likely to wipe out humanity on a wide scale when our glorious world leaders start pressing buttons. It seems like it increases strength and speed as well. Unfortunately it would seem it has a very negative effect on the mind, but that of course was an unintended side effect. However, if animal testing is anything to go by, those effects should only be temporary.” “But how long do they last?” “With animals? A few weeks, but we never really got to test on humans at least not on a wide scale. There were some individual tests I believe, but those were the earlier stages of the drug and the results of those weren’t very positive. Ground Zero wanted to pick a populated area to do testing on years ago to hammer out all the problems quicker, but we had an agreement with government, which kept dragging its damn feet as usual on things. It didn’t help that GZ was also temporarily burdened with some incompetent leadership for a while so we didn’t get to do any of this until the last minute and now this is the result. Don’t get me started on the faulty elevator problems in most of the shelters…” Lilith at this point shakes her head and runs her fingers through her hair as if dismayed with how things have turned out. As she’s doing this, a horrible conclusion comes to you. “Wait…am I going to go crazy too? I drank mostly bottled water!” you say. “Yes, a lot of people do these days, but most people still bathe regularly, brush their teeth and such and all that is still enough even if you’re not drinking straight from the tap. As for if you’re going to go crazy, well that’s a matter of perspective. Given what I know about you, I have to say from a professional perspective you’re not exactly a beacon of sanity Suzy, but then who of us really is right? If you were worried that you’re going to start going into a violent fit of rage, I’d have to say I don’t think you are since you haven’t already. The drug doesn’t seem to be affecting everyone in town the same way for some reason. Not sure why, but again that’s why I’m keeping you around for observation. You’re going to be my control subject as it were.” “What does that mean?” you ask. “What it essentially means is as long as you cooperate and don’t try to escape, you’ll be well taken care of. I’ll ask you questions, maybe do a few non-invasive tests and that’s about it. If it seems you’re completely fine, I guess we’ll move on from there. For now though I think you should have better accommodations don’t you? This room is rather spartan, I’m going to take you to a new one. Now, I could call my brother in here or just wheel you to it still strapped to the gurney, but I’d rather NOT do that Suzy. I want our relationship to be a trusting one. So, I’m going to release you from your straps, you’ll follow me and you WILL NOT try to escape or anything like that. Do you understand?” Of course you’re going to say yes to Lilith, no matter what, but your intentions are another matter. While Lilith seems like a reasonable lady, she’s still a Morningstar and all that entails from what you know of that fucked up family. She might not be one of the chaos goddess worshipping brainwashed cultist ones, but she’s obviously still not concerned with the value of human life and the only thing that’s saved you is having a past relationship with Bobby and his continued feelings for you. She doesn’t look tough, of course looks can be deceiving, but you’re pretty desperate and you REALLY want to leave. When she releases you, you could probably easily grab one of those surgical instruments and hold her hostage until you took her car and got out of this place. You’ve no idea where you’d go, but anywhere would be better. > You make an attempt to escape You aren’t going to stick around to be someone’s lab rat only to probably get disposed of later. And you know enough about the Morningstar family that they’re all a bunch of damn psychos at their core. You need to make your escape now. Lilith undoes your straps and you’re soon free. You sit up, stretch and then make out like you’re about to fall. “Oh shit.” You say and Lilith quickly comes to your aid to prevent you from “falling.” “Whoa, easy there, you o…” Lilith starts to say and then you elbow her in the face. Lilith falls to the floor and you grab a particularly sadistic looking knife from the table. Lilith is remarkable quick to recover because by the time you’ve done all this, she’ already run to the door and opened it. “LESLIE!” she shouts before you manage to grab her hair and put the knife to her throat. “Don’t move. I don’t want to kill you, but I will to get out of here.” You warn. “This was a very stupid thing to do Suzy. If you’d cooperated you would’ve gotten out of here in a few days at most. Now you’ve sealed your own death certificate.” “Quiet! Now I’m taking your vehicle, so I’m going to need your keys. After I grab those I’ll be leaving and if YOU cooperate you won’t get hurt. So you better tell me where we’re going and NOT shout for help again!” You say. “(Sigh) Fine. I have my keys with me in my pocket. We just have to go to the vehicle. This way.” Lilith says and the pair of you leave the room. You constantly look around thinking you’re going to see Lilith’s brother coming around a corner, but so far nothing. Lilith tells you which way to go and eventually you’re heading up the stairs. It’s at this point Lilith starts talking shit again. “You’re not getting away with this you know. My brother’s going to stop you before you can escape and when that happens…well you think things were going bad in your life before? You’re going to soon learn that they’re going to be infinitely worse.” “Yeah well I haven’t seen him yet. I guess he didn’t hear you. Probably too busy with his experiments or whatever fucked up shit you two do here. Christ, your family is fucked up.” Lilith laughs. “Yes, and that apparently that didn’t stop you from dating one of us.” She says. “That was different!” you snap. “Of course it was. Extreme situations tend to create unusual pairings. Such as the one you and Bobby had. Although I think it was more unusual for him rather than for you given how much of a slave he is to some of my family’s sillier traditions.” You get to the ground floor. “Bobby saved you like some damsel in distress from your mean old serial killer uncle. Makes sense you’d latch on to him the way you did. In a way you’re very much like one of those fairly tale princesses locked away in a tower, except in your case, you locked yourself away in your basement. Bobby was your Prince Charming.” You continue to ignore Lilith’s ramblings. “Now of course you still KNEW what Bobby was, but you willingly looked past that. Why? Was it love? No, even if you thought it was at first. If it was love you would’ve married him in his compound instead of being here. Was it low self esteem? Possibly. But even as introverted as you are, you’re still a very pretty girl and you have to know that on some level…I mean even YOU aren’t that stupid.” “Will you shut up?” “Not to mention you seem to be fine by yourself. Even Bobby mentioned that you seemed to prefer your own company when you weren’t with him. So where does that leave us Suzy? Why would you willingly date someone from a family as fucked up as ours? Do you know the answer?” “Shut the hell up, I don’t care! Just tell me where the front fucking door is!” you exclaim. “Next two rooms to the right.” Lilith is quiet again and you make it to the front door. Still no sign of Leslie, so far so good. When you open the door, Lilith once again starts getting chatty. “Since our time together is almost at an end, I guess I’ll tell you the answer. You went with Bobby because deep down underneath all that apathy you’re just as fucked up as the rest of us.” “That’s not even remotely true.” “Oh, just because you were merely looking away from my nephew’s murderous deeds, that somehow makes you less fucked up? That’s classic enabling behavior, not to mention your co-dependency during your relationship with Bobby. Hell, before Bobby came into your life, you were pretty detached from the real world and lived in your own made up reality anyway. I’d say under a different sort of extreme circumstance, you’d easily turn into a killer like your uncle especially since from what I’ve heard the rest of your own family isn’t exactly well adjusted either. Didn’t one of them kill his whole family before shooting himself?” You press the blade closer to Lilith’s throat to the point that it draws blood. “You keep talking and you’re going to find that THIS extreme situation is the one that turns me into my fucking uncle, so keep fucking talking and you’re going to be the first fucking victim!” Your threat finally shuts Lilith up. You make your way to the truck, still looking around Leslie, but you don’t see anything. Eventually you get to the truck. “Alright, very slowly grab the keys out of your pocket. Drop them in my other hand and I’ll release you.” Lilith complies with your orders and as soon as you have the keys you toss her to the ground hard. You then open up the door and suddenly feel a hand grab one of your upper ankles and then a sharp blade cutting into where the tendon would be. You scream out in pain and fall on the driveway pavement. Then another hand grabs your other ankle and you feel a blade cut into your other tendon. Meanwhile Lilith has recovered and taken away the knife you dropped. She stands over you while you scream in pain. An older man with completely white and wild hair crawls out from under the truck. He wears a bloody lab coat and goes over to Lilith and asks if she’s okay and remarks on her neck, she nods that she is fine. You roll over and try to stand, but find it’s quite impossible with your tendons sliced the way they are. You’re bleeding all over the place and the fear of what’s coming next is overwhelming your physical agony. “Told you my brother would help me. I knew he would. He’s my Prince Charming after all. Hm. I suppose because it’s drilled into our heads when we’re little that on some level we all like to be rescued. A big strong man charging in to save the day and all that chivalrous patriarchal nonsense, but on some level it’s still sort of hot.” Lilith says and then gives her brother a long kiss and hugs him. You try to crawl away, since you can’t even stand at this point, but you don’t get far. “Too bad nobody’s going to rescue you now though. Should’ve killed me instead of holding back…but then that’s always been your problem isn’t it? Squandering your potential.” You hear Lilith say and then what follows is a hefty kick to the back of your head. You black out. When you wake up you’re firmly strapped to another table completely naked. This isn’t a regular surgical table though since your legs are spread apart. “Oh…no…NO…NO!” you start to say and try to struggle free. Your voice calls attention to Leslie who was currently hovering over another body on a different table. “Oh good, you’re up. I wanted you to be before I started. My sister said it was imperative that you not be unconscious for whatever I have in store for you.” You start screaming for help in vain and Leslie goes over to you and starts stroking your head. “Now she did suggest that one of the things I should do is hand you over to a couple of my redneck assistants and let them have fun with you, but no. After you harmed my sister’s lovely neck with a blade, I think I should have ALL the honors. I’m going to do things. Bad things and I’m going to have fun doing it and nobody is going to stop me. We’ll start off slow.” Leslie says patting your head. You begin to cry and for whatever reason in your grasp for hope in this hopeless situation you call out for Bobby. “Bobby?” Leslie chuckles and then moves over to the part of the table where your legs are spread open and he gets between them while undoing his belt. “I’m afraid he’s not here to help you blondie. I will say that I’ve never considered this before, but since this is a unique situation… is my dick bigger than my nephew’s? I guess you can be the judge.” What Leslie proceeds to do to you next is horrible and degrading. Then it gets worse. And worse. And worse. The next day, what’s left of you (which isn’t much) is cooked and wrapped up for sandwiches. What isn’t used for lunchmeat is tossed in the trash. And that is the story of you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re sick of everyone trying to control your life. You weren’t putting up with it with Bobby, and you’re sure as hell not going to put up with it with Jake. “Are you just assuming I can’t carry the boxes around because I’m a woman?” you ask. “What? No, that’s not it…” Jake starts to say before you interrupt. “You just said a little thing like me doesn’t want to lug boxes around like I’m some helpless damsel.” “Look, as a businessman it’s my job to match up potential employees with what they’re probably going to be best at. The fact is you ARE on the smaller side, not to mention you’ve just told me you’ve never done a hard day’s work in your life. So yeah, I don’t think you’re strong enough to do the job and not bitch about it or even get that much work done. I’d rather have you out here working the register.” “You just want me out here as eye candy for the customers.” You reply. “Jesus fucking Christ, I didn’t realize I was hiring a FemiNazi. Are you telling me you want to move boxes?” Jake says in exasperation. “I’m not a goddamn FemiNazi and no I don’t want particularly want to move boxes, but my point is you just took the damn choice out of my hands and made a stupid assumption that I couldn’t do the job due to your own narrow-mindedness.” Jack exhales again and rubs his face. “Are you kidding fucking me? You’re arguing about a job you don’t even want? In fact, you don’t even want THIS job! You know how many employers would’ve thrown you out with that sort of shitty work ethic and you haven’t even started yet! I’m fucking helping YOU out by hiring you in the first place with absolutely no skills or experience and you’re giving me shit already! It’s not like I’m grabbing your ass and telling you to suck my dick! I’m trying to be a nice guy here.” “Given with how you’re speaking to me, you’re not really all that fucking nice.” You respond. “Alright, I’ve had it. Get the fuck out of my shop. You probably think because you’re pretty you can just get what you want well not this time bitch. I got enough shit to deal with, get the fuck out! Get out! Get out! Get out!” Jake yells and points at the door. “FUCKING ASSHOLE!” you shout as loud as you can and storm out the shop. Well that could’ve went better. As you walk to your car, several nerd types are just now approaching the store. While they’re probably the sort that would’ve been staring at you all day if you’d been working at the shop, now they’re actively avoiding you since you’re mumbling and swearing to yourself like a crazy person. Your swearing continues when you’re actually in the car. You bang on the steering wheel several times in frustration. “I hate my fucking life!” you cry out and begin to sob. Life just isn’t fair Suzy and lately for you it’s only been getting harder. All you wanted to do is hang out in your basement, hiding out from the rest of the world. Now your forced to deal with all this shit that you’re just no good at and when you do try to assert yourself, you fail at that too. If you were fighting depression before, you’re currently getting your ass kicked by it. It’s a good thing you aren’t suicidal, but the thought is starting to cross your mind. After taking a moment to pull yourself together, you think about what you need to do next. “Okay…I need to go back home. Need to pack up all the most important shit I have and head over to Julie’s house.” You say to yourself. With this new goal in mind, you pull out of the comic shop parking lot and intend on making your way back home. You don’t get a couple blocks before you soon discover the way you came is barricaded due to an accident or something. There are ambulances and police cars blocking the way and you realize you’re going to have to go a different direction. You go down some side streets and find out that they currently aren’t much better and in one instance actually worse as a bunch of people have made a makeshift barricade with overturned cars and some of them are shooting at each other. You get the hell out of the area as fast as you can before someone starts shooting at you. After having to drive around avoiding barricades, downed power lines, overturned vehicles and general chaos, you begin to get even more frustrated since it’s starting to look like you can’t even get home. Or at least not by driving there and given the shit that’s going on, you’ll be damned if you’re going to get out of your vehicle to walk home. “Goddamn it, I just want to get the fuck home! Fuck it, I’m just going to go to Julie’s now…” you shout to yourself. It’s a further drive, but considering Julie lives in a better area, you’re hoping that maybe things won’t be as bad driving in that direction. You soon find out that isn’t the case as you’re desperately trying to avoid getting into an accident every five minutes. “Seriously what the hell is going on with this town? Everyone is acting like an asshole even more than usual.” You say and you’re starting to wonder if there’s something in the water. Turning on the radio doesn’t help, since you’re not getting much on it save for those annoying Ground Zero ads. “Come on, there’s gotta be something about…SHIT!” you say when look up from the radio and are just in time to see a bus turning left and about to hit you. You swerve immediately to avoid being hit, but unfortunately you slam the car into another speeding car, which crashes into your passenger side at full force. You are knocked around as your car goes spinning across the street. It all happens so fast you don’t even have time to panic or feel the fear of possibly dying right now. A large black truck slams on its breaks in an attempt to not hit you, which it succeeds in doing, only for your car to be stopped by lamppost instead. Thanks to airbags never working correctly when they should, you hit your head on the steering wheel hard and while you don’t quite knock yourself out you definitely scramble your brains a bit and you’re feeling pretty dazed. While you’re still recovering, you suddenly hear knocking on your window and a voice. “Hey, miss. Miss? You alright?” You slowly look out your window and see a woman wearing glasses and dressed in business attire staring back at you. Well actually you’re sort of seeing two of her and the image is still a little blurry, but that’s the size of it. You unhook your seat belt and get out of the car wincing in a bit of pain as you do so. The businesswoman helps you from falling since you’re still wobbly. “You’re lucky to be alive, I’ve seen a shitload of crashes like yours since I’ve been driving through town today. I only just managed to put on my breaks when I saw your car spinning out of control like that.” she remarks. You don’t really answer her; you just turn to look at the car, which is totaled. Besides part of the front being wrapped around a now leaning lamppost, the passenger side is trashed and you certainly aren’t going to be driving anywhere soon due to the front wheel area being caved in and the axel broken. You just look at the wreckage of the car silently and then start to giggle at the situation. Soon the giggling becomes full blown laughter and the woman that helped you out of the car gives you a strange look. “Are you alright?” she asks again. “Oh I’m just peachy! This has been a wonderful day!” you say laughing. “Do you know your name and where you’re at?” “Yeah, my name is mud and I’m in a world of shit.” You say still laughing. “Um, well you seem to be having a bit of difficulty balancing and you’ve got a nasty bruise on your forehead. You might have a concussion and given your laughter you might even be in some state of shock. I think it would be best if you had some medical attention.” You look at the woman that’s trying to help you and begin to stop laughing quite as hard and your mind starts heading back to earth again. Your head and body remind you of the pain you’re actually still in. “Yeah…yeah…maybe. Shit, my head does hurt… I guess…can you drive me to the hospital?” you ask. “The hospital? Yeah, that place is sort of fucked right now. Even if we could get to it in this mess of chaos, the place has been overflowing with patients and you might be waiting a long time, if they get to you at all. I’m not sticking around in this town any longer than I need to. However, my brother is a doctor with his own private practice just outside town; he can probably check you out for free. It won’t be any problem since I’m going to him right now.” The woman says. Well it’s either head somewhere with a complete stranger or try to make it to the hospital (or wherever) in your current condition. > You decline the offer You might not be in the best condition right now, but you’re not going off with some stranger. You don’t know who this woman is and with your luck she could be some psycho. “No, I’m okay. I’ll make it on my own.” You say. “Are you sure? You really don’t look well.” The woman says. “I said I’m fine.” You say starting to get agitated. “Alright, alright, just trying to help. I’ll go.” The woman says and steps away. As the woman goes back to her large black truck, you survey the immediate area and see that your accident isn’t being paid much attention to. Other vehicles are merely driving by and nearby onlookers lose interest. You look over at the other vehicle on the far end of the street that slammed into you. The front end of that one is trashed and the driver has gone half way through the windshield. He’s a bloody mess and isn’t moving. The first thing you need to do is get your bearings, because you don’t even know where the hell you’re at right now. You walk away from your vehicle, nearly falling a couple times until you lean up against the side of a building. You really feel woozy. You’re starting to wonder if you shouldn’t have taken the woman up on her offer. You try to ask a few people that are nearby where you are and they just brush you off. None of them offer to help you and one of them actually snarls like some sort of animal. The people in this town really have lost their damn minds. Since you don’t know where you’re at and you’re not exactly thinking clearly, you employ a simple plan of just going in a straight direction until you start to recognize something. It’s about all you can do at this point. Along the way, you get to see up close just how bad the town is getting. And it’s even scarier now that you’re not even within the safety of a vehicle. You attempt to maintain a low profile and hasten your pace, but it’s a little difficult to do since you’re limping along. Eventually you see a park a block ahead of you and instantly recognize it. It’s actually the same place you met Bobby once upon a time. You sort of wish he was here right now. You think you can make it to Julie’s from the park, that would probably be your best bet since you were told the hospital was sort of screwed and going home is probably a longer walk. She’s probably got more than enough painkillers there anyway. With this new goal in mind, you press onwards toward the park thinking you just might make this after all. Then several gunshots ring out. You don’t even know from what direction, you just duck behind a nearby-parked car. You hear shouting and shooting. You peek your head up just enough to see three armed men in animal masks running towards your direction, but shooting in the other. You duck your head back down when you see one catch a bullet to the head. From your cover, you hear another one cry out and the falling of a body. The third one however jumps over the hood of the car you’re hiding behind… You freeze as the bunny masked man stares directly at you. “You’ll do.” He says and grabs you. You try to resist, but after a couple pistol-whips to your face, you become more limp and he picks you up. “Alright! You pigs better not fuckin’ shoot or I’ll blow this yellow haired bitch’s brains out.” He shouts holding you up in front of him and pointing his pistol at your head. In your blurry vision you can see several police officers in front of you with their weapons drawn. You’ve got the masked man shouting near your ear, the cops are shouting back and you just wish you weren’t here anymore. The past few days have been just plain shitty and they’re obviously not going to get any better. With your luck, you’ll get shot and not even die right away because that’s certainly how this week has been going. Well not if you can help it. You’ve still got some control over your destiny. “Just shoot the motherfucker.” You utter and start squirming causing the criminal to start grabbing you tighter. “Shut the fuck up bitch!” he shouts. “Just shoot you fucking pigs! Look at this shithole town, do you think anyone’s really going to question you if a civilian gets caught in the crossfire anymore? Just fucking shoot!” The cops at this point briefly look at each other and nod, they aren’t even telling you to calm down. Maybe they already planned to just shoot anyway. Good. “Fuck this!” the masked man shouts and starts firing on the cops, who return fire immediately. You’re hit several times during their shoot out with the masked man and finally something goes your way, you die instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>MONDAY "And Suzy is the winner of the world hot dog eating championship! Let's all hear it for our little blonde small town girl!" The announcer shouts which is followed by a roaring crowd. Not even feeling full, you wipe the mayonnaise off your lips, graciously stand up and bow for your adoring fans. The grossly fat dude on your right looks at you in disbelief and then turns away to puke in a bucket. Meanwhile the little Asian dude on your left just shakes his head wondering how the hell you could've beaten him. "I don't understand it...all my training. I glanced over at you during the contest...you...you were barely even chewing! How?" He asks. "Oh just natural talent at swallowing hot dogs I suppose." You reply humbly and wink at the audience, which continues to praise you. While you're blowing kisses at your fans, the announcer of the contest speaks again. "And as an extra special reward, our glorious host of this event, Misty will be coming soon to congratulate our winner in person. This hasn't happened in decades! Perhaps even centuries! It's all just so exciting! Oh wait...I think that's Misty now!" At this point the wind begins to pick up significantly, which is amazing since this contest was taking place in an indoor stadium. The audience seems to be going even wilder, but at this point you're getting a little concerned. Your concern becomes fear when the fat bastard to your right melts into a gory pile of goo, the Asian guy's head gets really large like in one of those anime cartoons and he screams before running away shouting about Tokyo getting destroyed by a giant lizard. You look back at the audience and see that they've begun stripping off their clothes and embracing each other in the biggest orgy you've ever seen. (Even larger than that porno you watched one time) The roof suddenly comes off the stadium revealing a dark sky with a jet black swirling hole above. "And here comes Misty folks! It's absolutely...GLORIOUS." The disembodied voice says as its pitch changes to demonic tone. You can't run, you can't even move, you just stare at this unearthly sight like a deer in the headlights completely frozen. You see the flash of a couple red glowing orbs in the black hole above you and then the wind picks you up and you're being pulled towards it. "COME TO ME SUZY. COME TO US. COME. COME. COME..." A deep voice echoes all around you which is backed up by the audience who are chanting along with having their orgy. You vainly try to struggle, but there isn't much you can do accept uselessly flail about in midair as you are slowly enveloped by darkness. Even when you try to scream, you make no sound, in fact all your senses go numb and everything goes black. You are then awakened by the ringing of your phone. At first you look around briefly still wondering if you're still levitating towards a black hole, but you breathe a sigh of relief that it was all just a dream. However, even though you're wide-awake, you still feel shaken up. Something about that dream seemed really unnerving and you usually aren't one to put much stock into your dreams. The ringing of the phone takes priority before dream analysis though, so after fumbling with it a bit you answer it. "Hey I've been trying to get a hold of you. We're you still asleep?" Bobby asks. "Yeah, are you outside the house already?" You answer. "Nah, I'm on my way over. I hope you're packed and ready to go though, because it's nuts out here. I know you don't tend to leave the house much, but if you've been out lately, you'd know it's been getting fucking crazy in town. Seriously, you'll see how fucked up it is out there when we drive through town. The cops are everywhere, groups of people are rioting, like I said, it's a mess. Okay, I need to focus on the road, there's a meat wagon picking up some bodies off the road. I'll see you soon. Love you." Bobby says and hangs up. As you take a quick shower before getting ready to leave, you think more about your strange dream. You wonder if it was some sort of subconscious thing that your mind was telling you that this move is a bad idea. You have to admit, you still are feeling very unsure about it, especially now that Bobby has told you that you're moving into an isolated compound with not just his immediate family, but a bunch of other family that could be even crazier. Still, this could just be mostly anxiety of leaving a place where you've traditionally always felt safe and lived most of your life combined with a freaky dream. Bobby did say you could leave if you weren't comfortable there, so you're trying to not to focus on the possible negatives. You try to calm your nerves the old fashioned way and think about Bobby the entire time. Exiting the shower, getting dressed and grabbing your packed bags, you finally leave your basement. You packed as much as you could, hopefully you can return to get the rest later. You head upstairs and you're not waiting long before you hear a knock on the door. Upon answering it, you see Bobby who embraces you with a hug and a kiss. "By Tiamat, I've missed your body against mine." Bobby says caressing you all over. "I never would have guessed. I have missed your touch as well though Bobby. Let me just get my bags." You turn around and bend over to grab your bags and that's when Bobby grabs you around the waist and if it wasn't for the fabric separating the two of you, he'd also be inside you. It's startling enough that you probably would've lost you balance had Bobby not been holding on to you so tightly. "What the hell? Sheesh Bobby, I nearly fell forward on my face!" "You wouldn't have, I got you. Mmm, I just can't help myself, I just..." At this point Bobby starts kissing on your neck and groping you. "Bobby, Bobby, stop. My brother Peter is still here in the connected garage. Last thing I need is for him to hear us and then suddenly walk in on me getting plowed from behind. Besides, didn't you say it's getting crazy out there? Shouldn't we be getting the hell out of town?" "Yeah, it's wonderfully chaotic out there. Like Tiamat herself has blessed this town. It really started putting me in the mood and then seeing you...well how can I not want to make love to you in the midst of all this chaos?" Bobby at this point is trying pull your shirt off over your head and you hear the sound of a zipper being unzipped, though with as excited as he is, you dare say it could just impale you through his pants. He's grunting, slobbering all over your neck and sniffing your hair and...well he REALLY wants you right now. This isn't really what you had in mind and something about the way Bobby is behaving is a bit...animalistic. He's never been that way in your other intimate encounters with him. Well not excessively so at any rate. Also, you HAVE been fighting for awhile, and it's sort of presumptuous of him to just think you're going to spread your legs immediately because you're on good terms again. Then again, this is sort of turning you on right now, and it has been awhile for you. (By something not battery operated or your own hands at least) > You stop Bobby You might be Bobby’s girlfriend, but you’re not his fuck toy. You’re not going to just give in because he happens to be horny right now. “Bobby, fucking STOP! Seriously! I’m not in the mood!” you say and pull yourself away from his arms. At first he look hurt by your rejection, then his face turns to one of anger. “What the fuck? I thought we were back together?!” Bobby exclaims. “Exactly! We JUST got back together! I mean we got a lot of shit to talk about before we can just hop in the sack again!” “Are you fuckin’ kidding…Suzy I just told you that you don’t need to worry about Diana if that’s what you’re still on about!” “It’s not just about her, but that’s certainly part of it. It’s about not treating me like some glory hole because your dick’s hard!” “Suzy, you know that’s not even the fucking case. And since when are you not into me being affectionate with you? Shit, you were probably splittin’ the kitten and thinking about me before I even came over here! Now maybe YOU can turn your feelings on and off, but I genuinely missed you! Excuse me if I want to express that in a physical way!” “Bobby, I can’t turn my feelings on and off, and this isn’t one sided. I missed you too, but we still have things to work out before we can just continue as normal.” At this point Bobby rubs his hands over his face. “(Sigh) You know what…fine. I’m not arguing with you. Play your little game. Let’s just get your shit and get over to the compound.” Bobby’s obviously mad about not getting any sex from you, but at least he isn’t pointing out how you should “give it up” because he’s helping you out or something similar. Bobby grabs some of your bags and you grab the rest and the pair of you leave out the front door. Bobby silently loads your bags in the van and the pair of you gets in equally as silent. You break up the silence by mentioning how crazy the town seems as you drive through it. And it is pretty crazy. You’re seeing police cars, fire trucks, ambulances and large groups of people fighting. This has to be the liveliest this town has ever been. “Wow, you weren’t kidding about it being nuts out here.” You say. “Yeah.” Bobby says. You don’t say anymore since it seems like he’s content on sulking, but then he surprises you. “Look, I’m sorry for being an aggressive asshole back there. I just got overly excited I guess.” Bobby says. “Well I suppose I can’t blame you, I am pretty hot.” You say which causes a smile between the both of you. “And I want to say, I’m really glad you’re helping me out by letting me move in with you.” You say. “Don’t even mention it. I mean I would’ve wanted you to move in sooner…well anyway it’s probably best we’re doing this now. This compound is a lot bigger. You’ll be happy to know you can have perfect solitude to yourself and not be bothered by anyone.” “Nice.” you respond. “And you’re right, we probably do have a lot to talk about and we can do that and address all your concerns when we get there. We’ll work everything out.” Bobby says and smiles again with an optimistic tone. For a moment there’s another pause of silence and you think about how Bobby is a pretty great boyfriend in the scheme of things. So you come to a decision. “So…you want a blowjob?” you ask. “What?” Bobby says being caught completely off guard. “Well I can see from here you’re fidgeting with your man parts every two seconds while driving. That either means you got some severe issues with your underwear or you’re still horny.” “My underwear is fine.” “Well that pretty much leaves one option. So you want one or not?” “I always want a blowjob, but now? I mean the streets are pretty fucking crazy right now and I’m trying to concentrate on the road.” “Well you’re not concentrating completely on the road now, because you’re still groping yourself.” You say. “What about all that stuff about not being a fuck toy?” Bobby asks. “Oh that was when you all over me, this is different because it’s my idea.” You say. “…I’m not even going to argue with your female logic, I’m just going to say yes.” Bobby responds. “Smart boy.” You say with a smile and slowly slide over to Bobby and start unzipping his pants. Fortunately there’s enough room for your head so you aren’t going to be constantly hitting the back of it against the steering wheel. Considering Bobby’s pretty ready as soon as you pull it out, you get right to it and start doing what…well one of the many things Bobby loves you for. You focus on the job at hand and you can hear Bobby making some sounds of enjoyment as you really start to get into it. Any other time, this probably would’ve been a nice little thing for Bobby and probably a way for you to gain leverage in the next disagreement the pair of you would have inevitably had in a future about something. Blowjobs are the keystone to any successful relationship after all. However this probably wasn’t the best time to showcase your dick sucking skills. As you’re deep throating Bobby into ecstasy, he’s having an incredibly hard time paying as much attention to the road. Normally he probably wouldn’t have been an issue in this normally sleepy town, but with as crazy as the streets are right now, he doesn’t see the fire truck barreling down the side street and smashing right into his side Bobby’s van is hit with great force and actually topples over twice. In the process you end up biting Bobby’s dick off and choking on it. Bobby is somewhat lucky in that he was knocked unconscious on impact, but he’s not going to survive long due to several severe wounds and that’s not even including his dick getting bit off. You’re also in no condition to even move now due to several broken bones, and your last moments are gasping for breath with a dismembered dick lodged in your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are Ben Higgins, a person of no consequence living in the town of Van Hove. The town was large but not big enough to be a city, not that it matted to you since your world is mainly your home and the small yard around it. For most of your life the idea of going out into the world made you uncomfortable, along with the idea of social interaction. Of course when the situation called for it, like getting food or mailing a letter at the post office, you could handle it no problem, but you found it joyless and were glad when it was over. In addition you rarely watched TV or even the news on the internet, unless it was happening on your property it didn't affect you or at least that's what you believe. As for money you work from home on your computer fixing problems on other people's computers via remote desktop connections. The company you work for pays enough so you have enough food and pay the bills. What is most important is that they leave you alone while you work. Your little sister Victoria says you do want to go out and do more, but you're afraid. Victoria is your main source of social interaction and the only person who have any real connection to. Several years ago, your parents died in a car crash and Victoria has been living with you ever since. The two of you get along for the most part, you have the same squabble that all siblings have but you genuinely care for each other. It's summer now and in the fall Victoria is leaving for college, which is going to leave you more alone than ever. Oh sure, she is going to visit and stay here between semesters, but you know this is the beginning of her going off to forge her own path and living her own life, something you never got around to doing. Alas you are happy for her and would never want to hold her back. Certainly you would not want her to live the same dull and somewhat depressing existence you have. You do wonder if she is right and you do want to go out in the world and make friends but the fear is simply more than you can handle, while giving up and crawling back into bed is just too easy. If Victoria is right then what exactly are you afraid of? Not being able to fit in, or perhaps it's the shear unpredictably of life. It doesn't make a difference as you have no plans on changing your lifestyle in the foreseeable future. You wake up late one morning, planning on spending the day working, you head into the narrow hallway and into the kitchen. The kitchen is cramped and needs to be cleaned soon, as you brush crumbs off the kitchen table you notice something is off. It's relatively quiet, normally when you get up Victoria is making noise doing one thing or another. She can't still be asleep, she was always an early bird, maybe she is feeling ill, you decided to check on her as you head back into the hallway and knock on her bedroom door. "Vic, you alright?" You call out while knocking. No response, you open the door just a tad to peek in and see her bed is empty. After this discovery you head back into your room and grab your cell phone off your dresser. There are no text messages or voicemail, Victoria always leaves one when she heads out. You send her text asking where she is. Several minutes pass and there is no reply. Victoria is glued to that phone and she always responds quickly, even though it's usual a text to stop bugging her. You begin to worry, but perhaps you're being overprotective. Your sister is an adult and unlike you has a life, although this is a big departure from her usual behavior. Her best friend is Moira Estacado, she owns the bar and restaurant "Moira's" located in the center of town. Maybe she would know where your sister is, or you could search Victoria's room, there might be something there you could find. > You go to Moira's Moira Estacado is Victoria's best friend and a mother figure to her since your mother died. She's a bit older then Victoria which made her instantly cool in your sister's eyes. The fact that she owned a bar and restaurant just increased the cool factor. Personally, you can't stand her, she's obnoxious, annoying and in general a pain. Vic tries to explain that Moira likes to tease and it's just harmless fun, but you aren't convinced. Still if there is someone who would know where sister is it's her. You leave your house and get into your car noticing that the rust on the hood is beginning to spread. A bit of drive later you arrive at Moira's, it's still early, but you know she will be there. Moira is very dedicated to the bar and restaurant, always making sure it is running smoothly and her workers aren't slacking off. She spends as much time there as you spend secluded in your house. There is plenty of parking as it's too soon for the lunch crowd. After parking your car near the front you head in and see the waiter and hostess talking to each other, not expecting a customer so soon after opening. They seem a bit puzzled by your presence and attempt to interact with you, but you're focused on asking to Moira about Victoria and ignore them. You spot her at the bar cleaning a glass, her shoulder length red hair makes her stand out easily. She notices you approaching and a mischievous smile appears on her face. "Well look who decided to crawl out from under a rock," Moira greeted. Her attitude was already getting under your skin, but you had to see if she knew about Victoria. > You say "Hello Moira, nice to see you" "Hello Moira, nice to see you," You manage to say without showing how annoyed you are at her greeting. "Wow, who are you and what have you done with Ben?" Moira responded, getting you more annoyed. "I mean not only did you leave your house, but you're talking without sounding like a dick." "Look, I can't find Victoria, can you tell me where is she, she's not answering her phone and I just want to make sure she's alright." "Will you relax, she's probably still at Steve's house, they left here together last night." "Who the hell is Steve?" "You mean you don't know, wow just wow, Victoria always said you were a bit obvious to things, but I didn't know it was to the point where she can date a guy for a month and you remain completely clueless." The mention of Victoria having a boyfriend caught you off guard. You're pretty sure Victoria never mentioned him, maybe she was worried you'd get upset or maybe simply she never told you because you never asked. Are you really that withdrawn? Now is not the best time to worry about this, it's better stay focused on finding her. "Are you sure she's there?" You ask. "I'm not positive but it makes sense, last night Victoria was here for a bit then Steve came and picked her up, I assume she spent the night there since she isn't at your house," Moira explains. "Why would she spend the night there?" "Jesus, are you really that socially inept, do I really have to explain why she would spend the night at her boyfriend's house?" You ponder for a second and then as the realization hits you, a look of disgust appears on your face. > You ask where Steve lives "Please, I need to know where Steve lives so I can check on Vic," You plead. "Alright, since you're actually making an effort to be pleasant, he lives on 48 Kerr Road, but you didn't here that from me," Moira reveals. "Thanks Moira," you say as you quickly head out. You get into your car and drive off to Kerr Road. You know where it is since you use it to reach the grocery store in town. As you approach the house, you notice there is a car in the driveway blocking any other car from using it. In addition there is no parking on this street, forcing you to go to the supermarket, use their parking lot and then walking several blocks back to the house. You get quite annoyed of how complicated this is becoming but you need to make sure everything is OK with Victoria. When you're back on Kerr Road. You walk up Steve's house and ring the doorbell. A few minutes go by with no response, as you go to ring the bell again, you notice that near the door knob are scratch marks. Looking close you see that the wooden frame surrounding the door is damaged near the knob and the lock is broken, somebody had broken in. Worried about your sister you rush into the house. "Victoria!" You shout but there is no response. As you run down the foyer you notice out of the corner of your eye someone sitting in a lounge chair in a room to the right. You walk in to talk to this man when you notice that his throat is slit and a "W" is carved into their chest. You need to get out of here now! > You run out front door In a panic you run back into the foyer and head out the front. At the same time the police have arrived and quickly get out of their cars to draw their guns on you. "Get the fuck on the ground!" One screams at you. They completely ignore you as you try to explain what happened and that you didn't kill the man in there. They handcuff you quickly and place you in the back of one of the cruisers. You later learn that the dead man is Steve, Victoria's boyfriend and spend the next several days in a jail cell. Finally you're let go since there is no evidence that you killed him, but soon that doesn't matter, as upon being released you learn the police have found Victoria's body.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Please, I need to know where Steve lives so I can check on Vic," You plead. "Alright, since you're actually making an effort to be pleasant, he lives on 48 Kerr Road, but you didn't here that from me," Moira reveals. "Thanks Moira," you say as you quickly head out. You get into your car and drive off to Kerr Road. You know where it is since you use it to reach the grocery store in town. As you approach the house, you notice there is a car in the driveway blocking any other car from using it. In addition there is no parking on this street, forcing you to go to the supermarket, use their parking lot and then walking several blocks back to the house. You get quite annoyed of how complicated this is becoming but you need to make sure everything is OK with Victoria. When you're back on Kerr Road. You walk up Steve's house and ring the doorbell. A few minutes go by with no response, as you go to ring the bell again, you notice that near the door knob are scratch marks. Looking close you see that the wooden frame surrounding the door is damaged near the knob and the lock is broken, somebody had broken in. Worried about your sister you rush into the house. "Victoria!" You shout but there is no response. As you run down the foyer you notice out of the corner of your eye someone sitting in a lounge chair in a room to the right. You walk in to talk to this man when you notice that his throat is slit and a "W" is carved into their chest. You need to get out of here now! > You find a back exit You run out of the room and head towards the back of the house hoping to find a back way out. At the end of the foyer is a glass sliding door that is already opened, whoever killed that man must have taken the same route. You dash outside and find yourself in the backyard. Still running at full speed you reach the chain-link fence surrounding the perimeter and are able to jump over it. As you jump you hear the sounds of sirens, the police have arrived at the house. You run across a few more yards before you feel you're a safe enough distance away and begin to walk back to the super market. You can only hope no one saw you enter or leave Steve's house. After making your way back home, you head into your room and sit at your computer. You begin searching for the internet for clues on who murdered the man back in Steve's house. You search for "murder victims with W carved in them" and along with seeing several graphic photos, you learn it is the MO of a crime lord named "Westfield". Further searching and you find a web page explaining who this "Westfield" is: Real name: Unknown Alias: Westfield Crimes believed to have committed or involved with: murder, human trafficking, drug trafficking, drug dealing, armed robbery, illegal gambling and extortion Bio: Westfield runs a gang simply called "Westfield's gang", operates in several counties but base of operation is believed to be in Van Hove. One of the gang's most famous MO's is carving a "W" on the body of people murder by them. Due to real name and appearance being unknown, rumors of West actually being several people have circulated along with rumors that several high ranking members of the Van Hove police are on Westfield's payroll, hence the lack of progress on catching or even identifying the crime lord. Van Hove Police have denied these allegations and internal investigations have turned up no evidence. You turn off the computer. While the details aren't clear you know that Westfield is connected to your sister's disappearance. Calling the police would be the most logical choice, but if the rumors about some of them on Westfield's payroll are true, you could put yourself and Victoria in danger. A second option is to do an independent investigation, Victoria used to have a friend named Sophie Glass, their friendship ended when Sophie developed a drug problem and got involved in the seedy underworld where Westfield would reside. It's extremely dangerous, but being under the police's radar might save Victoria. > You call the police Trying to find your sister and possibly going up against a wanted criminal would be suicide. Corrupt or not calling the police is the more logical thing to do. You pull out your cell phone and call 911 "911, what is your emergency?" The operator on the other end inquiries. "My sister is missing and I think Westfield murdered her boyfriend," You answer. "I need your name, sister's name and sister's boyfriend name." "I'm Ben, Ben Higgins, my sister is Victoria Higgins and her boyfriend's name is Steve, I don't know his last name." "What's your address?" "219 Okonedo Street." "Alright, I'm sending someone over." Several minutes later a police car pulls into your driveway shortly followed by a knock at the door. You open the door to find a young women with light brown hair in a bun and eyes also light brown. You would find her pretty if wasn't for the serious look on her face. "Hello, I'm detective Carla Northcutt are you Ben Higgins?" She questions you with a no non-sense demeanor. "I am, come on in," you respond in a direct way. The detective walks in and turns her attention back to you. "I got to admit, I'm a bit confused here, you called in saying your sister is missing her boyfriend has been murdered and you think the notorious Westfield is behind it, do you mind telling me in detail what happened?" > You tell the truth "When I woke this morning my sister was missing, I waited around a bit for her to come home, around two I went to see her best friend Moria to see if she knew, it turned she had a boyfriend so I went to his house to see if she was there, the lock on the door was broken and I walked in, I found who I believe was Steve sitting in a chair with his throat slit and a 'W' carved in his chest, I freak out, ran out the back door, I heard police sirens but I had parked a couple of blocks away at a grocery store so I assume they didn't notice me and then I came home, when I learned that the W was a trademark of a violent criminal named Westfield I called you", You tell honestly. Carla gives you an odd look, as if trying to figure out what you said was the truth or not. After a few moments the look goes away. "I believe you," She decides. "You do?" You respond somewhat surprised. "I deal with liars all day, I've developed a talent for sniffing out lies, and I can tell you're being honest." "So is this Westfield behind my sister's disappearance?" "All evidence points to that, we should-" Carla stops in the middle of her sentence. You hear the sound of footsteps approaching the front door. "Get to the back of the house!" Carla demands. "What's going-" "Go!" You sprint to your bedroom while Carla follows. "Stay the fuck down!" she continues to order. You quickly hide under your desk as you hear the sound of your front door being kicked in. Footsteps get close to the bedroom as Carla pins herself against the wall adjacent to the wall. A man with a gun walks in, completely unaware of Carla, he still fails to notice her as she points her gun at his head and pulls the trigger. Your stomach is immense pain due to the combination of fear and the site of seeing the man's brains getting blown off. A second set of footsteps is heard outside. "I know you're out there asshole" Carla yells. "Detective Northcutt, there is no need to worry, I'm under strict orders to bring you in alive, Ben if you're in there, the same goes for you," The man calls out from the hallway. Carla steps back and turns facing the wall. She points her gun at it and fries through it, you hear the sound of the man scream and then a thud. "These fuckers never seem to realize walls aren't bulletproof," Carla states. Slowly you emerge from out under the desk. "What the fuck is going on?" You yell. "Calm down, Ben" "Don't tell me to be calm, my sister is missing, there are bullet holes on my wall and two fucking corpses in my house." Carla walks over and grabs you by the shoulders. "Those were Westfield's men, when you called in about the murder, your sister disappearing and that you believed Westfield was behind it, I took the case so that an officer on his payroll couldn't get to you first, however someone in the department tipped him off where I was and what I was doing, so those thugs were sent to deal with me and you as well since you're a lose end, now right now you're the only person I know who is on my side and I need you to get a grip." You take a deep breath and recompose yourself. > You say "Westfield has cops on his side?" "Westfield has cops on his side?" "Yes, it's an open secret, when I became a detective, some of the officers tried to convince me to join their team, I didn't and then they tried to convince me not to interfere with anything related to Westfield's gang, I didn't and they responded by making sure I got shit assignments and never moved up in the force, that didn't stop me from trying to bring this monster down, you're lucky I was able to respond that call, another hour and my shift would've been over and who knows what would've happened to you, anyway I guess that was the last straw for them, so they sent those goons to kill me and you as a loose end" "Why not go to FBI? You suggest. "There has to be someone high enough up who isn't on the take." "It would just be their word against mine, there's more than enough of them to portray me as some overworked paranoid detective, destroying any credibility I have, even if the FBI where to do an investigation they wouldn't find anything because they don't want to find anything, it's always been easier to pretend a problem doesn't exist then actually fix it." > You say "What about Steve's murder?" "What about Steve's murder?" You wonder. "Homicide won't get anywhere with that case, if a cop isn't being paid off, then they are most likely scared shitless of the ones who are, that 'W' that is carved on Steve isn't a trademark, it's a message to the police to back the fuck off," Carla points out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Trying to find your sister and possibly going up against a wanted criminal would be suicide. Corrupt or not calling the police is the more logical thing to do. You pull out your cell phone and call 911 "911, what is your emergency?" The operator on the other end inquiries. "My sister is missing and I think Westfield murdered her boyfriend," You answer. "I need your name, sister's name and sister's boyfriend name." "I'm Ben, Ben Higgins, my sister is Victoria Higgins and her boyfriend's name is Steve, I don't know his last name." "What's your address?" "219 Okonedo Street." "Alright, I'm sending someone over." Several minutes later a police car pulls into your driveway shortly followed by a knock at the door. You open the door to find a young women with light brown hair in a bun and eyes also light brown. You would find her pretty if wasn't for the serious look on her face. "Hello, I'm detective Carla Northcutt are you Ben Higgins?" She questions you with a no non-sense demeanor. "I am, come on in," you respond in a direct way. The detective walks in and turns her attention back to you. "I got to admit, I'm a bit confused here, you called in saying your sister is missing her boyfriend has been murdered and you think the notorious Westfield is behind it, do you mind telling me in detail what happened?" > You lie "My sister's best friend, Moira Estacado called me and said that she heard Steve had been murdered and had a 'W' carved on him, the trademark of Westfield, I got worried because my sister had spent the night there and now she isn't answering her cell phone," You fabricate. "I find that hard to believe since the police haven't told the media about Steve's murder just yet," Carla informs you. "I also find it difficult that your sister's friend knew anything since the only person outside the police who knew a neighbor that called in and reported a person breaking into Steve's house, they sure as shit didn't know he was killed let alone the fact that someone carved a 'W' on him," Carla continues as she shoots down your story. "Something I would believe, is that a person who didn't like the person their sister was dating would decide to murder them and try to frame it a crime lord," The detective deducts. "I had nothing to do with Steve's death, why would I call the police if I did?" You try to defend yourself. "People never think these things through, you know I took this case because I really thought it was connected to Westfield and this was a chance to bring him down but now I see you've just wasted my time," Carla concludes, "Why don't we go to the police station and perhaps there you can tell me what really happened, now are you going to be cooperative or difficult?" "Fine, we'll do it your way," You submit. Carla walks behind you and handcuffs your hands behind your back. "This is the smartest thing you've done all day" Carla says as she takes by the arm and leads you outside. As you leave the house, you spot a black sedan stopping in front of the house. Two armed get out and turn their attention towards you and Carla. The detective immediately pulls her gun out and shots at them. The first one goes down with a shot to the head while the second one returns fire. Carla fires at him, hitting him several times in the torso. Her victory is short lived as you've been hit in the chest during the shooting and fall to the ground. Carla runs to her police cruiser to call an ambulance, but you're already dead by then. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You run out of the room and head towards the back of the house hoping to find a back way out. At the end of the foyer is a glass sliding door that is already opened, whoever killed that man must have taken the same route. You dash outside and find yourself in the backyard. Still running at full speed you reach the chain-link fence surrounding the perimeter and are able to jump over it. As you jump you hear the sounds of sirens, the police have arrived at the house. You run across a few more yards before you feel you're a safe enough distance away and begin to walk back to the super market. You can only hope no one saw you enter or leave Steve's house. After making your way back home, you head into your room and sit at your computer. You begin searching for the internet for clues on who murdered the man back in Steve's house. You search for "murder victims with W carved in them" and along with seeing several graphic photos, you learn it is the MO of a crime lord named "Westfield". Further searching and you find a web page explaining who this "Westfield" is: Real name: Unknown Alias: Westfield Crimes believed to have committed or involved with: murder, human trafficking, drug trafficking, drug dealing, armed robbery, illegal gambling and extortion Bio: Westfield runs a gang simply called "Westfield's gang", operates in several counties but base of operation is believed to be in Van Hove. One of the gang's most famous MO's is carving a "W" on the body of people murder by them. Due to real name and appearance being unknown, rumors of West actually being several people have circulated along with rumors that several high ranking members of the Van Hove police are on Westfield's payroll, hence the lack of progress on catching or even identifying the crime lord. Van Hove Police have denied these allegations and internal investigations have turned up no evidence. You turn off the computer. While the details aren't clear you know that Westfield is connected to your sister's disappearance. Calling the police would be the most logical choice, but if the rumors about some of them on Westfield's payroll are true, you could put yourself and Victoria in danger. A second option is to do an independent investigation, Victoria used to have a friend named Sophie Glass, their friendship ended when Sophie developed a drug problem and got involved in the seedy underworld where Westfield would reside. It's extremely dangerous, but being under the police's radar might save Victoria. > You go see Sophie The police can't be trusted, so it seems your only hope is a former drug addict. Even if Sophia is reliable you still have no idea how you're going to rescue your sister from the most wanted man in town. First thing however is finding where your sister is and then taking it from there. You remember when Victoria and Sophia were friends, they would hang out at Sophia's place at the Fuhrman Apartment Complex and as far as you knew she still lives there. You grab your car keys and head off to see her. Night is threatening to fall as you arrive at the apartment building. You head to the entrance and read the names on the intercom. One says "Unit 102: S.Glass", it looks Sophia still does live here and you push the intercom button. "Yeah?" A groggy voice greets. "Sophia, it's me Ben" You tell her. "Ben who?" "Ben Higgins, Victoria's brother" "Oh, Ben, hang on a sec I'll let you in" A second later you hear a buzzing sound and you enter the building. After walking up a set of stairs you reach apartment 102 and knock on the door. The door opens and you see Sophia standing in the doorway, she is around your age, but bags under eyes and lines on her face made her look older. "Ben so good to see you, please come in" Sophia greets. You walk into the small apartment and follow Sophia to sitting area in the back. There are two stuffed chairs across from each other that were once green but had faded badly and each had a few stains. "Please have a seat," Sophia requests while pointing at one of the chairs. You sit down one of the chairs while Sophia sits in the others. "So what can I do for you Ben?" "It's my sister Victoria, she's missing and I need your help in find her," You respond. "I'm not sure how helpful I'll be, your sister and haven't spoken in years." "I know she was taken by Westfield, because of your...past, I felt you'd know something," "You mean because I was a lowlife junkie, you thought I would have knowledge on other lowlifes." "That's not what I meant." "It sure as hell sounded like that's what you meant, and not only do you want information on any scumbag, you information on Westfield, the top dog, if you try to fuck with him he'll kill you and he'd kill me too for leading you to him." "So you do know something." "Why I should help you?" > You bribe Sophie You pull out your wallet and take out all the money you have in it. "Look this all I have, it's yours if you tell me what you know," You offer. "Do I look like some fucking whore?" Sofia angrily responds. "You don't talk to me for years and when you finally do, it's only because you want something, I think you should leave now." You head out of Sophia's apartment feeling defeated, you always had trouble communicating with others and this visit was just another reminder of that. When you arrive back home, you decide to call the police. Despite the rumor of corruption you're out of options at this point. You take out your cell phone and call 911. "911, what is your emergency?" The operator on the other end inquiries. "My sister is missing and I think Westfield murdered her boyfriend" You answer. "I need your name, sister's name and sister's boyfriend name" "I'm Ben, Ben Higgins, my sister is Victoria Higgins and her boyfriend's name is Steve, I don't know his last name" "What's your address?" "219 Okonedo Street" "Alright, I'm sending someone over" Several minutes later a police car pulls into your driveway shortly followed by a knock at the door. You open the door to find a man in a police officer uniform with a buzz haircut. "Hello I'm Sergeant Arthur Miller, are you Ben Higgins?" The police officer kindly asks. "Yes I am, please come in," You respond. As you turn around you hear the sound of a gun being cocked. You look behind you and see Sergeant Miller pointing his weapon at you. Without thinking you grab his hand to try to wrestle away the gun from him. During the struggle the gun goes off and the bullet goes through your abdomen, causing you go down to one knee. "Fucking idiot," You hear the officer say as you collapse completely. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The police can't be trusted, so it seems your only hope is a former drug addict. Even if Sophia is reliable you still have no idea how you're going to rescue your sister from the most wanted man in town. First thing however is finding where your sister is and then taking it from there. You remember when Victoria and Sophia were friends, they would hang out at Sophia's place at the Fuhrman Apartment Complex and as far as you knew she still lives there. You grab your car keys and head off to see her. Night is threatening to fall as you arrive at the apartment building. You head to the entrance and read the names on the intercom. One says "Unit 102: S.Glass", it looks Sophia still does live here and you push the intercom button. "Yeah?" A groggy voice greets. "Sophia, it's me Ben" You tell her. "Ben who?" "Ben Higgins, Victoria's brother" "Oh, Ben, hang on a sec I'll let you in" A second later you hear a buzzing sound and you enter the building. After walking up a set of stairs you reach apartment 102 and knock on the door. The door opens and you see Sophia standing in the doorway, she is around your age, but bags under eyes and lines on her face made her look older. "Ben so good to see you, please come in" Sophia greets. You walk into the small apartment and follow Sophia to sitting area in the back. There are two stuffed chairs across from each other that were once green but had faded badly and each had a few stains. "Please have a seat," Sophia requests while pointing at one of the chairs. You sit down one of the chairs while Sophia sits in the others. "So what can I do for you Ben?" "It's my sister Victoria, she's missing and I need your help in find her," You respond. "I'm not sure how helpful I'll be, your sister and haven't spoken in years." "I know she was taken by Westfield, because of your...past, I felt you'd know something," "You mean because I was a lowlife junkie, you thought I would have knowledge on other lowlifes." "That's not what I meant." "It sure as hell sounded like that's what you meant, and not only do you want information on any scumbag, you information on Westfield, the top dog, if you try to fuck with him he'll kill you and he'd kill me too for leading you to him." "So you do know something." "Why I should help you?" > You plead with Sophie "Please Sophie, my sister needs you right now," You plead. "Years ago I when needed her most, she turned her back on me instead of helping, so why shouldn't I do the same?" Sofia countered. "The Sophie I remember, would always help someone in need even if the person had hurt her, she would never let someone suffer because she couldn't let go of a grudge." The expression on Sophie's face softens after hearing this. "You're right, no one deserves to go through the hell that Westfield inflict on people, I'll help you try to find her". "Thank you Sophie." "If she was taken by Westfield, that most likely means he wants her to be one of his girls, and as far as I know there are two places where you can find them, a nightclub called Ellis and Hillside Apartments, which is actually a whorehouse." > You say "Tell me about Ellis" "Tell me about Ellis," You request. "Ellis is a bar, but it's also a front for an illegal casino in the basement," Sophie explains. "What makes you think my sister would be there?" "They have girls who serve the gamblers drinks, but in actuality they are there to distract the gamblers so they will make mistakes, kind of like any regular casino, only in your sister's case they won't have to pay her and I can tell you from personal experience they will harm her if she acts defiant." "They would kidnap her and force her to be a waitress?" You query. "That seems rather excessive" "Working in a secret casino run by a crime lord is not exactly the kind of job you can put in the wanted ads, besides the free labor speaks for itself." > You say "Tell me about Hillside Apartments" "Tell me about Hillside Apartments," You request. "It looks like an apartment building, but like I said it's a whorehouse" Sofia explains. "Guys will go inside, they tell the 'supervisor' what girl they want, hand over cash and are given an hour to fuck as much as they want, normally the girl gets a cut of the money she makes, but in your sister's case since she is being held against her will, they won't have to pay her shit, I heard rumors Westfield was losing money, I guess forcing people to do things against their will is a way to cut operating costs."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Hello Moira, nice to see you," You manage to say without showing how annoyed you are at her greeting. "Wow, who are you and what have you done with Ben?" Moira responded, getting you more annoyed. "I mean not only did you leave your house, but you're talking without sounding like a dick." "Look, I can't find Victoria, can you tell me where is she, she's not answering her phone and I just want to make sure she's alright." "Will you relax, she's probably still at Steve's house, they left here together last night." "Who the hell is Steve?" "You mean you don't know, wow just wow, Victoria always said you were a bit obvious to things, but I didn't know it was to the point where she can date a guy for a month and you remain completely clueless." The mention of Victoria having a boyfriend caught you off guard. You're pretty sure Victoria never mentioned him, maybe she was worried you'd get upset or maybe simply she never told you because you never asked. Are you really that withdrawn? Now is not the best time to worry about this, it's better stay focused on finding her. "Are you sure she's there?" You ask. "I'm not positive but it makes sense, last night Victoria was here for a bit then Steve came and picked her up, I assume she spent the night there since she isn't at your house," Moira explains. "Why would she spend the night there?" "Jesus, are you really that socially inept, do I really have to explain why she would spend the night at her boyfriend's house?" You ponder for a second and then as the realization hits you, a look of disgust appears on your face. > You demand to know where Steve is You need to tell me where Steve is," You demand while rising your voice a bit. "Now there's the Ben I know, but I don't think it's a good idea to have you go to his house while you're acting like an asshole, maybe when you learn proper etiquette I'll tell you," Moira says while clearly have too much fun with this conversation. "Why are you doing this, you know going out and talking to people is not an easy thing for me to do and yet you decide to make it worse for me." Moira seemed slightly bothered by this remark as if noticing she was beginning to take things a bit too far. "Alright, alright, I'll tell you what, you go home and in a bit I'll swing by Steve's house and let Victoria know you're concerned," She says in a softer tone. "Fine," You reply as you turn around to head out. Once back in your house, you sit at your kitchen table staring at your phone waiting for Victoria to respond. You're beginning to get impatient as you want to put this ordeal behind you and return to your regular routine. After waiting for almost an hour there is finally there is a knock at the door, it must be Victoria, you wonder why she didn't call, still you're glad this is over with. You walk up and open the front door only to find it's not Victoria, but Moira. Tears are flowing her eyes and her sclera's have turned red. "Ben it's terrible," Moira bawls as she lets herself in your house. She puts her head on your shoulder as she begins sobbing uncontrollably. "Moira, you need to calm down and explain to me what's wrong," You say, dreading finding out what caused Moira to act like this. Moira lifts her head up off your shoulder and wipes her tears with her sleeve. You grab the mug that is the least dirty from a cabinet above the kitchen sink and fill it with water. You hand it to her as she sits down at the table, you take a seat opposite of her. "Now Moira, I need you to tell me in a calm manner what happened?" You say politely but firmly. Moira takes a sip out of the mug and begins to explain "I went to Steve's house and the police, they were...they were taking his body out, I think, think someone killed him," Moira begins crying again as you too begin to become overwhelmed with fear. "What about Victoria?" You shout, instantly realizing that yelling at someone overcome with grief isn't the kindest thing to do. "I don't know, she wasn't there if that's what you're asking," Moira answers before taking another sip of the water. You take out your cell phone and call the police, hopefully they will able to find Victoria. "911, what is your emergency?" The voice on the other end inquiries. "Yeah, um, I recently found out my sister's boyfriend has been murdered and I can't find her anywhere," You reply hoping that you don't come off as suspicious. "What's your name, sister's name and her boyfriend's name?" "Uh, my name is Ben Higgins, my sister is Victoria Higgins and her boyfriend's name is Steve." "What's his last name?' You have no idea, it most likely would've been smart to know this before you called. You turn your attention to Moira. "I need to know Steve's last name," You say rather impatiently, still the not best way to talk to someone who is somewhat traumatized. "Upton," She informs you while still weeping a bit. "His last name is Upton," you tell the operator. "So your sister Victoria Higgins is missing and her boyfriend Steve Upton has been murdered?" "That's about it." "I need your address." "219 Okonedo Street." "Alright, I'm sending someone over." The operator hangs up and you really hope they don't think you're behind this. Moira has somewhat calmed down. "Will they find Victoria?" Moira asks sounding worn out. "I sure hope so" you say with obvious uncertainty in your voice. Several minutes later a police car pulls into your driveway shortly followed by a knock at the door. You open the door to find a women slightly older then you with light brown hair in a bun and matching colored eyes. You would find her pretty if wasn't for the serious look on her face. "Hello, I'm detective Carla Northcutt are you Ben Higgins?" She asks you with a no non-sense demeanor. "I am, come on in," you respond in a direct way. Carla walks in and sees Moira sitting at the kitchen. "Who are you?" Carla begins questioning as if doing an integration "I'm Moira Estacado, Victoria's my best friend you need to find her," Moira pleads while beginning to cry again. Carla sits down at the table and turn her attention back to you, you figure she thinks you'll be easy to get information from. "So start from the beginning, from when you noticed your sister was missing to when you called the police." "I woke up, found Victoria wasn't home, I tried to contact her phone, got no response, I went over to Moira's place, she said she was at her boyfriend's and would go over there to let her know I was worried, then Moira came over here saying Steve, Victoria's boyfriend is dead and then I called you." Carla looks back at Moira with suspicion. "When did you notice Steve was dead, you called the police not long after the incident was reported and the news hasn't picked up the story yet," Carla quizzes in an accusing manner. "After Ben came into my restaurant looking for Victoria, I offered to see if she was at Steve's house, about twenty minutes later I headed over there and saw police at the place and they were taking his body out on a stretcher, there was a sheet but a hand was sticking out and was wearing a ring that Steve always wears, I knew it was him," Moira explains before sobbing again. You walk over to Moira and put your arm on her shoulder to comfort her. Carla stops looking at Moira with distrust, you guess she could tell Moira isn't the killing type. "Ben why didn't you just go to the house to check on your sister yourself?" "I had recently found out Victoria had a boyfriend in the first place and Moira thought she should do it since she's better with dealing with people." Carla doesn't look at you with same suspicion she had given Moira, you figure she knew you were telling the truth. "From what I know, I believe Steve was killed by Westfield's gang and it is most likely the gang is connected to Victoria's disappearance as well," Carla mentions. "Who's Westfield?" You ask, completely puzzled. Carla and Moira look at you as if they are unsure your question was serious or not. "You're telling me you've never heard of Westfield? The most wanted man in county if not the state," Carla's queries as her disbelief overpowers her seriousness. "I don't get out much" You confess. "Trust me he doesn't" Moira confirms. "Westfield is a crime lord, illegal gambling, drug dealing, prostitution, armed robbery, human trafficking, extortion and of course outright murder, Westfield's gang has done it all, the worst part is we don't know his real name, what he looks like or even if he is a he at all" Carla explains. > You say "What makes you so sure this Westfield guy did it?" "What makes you so sure this Westfield guy did it?" You ask Carla. "His MO is that his gang carves a 'W' on their victims, which Steve had, Westfield wants people to know when he has someone killed." Carla reveals to you. Moira sobs upon hearing about this brutality. "What's to prevent someone from doing the same thing and having look like Westfield has done it?" You continue with your questions. "That would piss Westfield off and only an idiot would that" Carla says confidently. > You say "What does this crime lord want with my sister?" "What does this crime lord want with my sister?" You ask with grave concern. "My theory at this point is Steve was the target and Victoria was at the wrong place at the wrong time, hopefully I'll be able to figure out why Steve was killed in the first place, I don't know what Westfield plans to do with her, rest assured I will do everything I can to find her," Carla says rather sure of herself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Moira Estacado is Victoria's best friend and a mother figure to her since your mother died. She's a bit older then Victoria which made her instantly cool in your sister's eyes. The fact that she owned a bar and restaurant just increased the cool factor. Personally, you can't stand her, she's obnoxious, annoying and in general a pain. Vic tries to explain that Moira likes to tease and it's just harmless fun, but you aren't convinced. Still if there is someone who would know where sister is it's her. You leave your house and get into your car noticing that the rust on the hood is beginning to spread. A bit of drive later you arrive at Moira's, it's still early, but you know she will be there. Moira is very dedicated to the bar and restaurant, always making sure it is running smoothly and her workers aren't slacking off. She spends as much time there as you spend secluded in your house. There is plenty of parking as it's too soon for the lunch crowd. After parking your car near the front you head in and see the waiter and hostess talking to each other, not expecting a customer so soon after opening. They seem a bit puzzled by your presence and attempt to interact with you, but you're focused on asking to Moira about Victoria and ignore them. You spot her at the bar cleaning a glass, her shoulder length red hair makes her stand out easily. She notices you approaching and a mischievous smile appears on her face. "Well look who decided to crawl out from under a rock," Moira greeted. Her attitude was already getting under your skin, but you had to see if she knew about Victoria. > You say "Where's Victoria?" "Where's Victoria?" You say in a rather angry tone. "Not even a hello, now why should I help someone who has no manners?" Moira asks. "For Christ sake's Moira, can you stop being a bitch for one second and just tell me where Victoria is?" You shout as your patience runs out. The other workers in the building have heard your outburst and now all eyes are on you. "I think it's time for you to leave, Ben." Embarrassed and feeling like a jackass, you head out and drive back home. This incident will no doubt make going out in the future more difficult. When you're back in the safety of your dwelling, you begin to calm down. You go to your bedroom, sit down on your computer and begin the work you were going to do today. Although you are still upset, working relieves your stress quite a bit. After several more hours Victoria still is missing and your concern now as some justification. After the incident at Moira's, you really don't feel like heading out but need to determine what you're going to do next. > You call the police tomorrow morning You decide to call the police in the morning. The rest of the day is combination of worry, anxiety and boredom. After the sunsets you go to bed. During the night you don't get much sleep during as you constantly check your phone to see if Victoria has contacted you. When morning arrives you dart out of bed and rush into Victoria's room not bothering to knock. Your worst fears are confirmed when you see her bed is still empty. With no other option you call the police. "911, what is your emergency?" The operator on the other end inquiries. "I'd like to report a missing person," You answer. "What's your name sir?" "Ben Higgins." "Who is it that's missing?" "My sister, Victoria Higgins." "How old is she?" "Twenty." "How long has she been missing?" "Since yesterday morning." "So your sister Victoria Higgins has been missing since early yesterday?" "That's about it." "I need your address." "219 Okonedo Street." "Alright, I'm sending someone over." The operator hangs up and you spend several minutes pacing back and forth until you notice a police car pulling into your driveway. A few seconds later there is a knock at the door. You open the door to find a women slightly older then you with light brown hair in a bun and matching colored eyes. You would find her pretty if wasn't for the serious look on her face. "Hello, I'm detective Carla Northcutt are you Ben Higgins?" She asks you with a no non-sense demeanor. "I am, come on in," you respond in a direct way. Carla walks into your kitchen as you notice she as a somewhat annoyed look on her face. It's hard to tell if she's annoyed at something in general or if this was her natural personality. "So when did you last see your sister?" Carla begins her investigation. "Two nights ago a friend of hers picked her up, Vic told me she was going out and would be back later, pretty much routine, the next day I noticed she wasn't back and she hasn't responded to any texts or messages, this morning nothing had changed so I called the police," You bring Carla up to speed. "You wouldn't happen to know where she went or who picked her up would you?" "No I never really pried, she hates when I do that." "I'd like to search her room." You lead Carla to Victoria's room and open the door. The detective doesn't seem bothered by the mess and eyes Victoria's computer. "This might be able to help us," Carla suspects. "I tried that yesterday, it's password protected," You point out. Carla is undaunted as she sits at Victoria's desk and begins typing on the laptop, after several tries she manages to get past the login screen and gains access to Victoria's files. "Jackpot," Carla exclaims. "How'd you do that?" You say with astonishment. "The password was password," Carla explains. "You've got to be kidding me." "I learned a long time ago it's better not to over think things, now I'm going to see what your sister's various social media pages can tell us," Carla browses through Victoria's various online accounts while you watch over her shoulder. One account has numerous photos and Carla begins looking through them. Most of the pictures are selfies, Victoria with various friends, even one with you and her. Suddenly one picture catches both you and Carla's attention, a picture of her kissing a man you don't recognize. "Looks like somebody has a boyfriend," Carla says with the satisfaction of finding a break in the case. "She never mention this to me," You say in a surprised and annoyed tone. "Let's see who is, once I find a name I'll go pay him a visit and see what he knows about Victoria's whereabouts." Carla begins to read the comments of the photo in order to identify the man. "You and Steve look SO cute together," one comment reads. "Soon I'll be calling you Mrs. Upton," another comment says. "His name is Steve...Upton I'm guessing, but yesterday there was...oh fuck!" Carla says as her tone goes from confidence to concern. She quickly gets up and turns to you. "Now listen to me Ben, what I'm going to tell you isn't to make any sense, but you have to do exactly what I tell you if we are to have any chance of finding Victoria," Carla warns. "Yesterday a man named Steve Upton was found murdered in his home and I'm positive it's the same guy your sister was dating, I'm also positive that the person behind it also is behind Victoria's disappearance, the less you know the safer you'll be, I'm going to give you my card and call you if I find anything, do not under any circumstances call the police again." Upon hearing this dozens of questions enter your mind but Carla quickly leaves the house before you can get answers for any of them. Something was going on and you're in the dark. You need to get more information but how exactly? > You call the police for more information Although Carla warned you not to call the police, she didn't tell you why, in fact she told you almost nothing at all. There is no way you're going to accept not getting any answers. You take out your cell phone and call the police again. "911, what is your emergency?" The operator on the other end inquiries once more. "I'm Ben Higgins, I called a while ago about my sister being missing and the detective you assigned to investigate found out my sister's boyfriend has been murdered and then just ran off without telling me anything." "Do you remember the name of the detective?" "Carla Northcutt." "I see...I'm going to sending another officer, he'll explain everything, I'd do it myself but it would take too long just hang in there for a few minutes until he arrives." The operator hangs before you can ask any questions, this cloak and dagger is really beginning to bother you. True to the operator's word, another police car arrives in the driveway a few minutes later. You hurry over to the door hoping you'll soon get to the bottom of this. Opening the door to find a man in a police officer uniform with a buzz haircut, before a word is spoken he takes out his gun and shoots you right through the heart. You die with many questions left unanswered.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to call the police in the morning. The rest of the day is combination of worry, anxiety and boredom. After the sunsets you go to bed. During the night you don't get much sleep during as you constantly check your phone to see if Victoria has contacted you. When morning arrives you dart out of bed and rush into Victoria's room not bothering to knock. Your worst fears are confirmed when you see her bed is still empty. With no other option you call the police. "911, what is your emergency?" The operator on the other end inquiries. "I'd like to report a missing person," You answer. "What's your name sir?" "Ben Higgins." "Who is it that's missing?" "My sister, Victoria Higgins." "How old is she?" "Twenty." "How long has she been missing?" "Since yesterday morning." "So your sister Victoria Higgins has been missing since early yesterday?" "That's about it." "I need your address." "219 Okonedo Street." "Alright, I'm sending someone over." The operator hangs up and you spend several minutes pacing back and forth until you notice a police car pulling into your driveway. A few seconds later there is a knock at the door. You open the door to find a women slightly older then you with light brown hair in a bun and matching colored eyes. You would find her pretty if wasn't for the serious look on her face. "Hello, I'm detective Carla Northcutt are you Ben Higgins?" She asks you with a no non-sense demeanor. "I am, come on in," you respond in a direct way. Carla walks into your kitchen as you notice she as a somewhat annoyed look on her face. It's hard to tell if she's annoyed at something in general or if this was her natural personality. "So when did you last see your sister?" Carla begins her investigation. "Two nights ago a friend of hers picked her up, Vic told me she was going out and would be back later, pretty much routine, the next day I noticed she wasn't back and she hasn't responded to any texts or messages, this morning nothing had changed so I called the police," You bring Carla up to speed. "You wouldn't happen to know where she went or who picked her up would you?" "No I never really pried, she hates when I do that." "I'd like to search her room." You lead Carla to Victoria's room and open the door. The detective doesn't seem bothered by the mess and eyes Victoria's computer. "This might be able to help us," Carla suspects. "I tried that yesterday, it's password protected," You point out. Carla is undaunted as she sits at Victoria's desk and begins typing on the laptop, after several tries she manages to get past the login screen and gains access to Victoria's files. "Jackpot," Carla exclaims. "How'd you do that?" You say with astonishment. "The password was password," Carla explains. "You've got to be kidding me." "I learned a long time ago it's better not to over think things, now I'm going to see what your sister's various social media pages can tell us," Carla browses through Victoria's various online accounts while you watch over her shoulder. One account has numerous photos and Carla begins looking through them. Most of the pictures are selfies, Victoria with various friends, even one with you and her. Suddenly one picture catches both you and Carla's attention, a picture of her kissing a man you don't recognize. "Looks like somebody has a boyfriend," Carla says with the satisfaction of finding a break in the case. "She never mention this to me," You say in a surprised and annoyed tone. "Let's see who is, once I find a name I'll go pay him a visit and see what he knows about Victoria's whereabouts." Carla begins to read the comments of the photo in order to identify the man. "You and Steve look SO cute together," one comment reads. "Soon I'll be calling you Mrs. Upton," another comment says. "His name is Steve...Upton I'm guessing, but yesterday there was...oh fuck!" Carla says as her tone goes from confidence to concern. She quickly gets up and turns to you. "Now listen to me Ben, what I'm going to tell you isn't to make any sense, but you have to do exactly what I tell you if we are to have any chance of finding Victoria," Carla warns. "Yesterday a man named Steve Upton was found murdered in his home and I'm positive it's the same guy your sister was dating, I'm also positive that the person behind it also is behind Victoria's disappearance, the less you know the safer you'll be, I'm going to give you my card and call you if I find anything, do not under any circumstances call the police again." Upon hearing this dozens of questions enter your mind but Carla quickly leaves the house before you can get answers for any of them. Something was going on and you're in the dark. You need to get more information but how exactly? > You look for information on the internet You need answers, even if Carla is right when said you'd safer knowing less, finding your sister is more important. Your gut is telling you that you should avoid the police let Carla said, so you chose to sit at Victoria's desk and try to find information on the internet about Steve's murder. After searching "Steve Upton murder Van Hove", you find an online news article and begin to read it: Murder on Kerr Road Steve Upton, 28, was found murdered in his home around noon. Police had gotten a call from a neighbor about a possible break-in at Steve's address and his body was found shortly after entering the house. A Van Hove police spokesmen says that Steve was found with a "W" carved in his chest, the trademark of the notorious gang leader who goes by the alias Westfield. Police have asked anyone with information to come forward. A second search for "Westfield" revels information about a gang simply called Westfield's gang. You learn about rumors of having police officers on the take may explain why Carla didn't want you calling the police again. The gang itself commits nearly crime in the book from drug dealing to armed robbery to downright murder. You need to find out why this gang killed Steve, why they took Victoria and how you plan to get her back, the first step is taking out your cell phone and calling Carla. "Northcutt," Carla greets. "Detective Northcutt, it's me Ben, I just found out my sister was taken by some guy named Westfield, I really don't like being kept out of the loop," You complain. "Look Ben, Westfield is an extremely dangerous man and I didn't tell you anything to keep you out of harm's way, if you're so insistent on getting involved then come over to my place where at least I can keep an eye on you, I'm at 224 Shamrock way." "Why do I have the feeling there is still more you're not telling me?" "Just come over here and I'll answer your questions I promise." Carla hangs up, you get the feeling she is a caring person but has a very hard time showing it. Heading out the door and into your car, it occurs to you that Carla believes you're in danger, granted dealing with a criminal gang is dangerous but how much is her worrying justified and how much is simply in her head. You figure it's not worth worrying about as Carla is most likely you're best chance of getting your sister back, since it seems the police are at best useless and at worst the very reason you're in danger in the first place. Arriving on Shamrock way you pull into Carla's driveway and notice along with a police car there is two black sedans in the driveway as well. Carla didn't mention she was having anyone else over and you doubt she bought two identical cars. Perhaps you're over worrying as much as Carla is and is something else she neglected to tell you. > You go around back Something isn't right, you don't know what is as information is proving to be hard to come by today. You walk down the driveway and into the backyard. There is a small patio complete with two outdoor lounge chairs. On one of the chairs is a heavyset man smoking a cigarette. This man might as well wear a sign that says "criminal" and you're positive it's better to stay away from him. There is a backdoor leading into the house and plenty of space between the man and the open door for you to avoid drawing attention. You manage to get inside and find yourself in a kitchen. Ignoring the dirty dishes everywhere you walk out of the kitchen and into a foyer. Briefly glancing at the rooms along the hallway you find they are all empty and eventually you reach the front entrance. A stairway to your left is your only option as you quietly head upstairs. On the upper floor there are a few doors to the left and a few to the right. You hear footsteps that are too heavy to belong to Carla coming from the right so you head left, as you look into a room and at last you find Carla. The discovery is bittersweet as you notice she is tied to a chair with blood coming out of her nose and she has acquired a shiner along with several other bruises. Without thinking you walk in as Carla franticly shakes her head, then you feel something hit on the back which causes you to fall to the ground. You're vision is a bit blurry but you see a man with slicked back blonde hair, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, along with a revolver in his hand. "Hello Ben, I'm Westfield, selling of drugs and take of lives, yeah that was lame I have to work on that, anyway it has come to my attention you're looking for your little sister and to answer the two questions on your mind, yes I took her and the reason why was I wanted to make money off her by turning her into a whore, I'm sorry about this, I purposely only take girls that have no family to avoid situations like these, but that dumbass Steve lied to me, good thing I killed him while I had the chance, sadly this makes you a loose end and you know what happens to lose ends, but since this wasn't suppose to happen, I'll give you a chance to say your final words, make them count" Westfield rambles. Behind Westfield you notice Carla beginning to free herself from the ropes tying her hands to the chair she is in. If you can continue to distract Westfield long enough, she should be able to free yourself. "Well what are your last words?" Westfield asks impatiently. > You say "What's your name?" "What's your name?" You ask in an attempt to keep Westfield's attention on you instead of Carla. "It's Westfield, that's literally the first thing I told you," Westfield says somewhat baffled by your question. "No, I mean your real name, if I'm going to be killed, I should have the right to know the identity of the person who is doing the killing." "I see your point, alright I'll let you in a little secret, I was born and raised in a town called Westfield in New Jersey, I loved that town, of course when I first became a criminal I made a lot of mistakes and the police were closing in on me, I eventually had to leave and I resettled here in Van Hove, I learned that it's important to have an alias and to make sure the police are on your side, most people think nicknames are way to be cool but for me, they make staying out of jail a little easier, but if you really must know my name it's John Tiegel," Westfield prattles. You can see Carla almost is free of her restraints. If you can just distract Westfield for a little bit longer Carla should be able to escape. > You say "I won't tell anyone about this" "I won't tell anyone about this," You plead to Westfield. "Well it really wouldn't make a difference if you told anyone about this or not, I own the police in Van Hove as I'm sure you already know, but it doesn't matter since I have no intentions on letting you leave, you see I plan on keeping your sister as I went to some lengths to obtain her and I know you're not just to going to forget about it, one day you'd come after me, maybe in a week or several years to try to take your revenge," Westfield explains in a rather longwinded way. "For years Carla has tried to bring me down, despite my repeated warnings, I bet your wondering why she took on this case despite the dangers, well part of it is because she believes in law and order but I'm willing to wager it has to do with what happened to her family." Westfield continues as Carla makes a muffled scream through the tape on her mouth as if the topic is causing her to become upset. The scream causes Westfield to turn his attention back to Carla and she is forced stop trying to wiggle free. "You see Carla wasn't always planning to be a cop, she was originally going to be a doctor, but one day while she was away at college someone broke into her family's home, this home, and killed her parents and two little sisters and before you ask it wasn't me, after that incident she quit college and joined the force, perhaps saving your sister would allow Carla closure for the failure of saving her family, but now it won't matter, she won't save her, she won't save you and she won't save herself and now Ben it's time for you to die," After Westfield's speech he turns back to you and shoots with his revolver, another victim of Van Hove's crime problem. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What's your name?" You ask in an attempt to keep Westfield's attention on you instead of Carla. "It's Westfield, that's literally the first thing I told you," Westfield says somewhat baffled by your question. "No, I mean your real name, if I'm going to be killed, I should have the right to know the identity of the person who is doing the killing." "I see your point, alright I'll let you in a little secret, I was born and raised in a town called Westfield in New Jersey, I loved that town, of course when I first became a criminal I made a lot of mistakes and the police were closing in on me, I eventually had to leave and I resettled here in Van Hove, I learned that it's important to have an alias and to make sure the police are on your side, most people think nicknames are way to be cool but for me, they make staying out of jail a little easier, but if you really must know my name it's John Tiegel," Westfield prattles. You can see Carla almost is free of her restraints. If you can just distract Westfield for a little bit longer Carla should be able to escape. > You say "Go fuck yourself" Go fuck yourself," you bark at Westfield. "Go fuck yourself, that's what you want your last words to be?" Westfield responds puzzled. "It's not very original and not exactly something you want written on your tombstone, although there is- Westfield's rambling is interrupted by Carla who punches him squarely in the jaw knocking him down. Without hesitation Carla grabs Westfield's revolver and points at him. "Shut the fuck up, you annoying loquacious bastard," Carla demands. She offers you her hand and helps you off the floor. "Are you alright?'" Carla asks. "Yeah, I'm fine what about you?" You ask in regard to the injuries Carla obtained. "Don't worry, it's nothing that won't heal in a few weeks." Carla says as she keeps her gun firmly aimed at Westfield. "Well detective are you going to kill me or what?" Westfield goads as he continues to lay on the floor. "You've must have fantasized about this moment hundreds of time, don't chicken out now." "As much as I'd love to shoot your fucking head off, I need you alive to tell me where Victoria Higgins is." "Yeah and then you'll just kill me anyway, tell you what if you give me your word that you'll spare me, I'll lead you to her." "You're going to take her at her word?" You interrupt, somewhat baffled by what Westfield said. "Ben, I've known Carla for years and if it's one thing I've learned about her it's how much pride she has in the fact she is honest and incorruptible, it would go her against her nature to say she'll let me live and then just kill me, she calls it honor but in reality it's just egotistical." "Shut up," Carla snaps at Westfield. "So what's it going to be detective, is letting me live worth the life of Ben's sister?" "Alright you fucking asshole, you have a deal but if try anything I'll hurt you very badly, now call your two thugs downstairs to get in here, this deal doesn't include them." "Fair enough, they failed in their task to keep intruders out so it's no skin off my nose if you kill them." "Ben, take cover," Carla warns you. You hide behind a dresser in the room while Westfield calls for his men. "Lewis, Jerry get you're asses up here!" He yells. Walking into the room oblivious unaware of the trap, the two men enter the room. Carla using Westfield's own revolver shoots one of the thugs in the eye while the other reaches for his gun. His able to take out of the holster but is shoot in the throat before he can even aim it at Carla. "Now tell me where Victoria is," Carla aims her gun back at Westfield. "Hillside apartments, it looks like an apartment building on the outside but it's really a whorehouse, she was brought there early this morning, the address is 197 Hillside Street," Westfield informs. "Let's go get her then," You say rather impatiently. "Hang on Ben, how many men do you have at this building?" "There's the man in charge, Ivo and I think he was two guys with him," "Just three guys?" You interrupt once again baffled. "I own the police, I don't need to waste money recruiting more muscle then I need, besides there is also going to be about eight girls and a few johns" Westfield points out. "Well we should get over there but before we do..." Carla trails off midsentence. She heads to the dresser you hid behind earlier and opens the top drawer, all the while keeping an eye on Westfield. She pulls out a set of handcuffs and tosses them to Westfield. "Put these on," Carla orders. "Kinky," Westfield quips as he puts the handcuffs on his wrists. Carla goes to the body of one of the dead henchmen and takes the gun from its hand. "Take this," she says in a way that makes it sound she isn't going to take no for answer. "I don't know how use these thing," You whine. "You just aim and shoot." Reluctantly you take the gun from Carla as she goes back to Westfield. "On your feet asshole." Westfield complies and the three of you head out of room and downstairs. "Ben, we're taking your car it would be a dead giveaway if we show up in my cruiser, also you're going to have to drive, I won't be able to do the driving and keep an eye on this fucker." You nod your head in agreement and go out the front door. Once in your car along with Carla and Westfield you drive off to Hillside apartments. When you arrive you notice that the apartment building doesn't look anything like you thought it would, in fact it looks ordinary. Since most of your knowledge of the outside world has been through TV and movies rather than firsthand experience, the events that have happened today have made you realize the world is for better or worse not quite what you thought it was. You pull into a parking spot in front of the building. "So I'm going to head ask for your sister, once I get her it's mission accomplished, there's nothing to it," Westfield plans out. "Let's get going," Carla instructs. "Hold it there detective, my men know who you are they will shoot on sight, not that I care but it would put my life in danger as well, Ben has to bring me in, also you're going to have to remove this handcuffs, they will defiantly know something is wrong if I enter the building wearing these." "Don't take your eyes off him," Carla warns you. "If I here gunshots I'm coming guns blazing." Carla lets Westfield out of his cuffs as you get out of the car. Westfield soon does the same while you heed Carla's advice and watch every move he makes. "I saw the way you looked at Northcutt, do you have a thing for cops or authoritative women in general?" Westfield pokes fun at you. Due to being far more focused on finding Victoria you ignore Westfield and the two of you head inside. The interior looks just as ordinary as the exterior as you make your way to the front desk. Behind the desk was a heavy set man who might as well be wearing a sign that said "sleazy", he must be Ivo. He is looking into space when he noticed you and Westfield. Upon recognizing his boss he becomes much more attentive. "Westfield sir, what brings you here? Ivo says somewhat surprised by Westfield's presence. "Who's this with you?" "Never mind who this is, bring me Victoria," Westfield demands with a no nonsense attitude. "Who?" "The girl that was brought in this morning you moron." "Yes of course I'll get her right away," Ivo obliges as he scurries from the front desk and goes up a flight of stairs. Several tense minutes later he comes back down with a girl, it takes you a moment to figure this is your sister. She is covered in bruises, has an eye swollen shut and looks absolute petrified. "What happened to her?" You say very upset which causes Ivo to look at you awkwardly. "My friend asked you a question," Westfield reminds Ivo. "Oh yes, you see the first customer who requested her, nearly got his eyes scratched out, I had to break her, so she would understand the consequences." Rage fills your body of the thought of this lowlife causing harm to your sister, you remember the gun Carla had given you. > You kill Ivo This monster has caused harm to your sister and he will pay for what he has done. You take the gun Carla gave you and aim it at Ivo. Before he has a chance to react you pull the trigger and the bullet hits him just below his knee. He falls backwards onto the ground grabbing his leg and screaming in agony. You're about to fire another shot when Westfield grabs the gun out of your hand. He quickly shoots you in the stomach and like Ivo you fall backwards onto the ground. Westfield stands over you and is about to shoot you again when a bullet hits him killing him and removing a portion of his face. His lifeless body slumps over and lands on its side. You manage to turn your head see it's Carla who shot him, she walks to the middle of the lobby ignoring you and grabs Victoria by the hand, she must figure it's already too late to save you. Carla begins firing at someone else but you don't have any strength to turn your head to see who, it's most likely the two men with Ivo that Westfield had mentioned earlier. Carla is able to get out of the apartment building with Victoria. Westfield is dead and your sister is safe, that fact comforts you and makes dying far less painful.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Go fuck yourself," you bark at Westfield. "Go fuck yourself, that's what you want your last words to be?" Westfield responds puzzled. "It's not very original and not exactly something you want written on your tombstone, although there is- Westfield's rambling is interrupted by Carla who punches him squarely in the jaw knocking him down. Without hesitation Carla grabs Westfield's revolver and points at him. "Shut the fuck up, you annoying loquacious bastard," Carla demands. She offers you her hand and helps you off the floor. "Are you alright?'" Carla asks. "Yeah, I'm fine what about you?" You ask in regard to the injuries Carla obtained. "Don't worry, it's nothing that won't heal in a few weeks." Carla says as she keeps her gun firmly aimed at Westfield. "Well detective are you going to kill me or what?" Westfield goads as he continues to lay on the floor. "You've must have fantasized about this moment hundreds of time, don't chicken out now." "As much as I'd love to shoot your fucking head off, I need you alive to tell me where Victoria Higgins is." "Yeah and then you'll just kill me anyway, tell you what if you give me your word that you'll spare me, I'll lead you to her." "You're going to take her at her word?" You interrupt, somewhat baffled by what Westfield said. "Ben, I've known Carla for years and if it's one thing I've learned about her it's how much pride she has in the fact she is honest and incorruptible, it would go her against her nature to say she'll let me live and then just kill me, she calls it honor but in reality it's just egotistical." "Shut up," Carla snaps at Westfield. "So what's it going to be detective, is letting me live worth the life of Ben's sister?" "Alright you fucking asshole, you have a deal but if try anything I'll hurt you very badly, now call your two thugs downstairs to get in here, this deal doesn't include them." "Fair enough, they failed in their task to keep intruders out so it's no skin off my nose if you kill them." "Ben, take cover," Carla warns you. You hide behind a dresser in the room while Westfield calls for his men. "Lewis, Jerry get you're asses up here!" He yells. Walking into the room oblivious unaware of the trap, the two men enter the room. Carla using Westfield's own revolver shoots one of the thugs in the eye while the other reaches for his gun. His able to take out of the holster but is shoot in the throat before he can even aim it at Carla. "Now tell me where Victoria is," Carla aims her gun back at Westfield. "Hillside apartments, it looks like an apartment building on the outside but it's really a whorehouse, she was brought there early this morning, the address is 197 Hillside Street," Westfield informs. "Let's go get her then," You say rather impatiently. "Hang on Ben, how many men do you have at this building?" "There's the man in charge, Ivo and I think he was two guys with him," "Just three guys?" You interrupt once again baffled. "I own the police, I don't need to waste money recruiting more muscle then I need, besides there is also going to be about eight girls and a few johns" Westfield points out. "Well we should get over there but before we do..." Carla trails off midsentence. She heads to the dresser you hid behind earlier and opens the top drawer, all the while keeping an eye on Westfield. She pulls out a set of handcuffs and tosses them to Westfield. "Put these on," Carla orders. "Kinky," Westfield quips as he puts the handcuffs on his wrists. Carla goes to the body of one of the dead henchmen and takes the gun from its hand. "Take this," she says in a way that makes it sound she isn't going to take no for answer. "I don't know how use these thing," You whine. "You just aim and shoot." Reluctantly you take the gun from Carla as she goes back to Westfield. "On your feet asshole." Westfield complies and the three of you head out of room and downstairs. "Ben, we're taking your car it would be a dead giveaway if we show up in my cruiser, also you're going to have to drive, I won't be able to do the driving and keep an eye on this fucker." You nod your head in agreement and go out the front door. Once in your car along with Carla and Westfield you drive off to Hillside apartments. When you arrive you notice that the apartment building doesn't look anything like you thought it would, in fact it looks ordinary. Since most of your knowledge of the outside world has been through TV and movies rather than firsthand experience, the events that have happened today have made you realize the world is for better or worse not quite what you thought it was. You pull into a parking spot in front of the building. "So I'm going to head ask for your sister, once I get her it's mission accomplished, there's nothing to it," Westfield plans out. "Let's get going," Carla instructs. "Hold it there detective, my men know who you are they will shoot on sight, not that I care but it would put my life in danger as well, Ben has to bring me in, also you're going to have to remove this handcuffs, they will defiantly know something is wrong if I enter the building wearing these." "Don't take your eyes off him," Carla warns you. "If I here gunshots I'm coming guns blazing." Carla lets Westfield out of his cuffs as you get out of the car. Westfield soon does the same while you heed Carla's advice and watch every move he makes. "I saw the way you looked at Northcutt, do you have a thing for cops or authoritative women in general?" Westfield pokes fun at you. Due to being far more focused on finding Victoria you ignore Westfield and the two of you head inside. The interior looks just as ordinary as the exterior as you make your way to the front desk. Behind the desk was a heavy set man who might as well be wearing a sign that said "sleazy", he must be Ivo. He is looking into space when he noticed you and Westfield. Upon recognizing his boss he becomes much more attentive. "Westfield sir, what brings you here? Ivo says somewhat surprised by Westfield's presence. "Who's this with you?" "Never mind who this is, bring me Victoria," Westfield demands with a no nonsense attitude. "Who?" "The girl that was brought in this morning you moron." "Yes of course I'll get her right away," Ivo obliges as he scurries from the front desk and goes up a flight of stairs. Several tense minutes later he comes back down with a girl, it takes you a moment to figure this is your sister. She is covered in bruises, has an eye swollen shut and looks absolute petrified. "What happened to her?" You say very upset which causes Ivo to look at you awkwardly. "My friend asked you a question," Westfield reminds Ivo. "Oh yes, you see the first customer who requested her, nearly got his eyes scratched out, I had to break her, so she would understand the consequences." Rage fills your body of the thought of this lowlife causing harm to your sister, you remember the gun Carla had given you. > You don't kill Ivo You decide not to kill Ivo, it takes ever nerve in your body to resist the urge to point your gun at him and shoot. As badly as you want this monster to pay for what he did to Victoria, trying to kill him would put you and your sister in danger and you're very close to getting out of this situation. You know where Ivo works, there will be time to get revenge another day. "I'm taking her, you don't need to know why," Westfield bluntly tells Ivo. "Yeah sure, she'd but nothing but trouble for me anyway," Ivo presumes. You take Victoria by the hand as you head out of the apartment building. You notice Victoria says nothing and doesn't acknowledge you in any way. When you try to make eye contact with her, she gives you the thousand yard stare with her eye that isn't swollen shut. As soon Westfield is dealt with you need to get her to a hospital. You, Westfield and Victoria leave head outside and towards your car. Carla gets out of the back seat when she sees you approaching. "Oh my god what happened to her?" Carla asks in regard to Victoria. "One of Westfield's men hurt her," You explain trying not to get too upset. "I had no idea Ivo would that," Westfield defends himself. "Like would give shit, now put your jewelry back on," Carla orders as she tosses the handcuffs back to Westfield. You help Victoria into the passenger seat as Carla and Westfield seat in the back. After helping your sister you get into the driver's seat and head off. "Where are we going?" You ask Carla. "Head out to Kennedy road," Carla requests. "Kennedy road, there's nothing out there...oh shit!" Westfield figures out what is happening. After fifteen minutes of driving in silence you turn on to Kennedy road. It's outside of Van Hove and as Westfield claimed there is nothing out here. The road seems to go for miles as two empty fields lie to the left and right of the road. After going along on the road for almost a mile Carla tells to stop the car. "Alright get outside," Carla commands. "You can't do this, I kept my end of the deal," Westfield protests. After exiting the car Carla grabs Westfield by arm and keeps her gun firmly pressed against his back. "Ben get over here," Carla calls to you. You follow her as she leads Westfield away from the road and deeper into the field. "On your knees," She continues to order Westfield. "You're not going to do this, you're too proud to do something so underhanded," Westfield tries to call Carla's bluff. "True, I gave you my word that I wouldn't kill you, but I never said anything about Ben," Carla points out. "What?" You say as Carla's comment catches you off guard. "Ben if you don't kill this monster, he'll just harm more people like he harmed Victoria, you need to put an end to this." "I know a killer when I see one and Ben you're no killer." > You kill Westfiled Holding up the gun you got from Carla you put the muzzle up to the back of Westfield's head. You pull the trigger immediately without saying anything knowing the longer you hesitate the more difficult it would get. Small bits of what used to be Westfield's head wind up landing on your shirt as his body falls forward. You stand in silence as the realization of what you just did sinks into your mind. Carla notices you're becoming uneasy. "You did the right thing Ben," Carla comforts you as she puts her hand on your shoulder. "What's going to happen?" You ask. "Westfield's gang will implode, the police will start doing their fucking job now that no one will be paying them to do otherwise and Westfield will become a meal for the vultures, now let's get your sister to a hospital." > Three days later Ivo sat in his room behind the front desk. With the death of Westfield the rest of the gang has either left Van Hove or fighting in a fruitless battle for control of what little power the gang still has. Once word had reached his brothel about what had happened, all of the girls who were working for him left. It always the fact the Ivo was connected to Westfield that kept girls living in fear of him, without Westfield he was nothing. The two men who served Ivo left shortly after in an attempt to save themselves. Ivo also thought about leaving but he had nowhere to go. His only hope would be that in time a new criminal would come in and take over Van Hove and Ivo could offer his services to him. The sound of footsteps came from out in the hall. Ivo picked up his shotgun off the floor and head out. Running out of his room Ivo took cover behind his desk. Briefly peering out he saw nothing but he knew someone was there. "Van Hove police department, drop your weapon and come out with your hands up!" A voice called out. Knowing he couldn't bribe or shoot his way out of this, Ivo tossed his shotgun over the front desk and walked up with his hands in the air. In front of the doorway was Carla aiming her gun at him, yet she wasn't alone, you were standing beside her. The last time you were here you spared Ivo simply because it was too risky for you and your sister. Now there was no risk at all, Westfield is dead, Ivo's guards have abandoned him and Victoria is recovering at the hospital. "You!" Ivo shouts upon remembering you from your last visit. "I knew you had something to do with what happened to Westfield." "I killed Westfield for kidnapping my sister, you harmed her and now I'm going to kill you." You threaten. "Detective Northcutt, you're a cop, you're not going to let him kill me in cold blood are you?" Ivo tries to plea with Carla. "All my life I played by rules and it wasn't until I broke them that I actually got where," Carla says as she aims her gun at Ivo and shoots him in the kneecap. Ivo falls face down and start screaming in pain. You approach him while Carla hands you her gun. Like with Westfield you put the gun on the back of Ivo's head and pull the trigger. Unlike with Westfield you have no doubts about what you did. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide not to kill Ivo, it takes ever nerve in your body to resist the urge to point your gun at him and shoot. As badly as you want this monster to pay for what he did to Victoria, trying to kill him would put you and your sister in danger and you're very close to getting out of this situation. You know where Ivo works, there will be time to get revenge another day. "I'm taking her, you don't need to know why," Westfield bluntly tells Ivo. "Yeah sure, she'd but nothing but trouble for me anyway," Ivo presumes. You take Victoria by the hand as you head out of the apartment building. You notice Victoria says nothing and doesn't acknowledge you in any way. When you try to make eye contact with her, she gives you the thousand yard stare with her eye that isn't swollen shut. As soon Westfield is dealt with you need to get her to a hospital. You, Westfield and Victoria leave head outside and towards your car. Carla gets out of the back seat when she sees you approaching. "Oh my god what happened to her?" Carla asks in regard to Victoria. "One of Westfield's men hurt her," You explain trying not to get too upset. "I had no idea Ivo would that," Westfield defends himself. "Like would give shit, now put your jewelry back on," Carla orders as she tosses the handcuffs back to Westfield. You help Victoria into the passenger seat as Carla and Westfield seat in the back. After helping your sister you get into the driver's seat and head off. "Where are we going?" You ask Carla. "Head out to Kennedy road," Carla requests. "Kennedy road, there's nothing out there...oh shit!" Westfield figures out what is happening. After fifteen minutes of driving in silence you turn on to Kennedy road. It's outside of Van Hove and as Westfield claimed there is nothing out here. The road seems to go for miles as two empty fields lie to the left and right of the road. After going along on the road for almost a mile Carla tells to stop the car. "Alright get outside," Carla commands. "You can't do this, I kept my end of the deal," Westfield protests. After exiting the car Carla grabs Westfield by arm and keeps her gun firmly pressed against his back. "Ben get over here," Carla calls to you. You follow her as she leads Westfield away from the road and deeper into the field. "On your knees," She continues to order Westfield. "You're not going to do this, you're too proud to do something so underhanded," Westfield tries to call Carla's bluff. "True, I gave you my word that I wouldn't kill you, but I never said anything about Ben," Carla points out. "What?" You say as Carla's comment catches you off guard. "Ben if you don't kill this monster, he'll just harm more people like he harmed Victoria, you need to put an end to this." "I know a killer when I see one and Ben you're no killer." > You don't kill Westfield "This isn't right," You tell Carla. "It's wrong to kill someone in cold blood even if they are a monster." "Are you fucking kidding me?" Carla yells at you and for a moment you worry she is going to shoot you in addition to Westfield. "In case you haven't noticed, because of this shithead your sister is psychically hurt and traumatized, all because he couldn't bother to earn money with a nine to five job." "The reason why you never took Westfield's money or ignored his crimes was because you knew it was important to do the right thing no matter the cost, that's what being a cop is all about, you are last officer in Van Hove who is aware of that but if you kill Westfield you will become the very thing you're fighting against and you will be no different than the cops who took his money." Carla's express seems to calm a bit after listening to you. "You're right, I will personally make sure Westfield spends the rest of his life behind bars." > One week later You walk into Victoria's room with a small vase holding water and flowers. As you enter you see Victoria resting on the hospital bed, a bandage covers her swollen eye and is still emotional fatigued from all that has happened. Upon seeing you however she lets out a smile. "Some flowers should lighten things up here," You claim as you put the vase on a window still. "Thanks," Victoria says weakly. "The doctor says you should make a full recovery, next week you'll be able to come home," You try to cheer Victoria up. "I have to see the psychologist they have here for next three months, I think her name is Dr. Nikol or something like that." You walk to your sister's bed and hold her hand. "It'll be alright," You reassure her. Carla suddenly walks into the hospital room. "Sorry to interrupt this family moment but can I speak to you for a moment Ben?" the detective bluntly asks you. You look at Victoria who gives you a nod of approval and you head out of the room with Carla. "What's this about?" You ask. "I wanted to thank you for stopping me from killing Westfield, I always thought so highly of myself but in the end I let my obsession with bringing him down consume me, thank you for helping me coming to my senses," Carla praised. "Also I should let you know I persona lead the raid on hillside apartments, his men were gone but we caught that fucker Ivo." "That's a big relief and please note that you're a good cop and a good person Carla, you could've easily ignore what I said and shoot Westfield anyway." "You're too kind, but I resigned from the police force this morning, I can't let myself get consumed like that again, also I plan on leaving Van Hove because there's nothing but painful memories here, but thanks to you I know there are still good people in this word, goodbye Ben," Carla hugs you and begins to make her way to the elevator. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What's your name?" You ask in an attempt to keep Westfield's attention on you instead of Carla. "It's Westfield, that's literally the first thing I told you," Westfield says somewhat baffled by your question. "No, I mean your real name, if I'm going to be killed, I should have the right to know the identity of the person who is doing the killing." "I see your point, alright I'll let you in a little secret, I was born and raised in a town called Westfield in New Jersey, I loved that town, of course when I first became a criminal I made a lot of mistakes and the police were closing in on me, I eventually had to leave and I resettled here in Van Hove, I learned that it's important to have an alias and to make sure the police are on your side, most people think nicknames are way to be cool but for me, they make staying out of jail a little easier, but if you really must know my name it's John Tiegel," Westfield prattles. You can see Carla almost is free of her restraints. If you can just distract Westfield for a little bit longer Carla should be able to escape. > You say "Why my sister?" "Why my sister?" You ask Westfield. "Out of all the girls in Van Hove why her?" "That's a fair question, you see her boyfriend Steve liked to gamble but no matter how much he gambled he never could seem to win, he wound up owing me quite a bit of money and would never be able to make enough money to pay me back, then two days he calls me and says he has a girl he can offer as payment so the next day I have one of my guys go and get her," Westfield tells you. "Why did you kill him?" "I learned he had been dating your sister for a month, a person who pretends to be in love with someone else for their own gain can't be trusted, maybe I overacted but it's better to be safe than sorry besides it's not like you feel sorry for that piece of shit, even a by the book cop like Carla here would waste too much time with his death." As Westfield says this his attention turns to Carla and she is forced to stop trying to free herself. "Now it is time for you to die Ben," Westfield seals your fate as he turns back to you and shoots with his revolver and you are killed as Westfield again chooses to be safe rather than sorry. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Something isn't right, you don't know what is as information is proving to be hard to come by today. You walk down the driveway and into the backyard. There is a small patio complete with two outdoor lounge chairs. On one of the chairs is a heavyset man smoking a cigarette. This man might as well wear a sign that says "criminal" and you're positive it's better to stay away from him. There is a backdoor leading into the house and plenty of space between the man and the open door for you to avoid drawing attention. You manage to get inside and find yourself in a kitchen. Ignoring the dirty dishes everywhere you walk out of the kitchen and into a foyer. Briefly glancing at the rooms along the hallway you find they are all empty and eventually you reach the front entrance. A stairway to your left is your only option as you quietly head upstairs. On the upper floor there are a few doors to the left and a few to the right. You hear footsteps that are too heavy to belong to Carla coming from the right so you head left, as you look into a room and at last you find Carla. The discovery is bittersweet as you notice she is tied to a chair with blood coming out of her nose and she has acquired a shiner along with several other bruises. Without thinking you walk in as Carla franticly shakes her head, then you feel something hit on the back which causes you to fall to the ground. You're vision is a bit blurry but you see a man with slicked back blonde hair, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, along with a revolver in his hand. "Hello Ben, I'm Westfield, selling of drugs and take of lives, yeah that was lame I have to work on that, anyway it has come to my attention you're looking for your little sister and to answer the two questions on your mind, yes I took her and the reason why was I wanted to make money off her by turning her into a whore, I'm sorry about this, I purposely only take girls that have no family to avoid situations like these, but that dumbass Steve lied to me, good thing I killed him while I had the chance, sadly this makes you a loose end and you know what happens to lose ends, but since this wasn't suppose to happen, I'll give you a chance to say your final words, make them count" Westfield rambles. Behind Westfield you notice Carla beginning to free herself from the ropes tying her hands to the chair she is in. If you can continue to distract Westfield long enough, she should be able to free yourself. "Well what are your last words?" Westfield asks impatiently. > You say "Go fuck yourself" "Go fuck yourself," you bark at Westfield. "Go fuck yourself, that's what you want you're last words to be?" Westfield responds puzzled. "It's not very original and not exactly something you want written on your tombstone, although there is grave in Canada and I swear to god it has the words 'Fuck you' written on the side, but it's not obvious, you have to really pay to attention to see it but it's there," Westfield continues to blather but you can see Carla almost is free of her restraints. If you can just distract Westfield for a little bit longer Carla should be able to escape. > You say "What's your name?" "What's your name?" You ask in order to keep Westfield's attention on you instead of Carla. "It's Westfield, that's literally the first thing I told you," Westfield says somewhat baffled by your question. "No, I mean your real name, if I'm going to be killed, I should have the right to know the identity of the person who is going to do it." "I see your point, alright I'll let you in a little secret, I was born and raised in a town called Westfield in New Jersey, I loved that town, of course when I first became a criminal I made a lot of mistakes and the police were closing in on me, I eventually had to leave and I resettled here in Van Hove, I learned that it's important to have an alias and to make sure the police are on your side, most people think nicknames are way to be cool but for me, they make staying out of jail a little easier, but if you must know-" Westfield's rambling is interrupted by Carla who punches him squarely in the jaw knocking him down. Without hesitation Carla grabs Westfield's revolver and points at him. "Shut the fuck up, you annoying loquacious bastard," Carla demands. She offers you her hand and helps you off the floor. "Are you alright?'" Carla asks. "Yeah, I'm fine what about you?" You ask in regard to the injuries Carla obtained. "Don't worry, it's nothing that won't heal in a few weeks." Carla says as she keeps her gun firmly aimed at Westfield. "Well detective are you going to kill me or what?" Westfield goads as he continues to lay on the floor. "You've must have fantasized about this moment hundreds of time, don't chicken out now." "As much as I'd love to shoot your fucking head off, I need you alive to tell me where Victoria Higgins is." "Yeah and then you'll just kill me anyway, tell you what if you give me your word that you'll spare me, I'll lead you to her." "You're going to take her at her word?" You interrupt, somewhat baffled by what Westfield said. "Ben, I've known Carla for years and if it's one thing I've learned about her it's how much pride she has in the fact she is honest and incorruptible, it would go her against her nature to say she'll let me live and then just kill me, she calls it honor but in reality it's just egotistical." "Shut up," Carla snaps at Westfield. "So what's it going to be detective, is letting me live worth the life of Ben's sister?" "Alright you fucking asshole, you have a deal but if try anything I'll hurt you very badly, now call your two thugs downstairs to get in here, this deal doesn't include them." "Fair enough, they failed in their task to keep intruders out so it's no skin off my nose if you kill them." "Ben, take cover," Carla warns you. You hide behind a dresser in the room while Westfield calls for his men. "Lewis, Jerry get you're asses up here!" He yells. Walking into the room oblivious unaware of the trap, the two men enter the room. Carla using Westfield's own revolver shoots one of the thugs in the eye while the other reaches for his gun. His able to take out of the holster but is shoot in the throat before he can even aim it at Carla. "Now tell me where Victoria is," Carla aims her gun back at Westfield. "Hillside apartments, it looks like an apartment building on the outside but it's really a whorehouse, she was brought there early this morning, the address is 197 Hillside Street," Westfield informs. "Let's go get her then," You say rather impatiently. "Hang on Ben, how many men do you have at this building?" "There's the man in charge, Ivo and I think he was two guys with him," "Just three guys?" You interrupt once again baffled. "I own the police, I don't need to waste money recruiting more muscle then I need, besides there is also going to be about eight girls and a few johns" Westfield points out. "Well we should get over there but before we do..." Carla trails off midsentence. She heads to the dresser you hid behind earlier and opens the top drawer, all the while keeping an eye on Westfield. She pulls out a set of handcuffs and tosses them to Westfield. "Put these on," Carla orders. "Kinky," Westfield quips as he puts the handcuffs on his wrists. Carla goes to the body of one of the dead henchmen and takes the gun from its hand. "Take this," she says in a way that makes it sound she isn't going to take no for answer. "I don't know how use these thing," You whine. "You just aim and shoot." Reluctantly you take the gun from Carla as she goes back to Westfield. "On your feet asshole." Westfield complies and the three of you head out of room and downstairs. "Ben, we're taking your car it would be a dead giveaway if we show up in my cruiser, also you're going to have to drive, I won't be able to do the driving and keep an eye on this fucker." You nod your head in agreement and go out the front door. Once in your car along with Carla and Westfield you drive off to Hillside apartments. When you arrive you notice that the apartment building doesn't look anything like you thought it would, in fact it looks ordinary. Since most of your knowledge of the outside world has been through TV and movies rather than firsthand experience, the events that have happened today have made you realize the world is for better or worse not quite what you thought it was. You pull into a parking spot in front of the building. "So I'm going to head ask for your sister, once I get her it's mission accomplished, there's nothing to it," Westfield plans out. "Let's get going," Carla instructs. "Hold it there detective, my men know who you are, they will shoot on sight, not that I care but it would put my life in danger as well, Ben has to bring me in, also you're going to have to remove this handcuffs, they will defiantly know something is wrong if I enter the building wearing these." "Don't take your eyes off him," Carla warns you. "If I here gunshots I'm coming guns blazing." Carla lets Westfield out of his cuffs as you get out of the car. Westfield soon does the same while you heed Carla's advice and watch every move he makes. "I saw the way you looked at Northcutt, do you have a thing for cops or authoritative women in general?" Westfield pokes fun at you. Due to being far more focused on finding Victoria you ignore Westfield and the two of you head inside. The interior looks just as ordinary as the exterior as you make your way to the front desk. Behind the desk was a heavy set man who might as well be wearing a sign that said "sleazy", he must be Ivo. He is looking into space when he noticed you and Westfield. Upon recognizing his boss he becomes much more attentive. "Westfield sir, what brings you here? Ivo says somewhat surprised by Westfield's presence. "Who's this with you?" "Never mind who this is, bring me Victoria," Westfield demands with a no nonsense attitude. "Who?" "The girl that was brought in this morning you moron." "Yes of course I'll get her right away," Ivo obliges as he scurries from the front desk and goes up a flight of stairs. Several tense minutes later he comes back down with a girl, it takes you a moment to figure this is your sister. She is covered in bruises, has an eye swollen shut and looks absolute petrified. "What happened to her?" You say very upset which causes Ivo to look at you awkwardly. "My friend asked you a question," Westfield reminds Ivo. "Oh yes, you see the first customer who requested her, nearly got his eyes scratched out, I had to break her, so she would understand the consequences." Rage fills your body of the thought of this lowlife causing harm to your sister, you remember the gun Carla had given you. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need answers, even if Carla is right when said you'd safer knowing less, finding your sister is more important. Your gut is telling you that you should avoid the police let Carla said, so you chose to sit at Victoria's desk and try to find information on the internet about Steve's murder. After searching "Steve Upton murder Van Hove", you find an online news article and begin to read it: Murder on Kerr Road Steve Upton, 28, was found murdered in his home around noon. Police had gotten a call from a neighbor about a possible break-in at Steve's address and his body was found shortly after entering the house. A Van Hove police spokesmen says that Steve was found with a "W" carved in his chest, the trademark of the notorious gang leader who goes by the alias Westfield. Police have asked anyone with information to come forward. A second search for "Westfield" revels information about a gang simply called Westfield's gang. You learn about rumors of having police officers on the take may explain why Carla didn't want you calling the police again. The gang itself commits nearly crime in the book from drug dealing to armed robbery to downright murder. You need to find out why this gang killed Steve, why they took Victoria and how you plan to get her back, the first step is taking out your cell phone and calling Carla. "Northcutt," Carla greets. "Detective Northcutt, it's me Ben, I just found out my sister was taken by some guy named Westfield, I really don't like being kept out of the loop," You complain. "Look Ben, Westfield is an extremely dangerous man and I didn't tell you anything to keep you out of harm's way, if you're so insistent on getting involved then come over to my place where at least I can keep an eye on you, I'm at 224 Shamrock way." "Why do I have the feeling there is still more you're not telling me?" "Just come over here and I'll answer your questions I promise." Carla hangs up, you get the feeling she is a caring person but has a very hard time showing it. Heading out the door and into your car, it occurs to you that Carla believes you're in danger, granted dealing with a criminal gang is dangerous but how much is her worrying justified and how much is simply in her head. You figure it's not worth worrying about as Carla is most likely you're best chance of getting your sister back, since it seems the police are at best useless and at worst the very reason you're in danger in the first place. Arriving on Shamrock way you pull into Carla's driveway and notice along with a police car there is two black sedans in the driveway as well. Carla didn't mention she was having anyone else over and you doubt she bought two identical cars. Perhaps you're over worrying as much as Carla is and is something else she neglected to tell you. > You go to the front door You dismiss you're worries as paranoia and walk up to the front door. After ringing the doorbell you patiently wait. Finally the door opens and you're greeted by a large man. "Yeah?" The man rudely greets. "I'm looking for Carla Northcutt," You explain. "Who are you?" "I'm Ben Higgins, Detective Northcutt asked me to come." The man heads back into the house without saying anything. You continue to wait in the doorway unsure of what to do next. Another man soon comes to the entrance he has slicked back blonde hair, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, along with a revolver holstered on his hip. "Hey Ben, sorry for the rudeness of my friend, we're all a little on edge, Carla is upstairs," The man greets. You walk into the house, a stairway is in the middle of the foyer. You're about to head up when unknown to you, the man with the slicked back hair takes out his revolver and points it at the back of your head. You never hear the gunshot that kills you. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Where's Victoria?" You say in a rather angry tone. "Not even a hello, now why should I help someone who has no manners?" Moira asks. "For Christ sake's Moira, can you stop being a bitch for one second and just tell me where Victoria is?" You shout as your patience runs out. The other workers in the building have heard your outburst and now all eyes are on you. "I think it's time for you to leave, Ben." Embarrassed and feeling like a jackass, you head out and drive back home. This incident will no doubt make going out in the future more difficult. When you're back in the safety of your dwelling, you begin to calm down. You go to your bedroom, sit down on your computer and begin the work you were going to do today. Although you are still upset, working relieves your stress quite a bit. After several more hours Victoria still is missing and your concern now as some justification. After the incident at Moira's, you really don't feel like heading out but need to determine what you're going to do next. > You don't call the police You decide not to call the police and try to convince yourself that you are just overanxious and this will all be over with soon. After eating dinner you go to bed. The night mostly consists of you tossing and turning. When morning arrives you are too tired and too stressed to get any work done and for most of the day you don't really do anything. Your boss isn't going to be happy about this but your mind is completely focused on Victoria at this point. The sliver of hope you still have slowly fades as the hours pass and you beg for this torture to end. Finally around evening time you hear a knock at the door and run to it like a kid to presents on Christmas. Sadly it isn't Victoria but two police officers who tell you the grim news that Victoria's body has been found. If only you weren't such a recluse afraid of the outside world, dealt with Moira better or actually bothered to call the police you might have been able to find Victoria alive, as it is you must now come to terms with the fact you are truly alone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are Ben Higgins, a person of no consequence living in the town of Van Hove. The town was large but not big enough to be a city, not that it matted to you since your world is mainly your home and the small yard around it. For most of your life the idea of going out into the world made you uncomfortable, along with the idea of social interaction. Of course when the situation called for it, like getting food or mailing a letter at the post office, you could handle it no problem, but you found it joyless and were glad when it was over. In addition you rarely watched TV or even the news on the internet, unless it was happening on your property it didn't affect you or at least that's what you believe. As for money you work from home on your computer fixing problems on other people's computers via remote desktop connections. The company you work for pays enough so you have enough food and pay the bills. What is most important is that they leave you alone while you work. Your little sister Victoria says you do want to go out and do more, but you're afraid. Victoria is your main source of social interaction and the only person who have any real connection to. Several years ago, your parents died in a car crash and Victoria has been living with you ever since. The two of you get along for the most part, you have the same squabble that all siblings have but you genuinely care for each other. It's summer now and in the fall Victoria is leaving for college, which is going to leave you more alone than ever. Oh sure, she is going to visit and stay here between semesters, but you know this is the beginning of her going off to forge her own path and living her own life, something you never got around to doing. Alas you are happy for her and would never want to hold her back. Certainly you would not want her to live the same dull and somewhat depressing existence you have. You do wonder if she is right and you do want to go out in the world and make friends but the fear is simply more than you can handle, while giving up and crawling back into bed is just too easy. If Victoria is right then what exactly are you afraid of? Not being able to fit in, or perhaps it's the shear unpredictably of life. It doesn't make a difference as you have no plans on changing your lifestyle in the foreseeable future. You wake up late one morning, planning on spending the day working, you head into the narrow hallway and into the kitchen. The kitchen is cramped and needs to be cleaned soon, as you brush crumbs off the kitchen table you notice something is off. It's relatively quiet, normally when you get up Victoria is making noise doing one thing or another. She can't still be asleep, she was always an early bird, maybe she is feeling ill, you decided to check on her as you head back into the hallway and knock on her bedroom door. "Vic, you alright?" You call out while knocking. No response, you open the door just a tad to peek in and see her bed is empty. After this discovery you head back into your room and grab your cell phone off your dresser. There are no text messages or voicemail, Victoria always leaves one when she heads out. You send her text asking where she is. Several minutes pass and there is no reply. Victoria is glued to that phone and she always responds quickly, even though it's usual a text to stop bugging her. You begin to worry, but perhaps you're being overprotective. Your sister is an adult and unlike you has a life, although this is a big departure from her usual behavior. Her best friend is Moira Estacado, she owns the bar and restaurant "Moira's" located in the center of town. Maybe she would know where your sister is, or you could search Victoria's room, there might be something there you could find. > You search Victoria's room Victoria would kill you if she saw you entering her room, but you own the damn house so that gives you permission to go in. You walk in and find it a mess, clothes are thrown everywhere, there is a plate with bread crumbs on her nightstand that is beginning to attract ants, but you're not bothered since her room is always like this. You look around but can't find anything that would give a clue as to where she went. In a corner is a desk with her laptop on it, you turn it on but find it's password protected. It was you who insisted that she set up a password, why did this have to be the one time she would actually listen to you? Next to the laptop you find a framed photo of you and her. She has a big grin on her face while you look miserable complete with frown and tilted eyebrows. The search has turned up nothing and you come to the conclusion you're simply overreacting, she's probably out having fun and enjoying life, something you should start doing someday. Her cell phone most likely has a dead battery or she lost it, hence the lack of response. She'll presumably be home in a few hours and that will be that. For now you head into your and sit at your desk to begin working on your computer. Your computer is your sanctuary, your escape from reality. Talking to people via online chat is far less stressful then dealing with them face to face. Not long after you log on to your company's website, you begin working on fixing someone's computer, most of the time the problem is a virus someone got while trying to download porn or a pirated movie. After a while your work is interrupted by the growling of your stomach which reminds you that you never had breakfast. You go into the kitchen and have breakfast which consists of stale cereal and milk that's only one day passed its expiration date. When you put the milk back in the fridge you spot a note that had fallen off the door and sailed underneath the refrigerator. Picking it up off the ground you read the message on it. Ben, since you don't ever bother to check your phone, I'm leaving this note to remind you to wake up early so you can get me to Jan's dance studio tomorrow 6/26 at 10 AM. I can't get anyone else to do it and yes I know I should have my license, please try to remember because I hate going into your room to wake you up since it smells like feet in there -Love Vic Victoria loved dance and wouldn't miss it for the world, the worry you had earlier comes back and is a bit more potent this time. You decide to call the police, it may be a bit extreme but you figure it is better to be safe than sorry and take out your cell phone. "911, what is your emergency?" The operator on the other end inquiries. "I'd like to report a missing person," You answer. "What's your name sir?" "Ben Higgins." "Who is it that's missing?" "My sister, Victoria Higgins." "How old is she?" "Twenty." "How long has she been missing?" "I woke up and she wasn't here and she hasn't been answering her cell phone." "I'm sorry sir, but the law states a person has to be missing for at least twenty four hours before we can investigate, in most cases the person comes back on their own, if she is still missing by tomorrow morning, call us back." "Thanks, I guess." You hang up the phone, unsure of what to do next, you could wait to see Victoria comes back by tomorrow and call the police if she hasn't. It's also still possible to go to Moira's and see if she knows anything.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don't remember when you first acquired the power to see spirits. After all differentiating the dead from the living could be rather difficult considering that the ones you saw at such a young age died rather peacefully to your recollection. Or that was the case, until the age of around ten or so. The memory of that night was vivid, and it seemed to be stained into your brain, it's not something that you could imagine that you would ever forget. You had spent the night at a friend's house, which was pretty rare considering that you mostly always stayed at home on your own free time when you were younger at that age. You were so overjoyed and ecstatic, and so was your friend as you spent most of that night playing video games and at around midnight tried to watch the adult stuff that he had bragged about having access to on his T.V. It wasn't until the next morning, that he had invited you to come into his basement to look at his dad's motorbike that was stored down there, that made the night so unforgettable and morbid. At first, you didn't really know what it was, it seemed to be a jumble of hair, mixed with red clothes and gray clay. It was right by the motorbike that your friend was about to show off. You didn't really think much of it, not even asking your friend about it at first since it was probably your eyes just playing tricks on you, it was pretty dim after all. It was wasn't until you got closer. The facial features, the blood, the bent limbs and the wriggling maggots that were feasting around its mouth and what was left of its nose. You don't remember all that much after that. Your dad told you that you had to be sent home since you wouldn't stop screaming or crying, when he reminisced the story to you he found it amusing. Knowing what you do know, you didn't find it funny. You didn't really fear it all that much either though. > You present day There seemed to be a difference in the dead you saw. Some were alive and could communicate with you, while others were just corpses that you would see as if the crime or accident had just happened, sometimes the corpses would seem very decayed too, just like the one at your friend's house. At first, it was just it was just corpses that you were able to see, which really fucked you up when you saw them every now and then at different locations whenever you left you left your house. The first times you screamed, as far you can remember or have been told by your parents, but soon it seems you just got used to it as no one else were able to see what you kept on seeing. It didn't scare you as it did the first times after encountering new corpses, but then again it wasn't a sight that you looked forward to seeing either. You could best describe it as getting sick, or getting injured. It sucks when it happens, but you can't really do all that much about it, and the only way around it is to limit yourself in the locations that you went. That's how you ended up becoming a shut-in, locked away in your room on your computer for whenever you came home from school or had free time on the weekends. That's to say you weren't an emo loner or someone who had terrible serious issues that needed therapy, or at least you hoped so. The screaming parts were just seen as a phase to your parents. Like sex or bad words, seeing dead people was something that you never really felt comfortable talking about with them. In fact, at first, you thought everyone could see it, and they were just fucking with you when they said that they had no idea what you were talking about when you pointed at the corpses. It took months before you knew that it was just your own personal disease. A disease that you knew would probably never get cured. Waking up from bed, in a tired daze, you looked at your phone to see that it was Friday, and you had woken up an hour early before school. This was pretty unusual, since most of the time you would stay up till one or two a.m. and would usually miss the morning bus. That had to mean you only got like four or five hours of sleep. "Shit." Taking the time that you had, you got yourself showered and dressed and went downstairs to make yourself some breakfast before you would walk to your bus stop. Your school was close enough that walking could be an option. Although usually, you run into a few car crash victims along the sidewalk, most of the time their heavily disfigured or heavily weeping. You don't know exactly why you didn't notice them when you were younger, though you chalked it up to the assumption that you were always playing on your Gameboy on car rides or something. There have been a few instances in which you've spoken to the dead, although most of the time they never ended well. It seems that they're trapped into a sort of box, each box differentiating in size to reasons unknown to you. If they're lucky they have someone to talk to if the place they died has another ghost, or they died in pairs. When there's a lone ghost, however, most of the time they look miserable or heavily distressed. You learned never to make eye contact, as that was a sure fire way that they knew that you could see them. There was one time that one on a road you traveled on was screaming at you, and that had caused other ghosts in the area to also look over at you as he screamed that you could see him. You don't ever go on that road now on the way home, in fact, you stay try your best to stay away from that part of the city. Though there a bit of you that was ashamed for being afraid of ghosts. If this was something you were going to live with for the rest of your life then you had to start facing it head on, or at least that's what you wanted to think. > You take the bus After internally debating with yourself on what you would do, you finally told yourself that you would do this some other day, not wanting this day to be ruined over a bad interaction. With that, you grabbed your book bag and said goodbye to your mom who was in the kitchen. You were honestly genuinely surprised that you hadn't seen any ghosts on your way or at the bus stop. Usually, there had to be at least one every block or so, though this was probably the reason why you preferred this so much instead of walking. Besides you, there was only one other student who got on at this stop, though he usually kept to himself in the corner of the wall as he huddled down to his knees and checked his phone until the bus was to come. You thought about saying something a while back when you first started riding the bus but thought against it for reason. As the two of you waited in silence as the sun slowly rises in the distance changing the dark blue sky into a lighter hue by each passing second, the bus soon finally arrives as the two board the school bus. Your stop was one of the first ones on the route, so you had the first choice in seats. With only three other people on, and none of them being someone you knew, you sat alone in the midsection. You disliked sitting next to windows, for obvious reasons. The less you saw of the corpses the better. Today you felt worse than the past couple, probably was something that you had eaten or something. Resting your head against the back of the seat in front of you, you kept your hand against your stomach as you tried to remain calm. Fuck you should have asked your mom to stay home today, you already knew you were to vomit soon enough. Strangely you didn't notice time pass as you kept to your thoughts, and before you knew it the bus was crowded with most of the stops now being completed. The noise was rampant as you felt like you were getting to your breaking point, fuck this would be so embarrassing. You were lucky that no one was sitting next to you today, because of this you turned your back to the aisle as you rested your head against the window. Arriving at school, you were one of the last ones to get out, luckily the bus driver was just playing a game on his phone so he didn't all that much mind that you took your time getting off. Immediately your first thought was to head to the nurse's office, but with how far it was from the bus lanes, you knew you wouldn't make it. With your alternative being much, much closer, you decide to head there instead to get some solitude to do the disgusting deed. Your knees trembled as you planted them to the ground while lifting up the toilet seat. Something felt extremely weird, the feeling of your upcoming vomit fest was accompanied by a strong heartburn. You don't remember eating anything spicy that would have caused something like this but whatever was coming out, would most likely burn your throat. "Hnph, Hmpfhh!" A steady stream of brown water exits your mouth as it all enters the toilet in one big gush. It didn't seem like this would be ending anytime soon, as more continued to be projectile streamed from your mouth. As this was happening though, the heartburn got worse, and your eyesight was starting to become a blur in which you couldn't even see the dirty water of the toilet clearly anymore. With the last of the vomit exiting your body, you fell back onto the tile floor and went into immediate darkness. > You dreams You dream a lot when you sleep. In fact, you could probably remember all of them from the past week, in almost exact detail. Almost all of them involved ghosts, and almost all of them had unhappy endings. You couldn't really classify them as nightmares though, just sad stories. This dream wasn't like the last ones. The giant marble pillar that you sat on in a dark purple empty void was a brand new experience. This, this seemed and felt like a nightmare. Your surroundings felt so vast and unknown and because you had extreme anxiety and awareness for what could or was about to come. The voice that came a few minutes after, raised every single hair on the back of your neck and arms while your fingers clamped up. "Your quota needs to be met. You need to pass one five." These words were repeated twice in the same speed and vocal. You felt as if someone was watching you but as you looked around there was no one to be found. The voice sounded so alluring and calm, but also one that would be able to cause great things, and with that, it also intimated you greatly. "Diligence will reward you. Diligence is the key to pass them on." These words were repeated as well, and once they were done both were said compounded. "Good luck." You could hear the sound of the final late bell for class as your eyes opened to the ceiling of the bathroom. Groggily sitting yourself up and wiping the drying vomit from your mouth with your shoulder sleeve, you get yourself to your feet as you grab your bag and flush the toilet. You didn't know what the words of your dream meant, and if you should actually take it seriously at all. What mattered right now though is that you just fucking fainted after throwing up. You were feeling better but there was still an aching burning sensation in your chest that was starting to worry you. > You head to class This was probably some sort of morning sickness or something, it would probably end up passing during third or fourth period. Besides it's not like you walked or did anything active during class anyway so worst comes to worse you can just lay your head down and wait for it all to be over. Exiting out of the bathroom, you shuffle down the empty hallways as you navigate to your homeroom. Mr.Finks was pretty laid back when it came to being late so it's not like you would get into much trouble anyway because of this predicament. Finally arriving in the hallway in which your class was located, you open the door leading inside, feeling the stares of some people as they give you a quick look before going back to whatever was occupying them seconds before your arrival. You go over to where your seat is as Mr. Finks notices you but doesn't say anything towards, probably assuming your ride brought you here late or something. This makes you a bit glad as you slump down into your seat as Mr. Finks starts with today's morning lecture on what we would be doing for the period. Classes go by at a regular pace for you as you walk from one to another with each passing hour. Your stomach sways from normalcy to shitty pain every now and then which in turns gives you a piss poor attitude with anybody that interacts with you. During lunch, you didn’t feel like eating anything, which worried you since you hadn’t eaten at all today besides a banana for breakfast, which you probably threw up in the bathroom earlier. Most likely whatever you were to take in would immediately come right back out, so you decided to opt out from your normal lunch plans. You instead decide to go somewhere secluded, and find the solitude in one of the hidden areas behind the school were a nice patch of grass and a few benches could be found. Normally this is where couples would usually make out and such, but ever since they increased security around campus and added a camera here, it’s become abandoned by students save for rare occasions. You didn’t even sit on the bench and instead plopped your whole body on the grass. Immediately it started feeling better, and you’ve never felt such bliss of having a painless stomach. You just looked up at the light blue cloudless sky while your stomach just gurgled from hunger and bits of pain. The quietness of the whole area seemed off, with it being school and all. Normally there would at least be ambiance of wildlife or janitors emptying trash cans, but it was just silence. “How long have you been laying there?” Your whole body jumped up in surprise at this sudden voice from behind you, as your body immediately pulled itself up. Your torso turned to look at this intruder of your quiet time, to which you saw a female student giving you an odd look. “Who are you?” You say with a hint of venom, which you instantly curse yourself for doing. “You know it was pretty hard to find you when there were so many souls blocking my signal, you being alone though in a place like this just so happened to make the first part of my job extremely easy.” “Huh?” You say with a confused look for what was just said to you. The girl sighed with annoyance. “Now I guess we have to do the boring stuff don’t we...you can see ghosts right. Don’t lie to me either.” Your mouth hangs open as unintelligible sounds come from it as you don’t know how to respond. A smile appears on her face as she bends down onto her knees to get a better look at you more closely, which in turns startles you even more. "Do I know you?" You hesitantly ask. "Probably not, I usually end up leaving early since I'm a senior so you probably haven't seen me around all that much either. But anyway now that my suspicions are correct it's time to get down to business before lunch ends." This girl was being very vague with what she was telling you, and you felt like just walking off to leave her and her crazy thoughts to her lonesome. However she knew that you saw ghosts, and curiosity dominated over your cautiousness, so you ended up staying sitting down and for her to explain herself further. Before she began, you see that she took a big breath before anything left her mouth and then she started. "Your kind, the kind who sees ghosts are referred to as Wardens. Wardens help ghosts in different ways, and Wardens are categorized in different subs depending on how they help ghosts. You have been categorized into the trapper subsection congratulations, you get one of the most fun jobs there is. You can refer to me as your guide, I'll help you with finding easy ghosts, and in turn well both finish our contracts and bounce out of the quota system for five years until we're needed again." A lot of what she said didn't make sense, and there were a few parts that just passed you completely. "Well delve into this topic more, we have some time to spare so we can leave to helping spirits on the weekends. Which I honestly prefer because I don't want to waste my senior year doing this crap, even if it can be fun at times." She says this with a small smirk while look at her cluelessly. "Until our quota is done, I'm going to be your new best friend for the next couple of months, so let's get this over with as soon as possible. Anyway, give me your phone number so I can start getting you some more information after you go home because this the more extended stuff that you need to know is a real pain in the ass to have to say." You didn't really respond, as what she had just said went in through one ear and out the other. "Hey are you deaf, give me your phone number." She said a little more irritated. Coming back from your daze, you fumble your phone from out of your pocket, bringing up your number on the contacts page as you seem to forget what it is. Giving her your phone, she quickly starts typing in what she needs before giving it back to you seconds later. "Also don't call me to me around school like you know me, that'll be weird. My name is Ruby." With her quick introduction, she walks away from where you're sitting with everyone seemingly said and done. You continue to sit in that lonely patch of grass as you wonder what the hell had just happened. > You later that day With school over and you heading over to your bus stop, you wait there quietly as you and some other students idle around until it is time for it to arrive. A few minutes pass however when a car that had come from student parking rolls up onto the curb in which the bus usually parks itself. The passenger window rolls down and seeing who the driver is makes your mouth drop a little. "Hey, hurry up and get in!" Ruby yells while pointing directly at you. The other bus riders look at you while you immediately follow her directions and get into her car. As you close the door, Ruby begins to chastise you. "Holy fuck didn't you get my texts to wait at your last hour so I could come and get you, I was looking all over for you around campus." Reaching into your pocket you pull out your phone and see that you had a couple missed calls along with over ten spam texts. "Ah sorry my phone was dying so I was saving my battery, don't know why I didn't feel the vibrations th-.....Wait why am I here with you again?" You stop yourself and ask her with confusion. "Trust me, me I had plans to go do other shit to and I'd rather be doing that right now, but I just got a lead on a couple of spirits that you'll be able to take in, and the sooner we do that the sooner we can end the quota and length the time before we start getting sick. Always keep that in mind when I start pulling you out from classes or we go somewhere straight from school. So start checking your phone sooner dipshit." With her lecture and insult out of the way, she puts her car in drive and speeds of the school driveway and out onto the streets. "What did you mean by take in?" You ask in puzzlement at the first stoplight you meet. Ruby looks at you with confusion, before realization sets in. "Oh yeah I wasn't planning on explaining your powers until later over text, but I guess now is going have to be the time we do this. Alright listen and pay attention because I'm not going to repeat what I'm about to say, got it?" You nod. "Alright, so each one of your kind has a special power that is used in dealing with spirits and helping them ascend. Some powers are faster with the process than others, while some just go off on their own branches and ways that they can be used. Your specialty is a rarer one, and to be perfectly honest I don't even know how exactly we're going to go about doing this as I have no idea how your kind ascends spirits. But for now I need you to coax these spirits we encounter into a state of comfort, afterward you'll take them in." "Take them in how?" You ask again, this time a little tenser. This cause Ruby to grimace a bit as she seems to choose her wording wisely which surprises you a bit given her past attitudes of being upfront. "Well....Take in as in literally, the spirits we encounter will enter your body alongside you and sort of stay there, seeing what you see, communicating with you, and just being apart of you per say without much control over your body though." She finishes, giving a quick glance over to you for your reaction. "Wait a minute, you're telling me I'm going to be sharing my body with those fucking things!" You say a bit louder than you meant, but with good reason as this was a pretty serious matter. "Relax, you'll still have total control over your body, well I'm pretty sure you will. I've never heard of one of your class being taken over so I can't say for certain...but anyway all that'll really happen is that you'll just have other people talking to you in your head is all, or maybe they show up as actual spirits. I don't know your guess is as good as mine, so make sure to fill me in on what happens with our first contact. I'll be needing this information in case I ever have to work with another one of your kind." You couldn't really tell if she was trying to reassure you or calm you down from your anxiety, but if she was, she was doing a really shitty job at doing so. "Anyway...who's this first ghost were going to go....see?" You ask Ruby while your throat tightens a bit. "Well according to the tip, it's going to be a be a young boy who died while drowning, luckily his spirit boundaries included the docks so he wasn't stuck at the bottom of the lake forever, still though, getting out of there must have been hell..." She says with a small pause. > The lake You remember coming to this lake before. When you were much younger as a child with a couple of your cousins during a summer weekend. You hadn't realized a kid had drowned here, but then again you wouldn't be surprised as there were some pretty deep parts of this lake that could be really dangerous if you were by yourself. Ruby parked in the area in which a playground was located, though it seemed to be barren, though with school having just ended a little while ago that was probably a given. The two of you exited her car as you made your way down the hill towards the lake that was at the bottom of the large park that is mainly occupied. There being a lot of people fishing around here when you were younger, but a few signs that seemed to be banning such sport placed along the path down to the lake seemed to tell you that there was no more of such a thing around here. You have a guess that it probably had to do with more people swimming around this area causing the ban, though honestly you would have seen it as the other way around. "Let's hurry up and get this done before anyone decides to come down here and take a dip, apparently when you take in ghosts the process is a little....weird,"Ruby tells you as she gets into a faster pace on the way down the hill. Thanks to those words the feeling of your stomach churning in her car earlier had returned just as it had died down only moments before. Upon arriving at the lower wooden docks in which were used as jumping off points, you see no one there which surprises you a little, as you had at least expected to see the boy in plain view. "Ah fuck where did the little shit run off too..." You hear Ruby murmur under her breath in a not so subtle way. The two of you look around for the ghost boy but come up with nothing which leads to Ruby getting more irritated. "Fuck, if he's at the bottom of the lake right now then this is really going to be a pain in the ass to do...you know how to swi...HOLY SHIT." Ruby recoils back instantly, pushing yourself back in the process as she was right in front of you. You catch her with your hands before she can trip the two of you over and push her to the side a bit, to be able to see what shocked her so bad. You see nothing at first, which confuses you. It isn't until your vision starts lowering to the shallower parts of the water that you also recoil back a bit, but not as much as Ruby had. There in the water, a half-submerged head sits. Its forehead is covered with wet hair that hides most of it. The thing that fucked with you and Ruby though were the pair of yellow pupils that were looking directly at the two you ominously. The only other part that wasn't submerged was its upper nose, everything else of its head and body was under. "You little fucking shit, why'd you scare us like that!" Ruby yells with fury at the boy, who in turn cocks his head to the side, revealing some of its mouth and nostrils, which all seem to be rotting, as none of its skin is the normal color one would think when imagining a person. Everything about him was a sickly vomit green, the worst part though was some of his skin seemed to be sagging at different parts of its face, no doubt from the water. "Ruby approached the figure in the water, as she went down the dock. This caused the boy to get himself out of the water using his two hands to hoist his body out. When he did though, Ruby stopped in her tracks, and your stomach started churning violently as you tried to stop yourself from vomiting. The boy had no lower body so to speak, it seemed to stop at his stomach, and with how to skin met the flesh at the bottom, it had seemed as if though he was ripped apart violently, as entrails leaked out, but were sturdy enough to stay on him with his swaying motions as he kept balance with his hands onto the docks. His entrails reminded you of tentacles on an octopus, except dark red and green along with some black shit mixed between that you didn't want to guess on it being. "Fuck..."Ruby mutters under her breath. "What do you want?"The boy says, with a super unearthly voice that you swear echos like that of someone possessed by a demon. "We're here to help you cross over kid, so help us help you."Ruby says getting straight to the point, although she isn't as confrontational and rash as she was before, not even able to look directly at the boy." This causes the silence from the boy, but through your peripheral vision, you see that his eyes start to furrow in anger. "What are you some kind of devils or something, was this my punishment, sitting at the bottom of the lake for four months trying to dig my way out! Fuck you!" This boy had quite the vocabulary of words for someone as young as him. "Trust me kid, do you know how many people die each and every day and get stuck in this limbo, count yourself lucky that you haven't been waiting years, hell you might even be considered early,"Ruby tells him with a sideways glance. It seemed as if the boy took this the wrong way though as if Ruby was mocking him, as this only seemed to increase his anger. "You fucking bitch! Do you have any idea how long a month can be at a bottom of a lake, how murky and dark it can be. Do you have any idea how long I was dragging myself until I reached the embankment that started to take me up? Unless you can relate to that don't fucking joke about time, you know nothing of it." The boy seethed through his teeth. Ruby scoffed at this as she stepped closer to the kid. "Alright listen here kiddo, you can be mad all you want, what's done is done so why don't you start worrying about your future. Do you want to stay at this lake forever and not move on? If you keep us with this attitude we can just leave you here and you can wait for another one of us to come and find you, but trust me, you'll be waiting a lot longer than four months." The kid through his furious expression turns away to stop making eye contact with Ruby as he starts to shudder. You can see the tears falling from his remaining eye as he just shakes his head slowly. He stays silent after that. Ruby walks back to you as she crosses her arms. "Ok, well this is going to be harder than I thought due to what just happened, but everything else is going to be up to you. You have to get the kid to agree to come with you, but the trick is he has to be happy, or just content I think, afterward were done with this one and we can move on." "You know you could have been a little nicer with him you know." You reply with a frown. She laughs at your complaint, and with how real it is, it un-nerves you a bit. She puts a hand on your shoulder and looks you dead in the eye. "Trust me, once you start dealing with enough of them, you'll eventually get jaded out. Besides most of them are going to a better place after this, so don't worry to much about it." Letting go of your shoulder, she walks away and goes to sit down at the other end of the dock, and just seems to watch you. Better that she did this, you didn't think she would be much help in getting this kid into a good mood. > The boy Walking back up to the boy, you could see that he was still sulking, although he had stopped shaking so at least that was good. You crouch down to his level and start to speak. > You apologize "Hey I'm sorry about my friend back there, she doesn't really know how to talk to people all that well." "Yeah, I could tell..."The boy quietly replies. "Don't worry though, you don't really have to deal with her anymore. From now on it's just going to be you and me interacting with one another. Trust me I'm a lot nicer than she is." You say with a little laugh. This causes the boy to look up at you, and the two of you make direct eye contact. You try to morph your facial expression to that of an assured and friendly one, you think it's working as the boy doesn't break eye contact with you. "What's your name kid?" "Owen." "Well Owen, how would you like to come with me. I can get you out of here in the next couple of minutes." "You'll help me get to heaven?" Owens' eyes beam with home, but as he reads your unchanged expression his mood darkens. "I'm going to hell aren't I?" "What? No, it's just that.....well you won't be going to heaven just yet." "What do you mean...?"Owen asks suspiciously. You give a sigh."Alright look kid, I'm going to be straight with you. I'm going to perform an action and after this action. Well,.....you're going to go inside my body." "What?!" "Yeah, you'll share a body with me, and be able to see what I see and go where I go, think of it as keeping me company." You say trying to make situation sound tame. "But I don't want to go with you, I want to get off this fucking planet!"He cries. "Yes eventually you will, but you just have to stay with me for a period of time, and once that period of time is over, you can ascend." "How long is the period of time...?"He mutters. You give him a sideways glance. "I don't know, it depends on the spirit." Silence clouds the two of you as he seems to think this over. "Well...I guess it's better than staying here I guess, now that the fishermen are all gone. You don't seem like all that bad of a guy either so I guess it wouldn't be all that bad, compared to that one bitch..." He mutters. Even if he was to agree with the terms of coming with you, you still had to bring some happiness into him somehow, otherwise, the process wouldn't work going off of what Ruby had said. "Don't look so down about it kid. Hey, is there anywhere you ever wanted to go, anything you ever wanted to do?" "I...I wanted to play a video game that was supposed to be coming out." You bit your lip hard as you tried your best to stop the laugh that was wanting to come out, instead you give a deep nod to him in confirmation. "Alright, well then I'll get the game you wanted and we can play it together, and anything else you want to do we will do it, O.K?" "You promise?" "I promise." The kid smiles a little, and you think its a genuine one considering that he lets out his hand. "Let's do this then." Grabbing the boy's hand, you feel your head start to buzz. > You getting in Your mind starting to get really fucking fuzzy, as if listening to a radio station that had just gone completely static. It didn't hurt your ears though, it was just a mild annoyance as you felt dizzy and your vision getting blurry. Not wanting to fall on your face, you sat yourself down on the ground and waited for this experience to pass by. "That was pretty anticlimactic." You hear Ruby say through the static, though you don't pay her much mind as you try to concentrate on seeing if you could communicate with, Owen. Owen can you hear me? The static continues, and you feel your heart race a little bit. Sitting in silence for a few seconds, you start to feel the static die down a little as your ability to hear yourself think finally. Hello? You hear a voice call out to you, which makes your entire body jump up a bit with how it sounds directly in your mind. Owen is that you? Yeah, it's me. Man this is so weird, I can see what you're seeing I think, but I can't control where my eyes go, I can't explain it "Hey, so did it work then?" You hear Ruby ask you as she starts walking up to you from where she was sitting. "Yeah, I guess. He's in me now." "Well that's amusing, hopefully, that counts to your quota in terms of delaying the sickness for the both of us, anyway I guess were done here now that you have him. Before we go though you should test some of your abilities out." "What do you mean by abilities?" You asked puzzled. "I looked up on your specific class on my database while I was sitting down over there, and apparently you and your spirits can do some specific things together." "Like what?" "We'll first off he can detach from your body, apparently you're now his boundary zone, so he can stay around you in his own form if he doesn't want to stay inside your head so to speak." Ask her how to do it! Owen speaks loudly causing you to wince. "Well how is it done then?" you ask Ruby. "Tell him to just start thinking about leaving your mind, while being absolutely calm and patient, that's how they said to do it on the database." That sounds easy enough. Seeing as that you didn't have to do anything yourself, you waited for Owen to do the process of getting out. Nothing seemed to happen for a few moments, but a voice from behind you made you jump from behind. "Hey, it worked!" Turning around you see Owen, although this time, he had legs. Not just legs, but his entire body was completely different, he had regained his eye, and his skin was that of a normal healthy color. His whole body looked normal, as if he wasn't dead at all, this would be the first time you've ever seen a ghost this healthy looking. Owen didn't seem to notice this at first, but he soon looked down in puzzlement and let out a yelp as he stumbled back on his feet. "My...My legs are back!" "Yeah, now I can actually look at you without vomiting..." Ruby mutters from beside you. You give her a glare as Owen continues to feel up his body for all the body parts and skin that he had regained. Once again, tears started falling down his face as he continued feeling himself, although more slowly than before. "The other trick is getting back inside your body, and for that, all he has to do is grab your hand and twist it, those are the only tricks I've found so far, I'm sure there's more, I'll let you know once I find them," Ruby explains to you as she starts to walk off. "Now let's get out of here, I have to get home and do my homework." > You home Ruby had dropped you and Owen off at your house. Surprisingly though, Owen seemed to have regained physics as well, as he was able to touch a few things that other ghosts weren't able too, although some items were still limited, you felt as if though that could change with some practice. Your parents didn't seem able to see Owen either, as when the two of you walked inside, you were the only one who was greeted, which was good. Getting to your room, you start to speak to Owen as he's looking around with curiosity. "Alright, so from now on I want you to stay this way when it's possible, I don't want you reading my thoughts or anything while you're inside my head. Besides I'm pretty sure you'd like having your own freedom instead of being stuck to what I see and do, right?" Owen nods. "Good.....so um....do ghosts sleep?" "No, I usually just walked around the lake or looked up at the sky during the night time, not that much different than during the day..." Owen says in a bit of a depressed voice. "Well, with how you've changed already, you might need to start sleeping too. If that's the case sleep on the floor once I lay out some blankets. Otherwise just do something in my room....just don't go poking around in any of my personal stuff." You warn, wanting to keep at least some sort of privacy. "Yeah, Yeah, Whatever you say." He says sarcastically as he makes his way over to your desktop. "Can I play on your computer?" "Can you even touch it?" Owen reaches for the mouse and keyboard as he starts clicking and typing randomly. Guess that's a yes. "Yeah go ahead, the password is 01234." "Shitty password. "Do you want to play on it or not?"You say annoyed. "Sorry." > Next day You wake up pretty early the following day, although you think it's because the sound of a monster getting slain is what causes you to stir from sleep "Oh are you awake already, I beat this game for you while you were asleep, it was pretty easy not gonna lie." You rub your eyes for a second as you just sit there in confusion. It takes you a few moments before you realize who Owen is and remember everything that happened the following day. "Got to get ready for class..."You yawn as you start getting your clothes. "Oh let me come with you!" Owen exclaims as he gets up from your chair. "Well I mean you kind of have to..." "Oh yeah." You shake your head as you grab your remaining items and head for the bathroom. Luckily the boundary between you and Owen was pretty big so he didn't have to be close by to you that much, still giving you a lot of privacy then what you originally thought you would have. Once you were ready to go, you and Owen left your house and made your way to your bus stop. "You should ask your girlfriend to pick you up." Owne tells you as the two of stand in silence. "She's not my girlfriend, she's my partner." "Wait so you guy's are married?" "No!, were ju-." You stop yourself mid-sentence as you just now notice the other kids at your bus stop are staring at you, in which you realize it looks like you're talking to yourself. "Ahahaha, they think you're loony." Owen mocks at you, in which you return with a glare. As the two of you get onto the bus when it arrives, you sit together as Owen continues on to try to get you to talk to him. Though you decide now to ignore to unless you're alone somewhere or with Ruby. During your classes, Owen gets bored and decides to start running around the room, getting into people's faces and other sort of shenanigans. You had warned him before you went into class though that he was not to touch anything that would look like something supernatural to everyone else. He had promised not to, but with the half-assed way he had said it, you didn't all that much trust him. Because of this, you couldn't pay attention in class as your eyes were continually trained on Owen to make sure he wasn't doing anything stupid. There were even times in which he would give you evil glares and pretend to start throwing things, which would make you panic a little in which he could probably tell, as it made him laugh. Fuck, maybe it would be better if you could just keep him in your head. With your first set of classes over and lunch starting to begin, you wait to see if Ruby wants to meet with you so you stick by your class. Though after a few minutes you decide to leave and go get lunch with no signs of her, and not wanting to be the last one in line. "Are you not going to hang out with your girlfriend today," Owen asked, in a serious tone. You're about to answer him, but quickly stop yourself since you're packed in a line with other people, and instead just ignore him. "Lame, I thought you guys were cool together and hung out and stuff. Or maybe she's waiting for you to go and find her." You continue to ignore him. This seems to frustrate Owen a bit, as he stays quiet for the remainder of the time that you are in line. Once you grab your food and head on outside, out of earshot from everyone else, Owen starts to speak again. "OK, no one's around you can talk now." "Shut up Owen..." You mumble. "You talked!" Owen says with excitement, though in a mocking tone no doubt. "Anyway, what do you want to do for lunch today?" Owen asks you. > You library When Ruby had brought up the powers in which you had with Owen, it never really left your mind as you continued to think about it every now and then. You decided to go the library to see if you could find out any of this information out on your own. Though you didn't really have many hopes considering the silence your kind had to keep about their powers, though maybe someone had found a loophole and got around it. You checked a few books that had information from decades ago, but all of them proved useless as you decided to continue your search online. "I'm bored....Can't you play games or something on the computer? I don't think anyone will notice me typing on the keyboard...." Owen complains as he sits next to you in an empty chair. "Don't you want to learn how to use our powers?" You whisper to him as you open up numerous articles about ghosts and phenomenon. "Just ask the girl!" He exclaims, in which you ignore. You had done some research on your condition long before you had met Ruby or Owen, so you had a little bit of an idea in which websites had the best information and which ones didn't. Even the most credible sources though we're all pretty wrong or just vague when it came to what you had experienced yourself. It seemed as if you wouldn't be finding out how to use your powers on your own after all. At least not through any of these means. Giving up on your endeavors, you give a sigh before exiting out of all your windows and finding a website with flash games. "Here, go ahead and play..."You say to Owen, scooting your chair over a bit. "Really! Hell Yeah." > Weeks later Two weeks had gone by since you had taken in Owen. Even though he was to be extremely annoying at first, you had gotten used to his shenanigans and personality until it came to the point in which you weren't bothered by it at all anymore. Ruby only interacted with you about maybe twice or three times a week at most, and that was only to check up on the status of you and Owen, to make sure that you were doing alright. Though she worded it in a really weird way as if she was expecting something bad to have happened. On the second week, Ruby had given you forewarning of another spirit that the two of you would be meeting on the weekend. She had tried to push it during lunch on Friday, but you had persuaded her out of it since you weren't really up for skipping. "So then that means someone else is going to join us?" Owen asked you when the topic had been brought up in one of your conversations during lunch. "Yeah seems like it, which is kind of good since you're pretty boring to talk with one on one." You tease. "Fuck off." He laughs off with a smirk. When the weekend finally comes, Ruby comes by your house to pick you up early in the morning as you've already told your mom you would be heading out for the day and maybe coming back at night. "So who's it going be?" Owens asks in the backseat as Ruby gets onto the freeway. "It's going to be an older man actually, like really old. I can't tell if he had just died recently or the others had just forgotten to help him ascend, if it's the second one then at least it'll be easier to take him since he would already be broken." Ruby explains although an awkward silence fills the car with what said with the last part. "Where's he going to be at?" You ask Ruby in order to change the subject a little. "It's going to actually be at an old abandoned home. Apparently, the man owned it and died there alone, the house hasn't been bought yet which makes our lives a whole lot easier." Ruby explains as she merges onto a new lane. "So it's going to be the same process as last time, with what I did with Owen?" "Yep, but I expect you to do it faster and more efficiently this time now that you've had the experience." You roll your eyes at that as the car ride remains quiet for the remainder of the trip. The house in which this spirit was located seemed out of place compared to the commercial buildings surrounding it. It was also weird that its driveway merged onto an avenue, which seemed to be super inconvenient for anyone living here. As the three of you exit the car, Owen is the first one to run up to the door and try to open it. "It's locked!" He exclaims. "Well, of course, it is you dip, why wouldn't it be." You reply causing his to give you a dirty look. "Wait does it mean we're going to break in? That's so cool!" He says towards Ruby, who nods her head. "Wait I'm pretty sure this is illegal, I don't want a cop to pull up on us breaking in." You tell Ruby who is digging through her book-bag for something. "Relax pussy, where going to be in and out of here in no time, besides it's not like we're going to break a window or anything, a squatter recently was here and I found out that he leaves the back window open him to get in and out." "How could you possibly know that?" You say, feeling as if she was totally bullshitting you. "Your job is to catch the ghosts, my job is to make sure it all goes smoothly. You should be a little more grateful for the amount of research I put into our contacts if you had a shittier partner they would only have to give you the bare bones information on where spirits are." She says with total pride, which causes you to smirk. "Stop acting like you're doing this out of the good of your heart or something, I already know that your life is on the line too with these quotas." This causes Ruby to stop digging through her backpack, and give you a hard look, which actually intimidates you a bit. "Listen here fuckass, I don't think you realize how easy it is for those with my job to find wardens to help with getting ghosts, if I really wanted too I could drop you and find another one to help me. The only actual reason that I'm still with you is that we both go to the same school so finishing this quota can be done in a lot less time than it usually takes. I'm only doing this for convenience, not a necessity, you best remember that." With her rant over, Ruby starts to make her way around the house as you stand there with your butt clenched at what she just said. "Damn, she really got you there." Owen chimed in as you just notice him standing next to you. The two of you followed Ruby into the house as she easily opened the window letting all three of you gain entry. "Alright follow me and don't fucking touch anything, I don't want any traces that we were here if we can avoid it." Ruby orders as she starts walking up wooden stairs that are placed in a narrow room. When all of you get up to the second floor, Ruby seems to know immediately where to go as she starts directly walking to a lone door at the end of a long hallway. It didn't seem to work properly though, as merely pushing open the door lightly caused it to move back with ease. Taking a peek inside for herself, Ruby looked back over to you and ushered you inside, before closing the door once you were in with Owen. The room was empty, not a single piece of furniture could be found, but that could be said with most of the house anyway, besides random piles of trash and boxes. A single window could be found here but the blinds were only letting in a few rays of sunlight, giving the room an eerie atmosphere that wasn't helped by the spirit standing alone in the corner of the room, staring at you directly. You didn't think you would ever get used to this. "Um...Hello?" You say, in hopes that this would be a friendly spirit. The spirit gives a slight nod at you, but that's about it. The spirit in it's form, seemed very oddly different compared to what Owen had looked like. The immediate distinction above all else though was the blue glow that emitting from it's entire body. It had no markings of decay whatsoever, but at the same time it didn't look human. It looked as what one would imagine a spirit were to look, a form of energy in some sorts. "What's your name mister?" You ask, trying to be polite. "You can call me Nick, boy." The spirit since in an asserting type of tone. "Well Mr. Nick, do you know how long you've been here?" You ask, trying to get all the basic questions out of the way. "Well I've lived here my entire life, and it seems after it as well, so if that answers your question." "I mean how long has it been since you've passed?" "Oh, you mean that...Well, I don't really seem to remember. Could have been days or weeks. Probably less than a month though by my guessing." Even though Ruby had already told you this stuff, you still wanted to ask the spirit these questions to see how much they knew and if they were lying or not. Luckily this time Ruby didn't piss off the ghost before you talked to it so hopefully, this interaction will be much less of a hassle. > You nick "Do you know why we're here Nick?" "Are you here to take me to the great beyond? I thought you guys would be coming soon." Nick seemed a lot calmer than you would have imagined this interaction to be. Maybe it was because Owen had been so emotional and that was your first and only experience doing this till now that you were expecting the same from this guy. "Well not quite, were kind of middlemen to put it frankly. You'll be able to get to the great beyond soon enough, but there comes a process before that." "A shame, I was hoping to finally be able to sleep eternally without being hassled to remember to eat and go to the bathroom every now and then." > You ask Questions You felt as if though asking a few questions would help along the way later, and maybe also be a bit polite in inquiring about this man's past life. "How old are you Nick?" You ask to start off. "I had turned fifty-nine a few months ago, don't remember celebrating it though so it really just faded in with all the other days." "Do you know how you died, you seem pretty young to die from natural causes." You say with another question. "I couldn't really tell you myself, I smoked a helluva lot in my thirties but managed to quit when I turned forty with the help of my sister. All I know is that it was painless, don't remember feeling a thing when I passed." You nod at his recollections. "Well, that's good at least that you died in your sleep peacefully." > No more questions "You seem like a rather calm spirit, were you not in distress when you first found out that you were stuck like this in this house?" You ask, trying to be up front. "Well at first maybe. But I'm able to move throughout my house as I please, and it's not like I left it all that much, to begin with." He says with firmly, without any sense of doubt. "So then you don't feel any sadness or depression, just contentment?" You ask to make sure. "Well if you would want to put it like that, then yes," Nick states with continued affirmation. "Well, then this just makes the process a whole lot easier. We should be able to finish this process rather quickly." "What would this process entail?" Nick asks. "I would need you to agree to the terms of entering my body for an unspecified amount of time. Even I don't know how long you'll be with me, but trust me when I say that it won't be anything bad, in fact, it'll probably even be better than staying here. Wherever I go you'll be able to go, and you'll be able to have a little bit more intractability with the world." You explain to him, trying to make it sound as easy as possible. Nick takes seems to take this in for a moment, before nodding his head. "If that's the case then I really see no reason to object then, let's get this out of the way, the sooner I can get my sleep the better." Nick states. Wow, this would be way faster and easier then it was with Owen, if the older aged spirits were this upfront with wanting to leave and with the questions you asked, then you should totally be helping a lot more of them out. Regardless of that, you extend out your arm for Nick to grab. "Please grab my arm, Nick." Nick does as you say as grasp arms. Closing your eyes, you start to twist your palm around Nicks' arm as the familiar feeling you had first felt with Owen starts to happen once again. Although this time you don't feel as weak as you did, which is good, though your stomach still hurts quite a bit. As the tingling feeling starts to subside, you see that Nick stands before you, seemingly a bit confused. "I felt something happen I think, but did something happen?" He asks. "Yeah it isn't really a big change honestly, you just aren't tied down to this house anymore, and instead have a boundary around me." You explain to him. "Interesting." You look over at Ruby to get confirmation over your success to which you see her already standing up. "I knew this spirit wouldn't take that long to bind with, I've been on a roll with this is so far, anyway that should be enough spirits for you to bind with for now. Let's go home, I've had enough ghost hunting for one week." She yawns before starting to walk out of the bedroom. You were really surprised and relieved that you didn't really need Owen's help for this spirit, but you also felt a little shamed seeing that Ruby probably had a big part in why the spirits you were encountering didn't really put up much of a resistance when it came to coming with you. "Let's go home then, I wanted to finish my playthrough of fallout I just started on your computer." Shaking your head, you leave the room and follow Ruby downstairs with Nick and Owen. You were really hoping she meant what she said about there being no more spirits for you to take in, any more and it would most likely start to get really crowded in your room, besides all it took was for some ghost with a nasty attitude to really mess with things if you had to spend every minute assigned with them, that's why you were really glad that Ruby wasn't a spirit that was chained to you, that would be horrible. Ruby was quick to drop you off, Owen and Nick were even a bit worried about how fast she was driving at some sections, but luckily you made it home safe and sound. After getting to your room, Owen immediately hopped onto your computer and started playing Fallout, while Nick grabbed something from your bookshelf and began reading. Hopefully, these guys wouldn't be bored anytime soon, as you had no idea for any other way you would entertain them. A bit tired from everything that had happened, you decided to just sleep off the remainder of the day, hoping to sleep in well since it was the weekend. --- Months had passed since you first took in Nick into your circle. Since then you had also taken in three more ghosts, a teenage girl who had committed suicide by the name of Ashley, a middle-aged gangster type man who had been killed in a gunfight named Baron, and lastly there was a younger tween-aged girl who was killed while jaywalking named Veronica. With each new spirit, you continued to tell Ruby that you couldn't accept anymore since it was starting to get to crowded, though you had to word it carefully since all the spirits were in close proximity. Each time she would tell you that you would be ascending everyone soon, though each time you just got a new spirit to take in. While most of them weren't really a problem in dealing with, since if they got too rowdy you would make them stay in your head, it just became such a hassle whenever you needed privacy to yourself. Luckily Owen was really talkative so he drove the attention away from you as he was always the center of attention. The quietest out of everyone would have to be Baron, he didn't really speak all that much when you first brought him in, and only really ever talked if spoken to. Ashley was probably the loudest as she kept on complaining about still being here and not in a final resting place, or at least she was at first, now she's quiet like Baron but still gives off a strong negative attitude whenever she speaks. Owen and Veronica got along the best, probably since they were both around the same age save for a few years. Though still, they were very loud whenever they would get too excited, which led Ashley to start screaming a few times for them to shut up as she spent quiet time in the corner of your room. You were really glad that you had actually gotten Nick into your circle since he was the only real functioning adult here who could set his foot down causing everyone else to listen and stop whatever it was they were doing whenever he said something of importance. There was no way you could take anyone else in, the next spirit Ruby tries to throw at you you'll just put your foot down and say no. Half of the spirits assigned to you already want to leave and get ascended too, Ashley and Nick especially, although Nick seems to have gotten comfortable around everyone, to which he stopped asking Ruby about the ascension less and less as time went on. To be perfectly honest the only real problem was Ashley, she just kept pulling on your nerve strings whenever she opened her mouth. You actually just thought about keeping her in your mind so she wouldn't have to argue with anyone, but you felt as if that would just lead to more problems. The other major thing that you had to keep track off was when you went to classes. Owen tried to show off to Veronica a few times by doing stupid shit in class like touching peoples shoulders or dropping pencils. Naturally, he knew you couldn't do anything about it so your anxiety just kept on increasing along with antics. It got to the point in which you would force him to stay in your mind for the remainder of school. Though to counter this he would constantly try to annoy you in your head so you couldn't pay attention to anything at all. You've told him off plenty of times, probably a bit harsher than one would be to a kid at such a young age, and sometimes he would get into long pouts about it. As cool as Owen could be at times, he was really pushing you over his edge, just so he could get interest from Veronica, who gave mixed signals towards him which only made shit worse. You could swear that you were starting to get grey and white hairs from all this stress. -- "I already told you, you're going to be ascending soon now stop bitching!" Ruby seethes as Ashley confronts her yet again after school. "Bullshit it's already been months and we're still fucking here, I stopped believing you after we took Veronica in. Take us out of here NOW!" Ashley seemed to be really going at it this time, you've never seen her talk out this long, usually, she starts to brood in a corner after yelling or complaining for only a few seconds. "Is it my fucking problem that you decided to kill yourself? You should of thought about the shit that could happen before you made such a stupid ass decision." Veronica and Owen cringed and flinched back a bit, while Nick turned his head. It really was about to go down. "YOU FUCKING BITCH!" Ashley charged towards Ruby with fury, though as you predicted she flew right past through her due to her emotions. "Yeah nice try fuck face, now anyway before I was so rudely interrupted, I was going to say that I'm going to get you all ascended by the end of this month, and I'm serious when I say this. Our quota is going to be due soon, and if things go right, I might have something special in store for us." Ruby finishes, looking directly at you when she said the last part. "Don't do anything stupid or dumb until then while I get all the preparations in place, and after that, you all can get your eternal sleep or whatever the fuck it is you want and we can all be happy. Now I have to go, I have a club meeting that starts in an hour." > You home Upon getting home, Ashley got in her usual corner, though she was much more upset looking than usual which could be easily understood why. Nick went over and started talking to her quietly, while Veronica and Owen got onto your computer in which you now could almost never use. Baron sat himself down in one of your spare desk chairs and just placed it by one of your windows, and just stared outside which was his usual activity. "Ashley please, I guarantee you she means it this time, trus-." "No! It's not about that. The stupid bitch brought up my suicide again. Don't you think I regret it Nick, each day I'm stuck here I keep on thinking about it. If I knew this was waiting for me instead of what I dreamed of then I would have stayed alive for as long as I could, at least I had the freedom to do what I wanted." Ashley interrupted him with tearful cries. Man Ashley's reasoning's were pretty annoying, you hated when she got loud like this because of the stuff she said hardly made any common sense. Sitting down on your bed, which was probably the last refugee you had in your room, you started going through your phone as you had already completed classwork at school. In fact you got a lot done now ever since Nick first joined, turns out he was really good at math, and would instantly remember the lessons that were taught to you as he reheard them, during your free-time for homework, he would kneel beside you and help you with problems as you whispered any questions to him. Baron might have had some knowledge too, as he was only the only other one who actually paid attention to your classes, although he never spoke up and you've never been bothered to ask. Going through messages, you saw a notification from Ruby for a message that had been sent twenty or so minutes ago that you forgot to open. 'Hey don't tell those dweebs, but I might end up pushing the ascension up even earlier,I really want to get it out of the way for some reason, reminds me the fuck out how much Ashley bitches about it. So just get ready to do it on a Thursday or Wednesday in the next two weeks if need be. I'll give you the rides as usual.' Thank fucking Christ, though you were a little irritated that she only bothered doing this because of someone else. Besides that the quicker you got these guys to ascension the better, while you were still on good enough terms with most of them. Though you don't know why she didn't want any of them to know, the news itself would probably calm down Ashley enough for her to stop moping so hard. Unless of course, Ruby was bullshitting you again and what she just told you was a load of crap. Man you really felt so negative for the past couple of weeks, you needed something to blow off steam before you really went over the edge and snapped or something. Getting these guys out of the house too would also probably raise their spirits. Though you hadn't really gone out and did something since you watched that movie three weeks ago, in which Veronica and Owen ruined when they started making shadows near the projector, to which no one could tell where it came from except for you. You felt really bad for the couple that was sitting in the back that got the blame for it. When everyone seemed to look very bored in your room, was the time you gave them the news. "Alright, since this is the last month we'll all be together, I've decided that we should all go out and do something fun. Any suggestions?" You ask them all. "Oh let's go see a movie!" Owen immediately suggested. "No suggestions from you or Veronica." You immediately sternly reply. "What why? She was the one who did that stuff at the theater it wasn't even me!" "You're such a liar!" Veronica replies while pushing Owen. "Cunt!" Once again they start to go at it. You try your best to ignore them though as you continue taking suggestions from everyone else. "I'd like to go hiking," Nick says. "Baseball game..."Baron says next, which surprises you a bit. Looking over at Ashley, she doesn't seem to be paying attention all that much. "I don't care what you guys do..." Well that was it then, you had your two suggestions. > You hiking You didn't know how much tickets were to go the earliest baseball game this or next week, and you didn't really want to spend all that much money since you were basically broke as it was. "Alright then, I guess we're going hiking." "Sweet, I've like going to the mountains, my dad found an arrowhead one time when we went really far out!" Owen brags to everyone. Even though Baron didn't get his suggestion, he still nods in approval while Gwen still doesn't really seem to give much of a shit. ---- This was really going to suck if you were the only one who was going to get tired out of this. Though on the bright side that meant you only had to pack for yourself, which made everything much lighter. You were glad that Owen and Veronica were pretty enthusiastic about this trip, as they were already running ahead of the trail as far as the boundary would let them go. Baron and Nick were walking beside each other, talking about some grown-up stuff that would have probably bored you if you decided to join them. Ashley was the slowest one of everyone else, dragging her feet as she just looked at the ground while she walked, making you anxious that she would bump into a cactus or something if she wasn't careful. These ghosts could touch things, you had no idea if they were susceptible to pain depending on what they touched. Everyone seemed to be really enjoying themselves out here, as you took suggestions on which routes to travel on and which spots to stay and just look at. Though the one thing that really kept on bugging you on this trip was Ashley and her mopping in the back. Maybe it was just best to ignore it and let her be down on her own. > You talk to her You would probably be annoyed by this for the rest of the week, you best to just get this out of the way and try to talk to her about it. Lagging behind everyone else a bit on the trail, you started to match your pace to Ashley who immediately noticed this. "What do you want?" She asks rudely and a bit loudly. "Just wanted to talk is all." You simply respond. "I don't want to to talk, thank you." "It looks like you do." When you say this, she immediately gives you one of her usual dirty looks. She attempts to start walking ahead, but you hold her back by her bicep. "Let go of me!" She yells twisting away from. This causes everyone else to stop walking look at the two of you. "Could you calm down a little?" "Why do you want to talk with me?" "Because you're someone I'm supposed to help. Besides your whole attitude lately has been absolute shit. I'm not going to stop bugging you about it until you tell me what fuck is so wrong." Ashley sees everyone staring at her now as she backs up a little. You weren't planning on that happening, but since she decided to start yelling now all the attention was drawn on her. "Can we talk about this later..." She says to you, with her voice turning extremely soft. You think you also heard a quiver. You sigh, nodding your head in agreement. "Alright shows over everyone, let's just keep walking." You say to everyone else watching. You're pretty sure this little event pretty much negated all the fun that everyone was having, it would probably be best to end this hike soon. You probably should have just kept your mouth shut. > You later that night The hike actually went on longer than you thought it would after the argument, as everyone seemed to forget about it soon enough, and Ashley was quickening her pace to match everyone else's. By the time you got home though you were dead tired as it was already pretty late along with all the walking, you had done. Everyone had been doing their own thing in your room that night as you got ready for bed after your shower. You had actually forgotten about your little fight with Ashley for a while, deciding to bring it up anymore since there was really no point if she was just going to get confrontational every single time. Though right before you were about to call it a night and get into bed, she stopped you while standing up. "Can we talk now?" You were a little surprised that she wanted to go through with her earlier offer, with you just slowly nodding in agreement. "I don't want to talk like this though, can I....." she doesn't finish her sentence, instead, raising up her arm towards you. If this was about to be a deep talk then it would make sense that she wouldn't want anyone else to hear. Raising up your own hand, you twist her forearm as she disappears in front of you. 'A- Whoa, I've never been inside here, it's weird....' 'Yeah, it is.' You try to block off any other unrelated thoughts as she continues. 'A- Look, I want to apologize for what I did earlier, I've been thinking about it, and thinking about how I just act in general around everyone. It's just....I don't know I'm still upset about what I did. I've had so many regrets since I went through with it that it just got to the point in which it was all I could think about. What I could have done differently, the help I could have gotten that would have made me get better, it killed me inside as I thought about it every second, every day.' 'Yeah, I get what you mean, but you really have to let it go. I know it was a really shitty thing that happened, but there are some things you just have to stop worrying about if you have no way in changing the outcome. If you keep on worrying about the past, then it'll just fuck up your present, which will cause even more unhappiness with you. Look, I'm sorry for how I acted too. It's just ever since I've had to take everyone in, it's been bugging me every other day. Though honestly, it isn't even that bad, and I'm probably just overreacting about it. It's just.....seeing you unhappy makes me unhappy, so I want to stop that.' You hear her laugh a little. 'A- Thanks for caring about me.' You feel your face warm up a little as embarrassing thoughts start rushing through your head, which in turn makes her laugh even more. 'Well anyway, if you ever feel like you're down or anything like that. Please just talk to me about it. If not me then Baron or Nick. I want you to pass on happy, it's going be really shitty if you leave behind any regrets.' 'A- Yeah....Thanks for the talk, I really appreciate it.' 'Alright let's see if I remember how to pop you out of here.' 'A- Wait!......Would it be alright if I stayed inside her for the night...' 'Huh?' 'A-Well....I mean we can't sleep. So I was wondering if I was inside your mind while you slept, I could sleep too...' 'Well.....I mean if it doesn't work out then you realize you're going to be self-aware in total darkness right?' 'A- I'll take the risk.' 'Well if you want...' > You dreams You don't really know exactly what happened in your dreams that night. It's really hard to remember. You do know that Ashley was there though, and the two of you were having fun. You were either at a carnival or in a city you can't really recall. But you were having fun. You hope that she was having the same dream too. > You day of Ascension Ever since the day in which you all had fun. You had decided that it would be best to continue this as much as you could, continuing to take suggestions from everyone to places in which you could go and have fun. Each time everyone enjoyed themselves as all tensions seemed to fade off, you were glad that you managed to get through to Ashley as she now was enjoying the time with everyone else, being much more vocal and active. It wasn't until the day that Ruby had said everything would be ending that you realized you would be missing everyone here. The time in which you've spent with them made you mad sometimes, yes. But on the other hand, they had become sort of like family. No one really seemed all that happy upon entering the abandoned warehouse in which you would be performing the ritual with Ruby. "Bout time you guys showed up, haven't you ever heard of being early? I thought you guys would be hurrying here with how much you wanted to leave before, especially you." Ruby complains as she sees all of you enter the warehouse, directing the last bit to Ashley. Everyone stays silent though, as you're the first to speak up to break the awkward silence. "Why are we even doing it here?" You ask, getting really creepy vibes. "There are some cases in which ascension rituals get sort of.....unpredictable. They're really rare occurrences but it's best that were in a place in which nobody would bother to visit." Ruby explains. That really didn't make you feel all that comfortable, but not like you could call this off or anything. "So what does this ritual entail then?" You ask. "A very simple process. Each spirit here stands before you, and they each shake your hand. Depending on their attitude, fulfillment's, regrets, it decides whether or not they ascend, all of things are taken into the factor." That sounded easy enough, it's not like anyone here had any regrets now that you had Ashley was cool with her problems. Everyone started to line up in a row while you stood before them. "Alright let's make this quick, I got shit to do," Ruby says as she claps her hands. The first person to step up to you is Baron. You're about to speak first but he cuts you off. "Listen, kid, I know I didn't talk all that much when I first came with you. I think I was just a little shocked that I had lost during my last fight. Thanks for giving me the time to enjoy life without having to worry about all that other shit that I had to deal with for most of my life, I really enjoyed it." He says raising up his hand. "Thanks for being so cool with us, I hope you end up somewhere good Baron, you honestly deserve it." He laughs at that. "That's debatable." You raise up your own hand as the two of you lock onto each other, and before you know it, he's gone. Nick is next, and again he's the first one to speak. "Thanks for getting me out of that house kid, coming from the stories of everyone else here I was probably the one who had to stay in their death place the shortest amount of time. I probably would have started going crazy if I had stayed there any longer, due to some personal reasons I've been trying to forget all this time. Thanks for taking the time to take us to different places so we could enjoy ourselves before we left, it was probably one of the best months I can recall in years, you take care of yourself kid, and keep on helping those who can't help themselves." "You really helped me a lot with everyone, you made things a hell of a lot easier then they would have been if you weren't there. You kind of honestly normalized everything, thanks for that, I hope you find your peace." You both smile as your hands meet, as he too ascends in a matter of seconds. Veronica and Owen step up next, wanting to do the ascension together. "Bout time I got you out of my hair." You joke at Owen, who smiles in return. Though the smile itself does not last, as it starts to quickly quiver as Owen runs up to hug your abdomen. His muffled voice covered by your shirt begins to speak. "I'm going to miss you." You place a hand on top of his head while another one wraps around his back. "Wherever you end up, make sure to stay out of trouble kid. Either way, though I'll know everything is going to turn out good for you. Thanks for making everything so fun, and I'm sorry If I ever got too mad you." Fuck, you were actually about to tear up a little bit, though were able to stop yourself as Owen reluctantly let go of you as you gave one last firm hug, wiping away at his eyes. "Don't worry about it too much kid, we'll meet again someday. I'm sure we all end up in the same place." You say to raise his spirits. He smiles. "I'll be waiting for you so I can mess with you again." You both laugh as you take his tiny hand into yours. After a brief pause, you turn your wrist as you see Owen leave your eyes for good. You really hope that kid ended up somewhere nice. Veronica's ascension was much shorter, you two really never talked all that much. So you gave her your best wishes and she did the same, she ascended without any worry. Last but not least was Ashley, who slowly made her way up to you. "I saw those tears back there, that was pretty cute." She laughs. "I know I can get emotional too, big surprise," you reply with a grin. The conversation seems to turn a bit more serious as Gwen's smile fades into a neutral tone. "Thank you really for everything, I don't think I could have ascended if I was still depressed like that. You really did save me." "Ehh don't be too dramatic, you would have found your way eventually. You're quick to see things through so I have good faith that you would have gone through eventually." "I think you have a little too much faith in me, but it's nice that you think that. I'm going to miss you the most, thank's for the help. I'll be waiting for you on the other side." her hand goes up and so does yours. "Until then." You reply as you both give a nod. The wrist turns. She's gone soon after.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You didn't know how much tickets were to go the earliest baseball game this or next week, and you didn't really want to spend all that much money since you were basically broke as it was. "Alright then, I guess we're going hiking." "Sweet, I've like going to the mountains, my dad found an arrowhead one time when we went really far out!" Owen brags to everyone. Even though Baron didn't get his suggestion, he still nods in approval while Gwen still doesn't really seem to give much of a shit. ---- This was really going to suck if you were the only one who was going to get tired out of this. Though on the bright side that meant you only had to pack for yourself, which made everything much lighter. You were glad that Owen and Veronica were pretty enthusiastic about this trip, as they were already running ahead of the trail as far as the boundary would let them go. Baron and Nick were walking beside each other, talking about some grown-up stuff that would have probably bored you if you decided to join them. Ashley was the slowest one of everyone else, dragging her feet as she just looked at the ground while she walked, making you anxious that she would bump into a cactus or something if she wasn't careful. These ghosts could touch things, you had no idea if they were susceptible to pain depending on what they touched. Everyone seemed to be really enjoying themselves out here, as you took suggestions on which routes to travel on and which spots to stay and just look at. Though the one thing that really kept on bugging you on this trip was Ashley and her mopping in the back. Maybe it was just best to ignore it and let her be down on her own. > You leave her alone It was best to just leave the girl alone. She had her own problems, and if she wanted to keep them to herself until she left this world for good, then it was on her. It would only cause problems if you tried to get involved and she started freaking out or something, besides everyone seemed to be having a happy day today, best not to ruin it. The hike continued late into the night as Owen was the one who kept on asking to stay longer. It seemed since they guys didn't get fatigued, the only thing that was stopping them was boredom, which they didn't seem to have any of. That was a very enjoyable night, one you wish they would remember. > You day of Ascension Ever since the day in which you all had fun. You had decided that it would be best to continue this as much as you could, continuing to take suggestions from everyone to places in which you could go and have fun. Each time everyone enjoyed themselves as all tensions seemed to fade off, except for Ashley's dilemma. It wasn't until the day that Ruby had said everything would be ending that you realized you would be missing everyone here. The time in which you've spent with them made you mad sometimes, yes. But on the other hand, they had become sort of like family. While Ashley herself seemed pretty happy as you all entered the abandoned warehouse in which you would be doing the ritual, Owen himself seemed pretty down. "Bout time you guys showed up, haven't you ever heard of being early? I thought you guys would be hurrying here with how much you wanted to leave." Ruby complains as she sees all of you enter the warehouse. "Why are we even doing it here?" You ask, getting really creepy vibes. "There are some cases in which ascension rituals get sort of.....unpredictable. They're really rare occurrences but it's best that were in a place in which nobody would bother to visit." That really didn't make you feel all that comfortable, but not like you could call this off or anything. "So what does this ritual entail then?" You ask. "A very simple process. Each spirit here stands before you, and they each shake your hand. Depending on their attitude, fulfillment's, regrets, it decides whether or not they ascend, a lot of things are taken into the factor." This explanation immediately made you look over at Ashley, as did everyone else who was there. Ashley's eyes were wide open, as her head shook a little. "What happens if it doesn't work..." She lets out with a hoarse voice. "Simple. You don't ascend." Ruby says matter-of-factly. Ashley's mouth dropped open as Ruby continued to smile. "Alright, everyone in line! Let's get this show on the road!" She states gleefully. Everyone does as she says, with Gwen's knees trembling as the ritual begins. "Alright let's make this quick, I got shit to do," Ruby says as she claps her hands. The first person to step up to you is Baron. You're about to speak first but he cuts you off. "Listen, kid, I know I didn't talk all that much when I first came with you. I think I was just a little shocked that I had lost during my last fight. Thanks for giving me the time to enjoy life without having to worry about all that other shit that I had to deal with for most of my life, I really enjoyed it." He says raising up his hand. "Thanks for being so cool with us, I hope you end up somewhere good Baron, you honestly deserve it." He laughs at that. "That's debatable." You raise up your own hand as the two of you lock onto each other, and before you know it, he's gone. Nick is next, and again he's the first one to speak. "Thanks for getting me out of that house kid, coming from the stories of everyone else here I was probably the one who had to stay in their death place the shortest amount of time. I probably would have started going crazy if I had stayed there any longer, due to some personal reasons I've been trying to forget all this time. Thanks for taking the time to take us to different places so we could enjoy ourselves before we left, it was probably one of the best months I can recall in years, you take care of yourself kid, and keep on helping those who can't help themselves." "You really helped me a lot with everyone, you made things a hell of a lot easier then they would have been if you weren't there. You kind of honestly normalized everything, thanks for that, I hope you find your peace." You both smile as your hands meet, as he too ascends in a matter of seconds. Veronica and Owen step up next, wanting to do the ascension together. "Bout time I got you out of my hair." You joke at Owen, who smiles in return. Though the smile itself does not last, as it starts to quickly quiver as Owen runs up to hug your abdomen. His muffled voice covered by your shirt begins to speak. "I'm going to miss you." You place a hand on top of his head while another one wraps around his back. "Wherever you end up, make sure to stay out of trouble kid. Either way, though I'll know everything is going to turn out good for you. Thanks for making everything so fun, and I'm sorry If I ever got too mad you." Fuck, you were actually about to tear up a little bit, though were able to stop yourself as Owen reluctantly let go of you as you gave one last firm hug, wiping away at his eyes. "Don't worry about it too much kid, we'll meet again someday. I'm sure we all end up in the same place." You say to raise his spirits. He smiles. "I'll be waiting for you so I can mess with you again." You both laugh as you take his tiny hand into yours. After a brief pause, you turn your wrist as you see Owen leave your eyes for good. You really hope that kid ended up somewhere nice. Veronica's ascension was much shorter, you two really never talked all that much. So you gave her your best wishes and she did the same, she ascended without any worry. Last but not least was Ashley, who slowly made her way up to you with trembling knees. You two didn't really bother saying a word to one another as both your hands raised up. You felt pretty bad for her, but then again it was her own fault for her attitude. You locked onto her wrist and gave it a twist. She was still there. "D-Do, it again!" She cries with panic. You do as she asks and still, nothing. "Well it looks like that's all the ascending that'll be needed today, come on dipshit I'll give you a ride home. My treat since our quota is done." "Wait! What about me?!" Ashley yells at Ruby. "Simple, you'll ascend the next time we do this when you get a better attitude and feel fulfilled. Though you're going to have to wait awhile since our quota is done for the next few months, I'm sure that's plenty of enough time to reflect on yourself." Ruby replies to her without looking back. Man Ruby could be really fucking venomous when she wanted to be. You followed after her quickly since you didn't want to get the bus home and you doubt she would wait up for you with her offer. Ashley followed from behind defeated. It was going to be pretty hell living with her for the next few months, but maybe in that time, you could help with her emotions until she was ready to leave. Maybe talking to her that one time would have helped, no use thinking about it now though, what's done is done. As Ruby drove the two of you home, you thought about what had happened in the last couple of months. All the spirits you had met, all the fun times you had spent together. Would it really be OK for you if it just kept on resetting every few months or so, having those you've gotten to know just be completely erased from this existence? Would you become numb, or just really pissy like Ruby? No, you wouldn't fall that low. You would continue to help spirits to the best of your ability until you were no longer capable. Maybe after your time in this world was over and done, maybe you could have one big meeting with everyone that you had met and helped, that would be so cool. Or maybe everyone just reincarnated, and everyone you had just helped had already been reborn into this world. Whichever way it was, you knew something was waiting for them. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here doing this. and when your time came, something would be waiting for you too. Until then, you had a job to do.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Upon getting home, Ashley got in her usual corner, though she was much more upset looking than usual which could be easily understood why. Nick went over and started talking to her quietly, while Veronica and Owen got onto your computer in which you now could almost never use. Baron sat himself down in one of your spare desk chairs and just placed it by one of your windows, and just stared outside which was his usual activity. "Ashley please, I guarantee you she means it this time, trus-." "No! It's not about that. The stupid bitch brought up my suicide again. Don't you think I regret it Nick, each day I'm stuck here I keep on thinking about it. If I knew this was waiting for me instead of what I dreamed of then I would have stayed alive for as long as I could, at least I had the freedom to do what I wanted." Ashley interrupted him with tearful cries. Man Ashley's reasoning's were pretty annoying, you hated when she got loud like this because of the stuff she said hardly made any common sense. Sitting down on your bed, which was probably the last refugee you had in your room, you started going through your phone as you had already completed classwork at school. In fact you got a lot done now ever since Nick first joined, turns out he was really good at math, and would instantly remember the lessons that were taught to you as he reheard them, during your free-time for homework, he would kneel beside you and help you with problems as you whispered any questions to him. Baron might have had some knowledge too, as he was only the only other one who actually paid attention to your classes, although he never spoke up and you've never been bothered to ask. Going through messages, you saw a notification from Ruby for a message that had been sent twenty or so minutes ago that you forgot to open. 'Hey don't tell those dweebs, but I might end up pushing the ascension up even earlier,I really want to get it out of the way for some reason, reminds me the fuck out how much Ashley bitches about it. So just get ready to do it on a Thursday or Wednesday in the next two weeks if need be. I'll give you the rides as usual.' Thank fucking Christ, though you were a little irritated that she only bothered doing this because of someone else. Besides that the quicker you got these guys to ascension the better, while you were still on good enough terms with most of them. Though you don't know why she didn't want any of them to know, the news itself would probably calm down Ashley enough for her to stop moping so hard. Unless of course, Ruby was bullshitting you again and what she just told you was a load of crap. Man you really felt so negative for the past couple of weeks, you needed something to blow off steam before you really went over the edge and snapped or something. Getting these guys out of the house too would also probably raise their spirits. Though you hadn't really gone out and did something since you watched that movie three weeks ago, in which Veronica and Owen ruined when they started making shadows near the projector, to which no one could tell where it came from except for you. You felt really bad for the couple that was sitting in the back that got the blame for it. When everyone seemed to look very bored in your room, was the time you gave them the news. "Alright, since this is the last month we'll all be together, I've decided that we should all go out and do something fun. Any suggestions?" You ask them all. "Oh let's go see a movie!" Owen immediately suggested. "No suggestions from you or Veronica." You immediately sternly reply. "What why? She was the one who did that stuff at the theater it wasn't even me!" "You're such a liar!" Veronica replies while pushing Owen. "Cunt!" Once again they start to go at it. You try your best to ignore them though as you continue taking suggestions from everyone else. "I'd like to go hiking," Nick says. "Baseball game..."Baron says next, which surprises you a bit. Looking over at Ashley, she doesn't seem to be paying attention all that much. "I don't care what you guys do..." Well that was it then, you had your two suggestions. > You baseball game Going to a baseball game probably would be a nice distraction, hiking seemed a bit too boring anyway. "Alright we're going to a baseball game then." you decide. "Awww, why don't we go to a football, baseball is boring," Owen complains. Continuing to ignore him, Nick nods at the pick and so does Baron. Now with that out of the way you had to find out how to pay for this. ------ Turns out the tickets for the midsection were pretty cheap, and the nearest game was only about five days away from when you decided. You had told your mom that you were going to the game with friends and if she could buy your ticket. She agreed to it without much hesitation to your relief, getting to the stadium was also pretty easy since there was a bus stop right by it. Your mom was able to get you middle sears with a good enough view that none of the spirits would be able to complain. It also seemed to be a slow enough day that your row was pretty much empty, allowing the spirits to grab empty seats by you. Baron and Nick sat together and immediately got invested into watching the game and discussing it together in the row right below you. You made Owen and Veronica sit right next to you so you could make sure that they weren't up to any antics that would ruin the day, though they just started talking about random things, not really paying attention to the game. As long as they were occupied with something though, then you really didn't mind it all that much. Ashley sat a row above you, she wanted to sit an extra row higher but the boundary didn't allow it since there were hardly any seats up there with how full that row was. You looked behind you to check on her every now and then, though she was just hugging herself and looking down at her lap. You always think that she sleeps or just daydreams off in her head for most of the time, which maybe is best for her to just enjoy herself with her own thoughts. The game continued on in peace as you decided that you were to stay for all of the innings. Since people started to leave in the rows around you towards the end of the game, Veronica and Owen couldn't really mess with anyone, so you let them run around in the rows near you when they started getting bored. Since they were ghosts, you didn't really find it to worry about them wrestling amongst themselves and jumping around in the chairs. When the game finally ended, you looked up at the sky to see that it was pretty dark out already, with the gaming lasting longer than it supposed to. "I told you they were going to win didn't I?" Baron says to Nick with a laugh. The first one you think you've ever heard. "Please, they just got lucky, if they would have done better in the second inning than it would have been an easy win for them no doubt." Baron and Nick walked ahead of the rest of you to the bus stop while they continued to talk about the events of the game. Veronica and Owen continued to play tag around all of you, using you primarily as a fence to stop one another from getting each other. This whole entire time you really were trying to just leave Ashley alone to herself. But something kept on bugging you to just try to talk to her and ask her what the fuck was up. Something had to be eating at her, or maybe this is just how she was. > You talk to her You would probably be annoyed by this for the rest of the week, you best to just get this out of the way and try to talk to her about it. Lagging behind everyone else a bit, you started to match your pace to Ashley who immediately noticed this. "What do you want?" She asks rudely and a bit loudly. "Just wanted to talk is all." You simply respond. "I don't want to to talk, thank you." "It looks like you do." When you say this, she immediately gives you one of her usual dirty looks. She attempts to start walking ahead, but you hold her back by her bicep. "Let go of me!" She yells twisting away from. This causes everyone else to look at the two of you. "Could you calm down a little?" "Why do you want to talk with me?" "Because you're someone I'm supposed to help. Besides your whole attitude lately has been absolute shit. I'm not going to stop bugging you about it until you tell me what fuck is so wrong." Ashley sees everyone staring at her now as she backs up a little. You weren't planning on that happening, but since she decided to start yelling now all the attention was drawn on her. "Can we talk about this later..." She says to you, with her voice turning extremely soft. You think you also heard a quiver. You sigh, nodding your head in agreement. "Alright shows over everyone, let's just go home." You say to everyone else watching. You're pretty sure this little event pretty much negated all the fun that everyone had today, maybe you should have just kept your mouth shut about it. > You later that night Everyone had been doing their own thing in your room that night as you got ready for bed after your shower. You had actually forgotten about your little fight with Ashley for awhile, deciding to bring it up anymore since there was really no point if she was just going to get confrontational every single time. Though right before you were about to call it a night and get into bed, she stopped you while standing up. "Can we talk now?" You were a little surprised that she wanted to go through with her earlier offer, with you just slowly nodding in agreement. "I don't want to talk like this though, can I....." she doesn't finish her sentence, instead raising up her arm towards you. If this was about to be a deep talk then it would make sense that she wouldn't want anyone else to hear. Raising up your own hand, you twist her forearm as she disappears in front of you. 'A- Whoa, I've never been inside here, it's weird....' 'Yeah, it is.' You try to block off any other unrelated thoughts as she continues. 'A- Look, I want to apologize for what I did earlier, I've been thinking about it, and thinking about how I just act in general around everyone. It's just....I don't know I'm still upset for what I did. I've had so many regrets since I went through with it that it just got to the point in which it was all I could think about. What I could of done differently, the help I could of gotten that would have made me get better, it killed me inside as I thought about it every second, every day.' 'Yeah, I get what you mean, but you really have to let it go. I know it was a really shitty thing that happened, but there's some things you just have to stop worrying about if you have no way in changing the outcome. If you keep on worrying about the past, then it'll just fuck up your present, which will cause even more unhappiness with you. Look, I'm sorry for how I acted too. It's just ever since I've had to take everyone in, it's been bugging me every other day. Though honestly it isn't even that bad, and I'm probably just overreacting about it. It's just.....seeing you unhappy makes me unhappy, so I want to stop that.' You hear her laugh a little. 'A- Thanks for caring about me.' You feel your face warm up a little as embarrassing thoughts start rushing through your head, which in turn makes her laugh even more. 'Well anyway, if you ever feel like you're down or anything like that. Please just talk to me about it. If not me then Baron or Nick. I want you to pass on happy, it's going be really shitty if you leave behind any regrets.' 'A- Yeah....Thanks for the talk, I really appreciate it.' 'Alright let's see if I remember how to pop you out of here.' 'A- Wait!......Would it be alright if I stayed inside her for the night...' 'Huh?' 'A-Well....I mean we can't sleep. So i was wondering if I was inside your mind while you slept, I could sleep too...' 'Well.....I mean if it doesn't work out then you realize you're going to be self aware in total darkness right?' 'A- I'll take the risk.' 'Well if you want...'<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Going to a baseball game probably would be a nice distraction, hiking seemed a bit too boring anyway. "Alright we're going to a baseball game then." you decide. "Awww, why don't we go to a football, baseball is boring," Owen complains. Continuing to ignore him, Nick nods at the pick and so does Baron. Now with that out of the way you had to find out how to pay for this. ------ Turns out the tickets for the midsection were pretty cheap, and the nearest game was only about five days away from when you decided. You had told your mom that you were going to the game with friends and if she could buy your ticket. She agreed to it without much hesitation to your relief, getting to the stadium was also pretty easy since there was a bus stop right by it. Your mom was able to get you middle sears with a good enough view that none of the spirits would be able to complain. It also seemed to be a slow enough day that your row was pretty much empty, allowing the spirits to grab empty seats by you. Baron and Nick sat together and immediately got invested into watching the game and discussing it together in the row right below you. You made Owen and Veronica sit right next to you so you could make sure that they weren't up to any antics that would ruin the day, though they just started talking about random things, not really paying attention to the game. As long as they were occupied with something though, then you really didn't mind it all that much. Ashley sat a row above you, she wanted to sit an extra row higher but the boundary didn't allow it since there were hardly any seats up there with how full that row was. You looked behind you to check on her every now and then, though she was just hugging herself and looking down at her lap. You always think that she sleeps or just daydreams off in her head for most of the time, which maybe is best for her to just enjoy herself with her own thoughts. The game continued on in peace as you decided that you were to stay for all of the innings. Since people started to leave in the rows around you towards the end of the game, Veronica and Owen couldn't really mess with anyone, so you let them run around in the rows near you when they started getting bored. Since they were ghosts, you didn't really find it to worry about them wrestling amongst themselves and jumping around in the chairs. When the game finally ended, you looked up at the sky to see that it was pretty dark out already, with the gaming lasting longer than it supposed to. "I told you they were going to win didn't I?" Baron says to Nick with a laugh. The first one you think you've ever heard. "Please, they just got lucky, if they would have done better in the second inning than it would have been an easy win for them no doubt." Baron and Nick walked ahead of the rest of you to the bus stop while they continued to talk about the events of the game. Veronica and Owen continued to play tag around all of you, using you primarily as a fence to stop one another from getting each other. This whole entire time you really were trying to just leave Ashley alone to herself. But something kept on bugging you to just try to talk to her and ask her what the fuck was up. Something had to be eating at her, or maybe this is just how she was. > You leave her alone It was best to just leave the girl alone. She had her own problems, and if she wanted to keep them to herself until she left this world for good, then it was on her. It would only cause problems if you tried to get involved and she started freaking out or something, besides everyone seemed to have a happy day today, best not to ruin it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Do you know why we're here Nick?" "Are you here to take me to the great beyond? I thought you guys would be coming soon." Nick seemed a lot calmer than you would have imagined this interaction to be. Maybe it was because Owen had been so emotional and that was your first and only experience doing this till now that you were expecting the same from this guy. "Well not quite, were kind of middlemen to put it frankly. You'll be able to get to the great beyond soon enough, but there comes a process before that." "A shame, I was hoping to finally be able to sleep eternally without being hassled to remember to eat and go to the bathroom every now and then." > You get to the chase "You seem like a rather calm spirit, were you not in distress when you first found out that you were stuck like this in this house?" You ask, trying to be up front. "Well at first maybe. But I'm able to move throughout my house as I please, and it's not like I left it all that much, to begin with." He says with firmly, without any sense of doubt. "So then you don't feel any sadness or depression, just contentment?" You ask to make sure. "Well if you would want to put it like that, then yes," Nick states with continued affirmation. "Well, then this just makes the process a whole lot easier. We should be able to finish this process rather quickly." "What would this process entail?" Nick asks. "I would need you to agree to the terms of entering my body for an unspecified amount of time. Even I don't know how long you'll be with me, but trust me when I say that it won't be anything bad, in fact, it'll probably even be better than staying here. Wherever I go you'll be able to go, and you'll be able to have a little bit more intractability with the world." You explain to him, trying to make it sound as easy as possible. Nick takes seems to take this in for a moment, before nodding his head. "If that's the case then I really see no reason to object then, let's get this out of the way, the sooner I can get my sleep the better." Nick states. Wow, this would be way faster and easier then it was with Owen, if the older aged spirits were this upfront with wanting to leave and with the questions you asked, then you should totally be helping a lot more of them out. Regardless of that, you extend out your arm for Nick to grab. "Please grab my arm, Nick." Nick does as you say as grasp arms. Closing your eyes, you start to twist your palm around Nicks' arm as the familiar feeling you had first felt with Owen starts to happen once again. Although this time you don't feel as weak as you did, which is good, though your stomach still hurts quite a bit. As the tingling feeling starts to subside, you see that Nick stands before you, seemingly a bit confused. "I felt something happen I think, but did something happen?" He asks. "Yeah it isn't really a big change honestly, you just aren't tied down to this house anymore, and instead have a boundary around me." You explain to him. "Interesting." You look over at Ruby to get confirmation over your success to which you see her already standing up. "I knew this spirit wouldn't take that long to bind with, I've been on a roll with this is so far, anyway that should be enough spirits for you to bind with for now. Let's go home, I've had enough ghost hunting for one week." She yawns before starting to walk out of the bedroom. You were really surprised and relieved that you didn't really need Owen's help for this spirit, but you also felt a little shamed seeing that Ruby probably had a big part in why the spirits you were encountering didn't really put up much of a resistance when it came to coming with you. "Let's go home then, I wanted to finish my playthrough of fallout I just started on your computer." Shaking your head, you leave the room and follow Ruby downstairs with Nick and Owen. You were really hoping she meant what she said about there being no more spirits for you to take in, any more and it would most likely start to get really crowded in your room, besides all it took was for some ghost with a nasty attitude to really mess with things if you had to spend every minute assigned with them, that's why you were really glad that Ruby wasn't a spirit that was chained to you, that would be horrible. Ruby was quick to drop you off, Owen and Nick were even a bit worried about how fast she was driving in some sections, but luckily you made it home safe and sound. After getting to your room, Owen immediately hopped onto your computer and started playing Fallout, while Nick grabbed something from your bookshelf and began reading. Hopefully, these guys wouldn't be bored anytime soon, as you had no idea for any other way you would entertain them. A bit tired from everything that had happened, you decided to just sleep off the remainder of the day, hoping to sleep in well since it was the weekend. --- Months had passed since you first took in Nick into your circle. Since then you had also taken in three more ghosts, a teenage girl who had committed suicide by the name of Ashley, a middle-aged gangster type man who had been killed in a gunfight named Baron, and lastly there was a younger tween-aged girl who was killed while jaywalking named Veronica. With each new spirit, you continued to tell Ruby that you couldn't accept anymore since it was starting to get too crowded, though you had to word it carefully since all the spirits were in close proximity. Each time she would tell you that you would be ascending everyone soon, though each time you just got a new spirit to take in. While most of them weren't really a problem in dealing with, since if they got too rowdy you would make them stay in your head, it just became such a hassle whenever you needed privacy to yourself. Luckily Owen was really talkative so he drove the attention away from you as he was always the center of attention. The quietest out of everyone would have to be Baron, he didn't really speak all that much when you first brought him in, and only really ever talked if spoken to. Ashley was probably the loudest as she kept on complaining about still being here and not in a final resting place, or at least she was at first, now she's quiet like Baron but still gives off a strong negative attitude whenever she speaks. Owen and Veronica got along the best, probably since they were both around the same age save for a few years. Though still, they were very loud whenever they would get too excited, which led Ashley to start screaming a few times for them to shut up as she spent quiet time in the corner of your room. You were really glad that you had actually gotten Nick into your circle since he was the only real functioning adult here who could set his foot down causing everyone else to listen and stop whatever it was they were doing whenever he said something of importance. There was no way you could take anyone else in, the next spirit Ruby tries to throw at you you'll just put your foot down and say no. Half of the spirits assigned to you already want to leave and get ascended too, Ashley and Nick especially, although Nick seems to have gotten comfortable around everyone, to which he stopped asking Ruby about the ascension less and less as time went on. To be perfectly honest the only real problem was Ashley, she just kept pulling on your nerve strings whenever she opened her mouth. You actually just thought about keeping her in your mind so she wouldn't have to argue with anyone, but you felt as if that would just lead to more problems. The other major thing that you had to keep track off was when you went to classes. Owen tried to show off to Veronica a few times by doing stupid shit in class like touching peoples shoulders or dropping pencils. Naturally, he knew you couldn't do anything about it so your anxiety just kept on increasing along with antics. It got to the point at which you would force him to stay in your mind for the remainder of school. Though to counter this he would constantly try to annoy you in your head so you couldn't pay attention to anything at all. You've told him off plenty of times, probably a bit harsher than one would be to a kid at such a young age, and sometimes he would get into long pouts about it. As cool as Owen could be at times, he was really pushing you over his edge, just so he could get interest from Veronica, who gave mixed signals towards him which only made shit worse. You could swear that you were starting to get grey and white hairs from all this stress. -- "I already told you, you're going to be ascending soon now stop bitching!" Ruby seethes as Ashley confronts her yet again after school. "Bullshit it's already been months and we're still fucking here, I stopped believing you after we took Veronica in. Take us out of here NOW!" Ashley seemed to be really going at it this time, you've never seen her talk out this long, usually, she starts to brood in a corner after yelling or complaining for only a few seconds. "Is it my fucking problem that you decided to kill yourself? You should have thought about the shit that could happen before you made such a stupid ass decision." Veronica and Owen cringed and flinched back a bit, while Nick turned his head. It really was about to go down. "YOU FUCKING BITCH!" Ashley charged towards Ruby with fury, though as you predicted she flew right past though her due to her emotions. "Yeah nice try fuck face, now anyway before I was so rudely interrupted, I was going to say that I'm going to get you all ascended by the end of this month, and I'm serious when I say this. Our quota is going to be due soon, and if things go right, I might have something special in store for us." Ruby finishes, looking directly at you when she said the last part. "Don't do anything stupid or dumb until then while I get all the preparations in place, and after that, you all can get your eternal sleep or whatever the fuck it is you want and we can all be happy. Now I have to go, I have a club meeting that starts in an hour."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up pretty early the following day, although you think it's because the sound of a monster getting slain is what causes you to stir from sleep "Oh are you awake already, I beat this game for you while you were asleep, it was pretty easy not gonna lie." You rub your eyes for a second as you just sit there in confusion. It takes you a few moments before you realize who Owen is and remember everything that happened the following day. "Got to get ready for class..."You yawn as you start getting your clothes. "Oh let me come with you!" Owen exclaims as he gets up from your chair. "Well I mean you kind of have to..." "Oh yeah." You shake your head as you grab your remaining items and head for the bathroom. Luckily the boundary between you and Owen was pretty big so he didn't have to be close by to you that much, still giving you a lot of privacy then what you originally thought you would have. Once you were ready to go, you and Owen left your house and made your way to your bus stop. "You should ask your girlfriend to pick you up." Owne tells you as the two of stand in silence. "She's not my girlfriend, she's my partner." "Wait so you guy's are married?" "No!, were ju-." You stop yourself mid-sentence as you just now notice the other kids at your bus stop are staring at you, in which you realize it looks like you're talking to yourself. "Ahahaha, they think you're loony." Owen mocks at you, in which you return with a glare. As the two of you get onto the bus when it arrives, you sit together as Owen continues on to try to get you to talk to him. Though you decide now to ignore to unless you're alone somewhere or with Ruby. During your classes, Owen gets bored and decides to start running around the room, getting into people's faces and other sort of shenanigans. You had warned him before you went into class though that he was not to touch anything that would look like something supernatural to everyone else. He had promised not to, but with the half-assed way he had said it, you didn't all that much trust him. Because of this, you couldn't pay attention in class as your eyes were continually trained on Owen to make sure he wasn't doing anything stupid. There were even times in which he would give you evil glares and pretend to start throwing things, which would make you panic a little in which he could probably tell, as it made him laugh. Fuck, maybe it would be better if you could just keep him in your head. With your first set of classes over and lunch starting to begin, you wait to see if Ruby wants to meet with you so you stick by your class. Though after a few minutes you decide to leave and go get lunch with no signs of her, and not wanting to be the last one in line. "Are you not going to hang out with your girlfriend today," Owen asked, in a serious tone. You're about to answer him, but quickly stop yourself since you're packed in a line with other people, and instead just ignore him. "Lame, I thought you guys were cool together and hung out and stuff. Or maybe she's waiting for you to go and find her." You continue to ignore him. This seems to frustrate Owen a bit, as he stays quiet for the remainder of the time that you are in line. Once you grab your food and head on outside, out of earshot from everyone else, Owen starts to speak again. "OK, no one's around you can talk now." "Shut up Owen..." You mumble. "You talked!" Owen says with excitement, though in a mocking tone no doubt. "Anyway, what do you want to do for lunch today?" Owen asks you. > You find Ruby You were really hoping to find Ruby in order to ask her more about the situation with you and Owen. Not in a bad way or anything, but with the powers she had mentioned you had. You didn't know how open she would be about the information that you wanted, but it wouldn't hurt to try and ask her. "We're going to go look for Ruby, look out for her." You tell Owen. "Ah Hah! I knew you two couldn't be without one another, on it captain, I'll keep an eye out for your missing lover." This irked you more than it should off but you brushed it to the side for now. Ruby had mentioned before that she had a lot of friends and wanted to try to enjoy her senior year as much as possible. Even though she was in your grade you didn't see her at all, since you had no classes with her and you didn't know what she did for lunch. You thought about texting her but for some reason decided against it, so you just started to wander around campus in order to find her before lunch ended. Checking the cafeteria, library, hallways of some school buildings, and the general courtyard where everyone ate outside, you still couldn't find her even with Owen's help. "Man, did you make her mad or something? Your girlfriend really is trying to avoid you it seems like." Ignoring what he said, you give a sigh."I don't think we'll find her in time anyway before the bell rings, I'm just going to get something to eat from the cafeteria before lunch ends." "Meh, I wouldn't. The food today seemed kind of bad from what I saw when we were in there." "Don't care, I'm hungry." You reply, as you quickly walk to the cafeteria before it closes.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Walking back up to the boy, you could see that he was still sulking, although he had stopped shaking so at least that was good. You crouch down to his level and start to speak. > You stern "Alright listen up kid, the girl was right, do as you're told and we'll get you out of this hellhole, but don't fuck around or else you'll be staying here for the rest of eternity, and I'm not lying when I say that." The boy starts to quiver again as he continues to look down at his knees. > You press on "Answer me, boy, do you agree to these terms." "Y-Yes." He whimpers silently. A nasty smell comes to your nostrils, and the color of the boy's skin starts to turn a dark rotten green, which makes you wince in disgust. "Alright then, tell me about yourself, how did you die?" "I drowned in the lake..."He says in a light voice. "Yeah well no fucking shit, I was hoping you'd be more fucking specific, who let you drown, were you here alone?" The smell gets worse, you want to pinch your nose and get out of here, but you continue with the questions as the boy shakes harder. "Leave me alone..." "Excuse me?" There's a sudden second in which the boy disappears from your eyes, and seconds later you start to feel a pain from your chest. With each passing moment it grows stronger and stronger, and before you know it you let out a yell in pain as you fall onto your back. "Hey!" You hear Ruby shout out to you, but your ears start to ring as you wreathe around the wooden dock in pain. It feels like something wants to burst out of your chest, and you want nothing else more but to die and get rid of the burning sensation that was cooking your heart like a cracked egg. Something did burst from your chest, you were sure of it. You wouldn't see it though as your vision had gone out first. Shortly afterward your senses followed with it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Walking back up to the boy, you could see that he was still sulking, although he had stopped shaking so at least that was good. You crouch down to his level and start to speak. > You tough love "Alright listen up kid, I know she was pretty harsh with you right now, but you know she's right when it comes to getting out of here. We only want to help you ascend to your final rest, or peace, or whatever it is that comes next. But in order to do that you need to cooperate with me ok?" You tell him with as a hardy of a voice you could muster. The boy nods at what you say, but he doesn't look up at you. > You coax "Hey you know you can trust me, right kid? Helping you is my job, and I'm sure as hell going to help you get out of this place, no matter what." You say reassuringly. The boy looks up at you but doesn't say anything, though it seems like he's thinking about something as his eye keeps looking at different things. "Do you want to ask me anything?"You say, hoping that he would clear his mind of any worries. "How...How are you going to help me?" > You lie about taking him into your body "As soon as we get done with this conversation, you'll immediately ascend up to wherever your going to be placed, so please stop worrying about everything, soon enough you'll experience total piece, or get reincarnated, however, it all works." You say with a confident face. The boy nods his face as he seems in a much more better state than the one that Ruby had left him in. "When can you do it?" He asks you, almost a bit impatiently. "I need you to be content, and I need you to accept the terms that I'm about to give you. So start thinking about some happy thoughts before I ask you what I need you too O.K?" "Yeah, yeah I can do that no problem."The boy says letting out a fake laugh, as to try to build enthusiasm about what is to happen. "Alright then, take my hand." You order, which he follows through. You head starts to buzz as Owen disappears from view. > You on the inside Your mind starting to get really fucking fuzzy, as if listening to a radio station that had just gone completely static. It didn't hurt your ears though, it was just a mild annoyance as you felt dizzy and your vision getting blurry. Not wanting to fall on your face, you sat yourself down on the ground and waited for this experience to pass by. "That was pretty anticlimactic." You hear Ruby say through the static, though you don't pay her much mind as you try to concentrate on seeing if you could communicate with, Owen. Owen can you hear me? The static continues, and you feel your heart race a little bit. Sitting in silence for a few seconds, you start to feel the static die down a little as you're able to hear yourself think finally. Hello? You hear a voice call out to you, which makes your entire body jump up a bit with how it sounds directly in your mind. Owen is that you? Yeah. Where am I? Owen's voice sounded frightened which made you tense up a bit. You lied to me "huh?" I CAN READ YOUR THOUGHTS ASSHOLE, YOU LIED TO ME. I'M STUCK HERE. The sudden screaming by Owen had made your head hurt as you started to cover your ears. LIAR, LIAR YOU'RE A LIAR I TRUSTED YOU. As Owen's screams got louder, his voice started to change, as if turning into something demonic. Moments later, you start to feel a pain in your chest. With each passing moment it grows stronger and stronger, and before you know it you let out a yell in pain as you fall onto your back. "Hey!" You hear Ruby shout out to you, but your ears start to ring as you wreathe around the wooden dock in pain. It feels like something wants to burst out of your chest, and you want nothing else more but to die and get rid of the burning sensation that was cooking your heart like a cracked egg. Something did burst from your chest, you were sure of it. You wouldn't see it though as your vision had gone out first. Shortly afterward your senses followed with it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Hey you know you can trust me, right kid? Helping you is my job, and I'm sure as hell going to help you get out of this place, no matter what." You say reassuringly. The boy looks up at you but doesn't say anything, though it seems like he's thinking about something as his eye keeps looking at different things. "Do you want to ask me anything?"You say, hoping that he would clear his mind of any worries. "How...How are you going to help me?" > You tell him the truth Lying to the kid would probably fuck you over in some way later. It was best to be upfront with everything that was about to happen so he wouldn't be surprised. "Look kid, the process that were going to through is going to be...different than you would probably except. So please don't get to freaked out with what's to happen." "Well, what's the process?"He asks, with a bit of force in his voice. "You're going to be....coming into my body."You say bluntly. "What!?"He yells loudly, giving you a look of disbelief. "Yeah, you'll share a body with me, and be able to see what I see and go where I go, think of it as keeping me company." You say trying to make situation sound tame. "But I don't want to go with you, I want to get off this fucking planet!"He cries. "Yes eventually you will, but you just have to stay with me for a period of time, and once that period of time is over, you can ascend." "How long is the period of time...?"He mutters. You give him a sideways glance. "I don't know, it depends on the spirit." Silence clouds the two of you as he seems to think this over. "Well...I guess it's better than staying here I guess, now that the fishermen are all gone."The boy says with a gloomy face. Even if he was to agree with the terms of coming with you, you still had to bring some happiness into him somehow, otherwise, the process wouldn't work going off of what Ruby had said. "Don't look so down about it kid. Hey, is there anywhere you ever wanted to go, anything you ever wanted to do?" "I...I wanted to play a video game that was supposed to be coming out." You bit your lip hard as you tried your best to stop the laugh that was wanting to come out, you give a deep nod to him in confirmation. "Alright, well then I'll get the game you wanted and we can play it together, and anything else you want to do we will do it, O.K?" "You promise?" "I promise." The kid smiles a little, and you think its a genuine one considering that he lets out his hand. "Let's do this then, also my name is Owen." Grabbing the boy's hand, you feel your head start to buzz.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You dream a lot when you sleep. In fact, you could probably remember all of them from the past week, in almost exact detail. Almost all of them involved ghosts, and almost all of them had unhappy endings. You couldn't really classify them as nightmares though, just sad stories. This dream wasn't like the last ones. The giant marble pillar that you sat on in a dark purple empty void was a brand new experience. This, this seemed and felt like a nightmare. Your surroundings felt so vast and unknown and because you had extreme anxiety and awareness for what could or was about to come. The voice that came a few minutes after, raised every single hair on the back of your neck and arms while your fingers clamped up. "Your quota needs to be met. You need to pass one five." These words were repeated twice in the same speed and vocal. You felt as if someone was watching you but as you looked around there was no one to be found. The voice sounded so alluring and calm, but also one that would be able to cause great things, and with that, it also intimated you greatly. "Diligence will reward you. Diligence is the key to pass them on." These words were repeated as well, and once they were done both were said compounded. "Good luck." You could hear the sound of the final late bell for class as your eyes opened to the ceiling of the bathroom. Groggily sitting yourself up and wiping the drying vomit from your mouth with your shoulder sleeve, you get yourself to your feet as you grab your bag and flush the toilet. You didn't know what the words of your dream meant, and if you should actually take it seriously at all. What mattered right now though is that you just fucking fainted after throwing up. You were feeling better but there was still an aching burning sensation in your chest that was starting to worry you. > You go to the nurse Fuck this, you weren't about to deal with this shit for the next seven hours, you were going home. Exiting the bathroom, you shuffled on in the empty hallways while keeping your head down in case any teacher were to give you trouble for not being class. Reaching the nurse's office and entering the main reception room, the smell of medicine and cleanliness enters your nostrils, it made the sick feeling in your stomach start to grow again, albeit for different reasons. The nurse, who was the front desk filling out some paperwork, immediately lifted her head as soon as you walked in. "Do you have a pass?" Immediately she gave the same old first question she gives everyone when they walk in. "Ah no, I didn't go to first period I went straight here. I just threw up in the bathroom and I'm not feeling well..." You say as she gives you a quick look over. "You could of at least saved us both the trouble and just stayed home. Come here and sign in and go have a seat in the back. What's your ID number?" She grumbles with a hint of annoyance. "223312." Typing in the numbers on the computer by her, she nods towards the sign in sheet as you do as you're told. "Do you want me to call your mom or your dad?" "Mom please." Filling out the sign in sheet you take a seat in the back medical area and wait for your ride. "You should have told me that you were feeling sick before you left, I was in the middle of cooking something." Your mom lectures you in the car while you look out the passenger window, listening to her with half your attention. "You could of at least grabbed your homework from class or something, I don't want you playing any video games or anything. You go straight to bed while I go buy something from the pharmacy." "OK." You mumble through your palm that's resting against your cheek. Upon getting home, you go straight upstairs as you were ordered and face plant onto your bed in exhaustion. Normally you would ignore your mom and get straight online, though you were really were feeling like shit, so you decided against it. At least for the time being. With your mom coming back from the pharmacy and giving you something to take in, you spend the remainder of your late morning in bed, though as soon as you can tell that your mom had left the house to go do some errands, you immediately hop onto your computer now that your stomach had settled to just an annoyance rather than a hindrance. Logging into your desktop, you start aimlessly browsing around on the net, looking at random articles and looking at headlines to try and pass the time. For some reason though, the computer seems to be acting really slow. Not the kind of slow that comes from shitty internet, but just constant stuttering of just about everything non-internet related. This computer wasn't that fucking bad, while you started to check the inner settings to see what the fuck was wrong, the whole thing just went black. Thinking that the computer shut itself off, you start to reach for the power button to see that the computer is still on. A little freaked out and worried now, you were praying to god that you didn't download any shitty virus that fucked up your system. The computer monitor after a few moments turned itself back on and what was on the screen tensed up your whole body. It was liveleak. > You death sites You weren't in control of the mouse, it was moving all on its own as it was traversing through liveleak. You were a little too scared to see what would happen if you tried to take control of it, so you just let it do its thing. Multiple tabs started opening up instantaneously, photos of people, clippings of news reports, what really fucked with you though were uncensored pictures of corpses and crimes scenes that were the most numerous out of it all. A new internet window opened up, taking up most of the screen up with it. You looked to see that it was notepad, and almost immediately words started to appear, and you read them as they were typed out. G- It's been a while since I've last had contact with a Warden, your kind's power has been rather elusive and it's hard finding a partner for my quotas. Luckily your search history pretty much confirms all my suspicions. The words stopped typing, and you just stared in silence for a moment. G- You wanna ask me any questions (:?? Your hands trembled a bit as they started typing on the keyboard. Who are you? G- You can refer to me as G, we're going to be talking a lot so let's just keep it at that, don't ask me anything else about myself, and don't try to pry into who or what I am, understood?? You reflexively scowled at what you just read, and 'G' quickly responded to this. G- Don't make such a poor face, I usually come off quite strongly with that first impression but it's a given after my time working with you guys. (: She saw you fucking scowl?! Confused at first, you then take direct notice the webcam that sits next to your monitor, with quick haste you turn it backwards so it faces the wall behind it. G- Awwwww why'd you have to go and spoil all the fun :( Thinking of what to type at first, you look over at your microphone that's also connected to your PC, and try to test something out. "Who are you and what do you want." It takes a moment, but the typing starts once again. G- I already told you, you can call me G. Also, it's not really want per say, but it's what will benefit us both in the long run, I am contracted to you until you meet your quota until then we both have to work together to solve crimes and help spirits move on to ascension past this plane. I know that you see ghosts, and that is exactly what I have contacted you, my quota itself will meet its deadline at the same time yours will, so both of us meeting the goal would be a win-win. Now since I'm guessing you're new at this, I should explain to you this full phenomenon that you've had your entire life, while also giving insight on the quotas?" > You ignore the offer You didn’t who the fuck this person was and you were getting bad vibes from this interaction since the beginning of it. You didn’t it would give you the freedom of choice on whether or not to participate, but it was best to take advantage of this and opt out quickly before it changed its mind. “Sorry but no thank you, this seems sketchy as fuck and I want no part in this, don’t contact me again.” With those words being sternly said, you unplugged your PC tower before you could get a response. You felt a little stupid for being so demanding when you said those words since you were in no position to do that, but surprisingly to you, there were no immediate repercussions like getting electrified to death or something. You were a little paranoid about getting back online, however, so you took your moms advice and slept your stomach problems off for the rest of the day. > Weeks Later You had thought the stomachache would pass with time and over the counter medicine, but it only went on to become worse with each passing day. It got to the point at which you couldn't stand for long periods of time without having to lay back down. Your mom thought you were faking the pain at first, but it didn't take long for her to see that the situation was serious, and scheduled a doctors appointment as soon as one would be possible. Though you honestly wished your mom had just taken you straight to the emergency room, as you weren't exaggerating when you said that you wouldn't last until the doctor's appointment. As it would have it, it seemed like that would be the case. During one of your usual days of resting in bed while your mom was at work, your eyes got heavy and you slowly shut them while thinking you would take a pretty quick nap before your mom was to get home. You never woke up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You weren't in control of the mouse, it was moving all on its own as it was traversing through liveleak. You were a little too scared to see what would happen if you tried to take control of it, so you just let it do its thing. Multiple tabs started opening up instantaneously, photos of people, clippings of news reports, what really fucked with you though were uncensored pictures of corpses and crimes scenes that were the most numerous out of it all. A new internet window opened up, taking up most of the screen up with it. You looked to see that it was notepad, and almost immediately words started to appear, and you read them as they were typed out. G- It's been a while since I've last had contact with a Warden, your kind's power has been rather elusive and it's hard finding a partner for my quotas. Luckily your search history pretty much confirms all my suspicions. The words stopped typing, and you just stared in silence for a moment. G- You wanna ask me any questions (:?? Your hands trembled a bit as they started typing on the keyboard. Who are you? G- You can refer to me as G, we're going to be talking a lot so let's just keep it at that, don't ask me anything else about myself, and don't try to pry into who or what I am, understood?? You reflexively scowled at what you just read, and 'G' quickly responded to this. G- Don't make such a poor face, I usually come off quite strongly with that first impression but it's a given after my time working with you guys. (: She saw you fucking scowl?! Confused at first, you then take direct notice the webcam that sits next to your monitor, with quick haste you turn it backwards so it faces the wall behind it. G- Awwwww why'd you have to go and spoil all the fun :( Thinking of what to type at first, you look over at your microphone that's also connected to your PC, and try to test something out. "Who are you and what do you want." It takes a moment, but the typing starts once again. G- I already told you, you can call me G. Also, it's not really want per say, but it's what will benefit us both in the long run, I am contracted to you until you meet your quota until then we both have to work together to solve crimes and help spirits move on to ascension past this plane. I know that you see ghosts, and that is exactly what I have contacted you, my quota itself will meet its deadline at the same time yours will, so both of us meeting the goal would be a win-win. Now since I'm guessing you're new at this, I should explain to you this full phenomenon that you've had your entire life, while also giving insight on the quotas?" > You accept the offer You weren't going to lie, you were scared shitless about this whole situation, you didn't want to think this person would do if you pissed them off or denied them, so you went along with it for now. Giving a small sigh, you reply to her offer. "Go on..." G- :) Good choice. Now, where shall we start? Other than G, you can also refer to me as an observer. Whenever you are online doing work, I can spectate all of which you are doing and help you along the way in terms of finding distressed spirits in need of help ascending while you help cross out their requirements in order to do so, normally your kind are referred to as wardens, so that is what I will refer to you a title. Observers and Wardens share a 'professional relationship' as most of your kind would say. Both of us need to meet a certain amount of ascensions for the distressed in order for us to stay alive to put it brutally honest. After completing our quotas, we are free from future quotas until we are called into service again, which is normally five years. Any questions? > You what kind of spirits do you need to help "You keep on mentioning distressed spirits, can you explain that a little more?" You ask. G-Well I thought it was pretty self-explanatory, but it's mainly spirits who haven't ascended yet and still roam this world in their plane of existence. The reasons why they don't ascend vary, and it's usually a case by case basis I assume as the reasons for such happening can be arbitrary. I don't know who decides this and what their reasons are, but that isn't my job so I don't really care and neither should you. "Well, then how do I help them ascend then?" You say a bit frustrated. G- I'll give you more details when you come in contact with your first spirit, but the general idea is to give them fulfillment or right a wrong that has been done against them. Other times it's simply just making them happy, you can usually tell what you need to do once you get more information about the spirit, but I'll help you if you're too dense to do the task yourself. > You are there others? "You're talking as if there are others like me and you out there..." G- Well obviously retard, do you really think that the two of us would be able to handle all of the distressed spirits that are currently roaming? Yes, our numbers aren't legion, but they make do to keep balance in the spirits our kind help on the daily. "How hard is it to make contact with another one of my kind?" You ask, a bit tempted to make contact with someone that also shares your powers, but only to relate." G- Yeah fuck off, that's classified information that's only available to observers, you won't need help from other wardens on your quotas and you get it regardless. "It wasn't about help." You mutter to yourself. > No more questions "That's all I wanted to know." You say, finishing the questions you had to ask. G- One other thing I should mention, your grace period for snitching has been over for quite some time now, but like a good boy you are, you've remained silent which was to your benefit. "What do you mean?" You ask confused. G- Every warden such as yourself has a grace period from when they are born in which they are able to tell people that they see ghosts and such without suffering any consequences. Once a certain age is reached, however, yours is 16, the grace period ends, and any talk of your powers with anyone else will make you suffer....repercussions. It's not something that's easy to explain, but let's just say for your health it's best to keep this relationship between me and you and your whole powers quiet and hidden like you've been doing so far. Otherwise, I can't guarantee your safety. These words intimidated you immediately as you read them. Luckily G didn't see this with the webcam turned, otherwise, you probably would have teased heavily. It's not like you were planning on telling anyone about your powers anyway, though this still messed with you immensely. G- Anyway this explanation has tired me, I'll brief you tomorrow on any spirits that need your help, but until then just relax and pat yourself on the back for all the fun you're about to have, because believe me you have no idea how hard I'm going to ride your ass to get this quota done, I've got shit to do so the sooner we do this the better. You finished reading her last passage, and after a few moments, you saw that everything that had been written in the notepad was being deleted rapidly until there was thinning left a minute later. As you contemplated your situation with your hands clasping your head, you felt a buzz in your pocket. Taking out your phone, you see a new message from an unknown number, with an area code foreign from your state. It came from the United States though that much you could tell. G- ^_^ Don't go off calling me, this is just to send you information about spirits. You frowned heavily at this message, which leads to another one. G- What did I tell you about making those ugly faces :)? You had an instinct to throw your phone against your bedroom wall with the anger and frustration you were feeling, but quickly came to your senses and stopped yourself from harming your electronics. You needed to sleep this fucking day off. > You time Time had passed since your first encounter with G on your computer. Your stomach problems had died down enough that you were able to go back to school two days later, but it still lingered, and you ended up asking G about it. G said not to worry about it and that it was just apart of the quota, once you were to ascend a spirit, it would die down completely, and would only come back if you neglected your duties to help ascend spirits. When G told you this, you wanted nothing more than to get the first spirit out of the way, but as you pestered G about any possible spirits that you would be able to help, G kept on telling you that you just had to wait until something was to pop up that you could easily complete without binding you to help a high difficulty spirit for good. It was around the fourth day while in English class that you had received a message as you felt your phone buzz in your pocket while your teacher was giving you all a lecture. Something about personal growth or some boring shit that you weren't paying all that much attention too. Sneaking your phone out of your pocket and placing it on your lap, you checked your messages only to see that it was from G as you had suspected. Alright listen dipshit, I got a lead on a spirit that would be a good starting off point for you. There's a few spirts near a bridge where people usually commit suicide, after looking through each one of their backstories and suicide notes depending if there ever was one, I came up with at least two that would be fairly easy to solve. Check your locker during lunch and you'll find a bus pass for the day, it'll take you to the bridge and back home once you're done with everything. Give some excuse to your parents that you're busy or some shit because I'm telling you now, you're not going to be getting home until late tonight. I'll text you once you're out of class with more details. Fuck, it was a Thursday too, couldn't G just waited till tomorrow. During lunch, you opened your locker and stuck between a few notebooks you saw the bus pass that G had mentioned. A shiver ran down your spine as you wondered how G was able to even do this, or if there were other people in on this whole program or whatever it was. All you knew is you didn't want to piss off G all that much if there was this much possibility for direct interference in your life outside of the internet. Luckily the public bus stop wasn't all that far away from your school, so once classes had ended you went there to wait for the next bus that was to come. With your phone in your hands, you waited impatiently for G to text you with more instructions as you started tapping your foot. Soon enough one came as you quickly opened the new message. G- Here I'm sending you the exact bus routes you'll be taking in order to get to where you need to be, make sure you're not retarded and fall asleep on a bus and miss one of your stops, we need to conserve as much time as possible if we're going to get these quotas done, hell I even think we can do two today depending on how fast you are and how good you are at this job. I'll message you once you get to your location, I can track you through GPS. Jesus fucking Christ, G had set you up to take at least four different buses in order to get to the suicide bridge. As you boarded each crowded bus, you sat by yourself in the middle of each one as you just looked out at the scenery with each ride. Time went by at a leisurely pace that matched that of the bus. The fourth bus was the emptiest out of all the other ones, with only about seven or eight other people on board. This probably had to do with the fact that you were on the outer edges of town, where only warehouses and other sort of industrial buildings made up the surrounding land. Getting off at a secluded bus stop all by yourself, you checked your phone for any new messages from G along with finding the time. You see that it's barely four, and you've yet to get any new messages for G which makes you slightly worried. You don't see any bridge in which would be your destination anywhere close, causing you to think that you might have gotten off on the wrong stop. Just as you think about waiting for another bus, you feel your phone vibrate as you see that you've gotten a message from G. G- Alright good, so you didn't fuck up with the directions and get yourself lost, it seems I should put more faith in you. Anyway, the bridge that you'll be needing to get to is going to be up the hill to the east of you, by all of those red factories that you should be able to see. Following her directions with your eyes, you see the factories that she's talking about in the distance. It seemed like a far walk though, and you wondered if you could have gotten off closer at another bus stop as you could have sworn you saw one by there as your bus was coming down here. Sighing in laziness, you start your walk as you follow the crumbling sidewalk that goes uphill. With a cloudless sky, the sun beat down on you heavily, with the congested smog that made up this part of town not helping you with the walk either, hell you didn't realize that you were this out of shape, as you were already at a loss for breath twenty minutes into the walk. Though as you passed another brick factory, you could finally see the bridge come into view on the other side of the hill. What really fucking sucked though that it was even farther downhill, then what you had walked up in the first place. You let out a pained groan as you continued on with your trek. It was probably already close to five-thirty when you finally reached the bridge at the bottom of the hill, and you sat down next to the start of the bridge and took a break to catch your breath. Your back was soaked in sweat and you kept wiping your forehead in a futile effort to get rid of the moisture that was following into your eyes. You regretted not bringing water or something on this trip, you reminded yourself to yell at G for not telling you it would be this far of a walk. "Hey, are you alright?" "Yeah, I'm fine just a little h-." You catch yourself as you answer the question that you guessed was directed to you, you quickly turn your head to face this strange voice and with what comes into view, your heart quickly drops. At first, it seemed like countless of them, but as you started to slowly count the spirits, you saw that it was around eight of them all staring directly at you, only a few meters away. You were at a loss for words as you quickly picked yourself up and made some space between you and the horde that watched you silently. Fumbling for your phone in your pocket, you started to open your messages to see that G still hadn't sent anything. "Hey you fuck, I know you can hear me, fucking send something!" You quietly yell directly at your phone as the spirits stare at you with puzzlement. A few seconds after your demand, you see a few speech bubbles as new messages start to appear on your screen. G- Sorry, Sorry. I was doing something lol. So did you get to where you need to go? > The bridge Pointing up your phone, you made it so that your front-side camera was facing all the ghosts that were before you. Almost immediately, you got a reply from G. G- God fucking hell, I didn't think you would get their so fast. Alright listen up dipshit, Don't make any unnecessary interactions with these ghosts, if you do something stupid you're going to get yourself bound to help one of these spirits without knowing how hard each one is to ascend. I have a few options for you so look for one of them. There should be a small little boy with brown hair, his name Ken so if you call out to him he should react to you, the other one is a more teen looking male named Jordan, he should be pretty ripped and bulky at first glance. Only choose between those two, if you fuck up and pick someone harder then you'll really cause problems for us down the road. Looking up from your phone, you see that the ghosts haven't moved from their positions, and haven't said anything at all. This was really tripping you out, you would have expected one of them to start screaming at you or something since you were alive, but there was none of that. > You ken You felt like the needs of a kid would be simpler than that of a teen such as yourself. Getting him to ascend would probably be easy no doubt. Looking around the ghosts, you immediately spot the one that fits the description that G had given you as he was the smallest one there. However now that you had given each ghost a closer inspection, you notice that most of them didn't really seem all that decayed or worn, at least not as much as others you had encountered. As you step closer in preparation to call out to Ken, one of the ghosts says something to the other ghosts in a hushed tone. "He can see us..." "Of course he can, he heard what Mike said to him..." Another one says. "What do we do?" The ghosts remain silent as they all go back to looking at you as if waiting for you to do something. Though you notice, that some of them appear to be changing. With features of that of decay starting to appear in which you would normally see with other spirits. Ignoring this, you head the advice of G and only focus on talking to Ken, besides it's not like spirits were able to touch you anyway. At least none that you had encountered before. "Ken!" You call out, hoping to get his attention. The small looking child looks at you, but he doesn't seem to move forward and hides behind one of the other ghosts. "Ken, I'm here to help you. I won't bite I promise." You say trying to coax him out of his fear. "What do you want with him?" The ghost in which Ken is hiding behind asks. You didn't know exactly how much conversation you were to limit with these ghosts, but if you did something wrong G was going to be pissed, and with what he said you were going to fuck yourself over. > You respond It's not like you couldn't just give simple answers to these ghosts to state your intentions, if that's all you did then you're sure you would be fine. "I'm helping him leave this place." You say bluntly. Ken though doesn't seem to move from his spot, which kind of irks you a bit. "Don't you want to go to heaven kid? To get your peace?" You say, though with a bit more of assertiveness in your voice. "Well yeah but.... there are people who've been here longer than me. They should go first..." Ken said in a meek tone. "Sorry kid but it doesn't work like that, my guides have told me that you've been chosen first to ascend, so come wi-." "The kid says he doesn't want to go with you." The girl he's standing behind interrupts you. Fuck this was getting troublesome. "So you're going to make the kid stay here then? Forever and ever and never have the chance of getting his eternal peace?" "Fuck off, stop trying to make me out to be the bad guy, don't you think this kid is scared with you trying to take him off without explaining anything?" You were starting to get really annoyed. "Everything in my line of work has a reason, and a lot of us don't know the specifications for these reasons so mind your own fucking business or the next one of us that happens to come back here is just going to skip out on you if they find out that you're as troublesome as you are." You were about to continue your tirade, but you started to feel a lot of buzzing coming from your phone in your pocket. Taking it out, you saw that it was a spam of messages from G. G- Are you fucking retarded, do you have any idea what you've just done! "What, what happen?" You whisper into your phone. G- You autist you've grown an emotional attachment to her and now you have to bind with her, didn't I fucking warn you about this earlier, why the hell didn't you listen to me! "I didn't even talk to her that much, are you actually bullshitting me right now because if you are this isn't funny." G- Fucking Christ you know what? Fuck off and go find someone else to help you with ghosts. If you can't follow my simple ass instructions then working with you is going to be a pain in the ass. Good luck meeting your quota dipshit. You tried responding to G to try and calm him down, but your messages failed to go through, seeing that he blocked you. “Fuck.” Fuck indeed, you were royally screwed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You felt like the needs of a kid would be simpler than that of a teen such as yourself. Getting him to ascend would probably be easy no doubt. Looking around the ghosts, you immediately spot the one that fits the description that G had given you as he was the smallest one there. However now that you had given each ghost a closer inspection, you notice that most of them didn't really seem all that decayed or worn, at least not as much as others you had encountered. As you step closer in preparation to call out to Ken, one of the ghosts says something to the other ghosts in a hushed tone. "He can see us..." "Of course he can, he heard what Mike said to him..." Another one says. "What do we do?" The ghosts remain silent as they all go back to looking at you as if waiting for you to do something. Though you notice, that some of them appear to be changing. With features of that of decay starting to appear in which you would normally see with other spirits. Ignoring this, you head the advice of G and only focus on talking to Ken, besides it's not like spirits were able to touch you anyway. At least none that you had encountered before. "Ken!" You call out, hoping to get his attention. The small looking child looks at you, but he doesn't seem to move forward and hides behind one of the other ghosts. "Ken, I'm here to help you. I won't bite I promise." You say trying to coax him out of his fear. "What do you want with him?" The ghost in which Ken is hiding behind asks. You didn't know exactly how much conversation you were to limit with these ghosts, but if you did something wrong G was going to be pissed, and with what he said you were going to fuck yourself over. > You keep talking to Ken You'd best just follow the instructions of G to the word, he probably had a good idea of what he was talking about. "Ken listen to me, I've been sent here to this exact location to specifically get you and only you. I don't know the exact process of things but they want you to ascend and get up to the heavens for your eternal peace. Don't you want something like that?" You say, lying about a few things in that statement as you really had no fucking idea. "Hey, why won't you answer me." The girl asks again, seemingly irked that she was ignored. Ken still seems pretty indecisive on what he wants to do. You were running out of options on what to do, this girl would probably get to his head to stay if you let this drag out for too long, you had to get ballsy. "You know what this is a waste of time. You stay here Ken because trust me now that you've decided to come you'll be put at the bottom of the waiting list, and you'll stay at this bridge for hundreds and HUNDREDS of years. I have other ghosts that need help and can't have my time wasted, good luck boy." As finished that heavy statement, you started to turn around and walk away, not looking back or slowing down your pace. 'Come on' Silence. 'COME ON.' Even more silence. You were internally panicking as you didn't know what the fuck to do if Ken didn't give in to your bait, G was going to get pissed. "WAIT, PLEASE." "Ken stop!" Oh, thank fucking god." You turn around to face Ken, who you heard running towards you. He couldn't make it all the way through as he reached the boundary for which he could travel. "I don't want to stay here forever, please help me, I'm sorry for wasting your time, mister!" He cried with many tears and snot running down his face. You felt a little bad about that, but in the end, this would benefit both of you so you were also relieved. "Alright kid calm down, I'll help you get out of here, just do what I say and this process will be easy." You assure him while taking out your phone to contact G. Though you see he has already sent you a message. G- Alright good job, you didn't fuck yourself over with unnecessary interactions and now you won't be fucked with other burdens. This next part will be easy, touch the kid's hand and twist it, he'll be bound to you and then we can work on his need in order to ascend. Doing as what G instructed you turned to the Ken. "Alright for this next part I need you to grab my hand while I turn it, you'll be with me until I can do the work needed to get you up there alright?" "Yes, I understand," Ken says while wiping away some tears from his eyes. Beginning the process you start to turn his rest as your hands clasp with one another, instantaneously he starts to let out a blue glow, and you yourself feel a tingle up in your brain. Though other than that it doesn't seem like anything has happened. Ken is still standing there like normal. Though he tries walking forward, and much to both of your surprise, he manages to get out of the boundary. "I can leave!" He exclaims with surprise. He tries to walk farther with quick haste but ends up being blocked by another boundary, though this time it seems closer to you. "I guess you're bound to me for now." "I thought you said I would be going to heaven?" Ken says with a little disappointment in his voice. "You will don't worry, we just need to do a process and you'll be all set to leave." You promise him. Looking back at your phone you look to see if you were sent any more messages from G. G- Ask the kid the top three things that he wants to do. We have to get him really happy for this to work, Even if we can't do the things on his list we can still take him to an amusement park or some shit. That's probably what he was talking about when he said this would be easy. "So Ken is there anything that you would like to do before you leave, anything that would make you happy. Trust me I can probably make it happen with my connections." You say to him which causes him to have a look of surprise. "Well...like what?" "Like anything. Something you'd like to try, something you'd like to see. I can make it happen to an extent, give the top three things that you'd like to do." "Are you sure, it can be anything?" "Like I said, to an extent." You remind him again. "Well ok..." Ken seems to take some time to think over what he would like to do. Though it doesn't seem to take long as his mouth opens quickly. "I always wanted to go to Disneyland....and I wanted to be pilot when I became a grown-up......and I guess I wanted to play that new call of duty game that came out too." As he said these things on his list, you were also typing them to G who himself was already getting ready to reply. G- To tell you the fucking truth I think the pilot one is probably going to be easier, I may have a connection that can get you a plane ride, and the pilot is even a ghost-seer such as yourself. Though if you want to go to Disneyland instead you can also do that if you want. A fucking call of duty game isn't going to make him happy enough to where we need to be though. > You disneyland You haven't been to Disneyland in quite a long time. It wasn't really even that far to get to either, just a half a day drive. It could be even shorter if G was able to hook you up. The real problem though was getting permission from your mom to go, like hell, she was going to let you go to California on a school week. Either way, you made your choice, you told G that you are picking Disneyland. G- Pft, probably want to enjoy yourself on this kid's expense now don't you. Alright fine, I can get you a plane ticket on Friday night to California and you can get back Sunday night, don't pack anything you don't need to and I'll transfer you some money to have fun and shit there. You better make this kid have the time of his fucking life though. With everything said and done, you turn to Ken. "Alright let's get home, this walk has gotten me fucking exhausted." You say as you begin to turn around from the bridge.' "Hey wait!" You hear someone say to you. Turning around you see the same ghost that Ken was hiding behind earlier. She was a few feet away from you, though you could tell she was at the very edge of her boundary. "What about us, when are we getting out of here." Now that you had Ken bound to you, you didn't really think what G had said would affect you now that you were already bound to a 'contract' or whatever it was referred too. "The rest of you will get your turn in due time, there are others like me out there so they'll get to you all eventually. You just have to be patient and wait, that's all I can really tell you honestly." You say to her, in which your words don't really seem to help her mood. Seeing nothing else for you to do, you start to turn around once again and begin to leave the bridge with Ken. Getting back to the bus stop that would help you get home was a lot shorter of a way to get to compared to what you had to walk when you first got here, G was totally fucking with you. Nevertheless, when you got home you went straight to your mom with the speech of adulthood and freedom that you would give her in order to be able to go to California. Though deep inside your mind you know that still wouldn't work so you decided the next best thing to do would be to go to plan B. "Mom a friend invited me to go to Disneyland with him for the weekend, it would be cool if I go right?" Your mom gave you a puzzled look when you said this as if she didn't understand what you said. "The same friend you've been hanging out with this whole time you've been staying out late after school?" "Yeah, that friend." You reply, with a little hesitation. You see a little smile appear on her face. "Is he going to drive you?" "Yeah, we leave Friday night and we're getting back on Sunday." "Well if it'll only be for the weekend then yea go ahead. I'd like to meet your friend when you get back though." You tensed up a little when she said this but then just put on a smile and nodded. "Thanks, mom." You say before quickly walking away while heading up to your room. That was a lot easier then you were expecting it to be. Especially since you would be leaving tomorrow. Nevertheless, you started to get some clothes packed while turning on the T.V in your room for him to watch while you got everything ready. The next school day went by in a blur. Since Ken was assigned to you as a boundary he went where you went. He kept on talking about Disneyland during class and would also ask questions on what you were learning at the given time. At first, you were a little annoyed by this, but it was something that you got quickly used to. You even caught yourself talking to him while you were with other people, which ended up getting you some weird stares and 'who are you talking' discussions. While you were finishing up your last periods, G had wired everything you would need in order to leave tonight, the only thing you had to do was get a ride to the airport, which you would just to with an Uber. "What ride should we go on first when we get there, I heard space mountain was really cool and dark and super scary, It's going to be so much fun." Ken was getting far more excited then you were at this point. You felt a little bad though, there would probably be some rides in which he would be limited, or not be able to ride on at all. You really hoped it was going to be a slow day there, or at the very least have some empty seats that wouldn't hinder Ken from riding on, you couldn't have him get upset or depressed there, you had to think ahead. With classes over and done, you had ordered your Uber to pick the two of you up from school, with the destination being the airport. The price was twenty bucks which wasn't bad, but then again it was coming out of G's pocket. Luckily G had gotten you wristbands and fast passes already so it's not like you had to use the money for much anyway besides the hotel. "How long is the trip going to take, is it true we're going on a plane too!?" Ken says with excitement as the two of you wait at the school parking lot curb. Come to think of it, Ken did say he wanted to be a pilot and riding a plane was on his list. While he wouldn't be directly driving it or anything, you're pretty sure that would count in terms of his list. You knocked two birds with one stone, you're not going to lie, you felt a little proud of yourself. The Uber ride was pretty short, you didn't realize that the airport was so close to your school, you should have noticed something like that. Ken had continued talking to you for the ride, but you had to ignore him for most of the time in fear of not getting the driver to think you were a nutcase or something and kick you out. With it being one of the largest airports in the area, the entire plaza or center as filled with people either saying goodbye to their loved ones or racing to get to their flight on time. You didn't have any bags to check in as all your clothes and other supplies fit nicely in your bag, so you were able to head straight to the waiting gate and wait for your flight to be called. Placing your bag on an empty seat next to you, Ken sat atop of it as he started to talk once again now that you had stopped walking. "Thanks again for taking me on this trip, I had no idea that we would be doing this when I first talked to you on the bridge." "Yeah don't mention it kid it's all part of the job. Tomorrow is going to be your day so make sure to do everything you want, we can stay up all night, the return flight doesn't leave till late afternoon so we'll be fine." "Great!" He smiles, the two of you continue to make small chatter until it's time for your plane to be called. Upon boarding and taking your seat, you wait to see if anyone is to sit next to you while Ken shyly stands in the aisle. Seeing that you had your section to yourself, you motion for Ken to sit down which he quickly does. You didn't know if G had something to do with this arrangement though if he did that was pretty uncharacteristically nice of him. > You californa The flight was around one or two hours, you couldn't really tell with how fast time seemed to go. In the corner of your eye, you saw Ken's body bouncing up and down as he looked out the window as you started to descend. "I really wanted to fly one of these...." He said it so quietly, that you don't know if he meant to say it at all. Though you decided to just pretend that you didn't hear it as sad feelings started to enter your head a bit. You would make this kid's day today. The two of you quickly got off the plane and entered the main airport which was much smaller than the one in you had first arrived at. It was probably already close to midnight and you needed to get yourself to a hotel before you crashed from exhaustion. Luckily there were already Ubers patrolling around the airport so finding a ride didn't take all that long. You had already researched a hotel that you would be staying at so that was all covered too. You just needed to sleep this night off..... --- "Wake up, wake up! We're going to be late!" You felt someone pushing you from side to side as your eyes slowly opened. You saw that this was Ken, but his bright eager face startled a bit, enough to get you awake and to your senses. "Jesus, when did I go to sleep?" "Oh, you fell asleep as soon as you walked in the door. The room is pretty boring and the only kids show on TV is Arthur." Ken complains with slight annoyance. "But hurry up and get up, I want us to get there before the gates open at nine and it's already seven!" "Relax kid where like a few blocks away, let me get showered and dress and well get a bus over there..." You yawn as you start to open your backpack and dump out your clothes onto your bed. "Ughhhhh, well hurry up. I'm sick of watching Arthur." Ken grumbles before stomping back over to the T.V and plopping himself down on the carpet. Once you were done and ready, you took Ken with you to go downstairs while you served yourself breakfast in the cafeteria. You felt a little bad eating in front of Ken though while you waited, it seems he took notice to this and just waved his hand. "I don't get hungry ever." He says reassuringly. Even so, you raced to finish your food as fast as you could before leaving the Hotel itself and heading to the nearest bus stop that would get you to Disneyland. Ken always seemed to race ahead of you as he motioned for you to hurry up while he bounced side to side most likely from anticipation. The bus probably won't get here for ano-." "Look there's the bus!" Ken exclaims while he points down the road. Well shit. Getting onto the bus with your passes, Ken made you sit in the front row saying that he wanted to be the first one off the bus upon arriving. Though it didn't really all that much since the bus ride was only about five minutes anyway. The parking lots outside of Disneyland didn't seem all that full either, even though there was a lot of people around the entrance of the park you guess this would still be considered a slow day. "The line isn't even that long we're going to get in soon!" Ken says with eagerness. Just as he predicted, it took no time at all to get in with how fast it was to get through the gates. Upon entering the main section of the park, even you were overwhelmed on where you should start, Ken was already bouncing up and down while giving endless suggestions. "Let's go on the tower of terror, my friend said that he peed his pants when he went on that one because the drop was so scary, or we can go on Space Mountain since that's the one everyone always goes on first since it's the best ride in the park!" It looked like Ken was looking onto you for guidance on where to start in this ginormous park. > You kid Section Ken was a kid after all so it only made sense to start with the kid rides. He would probably end up getting too scared with the adult ones and that would lead to some issues. "Alright Ken, let's start with the kid rides first since I remember those being really fun when I was your age and came here for the first time, trust me you'll enjoy them." Ken seemed a little disappointed at your starting choice, though he didn't argue with you over it and instead followed you while you took lead. The two of you started to ride some of the kiddy rides that could also be ridden by adults, though those were a bit few in between, with Ken having a sad face on almost all of them. It wasn't until then you noticed that you couldn't really do the kiddy rides if you couldn't ride with Ken, you would probably also look really creepy if you just stared at kids riding on the rides without having a little brother or sister with you, your plan was meeting lots of dead ends. "Alright Ken never mind I'm picking another option for our rides." Ken's sullen attitude so far changes immediately as he beams at this sudden news. "About time!" > You adult thrill rides You remember being totally scared of all the big roller coasters when you first came to this park when you were younger, but after riding them once they weren't all that bad to you, so maybe it would be the same for Ken. Besides you were looking for a thrill too after all of those boring ones. "Alright Ken, where going to try out that biggest rides here now, starting with that one." You say pointing at a towering roller-coaster with a giant drop that you could see from the entrance, which was the California Screamin. The joy that Ken had earlier seemed to vanish, as he took one look at the ride and looked back at you with honest fear in his eyes. "Why that one?" "I thought you wanted to ride the scary rides since the other ones were too boring for you?" "I never said that I'm good with riding the less scary ones." He states. "Oh, Well we might as do at least a few of them since we're here. Or if you're not up to it we can just go back to riding all the kiddy rides again if that's more your style. "NO! That's not it, I just thought we could work our way up is all, that's way to much for me to jump too from the kiddy rides." "Trust me kid, I thought it was scary too at first but it's honestly pretty fun, now I'm not taking no for an answer so come on." You say as you begin walking towards monster that dominates the park. "Wait, Wait!" You don't listen to Ken though, as you hear his fast footsteps behind you catching up to your pace. Surprisingly the line for this ride wasn't all that long, you remember it taking ages to get on this, but you were the second ones to get on after the first group was finished. With it being empty, you were able to grab an empty seat next to you for Ken since you went for the middle. He was careful with the bars to not nick him as they dropped over his body, but with that out of the way, the two of you were ready to ride. Looking over at Ken he looked as if he was right about to shit himself at any moment, seemingly shaking. You slightly punch his shoulder as he looks over at you. "Hey, I wouldn't make you go on this if I didn't think you would have fun alright?" "Yeah....I trust you..." Ken takes a few deep breathes as the ride starts to lurch forward with all the preparations ready and set. You took the liberty of getting the seats in the far back to mitigate Ken's fear from the look of the drops, which seemed to be working as he only bothered to look down at his feet. Upon the first major drop, you could start to hear the laughter of everybody else in front of you as you yourself started to laugh to try to cheer Ken up. He laughed, but it seemed to be a much more forced and nervous one. When it got to the very top and you look down even you were starting to get second thoughts since you hadn't ridden one of these things in years, but before you knew it your cart lurched forward as kinetic energy took over with your stomach immediately dropping with the cart. Screams and laughter took over your ears as hands started to go up in glee as you did the same. You tried to look over at Ken but the coaster kept on shaking you around that you decided to just keep looking forward to avoid a neck injury. The ride didn't last as long as you were expecting it to, but that was probably on the account that you were having a blast on it, and once you had gotten off you already wanted to go on again. Spotting Ken, you looked at his facial expression to see what he thought of the ride. Emotionless at first, in some type of daze, though as soon as he made eye contact a grin from ear to ear went to his face. "That was frickin awesome, I want to go on it again!" He yelled whilst jumping up and down. "Maybe later, we still got another ride I want to try that's an even bigger drop." "You don't mean...?" "Yep!" you simply reply. "Let's go!" This time it's Ken who takes the lead as you chase after him in order for the boundary to not yank him back. You knew he knew what you were referring to as he was heading directly towards the tower. The tower of terror. The line for this ride was about the same, though it seemed that it went by faster though you had no clue as to why. This would be the first time riding this ride as even you were too scared to go on this thing when you were little no matter how much your friends had begged you too. You were glad at his assessment as the two of you got in line. The group that you were tied to was a rather large family, though because of this they themselves including you were the only ones to ride at that given time. You were kind of lucky since you were riding these rides by yourself, you were an outlier in these large crowds that rode rides together, so there was always an empty seat somewhere since everyone else wanted to ride with their families and friends. As the room darkened and the narrator began his speech, you saw Ken swaying his body back and forth a little as he looked all around the room with a smile on his face. You on the other hand, had no smile on your face as you were a little bit scared on what was to come, you didn't really enjoy the drops at roller coasters, and this one was probably going to be ten times that. "Hey look, we can see the entire pa-." Ken was cut off as the elevator you all were sitting in drastically fell floors below you as everybody started screaming, including you. Ken, on the other hand, was laughing his ass off as the elevator kept on going up and down with drastic height differences. You hadn't eaten anything beforehand but a sick feeling was starting to form in your stomach as you just wanted the ride to fucking end. You actually ended up closing your eyes, in which Ken seemed to notice. "Don't tell me you're scared!" He continued to laugh with the drops. "No, I just feel sick..." You weakly reply. When the ride finally comes to a stop, the grouped family and Ken get off laughing while you struggle behind trying not to vomit. "Yeah kid, I think I need a break from rides for a little bit." You say while sitting on a bench. "Aw really, did you feel that sick from it?" He asked with a mix of disappointment and worry. "Just give me a couple of minutes kid..." You say while taking a few deep breathes to get your stomach back in functioning order. "Man you were right though, I really did enjoy those scary rides, I think I want to ride all of them now if those two were the worst ones out of all of them. Let's get those done first before anything else today please?" Ken pleads. "As long as you give me a few breaks in between Kid then you can get on anything you want today." Ken smiled at this. "O.K I understand, I'm going to go check out the nearest line to see how long the wait is O.K? I promise it won't be too much of a scary. You groan while getting up to your feet. "I have to come with you remember. Anyway, I'm ready to get anyway so let's do this." "Hooray!" > You later that day You didn't realize that you had been on so many rides until you felt the soreness of your body kick in as the sun had already set awhile ago. Ken was racing to get on as many rides as he could before the park was to close for the day, and you sluggishly raced after him as fast as your body could keep up. Though when it finally came time to leave, it seemed as if Ken was satisfied as he wasn't begging to stay longer. On board the bus back to the hotel, Ken kept on talking about the events that had happened throughout this long day. "Man Space Mountain was probably one of the best rides there, I'm glad we managed to make getting on it before the park closed," Ken states with satisfaction. "Yeah it was a pretty fun day, even though we did a lot and it felt like we rode everything, it still felt really short." You remark as the bus takes you through the night back to your hotel. Ken nods in agreement. "Still though, it's not like I'm leaving regretting anything, I did everything I wanted too...". Ken's voice seemed to drop heavily as all the enthusiasm that he had seconds before almost instantly vanished. "Well that's good, this entire trip was for you to have a good time, I had one too. I honestly wish I could do this every weekend." You say with a little laugh, though Ken doesn't respond, and the rest of the ride is filled with an awkward smile. Upon arriving at the hotel and getting off the bus, Ken is slow, dragging his feet while you keep looking behind you to make sure you didn't lose him every two or three minutes. "Everything O.K man?" You asked worryingly since this was really out of place behavior compared to what happened today. Still, there was the silence, though Ken increased the speed at which he was walking this time. He didn't even bother opening the hotel room door, he just walked straight through it. You've never seen the kid be able to do that and now you were actually starting to worry, hastily opening the door with your key-card, you push it open and look for Ken in the main room, in which he is nowhere to be seen. "Ken!" You shout heavily, starting to look everywhere around the hotel room to see where he could be. You finally end up finding him as you see his legs sticking out from under his own bed. "Ken what the hell are you doing, you scared me. Get out from under there." You order with a sigh of relief. Seeing that his hiding spot had been compromised, Ken starts to squirm his way out while sitting himself down as he finished doing so, facing away from you. "Ken you have to tell me what's wrong, you're really starting to worry me. Did something happen on the bus?" You ask, remembering that his change of mood started there. He weakly shakes his head as he continues to not look at you, which makes you a little frustrated. You try to grab his shoulders in order to turn him around so that he can face you. Though your arms go straight through his body as the only thing you grasp is air. Seeing that, that wouldn't work you walk around him and kneel down so that you can get a look at his face. You kind of cringe a little on the inside when you see all the tears and snot that had built up all over his face, making it one big twisted mess while his red puffy eyes didn't want to make direct eye contact with you. "Ken you got to tell what's wrong..." You ask again, although this time with a much softer voice. Ken begins to wipe away the tears and snot from his face, but more keep flowing so it only makes them spread more. "I tho-thought I was h-happy. But after remembering everything, that I I-I'm going to leave soon. I just g-got scared..." Ken cries with numerous hiccups in between his words. "I don't want to leave, I had so much fun with you today and now I'm going to forget it all! I know you're going to make me leave as soon as we get home, but I'm not ready to leave...I'm scared.....I want to stay here and keep on having fun with you!" His tears were really falling now, you tried to grab his arm to console him but once again your hands went through his body. This probably had something to do with his emotions. You didn't really know what to say to him either. He was going to ascend as soon as G gave the word for him to do so. It's not like you didn't want him to stay either, you were having lot's of fun and you wish he could experience more with how young he was when he passed. Though you saw no way around this, he was going to move on whether you liked it or not, the only thing to do now was to try to give a positive outlook on the whole situation. Sitting down next to Ken you begin to speak. "Listen, kid. I had a lot of fun with you today, more than I probably had in a long ass time. I don't remember the last time I even went out before this to be honest. Look I know you're scared, I would be too in your situation. What I'm trying to say though is that you should enjoy the memories that you've gotten to experience so far, the fun that you've had up to this point, there's no use in dwelling on the past or on things you can't change. I wasn't a very religious person before all of this, but if I was chosen to help you ascend up into the sky above, then that has to mean you have something to look forward too, something is waiting for you, and who knows maybe it's a lot better than this life." you say, trying to help him feel even a little bit better. Ken sniffled a little bit more as he wiped his nose with his palm. You didn’t know ghosts could cry like this, how it was even possible, but now wasn’t the time to question things like this. “Life’s so unfair, I don’t know why my dad had to take that bridge, if he hadn’t none of this would have happened…” You let Ken vent a little more as you just sat there in silence since there were some things that you weren’t able to refute or deny. The more he vented, however, the calmer he seemed to become, along with acquiring a more lax attitude. “Is there any way you can visit me...?” Ken asked you, which made your whole body freeze a little. Taking a moment before responding, you chose your words carefully. "I mean I'll probably see you again eventually when it's my turn to ascend in the future. Though I'm sure there's some way for me to try to contact you, and if there is then I promise you that'll I'll find it." "You really promise me that?" Ken asks, with a heavy voice. "You bet I do." Ken keeps a bit of eye contact with you, before looking back at his knees while he hugs them. The two of you sit there in silence until you feel a buzzing from your pocket. Getting out your phone, you see that G had sent you a few messages. G- Alright so here's the deal, you're going to have to do the ascension there at the hotel room, I was planning on you doing it here, but I don't want to risk anything so get ready to start the preparations. You feel your heart start to rapidly beat as you type in a reply. "What the fuck do you mean I have to do it right now? That's way too soon!" G- Listen to me, if you don't do it now then there might be some complications getting him up. I didn't just spend all that fucking money for you to have a happy make a wish foundation day for this kid just so that he can't fucking ascend, follow the instructions I'm about to send you and get it the fuck done. G then sends you a list of instructions, much similar to the ones that he had given you when you first bonded with Ken. Ken seems to see your frustration. "Is something wrong?" You bite your tongue as the words you want to tell him won't leave your mouth. "There's.....there's been a slight change in plans." Another instruction in the list that G had given you said that Ken couldn't be sad while doing this ritual, which would be fucking hard to pull off seeing as what just happen. "Ken, I'm going to help you ascend right now, it's time to do it." You say, coming off as blunt as possible. Ken's eye furrowed in a type of fear and panic, as he quickly got up from sitting down, in which you joined him. "Now listen, it's not anything bad it's ju-." "Why does it have to be right now! Why can't we just wait a little longer!" Ken cries as he cuts you off. "I'm sorry but your time has been designated for this moment. Ken, please remember what I said earlier, > You all good things come to a end You don't know how much time had passed as you two sat in the hotel room, it had to be one in the morning already though. Once Ken had stopped crying the second time, you just started to talk to him about his earlier life, and just tried to bring up any question about him you could come up with. At first, he only said single word answers, though as the questions continued he started to get more in depth with what he said until he was bringing up every small detail of whatever he was reminiscing about. "When they first took my body after the car crash, I couldn't stop freaking out. I tried to get the attention of the rescuers, but nobody saw me, and I cried for so long on top of that bridge. It came to the point in where I couldn't stand to be up there, so I decided to go under the bridge where I thought it would be quiet. Turns out a lot of people died there, so I was never really lonely, but that's when I really found out that I was dead, and there was nothing I could do about it..." "I'm sorry that I couldn't get to you sooner Ken, really I wish that there was more of my kind that could help you guys, the amount of time some people have to wait to be helped is ridiculous." "Please make sure everyone at that bridge get's out of there like me, one of the men there said that he had been there for over a year, I was probably the one with the least amount of time spent there, I don't even know why you picked me first." You didn't have the heart to tell this kid the only reason G picked him is that he thought making him happy would be easy. If that was how these people filtered out which ghosts were worth saving, then who knows how long some of the spirits would have to wait before being saved. This whole system was shit, but that wasn't something to be worrying about right now, you would talk about it with G when the time was right. "I promise I'll get everyone out of that bridge kid." He nods, and stays silent for a moment as if trying to find something else to say. "I think I'm ready." "Are you sure? If you need a little more time, I'm not even tired." You say, although lying a little bit. Ken shakes his head though. "If I think about it anymore it's only going to get worse in my head, this is as ready as I'll be I think." With that Ken stands up, and you do as well. The two of you look at each other for a bit, and a bitter small smile appears on Ken's face as he outstretches his hand. "Thank you for the fun day today, and for getting me on a plane, you really did a lot for what time you had with me." "Well thanks for being such a good kid about everything, hanging out with you was like hanging out with someone my own age, you're a really smart kid. Wherever you're going to end up, I know you'll come out on top." Ken laughs a little, and so do you. At this point, your eyes start to sting, but you keep your head held high as you outstretch your hand in which both of you have your palms clasped with one another, just like at the start. "Don't forget my face when I find you again." You say, knowing in your heart it was about to happen. "Never." His kiddish eyes glowed, and they glowed. Until all was white. It had happened. Your hand felt nothing, and nothing was there. Ken was gone. > You ascension G- Hah, with how I've changed my order of things, I was able to shave off a few days since my contact quota. If things go right we should be able to finish this quota within the next week, good job kid, you're going to turn out to be an efficient member of this group if you keep this performance up, now get some rest and make sure to catch the plane tomorrow. G had left you alone after the congratulations, but you weren't feeling very happy. in fact, you were feeling like shit. If you had to go through this every single time you were to help ascend a spirit, then you didn't want to do this at all. Though you doubt that you had a say in this matter anyway, the only thing you could do on your own part was to make sure that these spirits didn't suffer, and are at least happy before they ascend. Though if every single one of your guides was to be like G in the future, then this was going to be one hell of a ride. You had asked G after the congratulations if there was any way to contact spirits and the response you got was that only certain classes of your kind were able to perform such acts, and G didn't know or come in contact with anyone who had such powers, apparently, they were a very rare bunch. Still, if there was a chance you were able to contact Ken in the future, then you had to find a way to do so, at least to see how he was doing. You didn't think G would be giving you any breaks if he finds a new spirit to help soon enough, tired as you were from only a few days of work, you couldn't stop until you finished your quota, and helped these spirits ascend. To hell with the quota actually, you had to find a way to do this permanently. You were going to help these spirits. Someone has to take a bigger initiative. That person was you. and so starts the adventures to come.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ken was a kid after all so it only made sense to start with the kid rides. He would probably end up getting too scared with the adult ones and that would lead to some issues. "Alright Ken, let's start with the kid rides first since I remember those being really fun when I was your age and came here for the first time, trust me you'll enjoy them." Ken seemed a little disappointed at your starting choice, though he didn't argue with you over it and instead followed you while you took lead. The two of you started to ride some of the kiddy rides that could also be ridden by adults, though those were a bit few in between, with Ken having a sad face on almost all of them. It wasn't until then you noticed that you couldn't really do the kiddy rides if you couldn't ride with Ken, you would probably also look really creepy if you just stared at kids riding on the rides without having a little brother or sister with you, your plan was meeting lots of dead ends. "Alright Ken never mind I'm picking another option for our rides." Ken's sullen attitude so far changes immediately as he beams at this sudden news. "About time!" > You medium thrill rides Ken was probably a little too young for the extreme roller coasters that they had here, with him also being a ghost, there was a chance of an accident happening that you wouldn't be able to intervene in. The medium rides wouldn't bore him but wouldn't be too dangerous either. "Alright then, let's do space mountain since the drops on that aren't really too bad," you say giving Ken your decision. "Yes! I knew you would pick that one! Come on I think I know the way I saw it on one of the billboard maps, I want to get those boring rides out of my mind!" Ken says as he starts running. "Hey wait!" Ignoring the looks of other park guests you start to run after Ken. Running throughout the park while taking breaks to look at the maps posted around, you finally reach the section containing space mountain as the two of you get into massive designated line. There were a pretty decent amount of people waiting, but it wasn't the size that you were expecting which was good. When it was finally your turn to take your seat, you picked the spot all the way in the back hoping that nobody else would ride with you, with Ken already taking up the seat next to you. By your lucks, you were able to save the empty seat as the man gave the thumbs up for the ride to start. "Are you sure there aren't any big drops or anything?" Ken says with genuine worry. "Yeah don't worry about it, it's just a really fun ride that swoops you around in the dark." Ken slowly nods as the lights begin to dim while the track starts to pull you with speed. "Oh my god that was awesome, I felt myself laughing the whole entire time! That as probably one of the best roller-coasters I've ever ridden!" Ken exclaims with adoration for what he had just experienced. "Yeah, it was pretty fun reliving that memory." You agree while keeping a steady pace along with the eager kid. On your walk to no actual destination, you stop by a cotton candy vendor and buy a stick. There was actually something you were looking to experiment with to see if it worked or not. Sitting down on a bench, you take off the covering for the cotton candy and point it at Ken's face who's taken aback a bit in surprise. "I can't eat that..." He says. "Don't eat it, lick it." You reply. "Huh?" "Try it, trust me." You say. A bit hesitant, Ken does as you say and licks a bit of the cotton candy. His eyes light up instantly as he begins to lick it more, with much more vigor. "I know you ghosts can't eat stuff, but I thought that you guys would still be able to taste since you can touch things and all." You explain while Ken indulges in pleasure. "I never thought I could do this since I was never able to grab anything before! This is great!" Touching the cotton candy with your hand, you felt no wetness from where Ken had touched. Still, though you were a little grossed out with eating the parts that he had licked, so you had torn off the bottom section for yourself to eat alone. After finishing your snacks and taking a quick trip to the bathroom, you went on the find the next ride that you could do together, though you already had two in mind. "Alright, kid do you want to do splash mountain or the rapid one where they put you in that circular tube kinda thingy." You say, letting him decide. "Splash mountain yes! Everyone at school always wanted to go on that and the ones who had said the feeling of your stomach dropping was so fun! I want to sit in the back though." "How come?" You ask. "Reasons, besides wouldn't it look weird if I sat in the front and no one could see me?" "Yeah that would be pretty weird, O.K, let's go get in line before it gets too big." The line to Splash Mountain was unsurprisingly the biggest one you had encountered at the park, mostly for it being the ride that almost everybody could go on, and everyone wanted to go on. While in line, Ken kept on racing back and forth from the front to where you were waiting to see how long it would be until it was your turn to ride, you were a bit worried he would push people which would lead to questions and hysteria, but he was careful to glide through the crowds with ease. When it finally came to be your own turn to get on after about ten minutes of waiting, you were able to get a log to yourself since you were the only single rider who wanted to get on in your section. Ignoring the weird looks some people gave, Ken asked you a question as soon as you were out of earshot from everyone else. "Are you sure this ride is safe, shouldn't it have seatbelts?" He asks worryingly. "Don't worry, people ride this thing every day. If you're really worried though just hang on to me when we reach the top." You assure him in which he just nods. As you begin to ascend the mountain, you and Ken both laugh at the animatronics that sing and talk throughout the ride. Though upon reaching the top, you feel Ken squirm behind you as if he's nervous. Even you feel a little queasy as you see the park before you atop of the drop. "Actually you may want to han-." You are interrupted as the log tips over the edge while you both let out a scream and Ken latches onto your back with his arms. The log causes a tremendous splash at the bottom as both of your bodies jerk forward from the momentum. A bit of your pants are soaked as you exit the ride. The same laughter that Ken had at Space Mountain is mirrored here as his head bobs up and down in enthusiasm. "That was freaking awesome! I want to go on it again!" He says with glee. You also shared his sentiment, but with how long the line was, you decided that it was best to just go on it later tonight when you had the free time. "Let's go to the picture kiosk, I want to see if I made a funny face." You say to Ken. You were the last one in line in the Kiosk, and since it was so crowded, you couldn't really see your own picture until it was your turn up in front. When the lady manning the kiosk looked at you, a bigger smile than she had before appeared on her face. "You and your little brother are probably one of the better pictures I've seen so fa today, his smile was so cute when he was hanging on behind you." She says with a laugh. At first, you think she had mistaken you with someone else, but as she points at the picture and you look at it, your heart drops almost instantly. Ken was indeed in the picture behind you, though his whole figure was a little bit hazed as if he wasn't all completely there. "Sorry about how he looks, the cameras can be a bit iffy with the water and all, I have to remember to tell my manager to get it checked out." She remarks. "N-No it's fine! Say how much is that picture?" You quickly stammer while taking out your wallet. I didn't do anything wrong did I...." Ken meekly says while the two of you sit on a bench as you look at the picture before you. "No, not at all! It's just I didn't think you would actually show up on the picture. Though honestly, I think it made it all the much better, the lady was right you did have a pretty dumb face while going down." You laugh trying to change the mood. "Not as dumb as yours, look how scared you look!" Ken replies with a smile while pointing at your face. Putting the picture away, you get up from the bench and give your arms a stretch. "Well we still got a lot of time to kill today with all these rides, we got to get as many done as we can before we leave." You say while pulling out your pamphlet map. "Yeah, I want to ride this one next! Someone at school told me that it was pretty fun and the lines aren't that long either!." Ken says with eagerness as he points to one of the attractions on the map. "Well let's get to it then." You say, putting the map back into your pocket. Off the two of you were, enjoying the rest of your day with the park that was before you. > You later that day You didn't realize that you had been on so many rides until you felt the soreness of your body kick in as the sun had already set awhile ago. Ken was racing to get on as many rides as he could before the park was to close for the day, and you sluggishly raced after him as fast as your body could keep up. Though when it finally came time to leave, it seemed as if Ken was satisfied as he wasn't begging to stay longer. On board the bus back to the hotel, Ken kept on talking about the events that had happened throughout this long day. "Man Space Mountain was still probably one of the best rides I went on at the park, nothing else topped it," Ken states with absolute assuredness. "Yeah, I agree, though the whole entire day was pretty fun since we were able to ride every ride we wanted. For some reason though the day also felt so short." You state while thinking back at everything that happened. Ken nods in agreement. "Still though, it's not like I'm leaving regretting anything, I did everything I wanted too...". Ken's voice seemed to drop heavily as all the enthusiasm that he had seconds before almost instantly vanished. "Well that's good, this entire trip was for you to have a good time, I had one too. I honestly wish I could do this every weekend." You say with a little laugh, though Ken doesn't respond, and the rest of the ride is filled with an awkward smile. Upon arriving at the hotel and getting off the bus, Ken is slow, dragging his feet while you keep looking behind you to make sure you didn't lose him every two or three minutes. "Everything O.K man?" You asked worryingly since this was really out of place behavior compared to what happened today. Still, there was the silence, though Ken increased the speed at which he was walking this time. He didn't even bother opening the hotel room door, he just walked straight through it. You've never seen the kid be able to do that and now you were actually starting to worry, hastily opening the door with your key-card, you push it open and look for Ken in the main room, in which he is nowhere to be seen. "Ken!" You shout heavily, starting to look everywhere around the hotel room to see where he could be. You finally end up finding him as you see his legs sticking out from under his own bed. "Ken what the hell are you doing, you scared me. Get out from under there." You order with a sigh of relief. Seeing that his hiding spot had been compromised, Ken starts to squirm his way out while sitting himself down as he finished doing so, facing away from you. "Ken you have to tell me what's wrong, you're really starting to worry me. Did something happen on the bus?" You ask, remembering that his change of mood started there. He weakly shakes his head as he continues to not look at you, which makes you a little frustrated. You try to grab his shoulders in order to turn him around so that he can face you. Though your arms go straight through his body as the only thing you grasp is air. Seeing that, that wouldn't work you walk around him and kneel down so that you can get a look at his face. You kind of cringe a little on the inside when you see all the tears and snot that had built up all over his face, making it one big twisted mess while his red puffy eyes didn't want to make direct eye contact with you. "Ken you got to tell what's wrong..." You ask again, although this time with a much softer voice. Ken begins to wipe away the tears and snot from his face, but more keep flowing so it only makes them spread more. "I tho-thought I was h-happy. But after remembering everything, that I I-I'm going to leave soon. I just g-got scared..." Ken cries with numerous hiccups in between his words. "I don't want to leave, I had so much fun with you today and now I'm going to forget it all! I know you're going to make me leave as soon as we get home, but I'm not ready to leave...I'm scared.....I want to stay here and keep on having fun with you!" His tears were really falling now, you tried to grab his arm to console him but once again your hands went through his body. This probably had something to do with his emotions. You didn't really know what to say to him either. He was going to ascend as soon as G gave the word for him to do so. It's not like you didn't want him to stay either, you were having lot's of fun and you wish he could experience more with how young he was when he passed. Though you saw no way around this, he was going to move on whether you liked it or not, the only thing to do now was to try to give a positive outlook on the whole situation. Sitting down next to Ken you begin to speak. "Listen, kid. I had a lot of fun with you today, more than I probably had in a long ass time. I don't remember the last time I even went out before this, to be honest. Look I know you're scared, I would be too in your situation. What I'm trying to say though is that you should enjoy the memories that you've gotten to experience so far, the fun that you've had up to this point, there's no use in dwelling on the past or on things you can't change. I wasn't a very religious person before all of this, but if I was chosen to help you ascend up into the sky above, then that has to mean you have something to look forward too, something is waiting for you, and who knows maybe it's a lot better than this life." you say, trying to help him feel even a little bit better. Ken sniffled a little bit more as he wiped his nose with his palm. You didn’t know ghosts could cry like this, how it was even possible, but now wasn’t the time to question things like this. “Life’s so unfair, I don’t know why my dad had to take that bridge, if he hadn’t none of this would have happened…” You let Ken vent a little more as you just sat there in silence since there were some things that you weren’t able to refute or deny. The more he vented, however, the calmer he seemed to become, along with acquiring a more lax attitude. “Is there any way you can visit me...?” Ken asked you, which made your whole body freeze a little. Taking a moment before responding, you chose your words carefully. "I mean I'll probably see you again eventually when it's my turn to ascend in the future. Though I'm sure there's some way for me to try to contact you, and if there is then I promise you that'll I'll find it." "You really promise me that?" Ken asks, with a heavy voice. "You bet I do." Ken keeps a bit of eye contact with you, before looking back at his knees while he hugs them. The two of you sit there in silence until you feel a buzzing from your pocket. Getting out your phone, you see that G had sent you a few messages. G- Alright so here's the deal, you're going to have to do the ascension there at the hotel room, I was planning on you doing it here, but I don't want to risk anything so get ready to start the preparations. You feel your heart start to rapidly beat as you type in a reply. "What the fuck do you mean I have to do it right now? That's way too soon!" G- Listen to me, if you don't do it now then there might be some complications getting him up. I didn't just spend all that fucking money for you to have a happy make a wish foundation day for this kid just so that he can't fucking ascend, follow the instructions I'm about to send you and get it the fuck done. G then sends you a list of instructions, much similar to the ones that he had given you when you first bonded with Ken. Ken seems to see your frustration. "Is something wrong?" You bite your tongue as the words you want to tell him won't leave your mouth. "There's.....there's been a slight change in plans." Another instruction in the list that G had given you said that Ken couldn't be sad while doing this ritual, which would be fucking hard to pull off seeing as what just happen. "Ken, I'm going to help you ascend right now, it's time to do it." You say, coming off as blunt as possible. Ken's eye furrowed in a type of fear and panic, as he quickly got up from sitting down, in which you joined him. "Now listen, it's not anything bad it's ju-." "Why does it have to be right now! Why can't we just wait a little longer!" Ken cries as he cuts you off. "I'm sorry but your time has been designated for this moment. Ken, please remember what I said earlier, just take a moment to console yourself and I'll help you through this, but we have to get it done today, I'm sorry." you apologize again, though Ken himself seems to be getting himself under control as he sits down on his bed. You look his face and see that he's trying to get a straight expression on it, but his mouth and eyes keep on twitching, and before you know it, he starts weeping once again, although this time it's more of a soft one, one you couldn't bear to look at.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The flight was around one or two hours, you couldn't really tell with how fast time seemed to go. In the corner of your eye, you saw Ken's body bouncing up and down as he looked out the window as you started to descend. "I really wanted to fly one of these...." He said it so quietly, that you don't know if he meant to say it at all. Though you decided to just pretend that you didn't hear it as sad feelings started to enter your head a bit. You would make this kid's day today. The two of you quickly got off the plane and entered the main airport which was much smaller than the one in you had first arrived at. It was probably already close to midnight and you needed to get yourself to a hotel before you crashed from exhaustion. Luckily there were already Ubers patrolling around the airport so finding a ride didn't take all that long. You had already researched a hotel that you would be staying at so that was all covered too. You just needed to sleep this night off..... --- "Wake up, wake up! We're going to be late!" You felt someone pushing you from side to side as your eyes slowly opened. You saw that this was Ken, but his bright eager face startled a bit, enough to get you awake and to your senses. "Jesus, when did I go to sleep?" "Oh, you fell asleep as soon as you walked in the door. The room is pretty boring and the only kids show on TV is Arthur." Ken complains with slight annoyance. "But hurry up and get up, I want us to get there before the gates open at nine and it's already seven!" "Relax kid where like a few blocks away, let me get showered and dress and well get a bus over there..." You yawn as you start to open your backpack and dump out your clothes onto your bed. "Ughhhhh, well hurry up. I'm sick of watching Arthur." Ken grumbles before stomping back over to the T.V and plopping himself down on the carpet. Once you were done and ready, you took Ken with you to go downstairs while you served yourself breakfast in the cafeteria. You felt a little bad eating in front of Ken though while you waited, it seems he took notice to this and just waved his hand. "I don't get hungry ever." He says reassuringly. Even so, you raced to finish your food as fast as you could before leaving the Hotel itself and heading to the nearest bus stop that would get you to Disneyland. Ken always seemed to race ahead of you as he motioned for you to hurry up while he bounced side to side most likely from anticipation. The bus probably won't get here for ano-." "Look there's the bus!" Ken exclaims while he points down the road. Well shit. Getting onto the bus with your passes, Ken made you sit in the front row saying that he wanted to be the first one off the bus upon arriving. Though it didn't really all that much since the bus ride was only about five minutes anyway. The parking lots outside of Disneyland didn't seem all that full either, even though there was a lot of people around the entrance of the park you guess this would still be considered a slow day. "The line isn't even that long we're going to get in soon!" Ken says with eagerness. Just as he predicted, it took no time at all to get in with how fast it was to get through the gates. Upon entering the main section of the park, even you were overwhelmed on where you should start, Ken was already bouncing up and down while giving endless suggestions. "Let's go on the tower of terror, my friend said that he peed his pants when he went on that one because the drop was so scary, or we can go on Space Mountain since that's the one everyone always goes on first since it's the best ride in the park!" It looked like Ken was looking onto you for guidance on where to start in this ginormous park. > You medium level thrill rides Ken was probably a little too young for the extreme roller coasters that they had here, with him also being a ghost, there was a chance of an accident happening that you wouldn't be able to intervene in. The medium rides wouldn't bore him but wouldn't be too dangerous either. "Alright then, let's start with space mountain since the drops on that aren't really too bad," you say giving Ken your decision. "Yes! I knew you would pick that one! Come on I think I know the way I saw it on one of the billboard maps!" Ken says as he starts running. "Hey wait!" Ignoring the looks of other park guests you start to run after Ken. Running throughout the park while taking breaks to look at the maps posted around, you finally reach the section containing space mountain as the two of you get into massive designated line. There were a pretty decent amount of people waiting, but it wasn't the size that you were expecting which was good. When it was finally your turn to take your seat, you picked the spot all the way in the back hoping that nobody else would ride with you, with Ken already taking up the seat next to you. By your lucks, you were able to save the empty seat as the man gave the thumbs up for the ride to start. "Are you sure there aren't any big drops or anything?" Ken says with genuine worry. "Yeah don't worry about it, it's just a really fun ride that swoops you around in the dark." Ken slowly nods as the lights begin to dim while the track starts to pull you with speed. "Oh my god that was awesome, I felt myself laughing the whole entire time! That as probably one of the best roller-coasters I've ever ridden!" Ken exclaims with adoration for what he had just experienced. "Yeah it was pretty fun reliving that memory." You agree while keeping a steady pace along with the eager kid. On your walk to no actual destination, you stop by a cotton candy vendor and buy a stick. There was actually something you were looking to experiment with to see if it worked or not. Sitting down on a bench, you take off the covering for the cotton candy and point it at Ken's face who's taken aback a bit in surprise. "I can't eat that..." He says. "Don't eat it, lick it." You reply. "Huh?" "Try it, trust me." You say. A bit hesitant, Ken does as you say and licks a bit of the cotton candy. His eyes light up instantly as he begins to lick it more, with much more vigor. "I know you ghosts can't eat stuff, but I thought that you guys would still be able to taste since you can touch things and all." You explain while Ken indulges in pleasure. "I never thought I could do this since I was never able to grab anything before! This is great!" Touching the cotton candy with your hand, you felt no wetness from where Ken had touched. Still, though you were a little grossed out with eating the parts that he had licked, so you had torn off the bottom section for yourself to eat alone. After finishing your snacks and taking a quick trip to the bathroom, you went on the find the next ride that you could do together, though you already had two in mind. "Alright, kid do you want to do splash mountain or the rapid one where they put you in that circular tube kinda thingy." You say, letting him decide. "Splash mountain yes! Everyone at school always wanted to go on that and the ones who had said the feeling of your stomach dropping was so fun! I want to sit in the back though." "How come?" You ask. "Reasons, besides wouldn't it look weird if I sat in the front and no one could see me?" "Yeah that would be pretty weird, O.K, let's go get in line before it gets too big." The line to Splash Mountain was unsurprisingly the biggest one you had encountered at the park, mostly for it being the ride that almost everybody could go on, and everyone wanted to go on. While in line, Ken kept on racing back and forth from the front to where you were waiting to see how long it would be until it was your turn to ride, you were a bit worried he would push people which would lead to questions and hysteria, but he was careful to glide through the crowds with ease. Luckily, the line was going in a zigzag formation so it didn't mess with the boundary either luckily, even then though, your boundary felt bigger than it did last time for some reason. When it finally came to be your own turn to get on after about ten minutes of waiting, you were able to get a log to yourself since you were the only single rider who wanted to get on in your section. Ignoring the weird looks some people gave, Ken asked you a question as soon as you were out of earshot from everyone else. "Are you sure this ride is safe, shouldn't it have seatbelts?" He asks worryingly. "Don't worry, people ride this thing every day. If you're really worried though just hang on to me when we reach the top." You assure him in which he just nods. As you begin to ascend the mountain, you and Ken both laugh at the animatronics that sing and talk throughout the ride. Though upon reaching the top, you feel Ken squirm behind you as if he's nervous. Even you feel a little queasy as you see the park before you atop of the drop. "Actually you may want to han-." You are interrupted as the log tips over the edge while you both let out a scream and Ken latches onto your back with his arms. The log causes a tremendous splash at the bottom as both of your bodies jerk forward from the momentum. A bit of your pants is soaked as you exit the ride. The same laughter that Ken had at Space Mountain is mirrored here as his head bobs up and down in enthusiasm. "That was freaking awesome! I want to go on it again!" He says with glee. You also shared his sentiment, but with how long the line was, you decided that it was best to just go on it later tonight when you had the free time. "Let's go to the picture kiosk, I want to see if I made a funny face." You say to Ken. You were the last one in line in the Kiosk, and since it was so crowded, you couldn't really see your own picture until it was your turn up in front. When the lady manning the kiosk looked at you, a bigger smile than she had before appeared on her face. "You and your little brother are probably one of the better pictures I've seen so fa today, his smile was so cute when he was hanging on behind you." She says with a laugh. At first you think she had mistaken you with someone else, but as she points at the picture and you look at it, your heart drops almost instantly. Ken was indeed in the picture behind you, though his whole figure was a little bit hazed as if he wasn't all completely there. "Sorry about how he looks, the cameras can be a bit iffy with the water and all, I have to remember to tell my manager to get it checked out." She remarks. "N-No it's fine! Say how much is that picture?" You quickly stammer while taking out your wallet. I didn't do anything wrong did I...." Ken meekly says while the two of you sit on a bench as you look at the picture before you. "No, not at all! It's just I didn't think you would actually show up on the picture. Though honestly I think it made it all the much better, the lady was right you did have a pretty dumb face while going down." You laugh trying to change the mood. "Not as dumb as yours, look how scared you look!" Ken replies with a smile while pointing at your face. Putting the picture away, you get up from the bench and give your arms a stretch. "Well we still got a lot of time to kill today with all these rides, we got to get as many done as we can before we leave." You say while pulling out your pamphlet map. "Yeah, I want to ride this one next! Someone at school told me that it was pretty fun and the lines aren't that long either!." Ken says with eagerness as he points to one of the attractions on the map. "Well let's get to it then." You say, putting the map back into your pocket. Off the two of you were, enjoying the rest of your day with the park that was before you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The flight was around one or two hours, you couldn't really tell with how fast time seemed to go. In the corner of your eye, you saw Ken's body bouncing up and down as he looked out the window as you started to descend. "I really wanted to fly one of these...." He said it so quietly, that you don't know if he meant to say it at all. Though you decided to just pretend that you didn't hear it as sad feelings started to enter your head a bit. You would make this kid's day today. The two of you quickly got off the plane and entered the main airport which was much smaller than the one in you had first arrived at. It was probably already close to midnight and you needed to get yourself to a hotel before you crashed from exhaustion. Luckily there were already Ubers patrolling around the airport so finding a ride didn't take all that long. You had already researched a hotel that you would be staying at so that was all covered too. You just needed to sleep this night off..... --- "Wake up, wake up! We're going to be late!" You felt someone pushing you from side to side as your eyes slowly opened. You saw that this was Ken, but his bright eager face startled a bit, enough to get you awake and to your senses. "Jesus, when did I go to sleep?" "Oh, you fell asleep as soon as you walked in the door. The room is pretty boring and the only kids show on TV is Arthur." Ken complains with slight annoyance. "But hurry up and get up, I want us to get there before the gates open at nine and it's already seven!" "Relax kid where like a few blocks away, let me get showered and dress and well get a bus over there..." You yawn as you start to open your backpack and dump out your clothes onto your bed. "Ughhhhh, well hurry up. I'm sick of watching Arthur." Ken grumbles before stomping back over to the T.V and plopping himself down on the carpet. Once you were done and ready, you took Ken with you to go downstairs while you served yourself breakfast in the cafeteria. You felt a little bad eating in front of Ken though while you waited, it seems he took notice to this and just waved his hand. "I don't get hungry ever." He says reassuringly. Even so, you raced to finish your food as fast as you could before leaving the Hotel itself and heading to the nearest bus stop that would get you to Disneyland. Ken always seemed to race ahead of you as he motioned for you to hurry up while he bounced side to side most likely from anticipation. The bus probably won't get here for ano-." "Look there's the bus!" Ken exclaims while he points down the road. Well shit. Getting onto the bus with your passes, Ken made you sit in the front row saying that he wanted to be the first one off the bus upon arriving. Though it didn't really all that much since the bus ride was only about five minutes anyway. The parking lots outside of Disneyland didn't seem all that full either, even though there was a lot of people around the entrance of the park you guess this would still be considered a slow day. "The line isn't even that long we're going to get in soon!" Ken says with eagerness. Just as he predicted, it took no time at all to get in with how fast it was to get through the gates. Upon entering the main section of the park, even you were overwhelmed on where you should start, Ken was already bouncing up and down while giving endless suggestions. "Let's go on the tower of terror, my friend said that he peed his pants when he went on that one because the drop was so scary, or we can go on Space Mountain since that's the one everyone always goes on first since it's the best ride in the park!" It looked like Ken was looking onto you for guidance on where to start in this ginormous park. > You adult mega thrill rides You remember being totally scared of all the big roller coasters when you first came to this park when you were younger, but after riding them once they weren't all that bad, so maybe it would be the same for Ken. Besides you were looking for a thrill too. "Alright Ken, were going to try out that biggest rides here, starting with that one." You say pointing at a towering roller-coaster with a giant drop that you could see from the entrance, which was the California Screamin. The joy that Ken had earlier seemed to vanish, as he took one look at the ride and looked back at you with honest fear in his eyes. "Why that one?" "Didn't you want to ride all the rides?" "I never said that." He states. "Oh, Well we might as well since we're here. Or if you're not up to it we can just ride all the kiddy rides if that's more your style. "NO! That's not it, I just thought we could work our way up is all, that's way to much for me to start with." "Trust me kid, I thought it was scary too at first but it's honestly pretty fun, now I'm not taking no for an answer so come on." You say as you begin walking towards monster that dominates the park. "Wait, Wait!" You don't listen to Ken though, as you hear his fast footsteps behind you catching up to your pace. Surprisingly the line for this ride wasn't all that long, you remember it taking ages to get on this, but you were the second ones to get on after the first group was finished. With it being empty, you were able to grab an empty seat next to you for Ken since you went for the middle. He was careful for the bars to not to nick him as they dropped over his body, but with that out of the way, the two of you were ready to ride. Looking over at Ken he looked as if he was right about to shit himself at any moment, seemingly shaking. You slightly punch his shoulder as he looks over at you. "Hey, I wouldn't make you go on this if I didn't think you would have fun alright?" "Yeah....I trust you..." Ken takes a few deep breathes as the ride starts to lurch forward with all the preparations ready and set. You took the liberty of getting the seats in the far back to mitigate Ken's fear from the look of the drops, which seemed to be working as he only bothered to look down at his feet. Upon the first major drop, you could start to hear the laughter of everybody else in front of you as you yourself started to laugh to try to cheer Ken up. He laughed, but his seemed to be a much more forced and nervous one. When it got to the very top and you look down even you were starting to get second thoughts since you hadn't ridden one of these things in years, but before you knew it your cart lurched forward as kinetic energy took over with your stomach immediately dropping with the cart. Screams and laughter took over your ears as hands started to go up in glee as you did the same. You tried to look over at Ken but the coaster kept on shaking you around that you decided to just keep looking forward to avoid a neck injury. The ride didn't last as long as you were expecting it to, but that was probably on the account that you were having a blast on it, and once you had gotten off you already wanted to go on again. Spotting Ken, you looked at his facial expression to see what he thought of the ride. Emotionless at first, in some type of daze, though as soon as he made eye contact a grin from ear to ear went to his face. "That was frickin awesome, I want to go on it again!" He yelled whilst jumping up and down. "Maybe later, we still got another ride I want to try that's an even bigger drop." "You don't mean...?" "Yep!" you simply reply. "Let's go!" This time it's Ken who takes the lead as you chase after him in order for the boundary to not yank him back. You knew he knew what you were referring to as he was heading directly towards the tower. The tower of terror. The line for this ride was about the same, though it seemed that it went by faster though you had no clue as to why. This would be the first time riding this ride as even you were too scared to go on this thing when you were little no matter how much your friends had begged you too. The scared look that Ken had when he was in line for last ride was mirrored on his face at this moment. Though this time there seemed to be a bit of determination in his eye as he looked at you. "This ride isn't going to be scary, it's going to be fun!" You were glad at his assessment as the two of you got in line. The group that you were tied to was a rather large family, though because of this they themselves including you were the only ones to ride at that given time. You were kind of lucky since you were riding these rides by yourself, you were an outlier in these large crowds that rode rides together, so there was always an empty seat somewhere since everyone else wanted to ride with their families and friends. As the room darkened and the narrator began his speech, you saw Ken swaying his body back and forth a little as he looked all around the room with a smile on his face. You, on the other hand, had no smile on your face as you were a little bit scared on what was to come, you didn't really enjoy the drops at roller coasters, and this one was probably going to be ten times that. "Hey look, we can see the entire pa-." Ken was cut off as the elevator you all were sitting in drastically fell floors below you as everybody started screaming, including you. Ken, on the other hand, was laughing his ass off as the elevator kept on going up and down with drastic height differences. You hadn't eaten anything before hand but a sick feeling was starting to form in your stomach as you just wanted the ride to fucking end. You actually ended up closing your eyes, in which Ken seemed to notice. "Don't tell me you're scared!" He continued to laugh with the drops. "No, I just feel sick..." You weakly reply. When the ride finally comes to a stop, the grouped family and Ken get off laughing while you straggle behind trying not to vomit. "Yeah kid, I think I need a break from rides for a little bit." You say while sitting on a bench. "Aw really, did you feel that sick from it?" He asked with a mix of disappointment and worry. "Just give me a couple of minutes kid...". You say while taking a few deep breathes to get your stomach back in functioning order. "Man you were right though, I really did enjoy those scary rides, I think I want to ride all of them now if those two were the worst ones out of all of them. Let's get those done first before anything else today please?" Ken pleads. "As long as you give me a few breaks in between Kid then you can get on anything you want today." Ken smiled at this. "O.K I understand, I'm going to go check out the nearest line to see how long the wait is O.K? I promise it won't be too much of a scary. You groan while getting up to your feet. "I have to come with you remember. Anyway, I'm ready to get anyway so let's do this." "Hooray!"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You'd best just follow the instructions of G to the word, he probably had a good idea of what he was talking about. "Ken listen to me, I've been sent here to this exact location to specifically get you and only you. I don't know the exact process of things but they want you to ascend and get up to the heavens for your eternal peace. Don't you want something like that?" You say, lying about a few things in that statement as you really had no fucking idea. "Hey, why won't you answer me." The girl asks again, seemingly irked that she was ignored. Ken still seems pretty indecisive on what he wants to do. You were running out of options on what to do, this girl would probably get to his head to stay if you let this drag out for too long, you had to get ballsy. "You know what this is a waste of time. You stay here Ken because trust me now that you've decided to come you'll be put at the bottom of the waiting list, and you'll stay at this bridge for hundreds and HUNDREDS of years. I have other ghosts that need help and can't have my time wasted, good luck boy." As finished that heavy statement, you started to turn around and walk away, not looking back or slowing down your pace. 'Come on' Silence. 'COME ON.' Even more silence. You were internally panicking as you didn't know what the fuck to do if Ken didn't give in to your bait, G was going to get pissed. "WAIT, PLEASE." "Ken stop!" Oh, thank fucking god." You turn around to face Ken, who you heard running towards you. He couldn't make it all the way through as he reached the boundary for which he could travel. "I don't want to stay here forever, please help me, I'm sorry for wasting your time, mister!" He cried with many tears and snot running down his face. You felt a little bad about that, but in the end, this would benefit both of you so you were also relieved. "Alright kid calm down, I'll help you get out of here, just do what I say and this process will be easy." You assure him while taking out your phone to contact G. Though you see he has already sent you a message. G- Alright good job, you didn't fuck yourself over with unnecessary interactions and now you won't be fucked with other burdens. This next part will be easy, touch the kid's hand and twist it, he'll be bound to you and then we can work on his need in order to ascend. Doing as what G instructed you turned to the Ken. "Alright for this next part I need you to grab my hand while I turn it, you'll be with me until I can do the work needed to get you up there alright?" "Yes, I understand," Ken says while wiping away some tears from his eyes. Beginning the process you start to turn his rest as your hands clasp with one another, instantaneously he starts to let out a blue glow, and you yourself feel a tingle up in your brain. Though other than that it doesn't seem like anything has happened. Ken is still standing there like normal. Though he tries walking forward, and much to both of your surprise, he manages to get out of the boundary. "I can leave!" He exclaims with surprise. He tries to walk farther with quick haste but ends up being blocked by another boundary, though this time it seems closer to you. "I guess you're bound to me for now." "I thought you said I would be going to heaven?" Ken says with a little disappointment in his voice. "You will don't worry, we just need to do a process and you'll be all set to leave." You promise him. Looking back at your phone you look to see if you were sent any more messages from G. G- Ask the kid the top three things that he wants to do. We have to get him really happy for this to work, Even if we can't do the things on his list we can still take him to an amusement park or some shit. That's probably what he was talking about when he said this would be easy. "So Ken is there anything that you would like to do before you leave, anything that would make you happy. Trust me I can probably make it happen with my connections." You say to him which causes him to have a look of surprise. "Well...like what?" "Like anything. Something you'd like to try, something you'd like to see. I can make it happen to an extent, give the top three things that you'd like to do." "Are you sure, it can be anything?" "Like I said, to an extent." You remind him again. "Well ok..." Ken seems to take some time to think over what he would like to do. Though it doesn't seem to take long as his mouth opens quickly. "I always wanted to go to Disneyland....and I wanted to be pilot when I became a grown-up......and I guess I wanted to play that new call of duty game that came out too." As he said these things on his list, you were also typing them to G who himself was already getting ready to reply. G- To tell you the fucking truth I think the pilot one is probably going to be easier, I may have a connection that can get you a plane ride, and the pilot is even a ghost-seer such as yourself. Though if you want to go to Disneyland instead you can also do that if you want. A fucking call of duty game isn't going to make him happy enough to where we need to be though. > You flying Going to Disneyland would probably lead to a whole set of problems that you weren't ready to deal with. If G said he could hook you up with flying then might as well take his offer. You texted him that you would be choosing flying, to which he quickly responded. G- Alright nice, was actually hoping you would pick this option, a lot less work I have to do. Alright, I should be able to hook you up this weekend at the soonest so be ready. I don't know what type of plane exactly my friend owns, but I think he should be able to let the kid fly a little, or at least touch a button or two to make it look like he's doing some helpful shit. I'll contact you with more details by tomorrow. Looking back at Ken you give him a nod. "Alright, it seems I'm going to get you to fly then. We'll even be able to do it by this weekend." Ken seemed to beam at this news as you could sense his giddiness. "Really! What type of plane is it?" "I don't know, it'll probably be a small one though. The pilot from what I heard can also see ghosts, so you'll be able to help him fly a bit depending on how things go." Ken's smile grew even bigger as he started to jump a little. "Alright let's get home, this walk has gotten me fucking exhausted." You say as you begin to turn around from the bridge.' "Hey wait!" You hear someone say to you. Turning around you see the same ghost that Ken was hiding behind earlier. She was a few feet away from you, though you could tell she was at the very edge of her boundary. "What about us, when are we getting out of here." Now that you had Ken bound to you, you didn't really think what G had said would affect you now that you were already bound to a 'contract' or whatever it was referred too. "The rest of you will get your turn in due time, there are others like me out there so they'll get to you all eventually. You just have to be patient and wait, that's all I can really tell you honestly." You say to her, in which your words don't really seem to help her mood. Seeing nothing else for you to do, you start to turn around once again and begin to leave the bridge with Ken. Getting back to the bus stop that would help you get home was a lot shorter of a way to get to compared to what you had to walk when you first got here, G was totally fucking with you. Upon getting home you say Hi to your mom and tell her the reason for which you were out so late before heading to your room. "Do ghosts sleep?" You ask Ken before getting ready to head to bed. "No, at least I don't. I haven't seen anyone else sleep either at the bridge..." He replies with a thoughtful answer. "Alright, then I'll turn on the T.V for you, just keep it down to a quiet volume and wake me up in the morning at five. Just don't leave this room, got it?" Ken nods at your command. As you begin to reach for the remote, Ken gets to it first as he hits on the ON switch, which to your surprise turns the T.V on. "You can touch things like that?" Ken seems confused by your obvious statement, but then he also seems surprised himself as he soon as he realizes what you meant. Not only that, Ken was able to touch you directly at the Bridge when you did the ritual for him to be bound to you. You start to wonder why you didn't see this sooner, though you just end up going along with it. "Well anyways good night, and remember to wake me up." With that being said, you sprawled your body out onto your mattress, managing to doze off in seconds. "Hey wake up." You feel someone shaking you side to side as your eyes slowly open from deep slumber. You look to see Ken who's still shaking you until you push away his hand and make him stop. "What time is it." You yawn. "Fourth-thirty, I thought you would probably want to wake up earlier and I was getting really bored so..." Well, no wonder you were so fucking tired. Well, there was no chance you were getting back to sleep now anyway. Without another word, you grab your clothes and other essentials before heading into the bathroom. "We're leaving in an hour." You say to Ken before closing the door. --- Classes today went by pretty slowly. Since Ken was assigned to you as a boundary he went where you went. He kept on talking about riding in the plane during class and would also ask questions on what you were learning at the given time during each period. At first, you were a little annoyed by this, but it was something that you got quickly used to. You even caught yourself talking to him while you were with other people, which ended up getting you some weird stares and 'who are you talking' discussions. While you were finishing up your last periods, G messaged you some of the details on what would happen for the plane ride. It would be today later in the day at a nearby small private airfield, and the pilot would try to let Ken touch some buttons and stuff to make him happy. You weren't all that excited as Ken was, but a private plane ride still was pretty cool, so you would be lying if you said you weren't slightly looking forward to it. "You really think the pilot is going to let me fly? Man, I'm so nervous I don't want to mess anything up. You'll be there too right?" "Yeah, of course, I mean your bound to me remember?" "Oh yeah, you're right." Ken laughs, which makes you laugh too. Though upon seeing some people stare at you in the hallways, your face turns a deep shade of red as you quickly start to walk away with Ken at your heels. G said that someone was picking you that was a friend of the pilot. So and Ken waited in the parking lot as students slowly started to trickle out of campus until there was only a handful of people left. "Is he running late?" Ken asks with a bit of worry in his voice. "I mean the airfield must be pretty far way, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case." These words seemed to make Ken tenser as his frown grew deeper. "Don't worry to much about it, I guarantee you were going to fly today." You honestly weren't that sure that you would be flying today but your words seem to get some enthusiasm back into Ken so you were glad. Your ride did eventually get here about a half hour later, as a vehicle pulled up into the parking lot that matched the description that G had given you. To which Ken started jumping up and down with excitement. With the driver rolling down his window you and Ken looked inside. "Are you our ride to the airport?" you ask. "Yeah, do the two of you want to get in the back?" "Yeah tha-." You pause reflexively as your brain stops for a brief moment. "Wait....Can...Can you se-." "Get in, I'll explain it on the way." The man smiles as he points to the back. Doing as you were told you and Ken got in while waiting for the explanation that the man was about to give you, but you asked a question first. "I thought G said only the pilot could see ghosts, you aren't the pilot are you?" You ask hesitantly. "No I'm not the pilot, I'm his spotter." The driver answers as he starts to pull out of the parking lot. "Spotter?" You ask confused. "Yeah, me and the pilot are assigned together to spot ghosts from the skies. To just get it through briefly, we fly planes over wooded areas and canyons in which hikers or other types of people may have died accidentally or just had their bodies dumped. Normally if one of them turns into a spirit they would have little to no chance to be found by any of you guys, so it's our job to go and look for whoever we can and help them ascend." The man explains. "That's cool, but do you guys do it forever? Does anyone help you?" You ask. "No were the only ones in our region I think. Our quotas are a little difficult to fulfill with all the dead that need saving, but with it comes some perks that I'd rather not disclose to you, you'd get very jealous." The man laughs heartily as he takes a turn that leads onto the freeway. The three of you continue to make conversation throughout the car ride that lasts for quite a while. From the city, you end up driving for quite a while until there's nothing but desert all around you. Not to say that the car ride was boring though, it was probably one of the most interesting ones you ever been on. Discussing ghosts, the driver's line of work, whose name turned out to be Dom and the pilot Micheal, kept the whole ride entertaining. By the time you arrived at the Airfield, it was almost five. Though while you were getting to the airport Dom had told the two of you that Micheal was getting the plane ready to fly as soon as you arrived. Though it wasn't a plane that was out on the runway, it was a helicopter. Dom had driven up right to where it was landed, with a man standing next to it, who you assumed was Micheal. Upon exiting the car, Ken immediately ran over to the helicopter as he started to examine every part of it, circling it constantly. "Sorry I couldn't get the plane out, but I don't think we all could have fit, it's very cramped in there. This is the next best thing that we can use though. I hope you're not disappointed." Micheal said towards Ken with a smile. Ken didn't take his eyes off the helicopter though as he was touching every part of it. "No way, I actually think this is way cooler!" "Well, that's good to hear because you're going to help fly it in the front seat." Ken takes his eyes away from the helicopter for the first time and looks at Micheal directly into his eyes. "You really mean it...?" "Well, of course, I'm not much of one to lie." A huge grin, one that you've never seen before appears on Ken's face. "Let's go, Let's go! I want to fly this!" Ken exclaims as he starts to look for a door handle or something to get inside. As Dom goes over to help Ken inside, Micheal goes over to and starts to talk to you a bit. "Is this your first ghost?" He asks with a small smile, though his voice has a hint of seriousness. "Yeah, G is helping me fill a quota I guess." "Lucky you, I haven't heard G ever helping a newbie such as yourself, G usually gets assigned to those already seasoned. You should count yourself lucky to get yourself such a top-rated guide to help you, you could have gotten a dipshit that abandoned you without the drop of the hat, sad that a lot of guides are like that. That class sucks though so I wouldn't blame them." Micheal says while rambling a bit. "So then do each of you have guides then?" You ask while you prepare to board the helicopter with Ken and Dom already on board. "No, our job lets us not have to count on guides so much since we're able to find our own spirits to help. Which honestly makes the process a whole lot easier in my opinion, then again I had a lot of shit guides when I was first starting out." You and Dom sat in the back while Ken and Micheal sat in the front of the helicopter. "We were actually on planning on going out today before you had called us, so luckily we're going to be able to fly for a little longer while we survey our hotspots," Dom explained as Micheal began to start the machine. It lifted up slowly but surely as it felt really smooth to what you had imagined the opposite of it being. "Once we're done with our hotspots you can choose anywhere you want to go around this area kid, and I'll fly us over." "Sweet I'd love that!" Once the helicopter had gained enough altitude, it started to soar across the sky as you looked down at the deserts below with fascination. It must have been really easy for these guys to spot people who had died around here with how empty it was beside the cacti everywhere. A dark feeling clouded your mind as you also imagined them being the first ones to find the actual bodies as well around here, which was a depressing thought. The farther out you went, the closer you got to a mountain range that was pretty close by to the airfield. "A lot of people go hiking and biking along these trails, and there are only a few park rangers here that actually supervise the place, we actually help a lot of people who end up getting lost here whenever we patrol," Dom explains. "Do you see anybody now?" Ken says. "No, not really, though no one usually comes here on weekdays, the bikers usually come here on Sunday." Around twenty minutes had passed while you were surveying the mountainside when Dom finally gave the sign to Micheal that it was clear, he started to turn around back to the beginning of the range. "Alright kiddo were done with our duties for today, is there anywhere you'd like to go, this helicopter has some pretty good range on it." You didn't really know why he had given this option since you were in the desert there wasn't really all that many places that you could go to, but you were sure Ken could think of something creative. "I want to see the city lights at night! I heard it can be really cool from a plane and I've always wanted too, I've seen a bit before from a mountain but I want to see it from higher!" Ken states with excitement. Dom and Micheal give each other a look while you cringe a bit. There's no way these guys would stay up flying all night just to do this for Ken. "Thomas stays at the airport pretty late helping with refueling right? We can stop by there if that's the case, though you would have to get a ride back to your house from the airport if that's fine with you." Micheal says, directing the first part to Dom and the last part towards you. You hesitantly nod. "Yeah, that won't be a problem." Fuck you need to ask G for some Uber money. "Well, in that case, you got yourself a ride kid, it should be dark enough for the lights to pop up once we make it to the city." Ken's eyes eyebrows widened as he started wiggling in his seat. "Since we're also just going to be going in a single direction for a while, I think it's time for you to try out the controllers." Taking this chance at it's fullest, Ken started to slowly grab at the throttle while he was guided by Micheal on where to push and pull. "See if you do it like this then it's pretty easy right?" "Yeah, it is!" Micheal beams with satisfaction. Micheal slowly but surely starts to let go of the throttle for him to grab on his own. "Now try to turn us left and right." "Are you sure...?" Ken asked a bit nervously. "Go ahead, if anything bad happens I have more than enough time to recover." Taking the approval, Ken starts to mess with the throttle and start turning it different directions, although very gingerly and slowly. Though that seemed to be enough to make him very excited. "Good job kid! You learned pretty fast, usually, it takes a couple of hours to learn how to use it as a beginner." You could tell that Micheal was probably bullshitting him which made you laugh a little, but it's not like it really mattered anyway. ---- "Wow, the sky really is so pretty at night." You say as you look down at city nightlife. Ken didn't comment on it when he first saw it, instead of taking it all in, in silence. That was probably the only time you've ever seen him this quiet. Nobody else really talked for the rest of that flight, as Micheal took his time hovering over the bustling city below. -- "Thank you so much for the ride, I really appreciated that you guys took the time to do this for us." You say once you've landed at the airport later that night. "No problem kid, it's good to see another one of us in this city. We rarely come in contact with anyone else with our gift so it's always interesting." Micheal says. "You take care of yourself kid, maybe when you get reincarnated, you can become a pilot with your new life," Dom says to Ken. "I'm going to be reincarnated?!" Ken says with disbelief. Dom doesn't answer but instead puts a finger to his lips with a smile, while he and Micheal wave you two goodbye as you leave for the car pickup center of the airport in which you've landed. You didn't know if what Dom said was true, or if he was just giving Ken some hope that he would live again after all of this, as long as it made him happy though, then a little false hope was welcome. You texted G that you had finished with the ride as you had entered your Uber with Ken. G- Alright nice, I'm going to have you do the Ascension by tomorrow or the day after, just make sure the kid's mood doesn't fall or anything until then and we'll be fine. > You ascension The rest of the time until Ken's ascension was pretty fun as it was. You played some games with him on your computer and took him to a few spots around town before the deadline to help him enjoy himself a little more. When the night finally came to where you would help him leave, it was pretty sad since you would miss the kid. Having the instructions from G, the ritual commenced, though not before your goodbyes. "Thank you for everything. I was really nervous at first about leaving, but after doing everything the last couple of days, I actually feel ready." Ken says to you as you stand before him. "I'm glad, also hanging out with you was really fun too, you're a pretty cool kid." Ken smiles as his hand raises up by your earlier command. "Will I be seeing you again...?" He asks in a much-lowered tone. "Probably not anytime soon. But yeah, we probably will see each other again." You reply. "Well when that day comes, it'll be me showing you around and helping you have fun when you're new!" He says with a laugh. That thought was a little depressing, but it had a sweet enough sentiment to make you smile. "Until then." You say grabbing his forearm. "Until then." He replies with a nod. You give his forearm a twist. Ken disappears from your eyes shortly after. Your job was done. While you were a bit sad about it in your now empty room, you were also glad that Ken would finally be getting his rest. You would still need to help more spirits to fulfill your quota, and you were committed to making sure they all got to where they were going with smiles and no regrets. This was your new life, your new duty.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"You're talking as if there are others like me and you out there..." G- Well obviously retard, do you really think that the two of us would be able to handle all of the distressed spirits that are currently roaming? Yes, our numbers aren't legion, but they make do to keep balance in the spirits our kind help on the daily. "How hard is it to make contact with another one of my kind?" You ask, a bit tempted to make contact with someone that also shares your powers, but only to relate." G- Yeah fuck off, that's classified information that's only available to observers, you won't need help from other wardens on your quotas and you get it regardless. "It wasn't about help." You mutter to yourself. > You how hard will this task be "Well, how hard will all of this be, helping spirits ascend and all." G-Fuck don't tell me you're going to pussy out if this is going to seem like too much work. The first few ghosts will probably be challenging for you, but after a while, you'll start getting used to it. It's just like taking care of a dog or cat, they're all different but they usually have the same needs most of the time. Although these needs will actually be more of wants, and these wants can vary in difficulty. Also keep in mind that we can't just skip on a ghost, each of their needs will have to be fulfilled before we can move onto a new ghost. That doesn't sound very appealing to you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You weren't going to lie, you were scared shitless about this whole situation, you didn't want to think this person would do if you pissed them off or denied them, so you went along with it for now. Giving a small sigh, you reply to her offer. "Go on..." G- :) Good choice. Now, where shall we start? Other than G, you can also refer to me as an observer. Whenever you are online doing work, I can spectate all of which you are doing and help you along the way in terms of finding distressed spirits in need of help ascending while you help cross out their requirements in order to do so, normally your kind are referred to as wardens, so that is what I will refer to you a title. Observers and Wardens share a 'professional relationship' as most of your kind would say. Both of us need to meet a certain amount of ascensions for the distressed in order for us to stay alive to put it brutally honest. After completing our quotas, we are free from future quotas until we are called into service again, which is normally five years. Any questions? > No Sensing your silence and lack of questions G continues on. G- One other thing I should mention, your grace period for snitching has been over for quite some time now, but like a good boy you are, you've remained silent which was to your benefit. "What do you mean?" You ask confused. G- Every warden such as yourself has a grace period from when they are born in which they are able to tell people that they see ghosts and such without suffering any consequences. Once a certain age is reached, however, yours being 16, the grace period ends, and any talk of your powers with anyone else will make you suffer....repercussions. It's not something that's easy to explain, but let's just say for your health it's best to keep this relationship between me and you and your whole powers quiet and hidden like you've been doing so far. Otherwise, I can't guarantee your safety. These words intimidated you immediately as you read them. Luckily G didn't see this with the webcam turned, otherwise you probably would have teased heavily. It's not like you were planning on telling anyone about your powers anyway, though this still messed with you immensely. G- Anyway this explanation has tired me, I'll brief you tomorrow on any spirits that need your help, but until then just relax and pat yourself on the back for all the fun you're about to have, because believe me you have no idea how hard I'm going to ride your ass to get this quota done, I've got shit to do so the sooner we do this the better. You finished reading her last passage, and after a few moments, you saw that everything that had been written in the notepad was being deleted rapidly until there was thinning left a minute later. As you contemplated your situation with your hands clasping your head, you felt a buzz in your pocket. Taking out your phone, you see a new message from an unknown number, with a area code foreign from your state. It came from the United States though that much you could tell. G- ^_^ Don't go off calling me, this is just to send you information about spirits. You frowned heavily at this message, which leads to another one. G- What did I tell you about making those ugly faces :)? You had an instinct to throw your phone against your bedroom wall with the anger and frustration you were feeling, but quickly came to your senses and stopped yourself from harming your electronics. You needed to sleep this fucking day off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There seemed to be a difference in the dead you saw. Some were alive and could communicate with you, while others were just corpses that you would see as if the crime or accident had just happened, sometimes the corpses would seem very decayed too, just like the one at your friend's house. At first, it was just it was just corpses that you were able to see, which really fucked you up when you saw them every now and then at different locations whenever you left you left your house. The first times you screamed, as far you can remember or have been told by your parents, but soon it seems you just got used to it as no one else were able to see what you kept on seeing. It didn't scare you as it did the first times after encountering new corpses, but then again it wasn't a sight that you looked forward to seeing either. You could best describe it as getting sick, or getting injured. It sucks when it happens, but you can't really do all that much about it, and the only way around it is to limit yourself in the locations that you went. That's how you ended up becoming a shut-in, locked away in your room on your computer for whenever you came home from school or had free time on the weekends. That's to say you weren't an emo loner or someone who had terrible serious issues that needed therapy, or at least you hoped so. The screaming parts were just seen as a phase to your parents. Like sex or bad words, seeing dead people was something that you never really felt comfortable talking about with them. In fact, at first, you thought everyone could see it, and they were just fucking with you when they said that they had no idea what you were talking about when you pointed at the corpses. It took months before you knew that it was just your own personal disease. A disease that you knew would probably never get cured. Waking up from bed, in a tired daze, you looked at your phone to see that it was Friday, and you had woken up an hour early before school. This was pretty unusual, since most of the time you would stay up till one or two a.m. and would usually miss the morning bus. That had to mean you only got like four or five hours of sleep. "Shit." Taking the time that you had, you got yourself showered and dressed and went downstairs to make yourself some breakfast before you would walk to your bus stop. Your school was close enough that walking could be an option. Although usually, you run into a few car crash victims along the sidewalk, most of the time their heavily disfigured or heavily weeping. You don't know exactly why you didn't notice them when you were younger, though you chalked it up to the assumption that you were always playing on your Gameboy on car rides or something. There have been a few instances in which you've spoken to the dead, although most of the time they never ended well. It seems that they're trapped into a sort of box, each box differentiating in size to reasons unknown to you. If they're lucky they have someone to talk to if the place they died has another ghost, or they died in pairs. When there's a lone ghost, however, most of the time they look miserable or heavily distressed. You learned never to make eye contact, as that was a sure fire way that they knew that you could see them. There was one time that one on a road you traveled on was screaming at you, and that had caused other ghosts in the area to also look over at you as he screamed that you could see him. You don't ever go on that road now on the way home, in fact, you stay try your best to stay away from that part of the city. Though there a bit of you that was ashamed for being afraid of ghosts. If this was something you were going to live with for the rest of your life then you had to start facing it head on, or at least that's what you wanted to think. > You walk to school You always wanted to actually try to walk to school again as you used too, but each time you ended up talking yourself out of it and putting it off until later. You didn't know what actually made you do it today though, maybe because you had been so bored for the past few weeks that you wanted something to spark your mood somewhat. It seems that you always forget though that you always regret your purposeful encounters with ghosts until it's too late to turn back. Grabbing your bag from the counter after finishing the last of your breakfast, you call out to your mom that you're leaving and head out the front door. Usually, you could probably get to school quicker depending on your pace compared to the bus with all the stops that it had to make. That would only be if you took the back alleys though, and that wasn't really the point of this walk. Making your way onto Bradley Ave. you spot the first ghost around thirty yards ahead, facing the opposite direction from you while just huddling down on its knees amidst the oncoming traffic. This was one of the ghosts who stuck out to you the most. As it was one of the first road ghosts that you had ever encountered. The other part of it was the fact that its face was heavily disfigured of what you remember. One of the eyes was bulging out like a stress toy, and half of its upper scalp seemed to be completely gone, giving the impression that it painted half of its head red sloppily. You assumed the reason what it was huddled was partially due to the fact that when you had seen it stand, its limbs seemed oddly bent in some angles, and when it had called out to you it hadn't moved at all, but instead crouched down into an animalistic like reflex. It's not really like you could communicate with it all that much either with it being in the middle of an avenue and all, you would look like a madman just talking to no one or be mistaken for someone who was trying to jaywalk across. Nevertheless with all these thoughts going into your mind, it was already too late to turn back now, otherwise, you would have been late to first period. Walking casually, you tried not to make all that much eye contact, and instead were only going to engage if the creature noticed you or called out. The closer you came to it, however, the more you started to regret what was about to happen, time seemed to slow a little bit as you could tell that you were now in the peripheral vision of the spirit. What surprised you though was the silence. It didn't call out to you. You could have sworn that it knew you were able to see if from past interactions, and when it came to ghosts who knew they always called out. This sparked curiosity, but also a bit of hesitation. The curiosity tempted you to immediately look over at the ghost to see what was up. Waves of regret immediately came over your entire body and mind, as the two of you both met eye contact immediately. Crouched down in its usual stance, its head was tilted at a total 90-degree angle as it gave you an eye to eye stare. Because of the dis-figuration and tilt of its head, you couldn't tell that much of the facial expression it was making, though you could only guess it was of confusion or wonder, though even that was hard to tell as one of its eyebrows were completely gone with red revealed flesh in its place. > You interaction Silence took over the air between the two of you as no words were spoken. You could tell that it was fear that you felt, but you didn't know why. It couldn't get to you, and it couldn't harm you, but you still felt a tinge of fear. "I remember you." With little cars currently passing by, you didn't really have all the much trouble hearing its voice clearly. It had almost no emotion in it, though it sounded almost normal, as you wouldn't think the person was dead. It didn't say anything after, seemingly waiting for you to reply. "I remember you too." You reply with a voice crack, in which you started coughing to get your vocals straight. "You can....see me?" You couldn't tell if that was confusion or a bit of desperation in how that was said, but you nodded back silently. Seeing your confirmation, the ghost started to drag it's body with its arms, slowly to where you were. Seeing the task made you feel pity for the poor thing with how much trouble it seemed to have had. It took about half a minute for it to finally reach its barrier, which seemed to be the sidewalk that was next to the road. This led the spirit to be a few feet away from you, in which you could now clearly see it's entirety. It was a girl, or so you thought. Besides the missing hair and bulging right eye, the right side of her cheek was torn off exposing dark golden teeth that were blackened by plaque or insects, while her nose was also crooked the right side. As hideous as it all was, you couldn't help to not look away. The fact that you couldn't stress you out a bit. "How long have you been here?" This was the first question that came to your mind, and it was the first one blurted out of your mouth without thinking. "I think...It'll be six or seven months soon..." You could hear the immense sadness and emptiness that came with those words and pauses. The whole situation was already making you feel extremely uncomfortable, but you couldn't really walk away from this now, or at least it wouldn't be right. You didn't really know what else to say though, questions started swarming into your mind, but which ones to ask and how to ask them made you freeze before anything could leave your mouth. “Are you leaving soon…?” She asked you before you could come up with anything. “Ah...yeah, I have s-school so…” The words stuttered out of your mouth as you didn’t want to say it impolitely, but then again you felt horrible as her face reacted to these words. She looked at the sky for a bit before half smiling at you. “Thanks for talking to me, you can go now so you won’t be late.” Even though she gave you the permission, your legs were moving. There had to be more you could do to help this poor soul. What really worried you thought was how calm she was, she didn’t scream like the other ones, but she seemed just as broken nevertheless, maybe even more so. > You stay You didn't move, but instead, help your ground as the ghost continued to eye you. "What's your name?" You ask, a little more steadily then your wordings from before. The ghost stood motionless her a second as her pupils moved from side to side, as if thinking heavily on the answer to your question. "It was Gwen." "Well, I'm sure it wouldn't be all that bad if you still decide to go by Gwen." You joke a little with a smile. The humor doesn't seem to be returned though as her face shows no emotion, making you feel a bit awkward for what you just said. "You're not going to go then...?" Gwen asks in a lower voice than before. You shake your head. "I usually don't like going to first period anyway, It wouldn't be all that bad if I just killed time here with you for a while. You knew your mom and dad would seriously have your ass if they found out you were ditching, but you would worry about that at a later time. "I see.." Gwen replies as she makes direct eye contact with you once again. "Do you have anything you would like to talk about, anything you'd like to ask me?" You had run out of things to say to her so you decided it would be best to let her do the talking while you came up with more topics in the back of your head for later. "What grade are you in?" This was probably the first time you could directly hear emotion in her voice, which was no doubt curiosity. "Oh, I'm a senior, this will be my last year before I graduate." "I was a Junior...I think I know school was just starting though." Gwen replies with her own memories. "Oh really, did you know which school you had gone too?" you asked a little too quickly since you were interested if you went to the same school or not. "I don't know..."She says sorrowfully, breaking eye contact and looking down. For someone who has been dead for less than a year, this girl seemed to forget things rather quickly. You had met one or two ghosts who seemed rather old, and even they seemed to have more recollection about their past than she did. You didn't want to pry too much though, as the questions seemed to be bothering her somewhat given on how they were making her act. You decided that it would best to come up with questions on your own. > You how did you die? "So. how did you die...?" You asked carefully. You weren't expecting to get an immediate or happy answer, but her reaction to what you just said startled you as her whole body started to shake vigorously. Her working eye turned white while the bulging one looked dead in place. "Woah hey, are you o-?" You tried to reach out to her with your hands, but she swiftly pulled her body back from your grasp as she let out a shriek. "DON'T TOUCH ME!" Your eardrums are stunned as you take a step back and cover them until her shrieks die down. Looking at her face, made the breakfast this morning feeling like it was about to come right back out. Her face seemed more deformed and rotten than it had before. The bulging eye was replaced with an empty socket, her entire nose was missing leaving a grey crevice with a few maggots entrenched within. Her left hand was gone, and white bone was visible with hints of flesh still attached to certain areas. What clothes she was wearing looked extremely raggedy and torn, more than any homeless person you've ever come across. Before her appearance didn't affect you all that much, now though you could barely look at her longer for two seconds before you wanted to vomit again. > You rage You backed away slowly as her body kept on transforming in that of a decayed skeleton, but as soon as she noticed this she seemed to charge directly at you. Never has a ghost been able to touch or affect you physically, you still started to instinctively run away, but she was faster and caught up to you before you could leave her boundary. You felt something enter inside of you, and that really freaked you the fuck out as you started to hold your head in pain. "HNNGGG." You let out a large yelp in pain as your ears were immediately pierced by a woman shrieking, causing you to fall to your knees and start wreathing around as you couldn't escape what kept on screaming. This took place for around a whole minute, finally though it stopped, and everything was quiet, totally quiet. Before that, though you heard a small *pop*, and with that you lost all your senses.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You didn't move, but instead, help your ground as the ghost continued to eye you. "What's your name?" You ask, a little more steadily then your wordings from before. The ghost stood motionless her a second as her pupils moved from side to side, as if thinking heavily on the answer to your question. "It was Gwen." "Well, I'm sure it wouldn't be all that bad if you still decide to go by Gwen." You joke a little with a smile. The humor doesn't seem to be returned though as her face shows no emotion, making you feel a bit awkward for what you just said. "You're not going to go then...?" Gwen asks in a lower voice than before. You shake your head. "I usually don't like going to first period anyway, It wouldn't be all that bad if I just killed time here with you for a while. You knew your mom and dad would seriously have your ass if they found out you were ditching, but you would worry about that at a later time. "I see.." Gwen replies as she makes direct eye contact with you once again. "Do you have anything you would like to talk about, anything you'd like to ask me?" You had run out of things to say to her so you decided it would be best to let her do the talking while you came up with more topics in the back of your head for later. "What grade are you in?" This was probably the first time you could directly hear emotion in her voice, which was no doubt curiosity. "Oh, I'm a senior, this will be my last year before I graduate." "I was a Junior...I think I know school was just starting though." Gwen replies with her own memories. "Oh really, did you know which school you had gone too?" you asked a little too quickly since you were interested if you went to the same school or not. "I don't know..."She says sorrowfully, breaking eye contact and looking down. For someone who has been dead for less than a year, this girl seemed to forget things rather quickly. You had met one or two ghosts who seemed rather old, and even they seemed to have more recollection about their past than she did. You didn't want to pry too much though, as the questions seemed to be bothering her somewhat given on how they were making her act. You decided that it would best to come up with questions on your own. > You did you have family? "Did you have a family?" She seemed puzzled at that question, as she didn't immediately respond. It took you a moment before you realized how stupid that question was, of course, she had a family when she was still alive. Fuck, that was a really stupid question. "Yeah..." She answers a bit awkwardly, with her eyes moving in different directions again. Let's try that again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You didn't move, but instead, help your ground as the ghost continued to eye you. "What's your name?" You ask, a little more steadily then your wordings from before. The ghost stood motionless her a second as her pupils moved from side to side, as if thinking heavily on the answer to your question. "It was Gwen." "Well, I'm sure it wouldn't be all that bad if you still decide to go by Gwen." You joke a little with a smile. The humor doesn't seem to be returned though as her face shows no emotion, making you feel a bit awkward for what you just said. "You're not going to go then...?" Gwen asks in a lower voice than before. You shake your head. "I usually don't like going to first period anyway, It wouldn't be all that bad if I just killed time here with you for a while. You knew your mom and dad would seriously have your ass if they found out you were ditching, but you would worry about that at a later time. "I see.." Gwen replies as she makes direct eye contact with you once again. "Do you have anything you would like to talk about, anything you'd like to ask me?" You had run out of things to say to her so you decided it would be best to let her do the talking while you came up with more topics in the back of your head for later. "What grade are you in?" This was probably the first time you could directly hear emotion in her voice, which was no doubt curiosity. "Oh, I'm a senior, this will be my last year before I graduate." "I was a Junior...I think I know school was just starting though." Gwen replies with her own memories. "Oh really, did you know which school you had gone too?" you asked a little too quickly since you were interested if you went to the same school or not. "I don't know..."She says sorrowfully, breaking eye contact and looking down. For someone who has been dead for less than a year, this girl seemed to forget things rather quickly. You had met one or two ghosts who seemed rather old, and even they seemed to have more recollection about their past than she did. You didn't want to pry too much though, as the questions seemed to be bothering her somewhat given on how they were making her act. You decided that it would best to come up with questions on your own. > You what's your favorite color? Wanting to start your questions with something simple and innocent, you tried asking something basic. "What's your favorite color?" "Green." She says immediately, her attitude sparking up with that answer. This causes you to smile a bit. "How come it's your favorite color?" "I used to go on trips a lot to the mountains, with my grandpa at his lake house. I loved the trees around there."She says, quite rapidly, and possibly with excitement. As she's talking about this, you could swear that there areas of her body that were turning from a rotten and decayed color to the light color of tan skin. Even her eye that was bulging seemed to shrink slowly to that of normal size. "Yeah, that seems like a pretty nice play to go too, always wanted to go to a place like that." "It really is great! Especially when it snows, it's an experience that you have to be there to truly know how great it feels!" As Gwen says this, her smile starts to fade, and her older decayed features begin to reappear. "I want to go back..." You frown at her sudden change in mood, you take a look at your phone again only to see that a half an hour had passed. Fuck you really couldn't miss more than one period or you're mom would REALLY have your ass, the confidence of staying had left as soon as her mood began to falter again, you would have to come back and talk to her some more when you had the luxury of your own set time. "Listen, I have to go and get to school. I'm going to come back though O.K? I just really can't miss it." She lifts her head with a pained expression on her face. "You promise you'll come back?" "Promise." With that being said, she sits back onto the asphalt and covers her head into her knees. "I'll see you then." It takes you a moment before you get yourself to move your legs and head down the quiet sidewalk towards your school. Classes go by fairly slowly for you as you can't stop thinking about Gwen. About what she had told you so far and the time she had spent on that street. It seemed rather odd how often her mood had changed, from being quiet to being happy and then finally ending with sadness. You couldn't tell if it was something like her being bipolar or just all the events that happened in such a short time span. Either way, you still felt sadness for how you left her, and you immediately had plans to go and visit her again on your walk home. Though on your walk, you had gotten a call from your mom. She chewed you out a little for being marked absent for first period, and you just gave the excuse that you had to go to the bathroom on the way to school and couldn't hold it. That seemed to work for her as she didn't try to question you all that much afterward. Gwen's figure had started to come into view as you arrived at her street. She was still sitting down while holding her knees, but as soon as she caught sight of you she instantly picked herself up and waved at you, with a cheery expression on her face. "You came back!" She beamed with a wide smile. "Of course I did, I promised you didn't I?" Her smile got bigger as she tilted her head while her eyes narrowed. "You're not leaving right away though right?" "Of course not, I got plenty of time to spare." You assure her. Her smile returns. "Good, because I've thought of a lot of things to ask you." You spend around two hours talking to Gwen as she learns about your high school and stuff that happens with you on a daily occurrence. She asks about your powers to see ghosts and you tell her about all the interactions you've had so far. It's when though that you bring up some of them being crazy that her mood seems to dampen a bit. "I was almost at that point too, had you not come along when you did. It wouldn't have taken long for me to be too far gone..."She told you sullenly. "Why bother thinking about that when it didn't happen, I met you and that's that." She smiles again. "Yeah, you're right." You look at your phone to see that time that had gone by since you had been talking to Gwen. "I should probably be heading home now, my mom would kill me if I didn't get home by six." Gwen's expression darkens as she starts twiddling her fingers. "Could you stay maybe a little longer....?" > You sure It wouldn't hurt all that much if you were to stay for a little longer. You could probably come up with another excuse anyway if your mom questioned you too much about it. "Alright why not, I think I can stay for another hour or so..." You say which causes Gwen's attitude to beam back up. "Great! I still got stuff to ask you, like.....when's your birthday and....what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you!" The conversation continued on as Gwen asked you random questions on a variety of topics. It seemed as if she was trying to prolong your stay or at least make it in so that you wouldn't get bored while being with her. It's not like you were anyway when it was your turn to ask questions or talk, everything that she replied with genuinely interested you. Still, there was a strange feeling in the pit of your stomach you would get, and it seemed as if it kept on recurring every time you were to interact with Gwen. You pushed it off to the side though as just random nervousness. Checking your phone you saw that it was already six. "Alright, I really got to go now, my mom's going to get pissed if I get back any later." You say, trying to excuse yourself out of the conversation as soon as you saw a good stopping point. "Yeah, you have been here for quite a while....thanks for deciding to stay a little longer with me though..." Gwen sweetly smiles you. Don't worry I'll be back every day at least twice, this route is on my way to school after all." "I know you will, and I'll be waiting." Those words send a little chill up your spine, though you don't exactly know why. Besides that, you wave Gwen off as you start head back home. Upon walking into your house, your mom is in the kitchen as she asks you where you've been. You tell her you stayed with some friends to do some stuff after school, and head up to your room before she can try to question you. You wake up a bit later than usual the next morning and take your time preparing yourself for school. Somehow the day before had drained you, as you were sluggish to leave the house and go on your walk. In fact, you actually had an inner desire to take the bus and catch a nap for a few minutes but decided against it. Not wanting to do that to Gwen. When you arrive on her street, you catch her looking in your general direction when the two of you make eye contact. You walk at a normal pace until you finally arrive at her boundary. She's the first one to say something. "You're later than usual." She didn't say this jokingly, but with a sort of seriousness and matter-of-factness. "Yeah....I slept in so I was a little late in getting ready." As you say this you take out your phone and look at the time. "Speaking of which I can't stay all that long either because of it, I can't be late again." As you say this, you see a deep frown start to form on Gwen's face. She's not even attempting to hide the disappointment that came from what you just said, and because of that, you started to feel guilty. Gwen didn't respond to what you said and just kept on looking at you. Fuck this was really awkward "Alright, well I'll see you later then..."You mutter as you give a little wave. You walk at a normal pace until you feel that you're out of her eyesight, before quickening your pace. You don't know why you did this, but you did know you weren't tired anymore. What the hell was that interaction? She was so weird about it that it actually made you genuinely uncomfortable. It wasn't just the guilty feeling, fuck the guilty feeling wasn't the worst part as all. The worst part is that you started having thoughts of just cutting interaction with Gwen, you had ideas why this came to mind, but you didn't know why it came onto you so strong. You started to worry that Gwen would be like the past ones, the ones who wouldn't let go if they could help it. Did it just take longer for the signs to show with her compared to the others? As more of these thoughts continued to plague your mind, you were eventually able to get rid of them and start trying to feel some compassion in which it seemed you were lacking. Gwen was alone a lot on that street, so it was only natural that she would get upset if it meant less interaction time with you if you were the only person she interacted with. Your apology for it was pretty shitty too, though at the time you didn't really feel the need to, and a part of you still doesn't now. Regardless you were to visit her again after school since you weren't ready to just abandon her, much reluctance was in you though as you down that street after school as you were contemplating if you had made the right decision or not. When you caught sight of Gwen, she was waving heavily at you, which made you quicken your pace a bit expecting something to be wrong. "Hey! You came back!" Gwen exclaimed, as if you had no intentions of doing so. "Of course I did, I said I would." "Listen I'm sorry about how I reacted earlier today, I acted like a little girl and didn't realize you had your own problems to deal with and such, I was putting myself ahead of you and I'm so sorry!" She was rapid with this apology, and with each word she had taken a step closer to you, causing you to in turn take a few steps back to keep the distance. "Don't worry about it really....you have nothing to apologize for." "I....I just don't want you to think I'm like those other ghosts that you left for being clingy or weird. I'm not like that, I'm.....I'm just lonely!" Her face twisted into something saddening as features of decay starting to rapidly show all over her body. It seems as if she wasn't able to hold in her emotions as she falls to the ground and starts sobbing, with her whole body shuddering heavily. You don't know how to react to this, especially since you're not able to touch ghosts, you can't really comfort her physically. You're still a little shocked with this happening so suddenly, but you get yourself out of it quickly as you try to figure out something to say. "Hey...I'm not going to leave you. You got it all wrong man, just because I didn't stick around for that long in the morning doesn't mean I don't want to be here or anything..." You felt that you weren't really good with words, as what you had said didn't really seem to help all that much. "I know, or at least I hope you're not lying. But still, these feelings just won't stop. I keep being afraid that you'll decide to leave me and I'll be alone again...Do you have any idea how long I've been on this street?" "Four months?" You say rememberering your conversation. "No...That was a lie. I've been here for about a year maybe more. You're the only person to have talked to me since then. At first, I didn't even think you were real, just a sign that I was actually losing it for real this time. But when you came back I knew you were real, and when there was the chance that you wouldn't be coming back, I got scared. I know I sound like I'm being clingy, well I am clingy. I don't don't want to lose you and I don't want you to go, ever." At this point Gwen didn't seem to be holding anything in, as she was letting all her emotions and thoughts out in the rawest form possible. You didn't really know how to feel about this, in one way you felt extreme pity for her, on the other hand a few things in which she admitted made you feel a little dirty. It felt like she was expecting too much from you, there was no way in which you could stay by her side on this street forever, it was heavily impractical. It would have been one thing if it were just a figure of speech, but you knew she was being serious, and that sent chills down your spine. > You you'll try your best Even though you didn't really ask for this responsibility, and you really hated obligations. You were the only one who would be able to talk to this girl if you were to leave her she would be alone to her own thoughts. You didn't know for how long you would be able to keep this up, but until the time came that you physically or mentally wouldn't be able to return here, you would visit her regularly. "You don't have anything to worry about trusting me, I'll stay by your side whenever I'm able, I'm not going to leave you alone here." You assure her as best as you can, she seems to work as a smile spreads across her face. "Are you sure? Please don't lie to me to make me feel better, I need to know the truth." "It is the truth, I won't leave your side if I can help it. It's not like I hate being with you, but you have to understand in turn that I have responsibilities and stuff, if there's a day that I don't show up or just end up being late, then don't take it personally. I'll be back eventually no matter what." "Sorry for putting to little faith in you, I promise it won't happen again." She says, still having a bit of a worried expression on her face. "Hey no please, don't try to hold back with me. I really want to know exactly what you're feeling whenever were together. If you hold something in then it's only going to get worse." You plead with her. Gwen was silent for a moment as she just sat there looking at the ground, then she started to speak. "During the first few months I was able to walk down the entire avenue, all the way to the next block. I didn't really take advantage of it though since I was still broken during those times, but as each month passed the barrier kept on getting smaller and smaller until it's what it is now. I started getting scared that it would keep on shrinking until I had nothing left but a few feet of walking space. Thankfully it never got to that, but it seemed to stop shrinking around the time that you had arrived. You saved me from getting squished, or whatever happens when the barrier closes on itself, but in a small way.....I wish it had. Then everything would finally come to an end. I could finally sleep..." You didn't know how to respond to this, so you just didn't and then were was a continued awkward silence afterward, though Gwen soon got up while rubbing her puffy eyes. "Thanks for the talk, I think I feel better now. I just needed to let some steam out, that's all." "Do it whenever you feel like it, just please don't assume anything of me, OK?" "OK." What a rough day. > You these worries Ever since that day when Gwen had broken down in front of you, you started to research online if there as any way that you could help her off that street. Even if you couldn't help her ascend to heaven or anything, at the very least you could move her to a spot in which there was more foot traffic, or better yet another ghost that she could interact with. The whole idea was morbid and gross to think about, but you didn't want to see her suffer anymore, there had to be a way. You had your powers for a reason, and you would be damned if you didn't put them to good use. The time that you didn't spend with Gwen, which you had increased by a few hours, was time spent locked in your room as you visited countless supernatural pages. Each of them had information dating from just a few days ago all the way to old tribal superstitions and ideas. Some of them sounded really far out there, while others just seemed like stupid entries placed by people writing fiction. Nevertheless, if you thought a process to help a ghost ascend sounded valid enough, you would try it out with Gwen to see if anything were to happen. Time and time again, you were disappointed with the lack of reaction. Gwen had told you not to worry about it, and seemed a little worried with how far you were taking this as most of your conversations now involved helping her move on. You just couldn't forget what had happened that day, even if you did come off as strange or weird with what you were doing, you had to get her out of here, she needed freedom from the boundary, at the very least this one. There were still two theories left that you could try out to see if it would help Gwen out of her boundary, and thankfully you saved them for last since they looked the most promising getting off of what you had read on them so far. One involved doing an old African ritual in which you had to chant some words while holding a couple of ingredients. The other was an old native American ritual, in which one would let out blood from their palms, and touch hands with a ghost in order for them to have increased physical contact. You were a little queasy about the second one, but not just that. You couldn't touch Gwen physically, so you didn't really understand all that well what that meant when it came to exchanging palms. The African one seemed more appealing, but gathering the materials would be a hassle, and you felt like you were being trolled with how rare the required ingredients were. Nevertheless, you had to choose one. > You african Ritual You felt as if the Native American ritual would be some kind of impossible riddle that wouldn't be able to be solved. At least with the African ritual, all you needed were physical items and everything would be set to go. The list of what you needed made you grimace. Googling some of them led to results of plants that were from far away countries, of which didn't show up on Amazon. You would have to go looking in niche sites for anything that you would need, and if you were to get a fake of anything you were fucked. You would need the feather of an African Harrier Hawk, ten crushed Dorylus ants, the eye of a lion, and a whole bunch of other shit that you couldn't even pronounce properly. Half of this shit was no doubt super illegal to try and obtain. You were already having second doubts about going down this route, as you could tell you would be in big shit trouble if you messed up and got caught. Though after much debating in your head, you decided to just go through with it to the end and see if this solution would work. Luckily you already had experience when it came to browsing the deep web as you had downloaded TOR when you were first looking up stuff about ghosts and phenomenon years earlier. You remember coming across online markets in which various illegal goods were being sold but never paid much attention to them. Those kinds of places would probably be your best shot for getting the materials you needed. After some hours of re-downloading and testing software on your computer, you were able to recreate the system requirements needed to browse the deep web again. Though it would take even longer to get some good market results, as the site you had found before seemed to be shut down as you searched back up. As you were getting frustrated with broken link after broken link and endless wiki pages to different sites, you were finally able to come up with two markets in which the materials you needed could most likely be sold. One of these markets even had its own little forum in which you could request products that weren't currently available on the market. That seemed really fucking sketchy though so you shied away from it, promising yourself to only use it if it came to the last resort. Anyways you had the choices between Garner.Net and Atlantic Trade.Net, which was the site with the forum to begin your searches. > You garner.Net Something seemed a little too fishy about the other one, especially with the forum and all. You just wanted to get the materials and never touch this side of the web again. Since most of everything you needed was mainly animal parts and some herbs, it meant that filtering through everything else made the whole process a tad bit easier. What really fucking sucked about this though where all of the prices each of the items on your list were going for on this market. Using your phone as a calculator, you started to add up all the expenses and saw that the total cost of everything would be a few grand. You didn't even have that kind of money and we're past the phase of using your mom's credit card, though even that was only for a few bucks here and there. The money part of this completely went over your head until now, and now you felt as if you were fucked. A idea hatched though, and that involved going back to the other site for the forum. > You forums The forums were pretty bare looking compared to ones you've seen on the regular internet portion. When making a new account in order to post and send messages, the only boxes were for a username and a password. Though in big red letters at the bottom of the password box red. DON'T USE A IMPORTANT PASSWORD! Very charming. Like the market portion, there were subsections of the forum for different types of items and off-topic discussions with weird titles such as "Does Fed-Ex check it's packaging and "Is 'X' item illegal if used this way?" Pretty expected stuff honestly. Though you looked past all of these, even the ones that were offering to sell some ingredients that were on your list. The subsection that you were looking for was labeled under barter. With your newly made account, you started on making a new post with the title. H-(Ability to communicate with the dead) W-(The ingredients listed here.) You didn't really expect this plan to work, but it was the only actual idea you could think of for right now so might as well put this here to sit and be read while you thought of other options to get money. IF you worked a job, you could probably earn enough in a few months, but that would take far to long for you. Fuck you wish you had started working a part-time job earlier and had not been such a lazy ass. For two days you would check back in on the forums to see if you had gotten response, and you got a few, but all of them were either dead ends or troll posts making fun of your offer, which is what you expected to be honest so it didn't really dampen your spirits all that much. You actually ended up forgetting about the forums for a day as you were focusing on some schoolwork while also trying to take a break from the whole hunt to try and calm your nerves, though during class you had gotten a mysterious text during class. Checking it, you see that it was from an unknown caller with a really weird area code. 'Take your post off of the forums, now.' You didn't really understand what this text meant for a little bit, as it was so random and you posted on a lot of forums. You reply back. 'huh?' You get a reply in mere seconds. 'Delete your post of the barter section on Atlantic Trade." The hairs on the back of your neck instantly stood up as your whole body jumped a little, causing the person sitting next to you to give you a stare for the way you were suddenly acting. For the time being, you put away your phone and just continued to pay attention to class as your heart was beating at an alarming pace while tiny drops of sweat were forming on your forehead. It's not like you could really do anything at the time being since you needed your own personal computer to access those forums. But still, who the fuck was this persona and how did they know that you posted on there. The whole process was supposed to be fucking anonymous. Were you careless this time and did something stupid giving away your information. Would you have your identity stolen in the next few days, did anyone else know who you were on that trading site? These type of questions continued to swarm your mind as the school day dragged on in a painful like way as you had raced from your bus stop all the way home when the never-ending school day had finally ended. Racing up to your room and locking your door, you immediately logged onto what you needed to in order to get back onto the forums. Doing as what you were told, you immediately started to look for your post, and once you had found it, deleted it without hesitation. With that out of the way, you brought back out your phone and texted back the person who had sent the message. "Alright it's gone, now who the hell are you." You got a message pretty quickly, just like last time. "Do you feel any pain, live severe pain that would make you want to die." The vagueness and the notion of the message made you feel worse as you just replied with a simple 'no' "Interesting, I don't know exactly why it didn't get you as I've heard it harming others before even if the words of power were shared online. Nevertheless, you're a lucky man, and so am I since I managed to find you in time before my quota expires." You didn't understand what this guy was saying, so you decided to start asking him questions on what the hell he was talking about. > No questions You didn't want to annoy this guy, who knows what he was capable of if he managed to find you and get your phone number. "Don't be too frightened, I'll tell you everyone you need to know in due time and when the situation comes to it. Now, tell me are you in contact with a ghost as of now?" You didn't really see any reason to lie to him, and a bit of you thought that he would know if you were doing so. "Yes, I'm talking to a girl that's been bound onto a street, and I've been trying to get her out of there." You text back, giving him the general idea of what you've been doing." "Hmm, well that would probably fall into the caretaker class. Lucky you to have gotten such a thing, that class is generally rare to come by. That also seems to answer a few of my questions. So let me ask you, do you really want to get this girl out of her set boundary?" "Yes. more than anything." "Well then, let me help you with what you need. You were smart enough to find one of the correct ways in order to get the spirits out. Normally most caretakers go the other route instead of this ritual, but this could be relatively easier and faster than that riddle shit in which we would have to go through. Alright, I'll get you all the materials you need, they should come in by the weekend." "What's the catch?" "No catch, just hurry up and do the ritual." You didn't really trust what he had just said, there's no way someone could buy this much stuff for that price just from the kindness of their hearts, but then again who were you to say no to free help. "How did you know that I could really see ghosts? That I wasn't lying?" You ask, a bit curious. "Our eyes are more....open than others. It's apart of our hierarchy, so don't you go worrying about it." After you and Ned had finished exchanging messages, he had again said the date in which the materials would be coming, didn't even need to ask for your address which freaked you out quite a bit when he told you that he already knew. Nevertheless you felt extreme joy for finally being able to get Gwen out of that boundary. --- Ned started messaging on your phone for the rest of the time that you were in contact with him with how the deliveries were going. You were getting the ingredients on separate days individually. They each came in some pretty sketchy looking packages, ignoring this though you started storing everything in your room closet for future use. Ned was actually pretty fast about all of this, more than you were expecting him to be considering that this was all free. You just know that there was a catch to all of this, but you didn't know what it could be, hopefully, he wasn't the devil or something and you had unknowingly signed away your soul for bird droppings and crushed ants. It took about two weeks for the final ingredients to come in, to which Ned already knew without you having to tell him. Ned- Alright listen here. I'm going to tell you how to mix these ingredients carefully. All you really need is a stove and something to mix everything with, you might want to throw away the pot after or just thoroughly bleach it or something but that's all on you. "I thought the website already gave instructions on how to do everything?" Ned- You're really going to trust instructions that are run by nerds who think they know our craft? I'll give them credit they got some stuff right, but only about 60% of it, and you need the whole process and ingredients to be perfectly accurate if you're going to make this work. Normally ascending someone would be a snap, but with what we're doing, it's going to be a little more tricky than that. Ned then sends you a list of instructions on how to prepare the potion or drink it was that you would be making. The number of steps was pretty big, though reading through it a couple of times it didn't seem all that hard, just combining a thing or two and stirring for periods of time. Ned had told you to get it done as soon as you could, though you were planning on to anyway. You were lucky that your mom had gone out to go do some things were a friend and your dad was still at work. You could get the first quarter of the list done before any of them were to get home and see what you were doing. Unpacking the ingredients you needed, you got straight to work. --- Jesus, the temperature that was emitting from the pot kept on fluctuation from hot to cold. You didn't even fucking know pots could let out a cold temperature, though will all of this ghost and stalker shit that you have come across you couldn't really be all that surprised. It must have been no joke when Ned said that the other faux ingredients wouldn't do, to combining these to make such concoctions took someone who knew what the fuck they were planning on making. You were secretly hoping though that this wouldn't explode in your face and destroy the entire house if you did something wrong, Ned didn't say such things would happen, but then again he didn't bring it up. The process was slower than you expected it to be as some of the ingredients took awhile to be stirred before they look as if they needed to be going by the instructions. Still, you think you would be able to finish in time before your dad was to get home since he would probably be here first. Though as time went on, you got more and more worried that he would catch you in the act, and you had no way in knowing how he would react, and it wasn't like you could just stop what you were doing midway into it. You could skip on stirring all the way, and only do it in half the time. The materials were already mixed enough as they were, it wasn't like they needed to be stirred to perfection. > You keep going as the instructions tell you too You weren't about to be killed because you didn't follow the instructions. Ned probably trusted that you had common sense and didn't need to be told to no go off of the instructions. A few more hours had passed as you finished with everything you needed too, pouring what you had made into a metal canister that Ned had sent you to store what you needed until you were ready to finish the other parts of the recipes. You were really surprised that your dad hadn't come home in the time that you were storing everything back where you had hidden it, but you weren't about to over question your luck. Now you were set on bleaching the cooking pot as Ned had instructed, he may have been fucking with you but you weren't about to take any chances of dying because of it in the future. Ned- You got the first part done then? Good, when you're ready for the next steps then get them done and tell me once you're ready to get your girlfriend of that street, there's a whole other process you'll have to go through on that day. After you finished your conversation with Ned, you did whatever homework you needed to do and went straight to bed. Your arms felt a bit weak with how thick some of the ingredients turned out to be, and that constant heat made you a bit dehydrated as well even after drinking a few glasses of water. You could already tell you would be passed out for a long while. -- Your dad had to wake you up the next morning as you were running a little late. Realizing what you were about to miss, you quickly got on some clothes and started to race down your usual route once you were out of the house. Gwen, as usual, was patiently waiting for you as she seemed a bit worried with how out of breath you were. "You O.K?" "Y-Yeah just didn't re-realize how late I was." You panted as you regained your composure. Gwen gave you a sideways look with a sweet small smile. "It was only a couple of minutes." You shrug with a small laugh. "Well..." "Anyway, what have you been up to, you've been seeming really busy with our last few meetups." Gwen acknowledges curiously." Shit, she caught on pretty fast, were you really that easy to spot? "Ugh, well, to be honest, I've been missing some homework that's worth a lot of points for a couple of classes, so I've been racing to finish them so my parents won't have my ass." You lie with a cheeky smile. "Well don't go getting yourself in trouble, and be sure to graduate. I don't want to see your moping around if you have to stay another year in high school." Gwen jokes. Your earlier excuse was only half a lie, you have been cutting down on schoolwork ever since you started this quest to make what you needed, you really needed to spare some time for school so you wouldn't fall too far behind, though worrying too much about it would only cause a whole other set of problems that you weren't ready to deal with at the moment. After you had said enough to feel content with your meeting, you give her a wave goodbye as you start racing towards school, if she was able to read your expressions with you realizing it, then you didn't want to risk giving anything away that would harm your mission. Trying to pay a bit more attention in class now that you didn't have to worry about the parts coming in, you were able to do a bit more classwork in order to catch up where you needed to for the week, even with some stern talks with teachers that you had to face during lunch, you're pretty sure it was all going smoothly. Your second meeting on the way home with Gwen seemed to be even shorter than the last one, though she brought up that you had a much better appearance than you did in the morning so she was glad enough to not ask you to stay longer. It's not like you wanted to ignore Gwen or anything, you just needed to get this potion done as soon as possible, and getting home earlier meant better opportunities to get the brewing done. With your parents away again for the early afternoon, you went straight ahead on starting the preparations to finish half of the potion, getting out all the materials that you needed. You like to think that because you had some experience with it yesterday, you should go a little bit faster now that you knew how all the steps usually went. One ingredient after another went into the pot as the steps were followed once again. You were a little more used to the steaming heat, but regardless you had opted to wear a bandanna and a baseball cap while you cooked so you wouldn't be drenched in sweat, or at least have something else to absorb it. After everything, you ended up finishing a half hour early. Since the third part of the recipe was also the smallest, you decided to get it out of the way as well, as you still had plenty of time to go going by when your parents had come home yesterday. You felt satisfied by the end of the day with everything completed and you taking a well-deserved rest in your room after bleaching everything moments earlier. You could get the last portion done by tomorrow, and the day after you could try out the potion with Gwen to finally get out of that street. Your mind was filled with complete euphoria knowing that everything was turning out in your favor. You never remember being this lucky. Meeting Ned, finding the correct recipe, having everything shipped to you for free. Everything was going your way, and you enjoyed the hell out of it. ---- Finally, it was all done. The final portion of the recipe really almost fucked you over since you messed up a bit of it when you stirred a little less than you were supposed to causing a different color then was intended after the next ingredient, but the final product looked the same in which you were intending for. You were also very careful upon mixing all the four mixtures, as putting them in the wrong order would cause a different potion. You really had to nuke the pot with bleach afterward because the look of what you just made was very unappealing. You had to remember to throw these metal cans you were storing this shit in far far away once you were done with everything. You texted Ned the good news about the success of the potion, and he responded almost immediately. Ned- Alright awesome, make sure to get the ritual done tomorrow with your girl, that potion shit isn't something you just want to have sitting around for to long.I'll text you the rest of the shit that you need to do then, just make sure to do it. Talk to you later. > The next day You were very careful not to fuck up the canister while you were finishing classes at school. You were a little frightened that a security guard would check your bag for one of their random vaping checks, and stumble upon the foreign liquid that could or could not be lethal to regular people. Though you realize they would just assume it was a thermos of a drink or something and leave it well alone. The smell of what you made was really strong when cooking it at your house, though the canister did a surprisingly well job at sealing it to make your bag pretty much odorless from it. You raced down the street to your house as fast as you could make yourself go with your cargo as you were extremely excited to get this ritual done. You had already texted Ned that you were on your way to meet with Gwen as soon as you left your final class. On the way, he started sending you various messages that had the steps that you needed to follow in order to make the ritual a success. Most of them seemed pretty normal to you, except when you came across one that was towards the end of the list. 6. Drink the liquid yourself, wait for effects to kick in. You froze in your tracks as you re-read the step to make sure you weren't looking at it wrong. You had to drink it? Your fingers hastily typed out a confused message for Ned. 'What do you mean I have to drink it?' Ned- You want to be with this girl, don't you? This is a potion to help you be with her, and that requires that you drink it too. Don't worry it's not even that bad. The taste is shit, but other than that it's going to help You didn't really trust what he was saying all that much considering how it looked and smelled while you were making it, but given that he had much more experience with this than you did, it was going to work. Gwen was waiting for you as usual, while you were already slipping your bag off your back. "You got something to show me or something?" She asks with confusion and curiosity. "You could say that," you say with a smirk. Taking out the canister, you carefully start unscrewing the top, keeping it in your other hand so it could be used as a cup. "Is that soup or something?" "No it's not, but I want you to drink it." "Excuse me?" Pouring some of the liquid into the cap, and pushing it in her direction. "You're actually serious?" You nod your head. "But I don't even think I can..." she says quietly. "Just try for me please." You plead with her. Being a little hesitant with her hand, she goes out to reach for the cup, which she gingerly grabs, though in both of your surprise that she could even grab it to begin with. Your eagerness rose exponentially as you knew the results of this would be in your favor. Putting the cup to her lips, she tilted it a bit so that it could fall down her throat, which it did with none of it falling onto the ground. Once the cup was empty, she wiped her lips and handed it back to you, with a weird expression on her face. "That tasted a bit funny..." "Yeah sorry about that, though trust me give it a few minutes and it's going to be so much better." "Could you stop playing with me and just tell me what this is all about." She complains with a frown. "Of course, I'll tell you everything you want to know after I take my drink." You say while pouring some more of the liquid into the cup once again. It looked so unnaturally black and thick that you actually started having some doubts with it yourself on drinking it. Though if Gwen did it you definitely had to do it, so you tilted back your head and put the cup straight to your parted lips, pushing it back along with your head. You managed to get it down in one big gulp, though your throat felt like complete shit afterward as you coughed it a bit. Weirdly enough it went down fine, though the coldness it left in your throat was the problem as if you had pushed an entire Popsicle down there. "You O.K, it looked like you took that pretty bad," Gwen says with a bit of worry. "Yeah I'm fine, just wasn't expecting it to taste like that either." You laugh a little while wiping your mouth. Speaking of which, it had little to no taste, besides the hint of herbs. You had no idea if that should worry you or not, as it was completely different from the smell. Nevertheless, you put that out of your thoughts for a moment as you took out your phone and contacted Ned, telling him that you had both drunk what you needed too. Though this time you didn't get a reply, at least not one in the span of the next five minutes as you usually did. "Is something wrong?" Gwen asks. You shake your head. "Nah, just messaging a friend is al-." The feeling was instant, and you dropped to your knees without any warning. "Hey!" Gwen shouted. Though your ears started to ring, and you couldn't really much after a few seconds. It felt like your body was quickly shutting down, as you were losing the feeling of everything. You just wanted to sleep. > You drugged You didn't know how long exactly you had been out, though by the time you had woken up the sun had already gone down. Though besides the darkness of the sky, the one other thing that had been watching you was Gwen, who was kneeling over her body, her eyes swollen red and her nose runny with mucus. "Hey, are you awake!" She cries as she brings you closer to her face/ "Ugh...yeah, I think so....what happen?" You ask while groaning from your massive headache. "You fucking passed out for over an hour! What the hell did you drink?" Fuck, was it really the drink? You would be super pissed and Ned once you got all your senses together. "No one stopped their cars to check on a passed out teen?" You ask, with a little sarcasm. Gwen doesn't seem to answer at first, her eyes darting around with hesitation. This causes you to panic a little. "You should probably look now..." She says. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Gwen grabbed both of your hands and laid them out in front of you so you could see all of your arms. Your heart started beating faster as you saw how they looked. They were blue, though that wasn't the problem. Your arms were almost completely transparent, you could see your legs through them. Though the transparency was fading in and out as if it hadn't settled in yet. Looking at the rest of your body, you saw that the same effect was all over. "What the fuck happened to me?!" you say with panic. "I don't know! It was probably that drink like I said.....fuck I knew it was a bad idea..." Yeah, Gwen was totally right about that, but it still really fucking pissed you off. Even though your body was still shifting in and out of reality, you were still able to grab your phone and other things that were in your pockets, backpack included. 'What the fuck did you do to me!' Sending your message to Ned, you awaited a response. Ned- Welcome to the spirit world kid! The spirit world? Ned- I know you got a lot of questions kid, and I'm sorry for tricking you like this. But I need you for an experiment I'm doing, and I haven't been able to find another replacement since my last one. Trust me if anything you'll thank me after this is all over with the powers that you'll gain. You'll see me soon, I'm already flying over to get you and your friend. Just hang tight until then. Shit, shit, SHIT. You clasped your hands onto your head in frustration as you didn't what the fuck you should do. Getting up from the floor, you tried out your first intuition and went for the barrier that was always blocking Gwen. You were met with a large solid force that pushed you back as you hit it with your run, and of course, it was the exact same one for Gwen. You were a ghost now, there was no denying it. You would get that motherfucker Ned back if it was the last thing you were to do. Though the only good thing about all of this was that you hadn't left your body behind and actually died normally, so maybe there was still a chance to get back to your normal state. Nevertheless, you walked back over to Gwen. "I have something to tell you, it's going to be a pretty long story...." and so you started telling Gwen everything that had happened since you first met Ned, the potion, his promise, and that he was coming here soon. "You should of fucking told me this earlier idiot! That sounded sketchy as hell I would have stopped you!" She chastises you while giving you a push. "Yeah I know, but now isn't the time to be playing the blame game OK, he's coming soon and we need to think of a plan to kick his ass." Gwen just shook her head as she faced away from you, obviously still pissed about this. "OK....Look, I'm sorry about what happened, it's just that I really thought this would work. It was supposed to get you out of here so you could finally leave this street and go wherever you wanted, I really wanted this to work, I'm sorry I fucked us over in the end." Gwen gives you a quick look before shaking her head once again. "Idiot....next time just tell me these things." "Promise I will." Gwen nods at this, as she walks back over to you. "Well, whatever happens, we're going to do this together, no more secrets and no more surprises. If we're going to stop this guy then you can't do any more of that crap, you got to trust in me too." She says to you, looking directly into your eyes for confirmation. "Together then." You nod. She smiles, which makes you feel a little bit calmer about everything. As long as you were together, nothing would stop you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You didn't want to annoy this guy, who knows what he was capable of if he managed to find you and get your phone number. "Don't be too frightened, I'll tell you everyone you need to know in due time and when the situation comes to it. Now, tell me are you in contact with a ghost as of now?" You didn't really see any reason to lie to him, and a bit of you thought that he would know if you were doing so. "Yes, I'm talking to a girl that's been bound onto a street, and I've been trying to get her out of there." You text back, giving him the general idea of what you've been doing." "Hmm, well that would probably fall into the caretaker class. Lucky you to have gotten such a thing, that class is generally rare to come by. That also seems to answer a few of my questions. So let me ask you, do you really want to get this girl out of her set boundary?" "Yes. more than anything." "Well then, let me help you with what you need. You were smart enough to find one of the correct ways in order to get the spirits out. Normally most caretakers go the other route instead of this ritual, but this could be relatively easier and faster than that riddle shit in which we would have to go through. Alright, I'll get you all the materials you need, they should come in by the weekend." "What's the catch?" "No catch, just hurry up and do the ritual." You didn't really trust what he had just said, there's no way someone could buy this much stuff for that price just from the kindness of their hearts, but then again who were you to say no to free help. "How did you know that I could really see ghosts? That I wasn't lying?" You ask, a bit curious. "Our eyes are more....open than others. It's apart of our hierarchy, so don't you go worrying about it." After you and Ned had finished exchanging messages, he had again said the date in which the materials would be coming, didn't even need to ask for your address which freaked you out quite a bit when he told you that he already knew. Nevertheless you felt extreme joy for finally being able to get Gwen out of that boundary. --- Ned started messaging on your phone for the rest of the time that you were in contact with him with how the deliveries were going. You were getting the ingredients on separate days individually. They each came in some pretty sketchy looking packages, ignoring this though you started storing everything in your room closet for future use. Ned was actually pretty fast about all of this, more than you were expecting him to be considering that this was all free. You just know that there was a catch to all of this, but you didn't know what it could be, hopefully, he wasn't the devil or something and you had unknowingly signed away your soul for bird droppings and crushed ants. It took about two weeks for the final ingredients to come in, to which Ned already knew without you having to tell him. Ned- Alright listen here. I'm going to tell you how to mix these ingredients carefully. All you really need is a stove and something to mix everything with, you might want to throw away the pot after or just thoroughly bleach it or something but that's all on you. "I thought the website already gave instructions on how to do everything?" Ned- You're really going to trust instructions that are run by nerds who think they know our craft? I'll give them credit they got some stuff right, but only about 60% of it, and you need the whole process and ingredients to be perfectly accurate if you're going to make this work. Normally ascending someone would be a snap, but with what we're doing, it's going to be a little more tricky than that. Ned then sends you a list of instructions on how to prepare the potion or drink it was that you would be making. The number of steps was pretty big, though reading through it a couple of times it didn't seem all that hard, just combining a thing or two and stirring for periods of time. Ned had told you to get it done as soon as you could, though you were planning on to anyway. You were lucky that your mom had gone out to go do some things were a friend and your dad was still at work. You could get the first quarter of the list done before any of them were to get home and see what you were doing. Unpacking the ingredients you needed, you got straight to work. --- Jesus, the temperature that was emitting from the pot kept on fluctuation from hot to cold. You didn't even fucking know pots could let out a cold temperature, though will all of this ghost and stalker shit that you have come across you couldn't really be all that surprised. It must have been no joke when Ned said that the other faux ingredients wouldn't do, to combining these to make such concoctions took someone who knew what the fuck they were planning on making. You were secretly hoping though that this wouldn't explode in your face and destroy the entire house if you did something wrong, Ned didn't say such things would happen, but then again he didn't bring it up. The process was slower than you expected it to be as some of the ingredients took awhile to be stirred before they look as if they needed to be going by the instructions. Still, you think you would be able to finish in time before your dad was to get home since he would probably be here first. Though as time went on, you got more and more worried that he would catch you in the act, and you had no way in knowing how he would react, and it wasn't like you could just stop what you were doing midway into it. You could skip on stirring all the way, and only do it in half the time. The materials were already mixed enough as they were, it wasn't like they needed to be stirred to perfection. > You stir halfway If your dad were to throw away what you were making then it would all be over, and you had no idea if Ned would be willing to send more ingredients to make up for the ones you had lost, he wouldn't be happy either way. You had to cut corners, the people who had done this before had to have done it at least once or twice right? So you only stirred halfway through each ingredient that had been entered into the pot. Though you made sure that you had stirred enough for it to be mixed. You had done this for about three different mixes until you started to feel a funny sensation. The heat emitting from the pot was getting hotter, much hotter than it had ever done before. Your whole face was burning heavily as you sweat was dripping down into the liquid. It got to the point in which you actually had to back away with how your eyes started to feel. "Shit, this isn't good..." The sound of something steaming grew louder and louder like a teapot, the whole bottom of the pot started to glow red as smoke was coming out of from the top rapidly. The smoke detector immediately went off as you starting coughing and wheezing, trying to get to the doorway. Somewhere along your panic, you heard an explosion. No pain was felt from it, just emptiness, and lot's of quietness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The forums were pretty bare looking compared to ones you've seen on the regular internet portion. When making a new account in order to post and send messages, the only boxes were for a username and a password. Though in big red letters at the bottom of the password box red. DON'T USE A IMPORTANT PASSWORD! Very charming. Like the market portion, there were subsections of the forum for different types of items and off-topic discussions with weird titles such as "Does Fed-Ex check it's packaging and "Is 'X' item illegal if used this way?" Pretty expected stuff honestly. Though you looked past all of these, even the ones that were offering to sell some ingredients that were on your list. The subsection that you were looking for was labeled under barter. With your newly made account, you started on making a new post with the title. H-(Ability to communicate with the dead) W-(The ingredients listed here.) You didn't really expect this plan to work, but it was the only actual idea you could think of for right now so might as well put this here to sit and be read while you thought of other options to get money. IF you worked a job, you could probably earn enough in a few months, but that would take far to long for you. Fuck you wish you had started working a part-time job earlier and had not been such a lazy ass. For two days you would check back in on the forums to see if you had gotten response, and you got a few, but all of them were either dead ends or troll posts making fun of your offer, which is what you expected to be honest so it didn't really dampen your spirits all that much. You actually ended up forgetting about the forums for a day as you were focusing on some schoolwork while also trying to take a break from the whole hunt to try and calm your nerves, though during class you had gotten a mysterious text during class. Checking it, you see that it was from an unknown caller with a really weird area code. 'Take your post off of the forums, now.' You didn't really understand what this text meant for a little bit, as it was so random and you posted on a lot of forums. You reply back. 'huh?' You get a reply in mere seconds. 'Delete your post of the barter section on Atlantic Trade." The hairs on the back of your neck instantly stood up as your whole body jumped a little, causing the person sitting next to you to give you a stare for the way you were suddenly acting. For the time being, you put away your phone and just continued to pay attention to class as your heart was beating at an alarming pace while tiny drops of sweat were forming on your forehead. It's not like you could really do anything at the time being since you needed your own personal computer to access those forums. But still, who the fuck was this persona and how did they know that you posted on there. The whole process was supposed to be fucking anonymous. Were you careless this time and did something stupid giving away your information. Would you have your identity stolen in the next few days, did anyone else know who you were on that trading site? These type of questions continued to swarm your mind as the school day dragged on in a painful like way as you had raced from your bus stop all the way home when the never-ending school day had finally ended. Racing up to your room and locking your door, you immediately logged onto what you needed to in order to get back onto the forums. Doing as what you were told, you immediately started to look for your post, and once you had found it, deleted it without hesitation. With that out of the way, you brought back out your phone and texted back the person who had sent the message. "Alright it's gone, now who the hell are you." You got a message pretty quickly, just like last time. "Do you feel any pain, live severe pain that would make you want to die." The vagueness and the notion of the message made you feel worse as you just replied with a simple 'no' "Interesting, I don't know exactly why it didn't get you as I've heard it harming others before even if the words of power were shared online. Nevertheless, you're a lucky man, and so am I since I managed to find you in time before my quota expires." You didn't understand what this guy was saying, so you decided to start asking him questions on what the hell he was talking about. > You who are you? "Who exactly are you?" You text him, as he never really got around to answering your question. "You can refer to me as Nick, that's the name I use to go by online so that's the name you can call me. As to who I am, I'm someone who is need of your help, but in return, I can offer you something you want, and maybe also save your life if what I think will happen is true." Well at least he was forward with his name, but the second part only stirred more questions into your head. > No more questions You didn't have any more questions to ask Ned, so you said you were done. "Don't be too frightened, I'll tell you everyone you need to know in due time and when the situation comes to it. Now, tell me are you in contact with a ghost as of now?" You didn't really see any reason to lie to him, and a bit of you thought that he would know if you were doing so. "Yes, I'm talking to a girl that's been bound onto a street, and I've been trying to get her out of there." You text back, giving him the general idea of what you've been doing." "Hmm, well that would probably fall into the caretaker class. Lucky you to have gotten such a thing, that class is generally rare to come by. That also seems to answer a few of my questions. So let me ask you, do you really want to get this girl out of her set boundary?" "Yes. more than anything." "Well then, let me help you with what you need. You were smart enough to find one of the correct ways in order to get the spirits out. Normally most caretakers go the other route instead of this ritual, but this could be relatively easier and faster than that riddle shit in which we would have to go through. Alright, I'll get you all the materials you need, they should come in by the weekend." "What's the catch?" "No catch, just hurry up and do the ritual." You didn't really trust what he had just said, there's no way someone could buy this much stuff for that price just from the kindness of their hearts, but then again who were you to say no to free help. "How did you know that I could really see ghosts? That I wasn't lying?" You ask, a bit curious. "Our eyes are more....open than others. It's apart of our hierarchy, so don't you go worrying about it." After you and Ned had finished exchanging messages, he had again said the date in which the materials would be coming, didn't even need to ask for your address which freaked you out quite a bit when he told you that he already knew. Nevertheless, you felt extreme joy for finally being able to get Gwen out of that boundary. --- Ned started messaging on your phone for the rest of the time that you were in contact with him with how the deliveries were going. You were getting the ingredients on separate days individually. They each came in some pretty sketchy looking packages, ignoring this though you started storing everything in your room closet for future use. Ned was actually be pretty fast about all of this, more than you were expecting him to be considering that this was all free. You just know that there was a catch to all of this, but you didn't know what it could be, hopefully he wasn't the devil or something and you had unknowingly signed away your soul for bird droppings and crushed ants. It took about two weeks for the final ingredients to come in, to which Ned already knew without you having to tell him. Ned- Alright listen here. I'm going to tell you how to mix these ingredients carefully. All you really need is a stove and something to mix everything with, you might want to throw away the pot after or just thoroughly bleach it or something but that's all on you. "I thought the website already gave instructions on how to do everything?" Ned- You're really going to trust instructions that are run by nerds who think they know our craft? I'll give them credit they got some stuff right, but only about 60% of it, and you need the whole process and ingredients to be perfectly accurate if you're going to make this work. Normally ascending someone would be a snap, but with what we're doing, it's going to be a little more tricky than that. Ned then sends you a list of instructions on how to prepare the potion or drink it was that you would be making. The number of steps was pretty big, though reading through it a couple of times it didn't seem all that hard, just combining a thing or two and stirring for periods of time. Ned had told you to get it done as soon as you could, though you were planning on to anyway. You were lucky that your mom had gone out to go do some things were a friend and your dad was still at work. You could get the first quarter of the list done before any of them were to get home and see what you were doing. Unpacking the ingredients you needed, you got straight to work. --- Jesus, the temperature that was emitting from the pot kept on fluctuation from hot to cold. You didn't even fucking know pots could let out a cold temperature, though will all of this ghost and stalker shit that you have come across you couldn't really be all that surprised. It must have been no joke when Ned said that the other faux ingredients wouldn't do, to combining these to make such concoctions took someone who knew what the fuck they were planning on making. You were secretly hoping though that this wouldn't explode in your face and destroy the entire house if you did something wrong, Ned didn't say such things would happen, but then again he didn't bring it up. The process was slower than you expected it to be as some of the ingredients took awhile to be stirred before they look as if they needed to be going by the instructions. Still, you think you would be able to finish in time before your dad was to get home since he would probably be here first. Though as time went on, you got more and more worried that he would catch you in the act, and you had no way in knowing how he would react, and it wasn't like you could just stop what you were doing midway into it. You could skip on stirring all the way, and only do it in half the time. The materials were already mixed enough as they were, it wasn't like they needed to be stirred to perfection.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Who exactly are you?" You text him, as he never really got around to answering your question. "You can refer to me as Nick, that's the name I use to go by online so that's the name you can call me. As to who I am, I'm someone who is need of your help, but in return, I can offer you something you want, and maybe also save your life if what I think will happen is true." Well at least he was forward with his name, but the second part only stirred more questions into your head. > You how did you find you\? "How did you find me on that forum, that shit was supposed to be anonymous?" "Trade secret, can't inform you on that sorry. Don't worry though your class probably has its own secrets of its own. All part of the job." His answer only led you to more questions to pop up into your head with confusion. > You quotas "What did you mean by quotas?" "It's the system that makes our world go round, it's the purpose for those of our kind. Question is in which I'm curious, as to why you haven't received one yet and why you haven't had the symptoms of not fulfilling yours, most of us get one once they're around your age at least once." He stopped with that message as if signaling for you to ask another question.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You felt as if the Native American ritual would be some kind of impossible riddle that wouldn't be able to be solved. At least with the African ritual, all you needed were physical items and everything would be set to go. The list of what you needed made you grimace. Googling some of them led to results of plants that were from far away countries, of which didn't show up on Amazon. You would have to go looking in niche sites for anything that you would need, and if you were to get a fake of anything you were fucked. You would need the feather of an African Harrier Hawk, ten crushed Dorylus ants, the eye of a lion, and a whole bunch of other shit that you couldn't even pronounce properly. Half of this shit was no doubt super illegal to try and obtain. You were already having second doubts about going down this route, as you could tell you would be in big shit trouble if you messed up and got caught. Though after much debating in your head, you decided to just go through with it to the end and see if this solution would work. Luckily you already had experience when it came to browsing the deep web as you had downloaded TOR when you were first looking up stuff about ghosts and phenomenon years earlier. You remember coming across online markets in which various illegal goods were being sold but never paid much attention to them. Those kinds of places would probably be your best shot for getting the materials you needed. After some hours of re-downloading and testing software on your computer, you were able to recreate the system requirements needed to browse the deep web again. Though it would take even longer to get some good market results, as the site you had found before seemed to be shut down as you searched back up. As you were getting frustrated with broken link after broken link and endless wiki pages to different sites, you were finally able to come up with two markets in which the materials you needed could most likely be sold. One of these markets even had its own little forum in which you could request products that weren't currently available on the market. That seemed really fucking sketchy though so you shied away from it, promising yourself to only use it if it came to the last resort. Anyways you had the choices between Garner.Net and Atlantic Trade.Net, which was the site with the forum to begin your searches. > You atlantic Trade.Net It's not like you really even needed to touch the forum part of the web-page to access the market portion. You just wanted to get the materials and never touch this side of the web again. Since most of everything you needed was mainly animal parts and some herbs, it meant that filtering through everything else made the whole process a tad bit easier. What really fucking sucked about this though where all of the prices each of the items on your list were going for on this market. Using your phone as a calculator, you started to add up all the expenses and saw that the total cost of everything would be a few grand. You didn't even have that kind of money and were past the phase of using your mom's credit card, though even that was only for a few bucks here and there. The money part of this completely went over your head until now, and now you felt as if you were fucked. An idea hatched though, but that involved the forums and silently cursed thinking of what you were about to get yourself into.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ever since that day when Gwen had broken down in front of you, you started to research online if there as any way that you could help her off that street. Even if you couldn't help her ascend to heaven or anything, at the very least you could move her to a spot in which there was more foot traffic, or better yet another ghost that she could interact with. The whole idea was morbid and gross to think about, but you didn't want to see her suffer anymore, there had to be a way. You had your powers for a reason, and you would be damned if you didn't put them to good use. The time that you didn't spend with Gwen, which you had increased by a few hours, was time spent locked in your room as you visited countless supernatural pages. Each of them had information dating from just a few days ago all the way to old tribal superstitions and ideas. Some of them sounded really far out there, while others just seemed like stupid entries placed by people writing fiction. Nevertheless, if you thought a process to help a ghost ascend sounded valid enough, you would try it out with Gwen to see if anything were to happen. Time and time again, you were disappointed with the lack of reaction. Gwen had told you not to worry about it, and seemed a little worried with how far you were taking this as most of your conversations now involved helping her move on. You just couldn't forget what had happened that day, even if you did come off as strange or weird with what you were doing, you had to get her out of here, she needed freedom from the boundary, at the very least this one. There were still two theories left that you could try out to see if it would help Gwen out of her boundary, and thankfully you saved them for last since they looked the most promising getting off of what you had read on them so far. One involved doing an old African ritual in which you had to chant some words while holding a couple of ingredients. The other was an old native American ritual, in which one would let out blood from their palms, and touch hands with a ghost in order for them to have increased physical contact. You were a little queasy about the second one, but not just that. You couldn't touch Gwen physically, so you didn't really understand all that well what that meant when it came to exchanging palms. The African one seemed more appealing, but gathering the materials would be a hassle, and you felt like you were being trolled with how rare the required ingredients were. Nevertheless, you had to choose one. > You native American Ritual You didn't feel like doing a scavenger hunt that could end up being a waste of time going off by your previous leads. At the very least you could try this one first and do the African ritual later. Though you were a bit confused when it came to the part in touching hands, as from what you know that wasn't very possible, and you wanted to make sure you could do it before you started bleeding yourself. You tried several times in touching Gwen whenever you two were talking, but each time your hand would go through her body and she would look confused in what you were trying to do. That probably had to do with the fact that you had told Gwen that you had given up on your efforts and to make the best out of what the two of you had. You wanted to surprise her if any of your efforts were to come to fruition so for now, you had to play dumb. Gwen seemed relieved at this as it meant that it would put a stop to your antics and experiments that you would try on her. Maybe she was glad that things were going back to normal. But no matter what lies you told her, you wouldn't stop trying, not until you found a solution to all of this. You looked a bit more online as now your research was focused on how to make ghosts physical. You tried your experiments in secret on Gwen as each of them failed as the ones had before. You didn't get far into your research though when similar phrases and words kept on reappearing with each new website that you visited. Apparently increasing a spirits happiness or any kind of a strong emotion, would lead to a bigger connection to the one that caused it. Well, that's what you interpreted from what you had read. You didn't want to make her to sad or mad, so you would be going with making her happy. But how would you make her happy? Wasn't she happy content enough that you were talking to her every day? She sure seemed like it with her mannerisms and occasional laughter at what you had to say every now and then. How happy would you have to make her to get this ritual to work, and would you have to cut your palm right there and then to get it done quickly before her happiness died down? Fuck, you needed to get yourself a pocket knife. There weren't many ideas of ways to make Gwen happy that you were able to think of, at least not much that could be done within the confines of her street. You didn't think you could reach the limit of happiness you needed with just words, maybe you could, you just didn't know how. "Is there anything that would make you really happy, like anything I could bring you physically for you to see?" You asked her one day to see if you could get any leads. "No not really, please don't tell me you're going on about this again. I told you to forget about that day, I never should have said those things so openly. Please, I'm happy now knowing that you're here with me." She pleaded as you frowned a bit. There was always the chance that she really was happy, and doing the ritual now was all you needed to do in order for her to ascend. Though something was telling you that it wasn't the case, and you needed to do something big in order to reach the criteria. Though as you were thinking about her happiness, you started to think about your own, as the thoughts that had been circling your mind earlier for the past few days kept on recurring. Did you really want to see Gwen go? > Yes No. You weren't about to pussy out of this because you were starting to get second thoughts. That would be incredibly selfish to make Gwen suffer on that shitty street while you knew you could do something about it, as she herself could not. There had to be a way, and you would try every way possible. Starting with this one. ---- You knew what these feelings were, you'd known them for a while now. You've had them ever since you first started talking to Gwen. As her face got less deformed and you started to talk to her more, the feeling just got stronger and stronger. You brushed it off at first as a stupid feeling that you shouldn't have been getting. Though it wouldn't go away, and a lot of the times you couldn't really look at Gwen straight in her eyes without you blushing a few times when she made her usual jokes. She really quickly changed from that fragile quiet girl you found on the street to someone filled with personality, who was both funny and caring at the same time. You loved her, yet you still wanted to see her go. You hoped to god that this ritual wouldn't send her off, maybe at best it would let her free roam around the planet to her heart's content. But even then, that would be dreadful. If that were to happen then you would need to be with her to keep her company, or at least find other ghosts that could do it as well if she were to get tired of you. Because of all this, you had been delaying the ritual for a few weeks already, it was about to be a month now, as each day went on you kept on hating yourself more and more, though it's not like in that time did you have an opportunity to make her euphoric. As these thoughts kept on running through your head, an idea came into view. Maybe if you told her that you loved her, that would make the spark you needed for the experiment to come together. Thinking it over it did sound really self-centered and cliche, but it was really worth a shot, and you wanted to convey your feelings before anything was to happen if she were to disappear or ascend without you knowing or being able to say your final goodbyes. This led to a whole other set of problems as you started pussyfooting around the whole confession. Although to be fair you weren't exaggerating when you said it had to be perfect, in more than two ways. You had to make sure you did it with enough finesse to swoon her over, and you had to be agile enough to make the cut and start the ritual, or at least persuade her into doing it for you without having to trick her. This isn't something that you could redo at a later day, it was all or nothing with this. Though with enough planning and patience, and the knife that had taken a while to get shipped from Amazon, you had planned for your confession and the ritual to fall on the day of Friday. With each passing day you rehearsed what you were planning on saying in your head countless times, and making sure that Gwen wasn't in a bad mood or anything that would ruin your surprise if she kept up with it for the entire week. When it finally came to Friday, you were really fucking nervous about how everything would turn out. Like an edgy school shooter emo, you had been fake practicing the cut in the mirror to be as quick and precise as possible. You were really bad when it came to pain so that would probably be the worst part out of this whole experience. It would be on your walk home when you would confess, and you waited a little bit later before actually starting your walk since you were wanting to do it a bit towards the time that the sun would lower. The last thing you needed was someone calling the cops because they saw a kid cut his wrist. -- "You're a little late, did anything happen at school?" Gwen asks. "Yeah had to stay behind for a bit of tutoring is all." You lie with a smile. "Ah, well that's good, I'm glad you're actually doing something about it now, with how tired you look every morning I could have guessed with how you were doing in school." "Is it really that obvious..." You frown. She laughs. "No don't feel bad about it, I'm just really good at reading expressions and all." You couldn't really tell if you were actually acting like that, or if it was just apart of your fake act from your earlier meetings. Forgetting about that for a moment, you started to think of your words. > You start slowly "Gwen, for the time that we've known each other, what do you think of me..." You ask while looking away a bit. Though you see her smirk a little. "What brought on that type of question?" "Just wondering." She seems to think for a moment, seeming to choose her words slowly. "Well....you were really nice to me. Yo still are, but I'm glad you stopped being super nice after that one day. You also really care about being on time here, which I appreciate....so I guess I think you're OK." HNNNNNNGGGGG. "Just OK?" You say half-jokingly, although on the inside being completely serious. She gives you a sly look with her eyes. "Well tell me then, what do you think of me?" she asks. "I think you're OK." You reply with a smile. "Oh fuck off, don't make me say that embarrassing stuff and you not do the same." She said slightly annoyed. "Well....I think you're a pretty cool ghost. You're very interesting to talk too, and you have a good sense of humor about things. You care about....well what happens to me and my school work so there's that too, I guess." Your carefully picked words cause Gwen's face to shift in a certain way. You couldn't tell if it was from embarrassment or something else, but she also couldn't seem to make eye contact with you either. "Gwen, I.....well I really like you." You didn't really know what to say after that, your mouth kind of dried up the point in which you didn't feel as if you could get anything else out of your throat. "Uh-h well..." You heard Gwen's reaction sounded stiff and hoarse. "W-Well I like you to I g-guess!" Gwen was a little bit louder with how she said it, trying to laugh along with it after saying it, though it sounded extremely unnatural. "Fuck I made things weird didn't I, I'm sorry." you apologize sheepishly. "No! Please don't. I mean yeah it is kind of awkward the way you said it. I would have worded it a bit differently I mean, but.....well I really do have the same feelings." she replies, a bit sturdier with her voice. "Well....I...It's more than just liking....I love you..."She finishes after a brief pause. "I loved you when you first came here and decided to stay.....you could of walked away but you stayed the first time and that's all that really took....I hated when you weren't here, and I always looked forward to our little talks, even if they weren't for that long. Maybe because they were so short is why I treasure them so much. I like to hear about your day, I want to know about your problems, I just want....I want to be with you..." Man, she was doing a better job than you were doing with this confession. She didn't even lose eye contact when she said that last part, her facial expression was one of seriousness, she didn't laugh that last bit off. "I love you too....That's why....Well that's why I want to help you. If it's just one way that could bring us together, or let you have your peace. I don't care if you say you don't want it, I'm doing what I'm doing because I care about you, and if a day comes where I have to stop coming that's out of my own control, then I don't want you to be here all alone, at the very best, I want you to be with me." You say, trying your best to sound as sincere as possible with your antics. "Well, I know that you have my best intentions in your heart, just please don't get yourself hurt over it, that's the last thing I want." Shit. "Well that's the thing, please listen to me through before you say anything though." You plead as you see her facial expression darken as she hears this from you. "I'm going to try a ritual, which just involves he drawing a little blood. After that we just need to hold hands while I say a chant. Afterward, I think you'll be able to walk free and go with me wherever I go. I want that more than anything, to just be with you outside of this street, and I think this way is going to work." Her attitude on this seems mixed as she seems hesitant about it, although you're already taking out your knife as you flip it open. "Wait! How do you know this is going to work?" Gwen hastily asks. "I honestly really don't, but I'm going to try either way. I'm not just doing this for you either, I'm doing it for me." You joke as you reflexively wince while making the cut. Although you make sure to not do it too deep that it would be dangerous or worry Gwen to an extreme level, though blood was easily flowing now if you tipped your wrist over sideways. You raised out your hand for Gwen to grab. "Let's try it out Gwen, me and you. You just need to grab my hand." You say. Again she seems to hesitate. Though much less now as she seems to make up her mind in less than a minute. "OK. Together then." Gwen reaches for your hand as your heart beats rapidly, as if ready to explode from your chest. You feel contact, as her cold clammy hand meets with yours. Your stomach drops as your knees begin to buckle, but you stand as firm as you can as you start to remember the chant. The words escape your mouth as you look up a little into the sky. You change your gripping from her hand to her forearm as you speed up the chant. Gwen grips you harder as she looks down. The chant ends as you finish saying what you needed to say. You don't feel anything different, and that makes you start to panic internally. Gwen slowly starts to look back up as her grip on your wrist begins to loosen, so does yours. "D-Do you know where your boundary is?" You stammer, not giving up on your hopes that something had changed. "Yeah, that fence is where I usually can't pass through...." She says quietly. Both of you start walking towards the fence, though your pace is slow as it's hard to move your feet with how weak they feel, while Gwen is right beside you at the same speed. When you reach the fence, you both pause. Both of you don't step forward, and part of you hopes that Gwen does it first. But since this was all your idea, it was best to find out if this was all for naught. Stepping past the fence, you turn around and look at Gwen, who's un-moving, You raise out your hand again for her to grab. "Come on, only one way to find out." All she needed to do was be able to grab your hand, that was all. Even if she couldn't leave this boundary, the of you being able to make physical contact was already enough to make you happy. Her hand raised up as it shook with nervously, moving it closer to yours, she grabbed your hand. She grabbed your hand. Outside of the boundary. The two of you froze for a moment as nothing was said. Though immediately afterward, you felt your body push back as a large amount of weight fell on top of you from the front. Falling on your ass, you felt arms embrace around torso while loud wails pierced your ears. Gwen was crying, and she was really letting it all out as you felt your shoulder be soaked with tears. Though looking down, you saw that your shirt wasn't wet, which was a really weird feeling. You hugged Gwen back as you let her cry out what she needed to cry out, rubbing her back to console her a bit. "It worked....>I-It really worked!" She cried into your ear. Maybe you should have been crying too, but your face just felt numb as you realized what you did actually worked, maybe deep down you expected nothing out of this, and to have it actually work just shook you. Though you knew, that now, everything was going to be OK. You got Gwen off the street. > You later You and Gwen talked throughout the night at your house. She looked at every square inch of your room while you offered to take her out somewhere for the night so that she could see the rest of the city again. Gwen also wanted to take the time to clean your wound herself after you supplied her with what was needed, saying that this was something she wanted to do. She refused though, saying that was where she wanted to be. Music was played, tears were shed, and before you knew it you were passed out with exhaustion on your bed. Ghosts couldn't sleep, so Gwen stayed up, sitting on your bed and playing with your hair while you lost consciousness. When you had woken up, she was back to where she was. You asked if she had stayed there the whole entire night, she said no, telling you she had explored your house for a couple of hours. Since it was the weekend, you decided that it would be best to take her out to go do something, and you already had an idea of what to do. Though you would have to wait until tonight to actually get there when you wanted to get there. Hanging out at your house and just talking for most of the morning, you got some money from your wallet and told your mom you would be coming back later tonight, saying you would be out with friends and getting a ride home from them. Paying for a bus fare you and Gwen traveled to a local mountain in which people usually hiked at. Though you didn't tell her the destination since you wanted it to be a surprise. You didn't think ghosts could get fatigued either, though it wasn't really that long of a climb so no need to worry about it. Upon arriving, there were only a few cars parked in the parking lot. The mountain didn't have a closing time, or at least this trail didn't you think. You already took the precaution of taking a flashlight too for the way down, since you would be up here until nightfall. "We're going hiking? That's so lame, It's late too." Gwen complained. "Stop being such a baby, there's something cool to see up top." "You know what else is cool? Taking your ghost girlfriend to go see a movie or something." "Maybe if you appreciate my thoughtful trips I'll take you when I feel like it." You joke. She smirks. "Ass." Reaching the top of the mountain, you continued on at the little plateau that was on the top in which you could look at everything. "Wow, the view from here is pretty..." Gwen says with admiration. "Yeah, but it gets even better." You say. She asks why, but you change the topic, and just begin to talk about random topics for the next couple of hours. Luckily there weren't that many people who came upon this mountain top at this time of day, only a few others you saw though they went to the other side of the area, whether that to avoid the crazy man talking to himself you had no idea. As the last bits of rays were disappearing in the horizon, the view that you had been waiting for came into full effect as you stopped the conversation that was going on and pointed towards the view, to which Gwen had been oblivious too until now. An audible "Woah" escaped her lips as she saw what you were seeing. Countless city lights had brightened up buildings as far as the eye could see since downtown wasn't that far away, you were able to see how beautiful the skyscrapers could be. "It's so pretty..." "Yeah, I came up her once during one time when I was climbing with my uncle, it's something I really wanted to see again." The two of you continued to look in silence as your arm was wrapped around the shoulder of Gwen. You had no idea how things would go from here, you finished what you needed too and you got what you wanted. Though the uncertainty if Gwen would ever enter the final stage of leaving this planet would be on your mind for quite some time, as long as she was here with you and you could physically feel her hand in yours, then you really didn't really care all that much. You would live each day as it was, and live it happily with Gwen.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No. You weren't about to pussy out of this because you were starting to get second thoughts. That would be incredibly selfish to make Gwen suffer on that shitty street while you knew you could do something about it, as she herself could not. There had to be a way, and you would try every way possible. Starting with this one. ---- You knew what these feelings were, you'd known them for a while now. You've had them ever since you first started talking to Gwen. As her face got less deformed and you started to talk to her more, the feeling just got stronger and stronger. You brushed it off at first as a stupid feeling that you shouldn't have been getting. Though it wouldn't go away, and a lot of the times you couldn't really look at Gwen straight in her eyes without you blushing a few times when she made her usual jokes. She really quickly changed from that fragile quiet girl you found on the street to someone filled with personality, who was both funny and caring at the same time. You loved her, yet you still wanted to see her go. You hoped to god that this ritual wouldn't send her off, maybe at best it would let her free roam around the planet to her heart's content. But even then, that would be dreadful. If that were to happen then you would need to be with her to keep her company, or at least find other ghosts that could do it as well if she were to get tired of you. Because of all this, you had been delaying the ritual for a few weeks already, it was about to be a month now, as each day went on you kept on hating yourself more and more, though it's not like in that time did you have an opportunity to make her euphoric. As these thoughts kept on running through your head, an idea came into view. Maybe if you told her that you loved her, that would make the spark you needed for the experiment to come together. Thinking it over it did sound really self-centered and cliche, but it was really worth a shot, and you wanted to convey your feelings before anything was to happen if she were to disappear or ascend without you knowing or being able to say your final goodbyes. This led to a whole other set of problems as you started pussyfooting around the whole confession. Although to be fair you weren't exaggerating when you said it had to be perfect, in more than two ways. You had to make sure you did it with enough finesse to swoon her over, and you had to be agile enough to make the cut and start the ritual, or at least persuade her into doing it for you without having to trick her. This isn't something that you could redo at a later day, it was all or nothing with this. Though with enough planning and patience, and the knife that had taken a while to get shipped from Amazon, you had planned for your confession and the ritual to fall on the day of Friday. With each passing day you rehearsed what you were planning on saying in your head countless times, and making sure that Gwen wasn't in a bad mood or anything that would ruin your surprise if she kept up with it for the entire week. When it finally came to Friday, you were really fucking nervous about how everything would turn out. Like an edgy school shooter emo, you had been fake practicing the cut in the mirror to be as quick and precise as possible. You were really bad when it came to pain so that would probably be the worst part out of this whole experience. It would be on your walk home when you would confess, and you waited a little bit later before actually starting your walk since you were wanting to do it a bit towards the time that the sun would lower. The last thing you needed was someone calling the cops because they saw a kid cut his wrist. -- "You're a little late, did anything happen at school?" Gwen asks. "Yeah had to stay behind for a bit of tutoring is all." You lie with a smile. "Ah, well that's good, I'm glad you're actually doing something about it now, with how tired you look every morning I could have guessed with how you were doing in school." "Is it really that obvious..." You frown. She laughs. "No don't feel bad about it, I'm just really good at reading expressions and all." You couldn't really tell if you were actually acting like that, or if it was just apart of your fake act from your earlier meetings. Forgetting about that for a moment, you started to think of your words. > You full on confession right away Maybe it would be best if you just said everything right away, just full on say 'I love you' and see what kind of reaction you get. But you soon realize that's a really stupid fucking idea and the chance of it working would be extremely slim for you. You had to take this slow and steady. "Hey are you alright?" You hear Gwen ask you. You realize that you had been staring into space for a bit as Gwen gave you a worried look. "Nah I'm fine.....It's just. For the time that we've known each other, what do you think of me...." You ask while looking away to miss eye contact. Though you see her smirk a little. "What brought on that type of question?" "Just wondering." She seems to think for a moment, seeming to choose her words slowly. "Well....you were really nice to me. Yo still are, but I'm glad you stopped being super nice after that one day. You also really care about being on time here, which I appreciate....so I guess I think you're OK." HNNNNNNGGGGG. "Just OK?" You say half jokingly, although on the inside being completely serious. She gives you a sly look with her eyes. "Well tell me then, what do you think of me?" she asks. "I think you're OK." You reply with a smile. "Oh fuck off, don't make me say that embarrassing stuff and you not do the same." She said slightly annoyed. "Well....I think you're a pretty cool ghost. You're very interesting to talk too, and you have a good sense of humor about things. You care about....well what happens to me and my school work so there's that too, I guess." Your carefully picked words cause Gwen's face to shift in a certain way. You couldn't tell if it was from embarrassment or something else, but she also couldn't seem to make eye contact with you either. "Gwen, I.....well I really like you." You didn't really know what to say after that, your mouth kind of dried up the point in which you didn't feel as if you could get anything else out of your throat. "Uh-h well..." You heard Gwen's reaction sounded stiff and hoarse. "W-Well I like you to I g-guess!" Gwen was a little bit more louder with how she said it, trying to laugh along with it after saying it, though it sounded extremely unnatural. "Fuck I made things weird didn't I, I'm sorry." you apologize sheepishly. "No! Please don't. I mean yeah it is kind of awkward the way you said it. I would have worded it a bit differently I mean, but.....well I really do have the same feelings." she replies, a bit more sturdier with her voice. "Well....I...It's more than just liking....I love you..."She finishes after a brief pause. "I loved you when you first came here and decided to stay.....you could of walked away but you stayed the first time and that's all that really took....I hated when you weren't here, and I always looked forward to our little talks, even if they weren't for that long. Maybe because they were so short is why I treasure them so much. I like to hear about your day, I want to know your problems, I just want....I want to be with you..." Man, she was doing a better job than you were doing with this confession. She didn't even lose eye contact when she said that last part, her facial expression was one of seriousness, she didn't laugh that last bit off. "I love you too....That's why....Well that's why I want to help you. If it's just one way that could bring us together, or let you have your peace. I don't care if you say you don't want it, I'm doing what I'm doing because I care about you, and if a day comes where I have to stop coming that's out of my own control, then I don't want you to be here all alone, at the very best, I want you to be with me." You say, trying your best to sound as sincere as possible with your antics. "Well, I know that you have my best intentions in your heart, just please don't get yourself hurt over it, that's the last thing I want." Shit. "Well that's the thing, please listen to me through before you say anything though." You plead as you see her facial expression darken as she hears this from you. "I'm going to try a ritual, which just involves he drawing a little blood. After that we just need to hold hands while I say a chant. Afterwards, I think you'll be able to walk free and go with me wherever I go. I wan't that more then anything, to just be with you outside of this street, and I think this way is going to work." Her attitude on this seems mixed as she seems hesitant about it, although you're already taking out your knife as you flip it open. "Wait! How do you know this is going to work?" Gwen hastily asks. "I honestly really don't, but I'm going to try either way. I'm not just doing this for you either, I'm doing it for me." You joke as you reflexively wince while making the cut. Although you make sure to not do it too deep that it would be dangerous or worry Gwen to a extreme level, though blood was easily flowing now if you tipped your wrist over sideways. You raised out your hand for Gwen to grab. "Let's try it out Gwen, me and you. You just need to grab my hand." You say. Again she seems to hesitate. Though much less now as she seems to make up her mind in less than a minute. "OK. Together then." Gwen reaches for your hand as your heart beats rapidly, as if ready to explode from your chest. You feel contact, as her cold clammy hand meets with yours. Your stomach drops as your knees begin to buckle, but you stand as firm as you can as you start to remember the chant. The words escape your mouth as you look up a little into the sky. You change your gripping from her hand to her forearm as you speed up the chant. Gwen grips you harder as she looks down. The chant ends as you finish saying what you needed to say. You don't feel anything different, and that makes you start to panic internally. Gwen slowly starts to look back up as her grip on your wrist begins to loosen, so does yours. "D-Do you know where you boundary is?" You stammer, not giving up on your hopes that something had changed. "Yeah, that fence is where I usually can't pass through...." She says quietly. Both of you start walking towards the fence, though your pace is slow as it's hard to move your feet with how weak they feel, while Gwen is right beside you at the same speed. When you reach the fence, you both pause. Both of you don't step forward, and part of you hopes that Gwen does it first. But since this was all your idea, it was best to find out if this was all for naught. Stepping past the fence, you turn around and look at Gwen, who's un-moving, You raise out your hand again for her to grab. "Come on, only one way to find out." All she needed to do was be able to grab your hand, that was all. Even if she couldn't leave this boundary, the of you being able to make physical contact was already enough to make you happy. Her hand raised up as it shook with nervously, moving it closer to yours, she grabbed your hand. She grabbed your hand. Outside of the boundary. The two of you froze for a moment as nothing was said. Though immediately afterwards, you felt your body push back as a large amount of weight fell on-top of you from the front. Falling on your ass, you felt arms embrace around torso while loud wails pierced your ears. Gwen was crying, and she was really letting it all out as you felt your shoulder be soaked with tears.Though looking down, you saw that your shirt wasn't wet, which was a really weird feeling. You hugged Gwen back as you let her out what she needed to cry out, rubbing her back to console her a bit. "It worked....>I-It really worked!" She cried into your ear. Maybe you should have been crying too, but your face just felt numb as you realized what you did actually worked, maybe deep down you expected nothing out of this, and to have it actually work just shook you. Though you knew, that now, everything was going to be OK. You got Gwen off the street.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You didn't feel like doing a scavenger hunt that could end up being a waste of time going off by your previous leads. At the very least you could try this one first and do the African ritual later. Though you were a bit confused when it came to the part in touching hands, as from what you know that wasn't very possible, and you wanted to make sure you could do it before you started bleeding yourself. You tried several times in touching Gwen whenever you two were talking, but each time your hand would go through her body and she would look confused in what you were trying to do. That probably had to do with the fact that you had told Gwen that you had given up on your efforts and to make the best out of what the two of you had. You wanted to surprise her if any of your efforts were to come to fruition so for now, you had to play dumb. Gwen seemed relieved at this as it meant that it would put a stop to your antics and experiments that you would try on her. Maybe she was glad that things were going back to normal. But no matter what lies you told her, you wouldn't stop trying, not until you found a solution to all of this. You looked a bit more online as now your research was focused on how to make ghosts physical. You tried your experiments in secret on Gwen as each of them failed as the ones had before. You didn't get far into your research though when similar phrases and words kept on reappearing with each new website that you visited. Apparently increasing a spirits happiness or any kind of a strong emotion, would lead to a bigger connection to the one that caused it. Well, that's what you interpreted from what you had read. You didn't want to make her to sad or mad, so you would be going with making her happy. But how would you make her happy? Wasn't she happy content enough that you were talking to her every day? She sure seemed like it with her mannerisms and occasional laughter at what you had to say every now and then. How happy would you have to make her to get this ritual to work, and would you have to cut your palm right there and then to get it done quickly before her happiness died down? Fuck, you needed to get yourself a pocket knife. There weren't many ideas of ways to make Gwen happy that you were able to think of, at least not much that could be done within the confines of her street. You didn't think you could reach the limit of happiness you needed with just words, maybe you could, you just didn't know how. "Is there anything that would make you really happy, like anything I could bring you physically for you to see?" You asked her one day to see if you could get any leads. "No not really, please don't tell me you're going on about this again. I told you to forget about that day, I never should have said those things so openly. Please, I'm happy now knowing that you're here with me." She pleaded as you frowned a bit. There was always the chance that she really was happy, and doing the ritual now was all you needed to do in order for her to ascend. Though something was telling you that it wasn't the case, and you needed to do something big in order to reach the criteria. Though as you were thinking about her happiness, you started to think about your own, as the thoughts that had been circling your mind earlier for the past few days kept on recurring. Did you really want to see Gwen go? > No The more your thoughts battled with one another, the more stupid this idea started to sound. There was no way this was going to work, it was a random fucking idea you just happened to find on the internet that you had no way in checking if it was factual or not. Gwen would probably be freaked the fuck out too if you made extremely happy and all of a sudden cut your wrist and demanded that she hold your hand quickly before her happiness died from the realization of what you were doing. These things must happen naturally, it just had too. There's no way she would be on that street forever, though until that time would come you would just keep her company to the best of your ability. Hopefully, by the time it was time for you to graduate, she would already be off in whatever waited for her. Besides, she told you herself that she didn't want the hassle that you were putting yourself through, it was probably making her worry too. ---- With your silly quest over and done, you feel a huge relief wash over you. The next few weeks are spent getting back on track on school work to which you end up putting yourself ahead in some classes. Your conversations with Gwen continue, and you're much more cheery and happy with them, to which Gwen notices herself and tells you. Weeks turn into months as the meetings never really got boring for you, but instead, you started to feel a stronger connection with her. You sometimes had your doubts about quitting on the mission to get Gwen out of there, though she never broke down like she did that one day, and you took that as it was. Even so, there was still a lingering feeling that she didn't mean what she said, and that she really wanted your help with this. That thought, as small as it was, always made you depressed whenever you were to dwell on it for too long. --- You didn't know how much time had passed until now. Though you didn't really care. Gwen was gone. She wasn't on the street, or anywhere down the roads. The first time you noticed this you didn't pay it much mind, but on your walk home, that's when you really started to panic. You walked back and forth twice, giving up and quitting when it started to get a little too late. After that day, you walked that sidewalk again, hoping to see her and give her a mouthful for worrying you. Though each day was the same, she wasn't there or anywhere. She had left without saying goodbye. You never got to say goodbye. Through the sadness and depression that was rolling through your head, a large part of you hoped that she got to wherever she was going safely. Finally, she would get her rest. Though you'd miss her. More than you could have imagined from the start.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It wouldn't hurt all that much if you were to stay for a little longer. You could probably come up with another excuse anyway if your mom questioned you too much about it. "Alright why not, I think I can stay for another hour or so..." You say which causes Gwen's attitude to beam back up. "Great! I still got stuff to ask you, like.....when's your birthday and....what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you!" The conversation continued on as Gwen asked you random questions on a variety of topics. It seemed as if she was trying to prolong your stay or at least make it in so that you wouldn't get bored while being with her. It's not like you were anyway when it was your turn to ask questions or talk, everything that she replied with genuinely interested you. Still, there was a strange feeling in the pit of your stomach you would get, and it seemed as if it kept on recurring every time you were to interact with Gwen. You pushed it off to the side though as just random nervousness. Checking your phone you saw that it was already six. "Alright, I really got to go now, my mom's going to get pissed if I get back any later." You say, trying to excuse yourself out of the conversation as soon as you saw a good stopping point. "Yeah, you have been here for quite a while....thanks for deciding to stay a little longer with me though..." Gwen sweetly smiles you. Don't worry I'll be back every day at least twice, this route is on my way to school after all." "I know you will, and I'll be waiting." Those words send a little chill up your spine, though you don't exactly know why. Besides that, you wave Gwen off as you start head back home. Upon walking into your house, your mom is in the kitchen as she asks you where you've been. You tell her you stayed with some friends to do some stuff after school, and head up to your room before she can try to question you. You wake up a bit later than usual the next morning and take your time preparing yourself for school. Somehow the day before had drained you, as you were sluggish to leave the house and go on your walk. In fact, you actually had an inner desire to take the bus and catch a nap for a few minutes but decided against it. Not wanting to do that to Gwen. When you arrive on her street, you catch her looking in your general direction when the two of you make eye contact. You walk at a normal pace until you finally arrive at her boundary. She's the first one to say something. "You're later than usual." She didn't say this jokingly, but with a sort of seriousness and matter-of-factness. "Yeah....I slept in so I was a little late in getting ready." As you say this you take out your phone and look at the time. "Speaking of which I can't stay all that long either because of it, I can't be late again." As you say this, you see a deep frown start to form on Gwen's face. She's not even attempting to hide the disappointment that came from what you just said, and because of that, you started to feel guilty. Gwen didn't respond to what you said and just kept on looking at you. Fuck this was really awkward "Alright, well I'll see you later then..."You mutter as you give a little wave. You walk at a normal pace until you feel that you're out of her eyesight, before quickening your pace. You don't know why you did this, but you did know you weren't tired anymore. What the hell was that interaction? She was so weird about it that it actually made you genuinely uncomfortable. It wasn't just the guilty feeling, fuck the guilty feeling wasn't the worst part as all. The worst part is that you started having thoughts of just cutting interaction with Gwen, you had ideas why this came to mind, but you didn't know why it came onto you so strong. You started to worry that Gwen would be like the past ones, the ones who wouldn't let go if they could help it. Did it just take longer for the signs to show with her compared to the others? As more of these thoughts continued to plague your mind, you were eventually able to get rid of them and start trying to feel some compassion in which it seemed you were lacking. Gwen was alone a lot on that street, so it was only natural that she would get upset if it meant less interaction time with you if you were the only person she interacted with. Your apology for it was pretty shitty too, though at the time you didn't really feel the need to, and a part of you still doesn't now. Regardless you were to visit her again after school since you weren't ready to just abandon her, much reluctance was in you though as you down that street after school as you were contemplating if you had made the right decision or not. When you caught sight of Gwen, she was waving heavily at you, which made you quicken your pace a bit expecting something to be wrong. "Hey! You came back!" Gwen exclaimed, as if you had no intentions of doing so. "Of course I did, I said I would." "Listen I'm sorry about how I reacted earlier today, I acted like a little girl and didn't realize you had your own problems to deal with and such, I was putting myself ahead of you and I'm so sorry!" She was rapid with this apology, and with each word she had taken a step closer to you, causing you to in turn take a few steps back to keep the distance. "Don't worry about it really....you have nothing to apologize for." "I....I just don't want you to think I'm like those other ghosts that you left for being clingy or weird. I'm not like that, I'm.....I'm just lonely!" Her face twisted into something saddening as features of decay starting to rapidly show all over her body. It seems as if she wasn't able to hold in her emotions as she falls to the ground and starts sobbing, with her whole body shuddering heavily. You don't know how to react to this, especially since you're not able to touch ghosts, you can't really comfort her physically. You're still a little shocked with this happening so suddenly, but you get yourself out of it quickly as you try to figure out something to say. "Hey...I'm not going to leave you. You got it all wrong man, just because I didn't stick around for that long in the morning doesn't mean I don't want to be here or anything..." You felt that you weren't really good with words, as what you had said didn't really seem to help all that much. "I know, or at least I hope you're not lying. But still, these feelings just won't stop. I keep being afraid that you'll decide to leave me and I'll be alone again...Do you have any idea how long I've been on this street?" "Four months?" You say rememberering your conversation. "No...That was a lie. I've been here for about a year maybe more. You're the only person to have talked to me since then. At first, I didn't even think you were real, just a sign that I was actually losing it for real this time. But when you came back I knew you were real, and when there was the chance that you wouldn't be coming back, I got scared. I know I sound like I'm being clingy, well I am clingy. I don't don't want to lose you and I don't want you to go, ever." At this point Gwen didn't seem to be holding anything in, as she was letting all her emotions and thoughts out in the rawest form possible. You didn't really know how to feel about this, in one way you felt extreme pity for her, on the other hand a few things in which she admitted made you feel a little dirty. It felt like she was expecting too much from you, there was no way in which you could stay by her side on this street forever, it was heavily impractical. It would have been one thing if it were just a figure of speech, but you knew she was being serious, and that sent chills down your spine. > You can't make that promise You couldn't make a promise that you couldn't keep, especially one as big as this. Even though Gwen seemed like a nice girl and all, she was expecting too much of a person that she barely met. You wouldn't be able to take the responsibility of keeping her happy and sane every day of the week just so that she wouldn't feel lonely. There had to be others like you out in the world that had your powers, hell there might even be another one living in this town. It's also not like she would stay here forever, nothing lasts forever. "I'm sorry, but....I can't make a promise like that. I can try to come whenever I have some spare time. But don't count on me to come every day." Saying these words made you feel like shit, and her expression that matched the dirty feeling worsened everything. It felt just like last time, although now you had really made up your mind about the future between the two of you. There would be none. The two of you didn't exchange any more words after that as you just walked off, not having the slightest desire to look back. You made a mistake with all of this. Your days of voluntarily communicating with ghosts were over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Wanting to start your questions with something simple and innocent, you tried asking something basic. "What's your favorite color?" "Green." She says immediately, her attitude sparking up with that answer. This causes you to smile a bit. "How come it's your favorite color?" "I used to go on trips a lot to the mountains, with my grandpa at his lake house. I loved the trees around there."She says, quite rapidly, and possibly with excitement. As she's talking about this, you could swear that there areas of her body that were turning from a rotten and decayed color to the light color of tan skin. Even her eye that was bulging seemed to shrink slowly to that of normal size. "Yeah, that seems like a pretty nice play to go too, always wanted to go to a place like that." "It really is great! Especially when it snows, it's an experience that you have to be there to truly know how great it feels!" As Gwen says this, her smile starts to fade, and her older decayed features begin to reappear. "I want to go back..." You frown at her sudden change in mood, you take a look at your phone again only to see that a half an hour had passed. Fuck you really couldn't miss more than one period or you're mom would REALLY have your ass, the confidence of staying had left as soon as her mood began to falter again, you would have to come back and talk to her some more when you had the luxury of your own set time. "Listen, I have to go and get to school. I'm going to come back though O.K? I just really can't miss it." She lifts her head with a pained expression on her face. "You promise you'll come back?" "Promise." With that being said, she sits back onto the asphalt and covers her head into her knees. "I'll see you then." It takes you a moment before you get yourself to move your legs and head down the quiet sidewalk towards your school. Classes go by fairly slowly for you as you can't stop thinking about Gwen. About what she had told you so far and the time she had spent on that street. It seemed rather odd how often her mood had changed, from being quiet to being happy and then finally ending with sadness. You couldn't tell if it was something like her being bipolar or just all the events that happened in such a short time span. Either way, you still felt sadness for how you left her, and you immediately had plans to go and visit her again on your walk home. Though on your walk, you had gotten a call from your mom. She chewed you out a little for being marked absent for first period, and you just gave the excuse that you had to go to the bathroom on the way to school and couldn't hold it. That seemed to work for her as she didn't try to question you all that much afterward. Gwen's figure had started to come into view as you arrived at her street. She was still sitting down while holding her knees, but as soon as she caught sight of you she instantly picked herself up and waved at you, with a cheery expression on her face. "You came back!" She beamed with a wide smile. "Of course I did, I promised you didn't I?" Her smile got bigger as she tilted her head while her eyes narrowed. "You're not leaving right away though right?" "Of course not, I got plenty of time to spare." You assure her. Her smile returns. "Good, because I've thought of a lot of things to ask you." You spend around two hours talking to Gwen as she learns about your high school and stuff that happens with you on a daily occurrence. She asks about your powers to see ghosts and you tell her about all the interactions you've had so far. It's when though that you bring up some of them being crazy that her mood seems to dampen a bit. "I was almost at that point too, had you not come along when you did. It wouldn't have taken long for me to be too far gone..."She told you sullenly. "Why bother thinking about that when it didn't happen, I met you and that's that." She smiles again. "Yeah, you're right." You look at your phone to see that time that had gone by since you had been talking to Gwen. "I should probably be heading home now, my mom would kill me if I didn't get home by six." Gwen's expression darkens as she starts twiddling her fingers. "Could you stay maybe a little longer....?" > You can't As much as you would have wanted too, you had to make stops in between your conversations, otherwise you wouldn't want it to end. "Sorry but I can't, I'll be back tomorrow though, same times twice a day. Even though Gwen's face is sadder then it as before, some happiness seems to be regained to morph her face into that of bitter sweetness. "Promise?"She asks once again. "Promise." She seems assured by that, so you make your way away from the road and begin your walk home. On it though you start to think about Gwen. Not so much of thoughts of interest, but thoughts of worry. With what she just asked for, she seemed incredibly lonely. That was a given though since you were her only source of interaction. In fact her attitude was probably tame in comparison to other spirits who had no other interaction, she wasn't screaming like a maniac compared to the others, so she was more approachable. You would need to keep your promises though to visit her everyday, at least once. You felt as if you would be super guilty if you tried to avoid her or promised her something that you wouldn't be able to keep. Though a more pressing matter was limiting your conversations so you wouldn't end up being late to school anymore, because the excuse you had given your mom would only probably work just that one time. As the sun slowly sank into the horizon, you finally managed to get home, aside from the questioning from your mom nothing else comes up and you get ready for bed. The next day you quickly wake up from bed and get hurriedly get ready to save as much time as possible. You even bothered to set your alarm for a half hour earlier to buy you enough time to meet Gwen. Getting outside, you managed to find yourself jogging a bit without even noticing at first. Getting up to the street with Gwen, she's already looking at you by the time she comes into view. Was she waiting for you to get here? "You're earlier than usual." Gwen notices as she tilts her head. "Yeah. I managed to leave the house pretty early so I could stay and talk with you more before I have to leave." Upon hearing this, Gwen avoids eye contact with you as she tilts her head down. "You didn't have to go that far..." "Nah I wanted too, I enjoy our little conversations." Gwen smiles as she nods her head. "I'm glad." You actually felt pure enjoyment when being around Gwen. You weren't sure at first, but after these meetings with her you could always catch yourself smiling during conversations and could see the same with her. Two weeks had passed as you continued your visits before and after school. With each interaction, the times that Gwen would become sad or bring up something depressing would start to slowly decrease until they were abnormal occurrences to happen. You never seemed to run out of things to talk about or bring up, or if you did yourself, Gwen would change the topic to start something new. It would get to the point in which you would actually become sad when your meetings were over, there were even some times you hadn't even noticed the sun had gone down until she herself brought it up, and suggested that you get yourself home. She didn't usually do this, but there had been occurrences in which passerby's in cars would stop by the curb in which the two of you were and ask you if you were O.K, as people had seen you continuously here each day and were worried that you were lost or sick or something. You had always given the excuse that you were waiting for someone or you just wanted to loiter like a normal teen, most of them bought the excuse although leaving with a troubled expression on your behalf. You didn't really care all that much though if you were being judged, as long as you were able to talk to Gwen. Another thing that you had noticed was that all the scars, wounds, and rotten flesh had been starting to disappear with each returning visit, until it got to the point in which you didn't see it at all. You never would have imagined that you would feel a romantic feeling towards a ghost. Since you always saw them as ugly creatures that plagued this world with the curse of not being able to move on. You wanted to help Gwen, somehow help her out of that street. On the other hand though you didn't want to lose her, being with her was fun, and even though it hadn't been that long, you couldn't really imagine not being with her. There had to be a way in which you could help her without letting her go. Somehow to get her off that street, if it was even possible. You tried to imagine something but nothing came to mind, which frustrated you immensely. It's not like she would know of anything either, she knew just about as much as you did on her condition. You tried to stop thinking about such depressing matters, until it was brought up in one of your conversions by Gwen unexpectedly. "Do you think I'll be here forever..." She asked in a shallow voice, after of series of other unrelated questions. "I doubt it, nothing lasts forever..." You said this, but when you did you wished you hadn't. You had basically said that you and Gwen would eventually come to a end as well, which may be true but still. You looked at her facial expression to see if she caught up on this, but you couldn't tell with how expressionless it was. "Yeah, that's true..." "Who knows what will happen though, it's not like we know for certain what's going to happen to you or which god is going to judge your fate, but I'm sure wherever you're going, it's going to be something enjoyable." You try to comfort her with possibilities. This causes Gwen to laugh, which catches you off guard a bit. "You know, before I died. I thought I was turning atheist with all the thoughts that were coming to my head at the time. I didn't really fear death all that much since I thought it would all just be over in a bright flash, and I would be able to sleep forever....now though." Tears start to well up in Gwen's eyes as she starts wiping them with her palm. "If only you had seen me the first couple of weeks when I was like this. How hard I screamed, how shitty I felt. Looking back on it even I knew was acting insane. I don't know when it happened, but after awhile I stopped feeling, I stopped caring. I just sat on my ass on that stupid road, hoping that one day one of those cars would actually make contact and end this shitty existence, this hell." Tears seem to stop flowing, but her eyes are a deep puffy red as she makes eye contact with you, and gives a warm, small smile. "When I met you, I didn't know how to react at first. I didn't even think you were real, and I had finally gone crazy. When you came back the second time though I knew you were actually there, and I started feeling happy again. I don't even remember the exact time I had been happy before that." There were a few a moments before she said anything else, while you yourself were quiet as you couldn't think of anything to say to respond to that, though at the very least you wanted her to finish everything she had to say before you were to comfort her. "I lied to you..."She says, in a quiet voice that you were barely able to make out. "What do you mean?" "I didn't die four months ago......I died a year ago or.....I think it's been a year by now." "Jesus Christ." You blurt out, not being able to stop yourself. "During the first few months, I was able to walk down the entire avenue, all the way to the next block. I didn't really take advantage of it though since I was still broken during those times, but as each month passed the barrier kept on getting smaller and smaller until it's what it is now. I started getting scared that it would keep on shrinking until I had nothing left but a few feet of walking space. Thankfully it never got to that, but it seemed to stop shrinking around the time that you had arrived. You saved me from getting squished, or whatever happens when the barrier closes on itself, but in a small way.....I wish it had. Then everything would finally come to an end. I could finally sleep."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Silence took over the air between the two of you as no words were spoken. You could tell that it was fear that you felt, but you didn't know why. It couldn't get to you, and it couldn't harm you, but you still felt a tinge of fear. "I remember you." With little cars currently passing by, you didn't really have all the much trouble hearing its voice clearly. It had almost no emotion in it, though it sounded almost normal, as you wouldn't think the person was dead. It didn't say anything after, seemingly waiting for you to reply. "I remember you too." You reply with a voice crack, in which you started coughing to get your vocals straight. "You can....see me?" You couldn't tell if that was confusion or a bit of desperation in how that was said, but you nodded back silently. Seeing your confirmation, the ghost started to drag it's body with its arms, slowly to where you were. Seeing the task made you feel pity for the poor thing with how much trouble it seemed to have had. It took about half a minute for it to finally reach its barrier, which seemed to be the sidewalk that was next to the road. This led the spirit to be a few feet away from you, in which you could now clearly see it's entirety. It was a girl, or so you thought. Besides the missing hair and bulging right eye, the right side of her cheek was torn off exposing dark golden teeth that were blackened by plaque or insects, while her nose was also crooked the right side. As hideous as it all was, you couldn't help to not look away. The fact that you couldn't stress you out a bit. "How long have you been here?" This was the first question that came to your mind, and it was the first one blurted out of your mouth without thinking. "I think...It'll be six or seven months soon..." You could hear the immense sadness and emptiness that came with those words and pauses. The whole situation was already making you feel extremely uncomfortable, but you couldn't really walk away from this now, or at least it wouldn't be right. You didn't really know what else to say though, questions started swarming into your mind, but which ones to ask and how to ask them made you freeze before anything could leave your mouth. “Are you leaving soon…?” She asked you before you could come up with anything. “Ah...yeah, I have s-school so…” The words stuttered out of your mouth as you didn’t want to say it impolitely, but then again you felt horrible as her face reacted to these words. She looked at the sky for a bit before half smiling at you. “Thanks for talking to me, you can go now so you won’t be late.” Even though she gave you the permission, your legs were moving. There had to be more you could do to help this poor soul. What really worried you thought was how calm she was, she didn’t scream like the other ones, but she seemed just as broken nevertheless, maybe even more so. > You leave Something was off to you, you regretted this contact with this spirit completely. Not because of fear or annoyance, but with a feeling of shame that stuck onto you like a foul stench. Slowly but surely without a word, you lifted your dead legs as you made your way back onto your commute on the sidewalk towards your school. You didn't want to look back, and you didn't. This was the encounter that you had regretted the most out of every single one of them from before. What irritated you was how tame it was, but it was for that reason that made you feel even the more terrible. You were expecting a horrible spirit all along, and your assumptions of what was to come through you off so bad in which now you didn't expect it at all. As you continue to walk, you leave the spirit behind in the distance from what you can tell. You don't plan on interacting with anymore any time soon. > Weeks pass A week after the encounter with the girl on the road, and your health started to deteriorate rapidly. It started when you vomited in class, causing you to be sent home from the day. You missed the first few days out of shame and embarrassment for the unexpected bile, but as more passed you couldn't go to school even if you wanted too. It takes a large amount of energy to do even the simplest of things such as walking around or going downstairs to eat dinner. Your mom who was extremely worried about your worsening condition, made an appointment to get you checked out by a doctor as soon as she could have it done. Though you honestly wished your mom had just taken you straight to the emergency room, as you weren't exaggerating when you said that you wouldn't last until the doctor's appointment. As it would have it, it seemed like that would be the case. During one of your usual days of resting in bed while your mom was at work, your eyes got heavy and you slowly shut them while thinking you would take a pretty quick nap before your mom was to get home. You never woke up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WARNING! (The fake one) This story contains mature subject matter concerning teens and is meant to help said age group “experience” a problem they may encounter in their life and show the consequences of their actions if they handle it in the wrong way. There will be separate sections for boys and girls for as we all know, both genders experience different struggles during their precious formative years. If you are a pre-pubescent, you should NOT be reading this story, you should be in bed. Such mature subject matter is not for your tender young eyes. If you are an adult and you are a parent, perhaps you should “experience” this story with your teen, for they may still have further questions about the subject matter. Questions that you should provide answer for, because if you do not they may learn the wrong answers from their peers, the streets, minorities or even (gasp) the evil dirty internet! If you are an adult and NOT a parent, get the fuck out of here. You probably just want to “play” the girl path and choose all the slutty choices, you fucking pervert. It is the hope that this story may somehow help teens better deal with the problems found in this story in real life. And remember if you do turn out to be gay (boys) or sexually loose (girls) it doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means you’re going to die of AIDS and burn in hell. Now what gender are you? > You male You are a typical male teen…well maybe not entirely typical. In your current state you aren’t very popular in school. Sometimes you feel left out of things, particularly social gatherings involving girls. Maybe being popular would makes things easier and make you happier, but then you also wonder if you even belong here, as you have a hard time relating to people sometimes. Well, what are YOU going to do about it? > You attempt to make friends because you NEED to be accepted by your peers You aren’t anybody unless you’re popular! Okay well it’s not entirely a bad thing to be social; it’s perfectly natural to want to go along with the rest of the sheep. Though what KIND of sheep you’re going to be going along with might make a big difference in your life. You must choose, but choose wisely because this is ALL going on your permanent record. > You join a sports team! Jocks get all the girls! Sure sports, that’s always a good way to conform and it does attract the ladies usually. A lot better than joining the chess club would anyway. You’re unsure of what to pick, so you go by the old chestnut and pick football… After laughing his ass off the coach actually gives you a chance at training, as it turns out, you aren’t completely inept, but you don’t really have ability that makes you stand out. You’ll probably get cut and then you’ll be back where you started and you don’t want that. While you’re sitting in the locker room wondering what the hell you’re going to do, one of your team mates approaches you. “Hey, I saw you out there, you looked pretty good.” Immediately you go on the defensive. “Hey, hey! I ain’t into that gay shit!” you exclaim protectively grabbing your dick and backing your ass against the wall. “What? Oh. Ha ha! No! No, I was just saying you probably got what it takes to make the team, but you just need that extra edge. I mean who has time to waste doing all that training right? I’d rather be spending my free time fucking the sluts and partying, y’know what I’m sayin’? That’s why I take this!” Your teammate shows you a needle. “Is that…” “Yep, steroids! Combine it with these pain killers…” He shows you a bag of pills. “And you got what Legends are made of!” “Um…aren’t those like illegal?” “Fuck yeah! But what are you some fucking choir boy? You wanna get on the team and fuck all those pretty cheerleader bitches you better start taking this shit. What’s the big deal? All the pros use them!” > You take the drugs: it's the breakfast of Champions! Hey if the pros use them, then it MUST be good! You take the needle and pills for later use. Before the next try outs you shoot up and feel a surge of energy! You feel like you could lift a thousand pounds! Due to you breaking another member’s leg in training, the coach doesn’t hesitate to allow you on the team. As the weeks go by, you start pumping a lot of iron and have muscles like you never had before and certainly a lot more confidence. Your awkwardness with girls has ended and after a few winning games your popularity has grown. You are now a “somebody”. Hey steroid freak, don’t celebrate just yet, now you get to see how much you fuck up! You’re continual abuse of steroids has increased your aggression to an unnatural degree, at one point you get angry at someone in one your classmates and smash his face into a bloody fucking pulp. It takes the teacher and a couple of your classmates to keep you from killing the poor sonofabitch. Fortunately for you, since you’re so “necessary” to win the next game, you get off with just suspension from school for three days. During this time you attend a party (Your parents don’t dare try to stop you) where you hook up with some chick. You and her start making out and then once again you start getting aggressive, she tells you to stop which only makes you angrier so you bitch slap her to the floor and start ripping her clothes off. While you attempt rape, you come across a big problem which is that the steroids have shrunk your balls and made you impotent. Now you’re even MORE pissed, so you just start beating the poor girl and blaming her for your own problems eventually breaking her neck. You aren’t done yet though, as you’re insistent on still trying to get your limp dick hard even after her body has expelled all its fluids from the “death release”. At this point some other people from the party enter the room and see this grisly sight. When they all shout “HOLY SHIT!” you instinctively realize you need to get the fuck out of here, so you jump out the window and land wrong twisting your ankle badly, but you pop some painkillers and start running. You don’t get far when a cop car attempts to stop you, but when the cops get out you charge into the first one and break both of his arms before he can even draw his gun, the second cop shoots you twice, but you don’t even feel it and you grab him by the throat and rip out his larynx, then you flip the car over crushing the other cop lying on the ground in pain with broken arms. More cops come and seeing what you’ve done they don’t take any chances and just blaze away at you with shotguns blowing big chunks of meat out of you finally putting an end to your ‘roid rage as well as your life. Fortunately you didn’t really feel anything since you were still flying on painkillers at the time. The moral of the story? Don’t do steroids they make your nuts shrink and cause impotence. And let’s be honest, it doesn’t matter how many cops you can kill with your bare hands, you just aren’t a man if you’re unable to rape a woman, shrinky dink! And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Sure sports, that’s always a good way to conform and it does attract the ladies usually. A lot better than joining the chess club would anyway. You’re unsure of what to pick, so you go by the old chestnut and pick football… After laughing his ass off the coach actually gives you a chance at training, as it turns out, you aren’t completely inept, but you don’t really have ability that makes you stand out. You’ll probably get cut and then you’ll be back where you started and you don’t want that. While you’re sitting in the locker room wondering what the hell you’re going to do, one of your team mates approaches you. “Hey, I saw you out there, you looked pretty good.” Immediately you go on the defensive. “Hey, hey! I ain’t into that gay shit!” you exclaim protectively grabbing your dick and backing your ass against the wall. “What? Oh. Ha ha! No! No, I was just saying you probably got what it takes to make the team, but you just need that extra edge. I mean who has time to waste doing all that training right? I’d rather be spending my free time fucking the sluts and partying, y’know what I’m sayin’? That’s why I take this!” Your teammate shows you a needle. “Is that…” “Yep, steroids! Combine it with these pain killers…” He shows you a bag of pills. “And you got what Legends are made of!” “Um…aren’t those like illegal?” “Fuck yeah! But what are you some fucking choir boy? You wanna get on the team and fuck all those pretty cheerleader bitches you better start taking this shit. What’s the big deal? All the pros use them!” > You no! You'll make the team on your own! Determination is all you need! Drugs are for losers! You saw that movie, about that guy, who had a lot of heart or something! And you saw that other movie about that other guy, who had a lot of heart or something! In fact you’ve seen A LOT of movies about “that guy, who had a lot of heart or something” you can’t remember any of their names, but if they can all do it, you certainly can! You turn down the drugs and start training a lot harder and trying to focus on the prize. You get that fuckin’ eye of the goddamn tiger! Yeah! Ain’t nothing going to stop you! You’re gonna get on the team, become popular, and date the head cheerleader because if there’s anything you’ve learned from movies it’s that NOTHING can triumph over the human spirit! Though the better thing to have learned would’ve been that real life ain’t a fucking movie! The next time you go to tryouts you’re so fucking cocksure that you end up not protecting yourself as much as you sure and when you get hit hard by one of your team mates you get SERIOUSLY injured. Like really bad. No, seriously, you get really fucked up…A LOT. In fact you’re a damn vegetable. Of course you don’t stay that way for long, as your parents aren’t religious and as such don’t feel your life is worth anything to them anymore so they authorize the doctors to pull the plug. Its kindest thing they’ve ever done for you. The moral of the story? Don’t try out for a team that you have no business trying out for in some inane quest to be popular. All the “heart” in the world doesn’t mean shit when you got a 400 pound asshole slamming into you with the power of a small bull elephant and your own body frame is more like that of a half starved pigmy marmoset! Now the chess club? Yeah, maybe that’s not gonna get you the head cheerleader, but you probably could’ve at least gotten to third base with the asthmatic girl who drools when you kiss her! And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t anybody unless you’re popular! Okay well it’s not entirely a bad thing to be social; it’s perfectly natural to want to go along with the rest of the sheep. Though what KIND of sheep you’re going to be going along with might make a big difference in your life. You must choose, but choose wisely because this is ALL going on your permanent record. > You join a band! Musicians get all the girls! Well you don’t seem to have any other talent of any kind so being a musician might be the way to go. You decide joining band in school is out though. You need to join a REAL band, if you want to be popular. You know there’s a group of guys that THINK they’re musicians, so lacking any better ideas you head to the garage where they play horribly in their spare time. “Hey guys, I heard you need a fourth member for your band.” You shout over the noise they’re causing. The bald headed one with the sunglasses and guitar addresses you. “What? Naw man, we’ve just decided to be a three piece and I’ll be singing all the songs. It’s a lot easier to keep track of that way.” He says as he drinks a can of beer. “Is that beer?” you ask. “Huh? Yeah, you ain’t never seen one before or something?” “Don’t your parents care?” “Shit no! Zack’s Mom is fuckin’ cool! She let’s us practice here and drink all the beer we like!” a rather hyper bass player exclaims. “Yeah, and she’s like fuckin’ hot too! I’d seriously fuck the shit outta her!” the drummer adds. “Hey fuck you Jake, I told you to stop talkin’ about my Mom!” “Come on gimme a chance, I really want to be in the band!” you whine. “Shit, this guy sounds like that stupid bitch a month ago that blew all of us when we told her that in order to see if she could sing well, she needed to exercise her throat and tongue.” The bass play says. “Yeah, well we all know you’re a secret fag Ed, but we won’t be doing THAT. (Sigh) Ah fuck it, I don’t really like singing anyway, here’s our latest song lyrics let’s see what you can do.” You’ve been given a chance to join something bigger than yourself! This is the biggest thing that’s ever occurred to you in your whole insignificant life! Now you just have to figure out a way to NOT fuck it up, which may be difficult since now you’re all nervous to the point of being paralyzed. Good thing this isn’t sex, knowing you, you probably would’ve fucking fainted when the girl unfastened her bra. > You start singing You go up to the mic and meekly start trying to “sing” over the deafening noise. It’s clear you aren’t loud enough and Zack and the others start shouting at you as they continue to play. “SING INTO THE MOTHERFUCKER MAN!” “YEAH, DON’T BE A GODDAMN PUSSY!” This unique form of encouragement doesn’t make you sing any better. In fact you’re just pathetic all the way around considering that you can’t even do better than a bunch of losers who can’t play worth a shit in the first place. Finally Zack stops and begins to berate you in a more hostile manner. “Get the fuck outta here! You ain’t cool and you ain’t no musician ya fuckin’ dick!” he says pushing you. “Yeah well you aren’t either!” you imaginatively retort. At this point Zack pushes you harder in the bass player’s amp where a bunch of half drunk beer cans were sitting on top of. “My beer!” he shouts as you knock all of it over and land on the floor where the deadly combination of wetness and electricity mix and electrocutes you in a spectacular fashion. The band naturally just looks on in awe while you fry to death. “Damn, that would’ve been cool if we were playing at a party!” “Yeah, but now my amp is fucking trashed! Shit!” “Well, just save your money for a new amp instead of using it to pay for fifteen minutes with Zack’s mom.” “Goddamn it I told you to stop talking about my mom!” The moral of the story? If you aren’t “cool” to begin with, joining a rock band isn’t going to suddenly transform you to be cool. Fumbling around trying to be something you aren’t just gets you killed in freak accidents. If you’re a lame ass unhip square then excel at that. Sure you’ll live a boring humdrum life filled with equally boring people who think the “email joke of the day” is the most hilarious thing ever, but at least when you eventually blow your brains out it will be AFTER you went on a killing spree from the tedious existence, rather than the over done rock n’ roll suicide! And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well you don’t seem to have any other talent of any kind so being a musician might be the way to go. You decide joining band in school is out though. You need to join a REAL band, if you want to be popular. You know there’s a group of guys that THINK they’re musicians, so lacking any better ideas you head to the garage where they play horribly in their spare time. “Hey guys, I heard you need a fourth member for your band.” You shout over the noise they’re causing. The bald headed one with the sunglasses and guitar addresses you. “What? Naw man, we’ve just decided to be a three piece and I’ll be singing all the songs. It’s a lot easier to keep track of that way.” He says as he drinks a can of beer. “Is that beer?” you ask. “Huh? Yeah, you ain’t never seen one before or something?” “Don’t your parents care?” “Shit no! Zack’s Mom is fuckin’ cool! She let’s us practice here and drink all the beer we like!” a rather hyper bass player exclaims. “Yeah, and she’s like fuckin’ hot too! I’d seriously fuck the shit outta her!” the drummer adds. “Hey fuck you Jake, I told you to stop talkin’ about my Mom!” “Come on gimme a chance, I really want to be in the band!” you whine. “Shit, this guy sounds like that stupid bitch a month ago that blew all of us when we told her that in order to see if she could sing well, she needed to exercise her throat and tongue.” The bass play says. “Yeah, well we all know you’re a secret fag Ed, but we won’t be doing THAT. (Sigh) Ah fuck it, I don’t really like singing anyway, here’s our latest song lyrics let’s see what you can do.” You’ve been given a chance to join something bigger than yourself! This is the biggest thing that’s ever occurred to you in your whole insignificant life! Now you just have to figure out a way to NOT fuck it up, which may be difficult since now you’re all nervous to the point of being paralyzed. Good thing this isn’t sex, knowing you, you probably would’ve fucking fainted when the girl unfastened her bra. > You drink a beer to give yourself "confidence" Well if your mom’s any indication beer makes you do a whole bunch of shit you wouldn’t normally do, hell its main reason why you were even born. You grab a beer and drink it. “Hey motherfucker, you ain’t part of the band yet! You can’t just be grabbing the damn beer like that! You better know how to wail on that fuckin’ mic!” Zack warns. Oddly even after only one beer you feel somewhat less nervous. You have no problem now screaming obscenities and nonsensical words into the microphone at the top of your lungs. After a few more songs (and a few more beers) you even start making up some words yourself and some minor theatrics. Zack and the rest are pleased with your display. “Yeah, you might work out. We’re playing at a party this weekend, do some crazier shit and I think we’ll rock the fuckin’ house!” “Will there be (hic!) beer?” “Duh, of course it’s a party.” “Cool.” You stumble home in a buzzed state. You’d probably get in trouble, but your own parents are currently fucking their brains out while on the sauce themselves so you manage to sneak in and avoid any lecture. For the rest of the week you become more and more acquainted with the joys of alcohol, A LOT. As it turns out, you’re one of those people that can drink and drink and not pass out right away. Guess you have Mom and Dad’s genes to thank for that. They finally came through for you. When you arrive to sing at the party, you immediately let the rest of the band members set up the equipment while you just drink in the meantime. By the time it’s ready to go on you’re already three sheets to the wind, and puke all over the place, but gosh darn it, that’s just part of the act! ALL the rock stars do it! At last you’re finally cool! Rock stars tend to do a lot of drugs too; while at the party someone offers you a ton of unknown pills which you greedily swallow. Could be dangerous considering you don’t know what they are, you took a bunch of them AND you’ve been drinking… Later in your now drugged up and drunken state you meet some skank. In fact she’s the school skank that everyone’s fucked in one way or another (Well except YOU of course) she was impressed by how you managed to vomit in tune with the “music”, in fact she’s so impressed by you, she takes you upstairs and fucks you eight ways from Sunday. Mind you this could also be dangerous considering you didn’t use any protection and this girl probably has a snatch as sanitary as an inbred hillbilly’s outhouse in the summer during a heat wave whose owner has chronic explosive diarrhea. After your encounter with “Miss Friendly” you decide in your drunken state that you should probably go home, because it would be the responsible thing to do. (Nevermind the fact that you were supposed to do another set which you’ve completely forgotten about) So you get in your parent’s car that you “borrowed” and begin to drive home… Okay you DO realize how dangerous that is right? No of course not, you’re an indestructible “rock star”. Anyway, you end up driving in the wrong direction and eventually drive into buttfuck farm country getting yourself totally lost. Speaking of buttfucking, you barely stop in time to notice a cow is in your way, at which point you get out of the car and…uh…for some odd reason, fucking that skank wasn’t enough for you… The next day a farmer finds you passed out next to his poor defiled cow with your pants around your ankles and your dick covered in cow shit and jizz. After beating the hell out of you he takes you to the authorities. To cut a long story shorter. You never live down the shame of fucking a cow in the ass and become the laughing stock of the town. You also get put in a mental institution where you become even more depressed when a perverse orderly molests you every night. Eventually you put yourself out of your misery by drinking bleach kept in the janitor’s closet. The moral of the story? Yeah, the rock life style is filled with alcoholism, drug abuse and irresponsible sex practices, but nobody tells you that it can lead to fucking a cow in the ass and cleaning product suicides. Not so “cool” now is it, cow fucker? And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t anybody unless you’re popular! Okay well it’s not entirely a bad thing to be social; it’s perfectly natural to want to go along with the rest of the sheep. Though what KIND of sheep you’re going to be going along with might make a big difference in your life. You must choose, but choose wisely because this is ALL going on your permanent record. > You join a gang! Gangstas get all the girls! Yep, nothing cooler than being in a gang. Sellin drugs, bustin’ caps, smackin’ the hoes… No wait; you’re a goddamn suburbanite, meaning the gangs in your “hood” are made up of a bunch of wannabe wiggers that learned everything about the “gangsta” lifestyle by watching rap videos. At best you’ll probably just be smoking pot, drinking beer and talkin’ a lot of shit. Still, it’s cooler than what you’re doing now. You aren’t sure of how to go about this though. You know there are “gang members” in your school that you could approach, but maybe you’d have an easier time joining a gang where the people don’t actually know you. > You join the gang in your school You approach the leader of your school’s gang (Kaspa Killa and Da Ghosts) and tell him you want to join. “Whatchu mean you want to join? This ain’t no place fo’ wack ass perpatrators! Just straight up hustlas! Know what I’m sayin mothafucka?” Kaspa says getting in your face. “Yeah, yeah, I hear ya, but I really want to show I’m down.” You retort trying not to show weakness. “Oh really? Aight, we’ll see. Meet us at my house after school and we’ll see if you’re really down or not.” After school, you head over to Kaspa’s house where he and the rest of the Ghosts are waiting for you in his backyard. They don’t look friendly either, in fact they look like they’re going to do you bodily harm. “Aight bitch, let’s see if you can take a beat down!” Kaspa says as he advances on you with the rest. Hey this is how it’s done. In order to join a gang you get beat in to show your fuckin’ heart. No time to punk out now. Time to take your beating and prove you’re down. Kaspa takes the first swing at you and clocks you in the jaw causing you to fall to the ground. You spit out some blood and attempt to get up only to feel kicks to your side, stomach, and head. Any attempt to fight back is met with an increase in kicks and punches. You think it’ll all be over soon, and you’re right in more ways than one… One of the Ghosts gets so overzealous that he drops a very large rock on your head cracking it open. You’re barely in a state of consciousness as you begin to lose blood at a more rapid rate. “Holy shit dude! What’d you do that for?!” “I got carried away!” “Oh fuck I think you killed him!” “I did? Oh no! Oh shit! No! I don’t wanna go to jail!” “Hey I didn’t have any part of this! YOU did it!” “Shut up all of you! Nah, he’s still alive, but he’s probably gonna die…let’s throw him in the woods where nobody can find him and nobody say SHIT about this to anyone!” Kaspa orders. The Ghosts take your now unconscious body and shove it in one of their cars and drive you to the woods. After finding a secluded spot they dump it and haul ass out of there. You never wake up and after a day, you die of your internal (and external) head trauma. And even worse you’re eaten by a wandering hungry bear that has been down his luck in finding suitable nourishment, so your body isn’t even found which would’ve lead to an investigation. The Ghosts however gain a little more confidence in their gang status since they have now officially killed someone. The moral the story? Getting beat up to join some stupid ass gang is one of the more idiotic concepts of the “lifestyle”. And it really doesn’t prove shit anymore considering you’re most likely going to be shooting at someone anyway. You were a damn fucktard for going along with it. If you have to indulge in gang activity, don’t get beat in, offer to bust a cap in someone’s ass. It serves the same purpose as showing that you’re “down” and you don’t get your head kicked into mush in the process. And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Yep, nothing cooler than being in a gang. Sellin drugs, bustin’ caps, smackin’ the hoes… No wait; you’re a goddamn suburbanite, meaning the gangs in your “hood” are made up of a bunch of wannabe wiggers that learned everything about the “gangsta” lifestyle by watching rap videos. At best you’ll probably just be smoking pot, drinking beer and talkin’ a lot of shit. Still, it’s cooler than what you’re doing now. You aren’t sure of how to go about this though. You know there are “gang members” in your school that you could approach, but maybe you’d have an easier time joining a gang where the people don’t actually know you. > You join a different gang You don’t think the guys in your school will accept you since they already now how lame you are, so you decide to join a different gang. You know of a bunch of mean looking guys who all hang out with each other a few miles from your house in a more remote area. You never really paid attention to what they’re all about, but they seem like they’re a gang, so you decide to check ‘em out. You head over to the area where you see a bunch of vans and bikes parked outside a run down looking house. You hear partying going on and music, then as you get closer you hear the sound of a shotgun being racked. “Alright, just turn around boy. Slowly.” “Holy shit mister! I don’t want no trouble” you say turning around to see a fat man in overalls. “Yeah? Well you just might be in a whole mess of it. Whatchu doin’ here sneakin’ around on private property? You a jew?” “Uh, no…I just, well I passed by here once or twice before and I noticed you guys. And I was looking if I could join your gang.” “Join our gang? Ha ha! Shit boy! We ain’t no gang!” “Um, you’re not?” “Hell naw! Only niggers and spics have gangs! We’re an organization dedicated to the purity of the white race!” “Oh.” “Hey, your blood’s pure isn’t it? I mean you ain’t got some mud race mixed with you do ya? You ain’t no faggot are ya?” “Um no, and no.” “Well hell, come on in and meet the rest of the folks! As long as you’re white yer all right!” Not really sure of how to act, you go along with the big guy holding the shotgun. You meet lots of people, most of which have shaved heads and swastikas tattoos. There are a few women there, but everyone is definitely a white supremacist. Oddly they’re also all friendly with you. In fact you think this is the only time you’ve ever been treated okay by a large group of people. One of them tells you that he thinks you just feel alienated because as a white person you’ve been fed evil Jewish propaganda to feel ashamed of yourself, but they say when the revolution comes, good white people will be able to take the country back like God intended. Again, you’re not sure what to make of all this, but you’re so glad for acceptance that you agree to listen to more Nazi philosophy. A few months go by you’re pretty much a believer, as the head of the local American Nazi Party chapter Daniel Count manages to weave half truths, misinformation and outright lies into your willing little head which is now twisted completely into believing things like Hitler being the true messiah for the white race. You end up getting expelled from school when you openly say that the Holocaust didn’t happen and that the Jew is using the black man as muscle to keep the white man down. Naturally your parents, as fucked up as they are, don’t approve of this sort of behavior and try to put you into therapy, but you call them race traitors and run away from home to your new skinhead buddies who embrace you with open arms where you have a great time with all of them. Finally you’ve found a place that accepts you. Unfortunately for you, this skinhead hangout has been under FBI watch for months and one day they have enough evidence to finally bust the lot of them for owning and trading illegal weapons mostly of military ordinance. You happen to be there when the shit goes down. The FBI storm the compound which results in a violent shootout. You join in to help your fellows, but are shot in the back by an undercover FBI agent before you even get a chance to kill any of the evil Zionists. Well they might've "Saved Hitler's Brain" but nothing is saving your dead ass. The moral of the story? You joined a bunch of fuckin’ Nazis, ya dumb shit; what the fuck did you think was going to happen? Even if you’re not into the whole liberal PC shit, you should’ve remembered at least one thing… Being a racist typically limits your pussy seeking options down to only white women (and usually only ugly white women at that) and as a hetero male, you want to ALWAYS leave those options as open as possible, not limit them. Anyway, the Nazis LOST the goddamn war, meaning you basically sided with losers; hence you were a loser, and got yourself killed ya racist fucktard! Where’s your Hitler now? Nyaah! And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t anybody unless you’re popular! Okay well it’s not entirely a bad thing to be social; it’s perfectly natural to want to go along with the rest of the sheep. Though what KIND of sheep you’re going to be going along with might make a big difference in your life. You must choose, but choose wisely because this is ALL going on your permanent record. > You join a gaming group! Geeks get all the girls...um no wait... Well at least you’re embracing the fact that you’re an uncool geek, it’s good to be true to yourself! Of course you realize you won’t be anymore popular than you are right now, in fact you’ll possibly be even LESS popular, but again at least you’ll be with liked minded folks such as yourself. Also, your chances of ever getting to even TOUCH a girl have probably decreased dramatically, but still at least you’ll have a hobby to keep yourself occupied on those dateless nights you’ll be in store for. However all gaming groups aren’t created equal, are you actually going to be playing games with other people in person, OR are you just going retreat into the internet world and join an online game? > You well, you SHOULD have some sort of human contact... You already have tons of D&D books and shit, time to actually put all that knowledge into practice. On your lunch break at school you head over to the table where you see a bunch of sickly pale people playing with some figures. Unsurprisingly, there are lots of empty seats around this little group of social rejects. When you approach they look in your direction nervously like a bunch of ferrets getting ready to flee from a giant predator. “Uh hey guys, can I play?” you ask. At first they look suspicious, but then they seem so overjoyed that somebody new is actually speaking to them that they excitedly tell you to pull up a chair. The “head geek” tells you his name is Richard and starts speaking about how you should come over to his house where you can get your character properly started, after which you and the rest can start a whole new campaign! At last, you’ve found your niche! Later that day after school, you head over to Richard’s house excited about the fact that you actually have people to hang out with now. When you get to his house, he answers the door in a red robe; the others you met at school appear behind him dressed the same way. “Welcome, new acolyte are you ready to take a journey to the next dimension?” he asks. “Um, sure I guess. Why are you all dressed like that?” “Because, in order to embark on our new adventure we must BECOME our characters and you will too, here take this robe and feel the power it will surely give you!” You take the red robe and put it on, but you don’t feel any different. You didn’t realize that this group was into live action role playing, but still you’re up for it. At least you’re no longer by yourself. Richard then motions you inside where upon you see his whole house is decked out in occult shit and candles lit everywhere which raises some questions. “Wow, your parents let you set up the house like this?” “My Mom allows me to, because she is…THE HIGH PRIESTESS OF THE RED MOON! NOW BASK IN HER GLORY AND MAKE NO NOISE UNLESS SHE COMMANDS IT!” Suddenly a woman dressed in a tight skimpy leather outfit comes down the stairs, she holds large staff in her hand. She brushes her long black hair aside and addresses you all. “I see that you all are prepared for tonight’s adventure. Good, because it will be one you won’t forget…don’t think I will go easy on you because you’re my son Richard!” “Of course not M…I mean High Priestess!” “Yes…that is the proper way to address me…mmmm.” Richard’s Mom begins to passionately kiss him on the lips, which is really freaking you out at this point, but you don’t know what to make of all it exactly, maybe its all just part of the game and you want to be a team player so you don’t say anything. Just then she notices you. “Ah you are the NEW disciple, Richard told me about.” Suddenly Richard’s Mom grabs your balls and squeezes causing you to almost yell in pain, before she puts her other hand over your mouth. “Don’t you dare scream! Don’t you DARE make a sound before your High Priestess unless I tell you to! Those are the rules! I demand silence from you, if you are to receive my gift and blessing…” Again you comply as Richard’s Mom ceases squeezes your balls and begins stroking them instead along with your cock until it gets hard, then she gets on her knees and lifts your robe up to finish you off properly. You can’t believe what’s going on; you never thought joining a gaming group would lead to you getting blown by a sexy MILF, granted this whole set up is really fucking weird, but at this point you don’t care! When you cum in her mouth you unleash a moan of ecstasy. Way to go dipshit, you just broke the rules. Richard’s Mom suddenly gets off her knees and spits your seamen right into your eyes, blinding you and then she kicks you to the floor. “I TOLD YOU SILENCE! You broke the rules and now your character must pay the ultimate price!” While you attempt to wipe your eyes, you are grabbed by Richard and the rest of the group. You attempt to struggle, but they seem to be stronger than you thought and after a couple of hits to the head by Richard’s Mom’s staff, you’re even less likely to fight back. Soon you are taken into a dark room with an altar where your are placed on top of, and Richard’s Mom makes a few nonsensical chants before plunging a dagger into your chest and sacrifices you to the Red Moon gods. Afterwards, they all have an orgy in your blood and gain one level. You on the other hand are dead, and will be unable to start a new character. The moral of the story? For fuck’s sake, sure you were desperate for friends, but it doesn’t matter how damn starved for socialization you are, when you see a bunch of fuckers dressed in robes looking like B-movie Satanists and one of them is making out with his own goddamn Mom, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE NOW. You should’ve gotten out of there as soon as you realized they were LARPers. Only fucking weird ass people get into that shit anyway. Either that or follow the fucking rules next time. And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well at least you’re embracing the fact that you’re an uncool geek, it’s good to be true to yourself! Of course you realize you won’t be anymore popular than you are right now, in fact you’ll possibly be even LESS popular, but again at least you’ll be with liked minded folks such as yourself. Also, your chances of ever getting to even TOUCH a girl have probably decreased dramatically, but still at least you’ll have a hobby to keep yourself occupied on those dateless nights you’ll be in store for. However all gaming groups aren’t created equal, are you actually going to be playing games with other people in person, OR are you just going retreat into the internet world and join an online game? > You uh...maybe you should practice your social skills online, before you move on to real people... Still being socially inept, you decide to join one of the many online gaming groups. You figure if you fuck up in making friends, you can just change your name and pose as someone new. Ah yes the joys of animosity on the internet! First you go out and buy the most popular online game right now to install it on your computer and within just a few minutes you’re in a whole new virtual world! You create a basic character and set off eager to make online friends who you can play with at any time! After taking you elf character D’annt Felspy through the starting town, you find out that folks aren’t too friendly with you at all. You keep getting the taunts of “U STOOPID NOOB” and “U SUXXOR LOL!” It’s all very disheartening. However all is not lost, eventually you find some people that invite you into their clan called the “New Adventuring Mighty Brave Leaders Alliance” which you find to be an odd name, but they seem very friendly towards you so you agree to join. They say they like to recruit young newbies like yourself because they all know what its like to be persecuted for simply being who they are. At last you think you’ve found some friends here and as luck would have it many of the members of the New Adventuring Mighty Brave Leaders Alliance seem to be chicks, and many of them seem to be flirtatious with you! You might be a big loser with the ladies in real life, but online you’re cat nip! You’re already getting two chicks, one named Jamie and another called Kelly asking you to send a picture of yourself to them, but you don’t have a scanner, so you say you’ll have to do that later. In the meantime you also want to play the game a bit more, which is cool in itself. Thanks to your lack of a real social life you have tons of time to play the game and you begin to level your elf up very quickly. Pretty soon your character is very powerful in fact one of the MOST powerful and you’re getting a lot of respect not just from your clan, but from other players as well. When you reach level fifty, Kelly says she wants to have “teh syber secks” with you. Of course being the horny virgin you are, you jump at the chance. Your characters go into you own private castle that you acquired when you defeated the blue assed giant dragon of vomitious destruction and you proceed to type misspelled swear words to each other while masturbating with your free hand. You and Kelly do this a lot. She says she really wants to meet you in person soon. You never thought that this could ever happen. You’re popular, you’ve got friends, you’ve got power and you’ve got a girlfriend. Yeah, it’s the virtual world, but you’ll take it because you are GOD here! Sadly the big crash comes to end it all, literally. While playing the game one day, a freak power surge fries your computer while you’re in the middle of playing! After panicking a bit, you manage to get your computer working and rebooted again. You hastily go online to check your character to see what equipment you lost since it was awhile since you saved, but unfortunately you didn’t just lose your equipment you lost your entire character. Your elf is GONE. You are devastated by this loss. Your fellow clan members sympathize with you, and say they still like you and will accept you no matter what new character you play. Kelly says she still wants to meet you in person so that she can better help you through your loss, but none of it comforts you. You identified so much with your character that you actually began to believe you WERE him and now he’s dead and you feel like you should be too. With this last morbid thought in your mind you end up hanging yourself over your loss. Or as they say on teh internet: GAME OVER BITCH! LOL! The moral of the story? GET OFF THE FUCKING INTERNET AND STOP TAKING SHIT ON IT SO FUCKING SERIOUSLY! It’s the goddamn virtual world for fuck’s sake. And by the way, you were “virtually fucking” a fat forty year old pedophile, not some hot chick. Shit, 90% of the “chicks” online are really guys anyway. That’s another lesson you probably should’ve learned, you cyber fag. And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are a typical male teen…well maybe not entirely typical. In your current state you aren’t very popular in school. Sometimes you feel left out of things, particularly social gatherings involving girls. Maybe being popular would makes things easier and make you happier, but then you also wonder if you even belong here, as you have a hard time relating to people sometimes. Well, what are YOU going to do about it? > You mope about it, but don't actually do anything because that might take some effort Oh you’re so complex and nobody understands you. Or more likely nobody even cares. In any case you become withdrawn and start dressing in black constantly. You stay in your room a lot with the shades drawn and the lights low and don’t move too much. Once a day your mother dusts you and leaves some food and drink by your bed. Once a week your father takes your pulse to make sure you’re actually still alive. In school you’re a little more active, (Well you DO still have to walk to class) but not much. You’re about as popular as you were before, but now you have the added bonus of being known as that “creepy guy”. Folks sometimes whisper things about you, most of them quite amusing to people other than yourself. Oddly you aren’t physically bullied, but that might be due to you being known as the creepy guy. (Because we ALL know the creepy guy is the one most likely to come to school and massacre everyone) > You play up your new image because now you finally have some attention! Ah ha, so you weren’t really depressed after all, you were just looking for attention! Way to be a manipulative little bastard. Still, whatever works right? In playing up to your new image you begin to say really creepy shit…. You go up to a group of jocks and ask them if they ever worry about someone putting poison in their water bottles. You tell a teacher you couldn’t complete your assignment on time because you’ve been having ongoing wet dreams about your Mom. You go up to a group of girls and tell them that their hair smells so pretty and how you would like to cut off some of it to hang from your bedroom ceiling. And similar macabre stuff. You of course think all of this is incredibly funny and think yourself as being incredibly clever for coming up with this “amazing” plan for attention. You completely succeed in your endeavor and have increased your infamy tenfold. Of course now you aren’t just the “creepy guy” you’re now the “scary ticking time bomb” People are genuinely getting afraid of you, of course there’s ALWAYS that element that thinks it’s “cool”. As a result you start attracting like minded individuals… well not quite. Mainly because the difference between you and them is that you’re just faking for the most part, while these miscreants are genuinely fucked up in the head. Still they’re the closest thing you have to friends so you hang out with them. All of you tend to hang out and talk about all the people you don’t like and all the minor slights you’ve perceived (Real or imagined) A lot of them start talking about how they wish they could “punish” all their “enemies”. Soon these talks begin to increase as you all play more violent video games, listen to heavy metal music and watch horror movies; all which are undoubtedly pushing you all in a more aggressive nature. Then one of your new trench coat buddies, Anthony, finally gets the motivation. He mentions how his Dad has a bunch of rifles and pistols. He then mentions how you ALL should start planning to carry out your revenge by next month. What started out as a cry for attention for you has developed into something else entirely. Part of you does flirt with this idea though. You mean there are a lot of people you don’t really like at school… > You go ahead with the plan Yeah! You’re going to teach all those assholes a lesson! You know how much they all talk about you behind your back! Well that’s going to stop soon! Forever! You and your crew of outcast sociopaths begin your plan. You map out the entire school and where the exit points are, the best time of day to start, the most populated areas, etc. The DAY soon arrives and you go over to Anthony’s house instead of going to school that morning. The gang’s all there ready to creative major mayhem, and you’re ready to join them. As you take the sub-machine gun, you’re wondering where Anthony’s parents are. “They’re lying upstairs in bed with their heads blown off, where do you think?” he remarks. You all pile into the car with enough weaponry and ammo to take out a small army and drive to the school. You ain’t going out like those Columbine losers. You got shit more planned out than they did. You definitely have plans to escape afterwards. You can live on the run, and when you get to Mexico, you’ll be home free! Of course all your “grand plans” go to shit when you actually get there. Not that you really had things as organized like you delusionally believed anyway. First of all, one your buddies is so hot on killing people, he starts blasting folks as soon as he gets out of the car, meaning he ruins your advantage and now you have to go around trying to chase people down to kill them. Most of the people you REALLY wanted to kill escape and you have to settle for innocents…well nobody’s innocent in your deranged eyes, but they didn’t actually do anything to you, so some of the joy is lost. Second of all, your other buddy who thought he was a bomb expert must’ve read the instructions wrong on the “Freedom Fighters against Zionism” website he was studying. The moment he attempts to light up one of these home made bombs he blows up his fucking arm and half of his face. He doesn’t even have time to scream out in pain before his half fried body hits the ground in a bloody mess. Still it was pretty cool though! Finally it’s just you and Anthony mowing down some of the Special Ed kids since they were too idiotic to escape in time and just panicked by running around in a circle. By this time the police have arrived and killed all your other friends, and you end up killing Anthony since you figure anyone who would kill retards is not to be trusted. You briefly entertain the idea of killing yourself, since it’s a pretty hopeless situation you’re in. But you remember a scene from a movie where the guy shot it out with the cops and took out a shitload of them before he died and how cool that was, so you decide to do that instead. The moment you come out of the school, a SWAT member snipes you in the head from a nearby building. The moral of the story? Yeah, being creepy and talking like a psychopath can be fun, but when you start believing your own hype you’re just being a fucktard. Seriously, what were you going to gain from killing a bunch of worthless jocks and cheerleaders? Life on the run? Being a gay porno star in Mexico to help support yourself? Yeah right, you can’t even sleep without a nightlight on! You couldn’t even do the mass killing right anyway, since you missed most of your primary targets. They’ll all go on with their lives and probably make money from the ordeal due to exploiting public sympathies and you’ll be worm food. But you REALLY showed them all didn’t you? And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ah ha, so you weren’t really depressed after all, you were just looking for attention! Way to be a manipulative little bastard. Still, whatever works right? In playing up to your new image you begin to say really creepy shit…. You go up to a group of jocks and ask them if they ever worry about someone putting poison in their water bottles. You tell a teacher you couldn’t complete your assignment on time because you’ve been having ongoing wet dreams about your Mom. You go up to a group of girls and tell them that their hair smells so pretty and how you would like to cut off some of it to hang from your bedroom ceiling. And similar macabre stuff. You of course think all of this is incredibly funny and think yourself as being incredibly clever for coming up with this “amazing” plan for attention. You completely succeed in your endeavor and have increased your infamy tenfold. Of course now you aren’t just the “creepy guy” you’re now the “scary ticking time bomb” People are genuinely getting afraid of you, of course there’s ALWAYS that element that thinks it’s “cool”. As a result you start attracting like minded individuals… well not quite. Mainly because the difference between you and them is that you’re just faking for the most part, while these miscreants are genuinely fucked up in the head. Still they’re the closest thing you have to friends so you hang out with them. All of you tend to hang out and talk about all the people you don’t like and all the minor slights you’ve perceived (Real or imagined) A lot of them start talking about how they wish they could “punish” all their “enemies”. Soon these talks begin to increase as you all play more violent video games, listen to heavy metal music and watch horror movies; all which are undoubtedly pushing you all in a more aggressive nature. Then one of your new trench coat buddies, Anthony, finally gets the motivation. He mentions how his Dad has a bunch of rifles and pistols. He then mentions how you ALL should start planning to carry out your revenge by next month. What started out as a cry for attention for you has developed into something else entirely. Part of you does flirt with this idea though. You mean there are a lot of people you don’t really like at school… > You rat them out to the principal Fuck this! You’re just faking this shit; you don’t really have the balls to actually kill anyone! You decide to play along with your friends and claim that you’re with the plan, but rat on them out to the principal later. Sadly things don’t really go as planned for you double crossing ass! The stupid ass clueless principal doesn’t entirely buy your story and thinks you’re just trying to play some sort of sick joke, in fact he thinks YOU’RE the problem and punishes you by calling up your parents and telling them he’s sending you home and that they need to put you in counseling and how they’re lucky that he’s not pressing criminal charges. You get the riot act from your parents, who don’t want to hear your shit either. They make you get rid of all your black clothing, video games, horror movies, and the like. You spend the next week having to listen to some hippy dippy psychologist who keeps saying you’re in denial about your feelings. The biggest fuck up about this is everyone eventually found out about this in school. Your trench coat buddies were not amused that you nearly ruined their plan, so the “day of their revenge” they make a quick trip to your house first… Your Dad was blasted on his way to his car and then Mom met the same fate when she went out to check the noise. You’re shot several times in the limbs after you were pulled out from hiding under your bed. Your former friends laugh at you as you beg for your pathetic life before they land the killing shot. The moral of the story? Don’t be a fucking rat. Seriously, nobody respects a goddamn rat and look what it got you: dead. Seriously you were the fucktard that insisted on acting like a psychopath for attention, so you only had yourself to blame when you attracted people like that. If you really wanted to avoid trouble you could’ve just played along and then on the “day of revenge” you could’ve disappeared and hid out somewhere until it was all over. Your trench coat buddies would’ve probably thought you just wussed out (Which they’d be right) and they’d go shoot up the school anyway. People still would’ve died and you wouldn’t have gotten killed. A win-win situation really. And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Oh you’re so complex and nobody understands you. Or more likely nobody even cares. In any case you become withdrawn and start dressing in black constantly. You stay in your room a lot with the shades drawn and the lights low and don’t move too much. Once a day your mother dusts you and leaves some food and drink by your bed. Once a week your father takes your pulse to make sure you’re actually still alive. In school you’re a little more active, (Well you DO still have to walk to class) but not much. You’re about as popular as you were before, but now you have the added bonus of being known as that “creepy guy”. Folks sometimes whisper things about you, most of them quite amusing to people other than yourself. Oddly you aren’t physically bullied, but that might be due to you being known as the creepy guy. (Because we ALL know the creepy guy is the one most likely to come to school and massacre everyone) > You sink into deep depression because nobody still "gets" you You sink further into depression, you’re just SOOOOO tormented and misunderstood. Or more likely you’re a little drama queen that’s… Hey, maybe THAT’S your problem! YOU KNOW what we’re talking about! You snap out of your self-pity for a minute and think really hard of WHY you don’t fit in with everyone else, perhaps if you figure it out then maybe that can be the first steps to getting better. > You well, you guess you do have some weird feelings... You remember when you were little of how you liked to dress up in Mommy’s clothing and how you always thought her make up was pretty. You remember your Dad severely beating you after you said you wanted a Barbie doll. Oh why didn’t he just let you be who you were? You’ve had to deny yourself of your true feeling all this time. Oh it’s just so sad… THAT’S why you’re so depressed! THAT’S why you don’t feel like you fit in! THAT’S why you longingly look at all the rest of guys in the shower room wishing that you were the bar of soap they use… But first things first! You’ve just come to accept the fact that you’re gay. Now the really hard part begins. Are you going to proudly come out in pink colored hot pants and announce it to everyone or are you going to hide in the closet like a scared little Nancy boy? > You you're coming out and reaching for that rainbow baby! You’re going to do it; you refuse to live in the closet! You prance out of your room, skip downstairs and reveal to your parents… “I’m gay and I’m proud of it! And I don’t care what you guys think!” Your parents take awhile to acknowledge your revelation. “Gay huh? You’d think you’d have a better sense of fashion.” You Mom says sipping her coffee as she points to your drab clothing. “…what? I was confused! I was depressed! I was struggling with who I was!” you dramatically whine. “Should’ve just asked me, I could’ve told you that you were gay. Can’t say I didn’t see this one coming.” You Dad remarks not looking up from his book. You’re almost disappointed that they aren’t making a big deal out of this. “Don’t you guys care?!” “Why should we? We’ve accepted the fact that we failed as parents a long time ago. This just confirms it. Personally I’m just glad you’re not moping anymore. That was getting to be really boring. If you’re going to be a pillow biter though I suggest you keep it a secret at school. They may not be as understanding of your decadent lifestyle as we are.” Your Mom says. “Speaking of decadence, are we still going that party tonight?” you Dad asks your Mom. “Yes, and remember to bring your own leash this time. Last time you caught that rash on your neck from using someone else’s.” While your parents relive one of their swinger parties you dejectedly go back to your room. You feel like someone’s let all the air out of your tires because you really hoping for some attention of any kind. You’re depressed all over again, except now it’s even worse because you’re gay too! > You carry on with your alternative yet sinful lifestyle Hey to hell with your parents! If they don’t love you, then you’ll find it else where! You’re a gay guy after all, finding love shouldn’t be that much of a problem. All you have to do is find another one of your kind and say “Blow me” and nine times out of ten your wish will come true! You’re gonna live it up from now on and honey is it gonna be FABULOUS! You end up going back to school with a completely different look and attitude. People immediately notice it and you like the fact that they notice it! You’re a stereotypical flamer and if you were any gayer, Richard Simmons eating a hotdog in a Turkish prison would look straight by comparison. You get called names every now and then, but since you end up being on such good terms with most of the popular females, the regular homophobic jock types don’t give you too bad of a time seeing as they don’t want to look too “insensitive” to their cheerleader girlfriends. The rest of your social life improves as well since you now frequent raves a lot in the city, while taking massive amounts of XTC and indulging in LOTS of unprotected gay sex. You’re very popular inside and outside of school and at last you feel loved! Well at least temporarily. Deep down you still aren’t very happy, but of course your solution to this is to go get more love to fill up that eternal void which will never be filled. Unsurprisingly all this “love” leads you catch herpes on your mouth, gonorrhea on your dick and AIDS in your ass, you silly faggot! Ultimately, people find out and abandon you like the plague carrier you are, and you eventually die a horrible lingering death. The moral of the story? Don’t be gay, it really isn’t as cool as actors makes it look like on TV or if you MUST be gay, choose a life partner and don’t go sucking and fucking every guy you see. And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re going to do it; you refuse to live in the closet! You prance out of your room, skip downstairs and reveal to your parents… “I’m gay and I’m proud of it! And I don’t care what you guys think!” Your parents take awhile to acknowledge your revelation. “Gay huh? You’d think you’d have a better sense of fashion.” You Mom says sipping her coffee as she points to your drab clothing. “…what? I was confused! I was depressed! I was struggling with who I was!” you dramatically whine. “Should’ve just asked me, I could’ve told you that you were gay. Can’t say I didn’t see this one coming.” You Dad remarks not looking up from his book. You’re almost disappointed that they aren’t making a big deal out of this. “Don’t you guys care?!” “Why should we? We’ve accepted the fact that we failed as parents a long time ago. This just confirms it. Personally I’m just glad you’re not moping anymore. That was getting to be really boring. If you’re going to be a pillow biter though I suggest you keep it a secret at school. They may not be as understanding of your decadent lifestyle as we are.” Your Mom says. “Speaking of decadence, are we still going that party tonight?” you Dad asks your Mom. “Yes, and remember to bring your own leash this time. Last time you caught that rash on your neck from using someone else’s.” While your parents relive one of their swinger parties you dejectedly go back to your room. You feel like someone’s let all the air out of your tires because you really hoping for some attention of any kind. You’re depressed all over again, except now it’s even worse because you’re gay too! > You suppress your gayness and go back to being miserable Realizing that you’re a big loser regardless of your sexual preference, you decide to suppress your gayness, since at least you won’t result in you getting beat up by the jocks on a regular basis. In an effort to suppress who you are, you begin to over compensate and start acting like a first class macho asshole. Which would be fine, if you actually could back it up, but since deep down inside you’re really a big girl, you don’t pull it off very well. All you succeed in doing is getting beat up a lot guys who don’t like you constantly hitting their girlfriends which you aren’t even attracted to. You also end up getting beat up by the girls you’re hitting on. In fact you probably would’ve taken FEWER beatings if you’d accepted being gay! Eventually, you actually manage to get one girl to fall for your poseur hetero act. Of course it’s the most pathetic one in the entire school. She’s 300 pounds, has coke bottle glasses, severe acne, braces and breathes when she talks. However, she’s all yours in your futile quest to deny your gayness. Then comes that “special night” when she’s willing to give it up for you. (Which unsurprisingly doesn’t take long) When she takes off her clothes you are completely unable to get an erection…though to be fair, even if you were straight you probably still wouldn’t be able to get it up for this massive monstrosity that should’ve been killed at birth. She attempts to blow you in an effort to get you started, but all she succeeds in doing is drawing blood due to her badly made braces. Having had enough of this charade you push the disgusting creature off of you, put your bloody dick in your pants, and run back home, vowing that you’d rather take it up the ass than go through something like that again. As it turns out, you get your wish, but not in the way that you might prefer… Your “girlfriend” was VERY hurt by your departure, as she thought yours was a true love that would last forever not some faggot travesty. Her demeanor changes to that of a psycho vindictive cunt, who accuses you of trying to rape her. She claims she managed to stop you, by biting you in the dick, forcing you to run away. You protest your innocence and claim that you’re really gay, but nobody’s buying it because you were known to be sexually harassing all the girls in school, and several witnesses can attest to this. Nobody believes you and you end up going to jail where YOU get ass raped for real almost every other day by the Aryan brotherhood who make you their personal pass around prison bitch. Your torment of having an asshole the size of Texas comes to an end when you get a little mouthy with one of the Aryans who’s in no mood for your bullshit and shanks your bitch ass. The moral of the story? Denying who you really are is a bad thing and never results in a good outcome. Be proud of who you are. Even if you’re gay, you can still live a fairly good life. You might burn in hell afterwards, but at least your time on Earth can be salvageable! And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You remember when you were little of how you liked to dress up in Mommy’s clothing and how you always thought her make up was pretty. You remember your Dad severely beating you after you said you wanted a Barbie doll. Oh why didn’t he just let you be who you were? You’ve had to deny yourself of your true feeling all this time. Oh it’s just so sad… THAT’S why you’re so depressed! THAT’S why you don’t feel like you fit in! THAT’S why you longingly look at all the rest of guys in the shower room wishing that you were the bar of soap they use… But first things first! You’ve just come to accept the fact that you’re gay. Now the really hard part begins. Are you going to proudly come out in pink colored hot pants and announce it to everyone or are you going to hide in the closet like a scared little Nancy boy? > You hell no! Your Dad would kick your limp wristed ass! While you’ve fully accepted the fact that you’re pickle puffer, you decide it would be best if you kept this secret from not just your parents, but from everyone in general. Keeping a low profile is now more vital than ever, so you proceed with your life as usual, but a little happier, now that you’ve come to grips with who you are. However, you still have all those throbbing gay URGES that aren’t going to let themselves be hidden for long… A little time goes by you manage to fine tune your new gay abilities, most notably your gaydar. Surprisingly you pick up on more people than you would’ve thought, but you still have to play it safe and pick someone who isn’t going to be in denial or worse, your gaydar is off and you hit on someone who tries to kill you. Eventually you manage to pick out some guy who fancies himself as an artist. He picks up on your gay vibes as well, and you two sneak off together every now and then to have a gay old time. Everything is going without any problems until he wants to come out of the fucking closet and express your forbidden love to everyone, while you want to not only stay in the closet, but also hide under the pile of dirty moth eaten clothing in there as well. You attempt to reason with him, but he throws a hissy fit and is determined to go through with his plan with or without you. But you can’t do it, because deep down you’re secretly ashamed of who you are! Your boyfriend is also ashamed, ashamed of you that is. He immediately breaks up with you, scolding you that you both have a “duty” to the gay community to make a stand when you can and that if you can’t do that then he doesn’t see a future for the both of you. You’d probably go home and cry like a bitch, but you’re more worried that your ex is going to “out” you. To his credit, he doesn’t, but unfortunately his “stand” doesn’t do him any good. You see him mercilessly taunted and beaten by other guys on a practically daily basis. Sometime during these times, he sees you standing there doing nothing, you can tell in his eyes that he’s looking for you to help, but you just can’t you’re too much of a coward. Eventually he’s killed by a couple of rednecks and left in a ditch somewhere. There’s no sympathy or anything over his death, you don’t even attend his funeral for your continued fear of being outed which you still have which has only increased by your ex’s murder. The guilt begins to consume you on top of the fear and you just can’t take it anymore. Is this what your life is going to be like? Forever sneaking around trying to cover up your sinful sexual preference? Oh sure you could eventually move away to a more gay friendly place, but you just can’t wait that long and you feel trapped…can’t breath! “AAAAARGH! I’M GAY AND I CAN’T LIVE LIKE THIS! ARRRRRGH!” you stand up and scream in the middle of class before you run and jump to your death out the window. Surprisingly your death has somewhat of an effect on the people. Oh not anything forward thinking like displaying open mindedness that could’ve prevented two deaths, but more along the lines that the students who were in your class when you killed yourself get a week off for seeing something so traumatic. Most of them go get drunk and party, but nobody’s mourning the death of some suicidal faggot. At your barely attended funeral, your Dad doesn’t even cry out “I love my gay son!” In fact he’s asleep the whole time. The moral of the story? Perhaps if you’d stood by your life partner, you wouldn’t have died a self-loathing coward and betrayer. That’s how Judas died you know. Oh sure MAYBE you would’ve gotten killed by the rednecks too, but at least you would’ve been taking a fucking stand. Hell, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten killed. Maybe you might’ve been able to fight them off and from that victory, other gays in the closet would’ve come out and been proud of who they were too! Then you could’ve had parade with rainbows and even a same sex prom! But of course you’ll never know that because you didn’t stand up for yourself and died a cowardly little bitch! And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sink further into depression, you’re just SOOOOO tormented and misunderstood. Or more likely you’re a little drama queen that’s… Hey, maybe THAT’S your problem! YOU KNOW what we’re talking about! You snap out of your self-pity for a minute and think really hard of WHY you don’t fit in with everyone else, perhaps if you figure it out then maybe that can be the first steps to getting better. > You what's the point? It's all so fucking futile anyway... Oh geez you really are hopeless aren’t you? You sink even further into depression. You REALLY don’t do anything anymore. Your grades drop, people don’t want to be anywhere near you in any way due to the fact that you give off such an aura of bleakness that other people get miserable just being near you. Well that, and the fact that your hygiene habits have become that of a third world street beggar dying of leprosy. Your parents at this point are getting fed up with the moping act and don’t help matters any by screaming at your practically comatose body 24/7. “UGH! It smells like shit from a dead dog’s ass up in this motherfucker!” your Mom exclaims holding her nose. “Goddamnit boy, get your ASS up! This shit’s getting’ old! Boy! I told you…ah fuck it, I’m not gonna even waste my time beating you, you’re a disappointment anyway! Go ahead and rot for all I care. Just leave the damn door closed.” Your Dad says before both of your parents leave in disgust. They don’t love you. Nobody does. You wish you could escape. Maybe they’d ALL be sorry once you’re gone… > You escape... Temporarily You’re too chicken shit to actually commit suicide so you decide you need to escape from your sorry existence in a more “chemical” way, namely drugs. Unfortunately you’re such a damn loser that you’re completely clueless to who’s selling the shit in school, or even your suburb. Unless you want to go down to DA HOOD, even you know that where ALL the drugs come from. Of course there are other options like household inhalants. It’s a big wide world out there just waiting for you to find something to get fucked up on! > You go buy some drugs in Da Hood Surprisingly you manage to snap out of your perpetual funk, in order to buy drugs. Maybe they ARE the answer! Your parents are so surprised to see you leave your room, let alone the house that they don’t even question where you’re going, they’re just happy you’re going. It gives your Mom some time to fumigate your room and your Dad to fuck her doggy style on your bed. Anyway, you make your way down to Da Hood. You know you’ve arrived when you see an increase in urban blight and a bunch of black people giving you dirty looks. Speaking of which you’re still fucking clueless to where you’re supposed to get some drugs so you just ask a group of black people hanging around a basketball court. They’re all bigger than you and definitely meaner and tougher. “Drugs? Whachu’ talkin’ ‘bout white mothafucka? You some fuckin’ narc or sum shit?” “No, I just…” “He gotta be workin’ fo’ the five-O! This cracka mothafucka would have ta be crazy walkin’ down here by hisself!” “No, I got money for drugs! See?” you stupidly say pulling out your allowance money. The instant you do this, the homeboys’ eyes light up and then you’re bum rushed. You first see a fist with tons of bling on it smashing into your face and then you’re looking up at several shoes frog stomp it into mush as another pair of hands goes through your pockets. Finally one of them throws a basketball at your bloody head and calls you a dumb ass white boy as you lie on the court and then they make their good escape to use your money to spend on chicken and malt liquor. You fall unconscious and bleed to death during the night, because nobody’s going to call an ambulance for the likes of you and even if they did, it wouldn’t get there in time to save you anyway, because as we all know 911 is a fuckin’ joke. Your body is soon moved to rot in an alley when people want to play basketball again. A few days later when the cops make their once a month rounds in Da Hood to collect their extortion money, one of them finds your body and calls it in. You’re buried and forgotten without fanfare. The moral of the story? Don’t go down to Da Hood if you’re a clueless white boy. If you wanted to buy drugs in a “poor area” you could’ve easily went to a trailer park. There are lots of nice white people there. Oh and you probably shouldn’t do drugs either. Maybe. And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re too chicken shit to actually commit suicide so you decide you need to escape from your sorry existence in a more “chemical” way, namely drugs. Unfortunately you’re such a damn loser that you’re completely clueless to who’s selling the shit in school, or even your suburb. Unless you want to go down to DA HOOD, even you know that where ALL the drugs come from. Of course there are other options like household inhalants. It’s a big wide world out there just waiting for you to find something to get fucked up on! > You find something in the house You’re still not motivated enough to leave your room, but you are motivated enough to go over to your unfinished Dungeons and Dragons diorama and sniff your modeling glue. You undo the cap, shove the tube up your nose and inhale deeply! Whooo! What a rush! You immediately start to hallucinate, and forget about all your so called problems. In fact you pretty much forget how to act altogether… You suddenly think that you’re a magical elf who must slay the evil dragon with your mighty sword! To get better prepared for this, you strip off all your clothing and run out of your room holding your uh…”sword”. As you go running around your house like this, you encounter a bellowing ogre! “Boy, what the fuck do you think yer doin’ running around bare ass naked?!” it yells. “What’s going…what the fuck?” its wife says after coming into the room. The ogre charges at you, but you manage to dodge the attack causing him to smack his head against a table when he trips. The ogre’s wife attempts to hold you down, but in the ensuing scuffle you manage to stab her once in the mouth with your sword and then run away, while she’s recoiling from your attack. Just in time too, because the ogre is recovering. “YOU SICK FUCK, I’M KICKING YOUR ASS!” it yells. You run back to your hideout and barricade the door, which the ogre attempts to knock down. You see no escape until you realize the window! You can use your spell of flight! You quickly cast your spell and then open the window. Just as the Ogre breaks down the door, you make your escape to freedom! A few hours later the coroner comes by to scoop your body off the sidewalk. On the plus side, you won’t have to go through the progressively worse brain damage you would’ve undoubtedly suffered by continuing to sniff glue and other such products. The moral of this story? Sniffing inhalants might be a nice cheap high, but you can do some seriously crazy shit while under their influences. Don’t be a lazy ass. If you want to go get fucked up for cheap just raid your Dad’s liquor cabinet or get an older stranger to buy you some beer. And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Oh geez you really are hopeless aren’t you? You sink even further into depression. You REALLY don’t do anything anymore. Your grades drop, people don’t want to be anywhere near you in any way due to the fact that you give off such an aura of bleakness that other people get miserable just being near you. Well that, and the fact that your hygiene habits have become that of a third world street beggar dying of leprosy. Your parents at this point are getting fed up with the moping act and don’t help matters any by screaming at your practically comatose body 24/7. “UGH! It smells like shit from a dead dog’s ass up in this motherfucker!” your Mom exclaims holding her nose. “Goddamnit boy, get your ASS up! This shit’s getting’ old! Boy! I told you…ah fuck it, I’m not gonna even waste my time beating you, you’re a disappointment anyway! Go ahead and rot for all I care. Just leave the damn door closed.” Your Dad says before both of your parents leave in disgust. They don’t love you. Nobody does. You wish you could escape. Maybe they’d ALL be sorry once you’re gone… > You escape... Permanently So you’ve decided to end it all. There’s just no place in this world for you and you can’t cope with it. Only your death will make a difference. You want to get it right though, so for once in your life you’re going to be motivated to plan something out. You continue to lay practically comatose in your room like you usually do, until your parents leave the house at night to go out swinging with the next door neighbors. They’ve long since not cared about leaving you by yourself since they figure all you’re going to do is lie in your room anyway. But not this time. You go to your parent’s bedroom where your Dad “hides” his fully loaded Desert Eagle. You’ve never fired it before, because your Dad didn’t think you were man enough to handle it. Well you’re man enough tonight and he’ll see that! They’ll ALL see that! You’ve seen enough movies where somebody kills themselves, so you do likewise and shove the gun in your mouth, pointing the barrel straight up BANG! You successfully blow your brains out all over the wall and your body slumps lifelessly on your parent’s bed. Hold on there Corky, that ain’t the end of this tale just yet… Your parent’s came home and found your dead body after a really wild night of swinging; it was a real downer for them. Your Mom got a little upset, but your Dad just muttered something about you ruining the bed and his gun. Your death didn’t really make an impact at school mainly because you weren’t anybody to begin with. There’s a brief announcement over the intercom from the principal saying that if anyone is “traumatized” by your death that they may take some time off of school and counselors will be available. Naturally several opportunists want to take advantage of the situation, but when they find out that they’d have to attend your funeral, they decide it would just be easier to just cut class the old fashioned way. Eventually only your parents and few distant family members attended your funeral and that was it. A year later your Mom had a new baby to take care of and you were practically forgotten about altogether. The moral of the story? Don’t fucking commit suicide, because nobody’s really going to miss you after you’re gone and even if they do, it’s only temporary. Shit, you didn’t even have any REAL problems except the ones you created in your own sad little head. Did you have a serious terminal disease? Did you lose your dick in a horrible lawnmower accident? NO! So you weren’t popular, big fucking deal, life sucks, you deal with it! High school is only four Goddamn years anyway for fuck’s sake, be a fucking man and tough it out! Besides suicide is a sin, so if you had hopes of having “peace” in the afterlife, think again, you’re going to be burning in hell right next to the Faggots and Muslims. Well either that or you’ll just rot in ground. Still means one thing, you died a big loser. And now you know!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>WARNING! (The fake one) This story contains mature subject matter concerning teens and is meant to help said age group “experience” a problem they may encounter in their life and show the consequences of their actions if they handle it in the wrong way. There will be separate sections for boys and girls for as we all know, both genders experience different struggles during their precious formative years. If you are a pre-pubescent, you should NOT be reading this story, you should be in bed. Such mature subject matter is not for your tender young eyes. If you are an adult and you are a parent, perhaps you should “experience” this story with your teen, for they may still have further questions about the subject matter. Questions that you should provide answer for, because if you do not they may learn the wrong answers from their peers, the streets, minorities or even (gasp) the evil dirty internet! If you are an adult and NOT a parent, get the fuck out of here. You probably just want to “play” the girl path and choose all the slutty choices, you fucking pervert. It is the hope that this story may somehow help teens better deal with the problems found in this story in real life. And remember if you do turn out to be gay (boys) or sexually loose (girls) it doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means you’re going to die of AIDS and burn in hell. Now what gender are you? > You female You are a typical female teen…well maybe not entirely typical. In your current state you aren’t very popular in school. Sometimes you feel left out of things, particularly social gatherings, and boys don’t seem to notice you at all. Maybe being popular would makes things easier and make you happier, but then you also wonder if you even belong here, as you have a hard time relating to people sometimes. Well, what are YOU going to do about it?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>I'm sorry, Jane, that I wasn't older, stronger and wiser when we met. You were a brief illumination in my otherwise bleak existence. I know now that the circumstances were out of our hands and that you would want me to be happy, but I've lived with this guilt for so long. I need to share you with everyone... > You into the past... You haven’t eaten anything since early this morning and the walls of your stomach are grinding together. You have to get your mind off of it somehow and the water fountain on the far wall beckons to you. You’ve been on the road for days and it feels like the better part of it has been planted in this seat—even though you’ve only been here for the last couple of hours. The skin on your back and the backs of your bare legs rip free of the hard plastic seat as you stand and your flip-flops slap and smack your heels as you plod across the room. You freeze midway when you see a cowboy roping a calf from horseback. It’s the most wonderful thing you’ve seen for days even if it is only a poster. And it’s not the only one! Scanning the room you see many, many more of far off magical places with waterfalls and cliffs and mountains and dark caverns. Some of cityscapes with towering buildings and some at night with only the lights on and still more of endless rolling plains. From somewhere behind you, you hear a garbled voice fighting it’s way through crackling static, droning on and on about things that only old people care about. You zero in on the source and discover that it is a tiny coin operated radio affixed to the arm of a terminal seat. Neat! Just then a clammy hand clamps down on the back of your neck and you’re whisked toward the double glass doors. “It’s time to go, mister,” comes the all too familiar voice of your mom and she only releases her grip—with a surprise thrust that causes you to whack your shin on the bottom step—to allow you to clamber up and into the bus on your own. A shiver runs down your spine and the back of your arms prickle as you make your way down the aisle between tall and comfy-looking seats. You’re not used to air conditioning and it brings both pain and relief. You pass by an elderly couple. The woman looks up and smiles at you warmly so you give her a wide berth. You doubt that she would, being a stranger and all, but you sure don’t want her squeezing your cheek like Grandma does. You’re nudged into the row behind them and you take the farthest seat. Your mother sits beside you and puts the bag with everything the two of you own at her feet. Her lips are pursed and her eyes drawn. She’s been tired every day since the divorce and when she gets tired, she gets mad. You have a hard time even recognizing her now. A hiss and a lurch later, the bus pulls out onto the highway and with your face plastered to the side window you watch as the fence posts strobe past with only the occasional bush or sapling breaking the pattern. “There’s a storm coming,” remarks the old man to his wife, “and it looks to be a bad ‘un.” “Mm-hmm,” she replies absently, not bothering to look up from her needlepoint. Your eyes drift upward from the fence to a draw on the horizon and there the sky is beginning to boil and bristle with blue-white sparks. You can’t shake the feeling that you are at the very beginning of the greatest adventure—and worst nightmare—of your life. After only a mile or two, the droning of the engine and the rhythmic beat of its tires thumping over the seams in the concrete soothes you to sleep and you sleep the whole rest of the way. You are shaken from a pleasant dream of opening Christmas presents with your parents to stumble and trip over your feet as you’re dragged toward the front of the bus. It pulls over, dumping the two of you out on a deserted street. You know it’s only your reflection, but the ghastly and pale boy is all you can make out in the store window before you. It brightens and fades, brightens and fades with each pulse of the stoplight on the corner. You take a step backward and the wind from the bus pushes you forward as it pulls away. “You tryin’ to get yourself run over?” Your mother cups the back of your head and shoves you toward the boy with hollow eye-sockets, “Get over there and sit down against the wall.” You do as your told, although you can’t help but look up at the glass expecting him to be standing there looking down at you. An eternity goes by with your mom standing slumped against a signpost and staring off into the night. Your butt burns as the bones chew their way to the cement. You rock slowly from one side to the other to relieve the pain and she flashes her eyes at you. You melt. “Sit there and don’t move,” she barks as she leaps toward the flashing light. A car has stopped at the corner and she waves her arms as she sprints toward it. It begins to pull away, but stops short and the window tentatively rolls down. You can’t make out her words, but there’s happiness in your mother’s voice again as she crouches there with her elbows propped against the car door. Maybe she’s not mad anymore. You stretch your legs out as far as you can and wiggle your toes. She stands as the car pulls away and turns toward you. You can’t see her face, but there’s no mad in her walk now. You let out a long breath in relief. “C’mon, I’ve found us a place to sleep tonight,” she beams snatching up the bag, “and tomorrow I start job huntin’. We’re gonna do jus’ fine you an’ me. You wait an’ see.” She wraps her arm around your shoulders and the two of you skip off around the corner and into the crisp night air. You sit with your shoulders slumped, dragging your feet in a circle as the swing’s chains lazily wind and unwind and then wind up again. You’ve already walked around the park twice and sat on everything here so now all you can do is wait. “You wait here an’ watch our stuff,” your mom had told you, “I’ve got a lot to do today an’, with any luck, things’ll be a whole lot better from now on. And don’t you leave the park! You hear me? I’ll be back as quick as I can.” Your stomach grumbles. The two half-crushed cheese and peanut butter crackers your mom gave you before she left didn’t do much to satisfy it. At least the gnawing emptiness is gone. You hear a squeal and giggles so you look up. Some little kids are playing in the dirt at the bottom of the slide as if it were a sandbox. A dozen steps away from them sits a plump woman with her nose in a book. You survey the park for other signs of life and spot a group about your age. Three boys in a circle around a dark-haired girl. They’re pushing her back and forth between them like some demented form of ‘Hot Potato’. “Where do you think you’re going?” jeers the fat one. “Yeah, you ain’t goin’ nowhere you little bastard,” cracks the snotty runt. “Let me go!” she hisses, “Leave me alone!” The tallest of the three quakes from head to toe and nearly loses his breath in a fit of really annoying breathy laughter as he shoves her back toward the other two. The girl turns beet red from anger and lashes out with flailing, non-connecting slaps which only seems to feed the boys’ hysterical laughter. You have the sudden urge to attack them, but that might be a little hasty. Perhaps you should find some other way. > You wade into 'em “Leave her alone!” you command as you trot over to them with more brass than you really possess, “You like picking on little girls?” Their shock fades instantly when they see you and Chortle begins to jiggle. They either aren’t that impressed by you in the slightest or they’re extremely good at hiding it. Chortle grapples the girl as Tubby strides up to you, heeled closely by Snots. You suddenly feel smaller and more helpless than at any other time in your life, but you refuse to show any sign of it. “Who are you?!” demands Snots. “Is this your little girlfriend?” jeers Tubby, “Have you come to rescue her?” You feel your face flush red, but not from embarrassment. You are livid! “Look here, this guy’s here to save his bastard girlfriend,” spits Snots. You lunge forward and Tubby grabs you in a meaty “bear hug”, but not before you put your fist in Snots’ mouth. He falls back in horror with a tooth dangling below his upper lip and starts tearing up. Tubby swings you around in an arc and falls on you with every ounce of his weight knocking the wind completely out of you. You struggle against his massive frame, kicking and thrashing, but there is no escape. It’d take a bulldozer to move this tub o’ guts. He crawls upward and pins your arms with his fat legs and starts drilling your forehead with his meaty finger. “Wanna be a tough guy, huh?” The girl manages to land one of her backward kicks and Chortle falls like a sack of potatoes, screaming in agony as his face goes purple. She turns and darts between two houses on the far side of the street. “Get her,” wheezes Chortle, “Get that little bastard!” Snots runs to his aid and tries to pull him to his feet between sobs, but can’t muster the strength. Chortle is in no condition to stand just yet anyhow. Tubby turns back to you and pounds a couple of stinging blows to the side of your face, then smooshes your head into the soft earth as he hoists his lard back to his feet and saunters over to his friends. You roll onto your belly, push yourself up and limp away in the other direction. Looking over your shoulder to make sure the trio aren’t watching, you dash between houses and start making your way back toward where the girl went through. The alley is shrouded by trees arching overhead and you make your way to the end of it. Seeing no sign of her, you cut through to the next street. Still nothing. She’s long gone. You suddenly remember the bag tucked under the picnic table that you were supposed to be watching. If something happened to it, you’ll be in big trouble. You sprint like the devil is after you. A hedge claws up your arms and face as you dart through it, which you barely even notice. Turning down the alley, a dark figure steps out from behind the corner of the hedge directly in your path. Your mouth goes all coppery and dry, and you skid to a stop. You’re all set to flee when you realize that it’s the girl from before. She looks sheepish and a bit winded, but no worse for wear. She hangs her head, but her eyes remain fixed on yours. As you cautiously approach her, you detect the faint hint of a smile. “Hi,” she barely more than whispers. “Are you okay?” you ask. “Yeah. They didn’t hurt me.” “You sure hurt that one.” She chuckles. “Who were them boys?” “Just some boys from school. They always pick on me.” “How come?” “Just ‘cause. They’ve always been like that.” “What’s your name?” you ask, scrunching your toes and noticing how dirty they’ve gotten. “Jane. What’s yours?” “Billy. We just moved here.” “Where’s your house?” “We don’t have one yet.” “Oh,” she says, turning her gaze to the side, then back to you. “My house is on Hill Road.” “I don’t know where that is. We just got here last night. We came in on the bus.” “It’s over there,” she points over your shoulder, “on the edge of town. C’mon. I’ll show you.” “I can’t right now. I have to watch our stuff so Mom can find a job.” “Oh.” After a pause, she asks “What grade are you in?” “I’ll be in Second this year.” “Me too. Maybe we can sit together.” The very suggestion makes you feel queasy and uncomfortable. “I better get back before she comes back,” you say stepping past her. “Okay. See ya later.” “See ya later.” You cut between two houses following their shared ribbon driveway. As you get to the front, you peek down the street and see that the gang is gone. The park is empty now with no one in sight. You cross the street and see that the bag is still right where it’s supposed to be. You climb the cement picnic table and plop down on top of it with your feet on the bench. All you can do now is wait. > The Way Things Were “What happened to you?” your mom asks from out of nowhere making you jump. You stand up and whirl around making eye contact before looking down at your arms and legs. “I got scratched up going through the bushes.” “What bushes?” she says squinting, “There aren’t any in the park that I can see.” You squirm, knowing full well what is about to happen. “Over there in the alley,” you mutter, pointing. Snatching you by the hair and ramming your face into hers, “I thought I told you to wait in the park!” she hisses through clenched teeth. “An’ I hadn’t even noticed the scratches. I was talking about your face!” Your eyes start to tear up and your lower lip begins to quiver. “A big boy hit me.” “You’ve been fighting?” she demands, “Why were you fighting? Why can’t you even go one single day without getting into trouble? What do I have to do to make you listen to me an’ use that head of yours for something other than a hat rack? Huh?!”, accentuating every other word with a jerk of your hair. “An’ stop your damned blubbering or I’ll give you something to really cry about,” she says through her teeth as she gives you a couple of thrusts even more violent than before. You slam your eyes shut and grit your teeth in an attempt to stifle the involuntary spasms. “Ugh!” she roars in disgust, flinging you prone on top of the picnic table. “Now get over there an’ sit down! It’s time to eat.” She unrolls a paper bag and slams down a small boat of shriveled, dried up shrimp and a larger one half full of crispy fries (the small ones that no one wants and are generally tossed out instead of being served to customers). You begin to pick at them one by one, but your hunger soon takes over and you start to cram them into your mouth by the handful. “Slow down. They’re all yours. I had mine already on the way back,” she says in a more pleasant tone. “I got a job today. I had to sweep the parking lot of the café I’ll be working at to pay for this an’ I’ll be waitressing starting tomorrow. An’ I got us a place to stay, too. Another waitress I’ll be working with is gonna let us stay in her garage until I can get back on my feet. An’ she’s gonna give us cots to sleep on for a change.” You look up at her as you pop the last shrimp in your mouth and she smiles at you. You can’t help but smile back. “Time to get going, mister,” she beams, snatching the bag from under the table. “I wanna be there when she gets home an’ see what we can do to help her out around the place. We’re not gonna be bums.” “Why don’t you go out back an’ play while I talk to Honey,” says your mom, “An’ don’t leave the yard.” It is a tidy house with a neatly trimmed yard. A small flower garden runs the length of the sidewalk connecting the kitchen door at the back of the house to the one on the side of the garage. Beyond it, there are white painted, metal lawn chairs and set squarely between the house and a row of short evergreens marking the property line stands a wooden swing set. You walk around for a few minutes and, finding nothing at all to do, flop into one of the swings where you spend the next few hours. You can’t hear their words, but can see through the kitchen window how much fun your mom is having laughing and talking with her new friend. It makes you both happy and a little sad. She hasn’t laughed like that with you for a long, long time. You really miss the old days. > You unexpected Visitor You pull the freshly baked muffin out of the Tupperware bowl that Honey had brought over for your breakfast when she and your mom had left for work, absently weighing it in your hands while you try to think of something to while away the hours until they return. “I’ll be home before dark. Stay here,” your mom had said, “I don’t want to have to go looking for you after working all day an’ I’m warning you now you’d better not get into any trouble.” You’re only a little bit hungry right now so you decide you’d better save it for when you get really hungry later. You put the muffin back in the bowl and snap the lid closed. You are startled by a knock on the door. No one knows you are here. You creep over to the door and try to peek through the gap between the edge of the window frame and the dark vinyl curtain, but can’t see anything. Imagining the worst, you pick up a small spade from a wooden tote and wield it like a knife. If whoever it is kicks the door down, maybe you’ll be able to get in a jab. “Billy?” comes a familiar whisper. You drop the spade back in the tote and open the door. Jane is wearing cut-offs and flip-flops just like you, but she’s also wearing a yellowed, button-up shirt that’s much too large for her, tied at the waist. “How’d you know I was here,” you ask, a little confused. “I followed you here from the park yesterday.” “You did?” “Yeah. I saw that lady pull your hair. Is that your mom?” “Uh huh,” you say looking down at your feet, “she gets like that when she’s tired.” “My momma does that to me, too. Gramma says I have to love her and be patient, but I still don’t like her.” You try to think of something to say, but can’t. All you can do is stare at her. Finally, she breaks the silence. “Wanna go get a pop? I got a quarter from the change jar. We can share it,” she grins at you. “Okay. We gotta hurry, though. I’m not s’posed to go anywhere.” “It won’t take long. The store’s only a couple blocks from here.” Ten minutes later, the two of you are on the sidewalk staring at the vending machine in front of Fredrick’s grocery. Jane plunks her quarter into the slot and whips open the door on the side. “Pick one,” she says. You lean in and squint at the selection and then tentatively say “I like root beer.” “Me too! It’s my favorite!” she exclaims as she grips the bottle’s neck and yanks it free—allowing another to roll in to take its place. Then, gripping the bottle with both hands, she pokes it into the rectangular hole and pops the cap off without even spilling one single drop. She then presents it to you saying “You’re my guest so you get the first sip.” You grin from ear to ear. On the way back to your house she informs you “I’ve lived here my whole life. I can show you all the neat places and all the places to stay away from. There’s not a whole lot.” “That’s how I was at my old house before my mom and dad got divorced,” you say, handing the bottle back to her. Jane doesn’t respond, but stops you short by sticking her arm out in front of your chest. She’s staring intently down the street and you follow her gaze. The three boys from yesterday are crossing a block ahead of you. “We better go the long way ‘round,” she says, “I’ll show you where my house is.” > The Secret Place “That’s my house,” Jane says, pointing to a ramshackle place covered in old and warped wood siding with peeling paint. The yard is waist high in grass and weeds with a worn path leading up to a sagging corner porch that looks like it could collapse at any moment. “C’mon, I’ll show you.” You follow her up the path and onto the porch. The boards creak and moan under your feet. You hold the screen door open while she heaves against the heavy entry door sagging on its hinges with her shoulder to unstick it from its jamb and shoves with all her weight to plow it open. “My momma’s not home right now,” she says, stepping inside “but that’s okay. I can have friends over if I want to.” You follow her in. By what little sunlight filters in, you can tell that the inside isn’t much better than the outside. The filthy carpeting is littered in bits of trash and the furniture is piled high with wadded clothing. The air is a stale mixture of cigarette smoke and vomit. You manage to quell your gag reflex by taking shallow breaths in through your mouth. She watches you for a minute or two as you look around and says “It’s just a house.” After another minute she says “Okay, let’s go.” You help her drag the door closed and are stepping off the porch when she suddenly stops and says “Wait. There’s something else I wanna show you.” You pause and then follow her around the corner of the house, watching carefully for snakes in the tall grass. “This is my ‘secret place’,” she whispers, “Nobody knows about it. Not even Momma.” Bending down, she pulls the grate loose from the foundation and slides it partway to the side, then slips through into a dark crawlspace. “C’mon,” she says over her shoulder, “It’s cool in here.” You follow her inside and can barely make out anything other than her. She has turned around and now sits facing you. You hear a rattle of bottles as she puts the now empty one with some others. Gradually, you’re able to see a little more, but nothing in detail. “This is the ‘change jar’,” she announces, holding something out in front of her, “I keep all the money Gramma gives me in it and what I get for all the bottles I find and take back.” Picking something else up she says in a hushed and mysterious voice “This is my treasure chest. It’s where I keep all my important stuff.” Your eyes finally adjust to the dim light and you can see she’s cradling a cigar box tied with a ribbon as she crawls past you to the opening. “Here, I’ll show you.” She begins pulling the contents out one by one and handling them gingerly. “This is me and Gramma when I was little,” holding out a yellowed Polaroid of a grim-faced woman holding the hand of a toddler, “and this is when I went to her house when momma went to the hospital,” showing you a slightly fresher one that’s probably only a couple years old, at most. There are several more and all with the same grim-faced woman standing with Jane, holding her hand. There are several black-and-white postcards with scenes from various parks and tourist attractions. Each one is addressed to Jane and tells what a wonderful time her Gramma is having and signed ‘Love Gramma’. Then there are a few fancy buttons and ribbons and such things that in all likelihood have sentimental value known only to her. You smile and nod as she excitedly tells you about every detail. The most interesting to you are the pictures on the post cards. They pull at something primal inside of you and you feel a strange longing to see many of the places for yourself. After she has quieted down a bit you say “I don’t have anything important anymore. We lost everything we had moving around so much and now we have to start all over.” Jane’s expression grows dark and she only looks at you without saying anything for the longest time which makes you very uncomfortable. Finally, she looks away and changes the subject “I sleep in here at night sometimes. I have my covers in that burlap sack over there.” “You sleep in here? How come? Ain’t you afraid of snakes and spiders and stuff?” Jane just shakes her head. She gently places her treasure chest back in its place and says “The boys are probably long gone by now so we can go back to your house.” You crawl out behind her and she puts the grate back in place. The two of you walk in silence and you can’t figure out for the life of you why she’d ever sleep under her house instead of inside it. > You wishes and Secrets When you get back to Honey’s house, the first thing you do is run into the garage and grab your muffin. It’s almost dinnertime now and your stomach has started to complain. You tear it in two as carefully as you can and say “Here,” handing Jane the slightly larger half, “It’s all I have so we’ll have to share it.” “Fahnk mhu,” Jane says through a mouthful, beaming at you, as she tears into her half like a wild animal that hasn’t eaten in days. After inhaling your half, you wipe your hands on your cut-offs. Jane smirks and wipes her hands off on your shorts, too. You jump back in shock and she tackles you—straddling you and instantly pinning your wrists down above your head. You are caught completely by surprise! This is the first time she’s been physical with you and you aren’t exactly sure how to react. You decide to play along by feigning escape. She giggles maniacally and pushes your head back down with her own. You stare into her wild eyes as you wriggle about and her shrieks of excitement grow louder and louder. Her eyes are the color of new grass and despite her current playfulness, reveal that she is much older than her years. Her hair is long and oily black and shimmers blue in the sun. For the first time you notice how beautiful she is. Through squeals and giggles she begins pecking kisses all over your face. The more you pretend to struggle the more she seems to enjoy it. Her expression suddenly changes to one of extreme seriousness and her eyes narrow. She dives in and gives you a big smacking smooch right on the cheek. You freeze for an instant before rolling out from under her and dashing around the swing set—keeping it between you and her as some kind of protective barrier. Every time she darts one way, you go the other and her shrill laughter only increases. She chases you all around the yard in a one-sided game of tag. You are quite a bit faster than she is so you can easily stay out of her reach. She really seems to enjoy the pursuit and she’s unwilling to give up her quarry. Eventually, things settle down some and the two of you sit in the swings where you manage to catch your breath. She’s still smiling devilishly at you so you keep your guard up and watch her warily from the corner of your eye. “When’s your mom coming home?” Jane asks. “’Bout dark, I think.” “Wanna go get another pop?” “Sure.” “We’ll have to return the bottles ‘cause I’m all out of quarters. If you’ll carry half of ‘em, we can take all of ‘em down.” “Okay.” After nearly running the whole way there, you two are puffing as you crawl through the hole into the damp coolness of the ‘secret place’. “I need a rest,” she pants, dragging the plump burlap sack out between the two of you. She flops over onto it and stretches her legs out, crossing her ankles. “Me, too,” you say, rolling over and laying your head down beside hers, stretching your legs out in the opposite direction. The warmth of her ear and cheek are comforting to you as you stare up into the darkness trying to make out the floorboards. Her steady, rapid breathing gradually slows and your eyes start to glaze over. You haven’t had an afternoon nap since you were in kindergarten, but you are beginning to see their appeal. Jane finally breaks the silence in a soothing tone, “Gramma has a giant photo book filled with pictures of all kinds of neat places she’s been to from all over the country. My favorite ones are from her honeymoon to the Grand Canyon. She was just a girl back then—even younger than Momma.” “It looks like mountains,” she says, “but it’s not. It’s a big hole in the ground a mile deep. It’s so big that you can’t even see the other side! I’m gonna go there when I grow up. I’m gonna see everything in Gramma’s book for myself.” Even in the dark and with your eyes closed you can feel the smile on her face, but it’s short-lived and her voice becomes a hoarse whisper, “I wish I could live someplace else. Momma hates me. Gramma told me that Momma was in love with a boy that didn’t love her back. That’s why I don’t have a Daddy and why Momma couldn’t even look at me when I first got borned. The doctor named me Jane ‘cause that’s what they call girls when they don’t know their name.” The feeling you had of drowsiness has completely and utterly faded now. You haven’t felt this much sadness since the last time you saw your dad—driving away from the courthouse in his pickup truck and not looking back. “C’mon,” Jane says, sitting bolt upright, “let’s change in them bottles.” > You mr. Freddy Jane spills her armload on the front counter by the cash register. After she’s righted all of them, she starts pulling them two at a time from yours. “You’ve got quite a number this time, little lady,” says a gruff heavy-set man, smiling. “You’re gonna run me clear out of money if you keep on like this.” Jane shoots him a wide toothy grin. “Let’s see now. Nineteen bottles at three cents apiece… That comes to fifty-seven cents. Does that sound right to you?” “Sounds right to me,” Jane beams back at him, “Can I get it in quarters so we can buy pops?” “Sure thing. Let me just put ‘em in the crates and then I’ll get you your money,” he says, stepping from behind the counter and walking over to stacks in front of the big plate window in front. While his back is to her, Jane snatches a Moon Pie from the impulse buy rack and slips it into the fold of her tied shirt. Stepping toward her, you whisper “You shouldn’t do that. What if he catches you?” You glance over to see if the man noticed and, sure enough, you see that he’s watching her in the convex mirror hanging up front in the corner. Before you can say anything, he’s already back at the register and putting the bottles in the crates he’s brought back with him. You’re shaking like a leaf and expect him to drop the hammer at any second, but all he does is smile at you knowingly and wink. He turns toward the register, pushes a button to release the tray, and slips several coins into his other hand. “Here you go, little lady,” he says, dropping the stack into her open palm. “That’s fifty-seven cents. You’d better count it to make sure it’s all there.” “Thanks!” she says, poking the coins deep into her pocket. “By the way, when’s the last time you ate something? I’ve made up a few too many sandwiches in the back and it looks like you two might be just the ones to help me get rid of ‘em. Whaddaya say?” You grin from ear to ear and nod vigorously. Jane’s face turns red as she looks off to the side and squeaks “Thank you, Mr. Freddy.” “C’mon, let’s get at ‘em then,” he says, flashing his eyes at the two of you while clicking the drawer closed on the register. On the way to the back, he grabs three small cartons of milk from their refrigerated case without breaking his stride—with you right on his heels. Jane is a reluctant half-step behind. When you reach the meat counter, he steps behind it and pulls up a white butcher paper package from underneath. He opens it revealing three ham and cheese sandwiches stacked high with lettuce, tomato and pickles and proceeds to cut them corner to corner, then fans them out on the paper sheet. “Dig in,” he says, opening the milk cartons and handing you each one, “There’s more’n plenty to go around.” While you’re eating, he bugs his eyes out at you and makes goofy looking faces. You can’t help but laugh at his antics and Jane spews milk from her nose once. Mr. Freddy has picked up a broom and is sweeping up behind the meat counter by the time the two of you have had your fill. He seems particularly interested in the dark corner beneath the bench that holds his slicer, grinder and saw. “Thank you, Mr. Freddy.” “Thank you, sir,” you say. “You’re quite welcome,” he tells you both without looking up or turning around as you’re heading toward the front of the store a step behind Jane. When you get to the register, Jane pulls the Moon Pie out of her shirt and puts it back in the rack without looking back. You couldn’t be more pleased. You look back toward Mr. Freddy, but he’s still bent over behind the meat counter and doesn’t see. Once outside, Jane fishes out a quarter, drops it in the slot, and pulls out another root beer. You are too full to even think about drinking any of it and, on the way back to your house, take only tiny sips before passing it back to her. You’re sitting in the shade of the garage on the opposite side as the house, staring vacantly at the overgrown lot crowding in on the neatly trimmed edge of Honey’s yard. “You wanna come with me and Gramma to see the Grand Canyon when I grow up?” asks Jane out of the blue, hugging her knees to her chin. “Uh huh. Okay.” “We can take Gramma’s truck and drive the whole way there. She said I can have it when I grow up ‘cause she’ll be too old to drive it by then. I know how to drive it, she lets me drive it on the farm road when I’m at her house. She has to push the pedals for me, though, ‘cause I can’t reach ‘em. I’ll teach you how and then we can take turns. She’s got a big camper on the back for sleepin’ in, but we always sleep in the house on the big bed ‘cause she’s got tired ol’ bones and she needs her rest.” “We need to make up a map of all the different places,” you say, excitedly, “And we can stop at bus stations to find even more. The one we stopped at had posters from all kinds of places. I want to go see them places too.” Jane looks over at you and smiles. For the next little bit, the two of you talk about the various places that you know about. The whole idea of adventure really appeals to you and you’re probably even more excited than she is about it. Every time you look over at her, she’s staring back at you through glassy eyes that say more than words ever could. Jane notices Honey’s car pulling into the driveway before you do. She leaps to her feet and says, “I better go so you don’t get in trouble. See ya tomorrow,” she throws over her shoulder as she heads toward the back, carefully keeping the garage between her and the driveway. “See ya later,” you holler to her as you watch her dash off between the evergreens and disappear down the alley. You walk around the back of the garage to greet your mom when she gets out of the car, but just as you round the corner another car pulls in behind Honey’s. You duck back and peek around to see two scraggly looking men get out. Honey walks over to one of them. He throws his arm around her waist and pulls her to him. The other walks up beside your mom and leans back against the trunk of the car next to her. You stay hidden until they’ve all gone inside and then you go sit on the swings and watch them through the kitchen window. They are laughing and you see them drinking beers and passing a cigarette back and forth. You didn’t even know your mom smoked! You watch her go sit on the man’s lap like she used to with your dad and kiss him every now and then. Maybe he’s her boyfriend now. It’s good that she has friends again. Maybe she will be okay. > You find something to do There’s nothing to do and you’ve been sitting here so long that your butt has fallen asleep. You need to do something—anything—, but what? You get up and begin taking a stroll around the yard. You turn over a couple of rocks at the edge of the flower bed and pluck a stiff, dry grass stem to herd the pill bugs you find crawling around under them. You usher them first one way and then another before it grows tiresome and you replace their stone shelter. Standing up, you wipe your hands off on your cutoffs and walk around some surveying the area. There is absolutely nothing here for a boy to do. You sure aren’t interested in looking at flowers even if they come with their own bugs. When you get to the edge of the front yard, you turn down the street and pace back and forth the half a block between Honey’s house and the lamp post on the corner. It doesn’t take long for this to get very, very old. You hear a buzz overhead and look up to see the light beginning to flicker to life. Already, there is a swarm of mosquitoes and a moth flitting around it. You study the sky and see that it will still be hours until nightfall. You’re not sleepy yet, but might as well head back anyway. > You head for bed You go into the garage and flip on the bulb. You flop down on your cot and lay there staring up through the ceiling joists at the shadowy undersides of the boards above the rafters. In the swirls and squiggles of their grain and knots, you make out tiny little faces—each with their own unique expressions. It’s a gift you’ve had since before you can remember that has served no other purpose other than to make you feel not quite so alone all the time. “Wake up sleepyhead,” your mom says, shaking you. You slit your eyes open and stretch your arms as far back over your head as they’ll go. “Here’s a dollar so you can buy your lunch at the grocery store,” your mom says, dropping the bill on your chest. “It’s three blocks that way,” she points in the direction of Fredrick’s, not knowing that you’ve already been there. “Make sure you come straight home, okay? Today’s payday, but I got a few dollars in tips yesterday so we’ll spend that so we don’t eat up all of Honey’s food.” You try to blink the sleep away. “Are we getting a house when you get paid?” “I’ll probably start looking for one in the morning, but I don’t think I’ll have quite enough yet. We might be here for a little while.” You look over at the garage’s bare wall studs and can see spots where light seeps through. You sure hope you don’t still live in here in the wintertime, because it might get really, really cold. “I’m going out dancing tonight after work. I probably won’t be in ‘til late so you be in by dark. I’ll be here when you wake up.” “Okay.” “Oh! an’ before I forget, Honey left you some bananas for your breakfast. They’re in the sack by the door. I’ll see you when I get home.” And with that, she’s out the door. A couple minutes later, you swing your feet over the side and slide them into your flip-flops. Standing, you stretch one last time as you lurch stiff-legged toward the door, grabbing the sack on your way out. As you round the corner to Jane’s house, she bolts out of the front door and hop-skips over to you. She grabs your hand and drags you toward her house. “Hurry up!” she says, nearly yanking your arm out of its socket, “I made something for you.” She practically dives through the hole into the “secret place” and you scurry in behind her wondering what all her excitement is about. She flips open the “treasure chest” and hands you a folded up sheet of notebook paper. As you’re looking at it a little confused, “It’s a card, open it up!” she demands. You carefully flip it open. Inside are the words “Bestist Frend” drawn with a careful hand in crayon and signed “Jane”. “See?” she asks, “I made it the color of our eyes, blue and green!” “Nobody ever gave me a card before,” you say, looking back and forth from it to a beaming Jane, smiling. “My pleasure!” “Ain’t never had a best friend before, neither.” You barely even manage to get the words out before she throws her arms around your neck, hugging the daylights out of you, and kisses you right on the mouth! This time you don’t pull away because you know it’s out of happiness. When she finally lets go, you say “Better put it back in the ‘treasure chest’ to keep it safe.” “Okay.” While she’s carefully arranging everything in her collection, you remember the sack and say “I’ve got bananas for breakfast. Want one?” Her face lights up and, nodding, she shuffles forward on her knees over to you. You snap the one off of the bunch that doesn’t have any soft, brown spots and hand it to her. You’ve been walking around and talking for a couple of hours, not having any specific destination in mind when Jane says “Wanna go see the school? It’s closed up for Summer right now, but I know where Second Grade is. I can show you.” “Yeah, okay.” A couple of blocks later, you’re cutting through a corner gas station when a display rack just inside the door catches your eye. “They got maps here,” you say, pivoting toward the door. Jane holds up and then reluctantly follows you in. You’re slowly spinning the display carousel, trying to discern the meaning of all the different shapes and colors when a lanky, bearded man in oil-stained coveralls and wiping his hands on a greasy rag steps in through the side door from the garage. “What are you kids doing in here?” he says, a little too gruff. “I-I’m l-looking for a m-map to the Grand Canyon,” you stammer. “There ain’t no Arizona maps in there,” he says, pushing you to the side and taking control of the display. “It might be in the Central and Western U.S. road map, here,” handing you one. On the top corner, you see “25¢” printed in the center of a circle and you debate buying it out of the dollar you have shoved in your pocket. “What do you want it for, anyway?” he asks. “I w-wanna s-study how to get there for when I’m growed up, ‘cause me and Jane are gonna go see it someday.” He furrows his brow looking the dirty pair of you up and down and finally says, snatching the map from your hands and returning it to the display, “Wait here. I think I have an old one in my glove compartment that I’ll just give you. I need a new one anyway.” When he’s out of earshot, Jane gets right up close to your ear and whispers “He came home with Momma one time. He’s not nice.” “Whaddaya mean?” Jane only shrugs and looks away. The man comes back with a folded, tattered map and hands it to you. “There you go, son. I don’t expect I’ll need one for a while so I’ll just get a new one when I do.” You reluctantly take it and say “Thank you”, but it worries you not knowing what Jane meant. You turn and follow her as she steps quickly outside. Before you stands a long red brick building surrounded by a native stone wall with a built in sag between sturdy pillars. “That’s the school,” says Jane, “C’mon I’ll show you the Second grade. It’s on the other side right next to the playground.” You follow her around the end of the building and see a half-dozen children a few years older than yourself lazing around in a chain-link yard. Jane freezes. “Hello,” comes a sweet womanly voice from behind you, making both of you jump. “You two aren’t here for Summer School, are you?” “Nope,” you say, “I don’t even go to this school yet. I just moved here.” “I was gonna show him the Second grade,” says Jane. “You go right ahead.” Jane grabs your hand and pulls you toward a long set of windows. “That’s it right there,” she says, pointing. Cupping your hands to the side of your face, you peer through the glass and see rows of small desks, blackboards and the large teacher’s desk. It looks basically the same as your First Grade classroom did last year. “If you two want to eat with us, you can,” says the woman from behind you. “I brought plenty of sack lunches to go around.” You and Jane swap glances, then you both nod in unison and say “okay” with giant grins on your faces. You turn around to see that she’s holding out a small paper sack with its top neatly folded down to each of you. The two of you sit with your backs against the school building while you devour your bologna with mustard sandwiches, carrot sticks and an apple half. The other kids have their lunches sitting on whatever playground equipment they happen to be on when the nice lady delivers their sacks to them. > You it Begins You wander around town for a while and end up back at the secret spot. The two of you are scrutinizing over the faded and torn map and begin planning your route. “Here it is! The Grand Canyon is almost straight across and only a little down,” you say. The two of you trace roads with your fingers trying to find the most direct route and puzzling out all the different town names. When you’ve grown weary of it, you have Jane put it in the treasure chest. You remember the dollar bill in your pocket. “Mom gave me a dollar to buy lunch with,” you say as you dig it out and slick it down across your leg to try to get all the wrinkles out of it before handing it to Jane. “Probably better put it in the change jar so it don’t get lost and we can buy something to eat with it later.” She smiles at you and carefully folds it before dropping it in with the rest of her money. “Wanna go get a pop?” “Sure,” you say. Jane fishes one of the quarters out of the jar and the two of you are on your way. Half a root beer later, you find yourself at the park just idly swaying back and forth on the swings. The place is deserted due to the afternoon heat and you try not to let the dark, rusty chains touch your sides because it nearly takes the hide off whenever they do. “Back before the divorce, Dad used to borrow the Tompkin’s boat and take us to the lake on hot days like this. We’d go fishin’ until it got too hot and then we’d cook whatever fish we caught back at the campground. Dad would clean ‘em, mostly, but he showed me where to cut. He just wouldn’t let me hold the knife by myself because I might get a bad cut. And then when it got too hot we went swimming in the lake.” “I can’t swim,” Jane says. “I can teach you—it’s real easy. Is there a lake anywhere around here?” “No. Just the swimmin’ pool over on Broad Street. It costs a dollar to go in and you have to have a bathing suit. They don’t allow no cut-offs.” You pass the time idly and soon discover that the street lights have come to life. The shadows under the trees have become full black. “I didn’t know it was so late,” Jane says, “we gotta get home so we don’t get in trouble.” “Mom isn’t coming home tonight so I’ll be there all by myself.” “Wanna spend the night at my house?” “I better not. She’s supposed to be back in the morning.” “Well, you can come over for a little while. Momma never comes home on the weekend and it’s always boring with nothing to do.” “Okay.” You follow Jane up the front steps of her house and stop at the wide open door. Every time before now it has been closed. You hear a woman cough from the blackness within and see a tiny orange ball of light swing in an arc and bounce off of something, exploding in a shower of sparks. “Shit!” the voice says, and then a lamp flips on and you see a ragged, dark haired lady wearing a thin white cotton dress that’s twisted halfway around her middle sitting spraddle-legged in the recliner in the far corner. Jane opens the screen door and takes a small step inside. A drunken slur whips out like a pistol shot, “Why are you so late?!” It’s obvious by the tone that she doesn’t care about an answer. “I was playing at the park with my new friend—” A flat pint bottle whistles past your heads and shatters on the porch column. “Don’t give me that shit! I’ve had it with you! If you get the cops out here again, you’ll regret it!” she spits venomously. “I wouldn’t do—” Jane starts apologetically as the woman springs from her chair like a cat, snatching her by the arm and starts waling on her in a flurry of slaps. “Stop! Stop! Stop!” you scream, hitting the woman at the waist and grappling with all your strength, trying to force them apart. She flicks you away like an insect, but loosens her grasp just long enough for Jane to slip free. Screaming in half terror, half frustration, Jane flies out the door and into the dark street. You dodge around the crazy lady who doesn’t give you a second glance as she steps out onto the porch in pursuit of Jane. She stops at the edge, clutching the column to keep from falling on her face, and screams “You better run you little bitch!” You run out into the dark street in the direction you think Jane went and have gone more than a block when you decide she must’ve gone a different way. Now you’ve done it. You can feel someone or some thing watching you and you’re pretty sure it isn’t Jane. You’re about to turn around when you hear sobbing up ahead. To your relief, you find her crumpled in the grass between the sidewalk and the street. She’s pounding her fists and half squealing, half moaning in her rage. You crouch beside her, putting your hand on her shoulder and she looks up at you through swollen, tear-filled eyes. “Are you alright?” you ask. She opens her mouth to say something, but can’t seem to form the words so she ends up just nodding. “C’mon. You can stay at my house tonight. I’ll tell Mom what happened when she gets home in the morning. It’ll be okay,” you say, helping her to her feet. Jane shakes her head and says between hitches “Not there. With her. She might come back early.” You walk with your arm around her for a few minutes, half carrying her as she regains herself and somehow end up in a dark alley. You hold on to her a bit more tightly than before. Her warmth and presence is enough that you feel safe. About halfway down the alley, Jane grabs your hand and pulls you through a leaning gate—held up somewhat by its bottom hinge which is only still barely attached—toward an eerie and desolate looking, boarded up house. “C’mon,” she says, “I know the way in.” “W-wait. What if something’s in there? What if someone catches us?” “Don’t worry. No one ever comes here. This place is ‘bandoned.” There are strange dark shapes crouched in the high, unkempt grass that you really hope are only bushes. You look up at the attic vent and can feel eyes peering back at you from the pitch black gaps between the louvers. “Here,” Jane says, stopping cold and pivots you around on legs that desire to keep moving. She swings a section of plywood to the side exposing a window. “Go on in. I’ll hold it open for you.” “I don’t like this,” you say looking over your shoulder toward the front of the house. “C’mon. Ain’t nothin’ to be afraid of,” she says, hiking a foot up on the windowsill and slithers her way through. After another cautious survey, you grip the windowsill on either side and hoist yourself up and through into a darkened and vacant dining room. Overhead hangs a chandelier—the only thing in the whole room. “See? Told ya,” she says, throwing her arms wide in presentation, “There’s not even any furniture.” You creep softly past her to the door to the front room and look from side to side. Light filters in through cracks in the boarded up front windows from the street-lamps somewhere outside. Jane plops down with her back against the wall. “I think I’ll stay here tonight. I sure ain’t goin’ home.” “Come home with me,” you try again, sliding down beside her, “Everything will be better tomorrow. I’ll make a pallet on the floor and you can sleep on my cot.” “Nope,” she says, shaking her head, “I don’t like your mom.” “She won’t do anything to you. She only gets mad at me sometimes—not all the time. She never does anything to anyone else.” Jane shakes her head and you can tell by the look on her face that she means it. “I’ll just stay here with you then,” you say. Jane frowns at you. “You’ll get in trouble.” “I don’t care. You’re my friend and I won’t leave you here all by yourself.” Jane smiles and clutches your hand in hers, folding her fingers around yours and scoots tight up against you. She lays her head on your shoulder and lets out a long, slow sigh of relief. “I’m happy you’re my friend,” Jane says wistfully as she drifts off to sleep. You softly lean your head against hers as her breaths deepen and slow. > No Haven You’ve only just drifted off when a booming man’s voice jars you awake and you very nearly leap out of your skin. “What are you doing in there? Come out of there, you two,” he commands, piercing your eyes with his flashlight beam. You stagger to your feet and help a groggy Jane to hers. You saunter over to the window and help steady Jane as she picks her way through. “Oh, it’s you again. You shouldn’t be in there. This place is falling apart and you could get hurt.” “We were just exploring,” pleads Jane, “weren’t hurting anything.” “Looked like you were sleeping to me.” “We just took a little nap is all ‘cause we got tired.” The man grabs you by the arm to steady you as you hop down to the ground. He’s wearing a dark uniform and you see a shiny tin shield pinned to his left breast pocket. “How many times have I told you to stay out of places like this, young lady? Maybe I should take you to the station and let you sit in a cell overnight to let you think about it. Maybe then you’ll listen when an adult tells you not to do something.” Turning toward you, he says “I don’t believe I know you, do I?” “N-no, sir. I-I just moved here,” you say, trembling. “Well, let me tell you that we take a mighty dim view on breaking and entering and trespassing around here. You look old enough to me to know that if something doesn’t belong to you you should just leave it alone.” “Y-yes s-sir.” Your eyes begin to well up. You’ve never met a police officer before and now he’s about to arrest you and throw you in jail. Jane stands there, rigid and glaring. She seems so strong and defiant—something you could never hope to be—looking as if she could attack at any moment. After a couple minutes that seem more like hours, he says “Now you two get on home right now and don’t let me catch you around here again or I will take you in. You understand?” “Y-yes sir,” you say, backpedaling before he can change his mind. You take a couple of steps backward, but Jane only stands there, boring holes in the officer. You snatch her by the hand and drag her along with you. Her gaze remains fixed on him until he’s completely out of sight. “What were you trying to do, get arrested?” you ask. “He don’t scare me none,” Jane fumes. You take your sweet time, wandering along first in the direction of your house one minute and then Jane’s the next not really wishing to end up at either place. Somehow you reach the railroad tracks on the edge of town and the two of you absently turn and follow them. You look warily over the dark embankment not knowing what may be lying in wait in the undergrowth just waiting to pounce. You wouldn’t even be able to hear it the way the gravel is crunching beneath your feet. You take a half-step closer to Jane. Even though it doesn’t help all that much since she’s not as big as you you somehow feel that there’s safety in numbers. You reach the edge of town and the wide spot that passes as a railroad staging yard. The street lights are behind you and everything here seems somehow darker even though your eyes have adjusted more to the lack of light. There’s a short string of boxcars on the side track and the shadows under and between them are completely black. If there was someone or something hiding in them, you wouldn’t be able to see it until it was too late. Jane doesn’t appear to be bothered by this even one little bit. While you’re busy keeping an eye out for movement, Jane steps up to the side of the second boxcar where its door is open a couple of feet—jumps up, pokes her head in and cranes her neck from side to side trying to glimpse what might be inside. You step beside her and shield your eyes with your hands from errant light and can’t make out anything but more blackness. “Boost me up,” she says, lifting her leg and holding her foot out to you. “I don’t think we should.” “Don’t be such a fraidy cat. There’s no one around.” You grab her foot with both hands and hoist her up. She’s as light as a feather. “C’mon.” After double-checking to make sure there’s nothing that will grab you from underneath the car, you plant your hands on the floor and jump up, but it’s still a little too high to throw your leg over. You try again jumping with all you have and still no dice. On the third attempt, Jane grabs you under the arm and heaves just enough that you manage to hang your foot. You can feel yourself sliding back out and under the car, but she snatches you behind the neck and you strain against her hands gaining just enough leverage to make it up. The two of you shuffle your way toward the end of the car where you find a few scattered and crushed cardboard barrels. You step around them and make your way toward the corner where you hear Jane slide down the side wall on the same side as the door and you turn and seat yourself against the end so that you are facing the door. “When Momma drinks she gets mean. She’s not always like that. Mostly she acts like I’m not even there.” “My mom’s starting to get like that. She spends all her time over at Honey’s house and now she’s got a new boyfriend.” “Your mom will never be as bad as mine. She doesn’t hate you.” “Maybe, but things keep getting worse instead of better.” It’s too dark to see Jane’s face, but you can tell she’s staring at you. It makes you a little uncomfortable. “Maybe we should just leave and go somewhere,” Jane finally says, “Maybe we could live at Gramma’s house. She’s really nice.” “I’m not sure.” You lean your head back and think about what it would be like without your mom. You’ve never been away from her for long. It’s a little scary, but also a little exciting. You’d get to be with Jane. That’s also exciting and scary at the same time, too. While you ponder all of this, you drift off to sleep. > You unexpected Journey You are jostled awake, but the rhythmic clacking and gentle, soothing rocking makes it difficult to keep your eyes open. Slowly, you begin to drift back toward dreamland when you come to a sudden and horrific realization and your eyes pop wide open. “We’re moving!” Jane moans softly in her sleep. Goose-pimples peak the length of your arm and the tiny hairs on the back of your neck come to attention. You reach out toward her sleep sounds and your hand finds Jane’s cheek with more force than you’d intended. She bolts upright, swinging and lands a hard slap to the side of your head. “We’re moving,” you repeat, cradling your ear, “The train’s moving!” She jumps up and the two of you stumble over the debris as you dash for the partly open door. Outside, the ground whizzes by at breakneck speed. You can barely even make it out as it passes by in the darkness. There is no way you’d be able to jump out at this speed—especially when you can’t see where you might land. “We’re stuck here,” says Jane, “We’ll just have to wait ‘til we stop to get off.” “How will we find our way back?” “We’ll just follow the train tracks. They go straight back to town.” “Yeah…” you say, staring blankly toward the horizon—seeing the land zip by faster and faster in your imagination as it rapidly approaches a blur. You return to the front of the car and sit back down next to Jane. With each passing clack, you know that you are getting farther from home and deeper in dutch with your mom. There’s no telling what she’ll do to you this time when you get back. “My mom is going to be really mad when she finds out I’m not in the garage,” you say. “We should just keep going and find somebody nice to live with. Gramma doesn’t have a phone, but maybe we might could find her house.” “I don’t know. What if she doesn’t like me? What if we can’t find someone who likes both of us?” “Then we’ll keep looking ‘til we do.” You lay your head down next to Jane and think about what she said. You’ve never been away from your mom before. What if everyone turns out to be just like her? You can feel the vibrations through the wood in your teeth. It feels really weird. You wake up and the car is still once more. Maybe it was just a dream. You reach out your hand in the darkness, find Jane’s shoulder and gently shake her awake. “Are we stopped?” she groggily asks. “Yeah. We should probably get off the train in case it starts moving again.” You stand up and help Jane stagger to her feet. Looking out the door, you see the street-lamps on the wrong side of the track. The diesel engine drones idly in the distance and you can see a rhythmic flashing light coming from that direction, but it’s too far away to make out more than that. You hop down onto the crunching gravel and quickly make your way into a stand of trees that are silhouetted against the predawn sky. You sit there until the train resumes its journey and see the sun peek out above the horizon. When you’re sure that the coast is clear, you make your way in the opposite direction that the train was headed. A short distance down the tracks you find a similar looking yard to the one you’d left last night. A line of metal buildings that serve the railroad runs along the street of whatever town you’re in now and the two of you rattle doorknobs in hopes that you’ll find one unlocked. They are all locked up tight. You resume your trek. A few blocks down, you come to a crossing and see a highway sign a short distance away. You see the numbers 281 printed in big block letters inside of a white shield. If only you had your map with you, you might be able to figure out where you are and how far away you are from your home. The sun is at your back and your shadows stretch into nothingness ahead of you. Jane carefully steps on every cross tie as she walks along while you step on every other one with your other foot on the rail—matching her stride for stride—which makes you appear to have a bad and pronounced limp. Your foot slips every now and again on the rail’s dew covered surface. “I don’t like Momma’s boyfriends. Sometimes they’re mean to her and sometimes they’re mean to me.” “Your Mom has boyfriends?” “Yeah, lots of ‘em. Every time she goes out and gets drunk, she gets another one. Sometimes it’s the same one, but not always.” “Why does she have so many?” “She has to. Kids cost a lot and it’s the only way she can make money. Each one only gives her a little money and sometimes they give her stuff when they don’t have any money. I wish she could find a job like your mom has. Nobody wants to give her a job, though.” “Why do they give her money if they are mean to her?” Jane shrugs. “Because she needs it, I guess.” “Why are they mean to you?” “Nobody likes a bastard. It’s just the way it is.” “What’s a bastard?” “Somebody that doesn’t have a dad.” “I don’t have a dad anymore, either.” “But you had one so you’re not a bastard. It’s only kids that never had one.” “Oh.” You’ve walked in silence for quite some time when you come upon an iron trestle bridge that spans a wide, muddy river and just beyond it you see a lineman’s shack. The cross ties are wider spaced across the bridge and you aren’t really looking forward to crossing it, but there’s no way around it that you can see. “I need to pee,” says Jane. “Me too,” you say, relieved that you can put off crossing the bridge for a few minutes at least. The two of you step just into the trees, find a spot where the other won’t be able to see and do your business. “Hi girly,” croaks a hoarse, grating voice, “What’re you doin’ out here all by yerself? Er you lost?” You nearly jump out of your skin. You can’t see the speaker, nor Jane. “Ahhh!” Jane screams, “Let go of me!” You sprint through the underbrush toward the sound of her cry and stumble out behind a wiry and hunched over, dirty looking man who has Jane caught by the arm. You run up and kick out as hard as you can as he’s turning around to see what the commotion is. “Let her go!” you shriek, connecting with his shin. He momentarily loses his footing and Jane falls away from his grasp. You snatch her by the hand as she stumbles to her feet and the two of you race off deeper into the woods. After a few minutes, you both stop—bent over to catch your breath—and hear no sign of the scruffy old man in pursuit. You head back in the direction you think the tracks are in, but at an angle and—after trudging through the underbrush for quite some time—discover that you are in fact hopelessly lost. Mosquitoes swarm all around you and it’s impossible to wave them off. Your hair drips with sweat and trickles the fine dust that covers your face into your eyes causing them to swell and burn. Your arms and legs are covered in swollen bumps from hundreds of itchy bites and the underbrush you’ve been plowing your way through has left tiny cuts and scrapes everywhere your skin is exposed. Both of you are a mess. > You surprise Guests You’ve been walking for what seems to be hours without sight of the tracks or the river when the sky starts to darken overhead. You look up to find menacing looking clouds fringed on the edges with lightning. You quicken your pace and just then the heavens decide to open up. The wind nearly knocks you off your feet and the rain scours your skin. Soaked to the skin and shaking like a leaf, you step out into a clearing where way out in the middle of it, you spy a quonset-style barn that’s open at the ends. The two of you drag yourselves over to it with lightning striking all around, accompanied by instant and deafening thunderclaps. You feel extremely vulnerable out in the open like this, but you have to get out of this sweeping rain. Inside you find that it’s stacked high on both sides with bales of bright green hay. You squeeze your way between the front wall and the stack and find that there is a short and narrow crawlspace behind that runs the length of the building. The bales are stacked at a slight angle which makes a narrow shelf at the top of each layer. Still dripping and now covered with dried grass, the two of you wring your clothes out as best you can and spread them out on the shelf of hay to dry and you sit huddled and shivering in the near darkness. You notice how frail Jane looks. Her ribs are prominent and she looks somehow more drawn than you had ever seen her. She looks like a skeleton. You feel rage welling up inside you at the abuse she’s suffered at her mother’s hand. How could anyone be that evil? Jane still looks worried. The narrow escape was still obviously weighing on her. When she looks over at you you smile and she smiles back. Though you don’t see it, you know that the sun has set due to the complete darkness outside. The wind has subsided, but the rain is still coming down in a deluge. Exhaustion takes hold and you pass yawns back and forth. You rake hay into a rough pile and make yourself as comfortable as you can. Clutching each other for warmth, you try to force sleep in spite of your misery. And eventually you do. You’re jolted awake to the sound of a revving engine just outside the barn. You jump up and jerk on your damp clothes as quickly as you possibly can and stealthily make your way to the opposite end of the barn. When you are sure that the coast is clear, you bolt—only to crash into a big man in faded overalls who latches onto you more out of surprise or instinct than anything else. “Hold on there, kids”, his voice bubbles, “where do you think you’re going?” “Let go of me!” Jane demands. “What’re you two doing in there?” “Nothing…”, you sheepishly respond. “Where’re you from? What’s your name? Where’re your folks?” Realizing the futility of it, you both stop squirming and he eases his grip on your arms. You share a momentary glance with Jane and in that very instant, know that neither of you are about to tell this stranger anything. After a couple odd minutes of silence, the farmer decides that he won’t press you, but he sure isn’t about to let a couple of young kids just run loose when he doesn’t know who or where you belong. He steers you over to his idling tractor and makes you climb up—one on either side—beside his seat, then climbs up behind you. He shoves the tractor into gear and makes a beeline over the hill to his house. “Martha! I caught a couple of rats in the barn!” bellows the farmer from behind you as he ushers you through the door of the small farmhouse. “What’s that, Earl?” asks a stocky, gray-haired woman entering the room from the far door. “Lan’ sakes! Where did these children come from?” “I told you. I found ‘em sneakin’ ‘round the barn. They’re pretty scraped up, too. Could use some of your doctorin’” “You children get caught out in the storm last night?” You both slowly nod. ”Let’s have a look and see if we can’t get you cleaned up.” You look at each other and then move slowly in her direction. “Come now,” she says, putting an arm around each of your shoulders, “Why! You’re still soaked! Earl, go get a couple of your shirts so the little ones can get out of these wet clothes.” “Yes, dear,” he says, turning and quickly walking down a hallway. “Now come this way. You can change in the other room.” She ushers the two of you into the short, dark hallway that Earl just went down. By the time you reach the second door, Earl is coming out of the one in the very back. “Here ya go,” he says holding a shirt out to each of you. “Now you go in here and I’ll be right in to collect your clothes, sweetie. Jus’ let me get the ointment and we’ll take care of those nasty scratches while we’re at it,” she says to Jane. “And you go with Earl and he’ll bring me your clothes.” “Come on, little man,” he says, scooping you toward the back room as he turns. While you’re getting out of your wet clothes, Martha taps on the bedroom door and hands a tube of salve, a washcloth and a white ceramic basin of water to Earl when he opens it. “Have you seen how emaciated these children are?” she tries to whisper low enough to Earl so that you don’t hear. “I don’t think they’ve had more than scraps for weeks.” “Ayuh. They’re pretty scrawny alright,” he says quietly, “They must’ve been through quite the ordeal.” When he gets back to you, he gives you a quick rub down with a wet cloth and then smears salve all over your abrasions. It really stings due to his large hands being so rough and calloused, but the ointment itself is cool and soothing. With the sleeves being much too long for your arms, you have trouble buttoning up the shirt and Earl ends up having to take over for you. > You departure Jane looks ridiculous in Earl’s gigantic shirt. It drags the ground around her feet as she plods back down the hall in front of you—doing her utmost not to trip on it. Of course, you must look equally funny since the one you’re wearing is nearly trailing the floor on you and the cuffs dangle nearly a foot below your hands. “I bet you two are starving,” Martha says in a chipper tone, “Come on in the kitchen and you can eat some breakfast with us. It’s almost ready. All I gotta do is set out two more places.” When you step through the door, you can’t believe your eyes. You’ve never seen so much food on a table at one time. There are biscuits, eggs, both bacon and sausage, fried potatoes and gravy, and most of a left over ham in which a few slices have already been cut. There’s a big block of butter and a loaf of light bread. Arranged next to each plate, is a bowl of oatmeal, a short glass of orange juice and a heavy round glass with a foot and stem full to the top with fresh milk. You can’t imagine how any more could even fit on the table without things tumbling off on the floor, but Martha does just that when she sets a place for you and Jane. And the table doesn’t look any more heaped than it did already. The four of you sit down and before you dig in, the elderly couple takes hold of each of your hands and bows their heads. "Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty,” says Earl with his eyes closed, and squeezing your hand he adds, “And thank you for bringing us these dear little ones that they may share in our feast. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen." “Amen,” parrots Martha as she reaches out and starts heaping food on your and Jane’s plates before she even does her own. Everything is so, so delicious and you cram in more than you ever have in your entire life. Jane is stuffing food in and matching you bite for bite. Earl and Martha pick at theirs and appear to be enjoying watching the two of you eat. When you finally push back from your plate it looks as if it has barely even been touched, but your belly feels like an overripe melon. There’s no way you could possibly poke in another spoonful. Your eyes have a mind of their own and you watch as the dinner table quickly disappears. You start to slump forward and are prevented doing a face-plant into your plate by Earl’s massive hand. As everything goes black, you hear him chuckle and say “I guess this little guy’s had plenty.” “So has this one,” laughs Martha. You are startled awake by a loud rapping on a door. You find yourself half-sunken into a big fluffy bed and Jane has an arm and a leg draped over you. Her warmth is so comforting and you don’t want to move out of this very spot. The shades are drawn and let in only a pinstripe of blinding light making everything else in the room too dark to make out. “They’re sleepin’ in the back room,” you hear Martha say, “Poor little dears were starving and plumb tuckered out.” “Do you know who they belong to?” asks a strange man’s voice. “They wouldn’t say. I s’pose they’ve run off and I can’t blame ‘em. They’re jus’ skin ‘n bones.” “Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of it.” The door cracks open and spills light into your eyes. “Oh, you’re awake,” Martha says quietly, flicking on the light. “There’s someone here that wants to talk to you. Let me get you your clothes so you can get dressed. They’re all clean and dry now.” After Martha has closed the door, you shake Jane awake. “Someone’s here to talk to us,” you tell her. “Who is it? What do you think they want?” “I dunno.” Martha comes back in and lays your clothes out on the foot of the bed. “Hurry and get dressed and you all come on out.” “Who is it?” Jane repeats to Martha, but she closes the door without answering. You both heave yourselves over and roll off opposite sides of the bed and drag your clothes on, leaving Earl’s crumpled shirts behind. You follow Jane down the hall and she freezes as she steps into the front room. You lean forward, peering around her and see a policeman framed in the outside doorway. He’s wearing a brown and khaki uniform and has a star pinned above his breast pocket. “Step in here so I can get a better look at you,” says the deputy. You both take tentative steps into the room—being careful to keep your distance. “I don’t think I’ve seen either of you before. Where are you kids from?” You look at Jane and her face is like stone. The policeman would probably take Jane back to her house so her mom could hit on her some more. It might be for the best if you stay silent and not tell him anything. After a couple of minutes, the deputy takes you each by the arm and says “Well, I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way then. Come on and let’s go.” You and Jane are ushered along and both of you walk stiff-legged out to his car. “You kids take care of yourselves,” calls Martha from the porch as the car door is being closed behind you. You look over and see her and Earl waving to you, but you don’t feel at all like waving back. You’ve been sitting on hard wooden chairs in the station for quite some time. Beyond the little glass window to the next room, you see several people moving around and you hear the occasional crackle of static mixed with garbled speech every now and then. “We should run away,” whispers Jane without turning to you, “before they can take us back.” “They’ll just catch us,” you whisper back, “We don’t even know where we are.” “I can’t go back home now. I have to find Gramma.” “You should tell them where she lives so they’ll take us there.” “They won’t. They’ll only take us home.” “Not if you tell ‘em how mean your mom is to you.” “They don’t care none about that. They always take me back home.” > You run away “Okay. Let’s get out of here,” you say. You wait until the dispatcher’s head is turned and both of you bolt for the door. You don’t hear any ruckus coming from behind you so you figure you made it. You don’t have a clue where you are or where to go, but you run. There are quite a few more people on the streets here than back at home. You try to keep out of sight at first, but there’s just too many and not enough places to hide. If you knew the town it’d probably make things much easier. Eventually, you don’t even bother trying to conceal yourselves. Why bother? It’s not like anyone is paying you any mind, anyway. After several blocks, you spot another one of those highway signs with 281 printed on it—only this one is smaller and way up high on a lamp post and has an arrow. Maybe you could find the train tracks again if you follow the little arrow. “I think the tracks are down that way,” you tell Jane. She gives you a puzzled look. “See the sign? I saw one like that, only bigger, when we were at that train yard.” “Okay. Then that’s where we need to go. No one knows how we got here. They won’t know where to look.” You both grin at each other and turn the corner. About a block out of town, you find the highway. You don’t see any sign of the tracks and decide to follow along it at a safe distance away so any passing cars won’t notice you. “We should get some food,” says Jane, “we might have to walk for a long way and we don’t want to starve. There’s a store right over there.” “We don’t have any money, though.” “We don’t need money. I’ll just grab something when no one’s looking.” “I don’t know. Mr. Freddy saw you last time. He just didn’t say anything.” “Mr. Freddy’s my friend.” “Then why would you steal his stuff?” Jane shrugs. “‘cause I need it, I guess.” Against your better judgment, you follow Jane over and into the store. While she walks down the aisles picking things off the shelf and acts like she’s looking at the price tags, you pretend to look at the magazines in the rack. You don’t like this at all, but you can’t say anything now. It’s too late for that. Suddenly, a hand clamps down on your shoulder. “Here you are. Now where’s your little friend?” You look up to see the deputy looking toward the back just as Jane steps around the corner. “There you are, little lady. C’mon, it’s time to go.” She sheepishly walks over to the two of you. “You two are beginning to be quite the handful, you know that? I guess we should’ve put bells around your necks.” Jane glares up at him. You know your goose is cooked. There’s nothing you can do now. It’s all over. “Just out of curiosity, how’d the two of you manage to get this far from home? I can’t imagine that you walked over eighty miles. Did someone give you a ride?” Jane says nothing. If you tell him you’ll only get into more trouble so the only explanation you give him is a shrug. “I guess it doesn’t matter. There’ll be someone here shortly to drive you back. And I’m sure there will be a lot of questions for you two.” A couple of hours later, you are back to your town. It was a long, quiet ride and neither you nor Jane gave more than a yes or no answer to the man that drove you. You only looked at each other attempting to communicate with only your eyes. All that she—and you, no doubt—could convey was sadness and a sense of hopelessness of the situation. You sit slumped—craning your neck to peek through the patrol car’s rear window—and watch as the officer who ran you and Jane out of the abandoned house a couple nights ago turns away from Jane and her mother, and walks back to the car. No sooner than his back is turned does she turn and shove Jane inside the house, slamming the door shut behind her. The officer throws a glance over his shoulder, but doesn’t break stride as he continues on his way. After he closes his car door, you say “Is she gonna hit Jane?” He turns sideways in his seat and looks back at you. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s not able to sit down for a week after pulling a stunt like this. Do you understand how dangerous it was for the two of you out there all alone? We’re lucky that we found you before something bad happened to you. You don’t know what some people are capable of doing to children.” “She hates Jane. I don’t want her to hit her anymore.” “No mother hates her own child. She’s just having a rough time raising her on her own—being a single mother and all.” “You don’t know.” “Listen. I’ll swing back by after I drop you off and look in on her, okay?” He starts the engine and pulls it into gear. “Everything will be back to normal as soon as this mess blows over.” As you pull into the drive, the door opens and your mom steps out on the porch. She rushes over to the patrol car and snatches you by the arm—dragging you out and pulling you close—as soon as the policeman opens the rear door. “Here he is, safe and sound. No one knows how those two managed to make it so far away on their own.” “He’s always been a handful. I can barely keep up with him most of the time. An’ with this new job, I’ll have to work extra hard at it, I guess,” she says, flashing her eyes at you over a wan smile. “I’m just glad he’s home.” “That’s why we’re here, ma’am. Glad to be of service.” He walks with you to the door of the garage and watches as the two of you step inside. “Thanks again, Officer,” your mom says, ushering you in and closing the door. “You’re quite welcome,” he says, turning around and walking back the way he came. She lifts the corner of the vinyl curtain to watch him get into his patrol car and pull out of the driveway. When she turns around to you, her face is a deep shade of red and skewed beyond all recognition. “If things are so bad here that you felt the need to run away, then why didn’t you just stay gone!?” You don’t have an answer. You take a step to the rear as she lifts the solid metal rod from the window and yanks it free of the curtain. She is on you before you even know it—whipping you side to side like a terrier does a rat by a handful of hair in one hand while she whacks at your butt and the back of your legs with the curtain rod in the other. Every so often, an errant strike lands in the small of your back and your vision momentarily goes black. You can feel it cut deep and glance off bone with each blow. “Why can’t you do anything right? Why do you always have to go out of your way to make me mad?” You try to lessen the blows by deflecting them with your palms, but it only forces her to swing harder. The flesh on the underside of your hands soon feels tight and swollen, and you no longer have control enough to maneuver them into a position of any benefit at all. All you can do is grit your teeth and bear the pain. If you make even the slightest sound of whimpering, she’ll “give you something to really cry about”. The stinging pain finally lessens as your vision fades and grows more and more distant as the world goes dark around you. You don’t know how long you’ve been lying here in the darkness. Your whole body throbs from one end to the other and you want nothing more than to return to sleep. What about Jane? She was right. You and she need to just run away together and find her Gramma or else somebody nice to take care of the two of you. You don’t have a choice anymore. You know that now. Your mom will end up killing you if you don’t get away. You slowly open your eyes. You drag your arms under you and shove yourself to your knees. You see no sign of your mom and can only guess that she has gone back to the party in Honey’s house. You pick yourself up off the floor. You can’t straighten your legs and your back is in an uncontrollable hunch, but you manage to maintain your balance and not topple over despite the impossible angle you are leaning. One determined step after another, you make your way to the door. The curtain is now back in its place over the window. You look at it for what seems like a long time debating whether or not to do something about that impromptu weapon. It would do absolutely no good, though, because she’d just grab something else to use on you the next time. You reach out and grip the knob with all the strength you can muster. It doesn’t give easily, but you manage to turn it enough that the latch lets go. You hobble on one foot through the open doorway into the bright afternoon sun and pull the door closed behind you. You can hear music coming from Honey’s house, but don’t see any movement through the windows. You limp around the garage and through the back yard to the alley. It’s about mid-afternoon by the time you reach Jane’s house. The place looks locked up tight. After calling into the “secret place” and getting no response, you amble up to the front door and rap on it several times with the same result. Where could she be? > You check the Places You Know You try to find the abandoned house that Jane took you to the other night. You wander down several alleys, but nothing looks familiar. Maybe it just doesn’t look the same in the daylight. You are about to give up when you spot the broken and leaning gate about a half a block down. You shuffle to it as fast as your legs will allow. The house just looks like any other house in the daytime. The grass is taller than most and there are scraps of trash in the yard among the bushes that are in dire need of trimming, but there’s nothing ominous at all about it. You stagger up to the window that you crawled through the other night and see that it has been nailed down tight since you were here. “Jane? Jane, are you in there?” you call as you rap on the boarded up window, but you hear only silence from within. Your legs and back are starting to buckle so you drag yourself along the wall to the cement and brick porch on the front corner and kneel down on the steps. You suck air in through your teeth to try to ease the pain away, but with each heartbeat your skin twinges with sharp stabbing needles. You give it a few minutes before striking out for somewhere else. You head over to the train yard to see if she might be hiding out there and find that the place is completely deserted. There are no railroad cars in sight. There aren’t even any buildings here like there were in the other one. It’s just a wide gravel lot with two sets of tracks running through it. It looks so different in the daylight. She could be almost anywhere and you barely know the town at all. You haven’t even lived here for a whole week yet. You have to take a break so you head over to a small grove of saplings just beyond the right of way and ease down to your knees in the sparse shade they provide. You don’t know if you’ll be able to get back up again, but you know you can’t stand any longer. It takes a good while for your back and legs to slow their spasms, but you’ve come down with a case of the hiccups. With each one, your back tries to curl back on itself and sends a new flood of agonizing waves of pain. Eventually, they subside and you heft yourself back to your feet. > You head for the Park You’ve made your way to the park only to find it completely deserted. Not a soul in sight. Your legs are sluggish and you’re having a difficult time staying on your feet. You have to rest a minute so you amble over to the swings and hang a knee on one. You slump stiffly forward—hanging onto the chain so you don’t put down too much weight. All of your energy is gone and your vision is starting to blur. You can’t help but close your eyes for few minutes. You hear a crunch nearby and jerk your eyes wide open. You see movement off to both sides and someone is standing directly in front of you. It takes a couple seconds, but it dawns on you that it’s Chortle from the first day you got here. If he’s come to finish the job, there’s no way you’d be able to defend yourself. You look up at his face expecting to see the same nasty grin plastered across it that he had the other day, but he looks really sad. You look side-to-side and see the other two boys standing there with their heads slightly bowed with nearly the same expression on their faces. “We just heard about Jane,” Chortle finally gets around to saying. “Yeah. It’s real sad news,” says Tubby. You squint up at Chortle—knowing full well that he’s got to be up to something. It’s all some kind of twisted joke he’s set up. “What do you mean?” “Don’t you know? She’s dead. Her mom killed her and they threw her in jail.” “Nah. You’re lyin’. Get away from me,” you say, heaving yourself back to your feet. “No I ain’t,” he says, stepping over to the side when you lurch toward him with your fists doubled. “Why would I lie about something like that?” “Get away from me. I’m not gonna listen to you.” “But it’s true!” he pleads. “Yeah, it is,” says one of the other boys. You keep walking and they don’t follow. You’ve never been this mad in all your life and if your muscles weren’t so stiff and on fire, you would’ve hit him right in the nose. > You dire News You hobble into Fredrick’s Grocery and see Mr. Freddy slumped and leaning heavily on his forearms over the counter by the register. He turns his head and looks up at you as you enter. “My God, son! What happened to you?” You shake your head intending to not say anything, but the words slip out before you can stop them. “I got in trouble for running off.” That doesn’t sound quite right so you add “but I didn’t. It was just an accident.” Mr. Freddy looks confused and even more concerned. “Come over here boy and let me look at you.” You take a couple of slow steps toward him and he meets you over halfway, taking you by the shoulder and leaning around to look at your back. “My God!” he whistles through his teeth, “Someone needs to do something about this.” You struggle to get out of his grip, but he doesn’t let go. “Come over here and hop up on the counter while I make a quick phone call.” “I can’t. It hurts.” “I’ll help you up and you can roll over on your belly.” He gently lifts you up on the counter before heading off somewhere. You can hear his clapping footfalls and after a moment of silence you hear him speaking, but his words garble and run together as you drift off to sleep. “Aaahhh!” You jolt awake when a searing pain arcs through your back. You whirl around and see several people standing around you—an older couple that you guess are only customers talking with Mr. Freddy and a couple of firemen. “Sorry about that,” says a fireman wearing latex gloves and scrutinizing your wounds, “I guess it is as bad as it looks. I’ll try to be more careful.” “…first the little girl and now this,” says the woman, “What is this world coming to?” “She was his friend,” says Mr. Freddy under his breath, “Never saw one without the other since he got into town. They’ve been like two peas in a pod.” “What a shame,” says the woman, “what a cryin’ shame.” “Somebody should do something about it,” says the old man. “I intend to,” says Mr. Freddy, “just as soon as Jarvis gets back. Joan said he was looking into a trespass out at the ol’ Simon farm and she’d send him over the minute he got in.” “Young people these days have no business having children,” says the old man. “Well, I don’t think there’ll be any permanent damage,” says the fireman who’s been working on you, “let’s get you over to the station and we’ll get you all cleaned and bandaged up. What d’ya say?” You’re staring at the old woman puzzling over what she’d said and finally can’t help but interrupt “What little girl? What do you mean?” Mr. Freddy’s head snaps around and he locks eyes with you, working his jaw without making any sound. “He doesn’t know?” gasps the old woman behind her hand, “Me and my big mouth.” “No. I guess not. All this must’ve happened around the same time,” Mr. Freddy finally manages to say. “What happened to Jane?” Focusing back on you he begins to stammer “I— I’m sorry, son. She— she was—” before turning away and stalking off toward the back of the store. The hairs on the back of your neck and arms prickle. “What happened to Jane?!” you shriek at the other dumbstruck faces. > In Hiding Everything is kind of a blur. You remember being led to the firehouse and worked on in the back of the ambulance. You remember how everyone was busy coming and going around you and there were new faces popping up every now and again, but you can’t recall everything that went on there. You don’t even know how you got here. You must’ve run when no one was looking because they never would’ve let you out of their sight in the condition you were in or the danger you could face if your mom had gotten her hands on you again. You are laying face down on Jane’s bag of covers in her “secret place”. You can feel the cool dampness all around you and it is so soothing. There is something “safe” about this place. You understand now why Jane would hide and sometimes even sleep overnight in here. With every stretch and adjustment you make, the bandages on your back and legs relax and constrict. This, too, is both soothing and comforting. Your eyes have long since adjusted to the dim light filtering in through the grate—which you must’ve closed behind you when you crawled in, but you can’t remember doing that, either. It’s got too much of a greenish tint to it to be sunlight. It must be coming from the street lamp on the corner. You look over toward the dark corner of the concrete foundation and see a couple empty pop bottles propped up against the change jar which still has your dollar resting on top of all the different coins. You remember sharing those root beers with Jane. Next to them is the ‘treasure chest’ all tied up neatly in the ribbon just the way Jane had left it. Your stomach is growling and twisting in knots. You haven’t eaten anything since the feast you shared with Jane, Earl and Martha early this morning. You can’t risk going back the garage for food and if you went to the store, Mr. Freddy would likely call the cops for your own protection. You don’t know what else you can do other than just tough out the hunger like you’ve done so many times before. You close your eyes and try to sleep, but the gnawing and churning won’t allow you to drift off. You’ll have to suffer through it or else find some way of taking the edge off. You crawl over to the grate and see that outside it is full dark. You shove lightly on the grate and it groans loudly against the concrete foundation. You nearly jump clean out of your skin. When you finally catch your breath again, you lift up on it on the side and slide it over sideways. The high grass outside is dimly lit and shadowy things move about just outside your vision. Your hands and feet go numb, and you get that all too familiar coppery taste in your mouth. You crawl out and drag the grate back over the hole, keeping your eyes on the deeper shadows all around you. One step after another, you make your way to the corner of the house and—instead of going around the front to the steps—climb up the side and slink your way past the window to the door. You gently swing open the screen door—propping it with your foot—and heave up on the doorknob like you remember seeing Jane do, then push inward with all your strength. The door plows the carpeting with a ripping sound that makes a whole new battalion of tiny hairs rise to attention on the back of your neck. Inside, you see that it is darker than dark. When the pounding in your ears subsides, you take a short step through the door and strain your ears against the silence. The only sound you hear is that of your own heavy breath going in and out. Looking over your shoulder only makes the panic grow, so you focus on finding the door in the back wall. You tiptoe through the room with your hands out in front of you and hoping that whatever is lurking in here doesn’t grab you by the arm or ankle from the dark. You find the door facing and pull yourself around it, putting your back against the wall and slamming your eyes shut. Your tongue has swollen two sizes and scrapes leathery against the roof of your mouth. You slowly open your eyes and can see the kitchen sink from what little light filters in through the window above it and the dim silhouettes of the cabinet doors flanking each side along the far wall. The linoleum floor is brighter than the dark carpeting in the front room and you can just make out that there’s nothing creeping around in here—at least, not in the open. You step lightly over to the sink and slowly make your way toward a wooden box on the counter. Taking another look behind you, you reach out and pry open the small doors with your thumbs. You reach inside and feel a soft bread wrapper with only a couple of slices left in it and a tall, square, cardboard box. You take both items and turn toward the front door. The frame is much brighter from this side and is the only thing you can see clearly. Each step you take toward it gets longer and longer until you are at full gallop. On your way through, you manage to snag the knob and jerk the door closed behind you—trapping whatever it was that was behind you inside. You cross the porch—carefully skirting the dark window—and slip back around the side of the house, then crawl back inside to the safety of the “secret place” and drag the grate back into place. Tearing them into chunks, you cram the two stale bread slices into your mouth and choke them down. You then turn your attention to the box. It is still unopened and you rock it lightly in your hands. You can feel the packed contents bounce against the sides. If you’re very careful with them, you can stretch the crackers out for a couple of weeks. After you prop it and the wadded bread wrapper against the wall beside the bottles, you flop face-down on the bag of covers. Your thoughts turn back to the last few days and of Jane as the world around you fades into dream. You wake up feeling a bit too warm and your mouth is dry and dusty. You are desperate for something to quench your thirst. As you push yourself to your knees, your whole body screams out in agony. You’d forgotten all about yesterday, but it all comes flooding back to you now. You reach over and pick up the change jar, but it’s mostly pennies and the pops in the vending machine cost a quarter. You can’t risk going there, anyway. You might not be able to get away this time. After putting the jar back, you crawl over to the grate and peer out as far as you can with your face pressed against it. As far as you can see, all there is is tall grass and weeds so you push it out and to the side, and crawl out into the harsh sunlight. Then you carefully drag it back into place. There are no houses beyond this street so you decide to crawl to the back of Jane’s house before standing up. There aren’t any close neighbors, but you can see a house a little distance on down the road. At the far corner of Jane’s house, you spot prefab concrete steps leading up do a back door. It’s beyond where the kitchen lies and must open into a room you haven’t been in. The house doesn’t seem nearly as spooky in the light of day. You decide to see if you can open it and get inside so you can maybe find something to drink. The door barely moves inward and bumps hard against something up high. You can’t see beyond the light pink curtain so you release the knob. Unless you can find an open window, you’ll have to go in through the front. All the windows are latched from the inside so after you make certain there is no one in sight, you dash for the porch and shove your way in as quickly as you can—closing the door behind you. After taking a second to let your eyes adjust, you walk across the room to the kitchen which is much brighter that the living room now. You stretch up on your tiptoes to reach the faucet knobs and find that they do still work. You catch handfuls of water and lose most of it bringing them to your mouth, but it doesn’t matter. There’s plenty more where that came from. When you’ve had enough, you look around for something to catch water in for later. You find a couple of pots on the stove, but they’re filled with moldy food. There are no plastic milk jugs in the garbage that you can rinse out so you start looking around for anything else that will work. The only other thing there is are whiskey bottles with screw on caps so you rinse them out as best you can and—even though you can still smell the alcohol in them—fill up six of the tallest ones. You rummage through the cabinets and find a couple of cans of green beans and a can opener. They won’t be as good uncooked, but since you have no choice you’ll just have to eat them straight from the can. The refrigerator is bare except for half a stick of butter which might help the crackers slide down easier, but you leave it where it is because it would only end up melting and making a mess. You head over to the door in the far back corner that you thought was a closet and find that behind it is a small room with a water heater being the only major thing in it. There is also a broom, a mop, a dustpan and a bucket and other such cleaning tools that you suspect haven’t been used on the place in quite some time. The floor is buckled and crinkles under your feet as you step lightly over to the back door. You see a lock mounted to the top of the back door well out of your reach and it takes some fancy maneuvering of the broom handle to slide the bolt out of the barrel, but the door is now usable so you don’t have to go around to the front and be spotted by random passersby or the neighbors. You make sure everything is back to exactly the way you found it before closing the door and carrying the water bottles and other items back around to the “secret place”. You’ve been hiding in here for the last two days when you hear footsteps coming from inside the house above you. Voices drift down to you through the floorboards. You hold your breath and don’t move a muscle in case they can hear you as easily as you can them. “This place is a filthy pigsty. How could anyone live in this place? Why was she allowed to even keep a child here?” you hear a woman say. “No one knew. They mostly kept to themselves,” says a familiar sounding man’s voice, “You should hurry and get what you need because I’m not really supposed to let anyone in here until after the trial.” “I don’t know how I’m ever going to find something for her to wear in all this mess. And even if I do, it’ll have to be cleaned before the service.” “I’ve heard it’s gonna be this Thursday, but have they decided where they’re going to hold it, yet?” “Yes, Thursday. It’ll most likely be in the school gymnasium since there are so many people who’ve already called and want to send flowers. Since the story hit all the papers, there’ll probably be a big turnout, too. It’s always sad when someone so young passes.” “It was right in front of my eyes and I couldn’t see it. The boy even warned me when I dropped her off and I thought he was exaggerating, like kids do. I wish I’d have listened. Really listened. I told him I’d look in on her, but by the time I got back it was too late.” That’s who it is! It’s Officer Jarvis. Now you can put a face to the voice. “Don’t blame yourself. The whole town new what shape the little girl was in and just sat on their hands. We’re all to blame.” “But, it’s my job to notice these things. I should’ve done something.” “We all should’ve done something more for her.” There’s a few minutes where all you can hear is footsteps above you and then the woman finally says “I can’t find anything in all this mess. We need to just take up a collection to get her something decent—even if I have to buy it all myself.” A short time later, you hear a car pulling away. You let out a long sigh of relief as you roll over onto your back. You spend the rest of the afternoon looking over your map and at Jane’s postcards. Everything you and Jane dreamed about seems so hopeless and so far away now. You only knew her for a few days, but it feels like you knew her your entire life. Sometime long after dark, your grief finally gives way to sleep. > The Farewell You sit on the bleachers at the edge of the school’s soccer field, staring over at the gymnasium. The parking lot is packed tighter than if there were a game going on inside and the cars stretch clear down both sides of the street beyond where you can see. It looks like there might be more people here than even live in this whole town. The funeral won’t be for a while yet, but people are paying their respects and viewing her remains. You want so much to see her one last time, but not like that. So you just sit here—feeling more helpless and alone than ever before—and just stare at the building. You hadn’t seen the policeman since he’d dropped you off with your mother on that fateful day, but you can make out his face every now and then when he looks out at you from just inside the glass double doors. He’s wearing a dark blue suit now instead of his uniform. When he opens the door and starts walking toward you, every instinct in your body tells you to flee, but you haven’t the will to even stand. You are too tired and sad way down deep to run. You don’t even care what he does to you at this point. You just close your eyes and wait. You can hear his heavy footfalls as he approaches and then a hand on your knee, giving it a gentle squeeze. You open your eyes and see through your tears that he has knelt before you and is struggling against his own tears for words. It takes him a couple of minutes, but he finally manages to speak. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you and thought something bad might’ve happened. I’m glad to see that you’re alright. I guess you’re here to say goodbye to your friend. We can get you to the station and take care of everything afterward. Would you like to go in?” You widen your eyes and your jaw slackens at the very horror of the suggestion. “No, huh uh,” you manage to weakly get out. “You really should, you know. She was your friend and she would want you there,” he coaxes softly, “It’ll be the last time you’ll ever see her and you really should say goodbye.” Your eyes start to burn and you can’t hold in your grief any longer. You scream from way down deep and fall forward as all of your strength falls away. He catches you before you hit the ground and scoops you up tight against him. “I told you. I told you,” you say hoarsely, between sobs. He mumbles something, but you can’t make out the words through your hysterical squeaks. You feel his chest heaving as he tries to hold back his own flood of emotions. Eventually, you manage to get hold of yourself and so does he. He pulls you to your feet and wraps his arm around your shoulders. “C’mon. I’ll go with you. This is something you have to do. I won’t leave you. I’ll be right there beside you the whole time.” Officer Jarvis reaches past you and pulls the door open. It is standing room only inside the building. Beyond the partition separating this area from the main gym, there are rows and rows of little white folding chairs reaching from one side of the basketball court all the way to the other where a long white box lays on its back with its lid standing open and draped in a filmy white shroud. There is a line of people snaking its way back and forth between silver poles attached together at their top by thick red velvet ropes and up through the center of the packed seats. There is a dull roar permeating the building, but you don’t see anyone talking. He walks behind you with a hand on each shoulder, steering you toward the back of the line. Everyone else is dressed in nice clothes and suits, but you still have on the same ones you’ve been wearing since the first night you got here. The line moves along at a snails pace. By the time you finally approach the open box, you are rocking back and forth from one leg to the other. It’s not that you have to go so much as it is the anticipation of reaching the end of this line. “She is so young,” you hear the gray-haired woman in front of you say, “It’s a real tragedy.” When the last of the people part in front of you and wander off toward the far end of the basketball court, you feel Officer Jarvis’ hands give your shoulders a light squeeze. You know you have to walk the few remaining feet to look into the box, but your feet no longer want to cooperate. You stand there frozen — needing to see, but not wanting to with every fiber of your being. “Come on,” he says, “you’re doing just fine.” He finally steps up beside you and wraps his arm around your shoulders—gently lifting and half carries you the last remaining steps. You squinch your eyes shut as tightly as you can and your whole body starts to spasm from the bottom of your feet all the way to your scalp. The moment stretches on and on, and just when you feel like you might make it, your eyelids slowly begin to part of their own accord. Everything is blurry at first, almost as if you are looking through a sheet of water on a window pane. The ultra fine netting gives the contents an almost supernatural feel—as if looking through a wispy cloud. Your eyes slowly follow the contour of the fabric sewn to the inside of the lid and come to rest on the sweetest face you have known in your short life. She looks so pleasant, as if she were only lying there, sleeping. The stern expression she always wore is completely gone from her face now and she looks so content, so peaceful. She’s wearing a dark blue dress spattered in tiny white flowers and her fingers are laced together below its wide lace collar. Her hair is combed out neatly and drawn back in a white ribbon that’s tied in a bow off to one side. You feel like you could just reach out and gently shake her awake, but you know you really can’t. She’s not merely asleep now—she is gone. And with that realization, your eyes begin to burn and you feel a flood cascading down the sides of your face and dripping off your chin onto your bare chest. “Okay, we can go now. We need to find us a place to sit for the service,” he says, curling your trembling body into his as he walks you around the far end of the room. All the seats on the court are filled so he takes you back toward the stairway leading up to the bleachers where many people have already seated themselves. As you round the corner, you see an exit sign over a door with a shiny metal bar across it and another closer one hanging from the ceiling that reads “restrooms” with an arrow pointing down a hall. You point up at it and he nods. “I’ll be up in the stands. Come find me when you’re done.” You nod up at him and head down the hall. You feel somewhat better after relieving your bladder, but you stare into the steel mirror at a boy that you don’t recognize any longer. You slap some water on your face to wash away the dust and slump forward with your hands on the edge of the sink. Nothing about this is right. The world just doesn’t make any sense anymore. You pound your fists against the top of the sink and then turn toward the door. You see a paper towel dispenser and grab a couple on your way out. When you reach the end of the short hall you turn toward the gym, but instead of walking that way you push against the steel bar with your back—feeling a twinge of pain as you do so—and step through into the sunlight. You have to get away from here. When you get back to the “secret place”, you’ve already decided to head West. You don’t have a choice any longer. You have to do this for Jane. And you have to do this now. It can’t wait. You begin carefully packing everything into the bag of covers. You dump the change jar into the bread wrapper to save space. You fill two of the screw-top bottles—and the root beer bottles, in which you have crammed wads of waxed paper that you found in the cabinets as makeshift corks, since you’ll be able to sell them somewhere along the way—with water. The last thing you pack is an old paring knife that has its very tip broken off. It fits perfectly in the ‘treasure chest’. You’ll leave as soon as it gets dark so no one sees you. Maybe there will be another train in the staging yard. If there isn’t, you’ll just keep on going until you do find one. > You into the Night You try to focus on staying between the tracks and not on the darkness that is slowly swallowing you. Every once in a while, the side of your foot glances off one metal rail or the other and you take a step more toward the center. You have to be careful not to turn your ankle since you can only feel your way over the unevenness of cross ties and gravel. There is no moon or even a single star in sky above you, but you can’t risk taking a look upward in case something should brush against you and you should need to suddenly run in the opposite direction. There is a fine mist in the air and every once in a while a small droplet smacks into your clammy skin making you wince. Your heart is sprinting, but your feet take their own sweet time. You have to make it as far as you can before the sun peeks over the horizon. You don’t think you’d be able to survive another beating. You hear a low, rumbling growl coming from all around you. You can feel it more than hear it. The skin behind your ears tingles and your neck hairs prickle. You spin around and around, swinging the bag like a baseball bat and desperately roar as loud as you can to scare off whatever it is that has you surrounded. Your tears burn your eyes and your heart tries to escape through your ears. It’s getting closer. You scream at the thing in the darkness and hear it reverberate back to you, growing louder and louder. Your feet will no longer obey and your skin has become so stiff that if you could somehow move it would probably rip wide open. You close your eyes and grit your teeth. Your whole face feels swollen. The rumble has become so loud now that you can feel it welling up from the ground and into your feet. You can’t even draw in breath anymore. A sudden trumpeting roar blasts from behind you and you spin around to see shining eyes in the blackness. They are so bright that you can barely even look at them. You turn on your heels and can see the tracks stretching out ahead of you. You run. The thing is getting closer and closer. You spot a ravine shrouded in blackness off to the side and dive for it with every ounce of your being. Gravel plows through your forearms up to your elbows and you strike the side of your head on something solid. It is on you now. The wind swirls all around you threatening to rip you from the ground. You flip over and shield yourself with the bag as the thing races past. Through the flashes of light in your vision you can make out a shuttering silhouette and a slow realization bubbles its way to the surface. It is no vile beast, but a train moving at breakneck speed. You roll over onto your belly and push yourself up to your knees. You can see the light on the front piercing its way through the night. You turn and look back toward the other end and can see red lights bringing up the rear. Your burning skin begins to gradually freeze as your breath slowly returns to you and your heartbeat softens and slows. You gently caress your gritty forearms and pluck tiny stones from the soft fleshy underside. You get back to your feet and climb the grade as the final car zooms by. In the dim glow, you can see the tracks clearly. After looking back to make sure there isn’t another one coming, you step back in the middle and continue on your way. You keep your eyes on the train until the tail light finally winks out of sight allowing the darkness to flood back in around you. You are exhausted. You’ve been walking all night and your muscles are stiff and aching—almost feverish. You need sleep, but the sky has only started to gray behind you. You can barely make out the ground around you, but still can’t see anything more distant. You’ll have to find some place that you won’t be discovered as soon as there is enough light for you to see by. The bandages are pulling at your skin from the middle of your back to halfway down your legs and the burning emanating from under them sends a jolt from the base of your scalp all the way to your feet. With every step, the bag you have slung over your shoulder pounds more pain through your body. It finally gets light enough that you can see. You spot a stand of high grass over by a barbed wire fence that will easily conceal you from sight. Not caring about snakes or whatever else might be lurking in there, you wade right into the middle of it and fall face down. You barely manage to pull the bag under your head before sleep takes you. You wake up with the bright sun on your face and it’s too unbearable to open your eyelids. You shield your face with your hand as you roll over onto your side and when your leg strikes the ground it burns like fire. You forget all about the burning brightness and look down at your leg. It is beet red all the way up to your cutoffs and starts again at your belly. Your whole front is sunburned and even lightly touching it makes you wince. You carefully shove yourself to your feet and look as far around you as you can see. Just beyond the pasture on the other side of the fence, the trees are thick and you can only see darkness within. There are no houses or roads within sight—only the train tracks. You are extremely thirsty so you pull one of the screw-top bottles from the sack and gulp down several swallows before picking up the sack and slinging it over your shoulder. You head back to the tracks and—after taking another look around—continue on. > A New Normal You’ve walked for most of the day—going off the embankment and crouching low whenever you spot a farmhouse, someone toiling away in their field or a car on a nearby dirt road—and the light is leaving fast when you hear yipping coming from behind you. When you turn to look, you see a pack of dogs. No, not dogs, because these are all gray. They don’t look as big as the ones in the movies, but they must be wolves! What else could they be out here in the wilderness? You quicken your pace and keep looking back at them over your shoulder. Even though they are definitely following you they don’t seem to be gaining. Maybe they’re waiting for it to get dark before they sneak up on you and attack. They can probably smell the dried blood on your bandages and want to eat you. You look around for somewhere to hide, but there isn’t any place. All the trees nearby are scraggly and you don’t really like the idea of trying to stay awake in a tree all night anyway so you keep moving. Before long you start to notice the stars coming out and the night insects are starting to come to life. You turn around to look at how far back the wolves are and can’t see any of them. Maybe they are sneaking around to ambush you or maybe they lost interest and moved off in a different direction. Either way, you quicken your pace a little more just to be safe. You happen to spot a long heavy stick at the bottom of the embankment and quickly rush down to get it. It is rather light and just a little longer than you are tall. It’s a perfect walking stick and will make a nice weapon in case the wolves decide to attack. Your weariness catches up to you. You have to stop every couple of miles to get off your feet and take a breather. The grassy embankment feels so cool and invigorating against your bare skin. You don’t dare stop for long or you’ll fall asleep for sure. Eventually, though, you do. Your sleep is disturbed by the train screaming by in the night, but you are so tired that all you do is roll over away from the sound. You don’t have the strength to even raise up to look at it. Then it is gone into the place where dreams live. When you wake up, it’s still full dark and you have no idea whether you only slept for a few minutes or for several hours. You decide to eat a few crackers and polish off your first bottle of water before you set out again. The bottle isn’t worth anything so you decide to save some weight and pitch it aside. Your leg muscles feel like blocks of wood from complete exhaustion and you have some trouble controlling them. You also take the time to carefully tear the tape from your back and legs. It’s been on so long that it feels as if it has grown into the skin. Most of the tenderness is gone, but there are still slimy scabs underneath. You can’t see them in the dark, but you can guess that they are all different shades from blue-gray to yellow-green like they were the last time your mom got really mad at you. After about an hour or so of walking you see the first rays of dawn on the horizon. There is a faint mist blanketing the field off to your left and a dark, dense thicket of trees to your right. Either place could be concealing all manner of things intent on doing you harm, but you don’t have the time or the energy to dwell on it. Mosquitoes whine all around your face and you can feel them lighting on your bare skin. It isn’t long before the itching begins driving you mad so you take to jogging in the hopes that they can’t keep up. It works for the most part, but in rays of the cresting sun you can see wispy clouds of them swarming off to the sides and on down the line. All you can hope for is to avoid the biggest share of them. The sun has barely cleared the horizon when up ahead, you see a train parked on the side track of this town’s staging yard. There are a couple of men milling around so you step over the rail and head down the short gravel slope to the ditch filled with stagnant water. There is a line of trees several yards beyond the slough which looks like the perfect cover to make your way up the line without being seen. You take off your flipflops to wade through the ankle deep muck and on the other side you drag your feet through the knee deep grass until the slime and mud are mostly wiped away before slipping them back on. Concealing yourself behind small trees, you make your way up to the train. The doors are closed on the few boxcars you see at this end so you keep moving until you find another short string. They too have their doors pulled shut so you keep moving. You finally near the front end and can see the engine idling beyond the switch on the main track. You can barely hear any other sounds over its rumble. So that you aren’t spotted by someone up there, you duck back behind the boxcars and make your way back toward denser cover. Since all the boxcars along its length appear to be locked up tight, you’ll either have to come up with some other place to board or else continue your journey on foot. There are several flatcars loaded with timbers and other things that are tightly packed and don’t offer any cover, a few with truck van trailers, but the ones that interest you most are two together with new farm implements chained down. Some of them appear high enough off the bed that you could squeeze under them where it would be hard for someone to see you unless they were really trying. > You from the Jaws of Death You start to head over to one when you notice a pair of legs walking on the other side toward the back end of the train. You squat back down to wait until they are far enough away that you can make it over unseen, but you hear the engine rev and a couple of jerks later it is moving. You give it a few more seconds while you look for movement on the other side before getting up and running over to the flatcar. It is still moving slower than you can walk so you sling your walking stick and bag up on it before grabbing a chain to haul yourself up. You throw your leg over the deck and when you try to wriggle up it slips off. You try again and again as the train slowly picks up speed, but you no matter how hard you try to climb up you can’t get enough leverage with the train moving like this. You jump up to try and snag your stuff, but it’s just out of reach so you desperately look around for another stick or anything that would allow you to reach it. There is nothing but gravel so you give it one last try with everything you have. You make a run at it again and try to swing your weight up over the side, but fall and land hard on the rail. A shooting pain courses through your ribs making it hard to catch your breath. You lay there for a second to let the pain go away when you remember that the train is moving. You glance over and see the steel wheels are nearly upon you so you roll away as fast as you can, but you can’t move fast enough and they keep getting closer and closer. You try to scream and all that escapes is air. Just then, large hands clamp down on your shoulders and you feel yourself being yanked from the jaws of death. One of your flipflops slips off and you try to reach back and grab it, but it’s too late. Your heart is pounding and the world is swirling all around you. Everything within your field of vision has taken on a hellish red hue. Before you even know what is happening, those same hands pick you up and sling you on up on the deck. You tumble and roll until slamming into one of the farm implements brings you to a sudden stop. Stunned, you finally manage to look around to see what in the world just happened and you see a tall scraggly man in a old gray sports coat with leather elbows on the sleeves pulling himself up on the side of the car. “It’s a good thing I happened along or you’d have been cut clean in half. You would’ve definitely missed your train.” “Wh- what?” “I was waiting for the train to start moving before I hopped on when I saw you sneaking around out there,” he says, hooking a thumb over his shoulder toward the trees, “Didn’t look like you were gonna make it so I decided to give you a hand. Didn’t anyone ever tell you how dangerous it is to mess around with trains? You could get hurt or maybe even killed. If I hadn’t been here you’d be dead right now.” You stare at him in silence. “What’s a kid like you hopping a freight for, anyway?” “I have to get somewhere. It’s real important.” “It must be if you’re willing to risk your life for it,” he stares at you for a brief moment then continues “I guess since we’re going the in same direction, we might as well get to know each other. I’m Harvey.” You aren’t really sure you should be talking to a stranger let alone tell him your name, but he did just save your life and he’s standing there smiling at you with an eyebrow lifted expecting an answer. He doesn’t really look dangerous and he did help you get on the train so do you tell him the truth or do you lie? > You tell the Truth You reluctantly say “I’m Billy.” “Nice to meet ya, Billy. I guess we’re gonna be here a while so might as well find a spot to get comfortable.” He sits down between two of the implements—putting his back to one and props his foot up on the other—where he can’t be seen from the ground. You bring your bag over and find a nice comfy place out of view from the side. You sit down beside it—leaning on it with your elbow—with your walking stick laying across you lap while keeping a wary eye on Harvey. “I saw you a ways back down the line and can’t believe you made it this far. You’ve really covered some miles in the last couple of days.” “Yeah. It’s a long ways to where I’m going.” “Where’s that? If you don’t mind my asking.” You study his face. You’re still not sure if you can really trust him or not so you make up something on the spot. “I have to find my uncle in Arizona so I can live with him.” “Hope everything turns out okay for ya. I kinda like to keep moving. Don’t like to stay in one place too long. Figured I’d head for the coast since this area is mostly played out now. It’s not a bad place to Winter.” Your belly starts growling so you reach into your bag and pull out what’s left of the pack of crackers you’ve been eating on for the last couple of days. You only have one more pack left and they’re mostly crushed, but you won’t mind that a bit when you get hungry again. You stuff one in your mouth and grab a few more for good measure. You consider putting the pack back in the bag, but decide you ought to share so you offer Harvey the last of the package which he quickly accepts. “Thank ya,” he grins, “I haven’t had anything on my stomach since early yesterday.” You both eat in silence and after a while you drift off to sleep to the sounds of the clacking rails. > A Hobo's Life You are awakened by a gentle shake to your shoulder and see that the stars are out. “It’s time to get up. We’re slowing down and the train might be stopping up ahead. We need to get off before it does.” “Huh?” “There’s no telling what they’ll do if they catch us riding their train. Sometimes they just run you off and sometimes they call the police.” You stand up, pick up your bag with your free hand and stand next to Harvey at the side of the flatcar. Still wiping the sleep from your eyes you suddenly think about the jagged gravel that you know is down there where you must jump, but can’t see in this light. “I don’t know if I can jump. I lost my flipflop back when we got on.” “You need a pair of shoes. We’ll worry about that later. It’s not that far to the ground so you should be just fine. Just try not to land too hard on your bare foot.” You nod, but it’s dark enough that Harvey wouldn’t be able to see it. “Okay,” he says, “time to go.” Then he steps off the side and disappears. You take a deep breath and jump as far away from the train as you can so you don’t get run over. The shock to your knee shoots a bolt of pain through your leg, but it goes away as soon as your bare foot touches down on the jagged chunks of rock. You grit your teeth even though it isn’t as bad as you thought it would be. You sling your bag over your shoulder and—leaning hard on your walking stick—limp back toward where Harvey jumped off. It isn’t long before you find him since he’s walking up to find you. “Are you okay?” “Yeah, but it’s hard to walk bare-footed on these sharp rocks.” “Here, climb up on my back until we find softer ground for you to walk on,” he says, squatting down on one knee in front of you. You fumble for grip because you don’t have enough hands to hang on. “Let me have that,” Harvey says, snatching the stick from your grip before you even know what is happening. “Hey, I need that!” “Not right now, you don’t. You can have it back later.” A short time later, you come to a dirt access road and Harvey sets you down. He’s bent over huffing and puffing and it takes him a while to get his breath back. It’s obvious that he’s older than he looks. The lines in his face have deepened and there are shadows under his eyes. Eventually he catches his breath and straightens up. “There has to be a better way,” he says, “Whatcha got in the bag? Anything you could use as a shoe or wrap your foot up with until something better comes along?” “Just some covers and postcards.” “Let’s have a look at them covers.” As you pull the blanket from the bag, the bottles clink together. “What’s that?” “Just some old bottles that I keep water in.” “Let’s have one. I’m parched.” You don’t want to risk losing one of the trade-in bottles so you pull out the other screw-top one and hand it to him. He gulps down half of it before cutting his eye at you and stops himself. You can tell that he wants more, but he screws the lid back on and passes it back to you. “Thanks, kid. I needed that.” You take a couple of swallows for yourself before putting it back in the bag. The bottles clink and clank against each other so you roll the bag up tight against them to keep them from breaking. You do your best to tie the wrapped blanket around your foot, but can’t make it stay on so Harvey takes over and by the time he’s done you look like you’re wearing a golf bag on your leg. You feel like Frankenstein when you walk with your leg stiff like this, but it beats jabbing your foot on sharp things. “I guess we oughta find some food. What do you feel like, kid, steak or lobster?” chuckling to himself. You just stare back at him. “That looks like a fine place to eat,” he says, pointing through the trees to a small house. “I hope we don’t need a reservation.” You follow him through the trees curious as to how he’s going to get someone to give him food. You’re at his heels when he raps on the door and as he steps back he nearly runs you over. When no one comes to the door, he knocks a little louder the second time. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” he says, turning toward the steps and leans against the railing. He stands there looking around the yard for a few minutes before walking over to a short board fence and hopping over. He snatches a couple of ripe tomatoes off the vine and pulls up a couple of decent sized carrots. “This oughta hold us a while. We don’t want to get too greedy.” As you and he walk down the tracks eating your measly meal you can’t help but feel a little guilty. It wasn’t you that stole the food, but you are eating it nonetheless. It’s so delicious that you can’t help yourself. > You christmas in July You’ve been walking for a couple hours and things look eerily familiar when up ahead you spot the old trestle bridge that you saw when you were with Jane. “Too bad we don’t have any fishing gear,” Harvey muses, “or we could be eating catfish tonight.” You look over at him and then follow his gaze to a small group of people fishing on far bank of the muddy river. “Maybe they could spare a couple of hooks and some line so we can make cane poles.” “Do you think they might let us have some?” “There’s no harm in asking. C’mon, let’s go see.” You follow him as fast as your stiff-legged limp can take you. He stops at the bridge for about a minute looking up and down the tracks until he’s satisfied that there’s no train on its way, then walks at nearly his walking pace across. You look down at the muddy, swirling water and wonder what might be lurking under its surface. You don’t really like high places and wish there was another way around. After gritting your teeth, you step out onto the first tie. You have trouble keeping up and have only made it halfway across when he reaches the other side. Luckily, you make it across without falling between the cross ties and aren’t surprised by a speeding train. “You look like you need a breather,” he says, “Why don’t you go sit in the shade over there while I go talk to these people.” You almost protest, but decide it might be better if you’re seen by as few people as possible. Even though you are with an adult now, there’s no telling what might happen and you certainly don’t want to be taken back to your mom. There’s no telling what she might do to you this time. You walk over and find a comfy spot and sit down. While you wait, you pull out your map and look for the highway number that you saw when you were near here with Jane. You were focusing your attention on Harvey this time and didn’t notice it this time. It doesn’t look very far away from home on the map, but the deputy had said it was eighty miles and eighty miles is a long way. You put the map back in the ‘treasure chest’ and lean back—soaking up the coolness of the shade. Your eyes start to glaze over so you sit up and give yourself a couple of light slaps to make the sleepiness go away. You’ve been sitting here a long time and start to wonder what’s taking Harvey so long to get back. It shouldn’t take this long to ask for fishing line and a couple of hooks. Maybe he decided not to come back. Maybe he figured it would be better not to have to travel with a kid. Getting to your feet and picking up the bag, you decide you should at least take a peek and see if he’s anywhere to be seen. You walk about halfway back to the river when you hear a hushed “Hey, psst” from behind you. You turn around and see Harvey stepping out of the trees so you walk back over to him. He’s got a rolled up paper bag under his arm and is grinning at you as he motions for you to follow him into the tree-line. “They were nicer than I ever would’ve expected. Look at all the stuff they were willing to part with.” He pulls out a brand-new package of treble hooks and a whole roll of bright blue fishing line. “Looks like we might be eating fish tonight. And here’s something for you,” he says, pulling out a rolled up green shirt and flipping it open to reveal a pair of pink and white tennis shoes. You crinkle your nose. You don’t want to wear girl’s shoes. He smirks and says “Don’t worry. After you wear ‘em a couple days, nobody’ll know the difference. Oh, and this here shirt is for you, too.” He helps you untie the blanket and repack your bag. He doesn’t open the ‘treasure chest’ and only packs it in tight with everything else. You mentally let out a sigh of relief. If stealing stuff from a house didn’t bother him, what would he have done if he’d found your money? It makes you wonder if those people actually gave him this stuff or if he stole it, too. The shoes are a bit loose on you, but you lace them up good and tight and they only flop a little bit when you walk in them. Your put your lone flip-flop in the bag in case you might need it later and notice that the bag is considerably smaller now which will make it much easier to carry. Harvey must’ve had a lot of practice packing stuff since he moves around so much. “We should head off down the river that way to do our fishing. We don’t wanna be too close to other people fishing if we expect to catch anything. You ready to go?” You nod. “Then let’s go catch us some supper.” Harvey steps into the trees on the other side of the tracks and you follow close behind. It’s been so long since you wore a pair of shoes that you forgot how good they can feel and the branches raking your sunburned chest as walk through the brush doesn’t bother you quite so much now that you have a shirt as an extra barrier of protection. It seems like you’ve been walking in the woods for a long time and you begin to think that you might be lost again like what happened when you were with Jane. Harvey stops several times to listen and look around like he doesn’t know where he’s going. You are about to ask him if you might be lost when he steps out on a bluff overlooking the river. He crane’s his neck to look upstream and can’t see beyond the bend. “This looks like a good spot,” he says. > You gone Fishin' Both of you put your stuff down and Harvey pulls out an old pocket knife and flips out a blade that looks to have been sharpened way too many times. He walks around looking until he finds a couple of straight enough saplings to whack into poles and ties line and hooks to the end. “We don’t have any worms or grasshoppers,” you say. He raises an eyebrow at you. “We won’t need ‘em.” You look at him a little puzzled as he reaches into the neck of his shirt and rips off the tag, then does the same to yours. “Here’s the best starter bait in the world.” You shake your head. What fish would want to eat cloth? Maybe he doesn’t even know how to fish since he doesn’t know what fish like to eat. He stabs a hook through each square white piece and hands you your pole before dropping his line in the water. You move a few yards down the bank and find a place where you can sit with your feet hanging over. Might as well get comfortable since you are going to be here a while. You drop your line in and lean back against a tree. You notice that your back doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as it did. It still itches a little, but you are careful not to scratch it so you don’t open the scabs and start it bleeding all over again. You look up at the clouds floating by and realize that it has been a long time since you took the time to really stop and look around at anything. You find yourself swinging your feet and whistling softly through your teeth—just like you used to do when your dad took you fishing before he and your mom got a divorce. Everything was perfect back then and everyone was always so happy. You long to be back there because now the whole world has gone crazy and you’re having a hard time just keeping up. You don’t notice the slight tugging at your line, but when it is nearly jerked from your grasp you yank on it with too much force. You know better than to do that. That’s how fish get away. You look down at your line and see a tiny perch flopping on the end of it. You can hardly believe your eyes. The little fish must’ve really thought that your shirt tag was something to eat. “I got one! I caught a fish!” “Shh. Not so loud. You don’t want to scare off all the other fish, do you?” Harvey says, craning his neck to look upriver. “Bring it over here and let me see it.” You do as he asks. “It’s only a little one so we gotta throw it back.” He shakes his head. “This one’s gonna be our catfish bait.” He worries the hook out and guts the tiny little fish. After baiting your hooks with its innards, he hands you back your pole and pitches his line out as far as it will go. You walk back to your spot and throw your line back in. You remember your dad telling you that you have to turn the little fish loose so they can grow up to be big fish. If you didn’t, there wouldn’t be any big fish for other people to catch. You look back over at Harvey and wonder if he really has any idea what he’s doing after all. After spending the whole day fishing, there’s only one channel cat and a couple of medium perches to show for it. Harvey did end up throwing several small fish back so it eased your mind about that somewhat. When it came time to clean and cook the fish, he showed you how to tie a fish to the end of a forked stick and stake it on with smaller ones sharpened into little skewers so it wouldn’t fall off in the campfire. You are basically roasting them like marshmallows which was kind of neat and fun. It reminded you of the camp-outs you had with your parents when you were little. To round out the meal, you sift through the shattered crackers and pick out the biggest chunks. Harvey eats most of the fish and crackers and before he is through you feel like you wouldn’t be able to hold in even one more bite if you wanted to. You collapse into a heap and begin thinking about how almost the entire day was wasted. You could be a long way from here right now—even if you had to walk to do it. Sure, you needed the rest, but not as much as you needed to cover the ground. You’ll have to try to make up for all this lost time tomorrow and if that means going on alone then so be it. Getting to the Grand Canyon for Jane is the most important thing. It’s the only thing that matters. > You life on the Road You wake up before the sun and begin readying your pack for the road ahead. Harvey occasionally grunts in his sleep and you don’t dare wake him unless it is a real emergency. That’s just the way it is with grownups. When you get tired of waiting, you decide to throw your line in the murky water. It isn’t that you are hungry, but you are nearly out of food and if you had a fish to tide you over in the afternoon it would save time—and the hassle—in the long run. You find a decent looking gut that isn’t too big or too small to skewer onto your hook and pitch your line out as far as it will go. After more than an hour, you still haven’t had even a nibble and are about to give up when the sun finally peeks over the horizon. The warmth is overwhelming and the world around you sort of melts away. It is so comforting to just stand here and bask in the rays of the new day. Just then, your pole snaps and you are startled back into reality. “Ahhh!” Something big has tied onto your line and with the way it is thrashing, you don’t know if you’ll be able to haul it in. You dig in with your heels and strain with all you have, but the mud is slick and you are being dragged toward the water. The surface opens up in a geyser revealing the biggest catfish you have ever seen. It is a sleek and silky, bluish-gray catfish and you can only stand there while the spray engulfs you in slow motion. “Wha- What’s going on?!” you hear from behind you along with quite a ruckus. Harvey scrambles up beside you and is still rubbing the bleariness out of his eyes when it finally dawns on him that you need help so he reaches out and snags the end of your pole. “This guy’s enough to feed an entire army!” By the time all the chunks have cooked the sun is already high. You’ve lost so much time already that when you finally do head off down the tracks you have to continually slow down to let Harvey catch up even though your paces are two to his one. You try not to even stop to rest when he suggests it, but he’s not as young as you are so you have to give him the occasional breather. The miles tend to run together and then the days. It’s a long way between towns and by the time you finally get within sight of one that is little more than a far away dot, you’ve long since eaten the last morsel of fish. Harvey has pointed out a few edible plants along the way—none of which are very appetizing, but they don’t kill you or even make you sick—which is better than having nothing at all on your stomach. He shows you how to skin prickly pears so you can eat them, but they are so bland that you can only stand to chew them until all the moisture is gone and then spit out the remnants when he’s not looking. It’s about midday when you run up on another farmhouse about a half a mile from the tracks. “Wait here,” Harvey says, “I’ll be back in a jiff.” You watch as he crosses the over-grazed pasture and strides up to the front door. After a couple minutes, you see him disappear around the side only to return a few minutes later cradling something in his arms. When he gets close enough, you can see that what he’s carrying is eggs. “I got us a real treat, boy.” You look up at him and give a half-smile. “I haven’t had eggs in a long, long time. How are we gonna cook ‘em? We don’t have a pan or anything.” “Leave that to me. Where there’s a will—there’s a way.” After a short ways, he picks up an old tin can and peers into it while holding it up to the sun. “This’ll do nicely. You got any of that water left?” “Yeah.” You reach into the bag and pull a bottle out. “It’s the last one.” “It’ll be more than enough. We’ll get some more the next place we run on to.” He steps off to the side of the tracks and kicks an area bare with his foot. He starts piling dried grass, twigs and whatever else he finds and then lights it. You quickly run around gathering more bits of dried wood and before you know it, the can is boiling away so he pulls it off to the side a couple inches—enough that it can still get heat, but not so much that it loses all of its water. Then, the two of you sit back and watch it for a few minutes. “That oughta be enough.” He pulls his hand inside his sleeve and uses the cuff like a hot pad. After dumping the water on the fire, he kicks it around a little bit to make sure it is completely out. “We’ll let these cool off while we walk and come supper time we’ll have us a real treat.” You don’t really want to wait, but you know he’s right so you do your best to put it out of your mind and think about other things. All at once, you notice that there are suddenly more houses around. You didn’t even realize how much you’d traveled since you first saw this town as a far off speck. “With any luck, we’ll be able to catch a train out of this bump in the road. I don’t think my feet can take too many more miles.” “We need to fill up the bottles with water.” “We oughta find a milk jug or two instead. Those glass bottles you got are empty weight. If you’re going to be lugging something around, it oughta be more water.” You nod in agreement. > You wrench in the Cogs Crossing the street to a gas station, you spot a police car coming toward you from down the street. You step up your pace and put Harvey between you and it. You look around for a place to hide, but there isn’t anything close. You prepare yourself in case he stops, but all you can hope for is to run as fast as you can and hope that you can get away. You let out a sigh as it goes on by and the officer behind the wheel doesn’t even look over at you. Stepping through the open door, you are hit by a blast of not quite so hot air. A big shop fan rests against the back wall and is aimed directly at the door. A nice looking man in thick glasses and stained coveralls sits just to the right of it and has his nose buried in a newspaper. “Ahem,” Harvey clears his throat to get the guy’s attention. “Howdy,” says the attendant, leaning forward so that the legs of his folding chair touch the floor, “What can I do for you?” “We were hoping to get some water. Drinking water. And maybe a jug or something to put it in.” You can see the disappointment on the attendant’s face as he draws his lips back, but it quickly shifts into a forced smile. “Sure thing. I think there might be one around back by the dumpster.” “Thanks,” Harvey says as he heads back out the front door. You hang back and stand there looking at the guy with a sheepish smile until you finally build up enough nerve to blurt out “Do you buy bottles?” “Sure thing, little man. You got some you wanna trade in?” “Uh huh.” You dig through you bag and pull out the two root beer bottles. You stand there looking down at them and remember sharing them with Jane. You knew you’d have to sell them eventually, but now you aren’t sure that you really want to. “Just the two, then?” You wipe the film from your eyes that has started to develop and look up at him. You nod. “I think I have it right here—” he says, digging in his pocket. “Yeah, here you go. Six cents. You can put ‘em over there with those,” he points after handing you the coins. From the little wire rack by the front door, you grab a couple plastic tubes of peanuts. They are marked twenty-five cents and you think you have more than enough in change. You pull out the plastic bread wrapper and start counting out pennies on the only bare spot on the counter. The attendant watches you and drums his fingers impatiently. “That’s it.” You look up and see him sliding the pile off into his hand. “That’s not fifty cents.” “Yeah, it is. You must’ve just miscounted.” You grin up at him. You’d only given him a little over thirty cents so either he is really nice and doing you a favor or else he just doesn’t want all your pennies. He smiles warmly back. You quickly twist the bag of money and shove it way down deep in your pocket before Harvey comes back. He seems that he’s on your side so far, but if he can steal from random strangers he might just take from you, too. You drop the peanuts into your bag for later in case you have to go too long without food. You’re leaning with your back against the metal door frame when Harvey returns with two jugs. He and the attendant talk briefly before the two of you head around the side of the building to the faucet and fill the jugs. You have a huge lump in your throat and barely even take notice of anything around you for quite a little while. Even bending down and taking giant gulps straight from the spigot doesn’t make it go down. It just sort of hangs there. The last thing you do is pitch the last whiskey bottle in the dumpster before the two of you head back toward the tracks. It’s several hours before a train comes into view. You hear the blasting horn from miles away and you sit staring in the direction of the blast. It is going the wrong way, however, so you have to keep waiting. You and Harvey have found yourselves a nice comfy spot in the shade of a metal building in some scrub brush where no one can see you. Harvey has been leaning with his back against a small tree and every once in a while he lets out a snort that would wake any normal person from a sound sleep. Not him, though. Even though he’s had much more rest than you, he still looks like an old, old man. His gray doesn’t end at his hairline, but keeps going all the way down his face subcutaneously. Sometime before dark and just when you finally feel like you could stand some sleep yourself, you hear a long, blaring horn from the opposite direction. “That’s our ride,” says Harvey, opening his eyes and stretching to get the kinks out. You watch as the engine finally enters the yard, but it keeps going and doesn’t slow any more than a fast walking pace. Harvey cranes his neck and strains to try and see further down its length. There are no boxcars. All you can see are flatcars and hoppers. A long stretch of flatcars are loaded with sea containers probably bound for the coast and don’t offer any space at all around them, but one of the last cars is only half full at the back. Harvey trots toward it and you dash around him. After lofting your bag over the side, he grabs you around your middle and hefts you up. He tosses his coat and the water jugs at your feet before trotting up to the very front where there is a step. “Hey! Get away from there!” you hear coming from the tail end of the train. “That’s private property!” You duck into a corner made by the slightly mismatched cargo containers and watch as Harvey takes a step backward. He looks up at you as the train whisks you by and turns away from the tracks. You peek around the container to see two men rush up to him. They take him by the arms and lead him back across the tracks. One of them is talking on a walkie-talkie. What are they going to do to him? Did they see you? You have no idea. If they did, they might call ahead to stop the train and then what would you do? > You go back for Harvey You shove Harvey’s coat into your bag and wait until the yard is out of sight before jumping off. The train has picked up a little speed and you end up rolling headlong in the gravel, but only end up with a couple of small scrapes. There will be other trains or maybe Harvey will have another idea. You can’t just bear to take his stuff and go on without him. By the time you get back to the train yard there is no one in sight. You don’t know what to do. You can’t just start walking around town looking for him. What if that cop sees you? He’ll take you back to your Mom and after what she did last time—well, that’s just too awful to even think about. You hang around the train yard for a little while being sure to keep out of sight until it is full dark and then walk over to the street where the gas station is. You don’t see any sign of Harvey. In fact, the street is completely deserted so you head back to the tracks. There’s a strange sense of deja vu as you walk between the rails. It’s not quite as scary this time, but things are still creeping around out there just out of sight. You wish that you still had your stick with you. You must’ve left it back at the river. That’s the last place you remember seeing it. About a mile or so away from town, you see a small cinder block building with a light on the front of it above a blue door out in the middle of a field and just behind it there’s an earthen dam. It looks like it might be a good place to stay the night. You walk over to it and try to open the door, but it’s locked so you go around to the side where it’s dark and slump down against the wall. You are getting rather hungry so you reach in your bag to get a package of peanuts when you remember the eggs. Too bad Harvey isn’t around to enjoy them. You take out two and take your time eating them. You fiddle with the shells—not wanting to go to sleep out here in the open, but there is a little light to see by so you don’t feel quite as skittish—and end up crumbling them into tiny bits only slightly bigger than sand before finally casting them out into the wiry grass. You aren’t sitting there long before the day catches up with you and you drift off to sleep. You wake up before the sun and find it right nippy out so you put on Harvey’s coat. Your legs are stiff and there’s a crick in your back. Your arms feel like they are about to fall off from carrying the extra weight of the water jugs. There has to be something you can do about it. You can’t keep juggling all this stuff and expect to last very long. At long last, the sun finally pops up and the dew steams off the tracks. It won’t be long until it gets warm enough that you won’t need the coat anymore and that gives you an idea. You pull your arms out of the sleeves and tie a jug to each one—letting them flop in front of you while you keep the coat on like a cape. It’s not pretty, but it frees up your hands so that all you have to worry about is holding onto the bag. It isn’t long before you polish off the rest of the eggs and while getting them out, you find the hooks and line. With any luck you’ll run into another river or maybe a lake somewhere up ahead. You trudge along for mile after mile as the sun creeps steadily overhead and just hangs there baking you. You keep wishing you had some kind of hat when you see something between the tracks up ahead that looks just like a dusty, smashed cowboy hat. You pick up your pace and are nearly on it when it suddenly moves! It’s a snake! And it’s big one. It has a pattern of criss-crossing lines along its back and starts to make a rattling noise. You drop the bag as you fall backward. You see it draw back its head as you crab-walk the heck out of there as fast as you can. When you are a safe distance away, you get back to your feet. What are you going to do now? You have to get your bag back, but it’s much too close to it now. You look around and the only thing there is is the crushed limestone gravel. Perfect! You pick up a couple handfuls of the biggest chunks and start lobbing them at it to drive it away. Every single stone—whether it be a hit or miss—is a hit because the rattler strikes them when they get close. Every single time! And then it shakes off the impact kind of and gets ready for the next one. Before long the bottom of its mouth is kind of drooping to one side and its head is mangled, but it hangs in there. You ease a little closer being careful to stay well out of range and start pelting it with everything you have until it is little more than a pile of mush. It finally slinks over the rail and slithers into the sparse grass where it disappears completely. You creep up and pick up your bag giving that area a wide berth before continuing on your way. > You any Port in the Storm You only now realize how late it is getting. It seems like only a couple hours ago the sun was directly overhead and now there are not even shadows at all anymore. You look around for some place to hole up for the night and the only place you see is a small grove of trees in the corner of the field some distance from the tracks. There are no people or animals within sight and you debate whether you should head over there or keep going and hope for a better spot to present itself. Just then, a loud crack nearly knocks you off your feet and everything around you is immediately thrown into high contrast. You duck instinctively, even though you are a second too late. You look up to see the sky overhead is near black and brimming with static. The horizon behind you fades swiftly to nothing in a dingy gray curtain. You are about to get soaked! Nature has made your decision for you. You don’t want to be anywhere near trees during an electrical storm. And you certainly don’t want to be standing on these metal tracks higher than all the ground around you for as far as you can see. You can see a dirt road about a half a mile ahead. Perhaps you’ll find some cover when you reach it. In any case, you’ll be off the tracks and will no longer be a sitting duck for lightning strikes. You run. As you near the crossroad, you look both ways for any sign of shelter and see a bent over mail box at the end of what appears to be a driveway so you veer in that direction cutting across the ditch before even reaching the road. There is a stitch in your side, but you keep moving. Thunder is clapping all around you and a sound like running horses is growing louder and louder. You turn into the driveway without slowing down and find it nearly overgrown down the center. It is canted downhill and looks more like an old wash than something carved out by human hands. Only vague tire wear paths along each side show that it was once used. The spindly saplings on either side stretch out and their branches knit together overhead throwing the path into unnatural darkness. Your stomach lurches at the prospect of having to venture down such a lane, but you don’t have much choice and hope that there is still some form of shelter when you reach the end of it. As you run along weaving back and forth through the tall grass and weeds down the center of the lane from one worn path to the other to avoid the darkest areas and shrubbery that threatens to conceal any manner of creature, you hope that something isn’t lying in wait just out of your vision—to trip you up or is crouched and ready to pounce. The path finally widens into a clearing and with it your spirits—for across the unkempt yard you see an old derelict shotgun house whose roof has collapsed in at the back. It might not be much to look at, but it will definitely serve its purpose to keep you dry while you weather the storm that has just now caught up to you. Snow white stones pummel the ground around and in front of you and will soon tear their way through the spindly branches overhead so you have no choice but to run the gauntlet and hope that you can make it to the cover on the other side. With giant strides, you cover the ground with ice pelting you from above and ricocheting off of your shoulders and arms—stinging as they bounce high and away—and sure to leave welts the size of goose eggs. A couple or three times a stone smacks into your head and your vision goes fuzzy, but you are too focused on your goal to give it much thought or to succumb to the blinding pain. Finally, you spring up onto the gabled porch and dart through the framed hole in the wall that once supported a door. Everything is shrouded in a dim gloom and there is a mustiness that permeates the place. You don’t see signs that anyone has been in this place for possibly years. You set your bag against the wall by the door so you can look around. Beyond the front room is a short hall on the left that leads into a darkened room. As you make your way down it, you come to a wood panel door with cracked and peeling white paint that has greened slightly with age midway and see another a little further on with a more yellowed tinge to it. Both are standing wide open and you can see only darkness in the slits between them and the door frame. Inside the first room you see the remnants of a mattress leaning against the far wall partially covering a window whose muntins hold only shards and fragments of turquoise shaded glass still trapped by its web of caulk. It was probably placed there to prevent the room from being damaged by weather or overrun with critters when the first of its lights had been knocked out. The bed frame is still in the corner and the pile next to its head was most likely a nightstand that didn’t fare too well with time. A pile of debris layers the floor of the built-in closet. It was undoubtedly shirts and dresses and things once upon a time and has become shredded by moths, rodents and mildew until it could no longer cling on to the wire hangers still suspended on the bar. You wrestle the door away from the wall enough to peek behind and find nothing at all there save cobwebs and decades of dust. You shove it back against the wall and step into the room for a more thorough examination. Still hanging from a crooked nail in the closet, you find a narrow leather dress belt. You bend and wrench it and find that it still has life left in it. It could come in handy sometime, so you buckle it to its tail and sling it over your head—letting it dangle at your hip like a sash. There are a few other things like a brass ash tray that’s tarnished black with age, but you can’t imagine a use for it and it would only weigh you down. You check the next door and see that behind it is a tiled bathroom. There isn’t much of value in here, but as you are about to leave you spot a new vinyl shower curtain still in its wrapper. It sounds a bit crunchy when you bend the package, but it might still be good enough to keep you dry if you get caught in a sudden downpour. The back room is the kitchen, but you can’t get through it or even tell what might be in there since the roof has collapsed and draped the ceiling over whatever might’ve once been in here. It doesn’t look too safe to even go near so you head back to the front room where you seat yourself by the open doorway and snack on a few peanuts. The storm outside is raging and seems to be growing more violent with every passing second. At least you found a dry place to weather it. You might as well try to get some rest since it looks like you’re going to be here a while so you draw the coat up as tightly as you can and slump your back against the wall. > You ghosts From the Past Sleep doesn’t come easily with all the thunderclaps. And you keep seeing movement with each flash of lightning. Sometimes it’s down the dark hallway and sometimes through one of the windows. Each time you spin your head in that direction it is already gone—whatever it is. You’d move to a better angle to see everything, but it would only put you at a disadvantage. If you move even a foot to either side, something could grab you through a window and if you move over to the far wall, the hallway would be at your back. As it is now, something could reach through and grab you from the doorway so you draw your feet under you and are poised to spring away. Something is scraping around in the kitchen now. You can barely make it out above the howl of the wind, but it is there. You still can’t make anything out through the darkness—which only deepens with each strobe from the storm. Something is watching you. You slowly turn your head to one side to see out of the windows along that wall and only see blackness. Your hands are all sweaty so you try to wipe them off on your shirt, but it is still damp and doesn’t do much good at all. Lightning flashes overhead and you can see that there’s nothing outside the windows. You slowly pivot your head toward the windows on the opposite wall and notice how much blacker the room has become. Your ears begin to burn and prickle. You don’t dare make any sudden movement. You hear the ambient rumble emanating from all around you with only slight variances every now and again. What happened to all the lightning? Why is it taking so long? Then it is suddenly and briefly daylight outside and you can see that the windows are empty. Does it know when the flashes will come and only hide until it gets dark again? Something moves in front of you! It is only a black shape against the darkness and you can see it getting taller—as if it is getting to its feet. Your legs won’t work and your chest feels heavy. You can’t see its face, but can feel the too wide grin creeping slowly across it. Its eyes burn into you though you cannot see them. You can see more of them writhing in background, waiting. They slither this way and that, but aren’t drawing any closer. The thing is still just black on black, but it is drawing ever nearer as it glides toward you. It is getting larger and larger. You can feel it reaching its long bony talons out toward you and its shriveled lips part open. Don’t worry. No one ever comes here. This place is ‘bandoned. You nearly jump out of your skin and your eyes snap open. Was it a only dream or did you actually just hear those words? You rapidly swivel your head back and forth trying to get a handle on where it is. All you can see is blackness that goes gray with each heartbeat. The rumble outside has become more distant and there are no longer any lightning flashes to illuminate the room. You pick up your bag and hold it in front of you as a makeshift shield. Get that little BASTARD! You are on your feet and running through the night in the direction that you believe the driveway is. It is so dark that you can’t see your hand in front of your face and you can only hope that you don’t slam into a tree or anything. The jugs of water are beating against your thighs with every step. Your eyes burn and tears stream down your cheeks. You better run you little BITCH! You run like the devil is after you because it most certainly is. With each step, you slog through the ankle deep water. You can hear it slosh and spray all around you. You expect you foot to drop into a hole or get stuck in the mud, but find solid footing among the submerged grass and weeds. You have your arm outstretched ahead of you to help deflect anything in your path, but there is nothing. The grassy slough gives way to solid ground—possibly a road—and you turn back in the direction you believe the tracks are in. You run and run until you run yourself completely out of packed ground and find yourself surrounded by dense grass. You no longer have anywhere to go but down. You fall in a heap attempting to stifle your wheezing sobs and clinging to the bag for dear life. The pounding in your ears blocks out all other sound and you wouldn’t know if something was coming up on you in the blackness—no matter how much racket it was making. Eons pass and you finally see the first twinkle among the clouds. The sky slowly withdraws its veil letting more and more tiny lights shine through. All around you there is a comforting bluish glow. The grass seems to be lit from within and it feels like you can see for miles and miles—as if you are in some supernatural sea. The serenity seeps into your soul and your previous terror is completely replaced with awe and wonder. The sun spills over the horizon and washes across the landscape and you are momentarily blinded by the glint of steel. The tracks are but a short distance away. You must have turned and run along beside them in your panic. A great double rainbow cinches the whole world together and everything is suddenly new again. You feel like you can take the entire universe on single handed. You pick yourself up and sling the bag over your shoulder and once again hit the rails. > You train Wrangler After a day and a half, you come within sight of a town. It is just getting dark and the street lights are beginning to glow orange as far as the eye can see. This is no ordinary town—it stretches out for miles and is already giving off a glow comparable to that of the setting sun. Another track stretching off into the far yonder joins with yours and up ahead you can see yet another. They cling to each other and swap back and forth between switches. There are trains up ahead—some coming and some going—and beyond that a vast highway arcs in perpetual leap from one side of this river of rails to the other. You make your way over to the far side to keep out of sight of the headlamps of the oncoming trains and follow the tracks for nearly an hour—careful to stay with the majority as they snake their way westward—doing your best to not get sidetracked. Up ahead and on the same side of the arteries of tracks as you you see a train just sitting there alongside a string of small warehouses and aimed in the right direction. You can hear the engine reverberating and there are bright lights on tripods scattered all around. There are some flatcars with men busy loading large crates onto them using forklifts from the loading dock and in the gloom between them and the engine is a string of boxcars. You can see from here that their doors are wide open. If only you could make it inside one without being spotted. You sneak up behind the metal buildings and then through the gap between until you are right across from the darkest one and watch the men carefully for your opening. The door is only a few inches higher than the platform so you won’t have any trouble getting inside. You only have to wait for the right moment. After the crates have been chained down and the forklifts have gone away, the men start taking the lights down one by one and you hear the engine slowly rev up. You’ll have to time this just right. Luck is on your side. There is no one in sight when the train starts inching forward and you make your dash. You make your way as quickly between the slatted crates and the wall as you can to the front of the car where you find just enough crawl space to conceal yourself and your stuff. The smell is overpowering and your mouth begins to water uncontrollably. The crates are packed full with cantaloupes and you haven’t eaten anything since the remainder of peanuts you had last night. You are famished! You don’t even bother with getting the knife out of the ‘treasure chest’. You just reach in and punch a hole in one with your fist. You pull out handful after handful of slimy goodness and cram it into your mouth. It’s so dark that you can’t even see it, but you know how light and orange it must be. You’ll definitely be filling your belly this night. The thought strikes you that you could take a couple along with you for good measure when you leave the train so while you’re filling your gullet you also pry off enough of the slats to pull out a couple of good sized ones and pack them in the blanket in your bag. When you’re finally lulled to sleep by the clacking rails, you are returned to the night you and Jane spent on that train and all the plans you and she had made. Only this time, the two of you are on your way to see the Grand Canyon and are without a care in the world. She gives you a huge grin and throws her arms around you—planting a big kiss on your cheek—and hugging you for all you are worth. The day comes much too soon and you stagger over to the open doorway to relieve yourself. You stand there and marvel at how far you can see. Snaking its way through a long valley is a river so blue that it makes your heart stop. On both sides it is lush with trees and you spot a large flock of birds winding and twisting like dust devils above the dense foliage. All is right with the world. You know you are going to make it just fine. > You where the West Begins After the long slow grade up from the river bottom, you find yourself in an entirely different landscape. The closest thing to trees are the tumbleweeds attempting to go unnoticed by entwining themselves in the nearly evenly spaced barbed-wire fences. A gentle breeze blows waves through the seeded out short-grass on the endless rolling hillsides as it ebbs and eddies. You are careful not to get too close to the open door that you can be seen, but you manage to drag one of the crates close enough that you catch the breeze and sit there dining on cantaloupes as you watch the world whisk by. The short-grass is soon replaced with only tufts of desperate hangers-on and sprawling prickly-pear patches. There are colorful rocky outcroppings jutting out from everywhere and you see a herd of small deer pawing and licking at one of them. You watch small towns drift by in the distance and for a while the train runs alongside a highway filled with car after car from one end to the other for as far as you can see and wonder how there can be so many people. How did they all get here and why? Where did they all come from and where are they going? Soon after, the flat desolation opens wide and the land reaches up in supplication to the heavens. Mountain after mountain looms in the distance and slowly each one in turn makes its way from its incorporeal plane into reality. You’ve never seen anything so amazing. From all the pictures you’ve ever looked at, you never realized how awesome mountains would be up close in real life. The train takes forever to reach the bottom of a long grade and your ears pop every couple of minutes. Your eyes feel swollen and like they might end up bursting from the pressure if something doesn’t give soon. The sun was just beginning to set when you started your descent, but now you are in deep shadow cast by the mountains. The early lights of a large city come into view so it won’t be long before you have to leave the train. You’ve been walking around for hours and still have no idea where to go from here. You’ve gotten all turned around and don’t remember which direction the sun was in. You aren’t exactly sure what town you are in right now, either. You haven’t been looking at your map and you’ve lost all track. You’ve just been following the sun since it seems to know where to go. It’d be best if you could board a train at night, but you may have to wait until morning to regain your bearings. There isn’t really any place to lie down here. There are houses immediately beyond a high chain link fence that runs the course of the tracks through town and a gatehouse at each entrance that you are forced to skirt. The street lamps offer little light this far away and those blinding security lights on the front of the little buildings only extend out so far. You can either wait until morning or attempt to board one of the random trains that sit idling on the tracks. > You wait until morning Not wanting to risk hopping a train to God knows where, you decide to find a place to curl up and sleep for the night. Over behind the steel buildings across from the road, you find a patch of high weeds that will do nicely. You settle down and catch a few winks during the short breaks between the interruptions of the normal commotion of loading and unloading the freight cars and hitching and unhitching. It’s exhausting to say the least, but you have faith that in the morning you’ll be able to catch a ride and there’ll be plenty of time to rest then. When the sky finally starts to gray in the East, you begin juning around. There are plenty of trains to choose from pointed in the direction you wish to go. It’s just a matter of getting on board without being spotted and as luck would have it, there aren’t too many people bustling about right now. Still, you have to be careful. You glide quickly over to the closest one and climb up the ladder on the front of a side dump car on the tail end of the train to look inside. Except for a bit of what looks like gravel here and there and dust, it’s completely empty. You pitch your bag over and climb in. There’s no way someone will be able to see you unless they climb up and look directly in. You make yourself cozy and settle in for the ride. The sun becomes unbearable around midday and you end up having to spread the blanket out to be able to even stand the radiating heat from the floor of the car. Every so often you have to stand up and let the blast furnace air flow over you to try to cool down as much as you can. You can only stand for a few minutes at most each time because the tracks run parallel to a highway and if you are spotted by a passing car, you’ll no doubt be reported. You end up going through more of your water than you wanted and end up having to soak your T-shirt and wrap around your head to even begin to bear the heat. The sun finally drops down low enough that it casts a shadow in the front end of the car. Every hour brings with it more and more relief as the temperature seems to fall a degree or two until it has cooled down enough—or perhaps you are just that tired—that you find yourself getting sleepy. You stretch out and the rhythm of the tracks sends you tumbling head-first into dreamland. You wake up before dawn and find the train still once more. You make up your bedroll and repack your bag before peeking out to see if the coast is clear. The engine is gone and the short string of cars you are in seems to have been unhitched on a siding. The track stretches northeastward over the hill and there’s a tall barricade of railroad ties where it stops abruptly at the west end. You could head back up the tracks, but that would mean backtracking and it’s anyone’s guess how far. Or you could head for the mountains at the far end of the valley. Surely you’ll run into a road or more tracks before too long. > You backtrack Maybe you should stick to the tracks. There’s no telling what may be out in the desert. It might take longer and be more out of the way, but there’s less of a chance to get lost. The track rejoins one running East to West and you continue on to where the sun sets. It’s blazing hot and only gets hotter with each passing hour. You try to conserve water as best you can and it only makes you thirstier. You’ll have to go back to traveling only while the sun is down or you’ll never make it. You’ve run yourself completely out of water, but still you trudge on. The iron rails stretch out ahead of you into infinity. There’s no turning back. You’ve shed every single item that you can afford to do without in order to lessen your load. The only thing you are unwilling to part with is Jane’s treasure chest. It’s all that is left of her. The sun is blazing down on you and yet you are freezing. If only you’d kept the coat. Your knees are shaking so furiously that you can barely keep them under you. Just when you think you won’t be able to take another step, you see a gravel road up ahead crossing the tracks. You dig deep and force yourself to continue on. You must reach the crossing. You have to. You are still fifty yards or so shy of it and cannot go on. Your legs are cramping something fierce and no longer obey your wishes. You have to stop. You have to rest. A dark green sedan covered in dust pulls up to the crossing and stops momentarily. After everything you’ve done to keep out of sight, you have no choice now but to get help. It no longer matters whether they send you back or not as long as you don’t die—and you know you will if you don’t get assistance. You raise your arm to flag the car down and the ground starts spinning. Your vision goes black. > You francisca There is soft music playing far, far away. Even though you can’t make out the words, it is so soothing and you feel enveloped by it like a warm blanket on a cold winter night. You struggle to open your eyes against a piercing white light. You try to shield them from it with your hand and find that it is captured by a soft, thick blanket. The light is still way too bright, but you force your eyes open despite it. They eventually adjust and you find yourself in a very sterile-looking room. There are framed rubbings on the walls from what appears to be tombstones flanking a large, hand-carved wooden crucifix and on the nightstand next to the bed you are tucked into is a pitcher and basin, and a blue vase exploding with yellow flowers. The bed is so soft. You’ve never felt anything so soft. It feels like it could swallow you up. That you might could even drown in it—and that wouldn’t be half bad. Not half bad at all. You reach out from under the covers and stretch your arms high over your head. A cool, damp washcloth slides down from your forehead and onto your cheek. It’s a bit startling, but feels good all the same. You smush it back so that it stays in place. You pull yourself up even though you’d rather not and find that you haven’t got a stitch of clothing on. You desperately look around and there’s not a single thing other than the blanket to wrap yourself in so you scrunch back down. What in the world are you going to do? You hear a “click” and determine that it came from the door a mere moment before it swings open a crack. You can see movement in the darkness beyond the door and then suddenly an eye is looking in at you. You scrunch down deep. You have nowhere to run. You only hope that whoever—or whatever—it is isn’t here to hurt you. The door slowly creaks open revealing the monster! It’s in the form of a short, dark-skinned woman with long black hair and a broad, warm smile pasted across her face. She’s carefully balancing a wooden tray so that several dishes she has neatly arranged on it don’t go sliding off and onto the floor. “¡Buenos días!” You eye her suspiciously from under the covers. What does she want? “¿Tienes hambre?” she asks, nodding and motioning toward the tray with her lips. “eh … eat food?” You nod slowly. “¿Sí?” She whisks over beside the bed while you slowly unravel yourself from the blanket and push yourself back making sure not to let anything that shouldn’t come uncovered. She sits beside you and gently places the tray on your lap—keeping her hand on the edge of it for balance. Other than the short glass of orange juice and taller one of tepid milk you have no idea what any of this is, but it sure is delicious. You can’t help but cram even more into your mouth before you’ve even had time to swallow the previous bite. “¿Sabe bien? eh … es good?” she asks, smiling. You give her a broad smile and a vigorous nod. “Mmm hmmm!” When you can hold no more, you push back with a groan. “Thank you. That was the best food I ever ate.” She places the tray on the foot of the bed and then turns back to you and lifts the blanket before you even know what she’s doing. You start. Extending her finger and gently touching one of the scars on your back she asks “¿Quien te hizo esto? eh … who hurt?” You give her another suspicious look and decide that it probably wouldn’t hurt to tell her. It’s not like she’ll be able to tell anyone else. She can’t even talk right. “My mom…” “¡Dios mío!” she says, looking at you in horror, “¿Tu madre?” She leaps from the bed and begins pacing back and forth with a wild look in her eyes. She’s rattling on so fast that even she wouldn’t be able to pick out her own words. She finally stops and turns to you. “Nadie te pegará más. Serás mi hijo ahora,” she says in a steadier and more soothing tone. She rushes over and throws her arms around you—nearly dragging you from the bed—and gives you such a squeeze that she nearly crushes the air right out of your chest. “Estás a salvo aquí.” Days go by and turn into weeks, and weeks into months, months into years. You keep meaning to get back to your journey to the Grand Canyon, but you feel so safe here and Francisca is so, so nice. There’s not one mean bone in her whole body. Jane would’ve really loved it here. Someday—when you’re old enough and have a car of your own—you intend to make good on your promise to Jane. But, for now this is… — The End<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Not wanting to risk hopping a train to God knows where, you decide to find a place to curl up and sleep for the night. Over behind the steel buildings across from the road, you find a patch of high weeds that will do nicely. You settle down and catch a few winks during the short breaks between the interruptions of the normal commotion of loading and unloading the freight cars and hitching and unhitching. It’s exhausting to say the least, but you have faith that in the morning you’ll be able to catch a ride and there’ll be plenty of time to rest then. When the sky finally starts to gray in the East, you begin juning around. There are plenty of trains to choose from pointed in the direction you wish to go. It’s just a matter of getting on board without being spotted and as luck would have it, there aren’t too many people bustling about right now. Still, you have to be careful. You glide quickly over to the closest one and climb up the ladder on the front of a side dump car on the tail end of the train to look inside. Except for a bit of what looks like gravel here and there and dust, it’s completely empty. You pitch your bag over and climb in. There’s no way someone will be able to see you unless they climb up and look directly in. You make yourself cozy and settle in for the ride. The sun becomes unbearable around midday and you end up having to spread the blanket out to be able to even stand the radiating heat from the floor of the car. Every so often you have to stand up and let the blast furnace air flow over you to try to cool down as much as you can. You can only stand for a few minutes at most each time because the tracks run parallel to a highway and if you are spotted by a passing car, you’ll no doubt be reported. You end up going through more of your water than you wanted and end up having to soak your T-shirt and wrap around your head to even begin to bear the heat. The sun finally drops down low enough that it casts a shadow in the front end of the car. Every hour brings with it more and more relief as the temperature seems to fall a degree or two until it has cooled down enough—or perhaps you are just that tired—that you find yourself getting sleepy. You stretch out and the rhythm of the tracks sends you tumbling head-first into dreamland. You wake up before dawn and find the train still once more. You make up your bedroll and repack your bag before peeking out to see if the coast is clear. The engine is gone and the short string of cars you are in seems to have been unhitched on a siding. The track stretches northeastward over the hill and there’s a tall barricade of railroad ties where it stops abruptly at the west end. You could head back up the tracks, but that would mean backtracking and it’s anyone’s guess how far. Or you could head for the mountains at the far end of the valley. Surely you’ll run into a road or more tracks before too long. > You head for the mountains You set out through the barren waste, using the highest peak in sight at the far end of the valley for your bearing. Not having to watch your step to keep from tripping on ties makes it much easier going. You skirt large patches of low-lying bushes and piles of rock so you don’t have to worry about snakes. The sun climbs slowly overhead and you start putting away the water. You still have nearly a gallon which should more than do to cross this valley. The mountains are right there, after all. You can almost reach out and touch them. Just in case, though, you pick up your pace. You don’t want to be out here alone after dark. When it starts getting too hot, you wrap your T-shirt around your head like you did back on the train and imagine yourself as Lawrence of Arabia crossing the desert. You wonder if there might be an oasis out here. Wouldn’t that be something! The sun continues to swing across the sky and more than makes it to the finish line of the peaks before you. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. You look back from whence you came and can’t tell how far you’ve come or even where the railroad cars might be. You haven’t even left tracks as far as you can tell across the hard and scorched landscape. There’s no going back. Night falls and with it the temperature. The coat isn’t enough so you pull out the blanket and wrap it around you as well. You continue on until the peak fades into the night sky and you are no longer able to see it. You have no choice now but to stop here until morning. You can’t even see the ground anymore so you could step right in the middle of a snake before you even knew it was there. Wrapping up tightly in the coat, you lean back against the bag. Night insects chirp and buzz even out here so you don’t feel quite so alone as you thought. Somewhere in the far distance, you hear a lonesome yelping howl. It’s so far away that you have nothing to fear from it. But, what about the things closer in? The things that might not even make a sound? Your eyes finally close on their own while you are straining to listen. You sleep through the night. > You cast to the Winds You’ve been without water now since the day before yesterday. Or was it the day before that? You can no longer remember anymore. You can’t go on. Your legs have lost all their strength so you allow yourself to crumble to the ground. You don’t really have a choice in the matter. Looking out across the barren landscape, the mountains appear no closer than they did when you first set out. Everything has its own tint of blinding white and you can only make out what you think you are looking at by its vague shape. You pull Jane’s card from your pocket and unfurl it in your hand. It’s difficult to make out the lines on the page, but you don’t really need to. They have been seared into your mind since that very first day when she presented it to you. You did your best. You only wish you’d have been able to complete your quest so that her dream would have been realized. A slight breeze snatches the page from your grasp. You are helpless to stop it. It flutters for a second where it gets caught on a dessicated plant before the wind works it free. For a moment, it blots out the sun just long enough that you can see her standing there—beckoning to you. Those spindly legs and knobby knees ending in flipflops beneath those faded and ragged cutoffs. The stained, white button up shirt tied at her waist. That toothy grin stretching wide across her face beneath that long and cascading raven hair. Those eyes the color of new grass. She reaches down and folds her fingers over yours. — The End<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After the long slow grade up from the river bottom, you find yourself in an entirely different landscape. The closest thing to trees are the tumbleweeds attempting to go unnoticed by entwining themselves in the nearly evenly spaced barbed-wire fences. A gentle breeze blows waves through the seeded out short-grass on the endless rolling hillsides as it ebbs and eddies. You are careful not to get too close to the open door that you can be seen, but you manage to drag one of the crates close enough that you catch the breeze and sit there dining on cantaloupes as you watch the world whisk by. The short-grass is soon replaced with only tufts of desperate hangers-on and sprawling prickly-pear patches. There are colorful rocky outcroppings jutting out from everywhere and you see a herd of small deer pawing and licking at one of them. You watch small towns drift by in the distance and for a while the train runs alongside a highway filled with car after car from one end to the other for as far as you can see and wonder how there can be so many people. How did they all get here and why? Where did they all come from and where are they going? Soon after, the flat desolation opens wide and the land reaches up in supplication to the heavens. Mountain after mountain looms in the distance and slowly each one in turn makes its way from its incorporeal plane into reality. You’ve never seen anything so amazing. From all the pictures you’ve ever looked at, you never realized how awesome mountains would be up close in real life. The train takes forever to reach the bottom of a long grade and your ears pop every couple of minutes. Your eyes feel swollen and like they might end up bursting from the pressure if something doesn’t give soon. The sun was just beginning to set when you started your descent, but now you are in deep shadow cast by the mountains. The early lights of a large city come into view so it won’t be long before you have to leave the train. You’ve been walking around for hours and still have no idea where to go from here. You’ve gotten all turned around and don’t remember which direction the sun was in. You aren’t exactly sure what town you are in right now, either. You haven’t been looking at your map and you’ve lost all track. You’ve just been following the sun since it seems to know where to go. It’d be best if you could board a train at night, but you may have to wait until morning to regain your bearings. There isn’t really any place to lie down here. There are houses immediately beyond a high chain link fence that runs the course of the tracks through town and a gatehouse at each entrance that you are forced to skirt. The street lamps offer little light this far away and those blinding security lights on the front of the little buildings only extend out so far. You can either wait until morning or attempt to board one of the random trains that sit idling on the tracks. > You board a train You find a string of flatcars loaded with brand new pickup trucks. All of their doors are locked and you don’t want to risk being spotted by hiding under one of them so you climb up in the bed of one and hunker down. You hadn’t noticed it before, but your skin feels thick and rigid. You have your knees drawn up as tightly as you can in the old coat and it doesn’t seem to be helping so you drag out Jane’s blanket—carefully unraveling it from everything in the bag—and wrap yourself in it. As you gradually start to warm up, you watch the stars creep by overhead and can’t help but yawn uncontrollably. A peppering of raindrops on your face wakes you and you find that the train is moving. The sky overhead is mostly clear, but you happen to be under the one cloud that is leaking. You don’t fancy the thought of getting soaked so you jump to your feet and cram the blanket into the bag. The land is sweeping by at high speed and your heart skips a couple beats when your foot slips on the bumper while you’re climbing over the tailgate. You fall on your butt before you can catch yourself and only after you realize that you are safe do you look over and see that you aren’t anywhere near the edge of the flatcar. You roll under the back of the truck and pull the bag in behind you. The orange sun hangs in the sky in front of you and to the right of the train. No! You are going the wrong way! There are huge dark mountains on the other side of the train. You drag out your map in the desperate hope that you are somehow mistaken and try to locate where you are. It doesn’t show railroad tracks, but maybe you can figure it out some other way. There’s a highway way out in front of you, but it is too far away to ever hope to be able to read the signs. Until you know what town or highway to look for on the map it is utterly useless. You spend the next several hours watching the terrain sweep by knowing that you’ll have to backtrack all these extra miles and your spirits keep sinking lower and lower. By the time the train begins to slow down you have regained your resolve. You absolutely refuse to give up. You’ve come this far and there’s no turning back. There’s nothing to go back to anyway. No matter what it takes, you are going to see this thing through to the end. After jumping from the train you immediately turned and head back to the south. There wasn’t anything in view when you came within sight of whatever that mountain town was and you didn’t feel like hanging around waiting for something to come along. You feel so exposed here. There’s no cover of any kind along the tracks. The mountains appear to be close, but are, in fact, far away and whole communities—maybe cities, but it’s difficult to tell—look like narrow white lines running along their base. Tiny, ant-like cars creep along on roads that you can barely make out if you squint really hard and the dessicated yellow grass fades to blue in the distance giving you the sense that you are on some tranquil sea. Even with everything so spread out and far away, you still feel the need to somehow conceal yourself and hunch over as much as you can get away with while still being able to walk fast. Day turns into night and night into day. There’s no need for clocks or calendars out here so you haven’t the faintest idea how many days it has taken you to recover the lost ground of one simple mistake. It just all seems to blur together. You eat on the go and only stop for the occasional catnap—heading well away from the tracks so as not to be spotted from one of the many trains that whiz by. Even with being really conservative, you’ve still eaten the last of the melons and used up all of your water with no hope of replenishing either of them. You can’t afford to make the long trek across the barren landscape to one of the towns for being spotted would definitely put the old kibosh on the whole shebang and everything you’ve done and went through so far would all be for naught. As nightfall nears, you spot a small farmhouse not too far away from the tracks and decide to take a closer look. Leaving your bag near the tracks, you crawl on your belly up through the dried grass as far as you dare and try to spot a hydrant somewhere in the junk heap that passes for a yard. There are tires strewn around that may or may not belong to the half dozen or so old cars that are up on blocks. A discarded refrigerator sits propped against an old and rickety-looking wooden fence and there are a few mangy looking mutts staked out next to makeshift doghouses fashioned from oil drums whose tops have been removed. There’s no sense in trying to fill your water jugs. The dogs would only alert whoever is inside and then your goose would be cooked. Near the back fence, you spot an overgrown garden and can see quite a few freshly ripe tomatoes mixed in with the green ones clinging to the vine. Your mouth waters just thinking about those delicious fruits. You kick back and wait for the residual sunlight to leave the sky and close your eyes for a few minutes. Every little bit of rest you can get here and there helps. > You oases The lights just went off in the farmhouse so you crawl your way through the grass toward the garden—trying to keep as low to the ground as you can. It is full dark, but you can’t take the chance that someone might catch a glimpse of you. Something moves off to your right, but you can’t see what it is. You just hope it isn’t a snake and if it is, you hope it’s moving away from you instead of toward you. The dry grass crunches under your hands and knees so you slow your pace to not make any more racket than you can help. You are so, so hungry. It’s been days since you’ve eaten anything—anything at all. The hard, dry ground suddenly becomes loose, damp earth and you look up to see three dim strands of barbed wire. On the other side, you can make out the dark shapes holding their orbs out to you. You wriggle your way under the bottom wire. Halfway through, you reach up and pluck the first one you see, then another and another. They all look the same in this light so you grab as many as you can and bag them up in the bottom of your shirt. You hear a bawl coming from the direction of house, joined by a couple more as the bulb above the back door flips on and the door is thrown open. “What is it, boys?” you hear a man say, “What’s out there?” You are dragging yourself backward with your knees and shoving with your elbows when you see an orange flash near the house. You hear the boom a split-second later. He’s shooting at you! You scamper with everything you have and don’t stop until you’re back on the other side of the embankment. You lay prone with your eyes peeled for any sign of movement coming over the rise and, when your heart finally slows, you look down at the single piece of fruit in your hand. At least it’s something. You take a bite and feel your face attempt to implode. The tomato isn’t ripe, but it doesn’t matter. It’s food and moisture all in one and you’ve been without either for much too long. After all the commotion and dogs’ barking finally peters out, you creep back to retrieve your bag and continue on down the tracks. You see the back of a big truck stop over on the highway up ahead of you about a mile or two away with a constant stream of vehicles coming and going. The moon is just coming up and from the glint on the tracks it looks like they might come really close to it. It would be a good place to fill up your water jugs. You might be able to blend in among all those people and them not even suspect that you are all alone out here. You don’t have a lot of money, but maybe you can find some food that you can afford with the little bit of change you still have in your pocket. A couple of cheese crackers or the peanut butter kind would go really good right about now. When you get to a spot that is almost directly behind it, you set your bag down in the grass off to the side of the tracks and—taking just the jugs in hand—set off across the field. As you approach the crumbling asphalt of the back parking lot, you see a water faucet next to the pay air hose. What luck! You rush over and—after gulping down as much of the sweet liquid as you can—fill both jugs to the brim. You lug them back across the parking lot to the knee-high grass and set them down before heading around to the front of the building. Before going in, you pull the bread wrapper out of your pocket and sit on a yellow concrete curb to count out the change. You need to know how much you have before going inside. At long last, you decipher that there’s eighty-six cents—a small fortune. You still want to hold onto the dollar for a real emergency so you are only willing to spend the change. You’ve got to be careful not to spend all of it, though. You might really need it later on. As you step through the front door, you are blasted by frigid air. You’d almost forgotten that such a thing even existed. Several pairs of eyes are on you, but you pretend not to notice. “His mother should be ashamed of herself. Letting a boy get so filthy,” a woman with her face stretched back in a bun says to her friend who only nods in agreement. You glance down at your hands and can’t tell where the dirt ends and your skin begins. She’s definitely right about how dirty you are, but if she were a nice person, she wouldn’t have said it loud enough for you to hear. Maybe you should clean up before doing any shopping. You walk up to the stocky woman behind the counter and quietly ask “Do you have a bathroom?” She squints at you before saying “Sure do. It’s right down that hall over there.” “Thank you,” you say, walking as quickly as you can so you can get out from under all the judgmental eyes. It’s a tiny little room with only a stainless steel toilet and sink. Above the sink is a cloudy mirror that reflects what little it has to and in the corner is a tall, skinny trash can with a flapper on top. You lock the door before stripping off you shirt and shorts so someone doesn’t walk in on you. You do the best you can with wet paper towels and have to climb up on the sink to make sure you got everything off of your face and neck. After getting dressed, you sop up the floor as best you can. By the time you finally head back out the door, you are feeling fresh as the morning. The trash can, however, has seen better days. You walk down each aisle slowly looking at what is offered. Too bad you don’t have more money, because there is a lot of really good stuff you wouldn’t mind having. You finally choose a big plain bag of tortilla chips that are marked “3/$1”. It’s big enough that it should last you a good long while. The cashier eyes you with a smirk as you count out thirty-four cents to her. You can’t help grinning back at her every time you make eye contact. “Thank you, sir. Please come again,” she says handing you back your bag of chips and giving you a wink. You feel your face getting warm and you nod to her as you turn toward the door. You can’t remember the last time you felt as relieved as you do now to get away from people. If it wouldn’t seem suspicious, you would run. Wrestling the two jugs while trying not to crush the bag of chips too much, you head back to the tracks and fetch your bag before continuing on your trek. You come to a fork in the tracks and don’t know which one brought you here. One continues on to the south and the other angles off into the distance in a more easterly direction and looks like it goes right through a distant town. If it’s not just a mirage you might try hopping a train down there, but you aren’t sure that it would be going the right way. Maybe there will be another town somewhere up ahead on the one stretching south. > You continue south You’ve been walking south on this line for several days now and haven’t actually run into a single town. It might’ve been better to wait for a train heading in this direction, but who could’ve guessed that it would be so far between settlements. It was never like this back where you grew up. The land has gradually shifted from short grass to barren and rocky with only patches here and there so you know you’re getting close to where you were before taking this unfortunate detour. It’s not as easy going as it has been so far and you find yourself taking more and more rest breaks. It’s much easier traveling around dawn and then again at dusk so you’ve been lying around and sometimes napping during midday and when it gets too dark to see snakes that might be in your path. You’ve eaten over half of your chips and drank most of your water. You’ll need to find somewhere to replenish your supplies so you don’t end up back in the sorry shape you were in a couple of days ago. Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, you spot a mournful glow all by its lonesome out in the middle of nowhere some distance from the tracks. It takes a while for you to figure out that there is a house not too awful far from it, but it’s hard to see since there are no lights on within. You decide to stroll on over to find out if it might be vacant, but catch a glimpse of a reflection about midway there. It looks like the windshield of a pickup. There’s probably someone sleeping in the house. Not wanting a repeat of the last time you tried to sneak food away from a farmhouse, you walk around until you find a shelf of rock jutting out of the ground that’s just the perfect height for surveilling the place. It isn’t too long before the sky begins to gray with dawn, but you wait until the sun is full up and watch the house down below carefully from your perch on the rocky outcropping. After a few hours of biding your time, it happens. You watch as the old pickup pulls out of the drive and turns onto the highway. It’s far enough away that you can’t make out the driver and the cloud of dust billowing up from it soon makes it impossible to even make out the vehicle itself. You don’t see a garden growing anywhere and the yard is nothing but sand and rocks. There is a rectangular patch of weeds up against the side fence and it seems like the only place anything is growing at all. You sling your bag over your shoulder and walk carefully across the barren field, and then right up to the house like you owned the place. You try knocking at the front door in case someone might be inside, but no one comes. You try to open it without any success. You find that all the windows and the back door are locked up tight as well. You notice a pipe sticking up near the weed patch with a bucket hanging upside down over it. Sure enough, you find a spigot hiding under that little devil. You fill up your jugs again and drink what you can before turning your attention back to the house. You don’t really want to smash a window, but you are getting desperate. You pick up large stone and draw your arm back when you spot something in the reflection of the glass you are about to break. It looks like a large wooden door laying at a slight angle on the ground behind you propped up by a short concrete wall. You know exactly what it is — a storm cellar, just like the one at your grandmother’s house. With any luck, there’ll be jars and jars of canned food just like she stores in hers because it is cooler down there and they won’t go bad nearly as quickly. You trot over to it and drop the bag. You hook your hands under and heave with all your strength. The one at Grandma’s has a cable attached to a bunch of window weights strung through a pulley which makes it much easier to open and close. You have to lift the full weight of this one and it doesn’t give easily. You stand it up to more than a forty-five degree angle, but can’t get it to go any further without risking falling down the hole underneath it. You try to flop it on over, but you can’t give it enough push and you are already at a rather precarious angle, yourself. If you could fling it on over, you’d probably wind up tumbling in head first. Desperately, you look around for anything that might help and you are about to let the door go when you see a shovel leaning against the wall at the bottom of the steps leading down. You inch your way over to the top and carefully reach down with one hand while the door threatens to buckle your other arm. You manage to snag the end of it and drag it up enough that it tips over at your feet just as your other arm tires out, but you save the door from falling down and pinning the shovel by catching hold with your free hand and letting it rest against your chest while you take a minute to catch your breath. You pick up the shovel, jab it into the ground as best you can and lower the door onto the handle. There’s just enough room for you to slip through and over the side. It takes a minute for your eyes to adjust. There are shelves down here along one wall, but not a single jar on them. You are about to turn around when you notice that they aren’t exactly empty and look a little lumpy so you go over to investigate. You’ve hit the jackpot! The shelves are covered in potatoes, onions and turnips—more than you could ever hope to eat. Making a couple of trips, you gently drop several handfuls out the door and then clamber out behind them. You stand up and dust yourself off before picking up your bag. You are just starting to drop the vegetables in when you hear a low growl off to the side. Slowly turning your head, you see the biggest hound you’ve ever seen in your life. He comes up to your chest and is at least as long as you are tall. You stare back at one another and neither of you make a move. You are trapped! You can try to stand here and hope he decides that you aren’t a threat or you can try to come up with something else. > You distract him You look down at your bag and see the lone flipflop wedged in just inside the top beside the blanket. It gives you an idea. You’re not sure it will work, but it’s worth a shot. You slowly reach in and—being extremely careful not to make any sudden movements—draw it out. You take a deep breath and hold it out in a trembling hand toward the massive beast. “Fetch?” Keeping a wary eye on you, he leans forward and gives it a sniff before returning to his previous position. You can’t tell one way or the other whether he’s interested in it or not. Still, you have to give it a try. You shake it lightly to get his attention. When his eyes leave you and train on it, you shake it more vigorously. You draw your arm back, snap it forward and just as you let go, you holler “Fetch!” The flipflop sails across the yard while both you and he just stand there watching it glide. It skips a couple of times before spinning to a stop. You look back at the hound and he looks back at you. He doesn’t appear to be even the slightest bit impressed. You have no choice now but to stand here and hope that he finally decides that you are not a threat. > You wait him out After waiting for an eternity for the dog to do something, he finally does. He turns, walks stiff-legged over to the back porch and groans softly as he plops down. He looks so old to you now that your fear has turned to pity. Keeping a wary eye on him, you start packing the vegetables into your bag. You hold out a turnip to eat on the way because you are half starving after all that hard work. You don’t want to overstay your welcome so as soon as you drop the last one in, you turn tail and head back the way you came toward the tracks. You’ve walked nearly a mile when you hear a strange sounding cough behind you. You whirl around only to find the hound several paces away. He stops and stares up at you. “Go home,” you command, but he only looks at you. “Get!” You take a couple of steps backward and he takes a couple forward. You think about picking up a rock and chucking it at him, but he’s as big as you are. If you made him mad, you wouldn’t stand a chance. The best thing to do would be to ignore him and he’ll head back home on his own when he’s darn good and ready. Over the course of the day, you grow more and more comfortable around your new companion and when you stop for a rest you discover that embroidered in his faded collar are the words “Ol’ Sam”. “It’s nice to meet ya, Sam. I’m Billy. I bet you’re hungry.” You pull out a handful of chips for Sam and a turnip for yourself to munch on. He greedily wolfs them down. You’re tempted to give him more, but you can’t afford to since they’re the only thing you have that will keep the longest and he’ll probably leave soon anyway. When night comes and it gets too dark to see, you find a decent place to bed down and give Sam another handful of chips while you wash down an onion with lots and lots of water. You give Sam a drink in an old tin can that you found on the tracks earlier so he doesn’t get too thirsty either. Sam lays down alongside you and his body warmth is somehow comforting. You drift off to sleep more easily than you ever remember doing and don’t stir even once in the night. The sun is already peeking above the mountains when you wake. Even though you have kinks all over from sleeping on the ground, you feel absolutely wonderful. It’s the first good nights sleep you’ve had in a long, long time. After both of you have eaten lightly, you set off once again down the tracks. Sam isn’t hanging back like he did yesterday. He walks right beside you—matching you step for step. You try to take it easy on the old guy and stop for regular rest breaks, but you cover a lot more ground than usual. The day just seems to fly by and by the time night comes, you are completely worn out. You start looking for a good spot to sleep when Sam suddenly stops and lets out a hair raising growl. You flinch instinctively and look down at him—frozen in your tracks—and see the hackles standing up from the top of his head to nearly the length of his back. He isn’t looking at you so you follow his gaze and see something really big and tan colored crossing the tracks up ahead. It is long and has a tail that looks as long as its body. It takes you a moment to realize that it’s a cat. A big cat. It pauses and stares at you for a few moments while Sam’s growls steadily grow in volume and pitch. Something about that thing clamps you down deep in the core and you can’t move a single muscle. Your skin tingles and your muscles burn. Then all at once the cat shoots off like a rifle shot across the field toward the mountains in tremendous leaps until it finally fades into the background. Your legs let go and you crumple right where you stand. All your strength has evaporated and you feel cold chills running all through your body. It’s a good thing Sam was here with you or that thing might’ve decided you were dinner. You throw your arms around his neck and squeeze with what little you have left in you. He just stands there looking in the direction the great cat ran and doesn’t move. When you find a spot and settle in for the night, you give Sam a double helping of tortilla chips. He finally eats the last one, but doesn’t seem quite as interested in them as he did last night. You wish that you had something else you could give him, but he wouldn’t like the raw vegetables nearly as much. The next time you see a gas station or store, you’re going to buy him something with meat in it. You lie down like you did last night and he stretches out against you just as he did before. You feel warm and safe and once again you sleep right straight on through. Morning comes early and as you lie there stretching the kinks out, you notice that Sam isn’t there. You sit up and call “Sam?” and don’t hear anything. You jump up and look all around as far as you can see and still there is nothing. “Sam!” Your ears prickle as you start to think the worst. You quickly shove those thoughts aside and jump to your feet. You run up on the higher ground of the tracks and look all around. You finally spot him way back up the tracks walking back the way you came. “Sam!” He pauses for a moment without turning around and then continues on his way. You want to run after him, but that would only make it worse. He’s been gone from his home too long already and just needs to go back. You watch him until he’s little more than a speck before returning to collect your gear. You’re more wary as you go now. Your senses seem heightened and for the first time on this trip you feel more like a wild animal than a person. Your eyes are in a perpetual squint and are constantly sweeping over the terrain from one side to the other. Every far off movement of a bird or hare doesn’t escape your notice and you feel more alive and in tune with the world around you than ever before. With the long nights returns the restlessness and you resume the catnaps during midday. Where the track you’ve been following veers alongside another, you peer down the slope at the great train yard you’d left days ago. You’ve finally made it back and can continue on with your journey into the west. You find a garden hose curled up on the side of the first house you come upon and there’s no one in sight. You refill your water jugs and take off before someone spots you. You’re well stocked up again for a while at least. The train yard looks so different in the light of day. There are so many things going on and machinery loading and unloading the cars that you are a bit afraid to try to make your way through. You’ll either have to bite the bullet or else skirt around it and hopefully find another opportunity somewhere down the line. > You watch for an opportunity You decide that the best option would be to hide under the overpass up near the end where it meets the incline. There’s a shelf that would offer you a nice vantage point to get the lay of the land. Taking your sweet time, you make your way over to it and then when you figure that the coast is as clear as it’s ever going to get you skedaddle your butt up the slope as fast as your legs will carry you. As you hike a leg over the short barricade, you smell cigarette smoke and hear a cough from not too far away. “Well, well. What do we have here?” You look up to see two slightly older boys looking down at you from one of the cubby holes up top. They hop down and stride up to you just as you pull your other leg over. Each one is at least a full head taller than you. “What have you got there?” asks the heavier of the two, ripping your bag away from you. “Give that back!” “Or what, little man?” “Or he’ll kick your ass!” cries the other kid, laughing. You lunge forward and attempt to wring the bag from him, but he gives it a yank and you lose your grip and go sprawling. He starts pulling things out and pitching them to the side. “What’s this?” He pulls out the treasure chest, drops the bag, and holds it up to his ear, shaking it as he and the other kid turn their backs you. “Nooo!” you roar, “That’s Jane’s! You can’t have it!”, leaping onto the kids back and grabbing his face with both hands—his ear with one hand and the inside of his cheek with the other. Your legs instinctively grapple him around the middle while you heave back with both hands in violent jerks. “Aaa-aaa-aah!” He tries to shake you off, but you have a death grip on him. There’s no way he can get loose without getting his ear and cheek torn off, and his friend sure isn’t stepping in to help. In fact, his friend looks terrified and confused and has taken a couple steps to the rear in wide-eyed panic. “YOU CAN’T HAVE THAT! IT’S NOT YOURS!” you shriek just before you clamp down on the side of his neck with your teeth. He screams bloody murder, dropping the treasure chest and strewing its contents, and starts raking at you with both hands. “Get him off! Get him off!” The other kid swings over the side of the barricade and drops out of sight. A warm trickle runs down your chin as you clamp down harder and sink your teeth deeper and deeper while you’re flailing back and forth trying to rip his face open with your bare hands. His screams turn to sobbing shrieks as he pounds in futility over his shoulder at you. He stumbles toward the barricade and just as he’s about to go over you shove back with your feet, sending him tumbling over and down the slope. You land flat of your back, but jump right back to your feet in case he decides to come back for you. The other kid is standing at bottom of the slope with eyes the size of goose eggs and looking like a deer caught in the cross-hairs. He rushes over and helps the kid with the bloody neck to his feet and they rush off across the tracks and toward the houses on the far side of the street. “YOU CAN’T HAVE IT! IT’S NOT YOURS! IT’S JANE’S!” you scream down at them at the top of your lungs, letting the foamy spit in your mouth fly and run out however it feels like. They don’t look back. The tiny hairs on the back of your neck and partway up your scalp still bristle and your heartbeat still pounds alternating white and dark patches in your vision. You take in deep lungfuls of air and let them out slowly to try to settle down. It helps some, but only slightly. You can’t stay here. You have to go before someone comes back to look for you. You start picking things up and cramming them into your bag as fast and as best you can. You crawl back over the barricade, dash up the hill on the far side of the overpass and follow the high chain link fence that separates the highway from everything else. Then, when you think you’ve gone plenty far enough, you head off at an angle back toward the tracks—aiming for much farther down. > You flight Even though it’s risky with all the men down there, you decide to go ahead and chance it. You can’t wait around here in case the boys come back with the cops. You creep down behind a short row of buildings and look for a train aimed toward the west. There aren’t any really close by, but there are a couple not too far away. They’re mostly long strings of hoppers and in a few places there are sections of flatcars. All the boxcars seem to be locked up good and tight. You’re still trying to find just the right one when a large hand clamps down on your shoulder and whirls you around. “You shouldn’t be back here, boy,” booms a deep gravelly voice. You are staring into a drawn face covered by a dark beard with gray streaks down each side. Besides the withered face, he fills out his overalls with a body three sizes too big and could quite possibly be just as thick from front to back as he is tall. “Let’s see if we can’t figure out who you belong to.” Despite your resistance, he propels you along in his meaty grip and it feels like your feet only touch the ground every second or third step. You manage to hang onto your stuff, but only barely. He leads you through the door of one of the guard houses and says to the guy in uniform “I caught this kid prowling around out there. Do something with him, would ya?”, shoving you forward. Without waiting for an answer, he revolves around on his heels and steps back through the door. “We’ve found a young kid playing in the yard and need someone to come pick him up,” says the guard to someone on the telephone. “I don’t know. Never seen him before. Okay, I’ll keep an eye on him until he gets here. Bye.” He hangs up the phone and turns toward you. “You got a name, kid?” You just stare back at him. There’s no way you’re going to tell him anything. “Okay… It might be a while, you want a soda or something?” You just stand there with as blank an expression as you can muster even though you are stewing inside. It isn’t long before an officer arrives and hauls you down to the police station where you’re forced to wait until they finally figure out who you are and where your home is. It takes them several hours and all the while you’re watching for any opportunity to escape that never presents its self. You’re led to an unmarked patrol car and—after the officer in a business suit places your bag in the trunk—ushered into the passenger seat. “Climb in and make yourself comfortable, it’s going to be a long ride.” You reluctantly climb in and he closes the door behind you. After he slides the key into the ignition he says “You can call me Jim, by the way. If you need anything, just say so.” He starts the engine and backs out of the parking space. You’re just pulling out onto the street when you finally can’t hold it in any longer. You already suspect what the answer will be, but have to give it a shot anyhow. “I need to go to the Grand Canyon. It’s real important. Can you take me there before you take me home?” He looks over at you and perks an eyebrow. “Is that where you were headed? I must say that you made it farther away from home than anyone would’ve guessed. Why is it so important?” “I have to go there for Jane. She died and never got to see it.” You see him swallow a huge lump in his throat. It takes him well over a minute before he can speak again. “I heard about your little friend from the officer I spoke to from back in your home town. He didn’t know whether you’d just run off or if something bad had happened to you. The whole town’s been combing the entire countryside for you.” After wiping his eye with the back of his wrist, he brings his palm down hard against the steering wheel. And then he pounds it hard a couple more times. “I wish I could, son. I really do. But, that’s nearly a whole state away in the wrong direction and they already know we’re on our way.” You lean back against the seat and stare out the side window. You’ve come too far to be turned back now. All of your stuff is locked in the trunk so you have little choice but to sit here and accept your fate. The mile markers on the highway click by like the incessant ticking of a metronome arm. It’s hopeless. It’s all over. > You escape You can’t go back. You just can’t. You will not be put through that again. You have to do something—anything. You reach down and pull the door handle and shove the door out with your foot. “What are you doing?! Stop that!” “I’m not going back and you can’t make me!” He grabs a handful of your shirt, but you’re not about to let that stop you. You strain with every ounce of your being and feel the fabric slowly begin to tear down from the neck. All at once it lets go and you leap from the door. You soar through the air and it feels like you’re flying. You’ve never felt so free before in all your life as you do right in this moment. This must be what birds feel like. The wind pushes back hard against you and you start to go down. You see it coming and there’s nothing at all that you can do to stop it. You hit the pavement just as you hear the brakes squeal on the car. The world tumbles over and over and you feel your bones exploding inside your flesh. Your skin burns briefly, but goes numb almost instantly. You try to suck in air and can’t. When you finally come to a stop, you hear hard leather soles clapping the asphalt and getting louder and louder as they approach. “Oh my God! Oh my God! What did you do?!” You see the horror slowly stretch its way across Officer Jim’s face. And you see Jane standing right there beside him—smiling and beckoning to you. Those bright green eyes are the last thing you see in this world. — The End<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Even though it’s risky with all the men down there, you decide to go ahead and chance it. You can’t wait around here in case the boys come back with the cops. You creep down behind a short row of buildings and look for a train aimed toward the west. There aren’t any really close by, but there are a couple not too far away. They’re mostly long strings of hoppers and in a few places there are sections of flatcars. All the boxcars seem to be locked up good and tight. You’re still trying to find just the right one when a large hand clamps down on your shoulder and whirls you around. “You shouldn’t be back here, boy,” booms a deep gravelly voice. You are staring into a drawn face covered by a dark beard with gray streaks down each side. Besides the withered face, he fills out his overalls with a body three sizes too big and could quite possibly be just as thick from front to back as he is tall. “Let’s see if we can’t figure out who you belong to.” Despite your resistance, he propels you along in his meaty grip and it feels like your feet only touch the ground every second or third step. You manage to hang onto your stuff, but only barely. He leads you through the door of one of the guard houses and says to the guy in uniform “I caught this kid prowling around out there. Do something with him, would ya?”, shoving you forward. Without waiting for an answer, he revolves around on his heels and steps back through the door. “We’ve found a young kid playing in the yard and need someone to come pick him up,” says the guard to someone on the telephone. “I don’t know. Never seen him before. Okay, I’ll keep an eye on him until he gets here. Bye.” He hangs up the phone and turns toward you. “You got a name, kid?” You just stare back at him. There’s no way you’re going to tell him anything. “Okay… It might be a while, you want a soda or something?” You just stand there with as blank an expression as you can muster even though you are stewing inside. It isn’t long before an officer arrives and hauls you down to the police station where you’re forced to wait until they finally figure out who you are and where your home is. It takes them several hours and all the while you’re watching for any opportunity to escape that never presents its self. You’re led to an unmarked patrol car and—after the officer in a business suit places your bag in the trunk—ushered into the passenger seat. “Climb in and make yourself comfortable, it’s going to be a long ride.” You reluctantly climb in and he closes the door behind you. After he slides the key into the ignition he says “You can call me Jim, by the way. If you need anything, just say so.” He starts the engine and backs out of the parking space. You’re just pulling out onto the street when you finally can’t hold it in any longer. You already suspect what the answer will be, but have to give it a shot anyhow. “I need to go to the Grand Canyon. It’s real important. Can you take me there before you take me home?” He looks over at you and perks an eyebrow. “Is that where you were headed? I must say that you made it farther away from home than anyone would’ve guessed. Why is it so important?” “I have to go there for Jane. She died and never got to see it.” You see him swallow a huge lump in his throat. It takes him well over a minute before he can speak again. “I heard about your little friend from the officer I spoke to from back in your home town. He didn’t know whether you’d just run off or if something bad had happened to you. The whole town’s been combing the entire countryside for you.” After wiping his eye with the back of his wrist, he brings his palm down hard against the steering wheel. And then he pounds it hard a couple more times. “I wish I could, son. I really do. But, that’s nearly a whole state away in the wrong direction and they already know we’re on our way.” You lean back against the seat and stare out the side window. You’ve come too far to be turned back now. All of your stuff is locked in the trunk so you have little choice but to sit here and accept your fate. The mile markers on the highway click by like the incessant ticking of a metronome arm. It’s hopeless. It’s all over. > You accept your fate You have no choice but to accept your fate. If when you get back and if you manage to survive, you will try again. It might not be for a long, long time because you will be watched like a hawk—provided your mom doesn’t kill you this time around as soon as there’s no one around to see. The landscape flows by in a constantly changing sea. You barely pick at the food that is given to you. You just don’t feel eating. Days turn into nights and nights turn into days. You get your own bed in motels where Officer Jim stops each night—which would be exciting any other time, but not now. Now, everything feels like it has a dark cloud hanging over it. It only takes two days to get home, but it feels like an eternity. And in all that time you don’t utter even one syllable. You just have to get this over with. I’m sorry, Jane. I failed you this time, but I will try again if I can. I promise you. — The End<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After waiting for an eternity for the dog to do something, he finally does. He turns, walks stiff-legged over to the back porch and groans softly as he plops down. He looks so old to you now that your fear has turned to pity. Keeping a wary eye on him, you start packing the vegetables into your bag. You hold out a turnip to eat on the way because you are half starving after all that hard work. You don’t want to overstay your welcome so as soon as you drop the last one in, you turn tail and head back the way you came toward the tracks. You’ve walked nearly a mile when you hear a strange sounding cough behind you. You whirl around only to find the hound several paces away. He stops and stares up at you. “Go home,” you command, but he only looks at you. “Get!” You take a couple of steps backward and he takes a couple forward. You think about picking up a rock and chucking it at him, but he’s as big as you are. If you made him mad, you wouldn’t stand a chance. The best thing to do would be to ignore him and he’ll head back home on his own when he’s darn good and ready. Over the course of the day, you grow more and more comfortable around your new companion and when you stop for a rest you discover that embroidered in his faded collar are the words “Ol’ Sam”. “It’s nice to meet ya, Sam. I’m Billy. I bet you’re hungry.” You pull out a handful of chips for Sam and a turnip for yourself to munch on. He greedily wolfs them down. You’re tempted to give him more, but you can’t afford to since they’re the only thing you have that will keep the longest and he’ll probably leave soon anyway. When night comes and it gets too dark to see, you find a decent place to bed down and give Sam another handful of chips while you wash down an onion with lots and lots of water. You give Sam a drink in an old tin can that you found on the tracks earlier so he doesn’t get too thirsty either. Sam lays down alongside you and his body warmth is somehow comforting. You drift off to sleep more easily than you ever remember doing and don’t stir even once in the night. The sun is already peeking above the mountains when you wake. Even though you have kinks all over from sleeping on the ground, you feel absolutely wonderful. It’s the first good nights sleep you’ve had in a long, long time. After both of you have eaten lightly, you set off once again down the tracks. Sam isn’t hanging back like he did yesterday. He walks right beside you—matching you step for step. You try to take it easy on the old guy and stop for regular rest breaks, but you cover a lot more ground than usual. The day just seems to fly by and by the time night comes, you are completely worn out. You start looking for a good spot to sleep when Sam suddenly stops and lets out a hair raising growl. You flinch instinctively and look down at him—frozen in your tracks—and see the hackles standing up from the top of his head to nearly the length of his back. He isn’t looking at you so you follow his gaze and see something really big and tan colored crossing the tracks up ahead. It is long and has a tail that looks as long as its body. It takes you a moment to realize that it’s a cat. A big cat. It pauses and stares at you for a few moments while Sam’s growls steadily grow in volume and pitch. Something about that thing clamps you down deep in the core and you can’t move a single muscle. Your skin tingles and your muscles burn. Then all at once the cat shoots off like a rifle shot across the field toward the mountains in tremendous leaps until it finally fades into the background. Your legs let go and you crumple right where you stand. All your strength has evaporated and you feel cold chills running all through your body. It’s a good thing Sam was here with you or that thing might’ve decided you were dinner. You throw your arms around his neck and squeeze with what little you have left in you. He just stands there looking in the direction the great cat ran and doesn’t move. When you find a spot and settle in for the night, you give Sam a double helping of tortilla chips. He finally eats the last one, but doesn’t seem quite as interested in them as he did last night. You wish that you had something else you could give him, but he wouldn’t like the raw vegetables nearly as much. The next time you see a gas station or store, you’re going to buy him something with meat in it. You lie down like you did last night and he stretches out against you just as he did before. You feel warm and safe and once again you sleep right straight on through. Morning comes early and as you lie there stretching the kinks out, you notice that Sam isn’t there. You sit up and call “Sam?” and don’t hear anything. You jump up and look all around as far as you can see and still there is nothing. “Sam!” Your ears prickle as you start to think the worst. You quickly shove those thoughts aside and jump to your feet. You run up on the higher ground of the tracks and look all around. You finally spot him way back up the tracks walking back the way you came. “Sam!” He pauses for a moment without turning around and then continues on his way. You want to run after him, but that would only make it worse. He’s been gone from his home too long already and just needs to go back. You watch him until he’s little more than a speck before returning to collect your gear. You’re more wary as you go now. Your senses seem heightened and for the first time on this trip you feel more like a wild animal than a person. Your eyes are in a perpetual squint and are constantly sweeping over the terrain from one side to the other. Every far off movement of a bird or hare doesn’t escape your notice and you feel more alive and in tune with the world around you than ever before. With the long nights returns the restlessness and you resume the catnaps during midday. Where the track you’ve been following veers alongside another, you peer down the slope at the great train yard you’d left days ago. You’ve finally made it back and can continue on with your journey into the west. You find a garden hose curled up on the side of the first house you come upon and there’s no one in sight. You refill your water jugs and take off before someone spots you. You’re well stocked up again for a while at least. The train yard looks so different in the light of day. There are so many things going on and machinery loading and unloading the cars that you are a bit afraid to try to make your way through. You’ll either have to bite the bullet or else skirt around it and hopefully find another opportunity somewhere down the line. > You go around It wasn’t worth the risk to you so you head around the yard and make your way toward where the tracks resume. By the time a train leaves the yard, you find that it is moving much too fast for you to board it so you set off once again down the tracks on foot. Every couple of hours you have to ditch the tracks and hide behind a boulder or in a shallow ravine until a train passes. This is the busiest set of tracks that you’ve been on and if anyone spotted someone your age out here alone they would certainly report it. You have to take a break so you find a nice clear spot away from the tracks to kick back in and lean back on the bag. You have a sudden urge to pull out the card Jane made for you and look at the old postcards while you rest. You trace each line drawn in crayon on the page with your finger and think back to those few magical days. It seems like so long ago now. A lot has happened and every day that has passed seems to have steadily grown worse than the last. After you do this one thing, you should find someone nice to live with like Jane dreamed of. Surely there’s someone out there that would love and take care of you, someone you can depend on. You carefully refold the letter and slip it into your pocket and put everything else back into the treasure chest before giving your eyes a rest. You don’t even notice when you start to drift off, but you are rudely awakened by a brutal gust and find that a strong wind has kicked up. The dust and sand scour your face and you can barely breathe even with your shirt pulled up over your face. You stagger around trying to find some kind of shelter behind a rock or something, but there doesn’t seem to be anything nearby and you probably wouldn’t be able to see one anyway unless you were right on top of it. Your foot suddenly finds nothing but open air and you tumble headlong down a steep embankment. Your bag disappears as it goes one way and you go another. And then the world slips away into blackness. You wake to find your arm twisted under you—your shoulder screaming out in agony. You have scrapes and tiny cuts from the side of your face all the way down your legs. It takes a couple attempts before you’re able to roll over and sit up. You push yourself to your feet and look up at the steep incline that you fell down and don’t think you’d be able to climb back up there even if your arm wasn’t throbbing like it is. You can see the coat caught on a rock protruding from the ground near the top. One of the plastic jugs tied to the sleeves is crushed and the other one looks like it just exploded when it slammed into the ground. You don’t see your bag anywhere. You pace back and forth along the base of the cliff looking for any trace of your stuff and finally have no choice but to give up. You head down the wash and hope that it doesn’t dead end. The feeling finally comes back in your arm. You can move it, but not without pain and there’s a huge black and green bruise that goes from your shoulder to half way across your chest. The wash spills you out on the edge of a two-lane highway and there isn’t a car or a sign or anything at all except brushy desert and rocks for as far as you can see. The train tracks must be somewhere beyond the ridge behind you, but you’d never be able to get back to them that way. You look up at the sun and figure that you might as well keep following it since it has already led you this far. You close your eyes, take a deep breath and then set off down the road. You’ve been walking for hours when a car pulls out onto the blacktop from a gas station up ahead that you didn’t even know was there. The hot blazing sun reflecting off the pavement has made you half blind and has given you such a raging thirst that it feels like no amount of water could ever hope to quench. You don’t know if you’ll even be able to make it as far as the gas station. You’re torn between whether or not to flag the car down when it gets close or to find somewhere to hide until it passes by. > You flag down the car You stagger up to the edge of the road and raise your hands. The car slows down for a moment as the rear passenger window rolls down. As it gets nearly even with you, a bottle flies out and hits the pavement halfway to your feet. You don’t have the strength or energy to jump to the side so you can only stand there and watch as it bounces off the asphalt and hits you dead center in the chest before you can react. The pain is so sudden and intense that the wind is knocked completely out of you. Your face feels like it swells to nearly twice its size and burns all the way to your ears. You slump and fall to your knees. The car screeches to a stop and the driver’s door opens. “Why in the hell would you do that to a kid?! I oughtta kick your ass. You could’ve killed him, you know that?” You gasp for breath and can’t take in any air. You want to cry due to the immense pain, but your eyes are so dry that they can no longer produce tears. Your vision starts to waver and you fall forward. Just before you eat the blacktop, you feel hands grab you and swing you back into a seated position. “It’s okay. I’m here to help. He was just being a dumbass and didn’t know that he might actually hit you.” You wheeze and can feel your lungs slowly start to fill with air. Your vision is still fuzzing in and out, but it’s slowly beginning to clear. “What’s your name?” asks the teenage boy with closely cropped hair. You rock back and forth trying to help force more air into your lungs, and only wheeze louder in answer to his question. You look around to see several more teenagers standing around you. “Take it easy, man. Don’t try to rush it. I’m not going anywhere.” You’re not sure you want to tell them your real name. After all, one of them just tried to kill you. Maybe it was an accident and maybe it wasn’t. You try to think of a name—any name—and a sudden image of little Timmy that lived down the street from you before your parents got a divorce pops into your head. You remember how he used to say his name and before you can correct it, out comes “Tim-O-tee.” You take a deep breath and try hard not to laugh or even smile. “Timothy. My name is Timothy.” “What are you doing out here all by yourself, Timothy?” “I’m lost. I don’t know where this is.” “Where do you live? We’ll take you home,” says a slightly gruffer voice off to the side. You shrug as you try to come up with something to tell them. You look around, trying to come up with a story they might believe and your eyes settle on a far-off vertical rock piercing up through desert floor. “A long, long ways from here. I was s’posed to stay by the camper, but I wanted to look at the rocks.” One of the boys sucks air in through his teeth. “That wasn’t very smart. Kids get lost out here all the time and die,” says the one crouched down by you. “Where were you going? Maybe we can find your parents or get you to someone who can.” If they take you to the cops, you’ll never make it to the Grand Canyon. You have to change the subject. “I’m so thirsty. I need water.” The boy reaches up and snatches a bottle from one of the others and says “Here, drink this. We’ll get you some water.” You tip the over half full bottle and guzzle the orange soda down without stopping. It burns like fire and doesn’t help even a little, but it’s wet and wet is better than nothing. “We’ve gotta get back. We can’t take him with us,” says another boy under his breath. “We’re not leaving him out here, alone,” snaps the one you’ve been talking to, “Not here!” “There’s a gas station right there! It’s not like he’s lost out in the middle of the desert.” “We can’t go driving all over the country looking for his folks,” says another. “You shoulda thought of that before you chucked that bottle him!” he hisses up at the boy with slicked back hair—who just pivots around on his heels and stalks back to the car. Turning back to you, he says “C’mon. We’ll go find a phone or something,” picking you to your feet and helping you to the car. You hang back as the boys head into the gas station. If they call the police, they’ll take you home and you’ll never get to the Grand Canyon for Jane. As soon as the door swings shut, you dash to the end of the building and swing around the corner toward the back. There is a stack of oil drums at the base of the hill out back and you run in behind them. You hope this will be enough because there is no other cover close by that you can see. You squeeze into a hole between two of the drums that are resting on the ground and wait. It isn’t long before you hear them talking from not too far away from your hiding spot. “Where could he have got to?” asks the boy that’s been trying to help you. “I dunno. He just ran off, I guess. Maybe we just imagined the whole thing.” “Maybe he’s a spook and just went invisible,” laughs a third. “Don’t be a moron,” says the first, “He’s just scared.” “We can’t go traipsing all over the desert looking for him. When he gets tired, he’ll come back. We’re already gonna be late as it is.” “I guess. I just wanted to help the kid out, is all.” “Let’s just go before we get into trouble, ourselves.” You hear the car engine start and gravel raining down in their wake before you poke your head out. You can’t risk going inside because they probably already told whoever is in there about you and the police might still show up. You spot a coiled hose on the ground by the corner of the building that you must’ve run right by without even seeing. It’s just what you need. You trot over and reach for the faucet, but the handle has been removed. You study it a minute before picking up the hose a little at a time—working the contents out to the end—and manage to get a good mouthful of scalding hot water. You fight the pain and as soon as it’s cooled enough, you choke it down. You can’t go any further in this heat so you look for any kind of shade to get out of this blistering sun. You spot a low-lying rock a little ways up the hillside behind the building and judging by its angle it might offer some shelter from the sun. You drag yourself over to it. It looks like it would be the perfect place for a den of snakes, but peering under the shelf you see no sign of anything. You wedge yourself underneath where you’ll wait for nightfall before heading off again. You open your eyes to find that you are shivering. The temperature has dropped considerably. If you don’t end up freezing, it’ll at least be a welcome relief compared to that awful sun. After pulling yourself out, you stand and slink down the hill. Your feet are like bricks, but you have no other choice other than to go on. The gas station parking lot is deserted except for a run-down old pickup truck loaded down with all kinds of junk and covered with a tarp. It’s parked in the shade of the pump lights around the corner of the building and you have to walk around it to get to the highway. As you pass by it, its yellow license plate catches your eye. It says Arizona in green letters across the top and Grand Canyon State on the bottom. You peek around the corner of the building and see an old hunched over Indian man with a pony tail halfway down his back stepping up to the cash register. This could be your lucky break. You could try asking him for a ride, but what if he says no? Maybe hiding under the junk in the back and hope for the best would be smarter way to go. It won’t be long before he’s heading this way so you’d better hurry and make up you mind. > You ask for a ride You lean against the corner of the building to wait for the old man to step out and when he finally does, you rush over to meet him just as he reaches the corner. Even though he’s walking crooked, he’s still manages to jump back like a cat about to be stepped on. “Can you take me to Arizona?” He cuts his eyes around the dark parking lot. “No.” He starts walking toward his truck. “Please? I need to go to the Grand Canyon.” “No.” “Can you take me to the railroad tracks? I can walk the rest of the way.” “No.” He opens the door and climbs in. “Can you take me to the next town, then? I gotta find a new map ‘cause I lost my all my stuff.” “No.” “Do you have any water?” He pulls the door shut, starts his truck and pulls it in gear. You watch as he backs up and then drives off into the night. By the pump lights, you can see the trail of dust he left in his wake. Maybe you scared him or maybe that’s just the way he is. It doesn’t matter now. You look around at the door to the gas station. There’s no way you can go in there. You’ll have to think of something else. Maybe you can climb up the ridge behind the station and from there you might be able to see the tracks. It’s dark enough that you wouldn’t be able to see them until morning—which means that you’ll have to find a place to sleep for the night. You could keep going down the highway and maybe figure something out along the way. You don’t have any water so you’ll have to walk only at night and find cool places to sleep during the day. Whichever way you go, perhaps you’ll run into another farmhouse along the way to get more stuff. > You take the road You can probably make more miles on the highway than you could climbing the mountains and crossing the desert. Surely you’ll run into railroad tracks sooner or later. There are probably more houses along the road, too. You head around behind the gas station to stay out of the light and then make your way to the blacktop. There are no yard lights within sight, but you’ll probably see one before too long. You just have to make as many miles as you can while it’s still dark. You can still feel the heat of the day leeching out of the asphalt and the occasional slight breeze feels good against your clammy skin. Your mouth is dry, but you can probably manage to make it through the night since it isn’t really all that bad right now. You should make it just fine. You watch a shooting star that traverses nearly the whole western sky before burning itself out far to the south. Your wish is the same as you’ve had from the very beginning—to make Jane’s dream come true. It isn’t until a little while later that you start kicking yourself for not tacking a little water onto that wish. Oh, well. Surely you’ll find some before long. Even though there are no landmarks to go by, you somehow know that you’ve covered many a mile. There’s a blacker circle in the sky that looks like it might be a moon in a day or two. Until then, you’ll just have to make your way as best you can in the dark. The night has somehow become a comforting friend instead of the dreaded enemy you once feared. You don’t even know how it happened. It just—all of a sudden—did. Mile after mile and you don’t see much more than a vague dark shape every now and then out some distance from the side of the road. They would’ve been monsters lurking and ready to pounce only a few short weeks ago. Now, they’re just big rocks. > You migration In the lights of an oncoming car, the highway looks like it has little rippling waves on it. They’re flowing from one side of the blacktop to the other. This must be some kind of dream, but you don’t remember falling asleep. As the car gets closer, you can see that they aren’t waves at all. They’re snakes! Dozens of snakes. They move weird, though, throwing a loop and dragging themselves up to it before doing the whole process all over again. Snakes don’t move like that. They slide along on their bellies as they slither along. This has to be a dream. Still, you wouldn’t want to be bitten by a dream snake any more than you would a real one so you try not to let them get too close. You look up and the headlights flash in your eyes. You can’t see anything. You don’t know whether to get off the road or just keep going. It is a car, though. You’d better at least get off the road so you take a step sideways. Zzzht-zzzht-zzzht! You know that sound! And it’s much too close! You leap backward, but—whap!—it’s too late. Your leg is on fire! “Aaaah!” You fall sideways and—whap!—another hits your arm. Whap! Whap! Whap! You’re being struck from all sides now. Your arms, your legs, your face. Even the top of your head. The headlights are on you now and you hear the brakes squeal to a slow stop. Your whole body feels like you’ve fallen into a campfire and you can’t pull yourself out. Your body starts to quake and you’re helpless to stop it. “Oh my God in heaven!” shrieks a woman getting out of the car. “It’s a kid and he’s been snake bit!” Your tongue grows two sizes and wedges tight in your throat. You can’t breathe and you feel like you might pop from the building pressure. Even counting the beating you got from Mom, you’ve never felt such intense pain. It crashes through your body like a tidal wave. The headlights waver and grow steadily brighter and brighter until they fill your entire field of view. In the intense light, you can see Jane standing there looking down at you. She’s shaking her head. She reaches down and takes your hand—cupping it in hers. The only thing you can see now is her face against the blinding white light. The burning sensation swallows you whole. — The End<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You lean against the corner of the building to wait for the old man to step out and when he finally does, you rush over to meet him just as he reaches the corner. Even though he’s walking crooked, he’s still manages to jump back like a cat about to be stepped on. “Can you take me to Arizona?” He cuts his eyes around the dark parking lot. “No.” He starts walking toward his truck. “Please? I need to go to the Grand Canyon.” “No.” “Can you take me to the railroad tracks? I can walk the rest of the way.” “No.” He opens the door and climbs in. “Can you take me to the next town, then? I gotta find a new map ‘cause I lost my all my stuff.” “No.” “Do you have any water?” He pulls the door shut, starts his truck and pulls it in gear. You watch as he backs up and then drives off into the night. By the pump lights, you can see the trail of dust he left in his wake. Maybe you scared him or maybe that’s just the way he is. It doesn’t matter now. You look around at the door to the gas station. There’s no way you can go in there. You’ll have to think of something else. Maybe you can climb up the ridge behind the station and from there you might be able to see the tracks. It’s dark enough that you wouldn’t be able to see them until morning—which means that you’ll have to find a place to sleep for the night. You could keep going down the highway and maybe figure something out along the way. You don’t have any water so you’ll have to walk only at night and find cool places to sleep during the day. Whichever way you go, perhaps you’ll run into another farmhouse along the way to get more stuff. > You climb the ridge It would probably be best not to walk along the highway where a cop might see you. You’ve come a long way and you don’t want to be taken home when you’re so close you can almost taste it. You head back around the building and plunge into the darkness. The sky overhead is crowded with stars, but since there is no moon out tonight they offer very little light to see your way by. You’ll have to take it slow and easy so you don’t step into a hole or trip over something in the dark. You take small steps. With each one the ground seems to get steeper and steeper until you finally have to crawl on your hands and knees to keep from sliding back down the hill. It would probably be much easier in the daytime, but it would be a lot hotter and you would need water. The ground becomes rocky and some of the stones are so big that you have to go around them. You keep working your way toward higher and higher ground until you run into a cliff that you can’t climb, then you follow along its base. Every now and then, your foot dislodges a rock and you listen as it gets fainter and fainter until it finally tumbles out of earshot. At long last, the cliff starts to fall away and the ground begins to slope around it. You keep going until you find a crevasse that leads right up through the middle of it. It’s probably the only way through so you heft yourself into it and it’s just like climbing stairs in the dark. You keep going up and up and up until you reach the top and the stars seem to hover right straight in front of you. You can’t see the ground on the other side and you sure don’t want to plummet off a cliff so you make yourself as comfortable as you can and wedge yourself in for the night. You pull your knees up and fold your arms against the cold. You close your eyes to try to sleep your way to morning. Maybe then you will be able to see whether you can climb down the other side or if you’ll just have to turn around and find some other way. The sky starts to brighten a dingy dishwater gray. You couldn’t sleep at all last night thanks to the cold. That’s fine, though, you can find a nice shady spot and sleep through the sun. First things first, though, you have to get off this mountain. You stretch your stiff legs out from under you and pull yourself up with the wooden clubs that are your arms. Through the gap in the rocks, you can see a narrow, winding rock shelf snaking its way around the far side of the rocks. You can’t see where it ends, but it beats going back down and all the way around. Out across the valley, you can see a gray line at the base of the far away cliffs. It must be the tracks. It’s a long ways away. The sun will be up before too long and you’ll have to find a place to sleep in a few hours so you’d better get moving. You wriggle your way over the top of the rocks and stretch out your toes until you can feel the ledge beneath them. It’s a little wider than your shoes are long so it shouldn’t be all that hard to stay on. Taking small steps and crowding the rock face as best you can, you slowly make your way down and down. It’s actually easier than it looked from the top. The sun spills its rays over the far horizon and they blanket you in their warmth. Your stiff muscles melt away. You can see farther now and the rocky ledge spreads out onto a slope several dozen yards away. You’re going to make it just fine. You look down to see just how much farther you have to go and it grabs you. Everything looks so tiny down there. The world sways—first one way and then the other—and your legs no longer want to move. You clutch the rock face with all your strength and take tiny breaths so you don’t accidentally push yourself backward off the ledge. You’re legs start shaking and your palms get all sweaty. You close your eyes and feel the blood racing in your veins. You know you have to keep going, but how? If you fall off, it would take a long, long time to reach the bottom. You might not even pass out and feel the whole thing when you splat! Don’t be such a fraidy cat. She’s right. You can do this. You snap your eyes open and start the tiny sideways steps again. It doesn’t take long for you to reach the rocky slope. From there, you memorize the mountain peak you need to walk toward to get to that gray line and then set out to make it as far as you can before the sun gets too high. You’ve covered quite a bit of ground when you find several big boulders in a roughly circular formation and sit beneath the largest one for its shade. You manage to nap quite nicely until the sun gets far enough to the west that you have to move to a different shady spot. When the sun has dipped more than halfway behind the horizon, you set out to make as many miles as you can before it gets too dark to see. You feel weak from hunger and from lack of water, but your will pushes you on. About halfway through the night, you look up to see a tiny sliver of moon directly overhead. It’s no wonder that you’ve been able to keep going this long. Even with that tiny bit of light, you can see the ground quite clearly. The faint shadows contrast against the background and your eyes seem to have adjusted themselves to the lack of light. It’s warmer down here than it was last night, but the air still has that certain crispness to it. You haven’t been able to see the mountain peak for hours, but are confident that you haven’t strayed too much from your intended goal. You just keep pushing yourself. You are going to make it. You have no other choice. You continue on. You’ve been walking for hours and you feel like your legs are about to fall off. If you don’t just collapse, that is. But, you must keep going. There will be time to rest tomorrow—when it is too hot. The stars and the moon flow gently to the west, but you don’t even notice. You are too focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Suddenly, you see a straight black double line running perpendicular to your path. It looks like it might be the edge of a cliff so you approach it ever so slowly. When you’re nearly upon it, you discover that it is higher than the rest of the ground around it. It’s the tracks! You’ve found them! You really found them! They weren’t nearly as far away as they looked. You feel great! You are KING! You turn toward the west—nearly skipping—and continue on your journey. Now all you have to do is find some water and some food, then you’ll be all set. You watch as the sliver of moon finally disappears behind the black horizon and the stars start to twinkle just a tiny bit brighter. You can barely make out the rails on either side of you, but there’s still more than enough light to guide you. You trudge on and on in the darkness. It feels somehow comforting to you now. Like you might be the only person in the whole world. The cloak of night is your friend, your companion. As the sky starts to gray, you can see farther and farther with each passing minute. There are no yard lights. No houses. No distant towns. No nothing. You feel completely alone now. It gives you a lump in your throat. The sun is on your back now and you can feel its rays trickling warmth into your rigid skin. You can’t turn around to look at it. You have to save every last bit of your strength. You can barely lift your legs and the toes of your shoes scrub furrows in the dust. Still, you plod on. When you’ve nearly caught up with your shadow, you scan the area for some cool shade. You see a pile of old lumber out all by its lonesome. It may have been some kind of mining shack at one time, but it’s impossible to tell. It’s the only thing within sight and the two vertical boards won’t offer any shade for hours yet, but you can’t go on. You have to get off your feet so that means you have work to do. You stumble over and start dragging and prying boards from the ground as best you can. It takes some doing since half of them are buried in sand. You are just pulling up the last one when you see something shiny under it. You drop the board as you jump back thinking at first that it might be a snake. It couldn’t be, though, it didn’t even resemble anything that could even be alive. Sticking another board under the one you dropped so you don’t have to stick your bare hand in there, you pry it up. It takes a moment for the sun’s glare to clear from your eyes and then you see a magical treasure. It is a half-crushed tin cup that is about a third full of old water. It is dark and has a funny smell to it, but it’s wet. You aren’t sure that you should drink it, but you might die if you don’t get water soon. > You drink it This is life or death. You have no choice but to risk drinking it. You hold your nose against the foul stench and gulp it down. It isn’t really that bad and sure beats dying. You go back to work and before long, you have something that resembles something that someone might accidentally mistake for a shack. It’s more of a lean-to than anything, but at least there’s shade. You get down on all fours and crawl through a narrow opening at the bottom. The ground is still hot and could possibly blister if you dally. Once inside, you scoop handful after handful off the top and shove it against the sides at the bottom. It’ll help hold them up as well as give you a faintly cooler spot to lay down. Slumping over, something bites your little finger. It stings a little, but nothing serious. You push yourself back up and see a tiny scorpion right where your hand was so you slam your fist down on it and crush it before it can strike again. You don’t see any others, so you lay down and look at the white sky through the cracks for a while to make yourself sleepy. You awake with a shiver and barely have the strength to raise yourself up. The sun is still high and your hand is throbbing something awful, but you barely notice that pain compared to the vise that has seized your stomach. Your belly writhes and tumbles in searing agony and besides that, you need water desperately and your tongue feels like sandpaper in your mouth. Pushing yourself back against the far wall so you can catch what little light filters through the cracks, you watch as the sun makes its ever so slow descent. You wrap your sweaty arms around your knees and hug them close to you in an attempt to ward off the shivers. Your hair is slicked against your temples and you’re having trouble focusing. This just isn’t going to be your day. You close your eyes and try to take in deep breaths, but hot air you suck in with each one just makes you feel that much worse. After a while, you open your eyes and between the vertical planks you can see the light fading from the sky. There are reds and oranges and pinks. Even through the slits, it is breathtaking. You only wish you could walk out to see the whole thing. You can barely move your head and it’s impossible to move the rest of you. You can’t take this anymore, but what choice do you have? You can only sit here to wait for the inevitable. Too bad you don’t have a blanket, because it is getting so, so cold. Your teeth would chatter if you only had the energy to do so. The sky deepens and you can see the first twinkle of a star. You should make a wish. But, it’s much too late for that. You know it as sure as you know anything at all. All you have left waiting for you is the inevitable. Maybe if you made the right wish, it might come true. You can’t close your eyes to make the wish or you may never get them open again. You take a long, hard swallow and feel the sides of your throat scratch together. You focus hard on the star until you can feel it pulling back at you. You try to mouth the words, but you don’t have the strength. Willing with everything you have—everything you are—you send your wish soaring toward that tiny pinprick of a speck—faster than the speed of light. Jane steps from the corner of your little makeshift shelter. She looks so beautiful, yet so sad. She kneels down beside you and stares deep into your eyes while you lose yourself in hers. You drown in those bright green eyes. She may not have gotten her wish, but you were granted yours. — The End<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It would probably be best not to walk along the highway where a cop might see you. You’ve come a long way and you don’t want to be taken home when you’re so close you can almost taste it. You head back around the building and plunge into the darkness. The sky overhead is crowded with stars, but since there is no moon out tonight they offer very little light to see your way by. You’ll have to take it slow and easy so you don’t step into a hole or trip over something in the dark. You take small steps. With each one the ground seems to get steeper and steeper until you finally have to crawl on your hands and knees to keep from sliding back down the hill. It would probably be much easier in the daytime, but it would be a lot hotter and you would need water. The ground becomes rocky and some of the stones are so big that you have to go around them. You keep working your way toward higher and higher ground until you run into a cliff that you can’t climb, then you follow along its base. Every now and then, your foot dislodges a rock and you listen as it gets fainter and fainter until it finally tumbles out of earshot. At long last, the cliff starts to fall away and the ground begins to slope around it. You keep going until you find a crevasse that leads right up through the middle of it. It’s probably the only way through so you heft yourself into it and it’s just like climbing stairs in the dark. You keep going up and up and up until you reach the top and the stars seem to hover right straight in front of you. You can’t see the ground on the other side and you sure don’t want to plummet off a cliff so you make yourself as comfortable as you can and wedge yourself in for the night. You pull your knees up and fold your arms against the cold. You close your eyes to try to sleep your way to morning. Maybe then you will be able to see whether you can climb down the other side or if you’ll just have to turn around and find some other way. The sky starts to brighten a dingy dishwater gray. You couldn’t sleep at all last night thanks to the cold. That’s fine, though, you can find a nice shady spot and sleep through the sun. First things first, though, you have to get off this mountain. You stretch your stiff legs out from under you and pull yourself up with the wooden clubs that are your arms. Through the gap in the rocks, you can see a narrow, winding rock shelf snaking its way around the far side of the rocks. You can’t see where it ends, but it beats going back down and all the way around. Out across the valley, you can see a gray line at the base of the far away cliffs. It must be the tracks. It’s a long ways away. The sun will be up before too long and you’ll have to find a place to sleep in a few hours so you’d better get moving. You wriggle your way over the top of the rocks and stretch out your toes until you can feel the ledge beneath them. It’s a little wider than your shoes are long so it shouldn’t be all that hard to stay on. Taking small steps and crowding the rock face as best you can, you slowly make your way down and down. It’s actually easier than it looked from the top. The sun spills its rays over the far horizon and they blanket you in their warmth. Your stiff muscles melt away. You can see farther now and the rocky ledge spreads out onto a slope several dozen yards away. You’re going to make it just fine. You look down to see just how much farther you have to go and it grabs you. Everything looks so tiny down there. The world sways—first one way and then the other—and your legs no longer want to move. You clutch the rock face with all your strength and take tiny breaths so you don’t accidentally push yourself backward off the ledge. You’re legs start shaking and your palms get all sweaty. You close your eyes and feel the blood racing in your veins. You know you have to keep going, but how? If you fall off, it would take a long, long time to reach the bottom. You might not even pass out and feel the whole thing when you splat! Don’t be such a fraidy cat. She’s right. You can do this. You snap your eyes open and start the tiny sideways steps again. It doesn’t take long for you to reach the rocky slope. From there, you memorize the mountain peak you need to walk toward to get to that gray line and then set out to make it as far as you can before the sun gets too high. You’ve covered quite a bit of ground when you find several big boulders in a roughly circular formation and sit beneath the largest one for its shade. You manage to nap quite nicely until the sun gets far enough to the west that you have to move to a different shady spot. When the sun has dipped more than halfway behind the horizon, you set out to make as many miles as you can before it gets too dark to see. You feel weak from hunger and from lack of water, but your will pushes you on. About halfway through the night, you look up to see a tiny sliver of moon directly overhead. It’s no wonder that you’ve been able to keep going this long. Even with that tiny bit of light, you can see the ground quite clearly. The faint shadows contrast against the background and your eyes seem to have adjusted themselves to the lack of light. It’s warmer down here than it was last night, but the air still has that certain crispness to it. You haven’t been able to see the mountain peak for hours, but are confident that you haven’t strayed too much from your intended goal. You just keep pushing yourself. You are going to make it. You have no other choice. You continue on. You’ve been walking for hours and you feel like your legs are about to fall off. If you don’t just collapse, that is. But, you must keep going. There will be time to rest tomorrow—when it is too hot. The stars and the moon flow gently to the west, but you don’t even notice. You are too focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Suddenly, you see a straight black double line running perpendicular to your path. It looks like it might be the edge of a cliff so you approach it ever so slowly. When you’re nearly upon it, you discover that it is higher than the rest of the ground around it. It’s the tracks! You’ve found them! You really found them! They weren’t nearly as far away as they looked. You feel great! You are KING! You turn toward the west—nearly skipping—and continue on your journey. Now all you have to do is find some water and some food, then you’ll be all set. You watch as the sliver of moon finally disappears behind the black horizon and the stars start to twinkle just a tiny bit brighter. You can barely make out the rails on either side of you, but there’s still more than enough light to guide you. You trudge on and on in the darkness. It feels somehow comforting to you now. Like you might be the only person in the whole world. The cloak of night is your friend, your companion. As the sky starts to gray, you can see farther and farther with each passing minute. There are no yard lights. No houses. No distant towns. No nothing. You feel completely alone now. It gives you a lump in your throat. The sun is on your back now and you can feel its rays trickling warmth into your rigid skin. You can’t turn around to look at it. You have to save every last bit of your strength. You can barely lift your legs and the toes of your shoes scrub furrows in the dust. Still, you plod on. When you’ve nearly caught up with your shadow, you scan the area for some cool shade. You see a pile of old lumber out all by its lonesome. It may have been some kind of mining shack at one time, but it’s impossible to tell. It’s the only thing within sight and the two vertical boards won’t offer any shade for hours yet, but you can’t go on. You have to get off your feet so that means you have work to do. You stumble over and start dragging and prying boards from the ground as best you can. It takes some doing since half of them are buried in sand. You are just pulling up the last one when you see something shiny under it. You drop the board as you jump back thinking at first that it might be a snake. It couldn’t be, though, it didn’t even resemble anything that could even be alive. Sticking another board under the one you dropped so you don’t have to stick your bare hand in there, you pry it up. It takes a moment for the sun’s glare to clear from your eyes and then you see a magical treasure. It is a half-crushed tin cup that is about a third full of old water. It is dark and has a funny smell to it, but it’s wet. You aren’t sure that you should drink it, but you might die if you don’t get water soon. > You don't drink it It’s probably better not to risk drinking it, but you sure don’t intend to waste such a gift. You pull your shirt off and wet it carefully from the cup—being extremely careful not to let even a single drop roll off onto the ground. You wipe your back and chest off with the cool rag as best you can before wrapping it around your head like that man did in that movie you saw a long time ago on TV. You go back to work and before long, you have something that resembles something that someone might accidentally mistake for a shack. It’s more of a lean-to than anything, but at least there’s shade. You get down on all fours and crawl through a narrow opening at the bottom. The ground is still hot and could possibly blister if you dally. Once inside, you scoop handful after handful off the top and shove it against the sides at the bottom. It’ll help hold them up as well as give you a faintly cooler spot to lay down. Slumping over, something bites your little finger. It stings a little, but nothing serious. You push yourself back up and see a tiny scorpion right where your hand was so you slam your fist down on it and crush it before it can reset itself to strike again. You don’t see any others, so you lay down and look at the white sky through the cracks for a while to make yourself sleepy. When you wake up, the sun is still high and your hand is throbbing something awful. You need water desperately and your tongue feels like sandpaper in your mouth. Pushing yourself back against the far wall you try to get your mind off of your hand by watching what little light filters through the cracks. While you watch as the sun makes its ever so slow descent, you wipe yourself off every now and then with the cool rag—truly a gift from heaven. You don’t know when the throbbing in your hand went away or when your head sagged, but you open your eyes and between the vertical planks you can see the light fading from the sky. There are reds and oranges and pinks. Even through the slits, it is breathtaking. You scurry back through the hole in the boards and see the tapestry of the western sky in all its glory. The sun has already set, but has left an explosion of color in its wake. You stand there a moment in awe before setting off down the tracks once more. You walk through the night taking frequent rest breaks to rub away the burning cramps in your legs and once, you have to move away from the tracks and go prone when a freight roars through. You don’t think you’ll be able to make it much farther if you don’t find drinkable water soon. When the sun starts to peek its head, you scan the barren landscape looking for both water and another daytime shelter. It’s already getting too hot for comfort. Up ahead a couple of miles, you see a string of hoppers sitting off on a siding near the foot of a small mountain. They won’t offer much, but at least it’s shade. You quicken your pace despite your toes attempting to curl themselves in under your feet. There’s plenty of shade under the hoppers when you reach them, but already they are giving off more heat than would be comfortable. You do spot a dusty brown prickly pear patch off toward the mountain so it’s a good thing you decided to stop early in the day. It seems like so long ago when Harvey first showed you that you could eat it. You’ll just have to be really careful when you pick and skin it since you lost your knife. You rush over and fall to your knees and start to carefully pluck one of the leafy pads. The tiny spines prick at your fingers so you take extra time to be even more careful. When you have it in your hands, you dig the skin off of it with your thumbnail. The moisture runs down and drips off your hand. You greedily lap up the sweet juice as you continue digging away the skin and spines. When you have enough exposed you take a bite and the sweet flavor explodes in your mouth. It doesn’t taste bland at all. Maybe it’s because it’s later in the year and maybe more ripe or maybe it’s just because you haven’t eaten or had anything to drink in days. After three pads, you can’t hold any more but you continue chewing up bite after bite to get at the juice. While you’re gorging yourself, you see a deep shadow at the base of the mountain that looks like it has a door in it. Weird. Who would put a door in a mountain? You push yourself to your feet and stumble over to the shadow and see that it’s not really a door, but a boarded up hole. A cool draft hits you right square in the face. You have to get in there! At the bottom and under a faded sign that has slipped it’s nail, there’s a gap just big enough for you wriggle your way through if you swing the sign aside. It reminds you of the night you and Jane went into that spooky old house. C’mon, I know the way in. W-wait. What if something’s in there? What if someone catches us? Don’t worry. No one ever comes here. This place is ‘bandoned. It seems so long ago and in a place you can barely remember and to a boy who no longer exists. Maybe even in another life, perhaps. You squat down and hold the sign up with one hand as you work your way inside. Sand sifts down on you as you pass through the opening—but only a little. From somewhere deep in the bowels of the cave, you can hear water dripping into a pool. Too bad it isn’t outside. It’s been so long since you’ve been swimming. It’d be a nice way to cool off. Sitting just far enough inside that you’re out of the direct sunlight, you lean back to soak up the cool, damp air. Your stomach rumbles and cramps up, but you barely notice as you fall fast asleep. You wake up shivering and crawl back into the blast furnace through the little gap. You have a vague recollection of an eerie yawning groan having disturbed your sleep, but it quickly fades into the ether along with the dream that inspired it. You head back over to the prickly pear patch and perform your routine again. It’ll take some time before you are back to one-hundred percent. Right now, you aren’t even considering leaving this wonderful place. Once you’ve had your fill again, you crawl back into your hidey-hole. You have to crawl in a little deeper since the sun is at a lower angle and its rays stretch in nearly twice as far. It’s not that you mind sleeping in the daytime so much, you just don’t want those burning fingers on your skin. You see a lump over against the far wall and have to investigate what it might be. You carefully creep over in case it might be an animal—even though by its shape, it couldn’t possibly be. You reach out with the toe of your shoe and give it a light nudge. It teeters to one side and comes back to rest in the same place with a tinny sound that reverberates off the walls. You immediately know what this object is. It’s a bucket! If you can find the source of that dripping sound, you could have all the water you’d need for a couple days and surely you’d run into more by the time it is empty. > You try to find the source Crawling slowly through the dark on your knees and feeling ahead of you with one hand while dragging the pail with the other, you make your way deep into the cave. The sound gets gradually louder the deeper you go until you feel spatter hit your face. It’s coming from the wall from drips overhead, but the sound of the pool is still far away so you continue on. The ground is damp for quite a ways before it starts getting dry again. It doesn’t appear that the sound is getting any closer. If you don’t find it soon, you might as well turn back. You don’t want to get lost in this cave. You might not be able to find your way back. The floor keeps rising steadily and turns from sand to rock. It slopes up steeply and you have trouble holding on enough while climbing with only one free hand. You’ve come just about as far as you dare. You try to determine how much farther the sound of the pool is and in what direction, but the echo off the rocks makes it sound like it’s coming from everywhere. It’s no use. You shimmy back down the rock and start making your way back. You can feel eyes on you from the darkness, but can’t tell from which direction. One way is as black as another. The only thing you can see is tiny white flashes at the edge of your vision. You reach the damp sand again and have just started across it when the ground under you starts shifting forward. You twist around and try to scramble back, but it’s moving too swift and you’re losing more ground than you gain. Then suddenly, you are in open air and tumbling head over feet. The fall seems to take forever. It’s only seconds, but time has slowed down for you. “AAAAHH!” “AaaAaaAaaahh!” your echo screams back at you. You hit the water head first. You frantically paddle for the surface. There is absolutely no light so can’t tell which way is up. Your lungs are empty and you fight to not let the water in. Finally, you break the surface and tread water as best as you can, but you don’t have the strength to last long. It dawns on you that you still have the bucket so you flip it upside-down—letting the water spill out and catch some air—to use as a float. When you’ve finally caught your breath, you kick and paddle over to a slimy and slick wall. There are no handholds so you slowly move along looking for something to grab onto. You come to a ledge that is right at water level and slowly work your way up onto it. When you’re finally seated, you place the bucket beside you and take slow even breaths to slow your racing heart. That was way too close. You stand up and search the slimy wall and find nothing as far up as you can reach. You move from one end to the other and find nothing but the same. When you’ve regained your strength, you slip back into the water and—holding onto the bucket—start feeling around some more as you make your way around the pool. You make it back to the same ledge before long. You don’t know how long you’ve been sitting here. Hours? Days? Weeks? It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t long before you couldn’t feel your legs. Then your arms wouldn’t work anymore. You can’t even tell if your eyes are open or closed at this point. Out in the middle of the blackness, you see a shimmering speck of light that grows and grows until it finally takes shape. It’s that dark haired girl with that mischievous grin. Her toes barely skim the water as she glides softly over to you. She reaches down and cups her hand over yours as she looks deeply into your eyes with those bright green eyes. You manage to mouth a word, but does it really escape your lips? “Jane” your echo whispers back. — The End<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It’s probably better not to risk drinking it, but you sure don’t intend to waste such a gift. You pull your shirt off and wet it carefully from the cup—being extremely careful not to let even a single drop roll off onto the ground. You wipe your back and chest off with the cool rag as best you can before wrapping it around your head like that man did in that movie you saw a long time ago on TV. You go back to work and before long, you have something that resembles something that someone might accidentally mistake for a shack. It’s more of a lean-to than anything, but at least there’s shade. You get down on all fours and crawl through a narrow opening at the bottom. The ground is still hot and could possibly blister if you dally. Once inside, you scoop handful after handful off the top and shove it against the sides at the bottom. It’ll help hold them up as well as give you a faintly cooler spot to lay down. Slumping over, something bites your little finger. It stings a little, but nothing serious. You push yourself back up and see a tiny scorpion right where your hand was so you slam your fist down on it and crush it before it can reset itself to strike again. You don’t see any others, so you lay down and look at the white sky through the cracks for a while to make yourself sleepy. When you wake up, the sun is still high and your hand is throbbing something awful. You need water desperately and your tongue feels like sandpaper in your mouth. Pushing yourself back against the far wall you try to get your mind off of your hand by watching what little light filters through the cracks. While you watch as the sun makes its ever so slow descent, you wipe yourself off every now and then with the cool rag—truly a gift from heaven. You don’t know when the throbbing in your hand went away or when your head sagged, but you open your eyes and between the vertical planks you can see the light fading from the sky. There are reds and oranges and pinks. Even through the slits, it is breathtaking. You scurry back through the hole in the boards and see the tapestry of the western sky in all its glory. The sun has already set, but has left an explosion of color in its wake. You stand there a moment in awe before setting off down the tracks once more. You walk through the night taking frequent rest breaks to rub away the burning cramps in your legs and once, you have to move away from the tracks and go prone when a freight roars through. You don’t think you’ll be able to make it much farther if you don’t find drinkable water soon. When the sun starts to peek its head, you scan the barren landscape looking for both water and another daytime shelter. It’s already getting too hot for comfort. Up ahead a couple of miles, you see a string of hoppers sitting off on a siding near the foot of a small mountain. They won’t offer much, but at least it’s shade. You quicken your pace despite your toes attempting to curl themselves in under your feet. There’s plenty of shade under the hoppers when you reach them, but already they are giving off more heat than would be comfortable. You do spot a dusty brown prickly pear patch off toward the mountain so it’s a good thing you decided to stop early in the day. It seems like so long ago when Harvey first showed you that you could eat it. You’ll just have to be really careful when you pick and skin it since you lost your knife. You rush over and fall to your knees and start to carefully pluck one of the leafy pads. The tiny spines prick at your fingers so you take extra time to be even more careful. When you have it in your hands, you dig the skin off of it with your thumbnail. The moisture runs down and drips off your hand. You greedily lap up the sweet juice as you continue digging away the skin and spines. When you have enough exposed you take a bite and the sweet flavor explodes in your mouth. It doesn’t taste bland at all. Maybe it’s because it’s later in the year and maybe more ripe or maybe it’s just because you haven’t eaten or had anything to drink in days. After three pads, you can’t hold any more but you continue chewing up bite after bite to get at the juice. While you’re gorging yourself, you see a deep shadow at the base of the mountain that looks like it has a door in it. Weird. Who would put a door in a mountain? You push yourself to your feet and stumble over to the shadow and see that it’s not really a door, but a boarded up hole. A cool draft hits you right square in the face. You have to get in there! At the bottom and under a faded sign that has slipped it’s nail, there’s a gap just big enough for you wriggle your way through if you swing the sign aside. It reminds you of the night you and Jane went into that spooky old house. C’mon, I know the way in. W-wait. What if something’s in there? What if someone catches us? Don’t worry. No one ever comes here. This place is ‘bandoned. It seems so long ago and in a place you can barely remember and to a boy who no longer exists. Maybe even in another life, perhaps. You squat down and hold the sign up with one hand as you work your way inside. Sand sifts down on you as you pass through the opening—but only a little. From somewhere deep in the bowels of the cave, you can hear water dripping into a pool. Too bad it isn’t outside. It’s been so long since you’ve been swimming. It’d be a nice way to cool off. Sitting just far enough inside that you’re out of the direct sunlight, you lean back to soak up the cool, damp air. Your stomach rumbles and cramps up, but you barely notice as you fall fast asleep. You wake up shivering and crawl back into the blast furnace through the little gap. You have a vague recollection of an eerie yawning groan having disturbed your sleep, but it quickly fades into the ether along with the dream that inspired it. You head back over to the prickly pear patch and perform your routine again. It’ll take some time before you are back to one-hundred percent. Right now, you aren’t even considering leaving this wonderful place. Once you’ve had your fill again, you crawl back into your hidey-hole. You have to crawl in a little deeper since the sun is at a lower angle and its rays stretch in nearly twice as far. It’s not that you mind sleeping in the daytime so much, you just don’t want those burning fingers on your skin. You see a lump over against the far wall and have to investigate what it might be. You carefully creep over in case it might be an animal—even though by its shape, it couldn’t possibly be. You reach out with the toe of your shoe and give it a light nudge. It teeters to one side and comes back to rest in the same place with a tinny sound that reverberates off the walls. You immediately know what this object is. It’s a bucket! If you can find the source of that dripping sound, you could have all the water you’d need for a couple days and surely you’d run into more by the time it is empty. > You continue on your way You carry the bucket back with you into the light and examine it for holes. There aren’t any that you can see so you set it near the entrance and crawl back out of the light, lay down and sleep for the rest of the day. When you wake up, there is barely enough light to see your way out by and you have trouble even making your way back. You manage to squeeze your way back outside and a warm, stiff breeze ripples its fingers over your skin and through your hair. It feels rather pleasant after being in the cool for so long. With bucket in hand, you stroll over to the prickly pears and begin carefully filling it with the pads that you don’t immediately eat. There’s not much left of the patch when you get done with it. You look over your shoulder to see that the moon is more than a sliver and just a might above the horizon behind you. You decide that you might as well continue on since there’s no point in staying in one place for too long. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off and set off down the tracks again. There are faint shadows outlining each railroad tie and you can see the wispy shapes of gravel off to the sides. There is a bluish tint to the desert where it fades into nothingness only a stones throw to each side. You don’t have to stop to rest nearly as often and when you do, you carefully peel bits of prickly pear and suck out the juice. You’ve got enough to last you for days as long as you don’t get too piggish with it. And now that you’ve found out how magical it is, you’ll keep an eye out for patches so you can keep your bucket as full of it as you can. Once in the night, you have to get away from the tracks and go prone when an East-bound freight rumbles through. It must be miles and miles long with six roaring engines straining to keep it moving. It’s too dark to make out the cargo, but it has to be really something special. You long to be on it heading back to familiar territory, but what magical things it must have seen before reaching this point. Even after it passes out of sight and then hearing, you can still feel its vibrations in the tracks. The moon drifts by overhead—dragging the stars in its wake. You take the ties two at a time until the bottoms of your feet are so puffy that you have to slow to every one. The dark silhouettes of the mountains to your right take form as they rip free of the night sky and go from black to red to gold before you turn around and see the sun spilling over the horizon to your rear. It is a most awe inspiring sight of reds and oranges and golds fading into lavender at its fringes. You scan the barren landscape around you and spot a tiny twinkle far up ahead. Maybe it’s something and maybe it’s not, but the tracks will come close enough to it that you’re going to find out. The landscape is sparsely dotted with bluish-green lumps and by their shape you can tell that they are prickly pear patches. They are everywhere! There’s so much that you’ll never go hungry or thirsty again! You’ll just grab what you need from the patches when they come close to the tracks to keep your bucket full. There is a sudden explosion all around you and your heart skips a couple of beats when a dozen or so tiny pigs shoot out in all directions from their dusty wallows surprised by your sudden appearance. Even the grown ones are no bigger than a dog. It takes you a moment for your blood to settle enough that you can keep walking. After you go a little farther, you are close enough to see what the thing is that is twinkling. It’s a windmill out all by itself. The shiny fan blades are high enough off the ground that they catch a ripple every now and then, but the tail fin is broken and bent sideways so it can no longer face into the wind. Did there used to be a farmhouse near it and now it’s gone? Maybe there’s still some stuff laying around it. You pick up your pace in the hopes of finding something salvageable. From somewhere not too far off toward the mountains, you hear a sound like someone screaming with rage. Your hair stands on end and you freeze in your steps. You carefully scan the area and see nothing but a barren, sand-colored landscape dotted with the occasional boulder, cactus or prickly pear patch. Everything is eerily still. You take a tentative step down the tracks while keeping a wary eye on the desert. Something is out there, but you don’t have a clue what it might be. A ghost, maybe? Or some madman? You are poised to run at the first sign of movement. Before long, you are adjacent to the windmill and—after taking a last, long look around—head down the gravel embankment toward it. You see a long galvanized water trough—a little bigger than the bathtub you had in your old house before your mom and dad got a divorce—a short distance from its base connected to a rusty tank via a short, bent pipe. Maybe there will be enough water to soak in and cool off before the sun creeps high enough to scorch the day. When you get up to the tank, you see about an inch of water in the bottom. You could still use it to cool off in and rinse away several layers of dirt and dust that you’ve picked up since the last time you bathed so you strip down to your altogethers and dip your toe in. The water is a bit warm now even though it’s still early in the day, but not so much that you can’t stand it and when you climb back out the gentle breeze should take care of the rest. You sit down and start dipping water with your hands and pouring it over your head. It feels so good on your bare skin as you rub away the grit and dust. You haven’t had a bath in a long, long time so you make the most if it. You lean back and bask in the sun for a few minutes soaking everything up and notice a metal latter going up the side of the windmill. There’s no telling what you’d be able to see from up there. As soon as you’ve dried off, you want to climb it and have a good look around. There’s nothing on the ground here for as far as you can see. Why would anyone put a windmill out in the middle of nowhere? There’s not even a fence to keep in animals if that’s what it’s for. You stand up and are reaching over the side for your clothes when you hear that scream again from much closer this time. Your blood runs cold. You whip your head around toward the tracks and the direction it came from. There on the ridge, you see a big tan cat just like the one you saw when you were with Sam only this one isn’t quite as big even though it is twice as scary. Before it heads down the slope toward you you are already climbing up the tower. When you reach the top, you look back over your shoulder to see it circling below and looking up at you. You look over and see an old paint can full of bolts and heavy, rusty adjustable wrench which you can use as a nice weapon. As long as it can’t figure out how to use the ladder, you are safe since there’s no way it could climb the metal legs. You pick up the wrench and slap it against your palm. If it does manage to climb the ladder, you’re ready to smash its head and paws as soon as it gets within arm’s reach. Its eyes are fixed on yours and its ears are laid back when it makes a tremendous leap. You stagger backward and manage to grab onto one of the center posts that angle to the ground at the very last second while you are teetering and flailing your arms. The cat can jump much higher than you expected, but still only came a little over halfway to the top. After a couple more attempts with no more success than it had the first time, it stalks around and swats your bucket through the air—sending its contents spraying out in a wide arc. “Go away! Leave me alone!” You grab a hand full of bolts and start pelting the ground around him with the tiny missiles. Only one manages to hit its mark and the cat only flicks its shoulder muscle in response. The cat pays no mind to your words and only continues pacing around the tower while staring up at you. There’s really nothing you can do but wait it out and hope it gets interested in something else or bored enough that it forgets all about you and leaves. You sit down with your back against the center post and keep a watchful eye on the cat below in case it figures out how to use the ladder. After a few minutes, the big cat moves over to opposite side of the storage tank from the trough and lays down in the sliver of shade it provides. It’s only going to get hotter up here as the sun gets higher and higher. You have no choice but to suffer through it. There is a decent breeze up here that the cat doesn’t have. Maybe it’ll be enough. You lean your head back against the post and close your eyes, but only to slits because you don’t want that thing to get out of your sight. It yawns and does the same, but doesn’t lay its head down. From here on in it’s just going to be a waiting game. > You life happens Hours have passed when you hear a low rumble coming from behind you. You look down at your nemesis to see that it has its head down on its paws and doesn’t seem to hear it. You look over your shoulder to see bright red pickup kicking up a cloud of dust and heading straight for you. You get to your feet just as the pickup skids to a stop and the door flies open. “What the hell are you doing up there!?” yells a beefy man with a scraggly beard. “Get down from there!” You look down to see the cat jerk its head around and point toward it. “I can’t.” He looks over to where you’re pointing and immediately dives back into his truck at the same time the cat makes a dash toward the tracks. When he comes back out, he has a rifle in his hands and lays it against the open door. Crack! You see a wisp of dust explode on the far side of the cat and the cat veers away from it. Before the man can lever in another shell, it has gone over the tracks and down the other side. You watch as it fades into the background as it’s bounding toward the mountains. “She won’t be back anytime soon so you can get down off of there now!” You lay the wrench aside and step off onto the ladder. You don’t know what you would’ve done if he hadn’t come along when he did. Your mouth is already full of cotton. When you reach the bottom, you head straight for the closest prickly pear and begin skinning it with your thumbnails. “What are you doing?” “I’m thirsty. I need water.” “Come over here. I’ve got some ice water in the truck.” He opens the passenger door and rummages around in the pile in the floorboard until he comes back with an only slightly wrinkled paper cup. He slides a big cooler over the edge of the seat and pushes the button on the bottom to fill it before handing it to you. “Here.” “Thank you.” You guzzle it down without taking a breath. “Why aren’t you wearing any clothes?” You look down at yourself and say “I was rinsing off from that trough to get cool when that big cat came.” “Well, go put ‘em back on. You can’t be running around naked as a jaybird.” You turn to go when he grabs your arm and says “What the hell happened to you, boy?” You follow his gaze and look under your arm at your back. “Oh, that’s from my mom.” “Why’d she do that?” You shrug. “She was mad ‘cause I ran away, but I didn’t. It was an accident.” He stands there scratching above his ear for a moment before shaking his head and turning toward the windmill. You rush over and jerk on your clothes while he climbs it. Then you start putting the all the prickly pears you can find back in your bucket and look up to see him fixing the tail. You can’t help but stand there until he’s finished just to see if it works. He releases a catch and the blades start turning immediately. “Where are you from?” he asks, stepping off the bottom rung. “There aren’t any houses for miles around except for mine.” You look down at your feet. “A long, long ways from here.” He takes you back to his house despite your objections and finally gets the whole story out of you. He threatens to turn you over to the sheriff, but can’t come to terms with what might happen to you if you were sent back. One thing leads to another and days turn into weeks. When school time rolls around, he enrolls you under his name and after talking to a judge friend of his and telling him your story, it’s all made nice and legal. It isn’t long before you feel like you belong at this ranch. One day when you’re fourteen and he can barely get around even with the aid of his cane, you and he are out setting the windmill where you first met. He turns to you and says “I never had a son of my own. It’s lucky for me that you dropped into my lap like you did. You’re a damn fine worker and a fine young man. Someday I’ll be gone and all this will belong to you.” You smile at him and give him a firm squeeze on the shoulder. Isn’t it funny how life turns out sometimes, you think. Looking him square in the eye, you say “I’m the lucky one.” — The End<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stagger up to the edge of the road and raise your hands. The car slows down for a moment as the rear passenger window rolls down. As it gets nearly even with you, a bottle flies out and hits the pavement halfway to your feet. You don’t have the strength or energy to jump to the side so you can only stand there and watch as it bounces off the asphalt and hits you dead center in the chest before you can react. The pain is so sudden and intense that the wind is knocked completely out of you. Your face feels like it swells to nearly twice its size and burns all the way to your ears. You slump and fall to your knees. The car screeches to a stop and the driver’s door opens. “Why in the hell would you do that to a kid?! I oughtta kick your ass. You could’ve killed him, you know that?” You gasp for breath and can’t take in any air. You want to cry due to the immense pain, but your eyes are so dry that they can no longer produce tears. Your vision starts to waver and you fall forward. Just before you eat the blacktop, you feel hands grab you and swing you back into a seated position. “It’s okay. I’m here to help. He was just being a dumbass and didn’t know that he might actually hit you.” You wheeze and can feel your lungs slowly start to fill with air. Your vision is still fuzzing in and out, but it’s slowly beginning to clear. “What’s your name?” asks the teenage boy with closely cropped hair. You rock back and forth trying to help force more air into your lungs, and only wheeze louder in answer to his question. You look around to see several more teenagers standing around you. “Take it easy, man. Don’t try to rush it. I’m not going anywhere.” You’re not sure you want to tell them your real name. After all, one of them just tried to kill you. Maybe it was an accident and maybe it wasn’t. You try to think of a name—any name—and a sudden image of little Timmy that lived down the street from you before your parents got a divorce pops into your head. You remember how he used to say his name and before you can correct it, out comes “Tim-O-tee.” You take a deep breath and try hard not to laugh or even smile. “Timothy. My name is Timothy.” “What are you doing out here all by yourself, Timothy?” “I’m lost. I don’t know where this is.” “Where do you live? We’ll take you home,” says a slightly gruffer voice off to the side. You shrug as you try to come up with something to tell them. You look around, trying to come up with a story they might believe and your eyes settle on a far-off vertical rock piercing up through desert floor. “A long, long ways from here. I was s’posed to stay by the camper, but I wanted to look at the rocks.” One of the boys sucks air in through his teeth. “That wasn’t very smart. Kids get lost out here all the time and die,” says the one crouched down by you. “Where were you going? Maybe we can find your parents or get you to someone who can.” If they take you to the cops, you’ll never make it to the Grand Canyon. You have to change the subject. “I’m so thirsty. I need water.” The boy reaches up and snatches a bottle from one of the others and says “Here, drink this. We’ll get you some water.” You tip the over half full bottle and guzzle the orange soda down without stopping. It burns like fire and doesn’t help even a little, but it’s wet and wet is better than nothing. “We’ve gotta get back. We can’t take him with us,” says another boy under his breath. “We’re not leaving him out here, alone,” snaps the one you’ve been talking to, “Not here!” “There’s a gas station right there! It’s not like he’s lost out in the middle of the desert.” “We can’t go driving all over the country looking for his folks,” says another. “You shoulda thought of that before you chucked that bottle him!” he hisses up at the boy with slicked back hair—who just pivots around on his heels and stalks back to the car. Turning back to you, he says “C’mon. We’ll go find a phone or something,” picking you to your feet and helping you to the car. You hang back as the boys head into the gas station. If they call the police, they’ll take you home and you’ll never get to the Grand Canyon for Jane. As soon as the door swings shut, you dash to the end of the building and swing around the corner toward the back. There is a stack of oil drums at the base of the hill out back and you run in behind them. You hope this will be enough because there is no other cover close by that you can see. You squeeze into a hole between two of the drums that are resting on the ground and wait. It isn’t long before you hear them talking from not too far away from your hiding spot. “Where could he have got to?” asks the boy that’s been trying to help you. “I dunno. He just ran off, I guess. Maybe we just imagined the whole thing.” “Maybe he’s a spook and just went invisible,” laughs a third. “Don’t be a moron,” says the first, “He’s just scared.” “We can’t go traipsing all over the desert looking for him. When he gets tired, he’ll come back. We’re already gonna be late as it is.” “I guess. I just wanted to help the kid out, is all.” “Let’s just go before we get into trouble, ourselves.” You hear the car engine start and gravel raining down in their wake before you poke your head out. You can’t risk going inside because they probably already told whoever is in there about you and the police might still show up. You spot a coiled hose on the ground by the corner of the building that you must’ve run right by without even seeing. It’s just what you need. You trot over and reach for the faucet, but the handle has been removed. You study it a minute before picking up the hose a little at a time—working the contents out to the end—and manage to get a good mouthful of scalding hot water. You fight the pain and as soon as it’s cooled enough, you choke it down. You can’t go any further in this heat so you look for any kind of shade to get out of this blistering sun. You spot a low-lying rock a little ways up the hillside behind the building and judging by its angle it might offer some shelter from the sun. You drag yourself over to it. It looks like it would be the perfect place for a den of snakes, but peering under the shelf you see no sign of anything. You wedge yourself underneath where you’ll wait for nightfall before heading off again. You open your eyes to find that you are shivering. The temperature has dropped considerably. If you don’t end up freezing, it’ll at least be a welcome relief compared to that awful sun. After pulling yourself out, you stand and slink down the hill. Your feet are like bricks, but you have no other choice other than to go on. The gas station parking lot is deserted except for a run-down old pickup truck loaded down with all kinds of junk and covered with a tarp. It’s parked in the shade of the pump lights around the corner of the building and you have to walk around it to get to the highway. As you pass by it, its yellow license plate catches your eye. It says Arizona in green letters across the top and Grand Canyon State on the bottom. You peek around the corner of the building and see an old hunched over Indian man with a pony tail halfway down his back stepping up to the cash register. This could be your lucky break. You could try asking him for a ride, but what if he says no? Maybe hiding under the junk in the back and hope for the best would be smarter way to go. It won’t be long before he’s heading this way so you’d better hurry and make up you mind. > You hide in the back of the truck You climb in the back of the truck and find a hole under the tarp that you can squeeze yourself into. You hunker down and get as comfortable as you can, but you can’t see out from where you are. It isn’t long before you feel the truck rocking and hear the door slam. The engine revs to life and you are jostled this way and that before the ride eventually smooths out. All you can do is hope for the best as you settle back and try to get some much needed sleep. You wake up with the old Indian man staring down at you. He has a mixture of concern and annoyance on his face. “Where did you come from? Why are you in my truck?” You rub the sleep from your eyes while you try to think of an answer. Your stiff back decides to contort all on its own and you are helpless to stop it. When you’re able to do so you look back up at him. Not knowing the best way to respond, you say “I was hiding and fell asleep.” He looks you over and finally says “Come on out of there.” He turns and walks toward the front of his truck as you sit up. He doesn’t stop at the front and continues on to a short, shiny trailer with a tattered awning drooping from its side and props the door open with a beat up lawn chair. All around you as far as the eye can see is only desolation broken up by the occasional rock jutting up through the earth. You climb over the side and aren’t sure whether to follow him inside or to go somewhere else entirely. You don’t know where you are and can only guess that the rough and rutted path behind the truck leads back to some road. At the very least, you need water. It couldn’t hurt to go to the door and ask for some before heading out. You also haven’t a clue as to where you are so maybe he’ll tell you that, too. You walk over to the trailer and lean in. “Can I have some water?” It’s really dark in there and before you can make out any movement, a heavy black pot spattered with light blue specks and a long shiny handle sticking out of the top drops onto the corner of the built-in table into the slender patch of sunlight that makes it through the door. A hand reaches out of the blackness and grabs the handle, drawing a ladle dripping with water from inside the pot. “Here.” You lunge inside, snatch the ladle with both hands and gulp down the liquid in huge swallows. It’s warm and you can taste the metal in it. It doesn’t matter. You’ve gone without for so long that the only thing that registers is that it’s wet. Even through you are choking for air you keep chugging. Finally, you’ve had all you can hold. After dropping the ladle into the pot, you stagger backward and fall against the aluminum door facing. Your eyes have started to adjust and you can see the old man seated at the far end of the table and staring vacantly at the far wall. “You want to tell me where you’re from?” You shift from one foot to the other trying to remember some of the towns from your map, but you draw a blank. Not sure if you should tell him the truth or make something up, you end up saying “A long way from here.” He lifts an eyebrow, but doesn’t turn toward you. “I have to get somewhere. It’s real important.” The instant those words pass through your lips you flash back on a conversation from a long, long time ago, but it slips away before you get the chance to latch on to it. He only sits there patiently and stares straight ahead without saying a word. It makes you feel all jittery inside. You have to tell him something. “Jane died and I have to go to the Grand Canyon for her ‘cause she never got to see it,” you blurt out. He sucks in his breath and stiffens as the words spill out with you powerless to stop them. “Her mom hated her and she killed her and all she wanted was someone to love her and to take care of her! She was my friend! She was my bestist FRIEND!” You fall to the floor in a heap. All of your strength has dissipated. Your body heaves and shutters and your eyes burn, but they are so dry that they can no longer make tears. A large, gentle hand comes to rest on your shoulder and you don’t even bother raising your head. It has all been too much. Just way too much. “Wake up. We’re here.” You shove yourself up in the seat and peer through the dusty windshield. A red granite sign with dark inset lettering atop a light tan sandstone base stands off to the right in front of the pickup. You can see the words clearly over the hood. “Grand Canyon National Park”. You can hardly believe your eyes. After a long, slow grind, the engine whirs to life. Silas jams the truck into gear and it lurches forward. It isn’t long before you come to a large parking area and he whips around into one of the paint-striped spaces, killing the old truck in gear causing it to shudder to a stop. You look up at him. He’s staring out through the windshield with that vacant stare he does. You can’t help yourself. You shimmy over in the seat, reach up and give him a big hug around the neck. “Thank you for bringing me here.” He doesn’t move or even look around. He finally says “Go now.” > You go now! You look out over the vast canyon before you—the cool pastel painted walls, the shadowy crevasses and overhangs. You walk down a narrow trail cut into the wall. A flimsy railing is all that separates you from a terrifying fall to your death. You lean against it and peer over the side. You can't make out the bottom, it seems to just flow into the horizon. You turn around and look at the cliff face behind you. The tool marks are still there—as they have undoubtedly been for decades—still unweathered in this arid environment. They will most likely remain long, long after your own death. You carefully choose your hand and footholds and—after looking around to make sure no one is in sight—make the short climb. At the top, you sit admiring the view. Taking a deep breath, you pull out the folded up sheet of paper. You open it and stare at it one last time, trying to memorize every single line (though you don't need to because you have studied it many times before). You give it a soft kiss, remembering those few magical days, refold it and touch it to your forehead. Then you gingerly slip it into a crack in the wall that faces out over the great canyon. You sit there as the sun sets and the light dwindles. The walls of the canyon gradually darken into deeper oranges and violets. You can feel her sitting beside you and know that if you just turn your head, you'd see that raven haired beauty with those bright, shining green eyes. After all this time, her dream has finally come true... — The End<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It wasn’t worth the risk to you so you head around the yard and make your way toward where the tracks resume. By the time a train leaves the yard, you find that it is moving much too fast for you to board it so you set off once again down the tracks on foot. Every couple of hours you have to ditch the tracks and hide behind a boulder or in a shallow ravine until a train passes. This is the busiest set of tracks that you’ve been on and if anyone spotted someone your age out here alone they would certainly report it. You have to take a break so you find a nice clear spot away from the tracks to kick back in and lean back on the bag. You have a sudden urge to pull out the card Jane made for you and look at the old postcards while you rest. You trace each line drawn in crayon on the page with your finger and think back to those few magical days. It seems like so long ago now. A lot has happened and every day that has passed seems to have steadily grown worse than the last. After you do this one thing, you should find someone nice to live with like Jane dreamed of. Surely there’s someone out there that would love and take care of you, someone you can depend on. You carefully refold the letter and slip it into your pocket and put everything else back into the treasure chest before giving your eyes a rest. You don’t even notice when you start to drift off, but you are rudely awakened by a brutal gust and find that a strong wind has kicked up. The dust and sand scour your face and you can barely breathe even with your shirt pulled up over your face. You stagger around trying to find some kind of shelter behind a rock or something, but there doesn’t seem to be anything nearby and you probably wouldn’t be able to see one anyway unless you were right on top of it. Your foot suddenly finds nothing but open air and you tumble headlong down a steep embankment. Your bag disappears as it goes one way and you go another. And then the world slips away into blackness. You wake to find your arm twisted under you—your shoulder screaming out in agony. You have scrapes and tiny cuts from the side of your face all the way down your legs. It takes a couple attempts before you’re able to roll over and sit up. You push yourself to your feet and look up at the steep incline that you fell down and don’t think you’d be able to climb back up there even if your arm wasn’t throbbing like it is. You can see the coat caught on a rock protruding from the ground near the top. One of the plastic jugs tied to the sleeves is crushed and the other one looks like it just exploded when it slammed into the ground. You don’t see your bag anywhere. You pace back and forth along the base of the cliff looking for any trace of your stuff and finally have no choice but to give up. You head down the wash and hope that it doesn’t dead end. The feeling finally comes back in your arm. You can move it, but not without pain and there’s a huge black and green bruise that goes from your shoulder to half way across your chest. The wash spills you out on the edge of a two-lane highway and there isn’t a car or a sign or anything at all except brushy desert and rocks for as far as you can see. The train tracks must be somewhere beyond the ridge behind you, but you’d never be able to get back to them that way. You look up at the sun and figure that you might as well keep following it since it has already led you this far. You close your eyes, take a deep breath and then set off down the road. You’ve been walking for hours when a car pulls out onto the blacktop from a gas station up ahead that you didn’t even know was there. The hot blazing sun reflecting off the pavement has made you half blind and has given you such a raging thirst that it feels like no amount of water could ever hope to quench. You don’t know if you’ll even be able to make it as far as the gas station. You’re torn between whether or not to flag the car down when it gets close or to find somewhere to hide until it passes by. > You hide You take cover and lie flat in some wispy brush. It’s the only choice you have at the moment. It doesn’t conceal you very well, but well enough since the car speeds by without slowing down. You get back to your feet and stumble on. The sandy, vacant lot is such a relief after walking down the sweltering blacktop for so long. The building is long and narrow and runs parallel to the highway. Along its front drapes a green and white awning and below that there are dark windows partially covered with plywood. There are two antique gas pumps with glass bowls on top for measuring out fuel standing a little more than a car’s width from a glass door plastered with all manner of fliers. You struggle to pull open the glass door. You hear a television blaring from within as you stumble inside. “Can I have some water?” you hoarsely ask the beefy guy behind the counter. “It’s back by the soda fountain,” he answers without looking up from his game-show. “Cups are five cents.” You blink. All your money is in your bag lost somewhere back in that canyon. “C’mon! Who ever heard of shaving cream costing ten bucks?! You stupid moron!” You turn around and fall against the door, forcing it open with your shoulder and stagger back out into the blast furnace. Walking around the end of the building, you spot a coiled hose on the ground by the back corner. It’s just what you need. You trot over and reach for the faucet, but the handle has been removed. You study it a minute before picking up the hose a little at a time—working the contents out to the end—and manage to get a good mouthful of scalding hot water. You fight the pain and as soon as it’s cooled enough, you choke it down. You can’t go any further in this heat so you look for any kind of shade to get out of this blistering sun. You spot a low-lying rock a little ways up the hillside behind the building and judging by its angle it might offer some shelter from the sun. You drag yourself over to it. It looks like it would be the perfect place for a den of snakes, but peering under the shelf you see no sign of anything. You wedge yourself underneath where you’ll wait for nightfall before heading off again. You open your eyes to find that you are shivering. The temperature has dropped considerably. If you don’t end up freezing, it’ll at least be a welcome relief compared to that awful sun. After pulling yourself out, you stand and slink down the hill. Your feet are like bricks, but you have no choice other than to go on. The gas station parking lot is deserted except for a run-down old pickup truck loaded down with all kinds of junk and covered with a tarp. It’s parked in the shade of the pump lights around the corner of the building and you have to walk around it to get to the highway. As you pass by it, its yellow license plate catches your eye. It says Arizona in green letters across the top and Grand Canyon State on the bottom. You peek around the corner of the building and see an old hunched over Indian man with a pony tail halfway down his back stepping up to the cash register. This could be your lucky break. You could try asking him for a ride, but what if he says no? Maybe hiding under the junk in the back and hope for the best would be smarter way to go. It won’t be long before he’s heading this way so you’d better hurry and make up you mind.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The lights just went off in the farmhouse so you crawl your way through the grass toward the garden—trying to keep as low to the ground as you can. It is full dark, but you can’t take the chance that someone might catch a glimpse of you. Something moves off to your right, but you can’t see what it is. You just hope it isn’t a snake and if it is, you hope it’s moving away from you instead of toward you. The dry grass crunches under your hands and knees so you slow your pace to not make any more racket than you can help. You are so, so hungry. It’s been days since you’ve eaten anything—anything at all. The hard, dry ground suddenly becomes loose, damp earth and you look up to see three dim strands of barbed wire. On the other side, you can make out the dark shapes holding their orbs out to you. You wriggle your way under the bottom wire. Halfway through, you reach up and pluck the first one you see, then another and another. They all look the same in this light so you grab as many as you can and bag them up in the bottom of your shirt. You hear a bawl coming from the direction of house, joined by a couple more as the bulb above the back door flips on and the door is thrown open. “What is it, boys?” you hear a man say, “What’s out there?” You are dragging yourself backward with your knees and shoving with your elbows when you see an orange flash near the house. You hear the boom a split-second later. He’s shooting at you! You scamper with everything you have and don’t stop until you’re back on the other side of the embankment. You lay prone with your eyes peeled for any sign of movement coming over the rise and, when your heart finally slows, you look down at the single piece of fruit in your hand. At least it’s something. You take a bite and feel your face attempt to implode. The tomato isn’t ripe, but it doesn’t matter. It’s food and moisture all in one and you’ve been without either for much too long. After all the commotion and dogs’ barking finally peters out, you creep back to retrieve your bag and continue on down the tracks. You see the back of a big truck stop over on the highway up ahead of you about a mile or two away with a constant stream of vehicles coming and going. The moon is just coming up and from the glint on the tracks it looks like they might come really close to it. It would be a good place to fill up your water jugs. You might be able to blend in among all those people and them not even suspect that you are all alone out here. You don’t have a lot of money, but maybe you can find some food that you can afford with the little bit of change you still have in your pocket. A couple of cheese crackers or the peanut butter kind would go really good right about now. When you get to a spot that is almost directly behind it, you set your bag down in the grass off to the side of the tracks and—taking just the jugs in hand—set off across the field. As you approach the crumbling asphalt of the back parking lot, you see a water faucet next to the pay air hose. What luck! You rush over and—after gulping down as much of the sweet liquid as you can—fill both jugs to the brim. You lug them back across the parking lot to the knee-high grass and set them down before heading around to the front of the building. Before going in, you pull the bread wrapper out of your pocket and sit on a yellow concrete curb to count out the change. You need to know how much you have before going inside. At long last, you decipher that there’s eighty-six cents—a small fortune. You still want to hold onto the dollar for a real emergency so you are only willing to spend the change. You’ve got to be careful not to spend all of it, though. You might really need it later on. As you step through the front door, you are blasted by frigid air. You’d almost forgotten that such a thing even existed. Several pairs of eyes are on you, but you pretend not to notice. “His mother should be ashamed of herself. Letting a boy get so filthy,” a woman with her face stretched back in a bun says to her friend who only nods in agreement. You glance down at your hands and can’t tell where the dirt ends and your skin begins. She’s definitely right about how dirty you are, but if she were a nice person, she wouldn’t have said it loud enough for you to hear. Maybe you should clean up before doing any shopping. You walk up to the stocky woman behind the counter and quietly ask “Do you have a bathroom?” She squints at you before saying “Sure do. It’s right down that hall over there.” “Thank you,” you say, walking as quickly as you can so you can get out from under all the judgmental eyes. It’s a tiny little room with only a stainless steel toilet and sink. Above the sink is a cloudy mirror that reflects what little it has to and in the corner is a tall, skinny trash can with a flapper on top. You lock the door before stripping off you shirt and shorts so someone doesn’t walk in on you. You do the best you can with wet paper towels and have to climb up on the sink to make sure you got everything off of your face and neck. After getting dressed, you sop up the floor as best you can. By the time you finally head back out the door, you are feeling fresh as the morning. The trash can, however, has seen better days. You walk down each aisle slowly looking at what is offered. Too bad you don’t have more money, because there is a lot of really good stuff you wouldn’t mind having. You finally choose a big plain bag of tortilla chips that are marked “3/$1”. It’s big enough that it should last you a good long while. The cashier eyes you with a smirk as you count out thirty-four cents to her. You can’t help grinning back at her every time you make eye contact. “Thank you, sir. Please come again,” she says handing you back your bag of chips and giving you a wink. You feel your face getting warm and you nod to her as you turn toward the door. You can’t remember the last time you felt as relieved as you do now to get away from people. If it wouldn’t seem suspicious, you would run. Wrestling the two jugs while trying not to crush the bag of chips too much, you head back to the tracks and fetch your bag before continuing on your trek. You come to a fork in the tracks and don’t know which one brought you here. One continues on to the south and the other angles off into the distance in a more easterly direction and looks like it goes right through a distant town. If it’s not just a mirage you might try hopping a train down there, but you aren’t sure that it would be going the right way. Maybe there will be another town somewhere up ahead on the one stretching south. > You head for the town If you can get on a train, it’ll be well worth going slightly out of your way. You head down the tracks toward the distant town. The sun is still high overhead when you cross into the train yard. There’s a cross track here and little else save for a row of run-down, caved in buildings along a dusty, weedy road. It doesn’t look like a train would stop here anymore even if it did pass through. You might as well turn around and head back the way you came. You have just reached the end of the yard when you see a sky blue car cross on the last street in town just ahead of you. It looks like the driver is looking straight back at you. You duck down, but there’s nowhere to go and it is too late anyway. The car slows and you make a mad dash for the buildings just as it disappears from sight. You run at full bore until you see a stack of shipping pallets laying haphazard against the side of the far end building. You dive in behind them. Did he really see you or was it just your imagination? Maybe he only slowed down because there was something in the road. You’ll just hide here and wait for a little while until the coast is all clear and then you’ll get the heck out of Dodge. The car drives slowly back up the road from where it came. It is barely creeping by this time. He must’ve seen you. What else could it be? He’ll turn you over to the cops and then you’ll never make good on your promise to Jane. You have to somehow get away from him and out of here. > You find somewhere to hide There goes that car again. The one that’s been creeping back and forth down the same street for the last hour. The driver must’ve seen you. He might take you to the cops and you’ll be taken back home if he catches you. You duck down as low as you can. If you can hide until it gets dark, maybe you can sneak away. You look around for a better place to hide and see nothing. This stack of pallets isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing. You’ll just have to wait. The minutes pass by slowly. It will be a long, long time before you’ll be able to escape. Your leg starts cramping so you reach down and rub the knots out of it. “There you are,” comes a crackly man’s voice from behind you, “I almost thought you’d flown the coop. C’mon, let’s go for a ride.” You are paralyzed with fear. He found you and now they’ll take you home. You can’t go home, yet. You’re not finished. He lifts you to your feet by the back of the shirt and you can hardly hold onto your stuff due to your feet barely touching the ground. He takes you around to the back of the building and opens up the passenger door of his car. “Hop in.” Something isn’t right. This isn’t the way strangers act. You struggle to remain outside, but he snatches your bag from you and pitches it over the backseat with his free hand. You slap at his hands and kick at his shins, but he doesn’t seem to even notice. He backhands you across the face and shoves you in anyway. Your cheek burns from your temple to your chin. The tiny itch on your eyebrow turns out to be a trickle of blood. You are dazed and can only watch as he makes his way around the front of the car to the driver’s door. By the time you finally snap out of it, you see the town getting smaller and smaller through the back glass. You start to dive over the seat back and his hand comes crashing down on you again. Your vision narrows to a tiny speck and then winks out. You wake up shivering. It is dark all around you. You don’t have any clothes on. You are sore in a place where you shouldn’t be and it really, really burns. There’s a strange, intermittent scraping sound coming from somewhere close by. You cough and the scraping sound stops. You try to raise up on your elbow and see something coming straight down at you from the darkness overhead. It’s the back of a shovel blade and it’s the last thing you will ever see. — The End<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Crossing the street to a gas station, you spot a police car coming toward you from down the street. You step up your pace and put Harvey between you and it. You look around for a place to hide, but there isn’t anything close. You prepare yourself in case he stops, but all you can hope for is to run as fast as you can and hope that you can get away. You let out a sigh as it goes on by and the officer behind the wheel doesn’t even look over at you. Stepping through the open door, you are hit by a blast of not quite so hot air. A big shop fan rests against the back wall and is aimed directly at the door. A nice looking man in thick glasses and stained coveralls sits just to the right of it and has his nose buried in a newspaper. “Ahem,” Harvey clears his throat to get the guy’s attention. “Howdy,” says the attendant, leaning forward so that the legs of his folding chair touch the floor, “What can I do for you?” “We were hoping to get some water. Drinking water. And maybe a jug or something to put it in.” You can see the disappointment on the attendant’s face as he draws his lips back, but it quickly shifts into a forced smile. “Sure thing. I think there might be one around back by the dumpster.” “Thanks,” Harvey says as he heads back out the front door. You hang back and stand there looking at the guy with a sheepish smile until you finally build up enough nerve to blurt out “Do you buy bottles?” “Sure thing, little man. You got some you wanna trade in?” “Uh huh.” You dig through you bag and pull out the two root beer bottles. You stand there looking down at them and remember sharing them with Jane. You knew you’d have to sell them eventually, but now you aren’t sure that you really want to. “Just the two, then?” You wipe the film from your eyes that has started to develop and look up at him. You nod. “I think I have it right here—” he says, digging in his pocket. “Yeah, here you go. Six cents. You can put ‘em over there with those,” he points after handing you the coins. From the little wire rack by the front door, you grab a couple plastic tubes of peanuts. They are marked twenty-five cents and you think you have more than enough in change. You pull out the plastic bread wrapper and start counting out pennies on the only bare spot on the counter. The attendant watches you and drums his fingers impatiently. “That’s it.” You look up and see him sliding the pile off into his hand. “That’s not fifty cents.” “Yeah, it is. You must’ve just miscounted.” You grin up at him. You’d only given him a little over thirty cents so either he is really nice and doing you a favor or else he just doesn’t want all your pennies. He smiles warmly back. You quickly twist the bag of money and shove it way down deep in your pocket before Harvey comes back. He seems that he’s on your side so far, but if he can steal from random strangers he might just take from you, too. You drop the peanuts into your bag for later in case you have to go too long without food. You’re leaning with your back against the metal door frame when Harvey returns with two jugs. He and the attendant talk briefly before the two of you head around the side of the building to the faucet and fill the jugs. You have a huge lump in your throat and barely even take notice of anything around you for quite a little while. Even bending down and taking giant gulps straight from the spigot doesn’t make it go down. It just sort of hangs there. The last thing you do is pitch the last whiskey bottle in the dumpster before the two of you head back toward the tracks. It’s several hours before a train comes into view. You hear the blasting horn from miles away and you sit staring in the direction of the blast. It is going the wrong way, however, so you have to keep waiting. You and Harvey have found yourselves a nice comfy spot in the shade of a metal building in some scrub brush where no one can see you. Harvey has been leaning with his back against a small tree and every once in a while he lets out a snort that would wake any normal person from a sound sleep. Not him, though. Even though he’s had much more rest than you, he still looks like an old, old man. His gray doesn’t end at his hairline, but keeps going all the way down his face subcutaneously. Sometime before dark and just when you finally feel like you could stand some sleep yourself, you hear a long, blaring horn from the opposite direction. “That’s our ride,” says Harvey, opening his eyes and stretching to get the kinks out. You watch as the engine finally enters the yard, but it keeps going and doesn’t slow any more than a fast walking pace. Harvey cranes his neck and strains to try and see further down its length. There are no boxcars. All you can see are flatcars and hoppers. A long stretch of flatcars are loaded with sea containers probably bound for the coast and don’t offer any space at all around them, but one of the last cars is only half full at the back. Harvey trots toward it and you dash around him. After lofting your bag over the side, he grabs you around your middle and hefts you up. He tosses his coat and the water jugs at your feet before trotting up to the very front where there is a step. “Hey! Get away from there!” you hear coming from the tail end of the train. “That’s private property!” You duck into a corner made by the slightly mismatched cargo containers and watch as Harvey takes a step backward. He looks up at you as the train whisks you by and turns away from the tracks. You peek around the container to see two men rush up to him. They take him by the arms and lead him back across the tracks. One of them is talking on a walkie-talkie. What are they going to do to him? Did they see you? You have no idea. If they did, they might call ahead to stop the train and then what would you do? > You ride it out You don’t know what else you can do except to ride this one out. Even if you went back to find Harvey, there’s no way of knowing if you could get to him without being spotted and sent back to your mom. You’ll just have to be ready for them when the train starts to slow down at the next town. You can jump off early and run just to be on the safe side. You can’t afford to lose any more time. It’s only been half a day when you come within sight of a town. You gather your stuff together and cling to the side of the sliding door. The gravel drops off sharply just beyond the tracks and the dense bushy undergrowth looks like it would make for a rather soft landing. You are poised and ready when the train starts to slow down. You wait for the perfect opening and then leap as far as you can toward the brush. You don’t clear the edge of the right of way, but still tumble into the undergrowth and the back of your head strikes the base of a large sapling. Your nose is instantly filled with a burning, coppery stench and the world blinks out. When you come to, it’s just getting dark and the street lights are beginning to glow orange as far as the eye can see. This is no ordinary town—it stretches out for miles and is already giving off a glow comparable to that of the setting sun. Another track stretching off into the far yonder joins with the one you’re on and you can see yet another up ahead. They cling to each other and whip back and forth across each other at switches. There’s a huge yard with trains pointing this way and that and beyond it is a highway over pass that seems to just hang there with a steady stream of cars flowing in both directions. You make your way over to the far side to keep out of sight of the headlamps of the oncoming trains and follow the tracks for nearly an hour—careful to stay with the majority as they snake their way westward—doing your best to not get sidetracked. Up ahead and on the same side of the arteries of tracks as you you see a train just sitting there by a string of small warehouses and aimed in the right direction. You can hear the engine reverberating and there are bright lights on tripods scattered all around. There are some flatcars with men busy loading large crates onto them using forklifts from the loading dock and in the gloom between them and the engine is a string of boxcars. You can see from here that their doors are wide open. If only you could make it inside one without being spotted. You walk up behind the metal buildings and then through the gap between until you are right across from the darkest one and watch the men carefully for your opening. The door is only a few inches higher than the platform so you won’t have any trouble getting inside. You only have to wait for the right moment. After the crates have been chained down and the forklifts have gone away, the men start taking the lights down one by one and you hear the engine slowly rev up. You’ll have to time this just right. Luck is on your side. There is no one in sight when the train starts inching forward and you make your dash. You make your way as quickly between the slatted crates and the wall as you can to the front of the car where you find just enough crawl space to conceal yourself and your stuff. The smell is overpowering and your mouth begins to water uncontrollably. The crates are packed full with cantaloupes and you haven’t eaten anything since the remainder of peanuts you had last night. You are famished! You don’t even bother with getting the knife out of the ‘treasure chest’. You just reach in and punch a hole in one with your fist. You pull out handful after handful of slimy goodness and cram it into your mouth. It’s so dark that you can’t even see it, but you know how light and orange it must be. You’ll definitely be filling your belly this night. The thought strikes you that you could take a couple along with you for good measure when you leave the train so while you’re filling your gullet you also pry off enough of the slats to pull out a couple of good sized ones and pack them in the blanket in your bag. When you’re finally lulled to sleep by the clacking rails, you are returned to the night you and Jane spent on that train and all the plans you and she had made. Only this time, the two of you are on your way to see the Grand Canyon and are without a care in the world. She gives you a huge grin and throws her arms around you—planting a big kiss on your cheek—and hugging you for all you are worth. The day comes much too soon and you stagger over to the open doorway to relieve yourself. You stand there and marvel at how far you can see. Snaking its way through a long valley is a river so blue that it makes your heart stop. On both sides it is lush with trees and you spot a large flock of birds winding and twisting like dust devils above the dense foliage. All is right with the world. You know you are going to make it just fine.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You start to head over to one when you notice a pair of legs walking on the other side toward the back end of the train. You squat back down to wait until they are far enough away that you can make it over unseen, but you hear the engine rev and a couple of jerks later it is moving. You give it a few more seconds while you look for movement on the other side before getting up and running over to the flatcar. It is still moving slower than you can walk so you sling your walking stick and bag up on it before grabbing a chain to haul yourself up. You throw your leg over the deck and when you try to wriggle up it slips off. You try again and again as the train slowly picks up speed, but you no matter how hard you try to climb up you can’t get enough leverage with the train moving like this. You jump up to try and snag your stuff, but it’s just out of reach so you desperately look around for another stick or anything that would allow you to reach it. There is nothing but gravel so you give it one last try with everything you have. You make a run at it again and try to swing your weight up over the side, but fall and land hard on the rail. A shooting pain courses through your ribs making it hard to catch your breath. You lay there for a second to let the pain go away when you remember that the train is moving. You glance over and see the steel wheels are nearly upon you so you roll away as fast as you can, but you can’t move fast enough and they keep getting closer and closer. You try to scream and all that escapes is air. Just then, large hands clamp down on your shoulders and you feel yourself being yanked from the jaws of death. One of your flipflops slips off and you try to reach back and grab it, but it’s too late. Your heart is pounding and the world is swirling all around you. Everything within your field of vision has taken on a hellish red hue. Before you even know what is happening, those same hands pick you up and sling you on up on the deck. You tumble and roll until slamming into one of the farm implements brings you to a sudden stop. Stunned, you finally manage to look around to see what in the world just happened and you see a tall scraggly man in a old gray sports coat with leather elbows on the sleeves pulling himself up on the side of the car. “It’s a good thing I happened along or you’d have been cut clean in half. You would’ve definitely missed your train.” “Wh- what?” “I was waiting for the train to start moving before I hopped on when I saw you sneaking around out there,” he says, hooking a thumb over his shoulder toward the trees, “Didn’t look like you were gonna make it so I decided to give you a hand. Didn’t anyone ever tell you how dangerous it is to mess around with trains? You could get hurt or maybe even killed. If I hadn’t been here you’d be dead right now.” You stare at him in silence. “What’s a kid like you hopping a freight for, anyway?” “I have to get somewhere. It’s real important.” “It must be if you’re willing to risk your life for it,” he stares at you for a brief moment then continues “I guess since we’re going the in same direction, we might as well get to know each other. I’m Harvey.” You aren’t really sure you should be talking to a stranger let alone tell him your name, but he did just save your life and he’s standing there smiling at you with an eyebrow lifted expecting an answer. He doesn’t really look dangerous and he did help you get on the train so do you tell him the truth or do you lie? > You lie It’s probably better not to tell him your real name. He’s not only a stranger, but also a grownup and grownups think they know what’s best for a kid even if they don’t. The more people who know who you are, the greater the chance that they’ll send you back and the next time Mom gets her hands on you she’ll probably kill you like Jane’s mom did to Jane. You look him right square in the eye and say “I’m Tommy.” “Nice to meet ya, Tommy. I guess we’re gonna be here a while so might as well find a spot to get comfortable.” He sits down between two of the implements—putting his back to one and props his foot up on the other—where he can’t be seen from the ground. You bring your bag over and find a nice comfy place out of view from the side. You sit down beside it—leaning on it with your elbow—with your walking stick laying across you lap while keeping a wary eye on Harvey. “I saw you a ways back down the line and can’t believe you made it this far. You’ve really covered some miles in the last couple of days.” “Yeah. It’s a long ways to where I’m going.” “Where’s that? If you don’t mind my asking.” You study his face. You’re still not sure if you can really trust him or not so you make up something on the spot. “I have to find my uncle in Arizona so I can live with him.” “Hope everything turns out okay for ya. I kinda like to keep moving. Don’t like to stay in one place too long. Figured I’d head for the coast since this area is mostly played out now. It’s not a bad place to Winter.” Your belly starts growling so you reach into your bag and pull out what’s left of the pack of crackers you’ve been eating on for the last couple of days. You only have one more pack left and they’re mostly crushed, but you won’t mind that a bit when you get hungry again. You stuff one in your mouth and grab a few more for good measure. You consider putting the pack back in the bag, but decide you ought to share so you offer Harvey the last of the package which he quickly accepts. “Thank ya,” he grins, “I haven’t had anything on my stomach since early yesterday.” You both eat in silence and after a while you drift off to sleep to the sounds of the clacking rails.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Jane looks ridiculous in Earl’s gigantic shirt. It drags the ground around her feet as she plods back down the hall in front of you—doing her utmost not to trip on it. Of course, you must look equally funny since the one you’re wearing is nearly trailing the floor on you and the cuffs dangle nearly a foot below your hands. “I bet you two are starving,” Martha says in a chipper tone, “Come on in the kitchen and you can eat some breakfast with us. It’s almost ready. All I gotta do is set out two more places.” When you step through the door, you can’t believe your eyes. You’ve never seen so much food on a table at one time. There are biscuits, eggs, both bacon and sausage, fried potatoes and gravy, and most of a left over ham in which a few slices have already been cut. There’s a big block of butter and a loaf of light bread. Arranged next to each plate, is a bowl of oatmeal, a short glass of orange juice and a heavy round glass with a foot and stem full to the top with fresh milk. You can’t imagine how any more could even fit on the table without things tumbling off on the floor, but Martha does just that when she sets a place for you and Jane. And the table doesn’t look any more heaped than it did already. The four of you sit down and before you dig in, the elderly couple takes hold of each of your hands and bows their heads. "Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty,” says Earl with his eyes closed, and squeezing your hand he adds, “And thank you for bringing us these dear little ones that they may share in our feast. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen." “Amen,” parrots Martha as she reaches out and starts heaping food on your and Jane’s plates before she even does her own. Everything is so, so delicious and you cram in more than you ever have in your entire life. Jane is stuffing food in and matching you bite for bite. Earl and Martha pick at theirs and appear to be enjoying watching the two of you eat. When you finally push back from your plate it looks as if it has barely even been touched, but your belly feels like an overripe melon. There’s no way you could possibly poke in another spoonful. Your eyes have a mind of their own and you watch as the dinner table quickly disappears. You start to slump forward and are prevented doing a face-plant into your plate by Earl’s massive hand. As everything goes black, you hear him chuckle and say “I guess this little guy’s had plenty.” “So has this one,” laughs Martha. You are startled awake by a loud rapping on a door. You find yourself half-sunken into a big fluffy bed and Jane has an arm and a leg draped over you. Her warmth is so comforting and you don’t want to move out of this very spot. The shades are drawn and let in only a pinstripe of blinding light making everything else in the room too dark to make out. “They’re sleepin’ in the back room,” you hear Martha say, “Poor little dears were starving and plumb tuckered out.” “Do you know who they belong to?” asks a strange man’s voice. “They wouldn’t say. I s’pose they’ve run off and I can’t blame ‘em. They’re jus’ skin ‘n bones.” “Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of it.” The door cracks open and spills light into your eyes. “Oh, you’re awake,” Martha says quietly, flicking on the light. “There’s someone here that wants to talk to you. Let me get you your clothes so you can get dressed. They’re all clean and dry now.” After Martha has closed the door, you shake Jane awake. “Someone’s here to talk to us,” you tell her. “Who is it? What do you think they want?” “I dunno.” Martha comes back in and lays your clothes out on the foot of the bed. “Hurry and get dressed and you all come on out.” “Who is it?” Jane repeats to Martha, but she closes the door without answering. You both heave yourselves over and roll off opposite sides of the bed and drag your clothes on, leaving Earl’s crumpled shirts behind. You follow Jane down the hall and she freezes as she steps into the front room. You lean forward, peering around her and see a policeman framed in the outside doorway. He’s wearing a brown and khaki uniform and has a star pinned above his breast pocket. “Step in here so I can get a better look at you,” says the deputy. You both take tentative steps into the room—being careful to keep your distance. “I don’t think I’ve seen either of you before. Where are you kids from?” You look at Jane and her face is like stone. The policeman would probably take Jane back to her house so her mom could hit on her some more. It might be for the best if you stay silent and not tell him anything. After a couple of minutes, the deputy takes you each by the arm and says “Well, I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way then. Come on and let’s go.” You and Jane are ushered along and both of you walk stiff-legged out to his car. “You kids take care of yourselves,” calls Martha from the porch as the car door is being closed behind you. You look over and see her and Earl waving to you, but you don’t feel at all like waving back. You’ve been sitting on hard wooden chairs in the station for quite some time. Beyond the little glass window to the next room, you see several people moving around and you hear the occasional crackle of static mixed with garbled speech every now and then. “We should run away,” whispers Jane without turning to you, “before they can take us back.” “They’ll just catch us,” you whisper back, “We don’t even know where we are.” “I can’t go back home now. I have to find Gramma.” “You should tell them where she lives so they’ll take us there.” “They won’t. They’ll only take us home.” “Not if you tell ‘em how mean your mom is to you.” “They don’t care none about that. They always take me back home.” > You stay put The door suddenly opens and the deputy who brought you in steps through. “Looks like you two have come a long way. How in the world did the two of you manage to get more than eighty miles from your home?” Jane doesn’t respond and you only shrug your shoulders slightly. “I guess it doesn’t matter. There’ll be someone here shortly to drive you back. And I’m sure there will be a lot of questions for you two.” A couple of hours later, you are back to your town. It was a long, quiet ride and neither you nor Jane gave more than a yes or no answer to the man that drove you. You only looked at each other attempting to communicate with only your eyes. All that she—and you, no doubt—could convey was sadness and a sense of hopelessness of the situation. You sit slumped—craning your neck to peek through the patrol car’s rear window—and watch as the officer who ran you and Jane out of the abandoned house a couple nights ago turns away from Jane and her mother, and walks back to the car. No sooner than his back is turned does she turn and shove Jane inside the house, slamming the door shut behind her. The officer throws a glance over his shoulder, but doesn’t break stride as he continues on his way. After he closes his car door, you say “Is she gonna hit Jane?” He turns sideways in his seat and looks back at you. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s not able to sit down for a week after pulling a stunt like this. Do you understand how dangerous it was for the two of you out there all alone? We’re lucky that we found you before something bad happened to you. You don’t know what some people are capable of doing to children.” “She hates Jane. I don’t want her to hit her anymore.” “No mother hates her own child. She’s just having a rough time raising her on her own—being a single mother and all.” “You don’t know.” “Listen. I’ll swing back by after I drop you off and look in on her, okay?” He starts the engine and pulls it into gear. “Everything will be back to normal as soon as this mess blows over.” As you pull into the drive, the door opens and your mom steps out on the porch. She rushes over to the patrol car and snatches you by the arm—dragging you out and pulling you close—as soon as the policeman opens the rear door. “Here he is, safe and sound. No one knows how those two managed to make it so far away on their own.” “He’s always been a handful. I can barely keep up with him most of the time. An’ with this new job, I’ll have to work extra hard at it, I guess,” she says, flashing her eyes at you over a wan smile. “I’m just glad he’s home.” “That’s why we’re here, ma’am. Glad to be of service.” He walks with you to the door of the garage and watches as the two of you step inside. “Thanks again, Officer,” your mom says, ushering you in and closing the door. “You’re quite welcome,” he says, turning around and walking back the way he came. She lifts the corner of the vinyl curtain to watch him get into his patrol car and pull out of the driveway. When she turns around to you, her face is a deep shade of red and skewed beyond all recognition. “If things are so bad here that you felt the need to run away, then why didn’t you just stay gone!?” You don’t have an answer. You take a step to the rear as she lifts the solid metal rod from the window and yanks it free of the curtain. She is on you before you even know it—whipping you side to side like a terrier does a rat by a handful of hair in one hand while she whacks at your butt and the back of your legs with the curtain rod in the other. Every so often, an errant strike lands in the small of your back and your vision momentarily goes black. You can feel it cut deep and glance off bone with each blow. “Why can’t you do anything right? Why do you always have to go out of your way to make me mad?” You try to lessen the blows by deflecting them with your palms, but it only forces her to swing harder. The flesh on the underside of your hands soon feels tight and swollen, and you no longer have control enough to maneuver them into a position of any benefit at all. All you can do is grit your teeth and bear the pain. If you make even the slightest sound of whimpering, she’ll “give you something to really cry about”. The stinging pain finally lessens as your vision fades and grows more and more distant as the world goes dark around you. You don’t know how long you’ve been lying here in the darkness. Your whole body throbs from one end to the other and you want nothing more than to return to sleep. What about Jane? She was right. You and she need to just run away together and find her Gramma or else somebody nice to take care of the two of you. You don’t have a choice anymore. You know that now. Your mom will end up killing you if you don’t get away. You slowly open your eyes. You drag your arms under you and shove yourself to your knees. You see no sign of your mom and can only guess that she has gone back to the party in Honey’s house. You pick yourself up off the floor. You can’t straighten your legs and your back is in an uncontrollable hunch, but you manage to maintain your balance and not topple over despite the impossible angle you are leaning. One determined step after another, you make your way to the door. The curtain is now back in its place over the window. You look at it for what seems like a long time debating whether or not to do something about that impromptu weapon. It would do absolutely no good, though, because she’d just grab something else to use on you the next time. You reach out and grip the knob with all the strength you can muster. It doesn’t give easily, but you manage to turn it enough that the latch lets go. You hobble on one foot through the open doorway into the bright afternoon sun and pull the door closed behind you. You can hear music coming from Honey’s house, but don’t see any movement through the windows. You limp around the garage and through the back yard to the alley. It’s about mid-afternoon by the time you reach Jane’s house. The place looks closed up tight. After calling into the “secret place” and getting no response, you amble up to the front door and rap on it several times with the same result. Where could she be?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You haven’t eaten anything since early this morning and the walls of your stomach are grinding together. You have to get your mind off of it somehow and the water fountain on the far wall beckons to you. You’ve been on the road for days and it feels like the better part of it has been planted in this seat—even though you’ve only been here for the last couple of hours. The skin on your back and the backs of your bare legs rip free of the hard plastic seat as you stand and your flip-flops slap and smack your heels as you plod across the room. You freeze midway when you see a cowboy roping a calf from horseback. It’s the most wonderful thing you’ve seen for days even if it is only a poster. And it’s not the only one! Scanning the room you see many, many more of far off magical places with waterfalls and cliffs and mountains and dark caverns. Some of cityscapes with towering buildings and some at night with only the lights on and still more of endless rolling plains. From somewhere behind you, you hear a garbled voice fighting it’s way through crackling static, droning on and on about things that only old people care about. You zero in on the source and discover that it is a tiny coin operated radio affixed to the arm of a terminal seat. Neat! Just then a clammy hand clamps down on the back of your neck and you’re whisked toward the double glass doors. “It’s time to go, mister,” comes the all too familiar voice of your mom and she only releases her grip—with a surprise thrust that causes you to whack your shin on the bottom step—to allow you to clamber up and into the bus on your own. A shiver runs down your spine and the back of your arms prickle as you make your way down the aisle between tall and comfy-looking seats. You’re not used to air conditioning and it brings both pain and relief. You pass by an elderly couple. The woman looks up and smiles at you warmly so you give her a wide berth. You doubt that she would, being a stranger and all, but you sure don’t want her squeezing your cheek like Grandma does. You’re nudged into the row behind them and you take the farthest seat. Your mother sits beside you and puts the bag with everything the two of you own at her feet. Her lips are pursed and her eyes drawn. She’s been tired every day since the divorce and when she gets tired, she gets mad. You have a hard time even recognizing her now. A hiss and a lurch later, the bus pulls out onto the highway and with your face plastered to the side window you watch as the fence posts strobe past with only the occasional bush or sapling breaking the pattern. “There’s a storm coming,” remarks the old man to his wife, “and it looks to be a bad ‘un.” “Mm-hmm,” she replies absently, not bothering to look up from her needlepoint. Your eyes drift upward from the fence to a draw on the horizon and there the sky is beginning to boil and bristle with blue-white sparks. You can’t shake the feeling that you are at the very beginning of the greatest adventure—and worst nightmare—of your life. After only a mile or two, the droning of the engine and the rhythmic beat of its tires thumping over the seams in the concrete soothes you to sleep and you sleep the whole rest of the way. You are shaken from a pleasant dream of opening Christmas presents with your parents to stumble and trip over your feet as you’re dragged toward the front of the bus. It pulls over, dumping the two of you out on a deserted street. You know it’s only your reflection, but the ghastly and pale boy is all you can make out in the store window before you. It brightens and fades, brightens and fades with each pulse of the stoplight on the corner. You take a step backward and the wind from the bus pushes you forward as it pulls away. “You tryin’ to get yourself run over?” Your mother cups the back of your head and shoves you toward the boy with hollow eye-sockets, “Get over there and sit down against the wall.” You do as your told, although you can’t help but look up at the glass expecting him to be standing there looking down at you. An eternity goes by with your mom standing slumped against a signpost and staring off into the night. Your butt burns as the bones chew their way to the cement. You rock slowly from one side to the other to relieve the pain and she flashes her eyes at you. You melt. “Sit there and don’t move,” she barks as she leaps toward the flashing light. A car has stopped at the corner and she waves her arms as she sprints toward it. It begins to pull away, but stops short and the window tentatively rolls down. You can’t make out her words, but there’s happiness in your mother’s voice again as she crouches there with her elbows propped against the car door. Maybe she’s not mad anymore. You stretch your legs out as far as you can and wiggle your toes. She stands as the car pulls away and turns toward you. You can’t see her face, but there’s no mad in her walk now. You let out a long breath in relief. “C’mon, I’ve found us a place to sleep tonight,” she beams snatching up the bag, “and tomorrow I start job huntin’. We’re gonna do jus’ fine you an’ me. You wait an’ see.” She wraps her arm around your shoulders and the two of you skip off around the corner and into the crisp night air. You sit with your shoulders slumped, dragging your feet in a circle as the swing’s chains lazily wind and unwind and then wind up again. You’ve already walked around the park twice and sat on everything here so now all you can do is wait. “You wait here an’ watch our stuff,” your mom had told you, “I’ve got a lot to do today an’, with any luck, things’ll be a whole lot better from now on. And don’t you leave the park! You hear me? I’ll be back as quick as I can.” Your stomach grumbles. The two half-crushed cheese and peanut butter crackers your mom gave you before she left didn’t do much to satisfy it. At least the gnawing emptiness is gone. You hear a squeal and giggles so you look up. Some little kids are playing in the dirt at the bottom of the slide as if it were a sandbox. A dozen steps away from them sits a plump woman with her nose in a book. You survey the park for other signs of life and spot a group about your age. Three boys in a circle around a dark-haired girl. They’re pushing her back and forth between them like some demented form of ‘Hot Potato’. “Where do you think you’re going?” jeers the fat one. “Yeah, you ain’t goin’ nowhere you little bastard,” cracks the snotty runt. “Let me go!” she hisses, “Leave me alone!” The tallest of the three quakes from head to toe and nearly loses his breath in a fit of really annoying breathy laughter as he shoves her back toward the other two. The girl turns beet red from anger and lashes out with flailing, non-connecting slaps which only seems to feed the boys’ hysterical laughter. You have the sudden urge to attack them, but that might be a little hasty. Perhaps you should find some other way. > You find a better way The only adult you see is the woman reading on the park bench so you run up to her. “Please help that girl” you say, pointing toward the group. She looks clearly agitated as she lifts her eyes up at you and slowly turns her head toward them, but crinkles her nose and goes right back to her stupid book. You have no choice now but to come up with something on your own. Looking around for a club of some kind, you notice a bunch of rocks. You quickly grab up a handful and find you a nice spot behind a tree not too far from them. “Get away from her!” The boys look over and spot you. “Who are you?” demands Snots. “Just let her go!” “Or what?” asks Tubby as he takes a step toward you. Chortle grapples the girl as Snots trots up beside Tubby. “Are you here to rescue her? Is she your girlfriend?” Tubby jeers. You feel your face flush with anger. “Just leave her alone,” you say, taking a step to the rear and letting your hand drop back. “Look here, this guy’s here to save his bastard girlfriend,” spits Snots. You flash red and send a rock sailing right at his little smart mouth. He manages to turn his head just in time and the rock bounces off the side of his face. He falls back in horror and starts tearing up. Tubby lunges toward you, but you side-step and he misses you by several feet, flailing his arms to keep his balance. You ready another rock as he spins back toward you. “Wanna be a tough guy, huh?” He comes at you again like a raging bull—nostrils flaring and all. You chuck the rock at him. It bounces off his chest and he keeps coming without losing a step. You dodge sideways, but his hand still clobbers your face as he continues past. The girl manages to land one of her backward kicks and Chortle falls like a sack of potatoes, screaming in agony as his face goes purple. She turns and darts between two houses on the far side of the street. “Get her,” wheezes Chortle, “Get that little bastard!” Snots runs to his aid and tries to pull him to his feet between sobs, but can’t muster the strength. Chortle is in no condition to stand just yet anyhow. You run. When you feel like you are far enough away, you look back to see that Tubby has gone back to his friends. You dash between houses and start making your way back toward where the girl went through. The alley is shrouded by trees arching overhead and you make your way to the end of it. Seeing no sign of her, you cut through to the next street. Still nothing. She’s long gone. You suddenly remember the bag tucked under the picnic table that you were supposed to be watching. If something happened to it, you’ll be in big trouble. You sprint like the devil is after you. A hedge claws up your arms and face as you dart through it, which you barely even notice. Turning down the alley, a dark figure steps out from behind the corner of the hedge directly in your path. Your mouth goes all coppery and dry, and you skid to a stop. You’re all set to flee when you realize that it’s the girl from before. She looks sheepish and a bit winded, but no worse for wear. She hangs her head, but her eyes remain fixed on yours. As you cautiously approach her, you detect the faint hint of a smile. “Hi,” she barely more than whispers. “Are you okay?” you ask. “Yeah. They didn’t hurt me.” “You sure hurt that one.” She chuckles. “Who were them boys?” “Just some boys from school. They always pick on me.” “How come?” “Just ‘cause. They’ve always been like that.” “What’s your name?” you ask, scrunching your toes and noticing how dirty they’ve gotten. “Jane. What’s yours?” “Billy. We just moved here.” “Where’s your house?” “We don’t have one yet.” “Oh,” she says, turning her gaze to the side, then back to you. “My house is on Hill Road.” “I don’t know where that is. We just got here last night. We came in on the bus.” “It’s over there,” she points over your shoulder, “on the edge of town. C’mon. I’ll show you.” “I can’t right now. I have to watch our stuff so Mom can find a job.” “Oh.” After a pause, she asks “What grade are you in?” “I’ll be in Second this year.” “Me too. Maybe we can sit together.” The very suggestion makes you feel queasy and uncomfortable. “I better get back before she comes back,” you say stepping past her. “Okay. See ya later.” “See ya later.” You cut between two houses following their shared ribbon driveway. As you get to the front, you peek down the street and see that the gang is gone. The park is empty now with no one in sight. You cross the street and see that the bag is still right where it’s supposed to be. You climb the cement picnic table and plop down on top of it with your feet on the bench. All you can do now is wait.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> > You spy Mission "Another day, another dollar," you think as you trudge out the door from your job. You really don't like working there, but at least they pay you...a little. Finally you've made it to the weekend, so you at least get to look forward to a couple days off from work. You get in your car and drive out of the parking lot at work only to come to an almost immediate stop as you hit the traffic. It is like this every day, but Fridays are always the worst. You reach to turn the radio on, but then remember that you still haven't had time (or money) to get that fixed. You look out the window and just see the line of cars moving slowly... Finally you get home, and you're hungry. You should have stopped for something on the way home, but you just wanted to get out of that traffic and out of the car. When you arrive at the apartment parking lot, you sigh when you realize that you're late, so everyone else will be parked in the good spots. You circle the building once before you give up and park in the "remote" lot. Hey, at least you're home and work is over. As you trudge towards your apartment building, you see a small brown box sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, right near where you parked. Looking around, you don't see anyone else at the moment. You can't tell if the box was left there on purpose, or if someone accidentally left it behind. > You ignore it and head home... You walk across the sidewalks and towards your apartment. You can feel the heat coming off all the cars that got to park closer to the building than you did because of that traffic. Most of the cars here are older cars, some with dents and cracked windows, just like yours. You'll earn enough one day to get a better car, you're sure of it, just not any time soon. You start up the stairs to your apartment. When you rented this place, the $200 discount for taking the fourth floor apartment seemed like a good idea. Of course, that was before you found out the apartment above you had kids, and you still had to walk up all these stairs because the elevator was at the other end of the building. Maybe you would win the lottery, then you could build your own house where you wanted it to be: and you weren't going to have any stairs in the entire house! You unlock your apartment and step inside. The air is pretty stale, since the management makes you pay if you leave the A/C on all day. You know without looking that the refrigerator has nothing but some old catchup. But hey, you did get paid today, so you're going to order some take-out! Just before you get to the phone to place an order, the phone starts ringing. > You ignore the phone... You make it through the regular take-out for your dinner and realize that you ended up spending way more of your paycheck than you should have. Now you're full, so maybe you won't go out tonight...well, at least not yet. Sitting around for a bit, it's Friday night, so you're sure something good will be on TV. Later on you can worry about going out. You flip the channels and start to realize that even though you have something like 1,000 channels, there's really nothing on...nothing at all. You finally stop on some supposed reality show that's just made for laughs and embarrassing people. It's pretty bad, but you watch it all the same because it's better than watching re-runs of a game show from 20 years ago. As you zone out, suddenly you hear a tapping on your window. Yes, you're on the fourth floor, but one of your living room windows faces the walkway/balcony that loops around the outside of one side of the apartment building. You figure it was probably just the kids from upstairs messing with you, but then you hear the tapping once again. You could just turn the TV up, but you could go see who it is. > You ignore It... Your eyes blink open and you look at the ceiling. It is a boring white, like all these apartments, but you're pretty sure it hasn't been painted in 10 or more years. You blink and sit up. At least you don't have to go to work today. Instead, today is relaxation day. First you need to head to the store to stock up on some food, then all bets are off! You open the door to head downstairs. The day does not match your mood: it is cloudy, cool, and windy outside. In fact, the clouds are getting darker and rolling across the sky as you watch them. You better hurry and get your supplies and get back, or you're sure this storm will catch you. You trot down the stairs and head into the back lot to your car. You start to pull out and slam on your brakes when another car starts to back out in front of you. That was close. This is a big apartment building, but you recognize that giant car as that of the old lady who lives on the first floor and does everything slow. You slowly follow her out of the parking lot and are glad when she turns the other way. You are headed towards the grocery store, but when you take a right in the middle of town, you hear a loud "pop" and feel the car slide underneath you. You limp the car over to the sidewalk and get out to see that yes, you now have a flat tire. That's the second one this year, and you just remembered that you didn't replace your spare since the last time. Fortunately, you have AAA, and you can call them to help you. The overly nice AAA guy on the phone tells you that it will take about an hour, but they'll be there. You sigh and lean against the hood, thinking about all the food you were going to buy, but will now have to wait. As you're sitting there, a black four-door car slams it's brakes on next to you in a squeal of tires. The back door pops open and you can see a skinny man inside in a dark suit and dark glasses on the far side. He calls out to you, "Get in." > You get in the car... You get in the vehicle and take a seat. Before you have time to put on your seat belt, the vehicle starts moving quickly. As you are pressed back into your seat, you get a whiff of the car: it smells new. It looks completely new, like the plastic had just been taken off the seats this morning. You start to sit up and look out the windows, but then you realize the rear windows are not just blacked out from the outside, you cannot see out them from the inside. You look towards the windshield as a large panel appears from the floor, sliding up to completely obscure your vision. You cannot see out the front window at all. Instead, you sit back, slightly disoriented, as the vehicle bounces through traffic and along the roads. You have no idea where you are going, or even what direction you are traveling. Suddenly you start to get sleepy and find that you are having trouble keeping your eyes open... > You continue... The first thing that you notice when you start to wake is that you are lying down on something hard. The next thing you notice is how much your head hurts. If feels like your head has been in a pinball machine. As you reach up to touch it, you hear a deep voice say, "Oh, sorry about that headache. It will go away soon, but until then it's going to hurt quite a bit. A minor side effect of the drug, you know." You open your eyes and start to sit up. It feels like a horse has kicked you in the head as you manage to start to sit and open your eyes. You find that you are sitting on the floor of the black van and the side door is open. You spin around and put your legs out the door but don't stand right away as you press your hands against your head to try and reduce the pain. Fortunately, opening your eyes doesn't seem to make the pain any worse and you take in the man outside the van. The man is short, bald, and dressed in black pants and a tight black tee shirt. You can see cargo pockets on the pants that hang down as if they are not empty. The tight tee shirt reveals that the man has more than a few muscles. He has small, dark eyes that are set deep into his head and a strong forehead. He has a dark stubble around his chin. When he smiles, you can see he is missing at least one of his teeth. He smiles and nods as you take him in. He crosses his bulging arms in front of his body and continues, "So yeah, we had to knock you out because you didn't need to see where we are just yet. You know, secret and all that stuff. And before you ask, no, I don't know why you were selected. That's above my pay grade. They tell me you're coming, and I take it from there. So you ready to get started?" You look up with confusion on your face and think of any number of different responses from one-word responses, to anger, to being incredibly sarcastic. Before you can put the words together to respond, the man continues. "Okay, you're confused. I get it. Sometimes people are prepared for this, sometimes they're not. And some people can't make it through the training, while other times they can. I don't feel like giving you the long story, so you're getting the short story. Here it is: "You're in training be a spy. You get to decide the best way for you to do that. The training starts as soon as you get up off your lazy rear end. And at any time if you decide this isn't for you, you can go home. Of course, we will wipe your memory and you likely won't remember any of this, but that's your choice. Your other options? In this facility we teach stealth, charm, and weapons. So you pick one and we get started, or you choose to go home and I zap you. Got it?" You look around and past the man and you can see that you are in a large warehouse with a high ceiling. There are a few doors along the far wall that appear to lead into smaller offices. Off to the right is a garage door, obviously where the van came in. The space off to the left is wide open, but there are some obstacles and the floor and some chains and rope hanging from the ceiling. The man snaps his fingers as you look around and says, "Hey, you with me here? We don't have all day." > You tell him to forget it, you want to go home. You look around the space and make a decision. You tell the man, "No way. This isn't for me. I might have a crappy job, but at least I'm not getting beat up and killed every day." You shake your head and continue, "My crappy apartment is crappy, but at least it's safe. I don't know who you are and I don't want to know. I just want to get back to my safe life. Now, mister." The man shrugs his shoulders and pulls out a small bottle. Before you can react, he presses a button on the top and a fine mist sprays into your face. You reach up to wipe away the mist, but as you do, the garage around you is already starting to get out of focus. You try to look at your hand, but it almost seems to be moving on its own. You close one eye to try and focus, but then your other eye closes as well. You only have a moment to think about that before you just stop thinking... You wake up and open your eyes, but immediately regret doing so. Above you is clear, blue, bright sky. You squint and realize that you really have a pounding headache. From the view of the sky you put two and two together and realize that you're lying on your back on the ground. You gingerly move to sit up and close your eyes as your head pounds. You can't remember the last time your head hurt this much. You squint again, trying to get your bearings and realize that you're sitting on the sidewalk outside your crappy apartment. You don't really remember how you got here, but you wonder if there is any pizza leftover from last night...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The first thing that you notice when you start to wake is that you are lying down on something hard. The next thing you notice is how much your head hurts. If feels like your head has been in a pinball machine. As you reach up to touch it, you hear a deep voice say, "Oh, sorry about that headache. It will go away soon, but until then it's going to hurt quite a bit. A minor side effect of the drug, you know." You open your eyes and start to sit up. It feels like a horse has kicked you in the head as you manage to start to sit and open your eyes. You find that you are sitting on the floor of the black van and the side door is open. You spin around and put your legs out the door but don't stand right away as you press your hands against your head to try and reduce the pain. Fortunately, opening your eyes doesn't seem to make the pain any worse and you take in the man outside the van. The man is short, bald, and dressed in black pants and a tight black tee shirt. You can see cargo pockets on the pants that hang down as if they are not empty. The tight tee shirt reveals that the man has more than a few muscles. He has small, dark eyes that are set deep into his head and a strong forehead. He has a dark stubble around his chin. When he smiles, you can see he is missing at least one of his teeth. He smiles and nods as you take him in. He crosses his bulging arms in front of his body and continues, "So yeah, we had to knock you out because you didn't need to see where we are just yet. You know, secret and all that stuff. And before you ask, no, I don't know why you were selected. That's above my pay grade. They tell me you're coming, and I take it from there. So you ready to get started?" You look up with confusion on your face and think of any number of different responses from one-word responses, to anger, to being incredibly sarcastic. Before you can put the words together to respond, the man continues. "Okay, you're confused. I get it. Sometimes people are prepared for this, sometimes they're not. And some people can't make it through the training, while other times they can. I don't feel like giving you the long story, so you're getting the short story. Here it is: "You're in training be a spy. You get to decide the best way for you to do that. The training starts as soon as you get up off your lazy rear end. And at any time if you decide this isn't for you, you can go home. Of course, we will wipe your memory and you likely won't remember any of this, but that's your choice. Your other options? In this facility we teach stealth, charm, and weapons. So you pick one and we get started, or you choose to go home and I zap you. Got it?" You look around and past the man and you can see that you are in a large warehouse with a high ceiling. There are a few doors along the far wall that appear to lead into smaller offices. Off to the right is a garage door, obviously where the van came in. The space off to the left is wide open, but there are some obstacles and the floor and some chains and rope hanging from the ceiling. The man snaps his fingers as you look around and says, "Hey, you with me here? We don't have all day." > You agree to stealth training. Whump! You bend over in pain as the main punches you hard in the stomach. Your eyes open wide and you gasp as you try and get air inside your suddenly collapsed lungs. The man says, "I see you. You suck at hiding. Want to try again?" You aren't sure that you like this method of training. You assume that you're supposed to do something, but you don't really know what. You figure if you're going to continue this training that you need to at least move away from this crazy man who is attacking you. But then maybe that is the point -- to learn by doing. This seems a little odd because you haven't actually been given, well, any instruction at all, but you don't have a lot of choice at this moment. You don't have a lot of options here in the open space of the warehouse, but you do have some choice... > You try and run behind the van and hide from the man. You move quickly around the van, thinking that this is just stupid. Even a kid from grade school can watch you run away from them and see where you are. You get around the other side of the van and stop. The man is in front of you. He says, "You need to work more with the shadows and the light." He points out the different ways the light move and the shadows are formed in an around the van. He shows you many other ways you can blend into the shadows by using your body, the light, and natural lines. The man looks at you and says, "We have time for just one more training session. I can teach you more details about what you already know, or I can teach you a different skill, the choice is up to you. And yes, there is going to be a test at the end of this. It will be a real test, and you might not survive. But I hope you do. So what do you select for you final training?" > You stealth training The man leads you over to a large table along the wall of the warehouse. Spread out across the table are a number of different types of gadgets and devices. He takes the time and shows you how to use some simple items to pick a lock and how to disable a security system. He shows you how you can use some of the gadgets to help you distract people and allow you time to move about without being seen or heard. He shows you simple ways to break into place and more difficult ways to bypass security systems and other types of systems designed to keep you out. The man looks at you and says, "We are out of time. You are either ready or you are not ready. And that is what we will determine now." He turns and walks over to a door in the rear of the room and disappears through it. You are alone in the large warehouse, wondering if you were supposed to follow the man. You have trained the following levels of skills: Stealth: 3 Charm: 0 Weapons: 0 > You continue... A moment later, another door in the wall opens up behind you. You turn quickly and see a rather well-dressed man enter the room. He holds the door open for you and gestures into the room. You walk towards the man and the door, but before you can enter the room, the man holds his hand up, stopping you short of seeing past the door. He speaks with a British accent and says, "This is your final challenge. You will enter through this doorway and you may not return. This is no longer training, this is real. There is a man inside this room that will kill you. I don't mean that you get another chance, that he's trying to scare you, or that you'll get saved at the last minute. I mean that if you fail, you will die." He clears his throat and continues, "That is not to say that we wish for you to die. Quite the contrary, we would like you to succeed. But if you are not prepared, then you will fail and in this case failure is death. Your death, in case that was not clear." "Inside this room there is a table. On that table is a small box. Your job is simply to go to the table, retrieve the box, and return it to me. That is all. But, of course, it is not that simple. Also inside this room is a man whose job is to guard that box and prevent anyone from taking it. And that man has been authorized to use deadly force to protect the box." He gestures again into the room and says with a bow, "Would you be so kind as to retrieve the box for me?" > You continue... You step to the doorway and look into the room. It is a very dimly lit room, so you have to look carefully to see the contents. There is a spotlight shining on a small brown box in the center of a table on the far side of the room. Most of the rest of the small room is in darkness, other than what is lit by the light coming from the main warehouse. You can see through the door it is exactly as the British gentleman had described. The entire room is about 15 feet square. There is a man standing, arms crossed in front of him, in front of the table. He has a large knife in one of his hands and you cannot be sure in the shadows, but perhaps a firearm strapped to his waist. He is staring off into the distance and is facing the wall to the left, so that you are looking at his left side. You cannot see anything on that wall where he is looking, but he does appear quite focused. The floor of the room is in darkness and you cannot really see anything else in the room. The box on the table is quite clear at this point... > You attempt to sneak around, along the walls, and grab the box... You quietly and slowly enter the room. You watch the guard but he does not move and does not appear to hear you enter the room. You watch the ground and carefully move into the darkness around the side of the room, trying to work your way to the table... > You continue... You make your way to the table and the guard hasn't moved yet. You slowly and carefully reach out for the box and lift it from the table, moving as slowly as you can so the guard doesn't see any movement. After what feels like an eternity, you pull back and into the shadows. You slowly trace your steps back the way you have come, moving back to the door and slipping out of the room. You had a 90 percent chance of winning that battle. You hold the box out to the man with the British accent and say, "I believe this is what you requested?" The man nods and replies, "Indeed, that was sufficient." He closes the door to the examination room as he continues, "Now we shall have to see about our guard there, as he just failed his test." There is a yell, then a loud thump from the room, but the man ignores the sounds and walks away from the room, clearly expecting you to follow. "You have passed the test, and that is good. You are now working for us." He holds his hand up before you can say anything. "Ah, no questions yet. You do not need to know who we are. Simply accept that we are working for the U.S. government, and we aren't listed in any of the directories. It won't matter anyway, because it's not like we're going to be issuing you a paycheck and withholding taxes for you." He laughs as he leads you to a set of stairs in the corner of the warehouse. He stops at the bottom of the stairs and points up the stairs. "There, you see that door at the top of the stairs? This is where your service begins. Head up these stairs and into that room. There you will receive your mission briefing. Should you survive your first mission, we will see what else you can do, where you are needed, and what other information you may need to know. Now off with you!" With that, he makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. He turns and walks away from you, apparently heading back to the testing room. He does not look back as he leaves you, clearly expecting you to follow his directions. You realize that you still don't know where you are, so you really don't have any options here. > You head on to the mission briefing. You head up the stairs to the indicated room on the second floor. You've seen the door there while you were training, but you had never seen anyone go out or into that room. You're not really sure what to expect. With a last look back at your trainer on the floor of the warehouse, you turn the doorknob and walk inside. The first thing that greets your eyes is bright light! The far side of the room is all glass and the sun is setting in that direction, really bathing the room in bright sunlight. You raise your hand to block the light and blink your eyes. At the same time you brace for an attack, realizing this is probably a setup, as you try and look around the room. You move to your right in a defensive position and blink your eyes again. As the room comes into focus, you realize there is a couch in the middle of the room facing a small desk. On the far wall, behind the desk to the left is a white board of some kind. There is a projector on the ceiling and a nondescript man sitting behind the desk. He says, "Oh, is that too bright?" He presses a button underneath the desk and the windows immediately shift to a tint and the light is quickly reduced. The man gestures towards the couch, inviting you to have a seat. He says, "There are drinks there in the fridge if you need one." Taking another look, you see a small cube refrigerator on the floor next to the couch. You move towards the couch, not really sure that you know what is going on, or whether to trust this fellow. He watches you as you sit on the couch. Without any introduction, he presses two more buttons on his desk. The projector lights up and the white board screen is filled with the face of a man with dark skin and a short, almost smashed-looking face. The man at the desk speaks, "This is el Martillo. He is a drug lord that has really caused a great deal of trouble recently. We want to eliminate him, but we cannot get to him. He has a great fortune and he uses it effectively to keep himself alive." The man pauses, then looks directly at you as he continues, "He is a very dangerous man. Stay away from him. He is NOT your target. I repeat, stay away from him at all costs." He looks back at the screen and the slide advances to show a smaller, thin man that is starting to bald, but has a dark, even tan. The man says, "This is Jack Kauffman. He is an accountant for el Martillo. He is currently in control of an SD card that has a bitcoin account worth over ten million dollars. The SD card is your target. We need el Martillo to not have that money. We don't really care if you steal the card and bring it back to us, or if you destroy it. Your mission is to ensure that el Martillo and Jack Kauffman do not have that card." "Jack Kauffman moves about and has some protection, but our intelligence has let us know where he will be shortly and when he will be moving. They change plans all the time, but we think this is the time to strike. There is a plane waiting outside to take you to Cuba now. When you arrive, there will be a car waiting for you at the airport. You will need to drive, the keys will be in it. A contact will meet you at Cafe Quinta Avenida with final details when you arrive." "We do not trust the locals and el Martillo's tentacles run deep in the area. To identify yourself to the contact, you will ask, 'Is the coffee any good here?' He will reply, 'It is good, but not as good as Kenyan.' To confirm, you must reply 'Ah, but Kenyan is too expensive.' If there are any deviations from that code, the contact will not reveal his information. The abort word is 'tea.' If you or he say any phrase with the word 'tea' in it, you immediately abort the mission and return to the airport." "Remember, stay away from el Martillo and steal or destroy that SD card. That is all." He gestures towards the door in the glass wall. For the first time you notice that there is a door there, and there is a small runway outside. As you stand up, you can see a small private plane sitting near the bottom of the stairs outside the door with the airplane door open. > You go to the waiting airplane. You head towards the door. The man has started to pull some papers out of the desk and is reading them. He ignores you as you open the door only to be assaulted by the sunshine once again. There is a wave of heat coming off the runway that catches you by surprise, but it is quickly washed away with a gentle breeze. You walk down the stairs and towards the plane. As you approach, a man dressed in a uniform steps from around the side of the plane and gestures towards the entrance, welcoming you to the plane. You move up the steps and into the plane. Inside the plane is clearly a luxury craft designed for the rich. There are four swiveling captain's chairs, wood grain cabinets, and a number of flat screens. You take a seat and sink into the soft leather of the chair. The man in uniform steps onto the plane behind you. He says, "Sorry, but due to secrecy, there will be no flight attendant on this flight. You can sit anywhere, and I suggest you keep your seat belt on at all times." It then that you notice there are seat belts in the leather chairs. The man continues, "The flight should be over in a couple hours. I would announce when we're landing, but it will be pretty obvious. Enjoy your flight." Without pausing for questions, the man pulls up the stairs, closes the door, then steps into the cabin. The door to the cabin closes with a click and you are alone in the plane. A few moments later you hear the jet engines start up. You wait for the announcements that never come and the plane starts moving. A minute later you are pressed back into your seat as the plane speeds up down the runway. You sit back and relax in the seat, planning to get up and explore the plane soon. Before you know it, you are out cold, enjoying the comfort of the seat. You awake with a start when the wheels of the plane touch down onto the ground once again. You look around quickly, trying to re-orient yourself as the plane taxis to a terminal. Looking out the window you see a small shack at the side of what looks like a very new runway. The plane moves towards the shack and in no time the captain comes out of the cabin. Without a word he opens the door and puts down the steps. He stays on board the plane and gestures you towards the exit. Stepping outside, you feel the humid heat wash over you. The sun is shining brightly, and you can only assume that you are in Cuba. Blinking in the sun, you can see an old sedan parked next to the hut. You start walking towards the car and you hear the door slam shut behind you. The plane is already in motion before you make it to the car. You shrug and figure that it's too late to back out now. The gravel crunches under your feet as you walk towards the car. There are bits of dust in the air and you can see a long dirt road headed in two directions from the small hut. Walking past the hut, you don't see anyone in the building at all. In fact, it looks like it has been abandoned for some time now. When you arrive at the dark blue car, you look inside and can see a set of keys sitting on the seat. Next to the keys are a map with four locations circled in red. You can tell that one is a runway, apparently where you are now. The second is in town, so that must be the coffee shop. The third looks like an estate on a hill, which must be el Martillo's house. The last is a large building and the only one labeled on the map, and it is labeled, "Hotel Melia Habana." You open the door and get in the car. The keys do indeed fit the ignition and the car starts up easily. The gas tank indicator shows full and you have to decide what to do next. > You take a run past el Martillo's place and check it out first. You decide that the best way to approach this situation is to head for the heart of the matter -- el Martillo's. You drive down the road and quickly find your way to the massive mansion of the drug lord. The mansion is high on a hill and there is only one road that leads to the top of the hill. You follow the winding road up the hill and notice a number of different fences and walls. You even spot a video camera following your movements on the road. You reach the top of the hill and there are two men standing near a large gate with what look like small machine guns. They stare at you as you approach the gate and do not move to the side. The road continues along past the gate and you quickly move to keep the car moving. One of the men moves with his gun and looks like he might start shooting at you. You quickly accelerate and the tires squeal as you take a turn heading back down the hill. You realize this was not a great idea -- you didn't get a look at the mansion or the drug lord, and now they know you are here and have a picture of you. You look in the rear view mirror and see the men watching you drive away. You continue down the hill and away from the men, back towards town. You can consult the map and see the way towards the center of town and to your hotel. > You head on towards the Melia Habana Hotel. Inside the hotel room you can see that this is indeed a luxury suite. This is the top of the line for the hotel and the city. There are top quality furnishings and a large Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom. There is a large king bed in the middle of the room and the room is large enough to also have a lounging area with a leather recliner and a large desk. Next to the desk is a sliding glass door that leads outside to a large balcony with chairs and a small table as well. On the desk you see a legal-sized folder. You go over to the folder and open it up. Inside you can see a picture of Jack Kauffman meeting with el Martillo. There are a couple of additional photographs of Jack from different angles so you can recognize him easily. On a second page are two addresses listed as his home address and a work address. There is a map with the locations circled and they are both near the hotel. There are also two envelopes in the folder. Inside the first envelope are two first-class tickets on a flight from Havana to London and a second pair of first-class tickets from London to your home. These are dated for tomorrow, so to use them you will have to complete your mission today or tonight. The second envelope includes a folded piece of paper. The text of the paper is hard to read, but you can see that it indicates that Jack Kauffman takes the item home at night with him every night. Looking out the window, you see the sun is now beyond the peak of the sky -- it is after noon and you do not have that much time left in the day. If you are going to deal with the accountant at his office, you will have to make a move quickly. If you decide to wait until night, you have a little more time to prepare. > You will move now and attempt to break into the office during a break and steal the card. You are very suddenly interrupted by a loud banging on the door. You hear, "¡Abrir! ¡Policía! Abre esta puerta ahora!" The banging continues and you hear, "Policia!" The sturdy door is shaking in the frame and you know that you only have a moment to decide what to do... > You move quickly and quietly and attempt to escape out the window of the top floor of the hotel. You turn and check out the window. The window does not open, surely some kind of safety device. The banging on the door continues as you run to the balcony. The glass door slides to the side silently and the wind catches you by surprise. You step out the door and survey the area. There are balconies below this one and down to the road. You turn and move quickly over the edge of the balcony to try and maneuver down from one balcony to the other... > You continue... Your feet find the balcony below yours as you hear the men ransacking the hotel room above. You wonder briefly is the police are going to pay for the damage, or if the hotel will try and bill your cover. It doesn't really matter to you as you swing onto the next balcony and then quickly scramble over the edge to reach the next lower floor. As you swing down again, you hope no one is out enjoying the afternoon on their balcony. As you move down, you are happy to find that the area appears quite abandoned on each floor. Finally you reach the bottom floor and easily drop to the ground. You look around the alley and see no appears to have noticed you dropping in from above. You casually straighten your clothes and head down the alley away from the front of the hotel where you can see red and blue lights flashing. In a few moments, you are away from the hotel and in the clear. Note: You had a 85 percent chance of winning that battle. You walk around the streets of Havana a bit, taking in the sights and watching to see if you see anyone following you. You don't notice anyone, most people here seem to be minding their own business. There are a few tourists here and there, and they are mostly obvious with their fancy, upscale clothes and the fact they are taking pictures with their cell phones. After a bit of time, you take a seat at one of the many coffee shops. You wave the waiter away when he offers you a drink and you survey the area. You remember the maps from the room and wonder if you were supposed to take them with you. You realize that since you did not, your mission may be compromised. At this point you do not have a lot of options. You can either continue on your mission and try to complete it, or you can take the tickets you grabbed and make an exit from this country. > You continue your mission. You decide that the best way to deal with this situation is head-on...but perhaps with a little subterfuge mixed in. You head for the office listed for the accountant. When you find the location, you see it is a small, but relatively busy small office front. From the outside, it looks like there is a common area and then a few different offices off in different directions. It look like there is more than one accountant here and perhaps some consultants, lawyers, or other professionals that all share the common front office. You remember where the accountant parks his car, so you decide to use that information. You walk in the door quickly and rush over to the attendant. She is a middle-aged woman who looks like she is going to be happy to tell you, "no." Pretending to be out of breath you say, "Please, quickly! I need to see Mr. Kaufman right away!" The woman frowns at you and looks down her nose at you as she says, "Indeed. Do you have an appointment?" Expecting this you continue, "This is not about..." You take a quick look around and say, "There's police involved. They are going to come here. Something about Mr. Kaufman's car." The woman does not look impressed and makes no move to help you. You try harder to convince her of the danger of the police and imply that Mr. Kaufman himself may be in danger. You know that you've got to make this work or you're never going to see that SD card... > You continue... You gesture towards the door and in the direction of the parking area. You step back out the door in look in that direction, coming back into the room with fear on your face. You implore the woman, "You have GOT to tell Mr. Kaufman! Don't you understand that the police are coming here now?" The woman simply stares as you. Finally she says, "If you would like to make an appointment to see Mr. Kaufman, I would be glad to help you." You slam your hands on the desk and yell that the woman. You realize that you are starting to lose control and are losing this battle. You take a deep breath as the woman looks at your hands. You see her reach her hand under the desk. You step away from the desk and again explain that the police need to see Mr. Kaufman about his vehicle. At this point even you realize that you are just repeating yourself and this woman is not going to budge. You move towards the door and suddenly one of the doors to the other offices opens up. Two short, but very wide men shove their way through the door. You turn and hold your hands up to show them that you mean no harm, and they quickly approach you and one grabs each of your wrists. In a second they are painfully twisted behind you and they are guiding you out the door. They drag you out the door and you expect to be shoved to the ground, but instead they shove you around the corner and into an alley. You find your face shoved roughly into the solid stone wall. You hear a crack and feel incredible pain in your jaw. Then you slide down the wall with some assistance and you can feel skin being torn off your face. As you hit the ground, one of your wrists is released, but the other is twisted and pulled around behind you. There is another loud pop and you scream in pain as your shoulder is yanked out of its socket. Before you can turn, a foot slams into your chest and knocks the breath out of you. You are gasping, trying to get enough air into your lungs to scream out in pain when another foot slams into your head, thankfully knocking you out cold. Note: You had a 10 percent chance of winning that challenge. I'm sorry, it appears that you have lost. Please be sure to try again, as there are many different paths to this story. As a tip, if you're seeing low percent chances of winning, you might want to try selecting options where you have trained for that skill. Thank you for reading!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your feet find the balcony below yours as you hear the men ransacking the hotel room above. You wonder briefly is the police are going to pay for the damage, or if the hotel will try and bill your cover. It doesn't really matter to you as you swing onto the next balcony and then quickly scramble over the edge to reach the next lower floor. As you swing down again, you hope no one is out enjoying the afternoon on their balcony. As you move down, you are happy to find that the area appears quite abandoned on each floor. Finally you reach the bottom floor and easily drop to the ground. You look around the alley and see no appears to have noticed you dropping in from above. You casually straighten your clothes and head down the alley away from the front of the hotel where you can see red and blue lights flashing. In a few moments, you are away from the hotel and in the clear. Note: You had a 85 percent chance of winning that battle. You walk around the streets of Havana a bit, taking in the sights and watching to see if you see anyone following you. You don't notice anyone, most people here seem to be minding their own business. There are a few tourists here and there, and they are mostly obvious with their fancy, upscale clothes and the fact they are taking pictures with their cell phones. After a bit of time, you take a seat at one of the many coffee shops. You wave the waiter away when he offers you a drink and you survey the area. You remember the maps from the room and wonder if you were supposed to take them with you. You realize that since you did not, your mission may be compromised. At this point you do not have a lot of options. You can either continue on your mission and try to complete it, or you can take the tickets you grabbed and make an exit from this country. > You head for the airport and abort the mission. You decide that by leaving the papers behind that you cannot complete the mission. Surely el Martillo will be notified and he will quickly move some extra protection in for Jack Kauffman. You hail a cab and tell him to take you to the airport. You step out of the cab and head for the airport entrance, taking out your tickets. You step up to the security gate and hand them your first class tickets. The security person scans the tickets, but instead of the green light, a red light shows up. The bored security person scans the ticket again, but again the red light shows up. You try not to look nervous as the agent calls over another airport security person. They speak for a moment in Spanish, then the new arrival tries to scan the ticket. Again the ticket shows up red. The new arrival gestures for you to come with him. He leads you to a small door near the security area and opens the door for you, gesturing for you to enter. As soon as you do, the door slams behind you. You find that you are in a small room with a little table and two chairs on opposite sides. There is another door on the far side of the room. Checking the door behind you, you find that it is locked, so you take a seat in the chair. A moment later, the door on the far side opens up. A heavyset man smelling of cigarettes enters the room and looks at you. He has a gun and a badge on his belt. He says something in Spanish that you do not understand, so you shrug. He smiles and says in broken English, "You try to leave with no ticket?" You're not really sure how to respond to that because you don't know anything about your tickets, so you shrug again. The man nods his head and smiles again. He says, "el Martillo sends his greetings." Your eyes grow wide and dart about. Before you can make any plans for escape, the man has drawn his gun and is pointing it at you. You jump to your feet and hold your hands up, but the man does not wait and fires. The bullet catches you in the chest and you can hear your lungs sucking in air as you drop to your knees, trying to hold onto the chair. You can hear the man laughing as your world fades to black... I'm sorry, it appears that you have lost. Please be sure to try again, as there are many different paths to this story. As a tip, if you're seeing low percent chances of winning, you might want to try selecting options where you have trained for that skill. Thank you for reading!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are very suddenly interrupted by a loud banging on the door. You hear, "¡Abrir! ¡Policía! Abre esta puerta ahora!" The banging continues and you hear, "Policia!" The sturdy door is shaking in the frame and you know that you only have a moment to decide what to do... > You open the door and attempt to talk your way out of the situation, even though you don't speak Spanish. You take a deep breath and step towards the door. You look down and brush a little dust from your chest as you reach out for the door handle. You press down the handle and pull the door open. Three very angry looking policemen stand at the door, looking surprised that you opened the door. One has his pistol in his hand. You smile and take a last breath as you prepare to try and explain that you are not who they are looking for... > You continue... You show the police your biggest smile and start to explain that you are not who they are seeking. Instead of listening to you, they slam you to the side as one man runs past you into the room. They continue to yell at you in Spanish and you cannot understand them. When you try and speak, one of the policemen punch you in the face. The one from inside the room calls out something else in Spanish and the other two draw their guns. As you attempt to turn around to explain, they both fire into your chest. You look at them, still not understanding, as your life slips away from you. Sorry, it would appear that you have lost. Please do try again, especially if this is your first time. There are lots of different options and possibilities. Be sure to try acts that you have trained, as you will have a much better chance of success if you do! You had a 10 percent chance of winning that battle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are very suddenly interrupted by a loud banging on the door. You hear, "¡Abrir! ¡Policía! Abre esta puerta ahora!" The banging continues and you hear, "Policia!" The sturdy door is shaking in the frame and you know that you only have a moment to decide what to do... > You take a stand, open the door, and attack. The police! You decide that if they are going to take you down, you are going to go down in a blaze of glory. You take a moment to rig a quick explosive on the back of the door and step away from the door. You take cover behind the corner of the bathroom and wait. When they strike the door one more time, the explosive goes off, blowing the door off the hinges and towards the hallway. You step around the corner, staying low, gun at the ready to fire at anything that moves... > You continue... Looking over at the door, it takes a moment for the dust to clear. You don't see anything moving, so you stand up and stare into the dust. You step towards the door, trying to make out the figures in the dust cloud when suddenly guns open up firing in your direction. You turn and twist and attempt to get back under cover as a bullet finds your back, spinning you around. A second round hits you in the chest and you crumble to the ground, as everything quickly fades to black. Sorry, it would appear that you have lost. Please do try again, especially if this is your first time. There are lots of different options and possibilities. Be sure to try acts that you have trained, as you will have a much better chance of success if you do! You had a 10 percent chance of winning that battle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head towards the door. The man has started to pull some papers out of the desk and is reading them. He ignores you as you open the door only to be assaulted by the sunshine once again. There is a wave of heat coming off the runway that catches you by surprise, but it is quickly washed away with a gentle breeze. You walk down the stairs and towards the plane. As you approach, a man dressed in a uniform steps from around the side of the plane and gestures towards the entrance, welcoming you to the plane. You move up the steps and into the plane. Inside the plane is clearly a luxury craft designed for the rich. There are four swiveling captain's chairs, wood grain cabinets, and a number of flat screens. You take a seat and sink into the soft leather of the chair. The man in uniform steps onto the plane behind you. He says, "Sorry, but due to secrecy, there will be no flight attendant on this flight. You can sit anywhere, and I suggest you keep your seat belt on at all times." It then that you notice there are seat belts in the leather chairs. The man continues, "The flight should be over in a couple hours. I would announce when we're landing, but it will be pretty obvious. Enjoy your flight." Without pausing for questions, the man pulls up the stairs, closes the door, then steps into the cabin. The door to the cabin closes with a click and you are alone in the plane. A few moments later you hear the jet engines start up. You wait for the announcements that never come and the plane starts moving. A minute later you are pressed back into your seat as the plane speeds up down the runway. You sit back and relax in the seat, planning to get up and explore the plane soon. Before you know it, you are out cold, enjoying the comfort of the seat. You awake with a start when the wheels of the plane touch down onto the ground once again. You look around quickly, trying to re-orient yourself as the plane taxis to a terminal. Looking out the window you see a small shack at the side of what looks like a very new runway. The plane moves towards the shack and in no time the captain comes out of the cabin. Without a word he opens the door and puts down the steps. He stays on board the plane and gestures you towards the exit. Stepping outside, you feel the humid heat wash over you. The sun is shining brightly, and you can only assume that you are in Cuba. Blinking in the sun, you can see an old sedan parked next to the hut. You start walking towards the car and you hear the door slam shut behind you. The plane is already in motion before you make it to the car. You shrug and figure that it's too late to back out now. The gravel crunches under your feet as you walk towards the car. There are bits of dust in the air and you can see a long dirt road headed in two directions from the small hut. Walking past the hut, you don't see anyone in the building at all. In fact, it looks like it has been abandoned for some time now. When you arrive at the dark blue car, you look inside and can see a set of keys sitting on the seat. Next to the keys are a map with four locations circled in red. You can tell that one is a runway, apparently where you are now. The second is in town, so that must be the coffee shop. The third looks like an estate on a hill, which must be el Martillo's house. The last is a large building and the only one labeled on the map, and it is labeled, "Hotel Melia Habana." You open the door and get in the car. The keys do indeed fit the ignition and the car starts up easily. The gas tank indicator shows full and you have to decide what to do next. > You go to the coffee shop and try to find your contact. You decide to follow the map towards the contact and the coffee shop. From the airstrip, you drive around a few hills and in the direction of Havana. Driving down the hills, you see the city start to unfold in front of you and can easily follow the map towards the coffee shop. When you arrive, you notice there is plenty of parking and not that many cars around. Instead there are a number of people on mopeds and motorcycles and a few older cars. There are a few small delivery trucks driving around as well. You find a space on the side of the street and park the car. You wait in the car for a few moments and watch the people around you. Most of the people around appear to be in a hurry, or at least have a purpose. Across the street there are a number of round tables with umbrellas outside the coffee shop where you are to meet. There are two couples sitting at tables there, drinking coffee and a single man with blonde hair and a bushy mustache sitting by himself. You guess that he must be your contact. Taking one last look around, you step out of the car. You pause to let a mule pulling a wagon travel along the road before you cross towards the coffee shop. It appears that there is no one else watching as you make your way across the street. You walk up to the blonde man sitting alone. You say: > You how's the coffee? Very suddenly, the man jumps to his feet, knocking the chair he was sitting in to the ground behind him. As it clangs into the ground, his hands rise up, one with a fork and one with a dinner knife. You turn your hips and move quickly to avoid the very sudden slash with the knife across your midsection. The man moves cautiously with his knife held out in front of him. As his feet shift on the ground, you realize that he looks quite skilled with the improvised weapon. Your mind travels back to your training in the warehouse and you carefully watch the knife, his arm, and his eyes. You are not sure what he will do next, but he is clearly watching you carefully, looking for an opening. The two other couples at the cafe get up and scramble away from the tables and chairs. You do not take your eyes from the now armed man in front of you. A serving platter crashes to the ground as a waiter appears and then quickly runs back into the restaurant. You know it will not be long before he summons help in the form of the local police, who you probably do not want to meet right now. The man circles and moves towards you and you can tell he is about to make another strike with the knife. > You wink at the man and try to talk your way out of this fight! You look at the man and try to calm him down. You speak in a soothing tone, like you have been taught. You try and show him that you are no threat to him. You even back up a little, trying to show him that you're not out to kill him...at least not right now. > You continue... The man continues to sweat and you see his face redden as you speak to him. Instead of moving away from you, as you back up, he slowly moves up and closes the distance with you. You continue to hold your hands up and attempt to talk him down. Very suddenly he moves in and stabs your hand! The pain startles you and you move your arm, giving up your defenses. The man sees this and before you can react, he drives through your arms and stabs you in the chest. He lets go of the knife as you slip to your knees. He turns and runs, disappearing into an alley next to the coffee shop.The world around you gets dimmer as you drop to the ground. You can hear sirens in the distance, but they are getting more quiet as you decide you will close your eyes and rest, just for a moment. I am sorry, but it would appear that you have died. You had a 10 percent chance of winning that battle. Please do feel free to try again. To increase your chance of success, be sure to use a skill that you have trained or have items to help you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Very suddenly, the man jumps to his feet, knocking the chair he was sitting in to the ground behind him. As it clangs into the ground, his hands rise up, one with a fork and one with a dinner knife. You turn your hips and move quickly to avoid the very sudden slash with the knife across your midsection. The man moves cautiously with his knife held out in front of him. As his feet shift on the ground, you realize that he looks quite skilled with the improvised weapon. Your mind travels back to your training in the warehouse and you carefully watch the knife, his arm, and his eyes. You are not sure what he will do next, but he is clearly watching you carefully, looking for an opening. The two other couples at the cafe get up and scramble away from the tables and chairs. You do not take your eyes from the now armed man in front of you. A serving platter crashes to the ground as a waiter appears and then quickly runs back into the restaurant. You know it will not be long before he summons help in the form of the local police, who you probably do not want to meet right now. The man circles and moves towards you and you can tell he is about to make another strike with the knife. > You dodge the attack and try to move through the furniture to avoid the man. As the knife comes towards you, you duck and turn. You quickly scramble under the nearest table, hoping to get out of his reach and to the far side. You roll around a downed chair and jump to your feet, ready to avoid this fight at all costs. > You continue... You roll and jump to your feet on the other side of the table. Unfortunately, the man was anticipating your move, and he has come around the table. As you scramble to your feet, moving away, you feel a sharp pain in your back. You reach around, but cannot reach the location -- the man has stabbed you in the ribs. You try to get to your feet, but the strength is quickly leaving your body.The world around you gets dimmer as you drop to the ground. You can hear sirens in the distance, but they are getting more quiet as you decide you will close your eyes and rest, just for a moment. I am sorry, but it would appear that you have died. You had a 10 percent chance of winning that battle. Please do feel free to try again. To increase your chance of success, be sure to use a skill that you have trained or have items to help you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Very suddenly, the man jumps to his feet, knocking the chair he was sitting in to the ground behind him. As it clangs into the ground, his hands rise up, one with a fork and one with a dinner knife. You turn your hips and move quickly to avoid the very sudden slash with the knife across your midsection. The man moves cautiously with his knife held out in front of him. As his feet shift on the ground, you realize that he looks quite skilled with the improvised weapon. Your mind travels back to your training in the warehouse and you carefully watch the knife, his arm, and his eyes. You are not sure what he will do next, but he is clearly watching you carefully, looking for an opening. The two other couples at the cafe get up and scramble away from the tables and chairs. You do not take your eyes from the now armed man in front of you. A serving platter crashes to the ground as a waiter appears and then quickly runs back into the restaurant. You know it will not be long before he summons help in the form of the local police, who you probably do not want to meet right now. The man circles and moves towards you and you can tell he is about to make another strike with the knife. > You stand and take the hit, then punch the man in the throat. You see the blade coming, and you move towards it, hoping to surprise the man. By cutting off his expected flow, you imagine that he will not be able to slide into you where and when he expected. You cock your arm back, ready to knock him to the ground when he misses. > You continue... The man stabs with his knife and his face shows surprise when you move towards him. Instead of stabbing you, the knife hits nothing but the space behind you as his arm strikes you. You react quickly and punch the man in the throat. You hear the knife clatter to the ground behind you as the man gasps for breath. You move quickly and pick up the knife. When you turn back you see the man has run off and has headed down an alley next to the coffee shop. Looking around, you see that there is no one else in the area, others have cleared out. In a second-story window you see a woman staring out the window at you, her arms crossed. You hear the sound of sirens in the distance and figure you should get moving. There is an alley near the coffee shop and you take off down it at a run, deciding the only place you can head now is the hotel. Note: You had a 90 percent chance of winning that battle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to follow the map towards the contact and the coffee shop. From the airstrip, you drive around a few hills and in the direction of Havana. Driving down the hills, you see the city start to unfold in front of you and can easily follow the map towards the coffee shop. When you arrive, you notice there is plenty of parking and not that many cars around. Instead there are a number of people on mopeds and motorcycles and a few older cars. There are a few small delivery trucks driving around as well. You find a space on the side of the street and park the car. You wait in the car for a few moments and watch the people around you. Most of the people around appear to be in a hurry, or at least have a purpose. Across the street there are a number of round tables with umbrellas outside the coffee shop where you are to meet. There are two couples sitting at tables there, drinking coffee and a single man with blonde hair and a bushy mustache sitting by himself. You guess that he must be your contact. Taking one last look around, you step out of the car. You pause to let a mule pulling a wagon travel along the road before you cross towards the coffee shop. It appears that there is no one else watching as you make your way across the street. You walk up to the blonde man sitting alone. You say: > You is the coffee any good here? The man replies, "It is good, but not as good as Kenyan coffee." You say: > You but you like Kenyan tea. The man looks nervous at your response and you can see sweat suddenly break out on his forehead. He looks around at the street and quickly glances up and down the street. He slowly slides his chair back from the table and continues to glance around. He looks back at you and rises to his feet. He fiddles with his cup and his napkin for a moment, looking down, then moves suddenly. He shoves his cup off the table and it crashes onto the floor. He makes a move in your direction and you tense up in defense. Then he shifts and moves to the side, quickly running past you. He knocks a chair over as he reaches the street and takes off at a run down the street before you can stop him. The two couples at the other tables look over at you, as if waiting for you to explain the man. You look after him and shrug your shoulders. In a moment his has vanished from sight. After a pause, the two couples go back to their conversations, ignoring the man and you. Looking around, you don't see anyone else that appears interested in you or the man. With your contact gone, you are not sure what you should do next. You look at the man's abandoned table, but then decide to go back to your car.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The man replies, "It is good, but not as good as Kenyan coffee." You say: > You ah, but Kenyan is too expensive. The man looks around and gestures to the seat across from him. He makes a motion for the waiter and the waiter quickly shows up with some Cuban coffee. The man takes one more look around and then speaks, "We should be safe here, but you never know. Our target's employer has many friends in many places. Do not speak anything other than what you have to. Use no names at any time." He says, "I know few details. It is best that way. I know little of why you are here, but I know some. I do not know your mission, so do not bother asking me any questions. Instead, I am here to offer you assistance. I cannot help you with the mission itself, I do not know the details. I am simply here to offer you an item to aid you with, well, whatever it is that you're going to do." He pauses once more then, continues, "I can provide you with a suit. Not just any suit, but a top-notch, custom-fit Italian suit. They already know your size, so that can be provided quickly. It might help you should you try and talk your way past anyone or anything. I also have a box of, well, gadgets. It contains a number of different items that might help you with alarms, locks, and other such things. Or, if you would rather, I can get you a few weapons." He checks to be sure no one else has approached and continues, "Not a great deal of weapons, as these are hard to get here, but enough to do what you need. Don't tell me what you need them for, just let me know if that's what you need." He gets to his feet and drops money on the table to pay for the coffee. He says, "Tell me what you need and I will ensure it is at your hotel room. Do not delay, the longer you are here in the open, the more likely it is that the secret police will spot you and decide they want to know more about you. So what do you want?" > You tell him that you want the suit. You tell the man what you want. He nods and quickly moves away from you, hailing a cab and disappearing into the cab before you have a chance to ask him any additional questions. With no other clear options, you decide to head to the hotel Melia Habana. You head in the entrance of the luxurious hotel and head to the counter. As you approach, the bellhop runs up to you and says, "Ah, Mr. Smith, you have been expected." He leads you to the counter where the hotel attendant hands you a key card for a room on the top floor. As you turn to head to the elevator, the bellhop says, "Yes, and there was a package left here for you as well. I will bring it up and meet you at the room." You enter the elevator and ride to the top floor. As promised, the bellhop has somehow arrived on the floor of the hotel before you. He leads you to the room and opens the door for you. Before you can enter, he hands you a package. The package contains a quality suit, just as your contact had described. You step into the room and then into the bathroom to put the suit on. As he promised, the suit fits you perfectly. Looking in the mirror, you can tell that anyone who sees you in this suit will be impressed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The man looks around and gestures to the seat across from him. He makes a motion for the waiter and the waiter quickly shows up with some Cuban coffee. The man takes one more look around and then speaks, "We should be safe here, but you never know. Our target's employer has many friends in many places. Do not speak anything other than what you have to. Use no names at any time." He says, "I know few details. It is best that way. I know little of why you are here, but I know some. I do not know your mission, so do not bother asking me any questions. Instead, I am here to offer you assistance. I cannot help you with the mission itself, I do not know the details. I am simply here to offer you an item to aid you with, well, whatever it is that you're going to do." He pauses once more then, continues, "I can provide you with a suit. Not just any suit, but a top-notch, custom-fit Italian suit. They already know your size, so that can be provided quickly. It might help you should you try and talk your way past anyone or anything. I also have a box of, well, gadgets. It contains a number of different items that might help you with alarms, locks, and other such things. Or, if you would rather, I can get you a few weapons." He checks to be sure no one else has approached and continues, "Not a great deal of weapons, as these are hard to get here, but enough to do what you need. Don't tell me what you need them for, just let me know if that's what you need." He gets to his feet and drops money on the table to pay for the coffee. He says, "Tell me what you need and I will ensure it is at your hotel room. Do not delay, the longer you are here in the open, the more likely it is that the secret police will spot you and decide they want to know more about you. So what do you want?" > You tell him that you want the gadgets. You tell the man what you want. He nods and quickly moves away from you, hailing a cab and disappearing into the cab before you have a chance to ask him any additional questions. With no other clear options, you decide to head to the hotel Melia Habana. You head in the entrance of the luxurious hotel and head to the counter. As you approach, the bellhop runs up to you and says, "Ah, Mr. Smith, you have been expected." He leads you to the counter where the hotel attendant hands you a key card for a room on the top floor. As you turn to head to the elevator, the bellhop says, "Yes, and there was a package left here for you as well. I will bring it up and meet you at the room." You enter the elevator and ride to the top floor. As promised, the bellhop has somehow arrived on the floor of the hotel before you. He leads you to the room and opens the door for you. Before you can enter, he hands you a package. The package contains a briefcase. You set the briefcase down and open it. Inside you find a number of gadgets that look like they came from the set of James Bond. Certainly these tools will help you with locks, security, or any other such activities.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The man looks around and gestures to the seat across from him. He makes a motion for the waiter and the waiter quickly shows up with some Cuban coffee. The man takes one more look around and then speaks, "We should be safe here, but you never know. Our target's employer has many friends in many places. Do not speak anything other than what you have to. Use no names at any time." He says, "I know few details. It is best that way. I know little of why you are here, but I know some. I do not know your mission, so do not bother asking me any questions. Instead, I am here to offer you assistance. I cannot help you with the mission itself, I do not know the details. I am simply here to offer you an item to aid you with, well, whatever it is that you're going to do." He pauses once more then, continues, "I can provide you with a suit. Not just any suit, but a top-notch, custom-fit Italian suit. They already know your size, so that can be provided quickly. It might help you should you try and talk your way past anyone or anything. I also have a box of, well, gadgets. It contains a number of different items that might help you with alarms, locks, and other such things. Or, if you would rather, I can get you a few weapons." He checks to be sure no one else has approached and continues, "Not a great deal of weapons, as these are hard to get here, but enough to do what you need. Don't tell me what you need them for, just let me know if that's what you need." He gets to his feet and drops money on the table to pay for the coffee. He says, "Tell me what you need and I will ensure it is at your hotel room. Do not delay, the longer you are here in the open, the more likely it is that the secret police will spot you and decide they want to know more about you. So what do you want?" > You tell him that you want the weapons. You tell the man what you want. He nods and quickly moves away from you, hailing a cab and disappearing into the cab before you have a chance to ask him any additional questions. With no other clear options, you decide to head to the hotel Melia Habana. You head in the entrance of the luxurious hotel and head to the counter. As you approach, the bellhop runs up to you and says, "Ah, Mr. Smith, you have been expected." He leads you to the counter where the hotel attendant hands you a key card for a room on the top floor. As you turn to head to the elevator, the bellhop says, "Yes, and there was a package left here for you as well. I will bring it up and meet you at the room." You enter the elevator and ride to the top floor. As promised, the bellhop has somehow arrived on the floor of the hotel before you. He leads you to the room and opens the door for you. Before you can enter, he hands you a package. The package contains an ammo box. Opening it up, you see a small .22 caliber pen gun, a small concealable pistol, ammunition, and a small radio-controlled bomb. Certainly these things will help you if you need to bring violence on anyone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head towards the door. The man has started to pull some papers out of the desk and is reading them. He ignores you as you open the door only to be assaulted by the sunshine once again. There is a wave of heat coming off the runway that catches you by surprise, but it is quickly washed away with a gentle breeze. You walk down the stairs and towards the plane. As you approach, a man dressed in a uniform steps from around the side of the plane and gestures towards the entrance, welcoming you to the plane. You move up the steps and into the plane. Inside the plane is clearly a luxury craft designed for the rich. There are four swiveling captain's chairs, wood grain cabinets, and a number of flat screens. You take a seat and sink into the soft leather of the chair. The man in uniform steps onto the plane behind you. He says, "Sorry, but due to secrecy, there will be no flight attendant on this flight. You can sit anywhere, and I suggest you keep your seat belt on at all times." It then that you notice there are seat belts in the leather chairs. The man continues, "The flight should be over in a couple hours. I would announce when we're landing, but it will be pretty obvious. Enjoy your flight." Without pausing for questions, the man pulls up the stairs, closes the door, then steps into the cabin. The door to the cabin closes with a click and you are alone in the plane. A few moments later you hear the jet engines start up. You wait for the announcements that never come and the plane starts moving. A minute later you are pressed back into your seat as the plane speeds up down the runway. You sit back and relax in the seat, planning to get up and explore the plane soon. Before you know it, you are out cold, enjoying the comfort of the seat. You awake with a start when the wheels of the plane touch down onto the ground once again. You look around quickly, trying to re-orient yourself as the plane taxis to a terminal. Looking out the window you see a small shack at the side of what looks like a very new runway. The plane moves towards the shack and in no time the captain comes out of the cabin. Without a word he opens the door and puts down the steps. He stays on board the plane and gestures you towards the exit. Stepping outside, you feel the humid heat wash over you. The sun is shining brightly, and you can only assume that you are in Cuba. Blinking in the sun, you can see an old sedan parked next to the hut. You start walking towards the car and you hear the door slam shut behind you. The plane is already in motion before you make it to the car. You shrug and figure that it's too late to back out now. The gravel crunches under your feet as you walk towards the car. There are bits of dust in the air and you can see a long dirt road headed in two directions from the small hut. Walking past the hut, you don't see anyone in the building at all. In fact, it looks like it has been abandoned for some time now. When you arrive at the dark blue car, you look inside and can see a set of keys sitting on the seat. Next to the keys are a map with four locations circled in red. You can tell that one is a runway, apparently where you are now. The second is in town, so that must be the coffee shop. The third looks like an estate on a hill, which must be el Martillo's house. The last is a large building and the only one labeled on the map, and it is labeled, "Hotel Melia Habana." You open the door and get in the car. The keys do indeed fit the ignition and the car starts up easily. The gas tank indicator shows full and you have to decide what to do next. > You search the vehicle, just to be safe. You climb out of the car and head for the rear of the vehicle. You fumble with the keys a moment, then find the one that appears to open the trunk. The key fits and the trunk opens with a loud thump. The springs are old, so you have to push the trunk lid up to get it to open. Inside the trunk is old and quite dusty. Most of the inside is covered with dust and the spare tire looks like it doesn't have any air in it. There are three items that look brand new without a drop of dust: a clothing bag with an elegant black suit, a briefcase that is full of a number of different mechanical and electrical parts, and a large ammo box with weapons and ammunition. Before you can start looking through the items, you catch some movement out of the corner of your eye. Looking back down the long dirt road, you can see a dust trail rising. The sound of a military Jeep can be heard echoing across the runway. The Jeep is headed down the road towards you and there doesn't appear to be anywhere else it could be going, except where you are. You have only a moment before you need to get away, so you can grab one item from the trunk now, and then you must get into the car and drive. > You grab the clothing bag so you can have the fancy suit. You jump back into the car and turn the key. The car starts right up again and you back out of the parking space. The Jeep continues to head in your direction, you're not sure if they have spotted you yet. You take off the in car and head in the opposite direction, down the dirt road. As you drive, you leave a large cloud of dust and you realize the occupants of the Jeep have seen you! You speed up and hope the road isn't a dead end. The dirt road is mostly straight, but starts to turn after half a mile or so. The road leads through some brush and low trees and heads for the buildings of a city. You struggle to keep the car on the dirt road as it twists and turns, but you stay on the road. You are glad when you see the dirt road turns into pavement as it nears the town. You slow down a bit when you read the pavement and the small buildings and houses, partially to stay on the road and partially to ensure you don't hit any of the people in the area. Looking back you can see the Jeep is farther behind you than you thought it would be. The tires on the car squeal as you take the turns on the road, putting more distance between you and the Jeep. You slow down some more and continue to make a number of different turns passing houses and small businesses. There are a few people sitting around on the sides of the road that watch you as you pass. After a number more turns, you realize you have lost the Jeep. You pull over to the side of the road and consult the map. You are somewhere nearing the center of downtown Havana. You can see the markings on the map for hotel Melia Habana. After a few moments, you can tell about where you are on the map now and you can see the roads that will lead you to downtown. > You drive to the hotel Melia Habana. You arrive at the hotel and take the suit with you as you head into the hotel. Looking at the suit, you can see that it is truly a quality suit. You know that you will look good in the suit and others will surely notice that as well. When you tell the counter help your cover name, they provide you with a key to a suite on the top floor. You take the elevator to the room and step into the bathroom to put on the suit. You do indeed look good and the suit fits perfectly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step to the doorway and look into the room. It is a very dimly lit room, so you have to look carefully to see the contents. There is a spotlight shining on a small brown box in the center of a table on the far side of the room. Most of the rest of the small room is in darkness, other than what is lit by the light coming from the main warehouse. You can see through the door it is exactly as the British gentleman had described. The entire room is about 15 feet square. There is a man standing, arms crossed in front of him, in front of the table. He has a large knife in one of his hands and you cannot be sure in the shadows, but perhaps a firearm strapped to his waist. He is staring off into the distance and is facing the wall to the left, so that you are looking at his left side. You cannot see anything on that wall where he is looking, but he does appear quite focused. The floor of the room is in darkness and you cannot really see anything else in the room. The box on the table is quite clear at this point... > You walk up to the guard seductively and wink... You move into the room and step to the left, trying to stay in sight of the guard. You smooth your shirt and nod in his direction. He spots you and tenses up. You raise your hands to show that you are not a threat to him and start complimenting him on his size and ability to guard... > You continue... You wave to the guard, holding your hands up. As you do, he unfolds his arms and holds the knife out in an attack posture. You talk to the man and attempt to keep him off-guard. You nod often, trying to get his to nod with you, to get him on your side. As you speak, you attempt to casually work your way around to the table. You compliment the guard as you reach behind your back and pick up the box. As you attempt to move back to the door, he steps in front of you. You work to talk your way past him, but as you move, he stabs out with the knife, splitting your ribs. You feel the pain as the knife goes through your chest and the tip stabs into your heart. You hear the box drop from your hands as you fall to your knees, your life quickly draining from your body. It would seem that you have failed your challenge. In the high stakes world of spy vs. spy this means that you have been killed. This is not the best way to end this story, but sadly, this is how your story ends. Sorry about that! Thank you for reading! Feel free to try again. You had a 10 percent chance of winning that battle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step to the doorway and look into the room. It is a very dimly lit room, so you have to look carefully to see the contents. There is a spotlight shining on a small brown box in the center of a table on the far side of the room. Most of the rest of the small room is in darkness, other than what is lit by the light coming from the main warehouse. You can see through the door it is exactly as the British gentleman had described. The entire room is about 15 feet square. There is a man standing, arms crossed in front of him, in front of the table. He has a large knife in one of his hands and you cannot be sure in the shadows, but perhaps a firearm strapped to his waist. He is staring off into the distance and is facing the wall to the left, so that you are looking at his left side. You cannot see anything on that wall where he is looking, but he does appear quite focused. The floor of the room is in darkness and you cannot really see anything else in the room. The box on the table is quite clear at this point... > You run up to the guard, take the weapon and kill the guard... You pause at the door, but then move quickly. You head straight at the guard. He spots you before you reach him and he starts to turn towards you. You reach out for the knife, attempting to take it from him before he can strike out at you... > You continue... You dash straight at the guard. He turns as you reach him, but before he can get the knife around, you grab his wrist. You both struggle for the knife and twist and turn. You grab his wrist with your other hand and pull, trying to twist the knife out of his hand. It is then that you feel a sudden pain in your back! The guard had another knife, and now that knife is stuck in your back. You let go and reach back for the knife and the guard stabs you in the ribs with the larger knife. You don't know whether to reach for the knife in your chest or your back, but it doesn't matter as your life quickly drains from your body. It would seem that you have failed your challenge. In the high stakes world of spy vs. spy this means that you have been killed. This is not the best way to end this story, but sadly, this is how your story ends. Sorry about that! Thank you for reading! Feel free to try again. You had a 10 percent chance of winning that battle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You move quickly around the van, thinking that this is just stupid. Even a kid from grade school can watch you run away from them and see where you are. You get around the other side of the van and stop. The man is in front of you. He says, "You need to work more with the shadows and the light." He points out the different ways the light move and the shadows are formed in an around the van. He shows you many other ways you can blend into the shadows by using your body, the light, and natural lines. The man looks at you and says, "We have time for just one more training session. I can teach you more details about what you already know, or I can teach you a different skill, the choice is up to you. And yes, there is going to be a test at the end of this. It will be a real test, and you might not survive. But I hope you do. So what do you select for you final training?" > You charm training The man takes you to a wardrobe that sits in the corner of the warehouse. He starts pulling out different types of clothes and shows you how and why they are different from one another. He shows you different types of materials and styles of shirts and suits and explains when and where the different types should be worn and who they will impress. He spends some time showing you how you send messages non-verbally and how to focus those messages so you are more clearly communicating with someone, even when they don't realize it. The man looks at you and says, "We are out of time. You are either ready or you are not ready. And that is what we will determine now." He turns and walks over to a door in the rear of the room and disappears through it. You are alone in the large warehouse, wondering if you were supposed to follow the man. You have trained the following levels of skills: Stealth: 2 Charm: 1 Weapons: 0<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You move quickly around the van, thinking that this is just stupid. Even a kid from grade school can watch you run away from them and see where you are. You get around the other side of the van and stop. The man is in front of you. He says, "You need to work more with the shadows and the light." He points out the different ways the light move and the shadows are formed in an around the van. He shows you many other ways you can blend into the shadows by using your body, the light, and natural lines. The man looks at you and says, "We have time for just one more training session. I can teach you more details about what you already know, or I can teach you a different skill, the choice is up to you. And yes, there is going to be a test at the end of this. It will be a real test, and you might not survive. But I hope you do. So what do you select for you final training?" > You weapons training The man leads you to a table along the side of the wall of the warehouse. The table has a number of small weapons on it and some other devices that you cannot recognize. He shows you how the smaller weapons work and how you can make them on your own. He shows you a number of the other devices and how they can be combined to make different types of explosives that can be used for different purposes. He explains how to focus and aim both the improvised devices and the explosives so that you do not get hurt yourself. The man looks at you and says, "We are out of time. You are either ready or you are not ready. And that is what we will determine now." He turns and walks over to a door in the rear of the room and disappears through it. You are alone in the large warehouse, wondering if you were supposed to follow the man. You have trained the following levels of skills: Stealth: 2 Charm: 0 Weapons: 1<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Whump! You bend over in pain as the main punches you hard in the stomach. Your eyes open wide and you gasp as you try and get air inside your suddenly collapsed lungs. The man says, "I see you. You suck at hiding. Want to try again?" You aren't sure that you like this method of training. You assume that you're supposed to do something, but you don't really know what. You figure if you're going to continue this training that you need to at least move away from this crazy man who is attacking you. But then maybe that is the point -- to learn by doing. This seems a little odd because you haven't actually been given, well, any instruction at all, but you don't have a lot of choice at this moment. You don't have a lot of options here in the open space of the warehouse, but you do have some choice... > You put your hands up and compliment the man. You brace yourself for another slap, and open your eyes when you see that he's not going to slap you right away. The man says, "That's a good start. Always work with compliments, because nearly everyone, even trained spies, respond to compliments." He spends a bit more time telling you different ways to give the compliments and how to really sound sincere. He gives you some tips on what kinds of compliments tend to work in different situations and how you can talk yourself out of nearly any bad situation. The man looks at you and says, "We have time for just one more training session. I can teach you more details about what you already know, or I can teach you a different skill, the choice is up to you. And yes, there is going to be a test at the end of this. It will be a real test, and you might not survive. But I hope you do. So what do you select for you final training?" > You stealth training The man leads you over to a large table along the wall of the warehouse. Spread out across the table are a number of different types of gadgets and devices. He takes the time and shows you how to use some simple items to pick a lock and how to disable a security system. He shows you how you can use some of the gadgets to help you distract people and allow you time to move about without being seen or heard. He shows you simple ways to break into place and more difficult ways to bypass security systems and other types of systems designed to keep you out. The man looks at you and says, "We are out of time. You are either ready or you are not ready. And that is what we will determine now." He turns and walks over to a door in the rear of the room and disappears through it. You are alone in the large warehouse, wondering if you were supposed to follow the man. You have trained the following levels of skills: Stealth: 2 Charm: 1 Weapons: 0<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You brace yourself for another slap, and open your eyes when you see that he's not going to slap you right away. The man says, "That's a good start. Always work with compliments, because nearly everyone, even trained spies, respond to compliments." He spends a bit more time telling you different ways to give the compliments and how to really sound sincere. He gives you some tips on what kinds of compliments tend to work in different situations and how you can talk yourself out of nearly any bad situation. The man looks at you and says, "We have time for just one more training session. I can teach you more details about what you already know, or I can teach you a different skill, the choice is up to you. And yes, there is going to be a test at the end of this. It will be a real test, and you might not survive. But I hope you do. So what do you select for you final training?" > You charm training The man takes you to a wardrobe that sits in the corner of the warehouse. He starts pulling out different types of clothes and shows you how and why they are different from one another. He shows you different types of materials and styles of shirts and suits and explains when and where the different types should be worn and who they will impress. He spends some time showing you how you send messages non-verbally and how to focus those messages so you are more clearly communicating with someone, even when they don't realize it. The man looks at you and says, "We are out of time. You are either ready or you are not ready. And that is what we will determine now." He turns and walks over to a door in the rear of the room and disappears through it. You are alone in the large warehouse, wondering if you were supposed to follow the man. You have trained the following levels of skills: Stealth: 1 Charm: 2 Weapons: 0<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You brace yourself for another slap, and open your eyes when you see that he's not going to slap you right away. The man says, "That's a good start. Always work with compliments, because nearly everyone, even trained spies, respond to compliments." He spends a bit more time telling you different ways to give the compliments and how to really sound sincere. He gives you some tips on what kinds of compliments tend to work in different situations and how you can talk yourself out of nearly any bad situation. The man looks at you and says, "We have time for just one more training session. I can teach you more details about what you already know, or I can teach you a different skill, the choice is up to you. And yes, there is going to be a test at the end of this. It will be a real test, and you might not survive. But I hope you do. So what do you select for you final training?" > You weapons training The man leads you to a table along the side of the wall of the warehouse. The table has a number of small weapons on it and some other devices that you cannot recognize. He shows you how the smaller weapons work and how you can make them on your own. He shows you a number of the other devices and how they can be combined to make different types of explosives that can be used for different purposes. He explains how to focus and aim both the improvised devices and the explosives so that you do not get hurt yourself. The man looks at you and says, "We are out of time. You are either ready or you are not ready. And that is what we will determine now." He turns and walks over to a door in the rear of the room and disappears through it. You are alone in the large warehouse, wondering if you were supposed to follow the man. You have trained the following levels of skills: Stealth: 1 Charm: 1 Weapons: 1<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Whump! You bend over in pain as the main punches you hard in the stomach. Your eyes open wide and you gasp as you try and get air inside your suddenly collapsed lungs. The man says, "I see you. You suck at hiding. Want to try again?" You aren't sure that you like this method of training. You assume that you're supposed to do something, but you don't really know what. You figure if you're going to continue this training that you need to at least move away from this crazy man who is attacking you. But then maybe that is the point -- to learn by doing. This seems a little odd because you haven't actually been given, well, any instruction at all, but you don't have a lot of choice at this moment. You don't have a lot of options here in the open space of the warehouse, but you do have some choice... > You run to the van and look for a weapon, maybe a tire iron. Your ears are still ringing as you run around the rear of the van and do indeed find a tire iron right inside the back doors. You grab it and turn around to see the man standing there, nodding his head. He reaches out and adjusts your grip on the tire iron, explaining why holding at the different location can give you better leverage. He also shows you a number of other different, common items in the back of the van that could be used as quick, improvised, and deadly weapons. He shows you a few places to strike people that will work better to stun or disable them long enough for you to escape, should the need arise. The man looks at you and says, "We have time for just one more training session. I can teach you more details about what you already know, or I can teach you a different skill, the choice is up to you. And yes, there is going to be a test at the end of this. It will be a real test, and you might not survive. But I hope you do. So what do you select for you final training?" > You stealth training The man leads you over to a large table along the wall of the warehouse. Spread out across the table are a number of different types of gadgets and devices. He takes the time and shows you how to use some simple items to pick a lock and how to disable a security system. He shows you how you can use some of the gadgets to help you distract people and allow you time to move about without being seen or heard. He shows you simple ways to break into place and more difficult ways to bypass security systems and other types of systems designed to keep you out. The man looks at you and says, "We are out of time. You are either ready or you are not ready. And that is what we will determine now." He turns and walks over to a door in the rear of the room and disappears through it. You are alone in the large warehouse, wondering if you were supposed to follow the man. You have trained the following levels of skills: Stealth: 2 Charm: 0 Weapons: 1<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your ears are still ringing as you run around the rear of the van and do indeed find a tire iron right inside the back doors. You grab it and turn around to see the man standing there, nodding his head. He reaches out and adjusts your grip on the tire iron, explaining why holding at the different location can give you better leverage. He also shows you a number of other different, common items in the back of the van that could be used as quick, improvised, and deadly weapons. He shows you a few places to strike people that will work better to stun or disable them long enough for you to escape, should the need arise. The man looks at you and says, "We have time for just one more training session. I can teach you more details about what you already know, or I can teach you a different skill, the choice is up to you. And yes, there is going to be a test at the end of this. It will be a real test, and you might not survive. But I hope you do. So what do you select for you final training?" > You charm training The man takes you to a wardrobe that sits in the corner of the warehouse. He starts pulling out different types of clothes and shows you how and why they are different from one another. He shows you different types of materials and styles of shirts and suits and explains when and where the different types should be worn and who they will impress. He spends some time showing you how you send messages non-verbally and how to focus those messages so you are more clearly communicating with someone, even when they don't realize it. The man looks at you and says, "We are out of time. You are either ready or you are not ready. And that is what we will determine now." He turns and walks over to a door in the rear of the room and disappears through it. You are alone in the large warehouse, wondering if you were supposed to follow the man. You have trained the following levels of skills: Stealth: 1 Charm: 1 Weapons: 1<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your ears are still ringing as you run around the rear of the van and do indeed find a tire iron right inside the back doors. You grab it and turn around to see the man standing there, nodding his head. He reaches out and adjusts your grip on the tire iron, explaining why holding at the different location can give you better leverage. He also shows you a number of other different, common items in the back of the van that could be used as quick, improvised, and deadly weapons. He shows you a few places to strike people that will work better to stun or disable them long enough for you to escape, should the need arise. The man looks at you and says, "We have time for just one more training session. I can teach you more details about what you already know, or I can teach you a different skill, the choice is up to you. And yes, there is going to be a test at the end of this. It will be a real test, and you might not survive. But I hope you do. So what do you select for you final training?" > You weapons training The man leads you to a table along the side of the wall of the warehouse. The table has a number of small weapons on it and some other devices that you cannot recognize. He shows you how the smaller weapons work and how you can make them on your own. He shows you a number of the other devices and how they can be combined to make different types of explosives that can be used for different purposes. He explains how to focus and aim both the improvised devices and the explosives so that you do not get hurt yourself. The man looks at you and says, "We are out of time. You are either ready or you are not ready. And that is what we will determine now." He turns and walks over to a door in the rear of the room and disappears through it. You are alone in the large warehouse, wondering if you were supposed to follow the man. You have trained the following levels of skills: Stealth: 1 Charm: 0 Weapons: 2<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The first thing that you notice when you start to wake is that you are lying down on something hard. The next thing you notice is how much your head hurts. If feels like your head has been in a pinball machine. As you reach up to touch it, you hear a deep voice say, "Oh, sorry about that headache. It will go away soon, but until then it's going to hurt quite a bit. A minor side effect of the drug, you know." You open your eyes and start to sit up. It feels like a horse has kicked you in the head as you manage to start to sit and open your eyes. You find that you are sitting on the floor of the black van and the side door is open. You spin around and put your legs out the door but don't stand right away as you press your hands against your head to try and reduce the pain. Fortunately, opening your eyes doesn't seem to make the pain any worse and you take in the man outside the van. The man is short, bald, and dressed in black pants and a tight black tee shirt. You can see cargo pockets on the pants that hang down as if they are not empty. The tight tee shirt reveals that the man has more than a few muscles. He has small, dark eyes that are set deep into his head and a strong forehead. He has a dark stubble around his chin. When he smiles, you can see he is missing at least one of his teeth. He smiles and nods as you take him in. He crosses his bulging arms in front of his body and continues, "So yeah, we had to knock you out because you didn't need to see where we are just yet. You know, secret and all that stuff. And before you ask, no, I don't know why you were selected. That's above my pay grade. They tell me you're coming, and I take it from there. So you ready to get started?" You look up with confusion on your face and think of any number of different responses from one-word responses, to anger, to being incredibly sarcastic. Before you can put the words together to respond, the man continues. "Okay, you're confused. I get it. Sometimes people are prepared for this, sometimes they're not. And some people can't make it through the training, while other times they can. I don't feel like giving you the long story, so you're getting the short story. Here it is: "You're in training be a spy. You get to decide the best way for you to do that. The training starts as soon as you get up off your lazy rear end. And at any time if you decide this isn't for you, you can go home. Of course, we will wipe your memory and you likely won't remember any of this, but that's your choice. Your other options? In this facility we teach stealth, charm, and weapons. So you pick one and we get started, or you choose to go home and I zap you. Got it?" You look around and past the man and you can see that you are in a large warehouse with a high ceiling. There are a few doors along the far wall that appear to lead into smaller offices. Off to the right is a garage door, obviously where the van came in. The space off to the left is wide open, but there are some obstacles and the floor and some chains and rope hanging from the ceiling. The man snaps his fingers as you look around and says, "Hey, you with me here? We don't have all day." > You agree to charm training. Whap! The man slaps you in the face and your cheek stings. You blink your eyes as you consider what just happened and the man says, "Well? Now what? How do you react? What are you going to say next?" You aren't sure that you like this method of training. You assume that you're supposed to do something, but you don't really know what. You figure if you're going to continue this training that you need to at least move away from this crazy man who is attacking you. But then maybe that is the point -- to learn by doing. This seems a little odd because you haven't actually been given, well, any instruction at all, but you don't have a lot of choice at this moment. You don't have a lot of options here in the open space of the warehouse, but you do have some choice...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The first thing that you notice when you start to wake is that you are lying down on something hard. The next thing you notice is how much your head hurts. If feels like your head has been in a pinball machine. As you reach up to touch it, you hear a deep voice say, "Oh, sorry about that headache. It will go away soon, but until then it's going to hurt quite a bit. A minor side effect of the drug, you know." You open your eyes and start to sit up. It feels like a horse has kicked you in the head as you manage to start to sit and open your eyes. You find that you are sitting on the floor of the black van and the side door is open. You spin around and put your legs out the door but don't stand right away as you press your hands against your head to try and reduce the pain. Fortunately, opening your eyes doesn't seem to make the pain any worse and you take in the man outside the van. The man is short, bald, and dressed in black pants and a tight black tee shirt. You can see cargo pockets on the pants that hang down as if they are not empty. The tight tee shirt reveals that the man has more than a few muscles. He has small, dark eyes that are set deep into his head and a strong forehead. He has a dark stubble around his chin. When he smiles, you can see he is missing at least one of his teeth. He smiles and nods as you take him in. He crosses his bulging arms in front of his body and continues, "So yeah, we had to knock you out because you didn't need to see where we are just yet. You know, secret and all that stuff. And before you ask, no, I don't know why you were selected. That's above my pay grade. They tell me you're coming, and I take it from there. So you ready to get started?" You look up with confusion on your face and think of any number of different responses from one-word responses, to anger, to being incredibly sarcastic. Before you can put the words together to respond, the man continues. "Okay, you're confused. I get it. Sometimes people are prepared for this, sometimes they're not. And some people can't make it through the training, while other times they can. I don't feel like giving you the long story, so you're getting the short story. Here it is: "You're in training be a spy. You get to decide the best way for you to do that. The training starts as soon as you get up off your lazy rear end. And at any time if you decide this isn't for you, you can go home. Of course, we will wipe your memory and you likely won't remember any of this, but that's your choice. Your other options? In this facility we teach stealth, charm, and weapons. So you pick one and we get started, or you choose to go home and I zap you. Got it?" You look around and past the man and you can see that you are in a large warehouse with a high ceiling. There are a few doors along the far wall that appear to lead into smaller offices. Off to the right is a garage door, obviously where the van came in. The space off to the left is wide open, but there are some obstacles and the floor and some chains and rope hanging from the ceiling. The man snaps his fingers as you look around and says, "Hey, you with me here? We don't have all day." > You agree to weapons training. Blam! Your ears ring as the man fires a gun right next to your head, striking the van behind you. His lips move, but you're not quite sure you can hear what he is saying, all you can hear is the ringing in your ears from the shot. You aren't sure that you like this method of training. You assume that you're supposed to do something, but you don't really know what. You figure if you're going to continue this training that you need to at least move away from this crazy man who is attacking you. But then maybe that is the point -- to learn by doing. This seems a little odd because you haven't actually been given, well, any instruction at all, but you don't have a lot of choice at this moment. You don't have a lot of options here in the open space of the warehouse, but you do have some choice...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The first thing that you notice when you start to wake is that you are lying down on something hard. The next thing you notice is how much your head hurts. If feels like your head has been in a pinball machine. As you reach up to touch it, you hear a deep voice say, "Oh, sorry about that headache. It will go away soon, but until then it's going to hurt quite a bit. A minor side effect of the drug, you know." You open your eyes and start to sit up. It feels like a horse has kicked you in the head as you manage to start to sit and open your eyes. You find that you are sitting on the floor of the black van and the side door is open. You spin around and put your legs out the door but don't stand right away as you press your hands against your head to try and reduce the pain. Fortunately, opening your eyes doesn't seem to make the pain any worse and you take in the man outside the van. The man is short, bald, and dressed in black pants and a tight black tee shirt. You can see cargo pockets on the pants that hang down as if they are not empty. The tight tee shirt reveals that the man has more than a few muscles. He has small, dark eyes that are set deep into his head and a strong forehead. He has a dark stubble around his chin. When he smiles, you can see he is missing at least one of his teeth. He smiles and nods as you take him in. He crosses his bulging arms in front of his body and continues, "So yeah, we had to knock you out because you didn't need to see where we are just yet. You know, secret and all that stuff. And before you ask, no, I don't know why you were selected. That's above my pay grade. They tell me you're coming, and I take it from there. So you ready to get started?" You look up with confusion on your face and think of any number of different responses from one-word responses, to anger, to being incredibly sarcastic. Before you can put the words together to respond, the man continues. "Okay, you're confused. I get it. Sometimes people are prepared for this, sometimes they're not. And some people can't make it through the training, while other times they can. I don't feel like giving you the long story, so you're getting the short story. Here it is: "You're in training be a spy. You get to decide the best way for you to do that. The training starts as soon as you get up off your lazy rear end. And at any time if you decide this isn't for you, you can go home. Of course, we will wipe your memory and you likely won't remember any of this, but that's your choice. Your other options? In this facility we teach stealth, charm, and weapons. So you pick one and we get started, or you choose to go home and I zap you. Got it?" You look around and past the man and you can see that you are in a large warehouse with a high ceiling. There are a few doors along the far wall that appear to lead into smaller offices. Off to the right is a garage door, obviously where the van came in. The space off to the left is wide open, but there are some obstacles and the floor and some chains and rope hanging from the ceiling. The man snaps his fingers as you look around and says, "Hey, you with me here? We don't have all day." > You agree to nothing and demand more answers. The man's eyebrows rise as you refuse to cooperate. He takes a step back and looks you up and down. He says, "You sure do think highly of yourself, don't you? Why don't you take a look around." He gestures around the large, empty, blank warehouse before continuing, "Do you know where you are? No, you don't, do you? You have no idea where you are, no idea how you got here, and no idea who I am. I don't think you are in a position to be making demands." He walks up to you and pokes you in the chest, hard. He says, "I'm in charge here. You are no one. You are nothing. And this isn't about you, anyway. This agency is charged with making people safe, and we're going to make people safe, no matter the cost. And getting rid of you won't bother me in the least, we'll go find someone else who can help us." He crosses his arms and looks at you one more time, saying, "So here's your choice -- you either agree to get some simple training before we send you out where you might get killed, or you get out now. This isn't the police, you don't have any rights. You simply have a choice to decide to cooperate with me and get a few skills, or I'll give you one last chance to wimp out and go home. Make your choice now."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your eyes blink open and you look at the ceiling. It is a boring white, like all these apartments, but you're pretty sure it hasn't been painted in 10 or more years. You blink and sit up. At least you don't have to go to work today. Instead, today is relaxation day. First you need to head to the store to stock up on some food, then all bets are off! You open the door to head downstairs. The day does not match your mood: it is cloudy, cool, and windy outside. In fact, the clouds are getting darker and rolling across the sky as you watch them. You better hurry and get your supplies and get back, or you're sure this storm will catch you. You trot down the stairs and head into the back lot to your car. You start to pull out and slam on your brakes when another car starts to back out in front of you. That was close. This is a big apartment building, but you recognize that giant car as that of the old lady who lives on the first floor and does everything slow. You slowly follow her out of the parking lot and are glad when she turns the other way. You are headed towards the grocery store, but when you take a right in the middle of town, you hear a loud "pop" and feel the car slide underneath you. You limp the car over to the sidewalk and get out to see that yes, you now have a flat tire. That's the second one this year, and you just remembered that you didn't replace your spare since the last time. Fortunately, you have AAA, and you can call them to help you. The overly nice AAA guy on the phone tells you that it will take about an hour, but they'll be there. You sigh and lean against the hood, thinking about all the food you were going to buy, but will now have to wait. As you're sitting there, a black four-door car slams it's brakes on next to you in a squeal of tires. The back door pops open and you can see a skinny man inside in a dark suit and dark glasses on the far side. He calls out to you, "Get in." > You wait for the tow truck... You are standing in town next to your car with a flat tire. A car drives past every now and then, but there's not a lot of activity going on right now. The clouds have started to break up, but it would be a stretch to call it a sunny day yet. At least it's not hot. There are two store fronts here where you are standing, a Mailboxes, etc., and a local coffee shop. There is no one in the Mailboxes store, but there are a few different people wandering in and out of the coffee shop, like any other day in any other town. > You go into Mailboxes, etc... You find yourself inside the lobby of a 24-hour Mailboxes Etc. store. At the moment, there appears to be no one here. There is a counter with a number of ads and hand-written papers advertising discounts for various types of mailboxes and terms. There is even a scale for weighing mail. On the side wall is a slot labelled "Outgoing mail." The floor here is, well, old. It looks like the linoleum floor was once white, but it is a strange grey-brown at the moment, and near one corner is a pile of something that, well, you don't even want to think about what it might be. On all the other walls of the room are various mailboxes from very tiny boxes that appear to only hold a letter or two; up to boxes that look so large that you think you might be able to climb inside.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are standing in town next to your car with a flat tire. A car drives past every now and then, but there's not a lot of activity going on right now. The clouds have started to break up, but it would be a stretch to call it a sunny day yet. At least it's not hot. There are two store fronts here where you are standing, a Mailboxes, etc., and a local coffee shop. There is no one in the Mailboxes store, but there are a few different people wandering in and out of the coffee shop, like any other day in any other town. > You go into the coffee shop... As soon as you walk inside the coffee shop, the aroma of fresh coffee assaults your senses. There is a long counter along the left side of the small shop and a few small tables to the right. There are a few round tables along the right side of the room, not all of them empty. There is a small man with a thin beard typing at an old laptop computer, ignoring the room around him. Before the door shuts, you hear the squeal of tires. A taxi has pulled up outside and the passenger door swings open. The driver is gesturing at you to get inside. You look around to see if he is talking to someone else, but there is no one else looking at him, he is clearly trying to get you to go in the taxi with him. > You get in the taxi... The taxi accelerates quickly away from the coffee shop before you have time to put on your seat belt or even close the door. The door slams as the cab turns left in another squeal of tires. Looking around, you see the cab looks used and smells used, too. As the car turns another corner at high speed you notice that the place for the cab driver's name is empty. Any attempts to speak with the driver of the cab are completely ignored as the driver concentrates on the road. You spend most of the trip trying to stay in your seat as the car accelerates, turns corners, and slams the brakes on faster and more often than any car you've ever been in. Suddenly the car stops, almost throwing you on the floor. The driver does not turn around. Your door is opened from the outside by a red cap. A red cap? Yes, as you step outside of the cab you realize that you are at the airport. The red cap talks to the driver a moment, then the cab speeds away. With no idea what else you are to do, you head inside the airport with the flow of people. You can see baggage checks and ticketing lines, but you have no bags, and you are sure you don't have enough money to pay for a ticket. You wander around a little, but then realize the entire place is focused on getting on a plane, so you are eventually pushed towards the TSA security area by the crowd. Looking around, you realize you do not have a lot of options here. You can try and sneak past these TSA agents, knowing that many of them barely have a high school education; or you can just stay in the line with the rest of the people moving slowly towards the security check. > You continue and attempt to board the plane... You walk up to the TSA guard, your hands empty. He looks up at you, finally realizing that something is wrong. "Hey, what the hell? What are you trying to pull here?" His tone of voice attracts a few more of the blue-gloved guards. They gather around you quickly and one says, "Hey, do you want me to search him good?" They look from one to the other, unsure of what to do. Finally, a taller man, clearly the one in charge comes over and says, "What are you morons doing standing around? We need to keep this line moving. You know the rules. Anyone who doesn't have a ticket doesn't get through." > You continue... You are quickly shoved and pushed. Before you can react, your hands and arms are grabbed by half a dozen pairs of blue gloves. Your hands are pulled behind your back and zip ties are quickly put in place, locking your hands behind you. "Let's go," you hear, as you are shoved from behind almost hard enough to knock you over. You stumble forward and keep your feet as you are led to an elevator. Six TSA guards get on the elevator with you like they expect you to attack one of them and create a national security incident. They look smug, like they are proud to have captured you. The elevator moves down into the ground for a few floors -- more than you thought were in the airport. When the door opens, you see nothing but old grey walls all around the plain hallways. They walk you down the hallway underneath bare light bulbs and exposed pipes. One guard walks ahead of you and open a large steel door on the right hallway. He roughly shoves you in the room and says, "Welcome to TSA jail." The door slams behind you and you sit in the dimly lit room. There is a bare metal toilet here and a simple bench for you to sleep on. Sorry, but that's all there is for this path! You're stuck in TSA jail.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The taxi accelerates quickly away from the coffee shop before you have time to put on your seat belt or even close the door. The door slams as the cab turns left in another squeal of tires. Looking around, you see the cab looks used and smells used, too. As the car turns another corner at high speed you notice that the place for the cab driver's name is empty. Any attempts to speak with the driver of the cab are completely ignored as the driver concentrates on the road. You spend most of the trip trying to stay in your seat as the car accelerates, turns corners, and slams the brakes on faster and more often than any car you've ever been in. Suddenly the car stops, almost throwing you on the floor. The driver does not turn around. Your door is opened from the outside by a red cap. A red cap? Yes, as you step outside of the cab you realize that you are at the airport. The red cap talks to the driver a moment, then the cab speeds away. With no idea what else you are to do, you head inside the airport with the flow of people. You can see baggage checks and ticketing lines, but you have no bags, and you are sure you don't have enough money to pay for a ticket. You wander around a little, but then realize the entire place is focused on getting on a plane, so you are eventually pushed towards the TSA security area by the crowd. Looking around, you realize you do not have a lot of options here. You can try and sneak past these TSA agents, knowing that many of them barely have a high school education; or you can just stay in the line with the rest of the people moving slowly towards the security check. > You attempt to sneak past the TSA guys... You wait for the right moment, then move to sneak around the outside edge of the TSA security check area. You move slowly, then try to look like you know what you are doing. You manage to make it around the inattentive guy checking IDs of people and start to get past the shoe checker when you bump into a metal pole that makes the pathways, and it clangs to the ground, the ringing echoing along the hallways. One of the bored TSA guys barely looks over and says, "Hey, that machine is closed, you need to come over this way."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As soon as you walk inside the coffee shop, the aroma of fresh coffee assaults your senses. There is a long counter along the left side of the small shop and a few small tables to the right. There are a few round tables along the right side of the room, not all of them empty. There is a small man with a thin beard typing at an old laptop computer, ignoring the room around him. Before the door shuts, you hear the squeal of tires. A taxi has pulled up outside and the passenger door swings open. The driver is gesturing at you to get inside. You look around to see if he is talking to someone else, but there is no one else looking at him, he is clearly trying to get you to go in the taxi with him. > You stay where you are... You take a seat inside the coffee shop and the taxi drives away. You wonder what it could have wanted, and why you are suddenly seeing so much attention. As you look around the shop, a fellow typing on his old laptop looks up at you and glares at you before putting his nose back in the machine, the old keys clicking away as he types. There is little traffic in and out of the coffee shop today, and you wonder when that tow truck will show up. Sometimes you think those tow truck drivers are on their own times and really don't want to help you out. Then you start to think about how much the tow is going to cost and you realize you really need to buy two tires now: one to replace the flat and another to replace the spare that you haven't had time to replace. This is really going to cost you. > You continue... The barista at the coffee shop glares at you since you have been there for some time and have not ordered any coffee. Yes, there are plenty of empty seats around, but that barista clearly doesn't want any freeloaders in the shop. Fortunately for you, about that time the tow truck shows up. The diesel engine clatters and clanks as the bright orange lights spin on the top of the truck. The middle-aged man with the stained white t-shirt steps around to your car and quickly hooks it up to the flatbed of the truck. You head over towards him, but he gestures you back without a word. You ask if you can at least ride in the truck, but he spits on the ground near you and says, "Company Policy." He climbs back into the truck and drives away, your car sitting firmly on his truck. You look around the sudden silence and realize that now you're stuck in town with no car and no life. Then you realize that you're not even quite sure where the tow truck took your car. Just then there is a sudden boom of thunder and it starts raining. The rain is cold, so you turn up your collar and start walking home. At least you get to go to work again in a couple days...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You make it through the regular take-out for your dinner and realize that you ended up spending way more of your paycheck than you should have. Now you're full, so maybe you won't go out tonight...well, at least not yet. Sitting around for a bit, it's Friday night, so you're sure something good will be on TV. Later on you can worry about going out. You flip the channels and start to realize that even though you have something like 1,000 channels, there's really nothing on...nothing at all. You finally stop on some supposed reality show that's just made for laughs and embarrassing people. It's pretty bad, but you watch it all the same because it's better than watching re-runs of a game show from 20 years ago. As you zone out, suddenly you hear a tapping on your window. Yes, you're on the fourth floor, but one of your living room windows faces the walkway/balcony that loops around the outside of one side of the apartment building. You figure it was probably just the kids from upstairs messing with you, but then you hear the tapping once again. You could just turn the TV up, but you could go see who it is. > You check it Out... You look out the window and you see a man standing there in a long coat and dark hat. He stands in the shadows -- you swear there used to be a bright light there outside your window. He gestures for you to come to the door and waits. You open the door a crack, and you hear an old, cracked voice say, "I came to pick you up. You're supposed to come with me." He turns and starts walking towards the stairs.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk across the sidewalks and towards your apartment. You can feel the heat coming off all the cars that got to park closer to the building than you did because of that traffic. Most of the cars here are older cars, some with dents and cracked windows, just like yours. You'll earn enough one day to get a better car, you're sure of it, just not any time soon. You start up the stairs to your apartment. When you rented this place, the $200 discount for taking the fourth floor apartment seemed like a good idea. Of course, that was before you found out the apartment above you had kids, and you still had to walk up all these stairs because the elevator was at the other end of the building. Maybe you would win the lottery, then you could build your own house where you wanted it to be: and you weren't going to have any stairs in the entire house! You unlock your apartment and step inside. The air is pretty stale, since the management makes you pay if you leave the A/C on all day. You know without looking that the refrigerator has nothing but some old catchup. But hey, you did get paid today, so you're going to order some take-out! Just before you get to the phone to place an order, the phone starts ringing. > You answer the phone... You trudge over to the phone and pick it up. You say, "Road-kill grill: You kill 'em we grill 'em" (like you usually do). There is a moment of silence, then you hear a clearly computerized voice: "Now is the time. The location is 841 South Dergible Road. Do you copy?" You pause for a moment and wonder what this could be about. Finally you stutter, "I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number." The computerize voice replies, "No. This is a direct line. The message is clear: now is the time. The location is 841 Dergible Road. Again, do you copy?" "I... I... I don't know what you're talking about." "Repeating for the final time: now is the time. The location is 841 Dergible Road. Out." The line immediately goes dead. You are standing in your living room, staring at a dead phone. You try to get the last number off the phone, but it doesn't show having received any call in the last two days. The address that was mentioned is only a few blocks from your apartment...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Another day, another dollar," you think as you trudge out the door from your job. You really don't like working there, but at least they pay you...a little. Finally you've made it to the weekend, so you at least get to look forward to a couple days off from work. You get in your car and drive out of the parking lot at work only to come to an almost immediate stop as you hit the traffic. It is like this every day, but Fridays are always the worst. You reach to turn the radio on, but then remember that you still haven't had time (or money) to get that fixed. You look out the window and just see the line of cars moving slowly... Finally you get home, and you're hungry. You should have stopped for something on the way home, but you just wanted to get out of that traffic and out of the car. When you arrive at the apartment parking lot, you sigh when you realize that you're late, so everyone else will be parked in the good spots. You circle the building once before you give up and park in the "remote" lot. Hey, at least you're home and work is over. As you trudge towards your apartment building, you see a small brown box sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, right near where you parked. Looking around, you don't see anyone else at the moment. You can't tell if the box was left there on purpose, or if someone accidentally left it behind. > You open up the box and look inside it... You open the box and find a few items in it. There is nothing else in the box identifying the owner or source of the items.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You wake up in some dimly illuminated room with a damn headache, and the first thing you notice is that you are really thirsty. You also notice that you are not “in” the bed, but instead you are simply on top of it, dressed in a really creased gray suit, and apparently you didn’t even bother taking off your shoes. All of this makes you think “Fuck this, I’m never drinking that much alcohol again in my whole life”. But there seems to be something weird in this whole situation: You can’t remember what clubs did you visit last night, or what did you drink at them. Hell, you can’t even remember whether you went out last night or not (even if the answer to that question seems pretty obvious). And what is worse, you don’t have a clue about who the hell are you or where the hell is this place, now that you think about it. And since that’s really creepy, you think “Nah, this must be a dream, I’ll wake up soon enough and then I’ll laugh at my own stupidity”. But until you wake up from such a hateful dream, you should do something… “Hell no, there’s no reason to get up in such a hateful dream as this one, screw it” you think as you turn yourself to find a more comfortable position to sleep. You try to remember if you had seen some horror movie or whatever thing that could justify such a crappy dream, but you realize there’s no way to find something like that out without your memories. And while you keep thinking in these deep, sort of pointless, thoughts, you fall asleep again. And suddenly: Voice of a Man: “AAAAAAAAA Who are you and what the **** are you doing here?!” You: “Fuck! Who are you?” Man: “What the… You are sleeping in MY house and you dare asking me who am I?” You: “Eh… Well, yes… Why wouldn’t I do it? I don’t remember having ever seen you in my life. And who says this is your place?” Man: “… O.o… ¬¬ Get the hell out of here right now or I’ll call the police” > You try convincing him that you are just a poor human being lost, scared, and unsure :( You: “But… But… I can’t remember how did I make it to this place, or who am I, or… you are the only person that can help me! :(” Man: "How did a fucking junkie get in my house…?” You: “No! I swear it’s true! I can’t remember anything, if you kick me out of here I won’t even know where to go to :(” Man: “Well, I’ll hate myself for doing this later, but… Let’s say I believe you. What do you suggest I do? The only thing I can think of is that the police might know something about you. But you probably should just go straight to a psychiatrist… er… doctor. Or perhaps a hypnotist so you can do a regression, or however those are called. Actually, I know a hypnotist…” > The word 'Hypnotist' sounds cool and awesome, and possibly helpful here You tell him to call the hypnotist, and he suggests you go sit down in the living room while he finds the number and phones him. In the living room, you notice a black leather wallet that looks pretty badass, so you grab it thinking it might be yours, and open it. Inside it you find a bunch of cards and identifications, all of them with different names. Before you can think any more into it, the owner of the flat comes back and informs you that the hypnotist has some free time in 20 minutes, so you should get going. You ask the man if the wallet is yours. He says he’s never seen it in his life, so you put it in your right pocket, noticing right then and there that you also have a lighter in that pocket for some reason. The man must have been pretty happy about you leaving, because you got perfectly clear directions and reached the building where the hypnotist works in no time. Once you are in his “office”, he tells you to close your eyes, something about a brilliant white light surrounding you, and whatever else they use to make you fall asleep… I mean, enter in a trance It seems to have worked, because you have the feeling of having been asleep for a while now. You look at the hypnotist’s face, and notice he’s staring at you as if you were something weirder and more creepy than a pink-stripped white alien. You eventually gather enough courage to ask him what he got out of the session, and the hypnotist starts reading his notepad in a voice devoid of any emotions: “Firstly, you said you see yourself, aged 15, talking happily to some friends, until you all see a bunch of dragons flying over your heads and one of your friends say “Oh shit, I knew this town was fucked. How about we run?”, thing you all agree with. You run through the field and eventually take shelter in a castle. Soon after that, an army of angry dwarfs sieges the castle, and you have to fight them Next scene is about you running through a highschool filled with zombies, until you find your goal: The garden. You walk around there and notice the guy you hate sitting next to a beautiful well. You turn to walk in the opposite direction thinking “this guy isn’t going to mess with my day!”, but suddenly you stop and say: “then again, I doubt I’ll ever have a better chance of doing this...” You run up to him and kick him straight into the well, in a slow motion movement that is repeated from 3 different angles Now you are feeling really dizzy inside a hospital’s room, some blond guy is helping you out of there. He says his name is Dani, and that he wants to “save your ass”. He drags you through the hospital, and eventually gets you out of there and throws you inside a car. He then stops and lets you somewhere, telling you he’ll be in contact with you, and if you can’t find him, go to Decasibar Finally, you are at the first plant of a hotel with "some stereotyped characters, the kind you see in teenagers movies: The nerd, the evil tough guy who thinks highly of himself, the 2 blonde stupid girls who are best-est friends, the black man,the lonely bitch and the hot guy", in your own words. You all have to participate in a Battle Royale-like game, you see every single fucking death and give a long list of dark details I will *not* mention. In short, the friends kill the black guy, the tough guy kills the hotter one, then the friends deal with the loner, the nerd kills tough guy (thianks to his knowledge of horror movies, he knew exactly where was the guy going to attack him from, and he managed to shoot him through the door), the 2 friends kill each other by activating some trap and the nerd runs away A weird man armed with a giant wirecutter appears and tells you “Lots of people can’t appreciate their lives. But not you. Not anymore”, you answer “But I didn’t even do a thing, the nerd did kill someone, though”. He comments “Oh, you are honest. Now you’ve really won, he will live too… but first… You must pass a trial”. Apparently he wants to cut a finger off your left hand, you oppose the idea, and he says “LISTEN YOU IDIOT, IT’S YOUR FINGER OR YOUR LIFE”. So you nod, he cuts it and stores it in a plastic bag, and then bids farewell to you, smiling” You: “Eh… hehehe… I see...” Hypnotist: “Get out of here now before I call a psychiatric, you fucking piece of shit on crack” You: “Yeah, great idea” You run out of the building, in your hurry your wallet fell off your pocket -.- oh well, you are definitely not going back to the poor hypnotist. Not in a week, at least. That must have been tough on him. And hey, at least you still have the lighter, which is a golden, pretty cool-looking one. You walk in no direction until you see a bar in front of you. Called “Kasi bar”. Didn’t you say something that sounded like that in your insane rambling? Something about a Dani guy telling you to go there? Well, you won’t lose a thing for trying, will you? > You enter the Kasi bar You get in the bar, which at this time of the day (whatever it is) is nearly empty. You order a beer after telling the barman that “Dani recommended this place” and you are given one without any questions, which makes you happy (and worries you. Who the hell is Dani?) You sit down in a table by the darkest corner of the place and wonder if you should ask someone about Dani, although you are not sure about whether you can trust him or whether he'll be any helpful. But then again you got a free beer by just mentioning his name, which makes him cool :D Suddenly, asking someone else becomes unnecessary, since Dani, dressed in a yellow tracksuit with a couple of black lines that looks slightly familiar to you for a couple of seconds, enters the bar, looks at you, and says: Dani: “AAAH, that’s how I like it! You accepted my invitation!” You: “Eh… I'm sorry but… who are you?” Dani: “Bad memory? I got you out of the fuckin’ hospital where they were turning you into a mindless soldier with weird skills” You: “... What?” Dani: “You know, I know this is going to sound pretty strange to you, but it all started the day you met my sister. Fuckin’ girl is one of them… So they tracked you, and then you were posioned. But just like they expected you to do, you survived with no poisonin’ symptoms at all. So they went straight to phase 2, a.k.a “mix of random drugs that can be natural, artificial, or plain crap”. As in, they injected that shit in your blood” You: “HAHAHAHA yeah, sure” Dani: “I know right? it does sound fuckin' weird. Nearly as much as your rantin’s as I kicked your ass out of the hospital (they included dragons and bizarre murders, true story). But as I was sayin’, they injected you some new mix and waited to see what effect it’d have on ya, or if it’d simply kill ya. While they were at it, they used this little girl to erase your memories, just to make sure ya wouldn’t try escaping from the place out of nostalgic feelings for your previous life. Phase 3, ya never reached this one because I got ya out of the place. If you, my friend, had died, your corpse would have been disposed of. If you had survived but showed no signs of an ability, they’d prepare a new mix and retry. Finally, if ya got a new skill, they’d help you to control that ‘power’, and eventually ya would have been sent to do some missions.” You: “… Dude… There’s no way I’m believing that, and you know it, right?” Dani: “Of course I do, but I had to try :D Anyways, believe it or not, there’re at least 2 groups out there trying to find you: One of them wants to kill ya, since they have some funny “nothin’ gets out of here” policy, and the other one wants ya to join them (I dunno what are their plans, though)” You: “And how can you know that?” Dani: “Why, because their funny experiment on me gave me an attempt at being omniscient. I didn't get *THE* omniscience, but I got to know some useful things. For instance I may find a credit card and know its secret number right then and there, or I can know at any time where are some specific objects located, so I can have someone located if I want it. For instance, I could just stick a lighter into his pocket and whenever I want to talk to him I’ll just go to him and say ‘hey, have ya got a light?’” You: “Wait, that thing you just said…” Dani: “Yeah, ya don’t need omniscience to know the lighter in your pocket is mine. Sorry, I ain’t gonna get your memories or your previous life back, I just can’t do that. But we can end with the makers of weird people’s organization. The only reason why I hadn’t left the place until the day I got you outta there was that I knew perfectly well that there was no way I could finish them. That is, until your apparition in the picture, when at last I had an option :D So what’d ya say, will ya help me do this?” > You agree to help Dani You decide to help Dani, even if you don’t understand half the stuff he's just said Dani: “So yeah, in that case… I guess it’s time I help ya with that weird ability of yours… which will require you to drink some interestin’ thingy, and stuff. It’ll only be 3 or 4 hours worth of side effects and things will be much better for you after it :D” After taking the risk and drinking some blue liquid Dany was carrying around in a little bottle, you go through some hours of complete mental blackout (which started, by pure coincidence, I'm sure, right after you drank it), you feel… Absolutely nothing different. It’s already nighttime, though, so you assume Dani just lied to you and wasted your time. Dani: “No, no, you’ll notice soon enough. Way sooner than you’d expe-” You: “AAAAAA TRAITOR!!!!” *you get up and knock out the bastard who had silently walked up to you from behind and was about to hit you in the head with a baseball bat. With a single punch, too :O* Dani: “Yeah, that’s what I meant… Poor guy, I never mentioned you’d defend yourself :D your ability is, basically, anticipatin’ a dangerous situation and avoidin’ it in the best possible way by pure instinct. Although I guess we're gonna have to work on the 'Shoutin’ like a FUCKIN’ ALARM before doin’ it' part” You: “¬¬… Shut up and tell me how’s that thing going to change my life” Dani: “Well, in other words… Welcome to the Paranoid People Association :D” *silence* You: “Excuse me?” Dani: “Ya know how one of the types of paranoia is feelin’ as if you are bein’ chased or threatened by things or beings who are completely inoffensive. From now on, you’re gonna notice all kind of threats, varyin’ degrees of danger. Normal people will think you can’t trust anyone at all. However, callin’ ya ‘paranoid’ would be a big mistake: whenever you feel somethin’ bad is gonna happen to you, it’ll be because it really *is* gonna happen. But it will be fun, especially once you manage to block the unimportant warnings :D” Realizing that this Dani probably knows what is he talking about, and that asking more questions now is a waste of time you just nod and tell him to get his plan working, Dani takes you to his car and he drives you around the city until the hospital you two had apparently escaped from. Once in there, he tells you that he doesn’t trust your “wannabe alarm complex” and tells you that for the sake of both of you he’s going to have you gagged. You try to convince him that it won’t be necessary, then you rant about how that goes against the human rights, then you rant some more about random reasons against this, but Dani ignores you and tells you he will also tie your hands if you don’t stop saying stupid things. So you decide to shut up and let him do as he wished. Wait a second, why was this guy carrying a gag in his car? O.o Anyways, it’s easy for you two to reach the basement you two were heading to thanks to the fact that Dani knew where would the (few) guards be patrolling and your alarm-thing made you hide in a safe location (taking him with you) whenever you noticed someone coming in your direction (I guess Dani’s “they see you, they kill you” sayings really got to you, because you anticipated them *all*). After Dani enters the right access code, you find… nothing in there! (apparently). Well, there are a bunch of shelves, and boxes, and random stuff. One would say it’s an archive or a storage of some sort. Taking the gag off yourself (you’ll never admit it, but it was helpful), you ask “eh… didn’t you say we were going to kill these people?” Dani: “I said ‘end the makers of weird people’s organization’. Best way to do that is blowin’ their way of creatin’ them. You didn’t think I was gonna come here and kill everyone on sight did ya?” You: “Well, actually…” Dani: “Meh, who cares. They’re out there if ya want to try doin’ that, but I suggest you don’t bother, ‘cos you probably wouldn’t make it out of here alive with the shitload of weapons they have and, deep down, they ain’t that bad. Their recruitin’ and creatin’ agent ways ARE bad, but their goal is protectin’ the country and makin’ sure no one else has this ‘technology’. Actually, I’d consider joinin’ them again if they weren’t gonna shoot me a couple of times before saying hi due to this betrayal business. Which will becoe a damn big betrayal once I’m done here. So… will you help me? :D” > You ignore Dani's reasons and get your revenge You: “Nah, I’m not leaving without at least getting some answers out of the guys who forced me into this thing >.>” Dani: “Well, you see, I understand your feelings and all, but you are lookin' for 4 people: The one who created the system, he never even knew he had done it and he wouldn’t have used it again; the one who decided to use it to create this agency; the one who discovered the experiment could be done on you; and last but not least, the person who brought you here. You may or may not remember that the latter one is my sister. It ain’t like I really like her, although I don’t hate her either, but… I’m not letting ya kill her anyway :D” You: “Oh, and what can some guy who only knows a lot of random things do to stop me? As in, the person who can anticipate any dangerous situation, from doing whatever I want to?” Dani: “Apparently nothin’, right? Thing is, you are cool in my opinion, even if back then I was kinda scared of your ability. So I must say it once more: Don’t try anythin’ stupid. But you’re free to go find them if ya want, I doubt you’ll find my sister anyway, so it wouldn’t be that bad :D” > You follow Dani's advice and help him complete his plan You mumble something that sounds close to “screw them all” while Dani pulls out what seems to be a… shoe box (Seriously, how the hell does he hide all of that in a damn tracksuit?). He puts it in the middle of the room, opens it and… starts setting the bomb inside it to explode, it'd seem. You: “O.o Wait, you’ve been carrying a bomb next to me for all this time and I haven’t noticed a thing!?” Dani: ”Ya know, I could lie and say “Oh, no, this thing wasn’t dangerous at all because I knew perfectly well how to make it”. But even when I knew how to make it, and yes, I’ve done it on my own, I couldn’t guarantee that it’s 100% safe. So your paranoid ways should’ve noticed something, I’m sorry for this one detail… :D ” You: “… What are you talking about? ¬¬” Dani: “Remember that gap in your memory after you took my funny drink? Well, while ya were off, I gave you something else to limit your alarm-thing when it came to big explosions… and it might have had some side effects, but that’s irrelevant :D I have the antidote back in the car, anyway, then ya’ll be fine” You: “Alright… Damn smiling guy who trusts no one… ¬¬” Dani: “No, I do trust people, I just like making sure things work fine! :D” Dani sets the thing to explode in around 20 minutes, which is more than enough for you two to leave the place. Once again you have no problems thanks to the gag… I mean... you are glad you are never using that thing again. As you drink the transparent liquid Dani gives you once you’ve reached the car, you hear a pretty big explosion and some alarms, but most of the building seems to be alright, apparently. That makes your destructive side sad :( Dani: “There, there. We’ll have plenty of time to destroy stuff and blow building up if it comes to that. Now we are outta here and I'll deal with some unfinished business…” Dani drives to some big, pretty cool-looking house located in the other side of the city. He tells you to wait for him inside the car, since he’ll be back in 5 minutes. Indeed, he appears again exactly after 5 minutes, bringing a couple of CD’s he has apparently “borrowed” from the owner of the house. You: “What’s that supposed to be?” Dani: “Ah, nothing all that interesting… you still have that lighter with ya?” You give it to him, he burns the CD’s inside a trashcan, making sure there’s nothing but ashes left of them. Once he's happy about the results, he says “Well, everything’s done :D Now I suggest we get out of this city and do whatever we feel like doing. Because if we two work together, we can do pretty much anything :D” He is right, actually. You two will probably have fun for the rest of your life. And I’m not implying you two are gay, I tell ya. Lots of homophobic people out there. But hey, maybe you like that stuff and… Nah, Dani doesn’t feel like that about guys anyways :D. So just go and do whatever you feel like doing with your life. Congratulations on reaching the one I consider to be the “Best Ending”, Especially if you made it here on your first read. END > You try again? You wake up in some dimly illuminated room with a damn headache, and the first thing you notice is that you are really thirsty. You also notice that you are not “in” the bed, but instead you are simply on top of it, dressed in a really creased gray suit, and apparently you didn’t even bother taking off your shoes. All of this makes you think “Fuck this, I’m never drinking that much alcohol again in my whole life”. But there seems to be something weird in this whole situation: You can’t remember what clubs did you visit last night, or what did you drink at them. Hell, you can’t even remember whether you went out last night or not (even if the answer to that question seems pretty obvious). And what is worse, you don’t have a clue about who the hell are you or where the hell is this place, now that you think about it. And since that’s really creepy, you think “Nah, this must be a dream, I’ll wake up soon enough and then I’ll laugh at my own stupidity”. But until you wake up from such a hateful dream, you should do something… “Hell no, there’s no reason to get up in such a hateful dream as this one, screw it” you think as you turn yourself to find a more comfortable position to sleep. You try to remember if you had seen some horror movie or whatever thing that could justify such a crappy dream, but you realize there’s no way to find something like that out without your memories. And while you keep thinking in these deep, sort of pointless, thoughts, you fall asleep again. And suddenly: Voice of a Man: “AAAAAAAAA Who are you and what the **** are you doing here?!” You: “Fuck! Who are you?” Man: “What the… You are sleeping in MY house and you dare asking me who am I?” You: “Eh… Well, yes… Why wouldn’t I do it? I don’t remember having ever seen you in my life. And who says this is your place?” Man: “… O.o… ¬¬ Get the hell out of here right now or I’ll call the police”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You: “Nah, I’m not leaving without at least getting some answers out of the guys who forced me into this thing >.>” Dani: “Well, you see, I understand your feelings and all, but you are lookin' for 4 people: The one who created the system, he never even knew he had done it and he wouldn’t have used it again; the one who decided to use it to create this agency; the one who discovered the experiment could be done on you; and last but not least, the person who brought you here. You may or may not remember that the latter one is my sister. It ain’t like I really like her, although I don’t hate her either, but… I’m not letting ya kill her anyway :D” You: “Oh, and what can some guy who only knows a lot of random things do to stop me? As in, the person who can anticipate any dangerous situation, from doing whatever I want to?” Dani: “Apparently nothin’, right? Thing is, you are cool in my opinion, even if back then I was kinda scared of your ability. So I must say it once more: Don’t try anythin’ stupid. But you’re free to go find them if ya want, I doubt you’ll find my sister anyway, so it wouldn’t be that bad :D” > You choose a more radical approach to this thing You: “Well, good for you. So… Good luck” Dani: “Yeah… Same to you… Don’t go after my sister first, will ya :D” You: “O.o you are damn weird, you know… anyways, see you around” You get out of the room and run around the building for a while. You realize now that you didn’t ask Dani about the location of any of your 4 targets, and you also realize that wasn’t a smart move. Well, entering some office and interrogating whoever is inside it will probably be enough to find that out. Once you are in front of an office that seems to be currently occupied, you hear an explosion and an alarm goes off. You: 'Shit, Dani must have done something >.< And what the hell do I do now?' "AAAAAAARRRGGG!!!!" *running around some halls*” Suddenly, you feel really tired. Like, you literally faint. You wake up not knowing where are you, or who the hell are you, or how did you end up here anyway. You are told that you are the latest member of some elite group, and you’ll be a memeber of this group until you die or they let you go. You’ll never know that the reason you are alive right now and serving these guys instead of simply dead is a note Dani left near the place he had blown with some explosive device: “Hi, I brought the guy I got out of here back (mainly because he didn’t feel like helping me destroy your twisted system in a quiet way). He doesn’t remember a thing about me. Actually, he doesn’t remember anything at all. So he’s not worth killing, I tell you. Besides, he is a cool guy with some nice skill :D” Well, if you don't think about the manipulation being done on you (and you can't really do it, since you don't know about it), at least you are working in a pretty interesting organization. It's not too bad of an ending for you, even if there are better ones out there END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You get in the bar, which at this time of the day (whatever it is) is nearly empty. You order a beer after telling the barman that “Dani recommended this place” and you are given one without any questions, which makes you happy (and worries you. Who the hell is Dani?) You sit down in a table by the darkest corner of the place and wonder if you should ask someone about Dani, although you are not sure about whether you can trust him or whether he'll be any helpful. But then again you got a free beer by just mentioning his name, which makes him cool :D Suddenly, asking someone else becomes unnecessary, since Dani, dressed in a yellow tracksuit with a couple of black lines that looks slightly familiar to you for a couple of seconds, enters the bar, looks at you, and says: Dani: “AAAH, that’s how I like it! You accepted my invitation!” You: “Eh… I'm sorry but… who are you?” Dani: “Bad memory? I got you out of the fuckin’ hospital where they were turning you into a mindless soldier with weird skills” You: “... What?” Dani: “You know, I know this is going to sound pretty strange to you, but it all started the day you met my sister. Fuckin’ girl is one of them… So they tracked you, and then you were posioned. But just like they expected you to do, you survived with no poisonin’ symptoms at all. So they went straight to phase 2, a.k.a “mix of random drugs that can be natural, artificial, or plain crap”. As in, they injected that shit in your blood” You: “HAHAHAHA yeah, sure” Dani: “I know right? it does sound fuckin' weird. Nearly as much as your rantin’s as I kicked your ass out of the hospital (they included dragons and bizarre murders, true story). But as I was sayin’, they injected you some new mix and waited to see what effect it’d have on ya, or if it’d simply kill ya. While they were at it, they used this little girl to erase your memories, just to make sure ya wouldn’t try escaping from the place out of nostalgic feelings for your previous life. Phase 3, ya never reached this one because I got ya out of the place. If you, my friend, had died, your corpse would have been disposed of. If you had survived but showed no signs of an ability, they’d prepare a new mix and retry. Finally, if ya got a new skill, they’d help you to control that ‘power’, and eventually ya would have been sent to do some missions.” You: “… Dude… There’s no way I’m believing that, and you know it, right?” Dani: “Of course I do, but I had to try :D Anyways, believe it or not, there’re at least 2 groups out there trying to find you: One of them wants to kill ya, since they have some funny “nothin’ gets out of here” policy, and the other one wants ya to join them (I dunno what are their plans, though)” You: “And how can you know that?” Dani: “Why, because their funny experiment on me gave me an attempt at being omniscient. I didn't get *THE* omniscience, but I got to know some useful things. For instance I may find a credit card and know its secret number right then and there, or I can know at any time where are some specific objects located, so I can have someone located if I want it. For instance, I could just stick a lighter into his pocket and whenever I want to talk to him I’ll just go to him and say ‘hey, have ya got a light?’” You: “Wait, that thing you just said…” Dani: “Yeah, ya don’t need omniscience to know the lighter in your pocket is mine. Sorry, I ain’t gonna get your memories or your previous life back, I just can’t do that. But we can end with the makers of weird people’s organization. The only reason why I hadn’t left the place until the day I got you outta there was that I knew perfectly well that there was no way I could finish them. That is, until your apparition in the picture, when at last I had an option :D So what’d ya say, will ya help me do this?” > You refuse to help him You: “Meh, not interested” Dani: “Oh well, you fucked my plan. Whatever, I’ll have to find someone else one of these days… I suggest ya get out of this city as soon as possible, they’re looking for us around here because it’s the only place where we could be that they can think of :D And that’s about it, I suggest you never get anywhere near a psychiatrist” You: “What?” Dani: “Nah, nothing, I’m outta here… By the way, take this *he hands you some car keys*. Ya know, blue car parked right in front of the bar. Take care, maybe if you’re still alive I’ll go find you some day :D” *he leaves* You suppose he’s right, so you take the car keys and enter the car… which surprisingly DOESN’T explode after you start its engine, as you assumed it’d happen (Seriously, what kind of guy would give you a car when you’ve only known him for 20 minutes?) Well, you’ll have time to think about that and many other things, like what to do with your life. You’ll probably end up slightly insane, as Dani seemed to hint with the psychiatrist part, but who knows, you might actually survive somehow END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You: “But… But… I can’t remember how did I make it to this place, or who am I, or… you are the only person that can help me! :(” Man: "How did a fucking junkie get in my house…?” You: “No! I swear it’s true! I can’t remember anything, if you kick me out of here I won’t even know where to go to :(” Man: “Well, I’ll hate myself for doing this later, but… Let’s say I believe you. What do you suggest I do? The only thing I can think of is that the police might know something about you. But you probably should just go straight to a psychiatrist… er… doctor. Or perhaps a hypnotist so you can do a regression, or however those are called. Actually, I know a hypnotist…” > The police might be helpful for once! This man clearly wants to get rid of you, so 5 minutes later you have been given clear instructions to reach the closest police department, being wished “good luck” and had the door locked right behind you as you left the flat. You walk towards the police department as fast as you can because the whole “I can’t remember a thing” is freaking you out. Wait, maybe the thing that’s freaking you out is that man dressed in a dark blue suit who is following you. Isn’t he? “Damn, someone traded my memories for a DAMN MENTAL ILLNESS CALLED PARANOIA”, you think > You keep walking not giving a damn, it's probably nothing “Whatever, I'm freaking out for nothing. Screw him if he’s following me, let him run and chase me and interrogate me if that’s his intention", you think as you keep walking. For some reason I think you wouldn’t have thought that way before having your memories erased. I’m not sure what would you have thought, but not that, certainly; whatever, let’s go back to the interesting thing. You reach the Police Department with no problems at all, so you suppose your “pursuer” simply happened to have the same route as you. After some minutes thinking on what the hell are you going to tell the police officer in front of you, and noticing that you don’t even have a wallet or some sort of identification, or money, or ANYTHING (except for a cool-looking lighter stored in your right pocket), you decide a serious approach will be the best way to finish this. Problem is, taking “a serious approach” is complicated in your current position: You: “Hi, do you think you could you help me with some problem I have?” She: “What is it?” You: “Thing is… I’m really… disoriented… I’ve woken up in a house I didn’t know, with no identifications or anything, and I can’t remember anything about myself. The owner of the place didn’t recognize me, but he suggested I came here” She: “Well… Eh… I think it’s the first time I’ve heard something like that. Be honest: Are you on drugs and/or alcohol?” You: “O.o… No, not that I can remember… Why does everyone ask me that question?” After a while, she informs you that they have no reports of any missing person who might fit your description. She also says that an investigation to find out who are you may start if you wish so, and while they are at it you could go see a psychiatrist or they could give you a new, temporal identity and some money so you can go and do something useful, you fucking junkie (alright, she doesn’t use those words, but that’s the impression you get, anyways) > You decide to go to a psychiatrist until the investigation is over Seeing a psychiatrist and waiting for the police to fix your problems sounded well. During a week you slept in a room the police lent you (out of pity) that was located in the police department and went to see the psychiatrist. The bad thing is, this “doctor” wasn’t exactly the best in his promotion, because after some sessions in which he found absolutely nothing, he decided to send you straight to a mental asylum, saying you had some sort of “schizoidal paranoia” that had been provoked by the prolonged usage of toxic substances, or something like that. Well, maybe it’s your paranoia what makes you think he’s making all of that up, but you’ll never be sure of that, HAHAHAHA So you complained to the police, you asked for a new doctor… but no, the Fucking psychiatrist had the labs analyze a sample of your blood he took during your first session and in there he found a combination of toxic stuff that could be a worthy opponent to whatever is on Keith Richards’s blood, so no one believed you. At the present time, a cop has come and told you a van from the “medical center” is about to arrive to take you to your new location, leaving the room right after informing you. And he didn’t lock the door! This may be your last chance of escaping your fate at the mental asylum, although being back out on the streets with no memories, home, or anything sounds pretty bad, too. Not to mention, the stupid psychiatrist would probably say that you’re a dangerous individual and must be terminated > You trying to escape is not worth the risk, let's just go to the Psychiatric Hospital Two nice guys enter your room, introduce themselves, and tell you everything is going to be ok. They lead you to a van, and once in front of it, your (unconfirmed) paranoia tells you getting in the van will be bad. REALLY BAD. You: “AAAAAAAAAA let me go back to my room!!!” *turning and starting to run back towards the building* Man #1: *grabbing you* “Oh, I thought we wouldn’t have to do this for once!” Man #2: *forcing you into a straitjacket and pushing you into the van* “Nah, it happens everytime… Shame, he seemed to be pretty relaxed a moment ago” Man #1: “you can never trust these guys…” They lock you inside the van, letting the straitjacket on you. You still think something bad is going to happen, but understanding that no matter how much you cry they won’t give a damn, you shut up as the driver and the other guy talk happily. Your paranoia, however, turns out to be right. As the 2 assholes who were sent to pick you up keep on talking like… assholes… the one driving doesn’t pay enough attention to the traffic and you all end up crashing into a truck You all die pretty quickly, which is obviously quite bad for you END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Seeing a psychiatrist and waiting for the police to fix your problems sounded well. During a week you slept in a room the police lent you (out of pity) that was located in the police department and went to see the psychiatrist. The bad thing is, this “doctor” wasn’t exactly the best in his promotion, because after some sessions in which he found absolutely nothing, he decided to send you straight to a mental asylum, saying you had some sort of “schizoidal paranoia” that had been provoked by the prolonged usage of toxic substances, or something like that. Well, maybe it’s your paranoia what makes you think he’s making all of that up, but you’ll never be sure of that, HAHAHAHA So you complained to the police, you asked for a new doctor… but no, the Fucking psychiatrist had the labs analyze a sample of your blood he took during your first session and in there he found a combination of toxic stuff that could be a worthy opponent to whatever is on Keith Richards’s blood, so no one believed you. At the present time, a cop has come and told you a van from the “medical center” is about to arrive to take you to your new location, leaving the room right after informing you. And he didn’t lock the door! This may be your last chance of escaping your fate at the mental asylum, although being back out on the streets with no memories, home, or anything sounds pretty bad, too. Not to mention, the stupid psychiatrist would probably say that you’re a dangerous individual and must be terminated > No way, anything is better than a Mental asylum, you have to escape! 20 seconds after the cop’s departure, you silently get out of the room and move through some corridors. Leaving through the main door when we all know someone’s coming to get you sounds pretty retarded, so you decide to hide inside the women’s toilets, pretty close to a row of people waiting for who knows what. You hear some noise 5 minutes later, but no cops come anywhere close to your hiding place. When the place goes back to normal, you leave the toilets and run to the emergency exit, leaving the building through it. Funny how you found an emergency exit, especially one that wasn’t even remotely guarded, you know… You ask the first person you see the road to the closest bus station. Once you get there, you steal a wallet off some stupid tourist, grab all of his money, and buy a ticket for the first bus leaving the city. You also say that you found this wallet on a bank in the station (such a nice guy you are, eh ;) ) Once in the bus, you recall how extremely easy robbing was for you, maybe you could do this to survive. Like, you might even have been a robber before the incident, because that was easier that saying your own name (eh… wait, I can’t really use this comparisson effectively with you) “Meh, whatever”, you think, “as soon as I get to wherever this bus is taking me to, I’ll make those cops regret not having found my identity and decide sending me to a mental asylum by becoming the best robber in the district, hahahaha” Yes, you will do that… For some reason, you have a feeling that your attempt won’t go that badly, but that’s another tale. Congratulations on being alive, even if this isn't the best possible ending END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Whatever, I'm freaking out for nothing. Screw him if he’s following me, let him run and chase me and interrogate me if that’s his intention", you think as you keep walking. For some reason I think you wouldn’t have thought that way before having your memories erased. I’m not sure what would you have thought, but not that, certainly; whatever, let’s go back to the interesting thing. You reach the Police Department with no problems at all, so you suppose your “pursuer” simply happened to have the same route as you. After some minutes thinking on what the hell are you going to tell the police officer in front of you, and noticing that you don’t even have a wallet or some sort of identification, or money, or ANYTHING (except for a cool-looking lighter stored in your right pocket), you decide a serious approach will be the best way to finish this. Problem is, taking “a serious approach” is complicated in your current position: You: “Hi, do you think you could you help me with some problem I have?” She: “What is it?” You: “Thing is… I’m really… disoriented… I’ve woken up in a house I didn’t know, with no identifications or anything, and I can’t remember anything about myself. The owner of the place didn’t recognize me, but he suggested I came here” She: “Well… Eh… I think it’s the first time I’ve heard something like that. Be honest: Are you on drugs and/or alcohol?” You: “O.o… No, not that I can remember… Why does everyone ask me that question?” After a while, she informs you that they have no reports of any missing person who might fit your description. She also says that an investigation to find out who are you may start if you wish so, and while they are at it you could go see a psychiatrist or they could give you a new, temporal identity and some money so you can go and do something useful, you fucking junkie (alright, she doesn’t use those words, but that’s the impression you get, anyways) > You get a new identity until the investigation is over You think the prospect of answering random questions a man asks you sounds too similar to going back to school for your liking, so you accept a new identity and the police lends you a crappy spare room they have in the department (until you find something better or die, probably). They suggest you ask for a job at some places marked in a list titled (although crossed out now) “local businessmen who employ ex-cons”. None of them sound particularly appealing to you, so you close your eyes and randomly choose one, which happens to be some “scrap metal” business You know, maybe the salary isn’t great (it’s around the same amount as the one you pay monthly for your newly acquired crappy apartment), but removing pieces of cars is funny, and after some time you might have learned enough to get a new job at a better place, a workshop or something. Well, that’ll depend entirely on you and how much does this thing really interest you. Of course, the police never found out anything about who were you supposed to be. But hey, you can’t really miss something you can’t remember, right? END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Whatever, I'm freaking out for nothing. Screw him if he’s following me, let him run and chase me and interrogate me if that’s his intention", you think as you keep walking. For some reason I think you wouldn’t have thought that way before having your memories erased. I’m not sure what would you have thought, but not that, certainly; whatever, let’s go back to the interesting thing. You reach the Police Department with no problems at all, so you suppose your “pursuer” simply happened to have the same route as you. After some minutes thinking on what the hell are you going to tell the police officer in front of you, and noticing that you don’t even have a wallet or some sort of identification, or money, or ANYTHING (except for a cool-looking lighter stored in your right pocket), you decide a serious approach will be the best way to finish this. Problem is, taking “a serious approach” is complicated in your current position: You: “Hi, do you think you could you help me with some problem I have?” She: “What is it?” You: “Thing is… I’m really… disoriented… I’ve woken up in a house I didn’t know, with no identifications or anything, and I can’t remember anything about myself. The owner of the place didn’t recognize me, but he suggested I came here” She: “Well… Eh… I think it’s the first time I’ve heard something like that. Be honest: Are you on drugs and/or alcohol?” You: “O.o… No, not that I can remember… Why does everyone ask me that question?” After a while, she informs you that they have no reports of any missing person who might fit your description. She also says that an investigation to find out who are you may start if you wish so, and while they are at it you could go see a psychiatrist or they could give you a new, temporal identity and some money so you can go and do something useful, you fucking junkie (alright, she doesn’t use those words, but that’s the impression you get, anyways) > You decide the Police is useless here and try going somewhere else You were wise choosing not to trust the police. Or perhaps you weren't, who knows :D Anyways, you feel that you can’t trust them to really help you on this matter, and before they can ask you more questions, you walk out of the building. Soon after leaving, a blond 20 year-old guy walks up to you and asks you if you've got a light. You do have a lighter, indeed (although you don’t really know why), so you lend it to him. As he starts smoking, you wonder why would you keep a lighter and not a wallet, and you think you’ve been quite stupid to leave the flat without thinking on *that* detail. Guy: *as he smokes* “Yeah, it certainly has been an stupid movement by your part, but you shouldn’t really feel guilty about it. You’re fucking confused right now, after all” You: “Uh? What did you say?” Guy: *giving you the lighter back* “Me? No, nothing. But you seem kinda cool, come meet me later at the Kasi bar. You only have to go straight ahead in that direction, you’ll see it easily. Tell them Dani told you to go and have something to drink. See you there!” *running away*. Well, booze probably brought you to this situation, and when you have a drinking problem drinking more is rarely the way to fix it. On the other hand, this Dani has invited you to go, and it’s very rude to ignore an invitation, especially when you have NO MONEY AT ALL with you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> This man clearly wants to get rid of you, so 5 minutes later you have been given clear instructions to reach the closest police department, being wished “good luck” and had the door locked right behind you as you left the flat. You walk towards the police department as fast as you can because the whole “I can’t remember a thing” is freaking you out. Wait, maybe the thing that’s freaking you out is that man dressed in a dark blue suit who is following you. Isn’t he? “Damn, someone traded my memories for a DAMN MENTAL ILLNESS CALLED PARANOIA”, you think > You stop and run back to face your possible pursuer You turn around and walk up to the dark-blue-suited man, who at this particular moment seemed to be really interested in the clothes of a random shop. You: “Hey, why are you following me?” He: “Hmm now that you mention it… yes, I’ve been following you” You: “Damn, I’ve already noticed that, now can you answer my question and tell me why?” He: “Well… the fact that you are here talking to me instead of running away implies that you don’t remember us. Which puts me in a moral dilemma because, you know, I’ve been sent to kill you because you escaped our operation base knowing who we are. But it’s obvious you don’t really know it. But shit, I've just told you that…” You: “wait, what? O.o” He: “Ah, shit, I’ll have to kill you” > You punch him in the face and Try to escape You punch him and turn to run as fast as you can to try getting him off your heels Your move apparently caught him off-guard, and this has given you a small distance, but you should choose where to go to, quickly. You may try running straight ahead the street you are at, which is pretty big and crowded, hoping the man will not start shooting everything on sight to get you, or turning to one of the smaller streets left, with less people and probably better places to hide at > You run down the main street You run. You run like a damn paranoid being escaping from some unknown thing… wait, that’s pretty much what you are. Your follower has apparently gotten lost somewhere on the way. Good for you (I guess)<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You punch him and turn to run as fast as you can to try getting him off your heels Your move apparently caught him off-guard, and this has given you a small distance, but you should choose where to go to, quickly. You may try running straight ahead the street you are at, which is pretty big and crowded, hoping the man will not start shooting everything on sight to get you, or turning to one of the smaller streets left, with less people and probably better places to hide at > You try the side streets Well, that was a bad move. Sure they were smaller streets, but since there weren't enough people complicating his task, the suited man managed to follow you all the way to a dead end where no one else was present, shooting you dead right there without any more ceremonies Ouch :( END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You turn around and walk up to the dark-blue-suited man, who at this particular moment seemed to be really interested in the clothes of a random shop. You: “Hey, why are you following me?” He: “Hmm now that you mention it… yes, I’ve been following you” You: “Damn, I’ve already noticed that, now can you answer my question and tell me why?” He: “Well… the fact that you are here talking to me instead of running away implies that you don’t remember us. Which puts me in a moral dilemma because, you know, I’ve been sent to kill you because you escaped our operation base knowing who we are. But it’s obvious you don’t really know it. But shit, I've just told you that…” You: “wait, what? O.o” He: “Ah, shit, I’ll have to kill you” > You try to negotiate with him You: “Wait a second! You don’t have to kill me, I don’t even know what are you talking about, what’s this thing about me having escaped, anyways?” He: “Hey, what can I do? I have my orders” You: “Hell if I know… take me back to the place from where I escaped, for instance?” He: “Well, that sound like a good idea, yeah” He leads you to his car and once there he drives you to who knows where, which seems to be at least in the other side of the city. During the relatively short journey you wonder what’s the deal with this guy, since he is supposed to kill you but doesn’t even seem to know you or be all that smart to start with. Like, it was you who suggested going back “there”, so maybe if you had said “just let me go” he might have gone and done that. And now that you think it, it certainly would have been easy to lose him in the streets of that city. Ah well, no sense crying now. You get out of the car accompanied by the man, and notice that you are standing in front of what appears to be a huge hospital. You realize that once you go in there, there’s no coming back, but at the same time you understand that right now you can’t do anything else other than going in there or dying, which is bad >.< You enter the “hospital” and the suited man leads you to some office in there. After knocking on the door and having a brief conversation with whoever is behind the door, you are eventually told to come in (the damn psycho didn’t take his eyes off you for a second while you were out there >.<). Once in the room, you see a dark-haired woman in her early thirties who looks like she’s damn bored, who is sitting in front of a laptop writing something. She: “So... you can’t remember anything, right?” You: “Exactly” She: “You see, we applied some… experimental treatment on you while we were in this very hospital, and before that you accepted to work under us. When you accepted that, you knew you were accepting to work for us or we would have to kill you” You: 'I don’t really think I would have accepted an agreement under those terms, but what can I do' “I see” She: “However, you escaped somehow before the treatment was over, and it’s true that we think you might have been helped to escape, or even forced to do so by some outsider. That’s why we are going to allow you to join us again in the same terms” You: “So I either join you with no chance of leaving or…?” She: “you die, obviously. That doesn’t mean you are a prisoner here or that you’ll never get out of here in the future” You: “Well… I suppose I have no choice…” Let’s say you’re now part of a special group with strange and useful powers (or something) that were “awakened” by an injection of drugs, toxic artificial things and who knows what else straight into your blood (as a mere agent, no one is going to explain the whole process to you). You are not really sure if you’ll be working under the good guys or the bad guys, and right now you don’t even know what’s your “power” (as much as that woman tells you that it’s obvious that you have one and you probably have already exhibited it spontaneously). Oh well, at least it sounds like this might be funny xD Well, as far as endings go, this could have been much worse, congrats! END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ah the basement. The refuge of all who refuse to move out of the house for whatever reason. Some of them are dreamers who just can’t fit into proper society. Some of them have potential, but due to personality quirks fame has escaped them. And finally 99% of them are just downright pathetic losers that just fail at life. So choose one of these basement dwellers and enjoy the desperation and horror of their tales! You may come to find that they are just like you. In fact chances are, you’ll think someone wrote a biography about you! > The Ebay Escapist (This one's for the classic randomness!) You wake up and dread the fact that you’ve entered the real world again. The dream world will have to wait until later. You don’t like real world, never have. It’s why you like to sleep. It allows you to get away from the reality for a little while. It’s also why you prefer to hang out on your computer all night and day. It’s not really because you’re afraid of the real world, it’s just that you don’t have that much interest in it. Sometimes it can be fascinating, but over all you just find it to be involve so much boring tedium that you’d prefer to remove yourself as much as you can from it. It’s also probably why you’re over 18 and still living at home. You’re a basement dweller. Fortunately you’re one of the productive ones. You contribute to the household by buying and selling useless shit on Ebay. Unfortunately this is still “work” and as a result, it’s a hassle so you probably don’t put as much effort as you should into it. In fact you’re more inclined to keep the stuff you buy due to your interest in odd things. Despite your limiting of outside world contact, you can’t help but feel like something different is going to happen today. You start daydreaming about possible things that could happen to you until you quickly snap yourself out of it. As much as you’d like to waste time daydreaming, playing video games or other time wasting activities on the internet, you probably should go to “work.” Well don’t just sit there with a thumb up your ass, you gonna buy useless shit, or sell it? > You buy useless shit You decide to buy more useless shit. You can never have enough, you fuckin’ obsessed pack rat. Okay well some of this shit isn’t useless, and might even do you some good. Certain items catch your eye. You see a car that’s made completely out of asbestos! How cool would that be? You could drive through fire and be none the worse for wear! True you rarely go out anymore, but maybe this would be the thing that could do it! You see a bomb shelter for sale made of xentronium armor. Could be useful in these dangerous times we live in and it’ll definitely provide you more protection than the basement. There’s a small island made of Styrofoam in the middle of the ocean. It says it’s held together by hemp. While you’ve never been one for the beaches and sun, you wonder if you could rent it out some how. Maybe movie producers would pay you to use it or something. Actually perhaps something more practical might be good, there’s some toilet paper for sale. You know you always need that! Finally, you see a building for sale; it doesn’t really give a description. It just says “Generic Gray Building” It might be a good thing to invest in since you’re getting tired of hearing your Mom’s moans of ecstasy at night when she’s masturbating with her 400 horse powered vibrator. A place of your own might be in order. > You buy the car! It's Asbestoriffic! The car! You gotta get the car! As much as you don’t fit in to society, you still have urges, and even you think that having a real life girl would be better than wackin’ it every once in awhile You figure you might get a girlfriend if you get a car. After all chicks like cars right? Not so fast there, asbestos boy. You gotta buy it first and a few other people seem to have the same “great idea” you have. Eventually the bidding war is won by you, for an even $5000. There goes all the money you have in the world. You’re probably going to have to sell your prized Harlequin Baby Art Collection to make that money back, but who can put a price on the endless supply of pussy you’ll be getting from this cool car? Eventually the car arrives outside your house along with keys and an instruction booklet on your doorstep saying “READ ME FIRST!” on the front cover. Guess they really want you to read the instructions first. > You read the instructions Well you didn’t get to be a basement dweller by being adventurous so you read the instructions first. Good thing too, there’ a bunch of safety precautions to the car. Namely due to the extremely high levels of asbestos in the car, going in it without a hazmat suit would be fatal. Fortunately you just happen to have one. Unfortunately you only have one, which means that any lady that’s remotely impressed by it won’t be able to get in the thing without dying shortly thereafter. So unless you plan on becoming a necrophiliac, you have to come up with a new plan. (Though becoming a necrophiliac is plan B) As you’re suiting up, you think about how you’re going to impress possible ladies with the car, without actually letting them get in it. You got it! A stunt! Chicks like daredevils right? You got a bunch of compost in the backyard, A LOT. You get the idea to take that compost and put it in the middle of the street, set it on fire and then drive through it! Enthusiastically you start grabbing compost and going through with your plan. It probably would’ve been a better idea to at least use a fuckin’ SHOVEL on the compost instead of picking it up with your fuckin’ hands you silly motherfucker. Oh well at least you’re wearing a hazmat suit Anyway you smell REALLY awful and you’ve just made the entire block smell that way too, when you light it on fire. This act has finally come to the attention of all the neighbors who are giving you holy hell about it. “Jesus fucking Christ! It smells like a dead bum who just sprayed diarrhea on himself during a heat wave!” one of them shouts. An angry mob is starting to form… > You escape in your car Realizing you can’t possibly calm them down or fight them, you quickly get in the car and start it. The car belches toxic fumes of its own causing the mob to back off a little as they begin to puke and and tear up from all the foulness in the air. The shortest way to escape is through the burning compost. So part of you hopes that between the puking and tears that some of the cuter chicks on the block will still see your stunt You barrel down the flaming compost pile… SPLUNGE You don’t quite make it! It seems you made the compost pile a little too thick and even at the high speed you were going the car couldn’t quite make it all the way through. Instead you got struck right in the middle of the compost until it enveloped you completely, effectively trapping you. Fortunately the car is made of asbestos so you’re protected from getting burned to death. Unfortunately the car still runs on gasoline… Your car explodes spectacularly throwing hot shit and asbestos pieces everywhere, not to mention killing many of the mob that were already in a state of extreme sickness at this point. The whole block is later quarantined and treated as a biohazard dump. You of course died instantly, BUT you did get your wish! You made front page news and became a sex symbol for lonely necrophiliac women who thought you were so cool for dying in your car like that.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well you didn’t get to be a basement dweller by being adventurous so you read the instructions first. Good thing too, there’ a bunch of safety precautions to the car. Namely due to the extremely high levels of asbestos in the car, going in it without a hazmat suit would be fatal. Fortunately you just happen to have one. Unfortunately you only have one, which means that any lady that’s remotely impressed by it won’t be able to get in the thing without dying shortly thereafter. So unless you plan on becoming a necrophiliac, you have to come up with a new plan. (Though becoming a necrophiliac is plan B) As you’re suiting up, you think about how you’re going to impress possible ladies with the car, without actually letting them get in it. You got it! A stunt! Chicks like daredevils right? You got a bunch of compost in the backyard, A LOT. You get the idea to take that compost and put it in the middle of the street, set it on fire and then drive through it! Enthusiastically you start grabbing compost and going through with your plan. It probably would’ve been a better idea to at least use a fuckin’ SHOVEL on the compost instead of picking it up with your fuckin’ hands you silly motherfucker. Oh well at least you’re wearing a hazmat suit Anyway you smell REALLY awful and you’ve just made the entire block smell that way too, when you light it on fire. This act has finally come to the attention of all the neighbors who are giving you holy hell about it. “Jesus fucking Christ! It smells like a dead bum who just sprayed diarrhea on himself during a heat wave!” one of them shouts. An angry mob is starting to form… > You calm the mob down You attempt to calm the mob down; by saying this’ll be the coolest stunt ever! The mob disagrees and proceeds to disagree with you in a physical way! They smash you in the head with a few bricks and frog stomp you, then they take some of the compost (Using a shovel) and cover you with shit. Then they proceed to destroy your car. The jokes on them though! By pounding and beating on the car they cause a lot of asbestos flakes and dust to go flying into the air which they breathe in, since there’s a lot of heavy breathing going on. (It IS a tiring job after all) They all eventually get cancer from breathing in this toxic substance and die. Of course you don’t get any enjoyment from any of this, because you’re in a coma.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The car! You gotta get the car! As much as you don’t fit in to society, you still have urges, and even you think that having a real life girl would be better than wackin’ it every once in awhile You figure you might get a girlfriend if you get a car. After all chicks like cars right? Not so fast there, asbestos boy. You gotta buy it first and a few other people seem to have the same “great idea” you have. Eventually the bidding war is won by you, for an even $5000. There goes all the money you have in the world. You’re probably going to have to sell your prized Harlequin Baby Art Collection to make that money back, but who can put a price on the endless supply of pussy you’ll be getting from this cool car? Eventually the car arrives outside your house along with keys and an instruction booklet on your doorstep saying “READ ME FIRST!” on the front cover. Guess they really want you to read the instructions first. > You go check out the car You figure you can read the instructions later, you decide to check out the car first. The whole point of buying the car was to impress women so you’re in a hurry to do that. The car is a nice white gray color and looks like a 50s type car. It’s so well designed that you almost can’t tell that it’s made out of asbestos. You get in the car and breathe deeply to get that new car smell. And promptly fall over dead! Asbestos causes cancer you fuckin’ moron and your car is overflowing with the stuff! Well the only good thing is it was so toxic that the “sickness process” was accelerated by 200 and killed you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to buy more useless shit. You can never have enough, you fuckin’ obsessed pack rat. Okay well some of this shit isn’t useless, and might even do you some good. Certain items catch your eye. You see a car that’s made completely out of asbestos! How cool would that be? You could drive through fire and be none the worse for wear! True you rarely go out anymore, but maybe this would be the thing that could do it! You see a bomb shelter for sale made of xentronium armor. Could be useful in these dangerous times we live in and it’ll definitely provide you more protection than the basement. There’s a small island made of Styrofoam in the middle of the ocean. It says it’s held together by hemp. While you’ve never been one for the beaches and sun, you wonder if you could rent it out some how. Maybe movie producers would pay you to use it or something. Actually perhaps something more practical might be good, there’s some toilet paper for sale. You know you always need that! Finally, you see a building for sale; it doesn’t really give a description. It just says “Generic Gray Building” It might be a good thing to invest in since you’re getting tired of hearing your Mom’s moans of ecstasy at night when she’s masturbating with her 400 horse powered vibrator. A place of your own might be in order. > You buy the bomb shelter! Duck and cover! Erm, it’s like $500,000. You can’t buy it, because you’re too damn poor. Even if you sold all your stuff you still wouldn’t have enough. Your Mom might have it, but you’d have to beg for it and your Mom’s usually not pleased with you at the best of times. > You beg Mom You beg Mom for money, but she’s in no mood to listen to you. In fact she’s pretty pissed off at you even thinking that she’d go for this idea. You REALLY want that bomb shelter though. You NEED it. You know the END is coming soon, so you decide to do something desperate. > You threaten your mom in exchange for money You grab your Limited Edition Red Ryder BB Gun and attempt to threaten mom in a less than effective manner. She doesn’t know whether to slap you or laugh at you at this point. ”Boy, I hope you’ve been doing some good drugs to excuse this behavior because I’m this close to throwing your ass out, you’re lucky I haven’t done it sooner.” She replies. “Mom, if you know what’s good for you, you better gimme what I want! The end is coming soon and I need that money to save us!” you say still pointing your gun at her. Your Mom is silent for a moment and then speaks. “Well since you put it that way…” Mom wasn’t in the marines to sit around and look pretty. She easily disarms you, punches you in both eyes, kicks you in the nuts three times and throws you out of the house! As you lay in the gutter pondering your poor judgment, you think “The joke’s on her, here come the bombs now!” You and 3/4ths of the Earth’s population are vaporized in a nuclear fireball death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You beg Mom for money, but she’s in no mood to listen to you. In fact she’s pretty pissed off at you even thinking that she’d go for this idea. You REALLY want that bomb shelter though. You NEED it. You know the END is coming soon, so you decide to do something desperate. > You offer your mom sex in exchange for money Uh…no. That doesn’t happen! (Sicko!) Instead of THAT, you just beg you Mom harder for the money. Out of pity and to stop your whining, she gives you the money from her Swiss bank account and you buy the bomb shelter. You receive the location and keys soon afterwards Soon just before the nuclear bombs start dropping, you and your Mom head to the shelter where you remain safe and live for years. Over the years naturally you and Mom become very close and begin to look at each other with greater intimacy and fall in love until one day… (Okay, so it DID happen, but it was for love, not money!) Eventually you and your Mom emerge from the bomb shelter and repopulate the Earth with your mutant children and found an empire that brings order to this hostile wasteland.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Erm, it’s like $500,000. You can’t buy it, because you’re too damn poor. Even if you sold all your stuff you still wouldn’t have enough. Your Mom might have it, but you’d have to beg for it and your Mom’s usually not pleased with you at the best of times. > You buy it anyway despite the fact that you don't have the means! You clear your mind, and ignore the common sense part of your brain that states you don’t have enough money to do that…sonofabitch it works! You buy the bomb shelter which magically appears right outside your house. It suddenly occurs to you though, that you have a VERY powerful gift… You begin to clear your mind of every law (natural and man made) you’ve ever been taught. You are able to do amazing things! You can walk over a cliff and not fall, since you don’t “know” about gravity! You can breathe underwater, since you don’t “know” about oxygen! You begin to create things out of thin air, with just the will of your mind! You start to change the world and people marvel at your abilities and you become as a GOD, and it’s all thanks to ignorance! Until one day someone says, “Hey you can’t do that.” And it suddenly occurs to you that you can’t, and that’s when it ALL comes crashing down. Fortunately you had a bomb shelter to hide in during the apocalypse that happened soon afterwards. With the world destroyed you have a lot of time to think about what you did. You decide to try to make things right, starting with clearing your mind again in an attempt to “recreate” the world. It doesn’t work though. You spend the rest of your days eating spam in your bomb shelter.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to buy more useless shit. You can never have enough, you fuckin’ obsessed pack rat. Okay well some of this shit isn’t useless, and might even do you some good. Certain items catch your eye. You see a car that’s made completely out of asbestos! How cool would that be? You could drive through fire and be none the worse for wear! True you rarely go out anymore, but maybe this would be the thing that could do it! You see a bomb shelter for sale made of xentronium armor. Could be useful in these dangerous times we live in and it’ll definitely provide you more protection than the basement. There’s a small island made of Styrofoam in the middle of the ocean. It says it’s held together by hemp. While you’ve never been one for the beaches and sun, you wonder if you could rent it out some how. Maybe movie producers would pay you to use it or something. Actually perhaps something more practical might be good, there’s some toilet paper for sale. You know you always need that! Finally, you see a building for sale; it doesn’t really give a description. It just says “Generic Gray Building” It might be a good thing to invest in since you’re getting tired of hearing your Mom’s moans of ecstasy at night when she’s masturbating with her 400 horse powered vibrator. A place of your own might be in order. > You buy the island! It's an investment! You decide to get the island. Its only $50! Someone attempts to buy it for $100, but you outbid them to a whopping $150. You begin to daydream about what’ll happen if you actually win the bid. You think about all the bad B-movies that take place on islands and how directors are always looking to use cheaper sets. You could rent it out for that, or possibly a cheap “island getaway” substitute for people that don’t want to spend that much on a vacation. You’ll have to check it out. It suddenly occurs to you that maybe people are already living on the island. Hey maybe the island will already have those topless island babes that you’ve seen in your “nature” magazine under your bed! You snap out of your day dream only to realize that you’ve won the bid! You clap you hands and dance around in celebration like a monkey on crack. Eventually you receive the exact location and make arrangements to go to the island. After a short trip to the ocean and a boat trip you are now on YOUR island. Time to explore! > You enter the jungle You enter the jungle. You appreciate the beauty that is the lush green jungle. This really is a nice island you think. However the cannibals on the island think it’s pretty nice too. In fact you made it even nicer for them; nothing tastes better to them than virgin flesh… They hunt you, trap you, kill you and eat you. (Not necessarily in that order!) They end up selling your skull on Ebay for $500, which they use to build a new menstrual hut.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to get the island. Its only $50! Someone attempts to buy it for $100, but you outbid them to a whopping $150. You begin to daydream about what’ll happen if you actually win the bid. You think about all the bad B-movies that take place on islands and how directors are always looking to use cheaper sets. You could rent it out for that, or possibly a cheap “island getaway” substitute for people that don’t want to spend that much on a vacation. You’ll have to check it out. It suddenly occurs to you that maybe people are already living on the island. Hey maybe the island will already have those topless island babes that you’ve seen in your “nature” magazine under your bed! You snap out of your day dream only to realize that you’ve won the bid! You clap you hands and dance around in celebration like a monkey on crack. Eventually you receive the exact location and make arrangements to go to the island. After a short trip to the ocean and a boat trip you are now on YOUR island. Time to explore! > You walk along the shore You walk along the shore, marveling at the fact this island is made completely out of Styrofoam and held together by hemp. In your wonder, you begin to inspect the hemp ropes which are holding the pieces of Styrofoam together. In your curiosity you begin to pick at a frayed rope… And in your stupidity, you’ve just unraveled the entire island! Well so much for renting this place, you attempt to paddle your way back to shore on a piece of Styrofoam, but you’re eaten by a very large seagull flying overhead. Fortunately it swallowed you whole, but its digestive juices are going to make quick work of you if you don’t do something to escape, so you figure fleeing through its asshole is the best way to do this. Fighting through the intestinal tract of the seagull to get to the “exit”, might sound like a novel idea, but it does have its consequences. First of all you’re a mile above the earth and over the water. So assuming you managed to survive the fall out of the bird’s rectum, you’d still have to contend with minor problem of drowning and sharks. Second, you’ve done quite a bit of damage to the bird itself by crawling around in it; in fact you’ve ruptured and punctured some vital organs. It’s dying and now falling at a terrific speed. > You jump out of the rectum and try to swim to land Well you jump out and survive the fall, and since you do know how to swim pretty well, you also survive the drowning. However you don’t survive the sharks…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk along the shore, marveling at the fact this island is made completely out of Styrofoam and held together by hemp. In your wonder, you begin to inspect the hemp ropes which are holding the pieces of Styrofoam together. In your curiosity you begin to pick at a frayed rope… And in your stupidity, you’ve just unraveled the entire island! Well so much for renting this place, you attempt to paddle your way back to shore on a piece of Styrofoam, but you’re eaten by a very large seagull flying overhead. Fortunately it swallowed you whole, but its digestive juices are going to make quick work of you if you don’t do something to escape, so you figure fleeing through its asshole is the best way to do this. Fighting through the intestinal tract of the seagull to get to the “exit”, might sound like a novel idea, but it does have its consequences. First of all you’re a mile above the earth and over the water. So assuming you managed to survive the fall out of the bird’s rectum, you’d still have to contend with minor problem of drowning and sharks. Second, you’ve done quite a bit of damage to the bird itself by crawling around in it; in fact you’ve ruptured and punctured some vital organs. It’s dying and now falling at a terrific speed. > You stay in the seagull and try to shift its weight towards land You take a running push up against the seagull’s slowly beating heart, killing it instantly, but you knocked it just enough so its body would crash on land. And it crashes in a spectacular bloody fashion, fortunately you used its liver as a cushion to survive the fall, you remain unharmed and in desperate need of a bath. You head home with 20 hungry cats following close behind.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to buy more useless shit. You can never have enough, you fuckin’ obsessed pack rat. Okay well some of this shit isn’t useless, and might even do you some good. Certain items catch your eye. You see a car that’s made completely out of asbestos! How cool would that be? You could drive through fire and be none the worse for wear! True you rarely go out anymore, but maybe this would be the thing that could do it! You see a bomb shelter for sale made of xentronium armor. Could be useful in these dangerous times we live in and it’ll definitely provide you more protection than the basement. There’s a small island made of Styrofoam in the middle of the ocean. It says it’s held together by hemp. While you’ve never been one for the beaches and sun, you wonder if you could rent it out some how. Maybe movie producers would pay you to use it or something. Actually perhaps something more practical might be good, there’s some toilet paper for sale. You know you always need that! Finally, you see a building for sale; it doesn’t really give a description. It just says “Generic Gray Building” It might be a good thing to invest in since you’re getting tired of hearing your Mom’s moans of ecstasy at night when she’s masturbating with her 400 horse powered vibrator. A place of your own might be in order. > You buy the toilet paper! It's the soft kind! Well last time your Mom went to the supermarket she couldn’t find the soft kind. In fact, she never can find it. It’s almost like there’s a conspiracy and the super markets hide it before she gets there. Either that or she just enjoys torturing you with toilet paper that feels more like sandpaper. But this isn’t about your paranoia, and you manage to find some toilet paper for $5, 1000 rolls of it! You buy it immediately and soon it arrives magically in front of your house. You find out why it was so cheap. It’s wet and USED… > You keep it, because youre cheap You really can’t see anyone buying your shitty toilet paper; you’re still not sure why you wanted to buy it so bad yourself. Perhaps you have toilet training issues, but this isn’t about your screwed up childhood, this is about how you wasted your money! Or have you? Upon closer inspection you realize that this is the genuine toilet paper of Elvis! You can tell by the wiping signature! You sell it back to Graceland for millions! You then proceed to buy up other famous used toilet paper and selling them, making even more millions! Finally you decide to get out of the business and retire to your bomb shelter on your very own Styrofoam island where you live comfortably for the rest of your life. And perhaps when you die, YOUR toilet paper will sell for millions.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well last time your Mom went to the supermarket she couldn’t find the soft kind. In fact, she never can find it. It’s almost like there’s a conspiracy and the super markets hide it before she gets there. Either that or she just enjoys torturing you with toilet paper that feels more like sandpaper. But this isn’t about your paranoia, and you manage to find some toilet paper for $5, 1000 rolls of it! You buy it immediately and soon it arrives magically in front of your house. You find out why it was so cheap. It’s wet and USED… > You try to sell it as art You re-sell it as art. You list it as a great ornamental garden piece. Bio-degradable and good for the soil. Yeah, you ALMOST believe that yourself. You do get a bid from some idiot though for $350, you figure you’ve made a large profit already, so you sell. “Ha Ha! What a sucker!” you think. Well think again toilet boy, turns out it was more valuable than you thought! It was the same toilet paper used by Elvis the day he died on the toilet! The “idiot” sells it back to Graceland for millions, and spends it on cars, girls and drugs. You spend your $350 on more used toilet paper in the misguided attempt to get someone else’s famous toilet paper, but it turns out to be only Pat Boone’s and is worthless.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to buy more useless shit. You can never have enough, you fuckin’ obsessed pack rat. Okay well some of this shit isn’t useless, and might even do you some good. Certain items catch your eye. You see a car that’s made completely out of asbestos! How cool would that be? You could drive through fire and be none the worse for wear! True you rarely go out anymore, but maybe this would be the thing that could do it! You see a bomb shelter for sale made of xentronium armor. Could be useful in these dangerous times we live in and it’ll definitely provide you more protection than the basement. There’s a small island made of Styrofoam in the middle of the ocean. It says it’s held together by hemp. While you’ve never been one for the beaches and sun, you wonder if you could rent it out some how. Maybe movie producers would pay you to use it or something. Actually perhaps something more practical might be good, there’s some toilet paper for sale. You know you always need that! Finally, you see a building for sale; it doesn’t really give a description. It just says “Generic Gray Building” It might be a good thing to invest in since you’re getting tired of hearing your Mom’s moans of ecstasy at night when she’s masturbating with her 400 horse powered vibrator. A place of your own might be in order. > You buy the building. It's um... Gray Face it; you don’t really have that much of a personality, so instead of buying any one of the more “interesting” items, you decide to get the dull gray building to match your life. Its only $2000 and nobody else wants it, so you get it with relative ease. Alright! A place of your own, no more having to quickly erase the porn on the computer or explaining to Mom why your pants are off anymore! After you receive the location, you quickly start packing up your shit. Until you realize you’ve got a lot of it. Hmmm, you don’t really feel like moving it all and you briefly think about selling some of your shit on Ebay, but as usual you can’t bear to part with anything. Where else are you gonna get a genuine Hitler Pez dispenser? Or the rare gay version of Star Wars? Or even that picture of you with Boudicca’s ghost? Besides you don’t want to waste anymore time on Ebay today. You’re in a rare adventurous spirit and really wanna find out what this building’s all about. You load up your Mom’s car with as much shit as you can and drive to the building’s location. It takes you a day to get there, but you finally do it. You’re here at the Gray Building. You’re also in the middle of nowhere! You can hear a pack of ravenous wolves in the distance. There’s only one door and no windows. Looks pretty ominous actually. Like a place where they’d do a snuff film, or perform secret government experiments. Well in any case you DO own it, so maybe you should find out! > You go in the Gray Building You cautiously enter the building, but not before you take your Limited Edition Red Rider BB Gun with you. Nothing! There's absolutely nothing in here! No illegal underground sex club, no "Area 51" like facility. Nothing. You can't help being slightly disappointed; well at least you don't have to worry though, its big enough to hold all your shit. You go back to your car and proceed to gather your belongings. You kick the door open and are surprised by what you see! You see a jungle like area, with a primitive village inside! There ARE some natives roaming around, but they haven't noticed you yet. They may or may not be friendly. This is fuckin' bizarre to say the least! > You close the door! You quickly close the door and try to piece together what the fuck just happened! You don't have as much time as you like though. Those wolves you heard earlier, must've caught your scent, because there's a pack of them on a nearby hill. The leader is jet black, has red eyes and has gotta be a mutant of some sort because he's got six legs and is fuckin' HUGE! He sees you and howls an unearthly howl calling his fellows after you. They'll be upon you soon and you're not gonna make it to your car in time. > You run into the building You'd rather take your chances with some natives than these things! At least the primitives were human! (Well you assume they were) You rush inside and slam the door shut, locking it. The jungle and village are gone, whatever you saw before will remain a mystery because there's no trace of it now. You wonder if it was some acid flashback you had. It’s possible; you have done the stuff in the past. Maybe this is all just the flashback of a bad trip. Of course the scratching at the door and inhuman noises outside sound pretty real... Bad trip or no, there's no point in taking fuckin' chances! You stand in the center of the room and watch the door, as the banging gets more intense. You prepare yourself, holding your BB Gun at the door and taking out your limited edition Charles Manson butcher Knife. You stand ready, as the door looks like its going to come off its hinges, but then the noise stops and you hear the wolves padding off. You breathe a little easier, but only for a moment. You look in utter horror as you see the alpha wolf (That would be the mutant, in case you weren't paying attention earlier) materialize out of one of the corners of the building. It looks at you with absolute hatred and hunger. If this IS an acid flashback, it’s a REALLY bad one! > You kill the beast! You begin to fire, but you BB Gun has absolutely no effect on the thing. It reaches you in no time, but not before you smash it in the face with the gun, breaking it into pieces. This temporarily stuns the beast, which allows you to take your knife and start stabbing the shit out of it. It howls and knocks you to the ground with one paw, reeling back from its bloody wound. It sprints to the other side of the building but looks to be preparing for another assault. You actually hope it does. You've never felt so alive... > You get ready for the next assault Your determination and bravery are admirable. Your intelligence though is questionable! The beast charges at you and smashes into your body as you attempt to stab it in the eye. You feel your ribs break as this blow knocks you to the ground. You feel completely out of breath. As you gasp for air, the Beast sinks its razor teeth into one of your legs and rips it off, swallowing the limb in one gulp. You go into shock as you watch blood spraying from your stump. It’s just as well because the Beast's next move is biting your head off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You begin to fire, but you BB Gun has absolutely no effect on the thing. It reaches you in no time, but not before you smash it in the face with the gun, breaking it into pieces. This temporarily stuns the beast, which allows you to take your knife and start stabbing the shit out of it. It howls and knocks you to the ground with one paw, reeling back from its bloody wound. It sprints to the other side of the building but looks to be preparing for another assault. You actually hope it does. You've never felt so alive... > You look for something else to attack it It occurs to you, you got lucky with the knife, you need to use one the other many objects you brought with you before hell hounds were on your trail. You hastily look into your pockets for something and find some marbles. You throw them on the ground in the hopes that the Beast will slip up. The Beast crushes the marbles underfoot as it advances! You just barely manage to dive out of the way, as it tries to plow into you. The Beast cracks its head into the solid concrete wall and emits a painful howl. Now's your chance! You jump on the back of the Beast and start stabbing it in the back! It howls even more and attempts to get you off of it. You are relentless! You drive the knife in and grab hold of its spine! You pull part of it out! The Beast collapses unable to move, but still wailing. You finish it off by plunging the knife into its black heart. You're winded, you're hot, you're sweaty and you’re covered in blood. And now it appears the other wolves have finally come through the now shattered door. The wolves all seem to whimper as they sense the power of the Beast is now within you. You look at the pack, and YOU are its master now. And you feel the urge to hunt... You have embarked on a very strange new path.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You'd rather take your chances with some natives than these things! At least the primitives were human! (Well you assume they were) You rush inside and slam the door shut, locking it. The jungle and village are gone, whatever you saw before will remain a mystery because there's no trace of it now. You wonder if it was some acid flashback you had. It’s possible; you have done the stuff in the past. Maybe this is all just the flashback of a bad trip. Of course the scratching at the door and inhuman noises outside sound pretty real... Bad trip or no, there's no point in taking fuckin' chances! You stand in the center of the room and watch the door, as the banging gets more intense. You prepare yourself, holding your BB Gun at the door and taking out your limited edition Charles Manson butcher Knife. You stand ready, as the door looks like its going to come off its hinges, but then the noise stops and you hear the wolves padding off. You breathe a little easier, but only for a moment. You look in utter horror as you see the alpha wolf (That would be the mutant, in case you weren't paying attention earlier) materialize out of one of the corners of the building. It looks at you with absolute hatred and hunger. If this IS an acid flashback, it’s a REALLY bad one! > You disbelieve! Disbelieve! You empty your mind, close your eyes and completely disbelieve that this THING could exist as it comes charging at you. You feel its hot breath hit your face, and expect your death, but nothing happens. You slowly open your eyes, and there's no sign of the Beast. In fact you're not even in the building anymore. You're by your car. You hear some wolves howling in the distance. You look at the Gray building. There's only one door and no windows. Its pretty ominious looking actually. Like a place thed's do snuff films or secret government experiments. You cautiously look in and find nothing. No illegal sex club or "Area 51" like area, you're a bit disappointed actually. You go back to your car and pick up some of your shit to take inside. You open the door and see a primitive jungle and village! You also see some natives, who may or may not be friendly. You close the door and try to figure out what the fuck just happened, you don't have long though. Those wolves you heard earlier must've caught your scent. The leader must be some kind of mutant since he's got red eyes, six legs and is fuckin HUGE! As they decend upon you, you quickly run back into the building and decide to take your chances with the villagers, at least they're human! When you get inside though the village is gone. There's no trace of it. The wolves begin to scratch and howl outside the door. You prepare yourself with your BB Gun and Limited Edition Charles Manson butcher knife. Suddenly the noises stop, but you don't have long to rejoice, as the mutant wolf suddenly materializes from one of the corners of the building! It looks at you in absolute hatred and hunger. You empty your mind, close your eyes and completely disbelieve that this THING could exist, as it comes charging at you. You feel its hot breath hit your face, and expect your death, but nothing happens. You slowly open your eyes, and there's no sign of the Beast. In fact you're not even in the building anymore. You're by your car. You hear some wolves howling in the distance...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly close the door and try to piece together what the fuck just happened! You don't have as much time as you like though. Those wolves you heard earlier, must've caught your scent, because there's a pack of them on a nearby hill. The leader is jet black, has red eyes and has gotta be a mutant of some sort because he's got six legs and is fuckin' HUGE! He sees you and howls an unearthly howl calling his fellows after you. They'll be upon you soon and you're not gonna make it to your car in time. > You shoot them with your BB Gun Your BB Gun is NOT a suitable weapon! Especially not against Fenris over there. You manage to run back into the building and decide to take your chances with the village. At least they're human. You run back inside, but the village and jungle have been replaced by a battlefield. Apparently, you're no longer in the building at all anymore. A mortar shell hits close by, when suddenly you're pulled in by some woman in a fox hole. She asks you what the hell you are doing. Her uniform isn't recognizable; in fact the surroundings are even a little strange looking. The sky's green for one thing. You attempt to explain yourself, but she doesn't seem too surprised and just hands you a real weapon and mutters something to herself about how the Kragan's time/dimension experiments have fucked everything up. You ask her what's going on, but she says she'll explain everything later if you both get out of your current situation alive. She starts firing at a strange looking creature and tells you to move it. You both run as fast as you can as you see strange looking planes flying overhead which proceed to bomb the hell out of the enemy behind you. You both dive for cover again as the explosion occurs. The woman surprisingly laughs at all of this. You on the hand are a nervous wreck. She notices this and kisses you. You don't know what the hell's going on, but this isn't ALL bad. After she's done, she says you have to get moving again. You ask her what that was all about. "Well you're cute and when you face death all the time, you gotta seize the moment sometimes. Plus I think you need something good to happen to you after walking into that Gray building." You look surprised; you never got around to telling her that. "Let me guess, Gray building on Ebay right?" Looks like you just stepped into something REALLY weird, but at least you got a new girlfriend out of it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You cautiously enter the building, but not before you take your Limited Edition Red Rider BB Gun with you. Nothing! There's absolutely nothing in here! No illegal underground sex club, no "Area 51" like facility. Nothing. You can't help being slightly disappointed; well at least you don't have to worry though, its big enough to hold all your shit. You go back to your car and proceed to gather your belongings. You kick the door open and are surprised by what you see! You see a jungle like area, with a primitive village inside! There ARE some natives roaming around, but they haven't noticed you yet. They may or may not be friendly. This is fuckin' bizarre to say the least! > You enter the village You enter the village, taking your BB gun with you and some of your other stuff. The villagers see you, but don't attack. They're more curious than anything, especially with all the wonderful things you're carrying, suddenly you got a million hands grabbing at you. You let them take the stuff, which they seem pretty pleased about. They give you some precious gems in return! You tell them, you have more gifts for them. You run out to your car, get more stuff and give it to them. This earns you more gems AND a chance to sleep with the chieftain’s twin bisexual daughters! You fuckin' rule! In fact you rule so much, they think of you as some kind of god. This isn't as fortunate as you might think... It seems they want to EAT you, and become one with their god. They believe since you are a supernatural being, killing your body will be of minor consequence to you. Nothing could be further from the truth! Grabbing your clothes you begin running butt ass naked through the jungle with the entire tribe chasing you, whooping it up. They think this is a fuckin' test! > You run! As you run you attempt to avoid protruding branches that could severely damage your tender bits. As you get to the shore you trip over a piece of hemp rope. Sonofabitch! This is that Styrofoam Island! As the natives close in, you get an idea to start picking at the hemp rope. It works! You have successfully unraveled the piece that you were standing on from the rest of the island. The natives shout something at you in an indecipherable language (Which is odd since they were speaking perfect English when you were friends with them) as you make your good escape on the drifting Styrofoam. You put your clothes back on and wait to reach the mainland. The tribe suffers greatly however. They think they've failed a great test and commit ritualistic mass suicide.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You enter the village, taking your BB gun with you and some of your other stuff. The villagers see you, but don't attack. They're more curious than anything, especially with all the wonderful things you're carrying, suddenly you got a million hands grabbing at you. You let them take the stuff, which they seem pretty pleased about. They give you some precious gems in return! You tell them, you have more gifts for them. You run out to your car, get more stuff and give it to them. This earns you more gems AND a chance to sleep with the chieftain’s twin bisexual daughters! You fuckin' rule! In fact you rule so much, they think of you as some kind of god. This isn't as fortunate as you might think... It seems they want to EAT you, and become one with their god. They believe since you are a supernatural being, killing your body will be of minor consequence to you. Nothing could be further from the truth! Grabbing your clothes you begin running butt ass naked through the jungle with the entire tribe chasing you, whooping it up. They think this is a fuckin' test! > You attempt to take the tribals out one at a time Okay Action Hero... You sneakily lose the tribals by climbing into a tree. As you put your clothes back on, one of the tribals wanders underneath you. Using one arm you reach down and quietly snap his neck with your forearm. You pick up his knife and hid in some nearby bushes, a couple more tribals show up, you sneakily throw the knife at one of their heads and before he even hits the ground you charge the other and punch him in the throat and then tear out his wind pipe. You dress up in one of the tribal's clothing in order to pass as one of them. Another one shows up and you begin motioning him over to "Help" your fellow tribals. When he does so, you throw an upper jab ramming his nose into his brain, killing him instantly. You take his bow and arrows and wipe mud all over yourself. You return to the village and sneak back into the hut you were in and take your Micky Mouse Zippo lighter back and begin running around shooting fire arrows at the huts. The tribals are screaming in terror, as you mercilessly butcher them with their own spears. Then it happens, the Chieftain appears. He looks upon the carnage you've inflicted upon his village and realizes you are not a god, but a demon! He stands before you and is ready to confront you once and for all. You clash! The Chieftain is a very good fighter, he lands some very good hits and you'll certainly have some scars after this, but you're the good guy and have no choice but to win. Eventually you manage to stab him through the heart with his own knife. He dies, but looks upon you with respect of a warrior. You give him the same salute as he passes into next life. He was a worthy opponent. And to the victor go the spoils, you take both of his daughters over your shoulders, all the gems you can carry and leave the village burning down behind you because you're SUPER FUCKING COOL. Yep, that sure was a nice last delusional thought before one of tribal's spears plunged into your back as you were trying to get away. That night the villagers eat their "god" and look up in the heavens wondering if you're looking down at them in approval.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Face it; you don’t really have that much of a personality, so instead of buying any one of the more “interesting” items, you decide to get the dull gray building to match your life. Its only $2000 and nobody else wants it, so you get it with relative ease. Alright! A place of your own, no more having to quickly erase the porn on the computer or explaining to Mom why your pants are off anymore! After you receive the location, you quickly start packing up your shit. Until you realize you’ve got a lot of it. Hmmm, you don’t really feel like moving it all and you briefly think about selling some of your shit on Ebay, but as usual you can’t bear to part with anything. Where else are you gonna get a genuine Hitler Pez dispenser? Or the rare gay version of Star Wars? Or even that picture of you with Boudicca’s ghost? Besides you don’t want to waste anymore time on Ebay today. You’re in a rare adventurous spirit and really wanna find out what this building’s all about. You load up your Mom’s car with as much shit as you can and drive to the building’s location. It takes you a day to get there, but you finally do it. You’re here at the Gray Building. You’re also in the middle of nowhere! You can hear a pack of ravenous wolves in the distance. There’s only one door and no windows. Looks pretty ominous actually. Like a place where they’d do a snuff film, or perform secret government experiments. Well in any case you DO own it, so maybe you should find out! > You inspect the outside of the building You inspect the outside, but there's nothing unusual. It’s just concrete, no windows, or other doors at all. You make your way back to the front of the building and the door is gone! You could've sworn it was right there! You search and search, but to no avail. It’s just solid concrete now. You're search more, but you see some wolves up on a nearby hill that look very dangerous, so you decide to leave and come back tomorrow. When you come back, the entire building is gone! There's no trace of it. You can't figure it out! This WAS the right location. This is very strange. Maybe you made a mistake and need to travel further up the road. > You travel further up the road You drive a little further up the road, still nothing. You're about to give up when then you see it again. You see the Grey Building. You guess you just didn't realize it was further than you thought. The Grey Building stands before you and there's the door, so you can go in if you want. > You go in the Grey Building You enter the Grey building and suddenly feel a strike to the back of the head. "THIS IS MY GREY BUILDING! DIE INTERLOPER!" a voice shouts as you try to get back up. A heavy boot kicks you in the face and everything goes black. The last thing you hear is a rusty chainsaw. The last thing you feel is that chainsaw entering your back. The last thing you think is that this is the GREY Building not the GRAY Building.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You drive a little further up the road, still nothing. You're about to give up when then you see it again. You see the Grey Building. You guess you just didn't realize it was further than you thought. The Grey Building stands before you and there's the door, so you can go in if you want. > You inspect the building again You walk around the building again, and something isn't right. This is a Grey Building but it isn't your Gray Building. You can hear shuffling inside, and the clinking of chains. This doesn't seem like a safe place to enter, so you hastily leave and head back home and just say to hell with the whole damn thing. Your life is more important than fucking around with mysterious buildings in the middle of nowhere.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You inspect the outside, but there's nothing unusual. It’s just concrete, no windows, or other doors at all. You make your way back to the front of the building and the door is gone! You could've sworn it was right there! You search and search, but to no avail. It’s just solid concrete now. You're search more, but you see some wolves up on a nearby hill that look very dangerous, so you decide to leave and come back tomorrow. When you come back, the entire building is gone! There's no trace of it. You can't figure it out! This WAS the right location. This is very strange. Maybe you made a mistake and need to travel further up the road. > You give up and go back home again You give up that easily? Well it’s your choice I suppose and not too surprising considering you’ve spent most of your life in your Mom’s basement. You go back home and go back to your safe little world that doesn't require any exploration at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up and dread the fact that you’ve entered the real world again. The dream world will have to wait until later. You don’t like real world, never have. It’s why you like to sleep. It allows you to get away from the reality for a little while. It’s also why you prefer to hang out on your computer all night and day. It’s not really because you’re afraid of the real world, it’s just that you don’t have that much interest in it. Sometimes it can be fascinating, but over all you just find it to be involve so much boring tedium that you’d prefer to remove yourself as much as you can from it. It’s also probably why you’re over 18 and still living at home. You’re a basement dweller. Fortunately you’re one of the productive ones. You contribute to the household by buying and selling useless shit on Ebay. Unfortunately this is still “work” and as a result, it’s a hassle so you probably don’t put as much effort as you should into it. In fact you’re more inclined to keep the stuff you buy due to your interest in odd things. Despite your limiting of outside world contact, you can’t help but feel like something different is going to happen today. You start daydreaming about possible things that could happen to you until you quickly snap yourself out of it. As much as you’d like to waste time daydreaming, playing video games or other time wasting activities on the internet, you probably should go to “work.” Well don’t just sit there with a thumb up your ass, you gonna buy useless shit, or sell it? > You sell useless shit It literally pains you to part with anything being the fuckin’ obsessed pack rat you are, but you need to start earning your keep again. The problem is you’ll only part with a few things and those things are shit that nobody wants! You can't believe that nobody would want things like S&M Elmo or Trailer Trash Barbie! And you can't even wrap your mind around the fact that people don't want your used toothpick collection from around the world! Well it looks like the demand is currently for “Big Objects” and the only two big objects you have that you’re willing to part with are your full set elephant bones and your Kudzu plant. Of course there’s always a demand for porn, but you’re sort of attached to your collection of that stuff. > You sell your elephant bones You get an offer for $15,000 dollars! You take it! Man, what a sucker! You don’t feel like wrapping up the bones and shipping them so you tell the guy to pick them up at your house. He said he’ll come by with a briefcase of money. Soon you get a knock on the door. You answer it and a strange looking scientist type appears before you. "Hello, I'm here for my Elephant Man bones." he says ELEPHANT MAN? No wonder they sold for so much! This dickhead thought he was buying the remains of a medical curiosity, not that of an actual elephant! “Hey I think there’s been a mistake. It’s just a regular elephant buddy. Still, should be good for something in the science field right?” “What?! This is false advertising! I demand my Elephant Man bones!” The scientist is very angry, but he doesn't seem to realize that mistake has been made. He thinks that you're holding out on him and trying to renig on the deal. You tell him that the deal’s off and he can keep his money if he’s so unhappy, but he won't hear any of it, he's demanding that you give him his Elephant Man Bones! He pulls out a pistol! > You try to hide Sensing that you’re looking around to hide behind cover, he fires before you can move! Nothing happens. Realizing he forgot to put bullets into the thing, he throws the gun at your head, which you easily duck. You grab a nearby lamp and clobber him in the face with it. He goes down like a sack of potatoes. Seriously, as if you'd really sell the bones of the Elephant Man in your basement! You take the briefcase of money, drag him out to the curb for the derelicts to have their way with and think nothing more of it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You get an offer for $15,000 dollars! You take it! Man, what a sucker! You don’t feel like wrapping up the bones and shipping them so you tell the guy to pick them up at your house. He said he’ll come by with a briefcase of money. Soon you get a knock on the door. You answer it and a strange looking scientist type appears before you. "Hello, I'm here for my Elephant Man bones." he says ELEPHANT MAN? No wonder they sold for so much! This dickhead thought he was buying the remains of a medical curiosity, not that of an actual elephant! “Hey I think there’s been a mistake. It’s just a regular elephant buddy. Still, should be good for something in the science field right?” “What?! This is false advertising! I demand my Elephant Man bones!” The scientist is very angry, but he doesn't seem to realize that mistake has been made. He thinks that you're holding out on him and trying to renig on the deal. You tell him that the deal’s off and he can keep his money if he’s so unhappy, but he won't hear any of it, he's demanding that you give him his Elephant Man Bones! He pulls out a pistol! > You kill him! Kill him! Something in you snaps! You're overcome with panic and solve your problems with violence. You immediately knock the gun out of his hand and choke the life out the scientist, snapping his scrawny neck! You have to figure out to get rid of the body; Mom doesn't like you leaving a mess. So you decide to chop him up and throw him in a trash bag. In the middle of your grizzly work, you start to enjoy it. In fact you don't think you're going to get rid of the body at all. In fact you found something much more interesting to collect than useless shit on the internet. You begin to increase selling things on the internet to attract more people...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It literally pains you to part with anything being the fuckin’ obsessed pack rat you are, but you need to start earning your keep again. The problem is you’ll only part with a few things and those things are shit that nobody wants! You can't believe that nobody would want things like S&M Elmo or Trailer Trash Barbie! And you can't even wrap your mind around the fact that people don't want your used toothpick collection from around the world! Well it looks like the demand is currently for “Big Objects” and the only two big objects you have that you’re willing to part with are your full set elephant bones and your Kudzu plant. Of course there’s always a demand for porn, but you’re sort of attached to your collection of that stuff. > You sell your Kudzu You get an offer of $500 dollars for the Kudzu that has basically enveloped the house. You take it. You never wanted this stuff in the first place, it just grew out of hand and you couldn't get rid of it. As you begin wondering how you’re going to ship the Kudzu, suddenly something green catches the corner of your eye! It’s the Kudzu! It appears that it didn't like the idea of being sold! It begins to crawl at you, and it looks a lot more dangerous than you remember considering it has sharp thorns now. You grab your Mickey Mouse Zippo lighter and a can of Lounge Lizard Hair Spray and use it as a poor man's flamethrower! It works! You burn and singe enough of the Kudzu to make it retreat, giving you time to wonder what to do next. > You jump out the window and escape As just one man armed only with a lighter and a can of spray can, you decide you cannot stop it yourself. You jump out of your window and run off as the Kudzu begins to grow and eat your neighbors behind you. You eventually hide out in old cabin up north that you family used to go up to when you were little. While you're hiding out, the horror that you unleashed onto the world that ends up taking the lives of millions. It's eventually stopped, but your name is cursed and you will forever be known as the one who didn't stop the evil when it was small.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You get an offer of $500 dollars for the Kudzu that has basically enveloped the house. You take it. You never wanted this stuff in the first place, it just grew out of hand and you couldn't get rid of it. As you begin wondering how you’re going to ship the Kudzu, suddenly something green catches the corner of your eye! It’s the Kudzu! It appears that it didn't like the idea of being sold! It begins to crawl at you, and it looks a lot more dangerous than you remember considering it has sharp thorns now. You grab your Mickey Mouse Zippo lighter and a can of Lounge Lizard Hair Spray and use it as a poor man's flamethrower! It works! You burn and singe enough of the Kudzu to make it retreat, giving you time to wonder what to do next. > You kill the Kudzu! You can't let this evil grow! You have to stop it right here and now! You move forward to attack, burning it as you go. You start setting flammable things on fire and hope to get to the kitchen to turn on the gas and blow it up. You get to the kitchen and turn on the gas, now all you need to do is escape before the gas hits the flame and explodes in that spectacular fashion like in all those movies you've ever watched. Well unlike the movies there is no "Dramatic time" (Especially since you were still holding an open flame Zippo lighter in your hand!) and as soon as you turn the gas on the entire house blows up, with you and the Kudzu in it. You have stopped an evil from attacking the world though, if it’s any consolation. Probably not, since nobody ever knew they were in any danger in the first place.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It literally pains you to part with anything being the fuckin’ obsessed pack rat you are, but you need to start earning your keep again. The problem is you’ll only part with a few things and those things are shit that nobody wants! You can't believe that nobody would want things like S&M Elmo or Trailer Trash Barbie! And you can't even wrap your mind around the fact that people don't want your used toothpick collection from around the world! Well it looks like the demand is currently for “Big Objects” and the only two big objects you have that you’re willing to part with are your full set elephant bones and your Kudzu plant. Of course there’s always a demand for porn, but you’re sort of attached to your collection of that stuff. > You wait! You've got naked pictures of your Mom! We’ll save you the embarrassment of WHY you have the pictures in the first place, but after scanning one naked photo of your Mom, it doesn't take long for perverts all across the globe to start bidding for the whole set. The highest bid you've got right now is some guy in Mexico who's offering 10,000! > You sell! You sell, send off the pics and receive your money Unfortunately you forgot to consider the foreign exchange rate! 10,000 Mexican Pesos is only $2.00 in US Currency! While it’s very possible that your Mom won’t find out what you did, but there’s always the chance she will. And hell, for that amount of money you could've sold naked pictures of yourself! > You try to buy your Mom's pictures back Fortunately the Mexican guy is now trying to sell them for a bigger profit, 20,000...unfortunately its US currency. You’re fucked. You don’t have that sort of money. So you do the only thing you can do. You steal your Mom's credit card and buy back the pictures. However there ARE consequences for your actions. First your Mom finds out about all of this the very next time she tried to use her card. (Which gets cut up) Second she's wickedly pissed off that you even sold the pictures in the first place let alone the fact that you didn't get squat for them and then put her in SEVERE debt by buying them back. Third there are some questions about your erm... morality, not to mention your sanity. You basically STOLE her private property which makes you a thief, the fact that you knew the content of the pictures and looked at them, makes you a sicko, the fact that you sold them makes you a sleazeball, and the fact you lost money on the whole deal makes you an idiot! Your Mom has you committed to the asylum, where you spend the rest of your days, until you cause so much trouble you get lobotomized.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sell, send off the pics and receive your money Unfortunately you forgot to consider the foreign exchange rate! 10,000 Mexican Pesos is only $2.00 in US Currency! While it’s very possible that your Mom won’t find out what you did, but there’s always the chance she will. And hell, for that amount of money you could've sold naked pictures of yourself! > You sell naked pictures of yourself Some gay porno magazine offers you a $2.00 for your naked pics. You accept the offer. Unfortunately it’s a MEXICAN gay porno magazine! You get a fat nickle! Well you've made a total of $2.05 from selling your Mom's self respect as well as your own. (Not that you had that much to begin with) You try not to think too much of it and just hope you Mom never finds out, but as you find out later you should’ve worried about other things instead. You and she unknowingly become a point of obsession by a deranged bisexual midget. He eventually gets to the point where his obsession can’t be restricted to just images and pictures. He tracks you both down and somehow manages to ambush your Mom and knock her out cold. You hear the noise from the basement and come up to investigate, where upon the midget knocks you out as well. He ties you both up and well; it sort of only gets worse from there… Your images are uploaded one last time through the sick freak’s illegal snuff site.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>We’ll save you the embarrassment of WHY you have the pictures in the first place, but after scanning one naked photo of your Mom, it doesn't take long for perverts all across the globe to start bidding for the whole set. The highest bid you've got right now is some guy in Mexico who's offering 10,000! > You hold out for more! Wise choice! Everyone knows 10,000 in Mexican currency is only $2.00 US currency! After waiting for a better deal you finally get an offer of $10,000 from some rich lesbian in Hawaii. Jackpot! Apparently she also wants to meet your Mom in person. You know your Mom's been kinda lonely after Dad was killed in that "elephant incident" so you decide to set it up... And after months of workin', proddin', fixin', and schemin' on your part, your Mom is now a much happier person and so are you having a rich stepmom and all. Now you can go buy that bomb shelter you always wanted.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ah the basement. The refuge of all who refuse to move out of the house for whatever reason. Some of them are dreamers who just can’t fit into proper society. Some of them have potential, but due to personality quirks fame has escaped them. And finally 99% of them are just downright pathetic losers that just fail at life. So choose one of these basement dwellers and enjoy the desperation and horror of their tales! You may come to find that they are just like you. In fact chances are, you’ll think someone wrote a biography about you! > The Good Girl (This one's for the ladies! AWWW YEAH!) You wake up to another day in your sheltered little world. “Sheltered” is probably a little inaccurate, but you’re about as close as you can get in your dysfunctional family. Your upbringing for you and all your siblings, quite frankly sucked, and it made you very introverted and unmotivated. It’s probably why you’re over 18 and still living at home. You’re a basement dweller. However we shouldn’t be too hard on you. Your other four siblings are also living at home along with a few other freeloading family members. You just happen to be living in the basement. Fucked up parenting aside, you actually have potential, if you’d just break out of your shell. You aren’t unintelligent. You at least graduated high school, watch the learning/history channel and read weird shit on the internet all day. You aren’t even unattractive, though your mom always drilled it into you and your sisters head that you were always to be “good girls”. It only really worked on you though; as a result you’ve never had a boyfriend. (Or girlfriend for that matter) You don’t even have that much contact with the world outside your house anymore. The world’s a dangerous place and you feel much safer in your house. Again, this thinking of yours is misguided as being out of the house of your crazy ass family would probably be a lot safer. Of course you rarely even leave the basement nowadays anyway. Seems like your world is getting smaller with each passing day. Of course you could do something a little out of the ordinary today and try to change your lot in life. How about it? Want to give it that old college try? (Even though you never went to college?) > You sure you'll give it a go That’s the spirit! I knew you had it in you! Okay so you’re feeling uncharacteristically motivated today, that’s a start, but where exactly you’re going to begin is another question. Getting a job might be the way to go, but you have no idea what you might be qualified for. You could go to a family member for help or your old friend the internet as usual. > You ask your older sister Kelly It’s probably not the best pick of all possible choices, but Kelly is the only one who has a real job and constantly working. Surely she’d be in the best position to help you, though even now you’re shuddering of what you might have to put up with to gain her help, even if she choices to do so. Cautiously you head to her room where you find her resting on her bed with her eyes closed. “Go away Peter! I told you before you’re NOT doing a documentary on me!” Kelly says without looking up. “Uh, it’s not Peter, it’s me Suzy.” Kelly instantly sits up to take notice of this revelation. She doesn’t make a move towards you, but it’s obvious she isn’t happy about you disturbing her. You haven’t been out of the basement for awhile, so you haven’t seen here lately, but Kelly is sporting some heavy duty scars and looking a little more muscular than when you last saw. “You? What the fuck do you want? Get out.” Kelly demands “But I just want to talk to you for a moment about something.” “You deaf or just fucking stupid? Bitch I said get out!” “But I wanted advice on how to get a job.” “(Snort) You want a job? Little Miss priss wants to get a job? I can’t believe I’m hearing this! Ha ha! Do you even have any skills? Shit, you’re still a virgin. You probably wouldn’t even make a good whore. Just go back to the basement and hide out from the real world. It’s what you’re best at.” You pause for a moment before answering. “Why have you always so mean to me? I’ve never done anything to you.” “Oh no? You were Mom’s perfect little angel that did what she was told and never had to do anything more than that. Me? I got nothing, but shit from Mom, just because I wasn’t what her so called standard of womanhood was supposed to be. Yet I also had to do most of the work around here as well as look out for you to make sure someone didn’t rape your naïve ass. Your mere existence did something to me!” “Mom was just trying to instill guidelines for how we should behave. She was just looking out for us. What’s wrong with that?” “Yeah, yeah, and following her guidelines has really served you well eh? A complete fucking recluse that can’t function on her own.” > You point out her faults You’ve had enough of your older sister’s abuse, you’re going to stand up to her. “Yeah well at least I’m not some ‘roid dyke still whining about how Mom never approved of them.” For a brief moment your sister can’t believe that you’ve actually stood up to her. Perhaps if you’d done that in the past she might’ve respected you more. However, now she just sees it as a threat to her position and one that needs to be squashed before you get even more uppity. Kelly springs from the bed and grabs your arm before you can run out her room. When you attempt to fight back, it only makes her angrier. Her next step is to break it in three places and drop kick you in the face. She then takes your battered body, gets on the bed, jumps off it and pile drives you into the floor, breaking your neck instantly. At this point you’re already dead, but your sister proceeds to torment your corpse with physical abuse for about fifteen more minutes until she finally realizes she’s killed you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It’s probably not the best pick of all possible choices, but Kelly is the only one who has a real job and constantly working. Surely she’d be in the best position to help you, though even now you’re shuddering of what you might have to put up with to gain her help, even if she choices to do so. Cautiously you head to her room where you find her resting on her bed with her eyes closed. “Go away Peter! I told you before you’re NOT doing a documentary on me!” Kelly says without looking up. “Uh, it’s not Peter, it’s me Suzy.” Kelly instantly sits up to take notice of this revelation. She doesn’t make a move towards you, but it’s obvious she isn’t happy about you disturbing her. You haven’t been out of the basement for awhile, so you haven’t seen here lately, but Kelly is sporting some heavy duty scars and looking a little more muscular than when you last saw. “You? What the fuck do you want? Get out.” Kelly demands “But I just want to talk to you for a moment about something.” “You deaf or just fucking stupid? Bitch I said get out!” “But I wanted advice on how to get a job.” “(Snort) You want a job? Little Miss priss wants to get a job? I can’t believe I’m hearing this! Ha ha! Do you even have any skills? Shit, you’re still a virgin. You probably wouldn’t even make a good whore. Just go back to the basement and hide out from the real world. It’s what you’re best at.” You pause for a moment before answering. “Why have you always so mean to me? I’ve never done anything to you.” “Oh no? You were Mom’s perfect little angel that did what she was told and never had to do anything more than that. Me? I got nothing, but shit from Mom, just because I wasn’t what her so called standard of womanhood was supposed to be. Yet I also had to do most of the work around here as well as look out for you to make sure someone didn’t rape your naïve ass. Your mere existence did something to me!” “Mom was just trying to instill guidelines for how we should behave. She was just looking out for us. What’s wrong with that?” “Yeah, yeah, and following her guidelines has really served you well eh? A complete fucking recluse that can’t function on her own.” > You continue to ask for help Antagonizing her isn’t going to help you and you did come to her for advice so you maintain your calm demeanor. You just hope it doesn’t result in some sort of physical abuse. “Kelly I’m just asking you for help since I acknowledge the fact that you have looked out for me in the past. Obviously you’re right, Mom’s guidelines didn’t work out for me since you’re so strong and independent and I’m not.” Kelly’s eyebrows raise and you almost think she’s going to smile. She doesn’t, but at least she doesn’t seem to be as agitated anymore either. “Well maybe you HAVE seen the light at last. Took you long enough. (Sigh) Alright I’ll help you out, but you have to do what I say exactly because I know what’s best. Are you willing to do that?” “Okay.” “Alright then, let’s go.” Kelly says as you both begin to walk and talk. “Where are we going?” “You said you wanted a job, well I’m going to get you one where I work.” “The roller rink?” “There? No, I doubt if you’d last five seconds being a roller girl. I was talking about the other job I have down in the warehouse district.” “Um…there? But that’s illegal and I don’t think I’d be able to fight any better there either.” “Not to fight you airhead. To be a ring girl.” “A ring girl? I don’t think I’m pretty enough.” “You always were lacking in confidence. Trust me considering the skeezers I’ve seen hanging out down there as so called eye candy, you’re already ahead of the pack. Besides, the audience is filled with a bunch of drunk testosterone laden idiots, you’ll do just fine.” When you get to Kelly’s car, you start to panic. “I dunno if I can do this. Displaying my body for pay. It seems so wrong.” “Oh fuck Suzy, I thought you were trying to change you pathetic status in life! And if you’re serious about doing that, you’re going to have to get a little dirty. I dunno what you’re worried about anyway; I’m going to be there to save your timid ass if things get out of hand as always. Now are you coming or have I been wasting my fucking time?” Meekishly you enter the car and the pair of you drive off. You’re already nervous about this and when Kelly starts driving in progressively more run down areas, you begin to feel even more so. You attempt to make conversation to keep your mind off things. “So uh what exactly goes on in these things?” “Well it’s pretty simple. There’s a crowd of degenerate gamblers around a ring. Two people enter the ring. They proceed to beat the fuck out of each other until one of them can no longer proceed. People collect their money. The end. It’s just like ultimate fighting except there aren’t as many professionally skilled people and there aren’t as many stupid rules that get in the way.” “I didn’t think there were that many women in this sort of thing.” “There aren’t. I’m fighting guys most of the time, though one of the few rules they adhere to is a weight class system. So it’s not like I’m going against a fucking muscle-bound steroid junkie most of the time. After all it is supposed to be a good show too and they want the matches to at least be somewhat evened out. I’m pretty much accepted now there though. I’m kicked enough balls that they know I’m not one to be fucked with and can handle myself.” You hesitate to ask, but you can’t help yourself. “Do you take steroids?” “Ha ha ha ha! You sounded like Mom, which I guess isn’t surprising. Well since we’re getting all sisterly and all I might as well tell you. Yeah, I used to take them, but I stopped since I decided that I’d like to at least remain female even if I wasn’t some beauty. I’m probably addicted to pain killers though. Oh well shit happens right?” “I guess.” Soon Kelly pulls up to an abandoned warehouse. Its pretty deserted now, but you’re guessing later on tonight it won’t be. A couple of dubious individuals peep their heads out “Here we are, let me do all the talking.” “What do I do?” “Just stand there and look pretty as usual.” As you follow Kelly into the warehouse the two men who you saw earlier stand armed as another fatter man comes to greet you both. “Ah Killer Kelly always a pleasure. You’re here very early. I hope you haven’t come to convince me that you deserved more money for that last match because I thought we had settled that, disagreement.” “No Steve, that’s settled, I’m here about something else. Namely my sister here.” “Oh?” Steve says as he eyes you up and down lustfully, making you very uncomfortable. “She wants a job and I figured you could help me out, us being friends and all.” “Why of course! But surely this pretty little thing is no fighter is she?” “No, but I know you’re always looking for more ring girls, and well obviously since your tongue is hanging out you believe she qualifies.” “Oh yes, she qualifies, but let’s go to my office and discuss this in more detail.” All five of you head towards the office and every instinct in your body is telling you to get out, but then you remember your sister telling you that she’ll be looking out for you. She’s always been mean, but she’s never lied to you. The office isn’t anything unusual and Steve continues talking with Kelly the whole time, until he sits down and begins to address you directly. “So you willing to walk around a ring holding a card for a few minutes while drunks gawk and scream at you?” “I guess so.” “You willing to dress in a skimpy outfit that shows off those tits and that ass you’ve got covered?” “Uh…yeah.” “You willing to suck my cock?” “What?” “I said are you willing to suck my cock darling? Your sister did mention that as a pre-requisite didn’t she?” You look at Kelly in horror. “Heh, well by that expression, I can see she didn’t.” “Kelly! You mean you blew this guy to get this job?” “Hah! I wouldn’t let Kelly near my dick! She’s a dyke anyway. No only ring girls get this special privilege. So let’s get to it.” Steve starts to unzip his pants while his two goons just smirk. Kelly’s expression hasn’t changed. She looks as serious as ever. “Kelly, I don’t think I can do this…” you say. “Oh fuck Suzy what’s the fucking problem? So you suck a little dick to get a job, it’s not the end of the goddamn world! I told you before; you’re going to have to get a little dirty if you want to function in the real world! DO NOT make me look like a fucking asshole right now by backing out!” You feel so scared, outnumbered and overwhelmed right now. > Back out You can’t do this. It goes against everything that mom instilled in you. You begin to cry and collapse on the floor in tears. “Oh geez, she is an emotional one. Oh well nevermind then.” Steve says zipping up his pants. “Kelly I’ll see you at tonight’s show, hope you put on a good one, because combined with your complaining yesterday and wasting my time today, you’re not exactly high on my list right now. Get out of here.” Kelly doesn’t say anything but she pulls you up by the hair and roughly pulls you back to the car. She’s entirely silent during this time, but when she throws you in the car, she lets loose. “You fucking little bitch! You couldn’t help me out once? I told you to trust me, and you can’t even do that! When we get home you better just permanently stay in that goddamn basement of yours! Don’t EVER ask for my help ever again! Fuck you! Fuck you!” She screams and your cries are stifled when she punches you in the face a couple times before starting up the car. She continues to berate you and smacks you a few more times whenever you start to cry a little louder. You almost think she’s going to dump you in the middle of one the ghettos you’re driving through and she does threaten to do so several times, but she never does. When you get home, Peter and his buddy Kevin are outside filming something irrelevant, but when they see you and Kelly they film her pulling you out of the car, screaming obscenities, and kicking you a few times before driving off. Kevin helps you up and tries to grope you in the process, but you push him away and run back to your room to cry. You attempted to do something in the real world and were literally beaten and harassed for your efforts. It’s apparent to you now that you have no place out there anymore. You follow Kelly’s advice this time and vow never to leave the basement ever again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Antagonizing her isn’t going to help you and you did come to her for advice so you maintain your calm demeanor. You just hope it doesn’t result in some sort of physical abuse. “Kelly I’m just asking you for help since I acknowledge the fact that you have looked out for me in the past. Obviously you’re right, Mom’s guidelines didn’t work out for me since you’re so strong and independent and I’m not.” Kelly’s eyebrows raise and you almost think she’s going to smile. She doesn’t, but at least she doesn’t seem to be as agitated anymore either. “Well maybe you HAVE seen the light at last. Took you long enough. (Sigh) Alright I’ll help you out, but you have to do what I say exactly because I know what’s best. Are you willing to do that?” “Okay.” “Alright then, let’s go.” Kelly says as you both begin to walk and talk. “Where are we going?” “You said you wanted a job, well I’m going to get you one where I work.” “The roller rink?” “There? No, I doubt if you’d last five seconds being a roller girl. I was talking about the other job I have down in the warehouse district.” “Um…there? But that’s illegal and I don’t think I’d be able to fight any better there either.” “Not to fight you airhead. To be a ring girl.” “A ring girl? I don’t think I’m pretty enough.” “You always were lacking in confidence. Trust me considering the skeezers I’ve seen hanging out down there as so called eye candy, you’re already ahead of the pack. Besides, the audience is filled with a bunch of drunk testosterone laden idiots, you’ll do just fine.” When you get to Kelly’s car, you start to panic. “I dunno if I can do this. Displaying my body for pay. It seems so wrong.” “Oh fuck Suzy, I thought you were trying to change you pathetic status in life! And if you’re serious about doing that, you’re going to have to get a little dirty. I dunno what you’re worried about anyway; I’m going to be there to save your timid ass if things get out of hand as always. Now are you coming or have I been wasting my fucking time?” Meekishly you enter the car and the pair of you drive off. You’re already nervous about this and when Kelly starts driving in progressively more run down areas, you begin to feel even more so. You attempt to make conversation to keep your mind off things. “So uh what exactly goes on in these things?” “Well it’s pretty simple. There’s a crowd of degenerate gamblers around a ring. Two people enter the ring. They proceed to beat the fuck out of each other until one of them can no longer proceed. People collect their money. The end. It’s just like ultimate fighting except there aren’t as many professionally skilled people and there aren’t as many stupid rules that get in the way.” “I didn’t think there were that many women in this sort of thing.” “There aren’t. I’m fighting guys most of the time, though one of the few rules they adhere to is a weight class system. So it’s not like I’m going against a fucking muscle-bound steroid junkie most of the time. After all it is supposed to be a good show too and they want the matches to at least be somewhat evened out. I’m pretty much accepted now there though. I’m kicked enough balls that they know I’m not one to be fucked with and can handle myself.” You hesitate to ask, but you can’t help yourself. “Do you take steroids?” “Ha ha ha ha! You sounded like Mom, which I guess isn’t surprising. Well since we’re getting all sisterly and all I might as well tell you. Yeah, I used to take them, but I stopped since I decided that I’d like to at least remain female even if I wasn’t some beauty. I’m probably addicted to pain killers though. Oh well shit happens right?” “I guess.” Soon Kelly pulls up to an abandoned warehouse. Its pretty deserted now, but you’re guessing later on tonight it won’t be. A couple of dubious individuals peep their heads out “Here we are, let me do all the talking.” “What do I do?” “Just stand there and look pretty as usual.” As you follow Kelly into the warehouse the two men who you saw earlier stand armed as another fatter man comes to greet you both. “Ah Killer Kelly always a pleasure. You’re here very early. I hope you haven’t come to convince me that you deserved more money for that last match because I thought we had settled that, disagreement.” “No Steve, that’s settled, I’m here about something else. Namely my sister here.” “Oh?” Steve says as he eyes you up and down lustfully, making you very uncomfortable. “She wants a job and I figured you could help me out, us being friends and all.” “Why of course! But surely this pretty little thing is no fighter is she?” “No, but I know you’re always looking for more ring girls, and well obviously since your tongue is hanging out you believe she qualifies.” “Oh yes, she qualifies, but let’s go to my office and discuss this in more detail.” All five of you head towards the office and every instinct in your body is telling you to get out, but then you remember your sister telling you that she’ll be looking out for you. She’s always been mean, but she’s never lied to you. The office isn’t anything unusual and Steve continues talking with Kelly the whole time, until he sits down and begins to address you directly. “So you willing to walk around a ring holding a card for a few minutes while drunks gawk and scream at you?” “I guess so.” “You willing to dress in a skimpy outfit that shows off those tits and that ass you’ve got covered?” “Uh…yeah.” “You willing to suck my cock?” “What?” “I said are you willing to suck my cock darling? Your sister did mention that as a pre-requisite didn’t she?” You look at Kelly in horror. “Heh, well by that expression, I can see she didn’t.” “Kelly! You mean you blew this guy to get this job?” “Hah! I wouldn’t let Kelly near my dick! She’s a dyke anyway. No only ring girls get this special privilege. So let’s get to it.” Steve starts to unzip his pants while his two goons just smirk. Kelly’s expression hasn’t changed. She looks as serious as ever. “Kelly, I don’t think I can do this…” you say. “Oh fuck Suzy what’s the fucking problem? So you suck a little dick to get a job, it’s not the end of the goddamn world! I told you before; you’re going to have to get a little dirty if you want to function in the real world! DO NOT make me look like a fucking asshole right now by backing out!” You feel so scared, outnumbered and overwhelmed right now. > You do it Reluctantly you agree, but definitely not because you want to, but more because you feel scared and pressured right now. Tearfully you go towards Steve who begins to fondle your breasts and run his hands generally all over your body. “Oh yeah, you’re nice. Don’t be scared little darling. Nobody’s going to hurt you here.” You get on your knees before Steve who pulls his dick out and begins stroking it, but is getting dismayed by your reluctance. At this point your sister Kelly speaks up. “Erm, Steve. I think this would go easier for my sister if there wasn’t an audience. As you might’ve noticed she’s a bit on the shy side.” “Yes, yes, whatever. All of you get out.” Steve’s goons look a bit disappointed, but comply. You sister leaves as well. You could swear she had a grin on her face as she was leaving. “Alright sweetie, we’ve wasted enough time, get to work.” Steve says and shoves your face in his crotch. It has to be one of the more awful things you’ve smelt and it definitely tastes just as bad. You begin to cough. “Bitch you better not vomit on my dick!” Steve orders, but you’re having a very hard time with that order. Being a virgin, you haven’t even done this before. So you’re sort of fumbling around a lot. True you’ve watched porn on the internet out of curiosity and you’re attempting to mimic what you remember those ladies (or guys in some cases) did, but you’re just not a natural at it seems. Either that or the smell and the entire degrading situation is really distracting you. Once again Steve begins to get agitated. “Christ have you ever done this before? Here!” he says and put his hands on your head and push it back and forth himself. You’d probably choke on his dick with this technique if his dick wasn’t so small. As it is your head is partially ramming into the flab of his gut, so you’re still not getting much air. Steve continues to violate your mouth and says how much you’re a whore and how you enjoy this. You absolutely don’t though and the only thing you can do as the salty taste invades your mouth is close your eyes and pretend you’re someplace else. “Swallow you fucking whore!” he shouts in ecstasy and at that point a shot is heard. “Ack!” Steve shouts as he cums in your mouth. You gasp and gag for air and manage to break free while more cum shoots from his dick and all over your face. You immediately start spitting and throwing up in the corner, still not realizing what has happened. “Teach you to cheat me, motherfucker. Now where’s that safe combination?” you hear your sister say. You finally look behind you, still hacking up cum and attempting to wipe it off your face along with tears. “Kelly?” “Yeah, I’m here. I told you, that I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you. Glad you trusted me.” She says as she searches Steve who lies in a slump in his chair and a big hole in his head. “Hah! Knew he had the combo written down, this fucker could never remember anything.” Kelly gleefully proceeds to open the floor safe hidden nearby, though not too hidden since Kelly knew where it was. You on the other hand are still trying to come to grips with what just happened. “Didn’t let any one hurt me?! You let this bastard rape my mouth! And for what?” “For this! All this lovely loot!” Kelly says thrusting a wad of bills in your face, which you don’t like considering that you’ve had your fill of having anything thrust in your face today. You’re beyond fear now and moved on to outrage and anger. “For money?! You could’ve just killed him without me!” “True, but it would’ve been much harder. He had those bodyguards with him at all times, your distraction was just what I needed.” “Bullshit! You did this to me for your own twisted pleasure!” “Did I?” your sister smiles. “Maybe. But I also did it for the money and revenge. “Revenge on me or him?” “Perhaps both. And I didn’t make you do anything. You could’ve backed out. I would’ve been pissed of course, but you still could’ve backed out. So you took a shot in the mouth, so fucking what? I told you before that you were going to have to get a little dirty to make it in the real world. I’m going to give you half of this money for helping me anyway. Buy yourself a box of mouth wash or some shit. Hell the guy’s dead now, it’s not even like he can brag about it. Here help me with this money.” Not knowing what to do, you comply to your sister’s orders again. You and her put it all in a bag and leave, but not before Kelly kicks Steve and his chair over. “And I’m not a dyke you fucking asshole!” she says. You pass one of the dead guards on the way back, then another near the exit. They showed no evidence of being shot. You guess that Kelly killed them with her bare hands. Kelly and you drive off and you begin to ask about the cops or any other criminals that might miss Steve. “Nah, don’t worry about the cops. They’ll probably throw a party. Steve’s just another dead criminal. No serious investigation. And as for other criminals, they’ll probably throw a party too. Nobody’s going to miss him. Look, I’m sorry for what happened to you, but you needed a wake up call. You needed to understand that the real world is based on sacrifices. You made a sacrifice and the pay off was bigger than the sacrifice. Wish I could’ve learned that lesson a lot sooner and quicker instead of putting my body through hell and waking up in pain every morning.” While Kelly’s unique “lesson” might have a point, all it makes you feel is violated and used. All her abuse over the years doesn’t even compare to this twisted little endeavor. And she wants you to be thankful? Fuck that, and fuck her. You see the gun she used to kill Steve next to her and grab it. “Suzy what the fuck are you doing?” “Teaching you a lesson too, that you can’t abuse people for years and get away with it!” Kelly is momentarily surprised, but then reverts back to calmness. “If you shoot me, you’ll have a hell of a time getting back home, with two bags of stolen money, a bloody car and a dead body collapsed on the steering wheel and gas pedal.” “That’s why you’re pulling over.” “Hah! The hell I am. Nice try, but you didn’t think this through. Should’ve waited until we got home where you wouldn’t have been at my mercy as much, though you probably would’ve lost your nerve if you waited. Maybe just as we got in this car? Oh well doesn’t matter you missed your opportunity.” “I’m telling you to pull over now!” you say jamming the gun into her head. “Ohh, you ARE mad. Never seen this side of you before. Maybe you should’ve been like this when Steve was shoving his little dick in your mouth. God, that had to be horrible. What a first time for a blow job eh? Well at least his fat ass wasn’t laying on top of you. Give it up Suzy. You’re not going to kill me. You don’t have it in you to take the risk. I’m being understanding right now because you’ve obviously snapped from the wake up call to reality, but you continue to shove that gun at my head and I’m going to be less understanding. Trust me on that.” > You put the gun away Kelly’s right. Shooting her now wouldn’t be a good idea and you put away the gun. The pair of you remain silent for the rest of the trip home and eye each other warily. When you get home you get out of the car and grab your bag of money from the back seat without another word. Peter and his buddy Kevin are outside filming something irrelevant, but when they see you and Kelly their attention is turned. “Hey Suzy, whatcha got in the bag?” Kevin says while attempting to touch you. You’re in no mood for his antics and you swing the bag of cash into his head. He falls to the ground and you proceed to pistol whip the shit out of him. “Holy shit! This is great stuff!” Peter says pointing the camera at you. “Open your fucking mouth you little bitch!” you scream into Kevin’s ear. When he complies you start jamming the pistol into his mouth and scream even more at him. The scene you’re causing in public makes all the neighbors head inside. Even a couple of the Morningstar clan make haste for their compound. “DON’T YOU EVER FUCKING TOUCH ME AGAIN!” are your last demands to Kevin who is more than willing to capitulate to your threats. You then warn Peter that if he keeps stealing your clothes you’re shoving the gun up his ass and pulling the trigger. He backs off as well. Kelly meanwhile is laughing at you abuse the pair of them. “See, told you it did you some good. Now try to channel that energy into something more useful. You got a bunch of money now to help you get started.” Kelly says before going into the house. And so you do. With the money you use it to get yourself an apartment and move out that lunatic asylum you used to call home. You also enroll into the local college and get a part time job there. It’s a start of a brand new life for you and it isn’t exactly easy, but you’re better prepared to handle it now. And as much as you’re loathed to admit it, Kelly was right.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Reluctantly you agree, but definitely not because you want to, but more because you feel scared and pressured right now. Tearfully you go towards Steve who begins to fondle your breasts and run his hands generally all over your body. “Oh yeah, you’re nice. Don’t be scared little darling. Nobody’s going to hurt you here.” You get on your knees before Steve who pulls his dick out and begins stroking it, but is getting dismayed by your reluctance. At this point your sister Kelly speaks up. “Erm, Steve. I think this would go easier for my sister if there wasn’t an audience. As you might’ve noticed she’s a bit on the shy side.” “Yes, yes, whatever. All of you get out.” Steve’s goons look a bit disappointed, but comply. You sister leaves as well. You could swear she had a grin on her face as she was leaving. “Alright sweetie, we’ve wasted enough time, get to work.” Steve says and shoves your face in his crotch. It has to be one of the more awful things you’ve smelt and it definitely tastes just as bad. You begin to cough. “Bitch you better not vomit on my dick!” Steve orders, but you’re having a very hard time with that order. Being a virgin, you haven’t even done this before. So you’re sort of fumbling around a lot. True you’ve watched porn on the internet out of curiosity and you’re attempting to mimic what you remember those ladies (or guys in some cases) did, but you’re just not a natural at it seems. Either that or the smell and the entire degrading situation is really distracting you. Once again Steve begins to get agitated. “Christ have you ever done this before? Here!” he says and put his hands on your head and push it back and forth himself. You’d probably choke on his dick with this technique if his dick wasn’t so small. As it is your head is partially ramming into the flab of his gut, so you’re still not getting much air. Steve continues to violate your mouth and says how much you’re a whore and how you enjoy this. You absolutely don’t though and the only thing you can do as the salty taste invades your mouth is close your eyes and pretend you’re someplace else. “Swallow you fucking whore!” he shouts in ecstasy and at that point a shot is heard. “Ack!” Steve shouts as he cums in your mouth. You gasp and gag for air and manage to break free while more cum shoots from his dick and all over your face. You immediately start spitting and throwing up in the corner, still not realizing what has happened. “Teach you to cheat me, motherfucker. Now where’s that safe combination?” you hear your sister say. You finally look behind you, still hacking up cum and attempting to wipe it off your face along with tears. “Kelly?” “Yeah, I’m here. I told you, that I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you. Glad you trusted me.” She says as she searches Steve who lies in a slump in his chair and a big hole in his head. “Hah! Knew he had the combo written down, this fucker could never remember anything.” Kelly gleefully proceeds to open the floor safe hidden nearby, though not too hidden since Kelly knew where it was. You on the other hand are still trying to come to grips with what just happened. “Didn’t let any one hurt me?! You let this bastard rape my mouth! And for what?” “For this! All this lovely loot!” Kelly says thrusting a wad of bills in your face, which you don’t like considering that you’ve had your fill of having anything thrust in your face today. You’re beyond fear now and moved on to outrage and anger. “For money?! You could’ve just killed him without me!” “True, but it would’ve been much harder. He had those bodyguards with him at all times, your distraction was just what I needed.” “Bullshit! You did this to me for your own twisted pleasure!” “Did I?” your sister smiles. “Maybe. But I also did it for the money and revenge. “Revenge on me or him?” “Perhaps both. And I didn’t make you do anything. You could’ve backed out. I would’ve been pissed of course, but you still could’ve backed out. So you took a shot in the mouth, so fucking what? I told you before that you were going to have to get a little dirty to make it in the real world. I’m going to give you half of this money for helping me anyway. Buy yourself a box of mouth wash or some shit. Hell the guy’s dead now, it’s not even like he can brag about it. Here help me with this money.” Not knowing what to do, you comply to your sister’s orders again. You and her put it all in a bag and leave, but not before Kelly kicks Steve and his chair over. “And I’m not a dyke you fucking asshole!” she says. You pass one of the dead guards on the way back, then another near the exit. They showed no evidence of being shot. You guess that Kelly killed them with her bare hands. Kelly and you drive off and you begin to ask about the cops or any other criminals that might miss Steve. “Nah, don’t worry about the cops. They’ll probably throw a party. Steve’s just another dead criminal. No serious investigation. And as for other criminals, they’ll probably throw a party too. Nobody’s going to miss him. Look, I’m sorry for what happened to you, but you needed a wake up call. You needed to understand that the real world is based on sacrifices. You made a sacrifice and the pay off was bigger than the sacrifice. Wish I could’ve learned that lesson a lot sooner and quicker instead of putting my body through hell and waking up in pain every morning.” While Kelly’s unique “lesson” might have a point, all it makes you feel is violated and used. All her abuse over the years doesn’t even compare to this twisted little endeavor. And she wants you to be thankful? Fuck that, and fuck her. You see the gun she used to kill Steve next to her and grab it. “Suzy what the fuck are you doing?” “Teaching you a lesson too, that you can’t abuse people for years and get away with it!” Kelly is momentarily surprised, but then reverts back to calmness. “If you shoot me, you’ll have a hell of a time getting back home, with two bags of stolen money, a bloody car and a dead body collapsed on the steering wheel and gas pedal.” “That’s why you’re pulling over.” “Hah! The hell I am. Nice try, but you didn’t think this through. Should’ve waited until we got home where you wouldn’t have been at my mercy as much, though you probably would’ve lost your nerve if you waited. Maybe just as we got in this car? Oh well doesn’t matter you missed your opportunity.” “I’m telling you to pull over now!” you say jamming the gun into her head. “Ohh, you ARE mad. Never seen this side of you before. Maybe you should’ve been like this when Steve was shoving his little dick in your mouth. God, that had to be horrible. What a first time for a blow job eh? Well at least his fat ass wasn’t laying on top of you. Give it up Suzy. You’re not going to kill me. You don’t have it in you to take the risk. I’m being understanding right now because you’ve obviously snapped from the wake up call to reality, but you continue to shove that gun at my head and I’m going to be less understanding. Trust me on that.” > You shoot Kelly Kelly’s last bit of arrogance is the last straw. You don’t say anything, you just shoot and Kelly’s brains splatter all over the driver’s window and partially on you. The thrill of killing her is short lived as her body does indeed cause the car to swerve out of control. You attempts to regain control fail and you crash into an oncoming truck.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>That’s the spirit! I knew you had it in you! Okay so you’re feeling uncharacteristically motivated today, that’s a start, but where exactly you’re going to begin is another question. Getting a job might be the way to go, but you have no idea what you might be qualified for. You could go to a family member for help or your old friend the internet as usual. > You ask your older brother Ben You’re not really sure of how much help you’re going to get from Ben given that he’s probably just as reclusive as you, probably more so. You head to the backyard to look for him, but he’s nowhere to be found. You do see his girlfriend Moon Shadow meditating in the garden though. For being a filthy hippy she’s very pretty. In some ways you can see why Ben gave up his potentially lucrative job in the government for her. Though you don’t think Moon Shadow had it in mind that he’d become a paranoid survivalist nut that indulged in every conspiracy theory known under the sun. You ask her where he is. “Hey Moon Shadow, sorry to bother you, but do you know where Ben is?” Moon Shadow stops her meditation to address you. “No worries Suzy. I am just happy to see you! You spend far too much time inside that dark basement hiding out from the world much like Ben does in his bunker. The both of you should embrace all the beauty it has to offer!” ”Uh, sure. So do you know where Ben is?” “Sadly no. I haven’t seen him for a couple days, but I’m sure he’ll return to me soon. He always has!” “A couple days? Where did he go?” “Oh he’s working on his underground bunker as always. He really gets caught up in it; though I try to tell him that it’s completely unnecessary, but I understand his intentions to protect all of us are good. It is my hope that he will someday come to his senses and we will leave this place. The aura and karma here are…well very fucked up.” Never having been in Ben’s bunker you ask where it is. “Dunno, he hides it really well and keeps switching the entrance. In fact I haven’t ever been inside it; I’ve always slept up here beneath the majestic stars.” “Hmm, I think I’ve seen you and Tommy on the couch in the living room a few times.” “Well Tommy gets cold sometimes and he wants his mommy with him, would you have me deny that right?” “I suppose not. So where’s Tommy then?” “He’s been spending time with his father, so he’s also down in the bunker. It’s good for them to bond and it allows me to get back in touch with the cosmos.” At this point you’re getting exasperated. “How the hell can Ben move the damn entrance around and hide it so well in just this backyard?” you ask. “I’m afraid I do not know the answer to your questions. You will have to ask him yourself. All I can tell you that if you truly wish to find him, you will do so, but I am wondering if you should not stay here and meditate with me so that you may calm yourself and perhaps find another path.” > You go find Ben You don’t have time for Moon Shadow’s hippy shit, you’re here to find Ben. “No, I’m pretty sure the only path I wanted to follow today was to find Ben.” “Very well, but as I said before I have no idea where he’s hidden the entrance this time. You’ll just have to find it yourself.” Moon Shadow tells you and then goes back to her meditation. You begin wandering the backyard, looking at the ground in the hopes of finding something out of place, but you’re not having too much luck. “How the hell…gah, tis is pointless…huh?” “Aunt Suzy pretty!” you hear a familiar voice say. You turn around and see Tommy! “Tommy! I thought you were with your dad. Your mom’s over there.” “Mommy sleeping.” “No she isn’t she’s med…” you look again over in Moon Shadow’s direction and she’s no longer meditating she’s on the grass sprawled out fast asleep. “Oh well, I guess she is asleep. So Tommy, as I said before I thought you were helping your dad.” “Busy. No want my help anymore.” Tommy says while looking down at the ground. At first you think he’s sad, but actually he’s just become fascinated with a bug on the ground. “Tommy where’s the entrance to the bunker?” “Dunno.” “You don’t know? How can you not know? You came up from the bunker!” “Oh yeah…me don’t know. Keeps changing location. You want to play?” This little trip to find Ben has just gotten weirder by the minute. You’re really starting to wonder what the hell is going on. Though part of you just wants to give up and not bother with this nonsense. > You keep looking for Ben “Tommy, think carefully. WHERE is the entrance to the bunker?” you order which seems to make Tommy upset. He collapses on the ground and begins to cry. “WAHHHHHHH! I don’t like this game! No blue anymore! No more bad place!” “What the hell?” “Dig too deep! Too deep! Two trees! Scary things! (Sob)” It’s a bit incoherent gibberish, but you begin to wonder if Tommy hasn’t given you the clue of where to find the shelter entrance. You look around and notice the blue colored flowers near the medium sized trees in your backyard and you start to wonder. You leave Tommy to his retard seizure and head over to one of the trees and knock on it. Sounds solid, you knock on the other one and it makes a completely different sound. “Hah! Hollow!” you say and feel around for a door of some sort, eventually you find one and when you open it up a long ladder leading down is revealed. At the bottom you can see a faint bit of light and hear the hum of a generator. While you’re glad you found the entrance, you still don’t know how the hell he’s been supposedly changing the entrance. It really doesn’t seem possible, unless Moon Shadow and Tommy were initially lying to you. You descend down the ladder. It takes awhile, but when you get to the bottom you find yourself in a fairly spartan room with a few dim lights and a generator. There’s only one corridor leading from the room so you follow it. “Ben? Are you down here? Don’t shoot if you are, it’s me Suzy!” you call out, walking down the corridor. You pass many smaller room, most are empty. Some have things like canned food in them. You marvel at the fact that Ben was able to build something like this within a relatively short period of time. Amazing still that nobody really paid much attention to what he was doing or how he even got the materials down here. Eventually you come to a spot where the bunker doesn’t have the wall siding and just dirt with wooden support beams are being used. You’re guessing that Ben’s only just started digging here. You also notice that the newly dug pathway is sloping downward and there isn’t any lighting in that direction. This was creepy before, but now it’s starting to approach the scary realm. You decide you don’t really want to go any further. “BEN?! Are you down there?” Your call is followed by silence for a moment, then you hear some shuffling, then heavy breathing. Whatever it is that’s approaching, it doesn’t sound like Ben and when a disgusting figure dripping with ichor steps into the dim light, you know damn well it isn’t Ben! Panic and fear overwhelm you, and you run screaming back to the ladder. The inhuman noises are only getting louder though. You completely freak out when you run into a figure that steps out from one of the side rooms. You’re temporarily blinded by the powerful light shining from where the figure’s head would be. The figure turns down the light and you can see that it’s Ben wearing light mounted helmet. “Suzy, what the fuck are you doing down here? Get out of the way!” Ben shouts and strides past you with a shotgun when he hears the noises behind you. You crawl into the room he just came out of and hear him shout “DIE FUCKING MUTANT BASTARD!”, followed by a couple of gunshots a hideous cry and a loud thump. Ben then returns to find you. “Suzy, you’re still here? You’ve should’ve kept running, it’s not safe down here.” Ben asks helping you up. “W…what’s going on down here?” “Oh nothing much except trying to clean out some sort of race of creatures. I dunno what the hell they are, but I call ‘em Chulocks. Y’know like a combination of a Morlock and a Chud heh heh.” You have so many questions that you don’t know where to begin. Ben touches some sort of panel on the wall with his shotgun and a secret door slides open and motions you inside a nicely furnished room with a large arsenal, computer, books, bed and some food. “Don’t worry about the Chulocks, we’re safe in here, though I really need to install a security camera system down here. Just haven’t had time. I Look Suzy, I’m sure have a shitload of questions, and I’ll try to answer some of them, but you’ll have to leave soon. I have to start working on changing the layout of this place again, obviously it isn’t hidden enough if you found it. What were doing do here anyway?” “I…I was going to ask you for job advice.” “Job?” Ben starts to laugh. “I don’t think I’d have any good advice since I gave up that life long ago. You still living in the basement?” “Yeah.” “Hmm, you might want to think about moving or at least sleeping with a weapon.” “Why?” “Well as you can see living underground around here isn’t exactly the safest thing. Now I doubt if these things will be crawling into the basement anytime soon, but still it’s something to think about. Ironic that I built this place to be safe and it turns out to be almost as dangerous.” “Almost? Why the hell are you still living down here?” “You might as why as why am I still living in America. Because it’s my home and I’m not going to be run off by some underground mutants or ancient race, or whatever the hell those things are. Besides I got a theory they’re government made anyway. Probably some sort of experiment that went wrong, or maybe even unleashed on me purposely. It wouldn’t surprise me.” You’re not sure if that is the case, but given that you saw one of these things, Ben’s conspiracy theories might not all be crazy. “How long have you been fighting these things?” “Quite awhile. I first ran into them about a year after I started digging this thing. Little did I know something else was digging UP. There were shitloads of them in the past. Nowadays not so much. I dunno if it’s because I’m killing them all off or they’re finally getting the idea of not to come around here. For awhile I thought I’d killed them all, and I even had Tommy come down here to help me sometimes, but as it turned out they weren’t all gone and I sent Tommy back up. He’s seen them, and is scared of them, but I know his attention span isn’t the greatest.” “So, wait does Moon Shadow know about this? Does anyone else?” “Moon Shadow, well if you’ve spoken with her, she’d probably try to make friends with the damn things. So no she doesn’t know. Everyone else in the family doesn’t know either. They’re all too wrapped up in their own dramas and wouldn’t believe me if I told them. Well Uncle Ed might, but he’s up to his own suspicious dealings and quite frankly I think a Chulock eating him wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. He’s just plain creepy.” This all seems very surreal to you. All you did was want a little job advice to do something with your life and you got wrapped up in something much more. Question is now, are you going to actively do anything about what you learned? > No This definitely isn’t for you. You want to be out of here as quickly as possible. Ben certainly understands. “Can’t say I blame you, but like I said before you really should think about changing locations of where you sleep or move out entirely. This place was never the healthiest of environments…eh, I’m not going to tell you what you should do with your life, but take this pistol at least. Hell, given our family’s dysfunction you should have one anyway. Take care okay?” You take the gun and make your way back up the ladder and out the bunker. Moon Shadow and Tommy are now both sleeping near the garden. You pass them and head back to the basement half expecting to be attacked, but of course that doesn’t happen. You don’t sleep much for the next few days and when you do its on the living room sofa, which means you have to endure Kelly’s insults, but nothing worse than that. (She does notice that you carry a pistol around now though) Out of curiosity you go back to the tree with the secret entrance only to find it doesn’t exist anymore. Time passes and Ben comes up to the surface every once in awhile as usual, and you talk more in depth about things. Namely the “underworld”. He’s convinced more than ever that the government has something to do with them. Eventually he says he has everything he needs down there now, and doesn’t expect to come to the surface again. He tells Moon Shadow to take Tommy away and go some place else for he cannot be the soul mate or father that is needed. He also tells you again that you should leave with them and hands you a bunch of money. He says it’s the last of his life savings from his “old life”. You can’t see any reason to really stay. You’ve been on edge ever since you found out about the Chulocks, and you were looking for something to do with your life. Saying goodbye to Ben one last time, you, Moon Shadow, and Tommy move on to parts unknown where an unknown future awaits. But hopefully it won’t involve Chulocks.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Tommy, think carefully. WHERE is the entrance to the bunker?” you order which seems to make Tommy upset. He collapses on the ground and begins to cry. “WAHHHHHHH! I don’t like this game! No blue anymore! No more bad place!” “What the hell?” “Dig too deep! Too deep! Two trees! Scary things! (Sob)” It’s a bit incoherent gibberish, but you begin to wonder if Tommy hasn’t given you the clue of where to find the shelter entrance. You look around and notice the blue colored flowers near the medium sized trees in your backyard and you start to wonder. You leave Tommy to his retard seizure and head over to one of the trees and knock on it. Sounds solid, you knock on the other one and it makes a completely different sound. “Hah! Hollow!” you say and feel around for a door of some sort, eventually you find one and when you open it up a long ladder leading down is revealed. At the bottom you can see a faint bit of light and hear the hum of a generator. While you’re glad you found the entrance, you still don’t know how the hell he’s been supposedly changing the entrance. It really doesn’t seem possible, unless Moon Shadow and Tommy were initially lying to you. You descend down the ladder. It takes awhile, but when you get to the bottom you find yourself in a fairly spartan room with a few dim lights and a generator. There’s only one corridor leading from the room so you follow it. “Ben? Are you down here? Don’t shoot if you are, it’s me Suzy!” you call out, walking down the corridor. You pass many smaller room, most are empty. Some have things like canned food in them. You marvel at the fact that Ben was able to build something like this within a relatively short period of time. Amazing still that nobody really paid much attention to what he was doing or how he even got the materials down here. Eventually you come to a spot where the bunker doesn’t have the wall siding and just dirt with wooden support beams are being used. You’re guessing that Ben’s only just started digging here. You also notice that the newly dug pathway is sloping downward and there isn’t any lighting in that direction. This was creepy before, but now it’s starting to approach the scary realm. You decide you don’t really want to go any further. “BEN?! Are you down there?” Your call is followed by silence for a moment, then you hear some shuffling, then heavy breathing. Whatever it is that’s approaching, it doesn’t sound like Ben and when a disgusting figure dripping with ichor steps into the dim light, you know damn well it isn’t Ben! Panic and fear overwhelm you, and you run screaming back to the ladder. The inhuman noises are only getting louder though. You completely freak out when you run into a figure that steps out from one of the side rooms. You’re temporarily blinded by the powerful light shining from where the figure’s head would be. The figure turns down the light and you can see that it’s Ben wearing light mounted helmet. “Suzy, what the fuck are you doing down here? Get out of the way!” Ben shouts and strides past you with a shotgun when he hears the noises behind you. You crawl into the room he just came out of and hear him shout “DIE FUCKING MUTANT BASTARD!”, followed by a couple of gunshots a hideous cry and a loud thump. Ben then returns to find you. “Suzy, you’re still here? You’ve should’ve kept running, it’s not safe down here.” Ben asks helping you up. “W…what’s going on down here?” “Oh nothing much except trying to clean out some sort of race of creatures. I dunno what the hell they are, but I call ‘em Chulocks. Y’know like a combination of a Morlock and a Chud heh heh.” You have so many questions that you don’t know where to begin. Ben touches some sort of panel on the wall with his shotgun and a secret door slides open and motions you inside a nicely furnished room with a large arsenal, computer, books, bed and some food. “Don’t worry about the Chulocks, we’re safe in here, though I really need to install a security camera system down here. Just haven’t had time. I Look Suzy, I’m sure have a shitload of questions, and I’ll try to answer some of them, but you’ll have to leave soon. I have to start working on changing the layout of this place again, obviously it isn’t hidden enough if you found it. What were doing do here anyway?” “I…I was going to ask you for job advice.” “Job?” Ben starts to laugh. “I don’t think I’d have any good advice since I gave up that life long ago. You still living in the basement?” “Yeah.” “Hmm, you might want to think about moving or at least sleeping with a weapon.” “Why?” “Well as you can see living underground around here isn’t exactly the safest thing. Now I doubt if these things will be crawling into the basement anytime soon, but still it’s something to think about. Ironic that I built this place to be safe and it turns out to be almost as dangerous.” “Almost? Why the hell are you still living down here?” “You might as why as why am I still living in America. Because it’s my home and I’m not going to be run off by some underground mutants or ancient race, or whatever the hell those things are. Besides I got a theory they’re government made anyway. Probably some sort of experiment that went wrong, or maybe even unleashed on me purposely. It wouldn’t surprise me.” You’re not sure if that is the case, but given that you saw one of these things, Ben’s conspiracy theories might not all be crazy. “How long have you been fighting these things?” “Quite awhile. I first ran into them about a year after I started digging this thing. Little did I know something else was digging UP. There were shitloads of them in the past. Nowadays not so much. I dunno if it’s because I’m killing them all off or they’re finally getting the idea of not to come around here. For awhile I thought I’d killed them all, and I even had Tommy come down here to help me sometimes, but as it turned out they weren’t all gone and I sent Tommy back up. He’s seen them, and is scared of them, but I know his attention span isn’t the greatest.” “So, wait does Moon Shadow know about this? Does anyone else?” “Moon Shadow, well if you’ve spoken with her, she’d probably try to make friends with the damn things. So no she doesn’t know. Everyone else in the family doesn’t know either. They’re all too wrapped up in their own dramas and wouldn’t believe me if I told them. Well Uncle Ed might, but he’s up to his own suspicious dealings and quite frankly I think a Chulock eating him wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. He’s just plain creepy.” This all seems very surreal to you. All you did was want a little job advice to do something with your life and you got wrapped up in something much more. Question is now, are you going to actively do anything about what you learned? > Yes You were looking for something to do with your life, and you’ve come this far so… “Ben do you need some help fighting these things?” Ben is taken back “Are you serious? Suzy, while I appreciate your willingness to help, I think this is a bit much for you. Maybe if you were Kelly it would be a different story. You don’t think Kelly would believe you if you told them what was going on down here do you?” The pair of you laugh a little at that silly question. “Ben why don’t you just drag the bodies of one of them up here and show everyone?” “I thought about that, except it’s the damnedest thing. They fucking dissolve shortly after they get killed. I thought about catching one alive, but I doubt if I could do it myself and how am I going to drag one of those heavy things up a ladder while it’s kicking, biting, clawing and screeching at me in a net?” “Well…how about Peter?” “Peter? What the hell is he going to do? Dress up in lingerie and be bait?” You laugh again. “As long as it isn’t in my clothes he can, but you are aware of his film aspirations aren’t you?” “I dunno I haven’t seen him lately, the last thing I remember was him playing with dolls.” “Well he’s been in love with filming every little thing he sees lately. Seems like he’d help film something like this so there was proof. I mean I suppose we could do it without him, but I figure he’s got some better connections, us being recluses and all.” “Hmm, maybe. Alright, get him down here. I won’t change the entrance again for awhile.” You leave the bunker and go to Peter who is predictably filming unimportant shit around the house. Kevin thankfully seems to be in a corner nodding out from his recent heroin fix. Peter is surprisingly difficult to drag back to the bunker. He scoffs at the idea that you know what would be good material to record. But after promising him some of your pink underwear with the hearts on them, he agrees. You and Peter head back to the bunker where Ben is in full battle mode. He tells you and Peter to stay behind him the whole time. You follow Ben into the lower tunnel where more of those Chulocks are. The noise Ben makes attract them. Peter is dumbstruck by what he sees through his camera and records the whole gruesome incident. Afterwards Peter shows the whole family the tape and unfortunately almost no one wants to help. Uncle Ed is intrigued, but says he needs to be moving on with other things and wishes you luck. Donna is terrified and runs away from home. Moonshadow doesn’t approve of your willingness to destroy living beings and also leaves with Tommy. As for Dad he’s so drunk he just thinks you guys are watching a horror movie. Fortunately Kelly who practically sees herself as one of the “defenders” of the McCray household is willing to help out and you all take the fight to the Chulocks. All goes well for awhile. The family that’s left is focused on goal of battling the Chulocks. It’s probably the closest all of you have been in….well ever. The problem lies with the arrangement. Ben is still doing most of fighting. Kelly is still the main bread winner of the house and as such can’t really do any fighting (Indeed she does enough of that at her jobs!) Peter is almost more of a hindrance. He’s so eager to get more footage of the creatures; Ben has to bail his ass out most of the time. As for you, well you try, and you do alright, but ultimately it’s going to take more people to wipe out all the Chulocks as the deeper you go the more of them there are and there doesn’t seem to be an end to them. Then it all starts to break down. You begin to suggest reinforcing the bunker with thick concrete and steel so that the Chulocks can’t enter anymore. You figure that they’ll probably dig elsewhere for better picking. Ben argues that you need to exterminate all of them. Peter agrees, but his reasons are different than Ben’s. Kelly says she doesn’t give a shit, just follow through with a plan. So extermination it is. During the discussion Peter says he can’t wait to present this to the world. You’re actually surprised he hasn’t been uploading it to the internet in sequences, but he states he wants the whole “epic” before unleashing this masterpiece in its entirety. This causes an argument with Ben who has never been fond of the idea of showing this to the world since he’s starting to really believe that the government is behind the Chulocks. Peter says if they are then this would be a good way to expose them. The final foray isn’t pretty. You, Ben and Peter descend down as usual. The initial attack goes well. Then the next. And then the next. In fact you’re doing very well, a little too well. Eventually you go the deepest you’ve ever been and find the largest group of Chulocks ever. Ben wastes no time and starts throw grenades. Explosions occur and body parts start to fly. Unfortunately being underground this isn’t the best place for explosions. All three of you hightail it out of the area. Peter trips on something and falls. He cries out for you and Ben. You’re about to go back for him, but Ben roughly pushes you forward and says he’s done for and that you have to move. You get the very real impression, Ben wanted him to die. The collapsing tunnel is followed by an ambush. Apparently the Chulocks were a lot smarter than you thought and dug their own hidden passages and waited for you to be in so deep in their home that you wouldn’t be able to escape effectively. Ben fights valiantly, but the sheer number of them take him down. You see him gruesomely ripped to shreds before your eyes. Your fate is probably less pleasant. The Chulocks apparently aren’t just fond of breeding with each other, but are attracted to your “scent” as well. Your clothing is ripped off and you are forced to the ground, beaten, bloody and ultimately violated several times. The terror and pain is so great that you actually pass out. For a couple days you’re in those tunnels in a barely conscious state. You don’t come to until several figures in hazmat suits surround you. “Sir we’ve got them all, found this camcorder too.” “Good. So has the house been exterminated too?” “Yes, only two inside. We’ll be tracking the others down from this family soon.” “Hey this one’s still breathing. Christ, do you think they did what I THINK they did to her?” “Well it would explain why they didn’t kill her. Better take her back to the lab for examination. Should be interesting to say the least. Alright boys let’s move out.” You are whisked away to a top secret lab. Your nine month stay is not a pleasant one and ultimately fatal when you give birth.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t have time for Moon Shadow’s hippy shit, you’re here to find Ben. “No, I’m pretty sure the only path I wanted to follow today was to find Ben.” “Very well, but as I said before I have no idea where he’s hidden the entrance this time. You’ll just have to find it yourself.” Moon Shadow tells you and then goes back to her meditation. You begin wandering the backyard, looking at the ground in the hopes of finding something out of place, but you’re not having too much luck. “How the hell…gah, tis is pointless…huh?” “Aunt Suzy pretty!” you hear a familiar voice say. You turn around and see Tommy! “Tommy! I thought you were with your dad. Your mom’s over there.” “Mommy sleeping.” “No she isn’t she’s med…” you look again over in Moon Shadow’s direction and she’s no longer meditating she’s on the grass sprawled out fast asleep. “Oh well, I guess she is asleep. So Tommy, as I said before I thought you were helping your dad.” “Busy. No want my help anymore.” Tommy says while looking down at the ground. At first you think he’s sad, but actually he’s just become fascinated with a bug on the ground. “Tommy where’s the entrance to the bunker?” “Dunno.” “You don’t know? How can you not know? You came up from the bunker!” “Oh yeah…me don’t know. Keeps changing location. You want to play?” This little trip to find Ben has just gotten weirder by the minute. You’re really starting to wonder what the hell is going on. Though part of you just wants to give up and not bother with this nonsense. > You entertain Tommy You decide you just don’t care enough to find Ben, you instead decide to play with Tommy as he seems starved for attention right now. You take Tommy down to the basement to play, but now he seems more interested in your computer. “Puter! Better! Make better! Faster!” he says excitedly. “You saying you can upgrade my computer without me having to spend money?” “Make faster! Better! Puter!” You take that as a yes and let him at it. At first when you see Tommy ripping out wires and banging on the computer with a hammer he pulls out, you think you’ve made a horrible mistake. The computer looks entirely trashed in five minutes, but Tommy smiles and says. “Finished! Better now!” “I sure hope so…” You hesitantly turn the computer on and try it out and Tommy has indeed succeeded. You computer runs a lot faster. “Hey thanks Tom…” you say, but then realize he’s wandered off again. You shrug your shoulders and enjoy your upgraded computer. Looks like there will be even less of a reason to leave the basement now, though you know who to look for if you ever need it “made better” again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re not really sure of how much help you’re going to get from Ben given that he’s probably just as reclusive as you, probably more so. You head to the backyard to look for him, but he’s nowhere to be found. You do see his girlfriend Moon Shadow meditating in the garden though. For being a filthy hippy she’s very pretty. In some ways you can see why Ben gave up his potentially lucrative job in the government for her. Though you don’t think Moon Shadow had it in mind that he’d become a paranoid survivalist nut that indulged in every conspiracy theory known under the sun. You ask her where he is. “Hey Moon Shadow, sorry to bother you, but do you know where Ben is?” Moon Shadow stops her meditation to address you. “No worries Suzy. I am just happy to see you! You spend far too much time inside that dark basement hiding out from the world much like Ben does in his bunker. The both of you should embrace all the beauty it has to offer!” ”Uh, sure. So do you know where Ben is?” “Sadly no. I haven’t seen him for a couple days, but I’m sure he’ll return to me soon. He always has!” “A couple days? Where did he go?” “Oh he’s working on his underground bunker as always. He really gets caught up in it; though I try to tell him that it’s completely unnecessary, but I understand his intentions to protect all of us are good. It is my hope that he will someday come to his senses and we will leave this place. The aura and karma here are…well very fucked up.” Never having been in Ben’s bunker you ask where it is. “Dunno, he hides it really well and keeps switching the entrance. In fact I haven’t ever been inside it; I’ve always slept up here beneath the majestic stars.” “Hmm, I think I’ve seen you and Tommy on the couch in the living room a few times.” “Well Tommy gets cold sometimes and he wants his mommy with him, would you have me deny that right?” “I suppose not. So where’s Tommy then?” “He’s been spending time with his father, so he’s also down in the bunker. It’s good for them to bond and it allows me to get back in touch with the cosmos.” At this point you’re getting exasperated. “How the hell can Ben move the damn entrance around and hide it so well in just this backyard?” you ask. “I’m afraid I do not know the answer to your questions. You will have to ask him yourself. All I can tell you that if you truly wish to find him, you will do so, but I am wondering if you should not stay here and meditate with me so that you may calm yourself and perhaps find another path.” > You stay with Moon Shadow Moon Shadow seems pretty happy with life and she does even less than you, so maybe she’s on to something. You sit down with Moon Shadow who looks even happier than she did before. “So what is this path you speak of?” “If you meditate with me, you may find out. This will be so nice, Ben never meditates with me anymore and I’m afraid Tommy is a bit too hyperactive to sit still for it.” “So what do I do?” “Just sit across from me and cross your legs. Good, now stretch out your arms towards me so that we may hold hands. We shall hold hands the entire time so that we may feel our energies combining and let the positivity flow between us.” “Okay, now what?” “Now close your eyes and contemplate you life as it was, as it is and as it can be. See the universe, be the universe. Touch the universe…” While your eyes are closed you can definitely tell that Moon Shadow is maneuvering your hands towards her. “Feel the majestic mountains. Their peaks so perfect and beautiful. You could just want to bury yourself in between them…” “Uh…” “Feel the plains below, smooth and tight. No doubt due to a good diet…” “Hey…” “Now follow further south and AH! FEEL the field of everlasting glory!” “MOON SHADOW!” you say pulling your hands away. “What’s wrong I thought you wanted to meditate?” Moon Shadow says looking concerned. “That wasn’t meditation, that was you trying to shove my hand under your dress!” “Oh you’re right. I’m so sorry! I just…I’m just so lonely here and mostly everyone here is mean! I never see Ben anymore and I can’t even leave because it wouldn’t be right to take Tommy away from his dad. I feel so trapped! I guess when I saw you I thought…I oh, I dunno what I thought. (Sob)” You sort of feel sorry for Moon Shadow, and you can sort of sympathize with her plight. You too feel a little trapped. While Moon Shadow might’ve been a little misguided in trying to make “friends” with you, you try to console her. “Look Moon Shadow, you seem very nice, but you really caught me by surprise there. I mean I’ve never been with anyone before so this is all a bit weird for me. Not to mention you ARE with my brother. How would that look?” “Oh, I don’t place restrictions on such things. Never have. I believe if you have feelings for someone you should share them. And as far as Ben is concerned, he’s so infatuated with his bunker he’d rather be raping the holes in mother Earth rather than entering mine.” “Hmm, well if you’re horny couldn’t you just go out and meet someone else for a few hours? I mean like you said Tommy’s under watch by Ben. They probably wouldn’t know you’re even gone.” “Suzy, you misunderstand. I’m not some whore that just gives it up to anyone. I need to feel a spiritual connection with them first. Such things take time, but I felt it with you which is why I reached out. Didn’t you feel it too?” “Well I felt something…” you say looking at your hands. “You say you’re still a virgin? That is an awful long time to be one and I can’t imagine why given how pretty you are. Don’t you ever get urges?” “Sure, that’s why there are vibrators though.” “Oh Suzy, you are lost! No machine can ever compare to the touch of a real life human being. The tenderness and warmth…don’t you wish to experience that?” > You experience a "Moon" landing Well you’d be lying if you weren’t a bit curious. Besides, Moon Shadow seems caring enough to make your first time a pleasant one. “Well okay, I guess let’s go do it back to my basement.” you say. “Do it in the basement? That’s so tawdry! No, we are going to embrace underneath the sky so that nature may witness it.” “Uh…out here? But someone might see us!” “So? We can’t be ashamed to express our desires…here let me relax you.” At this point Moon Shadow crawls over to you and kisses you on the lips gently. Soon she has you lying on the grass as you both make out. Her tongue explores every inch of your virgin body as both of your articles of clothing are shed away. You feel her tongue pleasure you in a way you’ve never felt before, and it’s true, this is better than a machine. While the pair of you are making sweet interracial lesbian love in the garden, and bringing a whole new meaning to term ebony and ivory coming together in perfect harmony, Peter and his buddy Kevin stumble onto you. “HOLY SHIT DUDE!” Kevin shouts. “Shhh! Quick, get this on camera; we can use this for the romance scene. For some reason you heteros like watching the rug munching. Baffling to me, but I know it sells.” Peter says. You and Moon Shadow hear them, but neither one of you care. The pair of you are enjoying each other too much right now. In fact after both of you are finished Moon Shadow is more than a little infatuated and you’re quite fond of her too. She decides that her true path was to meet you and to take you away from this dysfunctional place. You and Moon Shadow end up running off together to live in a commune in the wilderness, where you and her grow your own food, make your own clothes and practice witchcraft. You two make the relationship “official” when you marry each other at the Sappho Fair and live happily ever after.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Moon Shadow seems pretty happy with life and she does even less than you, so maybe she’s on to something. You sit down with Moon Shadow who looks even happier than she did before. “So what is this path you speak of?” “If you meditate with me, you may find out. This will be so nice, Ben never meditates with me anymore and I’m afraid Tommy is a bit too hyperactive to sit still for it.” “So what do I do?” “Just sit across from me and cross your legs. Good, now stretch out your arms towards me so that we may hold hands. We shall hold hands the entire time so that we may feel our energies combining and let the positivity flow between us.” “Okay, now what?” “Now close your eyes and contemplate you life as it was, as it is and as it can be. See the universe, be the universe. Touch the universe…” While your eyes are closed you can definitely tell that Moon Shadow is maneuvering your hands towards her. “Feel the majestic mountains. Their peaks so perfect and beautiful. You could just want to bury yourself in between them…” “Uh…” “Feel the plains below, smooth and tight. No doubt due to a good diet…” “Hey…” “Now follow further south and AH! FEEL the field of everlasting glory!” “MOON SHADOW!” you say pulling your hands away. “What’s wrong I thought you wanted to meditate?” Moon Shadow says looking concerned. “That wasn’t meditation, that was you trying to shove my hand under your dress!” “Oh you’re right. I’m so sorry! I just…I’m just so lonely here and mostly everyone here is mean! I never see Ben anymore and I can’t even leave because it wouldn’t be right to take Tommy away from his dad. I feel so trapped! I guess when I saw you I thought…I oh, I dunno what I thought. (Sob)” You sort of feel sorry for Moon Shadow, and you can sort of sympathize with her plight. You too feel a little trapped. While Moon Shadow might’ve been a little misguided in trying to make “friends” with you, you try to console her. “Look Moon Shadow, you seem very nice, but you really caught me by surprise there. I mean I’ve never been with anyone before so this is all a bit weird for me. Not to mention you ARE with my brother. How would that look?” “Oh, I don’t place restrictions on such things. Never have. I believe if you have feelings for someone you should share them. And as far as Ben is concerned, he’s so infatuated with his bunker he’d rather be raping the holes in mother Earth rather than entering mine.” “Hmm, well if you’re horny couldn’t you just go out and meet someone else for a few hours? I mean like you said Tommy’s under watch by Ben. They probably wouldn’t know you’re even gone.” “Suzy, you misunderstand. I’m not some whore that just gives it up to anyone. I need to feel a spiritual connection with them first. Such things take time, but I felt it with you which is why I reached out. Didn’t you feel it too?” “Well I felt something…” you say looking at your hands. “You say you’re still a virgin? That is an awful long time to be one and I can’t imagine why given how pretty you are. Don’t you ever get urges?” “Sure, that’s why there are vibrators though.” “Oh Suzy, you are lost! No machine can ever compare to the touch of a real life human being. The tenderness and warmth…don’t you wish to experience that?” > You escape from the "Shadow" “Sorry Shadow girl, but I think I’m straight.” “How do you know, if you’ve never done anything?” “Well, I suppose I don’t, but I do know I don’t really have any desire to roll around in the grass with you. Sorry. Hope everything works out for you.” Moon Shadow looks very upset, so you leave her alone. In fact you decide to head back to the basement and continue your hermitage; you’ve had more than enough “adventure” for one day. Still you don’t need to be completely alone. “Well looks like it’s just you and me again, old friend.” You say pulling out your vibrator.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>That’s the spirit! I knew you had it in you! Okay so you’re feeling uncharacteristically motivated today, that’s a start, but where exactly you’re going to begin is another question. Getting a job might be the way to go, but you have no idea what you might be qualified for. You could go to a family member for help or your old friend the internet as usual. > You ask your Dad Well Dad used to work a lot at one time, so much so that he was never around, most would say he still isn’t due to him being drunk all the time, and you’d pretty much agree. You find Dad in the living room half passed out. You almost think to come back when he’s in a better state, but then you remember this is probably about as sober as he gets. “Hey Dad I need to ask you something.” Dad looks at you in a drunken daze. “What tha hell? (Hic!) Whadda you want?” “Well uh…I just wanted some advice on how to get a job.” “Job? (Hic!) What for? Workin’ man’s a sucker. I worked and worked to support all you bastards and what did it get me? Nuthin! Just a dead wife and sorrow. None of you appreciated her the way I did!” “Hey, that’s not true. We all missed her. As I recall you weren’t even at the funeral.” “Because the pain was too great, that’s why! And what exactly are you (Hic!) implyin? That I didn’t love her? Cause I did! Hell, I loved her enough to produce you and your worthless sib (Hic!) lings!” “Uh…okay.” You say and start to back away. “HEY! Don’t you walk away while I’m talking to you!” At this point your Dad manages to get up to lurch at you, but only succeeds in tripping over his feet and banging his head on the coffee table. “Argh! Shit. Fuck…(sob) Why? Why did you leave me? I was gonna…come back…just…just wasn’t enough time…(sob)…” You Dad lies on the floor clutching his head and sobbing quietly. He is truly a pitiful sight. Dad’s anger at you is probably misguided and while it’s true he wasn’t really there for you, it doesn’t mean you have to do the same. So you try to console him. “Erm…there there. I’m sure Mom knew how you felt even if you weren’t around to help raise five kids…” “(sniff) You think so?” “Sure, she often mentioned you a lot while you were gone.” “Oh really? What would she say?” You try to think back to anything positive, but come up empty. You just say non-committal. “Oh…just stuff about wishing you were here…” “Y’know, Suzy I REALLY do wish I could’ve been here more. It’s just always thought I’d have time to spend all the time in the world with her after I retired. If I could just have that time back, I would do everything I wanted to do with her.” Sensing that it might ease his pain you tell him stories about Mom. You try to just focus on the good times you spent with her, rather than all the arguing that usually went on with her and your more unruly siblings. This seems to cheer him up. He’s also sobered up a little while listening to you. “You really did take after her the most didn’t you?” he states. “Um, yeah I suppose I did.” You reply. Your Dad begins to look around as if to make sure nobody else is around and then looks at you intently. “I have something of your mother’s. I think she’d want you to have. It’s in the bedroom, follow me.” He whispers and gets up. > You follow him to the bedroom This is a little strange, but you have no reason to think that your Dad is going to do anything weird to you. Maybe it’s just a piece of jewelry or something. I mean you’re his daughter for Christ’s sake. Sure he might’ve been an absentee father and he’s a drunk, but do you really think he’d be so overcome with grief that he’d actually be trying to lure you into the bedroom so that in his twisted mind he could have sex with Mom again? “What exactly is it that you want to show me?” you ask. “Come with me, it’s in the bedroom.” He beckons. “Can’t you bring it out here?” “Suzy, it’s very special. In fact I question on whether I should give it to you, not because you don’t deserve it, but because if your other sisters catch wind of it, they might get jealous. So when I give it to you, you can’t tell anyone. It’ll have to be our secret.” ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO FOLLOW YOUR DAD? I’ll give you another chance to reconsider if you’re not entirely sure of his intentions. > You nah, if he was going to molest you, you would've wrote it in already You follow your Dad to the bedroom. When you walk inside it’s a little unnerving. There’s no lighting except candlelight. Candles are lit up near a dresser with a mirror and all over the walls are pictures of Mom. You Dad goes to the dresser and pulls out a fancy looking ring. It’s the one your Mom wore, you remember unashamedly arguing over who should get it, when she died. It is a very nice ring, but you certainly weren’t going to dishonor Mom by ripping it from her corpse. Ultimately your Dad hung on to it, just like he did with most of Mom’s old belongings. “Here Suzy, I’ve held on to my pain long enough. You take this ring.” You take the ring and stare at it for awhile. “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’m sure. You’re the one. Try it on just for kicks.” At first you think it won’t fit, but apparently you and Mom are about the same size. You like it, but you just can’t let your sisters see it. Hell, maybe you shouldn’t let Peter see it either. As you marvel at the ring, your Dad is picking up the urn with your Mom’s ashes. Before you can ask him what he’s doing he opens it and throws the ashes in your face! “SHE IS THE ONE! YOU CAN POSSESS HER BODY! AND RETURN TO ME ONCE MORE!” You try to stagger out of the bedroom choking and coughing while trying to get “Mom” out of your eyes, but Dad grabs you and throws you on the bed. “COME BACK TO ME BERTHA!” he shouts while locking the door. “Mom’s dead! Stop this right now you crazy fuck!” you exclaim rolling off the bed. “I’m sorry it has to be this way Suzy, but your mother needs a suitable body to return, and you’re perfect in everyway. Just think, you’ll be the one to bring her back to me!” > You grab a candle and try to set him on fire Snatching a candle nearby you throw it at him and miss spectacularly. You do however succeed in setting some nearby clothes on fire. “Bertha you will be mine again!” your Dad yells and lunges, pinning you to the floor. “Quick take her body! Enter her! ENTER!” While Dad is screaming his delusional statements, the fire in the room begins to spread. “Dad, get off of me, we’re both going to die!” you plead, but it’s no use. He’s still insisting on holding you down so that your mother’s “spirit” will enter inside you. That doesn’t happen of course, what does happen instead is the pair of you burning to death in the fire.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You follow your Dad to the bedroom. When you walk inside it’s a little unnerving. There’s no lighting except candlelight. Candles are lit up near a dresser with a mirror and all over the walls are pictures of Mom. You Dad goes to the dresser and pulls out a fancy looking ring. It’s the one your Mom wore, you remember unashamedly arguing over who should get it, when she died. It is a very nice ring, but you certainly weren’t going to dishonor Mom by ripping it from her corpse. Ultimately your Dad hung on to it, just like he did with most of Mom’s old belongings. “Here Suzy, I’ve held on to my pain long enough. You take this ring.” You take the ring and stare at it for awhile. “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’m sure. You’re the one. Try it on just for kicks.” At first you think it won’t fit, but apparently you and Mom are about the same size. You like it, but you just can’t let your sisters see it. Hell, maybe you shouldn’t let Peter see it either. As you marvel at the ring, your Dad is picking up the urn with your Mom’s ashes. Before you can ask him what he’s doing he opens it and throws the ashes in your face! “SHE IS THE ONE! YOU CAN POSSESS HER BODY! AND RETURN TO ME ONCE MORE!” You try to stagger out of the bedroom choking and coughing while trying to get “Mom” out of your eyes, but Dad grabs you and throws you on the bed. “COME BACK TO ME BERTHA!” he shouts while locking the door. “Mom’s dead! Stop this right now you crazy fuck!” you exclaim rolling off the bed. “I’m sorry it has to be this way Suzy, but your mother needs a suitable body to return, and you’re perfect in everyway. Just think, you’ll be the one to bring her back to me!” > You act like Mom The only way you’re going to be able to escape is most likely through trickery, so you get the idea of letting him think Mom’s spirit is possessing you. You immediately fall to the floor and begin to convulse and speaking in gibberish just like you’ve seen those fakers on televangelist healer programs. “G..,George! H…he…help m…me! Argh bleh! Garrrgh!” you gibber. Dad’s so gone by this point he believes this act entirely. He runs to your side and holds your hand. “Bertha! You’ve returned! W..what do you need? I’ll do anything!” Lacking any complex ideas, you just need to get out of this room. “W…water! Grah! Lots! Raghhh!” Dad immediately picks you up and with one hand and unlocks the door. He runs with you towards the stairs where the bathroom is nearly slamming into Peter and Kevin along the way. “Get out of the fucking way! I have to save your…ARGH!” he cries out when you jam your thumb in his eye causing you to drop you. “Quick, get all this on camera!” Peter shouts to Kevin. You recover just in time to avoid Dad trying to grab you. “You little bitch! Stop fighting it! Your mother MUST enter your body!” This threat is followed by a stroke of lightning and thunder, which causes Dad to act even crazier. “Lightning! I know now what I must do! Bertha I will bring you back!” he exclaims and then runs back to the bedroom. “Peter call the fucking police, I’m getting the hell outta here, Dad’s lost it!” you shout “Kevin, make sure you’re getting my good side.” “PETER! This isn’t a fucking game! Call them NOW!” Your demands to Peter are cut off when you see Dad come back with a lightning rod in hand! “THIS! Will bring her back! The power of lightning will destroy your disobedient soul and allow hers to enter!” he says and then charges at you will the rod. You run from your crazy ass Dad and manage to get outside where it’s storming pretty good. You don’t get far when you feel something hit the back of your head and you collapse to the ground. With the rain beating down, you feel a kick to your ribs to turn you over. You look up and see your Dad with lightning rod in hand. “AND NOW BERTHA WILL RETURN TO ME!” he shouts with the rod raised over his head ready to bring it down on you. Dad’s lightning rods were always considered the best quality… Even with there being higher structures in the area, the lightning strikes the rod immediately and fries your Dad to a crisp. Fortunately his legs weren’t touching you and you scramble and crawl to a much safer distance. The lightning doesn’t just hit him once but several times before he falls over smoking and completely black. The smell of burnt flesh is strong even in this heavy rain. “HOLY SHIT!” Kevin shouts still holding the camera. “You get all that? This is going to make a great finale!” Peter replies. In the aftermath, Peter does indeed manage to piece together some sort of movie from all this though he can’t use the real footage so he makes up a horror movie based on the events. It sort of becomes an underground hit in the horror genre. Due to it being based on you, you get to claim most of the profits. You sell your Mom’s ring too, as you don’t want to be constantly remembered of that dark day. With the film money and what you got with the ring, you decide to move out of the basement (and house) to put this life behind you for good. You’re not sure what you’re going to do exactly, but you won’t be a basement dweller anymore.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is a little strange, but you have no reason to think that your Dad is going to do anything weird to you. Maybe it’s just a piece of jewelry or something. I mean you’re his daughter for Christ’s sake. Sure he might’ve been an absentee father and he’s a drunk, but do you really think he’d be so overcome with grief that he’d actually be trying to lure you into the bedroom so that in his twisted mind he could have sex with Mom again? “What exactly is it that you want to show me?” you ask. “Come with me, it’s in the bedroom.” He beckons. “Can’t you bring it out here?” “Suzy, it’s very special. In fact I question on whether I should give it to you, not because you don’t deserve it, but because if your other sisters catch wind of it, they might get jealous. So when I give it to you, you can’t tell anyone. It’ll have to be our secret.” ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO FOLLOW YOUR DAD? I’ll give you another chance to reconsider if you’re not entirely sure of his intentions. > You hell no, you know how this is going to end up! While maybe it’s not what you think, but your heightened suspicion based on reading countless incest stories on the internet, his odd behavior, loneliness and depression and the fact he said you took after your Mom…needless to say it’s understandable that you think something really wrong is going to happen. “Yeah…Hey Dad I just remembered I have to go get something. I’ll be back.” Your Dad doesn’t even reply he just stands there looking a little bewildered. You briskly head back to the basement and hope he doesn’t try to follow you. He doesn’t. In fact when you creep back upstairs a couple days later he’s passed out on the couch as usual. It would seem his attention turned back to booze which is perhaps where it should stay. With this little example in mind, you come to the conclusion that changing things the way they are isn’t such a good idea and you rarely leave the basement ever again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>That’s the spirit! I knew you had it in you! Okay so you’re feeling uncharacteristically motivated today, that’s a start, but where exactly you’re going to begin is another question. Getting a job might be the way to go, but you have no idea what you might be qualified for. You could go to a family member for help or your old friend the internet as usual. > You ask your Uncle Ed It might be morbid curiosity that’s causing you to ask Uncle Ed. He obviously is getting money from somewhere, but you and everyone else can only guess how. It’s most likely illegal no doubt. As you approach the door to the garage, you have a feeling of dread overcome you, but you press on anyway. Upon opening the door you see Ed’s van and various other things that would be in a garage. Everything looks normal. Of course you haven’t actually inspected the little apartment space that exists above the garage where Ed actually sleeps. You make your way up the steps only to find Ed isn’t there. His place isn’t exactly as you imagined it. It’s clean! Everything is neatly packed away. In fact he appears to be the neatest person in the house. His bed is neatly made and doesn’t appear to be slept in, which is odd since his van is here, unless he made it already and went out during the day without his van. Of course that would be out of character behavior for him as you know him to be a night owl. You shrug your shoulders and decide to wait for him. Waiting for you though doesn’t include just sitting, you start to snoop around. Without thinking anything of it you open up his large freezer… Inside are heads and other body parts. Frozen blood paints the inside of the freezer. You scream in shock and fall backwards. “So, now you know, what many in this family have probably already whispered about for years. Knew I shouldn’t have slept in the van last night.” You turn your head and see Uncle Ed standing by the stairway. His clothing is caked with dried blood and he has a knife in hand. “Oh…uh…Uncle Ed…um…” you sputter, you’re too terrified to even scream out, though Ed gives you some quick instructions on that line of thinking. “Suzy, before you say anything else. Keep in mind that I kill pretty things like you on a regular basis. If you scream, I’ll do it again, family or not and that would be very regrettable. Besides I doubt if anyone would come running anyway.” Ed’s threat is completely calm which makes it all the scarier. You just sit down and quietly watch him as he approaches. “What’re you going to do to me?” you ask trying not to think about his possible answers. “Do? Well…there’s a lot of things I WOULD do to you if you weren’t my niece. You’re just about everything I look for in a girl. Nice, pretty, young. You’re even a virgin aren’t you? Yeah you are. You know how appealing that is in this age of whores who are only suitable for rape and annihilation?” your uncle says licking his knife in front of your face before stepping back. “Oh yes, I WOULD have lots of fun with you. However you’re family, and I always had a lot of respect for my sister. God rest her soul. And from what I know of you, you’re about the only one who followed her value system, which means you respected her too. So you’re safe for now…but…” “But?” “Well, call me paranoid, but it would really be foolish of me to just let you go after knowing my secret now wouldn’t it?” “But you already said everyone in the family thinks you’re a serial killer anyway…” Ed gets perturbed and holds his knife up. “Now stop right there. That’s the point. They THINK that. They don’t know for sure though, and I thought I was doing a good job of keeping them all away too. (Sigh) But I’m not really worried about you telling any of them, I’m more concerned with you going to the police after you leave here. Then I have to move, and then I’d have to come back and do something bad to you when you least expect it. So what could you do that could convince me?” “My word?” Ed starts to laugh. “Ha ha ha ha! You’re serious? My you are a unique one. God I wish you weren’t family…but anyway no I’m afraid that won’t do. While I’m sure you may very well be telling the truth, your moralistic view point and conscience may get the better of you one day and then where would I be. No, I need something else from you. Something that will bond us in a more meaningful way.” You start to panic and what he might be implying and you start to cover yourself with your arms and cross your legs. Again he laughs. “Oh no, not that my little Suzy. As much as I might like to, that’s just not something for me to place on the table. Besides it wouldn’t make me inclined to trust you anymore than I do now. Tell me Suzy, what do you know of the Morningstars?” “The Morningstars? You mean the family that lives in that compound up the street? Not much.” “Hmm, I thought as much. They are a strange lot, I’m surprised nobody has complained about them given their blatantly cultish ways.” ”Well people on this block tend to keep to themselves.” “Hm, true. One reason why I like living here. It’s perfect really. But there’s really only room for one of us.” “What do you mean?” “Isn’t it obvious dear girl? The Morningstars ARE cultists. Not sure what they worship, but I know damn well in involves human sacrifice. I’ve kept an eye on them ever since I noticed a few of their number taking in young girls.” Ed says while starring at your body. “These girls are never seen again.” “Uh, how do you know all this?” “Because sometimes my work overlaps with theirs and I know my prey. And they’re encroaching on it. I don’t think they’re really aware of me yet, but I think they’ve been getting suspicious.” “Okay so what does all this have to do with me?” “Right, straight to the point. Well whether you want to be or not, our families are going to embark in a good old fashioned feud. And you’re going to be bait.” “What?” “You heard me. Now as far as I can tell the Patriarch of that family and his eldest son are in absolute control. I figure if you can help me take out those two, that family will fall into chaos and it will be a simple matter of picking off their more incompetent members at leisure.” “So what am I supposed to do exactly?” “Heh…yeah I guess you might very well be clueless in this sort of thing. Look Suzy, I know you’re a good girl…but within every good girl lies a filthy dirty whore. A whore that wants to be fucked and desecrated…” Uncle Ed seems to be somewhere else for a moment, but he tries to quickly get back on track. “…uh anyway. YOU need to get in touch with the whore that is within you. You need to flirt, seduce and beguile those two in such a way that will allow me to get them. I really don’t think you’ll have that much of a problem though.” You take a deep breath and realize you have little choice, but to agree at this point. “Okay. I’ll do it.” “Good girl. I knew I could count on you. I’ll be in contact with you soon.” “Alright, I…” Uncle Ed grabs your arm as you try to leave. “Remember, we’re in this together now. Don’t do anything foolish. I really wouldn’t want to have to hurt you.” With that final warning, he lets you go. Completely unnerved and creeped out, you run back to the basement and pace the floor wondering what you should do next. > You obey Uncle Ed Ed’s got you so scared that you don’t dare disobey him. For the next few days you spend your time in the basement as usual hoping that he forgets about you. You barely sleep and you’re on edge constantly expecting him to come in to get you. You get sick many times. Exhausted from fear you eventually give in and fall into a deep sleep… “Wake up Suzy. It’s time.” You hear Ed’s unpleasant voice say. As much as you’ve been dreading this moment, you oddly don’t feel quite as sick anymore. “I’m sorry you had to go through what you did. I figured that would happen so that’s why I let it run its course. I think you’re sufficiently drained of emotion to the point where you’ll be able to pull this off without the chance of hysterics now. I hope you don’t mind me dropping in like this…hmm nice little hide away you got here…very dark and isolated…nice.” Uncle Ed continues his inspection of your “domain” as you slowly get up. You know he’s getting a kick out of this. You intruded on his “domain” and now he’s returning the favor. “Uncle Ed?” “Hmm?” “I gotta get dressed.” “Oh. Please don’t let me stop you. In fact I brought you some more appropriate clothing. Wear this.” Your uncle throws you some clothing at you. It’s a mini skirt and tight top and basically clothing your sister Donna would wear. “I took the liberty of getting you some more appropriate clothing. I’m pretty sure I got all the bloodstains out.” You look at this “hookerwear” in disbelief. “You expect me to wear this stuff?” “I’m afraid it’ll be necessary for you to better lure Bobby and Pa Morningstar. They like to hang out by the park. That’s where we’re going. Put those on, because while you may have the morals of a saint, you have the body of a harlot… within every virgin lies a fucking slut…whore…” Ed is successfully making you feel scared again. When he realizes what he’s doing he apologizes. “…I’m sorry Suzy. I get in another place sometimes. I guess you’ll want some privacy. I’ll wait outside.” Uncle Ed goes upstairs to wait and you try to psyche yourself up for this ordeal. You look at the clothing and put it on which makes you feel really vulnerable. Your legs are exposed, your stomach isn’t covered. You feel almost naked. When you exit the house it’s twilight. You didn’t realize you slept so long. Ed motions you over to his van where he beeps his horn. You feel like a hooker going to be picked up. You don’t say a word when you get in the van. “Ah yes, you almost look the part now. But let’s do one more thing.” Ed says and then pulls something out of his jacket. It’s lipstick. Uncle Ed gets close to apply it on you. Again you don’t say anything. It doesn’t take long, and then he shows you what you look like in a mirror. He’s done a good job. Probably better than you could have considering you’ve never worn any make up of any kind. It would appear that Uncle Ed’s done this before. “Wish I had some eye liner, but we don’t have time for all that. Your eyes are pretty enough without it though. You’re a very lucky girl to be blessed with such natural beauty.” Ed says as he starts up the van. The drive to the park is uneventful. When you get near there, Ed stops the van to brief you. “Alright, I don’t want to get too close yet, but the father and son duo should be sitting at a picnic table over near that lightly wooded area way over there. I’ve been keeping up with their routines a bit, so they should be there. Now that area is a little secluded, but not enough, I need you to actually lure them into the woods. I’ll take care of the rest. After we do this, me and you will be even and I’ll be able to trust you completely.” “What if I can’t lure them into the woods? What if they try to kill me?” “They won’t try to kill you. They don’t do it that way. And I have faith that you’ll be able to lure them. No man can resist a whore…” Sensing your uncle is going to his dark place again, you cut the conversation short. “Okay, I’m leaving…” you say quickly getting out of the van and nearly running off. You’re so glad to be out of his presence. You look around the park which is still fairly populated at this time, though most of the families are going home now. You’re drawing some looks from several teenage guys though. You get a lot of comments as well. You aren’t used to it so now you’re afraid of getting assaulted by some horny teenagers. But like most teenage guys, they do a lot of barking, but don’t actually do anything. Eventually you reach the area your uncle was talking about. You see a young man sitting at a table by himself, you know that’s Bobby having seen him a few time before in the neighborhood. No sign of his father though. No sign of your uncle either, but you sense he’s somewhere nearby. As you approach Bobby you see that he must be preoccupied because he isn’t even looking up. It’s like he’s deep in thought. Searching your memory of how you’ve seen it done in movies and TV, you try your best to be seductive. “Hello.” Is all you can think of. Bobby looks up. “Erm, hello? Do I know you?” “You might. I’m Suzy. I live down the street from you.” “Oh yeah…I haven’t seen you for quite awhile.” “Well, I’m around, I just don’t get out much.” “Hm. So what brings you out here?” “Oh sometimes I like to take walks by myself. You know clear my head from family troubles.” “Well I can understand all about family trouble, let me tell you. But I’ve never seen you here before. I come here quite a bit and I can honestly say I would remember you walking around.” Bobby says looking you up and down referring to your state of dress. You get a little shy, and try to think of an excuse. “Oh this get up? Well, I don’t usually dress like this, these are my sister’s clothes. I lost a bet with her. It’s a bit complicated.” “Ah, say no more. Family again. (Sigh)” That’s the second time Bobby’s mentioned family in a distracted manner again, so you decide to follow up on it before he presses you for more information. “Is there something wrong?” you ask as you sit down. Bobby looks hesitant to tell you at first, but when you smile at him from across the table, he lets down whatever guard he might’ve had up. “It’s my Dad. He’s so demanding. I come from a very large family and just because I’m the oldest son I have all this extra responsibility! I’m expected to keep all my siblings in line, I’m supposed to take over when Dad’s gone. I’m supposed to do all this shit and it’s always been that way all my life and it sucks! Tiamat forbid that I get to do some stuff by myself.” “Uh…Tiamat?” you question, but Bobby doesn’t stop his rant to explain that oddity. “My Dad still treats me like a little kid sometimes. I have to go with him to do all these important things and he takes every opportunity to point out all my shortcomings, without listening to any of my ideas! We were supposed to do something to today and instead of doing it, we spent the whole day arguing. He stormed off and told me I better get my shit together by the time he comes back. In fact he left not too long after you showed up. If he saw me talking to you, he’d probably accuse me of not paying attention to my so called duties.” “Is your dad still here, where did he go?” “Yeah, I wouldn’t be fortunate enough for him to leave me alone that long. He went to go cool off in those woods over there…” Your heart begins to race quicker at that thought. If Pa Morningstar went into the woods then he might’ve already run into Uncle Ed. Things on your part are probably going to be a lot easier now. Part of you wants warn Bobby though since you sort of sympathize with him on some level. > You warn Bobby You can’t go through with this. You know your life is going to be in danger and that Pa Morningstar may very well already be dead, but you can’t actively be involved in killing anyone directly or indirectly. Your demeanor changes from one of feigned cheerfulness, to one of scared candor. You even take Bobby’s hand which shocks him a little. “Bobby, you opened up to me, so I’m going to open up to you. We need to go into that woods right now, because your dad might be in serious trouble.” “What?! What’re you talking about?” “There’s no time to explain, but my uncle is going to kill him!” you exclaim and get up trying to pull Bobby with you. Bobby starts to move, but insists that you tell him in more detail of what is going on. You do in a very condensed fashion which causes him to pause. “So wait, you’re working with your uncle to kill me and my dad in the woods? And now you want ME to go in there?” “NO! I was bullied into helping my uncle, but I couldn’t do it that’s why I’m warning you now, so that you can save your dad!” Bobby stops completely. “Why would I do that?” “What? Come on it may already be too late!” “So what if it is? Look Suzy, you don’t know my dad like I do. The guy has barely any fucking redeeming qualities and those he does have he barely shows most of the time. Fuck him.” “B…but he’s your father!” “What of it? Just because someone is related to you don’t mean anything if they’re complete assholes to you and treat you like shit your whole life. Hell he hasn’t even been the worst to me. He’s been a fucking abusive tyrant to my whole family. I’m sure all of them at some point have thought about killing him themselves. Shit, I know I have.” You certainly didn’t expect this reaction. You don’t know what to do now, you start to cry. “Now what’s wrong with you?” Bobby asks. “I wish I could be that brave, but I’m so scared. Now that you know what’s going on you can avoid your fate. But I’m still in danger. My Uncle Ed is gonna (Sob!) kill me!” “Hey…Shhh…Hey…don’t cry. Don’t cry. Look you are brave. I mean it took courage to tip me off didn’t it? You went against your uncle’s threats and took a chance that I wouldn’t flip out and kill you myself right?” “(Sniff) I guess so.” “Look…your uncle is still expecting me right?” “Probably.” “Well let’s wait a minute or two, then I’ll go in the woods and I’ll take care of your uncle Ed.” At this point Bobby lifts open his jacket and quickly displays a large knife of his own. It’s rather ornate from what little you see of it. “I’m prepared.” He says He spends the next few minutes calming you down, but then begins to mumble some sort of prayers. You can’t make out most of them, but they certainly don’t sound Christian and you hear the name Tiamat a lot. After he finishes he turns to you and smiles. “Okay I’m going into the woods. YOU wait here. Now one of two things will happen. Either I’ll come out and your uncle will be dead. Or your uncle will come out and I’ll be dead, and you can still take credit for luring me into the woods. Just tell him you told me to make up with my dad or something. He should buy that, and you’ll be still be safe.” “What about your dad?” you ask. “My dad? He’s probably dead. If he was still alive he would’ve came out by now. Obviously Tiamat had forsaken him, if he was taken down by the likes of your uncle.” Bobby makes his way into the woods. You wait at the table for awhile in the darkness. There isn’t a soul around. You continue to look into the woods waiting for someone to step out. Bobby, Uncle Ed, Pa Morningstar, anyone… Eventually someone does and it’s Bobby. He looks a little roughed up and there are bloodstains on his clothes. You can only guess that it wasn’t an easy kill. “Sheesh, that was intense. Your uncle might’ve killed me, if I hadn’t known he was lurking around. I think what caused him to go off his game plan was when I mentioned you told me that he was waiting. I think he wanted to yell at that point, because his calm killer demeanor turned into white hot rage. Still he never made a grand outburst, he just mumbled something about ripping you apart after he was done with me. Well we better get out of here. You need a ride home?” You back off a little bit. As much as you didn’t want to be involved in Bobby’s murder, you’re not entirely trusting of him. You know for certain that he and his family are indeed cultists that sacrifice people to this Tiamat he’s mentioned a few times. “Uh…not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but maybe I should walk home.” “Walk? In that outfit and through this area? You’d be safer with me. I’m not going to do anything to you.” “How do I know you aren’t going to sacrifice me to Tiamat?” “…well I suppose you don’t. However, all I can say is that I’m in a better mood than I was, and that’s thanks mostly to you. I can now run the compound the way I want to and communicate to Tiamat directly as the new high priest. Plus you did warn me of your uncle and possibly saved my life. So I’d say you’re safe. I mean it’s not like you’re going to blab about any of this right?” Bobby is smiling. He’s even a little playful, but you get the very real feeling he is warning you. “No, no of course I won’t.” “Good! I’m glad that’s settled then. Come on let’s go.” You follow Bobby to his car and sit quietly. Bobby turns on the radio and begins humming happily to the heavy metal music playing. Halfway home he speaks to you directly. “So, you wanna go out sometime?” he asks. “What?!” you say in total surprise. “Do you wanna go out? I mean it seems like we got some stuff in common. And before all this went down it seemed like there was a spark there. At least I felt a little something. It’s why I told you about my dad, which was a major place of trust on my part given that you were a virtual stranger.” “Yeah, I suppose so.” “As you might guess my family isn’t much for outsiders. None of us gets out all that much. I was one of the luckier ones, being the eldest son and all, but I still had strict guidelines. Fucking your sister alleviates the tension so to speak, but really it doesn’t allow for a good future bloodline. Well that’s the way I see it anyway. So, how about it?” “Well, I dunno. I don’t get out much either. Though that’s by choice, not because anyone made me.” “Hah. Sounds like you were your own prisoner. Come on, let’s go out. It’ll be good for the both of us, you can tell me all about your obviously fucked up family on the date.” “I wouldn’t even know where to start.” You laugh. “See that’s the spirit! If it helps you don’t have to dress like that either.” Bobby points at your clothing. “I don’t normally wear this sort of thing.” “Yeah, I sort of figured that. You didn’t seem comfortable in it from the moment I saw you. Hell, if I had to guess. You’re still a virgin.” You’re amazed at Bobby’s insight. “Is it THAT obvious? My Uncle Ed knew too when he roped me into this.” “Well it’s probably more obvious to us predatory types even if we don’t know that much about the person. Darkness is often drawn to purity. Don’t worry though; Tiamat doesn’t have a predisposition toward virgin blood. You’re still safe.” “Well lucky me.” Bobby stops in front of your house. You didn’t realize you were already so close to home. “Here you are. See, nice and safe. So…do you want to go out sometime?” You look at Bobby and its crazy that after all that’s happened tonight, you do feel a certain spark between you. “Okay what the hell. Come pick me up whenever you’re able I suppose. You know where I live and I never go anywhere so I’ll be here.” “Alright then, but first…” Bobby quickly leans over and steals a quick kiss from you before you get out of the car. Your first kiss. You always wondered if it would happen. You feel completely giggly. He smiles in satisfaction. “See you soon!” he says and drives home. You head back to the basement nearly walking on air. A good thing came out of all this and you fall asleep with no problems for the first time in the past few days. The wonderful dreams you have that night you know are just glimpse into the reality that is sure to come.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ed’s got you so scared that you don’t dare disobey him. For the next few days you spend your time in the basement as usual hoping that he forgets about you. You barely sleep and you’re on edge constantly expecting him to come in to get you. You get sick many times. Exhausted from fear you eventually give in and fall into a deep sleep… “Wake up Suzy. It’s time.” You hear Ed’s unpleasant voice say. As much as you’ve been dreading this moment, you oddly don’t feel quite as sick anymore. “I’m sorry you had to go through what you did. I figured that would happen so that’s why I let it run its course. I think you’re sufficiently drained of emotion to the point where you’ll be able to pull this off without the chance of hysterics now. I hope you don’t mind me dropping in like this…hmm nice little hide away you got here…very dark and isolated…nice.” Uncle Ed continues his inspection of your “domain” as you slowly get up. You know he’s getting a kick out of this. You intruded on his “domain” and now he’s returning the favor. “Uncle Ed?” “Hmm?” “I gotta get dressed.” “Oh. Please don’t let me stop you. In fact I brought you some more appropriate clothing. Wear this.” Your uncle throws you some clothing at you. It’s a mini skirt and tight top and basically clothing your sister Donna would wear. “I took the liberty of getting you some more appropriate clothing. I’m pretty sure I got all the bloodstains out.” You look at this “hookerwear” in disbelief. “You expect me to wear this stuff?” “I’m afraid it’ll be necessary for you to better lure Bobby and Pa Morningstar. They like to hang out by the park. That’s where we’re going. Put those on, because while you may have the morals of a saint, you have the body of a harlot… within every virgin lies a fucking slut…whore…” Ed is successfully making you feel scared again. When he realizes what he’s doing he apologizes. “…I’m sorry Suzy. I get in another place sometimes. I guess you’ll want some privacy. I’ll wait outside.” Uncle Ed goes upstairs to wait and you try to psyche yourself up for this ordeal. You look at the clothing and put it on which makes you feel really vulnerable. Your legs are exposed, your stomach isn’t covered. You feel almost naked. When you exit the house it’s twilight. You didn’t realize you slept so long. Ed motions you over to his van where he beeps his horn. You feel like a hooker going to be picked up. You don’t say a word when you get in the van. “Ah yes, you almost look the part now. But let’s do one more thing.” Ed says and then pulls something out of his jacket. It’s lipstick. Uncle Ed gets close to apply it on you. Again you don’t say anything. It doesn’t take long, and then he shows you what you look like in a mirror. He’s done a good job. Probably better than you could have considering you’ve never worn any make up of any kind. It would appear that Uncle Ed’s done this before. “Wish I had some eye liner, but we don’t have time for all that. Your eyes are pretty enough without it though. You’re a very lucky girl to be blessed with such natural beauty.” Ed says as he starts up the van. The drive to the park is uneventful. When you get near there, Ed stops the van to brief you. “Alright, I don’t want to get too close yet, but the father and son duo should be sitting at a picnic table over near that lightly wooded area way over there. I’ve been keeping up with their routines a bit, so they should be there. Now that area is a little secluded, but not enough, I need you to actually lure them into the woods. I’ll take care of the rest. After we do this, me and you will be even and I’ll be able to trust you completely.” “What if I can’t lure them into the woods? What if they try to kill me?” “They won’t try to kill you. They don’t do it that way. And I have faith that you’ll be able to lure them. No man can resist a whore…” Sensing your uncle is going to his dark place again, you cut the conversation short. “Okay, I’m leaving…” you say quickly getting out of the van and nearly running off. You’re so glad to be out of his presence. You look around the park which is still fairly populated at this time, though most of the families are going home now. You’re drawing some looks from several teenage guys though. You get a lot of comments as well. You aren’t used to it so now you’re afraid of getting assaulted by some horny teenagers. But like most teenage guys, they do a lot of barking, but don’t actually do anything. Eventually you reach the area your uncle was talking about. You see a young man sitting at a table by himself, you know that’s Bobby having seen him a few time before in the neighborhood. No sign of his father though. No sign of your uncle either, but you sense he’s somewhere nearby. As you approach Bobby you see that he must be preoccupied because he isn’t even looking up. It’s like he’s deep in thought. Searching your memory of how you’ve seen it done in movies and TV, you try your best to be seductive. “Hello.” Is all you can think of. Bobby looks up. “Erm, hello? Do I know you?” “You might. I’m Suzy. I live down the street from you.” “Oh yeah…I haven’t seen you for quite awhile.” “Well, I’m around, I just don’t get out much.” “Hm. So what brings you out here?” “Oh sometimes I like to take walks by myself. You know clear my head from family troubles.” “Well I can understand all about family trouble, let me tell you. But I’ve never seen you here before. I come here quite a bit and I can honestly say I would remember you walking around.” Bobby says looking you up and down referring to your state of dress. You get a little shy, and try to think of an excuse. “Oh this get up? Well, I don’t usually dress like this, these are my sister’s clothes. I lost a bet with her. It’s a bit complicated.” “Ah, say no more. Family again. (Sigh)” That’s the second time Bobby’s mentioned family in a distracted manner again, so you decide to follow up on it before he presses you for more information. “Is there something wrong?” you ask as you sit down. Bobby looks hesitant to tell you at first, but when you smile at him from across the table, he lets down whatever guard he might’ve had up. “It’s my Dad. He’s so demanding. I come from a very large family and just because I’m the oldest son I have all this extra responsibility! I’m expected to keep all my siblings in line, I’m supposed to take over when Dad’s gone. I’m supposed to do all this shit and it’s always been that way all my life and it sucks! Tiamat forbid that I get to do some stuff by myself.” “Uh…Tiamat?” you question, but Bobby doesn’t stop his rant to explain that oddity. “My Dad still treats me like a little kid sometimes. I have to go with him to do all these important things and he takes every opportunity to point out all my shortcomings, without listening to any of my ideas! We were supposed to do something to today and instead of doing it, we spent the whole day arguing. He stormed off and told me I better get my shit together by the time he comes back. In fact he left not too long after you showed up. If he saw me talking to you, he’d probably accuse me of not paying attention to my so called duties.” “Is your dad still here, where did he go?” “Yeah, I wouldn’t be fortunate enough for him to leave me alone that long. He went to go cool off in those woods over there…” Your heart begins to race quicker at that thought. If Pa Morningstar went into the woods then he might’ve already run into Uncle Ed. Things on your part are probably going to be a lot easier now. Part of you wants warn Bobby though since you sort of sympathize with him on some level. > You don't warn him It’s pointless, even if you did warn Bobby then what? You can’t count on him to help you and you’d be at Uncle Ed’s mercy. No, you need to go through with this. You just hope you can convince Bobby to actually go into the woods. From the sound of it, he’s not to happy with his dad right now who’s supposed to be in the woods, so it wouldn’t be likely he’d follow you there to do anything sexual. You decide to try a different approach. “Bobby. I know it might not be my place, but I think you should make up with your father.” “What?! You’re taking his side? Who the hell are you to tell me what to do?!” he snaps. “Hold on slow down, I sympathize with you. I really do. But remember he’s family.” Bobby calms down and listens to you. “Sometimes family can be overbearing and annoying and all of that. Trust me I know. But like I said, they’re still family. And when it comes down to it, they’re the only ones who you can usually count on. There’s a bond there. A strong one that shouldn’t be easily broken over a silly argument. I’m sure deep down you dad cares about you.” Bobby looks at you and nods. “Yeah…yeah…I suppose you’re right. My dad has always been there for me. For all of us. He must care, I mean I’m the next one to take his place in case anything happens to him. I guess he just wants the best for me. I need to go find him.” “You want me to come with you?” “Heh, no you’ve done enough. Besides I’m trying to make up with the old bastard, if he sees you, it might get complicated. I need to go alone. Thanks though. Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.” Bobby says quickly getting up to leave. “Yeah. Maybe. H…hey I’ll stay here though in case he comes out and you miss him okay?” you shout at Bobby, but he’s already entered the woods. You wait at the table for awhile in the darkness. There isn’t a soul around. You continue to look into the woods waiting for someone to step out. Bobby, Uncle Ed, Pa Morningstar, anyone… “So you ready to go Suzy?” you hear Uncle Ed say as he puts a hand on your shoulder and scaring you again. “Oh shit! Fuck! You scared me!” you gasp. “Where the hell did you come from, I didn’t see anyone come out of the woods. “Oh I took the scenic route. You should be more alert though and look all around you so you don’t get anyone to sneak up on you again. Come on the van’s in the parking lot.” You head towards the lot with Uncle Ed by your side the entire time. He’s pretty quiet on the way to the van. He’s not even staring at you anymore. Doesn’t make him any less creepy or dangerous though. In fact the trip back home in the van is pretty quiet as well half way through. “So, Suzy how did you manage to do that?” Ed suddenly asks. “Do what?” “Get those Morningstars to go into the woods, separately too I might add. Boy that made things a lot easier. Thanks. But I never saw you. In fact I thought you’d screwed up at first when I only saw Pa Morningstar there wandering around and so early.” “Well, he and his son had an argument. Pa stormed off into the woods to cool off, shortly before I even got there. So that’s why you bumped into him so quickly.” “Really? Guess that was a lucky break for you then. What about the son?” “I convinced Bobby to make up with his father, because it was important that family stick together no matter what. So he went into the woods to do so.” Uncle Ed nods. “Well it didn’t go quite as planned, but it went easier than I expected. And more importantly I’m pretty sure I can trust you now. But not just because you’re an accomplice to murder now, but because of what you just said about it being important that family stick together. You really do believe that don’t you?” You look at Ed, and it takes a lot of effort, but you convince yourself that you do. “Yes, I do.” Ed nods again and doesn’t speak again until you get back home at which point he says one last thing to you before you get out of the van. “You’re a good girl Suzy. A very good girl. Your Mom would be proud. Hell, you didn’t even need to rely on your looks. You’re one of the rare ones. (Sigh) Wish things were different, y’know? But things are what they are. Guess I better leave. No sense in causing you distress. This isn’t the life for you. I’ll be out of here by morning.” Ed starts to laugh as he gets out of the van. “Ha ha I just thought of something funny. I killed those two because they were encroaching on my territory, but now I’m leaving anyway. Oh well, guess it just wasn’t their night.” You leave Ed to his morbid sense of humor and back to the “safety” of your basement. You don’t leave it for days. You swing from emotion to emotion. Guilt, fear, sickness, sorrow, etc. Eventually you leave to check the garage, because you just have to know if he really left, and he did. Apparently Moon Shadow and Tommy moved into the garage shortly after Ed left. The garage has been completely redecorated into a much “happier” place. In time you learn to live with what you were involved in, but you become even more distant and introverted. You never leave the basement again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It might be morbid curiosity that’s causing you to ask Uncle Ed. He obviously is getting money from somewhere, but you and everyone else can only guess how. It’s most likely illegal no doubt. As you approach the door to the garage, you have a feeling of dread overcome you, but you press on anyway. Upon opening the door you see Ed’s van and various other things that would be in a garage. Everything looks normal. Of course you haven’t actually inspected the little apartment space that exists above the garage where Ed actually sleeps. You make your way up the steps only to find Ed isn’t there. His place isn’t exactly as you imagined it. It’s clean! Everything is neatly packed away. In fact he appears to be the neatest person in the house. His bed is neatly made and doesn’t appear to be slept in, which is odd since his van is here, unless he made it already and went out during the day without his van. Of course that would be out of character behavior for him as you know him to be a night owl. You shrug your shoulders and decide to wait for him. Waiting for you though doesn’t include just sitting, you start to snoop around. Without thinking anything of it you open up his large freezer… Inside are heads and other body parts. Frozen blood paints the inside of the freezer. You scream in shock and fall backwards. “So, now you know, what many in this family have probably already whispered about for years. Knew I shouldn’t have slept in the van last night.” You turn your head and see Uncle Ed standing by the stairway. His clothing is caked with dried blood and he has a knife in hand. “Oh…uh…Uncle Ed…um…” you sputter, you’re too terrified to even scream out, though Ed gives you some quick instructions on that line of thinking. “Suzy, before you say anything else. Keep in mind that I kill pretty things like you on a regular basis. If you scream, I’ll do it again, family or not and that would be very regrettable. Besides I doubt if anyone would come running anyway.” Ed’s threat is completely calm which makes it all the scarier. You just sit down and quietly watch him as he approaches. “What’re you going to do to me?” you ask trying not to think about his possible answers. “Do? Well…there’s a lot of things I WOULD do to you if you weren’t my niece. You’re just about everything I look for in a girl. Nice, pretty, young. You’re even a virgin aren’t you? Yeah you are. You know how appealing that is in this age of whores who are only suitable for rape and annihilation?” your uncle says licking his knife in front of your face before stepping back. “Oh yes, I WOULD have lots of fun with you. However you’re family, and I always had a lot of respect for my sister. God rest her soul. And from what I know of you, you’re about the only one who followed her value system, which means you respected her too. So you’re safe for now…but…” “But?” “Well, call me paranoid, but it would really be foolish of me to just let you go after knowing my secret now wouldn’t it?” “But you already said everyone in the family thinks you’re a serial killer anyway…” Ed gets perturbed and holds his knife up. “Now stop right there. That’s the point. They THINK that. They don’t know for sure though, and I thought I was doing a good job of keeping them all away too. (Sigh) But I’m not really worried about you telling any of them, I’m more concerned with you going to the police after you leave here. Then I have to move, and then I’d have to come back and do something bad to you when you least expect it. So what could you do that could convince me?” “My word?” Ed starts to laugh. “Ha ha ha ha! You’re serious? My you are a unique one. God I wish you weren’t family…but anyway no I’m afraid that won’t do. While I’m sure you may very well be telling the truth, your moralistic view point and conscience may get the better of you one day and then where would I be. No, I need something else from you. Something that will bond us in a more meaningful way.” You start to panic and what he might be implying and you start to cover yourself with your arms and cross your legs. Again he laughs. “Oh no, not that my little Suzy. As much as I might like to, that’s just not something for me to place on the table. Besides it wouldn’t make me inclined to trust you anymore than I do now. Tell me Suzy, what do you know of the Morningstars?” “The Morningstars? You mean the family that lives in that compound up the street? Not much.” “Hmm, I thought as much. They are a strange lot, I’m surprised nobody has complained about them given their blatantly cultish ways.” ”Well people on this block tend to keep to themselves.” “Hm, true. One reason why I like living here. It’s perfect really. But there’s really only room for one of us.” “What do you mean?” “Isn’t it obvious dear girl? The Morningstars ARE cultists. Not sure what they worship, but I know damn well in involves human sacrifice. I’ve kept an eye on them ever since I noticed a few of their number taking in young girls.” Ed says while starring at your body. “These girls are never seen again.” “Uh, how do you know all this?” “Because sometimes my work overlaps with theirs and I know my prey. And they’re encroaching on it. I don’t think they’re really aware of me yet, but I think they’ve been getting suspicious.” “Okay so what does all this have to do with me?” “Right, straight to the point. Well whether you want to be or not, our families are going to embark in a good old fashioned feud. And you’re going to be bait.” “What?” “You heard me. Now as far as I can tell the Patriarch of that family and his eldest son are in absolute control. I figure if you can help me take out those two, that family will fall into chaos and it will be a simple matter of picking off their more incompetent members at leisure.” “So what am I supposed to do exactly?” “Heh…yeah I guess you might very well be clueless in this sort of thing. Look Suzy, I know you’re a good girl…but within every good girl lies a filthy dirty whore. A whore that wants to be fucked and desecrated…” Uncle Ed seems to be somewhere else for a moment, but he tries to quickly get back on track. “…uh anyway. YOU need to get in touch with the whore that is within you. You need to flirt, seduce and beguile those two in such a way that will allow me to get them. I really don’t think you’ll have that much of a problem though.” You take a deep breath and realize you have little choice, but to agree at this point. “Okay. I’ll do it.” “Good girl. I knew I could count on you. I’ll be in contact with you soon.” “Alright, I…” Uncle Ed grabs your arm as you try to leave. “Remember, we’re in this together now. Don’t do anything foolish. I really wouldn’t want to have to hurt you.” With that final warning, he lets you go. Completely unnerved and creeped out, you run back to the basement and pace the floor wondering what you should do next. > You call police Wasting no time you decide to call the police. Uncle Ed cannot possibly clean up his place in time, especially not if he doesn’t know the police are being called. You explain the situation to them, and they say they’ll send someone over right away and for you not to try to stop your uncle yourself. Soon the police arrive. Not just one but two cop cars. On your way to meet them you bump into Peter and Kevin who are filming something pointless as usual. “Suzy what’s going on?” Peter asks. “The cops are here, Uncle Ed’s a serial killer!” “HOLY SHIT! The cops? I gotta get outta here!” Kevin exclaims and runs off to hide somewhere in the house. “Hah! I always knew something was weird with him. I’m filming this shit.” Peter says taking the camera Kevin dropped. Before you can get to the front door you hear a crash, shouting and the screeching of a vehicle followed by gun fire! Uncle Ed is escaping in his van! You rush outside just in time to see one cop car give chase and another officer calling for backup and paramedics for his partner who was run down. After the initial chaos has died down, the police question you and the rest of the family. They also take the opportunity to search the entire house when they find the body parts in Ed’s freezer. This all doesn’t go over well for any of you. They start out by questioning you, and you help out as much you can, but now you’re terrified that Ed is going to come back to kill you. You breakdown in the middle of it and have to be taken to a hospital. This fortunately allows you to miss most of the other “fun” that occurred… Dad was half passed out, but when they tried to wake him he gets hostile and throws a punch at one of the cops. They cuff him and take him into custody. Peter attempts to make out like he discovered everything and asking if other news crews are going to be over. They dismiss him as the annoying fuck he is and tell him if he doesn’t get the camera out of their faces they’ll take him in for obstructing a police investigation. Naturally he cries about the Bill of Rights. They follow up with taking his camera away as evidence and throw him into the back of a police car right next to Dad. They find Kevin hiding in a cupboard. They find a large quantity of drug on him and he gets a seat in the back of yet another police car. The worst part comes when Ben has just happened to come up from his bunker to get some supplies. He thinks government agents finally come to get him and opens fire on them. The shoot out lasts a couple hours and doesn’t end until Ben is lying dead with several gunshots in him. This of course causes great outrage and sorrow from Moon Shadow and Tommy who see this happen before their eyes. They too are taken away. Neither one of your sisters were home at the time during this drama, but when Kelly finds out when she comes home later, she’s pissed. (Donna doesn’t find out until a couple days later since she was partying) She bails out Dad and Peter and blames you for everything. She comes to see you in the hospital and tells you that you that the house has been seized and that they’ll all have to find a new place to live! She also tells you that wherever it is they move to, you won’t be welcome back and that nobody wants to see you again for all the trouble you cause. You try to explain your side, but none of them want to listen. It doesn’t matter that Uncle Ed was a serial killer, you disrupted the natural order of things in the house and everyone’s life has been made even worse because of it. Especially yours. After getting released from the hospital you’re now homeless. You can’t really think of any other ideas, so you call your friend Julie and ask if you can stay with her. Fortunately she says you can, but that you’ll have to get there yourself because she’s too busy with an orgy at the moment. Unfortunately you never make it. Even with the police having a manhunt, even with your heightened state of danger. Uncle Ed keeps his promise. You don’t even hear him until he’s grabbed your mouth, dragged you into an alley and whispered into your ear. “My only regret is I won’t be able to take my time with you, traitorous bitch.” A razor sharp knife is run across your throat, allowing for a quick clean kill. Uncle Ed then leaves you to bleed out and die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>That’s the spirit! I knew you had it in you! Okay so you’re feeling uncharacteristically motivated today, that’s a start, but where exactly you’re going to begin is another question. Getting a job might be the way to go, but you have no idea what you might be qualified for. You could go to a family member for help or your old friend the internet as usual. > You ask the internet Well it’s always been there for you before; it might as well be there for you again. You go online and start looking up a local job site. Naturally there doesn’t seem to be anything you want to do, let alone be qualified for. After your half-assed attempt at “looking” for a job, your attention begins to wander and you start surfing the internet like you always do. Soon you get an instant message from Julie. She hasn’t sent one in a long time; she must either have something serious to talk about or… Parteegurl69: HAY SUZEE!1! PARTY TONITE! GET OUTTA DAT BASEMENT AND GET LAID FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIF! LOL1!!!111! That. Maiden4ever: Hi Julie. Parteegurl69: HAY SO LIEK R U CUMMING TO MY PARTY? LOTZ O GUYZ WILL BE THERE! Maiden4ever: You party all the time and there are always a lot of guys at your place, what makes this one so different? Parteegurl69: CUZ! UR GONNA BE THERE THIS TIME! SIRISLY U NEED TO CUM. I NEED TO TALK TO YOU BOUT SOMETHING 2. Maiden4ever: Why don’t you just tell me you think you’re pregnant again right now? Parteegurl69: LOL. NO IZ NOT THAT. I NEED TO SEE U IN PERSON ITS SUMTHIN I GOT TO TELL U FACE 2 FACE. BUT I ALSO WANT U TO HAVE SUM FUN 2 4 ONCE. Maiden69: You can’t tell me online? Parteegurl69: NO I GOT TO TELL U IN PERSON. PLZ CUM!11!!!1 Normally you’re not the type to go to parties, let alone the glorified orgies she calls parties, but if she really does have something to tell you in person it has to be important. She’s never been known to exaggerate in times like this. Though you wonder if it’s really all that serious considering that she’s still having a party tonight. Maiden4ever: Alright Julie I’ll try to be there, but if I do get there, I’ll only be there to talk to you. I’m not staying. Parteegurl69: UR CUMMIN KEWL! C U TONIGHT AT 6! Julie logs off and you continue to browse the internet for hours like you were doing. Eventually you hear a faint knock on the door and whispering. You quickly open the door and see Peter and his friend Kevin standing there. “Oh hi Suzy, we were just wondering if you’d like to have the honor in being in my movie.” “Bullshit. You were seeing if I was in here or not to steal more of my clothes! I told you to stop that!” “I wasn’t! I seriously wanted to know if you’d be interested in taking part in the movie.” “Peter, you’ve been making this so called movie for like two years now, what the hell is it even about? I mean the only thing I’ve seen you do is walk around the house filming insignificant stuff. I mean have you even posted any of your crap on YouTube at least to see if ANYONE would even be interested?” “YouTube? Pshaw! I AM a film maker! Not some fly by night hack! I’m creating a vision! My movie is going to be about life! It’ll be the best art house movie ever! So, you should be grateful that I’m allowing you the chance to be in this thing at all!” “Gee, I’m so flattered. Anyway don’t you already have a ton of footage of me already? I mean your pervo junkie friend is always aiming the camera at me when I’m around. Just like now.” You say pointing at Kevin who is shamelessly pointing the camera at your crotch. “No, Suzy. That footage is mostly unusable will be edited. I need real scene with you. So how about it? I promise I’ll stop borrowing your clothes and I’ll give you five percent of the profits this movie will make along with credit! And trust me when this thing becomes well known you’ll thank me that I gave you this generous offer!” “(Sigh) How long is this going to take?” “It may very well go into the night! So if you want in, I suggest you clear your schedule. Hah, look at who I’m talking to, you don’t have a life, so what else have you got to do?” Peter’s obnoxiousness aside, you almost don’t mind doing this if it’ll get him to stop stealing your clothes. You also aren’t completely gung-ho about going to Julie’s party either. > You help Peter with his movie “Oh alright, I’ll help you with your movie.” “Excellent! You’ll see in time that you made the right decision. Okay, Kevin go fetch the supplies.” “Supplies?” you ask as Kevin complies and gives Peter the camcorder. “Oh just some props and such.” Peter starts to look around your room and then places the camcorder in a position so it’s facing your bed. “There, that should do it for the initial scene. I’ll take it in for a close up later.” “Excuse me, but WHAT are you exactly intending to film here?” “The love scene for my movie of course.” While you stand in disbelief, Kevin comes back stripped to his underwear with a big bag in one hand and some lube in his other. “Woo! Yeah! I’m ready to do this thing!” Kevin says in a hyper tone. Apparently he’s taken something to speed him up. “NO NO NO NO! I am NOT having sex on camera! Least of all with that disgusting freak!” “What’s the big deal? It’s just sex. Look if it’ll make you feel any better, Kevin will wear a condom.” “What? That wasn’t part of the plan. You said I could fuck her straight bareback if she agreed to help us…” “NOBODY IS FUCKING ME!” you yell to make yourself heard and your attitude on the situation final, unfortunately Kevin doesn’t seem to get it. “Aw come on Suzy, I know you gotta be dyin’ to get laid.” He says and starts to grope your breasts with one hand, and grind up against your ass. You can feel his little cock poking you and that’s when you totally lose it. “Leave me the fuck alone asshole!” you say and throw Kevin on the floor. You then proceed to kick him. “Ah! Shit! Damn! Fuck! Feels good!” Kevin says. Sonofabitch is actually enjoying you kick the shit out of him. To be quite honest you’re starting to like it too, you wonder if you’ve learned something about yourself today. Peter of course gets a cunning plan. “Y’know, this could still work. Suzy would you be interested in wearing a dominatrix outfit while you beat the hell out of Kevin? You wouldn’t have to have sex with him and this could still serve as the romance scene for my movie.” > You agree with Peter's idea “Sure, why not, I’m just getting started.” You say stopping momentarily from kicking Kevin. “Great! My movie will be even better! There’s a dominatrix outfit in that bag, don’t worry nobody else has worn it yet.” You quickly get the outfit and head to the small enclosed toilet area in the basement to change. The leather “catsuit” is a tight fit, but that’s to be expected. You feel a sense of euphoria overwhelm you, never before have to felt so comfortable. When you leave, you see Peter has the camera in hand and Kevin is all stretched out and tied up to one of the hanging ceiling pipes in the main area of the basement, rather than your room. Which is just as well since you really didn’t want any mess there “Hey you look great Suzy. You’ll find some useful tools in that bag too. Just grab some and do whatever comes natural.” And you do. Boy, do you ever! You start out by whipping Kevin on his back at first. Much like the kicking, he seems to enjoy it. You then move on to a big paddle and start spanking his bare ass. Again he likes it. He’s also probably not registering a lot of the pain due to his drug intake. This frustrates you. You want him to HURT. You pull out a big ass dildo next… He feels that. Boy, does he ever! “Peter! This wasn’t part of the deal! I don’t want to be ARGH penetrated!” “Shut up and like it, bitch!” you snarl. “Beautiful! This is great stuff!” Peter exclaims getting a close up. You continue to abuse Kevin’s rectum with the dildo for a good ten minutes the whole time he’s begging you to stop. It’s completely covered in blood and shit by the time you’re tired of using it. “Is that it? Damn I was hoping for more.” Peter says. “…No…no more…no…” Kevin sputters in exhausted pain. You say nothing and throw the dildo back in the bag and reach in for something else, namely a strap on. You quickly adjust it to your leather catsuit. This time you put a ball gag on Kevin so that he can’t scream as loud from the irreparable damage you’re about to do to his motherfucking asshole. Peter is there get shot after shot of the fairly gruesome scene. He makes sure to get a close up of the anguish on Kevin’s face, and the look of ecstasy in yours when you have an orgasm sometime during your rape of Kevin’s gaping hole. Eventually Kevin passes out from the pain and you decide you’ve had your fill too. Peter stops filming. “That was better than I could’ve imagined! Thanks Suzy! I swear you are definitely getting credit and five percent of profits from this movie when it becomes a hit! Man, I never knew you had that in you. You should think about doing that full time. You could get paid serious money. Hell you already have the dungeon atmosphere for it. Go ahead and keep the outfit and bag of goodies, I get the feeling you’ll be wanting them.” Peter unties Kevin and carries his unconscious body out the door. You take Peter’s advice under strong consideration. You were looking for a job; well this would be a good one. You could schedule clients online, be your own boss and never even have to leave the basement. Best of all you can have mind blowing orgasms and technically not actually have to fuck anyone thus retaining your good girl status. And so it happens, you pursue this life with a new found motivation. While you never do gain fame and fortune from Peter’s failure of a “movie” you do gain fame and fortune as the best dominatrix in the tri-state area.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Oh alright, I’ll help you with your movie.” “Excellent! You’ll see in time that you made the right decision. Okay, Kevin go fetch the supplies.” “Supplies?” you ask as Kevin complies and gives Peter the camcorder. “Oh just some props and such.” Peter starts to look around your room and then places the camcorder in a position so it’s facing your bed. “There, that should do it for the initial scene. I’ll take it in for a close up later.” “Excuse me, but WHAT are you exactly intending to film here?” “The love scene for my movie of course.” While you stand in disbelief, Kevin comes back stripped to his underwear with a big bag in one hand and some lube in his other. “Woo! Yeah! I’m ready to do this thing!” Kevin says in a hyper tone. Apparently he’s taken something to speed him up. “NO NO NO NO! I am NOT having sex on camera! Least of all with that disgusting freak!” “What’s the big deal? It’s just sex. Look if it’ll make you feel any better, Kevin will wear a condom.” “What? That wasn’t part of the plan. You said I could fuck her straight bareback if she agreed to help us…” “NOBODY IS FUCKING ME!” you yell to make yourself heard and your attitude on the situation final, unfortunately Kevin doesn’t seem to get it. “Aw come on Suzy, I know you gotta be dyin’ to get laid.” He says and starts to grope your breasts with one hand, and grind up against your ass. You can feel his little cock poking you and that’s when you totally lose it. “Leave me the fuck alone asshole!” you say and throw Kevin on the floor. You then proceed to kick him. “Ah! Shit! Damn! Fuck! Feels good!” Kevin says. Sonofabitch is actually enjoying you kick the shit out of him. To be quite honest you’re starting to like it too, you wonder if you’ve learned something about yourself today. Peter of course gets a cunning plan. “Y’know, this could still work. Suzy would you be interested in wearing a dominatrix outfit while you beat the hell out of Kevin? You wouldn’t have to have sex with him and this could still serve as the romance scene for my movie.” > You throw Peter out of your room “Get the hell outta here too Peter! And stop stealing my damn clothes!” you yell pushing Peter towards the door. “Alright, alright! Shit. Alright Kevin looks like you’re fucking me for this scene.” Kevin gets up and stumbles towards the door. “Aw damn Peter, I really wanted to fuck your sister this time.” “Yeah well she’s being an uptight bitch as usual. Come on it’s not like we haven’t done this before.” You stop them for one second before they leave. “Wait a minute, you guys are together?” “Well I wouldn’t say that. Kevin has been helping me a lot, but I don’t have any money to actually pay him most of the time. I see sex as a mutually beneficial exchange. Fortunately Kevin is very liberal when it comes to sex, however as you’re well aware Kevin has a bit of a thing for you. Hence why I borrow your clothes sometimes to dress up as you, though I really do think they look a lot better on me.” Peter sniffs. You shake your head at all this sordid nonsense and give them both a shove before slamming the door. You didn’t get much accomplished, but at least you prevented anymore of your clothing from getting stolen today.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well it’s always been there for you before; it might as well be there for you again. You go online and start looking up a local job site. Naturally there doesn’t seem to be anything you want to do, let alone be qualified for. After your half-assed attempt at “looking” for a job, your attention begins to wander and you start surfing the internet like you always do. Soon you get an instant message from Julie. She hasn’t sent one in a long time; she must either have something serious to talk about or… Parteegurl69: HAY SUZEE!1! PARTY TONITE! GET OUTTA DAT BASEMENT AND GET LAID FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIF! LOL1!!!111! That. Maiden4ever: Hi Julie. Parteegurl69: HAY SO LIEK R U CUMMING TO MY PARTY? LOTZ O GUYZ WILL BE THERE! Maiden4ever: You party all the time and there are always a lot of guys at your place, what makes this one so different? Parteegurl69: CUZ! UR GONNA BE THERE THIS TIME! SIRISLY U NEED TO CUM. I NEED TO TALK TO YOU BOUT SOMETHING 2. Maiden4ever: Why don’t you just tell me you think you’re pregnant again right now? Parteegurl69: LOL. NO IZ NOT THAT. I NEED TO SEE U IN PERSON ITS SUMTHIN I GOT TO TELL U FACE 2 FACE. BUT I ALSO WANT U TO HAVE SUM FUN 2 4 ONCE. Maiden69: You can’t tell me online? Parteegurl69: NO I GOT TO TELL U IN PERSON. PLZ CUM!11!!!1 Normally you’re not the type to go to parties, let alone the glorified orgies she calls parties, but if she really does have something to tell you in person it has to be important. She’s never been known to exaggerate in times like this. Though you wonder if it’s really all that serious considering that she’s still having a party tonight. Maiden4ever: Alright Julie I’ll try to be there, but if I do get there, I’ll only be there to talk to you. I’m not staying. Parteegurl69: UR CUMMIN KEWL! C U TONIGHT AT 6! Julie logs off and you continue to browse the internet for hours like you were doing. Eventually you hear a faint knock on the door and whispering. You quickly open the door and see Peter and his friend Kevin standing there. “Oh hi Suzy, we were just wondering if you’d like to have the honor in being in my movie.” “Bullshit. You were seeing if I was in here or not to steal more of my clothes! I told you to stop that!” “I wasn’t! I seriously wanted to know if you’d be interested in taking part in the movie.” “Peter, you’ve been making this so called movie for like two years now, what the hell is it even about? I mean the only thing I’ve seen you do is walk around the house filming insignificant stuff. I mean have you even posted any of your crap on YouTube at least to see if ANYONE would even be interested?” “YouTube? Pshaw! I AM a film maker! Not some fly by night hack! I’m creating a vision! My movie is going to be about life! It’ll be the best art house movie ever! So, you should be grateful that I’m allowing you the chance to be in this thing at all!” “Gee, I’m so flattered. Anyway don’t you already have a ton of footage of me already? I mean your pervo junkie friend is always aiming the camera at me when I’m around. Just like now.” You say pointing at Kevin who is shamelessly pointing the camera at your crotch. “No, Suzy. That footage is mostly unusable will be edited. I need real scene with you. So how about it? I promise I’ll stop borrowing your clothes and I’ll give you five percent of the profits this movie will make along with credit! And trust me when this thing becomes well known you’ll thank me that I gave you this generous offer!” “(Sigh) How long is this going to take?” “It may very well go into the night! So if you want in, I suggest you clear your schedule. Hah, look at who I’m talking to, you don’t have a life, so what else have you got to do?” Peter’s obnoxiousness aside, you almost don’t mind doing this if it’ll get him to stop stealing your clothes. You also aren’t completely gung-ho about going to Julie’s party either. > You prove you have a life and go to the party “Peter contrary to popular belief, I do have a life. I’m going to a party tonight!” you say indignantly. “Hmm, I find that hard to believe, but if you don’t want to be part of what will be the greatest movie ever, ‘tis your loss, not mine.” Peter says and leaves with Kevin who’s still pointing the camera at you until you slam the door in his face. You groan when you now realize you’re going to a party that will most likely have several “Kevins” all attempting to get in your pants. Still, you’ve never not been there for Julie when she’s really wanted or needed you and that seems to be the case now. So you’re going. You try to find something to wear that’s not going to cause the natives to get too restless, but then you remember it won’t matter, so you just wear something comfortable to you. Your walk to Julie’s is relatively uneventful and you get there exactly at six o clock. Julie is unusually sober. Granted the party hasn’t quite started yet, but that’s never stopped her before. “Suzy? What the hell are you doing here? Nobody else has arrived yet!” “Uh you told me six, so I’m here at six.” You say totally not grasping the concept of being fashionably late. Julie laughs and puts her hand on your shoulder. “Oh Suzy, you are just so precious sometimes. That’s why despite our differences I’ve always considered you my best friend after all these years.” “Uh huh. So what did you want to see me about?” you ask “Oh we can talk about that later, you should enjoy yourself now.” “Julie, as you pointed out nobody else is here yet! Also, I just came over to talk to you, not hang out at your party, so now is a good time to tell me. You said it was important.” Julie begins to get a little nervous now, and tries to avoid the situation. “Ha ha, yeah well. Maybe it wasn’t as important as I thought I guess. It’s funny to see you here; I almost didn’t expect you to come, but now that you are, stay!” “Julie, you mean to tell me you wasted my time, and lied to me?” “No! I just…yeah I guess it’s important, I just can’t tell you right now. I will later I promise. Please can’t you just stay for the party?” It’s apparent that Julie really does want you to stick around, but at this point you’re very exasperated. You don’t like leaving your basement without a good reason. You didn’t come here to play games. You give Julie one last chance. “Look Julie, if you don’t tell me what’s going on right now I’m leaving.” “No! Please no! If I don’t tell you now I might never…I need a drink first.” She says and goes to her liquor cabinet, but you stop her. “Dammit WHAT?!” you yell into her face while grabbing both of her arms. Julie breaks free of your grip and grasps your face to kiss you full on the lips passionately. You’re so surprised that you don’t resist at first, but eventually you push her off of you. “I love you Suzy! I think I always have! I think you’re my soul mate!” she blurts out. “There I said it.” You’re in too much shock to even reply at this revelation. All you know is she wasn’t joking about it being important. “Whew, I feel like a great weight has been lifted off of me. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to tell you without being drunk, but I’m glad you forced it out of me. You always lead me to the right decision. It’s why I love you.” “Stop…just stop Julie.” You say, sitting down trying to take all this in. “What’s wrong Suzy? I mean I thought you might be into this.” “What? And what made you think that?” “Oh come on Suzy, you’re still a fucking virgin. You’ve never shown any interest in guys, so I’m pretty sure that it’s obvious that you’re a closet lesbian.” “Glad it’s obvious to you, because it sure wasn’t to me. Look I need to wrap my head around this. I gotta get out of here.” “But…but…” “But what Julie? What am I supposed to do fall down on my knees and start munching your rug? Look maybe YOU’VE had those feelings, but I haven’t. I mean I suppose we’re friends and all, but quite frankly we’re VERY different people and wouldn’t be compatible in a relationship even if I was so inclined to pursue one with a woman. Which I’m not. At least not now.” Julie begins to look very hurt and upset. “But…you could right?” “Look Julie, it’s not going to happen. First of all you’d have to undergo some serious lifestyle changes which I doubt if you’re even capable of. Second of all I question whether or not what you feel right now is going to last. You have a habit of falling in love every other week.” “No it not like that! I’ve always felt this way! And I’ll do anything for us to be together!” “Julie, forgive me if I don’t share your delusions. Look, I know that you probably believe what you’re saying, but let’s just forget about this shall we?” At this point Julie starts to cry which is followed up by her running into the bathroom and slamming the door. You think about trying to console her, but that’s probably only going to make things worse. Lacking any other ideas, you decide to go home and let Julie work it out herself. On your way home, you run into Donna and a bunch of her slutty friends. “Suzy? What the hell are YOU doing out of the basement, you never go anywhere!” Donna says. “I’m coming back from Julie’s. It’s a long story.” “Coming back from there? We’re going there! Julie invited all of us to her party. Normally we wouldn’t get there so early, but we figured we’d like to get the first dibs on the guys.” “Yeah she invited me too, but she wanted to talk about something else.” You say and then feel the need to tell Donna more. “Uh…Donna can I talk to you about something in private?” “Sure, hey you guys just go on, I’ll catch up.” Donna tells her friends. After her friends leave you tell Donna everything that happened between you and Julie. Donna’s intrigued, but is shocked at your response. “So you just left her to cry?” “Well yeah, I mean if I stayed I would’ve just made things worse. She’ll get over it.” “No she won’t! She basically just admitted to you that she’s loved you all her life and had a hard time even admitting it to you. And you basically just stomped all over her little heart! She’s supposed to be your friend. The ONLY one you really have, and you didn’t even give her a chance!” “Yeah, key word being FRIEND. I never felt that way and I’ve known Julie a lot longer and better than you have and she’s incapable of having a stable relationship with anyone. She’s wild party girl just like you.” Now Donna gets offend by your rude choice of words. “Oh I see. Just because Julie isn’t some stick in the mud flying nun who’s only knowledge of a so called relationship is with a piece of battery powered machinery, she’s a whore that’s incapable of change or true feelings huh?” “That’s not…” And you see me and Julie as one of the same too, right?” “I didn’t…” “Fuck you Suzy! I know what you think. Let me tell you what I think! I think you’re an emotional cripple who’s so fucking scared of the real world so you hide out from it in your goddamn basement! So scared that you’ll get hurt that you miss out on shit that COULD be good for your uptight ass! Well fuck that, I’d rather be a whore than some scared virginal recluse!” You’re left speechless as Donna storms off who says one more parting shot. “And I dunno why you’re claiming not to be interested in Julie anyway. It’s pretty obvious that you’re a lesbian.” > You head back home You head back home and don’t give Donna’s self-righteous speech another thought. She hasn’t known Julie as long or even as well as you have. She thinks she knows everything and is probably defending her because she has more in common with Julie’s “lifestyle” than yours. Hell, they ARE one of the same. You know Julie, she’ll get over this “crush” just like she has with other past “relationships” namely through partying, fucking and drinking. She’ll probably be trying to convince you to go to another party next month and everything will be back to normal. Still, part of you does wonder if Julie did really “love” you as much as she claimed. You wonder if she would’ve changed had you given in to her advances. You shake your head at such thoughts though. You head back home and to the comfort of your basement. Perhaps you are playing it safe, but in your opinion, it’s better to be safe than sorry.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Peter contrary to popular belief, I do have a life. I’m going to a party tonight!” you say indignantly. “Hmm, I find that hard to believe, but if you don’t want to be part of what will be the greatest movie ever, ‘tis your loss, not mine.” Peter says and leaves with Kevin who’s still pointing the camera at you until you slam the door in his face. You groan when you now realize you’re going to a party that will most likely have several “Kevins” all attempting to get in your pants. Still, you’ve never not been there for Julie when she’s really wanted or needed you and that seems to be the case now. So you’re going. You try to find something to wear that’s not going to cause the natives to get too restless, but then you remember it won’t matter, so you just wear something comfortable to you. Your walk to Julie’s is relatively uneventful and you get there exactly at six o clock. Julie is unusually sober. Granted the party hasn’t quite started yet, but that’s never stopped her before. “Suzy? What the hell are you doing here? Nobody else has arrived yet!” “Uh you told me six, so I’m here at six.” You say totally not grasping the concept of being fashionably late. Julie laughs and puts her hand on your shoulder. “Oh Suzy, you are just so precious sometimes. That’s why despite our differences I’ve always considered you my best friend after all these years.” “Uh huh. So what did you want to see me about?” you ask “Oh we can talk about that later, you should enjoy yourself now.” “Julie, as you pointed out nobody else is here yet! Also, I just came over to talk to you, not hang out at your party, so now is a good time to tell me. You said it was important.” Julie begins to get a little nervous now, and tries to avoid the situation. “Ha ha, yeah well. Maybe it wasn’t as important as I thought I guess. It’s funny to see you here; I almost didn’t expect you to come, but now that you are, stay!” “Julie, you mean to tell me you wasted my time, and lied to me?” “No! I just…yeah I guess it’s important, I just can’t tell you right now. I will later I promise. Please can’t you just stay for the party?” It’s apparent that Julie really does want you to stick around, but at this point you’re very exasperated. You don’t like leaving your basement without a good reason. You didn’t come here to play games. You give Julie one last chance. “Look Julie, if you don’t tell me what’s going on right now I’m leaving.” “No! Please no! If I don’t tell you now I might never…I need a drink first.” She says and goes to her liquor cabinet, but you stop her. “Dammit WHAT?!” you yell into her face while grabbing both of her arms. Julie breaks free of your grip and grasps your face to kiss you full on the lips passionately. You’re so surprised that you don’t resist at first, but eventually you push her off of you. “I love you Suzy! I think I always have! I think you’re my soul mate!” she blurts out. “There I said it.” You’re in too much shock to even reply at this revelation. All you know is she wasn’t joking about it being important. “Whew, I feel like a great weight has been lifted off of me. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to tell you without being drunk, but I’m glad you forced it out of me. You always lead me to the right decision. It’s why I love you.” “Stop…just stop Julie.” You say, sitting down trying to take all this in. “What’s wrong Suzy? I mean I thought you might be into this.” “What? And what made you think that?” “Oh come on Suzy, you’re still a fucking virgin. You’ve never shown any interest in guys, so I’m pretty sure that it’s obvious that you’re a closet lesbian.” “Glad it’s obvious to you, because it sure wasn’t to me. Look I need to wrap my head around this. I gotta get out of here.” “But…but…” “But what Julie? What am I supposed to do fall down on my knees and start munching your rug? Look maybe YOU’VE had those feelings, but I haven’t. I mean I suppose we’re friends and all, but quite frankly we’re VERY different people and wouldn’t be compatible in a relationship even if I was so inclined to pursue one with a woman. Which I’m not. At least not now.” Julie begins to look very hurt and upset. “But…you could right?” “Look Julie, it’s not going to happen. First of all you’d have to undergo some serious lifestyle changes which I doubt if you’re even capable of. Second of all I question whether or not what you feel right now is going to last. You have a habit of falling in love every other week.” “No it not like that! I’ve always felt this way! And I’ll do anything for us to be together!” “Julie, forgive me if I don’t share your delusions. Look, I know that you probably believe what you’re saying, but let’s just forget about this shall we?” At this point Julie starts to cry which is followed up by her running into the bathroom and slamming the door. You think about trying to console her, but that’s probably only going to make things worse. Lacking any other ideas, you decide to go home and let Julie work it out herself. On your way home, you run into Donna and a bunch of her slutty friends. “Suzy? What the hell are YOU doing out of the basement, you never go anywhere!” Donna says. “I’m coming back from Julie’s. It’s a long story.” “Coming back from there? We’re going there! Julie invited all of us to her party. Normally we wouldn’t get there so early, but we figured we’d like to get the first dibs on the guys.” “Yeah she invited me too, but she wanted to talk about something else.” You say and then feel the need to tell Donna more. “Uh…Donna can I talk to you about something in private?” “Sure, hey you guys just go on, I’ll catch up.” Donna tells her friends. After her friends leave you tell Donna everything that happened between you and Julie. Donna’s intrigued, but is shocked at your response. “So you just left her to cry?” “Well yeah, I mean if I stayed I would’ve just made things worse. She’ll get over it.” “No she won’t! She basically just admitted to you that she’s loved you all her life and had a hard time even admitting it to you. And you basically just stomped all over her little heart! She’s supposed to be your friend. The ONLY one you really have, and you didn’t even give her a chance!” “Yeah, key word being FRIEND. I never felt that way and I’ve known Julie a lot longer and better than you have and she’s incapable of having a stable relationship with anyone. She’s wild party girl just like you.” Now Donna gets offend by your rude choice of words. “Oh I see. Just because Julie isn’t some stick in the mud flying nun who’s only knowledge of a so called relationship is with a piece of battery powered machinery, she’s a whore that’s incapable of change or true feelings huh?” “That’s not…” And you see me and Julie as one of the same too, right?” “I didn’t…” “Fuck you Suzy! I know what you think. Let me tell you what I think! I think you’re an emotional cripple who’s so fucking scared of the real world so you hide out from it in your goddamn basement! So scared that you’ll get hurt that you miss out on shit that COULD be good for your uptight ass! Well fuck that, I’d rather be a whore than some scared virginal recluse!” You’re left speechless as Donna storms off who says one more parting shot. “And I dunno why you’re claiming not to be interested in Julie anyway. It’s pretty obvious that you’re a lesbian.” > You go back to Julie's house Donna’s outburst has made you realize that she’s absolutely right. You do hide out in the basement from the real world because you’re scared of getting hurt. You ponder several times on whether or not to go back to Julie’s and finally you do. When you get there, a few more people have arrived. Most of Donna’s friends are already talking to various guys. No sign of Donna or Julie though. You ask where they are and someone dismissively says her bedroom. Your heart sinks when you hear this. You can’t believe you were briefly swayed by Donna’s self-righteous speech! Here you were thinking that maybe she was right, and what happens? She’s fucking Julie! You’re just glad you didn’t allow yourself to get too emotionally involved to get hurt, but you are mad and fully intend on giving the both of them a piece of your mind! You quickly make your way to Julie’s bedroom and throw open the door. “JULIE! DONNA! ...Oh.” You see Donna and Julie sitting a respectable distance from each other, they both look in your direction with surprise on their face. Still, you maintain your suspicion. “…what’re you doing here Donna?” “I was trying to console Julie, by telling her that you didn’t mean to be a bitch, it was just you didn’t know how to react to human emotions. And what’re you doing here storming in like that…wait. YOU thought me and Julie were in here having sex didn’t you?!” You sputter and answer. “Well…I…” “Yes you did! So were you jealous or something?” Donna asks. “NO! I was just…look. I took what you told me into consideration I decide you might be right. So I came back here, and when someone told me you and Julie were in the bedroom together, I just sort of got a little crazy.” “Jeez, Suzy I know you think I’m slutty, but I wouldn’t have rebounded with your sister!” Julie sniffles still wiping her eyes. “Yeah, I would’ve thought by now that you knew I kept my sluttiness to just guys. No offense.” Donna adds with smirk on her face. You sit down coming to grips with all that has gone on within the last few moments. Donna at this point decides to leave. “I think the both of you have a lot to talk about, so I’m going back to the party.” Julie turns to you, still wiping her eyes. “So, you came back.” “Yeah, I came back.” “Not to break my heart again I hope.” “Alright Julie let’s not be overly dramatic. Look, I suppose on some level I might like you. I’ve never just considered us together like that before, but Donna said some things that sort of ring true. However, that doesn’t mean I’m throwing all my beliefs out the window. If we do this, I mean if you’re REALLY this serious about us. I need you promise me that from here on out, that I’M the ONLY one.” Julie walks over to you and grabs your hand tightly. “You will be. I swear, I’ll change for you, because I love you.” At this point Julie moves in to kiss you again, but this time you don’t push her away. The pair of you embrace and begin to remove each other clothes. For the first time you don’t ponder getting hurt or anything like that, you just live in the moment. Julie’s naked body lies on top of yours. You feel the warmth of her and enjoy her tongue which first explores your breasts and eventually your clit. You then feel her fingers enter inside you. Your back arches in excitement as she proceeds to bring you closer to a climax. You don’t get a chance to return the favor because when Julie finally causes you to have an orgasm you soon fall asleep completely satisfied. A couple hours later you feel something completely different. Something going inside you. You open your eyes and see a teenage guy on top of you. He’s a little shocked when you scream, which is good because it gives you enough time to push him off of you and roll of the bed. You pick up a nearby lamp ready to throw it if necessary. “Whoa whoa whoa! No need for that! I thought you were passed out!” The teenager explains. “Passed out? And that gave you the right to try to rape me?” “Hey it’s not rape! I wasn’t hitting you or forcing you or anything.” He replies, totally oblivious to the fact that what he was doing was wrong. You refuse to argue with this teenage idiot and chase him with the lamp until he runs out the bedroom door. You get dressed as quickly as you can to find Julie. From the sound of the music it’s apparent that the party is now in full swing. You don’t really want to think it, but you know damn well what’s going to happen next. You leave the bedroom and ask where Julie is; various people say they don’t know. While fighting your way through the crowd you bump into Donna. “Hey, oh uh…” “Donna, where’s Julie?” “…Suzy maybe you were right…” “Donna, where the fuck is Julie?” “Suzy you don’t really want to see…let’s just go home.” “Don’t tell me what I don’t want to see. I’m a big girl, now where is Julie?” “…she’s in the backyard…I’m sorry…” You make your way to the backyard and that’s when you see Julie. She’s engaging in her favorite past time of blowing one guy while another rails her from behind. You step up past the on looking crowd. Julie sees you out the corner of her eye and you get the impression she’d try to explain if she didn’t have a dick in her mouth. “It’s alright Julie, I know you’re real busy right now and can’t talk so just listen. I don’t blame you. I allowed myself to be temporarily swayed. Actually it’s a good thing this happened so soon, I didn’t get too hurt and it just proves I was right all along. Besides, I guess I can thank you for the sex at least. I’m sure its experience that we’ll both remember, because it’s not going to happen again. Don’t contact me again for anything. Goodbye Julie.” You walk away and a few seconds later you her Julie in the background calling for you, but you quickly lose her in the crowd. You head home and back to your basement. It’s odd, but you aren’t really upset by this whole ordeal. True, you are a little disappointed, because on some level maybe you wanted it to go well, but now that it failed so spectacularly you don’t really care. If anything you don’t ever have to put up with Julie’s chaotic cries for help ever again. Maybe that’s why you aren’t upset. You managed to cut off yet another link to the outside world which gives even more of an excuse to remain in your basement. But you’ve had enough of thinking about this for tonight; you go to sleep even more secure in the fact that your way of “life” is the correct one.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up to another day in your sheltered little world. “Sheltered” is probably a little inaccurate, but you’re about as close as you can get in your dysfunctional family. Your upbringing for you and all your siblings, quite frankly sucked, and it made you very introverted and unmotivated. It’s probably why you’re over 18 and still living at home. You’re a basement dweller. However we shouldn’t be too hard on you. Your other four siblings are also living at home along with a few other freeloading family members. You just happen to be living in the basement. Fucked up parenting aside, you actually have potential, if you’d just break out of your shell. You aren’t unintelligent. You at least graduated high school, watch the learning/history channel and read weird shit on the internet all day. You aren’t even unattractive, though your mom always drilled it into you and your sisters head that you were always to be “good girls”. It only really worked on you though; as a result you’ve never had a boyfriend. (Or girlfriend for that matter) You don’t even have that much contact with the world outside your house anymore. The world’s a dangerous place and you feel much safer in your house. Again, this thinking of yours is misguided as being out of the house of your crazy ass family would probably be a lot safer. Of course you rarely even leave the basement nowadays anyway. Seems like your world is getting smaller with each passing day. Of course you could do something a little out of the ordinary today and try to change your lot in life. How about it? Want to give it that old college try? (Even though you never went to college?) > You dunno, sounds scary! Better stay in the basement! Alright, I understand, you have everything you want in the basement and even if you don’t you don’t have far to go get it. The outside world doesn’t really hold any interest for you, so there’s little point in going through the hassle of dealing with it. And living in the basement has worked out for you so far more or less, so why mess with success right? But you must also understand that just hanging out in the basement for the rest of your life doesn’t usually offer much in the way of excitement. At least not without some sort of outside stimulus anyway, and with all the rest of the drama going on in the house, everyone usually forgets about you and you happily stay out of it most of the time. So this little story will come to an end right here.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up to another day in your sheltered little world. “Sheltered” is probably a little inaccurate, but you’re about as close as you can get in your dysfunctional family. Your upbringing for you and all your siblings, quite frankly sucked, and it made you very introverted and unmotivated. It’s probably why you’re over 18 and still living at home. You’re a basement dweller. However we shouldn’t be too hard on you. Your other four siblings are also living at home along with a few other freeloading family members. You just happen to be living in the basement. Fucked up parenting aside, you actually have potential, if you’d just break out of your shell. You aren’t unintelligent. You at least graduated high school, watch the learning/history channel and read weird shit on the internet all day. You aren’t even unattractive, though your mom always drilled it into you and your sisters head that you were always to be “good girls”. It only really worked on you though; as a result you’ve never had a boyfriend. (Or girlfriend for that matter) You don’t even have that much contact with the world outside your house anymore. The world’s a dangerous place and you feel much safer in your house. Again, this thinking of yours is misguided as being out of the house of your crazy ass family would probably be a lot safer. Of course you rarely even leave the basement nowadays anyway. Seems like your world is getting smaller with each passing day. Of course you could do something a little out of the ordinary today and try to change your lot in life. How about it? Want to give it that old college try? (Even though you never went to college?) > You who the hell are all these fucked up people in your house? (Cast of Characters) Suzy: This is you. We already went over what the fuck your problem was on the first page. Let’s move on shall we? Ben: This is your older brother and the oldest of your siblings. He’s a paranoid survivalist nut that trains for inevitable apocalypse that’s going to come. He walks around armed at all times and is convinced that THEY are out to get him. He also has a misguided biracial hippy girlfriend by the name of Moonshadow and an illegitimate son with her by the name of Tommy who is an idiot savant. Currently they all live out in the backyard though Ben’s been building an underground bunker of some sort out there. Kelly: This is your Amazonian older sister. She’s in a small time roller derby league and has been known to do some illegal underground fight club shit on the side. She’s probably the only one in the house that has closest thing to a “real” job. Kelly’s never liked you, for various reasons. When you two were growing up she’d always try to take every opportunity she could to abuse you in some way. Fortunately she’s mostly too busy working to engage in physical or psychological torture on you nowadays. Peter: This is your younger brother. He’s a pretentious effeminate aspiring film maker who has the annoying habit of attempting to record everything with his camcorder. Has the disturbing habit of stealing your clothes and wearing them. He also hangs out with a junkie drug dealer from school by the name of Kevin who is always lecherously looking at you when you’re around. Donna: This is your younger sister and the youngest of your siblings. She’s probably the most “normal” out of all of you. Perhaps a little on the wild side, but nothing excessively out of hand, basically your typical high school girl who hangs out with others similar to her. She’s probably the most alright with you, though sometimes she urges that you should get out more. Dad: This is your Dad (George McCray is his real name). He used to be a traveling lightning rod salesman. He’s retired now and hasn’t really been the same since your Mom died. He’s usually in various stages of drunkenness and nobody much pays any serious attention to him anymore. It’s not like he was around for the parenting process anyway. Mom: This is your Mom (Bertha McCray is her real name). Despite her overprotective moralist views on how you and your sisters should act, she was probably the one who kept some semblance of order on the family. When the flesh eating virus consumed her years ago, everyone missed her a lot especially your dad. Eventually she was cremated and her ashes are kept in your Dad’s room. Ed: This is your really creepy uncle and brother of your late mother. It was her dying wish that he have some place to stay, so he lives in the garage which he’s pretty much made his domain as most other family members stay clear of him, even Ben. He doesn’t have any visible means of support yet contributes to the household at times. There are certainly rumors and whispers of what he might be up to when he leaves and comes back at various hours of the night, but nobody really wants to talk to him directly about it, let alone go in the garage and find out. Julie: This is your “best friend” since kindergarten, who you speak to less and less with each passing year. As you grew older the pair of you had very different lives. Julie was very wild in her teenage years and still is today. It is only due to the fact that you knew each other for so long that you two are even still in contact. She’s probably remained in contact with you mainly because you are about the only stable person in her life that she feels that she can talk to on a serious level about shit that sometimes bothers her. The Morningstars: While your family on the block is rightfully seen as the most dysfunctional lot to live there, The Morningstars are definitely running a close second. They’ve converted their house into something of a compound. There seems to be a bunch of them of varying ages and gender, but “Pa” Morningstar and his eldest son Bobby Morningstar stand out the most. They mostly keep to themselves, though recently Uncle Ed has been asking a few random questions about them sometimes.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ah the basement. The refuge of all who refuse to move out of the house for whatever reason. Some of them are dreamers who just can’t fit into proper society. Some of them have potential, but due to personality quirks fame has escaped them. And finally 99% of them are just downright pathetic losers that just fail at life. So choose one of these basement dwellers and enjoy the desperation and horror of their tales! You may come to find that they are just like you. In fact chances are, you’ll think someone wrote a biography about you! > The Anime Addict (And this one's for TEH LULZ!) Look at you. You’re pathetic. You’re over 18 and still living at home. You have no job, no skills, and absolutely no future prospects! But why bother pointing all this out? You know all of this already, but still choose to leech off of Mom’s hard earned money. You’re a basement dweller. Worse, you’re an Anime loving basement dweller. Sure you could drop lower, but you’re already just below the tapeworm as far as social scale is concerned. Even Trekkies rank higher. Right now you’ve just received every anime DVD that you could buy with your mom’s stolen credit card. She’ll probably bitch at you later, but you figure you’ve got at least a week before she sobers up enough to find out. Until then, it’s anime time! Tonight is the night that you start your journey to give yourself totally to anime. If you do, you will be forever chained to it… However, that doesn’t have to be your fate! There IS still hope for you! Somewhere within you there does exist something human. You COULD resist the anime! Do something else! Anything else! Think about it. Is what is on those DVDs really going to be any different from what you’ve seen already? Seriously it’s all the same anyway. Bunch of wide eyed pre-pubescent girls dressed in the latest pedowear while sucking on lollipops and effeminate fags who emo whine about how they’re only half human and finding out that their true love is actually their long lost sibling. I mean as much as we all like watching a bisexual half demon commit anal rape on his 12 year old sister every once in awhile, there comes a time where you just gotta say: “What the fuck am I doing? Half of this shit is inane and stupidly childish, and the other half is really fucked up and twisted. And some of it manages to combine the two halves. Two nukes really weren’t enough for that country. I’m going to do something better with my life.” So is today that day you sad little freak? > You no! You love being a basement dwelling anime fan! Jesus fucking Christ, if you’re not even going to try to improve your position then what’s the goddamn point? Don’t you have even the slightest incentive to improve your miserable existence? > You said no! Why can't you accept you for who you are\? No? Alright then. I’ll save you the play by play details of your complete descent into degeneracy, but basically you move on past normal anime and you watch/sleep/eat/ and shit Hentai (Not necessarily in that order) for the next few months. You jerk off so much that your mom doesn’t even bother washing your sheets anymore. In fact she doesn’t even enter the basement if she can help it now. You continue on this way for quite some time, discussing the intricacies of shitting dick nipple girls and tentacle rape with likeminded cohorts on the internet. However the fact still remains, you’re still a virgin and surprisingly somewhere within your sub humanoid body remains the yearning for a real live person. Who knew? Unfortunately you’ve gotten to the point where any chance of getting a real woman are impossible, not to mention that you’ve conditioned yourself to a point where you wouldn’t be able to even get it up for a “normal” woman anyway. Hell, it’s debatable that you even still like females at this point. While thanks to those wacky Japanese you’ve developed several fetishes, you have to admit that you’ve started to favor one over the rest. So just what kind of pervert have you become? > You gimme a fursuit with a big ol' stupid fox head because you're proud to be a FUR FAG! Being the pussy you are, this choice isn’t really surprising, though this is probably safest out of some of the shit you could’ve gotten addicted to. Of course this pretty much means you’ve given up on the last vestiges of your heterosexuality, but having gay sex is probably the only way you’re going to get any at this point. However regular homo love just ain’t gonna cut it for you. The moment you decided to prance around in a fur suit and jerk off to the shapely ass of a rabbit you embraced the life style of fur faggotry and all the abuse that comes with it. Your status has just dropped even lower and even other basement dwellers you talk to online now think you’re lame. You don’t care though, because you find a site where your kind can freely talk to each other without the fear of being called a furfag. (Well okay the site gets trolled every other week, but it’s still the best a fur fag like you can hope for) Eventually you chat up some faggot that likes dressing up as a fucking cat. (His name is Tom) It’s not a rabbit, but he actually lives in your state so he’ll do! Fortunately this guy seems to have a little more money than you, so he offers to meet you at some hotel and pay for everything. The day you leave to meet Tom, your mom just shakes her head regretting the day she was too drunk to fight off your dad’s date raping that resulted in your conception that night. When you get to the hotel that’s when you meet Tom in all his furry glory. The two of you don’t spend too much time talking; after all you two have been doing all the getting to know you stuff online. Now you’re both just interested in hot furry love. The pair of you furfags yiff it up and take turns sucking each others dicks and taking it up the ass. Your fursuits are taking a beating with all the cum, spit, blood and shit leaking out of various orifices, but after all is said and done the pair of you are happy. (If sore and chaffed) You and Tom fall asleep in each others arms dreaming of a furry world… The next morning you are both rudely and violently awakened. “GET UP FURFAGS! YOU’RE UNDER ARREST!” a man in jet black riot gear yells. “Phew! It smells like shit and wet dog in this motherfucker!” another remarks. “Wha…” is all you can say before you’re pulled out of the bed and dragged by your tail out of the hotel and thrown into a van. You see Tom try to fight back, but he’s severely beaten and then two shots placed in his head. You cry out and try to leave the van when you see this, but a rifle butt to your face prevents that plan. The door is then slammed shut. After shaken off the cobwebs you notice other furries in the van with you. That’s when you swallow hard (Even more than last night) and realize what’s going on and it’s the day that all furries have feared would come. THE FINAL FURSECUTION IS AT HAND! Yes furfag, the world has finally had enough, and day of righteous cleansing has come! All of you degenerates are globally rounded up and placed into camps! The executions go on through the night as furry bodies fall into mass trenches and the skies are gloriously filled with the black smoke of your burning fur and flesh. Minutes before your own death you scream out wondering why nobody is stopping this, after all they stopped this for the Jews and everyone hates them! Well you’re forgetting one thing; Jews are actually useful, like being comedians and killing Arabs. Furries on the other hand are a pathetic waste of a zygote and serve no purpose other than to be fucking hanged. “We will be remembered! You can’t erase history!” you shout. “Hah, we already are. Soon nobody will ever know about you fuckers ever again and the world will be thankful of that! Got any last words?” You resign yourself to your fate, but still remain defiant in your last moments. “I’m proud to be a Furry!” you exclaim before getting your brains splattered all over the place. “Yiff in fucking Hell Furfag.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No? Alright then. I’ll save you the play by play details of your complete descent into degeneracy, but basically you move on past normal anime and you watch/sleep/eat/ and shit Hentai (Not necessarily in that order) for the next few months. You jerk off so much that your mom doesn’t even bother washing your sheets anymore. In fact she doesn’t even enter the basement if she can help it now. You continue on this way for quite some time, discussing the intricacies of shitting dick nipple girls and tentacle rape with likeminded cohorts on the internet. However the fact still remains, you’re still a virgin and surprisingly somewhere within your sub humanoid body remains the yearning for a real live person. Who knew? Unfortunately you’ve gotten to the point where any chance of getting a real woman are impossible, not to mention that you’ve conditioned yourself to a point where you wouldn’t be able to even get it up for a “normal” woman anyway. Hell, it’s debatable that you even still like females at this point. While thanks to those wacky Japanese you’ve developed several fetishes, you have to admit that you’ve started to favor one over the rest. So just what kind of pervert have you become? > You lock up your daughters and hell maybe even your sons too because you're gonna RAPE you some childrens! Children? Christ, you sick fuck. (Sigh) Awwwright then, baby raper… Of course being a pervert and having courage rarely go hand in hand, you’re still too afraid to actually leave the goddamn basement. And despite your sick fetish, deep down inside you have a loathing for yourself. So you try to contain yourself for a little while longer with just pictures. A process that is doomed to failure. After jerking it countless times to Lolicon and MySpace you finally cross that barrier and start looking for real child porn. Eventually you get a hold of a lot of it, but it still isn’t enough. You NEED to actually get your pedo hands on a little girl. Back in the old days you would’ve actually had to leave the house and stalk the school yards for suitable prey, but thanks to the internet and bad parenting you can find lots of young girls with daddy issues that are practically begging to be raped due to camwhoring in their underwear. Yes, it’s certainly a golden age for pedophilia! You stalk various sites and chatrooms looking for a live one and eventually you get lucky… iluvhannah: so you watch cartoons? Whut kind? Liek Dizney? Oursecret: oh all kinds, mostly anime iluvhannah: OMG I LUV anime! I almost luv them as much as Hannah Montana! We even got the same first name! LOL! Anyway whut do u watch? Oursecret: well I used to watch stuff like pokemon, but I moved on to better stuff. Deeper stuff that requires a more mature mind. I’d like to show you these cartoons sometime. iluvhannah: yeah i could do that becuz i’m liek mature for my age. Oursecret: I can see that. How old are you exactly? iluvhannah: im 12. lol. how old r u? Oursecret: oh im just a little bit older, but I don’t think that should prevent us from being friends right? iluvhannah: No, bcuz I think age is just a number anyway. Wanna see my pic? lol. Oursecret: Sure. Hannah sends you a picture of herself and the best thing is that even though she’s 12 she only looks 10! You might have a little dick, but boy is it sure going to look big in her tiny hands! She even lives in your state! You’ve GOT to meet this girl. You make plans to meet Hannah at her house where she says her parents won’t be since they’re going out for the weekend. She even tells you she’ll make some cookies for you. Could life get any better? So for the first time in a long while you actually leave your basement. You take your mom’s car keys from as she’s asleep from a hard day’s work and drive over to your preteen queen’s house. You see the silhouette of a young girl in the door way who waves over to you. You’re so hot for twelve year old trim that it never occurs to you that this could be a set up. You enter the house… “Hey pedo, why don’t you take a seat over there?” you hear a voice say. OH NOES IT’S CHRIS FUCKIN’ HANSEN! You gulp hard when you see the crusading media man in all his smug glory. He’s not as reserved as he usually is though, in fact he seems to be hold back laughter. “But…I thought you didn’t do this anymore! I thought you moved on to con artists and identity thieves!” You exclaim. “True. But trolling you pedos will never get old. Ever. Hell, I don’t even get paid for this anymore, I’m just doin’ it for the shits and giggles!” Chris laughs. While this is a bizarre revelation, it still doesn’t change the fact that you’re still in a world of shit. You immediately dash for the door. “Hey, you loli fucker, don’t you run on me! I didn’t get to ask you embarrassing questions yet!” you hear Chris yell. Of course you don’t get a couple feet from the house when several swat officers tackle your ass to the ground and shove a gun in the back of your head. Chris comes out with his crew and motions that the camera get a close up of your face. “YOU GOT HANSEND FOR GREAT JUSTICE, BITCH!” Chris Hansen laughs hysterically the whole time the officers arrest you. Bitch is a term you become very familiar with while in prison. After only a few weeks your asshole makes Goatse look tighter than the 10 year old girls that you were lusting for. Eventually some skinheads do something that your mom should’ve done when you were born, namely shank you in the fucking neck.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Jesus fucking Christ, if you’re not even going to try to improve your position then what’s the goddamn point? Don’t you have even the slightest incentive to improve your miserable existence? > You alright, alright, get off your ass already! After years of watching anime and being dangerously close to either becoming a pedophile or a furry, (Or possibly a furry pedophile) you finally make a worthwhile decision. You grab your new anime DVDs and break them all! You then grab all your old ones and break them too! Manga books all fucking burned! Comics too! Video games with anime graphics destroyed! You even break your computer just so you can’t be tempted by the internet! You’ve just destroyed your “social life” by doing that, but it’s worth it! NO MORE FUCKING ANIME! Holy shit you feel free! Seriously this is the first day of your new life and you’ve just made a break through here. But don’t get too puffed up there fatty. The fact still remains that you’re a basement dwelling loser. You’re also going to experience withdrawals and the temptation to go back to anime will be there. Best thing you can do right now is confine yourself to the house for awhile. Now…I know that might seem odd given that you practically stay inside for days on end anyway, but your trips to the comic shops might provide too much temptation. And so begins the long road to recovery… Days pass into weeks and you got the jitters like a fucking crackhead. You spend a lot of time pacing and staring at the walls in your room. You try to find ways to keep yourself occupied. You try to watch TV, but you have to struggle to not click on the Cartoon Network. Eventually you beg your mom to put a block on it. She’s willing to help you out in the hopes that you might actually move out of her house one day. Reading books doesn’t seem to help either. Your attention span has practically been destroyed from “blipvert” anime action. You even can’t concentrate on the shortest story, let alone a novel. You feel like you’re going mad. > You stay in the house Just then the phone rings and you answer it in frustration of needing SOMETHING else to do! “Hello?” “Hello? Brian? Is that you?” “Yeah? Who is this?” “It’s your cousin Patricia silly! Is your Mom there?” “No, she’s at work. What did you need her for?” “Well I remember that she was good at math and I’ve been having problems with my trig class. She said I could come by and she’d help me.” You vaguely remember your cousin Patricia from one of your family gatherings from years ago. She was younger then, but about the only one not immediately repulsed by your incessant talk of Pokemon and YuGiOh (That was before you had moved on to the “harder” stuff.) You probably don’t have much in common, but at this point you almost want to talk to ANYONE to keep your mind off things. “Hey just come on over, she’ll be home soon.” “You sure it’s okay? I mean I don’t want to bother you and all.” “It’s no problem at all! Just come over!” “Okay, then see you later I guess.” Patricia hangs up and you continue to fight your anime withdrawals. Eventually Patricia shows up on your front door. Patricia is wearing the traditional Catholic school girl outfit. She’s slender and her breasts aren’t large, but firm looking. Her face almost looks like a doll’s. She’s even looking at you with innocent WIDE eyes. She can’t be any older than 15. You fucking degenerate, you aren’t supposed to be looking at your underage cousin that way. It’s a good thing you’re fat; otherwise your two inch boner might be showing. Still, at least this proves that real HUMAN women can turn you on, even if they are fitting your previous jack off material. “Wow.” Is all you can sputter. “Hey Brian. Long time no see. So how’s it been?” Patricia asks as she walks past you. You can’t help but stare at her ass before she turns around and sits down on the couch with her books.” This is probably the closest you’ve been to a real girl that’s talked to you in…well ever actually. NOW STOP RIGHT THERE FAT ASS! I KNOW what you’re fucking thinking! You’re thinking that you got this raging hard on, and it would be a shame to waste it with a young piece of jailbait ass sitting in front of you. Well just put THAT shit out of your mind RIGHT fucking now! Disregarding any of the incest taboos she’s also underage, and you can’t do that shit. Even in the very unlikely event that she’d let your Jabba the Hut ass lay on top of her willingly, you still can’t do that shit. The best you can do is excuse yourself and jack off in the basement. And that still makes you a perv, but at least you aren’t doing anything illegal. Now then, is that what you’re going to do? Or can you actually talk with the girl and not try to hump her like a dog in heat? > You too much over stimulation! Gotta get outta here! Ah well, I suppose it WAS too much stimulation for you. “Uh…excuse me Patricia I have stuff to do in the basement, you just wait up here.” “Oh, alright then.” You immediately run down into your basement and can’t take your pants off quick enough to jack off to her image. The first few times you just think of the traditional missionary position and blow job images. Then you move on to fucking her in the ass. Eventually you return to your “Anime roots” and start imagining yourself growing tentacles and simultaneously fucking her in all three holes and filling them with cum and then shitting on her face through your mouth. I suppose this sick scenario would be inventive, if you hadn’t stolen it from those Wacky Japanese. Anyway by the time your mom has come home, helped Patricia, talked with her, sent her home and then went to bed herself, you’ve jacked off at least into the double digits. It’s actually amazing that you didn’t give your fat ass a heart attack. You are incredibly tired though and you fall asleep in your incredibly sticky bed. The next day, you still have images of your cousin running through your mind. This probably wouldn’t be anymore than a lingering sick fantasy, but the problem is that your cousin is coming over again. Apparently she needs more help from your Mom. She comes over and your urges are stronger than ever. You barely manage to make it to the basement that time. She comes over a third time and is starting to notice your increasingly odd behavior, but by then it’s too late for her. You can contain your unnatural lust any longer. When she’s sitting on the couch waiting for your mom with her books you don’t bother going into the basement this time. “So uh…don’t you have something to do in the basement?” “Nah, I’d rather just sit and look…I mean talk to you…” “Okaaaaaaay…hey look maybe I’ll just come back later…” “No wait! I want you to stay and we can play!” “Eeeek! What’re you doing?!” At this point you lunge at your cousin and nearly crush the poor girl with your weight. You begin gyrating against her and trying to pull your pants down while lifting her skirt up. “Mmmm yeah…you smell good…so fresh and innocent…I just wish you were twelve.” “NO! Get off me you fucking fat ass pedo!” she screams and manages to smash your head in with a nearby lamp, before sliding from underneath you and screaming rape in the streets. You’d probably go to jail and get ass raped multiple times for this, but the lamp to the head put you in a coma. Your mom is content on just taking you off of life support and letting you die, but the state insists that you must pay for your crimes and therefore must be kept alive until you come out of the coma where upon you can stand trial. The joke’s on them though, you remain a vegetable!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just then the phone rings and you answer it in frustration of needing SOMETHING else to do! “Hello?” “Hello? Brian? Is that you?” “Yeah? Who is this?” “It’s your cousin Patricia silly! Is your Mom there?” “No, she’s at work. What did you need her for?” “Well I remember that she was good at math and I’ve been having problems with my trig class. She said I could come by and she’d help me.” You vaguely remember your cousin Patricia from one of your family gatherings from years ago. She was younger then, but about the only one not immediately repulsed by your incessant talk of Pokemon and YuGiOh (That was before you had moved on to the “harder” stuff.) You probably don’t have much in common, but at this point you almost want to talk to ANYONE to keep your mind off things. “Hey just come on over, she’ll be home soon.” “You sure it’s okay? I mean I don’t want to bother you and all.” “It’s no problem at all! Just come over!” “Okay, then see you later I guess.” Patricia hangs up and you continue to fight your anime withdrawals. Eventually Patricia shows up on your front door. Patricia is wearing the traditional Catholic school girl outfit. She’s slender and her breasts aren’t large, but firm looking. Her face almost looks like a doll’s. She’s even looking at you with innocent WIDE eyes. She can’t be any older than 15. You fucking degenerate, you aren’t supposed to be looking at your underage cousin that way. It’s a good thing you’re fat; otherwise your two inch boner might be showing. Still, at least this proves that real HUMAN women can turn you on, even if they are fitting your previous jack off material. “Wow.” Is all you can sputter. “Hey Brian. Long time no see. So how’s it been?” Patricia asks as she walks past you. You can’t help but stare at her ass before she turns around and sits down on the couch with her books.” This is probably the closest you’ve been to a real girl that’s talked to you in…well ever actually. NOW STOP RIGHT THERE FAT ASS! I KNOW what you’re fucking thinking! You’re thinking that you got this raging hard on, and it would be a shame to waste it with a young piece of jailbait ass sitting in front of you. Well just put THAT shit out of your mind RIGHT fucking now! Disregarding any of the incest taboos she’s also underage, and you can’t do that shit. Even in the very unlikely event that she’d let your Jabba the Hut ass lay on top of her willingly, you still can’t do that shit. The best you can do is excuse yourself and jack off in the basement. And that still makes you a perv, but at least you aren’t doing anything illegal. Now then, is that what you’re going to do? Or can you actually talk with the girl and not try to hump her like a dog in heat? > You can do this...I can do this... Pretty brave of you, let’s see if it works. You sit far away from her and answer her, while trying not to stare too hard. “Oh, well I’m sorta doing okay I guess…” “You seem troubled, what’s wrong?” “Nothing really, I’m just trying to…(sigh) I’ll be honest. I’ve been severely addicted to anime for years and I’ve just now started to go cold turkey and it’s been harder than I thought.” This confessional is about the only thing you could think of to talk about that wouldn’t cause her to call the cops on you. And that’s still a possibility. Stay the course fatty, stay the fucking course! “Wow, that’s pretty commendable of you. I remember that you were all into that anime stuff the last time we had a family gathering. Even though I was young even I thought you were a bit obsessed with it.” “Yeah I dunno how I’m going to make it…” you say trying to fight the urge to say anything inappropriate. “Maybe you should try this.” Patricia says and opens up her bookbag. She throws a comic book at you. It’s one of those superhero ones. AMERICAN superheroes! Like superman and such. You’re taken off guard and forget about your unnatural feelings for a moment. “Superman?” “Yeah, maybe if you read some other comics it will help ease your transition. The only thing is, you could get addicted to those, so be careful.” “Y’know, this could work. I never really was interested in these types before, so I probably won’t get too attached.” “And unlike the anime shit, you got more of a variety meaning you’re less likely to get obsessed with one thing. I mean the characters are at least different from each other in looks and stuff.” “This is a great idea! I just wish I had some money to go down to the comic shop and try this out!” “Here, take these. I never bother rereading them.” Patricia says handing you a bunch of superhero comics. “Alright! Thanks!” you say and run down to the basement. It’s funny, but the fact that Patricia was into comics didn’t make you more aroused like it would most loser geeks. It might be due to the fact that you were so thankful that someone was not only willing to talk to you, but help you that caused you to no longer look at her with nearly overwhelming lust. Okay, so after you read them, you DO spend an inordinate amount of time rubbing the comics on yourself and enjoying her “scent” and think about her while you jack off a little bit. But you still feel a little better, like the obsession has lessened a little. Patricia comes over several more times as your Mom tutors her and she brings you more comics. You appreciate it, but eventually she doesn’t need anymore tutoring and you miss her and the comics especially since the comics were working. You get depressed and mope around the house, but your Mom is quite tired of you in general at this point. “Look, I know you’re trying to beat your fucking addiction, but you’re taking too fucking long about it! If you’re going to insist on being a man-child that lives in my goddamn basement forever, the least you can do is go and get a fucking job! In fact you ARE going to get one, or I’m kicking your fat ass out!” Since you don’t have much of a choice, you leave the house for the first time in a long time. The sunlight burns your pasty skin and eyes, but you waddle down the street in your quest to find a job. The problem is, you don’t even know where to look, so you just end up going to the comic shop to read them without paying. Jake the comic shop owner sees you enter and is really surprised. “Brian is that you? Shit man, thought you might’ve died of a heart attack or gotten arrested for having child porn on your computer har har har har! Where have you been? You’ve missed several issues of your favorite Japanese shit.” “Yeah, well that’s why I haven’t been here, I destroyed my entire collection. I’ve quit it cold turkey, but it hasn’t been easy.” “Shit, that’s almost hard to believe, but then again you never were one to miss an issue before, so I guess you’re telling the truth. But what brings you back here?” “I dunno, my mom told me to look for a job or she’s going to kick me out. I dunno what I’m going to do.” “Well, you could work here, I need someone to lug around the comic boxes. I’m going to be doing some rearranging.” “What? Are you serious, I thought Ron did that.” “Ron’s fuckin’ dead. Found the asshole dead with a broken neck in my fucking bathroom! He was looking at one of those sex comics and the dumb ass decided to try autoerotic asphyxiation. I swear that’s the last time I hire a retard.” This could be an opportunity to save yourself from being homeless, or it could be a relapse back into your former addiction. Remember, you’d be working right at the source. > You take the job This is going to be very difficult, but you’d rather risk getting addicted again than being homeless. “I’ll take the job.” “Alright then, but let’s get something straight first. I’m going to be watching you CLOSE. While you say that you’ve kicked the anime habit, I remember when you were a little junkie, so I don’t want to find out if you’re stealing shit, because I will be kicking your fat ass if that’s ever the case.” Jake threatens. You nod and agree meekishly where upon Jake tells you go start moving and unpacking boxes. This is probably the first time you’ve actually had to do any “hard work” in your life. Moving the boxes is an effort for you and you have to rest several times. Jake yells and screams at you the entire time. You almost think he’s going to fire you that day, but he never does. You can only assume he’s really desperate for help and he must be considering he hired you. The only good thing about all this, is that you’re too damn tired to even think about your anime addiction, but this is just the first day after all… When you get home, your mother is a little surprised to see you. “You’ve been out? I figured you were down in the basement.” “No, I got a job. You said you were going to kick me out if I didn’t.” “YOU DID?! How much does it pay?” “Not much, I work at the comic shop…” “Oh. Well I suppose it was too much to hope for that you’d actually be able to move out one day…(Sigh) Alright, I guess you made the effort, but don’t you think it’s a little idiotic to work at a place like that given your addiction?” “Probably.” Your mother just shakes her head. “Well you never were the brightest. However, considering that you’re making your own money now, you can use THAT to feed your addiction if it should flare up again. And you WILL be paying me back for all that shit you bought with my stolen credit card you asshole!” your Mom says while hitting you upside the head. You head back down to your basement completely exhausted by today’s labor. You don’t even jack off, you just fall asleep. You MUST be tired! As the days go by you go about your job, but you start to feel the temptation. Especially when a big shipment of Japanese DVDs, graphic novels and comics arrive. You’re trying hard not to look too much at the Japanese shit. REALLY hard. In fact something else is starting to get hard and you’re starting to hear shit in the stock room. “Tee hee! Come on, open us up! We’ve never been touched yet!” a little girl voice says. “What the fuck?” you reply. “Yeah, come on Brian, what’s wrong? You used to like to deflower us and run your hands ALL over us. I remember how you used to spew all your delicious spunk on our 2-Dimensional faces! Mmmm! Come back to us! We’ll love being your little fuck slut in LOLI-WHORE SCHOOL! Tee hee!” “I was a different person, look I read different comics now. I need some variety.” “Hey man, I’m all for variety, you remember that time you bought that ORGY OF THE CYBERNETIC TENTACLE MUTANTS anime DVD? We’ve got it all! You should come back to us. It’s pointless to resist.” a more robotic voice says. “Shhhhh! Shut up about that! I was uh… just wondering what the appeal was! Look I’ve been reading some super hero stuff, and I’m starting to like that now, so…” “Bah! Super heroes! You actually like those muscle bound parodies of the masculine form? I remember when you appreciated a more subtle type of hero. One who was shy, soft spoken and had a large dose of ambiguous sexuality to them. Hey if you don’t like girls anymore, we got things to satisfy those urges too you know! Like SHOTA DICKGIRL ADVENTURES!” an effeminate male voice says. “GAH! Leave me alone!” “Well there’s always…” “Don’t say it!” “Come on, you can’t say you never thought about it…” “Don’t say it!” “Come on, it’s completely normal. They even did a CSI episode of it…” “Don’t you FUCKING say it!” “Furries.” “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” At this point you run out of the stock room and the comic shop screaming your head off. You don’t stop running until you collapse from exhaustion which means you only get to the end of the block thanks to your poor physical condition. Fortunately some kind soul helps you. “Hey Brian, are you okay?” Patricia asks. Your eyes flutter open and you look up to see an angel of perfection. Your eyes follow her exposed legs, at this angle you can see up her dress. White panties. The color of purity. She’s so pure. She’s sooooo good. You take one look at her smiling face and you ejaculate in your skidmarked underwear, giving something else for your poor mom to clean. “Yeah, I’m okay…I just…I dunno. Some weird shit happened.” “It happens. Okay let’s help you up.” As Patricia helps you up, you smell the scent of her hair…SMMMMMM AHH! It smells like heaven! You just want to tell her how much you like her right now. You’re sure that IF you just had a girlfriend you could get over your addiction a lot quicker. Far be it from me to warn you about this course of action. But you’re doing it again. You start sweating and breathing heavy. Patricia’s looking at you with concern. “Are you alright? You look a little flush.” “I just…I dunno…it addiction is really hard to break and I liked it when we used to speak and stuff. It kept my mind off things a lot better. You were so nice and understanding.” “Awww…look I didn’t know I had so much of an effect. I’ll tell you what, I’ll try to make some time for us to talk every once in awhile” Well fortunately for you, you weren’t quite brave enough to admit your inappropriate feelings directly and she takes what you say completely out of context. “So where were you heading?” she asks. “Oh…uh the comic shop. I work there now.” “You do? Well no wonder you nearly had a relapse silly!” “Yeah well Jake might fire me after this.” “Nah, I’ll talk to him. He’s always nice to me and gives me discounts. Let’s go.” This probably doesn’t make things easier for you since this naivety just turns you on more. You have to fight the urge to pull it out and start wackin’ it as you stare at her ass the whole time you’re walking back to the comic shop. Jake is about ready to yell at you, but when he sees Patricia he focuses on her instead. You quietly go back and move boxes, getting to keep your job. Once again Patricia has helped you out. This girl MUST be yours! She’s everything you could ever want in a girl. She’s perfection. Time passes and you continue to work at the comic shop and spend time with Patricia when you can. It’s good for you. You get exercise and get to spend time with a pretty girl… who just happens to be your underage cousin. Patricia also encourages you to read more American comics which you start doing on a regular basis. Of course now this means you’ve got a little more to talk about with Patricia and your feelings for her are getting to a point where it’s getting harder to not hide. > You tell Patricia how you really feel about her It’s too much; you just can’t hide it anymore. You HAVE to tell her! One day when you’re alone with her in your basement, you just blurt it out. “Patricia, you’ve been so nice to me. More than a basement dweller like me deserves. And I know this is wrong, but I’ve grown to love you. I can only hope that somewhere within you, you love me too.” You’re never going to believe this, but Patricia doesn’t run away in terror screaming. Though she does look a little apprehensive and starts edging away from you. “Uh…Brian. I’m flattered, but…uh I don’t think…” “Believe me, I know it’s wrong. I used to read the SUPER HAPPY INCEST FAMILY comic series. But I can’t help but feel this way about you!” “Brian, I know you’re desperate for female companionship, but maybe you just need to jack off or something.” “Jacking off has lost all meaning now. At one time I used to just be satisfied with images of anime girls getting raped, but now that I’ve been in close and civilized contact with a real woman on a regular basis I want more.” “Can’t you find a different girl?” “What other girl wants me? You’re the only one I know who understands me!” “But dude, I’m your cousin!” “So? Samurai Warrior Raki Onari fell in love with his…” At this point Patricia slaps you. “Damn it Brian! I thought you were past this! You aren’t a samurai, I ain’t some geisha and this ISN’T an anime comic! You need to get this Jap shit outta your head once and for all!” “I know, I know! (Sob!) But its like with you around, all my anime fantasies could come true! I mean maybe you could even put on some cat ears…” Your cousin slaps you again. “NO! FUCK NO! Look Brian if you expect any kind of relationship with me, you won’t be making me dress up in anything remotely furry!” “(Sob) I’m sorry, I’m just…wait…did you say?” “I said if you want any chance with me, you better knock off this anime shit for good!” You can hardly believe your ears. Against all odds your pretty teenage cousin is offering to have a relationship you. It seemed like she was prett against it just a moment ago. At this point you pinch your own ass just make sure you’re not dreaming. “Ow!” you say. “Why the fuck are you pinching your own ass?” “Nevermind. I’m just over thrilled that you aren’t calling the police on me. I’m so glad you’ve made this decision! I can be so good for you; you’ll see…but uh, remember we’ll have to keep this a secret.” “No shit. We’d probably look suspicious hanging out together if most folks wouldn’t ever believe that I’d be caught dead fucking someone that looks like you! Hah! Though all that box lifting at the comic shop must’ve had an effect on you. You’re putting on a little more muscle rather than remaining the disgusting blob you were before.” “Um…thanks I think...” Now at this point someone less desperate would sense something is amiss personality wise with this chick, but of course you’re not really thinking about that. You don’t think about it when she starts sucking your cock, minutes after this conversation. You don’t think about it when she punches you in the face after swallowing your load. You don’t think about it when she’s fucking you while your mom is out of the house. You don’t think about it when she begins to constantly insult you and physically abuse you whenever possible. After getting a dildo shoved up your ass during a particularly rough round of sex, you begin to think about it! Over the past few months you’ve come to find out that your lovely Patricia is bat shit insane. Lots of stuff you didn’t know about her come to light, like your previous notions of her being some beacon of purity were completely wrong as well. She’s been fucking guys since sixth grade. (Definitely shows when she’s fucking you too) She’s also supposed to be taking meds and she hasn’t. You don’t exactly know what mental illness she has, but she’s definitely not a well girl. (This really shouldn’t surprise you considering she’s fucking you) None of this would be so bad, if she hadn’t become so increasingly sadistic towards you. You’ve been letting her get away with it too, so she’s just getting worse. The only good thing about all this is you haven’t once been thinking about anime. Not because you’ve got something else to concentrate on now, but because you’ve learned to associate anime with pain and fear. (Which is a fetish you definitely haven’t embraced) Anytime you showed signs of relapsing again, your cousin would punish you severely. (Even more than usual) While I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned and the philosophical idea of being careful of wishing and all that other shit, but really none of that is going to help you right now. You can either stay in this completely fucked up relationship or try to break up with her. > You break up with this crazy bitch! Seriously? Shit, I didn’t think you had it in you. You gather up all your courage for your next meeting with Patricia. You’re really nervous and on edge. Your mom notices this before she goes to work. “Hey Brian.” “AGHH! SHIT!” you shout, not realizing she was there. “Damn you scared me.” “Calm down, it’s just me. Shit, Patricia’s got you more jumpy than a five year old at a NAMBLA convention.” “Patricia? Uh I dunno…” “Cut the shit son, I know all about it. I wash your sheets remember?” “You knew? You didn’t care?” “Well, I can’t say I approved, but I guess I felt sorry for you. I mean hell you were finally getting laid and on a regular basis too. I figured if she got pregnant we’d just abort the unholy bastards. I didn’t quite know how crazy Patricia was until I spoke to her mother recently though. I imagine you didn’t either, but you were just so grateful for someone to fuck you. My sister Evelyn said they were going to ship her to some convent in South Seas, but strangely your relationship with her has had a calming effect. She seems to let most of her crazy shit out on you.” “Yeah, I noticed and I don’t think I like it anymore.” You say. “Well, I can’t say I blame you. I’m glad to see you have a backbone somewhere in that out of shape body of yours. Ah fuck, maybe some of this is my fault. I should’ve gotten you a hooker when you turned sixteen. At least you might’ve avoided this fucked up relationship.” At this point your mom opens up her purse and takes out her handgun and gives it to you. “Here, take this. If you’re going to break up with her, you might need it.” “I don’t want to kill her!” “Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, but given how she is, you’d better have something to protect yourself. Now I’m going to work. Good luck son, and you better not leave a big fucking mess for me to clean up.” Wow, that’s gotta be the first time your mom’s been supportive. Of course now you’re even more nervous. Eventually Patricia comes over. She’s in a horny mood and grabs your balls hard when you open the door. “Hey you fucking perv. You ready to shove that little dick in me for a good two minutes before you get too tired? Hah! You’re such a loser!” she says and then shoves her tongue in your mouth. You push her back a bit and cover your balls while rubbing them in pain. “Patricia, we really gotta talk.” “Yes we do! I wanna talk about the last Batman comic! Can you believe that…” she says changing her tone as usual. “No, Patricia we gotta talk about us.” “Oh?” While Patricia looks at you expectantly, you start and stop several times in an attempt to tell her it’s over, but just can’t do it. Patricia on the other hand realizes what’s going on and she gets very upset. “You fucking bastard…you’re breaking up with me aren’t you? YOU UNGRATEFUL PIECE OF SHIT!” “Now Patricia, it’s not like that.” “Oh then how is it like? I gave my body, my love, my fuckin’ SOUL to your sorry ass and this is how you repay me? Oh fuck no; you’re not getting away with this shit!” Patricia doesn’t attack like you think she was going to, she starts to leave. “What’re you doing?” ”Me? I’m going home, that’s what I’m doing! And I’m telling everyone of how you’ve been molesting and raping me on a routine basis. You’ll be locked up and I hope some big ass black guys shove their dicks up your bitch ass every night!” “Patricia, your parents and my mom already know about us.” You say in the hopes it’ll stop her. Patricia does stop. She didn’t expect that, but she quickly resumes her tirade. “So what? Then they’ll get in trouble too! I’m still underage not to mention your fucking cousin! I’ll just go straight to the police and they’ll take you all in! Regardless of what happens, you’re still going to be in major fucking trouble and you’ll still be taking it in the ass in jail!” Maybe it’s fear, maybe it’s anger, maybe it’s a combination, but you pull the gun on Patricia and order her to stop. “Patricia, I can’t let you do that.” You say, while Patricia looks at you in disbelief. “Brian?! You’d actually shoot me? Someone you used to love?” “I still love you Patricia, but I can’t let you go now. I would’ve before, but given your threats and your past abuses towards me, I can’t take that chance. You’re too chaotic…and I gotta do this.” Patricia drops to her knees before you and starts to tear up. Her voice starts to quiver as she begs for her life. “Brian…(sob) please. Don’t do this! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to treat you like that. I’m just all fucked up when I’m not on my medication. I’ll start taking it! We can still be together. Just please (sob) Don’t kill me!” For a moment you drop your guard. It’s a moment though that is your downfall. Patricia punches you in the nuts and tries to wrestle the gun from your hand. In the ensuing struggle she manages to turn the gun on you and pull the trigger. You feel pain spread from your stomach to every other inch of your body. However unlike the movies, this doesn’t result in some “shocked” expression and you falling limp in slow motion. You instead have enough adrenalin to push her off of you and with the gun still firmly in your hands you shoot her twice in the chest. Patricia falls to the floor in a bloody heap and you do likewise. ‘Ugh…damn it Patricia…” Patricia doesn’t respond though since she’s already dead. You’ll be joining her soon. It’s probably for the best anyway. Still, even though she was a crazy bitch, she’s still the only love your life. You crawl over and grab her hand as you bleed out. “Ha ha ha ha, Mom’s gonna have a big ass mess to clean up when she gets home.” You laugh as you start to lose consciousness and pass from this world. And so ends the life of another basement dweller, but you know the old saying: “Tis better to have fucked your cousin and die, then to have never fucked your cousin at all.” Okay so that’s not how it goes, but you still accomplished one major thing that most basement dwellers never do and that’s getting laid by a real live girl. And it didn’t even involve money or rape! Not to mention she was a jailbait family member. Do you realize how many sexual repressed Japs and jilted Rednecks dream to be in that position? Why some basement dwelling pedophile fucktards go through their whole pathetic lives too scared to act on their feelings and only content on wackin’ it to prostitot beauty pageant pictures. YOU were living the dream man! You were living the fuckin’ dream! So cheer up and don’t think of dying as a loss because a Winner is YOU!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It’s too much; you just can’t hide it anymore. You HAVE to tell her! One day when you’re alone with her in your basement, you just blurt it out. “Patricia, you’ve been so nice to me. More than a basement dweller like me deserves. And I know this is wrong, but I’ve grown to love you. I can only hope that somewhere within you, you love me too.” You’re never going to believe this, but Patricia doesn’t run away in terror screaming. Though she does look a little apprehensive and starts edging away from you. “Uh…Brian. I’m flattered, but…uh I don’t think…” “Believe me, I know it’s wrong. I used to read the SUPER HAPPY INCEST FAMILY comic series. But I can’t help but feel this way about you!” “Brian, I know you’re desperate for female companionship, but maybe you just need to jack off or something.” “Jacking off has lost all meaning now. At one time I used to just be satisfied with images of anime girls getting raped, but now that I’ve been in close and civilized contact with a real woman on a regular basis I want more.” “Can’t you find a different girl?” “What other girl wants me? You’re the only one I know who understands me!” “But dude, I’m your cousin!” “So? Samurai Warrior Raki Onari fell in love with his…” At this point Patricia slaps you. “Damn it Brian! I thought you were past this! You aren’t a samurai, I ain’t some geisha and this ISN’T an anime comic! You need to get this Jap shit outta your head once and for all!” “I know, I know! (Sob!) But its like with you around, all my anime fantasies could come true! I mean maybe you could even put on some cat ears…” Your cousin slaps you again. “NO! FUCK NO! Look Brian if you expect any kind of relationship with me, you won’t be making me dress up in anything remotely furry!” “(Sob) I’m sorry, I’m just…wait…did you say?” “I said if you want any chance with me, you better knock off this anime shit for good!” You can hardly believe your ears. Against all odds your pretty teenage cousin is offering to have a relationship you. It seemed like she was prett against it just a moment ago. At this point you pinch your own ass just make sure you’re not dreaming. “Ow!” you say. “Why the fuck are you pinching your own ass?” “Nevermind. I’m just over thrilled that you aren’t calling the police on me. I’m so glad you’ve made this decision! I can be so good for you; you’ll see…but uh, remember we’ll have to keep this a secret.” “No shit. We’d probably look suspicious hanging out together if most folks wouldn’t ever believe that I’d be caught dead fucking someone that looks like you! Hah! Though all that box lifting at the comic shop must’ve had an effect on you. You’re putting on a little more muscle rather than remaining the disgusting blob you were before.” “Um…thanks I think...” Now at this point someone less desperate would sense something is amiss personality wise with this chick, but of course you’re not really thinking about that. You don’t think about it when she starts sucking your cock, minutes after this conversation. You don’t think about it when she punches you in the face after swallowing your load. You don’t think about it when she’s fucking you while your mom is out of the house. You don’t think about it when she begins to constantly insult you and physically abuse you whenever possible. After getting a dildo shoved up your ass during a particularly rough round of sex, you begin to think about it! Over the past few months you’ve come to find out that your lovely Patricia is bat shit insane. Lots of stuff you didn’t know about her come to light, like your previous notions of her being some beacon of purity were completely wrong as well. She’s been fucking guys since sixth grade. (Definitely shows when she’s fucking you too) She’s also supposed to be taking meds and she hasn’t. You don’t exactly know what mental illness she has, but she’s definitely not a well girl. (This really shouldn’t surprise you considering she’s fucking you) None of this would be so bad, if she hadn’t become so increasingly sadistic towards you. You’ve been letting her get away with it too, so she’s just getting worse. The only good thing about all this is you haven’t once been thinking about anime. Not because you’ve got something else to concentrate on now, but because you’ve learned to associate anime with pain and fear. (Which is a fetish you definitely haven’t embraced) Anytime you showed signs of relapsing again, your cousin would punish you severely. (Even more than usual) While I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned and the philosophical idea of being careful of wishing and all that other shit, but really none of that is going to help you right now. You can either stay in this completely fucked up relationship or try to break up with her. > You stay because even though she hurts you a lot, deep down you know she loves me Well I would say you’re pussy whipped, and while that might have something to do with it, it’s far more likely that you’re just suffering from a form of battered spouse syndrome. Yeah so anyway you stay with her and put up with more of her abuse. Now you’re probably thinking that she ends up killing you or something, but that doesn’t happen. Nope, you don’t get arrested for statutory rape either. Her parents and your Mom are quite aware of the situation, but because Patricia lets all her aggression out on you, her parents find her to be much more manageable now. As for your mom, she figures that you getting laid and not wasting time on anime anymore so it’s at least step up. Time passes and eventually you manage to get her ass pregnant. It’s at this point you are forced to move out of your mom’s house since she’s not putting up with you, your crazy bitch AND your unholy seed (Patricia’s family is even less receptive to the idea). Fortunately, you save up enough money to move out of your mom’s house and into a cheap ass trailer park with Patricia. (Hey you’re already fucking your cousin, might as well go with it at this point) You and Patricia live in this trailer park for the rest of your lives where she not only continues to abuse you mentally and physically but also gets fatter with each mutant child she gives birth to. Face it, you’re a big ass loser pal, but at least you’re no longer a basement dweller.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is going to be very difficult, but you’d rather risk getting addicted again than being homeless. “I’ll take the job.” “Alright then, but let’s get something straight first. I’m going to be watching you CLOSE. While you say that you’ve kicked the anime habit, I remember when you were a little junkie, so I don’t want to find out if you’re stealing shit, because I will be kicking your fat ass if that’s ever the case.” Jake threatens. You nod and agree meekishly where upon Jake tells you go start moving and unpacking boxes. This is probably the first time you’ve actually had to do any “hard work” in your life. Moving the boxes is an effort for you and you have to rest several times. Jake yells and screams at you the entire time. You almost think he’s going to fire you that day, but he never does. You can only assume he’s really desperate for help and he must be considering he hired you. The only good thing about all this, is that you’re too damn tired to even think about your anime addiction, but this is just the first day after all… When you get home, your mother is a little surprised to see you. “You’ve been out? I figured you were down in the basement.” “No, I got a job. You said you were going to kick me out if I didn’t.” “YOU DID?! How much does it pay?” “Not much, I work at the comic shop…” “Oh. Well I suppose it was too much to hope for that you’d actually be able to move out one day…(Sigh) Alright, I guess you made the effort, but don’t you think it’s a little idiotic to work at a place like that given your addiction?” “Probably.” Your mother just shakes her head. “Well you never were the brightest. However, considering that you’re making your own money now, you can use THAT to feed your addiction if it should flare up again. And you WILL be paying me back for all that shit you bought with my stolen credit card you asshole!” your Mom says while hitting you upside the head. You head back down to your basement completely exhausted by today’s labor. You don’t even jack off, you just fall asleep. You MUST be tired! As the days go by you go about your job, but you start to feel the temptation. Especially when a big shipment of Japanese DVDs, graphic novels and comics arrive. You’re trying hard not to look too much at the Japanese shit. REALLY hard. In fact something else is starting to get hard and you’re starting to hear shit in the stock room. “Tee hee! Come on, open us up! We’ve never been touched yet!” a little girl voice says. “What the fuck?” you reply. “Yeah, come on Brian, what’s wrong? You used to like to deflower us and run your hands ALL over us. I remember how you used to spew all your delicious spunk on our 2-Dimensional faces! Mmmm! Come back to us! We’ll love being your little fuck slut in LOLI-WHORE SCHOOL! Tee hee!” “I was a different person, look I read different comics now. I need some variety.” “Hey man, I’m all for variety, you remember that time you bought that ORGY OF THE CYBERNETIC TENTACLE MUTANTS anime DVD? We’ve got it all! You should come back to us. It’s pointless to resist.” a more robotic voice says. “Shhhhh! Shut up about that! I was uh… just wondering what the appeal was! Look I’ve been reading some super hero stuff, and I’m starting to like that now, so…” “Bah! Super heroes! You actually like those muscle bound parodies of the masculine form? I remember when you appreciated a more subtle type of hero. One who was shy, soft spoken and had a large dose of ambiguous sexuality to them. Hey if you don’t like girls anymore, we got things to satisfy those urges too you know! Like SHOTA DICKGIRL ADVENTURES!” an effeminate male voice says. “GAH! Leave me alone!” “Well there’s always…” “Don’t say it!” “Come on, you can’t say you never thought about it…” “Don’t say it!” “Come on, it’s completely normal. They even did a CSI episode of it…” “Don’t you FUCKING say it!” “Furries.” “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” At this point you run out of the stock room and the comic shop screaming your head off. You don’t stop running until you collapse from exhaustion which means you only get to the end of the block thanks to your poor physical condition. Fortunately some kind soul helps you. “Hey Brian, are you okay?” Patricia asks. Your eyes flutter open and you look up to see an angel of perfection. Your eyes follow her exposed legs, at this angle you can see up her dress. White panties. The color of purity. She’s so pure. She’s sooooo good. You take one look at her smiling face and you ejaculate in your skidmarked underwear, giving something else for your poor mom to clean. “Yeah, I’m okay…I just…I dunno. Some weird shit happened.” “It happens. Okay let’s help you up.” As Patricia helps you up, you smell the scent of her hair…SMMMMMM AHH! It smells like heaven! You just want to tell her how much you like her right now. You’re sure that IF you just had a girlfriend you could get over your addiction a lot quicker. Far be it from me to warn you about this course of action. But you’re doing it again. You start sweating and breathing heavy. Patricia’s looking at you with concern. “Are you alright? You look a little flush.” “I just…I dunno…it addiction is really hard to break and I liked it when we used to speak and stuff. It kept my mind off things a lot better. You were so nice and understanding.” “Awww…look I didn’t know I had so much of an effect. I’ll tell you what, I’ll try to make some time for us to talk every once in awhile” Well fortunately for you, you weren’t quite brave enough to admit your inappropriate feelings directly and she takes what you say completely out of context. “So where were you heading?” she asks. “Oh…uh the comic shop. I work there now.” “You do? Well no wonder you nearly had a relapse silly!” “Yeah well Jake might fire me after this.” “Nah, I’ll talk to him. He’s always nice to me and gives me discounts. Let’s go.” This probably doesn’t make things easier for you since this naivety just turns you on more. You have to fight the urge to pull it out and start wackin’ it as you stare at her ass the whole time you’re walking back to the comic shop. Jake is about ready to yell at you, but when he sees Patricia he focuses on her instead. You quietly go back and move boxes, getting to keep your job. Once again Patricia has helped you out. This girl MUST be yours! She’s everything you could ever want in a girl. She’s perfection. Time passes and you continue to work at the comic shop and spend time with Patricia when you can. It’s good for you. You get exercise and get to spend time with a pretty girl… who just happens to be your underage cousin. Patricia also encourages you to read more American comics which you start doing on a regular basis. Of course now this means you’ve got a little more to talk about with Patricia and your feelings for her are getting to a point where it’s getting harder to not hide. > You keep it to yourself This is pretty surprising. In your choice between pussy and morals you chose morals. You’ve really come a long way. Actually you haven’t. Your fear is just overriding your hornyness level. The fear of getting locked up for statutory rape and pedophilia and getting ass raped by real criminals is too great. It’s just as well; your shot at your cousin was pretty slim anyway. In the meantime you tell Patricia to get out as you’re getting sleepy. You begin pushing her towards the door trying very hard not to grab her ass or tits. “Alright, alright! I’m going! Stop shoving me! Shit, what’s your problem!?” “I got a lot on my mind alright? I won’t have you hounding me with questions! Get out! Out! Out!” Your outburst makes Patricia very upset. In fact she tears up, you fucking cad. “Oh fuck you then! I was trying to help your lame ass out! I even thought that maybe… Nevermind! Don’t fucking contact me anymore jerk off! (Sob!)” Patricia yells before slamming the door. With your cousin gone you feel so lost. Normally the temptation to go back to anime would be there, but instead you just feel depressed. It’s sort of like the first time she stopped coming over, but a lot worse because now you know she’s not coming back. Patricia was like your “girlfriend” even if she really wasn’t; the illusion was enough for you. You cry in your pillows. The very pillows you used to hump and pretend they were her. You’re too sad to even do that. You’re totally emo right now. Why you’re so emo, you might just become AN HERO. > You become AN HERO Well I guess we all shouldn’t be surprised that it would end like this. In the traditional of overly dramatic An Heros you decide to make a suicide note first. If you still had the internet you would’ve really been able to take advantage of this momentous occasion, but ever since you gave up anime you lost that perk. Anyway since you don’t really have any friends or even any relatives that like you, you just write about how you can’t go on due to your sick obsession with Patricia and then life isn’t worth living, it sucks, blah blah blah… After writing your emo faggotry, you now decide on how to kill yourself. Unfortunately your mom carries her gun on her at all times so you can’t shoot yourself and you’re probably too much of a fucking sissy to go out V-Tech style anyway. You try hanging, but your inept ass can’t tie a proper knot. Eventually you give up. You head to the bathroom to find some pills, but your mom hasn’t refilled her prescriptions lately. You just swallow what’s left in the medicine cabinet, only to throw it all up five minutes later. Undeterred in your quest to pwn yourself, you grab your mom’s razor blades and slit your fucking wrists open (Down the road not across the street of course) at last accomplishing something worthwhile in your miserable life. You begin to bleed out; surprisingly you don’t even change your mind and try to desperately call 911. You just think about how you wasted your life in your mom’s basement jerking off to anime and how if you hadn’t tried to stop you probably wouldn’t be in this situation now. You would’ve been content on living the life of a basement dweller not knowing any better. Gotta love the irony eh? Eventually you die and leave a bloody mess for your mom to clean up when she gets home. You aren’t really missed, and your letter was so drenched in blood that it was illegible, so nobody really knows why you killed yourself if anybody cared in the first place. In other words you’re not even amusing enough to be An Hero, you fail at life AND death!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is pretty surprising. In your choice between pussy and morals you chose morals. You’ve really come a long way. Actually you haven’t. Your fear is just overriding your hornyness level. The fear of getting locked up for statutory rape and pedophilia and getting ass raped by real criminals is too great. It’s just as well; your shot at your cousin was pretty slim anyway. In the meantime you tell Patricia to get out as you’re getting sleepy. You begin pushing her towards the door trying very hard not to grab her ass or tits. “Alright, alright! I’m going! Stop shoving me! Shit, what’s your problem!?” “I got a lot on my mind alright? I won’t have you hounding me with questions! Get out! Out! Out!” Your outburst makes Patricia very upset. In fact she tears up, you fucking cad. “Oh fuck you then! I was trying to help your lame ass out! I even thought that maybe… Nevermind! Don’t fucking contact me anymore jerk off! (Sob!)” Patricia yells before slamming the door. With your cousin gone you feel so lost. Normally the temptation to go back to anime would be there, but instead you just feel depressed. It’s sort of like the first time she stopped coming over, but a lot worse because now you know she’s not coming back. Patricia was like your “girlfriend” even if she really wasn’t; the illusion was enough for you. You cry in your pillows. The very pillows you used to hump and pretend they were her. You’re too sad to even do that. You’re totally emo right now. Why you’re so emo, you might just become AN HERO. > You damn it man, don't be AN HERO! No! You will not become like every other loser that kills himself due to not being able to get some jailbait pussy. You’ll be like every other loser that finds a substitute instead! You can’t think about her though, you need something else! But you got rid of all your anime and internet months ago! And you gotta jack off NOW! You then remember, your other comics! You can use them instead! You quickly grab and scan through them… All these super females are more like women than girls, but as you’ve been reading them over the past few months you find that you can still get turned on by them. Ah hah! She-Hulk! She’ll do! You begin to jack off vigorously to your replacement, and lo and behold it works! You feel better and less depressed. Months pass and eventually you’re over Patricia altogether and found that obsessing over comic book girls to be much easier for you. Besides you’ve found a new true love in all this: She-Hulk. Why her? Hell if I know, it’s your pathetic fetish. I suppose you latched on to her the most due to her being your first jack off material after you resisted Patricia. Plus she’s green and shit. Whatever the reason you just can’t get enough of her! She’s not only strong, but she’s intelligent too! And she looks just SO sexy with her green skin and Amazonian build! You never wanted to fuck that sexy green bitch so much in your life! The real women just can’t compare to this two dimensional green goddess! They’ll never relate to you the way that SHE can. Oh sure your cousin Patricia came close, but… Forget about that bitch, you got She-Hulk now! But how you WISH She-Hulk was REAL! If ONLY that giant poster on your wall could come to life. Hey loser, MAYBE if you wish REAL hard it will come true! > You wish! Are you fucking serious? I was fucking joking about that! Then again you’re pretty much bat shit insane at this point anyway… Okay so you look at the poster of your unnatural object of desire, and begin to concentrate. And concentrate… And concentrate… Well you’ve stared at the fuckin’ picture long enough to get you horny as hell, but she still hasn’t come to life and spread her green legs for you yet. All you’ve gotten is an erection from your staring. Now you’re looking at your dick. You’re looking at the pic. You’re looking at your dick. You’re looking at the pic. Pic. Dick. Pic. Dick. Pic. Dick. Pic. Dick. While all this is mildly amusing, we probably should get on with this futile exercise “URRRGGGH!” That’s you still trying to wish She-Hulk into existence. You don’t have a boner anymore since all the blood rushing to your other head as you redouble your efforts into concentrating on the poster. Of course now you’re starting to give yourself a fucking headache from this nonsense, in fact you’re getting a little dizzy, you silly motherfucker. Y’know you gave it a shot, but maybe this just wasn’t meant to be. Your cousin Patricia’s still available and considering what a hopeless loser you are anyway, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you tried to pursue her again. I mean someone like you really should get it where you can and you can’t do that by jacking off to cartoon characters in your mom’s basement. Think about how she left. She seemed pretty upset on a personal level. Maybe she even liked you romantically in some way. Maybe you could contact her again. Of course if you wanna risk giving yourself a fuckin’ seizure, it’s your choice. > You call up Patricia You quickly snap to your senses. This She-Hulk fetish is just yet another way for you to avoid real women! You did that with anime, and now you’re doing it with this. Patricia helped you out and was kind and sweet to you when by all rights you should’ve been taken out to the woods and shot for being a useless waste of skin. You need a woman like that in your life. You quickly stop jerking it to She-Hulk and call up your cousin Patricia. “Hello? Who is this?” “Hey Patricia, it’s me Brian! I want us to be together! I know I fucked up before, but it’s because I thought that obsessing over my underage cousin was unnatural! But now I’ve come to realize it wasn’t unnatural at all! It was perfectly normal! Shit, it was downright Biblical! I know you must’ve liked me on some level too, so how about it? Will you give us another chance…and uh…keep it a secret at least until you’re eighteen?” “Brian, this is Patricia’s mother, Evelyn.” Oh fuck. “Uh…hi Aunt Evelyn. Wow, you sound just like Patricia…uh…um…” “Don’t even try to talk your way outta it Brian.” “Erm…uh…” “Stuttering isn’t much better. If it’ll clear your mind though, I’m not going to call the police on you. However, I can’t allow you to go out with Patricia.” “But…but I love her!” “Yeah, and I’m sure you would love for her to have your seven fingered, one eyed kids, but Patricia’s getting sent to a convent in the South Seas.” “What? Why?” “Why? Because me and her father are sick of her going off her meds and giving us fucking grief, that’s why! She’s a disobedient little whore, and we’ve had enough!” You’re pretty floored by this revelation. “…but…well hey wait. Maybe you could marry her off to me, and I could keep an eye on her and show her love she desperately needs.” “YOU? Hah! And how’s that going to work out living in your mom’s basement? Christ I dunno how my sister even puts up with you. I would’ve sent you to a convent years ago. Besides, if we can’t control her, I doubt if you’d be able to. She’d have you so wrapped around her little finger you’d probably suck an AIDS ridden cock if she told you to. And while I’m sure it would still be the best thing that’s ever happened in your basement dwelling life, it ain’t happening. Goodbye.” With that final telephone click, you fall to the floor in defeat. Your destiny is sealed and you return to the basement to wallow in 2-dimentional girls. Eventually you save up enough money to get a new computer and hooked up to the internet again and your relapse is complete. The only differences being that you still work at the comic shop and that you aren’t obsessed with anime anymore. (Though you still jack off to the occasional loli-con) A step up, I suppose but not much of one. The fact remains that you’re still a basement dwelling virgin and you remain one until you eventually die of a Twinkie overload which causes your artery clogged heart to explode.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Are you fucking serious? I was fucking joking about that! Then again you’re pretty much bat shit insane at this point anyway… Okay so you look at the poster of your unnatural object of desire, and begin to concentrate. And concentrate… And concentrate… Well you’ve stared at the fuckin’ picture long enough to get you horny as hell, but she still hasn’t come to life and spread her green legs for you yet. All you’ve gotten is an erection from your staring. Now you’re looking at your dick. You’re looking at the pic. You’re looking at your dick. You’re looking at the pic. Pic. Dick. Pic. Dick. Pic. Dick. Pic. Dick. While all this is mildly amusing, we probably should get on with this futile exercise “URRRGGGH!” That’s you still trying to wish She-Hulk into existence. You don’t have a boner anymore since all the blood rushing to your other head as you redouble your efforts into concentrating on the poster. Of course now you’re starting to give yourself a fucking headache from this nonsense, in fact you’re getting a little dizzy, you silly motherfucker. Y’know you gave it a shot, but maybe this just wasn’t meant to be. Your cousin Patricia’s still available and considering what a hopeless loser you are anyway, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you tried to pursue her again. I mean someone like you really should get it where you can and you can’t do that by jacking off to cartoon characters in your mom’s basement. Think about how she left. She seemed pretty upset on a personal level. Maybe she even liked you romantically in some way. Maybe you could contact her again. Of course if you wanna risk giving yourself a fuckin’ seizure, it’s your choice. > You won't be denied! Not when you're THIS close to paradise! You think and wish and concentrate and all that other shit like you’ve never done before! And congratu-fuckin’-lations, you just knocked yourself fuckin’ unconscious you wacky fucktard! You’re not out for long though and when you come to, you hear a voice say to you… “Are you alright?” You rub your eyes. Can it be? IT IS! IT FUCKIN’ IS! IT’S SHE-HULK! In all her green Amazonian glory! You knew it! You knew if you worked for it hard enough, and wanted it bad enough, dreams really can come true! She-Hulk looks at you smiling, and helps you up. She wants you, you KNOW it. You were meant to be together! And this your big chance to hit that sweet green pussy! You briefly think about talking with her to get to know her a little better… Talk? What’s to talk about? You already know everything about her from the comics you read! No you gotta be a man of action! That’s what got her to come to life in the first place. You kiss She-Hulk. She kisses you back! You were half expecting her to clean your clock, but with the way things are going it looks like she’s gonna be sucking you cock! This fuckin’ rules! You and She-Hulk express your mutual love for each other in a physical way. She does things to you that you haven’t even had wet dreams about! (And you’ve had a lot of them) What surprises you the most is that’s she’s a gentle lover, which makes this not only physical attraction, but an emotional and even spiritual one as well. You are truly in heaven… At least until your Mom walks in on you! “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” she screams. You suddenly realize you haven’t been fucking She-Hulk at all. You’ve been ramming your dick into your poster of her on the wall the entire time you crazy fucker! You’ve ruined your poster, you’ve ruined your wall, you’ve ruined your dick and you’ve ruined your life! (Okay so your life was already ruined to begin with, but I was on a roll) You dumb motherfucker, all the wishing in the world ain’t gonna make that green mutant come to life! (And like she would want YOU even if she was real!) Your Mom has you committed (And who could blame her) You spend years in therapy trying to get over your obsession for She-Hulk, eventually your love goes away. It’s not easy, but the doctors manage to help you kick the green goddess by giving you other comics to read. In time you soon forget all about She-Hulk and don’t know what you ever saw in her, as you read your other comics. You should’ve been focusing more on Wonder Woman! Now she’s REALLY hot! Hey maybe if you wish REAL hard…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Pretty brave of you, let’s see if it works. You sit far away from her and answer her, while trying not to stare too hard. “Oh, well I’m sorta doing okay I guess…” “You seem troubled, what’s wrong?” “Nothing really, I’m just trying to…(sigh) I’ll be honest. I’ve been severely addicted to anime for years and I’ve just now started to go cold turkey and it’s been harder than I thought.” This confessional is about the only thing you could think of to talk about that wouldn’t cause her to call the cops on you. And that’s still a possibility. Stay the course fatty, stay the fucking course! “Wow, that’s pretty commendable of you. I remember that you were all into that anime stuff the last time we had a family gathering. Even though I was young even I thought you were a bit obsessed with it.” “Yeah I dunno how I’m going to make it…” you say trying to fight the urge to say anything inappropriate. “Maybe you should try this.” Patricia says and opens up her bookbag. She throws a comic book at you. It’s one of those superhero ones. AMERICAN superheroes! Like superman and such. You’re taken off guard and forget about your unnatural feelings for a moment. “Superman?” “Yeah, maybe if you read some other comics it will help ease your transition. The only thing is, you could get addicted to those, so be careful.” “Y’know, this could work. I never really was interested in these types before, so I probably won’t get too attached.” “And unlike the anime shit, you got more of a variety meaning you’re less likely to get obsessed with one thing. I mean the characters are at least different from each other in looks and stuff.” “This is a great idea! I just wish I had some money to go down to the comic shop and try this out!” “Here, take these. I never bother rereading them.” Patricia says handing you a bunch of superhero comics. “Alright! Thanks!” you say and run down to the basement. It’s funny, but the fact that Patricia was into comics didn’t make you more aroused like it would most loser geeks. It might be due to the fact that you were so thankful that someone was not only willing to talk to you, but help you that caused you to no longer look at her with nearly overwhelming lust. Okay, so after you read them, you DO spend an inordinate amount of time rubbing the comics on yourself and enjoying her “scent” and think about her while you jack off a little bit. But you still feel a little better, like the obsession has lessened a little. Patricia comes over several more times as your Mom tutors her and she brings you more comics. You appreciate it, but eventually she doesn’t need anymore tutoring and you miss her and the comics especially since the comics were working. You get depressed and mope around the house, but your Mom is quite tired of you in general at this point. “Look, I know you’re trying to beat your fucking addiction, but you’re taking too fucking long about it! If you’re going to insist on being a man-child that lives in my goddamn basement forever, the least you can do is go and get a fucking job! In fact you ARE going to get one, or I’m kicking your fat ass out!” Since you don’t have much of a choice, you leave the house for the first time in a long time. The sunlight burns your pasty skin and eyes, but you waddle down the street in your quest to find a job. The problem is, you don’t even know where to look, so you just end up going to the comic shop to read them without paying. Jake the comic shop owner sees you enter and is really surprised. “Brian is that you? Shit man, thought you might’ve died of a heart attack or gotten arrested for having child porn on your computer har har har har! Where have you been? You’ve missed several issues of your favorite Japanese shit.” “Yeah, well that’s why I haven’t been here, I destroyed my entire collection. I’ve quit it cold turkey, but it hasn’t been easy.” “Shit, that’s almost hard to believe, but then again you never were one to miss an issue before, so I guess you’re telling the truth. But what brings you back here?” “I dunno, my mom told me to look for a job or she’s going to kick me out. I dunno what I’m going to do.” “Well, you could work here, I need someone to lug around the comic boxes. I’m going to be doing some rearranging.” “What? Are you serious, I thought Ron did that.” “Ron’s fuckin’ dead. Found the asshole dead with a broken neck in my fucking bathroom! He was looking at one of those sex comics and the dumb ass decided to try autoerotic asphyxiation. I swear that’s the last time I hire a retard.” This could be an opportunity to save yourself from being homeless, or it could be a relapse back into your former addiction. Remember, you’d be working right at the source. > You find a different one You decide it’s too much temptation so you don’t even suggest it. Meanwhile Jake continues to speak. “So what are you looking for today, if you gave up the Anime shit?” “Uh, nothing Jake. I don’t have any money.” “Well if you don’t have any money get the fuck outta my store, I can’t afford to have fuckers lingering around without Ron around anymore. He might’ve been a retard, but he scared away any potential shoplifters.” “Aw Jake, I’m not going to steal anything!” “Yeah well I’m making sure you don’t by throwing your broke ass out. Besides you’re on the wagon, you might do something desperate like grab a bunch of my comics and run out of the store.” It’s useless to argue with Jake at this point so you leave continuing to feel depressed. Eventually you go back home go to sleep hoping that Mom will take mercy on you when she gets home. She doesn’t. She was quite serious about throwing you out and does just that. All you have are the clothes on your back and the comics that Patricia gave you. Patricia! That’s it! You’ll go live at her parent’s house! Then you can talk to her all the time! At this point you’ve definitely cracked a little bit and have become hopefully delusional. You make your way over there fully believing that you’ll be accepted with open arms. Nevermind the fact that Patricia’s parents always thought you were a big ass loser even when you a kid. (They always thought your mom was a bitch too) When you get over there you bang on the door loudly. At first there is no answer and you hear some sounds of running around and the sounds of “Hold on! Hold on!” You think you even hear someone running out the back. Eventually the door opens up. It’s Patricia and she’s only wearing a skimpy little robe. Her hair also looks disheveled. You’re almost awestruck by her near nakedness if she wasn’t so obviously pissed off. “Brian what the hell are you doing here? I thought you were my Mom and Dad! You scared the shit out me! (Sigh) I was finally going to make a man outta my boyfriend today, thanks for interrupting us, fat ass!” “What?” “Do it! Have sex! FUCK! You scared off my boyfriend though when you were banging on the door.” “Well you still could go through with those plans...” You say lustfully. “Huh. You don’t know my boyfriend. It’ll be awhile before he calms down again, I practically had to make the first moves to begin with.” “I was talking about me.” you say attempting to reach for her robe. “Huh? What? EW! NO! Get away from me you perv!” Patricia screams and quickly slams the door in your face. You completely lose it at this point and start banging on the door screaming. “Come on Patricia, I know you want this! And I NEED this!” You go so far as to grabbing a nearby brick and throwing it through the window. Some of the neighbors hear the commotion and come out to investigate. “Hey you crazy fat fucker, what the hell’s going on!?” “I’m getting some pussy!” you cry out, as you clumsily climb through the broken window cutting yourself up in the process. You climb inside and fall on the floor, with your hands bloody and your dick still hard. Dirty thoughts of Patricia getting ready to have sex with her boyfriend fill your mind. Those thoughts will be your last as Patricia has grabbed her daddy’s gun and when you look up a bullet goes through your eye. On the plus side, you didn’t think about anime once during your last living moments.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After years of watching anime and being dangerously close to either becoming a pedophile or a furry, (Or possibly a furry pedophile) you finally make a worthwhile decision. You grab your new anime DVDs and break them all! You then grab all your old ones and break them too! Manga books all fucking burned! Comics too! Video games with anime graphics destroyed! You even break your computer just so you can’t be tempted by the internet! You’ve just destroyed your “social life” by doing that, but it’s worth it! NO MORE FUCKING ANIME! Holy shit you feel free! Seriously this is the first day of your new life and you’ve just made a break through here. But don’t get too puffed up there fatty. The fact still remains that you’re a basement dwelling loser. You’re also going to experience withdrawals and the temptation to go back to anime will be there. Best thing you can do right now is confine yourself to the house for awhile. Now…I know that might seem odd given that you practically stay inside for days on end anyway, but your trips to the comic shops might provide too much temptation. And so begins the long road to recovery… Days pass into weeks and you got the jitters like a fucking crackhead. You spend a lot of time pacing and staring at the walls in your room. You try to find ways to keep yourself occupied. You try to watch TV, but you have to struggle to not click on the Cartoon Network. Eventually you beg your mom to put a block on it. She’s willing to help you out in the hopes that you might actually move out of her house one day. Reading books doesn’t seem to help either. Your attention span has practically been destroyed from “blipvert” anime action. You even can’t concentrate on the shortest story, let alone a novel. You feel like you’re going mad. > You leave the house You leave the house in the hopes of managing to avoid temptation from the TV, but maybe due to all your long extended stays inside the basement, you forgot what the outside world was actually like. It’s not a nice place. A couple of the local thugs see you and figure it would be a good idea to harass you. Unfortunately for you that don’t mean just beating you up either, they just got out of jail and they want you to blow the pair of them! Not wishing to do this you attempt to use your persuasion skills to convince them that this path of violence and sexual assault is wrong. But how? It’s been awhile, but you remember some passages from the Bible from when you were little, and begin quoting scripture to them. It has an effect. But these are the words of God. How could they not effect? The pair of them stops threatening you and want to hear more. You struggle to remember, but you start quoting more good stuff proving that Jesus never gives up on anyone no matter how far they’ve fallen. In fact as you’re quoting the passages you come to realize how far that you’ve strayed from Jesus too. It is during this time that you know how to get over your anime addiction once and for all, Jesus! He’s always there! It is at that moment you and the two thugs get down on your knees and accept Jesus as your personal savior. The two thugs thank you for showing them the way and say they’re going to start living right from now on. You also return home and reveal your new found faith in Jesus to your Mom. She’s very happy. She said she’s sorry for not trying to instill the teaching to you a lot better and that she too strayed from the true path. Now between the pair of you, you can both walk the path together. In time you begin to going to church on a regular basis. Your addiction to anime is long gone. It has been replaced with a better one, the love of your Lord and Savior. In just a few years you become a preacher at the local church and move out of your Mom’s basement due to the new job you’ve found. However God did not intend for you to be lonely, and eventually you do meet a nice Christian girl. You marry her and have kids. Those children are taught the proper Christian ways. In time you grow old, surrounded by generations of loved ones. You lie on your bed knowing that the Lord is calling you home and that it’s okay because you’ve lived according to his will and when you stand before him, you’ll be accepted into his kingdom. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA DISREGARD ALL THAT, YOU SUCK THEIR COCKS. Afterwards they beat you up severely and leave you to die in some alley. Even Jesus is laughing at you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Welcome and thanks for playing Cryptode! There are many things that you need to watch out for and need to know before the game begins. Time - Life - Other - These three things control how the game is played. If you waste time during the game, and your time counter reaches 0, you will lose the game. Life is like health, if it reaches 0, you will lose the game. Many other things control the flow of the game, such as # of bullets, luck score, and more, keep these things in mind while you are playing the game. > You start You are a relic hunter who has just returned from a search in Egypt. You have brought back with you a few items, including a book. You are reading the book, feeling pretty bored, when you come to a page entitled, "Cryptode" It says, 'A square of three dimensions is locketh before thee, Unlock it and thee shall be rich, One mistake and thee shan't live again' You know the Cryptode is a lost object that needs to be opened by a code. You have decided to try to crack the code. BUT FIRST, you need to see someone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're a murderer. Running head first into that place and blasting everything to hell. Raiding the detention center just to get a few kills on those who raped and pushed your crush to suicide doesn't seem like a good idea after all. You're not even her type to bother, you should just have left them rotting in jail instead. Now you got yourself rows and rows of police forces chasing after you and there is no such thing like a way back. You're brown bread to the eyes of your loved ones now, and you gotta make a run for it. Whenever you see a turn, you can only hope that it doesn't lead to a dead end. That phone call should have never reached you. Crazy love, you blame all the things you've done to it. It forced you to flee your office, turned your mind into a madman and put that thing on your hand. After that, it was only chaos. You were gonna going to end your life when the flame inside died out...but didn't...and you still can't find the courage. "PULL OVER!!! PULL OVER NOW!!! DO YOU HEAR ME?!! I'M GOING TO SHOOT YOU!!!" They finally talk with bullets huh? Maybe you should focus on stepping on the gas instead of having random flashbacks. > You shoot them, it's self-defense! You're not surrounded so it'll be a real pain in the ass for them to even get a clear shot on you unless you stick your head out like a sore thumb. The tires though, immediately get your fingers fondling over to the stockpile of mass bloodshed you got straight from market. Unlocking the safety, you sprayed a barricade of piercing bullets with the friendly-user Uzi towards them. You don't dare to look, too nerve-retching and you can't afford to waste your focus on the road. "THEY'RE FIRING AT US!!! CALLING FOR SUPPORT!! CALLING FOR SUPPORT!! HOLD THEM UP!!!" So they think there are accomplices involved? Man, that would have been very comforting at a time like this. This stuff is the thing that you can only see on movies, not experiencing it in real life and you can't have the fortune to share it with anyone...at least you'll have everyone wanting you in custody till death after this, a nice bonus for a loner like you. It looks like your firepower struck them as the deadly stuffs, they pull over and start to station in one place, aiming solely at your buggy and throwing rounds as you speed up to oblivion. You're safe...at least for now. From a runaway, you've became a wanderer. The future ain't going to got any lights for you but you'll have to bear with that, you just have to. You don't want to die. No matter how much the world spy on your fear or judge you, you will not die on this small world. ... Looking through the door and feeling all the wonderful sensations the wind let you enjoy, you seize your mind back in its origin, a calm and successful mind. "Ha...Haah hah hahh! A hahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!" You fake the laugh of a psychopath to let all the tears built up inside fly along, waving your brows in every fit. "...hahaha...damn..." You had sat there, laughing exactly like this just 2 hours ago, it more likely was belonged to a maniac, the one who put a bullet through a helpless person and cracked up in awe as his lover guided him towards the next targets. Revenge is never meant to be sweet, but it sure feels great afterward! Rocking the flow of blood in your veins, you drive through the clearing, followed by rains of falling leaves marking your exit. > You need a smoke after all of that first... You are John Namour, 28 years old, a normal secretary from some wealthy company which tries so hard to maintain its image that you have to question if all of your hard works really paid off working there. It's only thanks to Laura that you could enjoy your days signing sheets. A real beauty, she was...she was so naive, the things she could do sometimes. The opportunity of you getting to hold a conversation with her was like the Solar System lining up straightly. 21 vs 28, you thought you'd had your chance someday, assuming you could improve yourself into a braver, better man to give her the ring. You tried your best to understand her mind, her standing, her habits...by yourself. Hell! You even bought and gave expensive jewelries to her mother and her sister. Winning your soon-to-be-lovely-wife's family is your first...and your last affection. Your boss just couldn't allow it, could he? What a friendly bunch of meatdrops he had in store for young women. You knew something was wrong when you saw that fucker's smug sweep at her. Just when things could have gotten any worse, Laura hung herself in her room. The moment her mother read the first word of her suicidal note to you over the phone, you were downright demonic. Instead of assuaging her, you scared her and everyone off with your sudden loud tone, demanding a clear explanation. The rest of the writing was about you, how you've cared for her and her family. You drew your first blood afterward. "...hahhhh..." You blow a few smoke off your lungs, a burning nicotine stick between your fingers. "Useless...doesn't do a damn thing..." You are not made to love her, you're a hot-headed psychopath and you cringe at the thought of you abusing her. Before, you were writing paper and now, those fingers nearly mark you as a dangerous crackshot, an inspirational killer to the news and an idea living target practice for weapon maniacs. 'Now is a good time to quit.' You think, looking at the remains of the cigarette before throwing the entire pack down to the road. '...I-I can't...I don't want to die.' A place where you can temperately settle down for a bit and hide from the eyes of media is crucial to you. Speaking of media, you have a thought of buying a mini TV to keep an eye on your case. You can bet your life on the police shooting you on sight right now. Mass shootout at the local and getting out alive, how much luck can you have? One thing for sure, a trip to another country even though it seems like a good idea, you're not sure about the possibility of you getting on one without asking for an arrest. You don't even know if it's safe to buy some breads from a mere bakery. The more you think about it, the more you realize how deep the grave you have dug for yourself. Killing some rapists bastards...You should never expect society to forgive them or you. What a terrible crime you've committed!...You miss your home, your family. But you can't contact them, the cops will track your location, too risky and certainly isn't worth it. They probably are cursing themselves for having raised a murderer right now. ...Besides, you can't even call for anyone if you want anyway. > You drive to another town TV...checked. Sunglasses...checked. Trench coat...Unnecessary but you couldn't just leave your skinny bones out, it has doubled your luck and your appearance to be unique...Also checked. Good thing your face hasn't really hit the mark of any media type out there yet, but your time is running out. Lying low will have to be in another place, a safe and secure one far away from here. You check the plate covering your gas meter and see that it still got 2/3 left. You have to stock on some large litters to cross the border. The nearest place to refill would be...about 15 miles from here, not really hard to come by and if they try something funny, your guns will do the job. You decide to go there. ...Hmm? It's nearly night time. Anytime now... You have arrived at a gas station. There are only a few local houses and shops nearby, an empty place and probably not in any urban business. > You buy it legally You carefully stopped your car in an isolated place and quickly wrap your firearms inside a bag, not forgetting to cover it with a large blanket and hide it in the corner of you before driving straight into the yard. The lights are starting to shine the area. "A full refill! And I'd like to have 5 cans of fuel please." You speak to the one who is cleaning the equipment from your seat, a middle age man comes to you. "Wow, you are a big spender, aren't you?!" He says, opening the cover. "May I ask where ya going?" "That..depends." You response, already prepared for a conversation. "I'm heading to a friend and I heard that there are many byways so I think I'll stock some before I depart. "Yeah, that's about right." He says, pumping your gasoline. "You'd better step it up if rocks on the road found yer." "Rocks on the road?" "You haven't heard? Apparently there has been a bunch of fools riding their bikes and hijacking any car they find around these places. Drop a few prices at Black Market I bet." What kind of joke is this? Escaping the police chase and having a biker gang waiting for you in your next run, your life can't never be anymore playful than now. "It's nearly dark too." The man snaps you out of your thinking. "Maybe ya should stay the night here, it's too dangerous to travel at this hour." "Has there been anyone dealing with this gang?" You ask in hope for a safe route. "Anyone at all?" "Nope. Bastards got busted a few times but another just raises and repeats like generating task. That's that then, they will never be done." Well, aren't that just the thing you need? Turn back now and the cops might not let you go again, advance and take the risk of losing four wheels may cost you your life also. You cannot afford to wait here either, the news is going to spread and letting your guard down at a time this...So much mayhem for you to take. Challenge the law enforcer or the nasty gang? You're in deep trouble, a really, really deep trouble. > You stay the night Tick...tick...tick... You've been staring at your watch for nearly an hour and there isn't any sign of stopping. Normally you'd take a shot to calm your nerve since you deciding to enter the bar but the mood here failed to meet your taste. It's too quiet, too eerie at the time. Maybe it has something to do with the place itself as the bartender doesn't particularly enjoy any conversation with visitors just like you. Who designed this place? No wonder why there are so few people setting their boots here. You cannot find any positive point except for the waitress, a hot brunette who unfortunately doesn't appear to be working properly, she nearly spilled the entire claret on another customer without apologizing. Good thing kindness is still among some people these day. "Oh, Laura..." You sigh at yourself, pulling your forehead. "Why did you have to leave?" > You get out of here You're slowly deteriorating and you need a fresh bite to eat. Without any hesitation, you make your way towards the food stall across the street. It will take more than a cheap meal to satisfy your hunger. ... Hmm, the inside is not so bad, better than the shitty bar for sure. They got clean table clothes, beautiful decoration and most importantly, more people. You'd give it an above average rating if it wasn't for the space in here, a bit too narrow to move. You quickly come to the counter and order your dinner. A pancetta with fried eggs covered in hot sauce and an applepie as dessert seem like a great stomach filler for you. You find a seat and make yourself comfortable as you wait for your meal. You silently hope that this wouldn't become your last time eating outside. "Wah HAH!!" That sudden loud and squeaky yell from behind nearly scares you to death. How can you be so defenseless at a time like this? You turn around to see a school-grader boy who is focusing on your mini device. "A mini TV! It's just like in the game!!" Very enthusiastic and eager, he says while searching inside her bag and then shoves a small looking object to you. Upon looking, you see that it's a Nintendo DS. "Are you a Pokemon instructor?" "...Wa-what? What the...?" You start to sprout nonsense at the flashing screen before you as it changes to a different one with each button the boy is pressing. It's one of those Pokemon games for the DS, been selling high among youngsters and does not have any sign to stop. "Mr?" "Uhh..." You have put up with a lot of things today but for the first time, you're actually speechless at this. "Pip! Pip! You found someone?" And now it's the girl, who is also a school grader, to join the little trainer pestering around your coat. Goodness! Now you've realized that the light giving off by the portable TV inside the coat is attracting their curiosity, you have been hearing it constantly to check the news. And from what you can see from the boy's 2 screens machine, you can see what has grabbed his attention. > You pokemon...sounds nice You are not particularly into video games nowaday but it sure doesn't hurt to relax and play with them for a bit. You haven't played any of their Pokemon games but you still remember the show you were always watching as a kid. "What's this game, little fellow?" You get your glasses out and casually ask the game's name from the boy, interested. "Poom!" He spat an unnecessary but delightful slang before speaking. "It's Pokemon FireRed! My favorite of any kind!!" "Everyday you just want to play it all the time!" The girl adds to his statement, making a quality prospectus for this game. They seem so happy when it comes to this subject, you have the thought that you might be the only person in this town who has ever spoken openly to them. Considering how empty it is, not a surprise. "Do you want to see my collection?" She says sitting down right next to you, not bothered by the fact that she's with a stranger, a creepy stranger you might add. "Come on Pip! You too." "So, what's all about, your collection?" You say, eager to know about them. "Hold on...Here!" The girl put a bunch of colorful cards from that orange bag of hers on your table and continues. "Straight from the show and the game, I got them all!" The cards are all fully organized and you can almost see the light reflecting on the surfaces, a nice deck of Pokemon cards. "It's a nice deck. May I see them?" "Please, mister!!!" Aww! How could someone not wanting to talk with these little darlings? They're so full of life and adorable. Having the owner agreement, you reach for the deck and...Wow! you can still recognize most of them! You actually feel something warm inside you when you pick one by one and tell them the name of each Pokemon, the feeling from your innocent days, the love you've had for what you enjoyed. You are still a normal human being like everyone else. ...You've just realised something. You, a shade-wearing man cloaked in trentcoat, are catching most of the few attentions and you clearly do not want that to happen. A friendly stranger who wants to have a little chat with some random kids, that'll raise some eyes. You'd better have to act like a Pokemon maniac in this situation. Man, how you really want to have your food be right here for you, the sooner the better. "Hey mister, do you collect Pokemon cards?" The boy, Pip is what she called, asks you out of the blue while you are trying to drive yourself completely into those Pocket Monsters. "No...Not right now at least." You mumble, not really knowing what to say. "Eh?! Why not?" Both of them speak up, they have caught you red-handed. Ok...What can you tell them? You cannot tell them that it's just for kids, that's ridiculous but hey! Maybe that will give them the sign to stop now. > You tell them it's for kid "Young master!...And miss Jenny! What are you two doing??!" Just when you're about to say something, a grumpy yet elegant voice comes to you across the dining place. You turn around to see a huge guy tucked in a classy black tuxedo dragging himself towards your table. "Please stay away from that man!" Finally, someone with common sense and willingness to act in this forsaken town...and he doesn't seem to be the type you want to mess with. "Eww! Manny the Orge, what??" The girl who now known as Jennifer nearly gives a shriek at the sight of him. "Let's go to another room!" Alongside with her, Pip is already fleeing. "Who are you?! You didn't do anything to them, did you???" Wow! This guy is fast, completely contradicted to his mountainous figure. And his voice has gone into a raging fit waiting to release on you. He grabs your collar and shouts directly at your face, nearly giving you a heart attack. "You prick!!! What did you do???" Then without waiting for an answer, he throws a punch at you! > You block with your hands You try your best to get your butt off the chair as quick as possible to stand but the blow is still making contact when you raise both of your palms! You manage to drive his punch to your forehead by just an inch. The force is somehow absorbed but still knock your balance. Your body pulls along the chair with you and you fall to the floor with an unbearable pain and crazy tingles. Seem like you grab the table cloth with you too, flying cards are flickering around between you and the dangling light bulb on the ceiling. You also hear a loud thump falling after you are on the ground...Look like your legs trip this monster down too, good thing he didn't fall on you. "Manny!! What did you just do??!!" This is your chance to get up! You only heard a little bit of the girl yelling before your legs carry you out of the diner. ... Well, that went quite bad but at least it's not worse than ending up on the hospital bed. You put on your shade and the earplugs on and hit the street, waiting to hear your wanted public display. After that event on the diner, you have to resort to feeding on street food. Applepies, pancakes, disgustingly sweet desserts...You'll just have to endure those if you don't want to sleep with a growling stomach. > You later that night The mini TV says in its demonic sound, you can actually feel the devil's tongue making out with your ears passionately as you sit inside your vehicle. The doom train has came and it is waiting for you. As fearless as you can get, it only takes 1 second before your head starts making up shit and panic settles in. You hitch the blanket which has been covering your weapons and throw it on top of the trunk to cover the number plate. After that, it's the car seat that will make you comfortable for the night. You lock the handle tight and lie down, making sure there is no light remain while you tune up the TV and cover your face with the trentcoat, watching your case. To be alone and surrounded by silent cars and motorbikes under the darkening night, it's not a good feeling...not a good feeling at all. Good thing that the weather is nice, you could never hope to sleep inside a car like this in your hometown...Such a hot and busy place. Hiding, living on the run and evading attentions from people, what a fantastic life you've gotten yourself into! Throwing your humanity away to fade and becoming a criminal. Oh well, shit happens. You only did the right thing. You set everything you've bought from the shops to the front seats. Mostly basic things like medical stuffs, sweet toasts and water bottles,...but right now, they are packs of gold to you. Who know how much magic that could happen in your travel? It's always better to be careful. You decide to switch channel to something else, something that can cheer you up in this gloomy moment, a TV or music shows. You turn down the volume and close your eyes, trying to sleep and listening to the entertainment that tonight might provide. It doesn't take long for the snooze to hit you, you are so tired from all that running and you need the most of full sleep. You have to wake up early and leave this awful place before anyone can get a bite out of you. > You midnight Oh! something is dropping on the car. Rain? How appropriate, you really need some lullaby right now. It's kind of cool to be free and alone for once, taking up shelter by yourself and sleeping in piece. You must enjoy it while it still lasts. ...Hmm, it has became a little cold in here. You begin to shiver as you get yourself up and look through the glasses. Everything seems to be quiet around here. Man, you would kill to have a smoke right now. You suddenly think of the metal brick which has been hiding in the compartment the whole time. You head to the dashboard and hold the broken cell phone to your view. 'It has been out since the hit, what a waste...' This thing has taken 3 bullets for you and still, it refuses to die. But it has to be gone now, such a tragedy...You throw the phone away, finding it unbelievable that you forgot to get rid of it earlier. No use in keeping the potential tracking device for the police. The rain is falling quite heavily. That biker gang would have to be the most hard-working thugs of the Earth if they still wanted to run their business in this state. You start the engine and get out of the parking line- And the first sight that greets you after you turned on the light is a bloody cloth which looks like it is wrapping something inside too, lovely! You step on the gas and speed up like a madman, driving towards the exit of the garage. Watch out!!! ... It never turns out well for you, isn't it? Hell of bullets are unleashing directly on the street, right under this heavy rain! What is going on with this place?? You can't drive through the danger zone out there that's for sure, you can't even see clearly what's ahead. Uh oh! Bad turn!!! Someone has noticed your light and they don't waste any second to get rid of you. "Get the hell out of here, shithead! OFGG!" You shoot him dead before he could do anymore damage to your car and drive its tail back to the parking section while trading fire with the attackers who are on his side. Your day now has officially gone further beyond the worst. There is some serious conflict going on between these punks and they are powering their own dominance through the use of lethal firearms. You have to avoid getting nabbed in these. > You break through the rear You decide to bust through the rear entrance with your car and drive as fast as you can out of the harm way. With excellent handling reflexes, you manage to hit the road and onto the escape. To stay inside your precious vehicle over night was indeed a good choice. You blend into the rainfall and drive under the darkness...And a giant mosquito get splashed by your windshield in the process. Peaceful time has ended and the Dark Lord is coming to spread chaos on humanity, starting with you. "What the..." You have to yell out word of confusion at the brownish liquid remained on your sight before attempting to wash it away. It's just then, you notice something is scratching on the top of your car. You are surrounded!!! It doesn't take long for them to show their abomination form to you, gigantic mutated bloodsuckers. Why so many of them??? Just when things can't get any more cute, your car now is totally decorated in black and you hit straight to a tree, breaking your cheap windshield and allowing several tubes of death inside to harass your veins. Y.O.U F.A.I.L "What has killed them?" You, now have became a spooky skeleton, fold your bones into the Thinker pose and sit on the pile of dead mosquitoes. "Hmmm...They looked completely zoned out around me, like they were possessed by something."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Oh! something is dropping on the car. Rain? How appropriate, you really need some lullaby right now. It's kind of cool to be free and alone for once, taking up shelter by yourself and sleeping in piece. You must enjoy it while it still lasts. ...Hmm, it has became a little cold in here. You begin to shiver as you get yourself up and look through the glasses. Everything seems to be quiet around here. Man, you would kill to have a smoke right now. You suddenly think of the metal brick which has been hiding in the compartment the whole time. You head to the dashboard and hold the broken cell phone to your view. 'It has been out since the hit, what a waste...' This thing has taken 3 bullets for you and still, it refuses to die. But it has to be gone now, such a tragedy...You throw the phone away, finding it unbelievable that you forgot to get rid of it earlier. No use in keeping the potential tracking device for the police. The rain is falling quite heavily. That biker gang would have to be the most hard-working thugs of the Earth if they still wanted to run their business in this state. You start the engine and get out of the parking line- And the first sight that greets you after you turned on the light is a bloody cloth which looks like it is wrapping something inside too, lovely! You step on the gas and speed up like a madman, driving towards the exit of the garage. Watch out!!! ... It never turns out well for you, isn't it? Hell of bullets are unleashing directly on the street, right under this heavy rain! What is going on with this place?? You can't drive through the danger zone out there that's for sure, you can't even see clearly what's ahead. Uh oh! Bad turn!!! Someone has noticed your light and they don't waste any second to get rid of you. "Get the hell out of here, shithead! OFGG!" You shoot him dead before he could do anymore damage to your car and drive its tail back to the parking section while trading fire with the attackers who are on his side. Your day now has officially gone further beyond the worst. There is some serious conflict going on between these punks and they are powering their own dominance through the use of lethal firearms. You have to avoid getting nabbed in these. > You wait until it's clear A Shotgun, an Uzi and a mere shitty handgun are the only things capable of fending them off you have and you don't want to waste them. The stupidest thing is that you don't have a freaking clue on how to reload the Uzi and the Shotgun so you just bought them off without any ammo...It's gonna go to shit if you have to resort to them. Weapons of mass destruction at its finest state right here, what a load of shit your head must have been. On the bright side, you got yourself a huge piles of clips for the pistol so at least you won't have to worry about running out of option in a gunfire...which is happening right now. "Kill him!" It's not a good idea to stay in one place. You quickly get out of your car and crawl to another with bullets flying directly above your head and drilling noises of them to your side. It's a total death zone out there and you can only hope that they didn't intend on flaring the place up. Peaking from the bottom park of a brown car, your eyes set on their sexy legs and with them flapping around, you can easily mark your route to avoid any crossfire coming for you. You begin to wait... ... ... Too far away or has it ended? You realise that you have been backing yourself to the corner, isolated from any opening fire. They don't aim at you anymore. No sounds of yelling or projectiles ejecting can be heard anymore, just your breath and the drop of rain water. With caution, you slowly move to the front and the sight before you is...quite a gory piece to add to your nightmare. The rain has created a stream of red blood along with guts and organs. You can almost see a healthy beating heart flowing by. It's too dark to make out anything else so you can't be too sure about this but...Is that a pair of cockroach's legs that is stuck inside someone's neck? And it's moving, slightly but it's still making a scene of itself. > You investigate You find it unbelievable that even in this scenario, you can still find excitement over something like this. What can you say? Danger is scary yet so alluring at the same time. You carefully step over to the scene with a gun in hands, never manage hold it properly but still. Let's see here...The thing is jerking in and out the neck of the corpse as if it was trying to get itself out of the meatload. You can safely assume that it is stuck and there is nothing around resembling it. > You shoot it "A mosquito, what the hell??!" You burst a drop of water aside while taking aim at the abomination before you. A big black winged creature with a redish tumor sticking out of its groin area, it's a giant mosquito! Is this some kind of illusion trick your brain is playing with you? The thing is sucking his blood through its tube and thanks to your welcoming speech, it has now been aware of another human being, you. You blast it open instantly with your pistol, not a really threatening creature to be scared of. It's screaming in pain and that hellish reaction just want you to end it. Oops, overshot!! Now it's just a big giant mess dripping yellow liquid to the bloody stream. You can't make out any of its original shape anymore. You stare blankly at a random corpse before you as the rain starts beating it harder. He was so twisted and dried up that you almost consider it is a thick rag that you're seeing if it weren't for the clothes and the hair. Something has seriously gone wrong...You suddenly remember the bloody cloth that was right under your car before this madness started and the mere thought of it overflows your mind. You-you have to get out of here as fast as possible! Every wrong decision right now might turn out to be your last. > You go check it out You decide to go back into that place to check it out yourself. It's no use standing in the rain and you have this weird hunch that something would go horribly wrong if you escaped. But it's mostly curiosity that guide your legs to find the thing which had scared you nearly to death. You unreval the fabric mess to reveal a badly beaten up human being that you cannot recognise anymore, just a few drops of dried blood and ichor remained on the body, probably having been put under your vehicle before it started raining. A victim of those monster too? You put away your shade to have a clear look at the corpse. Damn! The smell is messed up, you have to keep a distance from it to stand the stench. From what you can tell. This one had pretty much been clubbed to death before those things slurped their fluid. So aside from the risk of those violent thugs and the police, you got yourself a nice threat from obscenity of hell too. Why he or she was beaten to death before they got fed to those, that you don't know. What you do know is, this terror will soon end your life if you don't get out of here. 'Is there more?' You start to wonder. 'I can't be alone in this.' Before long, you find another poor soul being stuffed under another vehicle, this one...has undergone some heavy decaying and yet strangely clean at the same time. From what you can tell, the corpse was reserved pretty well and no one would have any trouble identifying the owner. There is one another thing that now you have noticed .There are a large rows of motorcycles parking in here. You didn't recall seeing that many when you were hiding in the car. And they have those crazy marks and decoratings that make no sense, almost look like one of the symbol you usually came across in a bar or something. 'Rock on the road?...Nah, a biker gang can not be this polite.' You quickly discard the thought of them storming this place. 'Unless the roads were blocked, they would never do something like this...Or could this awful place be their hideout and I've been fooled the whole time???' You take a quick look at the parking lot under the rainy night. !!! You should have realised this sooner, this area has been nearly surrounded by cruisers and baggers, those types that you never want to ride on. That's it! You don't care if it's even true or not, you're getting out of here! "Helllpppp mmee!!! Help!!" Just when you're about to start the engine, a mixed screams of both men and women get through the glasses and into your hearing. With this heavy drop of rain water, it must have taken a lot of people to pull that off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Young master!...And miss Jenny! What are you two doing??!" Just when you're about to say something, a grumpy yet elegant voice comes to you across the dining place. You turn around to see a huge guy tucked in a classy black tuxedo dragging himself towards your table. "Please stay away from that man!" Finally, someone with common sense and willingness to act in this forsaken town...and he doesn't seem to be the type you want to mess with. "Eww! Manny the Orge, what??" The girl who now known as Jennifer nearly gives a shriek at the sight of him. "Let's go to another room!" Alongside with her, Pip is already fleeing. "Who are you?! You didn't do anything to them, did you???" Wow! This guy is fast, completely contradicted to his mountainous figure. And his voice has gone into a raging fit waiting to release on you. He grabs your collar and shouts directly at your face, nearly giving you a heart attack. "You prick!!! What did you do???" Then without waiting for an answer, he throws a punch at you! > You try to get out of the way You pull you head backward and OW!!! Right at the sweet cheek! This dude must have been participated in some serious boxing championships, that fist would make a double KO in one swift swing. Your teeth is certainly doomed and your new look is going to make a useful disguise against the police. Unfortunately, you don't have the mind to think about all of that as you are in for a deep slumber. Y.O.U F.A.I.L ... You wake up to see a ceiling fan spinning far away from your view. Damn, this place sucks! Even the thing looks like it came from the last century, not a pleasant sight to see after having a good sleep. But soon you're greeted with the face of an angel so that's not so bad. Your eyeballs snap open at the presence of a beautiful woman looking down on you. "Hold on..." She gloomily speak as you try to sit up. "You are still in a daze, it's better if you lie down for a bit more." Her tone suggests she is in between 25 and 30, the voice is so serene. You have a feeling that this woman was the one who has been taking care of you. > You her name "Who are you?" You ask, eyes opened on the comfortable sheet. "And where am I?" "You are inside the dispensary and I'm your doctor, Rudy Hills." She says, emotionless while carefully adjusting the bandage to your cheekbone. "You got quite a blunt injury from a fight but you should be fine. Although your jaw will need more time to heal back to normal, you still are able to eat. Just don't crush fast food." "How long was I out?" "...About half a quarter, I think?" That's relieved, you weren't busted while unconscious. The news hasn't broadcasted anything about you yet, your face is still remained unknown to the country. But for how long though? You need to get your gear back before anything bad happen. You feel a little disappointed that you have to say goodbye to another gorgeous babe. "I have to go. How much is the treatment?" You say, sitting up despite her warning earlier. "...Fine." Surprisingly easy enough, she frowns a little bit but agrees. "Your fee is already covered by your friend so don't worry about it." Wait...what? You have friends in this god forsaken place? "Friend? Who is he?" "A fellow tucked in a fine suit called himself Manny. You and him are good friends, right?" "...Yeah, whatever. Where is my coat?" You quickly get your trentcoat back and everything inside is still in place, even the damn gun! Are they too lazy or just too kind to do a quick search on a patient? Hey! Where did this cash come from? You find a thick bulge of money lying in one of the pockets, that amount could give someone a heavy dinner. It might have came from some poor sucker who mistook your coat for their own. Smirking, you shamefully hide it before they could come and find you. Well, lady luck sure has fell for your charm in the previous life. "Oh that's right!! Do you have any good medical supplies here that I can get?" With the newfound cash, your greed has triumphed over you. You put on your shade and the earplugs on and walk out to the street, waiting to hear your wanted public display. After that event on the diner, you have to resort to feeding on street food. Applepies, pancakes, disgustingly sweet desserts...You'll just have to endure those if you don't want to sleep with a growling stomach. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Young master!...And miss Jenny! What are you two doing??!" Just when you're about to say something, a grumpy yet elegant voice comes to you across the dining place. You turn around to see a huge guy tucked in a classy black tuxedo dragging himself towards your table. "Please stay away from that man!" Finally, someone with common sense and willingness to act in this forsaken town...and he doesn't seem to be the type you want to mess with. "Eww! Manny the Orge, what??" The girl who now known as Jennifer nearly gives a shriek at the sight of him. "Let's go to another room!" Alongside with her, Pip is already fleeing. "Who are you?! You didn't do anything to them, did you???" Wow! This guy is fast, completely contradicted to his mountainous figure. And his voice has gone into a raging fit waiting to release on you. He grabs your collar and shouts directly at your face, nearly giving you a heart attack. "You prick!!! What did you do???" Then without waiting for an answer, he throws a punch at you! > The Hundred Crack Fists!! ATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA!!! ATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA!!! ATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA!!!!!! WACCHAAAA!!!!!! ... Darkness, the only thing that you can only feel...can't you? You try to open your eyes but couldn't...In fact, you don't have any sensational feeling at all! Come on! Wake up! Damn IT! Finally after struggling with your brain, you manage to get a feel of your skin contact and snap your eyes opened. !!! You're being chained to a plastic surgery table, naked with only the boxer! The cold from it is killing your back. Numberous cords and tubes are sticked into your arms and your legs! To add up the creepy formation, 2 large sized needles are injecting some weird-colored liquid into your body. With each and each of those flowing before your eyes, your skin sensation slowly fades away. What the fuck is going on??! "Oh!...You can still be alive?" You turn your neck to the speaker and see a beautiful, gorgeous blondie looking at you. "Admirable...Stay still! Let's chat for a bit, shall we?" You try to open your vocal cord but find no strengths or air to do so, you can only glare at the beauty in front of your face, grinning slyly at your misery. "Can't talk? That's too bad." She is teasing you, and she is enjoying the look you're giving. "Umm, yes! You'd make a fine work out of this. Let's see..." She checks your chest for a bit and then speaks the murderous words on your decaying breath. "It's a bother but I guess you need another method. Be ready for it." Rudy Hills, her nameplate inprints itself into your brain after she has left. Well, her C-cups were quite a feast to the eyes at least. Y.O.U A.R.E A.L.R.E.A.D.Y D.E.A.D 'Is this it?' You ponder, looking at the dead bodies hanging on top of you. 'I wish I could chill out, this is so surreal. Maybe next time I should consider what world I'm living in before doing something stupid again.'<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're slowly deteriorating and you need a fresh bite to eat. Without any hesitation, you make your way towards the food stall across the street. It will take more than a cheap meal to satisfy your hunger. ... Hmm, the inside is not so bad, better than the shitty bar for sure. They got clean table clothes, beautiful decoration and most importantly, more people. You'd give it an above average rating if it wasn't for the space in here, a bit too narrow to move. You quickly come to the counter and order your dinner. A pancetta with fried eggs covered in hot sauce and an applepie as dessert seem like a great stomach filler for you. You find a seat and make yourself comfortable as you wait for your meal. You silently hope that this wouldn't become your last time eating outside. "Wah HAH!!" That sudden loud and squeaky yell from behind nearly scares you to death. How can you be so defenseless at a time like this? You turn around to see a school-grader boy who is focusing on your mini device. "A mini TV! It's just like in the game!!" Very enthusiastic and eager, he says while searching inside her bag and then shoves a small looking object to you. Upon looking, you see that it's a Nintendo DS. "Are you a Pokemon instructor?" "...Wa-what? What the...?" You start to sprout nonsense at the flashing screen before you as it changes to a different one with each button the boy is pressing. It's one of those Pokemon games for the DS, been selling high among youngsters and does not have any sign to stop. "Mr?" "Uhh..." You have put up with a lot of things today but for the first time, you're actually speechless at this. "Pip! Pip! You found someone?" And now it's the girl, who is also a school grader, to join the little trainer pestering around your coat. Goodness! Now you've realized that the light giving off by the portable TV inside the coat is attracting their curiosity, you have been hearing it constantly to check the news. And from what you can see from the boy's 2 screens machine, you can see what has grabbed his attention. > You ignore them No, nope, nope! Not the kind you want to be involved. Ignorance is pure bliss in this situation, you continue to listen to the TV. No matter how much they try to pester you into this Pokemon stuff, you stand...you sit on your chair without giving them even a glance. Perhaps because of your hardcore coolness, they leave you as fast as they arrive. Kids, adorable but so simple sometimes. You have to crack a smile at the sight of them asking another customer. A gameshow is on and it is blasting your eardrums, killing your rare happy mood instantly. You turn down the volume and lazily get back to the waiting game. Before long, your lovely meal has arrived. You're starving so even if the quality is shit, the quantity will fix it. You pick up the fork and start with the eggs first. "Hello sir! Where are you going?" Hmm, sunny today sure is hot and delicious, not bad for a small size, the hens here are healthy you can tell. And now bacon...with extra steak sauce too?! You grab a slice and shove it in your mouth. "Do you like this?" Ehh!!! What is this? Where does this stuff come from?? You swear you can almost taste the bitter ashes in this, did they put them on the stove? Not to mention the sauce is terrible, you find no traces of the sweet and fat juice of the meat. They're pretty soft and easy to swallow though so you can forgive that. After spending time savouring the eggs while cringing at the main meal, you move onto the applepie. "Uuu...He's so mean!" ...Uggrr! Sugar rush has no brake in this one. Sweet, soft and creamy pie, pretty good! Not the best but certainly not the worst, you can enjoy this one more time if you have to. You leave the cash down onto the table and prepare to walk out. When you are nearing the exit, you see a mountainous man in a black tux turning his back to you. Just as you're about to head for the door... "Oh, excuse me." The man turns to you and speaks up, looking at you with quite a non-friendly manner. "I'm looking for a boy and a girl going together, they are both in grade schools. Have you seen them?" > You ignore him "No, I haven't." You say, fixing the earplugs as if to show him that all you have done is just listening to music. These types are something you do not want to stay with for too long. "..." A disdainful look towards you, he clearly doesn't take a trentcoat wearing man's words. He and you have unintentionally started a stare battle against each others. With a tired sigh, you shove him out of the way before he could beat you. "What are you, some kind of their guardian?" You spat without wanting an answer, annoyed by this man's action. Some people these days...If it wasn't for your safety right now, you'd never need to hesitate pointing the gun at this orge. You step out of the diner with the man's hateful glare following behind.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No, nope, nope! Not the kind you want to be involved. Ignorance is pure bliss in this situation, you continue to listen to the TV. No matter how much they try to pester you into this Pokemon stuff, you stand...you sit on your chair without giving them even a glance. Perhaps because of your hardcore coolness, they leave you as fast as they arrive. Kids, adorable but so simple sometimes. You have to crack a smile at the sight of them asking another customer. A gameshow is on and it is blasting your eardrums, killing your rare happy mood instantly. You turn down the volume and lazily get back to the waiting game. Before long, your lovely meal has arrived. You're starving so even if the quality is shit, the quantity will fix it. You pick up the fork and start with the eggs first. "Hello sir! Where are you going?" Hmm, sunny today sure is hot and delicious, not bad for a small size, the hens here are healthy you can tell. And now bacon...with extra steak sauce too?! You grab a slice and shove it in your mouth. "Do you like this?" Ehh!!! What is this? Where does this stuff come from?? You swear you can almost taste the bitter ashes in this, did they put them on the stove? Not to mention the sauce is terrible, you find no traces of the sweet and fat juice of the meat. They're pretty soft and easy to swallow though so you can forgive that. After spending time savouring the eggs while cringing at the main meal, you move onto the applepie. "Uuu...He's so mean!" ...Uggrr! Sugar rush has no brake in this one. Sweet, soft and creamy pie, pretty good! Not the best but certainly not the worst, you can enjoy this one more time if you have to. You leave the cash down onto the table and prepare to walk out. When you are nearing the exit, you see a mountainous man in a black tux turning his back to you. Just as you're about to head for the door... "Oh, excuse me." The man turns to you and speaks up, looking at you with quite a non-friendly manner. "I'm looking for a boy and a girl going together, they are both in grade schools. Have you seen them?" > You say yes "Yeah. They were just here pestering people about Pokemon or something." You respond with an uncomfortable frown, you feel an annoying feeling around you that they and this man have created. "Oh!...Do you know where they've gone to?" "Don't know." "..." A disdainful look towards you, he clearly doesn't take a trentcoat wearing man's words. He and you have unintentionally started a stare battle against each others...And you're slowly losing. But then suddenly, he bows his head to you. "Please pardon me." With that said, he runs ahead of you and leaves the diner. You've not ever met anyone weirder than that these days. What the hell was that? That was completely out of nowhere. With nothing else to ruin your day, you hit the street outside.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Tick...tick...tick... You've been staring at your watch for nearly an hour and there isn't any sign of stopping. Normally you'd take a shot to calm your nerve since you deciding to enter the bar but the mood here failed to meet your taste. It's too quiet, too eerie at the time. Maybe it has something to do with the place itself as the bartender doesn't particularly enjoy any conversation with visitors just like you. Who designed this place? No wonder why there are so few people setting their boots here. You cannot find any positive point except for the waitress, a hot brunette who unfortunately doesn't appear to be working properly, she nearly spilled the entire claret on another customer without apologizing. Good thing kindness is still among some people these day. "Oh, Laura..." You sigh at yourself, pulling your forehead. "Why did you have to leave?" > You finish your drink Might as well do what you were going to do. Even though the taste is so horrible, you gulp it down in one goes, hoping for your stomach to hold up any retching urge. You feel sober as you carelessly put the glass and a bill down. Then immediately...Frowning at the sourness, you run out of the bar and vomit everything inside out like a loosen water hose. Yuck! Maybe you should find something to eat, you feel absolutely terrible.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Tick...tick...tick... You've been staring at your watch for nearly an hour and there isn't any sign of stopping. Normally you'd take a shot to calm your nerve since you deciding to enter the bar but the mood here failed to meet your taste. It's too quiet, too eerie at the time. Maybe it has something to do with the place itself as the bartender doesn't particularly enjoy any conversation with visitors just like you. Who designed this place? No wonder why there are so few people setting their boots here. You cannot find any positive point except for the waitress, a hot brunette who unfortunately doesn't appear to be working properly, she nearly spilled the entire claret on another customer without apologizing. Good thing kindness is still among some people these day. "Oh, Laura..." You sigh at yourself, pulling your forehead. "Why did you have to leave?" > You flirt The alcohol in your blood is kind of getting out of control right now. You need to sto- "Hey there, ~hotness!" You say, trying to force yourself not sounding like a manwhore. "...You called me, sir?" She looks at you expectantly...no, confused is more likely to describe her stunning expression right now. Maybe you're being too forward! > You slow down, no ladies are gonna run away You straight up your sitting and then...a dreamy glance escapes your eyes through the thickly shade to enters her own. "Sir? Do you want something?" It doesn't work. What?!! You should get a blush and an embarassing bow to the side from her, not a speech line! You try your best to come up with an answer. Maybe you shouldn't have thought so highly about yourself, that would be a start. "Can you help me find a name to put on the angelic painting before me? I'm helpless just by looking." You do your dirty tongue smoothly, making it sound like a sore one. "Hmmm." She smirks, such a pair of delicious lips she got. "Sir? Are you trying to ask me out?" This is some seriously sticky situation you've gotten yourself into, you just can sit there hopingly. A mature woman might not be very easy but at least you can live with that. No big trouble. "Obvious flirting like that will get you no where, that's all I can say, big boy." ... Shameful...Too shameful. A grown man being looked down by a lady, younger than him no less. Y.O.U F.A.I.L "Too much stimulation to try and not a single one worked out, guess I am not fit to be with another." You wailfully groan, stepping out of the bar.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The alcohol in your blood is kind of getting out of control right now. You need to sto- "Hey there, ~hotness!" You say, trying to force yourself not sounding like a manwhore. "...You called me, sir?" She looks at you expectantly...no, confused is more likely to describe her stunning expression right now. Maybe you're being too forward! > You charge right in, she is in your hand "You want to hang out?" You put so much confidence in yourself that you can't help but flash a dirty grin at her. "...Please, I'm working sir." She says, glaring at you hatefully. Uh oh! You hit the wrong desk this time. This girl was well-educated alright, you've been fooled! But the rat has been out of the bag, you have no choice but to go with the flow. "Whatever you want will be yours, sweet cheeks. The only thing I can ever hope to see is the shimmering body under those garment." Being a giant pervert, you nearly lick your mouth at the sight of hers. "No." Ohhkaa...Wait what? What? "You will not get anything from me, you dirty bastard!" Her looks she's giving can pass for a hard slap right now. "I'm not a whore!!" You are...not gonna walk out of here without receiving a few bruises from her, you freak. You sprint out of the bar before some pretty remarks could be thrown at you. Y.O.U F.A.I.L "I'm...Why am I such an idiot? Damn!" You blame yourself and your forcefulness with a scratch to your block head...and a feel to your empty stomach. "Stay away from good-looking woman when you are drinking I guess...If I run into her again, better be prepared for the pain."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You carefully stopped your car in an isolated place and quickly wrap your firearms inside a bag, not forgetting to cover it with a large blanket and hide it in the corner of you before driving straight into the yard. The lights are starting to shine the area. "A full refill! And I'd like to have 5 cans of fuel please." You speak to the one who is cleaning the equipment from your seat, a middle age man comes to you. "Wow, you are a big spender, aren't you?!" He says, opening the cover. "May I ask where ya going?" "That..depends." You response, already prepared for a conversation. "I'm heading to a friend and I heard that there are many byways so I think I'll stock some before I depart. "Yeah, that's about right." He says, pumping your gasoline. "You'd better step it up if rocks on the road found yer." "Rocks on the road?" "You haven't heard? Apparently there has been a bunch of fools riding their bikes and hijacking any car they find around these places. Drop a few prices at Black Market I bet." What kind of joke is this? Escaping the police chase and having a biker gang waiting for you in your next run, your life can't never be anymore playful than now. "It's nearly dark too." The man snaps you out of your thinking. "Maybe ya should stay the night here, it's too dangerous to travel at this hour." "Has there been anyone dealing with this gang?" You ask in hope for a safe route. "Anyone at all?" "Nope. Bastards got busted a few times but another just raises and repeats like generating task. That's that then, they will never be done." Well, aren't that just the thing you need? Turn back now and the cops might not let you go again, advance and take the risk of losing four wheels may cost you your life also. You cannot afford to wait here either, the news is going to spread and letting your guard down at a time this...So much mayhem for you to take. Challenge the law enforcer or the nasty gang? You're in deep trouble, a really, really deep trouble. > You risk your life You should never have chosen this road, it's the worst possible trail you've ever seen in your life. Roadkilled animals, full of dead ends leading to the falling death or harsh mud slowing you down and it's dark like your unlit office. But those are nothing compare to what you're avoiding right now. There is a biker gang risking their pitiful lives to steal your goods and might even kill you in the process. Due to the condition of the road, you can't seem to find a way to lose these experienced robbers who are familiar with this area. You pull out your repeater and start to spread deadly painful yelps and fresh blood among them. They're criminals, right? Wiping a few scums is just the same work you've done. "Fuck! A gun, he got a gun! AGGHRRR! "A fat loot! Fire away, boys!" Your opening fire has started a shootout between a lone car and packs of bikers. Each shot traded equals a body part of someone rendered useless and you can only pray that you're not the next one. "Let's see if you like THIS!!!" "AGGGGGRRR!!!" "GET OUT OF THE WAY, FOOLS! ROCK ON THE ROAD!" A rounds of bullets start to fly towards you and shriek their destruction power into your ears. A gatling gun! And they're not afraid of using rapid-fires even with the front row being in the way, they want your life! You have to think of a way! > You use one of the cans To be suggestive, that's one suicidal way to use the fuel. You grab one of the cans and wait for the fires to clear. Your car will have to endure for just one round and you'll have to be precise with the timing too. This is probably the stupidest idea that you can imagine but in the nick of time, no one can really blame your failure on this. When biker gang hit, they really hit profusely. There seems to be no signs of that gun and the screams from their own men stopping, it's so brutal just to hear this while trying to make your way through this. Aren't they aware of how many poor squirrels and vixens they just squashed?...It's unbelievable that you're thinking about that while being chased to death! "LOCK AND RELOAD! BABY WHHHooooooSSSSEEE!!!" There! 1...2...3! You throw the gas can through the windows. If you miss, there is a good chance they might slip on those. It takes about a mere second before an entire area is suddenly beaming with light. Old-schooled blue flame of death caused by gasoline...so beautiful, so serene yet so traumatic with their bodies being burned and their bikes getting imploded. As wonderful as it sounds like, you cannot bear to watch. You just set the forest on fire, man...You have to get out of here quickly. You know...Getting away with murders is really becoming more like something belonged to you. Was it luck, or your actual skill that you had in store that has given you the state of a cold-blooded killer? > You alright! Enough daydreaming! You are dead if you think you could escape from the infamous biker gang. Y.O.U F.A.I.L "I don't know if risking my life or being a criminal led me into this." You say directly to the scattering and burnt corpses lying in your way. "But know. I will take any life to ensure my own...even THIS!" You put the gun inside your mouth and pull the trigger, ending the pain from numberous bleeding holes in your body. ...If it has to be taken, then let's just do it like you has intended to right in the beginning.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You should never have chosen this road, it's the worst possible trail you've ever seen in your life. Roadkilled animals, full of dead ends leading to the falling death or harsh mud slowing you down and it's dark like your unlit office. But those are nothing compare to what you're avoiding right now. There is a biker gang risking their pitiful lives to steal your goods and might even kill you in the process. Due to the condition of the road, you can't seem to find a way to lose these experienced robbers who are familiar with this area. You pull out your repeater and start to spread deadly painful yelps and fresh blood among them. They're criminals, right? Wiping a few scums is just the same work you've done. "Fuck! A gun, he got a gun! AGGHRRR! "A fat loot! Fire away, boys!" Your opening fire has started a shootout between a lone car and packs of bikers. Each shot traded equals a body part of someone rendered useless and you can only pray that you're not the next one. "Let's see if you like THIS!!!" "AGGGGGRRR!!!" "GET OUT OF THE WAY, FOOLS! ROCK ON THE ROAD!" A rounds of bullets start to fly towards you and shriek their destruction power into your ears. A gatling gun! And they're not afraid of using rapid-fires even with the front row being in the way, they want your life! You have to think of a way! > You aim for the holder You suddenly has this urge just to stick your head out and aim for one who is firing at you. Hearing all those screams from their fellows being used as targets practice by the shooter slowly boil the anger inside your heart, you're always despite these kind of scumbags, coward and lack any responsiblity whatsoever. Strange...you of all people should be thankful by this. After all, is the fact that they're literally decreasing their own numbers down a good thing to you? "LOCK AND RELOAD, BABY!!!" Making use of their obvious free shot giveaway, you decide to risk your life. What's a better way to protect yourself other than being a badass while at it too? Oh hoh, you're cute...a batshit crazy type of endearing actually. You seriously need some help when you go to hell. Taking a good look at the shooters thanks to the motorcycle's light reflecting on them, you quickly pinpoint the huge crank-driven bastard. Without wasting any precious second, your tongue jingles by itself 3 times and both your hands join in the harmony. "He is there! Bastard's sticking out!" The bullet comes out flying and...It would be a real wrench for you if this missed. "AHGHGGGGG!!!" ...It seems like you hit your target's...jaw or something, you can hear him screaming and some of motor's engines dying down, the gunfire has been ceased too. "BOSS! Boss got shot!! Holy...What the... "Shut the hell up! Chase after that son of a bitch!" "BOss! Boss!...Boss??!!! Don't scare the group like that!" A gentle and pleasant feeling sweeps over your inside, to think you actually did it, you, a normal average Joe who hasn't received any training on how to operate or shoot a gun. You have cleaned another despicable piece of shit off the world! You drive far away with terrific handling skill, your car is like aviating through the roughness of the terrain. The odds of you surviving yet another chase wasn't very much but you have actually passed it with flying colors!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>TV...checked. Sunglasses...checked. Trench coat...Unnecessary but you couldn't just leave your skinny bones out, it has doubled your luck and your appearance to be unique...Also checked. Good thing your face hasn't really hit the mark of any media type out there yet, but your time is running out. Lying low will have to be in another place, a safe and secure one far away from here. You check the plate covering your gas meter and see that it still got 2/3 left. You have to stock on some large litters to cross the border. The nearest place to refill would be...about 15 miles from here, not really hard to come by and if they try something funny, your guns will do the job. You decide to go there. ...Hmm? It's nearly night time. Anytime now... You have arrived at a gas station. There are only a few local houses and shops nearby, an empty place and probably not in any urban business. > You sophisticated stealing At least you know how to reload a basic handgun while totally clueless about anything else. What is there to blame besides yourself? You were nuts, and you still are right now. You load the inside the barrel of your pistol with a fresh clip and proceed to approach the gas station slowly. You park the car just behind the wall surrounding the place and sneak into the yard on foot. Before the employer, a man in mid 40 can sense you, his hands have already raised behind his head as you hold him up at gunpoint. "Sorry for this." You say, looking frantically side by side. "Get me 6 litters of gasoline. Try anything funny and I will torch this place down in an instant." "A-Alright." He answers your order by slowly walking towards the container to grab the cans. "Here...just chill out, okay?" "Good. Grab those and go forward." You demand, wanting to be sure of your position to the eyes of any people outside. "Turn around now." You lead him back to your vehicle, the poor man is struggling to carry the fuel one by one. "Open all of the covers, I want to see them." He does so and backs away to the wall, allowing you to have a look at the containers...Yep! It seems like all of them are pure gasoline alright. "Good. Now go back to your place and I swear if I see the cops hogging the horn anytime now, I'll mark all flammable stuffs inside that place my practicing target. Are we clear on that?" "Yeah...I see your point." He says, throwing a dirty look behind you as you get in your car. "Nice doing business with you, mate." You crack a smile at your victim. "Good bye." Yeah, screw all of that moral bullshit. You got the gun, you are the winner.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're a murderer. Running head first into that place and blasting everything to hell. Raiding the detention center just to get a few kills on those who raped and pushed your crush to suicide doesn't seem like a good idea after all. You're not even her type to bother, you should just have left them rotting in jail instead. Now you got yourself rows and rows of police forces chasing after you and there is no such thing like a way back. You're brown bread to the eyes of your loved ones now, and you gotta make a run for it. Whenever you see a turn, you can only hope that it doesn't lead to a dead end. That phone call should have never reached you. Crazy love, you blame all the things you've done to it. It forced you to flee your office, turned your mind into a madman and put that thing on your hand. After that, it was only chaos. You were gonna going to end your life when the flame inside died out...but didn't...and you still can't find the courage. "PULL OVER!!! PULL OVER NOW!!! DO YOU HEAR ME?!! I'M GOING TO SHOOT YOU!!!" They finally talk with bullets huh? Maybe you should focus on stepping on the gas instead of having random flashbacks. > You okay, turn on the gas. No need to get touchy now. The pedal is being extremely abused by you as your vehicle blows off blindful storms of broken leaves and dirt back to your pursuers. Every turn you make equals a nightmare, your eyes cannot keep up with what in front of you anymore. You pray for the safety of the tires as well as yours. Nothing but speed and gunshot keep you stay intact with the world. Shreeekkkk!!! The glass door from behind has gone down! 'These cops!...This some kind of game to you???' You think, making a zic-zac move to dodge another straight shot. You can't afford to panic, anything but that. Hot and cold sweats mixed together run along your forehead and down to your lip, a salty taste quickly dominate your saliva. *Gulp* The tires are still normal, that was just a lucky shot...but a warning that you should step up pass the limitation!!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are Linda Niles, at just 19 you have become one of the most famous singers on the planet, your career started at 15 and you have enjoyed rave reviews, record breaking sales and all the fans a person could want. In addition, you have managed to avoid scandals and developing an ego, which have destroyed countless other singer careers, you live a life most dream of. Another typical day of your life, you are to make an appearance at the Destiny Hill Mall located in Destiny Hill, New Jersey. Recently you have become the spokeswoman, for Zidane's clothing and you are there to promote the opening of their newest store. They are a hoity toity clothing store that is hoping your endorsement will have people buy from them despite their outrageous prices. You arrive at the mall around noon in a inconspicuous car so the dozens of people waiting around outside don't notice you. The car stops in in the employee parking lot, you get out and sneak in through the employee entrance which is surround by half dozen police officers. Once inside you head up a flight of stairs, hearing the screaming of your fans, there must be hundreds of them. This doesn't bother you as you've had countless concerts that had as much 20,000 fans so it's actually more quiet then normal. At the top of the steps is the back exit to Zidane's, you knock and a giant mall security guard opens and lets you in. Heading towards the front of the store past the expensive clothes is a chair and a table with markers and a stack of photos of yourself. The screaming fans are kept outside and become even louder when they see you. A few more security guards are standing beside you as you take your seat. Along with them is Steve your lifelong photographer who has his camera on a tripod ready to take your picture with the fans. Police officers stand outside the store as the door's open letting the noise enter the store, which is unpleasant to the guards but not you. The first few fans come in and it is a pretty routine affair. You ask their name, you sign an autograph, they tell how great you are while trying contain their excitement, you take a picture with them and they leave. No matter how many times you've done this, you avoid going on auto pilot. You remain sincere and genuine for every fan, no doubt a factor to your success. The next fan that comes appears to be a bit uneasy, He's looks just one or two years older then you, he has fair skin and short black hair that he keeps nervously scratching and light brown eyes that seem to be intentionally looking away from you. You've dealt with people who were nervous in your presence before and have dealt with people a bit socially awkward, this guy however was different, you don't know why but your gut is telling you something is off. He approaches the table, you could have security kick him out or you could sign the autograph and just get this over with > You kick him out You've trusted your instincts your whole life and they have never let you down. You signal to the security guard to escort him out. The guard grabs the man by the arm and takes him out of the store. The rest of the meet and greet goes well and after several hours you head out the back of the store, back down the stairs and into the inconspicuous car. On the way home you get a cell phone call, it's your agent Lenny Hamliton. "Hey Lenny" you kindly say as you answer the phone. "What did you do?" Lenny angrily asks at the other end. You find this a bit odd since Lenny is usually calm. "What are you talking about?" You ask somewhat confused. "The media is saying you booted out a fan for no reason, I've been getting calls from news station, all day" "I found something odd about him, I don't know, something just didn't sit well" "I can't tell that to the press, they will be talking about this for weeks" "It'll blow over" "Maybe with someone else, but because you've been known for your spotless reputation, it'll hurt a lot more" Lenny hangs up on you, over the coming weeks it turns out you were both right in a way. The incident is talked about on all the tabloid papers and gossip sites. The identity of the man is never found out. Flame wars start on the internet over what you did was right or not. Your career continues to shine but you notice something is different, you are now just a singer, not the singer. This change takes a bit getting used too but you manage.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are Linda Niles, at just 19 you have become one of the most famous singers on the planet, your career started at 15 and you have enjoyed rave reviews, record breaking sales and all the fans a person could want. In addition, you have managed to avoid scandals and developing an ego, which have destroyed countless other singer careers, you live a life most dream of. Another typical day of your life, you are to make an appearance at the Destiny Hill Mall located in Destiny Hill, New Jersey. Recently you have become the spokeswoman, for Zidane's clothing and you are there to promote the opening of their newest store. They are a hoity toity clothing store that is hoping your endorsement will have people buy from them despite their outrageous prices. You arrive at the mall around noon in a inconspicuous car so the dozens of people waiting around outside don't notice you. The car stops in in the employee parking lot, you get out and sneak in through the employee entrance which is surround by half dozen police officers. Once inside you head up a flight of stairs, hearing the screaming of your fans, there must be hundreds of them. This doesn't bother you as you've had countless concerts that had as much 20,000 fans so it's actually more quiet then normal. At the top of the steps is the back exit to Zidane's, you knock and a giant mall security guard opens and lets you in. Heading towards the front of the store past the expensive clothes is a chair and a table with markers and a stack of photos of yourself. The screaming fans are kept outside and become even louder when they see you. A few more security guards are standing beside you as you take your seat. Along with them is Steve your lifelong photographer who has his camera on a tripod ready to take your picture with the fans. Police officers stand outside the store as the door's open letting the noise enter the store, which is unpleasant to the guards but not you. The first few fans come in and it is a pretty routine affair. You ask their name, you sign an autograph, they tell how great you are while trying contain their excitement, you take a picture with them and they leave. No matter how many times you've done this, you avoid going on auto pilot. You remain sincere and genuine for every fan, no doubt a factor to your success. The next fan that comes appears to be a bit uneasy, He's looks just one or two years older then you, he has fair skin and short black hair that he keeps nervously scratching and light brown eyes that seem to be intentionally looking away from you. You've dealt with people who were nervous in your presence before and have dealt with people a bit socially awkward, this guy however was different, you don't know why but your gut is telling you something is off. He approaches the table, you could have security kick him out or you could sign the autograph and just get this over with > You sign autograph You decide to just sign the autograph and move on. Everyone has to deal with a werido at some point in their life, no sense in stressing over it. The man approaches the table. "Name?" You ask with a hint of fear in your voice. "Uh, Jacob" the man replied as if he had trouble remembering his own name. "To Jacob, keep on rocking your's truly Linda Niles" you say aloud as you write it out the photo. You hand the photo Jacob and notice his hand is a bit shaky as he takes it from you, he also seems to be sweating a bit. You wonder which one of you is more on edge, no matter this will be over with a bit. You just need to take a photo and he'll be on his way. You and Jacob walk in front of the backdrop that has been set up on the wall, in front you is Steve with his camera. "Nice big smile now" Steve says in a robotic tone. While looking at the camera, you fail to notice Jacob as he puts hand into his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief, you also don't notice until the last minute that he puts it over your mouth as he puts his other arm around your waist and hoists you over his shoulder. The smell of the handkerchief is sweet and soon your vision begins to get blurry and your hearing decreases. You can barely make out security guards chasing after you as Jacob runs out of the store and down the stairs while holding you in a fireman's carry. Things get blurrier and blurrier until you blackout. > You some time later You awaken in a small room with a throbbing headache, it takes a moment for things to come into focus. When they do you see a beige sofa and a flat screen tv on the wall. Dust bunnies are on the carpeted floor and there are two doors leading out the room. You try the first door and it is locked, while the second door leads to even smaller bathroom complete with a toilet, shower and sink. You're not quite sure what to do next. > You watch TV You sit down on the sofa and notice the remote on one of the cushions. You use it to turn it on the TV which is currently on a news stations and not your surprise, your kidnapping is the top story. Several hours ago, renowned singer Linda Niles was kidnapped in broad daylight as she attended a meet and greet at the grand opening of a Zidane's clothing store in Destiny Hill Mall, here in Destiny Hill, New Jersey. Fans are furious that despite Police protection, the kidnapper was able to abduct Linda without a weapon and eluded police capture. Chief of Police Terry Shepard has already announced his resignation. The FBI have taken over investigating the kidnapping. The man entered Zidane's shortly after the Meet and Greet, grabbed Linda Niles and escaped through the back exit, he then entered a car and drove off. A car believed to be used by the kidnapper was found in an abandoned gas station. The car had been reported stolen a week and the owner is not believed to be part of the abduction. It is strongly believed that the kidnapper is a local resident and that Linda is still in Destiny Hill. The FBI said they are doing everything they can to make sure Linda Niles is found alive and bring the culprits to justice. Linda Niles came to fame at 15 when her single...." You turn off the TV after they begin talking about your career, no need to hear about it, you know it far better then anyone else. > You wait You lay down on the sofa, wondering what lays in store for you. No one would go through all this trouble for no reason and you dread learning what that reason is. Does the kidnapper simply want a ransom or do they have something more sinister in mind? You notice there are no windows in this room and the bleak white walls are not helping you stay positive. You can't let fear overcome you, only by thinking rational will you get out of this. Suddenly the door that was locked opens up and the man who kidnapped you appears, he is holding a tray with a paper bag on it, he appears nervous and is looking down at the tray and not you. > You demand to be let go "Let me go right now or you're going to face serious consequences" You demand. The kidnapper is taken aback by your yelling and drops the tray. You soon realize that he is coward and the door behind him is wide open. You push him aside and bolt through the door, the next room is a larger version of the one you were just in, carpeted floors with dust bunnies, bleak white walls and no windows. In the middle of the room is is a staircase which you quickly run up. At the top of the stairs you find yourself in a foyer and figure out that you are in a residential house. After quickly looking around you eye the front door and dash towards it. The door isn't locked as you swing it open and run outside. You run, run some more and keep running, never stopping to look back to see if the man is following you. After maybe an hour your legs simply don't have the energy and you collapse on someone's yard. Luckily the owner is home and when they see you on the ground they quickly the police. When cops get there you explain who you are and they rush you to a local hospital, with full police and FBI protection of course. At the hospital, you are checked to see if you have physical wounds or emotional trauma. Physically you are fine, mentally not so much, after a few days you are sent back to your home Los Angeles. The police never find the kidnapper, you were in such a rush when you ran out that you can't retrace your steps from where you were found. You never looked back at the house when you escaped that you have no idea what it looks like, let alone the street you were on. The worse news is that the events have changed you, as you become withdrawn, don't have any more meet and greets, in fact you never do anything that directly involves interacting with the fans again. Even worse is that you become difficult to work with. At all future concerts you have a beefed up security presence. At first people sympathize with you, considering what you've been through, but as the years go on and your behavior only gets worse, all that sympathy goes away. Rumors begin to speared that the entire incident was a publicity stunt and not many people defend you. This damages your career but doesn't destroy it, however things have forever changed and not for the better.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You lay down on the sofa, wondering what lays in store for you. No one would go through all this trouble for no reason and you dread learning what that reason is. Does the kidnapper simply want a ransom or do they have something more sinister in mind? You notice there are no windows in this room and the bleak white walls are not helping you stay positive. You can't let fear overcome you, only by thinking rational will you get out of this. Suddenly the door that was locked opens up and the man who kidnapped you appears, he is holding a tray with a paper bag on it, he appears nervous and is looking down at the tray and not you. > You beg to be freed "Please let me go, I won't tell anyone about this I promise, I'll give you money if that's what you want" you beg as tears begin to roll down your face. The man appears to get sad as if he regrets what he is doing and his eyes seem to get a bit watery. It isn't long before he regains his composure and begins to speak "I'm sorry about this, I promise everything will be explained in time, just relax I have no intention of hurting you and by the end of the week, you'll be home". The kidnapper explains. "What's that?" you ask pointing the bag on tray with one hand and wiping the tears off your face with the other. "Oh, this is dinner, I got it from this deli called Luca's, the internet said you liked pepperoni calzone and diet soda so I got you that" The kidnapper says while putting down the tray. "Now that sofa opens up into a bed and in the morning, you'll meet my girlfriend, it won't be so bad" The man quickly leaves closing the door behind him and locking it. You wonder if he is afraid of being caught by the FBI or if he is always like that. You pick up the bag on the tray and take out the contents, sure enough it's a pepperoni calzone and a diet soda. Your stomach growls at the sight of the meal, you are too hungry to care if it's poisonous or not and begin wolfing the food down. After you've finished you put the tray in a corner and pull the bed out of the sofa . As you lay down, the events of the day race through your mind and you wonder if you'll truly leave this place alive. However you are exhausted and soon you fall asleep. > The next day You wake up the next morning, hoping the kidnapping was just a bad dream, sadly when you look around you see that you're still in the small windowless room. Not long after you wake up, the kidnapper enters the room with another tray, this one has a stack of pancakes and orange juice. "I read you like buttermilk pancakes and pulp free orange juice" He says as he puts down the tray. "In hour my girlfriend, Jeanette is going to visit, you can meet her, she's quite a fan yours" Before the man leaves he picks up the tray from yesterday and exits the room, locking the door behind him. As you look at the tray you noticed he didn't leave any utensils, he has either planned this out or is just forgetful. You figure now is not the time to worry about proper eating habits as you grab a pancake and take a bite out of it. While you have breakfast you turn on the TV. "20 hours after Linda Niles kidnapping, the FBI appears to be no closer to finding her. So far no group has claimed responsibility and no ransom has been demanded. Surveillance footage from the Destiny Hill Mall showing the kidnapper has been released to the public in effort to identify the man. Witnesses say that before the abduction, he gave his name as 'Jacob' when requesting an autograph. FBI officials say the name is most likely a fake.Officials also say they are considering a house to a house search, with the town's population at 40,000 doubts if such a search is possible or even if legal have been raised. Residents of the once quiet town are upset of the over the high police presence and checkpoints set up around the town's exits, meanwhile sales of Linda Niles albums have skyrocketed and rumors of the kidnapping being a hoax are beginning to circulate..." You finish breakfast and turn off the TV. You begin to wonder who this "Jeanette" person your going to meet soon is like, maybe she is just is timid as the guy is, you'll have just to wait to find out. > You an hour later After waiting for an hour the door opens and the man appears. "Come on" he shyly says while sticking out his arm. You walk towards him and he grabs hold of your wrist. He heads out while tugging you along, he is obviously trying to make sure you don't run for it, he also seems to be trying to avoid hurting you. You walk into the next room which is basically just a larger version of the room you were just in, carpeted floor with dust bunnies, bleak white walls and no windows. In the middle of the room is a staircase which you and the man walk up. Upstairs you discover you are in a foyer in what appears to be a residential house. You eye the front door at the end of the foyer but the kidnapper tugs you in the other direction. You enter a room on the right which has two loveseat sofas, a large flat screen TV on stand with a DVD player and several DVDs. On the floor is a carpet that doesn't have dust bunnies, walls that aren't so bleak as the ones in the basement, and more importantly for you windows. You never thought you'd be so happy to see sunlight, but after almost a full day without you'll never take it for granted again. While you're staring outside you almost overlook that there is a women sitting on one of the love seats. She looks around your age, has almost waist long blonde hair, jean short shorts and a red tank top, she looks far more confident then the kidnapper ever did. She notices you are looking at her and begins to talk. "I can't believe you pulled this off Martin" the women begins. "Yeah, I made a promise and I don't break my promises" the man replied as he sat down next to her. You notice the man is far more relaxed when in the company of this women. "So you're the world famous Linda Niles, I'm Jeanette" the women introduces herself. "Nice to meet you" you respond. You suppose being polite will improve your odds of getting out of this situation. "I hope Martin has been treating you alright, he isn't a bad person, but I don't blame you if the kidnapping gave you a different impression" You can't tell if she is being serious or making a wise crack. "So the reason I am here is I'm going to babysit you today, Martin has a few errands to run and we obviously can't just leave you here alone" Jeanette explained. "But the FBI is out looking for you" You say surprisingly with a bit of concern in your voice. "I have...things to do" Martin stated purposely vague. You could insist that Martin stays and Jeanette goes out to do whatever these errands are. You're not quite sure what to make of Jeanette, she could be dangerous, while you know Martin is timid and (probably) won't hurt you. You might even be able to make an escape attempt. On the other hand Martin isn't much for conversation, having Jeanette stay around would give you somebody to talk to, which would really help you keep your saintly while trapped. However Martin going out runs the risk if him being caught, which can your situation much better or way worse. > You ask Martin to stay You're smart enough to know the devil you know is better then the devil you don't. "Maybe Martin should stay" you suggest. Both Martin and Jeanette are bit surprise by your comment. "Sorry hun, but I have a ton of work to do and so does Martin" Jeanette stated. "If you really plan on letting me getting go by the end of the week, then it benefits me not having Martin go out and risk getting caught" Your case doesn't seem to persuade Jeanette in the slightest, Martin on the other hand seems to take heed to what you say. "You can do my errands Jeanette and I can do your bank statements, you'll still get the credit for doing them" Martin advised. "Fine, I guess we should be careful" Jeanette and Martin kiss each goodbye as she gets off the sofa, leaves the room and heads out the front door. As soon as she is gone Martin becomes his more on edge self. "We have some work to do" Martin explained. As before Martin grabs you by the wrist but not very tightly leading you into the foyer and then a room on the left. It is a kitchen complete with a refrigerator, oven and stove. The appliances seemed fairly modern, although the oven and stove appeared to be a bit dirty. Next to them was a counter and sink, with dishes that needed to be washed.A sliding door on the right lead to the backyard was on the right. In the middle of the room is a kitchen table, on it is a box with a bunch of papers. You both sit down at the table as Martin takes the box and dumps the papers on the table. "Jeanette needs these bank statements alphabetize" Martin blunted instructed. It is a very dull affair as Martin at times seems to forget you are even there, paying for more attention to the papers then to you. You try to make small talk, Martin doesn't say much, but you manage to learn that his parents died in a car crash a few years ago and he doesn't like hot weather. Martin works at very fast pace, finishing his half of the statements and then proceeds to complete your half. By noon you are done, Martin orders a pizza, mushrooms and olives your favorite. After lunch Martin returns to the room with the love seats, lays down on one and promptly dozes off. You are now left unsupervised in the house. > You explore the house Escaping is way too risky, but it would be a waste to go back downstairs just yet, so you decide to have a look around. You walk into a room that is at the opposite end of the front door. In it is a staircase leading to a second floor. When you reach the upper level you notice it is rather small, as it is just a hallway with two doors, the first one you try is locked but the second one isn't, inside you see a bed, a small nightstand, a dresser and a desk with numerous papers on it. There is little doubt this is Martin's bedroom. You head towards the desk and inspect the papers. One is the blueprints for the Destiny Hill Mall, with an a red arrow drawn from it. The arrow starts out in Zidane's clothing store, goes out the back exit, down a set of stairs and out of the employee entrance. It stops at a parking space outside the mall. So this was Martin's escape route, you remember there were a bunch of cops guarding that entrance, how'd he get past them? You being unconscious at time, can't recall. The next item is a photo of a fancy blue sports car, on the back of the photo it says: Leaves keys in garage, code is 0515, asleep by 11 PM. You are bit surprised how someone who acts like his own shadow would scare him, could plan this all, maybe Jeanette had a hand you wonder. Next to the photo of the sports car is a flyer with your face on it: COME MEET 8 TIME GRAMMY WINNER LINDA NILES!!! YOU CAN HAVE YOUR PICTURE TAKEN AND GET AN AUTOGRAPH OF THE WORLD FAMOUS SINGER. ON THURSDAY AUGUST 16TH FROM 12PM-4PM AT THE OPENING OF THE NEWEST ZIDANE'S CLOTHING STORE LOCATED AT DESTINY HALL MALL AT 219 OKONEDO STREET, IN DESTINY HILL, N.J *limit, one photo and one autograph person, first 800 people only. Did they really have to make this flyer so obnoxious you wonder. Moving on you see a small piece of paper with handwritten notes. Sgt. Marcus Walker $10,000 WAY TOO MUCH!!! Sgt. Lewis Mott $4,000. DOESN'T HAVE GOOD REPUTATION Cpt. Harold Morowitz $3500, NEEDS MONEY, HAS A LOT TO LOSE IF CAUGHT Ben Hinds (Head of mall security) $2000, SERVED WITH J's FATHER, TRUSTWORTHY So cops were on the take, now things started making more sense, the final thing on the desk was another photo, it appeared it a bit more worn then the one with the sports car, on it was Martin only he appeared slightly younger, next to him was a teenage girl, it wasn't Jeanette as the girl had short brown hair and a more narrow chin, the back of the photo read: M+K, state fair This photo had to be important as the creases on it showed it had been held many times. You hear footsteps shuffling around downstairs, Martin must be awake, you quickly leave the room and rush down the stairs, you manage to get back to the kitchen before Martin comes in. "Time to go back downstairs" He says in a somewhat groggy state. Once again he grabs you by the wrist and once again not too tightly. He leads you to basement and back into what has become your room. Once you are inside Martin heads out. Jeanette returns a few hours later and comes into you room, holding a box of leftover pizza. "Thanks for doing the bank statements" Jeanette said while putting down the box of pizza. "Martin did most of the work" You admit. "Maybe you didn't want Martin to go because you were worried about him, maybe you found working with him romantic" You are taken aback by this statement. "I'm joking" Jeanette says as soon she notices you're getting uncomfortable. Jeanette is obnoxious and Martin is on another world, quite a pair those two are you think to yourself. You and Jeanette spend time eating the leftover pizza and talking for a bit. You learn Jeanette's father was in the army. After you are done, Jeanette leaves taking the now empty pizza box. You watch some primetime TV and then fall asleep. > Next morning You wake up the next morning and the smell of pancakes is in the air. You sit up to see that another tray of buttermilk pancakes and orange juice on the floor, there is also a small hand written note on the tray as well. You get up, walk towards the tray and read the note: I just realized you haven't had a change of clothes since you got here, there's a fresh pair in the bathroom, I borrowed them from Jeanette, I hope they fit alright, once you have eaten and changed, meet me in the backyard. -Martin You find it a little creepy that Martin was walking around in here while you were asleep, no point in stressing over it now through. Suddenly it dawns on you that wearing the same clothes for two days, including to bed, can't be good hygiene. You enter the bathroom and find the clothes the note mentions, which consists of a pair of loose fit jeans and a navy blue tank top. In addition a pair of fresh socks are sitting next to them. After a relaxing shower, you change clothes, and head upstairs. You remember the sliding door in the kitchen, you go through the foyer into the kitchen and out the door. When you head outside, you take a moment to bask int the sunlight, you've been couped inside for two days and you now you have the chance to savior the sunlight beaming down your skin, a gentle breeze touches your face and feels so comforting. You take off your socks and shoes to feel the grass on your feet, enjoying the feeling of each blade. if someone was watching you, they'd think you'd suffer some sort of brain injury, but right now you simply don't care. As you walk further into the back you see tall wooden fences on both sides of yard, preventing the neighbors from looking in. At the opposite end of the lawn you see that there are tall trees, there are so many that it appears dark despite being early in the day. In the middle of the area you can see a lawn chair, with Martin laying in it, dozing. You'll have to wake him up, although you could run into woods and make your escape or you could turn around go back in the house and out the front door. > You wake up Martin You've stuck around this along you might as well find out you were kidnapped in the first place. You walk up to Martin and gentle nudge his shoulder, he wakes up startled but calms down quickly. He notices you standing beside him and gets up from the lawn chair. "How Jeanette's clothes?" He asks "They're fine" you reassure. "I suppose now would be a good time to tell you why I went through the trouble of brining you here" "You did say you'd tell me today" "I have a sister named Kate, she's fifteen and the only family I have, a year go she got diagnosed with liver cancer and it quickly became terminal" Martin begins to choke up, but regains his composure and continues "Tomorrow she is being released simply so she can enjoy the final days of her life. I own a place called the Whishaw theater, you are going to give her a concert" You're not sure what to make of all of this, the story of Marin's sister is sad, but this man has kidnapped you and held you against your will for two days, does he deserve this act of kindness? > You agree to do the concert Kidnapped or not, it just wouldn't be the right thing to do to turn Martin down, if not for him then at least for his sister who is dying of cancer and wasn't part of your kidnapping int he first place. "I'm in" You tell Martin. Martin faces quickly turns from sad, to surprised to overjoyed in a span of five seconds. He puts his arms around and hugs you. "Thank you, Linda" He responds, still holding on, the nervousness you've seen in him appears to have melted away. He eventually realizes what he is doing and let's go, his face has a flash of embarrassment. "So, Kate is coming home later today, you can meet her, talk to her and in the evening you can go down to the Whishaw and give the concert" "Sounds good" Martin walks back to the house, seemly forgetting the fact you are left outside without anyone watching. You sit down in the lawn chair he was sitting in earlier and enjoy the fresh air. After an hour or two of lounging you hear footsteps approaching, you turn to see Jeanette standing nearby. "It's time meet Kate, Martin and I are heading out" Jeanette says as the two of you walk back to the house. Once back inside, Jeanette heads out the front door while you see someone sitting in the room with the love seats. This is no doubt this Kate, she is about five feet tall, has short brown hair and a somewhat narrow chin. Upon seeing you, a huge grin appears on her face as she runs towards you. "Oh my god, it's you, it's really you, sorry I'm acting like a total weirdo. I mean part of me was thinking Martin had simply lost his mind when he said you were here" Kate says excitedly. Her outgoingness makes you surprise she is related Martin. "It's alright, I'm human like everyone" You reassure. Almost as she soon she gets up, she goes back to sit down on the love seat, no doubt all she going through is leaving her with limited energy. You go and join her on the love seat. "I know Martin kidnapped you" Kate's tone becoming more serious. "I imagine it's all anyone is talking about for past few days" You responded. "My brother is a good person, sure he's an oddball but I love him, I just don't want you to think he's a monster, please forgive him and try to understand why he did what he did" > You forgive Martin You've been fortunate to have never had to deal with the pain of loss, let alone the loss of someone so young, you can't begin to imagine the pain Martin is in. Once Kate dies, Martin's pain will only get worse, but at least he can take comfort in the fact that he made his dying sister happy. Maybe that isn't enough of a reason to justify what he did, but you understand why he did it and holding a grudge against him just felt wrong. "I forgive him" You tell Kate. Kate's face lights upon hearing this. You spend the next few hours talking about a variety of subjects like music, movies, TV shows and more specific topics such as why sliced cheese is better then cubed cheese, the right amount of ketchup to put on a hamburger, and why sticks will always be superior to stones. You're not quite sure what to think of that last topic, so you just go along with her opinion. "I want to show you something" Kate says with excitement. She gets up and walks over to the flat screen TV. She then turns on the DVD player, while rummaging through a pile of DVD's. She opens one with a clear case and puts it the DVD player. A huge grin is once again on Kate's face as she hurries back to the love seat and sits down next to you. "Wait until you see this" Kate says with enthusiasm as she use's the remote to turn on the TV. The TV shows a slightly grainy image of a street that you can immediately tell is New York City. On video you see a girl you're sure is a slightly version of Kate walk up to a fancy hotel, with the cameraman following her. "This is the place" Kate tells the cameraman. "Are you sure she'll be here?" the cameraman asks, you recognize the voice as Martin's. Suddenly two people walk out of the hotel, one is a very large, muscular man the other is you. "Linda you're awesome" Kate shouts at you. You give a quick wave, while the man glares at Kate. You then get into a waiting limo and drive off. "She waved at us, did you see that?" Kate says with an abundant amount of energy. The movie then cuts to static and Kate turns off the TV. "You don't remember that do you?" Kate asks with a bit of sadness. "I'm sorry kid, I won't be forgetting this that's for sure" You say with a mix of truth and dry wit. Around noon, Kate orders a pizza, unlike the one from yesterday, it's not your favorite of mush and olives, in fact it's your least favorite anchovies. You assume this must Kate's favorite as her eyes get wide eyed at the sight of it. Despite that she only manages to eat one or two slices. Despite her limited energy and lack of an apatite that is no doubt caused by her cancer she remains in good sprites. You manage to eat a few slices, although it is not a very fun experience.Shortly after lunch. Martin and Jeanette walk in through the front door. When they walk into the kitchen, Martin grins upon seeing the pizza. "Anchovies" He says with delight as he grabs a slice. "We just got back from Luca's" Jeanette scolded her boyfriend. "Always room for anchovies" Jeanette rolls her eyes, while Kate finds the situation quite amusing, letting out a small giggle. Once Martin is done with the slice he turns toward you. "So now we're off to Whisaw" Martin says as he takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to you. "These are the songs you're going to sing" You look at the note and sure enough it has the names of the songs you're going to sing. There is about ten of them and you know them all by heart, there is no need to rehearse. The four of you head outside and into Martin's car. It looks a bit old and is the color of walls in the basement. You all manage to squish in, with Martin driving, Jeanette in the front, and you and Kate in the back. > You to the concert (Happy Mood) Martin drives the car into the parking lot of the Whishaw theater. The building is about two stories and made out of bricks. Giant gray metal letters spelling out the word "WHISHAW" are above the front door. The parking lot itself needs a few repairs as grass is beginning to grow in the cracks of the pavement. As you get out of the car you look at the people across the street, walking to and from the various shops. You get a bit a worried that someone will see you, but they seem busy with their lives that if anyone did see you they wouldn't notice you were the famous Linda Niles who got kidnapped. You, Martin, Jeanette and Kate walk towards the entrance of the theater. "So how does this work, is there a band or something?" You ask, knowing you've should ask this when you first agreed to the concert. "It's like karaoke, the music of your songs will play and you do the lyrics" Martin explains. The four walk into the building. Inside you see posters for plays, singers and bands you've never heard of. On the opposite wall, two sets of double doors leading into the auditorium. There is a concussion stand advertising food that may or may not have expired long ago. A ticket booth on the right looks like it is in need of a good dusting. The carpet looks a bit dated and while the wall color is not nearly as bleak as the ones in the basement, it is beginning to peel. "She's really something isn't she" Martin says marveling his theater. "It's something alright" You respond. Martin doesn't seem to pick up on your sarcasm, but Jeanette does as she lets out a snicker. The four of you head into the auditorium, the stage has a microphone with a spotlight shining on it "I've got to get the music on, good luck" Martin bluntly states as heads off and goes through a door to the right of the stage. You walk up a set of steps and onto the stage. Gently you tap the microphone to see if it's working. The tapping sound echoes throughout the theater, confirm the mic works. Jeanette and Kate take their seat as the music for the first begins to play. Shortly after you begin singing Martin comes in and takes a seat next to Kate. The concert goes to perfection, you can confidently say it is the best performance you ever gave. It's ironic that it's also the smallest audience you ever had. After the show, Kate stands and applauds excessively. Martin and Jeanette also join in the applause. You walk off to the stage and approach the trio. "That was awesome, beyond awesome, awesome just isn't a strong enough word" Kate rapidly. "What happens now?" you ask, slightly afraid of the answer. "Now we say goodbye, if you leave here and walk down three blocks, you'll find the police station" Martin explains. "It really means a lot to us that you did this" Jeanette thanked. "Thank you for everything" Kate says while hugging you and squeezes tightly. When Kate finally lets go, you head to the front door, you turn around and wave to them as they wave back. Once outside it occurs to you that none of them are concerned about you reporting to the police. Perhaps it didn't matter to them, you gave the concert for Kate and that's all they wanted. It also crosses your mind that you are free, the whole situation is over, although you doubt you will forget this anytime soon. The sun has nearly set as you head for the police station. > A few weeks later Finally you are back home in Los Angeles, the press had been hounded you non-stop. Granted as an A-list star, they hound you all the time anyway, but after the whole kidnapping event, they have been doubling their efforts. Thankfully your house has the best security money can buy and you don't have to worry about them for the moment. You never turned in Martin and Jeanette, you even begin to see them as good people. Soon your kidnapping isn't the top story and it gets less and less media attention. After a month the news stops talking about it altogether, some other celebrity is caught in a scandal and the world turns their attention to that. Another month later you learn through sources that Kate has died from her cancer, you wonder if should attend her funeral or not > You attend funeral It may be risky but something is compelling you go back to Destiny Hill. You've avoided the press before and you can do it again. You arrive back in Destiny Hill in a inconspicuous car, similar to the one you were in when you had the meet and greet. At the church you recognize Martin's car. Rain begins to drizzle as you park the car and head in. There are a few people inside and most pay no attention to you. In front pew you see Martin and Jeanette sitting with their heads bowed down. They don't notice you as you head to the front and sit near them. You tap Martin on the shoulder and he jumps slightly upon seeing who are. Jeanette eyes widen when she sees you. "What are you doing here?" Martin says in a mix of sadness and confusion. "I came to pay my respects, I only Kate for a day, but I know she was a good kid". You answer. "You don't have to do this, you're risking your career by being here" Jeanette says with concern. "I want to do this" Martin hugs you in way his sister did back the concert. "It'll be alright" You comfort Martin. After the funeral, the three of you head back to the house, Martin goes over his favorite memories of his sister. You learn that Jeanette's father had also died of liver cancer and she and Martin meet at a support rally. By the end of the day you head off but remain in close contact with the two of them. You make it an annual tradition to head out to Destiny Hill and visit Martin and Jeanette, also putting fresh flowers at Kate's grave every time you are there. A few years later Martin and Jeanette get married, while you don't attend as you don't want the attention on you instead of them on their big day, you foot the bill so they can have a very large and extravagant wedding. The events that happen give inspiration and another year later your next album is called "Stockholm Syndrome" which gets universal acclaim. You dedicate the album to Kate, people begin talking about who this Kate could be. The rest of your career continues in this fashion. Decades pass and soon you are in inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame. You are considered one of the greatest singers of all times. Long after you're gone, people continue to talk about your legacy and the influence you had on music.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Finally you are back home in Los Angeles, the press had been hounded you non-stop. Granted as an A-list star, they hound you all the time anyway, but after the whole kidnapping event, they have been doubling their efforts. Thankfully your house has the best security money can buy and you don't have to worry about them for the moment. You never turned in Martin and Jeanette, you even begin to see them as good people. Soon your kidnapping isn't the top story and it gets less and less media attention. After a month the news stops talking about it altogether, some other celebrity is caught in a scandal and the world turns their attention to that. Another month later you learn through sources that Kate has died from her cancer, you wonder if should attend her funeral or not > You do not attend funeral Going back to Destiny Hill would just be too risky, if you caught being there, the rumors will start again that you staged everything and this time people would start to believe them. Not to mention you'd be putting Martin and Jeanette at risk. You send them flowers and a sympathy card signed "L.N.", you also have the funeral coasts taken care of. Your career goes back to way it was before. A year later your next album is called "Stockholm Syndrome" and gets positive reviews. You dedicate the album to Kate, people begin talking about who this Kate could be.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Kidnapped or not, it just wouldn't be the right thing to do to turn Martin down, if not for him then at least for his sister who is dying of cancer and wasn't part of your kidnapping int he first place. "I'm in" You tell Martin. Martin faces quickly turns from sad, to surprised to overjoyed in a span of five seconds. He puts his arms around and hugs you. "Thank you, Linda" He responds, still holding on, the nervousness you've seen in him appears to have melted away. He eventually realizes what he is doing and let's go, his face has a flash of embarrassment. "So, Kate is coming home later today, you can meet her, talk to her and in the evening you can go down to the Whishaw and give the concert" "Sounds good" Martin walks back to the house, seemly forgetting the fact you are left outside without anyone watching. You sit down in the lawn chair he was sitting in earlier and enjoy the fresh air. After an hour or two of lounging you hear footsteps approaching, you turn to see Jeanette standing nearby. "It's time meet Kate, Martin and I are heading out" Jeanette says as the two of you walk back to the house. Once back inside, Jeanette heads out the front door while you see someone sitting in the room with the love seats. This is no doubt this Kate, she is about five feet tall, has short brown hair and a somewhat narrow chin. Upon seeing you, a huge grin appears on her face as she runs towards you. "Oh my god, it's you, it's really you, sorry I'm acting like a total weirdo. I mean part of me was thinking Martin had simply lost his mind when he said you were here" Kate says excitedly. Her outgoingness makes you surprise she is related Martin. "It's alright, I'm human like everyone" You reassure. Almost as she soon she gets up, she goes back to sit down on the love seat, no doubt all she going through is leaving her with limited energy. You go and join her on the love seat. "I know Martin kidnapped you" Kate's tone becoming more serious. "I imagine it's all anyone is talking about for past few days" You responded. "My brother is a good person, sure he's an oddball but I love him, I just don't want you to think he's a monster, please forgive him and try to understand why he did what he did" > You don't Forgive Martin After all the terror Martin has put you through, you still manage to have a heart and put on the concert, but forgiving him is just simply asking for too much. You want to say you will because that is what Kate wants to hear, but a comforting lie is still a lie and you're the not kind of person who would lie to a person with cancer. "I'm sorry I can't" You truthful tell her. Kate stares at you the way a kid does when their parent tells them there's no Santa Clause. "You'll still get your concert" The next few hours are the longest and some of the most painful hours of your life. You try to talk to Kate about a variety of subjects, but she always just responded with one word answers. You get a little annoyed how you're the one who gets kidnapped but you're the bad guy. The torture comes to end when Kate goes and orders a pizza, you remain in the room with the love seats with Kate eats the pizza by herself in the kitchen. You don't have any lunch and you wonder how you will do the show on an empty stomach. Finally Martin and Jeanette come home, Kate walks to over to them, putting on a facade. "How are you two getting along?" Martin asks completelyobvious. "Doing great" Kate says with a very convincing fake happiness. You join the three in the foyer ad Martin turns his attention to you. "So now we're off to Whisaw" Martin says as he takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to you. "These are the songs you're going to sing" You look at the note and sure enough it has the names of the songs you're going to sing. There is about ten of them and you know them all by heart, there is no need to rehearse. The four of you head outside and into Martin's car. It looks a bit old and is the color of walls in the basement. You all manage to squish in, with Martin driving, Jeanette in the front, and you and Kate in the back. The car ride is filled with awkward silence. > You to the concert Martin drives the car into the parking lot of the Whishaw theater. The building is about two stories and made out of bricks. Giant gray metal letters spelling out the word "WHISHAW" are above the front door. The parking lot itself needs a few repairs as grass is beginning to grow in the cracks of the pavement. As you get out of the car you look at the people across the street, walking to and from the various shops. You hope that someone will see you, then you could get out of this mess without feeling even more guilty but they seem busy with their lives that if anyone did see you they wouldn't notice you were the famous Linda Niles who got kidnapped. You, Martin, Jeanette and Kate walk towards the entrance of the theater. "So how does this work,?" You ask, your mind focused solely on getting this over with "It's like karaoke, the music of your songs will play and you do the lyrics" Martin explains. The four walk into the building. Inside you see posters for plays, singers and bands you've never heard of. On the opposite wall, two sets of double doors leading into the auditorium. There is a concussion stand advertising food that may or may not have expired long ago. A ticket booth on the right looks like it is in need of a good dusting. The carpet looks a bit dated and while the wall color is not nearly as bleak as the ones in the basement, it is beginning to peel. "She's really something isn't she" Martin says marveling his theater. "Yeah" You respond, not really paying attention what he just said. The four of you head into the auditorium, the stage has a microphone with a spotlight shining on it "I've got to get the music on, good luck" Martin bluntly states as heads off and goes through a door to the right of the stage. You walk up a set of steps and onto the stage. Gently you tap the microphone to see if it's working. The tapping sound echoes throughout the theater, confirm the mic works. Jeanette and Kate take their seat as the music for the first begins to play. You can't help but notice Kate is giving a rather nasty glare. Shortly after you begin singing Martin comes in and takes a seat next to Kate. The pain in your stomach from not eating greatly effects your ability to think straight. You give without a doubt the worst performance of your career, thankfully it is also the almost audience of your career and you doubt they will ever tell anybody. After the performance is over the three just stare at you. "Well, thank you for doing that" Martin says unsure of how to handle the situation. Jeanette is at a loss of words and Kate flat out ignores you. "So what happens now?" You ask, eager to get out of here. "Now we say goodbye, if you leave here and walk down three blocks, you'll find the police station" Martin explains. You walk out of theater without looking back, you inhale deeply after you're outside. You don't plan on turning them in, you just want to put as much distance between you and this town as you can. The experience you have at Destiny Hill is so dreadful you want nothing to do with singing ever again. Over the next few months you become reclusive and live your life in solitude. People begin to talk about the successful but short career of Linda Niles. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You've stuck around this along you might as well find out you were kidnapped in the first place. You walk up to Martin and gentle nudge his shoulder, he wakes up startled but calms down quickly. He notices you standing beside him and gets up from the lawn chair. "How Jeanette's clothes?" He asks "They're fine" you reassure. "I suppose now would be a good time to tell you why I went through the trouble of brining you here" "You did say you'd tell me today" "I have a sister named Kate, she's fifteen and the only family I have, a year go she got diagnosed with liver cancer and it quickly became terminal" Martin begins to choke up, but regains his composure and continues "Tomorrow she is being released simply so she can enjoy the final days of her life. I own a place called the Whishaw theater, you are going to give her a concert" You're not sure what to make of all of this, the story of Marin's sister is sad, but this man has kidnapped you and held you against your will for two days, does he deserve this act of kindness? > You refuse to do the concert Two wrongs don't make a right, it is tragic what is happening to Martin's sister, but that's no excuse for holding someone against their will. "You have my sympathy, but I'm not going to do this for you" You firmly tell him. Martin's face appears to be on the brink of tears. "I had a feeling you'd say that, I suppose there is no point in holding you here, you can leave" You are bit shocked how easily Martin gives up. "You're not worried I'll turn you in the police?" you say, instantly realizing that wasn't the smartest question to ask. "Soon my sister will be dead,being free or in jail won't change the grief I will feel" Martin sits down on the lawn, coming to terms with reality. His goal was to make his dying sister happy and he had failed. He doesn't pay any attention to you as you make your way to the road. Eventually you come across a police car and flag them down. You are rushed to a local hospital, with full police and FBI protection of course. At the hospital, you are checked to see if you have physical wounds or emotional trauma. Physical you are fine, mentally you are worn out and have anxiety, which you can't say surprises you. The root of your anxiety isn't actually the kidnapping but the decision to turn Martin in or not, before you would have turn him in a second, but now that you know the situation he is facing you don't know. > You turn Martin in Martin broke the law and dealing with a personal tragedy doesn't change that, you tell the FBI about Martin and Jeanette. Although they only have first names to go on, finding Kate is rather easy she is the only teenage patient at the local hospital with liver cancer. From there they learn where Martin lives and are able to arrest him along with Jeanette, after a few days you are back home in Los Angeles. Over the next few months you learn while awaiting trial, Martin was unable to attend Kate's funeral after she dies. Eventually he is convicted and sentenced to twenty years in jail, a bit of a harsh sentence, but the fact that he kidnapped someone so popular really worked against him. Jeanette is also convicted and sentenced to five years. The public learns during the trial why Martin kidnapped you and many begin to see him in a sympathetic light. You get some heat for turning him and refusing to do the concert. You become overrun with guilt which affects the quality of your songs and preferences. After a few years the world turns its attention to another singer, while you start taking pills to deal with everything you're going through. Pills lead to stronger pills and after a few months you have a fatal overdose. Ten years later the movie: "The Rise and fall of Linda Niles" premiers in theaters, it gets positive reviews.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Two wrongs don't make a right, it is tragic what is happening to Martin's sister, but that's no excuse for holding someone against their will. "You have my sympathy, but I'm not going to do this for you" You firmly tell him. Martin's face appears to be on the brink of tears. "I had a feeling you'd say that, I suppose there is no point in holding you here, you can leave" You are bit shocked how easily Martin gives up. "You're not worried I'll turn you in the police?" you say, instantly realizing that wasn't the smartest question to ask. "Soon my sister will be dead,being free or in jail won't change the grief I will feel" Martin sits down on the lawn, coming to terms with reality. His goal was to make his dying sister happy and he had failed. He doesn't pay any attention to you as you make your way to the road. Eventually you come across a police car and flag them down. You are rushed to a local hospital, with full police and FBI protection of course. At the hospital, you are checked to see if you have physical wounds or emotional trauma. Physical you are fine, mentally you are worn out and have anxiety, which you can't say surprises you. The root of your anxiety isn't actually the kidnapping but the decision to turn Martin in or not, before you would have turn him in a second, but now that you know the situation he is facing you don't know. > You don't turn Martin in You are overcome with enough guilt over refusing to do the concert, you don't need more by having Martin arrested. Besides you figure Martin is already suffering enough You lie to the police saying you don't know the name of the kidnapper and don't remember the house. After a few days you are back home in Los Angeles. A few months later you learn through sources that Martin's sister, Kate has passed away, you anonymously send flowers. As for your career, the guilt continues to haunt you effecting the quality of your songs and future performances. In a few years the world turns its attention to a new singer and you are labeled a "has been". Luckily you've always been good with your money and enjoy a good if obscure life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up the next morning and the smell of pancakes is in the air. You sit up to see that another tray of buttermilk pancakes and orange juice on the floor, there is also a small hand written note on the tray as well. You get up, walk towards the tray and read the note: I just realized you haven't had a change of clothes since you got here, there's a fresh pair in the bathroom, I borrowed them from Jeanette, I hope they fit alright, once you have eaten and changed, meet me in the backyard. -Martin You find it a little creepy that Martin was walking around in here while you were asleep, no point in stressing over it now through. Suddenly it dawns on you that wearing the same clothes for two days, including to bed, can't be good hygiene. You enter the bathroom and find the clothes the note mentions, which consists of a pair of loose fit jeans and a navy blue tank top. In addition a pair of fresh socks are sitting next to them. After a relaxing shower, you change clothes, and head upstairs. You remember the sliding door in the kitchen, you go through the foyer into the kitchen and out the door. When you head outside, you take a moment to bask int the sunlight, you've been couped inside for two days and you now you have the chance to savior the sunlight beaming down your skin, a gentle breeze touches your face and feels so comforting. You take off your socks and shoes to feel the grass on your feet, enjoying the feeling of each blade. if someone was watching you, they'd think you'd suffer some sort of brain injury, but right now you simply don't care. As you walk further into the back you see tall wooden fences on both sides of yard, preventing the neighbors from looking in. At the opposite end of the lawn you see that there are tall trees, there are so many that it appears dark despite being early in the day. In the middle of the area you can see a lawn chair, with Martin laying in it, dozing. You'll have to wake him up, although you could run into woods and make your escape or you could turn around go back in the house and out the front door. > You escape into the woods Who knows what Martin and Jeanette have in store for you or even if they are actually going to let you go. You decide to go into the woods to make your escape. Quietly you walk to the woods edge to avoid waking up Martin, once there you make a run for it. After several minutes of running you slow down to so you don't trip over any roots or hidden tree stumps. You think to yourself once you're on the other side of the woods, it'll be easy to find help. Several hours later you come to conclusion that you are most likely lost, you wish you knew how to get back, as Martin and Jeanette don't seem so bad compared to your current situation of being, tired and hungry. At this point it's best to keep walking and eventually you'll be out of here, at this point you're probably one or two towns away from Destiny Hill. Hours turn into days as you are exhausted, starving and your mind is beginning to crack. You are convinced you are in the largest forest in the world or you're walking in circles, it's hard to figure out which theory is right. Days turn into weeks as you collapse in front of a large tree, dying is far less painful then you thought it would be. Your disappearance becomes one of the biggest mysteries of all time. Destiny Hill become a tourist attraction as people come all across the globe trying to solve the disappearance of Linda Niles. Martin and Jeanette move away several years later to small town in Pennsylvania. No one ever suspects them. Twenty years later, lumberjacks find your remains while clearing out the area to make room for office buildings. The mystery deepens.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up the next morning and the smell of pancakes is in the air. You sit up to see that another tray of buttermilk pancakes and orange juice on the floor, there is also a small hand written note on the tray as well. You get up, walk towards the tray and read the note: I just realized you haven't had a change of clothes since you got here, there's a fresh pair in the bathroom, I borrowed them from Jeanette, I hope they fit alright, once you have eaten and changed, meet me in the backyard. -Martin You find it a little creepy that Martin was walking around in here while you were asleep, no point in stressing over it now through. Suddenly it dawns on you that wearing the same clothes for two days, including to bed, can't be good hygiene. You enter the bathroom and find the clothes the note mentions, which consists of a pair of loose fit jeans and a navy blue tank top. In addition a pair of fresh socks are sitting next to them. After a relaxing shower, you change clothes, and head upstairs. You remember the sliding door in the kitchen, you go through the foyer into the kitchen and out the door. When you head outside, you take a moment to bask int the sunlight, you've been couped inside for two days and you now you have the chance to savior the sunlight beaming down your skin, a gentle breeze touches your face and feels so comforting. You take off your socks and shoes to feel the grass on your feet, enjoying the feeling of each blade. if someone was watching you, they'd think you'd suffer some sort of brain injury, but right now you simply don't care. As you walk further into the back you see tall wooden fences on both sides of yard, preventing the neighbors from looking in. At the opposite end of the lawn you see that there are tall trees, there are so many that it appears dark despite being early in the day. In the middle of the area you can see a lawn chair, with Martin laying in it, dozing. You'll have to wake him up, although you could run into woods and make your escape or you could turn around go back in the house and out the front door. > You go out the front door You decide now is a good opportunity to leave and that the woods are too dangerous so you sneak back inside, into the foyer, and out the front door. Once out you decided to run off as fast as you can after exiting the house. You run, run some more and keep running, you never stop to look back to see if Martin is following you. After maybe an hour your legs simply don't have the energy and you collapse on someone's yard. Luckily the owner is home and when they see you on the ground they quickly call the police. When cops get there you explain who you are and they rush you to a local hospital, with full police and FBI protection of course. At the hospital, you are checked to see if you have physical wounds or emotional trauma. Physically you are fine, mentally you're a little out of it, not surprising after what you've through, after a few days you are sent back to your home Los Angeles. The police try find Martin or Jeanette, but you were in such a rush when you ran out that you can't retrace your steps from where you were found. You never looked back at the house when you escaped that you have no idea what it looks like, let alone the street you were on. The only info the FBI have to go on is their first names, it takes a while to comb through the hundreds of Martins in Destiny Hill but eventually they figure out which one kidnapped you. It turns out his last name is LaRosa, he owned a theater and has a little sister with terminal cancer. This process takes about a week and by the time the FBI arrive at the house it is long abandoned. They also find out who Jeanette is, turns out her last name is Richards and lives in an apartment, which has also been abandoned. Soon they are put on FBI's most wanted but they are never found. As for your career, you become a bit withdrawn and it is a very long time before you have meet and greet or anything that involves directly interacting with the fans. At future concerts you have a few more guards around. People notice all of this and you face some criticism, however just as many people defend you considering what you went through, rumors of your kidnapping being a publicity stunt die down, although the occasional internet troll mentions it. In several years things return to the way they were before, and incident just becomes a chapter of your long career. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're smart enough to know the devil you know is better then the devil you don't. "Maybe Martin should stay" you suggest. Both Martin and Jeanette are bit surprise by your comment. "Sorry hun, but I have a ton of work to do and so does Martin" Jeanette stated. "If you really plan on letting me getting go by the end of the week, then it benefits me not having Martin go out and risk getting caught" Your case doesn't seem to persuade Jeanette in the slightest, Martin on the other hand seems to take heed to what you say. "You can do my errands Jeanette and I can do your bank statements, you'll still get the credit for doing them" Martin advised. "Fine, I guess we should be careful" Jeanette and Martin kiss each goodbye as she gets off the sofa, leaves the room and heads out the front door. As soon as she is gone Martin becomes his more on edge self. "We have some work to do" Martin explained. As before Martin grabs you by the wrist but not very tightly leading you into the foyer and then a room on the left. It is a kitchen complete with a refrigerator, oven and stove. The appliances seemed fairly modern, although the oven and stove appeared to be a bit dirty. Next to them was a counter and sink, with dishes that needed to be washed.A sliding door on the right lead to the backyard was on the right. In the middle of the room is a kitchen table, on it is a box with a bunch of papers. You both sit down at the table as Martin takes the box and dumps the papers on the table. "Jeanette needs these bank statements alphabetize" Martin blunted instructed. It is a very dull affair as Martin at times seems to forget you are even there, paying for more attention to the papers then to you. You try to make small talk, Martin doesn't say much, but you manage to learn that his parents died in a car crash a few years ago and he doesn't like hot weather. Martin works at very fast pace, finishing his half of the statements and then proceeds to complete your half. By noon you are done, Martin orders a pizza, mushrooms and olives your favorite. After lunch Martin returns to the room with the love seats, lays down on one and promptly dozes off. You are now left unsupervised in the house. > You escape You realize that you will never get an opportunity like this again, you head to the front door, unlock it and quietly sneak out. Knowing that Jeanette could be home any minute, you decided to run off as fast as you can after exiting the house. You run, run some more and keep running, you never stop to look back to see if Martin (or Jeanette) is following you. After maybe an hour your legs simply don't have the energy and you collapse on someone's yard. Luckily the owner is home and when they see you on the ground they quickly call the police. When cops get there you explain who you are and they rush you to a local hospital, with full police and FBI protection of course. At the hospital, you are checked to see if you have physical wounds or emotional trauma. Physically you are fine, mentally you're a little out of it, not surprising after what you've through, after a few days you are sent back to your home Los Angeles. The police try find Martin or Jeanette, but you were in such a rush when you ran out that you can't retrace your steps from where you were found. You never looked back at the house when you escaped that you have no idea what it looks like, let alone the street you were on. The only info the FBI have to go on is their first names, it takes a while to comb through the hundreds of Martins in Destiny Hill but eventually they figure out which one kidnapped you. It turns out his last name is LaRosa, he owned a theater and has a little sister with terminal cancer. This process takes about a week and by the time the FBI arrive at the house it is long abandoned. They also find out who Jeanette is, turns out her last name is Richards and lives in an apartment, which has also been abandoned. Soon they are put on FBI's most wanted but they are never found. As for your career, you become a bit more withdrawn and never have a meet and greet again. In fact you rarely do anything that involves interacting directly with the fans. Your future concerts all have a beefed up security presence. At first people sympathize with you, considering what you've been through but over the years the sympathy slowly turns to criticism, this hurts your career, but you're able to handle it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're smart enough to know the devil you know is better then the devil you don't. "Maybe Martin should stay" you suggest. Both Martin and Jeanette are bit surprise by your comment. "Sorry hun, but I have a ton of work to do and so does Martin" Jeanette stated. "If you really plan on letting me getting go by the end of the week, then it benefits me not having Martin go out and risk getting caught" Your case doesn't seem to persuade Jeanette in the slightest, Martin on the other hand seems to take heed to what you say. "You can do my errands Jeanette and I can do your bank statements, you'll still get the credit for doing them" Martin advised. "Fine, I guess we should be careful" Jeanette and Martin kiss each goodbye as she gets off the sofa, leaves the room and heads out the front door. As soon as she is gone Martin becomes his more on edge self. "We have some work to do" Martin explained. As before Martin grabs you by the wrist but not very tightly leading you into the foyer and then a room on the left. It is a kitchen complete with a refrigerator, oven and stove. The appliances seemed fairly modern, although the oven and stove appeared to be a bit dirty. Next to them was a counter and sink, with dishes that needed to be washed.A sliding door on the right lead to the backyard was on the right. In the middle of the room is a kitchen table, on it is a box with a bunch of papers. You both sit down at the table as Martin takes the box and dumps the papers on the table. "Jeanette needs these bank statements alphabetize" Martin blunted instructed. It is a very dull affair as Martin at times seems to forget you are even there, paying for more attention to the papers then to you. You try to make small talk, Martin doesn't say much, but you manage to learn that his parents died in a car crash a few years ago and he doesn't like hot weather. Martin works at very fast pace, finishing his half of the statements and then proceeds to complete your half. By noon you are done, Martin orders a pizza, mushrooms and olives your favorite. After lunch Martin returns to the room with the love seats, lays down on one and promptly dozes off. You are now left unsupervised in the house. > You go back to the basement If something seems to good to be true then it probably it is. You head back to the basement and back into what has become your room. Jeanette returns a few hours later and comes into you room, holding a box of leftover pizza. "Thanks for doing the bank statements" Jeanette said while putting down the box of pizza. "Martin did most of the work" You admit. "Maybe you didn't want Martin to go because you were worried about him, maybe you found working with him romantic" You are taken aback by this statement. "I'm joking" Jeanette says as soon she notices you're getting uncomfortable. Jeanette is obnoxious and Martin is on another world, quite a pair those two are you think to yourself. You and Jeanette spend time eating the leftover pizza and talking for a bit. You learn Jeanette's father was in the army. After you are done, Jeanette leaves taking the now empty pizza box. You watch some primetime TV and then fall asleep<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> After waiting for an hour the door opens and the man appears. "Come on" he shyly says while sticking out his arm. You walk towards him and he grabs hold of your wrist. He heads out while tugging you along, he is obviously trying to make sure you don't run for it, he also seems to be trying to avoid hurting you. You walk into the next room which is basically just a larger version of the room you were just in, carpeted floor with dust bunnies, bleak white walls and no windows. In the middle of the room is a staircase which you and the man walk up. Upstairs you discover you are in a foyer in what appears to be a residential house. You eye the front door at the end of the foyer but the kidnapper tugs you in the other direction. You enter a room on the right which has two loveseat sofas, a large flat screen TV on stand with a DVD player and several DVDs. On the floor is a carpet that doesn't have dust bunnies, walls that aren't so bleak as the ones in the basement, and more importantly for you windows. You never thought you'd be so happy to see sunlight, but after almost a full day without you'll never take it for granted again. While you're staring outside you almost overlook that there is a women sitting on one of the love seats. She looks around your age, has almost waist long blonde hair, jean short shorts and a red tank top, she looks far more confident then the kidnapper ever did. She notices you are looking at her and begins to talk. "I can't believe you pulled this off Martin" the women begins. "Yeah, I made a promise and I don't break my promises" the man replied as he sat down next to her. You notice the man is far more relaxed when in the company of this women. "So you're the world famous Linda Niles, I'm Jeanette" the women introduces herself. "Nice to meet you" you respond. You suppose being polite will improve your odds of getting out of this situation. "I hope Martin has been treating you alright, he isn't a bad person, but I don't blame you if the kidnapping gave you a different impression" You can't tell if she is being serious or making a wise crack. "So the reason I am here is I'm going to babysit you today, Martin has a few errands to run and we obviously can't just leave you here alone" Jeanette explained. "But the FBI is out looking for you" You say surprisingly with a bit of concern in your voice. "I have...things to do" Martin stated purposely vague. You could insist that Martin stays and Jeanette goes out to do whatever these errands are. You're not quite sure what to make of Jeanette, she could be dangerous, while you know Martin is timid and (probably) won't hurt you. You might even be able to make an escape attempt. On the other hand Martin isn't much for conversation, having Jeanette stay around would give you somebody to talk to, which would really help you keep your saintly while trapped. However Martin going out runs the risk if him being caught, which can your situation much better or way worse. > You have Jeanette stay You decided to go with their plan, it's not likely the would change it if you wanted them too anyway. "I'm heading off now" Martin said as he got off the loveseat and headed towards the front door. "Aren't you worried he'll get caught?" You ask Jeanette. "He'll be fine" she responded not the least bit concerned. "So why did Martin kidnap me?" "I'm sorry Martin asked me not to tell you, just don't worry, we won't harm you and in a few days you'll be let go and can go home" You figure it was no use to keep trying to get info out of her, something about her makes you think she can rather stubborn. "So to help pass the time, you're going to help alphabetize some bank statements" Jeanette said in way she already assumed you would agree. "What do you mean" you responded quite puzzled. "Well the old manger of the bank I work at decided it would be fun to have bank statements in random order, so they fired him and if I fix this mess I got a good shot of getting his job, with you I can get it done even faster" You decide not to argue partly you're a bit afraid of what would happen if you said no and partly because sitting around doing nothing couldn't be good for your mental health. Jeanette heads off into the foyer and you follow her into a room on the left. It is a kitchen complete with a refrigerator, oven and stove. The appliances seemed fairly modern, although the oven and stove appeared to be a bit dirty. Next to them was a counter and sink, with dishes that needed to be washed. A sliding door on the right lead to the backyard. In the middle of the room was a kitchen table,on it is a box with a bunch of papers.You both sit down at the table as Jeanette takes the box and dumps the papers on the table. "You know the alphabet?" Jeanette sarcastically asks you. "Well if I didn't, now would be a good time to learn" You reply in equal wit. Jeanette smiles briefly at the remark, staying on her good side would be the best course of action. For next several hours you and her organize the files, it isn't so bad as you and her talk during the process. You learn that her father severed in the army and she lost her mother at a young age. You also learn she and Martin have been going out for two years. Around noon Jeanette orders a pizza, mushrooms and olives your favorite. By late afternoon you and her all done. "Alright, if you ever get tired as a singer, I'll hire you as my assistant. Jeanette compliments. A short while later Martin returns home and Jeanette greets him with a kiss. "Everything is all set for tomorrow" Martin confirms. "Great, Linda was a valuable help to me" Jeanette responds in a rather cheerful tone. Martin turns his attention to you. "Tomorrow I will explain everything to you, for now I'm afraid you have to go back to the basement" You comply and head back downstairs, for dinner you have left over pizza and after watching some prime time tv you fall asleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You lay down on the sofa, wondering what lays in store for you. No one would go through all this trouble for no reason and you dread learning what that reason is. Does the kidnapper simply want a ransom or do they have something more sinister in mind? You notice there are no windows in this room and the bleak white walls are not helping you stay positive. You can't let fear overcome you, only by thinking rational will you get out of this. Suddenly the door that was locked opens up and the man who kidnapped you appears, he is holding a tray with a paper bag on it, he appears nervous and is looking down at the tray and not you. > You say nothing You say nothing, you are way to nervous that saying the wrong thing will angry him and make your situation worse. He also says nothing and the two of you stare at each like 5th graders at their first dance. Finally the man gets the courage to speak up. "I'm sorry about this, I promise everything will be explained in time, just relax I have no intention of hurting you and by the end of the week, you'll be home". The kidnapper explains You stare at the bag on the tray. "Oh, this is dinner, I got it from this deli called Luca's, the internet said you liked pepperoni calzone and diet soda so I got you that" The kidnapper says while putting down the tray. "Now that sofa opens up into a bed and in the morning, you'll meet my girlfriend, it won't be so bad" The man quickly left, closing the door behind him and locking it. You wonder if he is afraid of being caught by the FBI or if he is always like that. You pick up the bag on the tray and take out the contents, sure enough it's a pepperoni calzone and a diet soda. Your stomach growls at the sight of the meal, you are too hungry to care if it's poisonous or not and begin wolfing the down the food. After you've finished you put the tray in a corner and pull the bed out of the sofa . As you lay down, the events of the day race through your mind and you wonder if you'll truly leave this place alive. However you are exhausted and soon you fall asleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken in a small room with a throbbing headache, it takes a moment for things to come into focus. When they do you see a beige sofa and a flat screen tv on the wall. Dust bunnies are on the carpeted floor and there are two doors leading out the room. You try the first door and it is locked, while the second door leads to even smaller bathroom complete with a toilet, shower and sink. You're not quite sure what to do next. > You shout for help "SOMEONE HELP" you shout at the top of your lungs. You scream several more times until you are too tired to shout. After a few minuets nothing happens and you are convinced either no one heard you or if anyone did hear, they have no intention on helping you. You'd figure that was a long shot but was worth a try. So now what? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> It’s officially winter break. You stumble toward your dorm room, brain turned to mush from taking five exams in three days. All you have to do is grab your suitcase, and then you’ll be on your way to NYC to stay with your boyfriend, Keith, and his parents for Christmas. You’ve never met them, but he’s told you that they have a large, luxurious apartment with a pool--which sounds awesome, but intimidating. Anyway. Keith, the lucky son of a gun, has already flown out. (He’s a creative writing major. His exams consist of writing poems about his childhood and writing essays about the meaning of life.) You pause in the hallway (which is empty--almost everyone else has finished exams and gotten the heck out of here.) Like every college dorm room in every movie ever, there's a whiteboard on your door. Now there's an "I Heart NY" magnet on there. The magnet holds a postcard with a photo of the Statue of Liberty. You're pretty sure it wasn't there when you left this morning. > You probably for your roommate. Go in your room without looking at it. You go in, shut the door, and finish packing. As you roll your suitcase down the deserted hallway, you see something disappearing around a corner: a figure about three feet tall, with green skin. > You follow it. You peek around the corner. Just a maintenance guy. He seems surprised there are still students here. > You speaking of which, CRIMINY, let's get going. The airport is hella crowded, and of course every single face you see is pinched with anxiety, like flying home for Christmas is the most horrific event of their lives. You aren't usually one to use the word vibe, but the whole atmosphere gives you a slightly sick feeling, as if your body is absorbing their stress. You board the plane for the six-hour flight to your connection, Atlanta. Halfway through, you use the lav. When you return, there's a postcard on your seat. This one shows a picture of the Empire State Building. You turn it over. Black, scrawling letters read: Dear Clara, When you get off, that’s when I’ll find you. When I find you, that’s when I’ll kill you. When you run, better run fast. When you hide, better hide good. When you tell, it makes things worse. Panic clenches your throat. Is this real? Does someone actually want to kill you? What should you do? Tell the stewardess? Or follow the advice on the postcard? > You tell You make your way to the galley and show the head flight attendant the postcard, explaining how you came to receive it. She smiles, turns it over. “The Empire State Building. I’ve been there.” You snatch it back and flip it to show her the message again. “Yeah, but someone’s threatening to kill me.” “I love New York.” Her eyes are glazed. “It’s my favorite layover.” She turns to smile at you. Her white teeth glitter. You show another flight attendant with similar results. Okay, this isn’t going so well. What should you do? Start screaming for help, or just sit there, like, well, a sitting duck? > You scream. Immediately, the co-captain comes out and helps the flight attendants handcuff you. You try to show them the postcard, but it slips out of your hand. They lecture you about causing a panic to the other passengers. The escort you to an empty seat and check your vital signs to rule out medical issues, as they are trained to do, and then bring you a glass of wine to help you stop panicking (as they are also trained to do). You don’t drink it, of course--you need your wits about you. Because something is seriously screwed up. When the flight attendant returns to collect the still-full wine glass, you ask her if you’re on some kind of list now, or if you’ll be allowed to board your next flight. She smiles. “ Don’t cause another disturbance, or there will be consequences.You must continue with the itinerary on your ticket.” Her tone is different--still creepily calm, but less robotic. There’s more of a sense that she might actually have a soul. This leads you, of course, to ask more questions, but she cuts you off saying she must clear the cabin for arrival. The plane lands. What should you do--go to the TSA and tell them what’s going on, or just run and hope the killer doesn’t find you? > You inform TSA. You go to your airline’s main desk and ask to speak to a TSA agent. The uniformed attendant, who isn’t much older than you but looks like she has a ton more responsibility, smiles briskly and pulls something up on her computer. “Yes, Miss Conner--we were wondering if you’d stop by. Follow me.” She leads you into what looks like a small conference room. Four leather chairs are arranged around a shiny wooden table. At one end of the room is a Keurig machine, a small fridge, and a bowl of apples. “Would you like something to drink while you wait?” she asks. “The agent should be in here shortly, and he’ll explain everything.” You meant to ask her some questions, but the kindness in her voice--as well as the promise that everything is finally going to start making sense--almost brings you to tears. You accept a bottle of water and sit quietly. The man who comes in is holding a manila file folder. He has no face. Well, he has eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but they have no distinguishing features. He’s like a mannequin, except there’s nothing mechanical about his movements. He’s clearly real, just blank. “Hello, Ms. Conner.” Fear is rising through your throat like smoke. This is a trap--this is just what the killer wanted. He smiles comfortingly. “Oh, no, Ms. Conner--I’m not here to kill you. That’s not my job. Shall I leave the door open? You may leave whenever you like.” He props it open and takes the seat opposite you, leaving you closer to the exit. A flat laugh. “Of course, leaving would mean starting the running part, which you may not be ready to do. I’m not sure I blame you there!” It’s the same tone you use with your boyfriend’s parents on Skype. Jovial, polite. A voice for small talk. “Anyway, while you’re here, I’m supposed to go over the rules with you.” He opens the folder. “Rules are optional…” he reads, almost to himself. “We went over that. Okay, here we are. ‘If you are being briefed, you have been exceedingly stubborn in contacting the authorities. Stubbornness has both benefits and drawbacks, which we will discuss at the end. “The following are the rules: you will run. They will try to catch you. You can run, hide, or fight. If they catch you, if they overpower you, you will die. “But you will not ask for help from people of higher authority than yourself. If you continue to fail to accept the situation, you will lose, and losing this game will not be pleasant. You are safe when you cross the threshold of 333 Madison Avenue.” He looks at you. “Do you need any part of that repeated?” he asks politely. “Or some coffee?” “But why is this happening? What’s the point?” He shrugs, eyes flitting over the documents. “I don’t see a point.” Right. Let’s try another tack. “What do I have that they want?” He reads from the paper again. “'You can run, hide, or fight.'” Not helpful. “Can I see what else is in the folder?” “Of course.” He slides it across the table. On top is the paper he just read, typed in ordinary Times New Roman. Behind that is another sheet with what appears to be a dossier on you--your full name, birthdate, social security number, height, weight, hair and eye color, GPA, hometown, high school, and a short medical and dental history. The GPA is current as of the exams you just finished taking. Personal life, it says, like on Wikipedia. Conner is of Irish, Scottish, and American Indian descent. She enjoys photography, reading, and hiking. She is affiliated with no particular religion. Her flaws include an irregular flossing routine and passivity. That’s it. “This is crazy.” These aren’t really the right words, because actually these papers are boring--pointedly boring, like they’ve been created to mock you. You ask more questions--why you, why the teeth, how did they get this--but Faceless guy just gives you more polite non-answers. Suddenly something rather obvious strikes you. You’ve been dealing with this like it’s an airport emergency, but it’s bigger than that. You have your phone, and it’s got plenty of charge. Why not call the police? > You get Faceless Guy to leave, then call the police. “Thanks,” you manage, trying to imitate the polite, professional tone he’s been using on you. “This is all...very strange. Could I just have a cup of coffee and process this for a few minutes?” He smiles, says that’s fine, and reminds you your connection is at Gate 4C. Then he shakes your hand and leaves. Finally. You take out your phone and dial 911. Out of area, says the screen. The desk attendant appears at the door. She is no longer friendly. Her face is vacant, like a part of a machine no one is bothering to operate. In her hand is a ball-peen hammer. You stand up automatically. But she keeps coming. You shove the table at her, but it’s too heavy to do more than make her back up one step, then keep coming. You throw a chair, and she catches it. You rush to the right, but she always manages to stay between you and the door. She closes in. You try to kick, but she doesn’t react. She bends low and, without breaking eye contact, smashes the hammer into the bone of your left ankle. Colors swim against the sides of your skull, pain radiating through you like electricity. “This office closes in ten minutes,” she says. She turns and leaves. The folder is still on the table. You decide to stop fighting the rules. You accept that they--the goblins or whatever they are--are after you. So what should you do--run or hide? > You run. You've decided to run with a broken ankle...so...let’s see how that works out. After about thirty feet, the goblins catch up. One hard bite to your abdomen (they’re only about three feet tall) and you’re down. They slash your throat--quick and painless, but you're still dead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> “Thanks,” you manage, trying to imitate the polite, professional tone he’s been using on you. “This is all...very strange. Could I just have a cup of coffee and process this for a few minutes?” He smiles, says that’s fine, and reminds you your connection is at Gate 4C. Then he shakes your hand and leaves. Finally. You take out your phone and dial 911. Out of area, says the screen. The desk attendant appears at the door. She is no longer friendly. Her face is vacant, like a part of a machine no one is bothering to operate. In her hand is a ball-peen hammer. You stand up automatically. But she keeps coming. You shove the table at her, but it’s too heavy to do more than make her back up one step, then keep coming. You throw a chair, and she catches it. You rush to the right, but she always manages to stay between you and the door. She closes in. You try to kick, but she doesn’t react. She bends low and, without breaking eye contact, smashes the hammer into the bone of your left ankle. Colors swim against the sides of your skull, pain radiating through you like electricity. “This office closes in ten minutes,” she says. She turns and leaves. The folder is still on the table. You decide to stop fighting the rules. You accept that they--the goblins or whatever they are--are after you. So what should you do--run or hide? > You hide. You limp along for a few feet, then dart into a gift shop. You browse behind a high shelf, waiting to see if anyone (or anything) is following you. Nothing looks suspicious, and no one seems to be paying you any particular attention. You buy a dark blue Atlanta Braves sweatshirt and pull it over the cashmere J Crew sweater you got from the thrift shop in order to impress your boyfriend’s parents. Then it’s too hot, so you stuff it into your bag--your bright red bag. After checking your surroundings, you limp over and find a tote bag that says Hotlanta! And buy it (the clerk is, by now, looking at you like you’re a freak). You step behind the shelf and transfer everything in your large purse into the tote bag. Holy damn, your ankle hurts. Every pulse of pain reminds you that this is real. Suddenly you see them. Two...things. They’re about half your height, with green scales and large yellow teeth. They walk on two feet like a person, but they move like lizards. And no one notices. People move around them automatically, like they do for plants or luggage, but their eyes never focus on them. The goblin’s eyes are small, soulless, but peering everywhere. Their little nostrils--their snouts are shaped like an alligator’s, but shorter--are twitching. They’re sniffing for you. You step back, trying to move gradually in case fast movement kicks your scent into the air. Sweat pricks your underarms--a result, no doubt, of both your nervousness and the extra layer you’ve put on. But when you peek again, they’ve passed by. You pull off the sweater under your sweatshirt and manage to yank it off through the neck. Maybe the smartest thing would be to keep them in front of you. After all, your gate is all the way on the other side of the airport, and you only have four hours to get there. The only way out of this nightmare is to get on that plane to New York. You wait for them to get about fifty feet ahead, peek out of the store, and, seeing nothing amiss, begin slowly following them, dragging your sore ankle as you walk toward the center of the airport. Along the way, you throw away the purse and sweater, and stop in the bathroom and cover yourself with sickly-sweet strawberry soap--anything to hide your natural scent.After a few minutes, you reach an escalator, which will take you down to the tram area, where you will get a ride to your terminal. As you near the bottom, suddenly there is a slap-slapping on the marble floor, like someone in thin wet socks. You turn. There are creatures behind you, weaving around the people at the top of the escalator. You hurry down the escalator, biting back your yelps of pain. The tram to Gate C has arrived. Should you try to catch it, hoping the doors will close before they can follow you(or if they do, that you can hop out before they do) or turn and fight? > You try for the tram. You limp onto the tram just as the doors close. You aren’t stupid--no way is this hell over with. But at least you’re safe for now. The tram slows at B Gate. Will any of them get on? You edge toward the doors, ready to leap out, but it's just a group of middle schoolers in matching sweatshirts and their chaperone. The tram ambles forward. At the next stop, a guy about your age, tall and skinny with a t-shirt advertising a Dropkick Murphys show from eight years ago, gets on. He notices you. Huh. Come to think of it, not many people have done that since you found the first postcard. You’re no Megan Fox, but you are a reasonably attractive twenty-year-old girl, and you’re accustomed to a moderate amount of male perusal while in public. And yet people’s eyes have been sliding past you all day. Only airport employees have acknowledged your existence. Weird. This guy, however, sees you. Probably not good. You edge a little closer to the doors. What if he’s one of them? A normal college-age boy outside, a goblin inside? Maybe that’s the next level--at first the monsters are easy to spot, and then they’re in the form of fairly cute guys. He walks up to you. “Hi.” This close he looks familiar. Familiar like a human I’ve seen before, or familiar like a goblin? “I think we went to camp together.” His eyes are a yellow-striped green--what color were theirs? Damn. You were too panicked to notice. “Guess not,” he says. You must look pretty freaked out, because he starts backing away slowly. And then his face clicks into place. Triple R Ranch. Summer before fourth grade. His name is Dmitri, and the reason you still know that is that he was almost your first kiss. (Instead it was this loser named Jason in sixth grade. He told everyone you tasted like bubble gum--which doesn’t seem that bad, but somehow he made it sound absolutely disgusting. What a prick.) “Wait,” you say. “Dmitri, right?” “Yeah. You’re Claire.” “Clara, actually. That’s my real name.” You like Claire better, but it was too hard to keep telling everyone to call you Claire. They kept forgetting, and finally you just gave up and went with it. He asks where you’re going, and you tell him. He says he’s going to Philadelphia to spend Christmas with his dad--he’s headed to the same terminal you are. His eyes move over you, but not in a flirtatious way. “Are you okay?” You look down. In addition to the sloppy-looking sweatshirt and the way you're holding your foot, you are sweating profusely. “It’s been...a stressful trip,” you finish lamely. “How so?” He seems to know there’s a deeper meaning to that--which isn’t itself strange, Dmitri has always been able to read people pretty well--but you can’t shake the feeling that running into him is a little too coincidental. Should you trust him enough to tell him you’re being stalked, or just politely brush him off? > You trust Dmitri. You make up a story about an old boyfriend who is stalking you and has threatened to kill you. You say the authorities won’t do anything because the threats are all verbal, and there’s no evidence, and he has a perfect record. Dmitri is skeptical at first, but when he sees that your fear is real, he starts to believe you. “So what are you going to do?” he asks. “Get off at Terminal D, I guess. He's got to be watching Terminal C, since he knows my itinerary.” “Yeah, but he’s watching for you, right?” “Yeah…” “So let’s be a couple. He’ll be looking for someone alone, and that terminal should be pretty crowded since it’s a Delta one.” Should you agree to this, or stick with your original plan of going to D Terminal? > You go to D Terminal. The second you step off, they're there, and you barely stumble backward into the tram in time. As you do, you hit your head on one of the light poles. "Was he out there?" Dmitri looks skeptical again. Probably because from his perspective you just leapt about two feet backward at the sight of a woman with a stroller. "Yeah." The pain spiking through your head makes you want to kill people. "Let's go with your idea." > You try terminal C. Reluctantly, you agree. “Here.” He takes off his sweatshirt, which is light gray, and you switch wit him. He turns the Braves one inside out so the logo isn’t visible, since they’ve seen it. You switch bags. He has a carryon, and he unzips it and yanks out a scarf his grandmother just gave him as a Christmas present. You loop it around your face. When the tram slows at C, you look out the windows. Two of them are at the edge of the crowd, about ten feet away. There are about seven tram doors opening. “He’s here,” you mutter. “Too close for us to go?” Dang, it would be easy to say yes. But you don’t. “No, we can probably make it.” He puts his arm around you, and you put the hood up, making sure none of your hair is visible. You begin walking, heads turned toward each other. “We’re deep in conversation right now,” you say. “Yes,” says Dmitri. “And we’re not walking too fast.” “Because we’re so absorbed in our deep conversation.” A businessman barrels past you, giving you a look like you’re both idiots. He lets his overly large carryon run over Dmitri’s foot. But no slappy-slap-slap. You make it to the escalator. You make it up the escalator. You make it to terminal C, and duck into a bookstore. There is a closed sandwich stand, and you duck behind the counter and sink onto the sticky tile floor. “So....” says Dmitri. “You’re just going to hang out here for the next two and a half hours?” You nod. Compared to being violently murdered, it sounds like heaven. About half an hour before your flight starts boarding, Dmitri goes to get you guys something to eat. When he comes back with Qdoba, he says, “the strangest thing happened. I just got a notification on my phone that my flight is canceled, and I’m rerouted through La Guardia. So I’m on your flight. Weird, huh?” A shiver of suspicion runs through you. “Yeah, weird,” you say, unwrapping your burrito. Almost as weird as running into him in the first place. You put down the burrito. You don’t trust Dmitri. Actually, you do--you trust the weird little kid you met at camp. You’re just not sure if this guy sitting with you on this disgusting floor is actually him. This whole crazy day has been like something out of a twisted fairy tale, and isn’t there something in fairy tales about not taking food from strangers? At the same time, you skipped breakfast this morning. You’re so hungry you’re slightly dizzy, even sitting down. You doubt you’ll be able to run or think at your best if you don’t get some nourishment. Should you eat or not? > You eat. Your stomach starts to churn. There’s nothing magical or enchanted about this nausea--it’s identical to the last time you got food poisoning. You turn and hurl the contents of your stomach onto the grimy floor. It smells. It smells like me, you think. Like my insides. The sound of running. You leap up, and vault over the counter almost effortlessly--only later you remember Dmitri’s hands under your ribs, propelling you--and run. You only have to elude them for twenty minutes. Twenty stupid minutes is all that’s between you and being okay. You see an opening in the crowd and dart through. Without your heavy bag you must be faster than they are, because the space between you and them is widening. Should you keep running, or find a place to hide? > You hide somewhere. You duck into a large, crowded restaurant and hide at a table in the back. Ten minutes before your flight takes off, you slowly come out. Dmitri is still by the empty deli counter. “What,” he says, “was that? It looked like you were having a seizure. Except no one even saw you. I could barely see you.” He shakes his head, as if something has been fogging his vision. “I’ll explain on the flight,” you say. “If I ever actually get on there.” > You to the planemobile! Your damp, shaking hand holds out the ticket. The agent smiles--a real, human smile--and tells you to have a nice flight. You walk past them and get on the plane. Their eyes never leave you, but they don’t move. Apparently you’ve earned the right to get on the plane. As you get into the cabin, you halt. There's a goblin in an empty seat. (An empty first-class seat--pretty bloody annoying.) It’s somehow wearing what looks like an expensive pinstriped suit, and the stupid flight attendant is handing him some wine. In the pocket of the seat in front of you is a postcard showing Times Square. You slide it out and flip it over. Rest and eat.This ain't finished yet. Well, isn’t that great. You’d love to eat--if you had any friggin’ food. This is just so stupid. What’s even the point of it? Goblins. Gremlins, or whatever they are. They’re bright Crayola green--they don’t even look realistic. Dmitri appears in front of you. “Hi,” he says, but he’s talking to the guy in the middle seat beside you. “I have an exit row seat--would you mind switching so I can sit by my girlfriend?” The guy is only too happy to switch to an exit row, and soon Dmitri is settled beside you. “I’m not your girlfriend,” you say. How are you even going to explain this whole crazy debacle to your boyfriend? Easy: you won’t. How could you? It’s unexplainable. You’ve become good at knowing which things not to bother Keith with, and this is definitely one of them. “I know,” Dmitri said. “But I didn’t think he would switch if we were just friends.” “Well, that’s really stupid.” You probably shouldn’t be taking this out on him, seeing as he rescued you and all, but you are hungry and exhausted and you know he’s about to ask a bunch of questions you can’t answer and you just want this stupid trip to be over already. “So the only good reason to sit beside someone is if you’re having sex with them? So what if we’re friends? Friends talk. Is having a conversation not a good enough reason to sit beside someone?” “Clara,” he says. “What’s going on?” “I don’t know. It just happened.” You explain what you can about the postcards and the goblins. You hand him the postcard, but he finds the handwriting impossible to read--which makes no sense, it’s sloppy, but not that sloppy. “Do you think they’ll actually kill you?” “Yes,” you say. “I do.” He takes your hand. Not long after, you fall asleep.You wake up to the stewardess’ voice. “Miss Conner, here’s the meal you ordered for this flight.” She seems to be in a hurry, and pulls your tray out for you so she can set it down and attend to something else. It appears to be a chicken salad sandwich and some chips. Which you definitely did not order. You realize you’re nauseous, and incredibly hungry again. Should you eat this incredibly sketchy food? > You um, no. It's from the friggin' goblin club. As the flight goes on, you get more and more nauseous. Soon you are shaking all over. You wretch a few times, but there’s nothing for you to throw up, so you don’t. When it’s time to get off the plane, the goblin is already gone, just like all the other first-class passengers. A glass with a few traces of red wine sits on the tray beside his seat. You walk through JFK with Dmitri. He holds your sweaty, shaky hand, watching your face for any sign of them, but there are no goblins. You get your luggage from baggage claim and turn toward the exit. Outside is a long line of taxis. In front of the door is a huge goblin. Taller than you. Taller than any human who's not in the NBA. “There’s one there,” you say dully to Dmitri, pointing toward it. His eyes follow your finger. He squints hard. “I think I see a--a shadow.” There are about ten sets of doors to the taxi line, so you turn toward another one and start trudging toward it. It probably won’t work, but hey, what do you have to lose? It doesn’t move. “Go ahead.” You turn, shocked. They’ve never spoken before. “If you do, I’ll follow you. I’ll never kill you, but I’ll keep following you for the rest of your life.” You can’t fight him. You’re tired and shaking, and at some point you must’ve banged your right knee on something because it hurts like hell. But you also can’t let him follow you around forever. What should you do? > You ask Dmitri to fight him. As soon as you ask him, the goblin laughs. It’s a liquid, disgusting sound. “What kind of story do you think this is? I’m not his goblin. Also, it's 2016--fight your own battles, missy.” > You fight him--hey, maybe you'll win. Okay, what will you fight him with? You now have your heavy, hard-sided suitcase, with a large textbook and the statue you planned to give to Keith's parents inside. Despite its weight, you could probably get it over your head, and since it's already in your hand, speed would be on your side. Nearby is a frail old lady carrying a long umbrella with a fairly pointy metal tip. Also nearby is a large, heavy metal luggage cart, which you definitely couldn't lift over your head but might do some serious damage if used like a battering ram. > You hit him with the suitcase. In your weakened state, you can barely lift the suitcase. It doesn’t even slow the goblin down. He swats you like a fly, and the last thing you see before your head hits the floor is Dmitri reaching out his hand, trying too late to save you. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Okay, what will you fight him with? You now have your heavy, hard-sided suitcase, with a large textbook and the statue you planned to give to Keith's parents inside. Despite its weight, you could probably get it over your head, and since it's already in your hand, speed would be on your side. Nearby is a frail old lady carrying a long umbrella with a fairly pointy metal tip. Also nearby is a large, heavy metal luggage cart, which you definitely couldn't lift over your head but might do some serious damage if used like a battering ram. > You ram him with the luggage cart. You grab one--uh-oh. They’re the kind you have to put coins into in order to make the brakes unlatch. It does almost nothing. The goblin leaps onto the cart and bites your head off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Okay, what will you fight him with? You now have your heavy, hard-sided suitcase, with a large textbook and the statue you planned to give to Keith's parents inside. Despite its weight, you could probably get it over your head, and since it's already in your hand, speed would be on your side. Nearby is a frail old lady carrying a long umbrella with a fairly pointy metal tip. Also nearby is a large, heavy metal luggage cart, which you definitely couldn't lift over your head but might do some serious damage if used like a battering ram. > You grab the umbrella. You pull it out of the old lady’s hands. (She starts going after you, but Dmitri intercedes.) It’s light enough that even as jelly-like as your limbs are, you can lift it easily and aim it toward the goblin’s eye. You miss, but you still give him a hard poke in the forehead--not enough to break the skin, but enough that he toddles back a few steps, tiny eyes blinking. You use the opportunity to whack him again. Unfortunately, this seems to wake him up. He comes toward you. Your friend had a Komodo dragon once. She loved to rub its belly--beneath the scales it was softer than its back or head. You stab his middle with all your might. Sticky yellow blood gushes out, but he’s still coming. One more hit and he wobbles, then smacks onto the floor. He’s dead. You’re free. You feel nothing. Why should you? You should've been free all along. You and Dmitri step outside. It’s raining, and the only thing out here that isn't gray is the long line of taxis. Ready to take you to the Upper East Side. Except you don't want to go there anymore--if you ever did. “Where are you headed?” Dmitri asks. He has no bags. He’s going to miss his flight to Philadelphia. “I don’t know,” you say. “But do you want to come with me?” The two of you get a taxi and choose a different adventure. Which is, it turns out, the happiest ending of all. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> As soon as you ask him, the goblin laughs. It’s a liquid, disgusting sound. “What kind of story do you think this is? I’m not his goblin. Also, it's 2016--fight your own battles, missy.” > You nope, not dying here. Let him follow you. So he follows you. He follows you to your boyfriend’s apartment--to the living room where you make small talk about your trip, into the bathroom while you pee, to the dining room where there is a lovely dinner prepared, into the bedroom where you and your boyfriend sleep. He follows you everywhere, little eyes tracing your every move. Finally, you decide to fight him. It’s like fighting air. You try to ignore him. Sometimes it works, but mostly it doesn’t. You can’t sleep. You can’t relax with friends. You can’t even kiss Keith without getting uncomfortable. Your friends notice your awkwardness, and Keith gets tired of being pushed away. Your grades suffer. You’re alone more and more--alone with it. After about a year, your mind can’t take it anymore. It lets go. With medication, you become a mindless--if peaceful--mental patient. But whenever they take you off it enough for you to notice your surroundings, what you see is the goblin. Because he never leaves. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Your damp, shaking hand holds out the ticket. The agent smiles--a real, human smile--and tells you to have a nice flight. You walk past them and get on the plane. Their eyes never leave you, but they don’t move. Apparently you’ve earned the right to get on the plane. As you get into the cabin, you halt. There's a goblin in an empty seat. (An empty first-class seat--pretty bloody annoying.) It’s somehow wearing what looks like an expensive pinstriped suit, and the stupid flight attendant is handing him some wine. In the pocket of the seat in front of you is a postcard showing Times Square. You slide it out and flip it over. Rest and eat.This ain't finished yet. Well, isn’t that great. You’d love to eat--if you had any friggin’ food. This is just so stupid. What’s even the point of it? Goblins. Gremlins, or whatever they are. They’re bright Crayola green--they don’t even look realistic. Dmitri appears in front of you. “Hi,” he says, but he’s talking to the guy in the middle seat beside you. “I have an exit row seat--would you mind switching so I can sit by my girlfriend?” The guy is only too happy to switch to an exit row, and soon Dmitri is settled beside you. “I’m not your girlfriend,” you say. How are you even going to explain this whole crazy debacle to your boyfriend? Easy: you won’t. How could you? It’s unexplainable. You’ve become good at knowing which things not to bother Keith with, and this is definitely one of them. “I know,” Dmitri said. “But I didn’t think he would switch if we were just friends.” “Well, that’s really stupid.” You probably shouldn’t be taking this out on him, seeing as he rescued you and all, but you are hungry and exhausted and you know he’s about to ask a bunch of questions you can’t answer and you just want this stupid trip to be over already. “So the only good reason to sit beside someone is if you’re having sex with them? So what if we’re friends? Friends talk. Is having a conversation not a good enough reason to sit beside someone?” “Clara,” he says. “What’s going on?” “I don’t know. It just happened.” You explain what you can about the postcards and the goblins. You hand him the postcard, but he finds the handwriting impossible to read--which makes no sense, it’s sloppy, but not that sloppy. “Do you think they’ll actually kill you?” “Yes,” you say. “I do.” He takes your hand. Not long after, you fall asleep.You wake up to the stewardess’ voice. “Miss Conner, here’s the meal you ordered for this flight.” She seems to be in a hurry, and pulls your tray out for you so she can set it down and attend to something else. It appears to be a chicken salad sandwich and some chips. Which you definitely did not order. You realize you’re nauseous, and incredibly hungry again. Should you eat this incredibly sketchy food? > You know what, whatever. Why the hell not. You eat, and you immediately you feel better. When it’s time to get off the plane, the goblin is already gone, just like all the other first-class passengers. A glass with a few traces of red wine is on the tray beside his seat. You walk through JFK with Dmitri. He holds your hand, watching your face for any sign of them, but there are no goblins. You get your luggage from baggage claim and turn toward the exit. Outside is a long line of taxis. In front of the door is a huge goblin. Taller than you. His head is above the archway. “There’s one there,” you say dully to Dmitri, pointing toward it. His eyes follow your finger. He squints hard. “I think," he says slowly, "I see a...a shadow.” There are about ten sets of doors to the taxi line, so you turn toward another one and start hurrying toward it. It probably won’t work, but hey, what do you have to lose? It doesn’t move. “Go ahead.” You turn, shocked. They’ve never spoken before. “If you do, I’ll follow you. I’ll never kill you, but I’ll never stop following.” Oh. Well, great. Fighting him seems like a losing proposition. Sure, he doesn’t look terribly fast or strong, but you aren’t either--and you’ve got skin, not hard, armor-like scales. Also, he's huge. But you also can’t let him follow you around forever. What should you do? > You know what, this ends now. Fight him. Okay, what will you fight him with? You now have your heavy, hard-sided suitcase, with a large textbook and the statue you planned to give to Keith's parents inside. Despite its weight, you could probably get it over your head, and since it's already in your hand, speed would be on your side. Nearby is a frail old lady carrying a long umbrella with a fairly pointy metal tip. Also nearby is a large, heavy metal luggage cart, which you definitely couldn't lift over your head but might do some serious damage if used like a battering ram.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Your stomach starts to churn. There’s nothing magical or enchanted about this nausea--it’s identical to the last time you got food poisoning. You turn and hurl the contents of your stomach onto the grimy floor. It smells. It smells like me, you think. Like my insides. The sound of running. You leap up, and vault over the counter almost effortlessly--only later you remember Dmitri’s hands under your ribs, propelling you--and run. You only have to elude them for twenty minutes. Twenty stupid minutes is all that’s between you and being okay. You see an opening in the crowd and dart through. Without your heavy bag you must be faster than they are, because the space between you and them is widening. Should you keep running, or find a place to hide? > You keep running. A huge tour group walks in a slow line right in front of you. You shove past them, but not long afterward, the slap-slapping comes behind you. Teeth gnash your knee, and you fall. A hard bite to your shoulder, and then the weight of the goblin is off of you, and you sit up in time to watch it careen into a moving walkway. Dmitri stands above you. “What,” he says, “was that? It looked like you were having a seizure. Except no one even saw you. I could barely see you.” He shakes his head, as if something has been fogging his vision. “I’ll explain on the plane,” you say. Your shoulder is bleeding, but not too badly. “If I ever actually get on there.” > You continue toward the gate. They don’t move. You keep walking, leg muscles braced, ready to stop and turn around. Your damp, shaking hand holds out the ticket. The agent smiles--a real, human smile--and tells you to have a nice flight. You walk past them and get on the plane. Their eyes never leave you, but they don’t move. Apparently you’ve earned the right to get on the plane. As you get into the cabin, you halt. There is one in an empty seat. (An empty first-class seat--pretty bloody annoying.) It’s somehow wearing what looks like an expensive pinstriped suit, and the stupid flight attendant is handing him some wine. In the pocket of the seat in front of you is a postcard showing Times Square. You slide it out and flip it over. Rest and eat. This ain't finished yet. Well, isn’t that great. You’d love to eat--if you had any friggin’ food. This is just so stupid. What’s even the point of it? Goblins. Gremlins, or whatever they are. They’re bright Crayola green--they don’t even look realistic. Dmitri appears in front of you. “Hi,” he says, but he’s talking to the guy in the middle seat beside you. “I have an exit row seat--would you mind switching so I can sit by my girlfriend?” The guy is only too happy to switch to an exit row, and soon Dmitri is settled beside you. “I’m not your girlfriend,” you say. How are you even going to explain this to your boyfriend? Easy: you won’t. How could you? It’s unexplainable. You’ve become good at knowing which things not to bother Keith with, and this is definitely one of them. “I know,” Dmitri said. “But I didn’t think he would switch if we were just friends.” “Well, that’s really stupid.” You probably shouldn’t be taking this out on him, seeing as he rescued you and all, but you are hungry and exhausted and you know he’s about to ask a bunch of questions you can’t answer and you just want this stupid trip to be over already. “Clara,” he says. “What’s going on, exactly?” Apparently he's figured out that jealous boyfriends aren't generally invisible. “I don’t know. It just happened.” You explain what you can about the postcards and the goblins. You hand him the postcard, but he finds the handwriting impossible to read--which makes no sense, it’s sloppy, but not that sloppy. “Do you think they’ll actually kill you?” "I know they will," you say, because you do. He takes your hand. Not long after, you fall asleep.You wake up to the stewardess’ voice. “Miss Conner, here’s the meal you ordered for this flight.” She seems to be in a hurry, and pulls your tray out for you so she can set it down and attend to something else. It appears to be a chicken salad sandwich and some chips. Which you definitely did not order. You realize you’re nauseous again, and incredibly hungry. Should you eat this incredibly sketchy food?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Reluctantly, you agree. “Here.” He takes off his sweatshirt, which is light gray, and you switch wit him. He turns the Braves one inside out so the logo isn’t visible, since they’ve seen it. You switch bags. He has a carryon, and he unzips it and yanks out a scarf his grandmother just gave him as a Christmas present. You loop it around your face. When the tram slows at C, you look out the windows. Two of them are at the edge of the crowd, about ten feet away. There are about seven tram doors opening. “He’s here,” you mutter. “Too close for us to go?” Dang, it would be easy to say yes. But you don’t. “No, we can probably make it.” He puts his arm around you, and you put the hood up, making sure none of your hair is visible. You begin walking, heads turned toward each other. “We’re deep in conversation right now,” you say. “Yes,” says Dmitri. “And we’re not walking too fast.” “Because we’re so absorbed in our deep conversation.” A businessman barrels past you, giving you a look like you’re both idiots. He lets his overly large carryon run over Dmitri’s foot. But no slappy-slap-slap. You make it to the escalator. You make it up the escalator. You make it to terminal C, and duck into a bookstore. There is a closed sandwich stand, and you duck behind the counter and sink onto the sticky tile floor. “So....” says Dmitri. “You’re just going to hang out here for the next two and a half hours?” You nod. Compared to being violently murdered, it sounds like heaven. About half an hour before your flight starts boarding, Dmitri goes to get you guys something to eat. When he comes back with Qdoba, he says, “the strangest thing happened. I just got a notification on my phone that my flight is canceled, and I’m rerouted through La Guardia. So I’m on your flight. Weird, huh?” A shiver of suspicion runs through you. “Yeah, weird,” you say, unwrapping your burrito. Almost as weird as running into him in the first place. You put down the burrito. You don’t trust Dmitri. Actually, you do--you trust the weird little kid you met at camp. You’re just not sure if this guy sitting with you on this disgusting floor is actually him. This whole crazy day has been like something out of a twisted fairy tale, and isn’t there something in fairy tales about not taking food from strangers? At the same time, you skipped breakfast this morning. You’re so hungry you’re slightly dizzy, even sitting down. You doubt you’ll be able to run or think at your best if you don’t get some nourishment. Should you eat or not? > You stuff the burrito in a napkin. You manage to hide the burrito in your napkin. The edges of your vision blur, and your knees are wobbly, but at least you’re safe. You and Dmitri decide that the best way to get on the plane is for you to wait until the line is ending and then just run. He will stand near enough to see the gate and then text you when it’s time. When he texts you, you begin running. No goblins on either side of you. Your hunger disappears--nothing matters except getting on the plane. They’re behind the desk. Actually, they’re ON the desk. Waiting. Watching. Two of them. The ticket agent is laughing, chiding that you aren’t that late. The ink of your printed-out ticket stains your sweaty hand. You slow down, almost to a stop. Maybe you should miss the plane. If you run fast, maybe you can lose them for long enough to get a cab to the bus station. But they didn't start chasing you until you got into this Godforsaken airport. Isn't it logical, then, that maybe they'll stop chasing you once you board? Look at you, trying to apply logic to a situation that's clearly insane. Yeah, that's a real productive use of your time. They see you. They aren’t coming toward you--but then, why should they? You’re going straight to them. What do you do?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You limp onto the tram just as the doors close. You aren’t stupid--no way is this hell over with. But at least you’re safe for now. The tram slows at B Gate. Will any of them get on? You edge toward the doors, ready to leap out, but it's just a group of middle schoolers in matching sweatshirts and their chaperone. The tram ambles forward. At the next stop, a guy about your age, tall and skinny with a t-shirt advertising a Dropkick Murphys show from eight years ago, gets on. He notices you. Huh. Come to think of it, not many people have done that since you found the first postcard. You’re no Megan Fox, but you are a reasonably attractive twenty-year-old girl, and you’re accustomed to a moderate amount of male perusal while in public. And yet people’s eyes have been sliding past you all day. Only airport employees have acknowledged your existence. Weird. This guy, however, sees you. Probably not good. You edge a little closer to the doors. What if he’s one of them? A normal college-age boy outside, a goblin inside? Maybe that’s the next level--at first the monsters are easy to spot, and then they’re in the form of fairly cute guys. He walks up to you. “Hi.” This close he looks familiar. Familiar like a human I’ve seen before, or familiar like a goblin? “I think we went to camp together.” His eyes are a yellow-striped green--what color were theirs? Damn. You were too panicked to notice. “Guess not,” he says. You must look pretty freaked out, because he starts backing away slowly. And then his face clicks into place. Triple R Ranch. Summer before fourth grade. His name is Dmitri, and the reason you still know that is that he was almost your first kiss. (Instead it was this loser named Jason in sixth grade. He told everyone you tasted like bubble gum--which doesn’t seem that bad, but somehow he made it sound absolutely disgusting. What a prick.) “Wait,” you say. “Dmitri, right?” “Yeah. You’re Claire.” “Clara, actually. That’s my real name.” You like Claire better, but it was too hard to keep telling everyone to call you Claire. They kept forgetting, and finally you just gave up and went with it. He asks where you’re going, and you tell him. He says he’s going to Philadelphia to spend Christmas with his dad--he’s headed to the same terminal you are. His eyes move over you, but not in a flirtatious way. “Are you okay?” You look down. In addition to the sloppy-looking sweatshirt and the way you're holding your foot, you are sweating profusely. “It’s been...a stressful trip,” you finish lamely. “How so?” He seems to know there’s a deeper meaning to that--which isn’t itself strange, Dmitri has always been able to read people pretty well--but you can’t shake the feeling that running into him is a little too coincidental. Should you trust him enough to tell him you’re being stalked, or just politely brush him off? > You brush him off. You have a pleasant conversation until he gets off--at your terminal, but you don't mention that. You ride the tram around the whole airport a few times and then decide to get off at Terminal D, since you assume the goblins are watching the tram stop at Terminal C. As soon as you get off, they spot you. You try to run, but that works about as well as you’d expect for someone with a broken ankle. They catch you. And they do, indeed, kill you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You limp along for a few feet, then dart into a gift shop. You browse behind a high shelf, waiting to see if anyone (or anything) is following you. Nothing looks suspicious, and no one seems to be paying you any particular attention. You buy a dark blue Atlanta Braves sweatshirt and pull it over the cashmere J Crew sweater you got from the thrift shop in order to impress your boyfriend’s parents. Then it’s too hot, so you stuff it into your bag--your bright red bag. After checking your surroundings, you limp over and find a tote bag that says Hotlanta! And buy it (the clerk is, by now, looking at you like you’re a freak). You step behind the shelf and transfer everything in your large purse into the tote bag. Holy damn, your ankle hurts. Every pulse of pain reminds you that this is real. Suddenly you see them. Two...things. They’re about half your height, with green scales and large yellow teeth. They walk on two feet like a person, but they move like lizards. And no one notices. People move around them automatically, like they do for plants or luggage, but their eyes never focus on them. The goblin’s eyes are small, soulless, but peering everywhere. Their little nostrils--their snouts are shaped like an alligator’s, but shorter--are twitching. They’re sniffing for you. You step back, trying to move gradually in case fast movement kicks your scent into the air. Sweat pricks your underarms--a result, no doubt, of both your nervousness and the extra layer you’ve put on. But when you peek again, they’ve passed by. You pull off the sweater under your sweatshirt and manage to yank it off through the neck. Maybe the smartest thing would be to keep them in front of you. After all, your gate is all the way on the other side of the airport, and you only have four hours to get there. The only way out of this nightmare is to get on that plane to New York. You wait for them to get about fifty feet ahead, peek out of the store, and, seeing nothing amiss, begin slowly following them, dragging your sore ankle as you walk toward the center of the airport. Along the way, you throw away the purse and sweater, and stop in the bathroom and cover yourself with sickly-sweet strawberry soap--anything to hide your natural scent.After a few minutes, you reach an escalator, which will take you down to the tram area, where you will get a ride to your terminal. As you near the bottom, suddenly there is a slap-slapping on the marble floor, like someone in thin wet socks. You turn. There are creatures behind you, weaving around the people at the top of the escalator. You hurry down the escalator, biting back your yelps of pain. The tram to Gate C has arrived. Should you try to catch it, hoping the doors will close before they can follow you(or if they do, that you can hop out before they do) or turn and fight? > You fight, despite the ankle. Okay, what will you use as a weapon? You have your new tote bag, (which, despite being soft on the outside, is pretty heavy with a phone, bottle of water, and iPad). Also, there is a wheelchair that has been left at the foot of the escalator. > You bash with bag. Yeah, heavy or not, it’s still just a bag, and there are two of them. You manage to hit one, and he seems to get dizzy. The other bites you, and you go down. No one notices you dying.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Okay, what will you use as a weapon? You have your new tote bag, (which, despite being soft on the outside, is pretty heavy with a phone, bottle of water, and iPad). Also, there is a wheelchair that has been left at the foot of the escalator. > You use the wheelchair. Picking up the heavy chair with only one reliable leg causes you to lose your balance. Immediately they’re on you. The last thing you see after one of them takes a bite out of you is a woman stepping over your body, as if she can't see you at all. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You go to your airline’s main desk and ask to speak to a TSA agent. The uniformed attendant, who isn’t much older than you but looks like she has a ton more responsibility, smiles briskly and pulls something up on her computer. “Yes, Miss Conner--we were wondering if you’d stop by. Follow me.” She leads you into what looks like a small conference room. Four leather chairs are arranged around a shiny wooden table. At one end of the room is a Keurig machine, a small fridge, and a bowl of apples. “Would you like something to drink while you wait?” she asks. “The agent should be in here shortly, and he’ll explain everything.” You meant to ask her some questions, but the kindness in her voice--as well as the promise that everything is finally going to start making sense--almost brings you to tears. You accept a bottle of water and sit quietly. The man who comes in is holding a manila file folder. He has no face. Well, he has eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but they have no distinguishing features. He’s like a mannequin, except there’s nothing mechanical about his movements. He’s clearly real, just blank. “Hello, Ms. Conner.” Fear is rising through your throat like smoke. This is a trap--this is just what the killer wanted. He smiles comfortingly. “Oh, no, Ms. Conner--I’m not here to kill you. That’s not my job. Shall I leave the door open? You may leave whenever you like.” He props it open and takes the seat opposite you, leaving you closer to the exit. A flat laugh. “Of course, leaving would mean starting the running part, which you may not be ready to do. I’m not sure I blame you there!” It’s the same tone you use with your boyfriend’s parents on Skype. Jovial, polite. A voice for small talk. “Anyway, while you’re here, I’m supposed to go over the rules with you.” He opens the folder. “Rules are optional…” he reads, almost to himself. “We went over that. Okay, here we are. ‘If you are being briefed, you have been exceedingly stubborn in contacting the authorities. Stubbornness has both benefits and drawbacks, which we will discuss at the end. “The following are the rules: you will run. They will try to catch you. You can run, hide, or fight. If they catch you, if they overpower you, you will die. “But you will not ask for help from people of higher authority than yourself. If you continue to fail to accept the situation, you will lose, and losing this game will not be pleasant. You are safe when you cross the threshold of 333 Madison Avenue.” He looks at you. “Do you need any part of that repeated?” he asks politely. “Or some coffee?” “But why is this happening? What’s the point?” He shrugs, eyes flitting over the documents. “I don’t see a point.” Right. Let’s try another tack. “What do I have that they want?” He reads from the paper again. “'You can run, hide, or fight.'” Not helpful. “Can I see what else is in the folder?” “Of course.” He slides it across the table. On top is the paper he just read, typed in ordinary Times New Roman. Behind that is another sheet with what appears to be a dossier on you--your full name, birthdate, social security number, height, weight, hair and eye color, GPA, hometown, high school, and a short medical and dental history. The GPA is current as of the exams you just finished taking. Personal life, it says, like on Wikipedia. Conner is of Irish, Scottish, and American Indian descent. She enjoys photography, reading, and hiking. She is affiliated with no particular religion. Her flaws include an irregular flossing routine and passivity. That’s it. “This is crazy.” These aren’t really the right words, because actually these papers are boring--pointedly boring, like they’ve been created to mock you. You ask more questions--why you, why the teeth, how did they get this--but Faceless guy just gives you more polite non-answers. Suddenly something rather obvious strikes you. You’ve been dealing with this like it’s an airport emergency, but it’s bigger than that. You have your phone, and it’s got plenty of charge. Why not call the police? > You run. You run for a few hundred feet, then dart into a gift shop. You browse behind a high shelf, waiting to see if anyone (or anything) is following you. Nothing looks suspicious, and no one seems to be paying you any particular attention. You buy a dark blue Atlanta Braves sweatshirt and pull it over the cashmere J Crew sweater you got from the thrift shop in order to impress your boyfriend’s parents. Then it’s too hot, so you stuff it into your bag--your bright red bag. After checking your surroundings, you limp over and find a tote bag that says Hotlanta! And buy it (the clerk is, by now, looking at you like you’re a freak). You step behind the shelf and transfer everything in your large purse into the tote bag. Suddenly you see them. Two. They’re about half your height, with green scales and large yellow teeth. They walk on two feet like a person, but they move like lizards. They look like the bad buys in a fairy tale. Goblins, or something. And no one notices. People move around them automatically, like they do for plants or luggage, but their eyes never focus on them. The goblins' eyes are small, soulless, but peering everywhere. Their little nostrils--their snouts are shaped like an alligator’s, but shorter--are twitching. They’re sniffing for you. You step back, trying to move gradually in case fast movement kicks your scent into the air. Sweat pricks your underarms--a result, no doubt, of both your nervousness and the extra layer you used to have on. But when you peek again, they’ve passed by. Maybe the smartest thing would be to keep them in front of you. After all, your gate is all the way on the other side of the airport, and you only have four hours to get there. The only way out of this nightmare is to get on that plane to New York. You wait for them to get about fifty feet ahead, peek out of the store, and, seeing nothing amiss, begin following them. You begin walking toward the center of the airport. Along the way, you throw away the purse and sweater, and stop in the bathroom and cover yourself with sickly-sweet strawberry soap--anything to hide your natural scent.After a few minutes, you reach an escalator, which will take you down to the tram area, where you will get a ride to your terminal. As you near the bottom, suddenly there is a slap-slapping on the marble floor, like someone in thin wet socks. You turn. There are creatures behind you, weaving around the people at the top of the escalator. You hurry down the escalator. The tram to Gate C has arrived. Should you try to catch it, hoping the doors will close before they can follow you (or if they do, that you can hop out quickly) or turn and fight? > You run for the Tram You leap onto the tram just as the doors close. You aren’t stupid--no way is this hell over with. But at least you’re safe for now. The tram slows at B Gate. Will any of them get on? You edge near the doors, ready to leap out, but none do, and the tram ambles onward. A guy about your age, tall and skinny with a t-shirt advertising a Dropkick Murphys show from eight years ago gets on. He notices you. Huh. Come to think of it, not many people have done that since you found the first postcard. You’re no Megan Fox, but you are a reasonably attractive twenty-year-old girl, and you’re used to a moderate amount of male perusal while in public. And yet, for the most part, people’s eyes have been sliding past you all day. Only airport employees have acknowledged your existence. Weird. And yet this guy sees you. That’s probably not good. You edge a little closer to the doors. What if he’s one of them? A normal college-age boy outside, a goblin inside? Maybe that’s the next level of this--at first the monsters are easy to spot, and then they’re in the form of fairly cute guys. He walks up to you. “Hi.” This close he looks familiar. Familiar like a human I’ve seen before, or familiar like a goblin? “I think we went to camp together.” His eyes are a yellow-striped green--what color were theirs? You can’t remember. You were too panicked to notice. “Guess not,” he says. You must look pretty freaked out, because he starts backing away. And then his face clicks into place. Triple R Ranch. Summer before fourth grade. His name is Dmitri, and the reason you still know that is that he was almost your first kiss. (Instead it was this loser named Jason in sixth grade. He told everyone you tasted like bubble gum--which doesn’t seem that bad, but somehow he made it sound absolutely disgusting. What a prick.) “Wait,” you say. “Dmitri, right?” “Yeah. You’re Claire.” “Clara, actually. That’s my real name.” You like Claire better, but it was too hard to keep telling everyone to call you Claire. They kept forgetting, and finally you just gave up and went with it. He asks where you’re going, and you tell him. He says he’s going to Philadelphia to spend Christmas with his dad--he’s headed to the same terminal you are. His eyes move over you, but not in a flirtatious way. “Are you okay?” You look down. You are sweating profusely. “It’s been...a stressful trip,” you finish lamely. “How so?” He seems to know there’s a deeper meaning--which isn’t itself strange, Dmitri has always been able to read people pretty well--but you can’t shake the feeling that running into him is a little too coincidental. Should you trust him enough to tell him you’re being stalked, or just politely brush him off? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You run for a few hundred feet, then dart into a gift shop. You browse behind a high shelf, waiting to see if anyone (or anything) is following you. Nothing looks suspicious, and no one seems to be paying you any particular attention. You buy a dark blue Atlanta Braves sweatshirt and pull it over the cashmere J Crew sweater you got from the thrift shop in order to impress your boyfriend’s parents. Then it’s too hot, so you stuff it into your bag--your bright red bag. After checking your surroundings, you limp over and find a tote bag that says Hotlanta! And buy it (the clerk is, by now, looking at you like you’re a freak). You step behind the shelf and transfer everything in your large purse into the tote bag. Suddenly you see them. Two. They’re about half your height, with green scales and large yellow teeth. They walk on two feet like a person, but they move like lizards. They look like the bad buys in a fairy tale. Goblins, or something. And no one notices. People move around them automatically, like they do for plants or luggage, but their eyes never focus on them. The goblins' eyes are small, soulless, but peering everywhere. Their little nostrils--their snouts are shaped like an alligator’s, but shorter--are twitching. They’re sniffing for you. You step back, trying to move gradually in case fast movement kicks your scent into the air. Sweat pricks your underarms--a result, no doubt, of both your nervousness and the extra layer you used to have on. But when you peek again, they’ve passed by. Maybe the smartest thing would be to keep them in front of you. After all, your gate is all the way on the other side of the airport, and you only have four hours to get there. The only way out of this nightmare is to get on that plane to New York. You wait for them to get about fifty feet ahead, peek out of the store, and, seeing nothing amiss, begin following them. You begin walking toward the center of the airport. Along the way, you throw away the purse and sweater, and stop in the bathroom and cover yourself with sickly-sweet strawberry soap--anything to hide your natural scent.After a few minutes, you reach an escalator, which will take you down to the tram area, where you will get a ride to your terminal. As you near the bottom, suddenly there is a slap-slapping on the marble floor, like someone in thin wet socks. You turn. There are creatures behind you, weaving around the people at the top of the escalator. You hurry down the escalator. The tram to Gate C has arrived. Should you try to catch it, hoping the doors will close before they can follow you (or if they do, that you can hop out quickly) or turn and fight? > You fight! Okay, what will you use as a weapon? You have your new tote bag, (which is pretty heavy with a phone, bottle of water, and iPad). Also, there is a wheelchair that has been left at the foot of the escalator. > You bash with bag. Heavy crap or not, it’s still just a bag, and there are two of them. It makes one dizzy, the other bites you, and you go down. No one notices you dying.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Okay, what will you use as a weapon? You have your new tote bag, (which is pretty heavy with a phone, bottle of water, and iPad). Also, there is a wheelchair that has been left at the foot of the escalator. > You use the wheelchair. The metal of the chair is light enough to swing but hard enough to hurt them. You send one sprawling into the now-moving tram and the other into the path of the crowd getting off the escalator. A few people seem to stumble over their own feet as they step on the goblin, but they--especially a woman in stilettos--injure him badly. Both lie there, bleeding yellow blood. They’re not dead, but both injuries look fatal. Neither of them is going to be in any condition to chase you for the next three hours. You probably shouldn't feel that triumphant. Sure, there were two of them, but they're three feet tall. But you do. You've never fought with anyone (or, in this case, anything) in your life. And you won. > You get on the tram. You hurry onto the tram just as the doors close. You aren’t stupid--no way is this hell over with. But at least you’re safe for now. The tram slows at B Gate. Will any of them get on? You edge near the doors, ready to leap out, but none do, and the tram ambles onward. A guy about your age, tall and skinny with a t-shirt advertising a Dropkick Murphys show from eight years ago gets on. He notices you. Huh. Come to think of it, not many people have done that since you found the first postcard. You’re no Megan Fox, but you are a reasonably attractive twenty-year-old girl, and you’re used to a moderate amount of male perusal while in public. And yet, for the most part, people’s eyes have been sliding past you all day. Only airport employees have acknowledged your existence. Weird. And yet this guy sees you. That’s probably not good. You edge a little closer to the doors. What if he’s one of them? A normal college-age boy outside, a goblin inside? Maybe that’s the next level of this--at first the monsters are easy to spot, and then they’re in the form of fairly cute guys. He walks up to you. “Hi.” This close he looks familiar. Familiar like a human I’ve seen before, or familiar like a goblin? “I think we went to camp together.” His eyes are a yellow-striped green--what color were theirs? You can’t remember. You were too panicked to notice. “Guess not,” he says. You must look pretty freaked out, because he starts backing away. And then his face clicks into place. Triple R Ranch. Summer before fourth grade. His name is Dmitri, and the reason you still know that is that he was almost your first kiss. (Instead it was this loser named Jason in sixth grade. He told everyone you tasted like bubble gum--which doesn’t seem that bad, but somehow he made it sound absolutely disgusting. What a prick.) “Wait,” you say. “Dmitri, right?” “Yeah. You’re Claire.” “Clara, actually. That’s my real name.” You like Claire better, but it was too hard to keep telling everyone to call you Claire. They kept forgetting, and finally you just gave up and went with it. He asks where you’re going, and you tell him. He says he’s going to Philadelphia to spend Christmas with his dad--he’s headed to the same terminal you are. His eyes move over you, but not in a flirtatious way. “Are you okay?” You look down. One of the goblins has ripped your jeans from knee to ankle. Also you are sweating profusely. “It’s been...a stressful trip,” you finish lamely. “How so?” He seems to know there’s a deeper meaning to that--which isn’t itself strange, Dmitri's always been able to read people pretty well--but you can’t shake the feeling that running into him is a little too coincidental. Should you trust him enough to tell him you’re being stalked, or just politely brush him off? > You trust him...well, a little. You make up a story about an old boyfriend who is following you and has threatened to kill you. The authorities won’t do anything because the threats are all verbal, and there’s no evidence, and he has a perfect record. Dmitri is skeptical of this at first, but when he sees your fear is real, he starts to believe you. “So what are you going to do?” he asks. “Get off at Terminal D, I guess. He's got to be watching Terminal C, since he knows my itinerary.” “Yeah, but he’s watching for you, right?” “Yes…” “So let’s be a couple. He’ll be looking for someone alone, and that terminal should be pretty crowded since it’s a Delta one.” Should you agree to this, or continue with your original plan?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You hurry onto the tram just as the doors close. You aren’t stupid--no way is this hell over with. But at least you’re safe for now. The tram slows at B Gate. Will any of them get on? You edge near the doors, ready to leap out, but none do, and the tram ambles onward. A guy about your age, tall and skinny with a t-shirt advertising a Dropkick Murphys show from eight years ago gets on. He notices you. Huh. Come to think of it, not many people have done that since you found the first postcard. You’re no Megan Fox, but you are a reasonably attractive twenty-year-old girl, and you’re used to a moderate amount of male perusal while in public. And yet, for the most part, people’s eyes have been sliding past you all day. Only airport employees have acknowledged your existence. Weird. And yet this guy sees you. That’s probably not good. You edge a little closer to the doors. What if he’s one of them? A normal college-age boy outside, a goblin inside? Maybe that’s the next level of this--at first the monsters are easy to spot, and then they’re in the form of fairly cute guys. He walks up to you. “Hi.” This close he looks familiar. Familiar like a human I’ve seen before, or familiar like a goblin? “I think we went to camp together.” His eyes are a yellow-striped green--what color were theirs? You can’t remember. You were too panicked to notice. “Guess not,” he says. You must look pretty freaked out, because he starts backing away. And then his face clicks into place. Triple R Ranch. Summer before fourth grade. His name is Dmitri, and the reason you still know that is that he was almost your first kiss. (Instead it was this loser named Jason in sixth grade. He told everyone you tasted like bubble gum--which doesn’t seem that bad, but somehow he made it sound absolutely disgusting. What a prick.) “Wait,” you say. “Dmitri, right?” “Yeah. You’re Claire.” “Clara, actually. That’s my real name.” You like Claire better, but it was too hard to keep telling everyone to call you Claire. They kept forgetting, and finally you just gave up and went with it. He asks where you’re going, and you tell him. He says he’s going to Philadelphia to spend Christmas with his dad--he’s headed to the same terminal you are. His eyes move over you, but not in a flirtatious way. “Are you okay?” You look down. One of the goblins has ripped your jeans from knee to ankle. Also you are sweating profusely. “It’s been...a stressful trip,” you finish lamely. “How so?” He seems to know there’s a deeper meaning to that--which isn’t itself strange, Dmitri's always been able to read people pretty well--but you can’t shake the feeling that running into him is a little too coincidental. Should you trust him enough to tell him you’re being stalked, or just politely brush him off? > You brush him off. Things are risky enough, thanks. You decide to get off at Terminal D, since that seems to be physically the closest to C. Maybe they won't be waiting for you. When it slows, you look out the windows. They don't seem to be there. You pull your hood up and walk out. You go up the escalator. They're waiting at the top. Three of them this time. You try to turn around, but there is a solid wall of people behind you. They yank you away from the crowd--no one seems to notice, it's like you're completely alone, it's so unfair-- and push you so hard against the wall that you're out before the first bite sinks into your skin. As dying goes, it's pretty painless, but it's still dying--alone, with no one to help you. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You make your way to the galley and show the head flight attendant the postcard, explaining how you came to receive it. She smiles, turns it over. “The Empire State Building. I’ve been there.” You snatch it back and flip it to show her the message again. “Yeah, but someone’s threatening to kill me.” “I love New York.” Her eyes are glazed. “It’s my favorite layover.” She turns to smile at you. Her white teeth glitter. You show another flight attendant with similar results. Okay, this isn’t going so well. What should you do? Start screaming for help, or just sit there, like, well, a sitting duck? > You um, it said not to tell. You're just going to sit quietly and then start running when you get off the plane. You run for a few hundred feet. No one seems to be coming behind you. Everything seems normal. Just another chaotic airport. You keep running. Maybe--maybe--this is all a sick joke. Well, probably not. But it could be an idle threat. After all, you’re in public. It shouldn’t be too hard to stay around plenty of witnesses--you’re in a friggin’ airport at Christmastime. This is fine. You can handle this. You dart into a gift shop. You browse behind a high shelf, waiting to see if anyone (or anything) is following you. Nothing looks suspicious, and no one seems to be paying you any attention. Just to be safe, you buy a dark blue Atlanta Braves sweatshirt and pull it over the cashmere J Crew sweater you got from the thrift shop in order to impress your boyfriend’s parents. What else will make you stand out? You're carrying a bright red purse. After checking your surroundings, you walk over and find a tote bag that says Hotlanta! And buy it (the clerk is, by now, looking at you like you’re a freak). You step behind the shelf and transfer everything in your large purse into the tote bag. Suddenly you see them. Two. They’re about half your height, with green scales and large yellow teeth. They walk on two feet like a person, but they move like lizards. They look like the bad buys in a fairy tale. Goblins, or something. And no one notices. People move around them automatically, like they do for plants or luggage, but their eyes never focus on them. The goblins' eyes are small, soulless, but peering everywhere. Their little nostrils--their snouts are shaped like an alligator’s, but shorter--are twitching. Sniffing for you. You step back, trying to move gradually in case fast movement kicks your scent into the air. Sweat pricks your underarms--a result, no doubt, of both your nervousness and the extra layer you’ve put on. But when you peek again, they’ve passed by. You pull off the sweater under your sweatshirt and manage to yank it off through the neck. Maybe the smartest thing would be to keep them in front of you. After all, your gate is all the way on the other side of the airport, and you only have four hours to get there. The only way out of this nightmare is to get on that plane to New York. You wait for them to get about fifty feet ahead, peek out of the store, and, seeing nothing amiss, begin following them. You begin walking toward the center of the airport. Along the way, you throw away the purse and sweater, and stop in the bathroom and cover yourself with sickly-sweet strawberry soap--anything to hide your natural scent.After a few minutes, you reach an escalator, which will take you down to the tram area, where you will get a ride to your terminal. As you near the bottom, suddenly there is a slap-slapping on the marble floor, like someone in thin wet socks. You turn. Creatures are behind you, weaving around the people at the top of the escalator. You hurry down the escalator. The tram to Gate C has arrived. Should you try to catch it, hoping the doors will close before they can follow you (or if they do, that you can hop out before they can do the same) or turn and fight? > You fight! Okay, what will you use as a weapon? You have your new tote bag, (which, though soft on the outside, is pretty heavy with a phone, bottle of water, and iPad). Also, there is a wheelchair that has been left at the foot of the escalator. > You bash with bag. Heavy or not, it’s still just a bag, and there are two of them. It makes one goblin dizzy, the other bites you, and you go down. Strangely, no one notices you dying.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Okay, what will you use as a weapon? You have your new tote bag, (which, though soft on the outside, is pretty heavy with a phone, bottle of water, and iPad). Also, there is a wheelchair that has been left at the foot of the escalator. > You pick up the wheelchair. The metal of the chair is light enough to swing but hard enough to hurt them. You send one sprawling into the now-moving tram and the other into the path of the crowd getting off the escalator. A few people seem to stumble over their own feet as they step on the goblin, but they--especially a woman in stilettos--injure him badly. Both lie there, bleeding yellow blood. They’re not dead, but both injuries look fatal. Neither of them is going to be in any condition to chase you for the next three hours. > You board the tram, victorious one! You hurry onto the tram just as the doors close. You aren’t stupid--no way is this hell over with. But at least you’re safe for now. The tram slows at B Gate. Will any of them get on? You edge near the doors, ready to leap out, but none do, and the tram ambles onward. A guy about your age, tall and skinny with a t-shirt advertising a Dropkick Murphys show from eight years ago gets on. He notices you. Huh. Come to think of it, not many people have done that since you found the first postcard. You’re no Megan Fox, but you are a reasonably attractive twenty-year-old girl, and you’re used to a moderate amount of male perusal while in public. And yet, for the most part, people’s eyes have been sliding past you all day. Only airport employees have acknowledged your existence. Weird. And yet this guy sees you. That’s probably not good. You edge a little closer to the doors. What if he’s one of them? A normal college-age boy outside, a goblin inside? Maybe that’s the next level of this--at first the monsters are easy to spot, and then they come in the form of fairly cute guys. He walks up to you. “Hi.” This close he looks familiar. Familiar like a human I’ve seen before, or familiar like a goblin? “I think we went to camp together.” His eyes are a yellow-striped green--what color were theirs? You can’t remember. You were too panicked to notice. “Guess not,” he says. You must look pretty freaked out, because he starts backing away. And then his face clicks into place. Triple R Ranch. Summer before fourth grade. His name is Dmitri, and the reason you still know that is that he was almost your first kiss. (Instead it was this loser named Jason in sixth grade. He told everyone you tasted like bubble gum--which doesn’t seem that bad, but somehow he made it sound absolutely disgusting. What a prick.) “Wait,” you say. "Dmitri, right?” “Yeah. You’re Claire.” “Clara, actually. That’s my real name.” You like Claire better, but it was too hard to keep telling everyone to call you Claire. They kept forgetting, and finally you just gave up and went with it. He asks where you’re going, and you tell him. He says he’s going to Philadelphia to spend Christmas with his dad--he’s headed to the same terminal you are. His eyes move over you, but not in a flirtatious way. “Are you okay?” You look down. During the fight, one of the goblins apparently ripped your jeans from knee to ankle. Also you are sweating profusely. “It’s been...a stressful trip,” you finish lamely. “How so?” He seems to know there’s a deeper meaning to that--which isn’t itself strange, Dmitri has always been able to read people pretty well--but you can’t shake the feeling that running into him is a little too coincidental. Should you trust him enough to tell him you’re being stalked, or just politely brush him off? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You run for a few hundred feet. No one seems to be coming behind you. Everything seems normal. Just another chaotic airport. You keep running. Maybe--maybe--this is all a sick joke. Well, probably not. But it could be an idle threat. After all, you’re in public. It shouldn’t be too hard to stay around plenty of witnesses--you’re in a friggin’ airport at Christmastime. This is fine. You can handle this. You dart into a gift shop. You browse behind a high shelf, waiting to see if anyone (or anything) is following you. Nothing looks suspicious, and no one seems to be paying you any attention. Just to be safe, you buy a dark blue Atlanta Braves sweatshirt and pull it over the cashmere J Crew sweater you got from the thrift shop in order to impress your boyfriend’s parents. What else will make you stand out? You're carrying a bright red purse. After checking your surroundings, you walk over and find a tote bag that says Hotlanta! And buy it (the clerk is, by now, looking at you like you’re a freak). You step behind the shelf and transfer everything in your large purse into the tote bag. Suddenly you see them. Two. They’re about half your height, with green scales and large yellow teeth. They walk on two feet like a person, but they move like lizards. They look like the bad buys in a fairy tale. Goblins, or something. And no one notices. People move around them automatically, like they do for plants or luggage, but their eyes never focus on them. The goblins' eyes are small, soulless, but peering everywhere. Their little nostrils--their snouts are shaped like an alligator’s, but shorter--are twitching. Sniffing for you. You step back, trying to move gradually in case fast movement kicks your scent into the air. Sweat pricks your underarms--a result, no doubt, of both your nervousness and the extra layer you’ve put on. But when you peek again, they’ve passed by. You pull off the sweater under your sweatshirt and manage to yank it off through the neck. Maybe the smartest thing would be to keep them in front of you. After all, your gate is all the way on the other side of the airport, and you only have four hours to get there. The only way out of this nightmare is to get on that plane to New York. You wait for them to get about fifty feet ahead, peek out of the store, and, seeing nothing amiss, begin following them. You begin walking toward the center of the airport. Along the way, you throw away the purse and sweater, and stop in the bathroom and cover yourself with sickly-sweet strawberry soap--anything to hide your natural scent.After a few minutes, you reach an escalator, which will take you down to the tram area, where you will get a ride to your terminal. As you near the bottom, suddenly there is a slap-slapping on the marble floor, like someone in thin wet socks. You turn. Creatures are behind you, weaving around the people at the top of the escalator. You hurry down the escalator. The tram to Gate C has arrived. Should you try to catch it, hoping the doors will close before they can follow you (or if they do, that you can hop out before they can do the same) or turn and fight? > You run for the tram. You hurry onto the tram just as the doors close. You aren’t stupid--no way is this hell over with. But at least you’re safe for now. The tram slows at B Gate. Will any of them get on? You edge toward the doors, ready to leap out, but it's just a group of middle schoolers in matching sweatshirts and their chaperone. The tram ambles forward. At the next stop, a guy about your age, tall and skinny with a t-shirt advertising a Dropkick Murphys show from eight years ago, gets on. He notices you. Huh. Come to think of it, not many people have done that since you found the first postcard. You’re no Megan Fox, but you are a reasonably attractive twenty-year-old girl, and you’re accustomed to a moderate amount of male perusal while in public. And yet people’s eyes have been sliding past you all day. Only airport employees have acknowledged your existence. Weird. This guy, however, sees you. Probably not good. You edge a little closer to the doors. What if he’s one of them? A normal college-age boy outside, a goblin inside? Maybe that’s the next level--at first the monsters are easy to spot, and then they’re in the form of fairly cute guys. He walks up to you. “Hi.” This close he looks familiar. Familiar like a human I’ve seen before, or familiar like a goblin? “I think we went to camp together.” His eyes are a yellow-striped green--what color were theirs? Damn. You were too panicked to notice. “Guess not,” he says. You must look pretty freaked out, because he starts backing away slowly. And then his face clicks into place. Triple R Ranch. Summer before fourth grade. His name is Dmitri, and the reason you still know that is that he was almost your first kiss. (Instead it was this loser named Jason in sixth grade. He told everyone you tasted like bubble gum--which doesn’t seem that bad, but somehow he made it sound absolutely disgusting. What a prick.) “Wait,” you say. “Dmitri, right?” “Yeah. You’re Claire.” “Clara, actually. That’s my real name.” You like Claire better, but it was too hard to keep telling everyone to call you Claire. They kept forgetting, and finally you just gave up and went with it. He asks where you’re going, and you tell him. He says he’s going to Philadelphia to spend Christmas with his dad--he’s headed to the same terminal you are. His eyes move over you, but not in a flirtatious way. “Are you okay?” You look down. In addition to the sloppy-looking sweatshirt, you are sweating profusely. “It’s been...a stressful trip,” you finish lamely. “How so?” He seems to know there’s a deeper meaning to that--which isn’t itself strange, Dmitri has always been able to read people pretty well--but you can’t shake the feeling that running into him is a little too coincidental. Should you trust him enough to tell him you’re being stalked, or just politely brush him off? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> The airport is hella crowded, and of course every single face you see is pinched with anxiety, like flying home for Christmas is the most horrific event of their lives. You aren't usually one to use the word vibe, but the whole atmosphere gives you a slightly sick feeling, as if your body is absorbing their stress. You board the plane for the six-hour flight to your connection, Atlanta. Halfway through, you use the lav. When you return, there's a postcard on your seat. This one shows a picture of the Empire State Building. You turn it over. Black, scrawling letters read: Dear Clara, When you get off, that’s when I’ll find you. When I find you, that’s when I’ll kill you. When you run, better run fast. When you hide, better hide good. When you tell, it makes things worse. Panic clenches your throat. Is this real? Does someone actually want to kill you? What should you do? Tell the stewardess? Or follow the advice on the postcard? > You don't Tell The plane lands. What should you do--go to the TSA and tell them what’s going on, or just run and hope the killer doesn’t find you? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> It’s officially winter break. You stumble toward your dorm room, brain turned to mush from taking five exams in three days. All you have to do is grab your suitcase, and then you’ll be on your way to NYC to stay with your boyfriend, Keith, and his parents for Christmas. You’ve never met them, but he’s told you that they have a large, luxurious apartment with a pool--which sounds awesome, but intimidating. Anyway. Keith, the lucky son of a gun, has already flown out. (He’s a creative writing major. His exams consist of writing poems about his childhood and writing essays about the meaning of life.) You pause in the hallway (which is empty--almost everyone else has finished exams and gotten the heck out of here.) Like every college dorm room in every movie ever, there's a whiteboard on your door. Now there's an "I Heart NY" magnet on there. The magnet holds a postcard with a photo of the Statue of Liberty. You're pretty sure it wasn't there when you left this morning. > You take the postcard from the board. In thick black Sharpie, it says “Dear Clara, If you leave, I’ll go too. So I can kill you.” No exclamation point. Like it’s a fact. So, um...that happened. You aren't real big on taking risks...but then again, is this a risk or a weird joke? > You why take chances? Stay and watch Netflix. Why take chances? You were nervous about meeting his family anyway. You don’t go. Your boyfriend is mad at you for about a month afterward, and you start to regret how cowardly you were--both about the note and meeting his parents. You clearly don’t have the capacity to think for yourself--and you’re selfish. In May, Keith gets a middle-management job at his dad’s company, which was always the unspoken plan (though Keith told people at parties that he was an aspiring writer.) He moves to New York City, and you are so bent on redeeming yourself for not coming to see him at Christmas that you follow him out there without really considering that you aren't in love with him anymore. A year later, you're engaged, and a year after that, you marry him. His father’s company promotes him quickly (so quickly his colleagues secretly hate him).You have two kids. You suspect he’s cheating, but you don’t really think about it until he comes home just before your twentieth anniversary. He tells you he’s in love with his secretary. Goblins haunt your dreams. After a two-year divorce battle over alimony and custody, you are angry, exhausted, and consumed with the need for vengeance. As the years go by, nothing much changes. You resent Keith for the way he controlled your life, but at this point you're too lazy to be proactive. This attitude remains basically unchanged until you die--which happens when you're an old woman, but jeez, what a pointless life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> In thick black Sharpie, it says “Dear Clara, If you leave, I’ll go too. So I can kill you.” No exclamation point. Like it’s a fact. So, um...that happened. You aren't real big on taking risks...but then again, is this a risk or a weird joke? > You go anyway. It's obviously a joke. Um, this is clearly a joke--and since you don’t get it, it’s probably for your roommate. Obviously you aren’t going to screw up your holiday plans and waste the $900 ticket Keith generously got for you. You finish packing. As you roll your suitcase down the deserted hallway, you see something disappearing around a corner: a figure about three feet tall, with green skin. Should you follow it, or ignore your obviously delusional and sleep-deprived mind?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up, but meh. Who really cares? You walk out of your chamber, the giant stone echoes with the sounds of your footsteps. As you exit the hall you gaze upon the worthless denizens of your humble abode. They all wander around, asking you your opinions of things, but do you care? Meh, not really. Another sound catches your ears. And from out of some random chamber comes a short girl with orange hair. "Ah, my cherry pie," you say as you kiss her on the forehead. "Hey, you slept in pretty late!" She says. "Meh." "I'm going to go to Cystia today? Want to join me?" she asks. "Meh." "Meh?" she asks. "Might stay in Discordina today." "Why?" "Eh, don't feel like it." As you continue on, you see more and more people and things you do not care about at all. Eventually, you make your way down the hall to one of your favorite rooms. The whirring and clanking of machinery and other things is like music to your ears. But that's not all. Ahead, someone covered in scales stands in front of a large machine. Large and with plenty of metal tubes, each with green liquid running through them. It is through this invention, and with the help of this green magical essence, you can alter reality itself. It's called the Deviner, the greatest invention to ever exist. You step forward to plug yourself in, the large needle like object about to prick through your forehead. But as you do so, you don't feel the rush of the running green liquid. In fact all you hear is an odd clunking and churning sound. Nothing happens, and you frown. "Damn it!" The scaly dragon man says, "I think something is busted." You rip the needle out and let it dangle where it sits. The machinery itself seems to have broken down, collapsed and laying defunct. The dragon man starts gathering pieces of what machinery he can. Before you can do anything, he stops you. "I'll work in this stuff, you should go to Cystia and find some of those magic crystals." "Why?" you ask. "Not only did the machinery break, it seems the magic crystal over charged, and sent a surge of magic throughout the liquid. So it broke down the weaker parts of the Deviner." You sigh, one of the few things you gave a shit about. You walk down the worthless halls, pass all the worthless people, and finally reach one of the worthless carriages. It seems several of them have taken off anyway. As you sit down, you slump into the comfy seat you had installed in the carriage. The worthless guy driving it flicks the reigns, causing the worthless horses to go forward. > You destination You finally arrive to the bustling land known as Cystia! As you drive through the wild lands, you see several guards in armor patrolling along the roads. These stone roads must be new. Ahead you see three of the guards chasing some furry creature, landing several arrows in its back as it finally goes down. The guards stand in the middle of the road, one steps forward and raises a hand. The carriage grinds to a halt. You look the window as a guard briskly approaches. "The roads are dangerous, you shouldn't be traveling alone." "Meh," you shrug your shoulders. The guard sighs, his tired eyes looking blank for a few moments. "The beast folk roam these lands," he says, "at least allow a couple of our guards to travel with you." You shrug your shoulders, and the guard orders two of his underlings to join you in the carriage. The ride is uneventful, although there are a few minor sights to see along the way. > You town It is about noon by the time the carriage reaches the gates of the civilized lands of Cystia. A few shouts from the guards over the walls, and the heavy wood and iron gates creak open. The carriage pulls up to a wooden…shack, where a couple of dirty peasants come out to take care of the horses. You step out of the carriage, and take a look around. Hopefully some crystals should be somewhere in Cystia…if not you're going to have to make a hike to a very powerful magic users place. Not that you can get in there, but you'd have to try. You have to try and figure something out, otherwise you'll never be able to use the Diviner again! You go to look around that all this portion of Cystia has to offer. Now where could those magic crystals be? > You lair A feeling of intense dread fills you up, making you feel not so warm inside. You're last trip to this place was….interesting. After getting painfully banished you decided to ignore the place and just continue on business as usual. But you NEED to get these crystals, otherwise what will become of your place in Discorina? It takes hours, but eventually you make your way past the main city, and through the dirt road. Ahead, the large and dark castle looms over head. The ashy clouds spewing a host of rain and lightning strikes viciously at the ground. The stone walls surrounding the castle appear foreboding, several small watchtowers dot the wall. Dark spires stretching upward, the metal spikes on top of them catching some of the lightning bolts. As you near the wall, you swear you hear something turning and whirring from deep within the castle, amidst the sound of the storm. Shivering and trembling you jog over to the castle, hoping you can get what you're looking for, and maybe a place to warm up. The large wooden gate appears to be shut, you didn't expect it to just be wide open though. You grab the rope on the side and pull it with all of your might. The large bell connected to it rings out its horrid tune. As you stand, soaked and cold, the door slowly opens but just a bit. Taking a step forward you squint at the opening. "Who's there?" a voice says, "Ford? Is that you?" "Yep," you say. "Ha, you know you're not allowed here." "I'm just here for some magic crystals…nothing else," you say. "I think that would be going against the rules…remember what happened last time you were here?" "Can you at least let me in from the cold, please," you say, "wouldn't it be nice?" The door opens more, and the source of the voice steps out. A tall man, hair shaved and clean shaven, he smiles. But there is something else to that smile, it's not exactly coming from a place of hospitality. "Sure," he chuckles, "this should be interesting." "Thanks," you say as you walk past him. You enter the tunnel that eventually leads to the door…which you find to be open. Walking in like you own the place, you take a look around. The large keep appears empty…as far as you can tell. The winds of the storm buffets against the castle, it almost obscures the sound of your soft steps as you traverse across the large keep. Wandering down the halls, you stop suddenly as you hear something. "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Shrugging your shoulders you continue, must have just been your imagination. The halls twist and wind, and you feel as lost as ever. How did you ever navigate this place in the short time you had spent here? That darn Sorceress must be around here somewhere, she must have some magic crystals. But where could she be? > You spire You start with the most obvious place, the spire that she lives in. As you pass a few rooms, you hear a strange sound coming from one of them…meh. You continue on, not caring about what is very likely one of the many strange noises you will be hearing tonight. After going up several sets of stairs, you come to one that narrows and….spirals as you go up it. After several minutes you find yourself at the top, amidst a huge library. You walk through the place, eerily quiet. "Ax…Ax!" you shout. Nothing. Eventually you find a bed, a desk, and some table meant to magic things or whatever it is she does. Having no interest in anything that could be stashed in here, you continue on your way. Where else could you look?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A feeling of intense dread fills you up, making you feel not so warm inside. You're last trip to this place was….interesting. After getting painfully banished you decided to ignore the place and just continue on business as usual. But you NEED to get these crystals, otherwise what will become of your place in Discorina? It takes hours, but eventually you make your way past the main city, and through the dirt road. Ahead, the large and dark castle looms over head. The ashy clouds spewing a host of rain and lightning strikes viciously at the ground. The stone walls surrounding the castle appear foreboding, several small watchtowers dot the wall. Dark spires stretching upward, the metal spikes on top of them catching some of the lightning bolts. As you near the wall, you swear you hear something turning and whirring from deep within the castle, amidst the sound of the storm. Shivering and trembling you jog over to the castle, hoping you can get what you're looking for, and maybe a place to warm up. The large wooden gate appears to be shut, you didn't expect it to just be wide open though. You grab the rope on the side and pull it with all of your might. The large bell connected to it rings out its horrid tune. As you stand, soaked and cold, the door slowly opens but just a bit. Taking a step forward you squint at the opening. "Who's there?" a voice says, "Ford? Is that you?" "Yep," you say. "Ha, you know you're not allowed here." "I'm just here for some magic crystals…nothing else," you say. "I think that would be going against the rules…remember what happened last time you were here?" "Can you at least let me in from the cold, please," you say, "wouldn't it be nice?" The door opens more, and the source of the voice steps out. A tall man, hair shaved and clean shaven, he smiles. But there is something else to that smile, it's not exactly coming from a place of hospitality. "Sure," he chuckles, "this should be interesting." "Thanks," you say as you walk past him. You enter the tunnel that eventually leads to the door…which you find to be open. Walking in like you own the place, you take a look around. The large keep appears empty…as far as you can tell. The winds of the storm buffets against the castle, it almost obscures the sound of your soft steps as you traverse across the large keep. Wandering down the halls, you stop suddenly as you hear something. "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Shrugging your shoulders you continue, must have just been your imagination. The halls twist and wind, and you feel as lost as ever. How did you ever navigate this place in the short time you had spent here? That darn Sorceress must be around here somewhere, she must have some magic crystals. But where could she be? > You garden You go to the interior garden, flowing with life, plants, some animals, the place is huge. You look around, and as you call out don't see anyone. Guess you'll have to look elsewhere.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A feeling of intense dread fills you up, making you feel not so warm inside. You're last trip to this place was….interesting. After getting painfully banished you decided to ignore the place and just continue on business as usual. But you NEED to get these crystals, otherwise what will become of your place in Discorina? It takes hours, but eventually you make your way past the main city, and through the dirt road. Ahead, the large and dark castle looms over head. The ashy clouds spewing a host of rain and lightning strikes viciously at the ground. The stone walls surrounding the castle appear foreboding, several small watchtowers dot the wall. Dark spires stretching upward, the metal spikes on top of them catching some of the lightning bolts. As you near the wall, you swear you hear something turning and whirring from deep within the castle, amidst the sound of the storm. Shivering and trembling you jog over to the castle, hoping you can get what you're looking for, and maybe a place to warm up. The large wooden gate appears to be shut, you didn't expect it to just be wide open though. You grab the rope on the side and pull it with all of your might. The large bell connected to it rings out its horrid tune. As you stand, soaked and cold, the door slowly opens but just a bit. Taking a step forward you squint at the opening. "Who's there?" a voice says, "Ford? Is that you?" "Yep," you say. "Ha, you know you're not allowed here." "I'm just here for some magic crystals…nothing else," you say. "I think that would be going against the rules…remember what happened last time you were here?" "Can you at least let me in from the cold, please," you say, "wouldn't it be nice?" The door opens more, and the source of the voice steps out. A tall man, hair shaved and clean shaven, he smiles. But there is something else to that smile, it's not exactly coming from a place of hospitality. "Sure," he chuckles, "this should be interesting." "Thanks," you say as you walk past him. You enter the tunnel that eventually leads to the door…which you find to be open. Walking in like you own the place, you take a look around. The large keep appears empty…as far as you can tell. The winds of the storm buffets against the castle, it almost obscures the sound of your soft steps as you traverse across the large keep. Wandering down the halls, you stop suddenly as you hear something. "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Shrugging your shoulders you continue, must have just been your imagination. The halls twist and wind, and you feel as lost as ever. How did you ever navigate this place in the short time you had spent here? That darn Sorceress must be around here somewhere, she must have some magic crystals. But where could she be? > You kitchen Ah, that’s right, it must be dinner time! After spending several more long and grueling minutes trying to remember your way around the place, you pass through some of the halls until you find the kitchens. And what a smell that greets you! Someone is cooking up some good shit! As you enter the large dinner hall, the near empty place seems somewhat startling. As you get closer to the trio, you see one woman holding several chickens in her arms and softly whispering to them. "Who are you?" you ask. "It's simple…I'm Sabley," she says before going back to the most precious chickens. The second person you see is some girl with little snakes for hair, and her eyes….by God her eyes…you stare with horror into the empty void that was her eye sockets, as you do so a little beetle crawls out of one of them, takes a shit on her eyebrow, and goes back inside. > You stare into the Void As you stare into the gaping chasms, you think you see something flickering within, it is a quick flash of red…then it is gone. As you keep staring the darkness seems to seep out of them and take over your vision. You tremble and shutter and fall to the floor… Time...time loops...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ah, that’s right, it must be dinner time! After spending several more long and grueling minutes trying to remember your way around the place, you pass through some of the halls until you find the kitchens. And what a smell that greets you! Someone is cooking up some good shit! As you enter the large dinner hall, the near empty place seems somewhat startling. As you get closer to the trio, you see one woman holding several chickens in her arms and softly whispering to them. "Who are you?" you ask. "It's simple…I'm Sabley," she says before going back to the most precious chickens. The second person you see is some girl with little snakes for hair, and her eyes….by God her eyes…you stare with horror into the empty void that was her eye sockets, as you do so a little beetle crawls out of one of them, takes a shit on her eyebrow, and goes back inside. > You ask where Axiom is "Where is Axiom?" you ask. Misjudging the sound, the blind freak turns towards the empty wall. "Last I saw, she went down to the dungeon," she says patting the chair next to her, "don't worry, you'll find her soon enough." "Thanks," you say. She turns to you. "I wasn't talking to you," she says turning back to the chair once again, "some people, no respect for private conversations." She shakes her head in disgust and begins going into detailed instructions of where the dungeon could be. "Well, our friend Corgi could take you there," Sabley says, "he knows where the dungeon is, don't you Corgi?" You hadn't really paid attention to, or noticed the third person in the trio. By your feet sits a little dog, its short fur pasted and matted with…you don't really want to know what. The dogs tongue perpetually hangs out from the side of its mouth, and as it stares at you, its left eye seems shift to the left. Its pupil almost hides within its eye socket. "Oh, I think he is trying to point towards the door." You look in the direction of the eye to see the door you came from. "He wants you to show him where the dungeon is, can you do that?" Sabley asks. "Daaaargh!" Corgi shouts and vigorously shakes his head up and down. In a moment he briskly walks over to the door, his little feet making padding sounds. You have no choice but to follow it at this point. The dog sits by the door and waits for you to catch up before continuing. > You dungeon After some time, the dog sits in front of a large stair case. He sits and faces you, his left eye rolling into the back of his head, presumably to point at the stairs right behind him. As you walk down the stairs you almost don't notice the dog following right behind you. You finally reach the long and dark corridors. As you walk past multiple cells, you see a demented looking furry man sitting in a cage with a giant lizard. They roll a ball back and forth, the furry man just repeats "Jibble" over and over again, drool coming out the side of his mouth. With shivers going down your spine, you continue on, not wanting to know what sick degeneracy this will turn into. Along the way, you hear a giant Uuuuurp! and peer into the cell it came from. Materializing from the shadows is a large, ugly….Ogre! The good natured being waves and smiles at you. "Didn't expect to see you here!" he says. Not caring you shrug your shoulders and continue on, the Ogre cares even less and goes back to scratching his ass or whatever it is ogres do. Eventually you find your way to a break in the wall, bricks lay on the ground, and moss grows along the walls of the cave that gives way. "Dar!" Corgi shouts and his eye points to the cave. > You cave You enter the dark cave, and after a few minutes of feeling around curse yourself for not thinking to grab a torch from the wall. Eventually though, a light emanates from up ahead. Surely she is hanging out over here. The torchlight almost blinds you as you step out. The cave expands out to a huge cave system, filled with thousands of glowing plants and mushrooms of various sorts. About halfway across is what appears to be a river running out to the ocean. A small dock sits empty, as a lonely lamp on a post shines bright. A small campfire burns, with several log benches surrounding it. Two figures sit around it, small green glowing things in their hands. You nonchalantly walk up to the campfire, the dog goes and crawls into some makeshift dog house not too far away. Sitting on each side of the fire are Malk and Steve. The first wearing a pink tutu, and a regular fur shirt above that, he sees you eyeing the tutu. "What?" Malk says, "it's a joke." "Whatever you say," you say, "have either of you seen Axiom?" "Just missed her, I'm afraid," Steve says, "hey, do you want to sit with us for a while?" You start to shrug your shoulders. "You should warm up," Steve says, "you look soaked." You decide to sit and humor them for a while, besides, the fire is quite warm. Steve points to the small dock. "Axiom took that boat not two hours ago," Steve says, "no idea why she would in a storm like this." You look to the empty dock once again, before looking down to the dark abyss that is the cave system. "These caves extend much further out than any of us would have imagined," Steve says, "what lies in the depths is any ones guess." "As long as she didn’t go too far into them," you say, "although she would probably know them better than anyone else." "No, she went to the ocean," Steve says, "although she does traverse the caves often enough." "Eh, she'll be fine," Malk says, "hey Ford, want to try one of these?" Malk extends his hand, revealing a glowing green mushroom, and a dark red plant in his palm. "These will have you up in the clouds for days, man," Malk says, "shit's good." "What exactly is it?" you ask. "Some kind of mushrooms," he says. > You don't Eat the Mushrooms "Eh, no I'm good," you say. "What? Why not, man?" Malks asks. "I just don't trust any old thing-" "Bah, whatever." Malk says as he jams the mushroom in his mouth, and seems to take too much pleasure in chewing it up and swallowing it…especially the swallowing. His eyes roll up into the back of his head a moment and then he grins as they roll back into place. His glazed eyes have a faraway look, and drool starts to drip from his mouth. Glancing back, you notice Steve seems to have ingested the mysterious mushrooms as well, he stares at the ceiling. "Whuuuuh," Steve says, "look at you, you sexy thing." > You continue You decide it would be best to wait around for a while, no use in going out and getting lost. As you wait, Steve and Malk seem to have ingested more of the mushrooms. Malk stands up and starts twirling like a pretty ballerina, and Steve starts dancing some king of Irish jig. In their minds they probably look like professional dancers…to you they look like a couple of idiots sloppily flailing around. Malk grabs your hands and starts trying to dance with you…..fuck it! You join in and spin him around right before dipping him, and throwing him in the air and catching him. He brings his lips close to yours, and you turn away in time to get a big, wet, sloppy smooch on the cheek. Cringing you drop him and step away. "Too far?" Malk grins as he snorts something else and starts hopping around like a frog. You see Steve take out some paper and begin to furiously scribble on it. You turn and scratch your head, wondering what exactly you have gotten yourself into. Malk hops up and tries to do the same jig he saw Steve do earlier, but only more horrible and sloppy. Malk belts out a song as he dances, at one point almost falling into the fire, but you catch him and pull him away. He doesn't even realize and continues what he is doing. He kneels down and picks up the red plant. "I've never tried this one before…" Malk looks at Steve, "let's try it boy-o." Steve looks up, already having several large books filled up with his writing. That was fast. "Indeed, my friend, indeed we shall," Steve stands up and takes a plant, "hmm, not sure if we should…" "Bah! Nonsense!" Malk says, "man, I could really go for some pie right now." "Ughh," Steve's face coils up into disgust. "I absolutely hate pie," Steve says. "Eh, you can help me make it then," Malk says. Steve shrugs as he and Malk begin to crush up parts of the red plant, and rolling it up in some leaves. After lighting it up using the camp fire, they smoke the crap out of that thing. They're eyes becoming red as smoke fills the immediate area. After some time you start to feel a bit woozy…too much smoke around you. As you sit, Malk giggles and points at you. Steve laughs his ass off and almost falls out of the log bench. "Man, I hate pie," Steve says, "but I sure could use some." "Haha fuck, fuck, fuck fuck!" Malk screams, "I have a great fucking idea!" Before anyone can say anything, Malk leaps up and grabs you by the collar. His eyes start to glow red like the red plant, and so do Steve's eyes. Both giggling they drag you up the cave, even while you kick and protest. "Man, this will be so funny," Malk says, "hah…fuck…best joke ever…" You open your mouth to try to speak, but Malk turns and vomits up some green, glowing liquid, it fills your mouth and you sputter and choke. "Ergh! Fuck!" you scream. > You baked and Baking The two high motherfuckers throw you onto the table in the kitchen. "Wha-what are you guys doi-" you say. "Shut the fuck up! It's okay," Malk says as he strokes your hair, "it'll be fun, you'll love it!" A sound grabs your attention, and you turn your head. A man with two sharp horns and pinkish red skin, enters. "Karstark! Er- Lord Karstark!" Malk says, "you're just in time, want to help?" "Sure…suuuure," Karstark grins and laughs evilly as he rubs his hands together, "what are we doing?" "You'll find out," Steve snaps and shakes his head, and he and Malk each glance at each other and shake their heads at Karstarks foolishness, a thing only known to them. As you turn to look at Malk, you scream as an axe blade buries into your face. Another whack and your eye pops out of your head, miraculously you're still able to see Steve preparing a little silver tray. Karstark steps forward and before you know it, he is sawing your arm off, and drinking the blood of your severed arm. You cough and sputter blood as you start to fall off the table, and Malk hoists you up back onto it with surprising strength. He scolds Kar for drinking your blood, and your vision goes dark as they continue to hack you up…. > You wake Up In the inner recesses of your consciousness, you feel an extreme heat burning up your body. You try to scream but can't just yet. You feel something moving though, must be your mouth. A grating sound grinds against your ears, and you cringe as a gloved hand grabs you and pulls you from the searing heat. You suck in a fresh gasp of air, and the two faces above you gasp and place you on the table. A third one comes into view as they all stare at you in horror…you recognize these faces…you're sure of it. As you are placed, more like thrown on the table. You feel a jolt of something course through you…and you remember. You remember fleeting bits of pain as these high as mother fuckers chopped you up. "What did we do?" Steve asks. The trio looks at each other, Karstark, being a demon, just laughs. Malk and Steve pick you up and hurriedly make their way to the sewage grates. "Sorry man," Malk says, "we're not sure what else to do." "Wait!" Steve says. But it's too late, you've been dropped in the drain and swirl in the stream of nasty, shitty, sewage water… > You swirls and Shit Pain…true pain…something stabs at the edge of your consciousness. No wait… Your eyes snap open, your shit and filth covered body reverberating as something slams into it…again and again. As the feces float out of your vision, you are accosted by the horrible sight of one of the beast people! It's little fuzzy pole jamming in and out of one of the many openings in your body. Your mouth gapes wide and excretes a foul, smelly, green liquid, covering the Rat Man! It screams as the acidic taste burns its flesh, and it hops into the squishy log filled waters in an attempt to wash off the liquid…bad idea. It screams from the pain of all the horrible bodily fluids and excrements entering its open wounds. And unable to handle the pain, it goes under and opens its mouth, swallowing as much as it can in a strange act of self mercy killing. You groan in pain, and realize you can't…but wait. A tentacle slowly emerges from your body slowly snaking on the stone walkway. Green glowing liquid seeps off of it and the tentacle crawls…but it twitches as well. After some straining and braining, you eventually learn you can control it! The rat-man cum and magic ooze must have somehow combined to give you these extraordinary powers! Your silver tray scrapes across the stone walkway as you grow another tentacle to pull yourself across…uggh, so damn slow. Some squeaks meet your ears, and you look over, to see several rat-men approaching, armed with rusty swords and spears. One of them, the apparent leader watches you intently, his paw on resting on the sword sheathed at his side. Two of the rats approach, one armed with a little club, and another with a spear. The one with the spear pokes at you a bit, and you see one further back licking their lips. The leader calls out to the rats in their language, and the one who was poking at you shrugs and seems to dismiss him. These rats are bothering you, and pose a great threat…but you get an idea. A way to get more power… > You eat One You lash your tentacles forth, one yanking the spear from the rat, and the other coiling around his neck and pulling him closer to you. As you try to eat him, he squeaks in fear and plants his paws on either side of you, pushing away with all his might. As he manages to pull away a bit, the other rat leaps forward, slamming the iron end of his mace down onto you. The cherries and human flesh inside of you splats on the stone, as everything feels fuzzy. A few of your teeth fall out, and the last thing you see is the rat raising the mace against you for the last time….<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Pain…true pain…something stabs at the edge of your consciousness. No wait… Your eyes snap open, your shit and filth covered body reverberating as something slams into it…again and again. As the feces float out of your vision, you are accosted by the horrible sight of one of the beast people! It's little fuzzy pole jamming in and out of one of the many openings in your body. Your mouth gapes wide and excretes a foul, smelly, green liquid, covering the Rat Man! It screams as the acidic taste burns its flesh, and it hops into the squishy log filled waters in an attempt to wash off the liquid…bad idea. It screams from the pain of all the horrible bodily fluids and excrements entering its open wounds. And unable to handle the pain, it goes under and opens its mouth, swallowing as much as it can in a strange act of self mercy killing. You groan in pain, and realize you can't…but wait. A tentacle slowly emerges from your body slowly snaking on the stone walkway. Green glowing liquid seeps off of it and the tentacle crawls…but it twitches as well. After some straining and braining, you eventually learn you can control it! The rat-man cum and magic ooze must have somehow combined to give you these extraordinary powers! Your silver tray scrapes across the stone walkway as you grow another tentacle to pull yourself across…uggh, so damn slow. Some squeaks meet your ears, and you look over, to see several rat-men approaching, armed with rusty swords and spears. One of them, the apparent leader watches you intently, his paw on resting on the sword sheathed at his side. Two of the rats approach, one armed with a little club, and another with a spear. The one with the spear pokes at you a bit, and you see one further back licking their lips. The leader calls out to the rats in their language, and the one who was poking at you shrugs and seems to dismiss him. These rats are bothering you, and pose a great threat…but you get an idea. A way to get more power… > You spit Acid Goop Your eyes widen as does your mouth, as the acidic vomit leaves your face, the rat yelp in surprise. Their flesh sizzles as the spear wielders leg burns to the bone, and he falls to the ground. The other rat holds his face and writhes out in agony before falling still. You lunge forward your tentacles, grabbing the surviving rat-man of the two and drag him closer. You munch and chew on him as you fit the whole rat-man in your mouth. You feel a burst of energy coursing through you, and the silver tray falls out from under you as you gain mass and power. Smirking evilly you lash out your tentacles once again, growing more as you do so. You strike one in the face, sending him against the stone wall, his skull cracking against it. He slumps down in a pitiful heap. The next one you wrap a tentacle around his ankle and force him into the shitty waters about a foot below him, sending another tentacle down to keep him under. The leader of the rat-men and his last two appear at a loss as to what to do. You leap forward, jamming a couple tentacles down one of their throats, and coiling around his wrist to stop him from reaching for his sword. The leader hops back as you shoot a tentacle around his other friends neck. Your mouth opens wide, and you gargle some of the green acid before shooting it at the trio. With surprising speed the leader chops through the one tentacle around one of his friends neck with his rusty sword. They spin as he tackles him into the fece filled water just in time to avoid the acid! Unfortunately there was nothing he could for the other rat-man, fortunately for you. You finish him off, and proceed to consume the corpses. You watch as the rat-man leader and his only surviving friend stare in horror as they let the current carry them somewhere safe. You're not worried about them, you have what you need. > You growth and Revenge Now that you have grown in power as well as size, it is time to exact your revenge! Your three potential targets won't be too easy at all. The first, and perhaps the easiest to get to might be Karstark. While you will have to worry about his entourage of demons, they don't seem like too much of a threat. You will have to travel a fair way to the demon infested shit areas of Cystia, but shit, with your appearance they will probably think you are one of them. The next possible target is Steve. He shouldn't be too hard to find, especially if you start looking now, before he sails off somewhere again. Shit, you might even be able to get him and Malk in one fell swoop. The only thing about him is that he is a tenacious bastard, he will not go too easily. You've seen his alcohol fueled duels against some of the beast people and other members of the land. Then there is Malk, who will likely be most on his guard. You'll have to try and catch him when he is high or drunk, as he won't have too good coordination like Steve. The issue with him is that if he channels his berserker rage you're probably fucked. Might have to sneak up on him when it comes time to get your revenge on him. You sincerely hope none of the other villains get in your way, which is always a possibility. You will just have to cross that bridge when you get there. Seems like Karstark will may be the easiest, so you'll start with him. > You karstark Well, you'll have to go with the weakest link first. Besides, he was the only one completely sober when they chopped you up and baked you into a pie. That bastard. Being the large sack of pie that you are, you roll your way out of the sewers, careful to evade any of the large groups of rat people looking for you. You do travel by the sewers though, and the going is easier when you get out of rat territory. You come across all manner of freaks and beasts in the sewer systems, which span for miles and miles. A few times you even get someone to guide your toward Lord Karstark's little territory. Your current guide, some Nuub named Lord Shark points up to a ladder. Apparently these two Lords have been feuding for a while now, so of course he would be happy to help you! You're about to make your way up when he holds up a hand. "Hey, so this ladder should lead right into the middle of his camp, in a not so open place of course," Lord Shark says, "but if you go a little more up that way, there should be a pipe that leads somewhere else in his camp." Shark looks around before continuing. "I can't say for sure where it goes but it couldn't hurt to check it out." "Thanks," you say, "I appreciate the assistance." > You ladder You climb up the ladder, open the hatch, and find yourself smack in the middle of Karstark's camp just as you expected. You look around, several demons are just milling about. While demons should be inherently scary, they don't seem like anything a human pie couldn't handle. > You stealth You decide to play this as quietly as a pie that needs to roll and slither about can. Somehow, you manage to make it across the fort ruins, evading drunken "patrols" and such. Rolling past all the tents, you eventually find who you're looking for. Sitting on an outhouse potty…without the outhouse, is Lord Karstark. His nose buried in some a story by one, who goes by the name of queenlatifa04, with the lowest rated book, presumably about to be turned into toilet paper. You send your tentacle forth, stabbing through the shitty (or soon to be shitty paper) and the tentacle slams right through his chest. Karstark's mouth gapes and quivers. "Y-y-you….I remember you…" Karstark says. "I would assume so, you just turned me into a pie," you say. "That was…months ago…" Karstark says before is head droops down and shpfoooooooouuuutt his legs jerk upwards as his bowels empty. You remove your bloody tentacle, admiring the sharp end on this one. You didn't even know you could do that, must have been instinct. Well, that was surprisingly easy. You slither off and evade the camp guards once again, making your way back to the sewers.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Its a sunny Saturday morning, you are sitted on the staircase to your home sipping coffee and mulling over the day's newspaper after your routine morning run. Its a your rest day and you plan on tucking in the whole day having had 2 long weeks. Its been 2 years since you left the military and joined the Anti-Terrorism Unit having earned a medal of honor for saving your team from what would have been an overwhelming annihilation from enemy forces in Syria. Non-military life had its perks-relaxed time frames, more family time, no foreboding barking of commands and best of all a near-predictable life routine. Your walkie-talkie is rested on the floor next to you, just in case there were any alerts on the events frequency. Just then it chuckles to life as you turn a page on the newspaper. > You pick up walkie-talkie You pick up the walkie-talkie and reply "Copy dog patch 6" "New events have come up that need your immediate presence" replied the voice with an acute touch of urgency "Errr, I am........." "Its a level 1 situation, gather your team and get to M&T bank at Queensferry and Seagate immediately over" cut in the voice You jump onto your feet and run into the house. You dress quickly and run out. As you run out of your bed room remember you have not told your wife that you are leaving. > You talk to your wife You run to the kitchen where your wife is cooking. She smiles as she sees you. You quickly peck her on the cheek and you tell her that you have an urgent work situation. She understands and bids you goodbye. You rush out and jump onto your SUV and pull away from the parking lot in a hurry. 15 minutes later you get to your designated location and notice a number of police vehicles with their hazard lights on. Your team is already on site and awaiting further orders. You alight half running and your assistant Special agent in charge hands you your protective gear and gun. He briefs you on the situation on site and waits for your command. You assess the situation including all exit routes from the building. The terrorists have held hostage a total of 27 customers and 12 employees of the bank.They demand that a well known terrorist be released or hostages will be executed by the hour. You learn that the terrorists had planned their stay with enough food supplies for 3 days and were not planning to leave anytime. Delaying tactics would not work. You look at your watch and you only have 4 minutes until the 1st hostage is executed. Your assistants holds the line for the Director National Security Branch, just in case you decide to negotiate. "We are running out of time sir" He urges Snipers were in position and the team had also taken the front and back entrances > You call Director to release prisoners You decide that its not worth losing hostages over a single prisoner. Furthermore, it would be easier to trace a group of escaping terrorists running across the country with all the inter-agency resources at your disposal. You call the Director and he shares your views after assurance of the mission's success. You promise him that you would not let the terrorists escape. He barks vehemently on the phone and lets you know that if they escape you would be answerable. You immediately call back the terrorists and inform them of the decision to comply with their demands. The terrorists demand that their prisoner be put on a plane to a destination that would be disclosed once the plane was airbound. You make the arrangements and go back to looking at the floor plans. You notice an underlying old waterway below the building's blue print. > You inquire about the old waterway The building was renovated a decade ago and the old waterways were sealed with waterproof cement. It had remained unused for the period of time. The drainage had a diameter of about a meter and led to an abandoned septic tank 3 blocks away. > You follow up on the waterway You call your assistant and assign him an assault team of 10 strong. You send them to the septic tank and brief them. The team leaves and lays ambush at the location. As the second team drives away enroute to their location they catch a glimpse of a bomb set near the second floor window manned by one of the terrorists and let you know about it. You call your bomb expert and brief him. He examines the location and confirms that it was indeed a bomb. He tells you the good news that the bomb had to be manually set off to go off after a 5 minute timed delay. You wonder whether it is better to shoot the 2nd floor terrorist first and send the bomb expert to dispose it but risk a panic by the terrorist who may shoot the hostages or Take out the 2nd floor terrorist during the surprise attack and takeover the building without risking the hostage deaths by shooting > You shoot 2nd floor terrorist first You decide to first shoot the 2nd floor terrorist and send the bomb disposal expert. A sniper takes out the 2nd floor terrorist. The rest of the terrorists seem not to notice. You send in the bomb disposal expert through a fire escape collumn at the side of the building. He gets to the location and as he attempts to tinker with it another terrorist gets into the room and shoots your expert. Immediately he rushes to arm the bomb and is shot too by your sniper as he runs away. Hostages begin running out of the building but as they run out, an explosion tears the yard around the buidling throwing away debris . You are thrown away by the force and find yourself in a nearby ditch after a while. You stand up and look around, your ears ringing from the explosion. Your entire team is wiped out. You limp towards the entrance of the building to inspect the building. Debris is scattered all over the floor and the hall is obscured by a plume of smoke and dust settling from the explosion. you manage to reach the open vault. It has been plundered with cash bundles strewn on the floor. Its seems the robbers stole what they could carry. You limp back to the banking hall and notice a hole on the ground but before you approach it you notice your leg is bleeding profusely and tear off a piece of cloth from the debris to bandage the wound. Just then an ambulance parks at the front entrance with its sirens blaring. A paramedic runs into the bank and looks around the bank for survivors that might need help. He runs back towards you. "You don't look good," he proclaims as he proceeds to examine your leg."You need to go to hospital.'' You barely hear his voice. Out of confusion you don't say a word. Your ears are still ringing from the explosion. Just then you remember that your second team was laying an ambush at the end of the tunnels. The medic holds your hand towards the exit and you see a police vehicle idling with its doors open. You could easily jump into the vehicle and drive to the ambush site but your leg hurts > You go to the ambush You decide that there is unfinished business to attend to. You call a police officer who has just arrived , introduce yourself and inform him that the robbers might have escaped through the tunnel. He immediately gathers a team of 10 officers and plans to enter the tunnel. You get into the police vehicle and drive away towards the old septic tank. You get there and find a fire fight taking place. The robbers seem to be heavily armed and pin down your officers. Your team is annihilated and taken down. You pick an M16 rifle and join the fight. You tactically try to delay the robbers from leaving until the police officers in the water tunnels arrive. You run out of ammunition and you find yourself surrounded by the 5 masked men. They get to your position but hesitate once they see your face. the leader of the team raises his arm and clenches a fist to command the men to hold fire - special forces style. As you wonder why you are being spared a 5th man emerges from the tunnel and shouts "tunnels are boobytrapped." He screeches to a stop when he notices you lying on the floor like a deer amidst a pack of wolves. Your eyes meet and for a moment your faces show bewilderment. "Jack? Is that you?" He looks down. The rest of the men peel off their masks. > You unlikely reunion "Rohn, Lewis, Sean, Larry and Beck" you muse as you stand up to regard them. They were all part of another team of your special forces unit that had been regarded Killed in Action during a search and rescue mission two years ago in a Siberian bank heist. The discovery finally solved a mystery in which both the team, the robbers and the money were never found. You remain speechless as the revelation hits you piece by piece. No wonder the heist was executed with pin point precision. "We don't have time." muttered Jack. He picks a box full of cash and places it at your feet and signals the team to pack off. You are still in a dilemma as the team leaves you standing and walks away towards a parking lot guns in hand. > You take the cash and walk away You decide its too dangerous to pursue the team of elite ex-military men. In addition you have alot of cash to spend, retire and make your family comfortable. You pick up the box of cash and walk away towards a taxi at the corner of the block. You get in and travel back home. You count the money and find amounts in excess of 20 million dollars. You hide your find and head back to hospital for treatment. Your boss later visits you in hospital and lets you know that a team of policemen spotted the robbers splitting the stolen money near a parking lot. They managed to dispose an explosive devise planted at the scene and were reviewing nearby CCTV surveillance cameras to identify the culprits. Your heart beats palpitatingly as you listen to the Special Agent in Charge. The boss is a close friend who always respected you for your professional records. You wonder whether you should confess that you took some money from the team and split the spoils or let the investigation take its course since there was a chance the video surveillance might not reveal his identity at the parking lot > You confess to the Special agent in charge You trust your boss and call him aside where you narrate to him the story. He keeps quiet the whole time and asks where the money was. You lie to him that it was hidden at your office drawer, just in case he did not comply with your suggestion. He immediately summons 2 agents accompanying him to the hospital. "Place special agent Jasper under arrest until you hear from me" he commands and leaves you handcuffed to the hospital bed. You ask the two agents to allow you to make a call to your wife and since they know you they agree. You call your wife and you let her know the situation. Fortunately you had told her about the days events and she understands your predicament and stashes the loot elsewhere. The CCTV surveillance reports come out and fails to reveal your identities. The heist team was clever enough to cover their tracks and destroyed the camera a day before the heist. You are let free for lack of evidence and your boss is fired for implicating a decorated member of the National Security Division.Your retire from the force with full honors > You 3 months later You are sitted on your porch sipping coffee and reading your newspaper. Your phone rests on the small coffee table. you pick up the call from a strange number. "Hi Jasper, its Jack Zulu," ready for the next mission?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide its too dangerous to pursue the team of elite ex-military men. In addition you have alot of cash to spend, retire and make your family comfortable. You pick up the box of cash and walk away towards a taxi at the corner of the block. You get in and travel back home. You count the money and find amounts in excess of 20 million dollars. You hide your find and head back to hospital for treatment. Your boss later visits you in hospital and lets you know that a team of policemen spotted the robbers splitting the stolen money near a parking lot. They managed to dispose an explosive devise planted at the scene and were reviewing nearby CCTV surveillance cameras to identify the culprits. Your heart beats palpitatingly as you listen to the Special Agent in Charge. The boss is a close friend who always respected you for your professional records. You wonder whether you should confess that you took some money from the team and split the spoils or let the investigation take its course since there was a chance the video surveillance might not reveal his identity at the parking lot > You keep quiet about your meeting with the robbers You don't trust your boss. He is a stickler for rules and he may report you. You let the incident go and sit there listening to him.The CCTV surveillance reports come out and fails to reveal your identities. The heist team was clever enough to cover their tracks and destroyed the camera a day before the heist. You recover and go on with your duties in the force to avoid suspicion. You plan to keep a low profile and retire in the next 2 years. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Rohn, Lewis, Sean, Larry and Beck" you muse as you stand up to regard them. They were all part of another team of your special forces unit that had been regarded Killed in Action during a search and rescue mission two years ago in a Siberian bank heist. The discovery finally solved a mystery in which both the team, the robbers and the money were never found. You remain speechless as the revelation hits you piece by piece. No wonder the heist was executed with pin point precision. "We don't have time." muttered Jack. He picks a box full of cash and places it at your feet and signals the team to pack off. You are still in a dilemma as the team leaves you standing and walks away towards a parking lot guns in hand. > You warn the police officers and pursue the robbers You warn the officer that there was an explosive rigged to blow in the tunnel. You wait for backup and decide to pursue the team. Although your backup sustains injuries and deaths you manage to arrest 2 of the men and recover a total of 112 million dollars. You also save the lives of 10 police officers. You receive a presidential commendation and are appointed the director of the National Security Division. > You retribution You are at your office when you receive a call that a group of terrorists have held hostages in a nearby bank. The terrorists demand that you be handed over to them in exchange for the release of the hostages. the president gives you a call and lets you know that he trusts your judgment. As you deliberate on the matter a hostage is shot dead. You assess the situation. 1 life for many.......seemingly fairtrade.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to first shoot the 2nd floor terrorist and send the bomb disposal expert. A sniper takes out the 2nd floor terrorist. The rest of the terrorists seem not to notice. You send in the bomb disposal expert through a fire escape collumn at the side of the building. He gets to the location and as he attempts to tinker with it another terrorist gets into the room and shoots your expert. Immediately he rushes to arm the bomb and is shot too by your sniper as he runs away. Hostages begin running out of the building but as they run out, an explosion tears the yard around the buidling throwing away debris . You are thrown away by the force and find yourself in a nearby ditch after a while. You stand up and look around, your ears ringing from the explosion. Your entire team is wiped out. You limp towards the entrance of the building to inspect the building. Debris is scattered all over the floor and the hall is obscured by a plume of smoke and dust settling from the explosion. you manage to reach the open vault. It has been plundered with cash bundles strewn on the floor. Its seems the robbers stole what they could carry. You limp back to the banking hall and notice a hole on the ground but before you approach it you notice your leg is bleeding profusely and tear off a piece of cloth from the debris to bandage the wound. Just then an ambulance parks at the front entrance with its sirens blaring. A paramedic runs into the bank and looks around the bank for survivors that might need help. He runs back towards you. "You don't look good," he proclaims as he proceeds to examine your leg."You need to go to hospital.'' You barely hear his voice. Out of confusion you don't say a word. Your ears are still ringing from the explosion. Just then you remember that your second team was laying an ambush at the end of the tunnels. The medic holds your hand towards the exit and you see a police vehicle idling with its doors open. You could easily jump into the vehicle and drive to the ambush site but your leg hurts > You go to hospital You decide to let your assistant handle the situation. You get onto the ambulance and go to hospital. You later learn that the ambush team was wiped out in the attack and another 10 police officers were killed by explosives. A total of 112 million dollars was stolen from the bank. You are tried for negligence and lose your job over the your team and the police officers' deaths.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You call your assistant and assign him an assault team of 10 strong. You send them to the septic tank and brief them. The team leaves and lays ambush at the location. As the second team drives away enroute to their location they catch a glimpse of a bomb set near the second floor window manned by one of the terrorists and let you know about it. You call your bomb expert and brief him. He examines the location and confirms that it was indeed a bomb. He tells you the good news that the bomb had to be manually set off to go off after a 5 minute timed delay. You wonder whether it is better to shoot the 2nd floor terrorist first and send the bomb expert to dispose it but risk a panic by the terrorist who may shoot the hostages or Take out the 2nd floor terrorist during the surprise attack and takeover the building without risking the hostage deaths by shooting > You surprise attack You decide a coordinated surprise attack would be more effective in arresting the fallout from the hostage situation. You order your sniper to shoot the terrorist on 2nd floor and shoot anyone entering the room when the attack commences. You give the command and the attack is made. All hostages run out of the building but the terrorist disappear through the underground water tunnels. You alert your team laying ambush to expect company at their end. You jump into a waiting car and rush to the ambush site<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The building was renovated a decade ago and the old waterways were sealed with waterproof cement. It had remained unused for the period of time. The drainage had a diameter of about a meter and led to an abandoned septic tank 3 blocks away. > You ignore waterway and focus on the current location You decided the waterway is too old and is sealed. In addition you know that the terrorists were most likely to use the hostages to escape. It would be a waste of resources to send another team to the septic tank and you would rather focus your attention on the current location > You prisoner release After 20 minutes the prisoner has boarded the plane and is airborne. You inform the terrorists that their prisoner is airborne. The terrorists demand that the plane land at a secondary private airstrip near the border and be handed to a team waiting to transfer him to a jet. You weigh your options. If you complied with their actions,the prisoner is likely to escape since you were not allowed to pursue targets across the border, otherwise it would spew diplomatic rows as it would be seen as an act of war. If you detained the prisoner, the terrorists are likely to kill all the hostages at the bank. Both options were not tenable but a choice had to be made > The bluff You decide to release the prisoner and decide to accompany the team escorting the prisoner to the strip. You get to the airstrip and find a jet ready to leave. You realize there is no way of retaining the prisoner and that the best way is to first ensure safe custody of hostages.The prisoner embarks on the jet and you rush back to the plane to coordinate the hostage release. As your plane nears the city you see a billow of black smoke rising to the sky. You learn that your entire team has been wiped out. As you are still pondering, your cell phone rings. It is your brother's wife calling.You pick up the call and listen. "Halo........he is gone, he is gone" sobs your sister in law "who is gone? where...." You ask "Tim was killed in the attack"she answers and continues to cry until the line goes dead. You hold your head in anguish Later on you discover that the prisoner release was a trick diversion to draw your attention away from the bank. A large consignment of cash was stolen through abandoned underground waterways and the bombs set off anyway by a group believed to be ex-military personnel. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide that its not worth losing hostages over a single prisoner. Furthermore, it would be easier to trace a group of escaping terrorists running across the country with all the inter-agency resources at your disposal. You call the Director and he shares your views after assurance of the mission's success. You promise him that you would not let the terrorists escape. He barks vehemently on the phone and lets you know that if they escape you would be answerable. You immediately call back the terrorists and inform them of the decision to comply with their demands. The terrorists demand that their prisoner be put on a plane to a destination that would be disclosed once the plane was airbound. You make the arrangements and go back to looking at the floor plans. You notice an underlying old waterway below the building's blue print. > You ignore the waterway and focus on coordinating the release You decided the waterway is too old and is sealed. In addition you know that the terrorists were most likely to use the hostages to escape. It would be a waste of resources to send another team to the septic tank and you would rather focus your attention on the current location. > You prisoner release The terrorists demand for their prisoner to be put on a plane whose destination would be disclosed once it was airborne. After 20 minutes the prisoner has boarded the plane and is airborne. You inform the terrorists that their prisoner is airborne. The terrorists demand that the plane land at a secondary private airstrip near the border and be handed to a team waiting to transfer him to a jet. You weigh your options. If you complied with their actions,the prisoner is likely to escape since you were not allowed to pursue targets across the border, otherwise it would spew diplomatic rows as it would be seen as an act of war. If you detained the prisoner, the terrorists are likely to kill all the hostages at the bank. Both options were not tenable but a choice had to be made > The bluff You decide to release the prisoner and decide to accompany the team escorting the prisoner to the strip. You get to the airstrip and find a jet ready to leave. You realize there is no way of retaining the prisoner and that the best way is to first ensure safe custody of hostages.The prisoner embarks on the jet and you rush back to the plane to coordinate the hostage release. As your plane nears the city you see a billow of black smoke rising to the sky. You learn that your entire team has been wiped out. In addition, a cash consignment of 112 million dollars has been stolen from the bank by the robbers who escaped through underground waterways. The prisoner release was a ruse to distract you from the escape. You are tried for negligence and for the death of your team. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You run to the kitchen where your wife is cooking. She smiles as she sees you. You quickly peck her on the cheek and you tell her that you have an urgent work situation. She understands and bids you goodbye. You rush out and jump onto your SUV and pull away from the parking lot in a hurry. 15 minutes later you get to your designated location and notice a number of police vehicles with their hazard lights on. Your team is already on site and awaiting further orders. You alight half running and your assistant Special agent in charge hands you your protective gear and gun. He briefs you on the situation on site and waits for your command. You assess the situation including all exit routes from the building. The terrorists have held hostage a total of 27 customers and 12 employees of the bank.They demand that a well known terrorist be released or hostages will be executed by the hour. You learn that the terrorists had planned their stay with enough food supplies for 3 days and were not planning to leave anytime. Delaying tactics would not work. You look at your watch and you only have 4 minutes until the 1st hostage is executed. Your assistants holds the line for the Director National Security Branch, just in case you decide to negotiate. "We are running out of time sir" He urges Snipers were in position and the team had also taken the front and back entrances > You launch a surgical strike with unknown casualties You decide to launch a surgical strike but you don't know the number of casualties that would be injured . As you read through your plan for the final time you notice some old abandoned underground waterways beneath the building.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You pick up the walkie-talkie and reply "Copy dog patch 6" "New events have come up that need your immediate presence" replied the voice with an acute touch of urgency "Errr, I am........." "Its a level 1 situation, gather your team and get to M&T bank at Queensferry and Seagate immediately over" cut in the voice You jump onto your feet and run into the house. You dress quickly and run out. As you run out of your bed room remember you have not told your wife that you are leaving. > You run outside the house You decide that you don't have the time to talk to your wife and you rush out ,jump onto your SUV and pull away from the parking lot in a hurry. You step on the accelerator as you hit the highway. Meanwhile your wife rushes outside and finds the SUV tearing away from the parking lot at high speed. Unaware that it was you driving away, she immediately thinks the car has been stolen and rushes to call the police to report the theft. "What is your emergency?'' Asks the telephone operator on the other end "I am reporting a stolen vehicle" she replies She describes the vehicle and its last seen location. "We have officers on that road, just give me a moment." The line goes quiet for a moment and then the operator speaks,"officers have placed a road block on all roads.we shall inform you of all new developments. meanwhile stay in touch in case we need clarification." > You roadblock You have been driving at high speed for the last 4 minutes. Suddenly you notice a traffic jam forming ahead of you. You pull out of the road and drive along the walk way honking as you snake your way through the lines of vehicles. You get to a junction and an officer signals for you to stop. Before you explain your situation 3 officers point guns at your face as the rest close the road. They force you out the vehicle and cuff you on the ground. As you try to explain yourself you are whisked away and the vehicle is searched for weapons. They find a walkie-talkie and service pistol and they immediately take you to a police station 20 minutes away. Unfortunately you have forgotten your badge and cannot prove that you are an agent. The 1st opportunity you get to speak is at the interview room when you are being questioned. You explain the day's predicaments and by the time you finish your wife appears in the questioning room. She informs the police that you are her husband and they let you go after apologizing. They hand you back your pistol, walkie-talkie and car. Just as you are about to leave the station you catch a glimpse of the television at the reception. It has been the perfect rest day. You lie on the couch and switch on the Television. There is breaking news showing terrorism attack in your city. 139 civilians and 23 agents of the Anti-terrorism Unit are reported dead from an explosion that rocked a bank in your city. The terrorists are said to have demanded for release of a well known prisoner but the security forces decided to launch an attack to rescue the hostages. Unknown to them, the whole building had been rigged to blow in case a rescue mission was attempted. You shoot to your feet, mouth agape as you take in the bad news. Your whole team has been wiped out in the attack. As you are still pondering, your cell phone rings. It is your brother's wife calling. You pick up the call and listen. "Halo........he is gone, he is gone" sobs your sister in law "who is gone? where...." You ask "Tim was killed in the attack"she answers and continues to cry until the line goes dead. You fall onto your knees and hold your head in anguish > You retribution You pull out of your grief in an instant. You call your senior and learn that the explosion has devastated your security force. You jump into your SUV and hit the road once more. Its a furious drive to the site and your feet hit the ground as the car screeches to a halt. You can feel adrenaline coursing through your veins as you walk over the site to look for clues, the kind that you usually felt when jumping off planes and dodging bullets back in the army. A couple of rescuers are on site to pull the hostages from the debris. Your eyes pore over as you look for what could be the bodies of the dead terrorists. A gaping hole welcomes you to one corner office at the far left of the banking hole. You peer into the hole and discover an underground tunnel. It seems old but wide enough to snuggle through. None of the bodies outside matched the profile of terrorists. You realize this could be the gunmen's escape route. > You pursuit You look around you and notice an armored truck pulling over at the bank's foyer. Its a replenishment of agents from your force. You immediately talk to a team leader disembarking from one of the vehicles. You walk over your findings with him. He spreads out a security map indicating old underground tunnels leading to an abandoned septic tank 3 blocks away. He assigns you a 10 man detail and a vehicle and selects another 10 men to pursue the attackers from the bank through the tunnels. > You go to the ambush You get there and immediately you alight from your vehicle a fire fight begins. The robbers seem to be heavily armed and pin down your officers. Your team is annihilated and taken down. Your M16 rifle runs out of ammunition and you find yourself surrounded by 5 masked men. They get to your position but hesitate once they see your face. the leader of the team raises his arm and clenches a fist to command the men to hold fire - special forces style. As you wonder why you are being spared a 5th man emerges from the tunnel and shouts "tunnels are boobytrapped." He screeches to a stop when he notices you lying on the floor like a deer amidst a pack of wolves. Your eyes meet and for a moment your faces show bewilderment. "Jack? Is that you?" You ask as he looks down. The rest of the men peel off their masks. > You unlikely reunion "Rohn, Lewis, Sean, Larry and Beck" you muse as you stand up to regard them. They were all part of another team of your special forces unit that had been regarded Killed in Action during a search and rescue mission two years ago in a Siberian bank heist. The discovery finally solved a mystery in which both the team, the robbers and the money were never found. You remain speechless as the revelation hits you piece by piece. No wonder the heist was executed with pin point precision. "We don't have time." muttered Jack. He picks a box full of cash and places it at your feet and signals the team to pack off. You are still in a dilemma as the team leaves you standing and walks away towards a parking lot guns in hand. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Its a sunny Saturday morning, you are sitted on the staircase to your home sipping coffee and mulling over the day's newspaper after your routine morning run. Its a your rest day and you plan on tucking in the whole day having had 2 long weeks. Its been 2 years since you left the military and joined the Anti-Terrorism Unit having earned a medal of honor for saving your team from what would have been an overwhelming annihilation from enemy forces in Syria. Non-military life had its perks-relaxed time frames, more family time, no foreboding barking of commands and best of all a near-predictable life routine. Your walkie-talkie is rested on the floor next to you, just in case there were any alerts on the events frequency. Just then it chuckles to life as you turn a page on the newspaper. > You do not pick up walkie-talkie You look at the walkie-talkie. Its not your job since you are on rest. You had promised your wife to stay at home and play with the kids. More so, there were other Special Agents in charge to lead the team.You turn to the next page and proceed to read the news paper ignoring the call. The line goes quiet and you forget the whole incident. You can smell something sweet coming from the kitchen and you cant wait to have the good meal. > You perfect rest day It has been the perfect rest day. You lie on the couch and switch on the Television. There is breaking news showing terrorism attack in your city. 139 civilians and 23 agents of the Anti-terrorism Unit are reported dead from an explosion that rocked a bank in your city. The terrorists are said to have demanded for release of a well known prisoner but the security forces decided to launch an attack to rescue the hostages. Unknown to them, the whole building had been rigged to blow in case a rescue mission was attempted. You shoot to your feet, mouth agape as you take in the bad news. Your whole team has been wiped out in the attack. As you are still pondering, your cell phone rings. It is your brother's wife calling. You pick up the call and listen. "Halo........he is gone, he is gone" sobs your sister in law "who is gone? where...." You ask "Tim was killed in the attack"she answers and continues to cry until the line goes dead. You fall onto the couch and hold your head in anguish<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>INTRODUCTION: This game is stupid, unrealistic, and not time specific at all. There will be weird references to things that haven't happened yet, misplaced musical cues, and a bunch of other lazy mistakes. Hopefully it will be fun, though. Try to do the stupid stuff, as it's usually funnier. Dying doesn't matter much and please don't take this too seriously. Good luck! Also, you'll come across items which represent proficiencies that will enable you to overcome certain obstacles you'll face in the story or alternatively cooler ways to solve problems. Click them once, and you'll take them. You don't need to use an item, it'll just unlock alternative choices throughout the plot. If you like music, we have also developed a few minute-long tracks to further induce the trance-like state that the '90s should provide for you. download them here. You'll know you've unlocked a song when some text at the top of a node tells you. Or, feel free to just play the songs whenever you feel if it helps you get immersed. Like This if Time Travel is Real and I'm in the '90s Again The calming glow of your computer screen splays a dim light across a complete collection of Nicktoon posters. You’ve liked your last 90s Remembrance page for the night, and close Facebook before settling back for another viewing of Jerry McGuire. You’re 46 years old, your parents are dead, and Tony just got married. You reopen Facebook, idly spitting some tobacco into your Catdog Licensed Cup, and navigate to Tony’s page. Wow, looks like he just got another award for some bullshit science achievement. You’re sure mom and dad would be proud of him, just like they always were. Rocco jumps on your lap, purring excitedly, as she can sense some hot fire about to be spat on your idiot brother’s face. > You download them here <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Its another day and you feel nothing... You're 18 years old and very socially inept. Naturally you're not popular in high school, you're not even worthy to be routinely picked on. This isn't to say you aren't at all, but most people just find you very creepy and stay away from you. You're mom's strict upbringing has made you very emotionally detached and repressed. At this point you barely feel any kind of emotions at all. Maybe that changes today. Your Mom is calling you down to eat. > You go downstairs You head downstairs, like you always do. No point in breaking tradition. When you get downstairs your Mom is arguing with your 17 year old sister as usual. She isn't like you at all, she's popular for one thing, but then again being a very pretty and extroverted will do that for a person. She's a bit of a wild child though which your domineering mother can't stand. You wonder why your sister acts the way she does, Mom's just trying to look out for her. They're really arguing today. > You sit down, eat and stay out of it You sit and eat your breakfast quietly while the two argue as usual. It doesn't involve you, so why get into it? "You little fucking whore! You keep staying out all night, and you can just forget about living under my roof! Go fucking sleep in the street with the rest of the sluts!" "Oh go fuck yourself Mom! You're just mad because you're a fucking bitter old harpy with nobody in your fucking life!" "Why you fucking little bitch!" your Mom says and slaps your sister across the face. Your sister holds her face and shuts up. She picks up her school stuff and heads toward the door, before exiting she says one last thing, before slamming the door. "Don't worry Mom, I'm not staying in this fucking house another day!" You finish up your breakfast, your Mom doesn't even acknowledge you're there, she leaves the kitchen in a huff rather quickly. She must be really pissed. > You head to school Mom's strong, she doesn't need you checking up on her. You head to school as normal. What else would you do? You get to school just in time for you to see Henry the school bully kicking the hell out of your "friend" Aaron. Aaron isn't so much your friend in that he's such a social reject that you're the only one who doesn't treat him like a leper, so he's attached himself to you. Of course you could really care less about him. Sometimes you wish he'd leave you alone, since he only makes you stand out more, when all you want to do is blend into the background. "Get the fuck up you faggot!" Henry shouts abusively at Aaron while kicking him gleefully. Aaron looks at you in the hopes that you'll help. > You go to class Its between Henry and Aaron. Why get involved? Henry would just draw his attention to you, and you have no desire for that. You go to your classes as usual and do your work again as usual. In your computer class you see Jessica. She's one of your sister's friends, but isn't as wild as most of them. Doesn't stop her from being a normal teenager though, assuming you had any idea of what normal is. You don't know what it is about her, but she stirs some kind of feeling inside you. She doesn't really know you at all, other than you're Mary's "creepy" brother. She looks like she's having difficulty with today's computer lesson. > You continue with your work She's never made any effort to talk to you, so you don't feel the overwhelming need to talk to her. You continue with your work until that class is over. Lunch time comes around, you expect Aaron to come sit next to you, but he's nowhere to be seen. You wonder if Henry beat him up so bad he had to go home. As you sit by yourself eating quietly, you overhear Butch at the next table. "Yeah that fucking bitch sucked my dick last night! Haw Haw!" Butch is your sister's jock boyfriend, even though they're constantly breaking up and making up. The break ups are mainly due to him cheating on her all the time, but she always ends up forgiving him. You don't know why, even you think your sister could do way better. Right now Butch is bragging to his buddies about his latest conquest, which apparently wasn't your sister. > You finish eating and go to class Your sister is aware of Butch's infidelity, its up to her to leave him. What good would it do to confront him? After all it isn't really your concern. You finish eating and head back to class. On your way there, you pass Henry. Normally Henry doesn't bother with you, save the occasional name calling, but he's looking for a fight. "Hey dickhead! I saw you looking at me kicking that faggot Aaron's ass! I know you two fucking butt boys hang out, aren't you pissed off that I kicked your boyfriend's ass?" Henry says getting in your face and pushing you. > You ignore him You step aside and walk around him. Henry's a little surprised. "Hey faggot, I'm talking to you bitch!" he shouts as you continue to ignore him. Henry hits you in the back of the head with a thrown pencil which you continue to ignore. Sensing his actions aren't getting the desired effect, he stops harassing you. "Fuck this creepy faggot." Henry mutters to himself and goes in search of different prey. You attend the last of your classes and then leave the school. You run into your sister outside. She walks up to talk to you. "Hey, I'm gonna stay with Butch tonight, and I think I might just stay over there permanently, his parents all cool enough to let me stay there. I'll be moving all my stuff out a little bit at a time, but I'll try to be quick, so you can tell that controlling bitch that she won't have to deal with me anymore." Wow, your sister wasn't joking about moving out. > You tell her you'll relay the message to Mom You nod and say okay unemotionally. Your sister looks at you a little worried. "You know, you should get out of that house too. I mean look at what Mom has done to you. You're a fucking emotionless robot! You just do everything Mom tells you. Is that really how you want to go through life?" You don't say anything. "Look, take care of yourself and remember that you don't need to do everything that Mom says." She hugs you goodbye and leaves. You head back home and when Mom comes back home from work you explain what happened to your sister. Your Mom looks angry, but also relieved, almost as if having her out of the house is a blessing. "Good, that little disobedient bitch can stay gone then. Well what are you doing still standing around for? You know you have work to do around the house!" > You do as Mom says You do some cleaning and other chores, then you go up to your room and occupy your time until your Mom tells you to go to sleep, which you comply. You go to sleep until morning, then you wake up. Its another day and you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You nod and say okay unemotionally. Your sister looks at you a little worried. "You know, you should get out of that house too. I mean look at what Mom has done to you. You're a fucking emotionless robot! You just do everything Mom tells you. Is that really how you want to go through life?" You don't say anything. "Look, take care of yourself and remember that you don't need to do everything that Mom says." She hugs you goodbye and leaves. You head back home and when Mom comes back home from work you explain what happened to your sister. Your Mom looks angry, but also relieved, almost as if having her out of the house is a blessing. "Good, that little disobedient bitch can stay gone then. Well what are you doing still standing around for? You know you have work to do around the house!" > You disobey Mom You tell her no. She slaps you. "What was that?" You don't make anymore trouble, and do what you're told. Your sister's advice only got you punished, and what has her rebellious nature gotten her? She's been kicked out of the house. No, rules are made to be followed. To disobey invites punishment. You go to bed remembering that fact of life. Another day arrives, and you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step aside and walk around him. Henry's a little surprised. "Hey faggot, I'm talking to you bitch!" he shouts as you continue to ignore him. Henry hits you in the back of the head with a thrown pencil which you continue to ignore. Sensing his actions aren't getting the desired effect, he stops harassing you. "Fuck this creepy faggot." Henry mutters to himself and goes in search of different prey. You attend the last of your classes and then leave the school. You run into your sister outside. She walks up to talk to you. "Hey, I'm gonna stay with Butch tonight, and I think I might just stay over there permanently, his parents all cool enough to let me stay there. I'll be moving all my stuff out a little bit at a time, but I'll try to be quick, so you can tell that controlling bitch that she won't have to deal with me anymore." Wow, your sister wasn't joking about moving out. > You tell her that Butch has been cheating on her again You suddenly realize that with your sister gone, you'll be the only one there to face Mom. Even you sense that isn't a good thing. Maybe underneath all your automaton type behavior you do have a certain sense of self-preservation. If anything you're concerned about the changes that your sister leaving might bring, and even though you might not show it, you fear change. You tell your sister about Butch, she gets upset, but isn't really surprised. She'll probably break up with him, only to get back with him later. But for now its enough to convince her not to go move in with him. The status quo is kept in check. Home life continues as normal, your Mom yells at your sister and she yells back. There's something that is reassuring about that familiarity. Another day arrives and you feel comfortably numb...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your sister is aware of Butch's infidelity, its up to her to leave him. What good would it do to confront him? After all it isn't really your concern. You finish eating and head back to class. On your way there, you pass Henry. Normally Henry doesn't bother with you, save the occasional name calling, but he's looking for a fight. "Hey dickhead! I saw you looking at me kicking that faggot Aaron's ass! I know you two fucking butt boys hang out, aren't you pissed off that I kicked your boyfriend's ass?" Henry says getting in your face and pushing you. > You punch him When Henry pushes you, you look confused at first, but then your expression turns to anger. Then your emotions soon follow... You punch Henry straight in the nose causing it to explode in a gout of blood! Henry screams when he sees all that blood gushing from his nose. You don't just stop there though, you then take his pinky finger and break it. At this point you are drawing a crowd, while some others go to fetch a teacher. You slam Henry's head into the hard ground until his skull cracks. Henry's already unconscious at this point, but you continue to kick him in the stomach until a teacher finally pulls you off, at which point to go quietly. This act of wild unleashed anger gets you in severe trouble, namely prison for attempted murder. You don't seem to mind though, Its a structured environment that you're used to, and you welcome the chance to unleash your endless pent up anger on your fellow inmates. Another day arrives in your cell you feel fury...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your sister is aware of Butch's infidelity, its up to her to leave him. What good would it do to confront him? After all it isn't really your concern. You finish eating and head back to class. On your way there, you pass Henry. Normally Henry doesn't bother with you, save the occasional name calling, but he's looking for a fight. "Hey dickhead! I saw you looking at me kicking that faggot Aaron's ass! I know you two fucking butt boys hang out, aren't you pissed off that I kicked your boyfriend's ass?" Henry says getting in your face and pushing you. > You tell him you could care less about Aaron Your detached answer, only causes Henry to believe that you're smarting off to him. He immediately kicks you in the balls and trust me you DO feel that! He then drags you into the bathroom and beats the hell out of you and leaves you for dead. As you struggle to get your head out of the toilet you lose consciousness due to the massive gash in your head that's bleeding profusely. Later you're found by the janitor who manages to get you to a hospital just in time for you to live. Not in time for you to have not suffered brain damage though. Oddly this has an interesting effect on your previous emotional condition. You revert back to a childlike state. Your Mom actually is nicer to you and in general, and sis seems to stop partying as much. Your unfortunate event has inadvertantly brought them closer to each other and to you. Of course you're unaware of such things, you just know that two pretty ladies take care of you. Another day arrives and you feel playful...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>She's never made any effort to talk to you, so you don't feel the overwhelming need to talk to her. You continue with your work until that class is over. Lunch time comes around, you expect Aaron to come sit next to you, but he's nowhere to be seen. You wonder if Henry beat him up so bad he had to go home. As you sit by yourself eating quietly, you overhear Butch at the next table. "Yeah that fucking bitch sucked my dick last night! Haw Haw!" Butch is your sister's jock boyfriend, even though they're constantly breaking up and making up. The break ups are mainly due to him cheating on her all the time, but she always ends up forgiving him. You don't know why, even you think your sister could do way better. Right now Butch is bragging to his buddies about his latest conquest, which apparently wasn't your sister. > You confront Butch Probably not the best time to act on your feelings... You suddenly feel the need to defend your sister's honor by confronting Butch and his six football playing buddies. Needless to say, you don't win that confrontation. For the most part you're more humilated than beaten beyond recognition. Still, its enough to deter you from displaying emotion ever again, you go back to your low profile emotionless lifestyle. Things are just easier that way for you. Another day arrives and you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Its between Henry and Aaron. Why get involved? Henry would just draw his attention to you, and you have no desire for that. You go to your classes as usual and do your work again as usual. In your computer class you see Jessica. She's one of your sister's friends, but isn't as wild as most of them. Doesn't stop her from being a normal teenager though, assuming you had any idea of what normal is. You don't know what it is about her, but she stirs some kind of feeling inside you. She doesn't really know you at all, other than you're Mary's "creepy" brother. She looks like she's having difficulty with today's computer lesson. > You help Jessica Under different circumstances, this might have worked, but your cold emotionless demeanor is still very much a part of you. When you approach Jessica to help her, she declines and gives you a funny look. You go back to doing what you were doing. In fact you go about your usual routine for the rest of the day. The fact Jessica turned you down, seems to only make you supress your feelings and retreat into your own world even more. Eventually you go home and go to bed. Another day arrives and you still feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Mom's strong, she doesn't need you checking up on her. You head to school as normal. What else would you do? You get to school just in time for you to see Henry the school bully kicking the hell out of your "friend" Aaron. Aaron isn't so much your friend in that he's such a social reject that you're the only one who doesn't treat him like a leper, so he's attached himself to you. Of course you could really care less about him. Sometimes you wish he'd leave you alone, since he only makes you stand out more, when all you want to do is blend into the background. "Get the fuck up you faggot!" Henry shouts abusively at Aaron while kicking him gleefully. Aaron looks at you in the hopes that you'll help. > You help Aaron Sometimes attempting to do something positive doesn't work out. You attempt to tell Henry to leave Aaron alone, but that doesn't help you. Henry just gets mad and attacks you instead. His anger for you interfering results in him beating you very badly. In fact you don't survive. One last breath and then you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit and eat your breakfast quietly while the two argue as usual. It doesn't involve you, so why get into it? "You little fucking whore! You keep staying out all night, and you can just forget about living under my roof! Go fucking sleep in the street with the rest of the sluts!" "Oh go fuck yourself Mom! You're just mad because you're a fucking bitter old harpy with nobody in your fucking life!" "Why you fucking little bitch!" your Mom says and slaps your sister across the face. Your sister holds her face and shuts up. She picks up her school stuff and heads toward the door, before exiting she says one last thing, before slamming the door. "Don't worry Mom, I'm not staying in this fucking house another day!" You finish up your breakfast, your Mom doesn't even acknowledge you're there, she leaves the kitchen in a huff rather quickly. She must be really pissed. > You go check on Mom For some reason you feel the urge to check on Mom, you head towards her room. She's crying. You've never seen her like this! You've always known her to be a hard tough woman, its a little shocking to see this side of her. She notices you and quickly wipes her eyes and reverts back to her old self. "What the hell are you doing here?! Get the fuck to school!!" > You attempt to reach out to her You ignore her abuse, you now know her lashing out is merely a reflection of her own unhappiness. You continue to ask what's wrong and that you're only here to help. Your genuine concern and her vulnerable state seems to cause her to open up a bit. She breaks down and says how, she's sorry for failing as a parent, and how she's losing your sister, and she doesn't want to lose you either. You tell her if perhaps she was less controling, things might be better. You say you'll see what you can do about sis. Your Mom thanks you and after a few more hugs and reassurances, you rush off to school. On your way there, your emotions are a little less surpressed. You feel like you have a goal to accomplish now. You get to school a little late, which results in you getting sent to the principal's office where you run into Henry, the school bully. He's there for beating someone up as usual. He gives you a dirty look and the finger. > You attempt to reach out to him That routine might work on those close to you, but not on anti-social miscreants who hate your guts! As you attempt to ask why Henry feels the need to be hostile to everyone, his expression turns to repulsion. He thinks you're hitting on him. "What the fuck are you, some fucking faggot or something?" he says and then attacks you right in the principal's office! He beats you pretty bad before the principal manages to get him off of you. You end up having to go to the hospital. Your sister and Mom come to visit you and they get into an even bigger arguement resulting in a physical fight. Any goal you had of trying to patch up your family has been shattered forever. You don't seem to care anymore though, you realize playing peacemaker was a fool's quest anyway. Look what it got you. You fall asleep keeping that thought in mind. You wake up the next day in your hospital bed and you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You ignore her abuse, you now know her lashing out is merely a reflection of her own unhappiness. You continue to ask what's wrong and that you're only here to help. Your genuine concern and her vulnerable state seems to cause her to open up a bit. She breaks down and says how, she's sorry for failing as a parent, and how she's losing your sister, and she doesn't want to lose you either. You tell her if perhaps she was less controling, things might be better. You say you'll see what you can do about sis. Your Mom thanks you and after a few more hugs and reassurances, you rush off to school. On your way there, your emotions are a little less surpressed. You feel like you have a goal to accomplish now. You get to school a little late, which results in you getting sent to the principal's office where you run into Henry, the school bully. He's there for beating someone up as usual. He gives you a dirty look and the finger. > You ignore him You aren't here to be Gandhi and you aren't here to get into anymore trouble so you ignore Henry who gets called in soon. You sit and think how you want a close family. One that isn't always fighting or being controling. You know you can patch your family up and make it functional rather than dysfunctional, you just have to figure out how to do it. In the meantime the secretary tells you that the principal is going to be with Henry for a long time and since you're a fairly good student who never causes trouble, she says you can leave with a warning. You go to lunch, still trying to figure out how to fix your family when over at the table behind you, you hear your sister's boyfriend Butch bragging to his friends about some girl he slept with who wasn't your sister. > You confront Butch Exposing your sister's cheating cad of a boyfriend was the right direction, but you definitely went the WRONG way about it. Butch and his friends laugh at your attempt to convince him to confess to your sister or you'll do it. They beat you and humilate you, then run off laughing. In a cruel twist you get sent to the principal's office again where he's less flexible. He assumes you're a trouble maker and suspends you effective immediately. You don't get a chance to talk to your sister, she and Butch take off early for some party. When your Mom gets home, your sister's run away event and your suspension put your Mom back in her usual hard ass mood. She screams at you and says your sister isn't her daughter anymore, can go to hell and stay there because she isn't welcome here anymore. You've failed. Your attempts have been futile. You might as well not tried at all. You were the only one who really cared. You just thought that maybe if you had a more stable home life, you could feel like a normal person, but that goal is lost. You go to bed. Another day arrives and you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren't here to be Gandhi and you aren't here to get into anymore trouble so you ignore Henry who gets called in soon. You sit and think how you want a close family. One that isn't always fighting or being controling. You know you can patch your family up and make it functional rather than dysfunctional, you just have to figure out how to do it. In the meantime the secretary tells you that the principal is going to be with Henry for a long time and since you're a fairly good student who never causes trouble, she says you can leave with a warning. You go to lunch, still trying to figure out how to fix your family when over at the table behind you, you hear your sister's boyfriend Butch bragging to his friends about some girl he slept with who wasn't your sister. > You keep quiet You know that subtlety is going to be required here. This information can help bring your family together, but you have to do it right. You attend your classes as usual, eventually school ends and you see your sister. You immediately reveal this information to her. She looks very upset, yet not entirely surprised. This certainly isn't the first time he's done this. She just keeps forgiving him, and taking him back. She was planning on staying with him to get away from Mom, but now she's conflicted. You explain what happened with Mom after she left. Your sister looks skeptical, but knows even though you're a bit emotionless, you've never lied to her. Plus your latest deed has put you in better standing with her. Your sister agrees to give getting along with Mom a chance. You both go home and wait for Mom to get off work. Mom arrives, she's a little more calmer, but you know this is a volitile situation. > You stay You all sit at the table, staring at each other. You're acting as a mediator. Mom and sis start out calmly, but it quickly escalates into name calling and criticism. The usual insults. You put a stop to it and demand that they get along! Family is the most important thing and you won't just let them dismiss it. You remind them both that things haven't always been this bad between them. You remind them of the good times that you all have had at one time. Good times that have occurred much too rarely and much too long ago. You tell them you think that's why you shut down emotionally, because it was just easier to deal with the pain of seeing two people you care for in your life grow to hate each other so much. You say how you just want all of them to be a family again. You begin to weep. Your speech is probably the most emotional thing either of them has heard from you in years. Hell, they didn't even know you had any emotions anymore. You always did though they were just repressed, but no longer. Your Mom and sis also begin to cry at this point. Many apologies are exchanged. > You say how happy you are You wipe your tears and say how happy you are that you all have managed to at least come together on this night. Mom says she'll be less domineering and sis says she'll reign in her wild side. You hold both of their hands and say you know this all won't be easy, but you have faith that you're all on your way to being a family again. Another day arrives and you feel happy...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You all sit at the table, staring at each other. You're acting as a mediator. Mom and sis start out calmly, but it quickly escalates into name calling and criticism. The usual insults. You put a stop to it and demand that they get along! Family is the most important thing and you won't just let them dismiss it. You remind them both that things haven't always been this bad between them. You remind them of the good times that you all have had at one time. Good times that have occurred much too rarely and much too long ago. You tell them you think that's why you shut down emotionally, because it was just easier to deal with the pain of seeing two people you care for in your life grow to hate each other so much. You say how you just want all of them to be a family again. You begin to weep. Your speech is probably the most emotional thing either of them has heard from you in years. Hell, they didn't even know you had any emotions anymore. You always did though they were just repressed, but no longer. Your Mom and sis also begin to cry at this point. Many apologies are exchanged. > You group hug You all gather in a circle and hug one another. This is the closest you've all been in years and its all thanks to you. As you hug your Mom begins to rub her hands up and down your back, she then kisses you on the lips...passionately. You're a little surprised. Your sister then puts your hand on her ass, looks lovingly at Mom and kisses her as well. Of course! This makes sense now! You all alway felt greater intimacy for each other, but society's laws forbade it, and you all grew detached and hostile to each other because of it. But now that barrier has been shattered forever and you're able to pursue this love. Things eventually end up in the bedroom where you all express your love for each other in a physical way. You know that after tonight your family will be closer in ways you never dreamed about. After all family is the most important thing. Another day arrives, you wake up beside your sister and Mom and you feel complete euphoria...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know that subtlety is going to be required here. This information can help bring your family together, but you have to do it right. You attend your classes as usual, eventually school ends and you see your sister. You immediately reveal this information to her. She looks very upset, yet not entirely surprised. This certainly isn't the first time he's done this. She just keeps forgiving him, and taking him back. She was planning on staying with him to get away from Mom, but now she's conflicted. You explain what happened with Mom after she left. Your sister looks skeptical, but knows even though you're a bit emotionless, you've never lied to her. Plus your latest deed has put you in better standing with her. Your sister agrees to give getting along with Mom a chance. You both go home and wait for Mom to get off work. Mom arrives, she's a little more calmer, but you know this is a volitile situation. > You let Mom and sis work it out themselves You seriously can't expect these two to work it out themselves without your help! You were the architect in all this and now you've just going to abandon your project? You're either naively optimistic or you don't want it bad enough. In either case your lack of commitment shows in a spectacular way. Your Mom and sister eventually start disagreeing in a physical way, when this occurs you attempt to break them up. Unfortunately Mom happened to have a butcher knife at the time, you get in the way and Mom accidently stabs you right in the throat. You feel a sharp pain briefly then you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For some reason you feel the urge to check on Mom, you head towards her room. She's crying. You've never seen her like this! You've always known her to be a hard tough woman, its a little shocking to see this side of her. She notices you and quickly wipes her eyes and reverts back to her old self. "What the hell are you doing here?! Get the fuck to school!!" > You go to school You obey and go to school. There was a real opportunity to change things here, but you failed to take advantage. The rest of your day pretty much follows the same pattern until you come home and go to bed. Another day arrives and you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head downstairs, like you always do. No point in breaking tradition. When you get downstairs your Mom is arguing with your 17 year old sister as usual. She isn't like you at all, she's popular for one thing, but then again being a very pretty and extroverted will do that for a person. She's a bit of a wild child though which your domineering mother can't stand. You wonder why your sister acts the way she does, Mom's just trying to look out for her. They're really arguing today. > You side with Mom You know Mom's just looking out for the best interest of your sister, and you say as much. Your Mom looks a little surprised as does your sister, who then gets really angry. "Fuck the both of you! You don't know me! You're a fucking cold hearted bitch who's wallowing in her own loneliness and you're her fucking lap dog who does everything she says!" you sister screams. "Maybe because he actually cares about my feelings! Unlike you, you little slut!" your Mom says and then slaps her. Your sister looks like she might attempt to slap your Mom back, but your presence stops her. Instead she runs out the door, with one last comment. “I’m leaving this fucking house of insanity! The both of you two can go straight to hell!” she says slamming the door. Your Mom waves her hand in disgust and then turns to you. “Thanks for taking my side. You’re such a good son.” She says and then hugs you, you return the gesture. “Okay now head off to school, I have to go to work.” > You head to school As you obey Mom, your budding emotions seem to shrink back again. Maybe it was just a fluke that you acted like you did, because you certainly don't display any follow up feelings towards Mom or anyone else the entire day. Your day follows as unemotional as usual until you go home and go to bed. Another day arrives and you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know Mom's just looking out for the best interest of your sister, and you say as much. Your Mom looks a little surprised as does your sister, who then gets really angry. "Fuck the both of you! You don't know me! You're a fucking cold hearted bitch who's wallowing in her own loneliness and you're her fucking lap dog who does everything she says!" you sister screams. "Maybe because he actually cares about my feelings! Unlike you, you little slut!" your Mom says and then slaps her. Your sister looks like she might attempt to slap your Mom back, but your presence stops her. Instead she runs out the door, with one last comment. “I’m leaving this fucking house of insanity! The both of you two can go straight to hell!” she says slamming the door. Your Mom waves her hand in disgust and then turns to you. “Thanks for taking my side. You’re such a good son.” She says and then hugs you, you return the gesture. “Okay now head off to school, I have to go to work.” > You ask Mom to drive you Your Mom again looks surprised, but also a little happy. "Well okay, its on my way to work. Are you sure you want me too though? Won't it embarass you in front of your friends?" Mom sure doesn't know you very well at all. You don't really have any. Of course even if you did, you wouldn't care. Your Mom drives you to school just like you remember she used to when you were little. She always seemed a lot happier back then. She almost looks that happy again right now. As she drops you off, she lets you out, but before she does, she kisses you goodbye...on the lips. As she drives off, you're left feeling a little strange. You've never been very emotional, but something in you has changed. You head to your classes a little preoccupied, until Jessica comes up to you in computer class. "Hey, can you help me with this?" she asks. > You help Jessica You kind of don't want to think about your Mom kissing you the way she did. It makes you uncomfortable. You take the opportunity to help Jessica to take your mind off of things. As you help Jessica, she thanks you and becomes more friendly. She says she's always wondered about you, since you're very different than your sister who she's friends with. You open up a bit more than you normally would probably because you're still trying to get your mind off of Mom. Its probably what makes you blurt out asking Jessica for a date after school. Jessica's a little surprised, but accepts. When the class ends you realize you've just recieved a date with the one girl who seemed to stir some emotions in you. You begin to shake and rush to the bathroom to throw up. This is all a lot to take in. Your Mom kissed you on the lips and now you have a date with the girl of your dreams for all intense and purposes. You don't feel very hungry so you spend your lunch hour working on something for another class. You attend the rest of your classes and eventually school comes to an end, and Jessica meets you outside. Your emotions are all mixed up and your mind is going a mile a minute. > You take her home You tell her you want her to meet your Mom. You still got her on your mind. You have to show her that what she wants can't occur! And by bringing Jessica home, you'll be able to show that. Of course you're really nervous about what's going to happen. You barely manage to keep yourself from throwing up again. Jessica meanwhile is a little puzzled by your choice of "date" but agrees. You get home and you and Jessica talk for a little while longer getting to know each other better, but still in the back of your head you worry about Mom. Then she arrives. And she looks really surprised to see you with a girl in the house. Speechless in fact. > You introduce Jessica You muster up all your inner strength and introduce Jessica to Mom. Mom is surprisingly cordial. You don't get it, you thought she'd be mad. Maybe she realized that what she wanted to pursue with you was wrong, and is glad you found someone to be with in a healthy relationship. Your nervousness decreases almost completely. Your Mom leaves you and Jessica alone, your previous niceness to her has put her in a good enough mood to let you have some fun, especially since you don't cause much trouble. Eventually you take Jessica home, and despite having a rather strange first date, she agrees to see you tomorrow and you promise to really take her somewhere. You go home thinking about today's events. You still have a great deal of devotion to your Mom, but are glad it wasn't taken to THAT level. You wonder though, Jessica looks a lot like your Mom when she was younger. Is that why you were attracted to her? You don't want to dwell on that too much! You go to bed. Another day arrives and you feel slightly warped...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You tell her you want her to meet your Mom. You still got her on your mind. You have to show her that what she wants can't occur! And by bringing Jessica home, you'll be able to show that. Of course you're really nervous about what's going to happen. You barely manage to keep yourself from throwing up again. Jessica meanwhile is a little puzzled by your choice of "date" but agrees. You get home and you and Jessica talk for a little while longer getting to know each other better, but still in the back of your head you worry about Mom. Then she arrives. And she looks really surprised to see you with a girl in the house. Speechless in fact. > You beg for Mom's forgiveness You suddenly lose it. You beg for Mom's forgiveness. Your devotion to your Mom is too great and if she wants you as a lover as well then you'll comply. You say all this while groveling at her feet weeping. Jessica AND your Mom look at each other and then slowly back away from you. You look up, and see Jessica run past your Mom and out the door saying "Ewwwwww! I KNEW you were creepy!" Your Mom tells you to stay away from her. You comply but you don't understand why. You thought she had those feelings for you. She asks where the hell did you get a sick fucking idea like that. You mention the kiss. "It was a peck on the lips! Nothing more!" Your Mom shouts. You suddenly feel very very small. You curl up in a ball not knowing what to think anymore. Your Mom sees that you need many years of professional help and eventually has you put away in an institution where drugs work wonders on your screwed up thought process. No more emotions. Back to normal. Another day in your cell and you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You kind of don't want to think about your Mom kissing you the way she did. It makes you uncomfortable. You take the opportunity to help Jessica to take your mind off of things. As you help Jessica, she thanks you and becomes more friendly. She says she's always wondered about you, since you're very different than your sister who she's friends with. You open up a bit more than you normally would probably because you're still trying to get your mind off of Mom. Its probably what makes you blurt out asking Jessica for a date after school. Jessica's a little surprised, but accepts. When the class ends you realize you've just recieved a date with the one girl who seemed to stir some emotions in you. You begin to shake and rush to the bathroom to throw up. This is all a lot to take in. Your Mom kissed you on the lips and now you have a date with the girl of your dreams for all intense and purposes. You don't feel very hungry so you spend your lunch hour working on something for another class. You attend the rest of your classes and eventually school comes to an end, and Jessica meets you outside. Your emotions are all mixed up and your mind is going a mile a minute. > You go to the movies You want to avoid Mom for as long as possible! You take Jessica to the movies. You and Jessica get some food and sit to watch the film. You can't seem to relax. You're still anxious and nervous about going home. You begin not to feel well again. Just as Jessica asks you what's wrong, you puke up popcorn and gummy bears all over her. "EWWWWWWWW!" she screams and runs out of the theatre. Not really knowing what to do next you head home, still worrying over what Mom is going to do. When you get home, Mom sees you and starts screaming. She asks where the hell you've been. You say the movies, to which she screams at you some more for saying you never told her you were going there and you need to check in with her first. You'll be getting kicked out of the house like your sister, if you feel the need to disobey the rules she continues to say. This seems like the Mom you know and are comfortable with! You guess you were mistaken about Mom's feelings towards you and that relieves you. You don't feel as nervous now, it reverts back into that familar numb feeling again. You decide that acting out of your normal routine was a great risk that nearly drove you over the edge. You won't be doing that again. Another day arrives and once again you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your Mom again looks surprised, but also a little happy. "Well okay, its on my way to work. Are you sure you want me too though? Won't it embarass you in front of your friends?" Mom sure doesn't know you very well at all. You don't really have any. Of course even if you did, you wouldn't care. Your Mom drives you to school just like you remember she used to when you were little. She always seemed a lot happier back then. She almost looks that happy again right now. As she drops you off, she lets you out, but before she does, she kisses you goodbye...on the lips. As she drives off, you're left feeling a little strange. You've never been very emotional, but something in you has changed. You head to your classes a little preoccupied, until Jessica comes up to you in computer class. "Hey, can you help me with this?" she asks. > You ignore Jessica You barely acknowledge Jessica's presence. She's one of your sister's friends anyway, which makes you even less inclined to help her. You say something about being really busy and having a lot to do on your own computer right now. As Jessica leaves, you continue to think about Mom, and that kiss. Lunch time comes around and you sit to ponder it even more, fortunately without your idiot "friend" Aaron buzzing in your ear. You hear your sister's boyfriend Butch bragging at the next table about some chick he slept with last night, that apparently wasn't your sister. This is why your sister SHOULD listen to Mom! She knows what's best, and knows how to protect you from bad people. Lunch ends and you attend the rest of your classes without incident. Finally after school lets out, you run into your sister. She sees you, but refuses to talk to you. > You go talk to your sister Even though you know your sister doesn't like Mom, she's still family, and needs to realize that Mom's only looking out for her. You have to convince her. You go up to your sister who doesn't want anything to do with you after this morning, but you tell her what Butch was bragging about. She doesn't care and while she claims she doesn't believe you, you can tell she does, but her dislike for you and Mom is greater than Butch's infidelity. You start to get angry and start to yell at her saying that she doesn't know what's good for her, you attempt to get physical, but Butch stops you as he's coming out of the school. This results in you picking up a nearby rock, and smacking him in the head with it a couple times knocking him to the ground, your sister runs off and you go chasing after her in an attempt to show her the "light". You finally catch her in the park, where you give her an ultimatium of either obey Mom's rules or die. Your sister can't believe how over the edge you've gone until you start choking her. So enthusiastic you are to display your loyalty to Mom by "punishing" your sister, you don't even hear a passing police officer say "GET YOUR HANDS OF THE GIRL OR I'LL SHOOT!" The officer was enthusiastic too. You feel three bullets hit you in the body, one more in the head and then you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You barely acknowledge Jessica's presence. She's one of your sister's friends anyway, which makes you even less inclined to help her. You say something about being really busy and having a lot to do on your own computer right now. As Jessica leaves, you continue to think about Mom, and that kiss. Lunch time comes around and you sit to ponder it even more, fortunately without your idiot "friend" Aaron buzzing in your ear. You hear your sister's boyfriend Butch bragging at the next table about some chick he slept with last night, that apparently wasn't your sister. This is why your sister SHOULD listen to Mom! She knows what's best, and knows how to protect you from bad people. Lunch ends and you attend the rest of your classes without incident. Finally after school lets out, you run into your sister. She sees you, but refuses to talk to you. > You ignore her and go home Your sister is hopeless. You feel anger towards your sister, you can see that she doesn't appreciate all the sacrifices Mom makes for her. You hope she does move out, that'll leave you and Mom more time to spend together. You head home and wait for Mom to arrive. When she steps in, you hug her as she comes in the door, she hugs you back. She tells you to do some chores, but you don't mind, in fact you're happy to do them. You and Mom talk a little more than you normally do at dinner, now that your sister is out of the way and not around to cause trouble everything is good, and you feel wanted for the first time in your life. You talk into the night with her, until she tells you its time to go to bed. > You go to bed You do what Mom says and go to bed. You wonder if you should've pursued another path, with her, but you quickly dismiss such thoughts. You realize that if Mom wanted anything else from you, she would've told you. For now, she wants you to be a good and obedient son, just like you've always been. No strange thoughts, just total subservience to her. Submission of your will to her, emotions just make things more complicated. You make it a promise to yourself to do just that. Another day breaks, and once again you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your sister is hopeless. You feel anger towards your sister, you can see that she doesn't appreciate all the sacrifices Mom makes for her. You hope she does move out, that'll leave you and Mom more time to spend together. You head home and wait for Mom to arrive. When she steps in, you hug her as she comes in the door, she hugs you back. She tells you to do some chores, but you don't mind, in fact you're happy to do them. You and Mom talk a little more than you normally do at dinner, now that your sister is out of the way and not around to cause trouble everything is good, and you feel wanted for the first time in your life. You talk into the night with her, until she tells you its time to go to bed. > You insist on talking more You want to stay up all night talking with your Mom, you've never felt closer to her than you ever have in your entire life. Underneath her cold exterior, you can see a gentle and caring woman. She's just lonely... Your Mom says she has to go to work tomorrow and has to go to bed herself. She says you can stay up though if you want, but not to bitch about it when she wakes you up tomorrow. She leaves, and you feel a little confused, you're not sure how to proceed. > You watch TV You sit and watch TV dejectedly and wonder about what just happened. Could it be that you imagined things? Let it run wild? You suddenly realize what has been occurring in your mind. And it isn't right. You realize you've been thinking VERY sick thoughts about your mother. You couldn't help it though, she seemed so nice to you today... But no! You have to supress these feelings! Its the only way. you struggle all night with your derranged mind until you fall asleep with the TV still on. The next day you awake, something's different...it worked. You feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You want to stay up all night talking with your Mom, you've never felt closer to her than you ever have in your entire life. Underneath her cold exterior, you can see a gentle and caring woman. She's just lonely... Your Mom says she has to go to work tomorrow and has to go to bed herself. She says you can stay up though if you want, but not to bitch about it when she wakes you up tomorrow. She leaves, and you feel a little confused, you're not sure how to proceed. > You follow her You realize that she wants YOU to take the initiative! She already showed she was interested. She called you a good son, she kissed you, and now she's hinted about going to bed. It doesn't get anymore obvious to you. She loves you the same way you love her... You enter her room and see her sleeping. You slide into bed next to her. You feel like when you used to crawl into her bed when you were scared of the dark as a little kid. And much like then, you feel so safe being this close to her. She doesn't seem to mind, she cuddles up next to you, but she's still asleep. > You go to sleep You just want to be next to her. Nothing wrong with that. As you drift off to sleep, your Mom begins grinding even closer on to you. There's no doubt that she doesn't know who you are now... Somehow it doesn't matter. She wakes you up with a kiss. Her loneliness for physical pleasure is too great and her love for you is too strong. This feels so right to you. You realize why the girls at school never "did it" for you, it was always Mom you lusted for, you've always known, and now its all coming true. She begins to mount you and guides your hands all over her body. She is your teacher, she is your master, she is your life. You and Mom spend a night of hot taboo passion as your virgin seed enters the very womb that bore you. You fall asleep nestled in her protective bosom, just like when you were a baby. The next day you feel much different. You FEEL. You're not repressed anymore. Your love for your Mom, is now finally out and she knows about it and feels the same way. Of course this will have to be your little secret, but right now all that's important is: Its another day and you feel love...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You realize that she wants YOU to take the initiative! She already showed she was interested. She called you a good son, she kissed you, and now she's hinted about going to bed. It doesn't get anymore obvious to you. She loves you the same way you love her... You enter her room and see her sleeping. You slide into bed next to her. You feel like when you used to crawl into her bed when you were scared of the dark as a little kid. And much like then, you feel so safe being this close to her. She doesn't seem to mind, she cuddles up next to you, but she's still asleep. > You take it one step further You begin to caress and kiss her beautiful body. Your Mom begins to stir a little and opens her eyes... And is horrified! "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!!? I'M YOUR MOTHER YOU SICK FUCK!!!!" Your mother throws you off of her and begins to beat you mercilessly! You don't understand, you thought she loved you. You thought you understood...but it was all just a fantasy that YOU made up in your twisted mind. Your mother never hinted that she had any interest in you in that way! Even her kiss was just a peck on the lips. Nothing more, but you turned it into something else, along with everything else she did. You feel betrayed, you did everything she ever said, only to find out she doesn't love you afterall. You feel rage like you've never felt before, you attack! Your Mom isn't like you though, she's strong with a fighting personality. She isn't a push over like you are. She throws a table lamp at your head as you attempt to assault her. As it smashes into your skull, you fall crashing to the ground unconscious. When you wake up, you're in a holding cell. A decision is still being made if you should be going to jail or a mental institution. Its ultimately decided that you belong in a mental institution. You're doped up silly for the rest of your life. Once again, you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head downstairs, like you always do. No point in breaking tradition. When you get downstairs your Mom is arguing with your 17 year old sister as usual. She isn't like you at all, she's popular for one thing, but then again being a very pretty and extroverted will do that for a person. She's a bit of a wild child though which your domineering mother can't stand. You wonder why your sister acts the way she does, Mom's just trying to look out for her. They're really arguing today. > You side with sis You know, you've really had it with Mom picking on your sister all the time. Sure she's a little wild, but she isn't a slut and doesn't deserve to be called one, you tell Mom as much. Your sister and especially your Mom are both VERY surprised! Your Mom gets even angrier and slaps you! "So both of you ungrateful shits turn against me! Get the fuck out of my house right now! NOW! And don't fucking return if you aren't going to live by my rules!" She yells and storms out of the kitchen. You and your sister leave, but as you both head off to school, she thanks you for taking her side. "Thanks, its nice to have an ally for once against that fucking harpy!" You feel a little pleased. Its nice to be appreciated for once. When you get to school, you see Henry the school bully kicking the hell out of your "friend" Aaron. You don't really care for Aaron, but he looks at you in the hopes you'll help him. > You help Aaron You step up to Henry. "What the fuck do you want faggot?" he demands. You don't even answer, you just punch Henry. Henry punches you back! Any other time you might run away, but this is different! Somehow when you stood up to Mom today, you feel a lot more confident! You and Henry begin to wrestle in the hallway, until a teacher breaks you up. Normally you'd get sent to the principal's office, but the teacher just yells at you instead. Aaron thanks you profusely and states how he'll do all your homework for you. Your sense of accomplishment grows. You like being praised for your deeds. When you get to your computer class, you notice that your sister's friend Jessica, is having problems with today's lesson. > You help Jessica You go up to Jessica and explain what she's doing wrong and how she NEEDS to be doing it. You proceed to take completely over. While Jessica wouldn't have minded your help, she doesn't particularly care for how you approached her. She didn't ASK you for your help and your arrogant manner has turned her off. And the fact you told her that she may "thank you now" made things even worse. You've lost your shot at her, but that doesn't seem to bother you, the fact that she didn't praise the ground you walk on for your help, bothers you more. Some people are just ungrateful you guess. Lunchtime comes around and Aaron begins thanking you again, for helping him. You enjoy his praise until you tire of him and tell him to shut up and get you another can of Coke, which he complies. At this point you overhear your sister's boyfriend Butch brag to all his friends about some girl he slept with last night. A girl that wasn't your sister. You wonder if you should confront him, but you don't see how this could be readily advantageous to you. > You confront Butch Your sister has been getting fucked around by this guy for too long. He constantly cheats on her and she always takes him back. Well it stops today, because YOU know what's best for her. You immediately confront Butch, he turns around wondering what you want, and you tell him to stay away from your sister. He laughs in your face and tells you to fuck off. This once again prompts you to resort to violence. You punch Butch in the face, but the guy's a jock, he can easily withstand anything you can dish out. Not to mention he's got six of his buddies to help him. They beat the hell out of you and throw you in the Cafeteria garbage can, and take off laughing before an authority figure catches them. You get sent to the principal's office for getting into your second fight today! After getting suspended for the next three days, you run into your sister outside of school who walks up to you pissed as hell. "What the fuck did you think you were doing picking a fight with Butch?!" You attempt to explain, but she's not listening. "He stopped doing that! He loves me! You're just trying to control my life! I heard about how you acted towards Jessica today. You're trying to dominate everything just like Mom!" At this point you get enraged with her, for not showing you the gratitude that you deserve! You tried to help her out and this is how she repays you? You slap the shit out of her! She holds her face, hits you back and runs off crying, stating how she's moving out of the house. Good, you think, if she doesn't know what's good for her, she can get the fuck out. You head back home and do what the hell you want, until that bitch you call Mom comes home. She immediately starts her shit. "Don't think I haven't forgot about that shit you pulled this morning!" she begins saying. > You argue back with her Mom's reign of domination ends fucking today. YOU'RE the fucking man of the house and she needs to recognize that NOW. You call her every name in the book, as she returns in kind. She begins slapping you, threatening to kick you out of the house again. You push her down, and overpower her. All your repressed anger is directed towards her. And the shit you've ever had to put up with from her and everyone else is ALL directed at her. SHE NEVER APPRECIATED ANYTHING YOU EVER FUCKING DID! You snap her neck, thus proving you're the dominant one here. You feel a great emotional release, but then it disappears. Strange, killing her has completely deadened your emotions again. You decide to go to bed. You awaken to police taking you away. Your sister ended up coming home in the middle of the night to pick up some things, and she found Mom still laying on the floor where you left her. Another day in your cell, and once again you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your sister has been getting fucked around by this guy for too long. He constantly cheats on her and she always takes him back. Well it stops today, because YOU know what's best for her. You immediately confront Butch, he turns around wondering what you want, and you tell him to stay away from your sister. He laughs in your face and tells you to fuck off. This once again prompts you to resort to violence. You punch Butch in the face, but the guy's a jock, he can easily withstand anything you can dish out. Not to mention he's got six of his buddies to help him. They beat the hell out of you and throw you in the Cafeteria garbage can, and take off laughing before an authority figure catches them. You get sent to the principal's office for getting into your second fight today! After getting suspended for the next three days, you run into your sister outside of school who walks up to you pissed as hell. "What the fuck did you think you were doing picking a fight with Butch?!" You attempt to explain, but she's not listening. "He stopped doing that! He loves me! You're just trying to control my life! I heard about how you acted towards Jessica today. You're trying to dominate everything just like Mom!" At this point you get enraged with her, for not showing you the gratitude that you deserve! You tried to help her out and this is how she repays you? You slap the shit out of her! She holds her face, hits you back and runs off crying, stating how she's moving out of the house. Good, you think, if she doesn't know what's good for her, she can get the fuck out. You head back home and do what the hell you want, until that bitch you call Mom comes home. She immediately starts her shit. "Don't think I haven't forgot about that shit you pulled this morning!" she begins saying. > You simmer and just take it You say a few things back, but nothing too bad, you HAVE to live here and are too fearful of getting kicked out. Your Mom reads you the riot act and uses vulgar language that would shame a sailor. She verbally emasculates you to a degree that assures she's still in control of this house. All the feelings you had before fade. As quickly as gained your sense of "rebellion" your Mom has crushed it within a blink of an eye. You go upstairs to bed, your spirit utterly crushed. Another day arrives, and once again you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You go up to Jessica and explain what she's doing wrong and how she NEEDS to be doing it. You proceed to take completely over. While Jessica wouldn't have minded your help, she doesn't particularly care for how you approached her. She didn't ASK you for your help and your arrogant manner has turned her off. And the fact you told her that she may "thank you now" made things even worse. You've lost your shot at her, but that doesn't seem to bother you, the fact that she didn't praise the ground you walk on for your help, bothers you more. Some people are just ungrateful you guess. Lunchtime comes around and Aaron begins thanking you again, for helping him. You enjoy his praise until you tire of him and tell him to shut up and get you another can of Coke, which he complies. At this point you overhear your sister's boyfriend Butch brag to all his friends about some girl he slept with last night. A girl that wasn't your sister. You wonder if you should confront him, but you don't see how this could be readily advantageous to you. > You keep quiet No advantange in getting your ass kicked by Butch and six of his friends. No you know what to do. You attend all your classes as usual and wait until after school where you rat on Butch to your sister. She's really upset and confronts him about it. As they start to argue, you see Aaron and tell him that if Butch gets rough with your sister, he should step in and help, since she'll find that attractive and might go out with him. Poor Aaron already blindly loyal to you, readily believes your lies and sure enough as soon as Butch grabs your sister, Aaron attempts to defend her and gets the shit beaten out of him very badly. Your sister see first hand the brutality of Butch and screams for someone to help, where upon one of the teachers from the school removes Butch and has someone call the paramedics for Aaron. Butch will soon be paying legally for what he did to Aaron. For now though your sister is a bit distraught over all this, she's going to go home, despite the fact she'll have to face Mom. > You go home You decide its time to take control of the household. After all you're the fucking man of the house, and that bitch Mom of yours better realize that, besides the shift in power is in your favor with your sister on your firmly on your side now. Your prepare your sister for the coming confrontation with Mom, she looks less than excited to do it, but you helped her a lot today and agrees it needs to be done. When Mom comes home you immediately go on the offensive, totally catching her off guard. You do most of the fighting, your sister only piping up when you ask her to, you unleash a litany of cruel truths to your Mom. You mention how she's a lonely dried up over the hill woman who needs someone in her life because she's an unhappy person. So if she knows what's good for her she'll start treating you both with more respect. And that's just one of the things you say. Not that she isn't totally without ammo, but you feel actually energized by the battle. Like you're getting off on the conflict. Eventually you wear her down and she half-heartly gives in. You know that your Mom is never going to be docile, but you've effectively changed the balance of power. You go to bed totally pleased by your victory. Your confidence transformed into arrogance and finally into outright manipulative nastiness. Another day arrives and you feel like Mom...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No advantange in getting your ass kicked by Butch and six of his friends. No you know what to do. You attend all your classes as usual and wait until after school where you rat on Butch to your sister. She's really upset and confronts him about it. As they start to argue, you see Aaron and tell him that if Butch gets rough with your sister, he should step in and help, since she'll find that attractive and might go out with him. Poor Aaron already blindly loyal to you, readily believes your lies and sure enough as soon as Butch grabs your sister, Aaron attempts to defend her and gets the shit beaten out of him very badly. Your sister see first hand the brutality of Butch and screams for someone to help, where upon one of the teachers from the school removes Butch and has someone call the paramedics for Aaron. Butch will soon be paying legally for what he did to Aaron. For now though your sister is a bit distraught over all this, she's going to go home, despite the fact she'll have to face Mom. > You stay out Heh heh, let sis handle Mom, you're going to do something you've never done. Party all night! You end up going to a club and even though you haven't really had any previous experience with these places or any other major social gathering you seem to fit in very well. It amazing how far your new outlook on life has taken you within a short period of time. You realize that following all those rules was idiotic. You're going to have fun and anyone who tries to stop you is going to pay the price. Nobody is more important than you. Your home life changes quite a bit. Now its Mom yelling at you constantly rather than your sister, who seems to have calmed down quite a bit. Strange how things balance out. Another day arrives and you feel rebellious...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step up to Henry. "What the fuck do you want faggot?" he demands. You don't even answer, you just punch Henry. Henry punches you back! Any other time you might run away, but this is different! Somehow when you stood up to Mom today, you feel a lot more confident! You and Henry begin to wrestle in the hallway, until a teacher breaks you up. Normally you'd get sent to the principal's office, but the teacher just yells at you instead. Aaron thanks you profusely and states how he'll do all your homework for you. Your sense of accomplishment grows. You like being praised for your deeds. When you get to your computer class, you notice that your sister's friend Jessica, is having problems with today's lesson. > You ignore her Jessica didn't ask for your help, and you don't want to make an annoyance of yourself, so you go to your seat and quietly do your work. Soon, Jessica comes up to you and asks you for your help, since she knows you're good with computers. You're glad to lend her a hand. You've always liked her to some degree even if you never showed it. Now you have the perfect opportunity to do so. As you explain things to her you get the feeling she no longer thinks of you as your sister's "creepy" brother anymore. She really welcomes your help. Class ends and your confidence increases. You think you might even ask Jessica out tomorrow! Lunchtime comes around and Aaron sits next to you as he normally does. He continues to thank you for what you did earlier. He says you've inspired him a bit. Meanwhile you happen to over hear your sister's boyfriend Butch, who's bragging about his sexual exploits to his friends. "Yeah I fucked that bitch straight in the fucking ass last night! Haw Haw!" You're about to get up to defend your sister's honor, but suddenly you realize he's talking about a completely different girl. It appears Butch has been cheating on your sister again. > You confront Butch Butch has been treating your sister like this for too long. Its time to stand up to him, since she won't do it. You immediately pull him aside and tell him to stay away from your sister. He laughs in your face and pushes you to the ground. Then his six friends stand up... However your recent actions of defending Aaron cause him to try to help you out, by kicking Butch in the shin. Butch winces in pain, but immediately turns his attention to Aaron. He and his friends ignore you and beat the shit out of him. Seriously injuring him. The following events occur due to your hubris... Aaron has to be hospitalized and never fully recovers from suffering minor brain damage. Butch and his friends are charged, but ultimately nothing comes of it, since most of their parents are rich and Aaron's weren't. Charges are dropped. They're all expelled and school is sued however. You are also expelled since its determined that you started the fight in the first place, not to mention you your previous actions of fighting with Henry earlier that day, displays that you're a trouble maker. You sister blames you for Butch dumping her permanently, despite the fact you were actually trying to help her. Finally Mom gets SUPER pissed off at you for causing all this shit, causing her to miss lots of work. She sets you straight by breaking your will once more which is rather easy since you blame yourself for all of what happened. If you hadn't indulged you emotions this all would've never came about. You make sure it won't happen again. Another day arrives and once again you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Jessica didn't ask for your help, and you don't want to make an annoyance of yourself, so you go to your seat and quietly do your work. Soon, Jessica comes up to you and asks you for your help, since she knows you're good with computers. You're glad to lend her a hand. You've always liked her to some degree even if you never showed it. Now you have the perfect opportunity to do so. As you explain things to her you get the feeling she no longer thinks of you as your sister's "creepy" brother anymore. She really welcomes your help. Class ends and your confidence increases. You think you might even ask Jessica out tomorrow! Lunchtime comes around and Aaron sits next to you as he normally does. He continues to thank you for what you did earlier. He says you've inspired him a bit. Meanwhile you happen to over hear your sister's boyfriend Butch, who's bragging about his sexual exploits to his friends. "Yeah I fucked that bitch straight in the fucking ass last night! Haw Haw!" You're about to get up to defend your sister's honor, but suddenly you realize he's talking about a completely different girl. It appears Butch has been cheating on your sister again. > You keep quiet Maybe you've gained a little more confidence in yourself, but you're not an idiot. You can see Butch has six of his friends there. They're all bigger and stronger than you, being on the football team and all. You aren't going to let this go though. Lunch ends and you head to the rest of your classes as normal. After school you run into your sister, who looks happy to see you, until you mention what you heard Butch say. She get mad, but not at you. She sees Butch coming out of the school and immediately confronts him and starts yelling at him. He starts yelling back. > You stick around You aren't just going to leave, you stick around just in case Butch gets violent. Good thing you did, his temper gets worse and he raises his hand to your sister, which you immediately stop. He turns and can't believe you would dare confront him. "Huh! You think just because you kicked Henry's ass today, you think you're fucking tough shit? I'm gonna fucking kick your nuts up through your fucking throat! An there ain't no teachers around to break this up!" Butch swings at you and you dodge. You land some hits, but he's very strong. You feel a great crushing force to your stomach as he slams his fist into it. You fall trying to catch your breath, almost expecting him to finish you off, but Aaron comes out of no where and kicks him in the back of the head! Your earlier actions of defending Aaron have caused him to return the favor. He has distracted Butch long enough for you to punch him in the nuts as hard as you can three times. Butch falls and is in no condition to do anything. Your sister then proceeds to tell him its over for good this time and kicks him a couple times as well. Well you've accomplished a lot today at school. You've become a real defender, all your previously repressed energy has been channeled positively. However, home still awaits you and you know who awaits you there. > You go home No point in avoiding it. You have to go home eventually. Your sister isn't staying out tonight, since she's just broken up with Butch. You take this opportunity to convince her that you should put up a united front against Mom. She agrees completely and says its about time Mom's tyranny came to an end. You both get home, and psychologically prepare yourself for the battle with Mom, and then she enters the door... The battle is joined! Mom starts in on both of you right away! Its a very intense and long arguement, but you have the confidence to finally stand up to her and you also have your sister to back you up. As much as Mom continues to threaten to throw you both out of the house, you can tell she's bluffing. She doesn't REALLY want either of you to leave her. If you guys weren't there, she'd have nobody around and then she'd truely be alone. The arguement lasts into the night, but it finally ends, with you as the victor. Mom eventually half-heartedly gives in, but not before telling the both of you, what ungrateful brats you are. You go to bed that night, with a complete and total feeling of liberation. You have confidence that you've never had before and you can FEEL. By god, you can finally feel! Another day breaks, and you feel absolute joy.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren't just going to leave, you stick around just in case Butch gets violent. Good thing you did, his temper gets worse and he raises his hand to your sister, which you immediately stop. He turns and can't believe you would dare confront him. "Huh! You think just because you kicked Henry's ass today, you think you're fucking tough shit? I'm gonna fucking kick your nuts up through your fucking throat! An there ain't no teachers around to break this up!" Butch swings at you and you dodge. You land some hits, but he's very strong. You feel a great crushing force to your stomach as he slams his fist into it. You fall trying to catch your breath, almost expecting him to finish you off, but Aaron comes out of no where and kicks him in the back of the head! Your earlier actions of defending Aaron have caused him to return the favor. He has distracted Butch long enough for you to punch him in the nuts as hard as you can three times. Butch falls and is in no condition to do anything. Your sister then proceeds to tell him its over for good this time and kicks him a couple times as well. Well you've accomplished a lot today at school. You've become a real defender, all your previously repressed energy has been channeled positively. However, home still awaits you and you know who awaits you there. > You stay out It could be that you're feeling rebellious, or it could be that you're just not confident enough to stand up to your Mom in a knock down drag out arguement. That little one this morning will be nothing compared to what will await you tonight if you went home. After all you gotta live with her and she still commands a very intimidating presence. 18 years of indoctrination is hard to completely shake in one day. Your sister suggests a club that doesn't check IDs, since she isn't eager to go home either, but she won't be staying at Butch's anymore. > You party time! Well its not really your thing, but you don't really have any other ideas at this point, so you agree. The bouncer at the club lets your sister in immediately when he sees her since she's a regular here. She explains you're with her, he doesn't seem to like you, but he lets you in. Your senses are instantly assaulted by loud music and flashing blinding lights. "Woohoo! I'm getting liquored up tonight!" your sister says and disappears into the crowd heading towards the bar. You quietly sit in an empty booth, for some reason you start to feel a little less adventurous again. Less emotional. School was a "controled environment" This place is like a sensory overload to you. Too much chaos. You sit and watch all the people going by engaging in various activities. Soon an incredibly friendly girl comes up to you wanting you to follow her. > You follow her You follow her on to the dance floor. You of course have no idea how to dance, but that doesn't seem to matter to the girl, who's grinding all over you. A few minute go by and you begin to realize this isn't that bad! You're starting to enjoy yourself. You guess it just took you a little time to get accustomed to this environment. It seems the girl wants you to follow her somewhere else now... > You follow her You follow the girl into one of the bathrooms, specifically one of the stalls. Still a little naive about certain things, you're not exactly sure what's going to happen until she kneels in front of you... Afterwards, you feel a little bewildered about what happened. Its definitely not a common occurence for you. You can't say you didn't enjoy it though. You leave the club and sneak back to your house, carefully not waking Mom up. You go to bed, thinking about the unusual day and night you've had, and realizing that you should've been having fun like this in the first place. Time passes and things have improved for you at school. At home its a living hell. You argue with Mom as much as your sister does now, but nobody gets kicked out. You start staying out all night whoremongering, you also start to not feel well though in the coming months. Another day arrives, and you feel deathly sick...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You follow her on to the dance floor. You of course have no idea how to dance, but that doesn't seem to matter to the girl, who's grinding all over you. A few minute go by and you begin to realize this isn't that bad! You're starting to enjoy yourself. You guess it just took you a little time to get accustomed to this environment. It seems the girl wants you to follow her somewhere else now... > You go do something else You decide you don't want to spend the entire night dancing with one girl, so you spend the night looking for other girls to dance with. (Yes, you WERE oblivious to what the first girl had in mind!) You have fun without going overboard, and that's probably for the best since all this is brand new to you. Eventually you leave the club and sneak back in your house, making sure you don't wake Mom up. You lie in bed thinking about the unusual day and night you had and realize there isn't anything wrong with not following the rules ALL the time, and you also realize you're secure enough not to do something stupid. And Mom's just going to have to get used to that idea. Another day arrives, and you finally feel normal...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well its not really your thing, but you don't really have any other ideas at this point, so you agree. The bouncer at the club lets your sister in immediately when he sees her since she's a regular here. She explains you're with her, he doesn't seem to like you, but he lets you in. Your senses are instantly assaulted by loud music and flashing blinding lights. "Woohoo! I'm getting liquored up tonight!" your sister says and disappears into the crowd heading towards the bar. You quietly sit in an empty booth, for some reason you start to feel a little less adventurous again. Less emotional. School was a "controled environment" This place is like a sensory overload to you. Too much chaos. You sit and watch all the people going by engaging in various activities. Soon an incredibly friendly girl comes up to you wanting you to follow her. > You stay put Nope, you just can't get into it. Its all too much for you. You decline her offer and continue to just observe. Pretty soon, you see your sister stumbling around, she's not drunk enough to pass out, but she is drunk enough to be acting like an idiot. You notice other guys attempting to take advantage of this fact, you step in, and start escorting her out. When you get outside, you half expect her to start yelling at you for ruining her fun, but she doesn't. Instead she starts getting all weepy. Stating how you've been looking out for her all day and that no guy has ever done that, since they all treat her like shit. You tell her to just calm down and take her to the car. Since she's in no condition to drive (Though that's never stopped her before) As you put her in the back seat, she kisses you on the lips, with full tongue. You recoil back a bit in surprise. Surely its the alcohol...or is it? > You drive her home Alcohol definitely! You know that she gets pretty friendly after she's been drinking. You dismiss it. You can't possibly believe that she'd have that kind of interest in you. She may be a bit wild, but not to that extent! As you drive back home, she falls asleep in the back, thanking you for looking out. You get back home, unfortunately you're carrying your sister back in and you wake Mom up. She's pissed and iching for a fight. Normally her tirades would effect you more, but not after what you've been through. You're tired of her ordering everyone around, she has no idea how to REALLY look out for someone. If she did, your sister wouldn't be the mess she is. You put your sister on the sofa, and yell at your Mom telling her she needs to stop acting like a fucking dictator and to start acting like a mother, because she's going to drive away the both of you if she keeps this up. Your words seem to have somewhat of an effect. Your Mom still doesn't want to admit defeat though, she says you're ALL going to talk about this tomorrow. You're tired, and don't want to argue anymore tonight, so you agree. You head up to bed, realizing that your actions today have worn you out! Being a defender isn't easy. Its very taxing, but somehow you like it. Its much better than being the emotionless android you were acting like before. Its like you have a purpose in life now. Another day breaks, and you feel fulfilled...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Nope, you just can't get into it. Its all too much for you. You decline her offer and continue to just observe. Pretty soon, you see your sister stumbling around, she's not drunk enough to pass out, but she is drunk enough to be acting like an idiot. You notice other guys attempting to take advantage of this fact, you step in, and start escorting her out. When you get outside, you half expect her to start yelling at you for ruining her fun, but she doesn't. Instead she starts getting all weepy. Stating how you've been looking out for her all day and that no guy has ever done that, since they all treat her like shit. You tell her to just calm down and take her to the car. Since she's in no condition to drive (Though that's never stopped her before) As you put her in the back seat, she kisses you on the lips, with full tongue. You recoil back a bit in surprise. Surely its the alcohol...or is it? > You drive her "home" That wasn't the alcohol. You know how much your sister can drink. And she hasn't drank nearly enough to not know what the hell she's doing. You kiss her back, as she begins to take off her tight clothing. Suddenly it occurs to you that this is right. Your sister NEEDS someone to look out for her, otherwise she'll get into all kinds of trouble. All your helpful actions today have lead up to this moment. The natural progression of your relationship with her. You've always felt that you had a special connection with her, you're her balancer, her anchor if you will. That's why you were so repressed, you felt these emotions were wrong, but now you realize that was just society's rules being forced on you and its apparent that your sister had felt the same way, why else would she put herself in abusive relationships on purpose? She was attempting to run away from her own feelings in a different way. Well no more, tonight you both commit to your true feelings. You and your sister proceed to make passionate forbidden love in the backseat of her car where you both fall asleep afterwards. The next day when you wake up you both feel a little weird, but somehow satisfied. You don't say anything to each other, you both just slip your clothes back on and drive home. She holds your hand as you drive, occasionally smiling at you. You're fully prepared to hear Mom bitch at the both of you, but it doesn't matter anymore because together there's nobody that can get in your way. Yes, its a brand new day, and you feel absolute contentment...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It could be that you're feeling rebellious, or it could be that you're just not confident enough to stand up to your Mom in a knock down drag out arguement. That little one this morning will be nothing compared to what will await you tonight if you went home. After all you gotta live with her and she still commands a very intimidating presence. 18 years of indoctrination is hard to completely shake in one day. Your sister suggests a club that doesn't check IDs, since she isn't eager to go home either, but she won't be staying at Butch's anymore. > You go find something else to do That may be your sister's path, but it isn't yours. You decline the offer, and she tells you goodbye and thanks you for sticking up for her today. You begin to walk around wondering where to go, where all of a sudden Jessica calls out to you. You stop and wait for her to arrive, she says she heard what happened with Butch and she said she's glad to hear that your sister finally dumped him for good. Jessica had been telling your sister that for a year now, but she never listened to her. Jessica seems impressed by your actions today, looks like you won't have to wait until tomorrow to ask her out, she's interested now! > You go to the park You decide to go for a nice leisurely walk in the park, you can get to know her as you talk and walk in the full bloom of nature. You and Jessica are having a relatively good time, as the approaching evening makes the moon come out, making this "date" just a little bit more romantic. > You find some place to make out While you attempt to find a secluded spot, the approaching evening brings out bad elements of society. Particularly ones you've had run ins with today. "Thought you were gonna get away with that shit? Bleed motherfucker!" Henry shouts jumping out of nowhere and stabbing you repeatedly. Jessica attempts to help until he slaps her and begins to assault her. Being a "good guy" has its drawbacks, the world is very unfair when people like you aren't allowed happiness, but that's life. As you lay bleeding to death, hearing Jessica's screams, you realize it would've been better for all, if you hadn't felt the need to turn into a crusader today. You feel life ebb away then you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to go for a nice leisurely walk in the park, you can get to know her as you talk and walk in the full bloom of nature. You and Jessica are having a relatively good time, as the approaching evening makes the moon come out, making this "date" just a little bit more romantic. > You take her home All these new feelings are still a bit overwhelming to you, so you decide not to take it to that level just yet. Besides you don’t really want to be hanging out in the park too long at night. You take Jessica home who agrees to go out with you again and gives you a big kiss before she goes in which puts a perfect end to this day. You sneak back to your house, carefully not waking Mom up. You know you’ll have to deal with her in the morning, but that doesn’t seem to bother you. You’ve accomplished a lot today and that fills you with a sense of achievement that you’ve never felt before. Another day arrives and you feel triumphant…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>That may be your sister's path, but it isn't yours. You decline the offer, and she tells you goodbye and thanks you for sticking up for her today. You begin to walk around wondering where to go, where all of a sudden Jessica calls out to you. You stop and wait for her to arrive, she says she heard what happened with Butch and she said she's glad to hear that your sister finally dumped him for good. Jessica had been telling your sister that for a year now, but she never listened to her. Jessica seems impressed by your actions today, looks like you won't have to wait until tomorrow to ask her out, she's interested now! > You go to her house Her Mom works nights so you take advantage of the fact you won't be disturbed. You and Jessica have a good time getting to know each other a little better, a lot better in fact. Okay not THAT much better! Jessica may be a friend of your sister's, but she's not the "free spirit" she is. Jessica stops you from going any further and says she's just not ready to do that yet, especially since this is basically your first date! > You get agressive You know its always tragic to see how easy it is to fall from a positive path... Maybe it was your built up confidence crossing over to arrogance. Maybe you felt all your "good deeds" today should be "rewarded". Maybe it was just an overload of different emotions in one day from a previous complete lack of social interaction. Maybe it was a combination of all three factors as well as other ones, but your choice has lead you to perform a dispicable action, effectively erasing anything positive you've done today. Afterwards, you feel different, like something shut down inside your head. Perhaps it was a left over shred of morality reminding you of the evil you just committed. Whatever it was, you end up running off, leaving Jessica behind. You feel panic, fear, shame, regret, and disgust all at the same time. As these emotions assault you, you clutch your head, scream and end up collapsing in the park. You're awakened the next morning by the police, who've been looking for you, you meekly and quietly go with them. Its a brand new day and you feel everlasting anguish...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Her Mom works nights so you take advantage of the fact you won't be disturbed. You and Jessica have a good time getting to know each other a little better, a lot better in fact. Okay not THAT much better! Jessica may be a friend of your sister's, but she's not the "free spirit" she is. Jessica stops you from going any further and says she's just not ready to do that yet, especially since this is basically your first date! > You respect her wishes You didn't very well expect everything to go your way on your very first day of acting like a real person did you? Part of being a "good guy" is not necessarily expecting a "reward" for things you've done. Fortunately even with your low social skills you've realized this fact. You tell Jessica how you can't wait to see her tomorrow, and how you'll take her on a real date after school. She says she looks forward to it and kisses you goodnight before you leave. As you sneak back into your house, you think about how much you've changed in one day. For the most part you stood up against things you saw as unjust, yet you still recognized you have to have your own life as well. You'll still have to put up with your Mom's domineering personality and your sister is still a party animal, but you can't change people overnight, let alone the world. All you can do is TRY to do the right thing and hope everything works out for the best. And so far it looks like it's working out for you. Small victories will lead to bigger ones eventually, you know it will. Another day arrives and you feel hopeful...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know, you've really had it with Mom picking on your sister all the time. Sure she's a little wild, but she isn't a slut and doesn't deserve to be called one, you tell Mom as much. Your sister and especially your Mom are both VERY surprised! Your Mom gets even angrier and slaps you! "So both of you ungrateful shits turn against me! Get the fuck out of my house right now! NOW! And don't fucking return if you aren't going to live by my rules!" She yells and storms out of the kitchen. You and your sister leave, but as you both head off to school, she thanks you for taking her side. "Thanks, its nice to have an ally for once against that fucking harpy!" You feel a little pleased. Its nice to be appreciated for once. When you get to school, you see Henry the school bully kicking the hell out of your "friend" Aaron. You don't really care for Aaron, but he looks at you in the hopes you'll help him. > You ignore him You leave Aaron to his fate. Your emotions have become dead again. You just don't care anymore. What happened at the house was just an usual oddity in your "normal" behavior you guess. You go through your day numb as usual, when you get home, Mom reads you the riot act for this morning. This only makes you realize that speaking out against her wasn't a good idea in the first place. You go to bed. Another day arrives and you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Its another day and you feel nothing... You're 18 years old and very socially inept. Naturally you're not popular in high school, you're not even worthy to be routinely picked on. This isn't to say you aren't at all, but most people just find you very creepy and stay away from you. You're mom's strict upbringing has made you very emotionally detached and repressed. At this point you barely feel any kind of emotions at all. Maybe that changes today. Your Mom is calling you down to eat. > You stay in bed You don't get up. Today is different somehow. You don't know why, but it is. Your mother is screaming at you to come down. It doesn't even faze you. Her threats meaning nothing anymore. You hear her coming up the stairs. > You stay in bed She enters the room, screaming at you as usual. You don't even hear her. You've heard it all before. She begins to prod you, as you still lay in bed, oblivious to her. She shakes you and hits you, still nothing. Finally she drags you out of the bed and onto the floor... You're totally catatonic. Your mom screams for your sister to help her, and some confusion occurs. You are completely still from the time, the ambulance come to pick you up, to the time you're put in the catatonia ward. As you remain in your cell, you feel something. Freedom. Its ironic, in this place of walls and bars, and your catatonic state, you finally feel free. Your mind is completely free of the problems of the real world, and best of all free of Mom. Another day arrives as you lay motionless in a bed and you feel free...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don't get up. Today is different somehow. You don't know why, but it is. Your mother is screaming at you to come down. It doesn't even faze you. Her threats meaning nothing anymore. You hear her coming up the stairs. > You get ready for her Your mother comes bursting in the room. "What the fuck are you still doing in fucking bed? Its time for you to get your ass up and go to fucking school! What the fuck are you doing with your hands under the covers? Are you fucking jerking..." Before your mother can finish her rant, you flip your covers off and shoot her in the head. Wow. You didn't realize you were that good of a shot, you weren't even aiming. Your mother slumps to the floor and you jump out of bed, fully dressed for today. You hear your sister running up the stairs screaming, wondering what's going on. > You go meet your sister You appear suddenly as your sister comes from around the corner of the stairs, she has just enough time to see Mom's dead body and the pistol you're aiming at her. You shoot twice, the bullets can't miss at this range. Your sister goes flying down the stairs and is already dead by the time she hits the bottom. Yep, today is a different day... > You go to school You collect all the other weapons you had stored in your room. You always knew this day would come. You kiss your Mom and sister goodbye. It wasn't their fault, you just had to do it. Just like you have to do it again. Taking your Mom's car, you get to school, just in time to see your "friend" Aaron, getting beat up in the parking lot by the school bully Henry. You double check your weapons before getting out of the car. Henry and Aaron both notice the amount of firepower you're packing. > You dispense Mayhem "Hold on don't..." Henry says before taking a shotgun slug to the chest, killing him instantly. Aaron at first looks at you as a savior from his tormentor. His expression soon changes to fear when that same shotgun is then pointed at him, exploding his head like a ripe mellon. Your actions have now attracted a bit of attention. Students who were in the parking lot are now running for their lives or attempting to drive off. > You enter the school through the gym You run around to the back of the school in the attempts to do what you have to do as quickly as possible. You throw the doors open and gym class is in full session. You see so many...targets. Your eyes especially focus on Butch. Your sister's boyfriend. You immeidately take out your sub-machine gun and begin spraying the place. Some escape, some die instantly, some lay wounded on the floor begging for mercy. You take the opportunity to shoot the wounded one by one in a calculating manner. You do this very calmly. Like stepping on ants... Butch attempts to crawl away, but you spray him again with bullets. He lies still in a bloody mess. At this point, a majority of the school has been alerted of the things you're doing. The cops should be here shortly. You make your way down the corridor... > You head towards a classroom You know EXACTLY which classroom to enter. You go straight to it, shooting the janitor on the way there and a couple of students that you catch in the hallway. You enter your designated target area. And its still full. The class was cowering, hoping you'd pass by, but fate was not with them today. You see her. Jessica. Your sister's friend. She looks very frightened, but then again everyone in the class does. You assess the situation with your shotgun in hand... > You know what to do There's no other way. You begin blasting the room with buckshot, and don't stop shooting until you're sure everyone is dead. The room is covered in gore. You look at Jessica and kiss her blood soaked lips. There just wasn't enough time. You exit the class room. You hear police sirens and bullhorns screaming at you to give up. Most of the school has been evacuated at this point. Just you alone in the school and the cops waiting for you outside now. > You let's finish it You reload all your weapons calmly and exit through the front door. "DROP YOUR FUCKING WEAPONS NOW!" you hear a cop shout. You immediately open fire on them. You barely get off a few rounds before they fill you with lead, dropping you. You fall to the ground, and breathe your last breath. Nobody ever really knows why you did the terrible things you did that dark day. The only clue is the note they found in your pocket saying: I feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There's no other way. You begin blasting the room with buckshot, and don't stop shooting until you're sure everyone is dead. The room is covered in gore. You look at Jessica and kiss her blood soaked lips. There just wasn't enough time. You exit the class room. You hear police sirens and bullhorns screaming at you to give up. Most of the school has been evacuated at this point. Just you alone in the school and the cops waiting for you outside now. > You surrender Something over comes you. You suddenly feel a sense of self preservation. The only thing you HAVE felt during this bloody day. You drop all your weapons and exit the school completely unarmed. The police quickly take you down and drag you away. You feel completely numb during the trial, its ultimately decided that you're completely nuts to do what you did (Despite outcries for your death) so you are put in a mental institution. To this day nobody can figure out exactly why you did what you did. A reporter comes in to do a special on mass murderers and you were on the top on the list. He doesn't get too far with his questions though, he asks WHY you did it. You just say it had to be done. He asks you how you feel about killing all those people. But you give the same answer you gave at the trial You feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know EXACTLY which classroom to enter. You go straight to it, shooting the janitor on the way there and a couple of students that you catch in the hallway. You enter your designated target area. And its still full. The class was cowering, hoping you'd pass by, but fate was not with them today. You see her. Jessica. Your sister's friend. She looks very frightened, but then again everyone in the class does. You assess the situation with your shotgun in hand... > You it's all for her There's no other way. You pull out your pistol and begin shooting people with deadly accuracy, until only you and Jessica are left. Jessica is paralyzed with fear. She doesn't realize though, that this has all been for her. She never noticed you before. How much you cared for her. How much you loved her. Well she'll ALWAYS remember you now. You've made sure of that. As she cowers and shakes expecting you to kill her, you hand her your pistol. She's too frightened. She just wants you to leave her alone. You have to help her. You put the pistol in her hand and force her to squeeze the trigger until it releases its bullet into your heart. At last you don't feel the nawing pain of unquenched love anymore. You feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You run around to the back of the school in the attempts to do what you have to do as quickly as possible. You throw the doors open and gym class is in full session. You see so many...targets. Your eyes especially focus on Butch. Your sister's boyfriend. You immeidately take out your sub-machine gun and begin spraying the place. Some escape, some die instantly, some lay wounded on the floor begging for mercy. You take the opportunity to shoot the wounded one by one in a calculating manner. You do this very calmly. Like stepping on ants... Butch attempts to crawl away, but you spray him again with bullets. He lies still in a bloody mess. At this point, a majority of the school has been alerted of the things you're doing. The cops should be here shortly. You make your way down the corridor... > You try to escape now Suddenly a sense of fear builds up inside you. You realize what you've done. You can't take what you've done back and worse you're not going to get away with it. You begin to run. You don't know where to go though, so you head back home. You hear sirens. They're closing in. Its too much for you, you're afraid. You feel the fear, until you realize, you don't have to be afraid. At least not of death! Death is peace. Its unfeeling peace. You want that feeling again. You sit down on the sofa and blow your brains out, just as the cops bust the door down. But they can't do anything to you now though because You feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Hold on don't..." Henry says before taking a shotgun slug to the chest, killing him instantly. Aaron at first looks at you as a savior from his tormentor. His expression soon changes to fear when that same shotgun is then pointed at him, exploding his head like a ripe mellon. Your actions have now attracted a bit of attention. Students who were in the parking lot are now running for their lives or attempting to drive off. > You attempt to stop escapees You begin spraying the parking lot randomly, attempting to stop people from either running or driving off. People are screaming and ducking from the hail of bullets you're peeling off. People and cars are being hit indisciminately The funny thing about shooting at a car, is the small possiblity of hitting the gas tank. The possibility of you going on a killing rampage today was actually greater than one of your bullets hitting a gas tank. Probabilty has played a strange role in today's events, because you succeeded in accomplishing both of those odds. Unfortunately you were standing too close to the explosion when the first car went up and igniting the others in a domino effect. (Thus accomplishing yet another small possibility) You feel a painful burning sensation all over your body for a brief moment then You feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You collect all the other weapons you had stored in your room. You always knew this day would come. You kiss your Mom and sister goodbye. It wasn't their fault, you just had to do it. Just like you have to do it again. Taking your Mom's car, you get to school, just in time to see your "friend" Aaron, getting beat up in the parking lot by the school bully Henry. You double check your weapons before getting out of the car. Henry and Aaron both notice the amount of firepower you're packing. > You dispense Justice "Hey wait, no..." Henry utters before you blast his internal organs to hamburger with your shotgun. Aaron looks upon you as a savior. You are. You now know why you came to school. To right the injustices that have occurred. You immediately make your way to the gym. You see Butch, your sister's boyfriend. HE was responsible for leading your sister astray, most of the jocks in here deserve to die. Long have they taunted those they percieve as weaker. You catch them completely off guard, you manage to blast Butch first and then pick off his friends as they attempt to run for their pathetic lives. You then single out teachers who attempted to bully you with their "Rules". Their rules are meaningless to you. You serve a higher power. Justice. You sneer as one woman begs you not to kill her for the sake of her son. Her son will be much better off without the likes of her... People are running in terror from you, but its only because they FEAR the justice you may dispense if they are found guilty. The police soon arrive and they are here to dispense their OWN brand of justice. You do not acknowledge this though. What you've done today, will be remembered, nobody can judge you and nobody will. You turn one of your guns on yourself. You feel a great sense of pride, before squeezing the trigger. Then you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You appear suddenly as your sister comes from around the corner of the stairs, she has just enough time to see Mom's dead body and the pistol you're aiming at her. You shoot twice, the bullets can't miss at this range. Your sister goes flying down the stairs and is already dead by the time she hits the bottom. Yep, today is a different day... > You end it now You think about going to school, but you just don't feel like it. Its all so futile anyway. Everything. What you did didn't change anything, so why bother continuing with this pointless carnage? You decide there is no point, you sit next to your Mom's body, calmly put the gun in your mouth and then You feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your mother comes bursting in the room. "What the fuck are you still doing in fucking bed? Its time for you to get your ass up and go to fucking school! What the fuck are you doing with your hands under the covers? Are you fucking jerking..." Before your mother can finish her rant, you flip your covers off and shoot her in the head. Wow. You didn't realize you were that good of a shot, you weren't even aiming. Your mother slumps to the floor and you jump out of bed, fully dressed for today. You hear your sister running up the stairs screaming, wondering what's going on. > You go out the window You panic! You don't know what came over you. It was just her constant nagging, her verbal abuse, it just got to the point where you couldn't take it anymore. You don't want to kill anyone else. As you attempt to go out your window, but your sister is already up the stairs and sees what you've done. She also calls out to you. "Stop! You don't need to run away! Its okay. Just come back inside." > You listen to your sister You stop to listen to your sister, you're still scared and panicked, but she's never caused you harm. "Its okay I understand, you just couldn't take it anymore. Look what she did to you...okay, I know what to do. You just have to stay calm for me okay?" she says. You shake and tremble, but you nod your head. She tells you she's going to leave for a little while, but she'll be back. You don't want her to go, but she says she has to, if she's going to help. You reluctantly agree. After sis leaves, its just you alone in the house with Mom's dead body. > You try to hide it Weird scenarios enter your head in your state of panic. What if some insistant vaccum salesman knocks on the door and demands to demonstrate his product? Or maybe someone checking for Radon levels in the house? You have to hide the body! You pick Mom up, trying to figure out where to put her. You decide your closet, unfortunately your closet is full of crap, so you attempt to stuff her in there throwing your entire body into it. As you begin to breathe hard, you catch the fragrence of the perfume still lingering on her body, you notice her dress has been lifted up as you've been attempting to shove her in your closet. You're aroused as you also notice you're positioned between her legs, you begin to have BAD thoughts as you stroke her thighs. You can't stop yourself... During this completely immoral act, you don't feel panic anymore, you feel power. Total power. All that shit she did to you, you're returning in kind. Now YOU have the power over her. You feel so fuckin' alive! As you finish up, you hear your sister come back home. > You demonstrate your power again You calm yourself, quickly get your pants back on, and head downstairs. Your sister seems to have gone shopping for "body disposing" supplies. How thoughtful. She explains that Mom's body could be disposed of, and it sounds like sis has thought about killing the bitch herself, but was too weak to do it. Her weakness sickens you... You grab the shovel and smash your sister in the face with it until you're pretty sure she's not moving anymore. You feel that orgasmic rush again. No panic at all this time. No fear. Just a release. You've at last realized your repressed emotions have never really been repressed. You just don't have any, at least not in the traditional sense. You only feel rage and loathing for those who would try to control you and contempt and disgust for those weaker than you. You only feel happy when you kill. And you want to feel happy ALL the time... You pack up as much of your things as you can and prepare to leave for the road tomorrow. Tomorrow arrives and you feel unrelenting hate...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Weird scenarios enter your head in your state of panic. What if some insistant vaccum salesman knocks on the door and demands to demonstrate his product? Or maybe someone checking for Radon levels in the house? You have to hide the body! You pick Mom up, trying to figure out where to put her. You decide your closet, unfortunately your closet is full of crap, so you attempt to stuff her in there throwing your entire body into it. As you begin to breathe hard, you catch the fragrence of the perfume still lingering on her body, you notice her dress has been lifted up as you've been attempting to shove her in your closet. You're aroused as you also notice you're positioned between her legs, you begin to have BAD thoughts as you stroke her thighs. You can't stop yourself... During this completely immoral act, you don't feel panic anymore, you feel power. Total power. All that shit she did to you, you're returning in kind. Now YOU have the power over her. You feel so fuckin' alive! As you finish up, you hear your sister come back home. > You try to place the body back and act like nothing has happend Suddenly you begin to panic again, and you start to fumble with Mom's body which has obviously been violated with the ripped up clothing and all. Of course even without that evidence, you standing over her with your pants off is enough for your sister to draw her own conclusions when she walks in on your attempt to make things "normal" again. Your sister won't help you with this. Instead of looking like a sympathetic emotionally abused victim who was driven over the edge, you now look like a sick homicidal incestuous necrophiliac (And you are) She screams and runs out of the house before you can stop her. You know she's going to get the police and you can't say you blame her. You're revolted by your actions. You throw up. You don't know why you did the things you did today, but you're sorry you did. You begin to cry and scream as your tortured mind attempts to make sense of the situation, up until the time the police take you away. Eventually it's decided you should be in a mental institution, it doesn't matter to you though since all you want to do is die. Another day arrives, you wake up in your cell and feel torment...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stop to listen to your sister, you're still scared and panicked, but she's never caused you harm. "Its okay I understand, you just couldn't take it anymore. Look what she did to you...okay, I know what to do. You just have to stay calm for me okay?" she says. You shake and tremble, but you nod your head. She tells you she's going to leave for a little while, but she'll be back. You don't want her to go, but she says she has to, if she's going to help. You reluctantly agree. After sis leaves, its just you alone in the house with Mom's dead body. > You leave it where it is You don't even want to look at it, let alone touch it. Besides sis told you everything would be okay if you just stayed calm. You downstairs to watch TV, but you start to worry about where your sister is at. You begin to panic again, you feel so lost. > You run You totally lose it! You know your sister went to go get the cops! They're probably on their way here right now! You run like a mad man down the street until you pass out from hyperventilation. When you wake up, your sister is standing over you, scolding you for running off like that. You were fortunate that she saw you lying face first on the sidewalk. This doesn't reassure you though and you continue to gibber about being caught. Your sister gets irritated by your behavior and ends up having to dispose of the body herself. Later a story is made up that your Mom just up and left and never came back, unfortunately your constant nevousness give you away and you blab everything. Both of you get charged, but since your sister never actually killed anyone, she get a lesser sentence. You feel completely relieved by all this even though you're going to jail for life. The fear and panic have left you, and have been replaced by a welcomed numbness again. Another day arrives in your cell and you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don't even want to look at it, let alone touch it. Besides sis told you everything would be okay if you just stayed calm. You downstairs to watch TV, but you start to worry about where your sister is at. You begin to panic again, you feel so lost. > You wait You wait patiently because you were told to do so. Something about realizing that makes you a lot calmer. Your sister returns with "body disposing" items. She says you could either chop her up in the bathtub and then dispose of her in garbage bags or just wait until night and bury her in the backyard. It almost looks as if your sister had thought about doing it herself at one time. You hadn't even planned it out that far. You tell your sister whatever she thinks is best, but you'll carry it out whatever she decides. After she makes her decision, you go about performing the duty casually. Its almost as if you feel like yourself again. Later your sister makes up an elaborate story about your Mom's disappearance, you back her up without any problems and it is believed. Life continues as normal for the both of you, sis feels complete freedom to do what she wants and you take care of the more mundane matters that she tells you to do when she doesn't feel like bothering to do them (Which is all the time) You now know why you felt fear and panic after you killed your Mom. It was because after so many years of being told what to do you'd destroyed your shackles. Freedom can be frightening and you realized it wasn't for you. Thank god sis has taken over Mom's role now. Its not exactly the same, but its calmer and secure. Another day arrives and you feel safe...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You panic! You don't know what came over you. It was just her constant nagging, her verbal abuse, it just got to the point where you couldn't take it anymore. You don't want to kill anyone else. As you attempt to go out your window, but your sister is already up the stairs and sees what you've done. She also calls out to you. "Stop! You don't need to run away! Its okay. Just come back inside." > You continue out the window You're still too scared, you go out the window and try to climb down, unfortunately your panic prevents you from climbing as efficiently as you'd like. You fall off and impale yourself through the chest on the fence surrounding Mom's rose bushes. You gasp for breath, coughing up blood. You feel fear overwhelm you as you approach death. Then you feel nothing...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The world is dark, and cold. Your eyes see nothing, your ears hear no sound. Your heart no longer beats and you can't move a muscle. Congratulations, you are dead. But not for long. You hazily recall your last moments... Walking through the nightclub you see an ocean of flesh moving rhythmically to the blasting music. You see the women wearing skirts so short that you wonder how it's legal. Two people however catch your interest the most. A woman of about 20 something is sitting at the bar staring off into the distance. She is wearing a purple dress that ends at her upper thighs. Her alabaster skin looks smoother than porcelain. Her fine blonde hair is like a river of gold. You are immediately attracted to her but as you make your way through the crowd you spot another beauty. At about midway to the woman in the purple dress you spot another one at the opposite end of the bar. This one is wearing a low cut top (that is quite tight fitting) and a miniskirt, she radiates sexiness. She is also quite pale and has fiery red hair and catches you staring at her. She gives a small smile and then looks away. The old divining rod is no help here so who's it gonna be? > The girl at the bar "Hi," You say followed by whatever cheesy pickup line that comes to mind. Surprisingly it works and you get her attention. Her emerald eyes seem full of life and she looks hungrily at you, almost licking her lips for you. Obviously a good sign. After about an hour of conversing you learn that she lives nearby and she invites you back to her place. And you thought today would suck (All puns intended). You leave the club and follow her back to her place. Turns out she lives in a pretty tidy and sparse apartment down the road from the club. She leaves you on her couch to go "slip into something more comfy" and goes into what looks like her bedroom. Feeling like you just won the lottery you begin to check out her apartment, it's pretty empty except for a desk with some papers on it and a bookcase. The desk looks like it has newspaper clippings on it and the bookcase has some strange looking books on it. Feeling a little paranoid what do you do? > You search the bookcase After looking through the titles of the book you find that they are all on vampire myths and legends. However there is one that catches your eye out of all of them, it is labeled as "Diary of a vampire" and it intrigues you. Looking through the diary you find that it mentions a nightclub and a gullible guy with cheesy pickup lines trying to get into the owner's panties. The owner of the diary then goes into detail of how they want to dismember the guy after they drain them. You are horrified to find all of the similarities and find that you only have two choices you can either confront "Sarah" as she signs at the bottom of the diary or you can run for your life. Which do you choose? > You run away fast as you can Unfortunately you can't run away from a vampire that easily. The blonde tracks you down, drains you of blood, and snaps your neck. You die as a human and do not rise again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After looking through the titles of the book you find that they are all on vampire myths and legends. However there is one that catches your eye out of all of them, it is labeled as "Diary of a vampire" and it intrigues you. Looking through the diary you find that it mentions a nightclub and a gullible guy with cheesy pickup lines trying to get into the owner's panties. The owner of the diary then goes into detail of how they want to dismember the guy after they drain them. You are horrified to find all of the similarities and find that you only have two choices you can either confront "Sarah" as she signs at the bottom of the diary or you can run for your life. Which do you choose? > You confrontation You confront the blonde with the evidence you found, and she tells you everything. She is a vampire and she wishes to turn you so that she is not alone anymore. She also tells you to trust her and that her name is Sarah. She gives you the option to die and the option to live forever. > You die She kills you and you die, you do not rise from the grave either.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You confront the blonde with the evidence you found, and she tells you everything. She is a vampire and she wishes to turn you so that she is not alone anymore. She also tells you to trust her and that her name is Sarah. She gives you the option to die and the option to live forever. > You live Forever Sarah walks up to you and softly kisses you on the side of your neck and then bites you. you only feel a tiny pin prick and feel her as she sucks a little of your blood. She then bites her own arm and offers it to you. You take it and start to suck her blood as she sucks the blood out of your neck, making some sort of circle. Her blood tasted... sweet, like syrup but sweetened. you never knew that blood tasted so sweet until you finally pass out from sensory overload due to how sweet her blood tastes. She then whispers into your ear "It's alright my love, we will be together soon enough and she breaks your neck. You die but this is not the end... > You arise Fledgling You awaken from a cold slumber. You feel as if an eternity has passed and you feel dazed. Looking around you see that you must be in a crypt of some sort. High stone columns rise up to support a low and dark ceiling. There is no light in here save a sliver of moonlight which is shining in from a skylight. Immediately, like some sort of old habit, you scan the surrounding area and find it empty, you are alone in a crypt. Looking down you see that you're in a coffin and that the lid is nowhere to be seen. You then realize how different the world seems now. Everything seems to be sharper and clearer, you can hear crows outside quite a ways away from your crypt. You can smell the scent of death emanating from the surrounding area. Definitely a graveyard. What do you do? > You wait around You decide to wait for whoever decided to open up your coffin and disturb your slumber. You wait and wait until eventually you see the moonlight slowly turn to sunlight. On a whim you try sticking your finger into the light. As you do it is set ablaze with fire. You try to smother the fire but it is no good, it seems that as a vampire you are more flamable than gasoline and you are completely set on fire. You were a vampire for less than a day and you are already a pile of ashes, maybe you weren't cut out for this thing.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken from a cold slumber. You feel as if an eternity has passed and you feel dazed. Looking around you see that you must be in a crypt of some sort. High stone columns rise up to support a low and dark ceiling. There is no light in here save a sliver of moonlight which is shining in from a skylight. Immediately, like some sort of old habit, you scan the surrounding area and find it empty, you are alone in a crypt. Looking down you see that you're in a coffin and that the lid is nowhere to be seen. You then realize how different the world seems now. Everything seems to be sharper and clearer, you can hear crows outside quite a ways away from your crypt. You can smell the scent of death emanating from the surrounding area. Definitely a graveyard. What do you do? > You inspect your surroundings A quick look around can't hurt. After inspecting your surroundings you find that there is a note in the corner of your crypt with a rock on top of it. The note says: To the newborn reading this congratulations on your successful turning, you'll find that your new life will be much, much more than what it was previously. You are now stronger, faster, and (possibly) more intelligent than before when you were mortal. Now in your new life you must only fear The Three Things, which are as follows: #1 Fire #2 Sunlight #3 The Thirst Enjoy Eternity Marcus PS The door to your crypt, which you probably already know, is locked. See if you can jump up to the skylight, or if you're too big to squeeze through it just break down the door of your crypt. After reading the note you glance around again and notice a stone door which you thought was an engraved decoration. It looks a little imposing and quite heavy. Looking up at the skylight you can see that it is indeed quite small. > You skylight Crouching down you leap up the distance to the skylight, unfortunately you misjudge how much strength you have gained and you wedge yourself into the skylight by the shoulders with your arms pointed upwards. Unable to break the ceiling to free yourself you are forced into staying there until the sun rises. You burn to a crisp and turn into a pile of ashes.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A quick look around can't hurt. After inspecting your surroundings you find that there is a note in the corner of your crypt with a rock on top of it. The note says: To the newborn reading this congratulations on your successful turning, you'll find that your new life will be much, much more than what it was previously. You are now stronger, faster, and (possibly) more intelligent than before when you were mortal. Now in your new life you must only fear The Three Things, which are as follows: #1 Fire #2 Sunlight #3 The Thirst Enjoy Eternity Marcus PS The door to your crypt, which you probably already know, is locked. See if you can jump up to the skylight, or if you're too big to squeeze through it just break down the door of your crypt. After reading the note you glance around again and notice a stone door which you thought was an engraved decoration. It looks a little imposing and quite heavy. Looking up at the skylight you can see that it is indeed quite small. > You door The skylight doesn't look big enough to fit you so you back up to get ready to charge at the big stone door. Getting into a running start, you dash towards the door like a crazed bull, only a lot smaller and lighter. You close your eyes and you hit the door right on...and smash clear through it into the night. You stop and turn back to the crypt only to see it collapse due to the amount of force you put into annihilating the door which you did quite successfully as you pick pieces of door out of your hair. You wander around the graveyard until finally you find a road. On the side of the road a car is parked...it seems oddly familiar. > You run down the road You run down the road for a long time and you come upon a town, looking down you finally pay attention to your attire...which consists mainly of what you had on your person when Sarah turned you. Checking your pockets you find rubble and your wallet which still has some cash in it. Heading to the nearest clothing store you buy a shirt and some pants and put them on seeing that you didn't bust through a wall in them. You wander around the town until you stop at an alley and see someone yelling at somebody on the ground. With your enhanced senses you stay hidden and listen in, curious to see what's going on. There might be a free meal in this. "Where's my money, bitch!?!" "Please don't hurt me!" "What the fuck did you do with my money!?!" What do you do? > You help the poor girl out You decide to help the girl, but how are you going to do it? > You kill the guy You decide to get rid of this girl's problem and get a meal for yourself. Using your strength and speed you run with blinding speed to the guy, wrap your arms around him, and leap as high as you can into the air. You leaped at an angle so that you would land on a rooftop and drain this guy. Unfortunately you didn't cover his mouth during your leap and he is quite terrified... and screaming. You quickly snap his neck before he makes too much more noise. Lucky for you either this is a neighborhood that doesn't care if someone screams or everybody is a deep sleeper... probably both. "A good clean kill fledgling, I rarely see someone so young as you make a kill without everything being covered in blood." Your entire body freezes just before you indulge in your meal as you hear a male voice coming from behind you, you had no indication he was there a second ago. > You who is this mysterious voice? Hello there fledgling, my name is Marcus but you can call me M if it suits you. I was sent by the woman you know as Sarah to help guide you through the early stages of the turning. Seems that you are doing quite well to by the look of your meal. But no matter. We must get you to our headquarters so that we can prepare you." "For what?" "For war." Seeing that this guy is the guy who warned you about the sun and fire you follow him to wherever he's leading you. Marcus guides you through the building back down to ground level, which you find ridiculous since you could probably survive the fall if you jumped from the roof. However you don't bring this complaint up in fear. You can already tell that Marcus is a veteran vampire and that you should show as much respect as possible. Who knows what a vampire of his caliber is capable of? Once the two of you reach ground level Marcus leads you to a black sedan with heavily tinted windows. He opens the door and ushers you into the back seat. You are nearly pushed right into the other passenger of the car, from what you can tell it is a woman wearing a trench coat with the collar turned up and wearing a hat and sunglasses. You can barely see golden blonde hair from under the hat. Oddly familiar... You almost ask her something when from behind you hear a weird clicking sound. Turning around the last thing you see is a taser headed right for you. There is no time to dodge it and the taser knocks you out cold, but fortunately it doesn't light you on fire. > You hours later... You wake up dazed but alive and in a very comfortable four poster bed too. You sit up and look around and see that you are in a room of someone very rich because just about everything is either intricate, golden, or without a doubt priceless. It'd be best to not break anything. > You fake being asleep still Pretending to sleep sounds like a good idea, you don't know why they tased you so it'd be best to just sit back and observe for a little bit. You roll over and snuggle down into the covers a little bit so that you can get a look at any cameras that might be in the room. You don't see any so you decide to try and mimic the position you were in when you woke up. Laying flat on your back with your arms on either side of the large bed. Your plan seems to work because you hear voices approaching the room. "...mean he's not waking up?" a female, possibly Sarah. "Your majesty it's been 6 hours since the car, if he's not awake then I doubt that he'll be waking up anytime soon." Definitely Marcus. "But what are we going to do about the experiment? And we are so close too!" "Then we'll just have to find another fledgling that has yet to kill. He is just another subject your majesty. I doubt he can be of much use anyways." You hear a loud smack after this, most likely a slap and some hushed scolding that you can barely make out. Obviously Sarah cares about your well being but for now you decide to stay "asleep" until you can find out more. The door to the bedroom opens and someone walks over to you and put their hand on your shoulder. You can feel a sigh from Sarah, who put her arm on you and you hear Marcus make a remark along the lines of "I told you so." Sarah gets furious at this and you decide to work on your acting a little bit and roll over and mumble "C'mon mom, 5 more minutes..." A deafening silence fills the room. > You and the Emmy goes to... You fortunately. Get a reaction out of Sarah when she starts to shake you to make you get up. Finally you "wake up" and all you say is "Oh hey Sarah, where you been?" Sarah bursts into tears and embraces Marcus merely chuckles and backs up towards the door. Sarah makes some attempts to talk but she's so happy that all she can do is sob. Instead of her explaining things Marcus helps out. "What the queen is trying to say is that we need your help. You see as a fledgling that has yet to feed you still have the option of being cured of your vampirism. What do you say, we won't blame you if you don't want to go back." Well...? > You cure "Alright I'm game, let's do this." "Wonderful, now if her majesty would just let go we'll begin immediately." Marcus somehow manages to pry you from Sarah and leads you through a maze of corridors, hallways, and passages. You cannot hope to survive this maze without a guide. Eventually Marcus stops at a door and opens it, ushering you into it. You enter the room and see that tons of medical and scientific equipment stuffed into it. It seems that all the equipment is centered around a single bed. Looking closely at it you notice leather straps and bloodstains on said straps. You turn around to try and weasel your way out of this but it's no good. Marcus pulls out the trusty taser and once again you are knocked out. When you come to again you're strapped to the bed and a very bright light is shining into your eyes. You can hear voices but they sound disembodied and far away. You start to get a sinking feeling and you begin to fear what comes next, whatever it may be. The last thing you feel before the horrors of the "cure" is the comfort of a soft hand holding your own. > You blackness For what feels like an eternity the only thing that you are left with in the blackness of the cure induced coma is a raging fire of pain in every limb of your body. At first it was just a tingling on your skin, but now the raging firestorm that your body feels trapped in has no end in sight. You begin to pray for your life, hoping that someone, somewhere, will hear. Finally after the eternal abyss of pain ends you finally rest and sleep and sleep for a long time. Days Later You open your eyes up to the world once more but something isn't right. You're in a hospital bed and someone is on top of your arm and cutting off the flow of blood from it. You try and smell but it's no use, whatever powers you once had are now gone. No longer are you a hunter of the night. You have returned to the day to day existence of a simple human man. Nothing new or special, just plain old human you. Then you realize with a start that the person on your arm is Sarah, and that things might just be a little different... > You time Lapse....(Epilouge) Three years later... Things have been rather quiet for you. Nothing really extraordinary happened to you after you had been cured. They just gave you some money and sent you on your way. Three years later and bam, you're back in the same club looking for someone to keep you company all over again... Nah, not really. Just kidding. Here's what REALLY happened. After you healed up after the cure (to which you still don't know what they did to you) and eventually the vampires managed to advance the cure to where it could even cure those that had fed. Sarah immediately underwent the operation and was also cured. A year after that you and Sarah got married. The next year you become a father. And finally just this year your kid said her first word. "Dadah!" You sometimes reminisce about the days that you were a vampire but you take one look at your kid and those thought completely die for a little while. As long as you have that kid you don't need to be a vampire, being a dad is just as good in your book. You imagine about the future (that is well provided for by the vampires for your hard work as a test subject) and you're satisfied in knowing that you can take anything headed your way. "Honey?" "Yes Sarah what is it?" She only calls you honey when she's about to drop some news on you. "I'm pregnant." You smile and nod and start to laugh. You hold Sarah tightly hoping that this moment of pure happiness never ends and your wish comes true.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fortunately. Get a reaction out of Sarah when she starts to shake you to make you get up. Finally you "wake up" and all you say is "Oh hey Sarah, where you been?" Sarah bursts into tears and embraces Marcus merely chuckles and backs up towards the door. Sarah makes some attempts to talk but she's so happy that all she can do is sob. Instead of her explaining things Marcus helps out. "What the queen is trying to say is that we need your help. You see as a fledgling that has yet to feed you still have the option of being cured of your vampirism. What do you say, we won't blame you if you don't want to go back." Well...? > No Cure "Thanks but no thanks." "Oh well, that's too bad. I guess we'll just have to tie up a loose end instead." You are surprised when Sarah tears out your throat and even more surprised when you see the look on her face, on of unwavering hatred. Wow you must have REALLY pissed her off. Well at least you only felt her wrath for a fraction of a second.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up dazed but alive and in a very comfortable four poster bed too. You sit up and look around and see that you are in a room of someone very rich because just about everything is either intricate, golden, or without a doubt priceless. It'd be best to not break anything. > You dESTRUCTION RAMPAGE You decide to screw whoever decided to tase you and you immediately begin to smash everything in sight. You turn an antique oak tea table and matching chairs into toothpicks, you turn the priceless looking one-of-a-kind paintings into tissues and toilet paper. I think that it's needless to say that when Marcus enters the room and sees your destructive violence and the state that the bedroom is in he tears you limb from limb literally.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to help the girl, but how are you going to do it? > You forget it, i'm walking away before you get noticed You play it safe and walk away from the pimp and the ho, it's probably better that way. you wander around the city, mindful of your growing thirst before it gets too out of hand. You decide to embrace your predatory ways and hunt for some food. Going into a crowded bar you see tons of chicks doing shots like no tomorrow... that's good because there won't be for one of them. You have two choices, the first is a biker chick that seems to hold liquor like the Hoover Dam holds water, she has dirty blonde hair and you can see that all her face says is attitude. Second you have her unfortunate companion who looks quite feeble and meek, and quite out of place. She is wearing glasses and has her red hair in a bun. To you she seems to be the DD for her friend Pick your prey. > You biker Chick's Sober friend You walk up to the girl that looks like she actually has something in her besides alcohol and nicotine. She's shy at first and plays hard to get for a while but with your vampiric charm none can resist you. Finally after she drops off her friends you follow her to her house where you decide you'll make a meal out of her and use her home as a bed for the day. Unluckily when she takes you into her home she tells you she'll slip into something more comfortable. Wait, haven't you heard that from somewhere before? You think about this more until she comes back with a lit molotov cocktail in her hand. The last thing you hear is "DIE BLOODSUCKER." Seriously how do people keep finding out you're a vampire? Maybe you aren't good at this at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You play it safe and walk away from the pimp and the ho, it's probably better that way. you wander around the city, mindful of your growing thirst before it gets too out of hand. You decide to embrace your predatory ways and hunt for some food. Going into a crowded bar you see tons of chicks doing shots like no tomorrow... that's good because there won't be for one of them. You have two choices, the first is a biker chick that seems to hold liquor like the Hoover Dam holds water, she has dirty blonde hair and you can see that all her face says is attitude. Second you have her unfortunate companion who looks quite feeble and meek, and quite out of place. She is wearing glasses and has her red hair in a bun. To you she seems to be the DD for her friend Pick your prey. > You biker Chick You decide to go after the better looking and much more gullible (thanks to alcohol) woman of the two. It barely takes a few minutes before your sucking her life from her neck. However doing this left you incredibly vulnerable and her friend decided to look for her. In moments her friend (who you learn the hard way is a black belt in a couple martial arts) completely kicks your ass. You get up a little later and go back into the bar and get a different drinking biker chick but this one has no helpful black belt to stop you. Full and nearing exhaustion you hide in an abandoned building for the day. You have a strange dream while asleep. > You dream You dream that you are lying down in a large grassland surrounded by grass as far as the eye can see. There is a light breeze and the sun is up but you aren't getting burned by it. This is the most peaceful of all the places you have ever been. After sitting up and looking around you see that there is a small river cutting through the grassland. Suddenly you feel thirsty and head down to the river for a drink of water. You bend down to take a drink from the river and as soon as you put your hand in the water it darkens and reddens until it turns into a river of blood. Looking up from the river you see that the grass has died and you are in a barren wasteland. The sky turns red and black clouds soon block the view of it. Then it begins to rain but the raindrops aren't water, they're blood. You look around and the once peaceful grassland has turned into a bloodbath... literally. You hear someone behind you and turn to see who it is... only to see that it is yourself, covered in scars and wielding a wicked looking blade. Your evil twin merely grins at you and he raises his sword over his head. Just before he brings it down you wake up and see that the night has returned. Time to go hunting. You spend a few days in the city and eventually you are forced to move on. The hours eventually turn to nights, nights turn into days and days turn into months, many of them. > You 3 Years Later It has been three years since your rebirth as a fledgling and much has changed, both within you and outside of you. You now live on the outskirts of your old city alone. You sleep in the basement until nightfall and then you head towards town to find a meal. Since being born your body has "mutated" from what it once was. You are now much stronger and faster than ever before, as if all of your powers were doubled. But that is not the only power that concerns you. About a year after your rebirth a power struggle emerged between two major vampire factions. You are uncertain of who started what but you have managed to stay away from the conflict and remain a neutral party in the war. You spend the time that you aren't asleep or hunting in your home training and honing your powers so that they stay sharp in case of an emergency. That emergency happens today. > A knock at the door An unfamiliar sound in your home you hear someone know at your front door. From the pounding you can tell that they're quite strong and they mean business. Using your nose you can tell that the person on your doorstep is a vampire. A quick note about the smell of vampires: you can tell how old a vampire is by the scent they give off. This smell is so light that not even dogs can pick it up. To a human a vampire's smell is used as another lure to help secure prey, but to another vampire the scent is of decay. The more decay you smell, the more powerful the vampire. The visitor smells of one thousand graveyards each filled with one thousand open mass graves. You tremble in fear of the smell, but what are you going to do about it? > You be wary and see if you can investigate more about the visitor You try to look through a window that overlooks the front doorstep. All you see is a strange looking person wearing a trench coat, a hat, and gloves. The visitor looks incredibly suspicious and imposing. > You open the front door Throwing caution to the wind you open your door wide to the mysterious and powerful vampire. Before you stands...a large trench coat and wrapped in it is a little girl of no more than 5 or 6. Kneeling down you stare into the child's eyes and you cannot believe your own. Her eyes are black with a little bit of red around the pupils (vampire's eyes). Suddenly your pint sized visitor grins revealing her dagger-like fangs and leaps at you. You react just in time to stop her from biting you but she pins you on the floor with a strength that you know could only come from years of survival as a vampire. She then begins to pummel you and you become disoriented. She keeps beating you until you are a bloody pulp. The last thing you hear is the sound of a lighter being lit.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You try to look through a window that overlooks the front doorstep. All you see is a strange looking person wearing a trench coat, a hat, and gloves. The visitor looks incredibly suspicious and imposing. > You ignore the visitor You attempt to hide your presence and ignore the vampire as best you can, but it is futile. The vampire breaks down your door and rushes inside your home and immediately finds you and pins you on a nearby wall. You are surprised at the appearance of the vampire. It appears that you have been beaten by a child of no more than 7. That's right. The elder vampire from which you hid from is a female child with long blonde hair (which you thought looked quite familiar) that would touch the floor, if the girl was touching the floor. Instead the little girl levitated so that she could actually pin you on the wall. She is not happy with you. "What a pitiful excuse for a vampire, hiding from something that poses even a remote threat." You cannot answer, the power that exudes from this little girl is preventing you from doing anything other than putting on a look of sheer terror. "I was ordered by my sire to bring you to our side if you proved smart enough to best me, but seeing as that didn't happen i have to eliminate you now." You look around for anything that might help you in this dire situation when you see a glimmer of hope, an idea, that just might work. > You lightbulb In case that a vampire would attack you, you had prepared countermeasures around the house to prevent someone from killing you in your own home. The glimmer of hope was the lighter that you know is in the nightstand to your immediate right, within reach, and full of fluid. But do you risk it? > You hell yeah! Uh-Oh dummy, you forgot that you can't move a single inch against this broad! Reach and reach all you want to but you're never gonna get that lighter! > You don't care! You're not going to die like a coward! You're going to go down kicking! You desperately try and break out of the girls hold but it is stronger than iron. You try every dirty little trick that you can think of to get out of this situation until finally you break the little girl's concentration causing her power to drop just enough for you to quickly move your body and grab the lighter and light it, an inch from the little girl's skin. Her eyes widen in terror as you hold the flame just over her skin, she begins to tremble in fear of the fire. But then she grins and says "Pass." You don't see the blur that is her fist crash into your face but you feel it, for a moment, and fall unconscious. > You nighty nite You awaken what you think is hours later in a damp, dark cell. Your eyes adjust naturally to the low light and you see a message neatly scrawled in the dust of your cell. TEST #2: ESCAPE RULES BARS ARE ELECTRIFIED NO TIME LIMIT NO FOOD NO WATER NO BLOOD NO TOOLS FAIL=DEATH Good luck! You already start to feel the helplessness set in but there is nothing you can really do. The electric bars might kill you if tampered with, you have nothing in your cell except a metal bunk, a pillow, a rough blanket, and a seat with a bouncy cover. Well wasting no time you... > You check out the seat You decide to investigate the seat and you are granted with the knowledge that the seat is made of rubber, after some manuevering of the rubber you've made a rudimentary pair of handles to help you with bending the bars. But will the rubber hold?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Uh-Oh dummy, you forgot that you can't move a single inch against this broad! Reach and reach all you want to but you're never gonna get that lighter! > You might as well give up You accept your fate and let the little girl snap your neck, paralyzing you. She then pulls out a book of matches and using the power of her mind alone (and without even looking at what the matches are doing) she lights one and throws it onto your body just as she lets go. Gameover, you died.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>In case that a vampire would attack you, you had prepared countermeasures around the house to prevent someone from killing you in your own home. The glimmer of hope was the lighter that you know is in the nightstand to your immediate right, within reach, and full of fluid. But do you risk it? > You no, you will accept your humiliating punishment from this little girl who barely lifted a finger to kick your ass The little girl completely kicks your ass. Then she says "What a waste of my time." and uses your own lighter to set you on fire. You die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You run down the road for a long time and you come upon a town, looking down you finally pay attention to your attire...which consists mainly of what you had on your person when Sarah turned you. Checking your pockets you find rubble and your wallet which still has some cash in it. Heading to the nearest clothing store you buy a shirt and some pants and put them on seeing that you didn't bust through a wall in them. You wander around the town until you stop at an alley and see someone yelling at somebody on the ground. With your enhanced senses you stay hidden and listen in, curious to see what's going on. There might be a free meal in this. "Where's my money, bitch!?!" "Please don't hurt me!" "What the fuck did you do with my money!?!" What do you do? > You kill the scumbag and the ho Using your fast reflexes, amazing strength, and quiet footsteps you sneak up on the guy and snap his neck without even blinking. You then proceed to choke the girl using one arm to hold her in place on a wall and drain her of her blood. After she dies you drain the guy too. After you finish your meal you walk out of the alley only to find that a cop is walking towards you and you are covered in blood. The cop immediately arrests you and finds the two bodies. After easily snapping the cuffs and killing the cop you are pursued by them into a building which you hold out in until morning, you try to hide but they find you and you kill all of the cops in the nearby area. Suddenly out of nowhere a contingent of vampires sees that you have made a mockery of their rules that you do not even know yet and are immediately lit on fire and slain on the spot.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The skylight doesn't look big enough to fit you so you back up to get ready to charge at the big stone door. Getting into a running start, you dash towards the door like a crazed bull, only a lot smaller and lighter. You close your eyes and you hit the door right on...and smash clear through it into the night. You stop and turn back to the crypt only to see it collapse due to the amount of force you put into annihilating the door which you did quite successfully as you pick pieces of door out of your hair. You wander around the graveyard until finally you find a road. On the side of the road a car is parked...it seems oddly familiar. > You approach the car You are sure you've seen that car before so you approach it to see if anyone is inside of it. While approaching it you see that a window rolls down and someone points a gun at you. You barely have time to dodge the hail of bullets that come at you, even with your vampiric reflexes. You run and hide behind a nearby tombstone and the bullets stop. You hear someone get out of the car and reload the weapon. They begin to walk towards the tombstone where you are hiding, completely unafraid. > You take the human by surprise and disarm them You run out from behind the tombstone and charge the human with incredible speed. You manage to get a hold of the gun... just as he begins to fire in at point blank range. The bullets hit on-vital areas but the muzzle flash is enough to ignite your overly sensitive skin and set you ablaze. Death comes fast but painfully.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are sure you've seen that car before so you approach it to see if anyone is inside of it. While approaching it you see that a window rolls down and someone points a gun at you. You barely have time to dodge the hail of bullets that come at you, even with your vampiric reflexes. You run and hide behind a nearby tombstone and the bullets stop. You hear someone get out of the car and reload the weapon. They begin to walk towards the tombstone where you are hiding, completely unafraid. > You take Cover Unfortunately you can't outrun bullets but fortunately the human is a terrible shot for an assassin and you easily run away. You hide in a nearby crypt and spy on the assassin. You see that it is a man of about thirty and he is on a cell phone. You listen in on the conversation from afar. "Sir? I lost the target." "YOU IDIOT! I DON'T PAY YOU TO FUCK UP! I WANT THE FLEDGLING DEAD OR ELSE! YOU FUCKING GOT THAT!?!?!" "Sir, I'm only a human, how the hell can i keep up with a vampire?" "...Figure it out." Obviously whoever wants you to die doesn't want to spare the manpower to make you dead. What are you doing to do about the grunt? You start to feel your stomach growl and your throat goes oddly dry... > You mealtime You sneak around some more tombstones making sure that the human doesn't see you... you chuckle on the inside at how ignorant the human is. When you are behind him and within three feet of his neck you pounce on him like the predator you are and drain him of his blood. > You pick up his phone Picking up you assailant's phone you hit redail and call up his boss. You are greeted with this. "IS THAT MUTHAFUCKA DEAD OR ARE YOU JUST PLAIN DUMB YOU INSOLENT LITTLE..." "I wouldn't use that tone with me sir. "Who the hell are you?" "You should have brought more guys. I might've been nicked by a stray bullet." "Oh just you wait muthafucka, just you wait." He then hangs up on you and you hear a beeping nearby that is faster and faster until finally you realize quite late that the car has a bomb in it. From the link below it doesn't look like you survived all that well either. turns out he didn't need more guys.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Unfortunately you can't outrun bullets but fortunately the human is a terrible shot for an assassin and you easily run away. You hide in a nearby crypt and spy on the assassin. You see that it is a man of about thirty and he is on a cell phone. You listen in on the conversation from afar. "Sir? I lost the target." "YOU IDIOT! I DON'T PAY YOU TO FUCK UP! I WANT THE FLEDGLING DEAD OR ELSE! YOU FUCKING GOT THAT!?!?!" "Sir, I'm only a human, how the hell can i keep up with a vampire?" "...Figure it out." Obviously whoever wants you to die doesn't want to spare the manpower to make you dead. What are you doing to do about the grunt? You start to feel your stomach growl and your throat goes oddly dry... > You interrogate him You manage to sneak around behind him and take him by complete surprise. You take his gun and bend it so that it wont fire and you pin him on a nearby tombstone. You do it hard enough for the stone to tremble a bit to make your intentions clear. "Who do you work for?" "Fuck you bloodsucker, might as well kill me cuz you're not getting anything out of me." Fine, have it your way." You begin to torture him for answers so that you can find out who wants you dead. It's nothing too serious except you just scratching him with your unbelievably sharp nails until he starts to runs his mouth... which happens a little too quickly. "Alright, i'll tell you anything." "Who do you work for?" "I work for a guy named M. He hasn't told me anything except that letter and to kill you." "Do you know who put me in there?" "Yeah i do actually. M mentioned that some girl of his turned you and put you in there to protect you. She came by earlier tonight to check on you. That's how i knew." "Do you know where she is now?" "No." "Where is M?" "He has a bar in town. It's this place where a lot of bikers hang out." "Thank you. As appreciation for cooperating i'll kill you before i feed." You keep your word. What now? > You go find the bar You decide that finding the bar is important seeing as how you won't leave your sire behind (those of you who got here from back in time might need to pay more attention to that)and decide to investigate the biker bar. You search for hours but are unable to find it. Eventually you give up for the night and you decide to bunk in an abandoned tenement house. Too bad for you that the next morning it is demolished to make room for a mall with you in it still. You get a nice and fatal char broil from the sun.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You manage to sneak around behind him and take him by complete surprise. You take his gun and bend it so that it wont fire and you pin him on a nearby tombstone. You do it hard enough for the stone to tremble a bit to make your intentions clear. "Who do you work for?" "Fuck you bloodsucker, might as well kill me cuz you're not getting anything out of me." Fine, have it your way." You begin to torture him for answers so that you can find out who wants you dead. It's nothing too serious except you just scratching him with your unbelievably sharp nails until he starts to runs his mouth... which happens a little too quickly. "Alright, i'll tell you anything." "Who do you work for?" "I work for a guy named M. He hasn't told me anything except that letter and to kill you." "Do you know who put me in there?" "Yeah i do actually. M mentioned that some girl of his turned you and put you in there to protect you. She came by earlier tonight to check on you. That's how i knew." "Do you know where she is now?" "No." "Where is M?" "He has a bar in town. It's this place where a lot of bikers hang out." "Thank you. As appreciation for cooperating i'll kill you before i feed." You keep your word. What now? > You forget about M and Sarah and be your own vampire Actually you do quite well as a vampire for many years. You evade the mortals at every turn and you hide the bodies from your hunts quite well too. You live for quite a while too until one day the prey you selected happens to be an experienced vampire hunter. Needless to say you are eliminated quite quickly, odd for living so long under the radar. Ok now you know that leaving your sire behind is a really bad move, now are you going to go back and find out what happened or are you just going to end the game right here? This is the only time i will give you a retry in this storyline so be prepared for the minefield ahead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Unfortunately you can't outrun bullets but fortunately the human is a terrible shot for an assassin and you easily run away. You hide in a nearby crypt and spy on the assassin. You see that it is a man of about thirty and he is on a cell phone. You listen in on the conversation from afar. "Sir? I lost the target." "YOU IDIOT! I DON'T PAY YOU TO FUCK UP! I WANT THE FLEDGLING DEAD OR ELSE! YOU FUCKING GOT THAT!?!?!" "Sir, I'm only a human, how the hell can i keep up with a vampire?" "...Figure it out." Obviously whoever wants you to die doesn't want to spare the manpower to make you dead. What are you doing to do about the grunt? You start to feel your stomach growl and your throat goes oddly dry... > You flee You try and run from him but seeing that he does have a full clip and his boss just yelled at him his accuracy miraculously improves. He manages to hit you in your legs and before you can get up he runs up to you and shoots you in the head... oddly enough it doesn't kill you but it paralyzes you. Unable to move he then says something and he goes back to his car. He then begins to pour what you think is gasoline on you... Your killer then lights a match and says one last thing to you. "Nothing personal, but you are a terrible vampire." He throws the match on you and you light up like a Christmas tree light.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Hi," You say followed by whatever cheesy pickup line that comes to mind. Surprisingly it works and you get her attention. Her emerald eyes seem full of life and she looks hungrily at you, almost licking her lips for you. Obviously a good sign. After about an hour of conversing you learn that she lives nearby and she invites you back to her place. And you thought today would suck (All puns intended). You leave the club and follow her back to her place. Turns out she lives in a pretty tidy and sparse apartment down the road from the club. She leaves you on her couch to go "slip into something more comfy" and goes into what looks like her bedroom. Feeling like you just won the lottery you begin to check out her apartment, it's pretty empty except for a desk with some papers on it and a bookcase. The desk looks like it has newspaper clippings on it and the bookcase has some strange looking books on it. Feeling a little paranoid what do you do? > You search the clippings After browsing through the clippings on the desk to satisfy your paranoia you find that they are all of murders and that they all the victims were drained of blood and that they were all male and about your age. This worries you and you find that in a drawer of the desk is a diary, it says "Sarah's Diary" on the first page. Reading through it you find out that the owner of the diary was either bat shit crazy or a vampire, most likely a vampire with all the gory details that were provided. Armed with this information what do you do?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Hi," You say followed by whatever cheesy pickup line that comes to mind. Surprisingly it works and you get her attention. Her emerald eyes seem full of life and she looks hungrily at you, almost licking her lips for you. Obviously a good sign. After about an hour of conversing you learn that she lives nearby and she invites you back to her place. And you thought today would suck (All puns intended). You leave the club and follow her back to her place. Turns out she lives in a pretty tidy and sparse apartment down the road from the club. She leaves you on her couch to go "slip into something more comfy" and goes into what looks like her bedroom. Feeling like you just won the lottery you begin to check out her apartment, it's pretty empty except for a desk with some papers on it and a bookcase. The desk looks like it has newspaper clippings on it and the bookcase has some strange looking books on it. Feeling a little paranoid what do you do? > You it's just paranoia, let it go and have a good time You sit down on the couch and relax, it's just you being a little paranoid. After a few minutes the blonde, clad in super sexy lingerie, tells you to come on in. You quickly (and for good reason) enter her bedroom to find it covered in plastic. Just as you are about to ask what's up she hits you over the head with something heavy, as you slowly fade from this world you feel a sharp prick in your neck and then nothingness. You do not turn into a vampire, instead you turn into a bloodless husk, she has drained you dry.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The world is dark, and cold. Your eyes see nothing, your ears hear no sound. Your heart no longer beats and you can't move a muscle. Congratulations, you are dead. But not for long. You hazily recall your last moments... Walking through the nightclub you see an ocean of flesh moving rhythmically to the blasting music. You see the women wearing skirts so short that you wonder how it's legal. Two people however catch your interest the most. A woman of about 20 something is sitting at the bar staring off into the distance. She is wearing a purple dress that ends at her upper thighs. Her alabaster skin looks smoother than porcelain. Her fine blonde hair is like a river of gold. You are immediately attracted to her but as you make your way through the crowd you spot another beauty. At about midway to the woman in the purple dress you spot another one at the opposite end of the bar. This one is wearing a low cut top (that is quite tight fitting) and a miniskirt, she radiates sexiness. She is also quite pale and has fiery red hair and catches you staring at her. She gives a small smile and then looks away. The old divining rod is no help here so who's it gonna be? > The girl at the other end of the club You barely managed to choke out a "Hi" before she immediately grabs you and runs out of the club with you, By the time she stops you're quite a ways from the club. "Oh thank God that we got out of there." "Uh mind if i say what the fuck just happened?" "Oh yeah, you must have a strong will buddy, that blonde chick was about to make you her next meal." "I just don't like blondes all that much, besides what do you mean by next meal, and who the hell are you and why did you drag me out of the club like i was luggage?" "Alright i guess you at least deserve an explanation" The girl, who says her name is Alice, tells you that the woman at the bar was a vampire and that she was going to turn you into a blood milkshake. Alice then begins to tell you that she is a vampire hunter and that she was keeping the vampire from eating to weaken her and slay her when the sun rose in a few hours. She mentions that you might have potential as a vampire hunter seeing as how you resisted the bloodsucker but then she asks you to come with her to help her kill the vampire. Decisions, decisions. > You follow her Going with what you feel is right you follow Alice as she leads you to her hideout. The hideout is located in a shabby looking tenament that as far as you can tell has no obvious residents. She stops at the door and turns to face you. Look i need to ask you before we go in, how do you feel about vampires in this world? Well? How do you feel about vampires existing? > You vampires must die "Oh well that's too bad." She states and near immediately tears off your head and begins to suck the blood spurting from the stump where your head was. Seems that vampires lie a lot.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Going with what you feel is right you follow Alice as she leads you to her hideout. The hideout is located in a shabby looking tenament that as far as you can tell has no obvious residents. She stops at the door and turns to face you. Look i need to ask you before we go in, how do you feel about vampires in this world? Well? How do you feel about vampires existing? > You can coexist "Ok, from that I can trust you." she says happily and leads you into the shabby building. Inside there is a surprisingly good looking set of stairs that leads down into a basement of some sort. Following Alice she leads you into an empty chamber. She leads you into it and you hear a door shut behind you. Alice then turns around again and says, "This is the end, i'm going to give you a choice. You can either die quickly and painlessly or i can change your life forever. I'm not a vampire hunter only, i'm a vampire that hunts other vampires in case they break our strict laws. So what'll it be, Death or Undeath?" > You death "Alright then, goodbye." Alice keeps her word and kills you faster than you can blink. You didn't feel a thing and she didn't even feed from your dead body. Your body is found a week later and the cause of death is undetermined. You are buried and do not rise from the grave. No one knows how you died to this day.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Ok, from that I can trust you." she says happily and leads you into the shabby building. Inside there is a surprisingly good looking set of stairs that leads down into a basement of some sort. Following Alice she leads you into an empty chamber. She leads you into it and you hear a door shut behind you. Alice then turns around again and says, "This is the end, i'm going to give you a choice. You can either die quickly and painlessly or i can change your life forever. I'm not a vampire hunter only, i'm a vampire that hunts other vampires in case they break our strict laws. So what'll it be, Death or Undeath?" > You undeath "Are you absolutely sure you want this?" "Yes, I am tired of this earth and i wish to see it from another view. Make me a vampire." Alice keeps her word and bites you on the neck and drains a bit of your blood. She then bites her own wrist and offers it to you. Without saying a word you take her wrist and drink the blood coming from it. It tastes surreal, it is the most amazing thing that you have ever, or will ever, taste. You can feel power flowing into you from her blood and you keep taking more and more blood from her wound until finally she punches you in the face. You stop taking her blood and look up and she is furious. "What the hell man!? Are you trying to kill me!?" "I took too much?" "Yeah just a little would have done but you almost drained me! Now you have to die." Before you can manage to ask she breaks your neck and you fall to the floor dead but this is not the end, you do not stay dead for long... > You arise You awaken but you don't open your eyes yet, you can hear voices somewhere near you. One you can tell is Alice's and the other you don't recognize but sounds like a man. You listen in on their conversation. "I just want to know what the hell you were thinking when you turned him!" "I was thinking about the survival of our race. Plus there's something about him... I can feel it." "Well while you stake the future of the vampiric race on some guy you met in a club I'll return to Alenia and do REAL work on helping out vampire kind as we know it." Hearing this disturbs you and you decide to get a better sense of your surroundings... > You open your eyes Dummy! You look around and it seems that you have missed the last century. You are surrounded by high tech equipment and electronics. even the polished walls have a high tech feel to them. the voices were coming from the hall connected to your room. Taking a look around you notice that there are no windows and there's no doorknob... at least on your side. Suddenly you hear a pressurized hiss and all of the electronics sink into the floor. The walls also seem to move back giving you a lot more room than you thought you had. Just then Alice walks in. You walk up to greet her but, for some odd reason, she decided to greet you with a right hook to your temple at full force and with a blinding speed. > You 'What the hell!?!" You manage to choke this out right before Alice chokes you out. In fact she chokes you so hard the she "accidentally" snaps your neck and severs your spinal cord too. Death is immediate and painless. She cries a lot but you are soon replaced. Ok reader, this is the only time you're going to see this so listen up. You died at the hands of your creator but you were caught seriously off guard and it was an accident. I realize that this is highly improbable and i am willing to let you choose retaliate from this page. There will be no more retries so be careful. > You retaliate (from the dead) She's either really pissed or she wants you dead. Or both. Either way you're not gonna let some girl kick your ass right? She goes for an uppercut but you manage to somehow block it and hold on to her arm as you do a backflip that you know you couldn't do as a mortal. You land on top of her in a rather compromising situation. Your male brain decides to ponder on this and you hesitate. Alice utilizes this opportunity and she pins you in just a few movements. "You'll do. Your movements suck but you have potential as a fighter. Pass." "Wait that was a test?" "Yeah, the test was to see if you would respond accordingly when someone you recognize attacks you. It was also to see if you were an OK fighter. You can improve on the fighting part so I'll teach you how but you still pass this test. Now on to the next test, there's only two more including the next so don't fuck up otherwise we have to kill you." "What the fuck Alice? What's this test?" "How thirsty are you?" With her mentioning you notice just how thirsty you are. You throat feels like it just gargled sand and you think that you need water... but the thought actually repulses you. Then you think about blood... and the thirst worsens. "WELL GET USED TO BEING THIRSTY, I'LL SEE YOU IN A WEEK." Alice then dashes out the door which you realize needs no knob because like the rest of the stuff in this place it's all future-y and goes upwards into the ceiling before crashing down. You try to run after Alice but the door is locked behind her. You then realize what the test is. One week with no blood whatsoever. > You panic You decide to panic like many other people would at this situation. You go insane and start to hear voices in your head. Your world is spinning and if you were still mortal some men in white coats with a funny looking jacket would be trying to find you. You descend so far into madness that Alice is forced to end your life to save your own psychosis.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>She's either really pissed or she wants you dead. Or both. Either way you're not gonna let some girl kick your ass right? She goes for an uppercut but you manage to somehow block it and hold on to her arm as you do a backflip that you know you couldn't do as a mortal. You land on top of her in a rather compromising situation. Your male brain decides to ponder on this and you hesitate. Alice utilizes this opportunity and she pins you in just a few movements. "You'll do. Your movements suck but you have potential as a fighter. Pass." "Wait that was a test?" "Yeah, the test was to see if you would respond accordingly when someone you recognize attacks you. It was also to see if you were an OK fighter. You can improve on the fighting part so I'll teach you how but you still pass this test. Now on to the next test, there's only two more including the next so don't fuck up otherwise we have to kill you." "What the fuck Alice? What's this test?" "How thirsty are you?" With her mentioning you notice just how thirsty you are. You throat feels like it just gargled sand and you think that you need water... but the thought actually repulses you. Then you think about blood... and the thirst worsens. "WELL GET USED TO BEING THIRSTY, I'LL SEE YOU IN A WEEK." Alice then dashes out the door which you realize needs no knob because like the rest of the stuff in this place it's all future-y and goes upwards into the ceiling before crashing down. You try to run after Alice but the door is locked behind her. You then realize what the test is. One week with no blood whatsoever. > You stay Calm You relax and take a few deep breaths. Panicking will not help you in this situation so you decide to somehow pass the time without knowing it. You ponder how to do this and finally you realize that you should meditate. You get into a comfortable sitting position on the cold steel floor and you delve into the depths of your mind. You dive right past all of your memories, repressed or otherwise. You keep going and going, sifting through all of your mental baggage until you find the center of your own psyche. You then enter your mind's very core... > You what's in it? Your are now in a bright grass field. As far as the eye can see there is only green grass and bright light. There is a gentle breeze blowing and you feel at peace. The light, although quite bright, is not sunlight and is oddly comforting. You decide to lay down and bask in this peaceful inner world of yours. Suddenly you hear a shriek of terror... a woman's. You immediately dash into the direction of the scream and you find Alice being chased by a huge monster. It is covered in scales and has vicious looking claws. What do you do? > You save Her You decide to forgo danger and you run in to help your creator. You then have a startling realization. This is YOUR dreamworld and you can do whatever the hell you want to in it. So using your imagination you think of the beast exploding into a billion little bits and guess what? you were right. Exactly that happens. You turn to Alice but at that moment the real world Alice is trying to wake you up. Exiting the dreamworld you wake up and see Alice's eyes staring into yours and, well, lets say you decide to take advantage of the situation. You reach forward and kiss Alice. She is genuinely surprised but she doesn't stop you. when the kiss is over she slaps you. "What the hell Alice!?" "First of all you pass the seven days challenge. Second only do that when I give you permission." You are frustrated and angry but at the same time glad, because she didn't say she didn't like you. Only that she's not ready. Oh and you passed so you congratulate yourself. "Is there another test I should worry about?" "Oh, you have only just begun." At saying this Alice has a terrifying grin and you feel your spine freeze up. Welcome to hell, my friend is all you can think. > You hell freezes over as Alice trains you in combat and instructs you on your vampiric powers. You learn that as a vampire you are entitled to certain abilities that would normally be considered as magic. You can levitate, blend with shadows, you can even dive into a person's mind and drive them insane. She teaches you all of this by using you as an example. You might have cared about this if you weren't plagued by thoughts normally plaguing the male mind. She even uses this as an advantage to keep herself out of reach but to make you reach anyways. She makes it seem like she'll accept you as a lover, but then she pushes the bar even higher and higher until one day, you decide to train on an off day from Alice to attempt and beat her in at her own game. You train for quite a while using a technique Alice taught you about slowing time down using your speed and train. Using this technique one hour gets slowed down into about 15 minutes. eventually 6 hours later you deem yourself ready. Tomorrow you finally get your prize. > You tomorrow It is exceptionally early when you wake up to wait for Alice. You decide to think about what you learned, not just the combat but the politics and heritage and culture of the vampire race. Alice told you (between punches) that there are two major warring vampire factions. Basically they are two feuding families that haven't set aside their differences to help stop the end to the vampire race. All they care about is destroying the each-other. Alice then told you in a rare moment that she was once a part of one of the families and that she fell in love with a member of the opposite family. When she and him tried to flee her family caught the both of them and killed her lover. It was then that she left her family and renounced her name. She would say nothing more except that he kind of looked like you but longer hair and broader shoulders and that you're a little taller. She then kicked you in your groin and told you harshly to never let your guard down. You didn't show it at the time but you froze when you heard this. This must not have happened as long ago as she makes it seem because the description of the guy matches your uncle, Sam, who went missing not long after you were born. All that was left was a note that said "Primavera" and nothing else. You then asked if the name Primavera meant anything to Alice. She avoided the question (with an uppercut). You plan to make her tell you everything if... no, when you kick her ass. > A noise from your room It seems that nostalgia helped you wait because you can hear that someone is in your room. Your nose tells you from the all too familiar scent that Alice is in there beating your sheets flatter than paper. You burst from the bathroom and rush Alice who has a surprised and almost comical look on her face. Luckily you manage to land a few good blows before she realizes that you aren't playing around and taking this spar seriously. She tries to do her signature groin kick on you but you prepared for this and but a cup made of metal on the stop this. After you render her kick useless you grab her leg and flip her over, you then pin her arms on her back and put your knee into her back as well. Victory is yours. > You say "I win!" You wish you had a camera. The look on her face is priceless. You then state your request and she accepts it. She tells you that she'll tell you every last detail tonight, at dinner, alone... together... (do i really need to reiterate that any more?) "Like a date?" You ask. "It's not a date, but at least it's not an interrogation." "Good point." "Although there is a condition to this 'date'... no questioning until after we eat, then when we come back i'll tell you everything alright?" You agree and begin to prepare for the dinner ahead... but you have to ask at least one question. "Alice?" "Dress casual, bring a coat to blend in, it's November." "Alright thanks, see yah!" > You later that night... A few hours later you're on a rooftop with Alice overlooking the city. Both of you are trying to pick out which human looks tastier. You point out a few easy pickings and Alice picks out a guy who could've been mistaken for a pro bodybuilder. Just your luck. After jumping off the building into a shady the both of you go into hunting mode and begin to stalk your prey from afar. You see that he intends to cut through a nearby park and Alice sees this as well. You both increase the following distance to compensate for the lack of crowds to hide in. Suddenly you see an opportunity to strike, the guy bent down to pick something up off the ground. You can strike at him now or you can wait and follow him some more. > You be patient You sit back and wait for another opportunity to strike but it never comes. The guy turns around and pulls a shotgun out from his coat and fires it in your general direction. You manage to duck behind a tree and as the pellets whiz over your head you see that they're incendiary rounds. That makes it obvious that this guy is a vampire hunter. You pop back up to make a run for his gun but he was expecting this and fired another round in your direction. This one connects and it not only sets you on fire but it also causes massive pain before you finally lose all feeling because all the nerves in your body get burned shut by the flames. You become just another notch in the hunter's weapon. GAME OVER<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A few hours later you're on a rooftop with Alice overlooking the city. Both of you are trying to pick out which human looks tastier. You point out a few easy pickings and Alice picks out a guy who could've been mistaken for a pro bodybuilder. Just your luck. After jumping off the building into a shady the both of you go into hunting mode and begin to stalk your prey from afar. You see that he intends to cut through a nearby park and Alice sees this as well. You both increase the following distance to compensate for the lack of crowds to hide in. Suddenly you see an opportunity to strike, the guy bent down to pick something up off the ground. You can strike at him now or you can wait and follow him some more. > You strike Putting every Olympic runner in history to shame you charge with blinding speed towards the prey while nearly silent. The guy turns around but it is too late, his neck is already snapped by the time he realizes that you are there. Alice runs up behind you and the look on her face is that of surprise. She is obviously impressed with the kill and you offer first bite to her. After she finishes you drain the last bit of blood from the guy and tear his body to pieces and quickly bury them in different corners of the park, all in all about thirty seconds of the date down the drain. Alice smiles at your efficiency and you take her arm and begin to walk through the park like a happy couple. Then you start the questions. "Alright let's begin, who's Primavera and what does it have to do with me?" "Primavera is the name of one of the two warring families. The other is Sangre. The Primavera is Italian vampiric nobles and Sangre is Spanish vampiric nobles. The Italian and Spanish vampires have been warring for centuries and even they don't know how it started. Since I am of the Primavera you are technically also part of them. However since I left the family this does not apply anymore." "What does the name Sam mean to you?" "Sam was the name of my lover from the Sangre family. He was kind and sweet although his outlook on the world was a little childish. He believed that all people were capable of kindness and good. This eventually led him to his downfall." "Why me?" She gives you a confused look and you explain your question. "Why did you pick me, out of all the other people in that club?" You reminded me about him. That's why I asked you that question about vampires and humans coexisting, to see if you shared his beliefs. "Would you like some dessert?" "Actually that isn't a bad idea..." You two spend the rest of the night (after dessert) chatting about everything from fighting to music. > You many years later.... (Epilouge) Approximately 5 years later You hear a knock on your door and you open the door. At the door is a man in a fancy looking suit which you assume is Armani. You can see that this is no ordinary man due to his vampiric scent. "Hello," He says "I am a representative of the Primavera family and I would like to..." At hearing Primavera you shut the door in his face. You and Alice do not want anything to do with either Primavera or Sangre. Your visitor has enough sense to not knock again but not enough to step away out of earshot before he makes a call on his cell phone. "Boss." "Yes, what is it?" "They aren't going to join" "Oh well, that's okay. Go ahead and kill them." "My pleasure sir." The last thing he ever does is hang up his cell phone. And by the time he does that you're already halfway to his throat. He turns around and you are the last thing he sees as you proceed to annihilate him with the years of combat training provided by your mate. You look back at the house and Alice is already there carrying a two large sacks, one of which you know has your name on it. It was time to move again. Approximately 20 years later... You and Alice happily spend your time moving all over the world from place to place but you both avoid Europe like the plague, for traveling there would be a death sentence. You both spend the rest of your happy lives traveling the world and helping those in need (when it was profitable). Eventually you are both contacted by Primavera again. They beg and beg and finally after intense negotiations (both on and off the phone) you use your persuasive powers and both you and Alice are accepted into Primavera as it's king and queen. Eventually you and Alice manage to finally end the conflict between the two families and peace is brought to the vampiric world. ALthough there is still bad blood between the families peace is officially declared and both families work to establish a partnership between them. 100 years or so later... As King of all Vampires you united the two clans under a single banner. You also bring a golden age to the vampire race as vampiric children roam the streets of Illium, the country of Vampires. You keep this region of the world secluded from the rest and rule with an even hand. Alice bore many of your children and went into what is known as the Deep Sleep. A process in which a vampire turns into stone and sleeps for centuries until the time is right to re-enter the world. This time comes to you too and when it does you descend into your family's crypt and lie down with your beloved Alice. As you begin to fall asleep you wonder what the world will be like when you awaken. Only time will tell...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your are now in a bright grass field. As far as the eye can see there is only green grass and bright light. There is a gentle breeze blowing and you feel at peace. The light, although quite bright, is not sunlight and is oddly comforting. You decide to lay down and bask in this peaceful inner world of yours. Suddenly you hear a shriek of terror... a woman's. You immediately dash into the direction of the scream and you find Alice being chased by a huge monster. It is covered in scales and has vicious looking claws. What do you do? > You leave Her to Die You decide that your life is not worth risking and the beast catches up to Alice and she is slain. The beast then turns toward you and starts to chase you. The beast is re-energized from killing Alice and he catches you faster than anticipated and you are killed quite quickly. In your dreamworld you died and after your 7 days are up Alice finds you in a comatose state and after a few hundred years of prolonging your life you are killed to be put out of your misery.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You barely managed to choke out a "Hi" before she immediately grabs you and runs out of the club with you, By the time she stops you're quite a ways from the club. "Oh thank God that we got out of there." "Uh mind if i say what the fuck just happened?" "Oh yeah, you must have a strong will buddy, that blonde chick was about to make you her next meal." "I just don't like blondes all that much, besides what do you mean by next meal, and who the hell are you and why did you drag me out of the club like i was luggage?" "Alright i guess you at least deserve an explanation" The girl, who says her name is Alice, tells you that the woman at the bar was a vampire and that she was going to turn you into a blood milkshake. Alice then begins to tell you that she is a vampire hunter and that she was keeping the vampire from eating to weaken her and slay her when the sun rose in a few hours. She mentions that you might have potential as a vampire hunter seeing as how you resisted the bloodsucker but then she asks you to come with her to help her kill the vampire. Decisions, decisions. > You try and get away from this crazy broad Unfortunately she doesn't want anyone to know her secret, while you desperately try to flee from her like a maniac she pulls out a pistol and shoots you. Her aim is quite good so she shoots you in the head. Have fun being dead and not undead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Welcome to the Insanity Complex. We hope you enjoy your stay (or not...). (Remember to save your game frequently.) Shall we begin? > You yes! Let's begin! The sun shining through the small window above you wakes you up. You are lying on the soft bed in what appears to be a small room. You sit up suddenly, shocked by what you see around you. You don't remember how you got here or ever being in this place before. How did you get here? Next to your bed is a chest of drawers on the left and some shelves on the right. Maybe these could give you a clue. > You have a closer look at the shelves. You check the shelves. They are bolted to the wall. You see three pairs of clothing on the top shelf. These are made up of a shirt and a pair of trousers. One pair is purple, one is pink and one is blue. You know these aren't your clothes. You look at yourself. You are wearing what appears to be pyjamas. What do you do next? > You put on the purple clothes. Right, that's better. Even though it's not your clothing it feels fresher than those pyjamas. You have a look at the bottom shelf. There is a bottle. You read it. Quitiapine 400mg MISS TINA OWENS Take one twice daily. Right. Now at least you can remember your name. Quitiapine? That's an antipsychotic! Your heart begins to race. You decide not to take it before you figure out what's going on. You put it in your pocket. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The sun shining through the small window above you wakes you up. You are lying on the soft bed in what appears to be a small room. You sit up suddenly, shocked by what you see around you. You don't remember how you got here or ever being in this place before. How did you get here? Next to your bed is a chest of drawers on the left and some shelves on the right. Maybe these could give you a clue. > You have a closer look at the chest of drawers. You have a look a the chest of drawers. It seems old and rickety. It is shoddily bolted to the wall and the floor. Why is everything bolted down?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The sun shining through the small window above you wakes you up. You are lying on the soft bed in what appears to be a small room. You sit up suddenly, shocked by what you see around you. You don't remember how you got here or ever being in this place before. How did you get here? Next to your bed is a chest of drawers on the left and some shelves on the right. Maybe these could give you a clue. > You do Nothing. You do nothing. Time passes. Nothing happens.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and your buddy Ben gather your cheap spelunking gear from the corner of his basement where you keep it and hoist it up the narrow steps to his living room. His mom is sitting there the same as when you’d come in, still in her bathrobe, a green terry cloth robe Ben said his dad gave her, that’s how old it is. You head through the room without saying anything since she never responds when you do anyway, not so much as a "hi there" even though you've been her son’s best friend since the two of you dominated the kindergarten playground together. It gives you the creeps to see Ben try to talk to her. He's never tried to do what the rest of us would do if our mothers were walking, breathing vegetables like her. We’d have lost it long ago, taken her by the shoulders, slapped her, told her to fucking snap out of it. But not Ben. He lingers behind you, and you know he is bending down to kiss her on the cheek. What do you do next? > You enough is enough with Ben's mom. Someone needs to get through to her. You spin around on one foot, determined to get a reaction, if only for your friend Ben's sake. "Excuse me, Mrs. Anderson," you say, and you cannot stifle the thought that you sound like that character in The Matrix but know that this is no time for movie references, no matter how apropos. Ben is suprised by your sudden need to address his mother. He stands there, his hands swinging nervously at his sides, as if he's struggling against the urge to take physical action against you, and you push on. "Mrs. Anderson," you say again, as the first one didn't succeed in getting her eyes to shift from the TV screen to you. This one doesn't either. You clear your throat. "Mrs. Anderson! Please look at me!" You're practically yelling now, your voice booming over the laugh track. Slowly, ever so slightly, her head tilts up. Her eyes settle on your chest, then make their way up your chin to your eyes. "Well. Just who. The fuck. Are you?" she bellows. Her voice sounds gravelly, nicotine-charred. Her blue eyes are the emptiest eyes you've ever seen. Looking into them makes you feel as if you're falling down a mineshaft. The back of your neck goes cold, and you step back, feeling Ben's hand on your shoulder. "Get the HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE!" she screams. Ben grabs your arm, you both snatch the spelunking gear, and you're out of there. > You meet up with Rick You and Ben wait for Rick to pull up in his rusted-out Cavalier. They’ll probably make you drive as usual, seeing as how they're all jealous of your sea-green Chevy Nova. Black vinyl seats, a beautiful, flawless paint job that you applied yourself, a car with curves like Kelly Siegel, you always say; she's a girl who goes to your high school. Rick pulls up, foul black stuff coming out of his tail pipe. “You guys want to help me with this exhaust problem this weekend?” he asks. > You oh, yeah. Can't pass up an opportunity to mess around with somebody else's car. Rick gives you a high-five, and you drop down to take a look at the underbelly of his car. Just like you suspected: The exhaust system is pockmarked worse than your face was before you discovered Stridex pads. The salt they put on the roads at the merest hint of a snowflake here in Southern Illinois wreaks havoc on cheap cars like Rick's. You're in for more than a weekend job helping your buddy, but that's OK. If he wants to sink burger money into a car that ain't worth it, that's no skin off your nose. It'll be good practice for when you go for your automotive tech certification. Plus, you made Rick happy. He'd never fix his car without your help. > You drive to the Caves You pile into your Nova, Ben riding shot-gun and Rick lying down in the back seat. He pretends he's being chauffeured around town, as if he were one of the Cardinals baseball players who live in those brand-new houses out by the golf course. Or Jimmy Connors, who is from Belleville, which everybody likes to point out as if it validates their existence in this cow-town. Rick mimics Ozzie Smith, complaining that his wrists are sore from all the backflips he did in the outfield last night, which is pretty funny considering that Rick is what they call "husky." Nothing so much as a two-step has been performed by that guy since he was six. Ben fiddles with your radio, but there isn’t anything good on. “When you going to get a decent tape deck in here?” he asks. “When you start giving me gas money, that’s when,” you tell him, and that shuts him up. You quickly make it out of town and are curving around cornfields full of giant harvesters. You roll your window down to smell the sweetness, a little like candy corn before you’ve eaten too much to taste anymore. Suddenly Rick, says, “Did you all hear about the dead body they found out in one of these caves?” You know he likes to exaggerate and make shit up, so you don't bite. “Might be the cave we’re going to,” he says, dragging it out. You decide to take the bait. “No, Rick, we haven’t heard. Why don’t you tell us?” “Yeah,” he says, sitting up and putting his elbows on the backs of your seats. “Some guy with his dick cut off.” “No!” “Yes, your honor. The man has no dick.” “Shee-it.” You and Ben laugh, realizing that Rick is quoting “Ghostbusters.” All three of you know every line because your family owns a second-hand VCR that came with just that one movie, and since nobody else's family has a VCR, you've all seen the movie about 50 times. > You inside the Cave The cave the three of you enter today is a new one for you, a real beauty, nice and clean-smelling limestone with fingerlike projections of rock, boulders stacked like furniture. You and your friends live for the world of the cave, where nobody is around to mess with you, none of those pansy-ass suits who commute to St. Louis everyday and look down their noses at you. The caves are your world, and in them, you feel like kings. You shine your flashlight on a few tiny bats clinging to the rocks, wings tucked in like little Draculas sleeping the day off. The three of you crawl through passageways no wider than your shoulders. Pale white plants, like tiny mushrooms, grow along the floor. “Hey, check this out,” Ben says. He stares into a room full of pure, clear water. Over the water, draped like banners, are hundreds and hundreds of spider webs. You lean in, shining the flashlight on them: spindly white spiders, many carrying egg sacs, which vibrate as if about to burst open. Rick comes up behind us. “I’m not setting foot in there,” he says. What do you do? > You death to the spiders! You take the walking stick you thought to bring with you and use it to hatchet across the silken webs, destroying the delicate swathe hanging over the water, and hundreds of spiders, along with hundreds of gestating embryos of spiders in their little vibrating egg sacs, plunge into the water and drown. ... But wait a minute. What did these lovely, ghostly white cave spiders ever do to you? It's not like you're a hobbit trying to get past evil monsters with your sword Sting. This isn't that kind of story, and you're just a dude with a stick. Game over for you, sadist.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The cave the three of you enter today is a new one for you, a real beauty, nice and clean-smelling limestone with fingerlike projections of rock, boulders stacked like furniture. You and your friends live for the world of the cave, where nobody is around to mess with you, none of those pansy-ass suits who commute to St. Louis everyday and look down their noses at you. The caves are your world, and in them, you feel like kings. You shine your flashlight on a few tiny bats clinging to the rocks, wings tucked in like little Draculas sleeping the day off. The three of you crawl through passageways no wider than your shoulders. Pale white plants, like tiny mushrooms, grow along the floor. “Hey, check this out,” Ben says. He stares into a room full of pure, clear water. Over the water, draped like banners, are hundreds and hundreds of spider webs. You lean in, shining the flashlight on them: spindly white spiders, many carrying egg sacs, which vibrate as if about to burst open. Rick comes up behind us. “I’m not setting foot in there,” he says. What do you do? > You rick is right. Spiders, ick. "Just look," Ben says, so you and Rick do. You realize the spiders aren't threatening or disgusting; they're beautiful to watch as they spindle their webs and move slowly around the network of fibers that glow in the pale cave light. You can't help but let out a long, low, appreciative whistle, the echoes reverberating across the cave walls. Once your whistle dies down, the three of you turn around and keep going. You crawl around nooks, through crannies, some spots wet and muddy, and soon, your jeans are soaked. You can feel water squishing in your boots. There are more ghost spider rooms, and you stare in at them, none of you willing to disturb the drapes of white webs glistening with moisture. > You head Further into the Cave A while later, Rick leads you down a passage that keeps getting narrower and narrower. You follow him, your gloves like muddy paws in front of you, Ben’s breathing behind you making you feel like he is sucking up your air. Then your head bumps into Rick’s ass. “What’s the deal?” you ask. He's quiet, wriggling around in the dark in front of you. Then Ben stops in time to avoid bumping into you. “What’s the hold-up?” “Rick?" you ask. "What do you see?” Rick laughs. “Nothing. I can’t get my flashlight out in front of me. I think I’m stuck.” “Like a pig in mud!” you hoot. You all have a good belly-laugh at that one. Ben tries to back out of the tunnel, but it's too narrow for him to turn around. You have to pull Rick free, and then you and Ben back out first, Rick coming after you. “I think it’s time for lunch,” Rick says, patting his belly. “That’s just what we need,” you say. “For you to eat more so we can get stuck for good.” “Hey, you’d get stuck in there, too,” he says, pointing. “Give it a try, Slim Jim.” You get back down on all fours and try to get through the opening but can’t. “Okay, Chubs,” you say. “You’re off the hook this time.” “The meat hook that is,” Ben adds. You and Ben about piss your pants laughing. But Rick ignores you, scratching his head, looking around at the cave walls. “Which of these other passages did we come down?” he asks. “That one,” you say, pointing to the one on your right. “Naw, this one,” Rick says, thumbing at what looks like the wrong passage. Both of you look at Ben to break the tie, and he shrugs his shoulders. “There's only one way to settle this,” Rick says, smiling. > You settle the Disagreement Rick holds his hands out, one fist on top of a flattened palm. It's the universal sign for Rock, Paper, Scissors. Who wins? > You your scissors cuts Rick's paper You scissors your fingers across Rick's outstretched hand just to emphasize your win. Rick looks pained, and not just from losing at Rock, Paper, Scissors: He really thinks his passageway is the right one to take. He glances at Ben again, and again, Ben shrugs. He's the type of guy who learned a long time ago just to go with the flow, that winning battles against those closest to you always gives you an empty kind of victory. There's a lot at stake in this moment: your ability to get out of the cave, not to mention the strength of your friendships with these guys. What happens next in part depends on what's happened in the past, how you've been to each other up till this moment. Remember when Rick asked you to help him work on his car exhaust? What did you tell him? > Yes. It was a win-win situation. "You know what?" you say. "Rick, if you're sure your way is the correct way, I can go along with that. I'm not a hundred percent sure mine's the right one." It's a shift in the balance of your relationship. Up till now, you've been the alpha male in the group, usually getting your way in all disagreements because Rick isn't quite as strong as you are, and Ben just wants peace. "Yeah?" Rick asks, his voice betraying excitement, if a little disorientation, at your gesture of friendship. "Yeah." "Well, all right." Rick says. "I'm sure mine's the right one. Let's step on it." > You follow Rick You crawl around for a long time, hours it seems, and none of the passages you come to look like the one you’d been down before, and then you have to belly-crawl when the passages get narrower. It seems like you’ve got down to some old passages that nobody ever prowled around in, and you feel colder than you've ever felt in a cave. The further you crawl, the more you need your flashlight to see. Rick checks his watch at one point, and it’s been six hours since you left Ben's house. You don't know if you are going deeper down into the earth or heading back toward the cave mouth. Your internal compass seems to swing around in wild circles, like compasses that go haywire when aliens land nearby. Your chest tightens, you all crawl faster, breathing hard, no one saying anything. When none of you can pretend like you aren’t for sure lost in the cave, you stop. You and Ben don't feel like telling Rick it is all his fault. And you don’t need to. “Damn it, damn it,” Rick says. “I’m an idiot. I picked the wrong way.” “Naw, man.” you say. “Could have been my route. We’d be in a different part of the cave, but we’d still be lost.” “Yeah,” Ben says. “No telling which one was the right one.” “I got some candy bars in here,” Rick says, as if it's a peace offering, opening his backpack. “Dude, you’ve been holding out on us,” you say. “Don’t know if it’s because I know I’m trapped here or what, but I’m suddenly hungry. Got any beer in there to wash this down with?” “Nope,” Rick says. “You know I don’t touch that stuff.” “Sure would make being stuck in a cave a little easier right about now,” you say. Rick is quiet. There are two Hershey's bars. What should you do? > You eat the Hershey's bars. You'll never get out of the cave if you don't get sustenance. “Let’s get going,” Ben says once you've polished off the Hershey's. “Mosey on out of here.” The three of you follow Ben, who seems to get a rush of energy from the candy bar. Those skinny guys are like that, fast little motors in them like a gerbil in a treadmill. You try not to think about the corpse Rick said they found, the one with his dick cut off. You hadn’t bothered to ask him if he made that up. And now you don't want to know. You try not to think about how you don't have any food, that you hadn’t told anybody where you were going, that it is just your car parked in a cornfield to signal that the three of you are down here. In your mind, you try to calculate how far you've walked and crawled, and how far from the opening of the cave you've come. You can't picture it right: just a series of identical rocky rooms. The white spiders seem a long way off now. > You become Introspective You keep thinking about this guy they’d brought to your high school once, part of their tough love campaign. They brought in cops and military men to talk to students about the “real world” that you would encounter after graduation. Their speeches were always graphic, which was entertaining as hell, but you got the feeling they were exaggerating just to scare you straight. The latest guy had been a POW in Korea. He told you they made him eat maggots and kept asking him for information he didn’t even have, not that he would have given it to them if he had, he said. But you had to wonder whether or not he would have cracked. You have a theory that most people cracked, despite what TV and the movies want you to think. Those were the good stories, right? The bad stories probably never saw the light of day. With this guy, the North Koreans thought he was lying and so they jammed metal files under his nails or just beat him up all the time. The worst part, according to him, was being put in the hole, a 5-foot-by-5-foot box where he’d have to crouch for weeks at a time. All he gave them was his name, rank and serial number. You all decide to take a break, sitting in the pitch black darkness to conserve your headlights, cold and shivering then because the damp has leaked through the top layers of your clothing and down to the skin. You're all quiet. Rick stretches out on the ground to take a nap. After a while, you decide to ask Ben about his dad. “Ben?” “Yeah?” “Think your dad might have been a POW?” “Hard to say,” he answers. “Most of my family just say he’s MIA, like he’s just lost in the jungle or something. Like once he finds a map, he’ll be back. But he might have been killed during the war. Or he might be rotting in some moldy old jail cell. I think he’s dead. There’re thousands that are probably dead, their bones in some rice paddy.” “I can’t imagine,” you say. “Can’t imagine what?” “Any of that stuff—dying in war, torture.” “Me neither.” “What’s it like, man,” you ask, “to grow up without a dad?” “You don’t miss what you never had.” “Yeah, but it’s got to be weird, you know, not ever having a dad. Don’t you think about it all the time? Don’t you miss him?” “Yeah, I guess.” Ben pauses as if he's thinking about how to say something that has been on his mind a long time. “You know Skeeter and those guys up at the VFW hall?” he asks. “Talking about that phantom limb syndrome? They say they feel it tingling where there used to be a leg or arm or even a pinky finger. Like when your hand itches but you can’t find the scratch anywhere. He went MIA when I was like three years old. I can’t miss someone I never even knew. But it’s like he’s supposed to be there, you know?” You think of your own father, who left your mother and is now shacked up with some chick he used to work with who's half his age, and you feel envious of Ben for not having to deal with a father at all. “Sometimes I wish my dad was MIA,” you say. Ben suprises you by grabbing your shirt, harder than he’d ever laid a hand on you before. “Don’t say that shit,” he says. “Don’t say shit you don’t mean.” You shrug off his hand. “How do you know I don’t mean it?” Ben is quiet a while, like he's trying to calm down. “You and me,” he finally says, “we’re opposites. I don’t know what it’s like to have a dad who up and leaves. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up wishing you had a dad. I could tell you that I’d rather be in your shoes, but you’d probably tell me the same thing.” “Ain’t that the truth,” you say. “Do you remember him?” “Just this one thing,” he says. “I kind of have this shadowy memory of him dressed up as Santa Claus. I think I pulled his beard down, but it could be I just remember it from my mom telling the story. You know how that is. But it seems like I can remember him bouncing me on his knee; that’s how I pulled the beard off. He was bouncing me too hard, and I thought I’d fall off, so I grabbed hold of the closest thing.” You pick up a dead root and start carving the dirt with it even though you can't see the shapes you're carving. “You really don’t think he’s ever coming back, do you?” “Nope.” “You guys never had a funeral.” “My mom thinks he’s coming back. She’s still waiting.” > A Strange Sound None of you say anything for a bit, and you hear a little chipping noise, like a squirrel trying to crack into a nut. “You hear that?” You crawl in the direction of the noise. Then you shine your light on Rick and laugh. “It’s just Rick,” you say. “His teeth are chattering.” Ben crawls over. Rick’s teeth are going a mile a minute. He touches his face. “He’s ice-cold,” Ben says. “We got to wake him up. He could go into hypothermia.” “Shit,” you say, mad that you hadn’t thought of it when Rick stretched out for his nap. “Wake up, Rick!” you yell. You shake him. “Wake the fuck up!” Rick wakes quickly, looking confused. “Where am I?” he chatters. You and Ben each grab a shoulder and lift him up. “Man,” Rick says, shaking his head as if he is groggy. “I am trapped in a goddamn cave. I was hoping it was a nightmare. I don’t feel so good, guys. I’m cold. Why’d you wake me up, anyhow?” “No, Rick,” you say. “You can’t go to sleep. You’ll go to sleep and never wake up, you know what I mean?” “I wish we’d brought more clothes,” Ben says. “A wool jacket or something. It’s always colder than you think it’s going to be in the caves. Bunch of idiots, that’s what we are.” “Let’s sit together,” you say, scooting up close to Rick’s side. “Use our body warmth.” Ben does the same on the other side, and soon, Rick’s shivering slows down. But you are aching with cold on the side away from Rick. “Let’s huddle,” you say, motioning for Ben to move around so that you are touching on all sides. It's weird, sitting that close to Rick and Ben, but you don’t care. “We’re going to have to keep each other awake,” Ben says. “Body temperature drops when you’re sleeping. That’s why Rick fell out like that.” “Should we keep moving, trying to find our way out?” Rick asks. “Seems like we’re just getting in deeper,” Ben says. “Maybe we should stay right here.” > You keep Crawling You don't like the thought of sitting there waiting for someone to rescue you. “Fuck that,” you say. “I’ll find my own damn way out.” You start crawling, and they follow you. You crawl until your hands feel bloody. Rick and Ben follow, none of you making a sound. “I have to rest,” you say when your knees ache and feel you can't go any further. > You huddle Together You huddle together, Ben saying, “Remember about keeping warm.” His words come out raspy. He hasn’t had any of his water in a while. “Sip some water,” you say. “What if I run out?” Ben says, his voice hoarse. “I need to go as long as I can. I’m not drinking that muddy cave water. Make you sick.” It's pitch dark now. Your headlamp winks out, and theirs are down to two lights that together aren’t stronger than candlelight, so they turn them out to conserve. > You try to Keep Warm You sit in the dark for hours, moments of worried chatter interspersed with quiet. All three of you are shivering so bad, when it's quiet, all you can hear is the chatter of three sets of teeth. You're so cold, you keep imagining yourself surrounded by drifts of snow. You flash back to when you were five and young enough to make snow angels, how you took the garden hoe and set it in the angel's wing to look like a devil's pitchfork. “This ain’t working no-more!” Ben chatter-yells. His voice sounds uncharacteristically uneven, as if he could break into a sob any minute. “I’m dying of cold!” he yells. “I’m going to die down here, and no one will know!" “It’s all right,” Rick says. “We’re not going to die.” You say nothing. Ben is yelling the same way you feel, and you can't conjure any encouragement. “What the fuck do you know?” Ben says. “This is like my destiny. My mom will have two disappeared people in her life. A husband, then a son. That’s it. Then she’ll have two people to wait for!" “You know what I heard once, at the VFW?” Rick asks suddenly, sounding oddly calm compared to Ben’s hysteria. “This is no time for small talk!” Ben yells. “We’re dead men!” “These guys were lost in the jungle, all right, homeboy?” Rick grabs Ben’s shoulders as if to steady him, and it strikes you how much they sound like one of those dramatic war movies they show on Saturday afternoon TV. Ben is the weak guy who's losing it in the heat of battle; Rick is suddenly the one holding you all together. You laugh. “You guys are damn entertaining.” “Shut up,” they both tell you. “They were lost,” Rich says, continuing his story. “And it was cold. You think of jungles as hot, but those jungles in Nam can fuck with you. These guys were all wet from the swamps. Soaking wet like we are. And they were lost. They were supposed to meet a supply team but got lost. You know what they did to stay warm?” Neither Ben nor you answer. You’d heard that story at the VFW, too. Rick says it anyway: “They pissed on each other. It’s 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Body temperature. That would be great right now, wouldn’t it? A shower of about 98.6 degrees?” You still don’t say anything. “Look, brothers,” Rick says, “we’ve been pissing in the dirt, wasting that bit of body heat, and I’m not going to do it again. I’ll piss myself if I have to, but I’d rather not waste half of it in my jeans. I’d rather use it to keep you shits from dying on me. Capiche?" You stand up. “Fine,” you say. “Which one of you wants it first?” “Give it to Ben,” Rick says. “Sounds like he’s about to go into a coma.” You stand over Ben, and he holds his hands out. If it weren’t dark, you'd know for sure that they're already blue. If you get out of here, you think, will you be able to see color again? Any time one of you has to go, you use it to save each other’s life. > Another Strange Noise You think you hear a sound, a tapping sound. "Hey, do you guys hear that, or am I hallucinating?" They listen, and there it is: tap, tap, tap. It's coming from above you. The three of you pick up your headlamps and start tapping back. You see the flashlight beam of your rescuers bounce off the cave walls before you know for sure you're saved. The sound of other people’s voices is like music, some sweet old country song that makes you cry every time you hear it. They told you you've been down there for three days, but it feels like three lifetimes. You were down deep. It takes hours and hours to crawl out. At the mouth of the cave, a TV news crew is set up, Channel 11 from St. Louis. And there is Ben’s mom, standing over by your Nova, waiting for him. She's the one who called your parents, the police, even the news station when the police wouldn't take your disappearance seriously. She is still wearing that ratty old robe, but Ben doesn't care. He hugs her so hard, it picks her up off the ground, and that’s the clip they show on TV that night, a real homecoming for everyone to see.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You crawl around for a long time, hours it seems, and none of the passages you come to look like the one you’d been down before, and then you have to belly-crawl when the passages get narrower. It seems like you’ve got down to some old passages that nobody ever prowled around in, and you feel colder than you've ever felt in a cave. The further you crawl, the more you need your flashlight to see. Rick checks his watch at one point, and it’s been six hours since you left Ben's house. You don't know if you are going deeper down into the earth or heading back toward the cave mouth. Your internal compass seems to swing around in wild circles, like compasses that go haywire when aliens land nearby. Your chest tightens, you all crawl faster, breathing hard, no one saying anything. When none of you can pretend like you aren’t for sure lost in the cave, you stop. You and Ben don't feel like telling Rick it is all his fault. And you don’t need to. “Damn it, damn it,” Rick says. “I’m an idiot. I picked the wrong way.” “Naw, man.” you say. “Could have been my route. We’d be in a different part of the cave, but we’d still be lost.” “Yeah,” Ben says. “No telling which one was the right one.” “I got some candy bars in here,” Rick says, as if it's a peace offering, opening his backpack. “Dude, you’ve been holding out on us,” you say. “Don’t know if it’s because I know I’m trapped here or what, but I’m suddenly hungry. Got any beer in there to wash this down with?” “Nope,” Rick says. “You know I don’t touch that stuff.” “Sure would make being stuck in a cave a little easier right about now,” you say. Rick is quiet. There are two Hershey's bars. What should you do? > You ration the Hershey's bars. You don't know when you're getting out of this cave. You take one of the three candy bars, break it into three equal pieces, and hand Ben and Rick their allotments. You and Ben eat yours quickly, but Rick eats his slowly, as if savoring the taste. Then, it hits you: Rick just really likes the taste of food. You remember how he will order a soda at the McDonald's drive-through and ask for ketchup packets there even though you're headed to Arby's for a roast beef sandwich, all because Rick likes the taste of the McDonald's ketchup better. To you, there's no difference. You turn on your headlamp and lead the way, feeling a rush of energy from your little bit of candy bar. > You become Introspective As you crawl through the passageway, the light from your headlamp bouncing off the walls, you keep thinking about this guy they’d brought to your high school once, part of their tough love campaign. They brought in cops and military men to talk to students about the “real world” that you would encounter after graduation. Their speeches were always graphic, which was entertaining as hell, but you got the feeling they were exaggerating just to scare you straight. The latest guy had been a POW in Korea. He told you they made him eat maggots and kept asking him for information he didn’t even have, not that he would have given it to them if he had, he said. But you had to wonder whether or not he would have cracked. You have a theory that most people cracked, despite what TV and the movies want you to think. Those were the good stories, right? The bad stories probably never saw the light of day. With this guy, the North Koreans thought he was lying and so they jammed metal files under his nails or just beat him up all the time. The worst part, according to him, was being put in the hole, a 5-foot-by-5-foot box where he’d have to crouch for weeks at a time. All he gave them was his name, rank and serial number. You all decide to take a break, sitting in the pitch black darkness to conserve your headlights, cold and shivering then because the damp has leaked through the top layers of your clothing and down to the skin. You're all quiet. Rick stretches out on the ground to take a nap. After a while, you decide to ask Ben about his dad. “Ben?” “Yeah?” “Think your dad might have been a POW?” “Hard to say,” he answers. “Most of my family just say he’s MIA, like he’s just lost in the jungle or something. Like once he finds a map, he’ll be back. But he might have been killed during the war. Or he might be rotting in some moldy old jail cell. I think he’s dead. There’re thousands that are probably dead, their bones in some rice paddy.” “I can’t imagine,” you say. “Can’t imagine what?” “Any of that stuff—dying in war, torture.” “Me neither.” “What’s it like, man,” you ask, “to grow up without a dad?” “You don’t miss what you never had.” “Yeah, but it’s got to be weird, you know, not ever having a dad. Don’t you think about it all the time? Don’t you miss him?” “Yeah, I guess.” Ben pauses as if he's thinking about how to say something that has been on his mind a long time. “You know Skeeter and those guys up at the VFW hall?” he asks. “Talking about that phantom limb syndrome? They say they feel it tingling where there used to be a leg or arm or even a pinky finger. Like when your hand itches but you can’t find the scratch anywhere. He went MIA when I was like three years old. I can’t miss someone I never even knew. But it’s like he’s supposed to be there, you know?” You think of your own father, who left your mother and is now shacked up with some chick he used to work with who's half his age, and you feel envious of Ben for not having to deal with a father at all. “Sometimes I wish my dad was MIA,” you say. Ben suprises you by grabbing your shirt, harder than he’d ever laid a hand on you before. “Don’t say that shit,” he says. “Don’t say shit you don’t mean.” You shrug off his hand. “How do you know I don’t mean it?” Ben is quiet a while, like he's trying to calm down. “You and me,” he finally says, “we’re opposites. I don’t know what it’s like to have a dad who up and leaves. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up wishing you had a dad. I could tell you that I’d rather be in your shoes, but you’d probably tell me the same thing.” “Ain’t that the truth,” you say. “Do you remember him?” “Just this one thing,” he says. “I kind of have this shadowy memory of him dressed up as Santa Claus. I think I pulled his beard down, but it could be I just remember it from my mom telling the story. You know how that is. But it seems like I can remember him bouncing me on his knee; that’s how I pulled the beard off. He was bouncing me too hard, and I thought I’d fall off, so I grabbed hold of the closest thing.” You pick up a dead root and start carving the dirt with it even though you can't see the shapes you're carving. “You really don’t think he’s ever coming back, do you?” “Nope.” “You guys never had a funeral.” “My mom thinks he’s coming back. She’s still waiting.” > The Cold Gets to You None of you say anything for a bit, and you hear a little chipping noise, like a squirrel trying to crack into a nut. “You hear that?” You crawl in the direction of the noise. Then you shine your light on Rick and laugh. “It’s just Rick,” you say. “His teeth are chattering.” Ben crawls over. Rick’s teeth are going a mile a minute. He touches his face. “He’s ice-cold,” Ben says. “We got to wake him up. He could go into hypothermia.” “Shit,” you say, mad that you hadn’t thought of it when Rick stretched out for his nap. “Wake up, Rick!” you yell. You shake him. “Wake the fuck up!” Rick wakes quickly, looking confused. “Where am I?” he chatters. You and Ben each grab a shoulder and lift him up. “Man,” Rick says, shaking his head as if he is groggy. “I am trapped in a goddamn cave. I was hoping it was a nightmare. I don’t feel so good, guys. I’m cold. Why’d you wake me up, anyhow?” “No, Rick,” you say. “You can’t go to sleep. You’ll go to sleep and never wake up, you know what I mean?” “I wish we’d brought more clothes,” Ben says. “A wool jacket or something. It’s always colder than you think it’s going to be in the caves. Bunch of idiots, that’s what we are.” “Let’s sit together,” you say, scooting up close to Rick’s side. “Use our body warmth.” Ben does the same on the other side, and soon, Rick’s shivering slows down. But you are aching with cold on the side away from Rick. “Let’s huddle,” you say, motioning for Ben to move around so that you are touching on all sides. It's weird, sitting that close to Rick and Ben, but you don’t care. “We’re going to have to keep each other awake,” Ben says. “Body temperature drops when you’re sleeping. That’s why Rick fell out like that.” You eat the second candy bar in an attempt to warm yourselves up. > You find a Way to Tough This Out “Maybe we should sing,” Rick says. “Might take our minds off the cold.” “Maybe we should cook you up and feast off your excess fat,” you say. “Let’s try the singing,” Ben says. “Shit,” you say. “Singing sissies. Like that’s going to help.” “Bye, bye Miss American Pie…” Ben starts, and he and Rick sing without you. You give in when they get to the Elvis songs. They remind me of the part of your dad you can tolerate, maybe even like, the guy who sings at the top of his lungs when he's happy. You sing every song you know the words to, every damn song you learned in elementary school, every Christmas song, every church song, even the alphabet song. You sing every part of the Bohemian Rhapsody and Van Halen songs both pre- and post-David Lee Roth. You sing for hours and hours, pausing to take a breath or talk or relieve yourselves when you have to. Or maybe days go by. You're beginning to realize there isn’t any time in a cave. You break the last candy bar in half first and then into thirds, saving half for later, painfully aware of how little food it is. You're cold, a cold that seems to get into your bones, turn your blood to tiny frozen rivers. It becomes hard to sing through the chattering of your teeth. “This ain’t working no-more!” Ben chatter-yells. His voice sounds uncharacteristically uneven, as if he could break into a sob any minute. “I’m dying of cold!” he yells. “I’m going to die down here, and no one will know!" “It’s all right,” Rick says. “We’re not going to die.” You say nothing. Ben is yelling the same way you feel, and you can't conjure any encouragement. “What the fuck do you know?” Ben says. “This is like my destiny. My mom will have two disappeared people in her life. A husband, then a son. That’s it. Then she’ll have two people to wait for!"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You scissors your fingers across Rick's outstretched hand just to emphasize your win. Rick looks pained, and not just from losing at Rock, Paper, Scissors: He really thinks his passageway is the right one to take. He glances at Ben again, and again, Ben shrugs. He's the type of guy who learned a long time ago just to go with the flow, that winning battles against those closest to you always gives you an empty kind of victory. There's a lot at stake in this moment: your ability to get out of the cave, not to mention the strength of your friendships with these guys. What happens next in part depends on what's happened in the past, how you've been to each other up till this moment. Remember when Rick asked you to help him work on his car exhaust? What did you tell him? > No. You rather play Super Mario Bros. There's a reason you're the alpha male in this group, after all. You know you're right about the passageway. Rick's one of those guys who always has music or some other distracting noise playing in his head, so he never notices details, like the way the stone in the passageway you came down has long yellow veins running through it. The other passages all look blue instead. You explain this to Rick and Ben, and they can't argue with your logic. The three of you split a cache of candy bars that you thought to bring along, and then you crawl and crawl, several times resisting Rick's insistence that you've chosen wrong and should head back down the other way. It takes a couple hours, but the three of you crawl to safety. The sun is setting when you exit the mouth of the cave. You can see it glinting off the St. Louis Arch on the other side of the Mississippi. Rick is uncharacteristically quiet as you head back to Ben's house. He seems distant, less like his jokester self. As you let him out at his junker, you nod your head in the direction of it. "Hey, maybe I can swing by and give you a little help with your exhaust system tomorrow after all," you say. Rick stares off, at his car sitting there at the curb in front of Ben's house. "Nah, that's OK," he says. "I'll manage." The three of you part ways, and you head home. As you round the cornfields this time, you see in your mind's eye a long cord stretching out between you and Rick, and you see that cord snap, the two of you drifting apart in space.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You scissors your fingers across Rick's outstretched hand just to emphasize your win. Rick looks pained, and not just from losing at Rock, Paper, Scissors: He really thinks his passageway is the right one to take. He glances at Ben again, and again, Ben shrugs. He's the type of guy who learned a long time ago just to go with the flow, that winning battles against those closest to you always gives you an empty kind of victory. There's a lot at stake in this moment: your ability to get out of the cave, not to mention the strength of your friendships with these guys. What happens next in part depends on what's happened in the past, how you've been to each other up till this moment. Remember when Rick asked you to help him work on his car exhaust? What did you tell him? > You said no at the time, but you're going to lie because you think it might give you a better outcome. "You know what?" you say. "I'm sure mine's the right one, and just to prove it to you, we're not going to take it." "Wait. Did you just say we're not going to take it?" Ben asks. "That's right. Not. As in ain't. Gonna. Take it." "Sweet!" yells Rick. "That means, I win! Let's go, boys." He picks up his gear and heads down the passageway.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and Ben wait for Rick to pull up in his rusted-out Cavalier. They’ll probably make you drive as usual, seeing as how they're all jealous of your sea-green Chevy Nova. Black vinyl seats, a beautiful, flawless paint job that you applied yourself, a car with curves like Kelly Siegel, you always say; she's a girl who goes to your high school. Rick pulls up, foul black stuff coming out of his tail pipe. “You guys want to help me with this exhaust problem this weekend?” he asks. > No way. Rick's had enough of your free labor. Why spend the weekend flat on your back under Rick's hunk of junk when you could be at home, sitting on that new lounge chair you just got for your room, finishing your quest to rescue the princess? You're so close; you can feel it. Just another hour or so, and victory is yours.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and your buddy Ben gather your cheap spelunking gear from the corner of his basement where you keep it and hoist it up the narrow steps to his living room. His mom is sitting there the same as when you’d come in, still in her bathrobe, a green terry cloth robe Ben said his dad gave her, that’s how old it is. You head through the room without saying anything since she never responds when you do anyway, not so much as a "hi there" even though you've been her son’s best friend since the two of you dominated the kindergarten playground together. It gives you the creeps to see Ben try to talk to her. He's never tried to do what the rest of us would do if our mothers were walking, breathing vegetables like her. We’d have lost it long ago, taken her by the shoulders, slapped her, told her to fucking snap out of it. But not Ben. He lingers behind you, and you know he is bending down to kiss her on the cheek. What do you do next? > You this family stuff isn't your business. Pause and wait for Ben. “Bye Mom,” you hear him say as the screen door closes behind you. He might get a nod from her but that’s it, a nod without looking up, her eyes spaceylike from her pills, watching TV with the sound all the way down, as usual. You wait on the porch under the oversized black POW/MIA flag, which rolls in crazy arcs from the October wind. One of these days you'll get around to telling Ben he should take the flag down. It's a dark omen and makes the whole house look like somebody just died when in reality, Ben’s father went MIA more than twenty years ago.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You open your eyes and see the sun out of the open window. You watch it for a second trying to feel its heat on your body but after a moment you give up. Its winter and its perpetually cold here anyway. You get up and wander over to take in the view, you've been staying in this room for a while now. Your not sure exactly how long but it feels like around 5 months, long enough to become used to it at least. You lean out through the window and take in the sights, There are still some skyscrapers to the east looking in good condition, the stadium to the North isn't doing so well though, the roof has caved in and taken a small part of the wall down with it. Looking around you get a sense of general decay, between the points of interest are just fields of broken buildings and rubble. You know the couple of decades since the infection couldn't have done it alone so you decided it was the military. They had actually held out for years with relatively few casualties before it became airborne, after that it was chaos for a time until a 'vaccine' was found and sent world wide in an attempt to end the spread of the infection. You take one last look around then head for the door. You picked this room since it not only had a working lock on the door but actually had glass in the window, seemed like a nice touch of normality. Sadly the food has run out and you've scavenged the entire surrounding area until nothing is left, you have to move on. At least now you have a destination. Just last week you had found a decrepit old survivor mumbling to themselves in a fever and learned that somewhere to the far east past the skyscrapers there is a thriving colony, THOUSANDS of people actually living and forming a good community. The dying old man didn't have much of value but at least you got enough food to keep you full until now. > Down the Stairs You head down the stairs to check on your trap. Its a simple pitfall at the base of the stairs but it's sometimes good enough to catch a wild animal or two. Sadly no such luck today. Seems like the dead have finally managed to make the city free from even rats now. You start heading for the door when you hear a small sound outside, just a piece of wood being disturbed but your senses are attuned to listening for these things. Your now stuck, there is a back door but you don't keep it or the alleyways back there clear so just about anything could have moved in, however your pretty sure there is something out the front doors. > The Front Door You sling your pack over your shoulder and take out your metal baseball bat before edging slowly closer to the door, you need to know what's out there. It could just be a shambler who is about as dangeous as a child unless they are in a large pack. Then again it could be one of the other types. The Fast types are tricky to handle if not too smart. The mutant types, animals who got directly infected, are very dangerous. The Crazies, humans who got the vaccine too late or were bitten after getting it, they retain some semblance of intelligence but only that of a stupid flesh craved psychopath. Then theres the 'Heralds' or 'Harbingers', Nicknamed as the 'Harbingers of the apocalypse', they look nearly completely human but the infection somehow bonded with them making them stronger and faster than normal humans while retaining all of their intelligence, of course they still feed on living and partly decayed flesh, you avoid them at all costs. Once you get close you very slowly open the door a crack and peek out. Nothing immediately visible, your going to have to open it and look properly. > You outside You slowly open the door until its wide enough for you to fit through the gap, you have your bat ready and slip out into the sun. You carefully look around as you creep into the street, still nothing... 'CRACK' You hear the noise from behind you and whirl around to see something stepping out of a pile of rubbish very close to the door you just came out of. You panic for a moment and consider just running away as fast as you can... when you see it more clearly. It wasn't hiding to ambush you, it's just a shambler. The slowest and least dangerous of all the undead. It was probably lying in that heap for days and only moved because of you walking nearby. You walk up to it and even take the time to do a little impression of a pro-hitter before a single clean strike caves its skull right in and it crumples into a heap on the ground. You briefly reminisce about when the outbreak first happened and it would take several hits to the head to stop them, but now you're a lot stronger and faster than an average human and sport a physique that would have belonged to a professional athlete... if there were any left alive in this messed up world. You wipe your bat clean then begin walking East to the cross-roads a couple hundred yards away, your kill-count on shamblers must be over a hundred by now but you lost count somewhere in the fifties. You now face the choice of which way to go. You intend to reach the far east side of the city and investigate if the survivors are real however the skyscraper district was the most inhabited before the plague hit, which means it still is, only with less welcoming residents. To the North you could head up to the area around the stadium, some people tried to make a stand there and thinned out the undead but there isn't much in the way of food there since they were overwhelmed leaving the area stripped clean. South could probably take you along the highway to the suburbs which has a mixed chance of food and dangerous monsters. Deciding on the North as the safest choice for now you go that way. > You heading North You jog a couple of blocks North before finding a large blockade of crashed rusted cars, you know the area fairly well and slip into a side alley to bypass it, cutting North again through the first intersecting alley. You quickly make it out onto a main road again when you realize something is moving pretty close by to the east, you carefully edge up to a car and climb it to get a clear view. There's one of the wandering hordes that frequent the area working its way down the road. They look like mostly shamblers, but you never know. The other directions look clear leaving you the choice of heading into another ally North, heading down the road West and trying to loop around on a different road or fighting your way through the mob to the east, looks like 6 of them spread out on the road. > You north, back into the alleyways You're already heading North so why not continue and see what the old stadium district has to offer? The alleyways always have a chance of hiding a lurking undead but at least you're not out in the open and visible to anyone who wants to look. You easily slip through several alleyways before hearing a noise behind a closed door. Listening closely you hear some mumbling. mumbling can be very good or very bad. It means it isn't a full undead, so you've either located a survivor or a crazy, theres always a small chance its a harbinger but you highly doubt one would be hiding out in a dingy alley in this area. Of course you could just bypass it and not take the risk, keeping nice and quiet you can easily slip past and maybe even make the stadium district by nightfall. Then again finding an actual survivor is never to be passed up. > You take it Slow and Careful as you Open the Door You carefully test the door and almost have it open enough to slip inside when the hinges squeak, this also causes the mumbling to suddenly stop. Well its took late to go back so you quickly open the door the rest of the way and duck in, moving quickly to the side incase of gunshots. Nothing happens and you aren't hearing movement so whatever was in here is now hiding. You edge forward and take in you surroundings. A dingy small damp room with equipment caged all along the far wall and piles of trash and random looking objects strewn everywhere. Some sort of access room for the air-con of the building behind it you think to yourself as you ready your bat. You decide that the careful friendly approach might work best since you can't see anyone in the room "Is someone there?" you softly call out. Theres silence for a few moments before you hear a quiet chuckle from the pile of trah nearest your left side. "Thats just great, its a crazy after all." you think to yourself. You ready your bat and carefully walk forward until your just past the pile when they jump out at you, bursting into a loud gleeful cackle as they swing their pipe at your head. Luckily this is just what you were counting on and as they jump you spin and land a solid blow to their ribs, sending them crashing to the floor. You move to check if they were really a crazy or just a traumatized survivor but you see dried blood around their mouth and they are still trying to get up to attack with shattered ribs so either way they just need to be put down. You're kind and finish it quickly and cleanly before checking the room and body, packing some food for later and heading back out. "Only a crazy but hey, I have more food in my pack now than I did before so I count a win." you think to yourself as you head further North. > You night in the Northern Alleys You travel until dusk is well underway before trying to locate a good place to rest, the ground is dangerous as the monster types are more active during the dark hours this close to the city centre but its difficult to find secure high up rooms since they are usually magnets for the walkers and crazies. Theres a nice building up ahead though, maybe an old hotel. You can se the fire escape is still standing and could use it to get into an upper room or you could see about the basement and lock yourself into a secure area there since basements usually have nice heavy doors and solid walls. > You hotel basement for the Night The basement is closer and a solid door should hold off anything that comes by, you can always rely on the stupidity of shamblers so even if they follow you, they can't tell the difference between a door and a wall if you keep quiet. You force the lock on the entrance door and head down a short flight of stairs and through another door at the bottom to find yourself in a small square room with the buildings power and heating equipment in it. nothing is working so you wont have to worry about the noise at least. You close both doors then use the two wooden pallets you find to lightly barricade the inner door. looking around you find the rest of the room completely empty so lay down your sheet and begin to rest for the night. Its not too long before you hear the howling some distance off and reach for your bat. Howling means mutant types and most likely dogs, your really don't want to fight a dog pack again. Last time you did that nearly nearly left you ripped into pieces and eaten. You hold your breath but when the howl is heard again its much closer, close enough to be on your scent. You swear and jump to your feet, you can make a mad dash outside and try and get somewhere up high where they can't follow or you hope they pass you by/the doors hold out. > You run for higher ground You grab your things and wrench the flimsy barricade away from the door before sprinting outside, the howling is loud enough now that you're certain they are after you. Seeing a lumbering mass of teeth and muscle turn into the alleyway from the South just confirms your fears as you sprint up the fire escape, pulling the bottom section up after you. You know that the virus has made the dogs stronger faster and much much more dangerous than they were before so you keep sprinting up the fire escape only pausing briefly to see what is coming after you. Its hard to see in the dark but theres defiantly 3 or 4 smaller shadows following the larger one and they are moving at speed now towards the building. You resume sprinting until you close to the roof which you find is a single ladder to the top. You scramble up then lean over the edge to see what is going on below. You see a lot of movement punctuated by barks and yelps when you think you make out one of the dogs leaping off a dumpster onto the fire escape, it creaks lower under its weight allowing more to jump on and within seconds its on the ground with the dogs surging up after you. You stand and ready your bat. You assume the big one is the alpha and wont be able to jump high enough to reach you due to all the muscle it carries, you think it must weigh as much a a small car. The smaller ones however could probably get up to you if they were persistent so you going to have to fend them off. You glance round the rest of the roof and see no movement so prepare for the attack. The first dog to reach the top it pretty lithe compared to the others meaning it still looks like a Doberman on steroids and makes a jump at you, scrabbling at the ladder to try and get purchase. its head lines up nicely at your waist height and you meet it with a solid blow to the skull crashing it down onto its companions as they arrive. They ignore it and all start jumping at you keeping you fully occupied taking swings at them as they start to get purchase on the roof but not landing any more definitive hits. Your starting to get concerned when you hear glass smashing and see several windows are being broken out by undead inside. the dogs quickly loose interest in you in favor of the easier option of readily available food and launch into an all out attack on the shamblers trying to get out towards the noise. You take the opportunity to rest and watch the fight unfold. The Shamblers are clearly just trying to reach the source of the noise while the dogs are actively attacking and trying to rip them apart. The shamblers only seem to fight back after an attack is aimed at them specifically, ignoring the others being taken down. The mutants do easily the most damage at first, tearing several undead completely apart before they get too frenzied and start lashing out in all directions. One leaps in through the window and you hear lots of barking and growling before finally growing quiet and a shambler missing its left arm drags itself through the window. "One got itself overwhelmed" you think to yourself. You see another getting its rear leg bitten into by a shambler on the ground and hear the snap of the bone breaking before it pulled it away but it stays up and fighting until the huge muscled mutant and last smaller one tore the last of the shamblers apart. You watch the three surviving dogs feast on the shamblers before heading back down the fire escape and disappearing South again out of the alleyway. You finally relax and rest until first light when you head down into the alley again and start off North, you've got to be within a few hours of the stadium district now. > You into the stadium district You can tell by the changing architecture that you are nearing the stadium, just a few hours walking at most before you'll reach it. You aren’t too confident about finding food and supplies there but between the holdouts and the military trying to keep the stadium safe, as a refuge you think there shouldn’t be many dead up here. They do wander, though but you get the odd impression that they never wander too far from where they died, circling endlessly for months before their flesh gives up and they become prey for the others. As you get closer you begin to see the signs of battle everywhere, buildings collapsed, old craters, and burnt out cars. They had lasted a really long time in that stadium. You never went too close yourself but you occasionally saw the lights and the signs from tall buildings or when you were scavenging nearby. Over-confidence had been their end, just as you had predicted. Their regimented daily armored patrols, scavenging squads and clearance teams had, over the years, given way to weekly lightly armed excursions and missed guard duties. Their initial efforts probably cleared 95% of the infected in the area so they rarely if ever spotted one. You heard from a few survivors you ran into right after what had happened. “The patrols were just for show and guards rarely bothered to turn up to their shifts by the end. One patrol team went out to do a mix of scavenging and clearing but they were all young had no idea what the early days were like. They went right inside some store on the outskirts of their territory without even checking for infected. A couple got bit when they found a shambler in a locked office. One turned right away and took two more down because they weren’t ready to kill their friends. The two survivors finished the rest off and headed back to the stadium with their tails between their legs and covered with gore. Of course they immediately brought back all the old rules and regulations about ensuring the guard was always there and sending out veterans with the new kids but it was too late, one of the survivors had ingested some splattered blood during the fight and turned a few days later, sadly into a fast bugger. Went on a rampage biting everyone it saw. The people panicked and ran for the roof but it had been neglected for years and a strut failed, bringing the entire thing down, including part of the wall. Between the panic, the dead and the spreading infected inside it was all over and the survivors scattered and ran. No idea where they came from but a large number of dead swarmed them, as if they had been hiding and waiting all that time just to appear at the worst moment. Most probably died in the first few days to the infected or mutants.” You keep going as far as you can but the alleys become tighter and clogged with debris, you can keep to the alleys and clamber through them carefully to keep a low profile or you can head out to the main streets and move quickly. > You keep to the Alleys and move carefully Keep to the alleys and clamber through them carefully to keep a low profile You don’t want to risk getting fully exposed right now and decide to risk the alley ways. You make difficult progress at first and have to slow your pace a lot. The alleys are half blocked with trash and even the occasional human remains. Finally you start to find entire alleys blocked by rubble from collapsed buildings and have to climb over it all. It’s not as if you find this level of exercise difficult or anything but the more you climb and clamber over rubble and trash, the more chance of you stumbling right into infected. Unfortunately this is exactly what happens as you climb over a rubble pile a few minutes later. you just reach the top of the pile which is roughly level with the first floor of the buildings either side when a shambler lurches out from the building to the side and tries to grab you. You manage to shove it away and avoid its bite but now you aren’t in the best position. > You bash it with a bat then continue, it's just one shambler afterall Bash its head in then continue, one shambler won’t even slow you down. You sling your bat out of your belt loop and dispatch the shambler with a brutal efficiency, no time for playing around right now. You quickly wipe your bat off on its shirt and continue climbing down the rubble pile on the other side. “Got to pick up the pace a little.” You think to yourself as you climb the next rubble pile, trying to be more prepared of surprises. You are however getting the impression that the rubble is too regular to be an accident. “Must have been the holdouts trying to block the infected and funnel them” you decide as you continue. It’s only a short time later when climbing a particularly steep pile that the fast type makes an appearance. Normally you can outpace a single one, but halfway up the rubble it comes leaping down at you from above and manages to latch onto your arm before your punches knock it free and you finish it with several good blows with the bat. “Gorram thing ripped my arm open!” you complain to the air, and indeed you now have an obvious bite wound to the flesh of your left arm which needs binding up. You pause there to bandage it quickly with strips of cloth. It’s not nearly the worst wound you’ve had and so long as you keep eating enough you heal fast. After a brief pause you continue without further incident until you climb the last rubble pile and see the Stadium ahead of you. > You approaching the stadium “Now what?” you mumble to yourself as you look around. The streets behind you are either completely clear or blocked entirely by rubble. “Probably the hold outs work.” you think. The area in front has barricades and ditches leading up the stadium seemingly to prevent groups or vehicles from getting close. “Guess forward is the best option if I want to get inside that ruin, all the buildings around here are rubble so not much else around.” You decide that your only choices are to try and get inside the stadium or bypass it North, either way you're going to have to cross some barricades so you might as well take a closer look Scout out the stadium carefully > You scout the area out You begin slowly approaching the stadium, checking every ditch and barricade before crossing them, just incase there are any more surprises lurking there. You make relatively quick progress and are halfway through the blockades when you hear something ahead. You quickly pause and hunker down, taking your time to look ahead to try and locate source of the noise. If your hearing wasn’t so good and you weren’t being so careful you know you would have missed it entirely. There doesn’t seem to be anything close by and the area right in front of the stadium doors is flat and cleared so nothing there. You are about to put the noise up to your own paranoia when you catch a glimpse of movement on a balcony over the door. There’s a man lying on it, watching you through a rifle scope. “Gorramit, this place isn’t deserted and now they have me scoped before I can find out what’s happening.” You mumble to yourself. The man with the gun however has clearly realized he was spotted and stands up, along with 2 others to call out to you. “We know you spotted us so you may as well come out now. Move slowly into the open area in front of the stadium and show us that you aren’t an infected and there will be no problems.” You’ve been through this drill before, you show you aren’t an infected and they lower the guns. You get inside with the survivors. > You might as well go along with it again since they haven't fired yet and your currently goal is to find survivors after all. You know the drill so you may as well go along with it and get inside with the survivors to scout it out at least. You carefully finish getting through the barricades as they assure you that there are no infected ahead and reach the open ground below them. “Right, drop the weapon and show us your skin!” They call down. You lay the bat and your pack down and even start undoing your shirt before remembering that you have a large bite wound on your arm that really isn’t going to go over well with the men holding the guns. You have little choice left now and finish taking off the shirt revealing your skin and the rough bandage on your left arm to the men above. Quite predictably you hear the guns being cocked above you. “What’s the bandage for friend?” You hear called down in a distinctly unfriendly tone. > You can lie about it and just say it was a cut. You aren’t showing any other signs to make them suspicious after all You lie about it and claim you cut it climbing the debris in the alleyways, no point in telling them about the infected biting you. “When I was climbing through the alleyways back there I lost my footing and injured it on some old broken pipe. So I bound it up, as you can see I can still talk normally and show no symptoms! I’ve taken the vaccine after all!” They quietly confer and lower their guns slightly, so far so good. “Alright, the rest of your skins clear and the right color and you can talk normally. The vaccine doesn’t always protect from direct exposure so can’t be too careful. Just show the wound then we can let you inside.” You pause and try and think of a way out of showing it but there isn’t much option here. You slip your shirt back on and roll the sleeve up before taking the bandage off. You try and think quickly about what to say if they challenge your story but you are suddenly stopped short. You hear the loud crack at the same moment as you feel your clavicle disintegrate as if hit by a professional boxer, unfortunately you feel the damage continuing inside, finding when you try to breath, blood comes out of your mouth instead. You collapse back and vaguely hear the man arguing before everything turns black. “He lied; it’s a bite, look at it!” “He has no symptoms you idiot, he’s probably immune and was just wor…”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You know the drill so you may as well go along with it and get inside with the survivors to scout it out at least. You carefully finish getting through the barricades as they assure you that there are no infected ahead and reach the open ground below them. “Right, drop the weapon and show us your skin!” They call down. You lay the bat and your pack down and even start undoing your shirt before remembering that you have a large bite wound on your arm that really isn’t going to go over well with the men holding the guns. You have little choice left now and finish taking off the shirt revealing your skin and the rough bandage on your left arm to the men above. Quite predictably you hear the guns being cocked above you. “What’s the bandage for friend?” You hear called down in a distinctly unfriendly tone. > You own up but point out that you have taken the vaccine and bites don’t affect you. No Point in lying about it now. You call up to them carefully, preparing to run if needed. “Firstly I’ve had the vaccine and had bites before with no affect. It’s a bite wound, from a fast bugger back in the alleyways. I’m not hiding anything!” You see one of the men react and take aim at you, you’re about to dodge when the one who is clearly in charge swats his gun to the side and the shot misses you by a few feet. “Put that gun down you idiot, what the hell you think you’re doing?” he shouts “He’s been bit! He admitted it!” the man replies clearly panicked. “And he has no symptoms, he also has been bitten before and no reaction so obviously the vaccine works for him. Are you mentally challenged or something?” He turns back to you. “Sorry about that, he’s just a little panicky at the moment even if he knows full well the vaccine protects some people from all exposure, even bites. We are letting you in, but be warned; you’re being quarantined until we can be sure.” You collect your things and head inside. “So the vaccine protects some people from bites as well as the airborne strain but others get infected by it regardless. Good to know.” You think as you head inside and find more guns pointed your way. “Seems your skin is the right color, you can still bleed and still talk but you’ve been bitten. It’s a few days in our quarantine for you my friend.” One of them says to you. You quickly find yourself in a locked room in some basement area where you stay undisturbed until you judge its night time, a lamp on the outside wall giving some light through the door’s window. A soldier finally arrives to take a look at the wound. “Don’t worry mate, I’m a military doctor so I’m just here to take a look at that bite of yours.” He says as you let him take the bandage off and put a fresh proper one on it. “There, got it wrapped up properly now, I thought you said you just got it in the alleyway, it looks at least a couple of days of healing there?” You think quickly. “Oh I got it in the alleys, just not today, I’ve been clambering around in there for days now, I had no idea anyone was left here so I’ve been slowly making my way as I scavenge.” You watch his face and it seems he buys it. “Yeh, after the collapse almost everyone died or fled. Some of us are back now and making a new start. Well back in a day or two to make sure you haven’t gone crazy on us or anything. Longest I ever heard before a man turned was 3 days, and he just became a crazy so if you’re still you when you see me next I’ll get you outa here.” You’re left a tray of food as the door is once more locked. And a few more hours pass with no noise outside the door. > You time to break out of here, you’re stronger than most and a few good charges will bust the door wide open. There’s no way you’re staying locked up in here, not when you’re close to a perfect food source that will last you months, you’re hungers back again stronger than ever for some reason too. Time to act on it! You get yourself prepared and listen at the door but hear nothing there; you back off and charge the door with your shoulder. You feel it crack but it’s not open yet. You back off and try again, this time smashing through as the bolts give way. You’re just about to congratulate yourself on your own strength when the shouting catches your attention. Guards are coming down the stairs just 20 feet to your right. Seems smashing a door open makes a lot of noise. You sprint at them and catch them off guard near the base of the steps, they clearly didn’t expect your speed or strength as you punch one in the chest, feeling his ribs crack. The others react better, trying to raise their guns. You move quickly and swat one to the side, punching the guy in the throat before spinning on the last guard. You can see in his eyes that he just simply want prepared to fight anything as fast or strong as you as he fires and misses right before you kill him too. You quickly ensure they are all dead and are about to leave when your hunger gets the better of you and you take a moment to grab one of the men’s knives to hack a chunk of flesh off which you eat ravenously. As soon as you have eaten and your hunger subsides your senses return somewhat. “What am I doing? I can’t waste time eating here when more guards will be coming.” You think. You glance around but the tunnel is blocked off at the other end and the only way is up the stairs. You can also already hear a lot of guards up there shouting and cocking weapons for you. “Bloody hungers gotten me killed, guess that bite did have some affect after all.” You back off, trying to think of a plan when the new guards arrive. At least a dozen with guns, all ready to fire and pointed your way. Once they see what’s happened they simple swear and some look like they are about to fire when one man steps a little forward and raises a hand. “HOLD!” he looks behind to ensure the men obey before turning back to you. “SO you smashed through a solid door, killed three armed guards and ate some of their flesh, all while not acting crazy. Welcome to our holdout harbinger.” The men all start swearing and some are clearly getting itchy trigger fingers despite the hold order. You finally reply. “Well this isn’t exactly how I wanted to be found out but getting bitten earlier today seemed to send my hunger into overdrive. But yes I am indeed a harbinger, I usually only get to tell people before they die rather than before I do but I guess I had a good run and ate my fair share of people” you end with a bit of a grin, awaiting the bullets. “Oh you won’t die so easily.” The Capt. Replies. You are about to question him when he gives the order to shoot your knees and elbows. It seems like every man there was just waiting for the chance and you feel you limbs practically disintegrate from all the shots. “Bind the wounds and retrain him, we have experiments to conduct.” You hear as you lose consciousness. You survive the experiments for several weeks due to your advanced healing and innate strength before your mind and body finally give out to the torture, it seems they found out little of use, but many of them defiantly felt better as they tortured you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No Point in lying about it now. You call up to them carefully, preparing to run if needed. “Firstly I’ve had the vaccine and had bites before with no affect. It’s a bite wound, from a fast bugger back in the alleyways. I’m not hiding anything!” You see one of the men react and take aim at you, you’re about to dodge when the one who is clearly in charge swats his gun to the side and the shot misses you by a few feet. “Put that gun down you idiot, what the hell you think you’re doing?” he shouts “He’s been bit! He admitted it!” the man replies clearly panicked. “And he has no symptoms, he also has been bitten before and no reaction so obviously the vaccine works for him. Are you mentally challenged or something?” He turns back to you. “Sorry about that, he’s just a little panicky at the moment even if he knows full well the vaccine protects some people from all exposure, even bites. We are letting you in, but be warned; you’re being quarantined until we can be sure.” You collect your things and head inside. “So the vaccine protects some people from bites as well as the airborne strain but others get infected by it regardless. Good to know.” You think as you head inside and find more guns pointed your way. “Seems your skin is the right color, you can still bleed and still talk but you’ve been bitten. It’s a few days in our quarantine for you my friend.” One of them says to you. You quickly find yourself in a locked room in some basement area where you stay undisturbed until you judge its night time, a lamp on the outside wall giving some light through the door’s window. A soldier finally arrives to take a look at the wound. “Don’t worry mate, I’m a military doctor so I’m just here to take a look at that bite of yours.” He says as you let him take the bandage off and put a fresh proper one on it. “There, got it wrapped up properly now, I thought you said you just got it in the alleyway, it looks at least a couple of days of healing there?” You think quickly. “Oh I got it in the alleys, just not today, I’ve been clambering around in there for days now, I had no idea anyone was left here so I’ve been slowly making my way as I scavenge.” You watch his face and it seems he buys it. “Yeh, after the collapse almost everyone died or fled. Some of us are back now and making a new start. Well back in a day or two to make sure you haven’t gone crazy on us or anything. Longest I ever heard before a man turned was 3 days, and he just became a crazy so if you’re still you when you see me next I’ll get you outa here.” You’re left a tray of food as the door is once more locked. And a few more hours pass with no noise outside the door. > You wait it out. What’s a couple of days in solitary when you’ve spent years doing it? You feel hungry, far more hungry than normal and eating the lukewarm rations provided for you doesn’t hurt at all, but you’ve decided to wait it out. If you had your pack it wouldn’t be so bad since you had a few meat strips left in there but your bat and bag are gone for now. You curl up on the cot and spend the entire night trying to ignore your hunger. As it turns morning you hear someone approaching and a tray of food is left inside the door for you. You didn’t sleep well however once you eat the rations and rest again for a bit the hunger isn’t as bad. Lunch and dinner pass with more food provided. It doesn’t seem to agree with you at all, and you’re not surprised by that, however the hunger has passed and you spend the third night mostly sleeping pretty well all things considered. You aren’t surprised the next day when the army medic returns and leaves the door open behind him. “Quick test then your free to join the rest of what is left of society!” You are finally directed up into an atrium where you find four guards waiting for you. The medic disappears into a side room and the four take charge of leading you around. > You inside the stadium doors The four lead you to a room where you’re made to hand over your things and strip to your underwear while two of them check you for marks and prick your arms, causing you to bleed a little. Finally after discussion they let you get dressed and welcome you to the area. “Sorry about all the security but after what happened before, we can’t be too careful.” They tell you as you emerge into the center of the stadium. “The roof came down with the wall but as you can see it held mostly intact and covered over two thirds of the space down here.” You look up and see the roof lying on the lowest level of the seats, leaving plenty of room underneath for a small community, a few holes near the top letting the light in. “It also blocked off all but two of the tunnels with rubble so it kind of fixed the defense issue for us too.” “How many of you are here now?” you ask looking at the small group. “Only about 40 for now, we are hoping for more to arrive slowly as we have been getting the word out that it’s a safe zone now. Sorry again about all the checks but we have to be extra careful now of who we let in.” “You mentioned that before, I thought it was some survivor that got infected that caused everything?” you reply while thinking to yourself ‘Might as well get what information I can while they are still talking and the higher ups haven’t come sniffin to make life difficult.’ “That’s what we thought but some of the military guys saw more of what was happening than most of us, said that the infected outside had moved in close overnight and the ones inside behaved weirdly. Didn’t attack and eat like normal, they went on biting sprees, like spreading fresh infection was their goal. Like they were organized. We think they were led by a harbinger! So now we check everyone for bite marks, greying skin or lack of bleeding from small cuts to make sure they aren’t one!” “You idiots, those are just myths” you think to yourself “Harbingers looks nearly identical to normal humans, well I guess I won’t be the one to tell you the truth at least.” You finally see a man in full dress uniform approach “Here we go” you mutter under your breath. The man approaches you and is, to your surprise, very congenial. He welcomes you to their little hold out and asks only a few cursory questions before excusing himself to go and check on the other lookouts. He does make you affirm that if you would like to stay you would be willing to help out with defense if needed. “Well that wasn’t so bad.” You mutter just loud enough for your guards to hear. One laughs and responds. “A nice guy in charge? Yeh, rare enough I suppose, but people wouldn’t still follow the Capt. if he was an ass would they! Come on we will show you around.” You follow them around the accessible areas under the roof and see the paths up to the balcony where the men were on guard, you also notice that there are higher balconies with men in soldier’s uniforms on them. “Probably good I didn’t run” you think to yourself as you see the tents and shacks set up for sleeping and the tunnels used for storage. “Well that’s pretty much it.” One of the men says, looking around him. “Obviously there used to be a lot more here before the collapse but this is just the start. Once word spreads and more survivors gather we can tidy the place up more.” You think for a moment before speaking again. “Isn’t there some big group to the East of the city doing well, I heard a rumor about it some months back.” The guard smiles knowingly before responding. “It’s true! We had contact with them some time back via a series of radios we were setting up in the city. This was right before the collapse O’course. Seems that they got a really good thing going out there, clean food and water, even fields and solar panels up for power! Sadly when the roof came down, it took out our good radio equipment and most of the relays in the city are unreachable now without the manpower we used to have. We might not have enough men here to push through but we think if we hold out here and gather a good community then we can scout a safe route through the North of the city to the river and cross there. For now we are going to be the western safe zone for people unable to pass the city. You wouldn’t believe the monsters we used to kill in there when we had out jeeps and heavy guns. Most people that try and get through the city to the bridges die trying or turn back having lost their friends, some tried to circle up North or South well past the city limits but seems that there are infected and mutants out there too and no way to safely cross the river unless you carry a boat.” He trails off and you can see he is thinking of past friends, he was probably one of the ones who tried to get through and failed. “Well I better go get my stuff back and find a place to rest.” You state. The guards give you a nod and let you wander back to the entrance tunnel to collect your gear. You get pointed to your new temporary home, a small tent on the old pitch. Considering you half expected to get killed as soon as you saw the men with the guns this day has really turned out in your favor! > You your new home at the stadium You make some more small talk that evening then retire to your tent, you had learned something new and important today. They all seemed to strongly believe a Herald had somehow led and controlled the infected, even the ones inside the stadium. Some blamed him for planning the entire thing and that the infected had attacked the strut when it fell. Hard to believe but after seeing what the infection was able to do to some animals you were willing to give the idea a chance. That also meant that even if they had no idea what Heralds were really like, there must have been one in the area only a year or so ago and still might be. You were going to have to be extra careful with your planning for now. The second important thing was that they had a few shamblers trapped down in some old storage rooms, they experimented on them for good ways to hurt them and how long they lasted without food. You have choices to make in the morning. > You first light in the stadium A quiet ringing wakes you at first light. “Huh a near silent alarm, smatter than a loud one I guess.” You say to yourself as you get ready. You glance through your bag. They had left your last few strips of dried meat in there so you start chowing down on one as you head out. They said you had a few days to decide what you’d be doing but if you chose to stay more than that, then you would have to be useful to them in some way, guard duty and scavenging seemed to be the implied option. You had some time though. > You check out the caged shamblers They are keeping shamblers fully contained for experiments, with everything you’ve heard recently it’s just too tempting to pass up a little look at what’s going on. You know the rough location and after finding the stairs down, you emerge into a basement area with several doors leading off it. You also find two guards who ask what you’re looking for. “I heard there were some shamblers in cages being tested here and wanted to have a look. Its not often you get to see they relatively close without having to run away after all.” You joke. Luckily neither of them seems to think this is too out of the ordinary. “Yeh most new guys end up down here once they hear about it. Go on through and the doc can show you what’s up. Door gets locked behind you though, safety first.” He adds with a wink. You get let through a heavy door into a side corridor and indeed you hear the sound of a reassuringly large bolt being secured behind you. At the end of the corridor you see an open door with the lights on so head there first, passing two doors on either side with heavy bolts on them. You find a man in military uniform at a desk, writing in a book. He looks up at your arrival. “Ah the newest new guy! I wondered if you’d find your way down here. Most of them do once they hear about our test subjects. Let me show you around!” At first you are a little taken aback by his willingness to show you everything having only just met you but after a few minutes it becomes clear that he isn’t divulging important secrets, he’s an army medic acting as the stadiums doctor and their tests amount to two shamblers being starved slowly to death on one side of the corridor and two having weapons tested on them through slots in the door on the other. One still has a crossbow bolt in its upper leg, giving it a limp. “That’s about it sadly.” He sums up for you. “We had string tied to the bolts to get them back easily but that one caught on the bone so the string snapped. We did find out that destroying their joints and muscles is effective in slowing them down and they will die from large trauma, not just neural damage. So shooting knees and legs will stop them chasing you faster than a snail and body shots can kill them despite what anyone else says. We proved it with a fast bugger we found down here. 2 shots in the chest and he went down. Sure they can keep going with far more damage than a normal human but most things still work on them eventually.” You nod along, filling the information at the back of your mind for later, it matches up with your findings as well. “I’m guessing the closer to human they are, the easier they go down then? The crazies seem to be just like humans, the fast ones a little tougher and the shamblers just soak up damage if it’s not the head.” The man smiles and nods. “A man of experience. I assume the vaccine gave you full protection if you were able to test all of that out. You are right of course, the further from human they go, the tougher they get, taking more normal damage to kill them. Destroying the neural center is always effective though, headshots I mean. It’s easier if you don’t think of them as human.” He peeks through the windows a few more times before heading back to his office. “You’re welcome to stay and test things out on number 4, just never remove a lock no matter how dead they look.” The doors have large numbers on them so number 4 turns out to be the one with a crossbow bolt in its leg. “So it seems you are the expendable one.” You say quietly through the small slot. “You’ll be seeing more of me soon.” You head back up into the light to make up an excuse for being there so much and decide on something basic, you head off in search of materials in the rubble. > You testing time You exchange pleasantries with a few of the others in the stadium while you search and give the impression that you will probably choose to stay but just need a day or two to decide. A few even give you a hand in your search and after a couple of hours you have some forked metal the right size and shape and industrial elastic cable housing to make a high powered slingshot. You grab various possible projectiles from pebbles to bits of jagged metal and head back down to speak to the doc. You explain that you’ve always wanted to test how shamblers react to projectile damage as a way of killing them quietly. He has no issues but tells you that you’ll have to write down your findings. You get a small notebook with columns to fill out for weapon name and type, type of damage, effect on the shambler, tissue types… the list goes on but you know it’ll be fairly easy to fill out once you shoot them a few times. You glance a few pages back to see what else has been tried. “Huh, a flamethrower.” You say out loud. The Doc. Overhears from his office and calls out. “Highly effective, turned it into a walking torch and killed it in seconds, made a huge mess and bad smell though. Sadly ran out of fuel.” You shrug and get to work. You leave the slot on door number four and lean up against the opposite wall. You wait for it to wander into view and let fire with a small rock. Your slingshot is extremely powerful, to the point that a average male couldn’t even draw it properly but with your strength you can get it back a fair distance. The pebble hits at speed and pierces the skin of its abdomen. You note down your findings and tries out a few different projectiles. The small jagged metal pieces beaten into roughly a ball shape seem to win for the moment, you manage to shatter its clavicle with one and break its wrist with another. The doctor makes an appearance and glances through your notes. “Excellent, I can add all this to the data later on.” He says as much to himself as to you as he heads off out on some errand. Once he is gone you move closer to the door and pretend to be writing in the book just in case anyone is watching you. “So number 4, if you had any brain left you’d know by now that in our relationship, I am in charge, I can hurt you at will and you can do nothing, but you don’t really have a brain left do you?” You receive the silence that you expected so carry on. “I’ll be here a lot ‘testing’ weapons and other things on you but I have bigger plans for you and your brothers if some rumors I have been hearing work out.” You take your time there, concentrating, until you’ve used up all your makeshift ammo, you write a few more notes for the doc. Then head back up for lunch. > The testing continues Over the next two days you spend a lot of you time down ‘testing’ out various things on number 4, since you obviously had no qualms hurting the shamblers the doc and a couple of others even gave you their ideas to use on it which you did happily as it gave you more excuses to be down there. You also had your chat with the Capt. and said you’d be wanting to stay and would obviously help out with guard duty and scavenging if needed but hoped you could keep helping the doc too. He agreed and gave you half time guard duty and half time being the doc’s new assistant for the coming week to see how it worked out. You use the arrangement to your advantage and get to spend most of your evenings down with the shamblers. It’s 5 days before you make a break through, not a big one, but you defiantly notice something. You’ve been testing various weapons and objects on Number 4, as you call him, every day while concentrating hard and you were even beginning to doubt anything would happen when you hit him in there eye with a rusty bolt and you feel a slight twinge in your mind. You spend the next hour trying to concentrate on where and how you felt that twinge and when you fire the next bolt into its chest, you feel it again, a little clearer. The rest of the evening and a little into the night is spent this way until you are certain you can feel the shamblers presence with your mind and can tell when it feels pain. “So, the rumors are true, harbingers ARE able to use their minds in ways normal humans can’t. Next I work on controlling them.” You think as you head to sleep > You morning revelations You wake in the morning and realize that you can already feel the presence of the shamblers in the basement below without having to concentrate on it. You also get a hazy feeling throughout the stadium that you can’t pin down yet. You quickly eat breakfast with the other guards and head up to your post while eating your last meat strip. “The last of that crazy I killed a while back” You think as you set up on your balcony. Luckily you are alone today on a not very important post so you can relax and concentrate on the new sensations you mind is feeding you. After a few hours you find the haziness resolve into pockets that move about and decide that it must be linked to the normal people in the stadium. You can’t get anything stronger from the shamblers yet but if you made this much progress just by sleeping on it, who knows what I can do in a few more days. That evening you take a long pole with a spike on the end down, it will give you a good excuse to be close to the door for long periods of time while you pretend to stab at number 4. Once you are seated and staring at him the sensations gets strong and you can easily tell when it feels pain from being stabbed. “Huh, you don’t outwardly respond but the pains still there, interesting.” Two more days pass of these mornings concentrating and evenings testing and by the end you can tell what is happening to number 4 or any of the other 3 shamblers even from up in the stadium. While you were eating lunch, you felt that number 4 got stabbed in the left shoulder, and sure enough when you went down, there was the doc writing down that stabbing it through the shoulder join restricted its movement in that arm. “I’m testing if it recovers from its injuries now so please avoid its shoulder and arm for now if you test more.” He says as he passes you the book and heads up to eat. It’s now been several days since you arrived and you ran out of human flesh days ago. The food they give you doesn’t sit well or seem to quench your hunger but the progress you are making is distracting you enough that you can ignore it for now. You are even getting on well with several of the others in the stadium which gives you doubts for the first time about your original plans to kill them all and feed off them. You could probably volunteer for a scavenging mission to try and get some food out there but you’d probably only manage to get hold of some shambler flesh and it was simply not the same as normal flesh. Seemed just like the toughness, the further from human they got, the less useful their flesh was. But for now you move onto the next stage, time to make the puppet dance for you. You concentrate hard of the feeling you get from what you presume is the remains of the shamblers mind and try to make it lift its right arm into the air with little success, however, over the next few hours you see the arm twitch and eventually it responds and you see it lifting its arm up over its head. You lean back against the opposite wall feeling elated by your success when the doc returns. “Hey! You’ve got the mother of all nose bleeds there! Let me grab some gauze.” He heads into his office and returns quickly while you dab at your own nose, seems you were concentrating so hard you didn’t even feel it happening. You do however now feel fairly light headed so after being cleaned up and making your excuses you head up to lie down in your tent and very unusually fall asleep for the whole evening and night. The morning brings the final revelation and the decisions. You wake to a solid feeling of not only where the four shamblers are, but roughly what they are doing. Concentrating easily makes number 4 turn in a circle and only a little more effort is required to make the others do the same. A slight tingling at the reaches of your mind tells you that you can sense other infected out in the alleys near the stadium. “Time to make a choice. This mind stuff seems like a muscle, the more I use it, the stronger I get. Sleeping after a breakthrough only seems to reinforce it too. In days I’m certain I’ll be able to control small groups of the shamblers at the same time so I’ll have to start testing on the other types next. Can’t get anything from the normals other than a hazy feeling though.” You’re a Harbinger and you’ve eaten people for years, time to flex those powers, use the shamblers to help you wipe the stadium survivors out. You are a harbinger, but you aren’t sure you want to attack these people right now. Stay playing nice as you are while you train your powers, maybe get out on some scavenges to test yourself further. > You you're a Harbinger and you've eaten people for years, time to flex those powers, use the shamblers to help you wipe the stadium survivors out. Time to make your move, you are inside with four shamblers you can control and it’s time to feast! You wait until after breakfast when everyone splits up and head down to see the Doc, you find him leaning over some books in his office like normal so you head right inside and shut the door behind you. “What can I help you with.” He asks, giving you a quick smile before turning back to his books. You look round and see one of the blades that had been used to experiment on number 4. You lift it and walk carefully up behind the doc as you talk. “I have just a minor problem I need solved, I’ve been feeling very hungry lately and the rations here don’t really solve it. He starts to turn to answer you when you strike and stab him in the throat, preventing him from shouting out, you watch him die with only the faintest hint of remorse before you feel that last flicker of humanity disappear once more and you feast on him for a few minutes. You quickly clean the blood off yourself and head back out, tapping on the door to be let through to the security area. Only two guards and you are a lot faster than a normal human. You strike quickly, catching one in the throat and stabbing the other in the chest, clamping your free hand over his mouth before he can shout for help. You quickly drag them into the corridor before releasing the four shamblers who were to be the start of your little army, you concentrate hard but find it is easy to prevent them from attacking you and they quickly obey your compulsions to feed on the dead guards. Finally prepared, you head back out the door and to the base of the stairs, you can feel something fuzzy headed your way so you hide the shamblers round the corner and lean against the wall, trying to seem carefree as you see another guard heading down towards you. You give him a smile and a nod which he begins to return before looking at your trousers and pausing several steps away. You glance down and realize that one trouser leg has a lot of blood on it, must have been from dragging the guards. You look back up and start to go for the guard but he is already raising his gun, you bat it aside and stab him had enough in the chest to feel multiple ribs crack under your fist however his gun goes off with a loud crack. You swear and immediately head up the stairs with your shamblers only to find several other guards running your way, you try to charge them but being seem with blood on you and in the company of the four shamblers means they start firing first. Even with your speed you don’t make it more than a few feet before the bullets bring you down.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake in the morning and realize that you can already feel the presence of the shamblers in the basement below without having to concentrate on it. You also get a hazy feeling throughout the stadium that you can’t pin down yet. You quickly eat breakfast with the other guards and head up to your post while eating your last meat strip. “The last of that crazy I killed a while back” You think as you set up on your balcony. Luckily you are alone today on a not very important post so you can relax and concentrate on the new sensations you mind is feeding you. After a few hours you find the haziness resolve into pockets that move about and decide that it must be linked to the normal people in the stadium. You can’t get anything stronger from the shamblers yet but if you made this much progress just by sleeping on it, who knows what I can do in a few more days. That evening you take a long pole with a spike on the end down, it will give you a good excuse to be close to the door for long periods of time while you pretend to stab at number 4. Once you are seated and staring at him the sensations gets strong and you can easily tell when it feels pain from being stabbed. “Huh, you don’t outwardly respond but the pains still there, interesting.” Two more days pass of these mornings concentrating and evenings testing and by the end you can tell what is happening to number 4 or any of the other 3 shamblers even from up in the stadium. While you were eating lunch, you felt that number 4 got stabbed in the left shoulder, and sure enough when you went down, there was the doc writing down that stabbing it through the shoulder join restricted its movement in that arm. “I’m testing if it recovers from its injuries now so please avoid its shoulder and arm for now if you test more.” He says as he passes you the book and heads up to eat. It’s now been several days since you arrived and you ran out of human flesh days ago. The food they give you doesn’t sit well or seem to quench your hunger but the progress you are making is distracting you enough that you can ignore it for now. You are even getting on well with several of the others in the stadium which gives you doubts for the first time about your original plans to kill them all and feed off them. You could probably volunteer for a scavenging mission to try and get some food out there but you’d probably only manage to get hold of some shambler flesh and it was simply not the same as normal flesh. Seemed just like the toughness, the further from human they got, the less useful their flesh was. But for now you move onto the next stage, time to make the puppet dance for you. You concentrate hard of the feeling you get from what you presume is the remains of the shamblers mind and try to make it lift its right arm into the air with little success, however, over the next few hours you see the arm twitch and eventually it responds and you see it lifting its arm up over its head. You lean back against the opposite wall feeling elated by your success when the doc returns. “Hey! You’ve got the mother of all nose bleeds there! Let me grab some gauze.” He heads into his office and returns quickly while you dab at your own nose, seems you were concentrating so hard you didn’t even feel it happening. You do however now feel fairly light headed so after being cleaned up and making your excuses you head up to lie down in your tent and very unusually fall asleep for the whole evening and night. The morning brings the final revelation and the decisions. You wake to a solid feeling of not only where the four shamblers are, but roughly what they are doing. Concentrating easily makes number 4 turn in a circle and only a little more effort is required to make the others do the same. A slight tingling at the reaches of your mind tells you that you can sense other infected out in the alleys near the stadium. “Time to make a choice. This mind stuff seems like a muscle, the more I use it, the stronger I get. Sleeping after a breakthrough only seems to reinforce it too. In days I’m certain I’ll be able to control small groups of the shamblers at the same time so I’ll have to start testing on the other types next. Can’t get anything from the normals other than a hazy feeling though.” You’re a Harbinger and you’ve eaten people for years, time to flex those powers, use the shamblers to help you wipe the stadium survivors out. You are a harbinger, but you aren’t sure you want to attack these people right now. Stay playing nice as you are while you train your powers, maybe get out on some scavenges to test yourself further. > You are a harbinger, but you aren't sure you want to attack these people right now. Stay playing nice as you are while you train your powers, maybe get out on some scavenges to test yourself further. You decide that attacking now is pointless, you’d not be strong enough to take out all of the armed guards without the risk of getting shot and you are getting on well with a few of them. You spend the next few days more on guard duty and less down in the basement, flexing your abilities from further away to try and strengthen them. You think you can even reach one of two of the nearest ones out in the streets from the balcony. Finally you talk to the doc and the Capt. and volunteer to go along with a couple of scavenging missions, a couple of days before two men from a team didn’t return so they are happy for the offer of help. Your first mission goes smoothly as it’s a quick run to a relatively close store which a scout said still had some tins in its store room. For the others it’s a routine food grab but for you, it’s your chance to begin testing your new powers out properly. Sure you’ve been able to control the shamblers inside the stadium but that was only after days spent concentrating on them. What you needed were some shamblers you hadn’t tried anything on before or even some fast types. Not that you were planning on seeking them out, but if you sensed one close then you could give it a go. You did get closer to a couple of shamblers, finding that it only took you a few moments of hard concentration to get them to do simple tasks like change direction or move a specific limb. Happy with your success you help the others bring what little food there was back to the stadium and volunteered to go out again the next day. > You mission 2 The second mission begins the same as the first, a team of 4 sent out to check an old store you think might still have some supplies in it. This one is a little further away but it’s to the West and away from the city center so your team is confident that they won’t run into too much trouble. You set out happily, planning on testing your ability to make the shamblers do more complicated tasks when you quickly sense something slightly different from before, similar to a shambler but… more complicated, where the shambler feels like the last remnants of a broken and dead mind this feels more like a mind that has been twisted and shattered, but not yet dying. You concentrate on it hard for the next few minutes as you walk and realize that it’s moving about, jumping or running from spot to spot. It must be one of the fast ones or crazies. You walk onwards and soon move out of your range to sense it but an hour or so later you sense another one ahead of you. “As if my test subjects were lining up for me” You joke to yourself as you begin trying to affect its mind. You go through the process as you had with the shamblers, concentrating on sensing them properly first, then getting an idea of their sensations and finally trying to make it react to your prodding. It takes you about 2 hours but you finally have a good sense of what to do, its definitely a fast type infected and making them follow simple actions is only slightly different to the shamblers so by the time you reach your destination it’s only a couple of streets away but you have it walking in circles on command. “Dude, you hit your face of something?” one of the men quietly calls back to you and you realize that you have a nose bleed again. Not as bad as before but you quickly wipe it clean. “Yeh, sorry, I just get them sometimes.” You say as you clean the blood off. “Guess concentrating that hard on the other infected means I miss a lot, going to have to be more careful.” You think. You quickly realize that you have all arrived at the store, and there are several more infected in the vicinity. You were concentrating so hard on the one that you missed a second fast type not far off and several nearby shamblers. The rest of your team, completely unaware of the danger just streets away, starts to head into the store to check for the supplies. “I guess I could go for the big test now.” You think to yourself The team is contained and you can control the infected, you could use them to take them out as the first step to destroying the stadium hold out or you could force them all far away and help the stadium people for now, some of them are treating you like a real friend after all. > You take the first step to wiping the stadium out, use the infected to kill the team then eat them before returning You’ve wasted enough time playing happy families with this small community, your three team-mates will be the first to fall and become your food as you work to wipe them all out. Maybe you’ll even keep a few caged up to eat later, that would be a funny reversal, you think to yourself as you concentrate on all the surrounding infected, drawing them towards the store. “Just going to wipe all this blood off then I’ll be right in!” you call to the others before climbing on top of an old van across the street. No point in being a sitting duck incase the control isn’t as strong as you hope. In moments the nearest shambles and fast type appear. “Got about 6 shamblers and two fast types once the other arrives, should be enough” You wait for the second fast type, holding the infected at bay a few metres from the store, it’s harder to stop them once they can hear and smell the human flesh inside but you find, as with all your powers, that as soon as you master it once, it becomes very easy to do again. You edge them closer to the store until finally one of the men begins walking outside with a bag. You send the fast types rushing at him and he barely has time to react before them knock him to the ground and start feeding off him. The shamblers are only a few feet behind and also start biting into him, ensuring he is dead before the other two scavengers run to the door, guns ready. The fast types don’t respond instantly and you have to force with all of your will to make them stop feeding and go after the two in the doorway however the seconds lost doing this gets one on them shot and badly injured. You can feel its organs giving out so you ignore it now and concentrate on the other one. It makes it close enough to bite into one of the men’s arm and you get lucky. It seems the vaccine isn’t protecting him from direct exposure since you see his actions slowing down and the strange haze you sense from normal humans diminishes before your eyes. You send the rest of the nearby infected inside after the last survivor. You feel him taking down four of them but finally he gets bitten and overwhelmed. The infected make no move to come after you despite your proximity so you climb down and take your time to feed off your former team mates. > You tIme to get back to the stadium for part two You grab one of the men’s bags, partly full of tins, and carefully clean any trace of blood off your face. Leaving the guns behind, you bash in the head of the slowly dying fast type to make it look like you fought, then head back to the stadium. Once close you start running and panting a little for effect. The guards see you some distance away and they are already with guns aimed past you at the street when you get close. “They swarmed us, I was the only one fast enough to get away!” you call up. The gate opens and you are ushered inside quickly before seeing it being barricaded again from the inside. You tell your story about seeming to be ambushed by them when you were in the store a couple more times and it seems like everyone is buying it. Just a few days before the other scavengers to loose teammates told a similar story after all. You are given the rest of the day and the next one off from duties and spend it relaxing in your tent, simply prying with your mind as far as you could and drawing any infected you find, closer to the stadium. It seems that wherever you leave them, they stay. Sure they wander around nearby streets and buildings sometimes but never too far from where they started and they seem to usually return there. By dinner of the second day you have a fair number of shamblers and 1 fast type in the surrounding alleyways and buildings and you hear over dinner that everyone is sure that the harbinger had returned. Seem like this sort of thing fitted right into their suspicions. Time to get to work, the food here feels like its poisoning you now the more you eat of it. You have your army ready and know the enemy defenses perfectly; they think you are one of their defenders after all. At night the doc often sleeps in his office and there are only two guards so you are sure you can get the 4 shamblers out to go wild inside then all you’ll need is to get some on the ones from outside into the stadium to complete your victory. You are considering the best way to do this when you sense all the infected you brought close suddenly begin leaving towards the South and you cannot bring them back no matter how hard you concentrate. The last one pauses and you can feel that it seems to be waving at you for a few minutes, beckoning you after it almost, before it turns and heads South and eventually out of your range to sense it. “Well that’s odd.” You think as you watch it vanish along with your immediate attack plans. “Best bet is that they were right and the original harbinger is back, seems he wants to talk to me too.” The morning will bring a new decision to make, Go to meet the other harbinger or ignore his summons and take down the stadium yourself with your own army; you’ll just need to gather a new one first. > You go to meet the harbinger You wake first thing in the morning to find no other infected have come near to the stadium. “At least he is respectful” you think as you get up. You share a meal with the others as you ponder your next move; however it’s hard to pass on the chance to meet another like you. You go to see the Capt. right after eating. You find him with one of his soldiers looking over a map of this part of the city, probably planning some more scavenges. “Um, Sir, mind if we talk?” He looks up at you then waves the other soldier out leaving the two of you alone. “So what can I help you with?” He asks, having already turned back to his map. “Well, before I came here I stashed a few things of importance to me, memento’s and the like. I want to go retrieve them. I didn’t really expect this place to be inhabited so I stashed them near my old place to the South.” The Capt. quickly asks. “Is it within half a day’s walk of here?” “No, its going to take 2 or three days to get there and back.” You reply. At first he does not respond and you are finally about to speak up and break the silence when he gives his answer. “I can’t send a team with you, too dangerous but I won’t stop you going alone either. It’s your choice, please send Harry back in.” You shrug and head outside, finding a soldier waiting outside “The Capt. said to go back in now.” You tell him as you head off back to you tent. “Well I guess that was Harry at least.” You think as you grab your things and head to the gate. You are let out without a second glance, they trust you now afterall, and begin walking South to where you saw the shambler last. About halfway there you sense it again, South-East of its original position. It waves again and you follow after it, letting it stay a few blocks ahead of you as it leads you South and East of your position. You walk for the rest of the day before finally being lead to a small shop that looks like it might have been a high class gentleman’s tailor before the infection spread. Very heavy duty shutters are down over most of the windows however the door is uncovered and propped open. You try and sense inside and feel something akin to a bright, almost blinding light inside. You quickly stop trying to sense it but you kept your mind open long enough to realize that there are hundreds of infected of different types in the surrounding buildings. > You meeting the man You hear a chuckle from inside and hear an old man’s voice calling to you. “Oh don’t worry so much and come on in, your abilities will grow stronger in time, you are simply less practiced than me!” You start walking to the door and see and old man with a broom sweeping some near invisible dirt out of the door before standing aside for you to enter. You walk past him to find yourself in the fanciest tailors you’ve ever seen, with suits you never could have afforded before the infection spread. You glance again at the old man then back to the suits. He is clearly well dressed but not in anything as fine as the clothing in the store. You hear him chuckling again as pulls the shutters down and closes the door leaving everything in a dim sort of twilight. “Yes I am the tailor not the customer. I made every suit in this store to sell to others but it never felt quite right to wear one myself.” You can make out that he is looking you up and down, clearly not bothered by the lack of light. “You on the hand might need some new clothing; I’ll adjust something for you later. For now let’s head upstairs.” He heads off still holding his broom and you follow him closely, trying not to bump into anything until you reach the second floor and light from the open windows makes it easier to see. You let him get several feet ahead of you to see him better. He is clearly a frail old man and you begin wondering if he is really strong enough to be the other harbinger when he moves faster than you thought possible and in right in front of you, pinning your arms in a grip that doesn’t even let you move an inch. “Yes indeed I am the harbinger, and yes I am defiantly strong enough.” He releases you and walks over to a small chair beside a table covered with slices of meat. “Come have a seat, and yes, I can read your mind. Your powers are developing but they are still in their infancy, I will train you to use them properly so long as you don’t disappoint me.” You take a seat and immediately recognize the smell of the meat as fresh human. The old man smiles. “Yes I usually have a couple hanging around in old cellars to keep them fresh for me, my servants bring them to me when they find them and I divide them between myself and my horde.” He is clearly expecting you to eat, so you do. It’s not as if you haven’t eaten humans before and its nice to have human flesh again, it makes your whole body feel better. “Oh good, I was a little worried that you had sided with humans and might refuse to eat the meat but that’s the first test past. Here is the second.” The old man says to you as a shambler comes in through a previously closed door and begins to lunge for you. Your old reflexes tell you to go for your bat but your new practice kicks in and you reflexively lash out with your mind instead. You see it suddenly stumble back against a wall as if physically struck, before sinking down and not moving any more. “Ah, and the second test passed too, you didn’t have to kill it though you know?” The old man says to you. “Erm, sorry about that, it was reflexive and I’ve only been using this ability for a couple of weeks, I didn’t know I could kill them.” You suddenly feel your nose bleeding again and quickly pich it to prevent the blood pouring out on your clothing. The old man gives you a very happy look. “Only a couple of weeks, well that is great news, it means you are developing very quickly. The quicker the development, the higher the potential! Well I accept you as my student. Over the next few weeks I will be training you in all aspects of your gift, starting with shielding your mind from others, we aren’t the only ones out there you know.” The old man pauses and looks at you intently. “That is of course if you choose to learn from me, if so I will teach you for a few weeks and you will then aid me in destroying the last holdouts in the stadium, the greater plans will be revealed after that. Or you can leave now.” You glance around; he isn’t holding a weapon or acting threateningly. You also are pretty sure he didn’t lock the shutter and a glance out the window shows that the streets are clear. You try and sense the infected in the area again but try and block the old man’s mind out as you do so to prevent the painful blindness from before. It somewhat works and you sense that all the infected are right where they were when you sensed them the first time. He clearly isn’t making any obvious moves to trap you. Choose to stay and learn, it’s what you are after all, a harbinger. Back out politely and head back to the stadium, you were happier there and the old man is a bit creepy. > You choose to stay and learn, it's what you are after all, a harbinger. You think about it carefully, he doesn’t appear to be making any moves to trap you and you were getting to like some of the people back in the stadium, but wasn’t your reason for going there in the first place to eat them? It only makes sense to learn from the experienced harbinger while you can. You are about to tell him you choice when you realize he is practically grinning from ear to ear. “I can read your mind still, remember? An excellent choice you made too. You thought it through and weighed up the pro’s and Con’s. Excellent, you will learn very quickly under my tutelage, now eat up, there is much to be done!” He says to you happily as he tucks into the meat on the table. You join him in the meal and feel better about your choice already, predators were made to eat their pray were they not? > You training time You spend the next couple of weeks with the old man, you have three meals a day of human flesh and spend most of your waking hours training your mind, you used to sleep only a handful of hours a night but now you collapse into bed each night with the beginnings of a headache. He trains you hard, you constantly get nosebleeds but he doesn’t push you too hard, it turns out that if you push past the pain of a headache, you can actually fry your own abilities and drive yourself mad, so you are trained until the headaches come, then you rest and eat until they pass. The training pays off quickly. Within days of accepting your role as a harbinger and training to improve your abilities you feel faster and stronger than ever before, you begin seeing better in the dark and you can control an entire horde while barely trying. You even learn the subtle differences involved in affecting the fast types and mutants minds. You train briefly with crazies but the old man teaches you only enough to fend them off mentally rather than full control “They are unpredictable, forget commands nearly instantly and make terrible subjects who require your constant attention and concentration only to have them be barely more useful as combatants than shamblers.” He told you at one point, and you felt you had to agree. Their minds with the strange mix of haziness and cracks seemed to always shift and move even while you were trying to grasp them. By the end of the second week you have fully embrace your role as the new alpha predator or the planet. Sure you were once human, but now you are more, evolved beyond what humans thought was possible. You see in nearly pitch black, you move at speeds you couldn’t have imagined and you can punch through solid doors without more than a few scratches on your skin. You can now easily control an extensive horde without much effort and direct small teams separately without difficulty. One important thing you learned though was that if another harbinger has control of an infected mind, it is extremely difficult to take it from him. The old man can still take infected from you due to his extensive practice but you never come slightly close to taking one from him. It means if another harbinger attacks you, then at least you can try to keep your own troops under command. > You more mental exercises You are preparing for the days mental exercises when the old man comes to you. “I did have some interesting exercises for you today however we have more pressing news; I have had my scouts watching the Stadium and their scouts. They have been reaching further and further east in the clear attempt to find a way through to the Eastern colony. Obviously we cannot let that happen, they know too much about the truth of harbingers and my army requires food, not to mention myself of course. You nod along; it would be good to test out your new abilities on live subjects and it’s not as if you care about the normal anymore, you are better than them. Their predator. The old man goes through his things and pulls out an old map of the bus routes through the city. “It looks like they are planning to keep to a main route.” He begins. “They have been keeping their main scouting to larger open roads which lead directly East so my assumption is that they plan to move through at speed. Now the tricky thing is, before I brought down the stadium the first time, they had some military jeeps with mounted guns, I had originally presumed that I had destroyed them all however their actions suggest otherwise. We have to assume at least 1 vehicle so I will be blockading the road here.” He points to the map indicating a section of road just after a large corner. “this way they will only see it once they round the bend and I can then block their retreat. Obviously normally I would co-ordinate everything myself, however with you here I can give you some of my forces to control, leaving me with much better fine control of the assault horde.” You look over the map for a few moments. “What will my job be then?” You ask. The Old man smiles, you will have roughly 1/3 or the army, your job will be to close the trap!” He gives you a big smile. “Their captain is an annoyingly smart man and will have backup routes and plans so you must keep your horde hidden until they pass the designated position then close the trap instantly. You can then of course join in the assault from their rear while I handle the front and flanks.” There isn’t much to argue about so again you simply nod along, you’d rather he split his forces with you 50/50 however you know he is still significantly more powerful than you mentally. You can hold him at bay for a few moments but he can still force his way into your mind whereas you can’t even dent his current defenses you know you are rapidly improving though and you hold out a few seconds longer every time. The old man rolls his map up and carefully stores it away. “Time for us to be heading out, they could leave any day now and we must be prepared for them!” > You heading out to the ambush You take a leisurely pace with the old man and bring your horde along with you, from various trips out around the city you have gathered over 50 infected including 2 mutant cats which you found during a trip to the edge of the city centre, not as strong as the dogs but frighteningly agile and fast. You’re pretty happy with your little horde however as you walk you come into range of more and more of the Old man’s ‘storage points’, buildings where he places large numbers of infected for use later. By the end of the day you can sense hundreds of infected moving around you. The Old man clearly notices you trying to sense all of them and laughs. “They took me many months to build up again, a large number were originally from the stadium hold-outs before I destroyed it, others I have scavenged where I could to re-build my forces. You have heard something similar before, the old man clearly lost his hord at some point and you don’t believe it was during the stadium battle, there is clearly something he is holding back from you. You finally arrive at a small apartment block that is less damaged than the rest in the area and the Old man takes you inside. “This place will have to do, we are only two roads South of where the stadium people should pass so we can begin preparations in the morning. You head to sleep thinking about what it would mean to wipe out the last survivors in the stadium, and probably the North-West of the city, the Old man had been thorough in hunting them all down. > You setting up time With first light you wake and check on your horde “Still right where I left you.” You think as you dress and head down into the street. You had left them all locked in a small hospital clinic you passed a couple of blocks South, you thought it was funny to pack it full of infected. You gather them together near the apartment when the Old man comes to you. “Interesting news, it seems they have left the stadium a few minutes ago!” You turn West and concentrate hard, it’s still many miles away but you get a faint sense of haziness there. “Now now, don’t strain yourself, you are not practiced enough to sense properly over that distance, it’s even at the limit of my own abilities.” He looks over your Horde. “Excellent, all gathered, well you better get over to the North side and prepare to close the trap, remember that they have a jeep so just standing in the road won’t cut it!” he heads off cheerfully and you feel a large number of infected in a nearby building leave his control, they must be your part of the horde. You take control of them and along with your own horde you head North to look for some good blockade materials. As you pass North you begin noticing a change, the closer to the Highways, the more cars there are. “Huh, they all went for the highway to escape and blocked each other in.” you mumble as you look around. “Well at least the cars might make the blockade easy enough. You begin commanding your shamblers to start pushing the cars and taking off handbrakes when you notice the bus on a side road. A large solid looking city bus, easily capable of blocking the main road by itself. “Hah, almost too easy!” you say aloud as you redirect all of your forces to the bus and maneuver it pointing south, it would have to go round a bend to get into position but any closer and they could spot you as they pass so you put a shambler into the driving seat and take careful control of its mind so you can ensure the bus gets where it needs to go. Then you wait, you carefully send your senses out West again a few times, not pushing it like before and after an few tries you begin to sense them coming closer and closer, moving at a solid pace. “They must all be jogging or running,” you suddenly panick and this they have enough vehicles for all of them but as they approach you realize that they are too spread out to be packed into a vehicle. You settle back and track their progress, you have at least an hour to watch them approach and after a few minutes begin picking out individuals in the larger haze, you then start trying to assign names to them and think back to your time with them. It occurs to you for the first time in two weeks that you didn’t really need to go through with this. You could betray the old man and help the people from the stadium; they did treat you like a friend after all. Stop concentrating on the haze; it’s causing you to think funny. You’re a predator and they are just pray Watching the haze so closely for so long must have brought these thoughts on, however they are correct, why not help them. They helped you before and you are sure they would accept you if you saved them. > You look away from the haze and attack You quickly shake off the feelings that the haze is giving you. You concentrate on your little army for a time and quickly feel the thoughts of helping recede and die. “So it’s dangerous to concentrate in the normal’s mind for too long. Well at least I learned it now.” You are committed and ready; you track the little convoys progress as they get closer and closer along the main road. You avoid concentrating closly on them but they are near enough for you to resolve the shapes of the haze into individual people without concentrating on them. Large crowd following behind a Jeep fits best, that means you plan will work as the jeep won’t have time to back out of the trap. You finally hear the old man pop trying to politely pop back into your head. He could force his way in but recently he politely ‘Taps’ on your defenses when he wishes to talk mind to mind. You let him in and immediately hear his voice in your mind. “Excellent, they are proceeding exactly as predicted. The trap is set, are you ready?” You quickly mentally go over your hordes positions and plans before answering. “All set. Ready to go the moment the last normal passes by.” You feel him vanish and assume he is turning his full attention to his horde. You watch and wait as the normal pass by below you and set your horde off on their attack. The bus starts rolling slowly but quickly picks up speed and within seconds you have to run to keep up with it as you control the shambler in the driver’s seat to ensure it stays on course. It navigates the bend in the road with only a small scrape along an abandoned car and finally come flying out onto the main road only meters behind where the rearmost guards are standing. You crash it into the buildings on the far side and check your work. The front of the bus is stuck in the now partly destroyed wall of a building and the rear reaches nearly right back to the turning, there is a gap at the back where they could escape but you immediately start moving your horde through it to block them from trying. You hear the Old man speaking and gunfire starting, the sound of a heavy machine-gun peppered with the softer cracks from rifles and know the attack had begun. You swarm your own little horde forward to join in the assault, you immediately feel several fall with bullet wounds but the jeeps gun suddenly goes silent and the hordes quickly over-run the convoy, tearing the normals apart. > You time to clean up The clean-up doesn’t take long. There are two ‘survivors’ from the assault who are taken away by the old man to be kept fresh until he was ready to kill and eat them, the rest are given to the horde along with their own dead and everything is consumed within minutes. The Old man finally makes a personal appearance and heads your way. “Excellent work, the bus was a nice touch, blocked most of the road without the fuss of lots of smaller cars!” You accept his thanks and begin organizing your horde again to count up the losses while you think about your response. “Well I lost nearly a dozen, including wounded I had the others eat. Not bad considering the number of guns they had. How did yours fair?” The Old man looks like he is concentrating for a moment “Nearly three dozen, my left flank took the brunt of the heavy gun before I silenced it.” acceptable losses though to ensure the future of the horde. It looks like he is going to head away when you call him back. “Before we head back, you said this was the beginning and you would tell me more after we were finished here. Well we are now, so what is the big secret?” You are unsure how he will react to the sudden questioning but he simply smiles. “Excellent, thinking like a proper predator and looking for the next pray, I very much approve young man!” He waves you towards the jeep as he talks. “Well firstly we needed our horde to be fed and to ensure there were no enemies behind us, which was the aim of this little raid.” He hops inside and restarts the engine. “This little jeep is a lovely surprise though and will be very useful, you see the infected are too awkward to use guns by themselves, completely lack the co-ordination and fine control to be effective. You can of course fine control a couple yourself to be able to use them, however the concentration required means that you lose most of your control on the rest of the horde. This heavy gun however might well be worth that risk, especially with the two of us.” He pauses as if deciding how to explain before waving you into the passenger seat and beginning to drive back South with both of you directing your hordes to follow. > You finally the reveal “I have an enemy” He begins “Well two actually. They are harbingers like us, well more like me, we became harbingers during the first wave of the virus, before the vaccine and before it became airborne so we have had years to practice. They joined up together and set themselves up in the very center of the city with their own hordes of powerful mutants. They quickly took control of most of the city center and set up a colony of sorts, they actually let normals live there in a reasonable number so long as they obey the rules and treat the pair like Gods in their little playground.” He slows the jeep as he directs groups into holding buildings then continues when he is satisfied they are locked in. “I found all this out right after I had destroyed the stadium and raised my strongest horde, I was overconfident and waltzed right into the city center to add powerful mutants to my ranks, the outskirts were all the normal types of dogs and cats among the shamblers etc. but I had heard that further in there were other types including mutated humans and I wanted to find those. I ran right into the ‘Lords of the New City’s’ horde as they call themselves. They indeed had a couple of the human mutants and they tore through my ranks but I had greater numbers by far and won the first battle. That’s the first I knew of their existence and they of mine. It seems that they had the larger and more powerful hordes overall but they were spread throughout the city center and I had just run into a small group. I obviously pressed the attack as I hoped to reach their little colony before the growing hordes I could sense on my flanks reached me but I was a little too late, they resized I was alone.” For the first time you see clear annoyance on the old man’s face as he speaks. “One of them launched a mental attack on me, trying to invade my mind to stop me. It was the strongest attack I had faced but I was just as strong as him and fended him off easily, sadly the second one then attacked my horde. I knew I could not defend both against two minds so as I shielded myself, they whittled my horde down and took control of large numbers of them. By the time their re-enforcements arrive I had lost over three quarters of my horde and had to flee, leaving almost all the rest behind as well to cover my escape. That’s why I need you; I’ve been training my mind every day since then in order to attack again however I knew I needed an ally, a second mind to shield the horde as I shielded us.” You nod quietly as he speaks. “So this is why he needed me and took all the time to train and test me.” You think to yourself. “Well it’s an interesting proposition but I’d want to know more before we attack” You respond. “Of course, of course, I’ve been researching them since the last battle and have all the information you need back at my little shop!” The Old man happily responds. It seems the prospect of revenge puts him into a good mood. > Back at the apartment Once back at the apartment above his shop you look over all the information the Old man had gathered. They were a pair of Harbingers now calling themselves the ‘Lords of the New City’. They ruled a colony of around a couple of hundred normal survivors, they had no fear of them trying to escape as they city center was still flooded with mutants and other infected. The old man didn’t know why they kept them all, maybe as an insurance supply of food. They control a vast horde between them with groups spread around in a large circle to completely surround the colony. “Well it’s not too much but it’s a good start, I assume you have a cunning plan?” you say. “As cunning as a fox!” He replies, grinning to himself about what must be a reference to something. “Well two options really, the first option is the obvious assault plan. We both push into the city center and grab every infected we sense to add to our horde then attack their little base right away. I know there are far too many infected in there for them to control them all so we would probably reach our limit of control as well before we fought. After that it’s a matter of shielding ourselves and the horde as we attack them and wipe them out. Once they are gone we can overrun the pesky colony to the East of the city too using the more powerful mutants. The other option is for you to go in undercover and help destroy them from the inside as I attack from outside, it’s a lot riskier for you, however if you physically attack when they are mentally attacking me you might be able to take them out before the fight even really begins.” The old man is clearly leaving the choice up to you now, he needs you after all. > You frontal attack, you aren't going to walk right into enemy territory alone. You have no plans to wander into enemy territory alone without backup so you select the frontal assault. The Old Man nods and starts putting the map away. “Excellent! We leave at dawn!” You head to bed, excited for what was to come. As dawn breaks you are both well on your way to the city centre, collecting every infected you find on the way. The Old Man mostly walks in silence but he gives you little bits of advice every now and then “We face two enemies so each attack one, send your horde attack orders first so you need to concentrate on them less later.” You always nod and add it to your information list of how to fight other harbingers, it seems though that the best tactic is simply overwhelming force. Impress upon them your superiority by outright crushing them. It takes a few hours but you finally reach the outskirts of the skyscrapers and start sensing an incredible number of infected. At first you grab every find you can sense but it quickly becomes clear that there are so many here in the towering forest of buildings that you can afford to be picky. A few hours more and each of you is trailing over a thousand infected, with a huge number of those mutants of one variety or another. The Old Man cuts in again “The Lords took every human mutant in the city they could find, moved them close to them so we can’t capture them, they are the hordes main targets.” You once more nod as you walk. It will be interesting to take a few of them once you kill your rivals, after all this was where you were meant to be wasn’t it. Leading a horde, devouring everything in your path and crushing your enemies. You glance left; you would have to kill the Old Man after too the battle. Can’t have him trying to kill you or steal the humans. Suddenly the world becomes clearer and crystalizes for you. It makes perfect sense really, you are not just an Alpha Predator, you are THE Alpha, the rest of existence is for you to rule and devour as you see fit. Anything that opposes you will be crushed and utterly destroyed without mercy. You see the Old Man suddenly look at you with suspicion, you are about to lash out at him for daring to look at you that way when he speaks “Good, you are even stronger!” A compliment, acceptable, you won’t kill him yet, you need to use him first. You simply bod to him and you both continue until you feel the army ahead of you. > You battle in red The army ahead of you seems vast, even with two thousand at your back your hordes are dwarfed by those ahead, and you can sense strange minds amongst them which must mean the human mutants. “They knew we were coming! No matter, we crush them now!” The Old man does not wait and you don’t either, arraying a horde against you is a futile insult and you will crush all those responsible, feasting on their flesh as your final victory over them. You charge your horde at theirs and lash out at the glowing green minds you see half way up a building ahead of you. You feel the old man do the same and each of you slams your anger against the enemy. They seem prepared and you hit against what seems like both of their wills joined together into one shield and it holds, but you can feel its weakness, you know it won’t hold forever. You keep pushing, ignoring everything else but attacking their minds, anything the Old Man taught you is ignored as you are better than him anyway and you will prove that shortly. You can feel their defenses weakening moment by moment, cracks forming and barriers failing, you are stronger, the rightful ruler and devourer of humanity and no weak self-proclaimed Lords can stand in your way. You feel the attack weaken suddenly and spare a shred of concentration to check on what the Old Man is doing. You immediately see his rage has grown and know why. Your forces are being decimated by the enemy, they must have been holding back some of their concentration to direct their forces against you. You let out a hiss the Old Man had lost this way before, how was he not prepared for it again, he was too weak a tool for you to use. You almost lash out at him there an then but the main threat was the Lords and their army. You quickly scan the battle to see what was happening. Your hordes had charged blindly, right into a huge block of shamblers who had soaked up all of the initial attack and taken the brunt of the damage like cannon fodder, then while your army was busy tearing shamblers and other useless infected apart the enemies mutants, including humanoids had clearly just torn right through your forces. The little extra control had turned the battle into a one sided massacre in seconds. You let out an angry roar and concentrate hard on attacking again, leaving the Old Man to try and salvage some of his infected. You lash out hard again at the two minds but without the Old man, you are no longer crushing them, they are holding you at bay, you fall further into rage and push with all your might, thinking that you are still make some headway against them when you feel something hitting your own defenses. You had neglected them and pain shoots into your mind as you quickly shore them up but a small light seems to slip in a crack and your entire mind seems to suddenly explode with pain and colours, blocking all of your senses for several seconds. You stagger back and rub your temples until your mind recovers, it was some cheap trick by them, your defenses were still intact. The old man laughs at you “You fell for such a weak trick? I trained you better than that! Now attack them while I salvage the horde you threw away!” You simply hiss at him then turn back to your attack, they wouldn’t get away with it. Again you lash out and again at the peak of your attack your mind explodes in colours and lights. This time you hear the Old Man swearing when you return and see that the battle has been totally lost, there are also several humanoid mutants moving your way at incredible speed, some small but ridiculously fast, others larger than delivery vans yet still moving at speed. You try and think of the best plan when the Old Man insults you again “Weakling, you couldn’t even distract them properly!” This time was enough and you lash out at him only to be met by his attack, you strive against each other and this time you are almost equally matched. You suddenly see him scream in pain and clutch his head, you try to push the advantage but your own head explodes in pain again and you realize too late that in your rage, you ignored the other enemies. As your senses come back to you, you see the fist of the monstrosity that reached you first. “It’s first is the size of my entire torso.” You think right before it slams into you. You feel your entire ribcage crushing inward and destroying your organs, then your back hits something hard and blood is forced out of your mouth like a fountain. But you are still alive. You try to move, to get away but as you raise your head you see several of the smaller ones coming for you. The big ones now seem more concerned with the Old Man who is screaming at them “I am the End of You! The Endmaster! You cannot stop me!” sadly he is wrong as you see them catch him and tear his upper body in half before beginning to eat him. You turn back to the ones near you, they seem small, almost weak compared to the others until one moves close faster than you even though possible for something to move, one moment it was several metres away and the next it was beside you and your arm was gone. The others then move and you barely feel it as they remove your head. > The Old man lead you into a trap, kill him now! The Old man was too weak and stupid for you to have followed all this time. You were going to wait to prove that to him but leading you into a trap was the last straw. You stop your attack on the green minds in the city, you can destroy them when they are less prepared for you. You lash out at the Old Man’s mind, feeling him instantly recoil and falter. “You see Old man! I am the Alpha here, not you! You are a weak excuse for a Harbinger, no wonder you lost!” You press the attack and feel him trying to block you but then you sense the green minds attacking him too and his defenses shatter. You barely register the surprise mixed with rage which crosses his face as you force your attack into his mind, burning it with the red flames. You watch his nose, eyes and ears spouting out blood and feel him die there and then, mind destroyed by your attack. You laugh aloud in triumph. “At least you will make a fitting meal for me!” You announce as you grab his body. In your rage you had forgotten about your real enemy and they now attack you. Pressing on your mind and attempting to destroy it the way you did the Old Man’s. You lash out in return and they back off for a moment but you can already feel the difference in power. You know you could beat one of them but the two could hold you off until their horde reached you. You run to the Jeep and throw the Old Man’s body inside. The attack has returned and you find that your defense feels a lot weaker than your attack. When you lash out with your mind it feels like spears of flame, able to destroy anything but flames used for a defense feel less substantial and you know they won’t hold out for too long. You floor the gas pedal and start speeding away from the city Centre, back to the North West, You even know the perfect place to make your new base, the old Stadium is empty and defensible after all. As you get further away the attacks weaken then stop. You expect to feel your horde being stripped away but it seems like they don’t need too and you simply lose control as the distance gets too far. “I even added to their defenses now” you growl to yourself as you reach more familiar streets. > The Empty Stadium You reach the stadium as the fuel begins to run dry, there are two spare cans on the sides full of gas though so you aren’t worried and park it at the back where you find a cover big enough to hide it. Time to start building up your empire. It will take time but you are stronger than the Old Man was and you will eventually crush the City Minds and their little haven. The Old Man had the nerve to call himself the EndMaster, as if he could end the world. Well that is your title now and you will become the ruler of the City before destroying the colony to the East. ************************************************ You have found the current end to the Evil Path, this will be extended into a larger and more complete path at a later date, I simply do not have the time to do it before the competition deadline!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The army ahead of you seems vast, even with two thousand at your back your hordes are dwarfed by those ahead, and you can sense strange minds amongst them which must mean the human mutants. “They knew we were coming! No matter, we crush them now!” The Old man does not wait and you don’t either, arraying a horde against you is a futile insult and you will crush all those responsible, feasting on their flesh as your final victory over them. You charge your horde at theirs and lash out at the glowing green minds you see half way up a building ahead of you. You feel the old man do the same and each of you slams your anger against the enemy. They seem prepared and you hit against what seems like both of their wills joined together into one shield and it holds, but you can feel its weakness, you know it won’t hold forever. You keep pushing, ignoring everything else but attacking their minds, anything the Old Man taught you is ignored as you are better than him anyway and you will prove that shortly. You can feel their defenses weakening moment by moment, cracks forming and barriers failing, you are stronger, the rightful ruler and devourer of humanity and no weak self-proclaimed Lords can stand in your way. You feel the attack weaken suddenly and spare a shred of concentration to check on what the Old Man is doing. You immediately see his rage has grown and know why. Your forces are being decimated by the enemy, they must have been holding back some of their concentration to direct their forces against you. You let out a hiss the Old Man had lost this way before, how was he not prepared for it again, he was too weak a tool for you to use. You almost lash out at him there an then but the main threat was the Lords and their army. You quickly scan the battle to see what was happening. Your hordes had charged blindly, right into a huge block of shamblers who had soaked up all of the initial attack and taken the brunt of the damage like cannon fodder, then while your army was busy tearing shamblers and other useless infected apart the enemies mutants, including humanoids had clearly just torn right through your forces. The little extra control had turned the battle into a one sided massacre in seconds. You let out an angry roar and concentrate hard on attacking again, leaving the Old Man to try and salvage some of his infected. You lash out hard again at the two minds but without the Old man, you are no longer crushing them, they are holding you at bay, you fall further into rage and push with all your might, thinking that you are still make some headway against them when you feel something hitting your own defenses. You had neglected them and pain shoots into your mind as you quickly shore them up but a small light seems to slip in a crack and your entire mind seems to suddenly explode with pain and colours, blocking all of your senses for several seconds. You stagger back and rub your temples until your mind recovers, it was some cheap trick by them, your defenses were still intact. The old man laughs at you “You fell for such a weak trick? I trained you better than that! Now attack them while I salvage the horde you threw away!” You simply hiss at him then turn back to your attack, they wouldn’t get away with it. Again you lash out and again at the peak of your attack your mind explodes in colours and lights. This time you hear the Old Man swearing when you return and see that the battle has been totally lost, there are also several humanoid mutants moving your way at incredible speed, some small but ridiculously fast, others larger than delivery vans yet still moving at speed. You try and think of the best plan when the Old Man insults you again “Weakling, you couldn’t even distract them properly!” This time was enough and you lash out at him only to be met by his attack, you strive against each other and this time you are almost equally matched. You suddenly see him scream in pain and clutch his head, you try to push the advantage but your own head explodes in pain again and you realize too late that in your rage, you ignored the other enemies. As your senses come back to you, you see the fist of the monstrosity that reached you first. “It’s first is the size of my entire torso.” You think right before it slams into you. You feel your entire ribcage crushing inward and destroying your organs, then your back hits something hard and blood is forced out of your mouth like a fountain. But you are still alive. You try to move, to get away but as you raise your head you see several of the smaller ones coming for you. The big ones now seem more concerned with the Old Man who is screaming at them “I am the End of You! The Endmaster! You cannot stop me!” sadly he is wrong as you see them catch him and tear his upper body in half before beginning to eat him. You turn back to the ones near you, they seem small, almost weak compared to the others until one moves close faster than you even though possible for something to move, one moment it was several metres away and the next it was beside you and your arm was gone. The others then move and you barely feel it as they remove your head. > You lash out at the city minds, crush them before their horde does any more damage You let out an angry roar and concentrate hard on attacking again, leaving the Old Man to try and salvage some of his infected. You lash out hard again at the two minds but without the Old man, you are no longer crushing them, they are holding you at bay, you fall further into rage and push with all your might, thinking that you are still make some headway against them when you feel something hitting your own defenses. You had neglected them and pain shoots into your mind as you quickly shore them up but a small light seems to slip in a crack and your entire mind seems to suddenly explode with pain and colours, blocking all of your senses for several seconds. You stagger back and rub your temples until your mind recovers, it was some cheap trick by them, your defenses were still intact. The old man laughs at you “You fell for such a weak trick? I trained you better than that! Now attack them while I salvage the horde you threw away!” You simply hiss at him then turn back to your attack, they wouldn’t get away with it. Again you lash out and again at the peak of your attack your mind explodes in colours and lights. This time you hear the Old Man swearing when you return and see that the battle has been totally lost, there are also several humanoid mutants moving your way at incredible speed, some small but ridiculously fast, others larger than delivery vans yet still moving at speed. You try and think of the best plan when the Old Man insults you again “Weakling, you couldn’t even distract them properly!” This time was enough and you lash out at him only to be met by his attack, you strive against each other and this time you are almost equally matched. You suddenly see him scream in pain and clutch his head, you try to push the advantage but your own head explodes in pain again and you realize too late that in your rage, you ignored the other enemies. As your senses come back to you, you see the fist of the monstrosity that reached you first. “It’s first is the size of my entire torso.” You think right before it slams into you. You feel your entire ribcage crushing inward and destroying your organs, then your back hits something hard and blood is forced out of your mouth like a fountain. But you are still alive. You try to move, to get away but as you raise your head you see several of the smaller ones coming for you. The big ones now seem more concerned with the Old Man who is screaming at them “I am the End of You! The Endmaster! You cannot stop me!” sadly he is wrong as you see them catch him and tear his upper body in half before beginning to eat him. You turn back to the ones near you, they seem small, almost weak compared to the others until one moves close faster than you even though possible for something to move, one moment it was several metres away and the next it was beside you and your arm was gone. The others then move and you barely feel it as they remove your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Once back at the apartment above his shop you look over all the information the Old man had gathered. They were a pair of Harbingers now calling themselves the ‘Lords of the New City’. They ruled a colony of around a couple of hundred normal survivors, they had no fear of them trying to escape as they city center was still flooded with mutants and other infected. The old man didn’t know why they kept them all, maybe as an insurance supply of food. They control a vast horde between them with groups spread around in a large circle to completely surround the colony. “Well it’s not too much but it’s a good start, I assume you have a cunning plan?” you say. “As cunning as a fox!” He replies, grinning to himself about what must be a reference to something. “Well two options really, the first option is the obvious assault plan. We both push into the city center and grab every infected we sense to add to our horde then attack their little base right away. I know there are far too many infected in there for them to control them all so we would probably reach our limit of control as well before we fought. After that it’s a matter of shielding ourselves and the horde as we attack them and wipe them out. Once they are gone we can overrun the pesky colony to the East of the city too using the more powerful mutants. The other option is for you to go in undercover and help destroy them from the inside as I attack from outside, it’s a lot riskier for you, however if you physically attack when they are mentally attacking me you might be able to take them out before the fight even really begins.” The old man is clearly leaving the choice up to you now, he needs you after all. > You undercover, get inside and you can take out the enemy without risking your horde, more infected left alive means more ready to attack the Eastern colony after. “I like the undercover plan, they won’t know me so I can get inside and take them out personally as soon as you appear and take their attention.” You say. The Old man simply nods and starts putting the map away carefully. “Then we leave in the morning! I will escort you closer but once we near the centre you will be on your own. Remember to act nice around them, can’t have them attacking you before you get inside!” You nod back and snack on a bit of what you think must be a human bicep muscle before getting a couple of hour of rest. As the mornings first light arrives you grab a few handfuls of flesh and you both set out in the jeep again, this time towards the city centre. It’s not long before you cover a good distance, riding is clearly faster than walking and before you know it you are walking away from the Jeep towards the city centre alone, the Old man heading off into a building to set himself up for a few days. “Time to get things going then!” you think to yourself as you begin sensing infected ahead of you, already some mutants mixed in with the normal shamblers and fast types. > You start taking them over, it's always best to move with your own little horde for protection You aren’t going to march into enemy territory undefended so you quickly grab control of any infected you sense until it finally turns to lunchtime and you have over a hundred infected following around you. “Old man was right; I already have a horde this big after only a few hours, this really is the jackpot for forming an army.” You keep going but stop building your horde at around 150, You could control more but you realize that it is somewhat pointless as there are simply so many around you. Shamblers in every building practically, and since every building around is a huge multistory, that makes for a lot of infected. You carry on forward, only stopping briefly to eat the rest of the flesh you had brought with you and by dinner time you are keeping yourself occupied by swapping out horde menders, dropping the shamblers and taking more mutants. A couple feel slightly different when you force your control over them but they act exactly the same once you take their minds so you keep them too. Finally as night approaches you sense a very large number of infected ahead who aren’t moving and when you reach out you immediately realize that they are under someone else’s control. You are still deciding how to proceed against what must be over 1000 mutants when you feel the pressure hit your mind. You force up your defense against the attack like you had practiced with the old man, envisioning slabs of steel slammed up against the pressure of the assault but most of what he showed was how to attack so you know you won’t hold out long. You do know how to talk though, it took several days to learn but the Old Man had taught you a very useful trick and you send out a small thread of thought through your defenses and you feel the attack lessen very slightly and a voice finally enters you mind through it. “This is unexpected, you wish to talk this time? Last time you attacked us you seemed more like the rage driven egotist than the chatty type.” The voice says. You quickly respond, having already thought through several possible conversations. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘this time’ but I have never met you before, never mind attacked you.” You immediately feel surprise coming from the other mind. “You are actually telling the truth, you aren’t the one who attacked us before, you shared his colouring and came from the west so we had assumed it was him coming again. But in that case why are you entering our domain with an army?” You respond carefully “I had heard there were others like me here, I didn’t intend to attack you with my horde, and I just never like to travel alone for safety reasons.” There is silence for a time before an answer comes. “You may pass but your horde cannot, you must release them then pass through alone or there will be no entry.” You think about this for a moment > You who are they to order you about, they have their horde for protection and you have yours. Who are they to tell you where you can take you own horde? You didn’t train all this time with the Old Man just to be bossed about. “I’m coming in but I will be bringing my horde for safety, I can’t trust you won’t attack the moment I release them.” You say as you begin forward again towards the gap that had formed in the army ahead. “I’m not going to bow to their wishes for everything; I’m the Alpha predator as much as them and they will learn that soon.” You get no response from the mind in the city and you let the link drop. “Good, they know not to try and boss me around” you think as you walk. Sadly as you reach the army ahead they move as one large unit to attack your horde from the front and sides simultaneously. You are about to order your troops to fight back when your mind also comes under attack again and you are forced to concentrate on defense again while your troops are helplessly torn to pieces. You know it’s only been seconds but the attack feels like it’s been going on for hours when you feel the enemy horde change a little and suddenly there are two minds crushing into yours with almost as much force as the Old Man used to use on you. One of them you might hold off but two of them quickly crush your defenses and sparks of pain shoot through your mind as the last defense falls. The pain intensifies for a moment, past what you can bear so you are almost happy when it suddenly ends and blackness overwhelms you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t going to march into enemy territory undefended so you quickly grab control of any infected you sense until it finally turns to lunchtime and you have over a hundred infected following around you. “Old man was right; I already have a horde this big after only a few hours, this really is the jackpot for forming an army.” You keep going but stop building your horde at around 150, You could control more but you realize that it is somewhat pointless as there are simply so many around you. Shamblers in every building practically, and since every building around is a huge multistory, that makes for a lot of infected. You carry on forward, only stopping briefly to eat the rest of the flesh you had brought with you and by dinner time you are keeping yourself occupied by swapping out horde menders, dropping the shamblers and taking more mutants. A couple feel slightly different when you force your control over them but they act exactly the same once you take their minds so you keep them too. Finally as night approaches you sense a very large number of infected ahead who aren’t moving and when you reach out you immediately realize that they are under someone else’s control. You are still deciding how to proceed against what must be over 1000 mutants when you feel the pressure hit your mind. You force up your defense against the attack like you had practiced with the old man, envisioning slabs of steel slammed up against the pressure of the assault but most of what he showed was how to attack so you know you won’t hold out long. You do know how to talk though, it took several days to learn but the Old Man had taught you a very useful trick and you send out a small thread of thought through your defenses and you feel the attack lessen very slightly and a voice finally enters you mind through it. “This is unexpected, you wish to talk this time? Last time you attacked us you seemed more like the rage driven egotist than the chatty type.” The voice says. You quickly respond, having already thought through several possible conversations. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘this time’ but I have never met you before, never mind attacked you.” You immediately feel surprise coming from the other mind. “You are actually telling the truth, you aren’t the one who attacked us before, you shared his colouring and came from the west so we had assumed it was him coming again. But in that case why are you entering our domain with an army?” You respond carefully “I had heard there were others like me here, I didn’t intend to attack you with my horde, and I just never like to travel alone for safety reasons.” There is silence for a time before an answer comes. “You may pass but your horde cannot, you must release them then pass through alone or there will be no entry.” You think about this for a moment > You let them all go and head in alone, no point making them mad now, you're playing the long game You head further into the city centre alone and the hordes part for you, you can feel them dispersing to either side around you. “The Old Man said they keep them evenly spaced out in a ring, does this mean they knew I was coming?” You think as you walk. Finally you see the two minds of the harbingers ahead of you without having to stretch your senses out, and you also see the minds of what seems like over 300 humans with them, the very thought makes you hungry. As you get closer you see another link reaching out for you and as before you join in to let them converse with you. “You are only about an hour’s gentle walk away but you will need to circle a little to your left, that’s North, to get inside, only one entrance you see and everything is guarded to prevent any problems in our little haven.” You carefully force your hunger and feelings down, if you’ve been getting snippits of theirs then they might get some of yours and that might not be good. “Of course, it’s getting dark but that isn’t really an issue for our kind, I’ll walk faster though so I don’t make you wait.” There is a pause and you are about to drop the link when you hear one more question “You came from the West where our enemy lurked, Have you have any interaction with him, he has the feel of an old man, a very angry one at that.” You pause for a moment; you didn’t expect this question so bluntly so you have to choose your words carefully. > You tell some of the truth, that you encountered someone that might match that description but no details, if they push cover up the involvement. The best tactic is a small truth to back up the lie right? Well, obviously it would be to slaughter then and feast on their flesh but for now you have to play nice. “I did encounter someone like that, they indeed seemed very angry. Coming here and meeting you seemed like the better option when compared to staying there with a clearly hostile harbinger.” There is a slight pause before the next question “And he didn’t attack you, no offence but I don’t see you being alive if he did.” You tut to yourself, got to cover a little more “Well I think he was trying to recruit me, I think he would have attacked once he realized I wasn’t taking him up on the offer but I was too far away already.” This time the reply comes right away “Oh how interesting, I presume he wanted your help in attacking us, he seems like the angry vengeful type and we did send him away in disgrace barely holding onto his life afterall. So you weren’t tempted to join him?” > You enough is enough. They aren't buying the half-truths as the whole story so Lie outright about it "Not at all, I got away as fast as I could to come here!' You emphasize, you can't let them know the truth There is a longer pause than before and you get a little nervous when you hear the voice again. “Ok just up ahead you’ll see the underground entrance on your right? Good, that’s the entrance you’ll need to take, we are quite nicely set up in an old arena here, if was half underground before so makes it very defensible as you can imagine!” The tone seems jovial and the tunnel leads towards the minds you sense so you head inside. As you walk through the tunnel which has obviously had some work done to it with reinforcements and walls removed or built you sense the humans all gathering up ahead. “Is something going on up there?” You ask down the link and immediately get the response “Of course! It’s not every day they get to see a new harbinger so this is somewhat of an event! Everyone has gathers for it. Some of the minds to the East don’t agree with our stance on the matter which is why we separated but we see that we are superior to humans and should be treated as such so we rule here like Gods in a way, when we say there is an event, EVERYONE attends, not that they’d want to miss this anyway.” You heartily agree with the statement. You ARE better than humans, they are your prey after all, you can see their position though. Keeping them like pets to obey and serve you before eating them wouldn’t be so bad either. You see some light up ahead and walk out into what looks like the centre of an arena with 10 foot walls of concrete topped with another 10 feet of metal and reinforced glass. The humans are all on the other side of the glass cheering down at you like fans watching a concert. Something clearly isn’t right though. You sense the minds above you and looking up you see two cloaked figures sitting on a platform that extended out from the wall over the tiered row s of seats giving them the best view both around the room and down into the pit. “Welcome to the City Arena! Rules by the Lords of the New City, this is the place where your post-apocalyptic fantasies can become a reality, for the right price!” You now know that something is definitely wrong as a massive battered steel sheet slams down behind you, trapping you in the arena. Even with your enhanced strength you aren’t sure you could budge it without a lot of time and something to level with. The announcement continues though, the speakers voice amplified through a speaker system hanging high above of the roof. “Today we have a very rare treat for you, in the ring is a harbinger folks! That’s right, like our very own Lords of the city he has superhuman abilities and can control infected, however this one tried to lie to the Lords and we know how they take that don’t we!” The crowd responds with even more cheers. > You what you get for lying You aren’t going to stand for this, being put on display like some animal while the humans throw money around and a large board has odds displayed! Odds displayed.. You look around as see another large metal sheet across the way beginning to rise. “That’s right folks, he might be a lot weaker than our lords but he is still a big challenge so we are sending in a big challenger! It’s Nate the Sentinel!” You lash out at the Lords above you but their defenses are solidly in place, you try the human minds, you are certain you can affect them but it seems that the two harbingers are protecting them too. The door does not wait for your tests though and before you have time to try the walls you see a huge beast lumber through. Like a man but grotesquely mutated into something that looked more like an ogre from the old myths than a human anymore. You can easily beat any mutant you have come across barehanded, even the large dog types but as you size this thing you realize that it must be 12 feet tall and covered in muscles, this won’t be an easy fight. The beast comes charging at you and you barely dodge in time as it moves faster than anything that size should be able to move. You don’t have many options left > You concentrate on its mind, if you get control of that then you can use it to let you escape. You lash out at Nate’s mind but find it protected, you push with everything you can to force your way in and register that its stopped moving at least while your try. The defense is slippery though, every time you think you have forced a way in, you find it there again. You finally think you have it when you feel a sudden spike against your own mind. Your defenses hold but you are stunned for a second. Your senses return just in time to register that your right arm and ribcage is crushed and you are flying at a tremendous speed directly at the wall. You impact with a sickeningly hard crunch and feel more ribs breaking. “Oh dear me folks, the Lords just indicated to me that instead of fighting Nate, the idiot tried to attack his mind and steal him from them! That left him wide open for Nate’s punch! Give the man a hand though, I never seem anything that didn’t turn into jelly at one of those hits never mind still be moving!” You cough up blood and stagger to your feet. Just in time for Nate to reach you again. You even see the punch coming but can’t get out of the way in time and take it full to the chest. You get slammed back into the wall and know your done for, your organs are jelly and your blood is pooling at your feet. “And it’s over folks, even if he is still breathing, he isn’t moving! That’s a win in two punches for Nate the sentinel, always a crowd favorite even if his opponent was weak. You want to protest and tell them you weren’t weak when just register being lifted in the air. “Oh and Nate is hungry folks!” you hear right before the crunch.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t going to stand for this, being put on display like some animal while the humans throw money around and a large board has odds displayed! Odds displayed.. You look around as see another large metal sheet across the way beginning to rise. “That’s right folks, he might be a lot weaker than our lords but he is still a big challenge so we are sending in a big challenger! It’s Nate the Sentinel!” You lash out at the Lords above you but their defenses are solidly in place, you try the human minds, you are certain you can affect them but it seems that the two harbingers are protecting them too. The door does not wait for your tests though and before you have time to try the walls you see a huge beast lumber through. Like a man but grotesquely mutated into something that looked more like an ogre from the old myths than a human anymore. You can easily beat any mutant you have come across barehanded, even the large dog types but as you size this thing you realize that it must be 12 feet tall and covered in muscles, this won’t be an easy fight. The beast comes charging at you and you barely dodge in time as it moves faster than anything that size should be able to move. You don’t have many options left > You concentrate on the two 'Lords' above you, hit their minds hard enough and you could get away or even defeat them You mentally lash out at the Lords above you again and once more find their defenses holding you at bay. You concentrate on just one of them and try to force you way in, putting all your anger and rage into the attack. You feel his defenses buckling under the pressure but then you find the problem with your plan. While you concentrated on your attack you stopped moving. Nate the Sentinel did not stop moving. You feel the impact and turn back to your normal senses just in time to register that your right arm and ribcage is crushed and you are flying at a tremendous speed directly at the wall. You impact with a sickeningly hard crunch and feel more ribs breaking. “Oh dear me folks, the Lords just indicated to me that instead of fighting Nate, the idiot tried to attack our rulers! That left him wide open for Nate’s punch! Give the man a hand though, I never seem anything that didn’t turn into jelly at one of those hits never mind still be moving!” You cough up blood and stagger to your feet. Just in time for Nate to reach you again. You even see the punch coming but can’t get out of the way in time and take it full to the chest. You get slammed back into the wall and know your done for, your organs are jelly and your blood is pooling at your feet. “And it’s over folks, even if he is still breathing, he isn’t moving! That’s a win in two punches for Nate the sentinel, always a crowd favorite even if his opponent was weak. You want to protest and tell them you weren’t weak when just register being lifted in the air. “Oh and Nate is hungry folks!” you hear right before the crunch.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren’t going to stand for this, being put on display like some animal while the humans throw money around and a large board has odds displayed! Odds displayed.. You look around as see another large metal sheet across the way beginning to rise. “That’s right folks, he might be a lot weaker than our lords but he is still a big challenge so we are sending in a big challenger! It’s Nate the Sentinel!” You lash out at the Lords above you but their defenses are solidly in place, you try the human minds, you are certain you can affect them but it seems that the two harbingers are protecting them too. The door does not wait for your tests though and before you have time to try the walls you see a huge beast lumber through. Like a man but grotesquely mutated into something that looked more like an ogre from the old myths than a human anymore. You can easily beat any mutant you have come across barehanded, even the large dog types but as you size this thing you realize that it must be 12 feet tall and covered in muscles, this won’t be an easy fight. The beast comes charging at you and you barely dodge in time as it moves faster than anything that size should be able to move. You don’t have many options left > You concentrate on the combat, it's based off a human so it has human weaknesses, hit it's eyes, nose and tendons, then see if it can fight you. You can’t beat two of them mentally so you will have to concentrate on the fight in front of you for now. Nate is huge and clearly going to be stronger than you but you might have speed and intelligence on your side. He charges you at amazing speed and swings a punch but you are prepared, you dodge it at the last second and land a punch of your on on its side as you move around it. You had punched right through metal car doors before and know it must have hurt the thing when it let out a roar and span wildly at you. You stayed being careful though, letting it attack and only hitting on counters. Finally you see your chance and as it lunged too far you jump its punch and hit it right in the eye, feeling it pop under the impact. You watch it stagger back and follow up with a running jump to hit the other eye before it recovers, feeling it pop too. “Let’s see you fight blind!” you sneer at the monster as it clutches its face and staggers back into the wall, making the whole thing shake. “Oh my! What a turn of events!” You hear blaring out. “The new entry has managed not only to avoid Nate’s attacks, but he blinded him folks! Let’s see those odd rolling!” You see a frenzy of activity as the humans obviously rush to place their bets on you as is only right. You are the Alpha here, not their ‘Lords’ or this monster and you would show all of them soon enough. You start towards Nate at a leisurely pace, it should be easy to finish off now at least. Suddenly its hands drop and it looks at you. “Oh dear folks, the new guy waited too long and Nate grew his eyes back! He’s going to be mad now!” You swear as the Nate charges you, faster and clearly angrier than before, he clips you with one punch and you are sent spinning away feeling several ribs shatter into pieces. “If that was a direct hit I’d be a gonner.” You think as he charges again but this time you roll under the punch and tear out his Achilles as you pass. You head the satisfying crunch as Nate smashed into the wall having lost the use of one foot and you can see he is stunned so you press the advantage and attack again, blinding it again and punching right through its flesh several times until it starts wheezing and looms like it might be a while before getting up. “And the fight is over folks! The new guy has defeated the crowd favorite, Nate the Sentinel!” You sense the monsters movements changing but instead of coming after you it slinks back against a wall near the door it came in “Everyone give a hand for our newest entrant!” you hear as the crowd goes wild. > You soak up the arenas glory You get caught up in the praise for a second until you see the door begin to move, this might be your chance to escape so you race towards it as it opens only to see several humanoids blocking your way. You skid to a halt a few feet short as the announcer comes back on. “Oh dear me folks, he tried to make a break for it but He found Madglee and the 3J’s blocking his escape, That’s right folks, he faced one sentinel and now he faces two of them!” He drops his tone to a fake stage whisper “The three J’s are really three people but they share one mind so they count as one right?” The crowd goes wild as the four enter and you quickly see three of them look similar to humans, just stretched out a little and identical to each other. The fourth one looked like a cross between them and the monster from before, it also looked semi-intelligent which worried you more. You back off as Nate slipped out the back of the area, already clearly healing its wounds and the four new entries move out towards you. You try and plan some tactics but suddenly they are all moving to attack. You instantly see that the 3J’s are faster than you and they seem to dodge attacks they can’t see, while Madglee circles you, not attacking yet. You start taking hit after hit, not hard but they are adding up and you feel bones breaking and bruises forming. You’ve had enough of them and suddenly charge at one, lashing out physically and mentally at the fast opponents who were dodging around you and keeping you from moving. You realize it was the wrong choice when suddenly the back of your head explodes in pain and you fly hard into the wall ahead of you. “Oh dear me folks, the 3 J’s kept him locked town tight and Madglee simply waited for the right moment to end things instantly!” You barely have time to pick yourself up when the last blows fall.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The best tactic is a small truth to back up the lie right? Well, obviously it would be to slaughter then and feast on their flesh but for now you have to play nice. “I did encounter someone like that, they indeed seemed very angry. Coming here and meeting you seemed like the better option when compared to staying there with a clearly hostile harbinger.” There is a slight pause before the next question “And he didn’t attack you, no offence but I don’t see you being alive if he did.” You tut to yourself, got to cover a little more “Well I think he was trying to recruit me, I think he would have attacked once he realized I wasn’t taking him up on the offer but I was too far away already.” This time the reply comes right away “Oh how interesting, I presume he wanted your help in attacking us, he seems like the angry vengeful type and we did send him away in disgrace barely holding onto his life afterall. So you weren’t tempted to join him?” > You enough is enough. They aren't buying the half-truths as the whole story sell out the Old man, he'd be the first to sell you out if it benefited him. These guys are clearly too suspicious to buy the lies. The Old Man would also sell you out in a second if it benefited him, so why not sell him out first and join the stronger side? “Ok to be very honest, he was stronger than me, by a lot. I only found my abilities a couple of months back and he recruited me when I didn’t really have a chance of fighting him. I did train with him for a while as he wanted me to help him and I got a lot stronger. Seems he wanted me to help him beat you guys as he didn’t want to risk the fight alone. I learned what I could from him and now would much rather join you guys as he is a bit crazy and would most likely kill me the moment you were defeated anyway.” There is silence for a time before an answer finally comes. “Well that is very interesting, and actually the truth which we didn’t initially expect. We shall let you join us, do understand though that you will still be under some suspicion for a time.” You nod, that’s pretty much what you expected “Sounds about what I expected so I’ll accept those terms.” You say as you walk closer. A different voice joins in the conversation now “As you get closer you will see a large underground entrance, then one building past that on the right you will see a metal door set back inside an entrance way, that’s the way you need to take in. If you see anything strange, do not attack it, they are semi-autonomous but still under our control and will not attack unless provoked.” You shrug to yourself “not as if anything could really surprise me anymore” you think as you see the underground entrance and head one building past it. You see what looks like a normal skyscraper lobby and almost wonder if you had gone too far when you see what looks more like a huge metal slab than a door part way into a side corridor. “Huge defensive door but tucked where people walking by won’t easily see it, smart.” As you get closer it swings open to reveal a huge monstrosity holding it. The roof here must be over 10 feet high and the thing is still hunched against the ceiling to be able to fit and its bulk blocks most of the corridors width, like a human mutated to be the biggest, most muscular abomination you could imagine. “Gorram-it, I take it back, I can still be surprised, you’re like some monster from mythology aren’t you?” You mutter as you decide about what to do. Surprisingly the thing growls at you in response. “Oh, and you seem to understand me, that’s a bit worrying too.” You say. You carefully edge past the thing as it makes no move to attack and you notice that the door is several inches thick of metal, and that the thing easily pulls it shut behind you even though it’s not on hinges. “Seems those muscles aren’t for show either, I can see why I wouldn’t want to pick a fight with you” you tell the monster which seems to take it as a compliment and grins at you, which is a truly horrifying sight. > You welcome to the thunderdone! You head down the corridor ahead and past several smaller doors, opened by other strange mutated humans. You make note that the walls and ceiling here is re-enforced, probably after knocking down walls to make the tunnel. You start hearing cheering up ahead as you come into a small lobby area. “Nearly there!” you hear the first voice saying “There are doors and corridors off this room but you need the blue one marked ‘Balcony’.” Then the link drops. You have some suspicions now about a trap, but why let you pass all the abominations which could probably kill you in the tight confines of the corridor only to try and kill you now? You head through the arch and up the stairs and walk right out into what looks like an old circular arena, lit from above with a large pit in the middle, walled by concrete topped with glass and steel. Crowds of humans line the glass, looking down and cheering like they are at a concert. “Welcome to the New City Arena!” you hear thundering above you, and looking up you see the suspended PA system as the announcer continues “The Lords have told me that we have a special guest here today, as so we are putting on a special show for you all!” place your bets and give a cheer for your competitors!” The crowd goes wild as you see giant metal doors in the pit opening. You catch sight of a section sticking out of the balcony and immediately recognize the minds of the two cloaked figures sitting on it as the harbingers. One of them waves you over and you move through the crowd until you reach their little dais, sticking out over the crowd below. There are now humans near them so you walk the last few feet quickly and find an empty seat for you beside them. “Welcome to our little community!” The nearest one begins “This is obviously our arena where we get our entertainment. Obviously living areas and all that are down other tunnels and in other buildings but we thought we would greet you in proper fashion today!” He indicates the pit and you see a pack of mutant dogs walk out into the large open space, on the other side you see a much large group of infected, shamblers and fast types enter. The Harbinger continues “As you see, we have brought back the coliseum, we have infected fight for our entertainment, and occasionally humans who break the laws here, a small group tried to rebell against us a while back, we gave them weapons and sent them in against Nate, who you met at the front door, he is one of our sentinels. It turned Nate into a crowd favorite and he ensured that the peace was kept, no-one has tried real insubordination since then!” You think for a moment before replying as you watch the infected standing still as the humans shout to make bets based off numbers displayed on a big screen on one wall “But the humans, don’t you eat them? That’s how we get stronger and they are simply prey.” You can almost feel the disapproval of the men beside you and you sense new colour swirling in the glow of their minds “Not at all, it seems the Harbinger of the West has been lying to you. Eating humans has no effect on your abilities at all. Only your mind and training does. You got stronger as you believed in what he was saying and because you trained. But it is also why we nearly killed you on sight. Your decision taints your mind and we can see it.” You don’t really know what to respond to this. But your overwhelming urge is to lash out, you were honest but now they were lying to you? Were they simply trying to indoctrinate you to use you like the old man? You follow your urge, you know they are lying as you ate humans and got stronger, in just a few weeks of eating humans and training you became superhuman yourself. Attack physically and mentally, once they are dead, their community and the humans will be your personal living food locker. You force your urges back down, the longer you spent with the Old Man and the more humans you ate, the more violent and volatile you became however they don’t really have a reason to lie to you right now. Find out what they are saying then decide the truth for yourself. > You follow the urge Tainted? You are not tainted by anything, you are the alpha predator of the weak humans below you and you will prove it by killing their ‘Lords’ in front of them and feasting on their flesh. Once you are in charge the games can continue but you will eat the humans as you watch. You lash out at them and make a lunge towards them at incredible speed but you feel both attacks suddenly blocked. The two men in cloaks moved just as fast as you and they are now pinning your arms in grips you can’t break. “You see, I told you we can’t trust a red, once they go that way they are ruled by the infection and lose all reason.” One says to the other “Sadly in this case you were right, I thought since his colour had shades and wasn’t set yet that he could still chance but I guess not.” “Don’t talk over me!” You shout at them, you are about to continue and tell them of what you will do to get your revenge when you feel something slamming into your mind and you have to use all your concentration to fend it off. You only hold for a second though as a second attack shatters your defense and you feel pressure inside your mind. Suddenly it vanishes and you don’t feel their minds anymore. “There, I left all your abilities and mind intact but you lost all of your… mental prowess shall we say.” One of them say cheerily to you “An impressive feat if I say so myself, mental brain surgery! Literally!” he chuckles at his own joke. You are about to say something when you feel yourself suddenly thrown out over the crowd and fall right into the centre of the pit. You try and lash out at them but find all of your mental senses gone; you can only feel what you did when you were a normal human. You panic for a moment but the announcer comes back on the PA system. “That’s right folks, our special event is that our Lords have captured an evil harbinger and stripped him of his mental powers! He is still incredibly strong and fast, but let’s see how he does against our hordes! The winners are the infected who deliver the killing blow, will it be mutants of walkers!” You looks up just in time to see all of the infected and mutants rush at you. You fight well, you still have your speed and strength and kill a large number of them but the small wounds add up. You lose your left arm first to a large mutant dog, you killed it but it had already severed the flesh. Your leg is broken by a shamber latching onto it while a fast type slammed into you. After that it goes quickly. It ends as a mutant tears your windpipe out, the last thing you hear is the crowd cheering your death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head down the corridor ahead and past several smaller doors, opened by other strange mutated humans. You make note that the walls and ceiling here is re-enforced, probably after knocking down walls to make the tunnel. You start hearing cheering up ahead as you come into a small lobby area. “Nearly there!” you hear the first voice saying “There are doors and corridors off this room but you need the blue one marked ‘Balcony’.” Then the link drops. You have some suspicions now about a trap, but why let you pass all the abominations which could probably kill you in the tight confines of the corridor only to try and kill you now? You head through the arch and up the stairs and walk right out into what looks like an old circular arena, lit from above with a large pit in the middle, walled by concrete topped with glass and steel. Crowds of humans line the glass, looking down and cheering like they are at a concert. “Welcome to the New City Arena!” you hear thundering above you, and looking up you see the suspended PA system as the announcer continues “The Lords have told me that we have a special guest here today, as so we are putting on a special show for you all!” place your bets and give a cheer for your competitors!” The crowd goes wild as you see giant metal doors in the pit opening. You catch sight of a section sticking out of the balcony and immediately recognize the minds of the two cloaked figures sitting on it as the harbingers. One of them waves you over and you move through the crowd until you reach their little dais, sticking out over the crowd below. There are now humans near them so you walk the last few feet quickly and find an empty seat for you beside them. “Welcome to our little community!” The nearest one begins “This is obviously our arena where we get our entertainment. Obviously living areas and all that are down other tunnels and in other buildings but we thought we would greet you in proper fashion today!” He indicates the pit and you see a pack of mutant dogs walk out into the large open space, on the other side you see a much large group of infected, shamblers and fast types enter. The Harbinger continues “As you see, we have brought back the coliseum, we have infected fight for our entertainment, and occasionally humans who break the laws here, a small group tried to rebell against us a while back, we gave them weapons and sent them in against Nate, who you met at the front door, he is one of our sentinels. It turned Nate into a crowd favorite and he ensured that the peace was kept, no-one has tried real insubordination since then!” You think for a moment before replying as you watch the infected standing still as the humans shout to make bets based off numbers displayed on a big screen on one wall “But the humans, don’t you eat them? That’s how we get stronger and they are simply prey.” You can almost feel the disapproval of the men beside you and you sense new colour swirling in the glow of their minds “Not at all, it seems the Harbinger of the West has been lying to you. Eating humans has no effect on your abilities at all. Only your mind and training does. You got stronger as you believed in what he was saying and because you trained. But it is also why we nearly killed you on sight. Your decision taints your mind and we can see it.” You don’t really know what to respond to this. But your overwhelming urge is to lash out, you were honest but now they were lying to you? Were they simply trying to indoctrinate you to use you like the old man? You follow your urge, you know they are lying as you ate humans and got stronger, in just a few weeks of eating humans and training you became superhuman yourself. Attack physically and mentally, once they are dead, their community and the humans will be your personal living food locker. You force your urges back down, the longer you spent with the Old Man and the more humans you ate, the more violent and volatile you became however they don’t really have a reason to lie to you right now. Find out what they are saying then decide the truth for yourself. > You force it down There are two of them and one of you, they are also much more experienced than you. Attacking now would be suicide. You force your urges back down and after a moment you think a little more rationally again. “It makes complete sense that the Old Man lied to me about things, he was a vengeance driven psycho afterall, he just wanted me to help him, probably the only reason he didn’t kill me.” You give yourself a moment then respond. “What do you mean?” You sense surprise from them as one speaks “Well it seems I was wrong, he held the urge back, you were correct my friend, so long as the red isn’t set there is still some hope for him!” You look t them then add “That doesn’t really tell me what you mean by these colours, or where my abilities really develop from.” The other one laughs “Sorry about that, were had a rather heated debate about you before you arrived and you seem to have provided the answer in my favour. We will explain everything while we watch the entertainment!” You hear the announcer providing commentary as the two groups in the arena below you rush each other and begin tearing each other to pieces. You mostly concentrate on what you are being told though. “You see your power has nothing to do with what you eat, you developed it the moment the infection altered your brain and body. It’s completely mental really, development is based on two things rather like a muscle. Training to make it stronger and understanding to know how to train and use it, as it were.” He pauses as you see three mutant dogs tear the limbs off a shamber right before a fast type leaps on one of their back and bites a chunk out of its neck. “As I was saying, the training is the obvious part. The other part is more understanding and belief, firstly you must believe that the abilities are possible, then you must believe in what you are and what your role in life is.” The fight begins winding down in the dogs favor as you expected, the shamblers and fast types had the numbers but the dog pack was stronger and faster. He looks at you “look at our minds and describe them to me.” > You understanding You concentrate on your senses and describe the impression of their minds that comes to you “They are like two suns compared to the dull glow of the humans below us, almost like they are a deep green with some other colours moving under the surface.” You see the man lean back in his throne-like chair “Excellent, and the other harbinger seemed like an angry red with swirls of darker colours under it yes?” You nod in agreement as he continues “The colours represent how you see yourself and your role, we believe it represents how much control the infection has over your mind and decisions, The red means you have lost any shred of humanity and are more like a rage driven animal than a human. You retain your intelligence of course, but you see humans and harbingers as mere prey and you lose control to your urges, like the one you just felt to kill us.” He raises an eyebrow to you and you nod to indicate that you are following along and that he was right about the urge to kill them “You colour is nearly red you see but it is not set, there are still other distinct colours there too which means you are not yet fully set in your decision, you believed what the Harbinger taught you but your final choice to live that way was not yet made, close, but not final.” He pauses to let you think. “So if I have given into my urges more and fully excepted that I was a preditor out to eat everything I would have been fully red? What does your green mean then?” You see the man smile under his hood “Exactly, and had your colour turned fully red we would have killed you the moment you got close, almost all harbingers would. Your last vestige of reason would have gone and the option to be anything other than a crazed killer would be removed from you. As for our green, it’s a complicated one, not one of the ‘pure’ colours as others describe them. Our green means we have accepted that we are not human and not normal infected. We see ourselves as a separate race above the others but not as their predators, as their next evolution and obvious rulers. We also see infected as nothing, hence our past-time here. They lack minds and are only good for fighting and entertainment.” You take time to think as the infected left alive in the ring feed on the dead, then all leave and the corpses are dragged out by new infected, probably to eat later. A new set of ‘combatants’ enter. This time a huge infected bear verses a large horde of shamblers. One of the Lords whispers over the announcer’s commentary “The bear is very strong but far too dumb to act as a sentinel; it does heal well though so it always wins in the end.” You nod and keep thinking for a bit. You can appreciate their stance, different and better than humans and infected but not their predator. It will be something to think on, you haven’t eaten anything but human in a while now though and you are already hungering for it. “So what about food, and you said ‘Pure’ colours?” You finally ask. One of them nods as he replies, still facing the games. “Blue and red, they represent the ‘pure’ decisions as some call them. Red you know, blues are called guardians, the fastest and easiest ways to describe it is that they think they are superheroes, and I don’t mean that in a funny way. They truly believe they are humans who are granted their powers for a greater purpose to help or serve humanity. The Eastern colony is mostly ruled by them.” You smirk at the description and the idea of serving humans but one of the men responds “Oh I wouldn’t smirk at them until you see their power, their mental defense is unrivaled in its strength and adaptability they are truly forces to be reckoned with, like your old teacher is, his attack is fuelled by his rage and will be stronger than other colours, but his defense is weak. We are of one of the many in-between colours with our own strengths.” This gives you pause, they lower themselves to serve humans but they are un-matched in aspects of their power. You truly will need to think more and come to your decision. One of the men continues “Oh and as for food, you really eat whatever you want so long as it matches your choice, we eat infected flesh and normal human food, either works. You will probably find it safest to eat infected flesh for now as normal food won’t sit well until your colour moves further from the red. Don’t try to eat any of our humans though, killing without our permission means you end in the pit.” You watch the rest of the entertainment as you think and you are finally shown to a fairly nice room through a few tunnels and up some stairs, you guess it’s probably a 6th floor apartment in one of the surrounding buildings. > You final choices You spend most of the night thinking on all you had found out. There are now several paths open you and you feel that you need to come to a choice. You have thought several different things over the past few weeks and each holds interest, the only one you can’t bring yourself to believe is that you are a gifted human sent to protect them. “Too long with the Old Man to ever be able to truly believe that I guess.” You think as you cycle through things. The two Lords here didn’t give their names yet but you like their position, choosing the red is still and option of course, a very attractive one, accept that you are truly superior to all other as the Old Man did and gain massive power, you would have to eventually kill the Lords and the Old Man too but you could easily do that later. They also didn’t go through all the possible colours or decisions, so there are other choices you could come too, they all involve moving away from the red though and accepting that you aren’t an alpha predator sent to earth to eat everything. You consider everything, but eating humans just feels right. They warned you about going red but what is wrong with power and standing on top of the food chain on your own terms, you are already in so they won’t kill you right away and that will buy you the time you need. You consider everything and the red is very tempting but they warned you strongly against it, you want to be on top but not at the expense of EVERYTHING else. You will find a way to rule and do as you wish, but not the red path. > The red path Going Crimson You choose the red. You considered all things but you are a true ruler and you will not be bound by others ideals. You will stand on top of the world and the food chain! You suddenly feel things crystalize around you, your senses clear and the haze around other minds reduces, you can see the humans minds clearly now, as well as the other harbingers, all of them your prey. You’ve made the right choice and already feel more powerful for it, you could crush the Lords and take their community, eating the humans at your leisure, and when the Old Man comes, you can devour him. How pitiable that he actually was so weak that he had to practically beg for your help. You flex your powers and see that your mind is like a fire now, as you stretch it out you can imagine the force of it crushing and burning everything before it. You suddenly notice one of the Lords sending you a link an laugh to yourself a little, the fools even let you inside and taught you how to be stronger! You accept the link to give them their final message before crushing and devouring them. “You chose the red then?” one asks you instantly. You smirk and let the emotion carry over the link “Of course, what other real choice was there? Some weak compromise in the middle? Lowering myself to ‘protect’ my prey? No, I chose my rightful place!” You feel disappointment and pity. Once you would have wondered at it but now that option is not there, it was an insult and that must be met with destruction, nothing more or less. You lash out instantly, reveling in your new strength and feel your mind crashing into one of the harbingers, you can feel his defenses instantly begin to weaken. “See my power, your weakness means your death now that I am whole!” You announce as you push harder to completely cave his mind in and destroy him but you hear the other one respond. “Sadly not dear boy, did you really think we left you to make this choice without planning? Of course you did, reds do not think, they are like rabid dogs, only fit to be put down.” You are about to respond in anger and lash out at him too when you feel an attack slam into your own mind and you are forced to defend against it, weakening your own attack. You can feel the defenses strengthening against you and know you could beat one of them but not while the other was attacking you. “If you were capable of it you should have learned from your teachers defeat, we do not have your attack or blues defense but we have a finesse each of you lacks. Like this for example.” You feel a sudden strange impact on your mental defenses and something slips through causing all of your senses to trigger at once, filling your head with pain and light. You try to recover and lash out again but suddenly feel your arm vanish, you turn back to your normal senses and realize there are human mutants in the room with you and one of them is holding your severed arm. You roar at them and forgetting alla bout the other harbingers in your rage you try and lash out mentally and physically at the enemies around you. Your mind explodes in pain and light again and once you recover you find yourself against a wall and see the monsters in front of you now holding both of your arms and a leg, you feel the blood draining from you as one of the Lords speaks to you. “It is too bad, we really thought you might join us, but it seems that the 3J’s and Madglee get to fest on you instead. Your mind explodes one more time and you never recover.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You spend most of the night thinking on all you had found out. There are now several paths open you and you feel that you need to come to a choice. You have thought several different things over the past few weeks and each holds interest, the only one you can’t bring yourself to believe is that you are a gifted human sent to protect them. “Too long with the Old Man to ever be able to truly believe that I guess.” You think as you cycle through things. The two Lords here didn’t give their names yet but you like their position, choosing the red is still and option of course, a very attractive one, accept that you are truly superior to all other as the Old Man did and gain massive power, you would have to eventually kill the Lords and the Old Man too but you could easily do that later. They also didn’t go through all the possible colours or decisions, so there are other choices you could come too, they all involve moving away from the red though and accepting that you aren’t an alpha predator sent to earth to eat everything. You consider everything, but eating humans just feels right. They warned you about going red but what is wrong with power and standing on top of the food chain on your own terms, you are already in so they won’t kill you right away and that will buy you the time you need. You consider everything and the red is very tempting but they warned you strongly against it, you want to be on top but not at the expense of EVERYTHING else. You will find a way to rule and do as you wish, but not the red path. > You find your own path Leaving the red behind You are tempted by the red, but it is not worth loosing yourself to gain a little more power, and the Lords hinted that they might have other abilities that the reds do not. You will work on your own choice here with them until you are sure of your course. A couple of hours later one of the Lords links to you and you join them again. They are both clearly happier with you and mention that your colour had already lightened, evidence of you rejecting the red. You spend the next week with them, learning a few tricks that the Old Man hadn’t taught you and getting used to new food. You ate the flesh of the infected that died in the arena and it wasn’t so bad. It didn’t have the rush of fresh human but you got more used to it the more you ate and your old hunger reduced now that you knew it wasn’t even needed. You even get to really enjoy the special arena events the Lords host. The Old Man soon makes his appearance though to make things more interesting. You are eating lunch when the Lords contact you and direct you to a ledge on one of the buildings, it is 60 stories up, which is only half way up the building they tell you that they can’t go too high or they won’t get the best view. As you stretch your senses out you see the tiny red sun on the western horizon, slowly getting closer. “It seems he is attacking in the hopes of you following his plan to kill us as he does so, it is your move now friend, what do you choose to do?” One of them says to you. They showed you how to reveal lies In a mind by how the colours change, it is not exact but it is fairly accurate and you know they are much better at it than you, part of their being green you guess so you cannot lie to them. > You say "I will help the Old man, I owe him that much" You realize nearly instantly that this was a bad choice; you actually just told two harbingers that you would help their enemy try and kill them. You try and take it back but before you can open your mouth you feel the punch on your back and go sailing out into the air. Even with your toughness and healing ability you aren’t going to come out well from a 60 story fall You do however have time to think about your own foolishness on the way down before finally hitting the road below.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Leaving the red behind You are tempted by the red, but it is not worth loosing yourself to gain a little more power, and the Lords hinted that they might have other abilities that the reds do not. You will work on your own choice here with them until you are sure of your course. A couple of hours later one of the Lords links to you and you join them again. They are both clearly happier with you and mention that your colour had already lightened, evidence of you rejecting the red. You spend the next week with them, learning a few tricks that the Old Man hadn’t taught you and getting used to new food. You ate the flesh of the infected that died in the arena and it wasn’t so bad. It didn’t have the rush of fresh human but you got more used to it the more you ate and your old hunger reduced now that you knew it wasn’t even needed. You even get to really enjoy the special arena events the Lords host. The Old Man soon makes his appearance though to make things more interesting. You are eating lunch when the Lords contact you and direct you to a ledge on one of the buildings, it is 60 stories up, which is only half way up the building they tell you that they can’t go too high or they won’t get the best view. As you stretch your senses out you see the tiny red sun on the western horizon, slowly getting closer. “It seems he is attacking in the hopes of you following his plan to kill us as he does so, it is your move now friend, what do you choose to do?” One of them says to you. They showed you how to reveal lies In a mind by how the colours change, it is not exact but it is fairly accurate and you know they are much better at it than you, part of their being green you guess so you cannot lie to them. > You say "The Old Man is a psycho and I owe him nothing, I will help you" You aren’t going to help a psycho slaughter everyone here and turn this place into a giant living meat locker. Even if you were, telling two harbingers to their faces while 60 stories up was just the same as committing suicide. They nod to you “Your job will simply be to shield, you can leave the infected gathering below to us, as well as any attacking. So long as you concentrate only on shielding and we aid you in that, we will win easily.” > You nod and prepare for battle You watch the Enemy get closer and closer and begin sensing his horde, you judge about 1500 infected, and a great number of those mutants. Normally this would have terrified you, but right below you were arrayed out nearly 4000 infected of various types and an extra thousand or so shamblers in a block in front of them. You can also sense quite a few of the strange infected minds that indicate human mutants “The Old Man has brought a large army today, I don’t see how he expects to win though.” One of the Lords comments. “You really went all out on the defense then.” You comment for lack of anything better to say. One of the men laughs “Oh this is just a small part of the forces we could bring in but we knew he couldn’t have brought more than two thousand so we judged these sufficient and kept the rest in place to guard other areas.” You nod, you had seen some of the ring of defenders that these two had moved into place and it was no idle boast that this was just a part of their forces. The approaching red mind suddenly flares and you slam your defenses into place, putting your shield over the two Lords through the link you had formed. You feel the other two adding strength to your defense as you feel some pressure pushing lightly on your mind. Suddenly you feel rage strongly emanating from the Old Man and his attack slams against your defenses. Despite his rage and power, with your two allies supporting you, your defenses hold strong and you know you can easily hold him at bay. “It seems he knows you are choosing to support us then!” one of the Lords jokes. “Just keep the defenses up and this shall be fast.” You do as asked and keep your defenses up but it quickly becomes apparent that it won’t matter soon. His horde was caught up in the block of shamblers, obviously devoid of fin control and will. In comparison, being free to do as they wish with you protecting them, the two Lords start dismantling his army in huge chunks while attacking him. Within minutes his attack has weakened then stops as he has to split his attention between his forces and defending. You know it’s no use though as they pick up their attack on him once they took the more dangerous of his forces away and send in their own army to slaughter the rest. You watch him rage and fight harder but with the two of them attacking him, you can see he is losing badly and suddenly staggers back clutching his head. One of your allies shouts out “Ha flashed him! It’s over now!” and you can tell it as, before he recovers two of the humanoid mutants reach him and literally tear him apart. You expect some shouting or celebration but the Lords simply stretch then start heading back inside while chatting “Well, we will eat well tonight at least, that was good exercise, I wonder how all the betting went?” You are confused for a moment but a quick scan shows that all the humans are in various buildings nearby watching the battle “You had them watch and bet on whether you would win or lose?” You ask after a moment. “Oh dear me no.” one replies “We had them bet on enemy forces, losses and how long he would last. The big bet was what would kill him, us or the Army, it seems we only took the assist and the army stole the kill though.” He jokes. You shrug and follow them down inside, glancing at the screen in the arena as you pass you see that it has “BATTLE OF THE CENTURY! BZ, SETH AND SURPRISE NEWCOMER VS. PSYCHO OLD MAN!” displayed on it. “What do you even need money for now?” you finally ask. “Oh, not much, but it’s fun to fill bath tubs with.” BZ replies as you all head to a late lunch. > You relaxing in the New City Life is pretty good after that and the Lords can teach you a lot, the entertainment is good too! ********************************************************************* Well done, you have reached another of the good endings in this version, later this arc will be greatly extended but I ran out of time so it ends here, congratulations!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head further into the city centre alone and the hordes part for you, you can feel them dispersing to either side around you. “The Old Man said they keep them evenly spaced out in a ring, does this mean they knew I was coming?” You think as you walk. Finally you see the two minds of the harbingers ahead of you without having to stretch your senses out, and you also see the minds of what seems like over 300 humans with them, the very thought makes you hungry. As you get closer you see another link reaching out for you and as before you join in to let them converse with you. “You are only about an hour’s gentle walk away but you will need to circle a little to your left, that’s North, to get inside, only one entrance you see and everything is guarded to prevent any problems in our little haven.” You carefully force your hunger and feelings down, if you’ve been getting snippits of theirs then they might get some of yours and that might not be good. “Of course, it’s getting dark but that isn’t really an issue for our kind, I’ll walk faster though so I don’t make you wait.” There is a pause and you are about to drop the link when you hear one more question “You came from the West where our enemy lurked, Have you have any interaction with him, he has the feel of an old man, a very angry one at that.” You pause for a moment; you didn’t expect this question so bluntly so you have to choose your words carefully. > You lie. You can't have them know you are affiliated with him, tell them you only recently came from the North before turning East to the city centre and didn't meet another harbinger. You Lie, can’t have them knowing the Truth. “I don’t recall anyone by that description, although I only recently came into the West of the City from the North, above the old stadium area. I really just passed through and didn’t stay to investigate if any others were there.” There is a longer pause than before and you get a little nervous when you hear the voice again. “Ok just up ahead you’ll see the underground entrance on your right? Good, that’s the entrance you’ll need to take, we are quite nicely set up in an old arena here, it was half underground before so makes it very defensible as you can imagine!” The tone seems jovial and the tunnel leads towards the minds you sense so you head inside. As you walk through the tunnel which has obviously had some work done to it with reinforcements and walls removed or built you sense the humans all gathering up ahead. “Is something going on up there?” You ask down the link and immediately get the response “Of course! It’s not every day they get to see a new harbinger so this is somewhat of an event! Everyone has gathered for it. Some of the minds to the East don’t agree with our stance on the matter which is why we separated but we see that we are superior to humans and should be treated as such so we rule here like Gods in a way, when we say there is an event, EVERYONE attends, not that they’d want to miss this anyway.” You heartily agree with the statement. You ARE better than humans, they are your prey after all, you can see their position though. Keeping them like pets to obey and serve you before eating them wouldn’t be so bad either. You see some light up ahead and walk out into what looks like the centre of an arena with 10 foot walls of concrete topped with another 10 feet of metal and reinforced glass. The humans are all on the other side of the glass cheering down at you like fans watching a concert. Something clearly isn’t right though. You sense the minds above you and looking up you see two cloaked figures sitting on a platform that extended out from the wall over the tiered rows of seats giving them the best view both around the room and down into the pit. “Welcome to the City Arena! Rules by the Lords of the New City, this is the place where your post-apocalyptic fantasies can become a reality, for the right price!” You now know that something is definitely wrong as a massive battered steel sheet slams down behind you, trapping you in the arena. Even with your enhanced strength you aren’t sure you could budge it without a lot of time and something to lever with. The announcement continues though, the speakers voice amplified through a speaker system hanging high above of the roof. “Today we have a very rare treat for you, in the ring is a harbinger folks! That’s right, like our very own Lords of the city he has superhuman abilities and can control infected, however this one tried to lie to the Lords and we know how they take that don’t we!” The crowd responds with even more cheers.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I like the undercover plan, they won’t know me so I can get inside and take them out personally as soon as you appear and take their attention.” You say. The Old man simply nods and starts putting the map away carefully. “Then we leave in the morning! I will escort you closer but once we near the centre you will be on your own. Remember to act nice around them, can’t have them attacking you before you get inside!” You nod back and snack on a bit of what you think must be a human bicep muscle before getting a couple of hour of rest. As the mornings first light arrives you grab a few handfuls of flesh and you both set out in the jeep again, this time towards the city centre. It’s not long before you cover a good distance, riding is clearly faster than walking and before you know it you are walking away from the Jeep towards the city centre alone, the Old man heading off into a building to set himself up for a few days. “Time to get things going then!” you think to yourself as you begin sensing infected ahead of you, already some mutants mixed in with the normal shamblers and fast types. > You simply move them aside, might be best not to approach with an army at your back You don’t want to appear too aggressive right away so you simply clear yourself a path through the infected, moving them aside as you walk and closing them back up behind you. “If this ring is part of their defense it’s probably best I leave it intact, and having a large number of infected might be useful in an emergency.” You think as you walk further and further in. After a few hours you have given up counting all the infected in the area, this part of the city is made up of blocks of giant multi-story sky-scrapers which all must have had thousands of people inside each before the infection hit if not more. Now even if only 1 in 100 is left alive then that’s still hundreds of infected for every building you walk past, and the mutants are everywhere too. You have no idea if they were strays, pets or migrated here after the infection had taken over but there was no shortage of food for them here at least. You move them aside like the others, a few feel slightly different when you try to take them over but they move aside like the rest and you ignore them once you know you are safely past. It’s nearly dinner time when you finally sense the gathering horde ahead of you. You carefully prepare your defenses and reach your mind out towards the city centre. You are just starting to sense something there when your senses show a strong green glow and you feel pressure on your mind. It’s like an attack but weaker than the ones the Old Man put you through when you were training and you are a lot stronger now than when you were training so you don’t even need to try to keep the pressure from your mind. > You they are weak, the Old man said he was stronger than them individually when he faced them before. Take this one out here and now. The second one won't be an issue alone. You Aren’t going to let some weakling push you around, they might have a lot of infected around them but it means nothing if their will is less than yours. You leave the bare minimum defense against the attack then lash out as hard as you can against the Green haze in the city centre that you know represents you enemy. You know if you can crush them in a single fast attack that the second one won’t stand a chance. You visualize your attack and send it racing out, almost gleefully imagining the moment it shatters right through the enemies weak and neglected defenses and you crush their mind. But it doesn’t. Your attack smashes into a fully formed barrier, easily as strong as anything you could make. You feel it flex and buckle slightly but it is immediately shored up while the attack on you suddenly intensifies. You realize your mistake too late, it was a trap to test whether you would attack and you failed. You frantically try to press your attack while holding your defense up but the enemies defense easily holds you to a stalemate while their attacks strains you defenses to their maximum. You try and think of a way out when the second attack slams into your mind and shatters your already weak defenses. You feel intense pain shooting through your mind. You can barely handle the pain and are almost glad when everything ends.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t want to appear too aggressive right away so you simply clear yourself a path through the infected, moving them aside as you walk and closing them back up behind you. “If this ring is part of their defense it’s probably best I leave it intact, and having a large number of infected might be useful in an emergency.” You think as you walk further and further in. After a few hours you have given up counting all the infected in the area, this part of the city is made up of blocks of giant multi-story sky-scrapers which all must have had thousands of people inside each before the infection hit if not more. Now even if only 1 in 100 is left alive then that’s still hundreds of infected for every building you walk past, and the mutants are everywhere too. You have no idea if they were strays, pets or migrated here after the infection had taken over but there was no shortage of food for them here at least. You move them aside like the others, a few feel slightly different when you try to take them over but they move aside like the rest and you ignore them once you know you are safely past. It’s nearly dinner time when you finally sense the gathering horde ahead of you. You carefully prepare your defenses and reach your mind out towards the city centre. You are just starting to sense something there when your senses show a strong green glow and you feel pressure on your mind. It’s like an attack but weaker than the ones the Old Man put you through when you were training and you are a lot stronger now than when you were training so you don’t even need to try to keep the pressure from your mind. > You play everything safe, sure the attack is weak but the other one hasn't turned up. Hold fast and see what happens. You aren’t going to risk everything on a blind attack right now, you don’t even know if this is a real attack of just a test so you simply stop moving and hold your defenses in place, waiting for their next move. It isn’t long before you see a thread of thought reaching out to you and you do the same just like the Old Man had taught. You immediately hear a voice. “Hmm, you look like our old enemy but you came without an army and didn’t attack while I appeared weaker than you. Strange.” You aren’t sure how to respond to this so go with the playing it simple option. “I’m not your old enemy; I’ve never been to the city centre before so I don’t think we have encountered each other before.” The response comes with some small feelings of surprise “The truth is seems, you aren’t him after all, in that case what brings you to our little dominion alone as you are?” Again you carefully consider before answering “I heard about the two of you and came to meet you.” There is a longer pause this time before the answer finally comes “You may enter however do not try to control any infected now or once you are inside our ring.” You had already decided to not bring a horde so you happily start forward alone once the communication thread vanishes<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With first light you wake and check on your horde “Still right where I left you.” You think as you dress and head down into the street. You had left them all locked in a small hospital clinic you passed a couple of blocks South, you thought it was funny to pack it full of infected. You gather them together near the apartment when the Old man comes to you. “Interesting news, it seems they have left the stadium a few minutes ago!” You turn West and concentrate hard, it’s still many miles away but you get a faint sense of haziness there. “Now now, don’t strain yourself, you are not practiced enough to sense properly over that distance, it’s even at the limit of my own abilities.” He looks over your Horde. “Excellent, all gathered, well you better get over to the North side and prepare to close the trap, remember that they have a jeep so just standing in the road won’t cut it!” he heads off cheerfully and you feel a large number of infected in a nearby building leave his control, they must be your part of the horde. You take control of them and along with your own horde you head North to look for some good blockade materials. As you pass North you begin noticing a change, the closer to the Highways, the more cars there are. “Huh, they all went for the highway to escape and blocked each other in.” you mumble as you look around. “Well at least the cars might make the blockade easy enough. You begin commanding your shamblers to start pushing the cars and taking off handbrakes when you notice the bus on a side road. A large solid looking city bus, easily capable of blocking the main road by itself. “Hah, almost too easy!” you say aloud as you redirect all of your forces to the bus and maneuver it pointing south, it would have to go round a bend to get into position but any closer and they could spot you as they pass so you put a shambler into the driving seat and take careful control of its mind so you can ensure the bus gets where it needs to go. Then you wait, you carefully send your senses out West again a few times, not pushing it like before and after an few tries you begin to sense them coming closer and closer, moving at a solid pace. “They must all be jogging or running,” you suddenly panick and this they have enough vehicles for all of them but as they approach you realize that they are too spread out to be packed into a vehicle. You settle back and track their progress, you have at least an hour to watch them approach and after a few minutes begin picking out individuals in the larger haze, you then start trying to assign names to them and think back to your time with them. It occurs to you for the first time in two weeks that you didn’t really need to go through with this. You could betray the old man and help the people from the stadium; they did treat you like a friend after all. Stop concentrating on the haze; it’s causing you to think funny. You’re a predator and they are just pray Watching the haze so closely for so long must have brought these thoughts on, however they are correct, why not help them. They helped you before and you are sure they would accept you if you saved them. > You what have you been doing, you need to help them You have to help them, the Old man was clearly altering your thoughts to make you do what he wanted but you were originally human, becoming stronger doesn’t change that so you should help the stadium survivors. You know that watching the haze so intently for a couple of hours brought this on but you feel like you know it’s the right thing to do. You have control of a couple of shamblers in their path and walk them out to try and signal but they are killed instantly by what feels like intense gunfire. “The old man wasn’t kidding about the armored jeep at least.” You start running towards them, intending to warn them in person about the trap but almost immediately feel the old man attempting to sense your thoughts. You block him out but know it will only hold for a few minutes, he can’t bring his full concentration onto you while controlling his horde. You begin hearing them coming and are about to run out into the street when you remember the shamblers and instead hide behind a corner and start shouting to get their attention. You feel the pressure on you mind intensify and quickly send the order for all the infected you control to attack the old man’s horde. You feel it subside slightly as he has to divert his attention again. “Who’s there?” you hear the convoy shouting to you. You step out. “It’s me! Don’t shoot!” You see all the guns pointed at you and the jeep slows but doesn’t stop, the pressure is already returning to your mind, you have little time. “It’s a trap, the harbinger has blocked the road off ahead, he has a huge army of infected ready to take you out.” You were about to say more when you feel the Old man’s mind slam into yours, your defenses hold but you are driven to your knees with the pain. You wince then speak again. “You have to change course, get away…” You feel the second mental attack and your defenses fail completely, the pain nearly blacks you out and you fall prone on the ground. You hear the Old man in your head. “Betraying me was a foolish mistake.” You hear him say sadly before he leaves your mind. You almost celebrate, “He couldn’t finish me off” you think, you try and stand but feel too week from the mental attack and collapse again. You hear the Captain talking. “Bring him with us, but chain him up carefully. We change course, loop South near the city center to try and bypass any blockade.” You are about to rejoice, they were taking you with them. Sadly in your current mental state you couldn’t sense the mutant dog behind you in the alleyway and in your physical state there is nothing you can do as it leaps onto your back and bites into your skull, crushing it instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hear a chuckle from inside and hear an old man’s voice calling to you. “Oh don’t worry so much and come on in, your abilities will grow stronger in time, you are simply less practiced than me!” You start walking to the door and see and old man with a broom sweeping some near invisible dirt out of the door before standing aside for you to enter. You walk past him to find yourself in the fanciest tailors you’ve ever seen, with suits you never could have afforded before the infection spread. You glance again at the old man then back to the suits. He is clearly well dressed but not in anything as fine as the clothing in the store. You hear him chuckling again as pulls the shutters down and closes the door leaving everything in a dim sort of twilight. “Yes I am the tailor not the customer. I made every suit in this store to sell to others but it never felt quite right to wear one myself.” You can make out that he is looking you up and down, clearly not bothered by the lack of light. “You on the hand might need some new clothing; I’ll adjust something for you later. For now let’s head upstairs.” He heads off still holding his broom and you follow him closely, trying not to bump into anything until you reach the second floor and light from the open windows makes it easier to see. You let him get several feet ahead of you to see him better. He is clearly a frail old man and you begin wondering if he is really strong enough to be the other harbinger when he moves faster than you thought possible and in right in front of you, pinning your arms in a grip that doesn’t even let you move an inch. “Yes indeed I am the harbinger, and yes I am defiantly strong enough.” He releases you and walks over to a small chair beside a table covered with slices of meat. “Come have a seat, and yes, I can read your mind. Your powers are developing but they are still in their infancy, I will train you to use them properly so long as you don’t disappoint me.” You take a seat and immediately recognize the smell of the meat as fresh human. The old man smiles. “Yes I usually have a couple hanging around in old cellars to keep them fresh for me, my servants bring them to me when they find them and I divide them between myself and my horde.” He is clearly expecting you to eat, so you do. It’s not as if you haven’t eaten humans before and its nice to have human flesh again, it makes your whole body feel better. “Oh good, I was a little worried that you had sided with humans and might refuse to eat the meat but that’s the first test past. Here is the second.” The old man says to you as a shambler comes in through a previously closed door and begins to lunge for you. Your old reflexes tell you to go for your bat but your new practice kicks in and you reflexively lash out with your mind instead. You see it suddenly stumble back against a wall as if physically struck, before sinking down and not moving any more. “Ah, and the second test passed too, you didn’t have to kill it though you know?” The old man says to you. “Erm, sorry about that, it was reflexive and I’ve only been using this ability for a couple of weeks, I didn’t know I could kill them.” You suddenly feel your nose bleeding again and quickly pich it to prevent the blood pouring out on your clothing. The old man gives you a very happy look. “Only a couple of weeks, well that is great news, it means you are developing very quickly. The quicker the development, the higher the potential! Well I accept you as my student. Over the next few weeks I will be training you in all aspects of your gift, starting with shielding your mind from others, we aren’t the only ones out there you know.” The old man pauses and looks at you intently. “That is of course if you choose to learn from me, if so I will teach you for a few weeks and you will then aid me in destroying the last holdouts in the stadium, the greater plans will be revealed after that. Or you can leave now.” You glance around; he isn’t holding a weapon or acting threateningly. You also are pretty sure he didn’t lock the shutter and a glance out the window shows that the streets are clear. You try and sense the infected in the area again but try and block the old man’s mind out as you do so to prevent the painful blindness from before. It somewhat works and you sense that all the infected are right where they were when you sensed them the first time. He clearly isn’t making any obvious moves to trap you. Choose to stay and learn, it’s what you are after all, a harbinger. Back out politely and head back to the stadium, you were happier there and the old man is a bit creepy. > Back out politely and head back to the stadium, you were happier there and the old man is a bit creepy. You decide to leave, you’re not sure you want to learn from a slightly creepy old man and you were getting to like some of the people in the stadium, the food was even sitting better. You get to your feet. “Well I think I should be going, thank you for the offer.” You tense but the old man makes no move as he replies. “This is a shame, you had so much promise and even managed to slightly shield my mind when you checked on my horde. Clearly a fast learner. It is too bad indeed.” Seeing his lack of aggression you head for the door, as you reach the stairs down you feel a sudden impact and looking down you see a foot of broom handle sticking out of the front of your chest around where you no longer beating heart should be. “Well at least you will make a very special meal.” You hear the old man say as you tumble dying into the stairwell.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab one of the men’s bags, partly full of tins, and carefully clean any trace of blood off your face. Leaving the guns behind, you bash in the head of the slowly dying fast type to make it look like you fought, then head back to the stadium. Once close you start running and panting a little for effect. The guards see you some distance away and they are already with guns aimed past you at the street when you get close. “They swarmed us, I was the only one fast enough to get away!” you call up. The gate opens and you are ushered inside quickly before seeing it being barricaded again from the inside. You tell your story about seeming to be ambushed by them when you were in the store a couple more times and it seems like everyone is buying it. Just a few days before the other scavengers to loose teammates told a similar story after all. You are given the rest of the day and the next one off from duties and spend it relaxing in your tent, simply prying with your mind as far as you could and drawing any infected you find, closer to the stadium. It seems that wherever you leave them, they stay. Sure they wander around nearby streets and buildings sometimes but never too far from where they started and they seem to usually return there. By dinner of the second day you have a fair number of shamblers and 1 fast type in the surrounding alleyways and buildings and you hear over dinner that everyone is sure that the harbinger had returned. Seem like this sort of thing fitted right into their suspicions. Time to get to work, the food here feels like its poisoning you now the more you eat of it. You have your army ready and know the enemy defenses perfectly; they think you are one of their defenders after all. At night the doc often sleeps in his office and there are only two guards so you are sure you can get the 4 shamblers out to go wild inside then all you’ll need is to get some on the ones from outside into the stadium to complete your victory. You are considering the best way to do this when you sense all the infected you brought close suddenly begin leaving towards the South and you cannot bring them back no matter how hard you concentrate. The last one pauses and you can feel that it seems to be waving at you for a few minutes, beckoning you after it almost, before it turns and heads South and eventually out of your range to sense it. “Well that’s odd.” You think as you watch it vanish along with your immediate attack plans. “Best bet is that they were right and the original harbinger is back, seems he wants to talk to me too.” The morning will bring a new decision to make, Go to meet the other harbinger or ignore his summons and take down the stadium yourself with your own army; you’ll just need to gather a new one first. > You ignore him, you will deal with the stadium first then decide his fate later Ignore the fool who stole your army for now, you can deal with him once you practice your own powers more and wipe out the stadium community. You spend the morning planning and stretching your powers as much as you can until you finally manage to detect something further North “Must be up near the highway.” You think as you head to find the Capt. He is a little surprised at first but you carefully explain that you really just want to keep busy and heading out with a scavenging party to the North should be perfect since it’s the furthers from the city centre and so should be the safest. He reluctantly agrees with you and the team for the day gets redirected to one of the Northern targets. You get to tag along as the 5th man. It only takes a couple of hours to get to the Highway on ramps directly North and your team raids the convenience stores there for supplies, finding a surprisingly good amount, seems like after the highway got fully blocked with cars and infected, no-one came back here. You also get lucky with the infected, you find a few dozen can be sensed from this far North so as you grab tins of Spam off a shelf you concentrate on beginning to steer them all South. Mostly shamblers and a few fast ones. You find one mind that’s different from the rest, hazy like a normal but also cracked and venerable with twisted knots inside. You give it a test push to see if you can affect it but it reacts erratically and you immediately realize that it would be a lot more work to try and affect it in any meaningful way so you leave it alone for now. No point getting a nosebleed now just for a single crazy. Watching the others work at filling their bags you realize you’re in the perfect spot for a meal again and the hunger begins to rise. You even have a proper little horde this time you could use. > You call in the horde to swarm them and feed, the fresh human flesh boosts your healing so maybe your powers too. You decide that this is simply too good an opportunity to pass up and call the little horde forward to surround your team. You simply have to eat and test if their flesh can increase your powers faster, you also need to get the taste of their rations out of your system, the more of them you eat, the worse they make you feel so it will be good to get some real food again. You carefully begin positioning your horde to ambush the group. You’ve never actively tried to control this many at once and you begin to feel the strain after just a few seconds. However you force yourself to keep going, fighting off a splitting headache until you are all half way back and you have the horde move it, fast ones followed by the shamblers. You feel your nose bleeding again and your headache becomes nearly unbearable but once the attack has begun you releases some of the control knowing that they can finish the job themselves. The team is almost instantly overwhelmed and you quickly join in the feeding, just controlling the ones nearest you to ensure they don’t attack you like they normally would. You rest for a few minutes after and can almost feel the fresh human flesh refilling your energy, the headache even passes a little and finally you clean off the blood and begin heading back to the stadium trying the same act as before. Sadly the Capt. is there this time and they don’t seem to believe your story. “It seems to me that a lot of our problems began right when you arrived here and now two entire teams get wiped out with you untouched. You can understand how this looks can’t you?” You try and profess your innocence but your headache is back in full swing having brought your horde closer in to the North of the stadium and you find it hard to think straight never mind sound convincing. You finally get control of yourself and begin to try and reason your way out of this when you feel a sudden pain like a whip in your mind and you vomit at your own feet. Sadly you have been eating a reasonably amount of human flesh and skin and blood is clearly still recognizable in the mess. You don’t even get a chance to run before all the shots ring out and you fall backwards riddled with bullets.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Ignore the fool who stole your army for now, you can deal with him once you practice your own powers more and wipe out the stadium community. You spend the morning planning and stretching your powers as much as you can until you finally manage to detect something further North “Must be up near the highway.” You think as you head to find the Capt. He is a little surprised at first but you carefully explain that you really just want to keep busy and heading out with a scavenging party to the North should be perfect since it’s the furthers from the city centre and so should be the safest. He reluctantly agrees with you and the team for the day gets redirected to one of the Northern targets. You get to tag along as the 5th man. It only takes a couple of hours to get to the Highway on ramps directly North and your team raids the convenience stores there for supplies, finding a surprisingly good amount, seems like after the highway got fully blocked with cars and infected, no-one came back here. You also get lucky with the infected, you find a few dozen can be sensed from this far North so as you grab tins of Spam off a shelf you concentrate on beginning to steer them all South. Mostly shamblers and a few fast ones. You find one mind that’s different from the rest, hazy like a normal but also cracked and venerable with twisted knots inside. You give it a test push to see if you can affect it but it reacts erratically and you immediately realize that it would be a lot more work to try and affect it in any meaningful way so you leave it alone for now. No point getting a nosebleed now just for a single crazy. Watching the others work at filling their bags you realize you’re in the perfect spot for a meal again and the hunger begins to rise. You even have a proper little horde this time you could use. > You hold off for now, they are a suspicious lot and probably won't believe that you are the only one to get away twice in a row. You are highly tempted to wipe this team out just like you did with the last one but you know the guards would be too suspicious of you if that happened and it would make your life a lot harder so you hold off for now and instead have your new small horde hold off a few miles North of you and follow behind as you all return to the stadium. You’ve never actively tried to control this many at once and you begin to feel the strain after just a few seconds. However you force yourself to keep going, fighting off a splitting headache until you are all half way back. You feel your nose beginning to bleed this time and quickly plug it up tight with some balls of cloth. It means the blood backs up and you have to swallow it, but it’s better than having it streaming down your face again. You finally arrive back at the stadium and release your active hold on the infected to the North, leaving them all just inside your current maximum reach as you head inside. You receive several comments about how pale and terrible you look and quickly try to explain that maybe it was too soon after looking your other team. You quickly drop off the supplies and collapse into you tent with your head feeling like it’s going to split open where you fall unconscious for the rest of the evening and right through the night. > You waking up as lord of your own little horde. When morning comes you wake slowly and groggily, the last remnants of your headache still present however you immediately notice that you can sense your horde still milling about where you left them. You can even sense some of the stragglers further back that you had lost control of last night due to the pain. Trying to direct them right now is out of the question though as you know you over-did it the day before and you don’t want to risk any more bleeding incidents right now, there is only so many times you can lose half a pint of blood from your nose before people realize something is wrong. You find the Doc waiting for you at breakfast to check on your condition. “I heard you looked like death last night, one of the guards almost shot you before your team convinced him that you were ok and hadn’t been bitten.” You think fairly carefully before replying. “Yeh, I think it might just have been a bit soon after losing my other team, I thought being back out there might help me get over it but I guess it had the opposite reaction. Feeling better today but still got a headache so might be best if I rest for a bit.” The Doc nods and goes to chat with the Capt. who comes over. “We saw things like this back in the wars so don’t worry too much about it, it should mostly pass in a day or two, just let the doc here know if you start feeling overly paranoid or having flashbacks in the next week. You and your team brought back a huge haul of tins and supplies so don’t worry about the scavenging or other duties for a few days either.” He heads off and you finally relax. They were giving you exactly what you needed to destroy them. You head back to your tent with full permission to do nothing for a couple of days and fall asleep again, waking about lunchtime with your headache finally gone. You do however notice that one of the hazy blobs that mark a normal is still hanging around near your tent exactly where it was when you went to sleep. “Seems they are having me followed” You think “best act as normal as possible for a bit then” You head outside and see some of the guys you are friendlier with eating so you head over to join them, and sure enough your shadow follows, you never catch a glimpse of him so he must be one of the military ones or just very good at following people “Maybe they put an ex-stalker after me” you think with a laugh as you start joining in the conversation over lunch. By the next morning of acting normal again your shadow vanishes and you feel up to flexing your powers again. You reach out to your horde and find that, as expected, it’s simple to control them all at once now. “So keep pushing the limits, but not too far or for too long” You think to yourself as you plan your next move. > You hit the stadium right away, get infected inside before they can react and defend properly You have the horde, the ability to use them and you even have a reasonable plan, why wait? You head down into the basement on the premise of getting checkup by the doc and even get a few comments from the guards about them being glad you are feeling better. What a surprise it was going to be for them. Once in his office, you left him swing the door shut then, while his back is still turned you snap his neck from behind. “Huh, much easier than expected” you think as you carefully move his body out of sight from the corridor. You give it a few minutes then exit the office, closing the door behind you and head back out to the two waiting guards who unbolt the door for you and let you through. “Clean bill of health then?” one asks. You smile as you reply “Better than ever!” You punch him in the throat, planning just to crush the wind pipe but you feel his spine snap at the impact as you move to the next guard, you have your hand over his mouth and his neck snapped before the first even hits the floor. You quickly glance down at your hands before grabbing them both and half carry them down to the doc’s office to hide them. “Ok I was fast and strong before but this is on a whole new level. Guess advancing my other powers is helping my body too.” You think as you take the locks off the cell doors and let the four shamblers out. Number 4 is barely able to walk and two are half starved so you let them join you in feeding on the Doc. And the guards while you slowly make your horde move into position. Once you are finished you move with your little team of shamblers to the base of the stairs that lead up to the stadium and wait while your little horde surrounds the stadium, everywhere there are balconies that could lead inside. It’s just before lunch when you start the attack, shamblers and fast types moving out of the alleys and towards the stadium as fast of each of them is able. You immediately hear gunshots ringing out from the front balconies along with occasional booms indicating the 50cal. Sniper is getting involved too. The flanks are slower to react though like you predicted and your horde is already reaching the ditches and barricades by the time they open fire. You can feel large numbers of your horde dropping dead or injured now but you press them forward, each one that falls increases your fine control over the rest and with your guidance they are moving through the defenses at a good speed. The fast types reach the flanks about the time you realize the front is lost, two thirds of the infected there are already down and more drop every second. Seems the military guys on gate duty today are no slouches. You quickly try and read where the normal are and find haziness moving towards all parts of the stadium with two coming your way. The reinforcements are reacting already, that’s not the best news but you have fast types climbing up to the side balconies right now and you feel them taking down a couple of guards on the right side before the others get there. > You head out to attack from the rear; make sure your horde gets inside Now is the time to strike, you can take out the re-enforcements headed to the right and ensure your horde breeches the perimeter. You rush out with your shamblers following behind and run right into the two guards who were headed your way. You punch one right away and feel his chest cave, the other manages to shout and tries to raise his gun, but you’re too fast and bat it aside, letting your shamblers take him down. You begin heading to the right, to take out the re-enforcements however the shamblers, true to their name, move slowly and you decide to leave them behind and rush for the right flank. You arrive shortly behind the guards and feel them killing your horde but you attack from the rear and quickly kill all three, letting your horde into the stadium. You give it a few moments for them to get the first few inside as you try and prolong the other fights, the front attack is pretty much wiped out but you keep the badly wounded moving to draw attention at least. The left side has made the walls but it’s a much harder climb there so they aren’t doing well either. “Time to attack from the inside.” You think as you head down from the balcony with your small force. The first thing you notice is the low rumbling that seems out of place in the normally quiet stadium, the second thing is that the noise is coming from a large armored military jeep parked right in the middle of the field and pointing its mounted gun your way. Even with your super human speed, you can’t dodge bullets, so when the heavy machine-gun opens fire you feel yourself being torn apart along with your horde. “They had a back-up plan.” You think as you fall. “I could have told you that, if you had been willing to listen.” You hear in your head right before it goes black.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You have the horde, the ability to use them and you even have a reasonable plan, why wait? You head down into the basement on the premise of getting checkup by the doc and even get a few comments from the guards about them being glad you are feeling better. What a surprise it was going to be for them. Once in his office, you left him swing the door shut then, while his back is still turned you snap his neck from behind. “Huh, much easier than expected” you think as you carefully move his body out of sight from the corridor. You give it a few minutes then exit the office, closing the door behind you and head back out to the two waiting guards who unbolt the door for you and let you through. “Clean bill of health then?” one asks. You smile as you reply “Better than ever!” You punch him in the throat, planning just to crush the wind pipe but you feel his spine snap at the impact as you move to the next guard, you have your hand over his mouth and his neck snapped before the first even hits the floor. You quickly glance down at your hands before grabbing them both and half carry them down to the doc’s office to hide them. “Ok I was fast and strong before but this is on a whole new level. Guess advancing my other powers is helping my body too.” You think as you take the locks off the cell doors and let the four shamblers out. Number 4 is barely able to walk and two are half starved so you let them join you in feeding on the Doc. And the guards while you slowly make your horde move into position. Once you are finished you move with your little team of shamblers to the base of the stairs that lead up to the stadium and wait while your little horde surrounds the stadium, everywhere there are balconies that could lead inside. It’s just before lunch when you start the attack, shamblers and fast types moving out of the alleys and towards the stadium as fast of each of them is able. You immediately hear gunshots ringing out from the front balconies along with occasional booms indicating the 50cal. Sniper is getting involved too. The flanks are slower to react though like you predicted and your horde is already reaching the ditches and barricades by the time they open fire. You can feel large numbers of your horde dropping dead or injured now but you press them forward, each one that falls increases your fine control over the rest and with your guidance they are moving through the defenses at a good speed. The fast types reach the flanks about the time you realize the front is lost, two thirds of the infected there are already down and more drop every second. Seems the military guys on gate duty today are no slouches. You quickly try and read where the normal are and find haziness moving towards all parts of the stadium with two coming your way. The reinforcements are reacting already, that’s not the best news but you have fast types climbing up to the side balconies right now and you feel them taking down a couple of guards on the right side before the others get there. > You ambush the two near you and keep hidden for now, wait for the right moment. You don’t want to play your hand just yet so you wait and concentrate on controlling the right flank now that they had made the balcony. Concentrating on them so much will lose you control elsewhere but the front group is almost entirely gone and the left flank is having huge issues climbing up so it’s the best choice for now. You have them hide either side of the door as the first of the shamblers starts to reach the top of the rubble and attempt to get over the balcony rail. The guards take the bait and rush forward, shooting the shamblers in front of them the moment they arrive and you have the hidden infected ambush them. You still lose one of them, but that’s two fast ones inside and more following up with the shamblers. You move to the side as you sense the guards heading down the stairs to you and quickly, but brutally dispatch them the second the round the corner. Can’t have them raising the alarm on you now. You hear a low rumbling from the back of the stadium but have to ignore it for the moment, it’s probably a generator or something and right now you have to get rid of the military guys at the front balconies. You sense no-one nearby so you head up the stairs as quickly as you can make your group move and start slipping between the shacks and tents toward the front. You hear the rumble getting louder and realize where you recognize it from. It’s a car engine, and a powerful one at that. You haven’t heard a working one in years. You speed up and direct your forces from the right to swarm down inside then up towards the front balcony to take them out before whatever type of car it is gets involved but you are too late. You hear the sound of a heavy machine gun opening up and instantly feel your force on the right flank go down, you have more coming but all your fast types in the stadium just got taken out in seconds and you are left trapped between the big gun and the balcony. > You rush the big gun, so long as it's around, you are doomed You send your four shamblers to the side a little then have them charge towards the vehicle as you circle round a little as quickly as you can before attacking from its flank. You immediately see that it is a fully armored military jeep with a 50cal. On the roof which tears through your distraction in seconds. With your new found speed though, it’s enough for you to cover the ground necessary for you to launch yourself at the jeep, landing on the roof and grabbing the gunner before he can turn to face you. You are about to let of a whoop of elation and kill him when you hear a strange voice in your head. “Close, but you forgot to account for the Captain, he is not a stupid man.” You get the urgent sense that you should look right, and see the captain and several others in full military garb hiding behind the shacks and pointing rifles at you. They don’t give you a chance to dodge before firing. The last thing you feel is the voice in your head again. “Of course he knew that the jeep was the lynch-pin so he guarded it with his best men.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t want to play your hand just yet so you wait and concentrate on controlling the right flank now that they had made the balcony. Concentrating on them so much will lose you control elsewhere but the front group is almost entirely gone and the left flank is having huge issues climbing up so it’s the best choice for now. You have them hide either side of the door as the first of the shamblers starts to reach the top of the rubble and attempt to get over the balcony rail. The guards take the bait and rush forward, shooting the shamblers in front of them the moment they arrive and you have the hidden infected ambush them. You still lose one of them, but that’s two fast ones inside and more following up with the shamblers. You move to the side as you sense the guards heading down the stairs to you and quickly, but brutally dispatch them the second the round the corner. Can’t have them raising the alarm on you now. You hear a low rumbling from the back of the stadium but have to ignore it for the moment, it’s probably a generator or something and right now you have to get rid of the military guys at the front balconies. You sense no-one nearby so you head up the stairs as quickly as you can make your group move and start slipping between the shacks and tents toward the front. You hear the rumble getting louder and realize where you recognize it from. It’s a car engine, and a powerful one at that. You haven’t heard a working one in years. You speed up and direct your forces from the right to swarm down inside then up towards the front balcony to take them out before whatever type of car it is gets involved but you are too late. You hear the sound of a heavy machine gun opening up and instantly feel your force on the right flank go down, you have more coming but all your fast types in the stadium just got taken out in seconds and you are left trapped between the big gun and the balcony. > You rush the balcony; if you take it out you can get more infected inside to deal with the big gun. You know you can’t take the heavy gun on with only four shamblers so you rush for the front balcony instead, aiming to get to the highest one you can attack the ones below from there and they will never expect it. You can’t move at speed with the shamblers following so you send them to the left to see if they can do damage there but just as you reach the stairs up you feel them go down as you hear the heavy gun again. Glancing behind you, you see a fully armored military jeep parked right in the middle of the stadium with its 50cal. Now turning towards you. You use all the speed you can and manage to dive out of the way before it opens fire and you see the stairs where you hand been a moment before erupt into a shower of debris. “Now what do I do.” You think to yourself as you hide behind a pillar. “I would try running away if I were you, this little attack isn’t working out for you.” Comes the unbidden reply into your mind. You pause speechless for a moment “What the hell, my mind is talking to me now, are you the source of my powers?” You think at the air in front of you. You sense laughter in the response. “Oh dear me no, that did make me laugh! I’m simply another gifted, although significantly more powerful than a fledgling like yourself. I was hoping you’d accept my invitation to meet and discuss the stadium but you had to go and take this rash course instead. Well if you survive then come find me, I’m to your South. I doubt you will though.” You get the feeling that whoever it was has gone so you concentrate on your current predicament. You’re now surrounded, you’re covered with human blood since you were feeding on corpses and you attack is failing. All that’s left is to trust in your speed. You crouch then move right into a full sprint up the rest of the stairs, you hear the big gun starting to fire behind you but the bullets don’t find you until you have reached the balcony, you feel one tearing clean through your leg but dive through the doors and the shooting stops. Sadly this particular balcony is full of heavily armed soldiers. You manage to take three of them down before the others get shots on you and you slowly go down, bleeding from multiple bullet holes. “Ah, thought so.” You hear in your mind before it goes blank.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>When morning comes you wake slowly and groggily, the last remnants of your headache still present however you immediately notice that you can sense your horde still milling about where you left them. You can even sense some of the stragglers further back that you had lost control of last night due to the pain. Trying to direct them right now is out of the question though as you know you over-did it the day before and you don’t want to risk any more bleeding incidents right now, there is only so many times you can lose half a pint of blood from your nose before people realize something is wrong. You find the Doc waiting for you at breakfast to check on your condition. “I heard you looked like death last night, one of the guards almost shot you before your team convinced him that you were ok and hadn’t been bitten.” You think fairly carefully before replying. “Yeh, I think it might just have been a bit soon after losing my other team, I thought being back out there might help me get over it but I guess it had the opposite reaction. Feeling better today but still got a headache so might be best if I rest for a bit.” The Doc nods and goes to chat with the Capt. who comes over. “We saw things like this back in the wars so don’t worry too much about it, it should mostly pass in a day or two, just let the doc here know if you start feeling overly paranoid or having flashbacks in the next week. You and your team brought back a huge haul of tins and supplies so don’t worry about the scavenging or other duties for a few days either.” He heads off and you finally relax. They were giving you exactly what you needed to destroy them. You head back to your tent with full permission to do nothing for a couple of days and fall asleep again, waking about lunchtime with your headache finally gone. You do however notice that one of the hazy blobs that mark a normal is still hanging around near your tent exactly where it was when you went to sleep. “Seems they are having me followed” You think “best act as normal as possible for a bit then” You head outside and see some of the guys you are friendlier with eating so you head over to join them, and sure enough your shadow follows, you never catch a glimpse of him so he must be one of the military ones or just very good at following people “Maybe they put an ex-stalker after me” you think with a laugh as you start joining in the conversation over lunch. By the next morning of acting normal again your shadow vanishes and you feel up to flexing your powers again. You reach out to your horde and find that, as expected, it’s simple to control them all at once now. “So keep pushing the limits, but not too far or for too long” You think to yourself as you plan your next move. > You wait for nightfall then sneak them in slowly. Attack once you have a good force inside Your stalker is gone, headache is gone and you can now control a horde easily. What more could you want from life? To wipe out this little holdout of normals of course! You don’t want to rush things too much though; no sense attacking in the day when they defenders can all easily see and shoot your horde from far away, nighttime is the best option. You spend the rest of the day acting nice and chatting with people; you get several comments about how much better you are looking and always thank the person a lot and say how you think you’ll be back out there in no time. All the while you move your horde slowly closer to the stadium, until finally just before sunset they are hidden a single street away from the start of the barricades. You pretend to head to sleep for the night and wait for several hours. About 2am most people get sleepy whether or not they slept during the day so you wait until then and finally sneak out of your tent, heading towards the right-hand balcony Grabbing a combat knife along the way. Some fallen rubble means that your horde should easily be able to climb in there and there aren’t usually too many guards. You get close and almost get onto the balcony itself before you are challenged by the guards there. “Who’s that moving back there?” they call back to you in a not entirely unfriendly voice, your Inside the stadium after all. “Hey man, it’s just me.” You say stepping out into the moonlight. “Couldn’t sleep you know, remembering the other day.” The guard nods, probably thinking of his own nightmares fueled by watching people he knew killed. “Well you’re welcome to join us out here, it’s just me and Daed here tonight and I’ve heard his stories far too many times. Daed gives you a wave then does back to staring out into the darkness. You smile and lean back against the door frame, behind the two of them. “Thanks man, but I’m not sure I’ve heard all his stories yet.” You hear a groan from the first guard as Daed immediately starts into a story about when he was riding his motorcycle. You let him talk away as the other man shakes his head and looks out into the darkness, leaving both of their backs to you. It’s almost too east from there. You move quietly and stab the first guard in the neck, jumping over to Daed and putting your hand over his mouth before he has time to shout. A quick stab and he dies too leaving you alone on the moonlit balcony. You quickly start calling your horde in small groups to ensure they make as little noise as possible and after a few minutes the first group is climbing up with you. > You have a handful of fast ones and a handful of shamblers, strike now as the others make their way up. You can take out most of the other guards as the rest of your horde gets inside. You gather your ready infected and head right back down the stairs from the balcony; from here you can send the fast ones to one front side balcony while you attack another then re-group to attack the rest, by that time a large number of infected should be ready to sweep down over the living areas. You make it half way down the stairs at the front of your group before realizing that something is wrong, there are far too many hazy areas moving around in the center of the stadium and ahead of you. You try and concentrate but can’t make out more details of what is going on in the near complete darkness of the interior. You wait a few moments for your eyes to adjust so you can see what’s happening when you realize your mistake. You hear a barely audible whirring noise as your eyes adjust enough to realize that there is a huge armored jeep parked right in the middle of the stadium’s open area and its gun is both spinning, and pointed your way. They had taken the obvious follower off you but they must have still been keeping an eye on you, you think as the Jeeps gun opens fire. You dive to the side into a row of seats as you feel your small group of infected getting torn apart by the high caliber bullets. You try and think of where to run when you hear the separate boom at the same time as a hole appears in a seat in front of you and you feel a huge impact in your side. The dam 50cal. Sniper just shot you right through your cover. You try and run back to the balcony but you are already wounded and barely make it two feet before the second boom rings out and a hole appears in your chest.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your stalker is gone, headache is gone and you can now control a horde easily. What more could you want from life? To wipe out this little holdout of normals of course! You don’t want to rush things too much though; no sense attacking in the day when they defenders can all easily see and shoot your horde from far away, nighttime is the best option. You spend the rest of the day acting nice and chatting with people; you get several comments about how much better you are looking and always thank the person a lot and say how you think you’ll be back out there in no time. All the while you move your horde slowly closer to the stadium, until finally just before sunset they are hidden a single street away from the start of the barricades. You pretend to head to sleep for the night and wait for several hours. About 2am most people get sleepy whether or not they slept during the day so you wait until then and finally sneak out of your tent, heading towards the right-hand balcony Grabbing a combat knife along the way. Some fallen rubble means that your horde should easily be able to climb in there and there aren’t usually too many guards. You get close and almost get onto the balcony itself before you are challenged by the guards there. “Who’s that moving back there?” they call back to you in a not entirely unfriendly voice, your Inside the stadium after all. “Hey man, it’s just me.” You say stepping out into the moonlight. “Couldn’t sleep you know, remembering the other day.” The guard nods, probably thinking of his own nightmares fueled by watching people he knew killed. “Well you’re welcome to join us out here, it’s just me and Daed here tonight and I’ve heard his stories far too many times. Daed gives you a wave then does back to staring out into the darkness. You smile and lean back against the door frame, behind the two of them. “Thanks man, but I’m not sure I’ve heard all his stories yet.” You hear a groan from the first guard as Daed immediately starts into a story about when he was riding his motorcycle. You let him talk away as the other man shakes his head and looks out into the darkness, leaving both of their backs to you. It’s almost too east from there. You move quietly and stab the first guard in the neck, jumping over to Daed and putting your hand over his mouth before he has time to shout. A quick stab and he dies too leaving you alone on the moonlit balcony. You quickly start calling your horde in small groups to ensure they make as little noise as possible and after a few minutes the first group is climbing up with you. > You wait for the rest of your horde, you have time before the guard change and it will be safer to swarm everything at once. There is no point in rushing now, you’re horde is climbing up and will soon be strong enough to swarm over the sleeping areas while you took the fastest ones to help with the other balconies. It’s only a few minutes before the balcony is getting full and you do a quick check ahead, trying to sense out the best targets you send the horde after. You immediately realize something is wrong, there is an awful lot of movement going on down there for the middle of the night, you edge through the doorway and carefully keep to cover while you let your eye adjust and look out. You quickly realize that there is something large in the middle of the previously empty space in the stadium and there are a lot of men out with guns, all in a nice big semi-circle around the stairs you were about to walk down. “They must have had someone still keeping an eye on me” You think as you back carefully back onto the balcony. It really doesn’t look like you can do much more here, you’re going to have to escape. You take more immediate control of the infected on the balcony, packed in as they are you have two dozen up here and more still climbing so you send they rushing down at the defenders, maybe they will be surprised and get over-run, worth a try after all. You almost instantly feel them getting torn apart as you hear what sounds like a heavy machine gun open fire. Punctuated now and them by a single boom which always co-insided with one of the infected dying from a huge wound to the chest. You swear to yourself as you realize that every one of them was killed in seconds and didn’t even get close to the defenders. You quickly climb down outside the stadium and set off at a run to try and put some distance between you and it. You leave the infected trying to climb inside as a distraction so you aren’t followed immediately.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The second mission begins the same as the first, a team of 4 sent out to check an old store you think might still have some supplies in it. This one is a little further away but it’s to the West and away from the city center so your team is confident that they won’t run into too much trouble. You set out happily, planning on testing your ability to make the shamblers do more complicated tasks when you quickly sense something slightly different from before, similar to a shambler but… more complicated, where the shambler feels like the last remnants of a broken and dead mind this feels more like a mind that has been twisted and shattered, but not yet dying. You concentrate on it hard for the next few minutes as you walk and realize that it’s moving about, jumping or running from spot to spot. It must be one of the fast ones or crazies. You walk onwards and soon move out of your range to sense it but an hour or so later you sense another one ahead of you. “As if my test subjects were lining up for me” You joke to yourself as you begin trying to affect its mind. You go through the process as you had with the shamblers, concentrating on sensing them properly first, then getting an idea of their sensations and finally trying to make it react to your prodding. It takes you about 2 hours but you finally have a good sense of what to do, its definitely a fast type infected and making them follow simple actions is only slightly different to the shamblers so by the time you reach your destination it’s only a couple of streets away but you have it walking in circles on command. “Dude, you hit your face of something?” one of the men quietly calls back to you and you realize that you have a nose bleed again. Not as bad as before but you quickly wipe it clean. “Yeh, sorry, I just get them sometimes.” You say as you clean the blood off. “Guess concentrating that hard on the other infected means I miss a lot, going to have to be more careful.” You think. You quickly realize that you have all arrived at the store, and there are several more infected in the vicinity. You were concentrating so hard on the one that you missed a second fast type not far off and several nearby shamblers. The rest of your team, completely unaware of the danger just streets away, starts to head into the store to check for the supplies. “I guess I could go for the big test now.” You think to yourself The team is contained and you can control the infected, you could use them to take them out as the first step to destroying the stadium hold out or you could force them all far away and help the stadium people for now, some of them are treating you like a real friend after all. > You feed off humans sure, but you aren't controled by that need and you are enjoying having friends for a change. Hold off wiping out the stadium for now You know, you feed on humans sure, but they are treating you well right now and it is nice to have friends for a change. You can help keep them safe until your powers develop fully at least. You concentrate hard for a moment and see near instant results, all the infected you concentrate on start moving out of the area. You initially try controlling individual actions and feel your nose bleed returning but after a few moments you relax and just give them the general incentive to move away and they find their own routes. You quickly wipe your nose and follow the others into the store, projecting the simple command of ‘Move away’ at the infected as you go. From there the mission goes very easily and you all bag a reasonable amount of food to take back with you. You joke with a couple of the other guys as you all head back about the super easy scavenge when you realize that you’ve been subconsciously projecting the command the entire time, all the shamblers that you get anywhere near immediately begin leaving the area. “It just keeps getting easier.” You think to yourself as you come close to the stadium. Confident that the only infected within several blocks of the stadium as the ones in the basement you head inside happily with the others and hand over the spoils of your scavenge. > You happy evenings rest You rest happily that evening with no infected in sensing range and you only got a minor headache as a response to your new advancement. Even the rations doled out at dinner time taste better and sit more comfortably in your stomach than normal. The doc comes up to eat and you joke with him about your teams haul improving the food in the stadium getting a laugh out of him before happily spending the rest of the evening chatting with the rest of the scavengers. You finally head to bed feeling happier than you have in a while, your control of the infected is growing practically by the hour and people are unwittingly accepting you as a friend, how could life get better? That’s when you sense the movement, its right at the edge of your sensing range while inside the stadium but it feels like a shambler to you, after a few moments it moves a little closer and you become sure. “Stupid thing is trying to stumble back to whatever whole I moved it from.” You think to yourself. You barely concentrate as you send it the signal to leave again but find it not reacting at all, sighing you concentrate hard and try again, this time it simply stops and wavers on the spot for a moment. “Huh, did I overdo it earlier?” you think to yourself as you sense it suddenly waving at you, you don’t know how you know it but it definitely waves at you to invite you to follow before turning and walking South again. “Well that’s odd.” You think as you watch it vanish along with your immediate plans. “Best bet is that they were right and the original harbinger is back, seems he wants to talk to me too.” The morning will bring a new decision to make.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A quiet ringing wakes you at first light. “Huh a near silent alarm, smatter than a loud one I guess.” You say to yourself as you get ready. You glance through your bag. They had left your last few strips of dried meat in there so you start chowing down on one as you head out. They said you had a few days to decide what you’d be doing but if you chose to stay more than that, then you would have to be useful to them in some way, guard duty and scavenging seemed to be the implied option. You had some time though. > You enlist with the stadium guards You head to the shack that was pointed out as the Captain’s room and are about to knock when you find the door open and the man already up and looking at a map of the local city area, he gives you a quick glance before going back to studying the map. “Made a choice already, most people take a day or two to see if they like it here?” You think carefully, but the choice is fairly simple for you now. “Yep, been living alone for far too long now and let’s face it, food is getting short. Joining up here and working as a guard and scavenger gives me a much better chance at a steady food supply for the near future and I can sleep safer at night. It’s a no-brainer really.” He gives you another glance before calling in one of the guards you recognize from the day before. “We have a new recruit, get him kitted out and test him on weapons, you can start taking him out on missions. Unarmed until he passes his weapons handling, then he can have a rifle.” You are lead away and the next couple of days pass quickly as you head out on some very close scavenging missions, It’s the 5th day when you get your first real opportunity. You are sent out with three others to scavenge from an old store that the Capt. doesn’t think was totally cleared out yet. You wern’t doing so great on the provided food and you thought that this might be the first opportunity for a proper meal in a while. Most surprisingly however, you think you might be adapting to their rations but it's too early to tell. > You mission 1 You all head out quietly about an hour after dawn and make your way through the main streets, you don’t have a gun like the others but you do have your bat which you trust a lot more, using it doesn’t cause enough noise to call others to you after all. “I heard you guys had originally cleared this place out of infected?” you whisper to the nearest guard. He thinks for a moment before replying. “We had, but then that thing lead hundreds more to us, and what with all the ones bitten again when the walls fell… well let’s just say it’s not as safe as it used to be. Seems the vaccine doesn’t always work too well against direct exposure either, only the airborne strains, some people are immune but others turn right after getting bit.” You file this information away for later and keep a look-out since you’re nearing the store now and the leader is speaking up. “Right it's go time, two for the front, two for the rear.” The front is visible, it’s fairly open and all the large windows are broken giving easy access and sightlines. The rear must be through one of the alleyways you glimpse to the side. > You front? You don’t feel like alleyways today so you raise your hand for going in the front. The leader nods. “You’re with me then, we all meet in the middle of the store once we check all entrances are clear.” The other two men head off for the alley leading round back as you carefully approach the front door. Since you are unarmed you pull the doors open and jump back to give your partner a line of sight but there is no sign of movement so you both slip inside. The store was some old grocery and drug store combo, it has been mostly cleared out but it was done in a rush and there are still useable supplies on the shelves and floor if you sort through it. You and your partner begin to check the aisles more carefully when you hear the shot coming from the back of the store and you see the other two men stumbling in the back door, slamming it shut behind them. The first thing you notice is that one is clutching his arm and his has a large gash out of it. “It was under some trash, it didn’t move when we poked the bags or anything but after we went by and were trying the door it suddenly lurched up and grabbed me; bit me before, before I knew, before.” He stops and winces in pain, dropping his gun. Red sirens begin going off in your head. “His speech! He’s Going!” you practically shout. Your partner swears and glances around, we have to move NOW! Grab what you can and start running, I’ll finish him off then follow with my bags once I know for sure he’s turning. > You follow orders, grab tins and run You and the other guard grab what food and bags you can and start running as fast as you can away from the store, about a minute later you hear a gun shot, you glance behind you, the store is out of sight already but you see shamblers coming out of a couple of the alleyways headed that way. You pause, considering going back when your new partner grabs your arm. “No time, they are ahead too, Gorramit, it’s like it was a bloody trap!” You see that he is right, a couple of shamblers are already on the road ahead, two of them you can run past easy but if more come, then there will be trouble and there are already more than a dozen you can see behind. You keep running. You finally come within sight of the stadium and just have time to notice what you thought was a light in a nearby window before starting to climb barricades to get back to safety. Seems like the shamblers were more intent on the loud noise than chasing you at least. Once inside you let your partner do the talking, no-one blames either of you and you’re given the next couple of days off to recover before the next mission which goes smoothly. > You life as a guard The next few missions go a lot smoother and there are no casualties, your physical condition gives you advantages over some of the others and you become a fairly popular scavenging partner. You actually begin enjoying living there and even feel like you have begun to properly adapt to their rations and pass your weapon handling so can take a gun with you, though you still prefer the trusty bat for shamblers. Life goes pretty well for another week or two and you even think that settling here might not be so bad after all even if that wasn’t close to your intent when you first walked in the doors. Sadly things do not last that way for long. It’s barely been a month since you arrived in the stadium ruins when the scavenging team fails to return. They decide to send a larger squad after them so find out what happened and ask for volunteers. > You raise your hand You’ve been a great scavenger so far so people are not surprised when you volunteer and your team of 8 men sets out, heavily armed and ready. Everyone walks in a grim silence on the way. Loosing people is always a possibility but it’s still rare, apart from the two lost on your first time out there hasn’t been an incident in 3 months so losing an entire team has shocked everyone again. You walk quietly holding your gun at the ready, noisy but since everyone else will be firing it will be more effective than the bat you think. Once close the leader raises his hand. “Teams of two, always keep at least one other team in sight and call out all strange sights or sounds instantly, got it?” You all nod and split up as you enter the large store front, it used to be glass but with all the windows smashed you can walk right in wherever you want. You’ve gone with the other survivor from the first mission, seems that having everyone else die in your team makes a bond. It’s only a few seconds before you hear the first call go up from one aisle to your left, the one to your right a few seconds later, glancing through the empty shelves you see the teams hunched over something, moving forward past some upturned trollies you also make a find a call it out. Seems like all members of the other team have been found. Well, what remains at least. The rest of your team converges on the three groups that found something. “Looks like they got swarmed here, torn to pieces before they could put up a real fight, only a few shells on the floor.” One of the men says Something clicks in your brain and you suddenly turn to your partner. “Remember the first mission; you said it was like a trap? We have to get out of here right now, we have to run!” The other men hear and you can see it on their faces that they all agree, you all grab the fallen weapons and run to the front of the store but you find the street in either direction already full of infected, and not just shamblers, you’re pretty sure you see some fast ones there too, almost dancing on the spot with repressed energy, wanting to charge you, but they don’t. From a window across the street you see an old man call down to you. “Greetings new survivors of the stadium!” One of the men instantly reacts, “YOU! You’re the Harbinger! We let you in right before the attack happened!” He tries to take aim with his rifle but the man seems to move faster than he has any right to and vanishes from sight, you can still hear him though. “Indeed I have been called that many times before, although I won’t be by you again, sadly my pets here need a little food before I take out the rest of your little stronghold. I’d love to turn a few of you but feeding the current army comes first you know!” The infected rush you, the men get off several shots but they are quickly overwhelmed by the fast ones and the shamblers close in. You know there is no hope when you see them coming through the store too and take a running jump to catch the awning hanging high over the door, you easily make the high jump and are pulling yourself up to get away across the roof before you feel an impact in your back and lose your grip, falling to the pavement below. “Oh dear, you are a spry one, normal men shouldn’t have made that jump so easily but no matter!” you hear the old guy laughing as you get torn to pieces.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next few missions go a lot smoother and there are no casualties, your physical condition gives you advantages over some of the others and you become a fairly popular scavenging partner. You actually begin enjoying living there and even feel like you have begun to properly adapt to their rations and pass your weapon handling so can take a gun with you, though you still prefer the trusty bat for shamblers. Life goes pretty well for another week or two and you even think that settling here might not be so bad after all even if that wasn’t close to your intent when you first walked in the doors. Sadly things do not last that way for long. It’s barely been a month since you arrived in the stadium ruins when the scavenging team fails to return. They decide to send a larger squad after them so find out what happened and ask for volunteers. > You keep quiet, you know full well what happened and don't want to be next You remember what happened on your first mission, going after them will be suicide and probably a trap. Luckily 8 men volunteer quickly enough and no-one blames those who don’t so you get away with no shame from it, you head off to your normal duty for that day, you’re on balcony 6 for the next 4 hours or so. You’ll be the only one there since it isn’t really an important one, kind of to the side of the main entrance and not looking at anything of interest. Its half way through your shift when you hear some muffled sounds coming from over the city and it seems another sentry heard it too, you report hearing it then head back up. Once you get off duty though and come back down it’s not to a pretty sight. It seems that they worked out that the noise was gun fire and the ‘rescue’ team was now also overdue. You think back again to your first mission and what seemed like a trap, your starting to get a bad feeling about the city now. Seems like scavenging too close to the city center isn’t such a good plan anymore. You have to choose whether to dump these guys and head out alone now or hold out until they are ready to make a larger push for the colony to the east, sure you have lost men recently but true to their word, they have recruited nearly a dozen in the last month. You had no idea there were so many survivors up in this area or you’d have come North a lot sooner. You’re also pretty sure that the Capt. is going to order a push East soon too, even with the losses, their numbers are still good and they have the guns and equipment for a full military push through the open streets, the scouts have everything planed out route wise with backups for it things go wrong. > You leave them, their tactics aren't working You really can't work out why people keep using tactics right out of old movies when they never work. You have to get out of here before you get taken down with everyone else on their suicide mission. You start your preparations, gathering spare food and supplies and get your bag ready to leave when your friend from the first mission approaches you about leaving with some others who share your opinion. You sign on immediately and get ready to sneak out. > You sneaking out You’ve been thinking the same for a while. If an even larger group of military couldn’t hold the infected at bay, then what will this small team do? Especially if the harbinger from before COULD control the infected, you’ll have to think about that more later, for now it’s time to get out. “I’m in, betting a small team can move a lot quieter than a large group too. Let’s go.” You grab you pack and bat, leaving the gun behind as you never liked using it anyway and head for a North-East balcony where you all climb down some piping and Begin heading East. There are 5 people in your little team including yourself. A few brought guns, but everyone needs something to make them feel safe you guess, even if all it does is draw more infected. The plan gets laid out as you walk. Seems that you are heading East along a route further North of the route the jeep will be taking, getting up to a highway that should take you most of the way to the river. It was too clogged with cars for the main group for no problem for 5 guys on foot. You all walk quietly for the next few hours before stopping to eat having covered a good distance. You pick a low rooftop that you think once belonged to a barber shop to rest. One of the men finally speaks up. “We are a few hours clear and this roof is pretty safe, shall we break for the rest of the night and head out again at dawn?” You all agree and settle down for the rest of the night on the rooftop. You spend the next few hours thinking about getting to the safe colony to the east and why you were originally heading there before getting so caught up with the stadium people before eventually falling asleep. > You morning hunger You wake with the dawn and find two of the others already up. “We couldn’t sleep so great being exposed out here.” One of them says to you. As the last two get up, you realize just how hungry you are and remember that you didn’t eat anything last night. You dig in your bag for your meat strips but find nothing there, remembering that you finished them off on the third day in the stadium. You accept some rations from the other guys but it seems to do little to your hunger. You think back to when you used to feel this hunger practically all the time, seems your days of living happily in the stadium and not feeling hungry are over for the time being. You all check your surroundings but it’s all clear and you head off again about an hour after dawn. “Won’t the others catchup to us at this rate?” one of the others asks out loud. It’s your friend that answers. “Nah, we are a few roads North of them and will be heading up to the highway by lunchtime, so even if they do move faster than us, they will pass right by us to the South and never see us. Hey if all goes well we will meet up with them in a few weeks at the colony and have a great laugh about this all!” The mood seems to lighten a little after that and you all keep moving with some quiet chatter going on. You even join in some of the joking and in the light atmosphere begin to forget about feeling hungry again. It’s a few hours later and you are getting close to the on ramps for the highway when you begin hearing the noises. Its very faint but you call it out anyway. “Low rumbling to the South.” The others pause and listen for a time before one turns and says. “I hear it now, sounds like the Jeep, they will be passing us soon. Those are some ears you have mate!” “Seems they are making great time if they are passing us already, they might actually do it at this rate!” one of the men jokes as you all start walking again, listening to the low rumble get louder, then start to get quieter as they pass you a few roads to the South. Its only a few minutes later that you hear a crashing noise and the rumbling stop. “Gorram Harbinger! They are being ambushed aren’t they, we should go help them!” > You agree to run and help, they aren't too far away after all You immediately agree. “Well we can’t just leave them there and even if it’s the harbinger, he won’t expect us. Your friend reluctantly agrees as do the others. You all set off at a run. There hasn’t been any other noise yet and you start to hear the Jeep again. “The jeeps just idling! They were probably just clearing a car off the road!” one of the guys says when you are only a couple of blocks away. Almost on cue you hear the 50cal. Starting up and blocking out any other noise. Swearing out loud you round the corner a couple of blocks behind the stadium group and find a bus between you and them, as well as a horde of the infected. One man with you drops to his knees. “It’s just like when the stadium fell. It’s the harbinger.” The 50cal. Falls silent, looking through the buss’s windows you see the infected swarming towards the jeep. “It’s already over, let’s get out of here!” You drag the kneeling man to his feet but he breaks free, rushing towards the buss firing his rifle. “We can still save them! It’s not too late!” He barely gets 20 feet before you see a couple of fast types sprinting from an alleyway, taking him down and beginning to feed on him. “Everyone run!” You hear someone shout. You don’t even check who it was and start sprinting back in the direction you came as you see 3 more fast types headed your way. You never even notice your friend and one other falling behind and getting eaten. You only stop once you are several blocks away and turn to see the last member of your group some distance behind trying to keep up. “Forgot how much faster I was” You think to yourself as you wait for him. “Where are the other two?” You ask, thinking about your friend. “Got, taken, down…” He stammers, out of breath. “None of us could keep up with you and the fast ones don’t tire like us. I only got away because they stopped to eat the other two.” “AAHH Gorramit!” you say out loud, you know it was only the 3 fast types and if you had helped then you could have easily taken them down, it’s not as if a bite of two would inconvenience you much, you’ve had enough before to know they will have no more effect on you. “Let’s just go before more come. We know what the plan was at least.” You head North and quickly get to the highway without further signs of pursuit. The lighthearted atmosphere from before has vanished leaving you and the last remaining survivor from the stadium walking in silence and brooding. You can feel your hunger returning with a vengeance now that you have little else good to think about and eating a trail bar doesn’t help at all. Your mind keeps wandering to how anyone you try and get close to dies anyway. You both walk until night when you find a van to climb into and shut the door behind you. “So they are all dead.” You mutter out loud as you both check for what food there is left, your hunger is killing you. Seems that between you, you have enough basic rations for a few days. “Right, I REALLY need to eat, let’s have a proper meal then we can scavenge more as we go.” Your new partner seems too depressed to argue about anything so you divide the food into two big meals and 1 day’s rations. You both eat up quickly and he curls up into a corner of the van to sleep. You spend the next few hours awake thinking about all those dead people and about talk of harbingers being able to control the infected. You hunger hasn’t gone down at all despite the meal. > You late night munchies It’s near midnight and the old hunger is eating at you and you come to a decision. “I tried, I tried for weeks. No-one can blame me now, since everyone around me dies, it may as well be to my plan like it used to be.” The other survivor doesn’t even move as you take out your bat and kill him with a single blow. Your hunger is finally sated and like returning to an old addiction, everything feels better than ever. You pack up what’s left of his remains to take with you as food for your journey and fall asleep happy in the fact that you have made you mind up at last. You will reach the colony to the East. And once there you will eat them one by one, you are a harbinger after all, it’s what you do. > You morning in the blood stained van The morning comes and you wake happy again, not the relaxed happiness of the stadium, a happiness with an edge. You have great things to do after all. You check that the other survivors remains are carefully wrapped up and in your packs, the last meat strips from that crazy you killed and ate had run out so you have to make sure you bring enough with you. You almost laugh out loud that the idiots in the stadium never thought you were a harbinger and the strips of mean were from a human. But time to move on. You need to test out these ideas of controlling infected. You walk slowly East on the highway, from memory this thing circles most of the city so it will be a much longer way round to the bridge but you still don’t want to be near the city centre. Mutants are still mutants whether you admit to yourself what you are or not. After a few hours you see a shambler down below, slowly making its way down a road. You pause and concentrate for hours on it. Concentrating, trying to feel its mind, trying to order it to do something mentally but to no avail. It slowly keeps walking down the road and eventually you give up following it, starting to walk along the highway looking for a closer target to test your theories on. You finally come across a car which had crashed into the van in front leaving the driver trapped. You thought it was dead at first but once you are close, it twitches a little and makes a weak movement with its arm. “Seems you’ve been trapped here a really long time little shambler.” You say to it, looking carefully in the car you see from all the bones that there must have been at least one other passenger in the car which the shambler was eating to have sustained itself this long. Either way it was still trapped and near death. A perfect test subject. You decide to use the van it crashed into for your bed and spent the next couple of hours concentrating on it. Still no luck, no reaction at all really. It seems the same as always, it wants to eat you and you have no effect. You sigh as you settle down for the night in the back of the van. You might have to give up on the stupid rumors, you’ve been a harbinger for years and never had an inkling of controlling infected with ‘mind powers’ sure it’s the apocalypse but its not some stupid movie. You’ve already seen the infected swarming towards noise and that jeep could be heard for miles, they just made too much noise and attracted everything in the area to them so when they stopped to push cars around, they got swarmed, they probably tried to use the bus to block the infected from getting to them and failed. > You give it up. Who are you kidding that you have amazing mind powers that you simply never noticed before? You head East, following the highway for several days and strangely find it mostly deserted, like someone had cleared it out some time before and only the occasional straggler came back. The going is easy and the worst you are left to contend with are the occasional shambler amidst the parked and crashed cars. Its not long before you see the bridge ahead of you. There are a few shamblers visible on it but it looks clear enough for you to make a try at getting across, "Then its right onto the Eastern Colony!" you say to yourself. You're a harbinger through and through and you're going to enjoy infiltrating the colony then eating everyone inside, one by one. Unfortunately as you take your first step onto the bridge you feel a sudden pain hit your mind, like the worst migraine you ever had described to you. You collapse gripping your head but the pain vanishes just as suddenly, leaving a strange numb feeling in your mind. A voice suddenly appears in your head "Too close to being red my friend, we can't have you coming here to try and destroy us now can we?" You feel a second wave of pain then nothing more<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The morning comes and you wake happy again, not the relaxed happiness of the stadium, a happiness with an edge. You have great things to do after all. You check that the other survivors remains are carefully wrapped up and in your packs, the last meat strips from that crazy you killed and ate had run out so you have to make sure you bring enough with you. You almost laugh out loud that the idiots in the stadium never thought you were a harbinger and the strips of mean were from a human. But time to move on. You need to test out these ideas of controlling infected. You walk slowly East on the highway, from memory this thing circles most of the city so it will be a much longer way round to the bridge but you still don’t want to be near the city centre. Mutants are still mutants whether you admit to yourself what you are or not. After a few hours you see a shambler down below, slowly making its way down a road. You pause and concentrate for hours on it. Concentrating, trying to feel its mind, trying to order it to do something mentally but to no avail. It slowly keeps walking down the road and eventually you give up following it, starting to walk along the highway looking for a closer target to test your theories on. You finally come across a car which had crashed into the van in front leaving the driver trapped. You thought it was dead at first but once you are close, it twitches a little and makes a weak movement with its arm. “Seems you’ve been trapped here a really long time little shambler.” You say to it, looking carefully in the car you see from all the bones that there must have been at least one other passenger in the car which the shambler was eating to have sustained itself this long. Either way it was still trapped and near death. A perfect test subject. You decide to use the van it crashed into for your bed and spent the next couple of hours concentrating on it. Still no luck, no reaction at all really. It seems the same as always, it wants to eat you and you have no effect. You sigh as you settle down for the night in the back of the van. You might have to give up on the stupid rumors, you’ve been a harbinger for years and never had an inkling of controlling infected with ‘mind powers’ sure it’s the apocalypse but its not some stupid movie. You’ve already seen the infected swarming towards noise and that jeep could be heard for miles, they just made too much noise and attracted everything in the area to them so when they stopped to push cars around, they got swarmed, they probably tried to use the bus to block the infected from getting to them and failed. > You can't give up yet, it's not as if you have anything else to do is it? You really don't have anything to loose by continuing testing so you decide to spend the day where you are studying the trapped shambler, even if you don't have mind powers, you might still learn something as it's not every day you get to study one without it actively trying to eat you. You spend your time concentrating on it, staring at it and even try rubbing your temples and waving your hand at it like in the old movies but to no avail. You are starting to get a headache too so decide to call it a day. You sleep a few hours hungry and frustrated before waking well before dawn. Your eyesight is pretty good and the moon is out so you try testing things on the shambler again with the same lack of luck as the evening before. Finally fed up you pick up a piece of metal and throw it at the trapped shambler. You watch as it sticks into the decaying flesh of its chest and fell a slight twinge in your own. touching your chest quickly you realize that you felt a twinge right where your projectile had stabbed into the shambler. "I call that progress!" You begin concentrating on how your felt the twinge and by the evening you think you are feeling something. The headache from the night before is back with a vengeance though and you realize that you now have a small nosebleed. "Guess its not good to stare at the same think for 12 hours straight" You think to yourself as you head to bed early for once. > The morning after the tests. You wake up and quickly notice three things; Your headache is gone, you can feel something strange just outside the van and judging by the light creeping in, its well into morning. "Must have been the headache, I never sleep more than a few hours" you think as you snack on some meat strips and peek outside. You definitely can sense something and it is exactly where the shambler sits trapped. a weird kind of haze shares it's position "So I can sense then, that is definitely a start, I'll have to keep this one alive for testing on" You toss the trapped shambler a meat strip which it devours quickly while you begin concentrating on the haze, you find as the morning passes that the haze resolves into a small ball and realize that it must represent the shamblers mind. You smile to yourself as you settle into trying to affect it. Again by the evening the headache and nosebleeds are back "These must be to do with my powers, streaching them after so long of un-use much be causing it" you think as you take a snack break. > You further tests The next few days pass in much the same way, you practice trying to control the shambler until you get a headache and nosebleed, then wait and rest until it passes. Sleep seems to help the most and you often wake up having progressed by a large leap from the day before. By the end of your practicing you can make the shambler react to your commands and you are pretty sure you can sense what is happening to it too, like where it is injured. You need to test further and see if you can control others as well or if you are limited to having to learn each new infected like you did with this one. Once you are pretty sure you could make it move the way you wanted if it wasn't completely trapped in place, you decide that it is time to move on and further your training with more testing. It's a few hours after setting out that you see something below you and realize that a shambler must be on the road below the highway. You reach out for it and feel its mind there like you did with the trapped one but you immediately feel your nosebleed coming on again and stop pushing it. It seems that you will need to take things slowly That night you find a rest stop and actually manage to camp inside a building. Your hunger is back but the last remains of the survivor you killed keep you sated for now "going to have to find some more food soon" you think to yourself. > You heading East with your new powers, get to the colony soon You keep heading East and don't find much food on the way but your powers do increase. You manage to control a fast type that comes into range, and since you were hungry, it provides some food too. Not nearly as good as human but definitely better than shambler flesh at least. You learn to differentiate the minds of shamblers and fast types, even a mutant to the South falls temporarily under your control as your range increases. Your tests let you control several infected at once and direct them as you please. "They will have no idea what hit them when I reach the Eastern colony" You think to yourself. Your physical abilities have also improved. You were already faster and stronger than any normal human but that has increases along with your mental abilities, you know there isn't a normal human alive who could face you in a fight and you can rip a car's door clean off its hinges with only a little effort. It's not long after that you finally reach the bridge across the river. there are infected on it but this wont stop you now as you direct them over the sides of the bridge to fall into the deep flowing water below. after a few moment you realize that either the fall or the drowning has actually killed most of them but shrug it off as another test, they are just prey after all. Then the pain begins. A sudden sharp stabbing right into your mind forces you to your knees. You try to fight it off and feel it diminishing, like you are holding a barrier up against it, protecting your mind with your powers, but you feel jsut how much stronger the other force is and your defense crumbles. "Sorry about this, I really am, but you are far too close to being red to get in here alive." You try and respond but find that everything feels fuzzy, you are sure the voice in your head is female though "Oh yes, might have damaged a few things there, attacking really isn't my strong suit so I might have used too much strength, well either way it doesn't matter now. Bye" You feel a slight pain then everything fades out to black<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next few days pass in much the same way, you practice trying to control the shambler until you get a headache and nosebleed, then wait and rest until it passes. Sleep seems to help the most and you often wake up having progressed by a large leap from the day before. By the end of your practicing you can make the shambler react to your commands and you are pretty sure you can sense what is happening to it too, like where it is injured. You need to test further and see if you can control others as well or if you are limited to having to learn each new infected like you did with this one. Once you are pretty sure you could make it move the way you wanted if it wasn't completely trapped in place, you decide that it is time to move on and further your training with more testing. It's a few hours after setting out that you see something below you and realize that a shambler must be on the road below the highway. You reach out for it and feel its mind there like you did with the trapped one but you immediately feel your nosebleed coming on again and stop pushing it. It seems that you will need to take things slowly That night you find a rest stop and actually manage to camp inside a building. Your hunger is back but the last remains of the survivor you killed keep you sated for now "going to have to find some more food soon" you think to yourself. > You heading North to train before you make for the Colony You need time and safety to train your new talents, wandering recklessly East while still developing is probably too dangerous as you don’t know what is lurking between you and the colony. Heading South would just take you right into the city center and that would be a death wish without better abilities so North is your final option. You know there used to be small communities in the outlying areas, hamlets and villages that served the farming communities, retirement homes and even some affluent areas for those who no longer wanted to live in the big city. If you look around enough you are sure you will find a nice enough building to make a temporary base, food might be scarce but you can always subside on the infected for a few weeks. You walk until the next off-ramp leading to a North-bound road and wander down. Looking around you see most of the buildings reduced to rubble, the military must have hit this area harder than others during the defense. “Maybe this was one of the areas they tried to make a stand and bombed the hordes of infected that attacked them” You think to yourself as you walk, but it is unlikely that you’ll ever find out for sure. There are not too many infected in this direction but you know if you find a small community that you should find some there to practice on, they never wander too far from where they turned after-all. By night-time you have left the outskirts of the city behind and begin to see open areas of land a fields, some overgrown with crops of varying types, untended for years, the old clearly defined lines haven given away to a mish-mash of crops invading others fields while weeds and thorns try to choke them all out. By nightfall you are looking for a likely place to rest and see a few options, in the distance you can make out what looks like a small grain silo, it would take a couple of hours to reach but they usually are made of metal, have small ladders right up to the top where you’d be nice and safe from everything, There is also an old broken down farmhouse nearby and a Barn on the same land. The House was clearly ransacked long ago, the doors are missing, windows smashed and everything looted out of it. The barn seems in better shape, the doors wide open but still intact at least. > You head onto the Grain Silo, solid metal construction is more trustworthy You head resolutely toward the grain silo, if you were going to find a safe resting spot it would be there. You can see scattered houses in the distance but they will most likely be like the one you passed, ransacked and useless. THe grain silo however is a huge solid metal cylinder with a walkway spiraling up the outside which leads to the metal hatch on top to get inside. Even if the grain levels are too low inside it, there is often a small internal platform or walkway below the hatch you could rest on for the night. As you get closer the dusk ends and the night fully sets in, you count your blessings that you have good night vision as avoiding an infected attack now would be very difficult. You stomach keeps rumbling on you, reminding you of how long it has been since you ate. The old hunger has kept getting stronger recently and you know you will need to eat something very soon. And luckily you see prey. A woman is running out of the fields, right towards the same silo as you! You are normally a lot more cautious but the old hunger has finally overwhelmed your better judgment. You are a harbinger and you need to feed. You begin to sprint towards the woman, planning on cutting her off and tackling her. It has been too long since you had human flesh and you are practically salivating over the remembered taste. You realize almost too late that you are not the only thing chasing the woman. She screams out for help while she runs and you think you hear a response from up on the tower but you do not have time to think about it. Right behind the woman are two large mutant animals, they look like farm cats fed steroids having morphed into things larger than cougars and they are about to catch the woman seconds before you do. The woman is not a threat and despite your hunger you know you must deal with these mutants first or they will tear you apart too. The woman screams again as she finally notices you charging her way, bat raised ready to strike but as she stumbles you step past her and meet the front mutant cat with the full force of your swing sending it crashing to the ground, injured but still moving. You glance at the woman and see something akin to surprise before it returns to fear and she scrambles away toward the silo where you now see three men heading your way. You turn back as the second mutant attacks you. You know you can't afford to have it jumping around all the time so when it snaps you offer it your arm and it latches on. Once there you start smashing it's head in with your bat. only stopping when it slumps off you to the ground with half of its skull gone. You are about to turn back to the humans when the first mutant leaps at you again, you hadn't finished it off with that first blow and it knocks you clean off your feet. You realize that it is badly injured and probably could have killed it had the back of your head not landed neatly on a rock, knocking you out cold. > A painful wakening You slowly wake up and immediately feel the pain at the back of your head "Great I came to eat a human and wound up fighting mutants off for her instead" You think as you try and sit up. You realize something is wrong almost the moment you do. You are not outside anymore. You carefully feel your head while you look around. There is a bad gash but it should heal up in a few days so long as you eat. Your arm is in worse shape with several deep tears in the flesh "can't be helped, taking on two mutants is never a good plan" You think while trying to work out where you are. Finally you realize you are inside the grain silo you were trying to reach. The humans you saw must have dumped you down here once they scared off the other mutant. "Well thats some gratitude isn't it. I did save her life afterall." You are about to add a comment about how you planned to eat her not save her but you are fortunately cut off by a female voice from above "I know you did and I am sorry but you are bitten, we cannot risk it. I am glad you woke up though. please keep quiet now, they patrol this area at night." You think about responding but decide against it "They think I am a normal human who did somthing heroic and have put me down here to quarantine me while keeping me safe. this works to my advantage." You carefully lie down again and get some more sleep now that you know you have safety at least until morning. > You morning in the silo You wake at what you assume is the early morning hearing voices from above. They are whispering meaning you cannot hear most of what is said but one is definitely a woman and the other a man, you think they are arguing about you. The woman seems pretty adamant and you assume it is her defending you since she thinks you acted to save her. You can't make out any more details anyway so you loudly roll over and let out a yawn. The whispering immediately stops and the man calls down "If you are still human prove it now!" You think for a second before replying "You prove that you are human first then I will, I just saved that womans life while you chucked me down here!" You hear the woman cutting in "If he speaks, he is still human Chris and you know it." You hear silence again before a more resigned male voice calls down. "Ok, so you haven't turned yet but take a look at your arm. They bit you good and we can't risk having you loose until we know you wont turn" You nod to yourself, you proved you were human and that you were not scared of time, time to play nice for a bit "Ok I understand that, it's smart to quarantine those who are bitten but I haven't turned and it's not exactly comfortable down here, I can't even see what I am lying on!" You hear a creak from above and light floods down into the silo, the metal walls reflecting it to ensure everywhere is lit. You cover your eyes while they get used to the light then look around. You are about 12 feet below the small walkway below the hatch where you can see the two humans sitting. You are currently sitting on top of what appears to be some old fencing thrown down here so you wouldn't sink into the grain below it. You also notice the shambler only a few feet away from you. You lurch away from it and slip off the fencing boards, finding yourself sinking into the grain slowly when you hear the shout from above "Hold on there, it's trapped and not a thread, get back on the boards before you sink too deep!" You scramble back up again and sit down holding your arm, open wounds are not meant for clambering about, you have no idea if you would actually sink into the grain or if that was just some old myth but you are also not willing to test it out yourself. You look closer at the shambler and realize that it is indeed trapped. It is up to its shoulders in the grain with a piece of wooden plank sticking into its side, ensuring it cannot move at all. "So mind if I ask what it is doing in here with me then?" You call up and it's the woman that answers "He was one of us, a survivor but he got bitten so we lowered him in there incase he turned. he must have realized he was going because in the night we heard him jump off into the grain and dig himself in before he lost control. It took him over a day to turn in the end." You nod along. You try to catch and eat a woman and end up trapped in a grain silo with a shambler for company "Just great" You think. "So how long am I spending down here with no food or water then?" You call up to them. You reply is in the form of a small bag being tossed down to you which you catch deftly 1 handed. "That has some water and some rations, enough to last you three days. That's how long you'll have to stay here for." Then you see the man climb out the hatch. The woman goes to follow then calls down "I'm sorry but we must be sure." Then follows the man out. They at least leave the hatch propped open so you get a little light in. > You quarantine in the silo You are trapped and now along with the shambler in the silo. You could probably escape if you really tried. there are two sections of fence down here, if you stood on one and wedged the other up against the wall you are pretty certain you could make the jump off it and up onto the small walkway. It would be fairley easy to ambush those humans when they returned too. > You go for it, they trapped you in here and eating humans is what you do after all You quickly decide that you want out of here so you grab the other piece of fencing and testing it find that it is still good and solid. You are about to wedge it against the wall of the silo when you think about how hungry you are. You place it down and walk over it towards the trapped shambler. You quickly pull the plank out of its side and kill it with it before feeding on it briefly to sate your desire. You then go back to the original plan and using the wedged fencing you make it up to the walkway with a huge leap. You automatically grab onto the bottom lip to pull yourself up but remember too late about your arm. You feel the slight healing that had happened come undone and blood starts flowing down your arm as you pull yourself up. You collapse onto the walkway in pain "Now they are really going to pay" you think to yourself, you haven't felt this much pain in years. You check around and find some bags of food, mostly fruit and veg in one corner and assume they are here scavenging. You quickly tear a strip off one of the bags to bind up your wound then move to the corner of the walkway, trying to ensure you will be out of sight when they first come in, and you do not have long to wait. You watch as the hatch opens and lets more light flood in while you edge as far back into the corner as possible. It is unnecessary though and the woman climbs right in without checking first, seemingly completely sure that you were trapped and not a threat. You watch her move right over to some bags and start unloading some more fruit while the man climbs in behind. You spring your trap just as he turns his back to you, leaping clean onto his back and forcing him flat instantly. it is a simple task then for you to snap his neck and sit up to look at the woman who lets out a belated scream. You laugh aloud before replying "Sorry my dear but I was actually intending to eat you when those mutants got in the way, don't worry though, I will keep you alive down in the silo until I am finished eating this fo..." You are cut off as you hear the boom and feel the impact in your back. You are thrown to the ground and roll over in time to see two more men outside the hatch with guns pointed your way "There were three of them when they came to help there woman weren't there, I shouldn't have forgotten that" You think as the second man fires and it goes dark.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are trapped and now along with the shambler in the silo. You could probably escape if you really tried. there are two sections of fence down here, if you stood on one and wedged the other up against the wall you are pretty certain you could make the jump off it and up onto the small walkway. It would be fairley easy to ambush those humans when they returned too. > You wait out the quarantine, a few days wont hurt and you have things to test on the shambler Three days down here wont hurt you and will give your arm time to start healing. You will also be just as talkative and lucid as before so they will obviously think you are fine and let you back up at the end, you just need to bind your arm so the wound is not so obviously healing too quickly. You tear a strip off the bag they threw down as a temporary solution and bind the wound up "Not visible now at least" You think as you settle in for the long haul. Since you are here with a completely trapped shambler you have the perfect test subject to work on the persistent rumors of Harbingers abilities. You take the time to think through them all carefully since you only have three days and want to use them to the fullest. "They are stronger and faster than humans, check, cos I am." You think to yourself "Two, they heal faster, also check. Three they can control hordes of infected, unknown. Four, they don't bleed, false but very useful." You pause for a moment to try and recall any other rumor but you draw a blank for now "Controlling the infected it is then" You think as you lie back down and begin staring hard at the shambler. ​You only last a few moments before your head begins to throb at you and you decide that maybe giving the head wound a few more hours to heal before concentrating too hard might be a good plan so simply lie back and let your mind wander over past encounters with infected and over the one close to you now, how you might control its mind. You drift off to sleep still thinking about the shambler and how to control it and do not wake up for a few hours. > You sudden light in the face You are woken by a light flashing on your face and you sit up quickly to look around. You hadn't planned to fall asleep, just to rest for a few moments. You immediately hear a voice from above "He's still moving at least" You look up and see the man has a torch in his hand, no longer pointed in your face though "You still talking? You've slept an awful lot." He calls down to you. You are about to answer back sarcastically but remember you are supposed to be nice at the moment "Yeh, the head wound was hurting so I decided to rest a bit more, it's not really like I have that many options down here." The man nods in response then heads back out. You notice the bags near the railing look a lot bigger though so they must have brought something back when they came in. You lie back down to rest but realize you can feel somthing near you, like when someone is in the room and you can kind of feel it in the hairs on the back of your neck. You turn towards the source of the feeling and it is clearly the trapped shambler. You can actually sense it already, either your head wound or the sleep helped you. You immediately decide that giving yourself another head wound is out of the question so you decide that it must have been the sleeping while thinking about the shambler that did it. You spend the rest of the day concentrating on the strange feeling and the shambler and slowly resolving it into something you can control a little better. By the end of the day you can sense the mind of the shambler as a small compressed haze which represents it's mind. Your concentration is occasional interrupted by the man and woman coming and going, dropping off what looks like fruit and veg into the large sacks "So this is their scavenging expedition then, they come to the farms to get food for where-ever their base is." The woman always takes a few moments to try and apologize for your treatment but each time you assure them that it is completely understandable and the only smart option and that finally seems to calm her about it and by even she simply trades pleasantries with you. You go to sleep once more thinking about the shambler and affecting the haze which is its mind. > The difference between the shambler and your guards You wake just after dawn and find a lot of dried blood on your lip "Dam nosebleeds" you think as you wipe it off, wouldn't be good for the humans to see you bleeding like this, they might jump to conclusions and last night you saw the other two men again standing outside, and they were carrying rifles. You turn to begin your concentration on the shambler like before but find you don't need to. You can sense it near you easily. you concentrate anyway and find you can sense thing from its mind, or what is left of it. It feels like the dying remains of a mind, weak and rotting away slowly. You can tell where it is injured though and with a slight push you make it lift its arm up in the air. You are about to rejoice when you feel wetness on your face and realize you have a massive nosebleed again. You quickly wipe it away again and wait for the bleeding to stop "guess the side effects are going to just keep being annoying for a while, going to have to be careful" you also feel the beginnings of a headache but as soon as you stopped concentrating it lessened slightly again. You lie back to take a break and realize another difference. You can sense a haze above you too, very different than the one from the shambler, warmer, full of energy and life "So thats the mind of a normal human then, I wonder what mine appears like?" You think as you try and concentrate on the human minds. You make a little progress and have reduced the haze to a small area around the sleeping humans when they begin to stir and the headache gets too strong. You take a complete break and rest while they do their short morning routine. The woman pauses to lean over and look down at you, realizing you are away and looking back she calls down "You'll be out soon, sorry again about this but as you said, we have to be safe!" You grin and reply "It really isn't a problem, I just get to rest down here all day while you guys go scavenging for food, you have the more dangerous job if there are more of those mutants out there." The man cuts in a little suspicious "How do you know we are scavenging for food here?" You just laugh as you see the woman rolling her eyes at him. He looks a little confused before she fills him in "We come in here 3 or 4 times a day and dump food into the sacs like 6 feet from his head, I would be more worried if he didn't know what we were doing." The man pauses then realizes his mistake "Right, then I'll be outside when you are ready" is all he says as he heads out the door clearly embarrassed. "The woman turns back to you "Sorry for that, he can be a little paranoid but his heart is in the right place. My name is Cara by the way" She gives you a big smile. "It's lovely to meet you Cara" you reply "And don't worry, the paranoid ones usually live longer these days." She smiles again as she heads out "Perfect, she trusts me already, I'll be out soon" You think as you settle down to your tests. You make the shambler do a few tricks and after throwing a couple of pieces of wood at it, you are confident you can sense what is happening to it. You do however get a wicked headache again and decide that you will need to pace yourself a little more. The headaches seem to accompany progress but they also might be dangerous as shown by the nosebleeds. You take the evening off just to recover more and spend more time chatting with the woman when she returns, trying to resolve the haze around her more, you finally fall asleep still concentrating on the human haze. > You morning resolutions The morning comes with more progress, things with the shambler seems the same, you can make it do anything you want already, but above you the haze has defined more. You can tell the difference between Cara's mind and the man's. You had spent time the night before gathering details and had given your own name and some details of your life before the infection spread but you gave away little of your recent life, just glossed over it as a hard life scavenging along. You did tell them about loosing some comrades recently to garner a little sympathy and from their looks they both knew what it was like to loose friends. Their minds also resolved to be clearer and softer. Utterly different from the shamblers beside you, almost the opposite, exuding life and clearly full of thought and emotion but you find you cannot affect them in any similar way or gather feelings from them, just sense that they have them. The energy they seem to exude does seem to make your hunger worse though, just knowing how much you would gain from eating them. You exchange a few more pleasantries as they head out and Cara throws you down a ripe apple for a snack, you thank her as you bite into it and find that it surprisingly helps with your hunger a little. Not a lot, but enough to take the slightest edge off, you are used to human food tasting terrible and barely sustaining you so it is a very welcome surprise. You relax and eat some of the other rations while thinking of the conversation the night before and what you had learned. They actually live in an old walled community a couple of days walking North of here. The large walls and steel gate kept infected out and guns held off the looters until they fell to the infected so they survived well. They are one of several scavenging teams that head out to gather food and supplies for the community. They give few other details but you guess they are small of number, maybe 30 in all but they seem to do well enough there. You finally decide that it is time to do more tests but you have exhausted what you want to try on the shambler so you put your mind to trying to sense other things around you. This takes most of the day, a nose bleed and several headaches but by evening you can sense some minds at the periphery of where your senses reach. You remember an old barn in that direction so assume that is where the infected you sense must be, that means you have several hundred feet of sensing ability. You relax as you feel the minds of the humans returning and make sure you don't have any blood left below your nose. THe evening passes like before with chatting and telling stories, it's been a while since you enjoyed yourself like this. > You decision time You wake in the morning and realize that once more you slept through the night instead of the normal few hours "Must be the mental training" You think as you test your senses to see what changed while you slept. Sure enough you can feel the infected in the barn more clearly now and with less effort "Two shamblers, one nearly dead and the other near it also in bad shape. Must be trapped in the basement of somthing" you think to yourself as the humans above you wake up. Once awake Cara immediately leans down over the bar "Time to wake up! Let's get you out of there!" The man groggily stands beside her, "Are you sure about this?" but she just gives him a disparaging look until he goes to fetch a rope and lowers it down to you, tying one end off on the railing. You catch it as it comes down and are about to start climbing up when you realize that your arm will be healed a lot further than a normal humans and your makeshift bandage is almost certainly going to be replaced soon, you're going to have to bluff. You climb up, pretending to be careful of the wounded arm but you secretly put extra strain on it and can feel the wounds tearing open again slightly "Perfect" You think as you climb ove the railing and immediately find yourself receiving a huge hug from Cara. You are taken aback for a moment by the very unusual occurrence and have no time to act before she hops away again "That was for saving my life, I've owed you it!" The she quickly hops out of the hatch, you can see the two men holding rifles greet her as she passes. The man turns to you "Wait here for a bit, we have to finish a quick scavenge then we will all return to discuss what to do with you." You judge it best not to decide anything while the two men with guns have a clear shot at you and you have you climb through a hatch to get to them so you simply nod and take a seat to await their return. This gives you plenty of time to think things through. It has not been long but you are already progressing amazingly with your abilities. You are certain you can control infected easily and can sense them coming a long way off and you can sense the presence of humans or 'normals' at an equal distance even if you can't affect them. Cara trust you and you actually enjoy her company, the man doesn't fully trust you but isn't aggressive either. The two outside seem to be the guards for the scavengers, you have yet to speak to them but you can sense them always nearby the scavengers. You could of course strike now, Cara trusting you and getting close to you can be used to your advantage, you just need to ge them off guard once when they return and you can take the guards out leaving Cara and Chris defenseless. It would be a little risky but you are certain you could pull it off. On the other hand you really are enjoying chatting with Cara in the evenings and the food they gave you is actually sitting well and taking the edge off your hunger, why not stay with them a bit, at least until you are back to their little colony, you can decide what to do when you are there after all. > You ambush them, you may like her company but you gain more from eating them You need to be prepared if you are going to kill them all. Cara you can use since she seems to trust you, Chris is a fool and wont be trouble. It is just the guards outside that you need to care about, you need a good opportunity to get to them before they can react. You spend the next couple of hours resting and preparing. You try some fruit from one of the bags but it tastes bad and sits horribly in your stomach as your hunger grows worse, you'll have to eat them soon. Finally you sense their approach and put on your best happy and innocent face to greet them. You think about putting out some food for them but you aren't sure how they would react to you going through their stores so you just wait instead. Cara enters first and gives you a big smile which you return with an equally big smile and nod, and you even greet Chris which somewhat surprises him but he seems happy about it. "lets get started then" You think to yourself as they sit down and Cara says that it is time for you to discuss your future with them. "Shouldn't we all be present for this?" You ask, indicating the two men standing outside with your head, "I haven't even met them yet." there is a pause and Chris replies "It's our rules, the guards stay on duty all the time and do shifts through the night time, it's the only way we have kept safe so far." > You suggest you all go outside then and discuss it there. You can get close to them that way and attack now! "Well why don't we all go out for our chat them!" You suggest "We could sit up on the silo behind them so they could be a part of the discussion while staying on duty." The two look at each other but you see Cara wavering in your favor and push it a little "It's not as if it will be any more dangerous and I haven't exactly seen the sun in a few days" You say and immediately see the guilt working. Cara agrees and you all head outside. The guards are not so easily won over though. As you exit they spread apart. They are still close enough either side to hear what is happening and take part but they are no longer close enough to attack at the same time. You have to time your attack perfectly. You make a show of offering Cara your hand to help her out and onto the silo roof then with a flourish do the same for Chris who gives you a wry laugh, one of the guards even smirks about it, but only for a moment as you suddenly lunge at him and tackle him down. You are faster and stronger than any human so it is only a couple of seconds before his neck is snapped and you are back to your feet, spinning to charge the other guard. Sadly it seems they did not survive this long without skills and the second guard is already pointing his gun at you. You just have time to take in the horror and tears in Cara's eyes and the immediate revulsion in Chris and the guards before you hear the boom and feel the impact on your chest. You stumble back but hear the click click of a bolt action, you look up in time to take the second shot to the chest and tumble off the silo railing. You are almost grateful that you die before you hit the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need to be prepared if you are going to kill them all. Cara you can use since she seems to trust you, Chris is a fool and wont be trouble. It is just the guards outside that you need to care about, you need a good opportunity to get to them before they can react. You spend the next couple of hours resting and preparing. You try some fruit from one of the bags but it tastes bad and sits horribly in your stomach as your hunger grows worse, you'll have to eat them soon. Finally you sense their approach and put on your best happy and innocent face to greet them. You think about putting out some food for them but you aren't sure how they would react to you going through their stores so you just wait instead. Cara enters first and gives you a big smile which you return with an equally big smile and nod, and you even greet Chris which somewhat surprises him but he seems happy about it. "lets get started then" You think to yourself as they sit down and Cara says that it is time for you to discuss your future with them. "Shouldn't we all be present for this?" You ask, indicating the two men standing outside with your head, "I haven't even met them yet." there is a pause and Chris replies "It's our rules, the guards stay on duty all the time and do shifts through the night time, it's the only way we have kept safe so far." > You bide your time, you'll get your chance at them soon There is no point blowing it by being pushy now "Ah of course, that is a pretty smart precaution" You begin "But as to my future, you say that as if it involves options?" Cara immediately replies with a smile "Well of course it does, we aren't keeping you prisoner or anything" she pauses "Anymore" She adds with a wink to which you grin. She then continues a little more seriously "Basically you can join us, or head on your way. I would much rather you came with us though" and you can definitely hear some hopefulness in her voice "Perfect, she completely trusts me, this will be easy now" You think you yourself, smiling all the while. "Well I would love to join you all, it will be much better than being alone again after what happened." you carefully craft your voice to make sure they understand you are referring to the lost friends you spoke about before and you watch them both immediately react like proper normal humans, putting on their caring faces and trusting you more "Honestly this is too easy, they buy anything I tell them" You think as Cara takes you hand, leading you outside. "Well, you are with us now! She announces "And since you have joined us we can do a quick introduction before we head off to the compound!" The guards chuckle and wink at the fact you are holding hands the moment you exit the hatch and Cara drops you hand, blushing, but berating the guards for being childish. They are now close together and distracted, but they said you were heading to the compound right now. > You they are open, attack now! You can get the location from one of them after the guards are dead There is no reason to wait. once the guards are dead, the other two are not even a threat and you can get all the information you need from them before you eat them. You lunge suddenly and punch one guard cleanly in the jaw. You are not a trained fighter but with your superhuman strength and speed you still hit like a professional heavyweight. You watch the man go unconscious immediately but the momentum tips him over the rail and he falls from the silo. You are already spinning though. The other guard starts to react and the woman starts to scream but you are too fast and punch the guard in the throat before slamming him into the ground and snapping his neck, the haze around his mind vanishes instantly. Seconds later you notice the haze from the first guard vanish too "The fall finished him off then" You think as you turn back to a horrified and crying woman. "Oh don't worry, I wont kill you right away, I will keep you and the other one alive for a few days, I need information afterall." You grab her and she is unable to resist your sheer strength ans you pull her through the hatch and toss her over the railing and into the silo. The man tries to intervene but you are again to strong and he is tipped over too. You leave them down there while you take the time to bring both bodies and guns inside, leaving no trace of your fight visible and begin feeding on one of them. You vaguely hear sobbing from the woman below and the man alternating between cursing you and comforting her but what does it matter? They are just prey after all. Finally your hunger is sated and you look down at them, leaving the blood smeared on your chin from your feeding. "So our roles are somewhat reversed then?" You call down. THe woman is clearly too distraught to answer right away so the man does "Harbinger, that's what you are!" he says it like an isult but it is a compliment really, you are better than them after all. "Indeed, that is one of my names" you reply with a smile "You made this rather easy for me too, trusting a stranger like that, tut tut." THe woman then pauses her crying long enough to speak up "But you saved me, you were horribly wounded doing it!" You just smirk. "Random luck for you, I was actually intending to kill you when I noticed the mutants too late, had to kill them first or they would have torn me apart while I attacked you. Giving me enough time to begin healing up was nice though" you say as you remove your temporary bandage and show your wounds already well on the way to healing. "Now, you will be telling me where this little colony of yours is before you die. You'll find I can be fairly persuasive when needed. The man clams up and the woman goes back to sobbing. > You they have no food or water, leave them a day or two while you feast on the guards in front of them, they will be desperate soon enough "Well be sure to rest now, you have a few days down there before I question you. although I might let the one who tells me everything go with your food and water. It's not like I need your fruit." You say indicating the partly eaten corpse. You then ignore them and go back to eating. As night falls they still haven't said a word but you don't expect them to break right away and keep ignoring them, you've eaten all the good meat on the first guard so chuck what is left down into the silo and have a good laugh at the resulting screams, it is one thing to see some one die, it's another to have their half eaten and desecrated corpse thrown at you in the dark. You settle down for a sleep and quickly fall asleep with your hunger sated for now, you are thinking about how to affect the normals haze when drift off. You are woken in the night by a thump and realize that you no longer sense the shambler in the silo, you call down "Killing it wont do you any good, not as if you could eat it!" You smile to yourself "And that should panic them more, the fact I know exactly what they are doing in the dark". You fall back asleep > The silo painted red You wake well before dawn and peer down into the silo, it is hard to make anything out down there even with your night vision so you wait until the light is shining through the cracks and wrench the hatch open, flooding the silo with light and blinding the humans. "Time to rise and shine!" you call down at them as they wake and cover their eyes "One of you might win a chance at going free to day by telling me what I need to now!" You then start eating the other guard, the hunger is never gone long. You try and probe their minds while you eat but you are met with little success, it seems normals minds are much trickier than infected, you will need to practice. There is not so much crying today so you decide to taunt them a little more, maybe throw the guards head down once you have eaten the brain os something like that. You tear the guards arm off to gnaw on while you lean over the railing to look down at them, you get a big surprise though and see the man holding a pistol pointed right at you. He immediately fires, giving you no time to dodge and you feel two bullets hit your chest before you stumble backwards, several more missing you. "Where did you?" You manage before you feel blood starting to pool in your lungs and stumble toward the hatch to get outside, there is still a chance of you surviving if you can get to safety, the amount of fresh human flesh you have eaten should help you. The man calls after you "We never mentioned that out friend down here still had his pistol on him when we lowered him down. I remembered and dug it out after killing him! And time to end this harbinger, you just showed me your back!" You try and climb outside but the open railing gives you no cover as you hear the man empty his clip. Most of the bullets miss but some still hit and it is enough. You slump down inside and hear the woman crying again as things darken "Why is she still crying" You think "I was eating them".<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There is no reason to wait. once the guards are dead, the other two are not even a threat and you can get all the information you need from them before you eat them. You lunge suddenly and punch one guard cleanly in the jaw. You are not a trained fighter but with your superhuman strength and speed you still hit like a professional heavyweight. You watch the man go unconscious immediately but the momentum tips him over the rail and he falls from the silo. You are already spinning though. The other guard starts to react and the woman starts to scream but you are too fast and punch the guard in the throat before slamming him into the ground and snapping his neck, the haze around his mind vanishes instantly. Seconds later you notice the haze from the first guard vanish too "The fall finished him off then" You think as you turn back to a horrified and crying woman. "Oh don't worry, I wont kill you right away, I will keep you and the other one alive for a few days, I need information afterall." You grab her and she is unable to resist your sheer strength ans you pull her through the hatch and toss her over the railing and into the silo. The man tries to intervene but you are again to strong and he is tipped over too. You leave them down there while you take the time to bring both bodies and guns inside, leaving no trace of your fight visible and begin feeding on one of them. You vaguely hear sobbing from the woman below and the man alternating between cursing you and comforting her but what does it matter? They are just prey after all. Finally your hunger is sated and you look down at them, leaving the blood smeared on your chin from your feeding. "So our roles are somewhat reversed then?" You call down. THe woman is clearly too distraught to answer right away so the man does "Harbinger, that's what you are!" he says it like an isult but it is a compliment really, you are better than them after all. "Indeed, that is one of my names" you reply with a smile "You made this rather easy for me too, trusting a stranger like that, tut tut." THe woman then pauses her crying long enough to speak up "But you saved me, you were horribly wounded doing it!" You just smirk. "Random luck for you, I was actually intending to kill you when I noticed the mutants too late, had to kill them first or they would have torn me apart while I attacked you. Giving me enough time to begin healing up was nice though" you say as you remove your temporary bandage and show your wounds already well on the way to healing. "Now, you will be telling me where this little colony of yours is before you die. You'll find I can be fairly persuasive when needed. The man clams up and the woman goes back to sobbing. > The woman seems the easier one to break, Kill the man now in front of her too so she breaks sooner. You want the information soon and you can easily dust off a human a day the way your hunger returns so kill the man now and eat him later. The woman should break easily enough and you will be headed off to the colony soon to have the feast of your dreams. You pick up one of the rifles the guards was carrying "Been years since I used one of these! I was never great with them so you'll have to excuse my accuracy." You call down as you take aim at the man. It looks like he might be about to give a retort but you can't be bothered listening and fire right away hitting him square in the chest and knocking him off his feet. "Ah never mind, that was a great shot! You say as you chuck the rifle down on the walkway. The woman just startles then keeps crying. "Well she will break soon enough" You think as you spend the rest of the evening sleeping and finishing off the rest of the guard. Once you have finished off the good meat you chuck the remains of the desecrated copse down into the silo and have a good laugh at how it would scare the woman before falling asleep. > You morning in the red silo You wake up bright and early and realize it is still well before dawn so you make a start of eating the second guard, the hunger is never gone for long. You make good headway before finally seeing light through he cracks around the hatch and wrench it open to let it all flood in and wake the woman up. You expect a startled sound but hear nothing and look down into the silo and see she is missing. You swear and check everywhere you can see but you can only see the pieces of fencing, the half buried shambler and the dead man. You leap down, knowing you can get back out easily enough and start looking for the woman "If she killed herself I will tear her corpse apart before eating it" You think as you wrench up one of the pieces of fence while standing on the second one. You realize too late that it is a little too heavy and you just lifted the woman up too as she held onto the under side.You might be faster than any normal human but when you loose several seconds to shock you can still be taken off guard and the woman lashes out with a knife, managing to plunge it into your chest before you can get away. You stumble back as you lash out in return, knocking her aside, but your usual strength is not in the blow and she quickly pulls herself back onto a piece of fence and gets to her feet. "I'll kill you!" You manage as you take a step towards her but your one lung is already full with blood and it is leaking into the other. You can definitely survive this but you need to eat more flesh and rest very very soon to stand a chance. The woman snarls back at you, a terrifying counterpoint to the smiles she gave you the morning before "Oh, you will? like you killed the others, leaving me alive? Did you think the woman would be the weakest?" She lunges at you repeatedly, slashing and stabbing. You could so easily defeat her normally, she wouldn't even be a threat, but you can't breath and you are getting weaker. You land a punch as she cuts your arm and she goes down, but she staggers back up, dazed but still fighting and you know it is over. You don't have the strength any more and when she stabs again you cannot stop it. You simply watch as the knife plunges into your chest twice more before you fall to the ground. The last thing you hear is the woman crying again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There is no reason to wait. once the guards are dead, the other two are not even a threat and you can get all the information you need from them before you eat them. You lunge suddenly and punch one guard cleanly in the jaw. You are not a trained fighter but with your superhuman strength and speed you still hit like a professional heavyweight. You watch the man go unconscious immediately but the momentum tips him over the rail and he falls from the silo. You are already spinning though. The other guard starts to react and the woman starts to scream but you are too fast and punch the guard in the throat before slamming him into the ground and snapping his neck, the haze around his mind vanishes instantly. Seconds later you notice the haze from the first guard vanish too "The fall finished him off then" You think as you turn back to a horrified and crying woman. "Oh don't worry, I wont kill you right away, I will keep you and the other one alive for a few days, I need information afterall." You grab her and she is unable to resist your sheer strength ans you pull her through the hatch and toss her over the railing and into the silo. The man tries to intervene but you are again to strong and he is tipped over too. You leave them down there while you take the time to bring both bodies and guns inside, leaving no trace of your fight visible and begin feeding on one of them. You vaguely hear sobbing from the woman below and the man alternating between cursing you and comforting her but what does it matter? They are just prey after all. Finally your hunger is sated and you look down at them, leaving the blood smeared on your chin from your feeding. "So our roles are somewhat reversed then?" You call down. THe woman is clearly too distraught to answer right away so the man does "Harbinger, that's what you are!" he says it like an isult but it is a compliment really, you are better than them after all. "Indeed, that is one of my names" you reply with a smile "You made this rather easy for me too, trusting a stranger like that, tut tut." THe woman then pauses her crying long enough to speak up "But you saved me, you were horribly wounded doing it!" You just smirk. "Random luck for you, I was actually intending to kill you when I noticed the mutants too late, had to kill them first or they would have torn me apart while I attacked you. Giving me enough time to begin healing up was nice though" you say as you remove your temporary bandage and show your wounds already well on the way to healing. "Now, you will be telling me where this little colony of yours is before you die. You'll find I can be fairly persuasive when needed. The man clams up and the woman goes back to sobbing. > You kill the woman and the man now, screw the information, you know where to find to compound alone You look down at the two of them and run through a plan in your mind "The compound is about two days walk North, it is a walled community and still defended. That means it will be on a main road and I will see smoke from fires soon enough. I have no need for them to live." You pick up one of the rifles and look down at them "Change of plans, I know where the compound is and don't need to torture you. Take this as a blessing, I'm really being rather nice considering the alternatives." It takes you three shots since you aren't the best with guns but they lie dead in the silo, sources of food for once the guard is gone. You spend the rest of the day feasting on human flesh. and sleep through the night with no hunger bothering you for the first time in an age. Morning comes with more feasting, as does the rest of the day, and the next. All in all you spend 4 more days there eating every good bit of meat and organ off the four before finally setting out North "This is the only road in the area and it heads North, I am practically guaranteed to find their little community just by following it" You think as you set out, pack on your back we a few leftovers and your bat swinging in your hand. > You northward with killing on the mind You start out North with a swing in your step. You are full to bursting with energy from eating the humans, all your wounds are healed up and you know where to find a whole group of humans just waiting to be eaten. "What more could a man want!" You say aloud to the surrounding fields. Having gorged yourself over the past few days they hunger is staying low to nonexistent and you know it will stay that way for a few days more. Not that you would pass up another meal, best to stay ahead of these sorts of things. After a few hours you begin testing your powers again. You were able to get your senses to reach further than before and had some fun controlling the shamblers in the barn while you feasted but you need to try something more difficult. Something like the mutants that you fought near the silo. If you can control them, then you will have a force to be reckoned with! You keep stretching your senses out and find shamblers in small groups or singly but not anything stronger than that. You assume the mutants must be further off road and you might have to go searching for them. > You it's worth the time and effort, go searching for mutants Shamblers are not really fighters, those mutants you fought with however, those could fight. You head off the road to the West, that seemed to be the direction the others came from and you know the humans were being most careful out that way. By lunchtime though you have found nothing new. Just the usual scattered shamblers and no signs of anything else. It is possible that the two you fought were the only ones in this area "Maybe they are territorial like before they died and killed off other mutants? Guess I should actually learn more about the infected if I want to control them all" You think as you take a break for lunch and eat more meat strips. You decide that even if you want mutants, you may as well practice controlling some shamblers full time so reach out for the nearest ones. You stretch out your senses and invade the shamblers minds. It is so much easier than before and you take control of 8 of them, forcing them to follow you as you progress through the fields. 8 was a little tricky and after a few hours you find your headache growing and your nose starts bleeding again so you take a break, relaxing your hold on them while you snack on a piece of meat, wondering which human you ripped it off. It takes a couple of hours for the headache to begin subsiding and you set out again, by nightfall you are exhausted and the headache is throbbing with a vengeance. You relax your hold once more and climb into a ditch to sleep, you are in too rough a shape you look for anything else. You wake well after dawn, that means you slept right through the night again, you are going to have to be more careful from now on if you are going to be asleep for that long. You do however notice two things; Your headache is gone, and your shamblers have not moved an inch. You gently feel for them and it's almost as if you still have a small connection to their broken minds, you gently push a command for them to walk and they obey instantly "I see, so I must force my mind over them at the start but once I am in control I can relax and they still follow ymy commands!" Happy with the progress the sleep has given you, you set out again, once more having your shamblers following you from a distance, through the fields and ditches, but now you don't concentrate on them constantly, just gently send out commands and instantly feeling them respond to your will. You grin to yourself "This is going to be easy". You keep going in a haphazard fashion to the West until nightfall and find the second floor of a barn to use as a bed for the night.You think about the situation and realize that without you killing them off, that the scavenging team will be due back in a day or two at the most, and you wont beat that time back now so they will be suspicious either way. > You keep searching for mutants, if they are going to be suspicious either way, you want good minions to fight them You keep heading West the next morning and finally spot a large grouping of buildings in the distance. Once you get closer you see that it must have been a large farming complex before the infection. Several houses are spread out, surrounded by barns and various buildings you assume had something to do with raising farm animals though your lack of knowledge regarding farming prevents you from working out exactly what that was. You start being more careful as you approach and sure enough you begin sensing something different than before. haziness in one of the barns that you do not recognize. "Jackpot, something other than humans and shamblers is here, it better not just be some Goram crazy though" You think as your edge closer and closer. Finally things resolve. there are two things in there that you cannot identify along with a shambler. This confuses you at first but shortly after the strange things move closer and the shambler's mind vanishes "And now at least they have eaten" You think as you finally judge yourself close enough to try and take them over. You reach out with your mind at one of them first and find it instantly. It's mid is definitely different from anything before, feral and pulsing with instinct but not the same emotions or remnants of intelligence as other minds you had sensed before. You force you will on it and find it fighting back. You can feel the headache starting and push harder as you feel it now trying to flee you attack, leaping around the barn. Finally though you force your control over it and it settles down as your slave. The other one has reacted too though and you realize it is headed your way. Once more you lash out, but this time completely confident of your ability to take it over and the confidence seems to matter and you take it over is seconds. You now control two mutants, and from their minds, they are two more large mutant cats "Must have been the farm's ratters" You think as you command them to finish eating the shambler in the barn before following you back East. Your headache is terrible and with the accompanying nose bleed you would rather they didn't have hunger on their minds when they were looking at your back. You have no need to worry though and the next morning they are behaving in the same way as the shamblers you control. docile and waiting your commands. You smile to yourself, this attack was going to be easy. It is not long after that you notice the faintest hint of smoke in the distance > You waiting for nightfall You look carefully as you approach. The walls are High, maybe 10 foot high and 12 with the railings, the spikes on the top were surely ornamental before but they have been sharpened now into points and you can see men with guns looking over the walls at various points. They are clearly the guards as they are holding guns however they are also clearly relaxed. they probably haven't had any real excitement since the raiders died out a few years back. It is not long before you have moved right around to the rear of the little community and see that the walls appear exactly the same the entire way around and that there are guards on every wall. You'll have to wait for nightfall. You spend the next few hours carefully maneuvering your shamblers in closer to the community and snacking on meat strips. "Almost out of meat, seems the more I eat humans, the more the hunger grows. Ah well, a feast is coming soon enough." You begin salivating at the though of eating all the humans in the community in front of you. Your senses tell you that there could be as many as 40 in there. You will have to improve you abilities to number humans at a distance but for now the numbers match your expectations and you settle in to wait. > You attacking in the moonlight You wait as midnight comes and goes and give the new guards on the walls a couple of hours to get comfortable and sleepy before you make your move. The moon is out in a beautiful crescent, looking every bit like a blade cutting down at the little community ahead of you. The light it provides is more than enough for you to see clearly but you know it isn't enough for the guards who have lit torches on the railings "They have lit themselves up like candles but the light will blind them to my approach!" You think to yourself gleefully as you move closer with the six shamblers near you. You are within a few metres of the first guard when you realize the problem. You can get over the wall easily but the shamblers will never make it. You hiss at yourself for being so stupid and take a few minutes to send them all round to the ditches near the front gate along with the mutants. You will have to open it to get them inside to fight for you. You move to a dark spot between the torches and leave your bat and pack against the wall before jumping up incase they banged against somthing and gave you away. You reach the railings easily and swing yourself over in one smooth movement, landing quietly on a wooden platform behind the walls "Smart, they built a little walkway all the way around for their guards" You think as you sneak back towards the guard you were near before. He had seemed extra sleepy earlier, and sure enough, you find him napping. Two steps into the light from the small torch and you have and hand clamped over his mouth and the other around his throat, crushing his windpipe. It gives way with a pop and you finish him off by snapping his neck. The hunger surges up but you have to ignore it for now. You can feast once you have control of the entire compound. You start sneaking along the walkway toward the next guard and once more find a sleepy man, relaxing in his chair in the torchlight, you smile to yourself, they had become too lax in the peaceful times after the raiders all died. You once more move in close and before the man even wakes up enough to react you have you hand over his mouth and throat. You clamp down, crushing his windpipe but as you feel it give way, you hear the thump of his heel hitting his chair. You quickly snap his neck but the damage is done and the chair tumbles off the edge and into the compound before you can stop it. You swear to yourself and you hear the noise it makes but you know it wasn't really that loud, You almost think you got away with it when you hear the next guard calling out "Hey Kiel, you fall asleep again!" You quickly drop to the ground, the guard wont take long to get suspicious when their friend does not reply so you need to get the gates open fast. You sprint between the houses, luckily finding most quiet and dark and come to the main gate. there are two guards here, one either side of the gateway and they are awake and chatting to each other. But you hear the shout going up. The guard has found the body. "Kiel is dead! we have intruders! help!" You swear and rush towards the gate, leaping up and vaulting yourself onto the walkway behind one of the guards. He saw you coming and tries to raise his gun but you are faster and a punch to the throat sends him stumbling over the wall, only to get impaled on a spike before he can fully fall. the haze of his mind already gone by the time he hits the spike. You run and leap at the second guard, but this one has had more time and you see her with rifle ready. She takes the shot as you leap and you feel the impact in your side. You are certain she just got you cleanly in the kidney as you land and start punching her, not giving her time to work the bolt action for another shot. She shot you though and the hunger fills your mind with anger as you punch her repeatedly in revenge, even though she was dead after the second hit. The shouts of humans running brings you back from your rage and you can sense the minds of several humans headed your way. You leap down and wrench the wooden bar off the gate, swinging it open. "Time for vengeance!" you think as you order your horde inside and lean up against the wall for a moment to stop your own bleeding. You will easily survive this, but it is still not trivial, you will need a few moments to bind it before you move. You simply order your horde to attack while you tear a strip off your shirt to stuff into your wound when you hear the shots starting and feel your horde reduce in number quickly. You look up to see the humans aren't all carrying bold action hunting rifles or pistols, several have assault rifles and they are tearing your shambler horde apart with ease, the mutants are doing damage in return though and each has already downed a human. > You your wound has to wait, support your horde before it is too late "Gorram automatic weapons!" you say as you drop you attempts to stop your own bleeding and charge the men shooting at the shamblers.You quickly pass the slow cannon fodder as see that two of those still standing have assault rifles and need to be taken down fast, your mutants have also easily killed a man each but they are stopping to feed and at risk themselves because of it. You quickly send to order to attack humans relentlessly, only feeding once they are all dead and leap at the closest human. You clearly take him by surprise with your speed, bullets pass you by but luckily none hit as you plow right into the man knee first, feeling his ribs crack and sending him flying backwards. You can sense that he is still alive but you doubt that he will be moving any time soon. You spin and land a heavy punch on the next man, knocking him out cold before he can even get an aim at you. You feel two more human minds vanish behind you and glancing back you see the mutants mauling two more before moving on "No more automatic weapons now" You think as you shove the last man standing towards the shamblers as be desperately tries to reload his rifle. Then you feel one on the mutants flash in pain then vanish. looking over you instantly see it on the ground, bullet wound to the head. You search for the cause and see two of the wall guards, one still aiming down her gun at your dead mutant. You snarl, they were going to pay for that. The second guard grabs the woman "Briar, you killed it, now let's go!" and the both start running along the platform to the rear of the compound. You give chase and know you can cut them off if you run through the buildings quickly enough. You start dodging through, hearing gunfire still happening and know that other humans had finished off the last of the shamblers at the gate, but your second mutant and 3 shamblers were already loose between the buildings, hunting for humans. You rush out the side to see the two you are chasing jumping down and running for what looks like a bunker hatch where other humans are already gathering. > You chase them down, then slaughter the others as well, they killed your new pet You Rush after them "They die for killing my pet!" You snarl in your mind as you rush towards them, covering the ground inhumanly fast. You quickly catch the man and backhand him aside then lunge after the one he called 'Briar' she was the one who shot your pet. You even imagine how good your revenge will feel as you snuff her life out. Sadly though you never consider that when you move with inhuman speed in front of humans with guns currently fighting infected that they will assume you are indeed inhuman. The first bullet misses but the second catches you cleanly in the side of your chest right before you reach Briar and it knocks you off your stride. You stumble to your knee, feeling the internal bleeding start, you've been shot twice now and you are definitely reaching your limit even with your regenerative capabilities. You sense a movement and looking up you see Briar turn to you and raise her gun "You killed claw!" She says as she is about to fire, but she killed your pet and is standing close to you. You lunge upwards as she fires, her bullet tearing through your chest but you have momentum and manage to punch her in the throat before you collapse. You can feel the blood draining from you now and know you wont get up again but you are also looking right at Briars face. You both know you killed the other as you see her choke to death and she watches you bleed out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Gorram automatic weapons!" you say as you drop you attempts to stop your own bleeding and charge the men shooting at the shamblers.You quickly pass the slow cannon fodder as see that two of those still standing have assault rifles and need to be taken down fast, your mutants have also easily killed a man each but they are stopping to feed and at risk themselves because of it. You quickly send to order to attack humans relentlessly, only feeding once they are all dead and leap at the closest human. You clearly take him by surprise with your speed, bullets pass you by but luckily none hit as you plow right into the man knee first, feeling his ribs crack and sending him flying backwards. You can sense that he is still alive but you doubt that he will be moving any time soon. You spin and land a heavy punch on the next man, knocking him out cold before he can even get an aim at you. You feel two more human minds vanish behind you and glancing back you see the mutants mauling two more before moving on "No more automatic weapons now" You think as you shove the last man standing towards the shamblers as be desperately tries to reload his rifle. Then you feel one on the mutants flash in pain then vanish. looking over you instantly see it on the ground, bullet wound to the head. You search for the cause and see two of the wall guards, one still aiming down her gun at your dead mutant. You snarl, they were going to pay for that. The second guard grabs the woman "Briar, you killed it, now let's go!" and the both start running along the platform to the rear of the compound. You give chase and know you can cut them off if you run through the buildings quickly enough. You start dodging through, hearing gunfire still happening and know that other humans had finished off the last of the shamblers at the gate, but your second mutant and 3 shamblers were already loose between the buildings, hunting for humans. You rush out the side to see the two you are chasing jumping down and running for what looks like a bunker hatch where other humans are already gathering. > You pull back and wait to see what is going on, there is a lot of them Chasing them down would be suicide and they would instantly notice your wound and that you are not one of them, pull back for now and observe. You slip into shadows between a house and some old decorative tree and watch what happens. The two fleeing guards are welcomed into the strange bunker and as the door opens you realize that a bunker is exactly what it is. One of the old 'survive the apocalypse' things you always laughed at. Even at a glance you can can see it has solid metal walls, a solid metal door and lots of room inside with shelved stuffed with food. "They weren't messing around with that thing, I bet dynamite would barely scratch it!" You think as you watch a family running out of the houses to the right, two shamblers in slow pursuit. "Even with a toddler they can outrun them" You think as the family gets to safety and the shamblers fall to gunfire. You send you mind out and realize the mutant has been doing its job though. there are no more guards on the walls and the gunfire has stopped although is is wounded, probably a single gunshot you think. You watch as the last humans run out from the houses toward the bunker and a man gets taken down from behind by the Mutant, you quickly change it's order from rampaging to surviving and feeding and it drags the body bad into the shadows, barely dodging the bullets from those at the bunker. You watch the humans look around desperately before all retreating inside and sealing the door. You find yourself along in the compound with your pet mutant and a small pile of dead humans. > You time to feast and heal You grab the two nearest bodies and head into a house at random. You find a well kept little home and feeling oddly out of place in the clearly well-loved house you take the bodies into the kitchen and start eating there, feasting until the easiest to devour meat and organs was gone and you couldn't eat more without serious risk of your stomach splitting open. You are about to take a limb with you but again the house puts you off and you head up empty handed after wiping the blood off your face with a cloth. You reflect on your own odd behavior, you have never respected property before but you guess that it might be different due to this clearly being a well loved home that was lived in literally until moments ago, the owners might even be alive just across the yard in their bunker, or they might be one of the dead you just ate. Either way you can literally feel how you are supposed to act here and find yourself obeying the old unwritten rules of a guest in another home without even thinking about it. Almost out of spite to how you were just behaving you head into the master bedroom and use it for the night, leaving your mutant orders to guard you as wel as feeding during the rest of the night. > You morning in the well loved home You wake up feeling a little strange in the house again, but this was no time to be put off, You have started healing but you need to feed more to expedite the process and you head back down to the kitchen. This time as you feast you start looking around and find all the things that you might find in a normal home before the infection came "Seems like they avoided the worst of everything here" You think as you gnaw on a piece of tough muscle. "Must have had a low turn rate when it became airborne and killed those who turned quickly to stop it spreading, guess I give them credit for that" You keep looking around and realize that there is a note on the fridge, a chore list addressed 'To myself' and signed "Cara" You laugh aloud "This is Cara's house!" you smile to yourself, no longer caring about the house, only thinking about how you tricked and killed it's owner as you feast. THe next three days pass much the same way, you feasting on humans and occasionally observing the bunker but nothing changes there when you are looking and you never sense any of the humans leaving it. Your wound is closing up already so you think it is time to start doing somthing. > You test the bunker, there might be a way it if the company selling it were scammers You can't sit around just healing for any longer so you decide to finally test out this bunker of theirs. You know there have always been companies selling these, some good and some scammers but also that the industry boomed as the virus first began to spread, and most of the boomer companies were frauds, installing the bare minimum for looks then leaving with the money before they had to be used. You move closer slowly but sense no response from the humans inside, they are so close together is is very difficult to tell anything from them though. You finally edge right up to the door and still no reaction so you start your investigation properly, running through a checklist of possible obvious problems "Hinges are on the inside and the door edges form a perfect seal, walls clearly go deep underground, no windows or large panels, internal welding, the air filters are imbedded right into a 3inch steel plate..." You run through everything you can think of but find no weaknesses, only that it appears to be extreamly well made and large, the 25-30 people you estimate inside seem to have spare room. You tut aloud as you plan your next move > You leave and head back South, you have learned what you need to crush the Eastern colony Time to get out of here and head East. No point wasting any more time now that you know you have the abilities needed to take out the entire Eastern colony. "Thousands, or even tens of thousands of humans just waiting to be eaten!" You think as you load up on some meat strips and Start the walk back South. You grab a few shamblers at first but think better of it and send them to the compound instead to harass anything that tries to live there again and walk on South alone smiling to yourself. There isn't an infected now that you are scared of as you can control them all. Maybe another harbinger could give you some problems but you know inside that you are the strongest, the alpha predator. You work out plans as you walk. A colony as big as the one you are heading too can't be handled the same way, even with only a small number of dead, the bodies started to rot before you could devour them all so you will need a smarter method. Maybe kill a couple of hundred at the start to make sure they know you are in control of their lives then trap the others with shambler and mutant guards. You can have them in little groups, each with their own guards or you could even ring the entire colony in a wall of infected, preventing any hope of escape. "I will need to increase my powers for that one though" You think. "Going to have to keep the majority alive, maybe use them as slaves while I feed off them slowly. a population that big could sustain me for years to come, my own little herd of cattle waiting for the slaughter." You are enjoying the ideas when night finally falls. You find a broken down building to camp in and sleep a few hours before setting off once more in the morning. > You reaching the highway from the North You move quickly the next day and cover a lot of ground by jogging and walking quickly, your hunger is already starting to return and you want to reach your goal as fast as possible. You think about grabbing the minds of some infected you pass but again decide against it, you can get stronger and better fed ones in the city. You could even grab a few mutants before crossing the bridge if you wanted as there should be a couple around there. As dusk begins you can make out the highway in the distance and keep jogging and hour into the night until you finally get back to the furniture van with the sofa in it. You lock yourself in once more and eat a few of your meat strips, as long as you keep eating those, then the hunger seems to keep itself at bay. It never truly vanishes though unless you consume fresh flesh. You consider this for a time, it used to be that your meals would come days apart, then weeks apart and you would have to horde scraps of human and animal flesh to get by. The hunger stayed away though, but now the more you eat, the more the hunger returns, getting stronger each time. Feasting on the humans in such numbers recently has made it stronger than ever and you can feel it constantly weighing on your mind, pushing you to kill more and eat more. "It's like a second voice where a conscience used to be, but the opposite, telling me to kill and feast on humans, which then makes it stronger. Maybe this is a curse harbingers face, each human they devour feeds the hunger inside which then drives them to kill more an more. I will have to be careful I don't let it influence me too greatly." With those thoughts you drift off to sleep > You east with the dawn You set off with the dawn as you know you have a few days walking ahead of you at the very least and wanted to relish the sofa for a few more hours. You keep heading East and don't find much food on the way but your powers increase even further, with you able to control and direct large groups of shamblers from a distance You learn to differentiate the minds of shamblers and fast types, even a mutants to the South easily fall under your control as your range increases. Your tests let you control several infected at once and direct them as you please individual without lessening your grip or concentration on the others. "They will have no idea what hit them when I reach the Eastern colony" You think to yourself. Your physical abilities have also improved. You were already faster and stronger than any normal human but that has increases along with your mental abilities, you know there isn't a normal human alive who could face you in a fight and you can rip a car's door clean off its hinges with only a little effort. It's not long after that you finally reach the bridge across the river. There are infected on it but this wont stop you now as they are just shamblers and you direct them over the sides of the bridge to fall into the deep flowing water below. After a few moment you realize that either the fall or the drowning has actually killed most of them but shrug it off as another test, they are just prey after all. Then the pain begins. A sudden sharp stabbing right into your mind forces you to your knees. You try to fight it off and feel it diminishing, like you are holding a barrier up against it, protecting your mind with your powers, but you feel just how much strong the other force is. It feels like a glacier bearing down on your mind, slow but inexorable. You lash out at it with your mind, trying to force it away and almost imagine your attacks as flames striving against the attack. Then the attack pauses, it cannot gain any more ground against you. The pressure is still there and the pain is throbbing in your head but you stopped it in it's tracks. You grin as you stand up as straight as you can, they probably cannot see you but if another harbinger is going to attack you then you will destroy them while standing tall and showing your superiority. You do however feel the blood streaming down your face from your nose and realize that this is the worst nosebleed you have ever had "But of course, they launched a surprise attack on me, anyone would take a small hit but I held them off, I stopped their surprise attack easily and now I can destroy them!" Then the second weight hits your mind and your defenses shatter, this one felt different, almost ethereal but once it hit, your already stretched defense shattered instantly, letting the original attack succeed, the pain spikes suddenly . But then the pain suddenly stops. "Sorry about this, I really am, but you are far too close to being red to get in here alive. Only a matter of days before you went fully over so it is much better you are killed now before you actually become a threat worth worrying about." You try and respond but find that everything feels fuzzy, you are sure the voice in your head is female though "Oh yes, might have damaged a few things there, attacking really isn't my strong suit so I might have used too much strength, well either way it doesn't matter now. Bye" You feel a slight pain then everything fades out to black<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You can't sit around just healing for any longer so you decide to finally test out this bunker of theirs. You know there have always been companies selling these, some good and some scammers but also that the industry boomed as the virus first began to spread, and most of the boomer companies were frauds, installing the bare minimum for looks then leaving with the money before they had to be used. You move closer slowly but sense no response from the humans inside, they are so close together is is very difficult to tell anything from them though. You finally edge right up to the door and still no reaction so you start your investigation properly, running through a checklist of possible obvious problems "Hinges are on the inside and the door edges form a perfect seal, walls clearly go deep underground, no windows or large panels, internal welding, the air filters are imbedded right into a 3inch steel plate..." You run through everything you can think of but find no weaknesses, only that it appears to be extreamly well made and large, the 25-30 people you estimate inside seem to have spare room. You tut aloud as you plan your next move > You wait it out, you have enough food for a while and you can observe more There is no rush and you don't want to waste your time bashing your head against some stupid bunker so you simply make yourself at home and keep feasting for the next week. The time passes slowly but happily as you feast on the best humans and have your pet mutant feed of those who start to rot of the bits you don't want. It's the perfect pet, bigger than any normal dog should be, eats your leftovers nd can literally tear a group of humans apart in seconds. Time passes though and still nothing happens, even with so many humans in there you saw a lot of food and that was just a glimpse in the doorway, there is no telling how long it could take for them to come out. You pass the next week in the same way and finally have enough. You are basically fully healed, you have eaten all the good human flesh available and you need to do somthing > You test this thing properly, you have guns and access to gunpowder afterall You head back to where all the guards died and collect all their weapons and ammo before taking it back to in front of the bunker. you start but simply shooting a few of the guns at it and get a clear reaction from those inside but the bullets just bounce right off leaving barely a scratch on the metal. You then start taking them apart using tools in one of the sheds, someone here obviously made their own ammo and between their spare powder and that collected from bullets you dismantle you gain a fair sized bag of explosive to test. You once read something about needing to contain he blast until it built up enough so you find an old heavy duty pan with a sealing pressure lid to use and take everything over to the door of the bunker. You place the bag inside, slip in a makeshift fuse and light it. You seal the pan up as fast as possible then run for it. You dive behind a building but nothing happens. You wait a few moments an nothing is happening so you get to your feet and peek around the corner of the building as the explosion goes off. It's rather impressive if you say so yourself with lots of smoke and bits of metal flying everywhere but when it clears you can see the bunker clearly un-moved. You head over and find that it scorched the door a fair bit and there are some obvious scratches from the pieces of metal but that is all. You clearly aren't going to get inside this way. You turn to head away when you see hear the faintest humming noise and notice something blinking near the edge of the bunker. You find a small indent with a camera sunken into it behind a tiny thick piece of glass "They have a generator and cameras in this thing? where the hell do you buy something like this!" Frustrated you give up and start walking back over to the house. Unfortunately now that they took the risk of turning the generator and cameras on the humans can see you, and can see you are alone. You sense them moving before you hear the door open and have time to spin around so that you can clearly see when it opens and there are 4 humans already pointing guns your way. You try to dive to the side but two of the bullets still hit you and you hit the ground hard. You see you mutant rushing them from the shadows but they simply turn nd fire at it, automatic weapons tearing it apart and killing it before it even got half way to them. THen they turn back to you and fire again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Gorram automatic weapons!" you say as you drop you attempts to stop your own bleeding and charge the men shooting at the shamblers.You quickly pass the slow cannon fodder as see that two of those still standing have assault rifles and need to be taken down fast, your mutants have also easily killed a man each but they are stopping to feed and at risk themselves because of it. You quickly send to order to attack humans relentlessly, only feeding once they are all dead and leap at the closest human. You clearly take him by surprise with your speed, bullets pass you by but luckily none hit as you plow right into the man knee first, feeling his ribs crack and sending him flying backwards. You can sense that he is still alive but you doubt that he will be moving any time soon. You spin and land a heavy punch on the next man, knocking him out cold before he can even get an aim at you. You feel two more human minds vanish behind you and glancing back you see the mutants mauling two more before moving on "No more automatic weapons now" You think as you shove the last man standing towards the shamblers as be desperately tries to reload his rifle. Then you feel one on the mutants flash in pain then vanish. looking over you instantly see it on the ground, bullet wound to the head. You search for the cause and see two of the wall guards, one still aiming down her gun at your dead mutant. You snarl, they were going to pay for that. The second guard grabs the woman "Briar, you killed it, now let's go!" and the both start running along the platform to the rear of the compound. You give chase and know you can cut them off if you run through the buildings quickly enough. You start dodging through, hearing gunfire still happening and know that other humans had finished off the last of the shamblers at the gate, but your second mutant and 3 shamblers were already loose between the buildings, hunting for humans. You rush out the side to see the two you are chasing jumping down and running for what looks like a bunker hatch where other humans are already gathering. > You pretend to be a human fleeing the vilence like the others to get inside whatever it is they are running for You have the blood on you to look like a wound and you do look human so why not? You quickly start jogging out, clutching your side where you were shot and waving for help. You even pull the nearest shambler to 'chase you' to add a little realism to your drama. You see the group at the strange bunker entrance point at the two fleeing their way and welcoming them in. Then you see them point your way "Perfect, I get inside during the panic and they have no-where to run" You think as you close the distance. Shots ring out but you know they are aimed behind you and you feel the shambler go down, You glance behind then toward the men with guns "Thankyou! oh thankyou!" you start as you get close. Then the girl looks at you again, the one the man called 'Briar' "He is working with them, I saw him kill Claw at the gate!" she shouts and immediately the guns ring out again, this time at you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wait as midnight comes and goes and give the new guards on the walls a couple of hours to get comfortable and sleepy before you make your move. The moon is out in a beautiful crescent, looking every bit like a blade cutting down at the little community ahead of you. The light it provides is more than enough for you to see clearly but you know it isn't enough for the guards who have lit torches on the railings "They have lit themselves up like candles but the light will blind them to my approach!" You think to yourself gleefully as you move closer with the six shamblers near you. You are within a few metres of the first guard when you realize the problem. You can get over the wall easily but the shamblers will never make it. You hiss at yourself for being so stupid and take a few minutes to send them all round to the ditches near the front gate along with the mutants. You will have to open it to get them inside to fight for you. You move to a dark spot between the torches and leave your bat and pack against the wall before jumping up incase they banged against somthing and gave you away. You reach the railings easily and swing yourself over in one smooth movement, landing quietly on a wooden platform behind the walls "Smart, they built a little walkway all the way around for their guards" You think as you sneak back towards the guard you were near before. He had seemed extra sleepy earlier, and sure enough, you find him napping. Two steps into the light from the small torch and you have and hand clamped over his mouth and the other around his throat, crushing his windpipe. It gives way with a pop and you finish him off by snapping his neck. The hunger surges up but you have to ignore it for now. You can feast once you have control of the entire compound. You start sneaking along the walkway toward the next guard and once more find a sleepy man, relaxing in his chair in the torchlight, you smile to yourself, they had become too lax in the peaceful times after the raiders all died. You once more move in close and before the man even wakes up enough to react you have you hand over his mouth and throat. You clamp down, crushing his windpipe but as you feel it give way, you hear the thump of his heel hitting his chair. You quickly snap his neck but the damage is done and the chair tumbles off the edge and into the compound before you can stop it. You swear to yourself and you hear the noise it makes but you know it wasn't really that loud, You almost think you got away with it when you hear the next guard calling out "Hey Kiel, you fall asleep again!" You quickly drop to the ground, the guard wont take long to get suspicious when their friend does not reply so you need to get the gates open fast. You sprint between the houses, luckily finding most quiet and dark and come to the main gate. there are two guards here, one either side of the gateway and they are awake and chatting to each other. But you hear the shout going up. The guard has found the body. "Kiel is dead! we have intruders! help!" You swear and rush towards the gate, leaping up and vaulting yourself onto the walkway behind one of the guards. He saw you coming and tries to raise his gun but you are faster and a punch to the throat sends him stumbling over the wall, only to get impaled on a spike before he can fully fall. the haze of his mind already gone by the time he hits the spike. You run and leap at the second guard, but this one has had more time and you see her with rifle ready. She takes the shot as you leap and you feel the impact in your side. You are certain she just got you cleanly in the kidney as you land and start punching her, not giving her time to work the bolt action for another shot. She shot you though and the hunger fills your mind with anger as you punch her repeatedly in revenge, even though she was dead after the second hit. The shouts of humans running brings you back from your rage and you can sense the minds of several humans headed your way. You leap down and wrench the wooden bar off the gate, swinging it open. "Time for vengeance!" you think as you order your horde inside and lean up against the wall for a moment to stop your own bleeding. You will easily survive this, but it is still not trivial, you will need a few moments to bind it before you move. You simply order your horde to attack while you tear a strip off your shirt to stuff into your wound when you hear the shots starting and feel your horde reduce in number quickly. You look up to see the humans aren't all carrying bold action hunting rifles or pistols, several have assault rifles and they are tearing your shambler horde apart with ease, the mutants are doing damage in return though and each has already downed a human. > You get out of here, if your horde is loosing, you have to save yourself "Gorram automatic weapons!" You think as you quickly move out of the gate and into the night. You glance in all directions before heading South, the guards on the walls are too distracted by the fighting and you slip right past, jogging for nearly an hour before finding a small shed just off the road to collapse into for the night. You wedge the door shut then relax back against the wall to check your wound. The bullet is still inside and it is bleeding a lot, you'll have to keep it closed for it to heal and the jogging did you no favors, increasing your blood loss. You feel around the back and locate the bullet close to the skin on that side so you quickly cut the skin with a nail you find on the floor and pull the bullet out before finally using a strip of shift to bind yourself up. "Good thing I'm not human or that really would have killed me" you think as you fall deeply asleep never even wondering how far you had gotten in your jog. > You morning in the shed You wake with a headache and in pain from your wound but you can already feel it beginning to heal. This one would take at least a week to get healed enough to act normally but you got out alive and that is all that matters. You did however loose your horde and that angers you. You were going to have to get revenge on the humans another way, maybe once your wound heals up you can go for a new plan. Either way, you'll need to get a nice safe location to lay low for a bit. You retie your temporary bandage then force the door open to head out into the morning sunlight. You stop immediately when you find a ring of humans about 20 feet away with guns pointed at you. One calls over "You nearly had us that time raider, getting them inside the walls, don't know how you managed that but they are dumb and stop to feed letting us kill them easily. Then you also left us a blood trail all the way here, must be quite the wound you got." He says this last piece with a huge grin. He is obviously very happy that you are wounded. You spit and reply "I'm no raider, and I'm going to have my revenge on you all for killing my pets." you reply as you start forward, hunger and anger getting the better of you. Mere humans taunting you like this. Sadly anger is not a great way to think and the man replies as you take your first steps "Oh no, we will be getting our revenge on you, and we really don't care what you are." The humans all begin firing at once.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Shamblers are not really fighters, those mutants you fought with however, those could fight. You head off the road to the West, that seemed to be the direction the others came from and you know the humans were being most careful out that way. By lunchtime though you have found nothing new. Just the usual scattered shamblers and no signs of anything else. It is possible that the two you fought were the only ones in this area "Maybe they are territorial like before they died and killed off other mutants? Guess I should actually learn more about the infected if I want to control them all" You think as you take a break for lunch and eat more meat strips. You decide that even if you want mutants, you may as well practice controlling some shamblers full time so reach out for the nearest ones. You stretch out your senses and invade the shamblers minds. It is so much easier than before and you take control of 8 of them, forcing them to follow you as you progress through the fields. 8 was a little tricky and after a few hours you find your headache growing and your nose starts bleeding again so you take a break, relaxing your hold on them while you snack on a piece of meat, wondering which human you ripped it off. It takes a couple of hours for the headache to begin subsiding and you set out again, by nightfall you are exhausted and the headache is throbbing with a vengeance. You relax your hold once more and climb into a ditch to sleep, you are in too rough a shape you look for anything else. You wake well after dawn, that means you slept right through the night again, you are going to have to be more careful from now on if you are going to be asleep for that long. You do however notice two things; Your headache is gone, and your shamblers have not moved an inch. You gently feel for them and it's almost as if you still have a small connection to their broken minds, you gently push a command for them to walk and they obey instantly "I see, so I must force my mind over them at the start but once I am in control I can relax and they still follow ymy commands!" Happy with the progress the sleep has given you, you set out again, once more having your shamblers following you from a distance, through the fields and ditches, but now you don't concentrate on them constantly, just gently send out commands and instantly feeling them respond to your will. You grin to yourself "This is going to be easy". You keep going in a haphazard fashion to the West until nightfall and find the second floor of a barn to use as a bed for the night.You think about the situation and realize that without you killing them off, that the scavenging team will be due back in a day or two at the most, and you wont beat that time back now so they will be suspicious either way. > You head back quickly so you can attack before the party is too long overdue and alarms are raised You can take out the small compound alone easily enough so having some shamblers under your control will be more than enough. Also if you take too long they will be suspicious if their team does not return but you turn up instead. You stretch out your senses and invade the shamblers minds. It is so much easier than before and you take control of 8 of them, forcing them to follow you as you progress down the road. 8 was a little tricky and after a few hours you find your headache growing and your nose starts bleeding again so you take a break, relaxing your hold on them while you snack on a piece of meat, wondering which human you ripped it off. It takes a couple of hours for the headache to begin subsiding and you set out again, by nightfall you are exhausted and the headache is throbbing with a vengeance. You relax your hold once more and climb into a ditch to sleep, you are in too rough a shape you look for anything else. You wake well after dawn, that means you slept right through the night again, you are going to have to be more careful from now on if you are going to be asleep for that long. You do however notice two things; Your headache is gone, and your shamblers have not moved an inch. You gently feel for them and it's almost as if you still have a small connection to their broken minds, you gently push a command for them to walk and they obey instantly "I see, so I must force my mind over them at the start but once I am in control I can relax and they still follow ymy commands!" Happy with the progress the sleep has given you, you set out again, once more having your shamblers following you from a distance, through the fields and ditches, but now you don't concentrate on them constantly, just gently send out commands and instantly feeling them respond to your will. You grin to yourself "This is going to be easy" It is not long after that you notice the faintest hint of smoke in the distance > You approaching the target, horde following behind You slow your pace a little to match that of a normal human's walking and soon your keen eyes pick out a grey smudge below the thin trail of smoke. As you get closer the smudge resolves itself into a large grey wall topped with small spiked railings. The gated community. You keep your pace slow, you aren't sure if a normal human could have noticed the smoke and walls yet so you play it safe and wait a few more minutes before obviously turning your attention to the wall. You have your shamblers take more care and move slowly closer on either side, you picked up a few more that morning so you have a dozen of them now, 6 on each side. You look carefully as you approach. The walls are High, maybe 10 foot high and 12 with the railings, the spikes on the top were surely ornamental before but they have been sharpened now into points and you can see men with guns looking over the walls at various points. They are clearly the guards as they are holding guns however they are also clearly relaxed. they probably haven't had any real excitement since the raiders died out a few years back. You look carefully at them and realize that none of them is actually reacting to you at all. you look around and realize that most of you is covered by farm hedges and gates so that unless they were being vigilant they wont notice you for a few minutes yet. You still have time to decide on your best plan of action. > You head on up the road openly and claim the scavengers sent you so you can get inside The scavengers move a lot slower than you do so they might not even be expected back yet, time to use this to your advantage! You quickly check yourself over, your arm wound is already healed to the point that it looks more like an old injury than a frsh claw attack from a mutant, that will be easy to pass off. There is some blood on your clothing along with mud and other stains but honestly who doesn't in this world. You set out for the gates. As you walk you carefully maneuver all of your shamblers into ditches and under hedges, you are going to abandon then for a day maybe two before you attack so it is best if they are hidden properly, and it is not as if they complain about living in a hole for two days. You walk slowly, trying to emulate a weary human on a long walk and finally get close to the gate. You are in full view of the guard on the wall for a while before they finally notice you and the shout goes up to mark your presence "Lax guards, they should have seen me miles back. This will be easy if they are all this bad" You keep walking until you finally halt in front of the gate. The walls either side are clearly a solid 10 feet tall with the 2 foot railing spikes above and they are clearly maintained, the gates are large wooden affairs with metal banding, probably to emulate old castle gates but they will be strong. You see several humans looking down at you from either side and having seen them move there from around the walls you know they must have a walkway on the inside. You see several guns level at you but no fingers on triggers just yet, you also note that two of the guns are assault rifles, you will need to be careful. You know it is best to wait for them to speak first and do not need to wait for long before one of the men calls down "State your business, then prove you are human!" You lay your pak and bat down carefully then show your hands are now empty as you reply "Well I met your scavenging team a couple of days South and they sent me here to find sanctuary." you pause "I don't know how much they know about my kind so I'll play it dumb" You continue "As for proving I am human, well erm, I am talking?" The man stares at you "Show us your skin, no recent bites, that sort of thing. Then when we clear you, you can prove you were sent by our scavenging team." He keeps his gun up so you know you have to comply now. You slowly take your shirt off, revealing your muscular body and see a couple of approving looks from the women, then do a slow turn with arms raised to show you don't have any bites "Do I remove the trousers and underwear out here too?" You ask the man who is clearly in charge but he simply waves at your shirt and you put it back on. Realizing he is waiting for you you think quickly about what you had learned before you killed them, it occurs to you that they made a couple of jokes about a man called "Boring" who kept trying to be all official with the gate so you gamble on that. "Well when I was with Cara and Chris they did tell me what to do when I got here" You begin, and note the positive reaction when you gave their names "They said I should come to the gate a report to mr. Boring, well they just said 'boring'" You immediately see the man turn a little red and look displeased "I will have words with them!" The other guards clearly start chuckling and grinning behind him I have told them not to nickname me 'boring', they can use 'Fire' or 'Lion' but not Boring! what I do at the gate is important!" You can see you touched a nerve but from every ones expressions you know that you are safe, this is obviously a running joke so you keep going "Erm, sorry? Thats kind of all they told me to do,.." You trial off and know you are successful when you see the man sigh and wave behind him before replying "Yes, well you can't be blamed for their pranks, Chris is too easily influenced by Cara and her pranks, Welcome to 'Safe-Haven', the name might not be original but it fits." The gate opens and you head inside. > You safe-Haven As you walk in through the gate you get your first proper view of the little community, apart from the surrounding wall and wooden walkway you couldn't even tell that the world ended outside. There is a group of nicely laid out houses in the centre, a play park, a couple of mechanical looking buildings with tools and machinery inside and even a generator next to them. The people are the same, clean clothing and all smiling and chatting as if the most horrific decade in human history wasn't still fully underway just past the gate you had walked through. One of the guards hops down behind you and several of the people come over, one is even carrying a toddler. The guard starts introducing everyone and you give short pleasant responses before realizing the thing that was bugging you the most. You look like a hobo, a hobo who had something die and rot on it's clothing recently and everyone around you is clean and well dressed for a rural community. Your realization and glances at your torn and stained shirt must have registered as one of the women cuts the guard off "Let the man rest and get a change of clothing first before he gets embarrassed!" You are about to object when you hear a whoop from behind you and a female guard from the gate comes running over "I'll help, just wait till you see him with his shirt off!" The older woman tuts at her "Briar, behave yourself!" but she just grins and turns to you "Ok lets get you out of that shirt so I can burn it!". You don't actually feel embarrassed about anything around your prey and you definitely don't care what they think since you are about to eat them but you do find it strange that the social conventions still hold sway over you "I will have to break myself of these stupid old social compulsions, they get in the way" You think as you pull your shirt off and hear another whoop from Briar as she takes your shirt and heads off to a fire-pit near the walls. You also get some approving looks from the other ladies and glance down at your perfectly muscled self, "I am a bit of an Adonis thanks to the virus, makes sense I guess" you think as you let the crowd of women take you over to a shed and hand you some new clothing. You do change in private though, despite seeing them as prey to be eaten at the first opportunity, you mind still pulls you away from certain acts. When you finally come out there is a larger crowd, including men ready to greet you and show you their little community. They take you on a whirlwind tour, showing off everything like proud parents showing off their firstborn child. It is all as you first saw, nice well loved little houses and a couple of old barns used as machine shops, The one thing that catches your eye is at the back. A huge metal door leading into a metal corridor that seems half buried at the back of the compound. "That's our bunker!" One of the men proudly announces "If everything else fails, we can all live in there for months without any worries!" You mke a mental note to check it out, it would be problematic if you entire food supply was locked in a giant steel box after all. > The night and the next day You are shown to a house that looks less well kept than the others and are told you can use it as your own "An old member, called himself 'Playa' used to live here, sadly he was on a scavenge when they got attacked, him and his partner never returned so now it's yours." You thank them and head inside, finding yourself automatically wiping your feet as you do so "Oh come on, I haven't wiped my feet in years, what am I doing?" You head upstairs and find a nicely laid out bedroom complete with a full bead "Although I really can't complain about this!" You hop onto the bed and relax "Even better than my van-sofa!" You think as you begin making your plans. You start by stretching out your senses and trying to count the humans, you find that they are often too close together to count perfectly but at least 30-40 which fits your initial guess. Several act as guards day and night and they have a fair amount of guns including at least two automatic weapons. They also have the bunker but there are ways of dealing with that too. You slowly fall asleep as the sun sets, thinking about all those walking meals, just feet away and battling the hunger that always comes with those type of thoughts. > You well before dawn You wake after just a few hours sleep like you used too, hunger eating at your belly and pressing on the back of your mind. You are going to have to make your plans soon or you might snap and just outright attack someone.Then you pause "I'm not normally this bloodthirsty, I used to be able to control my urges much better. Guess this is what happens when I feast, luckily I know I can hold it at bay for a few days if I need too" You roll over in your bed and send out your senses again before finally heading over to the window to check the time "The moon says it's around 3 or 4 am and there are definitely guards still on the walkway but they are not moving at all. Probably sleep right now if not fully asleep from how lax they were when I approached. You head downstairs and peak out all of the windows, sure enough you see little to no movement anywhere in the compound. You cannot see the gate from your new house but if the two guards there are anything like the others then they will be fast asleep too. You think things through again "The scavengers are due back tomorrow I'd guess, I could play it out for one extra day if I say they had an extra large amount of food but people will get suspicious quickly. My other option is making my move now, I have the shamblers outside and ready to invade the second I kill a few guards and let them in." > You hold off one more day to plan and prepare Waiting it out one more day while you investigate the bunker and guard numbers is the best plan so you head to the kitchen and see what you can find to eat. You find it empty "They must have cleared it out after the last bugger died" You think s you head back upstairs to wait for dawn to arrive, it wouldn't be smart to be caught wandering about outside right now if you didn't plan to kill them all tonight. When the dawn finally comes, you have decided that the bunker is the key, even if you got half the guards dead and lat the shamblers inside, a large number of the humans could get to the bunker and hide out there if they were smart. You head out into the dawn light with a plan in mind. But first you have to act nice to the walking meat-sacks. You spend some time exchanging pleasantries with the members of the community and finally Boring heads you way with questions clearly on his mind "So friend, you survived long enough to get here and join us and you say Cara's team sent you but there are some things you need to answer". You give your best 'I'm not planning on ripping your head off and eating you' smile and reply "Of course, whatever you need to ask" "Two things" He begins "Firstly, everyone here earns their keep, even the kids, well, once they are able, anyway, if you plan to stay you'll need to do your share. Second, we were expecting Cara's team back before dusk yesterday and they haven't arrived, what do you know?" He immediately gets some disapproving looks from the others nearby but you reply quickly to them as well as him "They are fair questions, I will of course do my share where-ever I am needed, I will let the community decide my role and I will happily do it, you are the ones who know what is needed here. As for Cara and the others... I don't know, they did have a large number of sacks full of fruit and veg though, they said they had been extra successful?" He thinks for a moment then nods and heads off back to the gate while you force the bowl of gruel down your throat. It tasted liek ashes in your mouth and felt like it was kicking you in the gut it sat so badly but you had to keep the act up or they prey would get suspicious too quickly. After breakfast and the pleasantries you head for a walk around the inside of the wall, waving and saying hello to the guards before finally coming to the bunker, finding it open. > The bunker You grin at your own good fortune and immediately try to act like an innocent but curious visitor "Hello there?" You call as you slip through the door and down the ramp inside, finding yourself in a much larger room than expected. The walls lined with shelves packed with food tins of all varieties and bottles of water. You even see a generator with its vents plugged into the wall in one corner "They weren't kidding when they said they could survive here for months" You think as a man steps out of a far corner and simply asks "Can I help you?" You put on your best smile "Ah erm, well I just arrived yesterday and everyone was talking about the bunker so when I saw the door open I thought I should come and look, I did should hello?" The man simply nod and goes back to his clipboard "Ah yes, I saw you briefly as you were swarmed by the more excitable members of our little community. Luckily with the relatively recent loss of two members you will not throw our plans off at all. You are about to question his 'plans' when you realize he must be referring to the stores down here, he must be in charge of the rationing so he would be the one knowing exact numbers of people and things. "Well it seems very safe down here." You try. "Ah yes, safe indeed, out community all put in together to fund it from a specialist company I used to work for! We were not like the scammers that came after the infection began spreading. We were very expensive but with build with great care, our minimum standard was would we feel safe in it ourselves, and in this case I planned to use it myself so I made double certain of every detail." He seems keen on the subject so you keep asking questions "So you knew something like the virus was coming?" He pauses and looks at you "The virus?" Then he seems to reach some conclusion you can only guess at and brightens up before continuing "Oh dear me no, the virus was a shock indeed, we expected nuclear war. The world was headed towards it and we expected the biological attacks to get worse and worse until someone finally launched the first nuke. It seems that at least one country had other plans and released a virus that was a little too effective. Once it started mutating even their own vaccines were not effective.This beauty is a full community nuclear fallout shelter. You could house a small number safely for years without ever opening the door, the entire community could easily last" He glances down at his clipboard "5 and a half months before needing to make a run for more water, then they would have another 5 months!" excellent design and it could be hit directly by a tank and barely take any damage! We were remote enough to avoid the main hordes but close enough to the city to get the vaccine once it was developed and only lost a handful of members." He goes back to smiling to himself as he marked things off on his board "Well thanks for the info" you say as you head back out. Either you need to be in here when the door shuts of you need to stop anyone else getting in, you don't see any weakness at all in the design. > You waiting for nightfall You spend the rest of the day checking out all of the defenses as subtly as possible and being nice to all the humans as they taunted you with their flesh and minds, just waiting to be eaten, but you hold the urges off for now. You cannot act prematurely and let the hunger control you, that will just get you killed. You force yourself to stomach the horrendous food they give you and finally retire to your own house for the night and count the hour passed as you watch the moon. at midnight you sense the guards change over and watch the new ones settle in and get relaxed, leaving them long enough to get nice and sleepy before acting. But the ones at the gate keep moving, they clearly are not sleepy and might be a small problem tonight. > You gate open first, then while the shamblers get killed, you hide in the bunker with the others You slip quickly out of the house and head for the South West corner of the compound "No time like the present!" you think as you sneak close to the first guard and see he is isn't moving "Time to reduce the number of humans with guns so my shamblers will have free reign" You think as you move further along the wall. The guards have lit torches on the railings, helps them see nearby things but makes them night blind to anything more than a few feet away. You find a spot between torches and gently swing yourself up onto the walkway. You sneak back towards the guard you were near before. He had seemed extra sleepy earlier, and sure enough, you find him napping. Two steps into the light from the small torch and you have one hand clamped over his mouth and the other around his throat, crushing his windpipe. It gives way with a pop and you finish him off by snapping his neck. The hunger surges up but you have to ignore it for now. You can feast once you have control of the entire compound. You start sneaking along the walkway toward the next guard and once more find a sleepy man, relaxing in his chair in the torchlight, you smile to yourself, they had become too lax in the peaceful times after the raiders all died. You once more move in close and before the man even wakes up enough to react you have you hand over his mouth and throat. You clamp down, crushing his windpipe but as you feel it give way, you hear the thump of his heel hitting his chair. You quickly snap his neck but the damage is done and the chair tumbles off the edge and into the compound before you can stop it. You swear to yourself and you hear the noise it makes but you know it wasn't really that loud, You almost think you got away with it when you hear the next guard calling out "Hey Kiel, you fall asleep again!" You quickly drop to the ground, the guard wont take long to get suspicious when their friend does not reply so you need to get the gates open fast. You sprint between the houses, luckily finding most quiet and dark and come to the main gate. there are two guards here, one either side of the gateway and they are awake and chatting to each other. But you hear the shout going up. The guard has found the body. "Kiel is dead! we have intruders! help!" You swear and rush towards the gate, leaping up and vaulting yourself onto the walkway behind one of the guards. He saw you coming and tries to raise his gun but you are faster and a punch to the throat sends him stumbling over the wall, only to get impaled on a spike before he can fully fall. the haze of his mind already gone by the time he hits the spike. You run and leap at the second guard, but this one has had more time and you see her with rifle ready. She takes the shot as you leap and you feel the impact in your side. You are certain she just got you cleanly in the kidney as you land and start punching her, not giving her time to work the bolt action for another shot. She shot you though and the hunger fills your mind with anger as you punch her repeatedly in revenge, even though she was dead after the second hit.. The shouts of humans running brings you back from your rage and you can sense the minds of several humans headed your way. You leap down and wrench the wooden bar off the gate, swinging it open. "Time for vengeance!" you think as you order your horde inside and lean up against the wall for a moment to stop your own bleeding. You will easily survive this, but it is still not trivial, you will need a few moments to bind it before you move. You simply order your horde to attack while you tear a strip off your shirt to stuff into your wound when you hear the shots starting and feel your horde reduce in number quickly. You look up to see the humans aren't all carrying bold action hunting rifles or pistols, several have assault rifles and they are tearing your horde apart with ease. > You take them down fast before they kill too many of your shamblers Your wound will have to wait, you sprint towards the men, watching them take down two more shamblers with easy shots spread between the chest and head. The stupid shamblers were just not fast enough to get in close. But you are fast, very fast. You close the distance and pass your last 4 shamblers as you leap at the front human with an automatic weapon, Your knees hits him in the chest and you send him flying backwards. You felt his ribs crack but can feel that he is still alive "Out of action for now though" You think as you spin and punch another guard in the face, knocking him out cold. Then you feel the impacts in your back and stagger forwards. You turn slowly as your lungs fill with blood to see on of the men calmly pointing his rifle your way "Hey this one is a lot tougher than the normal ones at least!" He calls to his comrades as he pulls the trigger again and three more bullets tear into you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You spend the rest of the day checking out all of the defenses as subtly as possible and being nice to all the humans as they taunted you with their flesh and minds, just waiting to be eaten, but you hold the urges off for now. You cannot act prematurely and let the hunger control you, that will just get you killed. You force yourself to stomach the horrendous food they give you and finally retire to your own house for the night and count the hour passed as you watch the moon. at midnight you sense the guards change over and watch the new ones settle in and get relaxed, leaving them long enough to get nice and sleepy before acting. But the ones at the gate keep moving, they clearly are not sleepy and might be a small problem tonight. > You wait one more day, it wont hurt to be cautious now With the guards at the gate still active it is too risky, they could raise the alarm and ruin everything before your plan every really gets underway. You sleep for a few hours and wake with the dawn, heading down to the kitchen you find a couple of the guards there. You are immediately on alert but one smiles at you and waves you to a seat "So we decided you'll be joining the guards!" seems best suited for you if you survived this long out there along you'll know something about killing infected right?" You relax a little and nod your consent as he continues "We came to get you but then felt bad for waking you before dawn since you aren't a guard YET. so we let you sleep, but come on Boring has asked us to show you a few things." The guards all get up and head for the door and you follow, you notice they are all carrying their guns but think nothing of it, it is their job. They take you right to the bunker and lead you inside "So this is the bunker, our last line of defense. Our main job is not so much to hold off the attackers at the walls, but to delay them until everyone gets in here safely then we can simply wait it out!" You smile back and pretend to look around interested as you walk inside. "Yeh I met someone in here the other day and he told me about it..." you begin as you turn to see the guards backing out of the door and locking you in as he says "And we can also use it as a prison for those we suspect, since there is no way out without a key." You rush the door but it locks in place before you can do anything. > You prisoner in the bunker Your hunger pushes you to rage against the door, and you are about to give in before you calm yourself and step back. You try to call to them to profess your innocence for whatever they suspect but it seems like the door blocks the noise out too so you wander over to a fold-out chair and take a seat. It is several hours before you hear the door moving again. You jump to your feet but as it opens you see at least 6 men with guns pointed at you on the other side, no way you could get out the door before they shot you. You see Boring stepping out from where he was obviously opening the door and move up to the entryway but not inside. You note that he never blocks too many of the gunmen from your view though, probably to make sure you still feel intimidated when he speaks "That wont work on me though, I am better in every way then him, I could easily crush his skull with one hand. But I will play along for now, then enjoy slaughtering everyone he cares about the second I get free." He finally begins talking to you as you sit down again on your little folding chair "Well I am sorry to have to do this since several of our little community seem taken with you but things are looking suspicious right now and you wouldn't be the first raider to try and get our guard down this way." You think carefully before replying "Oh come on, I have behaved perfectly, I was even sent here by Cara and Chris!" You see the man smiling in response "Yes you joked around the fire about saving her life and spending time chatting with them, but now they are two days overdue on their return. I sent out a couple of our fastest men yesterday to find out what happened to them. It might be a freak accident or problem, or they might just turn up late but we must be careful and until we know the truth you will be living here." You try and protest but he backs out and closes the door again. > You judgement day You have two more nights in the Bunker and open a couple of cans of meat to eat while you are there "Can't blame me for eating if they were the ones to lock me in here" You think, but the canned food taste horrible to you and barely does anything for the hunger, if it wasn't slightly better than nothing you wouldn't even bother. Finally the door opens again and once more you see boring and the men with guns outside. This time though there are a few more of them. "Come on out now, there are people wanting to chat with you to work out the truth." You are confused at first but this is better than expected, maybe they didn't find the remains or thought that infected got them, there were two mutant carcass near the silo after all. They look nervous though so you will have to be careful "Of course" you reply "I can clear my name that way and get back to helping out here". Boring simply nods in response and starts walking away, several of the men follow him off to the side, leaving only a few near the entrance and they stop actively pointing guns at you. You walk up happily "I can play on their doubts, play the sadness card, pretend I am broken up about my new friends deaths bla bla. They will trust me again in no time, then I can tear them apart and feast tonight!" You think as you reach the doorway and notice that boring and the other guards had simply looped around as soon as they were out of sight and were now just a few metres away with all their guns pointed right at you. "Heralds must die, that is the first commandment for survivors!" Boring shouts as the others all open fire. You go down in the hail of bullets "Ah, they must have worked it out from the bodies then" you think<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake after just a few hours sleep like you used too, hunger eating at your belly and pressing on the back of your mind. You are going to have to make your plans soon or you might snap and just outright attack someone.Then you pause "I'm not normally this bloodthirsty, I used to be able to control my urges much better. Guess this is what happens when I feast, luckily I know I can hold it at bay for a few days if I need too" You roll over in your bed and send out your senses again before finally heading over to the window to check the time "The moon says it's around 3 or 4 am and there are definitely guards still on the walkway but they are not moving at all. Probably sleep right now if not fully asleep from how lax they were when I approached. You head downstairs and peak out all of the windows, sure enough you see little to no movement anywhere in the compound. You cannot see the gate from your new house but if the two guards there are anything like the others then they will be fast asleep too. You think things through again "The scavengers are due back tomorrow I'd guess, I could play it out for one extra day if I say they had an extra large amount of food but people will get suspicious quickly. My other option is making my move now, I have the shamblers outside and ready to invade the second I kill a few guards and let them in." > You head right for the gate and get it open for your shamblers Getting the gate open is the first priority, you will need your shamblers running distraction and killing the slow humans while you pick off the ones with the automatic weapons. You slip out in the moonlight and move silently between the houses. Your night-vision is as excellent as ever and the clouded night is revealed to you just as clearly as the daytime would be for a human. You keep checking on the guards and others in the community but everyone is in the beds on the second floor of the houses and most of the guards are not moving. "Probably asleep in their chairs" you think as you finally get in a clear view of the gate. The two guards at the gate are clearly still awake. They are standing, one on each side, chatting across the gap. They aren't any more use as guards than the others since they are not facing the road or fields at all but they are facing each other which is bad for you. You judge the gap between the walkway edges at 10 feet. You can easily make the jump but you will need to time everything perfectly. They also have torches lit beside them so they are lit up completly while making themselves night-blind to anything else. > You slip close quietly, they will be night blind so you can completly surprise one then leap for the other You will have to rely on speed and surprise, you can't think of any reason the guards would let you close to them in the middle of the night. especially at the front gate. You edge to the left first and manage to get within a few feet of the walkway before reaching the edge of the weak torchlight "Any further and I can be seen. Going to time this perfectly, you give them a few moments more before seeing the guard opposite stretching and looking away. You vault yourself onto the walkway behind one of the guards. He saw you coming at the last second and tries to raise his gun but you are faster and a punch to the throat sends him stumbling over the wall, only to get impaled on a spike before he can fully fall. the haze of his mind already gone by the time he hits the spike. You run and leap at the second guard, but this one has had more time and you see her with rifle ready. She takes the shot as you leap and you feel the impact in your side. You are certain she just got you cleanly in the kidney as you land and start punching her, not giving her time to work the bolt action for another shot. She shot you though and the hunger fills your mind with anger as you punch her repeatedly in revenge, even though she was dead after the second hit. The shouts of humans running brings you back from your rage and you can sense the minds of several humans headed your way. You leap down and wrench the wooden bar off the gate, swinging it open. "Time for vengeance!" you think as you order your horde inside and lean up against the wall for a moment to stop your own bleeding. You will easily survive this, but it is still not trivial, you will need a few moments to bind it before you move. You simply order your horde to attack while you tear a strip off your shirt to stuff into your wound when you hear the shots starting and feel your horde reduce in number quickly. You look up to see the humans aren't all carrying bold action hunting rifles or pistols, several have assault rifles and they are tearing your shambler horde apart with ease, the mutants are doing damage in return though and each has already downed a human.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Getting the gate open is the first priority, you will need your shamblers running distraction and killing the slow humans while you pick off the ones with the automatic weapons. You slip out in the moonlight and move silently between the houses. Your night-vision is as excellent as ever and the clouded night is revealed to you just as clearly as the daytime would be for a human. You keep checking on the guards and others in the community but everyone is in the beds on the second floor of the houses and most of the guards are not moving. "Probably asleep in their chairs" you think as you finally get in a clear view of the gate. The two guards at the gate are clearly still awake. They are standing, one on each side, chatting across the gap. They aren't any more use as guards than the others since they are not facing the road or fields at all but they are facing each other which is bad for you. You judge the gap between the walkway edges at 10 feet. You can easily make the jump but you will need to time everything perfectly. They also have torches lit beside them so they are lit up completly while making themselves night-blind to anything else. > You try to get close with talking, then when they relax, strike fast They are facing each other and chatting across the gap. You might be ridiculously fast but you are nearly certain that you couldn't kill one, make the jump and silence the other before they get out a shout, or worse a bullet. The second the alarm goes up you know your plans will be ruined so you need to get closer by other means. It takes a few minutes but eventually you notice something that you normally wouldn't have. You realize that the guard to the right is female. You haven't looked at humans as specifically male and female in years, since you started eating them at least. "This place is really affecting my brain, although this information I can use, she was one of the ones hanging around a lot when I first arrived and making comments about my looks". You stand up then begin walking forward, making a little more noise than necessary just to be safe. You get a few feet when you see the guards turn quickly to look your way "a little more alert then" You think as you continue forward a few steps "Who is it?" gets called your way as you reach the edge of the torchlight. You step fully into it so you can be seen before replying "Just me, I can never sleep around this time so I was just walking around" you bank on them being a little suspicious of this excuse and it works perfectly. The woman calls out "And you just happened to end up at the gate?" You pause and pretend to be embarrassed before replying "Well, actually I ended up at the South wall and chatted to one of the guards there for a bit and when I asked about you, he said you were on the gate duty tonight..." You trail off and it takes a few seconds but the male guard catches onto your hint and lets out a chuckle, that gives the game away to the girl and she immediately blushes, you can see her reactions as clear as day with your heightened senses but she does not know that and tries to hide it by putting up a front "No matter, all you need to do is let my up on the walkway and you wont ever have to act again" You think as she replies "Well he was right, I am on duty now. So why were you asking about me?" You smile this time"Well you made quite the first impression on me when I arrived and I was planning on, you know, trying to get to know you a bit better over the next few weeks, when I heard you were awake now too I just kinda headed this way". The girls blush deepens and you can see the other guard laughing his head off as she responds "Well I am on duty now and can't leave my post!" You know you have her now though and push one last time "Oh, I wouldn't expect you too but having another set of eyes up there while we chat wouldn't hurt would it?" You give your biggest smile and she finally gives in and smiles back "Ok hop up and you can try and chat me up then!" You grin as you jog forward and try to act like pulling yourself up onto the platform is at least a little tricky, finally leaning against the arch of the gate beside her "She let me stand between her and the gate, idiot!" You think as you glance at the male guard who is now making a point of looking the other way. You turn back as the girl speaks "Well I'm waiting, I thought you were going to chat me up?" she says with a cheeky grin. The timing was perfect so you struck. You step a little closer and open your mouth as if to speak but as she looks at your face your fist moves unbelievably fast and hits her cleanly in the throat, crushing her windpipe, she wont be able to should for help or do anything at all as she quickly suffocates. You spin and leap the gap. The other guard barely even registers what is happening as your punch knocks him cold. You quickly snap his neck then stop and listen to see if your attack alerted anyone but the only sound you hear is the soft strangled noise of the girl dying and after a few moments that ends too. You smile to yourself as you force your hunger back down "Can't feed yet, I have to keep it in check until the battle is over" you mumble as you gently hop down and lift the bar off the gate. You gently swing one side open just enough to let the shamblers in and control them all directly again, making them move quickly until they are gathered right across the road, then slipping over and into the compound. > You clearing the guards out before the rampage "Time to play my little pets" You tell them as you direct them carefully between the buildings, spreading them out so that they can cause the greatest havoc possible. even if they die, they should bite enough to make more infected and those can rampage too. You hop back up on the walkway and start creeping South until you find the first torch and guard asleep at his chair. You take two quick steps and grab him with one hand on his throat and the other over his mouth. Just a gentle squeeze crushes his windpipe and you hold him until he stops struggling, dropping him back into his chair after "There, you are just as much use sitting there dead as you were alive!" You chuckle as you keep moving and turn the corner, heading wet now until you see the next light and the next guard asleep, or close to, in his chair. You smile at just how lax the guards had become as you do exactly the same as before and have the man by the throat before he even knows what is happening. You feel his windpipe pop and keep holding him as he kicks, imagining how good it was going to be to eat all the dead soon when his foot kicks out and hits his chair and you watch helpless as if, and his gun, tumble over the side with a small crash. You swear to yourself, you can't let yourself daydream in the middle of killing someone! You hear the expected call from further along the wall and know the gig is up for now. If you hide, the body will be found and the alarm goes up, if the kill the next guy, the others who heard the call will raise the alarm when he vanishes too "Well, half of the guards will be down at least" You think as you sneak forward into the darkest area near you and wait. The guard comes jogging your way calling out "What did you fall asleep and tip your chair over again?" You immediately stand and hit him as hard as you can. You catch him cleanly in the jaw and see his head snapping round instantly, accompanied by a snapping sound. You sense his life vanish instantly and realize your punch must have snapped his neck "I am getting stronger, never used to be able to do that before" You think as you keep moving forward seeking the next guard. > The raised alarm call You hear the shout going up load and clear "Everyone evacuate, infected in the compound, the gate wa opened!" Then you hear a loud horn going off and every human mind in the compound begins to move "Their guards are lax but they know how to evacuate at least" You start running openly now, no point hiding out if the alarm is already raised. The next guard sees you coming but realizes you are not a comrade far too late to save himself and he joins the dead. You sense the humans reaching their doors and then the screaming starts. Your dozen shamblers were all placed perfectly to cause the most chaos and you instantly sense several biting and feeding on human flesh. You think about making them rampage but they are slow and they are doing their job so you just leave them to attack and feed as their instincts direct. You feel one getting beaten off and killed, but then you sense a human mind change as you watch it. You see something like rot spread over it, the glow fading, it seems to fight back but they rot tears away at it until it shatters, leaving a weak rotted husk where there was a vibrant mind moments before "And so it spreads" you say aloud as the new shambler lumbers after what must have been it's family moments before. You reach one more guard as the gunshots begin and two more shamblers die. This guard is ready for you though with his gun raised toward the compound to shoot the first infected that comes near. You are that first infected and he spins towards you as you rush him, he realizes in time that you are an enemy but you are too close and his shot skims past you, just grazing your side "Claw has spotted some, Centre West wall!" You hear from not far away. The dead guards reinforcements are headed right for you. You sense three below running your way and another along the walkway. You pull at the nearest shambler and have it go after the three below but they instantly shoot it down and keep coming, the one on the walkway is getting closer too and you only have moments before they see you. > You into the bunker! It should be close enough! You immediately slip over the edge and land lightly on the grass below, you only have a few seconds but you were right, the bunkers is close, so you sprint towards it and slip into the already open door. You are the first one here but you can sense more headed your way already. You quickly hunch up against a wall pretending to look worried and wait. The call from the guards goes up as they find the bodies and you can sense them moving outward in arcs, searching the area but they don't come your way yet. You are going to need more survivors in here incase they come your way. You quickly locate your shamblers and find one blocking some humans so make it move as if it has a new target to the side and you sense the humans surge past and toward you. The guards locate another and it vanishes amidst the gunfire. You can feel the difference now between the human minds, some are clearly fleeing, headed your way, wavering and moving in sprints while others are methodically sweeping the area, these must be the guards. You do your best to have your last shamblers ambush the guards but you only catch one before the last of your horde are wiped out. Then the humans arrive, they flood inside lead by a guard who doesn't even look your way and the other humans don't either. They are just too panicked and desperate to get inside. You smile to yourself, a few more and no-one will remember where you were, they will just think you came in with the others from the houses. You watch as more and more pile inside, filially followed by a few guards and the door swings partly shut, manned by two guards. You can sense others outside, more guards, holding the area around incase of more survivors or threats but you know there are none of either, the humans are all here and the infected are all dead. You do a quick head-count and see at least twenty inside, your shamblers did good work with the ambushes. Time to fit in, You quickly see a a group of the humans that you met the day before and head over there trying your best to look scared "What's going on? we were just directed here but there were infected everywhere!" They don't even look suspicious for a moment as they reply "The gate got breached and they got inside. We have as little idea what's going on as you do." You simply nod in response and stay close, they are now your alibi and you will look less suspicious in a group. "This is going perfectly, half of their guards are dead and all the humans are trapped in here with me! > You surviving in the bunker You stay with the group, occasionally chatting, sometimes watching others come over to trade stories but generally just trying to fit in and look appropriately worried. If you are going to make your plan work you need the humans to trust you for just a little bit longer. Finally you sense that the humans left outside have swept the area clear and they all enter the bunker, staying in a group near the entrance. You sense the last three outside heading at speed towards the gate. "Ok, the compound is clear now and we are shutting the gates. We do not yet know how they got inside but once the gate team returns they can tell us more. For now you know the drill. Everyone check your neighbors for bites." You hear some mumbled swearing, it seems that they all had forgotten part of the procedure in the panic and now everyone starts rolling up their sleeves of taking their shirts off. You of course join in and pretend to look a couple of others over before giving them the all clear and they return the favor. A few people start calling out "All clear here" and you call it out for the people near you. "Not a single bite in the room, too bad, could have used a shambler or fast type turning in here". Finally things begin settling down and the guards return from the front gate, giving their report to the other guards, they speak softly but you know the survivors nearest them can hear and your hearing is advanced enough to pick it up too "Gate was definitely opened from the inside, bar taken out and pulled open, inside job. Looks like other guards on the walkways were killed too, probably before the gate was opened." The guards keep conversing for a time and finally call out to the whole bunker "The immediate threat is gone, but we are going into lockdown. This was no accident, the infected were let into the compound by design." You hear worried mumbling breaking out but as the door seals shut and is locked you can feel the entire bunker relaxing slightly "They must have fended off attacks in here before then" You think as you suddenly realize that several of the guards and a few other humans are staring right at you. "Well of course they suspect me now, gonna have to act fast." > You pretend to want to prove your innocence to the guards, then strike fast and kill the armed ones, you must act before they do You stand up slowly and see several more set of eyes latch onto you so you begin your act right away "Look, I know I am the most likely suspect here since I just arrived so I am going to go talk to the guards to prove my innocence." You make sure to keep your voice calm but loud enough for the entire bunker to hear and see many of your watchers stop staring. You then begin to head over to the guards who watch you coming, they don't actively point weapons at you but they are clearly keeping them close to hand. "We heard your little speech there and you are right. You are the main suspect, so how do you plan to prove yourself?" One of them says. You notice than Boring isn't here and realize he must be one of the dead, you smile inside while you speak "Well I don't know but but letting infected inside would be suicide for me so it doesn't make sense. How would I get the gate open with the guards watching me then get away as the infected attacked, in fact, how could I even have made them attack? They are just lumbering relics that hang around where they died until disturbed." The guards clearly don't seem convinced "We have been attacked before, in fact a few years ago the raiders were strong in this area, they used to capture or lead infected right up to the gates of communities like ours then kill some guards and let the infected in to do the dirty work for them. I think you are one of them." A couple of the other guards nod but some don't seem so sure so you know the idea can't be watertight yet "And at least they don't suspect I am a harbinger" You think as you plan your next response, you already pretended to not know the guards were killed so best to keep with that. "So you think that the raiders, who were wiped out years ago, suddenly recovered and sent me in here to open the gate and let infected attack me? why on earth would I do that? If they were willing to sacrifice me why wouldn't I just join you instead. You held off the strongest raiders groups in the past so why would I risk ym own death for some weak remnant?" You pause as if thinking "And how would I even do it, I mean you have guards all around the walkways and at the gate and they all have guns, you' think they might just notice a guy removing the bar and opening the gate?" You can see from their faces that your points are sinking in and they are relaxing, a couple let their guns slide down to less threatening positions. You smile slowly, then strike. You lunge forward and punch one guard, immediately grabbing another in your other hand and throwing him back into a third. you spin and lash out at one behind you, grabbing his gun as he falls unconscious and fire it point-blank into the chest of the next one you see "Too easy" You think as you use the gun like a bat to smash a guard round the head, feeling her mind blink out instantly as she dies "They can barely comprehend what is happening before they die". You leap towards the ones you knocked over and two swift blows kill them too and you finally turn to the gathered humans who are rushing away from you as much as the space allows in fear. "Future meals! hear me, I am in charge now! You can recognize me as a herald or harbinger, whichever term you choose to use for me, but you can also see that you don't stand a chance against me." You wave to the group of dead or unconscious guards behind you "All your guards are now dead and I will feast on their flesh, all you have to do is cower and wait to be eaten." > You to feast or to kill? You have all the time in the world to decide You grin to yourself "Look at them, prey is the right work for them, cowering in fear from me as it should be. They can live in fear while I slowly eat them all one by one. I can even take the kaycards for the door an leave them locked in here with shamblers as guards!" You are considering your next announcement when you hear the boom, amplified by the small space and metal walls and feel the impact on your back. You see a spurt of red leaving your chest and something hits a bag of wheat on a shelf in front of you. Glancing down you see blood pouring out of your chest. You spin around as you fight off the weakness you are feeling and are just in time to hear the click-click of a bolt action being worked to reload a rifle. You see one of the guards still lying slumped against the wall where your punch had sent him flying "Too bad you didn't knock me out then isn't is harbinger!" He shouts at you. One bullet wound wont kill you, you just need to get outside and lock the door while you recover, you know you can survive it, only one lung was punctured and your healing is more accelerated than ever now. You leap at the guard but you ar too late as just as you land his second shot tears through your chest leaving a second gaping hole and you can feel both lungs rapidly filling with blood. You try and swing for him but you are too weak and simply slump to the side. you watch your prey running forward to help the wounded and see them just ignoring you as everything just fades away.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stay with the group, occasionally chatting, sometimes watching others come over to trade stories but generally just trying to fit in and look appropriately worried. If you are going to make your plan work you need the humans to trust you for just a little bit longer. Finally you sense that the humans left outside have swept the area clear and they all enter the bunker, staying in a group near the entrance. You sense the last three outside heading at speed towards the gate. "Ok, the compound is clear now and we are shutting the gates. We do not yet know how they got inside but once the gate team returns they can tell us more. For now you know the drill. Everyone check your neighbors for bites." You hear some mumbled swearing, it seems that they all had forgotten part of the procedure in the panic and now everyone starts rolling up their sleeves of taking their shirts off. You of course join in and pretend to look a couple of others over before giving them the all clear and they return the favor. A few people start calling out "All clear here" and you call it out for the people near you. "Not a single bite in the room, too bad, could have used a shambler or fast type turning in here". Finally things begin settling down and the guards return from the front gate, giving their report to the other guards, they speak softly but you know the survivors nearest them can hear and your hearing is advanced enough to pick it up too "Gate was definitely opened from the inside, bar taken out and pulled open, inside job. Looks like other guards on the walkways were killed too, probably before the gate was opened." The guards keep conversing for a time and finally call out to the whole bunker "The immediate threat is gone, but we are going into lockdown. This was no accident, the infected were let into the compound by design." You hear worried mumbling breaking out but as the door seals shut and is locked you can feel the entire bunker relaxing slightly "They must have fended off attacks in here before then" You think as you suddenly realize that several of the guards and a few other humans are staring right at you. "Well of course they suspect me now, gonna have to act fast." > You hold off, you can't be sure of vitory in this confined space and with so many guns around, the panic would help but you couldn't be sure to kill all the guards before they shot you You stand up slowly and see several more set of eyes latch onto you so you begin your act right away "Look, I know I am the most likely suspect here since I just arrived so I am going to go talk to the guards to prove my innocence." You make sure to keep your voice calm but loud enough for the entire bunker to hear and see many of your watchers stop staring. You then begin to head over to the guards who watch you coming, they don't actively point weapons at you but they are clearly keeping them close to hand. "We heard your little speech there and you are right. You are the main suspect, so how do you plan to prove yourself?" One of them says. You notice than Boring isn't here and realize he must be one of the dead, you smile inside while you speak "Well I don't know but but letting infected inside would be suicide for me so it doesn't make sense. How would I get the gate open with the guards watching me then get away as the infected attacked, in fact, how could I even have made them attack? They are just lumbering relics that hang around where they died until disturbed." The guards clearly don't seem convinced "We have been attacked before, in fact a few years ago the raiders were strong in this area, they used to capture or lead infected right up to the gates of communities like ours then kill some guards and let the infected in to do the dirty work for them. I think you are one of them." A couple of the other guards nod but some don't seem so sure so you know the idea can't be watertight yet "And at least they don't suspect I am a harbinger" You think as you plan your next response, you already pretended to not know the guards were killed so best to keep with that. "So you think that the raiders, who were wiped out years ago, suddenly recovered and sent me in here to open the gate and let infected attack me? why on earth would I do that? If they were willing to sacrifice me why wouldn't I just join you instead. You held off the strongest raiders groups in the past so why would I risk ym own death for some weak remnant?" You pause as if thinking "And how would I even do it, I mean you have guards all around the walkways and at the gate and they all have guns, you' think they might just notice a guy removing the bar and opening the gate?" You can see from their faces that your points are sinking in, it's lucky they thought you were a raider and not a harbinger as since you aren't a raider it is easier to convince them. One finally responds "We aren't saying the allegations are air tight but you arrived then after over a year of no infected sightings from the walkway, we are over-run within days." You pause, pushing further might be good or bad so you play it cautiously "That I can accept, as I said, I know I am the likely one but hopefully I can be proven innocent soon." One of the guards who had been silent up until now speaks up. "He might be guilty of letting them in for some other reason but he isn't with the raiders." The others look at him as he continues "The raiders always did the exact same thing, they killed some guards by surprise, opened the gates to let the infected they captured or lead here inside then ran. They were cowards who never faced a real fight and though only of themselves, one of them would never risk sacrificing himself by staying in the compound before and after the attack. Even if the attack worked and he out-ran the infected at the gate, he would know he would be the main suspect. He also would have a hard time killing the armed guards alone, so if it was him, he had help from other raiders meaning there was no need for him to stay, he would have just run off instead." The others pause and think about it for a time "Then since we have nothing better we go with that. If a raider squad miraculously turns up in the next two days as they always did after an attack, you are probably innocent. if they don't, then we shoot you and be done with it." You simply nod in response and head back to your seat "Time to make a raider squad appear from no-where" You think as your group nods at your return. > You planning a raider attack You settle back into your seat with one thing on your mind "How do I made a raider attack materialize in under two days? Every human I've met agrees that the raiding groups were all wiped out by the military or the infected years ago" Then it occurs to you that you don't actually need to make a raider attack happen, you just need to make it SEEM like one happens, and for that you need more information. You turn to those nearest you and begin fishing for clues "What were the raiders like, we never suffered from the the same way in the city?" A couple avoid your eyes but once the first ones begin describing their experiences others readily join in and a full on little debate about them begins. It goes on for nearly an hour before slowly dying out as people begin getting rations for breakfast and you pretend to enjoy a small can of meat with one of the others. You slowly work through all the stories to filter out the important information. The raiders always came from the North, avoiding the city and heavily populated areas. They used vehicles and had guns but still fought like cowards, killing a few guards then loosing infected that has taunted and made to follow them on the inhabitants of small communities. They would retreat right away so they were not forced to fight and were in no danger from the infected, returning the next day or day after to clear out the last of the infected and humans and steal all they could. They had also raided here a couple of times, killing guards and opening the gate before fleeing, but they always returned to find the inhabitants and food safely locked up, or back manning the walls so they would give up and leave after firing off guns for fun and breaking a few things. "So all that needs to happen is a lot of noise and some guns going off, and that I can do." Having worked out your plan, you relax back into a corner an pretend to be trying to get to sleep like many of the others. Once you are sure you wont be disturbed you send out your senses carefully, pushing near your limits but not forcing it, you don't want a nose-bleed now. You finally find a few scattered shamblers right at you limit and quickly grab their minds, sending the order to walk towards you before dropping the control again "That should do it for now" You think as the headache begins at the back of your mind, grabbing them at such range wasn't easy, you'll have to hope enough follow the order and get closer soon. > The Raiders arrival You actually let yourself rest for a few hours and nap for a short time before sending out your senses again and finding that you were successful. There are 5 shamblers now in easy range of your abilities so you quickly grab them and direct them to the community. Some of the humans are stirring again but you know most are avoiding you for now so you should have a little more time to relax and watch your shamblers approach. In the end it takes another hour for them to arrive and you finally get to direct them in the gate. They are in bad shape, nearer dead than alive so you direct them to feast on some of the bodies and leave them to it for a couple more hours while you exchange pleasantries with some of the humans. It seems that since you went and chatted to the guards and haven't been shot yet that some of them think that must mean you are innocent, enough to talk to you at least and that's fine, you only need the cover for a short time more. Once everyone quietens down again you once more retreat to your corner and pretend to nap while you check on your little hordes progress. They have been feeding and their bellies are full, you can sense the new energy in their bodies and know it is time to get to work, you want everything ready for evening. You have them stop feeding for now and carefully direct each one individually, having them find and gather guns. You fail at first, not knowing how to make them find something you cannot see but you can follow their senses to where you know the guards died and once there you have them sweep their arms around and feel whatever they find. It takes time and it is extremely difficult work for you, the fine control of their bodies, reading their senses and trying to locate things all at the same time takes it's toll and you headache is horrendous but you eventually get every shamblers holding a gun of some sort.You leave the order for them to hold on to their guns no matter what and release control, allowing your mind you relax as you try to wipe away a massive nosebleed. You glance around and see the guards are spread out with the other humans and many ar giving you suspicious looks "Good thing my plan is coming together" You think as you pretend to enjoy a late lunch with people and relax for the evening, you need to time this correctly. Three hours before sunset you think your headache has gone down enough to act so you move the shamblers closer to the bunker and begin trying to make one fire it's gun, this takes nearly twenty minutes to work out but finally you hear a muffled boom. Everyone looks instantly to the door and a guard makes sure it is locked, no-one says anything though and keeps quiet, waiting to see what comes next. You realize that the shambler dropped the gun when if fired and you don't have time to have it work out how to pick it up so you direct it to band on the door while starting to directly control a second one. This one you make hold the gun back against it's body and point the barrel at the bunker. You take much less time with this one and you hear the repeated cracking noises of a semi-automatic gun firing and at least a couple of the bullets ping off the outside of the shelter just as the first one reaches the door and slams it's arm into it. "The raiders are back!" one of the humans calls out in a panic and several others agree instantly, expressing the same concerns. Debate springs up with some saying they are wiped out while others say this must be a new group of them, either way they are all agreeing someone is outside with guns. You stop the one banging the door and have two more fire their guns off into the air before sending all of them to smash up a few breakables like the machine shop and its generator, keeping only the last one with a gun. You give it nearly half an hour before having this one fire it's gun too then have the shamblers leave. Directing them as far from the community as possible before loosing control over them > You acceptance and new trust The guards don't do much more than calm people down for the next few hours, re-assuring them about the bunker and how strong it is before finally one stands up and makes an announcement. "It seems like the raiders have returned. We don't know how or why, it is possible it is a new small group emulating their tactics after running out of supplies. We just know they are here. What happened over night was that several guards were killed, the gates opened and infected released inside. If they keep to their old playbook, it means that by now they are gone and all the infected are dead. We will wait in here one more night then go check on things" He sits back down as people begin talking about all the possibilities this brings up and you notice a massive drop in meaningful looks your direction. You smile to yourself "Off the hook for now then!" You think and people eat dinner then find a spot to sleep. You wait up a short time but your headache is throbbing so you finally lie down and join the sleeping humans. You even sleep right through the night and have to be woken in the morning by people moving around near you. Once you sit up, you get involved int he discussion about what the new raider threat means but add little to the conversation as you are mostly just trying to gage how quickly the doors open and you can get back to eating these walking ready meals. It isn't long before three guards head out and return with the news that guns were indeed fired around the compound and that the machine shop and a few of the houses were smashed up a little along with the generator but that little was taken, the general consensus rests with people deciding that it must have been another small community copying raider tactics to get more supplies. You smile to yourself once more "time for part B" You think as several people apologize for doubting you and the guards stop watching you. > You part B of the plan You watch the guards for a time, there are 7 of them and each is armed now however if you split them up, you can easily kill them all so you bide your time until a second team is sent out to investigate the surrounding area for danger. Three guards head out leaving 4 inside and you know it is the perfect chance. You wander slowly closer, seeing the door just ajar and the kaycard for it round one of the guards necks "So, about trying to prove my innocence here?" You begin as your excuse for walking closer and closer. Once of the guards replies for them all "We will still keep an eye on you but it does look more like a case of bad timing on your part now. Just don't do anything suspicious ok?" He gives you a little grin to signal that it's ok really but it freezes on his face as your fist crushes his windpipe. The others try and grab their guns but they are too late as you lash our at them, knocking them into the walls as you kill them. It is over is seconds and the four remaining guards lie dead at your feet. One of the humans rushes at you but you simply move too fast for him to stand a chance as you grab him by the skull with one hand and begin squeezing, forcing him to his knees in pain "I am a Harbinger, a Herald of the apocalypse! If you don't know what that means, it means that I am your new God, you can all cower in here while I feast on your dead, if your behave and cower like good prey should, many of you will survive, defy my and this is the result." You squeeze hard and feel the mans skull shatter, brain and blood squirts out as you drop his corpse in front of the others. You grab the keycard, checking the others to make sure there isn't a copy left inside then head outside and lock the door "And thats my food supply secured!" You laugh as you find the nearest body to feed on and clear the taste of the horrific human food from your mouth. > The coming days You know you are the Alpha predator now, humans are clearly just prey waiting to be eaten. You brought down an entire armed community with a security bunker no less and now you feast on their corpses. You powers are stronger than ever and you can keep pushing them further and further. Yes, this is right, there is a food chain and simply you are on top. other harbingers might rank second but you are first and the lowly humans are nothing but future meals. You suddenly feel your mind changing, everything becomes clearer, crystallized almost, your vision sharper and your mind more directed. It is as if a filter had been removed from your mind and you can see everything properly for the first time. Your rightful place in the world, your grandeur, it is all so simple really. You stretch out your senses, easily surpassing all of your previous limits and grab the minds of all the infected you locate, barely having to even think about it, every infected mind you touch, you crush instantly and control. You sense the three ast humans returning though and laugh "Oh how late to the party, well, you will be my next meal then, I shall eat you while you are still alive so you are as fresh as possible!" Once they are in the compound you sprint right for them. They can't even reach as you move with supernatural speed, knocking each of them flying into walls meters away and killing all but one instantly "Maybe I over did it? Ah well, they are still fresh now!" You look at the last one, pitifully clinging to life before lashing out at its mind with your own. You can almost see your mental attack, great red flames lashing the mind again and again as it writhes in pain then dies "Ah I can finally affect the normal human minds too, excellent, I truly am a god fit to rule this world." The next few weeks pass slowly and easily. You take humans from the bunker one by one and devour them until there isn't a single one left in the compound and you set your sights East "You are next oh great Eastern colony, you have enough prey to keep me going for years." You think as you rise and begin you journey > You journey of death You have reached the current Journey of Death ending. The second evil ending currently in the game. Of course this ending gets expanded greatly soon, but I was literally writing these pages a few hours before the deadline so I couldn't get it further along.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hear the shout going up load and clear "Everyone evacuate, infected in the compound, the gate wa opened!" Then you hear a loud horn going off and every human mind in the compound begins to move "Their guards are lax but they know how to evacuate at least" You start running openly now, no point hiding out if the alarm is already raised. The next guard sees you coming but realizes you are not a comrade far too late to save himself and he joins the dead. You sense the humans reaching their doors and then the screaming starts. Your dozen shamblers were all placed perfectly to cause the most chaos and you instantly sense several biting and feeding on human flesh. You think about making them rampage but they are slow and they are doing their job so you just leave them to attack and feed as their instincts direct. You feel one getting beaten off and killed, but then you sense a human mind change as you watch it. You see something like rot spread over it, the glow fading, it seems to fight back but they rot tears away at it until it shatters, leaving a weak rotted husk where there was a vibrant mind moments before "And so it spreads" you say aloud as the new shambler lumbers after what must have been it's family moments before. You reach one more guard as the gunshots begin and two more shamblers die. This guard is ready for you though with his gun raised toward the compound to shoot the first infected that comes near. You are that first infected and he spins towards you as you rush him, he realizes in time that you are an enemy but you are too close and his shot skims past you, just grazing your side "Claw has spotted some, Centre West wall!" You hear from not far away. The dead guards reinforcements are headed right for you. You sense three below running your way and another along the walkway. You pull at the nearest shambler and have it go after the three below but they instantly shoot it down and keep coming, the one on the walkway is getting closer too and you only have moments before they see you. > You attack the guards on the ground, surprise them You wait until the last second and leap out into the darkness, You can see the humans but know they wont see you clearly until it is too late. You crash into the first one as you land, knocking him to the ground as you punch another hard in the jaw, he doesn't die but you know he will be unconscious for a long time as you spin to the last guard. They fire at you but you are too quick and knock the rifle barrel to the side at the last second before grabbing their head and twisting until you feel their neck snap cleanly and they go limp. You guard you knocked over cries out and tries to crawl away instead of shooting at you so you simply walk over and stamp on him until his mind vanishes too and you are left with one unconscious guard "Well if he isn't dead, his meat will keep better. I will save him for later." You can sense the people and the panic now, over half of the shamblers have been killed but so have several humans and a couple even turned and attacked their friends and family before being killed. Then you realize that they are all headed your way "The bunker, they are trying to retreat there now, but I am between them and it, perfect!" You quickly scan for which minds will reach you first when you realize you were ignoring the guard on the walkway. You spin around just as they fire at you and the shot takes you right in the gut. You stagger back "That wont kill me, but I will tear them apart for shooting me!" You think as you let out a roar of anger and let the hunger drive you after the shooter. You leap cleanly up onto the walkway, ignoring the pain and the blood flowing from your wound, to land right in front of them. You immediately start to swing at them but they didn't hesitate either and their next shot hits you cleanly in the chest moments before your punch connects. You stagger forwards in an attempt to stay close to they as you realize your punch was weak and they are still conscious and only a little dazed. You take one more step and grab them as your lungs fill with blood and your heart begins beating erratically. You know you don't have the strength left to kill them yourself but you throw yourself forward onto them and are rewarded when you feet their body being pierced by the wall spikes behind them. You let go and slide down to the walkway in a pool of blood, mixed from your own and the still human guards. "Funny, I can't tell it apart" You think as you fall into blackness<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hear the shout going up load and clear "Everyone evacuate, infected in the compound, the gate wa opened!" Then you hear a loud horn going off and every human mind in the compound begins to move "Their guards are lax but they know how to evacuate at least" You start running openly now, no point hiding out if the alarm is already raised. The next guard sees you coming but realizes you are not a comrade far too late to save himself and he joins the dead. You sense the humans reaching their doors and then the screaming starts. Your dozen shamblers were all placed perfectly to cause the most chaos and you instantly sense several biting and feeding on human flesh. You think about making them rampage but they are slow and they are doing their job so you just leave them to attack and feed as their instincts direct. You feel one getting beaten off and killed, but then you sense a human mind change as you watch it. You see something like rot spread over it, the glow fading, it seems to fight back but they rot tears away at it until it shatters, leaving a weak rotted husk where there was a vibrant mind moments before "And so it spreads" you say aloud as the new shambler lumbers after what must have been it's family moments before. You reach one more guard as the gunshots begin and two more shamblers die. This guard is ready for you though with his gun raised toward the compound to shoot the first infected that comes near. You are that first infected and he spins towards you as you rush him, he realizes in time that you are an enemy but you are too close and his shot skims past you, just grazing your side "Claw has spotted some, Centre West wall!" You hear from not far away. The dead guards reinforcements are headed right for you. You sense three below running your way and another along the walkway. You pull at the nearest shambler and have it go after the three below but they instantly shoot it down and keep coming, the one on the walkway is getting closer too and you only have moments before they see you. > You attack the guard on the wall and dodge the three below You turn and sprint toward the mind coming your way and leap out of the darkness at him. His gun goes off too but again you are not hit as you snap his neck. You stand and begin to run when you hear the shot and feel the impact in your back. You stumble and look behind. The guards below should be too far to see you in the darkness but you realize you had jumped into torchlight when you killed the guard and lit up your actions for everyone to see. The next shot is followed by a burst from an automatic weapon and you die just as quickly as the guard you had punched.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You slow your pace a little to match that of a normal human's walking and soon your keen eyes pick out a grey smudge below the thin trail of smoke. As you get closer the smudge resolves itself into a large grey wall topped with small spiked railings. The gated community. You keep your pace slow, you aren't sure if a normal human could have noticed the smoke and walls yet so you play it safe and wait a few more minutes before obviously turning your attention to the wall. You have your shamblers take more care and move slowly closer on either side, you picked up a few more that morning so you have a dozen of them now, 6 on each side. You look carefully as you approach. The walls are High, maybe 10 foot high and 12 with the railings, the spikes on the top were surely ornamental before but they have been sharpened now into points and you can see men with guns looking over the walls at various points. They are clearly the guards as they are holding guns however they are also clearly relaxed. they probably haven't had any real excitement since the raiders died out a few years back. You look carefully at them and realize that none of them is actually reacting to you at all. you look around and realize that most of you is covered by farm hedges and gates so that unless they were being vigilant they wont notice you for a few minutes yet. You still have time to decide on your best plan of action. > You slip off the road before you are noticed, you can easily climb the wall and attack in the night You slow your pace a little to match that of a normal human to be less obvious and soon your keen eyes pick out a grey smudge below the thin trail of smoke. As you get closer the smudge resolves itself into a large grey wall topped with small spiked railings. The gated community. You look carefully as you approach. The walls are High, maybe 10 foot high and 12 with the railings, the spikes on the top were surely ornamental before but they have been sharpened now into points and you can see men with guns looking over the walls at various points. They are clearly the guards as they are holding guns however they are also clearly relaxed. they probably haven't had any real excitement since the raiders died out a few years back. You look carefully at them and realize that none of them is actually reacting to you at all. you look around and realize that most of you is covered by farm hedges and gates so that unless they were being vigilant they wont notice you for a few minutes yet. You still have time to decide on your best plan of action. You now have six shamblers on each side of the Road and two mutants hidden with you on the West It is not long before you have moved right around to the rear of the little community and see that the walls appear exactly the same the entire way around and that there are guards on every wall. You'll have to wait for nightfall. You spend the next few hours carefully maneuvering your shamblers in closer to the community and snacking on meat strips. "Almost out of meat, seems the more I eat humans, the more the hunger grows. Ah well, a feast is coming soon enough." You begin salivating at the though of eating all the humans in the community in front of you. Your senses tell you that there could be as many as 40 in there. You will have to improve you abilities to number humans at a distance but for now the numbers match your expectations and you settle in to wait. > You moonlight attacks You wait as midnight comes and goes and give the new guards on the walls a couple of hours to get comfortable and sleepy before you make your move. The moon is out in a beautiful crescent, looking every bit like a blade cutting down at the little community ahead of you. The light it provides is more than enough for you to see clearly but you know it isn't enough for the guards who have lit torches on the railings "They have lit themselves up like candles but the light will blind them to my approach!" You think to yourself gleefully as you move closer with the six shamblers near you. You are within a few metres of the first guard when you realize the problem. You can get over the wall easily but the shamblers will never make it. You hiss at yourself for being so stupid and take a few minutes to send them all round to the ditches near the front gate. You will have to open it to get them inside to fight for you. You move to a dark spot between the torches and leave your bat and pack against the wall before jumping up incase they banged against somthing and gave you away. You reach the railings easily and swing yourself over in one smooth movement, landing quietly on a wooden platform behind the walls "Smart, they built a little walkway all the way around for their guards" You think as you sneak back towards the guard you were near before. He had seemed extra sleepy earlier, and sure enough, you find him napping. Two steps into the light from the small torch and you have and hand clamped over his mouth and the other around his throat, crushing his windpipe. It gives way with a pop and you finish him off by snapping his neck. The hunger surges up but you have to ignore it for now. You can feast once you have control of the entire compound. You start sneaking along the walkway toward the next guard and once more find a sleepy man, relaxing in his chair in the torchlight, you smile to yourself, they had become too lax in the peaceful times after the raiders all died. You once more move in close and before the man even wakes up enough to react you have you hand over his mouth and throat. You clamp down, crushing his windpipe but as you feel it give way, you hear the thump of his heel hitting his chair. You quickly snap his neck but the damage is done and the chair tumbles off the edge and into the compound before you can stop it. You swear to yourself and you hear the noise it makes but you know it wasn't really that loud, You almost think you got away with it when you hear the next guard calling out "Hey Kiel, you fall asleep again!" You quickly drop to the ground, the guard wont take long to get suspicious when their friend does not reply so you need to get the gates open fast. You sprint between the houses, luckily finding most quiet and dark and come to the main gate. there are two guards here, one either side of the gateway and they are awake and chatting to each other. But you hear the shout going up. The guard has found the body. "Kiel is dead! we have intruders! help!" You swear and rush towards the gate, leaping up and vaulting yourself onto the walkway behind one of the guards. He saw you coming and tries to raise his gun but you are faster and a punch to the throat sends him stumbling over the wall, only to get impaled on a spike before he can fully fall. the haze of his mind already gone by the time he hits the spike. You run and leap at the second guard, but this one has had more time and you see her with rifle ready. She takes the shot as you leap and you feel the impact in your side. You are certain she just got you cleanly in the kidney as you land and start punching her, not giving her time to work the bolt action for another shot. She shot you though and the hunger fills your mind with anger as you punch her repeatedly in revenge, even though she was dead after the second hit.. The shouts of humans running brings you back from your rage and you can sense the minds of several humans headed your way. You leap down and wrench the wooden bar off the gate, swinging it open. "Time for vengeance!" you think as you order your horde inside and lean up against the wall for a moment to stop your own bleeding. You will easily survive this, but it is still not trivial, you will need a few moments to bind it before you move. You simply order your horde to attack while you tear a strip off your shirt to stuff into your wound when you hear the shots starting and feel your horde reduce in number quickly. You look up to see the humans aren't all carrying bold action hunting rifles or pistols, several have assault rifles and they are tearing your horde apart with ease.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There is no point blowing it by being pushy now "Ah of course, that is a pretty smart precaution" You begin "But as to my future, you say that as if it involves options?" Cara immediately replies with a smile "Well of course it does, we aren't keeping you prisoner or anything" she pauses "Anymore" She adds with a wink to which you grin. She then continues a little more seriously "Basically you can join us, or head on your way. I would much rather you came with us though" and you can definitely hear some hopefulness in her voice "Perfect, she completely trusts me, this will be easy now" You think you yourself, smiling all the while. "Well I would love to join you all, it will be much better than being alone again after what happened." you carefully craft your voice to make sure they understand you are referring to the lost friends you spoke about before and you watch them both immediately react like proper normal humans, putting on their caring faces and trusting you more "Honestly this is too easy, they buy anything I tell them" You think as Cara takes you hand, leading you outside. "Well, you are with us now! She announces "And since you have joined us we can do a quick introduction before we head off to the compound!" The guards chuckle and wink at the fact you are holding hands the moment you exit the hatch and Cara drops you hand, blushing, but berating the guards for being childish. They are now close together and distracted, but they said you were heading to the compound right now. > You hold off, they can get you inside a compound full of humans, that is worth the wait. Leaving them alive for a couple more days to get inside the compound is well worth it, you can eat them after that and once you have a proper plan. Time to keep getting in their good books. You make the polite small-talk with the guards to introduce yourself and do your best to be as nice as possible. After a few minutes the guards indicate it is nearly time to move and Cara jumps and looks like she is about to leap back through the hatch "Oh, lost track of time, we have to set out soon if we want to make our safe point soon!". You dodge ahead of her though and offer her your hand to climb back through. She raises an eyebrow and says "oohhh, being a gentleman today" before accepting it and climbing through while the guards chuckle to themselves. You climb through after her, thinking about how to keep in their good books. Once inside you find her waiting and before you can react she kisses you on the cheek saying "You're very sweet" then spins and heads over to the food bags. You finally catch onto the situation "She is actually flirting with me!" It has been years since you even though about things like that but you are sure now that she is actually flirting with you, a harbinger. "Well she doesn't know I'm a harbinger, and I did save her life" You look down at yourself "And thanks to being a harbinger I am actually a bit of an Adonis, I guess it makes sense." Somewhat dazed by the revelation you start helping picking up the sacks to help carry them. > You starting out for the compound With you all carrying bags there isn't too much and you make sure you take two of the heavier ones so Cara gets a single light bag to carry, and you know she notices "Well the plan is to stick with them for now and be trusted so this is the easiest way" You think as you all begin walking. The way is fairly simple as you had guessed, follow the road North for a couple of days and you will see the compound with big obvious walls and smoke above it from the fire pit "We used to be more cautious" Cara explains "But once the raiders were all wiped out it didn't matter so we can make as much smoke as we like!" You smile in response and begin trading stories with her. It seems life out here was very different from the city once the infection had taken hold. "It was all small communities here" She begins "Farmsteads and walled places like ours were the gathering points. There was so much food grown out here scavenging has never been a problem so people banded together. Sadly some of them for other reasons, The infected were bad at firsts, roving mobs of them dozens strong were seen coming out of the city or down other roads and they would simply overwhelm places without walls or defenses with their numbers. It didn't matter if you shot fifty of them if the last 5 got inside to bite everyone and turn them too." She pauses and seem close to tears when you realize she is speaking from experience. "Crap what are you supposed to do now?" You desperately try and remember the proper way to act when courting but when you look at her again and the gentle haze of her mind you realize you are moving automatically and you put your arm around her. "Oh perfect, comfort, going to have to really remember what it was like caring about humans for this to work. It's not like hanging around with males just being gruff and defensive the whole time". Cara instantly smiles when she notices that you dropped a bag to hug her and with a quick wipe at her eyes she jokes with you "You are not supposed to drop fruit and vegetables on the ground you know?" You quickly take your arm away and pick the bag up again realizing that you hadn't even noticed dropping it, but you are thrown off again when she kisses you on the cheek again saying "Thankyou", then as chuckles break out behind you from the men she follows up with a shouted "Shut-up or I'll poison your food tonight!". You laugh aloud with her before she takes up her story again. "Right, where was I. Well as you guessed that is what happened to my family. Our little community didn't have walls and we were over-run, maybe three of us escaped and ran all night. It was a long way East of here, we were separated by morning and I just kept going until a scavenging team found me living in an orchard alone and I joined 'Safe-Haven'. You immediately give her a look and raise an eye-brow, she sighs before going on "And yes it is a stupid and corny name but it fits ok? Anyway, that was some years ago, right after the city fell. After that the issue was the raiders. It seems that some communities decided that keeping trucks running and using guns to steal from others was better than scavenging. They probably killed more communities than the infected did, the burnt out places South of here were all their work if you saw those. They attacked the weak themselves but if a place was strong like ours they would kill guards in a surprise assault and open the gates just to release infected inside, then return the next day to see if everyone was dead." "they sound like cowards, if you wish to fight then you can do it with your own strength" You say after a moment, Cara give you a strange look "You're a funny one you know, most people would say how terrible it was to attack other humans bla bla bla but you just called them weak for not doing it themselves." She cocks her head to the side as if observing you differently "You really are interesting!" She gives you a big grin then calls lunchtime. > You walking talking and eating The next couple of days pass with the same routine. You walk with Cara chatting and carrying the bag while the other three walk behind you with their own conversation. The going is slow, not because it is difficult but simply because Cara sets a slow pace and no-one else is in any more of a rush to get anywhere it seems so you enjoy the leisurely stroll through the countryside. Even the food is tasting good, generally normal human food taste terrible and makes you feel like you ate a lump of dirt but each time you stop and eat the food tastes better. The evening of the second night you accidently let speak your thoughts instead of just thinking them "I can't believe this tastes good!" you say as you bite into a bowl of stew Cara had just made. You hear an immediate hiss from the other men and turn to see Cara leaning in close to your face "oooohhhhHHH? surprised that it's good? Surprised that I can cook?" Whether by luck or design, every hour you spent with Care let you remember more about what being a human was like so you know well enough just how much trouble you had somehow gotten into with your innocuous comment. "I can dig my way out or I can dig myself deeper into a whole, best not to dig myself deeper" You think. but You are not given an option as you immediately hear her saying "I'm waiting?". You panic a little "Crap it's not as if I even insulted her!" You finally try and explain seeing that you had no choice and she was beginning to brandish a knife at your throat. "No, erm I meant that I haven't tasted anything like this in years, even before the infection. I generally hate eating cos everything tasted like crap in a tin but this was just so good I was surprised it was even possible." You grin weakly and consider having to defend yourself from the knife waving close to your own throat when Cara suddenly grins and sits back down to eat her own food "Good save, I give you that." She announces and the three other men clap in approval. You just keep eating until Chris pats you on the shoulder and whispers 'good luck' before walking away from the fire "I'm checking our safe zone is still secure, if I don't return in under ten minutes, you know the drill. One of the guards gets up and heads off with him. You finally turn to Cara "Chris and you used to talk a lot but he has kept a little separate since I join up." She keeps eating as she replies "Oh, he isn't jealous, he has a partner back in the community so don't worry about that." She gives you a quick smile before going back to shoveling her food into her mouth "unexpected but I guess good, she though I was checking if she was available, this works out too". "Well that's good then" you say aloud and get another quick smile as the two return and let you know that the current safe zone is still in fact safe. You are all lead to a very old looking square building with a tin roof and solid looking door "So yesterday it was the second floor of a barn, and today it's a shed, seems like we are going down in the world" You announce and get a couple of smiles as everyone heads inside. Care quickly grabs you arm and leans in close "Don't worry, if you get cold we can cuddle for warmth!" She announces a little too loudly before jumping away again and dropping her bag off in a corner. You realize you are blushing, so do the two guards who once more chuckle as they secure the door "Stupid chuckle brothers, do you ever actually speak or just chuckle behind people all day long?" You announce, only to send them both into fits of proper laughter. You simply sigh and lie down. Cara does pick to lie close to you but still far enough away to make the message of 'Don't try anything' clear enough. She also makes sure you get the message by telling you "Don't try anything" loud enough for everyone to hear resulting in howls of laughter again. > You morning arrival at Safe-Haven You are awake well before dawn again and check the surroundings for infected but only find a couple of them nearby, both alone and near death anyway. You send them away and realize just how easy it was to do "Seems like my abilities are developing even without use or human flesh." You think to yourself while the others slowly wake up and join you for a breakfast of fruit. "Right today we reach the community!" Cara announces, immediately followed by Chris retorting "Where we would have been yesterday afternoon if you walked faster." She scowls at him before replying "Well I didn't see you taking the lead or speeding us up did I?" She grabs her bag and swings the door open "come on then!" she shouts as she heads out leading the rest of you to pack everything up and grab your bags to follow her. You find her waiting outside and clearly in a good mood. she slips her free hand through your arm while she tells you about what to expect "So it's a lovely little walled community, big solid walls and railing around a nice grassy area and pretty houses. It was a kind of rich person 'out of the city house' type thing so everything was very well made and cared for. You should see it any minute now actually on the horizon as we are not far off!" You don't tell her that you can already make out the grey smudge and smoke in the sky from here as you are pretty certain no normal human could. "Sounds lovely" is all you say as she goes on to tell you about certain people and specifically her own home there and how much she likes it and thinks you will too. You let her talk and make all the right agreeable noises when required while you scan the surrounding are for infected and humans, You can once more Sense a few scattered shamblers but that is about all the infected that seem to be left out here, up ahead though you can definitely sense human minds, the glow of a normal's mind is now totally unmistakable to you. You also suddenly realize that you aren't hungry when you look at it. Normally seeing a human wa enough to make your hunger spike but you haven't felt it in the last two days, even when looking at their energy filled minds. Then it stirs and you feel it hiding in the back of your mind again "I guess thinking about it was enough to trigger it again" You think as you do your best to forget about it again as you all close the distance to the compound. > The Safe-Haven of Safe-Haven As you get closer the smudge resolves itself into a large grey wall topped with small spiked railings. The gated community. You keep your pace slow, you aren't sure if a normal human could have noticed the smoke and walls yet so you play it safe and wait a few more minutes before obviously turning your attention to the wall. You look carefully as you approach. The walls are High, maybe 10 foot high and 12 with the railings, the spikes on the top were surely ornamental before but they have been sharpened now into points and you can see men with guns looking over the walls at various points. They are clearly the guards as they are holding guns however they are also clearly relaxed. they probably haven't had any real excitement since the raiders died out a few years back. You look carefully at them and realize that none of them is actually reacting to you at all. you look around and realize that most of you is covered by farm hedges and gates so that unless they were being vigilant they wont notice you for a few minutes yet. "Well the wall certainly looks impressive from here, but shouldn't the guards have spotted us by now, I mean we are out on the road?" Care is about to respond when you hear a bell ringing "Wel, they just did!" she announces happily. Now when we get to the gate we are going to be harassed by Boring, we call him that cos it is what he is. Anyway just be polite and he will open the gate, he just likes to act tough to seem like he is in charge." She quickly gives you another kiss on the cheek and says "Now remember I saw you first." Before walking ahead a little so she reaches the gate first. You are wondering what she was meaning when you hear the call from the gate "Who goes there" and the immediate response from Cara of "Oh shut up Boring and open the gate already!" you just sigh and mumble "so much for being polite" you hear a chuckle as one of the guards passes you and adds "As you have probably noticed, subtle is not really Cara's strong suit. good luck." you nod to him then join the group at the gate holding the bags while the little drama plays out. By the number of people on the walls laughing you can guess that this has happened before and more than once. You can also tell it isn't serious by the number of them laughing as the man up top repeatedly tries to tell Cara off and explain procedures and rules and that your group is late while she just insults him, calls him boring and tells him to go die because he is so old. Eventually you are told to prove you have no bites and remove your shirt and give them a turn so they can see, then you hear a female voice whooping at you from the wall and actually feel embarrassed. You get dressed again while you think about how strange it is for you to care about what a human thought. The gates swing open and Cara immediately breaks into the big grin and waves you inside. As you walk in through the gate you get your first proper view of the little community, apart from the surrounding wall and wooden walkway you couldn't even tell that the world had ended outside. There is a group of nicely laid out houses in the center, a play park, a couple of mechanical looking buildings with tools and machinery inside and even a generator next to them. The people are the same, clean clothing and all smiling and chatting as if the most horrific decade in human history wasn't still fully underway just past the gate you had walked through. One of the guards hops down behind you and several of the people come over, one is even carrying a toddler. The guard starts introducing everyone and you give short pleasant responses before realizing the thing that was bugging you the most. You look like a hobo, a hobo who had something die and rot on it's clothing recently and everyone around you is clean and well dressed for a rural community. Your realization and glances at your torn and stained shirt must have registered as one of the women cuts the guard off "Let the man rest and get a change of clothing first before he gets embarrassed!" You are about to object when you hear a whoop from behind you and a female guard from the gate comes running over "I'll help, just wait till you see him with his shirt off!" The older woman tuts at her "Briar, behave yourself!" but she just grins and turns to you "Ok lets get you out of that shirt so I can burn it!". You don't actually feel embarrassed about it and you haven't cared what humans thought for years but you do find it strange that the social conventions still hold such strong sway over you "I wonder if they lingered around in the back of my mind of all this time being nice to Cara has helped them resurface?" You think as you pull your shirt off and hear another whoop from Briar as she takes your shirt and heads off to a fire-pit near the walls. You also get some approving looks from the other ladies and glance down at your perfectly muscled self, "here we go again." you think as you let the crowd of women take you over to a shed and hand you some new clothing and let you change in private. When you finally come out there is a larger crowd, including men ready to greet you and show you their little community. They take you on a whirlwind tour, showing off everything like proud parents showing off their firstborn child. It is all as you first saw, nice well loved little houses and a couple of old barns used as machine shops, The one thing that catches your eye is at the back. A huge metal door leading into a metal corridor that seems half buried at the back of the compound. "That's our bunker!" One of the men proudly announces "If everything else fails, we can all live in there for months without any worries!" You make a mental note to check it out. > You first evening in the haven You are shown to a house that looks less well kept than the others and are told you can use it as your own "An old member, called himself 'Playa' used to live here, sadly he was on a scavenge when they got attacked, him and his partner never returned so now it's yours." You thank them and head inside, finding yourself automatically wiping your feet as you do so "Oh come on, I haven't wiped my feet in years, what am I doing?" You head upstairs and find a nicely laid out bedroom complete with a full bead "Although I really can't complain about this!" You hop onto the bed and relax "Even better than my van-sofa!" You think as you begin making your plans. You start by stretching out your senses and trying to count the humans, you find that they are often too close together to count perfectly but at least 30-40 which fits your initial guess. Several act as guards day and night and they have a fair amount of guns including at least two automatic weapons. They also have the bunker but there are ways of dealing with that too. Then you sense one in particular and can immediately tell it is Cara alone in a house nearby "Hmm, I can tell human minds apart now, thats a new development" You think as you drift off to sleep The morning is still far off when you wake up and automatically scan your surroundings, you see humans asleep all around you and guards un-moving on the walkway behind the walls, probably sleep judging by how lax they were. You also once more immediately sense Cara asleep in her house. "This place and being with the humans is clearly affecting me, bring up old emotions and issues but I am still a harbinger" You reach out your senses and find you can stretch them a long way before getting a headache and you grab control of all the nearby shamblers, forcing them out of where ever they were and close to the community. Then you pause "I guess there is the other option" You think to yourself as you head downstairs and peek out the windows into the silent night. > You clear your mind of the stupid thoughts and emotions, you are a harbinger and it is time to kill You look yourself over and shake your head "I eat humans, I have done for years, this stupidity is just from being forced to spend too much time with them recently and it will end once they are all dead!" You concentrate on getting the shamblers you had controlled closer and finally have six of them grouped up near the gate to get in once you had it open for them. The guards on the walls still hadn't moved and inch but the ones by the gates might have "So those two might still be awake at least" You think as you plan out your next move. If this place was affecting you like a virus in your brain then you didn't have any time to loose and you had to strike now. As you decide this it is as if your mind clears a little for you, what does it matter what one of them in named? Male, Female, child? they are all just prey and none of them matters at all. You are a harbinger, a Herald of the appocolypse and caring about humans is beneath you. It is time to feed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are shown to a house that looks less well kept than the others and are told you can use it as your own "An old member, called himself 'Playa' used to live here, sadly he was on a scavenge when they got attacked, him and his partner never returned so now it's yours." You thank them and head inside, finding yourself automatically wiping your feet as you do so "Oh come on, I haven't wiped my feet in years, what am I doing?" You head upstairs and find a nicely laid out bedroom complete with a full bead "Although I really can't complain about this!" You hop onto the bed and relax "Even better than my van-sofa!" You think as you begin making your plans. You start by stretching out your senses and trying to count the humans, you find that they are often too close together to count perfectly but at least 30-40 which fits your initial guess. Several act as guards day and night and they have a fair amount of guns including at least two automatic weapons. They also have the bunker but there are ways of dealing with that too. Then you sense one in particular and can immediately tell it is Cara alone in a house nearby "Hmm, I can tell human minds apart now, thats a new development" You think as you drift off to sleep The morning is still far off when you wake up and automatically scan your surroundings, you see humans asleep all around you and guards un-moving on the walkway behind the walls, probably sleep judging by how lax they were. You also once more immediately sense Cara asleep in her house. "This place and being with the humans is clearly affecting me, bring up old emotions and issues but I am still a harbinger" You reach out your senses and find you can stretch them a long way before getting a headache and you grab control of all the nearby shamblers, forcing them out of where ever they were and close to the community. Then you pause "I guess there is the other option" You think to yourself as you head downstairs and peek out the windows into the silent night. > You send the shamblers away, staying here for a while wouldn't be so bad You stop and think things through. Your kills were always driven by your hunger, and sure you enjoyed killing and eating humans, but right now you feel no need too. Your abilities have progressed greatly without eating any humans recently and the food Cara has been giving you tastes great and gets rid of the hunger completely. So what is wrong with staying here for a bit and enjoying things? Sure you are a harbinger and you might not be human anymore but they don't know that and it's not as if you are infectious... You stop. "Am I infectious? It's not as if I went round biting live humans then seeing how they react... No I don't think so, the virus did something strange to change my body but it must have mutated to do that. I should be safe enough." Having decided that you probably aren't infectious after all you settle into a chair and wait for the dawn. watching the human minds beginning to stir and move about their houses. Once you judge enough people have gathered around where you saw the large fire-pit the night before you head outside yourself to join them and get breakfast. You no longer have the burning driving hunger constantly in your head pushing you to kill, but your stomach still rumbles if you go too long between meals. Once there you are immediately greeted by several people and a couple of the younger women come over to give you food and chat. You grateful accept the food and try it "Still tastes good" You think as you notice Cara across the fire hacking angrily at her bowl "Erm sorry ladies but I have to run". They try and keep to you you insist that it is important and jog over to Cara to sit beside her. "Hey, why sitting alone?" You begin and make her jump, she had been so intent on killing her food that she hadn't even noticed your arrival. She quickly recovers and gives you look that you can't tell is happy or angry "I was just eating and you surprised me, anyway weren't you talking to those other girls first?" She looks over to indicate the girls that had been talking to you and is immediately met with three evil glowers, clearly directed right at her. She lets out an "oooo" noise before turning to you "Ok what did you do?" she says wearily. You think about it for just a second "Honestly I have no idea, they were nice and brought me some food but I saw you sitting here alone so told them I had to go. I mean, they did try and keep me but I told them I had something much more important to... Oh dear" You finish as realization dawns on you. Cara just bursts into laughter then shuffles closer so she can lean against your side "Good choice!" she announces as she sticks her tongue out at the girls glowing at her "Stupid hussies trying to steal my man" she adds mostly to herself. "Your man?" you ask before you realize it might be something that you should have pretended you didn't hear. Cara immediately flushes bright red and you can feel her entire body freeze up beside you "Oh crap" You think and you are about to try and save yourself when you feel her relax a little and she replies "Well you haven't asked me yet but you have good taste and aren't too stupid so I can wait a day or two more." You let out an audible sigh of relief and hear her chuckling to herself "Only a day or two more?" You start "I understand that your a highly desirable girl but are you saying you have men lined up that I will need to fight off if I take more than a day or two?". She gives you a cheeky grin "A girl never reveals her secrets so you better just not wait so you don't need to find out!" THen she hops to her feet and heads off. > You settling into the community life You don't wait and later that day you and Cara kiss for the first time. The relationship moves on from there as you stay in the little community and more time passes. You keep working on your abilities and find that all your physical skills improve along with your mental ones and you direct any infected you sense miles away from the community of scavenging areas. You join Cara's scavenging team permanently to protect her and make sure that the community is always well stocked and prepared incase anything does happen. You decide finally to settle down there and stay as a sort of 'resident protector' for the whole community. Cara already announced to everyone that you will be getting married soon despite only being together for a few weeks but you actually have no problem with it and are just going along with it since it makes her happy. Once you accepted your roll as her future husband and protector of the people in Safe-Haven your mind shifted. You felt your mind changing, as if it was clarifying everything for you. The last remnants of the headaches fade away and your senses, in their fully relaxed state, seem to stretch further, showing more details of those around you and making everything less hazy when you look at minds. As if you had been walking on a frozen lake covered with snow before and suddenly the snow was brushed aside to reveal the solid clear ice underneath. You quickly test a few other metal exercises and find that before your mental defenses were like random planks nailed over a window and mostly held in place by you pushing on them constantly whereas now the moment you try to put up a defense it’s like a thick wall of pure blue ice forms around your mind, shielding you from all sides. You push out at shambler minds, only now in range of your abilities and feel you mind moving out like an inexorable glacier, sweeping them away before it. You now know you truly made the right choice, you have full awoken. > A romance ending in blue You have found the romance ending as a Blue harbinger! If you do not know what that means, then you need to seek out the other endings hidden in the game as they explain it all!" ******************************* As with several other endings I have unfortunately had to cut it shorter than I would like due to time constraints but one day in the future it will be extended and completed!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake in the morning and realize that once more you slept through the night instead of the normal few hours "Must be the mental training" You think as you test your senses to see what changed while you slept. Sure enough you can feel the infected in the barn more clearly now and with less effort "Two shamblers, one nearly dead and the other near it also in bad shape. Must be trapped in the basement of somthing" you think to yourself as the humans above you wake up. Once awake Cara immediately leans down over the bar "Time to wake up! Let's get you out of there!" The man groggily stands beside her, "Are you sure about this?" but she just gives him a disparaging look until he goes to fetch a rope and lowers it down to you, tying one end off on the railing. You catch it as it comes down and are about to start climbing up when you realize that your arm will be healed a lot further than a normal humans and your makeshift bandage is almost certainly going to be replaced soon, you're going to have to bluff. You climb up, pretending to be careful of the wounded arm but you secretly put extra strain on it and can feel the wounds tearing open again slightly "Perfect" You think as you climb ove the railing and immediately find yourself receiving a huge hug from Cara. You are taken aback for a moment by the very unusual occurrence and have no time to act before she hops away again "That was for saving my life, I've owed you it!" The she quickly hops out of the hatch, you can see the two men holding rifles greet her as she passes. The man turns to you "Wait here for a bit, we have to finish a quick scavenge then we will all return to discuss what to do with you." You judge it best not to decide anything while the two men with guns have a clear shot at you and you have you climb through a hatch to get to them so you simply nod and take a seat to await their return. This gives you plenty of time to think things through. It has not been long but you are already progressing amazingly with your abilities. You are certain you can control infected easily and can sense them coming a long way off and you can sense the presence of humans or 'normals' at an equal distance even if you can't affect them. Cara trust you and you actually enjoy her company, the man doesn't fully trust you but isn't aggressive either. The two outside seem to be the guards for the scavengers, you have yet to speak to them but you can sense them always nearby the scavengers. You could of course strike now, Cara trusting you and getting close to you can be used to your advantage, you just need to ge them off guard once when they return and you can take the guards out leaving Cara and Chris defenseless. It would be a little risky but you are certain you could pull it off. On the other hand you really are enjoying chatting with Cara in the evenings and the food they gave you is actually sitting well and taking the edge off your hunger, why not stay with them a bit, at least until you are back to their little colony, you can decide what to do when you are there after all. > You stay with them for a bit and continue playing nice, you have nothing to loose that way There is nothing wrong with staying with them for a bit while you still enjoy their company, you can always eat them later if needed. You turn to Cara when she and Chris are seated "As to my future, you say that as if it involves options?" Cara immediately replies with a smile "Well of course it does, we aren't keeping you prisoner or anything" she pauses "Anymore" She adds with a wink to which you grin. She then continues a little more seriously "Basically you can join us, or head on your way. I would much rather you came with us though" and you can definitely hear some hopefulness in her voice to which you smile. "Well I would love to join you all, it will be much better than being alone again!" Cara gives you a huge smile and takes your hand, leading you outside. "Well, you are with us now! She announces "And since you have joined us we can do a quick introduction before we head off to the compound!" The guards chuckle and wink at the fact you are holding hands the moment you exit the hatch and Cara drops your hand, blushing, but berating the guards for being childish. You do the quick introductions to the guard but pause as you are heading back in to make a show of offering Cara your hand to help her enter. She blushes again as she accepts and climbs in to the laughter of the guards. Once inside you find her waiting and before you can react she kisses you on the cheek saying "You're very sweet" then spins and heads over to the food bags. You finally catch onto the situation "She is actually flirting with me!" It has been years since you even though about things like that but you are sure now that she is actually flirting with you, a harbinger. "Well she doesn't know I'm a harbinger, and I did save her life" You look down at yourself "And thanks to being a harbinger I am actually a bit of an Adonis, I guess it makes sense." Somewhat dazed by the revelation you start helping picking up the sacks to help carry them.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need time and safety to train your new talents, wandering recklessly East while still developing is probably too dangerous as you don’t know what is lurking between you and the colony. Heading South would just take you right into the city center and that would be a death wish without better abilities so North is your final option. You know there used to be small communities in the outlying areas, hamlets and villages that served the farming communities, retirement homes and even some affluent areas for those who no longer wanted to live in the big city. If you look around enough you are sure you will find a nice enough building to make a temporary base, food might be scarce but you can always subside on the infected for a few weeks. You walk until the next off-ramp leading to a North-bound road and wander down. Looking around you see most of the buildings reduced to rubble, the military must have hit this area harder than others during the defense. “Maybe this was one of the areas they tried to make a stand and bombed the hordes of infected that attacked them” You think to yourself as you walk, but it is unlikely that you’ll ever find out for sure. There are not too many infected in this direction but you know if you find a small community that you should find some there to practice on, they never wander too far from where they turned after-all. By night-time you have left the outskirts of the city behind and begin to see open areas of land a fields, some overgrown with crops of varying types, untended for years, the old clearly defined lines haven given away to a mish-mash of crops invading others fields while weeds and thorns try to choke them all out. By nightfall you are looking for a likely place to rest and see a few options, in the distance you can make out what looks like a small grain silo, it would take a couple of hours to reach but they usually are made of metal, have small ladders right up to the top where you’d be nice and safe from everything, There is also an old broken down farmhouse nearby and a Barn on the same land. The House was clearly ransacked long ago, the doors are missing, windows smashed and everything looted out of it. The barn seems in better shape, the doors wide open but still intact at least. > You check out the House, beds are too big to loot right? You head over to the house to see what might be left behind and are quickly disappointed. The entire place has been ransacked with whatever was left destroyed, you do find human remains in the basement though. "looks like this is where they tried to hide from the infected or looters, had no idea that a single old trapdoor was not a good defense against attackers" You think to yourself as you examine the smashed in wooden trapdoor. This place will be useless for shelter, there isn't a single whole door in the place. You head back outside and wander over to the Barn, may as well check it now that you are this close, again though you are disappointed. The entire place is also picked clean and the second level where you hoped to rest for the night has been collapsed down onto the floor. This place will be useless for shelter.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need time and safety to train your new talents, wandering recklessly East while still developing is probably too dangerous as you don’t know what is lurking between you and the colony. Heading South would just take you right into the city center and that would be a death wish without better abilities so North is your final option. You know there used to be small communities in the outlying areas, hamlets and villages that served the farming communities, retirement homes and even some affluent areas for those who no longer wanted to live in the big city. If you look around enough you are sure you will find a nice enough building to make a temporary base, food might be scarce but you can always subside on the infected for a few weeks. You walk until the next off-ramp leading to a North-bound road and wander down. Looking around you see most of the buildings reduced to rubble, the military must have hit this area harder than others during the defense. “Maybe this was one of the areas they tried to make a stand and bombed the hordes of infected that attacked them” You think to yourself as you walk, but it is unlikely that you’ll ever find out for sure. There are not too many infected in this direction but you know if you find a small community that you should find some there to practice on, they never wander too far from where they turned after-all. By night-time you have left the outskirts of the city behind and begin to see open areas of land a fields, some overgrown with crops of varying types, untended for years, the old clearly defined lines haven given away to a mish-mash of crops invading others fields while weeds and thorns try to choke them all out. By nightfall you are looking for a likely place to rest and see a few options, in the distance you can make out what looks like a small grain silo, it would take a couple of hours to reach but they usually are made of metal, have small ladders right up to the top where you’d be nice and safe from everything, There is also an old broken down farmhouse nearby and a Barn on the same land. The House was clearly ransacked long ago, the doors are missing, windows smashed and everything looted out of it. The barn seems in better shape, the doors wide open but still intact at least. > You check out the Barn, They often have second levels and old hay makes a comfortable enough bed. You wander over to the Barn, may as well check it now that you are this close, though you are disappointed. The entire place is picked clean and the second level where you hoped to rest for the night has been collapsed down onto the floor. This place will be useless for shelter. You head back outside and head over to the house to see what might be left behind and are quickly disappointed there too. The entire place has been ransacked with whatever was left destroyed, you do find human remains in the basement though. "looks like this is where they tried to hide from the infected or looters, had no idea that a single old trapdoor was not a good defense against attackers" You think to yourself as you examine the smashed in wooden trapdoor. This place will be useless for shelter, there isn't a single whole door in the place.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake with the dawn and find two of the others already up. “We couldn’t sleep so great being exposed out here.” One of them says to you. As the last two get up, you realize just how hungry you are and remember that you didn’t eat anything last night. You dig in your bag for your meat strips but find nothing there, remembering that you finished them off on the third day in the stadium. You accept some rations from the other guys but it seems to do little to your hunger. You think back to when you used to feel this hunger practically all the time, seems your days of living happily in the stadium and not feeling hungry are over for the time being. You all check your surroundings but it’s all clear and you head off again about an hour after dawn. “Won’t the others catchup to us at this rate?” one of the others asks out loud. It’s your friend that answers. “Nah, we are a few roads North of them and will be heading up to the highway by lunchtime, so even if they do move faster than us, they will pass right by us to the South and never see us. Hey if all goes well we will meet up with them in a few weeks at the colony and have a great laugh about this all!” The mood seems to lighten a little after that and you all keep moving with some quiet chatter going on. You even join in some of the joking and in the light atmosphere begin to forget about feeling hungry again. It’s a few hours later and you are getting close to the on ramps for the highway when you begin hearing the noises. Its very faint but you call it out anyway. “Low rumbling to the South.” The others pause and listen for a time before one turns and says. “I hear it now, sounds like the Jeep, they will be passing us soon. Those are some ears you have mate!” “Seems they are making great time if they are passing us already, they might actually do it at this rate!” one of the men jokes as you all start walking again, listening to the low rumble get louder, then start to get quieter as they pass you a few roads to the South. Its only a few minutes later that you hear a crashing noise and the rumbling stop. “Gorram Harbinger! They are being ambushed aren’t they, we should go help them!” > You can't sacrifice yourself by running into an ambush for them. Head North! You all chose to leave for exactly this reason didn't you? "Guys, we knew this might happen, it's why we left. If we run after them now we will just be dying with them at best and if they aren't really in trouble they will probably shoot us on the spot for deserting!" You tell them, trying to get them to leave the others for dead. "I can't!" is all one of them says before starting to run after the noises, clearly set on helping at all costs. The two others shrug and run after him, leaving you standing alone. You watch them disappear then shrug and begin heading North slowly, you'll keep to the plan even if you are the only one. You keep moving slowly and finally start up the on-ramp to the highway when you hear a shout behind you. turning you see one of the survivors running your way, chased by a fast type. Swearing you run back down and signal for the man to run past you, as he does you pause just for a second then swing. Your bat connects cleanly with the fast types head as it tries to pass you at full speed, intent on its prey. You watch it back flip and land with a thud, clearly not going to move again, before running after the man. You catch up quickly and call after him "Where are the others what happened?" he slows to a stop and nearly collapses "They are all dead, everyone dead. It was a trap, as we arrived to help they came after us too, I only got away because they stopped to eat the others before chasing me!" You realize that he is just a kid, probably still in his teens. You take his arm to help him walk and head up onto the highway. After a time you Find a secure looking van and you both get inside, securing the door behind you. You divide out the rations for a meal but your old hunger is back and even a full meal doesn't help. watching the depressed kid sink into the corner of the van and stare at nothing until he sleeps makes it worse too. "Every one of them dead." You think as you watch the kid sleeping.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You remember what happened on your first mission, going after them will be suicide and probably a trap. Luckily 8 men volunteer quickly enough and no-one blames those who don’t so you get away with no shame from it, you head off to your normal duty for that day, you’re on balcony 6 for the next 4 hours or so. You’ll be the only one there since it isn’t really an important one, kind of to the side of the main entrance and not looking at anything of interest. Its half way through your shift when you hear some muffled sounds coming from over the city and it seems another sentry heard it too, you report hearing it then head back up. Once you get off duty though and come back down it’s not to a pretty sight. It seems that they worked out that the noise was gun fire and the ‘rescue’ team was now also overdue. You think back again to your first mission and what seemed like a trap, your starting to get a bad feeling about the city now. Seems like scavenging too close to the city center isn’t such a good plan anymore. You have to choose whether to dump these guys and head out alone now or hold out until they are ready to make a larger push for the colony to the east, sure you have lost men recently but true to their word, they have recruited nearly a dozen in the last month. You had no idea there were so many survivors up in this area or you’d have come North a lot sooner. You’re also pretty sure that the Capt. is going to order a push East soon too, even with the losses, their numbers are still good and they have the guns and equipment for a full military push through the open streets, the scouts have everything planed out route wise with backups for it things go wrong. > You stay and help get ready for the push East with the military guys, they have the guns afterall It’s only a few days before your guesses are proven correct. The captain gathers everyone briefly and outlines a plan to head East. They have one working Military Jeep that they have been saving and lots of guns and ammo stockpiled for the attempt. Everyone is going along. They plan to head at a good pace just around the North of the city center along roads that have been scouted in advance over the past few weeks and head right for the bridge in force. Once over and safely near the ‘Eastern Haven’ as they call it, some of them will return with the jeep and begin their work here again to gather more survivors and get them across when they grow in number. Happy to be getting a free escort to your destination you continue your efforts to help the stadium and the next few days pass. It’s the day before the convoy leaves when you are approached by your friend from your first mission just as night falls. “Hey man, a couple of us don’t like the odds of this mission, they are going too close to the city center and that place is a death trap, also recently it seems like too much has been going wrong. We think the harbinger is behind it and we are getting out before everyone gets killed, you with us?” You weren’t expecting this since you’ve only been thinking of getting East for the last few days but you have to make a choice since he is clearly geared up and ready to leave. > You stay with the heavily armed convoy You aren’t going to leave the convoy now when you’re so close to your goal so you wish him the best of luck and wave him off; you can let the Capt. Know in the morning and just not tell him how long they have been gone. Staying has always been voluntary anyway. Morning comes and there is no sign of them, you report to the Capt. what happened and he simply nods. “Thought he might, hasn’t been the same since that mission. Glad you stayed though.” You head back to your post and prepare, you leave in 3 hours. The time arrives and you all gear up and follow the jeep, it weaves through the barricades and you all push the moveable ones out of its way until it stands ready to go on the road, its 50cal. reassuringly manned on the roof. “All stay close to the jeep and keep moving, we don’t stop for 4 hours when we make our first checkpoint, if you are too tired to continue then ride the tailgate and side seats on the jeep for a few minutes but switch out fairly.” Then you are moving. This level of exercise is nothing to you so you don’t feel the need to rest until three hours of jogging go past. That’s also about the time you turn a wide corner to find a full roadblock of cars. “I thought you scouted this!” one of the men shouts up “We did, but things have changed, we switch to route 2! Back 50 meters then we swap to a road parallel to this one, we only lose 5 minutes!” Its then that the bus comes rolling down the road you were headed back too and blocks your retreat. Swearing can be heard now and men and women preparing their guns. “Hold and prepare to fire!” the captain shouts but there isn’t anywhere to run even if you wanted too, infected start appearing in the doors and windows of all the buildings around you and start climbing the cars, climbing out of the bus until you are totally surrounded by a horde of infected, even a few mutants among them. You finally realize that you friend was right, the harbinger COULD control the infected and had come for you all. “Too late to make use for that information now” you think to yourself as the attack begins. At first the guns take them down but then the gunner on the jeep gets shot by something, followed by those doing the most damage, and the rest are swarmed over. You included.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t feel like alleyways today so you raise your hand for going in the front. The leader nods. “You’re with me then, we all meet in the middle of the store once we check all entrances are clear.” The other two men head off for the alley leading round back as you carefully approach the front door. Since you are unarmed you pull the doors open and jump back to give your partner a line of sight but there is no sign of movement so you both slip inside. The store was some old grocery and drug store combo, it has been mostly cleared out but it was done in a rush and there are still useable supplies on the shelves and floor if you sort through it. You and your partner begin to check the aisles more carefully when you hear the shot coming from the back of the store and you see the other two men stumbling in the back door, slamming it shut behind them. The first thing you notice is that one is clutching his arm and his has a large gash out of it. “It was under some trash, it didn’t move when we poked the bags or anything but after we went by and were trying the door it suddenly lurched up and grabbed me; bit me before, before I knew, before.” He stops and winces in pain, dropping his gun. Red sirens begin going off in your head. “His speech! He’s Going!” you practically shout. Your partner swears and glances around, we have to move NOW! Grab what you can and start running, I’ll finish him off then follow with my bags once I know for sure he’s turning. > You say "Hold on, your gun will attract more of them, I'll use my bat then make my own way back, I know how to move safely alone!" He looks at you for a few moments before nodding in assent to you plan, he grabs the other man and they start running out of the store with the bags of supplies you had grabbed. You turn back to the man whose speech had slurred just in time to see him stumble then shake slightly. It only seconds later that he suddenly leaps at you with his teeth bared. Luckily you were ready and his head is cleanly intercepted by a swing from your bat. He crumples to the ground and you glance around. The others were long gone so you quickly try to grab some food when you hear noises from behind the back door, you’re about to run for it yourself when the noises begin out the front too. You glance round and see a large number of shamblers starting to appear and make their way into the store. The rear door opens and more start coming in the back to, heading towards you. “They worked out how to open the door?” is all you have time to think before you are fighting for your life against the growing number of infected. It’s not long before they start to latch onto you and weight you down. It’s shortly after that, that they tear you apart as they eat you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You all head out quietly about an hour after dawn and make your way through the main streets, you don’t have a gun like the others but you do have your bat which you trust a lot more, using it doesn’t cause enough noise to call others to you after all. “I heard you guys had originally cleared this place out of infected?” you whisper to the nearest guard. He thinks for a moment before replying. “We had, but then that thing lead hundreds more to us, and what with all the ones bitten again when the walls fell… well let’s just say it’s not as safe as it used to be. Seems the vaccine doesn’t always work too well against direct exposure either, only the airborne strains, some people are immune but others turn right after getting bit.” You file this information away for later and keep a look-out since you’re nearing the store now and the leader is speaking up. “Right it's go time, two for the front, two for the rear.” The front is visible, it’s fairly open and all the large windows are broken giving easy access and sightlines. The rear must be through one of the alleyways you glimpse to the side. > You rear? You are considering the rear of the shop when someone else volunteers for the front which makes your mind up for you. You are paired off with a younger man who is clearly wearing a suit under his jacket. You ignore his choice of clothing and you both begin to carefully circle round the back of the store. The first alleyway you come too is clearly the right one. You see the dumpsters with the shops logo all over them and think you can see the back door some distance down the alleyway. You turn to your partner. “So what’s the plan?” He simply smiles at you before replying “Oh I have several plans. I have assessed dozens of situations like this and have backups for every eventuality. Careful research and planning is what always leads me to victory!” “Odd” you think before speaking aloud again. “Of course, that makes perfect sense, but what’s our plan for right now?” The man stares at the alley for a moment or two, “Ok you lead and I’ll back you up. Prod each dumpster and garbage pile you pass to check for hidden infected. If a shambler appears then you bat will be the best choice, a different kind or more than two of them and I’ll use the gun while we retreat to meet up with the others!” You shrug and start forward; it was an acceptable plan after all. The man whispers to you as you progress. “Names Drak by the way, not the one my parents gave me of course but I took it on after the infection, has a nice ring to it!” You nod back to him as you prod another garbage pile with your back and get no response. “A lot of people did that, kind of like a new start thing right?” You poke around inside a dumpster again for no response. “Exactly!” The man replies. “For all intents and purposes civilization ended, we are beginning anew in a new world so the new life begets a new name, don’t you agree?” You have just reached the backdoor and are about to open it when you hear a startled cry from behind you follow by two shots. Spinning around you see Drak with blood pouring down his arm and a dead shambler half out of a garbage pile you had just poked. “He didn’t respond when you poked the pile then went for me faster than I’ve ever seen one move!” He manages before wincing and grabbing his arm. You swear and force the door open; you both pile inside and slam it behind you. The others are headed your way guns at the ready. “What happened?” the leader calls out to you as they approach. You take half a step forward and do the talking for Drak since he is clearly in pain. “We were moving forward and being careful, I swear we poked and prodded every single piece of garbage when one leaped out and bit Drak.” The man swears and glances at him before turning back to you. “Drak’s always so careful too; we should get out of here soon. Grab what you can and let’s go.” You nod and turn to help Drak just in time to find him leaping at you, there’s no time to react as he sinks his teeth into your throat and rips out a large chunk of flesh, you knock him off and stand up again but immediately feel dizzy, he must have caught an artery. You feel blood pouring down your shirt as you see him spring to his feet and come after you again. “Gorram idiot had to turn into one of the fast ones didn’t he!” you think as you meet his lunge with a swing from your bat. His head caves in and his body his the floor only moments before you fall too due to the massive blood loss. You manage to roll over and see the leader of your team pointing his gun at you. “I’m sorry, but this is the only mercy I can give you now.” He says as he fires.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Eyes fluttering open, you find yourself there in the Nightmare Realm again. You’re sprawled out on a soft, eerily warm ground. A dull, strange pulse that trembles through the ground. The ground's texture is unnerving as your fingertips run across it, closer to flesh than earth. You squint, making out thin veins spread out through the ground, pumping a black liquid through the flesh that stands in stark contrast to the brownish-red of the floor. You briefly look at yourself for any injury, but you don't see anything wrong, at least visibly. You're wearing a pair of simply cloth pajamas that hang off your pale, frail frame and some small, featureless blue slippers. Standing, you look around at the nightmare realm surrounding you. The sky is black and lifeless, not a single shining light to break the dull veil of oblivion that hangs over your head. You’re in the middle of a forest of jet black trees that spike out from the ground like pillars of obsidian, their trunks all charred and blackened by what you presume was fire. From the tree's branches hang red, glistening organs and chunks of flesh, blood dripping down from them. A length of rotting intestine, a split open stomach whose food has spilled out to the ground, a long strip of unidentifiable flesh, they all just hang their like some horrifying butcher’s display. In contrast to the dark floor there’s several chunks of bleached white bone about the size of a child’s head in the ground, sticking out like everyday rocks. You grab the nearest one cautiously, turning it over in your hand to reveal the bottom of it is covered with beetle-like creatures, which make a strangely human-like panting. Thin, long pink tongues extend from their mouths towards you, before you frantically shake them off the chunk of bone. Nervously, you toss the chunk of bone back to the ground. You look around for anything useful, something to help you get out of this insane hellscape. Next to one of the trees, leaning against the gnarled black roots is a red, plastic Zippo lighter, seeming out of place in the whole world of nightmares. There’s a lake of black, unreflective liquid that you stare at, its waters thick and oil-like. Sitting next to it, far enough away from you that you’re not too scared, is a figure. The figure looks like a badly deformed child, although its face is closer to that of a hairless rat, a long snout that extends past its face. You pause, noticing its eyes are a pair of black buttons, stitched straight into its sockets with red thread. Its limbs are thin and frail, and although it seems to be naked. Its skin is pale and leathery, hanging off it in patches to reveal the black flesh underneath. It holds in its hand a fishing rod, sitting there casually as if nothing was wrong. You wonder if it’ll act as a friend or foe. Sitting next to it is a black oil lantern, from which the only light in sight shines out, brightening the area. > You follow the pulse of the ground Dropping to your knees, you press your thumb against one of the veins going through the ground, feeling the warm pulse of blood go through. You follow the vein, the pulse growing louder and louder, stronger and stronger with every beat. Continuing to follow it, you soon reach a thick mass of flesh, coils of muscle filled with the black, oozing blood. The thing spasms every few seconds, and you wince as you realize you’re listening to the beating of a heart. The heart lies there, spasming and beating as you wonder what to do. > You attempt to kill the heart You take a deep breath, looking around before seeing a chunk of bone. You lift it up, shaking off the bugs that cling underneath, before ramming it into the heart. It bounces back, but you feel there’s some leeway, so you heave it back into the air before bringing it down. The heart bursts open as you drive the chunk into it, spraying you with the black bile-like blood as it covers your arms up to your elbow as you plunge your hands inside. It spasms one final time, spraying blood out, before you toss the chunk aside. Listening to the silent night air, you hear the faint beating of other hearts, keeping the nightmare realm alive. There must be hundreds of them. There’s no way you’re killing this hellhole. > Back Eyes fluttering open, you find yourself there in the Nightmare Realm again. You’re sprawled out on a soft, eerily warm ground. A dull, strange pulse that trembles through the ground. The ground's texture is unnerving as your fingertips run across it, closer to flesh than earth. You squint, making out thin veins spread out through the ground, pumping a black liquid through the flesh that stands in stark contrast to the brownish-red of the floor. You briefly look at yourself for any injury, but you don't see anything wrong, at least visibly. You're wearing a pair of simply cloth pajamas that hang off your pale, frail frame and some small, featureless blue slippers. Standing, you look around at the nightmare realm surrounding you. The sky is black and lifeless, not a single shining light to break the dull veil of oblivion that hangs over your head. You’re in the middle of a forest of jet black trees that spike out from the ground like pillars of obsidian, their trunks all charred and blackened by what you presume was fire. From the tree's branches hang red, glistening organs and chunks of flesh, blood dripping down from them. A length of rotting intestine, a split open stomach whose food has spilled out to the ground, a long strip of unidentifiable flesh, they all just hang their like some horrifying butcher’s display. In contrast to the dark floor there’s several chunks of bleached white bone about the size of a child’s head in the ground, sticking out like everyday rocks. You grab the nearest one cautiously, turning it over in your hand to reveal the bottom of it is covered with beetle-like creatures, which make a strangely human-like panting. Thin, long pink tongues extend from their mouths towards you, before you frantically shake them off the chunk of bone. Nervously, you toss the chunk of bone back to the ground. You look around for anything useful, something to help you get out of this insane hellscape. Next to one of the trees, leaning against the gnarled black roots is a red, plastic Zippo lighter, seeming out of place in the whole world of nightmares. There’s a lake of black, unreflective liquid that you stare at, its waters thick and oil-like. Sitting next to it, far enough away from you that you’re not too scared, is a figure. The figure looks like a badly deformed child, although its face is closer to that of a hairless rat, a long snout that extends past its face. You pause, noticing its eyes are a pair of black buttons, stitched straight into its sockets with red thread. Its limbs are thin and frail, and although it seems to be naked. Its skin is pale and leathery, hanging off it in patches to reveal the black flesh underneath. It holds in its hand a fishing rod, sitting there casually as if nothing was wrong. You wonder if it’ll act as a friend or foe. Sitting next to it is a black oil lantern, from which the only light in sight shines out, brightening the area. > You inspect the tree trunks You head over to the black tree trunks, running a hand over the ash-covered trunk. Some of the ash rubs off, and you roll it between your fingertips. You notice that there’s several deep gouge marks in the tree, no doubt from some horrifying beast. A drop of blood lands on your shoulder from the organs hanging above you, and you step back away from the tree.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Eyes fluttering open, you find yourself there in the Nightmare Realm again. You’re sprawled out on a soft, eerily warm ground. A dull, strange pulse that trembles through the ground. The ground's texture is unnerving as your fingertips run across it, closer to flesh than earth. You squint, making out thin veins spread out through the ground, pumping a black liquid through the flesh that stands in stark contrast to the brownish-red of the floor. You briefly look at yourself for any injury, but you don't see anything wrong, at least visibly. You're wearing a pair of simply cloth pajamas that hang off your pale, frail frame and some small, featureless blue slippers. Standing, you look around at the nightmare realm surrounding you. The sky is black and lifeless, not a single shining light to break the dull veil of oblivion that hangs over your head. You’re in the middle of a forest of jet black trees that spike out from the ground like pillars of obsidian, their trunks all charred and blackened by what you presume was fire. From the tree's branches hang red, glistening organs and chunks of flesh, blood dripping down from them. A length of rotting intestine, a split open stomach whose food has spilled out to the ground, a long strip of unidentifiable flesh, they all just hang their like some horrifying butcher’s display. In contrast to the dark floor there’s several chunks of bleached white bone about the size of a child’s head in the ground, sticking out like everyday rocks. You grab the nearest one cautiously, turning it over in your hand to reveal the bottom of it is covered with beetle-like creatures, which make a strangely human-like panting. Thin, long pink tongues extend from their mouths towards you, before you frantically shake them off the chunk of bone. Nervously, you toss the chunk of bone back to the ground. You look around for anything useful, something to help you get out of this insane hellscape. Next to one of the trees, leaning against the gnarled black roots is a red, plastic Zippo lighter, seeming out of place in the whole world of nightmares. There’s a lake of black, unreflective liquid that you stare at, its waters thick and oil-like. Sitting next to it, far enough away from you that you’re not too scared, is a figure. The figure looks like a badly deformed child, although its face is closer to that of a hairless rat, a long snout that extends past its face. You pause, noticing its eyes are a pair of black buttons, stitched straight into its sockets with red thread. Its limbs are thin and frail, and although it seems to be naked. Its skin is pale and leathery, hanging off it in patches to reveal the black flesh underneath. It holds in its hand a fishing rod, sitting there casually as if nothing was wrong. You wonder if it’ll act as a friend or foe. Sitting next to it is a black oil lantern, from which the only light in sight shines out, brightening the area. > You fetch the lighter You move over towards the gnarled, tangled roots of the tree, blood from the organs that hang above dripping down to you. You pause, seeing wrinkled fingers wrapping around your other hand. You’re torn through the air with a scream, smacking into the earth as you’re quickly dragged down a burrow hidden in the roots of the tree. You tumble to your ground, collapsing in front of a horrifying creature. The creature looks to be a strange hybrid between a spider and an old man. It’s body is spider-like, covered in a pale, translucent ooze. Its head is that of a smiling old man, although the same ooze drips from the corners of its mouth. Its eyes are black, lifeless orbs. It’s eight long, spindly legs each end with a human hand covered with a wrinkled, grey skin. “Good evening, my child,” it says, with the voice of a kindly grandfather. It’s long, spindly arms reach around, it’s wrinkled fingers grabbing your limbs and lifting you into the air. “A shame I won't be able to take you to the tea party soon, but I'm just so very hungry. I’m going to savor your young, soft flesh,” it says, as you scream into the silent darkness. Hours later, when the last breath finally expires from your broken form, its long arm reaches out from its den, placing the bright, red plastic lighter in front of the den, waiting for the next fool to come. They always did.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Eyes fluttering open, you find yourself there in the Nightmare Realm again. You’re sprawled out on a soft, eerily warm ground. A dull, strange pulse that trembles through the ground. The ground's texture is unnerving as your fingertips run across it, closer to flesh than earth. You squint, making out thin veins spread out through the ground, pumping a black liquid through the flesh that stands in stark contrast to the brownish-red of the floor. You briefly look at yourself for any injury, but you don't see anything wrong, at least visibly. You're wearing a pair of simply cloth pajamas that hang off your pale, frail frame and some small, featureless blue slippers. Standing, you look around at the nightmare realm surrounding you. The sky is black and lifeless, not a single shining light to break the dull veil of oblivion that hangs over your head. You’re in the middle of a forest of jet black trees that spike out from the ground like pillars of obsidian, their trunks all charred and blackened by what you presume was fire. From the tree's branches hang red, glistening organs and chunks of flesh, blood dripping down from them. A length of rotting intestine, a split open stomach whose food has spilled out to the ground, a long strip of unidentifiable flesh, they all just hang their like some horrifying butcher’s display. In contrast to the dark floor there’s several chunks of bleached white bone about the size of a child’s head in the ground, sticking out like everyday rocks. You grab the nearest one cautiously, turning it over in your hand to reveal the bottom of it is covered with beetle-like creatures, which make a strangely human-like panting. Thin, long pink tongues extend from their mouths towards you, before you frantically shake them off the chunk of bone. Nervously, you toss the chunk of bone back to the ground. You look around for anything useful, something to help you get out of this insane hellscape. Next to one of the trees, leaning against the gnarled black roots is a red, plastic Zippo lighter, seeming out of place in the whole world of nightmares. There’s a lake of black, unreflective liquid that you stare at, its waters thick and oil-like. Sitting next to it, far enough away from you that you’re not too scared, is a figure. The figure looks like a badly deformed child, although its face is closer to that of a hairless rat, a long snout that extends past its face. You pause, noticing its eyes are a pair of black buttons, stitched straight into its sockets with red thread. Its limbs are thin and frail, and although it seems to be naked. Its skin is pale and leathery, hanging off it in patches to reveal the black flesh underneath. It holds in its hand a fishing rod, sitting there casually as if nothing was wrong. You wonder if it’ll act as a friend or foe. Sitting next to it is a black oil lantern, from which the only light in sight shines out, brightening the area. > You head off into the trees Heading off into the woods in a desperate attempt to find a way out of this place, you quickly hurry off out of the light of the lantern. You’re soon drowned in darkness, without the light of any light to guide you. After a few minutes, as you're feeling your way forward to avoid hitting a trunk, you hear the faint sound of someone weeping. A huge, towering creature of black fur with muscles that ripple underneath, standing like a gorilla with two massive, clawed hands appears out of the darkness, right in front of you. It’s face is a white, china mask of a crying woman, with tears of red flowing down its cheek. It continues to weep as it moves towards you, a hand wrapping around you. It lifts you up, moving you right in front of its crying face. Suddenly, it flings you into a tree, shattering your ribs. You hit the ground with a scream, as it continues weeping, although you can’t see where it is. You lie there in pain, listening to the sound of the crying growing fainter as the monster moves away. Suddenly, you hear the sound of laughter, growing closer and closer. You try to move, but you’re effectively crippled by pain, unable to move. You close your eyes and like your assailant, begin to weep, hoping whatever creature finds you first does its job quickly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Eyes fluttering open, you find yourself there in the Nightmare Realm again. You’re sprawled out on a soft, eerily warm ground. A dull, strange pulse that trembles through the ground. The ground's texture is unnerving as your fingertips run across it, closer to flesh than earth. You squint, making out thin veins spread out through the ground, pumping a black liquid through the flesh that stands in stark contrast to the brownish-red of the floor. You briefly look at yourself for any injury, but you don't see anything wrong, at least visibly. You're wearing a pair of simply cloth pajamas that hang off your pale, frail frame and some small, featureless blue slippers. Standing, you look around at the nightmare realm surrounding you. The sky is black and lifeless, not a single shining light to break the dull veil of oblivion that hangs over your head. You’re in the middle of a forest of jet black trees that spike out from the ground like pillars of obsidian, their trunks all charred and blackened by what you presume was fire. From the tree's branches hang red, glistening organs and chunks of flesh, blood dripping down from them. A length of rotting intestine, a split open stomach whose food has spilled out to the ground, a long strip of unidentifiable flesh, they all just hang their like some horrifying butcher’s display. In contrast to the dark floor there’s several chunks of bleached white bone about the size of a child’s head in the ground, sticking out like everyday rocks. You grab the nearest one cautiously, turning it over in your hand to reveal the bottom of it is covered with beetle-like creatures, which make a strangely human-like panting. Thin, long pink tongues extend from their mouths towards you, before you frantically shake them off the chunk of bone. Nervously, you toss the chunk of bone back to the ground. You look around for anything useful, something to help you get out of this insane hellscape. Next to one of the trees, leaning against the gnarled black roots is a red, plastic Zippo lighter, seeming out of place in the whole world of nightmares. There’s a lake of black, unreflective liquid that you stare at, its waters thick and oil-like. Sitting next to it, far enough away from you that you’re not too scared, is a figure. The figure looks like a badly deformed child, although its face is closer to that of a hairless rat, a long snout that extends past its face. You pause, noticing its eyes are a pair of black buttons, stitched straight into its sockets with red thread. Its limbs are thin and frail, and although it seems to be naked. Its skin is pale and leathery, hanging off it in patches to reveal the black flesh underneath. It holds in its hand a fishing rod, sitting there casually as if nothing was wrong. You wonder if it’ll act as a friend or foe. Sitting next to it is a black oil lantern, from which the only light in sight shines out, brightening the area. > You pull organs down from the trees You move towards the branches, attempting to pull the organs down. When that fails, you wrap an arm around the tree trunk, lifting yourself up somewhat and shaking a branch. Several bloody organs plop down into the dirt. Suddenly, the soil begins to morph, as it cracks open to reveal small, human-lie mouths. The creepily human-like teeth bite and tear at the meat as they swallows the meat, devouring the organs. > You attack the mouths You quickly look around for a bone chunk, grabbing it and shaking the bugs off it. Quickly, you smash the chunk of bone into a mouth, knocking bloody and broken teeth out. The mouths gnash soundlessly as you smash the chunk of bone into them repeatedly, smashing out countless teeth. The mouths shut closed, morphing back into the ground. Cautiously, you collect a handful of broken, bloody teeth, but the mouths don’t make a reappearance.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You move towards the branches, attempting to pull the organs down. When that fails, you wrap an arm around the tree trunk, lifting yourself up somewhat and shaking a branch. Several bloody organs plop down into the dirt. Suddenly, the soil begins to morph, as it cracks open to reveal small, human-lie mouths. The creepily human-like teeth bite and tear at the meat as they swallows the meat, devouring the organs. > You quickly flee You're unwilling entirely to let those mouths get you or get close to you. You quickly backpedal, heading to the relative safety of next to the lake.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Eyes fluttering open, you find yourself there in the Nightmare Realm again. You’re sprawled out on a soft, eerily warm ground. A dull, strange pulse that trembles through the ground. The ground's texture is unnerving as your fingertips run across it, closer to flesh than earth. You squint, making out thin veins spread out through the ground, pumping a black liquid through the flesh that stands in stark contrast to the brownish-red of the floor. You briefly look at yourself for any injury, but you don't see anything wrong, at least visibly. You're wearing a pair of simply cloth pajamas that hang off your pale, frail frame and some small, featureless blue slippers. Standing, you look around at the nightmare realm surrounding you. The sky is black and lifeless, not a single shining light to break the dull veil of oblivion that hangs over your head. You’re in the middle of a forest of jet black trees that spike out from the ground like pillars of obsidian, their trunks all charred and blackened by what you presume was fire. From the tree's branches hang red, glistening organs and chunks of flesh, blood dripping down from them. A length of rotting intestine, a split open stomach whose food has spilled out to the ground, a long strip of unidentifiable flesh, they all just hang their like some horrifying butcher’s display. In contrast to the dark floor there’s several chunks of bleached white bone about the size of a child’s head in the ground, sticking out like everyday rocks. You grab the nearest one cautiously, turning it over in your hand to reveal the bottom of it is covered with beetle-like creatures, which make a strangely human-like panting. Thin, long pink tongues extend from their mouths towards you, before you frantically shake them off the chunk of bone. Nervously, you toss the chunk of bone back to the ground. You look around for anything useful, something to help you get out of this insane hellscape. Next to one of the trees, leaning against the gnarled black roots is a red, plastic Zippo lighter, seeming out of place in the whole world of nightmares. There’s a lake of black, unreflective liquid that you stare at, its waters thick and oil-like. Sitting next to it, far enough away from you that you’re not too scared, is a figure. The figure looks like a badly deformed child, although its face is closer to that of a hairless rat, a long snout that extends past its face. You pause, noticing its eyes are a pair of black buttons, stitched straight into its sockets with red thread. Its limbs are thin and frail, and although it seems to be naked. Its skin is pale and leathery, hanging off it in patches to reveal the black flesh underneath. It holds in its hand a fishing rod, sitting there casually as if nothing was wrong. You wonder if it’ll act as a friend or foe. Sitting next to it is a black oil lantern, from which the only light in sight shines out, brightening the area. > You approach the figure You walk slowly towards the strange figure. It eagerly turns to stare at you as you approach, moving slowly and cautiously. When you’re standing less than a meter away, it begins to approach, it’s frail arms reaching up to your face, two pale, disgusting fingers entering your mouth and tapping against your teeth. Quickly, it jabs its finger forward, knocking a loose tooth free from your gums with a few drops of blood. “Mine,” it whispers in a soft, rasping voice. You pull back frantically as it releases its grip, looking towards you with indifference again as it slowly picks up the loose tooth, raising it to its mouth and swallowing it whole. You step back, ready for it to strike, but it returns to its spot by its lantern, grabbing its fishing pole. You wiggle your tongue around in the new gap in your teeth, staring ahead nervously. > You move away from the figure You move nervously away from the figure, who seems indifferent to your slow but steady backpedalling.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk slowly towards the strange figure. It eagerly turns to stare at you as you approach, moving slowly and cautiously. When you’re standing less than a meter away, it begins to approach, it’s frail arms reaching up to your face, two pale, disgusting fingers entering your mouth and tapping against your teeth. Quickly, it jabs its finger forward, knocking a loose tooth free from your gums with a few drops of blood. “Mine,” it whispers in a soft, rasping voice. You pull back frantically as it releases its grip, looking towards you with indifference again as it slowly picks up the loose tooth, raising it to its mouth and swallowing it whole. You step back, ready for it to strike, but it returns to its spot by its lantern, grabbing its fishing pole. You wiggle your tongue around in the new gap in your teeth, staring ahead nervously. > You offer it a tooth Not knowing what else to do, you step forward, pointing to one of your teeth. "A tooth. You get one tooth." The figure nods happily, motioning for you to kneel down. You do, and suddenly its disgusting fingers force their way into your mouth. They're surprisingly cold, tasting of a mixture of soot and rotting flesh. Its fingers squeeze a tooth tightly, before tearing it free of your mouth in a single motion. You go to move away, but the creature doesn't seem satisfied with its single tooth now that its so close or doesn't understand your offer, grabbing another tooth. At that point, you quickly panic, and begin to move desperately as you try to escape it as it tries to hold you in place to remove your teeth, shaking you violently in an attempt to get you to stop moving. You keep moving your head rapidly, trying to avoid it getting a grip on another tooth. It lets out a rasping scream in frustration. Finally, holding your head tightly, it twists it around and forces your head under the black, murky water. The water oozes into your throat, flooding into your lungs as you try to scream, but instead the liquid just pours into your throat. As your body seems to realize its hopeless to fight, the last bit of strength drained from you. Your last thought is a morbid one, but you think that it'll be a lot easier to pull out your teeth once you're dead. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk slowly towards the strange figure. It eagerly turns to stare at you as you approach, moving slowly and cautiously. When you’re standing less than a meter away, it begins to approach, it’s frail arms reaching up to your face, two pale, disgusting fingers entering your mouth and tapping against your teeth. Quickly, it jabs its finger forward, knocking a loose tooth free from your gums with a few drops of blood. “Mine,” it whispers in a soft, rasping voice. You pull back frantically as it releases its grip, looking towards you with indifference again as it slowly picks up the loose tooth, raising it to its mouth and swallowing it whole. You step back, ready for it to strike, but it returns to its spot by its lantern, grabbing its fishing pole. You wiggle your tongue around in the new gap in your teeth, staring ahead nervously. > You try to take the lantern You move towards the creature’s lantern, but it quickly grabs your hand. Its cold, semi-moist fingers wrap around your wrist as it gently but firmly pushes you back.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Dropping to your knees, you press your thumb against one of the veins going through the ground, feeling the warm pulse of blood go through. You follow the vein, the pulse growing louder and louder, stronger and stronger with every beat. Continuing to follow it, you soon reach a thick mass of flesh, coils of muscle filled with the black, oozing blood. The thing spasms every few seconds, and you wince as you realize you’re listening to the beating of a heart. The heart lies there, spasming and beating as you wonder what to do. > You leave it There’s no way you’re messing with whatever’s there. You’re just not willing to do it. You step back, moving away from the heart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The night is cold, dark and starless. The only light other than the candle Mama clutches in her hand comes from the moon, whose once bright, white, inviting and warm light is now deep red, like it's been splattered with blood. You're curled up with your two sisters, Ivana and Lilia, with Mama sitting over you, her candle in one hand and a wooden crucifix in the other. Papa is nailing boards to keep the door shut, hastily trying to give you some extra protection. It's the Night of the Blood Moon. You've never been through one, the last happening less than a year before your birth, but now, after another twelve years, it had arrived. Your eldest brother, Dornan, told stories about it, stories that chilled you to the bone, that kept you from sleep, that gave birth to the horrors of your nightmares. If even a fraction of what Dornan said is true, the screams should begin soon. "Mama?" Lilia asks. "Hush, darling," Mama replies, as Papa finishes boarding up the door and grabs his shotgun from it's place on the wall. He takes his spot next to you, his gun pointed at the door, and you wait. The screams start soon. Howls of pain and terror from other houses of the town. Ivana is old enough to know to stay quiet, but Lilia soon starts to cry. Mama desperately tries to hush her six year old daughter, but to no avail. "Sssh! Sssh, darling! It's alright, you just must stay quiet!" Papa says. Suddenly, a tall, dark shadow passes by the window. Papa immediately grabs his shotgun, frantically raising it to his shoulder. The shadow disappears, and Papa breaths a sigh of relief. "Scared of something?" a deep, guttural voice says from behind you. Papa turns, firing his shotgun as the monster speeds forward. It grabs Papa's throat with unnatural speed, smiling as it holds him in the air, strangling him. The monster looks hideous. It's dreadfully pale, it's face twisted with hate, and looks to be hairless. It's eyes are completely black, like the endless darkness of its soul, and it's mouth is filled with mangled teeth with two large fangs, curved and bloodstained, with even more blood pouring down its face. The creature snarls, before smiling as it turns to look at you and your siblings. "Ah... so young... so fresh..." the vampire says, licking it's lipless mouth with a forked tongue. "Peasant, your daughters are mine. Don't struggle." The vampire tosses Papa to the ground, turning towards your siblings. "No! No! You will not take my daughters!" Father says, grabbing for his gun. The monster strikes, smashing it's boot into Papa's head. "How dare you?!" the monster screams. "I gave you your land, I gave you your house, I give you your life!" The monster begins walking toward Papa, who desperately crawls back to the wall. "I keep the beasts away from the village! I let you roam the night all but one night every twelve years! I don't ask for your wife, to allow you to sire more. I don't ask for your son, to leave you a legacy. I only ask for your daughters! How dare you attempt to deny me that?" As the vampire walks towards Papa, his fangs bared, you see a chance to get Papa's shotgun. Still, you don't want to anger the vampire further. Perhaps the best option is to hope for the beast's mercy. > You grab for the gun You scuttle forward for the gun, grabbing it. You aim it at the vampire, grabbing the trigger and pulling it tightly. The gun explodes, sending you falling back with the recoil and smacking into the wall with a painful thud. The vampire roars as buckshot slams into his back. He grabs your father by the head, twisting with inhuman speed as your hear a painful snap. Then, he turns, staring at you. He snarls, walking forward quickly. You reach for the gun again, but he steps on your hand as you yelp in pain. "You dare shoot me? I have lived millennia, you think you'll be the one to end my life?" the hunter snarls, before laughing, a horrible, terrifying noise. "You have balls, little one." You stare at the monster in front of you, trying to stare him, but you see nothing but hate and unquenching thirst behind his eyes. "Yes... I see strength in you. Potential. I have an offer for you, as the newfound man of the house. Join me. Let me take you on as my... apprentice. As my servant. As my slave. As whatever I need you to be. In exchange for your servitude, I offer you not only your life, but the life of your mother and sisters." You stare at the monster, whose eyes narrow as he waits for you answer. > You agree "OK," you say, gulping. The vampire smiles, perhaps in an attempt to calm you, but the way his smile curves upwards seems unnatural. It's like the smile of a wolf who has found a young, bleating lamb all by itself. "Perfect," the vampire says, dropping you to the ground. The monster walks out of the hut, barking out a single order. "Follow," he commands. You walk outside to the glow of the red moon, seeing a dozen bodies, pale from blood draining, lying on the street. A single carriage lies there, with a hunch-backed man sitting there, wearing a low-down bowler hat, a balaclava and a large coat that cover his appearance. "Haygarth! We're finished here. I've fed," the vampire growls. The hunch-back nods eagerly, grabbing the reigns of the horses. "Yes, sir, ready to go, sir!" Haygarth says eagerly. "And the boy?" "He is mine," the vampire says, as he steps into the carriage. "Yes sir, yes sir! Up front, boy! Quickly!" Haygarth says. You quickly walk up to the carriage, climbing into the shotgun seat of the carriage. Haygarth seems badly deformed, clearly attempting to cover his appearance with his large coat, low hat and balaclava, but he still looks monstrous. Haygarth quickly stirs the horses into a trot, as you leave the town that's always been your home. "You're to serve Count Grey?" the hunchback asks. "Yes," you say, barely coming to terms with the fact. "Hmm... we'll see how long you last," Haygarth says. "Yes, we'll see..." > Three Years Later... You sit on the ground, scrubbing the cold stone floor of the Grey Castle, named as much for its cold, lifeless demeanor as much as its owner. Haygarth stands over you, watching as he makes sure you do a proper job cleaning the blood stains that cover the ground, a remainder of the last girl foolish enough to be out at night. So far, your job has been simple. You have little contact with Count Grey, as you work in the day and sleep at night, whilst he sleeps in the day, coming out at night to hunt, feed, plan and much more. Mostly, Haygarth forces you to work at any job he sees fit. He seems to think you're little different from a pack horse, working you as hard as them. If anything, he's feeding the pack horses better. You see your role in the castle as a servant on your more optimistic days, and as a slave on the worse ones. "Good, good, put your back into it! Yes, that's it!" Haygarth says, as he hurries around the room, collecting pieces of clothes left over from the poor girl being brutally murdered. "Yes, Haygarth," you reply, putting your pressure on the brush as you splash some more water to get rid of a particularly disgusting stain of a mixture of blood and urine. Haygarth is a hard ruler, forcing you to work day and night. He's not sadistic or cruel, he just doesn't seem to understand that you're not an animal who needs a break. Hell, perhaps his only redeemable feature is the fact that he works himself even harder. As he rushes past, trying to do various chores, you can hear him angrily mutter to himself to go faster. You finish off the stain, quickly crawling over to the next. You sigh as you realize just how much you need to clean. Your knees hurt from crawling around all day, your hands are covered in blisters, and you've done nothing but work all day. You had two ive minute breaks to cram food into your mouth, and one more to shit, and that was it. Who the fuck has only two people to keep an entire castle from falling into disrepair? "Hurry up, boy! Use some of those strong muscles! I want to be able to see my reflection in it!" Will he ever leave you be? The bastard can't just let you fucking work, he has to constantly remind you that you're not doing good enough? > You insult Haygarth "Really? You want to see your reflection in the floor? Maybe I should leave it dirty so you wouldn't have to look at your malformed, pathetic excuse for a face," you say, as a year of anger is released in a single jab. Haygarth stops suddenly, looking at you. He frowns, looking at the ground behind you, where ironically you've polished the stones enough for him to vaguely look at himself. "You... you know, you sound just like my mother, or Count Grey. Mean. Cruel. Perhaps it's good you've found yourself serving a man such as the Count. He could be your soul mate, if he had a soul." Haygarth hobbles out of the room, leaving you alone. You continue keeping working, but fuck, the floor is pretty clean. You sit down, leaning against the wall as you sigh as your aching muscles get relief. You take a deep breath, as you watch the the sun fall in the distance. After about half an hour, the moon has finally appeared, and Haygarth appears. "Come. We need to wake Count Grey," he says, not looking at you. > You follow Haygarth You follow Haygarth along the hallways with haste. You hurry down the stairs, quickly heading to the lowest floor, at the center of the castle, into a dark room, empty except for a single, candle-adored coffin leaning against the stone wall, and a large, black sword hanging above the coffin. The coffin in intricate, a large, black wooden coffin with an intricate, thorny pattern, and a single silver, demonic face with a roaring mouth with a pair of fangs on the front. The sword, on the other hand, is somehow even darker, its surface seeming to suck the very light from the room. Even staring at the thin edge makes you feel like you've been stabbed. You can practically taste the hatred and malice that emanates from it. "Do you feel it?" Haygarth says. "That is the master of the home." You feel the hairs stand up on your skin. The air tastes stale and rotten, and there's a general feeling of dread emanating from it. In a place like this, you feel even if you called on the good Lord to save you, he would be unable to find your soul in such an abyss of all warm or love, let alone rescue you from it. "What now?" you ask. Haygarth grabs your hand, pulling it forward until your hand touches the metal. "It... stings," you say, as it feels like your hand is both being put against a hot stove and a freezing block of ice. "You'll get used to it," Haygarth says, drawing an iron blade from his side. Haygarth presses the blade against your arm, smiling as he slices open your arm, a long, deep cut appearing with a stream of blood. "Ah!" you yelp as your arm is covered red. "Stop!" "It's necessary," Haygarth replies. "We need to draw blood." "Did you need to cut so deep?" you complain. "I wanted to," Haygarth replies, shoving your arm in the silver mouth of the demon, cut first. Blood begins to pour down the creature's mouth, as the coffin's door clicks open. Haygarth grabs you by the collar, pulling you back. Count Grey steps forward. He looks the same as he has every night since the night he took you, except now his lips look parched and cracked, his eyes immediately darting down to your arm. "Thirst," he moans, staring at your wound. Haygarth hits you in the back with a snarl. "Come on, boy, feed your master!" You hold your arm forward, as Count Grey grabs it, his mouth darting down to your bleeding wound with an insane speed. You close your eyes and wait for the pain of his bite, but instead feel his cold lips on your wound, instantly beginning to suck the blood out of your arm. You take a deep breath as you go pale, Haygarth putting your arm around his shoulder to keep you from fainting. After about a minute, Count Grey stops, raising his head as he smiles. "Good. I was thirsty. The bitch from the other night was dry, and half her blood ended up on the floors. Good thing I managed to stop myself from draining you completely," Count Grey says. He looks up at the sword that hangs above the coffin, staring at it for a second. "Do you see that sword? While I like to keep up to date with my weapon technology, such as with rifles. grenades and the new and innovative Maxim Gun, in cases of the super-natural, the old stuff is the best. I've had that sword since I was a child. Forged it myself under command of my master. So many ancient, arcane inscriptions, horrid rituals and infinitely worse had to be done to make it the thing it is today. It's name is the Psychí Líptis. It is a killing machine. You will become the same." Count Grey s walking past you, and up the stairs. You stand there, waiting, looking at Haygarth for what to do. "Follow!" Count Grey's voice booms. You quickly hurry up the stairs after him. > You an Hour Later... You sit in the shotgun seat of the coach, as Haygarth continues spurring the horses forward. You're entering the village of Nitchidorf, with Count Grey resting in the back. The carriage's wheels roll into the village, stopping as you enter the village limits. "Go open the doors for the Count," Haygarth says. You nod, quickly hopping off the carriage. You run to the back of the carriage, opening it as the tall, gaunt Vampire steps out, tilting his head to stare down at you. "Follow," he commands. He begins walking along the street, staring at each of the houses. "We must find you a little... playmate," Count Grey says, looking at the houses. He sniffs the air, staring at the houses. His eyes flicker to you, filling you with dread as he licks his lips, still stained with bits of your crimson ichor, looking hungry. "Ye-yes, master," you say, nervously. The vampire stares at you for a second, before looking away. He seems impatient. "Yes... I can smell two prominent ones. Tell me, Samuel, what do you think? There's a young one who smells freshly bathed and lemongrass perfume, or one that smells of fresh dough and... terror sweat. It appears the latter one can see us. Which is it, Samuel?" > The first girl "Uh... the... the fi..." you stutter, tripping over your words as the vampire growls. "Have I found myself with another fool, a boy with the mind of a mule?" the vampire says, his long, gleaning white fangs, the corners of his mouth still red with your blood. "I've had a year out of you. Perhaps it's best to finish you off now." Count Grey slowly walks forward, snarling as his fangs poke out, looking like huge spears. > You attack You charge forward, but you're a child, and he's an immortal, ancient vampire. He grabs your neck, holding your head high to expose your neck. His mouth immediately shoots forward, biting into your neck as he begins to drain you of your life force. You gasp as your blood is drained, before he drops your dead body to the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Uh... the... the fi..." you stutter, tripping over your words as the vampire growls. "Have I found myself with another fool, a boy with the mind of a mule?" the vampire says, his long, gleaning white fangs, the corners of his mouth still red with your blood. "I've had a year out of you. Perhaps it's best to finish you off now." Count Grey slowly walks forward, snarling as his fangs poke out, looking like huge spears. > You stand your ground You stand your ground, as the vampire grabs you by the throat, lifting you into the air. His grip is tight, strangling you as he snarls, looking you at you with his cold, dark eyes. “I’m going to feel nothing as you die,” he says. Your brain begins to scream from lack of oxygen, as his eyes stare into yours. Your vision gets blurry, as your head begins to pulse with a desire to simply close your eyes and pass out. Suddenly, he releases you from his grip, as he drops you to the ground. “Perhaps… perhaps you’re ready to truly serve. Your life is mine, Samuel. If I decide to break your neck, you’ll lay your head down on the table and have your neck broken, understood?" "Ye... yes, sir. Whatever you desire," you manage to spit out. "Good. The rich one, was it?" the vampire says, smiling. "Follow me." You quickly begin following, walking along the stone road. You stop at one of the larger brick houses, with a fancy looking brass knocker. Count Grey briefly knocked on the wooden door, waiting. There was a loud noise inside, as the owner scrambled to get ready. The door opened on a chain, with an elderly bespectacled man peering out. "May I... oh, my..." the man said, stepping back. Count Grey grabbed him by the throat, tearing the door open as the chain snapped. Count Grey raised the man into the air, tossing him aside. "Follow," Count Grey shouted, as the old man struggled to stand, grabbing a letter opener. "Stay back!" he said. "You stay away from..." Count Grey let out a snarl, as he bared his teeth, his eyes filling his hunger. The old man meekly dropped the letter opener, stepping back. Count Grey walked forward into the house, sniffing the air. With a quick kick, he smashed the door open. You stood behind him, watching as a young girl barely into her teens lies, wearing a night gown. From the wet path on both the gown and the sheets she's curdled up in, it appears she's peed herself. "Ah... so fresh... so young... so delicious," Count Grey says. The girl screams for her grandfather, but Count Grey simply grabs her by the hair, in a quick jerk ripping her from the bed. Count Grey walked along the hallway, dragging her towards the coach. You follow, passing the disgraced looking grandfather. "Grandpapa! Grandpapa!" the girl screamed, as her father just looked down, ashamed. Count Grey dragged her into the coach, throwing her into the back, before locking it. He motioned for you to follow. "It's a beautiful night. The moon's full in the sky. I need to... negotiate with a few of the beasts of the night. I shan't be long. When to the West the honorless dogs create endless machines of war and to the East our enemies have endless' souls to give, we could always use more allies, yes?" You nod slowly, as the Vampire slides his coat off his gaunt frame, holding it out. You stare at it, before realizing he wants you to take it and grabbing it. "Take the girl back to the castle. Detain her. Then, await my return." "Yes, sir," you respond, as your master turns away, strolling off into the night. > You head back to the castle You walk towards the shotgun seat, climbing up to sit next to Haygarth. "The girl is alive and in my coach, yet the master is not. What happened?" he asks. "Count Grey is hunting. You need to take me and the girl home." "What's to become of the girl? Is she a blood bag, or a new apprentice?" Haygarth asks, raising an eye. "Neither would be particularly surprising." "I don't know," you admit. "So be it," Haygarth replies. You put your head against the back of the coach, and close your eyes as you head towards the castle. > You an Hour Later... The coach enters the castle gate, as you climb off the coach. Haygarth lowers the portcullis, as you go to the back to open the coach. The girl sits there, staring at you in terror. "Get out," you command. The girl nods, crawling ahead as she gets out of the coach. You grab her by the wrist, leading her along to the coach. She doesn't talk, seemingly in shock. She doesn't say a word, instead staring at you in terror. You wonder if you should try to converse, to calm her, or keep unemotional and professional about this issue. > You talk to the rich girl "So, do you have a name?" you say. "Yelena," she says, struggling to even talk. "My name's Samuel." You walk on for another few seconds of silence, as she looks at you, her face pale. "Am I going to die?" she asks. "You..." you begin to say, before she stares at you, trying to see if you're lying. "I don't know. I'm sorry." She nods. You show her down the stairs, before leading her into a prison cell. You lock the cell door, staring at her from behind the bars. She stares blankly ahead, leaning against the wall and sliding down to lean against it, her nightgown now covered in mud and dirt. You leave her there, now secured, and end up heading to bed for a few hours sleep before Count Grey arrives back. > You sleep... You awake to the prick of fangs against your neck. You don't move, taking in a deep breath. "You looked so... so appetizing. Let's go. We need to finish the last stage of your path towards becoming a true apprentice." You nod, standing. You make your way down to the prison cell, where the girl still waits. She looks up, terrified. "What... what is to be done with her?" you gulp. "She is food. Learn that fact," your master says. The vampire draws a long dagger from his side, handing it to you. "If you're going to be my Ghoul, you need to prove you're capable of preparing my food. Kill her," You hold the knife, staring at it as the girl begins to cry. You notice from the wet patch growing on her nightgown, she’s pissed herself once more. “Kill her. She’s weak, you’re strong. Slice open her throat, so I can feed,” Count Grey commanded. The girl breaks into sobs as Count Grey opens the cell door, swinging it ajar and motioning for you to enter. You nod, walking forward with the knife held tightly in your hand. > You kill her You step forward, into the cell. You close your eyes, moving forward as you grab the girls’ head. You hold the knife to her throat as she struggles desperately, her fingernails scratching at your face. You stab her through the throat, directly through the main vein. She collapses, shuddering as blood spurts out and begins to run down her neck, staining her hair crimson. You feel like bursting into tears, but you know to show weakness would be to end up like her… if you were lucky. “Good,” Count Grey says, tossing a rag forward. “Hold it against her neck to stem the bleeding, and then pick her up and follow me.” You grab the girl, holding the rag tightly against the wound to stem the bleeding. You lift her over your shoulder, standing up. You follow Count Grey along the hall. Soon, you find yourself in front of a large, wooden door. Haygarth has forbidden you from entering, which only mean that you had one less room to clean. Count Grey pulls a short, silver key from his pocket. He opens the door, revealing a massive storage room. The room is filled with cabinets and shelving units. They’re all filled with crystal bottles, filled with a scarlet red ichor. “This castle was built to withstand a siege. It’s storerooms could keep a force here going for years with wheat, potatoes, salted meats and more, as well as small gardens. Unfortunately, I require a more… delicate solution to avoid starving.” You look at the endless bottles of blood, wondering how many lives were given to fill them. “It’s quite hard to successfully bottle blood. Let alone hard hard it is to get it from the victim without a needle and a few hours. You’ll need to get quite good at that.” “You want me to kill people and bottle their blood?” you ask. “Yes. Not just anyone. Virgins, particularly. Once they’ve lost that, their blood’s impure, and will spoil quickly enough outside the body. After that, you’ll need to keep it around for a few days, make sure it doesn’t spoil.” “I thought you said virgin blood doesn’t spoil.” “It doesn’t, but in this day and age, it’s so hard to tell. I always struggle to pick out my targets. I want them to be young enough to be a virgin, but still old enough to… well, perhaps from the morality my tribe taught me oh so many years ago, I don’t want to kill babies, or children that young. I’m perfectly willing to, mind you, but I don’t find it necessary when there are so many other potential blood bags. Even then, you can never be sure. You always have some human filth so enamored with mortal concepts like sex that they end up defiling children. You’d be surprised by how young I’ve found my victims to be, yet still spoiled. Oh, they say power corrupts, but it just lets people be who they are naturally. Perhaps some day, we’ll see who you are at heart.” “Does… does it have to be children?” you ask. “What about someone like… the Catholic priests in the village?” “Ha! I’d be able to find more virgins among the girls at the whore house then at the church!” Count Grey says, laughing. His laughter is… unnatrual. Even though you understand the context to the joke, you still somehow feel as if he’s laughing maniacally since he’s got you at his mercy, which you suppose he does. You weakly smile, before the weight of the dead girl over your shoulders becomes too much and you lower her onto the cold stone floor, keeping the now red, sticky rag pressed against her wound. “Ah, yes. We’re wasting time,” he says. Count Grey grabs a crystal bottle, handing to you. “Move the rag, and replace it with bottle. Fill it,” he says. You take the bottle and remove the rag, quickly pressing the bottle against the bleeding wound, as blood continues to flow into it. You take effort not to look at the girl’s face, watching as the bottle is slowly filled. "The heart is a tremendous organ, isn’t it?” Count Grey says, licking his lips. “So… fresh. So… delicious.” The vampire snarls, taking a deep breath. For a second, his face contorts into a combination of that of a starving man willing to break any moral code to feed his hunger, that of a hate-filled demon knowing nothing other than the negative emotions that plague the depths of man’s soul, as well as that of a beast, knowing only hunger. You step back, almost knocking over a rack of bottles, before Count Grey pauses. “Don’t worry, little one. It’s just that staring at the blood makes me so, so thirsty. I’d imagine you’ll be able to fill up a lot more bottles than I, seeing as you won’t be tempted to down the bottle you’re filling at any given moment.” Count Grey takes the bottle, pouring a small amount into an ornate wooden bowl, before capping the bottle with a crystal stopper. “No, we test. You get this little box,” he said, grabbing an oak box from the cabinet, and opening it to reveal various things. Count Grey draws out a long tooth, seemingly from a vampire. It looks to be a curved, deadly sharp fang. “This belonged to Elise the Skin-Taker. You need to drop the fang in the bowl, and leave it there for three days. If the tooth is no different, put the tooth back in the box and put the bottle with the others. If the tooth has turned black, dump out the blood and wash out the bottle. Then, use a blade to scrape of the rotten outside, and put the rest, the tooth that's not rotten, back in the box. Be careful. A tooth can only last two or three of these, and I only have so many. Getting more takes another trip to the wilder regions and find a maddened, bestial vampire without reason or logic, a bandit who has found himself with the gifts of the blood moon or some aspiring Vampire who wishes to be a count." Count Grey puts the bottle on the stone table, next to the bowl. "You've prepared your first bottle, little one. You'll prepare many more. You've proven yourself tonight. Now, your job changes. Follow me," he says. Count Grey walks along the hallways, stopping at a small, wooden door that again has remained locked during your stay here. He opens it with the same key, before handing it to you. "Here. This is your new room," he says, opening the door. In stark contrast with your last room, a simple tiny bed in a barren room, this one is surprisingly less furnished. A desk and chair stands there, a mirror, a wardrobe and a large bed. A gun rack sits by the single window, with two rifles and a shotgun in it. "Thank you, thank you master!" you say. "Open the wardrobe," Count Grey commands. You walk forward, opening the wardrobe. Inside is a pair of black leather boots, black trousers, a black shirt, a dark red leather long coat and belt and a dark red tri-corner hat. "Put it on," Count Grey commands. You quickly get undressed, as Count Grey stares, bored, at the wall. You get dressed into the outfit, turning to look back at your master. "Yes... it fits well. Kneel, dog," the vampire says. You drop to your knee, bowing your head low. You look up at Count Grey, who raises his arm to his mouth. He bites it, releasing a flow of blood that runs down his hands. He holds it out, staring at you expectantly. "Drink," he commands. You look at the burgundy liquid running down the vampire's arm, in stark contrast with the white, ghastly skin. You put your mouth to the wound, and begin to suck. The liquid is like a poison. Your skin begins to tingle, as you feel drowsy. You try to pull your head away, but the vampire holds it in place. "Drink!" he commands aggressively. You keep drinking the cold liquid down, as your stomach begins to churn. You feel like you're about to collapse into a coma, as the blood seems to drain your life source. Finally, Count Grey lets you pull your head back. "Rise, ghoul," he commands. You stand, trying not to puke. You look at Count Grey, who raises an eyebrow. "Are you going to vomit, child?" he asks. You feel the puke rise up in your throat, but hold it down, shaking your head. "Well done," he says. "Now, you're a ghoul. No longer will you work like a slave with Haygarth. You will hunt for me when I am busy. You will scout and pick out potential prey. You will guard the castle. You will be a true minion." You nod, eagerly. "I... am yours, master," you say. > Three Years Later... You sit in the shotgun seat of a carriage with Haygarth at the reins. It's been a long journey. You have to venture to meet with King Ferdinand I in order to arrange taxation laws and other things you haven't been educated well enough to understand. You're finally entering the territory under Count Grey's control, staring out at the village you're entering as the sun falls in the distance. "Stop here," you say. "I want to grab a bite to eat." "We must be home soon!" Haygarth says. "Count Grey's in the back, he might wake up soon. Sun's almost gone." You're hungry, thirsty and you've been traveling for the past three days. There's no way in hell you're going back to the castle for Haygarth to cook up his famous soup, which you're certain he's literally shitting in. > You attempt to convince Haygarth to stop "Haygarth, be fair here. Do you really want to go back to the castle to have to cook for us? We could quickly get some grub, some drinks, and then head back to the castle. Right?" "Don't like leaving carriage. There's always pointing, laughing, staring," Haygarth says, pulling his balaclava up to the bridge of his nose. "Fine. I'll pull in. You go eat. I'll wait here, eat something when I get home," he says. The carriage pulls in alongside a tavern, as you look to Haygarth, who looks fairly pathetic as he attempts to cover his mishapen form. > You enter the tavern You walk inside the tavern by yourself, feeling the weight of your Leu-filled wallet in your side pocket. You walk along, and immediately garner the attention of everyone in the bar. Your garb makes it immediately clear to anyone but the most ignorant or simply stupid of the peasants that you're a servant of Count Grey. The tavern quickly clears out, heading to their various homes, leaving only a few idiots too old and stubborn or young and cocky to realize staying near you is death. You toss a crumpled note on the counter, looking up at the bar tender expectantly. Soon, you find yourself drinking a pint, a plate of chicken, boiled potatoes and cabbage in front of you. You smile, eating it up eagerly, downing the pint in a few gulps. You belch loudly, smiling as you find yourself now filled with food, warm and content. "Where's the bathroom?" you ask, feeling the need to piss rising as your full bladder demands you act. "Bathroom's broken. Go outside," the bar-tender replies. You raise an eyebrow, tapping on your hat. "Do you know who I am? Who I work for?" you ask. "I do. If he shows up here, I'm as happy to show him the broken toilet as I am you." You sigh, standing and walking outside into the alley. You unzip your trousers and pull out your dick, pissing onto the side of the old building. Suddenly, the cold blade of a knife is pressed against your throat. "Don't move," a deep voice whispers. "Hands in the air." "Do you expect me to let go of my dick and piss on myself?" you ask, more annoyed than scared. "Finish up," the voice says. You finish pissing, popping your genitalia back in your trousers, buttoning it up, and slowly turn to face your attack. Two teens, barely fifteen by the looks of it, both with short blond hair, one skinny, on large and muscular, stare at you. The skinny one holds a pistol, while the big one holds the knife pressed against your throat. "What's this about, gents? Revenge?" you ask, knowing just how many family's want your blood for taking their daughter's. "What? We don't know you," the big one says. "The wallet. Now," the skinny one says. You pause, frowning. "Are you seriously fucking telling me you've decided to mug me?" you ask, surprised. "Why the fuck wouldn't we?" the big one asks, pushing you against the wall as the skinny one draws his own knife with his left hand, strolling forward to press the barrel against your temple. "Wallet. Now," he says. "Fucking idiots. You don't recognize the outfit, eh? I'm a fucking Ghoul, Count Grey's personal assistant." The big one looks at the skinny one nervously. "Maybe we should let him go," the big one asks. "He's bluffing," the skinny one says, licking his lips. "Ghouls... ghouls are rotten, aren't they?" "The sun's down, boys. Count Grey's due to wake..." "Shut it! Wallet, now!" the skinny one commands. > You buy time "Do you know how dangerous the count is? He'll drink you dry, his fangs'll prick..." "Shut it!" the skinny one says. "Let's just go," the big one says. "First, the wallet!" the skinny one says. "I think I can hear Count Grey. He's co..." you say, before you're interrupted by the skinny one pulling the trigger, covering the wall with your brain matter.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk inside the tavern by yourself, feeling the weight of your Leu-filled wallet in your side pocket. You walk along, and immediately garner the attention of everyone in the bar. Your garb makes it immediately clear to anyone but the most ignorant or simply stupid of the peasants that you're a servant of Count Grey. The tavern quickly clears out, heading to their various homes, leaving only a few idiots too old and stubborn or young and cocky to realize staying near you is death. You toss a crumpled note on the counter, looking up at the bar tender expectantly. Soon, you find yourself drinking a pint, a plate of chicken, boiled potatoes and cabbage in front of you. You smile, eating it up eagerly, downing the pint in a few gulps. You belch loudly, smiling as you find yourself now filled with food, warm and content. "Where's the bathroom?" you ask, feeling the need to piss rising as your full bladder demands you act. "Bathroom's broken. Go outside," the bar-tender replies. You raise an eyebrow, tapping on your hat. "Do you know who I am? Who I work for?" you ask. "I do. If he shows up here, I'm as happy to show him the broken toilet as I am you." You sigh, standing and walking outside into the alley. You unzip your trousers and pull out your dick, pissing onto the side of the old building. Suddenly, the cold blade of a knife is pressed against your throat. "Don't move," a deep voice whispers. "Hands in the air." "Do you expect me to let go of my dick and piss on myself?" you ask, more annoyed than scared. "Finish up," the voice says. You finish pissing, popping your genitalia back in your trousers, buttoning it up, and slowly turn to face your attack. Two teens, barely fifteen by the looks of it, both with short blond hair, one skinny, on large and muscular, stare at you. The skinny one holds a pistol, while the big one holds the knife pressed against your throat. "What's this about, gents? Revenge?" you ask, knowing just how many family's want your blood for taking their daughter's. "What? We don't know you," the big one says. "The wallet. Now," the skinny one says. You pause, frowning. "Are you seriously fucking telling me you've decided to mug me?" you ask, surprised. "Why the fuck wouldn't we?" the big one asks, pushing you against the wall as the skinny one draws his own knife with his left hand, strolling forward to press the barrel against your temple. "Wallet. Now," he says. "Fucking idiots. You don't recognize the outfit, eh? I'm a fucking Ghoul, Count Grey's personal assistant." The big one looks at the skinny one nervously. "Maybe we should let him go," the big one asks. "He's bluffing," the skinny one says, licking his lips. "Ghouls... ghouls are rotten, aren't they?" "The sun's down, boys. Count Grey's due to wake..." "Shut it! Wallet, now!" the skinny one commands. > You attempt to negotiate "Look, you take my wallet, Count Grey's going to feel disrespected. Best case scenario, he sends me out with a rifle to track you down and..." "Shut it!" the skinny one says. "Let's just go," the big one says. "First, the wallet!" the skinny one says. "Worst case, Count Grey comes after you personally. He'll..." you say, before you're interrupted by the skinny one pulling the trigger, covering the wall with your brain matter.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk inside the tavern by yourself, feeling the weight of your Leu-filled wallet in your side pocket. You walk along, and immediately garner the attention of everyone in the bar. Your garb makes it immediately clear to anyone but the most ignorant or simply stupid of the peasants that you're a servant of Count Grey. The tavern quickly clears out, heading to their various homes, leaving only a few idiots too old and stubborn or young and cocky to realize staying near you is death. You toss a crumpled note on the counter, looking up at the bar tender expectantly. Soon, you find yourself drinking a pint, a plate of chicken, boiled potatoes and cabbage in front of you. You smile, eating it up eagerly, downing the pint in a few gulps. You belch loudly, smiling as you find yourself now filled with food, warm and content. "Where's the bathroom?" you ask, feeling the need to piss rising as your full bladder demands you act. "Bathroom's broken. Go outside," the bar-tender replies. You raise an eyebrow, tapping on your hat. "Do you know who I am? Who I work for?" you ask. "I do. If he shows up here, I'm as happy to show him the broken toilet as I am you." You sigh, standing and walking outside into the alley. You unzip your trousers and pull out your dick, pissing onto the side of the old building. Suddenly, the cold blade of a knife is pressed against your throat. "Don't move," a deep voice whispers. "Hands in the air." "Do you expect me to let go of my dick and piss on myself?" you ask, more annoyed than scared. "Finish up," the voice says. You finish pissing, popping your genitalia back in your trousers, buttoning it up, and slowly turn to face your attack. Two teens, barely fifteen by the looks of it, both with short blond hair, one skinny, on large and muscular, stare at you. The skinny one holds a pistol, while the big one holds the knife pressed against your throat. "What's this about, gents? Revenge?" you ask, knowing just how many family's want your blood for taking their daughter's. "What? We don't know you," the big one says. "The wallet. Now," the skinny one says. You pause, frowning. "Are you seriously fucking telling me you've decided to mug me?" you ask, surprised. "Why the fuck wouldn't we?" the big one asks, pushing you against the wall as the skinny one draws his own knife with his left hand, strolling forward to press the barrel against your temple. "Wallet. Now," he says. "Fucking idiots. You don't recognize the outfit, eh? I'm a fucking Ghoul, Count Grey's personal assistant." The big one looks at the skinny one nervously. "Maybe we should let him go," the big one asks. "He's bluffing," the skinny one says, licking his lips. "Ghouls... ghouls are rotten, aren't they?" "The sun's down, boys. Count Grey's due to wake..." "Shut it! Wallet, now!" the skinny one commands. > You give them the wallet You hand over your wallet, giving them the finger as you do. "Thanks," the skinny one smiles, grabbing it from your hand as he smacks you in the head with the gun, knocking you to the floor. "What are you doing?" the big one asks. "We don't need to kill him! We got the wallet!" You look up to see the barrel of the gun pointing directly at your head. "You heard what he said. He's with the count. If we kill him now, the count won't come after us!" the skinny one knows. "He's seen our faces." "He doesn't know our names," the big one says. "I'm Lucas. That's Mikhail," the skinny one said. "What the fuck!?" the big one, Mikhail replies. "We have to kill him. Now even you'd agree to that," Lucas says. "Always kill your prey. You don't want to let them come back and bite you in the throat," a voice says. Count Grey steps from the shadows, his teeth curved in a grin, his fangs prominent. He grabs Lucas' gun arm, twisting it until Lucas drops the gun. Mikhail charges with a knife, but with a quick, well-planted punch to the chest sends him to the floor, badly winded. You stand up, grabbing the gun as well as drawing your own, pointing one at each of the thieves. "What, are you some fucking cowboy with your guns? Shoot, come on!" Lucas says, even though his bottom lip is quivering. "Tell me, Samuel. How did they manage to jump you?" Count Grey asks, tracing a finger down Lucas' nose. "I was pissing," you admit. "Hmmm... tell me, where is your family?" Count Grey asks, turning his attention to the teens. "Dead," Lucas answers. "Well then, you've shown balls, willingness to kill and the ability to ambush. Perhaps... Samuel, you were the one mugged. What happened? Were you behaving stupidly and ambushed by some lackluster fools, or are these two deserving of becoming ghouls?" > You suggest the teens become ghouls "They have potential," you admit. "Young men, I'll give you a choice. I could kill you now, drain your blood and return to my castle for the night." "What's the other option?" Mikhail asks. "Join me. Let me take you on as my... apprentice. As my servant. As my slave. As whatever I need you to be. In exchange for your servitude, I offer your life." "Jesus, do you have that memorized?" you mutter, under your breath. "I'm in," Lucas says immediately, as Mikhail pauses, before nodding in agreement. "Perfect," the vampire smiles. "The coach is full. You'll walk behind it. No breaks. No time to pack. Immediately. If you're too pathetic for that, you might as well die of exhaustion." With that, Count Grey walks off, and you eagerly follow. > Three Years Later... You watch as the Twins hold the two girls in front of you, knives in their hands. Count Grey stands to your side, watching intently. "Do it," Count Grey commands. Mikhail takes a deep breath, stabbing the girl in the throat. He closes his eye as the girl twitches, blood spurting out as he slices through her throat. "Help..." the girl gurgles, blood filling her throat, before he head drops to the side. Lucas looks at his master, before down at the girl. He presses the knife to the girl's wrist, slicing it open. As the girl screams, before he wraps his left arm around her throat and beginning to strangle her to prevent her from screaming. "What are you doing?" Count Grey asks, more curious than angry. "If she's left alive, the heart keeps pumping. More blood will spurt out for you to consume," Lucas says, as the girl sobs desperately. "Interesting," Count Grey says. "Grab your blood bags and follow me. Samuel, no need to see this. You've filled countless bottles." "Yes, sir," you reply. You walk away, walking to the bedroom, lying down in the bed. You rest your head against the pillow, and drift off to sleep. You awaken about an hour later, with Count Grey staring at you from the doorway. "Yes?" you ask nervously. "There's going to be some changes in this castle, understood? Now that we have three ghouls. You and the others will extend our power. First, it's important you should know. I'm not the only vampire." "I know," you reply, confused. "We've fought rival Vampires, hunted those that went feral with bloodlust, taken out vampiric bandits..." "I mean," Count Grey says, annoyed by the interruption. "That I'm not the only vampire on our side. You're family with the three vassal vampires that run the various subsections of the region, yes?" "Yes," you reply. "The Draven Family House, the Alexa Family House and the Mihrab Family House." "Not exactly. These are not the names of families. They're the names of individuals. I have three vampires under by control, acting as my lieutenants. Their names are Draven, Mihrab and Alexa." "Are they threats?" "No. You just need to know of them. If needs be, you'll kill one someday. Maybe all three. Understood?" "Yes, sir," you reply. "Good. Train and drill with the Twins more. You'll need to become a better fighter. Now, sleep." With that, Count Grey closes the door, leaving you in the dark room. Just knowing Count Grey has constant access to you prevents you from sleeping. > Three Years Later... The coach drives down the road as the sun begins to fall from its high perch in the sky.You breath in the cold air, as Haygarth drives the horse forward. You take a cigarette from your pocket, lighting it with a match. You breath in the smoke, closing your eyes as you feel it fill your lungs, before exhaling. “Pass it over,” Mikhail says, reaching a gloved hand forward to grab at the cigarette from inside the coach. "Haygarth? How far?" you ask. "We're here," Haygarth mutters. "Yes, yes, we're here." The coach pulls up to the side of an old brick tavern, the Raven's Quill. “Is he late?” you ask. "What time is he supposed to be here?" “Five-ish,” Mikhail says, opening his pocket watch. “It’s five now." "He’s late,” you say. “He said five-ish. That could be another hour, knowing Lucas,” Mikhail says. You nod, and turn to look at your companion. Mikhail is an even uglier creature. The man is 6’4, hunched up in the back seat. His muscles bulge, easily filling the extra large jacket. His nose has clearly been broken a dozen times over, his face looking similar. He looks like a shaven ogre, and although quiet, he’s been quite a sweet man despite his line of work. “He’s here,” Haygarth says. Mikhail goes through his jacket pocket, as Lucas opens the side door of the coach. He looks angelic, like a grown-up Cherub, with blond hair, rosy cheeks and a flashing smile. A woman is at his side, a little younger than you. “Brother, thank you for the lift!” Lucas says. “This is Dasha. I really think she’s a special one. Hop in, darling.” Dasha smiles nervously, getting into the car. She extends a hand to Mikhail, smiling. “Hi, I’m Dasha. pleasure to meet…” Dasha says. Mikhail grabs Dasha’s head, quickly covering her mouth with his massive hand. He pours the bottle in his hand out onto a rag, soaking it, before pressing it tightly against her face. She lets out a muffled scream before slowly beginning to stop struggling. Soon, Dasha goes still. Mikhail props her up, and Lucas climbs into the carriage. “She was a real bitch. Always saying she should stay with her friends, or tell them where she’s going, or offering to pay for a hired coach home. If someone like that gets someone like me, they should just keep their fucking mouth shut,” Lucas complains. “Clearly she shouldn’t have,” you point out. “Whatever,” Lucas says, grabbing the cigarette and fumbling through his coat pocket for some matches. “How long will that last?" you ask in reference to the chloroform. “Six hours, give or take,” Mikhail says. “How long to the castle?” Lucas asks, lighting the cigarette. “Three,” Mikhail says. “Four, yes, yes, definitely four," Haygarth says. “The roads are icy.” “Fantastic, let’s get the fuck out of here,” Lucas says. > Four Hours Later... The coach drives inside the huge gates of the huge castle, as the sky turns gold and twilight fills the world with a beautiful feeling of serenity. The coach pulls into the stables, where Haygarth immediately gets to work with the horses. Mikhail opens the coach door, putting Dasha over his shoulder and walking towards the keep. You follow him, as does Lucas, walking alongside him as Dasha stirs with a groan, but doesn't break her slumber. You walk into the keep, and quickly down to the dungeons. The large dungeon is covered with an earth floor, and four occupied cells. Four women, all of similar age and appearance to Dasha, all whose names you've forgotten, are there. Their mouths are gagged, though they scream desperately as they see you enter. Mikhail mutters a curse under his breath as he tries not to make eye contact with the women, but Lucas smiles and cheerfully waves at women. Mikhail carries Dasha to an empty cell, opening it and laying her gently on the cot inside. He locks the cell behind him, and looks at you both. "The sun is down. Should we wake him?" Mikhail asks. "Leave him. It's late. We'll wake him in an hour," Lucas says. You nod, turning and walking away from the twins. You head up the stone staircase towards the kitchen. Despite the fact that this building is around a thousand years old, it's surprisingly well furnished. Count Grey has kept the house furnished with modern technology, one of the bonuses of controlling a tiny pocket of land and resources. As long as King Carol I got his taxes, he left Count Grey do as he pleased. You open a cabinet, taking out a somewhat stale sugar cookie and biting into it. You make yourself a sandwich from cold meat, nuts and dates, and quietly consume it, while watching as the world blackens. Just as you see the first red haze on the horizon of the rising blood moon, you quickly turn and head quickly down to the Count's chambers. You hurry down the stairs, quickly heading to the lowest floor, at the center of the castle. Mikhail is already waiting in the dark room, empty except for a single, candle-adored coffin leaning against the stone wall. The coffin in intricate, a large, black wooden coffin with an intricate, thorny pattern, and a single silver, demonic face with a roaring mouth with a pair of fangs on the front. You can feel the dark feeling emanating from it. It makes you feel cold just looking at it, and you shudder at the thought of what lies inside. Nonetheless, it is your duty to awaken your master. Lucas hurries into the room,, dropping his cigarette and crushing it under his heel. He looks at both of you. "Oh good, we're all here. Let's do it, shall we?" Lucas says. "Which one of us wakes him tonight?" you say. Lucas smiles, holding up his bandaged wrist. "I did yesterday." Mikhail shows you the two-day old cut on his upper arm You draw your dagger, pressing it against your forearm and gently slicing it open. You take in a deep breath as you feel the sharp pain. Blood pours down your arm, and your press the open cut into the roaring mouth of the silver ideal, smearing it with blood. You count to three, before leaning in. "Glorious Master, the night has come and the world is yours," you whisper. You step back as the coffin door is pushed open. Inside stands the Count. Dried blood cakes the corners of his mouth, as he lets out a growl, flashing his long, curved fangs, that look sharper than a needle. His black, soulless eyes peer into yours, as you take a deep breath. You outstretch your arm, and he walks forward, grabbing you by the wrist. He brings your arm to his mouth, and begins to suck. He sucks the blood that pumps from your cut as you wince, before releasing you. Mikhail hands you a roll of bandage, which you quickly begin wrapping them around your wound. Count Grey walks away from you, strolling towards the lounge. He walks up the stone stairs, before heading to the glass window. He stares out at the darkness, and the rising red moon. "Good... good..." he says. "Prepare altar. The Viceroys will be here soon." You nod eagerly, and quickly head down to the dungeons, followed by the others. The gagged woman are in the cells, curled up and terrified. Dasha is still unconscious, which gives you pause. "The new girl, Dasha, look at her," you say. "What of her?" Lucas asks. "She's still not awake. Maybe you used too much chloroform, Mikhail," you say. "No, I used the normal amount. Maybe she had a medical condition," Mikhail says. "Who the fuck cares?" Lucas asks. "What if she's dead? We'll be one victim short? Do you want to be the sacrifice?" you say. Lucas pauses, opening the cell and walking towards her. He drops to his knee, putting a hand against her chest. "She's breathing. Just unconscious. The idiot must've used too much chloroform. She's alive, she'll do, alright?" Mikhail shrugs, slinging the girl over his shoulder. Lucas opens the two other cells, grabbing the women inside and pulling them along by their hair. The girls are shackled, so they're incapable of struggling much, but any resistance leads quickly to a punch to the side of the head. "Samuel, get the last two!" Lucas shouts. You grab the cell keys, walking over. One of the girl stares at you with rage, the other sits in the back corner in terror. You open the scared girl's cell first, grabbing her by her chain. You drag her out of the cell, before opening the second cell and grabbing the more resistant girl. "Don't fight me on this. You're not going to win this, and I don't want to hurt you," you say. You pull on the second girl's chain, but she plants her feet down and stares at you. > You hit the girl You swing your fist, smashing into the side of the girl's head, as she crumples to her knees. She lets out a pained moan through her gag, and as blood trickles down the side of her face, her eyes fill with fear. You pull on her chain again and she follows. You quickly lead the two along the hallway, before up the stairs, into the "church". You hear Count Grey's dark, cold, emotionless voice from the main hall. "Welcome, Viceroys. Did you decide to come together, or simply met on the road here?" "Coincidence, my lord," another far deeper voice booms, one more filled with malice and hatred than Count Grey's. "Good, good. Haygarth!" Count Grey shouts. "Yes, yes master?" Haygarth's voice comes back from the stables. "Come, fetch the Viceroy's coats!" "Yes, yes sir!" Haygarth says, quickly hurrying to them. You turn your attention back to the task at hand. In front of you in a large, open stone room. Groves cover the stone floor, making the shape of a large pentagram. Lucas' two prisoners are kneeling at two of the points of the pentagram chained to a loop in the stone to prevent them from moving, while Dasha lies at the third, her unconscious state meaning she doesn't need to be chained up. "Come on," you say, raising your fist to threaten the second girl. You force her to kneel on the ground and chain her to the loop in the ground. You drag the first girl to the other, doing the same. Mikhail and Lucas stand off to the side, watching them. Mikhail looks down, looking vaguely embarrassed at his part in this. Lucas, however, seems ecstatic. He walks forward, grinning as he draws his dagger. "Oh boy, look at that!" he says, dropping to his knees in front of a girl. "Look at that. You see the pentagram? You see those deep, thick groves? I'm going to fill them with your blood. You like that? You ready?" The girl frantically begins to struggle, as Lucas smiles. Lucas slices the girl's throat open, as blood pours out, flooding into the grove and running along. The girl gurgles as blood pours through her throat, and Lucas lets the head fall to the ground over the grove, letting the blood pour out into it. "Mikhail, come on, we need this ready for the Viceroys and Count Grey!" he says. "I am not a butcher," Mikhail says softly, as Lucas' eyes narrow. "Don't fucking take the high road. You drugged every whore here, knowing it was all so we'd slit there throats here. You're as much a murderer as I am." Mikhail looks to the ground, opening his mouth as if to say something, but closing it just as quickly. "That's what I thought. Samuel, grab your knife, let's get to work." > You join in You sigh, drawing your knife as Lucas smiles. "If you're going to lead to someone's death, at least have the fucking balls to be the one who uses the knife," he says. Lucas walks over to the next girl, as you walk up to one. She tries to struggle, but you grab her by the hair, holding her vulnerable throat out and slicing it open with a long cut, before slowly lowering her head to above the grove. Lucas grabs the next girl by the hair, holding her forward and quickly slashing her throat as the blood pours out. You walk to the next one, quickly driving the sword through her neck, slicing open her fleshy throat and letting her bleed into the groove. "Watch them die, Mikhail. You choose for this to happen. Whether you want to actually hold the knife or watch, you're a fucking monster. We all are. At least, we're willing to fulfill our role." "Lucas! Mikhail! Samuel! Come down here!" Count Grey asks. "Quickly!" "We need to go," Mikhail says, quickly turning and heading towards the door. You quickly hurry towards the main hall, walking down the spiraling stairs. Count Grey stands there, alongside his three Viceroys, and Haygarth rushing to put away coats. Viceroy Draven is a tall,well-muscled man. He has long, curly black hair, and instead of the black attire of the other three, he instead dons steel plated armor which covers him from the neck down. A sword hangs by his side. From what you know, he's almost five hundred years old, once being and most likely still remaining a formidable warrior. He looks at you, his eyes narrowing as he stares at you. He lets out a low, guttural growling at the sight of you. Even after years of work around Count Grey, the man manages to make you feel like little more than a blood bag. The second, Viceroy Mihrab, is even older, almost as old as Count Grey. His skin seems unusually tight, a light brown in complex, his face sunken, his eyes lacking any emotion whatsoever. He wears dark attire, his eyes glancing in your direction away for a second, before peering away with disinterest. He doesn't appear to be armed, but with the long, sharp fingernails on his hand that at that length qualify as swords as well as long fangs, he doesn't need them. The final Viceroy, Alexa, is the only woman of te group. She wears a black hooded cloak, her pale, scarred face underneath, with unnaturally long fangs even for one of her kind to halfway down towards her chin. She leans against the wall, looking at you without a single noise. She stares at you like a starved wolf. Something tells you that of all those present, she's the biggest threat. "Yes, master?" Mikhail says, standing up straight. "Werewolves spotted on Hangman's Trail," he says. "They're amassing. Perhaps for a strike." You pause, and can hear the distant howls of what lies between monsters and men. "We'll push them back, sir," Mikhail nods. Mikhail turns away, and quickly begins heading to the armory. You follow, and you all quickly descend the stairs to the armory. You walk inside, grabbing a padded leather duster and slinging it over. You grab a rifle, as well as several magazines of silver bullets, popping them in a satchel that you put over your head. Now suitably armed, you grab a lantern, walking out towards the main hall. The Vampires have left, no doubt to partake in some drinks, discuss future plans, before beginning the ritual and, imbued with a power that grows as the blood moan rises, slaughtering dozens of helpless villagers. You walk out the hall doors, pushing the door open and entering the dark night. You walk along the earth, passing the gate, which for some reason has been left open, one of the Viceroy's carriages sitting under the raised portcullis. "Should we move it so we can drop the portcullis?" you ask. "And piss off Count Grey and whoever owns this carriage? No fucking chance," Lucas says. As you leave and wander off into the trees. Soon, the only sound is the crunching of leaves under foot and your breathing. "Control your breathing. Deep breaths. Watch your foot placement as well as the path in front of you. Avoid twigs and try leaves. We're trying to hunt, best be quiet about it," Lucas says. "The man's most definitely untrustworthy and cruel, but he knows how to hunt. You take his advise, holding the lantern out to illuminate the path ahead. You see a shape move to your right, and stop, immediately twisting to aim. "Contract, left side!" you whisper. "Just a deer, stay focused!" Lucas whispers. "This is a fucking hunting trail, of course there's deer around!" You keep moving, you gun raised in your one hand, propped in the crook of your shoulder to allow you to aim. The beam of your light comes across a deer lying on the ground. It's belly has been ripped to shreds, entrails covering the earth around it and soaking it with bodily fluids. It's head, connected to its body by a few strands of sinew and muscle, lies in the grass at the edge of the path, two lifeless eyes staring towards the stars. "It's fresh, look out!" Lucas growls, as you immediately turn. You see a form rush through the undergrowth, aiming at it, but it's gone before your finger can even tighten on the trigger. A growling comes from the trees to your left, and you swing your rifle over to aim at the beast. They're faster than usual. They're not supposed to be this fast. It must be that fucking moon! A howl comes from your right, and you drop your lantern to aim, catching a glance of blood-matted fur and a flash of white teeth. The beasts don't seem to bee going for the attack, rather endlessly circling, toying with you. None of you have even had the chance to fire a shot. Suddenly you see one of them, basked in the red glow of the moon, dead in the center of the path. This one stands directly there, hunched over and staring at you, clearly not scared in the slightest. It's abnormally large, not even wearing the tattered remains of clothes, covered in patches of fur. it's head is malformed, it's jaws filled with teeth that barely fit in its mouth, crushed into somewhat of a snout. It's hungry eyes stare at you, as it lets out a low growl. > You fire You pull the trigger, as the silver bullet flies through the air. Through the grace of God, or whoever else, the bullet slams into the werewolf's head, smashing into his skull and sending bits of bone, chunks of grey matter and clumps of flesh and fur in various directions. The wolf's massive body stumbles forward, before collapsing to the ground with a thud. You hear a howl, which is immediately answered by dozens of other howls. There must be all the beasts here, stalking you through the forest, all of their power amplified by the power of the blood moon tenfold. Lucas and Mikhail also seem to notice it, immediately letting out a shout. "Run!" Mikhail shouts. You fling your lantern off to the side, setting a pile of dry leaves alight. A fire lights, as the fire quickly engulfs the leaves and grass, dry from lack of rainfall. The fire flares up, distracting the wolves for a split second. You sprint forward, desperately running through the undergrowth and bushes. You jump over a tree root, grabbing Mikhail and pulling him forward as he stumbles. You hear the roars of the werewolves close behind you. You see one sprinting to your side on all fours, it's claws and hind-legs sending it hurtling forward, galloping to your side. It stares at you, howling skyward, as you keep running. You raise the gun, firing off to the side as the werewolf leaps out of the way of the bullet. You hear wet, heavy panting, less than a foot behind you. The castle is close. barely a few hundred feet away. If you get to it, you might be able to get inside and bar the door, or drop the portcullis and keep the werewolves away. Still, you can see the golden hum of torches at the edge of your peripheral, showing the village closest to the house. > You sprint to the castle You keep sprinting forward, as Mikhail yells in pain off to your side a few seconds later. You hear him smack into the ground, and his terrified screams fill the air. You keep running, before you feel your back breaking as the werewolf's claw smashed into your hack, the knife-like claws cutting through your leather duster and slashing through your flesh. You roll to the ground with a scream, as the werewolf leaps onto you, it's weight crushing you. It's wet saliva dripping onto your face, it howls at the moon in an act of triumph, before it lunges forward, biting deep into your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You pull the trigger, as the silver bullet flies through the air. Through the grace of God, or whoever else, the bullet slams into the werewolf's head, smashing into his skull and sending bits of bone, chunks of grey matter and clumps of flesh and fur in various directions. The wolf's massive body stumbles forward, before collapsing to the ground with a thud. You hear a howl, which is immediately answered by dozens of other howls. There must be all the beasts here, stalking you through the forest, all of their power amplified by the power of the blood moon tenfold. Lucas and Mikhail also seem to notice it, immediately letting out a shout. "Run!" Mikhail shouts. You fling your lantern off to the side, setting a pile of dry leaves alight. A fire lights, as the fire quickly engulfs the leaves and grass, dry from lack of rainfall. The fire flares up, distracting the wolves for a split second. You sprint forward, desperately running through the undergrowth and bushes. You jump over a tree root, grabbing Mikhail and pulling him forward as he stumbles. You hear the roars of the werewolves close behind you. You see one sprinting to your side on all fours, it's claws and hind-legs sending it hurtling forward, galloping to your side. It stares at you, howling skyward, as you keep running. You raise the gun, firing off to the side as the werewolf leaps out of the way of the bullet. You hear wet, heavy panting, less than a foot behind you. The castle is close. barely a few hundred feet away. If you get to it, you might be able to get inside and bar the door, or drop the portcullis and keep the werewolves away. Still, you can see the golden hum of torches at the edge of your peripheral, showing the village closest to the house. > You take the detour through the village "Come on, you shout," running towards the village. Your hands push tree branches out of the way as you leave the path, almost tripping as your legs catch in the undergrowth, but manage to keep going. You stumble into the village, grabbing the corner of the house to steady yourself, as the werewolves charge into the village. Thankfully, a few peasants have been caught with their doors barely barricaded. The werewolves smash through hastily nailed planks and into the huts inside to devour a feast of flesh, bone, brains and organs. You hear horrified screams as the beasts get distracted and begin to tear apart the poor souls who have been left inside. "Ah!" Mikhail screams, as one of the more focused hunters knocks him to the ground with its claw. "Shit, Mikhail! Samuel, cover me!" Lucas says, skidding to a halt to help his brother. > You help the twins You grab the bolt of your rifle, pulling it back as you twist around and firing. The gun flies back in your hand as the recoil almost knocks you back as the werewolf takes the shot to its center mass, being knocked off Mikhail and letting out a high-pitched whimper as it quickly retreats back to the safety of the shadowy trees. Lucas grabs Mikhail. pulling him up to his feet as he joins you in running. As the werewolves are distracted with their prey, you continue sprinting towards the tower. Unfortunately, you see one of the werewolves stand in the center of the village. It's larger than the others, its fur white and its eyes red. It stares at you for a second, before it lets out a powerful, booming howl. The other werewolves emerge from the buildings, blood matting their fur and dripping from their claws. The Alpha Male drops to all fours and begins sprinting away towards you, followed by the others. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" Lucas says, as you see the castle. You sprint, the only noise being your heavy panting and the thudding of boots and clawed feet on the earth. You reach the castle, sprinting through the gates and past the carriages parked there. You see the portcullis' control wheel to your left, and the heavy wooden door to the keep to your right. > You close the portcullis You grab the wheel, freeing it of its latch and stepping back as the wheel frantically spins around. the portcullis smashing into the carriage in the middle of the gate. Although the carriage's roof is smashed, it prevents the portcullis from closing completely. The werewolves arrives, bursting under the gate and into the grounds. You frantically head to the door, before a massive bundle of flesh and fur smashes into you, shattering your bones. You painfully smash into the ground, looking up to see a massive, white werewolf sitting atop your broken body. It stares down at you, it's blood red eyes filled with an animalistic hunger, devoid of any sentience beyond that of the wolf it's body has morphed to imitate. You close your eyes. Thankfully, this beast doesn't like to play with its food, and finishes you quickly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the bolt of your rifle, pulling it back as you twist around and firing. The gun flies back in your hand as the recoil almost knocks you back as the werewolf takes the shot to its center mass, being knocked off Mikhail and letting out a high-pitched whimper as it quickly retreats back to the safety of the shadowy trees. Lucas grabs Mikhail. pulling him up to his feet as he joins you in running. As the werewolves are distracted with their prey, you continue sprinting towards the tower. Unfortunately, you see one of the werewolves stand in the center of the village. It's larger than the others, its fur white and its eyes red. It stares at you for a second, before it lets out a powerful, booming howl. The other werewolves emerge from the buildings, blood matting their fur and dripping from their claws. The Alpha Male drops to all fours and begins sprinting away towards you, followed by the others. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" Lucas says, as you see the castle. You sprint, the only noise being your heavy panting and the thudding of boots and clawed feet on the earth. You reach the castle, sprinting through the gates and past the carriages parked there. You see the portcullis' control wheel to your left, and the heavy wooden door to the keep to your right. > You get inside the castle You burst towards the wooden door, unlatching it and opening it so Lucas and Mikhail can topple in. You quickly close the door behind them, seeing the eyes of one of the beasts as as it desperately stares at you with the rage of a hungry and stuck lion. You lock the door as it's weight smashes into the hard wood with enough force to splinter it. "There's not supposed to be that many! There's not that fucking many!" Lucas says. "There must be every cursed wretch under the moon's gaze," you mutter. Mikhail spits blood onto his chest. "Christ..." he groans, as Lucas chuckles. "Oh dear brother, Count Grey would tear your throat out if he heard you mutter that fucker's name here," Lucas smiles. "Samuel, help me. We need to get Mikhail to the medical bay." "Can't you handle him? I need to go warn Count Grey and the viceroys," you say. "Yes, sure," Lucas says, grabbing Mikhail and putting his arm over his shoulder. He walks towards medical bay, as you quickly hurry up the stairs to the sacrificial chambers. You walk upstairs quickly, heading through the lounge. You reach the door to the sacrificial chambers, before pausing. You can hear whispered voices inside, almost drowned out by the roars of the werewolves outside. How has Count Grey not noticed the attack? Why is he still in the sacrificial chambers? You tilt your head forward, and you think you can make out the words if you try hard enough. > You eavesdrop You press your head against the wooden door, as you hear voices on the other side. "You're nothing more than rotten curs fixed with mange!" Count Grey snarls. "Why aren't we killing yet?" Draven asks. "We could run out pitiful master through and be done with it!" "There will be thousands of Blood moons, millions of hunting nights, but there will only ever be one Count Grey. I want to... savor his death," Mihrab says. "I'll skin you alive!" Count Grey howls. "What about his servants?" Alexa asks. "The crippled hunchback is no threat, Draven can hunt him down. The others will have been wiped out by the wulven," Mihrab commands. "What ab...? Understood," Alexa says, seemingly confused. "And the wulven?" Draven asks. "They're beasts with neither honor nor reason, nothing but instinct driving them forward. They can't be trusted." "They are the most trustworthy beings in existence," Mihrab says. "I can trust that they're too stupid to think to attack us, their bellies driving them forward to feast on the villagers instead of making a move for power. I can predict they think themselves too important, even as pawns, to know we plan to hunt them down when they're mortals the next moonless night. Hell, normal mortals are infinitely less manipulative. The mixture of fear, loyalty, honor, greed and ambition that drives them makes them hard to predict, let alone manipulate successfully." "You're going to die. You're going to suffer. I'll tear out your throat and fuck your bleeding neck stump, just like I should've when you were a pathetic mortal! I'll..." Count Grey threatens. Count Grey's voice stops abruptly as you hear the slicing of flesh followed by a desperate wet gurgling. The gurgling lasts about a minute, which the vampires stay silent for. Finally, it stops. "Goodbye, dear master," Mihrab says. "Good. We're finished here. I'm going to find that miserable humpback and take his head. Perhaps I might gift his body to the peasants under my control. The children should enjoy looking at his misshapen body, poking and prodding at it." You back step as you hear Draven begin moving, but he heads to the second door of the sacrificial chambers. Mihrab's steps follow him. "I'll follow. I need to make sure the albino knows his place." "The sound of footsteps fades as the pair leave. You breath out a sigh of relief. Suddenly, you find a dagger poking into your throat. "Look what we have here," Viceroy Alexa says, as she appears from the shadows. She doesn't exactly step out of the shadows, instead the shadows manifest, forming into material as the vampire appears in front of you. You take a deep breath, staring at her. She pushes the dagger against your neck, drawing blood that gently trickles down your neck. Her forked tongue darts forward and licks the blood as it runs down your neck, before she opens her mouth wide, her fangs pricking out. She gently scrapes her teeth along your neck, her breath as cold as a corpse, causing the hairs to stand on your neck. "Look at you," she says in a half-purr, half-growl. "You outsmarted the wolves, or maybe just got lucky. Unexpected, but not surprising. How did you manage to eavesdrop?" "I... I..." you stammer, reaching slowly for your gun. Unsurprisingly, Draven was too focused on killing to notice you, but Mihrab should've noticed you. You're nothing special. I could hear your footsteps up the stairs, you leaning slightly on the door, your heavy breathing. I don't know how you didn't get noticed, let alone the girl." Your hand wraps around the gun, as you slowly raise it to point at the monster's head. "Maybe Mihrab is too old, too proud, too over-confident to expect much from humans, not thinking to even check for you as you weren't a risk. Perhaps he needs to be taken off his so new throne. I'll admit, I like you. You have... balls. Listening in on three powerful vampires, pledging yourself to old Count Grey, even trying to grab your gun when my fangs are less than an inch away from your throat..." You grab your gun, raising it as your hand goes from the trigger. With the flat of her hand, Alexa slams it into your chest, knocking you against the wall as she grabs the gun from her hands. "You're weak. Slow. Stupid. One of the qualms of being human, I suppose," Alexa says, examining your rifle. "Uh, how I miss being able to eat some warm bread, drink myself stupid on cheap beer and feel the warmth of the sun on my face. Thankfully, I'm still able to enjoy some other... base pleasures. I'm so close to slicing your vein open and feasting on your delicious blood..." "Fuck you. Why don't you just kill me?" you spit. "Kill you? Why would I do that? You'll either fail and be killed, in which case why would I expend energy to kill you, or you'll succeed, and kill Draven and Mihrab, both of who will underestimate how dangerous you'll be, in which case they needed to die. If you do happen to kill them, please, come find me. I'm sure I'd like to talk to you at that point." Alexa steps back, smiling at you. She tosses the gun to the ground, where it clatters across the stone floor. She swirls around, walking away from you. She bursts forward, quickly speeding off. You let out a sigh of relief, grabbing your gun and picking it up. Fucking hell. You have three vampires and a pack of werewolves to deal with. Could things get...? Actually, you'll refrain from tempting fate. > You search the Sacrificial Chambers You walk into the sacrificial chambers. You walk over to Count Grey, who has a deep wound going through his chest and lies on the ground. You step over the blood-filled grooves of the floor, walking over to him. You drop to a knee, checking his pulse, before mentally hitting yourself for being so stupid. He's undead. You pull back his eyelids, revealing dull, lifeless black eyes. You quickly pat him down, finding only a curved ebony dagger and some Leu on him, which you take. You gently pat his cold head as a matter of respect, or perhaps more likely to comfort yourself. The terrifying menace who has controlled the region for over a thousand years is dead. He was your master, your mentor and your liege. "Good fucking riddance. He was a cold, sociopathic cunt," you say aloud, a part of you still terrified to say it, somehow expecting him to wake up and tear out your throat. You stand, looking around. There's the doorway to the lower floors, where you,,, A girl charges out from your blind side, holding up a dagger. > You shoot your gun You quickly raise your gun, firing it. The gun bucks in your hands as the bullet tears through the air forward, blowing out the girl's heart. She collapses onto the ground, her head smacking into the cold stone and falling into the groove. You stare at her face, recognizing Dasha, the sacrificial victim you kidnapped from earlier. Huh, she had survived. Must've gotten free of the chains. Did you even chain her up, or did you just leave her unconscious? Huh, doesn't matter. She's dead now. > You keep searching the room You keep looking through the room, finding several vials of blood sitting on a table off to the side. You open one of the table's drawers, before suddenly the door bursts open. Standing there, clad in armor with long, wild flowing black hair and a face contorted by rage and anger. "Yes! I thought I heard a gunshot! I was hoping for the cripple, but a ghoul will do!" he snarls, approaching. The vampire charges forward with remarkable speed. You raise your gun quickly, firing. The bullet thuds into Draven's chest, but it fails to even slightly slow him down. He swings the sword, slicing through your muscle and sinew and separating your head from your body. His lips immediately wrap around your gaping neck hole as he drains you of your blood, your head falling to the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly raise your gun, firing it. The gun bucks in your hands as the bullet tears through the air forward, blowing out the girl's heart. She collapses onto the ground, her head smacking into the cold stone and falling into the groove. You stare at her face, recognizing Dasha, the sacrificial victim you kidnapped from earlier. Huh, she had survived. Must've gotten free of the chains. Did you even chain her up, or did you just leave her unconscious? Huh, doesn't matter. She's dead now. > You head to the lower floors You walk towards the door to the lower floors, unclicking the latch. Before you can pull it open, something slams into it, sending you flying across the ground and onto your ass with a painful thud. Standing there, clad in armor with long, wild flowing black hair and a face contorted by rage and anger. "Yes! I thought I heard a gunshot! I was hoping for the cripple, but a ghoul will do!" he snarls, approaching. The vampire charges forward with remarkable speed. You raise your gun quickly, firing. The bullet thuds into Draven's chest, but it fails to even slightly slow him down. He swings the sword as he leaps upon you, slicing through your muscle and sinew and separating your head from your body. His lips immediately wrap around your gaping neck hole as he drains you of your blood, your head rolling to the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk into the sacrificial chambers. You walk over to Count Grey, who has a deep wound going through his chest and lies on the ground. You step over the blood-filled grooves of the floor, walking over to him. You drop to a knee, checking his pulse, before mentally hitting yourself for being so stupid. He's undead. You pull back his eyelids, revealing dull, lifeless black eyes. You quickly pat him down, finding only a curved ebony dagger and some Leu on him, which you take. You gently pat his cold head as a matter of respect, or perhaps more likely to comfort yourself. The terrifying menace who has controlled the region for over a thousand years is dead. He was your master, your mentor and your liege. "Good fucking riddance. He was a cold, sociopathic cunt," you say aloud, a part of you still terrified to say it, somehow expecting him to wake up and tear out your throat. You stand, looking around. There's the doorway to the lower floors, where you,,, A girl charges out from your blind side, holding up a dagger. > You strike her with the butt of your gun You swing the butt of your gun, cracking into the side of her face and knocking her to the ground with a grunt. The knife goes clattering, and you dart forward, grabbing the knife and raising your rifle to point at her. "Who the fuck are you?" The girl stares at you with anger, blood running down her face from the newly opened cut on her forehead. You recognize her as Dasha, the sacrificial victim from earlier. Huh, apparently she survived. Interesting. "Hands in the air!" you say, pointing the gun at her head. She slowly raises her hands, spitting blood and a tooth on the ground. Apparently, you swung harder than you thought. "Fuck you!" she says. "You need to listen to me," you say. The girl swings at your head, but you catch her fist. She spits in your face, which you wince at. > You headbutt her You swing your head forward, your forehead smashing into the bridge of her nose and knocking her head back as she yells in pain. "Listen!" you say loudly, losing your patience. "Did you see those fucking vampires!?" The girl stares at you, still defiant, but quiet. "If we want to get out of this, we need to work together. I don't care how much you hate me for doing what I did to you, but we need to." "You work for the vampires," she says. "I work for that one," you say, nodding towards Count Grey. "The others killed him, and now they want to kill me... and you. We're on the same side here, understood?" The girl pauses, before slowly nodding. "If I let you up, you won't try anything?" you ask. "Give me my knife," she replies. "I can't trust you," you say. "I can't trust you either," she says. You sigh, before handing the knife back. She grabs it from your, staring at her reflection in the blade for a brief moment, looking as if contemplating attacks, before looking at you. "What's the plan?" she asks. "I don't know. We need to... Haygarth," you say. "We need to find him. He should be in the stables. He knows this place better than anyone. He'll have keys, know secret tunnels, know everything." "Let's go, then," Dasha says. > You head to the stables You walk along the hallways towards the stable, your gun clenched tightly in your hands. You consider pushing Dasha ahead of you so anything that attacks has to cut through her first, but that's not the right thing to do. It's better to keep her behind you, in case a creature attacks from behind, and you can fight off whoever attacks from the front with your rifle. You walk past the rows of unlit torches that cover the walls, wishing they were lit. You aim your gun ahead, sweeping the barrel to check the corners for any hidden beasts that could be hidden away there. "We need to hurry up, h.." Dasha says. Suddenly, one of the windows several meters above you shatters as the upper half of a body smashes through it. It hits the wall with a wet thud, collapsing to the ground. Dasha screams as you desperately back pedal to avoid it. "Fuck me!" you say. "The villagers must be having a bad night." "Oh god," Dasha says. You hear a terrified scream outside. It sounds female, and young. Very young. "Help! Help! Mama!" a voice screams from outside. "We need to help her!" Dasha says, a look of panic flooding through her. "Do you want to fight the Wulven?" you ask. "I'm not." You try to appear tough as Dasha stares you down, before looking away. You hear a high-pitched scream, before the crunching of bone and flesh. "It's done. Let's go," you say. "The village is down the road! Why the fuck would they bring the villagers here to kill them?" Dasha says. "Break our morale, or act as bait, maybe. They're intelligent, for abominable beasts. Now, let's move on." You continue walking forward, reaching a wooden door. You press up against it, waiting. "Here it it." "This is the door to the stables," you whisper. "You ready?" "Ready. I'll follow your lead." > You head in You take a deep breath, bashing open the door with your shoulder, raising your rifle. Draven stands there, a sword in his hands and a grin on his face as he stands over a heavily injured Haygarth, who has been stripped naked and is covered in bruising and cuts. "Don't you know how, freak? I said do it!" Draven shouts. He swings his blade and smacks Haygarth in the side of the head with the flat of his blade, knocking Haygarth to the floor. "Dance!" Draven laughs, before his eyes flicker to you. "Look who it is! One of Grey's ghouls and... I've no fucking idea who you are, but you look like a bleeder!" Haygarth lets out a terrified yell as you aim your rifle, as Draven lets out a roar, sprinting towards you with insane speed, even faster than you've seen Count Grey sprint. > You shoot Draven You fire your rifle, the bullet slamming into Draven, although even with all the stopping power that causes the gun to buck violently in your hands, but Draven doesn't even slow down. You grab the rifle to pull back and release the shell, before Draven's upon you. He thrusts his sword forward, running it through your chest. Your heart is destroyed as you yell in pain, before his head darts forward and his fangs sink into your neck.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You take a deep breath, bashing open the door with your shoulder, raising your rifle. Draven stands there, a sword in his hands and a grin on his face as he stands over a heavily injured Haygarth, who has been stripped naked and is covered in bruising and cuts. "Don't you know how, freak? I said do it!" Draven shouts. He swings his blade and smacks Haygarth in the side of the head with the flat of his blade, knocking Haygarth to the floor. "Dance!" Draven laughs, before his eyes flicker to you. "Look who it is! One of Grey's ghouls and... I've no fucking idea who you are, but you look like a bleeder!" Haygarth lets out a terrified yell as you aim your rifle, as Draven lets out a roar, sprinting towards you with insane speed, even faster than you've seen Count Grey sprint. > You roll out of the way You dive out of the way, as Draven flies just past you, swinging his sword. His sword slices into the back of your neck, not enough to seriously wound but enough to hurt like a bitch. He slams into the door behind you, grunting as he spins around. He wipes the blood from his broken nose as he stares at the two of you, before letting out a horrible laugh. "Got too excited there, didn't I? Ha!" he smiles, twirling the sword around in his hands. You look around desperately, for something, ANYTHING in the room to help you out. Dasha is just as in the cross-hairs as you are, and seems terrified. Haygarth is hiding behind a counter, unfocused and not thinking. Most of the horses are dead, having had their heads cleaved clean off. Still, there's three or four in the farther stables. There's two large, oil-filled lamps illuminating the hallways that could be used. Fire has a history of being effective with monsters. Finally, there's the old full lead solution. If you just duck, weave and fill the air with as much lead, or in this case silver, as possible to take out the vampire bastard, although silver bullets are more of a werewolf-killer. > You get to the horses You sprint towards the horses, your rifle held tightly in your hands as you run towards them. Draven charges ahead with a howl, kicking your leg away as you collapse onto the ground, laughing. "Look at you try to run! Where are you trying to run to, little one?" he asks, before his eyes flicker to Dasha who goes for the door. Draven runs ahead with an animalistic howl, slamming her into the door. He presses the sword to her throat, before throwing into the air and catching it once more. "Ohh... this is everything! Savor the hunt!" he says. "Go! Try escape again! Or are you in a fighting mood?" > You try for the horses again You sprint towards the horses once more, as Draven pauses, raising an eyebrow as he strolls after you. You reach the horses, as Draven walks towards you. You unclasp the gate as the horses stand there. "What... what was your plan?" he asks, looking genuinely confused. "Were you hoping to have the horses stampede me? Were you planning on riding one to safety?" Draven twirls his sword, running it through you. You grunt in pain, blood dripping out your mouth as you collapse to your knees. "I've had my fun. Goodnight, ghoul," he says. You collapse forward onto your stomach, running the sword even further into you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sprint towards the horses, your rifle held tightly in your hands as you run towards them. Draven charges ahead with a howl, kicking your leg away as you collapse onto the ground, laughing. "Look at you try to run! Where are you trying to run to, little one?" he asks, before his eyes flicker to Dasha who goes for the door. Draven runs ahead with an animalistic howl, slamming her into the door. He presses the sword to her throat, before throwing into the air and catching it once more. "Ohh... this is everything! Savor the hunt!" he says. "Go! Try escape again! Or are you in a fighting mood?" > You try for the lamp You run towards the lamp, as Draven smiles. "Running for the door now, are we?" he asks, mistaking your attempt to grab the lamp as an attempt to flee. Draven yells and charges forward. He swings his sword as you run for the lamp, and the next thing you know, you feel the cold bite of steel on your neck. Your head flies through the air, and your body collapses to the straw-covered floor.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sprint towards the horses, your rifle held tightly in your hands as you run towards them. Draven charges ahead with a howl, kicking your leg away as you collapse onto the ground, laughing. "Look at you try to run! Where are you trying to run to, little one?" he asks, before his eyes flicker to Dasha who goes for the door. Draven runs ahead with an animalistic howl, slamming her into the door. He presses the sword to her throat, before throwing into the air and catching it once more. "Ohh... this is everything! Savor the hunt!" he says. "Go! Try escape again! Or are you in a fighting mood?" > You fire! You raise your gun and fire. Draven takes a shot to the shoulder, before side-stepping your next. He doesn't even attempt to charge, just grins. You keep firing, as he dodges the bullets with unnatural ease, even the lucky shots not even throwing him, and they only manage to graze or hit his central mass, which fails to even knock him back. You aim your rifle at Draven's head, as he gently taps his finger against it. "Come on, boy!" he says, laughing. "Take the shot! I'm enjoying this! I won't even move this time!" You peer down the sights, taking a deep breath, and you pull the trigger. It's empty. "Can't even c...?" Draven laughs, before grunting. Draven steps forward, before collapsing onto his stomach. A knife is imbedded in the back of his heart, directly where his heart it. He groans, spluttering blood, before lying still. Dasha stands behind him, a fierce look on her face. "They die easier than they did in my childhood nightmares," she says. "What now?" > You talk to Haygarth “Haygarth, what happened?” “He came for my head! Yelled at me and made me dance and work for him, the little cunt!” Haygarth says. “We need to get out of here. There…” “Is… is Count Grey truly dead?” “Yes,” you reply. “I never thought I’d see the day,” Haygarth says. “And the rest of what the vampire knight said was true? Vampires and werewolves have taken the castle?” “The area’s fucked, werewolves had surrounded the castle, the there’s still two other incredibly hostile vampires here.” “Where is Masters Lucas and Mikhail?” “They’re in the medical bay. We don’t need to think about them. We need to think about escape. They’re fine.” “Haygarth, is it? Dasha asks. “ “Yes,” Haygarth says, frowning. “You’re one of the sacrifices.” “I have a name. It’s Dasha.” “So be it,” Haygarth says. “Are there any secret passages that could get us out of here?” Dasha asks. “No, we wouldn’t have anything like that. The main gate’s the only way out, unless you’re willing to dive off the wall and pray your legs are all that ends up broken. Count Grey has become too paranoid, always thinking a Vampire Hunter would find there way in.” "So what can we do?" you ask. "The coach," Haygarth says. "We need to get out of here. We board it up heavily, and just make a run for it." "It's suicide!" you say. "Is it the only option?" Dasha asks. "Yes," Haygarth says. "There's werewolves out there! They'll easily wipe us out," you say. "We need to leave soon, before the werewolves find a way inside or the other two vampires find us. Are you willing to come?" Haygarth asks. > You agree "Fine. I'm in." "You must go find Mikhail and Lucas in the medical bay." "Do you expect him to traverse this castle, no doubt being found out by the vampires, whilst we're forced to wait here?" Dasha asks. "We need to go." > You leave without them "We need to go, now. They're probably already dead," you say. "Yes, sir," Haygarth says. "We must prepare the coach." Over the next few minutes, you board up whatever scrap wood you can over the carriage windows. Soon, you have what amounts to a massive, armored wooden box. "You can fire out the slits, to protect the horses. Hopefully, they'll be fast enough to escape the beasts' claws." Dasha climbs into the coach as Haygarth positions the reigns through the coach itself, so that he can control the horses without exposing himself. "Make as much noise as possible, to draw the werewolf's attention to us instead of the horses," Haygarth says, as he climbs in the coach. "Now, open the stable doors." You take a deep breath, unlatching the stable doors. You give them a hefty push open, as Haygarth yells at the horses to go. You run forward, grabbing onto the back of the coach and pulling yourself inside as Haygarth grabs the door and slams it shut behind you. You raise your rifle, pressing it to a firing shot and looking outside. The wolves are outside, as they prowl about the walls and the courtyard like a bad rabble, fighting over the bodies, both dead and living, of peasants, as well as searching for a way in. The big, albino one notices you, and lets out a loud, powerful howl, and the wolves charge. > You target the albino You aim your rifle, firing at the albino. The bullets slam into the albino as it roars in pain, before the nearing werewolves slam into your coach. Their massive, muscled frames slam through the wooden coach, knocking you against the other coach. A claw comes through the wall, grabbing you and tossing you against the ground, shattering your bones. You let out a pained scream, before the wolves are upon you, eagerly tearing you apart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"We need to go, now. They're probably already dead," you say. "Yes, sir," Haygarth says. "We must prepare the coach." Over the next few minutes, you board up whatever scrap wood you can over the carriage windows. Soon, you have what amounts to a massive, armored wooden box. "You can fire out the slits, to protect the horses. Hopefully, they'll be fast enough to escape the beasts' claws." Dasha climbs into the coach as Haygarth positions the reigns through the coach itself, so that he can control the horses without exposing himself. "Make as much noise as possible, to draw the werewolf's attention to us instead of the horses," Haygarth says, as he climbs in the coach. "Now, open the stable doors." You take a deep breath, unlatching the stable doors. You give them a hefty push open, as Haygarth yells at the horses to go. You run forward, grabbing onto the back of the coach and pulling yourself inside as Haygarth grabs the door and slams it shut behind you. You raise your rifle, pressing it to a firing shot and looking outside. The wolves are outside, as they prowl about the walls and the courtyard like a bad rabble, fighting over the bodies, both dead and living, of peasants, as well as searching for a way in. The big, albino one notices you, and lets out a loud, powerful howl, and the wolves charge. > You target the nearing werewolves You target the nearing werewolves, firing bullet after bullet. The silver bullets slam into the beasts as they howl, many collapsing and falling away. You keep them away from the coach, but not the horses. As you just make it past the castle gates and smashing past the viceroy's coach, the werewolves tear the horses apart as they neigh and whiny in terror as they're devoured by the eager wolves. You coach quickly slows down, slamming into a tree and stopping suddenly. "Shit!" Dasha yells. Shit. You need to act. > You get out and run towards the nearest village "Run!" you yell, kicking open the carriage door and leaping outside into the forest. You sprint forward, as the werewolves reach the carriage. You hear Haygarth, simply too slow to flee, scream in pain. You keep running, before you feel your back breaking as the werewolf's claw smashed into your hack, the knife-like claws cutting through your leather duster and slashing through your flesh. You roll to the ground with a scream, as the werewolf leaps onto you, it's weight crushing you. It's wet saliva dripping onto your face, it howls at the moon in an act of triumph, before it lunges forward, biting deep into your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You target the nearing werewolves, firing bullet after bullet. The silver bullets slam into the beasts as they howl, many collapsing and falling away. You keep them away from the coach, but not the horses. As you just make it past the castle gates and smashing past the viceroy's coach, the werewolves tear the horses apart as they neigh and whiny in terror as they're devoured by the eager wolves. You coach quickly slows down, slamming into a tree and stopping suddenly. "Shit!" Dasha yells. Shit. You need to act. > You defend the coach You aim your rifle, firing repeatedly. You fire at the werewolves from the slit, bullets slamming into the fur-covered beasts. A claw slams into the coach, breaking through the side, its claws slashing at the air as you back step to avoid it. A claw tears a massive panel of wood off the side of the coach and you shove the barrel through the firing slit, firing at the creature's black, beady eyes. A claw smashes through the coach, grabbing you as it tears you from the coach, gripping you tightly. You're held in the air staring into the black eyes of the Alpha Werewolf, as it growls. The gun flies from your hands as you desperately reach for it, before the claw tightens, crushing your limbs. The werewolf's huge, tooth-filled jaws fly forward, its teeth grabbing into your throat and tearing it out, before it flings your bleeding body into a tree, killing you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Fine. I'm in." "You must go find Mikhail and Lucas in the medical bay." "Do you expect him to traverse this castle, no doubt being found out by the vampires, whilst we're forced to wait here?" Dasha asks. "We need to go." > You go find the Twins "I'll find Lucas. You two stay here and prepare the coach, understood?" you say. "Yes, sir," Haygarth says, as Dasha nods. You turn, opening the doorway to the stables and entering the hallway. You take a breath, holding your rifle, and walking slowly along the hallways. You step slowly forward, looking along the dark, shadowy corridor. You feel a breath of cold air on your deck, quickly spinning to aim your rifle, only to find yourself staring at a shadow-filled corner. You turn, walking ahead again. You keep walking forward, as the figures in the paintings along the wall stare down at you, their eyes seemingly following you. You see a figure, writhed in a black cloak and shadows, leaning in an alcove. You quickly raise your gun and fire, but your bullet only slams into the stone alcove. You swear, grabbing the bolt and pulling it back. Suddenly, a gloved hand grabs you by the shoulder as a pair of sharp fangs prick into your neck, gently pressing into your neck. You pause, as their hand moves forward and grabs your rifle, which you allow them to take. The fangs pull away, breathing freezing cold air on the back of your neck. "Still here, huh?" Alexa asks. "I thought you were trying to escape, or at least kill Mihrab. From where you're going, it doesn't seem likely." "I'm getting my friends and getting out of here." "Optimistic," she says. "If you're not going to kill Mihrab for me, I might as well kill you," she says. You flinch and yelp as her lips close around your lips, before she laughs. "Ha! I like you, ghoul. You're going to die tonight, that's for sure, but I won't be the one killing you. Mihrab's busy, you can speed up a bit." She releases you, dropping the gun on the ground. You grab it quickly, stepping forward and spinning around to aim, only to be faced with shadows once more. "Fuck," you say. You turn, rushing along the halls. You open the door, pulling it open and walking inside the next room, the lounge. You quickly pass through, heading into the medical bay. He door is locked, so you quickly knock on it. You hear the door click unlocked as the door swings open, and someone grabs your arm, throwing you inside and onto the floor. You roll over as you stare at the barrel of a gun, looking up as Lucas aims his rifle at you. "Shit, what happened you?" Lucas asks, grabbing you by the hand and pulling you to your feet. "Count Grey is dead. The Viceroys betrayed him," you say. "Yeah, I suspected as much," Lucas admits. "We need to get the hell out of here. We have to find Haygarth." "He's in the stables with the girl. We're preparing the coach to escape. "The girl?" Lucas asks, frowning in confusion. "One of the girls we were going to sacrifice," you say. "Why didn't you kill her?" Lucas asks. "We need all the help we can get," you reply. "Fine," Lucas says. "Help me shift Mikhail." You look behind him, where Mikhail lies, heavily bandaged, in the medical bay's bed. He's unconscious, but moves his head slightly and groans upon hearing his name. You walk over, slinging your rifle over your back and grabbing Mikhail's left arm. You pull him up, as Lucas grabs his other arm, supporting him as he stands. "What is going on?" Mikhail mumbles. "We're getting out of here." "Let me stand, I can walk," Mikhail says, gently pushing at you. > You let him walk You let go of your grips on Lucas, as he immediately collapses face first on the ground. "Idiot," Lucas sighs, as you both lean over, grabbing him again. You continue walking, heading into the lounge, as Lucas pauses. "Put him down for a second," he says. He walks over to the lounge's bar, and begins grabbing several bottles, several boxes of matches, an oil lamp and more. He works for about a minute, before ending with with four bottles of oil and alcohol on the table topped with rags "What the fuck are those?" you ask. "Bombs. Light the rag, toss it, burn the monster," Lucas says. "Take two." You grab two, sliding into your leather duster's pockets, before grabbing a box of matches. "Alright, let's continue." You keep half-dragging, half-walking Mikhail towards the stables, before you finally arrive. You kick open the doors, as you all stumble inside, closing and locking the door behind you. "You're here. Good," Haygarth says. "We're ready to go." > You help Mikhail into the coach You help Mikhail clamber up into the coach, before turning to Haygarth. "You can fire out the slits, to protect the horses. Hopefully, they'll be fast enough to escape the beasts' claws." Dasha climbs into the coach as Haygarth positions the reigns through the coach itself, so that he can control the horses without exposing himself. "Make as much noise as possible, to draw the werewolf's attention to us instead of the horses," Haygarth says, as he climbs in the coach, followed by Lucas. "Now, open the stable doors." You take a deep breath, unlatching the stable doors. You give them a hefty push open, as Haygarth yells at the horses to go. You run forward, grabbing onto the back of the coach and pulling yourself inside as Lucas grabs the door and slams it shut behind you. You raise your rifle, pressing it to a firing shot and looking outside. The wolves are outside, as they prowl about the walls and the courtyard like a bad rabble, fighting over the bodies, both dead and living, of peasants, as well as searching for a way in. The big, albino one notices you, and lets out a loud, powerful howl, and the wolves charge.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'll find Lucas. You two stay here and prepare the coach, understood?" you say. "Yes, sir," Haygarth says, as Dasha nods. You turn, opening the doorway to the stables and entering the hallway. You take a breath, holding your rifle, and walking slowly along the hallways. You step slowly forward, looking along the dark, shadowy corridor. You feel a breath of cold air on your deck, quickly spinning to aim your rifle, only to find yourself staring at a shadow-filled corner. You turn, walking ahead again. You keep walking forward, as the figures in the paintings along the wall stare down at you, their eyes seemingly following you. You see a figure, writhed in a black cloak and shadows, leaning in an alcove. You quickly raise your gun and fire, but your bullet only slams into the stone alcove. You swear, grabbing the bolt and pulling it back. Suddenly, a gloved hand grabs you by the shoulder as a pair of sharp fangs prick into your neck, gently pressing into your neck. You pause, as their hand moves forward and grabs your rifle, which you allow them to take. The fangs pull away, breathing freezing cold air on the back of your neck. "Still here, huh?" Alexa asks. "I thought you were trying to escape, or at least kill Mihrab. From where you're going, it doesn't seem likely." "I'm getting my friends and getting out of here." "Optimistic," she says. "If you're not going to kill Mihrab for me, I might as well kill you," she says. You flinch and yelp as her lips close around your lips, before she laughs. "Ha! I like you, ghoul. You're going to die tonight, that's for sure, but I won't be the one killing you. Mihrab's busy, you can speed up a bit." She releases you, dropping the gun on the ground. You grab it quickly, stepping forward and spinning around to aim, only to be faced with shadows once more. "Fuck," you say. You turn, rushing along the halls. You open the door, pulling it open and walking inside the next room, the lounge. You quickly pass through, heading into the medical bay. He door is locked, so you quickly knock on it. You hear the door click unlocked as the door swings open, and someone grabs your arm, throwing you inside and onto the floor. You roll over as you stare at the barrel of a gun, looking up as Lucas aims his rifle at you. "Shit, what happened you?" Lucas asks, grabbing you by the hand and pulling you to your feet. "Count Grey is dead. The Viceroys betrayed him," you say. "Yeah, I suspected as much," Lucas admits. "We need to get the hell out of here. We have to find Haygarth." "He's in the stables with the girl. We're preparing the coach to escape. "The girl?" Lucas asks, frowning in confusion. "One of the girls we were going to sacrifice," you say. "Why didn't you kill her?" Lucas asks. "We need all the help we can get," you reply. "Fine," Lucas says. "Help me shift Mikhail." You look behind him, where Mikhail lies, heavily bandaged, in the medical bay's bed. He's unconscious, but moves his head slightly and groans upon hearing his name. You walk over, slinging your rifle over your back and grabbing Mikhail's left arm. You pull him up, as Lucas grabs his other arm, supporting him as he stands. "What is going on?" Mikhail mumbles. "We're getting out of here." "Let me stand, I can walk," Mikhail says, gently pushing at you. > You continue carrying him "No, brother, you can't walk," Lucas smiles, continuing walking. You continue walking, heading into the lounge, as Lucas pauses. "Put him down for a second," he says. He walks over to the lounge's bar, and begins grabbing several bottles, several boxes of matches, an oil lamp and more. He works for about a minute, before ending with with four bottles of oil and alcohol on the table topped with rags "What the fuck are those?" you ask. "Bombs. Light the rag, toss it, burn the monster," Lucas says. "Take two." You grab two, sliding into your leather duster's pockets, before grabbing a box of matches. "Alright, let's continue." You keep half-dragging, half-walking Mikhail towards the stables, before you finally arrive. You kick open the doors, as you all stumble inside, closing and locking the door behind you. "You're here. Good," Haygarth says. "We're ready to go."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Haygarth, what happened?” “He came for my head! Yelled at me and made me dance and work for him, the little cunt!” Haygarth says. “We need to get out of here. There…” “Is… is Count Grey truly dead?” “Yes,” you reply. “I never thought I’d see the day,” Haygarth says. “And the rest of what the vampire knight said was true? Vampires and werewolves have taken the castle?” “The area’s fucked, werewolves had surrounded the castle, the there’s still two other incredibly hostile vampires here.” “Where is Masters Lucas and Mikhail?” “They’re in the medical bay. We don’t need to think about them. We need to think about escape. They’re fine.” “Haygarth, is it? Dasha asks. “ “Yes,” Haygarth says, frowning. “You’re one of the sacrifices.” “I have a name. It’s Dasha.” “So be it,” Haygarth says. “Are there any secret passages that could get us out of here?” Dasha asks. “No, we wouldn’t have anything like that. The main gate’s the only way out, unless you’re willing to dive off the wall and pray your legs are all that ends up broken. Count Grey has become too paranoid, always thinking a Vampire Hunter would find there way in.” "So what can we do?" you ask. "The coach," Haygarth says. "We need to get out of here. We board it up heavily, and just make a run for it." "It's suicide!" you say. "Is it the only option?" Dasha asks. "Yes," Haygarth says. "There's werewolves out there! They'll easily wipe us out," you say. "We need to leave soon, before the werewolves find a way inside or the other two vampires find us. Are you willing to come?" Haygarth asks. > You refuse "I'm not going!" you say. "So be it," Haygarth says. "If you're not leaving the castle, we need your help." "What?" you ask. "You need to ring the castle's alarm bell at the North-East tower. If you can ring that, you can distract the werewolves and draw them towards the North-Eastern area, so we have a chance." "Fuck, fine. I'll get it done," you say. "Thank you, thank you!" Haygarth says. "I must find the Twins, if they're still alive. I'll be sure to be back before you can make the journey to the bell." "Fan-fucking-tastic," you say. "Best of luck, Haygarth. I hope we meet on the other side." "Same to you, Samuel." You turn, walking away from the room. You enter the hallways again, and move quickly. You can hear the roars of the beasts outside, and you wince as you hear the scraping of sharp claws on the stones outside. You take a deep breath of air, trying not to let terror cloud your judgment. Suddenly, you pause. You see the massive, wretched body of a werewolf slowly move forward through the hallway, heading perpendicular to you. Tufts of black fur cover its body, as its deformed snout looks like a pale imitation of a true wolf's, this one looking like a poor soul has had her face bashed in to create the appearance of one. It creeps along the hallways, sniffing the air. You step back slowly, taking a sharp breath. You shouldn't be surprised that they've got in. The doors are thick, reinforced with steel and silver alike, but the werewolves were bound to get in some time. Not if the portcullis had been closed, but once they entered the courtyard, they were bound to get in. The beast shakes its head violently as if spasming, before sniffing the air once more. It lets out a growl, and you know it's caught your scent. There's a rotten chifferobe to your side that you could foreseeably hide in. There's also the silver-loaded gun in your hands, if you want to take it more bluntly, as well as the silver dagger you have hidden in your boot. for a quiet tactic. > You hide You grab the chifferobe, opening it and stepping inside. You close the door, quieting your breathing as you wait. You hear the loud, clawed footsteps of the beast towards you, as you wait patiently for it to pass by. This is a beast, lacking all the stealth of the true wolf, or even its stronger Wulven kin. Still, it has the nose of one, which soon becomes apparent as its wet sniffling leans to it pausing outside your room. You wait slowly, holding your breath, for the wolf to pass. It doesn't seem to know you're there... yet. > You strike You smash open the door, smacking the wooden door and hitting the werewolf in the head. You grab the werewolf. You stab the werewolf in the throat as you knock its snouth upwards, impaling its jaw. Blood spurts out, running down its jaw as the werewolf lets out a pitiful whimper, before collapsing on the ground. Well, you dispatched it. Quietly, as well. Not bad. Time to continue, though. > You continue to the North-East corner You continue moving along the hallways, but thankfully wherever the werewolf's entry point is, it's not close enough to you to have an issue. You don't know where Alexa or Mihrab are, but they're not here, so that's enough. Soon, you find yourself climbing the tight, spiraling staircase towards the bell tower. You push open the wooden door once you reach the top, and find yourself faced with a massive, cast iron bell. You look out at the courtyard from the lookout of the bell tower at the dozens of fur-covered beasts scattered around the area. Shit, there's more than you thought. You take a deep breath, leaning your head against the bell, taking a deep breath. The walk was fairly long, and the werewolf took some of your time. If Haygarth's still alive, he's back at the coach. You grab the bell pull, before pulling it down as hard as you can. The bell clangs loudly as you put your hand over your ears. The werewolves began to panic and howl, instantly growing frantic and charging towards the doors of the castle. You wait a moment, staring out at the courtyard, before you see the coach burst free from the castle and smashing towards the gates. The Coach smashes the Viceroy's coach out of the way, as it flies on past the trees towards the nearby village. Well, they've escaped. Lucky bastards. You turn, and begin walking down the stairs, before seeing the tanned skin and black cloak of Viceroy Mihrab. "You're still alive, are you?" he asks. "I had thought one of the stupider werewolves had gotten inside and smacked its head into the bell by accident. It's an interesting choice to ring it for whatever reason you have." Mihrab walks slowly towards you, as you back up, slipping on the staircase. You quickly crawl your way up the stairs and get to the bell once more, looking down as he approaches you slowly with cool indifference. "You've taken me away from my work. At least you'll provide a refreshing meal." You hold your rifle out, aiming. You look over the edge of the bell tower. You could jump, bouncing off one of the tiled roofs and into the courtyard. The werewolves are inside, so you might be able to escape. Your other, as shitty option, is fighting. > You jump You sigh, looking out at the tiled roof. A long drop to that and then into the courtyard, then you can leg it out of there. If the first fall doesn't break your bones. Or the werewolves here you and tear you apart. You climb over the bell tower wall, and jump. There's a brief second of the air rushing as your fall, adrenaline rushing into you. Then, you hit the tiled roof. Pain surges through your as you yell in pain. Unfortunately, you don't smack into it and roll off into the courtyard. Instead, you just go straight through the tiled roof. You smash through, into the room beneath you. The world goes dark and hazy, as you lie there atop the broken tiles in desperate pain. You groan, taking a deep breath. You need to get moving. Otherwise, the werewolves will find you, if not Mihrab. You grab the side of the table, slowly pulling yourself up. You put weight on your legs, and grunt in pain. It hurts like a bitch, but they're not broken. You're able to walk. You stand, taking a deep breath, and stumble forward. You're not going to be able fight Mihrab like this, and you highly doubt your chances of being able to leg it back to the nearest village. You need to think. You could head to the castle armory. There's a large amount of explosives there, as well as other fun and interesting weapons that could be turned to wiping out the werewolves and killing Mihrab as well. You could head to Count Grey's personal chambers. Knowing how paranoid and prepared he was, you have no doubt that the place is insanely secured and prepared for a situation like this. It's too late for him to use it, but you still might. There's also the chance of negotiation. You could talk to Mihrab, and attempt to convince him to spare you. Through offering up Count Grey's secrets and perhaps even offering your services in the future, he can be convinced to spare you, and even have you join him. If you're feeling courageous, you could attempt to negotiate with the werewolves. Whilst they're beasts, they still do have human souls and consciousnesses. They can probably negotiate. If you find the Alpha, you can most likely negotiate with it. > You head to the armory You grab your gun from the broken tiles, and stumble forward. You hear a howl resonate down the halls. You sigh as you realize they're getting louder. You luck at a nearby door along the hallway, before looking at the gun in your hands. > You fight You raise your gun and take a deep breath, before you see the werewolf coming towards you. Unlike the one you killed earlier, this one is tall, stronger and muscular, covered with brown, blood-stained fur. It snarls as it spots you, bounding towards you. You fire your gun as the werewolf roars in pain, your silver bullet slicing through the werewolf's hind leg. It slides along the hall before stumbling forward and smashing into you. Its claws and fangs tear through you, sending spurts of blood and tearing through your flesh. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab your gun from the broken tiles, and stumble forward. You hear a howl resonate down the halls. You sigh as you realize they're getting louder. You luck at a nearby door along the hallway, before looking at the gun in your hands. > You hide You grab at the nearest door and open it, finding yourself in a bathroom. You shut the door and press up against it, waiting. You hear the snarls pass the door, and begin counting. When you reach twenty, you listen again, before opening the door and continuing along. It only takes a few minutes before you arrive at the oak doors of armory. You open the doors, moving quickly inside. There's a row of rifles leaning against the walls, a crate of pistols, a large machine gun atop a crate of ammunitions and an entire box of dynamite. It seems like you're fairly set to do some serious ki... You hear a howl, and turn to look out the door at the approaching Alpha that charges towards you. It's white fur is dripping with flesh blood, and you can see pieces of flesh stuck in its teeth. > You run You turn and run, hearing it desperately chase after you. The footsteps get closer and closer, before you feel your back breaking as the werewolf's claw smashed into your hack, the knife-like claws cutting through your leather duster and slashing through your flesh. You roll to the ground with a scream, as the werewolf leaps onto you, it's weight crushing you. It's wet saliva dripping onto your face, it roars at you, before it lunges forward, biting deep into your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab at the nearest door and open it, finding yourself in a bathroom. You shut the door and press up against it, waiting. You hear the snarls pass the door, and begin counting. When you reach twenty, you listen again, before opening the door and continuing along. It only takes a few minutes before you arrive at the oak doors of armory. You open the doors, moving quickly inside. There's a row of rifles leaning against the walls, a crate of pistols, a large machine gun atop a crate of ammunitions and an entire box of dynamite. It seems like you're fairly set to do some serious ki... You hear a howl, and turn to look out the door at the approaching Alpha that charges towards you. It's white fur is dripping with flesh blood, and you can see pieces of flesh stuck in its teeth. > You lock the armory door You slam the door shut, locking it quickly. You look around, as the claw smashes into the door, and you know it won't last much longer. There's a shotgun you can load with silver buckshot, that you've used on hunting some of the more dangerous werewolves before. There's a box full of dynamite that you could set off, which would almost certainly kill you as well as the Alpha, but fuck it, you wouldn't mind taking someone down with you. Finally, there's the machine gun. Although there's no silver bullets, you could set it up so you could pump so much lead into that beast that you'd definitely kill it. > You grab the shotgun You grab the shotgun, going for the box of silver shotgun shells. You quickly load one as the door begins to break as the wood splinters, before a claw smashes through the door. The albino werewolf charges inside, and you raise your gun, firing. The shotgun booms back, peppering the albino with buckshot. It howls as its skin begins to burn with silver, but it doesn't go down. You reach for another shell before the albino slams into you, its claws instantly shredding your torso as its jaws close around your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You slam the door shut, locking it quickly. You look around, as the claw smashes into the door, and you know it won't last much longer. There's a shotgun you can load with silver buckshot, that you've used on hunting some of the more dangerous werewolves before. There's a box full of dynamite that you could set off, which would almost certainly kill you as well as the Alpha, but fuck it, you wouldn't mind taking someone down with you. Finally, there's the machine gun. Although there's no silver bullets, you could set it up so you could pump so much lead into that beast that you'd definitely kill it. > You set off the dynamite Fuck, you don't have a chance. You're going to die here anyway. Might as well take that fucking albino out. You spot a box of matches on the shelf, grabbing it and pulling out a box of matches, which you quickly strike. The door begins to break as the wood splinters, before a claw smashes through the door. The albino werewolf charges inside, as you pull open the crate of dynamite, lighting it. The werewolf slams into you before the dynamite explodes with a powerful flash, before everything disappears with a loud boom, killing everyone in the room. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You slam the door shut, locking it quickly. You look around, as the claw smashes into the door, and you know it won't last much longer. There's a shotgun you can load with silver buckshot, that you've used on hunting some of the more dangerous werewolves before. There's a box full of dynamite that you could set off, which would almost certainly kill you as well as the Alpha, but fuck it, you wouldn't mind taking someone down with you. Finally, there's the machine gun. Although there's no silver bullets, you could set it up so you could pump so much lead into that beast that you'd definitely kill it. > You set up the machine gun You grab the machine gun, instantly loading in a box of ammo. You quickly hurry as you begin loading the ammunition into the gun and putting down the stand. The door begins to break as the wood splinters, before a claw smashes through. The albino werewolf charges inside, as you pull down on the trigger as bullets begin to slam into the werewolf, without even slowing down, let alone stopping it. You yell, before the albino slams into you, its claws instantly shredding your torso as its jaws close around your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sigh, looking out at the tiled roof. A long drop to that and then into the courtyard, then you can leg it out of there. If the first fall doesn't break your bones. Or the werewolves here you and tear you apart. You climb over the bell tower wall, and jump. There's a brief second of the air rushing as your fall, adrenaline rushing into you. Then, you hit the tiled roof. Pain surges through your as you yell in pain. Unfortunately, you don't smack into it and roll off into the courtyard. Instead, you just go straight through the tiled roof. You smash through, into the room beneath you. The world goes dark and hazy, as you lie there atop the broken tiles in desperate pain. You groan, taking a deep breath. You need to get moving. Otherwise, the werewolves will find you, if not Mihrab. You grab the side of the table, slowly pulling yourself up. You put weight on your legs, and grunt in pain. It hurts like a bitch, but they're not broken. You're able to walk. You stand, taking a deep breath, and stumble forward. You're not going to be able fight Mihrab like this, and you highly doubt your chances of being able to leg it back to the nearest village. You need to think. You could head to the castle armory. There's a large amount of explosives there, as well as other fun and interesting weapons that could be turned to wiping out the werewolves and killing Mihrab as well. You could head to Count Grey's personal chambers. Knowing how paranoid and prepared he was, you have no doubt that the place is insanely secured and prepared for a situation like this. It's too late for him to use it, but you still might. There's also the chance of negotiation. You could talk to Mihrab, and attempt to convince him to spare you. Through offering up Count Grey's secrets and perhaps even offering your services in the future, he can be convinced to spare you, and even have you join him. If you're feeling courageous, you could attempt to negotiate with the werewolves. Whilst they're beasts, they still do have human souls and consciousnesses. They can probably negotiate. If you find the Alpha, you can most likely negotiate with it. > You negotiate with Viceroy Mihrab You grab your gun from the broken tiles, and stumble forward towards the bell tower once more. You head along in a hurry, hoping not to draw the attention of the werewolves. The bell-tower is close, seeing as you just fell from it, and you soon find yourself stumbling along the hallway as Mihrab descends from the bell tower. He pauses, staring at you. "You... leapt from a bell tower... and came back?" he asks, raising an eyebrow. "I... yes," you reply. "Alright, you've truly gained my attention," he says, slowly extending his hand and grabbing you by the throat, his long, sharp nails prodding into your neck. "I want to make a deal. I have an abundance of information, and am happy to serve you as faithfully as I served Count Grey." "Did you? Did you really serve him faithfully? It seems you're happy to betray his secrets right now. "My loyalty ended upon Count Grey's death," you stammer. Mihrab smiles, as his fingers slice open your throat. You gasp, blood filling your throat and running down your chest. "I'll have to decline," he says, as you collapse to the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sigh, looking out at the tiled roof. A long drop to that and then into the courtyard, then you can leg it out of there. If the first fall doesn't break your bones. Or the werewolves here you and tear you apart. You climb over the bell tower wall, and jump. There's a brief second of the air rushing as your fall, adrenaline rushing into you. Then, you hit the tiled roof. Pain surges through your as you yell in pain. Unfortunately, you don't smack into it and roll off into the courtyard. Instead, you just go straight through the tiled roof. You smash through, into the room beneath you. The world goes dark and hazy, as you lie there atop the broken tiles in desperate pain. You groan, taking a deep breath. You need to get moving. Otherwise, the werewolves will find you, if not Mihrab. You grab the side of the table, slowly pulling yourself up. You put weight on your legs, and grunt in pain. It hurts like a bitch, but they're not broken. You're able to walk. You stand, taking a deep breath, and stumble forward. You're not going to be able fight Mihrab like this, and you highly doubt your chances of being able to leg it back to the nearest village. You need to think. You could head to the castle armory. There's a large amount of explosives there, as well as other fun and interesting weapons that could be turned to wiping out the werewolves and killing Mihrab as well. You could head to Count Grey's personal chambers. Knowing how paranoid and prepared he was, you have no doubt that the place is insanely secured and prepared for a situation like this. It's too late for him to use it, but you still might. There's also the chance of negotiation. You could talk to Mihrab, and attempt to convince him to spare you. Through offering up Count Grey's secrets and perhaps even offering your services in the future, he can be convinced to spare you, and even have you join him. If you're feeling courageous, you could attempt to negotiate with the werewolves. Whilst they're beasts, they still do have human souls and consciousnesses. They can probably negotiate. If you find the Alpha, you can most likely negotiate with it. > You negotiate with the Alpha You grab your gun from the broken tiles, and stumble forward towards the courtyard. You move along the building, before finding a wooden door to the courtyard, pushing it open. You stumble into the courtyard, walking to the middle before dropping to your knees. "Wolves! Bring me your Alpha! I wish to talk!" you cry. About a dozen werewolves quickly appear, beginning to circle you. They don't strike, perhaps confused by what you're doing. Soon, the Alpha appears. It walks forward, staring at you as it growls, saliva hitting you in the face. "I want to join you," you say. "Mihrab is going to betray you. I overheard him say as much. The vampires will always seek to have dominion over... over the noble wolf." The Alpha bears its teeth, but doesn't strike. It looks you dead in the eyes, as you stare back. "Let me join you. I promise you won't regret it." The wolf snarls, before pouncing forward. > You fire your rifle You raise your rifle and fire, the bullet slamming into the Alpha, but failing to slow it. Its jaws close around your throat, tearing it open as you scream in terror and pain.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab your gun from the broken tiles, and stumble forward towards the courtyard. You move along the building, before finding a wooden door to the courtyard, pushing it open. You stumble into the courtyard, walking to the middle before dropping to your knees. "Wolves! Bring me your Alpha! I wish to talk!" you cry. About a dozen werewolves quickly appear, beginning to circle you. They don't strike, perhaps confused by what you're doing. Soon, the Alpha appears. It walks forward, staring at you as it growls, saliva hitting you in the face. "I want to join you," you say. "Mihrab is going to betray you. I overheard him say as much. The vampires will always seek to have dominion over... over the noble wolf." The Alpha bears its teeth, but doesn't strike. It looks you dead in the eyes, as you stare back. "Let me join you. I promise you won't regret it." The wolf snarls, before pouncing forward. > You use your knife You raise your knife, slashing open the hide of the Alpha, but failing to slow it. Its jaws close around your throat, tearing it open as you scream in terror and pain.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab your gun from the broken tiles, and stumble forward towards the courtyard. You move along the building, before finding a wooden door to the courtyard, pushing it open. You stumble into the courtyard, walking to the middle before dropping to your knees. "Wolves! Bring me your Alpha! I wish to talk!" you cry. About a dozen werewolves quickly appear, beginning to circle you. They don't strike, perhaps confused by what you're doing. Soon, the Alpha appears. It walks forward, staring at you as it growls, saliva hitting you in the face. "I want to join you," you say. "Mihrab is going to betray you. I overheard him say as much. The vampires will always seek to have dominion over... over the noble wolf." The Alpha bears its teeth, but doesn't strike. It looks you dead in the eyes, as you stare back. "Let me join you. I promise you won't regret it." The wolf snarls, before pouncing forward. > You scream You scream as the Alpha's jaws fly forward, biting deep into your arm. You yell in pain as the werewolf bites into your arm, as a flood of emotions enters you. Hate. Anger. Passion. Adrenaline Hunger. You yell, no, you roar as you feel your body morph.Your body begins to twist and break. Your bones snap as your limbs stretch wider and your head and body grows. Your face is torn apart as his teeth grow and sharpen past their usual point. Hair sprouts from your body, soon, you find yourself lying on the ground, feeling the animal inside you finally unleashed. You look at the moon ecstatically, letting out a howl, which is soon joined by your new family. The Alpha looks at you and growls, and you bow your head in submission, an act that just feels natural. The Alpha blinks slowly at you, and you understand that its time to hunt, and finish Mihrab off. You turn, sniffing the air. It's like you just know where to go. You sprint forward, running along the walls and smashing through oak doors. You find Mihrab, covered in blood from what you presume was a fight with a werewolf, hurrying towards the sacrificial chambers. He stops in terror as he stares at you, his eyes widening. "So, you joined with the dogs, did you? Pathetic," he snarls. You burst forward as he does the same. His claws painfully scrape along your snout and release a wave of blood and adrenaline as you smash your claw into him, knocking him against the wall. You bite down on his throat with a roar, tearing it clean out as you smash your claws into him. You turn, seeing a werewolf staring, half ready to charge and half ready to run. You burst forward, tearing its head off and tossing it down the hall, before bursting forward again. You... "feel" a presence in the shadows, twisting around and pouncing, pinning Alexa against a wall. "You're either much, much more intelligent than I thought, or much less so," she says. You feel pain run through your chest as she jabs a silver dagger into your chest. You howl, tearing it out as pain runs through you. "Sorry, wolfy," she says, falling back against the walls, letting the shadows absorb her. You snarl, before turning to be faced with the Alpha. You stare at it, as it sniffs the air and slowly approaches you. It's eyes are filled with a deep desire, a desperate hunger. You sniff the air, suddenly becoming aware of many new sensations. The Alpha seems to be... in full bloom. A sniff quickly fills your nostrils with the scent of a beast in heat. It seems the creature is more of an Alpha female. The creature steps towards you, her intentions clear. The human part of you looks at disgust at the beast, wanting to spit and turn away. For better or worse, that's not the part in charge of you. The animal inside you only smells the odor of a horny bitch in heat. You step forward, your animalistic side taking over as you leap on her. Needless to say, you get little sleep under the gaze of the crimson moon. > You continue You awake lying on the cold stone, completely naked and with a severe headache. For a second, you feel cold, confused and scared, like a child hiding as Papa stands by the door with his rifle, waiting for Count Grey to arrive. You reach an arm out, finding a warm body and pulling yourself tightly against it, as memories begin to flood into your mind. As you realize where you are your eyes dart open. You look around frantically, seeing the white-haired girl lying next to you, blood and... other fluids covering her, and you as well. She yawns, looking up at you. She slowly gets to her feet, groaning. "Well?" she asks, raising an eyebrow. "What?" "Nothing," you reply, as she smiles. "You did well last night," she says. "Two dead vampires? Yeah, not bad," you say. "I was talking about the fucking," the Alpha replies. You look around, spotting other naked men and women lying on the ground, all in the process of waking up. "There's clothes stashed away nearby. You need a place to stay?" the Alpha asks. "Yeah," you say. "Done. Daustin owns a mechanics shop, and had hired Godfrey as an assistant. Seeing as Godrey was cut apart by the vampires, you can take his place." "Perfect," you reply. "Don't worry. You're part of the pack now. We look out for each other." The Alpha leans in, pushing you against the wall and kissing you. You push her away, as she raises an eyebrow. "What? Was it only the beast within that wanted to fuck me?" she asks. You grab her, kissing her back, before she pulls away. "We should go. We need to be home before we're found. If the villagers spot a bunch of naked people returning from where they just saw werewolves kill a bunch of their friends, they'll put two and two together." She turns, barking out an order for her pack to follow her as she leads them outside of the castle. You follow, walking after them. Now, you're part of a pack. Now, the beast within in you has been released, and you're only barely to keep it contained with the moon gone. You can't wait for the moon to call it out again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You continue moving along the hallways, but thankfully wherever the werewolf's entry point is, it's not close enough to you to have an issue. You don't know where Alexa or Mihrab are, but they're not here, so that's enough. Soon, you find yourself climbing the tight, spiraling staircase towards the bell tower. You push open the wooden door once you reach the top, and find yourself faced with a massive, cast iron bell. You look out at the courtyard from the lookout of the bell tower at the dozens of fur-covered beasts scattered around the area. Shit, there's more than you thought. You take a deep breath, leaning your head against the bell, taking a deep breath. The walk was fairly long, and the werewolf took some of your time. If Haygarth's still alive, he's back at the coach. You grab the bell pull, before pulling it down as hard as you can. The bell clangs loudly as you put your hand over your ears. The werewolves began to panic and howl, instantly growing frantic and charging towards the doors of the castle. You wait a moment, staring out at the courtyard, before you see the coach burst free from the castle and smashing towards the gates. The Coach smashes the Viceroy's coach out of the way, as it flies on past the trees towards the nearby village. Well, they've escaped. Lucky bastards. You turn, and begin walking down the stairs, before seeing the tanned skin and black cloak of Viceroy Mihrab. "You're still alive, are you?" he asks. "I had thought one of the stupider werewolves had gotten inside and smacked its head into the bell by accident. It's an interesting choice to ring it for whatever reason you have." Mihrab walks slowly towards you, as you back up, slipping on the staircase. You quickly crawl your way up the stairs and get to the bell once more, looking down as he approaches you slowly with cool indifference. "You've taken me away from my work. At least you'll provide a refreshing meal." You hold your rifle out, aiming. You look over the edge of the bell tower. You could jump, bouncing off one of the tiled roofs and into the courtyard. The werewolves are inside, so you might be able to escape. Your other, as shitty option, is fighting. > You fight You raise your rifle, firing. The bullet thuds into Mihrab as he bears his teeth in a grin. "Pathetic," he says. Mihrab bursts towards you, grabbing you by the throat, his claws cutting into your skin. "Your life is meaningless. Has your service to Count Grey blurred your mind and given you a strong head? You have nothing to offer." > You headbutt him You smack your head into Mihrab's face, knocking him backwards into the wall. The gun's not working. You need to find something else. You quickly hurry down the stairs as Mihrab swears in some long dead language. You run quickly, finding yourself in the lower floors of the castle. There's a straight shot up another stairs to the courtyard, where you could lure Mihrab outside. Hopefully, the werewolves would frenzy and take him out, while you could slip back inside the castle. You could also head deeper into the castle, towards Count Grey's coffin and the inner areas. > You head out to the courtyard You turn and sprint forward towards the courtyard as you hear Mihrab quickly following as he snarls. You push open the oak doors to the courtyard, running out. You hear a half dozen howls as the werewolves outside spot you, but you know Mihrab is most likely still pursuing. You can't tell, you only hear the pounding of his own heart. You keep running, before you feel your back breaking as the werewolf's claw smashed into your hack, the knife-like claws cutting through your leather duster and slashing through your flesh. You roll to the ground with a scream, as the werewolf leaps onto you, it's weight crushing you. It's wet saliva dripping onto your face, it howls at the moon in an act of triumph, before it lunges forward, biting deep into your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You smack your head into Mihrab's face, knocking him backwards into the wall. The gun's not working. You need to find something else. You quickly hurry down the stairs as Mihrab swears in some long dead language. You run quickly, finding yourself in the lower floors of the castle. There's a straight shot up another stairs to the courtyard, where you could lure Mihrab outside. Hopefully, the werewolves would frenzy and take him out, while you could slip back inside the castle. You could also head deeper into the castle, towards Count Grey's coffin and the inner areas. > You head inwards You turn, running further into the castle. You hear Mihrab snarl behind you as he charges after you. Suddenly, he slams into your with unnatural speed, sending you toppling forward as his claw cuts open your back. You groan, quickly stumbling forward as you push open the door and slam it shut behind you, locking the door. Mihrab immediately punches through, his clawed hand reaching for the key. You look around desperately, and find yourself in the room with Count Grey's coffin. You look around, spotting an oak door at the side that you remember leads towards the armory. There, you could get enough firepower to do something. You could also go for the sword hanging proudly above Count Grey's coffin. It's supposed to be a great and powerful. You could try get it, and maybe best him in melee. If you're very, very luck. > You head for the armory You turn, barreling towards the armory. You hear the door unlocked behind you, hearing Mihrab approaching. You run desperately forward, but Mihrab is faster, stronger and angry as hell. As you run desperately, you feel Mihrab grab you. He flings you against the wall as you yell in pain, before darting forward and stabbing you through the neck with his claws. You let out a yelp of pain as blood fills your throat and runs down your chest, before Mihrab grabs your head and quickly twists it, breaking your neck.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn, running further into the castle. You hear Mihrab snarl behind you as he charges after you. Suddenly, he slams into your with unnatural speed, sending you toppling forward as his claw cuts open your back. You groan, quickly stumbling forward as you push open the door and slam it shut behind you, locking the door. Mihrab immediately punches through, his clawed hand reaching for the key. You look around desperately, and find yourself in the room with Count Grey's coffin. You look around, spotting an oak door at the side that you remember leads towards the armory. There, you could get enough firepower to do something. You could also go for the sword hanging proudly above Count Grey's coffin. It's supposed to be a great and powerful. You could try get it, and maybe best him in melee. If you're very, very luck. > You go for the sword You grab the top of the coffin, feeling ill as dark energy still emanates. You pull yourself atop it, grabbing the sword hanging there. You pull yourself onto the coffin, reaching up and grabbing the sword grip. The grip despite being made of leather, is icy cold to touch. You hop down from coffin as Mihrab breaks through the door, staring at you with malice. "Are you going to stab me? With your little sword that you never learned to use? You've been an annoyance. Now, this is over." Mihrab charges towards you with a snarl, charging towards you with the swipe of his claw, his eyes filled with unfocused rage. > You dodge You roll to avoid the strike, and Mihrab rushes past, filled with rage. He stops, swiveling around and taking a deep breath as he stares at you. He takes another breath, before walking forward, slow and methodical. > You dodge He strikes like a viper as you sidestep, but he slips to the side. He slashes his hand, cutting open the side of your face before grabbing you. He jabs his claws into your eye as you scream in pain, before he catches your head, twisting it quickly and snapping your neck.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You roll to avoid the strike, and Mihrab rushes past, filled with rage. He stops, swiveling around and taking a deep breath as he stares at you. He takes another breath, before walking forward, slow and methodical. > You strike He strikes like a viper as you slash your blade, but he slips to the side. He slashes his hand, cutting open the side of your face before grabbing you. He jabs his claws into your eye as you scream in pain, before he catches your head, twisting it quickly and snapping your neck.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the top of the coffin, feeling ill as dark energy still emanates. You pull yourself atop it, grabbing the sword hanging there. You pull yourself onto the coffin, reaching up and grabbing the sword grip. The grip despite being made of leather, is icy cold to touch. You hop down from coffin as Mihrab breaks through the door, staring at you with malice. "Are you going to stab me? With your little sword that you never learned to use? You've been an annoyance. Now, this is over." Mihrab charges towards you with a snarl, charging towards you with the swipe of his claw, his eyes filled with unfocused rage. > You strike You swing your blade frantically, as Mihrab charges directly for you. You run the sword through his chest as he roars. His dark, soulless eyes go dull, as you pull the sword out of his chest, where it's just ran through his heart. "That..." Mihrab whispers, looking at the blade with horror and disgust, before he collapses to the ground. You step forward, running the sword through Mihrab's chest. He grunts as his body begins to turn to dust as the very essence of his life is absorbed into your blade. You release the blade, hearing it clang to the ground, before you step back. You watch as the ancient, powerful vampire's corpse disappears from view. You've killed Draven. You've killed Mihrab. Now, all you need to do is deal with Alexa, and the Viceroy problem will be solved. > You find Alexa You turn, walking towards the door. Last you remember, Alexa was inhabiting... "Hmm..." Alexa says, as you spin around to see her form from the shadows. Alexa walks forward, kneeling down to stare at the pile of ash. She gently picks some up with her finger, before blowing the dust away. "Good riddance," she smiles, showing her long fangs. Alexa stands, walking towards. You dive for the sword, grabbing it with your hand and holding it up, snarling. "Stay back," you snarl. Alexa moves forward, stopping in front of you just out of the reach of your sword. "You've proven yourself to me. You've shown that you truly deserve this gift I offer." "Gift?" you ask. "I offer you a chance to join me. We are immortal, we are powerful and we are predators. If you are willing, you can join me as a vampire, and we can take the places that Mihrab and Grey once occupied." "You want me to join you as a vampire? Why?" you ask. "Together, we can rule. I... miss the joys of mortal life. I miss having friends, having allies, having lovers. With you at my side, as equals, we can live forever, survive anything, and be the perfect allies." Alexa steps forward, smiling at you. "So?" she smiles. > You agree "Fine," you say. "I agree." "Good," Alexa says, striding forward. "The moon's falling, and the son will rise soon, scaring away the werewolves. Get undressed." You raise an eyebrow, but pull off your jacket, before pulling off your shirt. You pull off your boots and trousers, before looking up at Alexa. She pulls off her cloak, pulling off her shirt and pants as well, leaving her standing there naked, as she smiles at you. Her body, completely pale and white as snow, and as cold at it, has a definite beauty to it. She walks forward, wrapping her hands around you and kissing you, her forked tongue flickering in your mouth. You kiss back, as her freezing hands begin to roam around your body. She slowly pushes you into the coffin, which surprisingly is large enough to fit both of you. Soon, in the enclosed area, you find your thrusting as you push Alexa up against the steel coffin wall. Suddenly, Alexa bites into your neck as you groan in pain, and begins sucking on your blood, draining it from you. You struggle, but she grabs your head, pressing it against her neck. "Bite," she commands. You bite down on the vampire's neck, releasing a wave of dark crimson liquid that fills your mouth. "Drink," she whispers, as you hear her slurp your blood. You follow her orders, and begin drinking down on her black liquid. You feel, as the two of you become one and the spirit of the predator enters you with each once of blood you gulp down. The pair of you continue in the coffin, as you begin to transform. Mortality becomes a distant concept, life an old memory and a terrible thirst takes over you. The burden of the vampire is now yours, but so are all the benefits. > You pass out You stand on the wall of the castle, staring up at the gorgeous moon, Alexa's arm wrapped around you. She smiles at you, as you grin back, gently kissing her on the forehead. You sniff the air, smelling the blood of a nearby wounded dear, Alexa's perfume, the flowers along the river banks, so many senses. Alexa kisses you on the neck, before scraping her fangs across your neck. "I hunger, Sam," she smiles. "The thirst is back. Shall we go?" "Perfect," you smile. You hurry down the staircase and past the gate and out into the woods. You both sprint through the trees, laughing as you head out for the hunt. Yes. The hunt under the moonlight. The excitement. The joy. The passion. This is true life. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn, walking towards the door. Last you remember, Alexa was inhabiting... "Hmm..." Alexa says, as you spin around to see her form from the shadows. Alexa walks forward, kneeling down to stare at the pile of ash. She gently picks some up with her finger, before blowing the dust away. "Good riddance," she smiles, showing her long fangs. Alexa stands, walking towards. You dive for the sword, grabbing it with your hand and holding it up, snarling. "Stay back," you snarl. Alexa moves forward, stopping in front of you just out of the reach of your sword. "You've proven yourself to me. You've shown that you truly deserve this gift I offer." "Gift?" you ask. "I offer you a chance to join me. We are immortal, we are powerful and we are predators. If you are willing, you can join me as a vampire, and we can take the places that Mihrab and Grey once occupied." "You want me to join you as a vampire? Why?" you ask. "Together, we can rule. I... miss the joys of mortal life. I miss having friends, having allies, having lovers. With you at my side, as equals, we can live forever, survive anything, and be the perfect allies." Alexa steps forward, smiling at you. "So?" she smiles. > You decline "No," you say. "No?" Alexa asks, frowning. "Shame. i thought you had potential." Alexa puts her hand in her cloak to draw something, and you raise your sword with a snarl. She smiles, slowly opening her cloak to reveal a small flask, which she uncaps and puts to her lips, drinking. "I was really hoping to taste your blood... and for you to taste mine. Sadly, I shan't." Alexa leans against the shadowy corner of the wall, staring at you as the shadows begin to absorb her essence. "Good luck, ghoul. Hopefully, we'll both stay out of each others way in the future, shall we?" With that, Alexa disappears from the room and from your life. You fall to your knees, tossing the sword aside as you breath out a sigh of relief. You take a deep breath, before grabbing your rifle from the ground and standing. You hear a howl from outside, leaning up against the wall and creeping along before you stare out the window. You see in the distance the sun beginning to rise. The werewolves begin howl, fleeing off towards the woods, not wanting to be caught around him when the transformation ends. You wait, watching as even the Alpha flees desperately away. You wait until the sun's light actually begins to shine on the courtyard, before walking out into the courtyard. You look up at the sun, feeling its warmth on your face, before you realize how absolutely exhausted you are. You collapse on the ground, staring up at the sky and feeling the warmth of the sun on your face. > You continue Royalty You stand on the castle wall, staring out at the trees. A half a dozen guards patrol the walls, watching out for any potential werewolves. The purges you've organized of the forests have been effective, but you're still alive. Due to the loss of any significant supernatural power, you've need to replenish your power by recruitment. You've recruited Lucas, Mikhail and Haygarth, all of whom managed to survive the night through their coach escape, although Dasha thoroughly and aggressively refused to come anywhere near the castle. You recruited a few more men from the villages, and quickly regained the control that was lost with the death of Count Grey. Through hard-work and a treaty with King Ferdinand, you've managed to become the new Count of the region. The peasants continue to pay tax to you, although you've negated the need for any of them to die to feed you. You've created a nice little situation for yourself here. Count Samuel. You never thought you'd see the day. Yes, it's a new dawn. The world is changing. The myths and legends of the past are being dispelled. Now, you're the future.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn, walking towards the door. Last you remember, Alexa was inhabiting... "Hmm..." Alexa says, as you spin around to see her form from the shadows. Alexa walks forward, kneeling down to stare at the pile of ash. She gently picks some up with her finger, before blowing the dust away. "Good riddance," she smiles, showing her long fangs. Alexa stands, walking towards. You dive for the sword, grabbing it with your hand and holding it up, snarling. "Stay back," you snarl. Alexa moves forward, stopping in front of you just out of the reach of your sword. "You've proven yourself to me. You've shown that you truly deserve this gift I offer." "Gift?" you ask. "I offer you a chance to join me. We are immortal, we are powerful and we are predators. If you are willing, you can join me as a vampire, and we can take the places that Mihrab and Grey once occupied." "You want me to join you as a vampire? Why?" you ask. "Together, we can rule. I... miss the joys of mortal life. I miss having friends, having allies, having lovers. With you at my side, as equals, we can live forever, survive anything, and be the perfect allies." Alexa steps forward, smiling at you. "So?" she smiles. > You kill Alexa You step forward, as she smiles, assuming you've taken up her offer. Then, you swing your blade, beheading her in one quick move. Her head topples to the ground, and you smile. Three vampires in one night. Terrific. You fall to your knees, tossing the sword aside as you breath out a sigh of relief. You take a deep breath, before grabbing your rifle from the ground and standing. You hear a howl from outside, leaning up against the wall and creeping along before you stare out the window. You see in the distance the sun beginning to rise. The werewolves begin howl, fleeing off towards the woods, not wanting to be caught around him when the transformation ends. You wait, watching as even the Alpha flees desperately away. You wait until the sun's light actually begins to shine on the courtyard, before walking out into the courtyard. You look up at the sun, feeling its warmth on your face, before you realize how absolutely exhausted you are. You collapse on the ground, staring up at the sky and feeling the warmth of the sun on your face.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You raise your rifle, firing. The bullet thuds into Mihrab as he bears his teeth in a grin. "Pathetic," he says. Mihrab bursts towards you, grabbing you by the throat, his claws cutting into your skin. "Your life is meaningless. Has your service to Count Grey blurred your mind and given you a strong head? You have nothing to offer." > You go for your knife You lean down slightly, keeping eye contact with a snarling Mihrab, before grabbing your dagger. You stab it into Mihrab's stomach as he yelps in pain. You shove him back and immediately begin barreling down the staircase. The gun's not working. You need to find something else. You quickly hurry down the stairs as Mihrab swears in some long dead language. You run quickly, finding yourself in the lower floors of the castle. There's a straight shot up another stairs to the courtyard, where you could lure Mihrab outside. Hopefully, the werewolves would frenzy and take him out, while you could slip back inside the castle. You could also head deeper into the castle, towards Count Grey's coffin and the inner areas.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You raise your rifle, firing. The bullet thuds into Mihrab as he bears his teeth in a grin. "Pathetic," he says. Mihrab bursts towards you, grabbing you by the throat, his claws cutting into your skin. "Your life is meaningless. Has your service to Count Grey blurred your mind and given you a strong head? You have nothing to offer." > You go for your rifle You grab for your rifle and go down, grabbing it by the barrel and tossing it into the air. You grab for the trigger, before Mihrab slices his claws across your throat and pressing his mouth against it. You gasp as blood spurts into the monster's mouth, dropping the gun and letting out a pained grunt as you're drained of your life source.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the chifferobe, opening it and stepping inside. You close the door, quieting your breathing as you wait. You hear the loud, clawed footsteps of the beast towards you, as you wait patiently for it to pass by. This is a beast, lacking all the stealth of the true wolf, or even its stronger Wulven kin. Still, it has the nose of one, which soon becomes apparent as its wet sniffling leans to it pausing outside your room. You wait slowly, holding your breath, for the wolf to pass. It doesn't seem to know you're there... yet. > You wait for it to pass You wait patiently as the werewolf snarls outside. Suddenly, it's massive claws bash through the chifferobe, smacking into your and shattering your bones as the claw runs through your chest. You groan, spluttering blood out onto your chest, before entering oblivion.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'm not going!" you say. "So be it," Haygarth says. "If you're not leaving the castle, we need your help." "What?" you ask. "You need to ring the castle's alarm bell at the North-East tower. If you can ring that, you can distract the werewolves and draw them towards the North-Eastern area, so we have a chance." "Fuck, fine. I'll get it done," you say. "Thank you, thank you!" Haygarth says. "I must find the Twins, if they're still alive. I'll be sure to be back before you can make the journey to the bell." "Fan-fucking-tastic," you say. "Best of luck, Haygarth. I hope we meet on the other side." "Same to you, Samuel." You turn, walking away from the room. You enter the hallways again, and move quickly. You can hear the roars of the beasts outside, and you wince as you hear the scraping of sharp claws on the stones outside. You take a deep breath of air, trying not to let terror cloud your judgment. Suddenly, you pause. You see the massive, wretched body of a werewolf slowly move forward through the hallway, heading perpendicular to you. Tufts of black fur cover its body, as its deformed snout looks like a pale imitation of a true wolf's, this one looking like a poor soul has had her face bashed in to create the appearance of one. It creeps along the hallways, sniffing the air. You step back slowly, taking a sharp breath. You shouldn't be surprised that they've got in. The doors are thick, reinforced with steel and silver alike, but the werewolves were bound to get in some time. Not if the portcullis had been closed, but once they entered the courtyard, they were bound to get in. The beast shakes its head violently as if spasming, before sniffing the air once more. It lets out a growl, and you know it's caught your scent. There's a rotten chifferobe to your side that you could foreseeably hide in. There's also the silver-loaded gun in your hands, if you want to take it more bluntly, as well as the silver dagger you have hidden in your boot. for a quiet tactic. > You shoot You pull the trigger, as the gun bucks in your hands. The bullet flies through the air, hitting the werewolf in the neck and knocking it to the ground with a burst of crimson blood, which sprays over its fur and sends it collapsing to the ground. An easy kill, but a loud one. You need to move, and you need to move fast.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'm not going!" you say. "So be it," Haygarth says. "If you're not leaving the castle, we need your help." "What?" you ask. "You need to ring the castle's alarm bell at the North-East tower. If you can ring that, you can distract the werewolves and draw them towards the North-Eastern area, so we have a chance." "Fuck, fine. I'll get it done," you say. "Thank you, thank you!" Haygarth says. "I must find the Twins, if they're still alive. I'll be sure to be back before you can make the journey to the bell." "Fan-fucking-tastic," you say. "Best of luck, Haygarth. I hope we meet on the other side." "Same to you, Samuel." You turn, walking away from the room. You enter the hallways again, and move quickly. You can hear the roars of the beasts outside, and you wince as you hear the scraping of sharp claws on the stones outside. You take a deep breath of air, trying not to let terror cloud your judgment. Suddenly, you pause. You see the massive, wretched body of a werewolf slowly move forward through the hallway, heading perpendicular to you. Tufts of black fur cover its body, as its deformed snout looks like a pale imitation of a true wolf's, this one looking like a poor soul has had her face bashed in to create the appearance of one. It creeps along the hallways, sniffing the air. You step back slowly, taking a sharp breath. You shouldn't be surprised that they've got in. The doors are thick, reinforced with steel and silver alike, but the werewolves were bound to get in some time. Not if the portcullis had been closed, but once they entered the courtyard, they were bound to get in. The beast shakes its head violently as if spasming, before sniffing the air once more. It lets out a growl, and you know it's caught your scent. There's a rotten chifferobe to your side that you could foreseeably hide in. There's also the silver-loaded gun in your hands, if you want to take it more bluntly, as well as the silver dagger you have hidden in your boot. for a quiet tactic. > You use your knife You creep forward, dropping low as you draw your knife. Your boots leather creeks, making the slightest noise, and the wolf turns and bursts towards you. It charges towards you, barreling down the hall. It pounces before and you jab your knife, stabbing into flesh and fur. It's weight smashes you into the wall, snapping your body like a twig. You scream in pain as it swings its claw, beheading you in one foul swing.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You dive out of the way, as Draven flies just past you, swinging his sword. His sword slices into the back of your neck, not enough to seriously wound but enough to hurt like a bitch. He slams into the door behind you, grunting as he spins around. He wipes the blood from his broken nose as he stares at the two of you, before letting out a horrible laugh. "Got too excited there, didn't I? Ha!" he smiles, twirling the sword around in his hands. You look around desperately, for something, ANYTHING in the room to help you out. Dasha is just as in the cross-hairs as you are, and seems terrified. Haygarth is hiding behind a counter, unfocused and not thinking. Most of the horses are dead, having had their heads cleaved clean off. Still, there's three or four in the farther stables. There's two large, oil-filled lamps illuminating the hallways that could be used. Fire has a history of being effective with monsters. Finally, there's the old full lead solution. If you just duck, weave and fill the air with as much lead, or in this case silver, as possible to take out the vampire bastard, although silver bullets are more of a werewolf-killer. > You get to the lamp You sprint towards the lamp, your rifle held tightly in your hands as you run towards it. Draven charges ahead with a howl, kicking your leg away as you collapse onto the ground, laughing. "Look at you try to run! Where are you trying to run to, little one?" he asks, before his eyes flicker to Dasha who goes for the door. Draven runs ahead with an animalistic howl, slamming her into the door. He presses the sword to her throat, before throwing into the air and catching it once more. "Ohh... this is everything! Savor the hunt!" he says. "Go! Try escape again! Or are you in a fighting mood?" > You try for the horses You sprint towards the horses, your rifle held tightly in your hands as you run towards them. Draven charges ahead with a howl, kicking your leg away as you collapse onto the ground, laughing. "Pathetic!" Dasha attempts to stand, before Draven smiles, flinging his sword. The sword embeds itself in Dasha's hand, pinning it to the door, as he laughs. "I forgot to mention, I'm not a bad through," he says, before looking down at you. "It's a shame she tried to move and I had to throw my sword, little Ghoul. Now, I have to deal with you with fangs... and trust me, it'll be more painful." The lamp flies through the air, smashing into Draven's head. Oil sprays across him as it's quickly set alight, as is his dry, cold corpse. Draven screams in object terror as he's engulfed in fire. He screams, desperately flailing in an attempt to put out the flames. Draven collapses to his knees as his scream finally stops, before collapsing onto his face. He slowly burns as his body turns to ash, as you crawl away from the body, standing. Haygarth stands behind Draven, staring at the fire. "Didn't know what, what to do," Haygarth says, panting. "Saw you go for the lamp. Decided to finish the job." "Well done," you say. You walk over to Dasha, who whimpers as she paws at the sword embedded in her arm. You grab it, gripping it tightly as you pull it from the wall. You tear a piece of cloth from your robes, tying it tightly around the wound. "I'm fine," she says.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sprint towards the lamp, your rifle held tightly in your hands as you run towards it. Draven charges ahead with a howl, kicking your leg away as you collapse onto the ground, laughing. "Look at you try to run! Where are you trying to run to, little one?" he asks, before his eyes flicker to Dasha who goes for the door. Draven runs ahead with an animalistic howl, slamming her into the door. He presses the sword to her throat, before throwing into the air and catching it once more. "Ohh... this is everything! Savor the hunt!" he says. "Go! Try escape again! Or are you in a fighting mood?" > You try for the lamp again You run towards the lamp, as Draven realizes what you're doing, and charges forward. He grabs the lamp, opening it with the flick of his wrist and blowing out the candle. "Nice attempt," he says. "Now run." You turn and run, as Draven follows. He swings his sword as you run , and the next thing you know, you feel the cold bite of steel on your neck. Your head flies through the air, and your body collapses to the straw-covered floor.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You dive out of the way, as Draven flies just past you, swinging his sword. His sword slices into the back of your neck, not enough to seriously wound but enough to hurt like a bitch. He slams into the door behind you, grunting as he spins around. He wipes the blood from his broken nose as he stares at the two of you, before letting out a horrible laugh. "Got too excited there, didn't I? Ha!" he smiles, twirling the sword around in his hands. You look around desperately, for something, ANYTHING in the room to help you out. Dasha is just as in the cross-hairs as you are, and seems terrified. Haygarth is hiding behind a counter, unfocused and not thinking. Most of the horses are dead, having had their heads cleaved clean off. Still, there's three or four in the farther stables. There's two large, oil-filled lamps illuminating the hallways that could be used. Fire has a history of being effective with monsters. Finally, there's the old full lead solution. If you just duck, weave and fill the air with as much lead, or in this case silver, as possible to take out the vampire bastard, although silver bullets are more of a werewolf-killer. > You fire! You raise your gun and fire. Draven takes a shot to the shoulder, before side-stepping your next. He doesn't even attempt to charge, just grins. You keep firing, as he dodges the bullets with unnatural ease, even the lucky shots not even throwing him, and they only manage to graze or hit his central mass, which fails to even knock him back. You aim your rifle at Draven's head, as he gently taps his finger against it. "Come on, boy!" he says, laughing. "Take the shot! I'm enjoying this! I won't even move this time!" You peer down the sights, taking a deep breath, and you pull the trigger. It's empty. "Can't even count, huh?" Draven laughs, before bursting forward. You attempt to dodge, but he's faster and more prepared for your roll to the side. He swings his sword, cutting through flesh and bone as your upper body is separated from its organic stand. You barely have time for one scream before it's all over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk along the hallways towards the stable, your gun clenched tightly in your hands. You consider pushing Dasha ahead of you so anything that attacks has to cut through her first, but that's not the right thing to do. It's better to keep her behind you, in case a creature attacks from behind, and you can fight off whoever attacks from the front with your rifle. You walk past the rows of unlit torches that cover the walls, wishing they were lit. You aim your gun ahead, sweeping the barrel to check the corners for any hidden beasts that could be hidden away there. "We need to hurry up, h.." Dasha says. Suddenly, one of the windows several meters above you shatters as the upper half of a body smashes through it. It hits the wall with a wet thud, collapsing to the ground. Dasha screams as you desperately back pedal to avoid it. "Fuck me!" you say. "The villagers must be having a bad night." "Oh god," Dasha says. You hear a terrified scream outside. It sounds female, and young. Very young. "Help! Help! Mama!" a voice screams from outside. "We need to help her!" Dasha says, a look of panic flooding through her. "Do you want to fight the Wulven?" you ask. "I'm not." You try to appear tough as Dasha stares you down, before looking away. You hear a high-pitched scream, before the crunching of bone and flesh. "It's done. Let's go," you say. "The village is down the road! Why the fuck would they bring the villagers here to kill them?" Dasha says. "Break our morale, or act as bait, maybe. They're intelligent, for abominable beasts. Now, let's move on." You continue walking forward, reaching a wooden door. You press up against it, waiting. "Here it it." "This is the door to the stables," you whisper. "You ready?" "Ready. I'll follow your lead." > You force Dasha to go in first "You go in first. He'll be able to smell my blood sooner than yours. I'm a ghoul." "Bullshit!" Dasha hisses. "Give me the gun, then I'll go." > You give Dasha the gun You take a deep breath, bashing open the door with your shoulder, raising your rifle. Draven stands there, a sword in his hands and a grin on his face as he stands over a heavily injured Haygarth, who has been stripped naked and is covered in bruising and cuts. "Don't you know how, freak? I said do it!" Draven shouts. He swings his blade and smacks Haygarth in the side of the head with the flat of his blade, knocking Haygarth to the floor. "Dance!" Draven laughs, before his eyes flicker to you. "Look who it is! One of Grey's ghouls and... I've no fucking idea who you are, but you look like a bleeder!" Haygarth yells as Dasha raises her rifle. Draven roars as he charges forward, and Dasha both attempts to backpedal and aim. She trips on the stairs, firing off the gun. Unfortunately, she misses Draven. Even worse, the bullet ends up flying straight through your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"You go in first. He'll be able to smell my blood sooner than yours. I'm a ghoul." "Bullshit!" Dasha hisses. "Give me the gun, then I'll go." > You convince Dasha to go in with just the knife "No!" you say, shaking your head. "Then go through!" Dasha commands. "You go in with the knife, I go behind you with the rang..." Something slams into the door, sending you flying across the ground and onto your ass with a painful thud. Standing there, clad in armor with long, wild flowing black hair and a face contorted by rage and anger. "Yes! I was distracted by the freak, but even I can hear you two bickering! Gotta get my ears checked, haha!" he snarls before laughing menacingly as he steps forward. The vampire charges forward with remarkable speed. You raise your gun quickly, firing. The bullet thuds into Draven's chest, but it fails to even slightly slow him down. He swings the sword as he leaps upon you, slicing through your muscle and sinew and separating your head from your body. His lips immediately wrap around your gaping neck hole as he drains you of your blood, your head rolling to the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You swing the butt of your gun, cracking into the side of her face and knocking her to the ground with a grunt. The knife goes clattering, and you dart forward, grabbing the knife and raising your rifle to point at her. "Who the fuck are you?" The girl stares at you with anger, blood running down her face from the newly opened cut on her forehead. You recognize her as Dasha, the sacrificial victim from earlier. Huh, apparently she survived. Interesting. "Hands in the air!" you say, pointing the gun at her head. She slowly raises her hands, spitting blood and a tooth on the ground. Apparently, you swung harder than you thought. "Fuck you!" she says. "You need to listen to me," you say. The girl swings at your head, but you catch her fist. She spits in your face, which you wince at. > You try talk to her "Look, please, listen to me," you say. "Fuck off!" she shouts. "I don't need you to trust me, just listen! For..." "I said, fuck off!" she shouts again. "Listen!" you say loudly, losing your patience. "Did you see those fucking vampires?!" The girl stares at you, still defiant, but quiet. "If we want to get out of this, we need to work together. I don't care how much you hate me for doing what I did to you, but we need to." "You work for the vampires," she says. "I work for that one," you say, nodding towards Count Grey. "The others killed him, and now they want to kill me... and you. We're on the same side here, understood?" The girl pauses, before slowly nodding. "If I let you up, you won't try anything?" you ask. "Give me my knife," she replies. "I can't trust you," you say. "I can't trust you either," she says. You sigh, before handing the knife back. She grabs it from your, staring at her reflection in the blade for a brief moment, looking as if contemplating attacks, before looking at you. "What's the plan?" she asks. "I don't know. We need to... Haygarth," you say. "We need to find him. He should be in the stables. He knows this place better than anyone. He'll have keys, know secret tunnels, know everything." "Let's go, then," Dasha says.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk into the sacrificial chambers. You walk over to Count Grey, who has a deep wound going through his chest and lies on the ground. You step over the blood-filled grooves of the floor, walking over to him. You drop to a knee, checking his pulse, before mentally hitting yourself for being so stupid. He's undead. You pull back his eyelids, revealing dull, lifeless black eyes. You quickly pat him down, finding only a curved ebony dagger and some Leu on him, which you take. You gently pat his cold head as a matter of respect, or perhaps more likely to comfort yourself. The terrifying menace who has controlled the region for over a thousand years is dead. He was your master, your mentor and your liege. "Good fucking riddance. He was a cold, sociopathic cunt," you say aloud, a part of you still terrified to say it, somehow expecting him to wake up and tear out your throat. You stand, looking around. There's the doorway to the lower floors, where you,,, A girl charges out from your blind side, holding up a dagger. > You attempt to negotiate "Wait! Look," you say, holding up your hands in defense. The girl slashes her knife, cutting open the palms of your hands as blood spurts out and you yelp in pain. The girl slams into you, jabbing her knife directly into your throat. Blood spurts out in even more gallons, as you choke on your own blood as the girl repeatedly stabs you in a mixture of anger and terror.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You burst towards the wooden door, unlatching it and opening it so Lucas and Mikhail can topple in. You quickly close the door behind them, seeing the eyes of one of the beasts as as it desperately stares at you with the rage of a hungry and stuck lion. You lock the door as it's weight smashes into the hard wood with enough force to splinter it. "There's not supposed to be that many! There's not that fucking many!" Lucas says. "There must be every cursed wretch under the moon's gaze," you mutter. Mikhail spits blood onto his chest. "Christ..." he groans, as Lucas chuckles. "Oh dear brother, Count Grey would tear your throat out if he heard you mutter that fucker's name here," Lucas smiles. "Samuel, help me. We need to get Mikhail to the medical bay." "Can't you handle him? I need to go warn Count Grey and the viceroys," you say. "Yes, sure," Lucas says, grabbing Mikhail and putting his arm over his shoulder. He walks towards medical bay, as you quickly hurry up the stairs to the sacrificial chambers. You walk upstairs quickly, heading through the lounge. You reach the door to the sacrificial chambers, before pausing. You can hear whispered voices inside, almost drowned out by the roars of the werewolves outside. How has Count Grey not noticed the attack? Why is he still in the sacrificial chambers? You tilt your head forward, and you think you can make out the words if you try hard enough. > You enter the room You walk into the room, and are immediately faced with a shocking scene. Count Grey kneels on the ground in the center of the pentagram, his face covered with blood. Viceroy Draven stands over him, his sword pointed at the older vampire's chest he smiles, looking at his prey. Viceroy Alexa stands to the side, leaning against the wall as she drinks from a crystal bottle filled with the scarlet blood of one of Count Grey's many victims. Viceroy Mihrab stands over his former master, his sharp fingernails pressed against Count Grey's neck, an ornately carved wooden stake in his hands. In an instant, all four vampire's look at you, surprised. "He escaped the wolves. Impressive," Viceroy Alexa says. Viceroy Mihrab's eyes narrow, as he plunges the stake into Count Grey's hearts. "Get him," he commands. > You run You turn, sprinting away as the vampires give chase. You have a clear shot through the main hall and out into the courtyard, where you can lock the heavy wooden doors and keep him locked inside. You could head through the lounge and into the armory to find something capable of killing these beasts. Finally, you could head down the small, spiraling staircase and lose them in the lower floors. > You head into the courtyard You sprint forward, past the coat rack and into the entry hall. You grab the wooden door, quickly lifting the metal bar up with a heart-filled with adrenaline, and swinging the door open, shutting it behind you. A massive bundle of flesh and fur smashes into you, shattering your bones. You painfully smash into the ground, looking up to see a massive, white werewolf sitting atop your broken body. It stares down at you, it's blood red eyes filled with an animalistic hunger, devoid of any sentience beyond that of the wolf it's body has morphed to imitate. You close your eyes. Thankfully, this beast doesn't like to play with its food, and finishes you quickly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn, sprinting away as the vampires give chase. You have a clear shot through the main hall and out into the courtyard, where you can lock the heavy wooden doors and keep him locked inside. You could head through the lounge and into the armory to find something capable of killing these beasts. Finally, you could head down the small, spiraling staircase and lose them in the lower floors. > You head into the armory You sprint forward, turning towards the armory. You run desperately, but the vampires are faster. You feel your legs knocked away, hurtling to the ground. You smack painfully into the stone floor, yelping as Alexa plunges a dagger into your chest. You yell as it pierces your lungs, coughing blood onto your face. Alexa smiles, licking the blood off your lips, before biting down on your neck and draining the very life source from you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn, sprinting away as the vampires give chase. You have a clear shot through the main hall and out into the courtyard, where you can lock the heavy wooden doors and keep him locked inside. You could head through the lounge and into the armory to find something capable of killing these beasts. Finally, you could head down the small, spiraling staircase and lose them in the lower floors. > You head downstairs You turn, heading down to the staircase. Unfortunately, hurtling down a tight, steep staircase at breakneck speeds leads to you quickly slipping, tumbling face first down. You bounce off the steps, feeling your bones break, before your head lands awkwardly and your neck snaps like a twig.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk into the room, and are immediately faced with a shocking scene. Count Grey kneels on the ground in the center of the pentagram, his face covered with blood. Viceroy Draven stands over him, his sword pointed at the older vampire's chest he smiles, looking at his prey. Viceroy Alexa stands to the side, leaning against the wall as she drinks from a crystal bottle filled with the scarlet blood of one of Count Grey's many victims. Viceroy Mihrab stands over his former master, his sharp fingernails pressed against Count Grey's neck, an ornately carved wooden stake in his hands. In an instant, all four vampire's look at you, surprised. "He escaped the wolves. Impressive," Viceroy Alexa says. Viceroy Mihrab's eyes narrow, as he plunges the stake into Count Grey's hearts. "Get him," he commands. > You attack You raise your rifle, firing at Viceroy Mihrab. He easily sidesteps with inhuman speed, as Viceroy Alexa and Viceroy Draven charge you. Draven is faster, swinging his sword. You manage to duck under it, feeling it hack at your scalp, before he kicks your legs away. Your smack into the hard, cold stone floor, as Alexa grabs your neck, quickly snapping it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk into the room, and are immediately faced with a shocking scene. Count Grey kneels on the ground in the center of the pentagram, his face covered with blood. Viceroy Draven stands over him, his sword pointed at the older vampire's chest he smiles, looking at his prey. Viceroy Alexa stands to the side, leaning against the wall as she drinks from a crystal bottle filled with the scarlet blood of one of Count Grey's many victims. Viceroy Mihrab stands over his former master, his sharp fingernails pressed against Count Grey's neck, an ornately carved wooden stake in his hands. In an instant, all four vampire's look at you, surprised. "He escaped the wolves. Impressive," Viceroy Alexa says. Viceroy Mihrab's eyes narrow, as he plunges the stake into Count Grey's hearts. "Get him," he commands. > You surrender You raise your hands, dropping to your knees as you put your hands behind your head. "Please, have mercy," you beg. Viceroy Alexa sprints up to you with a blur, stopping behind you as she pulls out a curved dagger. "How... boring. How did you even survive here?" she asks. With that, she slashes your throat open. You clutch at your bleeding throat, collapsing forward.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Come on, you shout," running towards the village. Your hands push tree branches out of the way as you leave the path, almost tripping as your legs catch in the undergrowth, but manage to keep going. You stumble into the village, grabbing the corner of the house to steady yourself, as the werewolves charge into the village. Thankfully, a few peasants have been caught with their doors barely barricaded. The werewolves smash through hastily nailed planks and into the huts inside to devour a feast of flesh, bone, brains and organs. You hear horrified screams as the beasts get distracted and begin to tear apart the poor souls who have been left inside. "Ah!" Mikhail screams, as one of the more focused hunters knocks him to the ground with its claw. "Shit, Mikhail! Samuel, cover me!" Lucas says, skidding to a halt to help his brother. > You leave them You keep running, as Lucas swears loudly, cursing your name. You keep running, twisting your head back as you see the werewolf biting into Mikhail's throat. Lucas aims his gun, but clearly seeing the blood streaming from his throat, turns and follows you. As the werewolves are distracted with their prey, you continue sprinting towards the tower. Unfortunately, you see one of the werewolves stand in the center of the village. It's larger than the others, its fur white and its eyes red. It stares at you for a second, before it lets out a powerful, booming howl. The other werewolves emerge from the buildings, blood matting their fur and dripping from their claws. The Alpha Male drops to all fours and begins sprinting away towards you, followed by the others. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" Lucas says as he nears you, as you see the castle. You sprint, the only noise being your heavy panting and the thudding of boots and clawed feet on the earth. You reach the castle, sprinting through the gates and past the carriages parked there. You see the portcullis' control wheel to your left, and the heavy wooden door to the keep to your right.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sigh, drawing your knife as Lucas smiles. "If you're going to lead to someone's death, at least have the fucking balls to be the one who uses the knife," he says. Lucas walks over to the next girl, as you walk up to one. She tries to struggle, but you grab her by the hair, holding her vulnerable throat out and slicing it open with a long cut, before slowly lowering her head to above the grove. Lucas grabs the next girl by the hair, holding her forward and quickly slashing her throat as the blood pours out. You walk to the next one, quickly driving the sword through her neck, slicing open her fleshy throat and letting her bleed into the groove. "Watch them die, Mikhail. You choose for this to happen. Whether you want to actually hold the knife or watch, you're a fucking monster. We all are. At least, we're willing to fulfill our role." "Lucas! Mikhail! Samuel! Come down here!" Count Grey asks. "Quickly!" "We need to go," Mikhail says, quickly turning and heading towards the door. You quickly hurry towards the main hall, walking down the spiraling stairs. Count Grey stands there, alongside his three Viceroys, and Haygarth rushing to put away coats. Viceroy Draven is a tall,well-muscled man. He has long, curly black hair, and instead of the black attire of the other three, he instead dons steel plated armor which covers him from the neck down. A sword hangs by his side. From what you know, he's almost five hundred years old, once being and most likely still remaining a formidable warrior. He looks at you, his eyes narrowing as he stares at you. He lets out a low, guttural growling at the sight of you. Even after years of work around Count Grey, the man manages to make you feel like little more than a blood bag. The second, Viceroy Mihrab, is even older, almost as old as Count Grey. His skin seems unusually tight, a light brown in complex, his face sunken, his eyes lacking any emotion whatsoever. He wears dark attire, his eyes glancing in your direction away for a second, before peering away with disinterest. He doesn't appear to be armed, but with the long, sharp fingernails on his hand that at that length qualify as swords as well as long fangs, he doesn't need them. The final Viceroy, Alexa, is the only woman of te group. She wears a black hooded cloak, her pale, scarred face underneath, with unnaturally long fangs even for one of her kind to halfway down towards her chin. She leans against the wall, looking at you without a single noise. She stares at you like a starved wolf. Something tells you that of all those present, she's the biggest threat. "Yes, master?" Mikhail says, standing up straight. "Werewolves spotted on Hangman's Trail," he says. "They're amassing. Perhaps for a strike." You pause, and can hear the distant howls of what lies between monsters and men. "We'll push them back, sir," Mikhail nods. Mikhail turns away, and quickly begins heading to the armory. You follow, and you all quickly descend the stairs to the armory. You walk inside, grabbing a padded leather duster and slinging it over. You grab a rifle, as well as several magazines of silver bullets, popping them in a satchel that you put over your head. Now suitably armed, you grab a lantern, walking out towards the main hall. The Vampires have left, no doubt to partake in some drinks, discuss future plans, before beginning the ritual and, imbued with a power that grows as the blood moan rises, slaughtering dozens of helpless villagers. You walk out the hall doors, pushing the door open and entering the dark night. You walk along the earth, passing the gate, which for some reason has been left open, one of the Viceroy's carriages sitting under the raised portcullis. "Should we move it so we can drop the portcullis?" you ask. "And piss off Count Grey and whoever owns this carriage? No fucking chance," Lucas says. As you leave and wander off into the trees. Soon, the only sound is the crunching of leaves under foot and your breathing. "Control your breathing. Deep breaths. Watch your foot placement as well as the path in front of you. Avoid twigs and try leaves. We're trying to hunt, best be quiet about it," Lucas says. "The man's most definitely untrustworthy and cruel, but he knows how to hunt. You take his advise, holding the lantern out to illuminate the path ahead. You see a shape move to your right, and stop, immediately twisting to aim. "Contract, left side!" you whisper. "Just a deer, stay focused!" Lucas whispers. "This is a fucking hunting trail, of course there's deer around!" You keep moving, you gun raised in your one hand, propped in the crook of your shoulder to allow you to aim. The beam of your light comes across a deer lying on the ground. It's belly has been ripped to shreds, entrails covering the earth around it and soaking it with bodily fluids. It's head, connected to its body by a few strands of sinew and muscle, lies in the grass at the edge of the path, two lifeless eyes staring towards the stars. "It's fresh, look out!" Lucas growls, as you immediately turn. You see a form rush through the undergrowth, aiming at it, but it's gone before your finger can even tighten on the trigger. A growling comes from the trees to your left, and you swing your rifle over to aim at the beast. They're faster than usual. They're not supposed to be this fast. It must be that fucking moon! A howl comes from your right, and you drop your lantern to aim, catching a glance of blood-matted fur and a flash of white teeth. The beasts don't seem to bee going for the attack, rather endlessly circling, toying with you. None of you have even had the chance to fire a shot. Suddenly you see one of them, basked in the red glow of the moon, dead in the center of the path. This one stands directly there, hunched over and staring at you, clearly not scared in the slightest. It's abnormally large, not even wearing the tattered remains of clothes, covered in patches of fur. it's head is malformed, it's jaws filled with teeth that barely fit in its mouth, crushed into somewhat of a snout. It's hungry eyes stare at you, as it lets out a low growl. > You wait You wait, keeping the monster in your sights, but knowing there's as many off to the side, waiting to strike and wipe you out to the last man. The creature growls, clearly impatient. Suddenly, it arches it's head back, looking up at the crimson moon, and letting our a powerful, ear-splitting howl. Suddenly, the monsters are upon you. A wall of fur, muscles, teeth and claws strikes, a wave of death. You twist, firing your gun, grabbing the bolt and pulling it back, but before you have the chance, a clawed hand grabs you, willing you throw the air and into a tree. You yell as your back breaks against the tree. Before you can even scream, your throat is tore open by a mouthful of sharp canines.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You swing your fist, smashing into the side of the girl's head, as she crumples to her knees. She lets out a pained moan through her gag, and as blood trickles down the side of her face, her eyes fill with fear. You pull on her chain again and she follows. You quickly lead the two along the hallway, before up the stairs, into the "church". You hear Count Grey's dark, cold, emotionless voice from the main hall. "Welcome, Viceroys. Did you decide to come together, or simply met on the road here?" "Coincidence, my lord," another far deeper voice booms, one more filled with malice and hatred than Count Grey's. "Good, good. Haygarth!" Count Grey shouts. "Yes, yes master?" Haygarth's voice comes back from the stables. "Come, fetch the Viceroy's coats!" "Yes, yes sir!" Haygarth says, quickly hurrying to them. You turn your attention back to the task at hand. In front of you in a large, open stone room. Groves cover the stone floor, making the shape of a large pentagram. Lucas' two prisoners are kneeling at two of the points of the pentagram chained to a loop in the stone to prevent them from moving, while Dasha lies at the third, her unconscious state meaning she doesn't need to be chained up. "Come on," you say, raising your fist to threaten the second girl. You force her to kneel on the ground and chain her to the loop in the ground. You drag the first girl to the other, doing the same. Mikhail and Lucas stand off to the side, watching them. Mikhail looks down, looking vaguely embarrassed at his part in this. Lucas, however, seems ecstatic. He walks forward, grinning as he draws his dagger. "Oh boy, look at that!" he says, dropping to his knees in front of a girl. "Look at that. You see the pentagram? You see those deep, thick groves? I'm going to fill them with your blood. You like that? You ready?" The girl frantically begins to struggle, as Lucas smiles. Lucas slices the girl's throat open, as blood pours out, flooding into the grove and running along. The girl gurgles as blood pours through her throat, and Lucas lets the head fall to the ground over the grove, letting the blood pour out into it. "Mikhail, come on, we need this ready for the Viceroys and Count Grey!" he says. "I am not a butcher," Mikhail says softly, as Lucas' eyes narrow. "Don't fucking take the high road. You drugged every whore here, knowing it was all so we'd slit there throats here. You're as much a murderer as I am." Mikhail looks to the ground, opening his mouth as if to say something, but closing it just as quickly. "That's what I thought. Samuel, grab your knife, let's get to work." > You let Lucas kill them all You stare at Lucas wordlessly, who frowns. Lucas works to the next girl angrily, kicking her in the back of head to force her above the grove. He grabs her by the hair, holding her forward and quickly slashing her throat as the blood pours out. He walks to the next one, who at this point is frantically trying to escape. Lucas stabs her through the throat multiple times, as blood spurts to the ground. "Watch them die, cowards. You choose for this to happen. Whether you want to actually hold the knife or watch, you're fucking monsters. We all are. At least, I'm proud of myself." Lucas walks over the second last girl, putting the knife to her throat. The girl struggles desperately, but the chains stop her from resisting "Lucas! Mikhail! Samuel! Come down here!" Count Grey asks. "Quickly!" "We need to go," Mikhail says, quickly turning and heading towards the door. Lucas shrugs, slicing open the girl's throat and letting her head fall and knock against the cold stone. He quickly hurries towards Count Grey, and you follow. You quickly hurry towards the main hall, walking down the spiraling stairs. Count Grey stands there, alongside his three Viceroys, and Haygarth rushing to put away coats. Viceroy Draven is a tall, large man covered with heavy muscles. He has long, curly black hair, and instead of the black attire of the other three, wears steel plated armor covering him from the neck down, with a sword hanging by his side. From what you know, he's almost five hundred years, once being and most likely still remaining a formidable warrior. He looks at you, his eyes narrowing as he stares at you. He lets out a low, guttural growling at the sight of you, and even after years of work around Count Grey, the man manages to make you feel like little more than a blood bag. The second, Viceroy Mihrab, is even older, almost as old as Count Grey. His skin seems unusually tight, a light brown in complex, his face sunken, his eyes lacking any emotion whatsoever. He wears dark attire, his eyes glancing in your direction away for a second, before peering away with disinterest. He doesn't appear to be armed, but with the long, sharp fingernails on his hand that at that length qualify as swords as well as long fangs, he doesn't need them. The final Viceroy, Alexa, is the only woman of the group. She wears a black hooded cloak, her pale, scarred face underneath, with unnaturally long fangs even for one of her kind to halfway down towards her chin. She leans against the wall, looking at you without a single noise. She stares at you like a starved wolf. Something tells you that of all those there, she's the biggest threat. "Yes, master?" Mikhail says, standing up straight. "Werewolves spotted on Hangman's Trail," he says. "They're amassing. Perhaps for a strike." You pause, and can hear the distant howls of what lies between monsters and men. "We'll push them back, sir," Mikhail nods. Mikhail turns away, and quickly begins heading to the armory. You follow, and you all quickly descend the stairs to the armory. You walk inside, grabbing a padded leather duster and slinging it over. You grab a rifle, as well as several magazines of silver bullets, popping them in a satchel that you put over your head. Now suitably armed, you grab a lantern, walking out towards the main hall. The Vampires have left, no doubt to partake in some drinks, discuss future plans, before beginning the ritual and, imbued with a power that grows as the blood moan rises, slaughtering dozens of helpless villagers. You walk out the hall doors, pushing the door open and entering the dark night. You walk along the earth, passing the gate, which for some reason has been left open, one of the Viceroy's carriages sitting under the raised portcullis. "Should we move it so we can drop the portcullis?" you ask. "And piss off Count Grey and whoever owns this carriage? No fucking chance," Lucas says. As you leave and wander off into the trees. Soon, the only sound is the crunching of leaves under foot and your breathing. "Control your breathing. Deep breaths. Watch your foot placement as well as the path in front of you. Avoid twigs and try leaves. We're trying to hunt, best be quiet about it," Lucas says. "The man's most definitely untrustworthy and cruel, but he knows how to hunt. You take his advise, holding the lantern out to illuminate the path ahead. You see a shape move to your right, and stop, immediately twisting to aim. "Contract, left side!" you whisper. "Just a deer, stay focused!" Lucas whispers. "This is a fucking hunting trail, of course there's deer around!" You keep moving, you gun raised in your one hand, propped in the crook of your shoulder to allow you to aim. The beam of your light comes across a deer lying on the ground. It's belly has been ripped to shreds, entrails covering the earth around it and soaking it with bodily fluids. It's head, connected to its body by a few strands of sinew and muscle, lies in the grass at the edge of the path, two lifeless eyes staring towards the stars. "It's fresh, look out!" Lucas growls, as you immediately turn. You see a form rush through the undergrowth, aiming at it, but it's gone before your finger can even tighten on the trigger. A growling comes from the trees to your left, and you swing your rifle over to aim at the beast. They're faster than usual. They're not supposed to be this fast. It must be that fucking moon! A howl comes from your right, and you drop your lantern to aim, catching a glance of blood-matted fur and a flash of white teeth. The beasts don't seem to bee going for the attack, rather endlessly circling, toying with you. None of you have even had the chance to fire a shot. Suddenly you see one of them, basked in the red glow of the moon, dead in the center of the path. This one stands directly there, hunched over and staring at you, clearly not scared in the slightest. It's abnormally large, not even wearing the tattered remains of clothes, covered in patches of fur. it's head is malformed, it's jaws filled with teeth that barely fit in its mouth, crushed into somewhat of a snout. It's hungry eyes stare at you, as it lets out a low growl. It's trying to bait you into striking. Still, maybe this is the best chance you're getting.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The coach drives inside the huge gates of the huge castle, as the sky turns gold and twilight fills the world with a beautiful feeling of serenity. The coach pulls into the stables, where Haygarth immediately gets to work with the horses. Mikhail opens the coach door, putting Dasha over his shoulder and walking towards the keep. You follow him, as does Lucas, walking alongside him as Dasha stirs with a groan, but doesn't break her slumber. You walk into the keep, and quickly down to the dungeons. The large dungeon is covered with an earth floor, and four occupied cells. Four women, all of similar age and appearance to Dasha, all whose names you've forgotten, are there. Their mouths are gagged, though they scream desperately as they see you enter. Mikhail mutters a curse under his breath as he tries not to make eye contact with the women, but Lucas smiles and cheerfully waves at women. Mikhail carries Dasha to an empty cell, opening it and laying her gently on the cot inside. He locks the cell behind him, and looks at you both. "The sun is down. Should we wake him?" Mikhail asks. "Leave him. It's late. We'll wake him in an hour," Lucas says. You nod, turning and walking away from the twins. You head up the stone staircase towards the kitchen. Despite the fact that this building is around a thousand years old, it's surprisingly well furnished. Count Grey has kept the house furnished with modern technology, one of the bonuses of controlling a tiny pocket of land and resources. As long as King Carol I got his taxes, he left Count Grey do as he pleased. You open a cabinet, taking out a somewhat stale sugar cookie and biting into it. You make yourself a sandwich from cold meat, nuts and dates, and quietly consume it, while watching as the world blackens. Just as you see the first red haze on the horizon of the rising blood moon, you quickly turn and head quickly down to the Count's chambers. You hurry down the stairs, quickly heading to the lowest floor, at the center of the castle. Mikhail is already waiting in the dark room, empty except for a single, candle-adored coffin leaning against the stone wall. The coffin in intricate, a large, black wooden coffin with an intricate, thorny pattern, and a single silver, demonic face with a roaring mouth with a pair of fangs on the front. You can feel the dark feeling emanating from it. It makes you feel cold just looking at it, and you shudder at the thought of what lies inside. Nonetheless, it is your duty to awaken your master. Lucas hurries into the room,, dropping his cigarette and crushing it under his heel. He looks at both of you. "Oh good, we're all here. Let's do it, shall we?" Lucas says. "Which one of us wakes him tonight?" you say. Lucas smiles, holding up his bandaged wrist. "I did yesterday." Mikhail shows you the two-day old cut on his upper arm You draw your dagger, pressing it against your forearm and gently slicing it open. You take in a deep breath as you feel the sharp pain. Blood pours down your arm, and your press the open cut into the roaring mouth of the silver ideal, smearing it with blood. You count to three, before leaning in. "Glorious Master, the night has come and the world is yours," you whisper. You step back as the coffin door is pushed open. Inside stands the Count. Dried blood cakes the corners of his mouth, as he lets out a growl, flashing his long, curved fangs, that look sharper than a needle. His black, soulless eyes peer into yours, as you take a deep breath. You outstretch your arm, and he walks forward, grabbing you by the wrist. He brings your arm to his mouth, and begins to suck. He sucks the blood that pumps from your cut as you wince, before releasing you. Mikhail hands you a roll of bandage, which you quickly begin wrapping them around your wound. Count Grey walks away from you, strolling towards the lounge. He walks up the stone stairs, before heading to the glass window. He stares out at the darkness, and the rising red moon. "Good... good..." he says. "Prepare altar. The Viceroys will be here soon." You nod eagerly, and quickly head down to the dungeons, followed by the others. The gagged woman are in the cells, curled up and terrified. Dasha is still unconscious, which gives you pause. "The new girl, Dasha, look at her," you say. "What of her?" Lucas asks. "She's still not awake. Maybe you used too much chloroform, Mikhail," you say. "No, I used the normal amount. Maybe she had a medical condition," Mikhail says. "Who the fuck cares?" Lucas asks. "What if she's dead? We'll be one victim short? Do you want to be the sacrifice?" you say. Lucas pauses, opening the cell and walking towards her. He drops to his knee, putting a hand against her chest. "She's breathing. Just unconscious. The idiot must've used too much chloroform. She's alive, she'll do, alright?" Mikhail shrugs, slinging the girl over his shoulder. Lucas opens the two other cells, grabbing the women inside and pulling them along by their hair. The girls are shackled, so they're incapable of struggling much, but any resistance leads quickly to a punch to the side of the head. "Samuel, get the last two!" Lucas shouts. You grab the cell keys, walking over. One of the girl stares at you with rage, the other sits in the back corner in terror. You open the scared girl's cell first, grabbing her by her chain. You drag her out of the cell, before opening the second cell and grabbing the more resistant girl. "Don't fight me on this. You're not going to win this, and I don't want to hurt you," you say. You pull on the second girl's chain, but she plants her feet down and stares at you. > You drag her to the chambers You grit your teeth, pulling tightly on the chain and dragging her forward. She tries to resist, but you're simply stronger, and she's forced to follow. You slowly lead the two along the hallway, up the stairs, and into the "church". You hear Count Grey's dark, cold, emotionless voice from the main hall. "Welcome, Viceroys. Did you decide to come together, or simply met on the road here?" "Coincidence, my lord," another far deeper voice booms, one more filled with malice and hatred than Count Grey's. "Good, good. Haygarth!" Count Grey shouts. "Yes, yes master?" Haygarth's voice comes back from the stables. "Come, fetch the Viceroy's coats!" "Yes, yes sir!" Haygarth says, quickly hurrying to them. You turn your attention back to the task at hand. In front of you in a large, open stone room. Groves cover the stone floor, making the shape of a large pentagram. Lucas' two prisoners are kneeling at two of the points of the pentagram chained to a loop in the stone to prevent them from moving, while Dasha lies at the third, her unconscious state meaning she doesn't need to be chained up. "Come on," you say, dragging the second girl to one of the pentagram's points. You force her to kneel on the ground and chain her to the loop in the ground. You drag the first girl to the other, doing the same. Mikhail and Lucas stand off to the side, watching them. Mikhail looks down, looking vaguely embarrassed at his part in this. Lucas, however, seems ecstatic. He walks forward, grinning as he draws his dagger. "Oh boy, look at that!" he says, dropping to his knees in front of a girl. "Look at that. You see the pentagram? You see those deep, thick groves? I'm going to fill them with your blood. You like that? You ready?" The girl frantically begins to struggle, as Lucas smiles. Lucas slices the girl's throat open, as blood pours out, flooding into the grove and running along. The girl gurgles as blood pours through her throat, and Lucas lets the head fall to the ground over the grove, letting the blood pour out into it. "Mikhail, come on, we need this ready for the Viceroys and Count Grey!" he says. "I am not a butcher," Mikhail says softly, as Lucas' eyes narrow. "Don't fucking take the high road. You drugged every whore here, knowing it was all so we'd slit there throats here. You're as much a murderer as I am." Mikhail looks to the ground, opening his mouth as if to say something, but closing it just as quickly. "That's what I thought. Samuel, grab your knife, let's get to work."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hand over your wallet, giving them the finger as you do. "Thanks," the skinny one smiles, grabbing it from your hand as he smacks you in the head with the gun, knocking you to the floor. "What are you doing?" the big one asks. "We don't need to kill him! We got the wallet!" You look up to see the barrel of the gun pointing directly at your head. "You heard what he said. He's with the count. If we kill him now, the count won't come after us!" the skinny one knows. "He's seen our faces." "He doesn't know our names," the big one says. "I'm Lucas. That's Mikhail," the skinny one said. "What the fuck!?" the big one, Mikhail replies. "We have to kill him. Now even you'd agree to that," Lucas says. "Always kill your prey. You don't want to let them come back and bite you in the throat," a voice says. Count Grey steps from the shadows, his teeth curved in a grin, his fangs prominent. He grabs Lucas' gun arm, twisting it until Lucas drops the gun. Mikhail charges with a knife, but with a quick, well-planted punch to the chest sends him to the floor, badly winded. You stand up, grabbing the gun as well as drawing your own, pointing one at each of the thieves. "What, are you some fucking cowboy with your guns? Shoot, come on!" Lucas says, even though his bottom lip is quivering. "Tell me, Samuel. How did they manage to jump you?" Count Grey asks, tracing a finger down Lucas' nose. "I was pissing," you admit. "Hmmm... tell me, where is your family?" Count Grey asks, turning his attention to the teens. "Dead," Lucas answers. "Well then, you've shown balls, willingness to kill and the ability to ambush. Perhaps... Samuel, you were the one mugged. What happened? Were you behaving stupidly and ambushed by some lackluster fools, or are these two deserving of becoming ghouls?" > You suggest you were unprepared and the teens are undeserving of becoming ghouls "No. I was just unprepared," you say. "These thieves are nothing special." "So be..." Count Grey says, before Mikhail grabs your leg, flipping you onto your back. Count Grey steps back as he watches you struggle on the ground with Mikhail. Your guns bounce across the stones and land a few feet away, barely in arms reach. Lucas immediately goes for the guns, as Mikhail puts his hands around your throats and begins to strangle. > You go for the gun You reach for the gun, as both you and Lucas immediately grab it. You try to rip the gun from his hands, but Mikhail's massive, strong hands choke the life out of you. His hands crush your throat with it's powerful squeezing, and the life is wringed out of you as you desperately try to get one last breath. The world goes dark, as you let out a final croak.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"No. I was just unprepared," you say. "These thieves are nothing special." "So be..." Count Grey says, before Mikhail grabs your leg, flipping you onto your back. Count Grey steps back as he watches you struggle on the ground with Mikhail. Your guns bounce across the stones and land a few feet away, barely in arms reach. Lucas immediately goes for the guns, as Mikhail puts his hands around your throats and begins to strangle. > You focus on Mikhail Your fingers immediately grab Mikhail's face, your thumbs going into his eyes as you begin to push your thumbs down to blind him. Mikhail releases his grip to grab your wrists and pull him away, before Lucas fires the gun. The bullet blows out the back of your head, staining the ground red.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk inside the tavern by yourself, feeling the weight of your Leu-filled wallet in your side pocket. You walk along, and immediately garner the attention of everyone in the bar. Your garb makes it immediately clear to anyone but the most ignorant or simply stupid of the peasants that you're a servant of Count Grey. The tavern quickly clears out, heading to their various homes, leaving only a few idiots too old and stubborn or young and cocky to realize staying near you is death. You toss a crumpled note on the counter, looking up at the bar tender expectantly. Soon, you find yourself drinking a pint, a plate of chicken, boiled potatoes and cabbage in front of you. You smile, eating it up eagerly, downing the pint in a few gulps. You belch loudly, smiling as you find yourself now filled with food, warm and content. "Where's the bathroom?" you ask, feeling the need to piss rising as your full bladder demands you act. "Bathroom's broken. Go outside," the bar-tender replies. You raise an eyebrow, tapping on your hat. "Do you know who I am? Who I work for?" you ask. "I do. If he shows up here, I'm as happy to show him the broken toilet as I am you." You sigh, standing and walking outside into the alley. You unzip your trousers and pull out your dick, pissing onto the side of the old building. Suddenly, the cold blade of a knife is pressed against your throat. "Don't move," a deep voice whispers. "Hands in the air." "Do you expect me to let go of my dick and piss on myself?" you ask, more annoyed than scared. "Finish up," the voice says. You finish pissing, popping your genitalia back in your trousers, buttoning it up, and slowly turn to face your attack. Two teens, barely fifteen by the looks of it, both with short blond hair, one skinny, on large and muscular, stare at you. The skinny one holds a pistol, while the big one holds the knife pressed against your throat. "What's this about, gents? Revenge?" you ask, knowing just how many family's want your blood for taking their daughter's. "What? We don't know you," the big one says. "The wallet. Now," the skinny one says. You pause, frowning. "Are you seriously fucking telling me you've decided to mug me?" you ask, surprised. "Why the fuck wouldn't we?" the big one asks, pushing you against the wall as the skinny one draws his own knife with his left hand, strolling forward to press the barrel against your temple. "Wallet. Now," he says. "Fucking idiots. You don't recognize the outfit, eh? I'm a fucking Ghoul, Count Grey's personal assistant." The big one looks at the skinny one nervously. "Maybe we should let him go," the big one asks. "He's bluffing," the skinny one says, licking his lips. "Ghouls... ghouls are rotten, aren't they?" "The sun's down, boys. Count Grey's due to wake..." "Shut it! Wallet, now!" the skinny one commands. > You attack You grab the pistol, forcing it skyward as the skinny one pulls the trigger, the bullet ricocheting off the wall. The big one thrusts his knife forward, stabbing into your throat repeatedly, slicing open your throat and sending a wave of blood to run down your chest. You let out a pained gurgle, before collapsing to the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Haygarth, be fair here. Do you really want to go back to the castle to have to cook for us? We could quickly get some grub, some drinks, and then head back to the castle. Right?" "Don't like leaving carriage. There's always pointing, laughing, staring," Haygarth says, pulling his balaclava up to the bridge of his nose. "Fine. I'll pull in. You go eat. I'll wait here, eat something when I get home," he says. The carriage pulls in alongside a tavern, as you look to Haygarth, who looks fairly pathetic as he attempts to cover his mishapen form. > You attempt to convince Haygarth to come in "Haygarth, it's cold, it's been a long day, you must be starving and desperate for a drink. Come on, Haygarth, let's go inside." "Fine," Haygarth says, nodding as he climbs off his spot. "Five minutes." > You enter the tavern You walk inside the tavern by yourself, feeling the weight of your Leu-filled wallet in your side pocket,. You walk alongside a nervous Haygarth, and immediately garner the attention of everyone in the bar. Your garb makes it immediately clear to anyone but the most ignorant or simply stupid of the peasants that you're a servant of Count Grey. The tavern quickly clears out, heading to their various homes, leaving only a few idiots too old and stubborn or young and cocky to realize staying near you is death. You toss a crumpled note on the counter, looking up at the bar tender expectantly. "Everyone's staring," Haygarth says, nervously. "Everyone either left, is drunk as fuck or is trying to appear tough while stopping from pissing themselves," you reply. Soon, you find yourself drinking a pint, a plate of chicken, boiled potatoes and cabbage in front of you, as Haygarth does likewise. You smile, eating it up eagerly, downing the pint in a few gulps. You belch loudly, as Haygarth mutters a complaint. You grin, finding yourself now filled with food, warm and content. "Where's the bathroom?" you ask, feeling the need to piss rising as your full bladder demands you act. "Bathroom's broken. Go outside," the bar-tender replies. You raise an eyebrow, tapping on your hat. "Do you know who I am? Who I work for?" you ask. "I do. If he shows up here, I'm as happy to show him the broken toilet as I am you." "Fuck you," you say, before turning to Haygarth. "Back in a sec, I need to piss." "Have haste! The master awaits!" Haygarth replies. You stand, turning and walking outside into the alley. You unzip your trousers and pull out your dick, pissing onto the side of the old building. Suddenly, the cold blade of a knife is pressed against your throat. "Don't move," a deep voice whispers. "Hands in the air." "Do you expect me to let go of my dick and piss on myself?" you ask, more annoyed than scared. "Finish up," the voice says. You finish pissing, popping your genitalia back in your trousers, buttoning it up, and slowly turn to face your attack. Two teens, barely fifteen by the looks of it, both with short blond hair, one skinny, on large and muscular, stare at you. The skinny one holds a pistol, while the big one holds the knife pressed against your throat. "What's this about, gents? Revenge?" you ask, knowing just how many family's want your blood for taking their daughter's. "What? We don't know you," the big one says. "The wallet. Now," the skinny one says. You pause, frowning. "Are you seriously fucking telling me you've decided to mug me?" you ask, surprised. "Why the fuck wouldn't we?" the big one asks, pushing you against the wall as the skinny one draws his own knife with his left hand, strolling forward to press the barrel against your temple. "Wallet. Now," he says. "Fucking idiots. You don't recognize the outfit, eh? I'm a fucking Ghoul, Count Grey's personal assistant." The big one looks at the skinny one nervously. "Maybe we should let him go," the big one asks. "He's bluffing," the skinny one says, licking his lips. "Ghouls... ghouls are rotten, aren't they?" "The sun's down, boys. Count Grey's due to wake..." "Shut it! Wallet, now!" the skinny one commands<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit in the shotgun seat of a carriage with Haygarth at the reins. It's been a long journey. You have to venture to meet with King Ferdinand I in order to arrange taxation laws and other things you haven't been educated well enough to understand. You're finally entering the territory under Count Grey's control, staring out at the village you're entering as the sun falls in the distance. "Stop here," you say. "I want to grab a bite to eat." "We must be home soon!" Haygarth says. "Count Grey's in the back, he might wake up soon. Sun's almost gone." You're hungry, thirsty and you've been traveling for the past three days. There's no way in hell you're going back to the castle for Haygarth to cook up his famous soup, which you're certain he's literally shitting in. > You force Haygath to stop "Haygarth," you snarl, drawing a pistol from your side. "If you really want me to pistol-whip you into submission, I'm willing to do so." Haygarth sighs, before nodding. "Fine, fine, but be quick about it!" The carriage pulls in alongside a tavern, as you look to Haygarth, who looks fairly pathetic as he attempts to cover his mishapen form.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awake to the prick of fangs against your neck. You don't move, taking in a deep breath. "You looked so... so appetizing. Let's go. We need to finish the last stage of your path towards becoming a true apprentice." You nod, standing. You make your way down to the prison cell, where the girl still waits. She looks up, terrified. "What... what is to be done with her?" you gulp. "She is food. Learn that fact," your master says. The vampire draws a long dagger from his side, handing it to you. "If you're going to be my Ghoul, you need to prove you're capable of preparing my food. Kill her," You hold the knife, staring at it as the girl begins to cry. You notice from the wet patch growing on her nightgown, she’s pissed herself once more. “Kill her. She’s weak, you’re strong. Slice open her throat, so I can feed,” Count Grey commanded. The girl breaks into sobs as Count Grey opens the cell door, swinging it ajar and motioning for you to enter. You nod, walking forward with the knife held tightly in your hand. > You refuse “I can’t do it,” you say, dropping the knife and let it collapse on the ground. “Do you really want to make that choice?” Count Grey asks, baring his fangs. They remind you of long, curved thin ivory daggers, ready to strike at any given moment “Yes,” you say. “So be it,” he says. “You’ve shown courage by refusing an order. Perhaps you’re braver than expected. Fine, follow me. Lock the cell door behind you.” You breath out a sigh of relief, closing the door and locking it with a twist of the key. You follow Count Grey along the hall. Soon, you find yourself in front of a large, wooden door. Haygarth has forbidden you from entering, which only mean that you had one less room to clean. Count Grey pulls a short, silver key from his pocket. He opens the door, revealing a massive storage room. The room is filled with cabinets and shelving units. They’re all filled with crystal bottles, filled with a scarlet red ichor. “This castle was built to withstand a siege. It’s storerooms could keep a force here going for years with wheat, potatoes, salted meats and more, as well as small gardens. Unfortunately, I require a more… delicate solution to avoid starving.” You look at the endless bottles of blood, wondering how many lives were given to fill them. “It’s quite hard to successfully bottle blood. Let alone hard hard it is to get it from the victim without a needle and a few hours.” “You want me to kill people and bottle their blood?” you gulp. “Are you willing to do that?” > Yes “You think so? You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” “Yes,” you say, raising an eyebrow. “Then I think you’re right. You will fill a few bottles,” Count Grey says. Count Grey bursts forward, grabbing you by the neck and twisting it. His fangs fly forward, stabbing through your neck. You gasp as your blood fills his mouth. The last sensation you feel is your bleeding neck wound being pressed against the rim of an empty glass bottle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I can’t do it,” you say, dropping the knife and let it collapse on the ground. “Do you really want to make that choice?” Count Grey asks, baring his fangs. They remind you of long, curved thin ivory daggers, ready to strike at any given moment “Yes,” you say. “So be it,” he says. “You’ve shown courage by refusing an order. Perhaps you’re braver than expected. Fine, follow me. Lock the cell door behind you.” You breath out a sigh of relief, closing the door and locking it with a twist of the key. You follow Count Grey along the hall. Soon, you find yourself in front of a large, wooden door. Haygarth has forbidden you from entering, which only mean that you had one less room to clean. Count Grey pulls a short, silver key from his pocket. He opens the door, revealing a massive storage room. The room is filled with cabinets and shelving units. They’re all filled with crystal bottles, filled with a scarlet red ichor. “This castle was built to withstand a siege. It’s storerooms could keep a force here going for years with wheat, potatoes, salted meats and more, as well as small gardens. Unfortunately, I require a more… delicate solution to avoid starving.” You look at the endless bottles of blood, wondering how many lives were given to fill them. “It’s quite hard to successfully bottle blood. Let alone hard hard it is to get it from the victim without a needle and a few hours.” “You want me to kill people and bottle their blood?” you gulp. “Are you willing to do that?” > No “I thought not. You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” “Yes,” you say, raising an eyebrow. “Then I think you will fill a few bottles,” Count Grey says. Count Grey bursts forward, grabbing you by the neck and twisting it. His fangs fly forward, stabbing through your neck. You gasp as your blood fills his mouth. The last sensation you feel is your bleeding neck wound being pressed against the rim of an empty glass bottle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The coach enters the castle gate, as you climb off the coach. Haygarth lowers the portcullis, as you go to the back to open the coach. The girl sits there, staring at you in terror. "Get out," you command. The girl nods, crawling ahead as she gets out of the coach. You grab her by the wrist, leading her along to the coach. She doesn't talk, seemingly in shock. She doesn't say a word, instead staring at you in terror. You wonder if you should try to converse, to calm her, or keep unemotional and professional about this issue. > You do your job without talking You keep walking, as the girl stays compliant. She does actually smell quite strongly of perfume. You lead her quickly to the castle's dungeons. You drag her down the stairs, before leading her into a prison cell. You lock the cell door, staring at her from behind the bars. She stares blankly ahead, leaning against the wall and sliding down to lean against it, her nightgown now covered in mud and dirt. You leave her there, now secured, and end up heading to bed for a few hours sleep before Count Grey arrives back.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Uh... the... the fi..." you stutter, tripping over your words as the vampire growls. "Have I found myself with another fool, a boy with the mind of a mule?" the vampire says, his long, gleaning white fangs, the corners of his mouth still red with your blood. "I've had a year out of you. Perhaps it's best to finish you off now." Count Grey slowly walks forward, snarling as his fangs poke out, looking like huge spears. > You run You turn quickly, sprinting away as the vampire bursts forward, knocking your leg away and sending you tumbling forward. You smash into the ground as the vampire strikes, landing atop your fragile body.. He grabs your neck, holding your head high to expose your neck. His mouth immediately shoots forward, biting into your neck as he begins to drain you of your life force. You gasp as your blood is drained, before he stands, leaving your dead body on the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit in the shotgun seat of the coach, as Haygarth continues spurring the horses forward. You're entering the village of Nitchidorf, with Count Grey resting in the back. The carriage's wheels roll into the village, stopping as you enter the village limits. "Go open the doors for the Count," Haygarth says. You nod, quickly hopping off the carriage. You run to the back of the carriage, opening it as the tall, gaunt Vampire steps out, tilting his head to stare down at you. "Follow," he commands. He begins walking along the street, staring at each of the houses. "We must find you a little... playmate," Count Grey says, looking at the houses. He sniffs the air, staring at the houses. His eyes flicker to you, filling you with dread as he licks his lips, still stained with bits of your crimson ichor, looking hungry. "Ye-yes, master," you say, nervously. The vampire stares at you for a second, before looking away. He seems impatient. "Yes... I can smell two prominent ones. Tell me, Samuel, what do you think? There's a young one who smells freshly bathed and lemongrass perfume, or one that smells of fresh dough and... terror sweat. It appears the latter one can see us. Which is it, Samuel?" > The second girl "Uh... the... the se..." you stutter, tripping over your words as the vampire growls. "Have I found myself with another fool, a boy with the mind of a mule?" the vampire says, his long, gleaning white fangs, the corners of his mouth still red with your blood. "I've had a year out of you. Perhaps it's best to finish you off now." Count Grey slowly walks forward, snarling as his fangs poke out, looking like huge spears. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit on the ground, scrubbing the cold stone floor of the Grey Castle, named as much for its cold, lifeless demeanor as much as its owner. Haygarth stands over you, watching as he makes sure you do a proper job cleaning the blood stains that cover the ground, a remainder of the last girl foolish enough to be out at night. So far, your job has been simple. You have little contact with Count Grey, as you work in the day and sleep at night, whilst he sleeps in the day, coming out at night to hunt, feed, plan and much more. Mostly, Haygarth forces you to work at any job he sees fit. He seems to think you're little different from a pack horse, working you as hard as them. If anything, he's feeding the pack horses better. You see your role in the castle as a servant on your more optimistic days, and as a slave on the worse ones. "Good, good, put your back into it! Yes, that's it!" Haygarth says, as he hurries around the room, collecting pieces of clothes left over from the poor girl being brutally murdered. "Yes, Haygarth," you reply, putting your pressure on the brush as you splash some more water to get rid of a particularly disgusting stain of a mixture of blood and urine. Haygarth is a hard ruler, forcing you to work day and night. He's not sadistic or cruel, he just doesn't seem to understand that you're not an animal who needs a break. Hell, perhaps his only redeemable feature is the fact that he works himself even harder. As he rushes past, trying to do various chores, you can hear him angrily mutter to himself to go faster. You finish off the stain, quickly crawling over to the next. You sigh as you realize just how much you need to clean. Your knees hurt from crawling around all day, your hands are covered in blisters, and you've done nothing but work all day. You had two ive minute breaks to cram food into your mouth, and one more to shit, and that was it. Who the fuck has only two people to keep an entire castle from falling into disrepair? "Hurry up, boy! Use some of those strong muscles! I want to be able to see my reflection in it!" Will he ever leave you be? The bastard can't just let you fucking work, he has to constantly remind you that you're not doing good enough? > You keep working "Yes, sir," you mutter. You continue working, as does Haygarth. It takes about half an hour before the entire place is clean. You look out the window, seeing the large moon rising in the distance. "Yes, yes! Tonight, tonight is the night, little one!" Haygarth says. "The year of the mule is ready. Now, let's go! We must wake Count Grey!" > You follow Haygarth You follow Haygarth along the hallways with haste. You hurry down the stairs, quickly heading to the lowest floor, at the center of the castle, into a dark room, empty except for a single, candle-adored coffin leaning against the stone wall, and a large, black sword hanging above the coffin. The coffin in intricate, a large, black wooden coffin with an intricate, thorny pattern, and a single silver, demonic face with a roaring mouth with a pair of fangs on the front. The sword, on the other hand, is somehow even darker, its surface seeming to suck the very light from the room. Even staring at the thin edge makes you feel like you've been stabbed. You can practically taste the hatred and malice that emanates from it. "Do you feel it?" Haygarth says. "That is the master of the home. Don't be scared. It grows on you." You feel the hairs stand up on your skin. The air tastes stale and rotten, and there's a general feeling of dread emanating from it. In a place like this, you feel even if you called on the good Lord to save you, he would be unable to find your soul in such an abyss of all warm or love, let alone rescue you from it. "What now?" you ask. "The Count needs blood to awaken. Be still. I'll make it as easy as possible. Just don't resist." Haygarth gently grabs your hand, pulling it forward until your hand touches the metal. "It... stings," you say, as it feels like your hand is both being put against a hot stove and a freezing block of ice. "It's OK. You'll get used to it," Haygarth says, drawing an iron blade from his side. Haygarth presses the blade against your arm, quickly slicing a small cut in your arm. "Ah!" you yelp. Haygarth slowly presses your wound into the mouth as the silver demon. Blood begins to pour down the creature's mouth, as the coffin's door clicks open. Haygarth grabs you by the shoulder, pulling you back. Count Grey steps forward. He looks the same as he has every night since the night he took you, except now his lips look parched and cracked, his eyes immediately darting down to your arm. "Thirst," he moans, staring at your wound. Haygarth gently nudges you forward. "The master needs to feed, Samuel. Offer up your arm." You hold your arm forward, as Count Grey grabs it, his mouth darting down to your bleeding wound with an insane speed. You close your eyes and wait for the pain of his bite, but instead feel his cold lips on your wound, instantly beginning to suck the blood out of your arm. You take a deep breath as you go pale, Haygarth putting your arm around his shoulder to keep you from fainting. After about a minute, Count Grey stops, raising his head as he smiles. "Good. I was thirsty. The bitch from the other night was dry, and half her blood ended up on the floors. Good thing I managed to stop myself from draining you completely," Count Grey says. He looks up at the sword that hangs above the coffin, staring at it for a second. "Do you see that sword? While I like to keep up to date with my weapon technology, such as with rifles. grenades and the new and innovative Maxim Gun, in cases of the super-natural, the old stuff is the best. I've had that sword since I was a child. Forged it myself under command of my master. So many ancient, arcane inscriptions, horrid rituals and infinitely worse had to be done to make it the thing it is today. It's name is the Psychí Líptis. It is a killing machine. You will become the same." Count Grey s walking past you, and up the stairs. You stand there, waiting, looking at Haygarth for what to do. "Follow!" Count Grey's voice booms. You quickly hurry up the stairs after him.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You scuttle forward for the gun, grabbing it. You aim it at the vampire, grabbing the trigger and pulling it tightly. The gun explodes, sending you falling back with the recoil and smacking into the wall with a painful thud. The vampire roars as buckshot slams into his back. He grabs your father by the head, twisting with inhuman speed as your hear a painful snap. Then, he turns, staring at you. He snarls, walking forward quickly. You reach for the gun again, but he steps on your hand as you yelp in pain. "You dare shoot me? I have lived millennia, you think you'll be the one to end my life?" the hunter snarls, before laughing, a horrible, terrifying noise. "You have balls, little one." You stare at the monster in front of you, trying to stare him, but you see nothing but hate and unquenching thirst behind his eyes. "Yes... I see strength in you. Potential. I have an offer for you, as the newfound man of the house. Join me. Let me take you on as my... apprentice. As my servant. As my slave. As whatever I need you to be. In exchange for your servitude, I offer you not only your life, but the life of your mother and sisters." You stare at the monster, whose eyes narrow as he waits for you answer. > You refuse "No," you say. "No?" the vampire asks. "You have more balls than I thought. You're courageous. Too courageous. Can't have you getting brave and trying to get revenge for your peasant father some day." With that, the vampire grabs your head, quickly twisting it with unnatural speed, nearly tearing your head off before you can even blink in reaction.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The night is cold, dark and starless. The only light other than the candle Mama clutches in her hand comes from the moon, whose once bright, white, inviting and warm light is now deep red, like it's been splattered with blood. You're curled up with your two sisters, Ivana and Lilia, with Mama sitting over you, her candle in one hand and a wooden crucifix in the other. Papa is nailing boards to keep the door shut, hastily trying to give you some extra protection. It's the Night of the Blood Moon. You've never been through one, the last happening less than a year before your birth, but now, after another twelve years, it had arrived. Your eldest brother, Dornan, told stories about it, stories that chilled you to the bone, that kept you from sleep, that gave birth to the horrors of your nightmares. If even a fraction of what Dornan said is true, the screams should begin soon. "Mama?" Lilia asks. "Hush, darling," Mama replies, as Papa finishes boarding up the door and grabs his shotgun from it's place on the wall. He takes his spot next to you, his gun pointed at the door, and you wait. The screams start soon. Howls of pain and terror from other houses of the town. Ivana is old enough to know to stay quiet, but Lilia soon starts to cry. Mama desperately tries to hush her six year old daughter, but to no avail. "Sssh! Sssh, darling! It's alright, you just must stay quiet!" Papa says. Suddenly, a tall, dark shadow passes by the window. Papa immediately grabs his shotgun, frantically raising it to his shoulder. The shadow disappears, and Papa breaths a sigh of relief. "Scared of something?" a deep, guttural voice says from behind you. Papa turns, firing his shotgun as the monster speeds forward. It grabs Papa's throat with unnatural speed, smiling as it holds him in the air, strangling him. The monster looks hideous. It's dreadfully pale, it's face twisted with hate, and looks to be hairless. It's eyes are completely black, like the endless darkness of its soul, and it's mouth is filled with mangled teeth with two large fangs, curved and bloodstained, with even more blood pouring down its face. The creature snarls, before smiling as it turns to look at you and your siblings. "Ah... so young... so fresh..." the vampire says, licking it's lipless mouth with a forked tongue. "Peasant, your daughters are mine. Don't struggle." The vampire tosses Papa to the ground, turning towards your siblings. "No! No! You will not take my daughters!" Father says, grabbing for his gun. The monster strikes, smashing it's boot into Papa's head. "How dare you?!" the monster screams. "I gave you your land, I gave you your house, I give you your life!" The monster begins walking toward Papa, who desperately crawls back to the wall. "I keep the beasts away from the village! I let you roam the night all but one night every twelve years! I don't ask for your wife, to allow you to sire more. I don't ask for your son, to leave you a legacy. I only ask for your daughters! How dare you attempt to deny me that?" As the vampire walks towards Papa, his fangs bared, you see a chance to get Papa's shotgun. Still, you don't want to anger the vampire further. Perhaps the best option is to hope for the beast's mercy. > You beg "Please, please don't hurt my papa! We don't want any trouble! Please, show us mercy, and we'll remain forever loyal! We never miss food shipments...!" The Vampire snarls. "You are a sheep," he snarls. "Look at you. Look at all of you. Weak. Mindless. Sheep. You only exist to feed me. Your lifespan is measured in decades. I've lived over a millenia! I am the hunter, you are prey!" The vampire grabs Papa's head, twisting it with amazing speed. You hear his neck crack, as the vampire drops his limp body. Tears stream down your face, as he walks towards you. He grabs you by the scruff of your neck. "You are a sheep," he snarls. He flings you to the ground where you bounce off the wooden floor, skidding into the wall with a painful thud. Mama tries to strike him, but he catches her hand, yanking her into his grasp and biting down on her neck. She gasps as he tears open her throat, pressing his bloody mouth on the bleeding wound. He feeds for about a minute, as you lie there, too terrified to move. Then, he strides forward, catching your sisters by the hand and lifting them into the air. He flings them over his shoulder like a young lamb, and looks at you. "Bleet," he snarls, before walking out of the door, leaving you alone. > The Next Morning... You only peer out of your blood-spattered house when the sun rises, driving the vampires back like a shepherd driving off a wolf pack. The village is destroyed, and the vampire's promise is broken. Corpses lie strewn in the streets, in various states of dismemberment. One cadaver in particular stands out to you; the baker's son, who you used to play Knights and Goblins with, has been messily hanged with his own entrails. His face is bloated and blue, and you disgustedly realize that his eyes have been messily removed. You open the door to your house. As it swings out, it pushes the bisected corpse of a village toddler out of the way. You promptly vomit all over the corpse. The sound of a carriage rolling into town attracts your attention. Two riders sit astride, dressed as wealthy mourners attending a funeral might. The man nods curtly. "You're probably quite angry, then." > You life continues. A sob racks the woman's body as the grim-faced bishop slips the noose over her neck. "Please," The peasant woman begs as he pulls it taught and prepares to kick her off the platform. "I haven't done a thing, m'lord!" "For the crimes of murder, incest, communing with Satan and cannibalism, I sentence you to death." The holy man's voice wavers at death. Sympathy? Guilt? His face is unreadable, as always. A swift kick sends her off the platform. The young woman slumps like a marionette with its strings cut as the rope goes taught. A sign around her neck reads WITCH! You push through the crowd of peasant onlookers. Some jeer, some gasp in horror, but most shake their head and disperse, driven indoors by the chill and rain that comes with the mountain climate. Your hand touches the sword at your belt, feeling its reassuring weight. "Father Harrison." you murmur, nodding your head to the older man. "The sellsword returns," He looks at you disapprovingly. "What brings you back? No more corpses left to butcher for coin?" You bite back a swell of irritation. "Corpses that dine on human flesh. An important distinction." He laughs. It's a cold, humorless sound. "Of course. Best to charge for their disposal, no?" "Dangerous or not, I've still got to -" He silences you with a dismissive wave of his hand. "I'll hear no more of it. Tell me what brings you back to Eden." "I was looking to get my sword consecrated," You say evenly. "I was told that the Holy Roman Church provided such services." "We are obligated to, yes." He scowls. "See Friar Jameson. Stay no longer than is necessary." > The Blood of the Christ The basilica is empty, save for Friar Jameson, who frets over a golden bowl of what appears to be human blood. Along the carefully-crafted stone walls lie stained glass windows, displaying the adventures of various saints and angels from Catholic mythology. On the far wall is an oversized statue of Christ crushing the life out of a vampire with his two oversized fists. Friar Jameson looks up as the massive oak door swings shut behind you. He strides forward intently, grimly furrowing his eyebrows at you. He stops five feet away, glaring at you; you can feel his eyes pierce your very soul. "Hello, Jameson." He bursts into a grin and embraces you. You can feel your back crack under the big man's bear-like embrace. "Good to see you, you mercenary bastard!" You awkwardly pat his back. "Y-you as well, Jameson." "What brings you back to Eden?" He asks cheerfully, pulling back. You notice a fresh new scar running the length of his chin. "Lodgings for the night, and a Consecration. Been tracking a pack across the damn continent. Pretty sure they passed by here not too long ago." You explain, rubbing your shoulder. You hope he doesn't hug you again. His cheerful demeanor slips away, somewhat. "A Consecration, huh? Might be trickier than you expect. Blood's been angry recently." "How does blood get angry?" You wonder aloud. "Your guess is as good as mine, mate," He frowns deeply. "But shit's been going very, very wrong with the Ministrations." You're filled with a sudden impatience. You can feel your quarry slipping away. You hand him the leather scabbard, blade inside. "Do your best, anyhow." You leave the church, then, leaving Jameson clutching the blade with an ever-increasing look of alarm on his face. > You find yourself some lodgings for the night. You find yourself some lodgings at The Serpent, a run-down, overpriced inn on the edge of town. The beer has more in common with water than booze, and prostitutes and alcoholics glower at you from the edge of the common area. You rent yourself a room from the heavyset, nigh-incomprehensible Scottish bartender. He waves you to the back, where you find your meager lodgings. You lay your head against the stuffed straw pillow and doze off instantaneously. > You morning in Eden. The sun rises over the township of Eden, beating back whatever bloodthirsty creatures of the night lurk in its darkened streets. A cry is taken up in the town square, and it's carried to your ears on the backs of frightened townspeople. An old woman has been found dead in the night. Her one remaining arm is splayed out to the side, and the other lies ten feet away, on the other side of the street; it's been sucked dry of blood. From your vantage point in a nearby alley, you can see the church move in on the corpse almost immediately. Two glowering, armored figures dragging the corpse, along with the arm, back towards the basilica. One of the Paladins glares at you as you as the corpse is transported to the religious fortress on the hill. He appears to give you a silent challenge to come follow him. You suspect vampirism is at play, but there's no way to be certain until you can manually inspect the corpse for bite-wounds; otherwise, it could be werewolves, or even a plain serial killer. Of course, your sword is still in the basilica being consecrated. > You follow the Paladins. You follow the two agents of the Church as they drag the desecrated corpse back to their armored fortress. You maintain fifteen feet of distance, and use the crowds and narrow, winding streets to avoid their suspicious gaze. You become acutely aware of the two massive spears that they each carry; a four-foot hickory rod with a steel blade mounted on one end. You have no doubt that it could crack your head, or remove it wholesale, if swung by one of the two muscled brutes. They ascend the winding path to the basilica, leaving a steady trail of visceral fluid as the corpse scrapes along the ancient cobblestones. > You surprise! The unencumbered brute suddenly turns around, at a moment where you're exposed. You try to scramble backwards, but trip over your own feet. The last thing you see is the armored figure standing over you, prepared to club you over the head. > You sweet Sleep Finding the armored grasp of the Paladin quite comfortable, you slip once more into the land of unconsciousness. You go limp once more, leaving yourself a heavy burden for the alleged holy man to drag along. You awaken chained to a moist stone wall. A pounding headache graces your senses. "Oh, shit." you say to no one in particular. "Ephesians, four twenty-nine," A monotone voice chides you from the darkness. "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear." Even in a dungeon, with a head injury, chained to a wall, you can't escape the proselytization of Father Harrison. > You retrieving your sword. The restraints effortlessly fall off. You rub your wrists, slotting your thumbs into the grooves dug in by the chains. Harrison's words about retrieving your sword linger with you; you find it curious that the elderly priest directed you to arm yourself. "Turn the other cheek" appears to have been replaced by "don't die". You leave the dungeon (why does the basilica have a dungeon?) and wince as sunlight assaults your senses once more. Your head injury flares up immediately, sending you sprawling to the carpeted floor. Curiously, your pain is ignored by the sparse population of friars and monks stewing about. You stand at the back end of the room you entered two days before. Before you lies the rom where mass would typically be held. On the leftmost side of the wall closest to you is a doorway leading to the upper floors of the building. A longing strikes you, the sort and intensity of which you hadn't felt in years; a desire for something spiritual, something greater than yourself. You feel a newfound awareness for your place in the universe. Either that, or you got hit really fucking hard. > You take a moment for prayer. You sit on the closest pew, and stare at the massive statue of Jesus Christ that dominates the preacher's stage. You bow your head a moment in contemplative prayer. It feels awkward, clumsy and out-of-place, and your throbbing head prevents you from any real introspection. After a few minutes, you get up to retrieve your sword. Intuition tells you it's upstairs. > You upstairs The upstairs isn't as large as you expected, but to call it "small" would be a disservice. After walking up the fifty stone-tile steps, you find yourself in a carpeted hallway, stretching out for a couple of hundred feet in front of you. Either side is lined with small wooden doors, where the monks and permanent inhabitants of the church sleep. Behind you is the entrance to a library; given as this is a church, there's likely not much in the way of interesting reading, unless you like Latin bibles and apologetics. Logically, you know there must be an armory somewhere, but it's not up here. You head back downstairs. > You head downstairs. You head back down through the central room and back downstairs. The stairs are little more than a darkened stone tunnel, lit intermittently with flickering torches. Through process of elimination, you realize that the armory must be somewhere on the subterranean level. You walk down the stairs, with the trepidation of one who has lived their entire life in a world filled with vampires. Thankfully, nothing lurks in the shadows, and you reach the armory fairly easily. It's roughly a ten-foot by ten-foot stone chamber, with walls lined with rifles and the like. You find your sword fairly easily, as it's been placed separate from the weapon's owned by the church, on an opposite table. You slam it into your scabbard and buckle it around your hip. You go back upstairs. > You pounding at the Door You hear a pounding at the thick, oaken door. The three friars milling about the central room look up in alarm. You quickly approach the door, and you’re ushered back by one of the stone-faced monks. “It’s in all of our best interest if that door stays sealed.” he explains in mute tones, not meeting your eye, “A… large flock moved in on the town shortly after we sealed the church. Father Harrison saw fit to leave you untroubled with these matters.” “Fuck.” you mutter, as you slowly begin to realize why you dislike the church. “If you want to speak to him, he should be in the War Room.” the grim man explains quickly. “Why the fuck would there be a War Room in a basilica?” you ask, growing more irritated by the moment. “Perhaps,” he runs a hand over his bald scalp, sweating profusely, “It would be best if you allowed Father Harrison to explain this matter to you personally.” “Perhaps,” you muse bitterly, “Where is the War Room?” “Come.” he instructs curtly, as he walks back across the large room. You’re beginning to suspect that it may be a very long time indeed before another mass is held in it. > The War Room You recognize a half-dozen high-ranking priests and town officials inside the strangely-titled War Room. They’re cloistered in a semicircle alongside a parchment map with arcane sigils scratched into it. You see what appear to be troop markers, which is strange in and of itself; why does the Roman Catholic church have an army at its disposal? What army is denoted by an upside-down cross? These questions burn into your mind as Father Harrison nods to you. “I suppose you’ve started to understand that our purposes here aren’t exactly… ecclesiastical.” Harrison says acridly. He looks strange, armored in medieval chain with a double-barreled shotgun strapped to his back. Gone are the clipped, judgmental tones of an aging priest, having been replaced with the pragmatic, competent voice of a general ordering his troops. “No,” you murmur, amazed, “Not much of a Christian operation you’re running here.” He scowls. Warrior or not, the expression still fits him perfectly. “Deus Vult, my friend. Whether you like it or not, there are occasions when God demands his flock pick up the shepherd’s rod in his stead. Whether it’s warlike Mohammedans and blaspheming Jews, or bloodthirsty vampires… he cares little.” You recognize the quotation from one of the old historical texts Sir Gregory crammed down your throat. Pope Urban the Second, shortly before the first “Crusade. You’re planning a crusade.” “Yes,” he says with a grim smile, “We’re planning a crusade.” > You specialist Knowledge “But… why?” you ask, equal parts fascinated and horrified. “Why not?” he responds simply, “We’ve been fodder for too long. You yourself were almost a digestif, when you were a lad.” Now it’s your turn to scowl. You’re beginning to suspect that Harrison might be a fucking nob. “Not how I’d describe a massacre of innocents, but that’s one way to describe it.” “Semantics,” he mutters, waving your concerns aside with a sharp gesture of the wrist, “Now, your… unique skills as a corpse-hunting sellsword put you in a uniquely valuable position.” “But what would you have done if I hadn’t come here?” you ask. “It was assured that you would come here. A job posting near Eden didn’t spring up organically.” he smiles, a touch of sinisterness brushing his lips. “But why would I —“ “You will be rewarded most handsomely, let me make that clear. The situation becomes clear. He’s offering you a job. > You join the Crusade You’re not sure if you believe in God or not, but you believe in gold and revenge, and the Church has given you ample opportunity to sample both. Within a couple of months, your knowledge of the scourge placed you in control of a small garrison in Eastern Europe. To your relief, you were far from the heavy fighting. You expected a Crusade, but WWIII may be a better descriptor. Within a few days of the Pope’s declaration, mass hysteria gripped the general populace. Although good, faithful Catholics were more than willing to take up arms, Europe’s resident protestant and Jews were unwilling to fight, at first; this quickly changed when entire hamlets and villages began to disappear into the night. Governments proved to be ineffectual for more than the usual reasons; most parliaments and senates had long since been infiltrated. A few dead heads of state and parliamentary massacres later, most of the governing bodies were left headless. As you saw, the Church fought with little regard for the common man. Those who were unable to fight found themselves out in the cold, and those who found themselves out in the cold oftentimes found something colder still waiting in their homes. Some might say you’ve found a grander purpose. Others might say you’re still a mercenary, whoring out your dignity for gold. Perhaps, both are true. However, with the war raging, you have no time for such esoteric matters. > You mixed Squad Tactics Seven feet tall, if it’s a foot. Blood drips off its curled tusks, which protrude from its mouth like massive, arching fingers pointed upwards. How does a vampire become a monstrosity like this? Gabriel tells you that it’s a result of pacts with Satan. Raziel, the village apothecary, informs you that the vampires have “read the writing inside”, and have unlocked the secrets to transform at will. You’re not sure about either explanation. Either way, the beast is an immediate threat to the supply chain crossroads you’ve been tasked with defending. Gabriel trains his rifle on it; his hand shake violently as he takes aim. You can see him struggle to hold on to his gun, white-knuckled and terrified. The two other men at your position are all in similar states of apprehension. The ground vibrates slightly as the colossal horror shambles onwards, marching down the forested road for reasons unknown. In the feeble light of the streetlamps, you can see the blasphemous tokens hanging about its neck, made out of bits of human bone and sinew. Your hand touches your own weapon, a plain-looking revolver hanging in a simple leather pouch at your waste. You could annihilate the beast right now, and bring an end to its life; or, you could follow it back to its lair, and see if you can’t drive out the swarm. > You bring it down! “Fire!” You whisper fiercely to Gabriel. He complies immediately, violently jerking on the trigger. His shot goes wild, and strikes the foliage behind the creature. A flock of crows takes flight into the trees, blotting out the moon in their frantic numbers. The other two men dive for their weapons, and launch a hasty volley as the creature bellows out a challenge. One bullet strikes its shoulder, rewarding the firer with a burst of thick, tar-like ichor. The other strikes a tree branch, scoring its deep bark with an ugly new wound. By the time you reach for your weapon, the jig is up. The creature barrels into your team of saboteurs, sending you barreling into the underbrush, and sending your pistol flying into the bushes some four feet away. You sympathetically wince as the vampire plants a foot on one Gabriel’s chest, and crushes his ribcage in one motion. You shimmy through the scratching thorns, frantically searching for your only hope of salvation. Struck by the back of a monstrous fist, a man begins an ill-fated flight into the night sky. Your grasp closes around the revolver as the third man is run through with a clenched fist through the stomach. Hot blood coats your face as he twitches and feebly claws at the oversized creature’s massive bicep. You scream in agony as a foot crushes your right hand, shattering the bones within. You look up, and see the beast standing above you. The ghost of a smirk touches it’s oversized features as it grabs your other arm and plants its foot on your chest. An enormous force is applied to your shoulder. As the agony grows, you become aware of your muscles and tendons snapping like rope, until your arm is pulled free of your body. Darkness takes you then. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> Seven feet tall, if it’s a foot. Blood drips off its curled tusks, which protrude from its mouth like massive, arching fingers pointed upwards. How does a vampire become a monstrosity like this? Gabriel tells you that it’s a result of pacts with Satan. Raziel, the village apothecary, informs you that the vampires have “read the writing inside”, and have unlocked the secrets to transform at will. You’re not sure about either explanation. Either way, the beast is an immediate threat to the supply chain crossroads you’ve been tasked with defending. Gabriel trains his rifle on it; his hand shake violently as he takes aim. You can see him struggle to hold on to his gun, white-knuckled and terrified. The two other men at your position are all in similar states of apprehension. The ground vibrates slightly as the colossal horror shambles onwards, marching down the forested road for reasons unknown. In the feeble light of the streetlamps, you can see the blasphemous tokens hanging about its neck, made out of bits of human bone and sinew. Your hand touches your own weapon, a plain-looking revolver hanging in a simple leather pouch at your waste. You could annihilate the beast right now, and bring an end to its life; or, you could follow it back to its lair, and see if you can’t drive out the swarm. > You follow it. You decide then to trail the beast, hopefully finding its lair in the process. Silently, you motion for the two other saboteurs to stay back, taking just Gabriel with you. Out of all the village conscripts, you find him to be the least incompetent. That, and he quickly learned the valuable skill of shutting up. Terror crosses the boyish face under a blonde mop of hair, but he nods. You creep down the secluded lane, carefully avoiding twigs and treacherous birds. Crows, in particular, appear to be friends of the vampires; you’ve seen many a man fall to startled birds. Well, that and horrific injuries to the jugular. You stalk the beast for a good quarter mile, before it stops, seemingly at random, somewhere along the forested road leading into town. It steps into the bushes across the road from you, and looks down. And then, it vanishes completely. You move to follow it, and then you abruptly faint. The strings of consciousness are severed, leaving you as a marionette plummeting towards the stage. > A gateway. You awaken in a cold sweat, bundled in rags, and restrained to a bed. You find yourself in a small shack, scarcely illuminated by a few candles. It appears to be held up by naught but twigs and thatch, bound with bundles of rope. Piles of books line the corner. If you focus, you can see an unfamiliar language that makes your eyes water. An old man with a face like a mannequin flits about the shack. What he’s doing is unknown to you, as are his intentions. You gasp in horror as the candlelight surges; for a moment, you can see a pair of skeletal wings, extended into the shadowed corners of the makeshift building. He turns, and you wince as you feel his bright eyes bore through your defenses, laying bare your very soul. “The prodigal son awakens!” he tuts. “Prodigal son?” you ask as you regain your faculties. “I certainly hope so.” he responds with a warm chuckle. “Why?” “Disorder is bad for research.” he responds matter-of-factly, as if he were stating that the sky is blue. “Research… what do you research?” His body goes rigid. “Nothing.” “Nothing?” “Everything.” he smiles guiltily. You decide to change tack. “Why did you bring me here?” “I didn’t bring you anywhere,” he says defensively, “Gabriel brought you here.” “Why did he do that?” you ask. His double-talk is quickly growing tiresome. “You fainted,” Raziel assumes his matter-of-fact tone once more. “And I nursed you back to health?” “How did you nurse me back to health?” “I tied you down to prevent you from biting your fingers off.” “Why would I bite my fingers off?” “You had a fit of madness.” You let out an even sigh through your teeth. “Why did I have a fit of madness?” “It would appear that you looked into Hell.” despite the sudden and abrupt lurch to the unusual, his clipped, explanatory demeanor remains unchanged. “I looked into Hell?” you ask, incredulously, “How did I do that?” “You stalked a vampire, no?” Raziel takes the tone of a disappointed teacher, or perhaps a parent. “Yes.” you sound suspiciously like a misbehaving child. “Well,” he explains, “It’s only rational that you looked into Hell.” “Why in the hell would it be normal for me to look into Hell?” your temper flares, before you restrain it once more. He doesn’t seem to notice. “Vampires are dead, no?” “Yes, vampires are dead.” “Dead people go to Hell, no?” “I’m not so sure.” you’re unsure of how he’ll take to your agnosticism. “They do, trust me,” the ghost of a smile touches his lips, “As an undead species, vampires can traverse Hell if they’re so inclined.” “Oh, of course.” he doesn’t seem to pick up on the sarcasm. “Do you know how undeath works, Samuel?” gooseflesh ripples up your arm as he glares at you. You realize for the first time that he’s blind. “No.” you nervously respond. The temperature in the room must have dropped thirty degrees. “God is a novelist,” he whispers. “A-a novelist?” you stammer back. Who is this man?” “His works are written in blood.” A single tear leaks out of the old man’s broken eye. He ages forty years in front of you, and suddenly seems very small and fragile indeed. You begin to shiver uncontrollably. “W-what do you mean?” “The Church can only repeat his works. I read too many of them, that’s why he took my eyes.” “Who took your eyes?” A surge of dread seeps through you, from your chest down to your gut, and into your toes. You feel heavy under the weight of your terror. “They’re are writing their own works.” he wheezes in pain, as if he’s under duress. “What does that -“ “We have little time,” the strength seems to fade from him, “you must become a copyist to find their strength.” “How do -“ Your question is interrupted by his lifeless corpse hitting the ground. You wake up on the forest floor, gasping for air. > You awakening. The morning rays of dawn cannot penetrate the deep, unsettling, soul-penetrating cold that set in on you over night. You crane your neck, listening to the individual pops as your spine aligns itself. You look over, and see the corpse of Gabriel in the bush next to you. He’s frozen in place, an awful terror burned into his face for all of eternity. You pick up his rifle, and begin to walk back to town. Raziel’s words linger in your mind as you approach the hastily-erected fence around town. “Mornin’,” the watchmen mumbles though his late-in-shift exhaustion. You rub your eyes. “Where’s Raziel?” The watchmen looks at you, puzzled. “Who in the Hell is Raziel?” “Nobody,” you respond, sharing in the man’s exhaustion, “did any of the men make it back?” He shakes his head. “Nossir, thought they was with you!” “Fuck,” you mutter, “That’s a damn shame.” “Sounds like you had quite the night, sir,” he remarks, “Sure Father ‘oud love to here about it.” “I need sleep.” You mutter absentmindedly, already brushing past the man on the way to your quarters. “Don’t we all, sir?” He laughs, bitterly. > You head back to the church. You meander through the makeshift wall, and slowly begin your walk back to the church-turned-stronghold that quickly became the seat of power for the local religious militia. You marvel at how dirty the town had gotten; what was once a small European township with cobblestone streets and small, mom-and-pop businesses on every corner was now filthy, and comparable to a refugee camp. Old fire-barrels and trash litter the ground. The people you pass glare at you; perhaps one too many brush with looters is all it takes to gain a permanent mistrust of your fellow man. Your stroll ends at the church. A sign once read “FIRST PARISH CHURCH”, but it’s long since been replaced with a small sign that says “BASE OF OPERATIONS ” in small black lettering. The door to the small, unassuming little building has been ripped off, you you move the rubbery tarp aside as you enter. As with most churches converted to military strongholds, the pews have long since been scrapped for their requisite parts and nailed to the windows. The church smells of woodsmoke and unwashed bodies, consequences of the smoldering flame and lack of running water in the town. Fifty or so men are packed into it, milling about in various states of undress. In the far right corner, there’s an entrance to back room; this is where you need to be. > You reporting in. You enter the small office in the corner of the church, after shouldering your way through the dense crowd of sweaty, compacted men pressing in on each other. It’s original purpose was probably for the pastor to have a place to prepare his notes and sermon, but it’s been co-opted by the local militia, and is now used as a place for the local alderman to gather his thoughts and meet with advisors. The alderman is a small, grey-haired old veteran, worn out by the horrors of a lifetime of campaigns. You once heard that he cut a man’s head off with a trenching shovel. “Was your mission successful?” he croaks. “We were able to counter a vampire raid from the usual spot,” you begin, “but we made another, more alarming discovery.” “Don’t keep me in suspense, boy.” he croaks bitterly. The old man laughs, then; it’s a cold sound, lacking in mirth and warmth. “I collapsed, shortly after I witnessed a large vampire disappear into the underbrush.” you explain, as you begin to doubt your own experience. “You collapsed? What’s the matter, boy? The cold finally get to you? Would you like a cup of tea?” his sarcasm is grating, as always. You’d punch him, but hanging from a pole isn’t in your wheelhouse. “And after I collapsed, I had some sort of vision, or dream, or something.” your head begins to ache. “Well, boy. Do tell of this vision-dream-something you speak of.” You explain your vision in excruciating detail. His mask of snark and sarcasm drops quickly, and he leans forward in keen interest. His hands rest on his knees, and you can’t help but notice that they’re faintly shaking. “Well, boy, it sounds like your vision-dream-something knows a thing or to, eh?” He grins unexpectedly. “Sounds like it.” you say warily. You were expecting a religious tantrum, not a… whatever this is. “So he was instructing you to become a copyist,” the man lets out a heavy sigh, “One can assume that he wasn’t intending for you to live the life of a medieval friar.” “One can assume.” you echo. “So if a vampire can read “God’s Language”, then it sounds to me as if he’s telling you to become a copyist of it; that is, he wants you to become a vampire.” “Shit.” you mutter. “Shit indeed, ” he responds quietly, rubbing his beard, “Well, I suppose the decision has to be yours, then. Far be it beyond me to judge matters of the soul.” “But you’re the alderman, aren’t you going to tell the men?” you ask worriedly. You know the local superstitions; the second you’re suspected of communing with the devil, you’re one of “them”. “Tell them what?” he says meaningfully. > You mulling it over. You spend a fevered night at the church, tossing and turning. You’re chased through your dreams by a winged specter, gurgling at you in a language unknown to you. You run through a shadowed forest like a deer, artfully bounding over roots and tree-branches in the night. However, it isn’t enough, and the cruel ghost is never more than a few feet behind you. You awake with a start, shortly before dawn. Not a soul has stirred. You go outside, taking in the once-beautiful landscape of the small Eastern European town that has become your home. And then, quite abruptly, a vampire leaps onto your back, sinking its fangs into your shoulder. You react immediately, grabbing two fistfuls of its dry hair and throwing it into the ground. You plant a boot on its neck before it can react, and quickly snatch your revolver from its resting place. One bullet to the brain and its struggles cease. Onlookers rush towards you. You’re infected. You know that it’s only a matter of time before you’re strung up and left as an example. Even if their intentions are sympathetic, your path is clear; running. You fire another bullet into the air, startling the would-be first responders rushing towards you. With a cry of “back the fuck off!”, you run off into the woods, towards where you spotted the gigantic vampire. > You gateway You run full-pelt into the woods, exhausting your supply of stamina and then some. Your lungs beg for air, and your face goes flush as you prop yourself up against a nearby tree. You appear to have escaped your would-be pursuers, but the concept of a militiaman running about as an undead beast will likely bring them back in force. You can see the gateway that you saw a vampire walk through earlier. Perhaps, “see” is the wrong word; you can sense it. Like something in the corner of your vision, you know that it must exist, and where, even if you aren’t laying eyes on it directly. Out of options and desperate, you approach the hole in the ground. It’s cold and has no precise dimensions, appearing to you as a circle of indeterminate radius, shifting and slithering along the ground. It feels strangely inviting; like a blanketed bed in the morning. You could slip through, but there’s no guarantee of what you’ll see on the other side. Or, you could stay right here. > You enter the gateway. You step through. It feels as if you’ve just leaped into a pool; one moment you are on Earth, in the realm of the living, and the next, you are in the next life. Immediately, you feel uncomfortably warm. Sticky, uncomfortable sweat clings to your clothing as you materialize in a small dirt tunnel. Your arms and legs are uncomfortably close. There’s no room to stretch out, or even crawl backwards; you’re forced to slowly move forward. Vampirism begins to set hold on you; you feel weakened and feverish, as you begin to die. You can see an exit. It’s even narrower, and roughly fifteen feet away. Beyond it is complete and utter darkness. You force your failing muscles to propel you towards it. With a final, titanic effort, you force yourself out through the hole. You feel yourself falling down a gigantic hole, down to the interminable depths. Suddenly, you enter through another gateway, and rematerialize on a corn field. If you had to guess, you’d say you’re in Kansas at eight o’clock in the evening. You see the Devil standing before you. He’s tall and cultured looking, clad in a tuxedo and clutching a timepiece to his breast. He smiles at you. “My friend,” he begins in a vaguely English accent, “We’ve so much to talk about!” <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> You run full-pelt into the woods, exhausting your supply of stamina and then some. Your lungs beg for air, and your face goes flush as you prop yourself up against a nearby tree. You appear to have escaped your would-be pursuers, but the concept of a militiaman running about as an undead beast will likely bring them back in force. You can see the gateway that you saw a vampire walk through earlier. Perhaps, “see” is the wrong word; you can sense it. Like something in the corner of your vision, you know that it must exist, and where, even if you aren’t laying eyes on it directly. Out of options and desperate, you approach the hole in the ground. It’s cold and has no precise dimensions, appearing to you as a circle of indeterminate radius, shifting and slithering along the ground. It feels strangely inviting; like a blanketed bed in the morning. You could slip through, but there’s no guarantee of what you’ll see on the other side. Or, you could stay right here. > You don't You decide to reject the vampirism thrust upon you. If it means dying as a man, so be it. You turn your back to the gateway, and walk back towards the town. Already you can feel yourself growing feverish and weak, as the disease takes hold. Soon, the son will burn you to a crisp; and that’s just fine with you. You put your head to the ground and close your eyes. You’ve earned yourself some rest. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The night is cold, dark and starless. The only light other than the candle Mama clutches in her hand comes from the moon, whose once bright, white, inviting and warm light is now deep red, like it's been splattered with blood. You're curled up with your two sisters, Ivana and Lilia, with Mama sitting over you, her candle in one hand and a wooden crucifix in the other. Papa is nailing boards to keep the door shut, hastily trying to give you some extra protection. It's the Night of the Blood Moon. You've never been through one, the last happening less than a year before your birth, but now, after another twelve years, it had arrived. Your eldest brother, Dornan, told stories about it, stories that chilled you to the bone, that kept you from sleep, that gave birth to the horrors of your nightmares. If even a fraction of what Dornan said is true, the screams should begin soon. "Mama?" Lilia asks. "Hush, darling," Mama replies, as Papa finishes boarding up the door and grabs his shotgun from it's place on the wall. He takes his spot next to you, his gun pointed at the door, and you wait. The screams start soon. Howls of pain and terror from other houses of the town. Ivana is old enough to know to stay quiet, but Lilia soon starts to cry. Mama desperately tries to hush her six year old daughter, but to no avail. "Sssh! Sssh, darling! It's alright, you just must stay quiet!" Papa says. Suddenly, a tall, dark shadow passes by the window. Papa immediately grabs his shotgun, frantically raising it to his shoulder. The shadow disappears, and Papa breaths a sigh of relief. "Scared of something?" a deep, guttural voice says from behind you. Papa turns, firing his shotgun as the monster speeds forward. It grabs Papa's throat with unnatural speed, smiling as it holds him in the air, strangling him. The monster looks hideous. It's dreadfully pale, it's face twisted with hate, and looks to be hairless. It's eyes are completely black, like the endless darkness of its soul, and it's mouth is filled with mangled teeth with two large fangs, curved and bloodstained, with even more blood pouring down its face. The creature snarls, before smiling as it turns to look at you and your siblings. "Ah... so young... so fresh..." the vampire says, licking it's lipless mouth with a forked tongue. "Peasant, your daughters are mine. Don't struggle." The vampire tosses Papa to the ground, turning towards your siblings. "No! No! You will not take my daughters!" Father says, grabbing for his gun. The monster strikes, smashing it's boot into Papa's head. "How dare you?!" the monster screams. "I gave you your land, I gave you your house, I give you your life!" The monster begins walking toward Papa, who desperately crawls back to the wall. "I keep the beasts away from the village! I let you roam the night all but one night every twelve years! I don't ask for your wife, to allow you to sire more. I don't ask for your son, to leave you a legacy. I only ask for your daughters! How dare you attempt to deny me that?" As the vampire walks towards Papa, his fangs bared, you see a chance to get Papa's shotgun. Still, you don't want to anger the vampire further. Perhaps the best option is to hope for the beast's mercy. > You do nothing The vampire grabs Papa's head, twisting it with amazing speed. You hear his neck crack, as the vampire drops his limp body. Tears stream down your face, as he walks towards you. He grabs you by the scruff of your neck. "You are a sheep," he snarls. "Look at you. Look at all of you. Weak. Mindless. Sheep. You only exist to feed me. Your lifespan is measured in decades. I've lived over a millenia! I am the hunter, you are prey!" He turns, walking towards Mama. Mama tries to strike him, but he catches her hand, yanking her into his grasp and biting down on her neck. She gasps as he tears open her throat, pressing his bloody mouth on the bleeding wound. He feeds for about a minute, as you lie there, too terrified to move. Then, he strides forward, catching your sisters by the hand and lifting them into the air. He flings them over his shoulder like a young lamb, and looks at you. "Bleet," he snarls, before walking out of the door, leaving you alone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Dad's told you three things about Dawnwood: It's a small town with less than a thousand people, it's a friendly, closed-knit community and it's in the Deep South, between the middle of nowhere and some godforsaken shithole you've never been to. You sit in the back of Dad's Ford, staring out the window at shitty fields and forests. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" your dad says, cheerfully looking out the window. "Dad, I don't have bars on my phone. I genuinely didn't know there were places outside of Alaska in this country where that was possible." "Well, maybe it'll encourage you to spend more time actually talking to people, or read. Hunter loves reading." You look at your nine year old brother sitting next to your, his eyes glued to the screen of a Kindle. "He's not reading; he's playing games. I told you he shouldn't have gotten a Kindle." "Shut up, Hazel!" he says. You quickly thump him in the arm. "Hey! Hazel hit me!" Hunter whines. "Hazel! What have I told you about hitting your brother?" "Do it when you're not looking?" you ask sarcastically. "For God's sake, Hazel, you're sixteen, act your age! I'm sick of your acting like a spoilt brat because of the move!" "You're dragging me from my home to the middle of bumfuck nowhere, of course I'm pissed!" Dad angrily slams his hands on the wheel, losing his cool once again. "Stop swearing! I had to move here, I wasn't given a choice! The firm..." "There's plenty of other law firms! It's New York, there's not such a lack of crime you can't find work!" "That's another reason! New York was dangerous and full of crime. The only thing people die of where we're going is old age or eating too much fries!" "Fine, pick your job over us again!" Dad sighs as you pull out your headphones and put them in. You stare out the window as you pass through endless fields. > One Hour Later... An hour later, you pull into Dawnbrook, and find you were far too optimistic. The town is a shitty series of low buildings. Hunter looks up from his Kindle briefly, before shrugging and looking back down. You pull up to one of the many, generic looking houses pulling into the driveway.You can already see faces peeking out from windows at the new arrivals. Dad opens the car door and lugs two suitcases up to the door and fishes through his pocket for his keys and opens the door. "Here we are! Home!" he says cheerfully, obviously trying to raise his children's spirits. You follow Dad inside, dropping your backpack on the floor. "I'll begin unpacking, you guys can get settled in or go meet the neighbors or explore," Dad says. > You go to your room You pick up your backpack again and walk up to your new room. It has a large wardrobe, a large double bed, a desk and chair and two dressers. You sit on the bed, taking out your laptop, and go on Facebook. Thankfully, the WiFi's already set up, so you can go on. You go down your Timeline, seeing all your friends having fun. Fiona had a party, Dan's now dating Leone and a bunch of other shit's going on that you wish you could take part in. You sigh, and continue flicking through pictures and posts. After an hour or two, Dad calls you down again. You close your laptop and go downstairs, finding Dad waiting there in the kitchen. "Hey, sweetie. The house is pretty barren, so we're going to go out to eat and I'll pick up groceries in the morning. I saw a pizza place in town. Do you want to go?" > You say "Sure." "Oh, good! Come on, let's go!" You follow Dad to the car, and climb in the passenger seat. You don't even need to turn your head to know your brother's in the backseat, hearing the opening tune of Angry Birds: Stalin's Show Trials or whatever the fuck version they have now. You lie back in your seat and stare out the window as you go through the town. Eventually, you arrive at some shitty, greasy pizza joint, and get out of the car. You walk inside, and find yourself in a Chucky Cheese knock-off. You walk up to the counter and find yourself faced with a girl your age with long brown hair and a massive zit that looks like a red dot sight in the middle of her forehead. "Hello, welcome to Pizza Corner, can I take your order?" she asks. "Yeah, can we have a large Pepperoni Pizza and three Cokes?" "Sure thing. Small, Medium or Large?" "Medium." The girl begins pouring the drinks as another, far prettier blond girl appears from the kitchen, holding a large piece of dough. She glances briefly at you, before grabbing a cloth with her spare hand and disappearing back again. "So, are you new here?" the cashier asks. "Yeah, I just moved in." "I'm Lucy." "I'm Hazel." “Oh, really? Well, it’s a good town. You can’t find much work except in a dull pizza joint, but there ain’t much here to even spend the money on. Some old clothes stores and a cinema, and that’s about it.” “Do you work here full time?” “Jesus no. If I got to the point where I was working here full time I’d dip my head in the deep fat… well, I wouldn’t be happy. Im still in school.” “What grade?” “10th.” “Oh, I’m starting there tomorrow. I guess I’ll see you there.” “”Sure. If you want, I can always get you a job here. Becca, the blond girl, has literally done shit all since we started. She’s only working so her daddy an think she’s learning real-life experience and still feel justified buying whatever she…” “I can hear you!” a voice calls out from the kitchen. “I know, Becca, I’m getting a point across!” Dad appears standing next to you, grinning. "Look who's already making friends!" he smiles. You roll your eyes. "Yeah, sure. Let's just sit down," you say, pulling Dad towards a booth to sit in. > Two Days Later... The school is a shitty building filled with no good kids who are learning about geography and Shakespeare despite the fact that they’ll almost certainly end up in the shitty jobs that are needed to keep this town running. You walk through the doors, a backpack slung over your shoulder. “OK, it’s not so bad,” you mutter, walking past a row of lockers down the hall. "I just have to find my classes and…" “Hey, Hazel!” a voice cries. You turn to find the familiar, zit stricken face of the pizza cashier, Lucy. “Hey,” you reply. “So, it’s your first day, huh? Do you know what classes you’re in?" You search your pockets and pull out a crumpled class schedule, handing it to her. “OK, we have the same Spanish, English, Math, History… you do Chemistry? Gay! That’s the hardest class!” “Well other than that we seem to share a suspicious amount of classes.” “Yeah, I talked to the principal and begged him to put you in my classes… it’s a tiny school, what do you think would happen? Of course we share most classes. Oh look, Carter’s here.” You turn to see a tall kid with neat, combed hair and an awkward grin bounding over. His clothes are all too small and his teeth are messed up and chipped, which becomes more obvious as his grin widens. “P-p-pleased to meet y-you. I’m Carter,” the boy stutters awkwardly. “This is Carter. He’s one of my best friends here.” “It’s a t-tiny town. You di-didn’t exactly h-have a lot to choose from.” “Yeah, I guess not. If you want, we can both show you around. Between the two of us, we should share pretty much every class.” “Except Chem… Chemistry,” Carter points out. “Yeah, you’re pretty much fucked for that, but that’s your problem. Now we have double Math and English, and Miss Loaves is genuinely the easiest Math teacher to have to deal with. She’s the only one who lets you get books from your locker when you forget them rather than giving a write-out or detention or just yelling for ten minutes. Come on, we’ll show you around.” > Two Hours Later... The first few classes are easy. You've always been good at Math and Miss Loaves is quite eager to have a student who actually works hard. Of the class, it's mostly kids messing and doodling with the exception of you, the blond girl, Becca, who worked with Lucy in the pizza joint and a tiny kid sitting at the back of the class who looks as young as Hunter. English is similar, with you being among the few who can spell "Immediately". In the short space of three classes, you cement your position as a nerd in the class. When the bell rings for first lunch, you find Lucy smirking at you. "You could've given us a heads up you were a nerd," she says. "I'm not a nerd!" you protest. "You were doing half the sums in your head!" "I...!" "Calm it, new girl. Shit, I didn't think you'd make such a big deal about it. Come on, I'll introduce you to the gang." You follow Lucy to the cafeteria, where she sits down at a table. You recognize a few faces of those sitting there. Carter sits there, eagerly tearing into a sandwich. The nerdy, small kid is also there, as well as the blond girl, Becca, from the pizza place. The only others are a large, bulky kid who you don't recognize but seems unusually close to Becca. "Alright, everyone, this is Hazel, she's new here. You know Carter." "I'm Becca," Becca says, looking up at you. "Hey, I'm Anthony," the small kid says. "He's Ant," Becca buts in. "Anthony, you prick!" Ant says again, but you resolve that Ant is a way better name for the tiny kid. "I'm Kyle," the big kid says. You sit down, and Kyle immediately continues telling a story he was apparently telling. "So there I was, just walking into this shitty pet store that I genuinely think half the animals in were either dead or had a few hours to live, because I wanted to buy Becca a goldfish for our anniversary." "It's not anniversary. Anniversary is yearly, not five monthly," Ant points out. "Whatever, stop being a dick and interrupting the story. So I was trying to get a goldfish, when the manager or owner or whatever just stares blankly at me. After about a minute, he says "Buy something or get out", and I ask him what his problem is, and he says, no word of a lie, "All you Negroes is stealin' my cat food". I'm not even offended by that. I'm curious as to how much cat food has he had stolen by black kids to make that a stereotype in his head." "Nah, s-sounds like b-b-bullshit. I bet you w-weren't r-r-really buying Bec... Becca an anniversary gift. You w-were going to... to steal c-cat food," Carter points out. "Fuck you, Carter. Where was I?" "You just finished," Becca says. "Well, shit, I'm outta things to say. Where's Mason? He usually has something to say." "There he is," Lucy says. You turn your head slightly to see what could be the hottest boy you've ever seen. He stands tall with muscles that ripple under his t-shirt. He has short, straight black hair that looks really cute... shit, he's here. Say something! For God's sake, don't screw this up! USE THE RIGHT GREETING! > You say "Hello." "Hey," he smiles, extending a hand to shake. "I'm Mason." He speaks with a sexy, thick Southern drawl that immediately... Shit, he's staring at you. "I'm Hazel," you smile, shaking his hand. "Where were you, Mason?" Lucy asks. "I was talking to Drake about tonight." "Who's Drake?" you ask. "Lucy's older b-brother," Carter answers. "Did you tell him I was going to be there?" "Of course not. Can't you just trust me? Everything'll be fine. Hey, I forgot to say, I'm going to need you all to chip. Drake's got a heavy mark up." "What's tonight?" you ask. "We're all going out drinking in the woods," Lucy explains. "You can come, if you want. You don't even need to drink or anything, it's just a bit of fun." "I don't know if my dad will let me," "Well, sneak out," Ant says. "Well, I can try," you say. "Cool, I'll save you some cans just in case," Mason smiles. The bell rings, and Kyle and Ant swear in unison. "What class is now?" Mason asks. "Spanish," Carter replies. You grab your bag and follow your new friends to Spanish class. > Six Hours Later... The rest of the school day is easy. You learn about the history of the town in History Class, the history teacher eagerly abandoning the notion of McCarthyism to explain what appears to be her favorite topic. Apparently, the town was once home to a large tribe of Native Americans, who were promptly wiped out by Colonists. The town rose to prominence due to its large number of cattle farms, before falling into obscurity as the modern age dawned. Eventually, it became the shithole it is today. After school, you take the bus home and say goodbye to your friends. Dad's still at work, so you collapse in front of the TV for a barrage of nearly identical Crime Shows. One features a team of guys who just kind of stereotype criminals, one features some guys who look at glowing stains, one features a guy who knows when you're lying and one features a modern day Sherlock Holmes. Just as the team find a new bit of information about how the clown's car is full of some... particularly dirty stains, you hear the familiar whine. "HAZEL! Can I watch TV!?!" "No! I'm watching. Go play your games." "But It's out battery!" he whines. > You let the whining, snivelling brat watch TV "Fine!" you sigh, as your brother gleefully snatches the remote and switches to the latest cartoon that's far too old for him. You jump up from the couch, and grab your laptop, binge-watching Youtube until you hear Dad come through the door. "Hello! I'm home!" he calls. "Hey Dad!" you yell from the kitchen. He walks in, smiling. "You're not fighting. That's pretty impressive," he smiles, referring to you and your brother. "I'll put on dinner. We have chicken curry." He begins to turn on the stove and start cooking. "How was school, honey?" > You say "Shitty." "Well, honey, I'm sure it will get better. No, I swear it will. Don't worry, it just takes some time to get used to things." You shrug and turn on your phone. After about an hour, Dad begins serving dinner. > You sit down for dinner You sit down. "So Hunter, how was school?" "Good," Hunter mumbles. "Hey, Dad..." you ask. "Yes?" Now's the perfect time to ask him whether you can go or not... or you can just sneak out later. > You say "Can I go out with some friends to the woods?" "Into the woods? Hazel, it's late, you're not going to the woods," Dad says. "OK," you say dejectedly, already planning how to sneak out. You quickly eat most of your dinner before faking a stomach ache and disappearing into your room. > You several Hours Later... An hour before you're supposed to be meeting your newfound friends, you go out to Dad. "Dad, I don't feel great," you moan. "I'm going to bed." "Are you sure?" "Yeah. I need rest. I'm just going to sleep. Don't wake me any earlier than you need to." "Sure, sweetie." You disappear to your room, and immediately fill your bed will pillows even though it's a bit generic, and open your window. There's a small ledge you sit on, before you go to drop down. You hit the soil with a soft thud, and quickly break into a jog away from the house before Dad chooses to look out a window. You quickly rush away from the house and pull out your phone and call Lucy for directions. > You ten Minutes Later... After a long walk, getting lost on several occasions and using McDonalds as the landmark to navigate from, you end up trompsing through the woods, you feet softly landing on the soil that’s neither dry earth or wet mud, but a combination of both. After ten minutes walking, you come across the site your friends were talking off. A fire built from moss dry leaves and branches struggles to stay alight as two rusted pick-ups sit on either side. You see the group immediately. Mason, Lucy and Carter sit on the roof of one of the trucks, passing a large bottle of what looks like vodka between them. Kyle and Becca sit on the other sharing a strange mixture of various liquids that’s ended up a pale brownish color. Ant sits by the fire, letting out cursewords so dirty they’d make a sailor blush as he pours a can of lighter fluid among the flames in a desperate attempt to give the fire some self-sufficiency by setting alight one of the larger branches. “Oh, you’re h-h-here,” Carter says. “Oh, Hazel! I’m glad you could come! Shit, I half expectected you to get lost, give up and end up getting a McFlurry and going come,” Lucy admits. As the sun begins to hit the horizon, illuminating the entire forest golden and orange, you sit at the edge of one of the pick up’s. “You bring anything to drink?” Ant asks, turning a pile of leaves over to give the fire some air. You shake your head, and Ant sighs. “Figures. I’ve been telling half these guys to bring their own drinks since I knew ‘em, but the only ones who do is me.” Mason holds up his hands in offene. “And Mason,” “I always bring drinks!” Lucy says. “Your brother does, and he takes more than a pound of flesh in payment. Somebody ring him, anyway.” Just as Ant finishes talking, you hear a rustle among the leaves. Mason immediately puts his drink under his coat before a tall boy with messy hair that looks to be in his early twenties appears. “Hey!” he says sternly. “Underage drinking is illegal, unhealthy and can act as a gateway drug to the very dangerous Marijuana!” “We don’t have time for your bullshit, Drake,” Ant complains. “Why do have to spoil everything, short-round?” I was trying to scare the new girl,” the boy says, tossing a small grocery bag of cans of alcohol in front of Ant. “Fantastic!” Mason sasys, immediately grabbing the bag as Ant gives Drake a wad of crumpled bills. “I’m Drake, by the way,” he says to you. “Lucy’s brother.” “Hazel. You buy your sister alcohol?” you ask in surprise. “Shit, I was drinking when I was twelve and a quarter. I reckon she’s old enough to make her own decisions. Fuck, in some countries she’d be makin’ babies and runnin’ a household by now.” “Thanks, Drake,” Lucy says, breaking the tab of a can of off-brand supermarket beer. “No problem. Right, I gotta go, me and Ed are going out to do a few jobs. I’ll see you all around. Good meetin’ you, Hazel.” Drake turns and walks off through the forest as the kids around you begin tearing through the bag. “This all tastes like someone drank shitty liquor and pissed into a can,” Ant complains. “Oh, b-b-because you brought o-only the f-f-finest of wines and c-cham-champagnes, Ant,” Carter says. Mason pops the tab of another can, and looks at you expectantly. “Hey, Hazel,” he asks. “Do you want some?” > You say "No thanks." “Are you sure?” Lucy asks. “A bit of drink never hurt anyone.” “Plus, you’ll be really bland and we’lll be annoying to each other if you’re sober,” Ant adds. “Oh, and… peer pressure. We’re peers who are pressuring you, because that’s a thing that really happens." > You say "OK." "Cool," Mason grins, passing you the bottle of alcohol. You take a long drink, downing much of the bottle. Ant is right, it does taste like piss. Still, you manage to gulp down half the can, before passing it on. "Shit. The new girl can drink," Ant smiles. You continue sitting around the campfire, which is really a lot closer to a glorified candle sitting in a pile of leaves. Mason grabs the bottle of vodka and sits down next to you and your heart flutters. A large part of you knows that this is just infatuation and a childhood crush, mixed in with a fair bit of hormonal lust, but still… he’s really, really cute. The others seem bored, with Kyle downing what seems like more than his weight in booze. “Well, this is boring,” Lucy complains, tossing a bottle in the middle. “Let’s play spin the bottle.” “No way!” Ant complains. “I’m the odd guy out. Kyle and Becca go together, you and Carter and then Mason and the new girl.” You blush at that comment as Carter nods in agreement. “I agree. I d-don’t w-want to play spin the bo-bottle,” Carter says. Briefly glancing at the indifferent Mason, you feel a twinge of annoyance of all possibilities of spin the bottle disappears as Ant suggests a new game. “Truth or Dare!” Ant suggests, to the groans of Kyle and Becca. “Remember what happened last time?” Becca points out. “That’s not fair! That wasn’t my fault! You should’ve protected your dad’s stuff. How was I do know that that painting was worth a fortune?” “You shouldn’t have been drawing over paintings in the first place, Ant!” “It wasn’t skin off your dad’s nose! That rich bastard can handle a loss! Jesus, we all know his ancestors made his money off the backs of Kyle’s ancestors!” “Fuck you, Ant!” Kyle shouts, slurring from his drink. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, calm down,” Mason says. “There ain’t no issues! We’re all friends here! I say a game of truth and dare would calm us all down.” “Fine,” Becca says. Mason downs the rest of his drink, and tosses the glass bottle in the middle. He drops to his knees and spins it, landing on Carter, who lies in the back of the pick-up. “Truth or dare, Carter?” “If I p-pick dare, will you… will you make me st-stand up?” Carter says lazily. “Maybe,” Mason says slyly. “Truth, t-then.” Mason grins, glancing at him and Lucy. “Have you ever kissed Lucy?” he asks. “Nope. Sorry to disa-disa-disappoint.” “Damn. I was certain,” Mason sighs, pulling out his wallet and tossing Kyle a crumpled bill. “You just cost me twenty bucks, Carter.” Ant leans over, spinning the bottle. It slows to a stop, pointing off into the woods. “Is that closer to Becca or Hazel?” he asks. “Becca,” Carter says. “Oh, fantastic. Truth or dare?” “Truth.” “Dammit, Becca. Fine, I’ll make this awkward. How far has Kyle got with you?” “Shut up, Ant!” Becca hisses. “Hey, you gotta answer!” Lucy says. “Oh come on! That’s private!” “We’re all friends here,” Mason says. “Fine! We’ve… you know. Done it.” “Respect, Kyle,” Ant smiles, holding back a giggle. Becca goes red, grabbing the bottle and twirling it. Through pure luck or skill, it points directly at Ant. “Shit,” Ant sighs. “Truth or dare. I have a lot of embarrassing questions to ask.” “Dare,” Ant grimaces. “Well, you have a lot more balls than I though. You’ll suffer from it. I dare you to go into Herr Eichel’s basement.” “No!” Ant replies. “Come on, Becca! Herr Eichel’s tear out his throat if he caught him!” Lucy complains. “Who’s Herr EIchel?” you ask. “Oh, I’ll tell her. I’ve been practicing this story for my little brother,” Mason says, before clearing his throat. “During World War II, a young soldier rose through the ranks of the SS. He had a habit of hunting Jews and personally escorting them to the Camps. He would hunt men, women, children, and torture them all for information. He showed no mercy. Eventually, when the Russians invaded, he escaped by pretending to be a civilian, fleeing from Berlin to France to Britain to the US. He hid right here in Dawnwood, hunting down any Jews he could find. His name is Herr Eichel.” “That’s the biggest load of shit!” Lucy complains. “Everyone knows that any Jew in Dawnwood would be scared off by Carter Sr. and his white power bullshit.” “He doesn’t w-w-want white pow-power!” Carter says. “He wants white p-pride. There’s… a difference.” “No there isn’t, Carter, now stop ruining the story. Where was I?” Mason asks. “You just finished,” you point out. “Oh. Well, now Herr Eichel’s going to kill Ant.” “Becca, I’m sorry! Please change the dare!” “Fine. You have to go into the Dead Man’s Barn and go up to the attic.” “That’s even worse!” Ant complains. “Nah, that ain’t bad,” Mason says. “Nazis are real and will kill you. Ghosts aren’t.” You raise an eyebrow, and Mason smiles. “OK, story time. Once, there was a Sheriff back in the Western times who used his power to wipe out any competition of the big ranchers of the town. One of the small time ranchers, Daniel Edwards, stood up and told the Sheriff he wouldn’t sell his farm to his competition despite threats. The Sheriff led a posse to bring him down, and Edwards tried to fight back. He killed two dozen men and took near a hundred bullets before he went down. They tortured him for a few days, even cutting his face wide open to give him... what'd ya call it, a Glasgow Grin. Eventually, you just hung him to finish him off. Rumor is he still haunts the barn where they strung him up. It’s a historical building so it can’t be torn down, so the owner just leaves it vacant.” “I’m not going!” “Don’t pussy out, Ant.” “Will one of you go with me?” Ant pleads. “Spin the bottle, and whoever it lands on has to go with you,” Lucy suggests. “I hope it’s Becca. That’d be ironic.” “Sure,” Carter says. “Let’s do that.” Ant thanks Lucy and spins the bottle. It wobbles and slows to a halt, pointing directly at you. “Well, I guess Hazel’s going to Dead Man’s Barn,” Mason says. “No, she can go to Herr Eichel’s if she wants. Eichel’s just an old, slow dude. The Dead Man’s a supernatural murderer,” Lucy says. “Let Hazel pick,” Kyle says, trying to stand before stumbling and leaning back on the truck. “Yeah. Go ahead Hazel. Ghost or Nazi.” > You go with Ant to Dead Man's Barn "Dead Man's Barn." "If you think so," Lucy says as Mason nods encouragingly. Ant nods nervously. "Good choice," Mason says. You nod. The group begins to stand, and starts walking towards Dead Man's Barn. "I'll... I'll stay here!" Kyle slurs, collapsing into the back of the pick-up truck. Lucy shrugs, and continues leading the group out of the forest. The group drops the various empty cans among the shrubs as you emerge in yet a bland, empty field with an old, clearly abandoned and boarded up barn in the center. It's a particularly large barn, but other than that it's just an old, boring barn.. The sun's fallen, so Lucy brings out her phone and turns on the flashlight. She leads you to the barn, and Mason grabs the edge of a piece of plywood and pulls it back. "This is stupid guys," Ant says. "What, scared of a ghost?" Mason chuckles. "No! I'm just scared of tripping and getting tetanus from a rusty nail!" "Pussy," Mason says, rolling his eyes. Mason pulls the plywood back further, creating a large enough gap for you to step through. "Thank you," you say as you step through. "Of course, Ma'am," Mason smiles. As you step through, you enter complete darkness penetrated by a single beam of pale moonlight coming from the gap. Ant steps in afterwards, looking around nervously. "OK, we've went inside, dare's over," Ant says. Mason sighs, pushing the plywood back in place. You hear his muffled voice a few seconds later. "Go upstairs and open the boards at the window. Then we'll let you out, Ant," Lucy says. "You're a bitch!" Ant says, thumping on the plywood, before turning to you. "Let's explore," he says nervously. You pull out your phone, turning on the flashlight. The inside of the barn is immediately illuminated. Several horse stalls made of rotten wood takes up most of the barn, with the floor covered in dried, rotten hay. "It smells like shit in here," Ant complains. "Hush," you reply. You spot a partially rotted out stairs leading to the upper floor. You walk over to it. You put your foot on the first stair and put some weight on it to make sure it'll hold. You slowly make your way up the stairwell, reaching the upper-floor. There's a dead silence inside, even the wind dying as complete silence consumes you. You scan the room with your flashlight. You wince as you notice a blood-stained noose hanging from the ceiling. "Jesus. Is that what I think it is?" "No, Hazel, it's a fucking... I can't even think of a mocking example. Of course it's a...!" There's a creaking of the floorboards behind you, and you quickly turn to find... nothing. "Hazel, please. If you're trying to freak me out, just... don't." "I'm not doing..." You feel something knock into your back and you fall forward with a yelp. Your phone flies from your hands. It falls forward down the stairs, thudding before it lands on it's back, obscuring the flashlight and plunging you into total darkness. "What the fuck, Ant?" "I swear to god, that wasn't me!" Ant says. "Let's get out of here, fuck the window." You hear haggard, wet breathing in at the stairwell, and you freeze. "What...?" "Shut up!" you hiss. The breathing continues, before turning to a wet, squelching chuckle. Ant whimpers, as you begin to back away from the stairwell. "It ain't your night tonight, kids," a deep voice says, each word interspersed with the wet squelching you've heard before. "What the fuck makes two dumbass, chicken shit kids come into a place you don't belong?" "What the fuck...?" Ant says, half whimpering and half shrieking. "Sssh... save your breath. I ain't even given you a reason to start hollering... yet." > You charge the figure You charge forward, and the figure grabs you. It's arms grab your wrist and pin you to the wall. You hear the soft thudding of Ant's fists on the creatures back, but the figure doesn't even seem to notice. "Oh, you're going to regret that, darlin'." The figure laughs. You feel the cold metal of a blade press against your cheek. He laughs as he begins to carve your face apart, and all you can do is scream.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Dead Man's Barn." "If you think so," Lucy says as Mason nods encouragingly. Ant nods nervously. "Good choice," Mason says. You nod. The group begins to stand, and starts walking towards Dead Man's Barn. "I'll... I'll stay here!" Kyle slurs, collapsing into the back of the pick-up truck. Lucy shrugs, and continues leading the group out of the forest. The group drops the various empty cans among the shrubs as you emerge in yet a bland, empty field with an old, clearly abandoned and boarded up barn in the center. It's a particularly large barn, but other than that it's just an old, boring barn.. The sun's fallen, so Lucy brings out her phone and turns on the flashlight. She leads you to the barn, and Mason grabs the edge of a piece of plywood and pulls it back. "This is stupid guys," Ant says. "What, scared of a ghost?" Mason chuckles. "No! I'm just scared of tripping and getting tetanus from a rusty nail!" "Pussy," Mason says, rolling his eyes. Mason pulls the plywood back further, creating a large enough gap for you to step through. "Thank you," you say as you step through. "Of course, Ma'am," Mason smiles. As you step through, you enter complete darkness penetrated by a single beam of pale moonlight coming from the gap. Ant steps in afterwards, looking around nervously. "OK, we've went inside, dare's over," Ant says. Mason sighs, pushing the plywood back in place. You hear his muffled voice a few seconds later. "Go upstairs and open the boards at the window. Then we'll let you out, Ant," Lucy says. "You're a bitch!" Ant says, thumping on the plywood, before turning to you. "Let's explore," he says nervously. You pull out your phone, turning on the flashlight. The inside of the barn is immediately illuminated. Several horse stalls made of rotten wood takes up most of the barn, with the floor covered in dried, rotten hay. "It smells like shit in here," Ant complains. "Hush," you reply. You spot a partially rotted out stairs leading to the upper floor. You walk over to it. You put your foot on the first stair and put some weight on it to make sure it'll hold. You slowly make your way up the stairwell, reaching the upper-floor. There's a dead silence inside, even the wind dying as complete silence consumes you. You scan the room with your flashlight. You wince as you notice a blood-stained noose hanging from the ceiling. "Jesus. Is that what I think it is?" "No, Hazel, it's a fucking... I can't even think of a mocking example. Of course it's a...!" There's a creaking of the floorboards behind you, and you quickly turn to find... nothing. "Hazel, please. If you're trying to freak me out, just... don't." "I'm not doing..." You feel something knock into your back and you fall forward with a yelp. Your phone flies from your hands. It falls forward down the stairs, thudding before it lands on it's back, obscuring the flashlight and plunging you into total darkness. "What the fuck, Ant?" "I swear to god, that wasn't me!" Ant says. "Let's get out of here, fuck the window." You hear haggard, wet breathing in at the stairwell, and you freeze. "What...?" "Shut up!" you hiss. The breathing continues, before turning to a wet, squelching chuckle. Ant whimpers, as you begin to back away from the stairwell. "It ain't your night tonight, kids," a deep voice says, each word interspersed with the wet squelching you've heard before. "What the fuck makes two dumbass, chicken shit kids come into a place you don't belong?" "What the fuck...?" Ant says, half whimpering and half shrieking. "Sssh... save your breath. I ain't even given you a reason to start hollering... yet." > You run You turn and start running the other way. In the darkness, you see nothing, and your foot hits a rotten plank that gives way. You scream as you wall, flying through the air before you hit the hard ground with a thud. You scream as you feel your arm break. Ant screams, before falling silence, as you struggle to pull yourself to your feet. You hear frantic yelling outside the barn as your friends realize something's happened, but not before the figure appears above you again. "Ah, shit kid. You ain't even one of the old bloods. Some immigrant or Northerner or some shit. Well, can't have you telling the city to have this place torn down, though looking at the condition you're in, this'll be a mercy." You start to beg as he slashes the cold steel along your throat as it mingles with a fresh stream of hot blood.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Dead Man's Barn." "If you think so," Lucy says as Mason nods encouragingly. Ant nods nervously. "Good choice," Mason says. You nod. The group begins to stand, and starts walking towards Dead Man's Barn. "I'll... I'll stay here!" Kyle slurs, collapsing into the back of the pick-up truck. Lucy shrugs, and continues leading the group out of the forest. The group drops the various empty cans among the shrubs as you emerge in yet a bland, empty field with an old, clearly abandoned and boarded up barn in the center. It's a particularly large barn, but other than that it's just an old, boring barn.. The sun's fallen, so Lucy brings out her phone and turns on the flashlight. She leads you to the barn, and Mason grabs the edge of a piece of plywood and pulls it back. "This is stupid guys," Ant says. "What, scared of a ghost?" Mason chuckles. "No! I'm just scared of tripping and getting tetanus from a rusty nail!" "Pussy," Mason says, rolling his eyes. Mason pulls the plywood back further, creating a large enough gap for you to step through. "Thank you," you say as you step through. "Of course, Ma'am," Mason smiles. As you step through, you enter complete darkness penetrated by a single beam of pale moonlight coming from the gap. Ant steps in afterwards, looking around nervously. "OK, we've went inside, dare's over," Ant says. Mason sighs, pushing the plywood back in place. You hear his muffled voice a few seconds later. "Go upstairs and open the boards at the window. Then we'll let you out, Ant," Lucy says. "You're a bitch!" Ant says, thumping on the plywood, before turning to you. "Let's explore," he says nervously. You pull out your phone, turning on the flashlight. The inside of the barn is immediately illuminated. Several horse stalls made of rotten wood takes up most of the barn, with the floor covered in dried, rotten hay. "It smells like shit in here," Ant complains. "Hush," you reply. You spot a partially rotted out stairs leading to the upper floor. You walk over to it. You put your foot on the first stair and put some weight on it to make sure it'll hold. You slowly make your way up the stairwell, reaching the upper-floor. There's a dead silence inside, even the wind dying as complete silence consumes you. You scan the room with your flashlight. You wince as you notice a blood-stained noose hanging from the ceiling. "Jesus. Is that what I think it is?" "No, Hazel, it's a fucking... I can't even think of a mocking example. Of course it's a...!" There's a creaking of the floorboards behind you, and you quickly turn to find... nothing. "Hazel, please. If you're trying to freak me out, just... don't." "I'm not doing..." You feel something knock into your back and you fall forward with a yelp. Your phone flies from your hands. It falls forward down the stairs, thudding before it lands on it's back, obscuring the flashlight and plunging you into total darkness. "What the fuck, Ant?" "I swear to god, that wasn't me!" Ant says. "Let's get out of here, fuck the window." You hear haggard, wet breathing in at the stairwell, and you freeze. "What...?" "Shut up!" you hiss. The breathing continues, before turning to a wet, squelching chuckle. Ant whimpers, as you begin to back away from the stairwell. "It ain't your night tonight, kids," a deep voice says, each word interspersed with the wet squelching you've heard before. "What the fuck makes two dumbass, chicken shit kids come into a place you don't belong?" "What the fuck...?" Ant says, half whimpering and half shrieking. "Sssh... save your breath. I ain't even given you a reason to start hollering... yet." > You attempt to converse with the figure "Please... I don't want to die." "I didn't either, kid. It ain't so bad. Tell your grandparents I said "Fuck you.", ok?" "Please!" you say, breaking into a sob. "HEY! Mason shouts from outside. "Are you OK in there?" You feel cold metal touch your throat. "Tell him you're fine, darlin'." > You tell Mason you're fine "I'm fine! There was a rat!" you shout. "OK!" Mason replies. Ant continues whimpering, as a gloved hand runs through your hair. "Good girl... I don't recognize you in the dark. Let's see who you are... don't scream, by the way." Your hear the flick of a lighter before a flame splutters to life in front of you, illuminating all three of you. Then, you get the first sight of the Dead Man. His skin is grey and dead, his eyes cold, lifeless and pure black. His mouth has been carved open, the cuts carving upwards into a smile. Blood stains his rotting skin and his shirt. He wears a classic cowboy hat and leather duster, and his neck is covered in the deep bruises caused by a noose. Ant tries to scream, but can't find the air to do so. You freeze, immobilized in terror, as the Dead Man grin. "Well look who we have here. A Ceder and a wanderer." You stare at him as he caresses the side of Ant's face." "What's your name, boy?" "Anthony Ceder." "I remember you. I remember your people. I remember seeing your great-great-grand mama. A little Jewish girl who ran the store and didn't have shit. You're one of the few families that didn't string me up in this town. I ain't got no feud with you." He turns to you, and presses the knife to your lips. "Darlin', you should smile more. It'd make you a hell of a lot prettier." He traces the path of a smile along your face with the cold blade. "Don't hurt me." "Ah, I'd never hurt a woman 'less I had a reason. I don't recognize you. You're a wanderer, ain't ya? You ain't from Dawnwoods originally," "I'm from New York." "Hell, might cut you up for that if I weren't as nice a guy as I am." "Are you sure you're OK?" Becca shouts, and the Dead Man presses the knife to your throat. "What's her name?" he hisses. "Becca," you whimper. "I fuckin' know that voice! I fuckin' know that voice! I fuckin'... Becca Montgomery. The great-great however fuckin' many greats grand daughter of Horton J. Montgomery. That bitch..." The Dead Man is clearly quite distracted by his vengeful rant. If there's a time to do anything, it's now. > You wait patiently "...that goddamn bitch, I'll... Call her." "What?" you ask. "I said call her, you yankee bitch! Tell that Mongomery whore to come in!" > You tell Becca to come into the barn "Becca! Can you come in here, please? We need a hand. Ant got his leg stuck!" "Sure, we'll come in!" Mason shouts. Fuck, you didn't mean for them all to come. "Good job, darlin'. Sorry 'bout this, but I can't let any of you kids get out. God, I'm bagging a Montgomery tonight!" You scream as his blade slices open your throat, cold steel mixing with warm blood.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"...that goddamn bitch, I'll... Call her." "What?" you ask. "I said call her, you yankee bitch! Tell that Mongomery whore to come in!" > You refuse "Fuck you! Becca, don't...!" The cold metal of a blade slices open your throat as before you can get out another word as cold steel mingles with hot blood. "Dumb bitch."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'm fine! There was a rat!" you shout. "OK!" Mason replies. Ant continues whimpering, as a gloved hand runs through your hair. "Good girl... I don't recognize you in the dark. Let's see who you are... don't scream, by the way." Your hear the flick of a lighter before a flame splutters to life in front of you, illuminating all three of you. Then, you get the first sight of the Dead Man. His skin is grey and dead, his eyes cold, lifeless and pure black. His mouth has been carved open, the cuts carving upwards into a smile. Blood stains his rotting skin and his shirt. He wears a classic cowboy hat and leather duster, and his neck is covered in the deep bruises caused by a noose. Ant tries to scream, but can't find the air to do so. You freeze, immobilized in terror, as the Dead Man grin. "Well look who we have here. A Ceder and a wanderer." You stare at him as he caresses the side of Ant's face." "What's your name, boy?" "Anthony Ceder." "I remember you. I remember your people. I remember seeing your great-great-grand mama. A little Jewish girl who ran the store and didn't have shit. You're one of the few families that didn't string me up in this town. I ain't got no feud with you." He turns to you, and presses the knife to your lips. "Darlin', you should smile more. It'd make you a hell of a lot prettier." He traces the path of a smile along your face with the cold blade. "Don't hurt me." "Ah, I'd never hurt a woman 'less I had a reason. I don't recognize you. You're a wanderer, ain't ya? You ain't from Dawnwoods originally," "I'm from New York." "Hell, might cut you up for that if I weren't as nice a guy as I am." "Are you sure you're OK?" Becca shouts, and the Dead Man presses the knife to your throat. "What's her name?" he hisses. "Becca," you whimper. "I fuckin' know that voice! I fuckin' know that voice! I fuckin'... Becca Montgomery. The great-great however fuckin' many greats grand daughter of Horton J. Montgomery. That bitch..." The Dead Man is clearly quite distracted by his vengeful rant. If there's a time to do anything, it's now. > You elbow him and run You slam your elbow into his face and he drops you with a grunt. "Fuckin' bitch!" he grunts. You grab Ant's arm and yank him down the stairs, you turn, yelling at Mason to move the plywood as you sprint towards it. The Dead Man appears in front of you. "Hiya, darlin'," he chuckles, blood spurting out of his throat. He begins walking towards you, as Ant lets out a whimper. The Dead Man grins, his skin tearing open as blood trickles down his chin. "I'm going to..." he says, before pausing. There's a crunch as a large piece of plywood is pulled away by Mason. A beam of moonlight comes in, hitting the boot of the Dead Man. There's a sizzle as he boot begins to fade, and the Dead Man snarls. In the blink of an eye, he's gone. You don't know where he's gone, but you're not waiting around to find out. "Come on!" you shout, grabbing Ant running towards the gap in the boards. You scamper through, collapsing on the cool grass outside. "What the fuck happened?" Mason asks. "The Dead Man was there! He was there, and he was so mad, and he..." "Ant, calm the fuck down!" Lucy shouts, grabbing Ant and shaking him. "You're d-d-drunk as fuck, Ant. You d-don't know w-what you saw," Carter says. "I did! Ask Hazel!!" The group turns to you, and you nod. "There was a ghost in there. It had it's throat slit and...!" you say in a nervous panic. "Alright, calm down," Mason says, pulling you in and squeezing you in a hug. You feel your heart flutter as you take deep breaths, your head nestled in your chest. "G-get a room," Carter says. You blush as Mason lets go of you. "In fairness, you've drunk a fair bit as well. You're more pissed than I am. Maybe you were just seeing things in the shadows that weren't there," Mason suggests. You shrug whilst shaking your head. "I don't know." "Come on, let's head back to Kyle," Becca says. You walk back through the field and back into the woods, heading towards the trucks. "S-s-so, this w-was a bad id-idea," Carter says. "We just p-panicked Ant and H-Ha-Hazel." "We risked our lives to annoy what could have been a harmless old man," Ant says. You arrive at the camp, and Mason swears loudly. "FUCK! Where the hell is Kyle?" he asks. The camp is empty, with no one in sight. "R-r-remember last time we lost Kyle when he was drunk?" "Oh dear God, he ended up pissing in my garden. He wasn't pissing into the garden. He was standing in the garden, pissing on my house," Becca says. "That was funny," Ant says, still shaken up from his experience. "We need to find him. Is anyone not sober enough to find this place again?" Mason says. There's silence. "Good. We'll split up and try find him. Ant, you head towards the Rotten Trees, Lucy, go towards our old tree house, Becca, towards the old drinking point, Carter, back towards town. Hazel, you're new here. There's a stream just over there," Mason says, pointing. "Just walk along there, and keep your phone on. If you can't find him, follow the stream back here." You nod. Time to find Kyle. > You walk along the stream You walk alongside the stream, your shoes squelching in the wet mud. You walk along to the drier earth, but they're already ruined. "Fuck," you sigh, walking along. "Kyle! Kyle! Are you there?!?" You hear what sounds like twigs breaking behind you, and quickly twirl around. Must've been your imagination. You continue walking along the stream. "Kyle! Kyle! I don't care how drunk you are, do something! I'm getting sick of looking for you!" You hear the rustle as leaves as the wind picks up, and what was earlier a hot, humid night is now turning bitterly cold, as the light that the moon was provided dims considerably. For the first time, you realize that you're walking in the middle of a place you've never been, late at night, with no one around. You consider turning around and heading back, but you know if Kyle's passed out somewhere, you need to find him. "Hello!" you call. Your voice carries out across the trees. Then, the silence resumes. There's a silence so deadly quiet it's painful. There's no birds, no small mammals scurrying among the trees or undergrowth, not even a cricket. You take deep breaths in an attempt to calm yourself down, before you here a low growl. You turn around, flicking your head around desperately to find the source of the noise, desperately wanting to run but not knowing which direction to do so. "Kyle? Is that you?" you whimper. The growl stops, and the silence resumes. You stand perfectly still, not wanting to disturb whatever's out there. Then, it lets out a roar. The roar's incredibly loud and you scream in pain as the sound like shattering glass as concrete scrapes against each other. You feel pure, unadulterated terror, which is amplified when you spot the beast. The Beast stands on four legs, the shape of a bear but the size of a large truck, covered in thick fur that's so dark it consumes what little moonlight makes it through the trees. It's eyes are pure red, the all-consuming crimson of fresh blood that peer through your eyes and bore into your soul. As it roars, it revels a mouth filled with hundreds of teeth the size of daggers, pure white and sharp enough to drill through solid steel. It stands, blocking the route back towards your friends. You need to do something, now. > You run You turn, and run as fast as your legs will carry you. Trees are torn up and sent flying away behind you as the beast gives chase. Thankfully, its size means that navigating past the trees is impossible, so it needs to tear them up and throw them away to follow you. You have enough of a lead to know you have two options: You could head towards town, getting help from the many armed residents of Dawnwood who have enough combined firepower to invade a small nation, which would easily be enough to scare away or kill the beast. Hell, the need for that is unlikely, as since there's been a lack of reports about this creature, it probably wouldn't venture out and follow you if you escape the confines of the trees. On the other hand, if you head towards the caves, you might be able to find a place to hide and escape this terrible beast. > You run towards the town You run towards the town, letting out a desperate scream for help. It charges towards you, the gap between the pair of you lowering. It sprints towards you faster than a truck, and finally manages to catch you, batting you with its paw with incredible strength. Your bones break and crack as you're sent spiraling through the air. You land in a heap by the soft earth and let out a shriek as your limbs twist at incredible angles that they're definitely not meant to go. The creature walks slowly towards you, and you try to crawl away but find yourself unable to move. You see the flash of the beast's teeth and a spurt of crimson before it finishes off its prey.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn, and run as fast as your legs will carry you. Trees are torn up and sent flying away behind you as the beast gives chase. Thankfully, its size means that navigating past the trees is impossible, so it needs to tear them up and throw them away to follow you. You have enough of a lead to know you have two options: You could head towards town, getting help from the many armed residents of Dawnwood who have enough combined firepower to invade a small nation, which would easily be enough to scare away or kill the beast. Hell, the need for that is unlikely, as since there's been a lack of reports about this creature, it probably wouldn't venture out and follow you if you escape the confines of the trees. On the other hand, if you head towards the caves, you might be able to find a place to hide and escape this terrible beast. > You head toward the caves You change direction, bursting towards the few caves that these woods have. You can here the beast right behind you, feeling its hot breath on the back of your neck, blowing your hair out of the way. You spot two caves you think... well, hope you can reach before it catches you. One is a small crack in stone that you think you can dive through that's definitely far too small for the beast to follow you that leads into a tunnel further in. The other is an opening to a large cavern that's also too small for the beast to follow you and that widens considerably further down. > You go through the small tunnel You dart through the small crack, heading quickly down the tunnel. As you're emerged in complete darkness you stop walking, your deep breaths echoing off the cave walls creating an eery sound. You pull out your phone and turn on the flashlight, illuminating the area. Then, you let out a petrified scream. The walls are covered with vivid symbols of red, sharp and alien characters you don't recognize. But that's not what makes you scream. Three bound figures lie on the ground, their bodies now a scene of horrific cruelty. They're naked, but their skin has been torn off to let you see the wet muscles that glisten underneath. You let out a sob as they begin to writhe. They're not dead, you realize in terror. The figures writhe, and you begin sobbing as you back away in terror. You run with a scream to the opening of the tunnel. You don't dare venturing out in case you're sighted by the beast, so you sit by the opening, sobbing. You begin to smell a strange smell coming from further down the tunnel, this one different from the rotting flesh. Soon, your wretched, sobbing and broken body finds sleep. > You awaken "We found her!" a voice cries, awakening you from her slumber. You open your eyes, spotting a young man you vaguely recognize as the town mechanic. "It's ok," he says. "You're going to be alright." The images of the writhing corpses fill your mind as more of the town's residence arrive. "Jesus, what the fuck happened her?" someone asks. "God, is she OK?" "Does she need a doctor?" "Hazel! Where's my baby girl!?!" You hear Dad's voice and spot him among the growing crowd. "Dad!" you cry, as he leans in and hug him. "Oh Hazel, thank God I've found you. What the hell were you thinking, sneaking out like that? It’s OK, I found you. You’re safe. What happened?” You sob, and attempt to recount your story to Dad, to his confusion. “Your friends said that you had been looking for Kyle. They found him, but then they couldn’t find you. You… you smell of drink. What were you thinking, Hazel? You must’ve got drunk and seen a bear. I’ll tell the sheriff and have a hunting party sent out to kill it.” “It wasn’t a bear, Dad! And there were bodies! They’re in the cave!” “Sweetie, you were drunk!” The Sheriff appears, emerging from the crowd. He stops by Dad, squeezing his shoulder. “I’m glad you found your gal, Malcolm. We’ll talk later," he says, before pausing. "She smells of drink. I've always believed in the father disciplining the kid, so I'll leave that to you, Malcolm." “Come on, sweetie!” Dad says. “I’m getting you home.” “No wait, check the cave! There’s bodies in there!” Dad sighs, and the Sheriff heads in. He appears a minute later, shrugging. “There ain’t nothing in there. There's a few rabbit carcasses that look to be infected, but that's it,” he says. “What…?” you ask in confusion. "I need to go down there and check...!" "Calm down, darling. Those animal corpses could give you an infection. You might've seen them wrong in the dark. I'll have someone clear them out later. Come on, everyone, head on home." The Sheriff stands by the entrance to the tunnel, motioning for people to leave as the search and rescue party heads out towards the town as Dad thanks them. “Come on, Hazel, let’s get home," Dad says. You follow Dad out as he leads you back home. > You go home The ride home is long and quiet. Dad can clearly tell you don't want to talk, so he leaves you alone. Eventually, you pull into the driveway. "I've told your teacher you won't be coming in today. Go upstairs and have a shower, you can have the day to relax. I'm staying home to look after you today." You nod, and walk inside. You pull off your mud-covered shoes, and walk upstairs, leaving a trail of muddy water behind you. You walk into the bathroom, and slowly get undressed. You unbutton and pull off your jeans, then step out of your underwater. You pull off your jumper, than your shirt. As you go to unclasp your bra, you freeze as you notice yourself in the mirror. One of the strange, alien symbols you saw covering the cave walls above the disgusting, shuddering, skinless bodies, is carved into your stomach, just below your belly button. You shriek, and you hear Dad call up to you. "Hazel? Are you OK?" > You say "I'm fine!" "OK, honey." You stare at the symbol in horror, before taking a deep breath. You open your bathroom cabinet, and pull out some bandages, applying it to the wound. The wound's shallow and small, nothing really to worry about medically, although it terrifies you. Whoever did that to the corpses had access to you while you slept. You shudder at the sight. You decide to shower to feel some bit cleaner. > You shower You walk into the shower, and set the temperature as hot as you can without scalding yourself. You step under the water, feeling your hair grow in weight as the water soaks it through. The water warms you and helps clean the layer of dirt and mud from your body. To your absolute embarrassment, you notice the water pooling yellowish beneath you before it goes down the drain and you realize in the terror of last night you must have wet yourself at some point. You blush, both from embarrassment and the scalding water, and finish cleaning yourself. You turn off the shower and grab a towel, tossing your dirty clothes into the wash basket. You dry yourself off and get dressed, before collapsing on your bed. You grab your laptop and turn it on, finding comfort in the endless terrible comedies that Netflix provides. Dad brings you breakfast, then lunch, leaving you in a cocoon of blankets in front of the latest episode of Some random crime show about a police division that doesn't do nearly as much in real life, finding comfort about the stereotypical characters and massively contrived murder methods used to kill people. Eventually, you hear a knock on the door. "Hazel!" Dad shouts. "Your friends are here." You wiggle out of bed and jump up, walking down the stairs. Standing there are Mason, Carter, Lucy, Ant, Becca and Kyle. "Hey, Hazel. You feeling alright?" Lucy asks. "Yeah," you reply. "I'm so sorry, I just got drunk and wandered off to find a place to go to the bathroom. I didn't think anything would happen to you because of it!" Kyle says apologetically. "It's fine," you say. "Well, we were only stopping by to see if you're OK, and if you wanted to go down to town and get a bite to eat." Dad stares at you. "Do you remember what happened last time you went out? Only last night, remember?" "We'll have her back before sundown. We're only going into town, and I'll take good care of her," Mason says. "I'm sure you will," Dad says skeptically, looking Mason over. "Hazel, keep your phone on and be back by eight. Not half eight, not quarter past eight, not a single minute past eight. Got it?" "Yes, Dad." You walk out the door with your friends out towards town. > One Hour Later... An hour later, you sit in the pizza place Lucy and Becca work in, with two other unfortunate teenagers working behind the counter, a large pepperoni pizza in the middle of the group. "So... you were attacked by a monster... who then led you into a trio of undead dead people?" Ant asks. "No offense, but that sounds like complete and utter bullshit." You stare at Ant incredulously. "Do you not recall less than an hour before that what happened? You nearly pissed yourself!" Ant looks down, ashen faced. "There were no ghosts. You're just fucking with us," Lucy complains. "Fine, I believe you." "I believe her," Kyle says. "You d-don't have a c-c-choice, Kyle. You n-nearly got her kill-killed," Carter says. Kyle shrugs. "Fine, say we believe you," Becca says. "What are we going to do about it?" "What do you mean?" "Well, there's a monster in Dawnwoods.. That's a problem, also the monster's too big to go in the cave you were in or else it would've caught you, so that means the body skinning thing is separate, so we got a monster and at least one Satanist." "How do you know it was Satanism?" Ant asks. "Well, it wasn't Christians, hence, it must've been Satanists," Becca says. "Why c-couldn't it b-b-be any other r-r-religions?" "Carter, this is the whitest, most Christian town that has ever existed. There was one Sikh family, and they had a cross burned on their lawn and were forced out of town after 9/11. There's no other religions here." "OK, fine." "So, what are we going to do about...?" You groan as a sharp pain hits your stomach. It intensifies, and you let out a yelp. "Are you OK, Hazel?" Mason asks. "Yeah, I'm..." you groan, and Lucy helps you to your feet. "I think I'm going to be sick," you groan. "Come on, I'll take you," Lucy says, dragging you into the bathroom. You're pulled past the urinals and into one of the stalls, and drop to your knees, letting out a torrent of puke. You groan in pain as you begin to puke, filling the bowl. "Thank Christ I'm not on shift now. I'd hate to have to clean up this again," Lucy says. You puke again, before the pain starts to recede. "Don't worry, Hazel, we'll get you home soon," Lucy says. "Hey, Lucy?" "Yeah?" "Did you drag me into the guy's bathroom?" "Oh, oops. Sorry, Hazel. I clean both toilets, so I'm used to entering them both, and this one was closer..." You sigh, and stand, ready to go home. > You go home You friends drag you home, where your father waits. "Hazel! Are you OK? Carter called and told me you were throwing up." "I'm fine," you groan, as Dad helps you inside. "Go upstairs, sweetheart. I'll get you a flat Seven-Up to help settle your stomach and a hot water bottle. Thanks for helping get her home, guys," Dad says. "No bother," Mason replies. "See you later, Hazel." Dad helps you up to bed, and you collapse onto your mattress. You fall asleep before Dad even gets into the ktichen. > Six Hours Later... When you wake up six hours later, you panic. You're lying in a rusted, iron cage, surrounded by pitch darkness. You stand slowly, finding yourself in the middle of the woods. You look around desperately for a way out, but it seems you're stuck in here. The wind blows through the trees, rustling leaves and giving you a cold chill as you realize you're in your underwear. You look around, spotting a large RV next to the cage. Two figures step out and begin walking towards you. They both wear ski masks, hoodies and baggy black pants, with one carrying a doctor's bag. A third appears, pushing a gurney towards you. You scream for help and back away to the back of the cage. One of them steps forward and unlocks the cage door, and they enter the cage. "Hands behind your head, don't move," one of the figures said. > You attack You charge forward, swinging at the first man. You hit him with some force in the jaw, and he grabs your arm. He slaps you hard across the face, knocking you to the ground. The men grab you, and force you into the gurney. They strap your hands up my your head and your feet together, leaving you stretched out on the gurney. A ball gag is stuffed in your mouth and strapped tightly. You wince one off them puts surgical gloves on, before drawing a thermometer that's pushed into your ear. He checks it, before placing a cold hand on your stomach. He pushes gently, before squeezing. "I'm right. Get the injections ready." You shake and try to scream as one of the men takes out a needle that's almost comically large and sharp. He jabs it into your stomach and you scream into your gag and presses down, releasing the liquid into your stomach. You begin to tear up as he repeats the process with several more needles, and by the end your eyes are obscured with tears. He smiles at you through the ski mask, before another man arrives with a large burlap sack. He opens it, pulling out a small mammal like a rat or a ferret, and a large knife. You watch in horror as he slices the mammal's throat open, letting blood flow out onto your stomach. He tosses the carcass aside, and begins to use his fingers to draw various patterns along your belly as you wince and shake. He sighs, and slaps you hard across the face. "Stop shaking," he says, before turning to one of the other men. "Tomorrow night." He finishes drawing his patterns, before taking out a small black notebook. He begins to read from it in an insane language you don't understand, like the spluttering of a madman. The pain in your stomach intensifies greatly as you let out a petrified scream as you feel yourself being torn apart. Finally, he stops, as does the pain. "Ah, good. Get the chloroform and untie her. Then, bring the kids back from their walk." They free you from your straps, and you notice the door's still open. > You run for the gate You leap up and run for the gate. Clearly the men weren't prepared for your newfound strength, so you charge out of the cage and begin sprinting towards the trees. As you hear the men loudly swearing behind you, you break through the trees. You run through the darkness as you avoid trees, before knocking into something. You fall to the ground, painfully scraping your knee on a tree root. You look up, and scream in terror as you see them. A half dozen figures slowly surround you, giving you a view of them. The... creatures are all children, but they're so deformed, so mutated, they barely qualify. One is missing both it's arms, replaced with long, thin, slimy tentacles that reach forward to touch you. A second is missing most of its face, a gaping hole in its place filled with tiny, wiggling tentacles from the walls, back, roof and floor of the mouth. A third looks like a cute, perfectly normal girl of around four years old, except her mouth hangs open and her eyes are completely black. Another, one of the worst, looks like a cross between a schoolgirl, a fetus and an octopus, and stands wiggling above you as it reaches out towards you. You scream, and crawl backwards, terrified. They advance slowly, tentacles extending to rub you, slick goo wiping across your face and hair. You sob as you try to stand, before being yanked up by a man in a mask. He takes out a large rag and a glass bottle. He soaks the rag, before holding it to your mouth. You try not to breath, but after about a minute you take a gasp for breath, inhaling the fumes. > You lose Consciousness You awaken in your bed, terrified and curled up in your blankets. You briefly wonder if you dreamed everything, but know that that's impossible. Your knee hurts where you scraped it, your window is still open, and you know your mind couldn't conjure up everything you saw last night. "Honey? Are you OK?" Dad calls. You pause, wondering if you should tell him, before realizing he'd never believe you. "Yeah, I'm fine," you reply, wondering what you should do. It's Saturday, so you could visit your friends and explain the situation. If you're more optimistic, you could go through the normal, legal means, although you're almost certain that will be complete and utter bullshit. > You visit your friends You shower, noticing the same mark still under your belly button, and head off to meet your friends after a quick breakfast with Dad who remarks how "You look like you haven't slept". He gives you something to help settle your stomach, and you head out, texting your friends. They're already at Ant's house, so you head over there, carefully following their directions. Eventually, you find yourself at a house that's not even worth describing as it's identical to every other house in this shitty town. You knock on the door, which is opened by a short, balding man in a cheap suit. "Hello?" he asks, peering at you. "Hi. I'm Hazel, I'm a friend of Ant's." "Hmmm... Of course you are. I'll admit, it was my mistake calling him Anthony. I wish I had went with something nicer. It was his mother, god rest her, who wanted to give him a nice name like Connor, but I wanted Anthony. Ah, I'm rambling. He's in the games room, last left." You nod and thank him, heading down towards the last left and going inside, finding a pool table, several beanbags with your friends spread out among them, and an Xbox. "Hey Hazel. F-f-feeling better?" Carter asks. "Yeah, I... I need to talk to you about that." Ant looks up at you, raising an eyebrow. "Have you... put on weight?" he asks, staring at your belly through your t-shirt. "Hey Ant: Stop being such a prick. You don't ask a girl that," Lucy says. "What do you need to talk about?" Mason asks, looking away from the console to look at you, which Ant quickly takes advantage of and both screen peaks and starts heading towards his location for an easy kill. You explain your situation to the group, and they stare in either disbelief or horror. "There's no such thing as monsters," Lucy says as you end your tale. "Hang on," Mason says. "There's a rusted out cage from the old freak show in the woods. How else would she know about it?" "Maybe she saw it when she was lost." "I didn't," you say. "Fine. We have to do something about this, then," Becca suggests. "She's right," Kyle says. "Y-You're only agreeing because you f-f-feel bad about getting her l-lost," Carter points out. "Shut it, Carter!" Kyle hisses. "Have you called the police?" Ant asks. "I told the Sheriff, he didn't believe a word I said when he found me." Mason nods. "Sheriff's an idiot. We have to check out the spot," he says. You shake your head nervously. "I'm not going back there. There's that beast and those Satanists..." "If you want, I could get my brother to drive us out there in his pick-up," Lucy suggests. "Will Drake really take us out to the woods?" Becca asks in surprise. "He owes me. I covered him when he was caught doing business with some kids at school." "Doing business?" you ask. "Drug dealing," Lucy explains, eerily matter of factly. "Oh." "I'll give him a ring," she says, disappearing off into a side room. You sigh, nervous at the thought of heading back to the cage, but you know it needs to be done. You wait for Lucy to return, which she does after a few minutes. "Good news and bad news!" he says cheerfully. "Go on." Carter says. "My brother will drive us into the woods and help us look around... but not until eight." "It'll be dark by then!" you say hysterically. "It's OK, you'll be safe with all of us! I'll have Drake bring the biggest, most powerful flashlights he can, and a gun or two," Lucy says, smiling. "I don't... I mean, I can''t..." Mason grabs you and smiles. "It's OK, Hazel. I'll keep you safe." You have to admit, you do feel safer in his arms. Damn his charm. "Fine, we'll do it," you say. "Great. I'd feel bad if you were killed by evil cultists because we didn't do anything." He smiles cheekily, and you begin to regret this decision. > You nine Hours Later... Nine hours later, you're ready to go. You've somehow convinced Dad to let you go out, not daring to tell him your actual destination and instead claiming you're staying at Lucy's house. You meet up at the Lucy's house with the group, and walk into the living room, where they're all sitting around. "Are we ready?" you ask. "Damn straight!" Ant smiles, holding up a large backpack. "Spare food, water bottles, lighters, matches, rope, fireworks, some knives and flashlights. What'd you guys bring?" Carter holds up half a chocolate bar he's been chewing on. "Half a M-Mars bar," he says, before taking another bite. "A q-quart-quarter of a Mars b-bar." "I brought a penknife and a lighter," you shrug, and Ant looks around disappointedly. "No one brought anything?" he pouts. "You guys suck." You hear a horn outside, and look outside. A large RV drives up the driveway, stopping outside. Lucy skips out the door, before running up to him, and you follow her outside. "Hey, Hazel," Drake says. "Drake's friend, Ed, has the pick-up, so we're driving to the woods, meeting him and switching vehicle," Lucy tells you. "OK," you say, walking into the RV. You raise an eyebrow as you notice that the RV's windows are covered with shutters and bin bags, and the actual interior looks like a scene from Breaking Bad, covered with beakers, test tubes, Bunsen burners and other Chemistry gear. "Well, you're blatant," you say. "Hey, it's effective." "I mean, yeah, but Breaking Bad made this a trope. Don't police search RV's for this." "Breaking Bad helped my sales enough that I'm bribing the deputy. You'll be surprised how much extra meth heads are willing to pay for a product when you add some blue dye." You shrug, and take a seat in the RV, as your friends pack in. "Be careful back there. Knock one thing over and this place could blow." "Really?" you ask. Drake grins and shrugs, and begins driving. "Maybe. I mean, there's a distillery back there as well as the lab. I'd imagine one speed bump and boom!" "That's unnerving," Ant says. "I guess. So, why the hell am I dragging all your friends into the middle of the woods to the old freakshow cage?" "I told you already," Lucy reveals. "That nightmare bull isn't convincing me. What's the real reason?" "That is the real reason." Drake turns around to stare at you in annoyance. "What...?" "Eyes on the road, Drake," Kyle says. "Fine," Drake says, turning around. "Still, I want an explanation why I'm driving into the woods because the new girl had a nightmare." "It wasn't a nightmare!" you say. "Sure," Drake says. You all sit in awkward silence until you reach the outskirts of the woods. Drake pulls over, and you stand and head out the door. Although you couldn't tell because of the shutters and blacked out windows of the RV, you can now see that night has fallen. An empty red pick-up truck with four seats sits next to the woods. Drake strides forward, pulling out his phone. "Ah, shit," Drake says. "Of course Ed left the truck here and went off on his quad rather than just take back the RV like he was supposed to." He locks the RV and hides the keys in the wheel well. "I'll text my friend and get him to pick up the RV. Come on, get inside. Let's go drive to a dumbass cage in the woods." Drake, Lucy, Carter and Ant go in the seats while you, Mason, Becca and Kyle sit in the back of the pick-up. You sit, half-lying on Mason who wraps one arm around you. The emotional part of your brain momentarily forgets all fears in favor of a childish infatuation and hormonal lust towards Mason that causes you to blush and your heart to flutter, the rational part of your brain reminds you to stay vigilant in case the cultists or that beast do show up. You and the rest of your friends pull out flashlights and fire the beams off into the darkness, illuminating trees and undergrowth. "We're nearly there," Drake shouts. "It's a hell of a lot easier to get here because a path's been made." Your ears perk up at that. "What do you mean?" you ask, as Drake rolls down his window fully. "What'd you say?" "I said what do you mean? You said there's a path." "Yeah. It's like a big RV drove over the undergrowth and knocked a dirt path along." "What, you think Ed's been driving out here to work in the RV?" Lucy asks. "Nah, Ed's terrified of the woods. Said something about a monster or something." You feel a flash of fear as you remember the RV from last night. You stare outwards, illuminating every shadow, both hoping to and terrified of seeing something hiding in the dark. "Here it is! The old freak show's cage!" Drake says dramatically. As Drake pulls the pick-up into the clearing in the woods, you see the massive, rusted cage, although there's no RV. You shiver in fear, and Drake steps out of the truck. "Let's investigate and get home," Drake says, firing his flashlight beam towards the cage. The flashlight beam illuminates the cage and its insides. The old rusted gurney sits there, now encrusted with dried blood. "Well, that's new," Drake mentions. You step back nervously. "Hazel said there was a gurney in her dre... when she was abducted," Ant points out. "Fuck, this is some creepy shit. I'm calling the sheriff," Drake says. Drake takes out his phone, and makes a call. "Hello, Sheriff Buckly? I just found a gurney in the middle of the cage in the woods covered in dried blood. I think some weird... oh, really? OK, you know where the cage from the... oh, great.. Cool, see you in a few minutes, or an hour, or whatever." "What was that?" "The sheriff said he'll come here straight away." "Good," you sigh in relief. You really can't imagine having to deal with this without the help of the law. Now, it's out of your hands. You wait patiently for Sheriff Buckly to arrive. Eventually, you spot a flashlight heading towards you. "There he is," Drake says. You shine your light ahead, illuminating the figure of Sheriff Buckly. He swears, and holds his hands to block his eyes. "Turn that off!" he says, and you do. "Fuck, how'd you even get the truck out here? I can barely walk through the undergrowth," he says. "Where this bloody gurney?" You point at the cage, and Sheriff Buckly walks over and looks at it. "Jesus... who else saw this? I'm going to need to gather all the witnesses and find out what was going on," he says. "We're the only people who've seen this, although Hazel got a bit of a closer encounter." "So you didn't tell you pa about this?" Sheriff Buckly asks. You shake your head, and Sheriff Buckly nods. "Good," Sheriff Buckly says. Sheriff Buckly draws his revolver, and quickly aims at Drake's head and fires. Drake's head snaps back as it explodes partially, sending chunks of gray brain matter, pale skull and pieces of red flesh at you. You scream as Lucy runs over to Drake as his body collapses backwards. Mason runs for the truck, before the Sheriff barks an order. "Stop! Move another muscle and I'll blow the brain out of everyone of you!" Mason stops, raising his hands. Sheriff Buckly points his gun at all of you, forcing you to raise your hands into the air. "Everyone, calm down. Nobody needs to get hurt," Sheriff Buckly says. "Fuck you!" Lucy screams. "You killed him! You killed him you piece of..." Sheriff Buckly steps forward and cracks her across the head wit his revolver. "Shut up! Carter, Mason, Ant, Kyle, get in the fucking cage!" he shouts. Mason, Ant, Kyle and Carter slowly walk into the cage. "Now, back the fuck up to the end of the cage!" The boys comply, and the Sheriff draws a set of keys from his pocket, locking the cage door. He turns to you, Lucy and Becca. "Just don't move. They'll be here in a minute." You stand in silence, the cold wind blowing, the silence only broken by the occasional soft sob by Lucy as she stands over Drake. After about half an hour of waiting, you see the RV pull up along the path. It stops, and four masked men step out. "Anyone escape?" one asks. "No," Sheriff Buckly responds. "Fuck, I didn't even know they were coming out here. You said whatever the fuck you injected the girl with would make her forget everything." "I said it probably would. Her phone's bugged. How didn't you find out?" "She didn't make any calls saying she was going to do it!" "Well, at least no one escaped," the masked man says, pulling off his mask. The group remove their masks. You vaguely recognize them, one being the mechanic who found you, one being the town doctor, Doctor Kessel, another being a German teacher from school and the final one being the bartender of the local bar. "What are you going to do with...?" Becca asks, before Sheriff Buckley lets out a bark. "Hey! Shut the fuck..." "No, Jake, let the girl ask her question," Doctor Kessel says. "What are you going to do with us? Who are you? Why did you send a monster to hunt me?" "What are we going to do with you? Nothing, ideally. We only need to borrow you. Who are we? Well, surely you must recognize us. Louis, Sheriff Buckly, Mrs Jordan, Alison and me, Doctor Kessel. "As for the monster, I assume you're referring to the Black Beast. That's not an issue, I assure you. Although I'm not sure of its origins, if you look at town records, it actually kills most of the bears in the area, which reduces the amount of attacks so much it's saving lives. If I was in your situation, I'd be much more worried about us." "What do you want? Are you going to sacrifice us to Satan?" Becca asks again. Doctor Kessel lets out a chuckle. "No, Rebecca, we're not. We're not satanists. Real satanists don't even believe in Satan. We're... researchers. We're humanitarians. We're explorers. When we were little kids, we used to be the best of friends. We played in these very woods. When we were little, we found... a book in one of the caves. We took it and read it, and we found out the most amazing things. Do you know how insignificant not only we are, but this planet, this solar system, this galaxy and this universe is? There are so many amazing things we learned about these beings that we can't even comprehend, but compared to what's out there, we learned so little. So we kept reading. The book included some instructions to summon them, to summon these beings that are stronger than any gods we've ever imagined, more alien that any alien we've created in fiction, more incredible than anything you could experience here. If we create a Key-Bearer, we can create a portal to these beings." "That's insane! How do you know they won't wipe us out, or enslave us all, or worse!" you cry. "I don't," Doctor Kessel admits. "It could destroy everything!" "You just need to calm down and listen!" he hisses. "Imagine you're stuck in a room. There is a small tap for water, a toilet and a small machine that creates a nutritious yet tasteless paste. You have everything you need to survive and continue your blank, boring existence. Now, one day, a door appears in the room. It's unlocked. Do you go through?" "What the fuck does...?" "We are trying to open that door. Just as the person in the room doesn't know what's on the other side, anything is better than the bland, boring existence of the room. We're trying to open the world up to experiences unknown to man, good or bad, because it has to be better than this meaningless existence." "What are yuo even talking about? What the fuck's a Key-Bearer?" Mason shouts, as Sheriff Buckly aims his gun at his head once again. "Shut up," Sheriff Buckly grunts. "Ah yes, the Key-Bearer. That part's the worst for you guys. A Key-Bearer is a creature birthed of the beings' power of a human womb. We've had several attempts at this, but every time we failed. Instead of creating a Key-Bearer, we created half-human, half-monster children who aged rapidly. Finally, we settled the problem. The mother of the Key-Bearer had to be a virgin, post-puberty, below 21 and to have AB Negative Blood. You'd imagine my luck when I found one such target walking around the cave where I was sacrificing some former mothers to keep the beings' interested in our world. I simply pumped out some gas I had on hand to help knock her out, and voila! I got to work." You stare at him in horror, putting a hand on your stomach. There's a series of gasps and shouts from the group, before Sheriff Buckly fires his gun in the air. "SHUT IT!" he roars. "I'm sorry, Hazel. It'll be over in a few hours." "A few hours? It's only been two days, how...?" you ask in horror. "The Key-Bearer grows incredibly quickly. It should be able to be birthed within a day at most." You feel something wiggle in your stomach, in your womb, and a pain shoots through you. "Listen, Hazel, it'll be OK," Doctor Kessel says. "In a few hours, you'll be fine, and we'll be in a whole new world." > You agree to birth the Key-Bearer "Fine," you say. "I'll do it." "Fantastic!" Doctor Kessel says eagerly. "I promise, you're helping save humanity." Doctor Kessel takes your hand, and leads you towards the RV, where a second, newer gurney awaits. You climb up in it and are strapped down. Doctor Kessel stabs a needle into your neck, hushing you. "Don't worry, I'm going to help you sleep for the next few hours. When you wake up, it'll be all over..." You begin to feel sleepy, before closing your mouth. Your heavy eyelids close, as the needle presses into your veins, sending you into a deep sleep. > You awaken Mother of the Apocalypse You awaken, lying in a small bed. Sheriff Buckly stands above you, looking eerily joy-filled. "You're awake! Good, we can begin!" he says. You stand, looking down. Your legs are covered in dried blood and other liquids, and your body immediately runs out of strength. You're helped along, out of the RV. Your friends are gone, but you only look for a second before you see the preparations for the portal. A large circle of stones lies, each stained with a drop of blood. Standing around the circle are the six cultists; Louis, Doctor Kessel,Mrs Jordan and Alison. Standing around them are a half dozen monster-children that make you want to vomit, the failed attempts at rearing a Key Bearer. They're so deformed, so mutated, they barely qualify as children. One is missing both it's arms, replaced with long, thin, slimy tentacles like pasta. A second is missing most of its face, a gaping hole in its place filled with tiny, wiggling tentacles from the walls, back, roof and floor of the mouth. A third looks like a cute, perfectly normal girl of around four years old, except her mouth hangs open and her eyes are completely black. Another, one of the worst, looks like a cross between a schoolgirl, a fetus and an octopus, and stands wiggling. Still, that's nothing compared to what sits in the middle of the circle. Sitting in the middle, wiggling, is your child. The Key-Bearer is nothing but a seething mass of tentacles that whip around, seemingly drawing lines of purple lightning around itself in the symbol that was carved into you. "Ah, you're here!" Doctor Kessel says eagerly. "Where are my friends?" you ask. "It doesn't matter now! Now, we begin! We will witness the glory of Crexiciliatanian's creation!" The Key-Bearer speeds up, painting the symbol across the very fabric of reality. The ground begins to crumble away, turning in pure blackness. Suddenly, there's a flash, and the portal opens. Then, it begins.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Nine hours later, you're ready to go. You've somehow convinced Dad to let you go out, not daring to tell him your actual destination and instead claiming you're staying at Lucy's house. You meet up at the Lucy's house with the group, and walk into the living room, where they're all sitting around. "Are we ready?" you ask. "Damn straight!" Ant smiles, holding up a large backpack. "Spare food, water bottles, lighters, matches, rope, fireworks, some knives and flashlights. What'd you guys bring?" Carter holds up half a chocolate bar he's been chewing on. "Half a M-Mars bar," he says, before taking another bite. "A q-quart-quarter of a Mars b-bar." "I brought a penknife and a lighter," you shrug, and Ant looks around disappointedly. "No one brought anything?" he pouts. "You guys suck." You hear a horn outside, and look outside. A large RV drives up the driveway, stopping outside. Lucy skips out the door, before running up to him, and you follow her outside. "Hey, Hazel," Drake says. "Drake's friend, Ed, has the pick-up, so we're driving to the woods, meeting him and switching vehicle," Lucy tells you. "OK," you say, walking into the RV. You raise an eyebrow as you notice that the RV's windows are covered with shutters and bin bags, and the actual interior looks like a scene from Breaking Bad, covered with beakers, test tubes, Bunsen burners and other Chemistry gear. "Well, you're blatant," you say. "Hey, it's effective." "I mean, yeah, but Breaking Bad made this a trope. Don't police search RV's for this." "Breaking Bad helped my sales enough that I'm bribing the deputy. You'll be surprised how much extra meth heads are willing to pay for a product when you add some blue dye." You shrug, and take a seat in the RV, as your friends pack in. "Be careful back there. Knock one thing over and this place could blow." "Really?" you ask. Drake grins and shrugs, and begins driving. "Maybe. I mean, there's a distillery back there as well as the lab. I'd imagine one speed bump and boom!" "That's unnerving," Ant says. "I guess. So, why the hell am I dragging all your friends into the middle of the woods to the old freakshow cage?" "I told you already," Lucy reveals. "That nightmare bull isn't convincing me. What's the real reason?" "That is the real reason." Drake turns around to stare at you in annoyance. "What...?" "Eyes on the road, Drake," Kyle says. "Fine," Drake says, turning around. "Still, I want an explanation why I'm driving into the woods because the new girl had a nightmare." "It wasn't a nightmare!" you say. "Sure," Drake says. You all sit in awkward silence until you reach the outskirts of the woods. Drake pulls over, and you stand and head out the door. Although you couldn't tell because of the shutters and blacked out windows of the RV, you can now see that night has fallen. An empty red pick-up truck with four seats sits next to the woods. Drake strides forward, pulling out his phone. "Ah, shit," Drake says. "Of course Ed left the truck here and went off on his quad rather than just take back the RV like he was supposed to." He locks the RV and hides the keys in the wheel well. "I'll text my friend and get him to pick up the RV. Come on, get inside. Let's go drive to a dumbass cage in the woods." Drake, Lucy, Carter and Ant go in the seats while you, Mason, Becca and Kyle sit in the back of the pick-up. You sit, half-lying on Mason who wraps one arm around you. The emotional part of your brain momentarily forgets all fears in favor of a childish infatuation and hormonal lust towards Mason that causes you to blush and your heart to flutter, the rational part of your brain reminds you to stay vigilant in case the cultists or that beast do show up. You and the rest of your friends pull out flashlights and fire the beams off into the darkness, illuminating trees and undergrowth. "We're nearly there," Drake shouts. "It's a hell of a lot easier to get here because a path's been made." Your ears perk up at that. "What do you mean?" you ask, as Drake rolls down his window fully. "What'd you say?" "I said what do you mean? You said there's a path." "Yeah. It's like a big RV drove over the undergrowth and knocked a dirt path along." "What, you think Ed's been driving out here to work in the RV?" Lucy asks. "Nah, Ed's terrified of the woods. Said something about a monster or something." You feel a flash of fear as you remember the RV from last night. You stare outwards, illuminating every shadow, both hoping to and terrified of seeing something hiding in the dark. "Here it is! The old freak show's cage!" Drake says dramatically. As Drake pulls the pick-up into the clearing in the woods, you see the massive, rusted cage, although there's no RV. You shiver in fear, and Drake steps out of the truck. "Let's investigate and get home," Drake says, firing his flashlight beam towards the cage. The flashlight beam illuminates the cage and its insides. The old rusted gurney sits there, now encrusted with dried blood. "Well, that's new," Drake mentions. You step back nervously. "Hazel said there was a gurney in her dre... when she was abducted," Ant points out. "Fuck, this is some creepy shit. I'm calling the sheriff," Drake says. Drake takes out his phone, and makes a call. "Hello, Sheriff Buckly? I just found a gurney in the middle of the cage in the woods covered in dried blood. I think some weird... oh, really? OK, you know where the cage from the... oh, great.. Cool, see you in a few minutes, or an hour, or whatever." "What was that?" "The sheriff said he'll come here straight away." "Good," you sigh in relief. You really can't imagine having to deal with this without the help of the law. Now, it's out of your hands. You wait patiently for Sheriff Buckly to arrive. Eventually, you spot a flashlight heading towards you. "There he is," Drake says. You shine your light ahead, illuminating the figure of Sheriff Buckly. He swears, and holds his hands to block his eyes. "Turn that off!" he says, and you do. "Fuck, how'd you even get the truck out here? I can barely walk through the undergrowth," he says. "Where this bloody gurney?" You point at the cage, and Sheriff Buckly walks over and looks at it. "Jesus... who else saw this? I'm going to need to gather all the witnesses and find out what was going on," he says. "We're the only people who've seen this, although Hazel got a bit of a closer encounter." "So you didn't tell you pa about this?" Sheriff Buckly asks. You shake your head, and Sheriff Buckly nods. "Good," Sheriff Buckly says. Sheriff Buckly draws his revolver, and quickly aims at Drake's head and fires. Drake's head snaps back as it explodes partially, sending chunks of gray brain matter, pale skull and pieces of red flesh at you. You scream as Lucy runs over to Drake as his body collapses backwards. Mason runs for the truck, before the Sheriff barks an order. "Stop! Move another muscle and I'll blow the brain out of everyone of you!" Mason stops, raising his hands. Sheriff Buckly points his gun at all of you, forcing you to raise your hands into the air. "Everyone, calm down. Nobody needs to get hurt," Sheriff Buckly says. "Fuck you!" Lucy screams. "You killed him! You killed him you piece of..." Sheriff Buckly steps forward and cracks her across the head wit his revolver. "Shut up! Carter, Mason, Ant, Kyle, get in the fucking cage!" he shouts. Mason, Ant, Kyle and Carter slowly walk into the cage. "Now, back the fuck up to the end of the cage!" The boys comply, and the Sheriff draws a set of keys from his pocket, locking the cage door. He turns to you, Lucy and Becca. "Just don't move. They'll be here in a minute." You stand in silence, the cold wind blowing, the silence only broken by the occasional soft sob by Lucy as she stands over Drake. After about half an hour of waiting, you see the RV pull up along the path. It stops, and four masked men step out. "Anyone escape?" one asks. "No," Sheriff Buckly responds. "Fuck, I didn't even know they were coming out here. You said whatever the fuck you injected the girl with would make her forget everything." "I said it probably would. Her phone's bugged. How didn't you find out?" "She didn't make any calls saying she was going to do it!" "Well, at least no one escaped," the masked man says, pulling off his mask. The group remove their masks. You vaguely recognize them, one being the mechanic who found you, one being the town doctor, Doctor Kessel, another being a German teacher from school and the final one being the bartender of the local bar. "What are you going to do with...?" Becca asks, before Sheriff Buckley lets out a bark. "Hey! Shut the fuck..." "No, Jake, let the girl ask her question," Doctor Kessel says. "What are you going to do with us? Who are you? Why did you send a monster to hunt me?" "What are we going to do with you? Nothing, ideally. We only need to borrow you. Who are we? Well, surely you must recognize us. Louis, Sheriff Buckly, Mrs Jordan, Alison and me, Doctor Kessel. "As for the monster, I assume you're referring to the Black Beast. That's not an issue, I assure you. Although I'm not sure of its origins, if you look at town records, it actually kills most of the bears in the area, which reduces the amount of attacks so much it's saving lives. If I was in your situation, I'd be much more worried about us." "What do you want? Are you going to sacrifice us to Satan?" Becca asks again. Doctor Kessel lets out a chuckle. "No, Rebecca, we're not. We're not satanists. Real satanists don't even believe in Satan. We're... researchers. We're humanitarians. We're explorers. When we were little kids, we used to be the best of friends. We played in these very woods. When we were little, we found... a book in one of the caves. We took it and read it, and we found out the most amazing things. Do you know how insignificant not only we are, but this planet, this solar system, this galaxy and this universe is? There are so many amazing things we learned about these beings that we can't even comprehend, but compared to what's out there, we learned so little. So we kept reading. The book included some instructions to summon them, to summon these beings that are stronger than any gods we've ever imagined, more alien that any alien we've created in fiction, more incredible than anything you could experience here. If we create a Key-Bearer, we can create a portal to these beings." "That's insane! How do you know they won't wipe us out, or enslave us all, or worse!" you cry. "I don't," Doctor Kessel admits. "It could destroy everything!" "You just need to calm down and listen!" he hisses. "Imagine you're stuck in a room. There is a small tap for water, a toilet and a small machine that creates a nutritious yet tasteless paste. You have everything you need to survive and continue your blank, boring existence. Now, one day, a door appears in the room. It's unlocked. Do you go through?" "What the fuck does...?" "We are trying to open that door. Just as the person in the room doesn't know what's on the other side, anything is better than the bland, boring existence of the room. We're trying to open the world up to experiences unknown to man, good or bad, because it has to be better than this meaningless existence." "What are yuo even talking about? What the fuck's a Key-Bearer?" Mason shouts, as Sheriff Buckly aims his gun at his head once again. "Shut up," Sheriff Buckly grunts. "Ah yes, the Key-Bearer. That part's the worst for you guys. A Key-Bearer is a creature birthed of the beings' power of a human womb. We've had several attempts at this, but every time we failed. Instead of creating a Key-Bearer, we created half-human, half-monster children who aged rapidly. Finally, we settled the problem. The mother of the Key-Bearer had to be a virgin, post-puberty, below 21 and to have AB Negative Blood. You'd imagine my luck when I found one such target walking around the cave where I was sacrificing some former mothers to keep the beings' interested in our world. I simply pumped out some gas I had on hand to help knock her out, and voila! I got to work." You stare at him in horror, putting a hand on your stomach. There's a series of gasps and shouts from the group, before Sheriff Buckly fires his gun in the air. "SHUT IT!" he roars. "I'm sorry, Hazel. It'll be over in a few hours." "A few hours? It's only been two days, how...?" you ask in horror. "The Key-Bearer grows incredibly quickly. It should be able to be birthed within a day at most." You feel something wiggle in your stomach, in your womb, and a pain shoots through you. "Listen, Hazel, it'll be OK," Doctor Kessel says. "In a few hours, you'll be fine, and we'll be in a whole new world." > You get the Key-Bearer out of you You desperately search your pockets, finding it after a few seconds, pulling your switchblade out. You pull up our jumper and t-shirt slightly, revealing your stomach. You can see it is slightly extended, and if you take a deep breath and stay still, you can very vaguely feel something moving around in there, which begins to increase as you feel a sharp pain hit. "Drop the knife. I'll put a bullet between your eyes before you get near any of us," Sheriff Buckly says. You raise the knife, and plunge it into your stomach, towards the center mass of the movement. "NO! For fuck's sake, stop her!" Doctor Kessel screams. Sheriff Buckly charges towards you, knocking you in the side of the head with his gun. Your head snaps backwards, and you quickly lose consciousness. > You awaken You awaken strapped to a gurney, covered in blood, wearing a hospital gown. You're in the RV, and the lights are turned off. You can't see anything, but you can here a someone whimpering. "Hello?" you ask. The whimpering stops, and you begin to hear a deep, guttural panting. "Hello?" you ask again. As your eyes begin to adjust to the darkness, you make out two figures in the darkness. One sits in the corner, the other stands above them, rubbing them with a long coil of rope that moves like a snake. "Mason? Becca? Kyle? Carter?" you ask, staring towards the figures. The standing one turns, and you see the sitting one quickly flick on a light switch, brightening the RV. In the light, you notice that the sitting figure is Becca, whose eyes are red with tears and seems terrified. Your eyes scan, and see the second figure, slowly approaching you. The figure is one of the monster-children. It has long brown hair, but her face is nothing but a mucus-encrusted, lipless mouth and two nostrils. It wears a tattered, blood-stained blue dress, with a long, red tentacle coming from it's stomach and wrapping around its body. The tip of the tentacle slowly moves towards you, and you spot a yellow eye poking out from the end of the tentacle slowly edging towards you, staring into your eyes. You scream, and struggle against your bonds, before the tentacles begins to wrap around your leg, leaving a long lane of sticky pus that oozes out of the tentacle. You scream as it continues to edge towards you, heading towards your face. The tentacle snakes up your chest, before intertwining around your neck, before stopping inches from your face. "Hello..." the monster-child rasps. You stare at the eye, seeing a mixture of pain and child-like curiosity in the eyes. Then, you hear a yell. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Becca charge forward with a long, thin knife, stabbing the monster-child through the neck. The creature howls, gargling blood, before Becca draws her knife and begins slashing at it's face and neck, before finally running the knife through it's skull. It collapses, and the tentacle in front of you falls on your face, wiggling like a dying fish. You whimper, and Becca comes over to you and begins cutting you free of both your restraints and the tentacle that intertwines around you. You eagerly get up, pulling the bits of tentacle off you as you struggle not to vomit. "What happened?" you ask, shivering. You feel a dull pain in your stomach, pulling it up slightly slightly to reveal you're thankfully still in your underwear, although you see your stomach is heavily bandaged. "They cut you open and pulled... something out of you. It was alive, and wiggling, and..." Becca says, before shivering in terror. "We need to get our friends and get out of here." You hear a thumping from the bathroom door, and quickly go to listen. "Hello?" "Hazel? Get me out of here!" Lucy screams from inside. You unlock the door, finding Lucy. "Thank God. They locked us in here and put the guys in the cage. We need to get out of here and stop them." You nod, and head to the kitchen, finding a large butcher knife. The door to the RV opens, and Lucy and Becca quickly hide behind the counter with you. "Iris? Are you finished playing with your new friends? I hope you didn't hurt them. We're going to need them if this newborn isn't the Key-Bearer. I haven't even got to see the k... Iris?" Louis the Mechanic walks in, looking around. "Hello?" He takes a few steps forward, walking into the kitchen towards you. > You attack You wait until he's closer, take a deep breath, feel the adrenaline coursing through your veins, and charge. You turn around the counter and in a single bound reach him. His eyes widen in panic before you stab your blade, slicing through skin and flesh, straight through the neck. You pull your blade out and stab again, and again, until his neck is nothing but a hunk of meat that falls to the floor, blood spilling into a puddle on the floor. You stand over him as he dies, watching as the life goes out of his eyes. As a result of an adrenaline rush and primal instincts taking over, you try not to focus on the pathetic, dying man in front of you, and head to the door. You open it to a crack, peering out. Mason, Kyle, Carter and Ant sit in the rusted cage, with Sheriff Buckly watching over them. Mrs Jordan and Alison are placing blood-stained stones in a circle. Doctor Kesel stands with something cradled in his arms, although it's too dark for you to see. > You escape to formulate a plan You slowly open the door, and begin creeping out of the camp. You slowly tiptoe away, staying low and staying wrapped in the shadows. As you edge away from camp, you freeze as you hear a shout. "Shit, they're escaping!" Sheriff Buckly roars. You break into a sprint, heading away from the camp. You manage to make it to the trees, but you hear gunfire behind you. You turn your head slightly, seeing a spurt off blood go from the back of Lucy's leg as she collapses forward, skidding along the earth to a halt. Becca makes it to the trees next to you and stops. "Shit, do we go back?" she asks in a terrified panic. You look back. In the darkness, you might be able to get to Lucy and help her disappear into the trees. If you both reach the tree line, it'll be almost impossible for Sheriff Buckly to track you. > You try rescue her "We have to," you say, determined. Becca nods and you turn and burst into a sprint towards Lucy. You see Sheriff Buckly heading towards you, aiming his gun. You grab Lucy, yanking her up. "Come on!" you shout. As you begin to help pull Lucy towards the trees, Sheriff Buckly takes his shoot. You feel a bullet thud through your chest, and you collapse forward. You cough up blood, before closing your eyes for the last time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You slowly open the door, and begin creeping out of the camp. You slowly tiptoe away, staying low and staying wrapped in the shadows. As you edge away from camp, you freeze as you hear a shout. "Shit, they're escaping!" Sheriff Buckly roars. You break into a sprint, heading away from the camp. You manage to make it to the trees, but you hear gunfire behind you. You turn your head slightly, seeing a spurt off blood go from the back of Lucy's leg as she collapses forward, skidding along the earth to a halt. Becca makes it to the trees next to you and stops. "Shit, do we go back?" she asks in a terrified panic. You look back. In the darkness, you might be able to get to Lucy and help her disappear into the trees. If you both reach the tree line, it'll be almost impossible for Sheriff Buckly to track you. > You head off into the trees "We have to go!" you say, and Becca nods. You break off into a sprint heading into the shadows and darkness, escaping into the trees. You run for several minutes, before you stop, bending over and panting. "Jesus, what do we do now?" > You think OK, you need to act fast, before the cultists do whatever they're planning.you could call the police. Although Sheriff Buckly is one of the only cops in town, if you called the State Troopers, there's a good chance they'd be able to arrive and clear this place out. You could also sneak back to the trucks and steal some of the weapons that Drake brought, and force a confrontation and end this. Then again, you know where the location of Drake's keys are for the RV. You know the RV's highly explosive, and with that you could easily disrupt the ritual and do a lot more. Then, there are the more... dangerous solutions. You could use the Dead Man. That terrifying spirit no doubt has some rage toward the town locals such as the cultists. Perhaps he could be bartered with. > You call the State Troopers "So what do we do?" Becca asks. "Call the State Troopers." "Are you sure that'll work?" "I don't know," you admit. "Just... it's worth a try." You ring the number, and immediately get an automated voice in your ear. You wait as they go through the numbers, before you hear a shout. "HANDS UP!" a voice screams. You turn, and see Sheriff Buckly walking out from the trees. "Jesus fucking Christ, Alison suggested I track your phones, but I told her it'd be insane for you to use it after I told you I had the equipment to track it. Jesus Christ. Come on, girls. I'm taking you back to camp. I'm going to hurt you, hurt you so, so bad for what you did to Louis." > You attack You take a deep breath as adrenaline surges through you, and charge forward with the knife. As soon as you near Sheriff Buckly, he quickly backpedals and aims, before blowing your brains out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"So what do we do?" Becca asks. "Call the State Troopers." "Are you sure that'll work?" "I don't know," you admit. "Just... it's worth a try." You ring the number, and immediately get an automated voice in your ear. You wait as they go through the numbers, before you hear a shout. "HANDS UP!" a voice screams. You turn, and see Sheriff Buckly walking out from the trees. "Jesus fucking Christ, Alison suggested I track your phones, but I told her it'd be insane for you to use it after I told you I had the equipment to track it. Jesus Christ. Come on, girls. I'm taking you back to camp. I'm going to hurt you, hurt you so, so bad for what you did to Louis." > You surrender Apocalypse You raise your hands and drop your knife. Sheriff Buckly binds your hands with rope and ties a rag around your eyes as a blindfold, before marching you both off back towards camp. You walk for several minutes, before you're dragged within earshot of your friends, who let out disappointed groans and swears at your capture. Then, your blindfold is torn off. A large circle of stones lies, each stained with a drop of blood. Standing around the circle are the five remaining cultists. Standing around them are a half dozen monster-children that make you want to vomit, the failed attempts at rearing a Key Bearer. They're so deformed, so mutated, they barely qualify as children. One is missing both it's arms, replaced with long, thin, slimy tentacles like pasta. A second is missing most of its face, a gaping hole in its place filled with tiny, wiggling tentacles from the walls, back, roof and floor of the mouth. A third looks like a cute, perfectly normal girl of around four years old, except her mouth hangs open and her eyes are completely black. Another, one of the worst, looks like a cross between a schoolgirl, a fetus and an octopus, and stands wiggling. Still, that's nothing compared to what sits in the middle of the circle. Sitting in the middle, wiggling, is your child. The Key-Bearer is the size of a cat, and is nothing but a seething mass of tentacles that whip around, seemingly drawing lines of purple lightning around itself in the symbol that was carved into you. "Ah, you're here!" Doctor Kessel says eagerly. "I wanted you to see this!" "You're insane!" "I don't care! Now, we begin!" The Key-Bearer speeds up, painting the symbol across the very fabric of reality. The ground begins to crumble away, turning in pure blackness. Suddenly, there's a flash, and the portal opens. Then, it begins.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>OK, you need to act fast, before the cultists do whatever they're planning.you could call the police. Although Sheriff Buckly is one of the only cops in town, if you called the State Troopers, there's a good chance they'd be able to arrive and clear this place out. You could also sneak back to the trucks and steal some of the weapons that Drake brought, and force a confrontation and end this. Then again, you know where the location of Drake's keys are for the RV. You know the RV's highly explosive, and with that you could easily disrupt the ritual and do a lot more. Then, there are the more... dangerous solutions. You could use the Dead Man. That terrifying spirit no doubt has some rage toward the town locals such as the cultists. Perhaps he could be bartered with. > You steal weapons from Drake's truck and confront the cultists "We need to get the weapons in Drake's truck. We get them and use the advantage of surprise to fend off the rest of the group." Becca nods with determination, and you swivel around in the darkness, heading back towards the truck. As you head towards the camp, you can hear the sound of Sheriff Buckly berating Lucy. "You fucking bitch! Louis was a good friend of mine!" You sneak forward, staying low and moving as quickly as you can, avoiding stepping on anything that would make noise and disturb the cultists. Eventually, you reach the pick-up truck, Drake''s lifeless body lying alongside it. You lean in through the window, grabbing one of the large revolvers Drake brought. You pull it out, pulling the hammer back and flicking the safety off. Thankfully, many years of FPS games have given you some help in this. You take a deep breath, and stand, aiming your weapon at Sheriff Buckly. He turns, and grins. "Hiya. Why don't you just drop the weapon, darlin'?" "Fuck you." Yuo fire your revolver, but the hollow click eats into your soul as you realize it's empty. Lucy fires her gun, and realizes it's the same thing. "Taking the ammo from the guns was one of the first things I did. I'm the only one who gets to have a gun." He grins, raising his gun, and fires, the bullet embedding itself in your skull.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>OK, you need to act fast, before the cultists do whatever they're planning.you could call the police. Although Sheriff Buckly is one of the only cops in town, if you called the State Troopers, there's a good chance they'd be able to arrive and clear this place out. You could also sneak back to the trucks and steal some of the weapons that Drake brought, and force a confrontation and end this. Then again, you know where the location of Drake's keys are for the RV. You know the RV's highly explosive, and with that you could easily disrupt the ritual and do a lot more. Then, there are the more... dangerous solutions. You could use the Dead Man. That terrifying spirit no doubt has some rage toward the town locals such as the cultists. Perhaps he could be bartered with. > You steal Drake's RV Meth Lab “What are you thinking?” “Drake’s RV.” “What about it?” “We get the keys, and drive it straight into the cultists’s camp and hop out.” “What? Like ram them.” “No, we make it explode. I’m pretty good at Chemistry and I watch a lot of crime shows. I should know what to mix to make it go up in a fireball.” Becca stares at you nervously, before nodding. “Yeah, OK. Let’s do that.” “Do you remember which way the truck is?” Becca nods, and you begin following her through the dead night. The silence is only broken by the trudging of your feet and the occassional hoot from an owl. Eventually, you near the edge of the woods. Sure enough, the massive RV sits by the trees at the edge of the forest. “Do you know how to drive?” you ask. “I guess. I’ve never drove an RV, nad I sure as hell haven’t driven one through the woods, avoiding trees and… whatever.” “You’re going to have to,” you say. Becca retrieves the keys from their hiding spots, and you enter the RV. Becca goes to start it up, while you head to the back and start looking at the various pieces of equipment and chemicals at your disposal. You find a few choice substances from the distilerry Drake had set up, including plenty of flammible alcohol. As you struggle to remember your many science classes, you work with the chemicals for several minutes, before you’ve made the RV into a jury-rigged bomb. “Hey, Hazel, is it ready?” “Yes.” “Should we have waited until we were a little closer and not going through bumpy terrain before we made this into a bomb?” You shrug, and Becca begins driving. Although she finds it considerably harder to navigate the trees unlike the others who did so with ease, she manages to keep you on track and alive. After a while, you begin to near the camp. “So, what do we do?” Becca asks. “We ram them,” you say. “You get out now. I’ll ram it.” “You don’t know how to drive!” “I have a straight line to the camp. Just press down on the accerator, I suppose. Which one’s the accelrator?” Becca shows you, and you nod. “OK, get out.” “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’ll just speed it up and dive out. Easy,” you reply. You take a deep breath, before Becca gets out of the RV. She stands to the side, staring nervously ahead. You take another deep breath, hoping the oxygen will calm you, and hit the accelerator. The vehicle quickly begins to speed up, as the RV bumps you around in your seat. You enter the clearing, and get your site. You see slithering, monsterous and malformed children in the RV as the rest of the cultists lay stones in a massive circle. Doctor Kessel cradles a bundle in his arms, and looks up at you in shock. “What the hell…?” “Stop her!” Alison yells, as Sheriff Buckly fumbles for his gun in a panic. You point your RV at theirs’, and quickly drop a large piece of equipment on the accelerator. As the wheels begin to spin and start speeding toward RV. You jump out of your seat and rush to the door. You dive out of it, hitting the dirt, as you watch one RV speeding towards the other. Doctor Kessel screams in a panic, and the Meth Lab rams into the RV. They impact with incredible force, knocking them both onto their sides as they flip through the air. After a few seconds, they slow down, and land in a mangled heap. You hear horrible growls, shrieks and hisses from inside the metal as the seemingly unharmed monsters inside begin to pull themselves out by hands, claws or tentacles. The wreckage begins to leak, a large puddle of alcohol, fuel and various other chemicals forming. Doctor Kessel looks at it and laughs. "I thought would've exploded..." Doctor Kessel says. He begins walking towards you, and you see what he's holding: a wiggling mass of tentacles, flying around the air and stroking his face. The long, thin tentacles, covered with a thin veneer of slime, begin stretching out, stroking your face and you scream. "Ssssh..." Doctor Kessel whispers. "This is your child. Isn't he beautiful?" You stare at the center mass of the tentacles, and see a light blue, incredibly human eye in the center. An eye just like yours. You let out a terrified cry, as you hear a shout from Sheriff Buckly. "STUPID BITCH!" he screams. You look up, and see Becca has snuck up and is trying to open the rusted cage. Doctor Kessel looks up, and you have a moment to act. > You kill the Key-Bearer with your switchblade You grab your switchblade and stab it into the center mass of the Key-Bearer. Doctor Kessel notices and lets out a petrified scream, grabbing at your throat. The Key-Bearer's tentacles intertwine around your hand as a green-yellowish pus comes out and begins sticking to your hand. You feel a sharp prick, and then another, and then another, as bone teeth begin to grow slowly out of the tentacles, digging deeply into you. You scream as a black liquid begins to steep out of the teeth and out of your wound as your veins begin to turn black. You scream as your arm goes number, before the numbness begins to spread throughout your body. You let out a mangled cry before it reaches your chest, and finally the darkness consumes you as it stops your heart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“What are you thinking?” “Drake’s RV.” “What about it?” “We get the keys, and drive it straight into the cultists’s camp and hop out.” “What? Like ram them.” “No, we make it explode. I’m pretty good at Chemistry and I watch a lot of crime shows. I should know what to mix to make it go up in a fireball.” Becca stares at you nervously, before nodding. “Yeah, OK. Let’s do that.” “Do you remember which way the truck is?” Becca nods, and you begin following her through the dead night. The silence is only broken by the trudging of your feet and the occassional hoot from an owl. Eventually, you near the edge of the woods. Sure enough, the massive RV sits by the trees at the edge of the forest. “Do you know how to drive?” you ask. “I guess. I’ve never drove an RV, nad I sure as hell haven’t driven one through the woods, avoiding trees and… whatever.” “You’re going to have to,” you say. Becca retrieves the keys from their hiding spots, and you enter the RV. Becca goes to start it up, while you head to the back and start looking at the various pieces of equipment and chemicals at your disposal. You find a few choice substances from the distilerry Drake had set up, including plenty of flammible alcohol. As you struggle to remember your many science classes, you work with the chemicals for several minutes, before you’ve made the RV into a jury-rigged bomb. “Hey, Hazel, is it ready?” “Yes.” “Should we have waited until we were a little closer and not going through bumpy terrain before we made this into a bomb?” You shrug, and Becca begins driving. Although she finds it considerably harder to navigate the trees unlike the others who did so with ease, she manages to keep you on track and alive. After a while, you begin to near the camp. “So, what do we do?” Becca asks. “We ram them,” you say. “You get out now. I’ll ram it.” “You don’t know how to drive!” “I have a straight line to the camp. Just press down on the accerator, I suppose. Which one’s the accelrator?” Becca shows you, and you nod. “OK, get out.” “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’ll just speed it up and dive out. Easy,” you reply. You take a deep breath, before Becca gets out of the RV. She stands to the side, staring nervously ahead. You take another deep breath, hoping the oxygen will calm you, and hit the accelerator. The vehicle quickly begins to speed up, as the RV bumps you around in your seat. You enter the clearing, and get your site. You see slithering, monsterous and malformed children in the RV as the rest of the cultists lay stones in a massive circle. Doctor Kessel cradles a bundle in his arms, and looks up at you in shock. “What the hell…?” “Stop her!” Alison yells, as Sheriff Buckly fumbles for his gun in a panic. You point your RV at theirs’, and quickly drop a large piece of equipment on the accelerator. As the wheels begin to spin and start speeding toward RV. You jump out of your seat and rush to the door. You dive out of it, hitting the dirt, as you watch one RV speeding towards the other. Doctor Kessel screams in a panic, and the Meth Lab rams into the RV. They impact with incredible force, knocking them both onto their sides as they flip through the air. After a few seconds, they slow down, and land in a mangled heap. You hear horrible growls, shrieks and hisses from inside the metal as the seemingly unharmed monsters inside begin to pull themselves out by hands, claws or tentacles. The wreckage begins to leak, a large puddle of alcohol, fuel and various other chemicals forming. Doctor Kessel looks at it and laughs. "I thought would've exploded..." Doctor Kessel says. He begins walking towards you, and you see what he's holding: a wiggling mass of tentacles, flying around the air and stroking his face. The long, thin tentacles, covered with a thin veneer of slime, begin stretching out, stroking your face and you scream. "Ssssh..." Doctor Kessel whispers. "This is your child. Isn't he beautiful?" You stare at the center mass of the tentacles, and see a light blue, incredibly human eye in the center. An eye just like yours. You let out a terrified cry, as you hear a shout from Sheriff Buckly. "STUPID BITCH!" he screams. You look up, and see Becca has snuck up and is trying to open the rusted cage. Doctor Kessel looks up, and you have a moment to act. > You crawl away from them You crawl desperately backwards, away from Doctor Kessel. You hands touch the puddle of fuel, and you have an idea. You fumble through your pants, pulling out your lighter. Doctor Kessel charges forward, pressing his foot on your chest with a swift stomp. "Stop fighting, girl!" he growls. > You light the puddle You flick your lighter on, and ignite the puddle. Flames burst out as the liquid sets alight. The flames lap at your side, but Doctor Kessel desperately backs away in a panic, allowing you to roll away from the fire. The flames race along, igniting the puddle, before it reaches the RV. As flames reach the insides where the lab and make-shift explosive are hit. Then, it explodes. A wave of heat and shrapnel tear through the air as a thunderous boom goes off. Your ears ring as a fireball explodes into the night with tremendous force. Chunks of metal go off in all directions, and you collapse on the ground. After a few seconds you manage to look up and survey the carnage. Miraculously, you're safe, and all your friends in the cage as well as Becca and Sheriff Buckly seem mostly unharmed. You can hear the sizzling of the monsters' corpses in the burning skeleton of the two intertwined RVs. Alison and Mrs Jordan were closest to the RV and consumed in the wall of fire and barrage of shrapnel, their burned and torn apart bodies now lying on the earth. Doctor Kessel lies, badly burned with the scorched remains of the Key-Bearer lying on top of him. "NO! NO!" Sheriff Buckly screams, staring at the wreckage in abject horror. Becca raises her knife and stabs Sheriff Buckly in the neck with a scream and he yelps in pain. She pulls it out, and Sheriff Buckly collapses to the floor. "You... you've taken everything... from me," Doctor Kessel pants. You look at him, burns going across his face and across his smoldering chest. The Key-Bearer moves slightly, but you quickly finish it off with a few stomps, wincing at every squelch. "No...!" Doctor Kessel pants. "You've... doomed man... to nothingness." You stare down at him as his breathing slows, before the rise and fall of his chest ceases. You walk over to Becca, who's pulling a pair of keys out of Sheriff Buckly's pocket. She unlocks the rusted cage, and your friends spill out. Carter and Mason help Lucy hobble out, followed by Kyle who eagerly hugs Becca, and finally Ant. "Holy shit. You just blew up an evil cult. I'm impressed," Ant says. "Holy shit, I don't... what the fuck just happened?" Kyle asks. "I don't know. We should probably leave," Mason says. "Thanks, Hazel, thanks, Becca, you saved our asses here. "We n-need t-to get out of here and g-g-get Lucy help f-for her le-leg," Carter says. You nod, and begin to walk away from the burnt out ashes of the camp, just as the sky begins to rise. > One Year Later... After the Bang You're surprised how quickly and eagerly the media pick up on this. A tale of a bunch of kids discovering what a cult and driving a meth lab into it and blowing it up entirely. Of course, the story gets botched considerably. The cult is said to be Satanist, the monster-children are claimed to be simply malformed or mutilated, and any and all super-natural presence is rationalized. Still, it does turn Dawnwood into a media hotspot for some time and turns you into somewhat of a celebrity some time. Still, it doesn't take long for the media to move on. With celebrity pregnancies, terrorist attacks in the Middle East and an endless amount of mass shootings, things move on. You continue living in Dawnwood, staying with your friends. There's a special type of unbreakable bound that arises when a group of people face death together, and because of that you stay as a tight-knit group of friends. Time passes, you settle down in the town and for the first time you're glad you moved to the town. Sure, you still have many unanswered questions about what happened and still wake up with phantom pains in your stomach and nightmares of that night, but for the most part you're able to move past it. You're looking forward to your future in Dawnwood.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>OK, you need to act fast, before the cultists do whatever they're planning.you could call the police. Although Sheriff Buckly is one of the only cops in town, if you called the State Troopers, there's a good chance they'd be able to arrive and clear this place out. You could also sneak back to the trucks and steal some of the weapons that Drake brought, and force a confrontation and end this. Then again, you know where the location of Drake's keys are for the RV. You know the RV's highly explosive, and with that you could easily disrupt the ritual and do a lot more. Then, there are the more... dangerous solutions. You could use the Dead Man. That terrifying spirit no doubt has some rage toward the town locals such as the cultists. Perhaps he could be bartered with. > You attempt to barter with the Dead Man "So what's our plan?" "The Dead Man." "What? The ghost?" "Yeah. We could use him." "Ghosts aren't real, Hazel. Maybe you should sit down." "I saw him." "Ghosts aren't..." "Becca, our friends have been kidnapped by demon-summoning cultists, and you don't belief in ghosts at the moment?" "I... I guess." "Yeah. Let's go pay him a visit." You turn and lead Becca off towards the Dead Man's Barn. After about five minutes of jogging, you reach the empty field that's brightened in the moonlight, with the large, old abandoned barn standing there. "Come on!" you say. You reach the barn, and begin prying plywood out of the way. You pause, remembering the Dead Man's hatred of Becca, pause. "I'll go inside alone," you say. "Are you sure?" "Yeah," you say. Becca shrugs, pulling the plywood out of the way and clambering inside. You are immediately engulfed in darkness. The soft rustle of the grass ceases as the entire barn is filled with a silence. Then, a whistle breaks out. The Dead Man begins whistling a slow, soft tune, the only thing that breaks the silence. Each note is mixed with the wet squelching you heard the last time. You see him leaning on a large wooden beam, his long, cut open grin staring back at you. The whistling stops as shadows seem to enrapture him. He disappears from his position leaning on the beam, and you feel hot breath on the back of your neck. "I didn't think you'd come around here, darlin'. I was certain you'd be smarter," you hear him whisper from directly behind you. A gloved hand begins to stroke your hair as you feel a metal blade press against your throat. "No bother. I won't mind cutting you up a little." "Wait! I want to make a deal with you!" The blade stops and twists so that the flat of the blade is rubbing your neck. "Alright... you bought yourself a minute. Explain." "I want to help you get revenge." "No you don't.You want something that coincides with me getting my revenge. What?" "I need Mrs Jordan, Alison, Sheriff Buckly and Doctor Kessel." "Alison. What's her last name." "Parker." "Oh yeah, Parker... Damn right I want my revenge. But it seems you're far more desperate than I am." "I..." "I want something. The Montgomery girl." "What?" "I want you to bring me her." "I don't have her. She left..." The Dead Man smiles as his grin is elongated once again because of the cuts as a wave of blood spills down his cheeks. He leans forward, running a hand against your cheek and down your neck. "Bring me the girl... and I will help you kill every last person you want dead." > You agree You take a deep breath, and nod. “OK. Fine,” you say. It’s for the best. It’s the only way to safe your friends. If you don’t sacrifice one, you all die. "Call her, then." "Becca!" you shout. "Yes?" "Come in here!" "I though you said..." "Just do it!" You see the Dead Man disappear, and seconds later, Becca climbs through the hole in the wall. "What do you need?" "I'm so, so sorry," you whimper. "What...?" The Dead Man is formed from the shadows directly behind Becca, leaning against the wall. He raises an old-fashioned revolver, and points it at the back of her head. "Tell your ancestors I sent you," he says. The Dead Man fires his gun and the revolver explodes with a thunderous roar, as does Becca's face. The front of her face explodes, sending blood, bits of flesh and grey matter onto the floor. You scream in horror as your friend collapses on the floor as all the life flows from her eyes and her face takes a dull expression. "Ah... you can't imagine how good that felt." You choke back a cry, as tears stream down your face. "You have to kill everyone I mentioned." "How the fuck am I supposed to do that?" "What? You said you could! You promised." "I promised I would try. You bring those people into this barn, I'll kill 'em all and leave you alive." "How the fuck am I supposed to do that?" you shout, echoing the Dead Man's complaint. The Dead Man grins, and fades into the background and is absorbed by shadows once again. You sigh, and walk out. You climb out of the barn, your mind racing. Then, you have an idea. The one thing any of them care about is the Key-Bearer. If you can get that,or it, or whatever the fuck the creature is, you can lure them into the barn. You begin walking back towards the camp. > Five Minutes Later... You stare at the camp, watching the cultists work.They all pile stones in a large circle. You hear horrified moans from inside the RV, and you can vaguely see the horrified shapes of the failed attempts to birth a Key-Bearer inside the RV, the monstrous, contorting shapes howling desperately. Still, you see what you're looking for. Doctor Kessel holds a large bundle of contorting tentacles You look around the earthen floor of the woods, finding a large tree branch with suitable weight and length. You pick it up, and begin creeping towards Doctor Kessel. You silently creep forward, aas he watches the circle being formed, oblivious to anything else. You take a deep breath, and raise the tree branch. You swing it with as much strength as you can muster, and it smacks into the back of his head. It slams into his head and he collapses forward, the Key-Bearer flying onto the floor. You spot your friends in the cage, Sheriff Buckly watching over you, but know you don't have time to rescue them. You grab the Key-Bearer and get your first real look at it. A seething mass of tentacles, with at the base a small, spherical body. You shiver in terror as you notice the creature has a single, bright blue eye, the same color as yours. You grab it, wrapping in the blanket Doctor Kessel has been coddling it, and turn. "Fuck! Get her!" Doctor Kessel screams. Sheriff Buckly turns and raises his gun, but Doctor Kessel screams at him to stop. "No, no! For god's sake, don't fire! You could hit the key-bearer and ruin everything!" Doctor Kessel screams later. You break into a run, as you see Alison open the RV. "Children! Go, go track down your brother and the girl!" You see demented figures emerge from the RV. There's a pair of small legs that waddle forward, although everything above the waist is a seething mass of tentacles. There's an armless child who's eyes are just two empty caverns that are blacker the pure darkness. There's a small girl, each limb replaced with a long coil of muscles that it uses to crawl along the ground. They all see you, eyes filled with pain and angst, and begin to follow you. You turn and begin running as fast as you can towards the Dead Man's barn. You run as fast as your feet will carry you for several minutes, hearing the howls of the monsters behind you grow louder as the cultists follow just behind you. "Stop running! We won't hurt you!" Doctor Kessel screams. You feel the Key-Bearer writhe under the blanket in your arms and you wince, but don't dare stop runnign. Eventually, you break free from the trees, into the field under the moonlight. You spot the hole in the boarded up barn, and begin desperately running towards it. After a minute of running as fast as you can, you dive through it, into the darkness of the barn. Seconds later, you hear a slithering, shivering sound as those monsters enter. You stay perfectly quiet, and begin crawling under a small gap in the fence, into a horse stall. "Hazel... you better come out now..." Sheriff Buckly whispers. "It's better we find you then one of the kids..." You try not to breath and stay perfectly silent as you hear figures wandering around the room. "Oh, there you ar... what's this?" "Ah, look who it is. A Buckly... I always did know your family was a generation of snakes and government cocksuckers..." "How... what the fuck are yo...?" "I'm the Grim fuckin' Reaper." "No! Wait! Please, don't!" "Tell ol' grandaddy Buckly you died beggin' me!" There's a gunshot, and Sheriff Buckly falls silent. "Well, look at this... the Kessel family's newest generation are all pig-fuck ugly monsters. See ya, kids." There's a series of gun shots as you hear the knife whistle through the air. "Jesus fuck! What's...?" "A Parker. Your gran' daddy had the dumbest horse grin I'd ever seen." There's the noise of a knife, slicing through the air and the squelching sound of blood. "Oops, there goes a Jordan and a O'Riley. Huh, your grand daddies on your mom and dad's sides were fiddling, only makes sense their kids would have kids." There's a series of gunshots and squelches from knife stabs, before you hear a single, solitary voice. "Hazel? Whatever you've done, stop this... please..." Doctor Kessel whimpers. You hear a gunshot, and the thud of a body hitting the floor. Then, silence. Suddenly, the Dead Man stands, staring at you. "Alright, darling. You never said there'd be a dozen monsters in tow." "I didn't think they'd release them." "Alright. Well, I reckon we're about even." You nod, before the bundle wiggles in your arms again. The Dead Man raises his gun and shoots the wiggling bundle twice. You scream as blood flies up, before throwing the dying monster off you. "There. Now we're sure as fuck even." The Dead Man is absorbed by the darkness once more, and you're left alone in the darkness. You stand, walking out into the carnage. Corpses lie everywhere, shriveled tentacles and bleeding bodies around the room. You find Sheriff Buckly, lying on the floor in a growing puddle of blood. You search his pockets, pulling out the keys to the rusted cage. You leave the barn, and begin walking off to rescue your friends, just as the sky begins to rise. > One Year Later... Death and Vengeance You're surprised how quickly and eagerly the media pick up on this. A tale of a bunch of kids discovering what a cult. Of course, the story gets botched considerably. The cult is said to be Satanist, the monster-children are claimed to be simply malformed or mutilated, any and all super-natural presence is rationalized, and its claimed that you and Becca made a stand against the cultists, leading to Becca's death in the fire fight. You don't disagree with them, because you know you'd come off as crazy. The Dead Man is happy to stay hidden every time they investigate the barn, knowing the difference between picking off a few trespassers and ambushing a police investigation, and not wanting his barn covered in police tape for any longer than needs be. Still, it does turn Dawnwood into a media hotspot for some time and turns you into somewhat of a celebrity some time. Still, it doesn't take long for the media to move on. With celebrity pregnancies, terrorist attacks in the Middle East and an endless amount of mass shootings, things move on. You continue living in Dawnwood, staying with your friends. You still have serious guilt over what happened to Becca, and any and all attempts to rationalize it lead to you just wallowing in self-depreciation and depression. Time passes, you settle down in the town and for the first time you're glad you moved to the town. Sure, you still have many unanswered questions about what happened and still wake up with phantom pains in your stomach and nightmares of that night, and nightmares of Becca's corpse slumped over in front of you, but you're able to move past it somewhat. You're looking forward to your future in Dawnwood.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"So what's our plan?" "The Dead Man." "What? The ghost?" "Yeah. We could use him." "Ghosts aren't real, Hazel. Maybe you should sit down." "I saw him." "Ghosts aren't..." "Becca, our friends have been kidnapped by demon-summoning cultists, and you don't belief in ghosts at the moment?" "I... I guess." "Yeah. Let's go pay him a visit." You turn and lead Becca off towards the Dead Man's Barn. After about five minutes of jogging, you reach the empty field that's brightened in the moonlight, with the large, old abandoned barn standing there. "Come on!" you say. You reach the barn, and begin prying plywood out of the way. You pause, remembering the Dead Man's hatred of Becca, pause. "I'll go inside alone," you say. "Are you sure?" "Yeah," you say. Becca shrugs, pulling the plywood out of the way and clambering inside. You are immediately engulfed in darkness. The soft rustle of the grass ceases as the entire barn is filled with a silence. Then, a whistle breaks out. The Dead Man begins whistling a slow, soft tune, the only thing that breaks the silence. Each note is mixed with the wet squelching you heard the last time. You see him leaning on a large wooden beam, his long, cut open grin staring back at you. The whistling stops as shadows seem to enrapture him. He disappears from his position leaning on the beam, and you feel hot breath on the back of your neck. "I didn't think you'd come around here, darlin'. I was certain you'd be smarter," you hear him whisper from directly behind you. A gloved hand begins to stroke your hair as you feel a metal blade press against your throat. "No bother. I won't mind cutting you up a little." "Wait! I want to make a deal with you!" The blade stops and twists so that the flat of the blade is rubbing your neck. "Alright... you bought yourself a minute. Explain." "I want to help you get revenge." "No you don't.You want something that coincides with me getting my revenge. What?" "I need Mrs Jordan, Alison, Sheriff Buckly and Doctor Kessel." "Alison. What's her last name." "Parker." "Oh yeah, Parker... Damn right I want my revenge. But it seems you're far more desperate than I am." "I..." "I want something. The Montgomery girl." "What?" "I want you to bring me her." "I don't have her. She left..." The Dead Man smiles as his grin is elongated once again because of the cuts as a wave of blood spills down his cheeks. He leans forward, running a hand against your cheek and down your neck. "Bring me the girl... and I will help you kill every last person you want dead." > You lie and escape while claiming to be luring Becca in "OK. I'll go get her." "Oh, I can't let you leave until you Becca's here." "She's not going to come wander into the darkness just because I'm calling. I need to go out there personally." "...Hmm... Alright. Go get her." You nod, and head out of the barn slowly. Each step you expect to feel the steel blade slicing through you, but you keep walking, trying to appear calm and collected. You reach the ray of moonlight, and climb out of the barn, finding Becca. "What happened?" "We... we need to go. Come on." You grab Becca's arm and quickly pull her quickly away from barn, heading back into the field. "What happened there?" "It doesn't matter. Just make sure to never go inside that barn." "What do we do now? How will we rescue our friends?" "I had a few more ideas."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wait until he's closer, take a deep breath, feel the adrenaline coursing through your veins, and charge. You turn around the counter and in a single bound reach him. His eyes widen in panic before you stab your blade, slicing through skin and flesh, straight through the neck. You pull your blade out and stab again, and again, until his neck is nothing but a hunk of meat that falls to the floor, blood spilling into a puddle on the floor. You stand over him as he dies, watching as the life goes out of his eyes. As a result of an adrenaline rush and primal instincts taking over, you try not to focus on the pathetic, dying man in front of you, and head to the door. You open it to a crack, peering out. Mason, Kyle, Carter and Ant sit in the rusted cage, with Sheriff Buckly watching over them. Mrs Jordan and Alison are placing blood-stained stones in a circle. Doctor Kesel stands with something cradled in his arms, although it's too dark for you to see. > You pick them off one by one "We need to attack," you whisper. "What?" Lucy asks in surprise. "They have a gun!" "It's dark, we can sneak up on the sheriff and take him out with our knives, and get the gun. Then, we stop this and free our friends." Lucy nods, and you edge out of the door, heading towards Sheriff Buckly. You stay low, immersed in the darkness. You slowly edge forward, before you're less than a dozen feet away from him. Then, Sheriff Buckly turns, noticing you. "Ah, shit..." he sighs, raising his gun. > You charge him You charge forward, slashing your knife. Sheriff Buckly backs up with a yelp, firing randomly. Although he's firing without thinking or aiming, the amount of lead he puts in the air makes it sure that one finds it's way through your skull, killing you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"We need to attack," you whisper. "What?" Lucy asks in surprise. "They have a gun!" "It's dark, we can sneak up on the sheriff and take him out with our knives, and get the gun. Then, we stop this and free our friends." Lucy nods, and you edge out of the door, heading towards Sheriff Buckly. You stay low, immersed in the darkness. You slowly edge forward, before you're less than a dozen feet away from him. Then, Sheriff Buckly turns, noticing you. "Ah, shit..." he sighs, raising his gun. > You run "They're escaping!" Sheriff Buckly roars at his allies. You break into a sprint, heading away from the camp. You manage to make it to the trees, but you hear gunfire behind you. You turn your head slightly, seeing a spurt off blood go from the back of Lucy's leg as she collapses forward, skidding along the earth to a halt. Becca makes it to the trees next to you and stops. "Shit, do we go back?" she asks in a terrified panic. You look back. In the darkness, you might be able to get to Lucy and help her disappear into the trees. If you both reach the tree line, it'll be almost impossible for Sheriff Buckly to track you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken strapped to a gurney, covered in blood, wearing a hospital gown. You're in the RV, and the lights are turned off. You can't see anything, but you can here a someone whimpering. "Hello?" you ask. The whimpering stops, and you begin to hear a deep, guttural panting. "Hello?" you ask again. As your eyes begin to adjust to the darkness, you make out two figures in the darkness. One sits in the corner, the other stands above them, rubbing them with a long coil of rope that moves like a snake. "Mason? Becca? Kyle? Carter?" you ask, staring towards the figures. The standing one turns, and you see the sitting one quickly flick on a light switch, brightening the RV. In the light, you notice that the sitting figure is Becca, whose eyes are red with tears and seems terrified. Your eyes scan, and see the second figure, slowly approaching you. The figure is one of the monster-children. It has long brown hair, but her face is nothing but a mucus-encrusted, lipless mouth and two nostrils. It wears a tattered, blood-stained blue dress, with a long, red tentacle coming from it's stomach and wrapping around its body. The tip of the tentacle slowly moves towards you, and you spot a yellow eye poking out from the end of the tentacle slowly edging towards you, staring into your eyes. You scream, and struggle against your bonds, before the tentacles begins to wrap around your leg, leaving a long lane of sticky pus that oozes out of the tentacle. You scream as it continues to edge towards you, heading towards your face. The tentacle snakes up your chest, before intertwining around your neck, before stopping inches from your face. "Hello..." the monster-child rasps. You stare at the eye, seeing a mixture of pain and child-like curiosity in the eyes. Then, you hear a yell. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Becca charge forward with a long, thin knife, stabbing the monster-child through the neck. The creature howls, gargling blood, before Becca draws her knife and begins slashing at it's face and neck, before finally running the knife through it's skull. It collapses, and the tentacle in front of you falls on your face, wiggling like a dying fish. You whimper, and Becca comes over to you and begins cutting you free of both your restraints and the tentacle that intertwines around you. You eagerly get up, pulling the bits of tentacle off you as you struggle not to vomit. "What happened?" you ask, shivering. You feel a dull pain in your stomach, pulling it up slightly slightly to reveal you're thankfully still in your underwear, although you see your stomach is heavily bandaged. "They cut you open and pulled... something out of you. It was alive, and wiggling, and..." Becca says, before shivering in terror. "We need to get our friends and get out of here." You hear a thumping from the bathroom door, and quickly go to listen. "Hello?" "Hazel? Get me out of here!" Lucy screams from inside. You unlock the door, finding Lucy. "Thank God. They locked us in here and put the guys in the cage. We need to get out of here and stop them." You nod, and head to the kitchen, finding a large butcher knife. The door to the RV opens, and Lucy and Becca quickly hide behind the counter with you. "Iris? Are you finished playing with your new friends? I hope you didn't hurt them. We're going to need them if this newborn isn't the Key-Bearer. I haven't even got to see the k... Iris?" Louis the Mechanic walks in, looking around. "Hello?" He takes a few steps forward, walking into the kitchen towards you. > You stay hidden You stay hidden, and Louis walks over. He leans over the counter, his head just over you. Then, he spots the edge of Lucy's foot. "Shit!" he shouts, turning and running out of the RV. "Hey! The girls got loose! Where's the gun?" Within seconds, Sheriff Buckly is standing by the doorway, aiming his gun. "Come out or I'll blow your brains out!" he roars. > You surrender You raise your hands in surrender, and step forward. Sheriff Buckly grins. "Come on, there you go, drop the knife." You drop the knife, and step forward. He swings his gun, smacking into the side of your head and sending you spiraling into unconsciousness. > You awaken Apocalypse You lie in the rusted gurney, at the edge of a large circle. Your friends are gone, but you only look for a second before you see the preparations for the portal. A large circle of stones lies, each stained with a drop of blood. Standing around the circle are the cultists. Standing around them are a half dozen monster-children that make you want to vomit, the failed attempts at rearing a Key Bearer. They're so deformed, so mutated, they barely qualify as children. One is missing both it's arms, replaced with long, thin, slimy tentacles like pasta. A second is missing most of its face, a gaping hole in its place filled with tiny, wiggling tentacles from the walls, back, roof and floor of the mouth. A third looks like a cute, perfectly normal girl of around four years old, except her mouth hangs open and her eyes are completely black. Another, one of the worst, looks like a cross between a schoolgirl, a fetus and an octopus, and stands wiggling. Still, that's nothing compared to what sits in the middle of the circle. Sitting in the middle, wiggling, is your child. The Key-Bearer is the size of a cat, and is nothing but a seething mass of tentacles that whip around, seemingly drawing lines of purple lightning around itself in the symbol that was carved into you. "Ah, you're here!" Doctor Kessel says eagerly. "Where are my friends?" you scream, terrified of the creatures that surround you. "It doesn't matter now! Now, we begin! We will witness the glories of Crexiciliatanian's creation!" The Key-Bearer speeds up, painting the symbol across the very fabric of reality. The ground begins to crumble away, turning in pure blackness. Suddenly, there's a flash, and the portal opens. Then, it begins.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Nine hours later, you're ready to go. You've somehow convinced Dad to let you go out, not daring to tell him your actual destination and instead claiming you're staying at Lucy's house. You meet up at the Lucy's house with the group, and walk into the living room, where they're all sitting around. "Are we ready?" you ask. "Damn straight!" Ant smiles, holding up a large backpack. "Spare food, water bottles, lighters, matches, rope, fireworks, some knives and flashlights. What'd you guys bring?" Carter holds up half a chocolate bar he's been chewing on. "Half a M-Mars bar," he says, before taking another bite. "A q-quart-quarter of a Mars b-bar." "I brought a penknife and a lighter," you shrug, and Ant looks around disappointedly. "No one brought anything?" he pouts. "You guys suck." You hear a horn outside, and look outside. A large RV drives up the driveway, stopping outside. Lucy skips out the door, before running up to him, and you follow her outside. "Hey, Hazel," Drake says. "Drake's friend, Ed, has the pick-up, so we're driving to the woods, meeting him and switching vehicle," Lucy tells you. "OK," you say, walking into the RV. You raise an eyebrow as you notice that the RV's windows are covered with shutters and bin bags, and the actual interior looks like a scene from Breaking Bad, covered with beakers, test tubes, Bunsen burners and other Chemistry gear. "Well, you're blatant," you say. "Hey, it's effective." "I mean, yeah, but Breaking Bad made this a trope. Don't police search RV's for this." "Breaking Bad helped my sales enough that I'm bribing the deputy. You'll be surprised how much extra meth heads are willing to pay for a product when you add some blue dye." You shrug, and take a seat in the RV, as your friends pack in. "Be careful back there. Knock one thing over and this place could blow." "Really?" you ask. Drake grins and shrugs, and begins driving. "Maybe. I mean, there's a distillery back there as well as the lab. I'd imagine one speed bump and boom!" "That's unnerving," Ant says. "I guess. So, why the hell am I dragging all your friends into the middle of the woods to the old freakshow cage?" "I told you already," Lucy reveals. "That nightmare bull isn't convincing me. What's the real reason?" "That is the real reason." Drake turns around to stare at you in annoyance. "What...?" "Eyes on the road, Drake," Kyle says. "Fine," Drake says, turning around. "Still, I want an explanation why I'm driving into the woods because the new girl had a nightmare." "It wasn't a nightmare!" you say. "Sure," Drake says. You all sit in awkward silence until you reach the outskirts of the woods. Drake pulls over, and you stand and head out the door. Although you couldn't tell because of the shutters and blacked out windows of the RV, you can now see that night has fallen. An empty red pick-up truck with four seats sits next to the woods. Drake strides forward, pulling out his phone. "Ah, shit," Drake says. "Of course Ed left the truck here and went off on his quad rather than just take back the RV like he was supposed to." He locks the RV and hides the keys in the wheel well. "I'll text my friend and get him to pick up the RV. Come on, get inside. Let's go drive to a dumbass cage in the woods." Drake, Lucy, Carter and Ant go in the seats while you, Mason, Becca and Kyle sit in the back of the pick-up. You sit, half-lying on Mason who wraps one arm around you. The emotional part of your brain momentarily forgets all fears in favor of a childish infatuation and hormonal lust towards Mason that causes you to blush and your heart to flutter, the rational part of your brain reminds you to stay vigilant in case the cultists or that beast do show up. You and the rest of your friends pull out flashlights and fire the beams off into the darkness, illuminating trees and undergrowth. "We're nearly there," Drake shouts. "It's a hell of a lot easier to get here because a path's been made." Your ears perk up at that. "What do you mean?" you ask, as Drake rolls down his window fully. "What'd you say?" "I said what do you mean? You said there's a path." "Yeah. It's like a big RV drove over the undergrowth and knocked a dirt path along." "What, you think Ed's been driving out here to work in the RV?" Lucy asks. "Nah, Ed's terrified of the woods. Said something about a monster or something." You feel a flash of fear as you remember the RV from last night. You stare outwards, illuminating every shadow, both hoping to and terrified of seeing something hiding in the dark. "Here it is! The old freak show's cage!" Drake says dramatically. As Drake pulls the pick-up into the clearing in the woods, you see the massive, rusted cage, although there's no RV. You shiver in fear, and Drake steps out of the truck. "Let's investigate and get home," Drake says, firing his flashlight beam towards the cage. The flashlight beam illuminates the cage and its insides. The old rusted gurney sits there, now encrusted with dried blood. "Well, that's new," Drake mentions. You step back nervously. "Hazel said there was a gurney in her dre... when she was abducted," Ant points out. "Fuck, this is some creepy shit. I'm calling the sheriff," Drake says. Drake takes out his phone, and makes a call. "Hello, Sheriff Buckly? I just found a gurney in the middle of the cage in the woods covered in dried blood. I think some weird... oh, really? OK, you know where the cage from the... oh, great.. Cool, see you in a few minutes, or an hour, or whatever." "What was that?" "The sheriff said he'll come here straight away." "Good," you sigh in relief. You really can't imagine having to deal with this without the help of the law. Now, it's out of your hands. You wait patiently for Sheriff Buckly to arrive. Eventually, you spot a flashlight heading towards you. "There he is," Drake says. You shine your light ahead, illuminating the figure of Sheriff Buckly. He swears, and holds his hands to block his eyes. "Turn that off!" he says, and you do. "Fuck, how'd you even get the truck out here? I can barely walk through the undergrowth," he says. "Where this bloody gurney?" You point at the cage, and Sheriff Buckly walks over and looks at it. "Jesus... who else saw this? I'm going to need to gather all the witnesses and find out what was going on," he says. "We're the only people who've seen this, although Hazel got a bit of a closer encounter." "So you didn't tell you pa about this?" Sheriff Buckly asks. You shake your head, and Sheriff Buckly nods. "Good," Sheriff Buckly says. Sheriff Buckly draws his revolver, and quickly aims at Drake's head and fires. Drake's head snaps back as it explodes partially, sending chunks of gray brain matter, pale skull and pieces of red flesh at you. You scream as Lucy runs over to Drake as his body collapses backwards. Mason runs for the truck, before the Sheriff barks an order. "Stop! Move another muscle and I'll blow the brain out of everyone of you!" Mason stops, raising his hands. Sheriff Buckly points his gun at all of you, forcing you to raise your hands into the air. "Everyone, calm down. Nobody needs to get hurt," Sheriff Buckly says. "Fuck you!" Lucy screams. "You killed him! You killed him you piece of..." Sheriff Buckly steps forward and cracks her across the head wit his revolver. "Shut up! Carter, Mason, Ant, Kyle, get in the fucking cage!" he shouts. Mason, Ant, Kyle and Carter slowly walk into the cage. "Now, back the fuck up to the end of the cage!" The boys comply, and the Sheriff draws a set of keys from his pocket, locking the cage door. He turns to you, Lucy and Becca. "Just don't move. They'll be here in a minute." You stand in silence, the cold wind blowing, the silence only broken by the occasional soft sob by Lucy as she stands over Drake. After about half an hour of waiting, you see the RV pull up along the path. It stops, and four masked men step out. "Anyone escape?" one asks. "No," Sheriff Buckly responds. "Fuck, I didn't even know they were coming out here. You said whatever the fuck you injected the girl with would make her forget everything." "I said it probably would. Her phone's bugged. How didn't you find out?" "She didn't make any calls saying she was going to do it!" "Well, at least no one escaped," the masked man says, pulling off his mask. The group remove their masks. You vaguely recognize them, one being the mechanic who found you, one being the town doctor, Doctor Kessel, another being a German teacher from school and the final one being the bartender of the local bar. "What are you going to do with...?" Becca asks, before Sheriff Buckley lets out a bark. "Hey! Shut the fuck..." "No, Jake, let the girl ask her question," Doctor Kessel says. "What are you going to do with us? Who are you? Why did you send a monster to hunt me?" "What are we going to do with you? Nothing, ideally. We only need to borrow you. Who are we? Well, surely you must recognize us. Louis, Sheriff Buckly, Mrs Jordan, Alison and me, Doctor Kessel. "As for the monster, I assume you're referring to the Black Beast. That's not an issue, I assure you. Although I'm not sure of its origins, if you look at town records, it actually kills most of the bears in the area, which reduces the amount of attacks so much it's saving lives. If I was in your situation, I'd be much more worried about us." "What do you want? Are you going to sacrifice us to Satan?" Becca asks again. Doctor Kessel lets out a chuckle. "No, Rebecca, we're not. We're not satanists. Real satanists don't even believe in Satan. We're... researchers. We're humanitarians. We're explorers. When we were little kids, we used to be the best of friends. We played in these very woods. When we were little, we found... a book in one of the caves. We took it and read it, and we found out the most amazing things. Do you know how insignificant not only we are, but this planet, this solar system, this galaxy and this universe is? There are so many amazing things we learned about these beings that we can't even comprehend, but compared to what's out there, we learned so little. So we kept reading. The book included some instructions to summon them, to summon these beings that are stronger than any gods we've ever imagined, more alien that any alien we've created in fiction, more incredible than anything you could experience here. If we create a Key-Bearer, we can create a portal to these beings." "That's insane! How do you know they won't wipe us out, or enslave us all, or worse!" you cry. "I don't," Doctor Kessel admits. "It could destroy everything!" "You just need to calm down and listen!" he hisses. "Imagine you're stuck in a room. There is a small tap for water, a toilet and a small machine that creates a nutritious yet tasteless paste. You have everything you need to survive and continue your blank, boring existence. Now, one day, a door appears in the room. It's unlocked. Do you go through?" "What the fuck does...?" "We are trying to open that door. Just as the person in the room doesn't know what's on the other side, anything is better than the bland, boring existence of the room. We're trying to open the world up to experiences unknown to man, good or bad, because it has to be better than this meaningless existence." "What are yuo even talking about? What the fuck's a Key-Bearer?" Mason shouts, as Sheriff Buckly aims his gun at his head once again. "Shut up," Sheriff Buckly grunts. "Ah yes, the Key-Bearer. That part's the worst for you guys. A Key-Bearer is a creature birthed of the beings' power of a human womb. We've had several attempts at this, but every time we failed. Instead of creating a Key-Bearer, we created half-human, half-monster children who aged rapidly. Finally, we settled the problem. The mother of the Key-Bearer had to be a virgin, post-puberty, below 21 and to have AB Negative Blood. You'd imagine my luck when I found one such target walking around the cave where I was sacrificing some former mothers to keep the beings' interested in our world. I simply pumped out some gas I had on hand to help knock her out, and voila! I got to work." You stare at him in horror, putting a hand on your stomach. There's a series of gasps and shouts from the group, before Sheriff Buckly fires his gun in the air. "SHUT IT!" he roars. "I'm sorry, Hazel. It'll be over in a few hours." "A few hours? It's only been two days, how...?" you ask in horror. "The Key-Bearer grows incredibly quickly. It should be able to be birthed within a day at most." You feel something wiggle in your stomach, in your womb, and a pain shoots through you. "Listen, Hazel, it'll be OK," Doctor Kessel says. "In a few hours, you'll be fine, and we'll be in a whole new world." > You run You try to run, but Doctor Kessel is faster, sprinting forward and grabbing you. You scream, as a needle enters your neck. "Don't worry, I'm going to help you sleep for the next few hours. When you wake up, it'll be all over..." You scream as you begin to feel sleepy, before closing your mouth. Your heavy eyelids close, as the needle presses into your veins, sending you into a deep sleep. Knowing what they're planning to do, you hope you overdose on this rather than waking up...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Nine hours later, you're ready to go. You've somehow convinced Dad to let you go out, not daring to tell him your actual destination and instead claiming you're staying at Lucy's house. You meet up at the Lucy's house with the group, and walk into the living room, where they're all sitting around. "Are we ready?" you ask. "Damn straight!" Ant smiles, holding up a large backpack. "Spare food, water bottles, lighters, matches, rope, fireworks, some knives and flashlights. What'd you guys bring?" Carter holds up half a chocolate bar he's been chewing on. "Half a M-Mars bar," he says, before taking another bite. "A q-quart-quarter of a Mars b-bar." "I brought a penknife and a lighter," you shrug, and Ant looks around disappointedly. "No one brought anything?" he pouts. "You guys suck." You hear a horn outside, and look outside. A large RV drives up the driveway, stopping outside. Lucy skips out the door, before running up to him, and you follow her outside. "Hey, Hazel," Drake says. "Drake's friend, Ed, has the pick-up, so we're driving to the woods, meeting him and switching vehicle," Lucy tells you. "OK," you say, walking into the RV. You raise an eyebrow as you notice that the RV's windows are covered with shutters and bin bags, and the actual interior looks like a scene from Breaking Bad, covered with beakers, test tubes, Bunsen burners and other Chemistry gear. "Well, you're blatant," you say. "Hey, it's effective." "I mean, yeah, but Breaking Bad made this a trope. Don't police search RV's for this." "Breaking Bad helped my sales enough that I'm bribing the deputy. You'll be surprised how much extra meth heads are willing to pay for a product when you add some blue dye." You shrug, and take a seat in the RV, as your friends pack in. "Be careful back there. Knock one thing over and this place could blow." "Really?" you ask. Drake grins and shrugs, and begins driving. "Maybe. I mean, there's a distillery back there as well as the lab. I'd imagine one speed bump and boom!" "That's unnerving," Ant says. "I guess. So, why the hell am I dragging all your friends into the middle of the woods to the old freakshow cage?" "I told you already," Lucy reveals. "That nightmare bull isn't convincing me. What's the real reason?" "That is the real reason." Drake turns around to stare at you in annoyance. "What...?" "Eyes on the road, Drake," Kyle says. "Fine," Drake says, turning around. "Still, I want an explanation why I'm driving into the woods because the new girl had a nightmare." "It wasn't a nightmare!" you say. "Sure," Drake says. You all sit in awkward silence until you reach the outskirts of the woods. Drake pulls over, and you stand and head out the door. Although you couldn't tell because of the shutters and blacked out windows of the RV, you can now see that night has fallen. An empty red pick-up truck with four seats sits next to the woods. Drake strides forward, pulling out his phone. "Ah, shit," Drake says. "Of course Ed left the truck here and went off on his quad rather than just take back the RV like he was supposed to." He locks the RV and hides the keys in the wheel well. "I'll text my friend and get him to pick up the RV. Come on, get inside. Let's go drive to a dumbass cage in the woods." Drake, Lucy, Carter and Ant go in the seats while you, Mason, Becca and Kyle sit in the back of the pick-up. You sit, half-lying on Mason who wraps one arm around you. The emotional part of your brain momentarily forgets all fears in favor of a childish infatuation and hormonal lust towards Mason that causes you to blush and your heart to flutter, the rational part of your brain reminds you to stay vigilant in case the cultists or that beast do show up. You and the rest of your friends pull out flashlights and fire the beams off into the darkness, illuminating trees and undergrowth. "We're nearly there," Drake shouts. "It's a hell of a lot easier to get here because a path's been made." Your ears perk up at that. "What do you mean?" you ask, as Drake rolls down his window fully. "What'd you say?" "I said what do you mean? You said there's a path." "Yeah. It's like a big RV drove over the undergrowth and knocked a dirt path along." "What, you think Ed's been driving out here to work in the RV?" Lucy asks. "Nah, Ed's terrified of the woods. Said something about a monster or something." You feel a flash of fear as you remember the RV from last night. You stare outwards, illuminating every shadow, both hoping to and terrified of seeing something hiding in the dark. "Here it is! The old freak show's cage!" Drake says dramatically. As Drake pulls the pick-up into the clearing in the woods, you see the massive, rusted cage, although there's no RV. You shiver in fear, and Drake steps out of the truck. "Let's investigate and get home," Drake says, firing his flashlight beam towards the cage. The flashlight beam illuminates the cage and its insides. The old rusted gurney sits there, now encrusted with dried blood. "Well, that's new," Drake mentions. You step back nervously. "Hazel said there was a gurney in her dre... when she was abducted," Ant points out. "Fuck, this is some creepy shit. I'm calling the sheriff," Drake says. Drake takes out his phone, and makes a call. "Hello, Sheriff Buckly? I just found a gurney in the middle of the cage in the woods covered in dried blood. I think some weird... oh, really? OK, you know where the cage from the... oh, great.. Cool, see you in a few minutes, or an hour, or whatever." "What was that?" "The sheriff said he'll come here straight away." "Good," you sigh in relief. You really can't imagine having to deal with this without the help of the law. Now, it's out of your hands. You wait patiently for Sheriff Buckly to arrive. Eventually, you spot a flashlight heading towards you. "There he is," Drake says. You shine your light ahead, illuminating the figure of Sheriff Buckly. He swears, and holds his hands to block his eyes. "Turn that off!" he says, and you do. "Fuck, how'd you even get the truck out here? I can barely walk through the undergrowth," he says. "Where this bloody gurney?" You point at the cage, and Sheriff Buckly walks over and looks at it. "Jesus... who else saw this? I'm going to need to gather all the witnesses and find out what was going on," he says. "We're the only people who've seen this, although Hazel got a bit of a closer encounter." "So you didn't tell you pa about this?" Sheriff Buckly asks. You shake your head, and Sheriff Buckly nods. "Good," Sheriff Buckly says. Sheriff Buckly draws his revolver, and quickly aims at Drake's head and fires. Drake's head snaps back as it explodes partially, sending chunks of gray brain matter, pale skull and pieces of red flesh at you. You scream as Lucy runs over to Drake as his body collapses backwards. Mason runs for the truck, before the Sheriff barks an order. "Stop! Move another muscle and I'll blow the brain out of everyone of you!" Mason stops, raising his hands. Sheriff Buckly points his gun at all of you, forcing you to raise your hands into the air. "Everyone, calm down. Nobody needs to get hurt," Sheriff Buckly says. "Fuck you!" Lucy screams. "You killed him! You killed him you piece of..." Sheriff Buckly steps forward and cracks her across the head wit his revolver. "Shut up! Carter, Mason, Ant, Kyle, get in the fucking cage!" he shouts. Mason, Ant, Kyle and Carter slowly walk into the cage. "Now, back the fuck up to the end of the cage!" The boys comply, and the Sheriff draws a set of keys from his pocket, locking the cage door. He turns to you, Lucy and Becca. "Just don't move. They'll be here in a minute." You stand in silence, the cold wind blowing, the silence only broken by the occasional soft sob by Lucy as she stands over Drake. After about half an hour of waiting, you see the RV pull up along the path. It stops, and four masked men step out. "Anyone escape?" one asks. "No," Sheriff Buckly responds. "Fuck, I didn't even know they were coming out here. You said whatever the fuck you injected the girl with would make her forget everything." "I said it probably would. Her phone's bugged. How didn't you find out?" "She didn't make any calls saying she was going to do it!" "Well, at least no one escaped," the masked man says, pulling off his mask. The group remove their masks. You vaguely recognize them, one being the mechanic who found you, one being the town doctor, Doctor Kessel, another being a German teacher from school and the final one being the bartender of the local bar. "What are you going to do with...?" Becca asks, before Sheriff Buckley lets out a bark. "Hey! Shut the fuck..." "No, Jake, let the girl ask her question," Doctor Kessel says. "What are you going to do with us? Who are you? Why did you send a monster to hunt me?" "What are we going to do with you? Nothing, ideally. We only need to borrow you. Who are we? Well, surely you must recognize us. Louis, Sheriff Buckly, Mrs Jordan, Alison and me, Doctor Kessel. "As for the monster, I assume you're referring to the Black Beast. That's not an issue, I assure you. Although I'm not sure of its origins, if you look at town records, it actually kills most of the bears in the area, which reduces the amount of attacks so much it's saving lives. If I was in your situation, I'd be much more worried about us." "What do you want? Are you going to sacrifice us to Satan?" Becca asks again. Doctor Kessel lets out a chuckle. "No, Rebecca, we're not. We're not satanists. Real satanists don't even believe in Satan. We're... researchers. We're humanitarians. We're explorers. When we were little kids, we used to be the best of friends. We played in these very woods. When we were little, we found... a book in one of the caves. We took it and read it, and we found out the most amazing things. Do you know how insignificant not only we are, but this planet, this solar system, this galaxy and this universe is? There are so many amazing things we learned about these beings that we can't even comprehend, but compared to what's out there, we learned so little. So we kept reading. The book included some instructions to summon them, to summon these beings that are stronger than any gods we've ever imagined, more alien that any alien we've created in fiction, more incredible than anything you could experience here. If we create a Key-Bearer, we can create a portal to these beings." "That's insane! How do you know they won't wipe us out, or enslave us all, or worse!" you cry. "I don't," Doctor Kessel admits. "It could destroy everything!" "You just need to calm down and listen!" he hisses. "Imagine you're stuck in a room. There is a small tap for water, a toilet and a small machine that creates a nutritious yet tasteless paste. You have everything you need to survive and continue your blank, boring existence. Now, one day, a door appears in the room. It's unlocked. Do you go through?" "What the fuck does...?" "We are trying to open that door. Just as the person in the room doesn't know what's on the other side, anything is better than the bland, boring existence of the room. We're trying to open the world up to experiences unknown to man, good or bad, because it has to be better than this meaningless existence." "What are yuo even talking about? What the fuck's a Key-Bearer?" Mason shouts, as Sheriff Buckly aims his gun at his head once again. "Shut up," Sheriff Buckly grunts. "Ah yes, the Key-Bearer. That part's the worst for you guys. A Key-Bearer is a creature birthed of the beings' power of a human womb. We've had several attempts at this, but every time we failed. Instead of creating a Key-Bearer, we created half-human, half-monster children who aged rapidly. Finally, we settled the problem. The mother of the Key-Bearer had to be a virgin, post-puberty, below 21 and to have AB Negative Blood. You'd imagine my luck when I found one such target walking around the cave where I was sacrificing some former mothers to keep the beings' interested in our world. I simply pumped out some gas I had on hand to help knock her out, and voila! I got to work." You stare at him in horror, putting a hand on your stomach. There's a series of gasps and shouts from the group, before Sheriff Buckly fires his gun in the air. "SHUT IT!" he roars. "I'm sorry, Hazel. It'll be over in a few hours." "A few hours? It's only been two days, how...?" you ask in horror. "The Key-Bearer grows incredibly quickly. It should be able to be birthed within a day at most." You feel something wiggle in your stomach, in your womb, and a pain shoots through you. "Listen, Hazel, it'll be OK," Doctor Kessel says. "In a few hours, you'll be fine, and we'll be in a whole new world." > You break down You drop to your knees and begin sobbing, as Doctor Kessel walks over, grabbing you. You scream, as a needle enters your neck. "Don't worry, I'm going to help you sleep for the next few hours. When you wake up, it'll be all over..." You scream as you begin to feel sleepy, before closing your mouth. Your heavy eyelids close, as the needle presses into your veins, sending you into a deep sleep. Knowing what they're planning to do, you hope you overdose on this rather than waking up...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken in your bed, terrified and curled up in your blankets. You briefly wonder if you dreamed everything, but know that that's impossible. Your knee hurts where you scraped it, your window is still open, and you know your mind couldn't conjure up everything you saw last night. "Honey? Are you OK?" Dad calls. You pause, wondering if you should tell him, before realizing he'd never believe you. "Yeah, I'm fine," you reply, wondering what you should do. It's Saturday, so you could visit your friends and explain the situation. If you're more optimistic, you could go through the normal, legal means, although you're almost certain that will be complete and utter bullshit. > You go through legal means You take out your phone and make a call to the police department. You immediately reach the Sheriff, who answers. You quickly explain your situation, only to have him chide you. "Now, Hazel, I get you're still scared after the last night, but you can't be calling the sheriff's office over a little nightmare!" With that, he hangs up. What a cunt. > You try again You make another call, and get the police voicemail. You go through the normal bullshit, asking you what you want to report, and you notice there's not exactly a number to press for your complaint, and the "Other" button will lead you back to the Sheriff. The automated voice does tell you there's a police website where you can make an official report.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You charge forward, swinging at the first man. You hit him with some force in the jaw, and he grabs your arm. He slaps you hard across the face, knocking you to the ground. The men grab you, and force you into the gurney. They strap your hands up my your head and your feet together, leaving you stretched out on the gurney. A ball gag is stuffed in your mouth and strapped tightly. You wince one off them puts surgical gloves on, before drawing a thermometer that's pushed into your ear. He checks it, before placing a cold hand on your stomach. He pushes gently, before squeezing. "I'm right. Get the injections ready." You shake and try to scream as one of the men takes out a needle that's almost comically large and sharp. He jabs it into your stomach and you scream into your gag and presses down, releasing the liquid into your stomach. You begin to tear up as he repeats the process with several more needles, and by the end your eyes are obscured with tears. He smiles at you through the ski mask, before another man arrives with a large burlap sack. He opens it, pulling out a small mammal like a rat or a ferret, and a large knife. You watch in horror as he slices the mammal's throat open, letting blood flow out onto your stomach. He tosses the carcass aside, and begins to use his fingers to draw various patterns along your belly as you wince and shake. He sighs, and slaps you hard across the face. "Stop shaking," he says, before turning to one of the other men. "Tomorrow night." He finishes drawing his patterns, before taking out a small black notebook. He begins to read from it in an insane language you don't understand, like the spluttering of a madman. The pain in your stomach intensifies greatly as you let out a petrified scream as you feel yourself being torn apart. Finally, he stops, as does the pain. "Ah, good. Get the chloroform and untie her. Then, bring the kids back from their walk." They free you from your straps, and you notice the door's still open. > You stay still You stay still, as one of them takes out a large rag and a glass bottle. He soaks the rag, before holding it to your mouth. You try not to breath, but after about a minute you take a gasp for breath, inhaling the fumes.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>When you wake up six hours later, you panic. You're lying in a rusted, iron cage, surrounded by pitch darkness. You stand slowly, finding yourself in the middle of the woods. You look around desperately for a way out, but it seems you're stuck in here. The wind blows through the trees, rustling leaves and giving you a cold chill as you realize you're in your underwear. You look around, spotting a large RV next to the cage. Two figures step out and begin walking towards you. They both wear ski masks, hoodies and baggy black pants, with one carrying a doctor's bag. A third appears, pushing a gurney towards you. You scream for help and back away to the back of the cage. One of them steps forward and unlocks the cage door, and they enter the cage. "Hands behind your head, don't move," one of the figures said. > You make a run for the door You run towards the gate, but the men are faster and bigger then you. The men grab you, and force you into the gurney. They strap your hands up my your head and your feet together, leaving you stretched out on the gurney. A ball gag is stuffed in your mouth and strapped tightly. You wince one off them puts surgical gloves on, before drawing a thermometer that's pushed into your ear. He checks it, before placing a cold hand on your stomach. He pushes gently, before squeezing. "I'm right. Get the injections ready." You shake and try to scream as one of the men takes out a needle that's almost comically large and sharp. He jabs it into your stomach and you scream into your gag and presses down, releasing the liquid into your stomach. You begin to tear up as he repeats the process with several more needles, and by the end your eyes are obscured with tears. He smiles at you through the ski mask, before another man arrives with a large burlap sack. He opens it, pulling out a small mammal like a rat or a ferret, and a large knife. You watch in horror as he slices the mammal's throat open, letting blood flow out onto your stomach. He tosses the carcass aside, and begins to use his fingers to draw various patterns along your belly as you wince and shake. He sighs, and slaps you hard across the face. "Stop shaking," he says, before turning to one of the other men. "Tomorrow night." He finishes drawing his patterns, before taking out a small black notebook. He begins to read from it in an insane language you don't understand, like the spluttering of a madman. The pain in your stomach intensifies greatly as you let out a petrified scream as you feel yourself being torn apart. Finally, he stops, as does the pain. "Ah, good. Get the chloroform and untie her. Then, bring the kids back from their walk." They free you from your straps, and you notice the door's still open.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>When you wake up six hours later, you panic. You're lying in a rusted, iron cage, surrounded by pitch darkness. You stand slowly, finding yourself in the middle of the woods. You look around desperately for a way out, but it seems you're stuck in here. The wind blows through the trees, rustling leaves and giving you a cold chill as you realize you're in your underwear. You look around, spotting a large RV next to the cage. Two figures step out and begin walking towards you. They both wear ski masks, hoodies and baggy black pants, with one carrying a doctor's bag. A third appears, pushing a gurney towards you. You scream for help and back away to the back of the cage. One of them steps forward and unlocks the cage door, and they enter the cage. "Hands behind your head, don't move," one of the figures said. > You comply You put your hands behind your head. The men grab you, and force you into the gurney. They strap your hands up my your head and your feet together, leaving you stretched out on the gurney. "Good girl," one of them says, before placing a ball gag in your mouth and strapping it around your head. You wince one off them puts surgical gloves on, before drawing a thermometer that's pushed into your ear. He checks it, before placing a cold hand on your stomach. He pushes gently, before squeezing. "I'm right. Get the injections ready." You shake and try to scream as one of the men takes out a needle that's almost comically large and sharp. He jabs it into your stomach and you scream into your gag and presses down, releasing the liquid into your stomach. You begin to tear up as he repeats the process with several more needles, and by the end your eyes are obscured with tears. He smiles at you through the ski mask, before another man arrives with a large burlap sack. He opens it, pulling out a small mammal like a rat or a ferret, and a large knife. You watch in horror as he slices the mammal's throat open, letting blood flow out onto your stomach. He tosses the carcass aside, and begins to use his fingers to draw various patterns along your belly as you wince and shake. He sighs, and slaps you hard across the face. "Stop shaking," he says, before turning to one of the other men. "Tomorrow night." He finishes drawing his patterns, before taking out a small black notebook. He begins to read from it in an insane language you don't understand, like the spluttering of a madman. The pain in your stomach intensifies greatly as you let out a petrified scream as you feel yourself being torn apart. Finally, he stops, as does the pain. "Ah, good. Get the chloroform and untie her. Then, bring the kids back from their walk." They free you from your straps, and you notice the door's still open.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The ride home is long and quiet. Dad can clearly tell you don't want to talk, so he leaves you alone. Eventually, you pull into the driveway. "I've told your teacher you won't be coming in today. Go upstairs and have a shower, you can have the day to relax. I'm staying home to look after you today." You nod, and walk inside. You pull off your mud-covered shoes, and walk upstairs, leaving a trail of muddy water behind you. You walk into the bathroom, and slowly get undressed. You unbutton and pull off your jeans, then step out of your underwater. You pull off your jumper, than your shirt. As you go to unclasp your bra, you freeze as you notice yourself in the mirror. One of the strange, alien symbols you saw covering the cave walls above the disgusting, shuddering, skinless bodies, is carved into your stomach, just below your belly button. You shriek, and you hear Dad call up to you. "Hazel? Are you OK?" > You say "There's... Something carved into me!" "What?" "There's... just come here!" Dad quickly comes up as you grab a pair of towels to cover yourself. Dad knocks on the door. "Can I come in?" "Yeah," you reply. Dad enters, and winces as he sees your wound. "God... what happened?" "I think someone carved it into me while I was sleeping," you say. "Don't be ridiculous!" he says. "You must've fell and cut yourself last night." Over the next few minutes, Dad bandages up your wound. "Good. It's a very shallow wound, you'll be fine. Now, go shower." You nod, and walk off to the shower, frustrated at Dad's naivety.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You change direction, bursting towards the few caves that these woods have. You can here the beast right behind you, feeling its hot breath on the back of your neck, blowing your hair out of the way. You spot two caves you think... well, hope you can reach before it catches you. One is a small crack in stone that you think you can dive through that's definitely far too small for the beast to follow you that leads into a tunnel further in. The other is an opening to a large cavern that's also too small for the beast to follow you and that widens considerably further down. > You go through the opening to the cavern You sprint as fast as you can, the rush of adrenaline overtaking you as you mind fixes on its one and only purpose: SURVIVE! With several bounds you manage to make it to the cavern, barreling down the cave. The beast stops just before it would've gotten itself stuck in the opening, and stares at you. There's no emotion behind the crimson pools that stare at you like giant rubies without their sparkle, only pure, animalistic hunger. You turn, and begin heading further into the cave. You walk down into the larger cavern. You pull out your phone and turn on the flashlight and only now learn its purpose. The entire cavern seems to have turned into what is a massive animal den. The tattered furs and skins of creatures ranging from rabbits to deer to even bears lie around, with an endless number of deep red stains and piles of crushed and shattered animal bones. You whimper at the sight of this, before noticing what looks like man-made creations. Wooden idols and necklaces lie, spread around the cavern, while under the bloodstains that cover the walls you notice images, with a large oak staff lying among them. You lean in to get a better look, noticing pictures of stickmen surrounding what appears to be a badly painted picture of the beast that chased you. The pictures continue, beginning to tell a story. There's images of the beast massacring stickmen, before you see a picture a tall stickmen wearing several necklaces like the ones scattered around the floor holding a large staff standing in front of the beast. The next picture shows the beast retreating. You stare in confusion, trying to make out what the other images obscured by blood show. You give up, looking around again. Then you see it. At the other end of the cavern stands the beast. You only notice now that the cavern's ceiling is partially caved away, revealing a path for the beast to enter. It's slowly approaching, although now that you've been noticed it's sure to speed up. > You charge the beast in an attempt to slip past You charge towards the beast, and it bats its paw. The paw slams into you, sending you headfirst into the stone wall. Thankfully, your skull breaks open and shatters, saving you from the painful death of being torn apart and devoured.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sprint as fast as you can, the rush of adrenaline overtaking you as you mind fixes on its one and only purpose: SURVIVE! With several bounds you manage to make it to the cavern, barreling down the cave. The beast stops just before it would've gotten itself stuck in the opening, and stares at you. There's no emotion behind the crimson pools that stare at you like giant rubies without their sparkle, only pure, animalistic hunger. You turn, and begin heading further into the cave. You walk down into the larger cavern. You pull out your phone and turn on the flashlight and only now learn its purpose. The entire cavern seems to have turned into what is a massive animal den. The tattered furs and skins of creatures ranging from rabbits to deer to even bears lie around, with an endless number of deep red stains and piles of crushed and shattered animal bones. You whimper at the sight of this, before noticing what looks like man-made creations. Wooden idols and necklaces lie, spread around the cavern, while under the bloodstains that cover the walls you notice images, with a large oak staff lying among them. You lean in to get a better look, noticing pictures of stickmen surrounding what appears to be a badly painted picture of the beast that chased you. The pictures continue, beginning to tell a story. There's images of the beast massacring stickmen, before you see a picture a tall stickmen wearing several necklaces like the ones scattered around the floor holding a large staff standing in front of the beast. The next picture shows the beast retreating. You stare in confusion, trying to make out what the other images obscured by blood show. You give up, looking around again. Then you see it. At the other end of the cavern stands the beast. You only notice now that the cavern's ceiling is partially caved away, revealing a path for the beast to enter. It's slowly approaching, although now that you've been noticed it's sure to speed up. > You run back the way you came You turn, and sprint back towards the opening. You dart through it, although you know the beast has your scent. With your head start, you might make it back to town, although you could head down the smaller tunnel to escape the beast.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk alongside the stream, your shoes squelching in the wet mud. You walk along to the drier earth, but they're already ruined. "Fuck," you sigh, walking along. "Kyle! Kyle! Are you there?!?" You hear what sounds like twigs breaking behind you, and quickly twirl around. Must've been your imagination. You continue walking along the stream. "Kyle! Kyle! I don't care how drunk you are, do something! I'm getting sick of looking for you!" You hear the rustle as leaves as the wind picks up, and what was earlier a hot, humid night is now turning bitterly cold, as the light that the moon was provided dims considerably. For the first time, you realize that you're walking in the middle of a place you've never been, late at night, with no one around. You consider turning around and heading back, but you know if Kyle's passed out somewhere, you need to find him. "Hello!" you call. Your voice carries out across the trees. Then, the silence resumes. There's a silence so deadly quiet it's painful. There's no birds, no small mammals scurrying among the trees or undergrowth, not even a cricket. You take deep breaths in an attempt to calm yourself down, before you here a low growl. You turn around, flicking your head around desperately to find the source of the noise, desperately wanting to run but not knowing which direction to do so. "Kyle? Is that you?" you whimper. The growl stops, and the silence resumes. You stand perfectly still, not wanting to disturb whatever's out there. Then, it lets out a roar. The roar's incredibly loud and you scream in pain as the sound like shattering glass as concrete scrapes against each other. You feel pure, unadulterated terror, which is amplified when you spot the beast. The Beast stands on four legs, the shape of a bear but the size of a large truck, covered in thick fur that's so dark it consumes what little moonlight makes it through the trees. It's eyes are pure red, the all-consuming crimson of fresh blood that peer through your eyes and bore into your soul. As it roars, it revels a mouth filled with hundreds of teeth the size of daggers, pure white and sharp enough to drill through solid steel. It stands, blocking the route back towards your friends. You need to do something, now. > You stay perfectly still You stand perfectly still, hoping its vision is based on movement. It lets out a rumbling growl that shakes you to your core. As you wince in terror, it charges. It sprints towards you faster than a truck, and barrels into you. Your bones break and crack as you're sent spiraling through the air. You land in a heap by the soft mud by the stream and let out a shriek as your limbs twist at incredible angles that they're definitely not meant to go. The creature walks slowly towards you, and you try to crawl away but find yourself unable to move. You see the flash of the beast's teeth and a spurt of crimson before it finishes off its prey.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk alongside the stream, your shoes squelching in the wet mud. You walk along to the drier earth, but they're already ruined. "Fuck," you sigh, walking along. "Kyle! Kyle! Are you there?!?" You hear what sounds like twigs breaking behind you, and quickly twirl around. Must've been your imagination. You continue walking along the stream. "Kyle! Kyle! I don't care how drunk you are, do something! I'm getting sick of looking for you!" You hear the rustle as leaves as the wind picks up, and what was earlier a hot, humid night is now turning bitterly cold, as the light that the moon was provided dims considerably. For the first time, you realize that you're walking in the middle of a place you've never been, late at night, with no one around. You consider turning around and heading back, but you know if Kyle's passed out somewhere, you need to find him. "Hello!" you call. Your voice carries out across the trees. Then, the silence resumes. There's a silence so deadly quiet it's painful. There's no birds, no small mammals scurrying among the trees or undergrowth, not even a cricket. You take deep breaths in an attempt to calm yourself down, before you here a low growl. You turn around, flicking your head around desperately to find the source of the noise, desperately wanting to run but not knowing which direction to do so. "Kyle? Is that you?" you whimper. The growl stops, and the silence resumes. You stand perfectly still, not wanting to disturb whatever's out there. Then, it lets out a roar. The roar's incredibly loud and you scream in pain as the sound like shattering glass as concrete scrapes against each other. You feel pure, unadulterated terror, which is amplified when you spot the beast. The Beast stands on four legs, the shape of a bear but the size of a large truck, covered in thick fur that's so dark it consumes what little moonlight makes it through the trees. It's eyes are pure red, the all-consuming crimson of fresh blood that peer through your eyes and bore into your soul. As it roars, it revels a mouth filled with hundreds of teeth the size of daggers, pure white and sharp enough to drill through solid steel. It stands, blocking the route back towards your friends. You need to do something, now. > You approach the beast For some reason, perhaps entranced by the creatures eyes, you take a step forward towards it. It stands still, perhaps confused, as you take another step. It lets out a rumbling growl that shakes you to your core. As you take your third step, it charges. It sprints towards you faster than a truck, and barrels into you. Your bones break and crack as you're sent spiraling through the air. You land in a heap by the soft mud by the stream and let out a shriek as your limbs twist at incredible angles that they're definitely not meant to go. The creature walks slowly towards you, and you try to crawl away but find yourself unable to move. You see the flash of the beast's teeth and a spurt of crimson before it finishes off its prey.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Please... I don't want to die." "I didn't either, kid. It ain't so bad. Tell your grandparents I said "Fuck you.", ok?" "Please!" you say, breaking into a sob. "HEY! Mason shouts from outside. "Are you OK in there?" You feel cold metal touch your throat. "Tell him you're fine, darlin'." > You ask Mason for help "Mason! I...!" The cold metal of a blade slices open your throat as before you can get out another word as cold steel mingles with hot blood. "Dumb bitch."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Cool," Mason grins, passing you the bottle of alcohol. You take a long drink, downing much of the bottle. Ant is right, it does taste like piss. Still, you manage to gulp down half the can, before passing it on. "Shit. The new girl can drink," Ant smiles. You continue sitting around the campfire, which is really a lot closer to a glorified candle sitting in a pile of leaves. Mason grabs the bottle of vodka and sits down next to you and your heart flutters. A large part of you knows that this is just infatuation and a childhood crush, mixed in with a fair bit of hormonal lust, but still… he’s really, really cute. The others seem bored, with Kyle downing what seems like more than his weight in booze. “Well, this is boring,” Lucy complains, tossing a bottle in the middle. “Let’s play spin the bottle.” “No way!” Ant complains. “I’m the odd guy out. Kyle and Becca go together, you and Carter and then Mason and the new girl.” You blush at that comment as Carter nods in agreement. “I agree. I d-don’t w-want to play spin the bo-bottle,” Carter says. Briefly glancing at the indifferent Mason, you feel a twinge of annoyance of all possibilities of spin the bottle disappears as Ant suggests a new game. “Truth or Dare!” Ant suggests, to the groans of Kyle and Becca. “Remember what happened last time?” Becca points out. “That’s not fair! That wasn’t my fault! You should’ve protected your dad’s stuff. How was I do know that that painting was worth a fortune?” “You shouldn’t have been drawing over paintings in the first place, Ant!” “It wasn’t skin off your dad’s nose! That rich bastard can handle a loss! Jesus, we all know his ancestors made his money off the backs of Kyle’s ancestors!” “Fuck you, Ant!” Kyle shouts, slurring from his drink. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, calm down,” Mason says. “There ain’t no issues! We’re all friends here! I say a game of truth and dare would calm us all down.” “Fine,” Becca says. Mason downs the rest of his drink, and tosses the glass bottle in the middle. He drops to his knees and spins it, landing on Carter, who lies in the back of the pick-up. “Truth or dare, Carter?” “If I p-pick dare, will you… will you make me st-stand up?” Carter says lazily. “Maybe,” Mason says slyly. “Truth, t-then.” Mason grins, glancing at him and Lucy. “Have you ever kissed Lucy?” he asks. “Nope. Sorry to disa-disa-disappoint.” “Damn. I was certain,” Mason sighs, pulling out his wallet and tossing Kyle a crumpled bill. “You just cost me twenty bucks, Carter.” Ant leans over, spinning the bottle. It slows to a stop, pointing off into the woods. “Is that closer to Becca or Hazel?” he asks. “Becca,” Carter says. “Oh, fantastic. Truth or dare?” “Truth.” “Dammit, Becca. Fine, I’ll make this awkward. How far has Kyle got with you?” “Shut up, Ant!” Becca hisses. “Hey, you gotta answer!” Lucy says. “Oh come on! That’s private!” “We’re all friends here,” Mason says. “Fine! We’ve… you know. Done it.” “Respect, Kyle,” Ant smiles, holding back a giggle. Becca goes red, grabbing the bottle and twirling it. Through pure luck or skill, it points directly at Ant. “Shit,” Ant sighs. “Truth or dare. I have a lot of embarrassing questions to ask.” “Dare,” Ant grimaces. “Well, you have a lot more balls than I though. You’ll suffer from it. I dare you to go into Herr Eichel’s basement.” “No!” Ant replies. “Come on, Becca! Herr Eichel’s tear out his throat if he caught him!” Lucy complains. “Who’s Herr EIchel?” you ask. “Oh, I’ll tell her. I’ve been practicing this story for my little brother,” Mason says, before clearing his throat. “During World War II, a young soldier rose through the ranks of the SS. He had a habit of hunting Jews and personally escorting them to the Camps. He would hunt men, women, children, and torture them all for information. He showed no mercy. Eventually, when the Russians invaded, he escaped by pretending to be a civilian, fleeing from Berlin to France to Britain to the US. He hid right here in Dawnwood, hunting down any Jews he could find. His name is Herr Eichel.” “That’s the biggest load of shit!” Lucy complains. “Everyone knows that any Jew in Dawnwood would be scared off by Carter Sr. and his white power bullshit.” “He doesn’t w-w-want white pow-power!” Carter says. “He wants white p-pride. There’s… a difference.” “No there isn’t, Carter, now stop ruining the story. Where was I?” Mason asks. “You just finished,” you point out. “Oh. Well, now Herr Eichel’s going to kill Ant.” “Becca, I’m sorry! Please change the dare!” “Fine. You have to go into the Dead Man’s Barn and go up to the attic.” “That’s even worse!” Ant complains. “Nah, that ain’t bad,” Mason says. “Nazis are real and will kill you. Ghosts aren’t.” You raise an eyebrow, and Mason smiles. “OK, story time. Once, there was a Sheriff back in the Western times who used his power to wipe out any competition of the big ranchers of the town. One of the small time ranchers, Daniel Edwards, stood up and told the Sheriff he wouldn’t sell his farm to his competition despite threats. The Sheriff led a posse to bring him down, and Edwards tried to fight back. He killed two dozen men and took near a hundred bullets before he went down. They tortured him for a few days, even cutting his face wide open to give him... what'd ya call it, a Glasgow Grin. Eventually, you just hung him to finish him off. Rumor is he still haunts the barn where they strung him up. It’s a historical building so it can’t be torn down, so the owner just leaves it vacant.” “I’m not going!” “Don’t pussy out, Ant.” “Will one of you go with me?” Ant pleads. “Spin the bottle, and whoever it lands on has to go with you,” Lucy suggests. “I hope it’s Becca. That’d be ironic.” “Sure,” Carter says. “Let’s do that.” Ant thanks Lucy and spins the bottle. It wobbles and slows to a halt, pointing directly at you. “Well, I guess Hazel’s going to Dead Man’s Barn,” Mason says. “No, she can go to Herr Eichel’s if she wants. Eichel’s just an old, slow dude. The Dead Man’s a supernatural murderer,” Lucy says. “Let Hazel pick,” Kyle says, trying to stand before stumbling and leaning back on the truck. “Yeah. Go ahead Hazel. Ghost or Nazi.” > You go with Ant to Herr Eichel's Basement "Fine, we'll go to the Nazis." Ant nods nervously as Mason winces. "If... if you think so," Mason says. You nod. The group begins to stand, and starts walking towards Herr Eichel's house. "I'll... I'll stay here!" Kyle slurs, collapsing into the back of the pick-up truck. Lucy shrugs, and continues leading the group out of the forest. The group drops the various empty cans among the shrubs as you emerge in yet another one of the bland, boring suburbs that make up Dawnwood. The sun's fallen, so Lucy brings out her phone and turns on the flashlight. She leads you to a house that looks identical to every single house on the street. “Is this it?” you ask. “Yeah,” Lucy says. “Well. I expected swastika banners hanging from the roof or something.” “The closest thing to a swastika here is the one on Carter’s dad’s arm.” “Fuck you!” Carter says, “H-he’s not a naz-naz-nazi!” “Yes he is, Carter.” “We’re not arguing now. Quiet down, we don’t want to wake Herr Eichel. Ant, take Hazel ‘round back, there’s always an open window to the basement. We'll stay here. The ruckus of half a dozen kids 'round back would wake the Nazi," Mason says. “Probably to air out the smell,” Becca says. “You know, of his victims.” You begin to sweat nervously, and you follow Ant around the back. Like Mason said, the basement window is wide open. Ant looks at you, nodding. "Uh... ladies first," he says nervously. "Coward," you spit, before dropping to your knees. You crawl forward on your hands and knees, turning around and sliding through the window. You wiggle, taking a good minute to squeeze through, before dropping into the darkness of the basement. You lose sight of everything, and are left in complete and utter darkness that even the light of the moon can not penetrate. You listen, and the silence is broken by the quiet yelp and thud of Ant falling through the window. "Ssssh!" you hiss. "Fine," Ant says. You hear him fumble around in the darkness, before silence resumes. A tiny light flickers as Ant lights his cigarette lighter, his face being the only thing illuminated in the darkness. You draw your phone, turning on the flashlight, a more modern solution to the darkness. A workshop table is illuminated, with several... pieces of bone and flesh covering the tables. "What the fuck...?" Ant says, stepping back. "It was only supposed to be a rumor. I was nervous, but I didn't actually... I..." "What the hell is this place?" "We need to get out of here," Ant hisses. You stare at the table in pure horror. You turn your phone over, making out several more of these workshop tables covered in gristle and pieces of former victims. A large tool rack covered in blood stained knives, some deadly sharp, some serrated, some large enough to easily carve through bone as if through butter. "Hazel, snap out of it!" "OK, OK," you say, shaking your head. "I'll boost you out the window, you pull me up afterwards, got it?" you say. Ant nods, and you hurry to the basement window. He puts his foot in your cupped hands and you give him a boost. He grabs the window frame, and begins to pull himself through the door. You push him as he wiggles through the door. It takes a good two minutes for him to squeeze back through, before turning to grab your hand. "Come on, let's go!" you say. You hear a creaking. You turn off your phone as a beam of light from an opening door bursts in. "Hide!" Ant whisper loudly. "He's coming!" You look around. In the darkness, you see only two eligible options for hiding place: Under the workshop table or behind the "tool" rack. Then again, you could always try to squeeze through the window, although even with Ant's help, Herr Eichel might get you first. > You hide behind the tool rack You drop to your knees and quickly crawl behind the tool rack, curling up as you wrap your arms around your knees and curl up in a ball, trying not to move or make a noise. You hear an old voice begin to hum as the stairs begin to creak. "Muss i denn, Muss i denn, zum stadtele hinaus..." the old man sings. "...stadtele hinaus..." You wince as you hear him draw near. "Und du, mein schatz, bleibst hier?" he sings, as you hear the clank of metal as he grabs a blade from the tool rack, right in front of you. "Wenn i komm', wenn i komm', wenn i wiedrum komm'..." You let out a sigh of relief as he walks away, heading to the workshop. You hear the squelch as blades slicken as they slice through flesh. There's a thud and you gasp, before another thud, before a thud and a crack as Herr Eichel breaks open a bone with a hammer. Herr Eichel stops, pausing for a second. "Is there someone there?" he asks, his eery sing-song voice giving way to an elderly' grandfather's with a thick German accent. "I promise, if you come out now, there... won't be a problem." > You continue hiding You stay hidden, trying not to breath as Herr Eichel begins moving around the room, singing all the while. "Kehr' i ein, mein Schatz, bei dir. Kann i glei net allweil bei dir sein..." he sings. You hear a chime as the doorbell rings, and the room falls silent as Herr Eichel stops singing. "Ah. Guests," he says. You hear his boots thud away as the stairs begin to creak as he climbs them. You hear the door shut, and immediately get out of your hiding place. You head to the window, and leap up through it. You grab the window pane and begin to pull yourself through, wiggling to help you move on through. You pull yourself through and collapse onto the grass, and begin running around to the front. You freeze as you notice Herr Eichel standing directly in front of you. "Hello," he says in a thick German accent. "I am Mr Eichel." "I know." "Ah, so you've heard of me. Tell me, what are the current rumors. Am I said to be the assistant to Josef Mengele? The personal aid of Adolf Hitler? A camp doctor as the Concentration Camp?" You stare at him in silence. "Well, the rumors are completely untrue. I am simply an immigrant and a taxidermist. I came here when I was a boy. Sure, I served my country during the war in the Werhmacht, but I surrendered first chance I got. It's simple fear of foreigners that makes children think I'm so terrible boogeyman, not any real facts. Did you take any... souvenirs from my basement?" You shake yor head. "Good, although I warn you, my dear, that if you and your friends break into my house again I will be calling the Sheriff. And tell... give me a sec, my vision isn't great... Mason, Rebecca, Anthony and Carter that there's better things to waste your time on then bothering old men. Quite ironic that Carter's here to see a nazi with the family he has... Now, please leave me alone to my work, dear." You nod, and run out towards the trees. You find the group, with Mason standing terrified, waiting for you. "What happened? Why'd he just let you go? Carter says he was carving up a body!" "He said he's just an old immigrant and a taxidermist, and to leave him alone or he'd call the sheriff." "He was cutting up a person!" Ant shrieks. "That was probably a deer!" Lucy says. "You're drunk as fuck, Ant." "It was a person," Ant says, stubbornly. "Well, we probably just annoyed an old man. Let's get the fuck out of here and go find Kyle." > You head back into the woods You walk back through the woods, heading towards the trucks. "S-s-so, this w-was a bad id-idea," Carter says. "Yeah, it was. I risked my life to annoy a harmless old man," you say. "We risked our lives to annoy what could have been a harmless old man," Ant says. You arrive at the camp, and Mason swears loudly. "FUCK! Where the hell is Kyle?" he asks. The camp is empty, with no one in sight. "R-r-remember last time we lost Kyle when he was drunk?" "Oh dear God, he ended up pissing in my garden. He wasn't pissing into the garden. He was standing in the garden, pissing on my house," Becca says. "We need to find him. Is anyone not sober enough to find this place again?" Mason says. There's silence. "Good. We'll split up and try find him. Ant, you head towards the Rotten Trees, Lucy, go towards our old tree house, Becca, towards the old drinking point, Carter, back towards town. Hazel, you're new here. There's a stream just over there," Mason says, pointing. "Just walk along there, and keep your phone on. If you can't find him, follow the stream back here." You nod. Time to find Kyle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You drop to your knees and quickly crawl behind the tool rack, curling up as you wrap your arms around your knees and curl up in a ball, trying not to move or make a noise. You hear an old voice begin to hum as the stairs begin to creak. "Muss i denn, Muss i denn, zum stadtele hinaus..." the old man sings. "...stadtele hinaus..." You wince as you hear him draw near. "Und du, mein schatz, bleibst hier?" he sings, as you hear the clank of metal as he grabs a blade from the tool rack, right in front of you. "Wenn i komm', wenn i komm', wenn i wiedrum komm'..." You let out a sigh of relief as he walks away, heading to the workshop. You hear the squelch as blades slicken as they slice through flesh. There's a thud and you gasp, before another thud, before a thud and a crack as Herr Eichel breaks open a bone with a hammer. Herr Eichel stops, pausing for a second. "Is there someone there?" he asks, his eery sing-song voice giving way to an elderly' grandfather's with a thick German accent. "I promise, if you come out now, there... won't be a problem." > You reveal yourself You slowly leave your hiding spot, and are faced with Herr Eichel. His face is gaunt and haggard, wrinkles covering everything that was once smooth. His hair is all but gone, a few snow white pieces clinging onto his scalp. With how weak and feeble he looks, you're impressed he can stand. A pair of wire frame glasses sit on his nose as he looks you over. "Hello," he says in a thick German accent. "I am Mr Eichel." "I know." "Ah, so you've heard of me. Tell me, what are the current rumors. Am I said to be the assistant to Josef Mengele? The personal aid of Adolf Hitler? A camp doctor as the Concentration Camp?" You stare at him in silence. "Well, the rumors are completely untrue. I am simply an immigrant and a taxidermist. I came here when I was a boy. Sure, I served my country during the war in the Werhmacht, but I surrendered first chance I got. It's simple fear of foreigners that makes children think I'm so terrible boogeyman, not any real facts. Shall I escort you to the front door?" You nod, and follow him up the stairs. He walks you through an old, dust covered house, stopping at the front door to open it for you. "I warn you, my dear, that if you and your friends break into my house again I will be calling the Sheriff. And tell... give me a sec, my vision isn't great... Mason, Rebecca, Anthony and Carter that there's better things to waste your time on then bothering old men. Quite ironic that Carter's here to see a nazi with the family he has... Now, please leave me alone to my work, dear." You nod, and run out towards the trees. You find the group, with Mason standing terrified, waiting for you. "What happened? Why'd he just let you go? Carter says he was carving up a body!" "He said he's just an old immigrant and a taxidermist, and to leave him alone or he'd call the sheriff." "He was cutting up a person!" Ant shrieks. "That was probably a deer!" Lucy says. "You're drunk as fuck, Ant." "It was a person," Ant says, stubbornly. "Well, we probably just annoyed an old man. Let's get the fuck out of here and go find Kyle."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Fine, we'll go to the Nazis." Ant nods nervously as Mason winces. "If... if you think so," Mason says. You nod. The group begins to stand, and starts walking towards Herr Eichel's house. "I'll... I'll stay here!" Kyle slurs, collapsing into the back of the pick-up truck. Lucy shrugs, and continues leading the group out of the forest. The group drops the various empty cans among the shrubs as you emerge in yet another one of the bland, boring suburbs that make up Dawnwood. The sun's fallen, so Lucy brings out her phone and turns on the flashlight. She leads you to a house that looks identical to every single house on the street. “Is this it?” you ask. “Yeah,” Lucy says. “Well. I expected swastika banners hanging from the roof or something.” “The closest thing to a swastika here is the one on Carter’s dad’s arm.” “Fuck you!” Carter says, “H-he’s not a naz-naz-nazi!” “Yes he is, Carter.” “We’re not arguing now. Quiet down, we don’t want to wake Herr Eichel. Ant, take Hazel ‘round back, there’s always an open window to the basement. We'll stay here. The ruckus of half a dozen kids 'round back would wake the Nazi," Mason says. “Probably to air out the smell,” Becca says. “You know, of his victims.” You begin to sweat nervously, and you follow Ant around the back. Like Mason said, the basement window is wide open. Ant looks at you, nodding. "Uh... ladies first," he says nervously. "Coward," you spit, before dropping to your knees. You crawl forward on your hands and knees, turning around and sliding through the window. You wiggle, taking a good minute to squeeze through, before dropping into the darkness of the basement. You lose sight of everything, and are left in complete and utter darkness that even the light of the moon can not penetrate. You listen, and the silence is broken by the quiet yelp and thud of Ant falling through the window. "Ssssh!" you hiss. "Fine," Ant says. You hear him fumble around in the darkness, before silence resumes. A tiny light flickers as Ant lights his cigarette lighter, his face being the only thing illuminated in the darkness. You draw your phone, turning on the flashlight, a more modern solution to the darkness. A workshop table is illuminated, with several... pieces of bone and flesh covering the tables. "What the fuck...?" Ant says, stepping back. "It was only supposed to be a rumor. I was nervous, but I didn't actually... I..." "What the hell is this place?" "We need to get out of here," Ant hisses. You stare at the table in pure horror. You turn your phone over, making out several more of these workshop tables covered in gristle and pieces of former victims. A large tool rack covered in blood stained knives, some deadly sharp, some serrated, some large enough to easily carve through bone as if through butter. "Hazel, snap out of it!" "OK, OK," you say, shaking your head. "I'll boost you out the window, you pull me up afterwards, got it?" you say. Ant nods, and you hurry to the basement window. He puts his foot in your cupped hands and you give him a boost. He grabs the window frame, and begins to pull himself through the door. You push him as he wiggles through the door. It takes a good two minutes for him to squeeze back through, before turning to grab your hand. "Come on, let's go!" you say. You hear a creaking. You turn off your phone as a beam of light from an opening door bursts in. "Hide!" Ant whisper loudly. "He's coming!" You look around. In the darkness, you see only two eligible options for hiding place: Under the workshop table or behind the "tool" rack. Then again, you could always try to squeeze through the window, although even with Ant's help, Herr Eichel might get you first. > You hide under the workshop You drop to your knees and quickly crawl under the workshop, curling up as you wrap your arms around your knees and curl up in a ball, trying not to move or make a noise. You hear an old voice begin to hum as the stairs begin to creak. "Muss i denn, Muss i denn, zum stadtele hinaus..." the old man sings. "...stadtele hinaus..." You wince as you hear him draw near. You see his old, mud covered boots stomp down right next to you as he walks past. "Und du, mein schatz, bleibst hier?" he sings, as you hear the clank of metal as he grabs a blade from the tool rack. "Wenn i komm', wenn i komm', wenn i wiedrum komm'..." You wince as he stands at the end of the workshop, right by you. You hear the squelch as blades slicken as they slice through flesh. There's a thud right above you and you gasp, before another thud, before a thud and a crack as Herr Eichel breaks open a bone with a hammer. Herr Eichel stops, pausing for a second. "Is there someone there?" he asks, his eery sing-song voice giving way to an elderly' grandfather's with a thick German accent. "I promise, if you come out now, there... won't be a problem."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Fine, we'll go to the Nazis." Ant nods nervously as Mason winces. "If... if you think so," Mason says. You nod. The group begins to stand, and starts walking towards Herr Eichel's house. "I'll... I'll stay here!" Kyle slurs, collapsing into the back of the pick-up truck. Lucy shrugs, and continues leading the group out of the forest. The group drops the various empty cans among the shrubs as you emerge in yet another one of the bland, boring suburbs that make up Dawnwood. The sun's fallen, so Lucy brings out her phone and turns on the flashlight. She leads you to a house that looks identical to every single house on the street. “Is this it?” you ask. “Yeah,” Lucy says. “Well. I expected swastika banners hanging from the roof or something.” “The closest thing to a swastika here is the one on Carter’s dad’s arm.” “Fuck you!” Carter says, “H-he’s not a naz-naz-nazi!” “Yes he is, Carter.” “We’re not arguing now. Quiet down, we don’t want to wake Herr Eichel. Ant, take Hazel ‘round back, there’s always an open window to the basement. We'll stay here. The ruckus of half a dozen kids 'round back would wake the Nazi," Mason says. “Probably to air out the smell,” Becca says. “You know, of his victims.” You begin to sweat nervously, and you follow Ant around the back. Like Mason said, the basement window is wide open. Ant looks at you, nodding. "Uh... ladies first," he says nervously. "Coward," you spit, before dropping to your knees. You crawl forward on your hands and knees, turning around and sliding through the window. You wiggle, taking a good minute to squeeze through, before dropping into the darkness of the basement. You lose sight of everything, and are left in complete and utter darkness that even the light of the moon can not penetrate. You listen, and the silence is broken by the quiet yelp and thud of Ant falling through the window. "Ssssh!" you hiss. "Fine," Ant says. You hear him fumble around in the darkness, before silence resumes. A tiny light flickers as Ant lights his cigarette lighter, his face being the only thing illuminated in the darkness. You draw your phone, turning on the flashlight, a more modern solution to the darkness. A workshop table is illuminated, with several... pieces of bone and flesh covering the tables. "What the fuck...?" Ant says, stepping back. "It was only supposed to be a rumor. I was nervous, but I didn't actually... I..." "What the hell is this place?" "We need to get out of here," Ant hisses. You stare at the table in pure horror. You turn your phone over, making out several more of these workshop tables covered in gristle and pieces of former victims. A large tool rack covered in blood stained knives, some deadly sharp, some serrated, some large enough to easily carve through bone as if through butter. "Hazel, snap out of it!" "OK, OK," you say, shaking your head. "I'll boost you out the window, you pull me up afterwards, got it?" you say. Ant nods, and you hurry to the basement window. He puts his foot in your cupped hands and you give him a boost. He grabs the window frame, and begins to pull himself through the door. You push him as he wiggles through the door. It takes a good two minutes for him to squeeze back through, before turning to grab your hand. "Come on, let's go!" you say. You hear a creaking. You turn off your phone as a beam of light from an opening door bursts in. "Hide!" Ant whisper loudly. "He's coming!" You look around. In the darkness, you see only two eligible options for hiding place: Under the workshop table or behind the "tool" rack. Then again, you could always try to squeeze through the window, although even with Ant's help, Herr Eichel might get you first. > You try to get out the window You shake your head and jump up. Ant pulls desperately as you use your spare hand to pull yourself through the window. You wiggle as Ant pulls with all his strength. You slide through the window as your hear a sigh behind you. You turn your head, seeing Herr Eichel, an old, wrinkled man with metal spectacles and a balding head staring at you. You shriek when you see him and jump to his feet, grabbing Ant and pulling him after you. You run around to the front, where the rest of your friends are waiting. "Let's go! Ant shouts, as you burst towards the woods. You run through the trees, slowing down as you make reasonable distance from Herr Eichel's house. "What the fuck happened?" Mason asks. "Guts... flesh... cutting people up..." Ant asks. "Shit. Did he see you?" "He saw Hazel." "That's OK. That's fine," Mason says. "Do we go to the police?" you ask. "Shit, no. W-we can't g-g-go to the p-police," Carter says. "Just l-leave an anon-anonymous tip." Mason pulls out his phone and makes a brief call to 911, trying to disguise his voice all the while. After a few minutes of him trying to explain the situation, he ends the call. "So... this might've been our bad." "What?" you ask. "So... the cops have been to Eichel's house many times before. He's not a murderer. He's a taxidermist, and he was probably cutting up an animal." "That was definitely a person!" Ant says. "It could've been a deer," you admit. "What, so the police aren't coming?" Ant asks. "I guess not." "That's bullshit! I saw a person in there!" Ant yells. "Well, you are more than a little drunk," Lucy says. "Hazel is too, and she said she it might'a been a deer." "Well, I guess we just harassed an old man. Let's go back to Kyle, he's probably passed out in the back of a pick-up trucks," Mason says.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Cool," Mason grins, passing you the bottle of alcohol. You take a long drink, downing much of the bottle. Ant is right, it does taste like piss. Still, you manage to gulp down half the can, before passing it on. "Shit. The new girl can drink," Ant smiles. You continue sitting around the campfire, which is really a lot closer to a glorified candle sitting in a pile of leaves. Mason grabs the bottle of vodka and sits down next to you and your heart flutters. A large part of you knows that this is just infatuation and a childhood crush, mixed in with a fair bit of hormonal lust, but still… he’s really, really cute. The others seem bored, with Kyle downing what seems like more than his weight in booze. “Well, this is boring,” Lucy complains, tossing a bottle in the middle. “Let’s play spin the bottle.” “No way!” Ant complains. “I’m the odd guy out. Kyle and Becca go together, you and Carter and then Mason and the new girl.” You blush at that comment as Carter nods in agreement. “I agree. I d-don’t w-want to play spin the bo-bottle,” Carter says. Briefly glancing at the indifferent Mason, you feel a twinge of annoyance of all possibilities of spin the bottle disappears as Ant suggests a new game. “Truth or Dare!” Ant suggests, to the groans of Kyle and Becca. “Remember what happened last time?” Becca points out. “That’s not fair! That wasn’t my fault! You should’ve protected your dad’s stuff. How was I do know that that painting was worth a fortune?” “You shouldn’t have been drawing over paintings in the first place, Ant!” “It wasn’t skin off your dad’s nose! That rich bastard can handle a loss! Jesus, we all know his ancestors made his money off the backs of Kyle’s ancestors!” “Fuck you, Ant!” Kyle shouts, slurring from his drink. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, calm down,” Mason says. “There ain’t no issues! We’re all friends here! I say a game of truth and dare would calm us all down.” “Fine,” Becca says. Mason downs the rest of his drink, and tosses the glass bottle in the middle. He drops to his knees and spins it, landing on Carter, who lies in the back of the pick-up. “Truth or dare, Carter?” “If I p-pick dare, will you… will you make me st-stand up?” Carter says lazily. “Maybe,” Mason says slyly. “Truth, t-then.” Mason grins, glancing at him and Lucy. “Have you ever kissed Lucy?” he asks. “Nope. Sorry to disa-disa-disappoint.” “Damn. I was certain,” Mason sighs, pulling out his wallet and tossing Kyle a crumpled bill. “You just cost me twenty bucks, Carter.” Ant leans over, spinning the bottle. It slows to a stop, pointing off into the woods. “Is that closer to Becca or Hazel?” he asks. “Becca,” Carter says. “Oh, fantastic. Truth or dare?” “Truth.” “Dammit, Becca. Fine, I’ll make this awkward. How far has Kyle got with you?” “Shut up, Ant!” Becca hisses. “Hey, you gotta answer!” Lucy says. “Oh come on! That’s private!” “We’re all friends here,” Mason says. “Fine! We’ve… you know. Done it.” “Respect, Kyle,” Ant smiles, holding back a giggle. Becca goes red, grabbing the bottle and twirling it. Through pure luck or skill, it points directly at Ant. “Shit,” Ant sighs. “Truth or dare. I have a lot of embarrassing questions to ask.” “Dare,” Ant grimaces. “Well, you have a lot more balls than I though. You’ll suffer from it. I dare you to go into Herr Eichel’s basement.” “No!” Ant replies. “Come on, Becca! Herr Eichel’s tear out his throat if he caught him!” Lucy complains. “Who’s Herr EIchel?” you ask. “Oh, I’ll tell her. I’ve been practicing this story for my little brother,” Mason says, before clearing his throat. “During World War II, a young soldier rose through the ranks of the SS. He had a habit of hunting Jews and personally escorting them to the Camps. He would hunt men, women, children, and torture them all for information. He showed no mercy. Eventually, when the Russians invaded, he escaped by pretending to be a civilian, fleeing from Berlin to France to Britain to the US. He hid right here in Dawnwood, hunting down any Jews he could find. His name is Herr Eichel.” “That’s the biggest load of shit!” Lucy complains. “Everyone knows that any Jew in Dawnwood would be scared off by Carter Sr. and his white power bullshit.” “He doesn’t w-w-want white pow-power!” Carter says. “He wants white p-pride. There’s… a difference.” “No there isn’t, Carter, now stop ruining the story. Where was I?” Mason asks. “You just finished,” you point out. “Oh. Well, now Herr Eichel’s going to kill Ant.” “Becca, I’m sorry! Please change the dare!” “Fine. You have to go into the Dead Man’s Barn and go up to the attic.” “That’s even worse!” Ant complains. “Nah, that ain’t bad,” Mason says. “Nazis are real and will kill you. Ghosts aren’t.” You raise an eyebrow, and Mason smiles. “OK, story time. Once, there was a Sheriff back in the Western times who used his power to wipe out any competition of the big ranchers of the town. One of the small time ranchers, Daniel Edwards, stood up and told the Sheriff he wouldn’t sell his farm to his competition despite threats. The Sheriff led a posse to bring him down, and Edwards tried to fight back. He killed two dozen men and took near a hundred bullets before he went down. They tortured him for a few days, even cutting his face wide open to give him... what'd ya call it, a Glasgow Grin. Eventually, you just hung him to finish him off. Rumor is he still haunts the barn where they strung him up. It’s a historical building so it can’t be torn down, so the owner just leaves it vacant.” “I’m not going!” “Don’t pussy out, Ant.” “Will one of you go with me?” Ant pleads. “Spin the bottle, and whoever it lands on has to go with you,” Lucy suggests. “I hope it’s Becca. That’d be ironic.” “Sure,” Carter says. “Let’s do that.” Ant thanks Lucy and spins the bottle. It wobbles and slows to a halt, pointing directly at you. “Well, I guess Hazel’s going to Dead Man’s Barn,” Mason says. “No, she can go to Herr Eichel’s if she wants. Eichel’s just an old, slow dude. The Dead Man’s a supernatural murderer,” Lucy says. “Let Hazel pick,” Kyle says, trying to stand before stumbling and leaning back on the truck. “Yeah. Go ahead Hazel. Ghost or Nazi.” > You refuse to go "I'm not going!" you proclaim loudly. "Come on! You have to, it's a dare!" Lucy says. "Don't p-p-pussy out on... us," Carter says. "No, I'm not doing," There's a collective sigh from the group as you're hit by a barrage of complaints, sighs and insults, before the group settles down. You sit back onto the ground, noticing Mason has shied away from you slightly. Well shit. The group resumes their activities, which all consist of various ways of drinking. > You keep drinking You continue drinking and hours go past. The group constantly shifts positions, before Mason realizes something. "Hey guys, where's Kyle?" he asks. "I think he went to go pee," Lucy shrugs. "When was that?" "About an hour ago," Becca says. "FUCK! Where the hell is Kyle?" he asks. "R-r-remember last time we lost Kyle when he was drunk?" "Oh dear God, he ended up pissing in my garden. He wasn't pissing into the garden. He was standing in the garden, pissing on my house," Becca says. "We need to find him. Is anyone not sober enough to find this place again?" Mason says. There's silence. "Good. We'll split up and try find him. Ant, you head towards the Rotten Trees, Lucy, go towards our old tree house, Becca, towards the old drinking point, Carter, back towards town. Hazel, you're new here. There's a stream just over there," Mason says, pointing. "Just walk along there, and keep your phone on. If you can't find him, follow the stream back here." You nod. Time to find Kyle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Are you sure?” Lucy asks. “A bit of drink never hurt anyone.” “Plus, you’ll be really bland and we’lll be annoying to each other if you’re sober,” Ant adds. “Oh, and… peer pressure. We’re peers who are pressuring you, because that’s a thing that really happens." > You say "No, really, I'm fine." "Sure thing. Your loss." You continue sitting around the campfire, which is really a lot closer to a glorified candle sitting in a pile of leaves. Mason grabs the bottle of vodka and sits down next to you and your heart flutters. A large part of you knows that this is just infatuation and a childhood crush, mixed in with a fair bit of hormonal lust, but still… he’s really, really cute. The others seem bored, with Kyle downing what seems like more than his weight in booze. “Well, this is boring,” Lucy complains, tossing a bottle in the middle. “Let’s play spin the bottle.” “No way!” Ant complains. “I’m the odd guy out. Kyle and Becca go together, you and Carter and then Mason and the new girl.” You blush at that comment as Carter nods in agreement. “I agree. I d-don’t w-want to play spin the bo-bottle,” Carter says. Briefly glancing at the indifferent Mason, you feel a twinge of annoyance of all possibilities of spin the bottle disappears as Ant suggests a new game. “Truth or Dare!” Ant suggests, to the groans of Kyle and Becca. “Remember what happened last time?” Becca points out. “That’s not fair! That wasn’t my fault! You should’ve protected your dad’s stuff. How was I do know that that painting was worth a fortune?” “You shouldn’t have been drawing over paintings in the first place, Ant!” “It wasn’t skin off your dad’s nose! That rich bastard can handle a loss! Jesus, we all know his ancestors made his money off the backs of Kyle’s ancestors!” “Fuck you, Ant!” Kyle shouts, slurring from his drink. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, calm down,” Mason says. “There ain’t no issues! We’re all friends here! I say a game of truth and dare would calm us all down.” “Fine,” Becca says. Mason downs the rest of his drink, and tosses the glass bottle in the middle. He drops to his knees and spins it, landing on Carter, who lies in the back of the pick-up. “Truth or dare, Carter?” “If I p-pick dare, will you… will you make me st-stand up?” Carter says lazily. “Maybe,” Mason says slyly. “Truth, t-then.” Mason grins, glancing at him and Lucy. “Have you ever kissed Lucy?” he asks. “Nope. Sorry to disa-disa-disappoint.” “Damn. I was certain,” Mason sighs, pulling out his wallet and tossing Kyle a crumpled bill. “You just cost me twenty bucks, Carter.” Ant leans over, spinning the bottle. It slows to a stop, pointing off into the woods. “Is that closer to Becca or Hazel?” he asks. “Becca,” Carter says. “Oh, fantastic. Truth or dare?” “Truth.” “Dammit, Becca. Fine, I’ll make this awkward. How far has Kyle got with you?” “Shut up, Ant!” Becca hisses. “Hey, you gotta answer!” Lucy says. “Oh come on! That’s private!” “We’re all friends here,” Mason says. “Fine! We’ve… you know. Done it.” “Respect, Kyle,” Ant smiles, holding back a giggle. Becca goes red, grabbing the bottle and twirling it. Through pure luck or skill, it points directly at Ant. “Shit,” Ant sighs. “Truth or dare. I have a lot of embarrassing questions to ask.” “Dare,” Ant grimaces. “Well, you have a lot more balls than I though. You’ll suffer from it. I dare you to go into Herr Eichel’s basement.” “No!” Ant replies. “Come on, Becca! Herr Eichel’s tear out his throat if he caught him!” Lucy complains. “Who’s Herr EIchel?” you ask. “Oh, I’ll tell her. I’ve been practising this story for my little brother,” Mason says, before clearing his throat. “During World War II, a young soldier rose through the ranks of the SS. He had a habit of hunting Jews and personally escorting them to the Camps. He would hunt men, women, children, and torture them all for information. He showed no mercy. Eventually, when the Russians invaded, he escaped by pretending to be a civilian, fleeing from Berlin to France to Britain to the US. He hid right here in Dawnwood, hunting down any Jews he could find. His name is Herr Eichel.” “That’s the biggest load of shit!” Lucy complains. “Everyone knows that any Jew in Dawnwood would be scared off by Carter Sr. and his white power bullshit.” “He doesn’t w-w-want white pow-power!” Carter says. “He wants white p-pride. There’s… a difference.” “No there isn’t, Carter, now stop ruining the story. Where was I?” Mason asks. “You just finished,” you point out. “Oh. Well, now Herr Eichel’s going to kill Ant.” “Becca, I’m sorry! Please change the dare!” “Fine. You have to go into the Dead Man’s Barn and go up to the attic.” “That’s even worse!” Ant complains. “Nah, that ain’t bad,” Mason says. “Nazis are real and will kill you. Ghosts aren’t.” You raise an eyebrow, and Mason smiles. “OK, story time. Once, there was a Sheriff back in the Western times who used his power to wipe out any competition of the big ranchers of the town. One of the small time ranchers, Daniel Edwards, stood up and told the Sheriff he wouldn’t sell his farm to his competition despite threats. The Sheriff led a posse to bring him down, and Edwards tried to fight back. He killed two dozen men and took near a hundred bullets before he went down. They tortured him for a few days, even cutting his face wide open to give him... what'd ya call it, a Glasgow Grin. Eventually, you just hung him to finish him off. Rumor is he still haunts the barn where they strung him up. It’s a historical building so it can’t be torn down, so the owner just leaves it vacant.” “I’m not going!” “Don’t pussy out, Ant.” “Will one of you go with me?” Ant pleads. “Spin the bottle, and whoever it lands on has to go with you,” Lucy suggests. “I hope it’s Becca. That’d be ironic.” “Sure,” Carter says. “Let’s do that.” Ant thanks Lucy and spins the bottle. It wobbles and slows to a halt, pointing directly at you. “Well, I guess Hazel’s going to Dead Man’s Barn,” Mason says. “No, she can go to Herr Eichel’s if she wants. Eichel’s just an old, slow dude. The Dead Man’s a supernatural murderer,” Lucy says. “Let Hazel pick,” Kyle says, trying to stand before stumbling and leaning back on the truck. “Yeah. Go ahead Hazel. Ghost or Nazi.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit down. "So Hunter, how was school?" "Good," Hunter mumbles. "Hey, Dad..." you ask. "Yes?" Now's the perfect time to ask him whether you can go or not... or you can just sneak out later. > You say "Can I go to a friend's house?" "Hazel, it's your first day knowing these people. You don't know anyone here well enough to trust them," Dad says. "OK," you say dejectedly, already planning how to sneak out. You quickly eat most of your dinner before faking a stomach ache and disappearing into your room.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit down. "So Hunter, how was school?" "Good," Hunter mumbles. "Hey, Dad..." you ask. "Yes?" Now's the perfect time to ask him whether you can go or not... or you can just sneak out later. > You say "Nothing." "Uh... OK," Dad replies. You eat your dinner quietly, before faking a stomach ache and disappearing into your room.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Fine!" you sigh, as your brother gleefully snatches the remote and switches to the latest cartoon that's far too old for him. You jump up from the couch, and grab your laptop, binge-watching Youtube until you hear Dad come through the door. "Hello! I'm home!" he calls. "Hey Dad!" you yell from the kitchen. He walks in, smiling. "You're not fighting. That's pretty impressive," he smiles, referring to you and your brother. "I'll put on dinner. We have chicken curry." He begins to turn on the stove and start cooking. "How was school, honey?" > You say "OK." "Well, honey, that's pretty good." "Yeah, I guess." You shrug and turn on your phone. After about an hour, Dad begins serving dinner.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Fine!" you sigh, as your brother gleefully snatches the remote and switches to the latest cartoon that's far too old for him. You jump up from the couch, and grab your laptop, binge-watching Youtube until you hear Dad come through the door. "Hello! I'm home!" he calls. "Hey Dad!" you yell from the kitchen. He walks in, smiling. "You're not fighting. That's pretty impressive," he smiles, referring to you and your brother. "I'll put on dinner. We have chicken curry." He begins to turn on the stove and start cooking. "How was school, honey?" > You say "Pretty good." "That's fantastic honey! I'm sure you've made lots of friends." You smile and turn on your phone. After about an hour, Dad begins serving dinner.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The rest of the school day is easy. You learn about the history of the town in History Class, the history teacher eagerly abandoning the notion of McCarthyism to explain what appears to be her favorite topic. Apparently, the town was once home to a large tribe of Native Americans, who were promptly wiped out by Colonists. The town rose to prominence due to its large number of cattle farms, before falling into obscurity as the modern age dawned. Eventually, it became the shithole it is today. After school, you take the bus home and say goodbye to your friends. Dad's still at work, so you collapse in front of the TV for a barrage of nearly identical Crime Shows. One features a team of guys who just kind of stereotype criminals, one features some guys who look at glowing stains, one features a guy who knows when you're lying and one features a modern day Sherlock Holmes. Just as the team find a new bit of information about how the clown's car is full of some... particularly dirty stains, you hear the familiar whine. "HAZEL! Can I watch TV!?!" "No! I'm watching. Go play your games." "But It's out battery!" he whines. > You don't let him watch TV, for he is a whining, snivelling brat "Screw off!" you say, flinging a cushion at Hunter. "Fine!" Hunter shouts, storming off. You continue watching your show (the clown was being blackmailed by the mother about his time in jail so she could get the insurance money), until eventually you hear the slamming door that signifies Dad's home. "Hello! I'm home!" he calls. "Hey Dad!" you yell. He walks in, smiling. Immediately, Hunter starts to whine. "Dad! Hazel won't let me watch TV!" "Who was watching first?" Hunter falls silence as you follow Dad into the kitchen. "God, you're at each others throats," he smiles. "I'll put on dinner. We have chicken curry." He begins to turn on the stove and start cooking. "How was school, honey?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Oh, good! Come on, let's go!" You follow Dad to the car, and climb in the passenger seat. You don't even need to turn your head to know your brother's in the backseat, hearing the opening tune of Angry Birds: Stalin's Show Trials or whatever the fuck version they have now. You lie back in your seat and stare out the window as you go through the town. Eventually, you arrive at some shitty, greasy pizza joint, and get out of the car. You walk inside, and find yourself in a Chucky Cheese knock-off. You walk up to the counter and find yourself faced with a girl your age with long brown hair and a massive zit that looks like a red dot sight in the middle of her forehead. "Hello, welcome to Pizza Corner, can I take your order?" she asks. "Yeah, can we have a large Pepperoni Pizza and three Cokes?" "Sure thing. Small, Medium or Large?" "Medium." The girl begins pouring the drinks as another, far prettier blond girl appears from the kitchen, holding a large piece of dough. She glances briefly at you, before grabbing a cloth with her spare hand and disappearing back again. "So, are you new here?" the cashier asks. "Yeah, I just moved in." "I'm Lucy." "I'm Hazel." “Oh, really? Well, it’s a good town. You can’t find much work except in a dull pizza joint, but there ain’t much here to even spend the money on. Some old clothes stores and a cinema, and that’s about it.” “Do you work here full time?” “Jesus no. If I got to the point where I was working here full time I’d dip my head in the deep fat… well, I wouldn’t be happy. Im still in school.” “What grade?” “10th.” “Oh, I’m starting there tomorrow. I guess I’ll see you there.” “”Sure. If you want, I can always get you a job here. Becca, the blond girl, has literally done shit all since we started. She’s only working so her daddy an think she’s learning real-life experience and still feel justified buying whatever she…” “I can hear you!” a voice calls out from the kitchen. “I know, Becca, I’m getting a point across!” Dad appears standing next to you, grinning. "Look who's already making friends!" he smiles. You roll your eyes. "Yeah, sure. Let's just sit down," you say, pulling Dad towards a booth to sit in. > Two Days Later... The school is a shitty building filled with no good kids who are learning about geography and Shakespeare despite the fact that they’ll almost certainly end up in the shitty jobs that are needed to keep this town running. You walk through the doors, a backpack slung over your shoulder. “OK, it’s not so bad,” you mutter, walking past a row of lockers down the hall. "I just have to find my classes and…” “Hey, Hazel!” a voice cries. You turn to find the familiar, zit stricken face of the pizza cashier, Lucy. “Hey,” you reply. “So, it’s your first day, huh? Do you know what classes you’re in?” You search your pockets and pull out a crumpled class schedule, handing it to her. “OK, we have the same Spanish, English, Math, History… you do Chemistry? Gay! That’s the hardest class!” “Well other than that we seem to share a suspicious amount of classes.” “Yeah, I talked to the principal and begged him to put you in my classes… it’s a tiny school, what do you think would happen? Of course we share most classes. Oh look, Carter’s here.” You turn to see Carter, the kid from the day before, bounding over. “I know,” you say. “We met the day before yesterday.” “Y-yeah. How’ve y-you been?” “Good.” “Well, you made friends without me? I feel left out. Anyway, if you want, we can both show you around. Between the two of us, we should share pretty much every class.” “Except Chem… Chemistry,” Carter points out. “Yeah, you’re pretty much fucked for that, but that’s your problem. Now we have double Math and English, and Miss Loaves is genuinely the easiest Math teacher to have to deal with. She’s the only one who lets you get books from your locker when you forget them rather than giving a write-out or detention or just yelling for ten minutes. Come on, we’ll show you around.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You pick up your backpack again and walk up to your new room. It has a large wardrobe, a large double bed, a desk and chair and two dressers. You sit on the bed, taking out your laptop, and go on Facebook. Thankfully, the WiFi's already set up, so you can go on. You go down your Timeline, seeing all your friends having fun. Fiona had a party, Dan's now dating Leone and a bunch of other shit's going on that you wish you could take part in. You sigh, and continue flicking through pictures and posts. After an hour or two, Dad calls you down again. You close your laptop and go downstairs, finding Dad waiting there in the kitchen. "Hey, sweetie. The house is pretty barren, so we're going to go out to eat and I'll pick up groceries in the morning. I saw a pizza place in town. Do you want to go?" > You say "No." "For God's sake, Haze! This isn't fair! You can't punish me forever because of the mood! I'm sick of this bitchy behavior! Now, get in the car!" You follow Dad to the car, and climb in the passenger seat. You don't even need to turn your head to know your brother's in the backseat, hearing the opening tune of Angry Birds: Stalin's Show Trials or whatever the fuck version they have now. You lie back in your seat and stare out the window as you go through the town. Eventually, you arrive at some shitty, greasy pizza joint, and get out of the car. You walk inside, and find yourself in a Chucky Cheese knock-off. You walk up to the counter and find yourself faced with a girl your age with long brown hair and a massive zit that looks like a red dot sight in the middle of her forehead. "Hello, welcome to Pizza Corner, can I take your order?" she asks. "Yeah, can we have a large Pepperoni Pizza and three Cokes?" "Sure thing. Small, Medium or Large?" "Medium." The girl begins pouring the drinks as another, far prettier blond girl appears from the kitchen, holding a large piece of dough. She glances briefly at you, before grabbing a cloth with her spare hand and disappearing back again. "So, are you new here?" the cashier asks. "Yeah, I just moved in." "I'm Lucy." "I'm Hazel." “Oh, really? Well, it’s a good town. You can’t find much work except in a dull pizza joint, but there ain’t much here to even spend the money on. Some old clothes stores and a cinema, and that’s about it.” “Do you work here full time?” “Jesus no. If I got to the point where I was working here full time I’d dip my head in the deep fat… well, I wouldn’t be happy. Im still in school.” “What grade?” “10th.” “Oh, I’m starting there tomorrow. I guess I’ll see you there.” “”Sure. If you want, I can always get you a job here. Becca, the blond girl, has literally done shit all since we started. She’s only working so her daddy an think she’s learning real-life experience and still feel justified buying whatever she…” “I can hear you!” a voice calls out from the kitchen. “I know, Becca, I’m getting a point across!” Dad appears standing next to you, grinning. "Look who's already making friends!" he smiles. You roll your eyes. "Yeah, sure. Let's just sit down," you say, pulling Dad towards a booth to sit in. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>An hour later, you pull into Dawnbrook, and find you were far too optimistic. The town is a shitty series of low buildings. Hunter looks up from his Kindle briefly, before shrugging and looking back down. You pull up to one of the many, generic looking houses pulling into the driveway.You can already see faces peeking out from windows at the new arrivals. Dad opens the car door and lugs two suitcases up to the door and fishes through his pocket for his keys and opens the door. "Here we are! Home!" he says cheerfully, obviously trying to raise his children's spirits. You follow Dad inside, dropping your backpack on the floor. "I'll begin unpacking, you guys can get settled in or go meet the neighbors or explore," Dad says. > You go outside You walk outside, and two snot-nosed, dirty kids with long, uncombed brown hair appear, staring blankly at you. They both have shoulder-length hair and wear mud-stained clothes, a boy and a girl. "Who are you?" one asks as she begins to pick her nose. "Hazel. I'm new here." "Where you from?" "New York." "My dad says New York's only full of greedy Jews and angry Negroes." "Jesus Christ, kid, maybe your dad's a prick," you say aghast, staring at the pair. A tall boy who seems to be your age jogs over, grabbing the two children. He has short brown hair and wears shorts and a t-shirt, both of which are far too small for him, as well as an awkward smile that stares at you. "Hi. S-S-Sorry if these t-two were bothering y-you. TJ, Emma, go b-b-back inside," the boy stutters. The pair of kids shrug and run off. The boy extends a hand, which you grasp and shake. "I'm Carter," he says, smiling. "I'm Hazel." "So, d-did you just-m-m-move in?" "Yeah, I did." "Cool. What g-grade are you i-in?" "10th." "Oh! Me too! W-when are you star... starting?" "Day after tomorrow." "Cool. I guess I'll s-see you then. It was a... a pleasure to meet you," he smiles. Carter rushes after his siblings, and you watch as he jogs off. You hear Dad yell from your house, and turn to see him. "Hey, sweetie. The house is pretty barren, so we're going to go out to eat and I'll pick up groceries in the morning. I saw a pizza place in town. Do you want to go?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up in your cabin in the woods. You sit up and scratch some fleas that have infested your body. You also realize its still daylight. You hate waking up early. You lope into the bathroom and look in the mirror where you see a canine face covered in gray fur, you remember a time when your fur was completely brown. “You’re getting old Wolf” you say to yourself like you always do while trying to look on the bright side that at least you don’t have the mange. You think you’d just put a silver bullet in your head if you ever started to go bald. After eating some left over mutton in the fridge and some Gummy Blobs (for the sugar “pick me up”) you ponder how you’re going to pay this month’s rent on your cabin. You call your agent Erik and see if that little pissant has found any work for you. Hopefully it’s an actual job and not just a guest speaker spot at a comic convention. “Erik! It’s me Wolf! Pick up the fucking phone! I know you’re there!” you say when you get the answering machine. “Erik! Get on the phone NOW, or I’m gonna go over there and shove a pipe organ up your ass!” That got his attention. “Wolf, I’m sorry, but I fear I’m in a deep depression.” “What else is new? Look I need some work, got anything? I don’t even care if it’s straight to video. I just need some of the green stuff!” “Sadly, I don’t think I do, but then I haven’t really checked…I’m so depressed. I’ve been wondering if I made the right decisions in my life…and now it’s too late for me to do anything about it, because I’m old…” “Join the fucking club Erik! Look do you…” “But my art, my music, that is my love and its failing me again. My latest opera isn’t doing well. I wonder if I chose the wrong thing to love and pursue. Just like I did with Christine. Oh Christine WHY couldn’t you have loved me? I loved you…” Wonderful, he’s in full blown tortured artist mode. He can go on like this forever. You can either give up, or persist in getting something out of him. > You persist “Oh boo fucking hoo, your latest Opera hasn’t been doing too well lately. At least people are paying to see the goddamn thing! As bad of a composer, and musician you are, you oughta be glad anyone’s even paying to see the goddamn thing! People don’t want to see anything with me in it! And at least you’ve got another job to fall back on LIKE BEING AN AGENT THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING ME A FUCKING JOB!” you snarl. There’s some dead air briefly and then Erik begins talking again. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be complaining about my problems to you. You of course know all about torment. A war that wages within you, a beast that…” “Erik I’ve got no time and I’m in no mood to hear how we’re supposed to be kindred spirits, you just better tell me you found something for me and it better not be another guest speaker spot at a comic convention!” “Well let’s see…I dunno. Werewolves aren’t popular anymore you know…there might be something…here it is! It’s called Wolf Pack.” “Pack? That implies more than one wolf on the set there Erik. Well I suppose I can share the spotlight with some others. As long as I’m in charge of course.” You say. “Er…well according to this, you’d be the old cranky grandpa wolf that makes a bunch of rude remarks.” “What?! What kind of stupid shit is that?” “Yeah that’s the stuff.” Erik replies not catching on. “I mean what the hell kind of movie is this?” “Its uh…let’s see…oh here. It’s a horror comedy about a werewolf family and how they adjust to human society. Looks like you’ll be playing with a lot of young pups as you’d call them.” “WHAT?! NO! What the fuck Erik? I’m a fucking monster not something to be fucking laughed at! And they already did a movie like that a long time ago and it sucked!” “Well that’s all I got. Maybe you could talk to the director to make changes since they also wrote it. I’m sure you and her are familiar with each other. You had an affair with her for quite some time.” “Uh, you wanna narrow that list down Erik?” “It’s Mary. You know, the one who used to be married to Frankie, until your affair broke up both of your marriages?” Erik’s new information didn’t exactly make you any more enthusiastic to want to take the job. > You take the job anyway “Alright I’ll take the job, just tell me where its at.” You say. After Erik gives you the information, you ride your Harley to the studio. When you arrive on the set, you see a bunch of snot nosed wolflings hanging around trying to look “tough”. Some of them are in human form, but you can smell them for who they truly are though. These cubs today, you swear they would’ve never lasted back in the old days. All flash and nothing to back it up. (Though you don’t mind looking at the young females that are there) That’s why they hang out in packs. You never did that even when you were young. You were always a lone wolf. “Hey who’s the fossil?” one of them asks. “Hey Grandpa, the remake of Old Yellow is next door!” This causes a howl of laughter from all of them, until you confront the one who said it. Probably the leader no doubt. Not even in wolf form. Pathetic. “I’m going to give you time to transform into a more adequate fighting form before I neuter you.” You calmly explain. “You? You’re like 300 years old! I could take…” Can’t say you didn’t give him a chance. You immediately pounce on him, knocking him down while clamping your jaws on his face and digging your fangs in. “HOLY SHIT DUDE!” one of them shouts. “Oh my god he’s killing him!” a female screams. “Get him off of him, get him off of him!” While them all attempt to pull you off of their leader you hear a familiar voice that gets your attention. “Well, I see Erik passed my script over to you, good. I’m also glad to see you’re still as anti-social as usual Wolf.” Mary says as you finally get off of your misguided heckler and approach her. She still looks the same, though she looks a lot better now that she got rid of that hair style she used to have and dyed it blonde. “Just re-establishing the proper hierarchy, nothing more.” “Hmm, always the Alpha Male, that was what I always loved about you. So primal. Maybe later I can dress in a little red cloak and we can reenact a fairy tale.” “Some fairy tale, as I remember you loved a lot of beings.” “Hey I can’t help who I am. I was created this way.” “Just like Frankie eh?” “Don’t you compare me to that sicko! Yes we are controlled by our genetics to a certain degree, but as you damn well know I rose above them! I made my own identity. I’m a successful director and writer now, so what if I have a healthy sexual appetite? There’s nothing wrong with that, I’m sure you’d agree given all the beings you had your way with before, after and DURING your marriage!” “Look never mind all that. I got a real problem with this film.” You say side stepping her correct accusation. “What’s wrong with it?” “What’s wrong with it? Are you kidding me? It sucks! It makes a mockery of werewolves! You even named one of them fucking Benji!” “Well comedy is popular now. Plus children like monsters just as long as they aren’t too scary, so I was hoping to make it a family film.” “ARRGH! I don’t DO family films! This is insulting and demeaning!” “How? Come on Wolf. In most horror movies you’ve made you always got killed in the end by a human, how was that any less demeaning?” “Because at least I was portrayed as feared monster that killed a bunch of people! I can play ball with the humans and their idealistic notion of good always having to overcome evil and all that…but THIS! This makes me into a fucking joke! I can’t even believe you of all people wrote this…no wait I can. You fucking undead don’t have any consideration for anyone, but yourselves.” “You know I’m technically not even undead, I’m created from several dead bodies. I’m more of a golem.” Mary attempts to correct you. “Who gives a shit, you’re still basically a walking corpse, and your flesh is dead. You’re Undead in my book.” “You know for someone who hasn’t been able to find a job in months and is basically just rotting away in his little cabin, you’d think that you’d be a little more appreciative. I wrote this with you in mind you hairy bigoted asshole!” You don’t know whether to take that as an insult or as an attempt for her to try to make amends for the past. > You take it as an insult “So you had me in mind eh? Well that proves it. You think I’m a joke because that’s how you wrote the character.” “What? No! I just…” “I see your time with that bloodsucker was well spent. Learning how to exploit and leech right? Look maybe you can pull this shit with those puppies over there, but I ain’t fucking one! I don’t need the money that badly. I’ll go fucking live my twilight years in the forest and DIE there as nature probably intended. I don’t need this shit.” As you turn to leave, Mary shouts at you. “Yeah, that’s right go on leave Mr. Lone Wolf! You’ll fucking die alone, you stubborn bastard! I tried to help you! Erik tried to help you and you don’t appreciate any of it! That’s why none of your children speak to you and…” You run back over to her and slam her into the wall. You stare at her face to face as she struggles to get free. She’s strong, but you manage to keep her pinned. She really pissed you off and you were already pissed off to begin with. “Fuck you, and fuck Erik! You two don’t know shit about me, never did. I’m through with the pair of you! In fact I think I’ll be taking something with me since you’re so worried about me being alone…” You release Mary and go over to the wolflings who look a little worried that you’re going to cause harm to them. Many of them cast their eyes downward. “Hey, you want to be REALLY tough? You want to really raise some hell? Come with me. If you want to stay under the thumb of this patchwork dead bitch and be exploited and mocked, stay here. Your statement alone convinces all of them. They all follow you, even the one you made an example of. Mary attempts to call everyone back, but it’s useless, you’ve taken control of the pack and they’ll do what you want now. And right now you want to get into a fight. You think about all the people and creatures that wronged you in some way and only two of them keep coming to mind consistently. One is that fucking Dr. Victor Frankenstein. If it wasn’t for him, Frankie and Mary wouldn’t have been created in the first place which also means you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into trouble all those years ago. You wouldn’t have had to put up with his “children” taking jobs away from you. Not to mention he sued you once. But the one who you REALLY despise, is that bisexual bloodsucker. Fucking Dracula or Vlad, or whatever the hell he’s calling himself these days. The disgust you have for him and the reasons are too numerous to list here. > You go kick Victor's ass Your recent dealings with Mary, have made you think about all the shit you’ve had to put up with from that no talent dickhead. No human has ever given you such trouble. You know he’s still alive. (Mad scientists always find ways of prolonging their lives somehow) That won’t be true for long though, if you get your way. You killed him once before. This time you’re going to make sure he stays that way. He’s probably got whatever crappy inventions and experiments protecting his castle and from what you know, Frankie’s still living with his “Dad” as well. You don’t give a fuck, you’ll kill him too. You figure you’ll be doing the world a favor as well as getting some satisfaction. Besides, you’ve got to show these wolflings what being a werewolf is all about. “All right you cubs! We’re going to go raise some fucking hell. We’re going to Frankenstein’s Castle. We’re going to rip the place apart brick by brick, and I’M going to rip Victor apart limb from limb.” “Erm…Castle Frankenstien? Isn’t that where Frankie lives?” one of the wolflings asks. “I heard he’s really powerful, didn’t he fight Dracula and win?” ‘I dunno if we should mess with him.” You can’t believe your ears! These snot nosed pups know nothing of their heritage! Back in the old days they would’ve been killed and eaten for such cowardice! “Goddammit are you Wolves or fucking Chihuahuas? Frankie’s a fucking pussy! I personally kicked his ass before and I’ll do it again all by myself if I have too! Now are you going to run with me and be a fucking Wolf or are you going to go back home with your tails tucked between your legs?” After looking at each other for awhile they all agree to go with you. “Good! Now I want all of you to transform into your wolf form too! I’m traveling with fellow wolves not humans!” Just before one of the females begins to transform, you stop her. She’s dressed in a short leather skirt and a tight white t-shirt that’s tied in the center and has long flowing brown hair. You can smell that she’s in heat. You hate to coin a pun, but she literally is one hot l’il bitch. “Erm, not you. You stay in your human form; I kind of like the whole teenage slut look you got going on. In fact you come here right now; you’ll be traveling on my bike with me.” You say. As she slides in behind you and holds on, you ask her one more question. “So what’s your name?” “Ginger. What’s your name, you never did tell us.” “Wolf. Just Wolf baby. Remember it. You’ll be screaming it later.” Damn you’re so fucking cool, you think as you start up your Harley and ride ahead of the pack. (You’d probably be even cooler if these pups weren’t all riding those Japanese “crotch rocket” bikes, but that’ll have to be another lesson for another day) After a couple of days of riding, and a few “pit stops” with Ginger, you all eventually reach Castle Frankenstein. You park your bikes at the gate, and size the place up, which now looks a lot different. It looks like a damn Nazi fortress now, there’s guard towers and everything. It seems Victor has been keeping himself very busy in recent years. As it begins to rain, a familiar voice calls to you from one of the towers. “Its you. Vic always knew you’d return one day. I never believed him though. I guess I owe him fifty bucks.” You look up and see Igor, he looks different too. He has a lot of clumsy cybernetic implants, one of them being some sort of gun in place of an arm. More of Vic’s “handy work” no doubt. He’s still got that damn hump on his back though. “Igor? You still alive? I thought your ungrateful master would’ve just let you die of old age and get himself another assistant. I see he did a real good job of improving you though. Tell me, how’s it feel to be the real brains, never getting the credit and continuing to be a doormat?” “I’m happy with my lot in life. How’s it feel to be broke ass overgrown dog who’s trying to relive his lost youth?” Igor retorts back. “Don’t know yet. I’ll tell you before I shove that metal arm up your ass.” Well looks like the fight’s starting here. > You attempt to climb over the gate before Igor can get off a shot In your prime you would’ve been able to scale the gate, climb the tower and rip Igor’s head off all without getting hit. Unfortunately you aren’t in your prime anymore. Igor’s having trouble aiming his awkward arm-gun, but with as many bullets as it pumps out he doesn’t need to be completely accurate. While you’re attempting to climb over the gate he hits you several times. Naturally those bullets are silver. You crash to the wet ground with a loud CLANK! sound, as the rest of the pack go running away with their tails between their legs.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your recent dealings with Mary, have made you think about all the shit you’ve had to put up with from that no talent dickhead. No human has ever given you such trouble. You know he’s still alive. (Mad scientists always find ways of prolonging their lives somehow) That won’t be true for long though, if you get your way. You killed him once before. This time you’re going to make sure he stays that way. He’s probably got whatever crappy inventions and experiments protecting his castle and from what you know, Frankie’s still living with his “Dad” as well. You don’t give a fuck, you’ll kill him too. You figure you’ll be doing the world a favor as well as getting some satisfaction. Besides, you’ve got to show these wolflings what being a werewolf is all about. “All right you cubs! We’re going to go raise some fucking hell. We’re going to Frankenstein’s Castle. We’re going to rip the place apart brick by brick, and I’M going to rip Victor apart limb from limb.” “Erm…Castle Frankenstien? Isn’t that where Frankie lives?” one of the wolflings asks. “I heard he’s really powerful, didn’t he fight Dracula and win?” ‘I dunno if we should mess with him.” You can’t believe your ears! These snot nosed pups know nothing of their heritage! Back in the old days they would’ve been killed and eaten for such cowardice! “Goddammit are you Wolves or fucking Chihuahuas? Frankie’s a fucking pussy! I personally kicked his ass before and I’ll do it again all by myself if I have too! Now are you going to run with me and be a fucking Wolf or are you going to go back home with your tails tucked between your legs?” After looking at each other for awhile they all agree to go with you. “Good! Now I want all of you to transform into your wolf form too! I’m traveling with fellow wolves not humans!” Just before one of the females begins to transform, you stop her. She’s dressed in a short leather skirt and a tight white t-shirt that’s tied in the center and has long flowing brown hair. You can smell that she’s in heat. You hate to coin a pun, but she literally is one hot l’il bitch. “Erm, not you. You stay in your human form; I kind of like the whole teenage slut look you got going on. In fact you come here right now; you’ll be traveling on my bike with me.” You say. As she slides in behind you and holds on, you ask her one more question. “So what’s your name?” “Ginger. What’s your name, you never did tell us.” “Wolf. Just Wolf baby. Remember it. You’ll be screaming it later.” Damn you’re so fucking cool, you think as you start up your Harley and ride ahead of the pack. (You’d probably be even cooler if these pups weren’t all riding those Japanese “crotch rocket” bikes, but that’ll have to be another lesson for another day) After a couple of days of riding, and a few “pit stops” with Ginger, you all eventually reach Castle Frankenstein. You park your bikes at the gate, and size the place up, which now looks a lot different. It looks like a damn Nazi fortress now, there’s guard towers and everything. It seems Victor has been keeping himself very busy in recent years. As it begins to rain, a familiar voice calls to you from one of the towers. “Its you. Vic always knew you’d return one day. I never believed him though. I guess I owe him fifty bucks.” You look up and see Igor, he looks different too. He has a lot of clumsy cybernetic implants, one of them being some sort of gun in place of an arm. More of Vic’s “handy work” no doubt. He’s still got that damn hump on his back though. “Igor? You still alive? I thought your ungrateful master would’ve just let you die of old age and get himself another assistant. I see he did a real good job of improving you though. Tell me, how’s it feel to be the real brains, never getting the credit and continuing to be a doormat?” “I’m happy with my lot in life. How’s it feel to be broke ass overgrown dog who’s trying to relive his lost youth?” Igor retorts back. “Don’t know yet. I’ll tell you before I shove that metal arm up your ass.” Well looks like the fight’s starting here. > You duck for cover! You tell everyone to get the hell out of Igor’s range and take cover. Fortunately Igor’s gun-arm isn’t the best design and he’s having problems aiming and standing still due to the recoil, so you all manage to hide behind some nearby rocks Still, there’s no way you’re going to be able to scale the front gate with Igor on that damn tower. “See I knew this was a bad idea!” one of the wolflings says. “How are we supposed to get past that? I’m pretty sure he’s firing silver bullets at us.” “Oh I KNOW he is. Hence the reason why I told everyone to get out of the way. Okay so we’re not going through the front gate, the castle’s a big place right? Igor’s only guarding the front. I say we split up and scale the walls on the sides and around the back. We’ll meet up inside the castle.” “Yeah, but won’t there be other defenses?” “Probably. So you better be fucking prepared! This ain’t no damn game. You cubs think you’re really tough when in fact you’ve probably never had a real challenge. This is it. Don’t think about backing out now. This is where we truly test the idea of survival of the fittest. Damn, my blood is starting to feel that rush! Don’t you all feel it? I haven’t felt this way since they sent a group of ten “werewolf assassins” to put me down. Shit. They never tried that again! Ha ha ha ha ha!” While you’re reveling in gruesome nostalgia, your pack is looking at you like you’ve completely lost it. And they’re probably right. However, your speech seems to have stirred something in them. “The crazy old fossil’s right! I remember having to hear about similar stuff my grandfather used to talk about all the damn time. I never really paid any attention to it before. Now I think I understand. We need to prove our skills to truly be proud to call ourselves werewolves!” one of them states. “Now that’s the attitude I’m talking about!” You all huddle in the rain and make a howling noise in unison to the moon and proceed with your plan. You all split up into a couple of groups and begin to scale the side and back walls, which really isn’t all that difficult. You know Igor’s probably ran off to warn Vic though. All you can think is, he better have something better than just Igor and Frankie defending him. As you prowl around in the courtyard, you hear moaning and the clomping of several footsteps. You and your group turn to see some of Vic’s defenses. “Zombies? Are you fucking kidding me Vic? I thought you’d at least have some robots or something!” you say to yourself. Though upon a second look, you see that the horde of corpses aren’t actually zombies. Zombies are complete corpses brought back to life. These things look more like Frankie, except designed even worse. A lot of them have arms and legs in odd places. Some have a couple of heads or extra limbs. Most aren’t even stitched together neatly, there are just giant rivets and spikes sticking out, holding them together. These are probably some of his “failed” experiments. Doesn’t matter, they’re close enough to be Undead for you. > You fight them Damn straight! That’s what you’re here for! You take out the nearest pile of shit with ease and your pack follows suit. They’re a little tougher than you thought, but limbs are flying everywhere. Needless to say you’re really enjoying yourself, and you can see your pack is too. (Well the ones that haven’t gotten themselves killed) You attack one large experiment with four arms, it catches a few heavy hits on you, before you rip them off. It’s relentless and begins smashing its head (Which contains a lot of jagged metal bits) into you, knocking you down. As you shake it off, Ginger (Who’s now in wolf form) and a couple of other wolflings comes to your aid and finish off the large abomination. “Godammit! I had that! Don’t EVER come to help me! I can handle myself!” you snarl angrily. “We were just helping…” Ginger says casting her eyes downward and lowering her ears. “…yeah…well…just don’t let it happen again…” you say understanding they weren’t really trying to embarrass you. “Come on, we’re done here, let’s get in the castle.” You meet up with the ones remaining in your pack at the front door of the castle. You put all your muscle into it and rip the doors of their hinges. When you step inside, you narrowly dodge a laser beam of some sort. “He’s got the whole place trapped, be careful where you…” A wolfling steps on some floor stone that releases yet another beam trap, reducing him to ashes. “Step.” You say completing the sentence. That’s when you hear a loud speaker. “Wolf! Igor informed me you had arrived with some friends! I’m actually glad you’re here I get to test out my new experiment on you! Assuming you survive long enough to get to me of course!” At this point he does his typical Mad Scientist laugh. If he thinks you’re going to waste your time in his castle of death traps he’s sadly mistaken. He seems to have forgotten you have an excellent sense of smell and tracking in general. Of course the smell of dead bodies seems to be emanating everywhere. You try to sniff out a human scent, but you aren’t getting anything solid. The dead body smell is too overpowering. You’re catching a couple of different ones though. One of them is a very faint sweet smell. The other is a burning type smell. > You follow the burning smell Knowing that Vic works with electricity a lot, you figure he’s in that direction. You and the wolflings that are still with you follow, carefully avoiding traps. You travel further to higher levels of the castle where the burning smell is getting stronger. You KNOW you’re getting closer to him. You can feel it. You just hope his “experiment” is as great as he claims. It would suck if there wasn’t a real battle to fight after all this. You burst into the room with strong burning smell and see big globes of energy, conduits, generators and a big ass corpse with cybernetic implants lying on the table. It’s Frankie with some modifications and absorbing more electricity than lightning rod. You half expect to see Victor somewhere, but all you hear is the loudspeaker disturbing your ears again. “You see Wolf! You see! While you’ve been wasting away in that shitty cabin, I’ve been preparing for my son’s come back! You stole his woman! You ended his career! You didn’t just damage him physically, you damaged his mind! Scarred him emotionally! It’s taken me YEARS to undo the damage!” “Damaged his mind? He was a psychopathic serial pedophile made of corpses! What the fuck kind of damage could I have done? And Mary never liked him anyway!” “She could’ve learned! He could’ve too! They just needed more time! But YOU! You prevented all that! You and your dog dick!” “For fuck’s sake, I wasn’t the only one fucking her!” “Yes, but you’re the one who did it the longest and destroyed my poor boy’s career! You’re going to pay! Ha ha ha ha! He’s up! HE’S ALIVE! HE’S ALIVE! HE’S ALIVE! Frankie look who we have here! And old friend, why don’t you go and give him a big hug?” Victor goes into his mad scientist laugh yet again, as Frankie “2.0” gets up from the table. He opens his eyes and looks directly at you. “FRANKIE BEAT YOUR HEAD IN NOW.” He says with a booming voice. Still as verbal and articulate as ever. > You have the pack surround Frankie You order everyone to surround Frankie to try to keep him off guard. Frankie watches as the wolfling encircle him, but he’s still slowly moving towards you. He charges! A couple of the wolfling dive for his legs in an effort to stop him, but he’s like a juggernaut and keeps charging. Fortunately you’re still nimble and get out of his way as he smashes through the wall. The wolflings that dived for his legs, follow up and begin attack him with tooth and claw. It’s not having that great of an effect though, he’s got metal plating on that dead flesh now. Frankie kills the pair of them by smashing their heads together until there is nothing left except mush. “Everyone grab a weapon! Don’t fight him head on!” you bark at the survivors while attempting to find something. You find a large metal pole, though you’re reluctant to take it, with all the electricity in the damn room. “It’s useless! You’ll never defeat my boy Frankie!” Victor says. Frankie begins to approach you again. > You throw the pole at him Just as Frankie charges you again, you throw the pole as hard as you can at him like a spear. Bullseye! Literally. The pole slams into his left eye and straight through his head. It still doesn’t slow him down though and you just barely get out his way. Frankie stops his attack for a moment and attempts to remove the pole, but you and another wolfling don’t miss the opportunity. The pole is quite long and you grab it from the front, while the other grabs it from the back and you both run clockwise around Frankie. All the titanium plating in the world isn’t going to protect him from massive head trauma. “RARRRRGH! BRAIN!” Frankie yells as half of his head comes apart. As he attempts to keep his brains from falling out, and that’s when the rest of the pack begins to beat his head in even more with various blunt objects. He’s still putting up a fight though. “NO! STOP! FRANKIE! MY SON!” you hear Victor scream over the loudspeaker. Victor’s voice sounds like its very close. You see another door in the lab, and you’ve got a really good feeling that he’s behind it. You leave the wolflings to finish off Frankie, and run to open the door. And there he is, Victor Frankenstein… Or what’s left of him at least, he’s just a brain in a jar, hooked up to various machines now. “Wow, Vic. I always knew you were a terrible mad scientist, but I would’ve thought you’d be able to at least create a robot body for yourself, or a youth elixir or something!” “Shut up Wolf! You haven’t won! I’ve still got…” “What? What’ve you got? Nothing! Unless you’re a giant space brain from Venus or some shit, you can’t do anything to me. And you ain’t, so…” ”Wait! Wolf! Can’t we talk about this?” “Oh like you wanted to talk to me, when you fed me drugged meat?” “Oh yeah…you’re not still mad about that are you? I mean you did kill me for it…” ”Yeah, and I should’ve stuck around to make sure you stayed dead. Well no mistakes this time.” You take Victor’s brain out of the jar. “NOOOOOOOO……” are the last words to come out of the loud speakers before you step back into the lab where Frankie is flailing wildly at the wolflings who are carefully standing out of harms way as they continue to make quick strikes as him. He’s badly damaged and blind. Not deaf though. You call over to Frankie who turns around when he recognizes your voice. “Hey Frankie, your Dad wants to talk to you, he’s got a lot on his mind.” You say and then throw Victor’s brain into what remains of Frankie’s face. The brain splatters into bloody pieces, while you follow up with a quick and vicious attack. You sink your fangs deep into Frankie’s shoulder until it hits the bone, where upon you rip off the arm at the socket. The rest of the pack follows your lead and help you rip Frankie apart, until he’s reduced to the pieces that made him up in the first place. “Damn, I think I broke a tooth on that fucking metal plating.” You say breathing heavily. “We won Wolf! You were right! This was fun! I felt the primal instinct and everything!” one of the wolflings exclaims. “Yeah and right now all of you are going to be feeling silver burning through your bodies.” Igor says standing in the lab door exit, pointing that infernal arm weapon at you all. > You rush him You take one look at your pack and nod at them. You all make a howl in unison. Igor realizes he’s in deep shit. “No wait you dumb ass dogs! I got a fucking weapon here! Stop!” You all charge at him and Igor opens fire, he can’t stop you all before you overwhelm him. Unfortunately he does get some… including you. You eviscerate Igor as the silver begins to take its toll on your system. He dies coughing up blood, apologizing for not being able to defend Victor in his death throws. “I’m sorry Victor…I’m sorry my brother…gurgle…” The rest of the pack attempts to carry you out, but you refuse their help and stagger to the outside of the castle where you finally collapse on the ground. It seems so comfortable you figure you’ll just rest for awhile. You’re not surprised to see Mary standing over you. “I take it you killed my whole family.” She says unemotionally. “Yeah, even Igor. Never knew he was Vic’s brother. That explains a lot.” “Why? Why’d you do it? What was the point?! You could’ve just done my movie and still been alive! Or even if you didn’t want anything to do with me, you could’ve just went back to your cabin instead! You could’ve been alive!” “You’ll never understand Mary. You don’t get old. I did and I wasn’t meant to. I outlived my place in this world. No point in going on. Just had to get in one last monster fight and damn it felt good.” Mary shakes her head, you think she might even shed a tear if she was capable. “Go on now Mary, there’s nothing for you here. Don’t morn your family. You were always better than the rest of them anyway. Don’t morn me either, I don’t want it. Go. The pack is coming.” Mary gives you one last look and runs off before the rest of the pack arrives. When they do they begin howling loudly. “Goddammit shut the fuck up! I’m trying to die with a little peace and quiet here!” you snarl. “You have to lead us! You can’t die!” one wolfling says “The hell I can’t! Look I showed you what it means to truly be a Wolf tonight. It’s up to you to do something with it.” Ginger kneels down and tries to sit you up hoping that you’re not really dying. She’s very upset. “You can’t die! I want you with me…I…” “Stop Ginger. Don’t say it. Don’t give yourself anymore unnecessary pain, especially when I don’t deserve it. It’s just as well as I die now, I probably would’ve only broken your heart later. Just remember me how I was in the short time you knew me and every time you look at your litter.” You touch her stomach. “How do you know? I mean it’s too early, we can’t be sure if…” Ginger exclaims. “Please. I’m the Alpha Wolf. I never fucking miss. I got kids everywhere. None of them ever listened to me or talk to me, but I got ‘em.” “What do you want me to tell our litter about you?” “Whatever you want, you’ll be the one raising them and I’ll be too dead to do anything about it… just teach them what I taught all of you here tonight…hopefully they’ll listen. Damn willful pups…mmm…getting sleepy…one more thing…” “What’s that Wolf?” “Burn my damn body, I don’t want some fucker trying to bring me back to life! I hate the Undead!” You close your eyes and feel the darkness envelop you. After a brief period of howling, the remaining pack members take your body and burn it just like you asked, then they all part ways, each to pursue their own destinies in their own way just like you did. A few months later, Ginger does indeed give birth to a new litter and teaches them about you and how you lived. (This is tempered by some common sense on her part though). At last, a legacy worthy of an Alpha Wolf.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just as Frankie charges you again, you throw the pole as hard as you can at him like a spear. Bullseye! Literally. The pole slams into his left eye and straight through his head. It still doesn’t slow him down though and you just barely get out his way. Frankie stops his attack for a moment and attempts to remove the pole, but you and another wolfling don’t miss the opportunity. The pole is quite long and you grab it from the front, while the other grabs it from the back and you both run clockwise around Frankie. All the titanium plating in the world isn’t going to protect him from massive head trauma. “RARRRRGH! BRAIN!” Frankie yells as half of his head comes apart. As he attempts to keep his brains from falling out, and that’s when the rest of the pack begins to beat his head in even more with various blunt objects. He’s still putting up a fight though. “NO! STOP! FRANKIE! MY SON!” you hear Victor scream over the loudspeaker. Victor’s voice sounds like its very close. You see another door in the lab, and you’ve got a really good feeling that he’s behind it. You leave the wolflings to finish off Frankie, and run to open the door. And there he is, Victor Frankenstein… Or what’s left of him at least, he’s just a brain in a jar, hooked up to various machines now. “Wow, Vic. I always knew you were a terrible mad scientist, but I would’ve thought you’d be able to at least create a robot body for yourself, or a youth elixir or something!” “Shut up Wolf! You haven’t won! I’ve still got…” “What? What’ve you got? Nothing! Unless you’re a giant space brain from Venus or some shit, you can’t do anything to me. And you ain’t, so…” ”Wait! Wolf! Can’t we talk about this?” “Oh like you wanted to talk to me, when you fed me drugged meat?” “Oh yeah…you’re not still mad about that are you? I mean you did kill me for it…” ”Yeah, and I should’ve stuck around to make sure you stayed dead. Well no mistakes this time.” You take Victor’s brain out of the jar. “NOOOOOOOO……” are the last words to come out of the loud speakers before you step back into the lab where Frankie is flailing wildly at the wolflings who are carefully standing out of harms way as they continue to make quick strikes as him. He’s badly damaged and blind. Not deaf though. You call over to Frankie who turns around when he recognizes your voice. “Hey Frankie, your Dad wants to talk to you, he’s got a lot on his mind.” You say and then throw Victor’s brain into what remains of Frankie’s face. The brain splatters into bloody pieces, while you follow up with a quick and vicious attack. You sink your fangs deep into Frankie’s shoulder until it hits the bone, where upon you rip off the arm at the socket. The rest of the pack follows your lead and help you rip Frankie apart, until he’s reduced to the pieces that made him up in the first place. “Damn, I think I broke a tooth on that fucking metal plating.” You say breathing heavily. “We won Wolf! You were right! This was fun! I felt the primal instinct and everything!” one of the wolflings exclaims. “Yeah and right now all of you are going to be feeling silver burning through your bodies.” Igor says standing in the lab door exit, pointing that infernal arm weapon at you all. > You stall for time You briefly entertain the idea of rushing Igor, he wouldn’t be able to get all of you, but you’re not ready to risk death at the hands of some deformed assistant after you already killed Victor and Frankie. You need to buy some time. “Alright Igor, just calm down. It’s over Vic and Frankie are dead. You don’t have to get pushed around by either one anymore and you got this whole castle as inheritance! I just did you a favor.” “A favor? A favor? You killed my younger brother you ASSHOLE!” You quickly put two and two together. “Vic? Victor was your brother? Your younger brother?” “He damn well better have been, after all the abuse I took from him! You know what it’s like being abused by your younger brother on a daily basis for YEARS?” “Not really, I killed all my brothers soon after we were born. I wasn’t sharing. Survival of the fittest and all.” You say dryly. “Really? Well I envy you. I wish I had that option. But nooo. Mom liked Vic best. Vic was handsome. Vic wasn’t deformed, Vic this. Vic that! Look after Vic, Igor. Make sure he doesn’t get into trouble Igor. He’s your younger brother and you have to protect him Igor. I was the first born! Why didn’t Igor get any love?! I was the smart one!” “Yes you were. I mean if it hadn’t been for you Vic wouldn’t have even created Frankie.” You say. “Damn straight! I was the one who kept his ass alive! I’m the one that corrected all his idiot ideas when it came to updating Frankie! I’m not stupid like everyone says! I’m smart! And I demand respect! And I never fucking got it! I just got a fucking whip to the hump!” At this point Igor is ranting so much about hating his brother and his self-pity, he’s not aiming his weapon at you any longer. You take advantage of the situation and rush at him, he’s not quick enough to react and you knock him to the ground before eviscerating him. Oddly after all that ranting, he dies gurgling an apology. “I’m sorry Vic…I tried…gurgle…” You shake your head at Igor’s misguided loyalty, while the Pack surrounds you. “We won! You rule Wolf! What now?” one of them asks. “Dunno, didn’t expect to survive really…so did you get all this on camera Mary?” you ask out loud, startling the wolflings. Mary comes out of hiding, with a camcorder. “How did you know I was here?” she asks “Please, I don’t forget a scent, especially one that I know quite intimately. So let me guess. You’re going to exploit this footage for financial gain right?” “Well yeah. When you left the studio I followed you a bit and found out you were heading here. At first I wanted to protect and help my family so I got here before you.” “What changed your mind?” “I realized what a bunch of miscreants and fuck ups they all were! What was I supposed to do? Be like Igor and stay loyal to a bunch of reprobates that wouldn’t appreciate it anyway? It’s not like they’re REALLY my family. So I just decided to film the epic battle since you ruined my original movie by taking this lot with you.” “I take it you didn’t care who won though.” “Not really, but if it makes you feel warm and squishy inside I suppose I was rooting for you more. You were the underdog after all…hey! That’s a great title for the movie!” Mary exclaims. The Wolflings get a little restless about all this. “Hey shouldn’t we do something, I mean she’s part of this fucked up family, and she’s trying to exploit us!” “Ah see now this is another lesson I can teach you guys. You don’t need to be an asshole all the time, especially when there’s some benefit for not doing so. A lesson I probably should’ve obeyed more when I was your age. Mary’s little movie is made purely for exploitation, but its GOOD exploitation. It’ll show everyone who we are and that we’re NOT to be fucked with! This isn’t some shitty family movie. This is raw footage of werewolves doing what they do best, kicking ass! We couldn’t ask for better publicity. AND I assume we’ll be getting some money for this right Mary?” Mary looks a little reluctant, but she realizes she has to give you something. “Right Wolf.” “That’s what I thought. Now the battle is good and all, but you’ll need to pad it out more, I say you start doing interviews with us. We can make this into a documentary! If you need more footage, we can always go bust up a bar…” And so it happens, Mary releases “Underdogs: The Inner Mind of the Wolf” in a bunch of pansy art theatres at first where it’s critically acclaimed. Later it gets released it regular theatres where most people like it mainly due to the brutal violence and your “colorful” interviews. You even win an award. The movie makes Werewolves “cool” again and you’re never out of work anymore, which is a good thing since Ginger gave birth to a litter of cubs which YOU have to pay to support! You come home every day to the little nippers biting your ankles for your attention. Still, life is good and you once again have achieved the fame and fear you deserve.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You order everyone to surround Frankie to try to keep him off guard. Frankie watches as the wolfling encircle him, but he’s still slowly moving towards you. He charges! A couple of the wolfling dive for his legs in an effort to stop him, but he’s like a juggernaut and keeps charging. Fortunately you’re still nimble and get out of his way as he smashes through the wall. The wolflings that dived for his legs, follow up and begin attack him with tooth and claw. It’s not having that great of an effect though, he’s got metal plating on that dead flesh now. Frankie kills the pair of them by smashing their heads together until there is nothing left except mush. “Everyone grab a weapon! Don’t fight him head on!” you bark at the survivors while attempting to find something. You find a large metal pole, though you’re reluctant to take it, with all the electricity in the damn room. “It’s useless! You’ll never defeat my boy Frankie!” Victor says. Frankie begins to approach you again. > You stand firm and wait for him to charge You hold the pole like a medieval pike waiting to skewer Frankie when he comes charging at you. It’s like throwing rocks at a tank. The pole certainly impales Frankie, but it barely slows him down, he continues his rush even as the pole breaks off into him and he slams his heavy body into you hard. You go flying into the wall and collapse on to the floor. Frankie follows up with stomping your head into mush. Werewolves do have regenerative powers, but you won’t be regenerating this severe damage since your brains have leaked out of your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Knowing that Vic works with electricity a lot, you figure he’s in that direction. You and the wolflings that are still with you follow, carefully avoiding traps. You travel further to higher levels of the castle where the burning smell is getting stronger. You KNOW you’re getting closer to him. You can feel it. You just hope his “experiment” is as great as he claims. It would suck if there wasn’t a real battle to fight after all this. You burst into the room with strong burning smell and see big globes of energy, conduits, generators and a big ass corpse with cybernetic implants lying on the table. It’s Frankie with some modifications and absorbing more electricity than lightning rod. You half expect to see Victor somewhere, but all you hear is the loudspeaker disturbing your ears again. “You see Wolf! You see! While you’ve been wasting away in that shitty cabin, I’ve been preparing for my son’s come back! You stole his woman! You ended his career! You didn’t just damage him physically, you damaged his mind! Scarred him emotionally! It’s taken me YEARS to undo the damage!” “Damaged his mind? He was a psychopathic serial pedophile made of corpses! What the fuck kind of damage could I have done? And Mary never liked him anyway!” “She could’ve learned! He could’ve too! They just needed more time! But YOU! You prevented all that! You and your dog dick!” “For fuck’s sake, I wasn’t the only one fucking her!” “Yes, but you’re the one who did it the longest and destroyed my poor boy’s career! You’re going to pay! Ha ha ha ha! He’s up! HE’S ALIVE! HE’S ALIVE! HE’S ALIVE! Frankie look who we have here! And old friend, why don’t you go and give him a big hug?” Victor goes into his mad scientist laugh yet again, as Frankie “2.0” gets up from the table. He opens his eyes and looks directly at you. “FRANKIE BEAT YOUR HEAD IN NOW.” He says with a booming voice. Still as verbal and articulate as ever. > You fight him head on Um…no. Even in your prime you would’ve had problems taking on Frankie in his current updated state. At your age it’s just unthinkable. You attempt to bite his neck in an effort to tear his head off, but he crushes his strong metallic arms around you squeezing with all his might. Your pack attempts to help, but Frankie is too focused on his revenge. Even when you tear out his eyes, he continues to squash your internal organs until he finally breaks your back and throws you blindly into one of those electric generators. Your limp corpse fries for a little while, but unlike Frankie, it doesn’t bring you back to life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Damn straight! That’s what you’re here for! You take out the nearest pile of shit with ease and your pack follows suit. They’re a little tougher than you thought, but limbs are flying everywhere. Needless to say you’re really enjoying yourself, and you can see your pack is too. (Well the ones that haven’t gotten themselves killed) You attack one large experiment with four arms, it catches a few heavy hits on you, before you rip them off. It’s relentless and begins smashing its head (Which contains a lot of jagged metal bits) into you, knocking you down. As you shake it off, Ginger (Who’s now in wolf form) and a couple of other wolflings comes to your aid and finish off the large abomination. “Godammit! I had that! Don’t EVER come to help me! I can handle myself!” you snarl angrily. “We were just helping…” Ginger says casting her eyes downward and lowering her ears. “…yeah…well…just don’t let it happen again…” you say understanding they weren’t really trying to embarrass you. “Come on, we’re done here, let’s get in the castle.” You meet up with the ones remaining in your pack at the front door of the castle. You put all your muscle into it and rip the doors of their hinges. When you step inside, you narrowly dodge a laser beam of some sort. “He’s got the whole place trapped, be careful where you…” A wolfling steps on some floor stone that releases yet another beam trap, reducing him to ashes. “Step.” You say completing the sentence. That’s when you hear a loud speaker. “Wolf! Igor informed me you had arrived with some friends! I’m actually glad you’re here I get to test out my new experiment on you! Assuming you survive long enough to get to me of course!” At this point he does his typical Mad Scientist laugh. If he thinks you’re going to waste your time in his castle of death traps he’s sadly mistaken. He seems to have forgotten you have an excellent sense of smell and tracking in general. Of course the smell of dead bodies seems to be emanating everywhere. You try to sniff out a human scent, but you aren’t getting anything solid. The dead body smell is too overpowering. You’re catching a couple of different ones though. One of them is a very faint sweet smell. The other is a burning type smell. > You follow the sweet smell Even though you’re sure that the burning smell is probably where Vic is at, the sweet smell is so out of place here, you’re compelled to follow it. You tell the wolflings to follow the burning smell while you investigate the other one. They look a little unsure of being without you leading them, but they follow your instructions. Carefully avoiding traps, you travel further to different parts of the castle where the sweet smell starts getting so strong it’s almost sickening, until you finally get to a closed door. You open the door to an elegant bedroom. The smell pervades the entire area. Someone soaked this place in perfume and there you see Mary standing there in a see-through nightgown. You’re genuinely surprised to see her here. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist. I knew you’d follow this scent. it’s the very perfume I used to wear when we had our affair.” “Mary? What the hell are you doing here and why the hell did you douse the room in the shit?” “I know you don’t like the dead smell, I don’t like it either. I makes me remember that I’m not alive…I never was.” “Yeah, well this smell isn’t too pleasant either. Whew!” “You know out the many, many…many lovers I had, you know you’re the only one that made me feel alive? Like a real woman, instead of collection of parts as you’ve pointed out so accurately so many times.” Mary begins to get closer to you. “Look Mary I ain’t got time for this reminiscing bullshit, I’m on a mission of kicking ass right now and you’d do well to stay out of my way. Why are you here anyway?” you ask again. “I figured after you left the studio, you’d be in a wicked mood. I thought you’d probably just take your pack and smash up a bar or something. I followed you for a bit and found out you were planning on coming here. Look. I understand that my family has wronged you in many ways. My dad has, Frankie has, and I know I have, but I can’t let you kill them. I know they’re all fucked up and even I don’t like them, but they’re still my family such as they are. Wolf you already got your revenge a long time ago. I mean you beat the hell out of Frankie and ended his career and I heard tales about how you even killed my Dad once before he created either of us. What’s this all going to prove? My dad isn’t any match for you now. He’s barely alive. Frankie has been just lying on a slab for years. Dad took him apart in an effort to fix him. That’s the only experiment he’s talking about and he’s nowhere completed. Dad spends all his time with the insane idea of revitalizing Frankie for a come back. I tell him that it isn’t going to happen, but he continues anyway. There’s no battle here Wolf. Just a lot of empty dreams and delusions.” At this point she takes your paw and brushes her other hand against your fur. “Please Wolf, just let my family live. If you have any lingering feelings for me that I know you once did, just call off your attack.” > You call off the attack Mary’s plea for you to spare her family has gotten to you. Maybe she’s right. Maybe you did do a lot of damage to them already. Maybe you were just trying to relive your own youth. Maybe you’re a complete fucking idiot. As soon as you embrace Mary, you feel multiple shots to the back and extreme pain. You collapse to the floor, as Mary stands back from you angrily shouting. “Igor, you humped backed fucker! Those bullets went through him and hit me! Asshole!” “Hey, I can’t control the damn power of this thing. So is he dead?” “Not quite.” Mary heftily kicks you over as you struggle to breathe. “Poor Wolf. You of all people forgot the cardinal rule. Blood is always thicker and you abandoned your own kind over silly nostalgic feelings for me. I am touched though. I shall always remember you as your pelt covers my body as a new coat. Time to put this doggie down Igor.” “I’m on it.” Igor raises his weapon once more and blasts your head off in a hail of silver.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Even though you’re sure that the burning smell is probably where Vic is at, the sweet smell is so out of place here, you’re compelled to follow it. You tell the wolflings to follow the burning smell while you investigate the other one. They look a little unsure of being without you leading them, but they follow your instructions. Carefully avoiding traps, you travel further to different parts of the castle where the sweet smell starts getting so strong it’s almost sickening, until you finally get to a closed door. You open the door to an elegant bedroom. The smell pervades the entire area. Someone soaked this place in perfume and there you see Mary standing there in a see-through nightgown. You’re genuinely surprised to see her here. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist. I knew you’d follow this scent. it’s the very perfume I used to wear when we had our affair.” “Mary? What the hell are you doing here and why the hell did you douse the room in the shit?” “I know you don’t like the dead smell, I don’t like it either. I makes me remember that I’m not alive…I never was.” “Yeah, well this smell isn’t too pleasant either. Whew!” “You know out the many, many…many lovers I had, you know you’re the only one that made me feel alive? Like a real woman, instead of collection of parts as you’ve pointed out so accurately so many times.” Mary begins to get closer to you. “Look Mary I ain’t got time for this reminiscing bullshit, I’m on a mission of kicking ass right now and you’d do well to stay out of my way. Why are you here anyway?” you ask again. “I figured after you left the studio, you’d be in a wicked mood. I thought you’d probably just take your pack and smash up a bar or something. I followed you for a bit and found out you were planning on coming here. Look. I understand that my family has wronged you in many ways. My dad has, Frankie has, and I know I have, but I can’t let you kill them. I know they’re all fucked up and even I don’t like them, but they’re still my family such as they are. Wolf you already got your revenge a long time ago. I mean you beat the hell out of Frankie and ended his career and I heard tales about how you even killed my Dad once before he created either of us. What’s this all going to prove? My dad isn’t any match for you now. He’s barely alive. Frankie has been just lying on a slab for years. Dad took him apart in an effort to fix him. That’s the only experiment he’s talking about and he’s nowhere completed. Dad spends all his time with the insane idea of revitalizing Frankie for a come back. I tell him that it isn’t going to happen, but he continues anyway. There’s no battle here Wolf. Just a lot of empty dreams and delusions.” At this point she takes your paw and brushes her other hand against your fur. “Please Wolf, just let my family live. If you have any lingering feelings for me that I know you once did, just call off your attack.” > You continue the attack For a moment you almost believed her. For a moment she almost displayed real emotions and feelings. For a moment you almost were a complete idiot, except you remember the old prejudice that you’ve never forgotten: “No matter how much the Undead try to mimic feelings, they have none.” You hear a click of a wall opening up. You see a metal arm point out and run out of the room, pushing Mary in the way. Igor opens fire and Mary takes king’s ransom in silver to her body, toppling her over with a heavy thud. She’s not dead, but she’ll need some new parts and a major stitch job. “Igor, you fucking idiot!” she yells from the floor attempting to get up. “Go help Dad! Wolf’s probably on his way there!” If Mary knew you were coming back, she probably wouldn’t have dismissed Igor so quickly. She manages to stand up just as you stand in the doorway…with a torch. “You know what I like about these old castles? They always have torches and candles lighting the corridors.” You say. “Even in my present condition, you won’t get close enough to use that thing!” Mary says with defiance. “Save your feeble threats, but I don’t need to get close, you doused your room with perfume in your overly elaborate and dramatic attempt to trick me. Bye bye baby.” Mary’s eyes widen as you dump the torch on the floor which lights up the room spectacularly. Mary attempts to get out of flames, but all the silver in her body makes her too heavy and she falls over again. “Hmm, maybe the undead do have emotions. She certainly looked scared and sounds like she’s in pain.” You say as you leave to catch up with the rest of the pack. You don’t get far when you see the wolflings running towards you. Many of them are wounded, some badly. “What’s going on?” you ask, stopping one of them. “It’s too damn big! It’s unstoppable! We really tried! Honest!” “What?!” “Frankie! He’s been heavily modified. He doesn’t look at all like he did the old pictures I’ve ever seen of him!” No sooner have you been informed when you hear that damn loud speaker again, the remaining wolflings run past you. “You see Wolf! You see! While you’ve been wasting away in that shitty cabin, I’ve been preparing for my son’s come back! You stole his woman! You ended his career! You didn’t just damage him physically, you damaged his mind! Scarred him emotionally! It’s taken me YEARS to undo the damage!” “Damaged his mind? He was a psychopathic serial pedophile made of corpses! What the fuck kind of damage could I have done? And Mary never liked him anyway!” you retort. “She could’ve learned! He could’ve too! They just needed more time! But YOU! You prevented all that! You and your dog dick!” “For fuck’s sake I wasn’t the only one fucking her!” “Yes, but you’re the one who did it the longest and destroyed my poor boy’s career! You’re going to pay! Frankie look who we have here! And old friend, why don’t you go and give him a big hug?” Victor goes into his mad scientist laugh yet again, and Frankie “2.0” comes lumbering down the hallway, he’s definitely got that cybernetic look now. “FRANKIE BEAT YOUR HEAD IN.” He says with a booming voice. Still as verbal and articulate as ever. > You grab a torch and burn him The problem with this tactic, is you’ve neglected to remember that Frankie has been vastly updated whereas Mary wasn.’t. Titanium plating doesn’t burn very well, as you find this out the hard way when you grab a nearby torch and shove it into Frankie’s body. It doesn’t do any notable damage. Frankie does some notable damage to you though. He grabs your arm, breaking it in several places, and then takes the torch and sets YOU on fire, by shoving the flaming torch right through your body. Fur seems to burn very well.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For a moment you almost believed her. For a moment she almost displayed real emotions and feelings. For a moment you almost were a complete idiot, except you remember the old prejudice that you’ve never forgotten: “No matter how much the Undead try to mimic feelings, they have none.” You hear a click of a wall opening up. You see a metal arm point out and run out of the room, pushing Mary in the way. Igor opens fire and Mary takes king’s ransom in silver to her body, toppling her over with a heavy thud. She’s not dead, but she’ll need some new parts and a major stitch job. “Igor, you fucking idiot!” she yells from the floor attempting to get up. “Go help Dad! Wolf’s probably on his way there!” If Mary knew you were coming back, she probably wouldn’t have dismissed Igor so quickly. She manages to stand up just as you stand in the doorway…with a torch. “You know what I like about these old castles? They always have torches and candles lighting the corridors.” You say. “Even in my present condition, you won’t get close enough to use that thing!” Mary says with defiance. “Save your feeble threats, but I don’t need to get close, you doused your room with perfume in your overly elaborate and dramatic attempt to trick me. Bye bye baby.” Mary’s eyes widen as you dump the torch on the floor which lights up the room spectacularly. Mary attempts to get out of flames, but all the silver in her body makes her too heavy and she falls over again. “Hmm, maybe the undead do have emotions. She certainly looked scared and sounds like she’s in pain.” You say as you leave to catch up with the rest of the pack. You don’t get far when you see the wolflings running towards you. Many of them are wounded, some badly. “What’s going on?” you ask, stopping one of them. “It’s too damn big! It’s unstoppable! We really tried! Honest!” “What?!” “Frankie! He’s been heavily modified. He doesn’t look at all like he did the old pictures I’ve ever seen of him!” No sooner have you been informed when you hear that damn loud speaker again, the remaining wolflings run past you. “You see Wolf! You see! While you’ve been wasting away in that shitty cabin, I’ve been preparing for my son’s come back! You stole his woman! You ended his career! You didn’t just damage him physically, you damaged his mind! Scarred him emotionally! It’s taken me YEARS to undo the damage!” “Damaged his mind? He was a psychopathic serial pedophile made of corpses! What the fuck kind of damage could I have done? And Mary never liked him anyway!” you retort. “She could’ve learned! He could’ve too! They just needed more time! But YOU! You prevented all that! You and your dog dick!” “For fuck’s sake I wasn’t the only one fucking her!” “Yes, but you’re the one who did it the longest and destroyed my poor boy’s career! You’re going to pay! Frankie look who we have here! And old friend, why don’t you go and give him a big hug?” Victor goes into his mad scientist laugh yet again, and Frankie “2.0” comes lumbering down the hallway, he’s definitely got that cybernetic look now. “FRANKIE BEAT YOUR HEAD IN.” He says with a booming voice. Still as verbal and articulate as ever. > You retreat You jump out of Frankie’s way as he smashes into the wall behind you. You make your way quickly down the stairs, where you here Frankie getting back up and following you down them like a freight train. You’re still a good ways from the bottom, but you see Igor appear at the bottom. You can’t stop or Frankie will slam into you and probably kill you by breaking every bone in your body and tearing you apart. You can keep going and attempt to jump towards Igor hoping you’ll land on him before he can fire accurately or you could jump over the banister and get out of the way altogether. The only problem with this is you’re still pretty high up. You wouldn’t die from such a fall, but you could break something if you land wrong and you certainly don’t want that disadvantage. > You jump over the banister You jump over the banister. Frankie goes flying past you unable to stop himself. You hear gunfire and some sounds of bullets plinking off of metal and burying themselves into flesh. “OH SHIT!” you hear Igor shout. This term is followed by your own, when you see that you were a lot higher than you thought. You go crashing through a solid wooden dining table. It hurts...A LOT. You don’t get up right away and you half expect Frankie or Igor to come and finish you off, but fortunately that doesn’t happen. You painfully rise and prepare yourself for the final battle, which doesn’t occur. You go over to the bottom of the stairs and see the wolflings taking advantage of Frankie’s weakened prone state and getting revenge for the beating he gave them all earlier. As for Igor he’s lying under Frankie crushed and dying. He’s bleeding from his ears, mouth, nose and eyes. “(Gurgle) (sputter) I’m sorry…Vic…Sorry brother…(Gurgle)” he says before dying. “Well I guess that explains his loyalty.” You say to yourself. “Hey Wolf you want to get in on this?” A wolfling says ripping a hand off of Frankie. “Nah, you’ve earned this. I’m just going to go back upstairs and finish off Victor.” “Need any of us to come up with you?” “No, you just make sure you do a good job of killing Frankie there.” You head back up stairs and head to the lab that Frankie came bursting out of, it’s empty, but there’s another door in the room and you’ve got the impression that a certain doctor is behind it. You open the door to a small room with a bunch of big computers hooked up to a brain in a jar… “Dr. Frankenstein I presume?” you say. “Wow Vic, I would’ve thought you would’ve at least made a clone body or something.” “Frankie! Igor! Get in here! NOW!” ‘They’re dead just like you’ll be soon and should’ve been before.” “Erm…Wolf! Hold on! Come on, I can’t do anything to you! This isn’t fair! Hold on how about…” “How about you shut up and die?” you say and take Victor’s brain out of the jar. “NOOOOOO….” Is the last thing that comes out of the loud speakers as you crush the brain under your foot. Its over. You won, and you fucking hurt like hell. You stagger back downstairs where you find Frankie completely in pieces. The wolflings look at you expectantly. “Did you kill him?’ “Yeah, and it was hardly worth the effort.” You reply. “What are we going to do now?” another asks. “Well I don’t know about you, but I’m going back home to rest.” “But aren’t you taking us to raise hell somewhere else?” “Maybe some other day. Look I’m not here to lead you around by the paw. If you want to raise hell you can certainly do it without me. I showed you the way of the wolf tonight, it’s up to you to do something with it. Just remember you’re fucking werewolves, live up to the name.” You get back on your Harley and head home. Hopefully you taught the new generation something so tonight wasn’t a complete bust. You didn’t really get to have the epic battle you were looking for, but you survived and in the end that’s what it’s all about.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You jump out of Frankie’s way as he smashes into the wall behind you. You make your way quickly down the stairs, where you here Frankie getting back up and following you down them like a freight train. You’re still a good ways from the bottom, but you see Igor appear at the bottom. You can’t stop or Frankie will slam into you and probably kill you by breaking every bone in your body and tearing you apart. You can keep going and attempt to jump towards Igor hoping you’ll land on him before he can fire accurately or you could jump over the banister and get out of the way altogether. The only problem with this is you’re still pretty high up. You wouldn’t die from such a fall, but you could break something if you land wrong and you certainly don’t want that disadvantage. > You jump towards Igor What happens next is so quick it’s amazing you survive it. You leap up in the air in an effort to land on Igor before he fires. Frankie is still charging behind you, but that changes when you leap up into the air, because he ends up being underneath you when gains more momentum. Meanwhile Igor is attempting to lift that heavy arm weapon of his to accurately shoot you. The weight and the recoil makes it difficult and he’s not very accurate and begins firing everywhere randomly in your AND Frankie’s direction. You’re still airborn heading towards Igor and now Frankie as well who’s somehow gotten in front of you due to him being unable to stop himself at this point. This is fortunate since this causes Frankie to block most of the randomly fired bullets with his body. You still take a couple in the leg though. “OH SHIT! Igor yells as Frankie slams into him and the floor at terrific speed. You don’t fair much better since you crash into the back of Frankie which is pretty hard due to the metal plating. It hurts like hell and you crawl off as quickly as possible while Frankie attempts to recover. Igor isn’t recovering as quickly; he’s bleeding from every orifice and whatever cybernetic parts he had can go to the scrap yard. You’re in great pain and you got some silver bullets in your leg, but you need to act. > You finish off Igor You’ll never be able to fight Frankie in this condition and in his updated status, you get an idea. You go over to Igor who pathetically attempts to point his weapon at you. You easily grab his arm weapon and begin to pull the thing out its weakened socket. Blood spurts all over you and Igor finally dies from the loss of it. “I’m sorry Vic…my brother… (gurgle)” he sputters. “Hm, that explains his loyalty I guess.” You say to yourself. Frankie’s is attempting to recover from his own wounds, but you’re not going to give him a chance to do it. You point Igor’s arm at Frankie and manipulate the tendons inside. The gun fires and you blast half of Frankie’s head off with a rain of silver bullets. The recoil causes you to fall to the ground and the heat from it burns the fur on your hands. “Holy shit that was fucking cool.” You say impressed. Frankie’s not dead yet though, he tries to get back up, so you just take the weapon and club him in what remains of his head with it until he stays down for good. You then tear him apart to make sure. You stand over Frankie’s body parts panting heavily. You can’t even give a victory howl. You’re too tired. The rest of the pack comes in, somewhat surprised to see you alive. “You’re alive!” “Of course I’m alive! No thanks to you! Where the hell were you assholes?” “Um…well we didn’t know if we should help since you got mad when we did it last time…” You can’t even argue with them, you’re too tired to do even that. You only have the strength to do one more thing… You head upstairs by yourself, back to the lab Frankie came bursting out of, its empty, but there’s another door in the room and you’ve got the impression that a certain doctor is behind it. You open the door to a small room with a bunch of big computers hooked up to a brain in a jar… “Vic, you really are a shitty Mad Scientist, you couldn’t even come up with a better way to prolong your life.” “Frankie! Igor! Get in here! NOW!” ‘They’re dead just like you’ll be soon and should’ve been before.” “Erm…Wolf! Hold on! Come on, I can’t do anything to you! Hasn’t there been enough killing for one day!? “Not yet.” you say and take Victor’s brain out of the jar. “NOOOOOO….” Is the last thing that comes out of the loud speakers as you crush the brain under your foot. “NOW there’s been enough killing for one day.” You say. Its over. You won, and you fucking hurt like hell. You stagger back downstairs. Where the wolflings look at you expectantly. “Did you kill him?’ “Yeah, and it was hardly worth the effort.” You reply. “What are we going to do now?” another asks. “Well I don’t know about you, but I’m going back home to rest.” “But aren’t you taking us to raise hell somewhere else? We want to do more werewolf stuff!” “Raise hell? You fuckers made ME do all the damn work! I killed every single member of this fucked up family all by my damn self! As far as I’m concerned I’M the only werewolf here! The rest of you are fucking lapdogs at best! I’m not leading any of you anywhere until you go prove otherwise…no fuck that. I don’t want to see ANY of you again! Well except Ginger. You know where I live baby. When you don’t want to hang around with these neutered pups, come see me.” Unsurprisingly Ginger comes with you immediately. You and Ginger get back on your Harley and head home. You’re now convinced that you’re the last of a dying breed. Today’s youth are fucking spoiled. Still, you got to prove that you’re still the baddest ass Alpha Wolf this world is ever going to see, and it’ll be a long time before the world sees an Alpha Wolf like you again. That is until Ginger has a litter of cubs…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>What happens next is so quick it’s amazing you survive it. You leap up in the air in an effort to land on Igor before he fires. Frankie is still charging behind you, but that changes when you leap up into the air, because he ends up being underneath you when gains more momentum. Meanwhile Igor is attempting to lift that heavy arm weapon of his to accurately shoot you. The weight and the recoil makes it difficult and he’s not very accurate and begins firing everywhere randomly in your AND Frankie’s direction. You’re still airborn heading towards Igor and now Frankie as well who’s somehow gotten in front of you due to him being unable to stop himself at this point. This is fortunate since this causes Frankie to block most of the randomly fired bullets with his body. You still take a couple in the leg though. “OH SHIT! Igor yells as Frankie slams into him and the floor at terrific speed. You don’t fair much better since you crash into the back of Frankie which is pretty hard due to the metal plating. It hurts like hell and you crawl off as quickly as possible while Frankie attempts to recover. Igor isn’t recovering as quickly; he’s bleeding from every orifice and whatever cybernetic parts he had can go to the scrap yard. You’re in great pain and you got some silver bullets in your leg, but you need to act. > You finish off Frankie You limp over to Frankie while he’s recovering and land a few well placed strikes, even ripping off some of the back plating. It’s no good though; Frankie’s still got a lot of fight in him. He turns around, grabs you by the throat and begins to squeeze the shit out of it, raising you off the ground. Igor who’s dying makes one last effort to avenge his last blunder. “For my brother Vic!” he yells and fires his weapon at you one last time. He can’t miss at this range and your death is instantaneous.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You tell everyone to get the hell out of Igor’s range and take cover. Fortunately Igor’s gun-arm isn’t the best design and he’s having problems aiming and standing still due to the recoil, so you all manage to hide behind some nearby rocks Still, there’s no way you’re going to be able to scale the front gate with Igor on that damn tower. “See I knew this was a bad idea!” one of the wolflings says. “How are we supposed to get past that? I’m pretty sure he’s firing silver bullets at us.” “Oh I KNOW he is. Hence the reason why I told everyone to get out of the way. Okay so we’re not going through the front gate, the castle’s a big place right? Igor’s only guarding the front. I say we split up and scale the walls on the sides and around the back. We’ll meet up inside the castle.” “Yeah, but won’t there be other defenses?” “Probably. So you better be fucking prepared! This ain’t no damn game. You cubs think you’re really tough when in fact you’ve probably never had a real challenge. This is it. Don’t think about backing out now. This is where we truly test the idea of survival of the fittest. Damn, my blood is starting to feel that rush! Don’t you all feel it? I haven’t felt this way since they sent a group of ten “werewolf assassins” to put me down. Shit. They never tried that again! Ha ha ha ha ha!” While you’re reveling in gruesome nostalgia, your pack is looking at you like you’ve completely lost it. And they’re probably right. However, your speech seems to have stirred something in them. “The crazy old fossil’s right! I remember having to hear about similar stuff my grandfather used to talk about all the damn time. I never really paid any attention to it before. Now I think I understand. We need to prove our skills to truly be proud to call ourselves werewolves!” one of them states. “Now that’s the attitude I’m talking about!” You all huddle in the rain and make a howling noise in unison to the moon and proceed with your plan. You all split up into a couple of groups and begin to scale the side and back walls, which really isn’t all that difficult. You know Igor’s probably ran off to warn Vic though. All you can think is, he better have something better than just Igor and Frankie defending him. As you prowl around in the courtyard, you hear moaning and the clomping of several footsteps. You and your group turn to see some of Vic’s defenses. “Zombies? Are you fucking kidding me Vic? I thought you’d at least have some robots or something!” you say to yourself. Though upon a second look, you see that the horde of corpses aren’t actually zombies. Zombies are complete corpses brought back to life. These things look more like Frankie, except designed even worse. A lot of them have arms and legs in odd places. Some have a couple of heads or extra limbs. Most aren’t even stitched together neatly, there are just giant rivets and spikes sticking out, holding them together. These are probably some of his “failed” experiments. Doesn’t matter, they’re close enough to be Undead for you. > You out run them and get into the castle You don’t have time to fight some half ass experiments, the wolflings can handle that. You’re after a bigger prize. You leave the pack behind and run to the front door of the castle where upon you rip it off the hinges. You’re in such a hurry to kill Victor; you don’t proceed cautiously enough and forget that he’s probably trapped the place. You step on a floor panel and a laser beam suddenly shoots out, incinerating you into ash.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your recent dealings with Mary, have made you think about all the shit you’ve had to put up with from that no talent dickhead. No human has ever given you such trouble. You know he’s still alive. (Mad scientists always find ways of prolonging their lives somehow) That won’t be true for long though, if you get your way. You killed him once before. This time you’re going to make sure he stays that way. He’s probably got whatever crappy inventions and experiments protecting his castle and from what you know, Frankie’s still living with his “Dad” as well. You don’t give a fuck, you’ll kill him too. You figure you’ll be doing the world a favor as well as getting some satisfaction. Besides, you’ve got to show these wolflings what being a werewolf is all about. “All right you cubs! We’re going to go raise some fucking hell. We’re going to Frankenstein’s Castle. We’re going to rip the place apart brick by brick, and I’M going to rip Victor apart limb from limb.” “Erm…Castle Frankenstien? Isn’t that where Frankie lives?” one of the wolflings asks. “I heard he’s really powerful, didn’t he fight Dracula and win?” ‘I dunno if we should mess with him.” You can’t believe your ears! These snot nosed pups know nothing of their heritage! Back in the old days they would’ve been killed and eaten for such cowardice! “Goddammit are you Wolves or fucking Chihuahuas? Frankie’s a fucking pussy! I personally kicked his ass before and I’ll do it again all by myself if I have too! Now are you going to run with me and be a fucking Wolf or are you going to go back home with your tails tucked between your legs?” After looking at each other for awhile they all agree to go with you. “Good! Now I want all of you to transform into your wolf form too! I’m traveling with fellow wolves not humans!” Just before one of the females begins to transform, you stop her. She’s dressed in a short leather skirt and a tight white t-shirt that’s tied in the center and has long flowing brown hair. You can smell that she’s in heat. You hate to coin a pun, but she literally is one hot l’il bitch. “Erm, not you. You stay in your human form; I kind of like the whole teenage slut look you got going on. In fact you come here right now; you’ll be traveling on my bike with me.” You say. As she slides in behind you and holds on, you ask her one more question. “So what’s your name?” “Ginger. What’s your name, you never did tell us.” “Wolf. Just Wolf baby. Remember it. You’ll be screaming it later.” Damn you’re so fucking cool, you think as you start up your Harley and ride ahead of the pack. (You’d probably be even cooler if these pups weren’t all riding those Japanese “crotch rocket” bikes, but that’ll have to be another lesson for another day) After a couple of days of riding, and a few “pit stops” with Ginger, you all eventually reach Castle Frankenstein. You park your bikes at the gate, and size the place up, which now looks a lot different. It looks like a damn Nazi fortress now, there’s guard towers and everything. It seems Victor has been keeping himself very busy in recent years. As it begins to rain, a familiar voice calls to you from one of the towers. “Its you. Vic always knew you’d return one day. I never believed him though. I guess I owe him fifty bucks.” You look up and see Igor, he looks different too. He has a lot of clumsy cybernetic implants, one of them being some sort of gun in place of an arm. More of Vic’s “handy work” no doubt. He’s still got that damn hump on his back though. “Igor? You still alive? I thought your ungrateful master would’ve just let you die of old age and get himself another assistant. I see he did a real good job of improving you though. Tell me, how’s it feel to be the real brains, never getting the credit and continuing to be a doormat?” “I’m happy with my lot in life. How’s it feel to be broke ass overgrown dog who’s trying to relive his lost youth?” Igor retorts back. “Don’t know yet. I’ll tell you before I shove that metal arm up your ass.” Well looks like the fight’s starting here. > You memories (Igor) The Assistant: Igor You’ve never really had much contact with Igor, other than knowing he’s Victor’s assistant. For awhile you thought he and Vic had something ELSE going on, (Much like Vlad and Renfield) but that’s not the case. Igor’s just a loyal henchman. You always wondered why he is though. Despite general public perception, he’s not stupid. In fact, he’s been the one that’s given Vic most of his “successful” experiment ideas. Vic wouldn’t even be around if it hadn’t been for Igor. Vic doesn’t seem to appreciate any of his help though and doesn’t treat him very well. He treats his experiments better than he treats Igor. You can only guess Igor is a masochist, or has some severe self-esteem problems. Probably both.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“So you had me in mind eh? Well that proves it. You think I’m a joke because that’s how you wrote the character.” “What? No! I just…” “I see your time with that bloodsucker was well spent. Learning how to exploit and leech right? Look maybe you can pull this shit with those puppies over there, but I ain’t fucking one! I don’t need the money that badly. I’ll go fucking live my twilight years in the forest and DIE there as nature probably intended. I don’t need this shit.” As you turn to leave, Mary shouts at you. “Yeah, that’s right go on leave Mr. Lone Wolf! You’ll fucking die alone, you stubborn bastard! I tried to help you! Erik tried to help you and you don’t appreciate any of it! That’s why none of your children speak to you and…” You run back over to her and slam her into the wall. You stare at her face to face as she struggles to get free. She’s strong, but you manage to keep her pinned. She really pissed you off and you were already pissed off to begin with. “Fuck you, and fuck Erik! You two don’t know shit about me, never did. I’m through with the pair of you! In fact I think I’ll be taking something with me since you’re so worried about me being alone…” You release Mary and go over to the wolflings who look a little worried that you’re going to cause harm to them. Many of them cast their eyes downward. “Hey, you want to be REALLY tough? You want to really raise some hell? Come with me. If you want to stay under the thumb of this patchwork dead bitch and be exploited and mocked, stay here. Your statement alone convinces all of them. They all follow you, even the one you made an example of. Mary attempts to call everyone back, but it’s useless, you’ve taken control of the pack and they’ll do what you want now. And right now you want to get into a fight. You think about all the people and creatures that wronged you in some way and only two of them keep coming to mind consistently. One is that fucking Dr. Victor Frankenstein. If it wasn’t for him, Frankie and Mary wouldn’t have been created in the first place which also means you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into trouble all those years ago. You wouldn’t have had to put up with his “children” taking jobs away from you. Not to mention he sued you once. But the one who you REALLY despise, is that bisexual bloodsucker. Fucking Dracula or Vlad, or whatever the hell he’s calling himself these days. The disgust you have for him and the reasons are too numerous to list here. > You go kick Vlad's ass Its long over due and its time. You need to go fucking kill that bloodsucker or die trying. You need to prove that you are and always will be the baddest of the monsters. You also need to prove to these wolflings that they need to be proud of their fucking heritage and not play second fiddle to some overgrown leeches. “All right you cubs! We’re going to go raise some fucking hell. We’re going to Dracula’s Castle. We’re going to rip the place apart brick by brick, and every fucking bloodsucker in the goddamned place and I’M going to rip Fagula apart limb from limb, drive a stake in his heart, cut his head off and then shove his dick in his mouth!” The Wolflings look very apprehensive about your suggestion, in fact they outright refuse. “You’re a fucking crazy old coot; if you think we’re gonna follow you to Dracula’s Castle! Fuck that, he’s got an army of bloodsuckers and ghouls and who knows what the hell else! We can’t win that Wolf! Can’t we just bust up a bar or something?” one of them exclaims You can’t believe your ears! These snot nosed pups know nothing of their heritage! Back in the old days they would’ve been killed and eaten for such cowardice! “Goddammit are you Wolves or fucking Chihuahuas? Vampires have been taking OUR rightful place in the monster hierarchy for centuries! We need to set the fucking record straight on this shit! Now are you going to run with me and be a fucking Wolf or are you going to go back home with your tails tucked between your legs?” After looking at each other for awhile they all begin to leave and head back to the studio. “Oh fuckin’ fine then, play werewolf in a movie, but I can see I’m the only fuckin’ REAL Werewolf here, the rest of you are just goddamn overgrown dingos! Fuck this, I don’t give a shit, I’ll kill Dracula my own goddamned self. I don’t need anybody’s help!” You get on your Harley and ride. You only make a few stops on your way; you’re completely driven to have your final showdown with Vlad. Finally after a few days of riding you reach Dracula’s Castle. The place looks exactly the same. You get off your bike and scale the high iron gate. As you jump down into the courtyard you half expect yourself to be overwhelmed by vampires, or even ghouls, but nothing happens. This is weird, there aren’t even any guards patrolling or even at the door. In fact it sounds like a party is going on inside. You hear lots of laughter and music. Suddenly someone comes outside and sees you. It’s some Vampire chick. “Ohhh, a Werewolf! Wow, I didn’t know any of you types were invited to the party; I thought Drac hated you guys. Well what’re you doing standing outside? Come on in the party’s just starting!” she says waving you in. A bit of a different approach than you were preparing for, but you enter. You entrance to the ballroom is immediately a big event. You’re the only Werewolf there. Everyone else is either a Vampire, a ghoul, or even a human “servant”. Everyone is staring at you, some with wonder and interest, most with hatred, a few in awe. Most probably haven’t encountered a Werewolf like you before. The staring would probably continue if another slightly out of place being didn’t come shuffling up to you to talk you in a friendly manner causing the bloodsuckers to go back to partying. It’s Im-Ho-Tep. You’re surprised to see him here. “Wolf?! YOU got an invitation to this thing? I can’t believe it! What the hell did you and Dracula kiss and make up?” he remarks with his scratchy sounding voice. “Not in this life time Teppy. What’re you doing here?” ”Me? Oh you know Vlad, he’s always gotta put on a show. Likes to play up the whole royalty thing to the other bloodsuckers, so he always invites me to these things to prove he’s got connections or something since I was a Prince. I always keep telling him, it’s a meaningless title since the Egyptian Empire fell thousands of years ago, but he insists on flying me out here, making a big fuss and everything so what the hell, it’s not like I got anything better to do plus I get a kick out of watching the bloodsuckers get drunk and make idiots out of themselves, well that and I like to look at some of these Vamp chicks. Heh, guess that makes me a voyeur, but again what the hell, its one of the few pleasures I get in this world anymore. But enough about this dirty old man, what brings you here if you weren’t invited? Just randomly crashing the party?” “Sort of…I didn’t even know there was one…I’m here to kill Fagula.” You whisper quietly. Tep’s eyes widen a bit under his bandages. He isn’t entirely surprised (At his age barely anything surprises him anymore) but he was caught a little off guard by your statement. “Wow Wolf…I can tell you’re really not joking about this. All I can say is… what took you so long? I thought this day would come long before now. Lost some bets because of it, oh well easy come easy go. Well you know your secret’s safe with me, though I suppose it won’t be a secret for too much longer! You’re still the craziest sonofabitch I know, but then you always did know how to liven up a party! Ha ha! Ol’ Vlad will probably be making his grand entrance soon, so just wait awhile. He threw this party for some kind of special announcement he has to make. I still got a bet with Erik that you would win if you and Drac ever got into a battle to the death. I’ll be hoping to collect that bet from Erik. Good luck!” Tep then shuffles off back to where he sitting. Erik bet against you? Fucking little depressed shit! You’re going to have a little talk with him after all this. You put your back against the wall, watching everyone while waiting for Dracula to arrive. An hour passes and you’re fucking sick of waiting, you don’t feel like waiting for him to make “an entrance”. You’re here to commit major mayhem on him, not listen to anything he has to say. While you’re surveying the place, you see a disheveled man peek out from a corner across the room and then slink back. That was Renfield, you’d know Fagula’s sycophantic bitch boy anywhere. > You wait a little longer You figure he really can’t be that long now, and decide to wait. Soon you see Renfield come back, he tells everyone to quiet down on orders of his master. “Excuse me everyone, I know you’re all anxious to hear what my master has to say, but I have been informed that he will not step into this room until a certain infestation has been taken care of first. Namely THAT ONE OVER THERE!” Suddenly all the Vampires, Ghouls and Human servants look at you and advance! You’re beyond out numbered. You put up a good fight for someone in your position, but ultimately you are scratched, bitten and sucked dry. And not in the good way either. You are then skinned where your pelt is hung up over Drac’s fireplace, where he always brags about how he defeated you single handedly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Its long over due and its time. You need to go fucking kill that bloodsucker or die trying. You need to prove that you are and always will be the baddest of the monsters. You also need to prove to these wolflings that they need to be proud of their fucking heritage and not play second fiddle to some overgrown leeches. “All right you cubs! We’re going to go raise some fucking hell. We’re going to Dracula’s Castle. We’re going to rip the place apart brick by brick, and every fucking bloodsucker in the goddamned place and I’M going to rip Fagula apart limb from limb, drive a stake in his heart, cut his head off and then shove his dick in his mouth!” The Wolflings look very apprehensive about your suggestion, in fact they outright refuse. “You’re a fucking crazy old coot; if you think we’re gonna follow you to Dracula’s Castle! Fuck that, he’s got an army of bloodsuckers and ghouls and who knows what the hell else! We can’t win that Wolf! Can’t we just bust up a bar or something?” one of them exclaims You can’t believe your ears! These snot nosed pups know nothing of their heritage! Back in the old days they would’ve been killed and eaten for such cowardice! “Goddammit are you Wolves or fucking Chihuahuas? Vampires have been taking OUR rightful place in the monster hierarchy for centuries! We need to set the fucking record straight on this shit! Now are you going to run with me and be a fucking Wolf or are you going to go back home with your tails tucked between your legs?” After looking at each other for awhile they all begin to leave and head back to the studio. “Oh fuckin’ fine then, play werewolf in a movie, but I can see I’m the only fuckin’ REAL Werewolf here, the rest of you are just goddamn overgrown dingos! Fuck this, I don’t give a shit, I’ll kill Dracula my own goddamned self. I don’t need anybody’s help!” You get on your Harley and ride. You only make a few stops on your way; you’re completely driven to have your final showdown with Vlad. Finally after a few days of riding you reach Dracula’s Castle. The place looks exactly the same. You get off your bike and scale the high iron gate. As you jump down into the courtyard you half expect yourself to be overwhelmed by vampires, or even ghouls, but nothing happens. This is weird, there aren’t even any guards patrolling or even at the door. In fact it sounds like a party is going on inside. You hear lots of laughter and music. Suddenly someone comes outside and sees you. It’s some Vampire chick. “Ohhh, a Werewolf! Wow, I didn’t know any of you types were invited to the party; I thought Drac hated you guys. Well what’re you doing standing outside? Come on in the party’s just starting!” she says waving you in. A bit of a different approach than you were preparing for, but you enter. You entrance to the ballroom is immediately a big event. You’re the only Werewolf there. Everyone else is either a Vampire, a ghoul, or even a human “servant”. Everyone is staring at you, some with wonder and interest, most with hatred, a few in awe. Most probably haven’t encountered a Werewolf like you before. The staring would probably continue if another slightly out of place being didn’t come shuffling up to you to talk you in a friendly manner causing the bloodsuckers to go back to partying. It’s Im-Ho-Tep. You’re surprised to see him here. “Wolf?! YOU got an invitation to this thing? I can’t believe it! What the hell did you and Dracula kiss and make up?” he remarks with his scratchy sounding voice. “Not in this life time Teppy. What’re you doing here?” ”Me? Oh you know Vlad, he’s always gotta put on a show. Likes to play up the whole royalty thing to the other bloodsuckers, so he always invites me to these things to prove he’s got connections or something since I was a Prince. I always keep telling him, it’s a meaningless title since the Egyptian Empire fell thousands of years ago, but he insists on flying me out here, making a big fuss and everything so what the hell, it’s not like I got anything better to do plus I get a kick out of watching the bloodsuckers get drunk and make idiots out of themselves, well that and I like to look at some of these Vamp chicks. Heh, guess that makes me a voyeur, but again what the hell, its one of the few pleasures I get in this world anymore. But enough about this dirty old man, what brings you here if you weren’t invited? Just randomly crashing the party?” “Sort of…I didn’t even know there was one…I’m here to kill Fagula.” You whisper quietly. Tep’s eyes widen a bit under his bandages. He isn’t entirely surprised (At his age barely anything surprises him anymore) but he was caught a little off guard by your statement. “Wow Wolf…I can tell you’re really not joking about this. All I can say is… what took you so long? I thought this day would come long before now. Lost some bets because of it, oh well easy come easy go. Well you know your secret’s safe with me, though I suppose it won’t be a secret for too much longer! You’re still the craziest sonofabitch I know, but then you always did know how to liven up a party! Ha ha! Ol’ Vlad will probably be making his grand entrance soon, so just wait awhile. He threw this party for some kind of special announcement he has to make. I still got a bet with Erik that you would win if you and Drac ever got into a battle to the death. I’ll be hoping to collect that bet from Erik. Good luck!” Tep then shuffles off back to where he sitting. Erik bet against you? Fucking little depressed shit! You’re going to have a little talk with him after all this. You put your back against the wall, watching everyone while waiting for Dracula to arrive. An hour passes and you’re fucking sick of waiting, you don’t feel like waiting for him to make “an entrance”. You’re here to commit major mayhem on him, not listen to anything he has to say. While you’re surveying the place, you see a disheveled man peek out from a corner across the room and then slink back. That was Renfield, you’d know Fagula’s sycophantic bitch boy anywhere. > You go follow Renfield You push your way through the crowd and head towards where Renfield was lurking about. He isn’t far, you can smell him. You follow a long corridor and then turn the corner to see Renfield hobbling down another passage, you quickly knock him to the floor, turn him over and kneel on his chest. He attempts to struggle, but you’re still too strong for him. “Well, well, well, I’m surprised your faggot master still keeps you around. Shit, you smell terrible, I suppose along with your flesh rotting, and lousy hygiene in general, all those ass rammings have taken a toll on you eh? Where the hell is he?” ”You! You’ve always been jealous of the master! Jealous of his wealth, his style and his beauty! You’re nothing, but a lowly animal!” “For someone who gets abused in every possible way, has no self respect, and is a filthy Ghoul, I wouldn’t be calling anyone a lowly animal. And you’re not really in the position to be pissing me off anyway. Now where the fuck is Fagula?” “The master is going enjoy killing you, especially tonight! Now he’ll be able to claim victory over TWO of his greatest enemies!” “What the hell are you blathering about?” “Oh you’ll find out…” Renfield smiles with a set of blacken teeth. “Yeah whatever, look last chance to…” Suddenly you feel a powerful crushing blow to the back of your head. It isn’t enough to knock you out, but you fall off of Renfield and roll over feeling very woozy. In your bleary vision you can make out the form of that cocksucker Dracula standing over you. Another figure stands there as well, you don’t know who they are, but they look somewhat familiar. “Wolf, I don’t believe I invited you to this party, but it was good of you to come anyway. It only makes festivities more enjoyable! I think you’ll give Jacob a good chance of testing himself. I was going to have him fight Renfield, but I’m sure you’ll provide much more of a challenge. You think you’re up for the challenge Jacob?” “Sounds perfect to me.” The other figure says and steps closer, and just before he kicks you in the head, you could swear it looks like Van Helsing, but much younger. “Sonofa…” you begin to say and then get your face kicked in, knocking you unconscious. Time passes and you wake up in a cage with silver bars. You see the figure that kicked you in the face on the other side, it is Van Helsing…or someone that looks like him since his name was Abraham, not Jacob. You find out soon enough, when he begins to speak. “Wolf, you’re up. Good. I’m anxious to test my new skills on you. Renfield certainly wouldn’t have been much of a challenge, but you should prove to be. Even my foolish grandfather couldn’t kill you. He couldn’t kill Dracula either, but then Dracula was always superior in everyway. I have no idea why he pursued such an idiotic quest of trying to kill Vampires, they really are the supreme life form on this planet and certainly the most lovely and sensual. Vladimir has shown me such pleasures since our time together.” You shake your head and snicker. This must’ve been the “other” defeated enemy that Renfield was on about. “So, that’s how it is now? The Van Helsing bloodline finally defeated not through violence, but through seduction? Never thought I’d see the day come. I had my problems with your family and especially your father, but I could at least respect their dedication. You’re a fucking disgrace kid.” “On the contrary, I’m merely ensuring the survival of my family name. What was I supposed to do, carrying on some pointless family tradition of monster hunting, and get myself killed? Fuck that. I want to live forever.” “Yeah? Well you can scratch that plan, because when I get a hold of you, you’re going to be wishing you hadn’t turned into a fucking bloodsucker.” “(Sigh) Yes, Vladimir told me you were always one to make unimaginative threats, I’ll be more interested in hearing your howls of pain though, see you soon.” As Jacob leaves you to your cage. You hear another voice in the room. “So…Vlad has now eliminated all his enemies, I guess I always knew he’d succeed.” You see another holding cell, but one made of some kind of heavy duty unbreakable see-through plastic. The top of it has a ton of garlic hanging from it. Sitting and looking utterly defeated is an ugly distorted looking humanoid, who is yet another face you’re amazed to see. This revenge trip has just been one surprise after another. “Orlock? Heard you were dead.” you say. “I wish I was, unfortunately Dracula insists on keeping me alive…feeding me rats…tormenting me…reminding me of my shameful defeat by his hands…I’m proud of him.” “You’re happy that he’s torturing you? Sheesh, all you Undead are fucking masochists.” “I’m not happy that he’s torturing me you ignorant dog, I’m happy that he’s proven to be so ruthless, despite his foppish ways. I must admit I had my doubts about him when I first created him.” “Yeah, I see that really worked out well for you.” “(Sigh) True. But it’s my own fault for having a soft spot for him I suppose. I should’ve been more watchful of him. You’ll be lucky, he’ll just kill you, or rather have his new conquest Jacob do it.” “Nobody’s killing me, I’m getting the fuck outta here right now. These bars aren’t going to hold me.” “Won’t that be difficult Wolf? Seeing that the bars are made of silver?” “So fucking what? Doesn’t mean I can’t touch them! As long as the things aren’t going into my body they don’t mean shit! Thought you bloodsuckers knew that. See that’s the problem with you Vampires, always underestimating your enemies and being melodramatic. If Fagula and his bitch boys were smart they would’ve killed me when they had the chance. That’s what I would’ve done.” “You and I actually have more in common than you think. We both are the last of the old ways. I must admit that I too would’ve killed you immediately, rather than toy with such a dangerous enemy.” You ignore Orlock and concentrate on the bars. You easily pry the silver bars open and step out of the cage; you then rip one of the bars out to take with you. Orlock looks at you with interest. “Why are you taking that?” “Because unlike you Vampires, we Werewolves try to learn everything we can about our enemies. I know for a fact that silver hurts you fuckers too, though you guys like to try to keep that shit quiet.” “Ah. Tis a shame we never clashed Wolf, you would’ve been a worthy opponent.” “Yeah? Well when I kill Drac, I can come back to finish you off too.” “Ha ha! Glad to see you have such confidence. However, if in the unlikely event that you do defeat Vlad, by all means come back and finish me off to put me out my misery. I would gladly welcome everlasting death at this point.” You leave the room and find yourself in a corridor made of dull stone; you’re guessing you’re probably underground. Nobody’s around, but you can still hear the noise of the party above. You’re about to head back up when you hear a voice close by. “Psst! Wolf! Over here! Quick!” You turn around and at one end of the corridor you see Mary. Now what the fuck is SHE doing here?! You rush over to Mary. “What the fuck are you doing here?” you ask. “Trying to prevent you from getting yourself killed, you stubborn macho asshole! When the Wolflings returned to the studio, I asked them where you went, and they told me, so I went after you. What the hell did you think you were doing coming here to kill Dracula?” “Just that! Kill his bloodsucking ass! How’d you sneak in here anyway?” ”I didn’t, I got an invitation about a month ago to the party, so when I arrived I was expected. Then I heard you were taken down here by some of the guests.” “Oh I can see you and Drac are still chummy with each other, figures, all you Undead stick together. You’re probably here to help him not me!” ”Goddammit Wolf, will you stop being so fucking paranoid! I wasn’t even going to this thing; the only reason why I’m here is because of you! Because maybe you don’t want to believe it, but I do love you, you’ve always only been the one to make me feel complete. After all the searching and traveling and trying to discover myself, it was our time together that I always held dear to me and stayed in my mind. Please, Wolf don’t go through with this, we lost a lot of years already; now that we’ve been reunited I don’t want to lose you permanently. This is isn’t worth it. You don’t have to prove anything. I’m familiar with the secret passages in this place, we could leave right now without any trouble.” Mary’s face does show expression of concern, and her voice does display worry. She may or may not be telling the truth. If she isn’t then she’s done a good job of fooling you. However, even if she is telling you the truth, there’s something else at stake here, namely your principles and pride. You’d really hate to run from Dracula, especially at this point. > You leave with Mary You’re a lot older and not exactly at one hundred percent right now. Dracula is still in peek condition. You’re on his home turf. There are other hostile Vampires, Ghouls and Humans here, not to mention Dracula’s new boy Van Helsing. You’re not going to win this one. Maybe if you were still alone you’d do it anyway, but Mary’s words have had an effect on you. Your pride in the past is what got you into a lot of trouble, and most of it was unnecessary. With age comes wisdom, and maybe its time you started to act your age. Your past accomplishments have spoken for themselves; you don’t need to prove you still have “one last fight” in you. Why die pointlessly for some feud that nobody else cares about, and throw away a potentially good future with Mary? “Alright Mary, alright.” You say. Mary looks surprised, as if she thought you wouldn’t listen to her, but she’s pleased never the less. Having been involved with Dracula and been in his castle in the past, she is of course quite familiar with the secret passages of the place and you both leave quietly. After resting up a bit, you get back to work on that movie with Mary. You of course still insist on her making changes to the script, which she does. The movie comes out and its relatively successful, it’s not going to make you a superstar again, but it’s good enough. Eventually you move in with Mary and live out the rest of your life with her. You always expect Dracula to attempt to get you somehow for escaping, but he never does. In fact that whole event is never even brought up or made public, since you were also expecting slanderous attacks about how you ran away to show up in magazines or something. Maybe it was because he was too busy having trouble with his new lover Jacob attempting to get palimony, or maybe he didn’t think the feud was that important either. You still always will wonder what might’ve happened…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You push your way through the crowd and head towards where Renfield was lurking about. He isn’t far, you can smell him. You follow a long corridor and then turn the corner to see Renfield hobbling down another passage, you quickly knock him to the floor, turn him over and kneel on his chest. He attempts to struggle, but you’re still too strong for him. “Well, well, well, I’m surprised your faggot master still keeps you around. Shit, you smell terrible, I suppose along with your flesh rotting, and lousy hygiene in general, all those ass rammings have taken a toll on you eh? Where the hell is he?” ”You! You’ve always been jealous of the master! Jealous of his wealth, his style and his beauty! You’re nothing, but a lowly animal!” “For someone who gets abused in every possible way, has no self respect, and is a filthy Ghoul, I wouldn’t be calling anyone a lowly animal. And you’re not really in the position to be pissing me off anyway. Now where the fuck is Fagula?” “The master is going enjoy killing you, especially tonight! Now he’ll be able to claim victory over TWO of his greatest enemies!” “What the hell are you blathering about?” “Oh you’ll find out…” Renfield smiles with a set of blacken teeth. “Yeah whatever, look last chance to…” Suddenly you feel a powerful crushing blow to the back of your head. It isn’t enough to knock you out, but you fall off of Renfield and roll over feeling very woozy. In your bleary vision you can make out the form of that cocksucker Dracula standing over you. Another figure stands there as well, you don’t know who they are, but they look somewhat familiar. “Wolf, I don’t believe I invited you to this party, but it was good of you to come anyway. It only makes festivities more enjoyable! I think you’ll give Jacob a good chance of testing himself. I was going to have him fight Renfield, but I’m sure you’ll provide much more of a challenge. You think you’re up for the challenge Jacob?” “Sounds perfect to me.” The other figure says and steps closer, and just before he kicks you in the head, you could swear it looks like Van Helsing, but much younger. “Sonofa…” you begin to say and then get your face kicked in, knocking you unconscious. Time passes and you wake up in a cage with silver bars. You see the figure that kicked you in the face on the other side, it is Van Helsing…or someone that looks like him since his name was Abraham, not Jacob. You find out soon enough, when he begins to speak. “Wolf, you’re up. Good. I’m anxious to test my new skills on you. Renfield certainly wouldn’t have been much of a challenge, but you should prove to be. Even my foolish grandfather couldn’t kill you. He couldn’t kill Dracula either, but then Dracula was always superior in everyway. I have no idea why he pursued such an idiotic quest of trying to kill Vampires, they really are the supreme life form on this planet and certainly the most lovely and sensual. Vladimir has shown me such pleasures since our time together.” You shake your head and snicker. This must’ve been the “other” defeated enemy that Renfield was on about. “So, that’s how it is now? The Van Helsing bloodline finally defeated not through violence, but through seduction? Never thought I’d see the day come. I had my problems with your family and especially your father, but I could at least respect their dedication. You’re a fucking disgrace kid.” “On the contrary, I’m merely ensuring the survival of my family name. What was I supposed to do, carrying on some pointless family tradition of monster hunting, and get myself killed? Fuck that. I want to live forever.” “Yeah? Well you can scratch that plan, because when I get a hold of you, you’re going to be wishing you hadn’t turned into a fucking bloodsucker.” “(Sigh) Yes, Vladimir told me you were always one to make unimaginative threats, I’ll be more interested in hearing your howls of pain though, see you soon.” As Jacob leaves you to your cage. You hear another voice in the room. “So…Vlad has now eliminated all his enemies, I guess I always knew he’d succeed.” You see another holding cell, but one made of some kind of heavy duty unbreakable see-through plastic. The top of it has a ton of garlic hanging from it. Sitting and looking utterly defeated is an ugly distorted looking humanoid, who is yet another face you’re amazed to see. This revenge trip has just been one surprise after another. “Orlock? Heard you were dead.” you say. “I wish I was, unfortunately Dracula insists on keeping me alive…feeding me rats…tormenting me…reminding me of my shameful defeat by his hands…I’m proud of him.” “You’re happy that he’s torturing you? Sheesh, all you Undead are fucking masochists.” “I’m not happy that he’s torturing me you ignorant dog, I’m happy that he’s proven to be so ruthless, despite his foppish ways. I must admit I had my doubts about him when I first created him.” “Yeah, I see that really worked out well for you.” “(Sigh) True. But it’s my own fault for having a soft spot for him I suppose. I should’ve been more watchful of him. You’ll be lucky, he’ll just kill you, or rather have his new conquest Jacob do it.” “Nobody’s killing me, I’m getting the fuck outta here right now. These bars aren’t going to hold me.” “Won’t that be difficult Wolf? Seeing that the bars are made of silver?” “So fucking what? Doesn’t mean I can’t touch them! As long as the things aren’t going into my body they don’t mean shit! Thought you bloodsuckers knew that. See that’s the problem with you Vampires, always underestimating your enemies and being melodramatic. If Fagula and his bitch boys were smart they would’ve killed me when they had the chance. That’s what I would’ve done.” “You and I actually have more in common than you think. We both are the last of the old ways. I must admit that I too would’ve killed you immediately, rather than toy with such a dangerous enemy.” You ignore Orlock and concentrate on the bars. You easily pry the silver bars open and step out of the cage; you then rip one of the bars out to take with you. Orlock looks at you with interest. “Why are you taking that?” “Because unlike you Vampires, we Werewolves try to learn everything we can about our enemies. I know for a fact that silver hurts you fuckers too, though you guys like to try to keep that shit quiet.” “Ah. Tis a shame we never clashed Wolf, you would’ve been a worthy opponent.” “Yeah? Well when I kill Drac, I can come back to finish you off too.” “Ha ha! Glad to see you have such confidence. However, if in the unlikely event that you do defeat Vlad, by all means come back and finish me off to put me out my misery. I would gladly welcome everlasting death at this point.” You leave the room and find yourself in a corridor made of dull stone; you’re guessing you’re probably underground. Nobody’s around, but you can still hear the noise of the party above. You’re about to head back up when you hear a voice close by. “Psst! Wolf! Over here! Quick!” You turn around and at one end of the corridor you see Mary. Now what the fuck is SHE doing here?! You rush over to Mary. “What the fuck are you doing here?” you ask. “Trying to prevent you from getting yourself killed, you stubborn macho asshole! When the Wolflings returned to the studio, I asked them where you went, and they told me, so I went after you. What the hell did you think you were doing coming here to kill Dracula?” “Just that! Kill his bloodsucking ass! How’d you sneak in here anyway?” ”I didn’t, I got an invitation about a month ago to the party, so when I arrived I was expected. Then I heard you were taken down here by some of the guests.” “Oh I can see you and Drac are still chummy with each other, figures, all you Undead stick together. You’re probably here to help him not me!” ”Goddammit Wolf, will you stop being so fucking paranoid! I wasn’t even going to this thing; the only reason why I’m here is because of you! Because maybe you don’t want to believe it, but I do love you, you’ve always only been the one to make me feel complete. After all the searching and traveling and trying to discover myself, it was our time together that I always held dear to me and stayed in my mind. Please, Wolf don’t go through with this, we lost a lot of years already; now that we’ve been reunited I don’t want to lose you permanently. This is isn’t worth it. You don’t have to prove anything. I’m familiar with the secret passages in this place, we could leave right now without any trouble.” Mary’s face does show expression of concern, and her voice does display worry. She may or may not be telling the truth. If she isn’t then she’s done a good job of fooling you. However, even if she is telling you the truth, there’s something else at stake here, namely your principles and pride. You’d really hate to run from Dracula, especially at this point. > You kill Dracula You stare deeply into Mary’s eyes, grab her and kiss her long and passionately. “You’re going anyway aren’t you?” she says. “I have to.” “But why?! You know he’s going to use every dirty trick in the book, he’s not going to fight you man to man. He’ll throw all his followers at you first.” “Good, it’s the only chance he’s got to level the playing field.” “But you’re severely outnumbered.” “Yeah, and they’re going to be overconfident like all those bloodsuckers are. And that I’m gonna beat ‘em, they keep underestimating me. Now you get out of here…don’t worry, we’ll see each other again. Just remember to make those changes in that movie of yours.” Mary gives a weak smile, she doesn’t look convinced that she’ll see you again, but she realizes you have to go. Actually you’re not even sure you’re getting out of this alive, but this is something that you have to do, win or lose. You leave Mary to head back upstairs, while she goes off through one of those passages she was talking about. As you’re heading up the twisting staircase, you run into Renfield, who was coming down to get you no doubt. His eyes widen in shock and he turns to run. “MAST…” he begins to shout and you smash the back of his skull with one of the silver bars. You then turn him over. “I’m not exactly sure what’s correct way of killing you Ghouls so I’m not going to take any chances.” You say placing your hands around his head and giving his neck a quick snap. He’s still alive, but now unable to move. “You’ll never defeat the master!” he says defiantly. “Yeah, yeah…” you say and shove your fist in his mouth to rip out his tongue. It takes some doing, but eventually you fish out the long slimy body part. “I don’t even want to think about where this has been.” You say and throw it away. As Renfield helplessly hisses at you, you plunge one of the silver bars through his chest. He begins to melt, he’d probably shriek if he could. When he quickly becomes nothing but bloody bones, you remove the skull and throw it into the wall where it shatters and take back your silver bar. Renfield won’t be coming back. You finally reach the ground floor again and follow the sounds of the party. The guests have already heard about what you did earlier, and when you run into a few of them in the hallway they give you some problems. Fortunately they’re a lot of flash and no substance. Three vampire guests attack and you quickly use your silver bar to smack them around. After knocking them all to the ground, you disable one by breaking his neck, while you’re doing that, one of them attacks you from behind where upon you grab and flip him into a small table which splinters into pieces. He tries to get back up, but you kick him in the face, grab one of the table legs and shove it into his chest. Your last would be attacker seeing what you’ve done runs off. You shake your head. “Sheesh, what happened to the days when you bloodsuckers actually put up a good fight?” you say and shove another table leg into the chest of the vampire whose neck you just broke. Your little rumble in the hallway has most definitely been heard, but the rest of your journey to the ballroom continues with no other interruptions. Upon your arrival, the rest of the guests just watch you. Dracula lounges on a fancy couch on the far side of the room while his followers to grovel over him, Jacob being the most fawning. “So is Jacob going to be the next Renfield?” you shout which gets you his attention and a very hostile look from Jacob. “Ah Wolf, you’ve arrived. Where is Renfield anyway, I sent him to fetch you. I do hope you didn’t hurt him too badly.” Dracula, says without even looking at you. “I regret to inform you that your favorite jizz jar is no longer among the living or the undead. He’s just plain dead.” “(Sigh) Ah well, it was bound to happen eventually, but still I will miss his…enthusiasm. But this is no time to morn past losses, tonight is a time of celebration! Jacob, a member of the Van Helsing family. The mortal enemies of vampires everywhere, and the source of the notorious Abraham Van Helsing, who nearly ended my life. A family of murderers, yet Jacob has abandoned his homicidal family tradition and become one of us, proving that even the most implacable of foes can one day become friends…and more.” Dracula says giving Jacob a lecherous stare, but then finally looks over in your direction and his demeanor changes to that of anger as he points at you the whole time. “But some foes always remain. These types are the OLD, the JEALOUS, the BITTER, and the HATEFUL that are so miserable with their own pathetic existence that they feel they must ruin other people’s happiness to make themselves feel better. This…this ANIMAL that stands before us is attempting to do just that! He is the pinnacle example of everything that’s wrong with his kind! The animals have always been jealous of us, and that will never change. Every now and then when a dog runs wild, it becomes necessary to slap it down and put it back in its place, but there are other times when it becomes rabid and needs to be destroyed. And that’s what you are Wolf and rabid dog that’s too stupid to know when to bow before your masters. Jacob, prove your love for me, destroy this animal.” “With pleasure.” Jacob says to Dracula and steps towards you baring his fangs. > You fight offensively You charge at Jacob with your silver bar, but you miss and he swiftly grabs it from you. You turn around and he smashes you in the face with it, knocking you to the ground. You attempt to get back up, but shoves the bar into your stomach with a great force, knocking the wind and fight completely out of you. You cough up blood as Jacob stands over you. “Maybe my father failed to kill you, but I won’t. Time to put you to sleep little doggy.” Jacob says and then pulls out a pistol and shoots you in the head with silver bullets.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stare deeply into Mary’s eyes, grab her and kiss her long and passionately. “You’re going anyway aren’t you?” she says. “I have to.” “But why?! You know he’s going to use every dirty trick in the book, he’s not going to fight you man to man. He’ll throw all his followers at you first.” “Good, it’s the only chance he’s got to level the playing field.” “But you’re severely outnumbered.” “Yeah, and they’re going to be overconfident like all those bloodsuckers are. And that I’m gonna beat ‘em, they keep underestimating me. Now you get out of here…don’t worry, we’ll see each other again. Just remember to make those changes in that movie of yours.” Mary gives a weak smile, she doesn’t look convinced that she’ll see you again, but she realizes you have to go. Actually you’re not even sure you’re getting out of this alive, but this is something that you have to do, win or lose. You leave Mary to head back upstairs, while she goes off through one of those passages she was talking about. As you’re heading up the twisting staircase, you run into Renfield, who was coming down to get you no doubt. His eyes widen in shock and he turns to run. “MAST…” he begins to shout and you smash the back of his skull with one of the silver bars. You then turn him over. “I’m not exactly sure what’s correct way of killing you Ghouls so I’m not going to take any chances.” You say placing your hands around his head and giving his neck a quick snap. He’s still alive, but now unable to move. “You’ll never defeat the master!” he says defiantly. “Yeah, yeah…” you say and shove your fist in his mouth to rip out his tongue. It takes some doing, but eventually you fish out the long slimy body part. “I don’t even want to think about where this has been.” You say and throw it away. As Renfield helplessly hisses at you, you plunge one of the silver bars through his chest. He begins to melt, he’d probably shriek if he could. When he quickly becomes nothing but bloody bones, you remove the skull and throw it into the wall where it shatters and take back your silver bar. Renfield won’t be coming back. You finally reach the ground floor again and follow the sounds of the party. The guests have already heard about what you did earlier, and when you run into a few of them in the hallway they give you some problems. Fortunately they’re a lot of flash and no substance. Three vampire guests attack and you quickly use your silver bar to smack them around. After knocking them all to the ground, you disable one by breaking his neck, while you’re doing that, one of them attacks you from behind where upon you grab and flip him into a small table which splinters into pieces. He tries to get back up, but you kick him in the face, grab one of the table legs and shove it into his chest. Your last would be attacker seeing what you’ve done runs off. You shake your head. “Sheesh, what happened to the days when you bloodsuckers actually put up a good fight?” you say and shove another table leg into the chest of the vampire whose neck you just broke. Your little rumble in the hallway has most definitely been heard, but the rest of your journey to the ballroom continues with no other interruptions. Upon your arrival, the rest of the guests just watch you. Dracula lounges on a fancy couch on the far side of the room while his followers to grovel over him, Jacob being the most fawning. “So is Jacob going to be the next Renfield?” you shout which gets you his attention and a very hostile look from Jacob. “Ah Wolf, you’ve arrived. Where is Renfield anyway, I sent him to fetch you. I do hope you didn’t hurt him too badly.” Dracula, says without even looking at you. “I regret to inform you that your favorite jizz jar is no longer among the living or the undead. He’s just plain dead.” “(Sigh) Ah well, it was bound to happen eventually, but still I will miss his…enthusiasm. But this is no time to morn past losses, tonight is a time of celebration! Jacob, a member of the Van Helsing family. The mortal enemies of vampires everywhere, and the source of the notorious Abraham Van Helsing, who nearly ended my life. A family of murderers, yet Jacob has abandoned his homicidal family tradition and become one of us, proving that even the most implacable of foes can one day become friends…and more.” Dracula says giving Jacob a lecherous stare, but then finally looks over in your direction and his demeanor changes to that of anger as he points at you the whole time. “But some foes always remain. These types are the OLD, the JEALOUS, the BITTER, and the HATEFUL that are so miserable with their own pathetic existence that they feel they must ruin other people’s happiness to make themselves feel better. This…this ANIMAL that stands before us is attempting to do just that! He is the pinnacle example of everything that’s wrong with his kind! The animals have always been jealous of us, and that will never change. Every now and then when a dog runs wild, it becomes necessary to slap it down and put it back in its place, but there are other times when it becomes rabid and needs to be destroyed. And that’s what you are Wolf and rabid dog that’s too stupid to know when to bow before your masters. Jacob, prove your love for me, destroy this animal.” “With pleasure.” Jacob says to Dracula and steps towards you baring his fangs. > You fight defensively Normally you aren’t one to fight defensively, however in this case it’s to your advantage. Jacob is eager to prove himself to Dracula and overconfident in his abilities. Jacob rushes at you and you trip him to the floor. As he attempts get up you impale him through the back with the silver bar. He screams in pain, but it looks like you missed his heart, he back kicks you in the nuts before scrambling to get up. While you recover, Jacob pulls the bar out of his back and throws it at your head which you dodge. With a burst of speed, he leaps next to you and punches you three times in the face, the fourth time however his hand goes into your open mouth. You sink your fangs in, grab his arm and pull back with your head as hard as possible, biting it off at the forearm. Jacob reels back in shock as he stares in horror at his spurting bloody stump. You spit out the gory limb which flops on the floor. You quickly pick up your silver bar from the ground. The crowd looks on in captivated awe. “Well looks like I get to kill two Van Helsings, that’s already one more than Fagula over there. Though I have to say, your father put up a better fight and he was only human. You sure you weren’t adopted? You put up a poor showing boy, even for an overgrown leech.” “You dare call me a leech you fucking animal?! You haven’t won, look at what I found here!” Jacob reaches into vest pocket with his one good arm and pulls out a pistol. You already know what it’s loaded with. He fires haphazardly at you, while you roll out of the way. Luckily he’s as bad of a shot as his father was. Guests start running out of the way after a few silver bullets start hitting them. He doesn’t care, who he hits, he’s too busy trying to make sure one of the bullets hits you. “I won’t fail where my father did, I will kill you! I WILL KILL HIM!” he screams. Of course in the chaos of everyone running around he doesn’t seem to realize you’ve appeared behind him. “Wrong again junior.” You say, turning him around and shoving the silver bar cruelly through his chest, hearing that satisfying crack of his upper ribs and the squishy sound of the bar hitting his heart. He falls to the ground dropping his pistol and clutching the bar which you dig in deeper as he starts to melt. “When you get to hell, say hello to your dad for me…and I sincerely hope he and the rest of the dead Van Helsing clan kicks your pansy ass for all eternity you fucking traitor.” As he releases one last death screech, you rip his head off and throw it at Dracula who hasn’t left his couch. He just looks at the melted skull and shrugs while you take your silver bar and prepare for the final battle. “Well I see your skills haven’t deteriorated, but there has been a great deal of luck involved here tonight as well. Unfortunately, you’ll find that your luck has run out. Do you actually think I’m going to dirty my hands on an animal such as you? Please. It wouldn’t be a contest anyway. My guests, I now give you the honor of fighting for me! That fool Van Helsing obviously wasn’t worthy of my love, but for any of you that lands the killing blow on this mangy dog, you shall know the pleasures that only I can show you.” “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me Vlad! That’s supposed to be an honor? You’re just trying to get out of this shit because you’re fucking scared.” Im-Ho-Tep pipes up from the back ground. “Stay outta this Tep!” Dracula exclaims. “Hey, I’m not in this little feud, but I’m calling it like I see it. You’re not willing to fight an old and tired Werewolf who’s supposed to be inferior to you anyway? Now you do whatever, but if you’re seriously going to let your followers do your dirty work, then you really are a big pussy.” There’s a moment of silence as Dracula looks at Tep and then back over at you. He stares at you and then… “KILL HIM MY CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT!” Dracula commands “Goddammit I knew it!” you say to yourself. You hear Tep shout over the crowd. “Sorry Wolf I thought he’d go for it!” As the crowd of vampires, ghouls and human servants advance on you, you think about how many you can take out before they finally get you. Just then it looks like Drac was wrong, your luck hasn’t run out yet. Werewolves crash through the windows, and attack! They look like the ones from the studio! Then Mary comes rushing into the room smashing a Ghoul in the head, and stands fighting by your side while you fight off an attacking vampire. “Mary! What’re you still doing here?! And how’d you get them to help?” you shout, twisting the vampire’s head completely around. “You didn’t think I came here by myself did you? I figured you’d insist on killing Drac. So I had the Wolflings come with me and told them to stay back until the appointed time.” “But how?! I tried to get them to come and they didn’t listen to me! And I’m a fucking Werewolf!” “Well, I’m a people person, while you’re mean old bastard, so of course they’d be more willing to listen to me. Plus I told them about how you paved the way for all of them and how they should be grateful.” “You told them you were going to replace them with human actors in furry suits didn’t you?” “Well…yeah, but that doesn’t mean the other stuff didn’t work either! Ugh! These ghouls aren’t very study are they?” Mary says putting her fist right through the face of one of them. “Hey Wolf, I hate to interrupt, but Vlad just went running down that corridor when your wolf pack arrived. I think you better go catch him. Oh hey Mary, I haven’t seen you for awhile, how have you been?” Tep says shuffling up to the both of you. “Tep! I was just thinking about you the other day! I’ve been alright, how about you?” While Mary and Tep bizarrely exchange pleasantries in the chaos of battle you head down the corridor that Tep pointed out with your silver bar. Eventually it leads into a study of some sort. You cautiously enter, but you’re immediately ambushed and thrown into a bookcase hard which then falls on you. “It ends here Wolf.” You hear Drac say as you crawl from underneath the bookcase. > Back up and recover You scramble for the silver bar and try to back away, but Dracula won’t allow you the chance to regain your strength. He rips the bar from your hands and hits you with it. You claw him across the face and get him in bear like hug so he can’t get enough momentum to shove the bar into you, but he’s got something different in mind. “Fucking animals like you need collars!” he says and wraps the bar around your neck! As your airway becomes constricted, you release Drac who then takes complete advantage and gets behind you and tightens the twisted silver even more eventually choking you out. A few minutes later you wake up before Tep and Mary who’s taken the silver bar from around your neck. “Wolf?! Are you alive? Speak to me!” Mary says. “(Cough! Cough!) Yeah…shit…(Cough!) What the fuck happened?” “Well looks like old Drac got the drop on you and tried to strangle you. Guess he didn’t do a very good job though since you’re still alive. He ran off though; don’t know where he went, probably to one of his other homes. Well, I guess this makes it a bit of a tie. I guess nobody collects the bet. Though I still think you would’ve won in a fair fight.” Tep says. “Ah shit, I gotta (Cough!) track his ass down, gather up the Wolflings…and…” ”NO! You’ll do no such thing! Most of the Wolflings are dead, and YOU almost died tonight too! I’m not having you risk that again over this foolishness! You’re coming home with me right now!” Mary takes you back to her place where you rest up. You still want to go after Dracula, but Mary is very convincing and eventually you give up on it and work on her movie (Which was rewritten) instead. As for Dracula you don’t hear from him ever again, obviously he knows it was a close call and doesn’t want to risk another battle with you. Still it always pisses you off that it was a “tie”.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Normally you aren’t one to fight defensively, however in this case it’s to your advantage. Jacob is eager to prove himself to Dracula and overconfident in his abilities. Jacob rushes at you and you trip him to the floor. As he attempts get up you impale him through the back with the silver bar. He screams in pain, but it looks like you missed his heart, he back kicks you in the nuts before scrambling to get up. While you recover, Jacob pulls the bar out of his back and throws it at your head which you dodge. With a burst of speed, he leaps next to you and punches you three times in the face, the fourth time however his hand goes into your open mouth. You sink your fangs in, grab his arm and pull back with your head as hard as possible, biting it off at the forearm. Jacob reels back in shock as he stares in horror at his spurting bloody stump. You spit out the gory limb which flops on the floor. You quickly pick up your silver bar from the ground. The crowd looks on in captivated awe. “Well looks like I get to kill two Van Helsings, that’s already one more than Fagula over there. Though I have to say, your father put up a better fight and he was only human. You sure you weren’t adopted? You put up a poor showing boy, even for an overgrown leech.” “You dare call me a leech you fucking animal?! You haven’t won, look at what I found here!” Jacob reaches into vest pocket with his one good arm and pulls out a pistol. You already know what it’s loaded with. He fires haphazardly at you, while you roll out of the way. Luckily he’s as bad of a shot as his father was. Guests start running out of the way after a few silver bullets start hitting them. He doesn’t care, who he hits, he’s too busy trying to make sure one of the bullets hits you. “I won’t fail where my father did, I will kill you! I WILL KILL HIM!” he screams. Of course in the chaos of everyone running around he doesn’t seem to realize you’ve appeared behind him. “Wrong again junior.” You say, turning him around and shoving the silver bar cruelly through his chest, hearing that satisfying crack of his upper ribs and the squishy sound of the bar hitting his heart. He falls to the ground dropping his pistol and clutching the bar which you dig in deeper as he starts to melt. “When you get to hell, say hello to your dad for me…and I sincerely hope he and the rest of the dead Van Helsing clan kicks your pansy ass for all eternity you fucking traitor.” As he releases one last death screech, you rip his head off and throw it at Dracula who hasn’t left his couch. He just looks at the melted skull and shrugs while you take your silver bar and prepare for the final battle. “Well I see your skills haven’t deteriorated, but there has been a great deal of luck involved here tonight as well. Unfortunately, you’ll find that your luck has run out. Do you actually think I’m going to dirty my hands on an animal such as you? Please. It wouldn’t be a contest anyway. My guests, I now give you the honor of fighting for me! That fool Van Helsing obviously wasn’t worthy of my love, but for any of you that lands the killing blow on this mangy dog, you shall know the pleasures that only I can show you.” “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me Vlad! That’s supposed to be an honor? You’re just trying to get out of this shit because you’re fucking scared.” Im-Ho-Tep pipes up from the back ground. “Stay outta this Tep!” Dracula exclaims. “Hey, I’m not in this little feud, but I’m calling it like I see it. You’re not willing to fight an old and tired Werewolf who’s supposed to be inferior to you anyway? Now you do whatever, but if you’re seriously going to let your followers do your dirty work, then you really are a big pussy.” There’s a moment of silence as Dracula looks at Tep and then back over at you. He stares at you and then… “KILL HIM MY CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT!” Dracula commands “Goddammit I knew it!” you say to yourself. You hear Tep shout over the crowd. “Sorry Wolf I thought he’d go for it!” As the crowd of vampires, ghouls and human servants advance on you, you think about how many you can take out before they finally get you. Just then it looks like Drac was wrong, your luck hasn’t run out yet. Werewolves crash through the windows, and attack! They look like the ones from the studio! Then Mary comes rushing into the room smashing a Ghoul in the head, and stands fighting by your side while you fight off an attacking vampire. “Mary! What’re you still doing here?! And how’d you get them to help?” you shout, twisting the vampire’s head completely around. “You didn’t think I came here by myself did you? I figured you’d insist on killing Drac. So I had the Wolflings come with me and told them to stay back until the appointed time.” “But how?! I tried to get them to come and they didn’t listen to me! And I’m a fucking Werewolf!” “Well, I’m a people person, while you’re mean old bastard, so of course they’d be more willing to listen to me. Plus I told them about how you paved the way for all of them and how they should be grateful.” “You told them you were going to replace them with human actors in furry suits didn’t you?” “Well…yeah, but that doesn’t mean the other stuff didn’t work either! Ugh! These ghouls aren’t very study are they?” Mary says putting her fist right through the face of one of them. “Hey Wolf, I hate to interrupt, but Vlad just went running down that corridor when your wolf pack arrived. I think you better go catch him. Oh hey Mary, I haven’t seen you for awhile, how have you been?” Tep says shuffling up to the both of you. “Tep! I was just thinking about you the other day! I’ve been alright, how about you?” While Mary and Tep bizarrely exchange pleasantries in the chaos of battle you head down the corridor that Tep pointed out with your silver bar. Eventually it leads into a study of some sort. You cautiously enter, but you’re immediately ambushed and thrown into a bookcase hard which then falls on you. “It ends here Wolf.” You hear Drac say as you crawl from underneath the bookcase. > You attack! You stagger over to attack Drac, but he dodges and throws you into another wall. You slam to the floor landing behind a desk. “You think you could come here to defeat me? You’re a fucking loser Wolf! You always will be! You know why? Because you don’t have any style or class! You should be thanking me for putting an end to your miserable existence! I think I’ll take some revenge on Mary too, since she felt the need to help you…” While he’s making dramatic villainous speeches you were searching the drawers in the desk and found a very sharp letter opener. You pop up from behind the desk and throw it at Drac, hitting him directly in the eye! “ARRRGH! MY EYE!” he bellows while pulling the opener out taking the bloody orb with it. You then lift up the entire desk and throw it at him! It crashes into his body, knocking him onto the floor. You grab your silver bar from the floor and prepare to do some more permanent harm to Drac, but he lifts the desk off of himself, before you can take advantage. “You’re going to pay for this you lowly dog!” he shouts and kicks the bar from your hand. He then kicks you in the stomach and brings both of his fists down on your head when you hunch over from the stomach kick. You take the opportunity to grab him by the legs and in a fireman carry, you run straight forward with him over your back, out the window! Both of your bodies crash and fall to the outside courtyard ground, broken glass embeds itself in both of your bodies, but mostly Drac’s. He pushes you off of him and retreats. You don’t give up your attack and tackle him, and bite deep into his leg. He kicks you with the other foot, but not before you tear off his leg from the bottom of the shin. Blood splatters all over the place. At this point Drac is too enraged to run and grabs hold of you and bites you deep in the neck! You feel the energy rapidly leaving you. > You try to pull his heart out Pulling someone’s heart out is never as easy as it appears in the movies, but you muster up all your strength and plunge your fist into Drac’s chest. He winces in pain, but continues to drain your blood. You break through the rib cage until you feel that squishy four chambered organ in your clutches. As your energy and life begin to ebb you pull it out and crush it into a bloody mess right before his eyes. He then begins to smoke suddenly. The sun! Its morning! You’ve been here so long you completely forgot about the passage of time. “Looks like it’s the end for both of us bloodsucker, but I’m making sure I live an extra minute longer to see you die first.” You say and collapse. Drac falls into a weird death spasm, and crawls in a hopeless escape attempt, but there is no escape. If the destruction of his heart didn’t kill him the sun certainly does. He shrieks as his body becomes a flaming torch and spectacularly explodes. At this point Mary, Tep and some of the remaining Wolflings rush outside to see what’s going on. Mary immediately rushes to you. “Wolf! No!” Mary shouts holding you. She’d probably shed tears if she was capable. “Is he dead?” you ask. “Yeah, Wolf he’s dead. You killed him. I always knew you’d be able to do it.” Tep says. “Good, now I can die happy now.” “No! I don’t want you to die! Why couldn’t you have just come with me?!” “I’m sorry Mary, but this is the way it had to be. I wasn’t meant to live a regular life. I wasn’t supposed to get old. I was supposed to die in combat…and I have…there’s nothing else for me here now. Its time for me to leave this world that no longer wants me.” “I’m here! I want you with me!” You smile weakly and grab her hand tightly. “I would if I could…just remember the good times Mary…and thank you for what you did tonight…I know that you did truly love me…just remember to burn my body, I don’t want to take the chance of coming back as one of these leeches.” You feel darkness envelop as Mary holds you close. “Tep, one thing before I leave.” “What’s that Wolf?” “When you collect your money from Erik, kick his fucking ass for betting against me!” You close your eyes and then nothing. After a brief period of mourning, Mary follows your last orders and burns your body. A few months later she writes a book about you and ultimately makes a movie about your final battle with Dracula, it’s a blockbuster hit. The movie is also dedicated in loving memory of you. Mary makes sure the legacy of the Alpha Wolf lives on…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stagger over to attack Drac, but he dodges and throws you into another wall. You slam to the floor landing behind a desk. “You think you could come here to defeat me? You’re a fucking loser Wolf! You always will be! You know why? Because you don’t have any style or class! You should be thanking me for putting an end to your miserable existence! I think I’ll take some revenge on Mary too, since she felt the need to help you…” While he’s making dramatic villainous speeches you were searching the drawers in the desk and found a very sharp letter opener. You pop up from behind the desk and throw it at Drac, hitting him directly in the eye! “ARRRGH! MY EYE!” he bellows while pulling the opener out taking the bloody orb with it. You then lift up the entire desk and throw it at him! It crashes into his body, knocking him onto the floor. You grab your silver bar from the floor and prepare to do some more permanent harm to Drac, but he lifts the desk off of himself, before you can take advantage. “You’re going to pay for this you lowly dog!” he shouts and kicks the bar from your hand. He then kicks you in the stomach and brings both of his fists down on your head when you hunch over from the stomach kick. You take the opportunity to grab him by the legs and in a fireman carry, you run straight forward with him over your back, out the window! Both of your bodies crash and fall to the outside courtyard ground, broken glass embeds itself in both of your bodies, but mostly Drac’s. He pushes you off of him and retreats. You don’t give up your attack and tackle him, and bite deep into his leg. He kicks you with the other foot, but not before you tear off his leg from the bottom of the shin. Blood splatters all over the place. At this point Drac is too enraged to run and grabs hold of you and bites you deep in the neck! You feel the energy rapidly leaving you. > You punch him in the face You have to get him off of you NOW! You immediately smash him in the face as hard as you can, and then again, and then again, and then again; finally he releases his grip and falls to the ground while you retreat a bit trying to shake the dizziness from the loss of blood. Drac having gained a little more strength from his quick meal makes an escape attempt by transforming into a bat. “Oh fuck no, you’re not getting away that easy!” you grab a nearby stone and throw it, smacking him out of the air. He falls to the ground in a bloody heap and transforms back into humanoid form. You run over and kick him repeatedly in the head and then starts smashing the back of his skull into the pavement until blood and brains come leaking out. Drac begins to beg for mercy. “Wolf! Stop! I give up! Please! Surely you as a man of honor can see that you’ve defeated me and will show mercy!” You nearly shit yourself laughing. “I’m afraid I can’t do that since as you were so fondly reminding me…I’m a fucking dog and like any good dog when we smell fear, we go in for the kill!” you say amused. Dracula, sensing this truly is the end for him attempts a different approach. “Very well you fucking animal! Kill me! But know this! You’ll never be as famous as me! People shall always remember me even after my death! My fame and name will still live on long after you’re rotting in a pet cemetery!” “…maybe…maybe you’re right…but you won’t be around to enjoy it!” you say and break his back over your knee and clamp your jaws around Drac’s throat ripping it out. He clutches at his new gruesome tracheotomy and then begins to smoke suddenly. The Sun! Its morning! You’ve been here so long you completely forgot about the passage of time. You finish ripping off Drac’s head and then hold it up high to the sunlight and howl in victory. Then it burns up and explodes, (Along with the body) injuring you and knocking you to the ground. You brush yourself off and remind yourself never to do that again! Meanwhile Mary, Tep and a few of the surviving Wolflings come outside to see what’s going on. “Wolf are you alright?!” Mary asks. “Yeah I’m fine, told you we’d see each other again.” You say and kiss her. “Well Wolf, I guess this makes you the winner, looks like Erik owes me a thousand dollars.” Tep replies looking at the ashes blowing all over the courtyard. “Yeah and I owe Erik an ass whipping for betting against me in the first place!” “Well I’m just glad you’re alive and it’s over.” Mary says. “Not quite, there’s still one more loose end I need to take care of, but it shouldn’t take long…” You head back down to the basement; Count Orlock is still lying slumped in the corner of his cell. He looks up when he sees you come in with your silver bar. “You’re back…so I guess this means Vlad is dead?” “Got it in one bloodsucker.” “(Sigh) Such a shameful defeat. He deserved much better…but then so did I…let’s get this over with. The lever to open this cell is over there.” You pull the lever and the cell opens. Count Orlock stand before you completely still as you approach. You expect him to put up some kind of resistance, but he doesn’t. He looks resigned and actually relieved to accept his fate. You plunge the bar into his chest. “At last my torment is at an end.” He says before you take his head. It is done. All loose ends have been taken care of. You go back outside and meet back up with Mary. After resting up (And participating in some less restful “activity” with Mary) you agree to work on the new movie that Mary has decided to do instead. Namely a movie based on your battle with Dracula. Of course most of the true story is changed around and a bunch of young monsters are all cast in the roles. (Mary even got an Aztec mummy to portray Tep) you don’t really mind not getting to play “yourself” though, you understand that youth sells better, besides it’s a lot easier sitting on your ass and just raking in the money from the movie since it turns out to be a big blockbuster hit. Perhaps Dracula’s name will always been more well known, but yours will always be known as the one who killed him and that’s certainly something you don’t mind being remembered best for. You live out the rest of your life with Mary, your days of battle finally behind you, but confident in your knowledge that you have made a permanent impact on the world. Your legacy as the Alpha Wolf is secured in history.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You push your way through the crowd and head towards where Renfield was lurking about. He isn’t far, you can smell him. You follow a long corridor and then turn the corner to see Renfield hobbling down another passage, you quickly knock him to the floor, turn him over and kneel on his chest. He attempts to struggle, but you’re still too strong for him. “Well, well, well, I’m surprised your faggot master still keeps you around. Shit, you smell terrible, I suppose along with your flesh rotting, and lousy hygiene in general, all those ass rammings have taken a toll on you eh? Where the hell is he?” ”You! You’ve always been jealous of the master! Jealous of his wealth, his style and his beauty! You’re nothing, but a lowly animal!” “For someone who gets abused in every possible way, has no self respect, and is a filthy Ghoul, I wouldn’t be calling anyone a lowly animal. And you’re not really in the position to be pissing me off anyway. Now where the fuck is Fagula?” “The master is going enjoy killing you, especially tonight! Now he’ll be able to claim victory over TWO of his greatest enemies!” “What the hell are you blathering about?” “Oh you’ll find out…” Renfield smiles with a set of blacken teeth. “Yeah whatever, look last chance to…” Suddenly you feel a powerful crushing blow to the back of your head. It isn’t enough to knock you out, but you fall off of Renfield and roll over feeling very woozy. In your bleary vision you can make out the form of that cocksucker Dracula standing over you. Another figure stands there as well, you don’t know who they are, but they look somewhat familiar. “Wolf, I don’t believe I invited you to this party, but it was good of you to come anyway. It only makes festivities more enjoyable! I think you’ll give Jacob a good chance of testing himself. I was going to have him fight Renfield, but I’m sure you’ll provide much more of a challenge. You think you’re up for the challenge Jacob?” “Sounds perfect to me.” The other figure says and steps closer, and just before he kicks you in the head, you could swear it looks like Van Helsing, but much younger. “Sonofa…” you begin to say and then get your face kicked in, knocking you unconscious. Time passes and you wake up in a cage with silver bars. You see the figure that kicked you in the face on the other side, it is Van Helsing…or someone that looks like him since his name was Abraham, not Jacob. You find out soon enough, when he begins to speak. “Wolf, you’re up. Good. I’m anxious to test my new skills on you. Renfield certainly wouldn’t have been much of a challenge, but you should prove to be. Even my foolish grandfather couldn’t kill you. He couldn’t kill Dracula either, but then Dracula was always superior in everyway. I have no idea why he pursued such an idiotic quest of trying to kill Vampires, they really are the supreme life form on this planet and certainly the most lovely and sensual. Vladimir has shown me such pleasures since our time together.” You shake your head and snicker. This must’ve been the “other” defeated enemy that Renfield was on about. “So, that’s how it is now? The Van Helsing bloodline finally defeated not through violence, but through seduction? Never thought I’d see the day come. I had my problems with your family and especially your father, but I could at least respect their dedication. You’re a fucking disgrace kid.” “On the contrary, I’m merely ensuring the survival of my family name. What was I supposed to do, carrying on some pointless family tradition of monster hunting, and get myself killed? Fuck that. I want to live forever.” “Yeah? Well you can scratch that plan, because when I get a hold of you, you’re going to be wishing you hadn’t turned into a fucking bloodsucker.” “(Sigh) Yes, Vladimir told me you were always one to make unimaginative threats, I’ll be more interested in hearing your howls of pain though, see you soon.” As Jacob leaves you to your cage. You hear another voice in the room. “So…Vlad has now eliminated all his enemies, I guess I always knew he’d succeed.” You see another holding cell, but one made of some kind of heavy duty unbreakable see-through plastic. The top of it has a ton of garlic hanging from it. Sitting and looking utterly defeated is an ugly distorted looking humanoid, who is yet another face you’re amazed to see. This revenge trip has just been one surprise after another. “Orlock? Heard you were dead.” you say. “I wish I was, unfortunately Dracula insists on keeping me alive…feeding me rats…tormenting me…reminding me of my shameful defeat by his hands…I’m proud of him.” “You’re happy that he’s torturing you? Sheesh, all you Undead are fucking masochists.” “I’m not happy that he’s torturing me you ignorant dog, I’m happy that he’s proven to be so ruthless, despite his foppish ways. I must admit I had my doubts about him when I first created him.” “Yeah, I see that really worked out well for you.” “(Sigh) True. But it’s my own fault for having a soft spot for him I suppose. I should’ve been more watchful of him. You’ll be lucky, he’ll just kill you, or rather have his new conquest Jacob do it.” “Nobody’s killing me, I’m getting the fuck outta here right now. These bars aren’t going to hold me.” “Won’t that be difficult Wolf? Seeing that the bars are made of silver?” “So fucking what? Doesn’t mean I can’t touch them! As long as the things aren’t going into my body they don’t mean shit! Thought you bloodsuckers knew that. See that’s the problem with you Vampires, always underestimating your enemies and being melodramatic. If Fagula and his bitch boys were smart they would’ve killed me when they had the chance. That’s what I would’ve done.” “You and I actually have more in common than you think. We both are the last of the old ways. I must admit that I too would’ve killed you immediately, rather than toy with such a dangerous enemy.” You ignore Orlock and concentrate on the bars. You easily pry the silver bars open and step out of the cage; you then rip one of the bars out to take with you. Orlock looks at you with interest. “Why are you taking that?” “Because unlike you Vampires, we Werewolves try to learn everything we can about our enemies. I know for a fact that silver hurts you fuckers too, though you guys like to try to keep that shit quiet.” “Ah. Tis a shame we never clashed Wolf, you would’ve been a worthy opponent.” “Yeah? Well when I kill Drac, I can come back to finish you off too.” “Ha ha! Glad to see you have such confidence. However, if in the unlikely event that you do defeat Vlad, by all means come back and finish me off to put me out my misery. I would gladly welcome everlasting death at this point.” You leave the room and find yourself in a corridor made of dull stone; you’re guessing you’re probably underground. Nobody’s around, but you can still hear the noise of the party above. You’re about to head back up when you hear a voice close by. “Psst! Wolf! Over here! Quick!” You turn around and at one end of the corridor you see Mary. Now what the fuck is SHE doing here?! You rush over to Mary. “What the fuck are you doing here?” you ask. “Trying to prevent you from getting yourself killed, you stubborn macho asshole! When the Wolflings returned to the studio, I asked them where you went, and they told me, so I went after you. What the hell did you think you were doing coming here to kill Dracula?” “Just that! Kill his bloodsucking ass! How’d you sneak in here anyway?” ”I didn’t, I got an invitation about a month ago to the party, so when I arrived I was expected. Then I heard you were taken down here by some of the guests.” “Oh I can see you and Drac are still chummy with each other, figures, all you Undead stick together. You’re probably here to help him not me!” ”Goddammit Wolf, will you stop being so fucking paranoid! I wasn’t even going to this thing; the only reason why I’m here is because of you! Because maybe you don’t want to believe it, but I do love you, you’ve always only been the one to make me feel complete. After all the searching and traveling and trying to discover myself, it was our time together that I always held dear to me and stayed in my mind. Please, Wolf don’t go through with this, we lost a lot of years already; now that we’ve been reunited I don’t want to lose you permanently. This is isn’t worth it. You don’t have to prove anything. I’m familiar with the secret passages in this place, we could leave right now without any trouble.” Mary’s face does show expression of concern, and her voice does display worry. She may or may not be telling the truth. If she isn’t then she’s done a good job of fooling you. However, even if she is telling you the truth, there’s something else at stake here, namely your principles and pride. You’d really hate to run from Dracula, especially at this point. > You memories (Van Helsing) The Hunters: The Van Helsings No group of humans ever actively caused as much trouble for the bloodsuckers than the Van Helsings. You’d actually like them, had they not hunted Werewolves as well. The Van Helsing family had a long standing tradition of hunting Vampires, they eventually stretched out to hunt other monsters as well, but Vampires were always their main target. They first got their start sometime during the medieval ages and each generation just continued the tradition. Oddly just as monsters had to adapt to the changing times, so did the Van Helsings. No longer could they just barge into a house and kill someone because they were a Vampire, indeed most of the people who were bitten by Vampires claimed it was consensual and there for the Van Helsings had no right to intrude on what two beings did in private. Subterfuge abounded as Vampires in high political offices or positions of power manipulated laws to encourage more “liberal” policies. This still did not deter the Van Helsing family, but it did cause disillusionment and less of them enthusiastically took up the tradition of monster hunting. Abraham Van Helsing is probably the best known one for his continual hunt and battles with Dracula. Despite his best efforts he could never defeat him and ultimately lost all his friends and his life in the finally confrontation. (Yes, the movies like to give the “happy ending” to the tale, but reality is always much darker) His son Ishmael Van Helsing took up the mantle next, but fearing to follow in his father’s footsteps he didn’t pursue Dracula. Instead he hunted less powerful Vampires and other monsters, including you. There were a couple times he attempted to assassinate you, but the last time he tried, you managed to catch him and rip him limb from limb. Jacob would be the next one to take up the mantel, but he showed little interest in it, and that would seem to be the end of Van Helsing tradition.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You push your way through the crowd and head towards where Renfield was lurking about. He isn’t far, you can smell him. You follow a long corridor and then turn the corner to see Renfield hobbling down another passage, you quickly knock him to the floor, turn him over and kneel on his chest. He attempts to struggle, but you’re still too strong for him. “Well, well, well, I’m surprised your faggot master still keeps you around. Shit, you smell terrible, I suppose along with your flesh rotting, and lousy hygiene in general, all those ass rammings have taken a toll on you eh? Where the hell is he?” ”You! You’ve always been jealous of the master! Jealous of his wealth, his style and his beauty! You’re nothing, but a lowly animal!” “For someone who gets abused in every possible way, has no self respect, and is a filthy Ghoul, I wouldn’t be calling anyone a lowly animal. And you’re not really in the position to be pissing me off anyway. Now where the fuck is Fagula?” “The master is going enjoy killing you, especially tonight! Now he’ll be able to claim victory over TWO of his greatest enemies!” “What the hell are you blathering about?” “Oh you’ll find out…” Renfield smiles with a set of blacken teeth. “Yeah whatever, look last chance to…” Suddenly you feel a powerful crushing blow to the back of your head. It isn’t enough to knock you out, but you fall off of Renfield and roll over feeling very woozy. In your bleary vision you can make out the form of that cocksucker Dracula standing over you. Another figure stands there as well, you don’t know who they are, but they look somewhat familiar. “Wolf, I don’t believe I invited you to this party, but it was good of you to come anyway. It only makes festivities more enjoyable! I think you’ll give Jacob a good chance of testing himself. I was going to have him fight Renfield, but I’m sure you’ll provide much more of a challenge. You think you’re up for the challenge Jacob?” “Sounds perfect to me.” The other figure says and steps closer, and just before he kicks you in the head, you could swear it looks like Van Helsing, but much younger. “Sonofa…” you begin to say and then get your face kicked in, knocking you unconscious. Time passes and you wake up in a cage with silver bars. You see the figure that kicked you in the face on the other side, it is Van Helsing…or someone that looks like him since his name was Abraham, not Jacob. You find out soon enough, when he begins to speak. “Wolf, you’re up. Good. I’m anxious to test my new skills on you. Renfield certainly wouldn’t have been much of a challenge, but you should prove to be. Even my foolish grandfather couldn’t kill you. He couldn’t kill Dracula either, but then Dracula was always superior in everyway. I have no idea why he pursued such an idiotic quest of trying to kill Vampires, they really are the supreme life form on this planet and certainly the most lovely and sensual. Vladimir has shown me such pleasures since our time together.” You shake your head and snicker. This must’ve been the “other” defeated enemy that Renfield was on about. “So, that’s how it is now? The Van Helsing bloodline finally defeated not through violence, but through seduction? Never thought I’d see the day come. I had my problems with your family and especially your father, but I could at least respect their dedication. You’re a fucking disgrace kid.” “On the contrary, I’m merely ensuring the survival of my family name. What was I supposed to do, carrying on some pointless family tradition of monster hunting, and get myself killed? Fuck that. I want to live forever.” “Yeah? Well you can scratch that plan, because when I get a hold of you, you’re going to be wishing you hadn’t turned into a fucking bloodsucker.” “(Sigh) Yes, Vladimir told me you were always one to make unimaginative threats, I’ll be more interested in hearing your howls of pain though, see you soon.” As Jacob leaves you to your cage. You hear another voice in the room. “So…Vlad has now eliminated all his enemies, I guess I always knew he’d succeed.” You see another holding cell, but one made of some kind of heavy duty unbreakable see-through plastic. The top of it has a ton of garlic hanging from it. Sitting and looking utterly defeated is an ugly distorted looking humanoid, who is yet another face you’re amazed to see. This revenge trip has just been one surprise after another. “Orlock? Heard you were dead.” you say. “I wish I was, unfortunately Dracula insists on keeping me alive…feeding me rats…tormenting me…reminding me of my shameful defeat by his hands…I’m proud of him.” “You’re happy that he’s torturing you? Sheesh, all you Undead are fucking masochists.” “I’m not happy that he’s torturing me you ignorant dog, I’m happy that he’s proven to be so ruthless, despite his foppish ways. I must admit I had my doubts about him when I first created him.” “Yeah, I see that really worked out well for you.” “(Sigh) True. But it’s my own fault for having a soft spot for him I suppose. I should’ve been more watchful of him. You’ll be lucky, he’ll just kill you, or rather have his new conquest Jacob do it.” “Nobody’s killing me, I’m getting the fuck outta here right now. These bars aren’t going to hold me.” “Won’t that be difficult Wolf? Seeing that the bars are made of silver?” “So fucking what? Doesn’t mean I can’t touch them! As long as the things aren’t going into my body they don’t mean shit! Thought you bloodsuckers knew that. See that’s the problem with you Vampires, always underestimating your enemies and being melodramatic. If Fagula and his bitch boys were smart they would’ve killed me when they had the chance. That’s what I would’ve done.” “You and I actually have more in common than you think. We both are the last of the old ways. I must admit that I too would’ve killed you immediately, rather than toy with such a dangerous enemy.” You ignore Orlock and concentrate on the bars. You easily pry the silver bars open and step out of the cage; you then rip one of the bars out to take with you. Orlock looks at you with interest. “Why are you taking that?” “Because unlike you Vampires, we Werewolves try to learn everything we can about our enemies. I know for a fact that silver hurts you fuckers too, though you guys like to try to keep that shit quiet.” “Ah. Tis a shame we never clashed Wolf, you would’ve been a worthy opponent.” “Yeah? Well when I kill Drac, I can come back to finish you off too.” “Ha ha! Glad to see you have such confidence. However, if in the unlikely event that you do defeat Vlad, by all means come back and finish me off to put me out my misery. I would gladly welcome everlasting death at this point.” You leave the room and find yourself in a corridor made of dull stone; you’re guessing you’re probably underground. Nobody’s around, but you can still hear the noise of the party above. You’re about to head back up when you hear a voice close by. “Psst! Wolf! Over here! Quick!” You turn around and at one end of the corridor you see Mary. Now what the fuck is SHE doing here?! You rush over to Mary. “What the fuck are you doing here?” you ask. “Trying to prevent you from getting yourself killed, you stubborn macho asshole! When the Wolflings returned to the studio, I asked them where you went, and they told me, so I went after you. What the hell did you think you were doing coming here to kill Dracula?” “Just that! Kill his bloodsucking ass! How’d you sneak in here anyway?” ”I didn’t, I got an invitation about a month ago to the party, so when I arrived I was expected. Then I heard you were taken down here by some of the guests.” “Oh I can see you and Drac are still chummy with each other, figures, all you Undead stick together. You’re probably here to help him not me!” ”Goddammit Wolf, will you stop being so fucking paranoid! I wasn’t even going to this thing; the only reason why I’m here is because of you! Because maybe you don’t want to believe it, but I do love you, you’ve always only been the one to make me feel complete. After all the searching and traveling and trying to discover myself, it was our time together that I always held dear to me and stayed in my mind. Please, Wolf don’t go through with this, we lost a lot of years already; now that we’ve been reunited I don’t want to lose you permanently. This is isn’t worth it. You don’t have to prove anything. I’m familiar with the secret passages in this place, we could leave right now without any trouble.” Mary’s face does show expression of concern, and her voice does display worry. She may or may not be telling the truth. If she isn’t then she’s done a good job of fooling you. However, even if she is telling you the truth, there’s something else at stake here, namely your principles and pride. You’d really hate to run from Dracula, especially at this point. > You memories (Orlock) Nosferatu: Count Orlock The bloodsuckers are big on keeping secrets. Nowadays, all Vampires have a “cool” look about them which fits in with their youthful image. Even the ones that are “old” are still regal and respectable looking. Its part of the whole “Let’s get stupid humans to serve us and be like us” routine that they like to employ. You keep telling the masses something long enough and they believe it and the past becomes forgotten. However even a secret slips out every now and then in movies and the hideous Nosferatu appear, but this is usually quickly dismissed as “creative license” and not based on any kind of fact. Vampires deliberately attempt to destroy any evidence of their ugly pasts. One old movie was actually supposed to be based on Count Orlock, but this movie was quickly ordered to be destroyed through Vampire string pulling. The truth is Vampires weren’t always the “cool” MTV movie bullshit propaganda that that’s churned out now. In the past there were the Elders or the first Vampires who looked as repugnant as any rotting corpse, they are also known as the Nosferatu. You rarely had any encounters with them as most of them were dead by then, but you heard many stories from your grandfather about them. They hid in the shadows, striking from the darkness, and returning to isolation, they used no servants. They did not mix and carry on a charade of “humanity”. They were true monsters. Over time however, things change and so did Vampires, there became an “evolution” of sorts (Though you’re loathed to use a word for such unnatural creatures). In time it became necessary for trickery, to fit in, to blend with humans to prevent mass extinction from vampire hunters. Later generations started to retain their human looks, and the Nosferatu began to die off through various means. Most of them by the hands of their own younger kind. The younger generation saw the Nosferatu as a threat to their own survival, not to mention cramping their style. How were they supposed to get humans to willingly serve them, if these ugly Nosferatu were going around snatching children in the night? No, their time had come and gone, a new era must be ushered in. Eventually the Nostferatu were all hunted down and killed save one. Count Orlock was the last of the Nosferatu, he was by no means an Elder, but he was still old enough to not retain his humanity. Sensing his time was coming to a close, decided to create a servant to protect him. He sensed Vlad would be able to do this. The instant he made him into a Vampire, he attempted to instill loyalty into him and it worked…for awhile at least. Eventually Dracula realized that Orlock was more of a burden than a teacher, and he turned on him. Defeating him utterly, but contrary to what most know (For those that even know about the Nosferatu in the first place) he didn’t kill him. Orlock’s implanted loyalty did still exist, but it was to Orlock’s detriment. Dracula could not bring himself to kill his creator, but he could make his unlife a living hell. Keeping him a weaken captive and tormenting him for all time. He’s been forgotten and held prisoner ever since.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Its long over due and its time. You need to go fucking kill that bloodsucker or die trying. You need to prove that you are and always will be the baddest of the monsters. You also need to prove to these wolflings that they need to be proud of their fucking heritage and not play second fiddle to some overgrown leeches. “All right you cubs! We’re going to go raise some fucking hell. We’re going to Dracula’s Castle. We’re going to rip the place apart brick by brick, and every fucking bloodsucker in the goddamned place and I’M going to rip Fagula apart limb from limb, drive a stake in his heart, cut his head off and then shove his dick in his mouth!” The Wolflings look very apprehensive about your suggestion, in fact they outright refuse. “You’re a fucking crazy old coot; if you think we’re gonna follow you to Dracula’s Castle! Fuck that, he’s got an army of bloodsuckers and ghouls and who knows what the hell else! We can’t win that Wolf! Can’t we just bust up a bar or something?” one of them exclaims You can’t believe your ears! These snot nosed pups know nothing of their heritage! Back in the old days they would’ve been killed and eaten for such cowardice! “Goddammit are you Wolves or fucking Chihuahuas? Vampires have been taking OUR rightful place in the monster hierarchy for centuries! We need to set the fucking record straight on this shit! Now are you going to run with me and be a fucking Wolf or are you going to go back home with your tails tucked between your legs?” After looking at each other for awhile they all begin to leave and head back to the studio. “Oh fuckin’ fine then, play werewolf in a movie, but I can see I’m the only fuckin’ REAL Werewolf here, the rest of you are just goddamn overgrown dingos! Fuck this, I don’t give a shit, I’ll kill Dracula my own goddamned self. I don’t need anybody’s help!” You get on your Harley and ride. You only make a few stops on your way; you’re completely driven to have your final showdown with Vlad. Finally after a few days of riding you reach Dracula’s Castle. The place looks exactly the same. You get off your bike and scale the high iron gate. As you jump down into the courtyard you half expect yourself to be overwhelmed by vampires, or even ghouls, but nothing happens. This is weird, there aren’t even any guards patrolling or even at the door. In fact it sounds like a party is going on inside. You hear lots of laughter and music. Suddenly someone comes outside and sees you. It’s some Vampire chick. “Ohhh, a Werewolf! Wow, I didn’t know any of you types were invited to the party; I thought Drac hated you guys. Well what’re you doing standing outside? Come on in the party’s just starting!” she says waving you in. A bit of a different approach than you were preparing for, but you enter. You entrance to the ballroom is immediately a big event. You’re the only Werewolf there. Everyone else is either a Vampire, a ghoul, or even a human “servant”. Everyone is staring at you, some with wonder and interest, most with hatred, a few in awe. Most probably haven’t encountered a Werewolf like you before. The staring would probably continue if another slightly out of place being didn’t come shuffling up to you to talk you in a friendly manner causing the bloodsuckers to go back to partying. It’s Im-Ho-Tep. You’re surprised to see him here. “Wolf?! YOU got an invitation to this thing? I can’t believe it! What the hell did you and Dracula kiss and make up?” he remarks with his scratchy sounding voice. “Not in this life time Teppy. What’re you doing here?” ”Me? Oh you know Vlad, he’s always gotta put on a show. Likes to play up the whole royalty thing to the other bloodsuckers, so he always invites me to these things to prove he’s got connections or something since I was a Prince. I always keep telling him, it’s a meaningless title since the Egyptian Empire fell thousands of years ago, but he insists on flying me out here, making a big fuss and everything so what the hell, it’s not like I got anything better to do plus I get a kick out of watching the bloodsuckers get drunk and make idiots out of themselves, well that and I like to look at some of these Vamp chicks. Heh, guess that makes me a voyeur, but again what the hell, its one of the few pleasures I get in this world anymore. But enough about this dirty old man, what brings you here if you weren’t invited? Just randomly crashing the party?” “Sort of…I didn’t even know there was one…I’m here to kill Fagula.” You whisper quietly. Tep’s eyes widen a bit under his bandages. He isn’t entirely surprised (At his age barely anything surprises him anymore) but he was caught a little off guard by your statement. “Wow Wolf…I can tell you’re really not joking about this. All I can say is… what took you so long? I thought this day would come long before now. Lost some bets because of it, oh well easy come easy go. Well you know your secret’s safe with me, though I suppose it won’t be a secret for too much longer! You’re still the craziest sonofabitch I know, but then you always did know how to liven up a party! Ha ha! Ol’ Vlad will probably be making his grand entrance soon, so just wait awhile. He threw this party for some kind of special announcement he has to make. I still got a bet with Erik that you would win if you and Drac ever got into a battle to the death. I’ll be hoping to collect that bet from Erik. Good luck!” Tep then shuffles off back to where he sitting. Erik bet against you? Fucking little depressed shit! You’re going to have a little talk with him after all this. You put your back against the wall, watching everyone while waiting for Dracula to arrive. An hour passes and you’re fucking sick of waiting, you don’t feel like waiting for him to make “an entrance”. You’re here to commit major mayhem on him, not listen to anything he has to say. While you’re surveying the place, you see a disheveled man peek out from a corner across the room and then slink back. That was Renfield, you’d know Fagula’s sycophantic bitch boy anywhere. > You memories (Im-Ho-Tep) The Mummy: Im-Ho-Tep If there was ONE undead who was consistently alright with you, it was Tep. He’s one of the few exceptions to your dislike of the Undead. Ironic, because even without being Undead, his personality was completely different from yours, however you like him because he at least has a down to earth attitude on life. Which is at least a step up from the arrogance of Vampires and most humans. Tep is very very VERY old. He was a Prince at one time during the height of the Egyptian Empire, but he never likes going by that title. He says it’s pointless to hold on to something that doesn’t exist anymore. As a royal Prince he didn’t have as much freedom as he would’ve liked, he basically had to stay in his palace and carry the responsibilities of an Empire which wasn’t as much fun as one might think. He used to read a lot about all the places his advisors and soldiers all traveled to, but he couldn’t ever go. So he decided that he would extend his life through magic so he could do and see all the things he couldn’t while he was alive. When he died at the ripe old age of 33 (Humans didn’t annoying live as long back then like they do now) the spell took effect and he snuck out of his sarcophagus at night. With no more responsibilities he was now allowed to see, go and do whatever and wherever he wanted. In fact his down to earth, observational habits are mainly due to the fact that he’s literally done it all. There really isn’t anything left for him to do anymore, so he gets a small pleasure from watching “Life” in general now. It’s also why he laughs at bloodsuckers who think they’re old, wise, and “done it all”. Even Dracula would be a mere child when compared to how old Tep is. One time Dracula was bragging about this completely decadent orgy he threw one time back in the 1600s that lasted for 6 days. He claimed it had everything and taunted everyone saying that they would never know about the carnal pleasures that were had that week. Tep just laughed and calmly put Vlad in his place that’s become a well known event in Hollywood History: “Please Vlad spare us of your fat musings, I was married to my younger sister at 13, I personally knew Cleopatra and lived through the Roman Empire during Caligula AND Nero’s reign, let alone all the other shit I saw long before you were even thinking about shoving little old ladies on iron spikes as a petty human dictator. You don’t know fuck about sexual decadence. Whatever you THINK you’ve done has already been done long ago. You’re an unoriginal amateur at best.” Dracula never “bragged” again when Tep was around.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Its long over due and its time. You need to go fucking kill that bloodsucker or die trying. You need to prove that you are and always will be the baddest of the monsters. You also need to prove to these wolflings that they need to be proud of their fucking heritage and not play second fiddle to some overgrown leeches. “All right you cubs! We’re going to go raise some fucking hell. We’re going to Dracula’s Castle. We’re going to rip the place apart brick by brick, and every fucking bloodsucker in the goddamned place and I’M going to rip Fagula apart limb from limb, drive a stake in his heart, cut his head off and then shove his dick in his mouth!” The Wolflings look very apprehensive about your suggestion, in fact they outright refuse. “You’re a fucking crazy old coot; if you think we’re gonna follow you to Dracula’s Castle! Fuck that, he’s got an army of bloodsuckers and ghouls and who knows what the hell else! We can’t win that Wolf! Can’t we just bust up a bar or something?” one of them exclaims You can’t believe your ears! These snot nosed pups know nothing of their heritage! Back in the old days they would’ve been killed and eaten for such cowardice! “Goddammit are you Wolves or fucking Chihuahuas? Vampires have been taking OUR rightful place in the monster hierarchy for centuries! We need to set the fucking record straight on this shit! Now are you going to run with me and be a fucking Wolf or are you going to go back home with your tails tucked between your legs?” After looking at each other for awhile they all begin to leave and head back to the studio. “Oh fuckin’ fine then, play werewolf in a movie, but I can see I’m the only fuckin’ REAL Werewolf here, the rest of you are just goddamn overgrown dingos! Fuck this, I don’t give a shit, I’ll kill Dracula my own goddamned self. I don’t need anybody’s help!” You get on your Harley and ride. You only make a few stops on your way; you’re completely driven to have your final showdown with Vlad. Finally after a few days of riding you reach Dracula’s Castle. The place looks exactly the same. You get off your bike and scale the high iron gate. As you jump down into the courtyard you half expect yourself to be overwhelmed by vampires, or even ghouls, but nothing happens. This is weird, there aren’t even any guards patrolling or even at the door. In fact it sounds like a party is going on inside. You hear lots of laughter and music. Suddenly someone comes outside and sees you. It’s some Vampire chick. “Ohhh, a Werewolf! Wow, I didn’t know any of you types were invited to the party; I thought Drac hated you guys. Well what’re you doing standing outside? Come on in the party’s just starting!” she says waving you in. A bit of a different approach than you were preparing for, but you enter. You entrance to the ballroom is immediately a big event. You’re the only Werewolf there. Everyone else is either a Vampire, a ghoul, or even a human “servant”. Everyone is staring at you, some with wonder and interest, most with hatred, a few in awe. Most probably haven’t encountered a Werewolf like you before. The staring would probably continue if another slightly out of place being didn’t come shuffling up to you to talk you in a friendly manner causing the bloodsuckers to go back to partying. It’s Im-Ho-Tep. You’re surprised to see him here. “Wolf?! YOU got an invitation to this thing? I can’t believe it! What the hell did you and Dracula kiss and make up?” he remarks with his scratchy sounding voice. “Not in this life time Teppy. What’re you doing here?” ”Me? Oh you know Vlad, he’s always gotta put on a show. Likes to play up the whole royalty thing to the other bloodsuckers, so he always invites me to these things to prove he’s got connections or something since I was a Prince. I always keep telling him, it’s a meaningless title since the Egyptian Empire fell thousands of years ago, but he insists on flying me out here, making a big fuss and everything so what the hell, it’s not like I got anything better to do plus I get a kick out of watching the bloodsuckers get drunk and make idiots out of themselves, well that and I like to look at some of these Vamp chicks. Heh, guess that makes me a voyeur, but again what the hell, its one of the few pleasures I get in this world anymore. But enough about this dirty old man, what brings you here if you weren’t invited? Just randomly crashing the party?” “Sort of…I didn’t even know there was one…I’m here to kill Fagula.” You whisper quietly. Tep’s eyes widen a bit under his bandages. He isn’t entirely surprised (At his age barely anything surprises him anymore) but he was caught a little off guard by your statement. “Wow Wolf…I can tell you’re really not joking about this. All I can say is… what took you so long? I thought this day would come long before now. Lost some bets because of it, oh well easy come easy go. Well you know your secret’s safe with me, though I suppose it won’t be a secret for too much longer! You’re still the craziest sonofabitch I know, but then you always did know how to liven up a party! Ha ha! Ol’ Vlad will probably be making his grand entrance soon, so just wait awhile. He threw this party for some kind of special announcement he has to make. I still got a bet with Erik that you would win if you and Drac ever got into a battle to the death. I’ll be hoping to collect that bet from Erik. Good luck!” Tep then shuffles off back to where he sitting. Erik bet against you? Fucking little depressed shit! You’re going to have a little talk with him after all this. You put your back against the wall, watching everyone while waiting for Dracula to arrive. An hour passes and you’re fucking sick of waiting, you don’t feel like waiting for him to make “an entrance”. You’re here to commit major mayhem on him, not listen to anything he has to say. While you’re surveying the place, you see a disheveled man peek out from a corner across the room and then slink back. That was Renfield, you’d know Fagula’s sycophantic bitch boy anywhere. > You memories (Renfield) The Manservant: Renfield Dracula has had a wide variety of lovers, and it’s well known he doesn’t limit himself to just women. However NOBODY (Gay or straight) could figure out what the hell he was doing with Renfield. Vampires being the vain, shallow and arrogant types they are, tend to only pick the “beautiful” people to have sex with. Indeed that’s the whole reason to be eternally youthful in the first place. Renfield didn’t fit into that category…ever. He wasn’t even a beautiful person on the inside. While everyone knows about his bug eating, that’s probably the least disgusting thing he’s ever eaten. Drac has always been a bit of a perverse individual, so he probably first fucked the dirty asylum patient just for kicks and to have a story to tell. Little did even Drac know that that was the kindest act that had ever been done to Renfield, who broke out of that asylum the very next day to track down Dracula and profess his undying love and loyalty to him. His willingness to completely debase himself in everyway imaginable for Drac, is probably one of the reasons why Drac kept him around. Drac always eventually gets bored of his “long term” lovers and begins to act dismissively and abusively to them and eventually no matter how much they were in love with him, they realize that they were just another notch on his fangs and they bitterly leave. Renfield has NEVER left, he routinely has endured all manner of abuse by Drac for years and he still comes back for more, it’s why he ultimately made Renfield into Ghoul to serve him forever. (Another oddity for Drac, since he never creates Ghouls, he prefers “disposable” humans or fawning fellow vampires. Renfield is the only Ghoul, Drac has ever created) Ghouls are considered low in Vampire society. They have some of a Vampire’s power, but at root they’re basically human servants who weren’t considered good enough to be turned into a Vampire. Also while they gain Vampire longevity, they don’t gain the eternal youth, and eventually rot to the point that they look more like zombies. They’re usually treated worse than human servants, since human servants still have “potential”. They’re typically are a miserable bunch who have a lot of anti-social personal habits while they continue to serve their thankless Vampire masters and resentful of the human servants. Renfield’s life didn’t really change much at all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“So you had me in mind eh? Well that proves it. You think I’m a joke because that’s how you wrote the character.” “What? No! I just…” “I see your time with that bloodsucker was well spent. Learning how to exploit and leech right? Look maybe you can pull this shit with those puppies over there, but I ain’t fucking one! I don’t need the money that badly. I’ll go fucking live my twilight years in the forest and DIE there as nature probably intended. I don’t need this shit.” As you turn to leave, Mary shouts at you. “Yeah, that’s right go on leave Mr. Lone Wolf! You’ll fucking die alone, you stubborn bastard! I tried to help you! Erik tried to help you and you don’t appreciate any of it! That’s why none of your children speak to you and…” You run back over to her and slam her into the wall. You stare at her face to face as she struggles to get free. She’s strong, but you manage to keep her pinned. She really pissed you off and you were already pissed off to begin with. “Fuck you, and fuck Erik! You two don’t know shit about me, never did. I’m through with the pair of you! In fact I think I’ll be taking something with me since you’re so worried about me being alone…” You release Mary and go over to the wolflings who look a little worried that you’re going to cause harm to them. Many of them cast their eyes downward. “Hey, you want to be REALLY tough? You want to really raise some hell? Come with me. If you want to stay under the thumb of this patchwork dead bitch and be exploited and mocked, stay here. Your statement alone convinces all of them. They all follow you, even the one you made an example of. Mary attempts to call everyone back, but it’s useless, you’ve taken control of the pack and they’ll do what you want now. And right now you want to get into a fight. You think about all the people and creatures that wronged you in some way and only two of them keep coming to mind consistently. One is that fucking Dr. Victor Frankenstein. If it wasn’t for him, Frankie and Mary wouldn’t have been created in the first place which also means you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into trouble all those years ago. You wouldn’t have had to put up with his “children” taking jobs away from you. Not to mention he sued you once. But the one who you REALLY despise, is that bisexual bloodsucker. Fucking Dracula or Vlad, or whatever the hell he’s calling himself these days. The disgust you have for him and the reasons are too numerous to list here. > You memories (Victor) The Mad Scientist: Dr. Victor Frankenstein You don’t strictly have anything against humans. You’ve even been known to get along with a few of them. Victor doesn’t fall into that category though. His “creations” caused much trouble for you, but you had problems with him even before then. Victor was the typical mad scientist type looking to shock and take the world by storm through weird experiments. He was always jealous of Dr. Moreau who managed to buy an entire island and create a small colony of “man-animals”. Victor wanted that same status, so he tried to do the same thing, but the problem was, he wasn’t as skilled of a doctor. Victor’s feud with Moreau and his petty human dreams would’ve gone unnoticed at this point had he not tried to perform an experiment on YOU. He invited you over to his place once for an idea of a new movie. After eating a big dinner of mutton, veal, and beef (No pork though, you don’t dig on swine) you promptly passed out from all those products being heavily drugged. When you woke up he was sticking needles into you and had you strapped to a table. He claimed he wasn’t going to do anything except some tests, but you highly doubted that since he also had scalpels nearby. He figured he could successfully duplicate Moreau’s experiments by using your DNA or something. You didn’t let him get that far though. The good doctor forgot how strong you were and you easily broke the straps with minimal effort on your part. Your revenge was quick and terrible. In fact you killed him…that is if his assistant Igor (Who had later come home to find his master lying on the floor with his throat ripped open and his arm ripped off) hadn’t got his heart started again with a major jolt of electricity and sewed him back together. Needless to say he wasn’t the really the same after that, but Igor’s “quick thinking” lead Victor to the idea of his first creation Frankie, then later Mary. In fact those two were probably his way of attempting to get back at you for killing him and it probably worked to a certain degree. Of course you weren’t the one who had to piss and shit into a bag for the rest of his life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“So you had me in mind eh? Well that proves it. You think I’m a joke because that’s how you wrote the character.” “What? No! I just…” “I see your time with that bloodsucker was well spent. Learning how to exploit and leech right? Look maybe you can pull this shit with those puppies over there, but I ain’t fucking one! I don’t need the money that badly. I’ll go fucking live my twilight years in the forest and DIE there as nature probably intended. I don’t need this shit.” As you turn to leave, Mary shouts at you. “Yeah, that’s right go on leave Mr. Lone Wolf! You’ll fucking die alone, you stubborn bastard! I tried to help you! Erik tried to help you and you don’t appreciate any of it! That’s why none of your children speak to you and…” You run back over to her and slam her into the wall. You stare at her face to face as she struggles to get free. She’s strong, but you manage to keep her pinned. She really pissed you off and you were already pissed off to begin with. “Fuck you, and fuck Erik! You two don’t know shit about me, never did. I’m through with the pair of you! In fact I think I’ll be taking something with me since you’re so worried about me being alone…” You release Mary and go over to the wolflings who look a little worried that you’re going to cause harm to them. Many of them cast their eyes downward. “Hey, you want to be REALLY tough? You want to really raise some hell? Come with me. If you want to stay under the thumb of this patchwork dead bitch and be exploited and mocked, stay here. Your statement alone convinces all of them. They all follow you, even the one you made an example of. Mary attempts to call everyone back, but it’s useless, you’ve taken control of the pack and they’ll do what you want now. And right now you want to get into a fight. You think about all the people and creatures that wronged you in some way and only two of them keep coming to mind consistently. One is that fucking Dr. Victor Frankenstein. If it wasn’t for him, Frankie and Mary wouldn’t have been created in the first place which also means you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into trouble all those years ago. You wouldn’t have had to put up with his “children” taking jobs away from you. Not to mention he sued you once. But the one who you REALLY despise, is that bisexual bloodsucker. Fucking Dracula or Vlad, or whatever the hell he’s calling himself these days. The disgust you have for him and the reasons are too numerous to list here. > You memories (Vlad) The Vampire: Vlad III AKA Vlad the Impaler AKA Dracula AKA… You’ve got more interesting names to call him though. “Fagula” comes to mind. All those movies nowadays that they make about how vampires and werewolves can’t get along were no doubt inspired by you and the bisexual bloodsucker. Yeah that always pissed you off. He was always considered a “ladies man” and yet he was buttfucking his sycophantic manservant Renfield on a regular basis. Fucking pretty boy got all the best looking women throwing themselves at him, while he was getting some massive man meat in his elitist aristocratic undead ass on the side. Blood wasn’t the only thing he was sucking on. That pretty boy also got all the best roles; got all the fame, got everything better and he didn’t deserve any of it. He came from fucking money. He was goddamn royalty. He was all those things that humans admire and strive for, looks, money, power, famous, and eternal youth. You didn’t really stand a chance in terms of popularity. Here you were a dirty ruthless “animal” that ripped people apart, while HE was Mr. suave and sexy that seduced his victims. Making death erotic rather than violent. In short, humans saw him and saw what they wanted to be. While they saw you, and saw what they were. Its one of the reasons why you have a big dislike for the undead. They aren’t natural. They don’t have that primal instinct that all living creatures have on some level. Humans and Werewolves both have it. Even all the Alien creatures you’ve had rare encounters with have a primal instinct due to the evolution that existed on their home worlds. The Undead don’t. They’re without emotion. No matter how much they try to mimic it. Any emotion they have is only due to their remembrance of how they reacted to events in their former lives. They don’t BREED naturally. Vampires are just fucking overgrown parasites and leeches in your superior opinion. All they do is try to exploit, hide and lie. And most idiotic humans fall for it. Now there’s a whole sub-culture of wannabe Vampires out there. Nobody wants to be a werewolf though. (Granted you’d probably hate a wannabe werewolf, but that’s not the point.) It’s not “sexy” enough. It’s not “dark and mysterious” enough, basically it’s not GAY enough. But being a Vampire sure is gay enough though, so let those stupid ass human wannabes go ahead and pretend and worship Vampires. They always find out just how much their “Masters” truly value them and it’s normally as food and at best a “pet”. Werewolves don’t lie. If they’re going to kill you, they’ll be up front immediately, they won’t string you along. At least you’ve always been that way. Fagula just represents everything you hate about his kind. All of which makes you wonder: Where the hell are the Van Helsings of the world, nowadays?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Alright I’ll take the job, just tell me where its at.” You say. After Erik gives you the information, you ride your Harley to the studio. When you arrive on the set, you see a bunch of snot nosed wolflings hanging around trying to look “tough”. Some of them are in human form, but you can smell them for who they truly are though. These cubs today, you swear they would’ve never lasted back in the old days. All flash and nothing to back it up. (Though you don’t mind looking at the young females that are there) That’s why they hang out in packs. You never did that even when you were young. You were always a lone wolf. “Hey who’s the fossil?” one of them asks. “Hey Grandpa, the remake of Old Yellow is next door!” This causes a howl of laughter from all of them, until you confront the one who said it. Probably the leader no doubt. Not even in wolf form. Pathetic. “I’m going to give you time to transform into a more adequate fighting form before I neuter you.” You calmly explain. “You? You’re like 300 years old! I could take…” Can’t say you didn’t give him a chance. You immediately pounce on him, knocking him down while clamping your jaws on his face and digging your fangs in. “HOLY SHIT DUDE!” one of them shouts. “Oh my god he’s killing him!” a female screams. “Get him off of him, get him off of him!” While them all attempt to pull you off of their leader you hear a familiar voice that gets your attention. “Well, I see Erik passed my script over to you, good. I’m also glad to see you’re still as anti-social as usual Wolf.” Mary says as you finally get off of your misguided heckler and approach her. She still looks the same, though she looks a lot better now that she got rid of that hair style she used to have and dyed it blonde. “Just re-establishing the proper hierarchy, nothing more.” “Hmm, always the Alpha Male, that was what I always loved about you. So primal. Maybe later I can dress in a little red cloak and we can reenact a fairy tale.” “Some fairy tale, as I remember you loved a lot of beings.” “Hey I can’t help who I am. I was created this way.” “Just like Frankie eh?” “Don’t you compare me to that sicko! Yes we are controlled by our genetics to a certain degree, but as you damn well know I rose above them! I made my own identity. I’m a successful director and writer now, so what if I have a healthy sexual appetite? There’s nothing wrong with that, I’m sure you’d agree given all the beings you had your way with before, after and DURING your marriage!” “Look never mind all that. I got a real problem with this film.” You say side stepping her correct accusation. “What’s wrong with it?” “What’s wrong with it? Are you kidding me? It sucks! It makes a mockery of werewolves! You even named one of them fucking Benji!” “Well comedy is popular now. Plus children like monsters just as long as they aren’t too scary, so I was hoping to make it a family film.” “ARRGH! I don’t DO family films! This is insulting and demeaning!” “How? Come on Wolf. In most horror movies you’ve made you always got killed in the end by a human, how was that any less demeaning?” “Because at least I was portrayed as feared monster that killed a bunch of people! I can play ball with the humans and their idealistic notion of good always having to overcome evil and all that…but THIS! This makes me into a fucking joke! I can’t even believe you of all people wrote this…no wait I can. You fucking undead don’t have any consideration for anyone, but yourselves.” “You know I’m technically not even undead, I’m created from several dead bodies. I’m more of a golem.” Mary attempts to correct you. “Who gives a shit, you’re still basically a walking corpse, and your flesh is dead. You’re Undead in my book.” “You know for someone who hasn’t been able to find a job in months and is basically just rotting away in his little cabin, you’d think that you’d be a little more appreciative. I wrote this with you in mind you hairy bigoted asshole!” You don’t know whether to take that as an insult or as an attempt for her to try to make amends for the past. > You continue to talk with Mary Eh, you let it slide this once, Mary can’t really help being so ignorant of a Werewolf’s pride, she’s just a fucking patchwork of corpse parts, besides you need the money from this job, and who knows, maybe you can jump start your career again… But there’s still no way you’re going to play in this movie the way it is! Time to turn on that charm. “Mary, look I know you mean well and all, but come on, you can’t seriously expect me to play this character! It’s insulting! Make it a comedy if you must, but make a dark one at least, not some family shit. Maybe I’m some fucking relic of the past trying to hold on to days gone by, but just about all I got left in this shitty world is my balls and my pride and I’m not losing either of them!” Mary stares at you a bit, then she addresses the wolfings. “Alright you guys that’s a wrap for today! I’ll call you back when I need you, there’s going to be some script rewrites, and before someone bites my head off, don’t worry nobody’s lost their jobs.” After the set is completely clear, Mary addresses you and strokes your facial fur. “That was a very passionate little speech you just gave, and almost halfway civilized for you. I especially liked the part about your balls.” At this point she gently caresses the twins with her other hand. “Mmm yes, I don’t think I’d like you to lose those either, or THIS!” At this point Mary grabs your big fully erect dick. “How about you and I discuss those script changes now, Wolfie?” “Alright, but its going to be hard for you to talk with your mouth full…” Four hours later, you and Mary have expended your sexual energy and are in a more talkative mood. “…and that’s how I think the movie should go.” You finish explaining. “Actually that’s not a bad idea; I’ll certainly incorporate some of the changes you suggested. See, and that’s why you’ll always hold a place in my heart, Wolfie.” Mary says lying next to you. “Well, the patchwork heart that was given to you anyways Mary.” “Damn Wolf, you were doing so well there for awhile and you revert right back to asshole mode.” “It’s a gift.” “Hmm, it’s also why you’re all alone.” “So what? I’ve always been a loner.” “And you’re happy living like that?” “Its worked pretty well so far, don’t see any reason to change now.” “Oh come on, surely you’d like someone around as opposed to the fast ass girls I hear you still bed every now and then.” “What? You mean like a wife? Yeah right! Tried that remember, you were part of the reason why I ultimately got divorced…ah fuck it. I was having problems with that bitch and fucking around on her before we started seeing each other. Nobody’s fault except my own for being stupid enough for getting married in the first place.” “Well maybe you just made the wrong choice in woman…” “No, I didn’t. I made the wrong choice period. I wasn’t meant to be married, and it’s not the idea of just fucking one female forever, I just value my freedom too much.” “Well I don’t see how you can be happy without someone special in your life.” “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Mary what is with you getting all into my fucking business? What about you? You ain’t married and you seem to be doing alright! …Or are you trying to tell me something?” Mary looks at you with a solemn expression on her face and touches your hand. “Wolf, things are different for me now. I spent years searching and while I’ve had lots of exciting and pleasant experiences in my life, but I’ve never felt as close to someone as I have during our time together. I might be made up of parts, but I’ve always felt a piece was missing when I wasn’t with you. No matter where I was, you were always in my mind.” “Oh so that’s what this is huh? You’re feeling that something is missing in your existence so you figure you can just waltz back into ol’ Wolf’s life because hey he doesn’t have anything going on and pick back up where we left off? Fuck that, I can say you literally and figuratively screwed the pooch on that one, baby. You ended up running off with that half a fag Dracula while I was getting all my shit taken away from me by my bitch ex-wife and sued by your goddamn no talent father!” you say and move your hand away. “It was a confusing time for me Wolf! You know how I was, I had all these hormones injected into me and I was initially created for the sole purpose of being a sex toy! Yes, I managed to overcome, but I couldn’t fight all of my initial feelings, I was also so curious about everything and anything! Dracula was a well traveled person and yes he WAS charming, I learned a lot while I was with him. I saw the world and more. You think I wanted to leave you? I loved you! Yes and I know you find that hard to believe that something Undead is capable of love, but I LOVED you!” “Oh yeah, well if you loved me so fucking much, why the fuck did you leave?” “Because I had to! You were stuck in your own little world, never wanting to mix with anyone, never wanting to do anything that didn’t interest you, I’m a social being! I need to be around people. I don’t know, maybe its because I was originally made to just stay locked in that fucking castle for that sicko Frankie and I spent so much time alone that I never wanted to be alone again. If stayed with you EVEN after your divorce and mine, I would’ve been trading a neglective mate, for an overly possessive one. Come on Wolf I know you. You would’ve been alienating everyone who looked at me with a hint of attraction. I had to let you go so I could be independent and find myself.” “Yeah, yeah, you’re the fucking victim as always right Mary? Tell someone who gives a shit. Fuck this, I’m not working on this movie with you, I don’t care what rewrites you do. I’m out.” You storm off, but as always Mary gets the last word. “I can’t be a victim, because you’ve already taken that job! You carry a chip on your shoulder the size of Gibraltar and act like the goddamn World owes you something, well it doesn’t! You can’t let shit go! It’s why you’re all by yourself! Okay Wolf, fuck me then, I was no good fucking cheating bitch that did you wrong. Fine. You talk to any of your children lately? At least the ones you know about? You got fucking sons and daughters Wolf and you’ve alienated ALL of them with your inflexibility and assholiness! Even Lawrence, who you once were so proud of remember? He was following in your footsteps remember? But what happened? He disappointed you by following his heart instead of YOUR bigotry!” The name “Lawrence” is one you haven’t heard in a long time and one you hoped you’d never hear again. You have to stop yourself from seriously damaging Mary for even mentioning him. Instead you just slowly turn around and attempt to calm yourself. “Mary, you will NOT fucking utter that name again. He’s fucking dead to me. You got that? He’s as fucking dead as your fucking flesh! He’s not a son, he’s not a relative, he’s not a friend!” “Yeah, I knew you’d say something like that, I told LAWRENCE that when we talked the last time and it’s so sad because he’s always just wanted your approval.” What the hell? What is Mary doing talking to your fucking no good disappointment of a son who dishonored the family by marrying Irena…one of the Cat People. > You question Mary Your interest is overriding your loathing; you decide to question Mary further. “What the fuck are you doing talking to Lawrence?” “It’s not like he’s a complete stranger to me you know, we did meet several times on the set when you and I were seeing each other. We got along remember?” “Yeah, I remember, so what, were you fucking him too at the time?” “(Sigh) No Wolf, though I wouldn’t have minded that since he was less of an asshole and a more open minded sort than you! In fact had he not been so in love with Irena, I might’ve tried, but I saw theirs was a true love and I wasn’t going to break that up…” “Hold just a goddamn minute! He told YOU about Irena before me?! You were keeping secrets from me?!” “No! In fact I was the one who told him to tell you about Irena because I knew you’d find out eventually, though he should’ve picked a better time than in the middle of your divorce to do it. I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t my place and it was between you and him. He wanted to keep it secret since he was so afraid that you’d be disappointed in him…” ”Hah! Disappointment isn’t a strong enough word!” “Yeah, I guess that was a mistake on my part. I figured you’d be able to look past it and I told him you would because he was your son and you were so proud of him…huh. I see your mind hasn’t changed on the subject though.” “Never will either, now that was fucking years ago what the hell are you doing still talking to him?” “Wolf, just because I wasn’t with you, doesn’t mean I couldn’t talk to Lawrence! Maybe by staying in contact with him, I felt like I was still in contact with you. Goddammit Wolf, I’m a free woman, I can talk to who I want! Besides, you disowned him anyway, what do you care?! I always kept in contact with Lawrence AND Irena. I even see them both every now and then…I bet I know more about Lawrence now than you do…hell I bet you don’t even know they have children! You got MORE grandchildren you don’t even know about!” You stand in utter shock; you didn’t even know such a pairing would produce off spring. You didn’t really want to think about it really. “He’s got children?” you say dumbfounded. “Yeah a few of them, they’re a bit funny looking, but they’re very cute! (Sigh) I always wished I was able to have children…” Mary says wistfully. “You know Wolf you really should see Lawrence. It would mean so much to him.” You don’t know, maybe all this information has bewildered you a bit, maybe Mary laid down the lovin’ really good, maybe you’re getting soft in your old age or maybe, just MAYBE you do want to see Lawrence. “…Alright…alright Mary, I’ll go see him, but I’m not promising anything!” Mary smiles and hugs you. “You will?” “Yeah, but if his cat bitch starts anything, I’m outta there!” “Oh Irena’s nice! You should get to know her too! She isn’t at all like you think Cat People are! I’ll go get ready!” “What?! You’re coming too?” “Of course, someone’s gotta keep you on a leash so you don’t end up destroying something, besides I know where they live and you don’t, so I’m going with you.” Soon you and Mary get on your Harley and are on your way. Mary tells you how to get your son’s house. You didn’t even realize he lived in the same state. You park your bike outside a fairly nice looking house. Your son’s been doing something right. You take a deep breath when you get to the door and stand there for a few seconds preparing yourself, and then ring the bell. The door opens almost immediately and a feline face stands before you, this must be Irena. It’s obvious she recognizes you, but predictably she doesn’t look happy to see you. “You? What do you want?” she demands, while Mary looks at you a little concerned about what you’re going to say. > You ask for Lawrence “Look Irena, I’m not here to fight, I just want to see Lawrence.” Speaking of whom, Lawrence arrives at the door; he’s very surprised to see you. “Dad?! What’re you doing here?” “I don’t really know, you can thank Mary here for even convincing me though… look we need to talk in private, I can’t be doing this shit in front of everyone.” Lawrence nods understanding completely and invites everyone in, Mary and Irena go off together while you and your son enter a study of some sort, where you have a fairly long talk. You find out that he runs his own security business, and is his own boss, which is something you can certainly respect. He excitedly tells about everything that’s occurred in his life since you “disowned” him. Its weird, he doesn’t seem to hold any kind of grudge or anything towards you. He’s just so happy you’re here. Must be a trait he picked up from his human mother’s side, because you know damn well he didn’t inherit it from you. If the roles were reversed, you’re certain you would’ve slammed the door in your own face. For once you’re glad Lawrence isn’t completely like you. You also realize that you have been unreasonable for all these years. You still don’t approve of your son’s choice in mates, but like Mary said, you need to get over it. Just then a couple of little furballs come wandering into the room, they look like Wolf cubs, but the unmistakable feline features are there. They look at you with wide eyes. “Hey, Tom and Isis. Come closer, I want you to meet someone.” Lawrence says. “Who’s that Daddy?” Tom asks. “That’s your grandfather.” Lawrence says picking one up. “Dad you’ve never even seen your own grandchildren. You want to hold them?” “Uh…erm…I don’t think we’re quite there yet Lawrence.” You say “Okay, I understand…hey! We’re having dinner soon, you should stay!” “I dunno it might be weird.” “Nonsense! Look if you think you’re going to get into it with Irena, I can tell you it won’t happen if you don’t say anything to her. She’ll keep quiet if you do. I hope you can be a little civil, I know it sucks when I have to be civilized to clients for my job, but you know how it is.” “Yeah I know how it is. Alright I can do it. Hell, I’ve come this far. This is a whole new experience for me. I hope just hope you’ve got some good food.” “Of course! We’re not vegetarians here you know!” “Well that’s good, or else I would’ve had to disown you again!” you badly joke. There’s a period of silence, and you think you might’ve stepped over the line, however Lawrence begins to laugh. “Disown me? If I become a vegetarian, just put a fucking silver bullet in my head! Ha ha!” You laugh too, and breathe a sigh of relief. You remind yourself that you’ll have to do a better job of your words at the dinner table! Dinner is a pleasant affair; Irena certainly is an excellent cook. In fact it looks like she’s an excellent housewife in general. You’ve noticed the house is spotless. She might be a house cat, but she’s certainly not a lazy one. Maybe there are exceptions to Cat People. She doesn’t talk to you, but she doesn’t start anything either. Everyone eats except Mary who doesn’t require it, but she looks happy that you’re here making an effort to get along with everyone. You can’t be sure, but you get the impression that she did this for herself as much as she did for you. Mary’s own “family” is pretty fucked up and she’s unable to have children of her own. Maybe in some ways she hoped to create a “surrogate” family that she could be apart of instead and all that was missing was you. The doorbell rings. “Who could that be?” Lawrence asks Irena. “I don’t know, I’ll go check.” Irena gets up to answer the door and you can hear a loud voice in the next room. “Sis! It’s so good to see you! How about a hug for your brother?” You hear some muttering and whispering, but can’t quite make it out. A few seconds later, another Irena and another Cat Person enters the room. You don’t like him. He’s fat and scruffy. He looks like scum and smells like scum. All your previous good feelings immediately start to dissipate. Mary looks over at you. “Uncle Oliver!” the furballs say in unison. “Hey, kids! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you! I’ll be staying here for awhile so we’ll have lots of time to play!” You don’t like him. “Hey Lawrence…I hope you’ve been taking good care of my sister.” He says with almost a hint of distain. You really don’t like him. “Who’s this couple?” he asks when noticing you and Mary. He gives you an unmistakable hostile stare. You hate him. You immediately whisper to Mary. “Who the fuck is this shithead?” “Its Irena’s brother, Oliver. I don’t know too much about him, this the first time I’ve met him in person.” > You leave There’s a limit to your tolerance and you’ve just reached it. This lowlife is going to piss you off severely. You better just leave now, before you turn this place into a warzone. “Well, I’d like to stay, but me and Mary have a lot of work to do on a new movie.” “We do?” “Yes! Remember all those rewrites?” you give her hand a squeeze and look at her while moving your head slightly in the direction of Oliver. She gets the hint. “Oh yeah, we have to go.” “Oh, well okay. I hope you’ll come by again soon though!” Lawrence says. As you and Mary head towards the door, you turn back around and look at the house, look at his wife, look at his children and then look at that other… cat person. You can only change so much. You can’t see yourself being “part of the family” This is your son’s life not yours. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again someday.” You say. Lawrence looks a little disappointed, but understands. “Yeah, I’m sure we’ll have a good time then.” He replies. “Goodbye and good luck son.” You and Mary get on your bike, wave goodbye and zoom off. During the ride you feel like you should say something to Mary, who you think is probably just as disappointed as your son was. “I’m sorry Mary, I just can’t change that much.” “I know. I suppose it was too big of a step. You did really make an effort though, and you at least reconciled with Lawrence.” “Hey I reconciled with you too…so are we like moving in together or should we still keep our own places?” “Excuse me? What’s all this? Are you suggesting that we should get back together?” “Well you were the one who brought it up first, and yeah you were right about a lot of stuff. I probably should have someone special in my life at my age. And since you’re about the only one who’ll put up with me on a long term basis, you’re the best candidate.” “Wow, Wolf with words like that, you REALLY make a girl feel special!” “You know I like everything else about you. I don’t need to say it.” “Hmm, what makes you think I still want to be with you?” “Oh please, you know you want this. Besides your hands are supposed to be around my waist, not fondling my crotch every five minutes.” Mary laughs at your remark and kisses you on the cheek. She rests her head on the back of your shoulder and just holds you normally for the rest of the trip, giving you a bit of a hugging squeeze every now and then. Sometimes a little change isn’t always a bad thing.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Look Irena, I’m not here to fight, I just want to see Lawrence.” Speaking of whom, Lawrence arrives at the door; he’s very surprised to see you. “Dad?! What’re you doing here?” “I don’t really know, you can thank Mary here for even convincing me though… look we need to talk in private, I can’t be doing this shit in front of everyone.” Lawrence nods understanding completely and invites everyone in, Mary and Irena go off together while you and your son enter a study of some sort, where you have a fairly long talk. You find out that he runs his own security business, and is his own boss, which is something you can certainly respect. He excitedly tells about everything that’s occurred in his life since you “disowned” him. Its weird, he doesn’t seem to hold any kind of grudge or anything towards you. He’s just so happy you’re here. Must be a trait he picked up from his human mother’s side, because you know damn well he didn’t inherit it from you. If the roles were reversed, you’re certain you would’ve slammed the door in your own face. For once you’re glad Lawrence isn’t completely like you. You also realize that you have been unreasonable for all these years. You still don’t approve of your son’s choice in mates, but like Mary said, you need to get over it. Just then a couple of little furballs come wandering into the room, they look like Wolf cubs, but the unmistakable feline features are there. They look at you with wide eyes. “Hey, Tom and Isis. Come closer, I want you to meet someone.” Lawrence says. “Who’s that Daddy?” Tom asks. “That’s your grandfather.” Lawrence says picking one up. “Dad you’ve never even seen your own grandchildren. You want to hold them?” “Uh…erm…I don’t think we’re quite there yet Lawrence.” You say “Okay, I understand…hey! We’re having dinner soon, you should stay!” “I dunno it might be weird.” “Nonsense! Look if you think you’re going to get into it with Irena, I can tell you it won’t happen if you don’t say anything to her. She’ll keep quiet if you do. I hope you can be a little civil, I know it sucks when I have to be civilized to clients for my job, but you know how it is.” “Yeah I know how it is. Alright I can do it. Hell, I’ve come this far. This is a whole new experience for me. I hope just hope you’ve got some good food.” “Of course! We’re not vegetarians here you know!” “Well that’s good, or else I would’ve had to disown you again!” you badly joke. There’s a period of silence, and you think you might’ve stepped over the line, however Lawrence begins to laugh. “Disown me? If I become a vegetarian, just put a fucking silver bullet in my head! Ha ha!” You laugh too, and breathe a sigh of relief. You remind yourself that you’ll have to do a better job of your words at the dinner table! Dinner is a pleasant affair; Irena certainly is an excellent cook. In fact it looks like she’s an excellent housewife in general. You’ve noticed the house is spotless. She might be a house cat, but she’s certainly not a lazy one. Maybe there are exceptions to Cat People. She doesn’t talk to you, but she doesn’t start anything either. Everyone eats except Mary who doesn’t require it, but she looks happy that you’re here making an effort to get along with everyone. You can’t be sure, but you get the impression that she did this for herself as much as she did for you. Mary’s own “family” is pretty fucked up and she’s unable to have children of her own. Maybe in some ways she hoped to create a “surrogate” family that she could be apart of instead and all that was missing was you. The doorbell rings. “Who could that be?” Lawrence asks Irena. “I don’t know, I’ll go check.” Irena gets up to answer the door and you can hear a loud voice in the next room. “Sis! It’s so good to see you! How about a hug for your brother?” You hear some muttering and whispering, but can’t quite make it out. A few seconds later, another Irena and another Cat Person enters the room. You don’t like him. He’s fat and scruffy. He looks like scum and smells like scum. All your previous good feelings immediately start to dissipate. Mary looks over at you. “Uncle Oliver!” the furballs say in unison. “Hey, kids! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you! I’ll be staying here for awhile so we’ll have lots of time to play!” You don’t like him. “Hey Lawrence…I hope you’ve been taking good care of my sister.” He says with almost a hint of distain. You really don’t like him. “Who’s this couple?” he asks when noticing you and Mary. He gives you an unmistakable hostile stare. You hate him. You immediately whisper to Mary. “Who the fuck is this shithead?” “Its Irena’s brother, Oliver. I don’t know too much about him, this the first time I’ve met him in person.” > You stick around You’ve just reconciled with your son you’re not leaving now, but you’re still on heightened state of agitation. “This is my father Wolf, and his…girlfriend Mary.” Lawrence says unsure of if that’s actually the case. You and Mary look at each other, shrug and nod silently in agreement that it is. “Wow, Lawrence, your family doesn’t keep to your own kind. Your Dad’s fucking a corpse and you’re fucking my sister. Wait, you’re also part human aren’t you? Sheesh, you Werewolves will fuck anything that isn’t another Werewolf! Can’t say I blame you though! HAR HAR HAR (BURP!) I’m kidding! I’m kidding of course. Relax. Hey Irena bring your pretty little tail over here and bring me some food too!” Okay you are REALLY close to losing it. Mary senses this and whispers to you to just calm down. It’s very difficult though. Meanwhile you see Irena bring Oliver some food, Lawrence isn’t paying attention as he’s talking to his children, but you notice Oliver is lecherously looking at Irena the whole time. Then he begins stuffing his bloated face when Lawrence turns back around. “Yeah, I’ll be staying here awhile Lawrence; I had a couple of job set backs. Might be awhile before I can find another one. Irena said it was okay.” Oliver says while food hangs from his mouth. You knew it. You goddamn well knew it. Typical fucking Cat Person. Fucking sponge. “Sure Oliver, you’re family after all, your home is my home.” “Ah, you have my thanks Lawrence. My sister is so lucky to have such a highly motivated well to do man such as yourself. Don’t know why our family disapproved so much of you, but hey at least I was at the wedding, right Irena? There to give you away, right Irena?” “Um, yes Oliver.” Irena says nervously and quickly goes back into the kitchen. Something is seriously WRONG here. You’ve hung around with some shady characters and known several creepy ones, and Oliver is just oozing with both traits. Even his sister doesn’t seem to like him; she seems more scared of him than anything. Like an abuse victim. You don’t understand why Lawrence is letting him talk like that. You ask to see Lawrence in the next room privately. “What’s up Dad?” he asks. “What’s up with you? Why are you letting Oliver talk shit like that?” “What Oliver? He’s harmless. That’s just how he is. Don’t pay any attention.” “Yeah well I’m having a very hard time doing that. Look fuck all my personal feelings about what you think of your relationship with Irena, but if that’s the woman you love, then you need to put Oliver in his place right now. I know damn well you HAD to inherit that trait from me.” “Dad I know your answer to everything is to kick everyone’s ass that looks at you sideways, but sometimes you have to let things go. Besides Oliver’s the only family member on EITHER side who supported our wedding you know. He even paid for it. He might make comments every now and then, but I know he’s supportive of us.” “Lawrence, I know about letting things go, I’ve been doing it all damn night, but I’m telling you I can sense that he’s up to no fucking good. He’s been staring at his sister’s tits and ass since he got here! It’s like he’s a psychotic stalker ex-boyfriend. I noticed Irena acting nervous around him, I’m telling you something weird went on between them and I don’t think it was consensual.” “Dad! You know what the fuck you’re saying?” “Hell yes I know what the fuck I’m saying. I’m saying he’s a fucking sicko and a moocher to boot. Doesn’t have a job and it’ll be awhile? You know what that translates into? A permanent squatter.” “Geez Dad, not all Cat People are decadent lazy inbreeders.” “Maybe not, but I’m saying HE is!” “I don’t think he is. Irena’s never told me that he’s ever done anything to her and I’m sure she would’ve, and as for the job thing, he’s just been having a string of bad luck. I mean come on; you should be able to identify with how hard the job market is right now. Look Dad, I hope you can put your bigotry aside, because I wanted you to stay awhile. Even stay here for the night.” > You leave “Lawrence I can’t put up with this, maybe you can and this is your life, but this ain’t me. If you ever want to see me, that’s fine, but I can’t deal with this aspect of your life.” You say and go back into the dining room. “Mary come on let’s go we gotta work on that movie thing.” ‘We’re leaving?” “Yeah, come on!” “Alright calm down!” When Lawrence enters the room, Oliver feels the need to make remarks again. “Hey Lawrence your Dad here really bosses around his woman, I hope you didn’t inherit that trait from him. When I gave her away I was hoping it would be to a gentleman, not a barking tyrant.” “Oliver, why the fuck did you give your sister away anyway? Was it because she was so repulsed by your appearance? Or was it because you were too much of a fucking loser to adequately provide for her?” You just set it off in this motherfucker. “What the fuck did you just say, you fucking mangy dog?” “Too complicated for you? Okay. I SAID YOU’RE A FUCKING SICKO INBREEDING DRAIN ON SOCIETY! Just like your whole fucking race! You’ve been ogling your sister all fucking night while shoveling that food in your fat face!” “Fucking racist! You’re a narrow minded racist!” Oliver screams. “Yeah? Well I’d rather be that, then a sick incestuous piece of worthless shit like you.” “Fuck you!” Oliver shouts and throws a fork at you. You dodge it and jump over the table. Oliver’s in poor physical condition and you easily put him in poorer physical condition; that is until Mary, Lawrence and Irena get you off of him. Only Mary is strong enough to hold you back. “Get him out of the house!” Irena shouts as the furballs go running off to hide from the mayhem. “Yeah, stick up for that fat floor rug! Just shut out the past like it didn’t happen, right?” “Dad, stop!” “Wolf, calm down!” Mary says. “Ignoring the problem ain’t gonna make it go away Lawrence. I thought you were smarter and more perceptive than this. I hope you realize soon, for your kids’ sake.” You take your leave, with Mary apologizing quickly to Lawrence and Irena and running after you. Oliver’s fat ass is still unconscious on the floor bleeding profusely. When you get to your bike, Mary is about to say something to you, but you interrupt her before she can start. “Mary don’t even start, because I’m not fucking wrong on this. You fucking saw him and how he was acting, don’t tell me you didn’t think he was a piece of shit pervert too.” Mary looks at you and nods. She can’t help but agree with you. She’d know the signs; after all she was married to that equally depraved fucker, Frankie. “But Wolf, shouldn’t we try to do something else? I mean…” “What else can we do Mary? I already said what I thought and kicked Oliver’s ass. Lawrence and Irena are going to have to take it from there. If I meddle anymore it’s just going to make things worse, if you meddle, it’ll just look like you’re siding with me. Its Lawrence’s family, it’s his life, it’s his choices, he’s gotta be the one to sort it out. Hopefully he makes the right one. Come on Mary let’s get out of here.” Mary hops on the back of your bike and you zoom off. On the trip home Mary rests her head on the back of your shoulder while holding you and giving you a bit of a hugging squeeze every now and then. It’s not really spoken, but it’s apparent you and Mary are back together again, and hopefully Lawrence listens to your warning so you can someday reunite with him again as well.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’ve just reconciled with your son you’re not leaving now, but you’re still on heightened state of agitation. “This is my father Wolf, and his…girlfriend Mary.” Lawrence says unsure of if that’s actually the case. You and Mary look at each other, shrug and nod silently in agreement that it is. “Wow, Lawrence, your family doesn’t keep to your own kind. Your Dad’s fucking a corpse and you’re fucking my sister. Wait, you’re also part human aren’t you? Sheesh, you Werewolves will fuck anything that isn’t another Werewolf! Can’t say I blame you though! HAR HAR HAR (BURP!) I’m kidding! I’m kidding of course. Relax. Hey Irena bring your pretty little tail over here and bring me some food too!” Okay you are REALLY close to losing it. Mary senses this and whispers to you to just calm down. It’s very difficult though. Meanwhile you see Irena bring Oliver some food, Lawrence isn’t paying attention as he’s talking to his children, but you notice Oliver is lecherously looking at Irena the whole time. Then he begins stuffing his bloated face when Lawrence turns back around. “Yeah, I’ll be staying here awhile Lawrence; I had a couple of job set backs. Might be awhile before I can find another one. Irena said it was okay.” Oliver says while food hangs from his mouth. You knew it. You goddamn well knew it. Typical fucking Cat Person. Fucking sponge. “Sure Oliver, you’re family after all, your home is my home.” “Ah, you have my thanks Lawrence. My sister is so lucky to have such a highly motivated well to do man such as yourself. Don’t know why our family disapproved so much of you, but hey at least I was at the wedding, right Irena? There to give you away, right Irena?” “Um, yes Oliver.” Irena says nervously and quickly goes back into the kitchen. Something is seriously WRONG here. You’ve hung around with some shady characters and known several creepy ones, and Oliver is just oozing with both traits. Even his sister doesn’t seem to like him; she seems more scared of him than anything. Like an abuse victim. You don’t understand why Lawrence is letting him talk like that. You ask to see Lawrence in the next room privately. “What’s up Dad?” he asks. “What’s up with you? Why are you letting Oliver talk shit like that?” “What Oliver? He’s harmless. That’s just how he is. Don’t pay any attention.” “Yeah well I’m having a very hard time doing that. Look fuck all my personal feelings about what you think of your relationship with Irena, but if that’s the woman you love, then you need to put Oliver in his place right now. I know damn well you HAD to inherit that trait from me.” “Dad I know your answer to everything is to kick everyone’s ass that looks at you sideways, but sometimes you have to let things go. Besides Oliver’s the only family member on EITHER side who supported our wedding you know. He even paid for it. He might make comments every now and then, but I know he’s supportive of us.” “Lawrence, I know about letting things go, I’ve been doing it all damn night, but I’m telling you I can sense that he’s up to no fucking good. He’s been staring at his sister’s tits and ass since he got here! It’s like he’s a psychotic stalker ex-boyfriend. I noticed Irena acting nervous around him, I’m telling you something weird went on between them and I don’t think it was consensual.” “Dad! You know what the fuck you’re saying?” “Hell yes I know what the fuck I’m saying. I’m saying he’s a fucking sicko and a moocher to boot. Doesn’t have a job and it’ll be awhile? You know what that translates into? A permanent squatter.” “Geez Dad, not all Cat People are decadent lazy inbreeders.” “Maybe not, but I’m saying HE is!” “I don’t think he is. Irena’s never told me that he’s ever done anything to her and I’m sure she would’ve, and as for the job thing, he’s just been having a string of bad luck. I mean come on; you should be able to identify with how hard the job market is right now. Look Dad, I hope you can put your bigotry aside, because I wanted you to stay awhile. Even stay here for the night.” > You stay for the night You’ve come this far, you might as well go a little further. “Alright…alright…I’ll stay around, but just direct me to your spare bedroom or something because I refuse to be in the same room with Oliver. His mere presence sickens me.” “Very well, just go upstairs turn left and straight ahead. It’s a blue room. I hope you’re in better spirits tomorrow, I want to talk with you some more.” “Yeah, well I hope you heed my warning Lawrence. See ya tomorrow.” You head to the bedroom, which is a fairly large one. You stretch out on the bed thinking about everything that’s happened today. It was going pretty well until fucking Oliver showed up. He just makes you want to rip his guts out and hang him with them until his tongue turns purple and sticks out. You’ve never had to hold in your anger like this before, but you’re trying to change. For the sake of Lawrence you’re trying damn hard to change. An hour passes and Mary enters the room. “So you can’t sleep, or am I correct in assuming you’re just isolating yourself so you don’t kill someone? Lawrence told everyone you were tired, but I knew better. You don’t like Oliver.” “Can you fuckin’ blame me? I mean come on Mary, you fuckin’ saw how he acts and how he is! Tell me you don’t find SOMETHING wrong with the fucker.” “Yeah, I know what you mean, I’ve been down there talking with everyone, and assessing him as well, and he is creepy. Especially with Irena.” “That’s what I tried to tell Lawrence, but he thinks I’m just a bigot.” “Well…you are, but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.” “I just want to fucking do massive harm to that fucking cat…” ”Whoa, easy there. We don’t actually know anything or have any proof of anything, he could just be harmlessly weird.” “I don’t need proof when I’ve got instinct! Arrgh! Why the hell isn’t Lawrence using his?!” “Calm down, you’re pretty tense, I think you need to work off some of that excess energy. Come on we worry about this tomorrow, for right now let’s continue to discuss those movie rewrites.” Mary seductively hops on your lap and begins to kiss you all over. “Mmm, I was wondering if you still wanted to be with me after what happened back at the studio.” “What you mean that little argument we had? Please, I’ve heard worse from you remember? I know you were just doing a lot of prideful macho posturing, which is kind of sexy actually. Beside I know damn well you want to be with me again, your actions of changing your views on Lawrence have proven that, not to mention your body is telling me right now.” Four hours later, Mary is fast asleep, but you’re still wide awake. This pleasant diversion still hasn’t calmed you down. You slide out of bed to get a drink and go for a walk. On your way to the bathroom, you hear to whispering and mumbling from another bedroom. You listen closely. “You know Isis, you’re growing into a pretty young feline, thank God you take after your beautiful mother.” “Thank you Uncle Oliver, but why’d you wake me up?” “Just to tell you that and to play a game with you. You see me and your mother used to play a game when we were younger, but it was a secret game. We didn’t tell anyone, and you can’t tell anyone either, especially not your Dad.” “Um I don’t like the way you’re rubbing my leg Uncle Oliver...” “But that’s how the game is played, now let me just…” You immediately burst through the door; Oliver’s fat frame is lurching over Isis when he turns his head in your direction. His eyes wide open like a deer caught in the headlights. “YOU’RE DEAD, YOU SICK PIECE OF SHIT!” you bellow and grab Oliver and throw him against the wall. Isis goes running and screaming from the room while you pound Oliver’s face into a bloody pulp. He tries to bat you with his claws, but they don’t even phase you, you’re too angry and you’ve been wanting to do this all fucking night. You throw him out of the room and into the hallway where you kick the hell out of him as he coughs up puke and blood. Mary arrives wondering what’s going on. “WOLF! STOP!” “NO! He was trying to molest Isis! I caught him right in the fucking act! I knew I was fucking right!” you bend down and speak in his ear. “And I’m gonna make sure you don’t ever try that shit on my granddaughter again, you fuck!” You begin shredding his balls and dick into pieces and howl of pain is sounded throughout the house, Tom at this point has woken up, but Mary takes him back to his own room and tells him to stay there. Now you’re lurching over Oliver’s bloody body ready to deliver the killing strike, when Lawrence and Irena arrive from downstairs. They look at you, they look at Oliver, then Irena says something you don’t expect, but the look in her eye doesn’t entirely surprise you. “Do it Wolf.” And you do, you drive your claws deep into his throat effectively decapitating him. After the deed is done, you and Lawrence dump the body (and head) in a nearby woods where nature can take care of it. Lawrence then speaks. “When Isis told us what happened exactly, all I could think about is that I should’ve listened to you. I’m a fucking idiot, and failed you and my children.” “Look nevermind all that now son, what’s important is the problem has been dealt with. YOU, just be on guard more in the future. Remember, you’re the protector of this family, you have to suspect everything and everyone. If something doesn’t feel right, trust your fucking instinct, its never wrong. Let’s get back home, I gotta wash this cat blood off of me, I think he pissed on me too, ugh.” The following day you decide to leave, Lawrence wants you to stick around, but you tell Lawrence he needs to spend time with his family right now, not you. This time he listens to you. You and Mary get on your Harley, while Lawrence, Irena, Isis and Tom all say their good byes to you. “Bye Grandpa!” Isis and Tom say in unison. “Bye you two. Remember, if someone starts trying to do something you don’t like to you, scratch their eyes out!” you reply patting them both on the head. “Thank you Wolf, for what you did…you don’t know how much it means to me…” “Think nothing of it, Irena, but you’re welcome.” “Bye Dad, I do hope we’ll see you again.” “You will.” You start up the cycle and you and Mary zoom off. On the trip home Mary rests her head on the back of your shoulder while holding you and giving you a bit of a hugging squeeze every now and then. “So are we going to actually get to those rewrites when we get back home, or are we going to just fuck our brains out again?” you ask Mary jokingly. “How about we do the latter, I don’t think the movie needs any rewrites now.” ”What?! Dammit I told you I’m not playing that cranky old grandpa part!” “Why not? You do an excellent job of it in real life.” Mary taunts. “Hey don’t joke like that! I got a public image to maintain!” “Ha ha! Don’t worry; we’re still making the changes. Your image of being a distrusting combative asshole will be maintained…and don’t ever change that trait.” Mary says while kissing you on the cheek. “No need to ever worry about that Mary, some things will never change.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your interest is overriding your loathing; you decide to question Mary further. “What the fuck are you doing talking to Lawrence?” “It’s not like he’s a complete stranger to me you know, we did meet several times on the set when you and I were seeing each other. We got along remember?” “Yeah, I remember, so what, were you fucking him too at the time?” “(Sigh) No Wolf, though I wouldn’t have minded that since he was less of an asshole and a more open minded sort than you! In fact had he not been so in love with Irena, I might’ve tried, but I saw theirs was a true love and I wasn’t going to break that up…” “Hold just a goddamn minute! He told YOU about Irena before me?! You were keeping secrets from me?!” “No! In fact I was the one who told him to tell you about Irena because I knew you’d find out eventually, though he should’ve picked a better time than in the middle of your divorce to do it. I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t my place and it was between you and him. He wanted to keep it secret since he was so afraid that you’d be disappointed in him…” ”Hah! Disappointment isn’t a strong enough word!” “Yeah, I guess that was a mistake on my part. I figured you’d be able to look past it and I told him you would because he was your son and you were so proud of him…huh. I see your mind hasn’t changed on the subject though.” “Never will either, now that was fucking years ago what the hell are you doing still talking to him?” “Wolf, just because I wasn’t with you, doesn’t mean I couldn’t talk to Lawrence! Maybe by staying in contact with him, I felt like I was still in contact with you. Goddammit Wolf, I’m a free woman, I can talk to who I want! Besides, you disowned him anyway, what do you care?! I always kept in contact with Lawrence AND Irena. I even see them both every now and then…I bet I know more about Lawrence now than you do…hell I bet you don’t even know they have children! You got MORE grandchildren you don’t even know about!” You stand in utter shock; you didn’t even know such a pairing would produce off spring. You didn’t really want to think about it really. “He’s got children?” you say dumbfounded. “Yeah a few of them, they’re a bit funny looking, but they’re very cute! (Sigh) I always wished I was able to have children…” Mary says wistfully. “You know Wolf you really should see Lawrence. It would mean so much to him.” You don’t know, maybe all this information has bewildered you a bit, maybe Mary laid down the lovin’ really good, maybe you’re getting soft in your old age or maybe, just MAYBE you do want to see Lawrence. “…Alright…alright Mary, I’ll go see him, but I’m not promising anything!” Mary smiles and hugs you. “You will?” “Yeah, but if his cat bitch starts anything, I’m outta there!” “Oh Irena’s nice! You should get to know her too! She isn’t at all like you think Cat People are! I’ll go get ready!” “What?! You’re coming too?” “Of course, someone’s gotta keep you on a leash so you don’t end up destroying something, besides I know where they live and you don’t, so I’m going with you.” Soon you and Mary get on your Harley and are on your way. Mary tells you how to get your son’s house. You didn’t even realize he lived in the same state. You park your bike outside a fairly nice looking house. Your son’s been doing something right. You take a deep breath when you get to the door and stand there for a few seconds preparing yourself, and then ring the bell. The door opens almost immediately and a feline face stands before you, this must be Irena. It’s obvious she recognizes you, but predictably she doesn’t look happy to see you. “You? What do you want?” she demands, while Mary looks at you a little concerned about what you’re going to say. > You be an asshole So much for civility… “Peeyew! It smells like a fucking litter box emanating from the house!” “Wolf! You said you’d be civil!” Mary remarks. “Doesn’t sound like something I’d say.” “Mary, why’d you bring this dick here?” Irena asks. “Because I THOUGHT he wanted to reunite with his son, not be obnoxious!” Just then your son comes to the door. He’s even more surprised to see you. “Dad? What, what’re you doing here?” “Insulting your wife so far.” Irena answers. “I don’t need to insult your feline ass; you people do a good enough job of that yourself by your mere existence.” “Now that’s enough Wolf!” Mary says hitting you. “Fuck you, you mean old bastard!” Irena says. “Dad, come on stop. Look let’s all go inside and…” Now two little furballs come to the door, they look like Wolf cubs, but the unmistakable feline features are there. They look up at you with wide eyes. “Who’s that Daddy?” “That’s your grandfather.” Lawrence says picking one up. “Dad you’ve never even seen your own grandchildren. You want to hold them?” “Don’t let that bastard hold them! He’s never bothered to see ANY of his grandchildren! Fuckin’ deadbeat!” Irena says. “Shit, they’d be safer with me than they are with you! You better watch your kids Lawrence, she’ll be trying to molest them soon, if she isn’t already, you know how those fuckin’ cats are!” Oooh boy you really crossed the line that time. “WOLF!” Mary shouts. “How fucking DARE you! Fuck you! I don’t need to be insulted on my own property! Get the fuck out!” “Dad, you’re out of line! You can’t just come here and insult my wife and family like this!” “Oh so that’s how it is eh? I’ve been hearing about how you want to see me so bad, but now you’re showing your true colors. You’re gonna side with your wife, instead of your blood. Shit, I knew you were whipped. I wasted my fucking time all those years ago trying to groom you to take my place and there’s no point in wasting my time here, I’m fuckin’ done. Enjoy your fuckin’ life with your cat bitch and your halfcat brats.” As you turn around you address Mary. “Yeah, this was a great idea Mary. If you want a ride back home, I’ll be on my bike waiting a few minutes, if not, you can get a ride from either the inbreeder or the traitor.” You get on your bike and wait awhile for Mary, but it’s apparent she isn’t following, so you take off and leave. Fuck her too and if she doesn’t want to work on the movie idea with you; then fuck that as well, you’ll survive somehow, you always have. It’s what you do best. You had a temporary moment of weakness, but when it came down to it, you stuck by your principles. You might be an old and broke, but at least you’re not fucking a cat thing.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Eh, you let it slide this once, Mary can’t really help being so ignorant of a Werewolf’s pride, she’s just a fucking patchwork of corpse parts, besides you need the money from this job, and who knows, maybe you can jump start your career again… But there’s still no way you’re going to play in this movie the way it is! Time to turn on that charm. “Mary, look I know you mean well and all, but come on, you can’t seriously expect me to play this character! It’s insulting! Make it a comedy if you must, but make a dark one at least, not some family shit. Maybe I’m some fucking relic of the past trying to hold on to days gone by, but just about all I got left in this shitty world is my balls and my pride and I’m not losing either of them!” Mary stares at you a bit, then she addresses the wolfings. “Alright you guys that’s a wrap for today! I’ll call you back when I need you, there’s going to be some script rewrites, and before someone bites my head off, don’t worry nobody’s lost their jobs.” After the set is completely clear, Mary addresses you and strokes your facial fur. “That was a very passionate little speech you just gave, and almost halfway civilized for you. I especially liked the part about your balls.” At this point she gently caresses the twins with her other hand. “Mmm yes, I don’t think I’d like you to lose those either, or THIS!” At this point Mary grabs your big fully erect dick. “How about you and I discuss those script changes now, Wolfie?” “Alright, but its going to be hard for you to talk with your mouth full…” Four hours later, you and Mary have expended your sexual energy and are in a more talkative mood. “…and that’s how I think the movie should go.” You finish explaining. “Actually that’s not a bad idea; I’ll certainly incorporate some of the changes you suggested. See, and that’s why you’ll always hold a place in my heart, Wolfie.” Mary says lying next to you. “Well, the patchwork heart that was given to you anyways Mary.” “Damn Wolf, you were doing so well there for awhile and you revert right back to asshole mode.” “It’s a gift.” “Hmm, it’s also why you’re all alone.” “So what? I’ve always been a loner.” “And you’re happy living like that?” “Its worked pretty well so far, don’t see any reason to change now.” “Oh come on, surely you’d like someone around as opposed to the fast ass girls I hear you still bed every now and then.” “What? You mean like a wife? Yeah right! Tried that remember, you were part of the reason why I ultimately got divorced…ah fuck it. I was having problems with that bitch and fucking around on her before we started seeing each other. Nobody’s fault except my own for being stupid enough for getting married in the first place.” “Well maybe you just made the wrong choice in woman…” “No, I didn’t. I made the wrong choice period. I wasn’t meant to be married, and it’s not the idea of just fucking one female forever, I just value my freedom too much.” “Well I don’t see how you can be happy without someone special in your life.” “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Mary what is with you getting all into my fucking business? What about you? You ain’t married and you seem to be doing alright! …Or are you trying to tell me something?” Mary looks at you with a solemn expression on her face and touches your hand. “Wolf, things are different for me now. I spent years searching and while I’ve had lots of exciting and pleasant experiences in my life, but I’ve never felt as close to someone as I have during our time together. I might be made up of parts, but I’ve always felt a piece was missing when I wasn’t with you. No matter where I was, you were always in my mind.” “Oh so that’s what this is huh? You’re feeling that something is missing in your existence so you figure you can just waltz back into ol’ Wolf’s life because hey he doesn’t have anything going on and pick back up where we left off? Fuck that, I can say you literally and figuratively screwed the pooch on that one, baby. You ended up running off with that half a fag Dracula while I was getting all my shit taken away from me by my bitch ex-wife and sued by your goddamn no talent father!” you say and move your hand away. “It was a confusing time for me Wolf! You know how I was, I had all these hormones injected into me and I was initially created for the sole purpose of being a sex toy! Yes, I managed to overcome, but I couldn’t fight all of my initial feelings, I was also so curious about everything and anything! Dracula was a well traveled person and yes he WAS charming, I learned a lot while I was with him. I saw the world and more. You think I wanted to leave you? I loved you! Yes and I know you find that hard to believe that something Undead is capable of love, but I LOVED you!” “Oh yeah, well if you loved me so fucking much, why the fuck did you leave?” “Because I had to! You were stuck in your own little world, never wanting to mix with anyone, never wanting to do anything that didn’t interest you, I’m a social being! I need to be around people. I don’t know, maybe its because I was originally made to just stay locked in that fucking castle for that sicko Frankie and I spent so much time alone that I never wanted to be alone again. If stayed with you EVEN after your divorce and mine, I would’ve been trading a neglective mate, for an overly possessive one. Come on Wolf I know you. You would’ve been alienating everyone who looked at me with a hint of attraction. I had to let you go so I could be independent and find myself.” “Yeah, yeah, you’re the fucking victim as always right Mary? Tell someone who gives a shit. Fuck this, I’m not working on this movie with you, I don’t care what rewrites you do. I’m out.” You storm off, but as always Mary gets the last word. “I can’t be a victim, because you’ve already taken that job! You carry a chip on your shoulder the size of Gibraltar and act like the goddamn World owes you something, well it doesn’t! You can’t let shit go! It’s why you’re all by yourself! Okay Wolf, fuck me then, I was no good fucking cheating bitch that did you wrong. Fine. You talk to any of your children lately? At least the ones you know about? You got fucking sons and daughters Wolf and you’ve alienated ALL of them with your inflexibility and assholiness! Even Lawrence, who you once were so proud of remember? He was following in your footsteps remember? But what happened? He disappointed you by following his heart instead of YOUR bigotry!” The name “Lawrence” is one you haven’t heard in a long time and one you hoped you’d never hear again. You have to stop yourself from seriously damaging Mary for even mentioning him. Instead you just slowly turn around and attempt to calm yourself. “Mary, you will NOT fucking utter that name again. He’s fucking dead to me. You got that? He’s as fucking dead as your fucking flesh! He’s not a son, he’s not a relative, he’s not a friend!” “Yeah, I knew you’d say something like that, I told LAWRENCE that when we talked the last time and it’s so sad because he’s always just wanted your approval.” What the hell? What is Mary doing talking to your fucking no good disappointment of a son who dishonored the family by marrying Irena…one of the Cat People. > You smack her and leave “I warned you about saying that name again!” you say and back hand Mary across the face, if she was human, she’d have a nice red welt there now and be on the floor, but Mary’s made of stronger stuff, in fact she starts hitting you back, which you attempt to deflect. “YOU BASTARD! How fucking dare you! Get the fuck out, I was an idiot thinking I could get you to change! You can forget about being in the movie too! Go back to your shithole cabin and be fucking alone since that’s what you want so bad!” “Yeah, yeah. Fuck you too.” You say turning around to leave while taking a few punches to your back. You return to your cabin and brood in the darkness, muttering to yourself. “I don’t need them; I don’t need any of them. I don’t need anybody. Never did. I’m not a pussy ass whiney weakling. I’m the fucking Alpha Wolf. That’s why I’m still here and everyone else is gone or fallen by the wayside. I got my fuckin’ pride. That’s all I need…that’s all I’ll ever need…” you say falling asleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Eh, you let it slide this once, Mary can’t really help being so ignorant of a Werewolf’s pride, she’s just a fucking patchwork of corpse parts, besides you need the money from this job, and who knows, maybe you can jump start your career again… But there’s still no way you’re going to play in this movie the way it is! Time to turn on that charm. “Mary, look I know you mean well and all, but come on, you can’t seriously expect me to play this character! It’s insulting! Make it a comedy if you must, but make a dark one at least, not some family shit. Maybe I’m some fucking relic of the past trying to hold on to days gone by, but just about all I got left in this shitty world is my balls and my pride and I’m not losing either of them!” Mary stares at you a bit, then she addresses the wolfings. “Alright you guys that’s a wrap for today! I’ll call you back when I need you, there’s going to be some script rewrites, and before someone bites my head off, don’t worry nobody’s lost their jobs.” After the set is completely clear, Mary addresses you and strokes your facial fur. “That was a very passionate little speech you just gave, and almost halfway civilized for you. I especially liked the part about your balls.” At this point she gently caresses the twins with her other hand. “Mmm yes, I don’t think I’d like you to lose those either, or THIS!” At this point Mary grabs your big fully erect dick. “How about you and I discuss those script changes now, Wolfie?” “Alright, but its going to be hard for you to talk with your mouth full…” Four hours later, you and Mary have expended your sexual energy and are in a more talkative mood. “…and that’s how I think the movie should go.” You finish explaining. “Actually that’s not a bad idea; I’ll certainly incorporate some of the changes you suggested. See, and that’s why you’ll always hold a place in my heart, Wolfie.” Mary says lying next to you. “Well, the patchwork heart that was given to you anyways Mary.” “Damn Wolf, you were doing so well there for awhile and you revert right back to asshole mode.” “It’s a gift.” “Hmm, it’s also why you’re all alone.” “So what? I’ve always been a loner.” “And you’re happy living like that?” “Its worked pretty well so far, don’t see any reason to change now.” “Oh come on, surely you’d like someone around as opposed to the fast ass girls I hear you still bed every now and then.” “What? You mean like a wife? Yeah right! Tried that remember, you were part of the reason why I ultimately got divorced…ah fuck it. I was having problems with that bitch and fucking around on her before we started seeing each other. Nobody’s fault except my own for being stupid enough for getting married in the first place.” “Well maybe you just made the wrong choice in woman…” “No, I didn’t. I made the wrong choice period. I wasn’t meant to be married, and it’s not the idea of just fucking one female forever, I just value my freedom too much.” “Well I don’t see how you can be happy without someone special in your life.” “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Mary what is with you getting all into my fucking business? What about you? You ain’t married and you seem to be doing alright! …Or are you trying to tell me something?” Mary looks at you with a solemn expression on her face and touches your hand. “Wolf, things are different for me now. I spent years searching and while I’ve had lots of exciting and pleasant experiences in my life, but I’ve never felt as close to someone as I have during our time together. I might be made up of parts, but I’ve always felt a piece was missing when I wasn’t with you. No matter where I was, you were always in my mind.” “Oh so that’s what this is huh? You’re feeling that something is missing in your existence so you figure you can just waltz back into ol’ Wolf’s life because hey he doesn’t have anything going on and pick back up where we left off? Fuck that, I can say you literally and figuratively screwed the pooch on that one, baby. You ended up running off with that half a fag Dracula while I was getting all my shit taken away from me by my bitch ex-wife and sued by your goddamn no talent father!” you say and move your hand away. “It was a confusing time for me Wolf! You know how I was, I had all these hormones injected into me and I was initially created for the sole purpose of being a sex toy! Yes, I managed to overcome, but I couldn’t fight all of my initial feelings, I was also so curious about everything and anything! Dracula was a well traveled person and yes he WAS charming, I learned a lot while I was with him. I saw the world and more. You think I wanted to leave you? I loved you! Yes and I know you find that hard to believe that something Undead is capable of love, but I LOVED you!” “Oh yeah, well if you loved me so fucking much, why the fuck did you leave?” “Because I had to! You were stuck in your own little world, never wanting to mix with anyone, never wanting to do anything that didn’t interest you, I’m a social being! I need to be around people. I don’t know, maybe its because I was originally made to just stay locked in that fucking castle for that sicko Frankie and I spent so much time alone that I never wanted to be alone again. If stayed with you EVEN after your divorce and mine, I would’ve been trading a neglective mate, for an overly possessive one. Come on Wolf I know you. You would’ve been alienating everyone who looked at me with a hint of attraction. I had to let you go so I could be independent and find myself.” “Yeah, yeah, you’re the fucking victim as always right Mary? Tell someone who gives a shit. Fuck this, I’m not working on this movie with you, I don’t care what rewrites you do. I’m out.” You storm off, but as always Mary gets the last word. “I can’t be a victim, because you’ve already taken that job! You carry a chip on your shoulder the size of Gibraltar and act like the goddamn World owes you something, well it doesn’t! You can’t let shit go! It’s why you’re all by yourself! Okay Wolf, fuck me then, I was no good fucking cheating bitch that did you wrong. Fine. You talk to any of your children lately? At least the ones you know about? You got fucking sons and daughters Wolf and you’ve alienated ALL of them with your inflexibility and assholiness! Even Lawrence, who you once were so proud of remember? He was following in your footsteps remember? But what happened? He disappointed you by following his heart instead of YOUR bigotry!” The name “Lawrence” is one you haven’t heard in a long time and one you hoped you’d never hear again. You have to stop yourself from seriously damaging Mary for even mentioning him. Instead you just slowly turn around and attempt to calm yourself. “Mary, you will NOT fucking utter that name again. He’s fucking dead to me. You got that? He’s as fucking dead as your fucking flesh! He’s not a son, he’s not a relative, he’s not a friend!” “Yeah, I knew you’d say something like that, I told LAWRENCE that when we talked the last time and it’s so sad because he’s always just wanted your approval.” What the hell? What is Mary doing talking to your fucking no good disappointment of a son who dishonored the family by marrying Irena…one of the Cat People. > You memories (Lawrence) The Wolfman: Lawrence Talbot One of your halfbreed sons by a human woman, however as long as the father is a werewolf then the child is still considered a werewolf. (Yes Werewolf society is patriarchal) Besides any seed of yours can’t be anything else BUT a werewolf! At least that’s what you’ve always believed, until Lawrence. Its true some of your other sons and daughters have disappointed you in some way for your strict ideology of how a “True Werewolf” is supposed to act, but Lawrence stepped over a line that can’t be dismissed as simple weakness, if anything its treason at worst and perverted mental illness at best, especially since you had such high hopes for him. When Lawrence was a cub, he did everything he could to emulate you. You weren’t in his life growing up of course since you’d long moved on before you even knew he was born, but he did everything he could to learn about you and eventually seek you out when he grew up. You remember he first arrived on one of the sets he punched out two security guards who tried to escort him off. You knew then he was one of yours. He was very excited to finally meet you and for your part you liked him too. Here he was, wanting to model his life after yours, as opposed to complaining and whining about how you weren’t there for him. Truly the survival instinct mindset was strong in this one. You spent time with him when you could. Indeed you wanted to. He didn’t ask for hand outs either, he wanted to prove he could do everything himself. And when his first movie opened up to glowing reviews, you were bursting with pride. It looked like everything was going good; Lawrence might’ve eventually replaced you as the “Alpha Wolf” which you didn’t even mind. He was worthy. You had the idea of him having cubs of his own and how one of them would also replace him when he got too old. It would’ve been a good legacy to be proud of…but then love got in the way. You don’t even like thinking about that dark day. The day he met that cat THING! Needless to say everything fell apart; it was also around the time of your divorce so you were really in no mood to hear his pleas for you to “understand”. You disowned him immediately. He wasn’t even a fucking werewolf anymore as far as you were concerned; you didn’t even dirty your hands beating the shit out of him since he disgusted you so much. Eventually he faded out of sight in the movie industry, disheartened by your harsh and brutal decision, but continued his abominable relationship with that cat thing. Years later you were invited to the wedding, but you returned it to sender with the words “PUSSY WHIPPED” in big red letters on the front.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Eh, you let it slide this once, Mary can’t really help being so ignorant of a Werewolf’s pride, she’s just a fucking patchwork of corpse parts, besides you need the money from this job, and who knows, maybe you can jump start your career again… But there’s still no way you’re going to play in this movie the way it is! Time to turn on that charm. “Mary, look I know you mean well and all, but come on, you can’t seriously expect me to play this character! It’s insulting! Make it a comedy if you must, but make a dark one at least, not some family shit. Maybe I’m some fucking relic of the past trying to hold on to days gone by, but just about all I got left in this shitty world is my balls and my pride and I’m not losing either of them!” Mary stares at you a bit, then she addresses the wolfings. “Alright you guys that’s a wrap for today! I’ll call you back when I need you, there’s going to be some script rewrites, and before someone bites my head off, don’t worry nobody’s lost their jobs.” After the set is completely clear, Mary addresses you and strokes your facial fur. “That was a very passionate little speech you just gave, and almost halfway civilized for you. I especially liked the part about your balls.” At this point she gently caresses the twins with her other hand. “Mmm yes, I don’t think I’d like you to lose those either, or THIS!” At this point Mary grabs your big fully erect dick. “How about you and I discuss those script changes now, Wolfie?” “Alright, but its going to be hard for you to talk with your mouth full…” Four hours later, you and Mary have expended your sexual energy and are in a more talkative mood. “…and that’s how I think the movie should go.” You finish explaining. “Actually that’s not a bad idea; I’ll certainly incorporate some of the changes you suggested. See, and that’s why you’ll always hold a place in my heart, Wolfie.” Mary says lying next to you. “Well, the patchwork heart that was given to you anyways Mary.” “Damn Wolf, you were doing so well there for awhile and you revert right back to asshole mode.” “It’s a gift.” “Hmm, it’s also why you’re all alone.” “So what? I’ve always been a loner.” “And you’re happy living like that?” “Its worked pretty well so far, don’t see any reason to change now.” “Oh come on, surely you’d like someone around as opposed to the fast ass girls I hear you still bed every now and then.” “What? You mean like a wife? Yeah right! Tried that remember, you were part of the reason why I ultimately got divorced…ah fuck it. I was having problems with that bitch and fucking around on her before we started seeing each other. Nobody’s fault except my own for being stupid enough for getting married in the first place.” “Well maybe you just made the wrong choice in woman…” “No, I didn’t. I made the wrong choice period. I wasn’t meant to be married, and it’s not the idea of just fucking one female forever, I just value my freedom too much.” “Well I don’t see how you can be happy without someone special in your life.” “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Mary what is with you getting all into my fucking business? What about you? You ain’t married and you seem to be doing alright! …Or are you trying to tell me something?” Mary looks at you with a solemn expression on her face and touches your hand. “Wolf, things are different for me now. I spent years searching and while I’ve had lots of exciting and pleasant experiences in my life, but I’ve never felt as close to someone as I have during our time together. I might be made up of parts, but I’ve always felt a piece was missing when I wasn’t with you. No matter where I was, you were always in my mind.” “Oh so that’s what this is huh? You’re feeling that something is missing in your existence so you figure you can just waltz back into ol’ Wolf’s life because hey he doesn’t have anything going on and pick back up where we left off? Fuck that, I can say you literally and figuratively screwed the pooch on that one, baby. You ended up running off with that half a fag Dracula while I was getting all my shit taken away from me by my bitch ex-wife and sued by your goddamn no talent father!” you say and move your hand away. “It was a confusing time for me Wolf! You know how I was, I had all these hormones injected into me and I was initially created for the sole purpose of being a sex toy! Yes, I managed to overcome, but I couldn’t fight all of my initial feelings, I was also so curious about everything and anything! Dracula was a well traveled person and yes he WAS charming, I learned a lot while I was with him. I saw the world and more. You think I wanted to leave you? I loved you! Yes and I know you find that hard to believe that something Undead is capable of love, but I LOVED you!” “Oh yeah, well if you loved me so fucking much, why the fuck did you leave?” “Because I had to! You were stuck in your own little world, never wanting to mix with anyone, never wanting to do anything that didn’t interest you, I’m a social being! I need to be around people. I don’t know, maybe its because I was originally made to just stay locked in that fucking castle for that sicko Frankie and I spent so much time alone that I never wanted to be alone again. If stayed with you EVEN after your divorce and mine, I would’ve been trading a neglective mate, for an overly possessive one. Come on Wolf I know you. You would’ve been alienating everyone who looked at me with a hint of attraction. I had to let you go so I could be independent and find myself.” “Yeah, yeah, you’re the fucking victim as always right Mary? Tell someone who gives a shit. Fuck this, I’m not working on this movie with you, I don’t care what rewrites you do. I’m out.” You storm off, but as always Mary gets the last word. “I can’t be a victim, because you’ve already taken that job! You carry a chip on your shoulder the size of Gibraltar and act like the goddamn World owes you something, well it doesn’t! You can’t let shit go! It’s why you’re all by yourself! Okay Wolf, fuck me then, I was no good fucking cheating bitch that did you wrong. Fine. You talk to any of your children lately? At least the ones you know about? You got fucking sons and daughters Wolf and you’ve alienated ALL of them with your inflexibility and assholiness! Even Lawrence, who you once were so proud of remember? He was following in your footsteps remember? But what happened? He disappointed you by following his heart instead of YOUR bigotry!” The name “Lawrence” is one you haven’t heard in a long time and one you hoped you’d never hear again. You have to stop yourself from seriously damaging Mary for even mentioning him. Instead you just slowly turn around and attempt to calm yourself. “Mary, you will NOT fucking utter that name again. He’s fucking dead to me. You got that? He’s as fucking dead as your fucking flesh! He’s not a son, he’s not a relative, he’s not a friend!” “Yeah, I knew you’d say something like that, I told LAWRENCE that when we talked the last time and it’s so sad because he’s always just wanted your approval.” What the hell? What is Mary doing talking to your fucking no good disappointment of a son who dishonored the family by marrying Irena…one of the Cat People. > You memories (Irena) The Cat People: Irena Reed To be quite honest you don’t know a whole hell of a lot about your son’s wife Irena, and you don’t really want to. All you know is she’s a fucking cat person and that’s enough to disown him by association. While you’re openly vocal about your extreme dislike for the undead and vampires in particular, you’d grudgingly admit while under duress and in a hopeless state of drunkenness, you have met a few that you’ve been able to get along with. Hell you’ve been known to fuck the occasional Vamp chick every now and then (Not to mention Mary). Not being natural creatures, you don’t really expect anything better from them, so whatever sneaky arrogant shit they pull doesn’t really surprised you. However, there is ONE group of people you absolutely WILL NOT tolerate on any level, and those are those damn Cat People. You just can’t stand the scent of them. They’re a decadent perverted race that sickens you. The Cat People are lycanthrope predators much like Werewolves, but that’s where the similarities end, and they aren’t even good predators anymore. Werewolves favor a survivalistic mindset. Even the young pups today who you normally frown upon as being spoiled go around trying to hone their skills and maintain that fighting spirit. Cat People do no such thing. They sponge, scam, scavenge and are just outright lazy bastards, even those overgrown leeches you call Vampires are less of a drain on society in your opinion. It’s partly why you’re such a hard ass when it comes to the “old ways’ and harass young werewolves about not living up to them like they should. Because you see that Cat People USED to be like Werewolves but then they completely gave into civilization and allowed themselves to become soft, fat and weak, and as long as you draw breathe on this shitty World you will NOT allow the Werewolf race to follow in their paw prints. Cat People are a hated reminder of what “civilization” can do to anyone if they aren’t careful. Another unsavory characteristic that they have that repulses you is that they’ve been rumored to indulge in incest; a loathsome practice that only serves to destroy and weaken a gene line, all of which gives further reason why they have fallen so far from what they used to be. Not to mention fucking lazy. You mean sheesh, they can’t even be bothered to look for a mate outside their goddamn house?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Oh boo fucking hoo, your latest Opera hasn’t been doing too well lately. At least people are paying to see the goddamn thing! As bad of a composer, and musician you are, you oughta be glad anyone’s even paying to see the goddamn thing! People don’t want to see anything with me in it! And at least you’ve got another job to fall back on LIKE BEING AN AGENT THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING ME A FUCKING JOB!” you snarl. There’s some dead air briefly and then Erik begins talking again. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be complaining about my problems to you. You of course know all about torment. A war that wages within you, a beast that…” “Erik I’ve got no time and I’m in no mood to hear how we’re supposed to be kindred spirits, you just better tell me you found something for me and it better not be another guest speaker spot at a comic convention!” “Well let’s see…I dunno. Werewolves aren’t popular anymore you know…there might be something…here it is! It’s called Wolf Pack.” “Pack? That implies more than one wolf on the set there Erik. Well I suppose I can share the spotlight with some others. As long as I’m in charge of course.” You say. “Er…well according to this, you’d be the old cranky grandpa wolf that makes a bunch of rude remarks.” “What?! What kind of stupid shit is that?” “Yeah that’s the stuff.” Erik replies not catching on. “I mean what the hell kind of movie is this?” “Its uh…let’s see…oh here. It’s a horror comedy about a werewolf family and how they adjust to human society. Looks like you’ll be playing with a lot of young pups as you’d call them.” “WHAT?! NO! What the fuck Erik? I’m a fucking monster not something to be fucking laughed at! And they already did a movie like that a long time ago and it sucked!” “Well that’s all I got. Maybe you could talk to the director to make changes since they also wrote it. I’m sure you and her are familiar with each other. You had an affair with her for quite some time.” “Uh, you wanna narrow that list down Erik?” “It’s Mary. You know, the one who used to be married to Frankie, until your affair broke up both of your marriages?” Erik’s new information didn’t exactly make you any more enthusiastic to want to take the job. > You insist that Erik give you something else No, no, no, no! The movie sounds like it sucks and you’re not going to deal with Mary after all the shit you got yourself into last time with her. “Fuck that Erik, there’s gotta be something else!” “Well there’s a comic convention that needs another guest speaker…” You slam the phone down. You need to get out of the house. You decide to go for a walk in the forest. You wander around in the calmness of the forest and nature in general. Sometimes you wonder if you shouldn’t just go back to living in the wild. Things were certainly simpler then. While you’re thinking about the nostalgia of the old days, you see a very large hairy body lying prone in the distance. “What the fuck…how the hell…” you mumble to yourself while going over to investigate. When you arrive, its exactly who you thought it was, though you don’t understand how you couldn’t have heard him lumbering through the forest given how big he is, let alone seen him. “Hey Kong! You alive? Wake up!” you shout. Kong stirs a little and then sits up to yawn. He scratches his now silverback and looks over at you. “Wolf? What’re you doing here?” “Me? I live just a few miles away! What’re you doing here and how is it that I didn’t see or hear you crashing through the forest?” “Oh I can be pretty silent when I want to be.” “Okay, but what’re you doing here?” “Back to nature my friend. Nancy kicked me out of the house. For good this time, she said she can’t put up with my chauvinism any more. All I told her was to get her ass back in the kitchen and make me a banana split and serve it to me naked.” “Sounds like a reasonable request, so what happened?” “She went into the kitchen, came back out with a frying pan of hot grease, threw the shit on me and kicked me in the balls, before shoving me out the door and calling me a fucking backward primate.” You hold back some laughter, before speaking again. “Tough break there Kong, but I guess you could look on the bright side, you’re back to your roots with no more cares anymore. Living free in the wild and all.” “Are you on fucking crack Wolf? It sucks! You know when I lived on Skull Island I didn’t know any better, but in the last few days I’ve come to realize living in a warm HOUSE and sleeping in a bed is way better than living in the cold wild and sleeping on the ground where bugs crawl all over you!” Kong’s remarks certainly have made you reconsider your previous nostalgia of the old days. “Well, can’t you just make up with Nancy? Surely if she’s put up with you this long and if you apologized and did all that romantic crap she’d let you back in.” “Don’t think so Wolf, I never was good at that, besides she’s got a restraining order on me too.” ”What else did you do to her?” “Nothing! She’s just being a crazy bitch, that’s unwilling to listen to reason. Well unwilling to listen to me anyway. Hey Wolf, you’ve always been a smooth talker with ladies. Maybe you could talk some sense into her for me.” “Uh, I dunno Kong I don’t really like getting into the middle of shit like this, don’t you have someplace else to stay, hey what about your cousin Joe?” “I’m not staying with him! He’s a fucking fag!” “Well, beggars can’t be chooser Kong, besides he’s your cousin it’s not like you have worry about him trying any ass pirate shit on you. I’m sure he’s got a nice house too.” “Yeah, I guess…but I’d still prefer to go back to my own home, and I’m not sure if Joe would let me stay anyway. You gotta help me out Wolf, Nancy kicked me out with nothing, and I don’t even have any money in the bank. I don’t want to be living in the fucking wilderness again!” You normally aren’t one to help someone for no reason, but there’s the fact that you don’t want him living that close to you, you don’t relish the idea of him taking big healthy dumps in a forest you live near, so to avoid wearing a clothespin on your nose for the rest of your time living here, you decide to help Kong. > You go talk to Nancy “Alright Kong I’ll go talk to Nancy.” “Cool. You always had a better way with words than I did, more diplomatic.” “That’s gotta be the first time I’ve ever heard someone call me diplomatic, but I’ll see what I can do, I’m not guaranteeing anything though.” Kong gives you the address and you head back to your cabin where you get on you Harley and drive off. You have no plan whatsoever. You’re just going to fumble your way through and try to turn on the charm. Eventually you get to the house which is huge, but then it would have to be to accommodate a couple of giants. You can’t even reach the doorbell, so you just kick the door and howl as loud as you can. A few minutes pass and you think you haven’t been heard, but eventually a colossal bald man with a towel wrapped around his waist opens the door, its Glenn. Well this was certainly unexpected. He looks down with a perturbed stare. “Yeah, whadda you want?” he booms. “Is Nancy home?” “Whadda ya want with Nancy, hairball?” “I have to talk to her, its important.” “Yeah, well I say it isn’t, now get the fuck outta here!” “Look, I’m not looking for trouble, just let me talk to Nancy it won’t take long.” “It won’t take long because you ain’t gonna do it, now get the fuck outta here you fucking mutt!” “Do you even know who I am?” you say starting to lose your temper. “Yeah I do, and if you don’t get the fuck outta here I’m gonna know who you WERE!” While you study his foot, and deciding which one of those big veins you’re going rip into before running off to hide, Nancy comes to the door in a silk robe. She’s kept herself in pretty good condition, either that, or the alien ray that hit her slowed down her aging process. “Glenn, what’s going on…oh hello Wolf. What bring you here?” “Hello Nancy, I need to talk to you for a moment.” “Nancy you want me to get rid of this hairball?” “No Glenn that’s not necessary, be nice.” “Yeah whatever, look I’m leaving, I’ll be back later tonight so you be ready for another round of the amazing colossal dick! Har har har har!” Glenn at this point slaps Nancy hard on her ass, and walks out the door and down the street with just the towel around him! “Uh, isn’t he forgetting something?” “Yes, but its not the first time. One time he left without even a towel.” “Yikes, that must’ve been a sight.” “(Sigh) Not really, he’s isn’t nearly as colossal as he thinks…but anyway come on in.” You enter the house and follow Nancy into the kitchen who makes herself some coffee. You look up at the table trying to figure out the best way to climb up there; Nancy unexpectedly picks you up and puts on it. “Ohh your fur is so soft.” She says brushing her finger against your back. “So what did you have to tell me?” “Its about Kong, he’s taken residence in a forest not too far away from my cabin, he says you kicked him out and he wants to come back home.” “You have my sympathies, for getting him as a neighbor, but I’m not taking him back. I’ve put up with his shit for too long. I was an idiot thinking I could change him. Sometimes I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.” Nancy’s pleasant demeanor has changed. This is a delicate situation, say the wrong thing and you could be in real danger. > You ask her about Glenn “So I see you’ve hooked up with Glenn, how’s that working out?” you ask. “Oh its great…” she says. Her demeanor didn’t change. “So is Glenn treating you any better?” you ask “Well…uh…yeah! Yes he is…” “That didn’t sound very convincing Nancy.” “Okay, so he’s a dickhead too, but at least with him he goes home and I don’t have to slave over him on a regular basis.” “Oh no, you just get treated like a cum bucket whenever he wants some pussy.” “EXCUSE ME?!” “Hey look, I’m just tellin’ it like it is. From what I can tell he isn’t exactly Mr. Right. Sheesh don’t you know the guy’s past? He’s fucking crazy.” “Yeah, but I can change him…” ”This again? Look honey, your track record isn’t good as far as that goes. Besides you can’t change the insane.” ”(Sob!) I know! Why the hell do I keep doing this to myself! (Sob!)” Oh shit, you just got yourself into some drama you didn’t want to; you try to change the subject back to Kong. “Look, obviously Kong can’t be as bad as Colossal Asshole.” “(Sniff) Oh no? He doesn’t do shit around the house and this is MY house! MY money paid for everything in here! If it wasn’t for me picking him up all those years ago he wouldn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out! Fuck him! I’m sick of him taking me for granted. I just jumped from one abusive marriage to another!” “Erm…Kong doesn’t beat you does he? Because if that’s the case then…” “Oh no, he’s never done that. If that ever had happened, I would’ve kicked him out a long time ago.” “Well, maybe I was wrong and you did change him a little then. I mean if you knew Kong back in the day, he had real temper problems. It seems like you did have some effect on him.” “Maybe…” “Look how about I go back and talk to…” Suddenly the doorbell rings. “Hold on Wolf let me get that.” While you wait for Nancy to come back, you think you’re on the right track to convincing her to take back Kong. Then she arrives in the kitchen with some big ass roses and happily reading a card. “Where the hell did you get those things? Hey are those from Kong?” you say hopefully. “No.” “They aren’t from Glenn are they?” you ask a little more worried. “Pfft, yeah right.” “So who are they from?” “Oh they’re from Ymir, he probably had Joe specially grow them for me…he’s so sweet and sensitive.” ”You’re fucking Ymir too?!” you exclaim. “No, he just leaves me presents with cards on my doorstep. He’s so shy, I wish he wasn’t though, because I wouldn’t mind seeing him. He writes the most romantic things…” Nancy begins to day dream about Ymir and now you’re back at square one again. Still, you do wonder if she shouldn’t be with Ymir. Nancy does seem like a nice girl and she probably deserves better than Kong, and certainly deserves better than Glenn. > You be a good Samaritan Here’s your good deed for…well you can’t remember the last time you did one, but you’re doing one now. “Nancy, you want me to find Ymir and talk to him?” “You’d do that? Why yes! But how are you going to find him?” “Please, I got an excellent sense of smell. I could find him if he was 20 miles from this house.” “Well okay then, tell him I’m interested and he needn’t be shy.” Nancy puts you down on the floor and opens the door for you. You know where the hell he’s at, Venusian isn’t a common smell on this planet and you aren’t going to have to go too far to find him. You walk around the corner of the house and see him hiding in the overgrown bushes looking into one of the windows. Big enough to hide him from Nancy, but not you since you can walk right in the things. “So Ymir, are you actually ever going to talk to Nancy, or are you going to stalk her forever?” “Argh! Wolf! I thought you were in the house! Um…did she get my roses?” Ymir asks surprised. “Yeah she got them and she likes them, so why don’t you just talk to her already?” “I dunno, she’s taller than me and…” “Don’t mean shit! I went out with Mary and she was taller than me, and that wasn’t even including that ridiculous beehive hairstyle she had! Look I know for a fact she likes you, she told me to tell you as much. Now I was originally here to hook her back up with Kong…so are you gonna let me do that? Or are you gonna fuckin’ man up and go talk to the girl, because she’s got that Colossal asshole coming by later too.” “Well, I guess I’ll try.” “Dammit! Don’t try! Do! There is no try! You gotta go in there with all the confidence that you say in your love poems or whatever the hell you’ve been writing to her. Obviously you’ve got the words, now just say the shit to her in person.” Ymir puffs up with pride. “I’ll do it!” “That’s the spirit. Now go in there and get your woman.” “Hey wait, you think I’ll be big enough to um…” ”What? To fuck her? Shit I dunno, just lick her pussy a lot, she’ll be happy trust me.” As you leave Ymir knocks on the door and Nancy opens it and gives him a big hug immediately. Looks like your work is done here. You drive back home. You get back and walk to where Kong is. He’s sleeping again. “Hey Kong wake up!” “Hmm? Yeah, I’m up. So did you do it?” “Nope, sorry. Couldn’t convince her.” “Ah well it was a long shot. Guess we’re neighbors.” “Guess so, see ya.” Kong rolls over back to sleep and you go back to your cabin. A few days pass and just as you thought, a new “aroma” invades the area. You’re happy to take the damn comic convention job just to get away from the stink. Just goes to show what you’ve always known: “No good deed goes unpunished.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“So I see you’ve hooked up with Glenn, how’s that working out?” you ask. “Oh its great…” she says. Her demeanor didn’t change. “So is Glenn treating you any better?” you ask “Well…uh…yeah! Yes he is…” “That didn’t sound very convincing Nancy.” “Okay, so he’s a dickhead too, but at least with him he goes home and I don’t have to slave over him on a regular basis.” “Oh no, you just get treated like a cum bucket whenever he wants some pussy.” “EXCUSE ME?!” “Hey look, I’m just tellin’ it like it is. From what I can tell he isn’t exactly Mr. Right. Sheesh don’t you know the guy’s past? He’s fucking crazy.” “Yeah, but I can change him…” ”This again? Look honey, your track record isn’t good as far as that goes. Besides you can’t change the insane.” ”(Sob!) I know! Why the hell do I keep doing this to myself! (Sob!)” Oh shit, you just got yourself into some drama you didn’t want to; you try to change the subject back to Kong. “Look, obviously Kong can’t be as bad as Colossal Asshole.” “(Sniff) Oh no? He doesn’t do shit around the house and this is MY house! MY money paid for everything in here! If it wasn’t for me picking him up all those years ago he wouldn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out! Fuck him! I’m sick of him taking me for granted. I just jumped from one abusive marriage to another!” “Erm…Kong doesn’t beat you does he? Because if that’s the case then…” “Oh no, he’s never done that. If that ever had happened, I would’ve kicked him out a long time ago.” “Well, maybe I was wrong and you did change him a little then. I mean if you knew Kong back in the day, he had real temper problems. It seems like you did have some effect on him.” “Maybe…” “Look how about I go back and talk to…” Suddenly the doorbell rings. “Hold on Wolf let me get that.” While you wait for Nancy to come back, you think you’re on the right track to convincing her to take back Kong. Then she arrives in the kitchen with some big ass roses and happily reading a card. “Where the hell did you get those things? Hey are those from Kong?” you say hopefully. “No.” “They aren’t from Glenn are they?” you ask a little more worried. “Pfft, yeah right.” “So who are they from?” “Oh they’re from Ymir, he probably had Joe specially grow them for me…he’s so sweet and sensitive.” ”You’re fucking Ymir too?!” you exclaim. “No, he just leaves me presents with cards on my doorstep. He’s so shy, I wish he wasn’t though, because I wouldn’t mind seeing him. He writes the most romantic things…” Nancy begins to day dream about Ymir and now you’re back at square one again. Still, you do wonder if she shouldn’t be with Ymir. Nancy does seem like a nice girl and she probably deserves better than Kong, and certainly deserves better than Glenn. > You convince her to take Kong back Nope you were here to help Kong and that’s what you’re going to do, for good or bad. “See? See what I’m saying Nancy? You’re doing it again! You’re falling for the romantic bit. Ymir’s just saying all that shit to get on your good side.” “You think so?” “Hell yeah! A lot of guys do it; you should know that by now! Look, I’ve used the same damn routine on several occasions until I just got too fucking lazy and decided it was too much trouble!” “I suppose you’re right, but why would he be too shy to show up? Surely it can’t all be an act.” “Hey, guy can do anything to get the pussy. Of course maybe it isn’t an act, and he’s just a creepy stalker type. You ever think of that? Maybe hiding and secretly spying on you! He is smaller than you, you know.” Nancy looks a bit worried by that revelation. “Eek! I never even thought of that!” ”See? That’s why you shouldn’t even consider getting with Ymir and should go back with Kong, at least you know where you stand with him.” “Maybe…but what about Glenn?” “What?! Hell no! You don’t want him, he’s a fucking nutball! Maybe Kong’s not the most sensitive, but at least you can reason with him. He can’t be all bad; you have stayed married all these years.” “I guess you’re right. Maybe I overreacted…okay you can tell Kong he can come back, but he’s going to have to stop saying some of the shit he says to me!” “I’ll tell him.” Nancy puts you back on the floor and opens the door for you to leave. You get back on your bike and ride back home to where Kong is munching on some leaves in a bored fashion. “Hey Kong…what the fuck man? You eat every leaf in the fucking forest?” “Just the ones in the immediate area…what? I was hungry!” ”Well, you can get yourself a home cooked meal now, Nancy’s willing to take you back, BUT you need to at least act a little less like an asshole. Tell her you love her and all that shit every now and then.” “Aw man…” ”Jesus fuckin’ Christ Kong it ain’t that hard! Hell she’s doing everything for your broke ass. I wish I was that fuckin’ lucky! You oughta be a little bit appreciative! She’s got other giants after her already.” “What?! Oh shit! I guess I better watch myself.” “Guess you better, okay then off you go.” “Hey thanks Wolf, I won’t forget this, when Nancy gives me my weekly allowance I’ll make sure to have a check sent to you.” He takes his leave and you head back home, not really expecting anything from Kong, a few days later when you’re dreading having to take that comic convention job, you get a check in the mail, its from Kong just like he promised. Hooray, you can avoid being a guest speaker for a bunch of nerds for at least another year!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“So I see you’ve hooked up with Glenn, how’s that working out?” you ask. “Oh its great…” she says. Her demeanor didn’t change. “So is Glenn treating you any better?” you ask “Well…uh…yeah! Yes he is…” “That didn’t sound very convincing Nancy.” “Okay, so he’s a dickhead too, but at least with him he goes home and I don’t have to slave over him on a regular basis.” “Oh no, you just get treated like a cum bucket whenever he wants some pussy.” “EXCUSE ME?!” “Hey look, I’m just tellin’ it like it is. From what I can tell he isn’t exactly Mr. Right. Sheesh don’t you know the guy’s past? He’s fucking crazy.” “Yeah, but I can change him…” ”This again? Look honey, your track record isn’t good as far as that goes. Besides you can’t change the insane.” ”(Sob!) I know! Why the hell do I keep doing this to myself! (Sob!)” Oh shit, you just got yourself into some drama you didn’t want to; you try to change the subject back to Kong. “Look, obviously Kong can’t be as bad as Colossal Asshole.” “(Sniff) Oh no? He doesn’t do shit around the house and this is MY house! MY money paid for everything in here! If it wasn’t for me picking him up all those years ago he wouldn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out! Fuck him! I’m sick of him taking me for granted. I just jumped from one abusive marriage to another!” “Erm…Kong doesn’t beat you does he? Because if that’s the case then…” “Oh no, he’s never done that. If that ever had happened, I would’ve kicked him out a long time ago.” “Well, maybe I was wrong and you did change him a little then. I mean if you knew Kong back in the day, he had real temper problems. It seems like you did have some effect on him.” “Maybe…” “Look how about I go back and talk to…” Suddenly the doorbell rings. “Hold on Wolf let me get that.” While you wait for Nancy to come back, you think you’re on the right track to convincing her to take back Kong. Then she arrives in the kitchen with some big ass roses and happily reading a card. “Where the hell did you get those things? Hey are those from Kong?” you say hopefully. “No.” “They aren’t from Glenn are they?” you ask a little more worried. “Pfft, yeah right.” “So who are they from?” “Oh they’re from Ymir, he probably had Joe specially grow them for me…he’s so sweet and sensitive.” ”You’re fucking Ymir too?!” you exclaim. “No, he just leaves me presents with cards on my doorstep. He’s so shy, I wish he wasn’t though, because I wouldn’t mind seeing him. He writes the most romantic things…” Nancy begins to day dream about Ymir and now you’re back at square one again. Still, you do wonder if she shouldn’t be with Ymir. Nancy does seem like a nice girl and she probably deserves better than Kong, and certainly deserves better than Glenn. > You memories (Ymir) The Beast From Space: Ymir You don’t know too much about Ymir, all you mainly know is he’s originally from Venus. He never really fit in with the rest of the monsters mainly due to his height, he wasn’t small enough to hang out with the likes of you and Fagula, but he wasn’t big enough to hang out with the giants like Kong. It was because of this, he tried a little harder to prove he could be just as destructive as the bigger giants in movies, but as far as his private life was concerned he didn’t cause any mayhem at all. Most directors loved working with him.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Alright Kong I’ll go talk to Nancy.” “Cool. You always had a better way with words than I did, more diplomatic.” “That’s gotta be the first time I’ve ever heard someone call me diplomatic, but I’ll see what I can do, I’m not guaranteeing anything though.” Kong gives you the address and you head back to your cabin where you get on you Harley and drive off. You have no plan whatsoever. You’re just going to fumble your way through and try to turn on the charm. Eventually you get to the house which is huge, but then it would have to be to accommodate a couple of giants. You can’t even reach the doorbell, so you just kick the door and howl as loud as you can. A few minutes pass and you think you haven’t been heard, but eventually a colossal bald man with a towel wrapped around his waist opens the door, its Glenn. Well this was certainly unexpected. He looks down with a perturbed stare. “Yeah, whadda you want?” he booms. “Is Nancy home?” “Whadda ya want with Nancy, hairball?” “I have to talk to her, its important.” “Yeah, well I say it isn’t, now get the fuck outta here!” “Look, I’m not looking for trouble, just let me talk to Nancy it won’t take long.” “It won’t take long because you ain’t gonna do it, now get the fuck outta here you fucking mutt!” “Do you even know who I am?” you say starting to lose your temper. “Yeah I do, and if you don’t get the fuck outta here I’m gonna know who you WERE!” While you study his foot, and deciding which one of those big veins you’re going rip into before running off to hide, Nancy comes to the door in a silk robe. She’s kept herself in pretty good condition, either that, or the alien ray that hit her slowed down her aging process. “Glenn, what’s going on…oh hello Wolf. What bring you here?” “Hello Nancy, I need to talk to you for a moment.” “Nancy you want me to get rid of this hairball?” “No Glenn that’s not necessary, be nice.” “Yeah whatever, look I’m leaving, I’ll be back later tonight so you be ready for another round of the amazing colossal dick! Har har har har!” Glenn at this point slaps Nancy hard on her ass, and walks out the door and down the street with just the towel around him! “Uh, isn’t he forgetting something?” “Yes, but its not the first time. One time he left without even a towel.” “Yikes, that must’ve been a sight.” “(Sigh) Not really, he’s isn’t nearly as colossal as he thinks…but anyway come on in.” You enter the house and follow Nancy into the kitchen who makes herself some coffee. You look up at the table trying to figure out the best way to climb up there; Nancy unexpectedly picks you up and puts on it. “Ohh your fur is so soft.” She says brushing her finger against your back. “So what did you have to tell me?” “Its about Kong, he’s taken residence in a forest not too far away from my cabin, he says you kicked him out and he wants to come back home.” “You have my sympathies, for getting him as a neighbor, but I’m not taking him back. I’ve put up with his shit for too long. I was an idiot thinking I could change him. Sometimes I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.” Nancy’s pleasant demeanor has changed. This is a delicate situation, say the wrong thing and you could be in real danger. > You continue to talk to her about Kong “Look he says he’s really sorry. Why don’t you just give him a second chance?” you continue to press the issue. “I said NO and if he sent you here to convince me then you can go right back and tell him you fuckin’ failed!” “Oh so Glenn’s such a better choice huh? I though you were supposed to be a feminist. Usually those types are smart, you’re about as bright as a fucking busted nightlight!” “Get the fuck outta my house, you fuckin’ males are all alike! Trying to boss us around and tell us what to do!” “Yeah, yeah fine I’m outta here, enjoy bein’ Glenn’s fuck toy. I swear you bitches never know what the fuck you want…” That last remark gets you a hard slap from Nancy. You go flying from the table and through the window and continue flying until you hit a tree. You then fall to the ground in a heap. You attempt to stand back up, but you’re very woozy. You see Kong sitting nearby watching you try to regain your balance. She must’ve knocked you back to where you started! “Well let me guess, she’s not taking me back.” He says “Got it in one Kong.” You say and then fall unconscious.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Alright Kong I’ll go talk to Nancy.” “Cool. You always had a better way with words than I did, more diplomatic.” “That’s gotta be the first time I’ve ever heard someone call me diplomatic, but I’ll see what I can do, I’m not guaranteeing anything though.” Kong gives you the address and you head back to your cabin where you get on you Harley and drive off. You have no plan whatsoever. You’re just going to fumble your way through and try to turn on the charm. Eventually you get to the house which is huge, but then it would have to be to accommodate a couple of giants. You can’t even reach the doorbell, so you just kick the door and howl as loud as you can. A few minutes pass and you think you haven’t been heard, but eventually a colossal bald man with a towel wrapped around his waist opens the door, its Glenn. Well this was certainly unexpected. He looks down with a perturbed stare. “Yeah, whadda you want?” he booms. “Is Nancy home?” “Whadda ya want with Nancy, hairball?” “I have to talk to her, its important.” “Yeah, well I say it isn’t, now get the fuck outta here!” “Look, I’m not looking for trouble, just let me talk to Nancy it won’t take long.” “It won’t take long because you ain’t gonna do it, now get the fuck outta here you fucking mutt!” “Do you even know who I am?” you say starting to lose your temper. “Yeah I do, and if you don’t get the fuck outta here I’m gonna know who you WERE!” While you study his foot, and deciding which one of those big veins you’re going rip into before running off to hide, Nancy comes to the door in a silk robe. She’s kept herself in pretty good condition, either that, or the alien ray that hit her slowed down her aging process. “Glenn, what’s going on…oh hello Wolf. What bring you here?” “Hello Nancy, I need to talk to you for a moment.” “Nancy you want me to get rid of this hairball?” “No Glenn that’s not necessary, be nice.” “Yeah whatever, look I’m leaving, I’ll be back later tonight so you be ready for another round of the amazing colossal dick! Har har har har!” Glenn at this point slaps Nancy hard on her ass, and walks out the door and down the street with just the towel around him! “Uh, isn’t he forgetting something?” “Yes, but its not the first time. One time he left without even a towel.” “Yikes, that must’ve been a sight.” “(Sigh) Not really, he’s isn’t nearly as colossal as he thinks…but anyway come on in.” You enter the house and follow Nancy into the kitchen who makes herself some coffee. You look up at the table trying to figure out the best way to climb up there; Nancy unexpectedly picks you up and puts on it. “Ohh your fur is so soft.” She says brushing her finger against your back. “So what did you have to tell me?” “Its about Kong, he’s taken residence in a forest not too far away from my cabin, he says you kicked him out and he wants to come back home.” “You have my sympathies, for getting him as a neighbor, but I’m not taking him back. I’ve put up with his shit for too long. I was an idiot thinking I could change him. Sometimes I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.” Nancy’s pleasant demeanor has changed. This is a delicate situation, say the wrong thing and you could be in real danger. > You memories (Glenn) The Amazing Colossal Man: Glenn Manning Glenn was just another normal human who got “monsterized” through technology. A common theme during the 1950s. In this case it was a good old nuclear explosion and radiation that steadily caused him to grow into a giant. Given that he was soldier, the army was hoping to use him as some kind of weapon, but that was quickly dismissed due to his growing mental instability. Glenn, hadn’t been known to be stable anyway, he’d come close to a Section 8 a couple times before becoming a giant. It was only due to his coming from a proud military family that he’d avoided such a dismissal. Now that he was a 50ft freak, he just went crazier than a shithouse rat sitting in the hot sun. He wreaked havoc and again, it was only because of his influential family that he wasn’t killed and merely captured and heavily drugged instead. He was ultimately institutionalized and kept heavily doped up for a majority of his life, and let out for periods of time. A few agents wanted to use him in a series of movies, but most attempts were failures. He was either too doped up to act properly, or not doped up enough to act civilized. In his later years he became a little more subdued and was released permanently, but still had to take medication.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No, no, no, no! The movie sounds like it sucks and you’re not going to deal with Mary after all the shit you got yourself into last time with her. “Fuck that Erik, there’s gotta be something else!” “Well there’s a comic convention that needs another guest speaker…” You slam the phone down. You need to get out of the house. You decide to go for a walk in the forest. You wander around in the calmness of the forest and nature in general. Sometimes you wonder if you shouldn’t just go back to living in the wild. Things were certainly simpler then. While you’re thinking about the nostalgia of the old days, you see a very large hairy body lying prone in the distance. “What the fuck…how the hell…” you mumble to yourself while going over to investigate. When you arrive, its exactly who you thought it was, though you don’t understand how you couldn’t have heard him lumbering through the forest given how big he is, let alone seen him. “Hey Kong! You alive? Wake up!” you shout. Kong stirs a little and then sits up to yawn. He scratches his now silverback and looks over at you. “Wolf? What’re you doing here?” “Me? I live just a few miles away! What’re you doing here and how is it that I didn’t see or hear you crashing through the forest?” “Oh I can be pretty silent when I want to be.” “Okay, but what’re you doing here?” “Back to nature my friend. Nancy kicked me out of the house. For good this time, she said she can’t put up with my chauvinism any more. All I told her was to get her ass back in the kitchen and make me a banana split and serve it to me naked.” “Sounds like a reasonable request, so what happened?” “She went into the kitchen, came back out with a frying pan of hot grease, threw the shit on me and kicked me in the balls, before shoving me out the door and calling me a fucking backward primate.” You hold back some laughter, before speaking again. “Tough break there Kong, but I guess you could look on the bright side, you’re back to your roots with no more cares anymore. Living free in the wild and all.” “Are you on fucking crack Wolf? It sucks! You know when I lived on Skull Island I didn’t know any better, but in the last few days I’ve come to realize living in a warm HOUSE and sleeping in a bed is way better than living in the cold wild and sleeping on the ground where bugs crawl all over you!” Kong’s remarks certainly have made you reconsider your previous nostalgia of the old days. “Well, can’t you just make up with Nancy? Surely if she’s put up with you this long and if you apologized and did all that romantic crap she’d let you back in.” “Don’t think so Wolf, I never was good at that, besides she’s got a restraining order on me too.” ”What else did you do to her?” “Nothing! She’s just being a crazy bitch, that’s unwilling to listen to reason. Well unwilling to listen to me anyway. Hey Wolf, you’ve always been a smooth talker with ladies. Maybe you could talk some sense into her for me.” “Uh, I dunno Kong I don’t really like getting into the middle of shit like this, don’t you have someplace else to stay, hey what about your cousin Joe?” “I’m not staying with him! He’s a fucking fag!” “Well, beggars can’t be chooser Kong, besides he’s your cousin it’s not like you have worry about him trying any ass pirate shit on you. I’m sure he’s got a nice house too.” “Yeah, I guess…but I’d still prefer to go back to my own home, and I’m not sure if Joe would let me stay anyway. You gotta help me out Wolf, Nancy kicked me out with nothing, and I don’t even have any money in the bank. I don’t want to be living in the fucking wilderness again!” You normally aren’t one to help someone for no reason, but there’s the fact that you don’t want him living that close to you, you don’t relish the idea of him taking big healthy dumps in a forest you live near, so to avoid wearing a clothespin on your nose for the rest of your time living here, you decide to help Kong. > You go talk to Joe “Well, I think it’s a lost cause with your wife, and to be quite honest I don’t want to get caught up in the drama, but I can go talk with your cousin Joe if you want.” You say. Kong looks disappointed by your remark, and agonizes over making a decision, but finally gives you the okay. “Alright Wolf, but I don’t like this.” “You’ll like it even less, if you have to live out here, now gimme the address.” Kong gives you the address and you go back to your cabin, start up your Harley and ride off. You don’t really have a plan, you’re just going to fumble through as usual, and you just hope Joe doesn’t hit on you. When you get to the house its very large like you expected, but not overly so. You notice the exterior is kept in very good condition, you have no doubt the inside looks like that as well. You get to the door and ring a doorbell that has been conveniently placed at your height level for normal sized guests. Joe opens the door and looks down. “Wolf? Well this IS a pleasant surprise! What brings you here, you perfect specimen of male?” Well no such luck of him not hitting on you. “Settle down there Joe, I’m just here to talk about your cousin Kong.” “Oh. Well what about him?” “He got kicked out by wife Nancy and now he’s living in a forest near my cabin, so can he stay here?” “So, Nancy finally threw that scrub to the curb eh? It’s about time girlfriend did that! Even I told her it was a bad idea for her to marry him. Well you have my sympathies Wolf, but I’m not having that homophobe living here! Though if you like YOU can live here!” “Uh, no. Besides I’m a homophobe too.” “Yes, but you’re a cute one!” “So all the GIRLS tell me. Look isn’t there anyway you’d reconsider? I mean he is family and all. I could tell him to behave himself, and he probably would since he really doesn’t want to be living in the wilderness again.” “Well…I guess, but surely you’ve noticed this place really isn’t built to accommodate his size. He’s a lot bigger than me you know.” You could kick yourself for not realizing that before. You sigh, but ask if there are any arrangements that could be made. “Isn’t there anywhere here he could stay?” “Not unless I had a giant addition built on to my house and I’m not about to do that, I have this house just perfect the way it is.” “How about your backyard? Don’t you have a large backyard with a garden?” “Yes I do, and I’m not about to have that lug crushing all my flowers! However there is a nearby cave that’s in the backyard that could accommodate him. But I’m having problems with my backyard in general which I’m trying to fix as we speak.” “What kind of problems?” “My garden has been infested with those awful Triffids! Horrid things, making that noise and killing my workers! It’s really ruining my business at this point. I’d get rid of them, but they’re much too nasty for me! Those stingers hurt!” You already know what he’s going to ask you, so you beat him to it. “If I get rid of these things can Kong stay in the cave?” “You’d do that? Oh thank you! And yes, if you saved my garden I’d take my cousin in.” Well that’s settled, get rid of the Triffids and Kong can stay, now you just have to figure out how to do it. > You rip them out yourself You figure Joe wants his garden still intact hence the reason he never used toxic chemicals, you prepare yourself for battle and enter the backyard which is littered here and there with dead human workers. The Triffids instantly sense you and begin to crawl slowly over towards you. Fighting them isn’t really that hard, Joe probably kept getting stung due to the fact that he’s a larger target and isn’t as fast as you. You easily avoid their stingers and carefully avoid getting surrounded as you turn them into Caesar salad. Soon you’re finished! You knock on the back door and Joe answers. “All finished Joe.” “What already? Wow, you’re efficient! Maybe you should stick around to help me on a regular basis.” “Don’t think so, but nice try. So Kong can stay then?” “Of course, I keep my word, (Sigh) I’m going to have to hire all new workers though, I’m really going to take a loss this year.” You turn briefly around and see someone coming out of the cave. “Hey Joe, looks like you won’t have to hire all new workers, there’s one coming out of the cave, guess some of them were hiding in there huh?” Joe looks over and another one comes out, then another. “That’s weird…I thought he was…now wait I know he’s…I saw!” “What? What’s going on?” You ask. “I saw those workers die! I saw the damn Triffids kill them right before my eyes! How can they be over there alive!?” At first you think zombies, but that can’t be it. Then you notice one of the dead bodies looks very similar to one of the ones coming out of the caves, and that’s when you know what you’re dealing with. “Uh Joe, you got something worse than just a Triffid infestation, you got fucking Body Snatchers! Fucking Pod People man!” you exclaim. At this point a bunch of them have just come out of the cave and they all look in your direction and let out an ear piecing screech while pointing at you. “Oh no! Wolf can you kill them too?” Joe asks as they advance. > You kill the Body Snatcher yourself “What?! Oh for fuck’s sake, alright you big pussy.” You say and walk towards them while Joe hides in his house. You clobber a couple of them, and think this is going to be an easy fight, that is until one of them starts talking about the intricacies of tax forms, then another talks about the topic of lint collecting and the details about it. Yet another discusses the fascinating subject of the history of cabinet making… You’ve never been overwhelmed by such mind-numbing matter! Your energy begins to leave you and your lids begin to get heavy. You fall into a deep slumber which you never wake up from. Soon a doppelganger of you is hatched. The Boring Snatchers have claimed another victim.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You figure Joe wants his garden still intact hence the reason he never used toxic chemicals, you prepare yourself for battle and enter the backyard which is littered here and there with dead human workers. The Triffids instantly sense you and begin to crawl slowly over towards you. Fighting them isn’t really that hard, Joe probably kept getting stung due to the fact that he’s a larger target and isn’t as fast as you. You easily avoid their stingers and carefully avoid getting surrounded as you turn them into Caesar salad. Soon you’re finished! You knock on the back door and Joe answers. “All finished Joe.” “What already? Wow, you’re efficient! Maybe you should stick around to help me on a regular basis.” “Don’t think so, but nice try. So Kong can stay then?” “Of course, I keep my word, (Sigh) I’m going to have to hire all new workers though, I’m really going to take a loss this year.” You turn briefly around and see someone coming out of the cave. “Hey Joe, looks like you won’t have to hire all new workers, there’s one coming out of the cave, guess some of them were hiding in there huh?” Joe looks over and another one comes out, then another. “That’s weird…I thought he was…now wait I know he’s…I saw!” “What? What’s going on?” You ask. “I saw those workers die! I saw the damn Triffids kill them right before my eyes! How can they be over there alive!?” At first you think zombies, but that can’t be it. Then you notice one of the dead bodies looks very similar to one of the ones coming out of the caves, and that’s when you know what you’re dealing with. “Uh Joe, you got something worse than just a Triffid infestation, you got fucking Body Snatchers! Fucking Pod People man!” you exclaim. At this point a bunch of them have just come out of the cave and they all look in your direction and let out an ear piecing screech while pointing at you. “Oh no! Wolf can you kill them too?” Joe asks as they advance. > You tell Joe to help you “Hey look, there’s a lot of them and I just expended energy fighting a bunch of Triffids! This is your business at stake here. Hell you’re two times bigger than me, the least you can do is help!” “Erm…well…okay, I guess you’re right. I just don’t like violence, I’m a lover not a fighter.” Joe says. You both walk towards them and get into it. You clobber a couple of them, and think this is going to be an easy fight, that is until one of them starts talking about the intricacies of insurance forms, then another talks about the topic of button collecting and the details about it. Yet another discusses the fascinating subject of the history of chamber pot making… You’ve never been overwhelmed by such mind-numbing matter! Your energy begins to leave you and your lids begin to get heavy. Fortunately Joe is there to help you from falling asleep. “Wake up Wolf! Don’t listen to them!” he shouts while punches out three of them at the same time. “Huh? Yeah!” you say getting yourself back into the fight. Eventually you both pound all the pod people back into mulch. “Man, what a boring fight.” You say. “I’m just glad its over, I think I ruined my manicure, I’ll have to make an appointment to get another one.” “Yeah anyway, that should be the end of your plant problems now. You’re not a bad fighter, for someone who claims to be a lover. I’ll just tell Kong he can come over.” “Hold on Wolf, you did help a lot, I didn’t even know about the Body Snatcher hiding in the cave. Good thing you were here, before they got too powerful. Here’s some money for your help.” “Hey, thanks Joe. Glad this hasn’t been for nothing.” You leave Joe to his clean up and ride back home. You then walk back to where Kong is. “Okay I think you can stay at Joe’s, he’s got a cave in his backyard, you can take up residence in, it’s better than nothing.” “I suppose so; I just hope he doesn’t pitch a bitch at me if I accidentally step on a couple of his faggot ass flowers.” “Hey, if you know what’s good for you, you won’t be talking like that around him or else you’ll be getting kicked out again.” You remind Kong. “Yeah, yeah, I know, well thanks for helping me out. I almost didn’t think you would when I first asked you.” “What can I say; it’s been that kind of day for me…and it won’t be again for a long ass time if I have anything to do about it.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You figure Joe wants his garden still intact hence the reason he never used toxic chemicals, you prepare yourself for battle and enter the backyard which is littered here and there with dead human workers. The Triffids instantly sense you and begin to crawl slowly over towards you. Fighting them isn’t really that hard, Joe probably kept getting stung due to the fact that he’s a larger target and isn’t as fast as you. You easily avoid their stingers and carefully avoid getting surrounded as you turn them into Caesar salad. Soon you’re finished! You knock on the back door and Joe answers. “All finished Joe.” “What already? Wow, you’re efficient! Maybe you should stick around to help me on a regular basis.” “Don’t think so, but nice try. So Kong can stay then?” “Of course, I keep my word, (Sigh) I’m going to have to hire all new workers though, I’m really going to take a loss this year.” You turn briefly around and see someone coming out of the cave. “Hey Joe, looks like you won’t have to hire all new workers, there’s one coming out of the cave, guess some of them were hiding in there huh?” Joe looks over and another one comes out, then another. “That’s weird…I thought he was…now wait I know he’s…I saw!” “What? What’s going on?” You ask. “I saw those workers die! I saw the damn Triffids kill them right before my eyes! How can they be over there alive!?” At first you think zombies, but that can’t be it. Then you notice one of the dead bodies looks very similar to one of the ones coming out of the caves, and that’s when you know what you’re dealing with. “Uh Joe, you got something worse than just a Triffid infestation, you got fucking Body Snatchers! Fucking Pod People man!” you exclaim. At this point a bunch of them have just come out of the cave and they all look in your direction and let out an ear piecing screech while pointing at you. “Oh no! Wolf can you kill them too?” Joe asks as they advance. > You memories (Body Snatchers) The Pod People: Body Snatchers Out of all the Alien races you’ve come across, or ANY race you’ve come across for that matter, the Body Snatchers have to be without a doubt the most BORING bunch of beings you’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. They have no emotions whatsoever and talk in a monotone voice. They are not fun in any sense of the word and worse they want to turn everyone else like them as well. They’re like intergalactic religious missionaries, but even more boring if such a thing was possible. You can’t imagine what their home planet is like; it must be filled with bureaucrats, accountants and insurance agents. It’s not even any fun fighting them. They just fall down and die when you kill them. No screams, no yelling, nothing. At most they might say “Ow.” and keel over.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Well, I think it’s a lost cause with your wife, and to be quite honest I don’t want to get caught up in the drama, but I can go talk with your cousin Joe if you want.” You say. Kong looks disappointed by your remark, and agonizes over making a decision, but finally gives you the okay. “Alright Wolf, but I don’t like this.” “You’ll like it even less, if you have to live out here, now gimme the address.” Kong gives you the address and you go back to your cabin, start up your Harley and ride off. You don’t really have a plan, you’re just going to fumble through as usual, and you just hope Joe doesn’t hit on you. When you get to the house its very large like you expected, but not overly so. You notice the exterior is kept in very good condition, you have no doubt the inside looks like that as well. You get to the door and ring a doorbell that has been conveniently placed at your height level for normal sized guests. Joe opens the door and looks down. “Wolf? Well this IS a pleasant surprise! What brings you here, you perfect specimen of male?” Well no such luck of him not hitting on you. “Settle down there Joe, I’m just here to talk about your cousin Kong.” “Oh. Well what about him?” “He got kicked out by wife Nancy and now he’s living in a forest near my cabin, so can he stay here?” “So, Nancy finally threw that scrub to the curb eh? It’s about time girlfriend did that! Even I told her it was a bad idea for her to marry him. Well you have my sympathies Wolf, but I’m not having that homophobe living here! Though if you like YOU can live here!” “Uh, no. Besides I’m a homophobe too.” “Yes, but you’re a cute one!” “So all the GIRLS tell me. Look isn’t there anyway you’d reconsider? I mean he is family and all. I could tell him to behave himself, and he probably would since he really doesn’t want to be living in the wilderness again.” “Well…I guess, but surely you’ve noticed this place really isn’t built to accommodate his size. He’s a lot bigger than me you know.” You could kick yourself for not realizing that before. You sigh, but ask if there are any arrangements that could be made. “Isn’t there anywhere here he could stay?” “Not unless I had a giant addition built on to my house and I’m not about to do that, I have this house just perfect the way it is.” “How about your backyard? Don’t you have a large backyard with a garden?” “Yes I do, and I’m not about to have that lug crushing all my flowers! However there is a nearby cave that’s in the backyard that could accommodate him. But I’m having problems with my backyard in general which I’m trying to fix as we speak.” “What kind of problems?” “My garden has been infested with those awful Triffids! Horrid things, making that noise and killing my workers! It’s really ruining my business at this point. I’d get rid of them, but they’re much too nasty for me! Those stingers hurt!” You already know what he’s going to ask you, so you beat him to it. “If I get rid of these things can Kong stay in the cave?” “You’d do that? Oh thank you! And yes, if you saved my garden I’d take my cousin in.” Well that’s settled, get rid of the Triffids and Kong can stay, now you just have to figure out how to do it. > You use more chemical means You have no idea why the hell Joe hasn’t just gotten some heavy duty weed killer. You tell Joe you’ll be back and zoom off to the nearest hardware store, where you buy a big tank of the stuff with what little money you have. When you come back you head straight to the backyard where the Triffids sense new fertilizer and begin to slowly scuttle towards you. You put on a mask and begin to spray the area. The toxic gas does its work and the Triffids begin to die, along with every other plant in the backyard, you’ve just destroyed Joe’s garden! Just then, Joe comes out to see why there’s a toxic cloud in his yard and is horrified by what you’ve done. “MY GARDEN! WHAT DID YOU DO!?!” Joe cries. “I killed the Triffids just like you wanted.” “YOU KILLED MY GARDEN! You fucking idiot! Why the hell did you use poison?! You were supposed to rip them out by hand!” “Oh so it was okay for me to get stung right? Fuck that, you never said how I was supposed to kill them.” “It should’ve been obvious not to use poison you goddamn moron!” ”Well shit, I’m not a botanist, how the fuck was I supposed to know.” “Oh God! My business is ruined! I’m finished! (Sob!)” “Yeah, um, sorry about that. Look I’m just going to leave now…okay then.” You leave Joe to his tears and ride back home. You then walk back to where Kong is. “Okay I think you can stay at Joe’s, he’s got a cave in his backyard, you can take up residence in, it’s better than nothing.” “I suppose so; I just hope he doesn’t pitch a bitch at me if I accidentally step on a couple of his faggot ass flowers.” “I don’t think you’ll ever have to be worrying about that Kong.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Well, I think it’s a lost cause with your wife, and to be quite honest I don’t want to get caught up in the drama, but I can go talk with your cousin Joe if you want.” You say. Kong looks disappointed by your remark, and agonizes over making a decision, but finally gives you the okay. “Alright Wolf, but I don’t like this.” “You’ll like it even less, if you have to live out here, now gimme the address.” Kong gives you the address and you go back to your cabin, start up your Harley and ride off. You don’t really have a plan, you’re just going to fumble through as usual, and you just hope Joe doesn’t hit on you. When you get to the house its very large like you expected, but not overly so. You notice the exterior is kept in very good condition, you have no doubt the inside looks like that as well. You get to the door and ring a doorbell that has been conveniently placed at your height level for normal sized guests. Joe opens the door and looks down. “Wolf? Well this IS a pleasant surprise! What brings you here, you perfect specimen of male?” Well no such luck of him not hitting on you. “Settle down there Joe, I’m just here to talk about your cousin Kong.” “Oh. Well what about him?” “He got kicked out by wife Nancy and now he’s living in a forest near my cabin, so can he stay here?” “So, Nancy finally threw that scrub to the curb eh? It’s about time girlfriend did that! Even I told her it was a bad idea for her to marry him. Well you have my sympathies Wolf, but I’m not having that homophobe living here! Though if you like YOU can live here!” “Uh, no. Besides I’m a homophobe too.” “Yes, but you’re a cute one!” “So all the GIRLS tell me. Look isn’t there anyway you’d reconsider? I mean he is family and all. I could tell him to behave himself, and he probably would since he really doesn’t want to be living in the wilderness again.” “Well…I guess, but surely you’ve noticed this place really isn’t built to accommodate his size. He’s a lot bigger than me you know.” You could kick yourself for not realizing that before. You sigh, but ask if there are any arrangements that could be made. “Isn’t there anywhere here he could stay?” “Not unless I had a giant addition built on to my house and I’m not about to do that, I have this house just perfect the way it is.” “How about your backyard? Don’t you have a large backyard with a garden?” “Yes I do, and I’m not about to have that lug crushing all my flowers! However there is a nearby cave that’s in the backyard that could accommodate him. But I’m having problems with my backyard in general which I’m trying to fix as we speak.” “What kind of problems?” “My garden has been infested with those awful Triffids! Horrid things, making that noise and killing my workers! It’s really ruining my business at this point. I’d get rid of them, but they’re much too nasty for me! Those stingers hurt!” You already know what he’s going to ask you, so you beat him to it. “If I get rid of these things can Kong stay in the cave?” “You’d do that? Oh thank you! And yes, if you saved my garden I’d take my cousin in.” Well that’s settled, get rid of the Triffids and Kong can stay, now you just have to figure out how to do it. > You memories (Triffids) Killer Plants: Triffids There isn’t much to know about Triffids, they’re basically intelligent plants that like to kill people with their stingers and then use them for fertilizer. There have been questions if they came from spores from a crashed meteor or if they were yet another genetic experiment gone wrong. Given your past dealings with Mad Scientist types and humans in general, you’d say the latter. Fucking humans never know when to leave shit alone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No, no, no, no! The movie sounds like it sucks and you’re not going to deal with Mary after all the shit you got yourself into last time with her. “Fuck that Erik, there’s gotta be something else!” “Well there’s a comic convention that needs another guest speaker…” You slam the phone down. You need to get out of the house. You decide to go for a walk in the forest. You wander around in the calmness of the forest and nature in general. Sometimes you wonder if you shouldn’t just go back to living in the wild. Things were certainly simpler then. While you’re thinking about the nostalgia of the old days, you see a very large hairy body lying prone in the distance. “What the fuck…how the hell…” you mumble to yourself while going over to investigate. When you arrive, its exactly who you thought it was, though you don’t understand how you couldn’t have heard him lumbering through the forest given how big he is, let alone seen him. “Hey Kong! You alive? Wake up!” you shout. Kong stirs a little and then sits up to yawn. He scratches his now silverback and looks over at you. “Wolf? What’re you doing here?” “Me? I live just a few miles away! What’re you doing here and how is it that I didn’t see or hear you crashing through the forest?” “Oh I can be pretty silent when I want to be.” “Okay, but what’re you doing here?” “Back to nature my friend. Nancy kicked me out of the house. For good this time, she said she can’t put up with my chauvinism any more. All I told her was to get her ass back in the kitchen and make me a banana split and serve it to me naked.” “Sounds like a reasonable request, so what happened?” “She went into the kitchen, came back out with a frying pan of hot grease, threw the shit on me and kicked me in the balls, before shoving me out the door and calling me a fucking backward primate.” You hold back some laughter, before speaking again. “Tough break there Kong, but I guess you could look on the bright side, you’re back to your roots with no more cares anymore. Living free in the wild and all.” “Are you on fucking crack Wolf? It sucks! You know when I lived on Skull Island I didn’t know any better, but in the last few days I’ve come to realize living in a warm HOUSE and sleeping in a bed is way better than living in the cold wild and sleeping on the ground where bugs crawl all over you!” Kong’s remarks certainly have made you reconsider your previous nostalgia of the old days. “Well, can’t you just make up with Nancy? Surely if she’s put up with you this long and if you apologized and did all that romantic crap she’d let you back in.” “Don’t think so Wolf, I never was good at that, besides she’s got a restraining order on me too.” ”What else did you do to her?” “Nothing! She’s just being a crazy bitch, that’s unwilling to listen to reason. Well unwilling to listen to me anyway. Hey Wolf, you’ve always been a smooth talker with ladies. Maybe you could talk some sense into her for me.” “Uh, I dunno Kong I don’t really like getting into the middle of shit like this, don’t you have someplace else to stay, hey what about your cousin Joe?” “I’m not staying with him! He’s a fucking fag!” “Well, beggars can’t be chooser Kong, besides he’s your cousin it’s not like you have worry about him trying any ass pirate shit on you. I’m sure he’s got a nice house too.” “Yeah, I guess…but I’d still prefer to go back to my own home, and I’m not sure if Joe would let me stay anyway. You gotta help me out Wolf, Nancy kicked me out with nothing, and I don’t even have any money in the bank. I don’t want to be living in the fucking wilderness again!” You normally aren’t one to help someone for no reason, but there’s the fact that you don’t want him living that close to you, you don’t relish the idea of him taking big healthy dumps in a forest you live near, so to avoid wearing a clothespin on your nose for the rest of your time living here, you decide to help Kong. > You memories (Kong) King of Skull Island: King Kong Not King of the Monsters (That honor belongs to Godzilla) but Kong certainly ranks close. In some ways he has a similar background to yours, he was living in the wilderness before civilization came calling, but was exploited financially more by humans. (Whereas you just blew all your money on wine, women and divorce) Kong never was the sharpest knife in the drawer and from day one when those humans convinced him he could become a star; they milked the gravy train as much as they could. After all monkeys plus movie always equal big bucks (Okay he was really an ape, but nobody cares about technicalities) so Kong being the biggest means he would bring in even more. Kong did become very popular and famous, but he wasn’t making nearly as much money as he should’ve been. That still wasn’t enough to lead to his ruin, what did that was his self destructive personality. He knew he couldn’t hold his fucking liquor yet he went and did it anyway which would always result in him paying out millions in reconstruction fees and his own hospital bills from multiple biplane wounds. While you’ve never been one to fit into “polite society” your normal size didn’t cause you to commit damage on a massive scale when you got drunk. (Though there was that one time in LA when you were on a two week drinking binge…) There was also the fact if he thought some woman was pretty, he’d just grab her, which resulted in more legal trouble. He just had a hard time of grasping the concept of dating. Finally all this trouble was too much even for his agents and all the other humans exploiting him to put up with and they abandoned him finding out that sticking with normal sized monkeys was much easier, so Kong’s career was pretty much finished. He didn’t even have enough money to go back to Skull Island, not that he would’ve been able to live there, since it got turned into an amusement park. Things looked bleak for Kong until he struck lucky and Nancy took an interest in him and the two eventually married.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No, no, no, no! The movie sounds like it sucks and you’re not going to deal with Mary after all the shit you got yourself into last time with her. “Fuck that Erik, there’s gotta be something else!” “Well there’s a comic convention that needs another guest speaker…” You slam the phone down. You need to get out of the house. You decide to go for a walk in the forest. You wander around in the calmness of the forest and nature in general. Sometimes you wonder if you shouldn’t just go back to living in the wild. Things were certainly simpler then. While you’re thinking about the nostalgia of the old days, you see a very large hairy body lying prone in the distance. “What the fuck…how the hell…” you mumble to yourself while going over to investigate. When you arrive, its exactly who you thought it was, though you don’t understand how you couldn’t have heard him lumbering through the forest given how big he is, let alone seen him. “Hey Kong! You alive? Wake up!” you shout. Kong stirs a little and then sits up to yawn. He scratches his now silverback and looks over at you. “Wolf? What’re you doing here?” “Me? I live just a few miles away! What’re you doing here and how is it that I didn’t see or hear you crashing through the forest?” “Oh I can be pretty silent when I want to be.” “Okay, but what’re you doing here?” “Back to nature my friend. Nancy kicked me out of the house. For good this time, she said she can’t put up with my chauvinism any more. All I told her was to get her ass back in the kitchen and make me a banana split and serve it to me naked.” “Sounds like a reasonable request, so what happened?” “She went into the kitchen, came back out with a frying pan of hot grease, threw the shit on me and kicked me in the balls, before shoving me out the door and calling me a fucking backward primate.” You hold back some laughter, before speaking again. “Tough break there Kong, but I guess you could look on the bright side, you’re back to your roots with no more cares anymore. Living free in the wild and all.” “Are you on fucking crack Wolf? It sucks! You know when I lived on Skull Island I didn’t know any better, but in the last few days I’ve come to realize living in a warm HOUSE and sleeping in a bed is way better than living in the cold wild and sleeping on the ground where bugs crawl all over you!” Kong’s remarks certainly have made you reconsider your previous nostalgia of the old days. “Well, can’t you just make up with Nancy? Surely if she’s put up with you this long and if you apologized and did all that romantic crap she’d let you back in.” “Don’t think so Wolf, I never was good at that, besides she’s got a restraining order on me too.” ”What else did you do to her?” “Nothing! She’s just being a crazy bitch, that’s unwilling to listen to reason. Well unwilling to listen to me anyway. Hey Wolf, you’ve always been a smooth talker with ladies. Maybe you could talk some sense into her for me.” “Uh, I dunno Kong I don’t really like getting into the middle of shit like this, don’t you have someplace else to stay, hey what about your cousin Joe?” “I’m not staying with him! He’s a fucking fag!” “Well, beggars can’t be chooser Kong, besides he’s your cousin it’s not like you have worry about him trying any ass pirate shit on you. I’m sure he’s got a nice house too.” “Yeah, I guess…but I’d still prefer to go back to my own home, and I’m not sure if Joe would let me stay anyway. You gotta help me out Wolf, Nancy kicked me out with nothing, and I don’t even have any money in the bank. I don’t want to be living in the fucking wilderness again!” You normally aren’t one to help someone for no reason, but there’s the fact that you don’t want him living that close to you, you don’t relish the idea of him taking big healthy dumps in a forest you live near, so to avoid wearing a clothespin on your nose for the rest of your time living here, you decide to help Kong. > You memories (Nancy) The 50ft Woman: Nancy Archer If you were gigantic freak, you certainly would’ve tried to tap that ass, hell if you just had a freakishly gigantic dick, you would’ve tried to tap that ass, but some things just aren’t meant to be. Nancy was just a normal rich human woman who was stuck in a bad marriage with an abusive cheating husband. The intelligent thing for her to have done would’ve been to leave him, but she had incredibly low self esteem due to his verbal abuse as well. So she just took all his abuse with a smile. Then one day some alien teenagers were fucking around with their toys on humans as usual and she got hit with some “Giant Ray”. She was horrified at first, but yet liberated. Her new size predictably had given her confidence. She didn’t waste any time, she immediately squashed her two timing abusive hubby and started a new life for herself. She did a few movies, but her main thing was modeling, mainly on those big billboards. Cancer sticks were popular back then so she had all kinds of contracts with cigarette companies. She was also a supporter of women’s’ rights and was also a big feminist. She invented the slogan “You’ve come a long way baby” However, despite all her new found freedom and her new life, she was still deep down unfulfilled. For whatever reason, she still wanted someone in her life, she had some suitors, but turned them all down and it was around that time when Kong was down on his luck and they met. It seems strange that Nancy would be interested in him, as he wasn’t the most “enlightened male” (Compared to him, you were considered pretty “forward thinking”) however that might’ve been why she fell for Kong. She felt that she failed at her past marriage by not trying hard enough to change him and just avoided the problem by stomping it into a bloody pulp. Kong was a chauvinist dick, and had problems controlling his anger. This would be her second chance! Apparently Nancy still had some issues. All of which goes to confirm what you’ve known all along, they can talk all they want about how they want a sensitive guy that does all that romantic shit 24/7, but more often than not chicks always fall for the dick.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No, no, no, no! The movie sounds like it sucks and you’re not going to deal with Mary after all the shit you got yourself into last time with her. “Fuck that Erik, there’s gotta be something else!” “Well there’s a comic convention that needs another guest speaker…” You slam the phone down. You need to get out of the house. You decide to go for a walk in the forest. You wander around in the calmness of the forest and nature in general. Sometimes you wonder if you shouldn’t just go back to living in the wild. Things were certainly simpler then. While you’re thinking about the nostalgia of the old days, you see a very large hairy body lying prone in the distance. “What the fuck…how the hell…” you mumble to yourself while going over to investigate. When you arrive, its exactly who you thought it was, though you don’t understand how you couldn’t have heard him lumbering through the forest given how big he is, let alone seen him. “Hey Kong! You alive? Wake up!” you shout. Kong stirs a little and then sits up to yawn. He scratches his now silverback and looks over at you. “Wolf? What’re you doing here?” “Me? I live just a few miles away! What’re you doing here and how is it that I didn’t see or hear you crashing through the forest?” “Oh I can be pretty silent when I want to be.” “Okay, but what’re you doing here?” “Back to nature my friend. Nancy kicked me out of the house. For good this time, she said she can’t put up with my chauvinism any more. All I told her was to get her ass back in the kitchen and make me a banana split and serve it to me naked.” “Sounds like a reasonable request, so what happened?” “She went into the kitchen, came back out with a frying pan of hot grease, threw the shit on me and kicked me in the balls, before shoving me out the door and calling me a fucking backward primate.” You hold back some laughter, before speaking again. “Tough break there Kong, but I guess you could look on the bright side, you’re back to your roots with no more cares anymore. Living free in the wild and all.” “Are you on fucking crack Wolf? It sucks! You know when I lived on Skull Island I didn’t know any better, but in the last few days I’ve come to realize living in a warm HOUSE and sleeping in a bed is way better than living in the cold wild and sleeping on the ground where bugs crawl all over you!” Kong’s remarks certainly have made you reconsider your previous nostalgia of the old days. “Well, can’t you just make up with Nancy? Surely if she’s put up with you this long and if you apologized and did all that romantic crap she’d let you back in.” “Don’t think so Wolf, I never was good at that, besides she’s got a restraining order on me too.” ”What else did you do to her?” “Nothing! She’s just being a crazy bitch, that’s unwilling to listen to reason. Well unwilling to listen to me anyway. Hey Wolf, you’ve always been a smooth talker with ladies. Maybe you could talk some sense into her for me.” “Uh, I dunno Kong I don’t really like getting into the middle of shit like this, don’t you have someplace else to stay, hey what about your cousin Joe?” “I’m not staying with him! He’s a fucking fag!” “Well, beggars can’t be chooser Kong, besides he’s your cousin it’s not like you have worry about him trying any ass pirate shit on you. I’m sure he’s got a nice house too.” “Yeah, I guess…but I’d still prefer to go back to my own home, and I’m not sure if Joe would let me stay anyway. You gotta help me out Wolf, Nancy kicked me out with nothing, and I don’t even have any money in the bank. I don’t want to be living in the fucking wilderness again!” You normally aren’t one to help someone for no reason, but there’s the fact that you don’t want him living that close to you, you don’t relish the idea of him taking big healthy dumps in a forest you live near, so to avoid wearing a clothespin on your nose for the rest of your time living here, you decide to help Kong. > You memories (Joe) The Sensitive Ape: Mighty Joe Young After Kong destroyed his own career, some of the humans that exploited him still wanted to go with the giant monkey theme so they had to find a substitute. Someone suggested Kong’s cousin Joe. He seemed like the perfect candidate, maybe he wasn’t as big as Kong, but he was certainly a lot more manageable and calm. He’d do, they were sure of it. This plan was doomed from the start. First of all Joe wasn’t really interested in acting, he’d rather just live his life in the wilderness. This wasn’t too much of a problem, after all they’d convinced Kong to “embrace” civilization, they could do it with Joe. However, it was apparent that Joe didn’t really want to play a brute similar to Kong. He felt he should be portrayed as a more sensitive being. As a compromise the humans told him that the movie would be made in such a way that the audience would feel sympathy like they did with Kong, but Joe wasn’t buying it. Rewrites and recasts plagued the productions. Joe was also a lot smarter than Kong, they couldn’t exploit him like they could with Kong, he over looked everything they ever tried to make him sign and if he didn’t like it then he’d tell them as much. The third thing was it was apparent that Joe was erm…a bit light on his feet and it was coming through on the screen. They quite correctly though the public wouldn’t accept this, so they tried to “toughen” up his image by putting the word “Mighty” in front of his name. It didn’t really help since Joe made no effort to hide who he was in public and didn’t really understand why he should. Though nobody was going to say anything, since he was still an incredibly strong 12ft ape, the public wasn’t ready for a “sensitive” monkey. His movies bombed, but he didn’t mind, he made his money and invested it well. The joke was on the humans that tried to take advantage of him. Last you heard he bought himself a nice home and spends most of time in his private garden tending to his exotic flowers which he grows for his own florist business.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Oh boo fucking hoo, your latest Opera hasn’t been doing too well lately. At least people are paying to see the goddamn thing! As bad of a composer, and musician you are, you oughta be glad anyone’s even paying to see the goddamn thing! People don’t want to see anything with me in it! And at least you’ve got another job to fall back on LIKE BEING AN AGENT THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING ME A FUCKING JOB!” you snarl. There’s some dead air briefly and then Erik begins talking again. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be complaining about my problems to you. You of course know all about torment. A war that wages within you, a beast that…” “Erik I’ve got no time and I’m in no mood to hear how we’re supposed to be kindred spirits, you just better tell me you found something for me and it better not be another guest speaker spot at a comic convention!” “Well let’s see…I dunno. Werewolves aren’t popular anymore you know…there might be something…here it is! It’s called Wolf Pack.” “Pack? That implies more than one wolf on the set there Erik. Well I suppose I can share the spotlight with some others. As long as I’m in charge of course.” You say. “Er…well according to this, you’d be the old cranky grandpa wolf that makes a bunch of rude remarks.” “What?! What kind of stupid shit is that?” “Yeah that’s the stuff.” Erik replies not catching on. “I mean what the hell kind of movie is this?” “Its uh…let’s see…oh here. It’s a horror comedy about a werewolf family and how they adjust to human society. Looks like you’ll be playing with a lot of young pups as you’d call them.” “WHAT?! NO! What the fuck Erik? I’m a fucking monster not something to be fucking laughed at! And they already did a movie like that a long time ago and it sucked!” “Well that’s all I got. Maybe you could talk to the director to make changes since they also wrote it. I’m sure you and her are familiar with each other. You had an affair with her for quite some time.” “Uh, you wanna narrow that list down Erik?” “It’s Mary. You know, the one who used to be married to Frankie, until your affair broke up both of your marriages?” Erik’s new information didn’t exactly make you any more enthusiastic to want to take the job. > You memories (Frankie) The Monster: Frankie Dr. Victor Frankenstein made Frankie out of the parts of dead bodies as everyone knows, but what wasn’t so well known at the time was he was using many of the parts from a graveyard where they buried insane asylum patients. The brain of an unstable sexual psychopath probably wasn’t the best choice. Even Igor tried to tell him it was a bad idea, but of course Victor knew it all so he went ahead with playing God. Victor probably wouldn’t have named his creation after himself if he knew what Frankie was going to do. Frankie had a… let’s say unhealthy interest in little girls. He also was an idiotic bully who would try to push anyone around who was smaller. You’re all for the survival of the fittest ideology and might makes right. Hell you live by it. But you didn’t like the way he acted since he was a real pussy when someone actually stood up to him. You also didn’t like him because when he came on the scene, all of a sudden he was number two. It was bad enough you had to play second fiddle to that fucking bloodsucker, but NOW you were getting pushed out of the spotlight from some child molesting, walking stitch work of corpses. Fortunately he tripped up his popularity somewhat when the public became suspicious of his little “secret”. Yet despite being a sicko, he still somehow managed to draw in the money, you hated even being in the same “rank” as him. You’ve never liked the undead as a rule, but Frankie was particularly loathsome to you. He always claimed he was “misunderstood” and couldn’t help the way he was. He couldn’t understand why some people hated him and chased him away with pitchforks and attempted to set him on fire. “Duh, it’s because you’re a goddamn pedophile you sick fuck.” as you so delicately explained one time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Oh boo fucking hoo, your latest Opera hasn’t been doing too well lately. At least people are paying to see the goddamn thing! As bad of a composer, and musician you are, you oughta be glad anyone’s even paying to see the goddamn thing! People don’t want to see anything with me in it! And at least you’ve got another job to fall back on LIKE BEING AN AGENT THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING ME A FUCKING JOB!” you snarl. There’s some dead air briefly and then Erik begins talking again. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be complaining about my problems to you. You of course know all about torment. A war that wages within you, a beast that…” “Erik I’ve got no time and I’m in no mood to hear how we’re supposed to be kindred spirits, you just better tell me you found something for me and it better not be another guest speaker spot at a comic convention!” “Well let’s see…I dunno. Werewolves aren’t popular anymore you know…there might be something…here it is! It’s called Wolf Pack.” “Pack? That implies more than one wolf on the set there Erik. Well I suppose I can share the spotlight with some others. As long as I’m in charge of course.” You say. “Er…well according to this, you’d be the old cranky grandpa wolf that makes a bunch of rude remarks.” “What?! What kind of stupid shit is that?” “Yeah that’s the stuff.” Erik replies not catching on. “I mean what the hell kind of movie is this?” “Its uh…let’s see…oh here. It’s a horror comedy about a werewolf family and how they adjust to human society. Looks like you’ll be playing with a lot of young pups as you’d call them.” “WHAT?! NO! What the fuck Erik? I’m a fucking monster not something to be fucking laughed at! And they already did a movie like that a long time ago and it sucked!” “Well that’s all I got. Maybe you could talk to the director to make changes since they also wrote it. I’m sure you and her are familiar with each other. You had an affair with her for quite some time.” “Uh, you wanna narrow that list down Erik?” “It’s Mary. You know, the one who used to be married to Frankie, until your affair broke up both of your marriages?” Erik’s new information didn’t exactly make you any more enthusiastic to want to take the job. > You memories (Mary) The Bride: Mary That entire wedding was an abomination. After the supposed “accidental” death of a little girl, Victor attempted to correct the problem by creating Mary. He figured if Frankie had a bride he could fuck her instead. Of course she was better made since Victor learned from the mistakes he made in Frankie. (This time he had Igor raid a regular graveyard) The marriage was brief and embarrassing. Mary hadn’t been alive that long and it was obvious that she didn’t want anything to do with Frankie even though Victor created her with an increased sex drive. And since Victor could be considered the “father” of them both, and he married them to each other…well that just a bit twisted. Mary didn’t have an identity. She didn’t even have the name “Mary” at that time. She was created solely as a sex toy for Frankie, an unused one to boot, since Frankie still had his sick fetish and didn’t take any interest in her at all. She was very unhappy in her role and pursued intellectual hobbies in her vast spare time. Eventually she took the name Mary after one of her favorite authors. However, she still had that BIG sex drive. She fucked everyone she could get her hands on behind Frankie’s back. It was only a matter of time before she got to you. And well, despite your prejudice against the undead, and the fact that you were married, and the fact she had a really bad hair-do, she was hot and you’re a big dog… You and her had very long and passionate affair. You even looked past the fact that she was Undead. Of course it just happened to be your bad luck to be the one that actually got caught in the act, by Frankie himself one day. Now while Frankie didn’t have any interest in her, he didn’t want anyone else to have her either and since he didn’t like you too much anyway all hell broke loose. Long story short. You beat the shit out of Frankie, depriving him of some of his vital parts. Victor sued you for vandalizing his “property”. Your bitch divorced you and took everything. And Mary left Frankie for good for that damn bloodsucking bastard until they broke up later as well. You really don’t like the undead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up in your cabin in the woods. You sit up and scratch some fleas that have infested your body. You also realize its still daylight. You hate waking up early. You lope into the bathroom and look in the mirror where you see a canine face covered in gray fur, you remember a time when your fur was completely brown. “You’re getting old Wolf” you say to yourself like you always do while trying to look on the bright side that at least you don’t have the mange. You think you’d just put a silver bullet in your head if you ever started to go bald. After eating some left over mutton in the fridge and some Gummy Blobs (for the sugar “pick me up”) you ponder how you’re going to pay this month’s rent on your cabin. You call your agent Erik and see if that little pissant has found any work for you. Hopefully it’s an actual job and not just a guest speaker spot at a comic convention. “Erik! It’s me Wolf! Pick up the fucking phone! I know you’re there!” you say when you get the answering machine. “Erik! Get on the phone NOW, or I’m gonna go over there and shove a pipe organ up your ass!” That got his attention. “Wolf, I’m sorry, but I fear I’m in a deep depression.” “What else is new? Look I need some work, got anything? I don’t even care if it’s straight to video. I just need some of the green stuff!” “Sadly, I don’t think I do, but then I haven’t really checked…I’m so depressed. I’ve been wondering if I made the right decisions in my life…and now it’s too late for me to do anything about it, because I’m old…” “Join the fucking club Erik! Look do you…” “But my art, my music, that is my love and its failing me again. My latest opera isn’t doing well. I wonder if I chose the wrong thing to love and pursue. Just like I did with Christine. Oh Christine WHY couldn’t you have loved me? I loved you…” Wonderful, he’s in full blown tortured artist mode. He can go on like this forever. You can either give up, or persist in getting something out of him. > You hang up and go to the bar in town Fuck it, you don’t feel like putting up with Erik’s whining. You’ll talk to him later when you’re in the mood. You hang up and decide to engage in one of your favorite past time ever since you became part of “society”. Drink. You head down to the bar in town. When you enter you see it nearly empty. Usually there’s someone here that you don’t like which gives you an excuse to get into a fight. You sit down and order a Scotch. The bartender tends to let you just drink and cleans up the mess you make afterwards, but today turns out a little differently. “Hey Wolf, some people have been wanting to see you.” The bartender says nervously. “Oh? Do these people have a name?” you ask downing your drink. “Well they’re in the bar right now actually, I think they’re old acquaintances of yours.” You scan the bar, which doesn’t take long considering its almost empty. And you’ll be damned you see not one, but THREE people from the old days; you’re surprised you didn’t notice them before. At a nearby table you see Dr. Henry Jekyll and Dr. Jack Griffin. Jack normally would be difficult to see in this dark lighting at the best of times, since he’s invisible, but he’s perfectly noticeable enough when he wears clothing. They see you and wave you to come over. At a table in the far corner you see Dr. Alphonse Moreau. He looks like a wreck. He’s obviously been chain smoking cigarettes and drinking a lot since he got here. He sees you and desperately signals you over like he needs your help severely. While you’re not surprised to see all these humans still alive (Mad scientists ALWAYS figure out how to extend their life spans past the normal human limit) you’re just surprised that they all want to see you and it makes you suspicious. You’ve always been mistrustful of Mad Scientist types ever since your run in with Dr. Victor Frankenstein. You turn to the bartender for more information. “What the hell, is there a Mad Scientist convention in town or some shit? Why are they all here and why do they want me?” “I dunno Wolf. I think its just coincidence. Henry and Jack say they got some sort of experiment going on and want your help on it. They know you’ve been needing some money lately and they’re willing to pay you for your time. I think Henry wants to play catch up with you as well.” “Hmm, speaking of catch, there probably is one. So why’s Moreau here? Same thing?” “He wouldn’t elaborate too much. He says he REALLY needs help with something, and it’s not an experiment. He says he gave up trying to play God. I dunno what’s wrong though you’ll have to ask him yourself. He just said, he’s willing to do anything for you if you help him. Well this venture to the bar seems to have become potentially lucrative; the problem is you have to deal with a bunch of humans with God complexes. (You doubt what the bartender told you about Moreau, his type never gets out of the game completely) You decide to throw caution to the wind and take one of their jobs; you feel you’ll be up to the challenge. After all its common knowledge of what you did to Victor when he tried to take advantage of you once. All it comes down to is who you want to deal with. > You go sit with Jekyll and Griffin Well despite your distrust of Jack, Henry’s always been alright and you could use the easy money. If it doesn’t sound like a good deal to you, you can always decline. You sit down with them both, keeping a constant eye on Jack, well his clothing anyway. “Hey Wolf, glad to see you, it’s been awhile. I remember when we used to tear up places like this back in the day.” Henry says. “Yeah, the good old days.” You say agreeing. “When we were young and a lot more active.” “Speak for yourself Henry.” You stand up and start punching and kicking. “I’m still active and I’m only as old as I feel which isn’t old at all! I can still… OW!” you get a slight sprain in your back when attempting to demonstrate your “youthful” combat abilities. “No, Wolf you’re not old at all.” Jack snickers. “Shut the fuck up Jack, I just haven’t been in a proper fight in awhile, I’m a little out of practice. Say, how about I practice on YOU?” “Uh, okay calm down Wolf! Jack! We’re not here to antagonize anyone!” “You’re right so let’s get all this catch up shit out of the way. Wolf, we got an experiment for you that should be right up your alley. It involves you testing those skills you claim you still have.” “Oh yeah? What kind of experiment is this?” Henry interjects before Jack can continue. “Well the government hired us to develop something that increased combat ability. We’ve been testing it on humans and the results have been good so far, however we want to see how good it is, so we wanted to test them against non-human opponents, you came to mind since well you ARE the Alpha Wolf and despite your age, you are probably the best the Werewolf race has to offer as far as combat skills. I figure you’re still worth 10 of the cubs nowadays. Plus I know you like to kick ass and get paid for doing it. You know how the government likes to throw money around when it comes to new weapons, so I figure we can spare five thousand for your help.” > You accept the job “I guess you always did know me pretty well Henry. Count me in.” you say. “Great! I knew you’d be game.” “Let’s get going, I’m ready.” You, Henry and Jack enter his car and drive to some nondescript building. The ground floor resembles just a normal abandoned warehouse, but of course you three enter a secret room with an elevator that takes you to a lab area, then you pass through a gym area where you see quite a few ugly overly muscular humans doing some rigorous training while doing a lot of shouting and yelling A lot of them look like they have severe ‘roid rage and that includes the females. “Huh, sure they all look pretty, but can they fight?” you mockingly ask Henry. “Well that’s what we’re going to find out. Now the arena area is through that door, you can just enter and the testing will begin. Jack and I will be watching from an upper room. I’ll see you when you’re ready.” Henry leaves with the rest of the humans and you’re about to enter the arena, but a hand grabs you causing you pull away in a defensive stance. It’s Jack. “Don’t fucking touch me Jack!” you growl. “Sheesh, calm down there, I just have to tell you something. Something important.” “What Jack? I don’t have time for your shit.” “Yeah, well you’ll be thanking me later. You need to take this.” Jack takes a bottle out of his jacket and hands it to you. “What’s this?” “It’s MY invention. Henry hasn’t been telling you the entire truth. He’s setting you up to be killed. He doesn’t have any intention of letting you out that arena until one of his super soldiers kills you, and I guarantee it’ll happen eventually. He’s already got most of them hopped up to the point of being uncontrollable. He’ll probably start increasing the dosage if you start winning against the initial barrage. However if you drink my invention you’ll be able to survive. It’s just like what Henry’s been feeding his Super Soldiers, but without all the side effects. Surely you noticed how ugly and distorted all those subjects were. All he did was make alterations to his original Hyde formula instead creating something new from scratch like I did, yet he claims my invention isn’t good enough.” “This all smells like bullshit Jack, but assuming you’re telling the truth, why’s Henry doing it and why in this way?” “I dunno, because he’s a Mad Scientist, and prone to be dramatic I suppose, its just one of our endearing qualities. Plus we really are testing this shit for the government, so its still good research even if it’s doubling as murder. If you want deeper reasons the only other explanation I can give is he’s ALWAYS been jealous of you. Yes, it’s true he did admire you, but he was always jealous of your natural abilities which he had to get artificially, and even then it wasn’t entirely successful as you well know. I can personally vouch for having to hear him rag on you over the years.” This all sounds pretty suspicious especially coming from Jack who’s known for his double dealing and sneaky ways. The bottle might contain poison for all you know, or maybe he’s just angry at Henry for snubbing his invention and he’s using you as a subject to test it which may or may not be as great as he says. Still, Mad Scientist types have tried to fuck you over before; you can’t help but wonder if Henry is planning what Jack’s claiming. > You drink the bottle As much as you don’t trust him, you have to admit Jack has never really done anything against you in all the time you’ve known him. If anything he’s always attempted to be friendly. Is it possible you’ve just been an asshole to him, for no good reason? Probably, but it wouldn’t be the first time and that’s all in the past. You take the bottle and down its contents. “(BURP!) I don’t feel any different.” “Oh you will trust me.” “I’ve put more than enough trust in you already, better not be trying anything Jack, because I swear I WILL get my revenge on you, if this is a fucking trick!” “Not a trick, everything I’ve told you is the truth, you’ll see.” “Yeah, we’ll see.” When you enter the arena area, it’s just a big empty white room with another door on the other side of it. High above you can see Henry on an upper floor with a clipboard behind some glass. He waves to you and speaks into a microphone. “Okay Wolf, we’re going to start off slow, this subject hasn’t been injected with as much of the formula so I’m guessing you shouldn’t have any problems with him. Try not to kill him though, since we DO want some of them to survive!” “No killing eh? Well I suppose there’s a first time for everything, alright Henry, send in the victim.” No sooner has the human entered the room, and you’ve already run up and drop kicked him in the face! You don’t allow him to get back up, and end up breaking one of his legs by totally destroying his knee. He’s in extreme pain and expresses it vocally. “Damn Wolf! What the hell!?” Henry shouts. “Hey you said not to kill him, you didn’t say anything about not breaking bones.” “Alright, drag him out, and bring in the next one.” This goes on for the next five fights. If the subjects are supposed to be getting tougher, you haven’t noticed. All you’ve notice is a severe change in the subjects, mainly being bigger and more vicious, they’re starting to not even resemble humans anymore, and in fact they resemble “Mr. Hyde” but even more out of control. But you haven’t even broken a sweat during all of this, it’s like you’re in your prime again. It must be Jack’s formula. Looks like he didn’t lie. You look up where Henry is located and you notice he seems to be ranting and yelling at Jack. He addresses you again. “How are you doing Wolf?” “Great! I haven’t felt this good in years!” “Hmm, well I guess I haven’t been trying hard enough! Wolf, I’m sending three of them in there, try to beat that!” “Hey, you’re supposed to be testing their fighting skills not mine.” “No Wolf, I’m supposed to be KILLING you, but you’re too fucking stupid to die properly! Well that ends now!” Looks like Jack was telling the truth about that too, you attempt to leave the way you came in but, a solid metal door slides from a hidden panel to block your way. Even your increased combat abilities can’t make more than a dent in it. Henry then begins to laugh maniacally and three lumbering hulks come through the opposite door all intent on doing you massive harm. However, you don’t have any fear about this situation, you’re confident that you can take them and you do just that! You’re literally a whirlwind of fury and violence. Bones are broken, flesh is ripped, faces are bitten and balls are stomped and happily none of them are yours. As you stand over the three large mutilated corpses you look up at the observation area and see only Jack standing there to address you. “Hey Jack! Let me outta here, I got a score to settle with that fucking pussy Henry!” “Uh, Wolf, you might want to prepare yourself, Henry said he’s coming down to handle you himself.” “What as Mr. Hyde? Pfft! Yeah, I’m really worried. He’s nowhere near as vicious as these fucktards were. I had to bail him out of most of the fights he started in the past. Sure he looked scary, still couldn’t fight worth a shit though.” Suddenly a very large figure smashes through the wall opposite you, its Mr. Hyde and he’s a LOT bigger and uglier than the last time you saw him. He’s easily larger than the last three subjects you just put down. “WOLF!!!” he bellows. Okay somebody just overdosed on the “formula”. > You fight Yeah, you might be feeling in your “prime” and all, but Mr. Hyde is severely out of your weight class right now. You might be quicker, but all he has to do is hit you once and you’re not that good to completely avoid being hit entirely… And when you inevitably feel that pile driver like fist breaking every bone simultaneously in your body you know you’ve been hit. You don’t feel the next one reducing you into a thin red furry paste.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As much as you don’t trust him, you have to admit Jack has never really done anything against you in all the time you’ve known him. If anything he’s always attempted to be friendly. Is it possible you’ve just been an asshole to him, for no good reason? Probably, but it wouldn’t be the first time and that’s all in the past. You take the bottle and down its contents. “(BURP!) I don’t feel any different.” “Oh you will trust me.” “I’ve put more than enough trust in you already, better not be trying anything Jack, because I swear I WILL get my revenge on you, if this is a fucking trick!” “Not a trick, everything I’ve told you is the truth, you’ll see.” “Yeah, we’ll see.” When you enter the arena area, it’s just a big empty white room with another door on the other side of it. High above you can see Henry on an upper floor with a clipboard behind some glass. He waves to you and speaks into a microphone. “Okay Wolf, we’re going to start off slow, this subject hasn’t been injected with as much of the formula so I’m guessing you shouldn’t have any problems with him. Try not to kill him though, since we DO want some of them to survive!” “No killing eh? Well I suppose there’s a first time for everything, alright Henry, send in the victim.” No sooner has the human entered the room, and you’ve already run up and drop kicked him in the face! You don’t allow him to get back up, and end up breaking one of his legs by totally destroying his knee. He’s in extreme pain and expresses it vocally. “Damn Wolf! What the hell!?” Henry shouts. “Hey you said not to kill him, you didn’t say anything about not breaking bones.” “Alright, drag him out, and bring in the next one.” This goes on for the next five fights. If the subjects are supposed to be getting tougher, you haven’t noticed. All you’ve notice is a severe change in the subjects, mainly being bigger and more vicious, they’re starting to not even resemble humans anymore, and in fact they resemble “Mr. Hyde” but even more out of control. But you haven’t even broken a sweat during all of this, it’s like you’re in your prime again. It must be Jack’s formula. Looks like he didn’t lie. You look up where Henry is located and you notice he seems to be ranting and yelling at Jack. He addresses you again. “How are you doing Wolf?” “Great! I haven’t felt this good in years!” “Hmm, well I guess I haven’t been trying hard enough! Wolf, I’m sending three of them in there, try to beat that!” “Hey, you’re supposed to be testing their fighting skills not mine.” “No Wolf, I’m supposed to be KILLING you, but you’re too fucking stupid to die properly! Well that ends now!” Looks like Jack was telling the truth about that too, you attempt to leave the way you came in but, a solid metal door slides from a hidden panel to block your way. Even your increased combat abilities can’t make more than a dent in it. Henry then begins to laugh maniacally and three lumbering hulks come through the opposite door all intent on doing you massive harm. However, you don’t have any fear about this situation, you’re confident that you can take them and you do just that! You’re literally a whirlwind of fury and violence. Bones are broken, flesh is ripped, faces are bitten and balls are stomped and happily none of them are yours. As you stand over the three large mutilated corpses you look up at the observation area and see only Jack standing there to address you. “Hey Jack! Let me outta here, I got a score to settle with that fucking pussy Henry!” “Uh, Wolf, you might want to prepare yourself, Henry said he’s coming down to handle you himself.” “What as Mr. Hyde? Pfft! Yeah, I’m really worried. He’s nowhere near as vicious as these fucktards were. I had to bail him out of most of the fights he started in the past. Sure he looked scary, still couldn’t fight worth a shit though.” Suddenly a very large figure smashes through the wall opposite you, its Mr. Hyde and he’s a LOT bigger and uglier than the last time you saw him. He’s easily larger than the last three subjects you just put down. “WOLF!!!” he bellows. Okay somebody just overdosed on the “formula”. > You escape Even with your renewed “youth”, you know you’re not going to be able to take Mr. Hyde, not head on at least. You still need to get the hell out of here though and he’s blocking the only exit, but you have a plan. Mr. Hyde predictably charges at you, and puts his giant fist through the wall behind you, collapsing most of it when you dodge out of the way. Well there was your plan! When he unsuccessfully tries to hit you again, you roll out of the way and run out the opening Mr. Hyde just provided for you. You quickly take a few bricks and chuck them at Mr. Hyde’s face when he attempts to squeeze through, of course that doesn’t do anything except causing a few gashes and making him madder. “YOU DIE TODAY WOLF!” he says collapsing more of the building in an attempt to get you. You just realized you’re underground, if he continues with this destruction he’s going to end up burying the both of you. You make your way to the elevator with Mr. Hyde in pursuit. When you get to where the elevator is in sight, you see Jack with a briefcase, busily fiddling with the buttons, he turns to face you. “Wolf! Watch out behind you!” he yells pointing in your direction. > You immediately dive to the floor You don’t think you just act and dive face first in the floor and roll attempting to avoid whatever Mr. Hyde has just thrown at you. The only problem is, he didn’t throw anything; in fact he’s still trying to squeeze through the corridor that’s just a bit too small for him. Meanwhile you were rolling on the floor; Jack nipped inside the elevator and closed the door! “SONOFABITCH!” You shout and quickly pry the doors open with all your might, but the elevator is already on its way up. Fortunately there is an emergency ladder on the side you can still use, or if you want to risk it the elevator has only just started to ascend, you could grab on to the bottom of it and take it up. > You grab the bottom You jump up and grab the bottom as the elevator doors snap shut behind you. You hold on for dear life as you hear the building shake from Hyde destroying yet another load bearing pillar no doubt. The elevator is shaking as well which does concern you since if it suddenly starts to drop, you’re going to be in a BAD position! As you dangle high above, you look down and see the elevator doors you came through being smashed through. Hyde sticks his head in first, then his massive body, and looks up, he sees you. “DIE WOLF!” His single mindedness on your death causes him to start digging his massive fingers in the shaft walls to climb after you! To make matters worse the elevator has just stopped, you hear Jack cursing above you. As you look up you notice a service panel on the bottom of the elevator. You could either open and go through that, or attempt to leap to the emergency ladder. > You leap for the ladder You leap for the ladder and just barely make it from your awkward position. Hyde is still in pursuit and closing fast. When you start your ascent, the see the figure of Jack jumping on the ladder just above you, he must’ve used the service panel in the roof of the elevator to escape. He must’ve left the briefcase behind in the elevator too since he’s not carrying it anymore. He looks down and pulls out a pistol. He fires several times, but fortunately only hits you in the arm. Unfortunately those bullets are silver and it fucking hurts like hell! “Argh! Shit! I should’ve known not to trust you, you goddamned invisible bastard!” you yell. Jack stops firing at you and then starts firing at the main elevator cord hitting it. The elevator is now dangerously dangling by a weakened cord. You quickly climb past the elevator before it falls which it inevitably does. You’re safe, but Mr. Hyde isn’t so lucky. The elevator drops at a good speed that even he can’t stop in his position and knocks him off his shaft climb. Hyde makes a deafening roar as the elevator crushes his body when they both hit the bottom. You don’t know if he’s dead yet, but he soon will be, in any case its one less problem to worry about. You continue your ascent after Jack, who is now at the top, trying to open the elevator doors. Too bad for him, he doesn’t have enhanced strength like you and is struggling to open them up, while still balancing on the ladder. “Ha ha, should’ve used your own formula Jack!” you say and grab his leg, digging your claws deeply in. “Arrrgh! Let go you mangy dog!” “You shouldn’t have double crossed me Jack!” “I can see my formula’s made you stronger than I thought, I’ll have to make a note of that after I put an end to you!” Jack pulls out his pistol again which was a big mistake, as now he’s not holding on to anything and is merely balancing on his legs, one of which you’re holding on to… You wrench the leg you’ve dug your claws into and pull hard, causing him to fall off. “NOOOOOOOOO!” he screams as he falls into the dark shaft to his imminent demise. You continue your escape by prying the elevator doors open and crawl through panting heavily. You lie face up on the ground for awhile just resting. You think the effects of the formula are wearing off. Too bad, you liked feeling “young” again. You do realize the folly of going against your instinct though; you knew you weren’t just being an asshole to Jack for all these years for no reason. You knew he was shady. He might’ve been telling the truth about Henry, but he was just using you as a “subject” just to test his invention and to hopefully kill Henry in the process. Oh well you came out alive and they’re both dead, you won. Though one thing pisses you off. “Fuck. The money’s buried down there.” You say to yourself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You jump up and grab the bottom as the elevator doors snap shut behind you. You hold on for dear life as you hear the building shake from Hyde destroying yet another load bearing pillar no doubt. The elevator is shaking as well which does concern you since if it suddenly starts to drop, you’re going to be in a BAD position! As you dangle high above, you look down and see the elevator doors you came through being smashed through. Hyde sticks his head in first, then his massive body, and looks up, he sees you. “DIE WOLF!” His single mindedness on your death causes him to start digging his massive fingers in the shaft walls to climb after you! To make matters worse the elevator has just stopped, you hear Jack cursing above you. As you look up you notice a service panel on the bottom of the elevator. You could either open and go through that, or attempt to leap to the emergency ladder. > You go through the panel As soon as you open up the panel, you feel a boot to the head. This wouldn’t be able to stop you, but the pistol with silver bullets does. After kicking you in the head, Jack unloads six silvers into your head killing you instantly before your body drops down the elevator shaft, hitting Mr. Hyde and then bouncing off him and continuing to fall until it crashes to the bottom.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You don’t think you just act and dive face first in the floor and roll attempting to avoid whatever Mr. Hyde has just thrown at you. The only problem is, he didn’t throw anything; in fact he’s still trying to squeeze through the corridor that’s just a bit too small for him. Meanwhile you were rolling on the floor; Jack nipped inside the elevator and closed the door! “SONOFABITCH!” You shout and quickly pry the doors open with all your might, but the elevator is already on its way up. Fortunately there is an emergency ladder on the side you can still use, or if you want to risk it the elevator has only just started to ascend, you could grab on to the bottom of it and take it up. > You take the ladder You start climbing the ladder as quickly as you can, its not quick enough though. Hyde eventually bashes the elevator doors open and squeezes into the shaft, upon seeing you on the ladder he climbs up the shaft by digging his massive fingers into the walls. He climbs high enough to grab you off the ladder and squeeze the life out of you until you explode into a mass of blood like a bloated tick.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Even with your renewed “youth”, you know you’re not going to be able to take Mr. Hyde, not head on at least. You still need to get the hell out of here though and he’s blocking the only exit, but you have a plan. Mr. Hyde predictably charges at you, and puts his giant fist through the wall behind you, collapsing most of it when you dodge out of the way. Well there was your plan! When he unsuccessfully tries to hit you again, you roll out of the way and run out the opening Mr. Hyde just provided for you. You quickly take a few bricks and chuck them at Mr. Hyde’s face when he attempts to squeeze through, of course that doesn’t do anything except causing a few gashes and making him madder. “YOU DIE TODAY WOLF!” he says collapsing more of the building in an attempt to get you. You just realized you’re underground, if he continues with this destruction he’s going to end up burying the both of you. You make your way to the elevator with Mr. Hyde in pursuit. When you get to where the elevator is in sight, you see Jack with a briefcase, busily fiddling with the buttons, he turns to face you. “Wolf! Watch out behind you!” he yells pointing in your direction. > You sprint for the elevator You lower your head and make a sprint to the elevator which opens up just as you leap into it. Jack moves out of your way when you do this and then follows you into the elevator. “Wow Wolf, you just missed getting nailed in the head.” Jack says pressing the button up. He might be invisible, but you can tell by the movement of his clothing that he’s fidgeting a lot. The building is shaking, not to mention the elevator, from Mr. Hyde’s destructive rampage, you seriously hope it makes it to the top. As the elevator ascends upward, you both can hear Mr. Hyde below bashing the elevator door open. “YOU WON’T ESCAPE ME WOLF!” you can hear him yell. He’s definitely in the shaft at this point, you can hear scraping and the twisting of metal. It sounds like he’s climbing after you through the shaft, not the emergency ladder! Suddenly the elevator creaks to a halt. Jack frantically presses the buttons, but nothing works. “NO! Shit! No! This can’t be happening! He must’ve knocked some sort of power out some how! Wolf there’s a service panel up top, open it up and we’ll escape out that way.” > You open up the panel While you turn around to reach the panel, Jack reaches into his coat pocket for a pistol. One loaded with silver bullets. He fires three into your back, then when you fall to the floor in a heap, he puts the final one into your head. “Sorry Wolf, but you never were anything more than a test subject for my invention. Glad to see it worked very well, you have my thanks… I suppose you can keep this briefcase of money, I’ll make a fortune with my formula after I dispose of your friend Mr. Hyde of course.” Jack dumps the briefcase on your dead body and climbs through the service panel and hops to the emergency elevator where he fires his pistol at the main elevator cable, hitting it and causing it to dangle a bit and then finally falling. This of course kills Mr. Hyde since even he can’t withstand such a heavy force at such a speed when it knocks him off and then finally crushes him when they both reach the bottom of the shaft. Jack makes his good escape, makes up a story about you and Henry to discredit him and his work, and finally makes millions of dollars from his formula.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You lower your head and make a sprint to the elevator which opens up just as you leap into it. Jack moves out of your way when you do this and then follows you into the elevator. “Wow Wolf, you just missed getting nailed in the head.” Jack says pressing the button up. He might be invisible, but you can tell by the movement of his clothing that he’s fidgeting a lot. The building is shaking, not to mention the elevator, from Mr. Hyde’s destructive rampage, you seriously hope it makes it to the top. As the elevator ascends upward, you both can hear Mr. Hyde below bashing the elevator door open. “YOU WON’T ESCAPE ME WOLF!” you can hear him yell. He’s definitely in the shaft at this point, you can hear scraping and the twisting of metal. It sounds like he’s climbing after you through the shaft, not the emergency ladder! Suddenly the elevator creaks to a halt. Jack frantically presses the buttons, but nothing works. “NO! Shit! No! This can’t be happening! He must’ve knocked some sort of power out some how! Wolf there’s a service panel up top, open it up and we’ll escape out that way.” > You punch out Jack You remember an old saying, “A liar is still a liar even when he’s telling the truth.” And despite Jack telling you the truth about Henry, you can tell he still had his own agenda. In fact it’s obvious he was trying to leave you here to rot. “Hey Jack what’s that?” you say pointing in his direction “Huh?” Jack replies looking down and around himself. POW! You clock Jack in his bandaged face, cracking his sunglasses and knocking him to the floor. You quickly rummage through his coat and find a pistol and check the clip. “Well, well, silver bullets. I always knew you weren’t to be trusted! Hell, you sold out Henry pretty quickly. You were using me as a test subject for your formula and were probably were hoping me and Henry would end up killing each other. I knew I wasn’t being an asshole to you for all these years for no reason! I bet this is the money I was never going to receive either right?” you open the briefcase and close it when you see it contains the money. “Alright fine Wolf you got me, but what use is there in really killing me? You can have the money, you can escape. Just let me live, besides you owe me a life! Self serving it may have been; if it wasn’t for my formula, you wouldn’t have survived the arena!” You better make up your mind either way; you can hear Mr. Hyde climbing closer to your location. > You kill Jack “Fuck you Jack, I would’ve survived the arena even without your wonder drug, now how about I make myself invisible too?” and with those words you take off Jack’s cracked sun glasses and shove two claws in where his eyes would be located, you know you got the right spot since you can feel the squish of the ocular jelly and his screams of agony. While you’d normally finish the job you don’t have time since you hear Mr. Hyde bounding on the bottom of the elevator, making dents in it. You grab the gun and the briefcase and leap up through the service panel in the roof, leaving Jack to writhe in unbelievable pain. Still hearing Mr. Hyde trying to get in, you leap to the emergency ladder, you’re having difficulty holding on to the ladder, the gun AND the briefcase though, and guess which one you accidently drop? The briefcase of course. “Goddammit!” you shout as it tumbles from you. “Well someone’s paying for that!” You point the gun at the main elevator cable and fire, hitting it a couple times. It dangles a bit and then falls onto Mr. Hyde who is in no position to be able to stop it. Eventually the elevator hits the bottom of the shaft with Jack’s dying body inside and crushing Mr. Hyde under it. You continue your escape by prying the elevator doors open and crawl through panting heavily. You lie face up on the ground for awhile just resting. You think the effects of the formula are wearing off. Too bad, you liked feeling “young” again. You’re also pissed that you dropped the damn briefcase of money. You’d climb down and get it, but you’re honestly too damn tired and can’t be bothered. You’re starting to really feel the pain from all the physical activity you’ve been doing today. “Damn, I really am getting too old for this shit.” You say to yourself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You remember an old saying, “A liar is still a liar even when he’s telling the truth.” And despite Jack telling you the truth about Henry, you can tell he still had his own agenda. In fact it’s obvious he was trying to leave you here to rot. “Hey Jack what’s that?” you say pointing in his direction “Huh?” Jack replies looking down and around himself. POW! You clock Jack in his bandaged face, cracking his sunglasses and knocking him to the floor. You quickly rummage through his coat and find a pistol and check the clip. “Well, well, silver bullets. I always knew you weren’t to be trusted! Hell, you sold out Henry pretty quickly. You were using me as a test subject for your formula and were probably were hoping me and Henry would end up killing each other. I knew I wasn’t being an asshole to you for all these years for no reason! I bet this is the money I was never going to receive either right?” you open the briefcase and close it when you see it contains the money. “Alright fine Wolf you got me, but what use is there in really killing me? You can have the money, you can escape. Just let me live, besides you owe me a life! Self serving it may have been; if it wasn’t for my formula, you wouldn’t have survived the arena!” You better make up your mind either way; you can hear Mr. Hyde climbing closer to your location. > You let him live “Alright, you got me in a generous mood, plus there really isn’t enough time for me to kill you properly, but here!” you throw the briefcase at him which he catches. “You’re making yourself useful, carry that, I’LL keep your pistol.” You exit the elevator through the service panel in the top of the elevator with Jack following behind you. Mr. Hyde is attempting to punch his way through the bottom of the elevator. You point the gun at the main elevator cable and fire, hitting it a couple times. It dangles a bit and then falls onto Mr. Hyde who is in no position to be able to stop it. Eventually the elevator hits the bottom of the shaft crushing Mr. Hyde under it. You continue your escape by prying the elevator doors open and crawl through panting heavily. You then pull Jack up while holding them open. Both of you are very tired. “Damn, I think that formula of yours is wearing off Jack.” You pant. “Hmm, that’s interesting; I’ll have to make a note of that. Well here’s your money. I suppose this is where we part ways, I guess I should thank you for not killing me and being a good subject for my formula. I anticipate the government will be very pleased with it. More than they would’ve been with Henry’s clumsy formula at least. You really do have my eternal gratitude Wolf.” “Yeah, yeah, you better get the hell outta here Jack before I catch my breath and change my mind about letting you live.” You say snatching the briefcase. Jack turns to leave, but you tell him one more thing. “And Jack…don’t let me catch your scent near me again or you’ll find that invisibility won’t be enough to protect you.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I guess you always did know me pretty well Henry. Count me in.” you say. “Great! I knew you’d be game.” “Let’s get going, I’m ready.” You, Henry and Jack enter his car and drive to some nondescript building. The ground floor resembles just a normal abandoned warehouse, but of course you three enter a secret room with an elevator that takes you to a lab area, then you pass through a gym area where you see quite a few ugly overly muscular humans doing some rigorous training while doing a lot of shouting and yelling A lot of them look like they have severe ‘roid rage and that includes the females. “Huh, sure they all look pretty, but can they fight?” you mockingly ask Henry. “Well that’s what we’re going to find out. Now the arena area is through that door, you can just enter and the testing will begin. Jack and I will be watching from an upper room. I’ll see you when you’re ready.” Henry leaves with the rest of the humans and you’re about to enter the arena, but a hand grabs you causing you pull away in a defensive stance. It’s Jack. “Don’t fucking touch me Jack!” you growl. “Sheesh, calm down there, I just have to tell you something. Something important.” “What Jack? I don’t have time for your shit.” “Yeah, well you’ll be thanking me later. You need to take this.” Jack takes a bottle out of his jacket and hands it to you. “What’s this?” “It’s MY invention. Henry hasn’t been telling you the entire truth. He’s setting you up to be killed. He doesn’t have any intention of letting you out that arena until one of his super soldiers kills you, and I guarantee it’ll happen eventually. He’s already got most of them hopped up to the point of being uncontrollable. He’ll probably start increasing the dosage if you start winning against the initial barrage. However if you drink my invention you’ll be able to survive. It’s just like what Henry’s been feeding his Super Soldiers, but without all the side effects. Surely you noticed how ugly and distorted all those subjects were. All he did was make alterations to his original Hyde formula instead creating something new from scratch like I did, yet he claims my invention isn’t good enough.” “This all smells like bullshit Jack, but assuming you’re telling the truth, why’s Henry doing it and why in this way?” “I dunno, because he’s a Mad Scientist, and prone to be dramatic I suppose, its just one of our endearing qualities. Plus we really are testing this shit for the government, so its still good research even if it’s doubling as murder. If you want deeper reasons the only other explanation I can give is he’s ALWAYS been jealous of you. Yes, it’s true he did admire you, but he was always jealous of your natural abilities which he had to get artificially, and even then it wasn’t entirely successful as you well know. I can personally vouch for having to hear him rag on you over the years.” This all sounds pretty suspicious especially coming from Jack who’s known for his double dealing and sneaky ways. The bottle might contain poison for all you know, or maybe he’s just angry at Henry for snubbing his invention and he’s using you as a subject to test it which may or may not be as great as he says. Still, Mad Scientist types have tried to fuck you over before; you can’t help but wonder if Henry is planning what Jack’s claiming. > You don't drink the bottle “I don’t think so Jack. I’ve never trusted you and I’m not about to start now. You can shove your invention up your ass and give yourself an enema with it, because I ain’t drinking the shit.” “Always with the colorful and inventive vocabulary Wolf. (Sigh) Very well, it’s your funeral. You’ll see.” Jack says and walks away. When you enter the arena area, it’s just a big empty white room with another door on the other side of it. High above you can see Henry on an upper floor with a clipboard behind some glass. He waves to you and speaks into a microphone. “Okay Wolf, we’re going to start off slow, this subject hasn’t been injected with as much of the formula so I’m guessing you shouldn’t have any problems with him. Try not to kill him though, since we DO want some of them to survive!” “No killing eh? Well I suppose there’s a first time for everything, alright Henry send in the victim.” No sooner has the human entered the room, and you’ve already run up and drop kicked him in the face! You don’t allow him to get back up, and end up breaking one of his legs by totally destroying his knee. He’s in extreme pain and expresses it vocally. “Damn Wolf! What the hell!?” Henry shouts. “Hey you said not to kill him, you didn’t say anything about not breaking bones.” “Alright, drag him out, and bring in the next one.” This goes on for the next five fights. The subjects are getting tougher, but so far you haven’t had too many problems. You’ve notice a severe change in the subjects though, mainly being bigger and more vicious, they’re starting to not even resemble humans anymore, and in fact they resemble “Mr. Hyde” but even more out of control. You look up where Henry is located and you notice he seems to be laughing and joking with Jack. He addresses you again. “How are you doing Wolf?” “I’m a little tired, but I’m okay.” “Okay Wolf, you’ve been doing well against one opponent, let’s see how you do against three.” “Hey, you’re supposed to be testing their fighting skills not mine.” “Well you’re kicking their asses, so I need to see them at least on equal footing.” “Who are they supposed to be fighting? If they’re fighting other humans then you’ve succeeded, there’s no way a normal human can beat those steroid freaks I’ve been fighting. I don’t even think most of the alien races, humans have come in contact with could stand up to them. I’d say your formula is a success.” “Wolf, I’m the scientist here, just a few more tests.” “Fuck that, I’m done. I’m going home and getting some sleep, I’ll be taking my money now.” When you try to go out the way you came in, a solid metal door slides from a hidden panel to block your way. “Don’t think so Wolf, we’re done when I SAY we are!” Henry then begins to laugh maniacally and when a Mad Scientist does that, well it’s never good. And it’s really not looking good when three lumbering hulks come through the opposite door all intent on doing you massive harm. > You fight They’re already upon you, so there’s nothing else for it, you’ll have to fight, but you still have a plan to escape. As soon as the first hulking freak is trying to bash your head in, you dodge and rake him across the eyes. This earns you a flailing backhand to the wall as it roars in pain, but you’ve effectively taken him out of the fight. Now the other two attempt to take advantage of you while you try to recover. You narrowly miss a punch that puts a large crack in the wall. “Goddamn it, kill the fucking mongrel!” Henry screams. You run up to the blind subject who’s still wailing and lumbering around swinging at anything. You jump up on its back and hold on as it tries to grab you. The two other freaks decide to tackle the both of you. As soon as the first one lunges into the blind one with a sickening crunch, you leap from him and on to the back of the second freak and then with all your might leap again through the glass of observation area! “Sucks to be you Henry!” Jack says and runs off in the corner and takes off his clothing in a vain attempt to hide. Henry doesn’t say anything, he just reaches into his lab pocket for something; it’s a vial which he fully attempts to drink from. Not wishing to deal with Mr. Hyde, you quickly knock the vial out of his hand and grab him by the throat. Henry looks helplessly over at the vial which falls to the floor and shatters leaking out all its contents. “Got any last words before I rip your fucking spine out?” “Urg. (Choke) Wait! Don’t you want to know why? See it from my point of view?” “Fuck no! Besides Jack tried to warn me before all this shit went down, I thought he was lying though. Looks like you turned out to be the treacherous one. Too bad, I thought you were one of the few alright humans I knew.” “Hold on, we can still work this out, I mean maybe I…” You silence Henry’s pathetic pleas for mercy, with a quick snap to his neck; you don’t bother doing anything else, since you don’t really feel like wasting any more effort on him. You look down into the arena area where the three subjects have now turned on each other in a spectacularly bloody way. You can still sense someone in the room you’re in. “Jack! I know you’re here! I might not be able to see you, but you know damn well I can smell your scent!” ”Hey, calm down Wolf, I did try to warn you!” ”Yeah I know and that’s why I’m not trying to kill you too, well that and the fact that I’m too damn tired, maybe later.” Jack quickly changes the subject away from his possible death. “Well I suppose you’ll be wanting your payment. You might as well have it, since you did me a favor by killing Henry anyway. Now I can test my own serum, and I won’t have to share the credit with him. There’s a briefcase under the table over there.” You go over to pick it up, check it and head home where you collapse on your bed. You’ll be feeling the pain from all of this for days. Still, it beats being a “guest speaker” at a comic convention.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I don’t think so Jack. I’ve never trusted you and I’m not about to start now. You can shove your invention up your ass and give yourself an enema with it, because I ain’t drinking the shit.” “Always with the colorful and inventive vocabulary Wolf. (Sigh) Very well, it’s your funeral. You’ll see.” Jack says and walks away. When you enter the arena area, it’s just a big empty white room with another door on the other side of it. High above you can see Henry on an upper floor with a clipboard behind some glass. He waves to you and speaks into a microphone. “Okay Wolf, we’re going to start off slow, this subject hasn’t been injected with as much of the formula so I’m guessing you shouldn’t have any problems with him. Try not to kill him though, since we DO want some of them to survive!” “No killing eh? Well I suppose there’s a first time for everything, alright Henry send in the victim.” No sooner has the human entered the room, and you’ve already run up and drop kicked him in the face! You don’t allow him to get back up, and end up breaking one of his legs by totally destroying his knee. He’s in extreme pain and expresses it vocally. “Damn Wolf! What the hell!?” Henry shouts. “Hey you said not to kill him, you didn’t say anything about not breaking bones.” “Alright, drag him out, and bring in the next one.” This goes on for the next five fights. The subjects are getting tougher, but so far you haven’t had too many problems. You’ve notice a severe change in the subjects though, mainly being bigger and more vicious, they’re starting to not even resemble humans anymore, and in fact they resemble “Mr. Hyde” but even more out of control. You look up where Henry is located and you notice he seems to be laughing and joking with Jack. He addresses you again. “How are you doing Wolf?” “I’m a little tired, but I’m okay.” “Okay Wolf, you’ve been doing well against one opponent, let’s see how you do against three.” “Hey, you’re supposed to be testing their fighting skills not mine.” “Well you’re kicking their asses, so I need to see them at least on equal footing.” “Who are they supposed to be fighting? If they’re fighting other humans then you’ve succeeded, there’s no way a normal human can beat those steroid freaks I’ve been fighting. I don’t even think most of the alien races, humans have come in contact with could stand up to them. I’d say your formula is a success.” “Wolf, I’m the scientist here, just a few more tests.” “Fuck that, I’m done. I’m going home and getting some sleep, I’ll be taking my money now.” When you try to go out the way you came in, a solid metal door slides from a hidden panel to block your way. “Don’t think so Wolf, we’re done when I SAY we are!” Henry then begins to laugh maniacally and when a Mad Scientist does that, well it’s never good. And it’s really not looking good when three lumbering hulks come through the opposite door all intent on doing you massive harm. > You attempt to scale the wall Your plan is to climb to Henry, break the glass and beat the fuck out of him. The walls are smooth, but your claws and climbing skills can certainly overcome them, they can’t overcome the three butcher shops on legs though. As you attempt to climb, one of the subjects jumps up to grab your leg and slams you back down to the floor hard. The others then kick you about the head and frog stomp you in general. The last thing you see is a big black boot coming at your face, followed by Henry’s laughter.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well despite your distrust of Jack, Henry’s always been alright and you could use the easy money. If it doesn’t sound like a good deal to you, you can always decline. You sit down with them both, keeping a constant eye on Jack, well his clothing anyway. “Hey Wolf, glad to see you, it’s been awhile. I remember when we used to tear up places like this back in the day.” Henry says. “Yeah, the good old days.” You say agreeing. “When we were young and a lot more active.” “Speak for yourself Henry.” You stand up and start punching and kicking. “I’m still active and I’m only as old as I feel which isn’t old at all! I can still… OW!” you get a slight sprain in your back when attempting to demonstrate your “youthful” combat abilities. “No, Wolf you’re not old at all.” Jack snickers. “Shut the fuck up Jack, I just haven’t been in a proper fight in awhile, I’m a little out of practice. Say, how about I practice on YOU?” “Uh, okay calm down Wolf! Jack! We’re not here to antagonize anyone!” “You’re right so let’s get all this catch up shit out of the way. Wolf, we got an experiment for you that should be right up your alley. It involves you testing those skills you claim you still have.” “Oh yeah? What kind of experiment is this?” Henry interjects before Jack can continue. “Well the government hired us to develop something that increased combat ability. We’ve been testing it on humans and the results have been good so far, however we want to see how good it is, so we wanted to test them against non-human opponents, you came to mind since well you ARE the Alpha Wolf and despite your age, you are probably the best the Werewolf race has to offer as far as combat skills. I figure you’re still worth 10 of the cubs nowadays. Plus I know you like to kick ass and get paid for doing it. You know how the government likes to throw money around when it comes to new weapons, so I figure we can spare five thousand for your help.” > You decline Maybe it’s your sixth sense or mistrust in general, but you don’t really like the sound of this. Henry might be an alright guy, but you really don’t trust Jack and you’ve had problems with Mad Scientists before. Maybe if you were younger you’d take the risk, but you’re a lot wiser now and you’re not about to set yourself up into going into a bad situation that you might not be able to get out of. You’re not scared, you’re just not stupid. You decide to decline and make up an excuse. “Well it does sound like fun, but unfortunately I’ve got a job from Erik recently that I need to see about tomorrow, so I’ll have to decline.” Henry looks very surprised at your answer; it was almost as if he thought you’d immediately take his offer. He attempts to convince you further, but you continue to decline which makes his voice and inflections sound more desperate with a hint of anger in them. “We were fucking friends Wolf! You’re going to leave me hanging like this?! Fucking ingrate! After all the fights I helped you in too!” ”Henry, you better just fucking mind your tone. And half those fights I distinctly remember you starting and ME having to finish them!” “Why you fucking…” Henry stands up, which you do too daring him to do something, but naturally he realizes he isn’t in “Hyde” form, so he backs down. Jack eventually speaks up. “Come on Henry let’s go, we can get someone else.” Jack hands Henry his coat who’s still giving you the hard stare. Just before they leave Henry has to get another word in. “Fucking yellow dog! You oughta be put out of your misery! The Wolf I knew would’ve jumped at this chance, I don’t know what happened, but you ain’t him! Fucking mongrel!” “Alright Henry shut the fuck up, before he kicks your ass EEEK!” Jack gets out of the way when he sees you charge at Henry, he doesn’t stand a chance in his human form and you beat the hell of him. As he lies on the ground bleeding and pondering his poor choice of words, you relay a question to him. “Is that more like the Wolf who you USED to know? And Jack get your invisible ass outta here, before I tear you a new one too! I’m not falling for whatever fucked up scheme you had planned for me!” Jack quickly drags Henry out as quickly as possible, while you go back to drinking. After drinking your drink, you head back home and decide to call Erik up tomorrow who’ll hopefully be less annoying and actually have a job for you. Turns out he does and you end up having to show up at a comic convention as a special guest. It’s not exactly exciting for you, but then at least you don’t have to get your head bashed in to get paid. “Oooo! Ooo! Mr. Wolf! In Lycanthrope Terror #6, were you supposed to be immune to the silver dagger because you had sex with the witch who granted you extra powers in the beginning, or was it because you had been sent directly from Hell and thus had demon blood in your veins giving you extra powers? Because their problems with both of those things, because if…” The nerdy human goes on for another 10 minutes pointing out plot holes when in actuality there isn’t one, since the fucking dagger wasn’t silver at all it was just really shiny steel, and if he’d paid as much attention to movie then he did his own whiney voice he’d know that. Come to think of it, maybe getting your head bashed in might be preferable.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fuck it, you don’t feel like putting up with Erik’s whining. You’ll talk to him later when you’re in the mood. You hang up and decide to engage in one of your favorite past time ever since you became part of “society”. Drink. You head down to the bar in town. When you enter you see it nearly empty. Usually there’s someone here that you don’t like which gives you an excuse to get into a fight. You sit down and order a Scotch. The bartender tends to let you just drink and cleans up the mess you make afterwards, but today turns out a little differently. “Hey Wolf, some people have been wanting to see you.” The bartender says nervously. “Oh? Do these people have a name?” you ask downing your drink. “Well they’re in the bar right now actually, I think they’re old acquaintances of yours.” You scan the bar, which doesn’t take long considering its almost empty. And you’ll be damned you see not one, but THREE people from the old days; you’re surprised you didn’t notice them before. At a nearby table you see Dr. Henry Jekyll and Dr. Jack Griffin. Jack normally would be difficult to see in this dark lighting at the best of times, since he’s invisible, but he’s perfectly noticeable enough when he wears clothing. They see you and wave you to come over. At a table in the far corner you see Dr. Alphonse Moreau. He looks like a wreck. He’s obviously been chain smoking cigarettes and drinking a lot since he got here. He sees you and desperately signals you over like he needs your help severely. While you’re not surprised to see all these humans still alive (Mad scientists ALWAYS figure out how to extend their life spans past the normal human limit) you’re just surprised that they all want to see you and it makes you suspicious. You’ve always been mistrustful of Mad Scientist types ever since your run in with Dr. Victor Frankenstein. You turn to the bartender for more information. “What the hell, is there a Mad Scientist convention in town or some shit? Why are they all here and why do they want me?” “I dunno Wolf. I think its just coincidence. Henry and Jack say they got some sort of experiment going on and want your help on it. They know you’ve been needing some money lately and they’re willing to pay you for your time. I think Henry wants to play catch up with you as well.” “Hmm, speaking of catch, there probably is one. So why’s Moreau here? Same thing?” “He wouldn’t elaborate too much. He says he REALLY needs help with something, and it’s not an experiment. He says he gave up trying to play God. I dunno what’s wrong though you’ll have to ask him yourself. He just said, he’s willing to do anything for you if you help him. Well this venture to the bar seems to have become potentially lucrative; the problem is you have to deal with a bunch of humans with God complexes. (You doubt what the bartender told you about Moreau, his type never gets out of the game completely) You decide to throw caution to the wind and take one of their jobs; you feel you’ll be up to the challenge. After all its common knowledge of what you did to Victor when he tried to take advantage of you once. All it comes down to is who you want to deal with. > You go sit with Moreau You and Moreau have never had any dealings with each other before, so you’re kind of curious to as why he wanted to see you. You approach Moreau and he’s tripping over himself to thank you for seeing him. You’re a little suspicious of this treatment, especially since you’ve never been welcomed by anyone before. “Wolf, its Wolf right? Or do you prefer Mr. Wolf?” “Wolf is fine…will you tell me why the hell you want to see me so badly for? We’ve never had anything to do with each other before.” “Yes. Quite correct. My Vision didn’t lead me to interact socially that much. Maybe I shouldn’t have concentrated so much on my Vision though. Maybe I should’ve been more flexible. If I had, I might not have the problems I have now.” “Okay, so will you quit with the fucking mystery already and tell me what’s going on?” “As you know I transformed my island into a utopia where no being harms another.” “Pfft, some Utopia. I call it fucking with nature.” “And you know what? I agree with you. At one time, I would’ve dismissed you as a vicious animal that only pleased his primal instincts.” “You say it as if it’s a bad thing.” You utter. “I once thought so…but now I’m starting to see reality for the first time. My Utopia wasn’t followed by the world…it was hated. It was despised. Most are jealous of what I’ve done and want to destroy it.” “Duh, that’s humanity for you. So are you getting to the point anytime soon?” “My Utopia is about to be destroyed, but NOT directly. No human nation wants to look like the bad guys so you know what they’ve done instead? They’re letting Martians do it for them!” “What? Martians aren’t even allowed on this planet after all the unsuccessful attacks they’ve attempted on it.” You exclaim. “See that’s just it. In exchange of a new Martian-Earthling Peace accord they’re letting the Martians put a colony here provided they don’t kill any humans. The Martians agreed and MY Island was scheduled for designation for the colony! If we stay they’ll be allowed to kill everyone since nobody on there is human except me.” “Well that certainly does suck, but why not just move?” “WHAT!? That’s our home! Would YOU move from your own home?” “Eh…I suppose I can see your point. So what am I supposed to do though?” Moreau takes another drink and looks at you with dead seriousness. “I need you to get them all to FIGHT! I need you to get them all in touch with their animal instincts again! I know you’re more than just a werewolf. You’re the self-proclaimed Alpha. I need that viciousness, I need that aggressiveness, I need it ingrained into my people. I can’t do it. I’m not qualified, and I’d only make things worse. I can pay you all the money you want; our economy has always been good. If you like you could even live on the island and spend your remaining years there with nothing to worry about. You could mate with whoever you wanted, we could import whatever meat you wanted, or if you preferred…we could even make special arrangements just for you, to hunt living creatures. Anything…just please help us.” This is pretty heavy shit. Moreau must be very desperate to come begging to a practical stranger. There’s no way he’s lying about this, you have heard some stuff lately about Martian-Human relations, though you don’t really pay attention to the news a lot. You can’t say Moreau’s offer isn’t appealing on some level, but as much of a badass you are, you’re not in your prime anymore. Taking on a shit load of Martians and training a bunch of genetic freaks of nature could be just a little out of your scope. > You take the job; you always wondered what Martian meat tasted like “Aw hell, if the past is any indication Martians ain’t shit. I don’t have anything better to do. Let’s get going.” You remark. You and Moreau leave the next day to his island by private plane. When you arrive you can see why the place is considered a paradise, its basically untamed wilderness with some agricultural improvements and basic structures to house the citizens. Speaking of citizens, you see them in person. They’re a motley looking bunch. You see boar boys, goat girls, manatee men, and wombat women and those are some of the regular ones. Some look like they’ve been mixed with several species of animals, so you can’t even be sure what the hell they are. Moreau’s citizens are equally interested in you. “Are you another citizen?” one of them asks as they all attempt to crowd you. “What? Hell no! I’m a fucking werewolf! Not a freak of nature!” you snarl, not wanting them to touch you. Moreau take the opportunity to make sure you don’t kill anyone. “This is Wolf. He’s different than you…in several ways. But he’s here to help us with our current problem, just like our aquatic friend who volunteered to help a few days ago.” You stop Moreau. “Aquatic friend? You got someone else to help you?” you ask. “Well yes, I wasn’t sure if you’d help, so I tried to get others as well. You and he were the only takers it seems though. I’m pretty sure you and he are familiar with each other. I can’t pronounce his real name, but he goes by Gil.” “Gil?! You got GIL?! He was almost as reclusive as you! How’d you get him to help?” “I don’t know. It was really just a gamble. I made the same deal, but I had little hope of him accepting it since he’s not exactly fond of land dwellers. He accepted though since he’s tired of having humans intrude on his home every five minute. He already has a place set aside for himself on the island. I just hope the island is still ours after all this.” “Where is he?” “He keeps to himself in a nearby swamp. He likes his privacy and I respect it. You and he can talk later. I’d like you to get to the training. The Martians will be coming soon, I’m predicting in a matter of days.” “DAYS!? You didn’t say that before! How am I supposed to train these freaks in days?” “Please Wolf you must try! Gil tried and didn’t get very far; he may have even given up. I was hoping you might have more luck since you’re a bit closer to my citizens.” “I’m nothing like your citizens…but I’ll see what I can do.” > You start training the citizens If Gil’s already given up, you see little point in involving him. He’s never liked land dwellers anyway. You call everyone to the center of the town. “Alright I got a lot to teach you and there isn’t much time. As you all know the Martians are coming here and they won’t be interested in peace and love. They’ll be taking bets on who can blast more freaks.” You say frankly. “That’s pretty judgmental of you. How do you know that they won’t accept us and live in peace with us?” one of the freaks asks. “Because that’s not the Martian way! In fact it’s not ANYONE’S way! Not anyone sane anyway! The only reason why you freaks are all love and peace and shit, is because Moreau played God with your genetics and socially engineered you all to be pussies. It’s not right! But despite my disgust for your way of life, I’m here to get you back in touch with your animalistic sides. Now it’s my idea that you could evacuate the town and your other small settlements, take to the jungles, and wage a guerilla war on the Martians. A lot of you are designed for it already. The Martians are poor tacticians and weak immune systems, so the jungle diseases could have…” And you realize you’re not convincing them. > You keep trying “Look I understand some of you freaks never had that predator instinct, but just because you’ve got herbivore blood doesn’t mean you can’t fight. Those antlers and horns are just for show, they’re for defense! And even if you’re a total sissy, you could at least act as scouts and shit. When the Martians approach you can neigh, whinny, baa, or uh…quack your heads off to warn the rest of us that will fight!” They still don’t look convinced, now they’re starting to just leave. You begin to get angry. “Damn it, don’t you freaks want to live? They’re going to kill all of you stupid bastards when they get here! Grow a fuckin’ pair and stand up for your freak existence! “Stop calling us freaks, we are not animals!” one shouts. “Oh ho! Struck a nerve did I? Look at you fuckin’ freaks! You’re a goddamn embarrassment to mother nature! You know what I’ll be glad when the Martians waste your sorry asses. You don’t deserve to live.” “Fuck you! You’re no different than us you fucking hypocrite!” “The hell I ain’t! I am a creature of nature! My mother was a werewolf and my father was a werewolf, and guess what? THEIR parents were werewolves! You know who your parents were? The DNA of some dead animals and some stupid humans that Moreau captured! Then you disgustingly mate with each other and create more freaks. Bunch of fucking mongrels!” The crowd is beginning to get angry with you now. Good. Your plan is working. “I can see that you’re all pissed off. You probably want to kick my ass; well that’s a bad idea, because I’m the only one who can properly train you in the short period of time, now save that anger for the Martians…” Suddenly someone throws a rock at your head, causing you to fall. Before you can get up, you feel a strong kick to the face (Literally a mule kick) this is then followed up by the entire town attacking you. You kill quite a few, but they’re very intent on killing you, and eventually they rip you apart and even devour parts of you to make sure you won’t be regenerating back from the dead. Some of the older freaks kill Dr. Moreau as they remember the cruelty he inflicted in the past. Their new found animal side is short lived since when the Martians arrive, they bombard the island with death beams killing most of the inhabitants before invading. The Martians then easily mop up the few survivors.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If Gil’s already given up, you see little point in involving him. He’s never liked land dwellers anyway. You call everyone to the center of the town. “Alright I got a lot to teach you and there isn’t much time. As you all know the Martians are coming here and they won’t be interested in peace and love. They’ll be taking bets on who can blast more freaks.” You say frankly. “That’s pretty judgmental of you. How do you know that they won’t accept us and live in peace with us?” one of the freaks asks. “Because that’s not the Martian way! In fact it’s not ANYONE’S way! Not anyone sane anyway! The only reason why you freaks are all love and peace and shit, is because Moreau played God with your genetics and socially engineered you all to be pussies. It’s not right! But despite my disgust for your way of life, I’m here to get you back in touch with your animalistic sides. Now it’s my idea that you could evacuate the town and your other small settlements, take to the jungles, and wage a guerilla war on the Martians. A lot of you are designed for it already. The Martians are poor tacticians and weak immune systems, so the jungle diseases could have…” And you realize you’re not convincing them. > You give up and try something else You shake your head and go back to Moreau’s house. Moreau is fiddling with some large old looking radio that contains a small black and white screen in it. “This is not going to work.” You tell him. “You’re giving up already?!” “Well I don’t know what to do, maybe if I had more time I could do something, but shit Moreau, you bred all the damn fight out of them.” Just then a voice comes on the radio and an image appears on the screen, it looks like some deepsea diver…oh geez it’s Ro-Man. The bureaucratic joke of the galaxy. Its fitting that he should be working for a bunch of idiotic Martians. “Dr. Moreau, the Martian colonist will be here soon! I hope you have made your evacuations of your island, or we shall WIPE you from it!” Ro-man says mechanically. “Ro-Man, please can’t we talk about this? I mean we’re peaceful, we won’t cause you any trouble!” Moreau says into his microphone. “No! My orders are clear! We will WIPE you from the island!” You snatch the mic from Moreau and address Ro-Man. “Hey Ro-Man, you must be really scraping the bottom of the barrel if you’re working for Martians now. What happened, all the other aliens realize what a fucking joke you are?” “What!? Wolf?! What’re you doing there? We’re about to WIPE the island clean of all Earthlings and that includes you if you insist on staying there!” Ro-Man retorts. “I know Martians were stupid, but fuck, didn’t they realize what a goddamn joke you were when YOU attempted to take over the Earth?” “Shut up Wolf! Hey isn’t that island full of a bunch of pacifists? What’s a self-proclaimed badass Alpha Wolf doing there? You turn pussy too or are YOU scraping the bottom of the barrel by working for them?” “Fuck off Ro-Man! I got an idea, how about we settle this hand to hand combat? If I win you all go home, and if you win…well you won’t win, because you’re fucking moron.” “I don’t think so; we’re intent on colonizing this island in accordance with the new Earth-Mars cooperation treaty. Your pitiful attempts to stall for time are useless.” “Who says I’m stalling for time? I’m just saying I could kick your ass! You think I give a shit about this island? I’m just here to see if I got one more fight left in me, I was hoping for more of a challenge, but you’ll have to do. Of course if you’re too scared…” ”Aaargh! Alright! I’ll play your little game you mangy Earth mammal! We’ll do battle when we arrive and I’ll take great pleasure in crushing your skull!” Ro-man breaks communication, and Moreau is more than a little disturbed by your recent conversation. “Wolf! You promised to help us! I knew you were a lot of things, but I thought you at least weren’t a liar!” “Calm the hell down Moreau! Despite what Ro-Man thinks, I have bough you guys some time. While me and Ro-Man are bashing each others heads in, the Martians will be gathered around watching and probably taking bets. Besides unsuccessful invasions and fucking human women, there’s nothing they like better than watching a fight.” “Okay, but what good does that do us? I mean even if you win, the Martians will still kill all of us.” “Ah that’s where you and the hippy freak coalition come in. I know you guys are fond of your drugs here, so when the Martians are watching I want you guys to act like hosts and serve drinks laced with LSD or whatever hallucinogenics you keep stashed here. By the time I finish kicking Ro-Man’s ass, the Martians will be tripping so hard you can make quick work of them.” “That’s not a bad plan, but I think we’ll dispense with killing them as you’re suggesting. We can just destroy their weapons.” “(Sigh) Alright suit yourselves. But unarmed Martians are still hostile, even if they aren’t typically threatening.” “If I can make my citizens civilized, I can do the same with Martians, now let’s get prepared. What do I serve them to drink though? Its not like we have whatever it is Martians like to drink here.” “Sure you do. You’ve got water. Mars isn’t known for having a lot of it, so they can’t get enough of the stuff. Its one of the reasons why they wanted Earth so damn bad.” A few days pass and Moreau prepares his citizens for the plan, while they build some risers and bleachers for the fight, meanwhile you get in some last minute training. Ro-Man might be an idiot, but you’ve got a pretty good idea that he’s very strong, you’ll have to be on the top of your game. You watch the skies and finally the Martians arrive. They land and all come pouring out of their saucers firing their lasers in the air, and yelling about how they’re going to see a good fight. Ro-Man appears and looks as goofy as he always has. A large crowd gathers and soon it’s just you and Ro-Man in the center. “This is going to be your biggest mistake since your infamous Plan 9 invasion attempt.” You tell Ro-Man. > You fight aggressively You didn’t come here to do the job half assed, so you’re going to give it your all. The only real advantage Ro-Man has is his strength, other than that you’re a better fighter in every way. You start off with a foot smash to his shin, then following it up with a claw to the crotch. Ro-Man attempts to grab you, but you roll out of the way. You run around behind him and strike a vicious blow to his kidneys (Or at least where you think they’re located, he isn’t human after all) he swings his big gorilla like arms and back hands you in the face, knocking you a couple of feet to the ground. The Martians are cheering loudly at this point. You see Moreau’s freaks serving the drinks in the stands. You have to at least keep this up until the drugs kick in, and even then you’re not sure what will happen. For all you know it won’t even effect the Martians. You dodge another clumsy attack by Ro-Man and bite the fuck out of his leg ripping a good chunk off. Ugh! It tastes terrible! You’ll taste that for days assuming you live through this, which Ro-Man is attempting to make sure doesn’t happen, as he finally gets a good grip on you. He grabs you from the back and places you in a crushing bear hug. You can’t get free, the thing you can do is either use the back of your head and smash his face with it in a reverse head butt, or stretch your neck a bit and attempt to bite one of his massive arms. > You reverse head butt On most opponents this would’ve worked, unfortunately you seem to have forgotten that Ro-Man’s head is a fucking deep sea diver’s helmet! When you hear that “KLANG!” all you do is successfully knock yourself out. Ro-Man finishes you off, by breaking your back and keeping his promise of crushing your skull with his foot.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You didn’t come here to do the job half assed, so you’re going to give it your all. The only real advantage Ro-Man has is his strength, other than that you’re a better fighter in every way. You start off with a foot smash to his shin, then following it up with a claw to the crotch. Ro-Man attempts to grab you, but you roll out of the way. You run around behind him and strike a vicious blow to his kidneys (Or at least where you think they’re located, he isn’t human after all) he swings his big gorilla like arms and back hands you in the face, knocking you a couple of feet to the ground. The Martians are cheering loudly at this point. You see Moreau’s freaks serving the drinks in the stands. You have to at least keep this up until the drugs kick in, and even then you’re not sure what will happen. For all you know it won’t even effect the Martians. You dodge another clumsy attack by Ro-Man and bite the fuck out of his leg ripping a good chunk off. Ugh! It tastes terrible! You’ll taste that for days assuming you live through this, which Ro-Man is attempting to make sure doesn’t happen, as he finally gets a good grip on you. He grabs you from the back and places you in a crushing bear hug. You can’t get free, the thing you can do is either use the back of your head and smash his face with it in a reverse head butt, or stretch your neck a bit and attempt to bite one of his massive arms. > You bite his arm It’s going to taste like shit, but you bite down on Ro-Man’s arm ripping another chunk out of him, he drops you instantly and begins to feel the effects of his wounds as he bleeds severely from his arm and leg. And it looks like the drugs are taking effect too; you take a quick look in the stands and see them behaving strangely. A lot of them are giggling to themselves and hugging each other; some are just walking around in circles, and others are staring into the distance, pontificating about how they can hear the colors and taste sound. Fortunately none of them seem to have gotten more violent. Moreau’s freaks take their weapons away from them. Meanwhile Ro-Man is attempting to escape back to one of the saucers, limping and leaving a blood trail behind him. You attempt to finish him off, and tackle him to the ground, but he manages to bash you in the face a few times and gets you off of him. While you’re trying to recover, he escapes in the saucer. Oh well, it’s another loss for him and another win for you. That’s the important thing. Moreau approaches you while you brush yourself off. “You did it Wolf! You saved the island and with a minimum of violence!” he says. “Unfortunately. Well at least I got to kick someone’s ass, even if it was Ro-Man.” “So do you want to stay on this island as part of our agreement? Remember I said we’ll make special arrangements for you.” You look at Moreau’s freaks again who are now also tripping on drugs along with the Martians. The freaks and the Martians look like they’ve gotten very close to each other too. It looks like an orgy is about the break out. “Uh no! Living with your freaks would be bad enough, but adding Martians makes it even less attractive. I’ll be taking my reward in cash and leaving NOW!” Moreau shrugs his shoulders, goes back to his office and returns with a briefcase of money, which should be enough to support you for a long time. He flies you back to your home, where you head back to your run down cabin in the woods. It may not be paradise, but it’s yours and you don’t have to put up with hippy peace freaks or idiotic drug addled Martians.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You shake your head and go back to Moreau’s house. Moreau is fiddling with some large old looking radio that contains a small black and white screen in it. “This is not going to work.” You tell him. “You’re giving up already?!” “Well I don’t know what to do, maybe if I had more time I could do something, but shit Moreau, you bred all the damn fight out of them.” Just then a voice comes on the radio and an image appears on the screen, it looks like some deepsea diver…oh geez it’s Ro-Man. The bureaucratic joke of the galaxy. Its fitting that he should be working for a bunch of idiotic Martians. “Dr. Moreau, the Martian colonist will be here soon! I hope you have made your evacuations of your island, or we shall WIPE you from it!” Ro-man says mechanically. “Ro-Man, please can’t we talk about this? I mean we’re peaceful, we won’t cause you any trouble!” Moreau says into his microphone. “No! My orders are clear! We will WIPE you from the island!” You snatch the mic from Moreau and address Ro-Man. “Hey Ro-Man, you must be really scraping the bottom of the barrel if you’re working for Martians now. What happened, all the other aliens realize what a fucking joke you are?” “What!? Wolf?! What’re you doing there? We’re about to WIPE the island clean of all Earthlings and that includes you if you insist on staying there!” Ro-Man retorts. “I know Martians were stupid, but fuck, didn’t they realize what a goddamn joke you were when YOU attempted to take over the Earth?” “Shut up Wolf! Hey isn’t that island full of a bunch of pacifists? What’s a self-proclaimed badass Alpha Wolf doing there? You turn pussy too or are YOU scraping the bottom of the barrel by working for them?” “Fuck off Ro-Man! I got an idea, how about we settle this hand to hand combat? If I win you all go home, and if you win…well you won’t win, because you’re fucking moron.” “I don’t think so; we’re intent on colonizing this island in accordance with the new Earth-Mars cooperation treaty. Your pitiful attempts to stall for time are useless.” “Who says I’m stalling for time? I’m just saying I could kick your ass! You think I give a shit about this island? I’m just here to see if I got one more fight left in me, I was hoping for more of a challenge, but you’ll have to do. Of course if you’re too scared…” ”Aaargh! Alright! I’ll play your little game you mangy Earth mammal! We’ll do battle when we arrive and I’ll take great pleasure in crushing your skull!” Ro-man breaks communication, and Moreau is more than a little disturbed by your recent conversation. “Wolf! You promised to help us! I knew you were a lot of things, but I thought you at least weren’t a liar!” “Calm the hell down Moreau! Despite what Ro-Man thinks, I have bough you guys some time. While me and Ro-Man are bashing each others heads in, the Martians will be gathered around watching and probably taking bets. Besides unsuccessful invasions and fucking human women, there’s nothing they like better than watching a fight.” “Okay, but what good does that do us? I mean even if you win, the Martians will still kill all of us.” “Ah that’s where you and the hippy freak coalition come in. I know you guys are fond of your drugs here, so when the Martians are watching I want you guys to act like hosts and serve drinks laced with LSD or whatever hallucinogenics you keep stashed here. By the time I finish kicking Ro-Man’s ass, the Martians will be tripping so hard you can make quick work of them.” “That’s not a bad plan, but I think we’ll dispense with killing them as you’re suggesting. We can just destroy their weapons.” “(Sigh) Alright suit yourselves. But unarmed Martians are still hostile, even if they aren’t typically threatening.” “If I can make my citizens civilized, I can do the same with Martians, now let’s get prepared. What do I serve them to drink though? Its not like we have whatever it is Martians like to drink here.” “Sure you do. You’ve got water. Mars isn’t known for having a lot of it, so they can’t get enough of the stuff. Its one of the reasons why they wanted Earth so damn bad.” A few days pass and Moreau prepares his citizens for the plan, while they build some risers and bleachers for the fight, meanwhile you get in some last minute training. Ro-Man might be an idiot, but you’ve got a pretty good idea that he’s very strong, you’ll have to be on the top of your game. You watch the skies and finally the Martians arrive. They land and all come pouring out of their saucers firing their lasers in the air, and yelling about how they’re going to see a good fight. Ro-Man appears and looks as goofy as he always has. A large crowd gathers and soon it’s just you and Ro-Man in the center. “This is going to be your biggest mistake since your infamous Plan 9 invasion attempt.” You tell Ro-Man. > You fight defensively You figure all you need to do is last until the drugs start affecting the Martians, Ro-Man’s not very fast so you can just stay out of his way. You don’t want to tire yourself out. The problem with this is the Martians begin to get restless and angry at the “dodge and run” tactic, this is followed by loud booing. They came to see a fight not a dance! One of the Martians decides to take matters into his own hands and blasts you with his incineration beam. They proceed to do the same to the rest of the inhabitants on the island.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You shake your head and go back to Moreau’s house. Moreau is fiddling with some large old looking radio that contains a small black and white screen in it. “This is not going to work.” You tell him. “You’re giving up already?!” “Well I don’t know what to do, maybe if I had more time I could do something, but shit Moreau, you bred all the damn fight out of them.” Just then a voice comes on the radio and an image appears on the screen, it looks like some deepsea diver…oh geez it’s Ro-Man. The bureaucratic joke of the galaxy. Its fitting that he should be working for a bunch of idiotic Martians. “Dr. Moreau, the Martian colonist will be here soon! I hope you have made your evacuations of your island, or we shall WIPE you from it!” Ro-man says mechanically. “Ro-Man, please can’t we talk about this? I mean we’re peaceful, we won’t cause you any trouble!” Moreau says into his microphone. “No! My orders are clear! We will WIPE you from the island!” You snatch the mic from Moreau and address Ro-Man. “Hey Ro-Man, you must be really scraping the bottom of the barrel if you’re working for Martians now. What happened, all the other aliens realize what a fucking joke you are?” “What!? Wolf?! What’re you doing there? We’re about to WIPE the island clean of all Earthlings and that includes you if you insist on staying there!” Ro-Man retorts. “I know Martians were stupid, but fuck, didn’t they realize what a goddamn joke you were when YOU attempted to take over the Earth?” “Shut up Wolf! Hey isn’t that island full of a bunch of pacifists? What’s a self-proclaimed badass Alpha Wolf doing there? You turn pussy too or are YOU scraping the bottom of the barrel by working for them?” “Fuck off Ro-Man! I got an idea, how about we settle this hand to hand combat? If I win you all go home, and if you win…well you won’t win, because you’re fucking moron.” “I don’t think so; we’re intent on colonizing this island in accordance with the new Earth-Mars cooperation treaty. Your pitiful attempts to stall for time are useless.” “Who says I’m stalling for time? I’m just saying I could kick your ass! You think I give a shit about this island? I’m just here to see if I got one more fight left in me, I was hoping for more of a challenge, but you’ll have to do. Of course if you’re too scared…” ”Aaargh! Alright! I’ll play your little game you mangy Earth mammal! We’ll do battle when we arrive and I’ll take great pleasure in crushing your skull!” Ro-man breaks communication, and Moreau is more than a little disturbed by your recent conversation. “Wolf! You promised to help us! I knew you were a lot of things, but I thought you at least weren’t a liar!” “Calm the hell down Moreau! Despite what Ro-Man thinks, I have bough you guys some time. While me and Ro-Man are bashing each others heads in, the Martians will be gathered around watching and probably taking bets. Besides unsuccessful invasions and fucking human women, there’s nothing they like better than watching a fight.” “Okay, but what good does that do us? I mean even if you win, the Martians will still kill all of us.” “Ah that’s where you and the hippy freak coalition come in. I know you guys are fond of your drugs here, so when the Martians are watching I want you guys to act like hosts and serve drinks laced with LSD or whatever hallucinogenics you keep stashed here. By the time I finish kicking Ro-Man’s ass, the Martians will be tripping so hard you can make quick work of them.” “That’s not a bad plan, but I think we’ll dispense with killing them as you’re suggesting. We can just destroy their weapons.” “(Sigh) Alright suit yourselves. But unarmed Martians are still hostile, even if they aren’t typically threatening.” “If I can make my citizens civilized, I can do the same with Martians, now let’s get prepared. What do I serve them to drink though? Its not like we have whatever it is Martians like to drink here.” “Sure you do. You’ve got water. Mars isn’t known for having a lot of it, so they can’t get enough of the stuff. Its one of the reasons why they wanted Earth so damn bad.” A few days pass and Moreau prepares his citizens for the plan, while they build some risers and bleachers for the fight, meanwhile you get in some last minute training. Ro-Man might be an idiot, but you’ve got a pretty good idea that he’s very strong, you’ll have to be on the top of your game. You watch the skies and finally the Martians arrive. They land and all come pouring out of their saucers firing their lasers in the air, and yelling about how they’re going to see a good fight. Ro-Man appears and looks as goofy as he always has. A large crowd gathers and soon it’s just you and Ro-Man in the center. “This is going to be your biggest mistake since your infamous Plan 9 invasion attempt.” You tell Ro-Man. > You memories (Ro-Man) Robot Monster: Ro-Man If there’s a bigger laughing stock of the galaxy, they must’ve died of shame, because it would be tough to top Ro-Man. Ro-Man’s appearance is comical enough, but his personality takes him over the edge. For the most part he comes across as a typical unflinching bureaucratic tight ass that does everything his superiors tell him to the letter. However he does have his own ambitions and plans but he’s never competent enough to carry them through, since he can barely carry out plans of his superiors. The incident that really destroyed his career was his failed invasion of Earth. After seeing that the Martians were so interested in the planet he convinced his superior called “The Great One” that they should invade it and that he should lead the invasion force. He said he just needed one ship to do it too. The Great One up to that point wasn’t too impressed with Ro-Man, but he indulged the fool and said he’d get a promotion if he pulled it off. Ro-Man had it all planned out, he was going to WIPE out humanity (As he liked to say) and make the way clear for his own people to colonize. He developed a big death ray and everything. What happened next made every failed invasion by the Martians look like military genius in comparison. After he did all his long winded speeches, the governments of Earth pretty much dismissed him for the long winded blowhard he was and ignored him as a potential threat. Ro-Man was incensed and unleashed his “Death Beam” and destroyed every Earthling on the planet… Or at least that’s what he thought happened, what really happened is when he turned the damn thing on he caused a power outage in his ship due to his bad wiring. After fumbling around in the dark for awhile and putting in a new fuse, his lighting came back on. Unfortunately for him not all the rest of his controls went back on line, but of course this genius didn’t think to make sure. When he checked his scanners they didn’t detect any life on Earth. It never occurred to him that all Earthlings hadn’t been WIPED out and his scanners just weren’t working. Thinking he’d succeeded in his plan he landed on Earth to check things out, but instead of landing some place that would’ve tipped him off right away like a major city, he landed in the boondocks, where he ended up running into some very frightened humans who he figured were the only survivors on Earth. He spent the next few months chasing them around trying to kill them, until he started to get a hard on for some of the young human girls and then he was just trying to commit intergalactic rape at that point. What ultimately happened was some hunter caught sight of him and shot him in the ass with a heavy duty tranquilizer, thinking he was Bigfoot. (He wanted to capture him alive for a reward) When he woke up he was on the first saucer back home and deported in great shame. His planet was humiliated for his spectacularly idiotic failure. He was demoted several ranks after that and eventually just kicked off his planet and his citizenship revoked. Later he would go on to hire himself as a mercenary for other aliens often as an invasion consultant. Needless to say he would get hired once and then have to find a new employer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Aw hell, if the past is any indication Martians ain’t shit. I don’t have anything better to do. Let’s get going.” You remark. You and Moreau leave the next day to his island by private plane. When you arrive you can see why the place is considered a paradise, its basically untamed wilderness with some agricultural improvements and basic structures to house the citizens. Speaking of citizens, you see them in person. They’re a motley looking bunch. You see boar boys, goat girls, manatee men, and wombat women and those are some of the regular ones. Some look like they’ve been mixed with several species of animals, so you can’t even be sure what the hell they are. Moreau’s citizens are equally interested in you. “Are you another citizen?” one of them asks as they all attempt to crowd you. “What? Hell no! I’m a fucking werewolf! Not a freak of nature!” you snarl, not wanting them to touch you. Moreau take the opportunity to make sure you don’t kill anyone. “This is Wolf. He’s different than you…in several ways. But he’s here to help us with our current problem, just like our aquatic friend who volunteered to help a few days ago.” You stop Moreau. “Aquatic friend? You got someone else to help you?” you ask. “Well yes, I wasn’t sure if you’d help, so I tried to get others as well. You and he were the only takers it seems though. I’m pretty sure you and he are familiar with each other. I can’t pronounce his real name, but he goes by Gil.” “Gil?! You got GIL?! He was almost as reclusive as you! How’d you get him to help?” “I don’t know. It was really just a gamble. I made the same deal, but I had little hope of him accepting it since he’s not exactly fond of land dwellers. He accepted though since he’s tired of having humans intrude on his home every five minute. He already has a place set aside for himself on the island. I just hope the island is still ours after all this.” “Where is he?” “He keeps to himself in a nearby swamp. He likes his privacy and I respect it. You and he can talk later. I’d like you to get to the training. The Martians will be coming soon, I’m predicting in a matter of days.” “DAYS!? You didn’t say that before! How am I supposed to train these freaks in days?” “Please Wolf you must try! Gil tried and didn’t get very far; he may have even given up. I was hoping you might have more luck since you’re a bit closer to my citizens.” “I’m nothing like your citizens…but I’ll see what I can do.” > You go talk with Gil You take one look at Moreau’s citizens and shake your head. There’s no way you can whip these freaks into shape by yourself. Look at them, all peace and love and shit. There’s a damn giraffe man kissing a damn bear woman. It’s not right! You’re too disgusted right now; you have to talk to someone normal! You go to the nearby swamp, where you see Gil catching a small lizard and eating it. “Well its good to see someone here, who’s not a pansy ass herbivore.” You say. Gil looks up, perturbed at first, but surprised when he sees you. “Wolf? What’re you doing here?” “Same thing as you, Moreau offered to set me up for life, if I help him. Though I don’t see how that’s possible with the freaks I just met.” “I know, tell me about it. I can’t even get them to argue with me! I was calling them a bunch of ignorant land dwellers who should’ve been killed at birth like the freaks they were and they tried to do was hug me.” “Still don’t like surfacer dwellers eh Gil?” “Hell no! I wouldn’t even be here, but I was getting really tired of moving every five minutes because humans feel the need to build a factory near my home. At least here, I know that’s not going to happen and the freaks will know to leave me be.” “Assuming the freaks will still be here. The Martians will be taking over soon if we don’t do anything.” You remind Gil. “I know, I know. They would be even worse neighbors than humans assuming they would still let me live here. (Sigh) Looks like I’ll be moving again soon.” “Oh come on Gil, we gotta think up something. The Martians are a bunch of idiots. I can’t give up just yet.” “Ah I should’ve suspected. You’re here to prove you still got one fight left in you. The old Alpha Wolf syndrome.” “I’m not here just for that, but maybe that is part of it. So what the hell’s wrong with that?” “Nothing I suppose. It’s your life. I just think it’s a pointless and silly endeavor that gets you killed for no good reason.” “Oh fuck you Gil. We’re natural born killers, we’re designed to establish our dominance and be combative! You of all should understand that. You want to die an old fish in your sleep?” “Sounds about right. Look Wolf, I know you’ve always subscribed to natural law, survival of fittest ideology and I do too. But you take it to the fucking extreme that it’s ridiculous. Really I mean don’t you feel that in your elder years that you’d just like peace and quiet? I never picked fights for the hell of it. It didn’t make much sense. I mean shit, I’ve been fighting humans all my damn life, and I’m tired of it. I want to rest. I always just wanted to be left alone but the damn land dwellers wouldn’t leave me alone.” “Gil, I learned a long time ago, no matter how much you try, shitheads are going to bother you. You can be a recluse like you and Moreau or be an anti-social asshole like me. It doesn’t matter. Someone is going to fuck with you; someone is going to annoy you. All you can do is deal with it head on and make the best of it. What’re you going to do Gil? Move when the Martians arrive? Then move again when some humans build yet another factory by your new home and just keep going like that until you die? You got a chance here to pretty much live your dream of a relatively peaceful undisturbed life here. It’s not going to get any better Gil. All you gotta do is stand up to the Martians. Yeah, maybe you’ll get killed, but it’s better than constantly being on the run.” Your words have made sense to Gil. He can’t really argue with your logic. This place probably is the best he’s going to ever have it on this planet. He just needs to help get rid of the Martian threat. “Well Wolf, I guess either way this is going to be my last fight. Alright what should we do next? Because attempting to train the freaks seems like it’s doomed to failure.” > You ask Gil if he knows anyone else who can help If you actually had any friends you’d ask them if they could help, but since you don’t, you ask Gil if he knows anyone. “Not really.” He says. “Come on Gil, I mean you must know someone! There were a ton of aquatic sea monsters!” “Oh yeah, we ALL know each other. Damn land dweller ignorance. I bet we all look alike to too you right?” Gil says annoyed. “And I suppose you don’t think we all look alike?” you retort. “Alright nevermind. I don’t know though, most of the beings I know, tolerate land dwellers even less than I do. And most of them can’t even leave the water to begin with.” “I guess giant crabs and squids are out of the question then huh?” “You guess right.” “Damn.” “Okay well, I DO have a cousin that might help, but we haven’t spoken in years.” “Would he be of much help?” “Oh he’d be more than enough help; he doesn’t much care for aliens in general. In fact he doesn’t like anyone and is very violent.” “Sounds like a great guy.” You say. “Hmm, yes I’m sure you and he have a few things in common. He’s another that pointless picks fights and believes in proving his dominance whenever possible.” “Well get his ass over here!” “I don’t know if he’ll come, we had a fight about something a long time ago hence the reason we haven’t spoken.” “Gil, I know Moreau has at least one phone on this island. USE IT. NOW!” “Alright, I’ll try, but like I said I don’t know if he’ll come to help. You and Gil make your way back to Moreau’s freak town where the freaks still give you strange looks. You knock on Moreau’s door. “Hey Moreau! Open up, Gil’s gotta use the phone.” Moreau looks as haggard as ever when he opens his door. “Damn Moreau, you look like shit, you really need to take better care of yourself. Eat some fucking meat. Anyway, Gil has a bad ass cousin apparently that can help, he just needs to call him.” “Wolf, I don’t know if he’ll come, and now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t know if I WANT him to come. He might still be pissed at me.” ”Have some faith Gil.” Gil picks up the phone and starts pressing a million numbers. “Where the hell does your cousin live, Gil?” “Japan. Oh I got a tone…here he is. Hello Godzilla?” “Your cousin is FUCKING GODZILLA?!” you ask. “Oh even I’ve heard of him, heard he was giant lizard that routinely defeated other monsters and aliens. Surely he’ll be able to help.” Moreau says hopefully. You look at Moreau in disbelief, he apparently has been such a recluse he hasn’t even kept up on who the fuck Godzilla really is and the extent of his power. You know damn well if Godzilla comes here, the Martians will be destroyed, but so will everything else on the island! “It’s me. No don’t hang up! Look I’m sorry about that! I didn’t mean for that to happen! Come on I really need your help. I’m in a predicament and…” You snatch the phone from Gil “Dammit, no matter what shit happened between you two, you should at least know how your cousin’s mind operates by now, Gil!” you say to Gil. “Hello, Godzilla? Big fan. My name’s Wolf you might know me, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t. Look there’s a bunch of fucking Martians coming down to Earth thinking they’re tough shit and acting like they’re going to own the place. Yeah I know you’re King of the Monsters here on Earth, but you know how all aliens are, they’re arrogant bastards. Okay. Oh why thank you! That was my favorite role; I got to kill 17 humans in that one! Glad to see you have heard of me. Alright bye.” You turn to Moreau and Gil. “He’s coming.” You say. > You get the hell off the island You respect and even admire Godzilla for his abilities, but you’re not a damn idiot! When Godzilla comes to kick ass, he goes into overkill. You don’t want to be anywhere on the island when he arrives. You ask Moreau for your money. “Alright Moreau, you said I could have my reward in cash, I’ll be taking it now seeing as my work here is done.” “What?! You haven’t done anything!” Moreau says. “The hell I didn’t, I got Godzilla to come here. He’ll solve your Martian problem.” “Okay there’s two things wrong with that statement. First of all YOU still aren’t personally doing anything. Second of all Godzilla is Gil’s cousin not yours, if anything he gets credit for this before you!” “Yeah!” Gil remarks. “That may be, but I’m the one who convinced Godzilla to come here! Gil was too busy stuttering and apologizing.” “Godzilla’s not even here yet! I’m not paying you anything; you can wait until after he gets rid of the Martians.” Looks like Moreau isn’t parting with anything until after the job is completed, but if you wait until after Godzilla does his thing there won’t be anything left on the island to part with and that’s assuming you can find some place to lay low to avoid the sheer destruction that’s sure to come. (Even though Moreau seems to be ignorant of what’s about to occur to his Utopia) > You insist on getting paid You begin to get angry at Moreau’s unwillingness to pay up. “Moreau I’m going to ask you ONE last time, I want my money!” you snarl. “You’re not getting anything from me! And you can stop threatening me, because it won’t work! I had to face angry tigermen and worse while attempting to turn this place into a Utopia! So you can just…” You don’t let Moreau finish that sentence; you take a swipe at him with your claws, knocking him down. He slams his head into his desk and looks very still. Gil goes over to check on him. “He’s dead.” Gil says. “Damn, I didn’t mean to hit him so hard, I was just trying to scare him a bit.” “You dickhead! NOW what are we supposed to do?!” “Will you relax, I’m sure he’s got a safe or some place where he keeps the money, all we have to do is find it, it can’t be far.” ”I’m not talking about that! I’m talking about he was the only one who could fly the plane of the island! How the hell are we supposed to leave now that he’s dead?! And do I need to remind you that my cousin is coming here? I didn’t want to be here anymore than you did when he arrived especially since he’s pissed at me!” “Oh shit, I didn’t think about that. FUCK! Wait a minute! What the hell are you worried about? All you gotta do is start swimming!” ”Hey asshole, it’s the fucking ocean! SALTWATER! I can’t survive in that shit. Not for that long anyway. I might as well be swimming in vinegar.” “Hold on you better just calm the fuck down, and watch your tone Fishboy.” “Fuck you mangy land dwelling dog! I should’ve never listened to you!” Gil is just as pissed at you as you are with him right now and you both act on your anger. A fight between you both occurs in the office, and eventually out in the middle of the town. Moreau’s freaks stand in disbelief, they’re unaccustomed to seeing such violence in a long time, and the younger ones have never seen it at all. Most of them just stand out of the way as you and Gil attempt to kill one another. You fight for a couple days, and then the Martians arrive. When they see that the island is still inhabited they go into their kill all Earthlings routine and start killing the citizens of the island with ease, until they’re all dead. Meanwhile you and Gil are still beating each others brains out. The Martians decide not to interrupt and start placing bets; you’re the odds on favorite since Gil is starting to dehydrate at this point. Another day passes and Godzilla finally arrives. The Martians attempt to fight back, but this is fucking Godzilla. He merely sneezes at their beam weapons and their saucers. Then he crushes the remaining ones under foot, destroying most of the island in the process. Then he notices Gil, and remembering whatever he did to piss him off, he decides to get some payback. Unfortunately you’re in the way of his “payback” and you’re both incinerated with one bellow of radioactive fire.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You respect and even admire Godzilla for his abilities, but you’re not a damn idiot! When Godzilla comes to kick ass, he goes into overkill. You don’t want to be anywhere on the island when he arrives. You ask Moreau for your money. “Alright Moreau, you said I could have my reward in cash, I’ll be taking it now seeing as my work here is done.” “What?! You haven’t done anything!” Moreau says. “The hell I didn’t, I got Godzilla to come here. He’ll solve your Martian problem.” “Okay there’s two things wrong with that statement. First of all YOU still aren’t personally doing anything. Second of all Godzilla is Gil’s cousin not yours, if anything he gets credit for this before you!” “Yeah!” Gil remarks. “That may be, but I’m the one who convinced Godzilla to come here! Gil was too busy stuttering and apologizing.” “Godzilla’s not even here yet! I’m not paying you anything; you can wait until after he gets rid of the Martians.” Looks like Moreau isn’t parting with anything until after the job is completed, but if you wait until after Godzilla does his thing there won’t be anything left on the island to part with and that’s assuming you can find some place to lay low to avoid the sheer destruction that’s sure to come. (Even though Moreau seems to be ignorant of what’s about to occur to his Utopia) > You leave without getting paid You don’t even care about the money or anything at this point, you just need to get off this island and Moreau’s the only one who can fly the plane. “Alright look, forget the money, just take me home, I just don’t want to be on this island any longer the whole place sickens my sensibilities.” Moreau looks annoyed by your comment. “Hmm, well if you hate my Utopia so much, I certainly won’t keep you any longer. I’ll fly you home immediately. I didn’t want your kind really living here anyway. At least Gil is civilized enough to appreciate this place.” “Uh actually I’d like to go back to the mainland as well. I don’t care about any money either, I’m not going to be living anywhere that requires rent anyway.” Gil says nervously. “What? I thought you wanted to stay?” “I changed my mind! Can we just leave?!” “Alright fine, I’ll fly you both back. I’ll get the plane ready. I’m a little puzzled by all this, you’ve helped me, but now you don’t want any reward. All I can say is thanks I guess.” After Moreau leaves to start up the plane, you ask Gil what’s up with him. “So why are you leaving?” you ask. “Duh! The same reason you are, because my cousin will destroy this fucking place, even though Moreau seems to be oblivious of that fact. Not to mention he still sounded pissed at me on the phone, so I don’t want to be here when he arrives! (Sigh) And I did so want to live here too.” “Well if it wasn’t your cousin, it would’ve been the Martians so you would’ve had to leave anyway. I’m not getting anything out of this either; I gotta go back to my cabin in the woods and figure out how to raise some money again. I hope Erik’s got something lined up.” “At least you have a home to return to, I gotta find a new one all over again.” “Hm, well there’s a small lake in the woods I live in, you might try that for awhile. Not too many people go into the woods, especially since I tend to discourage it.” “I might just do that since I don’t have any better ideas right now, I guess you’re not a bad sort for a land dweller. Sounds like Moreau got the plane working, let’s get the hell out of here.” You and Gil proceed to talk about a great many of things while on the plane and become quite friendly with each other. Probably a first for the both of you. After Moreau drops you both off, you continue to discuss the old days while Gil checks out the lake you were talking about. He mentions it’s a good place as long as nobody bothers him. Gil becomes your new neighbor and you both part ways since you both still want your solitude. You do get together to watch TV when a news story comes on a couple days after you left Moreau’s island... The Martians arrived just like they said, and so did Godzilla. A massive fight broke out, but of course the only winner could ever be Godzilla. Their flying saucers were incinerated by his radioactive breath and their troops were crushed underfoot with ease. The entire island was also incinerated and crushed underfoot with ease! Most of Moreau’s citizens were killed in the cross fire of this battle. Dr. Moreau was found dead from a self-inflicted beam blast to the head (A weapon he picked up from a dead Martian no doubt) Some of the survivors claim his last words were “Such destruction… Why? Why? Why didn’t they tell me?!” This massive devastation continued even after Godzilla killed all the Martians, apparently from some of the other survivor reports, he was tearing the place apart searching the entire island for something or someone. When he didn’t find it, he gave a roar and went back to Japan. After watching the news report, you turn to Gil. “Alright Gil what the hell did you do to your cousin? I mean what possibly could you’ve done to piss him off so bad? It’s not like you’re Rodan or Mothra.” “Eh, it’s not something I like to talk about Wolf. I’m not too proud of doing it, but…” “But what Gil? Out with it!” “Well…I kind of…impregnated his wife…I know what your next question is, and it’s a bit complicated so I won’t try to explain, but we aquatics mate a little differently than…” “Alright Gil! I don’t need to hear anymore!” you say, and then sudden you have to ask… “So wait a minute. You mean to say Minya was…” “Yep, he was my son. Why else would he blow smoke rings instead of radioactive fire and be so small?” “Well I thought it was because he was young.” “You probably haven’t kept up with Minya, but he’s STILL that size and still can’t breathe radioactive fire. My cousin knew something was rotten around Minya’s 10th birthday, since he should’ve grown a lot bigger by then as well as the fire stuff. His wife confessed everything. It’s another reason why I’m so reclusive.” You just stare in disbelief at all this. Even with all the dirty secrets you’ve known about in this business, this one is definitely a new one for you. You don’t think you’ll be able to look at Godzilla OR Gil in the same light ever again. Godzilla might be King of the Monsters, but you have to give some sort of props to someone who fucked his wife and got away with it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you actually had any friends you’d ask them if they could help, but since you don’t, you ask Gil if he knows anyone. “Not really.” He says. “Come on Gil, I mean you must know someone! There were a ton of aquatic sea monsters!” “Oh yeah, we ALL know each other. Damn land dweller ignorance. I bet we all look alike to too you right?” Gil says annoyed. “And I suppose you don’t think we all look alike?” you retort. “Alright nevermind. I don’t know though, most of the beings I know, tolerate land dwellers even less than I do. And most of them can’t even leave the water to begin with.” “I guess giant crabs and squids are out of the question then huh?” “You guess right.” “Damn.” “Okay well, I DO have a cousin that might help, but we haven’t spoken in years.” “Would he be of much help?” “Oh he’d be more than enough help; he doesn’t much care for aliens in general. In fact he doesn’t like anyone and is very violent.” “Sounds like a great guy.” You say. “Hmm, yes I’m sure you and he have a few things in common. He’s another that pointless picks fights and believes in proving his dominance whenever possible.” “Well get his ass over here!” “I don’t know if he’ll come, we had a fight about something a long time ago hence the reason we haven’t spoken.” “Gil, I know Moreau has at least one phone on this island. USE IT. NOW!” “Alright, I’ll try, but like I said I don’t know if he’ll come to help. You and Gil make your way back to Moreau’s freak town where the freaks still give you strange looks. You knock on Moreau’s door. “Hey Moreau! Open up, Gil’s gotta use the phone.” Moreau looks as haggard as ever when he opens his door. “Damn Moreau, you look like shit, you really need to take better care of yourself. Eat some fucking meat. Anyway, Gil has a bad ass cousin apparently that can help, he just needs to call him.” “Wolf, I don’t know if he’ll come, and now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t know if I WANT him to come. He might still be pissed at me.” ”Have some faith Gil.” Gil picks up the phone and starts pressing a million numbers. “Where the hell does your cousin live, Gil?” “Japan. Oh I got a tone…here he is. Hello Godzilla?” “Your cousin is FUCKING GODZILLA?!” you ask. “Oh even I’ve heard of him, heard he was giant lizard that routinely defeated other monsters and aliens. Surely he’ll be able to help.” Moreau says hopefully. You look at Moreau in disbelief, he apparently has been such a recluse he hasn’t even kept up on who the fuck Godzilla really is and the extent of his power. You know damn well if Godzilla comes here, the Martians will be destroyed, but so will everything else on the island! “It’s me. No don’t hang up! Look I’m sorry about that! I didn’t mean for that to happen! Come on I really need your help. I’m in a predicament and…” You snatch the phone from Gil “Dammit, no matter what shit happened between you two, you should at least know how your cousin’s mind operates by now, Gil!” you say to Gil. “Hello, Godzilla? Big fan. My name’s Wolf you might know me, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t. Look there’s a bunch of fucking Martians coming down to Earth thinking they’re tough shit and acting like they’re going to own the place. Yeah I know you’re King of the Monsters here on Earth, but you know how all aliens are, they’re arrogant bastards. Okay. Oh why thank you! That was my favorite role; I got to kill 17 humans in that one! Glad to see you have heard of me. Alright bye.” You turn to Moreau and Gil. “He’s coming.” You say. > You sit back and watch the show No way are you going to miss a front row seat to watch the master do his work! You just need a good place to be at that’s out of the way of the destruction. “Okay so now that that’s settled, is there any place on the island that’s relatively uninhabited?” you ask “As you can see the island is mostly still in its natural state, but I’m assuming you’re talking about areas that aren’t visited or traveled very often, well there’s a peninsula on the island that’s pretty much avoided since it just consists of a rocky plateau. Nothing grows there and it’s barren.” ”Good that’s where I’ll be then.” You say. Moreau looks at you wondering why you’re acting strangely, then he wonders the same thing about Gil when he starts asking to leave. “Uh…Moreau can you take me back to the mainland? I don’t care; just drop me off at the nearest swamp.” Gil asks. “What?! I can’t leave right now, the Martians will be here soon and so will your cousin, I have to look out for my people! Why do you want to leave anyway? I thought you were going to live here.” “I changed my mind! Look it won’t take that long, I just need to leave!” “Well I’m not leaving now, you’ll have to wait until this blows over. Or if you really want to leave I’m sure you can swim.” ”It’s the fucking ocean you dick! I can’t be swimming in saltwater for extended periods of time! I can’t wait either! My cousin still sounded like he was pissed at me! He’ll destroy this whole island and me with it!” “What?!” Moreau says startled. “Uh, Gil’s exaggerating! Nothing to worry about!” you say attempting to shut Gil up. “Wait a minute! What the hell have you two brought to my island!?” “Dammit Moreau, if you don’t know who the fuck Godzilla is it’s your own damn fault! Look just keep your freaks out of the way and everything will be fine.” You say. Now Moreau looks as green as Gil, who’s looking even greener if such a thing was possible. They’re looking very worried. > You come up with another plan “Hey look I got an idea…” “SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP WOLF!” Moreau screams. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into calling my cousin!” Gil says and then attacks you! You and Gil start wailing on each other pretty good, eventually your fighting brings you both in the middle of the town where Moreau’s freaks look on in wide eyed wonder. They’re even more surprised when Moreau comes out with a silver fork and stabs you in the back with it. “Agh! What the fuck? Fuckin’ silverware? You’re gonna have to do better than that Freakmaker!” you say turning around, and slashing Moreau a couple times across the throat, killing him. Unfortunately you turned your back on Gil, who takes advantage of the fork in your back and drives it in deeper, puncturing vital organs. You fall to the ground in extreme pain attempting to catch your breath, as Gil smashes your face into some rocks and reenacting a psycho killer tactic by repeatedly stabbing the shit out of you with the silver fork, until he’s sure you’re dead. Gil’s revenge is short lived though. He’s killed in the big battle between the Martians and his cousin a few days later. In fact nothing on the island survives the battle except Godzilla.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>No way are you going to miss a front row seat to watch the master do his work! You just need a good place to be at that’s out of the way of the destruction. “Okay so now that that’s settled, is there any place on the island that’s relatively uninhabited?” you ask “As you can see the island is mostly still in its natural state, but I’m assuming you’re talking about areas that aren’t visited or traveled very often, well there’s a peninsula on the island that’s pretty much avoided since it just consists of a rocky plateau. Nothing grows there and it’s barren.” ”Good that’s where I’ll be then.” You say. Moreau looks at you wondering why you’re acting strangely, then he wonders the same thing about Gil when he starts asking to leave. “Uh…Moreau can you take me back to the mainland? I don’t care; just drop me off at the nearest swamp.” Gil asks. “What?! I can’t leave right now, the Martians will be here soon and so will your cousin, I have to look out for my people! Why do you want to leave anyway? I thought you were going to live here.” “I changed my mind! Look it won’t take that long, I just need to leave!” “Well I’m not leaving now, you’ll have to wait until this blows over. Or if you really want to leave I’m sure you can swim.” ”It’s the fucking ocean you dick! I can’t be swimming in saltwater for extended periods of time! I can’t wait either! My cousin still sounded like he was pissed at me! He’ll destroy this whole island and me with it!” “What?!” Moreau says startled. “Uh, Gil’s exaggerating! Nothing to worry about!” you say attempting to shut Gil up. “Wait a minute! What the hell have you two brought to my island!?” “Dammit Moreau, if you don’t know who the fuck Godzilla is it’s your own damn fault! Look just keep your freaks out of the way and everything will be fine.” You say. Now Moreau looks as green as Gil, who’s looking even greener if such a thing was possible. They’re looking very worried. > You head to the plateau Gil and Moreau can shit themselves with fear, but you’re not going to sit around worrying about all this. You decide to get yourself a prime seat on that rocky plateau. As you leave Moreau and Gil to their own devices, you walk through the town while the freaks all stare at you. That’s when you notice they have do have some livestock here after all. It looks like they just sheep for the wool purposes though. (Probably part of their economy) What a waste. You boldly go into the little grazing field and pick yourself up a couple of big fat sheep. A shepherd who looks like his origins lie with some sort of rodent, attempts to stop you from killing them. “Hey, those are my sheep, I’m afraid you can’t just…” You punch out the ratboy and continue to kill your dinner while all the other freaks whisper amongst themselves about your behavior. “Fuck all of you pussy ass bitches, y’all oughta be glad I’m not eating any of YOU!” you say and continue to your destination. You get to the plateau, and it really is a nice view. You can see the entire island from it. Not long after you get there you see Moreau’s plane leave. “Hmm, so much for sticking around to defend his Utopia.” You say. A day passes and you see the saucers come from the sky. A few of them land in the distance, while others are blasting the hell out of the towns scattered around the island. They’re too busy invading the populated areas though, so you’re safe. That’s when you also see Godzilla’s giant form looming in the distance. “Aw shit! This is going to be good!” you say preparing to watch the master in action. As soon as Godzilla steps foot on the island he starts wrecking the place. The Martians attempt to fight back, but it’s useless. They can’t even beat humans; they stand even less of a chance against Godzilla. Their technology is like the equivalent of someone throwing a rock at a fully armored tank; a tank that can breathe radioactive fire. The Martians are completely destroyed along with most of the island. Godzilla seems to stick around smashing the place, like he’s looking for someone, that’s when he notices you. Even from your high location, you’re still staring up at him from his belly. “RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAGH! RAAAAAAAAAGH!” “Oh Gil? Yeah, he was here.” You shout holding your ears. “RRRRRRAAAAAAAGH! RRRRAAAAAGGGGGH!” “Yeah, I think he left with Dr. Moreau though. You just missed him a couple days ago.” ”RRRRRAAAAGGGGHHH! RRRAAAAAGGGH!” “Okay I’ll let him know that, assuming I ever see him again.” “RRAAAAAAAAAGHHH! RRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAGGH!” “Okay bye then. And it was great to see you in action first hand!” Godzilla leaves and you’re now standing on a wrecked island. You’ll probably be stuck here for awhile, until the humans deploy ships to find out what the hell happened. This will all probably lead to another war between Earth and Mars again. Oh well. In the meantime, the island isn’t complete wasteland, in fact parts of it are still intact and there are plenty of animals around and even some freak survivors are still alive. You’ll have plenty of food, lots of solitude as well. Hell, it’s like a vacation. You just realized you’ve never been on vacation ever in your life, but you’re taking the opportunity now. You even got to see a “big show”. And why not, you’ve deserved it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>If you actually had any friends you’d ask them if they could help, but since you don’t, you ask Gil if he knows anyone. “Not really.” He says. “Come on Gil, I mean you must know someone! There were a ton of aquatic sea monsters!” “Oh yeah, we ALL know each other. Damn land dweller ignorance. I bet we all look alike to too you right?” Gil says annoyed. “And I suppose you don’t think we all look alike?” you retort. “Alright nevermind. I don’t know though, most of the beings I know, tolerate land dwellers even less than I do. And most of them can’t even leave the water to begin with.” “I guess giant crabs and squids are out of the question then huh?” “You guess right.” “Damn.” “Okay well, I DO have a cousin that might help, but we haven’t spoken in years.” “Would he be of much help?” “Oh he’d be more than enough help; he doesn’t much care for aliens in general. In fact he doesn’t like anyone and is very violent.” “Sounds like a great guy.” You say. “Hmm, yes I’m sure you and he have a few things in common. He’s another that pointless picks fights and believes in proving his dominance whenever possible.” “Well get his ass over here!” “I don’t know if he’ll come, we had a fight about something a long time ago hence the reason we haven’t spoken.” “Gil, I know Moreau has at least one phone on this island. USE IT. NOW!” “Alright, I’ll try, but like I said I don’t know if he’ll come to help. You and Gil make your way back to Moreau’s freak town where the freaks still give you strange looks. You knock on Moreau’s door. “Hey Moreau! Open up, Gil’s gotta use the phone.” Moreau looks as haggard as ever when he opens his door. “Damn Moreau, you look like shit, you really need to take better care of yourself. Eat some fucking meat. Anyway, Gil has a bad ass cousin apparently that can help, he just needs to call him.” “Wolf, I don’t know if he’ll come, and now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t know if I WANT him to come. He might still be pissed at me.” ”Have some faith Gil.” Gil picks up the phone and starts pressing a million numbers. “Where the hell does your cousin live, Gil?” “Japan. Oh I got a tone…here he is. Hello Godzilla?” “Your cousin is FUCKING GODZILLA?!” you ask. “Oh even I’ve heard of him, heard he was giant lizard that routinely defeated other monsters and aliens. Surely he’ll be able to help.” Moreau says hopefully. You look at Moreau in disbelief, he apparently has been such a recluse he hasn’t even kept up on who the fuck Godzilla really is and the extent of his power. You know damn well if Godzilla comes here, the Martians will be destroyed, but so will everything else on the island! “It’s me. No don’t hang up! Look I’m sorry about that! I didn’t mean for that to happen! Come on I really need your help. I’m in a predicament and…” You snatch the phone from Gil “Dammit, no matter what shit happened between you two, you should at least know how your cousin’s mind operates by now, Gil!” you say to Gil. “Hello, Godzilla? Big fan. My name’s Wolf you might know me, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t. Look there’s a bunch of fucking Martians coming down to Earth thinking they’re tough shit and acting like they’re going to own the place. Yeah I know you’re King of the Monsters here on Earth, but you know how all aliens are, they’re arrogant bastards. Okay. Oh why thank you! That was my favorite role; I got to kill 17 humans in that one! Glad to see you have heard of me. Alright bye.” You turn to Moreau and Gil. “He’s coming.” You say. > You memories (Godzilla) King of the Monsters: Godzilla Naturally you never got to hang out with him since he ran in his own circle and did most of his films in Japan, but you have nothing, but respect for Godzilla. He’s beaten the shit out of everything that’s been thrown at him. Humans, Aliens, Robots, other Giant Monsters, all of them decimated. If there was anyone else you had to be, you’d be Godzilla. There are no words that you could say that would do him justice. He’s the pinnacle of badassitude. He really is the King of the Monsters and will always be a legend.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You take one look at Moreau’s citizens and shake your head. There’s no way you can whip these freaks into shape by yourself. Look at them, all peace and love and shit. There’s a damn giraffe man kissing a damn bear woman. It’s not right! You’re too disgusted right now; you have to talk to someone normal! You go to the nearby swamp, where you see Gil catching a small lizard and eating it. “Well its good to see someone here, who’s not a pansy ass herbivore.” You say. Gil looks up, perturbed at first, but surprised when he sees you. “Wolf? What’re you doing here?” “Same thing as you, Moreau offered to set me up for life, if I help him. Though I don’t see how that’s possible with the freaks I just met.” “I know, tell me about it. I can’t even get them to argue with me! I was calling them a bunch of ignorant land dwellers who should’ve been killed at birth like the freaks they were and they tried to do was hug me.” “Still don’t like surfacer dwellers eh Gil?” “Hell no! I wouldn’t even be here, but I was getting really tired of moving every five minutes because humans feel the need to build a factory near my home. At least here, I know that’s not going to happen and the freaks will know to leave me be.” “Assuming the freaks will still be here. The Martians will be taking over soon if we don’t do anything.” You remind Gil. “I know, I know. They would be even worse neighbors than humans assuming they would still let me live here. (Sigh) Looks like I’ll be moving again soon.” “Oh come on Gil, we gotta think up something. The Martians are a bunch of idiots. I can’t give up just yet.” “Ah I should’ve suspected. You’re here to prove you still got one fight left in you. The old Alpha Wolf syndrome.” “I’m not here just for that, but maybe that is part of it. So what the hell’s wrong with that?” “Nothing I suppose. It’s your life. I just think it’s a pointless and silly endeavor that gets you killed for no good reason.” “Oh fuck you Gil. We’re natural born killers, we’re designed to establish our dominance and be combative! You of all should understand that. You want to die an old fish in your sleep?” “Sounds about right. Look Wolf, I know you’ve always subscribed to natural law, survival of fittest ideology and I do too. But you take it to the fucking extreme that it’s ridiculous. Really I mean don’t you feel that in your elder years that you’d just like peace and quiet? I never picked fights for the hell of it. It didn’t make much sense. I mean shit, I’ve been fighting humans all my damn life, and I’m tired of it. I want to rest. I always just wanted to be left alone but the damn land dwellers wouldn’t leave me alone.” “Gil, I learned a long time ago, no matter how much you try, shitheads are going to bother you. You can be a recluse like you and Moreau or be an anti-social asshole like me. It doesn’t matter. Someone is going to fuck with you; someone is going to annoy you. All you can do is deal with it head on and make the best of it. What’re you going to do Gil? Move when the Martians arrive? Then move again when some humans build yet another factory by your new home and just keep going like that until you die? You got a chance here to pretty much live your dream of a relatively peaceful undisturbed life here. It’s not going to get any better Gil. All you gotta do is stand up to the Martians. Yeah, maybe you’ll get killed, but it’s better than constantly being on the run.” Your words have made sense to Gil. He can’t really argue with your logic. This place probably is the best he’s going to ever have it on this planet. He just needs to help get rid of the Martian threat. “Well Wolf, I guess either way this is going to be my last fight. Alright what should we do next? Because attempting to train the freaks seems like it’s doomed to failure.” > You suggest you and Gil just try to do the best training them “Well we have to work with what we got Gil, nothing else for it.” “(Sigh) I don’t know, I tried already, and none of them have any kind of fighter instinct.” “You probably were treating them like something you scraped off your scales.” “Oh and I suppose you’d treat them better?” “Not really, but they might respond better to me, I can be diplomatic.” “Ha ha ha ha! YOU!? Diplomatic?! Alright I’ll help because I gotta see this!” You and Gil go to back to Moreau’s freak town, where the freaks stare at you again. You call everyone to gather around. “Alright you freaks come gather around! Now then, it has become quite apparent to me that all of you are a bunch of hippy weaklings who would’ve been killed a long time ago, if you actually lived in reality. Well soon the reality will come to rectify that mistake if you don’t stand up to the Martians that will be coming to annihilate this little so called paradise you all have.” “Oh maybe if we’re real nice to them, they’ll let us live!” one says. “Not familiar with Martians are you? They’re not the nicest beings in any sense of the word. They’ve attempted to conquer this planet several times and have killed millions of humans. What do you think they’ll do to you freaks?” “I’m sure they can be reasonable, if we just ask them nicely to live with us in peace.” “Argh! Didn’t you fucking freaks hear what I said?! I said they’ll fucking kill ALL of you! Now if you fight back you might have a chance! All you have to do is evacuate your town and whatever little settlements you have on this island and take to the wilderness. You could easily conduct a successful guerilla war on here. Martians aren’t very good tacticians and have bad immune systems. They’ll probably catch malaria and every other disease under the sun attempting to root you guys out and I of course will be the one leading you to victory!” Your speech is met with more silence and disapproval. “No! We shall not give in to hatred and violence! Those are the old ways!” “Yes and some of us never followed those ways in the first place!” “That went over real well, got any other ideas?” Gil asks you. > You fly into a rage This is too frustrating to you and once again you’re sickened with how nature has been perverted like this. You can’t take it any more. You start killing the nearest freaks to you. Naturally this all results in a lot of running and screaming on their part. The blood lust gets to you, so you don’t just stop there, you won’t be happy until you’ve killed them all. Dr. Moreau comes out to see what’s going on, and immediately goes into shock at the sight of his citizens lying on the ground in bloody heaps. He then clutches his heart and falls over dead. Gil sees that you’re busy, so he goes back to his swamp mumbling something about land dwellers. By the time the Martians arrive you’ve pretty much done their job for them. They take this as a sign of genuine steps to improve Martian-Earthling relations. They thank you and allow you to live on the island for free. You accept since it beats going back to the run down cabin and having to pay rent. As it turns out, Martians aren’t really such bad neighbors. A lot of them are pretty stupid, but then so are most humans. Life doesn’t change too much for you. Just goes to show wherever you go, there you are.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Well we have to work with what we got Gil, nothing else for it.” “(Sigh) I don’t know, I tried already, and none of them have any kind of fighter instinct.” “You probably were treating them like something you scraped off your scales.” “Oh and I suppose you’d treat them better?” “Not really, but they might respond better to me, I can be diplomatic.” “Ha ha ha ha! YOU!? Diplomatic?! Alright I’ll help because I gotta see this!” You and Gil go to back to Moreau’s freak town, where the freaks stare at you again. You call everyone to gather around. “Alright you freaks come gather around! Now then, it has become quite apparent to me that all of you are a bunch of hippy weaklings who would’ve been killed a long time ago, if you actually lived in reality. Well soon the reality will come to rectify that mistake if you don’t stand up to the Martians that will be coming to annihilate this little so called paradise you all have.” “Oh maybe if we’re real nice to them, they’ll let us live!” one says. “Not familiar with Martians are you? They’re not the nicest beings in any sense of the word. They’ve attempted to conquer this planet several times and have killed millions of humans. What do you think they’ll do to you freaks?” “I’m sure they can be reasonable, if we just ask them nicely to live with us in peace.” “Argh! Didn’t you fucking freaks hear what I said?! I said they’ll fucking kill ALL of you! Now if you fight back you might have a chance! All you have to do is evacuate your town and whatever little settlements you have on this island and take to the wilderness. You could easily conduct a successful guerilla war on here. Martians aren’t very good tacticians and have bad immune systems. They’ll probably catch malaria and every other disease under the sun attempting to root you guys out and I of course will be the one leading you to victory!” Your speech is met with more silence and disapproval. “No! We shall not give in to hatred and violence! Those are the old ways!” “Yes and some of us never followed those ways in the first place!” “That went over real well, got any other ideas?” Gil asks you. > You continue to speak You’re determined to make these freaks fight, mainly because you’re too stubborn to give up. You start going on about natural law, survival of the fittest an all those other might makes right philosophies you subscribe to. After about a day of this, some of the carnivorous and omnivore freaks begin to find something that still dwells within them. Even the herbivores start tapping into their human side to get that aggressive streak within them. Now you’ve got something to work with! Unfortunately you don’t have much time. You and Gil only manage to give the bare minimum of training when the Martians arrive. You manage to get most of them to evacuate before they do their initial saucer bombardment. Dr. Moreau stays behind to die after seeing what you’re turning his “citizens” into; he doesn’t want to be any part of it. As far as he’s concerned his Utopia is over. But your battle is just beginning! Just like you suggested you, Gil and the freaks take to the jungles which they all know like the back of their paws, hoofs, etc. You get some of the freaks that have burrowing skills to create a system of underground tunnels, where you do your training, planning and where you strike from. The Martians meanwhile use their superior technology to combat you, but they aren’t very successful. They can’t just destroy the entire island since they’re attempting to hold it, this all results in a war of attrition that ultimately ends very badly for them as they die of diseases, ambushes and the like. It also doesn’t help when you get a hold of some of their weapons. Eventually they pull out. Gil parts ways with you at this point and goes back to live in his bit of swamp where he originally wanted to spend the remainder of his days. Nobody ever bothers him again. You however take control of the island. The freaks are a lot more to your liking now. No more of that pussy peace shit. No more “No spill blood law” either. The only law now is the law of the jungle. (Well since you’re in charge, you tend to make “rules” that benefit you though) You live out the rest of your years in relative luxury mating with a Fox woman on a regular basis. Amazingly she gives birth to some weird crossbreed. You “imaginatively” call him Wox and teach him the same thing you taught everyone else. When Wox grows up he’s so grateful for your ruthless teachings that he decides that you’ve earned you rest and kills you for ruler ship of the island. You don’t blame him though it’s the natural order of things.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Aw hell, if the past is any indication Martians ain’t shit. I don’t have anything better to do. Let’s get going.” You remark. You and Moreau leave the next day to his island by private plane. When you arrive you can see why the place is considered a paradise, its basically untamed wilderness with some agricultural improvements and basic structures to house the citizens. Speaking of citizens, you see them in person. They’re a motley looking bunch. You see boar boys, goat girls, manatee men, and wombat women and those are some of the regular ones. Some look like they’ve been mixed with several species of animals, so you can’t even be sure what the hell they are. Moreau’s citizens are equally interested in you. “Are you another citizen?” one of them asks as they all attempt to crowd you. “What? Hell no! I’m a fucking werewolf! Not a freak of nature!” you snarl, not wanting them to touch you. Moreau take the opportunity to make sure you don’t kill anyone. “This is Wolf. He’s different than you…in several ways. But he’s here to help us with our current problem, just like our aquatic friend who volunteered to help a few days ago.” You stop Moreau. “Aquatic friend? You got someone else to help you?” you ask. “Well yes, I wasn’t sure if you’d help, so I tried to get others as well. You and he were the only takers it seems though. I’m pretty sure you and he are familiar with each other. I can’t pronounce his real name, but he goes by Gil.” “Gil?! You got GIL?! He was almost as reclusive as you! How’d you get him to help?” “I don’t know. It was really just a gamble. I made the same deal, but I had little hope of him accepting it since he’s not exactly fond of land dwellers. He accepted though since he’s tired of having humans intrude on his home every five minute. He already has a place set aside for himself on the island. I just hope the island is still ours after all this.” “Where is he?” “He keeps to himself in a nearby swamp. He likes his privacy and I respect it. You and he can talk later. I’d like you to get to the training. The Martians will be coming soon, I’m predicting in a matter of days.” “DAYS!? You didn’t say that before! How am I supposed to train these freaks in days?” “Please Wolf you must try! Gil tried and didn’t get very far; he may have even given up. I was hoping you might have more luck since you’re a bit closer to my citizens.” “I’m nothing like your citizens…but I’ll see what I can do.” > You memories (Gil) The Creature: Gil AKA Gilqtzejeopleziqjadg’helixizrtylewv’rocrzs… Gil’s real name is a mile long and unpronounceable like most members of underwater species. He doesn’t really care for the name “Gil”, but he resigns himself to the fact that you land dwellers can’t pronounce his real one. He was pretty private, normally he’d just come to work, do his job and go back to his swamp, or lagoon, or whatever body of water he was living in at the time. (Never anyplace with salt water though, as it reeked havoc on his skin) As far as the “big name monsters” go, he was probably the one who socialized the least, mainly because he didn’t like land dwellers. He didn’t like land dwellers for several reasons, but even if they hadn’t been draining his swamps, pissing into his pools, polluting his lagoons, and over fishing his lakes, he didn’t like them before they did all that. While he didn’t like land dwellers, you didn’t take offense to it like everyone else did. You actually understood it. You don’t have anything in common with the Undead and you don’t like them. Gil was an aquatic being, there’s no real reason for him to like ANY land dwellers, since he didn’t have much in common with them. (Given that you can’t stand most of them half of the time, you couldn’t really blame Gil for his prejudices) You and he never interacted much, but you did respect each other for each ones natural predator instinct.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and Moreau have never had any dealings with each other before, so you’re kind of curious to as why he wanted to see you. You approach Moreau and he’s tripping over himself to thank you for seeing him. You’re a little suspicious of this treatment, especially since you’ve never been welcomed by anyone before. “Wolf, its Wolf right? Or do you prefer Mr. Wolf?” “Wolf is fine…will you tell me why the hell you want to see me so badly for? We’ve never had anything to do with each other before.” “Yes. Quite correct. My Vision didn’t lead me to interact socially that much. Maybe I shouldn’t have concentrated so much on my Vision though. Maybe I should’ve been more flexible. If I had, I might not have the problems I have now.” “Okay, so will you quit with the fucking mystery already and tell me what’s going on?” “As you know I transformed my island into a utopia where no being harms another.” “Pfft, some Utopia. I call it fucking with nature.” “And you know what? I agree with you. At one time, I would’ve dismissed you as a vicious animal that only pleased his primal instincts.” “You say it as if it’s a bad thing.” You utter. “I once thought so…but now I’m starting to see reality for the first time. My Utopia wasn’t followed by the world…it was hated. It was despised. Most are jealous of what I’ve done and want to destroy it.” “Duh, that’s humanity for you. So are you getting to the point anytime soon?” “My Utopia is about to be destroyed, but NOT directly. No human nation wants to look like the bad guys so you know what they’ve done instead? They’re letting Martians do it for them!” “What? Martians aren’t even allowed on this planet after all the unsuccessful attacks they’ve attempted on it.” You exclaim. “See that’s just it. In exchange of a new Martian-Earthling Peace accord they’re letting the Martians put a colony here provided they don’t kill any humans. The Martians agreed and MY Island was scheduled for designation for the colony! If we stay they’ll be allowed to kill everyone since nobody on there is human except me.” “Well that certainly does suck, but why not just move?” “WHAT!? That’s our home! Would YOU move from your own home?” “Eh…I suppose I can see your point. So what am I supposed to do though?” Moreau takes another drink and looks at you with dead seriousness. “I need you to get them all to FIGHT! I need you to get them all in touch with their animal instincts again! I know you’re more than just a werewolf. You’re the self-proclaimed Alpha. I need that viciousness, I need that aggressiveness, I need it ingrained into my people. I can’t do it. I’m not qualified, and I’d only make things worse. I can pay you all the money you want; our economy has always been good. If you like you could even live on the island and spend your remaining years there with nothing to worry about. You could mate with whoever you wanted, we could import whatever meat you wanted, or if you preferred…we could even make special arrangements just for you, to hunt living creatures. Anything…just please help us.” This is pretty heavy shit. Moreau must be very desperate to come begging to a practical stranger. There’s no way he’s lying about this, you have heard some stuff lately about Martian-Human relations, though you don’t really pay attention to the news a lot. You can’t say Moreau’s offer isn’t appealing on some level, but as much of a badass you are, you’re not in your prime anymore. Taking on a shit load of Martians and training a bunch of genetic freaks of nature could be just a little out of your scope. > You go back home You’re not about to go traipsing across the world to save a bunch of hippy freaks from some dumb ass Martians. “I don’t think so Moreau, see ya around.” You say and get up to leave the bar, before anyone else asks you for any favors. You don’t get two feet outside of the place and suddenly you’re assaulted by a terrible smell. The stench is not unlike that of hot garbage during a heat wave. You turn around holding your nose and see Andre with his big ol’ stupid grotesque fly head. “Hey Wolf... Can you spare me some money?” he asks “Fuck Andre! Stand the hell away from me! What the hell? Did you roll around in a septic tank?” “Uh no, I just ate some fresh turds back in the alleyway…” “I don’t even know why I asked you that, I already knew the answer. Ugh.” you say continuing to hold your nose. “They tasted pretty good to me. Hey, but I could use some of that sweet sugar. You got any spare change so I can get me a box of the stuff?” “Fuck no! I barely have enough money for me! Phew! Just get the fuck away!” “Aw come on, help a brother out.” “Broth… what the…look nevermind, I ain’t got time for this shit Andre, if you want sugar so bad just go into a fast food place and stock up on those little free packets!” “I can’t! A lot of those places use that artificial sugar now! Don’t those idiotic humans know that stuff can cause cancer?! Besides whenever they see me coming they start spraying raid on me and hitting me in the head with swatters. I’ve even attempted to sneak in quietly, but they always seem to sense I’m coming, I can never understand how they do that.” “Gee, I can’t imagine how they’d be able to do it, Andre.” You say still holding your nose futility trying to block out Andre’s odor. “I just wish I could get with Janice, she’s got ALL the sugar! (Buzz) But she won’t have anything to do with me; She thinks I’m just low class trash.” “Well if you’re eating shit, I’d say she’s pretty much right.” “It’s not just her sugar I’m after though, I think she’s beautiful! She has such heavenly wings, and a nice abdomen! Yep she really kept herself in good condition after all these years. (Buzz)” “Yeah that’s real nice Andre, tell someone who cares.” You start to leave and then Andre has the nerve to grab you by the arm. “Wolf, please you gotta help me out! I can’t live like this anymore, I thought I could being part fly and all, but it’s getting too bad! I’m nearly killed everywhere I go and I’m getting too old to defend myself adequately! Humans hate the sight of me and I disgust them! I need to a home! Janice has a home! You gotta help me convince her that we should be together! Look, you know she’s rich too! You said you were in need of money too right? Maybe if we’re successful, something can be worked out.” > You kick Andre's ass You have absolutely no patience for this and you begin beating the hell out of Andre, starting by slashing him across his many eyes. Andre surprises you though by fighting back. Due to his diet he’s not exactly the best fighter, but he’s a lot stronger that you thought. You land a few bites on him which immediately cause you to puke since he tastes like a bleeding leper with gangrene. Andre counters with some puke of his own, unfortunately for you, his is acidic. Your arm is horribly burned to the bone. After howling in pain you summon up a reservoir of strength and put your fist through Andre’s chest and proceed to dig around deeply, pulling out all the nasty black stuff inside. Andre twitches and spasms for a good ten minutes before he dies. You stagger back home to nurse your wounds. Against any other opponent you probably would’ve just felt the pain for a couple of days, and regenerated back to your old self, but Andre WAS a fly and as such he was carrying multiple diseases both known and unknown. And during your fight he was spitting and bleeding all over you not to mention you bit him a few times. As a result you’ve been infected by some pretty nasty ones. Over the course of a few days you begin to get very sick and lethargic, if you were younger, your immune system might’ve been stronger to fight it off, but you don’t have that advantage anymore. You feel deathly ill and your fur is falling out, you refuse to die like this. You drag yourself back into town and weakly attack the nearest human you can find. After the cops are called you attempt to attack them as well, but they shoot you full of silver before you can even get near them.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re not about to go traipsing across the world to save a bunch of hippy freaks from some dumb ass Martians. “I don’t think so Moreau, see ya around.” You say and get up to leave the bar, before anyone else asks you for any favors. You don’t get two feet outside of the place and suddenly you’re assaulted by a terrible smell. The stench is not unlike that of hot garbage during a heat wave. You turn around holding your nose and see Andre with his big ol’ stupid grotesque fly head. “Hey Wolf... Can you spare me some money?” he asks “Fuck Andre! Stand the hell away from me! What the hell? Did you roll around in a septic tank?” “Uh no, I just ate some fresh turds back in the alleyway…” “I don’t even know why I asked you that, I already knew the answer. Ugh.” you say continuing to hold your nose. “They tasted pretty good to me. Hey, but I could use some of that sweet sugar. You got any spare change so I can get me a box of the stuff?” “Fuck no! I barely have enough money for me! Phew! Just get the fuck away!” “Aw come on, help a brother out.” “Broth… what the…look nevermind, I ain’t got time for this shit Andre, if you want sugar so bad just go into a fast food place and stock up on those little free packets!” “I can’t! A lot of those places use that artificial sugar now! Don’t those idiotic humans know that stuff can cause cancer?! Besides whenever they see me coming they start spraying raid on me and hitting me in the head with swatters. I’ve even attempted to sneak in quietly, but they always seem to sense I’m coming, I can never understand how they do that.” “Gee, I can’t imagine how they’d be able to do it, Andre.” You say still holding your nose futility trying to block out Andre’s odor. “I just wish I could get with Janice, she’s got ALL the sugar! (Buzz) But she won’t have anything to do with me; She thinks I’m just low class trash.” “Well if you’re eating shit, I’d say she’s pretty much right.” “It’s not just her sugar I’m after though, I think she’s beautiful! She has such heavenly wings, and a nice abdomen! Yep she really kept herself in good condition after all these years. (Buzz)” “Yeah that’s real nice Andre, tell someone who cares.” You start to leave and then Andre has the nerve to grab you by the arm. “Wolf, please you gotta help me out! I can’t live like this anymore, I thought I could being part fly and all, but it’s getting too bad! I’m nearly killed everywhere I go and I’m getting too old to defend myself adequately! Humans hate the sight of me and I disgust them! I need to a home! Janice has a home! You gotta help me convince her that we should be together! Look, you know she’s rich too! You said you were in need of money too right? Maybe if we’re successful, something can be worked out.” > You help Andre Maybe you’re getting a little soft in your old age, but you can somewhat sympathize with Andre, he’s in an even worse situation than you. He’s been stricken by bad luck more than you have. Helping him could be financially beneficial, plus if Andre had a home, he wouldn’t be constantly bothering you for money every time you walked into town. “Alright Andre I’ll help, just stand back and get your fucking disease ridden hands off of me! And don’t touch me again!” “Okay, I can do that. Thanks Wolf! I swear I won’t forget this!” “Yeah, yeah, now what do you want me to do?” “I need you to deliver this letter to her; it’s a poem about how I feel about her and how I’ve always felt about her. I know if she just read this she’d give me a chance!” You take the crumpled letter which reeks of Andre’s overall foulness, but you still have more questions. “Andre I know you’ve always wanted to do some buggery on Janice, but I hardly see how this is going to change how she feels and why the hell can’t you do this?” “Because every time I even try to get NEAR her mansion she has her guards chase me off! Its like when I try to sneak in anywhere people can somehow sense I’m coming!” “Andre, did it ever occur to you to that your fucking ODOR is the reason?” “Odor? What odor?” Andre asks like it’s the first time anyone’s ever suggested that to him that before. “Look I know in my heart that if she read my words, she’d fall for me, just like I know you’ll be able to get in and give her that letter!” “This is starting to sound like a lot of effort for possibly no reward…” “Arrrgh! Look when you get in there, you could always just rip something valuable off! Just please, you gotta give her that letter!” You look at the love letter (which has remarkable penmanship) and shake your head. Looks like you’re on a bug hunt. “Alright Andre you’re lucky her mansion isn’t far and I’m not busy right now. I just turned down an offer to live on an island paradise for the rest of my life in exchange for getting rid some Martians.” “What, you mean Moreau’s offer? He offered me a similar deal, but then quickly retracted it for some reason. But Wolf I know you wouldn’t have wanted to help some hippy freaks you don’t even know! But this is different! In this case you’re helping out an old friend gain true love!” “Okay listen up, I’m not, nor will I ever be your friend. I’m doing this for my own reasons. When I return, meet me back here at this bar.” You turn and eagerly leave Andre to go back to your cabin. You don’t normally like to wash, but in this case you definitely feel the need to! After thoroughly scrubbing down, you take your Harley and drive over to Janice’s mansion which is just a couple of counties away. It doesn’t take you long to get there. You haven’t really seen this place except once a long time ago and it looked like a regular mansion, now the place looks like a concentration compound; there is a big metal gate and barbed wire lined walls surrounding the mansion. The mansion itself looks like some half weird insect hive, half man made structure. As soon as you park near the gate you’re approached by some figures marching in unison like soldiers. They’re like big ants or at least they look like THEM. Something weird is going on. “You! Inferior hairy mammal! What business do you have here at the Hive?!” one of the ant guards asks clicking his mandibles angrily. “I’m supposed to deliver a letter to Janice.” “Watch you tongue, dog! You mean the Supreme Hive Queen! And she does not see inferiors such as you! Be gone, you impotent mangy mutt!” Well you’re used to people not liking you, but hearing it from a giant bug is still pretty insulting. > You argue with the guards Outnumbered or not, you’re not about to let some overgrown insect mouth off to you like that! “Impotent?! Fuck off, you fucking transantsexual! Everyone knows that all of you drones are fucking females that don’t get to mate! That explains why you’re all hostile all the time. I’d be hostile too if I wasn’t getting any, unless you’re all dyking it out and using those mandible on each others abdomens! Now let me in, I’m suppose to give this letter to Janice!” “Insolent dog! First of all drones are fucking MALE dipshit! Use the correct terminology at least! And second, you’re not getting in here! You’re a lowly mammal! You will leave now or become melted down for food!” “I’m not leaving until I give this letter to Janice!” You half expect THEM to open up the gates and attack you, but surprisingly one of THEM steps forward and addressed you in a more civilized manner. “Look, what’s so important in the goddamn letter that it has to be taken to her Majesty?” “Its some love nonsense from Andre…” As soon as you mention Andre, all of THEM begin clicking their mandibles. “Andre? That fly fucker who’s been stalking the Queen for years?” “Yeah, apparently he’s been trying give this letter to her; he says you guys chase him off, so he’s got me to do it. He says she’ll instantly fall in love with him after she reads it, I think he’s wasting his time, but there’s no point in telling him that.” “So do you think he’ll stop stalking her, if this letter was finally delivered, regardless of the outcome?” “I dunno, maybe.” You say. “Alright, give me the letter I’ll take it to her, we’re sick of that smell every time he comes around here anyway.” > You give the guard the letter You hand the guard the letter through the gate, who goes scuttling off to the mansion. The previous ant guard you were arguing with keeps watch on you, while the others go about their normal marching drills. Soon the other guard returns. “The Queen says while she’s flattered by such words, she has no interest in Andre and never has. She also says she hopes that this will finally put an end to his obsessive stalking. Goodbye mammal, you have no further business here.” Well that was certainly abrupt. You get back on your bike and return home. You can’t help but think the guard probably just ripped up the letter, but there’s not much you can do about it now. You tell Andre what happened, and he seems crushed, but you don’t really give a damn, since you basically wasted your time and didn’t get anything out of this. You tell Andre to never bother you again or you’ll shove a bug zapper up his ass. You return home pissed off and give Erik another call. You end up having to take a job as a special guest at a comic convention where you have to endure the inane rambling of hundreds of nerdy humans, which results in you being arrested after you maul a couple of them due to your short tolerance level.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Outnumbered or not, you’re not about to let some overgrown insect mouth off to you like that! “Impotent?! Fuck off, you fucking transantsexual! Everyone knows that all of you drones are fucking females that don’t get to mate! That explains why you’re all hostile all the time. I’d be hostile too if I wasn’t getting any, unless you’re all dyking it out and using those mandible on each others abdomens! Now let me in, I’m suppose to give this letter to Janice!” “Insolent dog! First of all drones are fucking MALE dipshit! Use the correct terminology at least! And second, you’re not getting in here! You’re a lowly mammal! You will leave now or become melted down for food!” “I’m not leaving until I give this letter to Janice!” You half expect THEM to open up the gates and attack you, but surprisingly one of THEM steps forward and addressed you in a more civilized manner. “Look, what’s so important in the goddamn letter that it has to be taken to her Majesty?” “Its some love nonsense from Andre…” As soon as you mention Andre, all of THEM begin clicking their mandibles. “Andre? That fly fucker who’s been stalking the Queen for years?” “Yeah, apparently he’s been trying give this letter to her; he says you guys chase him off, so he’s got me to do it. He says she’ll instantly fall in love with him after she reads it, I think he’s wasting his time, but there’s no point in telling him that.” “So do you think he’ll stop stalking her, if this letter was finally delivered, regardless of the outcome?” “I dunno, maybe.” You say. “Alright, give me the letter I’ll take it to her, we’re sick of that smell every time he comes around here anyway.” > You insist that you take it to her in person “I don’t think so; I want to make sure this gets to her, so you can just let me in.” “Well then you can shove that letter up your ass and pull it back out and give it to Andre to eat, because you ain’t getting in here mutt. We’ll not let your inferior kind pollute the Hive. Leave, you’re not wanted here.” It’s obvious that they don’t know anything about you, because they’d know that anyone telling you that you’re not wanted somewhere is the surest way of causing you to get in on purpose out of sheer spite. “Well I guess I’ll just…” you stop talking and grab the guard’s big ant head through the bars of the gate and smash it towards you causing green stuff to leak out. You then retreat back to you bike when the rest open up the gate to punish you. The fools now have the gate open! While they attempt to catch you, you maneuver your bike around THEM to avoid their attacks and drive towards the mansion. A general alarm is raised and soon there are ants all over the estate attempting to catch you. You’d never be able to fight them all. As you get closer to the mansion you notice its several entrances. You can either drive your bike into one of these hive tunnels or just drive your bike through one of the low mansion windows. > You drive through a window You’re not about to get yourself lost in some insect tunnels, besides knowing that stuck up wasp bitch, she’d still live in her mansion area. You drive up on a raised part of the ground and jump your bike through one of the first floor windows. The glass breaks and several house ants get out of your way except one who you land on and crush. You fly off your bike “Shit!” you exclaim as you slam into the wall. You quickly recover and find yourself surrounded by more ant people. These ants aren’t as big as the ones outside, but that hardly matters. They seem a little more shocked than anything though. “Eeek! There’s a filthy mammal in the Hive! Protect the queen! Protect the queen! Where are the soldiers?!” one yells and then they all let off an ear piecing sound Speaking of the soldiers, they’re heading towards the broken window you just crashed through, you need to get to Janice NOW. You punch your way through the house ants. In the ensuing scuffle you rip off a couple of antennas, this seems to have a desired incapacitating effect on THEM and they begin twitching on the floor. “Oh yeah, I forgot that they need those things.” You say as you run up an ornate staircase with a fistful of antennas in your hand. You go through fancy room through fancy room (Mostly filled with expensive items, lots of sugar and some strange looking symbols) looking for Janice, until you finally reach a large bedroom with several mirrors. A bipedal insect creature stares into one of the mirrors brushing her hair. She turns around and a low angry buzz is sounded when she sees you. She flaps her wings and flies towards you. “AN INFERIOR MAMMAL IN MY HIVE? YOUR KIND WILL SOON BE ERADICATED FROM THE EARTH! INSECTS SHALL RULE ONCE AGAIN! THE TRUE MASTER RACE!” she shouts. You’re not exactly surprised that she doesn’t want to see you. > You attack her You don’t exactly know what’s going on here with the insectfest, but given Janice’s outburst it’s apparent she’s been planning something and whatever it is; you don’t feel like putting up with it later. Better to kill her now, than wake up one day and finding your cabin in the middle of another giant insect and human war. Besides you can kill her, rob the place, and make your escape, so this trip won’t be a total loss. Plus there’s the fact you need to prove to this bitch that you don’t care how big they are, all of them are still a bunch of lowly fucking bugs. Janice attempts to sting you, but you dodge and grab one of her mirrors. Your next move is throwing it in an attempt to decapitate her, she flies out of the way, but happily it hits a soldier ant in the head who was attempting to come in the doorway. “Filthy mammal! How dare you come here to try to kill me, don’t you know that you’re…” While she’s giving another speech, you grab her leg and slam her to the floor. Then you proceed to stomp on her back, crushing her wings. While she attempts to crawl away, you grab her stinger and pull it out; this is followed by a dying shriek as you’ve ripped the poison sack out which was attached to the rest of her insides. Your claws are covered with bug guts. A few more Ant soldiers come inside, but you use the stinger as a weapon and stab THEM in the chest with it squeezing the sac filling their bodies with deadly poison. They die convulsing horribly on the floor. Before more can arrive you look through some of her drawers and find some money lying around, you take that and the diamond rings on her fingers. Before escaping out the window, you throw Andre’s letter at her corpse. “I believe I was supposed to deliver this to you.” Your escape is fortunately uneventful, but you lost your bike, so you have to walk home which sucks. Eventually you get back to your town where you stop at the bar to have a drink. You’re about to enjoy your drink, when that revolting odor hits you again. “Wolf! You’re back, so what happened? Did she like my letter?” “Eh, let’s just say she didn’t have any reaction to it…Andre I don’t think she’ll ever be interested.” Andre looks a bit saddened by the news. “Oh. I guess you were right.” “Here, here’s a c-note, knock yourself out on sugar.” You say giving him a hundred dollars. “Well thanks Wolf, see ya around.” Andre says cheering up almost immediately and running out of the bar. The bartender speaks up about your uncharacteristic charity. “Wow, Wolf that was out of character for you.” “Yeah well keep the drinks coming, I’ll get back into character soon enough.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re not about to get yourself lost in some insect tunnels, besides knowing that stuck up wasp bitch, she’d still live in her mansion area. You drive up on a raised part of the ground and jump your bike through one of the first floor windows. The glass breaks and several house ants get out of your way except one who you land on and crush. You fly off your bike “Shit!” you exclaim as you slam into the wall. You quickly recover and find yourself surrounded by more ant people. These ants aren’t as big as the ones outside, but that hardly matters. They seem a little more shocked than anything though. “Eeek! There’s a filthy mammal in the Hive! Protect the queen! Protect the queen! Where are the soldiers?!” one yells and then they all let off an ear piecing sound Speaking of the soldiers, they’re heading towards the broken window you just crashed through, you need to get to Janice NOW. You punch your way through the house ants. In the ensuing scuffle you rip off a couple of antennas, this seems to have a desired incapacitating effect on THEM and they begin twitching on the floor. “Oh yeah, I forgot that they need those things.” You say as you run up an ornate staircase with a fistful of antennas in your hand. You go through fancy room through fancy room (Mostly filled with expensive items, lots of sugar and some strange looking symbols) looking for Janice, until you finally reach a large bedroom with several mirrors. A bipedal insect creature stares into one of the mirrors brushing her hair. She turns around and a low angry buzz is sounded when she sees you. She flaps her wings and flies towards you. “AN INFERIOR MAMMAL IN MY HIVE? YOUR KIND WILL SOON BE ERADICATED FROM THE EARTH! INSECTS SHALL RULE ONCE AGAIN! THE TRUE MASTER RACE!” she shouts. You’re not exactly surprised that she doesn’t want to see you. > You give her the note “Here, I’m supposed to deliver this letter to you.” You say and hold it out to her. “What?! You break into MY Hive, kill my guards and face your imminent destruction all to give me a letter?!” “First of all, I’m not facing any kind of destruction, and Andre said it was important.” “Andre?! You were sent here by Andre?! That lowly fly? What the hell is he paying you with?” “Nothing actually, I was planning on getting something out of you, though in retrospect, it probably was a stupid idea given your personality…I can tell by your rhetoric of insects being the master race, it hasn’t changed. Just a WASP in another form eh Janice?” Several Ant guards enter the room, but Janice tells them to halt. “Hold on, I’m slightly amused by Wolf here. Yes, I remember you. Getting drunk, picking fights with everyone, sleeping with every woman that could stomach you; typical behavior of the lower class. Just proves that I’m right, we insectoids aren’t controlled by our impulses; we’re orderly and superior. Anyway, be that as that may, I might as well read the note…ugh, I’ll have to remember to wash my hands after touching this.” Janice takes the letter and reads it. She then begins to laugh. “Does this fool actually believe he EVER had a chance with me?! Oh that IS amusing, in fact I’m in a good mood, guards you can escort Mr. Wolf out alive. This lap dog can run to tell his master Andre that I’ll never ever be interested in such a common creature as him.” There’s no way you’re going to just leave without retorting to her insult. > You antagonize her guards Just as the Ant guards are about to take you away, you speak up. “Yeah, that’s right take me back to my master. We all got masters right? Just like you Ants have yours. Tell me how’s it feel serving some demanding bitch.” “She is our queen, mammal, she has every right to demand from us.” The guard says unemotionally. “See? Order! Everyone knows their place! Purity!” Janice adds. “Some purity! You’re not even an Ant! Hey, you Ants even think of that?! She’s not even one of your kind, and you serve her?” “She understands our plight. She is an insect, like us. Our own Queen was destroyed a long time ago, we were directionless when she died, we were assimilated and exploited by you mammals soon after. The Wasp Queen has made arrangements so that shall never be ever again!” “Hey that was the humans, not me.” “Doesn’t matter! All you mammals are alike!” the guard snaps. “Guard stop arguing with this fool! He’ll never understand! Wolf I suggest you stop barking, or I shall change my mind of letting you go!” Janice says, she sounds a bit nervous about your line of questioning though. “Yeah, I guess you’re right, all mammals are alike, I mean look at Janice, she’s acting just like the rest of us. Ordering you around, living on your hard work.” “Shut up Wolf! Guard, I changed my mind! Kill this furball!” “When I said Janice wasn’t your kind, I didn’t mean the fact that she was a Wasp, I meant the fact that she NOT an insect! I mean look at her, she wasn’t born that way! YOU were born an ANT! She became a half Wasp freak due to a failed human experiment!” “Well we know that, but still…” “Still nothing! She’s just using you for whatever twisted purpose she has and to make life easy for herself, just like she did when she was human! Think about it, who does all the work around here? It looks like you Ants! She only has you around because no human wants to work for her! AND even if she WAS all for making things better for insect people why is she so against Andre? Shouldn’t HE be allowed in too? I mean sure he’s a half freak, but so is Janice! Sounds like a double standard to me!” “The mammal has a point…you really aren’t one of us, in any sense of the word. A Queen is supposed to breed to keep the colony alive, in all these years, you haven’t even made that attempt, you’ve just been telling us what to do with promises of a so called glorious future for our kind.” “Um, I haven’t found the right guy…erm…Well what the hell do you want me to do mate with a pathetic mammal? All you Ants are female, and it’s not like there’s exactly any Male insects around!” Janice says trying in vain to find excuses. “There’s Andre.” You remind everyone. “Yes, there’s Andre. Granted he might be part human, but then as Wolf pointed out, so are you. We would look past that though since the children of such a pairing could be indoctrinated to…” “Silence! I will not fuck Andre! Andre is unfit!! He’s a disgusting insect, who belongs in the trash! Now you Ants know your fucking place and kill this asshole! Your place is to serve your superiors!” Janice says in anger. That statement didn’t go over to well. The Ant guards begin to look at Janice and click their mandibles. They then advance on her. “What’re you doing?! Stop! I command you! OBEY!” Janice’s orders go unheard, she attempts to escape out the window, but one of the guards grabs her legs before she can take flight. She stings one of them, but is ultimately ripped apart. There’s bug guts and blood all over the place. The Ant guard you were speaking to earlier addresses you. “You can take whatever you like from this mansion; it was never our style, just more of Janice’s human vanity at work. We prefer the tunnels we’ve built Thank you for opening our eyes to reality. (Sigh) We wish it hadn’t been true though, now we don’t have any purpose once more, as strange as it may seem we prefer to serve in a hierarchy, it’s just our nature.” “Hmm, can’t argue with nature. I know I for one, would love to be stalking humans on the foggy moors, but adaptation can be a bitch. I do have an idea though….” You gather as much money and valuables you can from the Mansion and head back to the bar where Andre’s been waiting, he buzzes excitedly. “Wolf! You’re back! So is Janice is interested?!” “She’s dead, but that’s not important…” “She’s dead?! What!? What happened?! But she was my love and...” You smack Andre upside the head and then shove your paw in a nearby patron’s beer to wash it. “Hey!” the patron says and then sees you scowl causing him to retract his statement. “Andre shut the fuck up and listen, I got you a better deal! You’ll be set for life, with all the sugar and whatever else you want. You know all those Ant guards, Janice had? Well they’re all willing to serve YOU, under a couple of conditions. You’re in charge, but you can’t think yourself inherently superior, you have to understand that you need them. You can’t suddenly start thinking you’re better than THEM just because you’re technically the king.” “Really? Well, yeah sure I can do that. Being a fly has made me pretty humble. I’ll be grateful more than anything.” “Okay second, TAKE A FUCKING BATH! Stop smelling like a garbage dump!” “Take a bath? Gee I dunno, that’s a pretty big step Wolf.” “You goddamn well better, if you want to score with all the Ant bitches there.” “WHAT?! Are you serious?!” “Fucking dead serious. None of them have ever mated, given that in the past only the Queen is supposed to, but now most of them want to feel what its like before they die. Hell, some of them hold out hope that they’ll produce offspring, to make their race thrive again. So, what’s it gonna be? A shit eating bum, or a smooth pimp Superfly that gets to be serviced by a bunch of virgins?” Andre doesn’t even answer; he just thanks you quickly and runs out the door. You doubt if you’ll ever see him again. “Lucky bastard.” You say as you sit down and order a drink with your newly gained loot.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Here, I’m supposed to deliver this letter to you.” You say and hold it out to her. “What?! You break into MY Hive, kill my guards and face your imminent destruction all to give me a letter?!” “First of all, I’m not facing any kind of destruction, and Andre said it was important.” “Andre?! You were sent here by Andre?! That lowly fly? What the hell is he paying you with?” “Nothing actually, I was planning on getting something out of you, though in retrospect, it probably was a stupid idea given your personality…I can tell by your rhetoric of insects being the master race, it hasn’t changed. Just a WASP in another form eh Janice?” Several Ant guards enter the room, but Janice tells them to halt. “Hold on, I’m slightly amused by Wolf here. Yes, I remember you. Getting drunk, picking fights with everyone, sleeping with every woman that could stomach you; typical behavior of the lower class. Just proves that I’m right, we insectoids aren’t controlled by our impulses; we’re orderly and superior. Anyway, be that as that may, I might as well read the note…ugh, I’ll have to remember to wash my hands after touching this.” Janice takes the letter and reads it. She then begins to laugh. “Does this fool actually believe he EVER had a chance with me?! Oh that IS amusing, in fact I’m in a good mood, guards you can escort Mr. Wolf out alive. This lap dog can run to tell his master Andre that I’ll never ever be interested in such a common creature as him.” There’s no way you’re going to just leave without retorting to her insult. > You antagonize her “I don’t think you’ll be taking me anywhere.” “Oh and why not?” “Because…well let’s just say, I’d tell you, but only in private.” “Save your veiled threats, I’m not impressed.” “It’s not a threat. I suggest you listen to my proposal.” You say all of this calmly with no malice in your voice. Janice gets a little nervous, but attempts to cover. “Alright fine, I’ll humor this mammal! Guards leave us, I’m sure I’d be able to handle this dog if he tries anything.” After the guards leave Janice backs away from you, close to the window in case she has to make an escape. She’s obviously intimidated by you, which is good. “We’re alone, speak.” “Well, it’s just occurred to me that you’re talking a lot of rhetoric, but not doing a whole lot about it. A so called Queen would be mating with SOMETHING to produce offspring. Surely you could’ve used Andre for such a purpose, even if he was a so called lower class bum. As long as they’re bugly and indoctrinated to the insect cause you shouldn’t have any problems right? In fact I question this whole insect supremacy thing. While I don’t doubt that YOU think you’re superior, I wonder if you feel that way about THEM. I think you’re just using THEM, to make your life more comfortable, and their dumb enough to believe your lies because they’re a bunch of good little Ants that mindlessly follow a hierarchy because that’s what they know best. However, they have been exploited in the past, namely by humans in their little wars. I don’t think they’d like to be suddenly reminded that something similar is going on here, because after all, when it comes down to it, you’re not really one of THEM, you’re just a half freak insect human who’s taking advantage of the situation. You’ve been lucky to get away with it so long, without any return investment on your part.” “…Okay, assuming that’s all true…and I’m not saying it isn’t…what are you proposing?” “It’s pretty simple. I delivered the letter to you; I expect a little something for it.” Janice buzzes displeasingly, but she realizes she has little choice. She goes over to a wall safe and hands you everything in it. “Okay, you’ve got your money, now get out of here!” “Thanks, now what do you want me to tell Andre?” “Andre? Tell him to fuck off! I still don’t want anything to do with that bum!” “You know, maybe I’m keeping quiet about your scheme, but that doesn’t mean your Ant slaves won’t catch on eventually. Maybe you should take precautions by considering Andre’s offer, just some free advice.” “You’re kidding right?” “Not at all. What’s the big deal? You’re both hideous bug freaks. Doesn’t seem like you’d be that picky at this point in your life…” “I am NOT hideous, I have a condition! And I’m just waiting for the right man. What about YOU? You’re not exactly Mr. Universe!” “Janice…give it up. No bloodsucker is going to EVER want you. Not when there are all those young human girls to seduce and consume. Not to mention the eternally youthful Vamp girls. I think its time you lowered your standards. And as for your comments to me, I’m a guy; the lowering of my standards doesn’t apply to me. Maybe it’s sexist and all that unPC shit, but that’s the way the world works. I could get old as fuck, and still be banging teenagers. All I need to worry about is being able to get it up. And since I’m the Alpha Wolf, that ain’t a problem.” “You know Wolf, I’ve always heard about your so called legendary prowess in the bedroom, but I’ve always questioned it. I can’t help wonder if you yourself have done a lot of talking, but not actually doing. Perhaps you’ve spread all those lies yourself eh?” Janice taunts. > You prove it You’re NOT going to let your cocksmanship come into question here! If this bug bitch wants your dick in her then that’s what you’re going to do! Janice senses it and smiles as she positions herself on the bed. “So are you gonna show me what you got, or are you just stand there and hold your dog dick.” She buzzes. “You know, I’ve fucked a lot of women. Humans, aliens, other werewolves, and even the goddamned undead so help me. Yeah, I’ve fucked just about everything that’s walked or crawled at one time or another, and now I’m here to fuck you Janice.” You get down to it. It’s an “interesting” experience to say the least. You have to be careful due to her stinger, but its not too bad. Now if anyone asks if you’ve ever fucked a bug, you can honestly answer “Why yes I have!” Afterwards while she’s praising your abilities, you wonder if you shouldn’t stick around, might be alright to live in a mansion, you can ignore the Ants, since they seem to concentrate on their own business and all you’d have to do is keep her satisfied and just close your eyes. (You’d fuck her from behind, but there’s that damn stinger…) > You stay You made up in your mind to stay “So Janice you ready for round two because URK!” you’re cut off mid sentence when you feel a sharp pain in your stomach! Poison soon follows, you’re paralyzed! You attempt to speak, but you can’t even do that. Janice hovers above you. “Well you were everything you claimed, it’s almost a shame that I have to kill you, but you’re right appearances have to be kept up. I can’t have a filthy dog like you dirtying up the house, what WOULD the Ants think?” As the poison finally works on completely destroying your nervous system, everything goes dark and the last thing you hear is the buzzing laughter of Janice.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re NOT going to let your cocksmanship come into question here! If this bug bitch wants your dick in her then that’s what you’re going to do! Janice senses it and smiles as she positions herself on the bed. “So are you gonna show me what you got, or are you just stand there and hold your dog dick.” She buzzes. “You know, I’ve fucked a lot of women. Humans, aliens, other werewolves, and even the goddamned undead so help me. Yeah, I’ve fucked just about everything that’s walked or crawled at one time or another, and now I’m here to fuck you Janice.” You get down to it. It’s an “interesting” experience to say the least. You have to be careful due to her stinger, but its not too bad. Now if anyone asks if you’ve ever fucked a bug, you can honestly answer “Why yes I have!” Afterwards while she’s praising your abilities, you wonder if you shouldn’t stick around, might be alright to live in a mansion, you can ignore the Ants, since they seem to concentrate on their own business and all you’d have to do is keep her satisfied and just close your eyes. (You’d fuck her from behind, but there’s that damn stinger…) > You go Nope, you need your freedom and even if you were going to be “kept” you’d make sure it would be by someone a lot hotter. As you get up, you hear a lower buzz tone. Sounds angry. When you turn around you narrowly avoid a sting to your face. Definitely angry! Janice is now hovering in front and slightly above you preparing for another attack. “Oh ho! Mating then killing afterwards is it? Sorry, but I’m not a drone baby.” You say and grab her legs. You follow this up, by throwing her into the wall. While she attempts to recover and calls for her guards, you leap out the window, with your payment. It takes awhile to get back because you left your bike back at the mansion which sucks big time. When you get back to town you immediately head for the bar. You don’t even get to drink your drink before Andre comes in stinks up the place. “Wolf! You’re back! The letter! Janice! What’s going on? Is she in love with me?” “Uh no Andre, she isn’t, but look on bright side, she has a nasty habit of killing after she mates with someone. Surely you didn’t want that, right?” “Yikes! No I suppose you’re right, I guess it was a pipe dream anyway.” Andre gets to the door and then turns back around. “Hey Wolf, how do you know she kills after she mates?” “Um, it’s an insect thing, I would’ve thought you’d known that Andre.” “Not all insects do that though, in fact that’s spiders! Now some in some insect species, the males die afterwards, but...” “(Sigh) okay I didn’t want tell you this but…” Andre looks at you expectantly. “I caught her fucking some other bug guy and when they were done, she stabbed him with her stinger, and ate him.” “Oh. Well okay then, thanks for looking out for me.” Andre says and leaves. “Yep, I am the Samaritan.” You say taking a drink.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I don’t think you’ll be taking me anywhere.” “Oh and why not?” “Because…well let’s just say, I’d tell you, but only in private.” “Save your veiled threats, I’m not impressed.” “It’s not a threat. I suggest you listen to my proposal.” You say all of this calmly with no malice in your voice. Janice gets a little nervous, but attempts to cover. “Alright fine, I’ll humor this mammal! Guards leave us, I’m sure I’d be able to handle this dog if he tries anything.” After the guards leave Janice backs away from you, close to the window in case she has to make an escape. She’s obviously intimidated by you, which is good. “We’re alone, speak.” “Well, it’s just occurred to me that you’re talking a lot of rhetoric, but not doing a whole lot about it. A so called Queen would be mating with SOMETHING to produce offspring. Surely you could’ve used Andre for such a purpose, even if he was a so called lower class bum. As long as they’re bugly and indoctrinated to the insect cause you shouldn’t have any problems right? In fact I question this whole insect supremacy thing. While I don’t doubt that YOU think you’re superior, I wonder if you feel that way about THEM. I think you’re just using THEM, to make your life more comfortable, and their dumb enough to believe your lies because they’re a bunch of good little Ants that mindlessly follow a hierarchy because that’s what they know best. However, they have been exploited in the past, namely by humans in their little wars. I don’t think they’d like to be suddenly reminded that something similar is going on here, because after all, when it comes down to it, you’re not really one of THEM, you’re just a half freak insect human who’s taking advantage of the situation. You’ve been lucky to get away with it so long, without any return investment on your part.” “…Okay, assuming that’s all true…and I’m not saying it isn’t…what are you proposing?” “It’s pretty simple. I delivered the letter to you; I expect a little something for it.” Janice buzzes displeasingly, but she realizes she has little choice. She goes over to a wall safe and hands you everything in it. “Okay, you’ve got your money, now get out of here!” “Thanks, now what do you want me to tell Andre?” “Andre? Tell him to fuck off! I still don’t want anything to do with that bum!” “You know, maybe I’m keeping quiet about your scheme, but that doesn’t mean your Ant slaves won’t catch on eventually. Maybe you should take precautions by considering Andre’s offer, just some free advice.” “You’re kidding right?” “Not at all. What’s the big deal? You’re both hideous bug freaks. Doesn’t seem like you’d be that picky at this point in your life…” “I am NOT hideous, I have a condition! And I’m just waiting for the right man. What about YOU? You’re not exactly Mr. Universe!” “Janice…give it up. No bloodsucker is going to EVER want you. Not when there are all those young human girls to seduce and consume. Not to mention the eternally youthful Vamp girls. I think its time you lowered your standards. And as for your comments to me, I’m a guy; the lowering of my standards doesn’t apply to me. Maybe it’s sexist and all that unPC shit, but that’s the way the world works. I could get old as fuck, and still be banging teenagers. All I need to worry about is being able to get it up. And since I’m the Alpha Wolf, that ain’t a problem.” “You know Wolf, I’ve always heard about your so called legendary prowess in the bedroom, but I’ve always questioned it. I can’t help wonder if you yourself have done a lot of talking, but not actually doing. Perhaps you’ve spread all those lies yourself eh?” Janice taunts. > You leave “Ha ha, sorry darling, but you’ll just have to wonder about the Legend, because you ain’t getting any of this, I guess I do have my standards too of a sort. I’ll be leaving now, so are you sure you don’t want Andre?” “(Sigh) Very well, I supposed his letter and stalking did prove genuine feelings. Tell him he can come by, but under one condition, he needs to take a fucking bath!” “Hmm, that’ll be a big step for him, but I’ll see what I can do.” “Yeah you do that, now get the hell out and never return!” You gather your bike from downstairs where you left and leave with your money. When you get back to the bar Andre is hopping up and down waiting for your news. “Wolf! My letter! So what about it? Did she like it?” “She’s all yours Don Juan. Just take a bath before you approach her, that was her only condition.” “For her, anything! Thanks Wolf!” Andre says and runs out the door, leaving you to your drink. Time passes and you never see Andre lurking around town to bother you ever again, you figure he was living it up with Janice. The truth is much different as you soon find out later. Apparently Janice took your advice of keeping up appearances and she mated with Andre. Unfortunately for him, she killed him afterwards when she confirmed she was pregnant. She ended up giving birth to a bunch of little Wasp Flies. Disgusting little buggers and even more so when they grew up. Rotten attitude and equally rotten smell. No discipline whatsoever. They all eventually just became a gang of thugs calling themselves the “Yellow Jackets” who weren’t really interested in world domination so much as just petty criminal activity. Still, they were enough to keep the Ants from thinking that Janice wasn’t dedicated to the “Queen” role. Her place was secure. Meanwhile you live fairly well on your wealth from Janice. Everyone won. Well except Andre of course.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“I don’t think so; I want to make sure this gets to her, so you can just let me in.” “Well then you can shove that letter up your ass and pull it back out and give it to Andre to eat, because you ain’t getting in here mutt. We’ll not let your inferior kind pollute the Hive. Leave, you’re not wanted here.” It’s obvious that they don’t know anything about you, because they’d know that anyone telling you that you’re not wanted somewhere is the surest way of causing you to get in on purpose out of sheer spite. “Well I guess I’ll just…” you stop talking and grab the guard’s big ant head through the bars of the gate and smash it towards you causing green stuff to leak out. You then retreat back to you bike when the rest open up the gate to punish you. The fools now have the gate open! While they attempt to catch you, you maneuver your bike around THEM to avoid their attacks and drive towards the mansion. A general alarm is raised and soon there are ants all over the estate attempting to catch you. You’d never be able to fight them all. As you get closer to the mansion you notice its several entrances. You can either drive your bike into one of these hive tunnels or just drive your bike through one of the low mansion windows. > You drive into one of the holes You figure Janice will be in the hive tunnels given that she’s a “queen” now. You’re still wondering what the fuck is exactly going on here. Sadly you won’t be finding out. As you drive deeper through the hive tunnels it gets very apparent that you’re lost due to the fact they all look alike! The ant guards have no such directional difficulties and are all over the place. Soon they manage to knock you off the bike, you make a run for it, but its no use there are too many and you’re completely lost. They catch you, overwhelm you, kill you and eat you. Yes, in that exact order. (It would be silly in any other order)<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe you’re getting a little soft in your old age, but you can somewhat sympathize with Andre, he’s in an even worse situation than you. He’s been stricken by bad luck more than you have. Helping him could be financially beneficial, plus if Andre had a home, he wouldn’t be constantly bothering you for money every time you walked into town. “Alright Andre I’ll help, just stand back and get your fucking disease ridden hands off of me! And don’t touch me again!” “Okay, I can do that. Thanks Wolf! I swear I won’t forget this!” “Yeah, yeah, now what do you want me to do?” “I need you to deliver this letter to her; it’s a poem about how I feel about her and how I’ve always felt about her. I know if she just read this she’d give me a chance!” You take the crumpled letter which reeks of Andre’s overall foulness, but you still have more questions. “Andre I know you’ve always wanted to do some buggery on Janice, but I hardly see how this is going to change how she feels and why the hell can’t you do this?” “Because every time I even try to get NEAR her mansion she has her guards chase me off! Its like when I try to sneak in anywhere people can somehow sense I’m coming!” “Andre, did it ever occur to you to that your fucking ODOR is the reason?” “Odor? What odor?” Andre asks like it’s the first time anyone’s ever suggested that to him that before. “Look I know in my heart that if she read my words, she’d fall for me, just like I know you’ll be able to get in and give her that letter!” “This is starting to sound like a lot of effort for possibly no reward…” “Arrrgh! Look when you get in there, you could always just rip something valuable off! Just please, you gotta give her that letter!” You look at the love letter (which has remarkable penmanship) and shake your head. Looks like you’re on a bug hunt. “Alright Andre you’re lucky her mansion isn’t far and I’m not busy right now. I just turned down an offer to live on an island paradise for the rest of my life in exchange for getting rid some Martians.” “What, you mean Moreau’s offer? He offered me a similar deal, but then quickly retracted it for some reason. But Wolf I know you wouldn’t have wanted to help some hippy freaks you don’t even know! But this is different! In this case you’re helping out an old friend gain true love!” “Okay listen up, I’m not, nor will I ever be your friend. I’m doing this for my own reasons. When I return, meet me back here at this bar.” You turn and eagerly leave Andre to go back to your cabin. You don’t normally like to wash, but in this case you definitely feel the need to! After thoroughly scrubbing down, you take your Harley and drive over to Janice’s mansion which is just a couple of counties away. It doesn’t take you long to get there. You haven’t really seen this place except once a long time ago and it looked like a regular mansion, now the place looks like a concentration compound; there is a big metal gate and barbed wire lined walls surrounding the mansion. The mansion itself looks like some half weird insect hive, half man made structure. As soon as you park near the gate you’re approached by some figures marching in unison like soldiers. They’re like big ants or at least they look like THEM. Something weird is going on. “You! Inferior hairy mammal! What business do you have here at the Hive?!” one of the ant guards asks clicking his mandibles angrily. “I’m supposed to deliver a letter to Janice.” “Watch you tongue, dog! You mean the Supreme Hive Queen! And she does not see inferiors such as you! Be gone, you impotent mangy mutt!” Well you’re used to people not liking you, but hearing it from a giant bug is still pretty insulting. > You sneak in “Fuck off, bug.” You say and leave. You get on your bike and drive off, but only a few miles out of sight, you then stash your bike behind some bushes and head back to the mansion. You head around the side walls, and scale them. The barbwire on top is a bitch though and you end up getting your fur caught in it. After tugging and ripping yourself up, you fall off the wall into the mansion grounds, bleeding and surrounded by ant people. Apparently they could sense something not “Bugly” creeping around, not to mention you made some noise trying to get off the barb wire. You end up meeting Janice after all…on her dinner plate.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe you’re getting a little soft in your old age, but you can somewhat sympathize with Andre, he’s in an even worse situation than you. He’s been stricken by bad luck more than you have. Helping him could be financially beneficial, plus if Andre had a home, he wouldn’t be constantly bothering you for money every time you walked into town. “Alright Andre I’ll help, just stand back and get your fucking disease ridden hands off of me! And don’t touch me again!” “Okay, I can do that. Thanks Wolf! I swear I won’t forget this!” “Yeah, yeah, now what do you want me to do?” “I need you to deliver this letter to her; it’s a poem about how I feel about her and how I’ve always felt about her. I know if she just read this she’d give me a chance!” You take the crumpled letter which reeks of Andre’s overall foulness, but you still have more questions. “Andre I know you’ve always wanted to do some buggery on Janice, but I hardly see how this is going to change how she feels and why the hell can’t you do this?” “Because every time I even try to get NEAR her mansion she has her guards chase me off! Its like when I try to sneak in anywhere people can somehow sense I’m coming!” “Andre, did it ever occur to you to that your fucking ODOR is the reason?” “Odor? What odor?” Andre asks like it’s the first time anyone’s ever suggested that to him that before. “Look I know in my heart that if she read my words, she’d fall for me, just like I know you’ll be able to get in and give her that letter!” “This is starting to sound like a lot of effort for possibly no reward…” “Arrrgh! Look when you get in there, you could always just rip something valuable off! Just please, you gotta give her that letter!” You look at the love letter (which has remarkable penmanship) and shake your head. Looks like you’re on a bug hunt. “Alright Andre you’re lucky her mansion isn’t far and I’m not busy right now. I just turned down an offer to live on an island paradise for the rest of my life in exchange for getting rid some Martians.” “What, you mean Moreau’s offer? He offered me a similar deal, but then quickly retracted it for some reason. But Wolf I know you wouldn’t have wanted to help some hippy freaks you don’t even know! But this is different! In this case you’re helping out an old friend gain true love!” “Okay listen up, I’m not, nor will I ever be your friend. I’m doing this for my own reasons. When I return, meet me back here at this bar.” You turn and eagerly leave Andre to go back to your cabin. You don’t normally like to wash, but in this case you definitely feel the need to! After thoroughly scrubbing down, you take your Harley and drive over to Janice’s mansion which is just a couple of counties away. It doesn’t take you long to get there. You haven’t really seen this place except once a long time ago and it looked like a regular mansion, now the place looks like a concentration compound; there is a big metal gate and barbed wire lined walls surrounding the mansion. The mansion itself looks like some half weird insect hive, half man made structure. As soon as you park near the gate you’re approached by some figures marching in unison like soldiers. They’re like big ants or at least they look like THEM. Something weird is going on. “You! Inferior hairy mammal! What business do you have here at the Hive?!” one of the ant guards asks clicking his mandibles angrily. “I’m supposed to deliver a letter to Janice.” “Watch you tongue, dog! You mean the Supreme Hive Queen! And she does not see inferiors such as you! Be gone, you impotent mangy mutt!” Well you’re used to people not liking you, but hearing it from a giant bug is still pretty insulting. > You memories (THEM!) Giant Ants: THEM! Well thanks to human ingenuity they probably created more monsters in the 50s with their nuclear tests. Gigantism and mutation were a big problem during that era. Along with giant spiders and mantises, the biggest problem was when an ant colony was struck by massive radiation and went undetected in the desert for a couple of years and wasn’t discovered until giant ants began carrying off small children from nearby towns to their colony. Granted they were never as big as people saw in the movies (Such a size would cause them to collapse underneath their own weight) but they did grow to be as big as humans. In fact they took on the look of “Ant centaurs”. A torso with two arms and a back end with four legs, still all very antlike though. Initially they weren’t very intelligent, but they grew smarter as time went on. This caused even greater problems for humans later. Now the “Ant people” weren’t malevolent per say, but they just had a different outlook on life just like any other culture, and they saw humans (And anything else that went near their colony) as a source of food. Naturally humans and insects have never gotten along so it was only a matter of time before all out war was declared. The war might’ve lasted longer if the Ant people were able to adapt a little better, and if humans hadn’t had a severe tech advantage. The humans were determined to wipe THEM out before they could get the numerical advantage. This of course was done by blowing up their queen thus ending any chance of THEM ever conquering the Earth. The remaining Ant people would’ve probably been mopped up, but by this time it was the 60s and civil rights and shit came about. Hippies started saying that they had the right to exist on their own land and such, so the remaining ones were eventually allowed to live, and in time they assimilated into society like everyone else. Nobody was sure of their life span, but the government still perceived THEM as a legitimate potential threat and didn’t really want to take the chance that one of those ants could turn into another queen somehow, so a lot got drafted into the Vietnam War to “thin out” their population. (Plus they made excellent soldiers, and were especially helpful in flushing out Viet Cong tunnels) Needless to say there aren’t too many Ant People left anymore, the ones that are still alive tend to keep to themselves and suspicious of everyone and anyone that doesn’t have six limbs. Any chance of THEM making a “come back” is highly unlikely.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re not about to go traipsing across the world to save a bunch of hippy freaks from some dumb ass Martians. “I don’t think so Moreau, see ya around.” You say and get up to leave the bar, before anyone else asks you for any favors. You don’t get two feet outside of the place and suddenly you’re assaulted by a terrible smell. The stench is not unlike that of hot garbage during a heat wave. You turn around holding your nose and see Andre with his big ol’ stupid grotesque fly head. “Hey Wolf... Can you spare me some money?” he asks “Fuck Andre! Stand the hell away from me! What the hell? Did you roll around in a septic tank?” “Uh no, I just ate some fresh turds back in the alleyway…” “I don’t even know why I asked you that, I already knew the answer. Ugh.” you say continuing to hold your nose. “They tasted pretty good to me. Hey, but I could use some of that sweet sugar. You got any spare change so I can get me a box of the stuff?” “Fuck no! I barely have enough money for me! Phew! Just get the fuck away!” “Aw come on, help a brother out.” “Broth… what the…look nevermind, I ain’t got time for this shit Andre, if you want sugar so bad just go into a fast food place and stock up on those little free packets!” “I can’t! A lot of those places use that artificial sugar now! Don’t those idiotic humans know that stuff can cause cancer?! Besides whenever they see me coming they start spraying raid on me and hitting me in the head with swatters. I’ve even attempted to sneak in quietly, but they always seem to sense I’m coming, I can never understand how they do that.” “Gee, I can’t imagine how they’d be able to do it, Andre.” You say still holding your nose futility trying to block out Andre’s odor. “I just wish I could get with Janice, she’s got ALL the sugar! (Buzz) But she won’t have anything to do with me; She thinks I’m just low class trash.” “Well if you’re eating shit, I’d say she’s pretty much right.” “It’s not just her sugar I’m after though, I think she’s beautiful! She has such heavenly wings, and a nice abdomen! Yep she really kept herself in good condition after all these years. (Buzz)” “Yeah that’s real nice Andre, tell someone who cares.” You start to leave and then Andre has the nerve to grab you by the arm. “Wolf, please you gotta help me out! I can’t live like this anymore, I thought I could being part fly and all, but it’s getting too bad! I’m nearly killed everywhere I go and I’m getting too old to defend myself adequately! Humans hate the sight of me and I disgust them! I need to a home! Janice has a home! You gotta help me convince her that we should be together! Look, you know she’s rich too! You said you were in need of money too right? Maybe if we’re successful, something can be worked out.” > You memories (Andre) The Fly: Andre Delambre For every successful “Mad Scientist” there are several failed ones. Most of them usually get killed by their own fool creations, or in their attempt to rule the world. Others are just inept and can’t create anything worthwhile. Still others just have some very bad luck. Andre falls into that category. Everyone knows the story, Andre was working on a teleportation device and when he tested it out a fly got in the thing with him and turned him into the big bug he is today. Contrary to what the movies say, there was NOT a fly buzzing around with his head on it after the accident! It was more like “remake” where his DNA combined with the fly’s DNA, just one being, not two separate ones. (Though he did still have a big ol’ grotesque fly head afterwards.) Needless to say his career as any kind of scientist was over, while his intelligence hadn’t been reduced to that of a fly, it certainly lowered it from what it was, and tended to make him more focused on simpler things like eating. His marriage was over as well. (His wife got everything; a repulsive fly isn’t too sympathetic) While he did find a new life of sorts in horror after his accident, it was still limited. It’s not like being a werewolf or vampire, they don’t make multiple movies with rampaging fly people and it’s not like he could “pass” for human for other roles. It wasn’t just that though, the main problem was he was a disgusting disease carrying fly and nobody wanted to be around him! This of course made other jobs somewhat limited as well. His last hope was working in the “Sanitation Engineering” field, which he thought would be perfect, but the problem was he spent too much time eating garbage rather than picking it up. He was fired within the week. Eventually his money ran out and he became a bum which probably wasn’t that bad for him, indeed he was more “free” now; ironic, since he started out from poverty and worked his way up from the gutter when he was a human and stated he’d never want to be poor ever again. You always avoided him for the same reasons everyone else did. He was just nasty smelling and looking. Despite your obvious dislike for Andre it hasn’t stopped him from all the times he’s tried to borrow money from you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You’re not about to go traipsing across the world to save a bunch of hippy freaks from some dumb ass Martians. “I don’t think so Moreau, see ya around.” You say and get up to leave the bar, before anyone else asks you for any favors. You don’t get two feet outside of the place and suddenly you’re assaulted by a terrible smell. The stench is not unlike that of hot garbage during a heat wave. You turn around holding your nose and see Andre with his big ol’ stupid grotesque fly head. “Hey Wolf... Can you spare me some money?” he asks “Fuck Andre! Stand the hell away from me! What the hell? Did you roll around in a septic tank?” “Uh no, I just ate some fresh turds back in the alleyway…” “I don’t even know why I asked you that, I already knew the answer. Ugh.” you say continuing to hold your nose. “They tasted pretty good to me. Hey, but I could use some of that sweet sugar. You got any spare change so I can get me a box of the stuff?” “Fuck no! I barely have enough money for me! Phew! Just get the fuck away!” “Aw come on, help a brother out.” “Broth… what the…look nevermind, I ain’t got time for this shit Andre, if you want sugar so bad just go into a fast food place and stock up on those little free packets!” “I can’t! A lot of those places use that artificial sugar now! Don’t those idiotic humans know that stuff can cause cancer?! Besides whenever they see me coming they start spraying raid on me and hitting me in the head with swatters. I’ve even attempted to sneak in quietly, but they always seem to sense I’m coming, I can never understand how they do that.” “Gee, I can’t imagine how they’d be able to do it, Andre.” You say still holding your nose futility trying to block out Andre’s odor. “I just wish I could get with Janice, she’s got ALL the sugar! (Buzz) But she won’t have anything to do with me; She thinks I’m just low class trash.” “Well if you’re eating shit, I’d say she’s pretty much right.” “It’s not just her sugar I’m after though, I think she’s beautiful! She has such heavenly wings, and a nice abdomen! Yep she really kept herself in good condition after all these years. (Buzz)” “Yeah that’s real nice Andre, tell someone who cares.” You start to leave and then Andre has the nerve to grab you by the arm. “Wolf, please you gotta help me out! I can’t live like this anymore, I thought I could being part fly and all, but it’s getting too bad! I’m nearly killed everywhere I go and I’m getting too old to defend myself adequately! Humans hate the sight of me and I disgust them! I need to a home! Janice has a home! You gotta help me convince her that we should be together! Look, you know she’s rich too! You said you were in need of money too right? Maybe if we’re successful, something can be worked out.” > You memories (Janice) The Wasp Woman: Janice Starlin Even before she became another insect hybrid, she was a “WASP” in every sense of the word, though “Nazi” might be even more appropriate. Janice likes to keep her past a secret, but for those in the know, she was sympathetic to the Germans during WW II. It’s one of the reasons why she wasn’t in “showbiz” for too long. (Showbiz and Anti-Semitism isn’t a good combination) Even without being a Nazi sympathizer, she was still a stuck up rich human bitch who came from “Old Money”. She was obsessed with her youth and looks and being an actress she was even more fanatical about it. As with all humans they can’t stop the ravages time without a little help, either supernatural or scientific. She attempted supernatural first, and tried to get one of those parasitic bloodsuckers to turn her. It would’ve been perfect for her; the problem was no vampire was willing to do it. The bloodsuckers are monsters, but even they tend to frown upon Nazis. (Of course Werewolves aren’t fond of Nazis either) Indeed, most Vampires have roots in the “Old country” (Not any particular country, just all of them) and as such most originally have Slavic or even Jewish backgrounds. (Which might explain why crosses don’t really work so well in real life as opposed to the crap they show in movies) and since Fagula is the head cocksucker…erm bloodsucker in charge, no vampire was going to defy him, even if they wanted to. Janice resorted to scientific means, so she hired some mad scientist type who was working on a youth serum based on wasp jelly. You’re not exactly familiar with the technical stuff involved, but what basically happened was a typical mad scientist “accident” and the shit turned her into a half wasp creature. Though while not as spectacularly as bad as Andre’s “accident”, it was horrific for her and ended her career as a “normal” actress. This transformation didn’t make her disposition any better, if anything she just got meaner and more condescending. When she “arrived” in the monster world, she constantly would go on about how she was superior to everyone else and why. (Though she didn’t say anything about the bloodsuckers since despite them shunning her she still always wanted to be one) After the show biz career started to dry up for her, she went back to being a typical rich shut in who never left her mansion. It’s not like she had to work, being independently wealthy and all. Nobody’s really had any contact with her since.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You and Moreau have never had any dealings with each other before, so you’re kind of curious to as why he wanted to see you. You approach Moreau and he’s tripping over himself to thank you for seeing him. You’re a little suspicious of this treatment, especially since you’ve never been welcomed by anyone before. “Wolf, its Wolf right? Or do you prefer Mr. Wolf?” “Wolf is fine…will you tell me why the hell you want to see me so badly for? We’ve never had anything to do with each other before.” “Yes. Quite correct. My Vision didn’t lead me to interact socially that much. Maybe I shouldn’t have concentrated so much on my Vision though. Maybe I should’ve been more flexible. If I had, I might not have the problems I have now.” “Okay, so will you quit with the fucking mystery already and tell me what’s going on?” “As you know I transformed my island into a utopia where no being harms another.” “Pfft, some Utopia. I call it fucking with nature.” “And you know what? I agree with you. At one time, I would’ve dismissed you as a vicious animal that only pleased his primal instincts.” “You say it as if it’s a bad thing.” You utter. “I once thought so…but now I’m starting to see reality for the first time. My Utopia wasn’t followed by the world…it was hated. It was despised. Most are jealous of what I’ve done and want to destroy it.” “Duh, that’s humanity for you. So are you getting to the point anytime soon?” “My Utopia is about to be destroyed, but NOT directly. No human nation wants to look like the bad guys so you know what they’ve done instead? They’re letting Martians do it for them!” “What? Martians aren’t even allowed on this planet after all the unsuccessful attacks they’ve attempted on it.” You exclaim. “See that’s just it. In exchange of a new Martian-Earthling Peace accord they’re letting the Martians put a colony here provided they don’t kill any humans. The Martians agreed and MY Island was scheduled for designation for the colony! If we stay they’ll be allowed to kill everyone since nobody on there is human except me.” “Well that certainly does suck, but why not just move?” “WHAT!? That’s our home! Would YOU move from your own home?” “Eh…I suppose I can see your point. So what am I supposed to do though?” Moreau takes another drink and looks at you with dead seriousness. “I need you to get them all to FIGHT! I need you to get them all in touch with their animal instincts again! I know you’re more than just a werewolf. You’re the self-proclaimed Alpha. I need that viciousness, I need that aggressiveness, I need it ingrained into my people. I can’t do it. I’m not qualified, and I’d only make things worse. I can pay you all the money you want; our economy has always been good. If you like you could even live on the island and spend your remaining years there with nothing to worry about. You could mate with whoever you wanted, we could import whatever meat you wanted, or if you preferred…we could even make special arrangements just for you, to hunt living creatures. Anything…just please help us.” This is pretty heavy shit. Moreau must be very desperate to come begging to a practical stranger. There’s no way he’s lying about this, you have heard some stuff lately about Martian-Human relations, though you don’t really pay attention to the news a lot. You can’t say Moreau’s offer isn’t appealing on some level, but as much of a badass you are, you’re not in your prime anymore. Taking on a shit load of Martians and training a bunch of genetic freaks of nature could be just a little out of your scope. > You memories (Martians) The Invaders: Martians Martians much like Human comes in many shapes, sizes and colors. They are a technologically advanced race which is amazing considering how stupid they actually are. It makes you wonder if natural selection even occurred on the dismal red planet. The first Martian invasion was impressive since humans weren’t prepared for it. Unfortunately for all their advanced weaponry their medical science was probably in the fucking toilet…literally. They have to be the only galactic race of “conquerors” that lost a war because of dysentery. All the “War Machines” in the world couldn’t protect them from all the air born germs that infest humanity (They really are filthy when you think about it). You’d think that they’d take this information and try to combat it with…uh you know inventing fucking vaccinations and penicillin. But did they do that? Nope. They tried to invade again this time they figured if they never got out of their machines at all they’d be safe. Unfortunately in order to invade a planet you HAVE to have ground troops to do it. So while they blasted the shit out of the Earth again they couldn’t properly conquer it. So these geniuses spent the rest of the time arguing about what they should do until all their flying saucers ran out of fucking fuel and started falling out of the sky, crashing into shit. At this point you’d think they’d just give up, but they didn’t. The next failed mission involved them stealing human women to breed with them. They figured two things: One was that they could replenish all their soldiers again that they’d lost in the last two invasions. The second idea was they figured they could create a hybrid that was more resilient to human germs. The plan was doomed to failure in its typical Martian idiocy and this was a particularly spectacular one that nearly wiped them out permanently as well as effectively destroying them as a potential threat. First of all the Martians had to get OUT of their machines in order to kidnap these women. Sure they finally developed protective suits at this point, but they were made of a thin and easily ripped material. Many Martians died attempting to steal away feisty housewives. Second of all they would’ve had to steal a lot more housewives than they did in order to replenish their severely depleted military (And male population in general) to say nothing of the fact they had to put up with the human women for at least 9 LONG months before they got a return on their “investment”. The third problem was for some reason it didn’t occur to them that the germs would still be ON these human women! Many Martians died after mating with these kidnapped housewives, not to mention an “Earth” plague hit the entire planet now. More dead Martians and lots of them. The kicker of all this, was most of the “hybrid” Martians that grew up tended to be very interested in their human heritage and would go back to Earth. (With their moms of course) The only good thing that occurred was the survivors were now finally resistant to human germs. Little good it did now since half the planet died, and was in no position to invade anyone. (Luckily for them, humans were too busy fighting each other, or they would’ve surely been defeated had humans invaded Mars). The Martians tried a few more stupid invasions later, but they never were really serious and by that time humanity had caught up to them technologically. (Thanks to salvaging the technology from all those immobilized war machines and flying saucers that fell out of the sky) Nowadays Martians are considered the intergalactic equivalent of rude hillbilly neighbors with lots of guns. They bring a whole new meaning to term “REDneck”.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fuck it, you don’t feel like putting up with Erik’s whining. You’ll talk to him later when you’re in the mood. You hang up and decide to engage in one of your favorite past time ever since you became part of “society”. Drink. You head down to the bar in town. When you enter you see it nearly empty. Usually there’s someone here that you don’t like which gives you an excuse to get into a fight. You sit down and order a Scotch. The bartender tends to let you just drink and cleans up the mess you make afterwards, but today turns out a little differently. “Hey Wolf, some people have been wanting to see you.” The bartender says nervously. “Oh? Do these people have a name?” you ask downing your drink. “Well they’re in the bar right now actually, I think they’re old acquaintances of yours.” You scan the bar, which doesn’t take long considering its almost empty. And you’ll be damned you see not one, but THREE people from the old days; you’re surprised you didn’t notice them before. At a nearby table you see Dr. Henry Jekyll and Dr. Jack Griffin. Jack normally would be difficult to see in this dark lighting at the best of times, since he’s invisible, but he’s perfectly noticeable enough when he wears clothing. They see you and wave you to come over. At a table in the far corner you see Dr. Alphonse Moreau. He looks like a wreck. He’s obviously been chain smoking cigarettes and drinking a lot since he got here. He sees you and desperately signals you over like he needs your help severely. While you’re not surprised to see all these humans still alive (Mad scientists ALWAYS figure out how to extend their life spans past the normal human limit) you’re just surprised that they all want to see you and it makes you suspicious. You’ve always been mistrustful of Mad Scientist types ever since your run in with Dr. Victor Frankenstein. You turn to the bartender for more information. “What the hell, is there a Mad Scientist convention in town or some shit? Why are they all here and why do they want me?” “I dunno Wolf. I think its just coincidence. Henry and Jack say they got some sort of experiment going on and want your help on it. They know you’ve been needing some money lately and they’re willing to pay you for your time. I think Henry wants to play catch up with you as well.” “Hmm, speaking of catch, there probably is one. So why’s Moreau here? Same thing?” “He wouldn’t elaborate too much. He says he REALLY needs help with something, and it’s not an experiment. He says he gave up trying to play God. I dunno what’s wrong though you’ll have to ask him yourself. He just said, he’s willing to do anything for you if you help him. Well this venture to the bar seems to have become potentially lucrative; the problem is you have to deal with a bunch of humans with God complexes. (You doubt what the bartender told you about Moreau, his type never gets out of the game completely) You decide to throw caution to the wind and take one of their jobs; you feel you’ll be up to the challenge. After all its common knowledge of what you did to Victor when he tried to take advantage of you once. All it comes down to is who you want to deal with. > You memories (Henry) The Split Personality: Dr. Henry Jekyll/ Mr. Edward Hyde Henry Jekyll was a typical bookworm human nerd that couldn’t get a girl. If that all he was, you two wouldn’t have even met. Henry’s experiments though led him to the “Monster world”. Apparently he’d seen you and studied how successful you were with females of all types. He chalked it up to your confidence and overall badassitude. (Well he wasn’t really wrong in that assumption) Using you as a model of what he wanted to be like, he started designing potions to duplicate the lycanthropy effect. Contrary to what most folks believe, Werewolves tend to breed with each other to make more, (as opposed to those unnatural parasitic Fagpires) they very rarely “make someone a werewolf”. It’s typically only by accident that that happens, and its VERY rare that someone survives long enough to escape a werewolf attack. Given all those risks and the very likelihood he would be killed in such a process Henry went ahead with his potions until one of them finally got the desired effect. The problem was, it just made him into a big vicious ugly brute. (As opposed to a super smooth handsome Wolf like yourself) He wasn’t any more successful with the ladies as Mr. Hyde, if anything they were repulsed by him even more, which led a lot of…”accidents”. Ultimately he just broke down and paid for hookers. However, you and he hung out a lot back in the old days, mostly partying and fighting with others. He was a good guy to have your back in a fight when he was Mr. Hyde. You rarely talked to him as Henry, but he was usually civilized and respectful when he did address you. He didn’t annoy and piss you off like Erik, because he knew to keep his distance when he wasn’t your “peer”. You can respect a (hu)man who knows his limitations.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fuck it, you don’t feel like putting up with Erik’s whining. You’ll talk to him later when you’re in the mood. You hang up and decide to engage in one of your favorite past time ever since you became part of “society”. Drink. You head down to the bar in town. When you enter you see it nearly empty. Usually there’s someone here that you don’t like which gives you an excuse to get into a fight. You sit down and order a Scotch. The bartender tends to let you just drink and cleans up the mess you make afterwards, but today turns out a little differently. “Hey Wolf, some people have been wanting to see you.” The bartender says nervously. “Oh? Do these people have a name?” you ask downing your drink. “Well they’re in the bar right now actually, I think they’re old acquaintances of yours.” You scan the bar, which doesn’t take long considering its almost empty. And you’ll be damned you see not one, but THREE people from the old days; you’re surprised you didn’t notice them before. At a nearby table you see Dr. Henry Jekyll and Dr. Jack Griffin. Jack normally would be difficult to see in this dark lighting at the best of times, since he’s invisible, but he’s perfectly noticeable enough when he wears clothing. They see you and wave you to come over. At a table in the far corner you see Dr. Alphonse Moreau. He looks like a wreck. He’s obviously been chain smoking cigarettes and drinking a lot since he got here. He sees you and desperately signals you over like he needs your help severely. While you’re not surprised to see all these humans still alive (Mad scientists ALWAYS figure out how to extend their life spans past the normal human limit) you’re just surprised that they all want to see you and it makes you suspicious. You’ve always been mistrustful of Mad Scientist types ever since your run in with Dr. Victor Frankenstein. You turn to the bartender for more information. “What the hell, is there a Mad Scientist convention in town or some shit? Why are they all here and why do they want me?” “I dunno Wolf. I think its just coincidence. Henry and Jack say they got some sort of experiment going on and want your help on it. They know you’ve been needing some money lately and they’re willing to pay you for your time. I think Henry wants to play catch up with you as well.” “Hmm, speaking of catch, there probably is one. So why’s Moreau here? Same thing?” “He wouldn’t elaborate too much. He says he REALLY needs help with something, and it’s not an experiment. He says he gave up trying to play God. I dunno what’s wrong though you’ll have to ask him yourself. He just said, he’s willing to do anything for you if you help him. Well this venture to the bar seems to have become potentially lucrative; the problem is you have to deal with a bunch of humans with God complexes. (You doubt what the bartender told you about Moreau, his type never gets out of the game completely) You decide to throw caution to the wind and take one of their jobs; you feel you’ll be up to the challenge. After all its common knowledge of what you did to Victor when he tried to take advantage of you once. All it comes down to is who you want to deal with. > You memories (Jack) The Invisible Man: Dr. Jack Griffin You’ve never trusted Jack. He never did anything to you per say, but anyone who turns himself invisible is obviously a sneak who’s not to be trusted. Jack sometimes attempted to make friends with you or converse with you on various topics, but you just didn’t want his friendship (Granted you never really wanted anyone’s friendship, but that’s another story) and you told him as much one time. Being invisible bothered a lot of folks though, so you weren’t the only one that didn’t trust him. Just about everyone felt his wrath due to all this rejection and not being accepted as a “real monster”. He pulled a lot of cruel jokes on people as revenge, always got away with it too, since it’s difficult to find someone that’s invisible. (You did think it was funny when he stole some of Fagula’s best baby blood “wine” and mixed it with the blood of a diseased rat from his lab. He was sick for a month after ingesting such filth) He never tried anything on you though. It might be because he seemed to take your rejection a little better. You at least acknowledged his existence, by telling him WHY you didn’t like him. Most others just tried to avoid the issue and avoid or ignore him just like…well an invisible man. Besides, his invisibility wouldn’t have affected you too much anyway; with your sense of smell, you could always sense him coming.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Fuck it, you don’t feel like putting up with Erik’s whining. You’ll talk to him later when you’re in the mood. You hang up and decide to engage in one of your favorite past time ever since you became part of “society”. Drink. You head down to the bar in town. When you enter you see it nearly empty. Usually there’s someone here that you don’t like which gives you an excuse to get into a fight. You sit down and order a Scotch. The bartender tends to let you just drink and cleans up the mess you make afterwards, but today turns out a little differently. “Hey Wolf, some people have been wanting to see you.” The bartender says nervously. “Oh? Do these people have a name?” you ask downing your drink. “Well they’re in the bar right now actually, I think they’re old acquaintances of yours.” You scan the bar, which doesn’t take long considering its almost empty. And you’ll be damned you see not one, but THREE people from the old days; you’re surprised you didn’t notice them before. At a nearby table you see Dr. Henry Jekyll and Dr. Jack Griffin. Jack normally would be difficult to see in this dark lighting at the best of times, since he’s invisible, but he’s perfectly noticeable enough when he wears clothing. They see you and wave you to come over. At a table in the far corner you see Dr. Alphonse Moreau. He looks like a wreck. He’s obviously been chain smoking cigarettes and drinking a lot since he got here. He sees you and desperately signals you over like he needs your help severely. While you’re not surprised to see all these humans still alive (Mad scientists ALWAYS figure out how to extend their life spans past the normal human limit) you’re just surprised that they all want to see you and it makes you suspicious. You’ve always been mistrustful of Mad Scientist types ever since your run in with Dr. Victor Frankenstein. You turn to the bartender for more information. “What the hell, is there a Mad Scientist convention in town or some shit? Why are they all here and why do they want me?” “I dunno Wolf. I think its just coincidence. Henry and Jack say they got some sort of experiment going on and want your help on it. They know you’ve been needing some money lately and they’re willing to pay you for your time. I think Henry wants to play catch up with you as well.” “Hmm, speaking of catch, there probably is one. So why’s Moreau here? Same thing?” “He wouldn’t elaborate too much. He says he REALLY needs help with something, and it’s not an experiment. He says he gave up trying to play God. I dunno what’s wrong though you’ll have to ask him yourself. He just said, he’s willing to do anything for you if you help him. Well this venture to the bar seems to have become potentially lucrative; the problem is you have to deal with a bunch of humans with God complexes. (You doubt what the bartender told you about Moreau, his type never gets out of the game completely) You decide to throw caution to the wind and take one of their jobs; you feel you’ll be up to the challenge. After all its common knowledge of what you did to Victor when he tried to take advantage of you once. All it comes down to is who you want to deal with. > You memories (Alphonse) The Visionary: Dr. Alphonse Moreau Fuck Victor Frankenstein. That crackpot couldn’t compare to Moreau, and he knew it. Victor tried to “beat” Moreau in the Mad Scientist department and he failed spectacularly in everyway, and to add insult to injury, Moreau barely even acknowledged Victor’s self-created “feud” with him. Moreau was more interested in his own work more than competition. You never had any contact with Moreau mainly because he didn’t really take an interest in anything except his work. Everyone knows Moreau was doing a lot of genetic experimentation and crossbreeding with humans and animals. Everyone also knows that Moreau was attempting to create a utopia of sorts on his island. What surprised people, is he actually succeeded to an extent. When he realized initial attempts of inflicting punishment via “The House of Pain” were just making matters worse, he scraped that idea and tried a bunch of other ideas. He wasn’t really successful with any of them until the 60s came rolling on in… He adopted some weird hippy/communist philosophy. You’re not really sure what it all entailed really since you never really were interested in such topics like government and philosophy, (Your simple “survival of the fittest” ideology seemed to work well for you) all you know is it entailed a lot of drugs and a lot of sex. By the end of the 70s, Moreau’s Island had achieved what no human nation ever has. No violence. No crime. No hate. A Utopia. The “citizens” of the island from what you know just mate, eat, and sleep until they die of natural causes. While most would say that sounds like a paradise, you’d have to disagree. While the mating, eating, and sleeping all sound pretty good. Everyone there is a fucking VEGETARIAN! Even the citizens that were crossbred with carnivores such as lions, bears and (Shudder) wolves are all vegetarians, eating leaves right along side their herbivore counterparts peacefully. The thought of any predator mating with something they should normally be eating makes you ill. Maybe you’re old fashioned, but it just ain’t natural.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up in your cabin in the woods. You sit up and scratch some fleas that have infested your body. You also realize its still daylight. You hate waking up early. You lope into the bathroom and look in the mirror where you see a canine face covered in gray fur, you remember a time when your fur was completely brown. “You’re getting old Wolf” you say to yourself like you always do while trying to look on the bright side that at least you don’t have the mange. You think you’d just put a silver bullet in your head if you ever started to go bald. After eating some left over mutton in the fridge and some Gummy Blobs (for the sugar “pick me up”) you ponder how you’re going to pay this month’s rent on your cabin. You call your agent Erik and see if that little pissant has found any work for you. Hopefully it’s an actual job and not just a guest speaker spot at a comic convention. “Erik! It’s me Wolf! Pick up the fucking phone! I know you’re there!” you say when you get the answering machine. “Erik! Get on the phone NOW, or I’m gonna go over there and shove a pipe organ up your ass!” That got his attention. “Wolf, I’m sorry, but I fear I’m in a deep depression.” “What else is new? Look I need some work, got anything? I don’t even care if it’s straight to video. I just need some of the green stuff!” “Sadly, I don’t think I do, but then I haven’t really checked…I’m so depressed. I’ve been wondering if I made the right decisions in my life…and now it’s too late for me to do anything about it, because I’m old…” “Join the fucking club Erik! Look do you…” “But my art, my music, that is my love and its failing me again. My latest opera isn’t doing well. I wonder if I chose the wrong thing to love and pursue. Just like I did with Christine. Oh Christine WHY couldn’t you have loved me? I loved you…” Wonderful, he’s in full blown tortured artist mode. He can go on like this forever. You can either give up, or persist in getting something out of him. > You memories (You) The Werewolf: You AKA Wolf The Werewolves nowadays are spoiled, but you are the last of the “True” Werewolves. The Alpha Wolf. The one who terrorized the wilderness and entire countrysides. Oh sure MAYBE you didn’t have a fancy accent like that damn aristocratic bloodsucker, but damn it YOU didn’t have the privilege of coming from money. You started from nothing and pulled yourself up from nothing to become a star. You just wish you’d invested your money better, and hadn’t gotten married and…well a whole bunch of things really. Sometimes you think about transforming into a human and living like a normal person, but you were never one to pretend. You’re a monster and you’ll DIE a monster. Besides you’re more noticeable in your Wolf form even if you aren’t properly feared anymore. If you’re lucky you’ll get some human asking you for your autograph. At least it’s something. It doesn’t pay the bills on this humble cabin though. You need to make some money or you’ll be scrounging around in the forests like when you were a young pup. Not that you can’t survive, but you’re really accustomed to your “human comforts” now. Damn civilization has had a domesticating effect on you. But you’re still the Alpha Wolf damn it. > Back to the story You wake up in your cabin in the woods. You sit up and scratch some fleas that have infested your body. You also realize its still daylight. You hate waking up early. You lope into the bathroom and look in the mirror where you see a canine face covered in gray fur, you remember a time when your fur was completely brown. “You’re getting old Wolf” you say to yourself like you always do while trying to look on the bright side that at least you don’t have the mange. You think you’d just put a silver bullet in your head if you ever started to go bald. After eating some left over mutton in the fridge and some Gummy Blobs (for the sugar “pick me up”) you ponder how you’re going to pay this month’s rent on your cabin. You call your agent Erik and see if that little pissant has found any work for you. Hopefully it’s an actual job and not just a guest speaker spot at a comic convention. “Erik! It’s me Wolf! Pick up the fucking phone! I know you’re there!” you say when you get the answering machine. “Erik! Get on the phone NOW, or I’m gonna go over there and shove a pipe organ up your ass!” That got his attention. “Wolf, I’m sorry, but I fear I’m in a deep depression.” “What else is new? Look I need some work, got anything? I don’t even care if it’s straight to video. I just need some of the green stuff!” “Sadly, I don’t think I do, but then I haven’t really checked…I’m so depressed. I’ve been wondering if I made the right decisions in my life…and now it’s too late for me to do anything about it, because I’m old…” “Join the fucking club Erik! Look do you…” “But my art, my music, that is my love and its failing me again. My latest opera isn’t doing well. I wonder if I chose the wrong thing to love and pursue. Just like I did with Christine. Oh Christine WHY couldn’t you have loved me? I loved you…” Wonderful, he’s in full blown tortured artist mode. He can go on like this forever. You can either give up, or persist in getting something out of him.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Geek: 1. A person regarded as foolish or clumsy. 2. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits, but is felt to be socially inept. 3. A carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre and disgusting acts. Your breath stinks from the foul things you’ve been eating and the rest of you stinks from not bathing in who knows when. Your head hurts from the cheap moonshine you’ve been getting “paid” in. Rubes often throw stuff at you and spit on you. Most of the other Carnies find you utterly repulsive and avoid you, a couple of them just abuse you for various reasons. On a good day, only the Pinheads come to your cell and taunt you with their gibbering laughs and mongoloid chatter. You have absolutely no worth as a human being, you get no respect from others, and you have no respect for yourself…and why should you? You are the lowest form of life in Carney society. You’re not a real performer; what you do can’t really be considered a skill. You’re not even a real freak. At least a deformed freak can evoke an emotion of horror, or pity, or even admiration for overcoming their condition. You weren’t born “this way”. You chose to do this. All you evoke is disgust and revulsion. At best you’re laughed at and not in the good way like those pervert clowns you work with. Fuck all that “Wildman of Borneo” shit that the Ringmaster tries to tell all the rubes. You’re little more than a bum with a “job”. A degrading job that involves you to debase yourself, all for the amusement and shock value of others, but hey it keeps a “roof” over your head and you pleasantly drunk enough to just barely forget how utterly pathetic your life is. You are the GEEK. You wake up to a bucket of piss being thrown in your face. Not the first time and certainly won’t be the last. “You like the taste of that Geek? Get up Geek! The Ring Master wants to see you!” Charley orders then he throws the empty bucket at your head. The comical sound it makes hitting your skull and the pain it causes makes Charley laugh. Then he jabs you a couple times with his pointed stick. Midgets can be so cruel… > You go see the Ring Master “Agh! Alright, alright! Stop poking me…what day is it?” “Never mind all that geek! Get going you know how the Ring Master doesn’t like being kept waiting! Phew! You smell even more disgusting than usual! I guess that’s one way to keep Ajax from killing you, he’d probably vomit his guts out before he could lay a hand on you…then you could lick it up for the rubes! Ha ha! Move it Geek!” Charley prods you with a sharp stick periodically on your way to the Ring Master’s trailer until you arrive at which point, Atlas stops the both of you. “Stop! What business do the both of you have here?” “Goddamnit you fuckin’ one eyed freak! We go through this all the fucking time and its getting REALLY old! You just saw me come out of the Ring Master’s trailer earlier today when he sent me to get the Geek, you know damn well what we’re both doing here!” Ignoring Charley’s comments Atlas looks down at you and points. “You may enter, but the Ring Master doesn’t need to see you again, so you may not.” “Yeah, whatever enjoy the smell.” Charley says and mumbles something to himself while leaving the area. You barely make it up the little steps to the trailer, but you do. You’re finally starting to gather your wits together; your head still hurts though and you’ve just realize you haven’t had a drink yet. What a terrible feeling. You open the door. “Close the door, you’re letting all the sunlight in.” the Ring Master orders from behind his desk. She’s siting in his chair, but has her back turned to you. “Uh you wanted to see me?” “Of course…(Sniff sniff) you really haven’t been taking care of yourself. If anything you’ve become even more repulsive than when I first took you in. Remember that day?” “Um, yeah I think…no, no I don’t. I mean kind of… I forget things.” “I’m not surprised; you’re constantly drinking that swill Charley makes. I am surprised you haven’t gone blind yet though. Oh well what you insist on doing to yourself is of little concern to me, all I require is your obedience. You are thankful for all I have provided for you aren’t you?” “Oh yeah. Sure I am.” “You seem to be one of the few nowadays then. There are some though that are ungrateful for things I’ve done for them, they plan to betray me and everything this carnival stands for. They plan to change the natural order of things. Can you imagine what might happen to this carnival if I wasn’t here? What might happen to you?” You attempt to think about this scenario, but instead you just stand there because you can’t really form anything in your mind because it hurts really bad, you’ve been sober too damn long, and it’s about to get even longer as the Ring Master seems intent on bombarding you with talk as he finally swivels around in her chair. That pale androgynous face of the Ring Master’s is displaying a look of seriousness as usual. “Nothing good I can assure you. Which is why I’m putting YOU in charge of this task.” “Huh? What task?” “Why ensuring the survival of the carnival of course.” ”What!? Me?! Why? How!? I’m not qualified! Can’t you or Charley do it?” “I fear I’ve done all I’ve can. I mean I’ve provided all of THIS to everyone here. I’ve given them purpose and a life. If that isn’t enough for them, then my words aren’t going to make a difference at this point. And as for Charley, well…I’m sure even in your usual state of drunkenness you’re aware that he has his own plans for this carnival.” “I guess…but agh, it’s too early for all this…why me? I mean what am I supposed to do? I’m just the Geek.” “Yes, and that’s exactly why I’m choosing you. You have no motive, you have no agenda, you have no friends, and as such you would probably be the best candidate to convince others to resist change and keep the status quo.” “You have to be joking! Nobody’s going to listen to me! I’m the fucking Geek!” “You might be surprised, you have far more potential than you give yourself credit for…perhaps you’ll even change some perspectives, or maybe not. The choice is yours, because the fate of THIS carnival is resting solely on your actions, you can no longer afford to hide from the world in a bottle and a cage if you wish to keep your current life. It is time for you to take some responsibility, its time to repay the debt you owe me. You have until show time.” “But…” “Now leave me, I wish to be alone.” The Ring Master swivels his chair back to its original position. You head back outside, where upon Atlas blocks it again with his massive body. Never before in your life have you been put in this kind of position of responsibility, (Not that you can remember anyway) but you’re going to have to do something, the question is what exactly? > You obey the Ring Master You feel you don’t really have a choice in this situation. The Ring Master is in charge and whatever he says goes and you DO owe a lot to her. As bad as it can be here sometimes, it would probably be worse if you didn’t have the protection of the Carnival. As tempted as you are to get a drink to get you through this test you have before you, you realize you need to stay sober for this. What a terrible thing. Now you have to figure out who you need to convince. The Freaks are firmly on the side of the Ring Master, so you don’t need to talk to them. That just leaves the Midgets and the Normals, both of those present some problems. > You try to convince the Midgets Charley leads the Midgets and you doubt if he’s going “fall in line” and even if he claimed he was, he’d just be lying. You might even be putting yourself in great danger by speaking to him directly about this, however you know the Midgets don’t really care for Charley, so if you could get him out of the way somehow, they might be more willing to ally with the Ring Master. You decide to “test the waters” by speaking to one of the few Midgets (Actually the only one) that’s somewhat less hostile towards you. You see Bob working on hammering tent stakes in the ground and go up to him. “Hey Bob, can I talk to you?” “Aw hell Geek, I ain’t got no money for you to get fucking drunk! Just go steal the liquor from that sonofabitch Charley and take your goddamn chances!” he says barely paying attention to you. “No, its not that…so you uh think Charley’s a son of a bitch huh?” “I don’t think it, I know it. Everyone does.” “So why do you guys follow him?” “Because he does make things better for us. Better than the Ring Master did anyway.” “Yeah, but what if he’s not the best choice to lead you guys, I mean…” Bob raises one eyebrow and focuses all of his attention on you now. “What the fuck are you talkin’ about Geek? You seem to be awfully interested with matters that don’t concern you.” Bob states raising his hammer menancingly. “Well um…I just heard that…um Charley…I mean…look there’s some shit gonna go down and the Ring Master wants me to get people on his side!” You’re unsure of what Bob’s going to do about your revelation. You expect the worst, but for once luck is on your side. “Look Geek, I ain’t gonna lie to ya, not many of us like Charley, and sure, he’s a fucking tyrant, but he gets things done, I dunno he’s kinda like that guy in Germany, except shorter. However, if he wasn’t around, we’d go back to being second class citizens again and why? We DO keep this place running. The Ring Master claims he cares about us, but it doesn’t seem that way to us. We’re under appreciated. And if Charley does have ideas about taking over, then we’re behind him. Maybe the whole place would be run a lot better with him in charge anyway. AND I suggest you don’t talk to any other dwarves about this, you’ll find that you’ll get the same answer and they might just feel the need to tell Charley about the discussion and I don’t think that would be very good for you.” “So there’s nothing I can do or say to change your mind?” “Goddamn it, weren’t you fuckin’ listening Geek? I said no! Not unless you found someway of replacing Charley with someone a little more even tempered and with his business savvy.” “Well, why don’t one of you midg…I mean dwarves do it?” “(Sigh) Because most of us are simple laborers. We just wanna do our job with as little hassle and relax when we can, we don’t wanna be worried about extra shit. Let Charley worry about it since he wants it so bad. Besides if you haven’t noticed he’s got a mean streak a mile wide and that fuckin’ muscle bound freak Ajax around him all the time.” “So there’s nobody who’d want to take Charley’s place?” “Nope. The only one I can think of who’d even have the intelligence of running the criminal activity here smoothly anyway would be his overgrown girlfriend Salina. Now her I wouldn’t mind working under if you know what I mean! Hah! Now get the fuck outta here Geek, I got work to do and your smell is gonna stick to my clothes for days! Get!” You back away from Bob before he hits you with his hammer or kicks you in the shin. It wasn’t what you expected, but perhaps Bob has subtlety shown you a way to get the midgets to ally with the Ring Master, but of course this means talking with Salina. That could be even more risky though, considering she’s the object of Charley’s “love”. Not to mention she doesn’t particularly like you. But then again, who does? > You go talk to Salina You cautiously approach Salina’s trailer, you’re nervous as hell. You stop and hide behind a nearby barrel when you see someone coming out. It’s Sasha. She looks like she’s been crying, probably about Ajax no doubt. Salina seems to be telling her something and then hugs her before closing the door. When Sasha leaves you knock on Salina’s door. She answers. “Look, I told you…UGH! Its you! Get the fuck outta here Geek! No amount of money is gonna make me degrade myself for your festering ass! And you’re upsetting my snakes with your odor!” “No, it’s not that, I really gotta talk to you.” “You don’t have anything to say that I wanna waste my time OR my sense of smell on, so…” “Please it s really important! It’s about Charley and the future of the Carnival!” Salina raises her eyebrow. “Hmm, very well, but you’re not coming in here, let’s go someplace secluded where nobody can see me associating with you.” You and Salina walk to a nearby spot in the wilderness (Separately of course) to talk where you explain the situation to Salina. “Yeah, so what does all this mean to me? If Charley takes over I win and if the Ring Master stays in power I still win. I don’t see why I should get involved in this power struggle.” Salina says unemotionally. “You’re not looking at the big picture. As it stands now you got some measure of freedom, but if Charley wins, this place will cease being a Carnival and become a crime ring. And while you might do alright gift and money wise, you’ll be Charley’s girlfriend full time at that point with little freedom. You know he’s never going to let you do anything without his approval if he’s in power. And if the Ring Master wins, chances are the criminal activity here is gonna be severely diminished without Charley to run it, meaning you’ll probably be making less money.” “Okay…but don’t you want the Ring Master to win?” “Yes, but she needs allies and I’m trying to get the midgets to ally with him and they won’t if Charley’s in charge of them.” “So I don’t understand, what exactly are you proposing? You’re kind of all over the place here.” “I’m saying I want YOU to take over Charley’s position. You run all his business dealings.” “What? You’re crazy Geek.” “Why? You’re intelligent; surely you probably know all of Charley’s secrets.” “Well THAT’S true. The little fucker insists on bragging about everything after sex, but what makes you think the midgets will follow me? I mean I’m a Normal.” “Please, you’re a tall beautiful woman, the midgets will love you, didn’t you see Wizard of Oz? Just as long as you promise to uphold all the things Charley did like protection from being bullied by rubes and keeping their payment the same, I don’t think they’ll mind you in charge instead of Charley. Think about it, YOU could be in charge of the whole operation, and it’s not like the Ring Master will bother you as long as you don’t try to screw with the everyday Carnival workings.” “I’d never do that, the Carnival has been like a home to me…I…” Salina seems to stop herself before she displays too much emotion to you. “Alright Geek, I’m willing to entertain this idea, but you have to do something for ME first.” “Okay, what?” “You gotta get rid of Randal.” “What? Why? What did he do?” “To me? Nothing, but he’s competition and I can’t have that.” “Competition for what?” “Nevermind, just get rid of him. Think of it this way, if you get him out of the picture, you’ll also eliminate the leader of the third faction here which would really cement the Ring Master’s supremacy here. Surely that should be incentive enough?” “You want me to kill him?!” “Look, I don’t care HOW you get rid of him, just get rid of him before show time. If you do that, you can tell the midgets that I’ll be taking over Charley’s position when the time comes. Now don’t speak to me again until you do this.” Looks like you got MORE work ahead of you and you really don’t know how you’re supposed to get rid of Randal. You doubt if just asking him to leave is going to work, and while killing him would solve the problem, it’s not really that simple to just kill a man even if you had it in you. You could really use a drink… > You talk to Randal You can’t kill Randal, so you’re going to have to just try to convince him to leave…somehow. You think perhaps Madam Orbec can help, since she has the most contact with him. You approach Madam Orbec’s tent which carries an air of creepiness about it. When you enter, you see her lying on the floor convulsing. “Madam! Are you alright?!” you run to her attempting to pick her up, but she pushes you away. “GEEK! Take your filthy hands off of me! My body is for the spirits only! You will not molest my person lest I call down their wrath upon you! Though I’m not sure what more they could do to such a pathetic soul such as yourself, and death would be a mercy.” “Sorry, I was just trying to help.” “Liar! You sought me out, to help yourself! But still…your mission is a somewhat good intentioned one…even if you are in the dark about some of it…” “What do you mean?” “That’s for the more enlightened to know, but I’m sure you’ll find out eventually, assuming we decide to help you that is…” “How do you know that I want your help?” “I see what the spirits see! And the spirits see all! You’re easier to read than an open book! You want to know how to get rid of Randal.” “How…nevermind. So how do I get rid of him? No…don’t tell me YOU want me to do something as well!” “Actually getting rid of Randal would serve me…he wouldn’t be around hounding me and the spirits all the time for one thing. The only reason I prefer him around is that he is a balancer of this carnival…but we see things are about to change…great changes…things would be better if he wasn’t around any longer.” “So?” Madam Orbec begins to talk to herself. “Should we? Maybe. What about them? Later. Yeah, let’s do it.” “Madam?” “Tell Randal to come to my tent, I will get rid of him. I shall tell him something that will give him cause to leave immediately. He won’t even be here for showtime. You have the word of the spirits and Madam Orbec. Now leave me, we must prepare.” You leave Madam Orbec’s tent and go find Randal. When you do, he attempts to avoid you, but when you mention Madam Orbec wants to see him, he pushes you out of the way to meet her right away. You follow him and watch Orbec’s tent, after awhile Randal leaves and heads back to his own tent. Orbec also exits and nods at you. You go back to Salina and tell her the news. Salina smiles and tells you everything has been set in motion, and she’ll be ready. She then tells you to go tell the midgets. You go back to Bob, who’d forgotten all about your discussion with him. In fact you have to remind him what it was you even discussed. “So lemme get this straight Geek…Salina’s taking over the crime trade here?” “Yeah, and she says everything will stay the same, the protection and the pay. All you gotta do is side with the Ring Master, after show time tonight.” “…Alright Geek, I’ll tell the rest of the dwarves. I just hope all of you fuckers know what you’re doing, because I guarantee if we get fucked in any way in this arrangement, YOU will be the first to feel our wrath!” You hope so too, a lot of this riding on the “word” of everyone. You don’t actually have any assurance by anyone that everything’s going to go as planned. You don’t tell the Ring Master that when you go back to his trailer though. (After getting Atlas’ permission to enter of course) you just tell her that he’ll have her allies when the time comes. The Ring Master seems confident in you and tells you to get ready for show time. You spend your remaining time a little on edge, wondering if everything is going to work out. You really wish the Ring Master hadn’t put all this pressure on you. Then show time arrives, everything goes pretty much the same except you’re a little distracted the entire time until you notice Randal doesn’t show up at all. You hope that’s a good sign that your plan has worked. > You but the real show begins afterwards A dark moonlit night. Charley confronts the Ring Master with his army of midgets behind him as well as Ajax. The Ring Master has Atlas, and his usual allies, the Freaks are hanging in the darkness ready to strike if necessary. Most of the Normals though are nowhere to be seen. Your heart sinks…the midgets have still sided with Charley and you get so worried that you puke up the sheep testicles and pigeon heads you consumed for your act. “Your time has come Ring Master! No longer will you exploit us! I’m taking over!” “So you can exploit your own people of course. Charley, I’ve put up with your delusions of grandeur long enough, it ends tonight. I have allies of my own, and you might find they are much more dedicated to me than yours are.” “It won’t work Ringy, I got more in common with my people than you ever will! Blood is thicker, and yours is going to run everywhere if you don’t peaceably leave…I’m giving you this one chance you pale she-male.” “Not likely.” At this point all of the freaks come out of hiding. Charley orders an attack, but the rest of the midgets do nothing…you cease worrying and Charley begins to get angry. “What the fuck man? I told you fuckers to attack! I’m your leader!” “Not anymore Charley…we got a new one.” Bob says. “Who? HIM? This fucking hermaphrodite bitch?” Charley yells pointing to the Ring Master. “No, this tattooed bitch.” Bob says calmly where upon Salina appears petting a cobra lovingly which is wrapped around her arm. “Yes, this tattooed snake bitch to be precise. Give it up Charley; your time here is done. You don’t have any allies anymore. I’d suggest you and the muscle bound woman beater leave NOW.” “You fucking back stabbing viper bitch…” Charley says in shock. “Hey fuck off cunt, fore I shove that snake up your ass!” Ajax yells. “You’re certainly welcome to try, here catch!” Salina throws here cobra at Ajax, which lands on him, he squashes its head, but not before it bites him a couple times. He runs at Salina, but the midgets trip him up and hold him down as the poison takes effect. Salina then puts out his eye, with her stiletto heel before he succumbs leaving Charley all by himself. “Well Charley, it seems all your grand plans have failed. You have nothing left. I’d say there’s no reason for you to stay. Atlas, if you would be so kind to escort this former employee of the premises…” When the Ring Master says that, it typically means “Atlas, after you break his neck make sure the body is properly disposed of.” Atlas grabs Charley who attempts to defend himself with his sharp stick, but instead it’s taken from him and broken. Then Charley’s spine is taken from him and broken. Atlas lumbers off in the darkness to get rid of Ajax and Charley’s bodies. “So, I trust we’ll have no problems Salina?” The Ring Master asks. “No problems from me, I have all I need, or I soon will have.” “Good, I suggest you and your new friends get some rest, we got a big show tomorrow.” While Salina and the munchkin brigade leave and the freaks disperse as well, the Ring Master calls you out. “Geek, you may come out of hiding, I’m sure you can see the danger is over, not that there ever was any.” “I can’t believe it actually worked. Everything…” “See? I told you, you underestimated yourself. Not only did you save the Carnival, but you stabilized it even more. I told you, I saw potential even when there was none apparent. Do you still want to be a Geek? You could be so much more if you just put in the effort. Charley used to do all my leg work, but now that he’s gone I need someone else to fit that role…would you be interested? Keep in mind that this new job would require a whole lot more responsibility and significantly less drinking as I would need you in a better frame of mind.” At one time you’d balk, but after seeing what you accomplished first hand, maybe you DO have potential. You accept and you’re given Charley’s old trailer. Time goes by and you stumble along the way with the first few months as you still have a really bad drinking problem, but fortunately the Ring Master is slightly understanding about that, and only sends Atlas to remind you ONCE to get it under control. (That incident really sets you on the straight and narrow) you get yourself cleaned up and actually become presentable. You’re more of an organizer than a main event now, but you still go ahead and bite some chicken heads off every now and then for the kids. Salina is a pretty fair and even handed business woman when it comes to the being new leader of the midgets. Much more than Charley, and she also has Pervus and his clown crew eliminated during one night. Apparently they got rough with one of her girls. They were all found dead the next day. Nobody said anything outright, but the fact that little snake bites were found on their bodies was a pretty good idea who was responsible. However, the Ring Master said nothing since Pervus and his friends had it coming for a long time, not to mention with them gone things actually improved morale wise. (People tend to work better when their aren’t evil demented clowns lurking around) You also see Salina and Sasha get very close in a way that makes you tingle in the nether regions. Now you know why Salina wanted you to get rid of Randal. Without Ajax to kick her around anymore, Sasha probably would’ve fell for Randal (You also found out Madam Orbec told him he needed to leave the Carnival to find some magic book in some Mayan ruins that the spirits commanded him to retrieve…he never returned) but since he wasn’t around, she ended up with Salina. They seem to be happy though. Actually everyone at the Carnival seems to be a lot happier and more relaxed and it’s all due to your actions. The Ring Master has given you a second chance at life, a life with a whole hell of lot more meaning. You’ve gotten respect at last.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You cautiously approach Salina’s trailer, you’re nervous as hell. You stop and hide behind a nearby barrel when you see someone coming out. It’s Sasha. She looks like she’s been crying, probably about Ajax no doubt. Salina seems to be telling her something and then hugs her before closing the door. When Sasha leaves you knock on Salina’s door. She answers. “Look, I told you…UGH! Its you! Get the fuck outta here Geek! No amount of money is gonna make me degrade myself for your festering ass! And you’re upsetting my snakes with your odor!” “No, it’s not that, I really gotta talk to you.” “You don’t have anything to say that I wanna waste my time OR my sense of smell on, so…” “Please it s really important! It’s about Charley and the future of the Carnival!” Salina raises her eyebrow. “Hmm, very well, but you’re not coming in here, let’s go someplace secluded where nobody can see me associating with you.” You and Salina walk to a nearby spot in the wilderness (Separately of course) to talk where you explain the situation to Salina. “Yeah, so what does all this mean to me? If Charley takes over I win and if the Ring Master stays in power I still win. I don’t see why I should get involved in this power struggle.” Salina says unemotionally. “You’re not looking at the big picture. As it stands now you got some measure of freedom, but if Charley wins, this place will cease being a Carnival and become a crime ring. And while you might do alright gift and money wise, you’ll be Charley’s girlfriend full time at that point with little freedom. You know he’s never going to let you do anything without his approval if he’s in power. And if the Ring Master wins, chances are the criminal activity here is gonna be severely diminished without Charley to run it, meaning you’ll probably be making less money.” “Okay…but don’t you want the Ring Master to win?” “Yes, but she needs allies and I’m trying to get the midgets to ally with him and they won’t if Charley’s in charge of them.” “So I don’t understand, what exactly are you proposing? You’re kind of all over the place here.” “I’m saying I want YOU to take over Charley’s position. You run all his business dealings.” “What? You’re crazy Geek.” “Why? You’re intelligent; surely you probably know all of Charley’s secrets.” “Well THAT’S true. The little fucker insists on bragging about everything after sex, but what makes you think the midgets will follow me? I mean I’m a Normal.” “Please, you’re a tall beautiful woman, the midgets will love you, didn’t you see Wizard of Oz? Just as long as you promise to uphold all the things Charley did like protection from being bullied by rubes and keeping their payment the same, I don’t think they’ll mind you in charge instead of Charley. Think about it, YOU could be in charge of the whole operation, and it’s not like the Ring Master will bother you as long as you don’t try to screw with the everyday Carnival workings.” “I’d never do that, the Carnival has been like a home to me…I…” Salina seems to stop herself before she displays too much emotion to you. “Alright Geek, I’m willing to entertain this idea, but you have to do something for ME first.” “Okay, what?” “You gotta get rid of Randal.” “What? Why? What did he do?” “To me? Nothing, but he’s competition and I can’t have that.” “Competition for what?” “Nevermind, just get rid of him. Think of it this way, if you get him out of the picture, you’ll also eliminate the leader of the third faction here which would really cement the Ring Master’s supremacy here. Surely that should be incentive enough?” “You want me to kill him?!” “Look, I don’t care HOW you get rid of him, just get rid of him before show time. If you do that, you can tell the midgets that I’ll be taking over Charley’s position when the time comes. Now don’t speak to me again until you do this.” Looks like you got MORE work ahead of you and you really don’t know how you’re supposed to get rid of Randal. You doubt if just asking him to leave is going to work, and while killing him would solve the problem, it’s not really that simple to just kill a man even if you had it in you. You could really use a drink… > You kill Randal You’ll have to kill him. It’s the only way, since he’ll never listen to you. You need a drink to get you ready for this though. You sneak over to Charley’s still, thankfully it’s not being manned right now. You down a couple of bottle of the toxic swill, spilling some of it on yourself. After you’re sufficiently “prepared” you steal one of the midget’s hammers and head to Randal’s tent. It’s now or never… You enter Randal’s tent which seems a lot larger on the inside than it does on the outside, but you figure it’s the booze is effecting your perception. You see Randal getting dressed with his back to you. Excellent. You creep as quietly as you can in your condition, step right behind him with the hammer raised up high and then… He disappears before your eyes! You do a double take, thinking it’s the booze again, but then you feel a tap on your shoulder, causing you to turn around to a fiery flash. Not very good in any case especially since Charley’s brew that you spilled on yourself earlier makes you quite flammable. You run around his tent attempting to put yourself out. “Didn’t you think I could SMELL you approaching Geek?” Randal says. “I have no idea why you would attempt something so foolish as to try to kill me, but I’ve always said the Carnival would be a lot better without the likes of you! TABAXINDOGA!” Whatever Randal just said causes all your limbs to freeze up. The good news is you aren’t on fire anymore, the bad news is you’re turning to stone! Randal looks noticeably exhausted after casting his spells, but he’s still holding all the cards. “I hate to waste such power on you, especially before showtime. (Pant) it really takes a lot out of me, but sometimes such actions are necessary when being attacked. I’ll have to inform Madam Orbec that the new spell she taught me works perfectly… I’ll take that hammer, it’ll come in handy.” As your body becomes completely stone, the last thing you see is Randal swinging the hammer at your head before it breaks into several pieces.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Charley leads the Midgets and you doubt if he’s going “fall in line” and even if he claimed he was, he’d just be lying. You might even be putting yourself in great danger by speaking to him directly about this, however you know the Midgets don’t really care for Charley, so if you could get him out of the way somehow, they might be more willing to ally with the Ring Master. You decide to “test the waters” by speaking to one of the few Midgets (Actually the only one) that’s somewhat less hostile towards you. You see Bob working on hammering tent stakes in the ground and go up to him. “Hey Bob, can I talk to you?” “Aw hell Geek, I ain’t got no money for you to get fucking drunk! Just go steal the liquor from that sonofabitch Charley and take your goddamn chances!” he says barely paying attention to you. “No, its not that…so you uh think Charley’s a son of a bitch huh?” “I don’t think it, I know it. Everyone does.” “So why do you guys follow him?” “Because he does make things better for us. Better than the Ring Master did anyway.” “Yeah, but what if he’s not the best choice to lead you guys, I mean…” Bob raises one eyebrow and focuses all of his attention on you now. “What the fuck are you talkin’ about Geek? You seem to be awfully interested with matters that don’t concern you.” Bob states raising his hammer menancingly. “Well um…I just heard that…um Charley…I mean…look there’s some shit gonna go down and the Ring Master wants me to get people on his side!” You’re unsure of what Bob’s going to do about your revelation. You expect the worst, but for once luck is on your side. “Look Geek, I ain’t gonna lie to ya, not many of us like Charley, and sure, he’s a fucking tyrant, but he gets things done, I dunno he’s kinda like that guy in Germany, except shorter. However, if he wasn’t around, we’d go back to being second class citizens again and why? We DO keep this place running. The Ring Master claims he cares about us, but it doesn’t seem that way to us. We’re under appreciated. And if Charley does have ideas about taking over, then we’re behind him. Maybe the whole place would be run a lot better with him in charge anyway. AND I suggest you don’t talk to any other dwarves about this, you’ll find that you’ll get the same answer and they might just feel the need to tell Charley about the discussion and I don’t think that would be very good for you.” “So there’s nothing I can do or say to change your mind?” “Goddamn it, weren’t you fuckin’ listening Geek? I said no! Not unless you found someway of replacing Charley with someone a little more even tempered and with his business savvy.” “Well, why don’t one of you midg…I mean dwarves do it?” “(Sigh) Because most of us are simple laborers. We just wanna do our job with as little hassle and relax when we can, we don’t wanna be worried about extra shit. Let Charley worry about it since he wants it so bad. Besides if you haven’t noticed he’s got a mean streak a mile wide and that fuckin’ muscle bound freak Ajax around him all the time.” “So there’s nobody who’d want to take Charley’s place?” “Nope. The only one I can think of who’d even have the intelligence of running the criminal activity here smoothly anyway would be his overgrown girlfriend Salina. Now her I wouldn’t mind working under if you know what I mean! Hah! Now get the fuck outta here Geek, I got work to do and your smell is gonna stick to my clothes for days! Get!” You back away from Bob before he hits you with his hammer or kicks you in the shin. It wasn’t what you expected, but perhaps Bob has subtlety shown you a way to get the midgets to ally with the Ring Master, but of course this means talking with Salina. That could be even more risky though, considering she’s the object of Charley’s “love”. Not to mention she doesn’t particularly like you. But then again, who does? > You go convince the Normals instead The Midgets are firmly in the camp of Charley. Your only hope is to convince the Normals and that’s not going to be easy either. A lot of them don’t like you and most of them are “unified” under Randal and he doesn’t like you either. The only thing you can of is to talk to Madam Orbec. She has the most contact with Randal, maybe you can get her help. You approach Madam Orbec’s tent which has an air of creepiness about it. You see her gazing into a crystal ball. “Geek! You foul aura disturbs the spirits!” “Um, sorry…but I need your…” “Yes, yes, yes, I know you want my help.” “How did you know that?” “I see what the spirits see! And the spirits see all! You want me to convince Randal to convince the Normals to side with the Ring Master in the upcoming battle tonight!” “Uh…yeah.” “I suppose I could do that…but I won’t, at least not directly…” “So you’re not going to help me?” “I didn’t say that, the spirits say that you can’t get something for nothing however…since you seem to be in such a noble mood Geek, then you won’t mind performing another noble deed. A deed that will help you as well as us.” “Well, what is it?” Madam Orbec starts talking to herself. “Could be a suicide mission. So? Yeah, no risk to us. What about the other thing? Will solve itself.” “You must get rid of the beautiful Sasha’s abusive boyfriend Ajax once and for all. Do this and we shall help you.” Orbec says addressing you. “WHAT?! How the hell am I supposed to do that? And why?” “Do not question the spirits’ wisdom! Just DO! Now leave and don’t return until you complete this task!” You exit Orbec’s tent. You’ve got an impossible job to do. Ajax is a vicious thug who beats you for fun on several occasions, there’s no way you can beat him even if you had the killer instinct which you don’t. You’re going to need some help. > You talk to Sasha Maybe you can talk directly to Sasha about this. Surely since she’s the one taking the abuse she’d be for getting rid of Ajax. Maybe she’ll even know some tips on weaknesses or something. You head to her trailer. She answers the door and looks obviously disgusted. “Ew! What’re you doing here Geek? Get outta here, you’re stinky!” “Wait Sasha, I got a proposal for ya!” “Excuse me?! This isn’t Salina’s trailer! And I doubt she’d degrade herself for you either! Goodbye!” “WAIT! This is about Ajax! And about how to get rid of him for good!” Sasha suddenly stops trying to get rid of you and seems more willing to listen. “How?” “I dunno, but I’ve seen how he treats you and it isn’t right. Nobody does anything, well I’m just saying I’ve had enough of seeing him push everyone around, especially you!” Sasha looks a bit touched by your remark, but then quickly speaks. “Okay look, he’ll be coming soon, he always has a drink when he comes over, and I’ll drug it. He’ll get drowsy and fall asleep, BUT you’ll have to finish him off. Many times I’ve though about it, but I just can never bring myself to do it…you’ll have to do it. Please free me from this brute once and for all.” “I will Sasha.” “Thank you…I guess underneath the grime you’re alright Geek…now go hide by that barrel over there, I’ll give the signal when he’s asleep!” You quickly run over to the barrel and hide. Soon you see Ajax enter Sasha’s trailer. While you wait, you can’t believe what just happened. Sasha actually seemed nice to you. You’ve never experienced that before. And could it be that you saw a glint of something in her eyes when she thanked you? Maybe after all this is over you and Sasha might have something. You never thought this could be possible. You feel positive and confident…you know you’ll have the strength to do in Ajax, he doesn’t deserve a beauty like Sasha anyway. He doesn’t deserve life. While you’re thinking about all this you see Sasha come back out of her trailer and wave at you. She has a knife in her hand, obviously what she’s going to give you to do in Ajax which you’ll take great pleasure in. After all this is over, Sasha is going to see you as her savior… Nice fantasy Geek. The sad truth is much worse though. When Ajax arrived he could tell you were around because your stench was still clinging to the door. Then he questioned Sasha about it. And the funny thing about abuse victims is they always side with their abuser before siding with someone who’s trying to help them. She didn’t just tell him everything, but she’s also lured you back into the lion’s den as it were… When you get to the doorway, Ajax pulls Sasha back inside roughly, and grabs you. “I’ve been looking for a good excuse Geek! I’m gonna enjoy this!” Ajax pulls you inside, and enjoys beating you to death. Oh how he enjoys it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Midgets are firmly in the camp of Charley. Your only hope is to convince the Normals and that’s not going to be easy either. A lot of them don’t like you and most of them are “unified” under Randal and he doesn’t like you either. The only thing you can of is to talk to Madam Orbec. She has the most contact with Randal, maybe you can get her help. You approach Madam Orbec’s tent which has an air of creepiness about it. You see her gazing into a crystal ball. “Geek! You foul aura disturbs the spirits!” “Um, sorry…but I need your…” “Yes, yes, yes, I know you want my help.” “How did you know that?” “I see what the spirits see! And the spirits see all! You want me to convince Randal to convince the Normals to side with the Ring Master in the upcoming battle tonight!” “Uh…yeah.” “I suppose I could do that…but I won’t, at least not directly…” “So you’re not going to help me?” “I didn’t say that, the spirits say that you can’t get something for nothing however…since you seem to be in such a noble mood Geek, then you won’t mind performing another noble deed. A deed that will help you as well as us.” “Well, what is it?” Madam Orbec starts talking to herself. “Could be a suicide mission. So? Yeah, no risk to us. What about the other thing? Will solve itself.” “You must get rid of the beautiful Sasha’s abusive boyfriend Ajax once and for all. Do this and we shall help you.” Orbec says addressing you. “WHAT?! How the hell am I supposed to do that? And why?” “Do not question the spirits’ wisdom! Just DO! Now leave and don’t return until you complete this task!” You exit Orbec’s tent. You’ve got an impossible job to do. Ajax is a vicious thug who beats you for fun on several occasions, there’s no way you can beat him even if you had the killer instinct which you don’t. You’re going to need some help. > You talk to Pervus You figure Pervus the clown is the only possible candidate to help you in this endeavor. He’s immoral enough and doesn’t have any allegiances. You don’t relish the idea of going anywhere near the clown tent though; everyone knows what terrible things they do to trespassers in there. Fortunately you find Pervus harassing one of the acrobats. She looks terrified, by this scary overbearing clown “Aw come on, I just wanna get to know ya better. You’re so pretty and young with a nice tight ass. What I could do with that for about an hour…” Suddenly Pervus goes to grab at the acrobat, but she leaps out of the way and runs off in fear. “Fuckin’ cock teasin’ bitch…(sniff sniff) I know that smell…smells like a dead dog’s asshole after I busted a nut in it…Geek…what the hell do you want?” “Uh hello Pervus…I uh, need your help with something.” “Oh do ya now? What might that be?” “I need to get rid of Ajax and I need your help to do it.” “Whoa, hold on there first of all what makes you think I’d help you without asking for something in return, and second of all, Ajax isn’t exactly easy prey if you know what I mean.” “Well…what would convince you…and NOT THAT!” Pervus chuckles. “Feh, maybe some of my boys might like a piece of your filthy ass, but I’m a little more discriminating…actually you got me in a unique mood. I’m willing to help you. Ajax pisses me off every time I go try to get some liquor from Charley. Walkin’ around displayin’ that perfect physique. He really needs to be taken down a fuckin’ peg. In fact he NEEDS to be pegged in the fuckin’ ass. Tell ya what, you get Ajax to come over to the clown tent and we’ll do the rest. He’s had this coming for a long time.” Pervus says stroking his crotch. “You gonna kill him?” “No, but I suggest you not ask what we ARE going to do to him. Trust me though; you’ll never see him again.” “Uh, okay…but how the hell am I supposed to get him to go over to your tent, nobody ever goes over there!” “Well I suggest you think of something, if you want our help. See you later and hopefully with a certain Strongman in tow.” Facing Ajax one on one is NOT what you had in mind! You’re going to have to do it though. You could attempt to make up a story which may or may not work, or you could go with a much dangerous approach and piss him off so he chases you there. The problem with that approach is you’re a dead Geek if he catches you. > You convince Ajax with a story You don’t want to piss Ajax off anymore than what’s necessary, so you decide to come up with a story that Charley needs him to go get some money the clowns to because they haven’t been paying their latest gambling debts. You look around for Ajax, but he’s nowhere around, typical. The one time you WANT to find him you can’t. Eventually you do see him entering Sasha’s trailer, you go to knock on the door. He answers it, and already looks pissed. “You got some fuckin’ balls Geek, disturbing me while I’m tryin’ to get me some pussy! This better be REALLY important!” “It is, Charley wants you to go to the clown tent, apparently they gambled on something or other and didn’t pay up, so he wants you to go get the money from them.” Ajax, gives you a hard look. “Why didn’t Charley come tell me himself, in fact this is the first I’m hearing about this and I certainly don’t understand why he’d send YOU to tell me.” “Well I just happened to be around at his still and he was ranting about some private bet he had with Pervus and well you know Charley…he ended up prodding me with his stick and ordered me to go get you to collect the debt from the clowns.” “I smell bullshit and I don’t like bein’ fuckin’ disturbed from fucking my bitch, let alone by the likes of you! I dunno what your fuckin’ angle is Geek, but since you seem to be so interested in the clown tent, let’s go asshole!” Ajax grabs you and raises you above his head with a vice like grip. You attempt to escape, but it’s useless. He walks all the way to the clown tent, where inhuman noises are emanating. “Hey you fuckin’ clowns, here’s a new fuck toy for ya!” Ajax yells and throws you inside. Pervus and his crew were working themselves up into a sexual frenzy waiting for Ajax to enter, but instead you got thrown in. They’re all a bit disappointed, but they fuck you anyway, no sense in wasting an erection. You never return from the horrors inflicted on you in the tent that day, and you are forced to serve their twisted pleasures day in day out, never to exit the tent.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You figure Pervus the clown is the only possible candidate to help you in this endeavor. He’s immoral enough and doesn’t have any allegiances. You don’t relish the idea of going anywhere near the clown tent though; everyone knows what terrible things they do to trespassers in there. Fortunately you find Pervus harassing one of the acrobats. She looks terrified, by this scary overbearing clown “Aw come on, I just wanna get to know ya better. You’re so pretty and young with a nice tight ass. What I could do with that for about an hour…” Suddenly Pervus goes to grab at the acrobat, but she leaps out of the way and runs off in fear. “Fuckin’ cock teasin’ bitch…(sniff sniff) I know that smell…smells like a dead dog’s asshole after I busted a nut in it…Geek…what the hell do you want?” “Uh hello Pervus…I uh, need your help with something.” “Oh do ya now? What might that be?” “I need to get rid of Ajax and I need your help to do it.” “Whoa, hold on there first of all what makes you think I’d help you without asking for something in return, and second of all, Ajax isn’t exactly easy prey if you know what I mean.” “Well…what would convince you…and NOT THAT!” Pervus chuckles. “Feh, maybe some of my boys might like a piece of your filthy ass, but I’m a little more discriminating…actually you got me in a unique mood. I’m willing to help you. Ajax pisses me off every time I go try to get some liquor from Charley. Walkin’ around displayin’ that perfect physique. He really needs to be taken down a fuckin’ peg. In fact he NEEDS to be pegged in the fuckin’ ass. Tell ya what, you get Ajax to come over to the clown tent and we’ll do the rest. He’s had this coming for a long time.” Pervus says stroking his crotch. “You gonna kill him?” “No, but I suggest you not ask what we ARE going to do to him. Trust me though; you’ll never see him again.” “Uh, okay…but how the hell am I supposed to get him to go over to your tent, nobody ever goes over there!” “Well I suggest you think of something, if you want our help. See you later and hopefully with a certain Strongman in tow.” Facing Ajax one on one is NOT what you had in mind! You’re going to have to do it though. You could attempt to make up a story which may or may not work, or you could go with a much dangerous approach and piss him off so he chases you there. The problem with that approach is you’re a dead Geek if he catches you. > You get Ajax to chase you He’ll see through a lie, and even if he can’t he won’t want to listen to anything you have to say anyway. There’s nothing for it, you have to have him chase you there. He’s going to be pissed off anyway. You look around for Ajax, but he’s nowhere around, typical. The one time you WANT to find him you can’t. Eventually you do see him entering Sasha’s trailer. You take a deep breath and start throwing stones at it, calling him out. “Hey asshole, stop hiding behind Sasha in there and get out here!” Plink! Plink! Plink! “Hey motherfucker I’m talkin’ to you! I know you ain’t still fuckin’ Sasha. Everyone knows you don’t last that long!” Plink! Plink! Plink! You’re actually having so much fun shouting and throwing things, it almost comes to a shock to you when Ajax comes storming out like a mad bull. He is wicked pissed. “YOU’RE FUCKING DEAD GEEK!” You throw the rest of your stones at him and run as fast as you can. You just hope you can make it to the clown tent before he catches you. Somehow despite Ajax being in better shape than you in every way, you are surprisingly faster than him, maybe its from all that protein from the pig uteruses you’ve had to consume over the years…or perhaps its just fear. Either way it gets the job done. You arrive at the clown tent stopping right at the entrance with Ajax not far behind; you see the glinting eyes and hellish grins peering from the unnatural darkness within it. The slurping and hideous laughter makes you REALLY hesitant to actually enter. In your current situation you feel like you’re bordering on the edge of madness with fury seeking to drive you into it. And that’s exactly what happens, while you’re stopped at the edge of the clown tent. Ajax tackles you hard, where upon the both of you roll into the clown tent. Its pitch dark in here and you don’t know how that’s even possible, but it is. You feel Ajax’s heavy body suddenly be lifted off of you along with several bottle sounds breaking. You can feel several glass particles fall down onto you. “AGH FUCK MY HEAD! GODDAMN CLOWN FUCKERS!” Ajax yells. You begin the crawl on the floor to get to the outside of the tent, but you’re not sure where the hell the entrance is anymore, the clowns have closed the flap. Apparently they have no intention on letting either of you escape. The only thing working to your advantage is they’re having a hard time subduing Ajax. It’s all very frightening to you though when you begin to hear Ajax scream in a high pitched falsetto voice, you never thought you’d ever hear something like that. The other sounds you hear from the clowns you don’t even want to think about. You keep crawling in the darkness hoping to reach the edge of the tent. It seems like forever, but eventually you feel the canvas, you then grab at the bottom and pull up; a beam of daylight enters. “STOP THAT GEEK!” you hear one of the clowns yell causing you to scramble out of the tent as fast as possible. You feel a hand grab your foot and attempt to pull you back in. You kick several times with your other foot and once again luck shines down and the clown releases you long enough for you to escape. You run back to Madam Orbec’s tent, who glances up at you from her crystal ball. “Ah, you’ve returned and from what the spirits have told me, you were successful…good. I will speak to Randal about siding with the Ring Master when the time comes. You may leave.” You’re still a little bewildered by her attitude, but you’re not going to press the issue, you got what you wanted. Time to report back to the Ring Master. You tell the Ring Master that he’ll have her allies when the time comes when you go back to his trailer though. (After getting Atlas’ permission to enter of course) The Ring Master seems confident in you and tells you to get ready for show time. You spend your remaining time a little on edge, wondering if everything is going to work out. You really wish the Ring Master hadn’t put all this pressure on you. Then show time arrives, everything goes pretty much the same except Charley looks a bit distracted the whole time as Ajax is nowhere to be seen. Pervus and his clowns seem to keep waving at you and making obscene gestures whenever they can. > You but the real show begins afterwards A dark moonlit night. Charley confronts the Ring Master with his army of midgets behind him. The Ring Master has Atlas, and his usual allies, the Freaks are hanging in the darkness ready to strike if necessary. Most of the Normals though are nowhere to be seen. You hope Madam Orbec did her job, because even without Ajax, Charley still has a numerical superiority and a pissed off midget can do a lot of damage. “Your time has come Ring Master! No longer will you exploit us! I’m taking over!” “So you can exploit your own people of course. Charley, I’ve put up with your delusions of grandeur long enough, it ends tonight. I have allies of my own, and you might find they are much more dedicated to me than yours are.” “It won’t work Ringy, I got more in common with my people than you ever will! Blood is thicker, and yours is going to run everywhere if you don’t peaceably leave…I’m giving you this one chance you pale she-male.” “Not likely.” At this point all of the freaks come out of hiding, and then Randal and most of the Normals appear as well. Pervus also shows up with his clown crew, and that’s when you see Ajax, or what’s left of him. He’s dressed in a weird leather getup and has a chain around his neck which one of the clowns is holding. There’s also a black leather mask covering his face now and some sort of ball gag…he looks completely docile and broken. Suddenly Charley seems to get a little less hostile, the rest of the midgets also look less than willing to fight now, though he’s still not backing down completely. “…so that’s what happened to Ajax…(Sigh)…alright Ringy you win. I can see I can’t beat you…I’ll leave. BUT! I’m taking my people with me!” “No you won’t, they work for me.” “The fuck I can’t! They’re still fuckin’ free people! You don’t fuckin’ OWN them Ringy! They ain’t your slaves!” “Oh and I suppose they’re YOUR slaves eh?” “Fuck it, let’s settle this.” Charley turns around to his fellow midgets. “Hey, do you want to work for me and make some serious money doing something a lot less menial? Or do ya wanna work for this hypocritical slave driving bitch bastard who claims everyone is free to do what they want and has his protection, but in reality she doesn’t do shit for anyone but herself and just expects everyone to obey him?” The midgets talk to each other for a moment and then reply with a uniformed answer that they want to stay with Charley. The Ring Master actually looks surprised, she even gets mad claiming all of what he’d done for them, but it doesn’t work. Charley was right they have more in common with him than they do the Ring Master. Charley leaves with his midget gang. The Ring Master looks like he’s going to order an attack, but decides against it. Instead he just assigns some Normals to do the job of the midgets and orders the rest to seek out new recruits in the next town. Everyone disperses leaving just the Ring Master, Atlas and you alone. The Ring Master for once looks a bit despondent. Not knowing what else to do, you attempt to lighten the situation. “Well you won, I’m just glad I didn’t mess things up for you.” “Yes, for now, but there will only be problems in the future. What happened to tonight was just a temporary patch for the situation…I suppose you did your best within your capabilities Geek. No more could be expected of you. The Carnival will survive, just like it always has though…return to your cell, we have a big show to do tomorrow and significantly less help.” And you do exactly that and continue on as usual Time passes and while nothing really changes for you, things do change… Without the midgets around to do most of the manual labor of setting things up, some of the less talented Normals like game barkers and such have to double as laborers. This causes some bad feelings initially until the Ring Master orders the Freaks to start helping as well. The Freaks seem to dislike the fact that the Ring Master isn’t “favoring” them as much anymore, but she’s just trying to keep things fair so his Carnival stays together. The criminal activity goes down quite a bit. (Though someone’s always still making hooch so happily you still have a steady supply of booze to grab) With Ajax out of the way Sasha grows closer to Randal who returns these feelings. This new relationship makes him a little less “uptight” and more willing to take chances and less likely to go running to Madam Orbec before he does anything. His “threats” of taking over start becoming more likely. Another rift in the Carnival is expected to occur and finally does, starting with the fiery death of Pervus and his clowns. Since the Ring Master was always looking for more help, Pervus and his clown crew took it upon themselves to start “recruiting” unsuspecting townies and rubes to come work for the Carnival, this causes them to start engaging in debauchery on a bigger scale than before, to an extent that they become a liability and more obvious. Randal, still having a great sense of ethics and morality could not stand by and let it go on any longer. He and several other Normals set fire to the entire tent in the middle of the night killing them all. (And putting the “Gimpjax” out of his misery.) The Ring Master was furious that Randal would take such a liberty. Another battle comes close to occurring, but fortunately for the Ring Master,(Who would’ve been greatly outnumbered) Randal doesn’t want to fight over the Carnival, instead he convinces his followers to leave while they started their OWN Carnival. One that was more family friendly and without Freaks all over the place. He leaves with Sasha and most of the other Normals in tow. The Carnival becomes much smaller and is little more than a traveling Freak show as they are practically the only ones still left. The Ring Master doesn’t seem to mind though, as he said, the Carnival would survive, maybe not in the same way, but its still around. And you still remain the GEEK.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Agh! Alright, alright! Stop poking me…what day is it?” “Never mind all that geek! Get going you know how the Ring Master doesn’t like being kept waiting! Phew! You smell even more disgusting than usual! I guess that’s one way to keep Ajax from killing you, he’d probably vomit his guts out before he could lay a hand on you…then you could lick it up for the rubes! Ha ha! Move it Geek!” Charley prods you with a sharp stick periodically on your way to the Ring Master’s trailer until you arrive at which point, Atlas stops the both of you. “Stop! What business do the both of you have here?” “Goddamnit you fuckin’ one eyed freak! We go through this all the fucking time and its getting REALLY old! You just saw me come out of the Ring Master’s trailer earlier today when he sent me to get the Geek, you know damn well what we’re both doing here!” Ignoring Charley’s comments Atlas looks down at you and points. “You may enter, but the Ring Master doesn’t need to see you again, so you may not.” “Yeah, whatever enjoy the smell.” Charley says and mumbles something to himself while leaving the area. You barely make it up the little steps to the trailer, but you do. You’re finally starting to gather your wits together; your head still hurts though and you’ve just realize you haven’t had a drink yet. What a terrible feeling. You open the door. “Close the door, you’re letting all the sunlight in.” the Ring Master orders from behind his desk. She’s siting in his chair, but has her back turned to you. “Uh you wanted to see me?” “Of course…(Sniff sniff) you really haven’t been taking care of yourself. If anything you’ve become even more repulsive than when I first took you in. Remember that day?” “Um, yeah I think…no, no I don’t. I mean kind of… I forget things.” “I’m not surprised; you’re constantly drinking that swill Charley makes. I am surprised you haven’t gone blind yet though. Oh well what you insist on doing to yourself is of little concern to me, all I require is your obedience. You are thankful for all I have provided for you aren’t you?” “Oh yeah. Sure I am.” “You seem to be one of the few nowadays then. There are some though that are ungrateful for things I’ve done for them, they plan to betray me and everything this carnival stands for. They plan to change the natural order of things. Can you imagine what might happen to this carnival if I wasn’t here? What might happen to you?” You attempt to think about this scenario, but instead you just stand there because you can’t really form anything in your mind because it hurts really bad, you’ve been sober too damn long, and it’s about to get even longer as the Ring Master seems intent on bombarding you with talk as he finally swivels around in her chair. That pale androgynous face of the Ring Master’s is displaying a look of seriousness as usual. “Nothing good I can assure you. Which is why I’m putting YOU in charge of this task.” “Huh? What task?” “Why ensuring the survival of the carnival of course.” ”What!? Me?! Why? How!? I’m not qualified! Can’t you or Charley do it?” “I fear I’ve done all I’ve can. I mean I’ve provided all of THIS to everyone here. I’ve given them purpose and a life. If that isn’t enough for them, then my words aren’t going to make a difference at this point. And as for Charley, well…I’m sure even in your usual state of drunkenness you’re aware that he has his own plans for this carnival.” “I guess…but agh, it’s too early for all this…why me? I mean what am I supposed to do? I’m just the Geek.” “Yes, and that’s exactly why I’m choosing you. You have no motive, you have no agenda, you have no friends, and as such you would probably be the best candidate to convince others to resist change and keep the status quo.” “You have to be joking! Nobody’s going to listen to me! I’m the fucking Geek!” “You might be surprised, you have far more potential than you give yourself credit for…perhaps you’ll even change some perspectives, or maybe not. The choice is yours, because the fate of THIS carnival is resting solely on your actions, you can no longer afford to hide from the world in a bottle and a cage if you wish to keep your current life. It is time for you to take some responsibility, its time to repay the debt you owe me. You have until show time.” “But…” “Now leave me, I wish to be alone.” The Ring Master swivels his chair back to its original position. You head back outside, where upon Atlas blocks it again with his massive body. Never before in your life have you been put in this kind of position of responsibility, (Not that you can remember anyway) but you’re going to have to do something, the question is what exactly? > You get a drink If you’re going to do anything you have to get a drink first, you head over to Charley’s still, you can only hope Ajax isn’t there. “What the fuck is that smell? Oh it’s the fucking lame ass Geek, why am I not surprised?” Ajax shouts when he sees you coming. Well so much for hope. Normally you’d run, but Charley’s also there and will keep Ajax from killing you (Maybe not beating you though) plus your reliance on alcohol in any form drives you on even in the presence of possible danger. “Lemme guess Geek, you want a drink?” Charley asks. “Ah good ol’ predictable Geek. Here you go.” Charley pours you some of the swill that you consider the Nectar of the Gods and drink it greedily. He pours you another when you finish it. Charley’s being unusually cool with you. “Can’t get enough eh? Here’s another…so what’d the Ring Master want to see you for?” “Huh?” “I said what the fuck did the Ring Master want to see you for? Surely it wasn’t about your act, you eat disgusting shit and that’s the end of it. So what did you talk about?” Charley’s demeanor has changed severely. He’s looking at you intently to determine if you’re going to lie to him. You’re thrown off guard and can only stutter a response. “Um, nothing much, he, um…I mean she…uh…” “WRONG ANSWER GEEK!” Charley yells, punching you in the nuts and at his height, he lands a good hit. You collapse like a rag doll, and then Ajax puts his foot on your neck while you hold your scrotum in pain. Charley continues his interrogation this time with his sharp stick pointed near your eye. “Now you’re gonna tell me what you and that pale she male freak talked about or you’ll have something in common with Atlas! Talk!” “(Groan) Alright! Okay! The Ring Master thinks change in this carnival is coming and he wants me to convince people that they should be on his side when the shit goes down!” Charley smirks and looks at Ajax. “You hear that Ajax? Some SHIT is supposed to go down! This is the first I’ve heard of any shit going down! You know about any shit going down Ajax?” “Nope. First I’ve heard of it. The only shit that goes down around here that is what this fucking Geek eats!” “Got that right…but just in case there WAS some SHIT going down, I’d say it would be in someone’s best interest to not be on the Ring Master’s side and be doing his bidding…after all they might find themselves getting hurt very badly.” “Charley you don’t have to worry about me! Nobody’s going to listen to me, I’m just a Geek!” “Of course I’m not worried about you! However…if the Ring Master asked YOU to do this, there must be a reason that I’m not readily seeing…I know! You’re working for me now!” “What?!” Ajax asks. “What?!” you repeat. “Yeah, all the shit the Ring Master told you to do; you’re doing for me now. Trust me you’ll be better off when I’m in charge. You can have all the booze you want, a bigger cell, hell I’ll even get you LAID! I know a couple of ladies who’ll debase themselves almost as much as you will!” Charley then gets in your face and whispers “And you won’t have to worry about Ajax ever hitting you again with me in charge I promise. But if you betray me, I’ll make sure Ajax breaks every bone in your goddamn body and then tosses you to Pervus and his fucked up clown army where they can skull fuck your corpse. Are we clear?” “Yeah, yeah, sure!” you quickly say. “Good. Ajax let him up.” You get up and Charley addresses you before you leave. “Remember, you have until show time Geek, and don’t even think about trying to run away, because I’ll find you and you know what happens then.” You stagger away with your new mission, you have no idea of how to go about this, so you just think about who might need convincing. God you could use another drink… > You go convince the Freaks Well, if you can get the freaks to side with Charley, everyone else should be pretty easy of course HOW you’re going to do that is another story. The Freak community is pretty loyal to the Ring Master and given your lowly status, you don’t know if they’re even going to listen to you. You approach the freak side of the Carnival. The instant you enter their camp, you’re watched and studied by many eyes (And some of those many eyes belong to the same freak), but at least nobody throws anything at your head. You don’t get far before Jasmine the Bearded Lady stops you. “Hey Geek! What’re you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be doing something for the Ring Master?” “Huh? How do you know about that?” “Because we’re his supporters obviously Geek! What he knows we know and she knows all!” Obviously he doesn’t know all; otherwise the freaks would know you’re working for Charley now. “Anyway, you don’t need to come here to convince us to ally with the Ring Master, our loyalty to him is well known. Though I must admit I wonder why she chose you for this task, but I guess he has her reasons. I suggest you leave now, there’s nothing else for you here Geek.” > You tell her the Freaks should change their allegiance “Um, Jasmine maybe you should reconsider.” “Reconsider what?” “Well maybe siding with the Ring Master isn’t the best thing for you guys.” Those words suddenly causes all the freaks that were previously spying on you from their trailers, tents, and holes to come out and surround you. There’s no way to escape. Jasmine’s eyes narrow while she strokes her beard. “Oh? And who would YOU suggest we side with?” “Well Charley makes this place really profitable and you know you’d have protection, even more than if the Ring Master kept running things.” “CHARLEY? That little obnoxious creep? He’s a fucking low life and with more power he’d be a fucking dictator! There wouldn’t be the freedom that the Ring Master gives us!” “How do you know? I mean he’s a midget, that’s almost like being a freak, he might understand your struggle. I mean I do and…” Suddenly you feel a crushing blow to the back of your head as Roger the Crustacean hits you with one of his claws. You then feel the stomping of various feet, hooves, talons and “other” on your body. You begin coughing up blood as your head is repeatedly kicked into the dirt. Jasmine then address you again while pulling your bloody head up. “You feel that? Hundreds of feet continuing to step on you as you struggle to rise up. THAT’S our struggle everyday. And now you know it. Hope you liked being one of us Geek.” Jasmine then lands a crunching blow your nose, pushing the bone up into your brain, killing you and ending your misery.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well, if you can get the freaks to side with Charley, everyone else should be pretty easy of course HOW you’re going to do that is another story. The Freak community is pretty loyal to the Ring Master and given your lowly status, you don’t know if they’re even going to listen to you. You approach the freak side of the Carnival. The instant you enter their camp, you’re watched and studied by many eyes (And some of those many eyes belong to the same freak), but at least nobody throws anything at your head. You don’t get far before Jasmine the Bearded Lady stops you. “Hey Geek! What’re you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be doing something for the Ring Master?” “Huh? How do you know about that?” “Because we’re his supporters obviously Geek! What he knows we know and she knows all!” Obviously he doesn’t know all; otherwise the freaks would know you’re working for Charley now. “Anyway, you don’t need to come here to convince us to ally with the Ring Master, our loyalty to him is well known. Though I must admit I wonder why she chose you for this task, but I guess he has her reasons. I suggest you leave now, there’s nothing else for you here Geek.” > You leave Mentioning anything against the Ring Master would be a death sentence at this point, so you keep your mouth shut and leave. As you leave the freaks, you notice a group of Pinheads congregating behind one of the trailers, when they see you they suddenly become quiet and stare at you with vacant smiles on their distorted faces. > You approach them The Pinheads are behaving very oddly, normally they’re gibbering or playing, they’re hardly ever this quiet. You approach them. “Hey, what’s going on?” you ask. They look up at you still vacantly smiling at you. > You talk some more “So, are you guys getting ready for your act tonight?” The Pinheads look at each other and then look at you and continue to smile vacantly. > You talk even more For some reason the Pinhead’s silence makes you feel welcome, normally everyone drives you off, you decide to talk more. “Yeah I got a new act, I bite the head off of a cat, vomit it back up and then eat it again with rotten chicken livers.” The Pinheads cease smiling, and begin to look utterly bored. > You continue to talk to them “Yeah, I remember one time I ate a dog bladder, kind of a bitter taste.” The Pinheads are now starting to get annoyed with you as you insist on telling them your “interesting” list of past dinners. You might want to stop. While the Pinheads aren’t normally abusive to you, you don’t exactly have a nice history with them and they have been known to get mean when something displeases them, much like young children do. > You keep pushing it “So one time…” “Geek will you shut the fuck up? Shit, I can smell your rotten breath from here!” one of the Pinheads shouts, you’re absolutely stunned. “You…you can talk?!” The lead Pinhead gives a dirty look to the one who shouted at you, and then looks back. “Yeah we can talk, and now YOU know we can thanks to big mouth over here! Thanks a lot Frank!” “Well he was getting on my nerves George!” “But…if you can talk, why do you act like idiots?” “Why do you eat all that nasty shit? For the money of course or in your case for the booze. You think we’d make as much if we didn’t act like little retarded children? We’re fucking ugly just like any freak, but by acting like simple minded children we come across as charming and harmless…cute even. Which makes us rube favorites. Nobody knows the truth, not even the other freaks, nobody except you…I guess we’ll have to kill you.” “Hold on wait wait! Can’t we come to an agreement here? I mean I’m not going to tell anyone! And even if I did, who’d believe me?” “Can’t take that chance.” You suddenly crumple to the ground and beg pathetically for your life at the feet of the George. He gives you a disdainful squinted expression. “Get off my feet Geek! Sheesh, you’re pathetic! We probably wouldn’t have killed you, maybe just cut out your tongue.” “So you’ll let me live?” “Yeah, but you’re still not getting off that easy. You gotta do something for us to make us trust you.” “What?” “Go to the clown tent and destroy all their sex toys.” “WHAT?!” “Shhhh! Stop fucking drawing attention!” “You want me to go to the clown tent? But nobody in their right mind goes in there!” “Duh, that’s why we’re sending you.” “Why do you want me to do this?” “Because those pedophile ass clowns are direct competition, they always draw all the children away from our act, and we’d like to get back at them in some way. It’ll really piss off Pervus when he sees his cock ring in pieces heh heh heh.” “I don’t wanna touch those things! Who knows where they’ve been!” “You’re kidding me right? This coming from the guy who eats cow ass for his grand finale. Look they’re mostly all in a big wooden box anyway so just set fire to the box or something. It’s not like you have a choice in this matter.” “I dunno, I think death might be preferable to getting caught by the clowns.” “(Sigh) Alright, I know you’re working for Charley you wanted to convince the Freaks to side with him in this ensuing struggle coming up…don’t ask us how we know, we just do. And it’s mainly because since much like you we hear a lot more because we’re considers idiots and non-threatening. If you do this, we’ll convince the Freaks to side with Charley, again don’t ask us how…we have our ways…do we have a deal now?” Knowing this is probably your best shot and if the Pinheads don’t kill you, Charley certainly will for your failure to get people to side with him, so you agree. “Good, return when you’ve completed the job, we’ll be playing around in this area until show time.” You leave the Pinheads who resume their pretend act of being morons while you resume your completely real act of being a moron for getting yourself into this mess. You don’t know how you’re going to do this. As you approach the tent, you notice how quiet it is. Normally loud insane rowdy laughter can be heard from within, but it’s silent which almost makes it scarier. You wonder if you shouldn’t just set the WHOLE tent on fire. In some ways you’d be doing the world a favor. You do wonder about how the Ring Master can just let such evil go unchecked. > You set the whole tent on fire You make up your mind and decide to save yourself some risk and set the whole tent on fire. You head back the Charley’s still, which luckily is unattended right now. You steal three bottles of his stuff and his Zippo lighter that he foolishly left near the volatile concoction. Before you leave you take another drink to calm your nerves. You return to the clown tent and start dowsing it with Charley’s booze trying not to be noticed and hopping no clown suddenly comes out of the tent. You continue to do this until you encircle the entire tent and run out of booze. You light it up… The entire tent goes up like tinder box, you didn’t expect it to go up so fast, and you’re a little singed yourself, as you fall backwards. You scramble away as other Carneys notice what’s happened and start calling for water. The clowns soon come running out screaming horribly while burning alive. Their faces literally melting off with all the makeup they were wearing. You are about to go see the Pinheads, but the carnival is in too much chaos, as your act of arson has had an unintended side effect. The burning clowns end up running hither, thither and yon, setting everything else on fire as well in their torment. Soon the entire Carnival is up in flames and its every man, woman, and freak for itself. Having no other options, you keep running until you reach the nearest town. You spend a couple days just bumming around the town and sleeping in the park until one night… “Hello, Geek.” You hear melodic voice say. Before you can reply a huge foot steps on your throat. It’s Atlas and the Ring Master. “It wasn’t enough that you attempted to betray me, but you had to destroy my beloved Carnival. The Carnival that brought so much joy to others and gave jobs to the outcasts. Outcasts like you…well do you have anything to say?” Atlas relaxes his foot on your throat for just a bit for you to answer. “It…it…was an accident…” “Hmm, an accident. Yes I made an accident too, time to correct it. Atlas.” “N…” Before you can get out the “o” Atlas brings his massive foot down on your throat utterly destroying your windpipe, your larynx, and your life.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“So one time…” “Geek will you shut the fuck up? Shit, I can smell your rotten breath from here!” one of the Pinheads shouts, you’re absolutely stunned. “You…you can talk?!” The lead Pinhead gives a dirty look to the one who shouted at you, and then looks back. “Yeah we can talk, and now YOU know we can thanks to big mouth over here! Thanks a lot Frank!” “Well he was getting on my nerves George!” “But…if you can talk, why do you act like idiots?” “Why do you eat all that nasty shit? For the money of course or in your case for the booze. You think we’d make as much if we didn’t act like little retarded children? We’re fucking ugly just like any freak, but by acting like simple minded children we come across as charming and harmless…cute even. Which makes us rube favorites. Nobody knows the truth, not even the other freaks, nobody except you…I guess we’ll have to kill you.” “Hold on wait wait! Can’t we come to an agreement here? I mean I’m not going to tell anyone! And even if I did, who’d believe me?” “Can’t take that chance.” You suddenly crumple to the ground and beg pathetically for your life at the feet of the George. He gives you a disdainful squinted expression. “Get off my feet Geek! Sheesh, you’re pathetic! We probably wouldn’t have killed you, maybe just cut out your tongue.” “So you’ll let me live?” “Yeah, but you’re still not getting off that easy. You gotta do something for us to make us trust you.” “What?” “Go to the clown tent and destroy all their sex toys.” “WHAT?!” “Shhhh! Stop fucking drawing attention!” “You want me to go to the clown tent? But nobody in their right mind goes in there!” “Duh, that’s why we’re sending you.” “Why do you want me to do this?” “Because those pedophile ass clowns are direct competition, they always draw all the children away from our act, and we’d like to get back at them in some way. It’ll really piss off Pervus when he sees his cock ring in pieces heh heh heh.” “I don’t wanna touch those things! Who knows where they’ve been!” “You’re kidding me right? This coming from the guy who eats cow ass for his grand finale. Look they’re mostly all in a big wooden box anyway so just set fire to the box or something. It’s not like you have a choice in this matter.” “I dunno, I think death might be preferable to getting caught by the clowns.” “(Sigh) Alright, I know you’re working for Charley you wanted to convince the Freaks to side with him in this ensuing struggle coming up…don’t ask us how we know, we just do. And it’s mainly because since much like you we hear a lot more because we’re considers idiots and non-threatening. If you do this, we’ll convince the Freaks to side with Charley, again don’t ask us how…we have our ways…do we have a deal now?” Knowing this is probably your best shot and if the Pinheads don’t kill you, Charley certainly will for your failure to get people to side with him, so you agree. “Good, return when you’ve completed the job, we’ll be playing around in this area until show time.” You leave the Pinheads who resume their pretend act of being morons while you resume your completely real act of being a moron for getting yourself into this mess. You don’t know how you’re going to do this. As you approach the tent, you notice how quiet it is. Normally loud insane rowdy laughter can be heard from within, but it’s silent which almost makes it scarier. You wonder if you shouldn’t just set the WHOLE tent on fire. In some ways you’d be doing the world a favor. You do wonder about how the Ring Master can just let such evil go unchecked. > You enter the tent You cautiously enter the tent, fearing for your ass (Literally). As it turns out, all the clowns are all passed out from the night before. Looks like it was necrophilia this time, judging from the rotting corpses lying on the floor. In fact if you weren’t so rank yourself, the smell might actually bother you. Pervus doesn’t seem to be here though. Liquor bottles are everywhere; in fact you could probably grab one and dowse the box (Which is open and crammed full of whips, shackles and “insertion objects”) then take one of the Zippos lying on a table and light the box up easy. This is going to be simpler than you… Suddenly you feel a hand grab around your foot. “Hmm, yeah come here baby…” Before you can do anything one of the clowns has curled his face up next to your foot and began sucking your BIG TOE. This is REALLY disgusting, even for you. The only good thing is the clown seems to still be somewhat asleep. > You remove your foot and get out of there As you attempt to remove your foot the clown’s grip tightens, and then he wakes up completely. “What the…Hey fellas! Look what we got here! It’s the Geek! Let’s fuck the shit out of his ass and make him our permanent fuck toy!” The clowns suddenly all get up from their drunken slumber and surround you, there is no escape. The horrors that are unleashed upon you that day are best left unmentioned, but you never leave that tent ever again. You are no longer known as a Geek anymore, you are something much worse… You are now the GIMP.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You cautiously enter the tent, fearing for your ass (Literally). As it turns out, all the clowns are all passed out from the night before. Looks like it was necrophilia this time, judging from the rotting corpses lying on the floor. In fact if you weren’t so rank yourself, the smell might actually bother you. Pervus doesn’t seem to be here though. Liquor bottles are everywhere; in fact you could probably grab one and dowse the box (Which is open and crammed full of whips, shackles and “insertion objects”) then take one of the Zippos lying on a table and light the box up easy. This is going to be simpler than you… Suddenly you feel a hand grab around your foot. “Hmm, yeah come here baby…” Before you can do anything one of the clowns has curled his face up next to your foot and began sucking your BIG TOE. This is REALLY disgusting, even for you. The only good thing is the clown seems to still be somewhat asleep. > You let him suck your toe You don’t want to risk waking him, so you just let him finish...the sucking and slurping sound is unnerving. “Hmmm, yeah, your clit tastes so good…mmm.” You shutter to think what clits he’s been sucking and licking if he thinks YOUR toe is one and that it tastes good! Soon he seems to stop and mumbles something about being sorry for pissing the bed again. You safely move your foot away. Not wishing to have anything else of yours molested, you grab a bottle dowse the box, and then set it on fire with one of the lighters here and get out as fast you can. You can hear some of the clowns cursing and yelling from the tent in the distance. When you get back to the Pinheads they’re playing with a ball and laughing. Upon seeing you, George nods in your direction, as its safe to talk with nobody around. “I did it.” “Yes, I know, I had Frank follow you. Good job.” “So about your side of the deal…” “Yes, don’t worry, we’ll honor it. Charley’s a good business man, he’ll make this place even more money…which means more money for us too, we don’t mind if he takes charge. You can go report to your new master the good news, but don’t you fucking DARE say shit about our true nature to anyone, EVER.” You agree and leave, you tell Charley the news before show time who chuckles heartily and tells you to be ready after the show because the revolution is coming after the rubes leave. Not wishing to run into the Ring Master before hand you hang around Charley’s still which isn’t too pleasant since you have to endure Ajax’s abuse while Charley goes off to make his preparations. Then show time arrives, everything goes pretty much the same except the Ring Master looks a little distracted the entire time and the clowns seem to be off their game tonight. The Pinheads take the opportunity to show them up in from of everyone. > You but the real show begins afterwards A dark moonlit night. Charley confronts the Ring Master with his army of midgets behind him as well as Ajax. The Ring Master has Atlas, and looks around for his usual allies, the Freaks, but they’re nowhere around. The Normals seem to be staying out of the fight for the most part, but chances are some of them will take one side or the other. “Your time has come Ring Master! No longer will you exploit us! I’m taking over!” “And you all feel this way? You’d rather follow this criminal who’ll be corrupt? You really think he’s doing this out of some noble moral code? Obviously you must be blind if you don’t see that rule by this degenerate will be worse than anything you THINK I’m doing…but I leave it up to you…” “It won’t work Ringy, I got more in common with my people than you do! Blood is thicker, and yours is going to run everywhere if you don’t peaceably leave…I’m giving you this one chance you pale she-male.” “Not likely, I have my own friends as you know.” The Ring Master whistles and you arrive with all the Freaks behind you. He looks surprised to see you. “Geek?” “Sorry, Ring Master, but we made a better deal.” You say and the Freaks advance. “NO! Atlas, it’s just me and you now!” The battle ensues, though it’s not really a battle. A few of the normals side with the Ring Master, but sensing Charley’s got the winning hand most of them either just stay out of it or directly side with him. The only thing that makes the battle last longer is the fact that Pervus and his clowns side with the Ring Master as they still were mad about the Pinheads embarrassing them at show time. Atlas and Ajax lock horns, and while Atlas kills Ajax in the struggle, he is easily taken down by the midgets afterwards. Pervus and the clowns do some damage, but likewise they too are taken down. On the side lines watching, the bloodshed is too much for Randal and he leaves during the battle which has forever destroying his love of the carnival. Sasha leaves with him seeing that Ajax is no longer alive to hold power over her. Finally in the last moments Charley laughs as he stands over the Ring Master’s body which is now lifeless with Charley’s sharp stick through its heart. Meanwhile you were hiding during all this, but Charley calls you out. “Hey Geek! Come out you fuckin’ coward! We won! Come out, you ain’t gotta worry about Ajax anymore his goddamn neck is twisted all the way around, damn shame.” “…I’m here Charley.” “Good, unzip the Ring Master’s pants.” “What?” “Unzip the Ring Master’s pants, I wanna see what the hell he or she was packing. I had a bet going with Ajax and while I’m just gonna take everything from his trailer anyway, I still wanna see if I would’ve won fairly.” You’re a little hesitant, but your crouch over the body and start unzipping the Ring Master’s pants. A crowd begins to form around you. Normal, Midget and Freak alike. “Come on come Geek, we ain’t got all fuckin’ night.” Charley says while kicking you in the ribs. You pull down the underwear… “EEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWW!” the crowd shouts in unison. “Holy shit!” you say falling back. “Ha ha, I knew it!” Charley chuckles before continuing. “Alright you lot, I want all these bodies cleaned up and disposed of before we head out to the next town, and Salina I want YOU in my new trailer to help me celebrate this glorious victory!” And so begins the reign of Charley the Ringmaster. Under his guidance midgets run everything and the Carnival doesn’t so much resemble a Carnival as it resembles a mobile grifting ring. While regular carnival activities still abound, they’re more of a cover than anything. In time, most of the high maintenance acts are done away with and eventually only thing that stays completely the same is the freak show, just to upkeep the front for what’s really going on. The Pinheads get their own special attraction since they take up the clown vacancy. You do somewhat better under the new management. You still do your act as it’s still a big draw; you get lumped in with the Freak Show. You don’t need to put up with Ajax’s abuse anymore so fearing for your life isn’t a factor. (Though the Pinheads still verbally warn you every now and then to ensure your secrecy) Charley uses you as a gopher, so you’re actually making money now (If little). He still kicks you around for his amusement, and is prone to dump a bucket of piss in your face to wake you up, but it’s better than what a Geek like you could’ve hoped for.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Yeah, I remember one time I ate a dog bladder, kind of a bitter taste.” The Pinheads are now starting to get annoyed with you as you insist on telling them your “interesting” list of past dinners. You might want to stop. While the Pinheads aren’t normally abusive to you, you don’t exactly have a nice history with them and they have been known to get mean when something displeases them, much like young children do. > You go talk to the Normals Since the Freaks are firmly behind the Ring Master, you might as well talk to the Normals, the problem is you have to talk to someone with some pull with most of them, and Remarkable Randal is the only one who has that in any great capacity and getting him to side with Charley is out of the question. At least directly. It’s possible you could talk with Madam Orbec and get her to convince Randal to change his stance since he follows anything she says; also she’s less likely to throw something at your head when she sees you approach. You head towards Madam Orbec’s tent, which has an air of creepiness surrounding it. You enter the tent and immediately get your usual welcome. “Geek! Begone from this place! Do not assault the spirits with your foulness!” Madam Orbec commands. “They’re dead; I don’t really see how my smell can affect them.” “It’s not your odor that offends the spirits, it’s your aura! We do not want you in our presence! Away with you, we have no wish to be involved in your underhanded dealings!” “How do you know what I’m here for?” “Fool! I am Madam Orbec! I see all that the spirits see! You’re working with that miscreant Charley in an attempt to take over the Carnival and you’re hoping to influence me so that I may in turn influence Randal to convince the normals to side with him.” “Well since you know…Madam?” Madam Orbec begins to clutch her head and writhe on the floor talking to herself. “Yes. But no! Maybe? Perhaps. If he can pull it off. Is he capable? I doubt it. We must try. Whatever, just get him out of here!” Madam Orbec suddenly stops and slowly sits up. “You need to expose those of the small craniums.” “What?” “The Pinheads. You need to show their true nature to the public.” “True nature? What’re you talking about? Why” “That is all the spirits have told me, their reasons are not to be questioned, but I have been advised to help you in your treacherous endeavor if you accomplish this objective. Now leave and do not return unless you are successful.” At this point Madam Orbec seems to go into a cationic trance. You take your opportunity to leave and ponder what the hell her cryptic ramblings were about. All you know for certain is that you have to do something to the Pinheads. Expose their true nature, though you can’t imagine what that could be. You could try spying on them and see what you can find out, or maybe a more direct approach would work. > You spy on them You head towards the Freak side of the carnival and try to find the Pinheads, when you see them you notice they’re all congregated together in a relatively secluded area. Almost as if they’re in a meeting. How odd. They haven’t seen you yet, so you take the opportunity to get closer by sneaking around behind them and hiding behind a barrel. You prop your back up against it, close your eyes and pretend to be passed out, just in case someone passes by, wondering what you’re doing. You then attempt to listen and you can’t believe what you’re hearing… “So George did you hear what’s going on in Germany?” “Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me if we had to go to war with them…AGAIN.” “Well maybe a war would be good for the economy.” “Maybe, I doubt if it could get any worse.” “Yeah, but if we go to war that means less people coming to this Carnival, and that’s not good for our income.” “Oh I don’t know about that. History has shown that in hard times, people are actually more inclined to want to escape reality and that’s what this Carnival is all about; escaping reality.” The Pinheads are discussing world matters! All this time they’ve been acting like idiot children and they’re actually intelligent! You get enthralled by more of their conversation. They begin discussing literature, science, philosophy and other topics that are far above your comprehension or even a normal person’s comprehension. Unfortunately since you’re not actually watching them and just listening, you don’t see what some of them do. The Pinheads realize you’ve been spying on them mainly due to your powerful smell which is unmistakable at this range. A couple of them did a bit of sneaking around on their own while the others continued the conversation to keep you put until they got into position. “Psst! Hey Geek, over here!” You open your eyes just in time to see a baseball smash into your face, breaking your nose. You curl in a fetal position while holding your nose and resisting the urge to yell. You pretend you’re still drunk, hoping you can throw them off suspicion. It doesn’t work though. The Pinheads have been fooling everyone for so long they’re experts in seeing through a fake act as pathetic as yours and even if they couldn’t they still wouldn’t want to take the chance of you blabbing. “Shoulda stayed in your cell today Geek.” are the last words you hear as a crowd of angry little squinty faces stare down at you, before they beat you to death and then dump your body in the clown tent. You really don’t want to know what happens after that.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Since the Freaks are firmly behind the Ring Master, you might as well talk to the Normals, the problem is you have to talk to someone with some pull with most of them, and Remarkable Randal is the only one who has that in any great capacity and getting him to side with Charley is out of the question. At least directly. It’s possible you could talk with Madam Orbec and get her to convince Randal to change his stance since he follows anything she says; also she’s less likely to throw something at your head when she sees you approach. You head towards Madam Orbec’s tent, which has an air of creepiness surrounding it. You enter the tent and immediately get your usual welcome. “Geek! Begone from this place! Do not assault the spirits with your foulness!” Madam Orbec commands. “They’re dead; I don’t really see how my smell can affect them.” “It’s not your odor that offends the spirits, it’s your aura! We do not want you in our presence! Away with you, we have no wish to be involved in your underhanded dealings!” “How do you know what I’m here for?” “Fool! I am Madam Orbec! I see all that the spirits see! You’re working with that miscreant Charley in an attempt to take over the Carnival and you’re hoping to influence me so that I may in turn influence Randal to convince the normals to side with him.” “Well since you know…Madam?” Madam Orbec begins to clutch her head and writhe on the floor talking to herself. “Yes. But no! Maybe? Perhaps. If he can pull it off. Is he capable? I doubt it. We must try. Whatever, just get him out of here!” Madam Orbec suddenly stops and slowly sits up. “You need to expose those of the small craniums.” “What?” “The Pinheads. You need to show their true nature to the public.” “True nature? What’re you talking about? Why” “That is all the spirits have told me, their reasons are not to be questioned, but I have been advised to help you in your treacherous endeavor if you accomplish this objective. Now leave and do not return unless you are successful.” At this point Madam Orbec seems to go into a cationic trance. You take your opportunity to leave and ponder what the hell her cryptic ramblings were about. All you know for certain is that you have to do something to the Pinheads. Expose their true nature, though you can’t imagine what that could be. You could try spying on them and see what you can find out, or maybe a more direct approach would work. > You direct approach You can’t think of anything else to do, so you wait around for the Pinheads to come running around the Carnival like they usually do. When you see them gleefully playing catch with a baseball with each other, you insist on joining in The Pinheads look a little bewildered by your actions at first, and when you actually get a hold of the ball and toss it back at them, they start getting noticeably angry. A few of them start pushing you and attempting to trip you up. You continue to antagonize them by “playing” with them. Until one of them says something out loud surprising everyone. “GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE GEEK! YOU’RE FUCKING STINKING UP THE PLACE!” This one hostile sentence shows a coherency that the Pinheads have never displayed before, and shouting it in public for the rest of the Carneys to hear has outted them. “Fucking Pinheads can talk!” someone shouts. At this point the Pinheads start arguing with themselves and attempting to cover up their mistake, but its too late now. You slip away and head back to Madam Orbec. When you get to Orbec’s tent, she’s talking to herself as usual (Or the “spirits” rather) “No, I don’t like that. Well if you moved a little more. NO! YOU CAN’T FUCK ME IN THE ASS! Oh fuck it then.” “Um, am I interrupting something intimate?” “The Geek returns! And I see you have been successful in your mission. The spirits thank you and you can be sure the Normals will be on your side when the time comes. Now leave us we are discussing something important.” “Wait, can you at least tell me why you…I mean the spirits wanted the Pinheads exposed?” “I suppose. Does he need an answer? Probably not. Then why tell? You’re right.” Then Madam Orbec answers you directly. “No, now leave before we change our mind.” Not wishing to undo your work, you leave and head back to Charley, who you see walking around looking for you. “Hey there you are Geek! What’s all this I’ve been hearing about you fucking around with the Pinheads? You’re supposed to be doin’ shit for me, I hope you’ve been making progress in that little endeavor.” “I have. I got the Normals to side with us.” Charley chuckles heartily and tells you to be ready after the show because the revolution is coming after the rubes leave. Not wishing to run into the Ring Master before hand you hang around Charley’s still which isn’t too pleasant since you have to endure Ajax’s abuse while Charley goes off to make his preparations. Then show time arrives, everything goes pretty much the same except the Ring Master looks a little distracted the entire time and the Pinheads don’t show up at all, apparently their exposure caused some trouble with other Carneys (All of them Normals) who didn’t like the fake act they were doing just to get paid more and taking money out of the pockets of performers who had real talents. (Tricking rubes is one thing, but fucking over other Carneys is frowned upon… if you get caught) > You but the real show begins aftterwards A dark moonlit night. Charley confronts the Ring Master with his army of midgets behind him as well as Ajax. The Ring Master has Atlas, and his usual allies, the Freaks are hanging in the darkness ready to strike if necessary. Most of the Normals though are nowhere to be seen. “Your time has come Ring Master! No longer will you exploit us! I’m taking over!” “And you all feel this way? You’d rather follow this criminal who’ll be corrupt? You really think he’s doing this out of some noble moral code? Obviously you must be blind if you don’t see that rule by this degenerate will be worse than anything you THINK I’m doing…but I leave it up to you…” “It won’t work Ringy, I got more in common with my people than you do! Blood is thicker, and yours is going to run everywhere if you don’t peaceably leave…I’m giving you this one chance you pale she-male.” “Not likely, I have my own friends as you know.” The Ring Master whistles and his Freaks show up, but Charley doesn’t look impressed. “Geek?” “Sorry, Ring Master, but we made a better deal.” You say and show up with a bunch of Normals behind you, and then Randal shows up on the other side with a bunch of Normals behind him as well. “I see. So you’ve all decided to throw your lot in with petty criminal activity. I’m glad to see your hypocrisy show its true face Randal, and Geek, I’m very disappointed in you. Very well, if I die this day, it’ll be beside those who are the true heart of Carnival! ATTACK!” The battle ensues, though it’s not really a battle. A few of the Normals side with the Ring Master, but most of them are on Charley’s side. The only thing that makes the battle last longer is the fact that the Freaks are fierce fighters. Atlas and Ajax lock horns, and while Atlas nearly kills Ajax, Randal does a couple of his magic tricks and blinds Atlas with a bright light, giving Ajax enough time to kill him. On the side lines watching, is Pervus and his clown gang masturbating to the carnage. Finally in the last moments Charley laughs as he stands over the Ring Master’s body which is now lifeless with Charley’s sharp stick through its heart; the last “Freak” to die. Meanwhile you were hiding during all this, but Charley calls you out. “Hey Geek! Come out you fuckin’ coward! We won!” “Yeah come out, you fucking useless piece of shit! I’m too tired to do anything to you right now.” Ajax adds. “…I’m here Charley.” “Good, unzip the Ring Master’s pants.” “What?” “Unzip the Ring Master’s pants; I wanna see what the hell he or she was packing. I have a bet going with Ajax and we wanna see who won.” You’re a little hesitant, but your crouch over the body and start unzipping the Ring Master’s pants. A crowd begins to form around you. Normal and Midget alike. “Come on come Geek, we ain’t got all fuckin’ night!” Ajax says while kicking you in the ribs. You pull down the underwear… “EEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWW!” the crowd shouts in unison. “Holy shit!” you say falling back. “Ha ha, I knew it! I fucking won!” Charley chuckles. “Shit! Fuck!” Ajax shouts and starts beating you to take his frustrations out. “Alright you lot, I want all these bodies cleaned up and disposed of before we head out to the next town, and Salina I want YOU in my new trailer to help me celebrate this glorious victory!” And so begins the reign of Charley the Ringmaster. Under his guidance midgets run everything and the Carnival doesn’t so much resemble a Carnival as it resembles a mobile grifting ring. While regular carnival activities still abound, they’re more of a cover than anything. In time though problems occur. Randal and Charley begin to come into conflict as Randal begins to regret his decision to side with him as well as his disapproval of what’s become of the Carnival. Another division begins to occur, but one on a smaller scale as Charley’s corrupting influence has infected most of the remaining Carneys at this point. Things really come to a head when Ajax suspects Sasha of having an affair with Randal. Eventually Randal, a few of his remaining “followers” AND Sasha are all killed in the middle of night and their bodies dumped in the river. Lacking any more “true talent” or even sideshow freaks, the Carnival is disbanded entirely and Charley and Ajax set up headquarters permanently in a sleazy small town where they primarily run the place. Proving that crime does pay. You on the other hand don’t do so well. While the Carnival was still around, you were routinely abused by Charley or Ajax more so than you normally were. When the Carnival disbanded you didn’t really have anywhere else to go, so you became the town drunk. Not really needing you anymore and having moved on to more important things, Charley forgets all about you, which leads to one dark rainy night when Ajax comes across you sleeping behind one of his bars. Not being reined in anymore, he does to you what he’s always wanted to do. He beats you death, laughing the whole time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Agh! Alright, alright! Stop poking me…what day is it?” “Never mind all that geek! Get going you know how the Ring Master doesn’t like being kept waiting! Phew! You smell even more disgusting than usual! I guess that’s one way to keep Ajax from killing you, he’d probably vomit his guts out before he could lay a hand on you…then you could lick it up for the rubes! Ha ha! Move it Geek!” Charley prods you with a sharp stick periodically on your way to the Ring Master’s trailer until you arrive at which point, Atlas stops the both of you. “Stop! What business do the both of you have here?” “Goddamnit you fuckin’ one eyed freak! We go through this all the fucking time and its getting REALLY old! You just saw me come out of the Ring Master’s trailer earlier today when he sent me to get the Geek, you know damn well what we’re both doing here!” Ignoring Charley’s comments Atlas looks down at you and points. “You may enter, but the Ring Master doesn’t need to see you again, so you may not.” “Yeah, whatever enjoy the smell.” Charley says and mumbles something to himself while leaving the area. You barely make it up the little steps to the trailer, but you do. You’re finally starting to gather your wits together; your head still hurts though and you’ve just realize you haven’t had a drink yet. What a terrible feeling. You open the door. “Close the door, you’re letting all the sunlight in.” the Ring Master orders from behind his desk. She’s siting in his chair, but has her back turned to you. “Uh you wanted to see me?” “Of course…(Sniff sniff) you really haven’t been taking care of yourself. If anything you’ve become even more repulsive than when I first took you in. Remember that day?” “Um, yeah I think…no, no I don’t. I mean kind of… I forget things.” “I’m not surprised; you’re constantly drinking that swill Charley makes. I am surprised you haven’t gone blind yet though. Oh well what you insist on doing to yourself is of little concern to me, all I require is your obedience. You are thankful for all I have provided for you aren’t you?” “Oh yeah. Sure I am.” “You seem to be one of the few nowadays then. There are some though that are ungrateful for things I’ve done for them, they plan to betray me and everything this carnival stands for. They plan to change the natural order of things. Can you imagine what might happen to this carnival if I wasn’t here? What might happen to you?” You attempt to think about this scenario, but instead you just stand there because you can’t really form anything in your mind because it hurts really bad, you’ve been sober too damn long, and it’s about to get even longer as the Ring Master seems intent on bombarding you with talk as he finally swivels around in her chair. That pale androgynous face of the Ring Master’s is displaying a look of seriousness as usual. “Nothing good I can assure you. Which is why I’m putting YOU in charge of this task.” “Huh? What task?” “Why ensuring the survival of the carnival of course.” ”What!? Me?! Why? How!? I’m not qualified! Can’t you or Charley do it?” “I fear I’ve done all I’ve can. I mean I’ve provided all of THIS to everyone here. I’ve given them purpose and a life. If that isn’t enough for them, then my words aren’t going to make a difference at this point. And as for Charley, well…I’m sure even in your usual state of drunkenness you’re aware that he has his own plans for this carnival.” “I guess…but agh, it’s too early for all this…why me? I mean what am I supposed to do? I’m just the Geek.” “Yes, and that’s exactly why I’m choosing you. You have no motive, you have no agenda, you have no friends, and as such you would probably be the best candidate to convince others to resist change and keep the status quo.” “You have to be joking! Nobody’s going to listen to me! I’m the fucking Geek!” “You might be surprised, you have far more potential than you give yourself credit for…perhaps you’ll even change some perspectives, or maybe not. The choice is yours, because the fate of THIS carnival is resting solely on your actions, you can no longer afford to hide from the world in a bottle and a cage if you wish to keep your current life. It is time for you to take some responsibility, its time to repay the debt you owe me. You have until show time.” “But…” “Now leave me, I wish to be alone.” The Ring Master swivels his chair back to its original position. You head back outside, where upon Atlas blocks it again with his massive body. Never before in your life have you been put in this kind of position of responsibility, (Not that you can remember anyway) but you’re going to have to do something, the question is what exactly? > You do something else This mission that’s been given to you by the Ring Master has gotten you all shook up. You don’t want all this pressure, yet you’re too scared to leave. This is the only place that accepts you somewhat. You’re too distracted to even get a drink! You’d rather not have to deal with Charley or especially Ajax right now either. Sometimes you just wish you didn’t have to live an utterly pathetic existence. While you’re attempting to find some place dark to crawl into and hide, you literally bump into Remarkable Randal. “Oof! Watch it you smelly, ugly, Geek! Honestly it’s bad enough this Carnival has Freaks and criminal Midgets, but honestly having YOU here defies all logic. If I ran this Carnival things would be different! What are you doing out of your cell anyway? Doesn’t the Ring Master usually keep you locked up until show time?” “Oh, um he wanted to talk to me about something.” “She did? What about?” “Oh about my act, and uh…doing…um…something.” Randal’s normal distain for you changes to one of interest. He studies you for a moment before speaking. “So the Ring Master has entrusted YOU to save this place? Hah! She MUST be desperate!” “Huh? What? How did you know?” “Madam Orbec has been teaching me how to contact the spirit world and read into people’s souls. And yours is an easy read indeed, such as it is…perhaps our meeting has its purpose however. After reading your soul I can see something within you that may be worth saving. I never thought it possible, but I think I may be able to help you and your situation Geek.” “I don’t understand.” “Yes you do. Maybe you try to block it out of your mind with that swill you drink from Charley, but deep down you hate what you are and your retched life. And you should. You’re a sorry excuse for a human being, in fact you aren’t really even human anymore, you’re sub-human. However, you have a chance to regain your humanity back, and even become a useful member of this Carnival again. And I’ll help you, if you help me.” “How am I supposed to help you?” “A simple task really. All I want you to do is go get Madam Orbec’s black book. She keeps it by her bed. You’ll know it when you see it.” “What?! You want me to steal from her? I thought she was supposed to be your mentor or something!” “Shhhhh! Keep it down Geek! Look. Madam Orbec IS my mentor and I’ll always be grateful for what she’s taught me. I’ve always believed in magic, but without her teachings, I wouldn’t be a magician, I’d only be an illusionist.” “There’s a difference?” you interrupt. “Oh yes, Geek. Oh yes. Anyway, you’re not stealing the book, I just need to borrow it for awhile because its time for me to learn more. I think Madam Orbec is afraid I’m not yet prepared to learn the secrets that lie inside her black book. But I know I am, and its time for me to prove it to her. She’ll be so proud when she sees what I’ll be able to do.” “So what’re you going to do with it?” “I’m going to use its powers to help me take over the Carnival of course.” “What?! I’m not helping you do that! I’m supposed to be helping the Ring Master anyway!” “Why? Seriously, what has the Ring Master really done for you? Given you a job? The Ring Master is exploiting you for his own personal gain. She cares nothing for you. He just saw a useless dreg of society and turned you into something that could somehow make money for her. Assuming you helped the Ring Master and were even successful, think about it, you’d just go back to your living your miserable life. Is mere existence just enough for you? Isn’t it time you wanted MORE out of life?” You’re quiet. You don’t think anyone’s even asked you that question, even before you became a geek, and you’re really surprised to hear it coming from Randal. Someone who has nothing, but distaste for you. “I dunno, I think I’m pretty bad off. I don’t think there’s anything I can do to improve myself at this point.” “Nonsense, there’s always a way and your first step is by helping me. Look. Maybe you are what you are and I don’t like it, but I do see that underneath it all you ARE a Normal. You should be on my side anyway; I can help you be something more than a geek. With magic anything is possible! Retrieve that book for me and I’ll turn this Carnival into something much more than what it is and I’ll turn you into something much more than what you could’ve thought possible.” Something about Randal makes you believe him. You can understand why people do tend to want to follow him. Maybe things would be better if he took over. He certainly seems more caring than the Ring Master and a hell of a lot better in general than Charley. “Okay, I’ll help you, but I dunno how I’m gonna ste…I mean borrow the book.” “Well I leave that up to you, but make sure you get the book to me before show time and don’t come back to me until then.” Randal leaves you to it, but you’re still not sure how you’re going to go about this. If Randal can read your intentions then Madam Orbec will certainly be able to read yours. It occurs to you, that you might need some help from the less “moral” people here. And you can’t ask Charley to help you for several reasons. You could go to Pervus for help. If murder and sexual deviancy is no problem for him then surely a little theft won’t be either. And he’s usually up for doing anything remotely illegal. You could also go see Salina. Besides prostitution she’s known to be good at theft as well, though her helping you is a real long shot. > You go see Pervus You decide Pervus would be a better choice. Probably not the safest, but he’s more likely to help you. You’re hesitant to go anywhere near the clown tent to get him though, however for once luck is with you and you see him around the animals talking to a horse. “Hmmm, yeah. You’re a pretty filly. Yes you are. Let me tell you what I’m gonna do…(sniff) you smell different than usual.” Pervus then turns around. “Oh it’s you Geek. What the fuck do you want? Can’t you see I’m with a lady?” “Hey um, Pervus I need your help with something.” “Oh do ya now?” “I need to borrow a black book from Madam Orbec, and I need you to distract her.” “Hmm, normally I wouldn’t help you do shit, but I’m kinda in the mood for some OLD pussy right now. Yeah I’ll distract her, I know exactly how to distract her.” Pervus say while stoking his crotch. “Um hold on, you’re not gonna rape and kill her are ya?” “I won’t kill her…oh fine I won’t rape her either. Probably won’t be necessary anyway, I’ve always had a way with the ladies…sorry old girl, but I’ll have to be fucking you some other time.” Pervus remarks and pats the horse on the head before following you. You both approach Madam Orbec’s tent which has an air of creepiness about it. Pervus has a look of crazed lust in his eyes. He’s starting to breathe heavily and doing a lot of slurping. “Oh fuck yeah, this is gonna be soooooooo good.” He said he wasn’t going to do anything excessive, but now you’re not so sure… > You continue with the plan All that really concerns you is getting that book, because if you don’t get Randal’s help, the Ring Master is certainly going to kill you when she finds out you’ve turned traitor. Pervus enters the tent and you sneak around back and begin trying to lift up a small portion of it to crawl in. You hear a lot of noise and some protesting, while you’re doing this, when you finally get in, Pervus is having his way with Madam Orbec, completely oblivious to you and Madam Orbec isn’t making a sound…you don’t like the looks of this. You turn to your left and see you’re right by her bed, next to that is her dresser which has the book on it. You grab it and crawl back out as quickly as you can. You run and don’t look back. When you get back to Randal he wonder’s why the hell you’re so worked up. “(Pant) I got the book.” “Phew! Well don’t breathe all over me, just gimme the thing! Excellent. I’ll study what I can tonight before show time and then afterwards we’ll see who the new master is! And what’s wrong with you Geek? Why are breathing so heavy and looking around…you didn’t let Madam Orbec see you borrow this did you?!” “No, not at all. I’m just winded from trying to get out there without her seeing me!” “Well you better make yourself scarce until showtime anyway. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to run into the Ring Master before hand. Relax, I will keep my end of the bargain. Now go.” You leave and linger around the edges of the Carnival, staying out of sight until show time. What happened back at Madam Orbec’s tent still has you unnerved a bit. You know it’s only a matter a time before everyone finds out, before Randal finds out. She was basically like a mother figure to him. You didn’t think Pervus would kill her, unless he didn’t mean to and more likely he was just so overwhelmed with lust that he didn’t care at that point. In fact you’re a little worried about being here by yourself with no one around. You half think Pervus is going to leap out somewhere and kill you too to shut you up. It would be exactly like him to do something like that. In fact now you think its weird to you that he HASN’T shown up to kill you. You’ve got a lot of potential enemies right now, Pervus, the Ring Master, not to mention plain old Ajax who always wants to kill you. Randal is pretty much your only hope for survival now. Eventually you wander back to the Carnival around show time. Everything goes as normal with a few exceptions. The Ring Master looks pre-occupied, Randal’s act seems to be a lot more spectacular than usual, the clowns nowhere to be seen and all throughout the show you have a dreaded feeling that something really bad is going to happen. And you just may be right. > You because the real show occurs afterwards A dark moonlit night. Charley confronts the Ring Master with his army of midgets behind him as well as Ajax. The Ring Master has Atlas, and looks around for his usual allies, the Freaks, and to the surprise of everyone Randal appears with most of the Normals behind him. You attempt to hide directly behind Randal figuring that will be the safest place. “YOU? You’re attempting to take over? You must be joking! Go take your fairy dust and prance off somewhere, this is between me and the she male freak!” Charley spits. “No, you malignant midget! Your time and a criminal ways are at an end here today! And you too Ring Master! No longer will this Carnival be run by an exploitative tyrant!” Randal retorts. The Ring Master sees you and shakes his head. “I’m very disappointed that you decided to betray me here today Geek. You will learn to regret that fateful decision.” “Enough, of this fuckin’ talk. Let’s see who’s gonna fuckin’ run this show once and for all! Attack!” Charley and his midgets begin the assault, and the other two sides follow suit. The fighting is furious and brutal. All you do is crawl away and try to hide under a trailer and hope Randal wins, which he looks like he’s doing. Randal has the upper hand in every way, he has numerical superiority for one thing, and the other thing is he’s casting actual magic spells. A couple of bolts of lightning fry Ajax and Charley. Another spell strikes down Atlas. All looks good for Randal…until Pervus and his clown crew show up. When you first see them, they look like they’ve already been in a fight. They’re walking in a shambling motion and have wounds on them. When they get closer those wounds look like mortal one. In fact they are. Pervus and the clowns are no longer among the living. It takes awhile for anyone else to recognize this. Randal just thinks he’s got more allies until they start biting other Normals (as well as some remaining Midgets and Freaks). Upon seeing this, he tries to cast another spell to destroy them, but is stopped when one of the previously dead bodies on the ground rises up and bites his leg. When he cries out, he sees another familiar face. Madam Orbec, who while dead, looks obviously displeased by the theft of her book. “I TOLD YOU NOT TO USE THIS BOOK! NOW SUFFER ALONG WITH THE REST OF US!” she shouts and bites a chunk of Randal’s throat out. He falls to the ground to be consumed by more of the dead and the book goes flying out of his hand. All of the bodies have risen now. They’re attacking everyone living, you take this as your moment to escape, when you scramble from under the trailer you feel a very strong grip tighten around your shoulder. You look up and see the Ring Master. “My poor sad Geek. I told you that you would learn to regret your decision to betray me. I have to thank you though, while my Carnival may be no more, perhaps it was time for a change, and with this book (The Ring Master shows you the black book that Randal lost) I think I can make a lot of them.” You try to struggle, but its no use. The Ring Master has an unnaturally strong grip on you. He walks directly towards the zombie horde, dragging you along. “Why?! Why aren’t they attacking you?” is the last thing you cry out. “Silly Geek, haven’t you at least figured that one out by now? Zombies don’t attack other undead.” With a sharp fang protruding in a grinning smile at you, the Ring Master hurls you to the zombies, who eat you alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide Pervus would be a better choice. Probably not the safest, but he’s more likely to help you. You’re hesitant to go anywhere near the clown tent to get him though, however for once luck is with you and you see him around the animals talking to a horse. “Hmmm, yeah. You’re a pretty filly. Yes you are. Let me tell you what I’m gonna do…(sniff) you smell different than usual.” Pervus then turns around. “Oh it’s you Geek. What the fuck do you want? Can’t you see I’m with a lady?” “Hey um, Pervus I need your help with something.” “Oh do ya now?” “I need to borrow a black book from Madam Orbec, and I need you to distract her.” “Hmm, normally I wouldn’t help you do shit, but I’m kinda in the mood for some OLD pussy right now. Yeah I’ll distract her, I know exactly how to distract her.” Pervus say while stoking his crotch. “Um hold on, you’re not gonna rape and kill her are ya?” “I won’t kill her…oh fine I won’t rape her either. Probably won’t be necessary anyway, I’ve always had a way with the ladies…sorry old girl, but I’ll have to be fucking you some other time.” Pervus remarks and pats the horse on the head before following you. You both approach Madam Orbec’s tent which has an air of creepiness about it. Pervus has a look of crazed lust in his eyes. He’s starting to breathe heavily and doing a lot of slurping. “Oh fuck yeah, this is gonna be soooooooo good.” He said he wasn’t going to do anything excessive, but now you’re not so sure… > You change the plan “Hold on Pervus. I got a better idea.” You say stopping Pervus from entering. “Geek, that’s the second time you’ve interrupted my dick from finding happiness. If you do it again, it’s gonna find happiness in YOU!” “Um…well look, I was just thinking that it would be better if you got the book, I dunno if I’m up for it. I’ll distract Madam Orbec instead.” “The ONLY reason why I agreed to this, was because of the possibility of getting some Granny pussy, and now you’re fuckin’ sayin’ no? Fuck you Geek! I’m doin’ this shit now!” Pervus knocks you to the ground and enters Madam Orbec’s tent. You begin to hear some weird noises. Some of it sounds like screams, but not of the human kind. You sit in shock unsure of what to do, and then soon Pervus comes back out with the black book. There’s blood all over his clown costume. “I’m not sure what the fuck you wanted this for, but you ain’t gettin’ it now Geek. See ya at show time.” You don’t want to check, but you do anyway. You go inside Madam Orbec’s tent and see a gruesome sight. Something else is here though. You feel a force hit you several times. You see sheer depravity in your mind! It overwhelms you, you begin to cry, and laugh at the same time. You immediately run back out to hide somewhere utterly mad from what you saw. You run off to the nearest town hoping nobody comes looking for you, and nobody does due to what happens at show time… With the black book in his possession, Pervus goes back to his own tent and begins reading it, wondering what you wanted it for. Soon he begins to discover the power contained inside. The reason why Madam Orbec never wanted Randal to use it is due to the evil contained within and didn’t want that evil unleashed lest it destroy him. Of course Pervus isn’t a choir boy like Randal, he embraces the evil and the evil embraces him. It’s a match made in hell. When show time comes around he and his whole degenerate clown crew begin chanting from the book unleashing horrible powers. Many in the audience are killed as they attempt to escape, the Ring Master attempts to restore order, but with one utterance by Pervus, a burning black light annihilates her. The next blast destroys Atlas. Randle attempts some sort of cheap magic defense, but he’s powerless against the sheer destruction Pervus is wreaking. Eventually some of the clowns surround and capture him and do unspeakable things to him until he’s literally an empty husk. Charley and Ajax attempt to escape, but are run down and torn apart by strange shadow creatures that were summoned up. The ones that manage to survive that terrible night become part of this twisted new Carnival that now travels the night seeking to pull more victims into its dreaded den of wickedness and suck their souls dry, with Pervus as the new crazed ring master. And while you weren’t there for the event, you SAW it all, in your mind back at Madam Orbec’s tent. One last curse by the spirits for your involvement in the death of Madam Orbec. You are doomed to forever see the on going horrors committed by Pervus’ Carnival, and yet can do nothing about it. You’re eventually picked up off the street while during one of your screaming jags and thrown into a mental asylum, straight jacked and doped up with morphine. But it doesn’t help. You still see. And you can’t stop the screaming.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This mission that’s been given to you by the Ring Master has gotten you all shook up. You don’t want all this pressure, yet you’re too scared to leave. This is the only place that accepts you somewhat. You’re too distracted to even get a drink! You’d rather not have to deal with Charley or especially Ajax right now either. Sometimes you just wish you didn’t have to live an utterly pathetic existence. While you’re attempting to find some place dark to crawl into and hide, you literally bump into Remarkable Randal. “Oof! Watch it you smelly, ugly, Geek! Honestly it’s bad enough this Carnival has Freaks and criminal Midgets, but honestly having YOU here defies all logic. If I ran this Carnival things would be different! What are you doing out of your cell anyway? Doesn’t the Ring Master usually keep you locked up until show time?” “Oh, um he wanted to talk to me about something.” “She did? What about?” “Oh about my act, and uh…doing…um…something.” Randal’s normal distain for you changes to one of interest. He studies you for a moment before speaking. “So the Ring Master has entrusted YOU to save this place? Hah! She MUST be desperate!” “Huh? What? How did you know?” “Madam Orbec has been teaching me how to contact the spirit world and read into people’s souls. And yours is an easy read indeed, such as it is…perhaps our meeting has its purpose however. After reading your soul I can see something within you that may be worth saving. I never thought it possible, but I think I may be able to help you and your situation Geek.” “I don’t understand.” “Yes you do. Maybe you try to block it out of your mind with that swill you drink from Charley, but deep down you hate what you are and your retched life. And you should. You’re a sorry excuse for a human being, in fact you aren’t really even human anymore, you’re sub-human. However, you have a chance to regain your humanity back, and even become a useful member of this Carnival again. And I’ll help you, if you help me.” “How am I supposed to help you?” “A simple task really. All I want you to do is go get Madam Orbec’s black book. She keeps it by her bed. You’ll know it when you see it.” “What?! You want me to steal from her? I thought she was supposed to be your mentor or something!” “Shhhhh! Keep it down Geek! Look. Madam Orbec IS my mentor and I’ll always be grateful for what she’s taught me. I’ve always believed in magic, but without her teachings, I wouldn’t be a magician, I’d only be an illusionist.” “There’s a difference?” you interrupt. “Oh yes, Geek. Oh yes. Anyway, you’re not stealing the book, I just need to borrow it for awhile because its time for me to learn more. I think Madam Orbec is afraid I’m not yet prepared to learn the secrets that lie inside her black book. But I know I am, and its time for me to prove it to her. She’ll be so proud when she sees what I’ll be able to do.” “So what’re you going to do with it?” “I’m going to use its powers to help me take over the Carnival of course.” “What?! I’m not helping you do that! I’m supposed to be helping the Ring Master anyway!” “Why? Seriously, what has the Ring Master really done for you? Given you a job? The Ring Master is exploiting you for his own personal gain. She cares nothing for you. He just saw a useless dreg of society and turned you into something that could somehow make money for her. Assuming you helped the Ring Master and were even successful, think about it, you’d just go back to your living your miserable life. Is mere existence just enough for you? Isn’t it time you wanted MORE out of life?” You’re quiet. You don’t think anyone’s even asked you that question, even before you became a geek, and you’re really surprised to hear it coming from Randal. Someone who has nothing, but distaste for you. “I dunno, I think I’m pretty bad off. I don’t think there’s anything I can do to improve myself at this point.” “Nonsense, there’s always a way and your first step is by helping me. Look. Maybe you are what you are and I don’t like it, but I do see that underneath it all you ARE a Normal. You should be on my side anyway; I can help you be something more than a geek. With magic anything is possible! Retrieve that book for me and I’ll turn this Carnival into something much more than what it is and I’ll turn you into something much more than what you could’ve thought possible.” Something about Randal makes you believe him. You can understand why people do tend to want to follow him. Maybe things would be better if he took over. He certainly seems more caring than the Ring Master and a hell of a lot better in general than Charley. “Okay, I’ll help you, but I dunno how I’m gonna ste…I mean borrow the book.” “Well I leave that up to you, but make sure you get the book to me before show time and don’t come back to me until then.” Randal leaves you to it, but you’re still not sure how you’re going to go about this. If Randal can read your intentions then Madam Orbec will certainly be able to read yours. It occurs to you, that you might need some help from the less “moral” people here. And you can’t ask Charley to help you for several reasons. You could go to Pervus for help. If murder and sexual deviancy is no problem for him then surely a little theft won’t be either. And he’s usually up for doing anything remotely illegal. You could also go see Salina. Besides prostitution she’s known to be good at theft as well, though her helping you is a real long shot. > You go see Salina Maybe you just want to talk to Salina because you’re creeped by Pervus or maybe you want to talk to her because you think she’s pretty, or maybe it’s a combination of both. Whatever the case the result is still the same when you bang on her trailer. “PEEYOO! Geek! Get the fuck outta here, even if you did have some money I wouldn’t debase myself!” Salina says when she answers. “No, its not that, I need some help.” “I’ll help you get your ass kicked if you don’t get outta here! I’m sure Charley wouldn’t like seeing you here lingering around me.” You just realized that. If Charley caught you here, he’d probably torture the shit out of you and then let Ajax finish you off (Nevermind the fact that Salina IS a prostitute, but Charley isn’t always logical when it comes to her, plus you’re a punching bag anyway) You need to not remain here as long as possible. > You try to convince her “Look, I just need your help to ste…I mean borrow something! I heard you were good at borrowing things, so…” “Go steal it yourself Geek! I’m not your personal thief! And it’s time for you to fucking go!” “Listen! It’s…” As you aggressively begin to step inside the trailer, you suddenly hear some hissing and a couple snakes appear by Salina’s foot. Before you have time to react, both of them dart their heads at your legs, giving you a bite. You fall back on the ground, as the poison begins to take effect. First you feel paralysis set in then your organs shut down completely. “Hey, somebody come pick up this Geek! He’s gonna smell even worse while dead!” is the last thing you hear Salina shout.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe you just want to talk to Salina because you’re creeped by Pervus or maybe you want to talk to her because you think she’s pretty, or maybe it’s a combination of both. Whatever the case the result is still the same when you bang on her trailer. “PEEYOO! Geek! Get the fuck outta here, even if you did have some money I wouldn’t debase myself!” Salina says when she answers. “No, its not that, I need some help.” “I’ll help you get your ass kicked if you don’t get outta here! I’m sure Charley wouldn’t like seeing you here lingering around me.” You just realized that. If Charley caught you here, he’d probably torture the shit out of you and then let Ajax finish you off (Nevermind the fact that Salina IS a prostitute, but Charley isn’t always logical when it comes to her, plus you’re a punching bag anyway) You need to not remain here as long as possible. > You beg and plead pitifully Being pitiful has always been something you’ve been good at, sometimes it even works to your advantage. You collapse on the little piece of stairs you’re standing on and start pleading. “Please Salina you gotta help me! (sob) I don’t have anyone else to turn to! I need to sneak in Madam Orbec’s tent and get a book from without her knowing (sob) or I’m gonna die! (sob)” Salina doesn’t completely understand what the hell you’re babbling about, but she just wants you to leave and stop stinking up the place. Salina goes back inside and grabs a bottle and dumps the entire contents on you. The shit burns like hell on the sores you have on your skin. You roll off the stairs and on to the ground in irritated pain. “I dunno what the hell you’re on about Geek, but you ain’t sneaking anywhere as long as you smell the way you do. I just dumped a strong perfume on you. Normally you’d smell like flowers, but with your disgusting odor all it’s gonna do is cancel out your usual foulness and even then only for a little while giving you time to do whatever it is you have to do. And this is ALL the help you’re getting from me! Now get outta here I got customers coming!” Salina says and then slams her trailer door. Not exactly what you had in mind, but more help than you expected. You head to Madam Orbec’s tent. When you arrive there’s a distinct air of creepiness about it. You can’t afford to waste too much time so you head around the back of the tent and start trying to pull up so you can sneak in and get the book. You only hope she doesn’t happen to be looking in your direction while you’re attempting to do this. As luck would have it, she isn’t, in fact when you crawl inside you see you’re right near her bed where she’s fast asleep. Next to the bed you see a small table with a black book on it. That must be it. You grab it. Madam Orbec then begins to stir. She starts sniffing in her sleep. The perfume must be wearing off! > You run out of the front entance of the tent No time to mess around lifting and crawling you just need to get out of here! You run out of the tent and don’t stop until you reach Randal who wonders why you’re breathing so hard. When you get back to Randal he wonder’s why the hell you’re so worked up. “(Pant) I got the book.” “Phew! Well don’t breathe all over me, just gimme the thing! Excellent. I’ll study what I can tonight before show time and then afterwards we’ll see who the new master is! And what’s wrong with you Geek? Why are breathing so heavy and looking around…you didn’t let Madam Orbec see you borrow this did you?!” “No, not at all. I’m just winded from trying to get out there without her seeing me!” “Well you better make yourself scarce until showtime anyway. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to run into the Ring Master before hand. Relax, I will keep my end of the bargain. Now go.” You leave and linger around the edges of the Carnival, staying out of sight until show time. You just hope Randal does live up to his bargain and manages to take control, because if he doesn’t, you’re going to be in a world of shit with the Ring Master. Eventually you wander back to the Carnival around show time. Everything goes as normal with a few exceptions. The Ring Master looks pre-occupied, and Randal’s act seems to be a lot more spectacular than usual. > You but the real show occurs afterwards A dark moonlit night. Charley confronts the Ring Master with his army of midgets behind him as well as Ajax. It appears that Pervus and his clowns have also decided to join him. The Ring Master has Atlas, and looks around for his usual allies, the Freaks, and to the surprise of everyone Randal appears with most of the Normals behind him. You attempt to hide directly behind Randal figuring that will be the safest place. “YOU? You’re attempting to take over? You must be joking! Go take your fairy dust and prance off somewhere, this is between me and the she male freak!” Charley spits. “No, you malignant midget! Your time and a criminal ways are at an end here today! And your too Ring Master! No longer will this Carnival be run by an exploitative tyrant!” Randal retorts. The Ring Master sees you and shakes his head. “I’m very disappointed that you decided to betray me here today Geek. You will learn to regret that fateful decision.” “Enough, of this fuckin’ talk. Let’s see who’s gonna fuckin’ run this show once and for all! Attack!” Charley and his midgets begin the assault, and the other two sides follow suit. The fighting is furious and brutal. All you do is crawl away and try to hide under a trailer and hope Randal wins, which he looks like he’s doing. Randal has the upper hand in every way, he has numerical superiority for one thing, and the other thing is he’s casting actual magic spells. A couple of bolts of lightning fry Ajax and Charley. Another spell strikes down Atlas. All looks good for Randal, especially when he wipes out Pervus and all the clowns with a huge fireball and finally with one last spell he strikes down the Ring Master with a dark black light which completely disintegrates him. Its over. “Geek! You can stop hiding! We won!” Randal shouts. “Yes, and with the help of MY book!” Madam Orbec says appearing from nowhere. “What the hell is wrong with you Randal? Didn’t I tell you not to mess with this book?” Orbec begins hitting Randal and takes her book back. “Ow! I’m sorry Madam! I just wanted to prove to you that I was ready to…ow!” “You’ll never be ready for this book, you hear me? You’re lucky you didn’t bring the dead back to life with your careless chanting!” then she points to you. “And YOU’RE lucky I didn’t catch you stealing this for him! I would’ve turned you into a worm which probably would be a step up for you!” Orbec decides she doesn’t want to dirty herself hitting you though, so she just leaves. After this embarrassing incident Randal regains his composure. “Okay people get some rest for tomorrow, a new era of this Carnival has arrived and we have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but it’ll be worth it! Because with magic anything is possible! And don’t worry Geek, I still haven’t forgotten about you, thanks to your help, you’ll have a place in my Carnival.” Time passes and Randal “cleans up” the Carnival of all remaining criminal activity, though without Charley around, it wasn’t really a factor anymore. Salina ends up leaving though as the Carnival has gotten too “Goody” for her liking. Without Ajax around, Sasha ends up falling for Randal and the two eventually get married. There also aren’t anymore Freaks in the Carnival anymore; the few that survived ran off to eke out meager livings elsewhere. There were quite a few Midgets left, and were allowed to stay due to the fact that they were hard workers, but their status is severely diminished. In fact they’re pretty relegated back to second class citizen status again. The Carnival flourishes though as it becomes a truly wondrous and safe place for entire families. And your reward for your help was a complete magical transformation into… An animal keeper. Having no other useful skills you’re relegated to have to look after all the animals and take care of them in Randal’s new Carnival. Every day you take your life into your hands when dealing with the lions. Every day the horses fart on you whenever you’re around. Every day you suffer the indignities of the monkeys throwing their shit at you. Not that it matters since you smell like shit anyway after having to clean up after the elephants. In fact you only smell slightly better than when you were a Geek, though at least you don’t have eat various parts of the animals’ anatomies and you don’t get beat up anymore. It’s a step up!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Being pitiful has always been something you’ve been good at, sometimes it even works to your advantage. You collapse on the little piece of stairs you’re standing on and start pleading. “Please Salina you gotta help me! (sob) I don’t have anyone else to turn to! I need to sneak in Madam Orbec’s tent and get a book from without her knowing (sob) or I’m gonna die! (sob)” Salina doesn’t completely understand what the hell you’re babbling about, but she just wants you to leave and stop stinking up the place. Salina goes back inside and grabs a bottle and dumps the entire contents on you. The shit burns like hell on the sores you have on your skin. You roll off the stairs and on to the ground in irritated pain. “I dunno what the hell you’re on about Geek, but you ain’t sneaking anywhere as long as you smell the way you do. I just dumped a strong perfume on you. Normally you’d smell like flowers, but with your disgusting odor all it’s gonna do is cancel out your usual foulness and even then only for a little while giving you time to do whatever it is you have to do. And this is ALL the help you’re getting from me! Now get outta here I got customers coming!” Salina says and then slams her trailer door. Not exactly what you had in mind, but more help than you expected. You head to Madam Orbec’s tent. When you arrive there’s a distinct air of creepiness about it. You can’t afford to waste too much time so you head around the back of the tent and start trying to pull up so you can sneak in and get the book. You only hope she doesn’t happen to be looking in your direction while you’re attempting to do this. As luck would have it, she isn’t, in fact when you crawl inside you see you’re right near her bed where she’s fast asleep. Next to the bed you see a small table with a black book on it. That must be it. You grab it. Madam Orbec then begins to stir. She starts sniffing in her sleep. The perfume must be wearing off! > You crawl back out the way you came You figure you don’t want anyone else seeing you run out of her tent with the book or else they’ll only rat you out later. You lift up the tent and try to crawl back out. You waste too much time though; she wakes up when you’re halfway through. She’s not happy! “GEEK! YOU DARE STEAL FROM ME! I CALL UPON THE SPIRITS TO CURSE YOU TO RESEMBLE THE LOWLY WORM YOU ARE!” You don’t think too much of those words at first, until you get fully out of the tent and find that you can’t stand up to run anymore. You look behind yourself and to your horror you see that your legs have fused together into one fleshy mass. Soon the rest of you begins to transform. You gradually start to shrink as you try to crawl away in a hopeless attempt to escape your fate. When you’ve fully transformed, Madam Orbec finally arrives to retrieve her book and sees you squirming around in the grass. She laughs and remarks how leaving you in that state is what you really deserve. But she decides to show mercy for your plight by stepping on you and putting you out of your misery.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Agh! Alright, alright! Stop poking me…what day is it?” “Never mind all that geek! Get going you know how the Ring Master doesn’t like being kept waiting! Phew! You smell even more disgusting than usual! I guess that’s one way to keep Ajax from killing you, he’d probably vomit his guts out before he could lay a hand on you…then you could lick it up for the rubes! Ha ha! Move it Geek!” Charley prods you with a sharp stick periodically on your way to the Ring Master’s trailer until you arrive at which point, Atlas stops the both of you. “Stop! What business do the both of you have here?” “Goddamnit you fuckin’ one eyed freak! We go through this all the fucking time and its getting REALLY old! You just saw me come out of the Ring Master’s trailer earlier today when he sent me to get the Geek, you know damn well what we’re both doing here!” Ignoring Charley’s comments Atlas looks down at you and points. “You may enter, but the Ring Master doesn’t need to see you again, so you may not.” “Yeah, whatever enjoy the smell.” Charley says and mumbles something to himself while leaving the area. You barely make it up the little steps to the trailer, but you do. You’re finally starting to gather your wits together; your head still hurts though and you’ve just realize you haven’t had a drink yet. What a terrible feeling. You open the door. “Close the door, you’re letting all the sunlight in.” the Ring Master orders from behind his desk. She’s siting in his chair, but has her back turned to you. “Uh you wanted to see me?” “Of course…(Sniff sniff) you really haven’t been taking care of yourself. If anything you’ve become even more repulsive than when I first took you in. Remember that day?” “Um, yeah I think…no, no I don’t. I mean kind of… I forget things.” “I’m not surprised; you’re constantly drinking that swill Charley makes. I am surprised you haven’t gone blind yet though. Oh well what you insist on doing to yourself is of little concern to me, all I require is your obedience. You are thankful for all I have provided for you aren’t you?” “Oh yeah. Sure I am.” “You seem to be one of the few nowadays then. There are some though that are ungrateful for things I’ve done for them, they plan to betray me and everything this carnival stands for. They plan to change the natural order of things. Can you imagine what might happen to this carnival if I wasn’t here? What might happen to you?” You attempt to think about this scenario, but instead you just stand there because you can’t really form anything in your mind because it hurts really bad, you’ve been sober too damn long, and it’s about to get even longer as the Ring Master seems intent on bombarding you with talk as he finally swivels around in her chair. That pale androgynous face of the Ring Master’s is displaying a look of seriousness as usual. “Nothing good I can assure you. Which is why I’m putting YOU in charge of this task.” “Huh? What task?” “Why ensuring the survival of the carnival of course.” ”What!? Me?! Why? How!? I’m not qualified! Can’t you or Charley do it?” “I fear I’ve done all I’ve can. I mean I’ve provided all of THIS to everyone here. I’ve given them purpose and a life. If that isn’t enough for them, then my words aren’t going to make a difference at this point. And as for Charley, well…I’m sure even in your usual state of drunkenness you’re aware that he has his own plans for this carnival.” “I guess…but agh, it’s too early for all this…why me? I mean what am I supposed to do? I’m just the Geek.” “Yes, and that’s exactly why I’m choosing you. You have no motive, you have no agenda, you have no friends, and as such you would probably be the best candidate to convince others to resist change and keep the status quo.” “You have to be joking! Nobody’s going to listen to me! I’m the fucking Geek!” “You might be surprised, you have far more potential than you give yourself credit for…perhaps you’ll even change some perspectives, or maybe not. The choice is yours, because the fate of THIS carnival is resting solely on your actions, you can no longer afford to hide from the world in a bottle and a cage if you wish to keep your current life. It is time for you to take some responsibility, its time to repay the debt you owe me. You have until show time.” “But…” “Now leave me, I wish to be alone.” The Ring Master swivels his chair back to its original position. You head back outside, where upon Atlas blocks it again with his massive body. Never before in your life have you been put in this kind of position of responsibility, (Not that you can remember anyway) but you’re going to have to do something, the question is what exactly? > You run away! This is all just too much for you; you don’t want to be any part of this. You do what you’ve always done all your life; run away leaving the carnival behind. Nobody goes looking for you, not even the Ring Master. Geeks like you are a dime a dozen. They can get another one. You take up “residence” in the nearest town, begging for money for booze and sleeping in the park. The townsfolk are a little less tolerant of the likes of you than the Carneys were though and besides they already have town drunks that they know and love. You’re treated worse than you were at the Carnival if such a thing were possible. At least there you served somewhat of a purpose; here you’re just a drain on the community. One night the town’s drain is solved when you’re beaten and set on fire by the local young punks.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Geek: 1. A person regarded as foolish or clumsy. 2. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits, but is felt to be socially inept. 3. A carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre and disgusting acts. Your breath stinks from the foul things you’ve been eating and the rest of you stinks from not bathing in who knows when. Your head hurts from the cheap moonshine you’ve been getting “paid” in. Rubes often throw stuff at you and spit on you. Most of the other Carnies find you utterly repulsive and avoid you, a couple of them just abuse you for various reasons. On a good day, only the Pinheads come to your cell and taunt you with their gibbering laughs and mongoloid chatter. You have absolutely no worth as a human being, you get no respect from others, and you have no respect for yourself…and why should you? You are the lowest form of life in Carney society. You’re not a real performer; what you do can’t really be considered a skill. You’re not even a real freak. At least a deformed freak can evoke an emotion of horror, or pity, or even admiration for overcoming their condition. You weren’t born “this way”. You chose to do this. All you evoke is disgust and revulsion. At best you’re laughed at and not in the good way like those pervert clowns you work with. Fuck all that “Wildman of Borneo” shit that the Ringmaster tries to tell all the rubes. You’re little more than a bum with a “job”. A degrading job that involves you to debase yourself, all for the amusement and shock value of others, but hey it keeps a “roof” over your head and you pleasantly drunk enough to just barely forget how utterly pathetic your life is. You are the GEEK. You wake up to a bucket of piss being thrown in your face. Not the first time and certainly won’t be the last. “You like the taste of that Geek? Get up Geek! The Ring Master wants to see you!” Charley orders then he throws the empty bucket at your head. The comical sound it makes hitting your skull and the pain it causes makes Charley laugh. Then he jabs you a couple times with his pointed stick. Midgets can be so cruel… > You kick at Charley You stagger to get up and attempt to kick Charley, but instead to trip over yourself and fall…right on to Charley’s pointed stick. The only good thing is you skewered yourself right through the heart killing you instantly. “Aw hell. Hey guys! Someone get me another Geek! This one’s dead.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Geek: 1. A person regarded as foolish or clumsy. 2. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits, but is felt to be socially inept. 3. A carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre and disgusting acts. Your breath stinks from the foul things you’ve been eating and the rest of you stinks from not bathing in who knows when. Your head hurts from the cheap moonshine you’ve been getting “paid” in. Rubes often throw stuff at you and spit on you. Most of the other Carnies find you utterly repulsive and avoid you, a couple of them just abuse you for various reasons. On a good day, only the Pinheads come to your cell and taunt you with their gibbering laughs and mongoloid chatter. You have absolutely no worth as a human being, you get no respect from others, and you have no respect for yourself…and why should you? You are the lowest form of life in Carney society. You’re not a real performer; what you do can’t really be considered a skill. You’re not even a real freak. At least a deformed freak can evoke an emotion of horror, or pity, or even admiration for overcoming their condition. You weren’t born “this way”. You chose to do this. All you evoke is disgust and revulsion. At best you’re laughed at and not in the good way like those pervert clowns you work with. Fuck all that “Wildman of Borneo” shit that the Ringmaster tries to tell all the rubes. You’re little more than a bum with a “job”. A degrading job that involves you to debase yourself, all for the amusement and shock value of others, but hey it keeps a “roof” over your head and you pleasantly drunk enough to just barely forget how utterly pathetic your life is. You are the GEEK. You wake up to a bucket of piss being thrown in your face. Not the first time and certainly won’t be the last. “You like the taste of that Geek? Get up Geek! The Ring Master wants to see you!” Charley orders then he throws the empty bucket at your head. The comical sound it makes hitting your skull and the pain it causes makes Charley laugh. Then he jabs you a couple times with his pointed stick. Midgets can be so cruel… > You jog your damn memory to remember who the hell you even associate with (Cast of Characters) Just because you’re all Carneys and united against the Rubes doesn’t mean there isn’t division in the ranks. You’re all like a big dysfunctional family, and you’re the scapegoat black sheep, you lucky Geek you. The only good thing about being the GEEK, is that nobody considers you a threat or even a person! Plus you’re usually sprawled out someplace either drunk or asleep. This means while others assume you’re out of it and not competent enough to do anything except eat disgusting things, you’ve over heard some interesting information in your half conscious state of mind. Things that will probably come in handy in the ensuing power struggle you’re about to become embroiled in. So if you keep your head down, use animal cunning, watch your ass and you might just come through this alive. And maybe, just maybe you’ll finally get some respect. Maybe… > You cast of Characters (The Main Event) The Ring Master Nobody knows what his real name is and if they do nobody’s telling and she’s certainly not volunteering any information about himself. Of course everyone assumes she’s male, but there’s an “air” of androgyny about him leading to rumors that he may actually be female…or possibly both. He’s very pale, his voice has an unnatural melodic tone and he wears a traditional ring master suit with a top hat. The only thing she wants people to know and remember is that he is definitely in charge. Her main concern is to keep his carnival running and turning a profit; he doesn’t really care what any of his employees do in their spare time unless it interferes or hampers the carnival. The Ring Master is known for being “Freak friendly” after all not many would have jobs at all if it weren’t for him, but by the same token he pays them fairly. Many see her as somewhat of a savior since he’s given many of them a place in the world where they can be useful. She doesn’t hold their hand or overprotect them he just gives them a chance. A chance that they can either succeed or fail in, but a chance they might not have had otherwise without him. He tends to stay in his trailer until show time allowing her assistant Charley to do all his leg work. She’s rarely seen walking around anywhere; instead he just suddenly “appears” and he’s never seen outside at all during the daytime. There have been the hushed rumors and semi-jokes that she’s really a vampire, but most people just think he’s just weird and suffers from albinism which makes her less inclined on wanting to be exposed to the sun. While not sadistic, (He doesn’t appear to get off on it like say Charley) he will make examples out of people that displease him and you’ll definitely feel it. Oh how you’ll feel it. When you have to see the Ring Master personally it’s usually not a good thing. You met him when she found you wandering and vomiting near his trailer at night while in your usual drunken states. She saw how utterly hopeless you were. You had no job, no home, no loved ones, no future prospects, yet he saw potential where there literally was none. He made a deal with you. Become the GEEK for a place to call home and all the liquor you could drink. Well gee how could you not pass up a deal like that? Charley the Midget Charley was a criminal long before he joined the carnival. The carnival just allowed him to flourish in those activities. He’s in charge of most of the illegal activities that go on at the carnival as well as making life miserable for anyone who displeases the Ring Master. Of course he takes great delight in making people miserable whenever it suits him. He has found a like minded partner in Ajax the Strongman who acts as his muscle when the need arises. He’s a first class sonofabitch, but he probably makes the carnival more profitable than it is. Midgets represent most of labor workforce in the carnival and being the “Biggest” and toughest midget at the carnival makes him their unofficial leader which the rest of the midgets have mixed emotions about, but with all his connections and power there is little that they can do about it even if they wanted to. Charley constantly reminds them that they are the real backbone of the carnival and also reminds them how townies and rubes would often pick on them for fun and ever since he arrived they don’t do that anymore lest they suffer the consequences. Gruesome consequences. Charley definitely harbors secret plans to take over the carnival completely one day, he likes to think of himself as the “Real Ring Master” and dresses like his boss except his suit is checkered and has an especially tall top hat. (To extend his height no doubt) He feels that with Ajax and “his people” behind him he’ll be able to launch a take over when the time is right. All he needs to do is get a few more of the others to side with him. As for you, Charley likes to take any free opportunity he has to humiliate you, which seems rather pointless given you don’t have any self-respect to begin with, still it makes him laugh. Chances are if he did take over the Carnival you’d still have a “job” since Charley wouldn’t want to get rid of his favorite whipping boy. The Remarkable Randal Randal is the appointed spokesperson for the “normal” Carneys such as the acrobats, tightrope walkers and other performers that rely on their genuine skills rather than their genetic conditions. Randal himself is a magician, but makes no pretense that he actually has any kind of real magical powers, but he believes magic exists. He’s constantly acquiring old books hoping that someday that he can learn how to perform real magic one day. Randal is a bit of an optimistic dreamer, he believes the carnival is supposed to be a place of fun and wonder for the whole family. He IS that boy that ran away to join the circus in a sense as he did run away from his family who were fundamentalists that believed him to be dabbling in Satanic worship with his magic tricks. He doesn’t really like the idea of the carnival having “freaks” for the sake of having them. He feels its pandering to the lowest common denominator and cheapening the other Carnies who actually have to rely on a learned skill and he really doesn’t approve of all the illegal activity that goes on (Especially in a place which is supposed to be for the children) he blames the Ring Master as much as Charley for this, since the Ring Master turns a blind eye to it when he should be stopping it. Randal is a little more open about his rebellious nature than Charley and complains to the Ring Master whenever he gets the chance, (One of the few that gets away with it without consequences) to which his last response was if he doesn’t like the way things are being run, he can either leave or make his move. So far Randal hasn’t gone anywhere, so maybe he’s going to take the Ring Master up on his challenge. Charley thinks he’s a lot of talk and doesn’t think he really has the balls to do it so he’s not worried about him. Considering Randal’s views, you might find yourself out of a job if Randal got things his way. Shock value and Freaks wouldn’t really have a place in Randal’s carnival. Unsurprisingly Randal finds you and your act disgusting and completely unsuitable for anyone, especially children. (Even though the kiddies really like throwing chickens at you)<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just because you’re all Carneys and united against the Rubes doesn’t mean there isn’t division in the ranks. You’re all like a big dysfunctional family, and you’re the scapegoat black sheep, you lucky Geek you. The only good thing about being the GEEK, is that nobody considers you a threat or even a person! Plus you’re usually sprawled out someplace either drunk or asleep. This means while others assume you’re out of it and not competent enough to do anything except eat disgusting things, you’ve over heard some interesting information in your half conscious state of mind. Things that will probably come in handy in the ensuing power struggle you’re about to become embroiled in. So if you keep your head down, use animal cunning, watch your ass and you might just come through this alive. And maybe, just maybe you’ll finally get some respect. Maybe… > You cast of Characters (The Secondary Acts) Ajax the Strongman While Charley has delusions of grandeur, he is somewhat grounded in reality enough not to believe he’s invincible. Ajax on the other hand probably thinks he could catch a bullet in his teeth and spit it back at his assailant. The man is completely narcissistic. Undoubtedly he is in good shape, very strong and probably a lot better looking than most of the Carnies, and he takes every opportunity to let everyone know it. He sneers at all the other guys for being “lesser” than him (Save Charley, Atlas and the Ring Master) and of course shamelessly grabs at any woman that strikes his fancy. So pleased with his own body image that he basically walks around in a loin cloth at all times. Even when the Carnival is someplace cold and snowing. He’d probably walk around naked if he could get away with it. Why he’s allied with Charley given his own arrogance and his “normie” status might cause some to wonder, but the reasons aren’t far fetched. Besides Ajax’s own criminal mentality, Ajax is an opportunist, and he’ll make more money under Charley and he thinks Charley is going to be on the winning team (Especially with him on his side) Not to mention Ajax doesn’t really like the Ring Master. Never has. His pale androgynous nature really creeps him out. And the Remarkable Randal is a pussy as far as Ajax is concerned. Another person that Ajax definitely doesn’t like is you. While most others will simply avoid, taunt or abuse you for awhile for amusement, Ajax HATES you and has nearly beaten you to death a couple times. Presumably he sees you as a pathetic example of the male specimen that should’ve been killed at birth and while he may be right, he’s kept in check by Charley and/or the Ring Master from carrying out his desires. (As a rule Carneys are NOT supposed to kill each other…well unless there’s a good reason for it) You’d be in a world of shit if something ever happened to both of them. Atlas the Cyclopean Giant If there’s one person that’s possibly stronger than Ajax, it’s Atlas. (He’s certainly scarier) He’s an eight foot Cyclops that wears a hood covering everything except a single unblinking eye. He stands outside the Ring Master’s trailer at all times not letting anyone pass unless the Ring Master wishes it. Atlas has been with the Ring Master even before the Carnival. Atlas was personally brought up by the Ring Master and is utterly loyal to him. It’s commonly thought that the Ring Master found him abandoned as a baby and took him in, of course rumors also persist that he’s the Ring Master’s son. (Whether the Ring Master is the father OR the mother causes more rumors) Whatever the truth, Atlas might as well be his son as he certainly considers the Ring Master as a parental figure since he raised him. Atlas’ sole job is to protect the Ring Master and to look intimidating. A job he does very well. Atlas rarely speaks and if he does it’s usually a one word response in a low voice. Charley hopes Ajax will be his counter balance when the time comes, of course Ajax feels he’ll be able to beat Atlas with no problems. Atlas is one of the few people that has no opinion of you, he just sees you as another Carney who works for the Ring Master and aren’t allowed to see him unless he deems it so. Madam Orbec Madam Orbec is the gypsy fortune teller. Like most fortune tellers she claims to genuinely have psychic powers, but most likely she’s just really good at conning people. Still she always keeps in character at all times, so it’s possible she believes her own hype. One thing she does a lot is talk to “spirits” that aren’t there. Sometimes this results in her talking to herself for great lengths of time and often screaming to tell “them” to shut up. She doesn’t even appear to notice anyone else around while she’s doing this. All of which pretty much means most of the other Carneys consider her just mentally unstable and is listening to the voices in her own head. Oddly Randal completely believes she has psychic abilities, this is probably due to Randal’s own naivety and his own desperate belief that magic is real. He consults her frequently about what she sees in the future for the carnival, it’s possible that’s why he hasn’t made any kind of move of his own because he’s guided by her visions to a certain degree. Madam Orbec likes Randal, but remains suspicious if he isn’t just trying to be friendly to gain access to an old book she has supposedly containing secrets to necromancy. Because of this factor, unlike the Ring Master and Charley’s “right hand men”, Madam Orbec isn’t necessarily on Randal’s side. She believes a great change is coming in the carnival, but the spirits haven’t told her exactly what that is yet. Her visions and conversations have been increasing to the point where she can barely keep it together for the rubes anymore. Her sanity has been in severe question for years, but now her competency is as well. Of course she still has enough sense to not want to be near you. Apparently the spirits don’t like you anymore than the living do. Pervus the Clown “Pervert” or “Pervo” is what he’s usually called and for good reason. Pervus is probably the next disgusting Carney after you, the only difference is he has a group of like minded “friends” and the other thing is he’s a clown. And clowns no matter how twisted and evil they are; they can get away with it. He and his gang of equally demented red nosed fellows have to be the sickest bunch in the Carnival, particularly in the sex department. It’s not surprising that townie children start disappearing whenever the Carnival makes an extended visit somewhere and they certainly haven’t all run off to join, what ultimately happens to them is better left unmentioned and not dwelled upon too much. But it isn’t just children that disappear. Local farm animals will disappear as well (Strangely these poor creatures may be spared death, if the Carnival is in need of a couple new pack animals) and local graveyards may even be raided… Of course Pervus and the clowns think it’s all a big joke on the rubes. Despite being the symbols of utter depravity, they are one of the other “major groups” and as is fitting they are a wild card. They do their job when its show time and do it very well which puts them in good standing with the Ring Master. They often indulge in the prostitutes and liquor Charley provides. And while Randal barely approves of them (To be honest he probably isn’t aware of how bad they REALLY are) he does recognize them as having a talent and are an important staple of any carnival. (They also aren’t Freaks, though classifying them as “Normals” might be stretching it) Its unknown who Pervus will side with, but they see that there’s definitely benefits for any of them. Pervus and his crew are the one exception concerning you. Instead of them avoiding you, YOU purposely avoid them! While they’d never kill you (They do still follow that one rule that you don’t kill a fellow Carney for no reason) that wouldn’t prevent them from having their way with you if the urge ever struck them. You have been known to resemble a rotting dead body (In smell especially) when you’re passed out after all. Sasha and Salina Sasha is the on/off girlfriend of Ajax. She’s not only a contortionist, but also an acrobat. She’s very beautiful, but her self-esteem isn’t really the best otherwise she wouldn’t be with Ajax. He pretty much treats her like shit, and she’ll put up with it, until he really fucks up and then she throws him out of her trailer. Upon which time he’ll continue to harass and stalk her until she takes him back for the umpteenth time and the cycle starts over again. She’s definitely the star attraction of the “normal” Carneys, besides Randal. (Who really wishes she wasn’t so close to Ajax.) Salina is Charley’s girlfriend…or at least he likes to tell everyone she is. She’s the tattooed woman and also dances with various kinds of snakes. (Imaginatively called a “Snake Lady”) She’s pretty, but has a harder look than Sasha, its obvious by her demeanor she had a rough life before the Carnival. Charley is constantly hitting on her, but he’s unsuccessful for the most part though every now and then he gets lucky, though you suspect it’s his money talking more than his “charms” at work in those cases. In any event she isn’t particularly fond of him. She’s considered a normal, but her activities and lifestyle lean more towards the criminal mindset particularly prostitution. So she has more in common with Charley than Randal who looks his nose down at her. Probably due to the partnership of Charley and Ajax, Sasha and Salina associate with each other more than they might normally would. As it turns out the two are genuinely friends and speak to each other frequently, one may wonder if they aren’t plotting something on their own together… Of course you’d never know since the two of them avoid you like the plague because you’re just icky.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just because you’re all Carneys and united against the Rubes doesn’t mean there isn’t division in the ranks. You’re all like a big dysfunctional family, and you’re the scapegoat black sheep, you lucky Geek you. The only good thing about being the GEEK, is that nobody considers you a threat or even a person! Plus you’re usually sprawled out someplace either drunk or asleep. This means while others assume you’re out of it and not competent enough to do anything except eat disgusting things, you’ve over heard some interesting information in your half conscious state of mind. Things that will probably come in handy in the ensuing power struggle you’re about to become embroiled in. So if you keep your head down, use animal cunning, watch your ass and you might just come through this alive. And maybe, just maybe you’ll finally get some respect. Maybe… > You cast of Characters (The Sideshows) Normals Normals is really a generic term for anyone who isn’t a Freak, but its often used to describe Carneys who aren’t deformed in some way and make a living in the Carnival utilizing some skill. (“Normals” who aren’t Carneys are usually just called “Rubes” or at best “Townies”) The core of these include acrobats, tightrope walkers, game barkers and the like. Normals as always out number the Freaks, but they aren’t nearly as unified, though Randal’s been trying to, in his effort to gain power. Nearly all Normals find you revolting and run you off if you get near, either verbally OR physically. Freaks This is a generic term for Carneys who have some sort of genetic condition that separates them from the rest of society. They can range from being very hairy, have no limbs, or have a few extra ones. In any case they are one of the major carnival draws. Some learn a few skills to go along with their deformities, but it’s mainly their horrific appearance that they rely upon. Despite all their different forms, they are very unified and support the Ring Master for giving them a place in the world. Jasmine the bearded lady tends to be the Matriarch of them all Freaks are a little more tolerant of you, since they’ve also suffered scorn and ridicule too, but you’re not REALLY one of them and as such you’re still an outsider and aren’t really welcomed around them. Midgets Not quite normals and not quite freaks, but the midgets are the ones who get things done in the Carnival and keep it running. (Though everyone else refers to them as Midgets, they prefer to refer to each other as Dwarves) They make up a majority of the labor force of the Carnival, a thankless job to be sure, and one that went unappreciated until Charley arrived. Now they make a lot more thanks to his “extra curricular” activities. They are pretty much unified, though they have mixed feelings about their self appointed leader. Midgets are overworked at the best of times, so when a smelly disgusting Geek like you is around they really don’t have the tolerance or patience for it. Bob is about the only one who’ll even talk to you, the rest tend to kick you in the shins and chase you off with their work tools while shouting obscenities. Pinheads An interesting sub-society within the Freak community. They all tend to hang out together constantly laughing and babbling nonsensical ramblings. Though they may appear childlike and carefree, those qualities can mask a mean spiritedness sometimes. You’d know since you’ve experienced this meanness first hand. Clowns Pure evil wrapped up in the guise of something supposedly funny and harmless. While technically classified as “normals”, there isn’t anything normal about them. One wonders if they’re actually even human underneath that make up. All intelligent right thinking people stay away from them. Even YOU stay away from clowns!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just because you’re all Carneys and united against the Rubes doesn’t mean there isn’t division in the ranks. You’re all like a big dysfunctional family, and you’re the scapegoat black sheep, you lucky Geek you. The only good thing about being the GEEK, is that nobody considers you a threat or even a person! Plus you’re usually sprawled out someplace either drunk or asleep. This means while others assume you’re out of it and not competent enough to do anything except eat disgusting things, you’ve over heard some interesting information in your half conscious state of mind. Things that will probably come in handy in the ensuing power struggle you’re about to become embroiled in. So if you keep your head down, use animal cunning, watch your ass and you might just come through this alive. And maybe, just maybe you’ll finally get some respect. Maybe… > Back to the story Geek: 1. A person regarded as foolish or clumsy. 2. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits, but is felt to be socially inept. 3. A carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre and disgusting acts. Your breath stinks from the foul things you’ve been eating and the rest of you stinks from not bathing in who knows when. Your head hurts from the cheap moonshine you’ve been getting “paid” in. Rubes often throw stuff at you and spit on you. Most of the other Carnies find you utterly repulsive and avoid you, a couple of them just abuse you for various reasons. On a good day, only the Pinheads come to your cell and taunt you with their gibbering laughs and mongoloid chatter. You have absolutely no worth as a human being, you get no respect from others, and you have no respect for yourself…and why should you? You are the lowest form of life in Carney society. You’re not a real performer; what you do can’t really be considered a skill. You’re not even a real freak. At least a deformed freak can evoke an emotion of horror, or pity, or even admiration for overcoming their condition. You weren’t born “this way”. You chose to do this. All you evoke is disgust and revulsion. At best you’re laughed at and not in the good way like those pervert clowns you work with. Fuck all that “Wildman of Borneo” shit that the Ringmaster tries to tell all the rubes. You’re little more than a bum with a “job”. A degrading job that involves you to debase yourself, all for the amusement and shock value of others, but hey it keeps a “roof” over your head and you pleasantly drunk enough to just barely forget how utterly pathetic your life is. You are the GEEK. You wake up to a bucket of piss being thrown in your face. Not the first time and certainly won’t be the last. “You like the taste of that Geek? Get up Geek! The Ring Master wants to see you!” Charley orders then he throws the empty bucket at your head. The comical sound it makes hitting your skull and the pain it causes makes Charley laugh. Then he jabs you a couple times with his pointed stick. Midgets can be so cruel…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"You look like you could use a drink, Captain." You turn to see Victoria, your first mate. Her purple hair is tied back in a ponytail. It always seemed to be tied a little towards the left side of her head. The thought came up to question why, but you've learned from experience not to question a woman on her hairstyle. "Way ahead of you, V," you say raising your cup from the bar top for emphasis. "I'll have what he's having," she addresses towards the bartender. "Got any news on The Sanguine?" you ask. "Yeah, boss, and it's not good. Procter is working on the repairs now. He said we might need the hull replaced." "I sure hope not," you reply. “We've been through worse, Cap,” Victoria replies. You take another sip from your cup. The latest job smuggling cargo for an English merchant paid well, but the damage sustained fleeing from a Spanish Galleon could very well cost the entire payout, or worse, put you in the hole. The wizard on board the Galleon hit The Sanguine with more than a few nasty spells. If Victoria didn't fire back with a perfectly aimed fire bolt, the entire ship might be at the bottom of the Caribbean. “I sent Freddy to find us some work,” you say to Victoria. “Did he come back with anything?” “Nothing yet,” she replies. “Although knowing Freddy, he probably got distracted by the nearest gambling hole.” “He always comes through in the end, despite his tendencies,” you reply. “What's next for you, Cap?” Victoria asks. You finish the cup and slam it back down on the bar top. Sunlight pours into the poorly lit building through several open windows creating rectangular beams of yellow. You're reminded of the Caribbean heat each time a wave of warm air floods in. Your crew had certainly seen better days. The last three ships you targeted weren't carrying anything substantial. Your most recent job would have been a huge payday if not for the Galleon's attack. At least you managed to escape alive and with most of your crew. Victoria's former life as naval mage certainly came in handy there. “Cap?” “Sorry, V. I must have zoned out for a second. My plan is to...” > You check on Procter “...check on Procter. I need to see the extent of the damage we sustained.” “A wise choice, Captain.” You toss a few coins onto the bar top, pick up your tricorn hat, and take your leave. The bright sunlight assaults your eyes as you enter into the open. The tavern is one of many upon a windy sloped path. Various vendors with small shops line the cobbled pavement. You pass by a group of marching soldiers and tip your hat towards their stoic, blank expressions. Tension between Nassau and the English occupation was at an all-time high. The governor's hold over the city had been steadily declining for years. Criminal activity only escalated with the diminishing control. Still, the English possessed the best firepower and wizards in their employ. Witnessing arcane power in addition to modern weaponry, you didn't think there would be much of a rebellion without outside help. Steel and gunpowder was vastly overshadowed by the power of the elements. As you continue on the road down the hill, your mind drifts to your crew. Besides the common sailor, gunpowder monkey, and cannoneer, you have three main members to rely on. Each have their flaws, although they're the best in the business as far as you're concerned. > You procter Sometimes you weren't quite sure of Procter's sanity. Your quartermaster had an affinity for unconventional methodology. During one less-than-friendly encounter with a French brig, Procter had saved The Sanguine by impersonating the ship's captain, taking the helm, and shouting “arrête de poser tes bras!” The cannon barrage and fiery destruction from Victoria helped as well. You had first met the sorcerer in Tortuga. The two of you shared a prison cell. He had been arrested selling watered-down ale to a group of French soldiers. Something about him had caught your eye, an obvious intelligence beneath the guise of quirkiness and social ineptitude. When Freddy broke you out, you took Procter along with you. His willingness to take the “smart” approach, despite the majority's disposition, is one of the many reasons you named him quartermaster. > You victoria There was no one you trusted more than Victoria, not even Freddy, when it came to getting things done. Your first mate had grown up among the nobility in London and attended the most prestigious schools. Her affinity towards arcane magic landed her a position within the Royal Navy as a naval mage, which is where you first met. You both served upon the HMS Eternity occasionally butting heads when it came to advising the captain. The two of you were considered Captain Newburry’s “right and left hands” and were the primary reason the ship survived as long as it did. You did find it frustrating that Newburry sided with Victoria more, probably since it’s hard to disagree with feminine beauty. Ironically, The Eternity went down under fire from the Spanish fleet, but not before you rescued Victoria’s unconscious body on a piece of floating debris. The two of you had gone your separate ways and met later in Port Maje. Uncharacteristically, Victoria had threatened her superior officers after being placed under another incompetent captain. Things escalated, a building or two burned down, and she was dishonorably charged from the Royal Navy. Her expertise when it comes to naval warfare has saved The Sanguine countless times. Lately, she has been teaching you to master the arcane, which in combination with your roguish tricks has created quite the resourceful, and deadly, captain.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"You look like you could use a drink, Captain." You turn to see Victoria, your first mate. Her purple hair is tied back in a ponytail. It always seemed to be tied a little towards the left side of her head. The thought came up to question why, but you've learned from experience not to question a woman on her hairstyle. "Way ahead of you, V," you say raising your cup from the bar top for emphasis. "I'll have what he's having," she addresses towards the bartender. "Got any news on The Sanguine?" you ask. "Yeah, boss, and it's not good. Procter is working on the repairs now. He said we might need the hull replaced." "I sure hope not," you reply. “We've been through worse, Cap,” Victoria replies. You take another sip from your cup. The latest job smuggling cargo for an English merchant paid well, but the damage sustained fleeing from a Spanish Galleon could very well cost the entire payout, or worse, put you in the hole. The wizard on board the Galleon hit The Sanguine with more than a few nasty spells. If Victoria didn't fire back with a perfectly aimed fire bolt, the entire ship might be at the bottom of the Caribbean. “I sent Freddy to find us some work,” you say to Victoria. “Did he come back with anything?” “Nothing yet,” she replies. “Although knowing Freddy, he probably got distracted by the nearest gambling hole.” “He always comes through in the end, despite his tendencies,” you reply. “What's next for you, Cap?” Victoria asks. You finish the cup and slam it back down on the bar top. Sunlight pours into the poorly lit building through several open windows creating rectangular beams of yellow. You're reminded of the Caribbean heat each time a wave of warm air floods in. Your crew had certainly seen better days. The last three ships you targeted weren't carrying anything substantial. Your most recent job would have been a huge payday if not for the Galleon's attack. At least you managed to escape alive and with most of your crew. Victoria's former life as naval mage certainly came in handy there. “Cap?” “Sorry, V. I must have zoned out for a second. My plan is to...” > You look for Freddy “…look for Freddy. No telling what he’s got himself into this time.” “A wise decision, Captain.” You flip a few coins to the bar and take your leave. The sudden sunlight in contrast to the dimly-lit tavern assaults your vision. You tip the point of your tricorn hat a bit lower to protect your eyes. The tavern is one of many upon a windy, sloped path. You pass by several street shops lining the cobbled pathway. A group of expressionless soldiers march by and receive a smile and tip of your hat. Tension between Nassau and the English occupation was at an all-time high. The governor's hold over the city had been steadily declining for years. Criminal activity only escalated with the diminishing control. Still, the English possessed the best firepower and wizards in their employ. Eventually you end up at a table underneath a covered patio. The entire overhang is covered with a green ivy. Three men sit at the table along with a crowd eagerly huddled around the players. You see Freddy in the middle always with a perfectly trimmed goatee. You never know how he finds the time, especially at sea, to trim each hair to the exact desired length. He holds his cup of dice with the usual several rings upon his fingers. “Not your lucky day, is it Freddy?” one man at the table speaks. “No one can lose this many times in a row,” he replies. “My luck’s about to change… and your coin purse is about to get lighter.” “Ha-ha, you’ve already lost several months of wages,” the other man chimes in. “Pretty soon you’ll be putting those fancy rings on the table.” “Done,” Freddy replies taking a ring from each pointer finger. “Call,” both his opponents say simultaneously and push their coin piles forward much to the amusement of the crowd. The three players shake their cups, rolling their dice, and slam the cups upside-down on the table. Then, they carefully peak underneath to see the result being careful not to let their opponent see. “Four fours,” one man speaks. “Five fours,” the other one bets. “Eight fours,” Freddy says. The crowd gasps at the sudden increase and start placing side bets with one another. “You mad dog, no way there’s that many,” the man to his left speaks. “Call me a liar then,” Freddy challenges. “Liar.” Freddy’s two opponents remove their cups revealing their rolled dice. Between the two of them, they have three fours. “Ha-ha-ha it’s still not your day, Freddy!” Freddy lifts his cup to reveal his roll. Each of the five dice shows a four. The crowd roars, threatening to riot. Freddy’s opponents stand up and knock their chairs to the ground in fury. “There’s no way you could roll that without cheating.” “Looks like my luck’s finally turned around. Thanks for the game, gentlemen,” Freddy says. Noticing you, he gets up to greet you. “Captain, there you are! I was getting to know the locals,” Freddy says. Quieter he adds on with a wink, “and they don’t have quick eyes.” “Yeah, well, they have quick feet,” you say pointing towards the table. As Freddy rose to greet you, his two opponents had taken their coin back and run off. “Damn, and we still had several more rounds to play. Anyway, I bet you’re here wondering about potential work. Don’t worry, I didn’t blow it off. I found us something and it could be big." “What’s the job?” you ask. “You heard of Woodes Rogers?” he asks. Seeing you nod he adds on, “I ran into his man, Dampier. They’re in the market for a captain; a captain who’s lived a life of danger and romance. One who all captains dream about becoming. I told him if I find anyone like that, I’d tell him.” Narrowing your eyes you reply, “Very amusing. What really happened?” “Ha. They are looking for a ship. The job is very hush-hush at this point. You’re supposed to meet him tonight at his estate.” “I suppose we don’t have much of a choice. We need money and a lot more than you were just playing for. I’ll meet with Rogers tonight.” “If you need me, I’ll be here,” Freddy replies. Turning back towards the crowd, he shouts, “Alright, who’s next?”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"You look like you could use a drink, Captain." You turn to see Victoria, your first mate. Her purple hair is tied back in a ponytail. It always seemed to be tied a little towards the left side of her head. The thought came up to question why, but you've learned from experience not to question a woman on her hairstyle. "Way ahead of you, V," you say raising your cup from the bar top for emphasis. "I'll have what he's having," she addresses towards the bartender. "Got any news on The Sanguine?" you ask. "Yeah, boss, and it's not good. Procter is working on the repairs now. He said we might need the hull replaced." "I sure hope not," you reply. “We've been through worse, Cap,” Victoria replies. You take another sip from your cup. The latest job smuggling cargo for an English merchant paid well, but the damage sustained fleeing from a Spanish Galleon could very well cost the entire payout, or worse, put you in the hole. The wizard on board the Galleon hit The Sanguine with more than a few nasty spells. If Victoria didn't fire back with a perfectly aimed fire bolt, the entire ship might be at the bottom of the Caribbean. “I sent Freddy to find us some work,” you say to Victoria. “Did he come back with anything?” “Nothing yet,” she replies. “Although knowing Freddy, he probably got distracted by the nearest gambling hole.” “He always comes through in the end, despite his tendencies,” you reply. “What's next for you, Cap?” Victoria asks. You finish the cup and slam it back down on the bar top. Sunlight pours into the poorly lit building through several open windows creating rectangular beams of yellow. You're reminded of the Caribbean heat each time a wave of warm air floods in. Your crew had certainly seen better days. The last three ships you targeted weren't carrying anything substantial. Your most recent job would have been a huge payday if not for the Galleon's attack. At least you managed to escape alive and with most of your crew. Victoria's former life as naval mage certainly came in handy there. “Cap?” “Sorry, V. I must have zoned out for a second. My plan is to...” > You sit here and drink “…sit here and drink,” you say. “Doesn’t seem like much of a plan,” Victoria replies. “The rum helps with brainstorming. A few more of these, and I’ll come up with something. Always do,” you say with a grin. “Far be it from me to question the captain,” she replies raising two fingers toward the bartender. Three more later... “Ha-ha-ha and that’s when I hid under the horse carriage and tried to find where I left my clothes! Luckily, I still had my hat to decently cover one side of me!” you finish telling the story to Victoria. “Ha, Captain! Her father, the magistrate, would have hung you.” “I still have my life...and my hat!” you say plopping the hat onto Victoria’s head. She instantly takes it off disgusted by its involvement in your story. Suddenly, a man sits down next to you and says, “Buy you a drink, Captain?” The antique arquebus upon his back immediately catches your eye. “You’re free to do as you please,” you answer. “Might want to buy yourself a modern weapon while you’re at it,” you add on. “I assure you, no musket any of these street peddlers sell can compare to ol’ Shelly,” the man replies tapping the rifle affectionately. “Fair enough. Thanks for the drink. What’s your name, friend?” you ask. “Dampier,” Victoria butts in. “He’s one of Rogers' men.” The man, Dampier, nods, “That’s right. I’ve actually been looking for you. My employer, Woodes Rogers, has been looking for a captain of your caliber. He graciously offers an invitation to meet at his estate tonight to discuss business.” You look to Victoria and silently agree there’s no choice but to see him out. At least that’s what your intoxicated senses tell you. “Tell Rogers I’ll be there,” you answer. “He’ll be expecting you. And please try to sober up before then,” Dampier replies. “Excellent idea,” you say. “Bartender, two beers please.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Day Zero. You wake up, it seems like a normal day. A little too normal.... > You go To Work You put your clothes on and head to work. Regardless of the abnomal normality of this day, the bills need to be paid. You walk down the street to your local 7/11 ,head to the back room and put on your work clothes. > You time to Work You spend the rest of the day working, your 9-5 job goes by as normal as ever. At little too normal.... > You well works done, let's go home You change back to your normal clothing and walk back home. There's not much to do so you make some food, play some games, masterbate and fall to sleep. Everything was just too normal though... > You day One Suppose it makes sense nothing unusual happens until the first day. After all, if anything happened the day before then that would have been considered the first day, now wouldn't it have. Before you wake up, let's reflect on who you are so you don't die to some random incident due to some crazy issue you had that you should have known you had all along since you are you. Anyways.... Name: James Age: 23 Sex: Yes Please Male Occupation: Clerk at 7/11 (Full time) Intelligence: Average Strength: Average Stamina: Low Weapon Experience: You can swing a melee weapon, then again anyone can do that.....that's it Relationships: You got a best friend who lives next store (Bob) and your family (Mom/Dad/younger Sister) lives across town, that's it. Don't you get lonely? Driving: You can drive fine, but sadly you cannot afford a car right now. Special Traits : None, you are an average bastard > You guess it's time to wake up You wake up at 8am, take a shower, throw on some clothes and turn on the local news. Everything seems to go just like it did yesterday, and the news is pretty much the same. Except all the normal murder stories are replaced by animal attacks and riots. The news doesn't say anything specific, no mention of zombies or anything, but the potential is still there... > You go to work anyways You decide to head to work anyways, you need money if you're going to finally buy a car and you have bills to pay. Nothing unusual happens on the way to work, nor for the first 3 hours. However at noon the news starts to say some interesting things. It's saying that the attacks and riots this morning are actually due to a new virus. They instruct everyone to return to their homes and wait until further instructions. No one arrives for the next hour, and finally your boss calls and tells you to go home. You change and proceed to head home, but then something different happens. > You well it's about damn time You exit the employee room, and find a customer standing just inside of the entrance to the store. He seems pretty out of it. You tell him the store is closed and he turns to you. His clothing is covered in blood, and his eyes seem completely black. He starts to stumble towards you. You continue to yell at him, angry that he is ignoring you. Finally, when he's just out of arm's reach, you realize hes probably been infected with that virus you heard about on the news. You hate to admit it, but he's probably a zombie. (Well no shit Sherlock) So, what's the plan? > You wrestle Him You um...decide the best course of action is to wrestle a zombie. Perhaps "average intelligence" was a bit too generous... Regardless, you slip behind the zombie and put him in a chokehold. You lean back, fall to the floor, and wrap your legs around him. Now usually this is the part where the person would slowly lose consciousness, and you would then let go and kick them a few times for good measure. Sadly this person is a zombie and can't lose consciousness. As such, his continous struggle eventually gets him out of your iron grip, and he bites your arm. We could go further into the story, but you can guess what your ending is now. [Death]<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You exit the employee room, and find a customer standing just inside of the entrance to the store. He seems pretty out of it. You tell him the store is closed and he turns to you. His clothing is covered in blood, and his eyes seem completely black. He starts to stumble towards you. You continue to yell at him, angry that he is ignoring you. Finally, when he's just out of arm's reach, you realize hes probably been infected with that virus you heard about on the news. You hate to admit it, but he's probably a zombie. (Well no shit Sherlock) So, what's the plan? > You avoid him and exit the store You avoid the man and exit the store. He looks pretty dangerous what with being covered in blood and all. You lock up behind you, effectively trapping the man inside. You don't care though, whoever works next can deal with him. You walk home and throw on the news to see exactly what this new virus is. > The News The news says that the new virus causes people to become hyper agressive, and that it is passed by the transfer of bodily fluids. They advise again that everyone stay indoors and wait for further instructions. Further in the day a video is shown on the news, the nature of the video makes it appear as if the news itself was not the one showing it. The video shows a man and one of the "infected", he says that they are like zombies from movies and such. The two are outside, it appears to be a parking lot but you can't tell what the building is and there are no cars. He says there is no cure and that everyone should put their "Zombie Survival Plan" into full effect. He then shoots the newly dubbed zombie in the head, and instructs that the only way to kill them is to damage the brain, however destroying their legs can render them pretty harmless as well. He continues and says that they are slow, and you can outrun them, however they never get tired. Pretty detailed for the first day of the infection. By now it's pretty late, you've been watching the news so intently that you've lost track of time, you go to sleep and decide that tommorow you'll put your Zombie Survival Plan into full effect! > You day Two You wake up to day two of the infection. Only now do you realize that you don't actually have a zombie plan. Well no worries. The infection is still in its early stages, and it should be at least a few days until all hell breaks loose. Until then you can probably walk the streets with no worries. Probably... So, what's the plan? > You go next door to your buddy Bob's You decide to go see your buddy Bob. You exit your house, lock it, and walk next door. You knock on the door and he answers. "Hey James, wanna get high...." Bob says, answering the door and showing you some weed. > You fuck Yea! You nod your head and enter. The next few hours go by quickly. Well, at least you think they do.... > You hours Later Hours later you remember why you came to Bob's house in the first place. "Hey...hey Bob" *cough* "Sup?" "You know there's like, zombies out right now. Right?" "Shit....shit really?" "Yea" "Fuck man. I thou-" Bob's comment is interupted by a knock on the door, a slow heavy pound. > You idiots can't knock right You go to the door and look through the peephole. Bob comes up behind you and tries to look through, but you push him back. Outside there's a girl, Bob's girlfriend if you're not mistaken. Sadly his girlfriend is in bad condition, in fact shes missing an arm. Clearly she's a zombie, which begs the question... Should you open the door? > Yes You open the door....really? You honestly thought that opening the door for the one-armed chick who is clearly a zombie fell into the "good idea" category? Well you did it anyways. The girl's knocking arm misses the door and instead hits you in the chest. It doesn't hurt, but she grabs onto your shirt and lunges forward at your neck. You attempt to fight her off, and are somewhat successful. Although you keep her face away from your neck, you both fall down to the floor, her landing on top of you. Using all your strength you push her off of you and towards the door. She ends up in a sitting position at the base of your feet. This entire time Bob is just staring at the two of you. Finally he does something. "Dude, that's Claire right!" Actually it's Casey, but this isn't the time to correct him and lecture him on how he should at least know the name of the girl he's dating. You attempt to crawl away from her but unfortunately she grabs your foot and takes a large bite into your ankle. You kick her in the face with your good foot and manage to get her outside the door, the quickly lean forward and shut the door. But you've been bit, so your story ends here. Also you eat Bob, but that bastard kind of deserved it for not helping you anyways. [Death]<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You go to the door and look through the peephole. Bob comes up behind you and tries to look through, but you push him back. Outside there's a girl, Bob's girlfriend if you're not mistaken. Sadly his girlfriend is in bad condition, in fact shes missing an arm. Clearly she's a zombie, which begs the question... Should you open the door? > You course Not You turn away from the door. There's no way in hell you're opening it and letting her inside. "Who's that?" Bob says. "Errr....wrong number" "Oh..." Bob walks away, apparently believing that the person knocking at the door had the wrong number. You throw on the TV and watch the news for the next few hours, forgetting all about the reason you came over to begin with.... Hours later you remember though (good thing right?). > You time for "The talk" Hours later you tell Bob that zombies have risen, and go into a detailed description of your day. "Woah...sounds rough." "Yeah, well least I'm alive. So what's your zombie plan?" Bob stands up from the couch and walks to his room. He comes back and throws a piece of paper at you. He actually had a zombie plan... You read it and it's not the most detailed, but it's better than your plan....of nothing.... You decide that in may be in your best interest to stay with him. Then again the guy can be very unpredictable, and when his weed runs out he'll probably get pretty pissed. But then again, he has a shotgun and you have no weapons at your place. Though trusting this guy with a shotgun makes you feel a bit uncomfortable. > You stay with Bob You decide Bob's plan is better than yours, and depending on what you've done you may not even have the supplies needed to survive on your own. A week passes and things happen. The military comes by in a caravan and tries to pick people up, but the two of you decide to stay inside (you were also scared they would find the weed). After picking people up the miltary attempts to control the situation, but they fail quite badly. People and zombies alike attack, but Bob's house holds out, at least for the first two months. The weed ran out after the first month, naturally Bob was pretty upset at first, but he dealt with it without going apeshit on you. > You phase 2 Interlude Well, this is a bit awkward.... Let's just say due to some constraints in the system and whatnaught you have to come here before Phase 2 can begin. Suppose a congratulations is in order, then again you only beat the first of three sections. Not to mention unless you were a dumbass (or having fun) you shouldn't have died at all. Common sense was all that was required to survive. Good luck in the next section, it requires slightly more thinking. Also there was one actual ending in phase 1, see if you can get it later. Here's something to help you on your journey.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to go see your buddy Bob. You exit your house, lock it, and walk next door. You knock on the door and he answers. "Hey James, wanna get high...." Bob says, answering the door and showing you some weed. > You drugs are bad mkay... You shake your head. "It's not optional", Bob says in an angry tone. "Kay...."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up to day two of the infection. Only now do you realize that you don't actually have a zombie plan. Well no worries. The infection is still in its early stages, and it should be at least a few days until all hell breaks loose. Until then you can probably walk the streets with no worries. Probably... So, what's the plan? > You go get supplies You decide to get supplies. Sadly you do not have a car, so your place for supplies is the local grocery store, a good 15 minute walk. You walk there with no issues, however everyone seems to have the same idea you do, and are all stocking up on supplies. You enter the store and see complete chaos. Well, what now? > You go back home You go back home, since you'd prefer not to die just to get some food. You return with no issues and decide on your next course of actions. > You go to you parent's house You decide to be a momma's boy and head to your parent's house. I mean, who else would know better how to survive zombies than your parents, right? It's a long walk, and since you won't be carrying anything (or returning for that matter) you ride your bike there. The journey takes an hour and along the way you notice various people taking part in riots, causing violence and eating each other. Though you hope those last ones were actually zombies. You hope... > You get to your parent's house and.... You arrive and put your bike in the garage. Everyone should be home what with the news telling everyone to be at home and all. You enter through the front door and are greeted by you parents. You explain the situation as you know it and they explain that the military is coming, soon. They say within a week they will be here and then they will take everyone to a "safe location". Until then your family will wait it out in their home. They have enough food for a week easily, and your dad has already started boarding up the house. They insist you stay with them, but since you're a big boy they don't plan to keep you here by force. It sounds like a good deal, wait a bit then be rescued by the miltary. There might be some sort of catch, but for now you don't know what it is. > You stay with your family You decide your best bet is to stay with your family. You doubt that the military will be as bad as they are in the movies during these times, so you're sure they can help you. Well, kinda sure... Regardless of if they can or cannot help, you and your father board up the rest of the house and your family waits out the week. Mant games of scrabble are played. Sadly you suck at scrabble, which makes this week one of your least favourite weeks ever (the zombies made it pretty bad too). Then the military finally arrives. > You well it's about damn time The military arrives a week after the start of the outbreak. True to their word, they begin calling out to people in the middle of the street to come outdoors and be picked up. Any nearby zombies stand no chance, as the military caravan consists of armoured vehicles which can handle the small amount nearby easily. You family opens the front door for the first time in a week and runs to the caravan. You kick the scrabble board for good measure before following them outside. You approach one of the transport vehicles (the one you family ran to before you) and are greated by a soldier. "Greetings", the soldier says as you approach, "what brings you out here?". > You [Moan like a zombie] You make various noises to try and mimic a zombie. Now why the hell would you do that? The soldier, in all of his 30 minutes of experience with zombies, has no idea that you are in fact, not one. As a result, he instinctively shoots you. No worries though, he has been trained properly and gives you a clean shot between the eyes. You don't even have time to scream. [Death]<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The military arrives a week after the start of the outbreak. True to their word, they begin calling out to people in the middle of the street to come outdoors and be picked up. Any nearby zombies stand no chance, as the military caravan consists of armoured vehicles which can handle the small amount nearby easily. You family opens the front door for the first time in a week and runs to the caravan. You kick the scrabble board for good measure before following them outside. You approach one of the transport vehicles (the one you family ran to before you) and are greated by a soldier. "Greetings", the soldier says as you approach, "what brings you out here?". > You say "I want to come" "I want to come." "Well fair enough, come on in!" the soldier replies, motioning for you to come in. You hop in and ride out into the sunset, just like some old western movie... > You epilogue - Family Ha! Like you'd actually get a real epilogue. You choose the fastest way out of the city. You and your family make it to the shelter and are protected by the military. You get news a little later that Bob was killed, cause of death was zombies. You live the rest of your life in the shelter. Sure the food is crap, the military is full of assholes, and there's not much to do, but hey you're alive right? Stats You got the First Epilogue available in the game. You survived Phase One. You got the Mediocre Ending. You got the achievement : Family Man<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The military arrives a week after the start of the outbreak. True to their word, they begin calling out to people in the middle of the street to come outdoors and be picked up. Any nearby zombies stand no chance, as the military caravan consists of armoured vehicles which can handle the small amount nearby easily. You family opens the front door for the first time in a week and runs to the caravan. You kick the scrabble board for good measure before following them outside. You approach one of the transport vehicles (the one you family ran to before you) and are greated by a soldier. "Greetings", the soldier says as you approach, "what brings you out here?". > You say "I want to pillage and rape this town " "I want to pillage and rape this town", you reply. "You do eh...." The soldier says, looking you up and down. "Well see, I can't let you do that, so, uh...." The soldier thinks about what to do in this situation and decides that it's best to shoot you in the leg. You scream out in pain and hear your family protest, but the soldier ignores them and the vehicle drives away. You manage to crawl to the sidewalk but the pain of the shot is too much and you faint due to blood lose. Shortly after, a crowd of zombies stumble by. I'm sure you can guess what they plan to do with you.... [Death]<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You arrive and put your bike in the garage. Everyone should be home what with the news telling everyone to be at home and all. You enter through the front door and are greeted by you parents. You explain the situation as you know it and they explain that the military is coming, soon. They say within a week they will be here and then they will take everyone to a "safe location". Until then your family will wait it out in their home. They have enough food for a week easily, and your dad has already started boarding up the house. They insist you stay with them, but since you're a big boy they don't plan to keep you here by force. It sounds like a good deal, wait a bit then be rescued by the miltary. There might be some sort of catch, but for now you don't know what it is. > You go back to your place You decide you're better off not trusting the miltary to this, you ponder on the idea of convincing your parent's and sister to not trust them but decide their best chance is to. After all a zombie world is no place for a family.... You say what may be your last goodbyes to your family and head back to your house, it takes a while but once again you beat all odds and return unharmed (though you're pretty damn tired by now). Too tired to try and get supplies you decide to just walk next door to Bob's house and see what his plan is. > You see what Bob's plan is You go next door to Bob's house. He answers the door, clearly high. Not bothering to ask him anything in this state, you enter and close the door behind you. He stares at you the whole time with a blank look on his face, but says nothing. Moments later you hear knocking on the door. A slow, heavy knock.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to get supplies. Sadly you do not have a car, so your place for supplies is the local grocery store, a good 15 minute walk. You walk there with no issues, however everyone seems to have the same idea you do, and are all stocking up on supplies. You enter the store and see complete chaos. Well, what now? > You go to where most people are - those are the supplies you want You decide to go where everyone else is, because following the crowd is sometimes a good thing. Right? You try and get a shopping cart through the crowd but give up, there's far too many people. You instead reach out and grab as much food as you can in your arms. However this is where your plan of following the crowd fails you. You see, some not-so-friendly people with guns had the same idea. They also seem to not be big fans of large crowds, and so they shoot in the air and into the crowd a few times. Most people are uninjured and run away, as gang of men have made their point. Sadly you are not in the group that survived, because you were shot in the leg. Now of course, a shot in the leg isn't fatal, but it did cause you to fall to the ground. Then what was your cause of death you ask? The large crowd of people who trampled you to escape was. Hey, at least you weren't eaten. [Death]<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decide to get supplies. Sadly you do not have a car, so your place for supplies is the local grocery store, a good 15 minute walk. You walk there with no issues, however everyone seems to have the same idea you do, and are all stocking up on supplies. You enter the store and see complete chaos. Well, what now? > You go to where no one is, it's safer that way You decide to avoid the large crowd of people and go to the less populated areas. The pickings are slim, but you manage to get your buggy at least half full with food. You should be able to survive at least a few months with this much. You hear a few gunshots from a couple of isles over, followed by a mass of people running out of the store. You take this as your cue to leave, and quickly run out of the store pushing your buggy of food. You get out fine, and your journey home is uneventful. You hope you don't run into those who made the gunfire later. Well now you're home, you got food, next step is to.... > You barracade and wait it out You decide to barracade your house and wait things out. You grab various tools and pieces of wood, then board up all your windows and doors. The next two months pass by and many things happen. Many, many things.... > You well what happened? A week after the events of the first day of the infection various things happened. Panic happened, riots happened. Real ones, not the initial ones which were actually just zombies causing havoc. Martial Law is put into effect, though it only lastws a few weeks before the military was over-run. Fighting the zombies head on was a bad idea but the military didn't learn this fast enough. They came by with caravans originally and picked up anyone who was willing to come with them. Then they created blockades and such to try and contain the problem. But eventually they were over-run. Your home is attacked a few times, but nothing major. A few gun fights happened just outside as well, but you survive. You've lost a bit of weight, but you're alive and well...ish. Two months have passed and for the past week it's been very quiet outside. No zombies, no people, nothing. Good thing too, because you're out of food and need to do leave the house now. Oh and congratulations, you survived Phase 1 of the zombies.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You exit the employee room, and find a customer standing just inside of the entrance to the store. He seems pretty out of it. You tell him the store is closed and he turns to you. His clothing is covered in blood, and his eyes seem completely black. He starts to stumble towards you. You continue to yell at him, angry that he is ignoring you. Finally, when he's just out of arm's reach, you realize hes probably been infected with that virus you heard about on the news. You hate to admit it, but he's probably a zombie. (Well no shit Sherlock) So, what's the plan? > You try and reason with him You continue to yell at the man, determined to get through to him. When he finally reaches you he grabs ahold of you and gives you a heartfelt hug. It seems you finally got through to him. Wait...no....no that's not a hug! The man grabs a hold of you and proceeds to bite your neck, ripping out the flesh from it. You fall to the floor and bleed out. Good thing you bleed out quickly, being eaten alive sure is painful. [Death]<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wake up at 8am, take a shower, throw on some clothes and turn on the local news. Everything seems to go just like it did yesterday, and the news is pretty much the same. Except all the normal murder stories are replaced by animal attacks and riots. The news doesn't say anything specific, no mention of zombies or anything, but the potential is still there... > You call in sick and see how everything progresses You call in sick, you don't feel like being involved in any riots or being murdered. Nothing new appears until noon, when they announce that the cause of all of this violence is a new virus, and that everyone should stay indoors until further notice. Good thing you didn't go to work. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are a Private Detective living in Victorian London. Crimes are common and you are frequently called upon to assist the policemen in Scotland Yard. You have been a Detective for a few years now and by combining hard work with intelligence you have had a few successes in uncovering the information that has enabled the Police to arrest wanted criminals. This has earned you a good Reputation but you must be careful not to lose it: if you do Scotland Yard will no longer trust you to help them. One evening you are at home when Commissioner James Monro, an experienced Policeman, visits you. "We would like your help again," he tells you. "A lunatic murderer called James Kelly escaped from Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane ten days ago. My detectives have investigated and found no trace of him. Perhaps if you look into the case you might be able to find something?” What do you do? > You search for the escaped killer "I'll see what I can do," you tell Monro who nods. “I’m glad you can help," he tells you. "I’ll send a telegram to Dr Orange, the Superintendent at Broadmoor, asking him to meet you tomorrow. He can tell you more about Kelly.” The next day you take a train out to the Asylum in the heart of the Berkshire countryside. A servant from the Hospital meets you at the station and takes in a horse and carriage through the sleepy village of Crowthorne and up to the gloomy and looming concrete walls of the Hospital. You are shown directly into Orange’s office where the Doctor shakes your hand. He is a middle-aged profession with a no-nonsense manner. “I got Commissioner Monro's telegram and I will be glad to help you in any way I can,” he tells you. “We are all rather concerned here: James Kelly was one of our most clever patients and I believe him to be a real danger to the general public, especially women.” You nod and consider which questions to ask first. > You what is Kelly's criminal history? “Five years ago Kelly stabbed his wife Sarah in the neck with a knife killing her," Dr Orange tells you. "He believed she was a prostitute who had infected him with a sexually transmitted disease. He surrendered at once to policemen and became very remorseful afterwards, claiming he was mad. At the trial he was originally sentenced to be executed but at an appeal he was found mentally unfit and sentenced to life imprisonment at this facility. During his time here Kelly has shown no violent tendencies and in fact displayed no signs of insanity whatsoever. I would say he was one of the cleverest patients we've ever had here." You nod, considering what to ask next. > You say "How did Kelly escape your prison?" "Kelly and another prisoner called George Shatten both play instruments in the Asylum’s band," Dr Orange tells you. "On the evening Kelly escaped they went out into the garden where the band meet to practice. When the rest of the band joined them an hour later only Shatten was still there. When we searched him we found two keys that he and Kelly had carved made out of some metal they found in the asylum’s garden. Kelly used this to let himself through a gate in the inner wall and afterwards climbed the six-foot high outer wall. He vanished without a trace but guards do report seeing a man called John Merritt near the Hospital during the day yesterday. He is an old friend of Kelly’s and visits him occasionally.” You nod, considering your next question. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken on the cold, stone floor with a shiver running through your body and a pounding earache from sleeping on the side of your head. You do not know how much longer you can survive in this place. No one has brought you any food or water for days. Either you've been abandoned to die or something's happened to the guards to keep them from feeding you. Either way you are well and truly buggered. With what little strength you have, you pick yourself up and look around your cell. There seems to be no way of escape. The window is barred and even if it wasn’t, your cell is at the very top of a huge, medieval tower, so climbing out would be suicide. The door is far too heavy to break down and you don’t have anything you could use to pick the lock. There is nothing in the room save for yourself, a dirty pile of straw in the corner and a bucket for… Well, let’s not discuss the bucket. Suddenly though, as your eyes scan the dungeon, you notice something you never saw before. One of the stones on the wall of your cell seems to have something etched into it. As you lean closer you can just about make out two words. “Press me.” > You press the stone You press the engraved stone and a secret door in the stone wall gradually slides to one side and reveals a hidden passage way. Congratulations, you’ve escaped your cell! That wasn’t too difficult was it? As you follow the empty passage way, you seem to be circling the dungeon and walking deeper and deeper into pitch darkness. Eventually you see a light at the end of the passage and find yourself in a room dimly lit by torches that hang from the wall. The room is small with only a spinning wheel and an old rocking chair to decorate it, both of which are coated in cob webs. There is a door on the other side of the room. Having nowhere else to go, you head towards the door when suddenly you hear the creaking of the rocking chair behind you. For a brief moment you hold your breath and try to reassure yourself that it’s just the breeze rocking the chair, but there is no breeze in the room. Eventually you force yourself to turn around and see the ghostly figure of an old woman sitting in the chair. Before you can run or scream, the old lady speaks up in a gentle yet eerie voice. “No need to be afraid of me child.” She tells you as she slowly rocks in her chair, stroking a small, ghostly cat on her lap. “You’ve nothing to fear from poor old Nana. I’m just here, pondering the old riddle to myself. Are you good at riddles child? I do hope so. They’re the only way to get out of this tower you see, ever since the old master went mad and cursed the place. Oh and that reminds me, I’m supposed to ask you the riddle aren’t I? Now let’s see if I can remember. What does man love more than life, Fear more than death and mortal strife, What the poor have and the rich require, And what contented men desire, What the miser spends and the spendthrift saves, And all men carry to their graves?” > You answer "Love" The ghost lets out a sad and disappointed sigh. “I’m afraid not dearie.” She tells you as the rocking of her chair gradually comes to a halt. “I am sorry child. At least you tried.” Suddenly a trap door opens up beneath you and you fall screaming into a pit of fire. Personally you find this punishment a tad eccentric just for failing to answer a riddle correctly, but that's just you. Better luck next time.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press the engraved stone and a secret door in the stone wall gradually slides to one side and reveals a hidden passage way. Congratulations, you’ve escaped your cell! That wasn’t too difficult was it? As you follow the empty passage way, you seem to be circling the dungeon and walking deeper and deeper into pitch darkness. Eventually you see a light at the end of the passage and find yourself in a room dimly lit by torches that hang from the wall. The room is small with only a spinning wheel and an old rocking chair to decorate it, both of which are coated in cob webs. There is a door on the other side of the room. Having nowhere else to go, you head towards the door when suddenly you hear the creaking of the rocking chair behind you. For a brief moment you hold your breath and try to reassure yourself that it’s just the breeze rocking the chair, but there is no breeze in the room. Eventually you force yourself to turn around and see the ghostly figure of an old woman sitting in the chair. Before you can run or scream, the old lady speaks up in a gentle yet eerie voice. “No need to be afraid of me child.” She tells you as she slowly rocks in her chair, stroking a small, ghostly cat on her lap. “You’ve nothing to fear from poor old Nana. I’m just here, pondering the old riddle to myself. Are you good at riddles child? I do hope so. They’re the only way to get out of this tower you see, ever since the old master went mad and cursed the place. Oh and that reminds me, I’m supposed to ask you the riddle aren’t I? Now let’s see if I can remember. What does man love more than life, Fear more than death and mortal strife, What the poor have and the rich require, And what contented men desire, What the miser spends and the spendthrift saves, And all men carry to their graves?” > You answer "Nothing" The old woman seems to think about your answer for a moment. “Nothing.” She says to herself before a ghostly smile twists her lips. “Nothing, yes I think that sounds right. Very good child. Thank you for answering poor Old Nana’s riddle. Now I can finally get some rest. You go on through the door now.” And with that, the rocking chair stops rocking and the ghost of the woman and her cat fade away into nothingness. Opening the door leads you to a staircase. As you descend these stairs you can hear all sorts of strange noises. Scuffling, squeaking, flapping of wings, hooting and howling, you expect to find a collection of animals caged at the bottom of the stairs. Instead you find a circular room with ten doors all the way around, each with a picture of a different animal engraved on the door. The noises begin to quiet down and the ghost of a dark haired, rather scruffy looking man appears in the centre of the room with a hawk perched on his arm. “So, you made it past Nana did you? Poor old bat’s been trying to solve that riddle for damn near fifty years now. Well I suppose it’s my turn then. Glad to meet you kid. I’m the games keeper here abouts. Master told me we had new company and he sent me down here with a riddle for you, to help you choose which door to go through. Give it a good think before you open one, alright? Wings as black as a moonless night. Only ventures in the light. Long tail, sharp teeth, legs of eight. Find my name or meet your fate.” > You open the door engraved with an Owl You open the door to see nothing but darkness before you and the sounds of several different creatures fill the air once again, only now they sound louder, and angrier. “Sorry kid.” The games keeper says to you as the sounds draw nearer. “Even I can’t stop them now. They’re just so hungry.” Suddenly you feel a sharp pain in your foot and you look down to see that a rat has come in through the door and bitten your toe. You manage to kick it away but more rats appear and you stumble backwards trying to keep them away from your feet. An owl flies at you out of the darkness and it’s talons scratch at you eyes. You try to shoo it away but see that your arms are covered in tiny black spiders which you frantically try to shake off. The spiders are the least of your worries though, since standing it the doorway is a great black bear which rises onto its hind legs and lets out the most terrifying roar. You are so distracted by the bear that you don’t even notice the wolf that is circling you until it sinks its teeth into your throat.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The old woman seems to think about your answer for a moment. “Nothing.” She says to herself before a ghostly smile twists her lips. “Nothing, yes I think that sounds right. Very good child. Thank you for answering poor Old Nana’s riddle. Now I can finally get some rest. You go on through the door now.” And with that, the rocking chair stops rocking and the ghost of the woman and her cat fade away into nothingness. Opening the door leads you to a staircase. As you descend these stairs you can hear all sorts of strange noises. Scuffling, squeaking, flapping of wings, hooting and howling, you expect to find a collection of animals caged at the bottom of the stairs. Instead you find a circular room with ten doors all the way around, each with a picture of a different animal engraved on the door. The noises begin to quiet down and the ghost of a dark haired, rather scruffy looking man appears in the centre of the room with a hawk perched on his arm. “So, you made it past Nana did you? Poor old bat’s been trying to solve that riddle for damn near fifty years now. Well I suppose it’s my turn then. Glad to meet you kid. I’m the games keeper here abouts. Master told me we had new company and he sent me down here with a riddle for you, to help you choose which door to go through. Give it a good think before you open one, alright? Wings as black as a moonless night. Only ventures in the light. Long tail, sharp teeth, legs of eight. Find my name or meet your fate.” > You open the door engraved with a Wolf You open the door with the wolf engraved on it and the game keeper nods with approval. “Good job kid. Did you put together the first letters of every sentence or was it just a lucky guess? Either way I suppose it’s time for me to move on. Good luck with the next riddle, but watch yourself. I hear there’s a killer on the loose in the tower.” You want to ask the game keeper more but by the time you turn around both the man and the hawk have already vanished. The doorway leads to a large dining hall with one great table, decorated with candles and long enough to host a royal banquet. The plates, cutlery and candle sticks are all covered in dust and all the seats are empty save for the last five at the far end, all of which are filled by ghosts. Two men sit on the left of the table and two women on the right. Judging by their clothing they are all servants of different standing within the tower, but at the head of the table sits a young woman about your own age, just barely into adulthood. Both her fine velvet dress and the refined way she sits show her to be a woman of noble birth. “Have you come to free me from my torment?” The noble woman asks as a ghostly tear runs down her cheek. “My father sent me here to become the Wizard Lord’s bride, but while I was a guest in his tower, the scoundrel had me poisoned by one of his own servants. I cannot be free until I know who my killer is. All I know is that it is one of the four sitting at the table, and that only one of them ever speaks the truth.” In unison the four servants all turn to you and begin to argue in their defence. “The maid is the murderer.” Says the butler. “The cook poisoned the princess.” Says the maid. “I didn’t kill the girl, I swear!” Says the gardener. “The maid is lying.” Says the cook. > The butler dunnit! Feeling rather confident in yourself, you walk past the servants to stand next to the noblewoman at the head of the table. “I think I know who murdered you!” You tell her proudly, seeing her face light up just about as much as a pale white, ghostly face can. “It was…” But before you can finish your sentence, you feel cold, sharp steel plunging into your back and the young ghost woman screams as you fall to the ground in a pool of your own blood. Looks like you got it wrong. Still, look on the bright side, maybe some day some other poor sod will find themselves trapped in the tower and they’ll get to solve the mystery of who murdered you! That side's really not all that bright is it?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You open the door with the wolf engraved on it and the game keeper nods with approval. “Good job kid. Did you put together the first letters of every sentence or was it just a lucky guess? Either way I suppose it’s time for me to move on. Good luck with the next riddle, but watch yourself. I hear there’s a killer on the loose in the tower.” You want to ask the game keeper more but by the time you turn around both the man and the hawk have already vanished. The doorway leads to a large dining hall with one great table, decorated with candles and long enough to host a royal banquet. The plates, cutlery and candle sticks are all covered in dust and all the seats are empty save for the last five at the far end, all of which are filled by ghosts. Two men sit on the left of the table and two women on the right. Judging by their clothing they are all servants of different standing within the tower, but at the head of the table sits a young woman about your own age, just barely into adulthood. Both her fine velvet dress and the refined way she sits show her to be a woman of noble birth. “Have you come to free me from my torment?” The noble woman asks as a ghostly tear runs down her cheek. “My father sent me here to become the Wizard Lord’s bride, but while I was a guest in his tower, the scoundrel had me poisoned by one of his own servants. I cannot be free until I know who my killer is. All I know is that it is one of the four sitting at the table, and that only one of them ever speaks the truth.” In unison the four servants all turn to you and begin to argue in their defence. “The maid is the murderer.” Says the butler. “The cook poisoned the princess.” Says the maid. “I didn’t kill the girl, I swear!” Says the gardener. “The maid is lying.” Says the cook. > The gardener dunnit! You look accusingly at each of the servants and consider what they each said in turn. “You say that only one of them can tell the truth. Now the only one that can be telling the truth while all the others are lying is the cook, and since the gardener claims he didn’t do it and we know he must be lying, that must make him the killer!” With that, the four servants all begin to disappear into the air. You have solved their riddle and now they can finally move on to the afterlife. “Thank you.” The ghost of the noblewoman tells you as she begins to fade away. “Finally I can rest in peace. I wish you luck on your next riddle. I hear it can only be solved by one with the sharpest of eyes.” Once the woman’s ghost has faded from sight you leave the dining hall and descend another spiral staircase until you find yourself in a long passageway that seems to wind in a circle around the tower. All across the walls hang the most incredible works of art. Landscapes and seascapes and portraits of lords and ladies dressed in shimmering silks, all painted with exquisite attention to detail. There is one painting that draws your eye though, a strange pattern made up of purple roses which would look very pretty on a pair of curtains but seems incredibly out of place hanging on the wall with the other paintings. “Ah, I zee you are admiring my masterpiece.” A voice speaks from behind you and you turn to see a ghost of a man standing behind you dressed in a brightly coloured tunic, holding a paint palette in one hand and a brush in another. “Oh ze hours I slaved avay on zis painting and ze mastery, it iz vasted on blind fools! Vhat of you I vonder? Can you zee past vhat is in front of your eyes? Tell me, vhat is it you zee in ze painting?” > You purple Roses The artist simply scoffs at your reply. “Hmph! Foolish child! I should ‘ave known zat your puny little eyes could never vitness ze true brilliance of my vork! Perhaps you vould prefer a more in depth study of von of my other paintings. Zat von maybe?” With that, the artist uses his paintbrush to gesture towards a magnificent work of art, depicting a war scene between a group of fully armed knights and a gang of vagabonds hiding in a forest with bows and arrows. Suddenly you feel yourself drawn to this painting and as you walk closer you find that the trees in the background seem to get further and further away while the knights in the foreground become closer and closer until they seem to be right there beside you. In fact, some of them are in front of you. It is then that you turn around in a full circle and realize that you are actually inside the painting. “I see one!” You hear one of the knights cry, and are horrified to find that he is pointing at you. “Rebel scum! Men, in the name of the King, I order you to kill that traitor!” At the man’s orders, all the other knights draw their swords in unison and point them at you. “… Oh bugger.” You mumble to yourself before turning around and running away, screaming like a little girl. You can hear the knights on their horses drawing closer to you, but they never get a chance to run you through, since out of the trees, the rebel’s arrows rain down on the knights and unfortunately one of them hits you right in the chest and pierces your heart. For a painted arrow it’s incredibly sharp.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look accusingly at each of the servants and consider what they each said in turn. “You say that only one of them can tell the truth. Now the only one that can be telling the truth while all the others are lying is the cook, and since the gardener claims he didn’t do it and we know he must be lying, that must make him the killer!” With that, the four servants all begin to disappear into the air. You have solved their riddle and now they can finally move on to the afterlife. “Thank you.” The ghost of the noblewoman tells you as she begins to fade away. “Finally I can rest in peace. I wish you luck on your next riddle. I hear it can only be solved by one with the sharpest of eyes.” Once the woman’s ghost has faded from sight you leave the dining hall and descend another spiral staircase until you find yourself in a long passageway that seems to wind in a circle around the tower. All across the walls hang the most incredible works of art. Landscapes and seascapes and portraits of lords and ladies dressed in shimmering silks, all painted with exquisite attention to detail. There is one painting that draws your eye though, a strange pattern made up of purple roses which would look very pretty on a pair of curtains but seems incredibly out of place hanging on the wall with the other paintings. “Ah, I zee you are admiring my masterpiece.” A voice speaks from behind you and you turn to see a ghost of a man standing behind you dressed in a brightly coloured tunic, holding a paint palette in one hand and a brush in another. “Oh ze hours I slaved avay on zis painting and ze mastery, it iz vasted on blind fools! Vhat of you I vonder? Can you zee past vhat is in front of your eyes? Tell me, vhat is it you zee in ze painting?” > A Ring The artist applauds your reply. “You zee! You zee! Oh you vonderful peasant, you zee ze ring! Now I can finally move on knoving zat my vork, it is appreciated! Good luck escaping vith your life and all zat.” And with that the ghost leaps into a blank canvas which quickly becomes a painting of a rather eccentric looking artist with a paintbrush and palette in his hands. Opening a door at the end of the hallway, you find another staircase. As you descend the stairs you pass by a window which shows you are almost halfway down the tower now. Keep up the good work and you’ll be free in no time. At the bottom of the stairs you open a door to reveal another round room. This room has six doors and they are each guarded by a suit of armour holding a different flag. No ghosts appear to give you advice, so you head towards the centre of the room to choose a door. It is then that the suits of armour come to life and bang the ends of their flags on the ground in unison. The first guard is holding a blue flag with white and red crosses going both from corner to corner and through the centre of the flag. The guard shouts, “None shall pass!” The second guard is holding a flag with vertical blue, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Personne ne peut entrer!” The third guard is holding a flag with red stripes at the top and bottom, a yellow stripe in the middle and to the left a picture of a shield with a crown on top. He shouts, “Nadie puede pasar!” The fourth guard is holding a flag with horizontal black, red and yellow stripes. He shouts, “Niemand darf passieren!” The fifth guard is holding a blue flag with a yellow cross going through. He shouts, “Ingen kan passera!” The sixth guard is holding a flag with vertical green, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Vieni dentro piccola persona!” > You open the first door Well the evil lord of the tower sure knows his European languages. You choose your door and turn the door knob but before you can open it, the suit of armour that guards your door plunges his spear into your back and it pierces all the way through your body, coming out of your chest. The spear also happens to be the stick on which his flag was attached and so you get to watch the little bloodstained flag flapping about before you slump to the ground and die.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The artist applauds your reply. “You zee! You zee! Oh you vonderful peasant, you zee ze ring! Now I can finally move on knoving zat my vork, it is appreciated! Good luck escaping vith your life and all zat.” And with that the ghost leaps into a blank canvas which quickly becomes a painting of a rather eccentric looking artist with a paintbrush and palette in his hands. Opening a door at the end of the hallway, you find another staircase. As you descend the stairs you pass by a window which shows you are almost halfway down the tower now. Keep up the good work and you’ll be free in no time. At the bottom of the stairs you open a door to reveal another round room. This room has six doors and they are each guarded by a suit of armour holding a different flag. No ghosts appear to give you advice, so you head towards the centre of the room to choose a door. It is then that the suits of armour come to life and bang the ends of their flags on the ground in unison. The first guard is holding a blue flag with white and red crosses going both from corner to corner and through the centre of the flag. The guard shouts, “None shall pass!” The second guard is holding a flag with vertical blue, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Personne ne peut entrer!” The third guard is holding a flag with red stripes at the top and bottom, a yellow stripe in the middle and to the left a picture of a shield with a crown on top. He shouts, “Nadie puede pasar!” The fourth guard is holding a flag with horizontal black, red and yellow stripes. He shouts, “Niemand darf passieren!” The fifth guard is holding a blue flag with a yellow cross going through. He shouts, “Ingen kan passera!” The sixth guard is holding a flag with vertical green, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Vieni dentro piccola persona!” > You open the sixth door What a nice Italian suit of armour. You open the door and the guard kindly steps aside to let you pass. “Addio piccola persona!” He calls after you. “Cercate di non morire in un modo brutto!” The next room is a rather cheerful change of pace in this otherwise rather depressing haunted tower. A little girl’s room, painted pink with little purple curtains draped over a little bed and more toys than a princess could ask for. Dollhouses complete with furniture and little tea sets for the dolls, rocking horses, every kind of toy animal you can think of and the most incredibly life like puppets. In the centre of the room is a table on which sits a little model village. On one side of the village is a little river with an island in the middle. There are three men and a little boat on the island. “Have you come to play with me?” You hear a little voice ask, and you turn around to see a young girl, about five years old, dressed up in a pretty green dress with a crown of flowers in her hair. Apparently the girl fancies herself a bit of a princess. Unlike the rest of the people in this tower though, the girl is not a ghost. Everything about her seems completely real. “I’ve been trying to finish this game for ages.” She tells you, standing up on a stool to get a better view of the model village. “My Daddy gave it to me. He says only a real smart person can figure it out.” The child then turns to you and considers you for a moment. “You don’t look very smart.” She says sadly. “But I’ll let you play anyway.” Before you can either agree or object, you suddenly find yourself shrinking down to the size of a little toy soldier. Rather carelessly, the girl picks you up between her thumb and forefinger and drops you on the little model island. “Now listen carefully.” The girl tells you with a rather bossy tone. “There’s three men on the island. The ugly one is a bad man who threw a lady in the river and drowned her. The angry one is the lady’s brother, and he’s very cross with the bad man for killing her. The scared looking man saw the ugly one drown the lady, he’s very scared because he thinks the bad man is going to kill him too, so that he won’t tell anybody what happened. You are the ferry man and you have to get all three of the men to the village so that they can take the bad man to court, but you can only take one man at a time. You can’t leave the lady’s brother alone with the bad man, or the lady’s brother might get angry and kill him. Also, you can’t leave the bad man alone with the scared man, because if you do then the bad man might kill the scared man so that he can’t tell anyone what happened. Now, who are you going to take first?” > You take the Murderer to the village You row to the model village. On the village is the murderer. Now what do you do? > You row back with the murderer You row back to the island. On the island are the murderer, the brother and the witness. Who do you want to take to the village first?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You row to the model village. On the village is the murderer. Now what do you do? > You leave the murderer and row back on your own You row to the model island. On the island are the woman's brother and the witness. Who do you want to take across next? > The Brother You row to the village. On the village are the murderer and the victim's brother. Who do you want to take across next? > The Murderer You row back to the island. On the island are the murderer and the witness. Who do you want to take across now?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>What a nice Italian suit of armour. You open the door and the guard kindly steps aside to let you pass. “Addio piccola persona!” He calls after you. “Cercate di non morire in un modo brutto!” The next room is a rather cheerful change of pace in this otherwise rather depressing haunted tower. A little girl’s room, painted pink with little purple curtains draped over a little bed and more toys than a princess could ask for. Dollhouses complete with furniture and little tea sets for the dolls, rocking horses, every kind of toy animal you can think of and the most incredibly life like puppets. In the centre of the room is a table on which sits a little model village. On one side of the village is a little river with an island in the middle. There are three men and a little boat on the island. “Have you come to play with me?” You hear a little voice ask, and you turn around to see a young girl, about five years old, dressed up in a pretty green dress with a crown of flowers in her hair. Apparently the girl fancies herself a bit of a princess. Unlike the rest of the people in this tower though, the girl is not a ghost. Everything about her seems completely real. “I’ve been trying to finish this game for ages.” She tells you, standing up on a stool to get a better view of the model village. “My Daddy gave it to me. He says only a real smart person can figure it out.” The child then turns to you and considers you for a moment. “You don’t look very smart.” She says sadly. “But I’ll let you play anyway.” Before you can either agree or object, you suddenly find yourself shrinking down to the size of a little toy soldier. Rather carelessly, the girl picks you up between her thumb and forefinger and drops you on the little model island. “Now listen carefully.” The girl tells you with a rather bossy tone. “There’s three men on the island. The ugly one is a bad man who threw a lady in the river and drowned her. The angry one is the lady’s brother, and he’s very cross with the bad man for killing her. The scared looking man saw the ugly one drown the lady, he’s very scared because he thinks the bad man is going to kill him too, so that he won’t tell anybody what happened. You are the ferry man and you have to get all three of the men to the village so that they can take the bad man to court, but you can only take one man at a time. You can’t leave the lady’s brother alone with the bad man, or the lady’s brother might get angry and kill him. Also, you can’t leave the bad man alone with the scared man, because if you do then the bad man might kill the scared man so that he can’t tell anyone what happened. Now, who are you going to take first?” > You row to the village alone Congratulations! You made it to the other side of the river! ... Now what?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>What a nice Italian suit of armour. You open the door and the guard kindly steps aside to let you pass. “Addio piccola persona!” He calls after you. “Cercate di non morire in un modo brutto!” The next room is a rather cheerful change of pace in this otherwise rather depressing haunted tower. A little girl’s room, painted pink with little purple curtains draped over a little bed and more toys than a princess could ask for. Dollhouses complete with furniture and little tea sets for the dolls, rocking horses, every kind of toy animal you can think of and the most incredibly life like puppets. In the centre of the room is a table on which sits a little model village. On one side of the village is a little river with an island in the middle. There are three men and a little boat on the island. “Have you come to play with me?” You hear a little voice ask, and you turn around to see a young girl, about five years old, dressed up in a pretty green dress with a crown of flowers in her hair. Apparently the girl fancies herself a bit of a princess. Unlike the rest of the people in this tower though, the girl is not a ghost. Everything about her seems completely real. “I’ve been trying to finish this game for ages.” She tells you, standing up on a stool to get a better view of the model village. “My Daddy gave it to me. He says only a real smart person can figure it out.” The child then turns to you and considers you for a moment. “You don’t look very smart.” She says sadly. “But I’ll let you play anyway.” Before you can either agree or object, you suddenly find yourself shrinking down to the size of a little toy soldier. Rather carelessly, the girl picks you up between her thumb and forefinger and drops you on the little model island. “Now listen carefully.” The girl tells you with a rather bossy tone. “There’s three men on the island. The ugly one is a bad man who threw a lady in the river and drowned her. The angry one is the lady’s brother, and he’s very cross with the bad man for killing her. The scared looking man saw the ugly one drown the lady, he’s very scared because he thinks the bad man is going to kill him too, so that he won’t tell anybody what happened. You are the ferry man and you have to get all three of the men to the village so that they can take the bad man to court, but you can only take one man at a time. You can’t leave the lady’s brother alone with the bad man, or the lady’s brother might get angry and kill him. Also, you can’t leave the bad man alone with the scared man, because if you do then the bad man might kill the scared man so that he can’t tell anyone what happened. Now, who are you going to take first?” > You refuse to play and give the little brat a good finger wagging! You refuse to be a child’s plaything! You wag your finger at the little girl and give her a very stern telling off. “I don’t have time to play games with you! I need to escape this tower! You change me back right now! I swear if I was my real height I’d put you over my knee and give you a good spanking so you’d know to respect your… Wait, what’re you doing?” By now the girl has picked you up and is looking at you rather crossly. “Bad toy!” She yells at you. “I don’t like you anymore!” And with that she dunks you in the model village’s river and holds you under until you drown. You never were very good with children.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>What a nice Italian suit of armour. You open the door and the guard kindly steps aside to let you pass. “Addio piccola persona!” He calls after you. “Cercate di non morire in un modo brutto!” The next room is a rather cheerful change of pace in this otherwise rather depressing haunted tower. A little girl’s room, painted pink with little purple curtains draped over a little bed and more toys than a princess could ask for. Dollhouses complete with furniture and little tea sets for the dolls, rocking horses, every kind of toy animal you can think of and the most incredibly life like puppets. In the centre of the room is a table on which sits a little model village. On one side of the village is a little river with an island in the middle. There are three men and a little boat on the island. “Have you come to play with me?” You hear a little voice ask, and you turn around to see a young girl, about five years old, dressed up in a pretty green dress with a crown of flowers in her hair. Apparently the girl fancies herself a bit of a princess. Unlike the rest of the people in this tower though, the girl is not a ghost. Everything about her seems completely real. “I’ve been trying to finish this game for ages.” She tells you, standing up on a stool to get a better view of the model village. “My Daddy gave it to me. He says only a real smart person can figure it out.” The child then turns to you and considers you for a moment. “You don’t look very smart.” She says sadly. “But I’ll let you play anyway.” Before you can either agree or object, you suddenly find yourself shrinking down to the size of a little toy soldier. Rather carelessly, the girl picks you up between her thumb and forefinger and drops you on the little model island. “Now listen carefully.” The girl tells you with a rather bossy tone. “There’s three men on the island. The ugly one is a bad man who threw a lady in the river and drowned her. The angry one is the lady’s brother, and he’s very cross with the bad man for killing her. The scared looking man saw the ugly one drown the lady, he’s very scared because he thinks the bad man is going to kill him too, so that he won’t tell anybody what happened. You are the ferry man and you have to get all three of the men to the village so that they can take the bad man to court, but you can only take one man at a time. You can’t leave the lady’s brother alone with the bad man, or the lady’s brother might get angry and kill him. Also, you can’t leave the bad man alone with the scared man, because if you do then the bad man might kill the scared man so that he can’t tell anyone what happened. Now, who are you going to take first?” > You need a hint It's not all that hard, just remember that you can only take one person in your boat at a time and never leave the brother alone with the killer, or the killer alone with the witness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The artist applauds your reply. “You zee! You zee! Oh you vonderful peasant, you zee ze ring! Now I can finally move on knoving zat my vork, it is appreciated! Good luck escaping vith your life and all zat.” And with that the ghost leaps into a blank canvas which quickly becomes a painting of a rather eccentric looking artist with a paintbrush and palette in his hands. Opening a door at the end of the hallway, you find another staircase. As you descend the stairs you pass by a window which shows you are almost halfway down the tower now. Keep up the good work and you’ll be free in no time. At the bottom of the stairs you open a door to reveal another round room. This room has six doors and they are each guarded by a suit of armour holding a different flag. No ghosts appear to give you advice, so you head towards the centre of the room to choose a door. It is then that the suits of armour come to life and bang the ends of their flags on the ground in unison. The first guard is holding a blue flag with white and red crosses going both from corner to corner and through the centre of the flag. The guard shouts, “None shall pass!” The second guard is holding a flag with vertical blue, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Personne ne peut entrer!” The third guard is holding a flag with red stripes at the top and bottom, a yellow stripe in the middle and to the left a picture of a shield with a crown on top. He shouts, “Nadie puede pasar!” The fourth guard is holding a flag with horizontal black, red and yellow stripes. He shouts, “Niemand darf passieren!” The fifth guard is holding a blue flag with a yellow cross going through. He shouts, “Ingen kan passera!” The sixth guard is holding a flag with vertical green, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Vieni dentro piccola persona!” > You knock the suits of armour over like dominoes! A brilliant idea springs to mind! Using all your strength, you push against the first suit of armour in an attempt to knock them all down like a circle of dominoes. It works! The first suit knocks over the second, the second knocks over the third, the third knocks over the fourth, the fourth knocks over the fifth, finally the fifth suit knocks over the sixth suit of armour and the six suit of armour knocks over you. Well, you should have seen that coming. Sadly the last suit of armour is particularly heavy and you are crushed under it’s weight. Remember when you were little and your mother would tell you to look but don’t touch? This is why.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The artist applauds your reply. “You zee! You zee! Oh you vonderful peasant, you zee ze ring! Now I can finally move on knoving zat my vork, it is appreciated! Good luck escaping vith your life and all zat.” And with that the ghost leaps into a blank canvas which quickly becomes a painting of a rather eccentric looking artist with a paintbrush and palette in his hands. Opening a door at the end of the hallway, you find another staircase. As you descend the stairs you pass by a window which shows you are almost halfway down the tower now. Keep up the good work and you’ll be free in no time. At the bottom of the stairs you open a door to reveal another round room. This room has six doors and they are each guarded by a suit of armour holding a different flag. No ghosts appear to give you advice, so you head towards the centre of the room to choose a door. It is then that the suits of armour come to life and bang the ends of their flags on the ground in unison. The first guard is holding a blue flag with white and red crosses going both from corner to corner and through the centre of the flag. The guard shouts, “None shall pass!” The second guard is holding a flag with vertical blue, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Personne ne peut entrer!” The third guard is holding a flag with red stripes at the top and bottom, a yellow stripe in the middle and to the left a picture of a shield with a crown on top. He shouts, “Nadie puede pasar!” The fourth guard is holding a flag with horizontal black, red and yellow stripes. He shouts, “Niemand darf passieren!” The fifth guard is holding a blue flag with a yellow cross going through. He shouts, “Ingen kan passera!” The sixth guard is holding a flag with vertical green, white and red stripes. He shouts, “Vieni dentro piccola persona!” > You need a hint First I need to apologize since the flags are not historically accurate considering this game is meant to be set in medieval England. Second, for those of you that don't speak six different languages, avez-vous entendu parler de google translator?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look accusingly at each of the servants and consider what they each said in turn. “You say that only one of them can tell the truth. Now the only one that can be telling the truth while all the others are lying is the cook, and since the gardener claims he didn’t do it and we know he must be lying, that must make him the killer!” With that, the four servants all begin to disappear into the air. You have solved their riddle and now they can finally move on to the afterlife. “Thank you.” The ghost of the noblewoman tells you as she begins to fade away. “Finally I can rest in peace. I wish you luck on your next riddle. I hear it can only be solved by one with the sharpest of eyes.” Once the woman’s ghost has faded from sight you leave the dining hall and descend another spiral staircase until you find yourself in a long passageway that seems to wind in a circle around the tower. All across the walls hang the most incredible works of art. Landscapes and seascapes and portraits of lords and ladies dressed in shimmering silks, all painted with exquisite attention to detail. There is one painting that draws your eye though, a strange pattern made up of purple roses which would look very pretty on a pair of curtains but seems incredibly out of place hanging on the wall with the other paintings. “Ah, I zee you are admiring my masterpiece.” A voice speaks from behind you and you turn to see a ghost of a man standing behind you dressed in a brightly coloured tunic, holding a paint palette in one hand and a brush in another. “Oh ze hours I slaved avay on zis painting and ze mastery, it iz vasted on blind fools! Vhat of you I vonder? Can you zee past vhat is in front of your eyes? Tell me, vhat is it you zee in ze painting?” > You beauty, Truth, Love, Passion... Art! The artist looks rather proud of himself when he hears your answer! “Yes, yes!” He declares with a broad grin. “Beauty! Passion! How remarkable zat a peasant such as yourself could recognize ‘ow much passion I put into zis painting to make it zo that only a truly gifted eye could zee ze… Vait… You ‘ave no idea vhat’s in ze painting do you?” In complete and utter frustration, the artist slaps his hand against his forehead. “Hmph! Foolish child! I should ‘ave known zat your puny little eyes could never vitness ze true brilliance of my vork! Perhaps you vould prefer a more in depth study of von of my other paintings. Zat von maybe?” With that, the artist uses his paintbrush to gesture towards a magnificent work of art, depicting a war scene between a group of fully armed knights and a gang of vagabonds hiding in a forest with bows and arrows. Suddenly you feel yourself drawn to this painting and as you walk closer you find that the trees in the background seem to get further and further away while the knights in the foreground become closer and closer until they seem to be right there beside you. In fact, some of them are in front of you. It is then that you turn around in a full circle and realize that you are actually inside the painting. “I see one!” You hear one of the knights cry, and are horrified to find that he is pointing at you. “Rebel scum! Men, in the name of the King, I order you to kill that traitor!” At the man’s orders, all the other knights draw their swords in unison and point them at you. “… Oh bugger.” You mumble to yourself before turning around and running away, screaming like a little girl. You can hear the knights on their horses drawing closer to you, but they never get a chance to run you through, since out of the trees, the rebel’s arrows rain down on the knights and unfortunately one of them hits you right in the chest and pierces your heart. For a painted arrow it’s incredibly sharp.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look accusingly at each of the servants and consider what they each said in turn. “You say that only one of them can tell the truth. Now the only one that can be telling the truth while all the others are lying is the cook, and since the gardener claims he didn’t do it and we know he must be lying, that must make him the killer!” With that, the four servants all begin to disappear into the air. You have solved their riddle and now they can finally move on to the afterlife. “Thank you.” The ghost of the noblewoman tells you as she begins to fade away. “Finally I can rest in peace. I wish you luck on your next riddle. I hear it can only be solved by one with the sharpest of eyes.” Once the woman’s ghost has faded from sight you leave the dining hall and descend another spiral staircase until you find yourself in a long passageway that seems to wind in a circle around the tower. All across the walls hang the most incredible works of art. Landscapes and seascapes and portraits of lords and ladies dressed in shimmering silks, all painted with exquisite attention to detail. There is one painting that draws your eye though, a strange pattern made up of purple roses which would look very pretty on a pair of curtains but seems incredibly out of place hanging on the wall with the other paintings. “Ah, I zee you are admiring my masterpiece.” A voice speaks from behind you and you turn to see a ghost of a man standing behind you dressed in a brightly coloured tunic, holding a paint palette in one hand and a brush in another. “Oh ze hours I slaved avay on zis painting and ze mastery, it iz vasted on blind fools! Vhat of you I vonder? Can you zee past vhat is in front of your eyes? Tell me, vhat is it you zee in ze painting?” > You need a hint It might just look like a bunch of purple roses, but there’s a three dimensional image hidden inside the painting. The trick is not to look at the picture like it’s right in front of you, look at it as if you are looking at something far away in the distance. Keep adjusting the way you look at it until you can see a 3D shape very clearly in the painting. (Unfortunately this may be difficult if you have problems with your eyesight and will not work if you are blind in one eye.)<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You open the door with the wolf engraved on it and the game keeper nods with approval. “Good job kid. Did you put together the first letters of every sentence or was it just a lucky guess? Either way I suppose it’s time for me to move on. Good luck with the next riddle, but watch yourself. I hear there’s a killer on the loose in the tower.” You want to ask the game keeper more but by the time you turn around both the man and the hawk have already vanished. The doorway leads to a large dining hall with one great table, decorated with candles and long enough to host a royal banquet. The plates, cutlery and candle sticks are all covered in dust and all the seats are empty save for the last five at the far end, all of which are filled by ghosts. Two men sit on the left of the table and two women on the right. Judging by their clothing they are all servants of different standing within the tower, but at the head of the table sits a young woman about your own age, just barely into adulthood. Both her fine velvet dress and the refined way she sits show her to be a woman of noble birth. “Have you come to free me from my torment?” The noble woman asks as a ghostly tear runs down her cheek. “My father sent me here to become the Wizard Lord’s bride, but while I was a guest in his tower, the scoundrel had me poisoned by one of his own servants. I cannot be free until I know who my killer is. All I know is that it is one of the four sitting at the table, and that only one of them ever speaks the truth.” In unison the four servants all turn to you and begin to argue in their defence. “The maid is the murderer.” Says the butler. “The cook poisoned the princess.” Says the maid. “I didn’t kill the girl, I swear!” Says the gardener. “The maid is lying.” Says the cook. > You colonel Mustard in the Library with the Candlestick! The ghost of the noblewoman looks very confused. “I do not understand. I was not murdered with a candlestick, I was poisoned. Besides, I died here at this very table, not in a library, and I do not believe the Wizard Lord has a Colonel Mustard in his emplo… Look out!” The lady screams, but you do not have time to turn around before you feel the cold, steel knife as it is plunged into your back. Well, I hope you’re happy. Now you’re dead, and the ghost of the poor woman will be trapped in the tower forever because you just had to make a reference to a board game that hasn't even been invented yet! Was it worth it? Was it really?!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You open the door with the wolf engraved on it and the game keeper nods with approval. “Good job kid. Did you put together the first letters of every sentence or was it just a lucky guess? Either way I suppose it’s time for me to move on. Good luck with the next riddle, but watch yourself. I hear there’s a killer on the loose in the tower.” You want to ask the game keeper more but by the time you turn around both the man and the hawk have already vanished. The doorway leads to a large dining hall with one great table, decorated with candles and long enough to host a royal banquet. The plates, cutlery and candle sticks are all covered in dust and all the seats are empty save for the last five at the far end, all of which are filled by ghosts. Two men sit on the left of the table and two women on the right. Judging by their clothing they are all servants of different standing within the tower, but at the head of the table sits a young woman about your own age, just barely into adulthood. Both her fine velvet dress and the refined way she sits show her to be a woman of noble birth. “Have you come to free me from my torment?” The noble woman asks as a ghostly tear runs down her cheek. “My father sent me here to become the Wizard Lord’s bride, but while I was a guest in his tower, the scoundrel had me poisoned by one of his own servants. I cannot be free until I know who my killer is. All I know is that it is one of the four sitting at the table, and that only one of them ever speaks the truth.” In unison the four servants all turn to you and begin to argue in their defence. “The maid is the murderer.” Says the butler. “The cook poisoned the princess.” Says the maid. “I didn’t kill the girl, I swear!” Says the gardener. “The maid is lying.” Says the cook. > You need a hint This riddle is pretty straight forward. You know only one of them ever tells the truth, so that must mean the rest of them are lying. Luckily only one of the servants made a comment that can be true whilst all the other comments remain false.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The old woman seems to think about your answer for a moment. “Nothing.” She says to herself before a ghostly smile twists her lips. “Nothing, yes I think that sounds right. Very good child. Thank you for answering poor Old Nana’s riddle. Now I can finally get some rest. You go on through the door now.” And with that, the rocking chair stops rocking and the ghost of the woman and her cat fade away into nothingness. Opening the door leads you to a staircase. As you descend these stairs you can hear all sorts of strange noises. Scuffling, squeaking, flapping of wings, hooting and howling, you expect to find a collection of animals caged at the bottom of the stairs. Instead you find a circular room with ten doors all the way around, each with a picture of a different animal engraved on the door. The noises begin to quiet down and the ghost of a dark haired, rather scruffy looking man appears in the centre of the room with a hawk perched on his arm. “So, you made it past Nana did you? Poor old bat’s been trying to solve that riddle for damn near fifty years now. Well I suppose it’s my turn then. Glad to meet you kid. I’m the games keeper here abouts. Master told me we had new company and he sent me down here with a riddle for you, to help you choose which door to go through. Give it a good think before you open one, alright? Wings as black as a moonless night. Only ventures in the light. Long tail, sharp teeth, legs of eight. Find my name or meet your fate.” > You open the door engraved with a Penguin You open the door to see nothing but darkness before you and the sounds of several different creatures fill the air once again, only now they sound louder, and angrier. “Sorry kid.” The games keeper says to you as the sounds draw nearer. “Even I can’t stop them now. They’re just so hungry.” Suddenly you feel a sharp pain in your foot and you look down to see that a rat has come in through the door and bitten your toe. You manage to kick it away but more rats appear and you stumble backwards trying to keep them away from your feet. An owl flies at you out of the darkness and it’s talons scratch at you eyes. You try to shoo it away but see that your arms are covered in tiny black spiders which you frantically try to shake off. The spiders are the least of your worries though, since standing it the doorway is a great black bear which rises onto it’s hind legs and lets out the most terrifying roar. You are so distracted by the bear that you don’t even notice the wolf that is circling you until it sinks it’s teeth into your throat. As you lay dying on the ground, ripped apart by wild animals, the ghost of the games keeper steps over your body and shakes his head. "The Penguin door?" He asks himself with the most baffled expression on his face. "Why? Why would you choose the Penguin door?" I suppose he'll never know.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The old woman seems to think about your answer for a moment. “Nothing.” She says to herself before a ghostly smile twists her lips. “Nothing, yes I think that sounds right. Very good child. Thank you for answering poor Old Nana’s riddle. Now I can finally get some rest. You go on through the door now.” And with that, the rocking chair stops rocking and the ghost of the woman and her cat fade away into nothingness. Opening the door leads you to a staircase. As you descend these stairs you can hear all sorts of strange noises. Scuffling, squeaking, flapping of wings, hooting and howling, you expect to find a collection of animals caged at the bottom of the stairs. Instead you find a circular room with ten doors all the way around, each with a picture of a different animal engraved on the door. The noises begin to quiet down and the ghost of a dark haired, rather scruffy looking man appears in the centre of the room with a hawk perched on his arm. “So, you made it past Nana did you? Poor old bat’s been trying to solve that riddle for damn near fifty years now. Well I suppose it’s my turn then. Glad to meet you kid. I’m the games keeper here abouts. Master told me we had new company and he sent me down here with a riddle for you, to help you choose which door to go through. Give it a good think before you open one, alright? Wings as black as a moonless night. Only ventures in the light. Long tail, sharp teeth, legs of eight. Find my name or meet your fate.” > You need a hint This riddle might look strange, since different parts of it seem to be describing different animals. Look at the riddle carefully and if it doesn’t seem to make any sense, try looking at it another way. The answer’s in there some where.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press the engraved stone and a secret door in the stone wall gradually slides to one side and reveals a hidden passage way. Congratulations, you’ve escaped your cell! That wasn’t too difficult was it? As you follow the empty passage way, you seem to be circling the dungeon and walking deeper and deeper into pitch darkness. Eventually you see a light at the end of the passage and find yourself in a room dimly lit by torches that hang from the wall. The room is small with only a spinning wheel and an old rocking chair to decorate it, both of which are coated in cob webs. There is a door on the other side of the room. Having nowhere else to go, you head towards the door when suddenly you hear the creaking of the rocking chair behind you. For a brief moment you hold your breath and try to reassure yourself that it’s just the breeze rocking the chair, but there is no breeze in the room. Eventually you force yourself to turn around and see the ghostly figure of an old woman sitting in the chair. Before you can run or scream, the old lady speaks up in a gentle yet eerie voice. “No need to be afraid of me child.” She tells you as she slowly rocks in her chair, stroking a small, ghostly cat on her lap. “You’ve nothing to fear from poor old Nana. I’m just here, pondering the old riddle to myself. Are you good at riddles child? I do hope so. They’re the only way to get out of this tower you see, ever since the old master went mad and cursed the place. Oh and that reminds me, I’m supposed to ask you the riddle aren’t I? Now let’s see if I can remember. What does man love more than life, Fear more than death and mortal strife, What the poor have and the rich require, And what contented men desire, What the miser spends and the spendthrift saves, And all men carry to their graves?” > You don't answer. Scream at the scary ghost! You scream like a little girl. "Ahh! Help! A ghost!" You scream. The ghost does not look impressed. "Yes, yes I am a ghost." She replies. "Are you quite finished?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press the engraved stone and a secret door in the stone wall gradually slides to one side and reveals a hidden passage way. Congratulations, you’ve escaped your cell! That wasn’t too difficult was it? As you follow the empty passage way, you seem to be circling the dungeon and walking deeper and deeper into pitch darkness. Eventually you see a light at the end of the passage and find yourself in a room dimly lit by torches that hang from the wall. The room is small with only a spinning wheel and an old rocking chair to decorate it, both of which are coated in cob webs. There is a door on the other side of the room. Having nowhere else to go, you head towards the door when suddenly you hear the creaking of the rocking chair behind you. For a brief moment you hold your breath and try to reassure yourself that it’s just the breeze rocking the chair, but there is no breeze in the room. Eventually you force yourself to turn around and see the ghostly figure of an old woman sitting in the chair. Before you can run or scream, the old lady speaks up in a gentle yet eerie voice. “No need to be afraid of me child.” She tells you as she slowly rocks in her chair, stroking a small, ghostly cat on her lap. “You’ve nothing to fear from poor old Nana. I’m just here, pondering the old riddle to myself. Are you good at riddles child? I do hope so. They’re the only way to get out of this tower you see, ever since the old master went mad and cursed the place. Oh and that reminds me, I’m supposed to ask you the riddle aren’t I? Now let’s see if I can remember. What does man love more than life, Fear more than death and mortal strife, What the poor have and the rich require, And what contented men desire, What the miser spends and the spendthrift saves, And all men carry to their graves?” > You need a hint I can’t really help you with this one. You have a list of answers, choose the one you think is right… Or scream like a little girl. It’s up to you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken on the cold, stone floor with a shiver running through your body and a pounding earache from sleeping on the side of your head. You do not know how much longer you can survive in this place. No one has brought you any food or water for days. Either you've been abandoned to die or something's happened to the guards to keep them from feeding you. Either way you are well and truly buggered. With what little strength you have, you pick yourself up and look around your cell. There seems to be no way of escape. The window is barred and even if it wasn’t, your cell is at the very top of a huge, medieval tower, so climbing out would be suicide. The door is far too heavy to break down and you don’t have anything you could use to pick the lock. There is nothing in the room save for yourself, a dirty pile of straw in the corner and a bucket for… Well, let’s not discuss the bucket. Suddenly though, as your eyes scan the dungeon, you notice something you never saw before. One of the stones on the wall of your cell seems to have something etched into it. As you lean closer you can just about make out two words. “Press me.” > You need a hint Well you're not the sharpest knife in the spoon drawer. It's very simple, you can either press the stone or you can wait around in your cell until you die of starvation. Which would you prefer?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>These stories occur within a set time limit where the reader has to solve the mystery by asking the right questions to the right people and looking in the right places for clues (and recognizing the importance of some clues over others). The Normal setting for this TIME challenge is 100, if a reader wants an Easier game they can select this feature to be allowed a TIME of 125, for a Harder game a TIME of 75 is given (this isn't recommended for readers reading the story for the first time). So Reader, Choose your Difficulty. > You easy Difficulty (125 Time Points) The Dorset Evening Gazette - 1 July 2000 TRAGIC DEATH ON BLACKSEA ISLAND The residents of Poole were shocked to learn this morning of the apparent suicide of Blacksea Island resident Robert Powell, aged 15. Powell and his mother Olivia Powell, aged 40, were volunteers for the National Group and both lived and worked on the Island. Powell, who took the ferry to and from the mainland to attend and leave Poole Grammar School every morning and evening was described by one classmate as a “happy” and “intelligent” student. In a statement issued by the Dorset Police Force it was confirmed that “A teenager died during a fall from a clifftop on Blacksea Island sometime between the hours of 10pm and 6am last night. At this time no foul play is suspected as the part of the island on which the deceased and his mother were living, known locally as “The Wetlands”, is enclosed by a high spike-topped wall and barred gates, making entry by a third party extremely unlikely. This paper was able to speak with Barry Guest, owner and operator of the Blacksea Ferry. “I can’t believe it,” he told us in a statement. “Robert was a happy boy and just about the last person I would have expected to top himself. I reckon it was an accident, a fall from the cliffs though Robert would have known better than to go up there at night. I feel sorry for his poor mum, she’s been left all on her own now.” Robert Powell’s suicide is the third such to happen on the island within living memory: on 25 December 1920 island owner Colonel Augustus Foster shot himself in the Hall of Blacksea Castle and on 5 July 1960 Castle Housekeeper Gwen Green apparently drowned herself in a Lily Pond on the island following a devastating fire on 30 June that had claimed the lives of her husband, butler Jack Green, and the island’s owner, Lord Marcus Van Raalte. Blacksea Island has a history of death and madness and indeed the eccentricity of a number of the island’s owners, most notoriously “The Mad Doctor” William Benson and the much-reviled Lady Mary Bonham-Christie, who closed the island to the public during her ownership of the island from 1960 to 1980, has done much to bear these suspicions out. This latest suicide is just the most recent in a long line of tragic and unusual deaths to occur on this notorious island. > The Mystery You lay down the Dorsetshire Gazette for 1 July 2000 (by now, nearly a month old) and stare moodily over the Blacksea Ferry’s railing towards Blacksea Island, squatting like a bug on the gentle sea, its thickly-growing dark green trees clustering together like a wall which, together with the almost total lack of beach beneath the steep cliffs, makes the island and its secrets appear ominously impenetrable. With a sigh you flick open your notebook to a page you have titled SUSPECTS. SUSPECTS: The ten Resident Volunteers who were actually on the island on the night of 30 June 2000: Iris Grey (50), Castle Compound Volunteer. Barry Guest (40), Ferryman of the Blacksea Ferry. George Loader (80), Castle Compound Volunteer. Gerry Luff (30), Island Handyman. Father Patrick Ould (40), Island Priest. Bill Parsons (30), Island Farmer. Olivia Powell (40), Wetlands Volunteer. Robert Powell (15), Wetlands Volunteer and Murder Victim. Arthur Van Raalte (40), Castle Compound Chief Volunteer. Charles Whitburn (20), Island Gamekeeper. You stroke your finger over Robert’s name. To you it’s not just a name, it’s a friend, a hundred happy memories, an ear in times of trouble and a joker in times of play. He was your best friend in school and given time he might have become more than that. That will never happen now and you want to know why. You KNOW Rob would never have killed himself. You KNOW that. So now you need to find out if his death was accident or murder. You suspect the latter. Your name is Susan Knox and you are a fifteen-year-old amateur detective. You know that your time is limited: the first ferry arrives at the island at 9am and the last ferry leaves the island at 5pm and tomorrow, because of the tragedy, the National Group Volunteers on the island will be moved to another location and a new group will move onto the island: this is your last chance to find out what really happened to your friend Robert. You don’t believe either the accident or suicide theories which means it must be murder. There were only nine other people on the island on the night your friend died and as steep cliffs ring the island except in one place where the ferry lands (which is locked up at night) you are sure that his killer must be somewhere on the island. You are determined to find out who it is, how they murdered your friend and why. As the ferry bumps alongside the Island’s Quay you rise to your feet alongside the other tourists who visit the island daily. As you climb off the boat with the others you reflect that time is short and you have to search everywhere and talk to everyone to find the clues that you need to solve this mystery so that you can confront the staff of the island when they gather together to leave on the last boat. You owe it to the memory of your best friend to find the person who killed him. NOTE: YOU MIGHT FIND IT USEFUL TO PICK UP THE LIST OF SUSPECTS TO REFER TO IT IN THE FUTURE. TAKING NOTES OF YOUR OWN WOULD ALSO BE A GOOD IDEA.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> > You alien Abduction It was the start of summer and you really wanted to be doing what you had planned for many months: sleeping. Well, of course you weren't going to sleep ALL day, but you certainly were not planning on getting up a five in the morning just so you could go stand in line... and then stand in line again... and then again. Summer had arrived and while you had planned to spend the week sleeping and gaming, your parents had decided that instead you were going to spend a week with Aunt Mary. You really didn't have anything against Aunt Mary, but she was pretty plan and boring. Worse, she lived in a town with absolutely nothing to do. Last time you spent a week there, you spent most of the week sitting on the front porch watching the grass grow. Sure, you might catch up on some of your sleep in the first part of the week, but she didn't have a gaming system, so you knew you were going to be seriously bored. Then again, it's not like anyone asked you what you wanted to do. So you got up early and rode to the airport. After getting dropped off, you stood in the line to check in. The days of the skycap were over, you know, because of "terrorism." Instead you had to walk inside and stand in line for an automated kiosk. You managed to make it through the line only for the machine to tell you that you had to check in at the agent counter. You trudged over to that line and waited at least 30 minutes before you made it to the front of the line. You handed ID, she pressed about 500 keys, then took your luggage with a seriously fake smile. This was really going to be a long day. Thinking about Aunt Mary's tiny house, you headed over to the security line. Of course there were about 1,000 people in that line, most of them confused when the blue-uniformed Wal-Mart greeters told them they had to take their shoes off. Or leave them on. For some reason, some people had to take shoes off and some did not. The confused ensured the line would continue to move very slow. That and the "special" people who managed to cut into the front of the line after paying some bribes or some crap. You were just glad that when you finally got to the front of the line and through the scanners that you didn't get felt up by the goofy guards. Next you had to wait for your plane to start boarding and then watch as all the people who were not called to board ran to get in line first. You had a ticket with an assigned seat, so you just waited until your row was called and then went to stand in line yet one more time. As you walked down the aisle of the plane, you counted the seats and knew before you finished counting that the seat next to the really fat guy that was having trouble breathing was your seat. Hooray for coach seats! At least you had the aisle seat so you wouldn't be squashed into the wall of the plane. You took your seat, fastened the stupid seat belt, and promptly closed your eyes, trying to ignore everyone and everything around you. At some point in time, you woke up, wide awake. You're not really sure why you woke up. The plane was filled with the sound of airplane noises. You looked around and realized that there was some sort of odd greenish light coming in through the windows of the plane. A few people started talking about just that as more noticed it. You heard a popping sound and looked around for the source. Everything looked normal, but then you heard someone towards the front of the plane yell. You stood up, like most of the plane, and looked towards the front. Suddenly there was another popping noise, and half the people in front of you simply disappeared! They were there one moment and not the next. More people started to yell and run into the aisle. There was another pop, and everyone in front of you disappeared. You looked around towards the rear of the plane, and saw others staring at you, eyes wide open. Then there was another popping sound and suddenly blackness... > You continue... When you start to wake up, you feel cold. Actually, mostly just your rear end feels cold. And quite uncomfortable for some reason. You slowly open your eyes and blink in the bright white light. You realize that you're lying down on your back and your pants are down around your ankles. You are lying on a cold metal table. Well that explains why your rear end is cold, but why does it feel like... You sit up and look around, pulling your pants up. You are in a small, strange, round metal room. The floor is flat, but the silver metal walls curve up and around, creating almost a bubble. You are sitting on a table in the middle of the room and there is a large machine of some sort sitting right next to you. It has long probes on it that are pointed in your direction. Fortunately, none of them are moving at the moment, but your butt clenches as you stand up from the table. There is an opening in the wall to the east that leads into a hallway, but you don't see any other ways out of this room. The floor and walls appear solid, but they also appear to be glowing a little, enough to provide light so that you can see all around you. > You head out of the room to the east. You stand at the west end of a long hallway. The walls are silver and curve up and around the ceiling so much that you feel like you are walking in a long, strange tube. The floor is flat and level, but there are small dips at the edge, looking almost like gutters that you would find on the roof of a house, but not quite as deep. To the west is the room where you first awoke with the strange table and probes that make you feel strangely uncomfortable. The hallway continues to the east, slowly bending out of sight to the right. To the south is a rounded doorway that leads into a well-lit room that looks like it might have some other metal tables in it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You… think too much. It’s always been your issue. You’ve had twelve miserable years in the world, an existence wracked with headaches, horrible, coma-like states known as your “deep dreams”, and horrible, scratching and never-ceasing voices that knaw at your sanity. You’ve been left frail, pale and very skinny from your condition as you spend most of your life sleeping, wrapped up and coddled in a tent of animal hides. If there was any justice, you would’ve been left on a hill to die when your tribe realized how weak you were, but through your condition you’ve made yourself useful. You have premonitions, messages that you can make out from the depth of your dreams that make you the most valuable member of the tribe. Whether it be seeing the green flames of anger running through the eastern fringes of the forests that signal an upcoming Greenkskin attack, the sweet smells drifting from the lake that indicate a herd of Braxen or a flock of buzzards that can easily be haunted down by some of your hunters. That’s not even to mention some of your other abilities. You can unnerve, even frighten strong warriors with a glance, cause mass confusion with a few words, easily convince some of the dumber members of the tribe to do your bidding, and with a lot of effort you’re able to “drag” items towards you without touching them. Still, due to the fact you can barely walk, it’s hardly a fair trade off. “Karth!” a voice cries. You look up, pulling your skinny body slightly above the blankets that are wrapped around you to look at Duggin as he walks inside, carrying a spear, a bow and sheath, wearing the hide of one of the many beasts of the jungle. “What thoughts have you for us today?” Duggin asks. You love your tribe. Your tribe is a group of strong, brave and loyal men who only want the best for each other. Better men don’t exist. Unfortunately, they’re idiots. Half your job here is relaying the many dreams, omens and messages you have in your sleep. The other half is keeping them from killing themselves. There are men here who have lived twenty, thirty, forty, even fifty years, but in your twelve years on this world you’ve learned infinitely more. You introduced them to the concept of stealing the hides from slain beasts and wearing it as your own, the concept of hiding like a predator with camouflage and strength, and new battlefield strategies beyond “attack!”. “None. It was a peaceful night,” you say. “We’re having a hunt with the Azajaja tribe. We’re heading to meet up with them soon.” You nod, raising your bony arms as Duggin lifts you up. You wrap your frail body around him as he walks outside. A large boar-like creature, a puk, sits there with a double-saddle tied to it. Duggin sits in the front saddle and places you in the back one, wrapping blankets tightly around you. You need the blankets for multiple reasons: to keep warm, to give yourself some sort of cushion to protect your fragile body, and most importantly it stops from having to feel the rough puk hair. Many textures, just like puk hair, just sends you into a tantrum for some strange reason. You can't rationalize it, but it still effects you. The puk begins striding forward in a half-gallop, as the other hunters of your tribe hop astride the puk, heading out toward the nearby lake. Suddenly, you watch as dozens of lizard-like creatures burst out of the trees, scuttling away from the jungles. “Ah! Look what we have here, boys! Fresh prey, sent to us by the great God-Emperor!” Duggin yells, raising his bow. You watch as the lizards charge out with reckless abandon, straight into your arrow fire. You pull yourself up the saddle into more of a sitting position, thinking. These are simple beasts, but even beasts have a level of cunning that stops them from acting as such. They aren’t this stupid, are they? > You warn your allies These beasts would never simply charge into the path of a fierce predator… unless a fiercer predator was chasing them. “Wait! Wait! Attack!” you shout. “What?” Duggin asks, annoyed as your outburst causes him to miss a shot. “There’s something chasing the beasts!” Duggin raises an eyebrow, before barking out an order. The hunters quickly rearrange formation, just as a horde of Greenskins charge out of the trees with a fierce roar. A burst of spears and arrows flies out from your allies, but the orks take them in their stride. Arrows imbed themselves into their chest and arms, but they don’t go down. Spears jab forward, metal points finding the softest parts of the thick green skin, sinking deep with a spurt of blood. There’s about two dozen, as many as you, but they can take more punishment. You’re outnumbered, but thanks to your forethought and your tiny amount of preparation, you have a chance. You still find yourself useless in the upcoming battle, but it lasts only a few minutes. You watch as blood is shed, limbs are hacked off and puk are struck down. You use what little might you have to cling onto the puk, only barely stopping yourself from falling off. You close your eyes, and wait. Eventually, Duggin calls you. “Karth! It’s over!” he says. You open your eyes, and survey the carnage. Bodies litter the earth, green and tan, lean and muscled, big and small. You’ve lost half your hunters in a single attack, but the rest of you have survived with few wounds. When orks strikes land, they kill, not wound. “Men, we need to check on the Azajaja boys!” Duggin yells. He rides forward, towards the Azajaja camp, deep in the trees. You cling to the puk, looking through the trees as you approach their camp. It’s in ruins. Tents have been torn apart, set alight and entirely wiped out. Bodies cover the ground, and you see the last few remnants of the Azajaja struggling to fight off the approaching Orks. Most are naked, still refusing to pick up your tactic of not going into battle with their dicks flapping in the breeze or their breasts hanging, as well as being one of the more idiotic tribes not to take on clothing at all, unlike yours. “Idiots,” you mutter to yourself. Duggin raises his spear and charges forward, the puk bursting forward as you struggle to hold on. Why couldn’t the idiot have left you at home?! Your allies attack with rage and speed, smashing into the orks from behind. There’s a short, brutal fight, before you see an ork charging towards you, swinging his axe. “Duggin!” you yell, pointing at the ork. Duggin turns, but he’s not fast enough. The ork’s weapon smashes into your puk, cutting through flesh and beheading him in a single blow. You’re sent flying as the puk collapses suddenly, smashing into the cold earth. You let out a pained yell, before opening your hazy eyes, only to find yourself in the centre of the remaining Azajaja survivors, which only consist of half a dozen warriors, a number that’s constantly dropping as the Orks charge once more, as well as two dozen civilians hastily armed with weapons. Suddenly, a small, goblin-like creature, a Gretchen, scampers through the warriors’ line, carrying a small knife fashioned from a large stone, who lets out a chuckle as he spots you and lets out a terrifying grin. You need to do something, fast. > You crawl away You scamper backward, before the creature charges toward you with its blade. You grab the earth, your frail strength still managing to pull your light body away, but the Gretchen it eager. It leaps onto you with a yell, jamming its blade into your throat. You let out a yell, as blood stains the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>These beasts would never simply charge into the path of a fierce predator… unless a fiercer predator was chasing them. “Wait! Wait! Attack!” you shout. “What?” Duggin asks, annoyed as your outburst causes him to miss a shot. “There’s something chasing the beasts!” Duggin raises an eyebrow, before barking out an order. The hunters quickly rearrange formation, just as a horde of Greenskins charge out of the trees with a fierce roar. A burst of spears and arrows flies out from your allies, but the orks take them in their stride. Arrows imbed themselves into their chest and arms, but they don’t go down. Spears jab forward, metal points finding the softest parts of the thick green skin, sinking deep with a spurt of blood. There’s about two dozen, as many as you, but they can take more punishment. You’re outnumbered, but thanks to your forethought and your tiny amount of preparation, you have a chance. You still find yourself useless in the upcoming battle, but it lasts only a few minutes. You watch as blood is shed, limbs are hacked off and puk are struck down. You use what little might you have to cling onto the puk, only barely stopping yourself from falling off. You close your eyes, and wait. Eventually, Duggin calls you. “Karth! It’s over!” he says. You open your eyes, and survey the carnage. Bodies litter the earth, green and tan, lean and muscled, big and small. You’ve lost half your hunters in a single attack, but the rest of you have survived with few wounds. When orks strikes land, they kill, not wound. “Men, we need to check on the Azajaja boys!” Duggin yells. He rides forward, towards the Azajaja camp, deep in the trees. You cling to the puk, looking through the trees as you approach their camp. It’s in ruins. Tents have been torn apart, set alight and entirely wiped out. Bodies cover the ground, and you see the last few remnants of the Azajaja struggling to fight off the approaching Orks. Most are naked, still refusing to pick up your tactic of not going into battle with their dicks flapping in the breeze or their breasts hanging, as well as being one of the more idiotic tribes not to take on clothing at all, unlike yours. “Idiots,” you mutter to yourself. Duggin raises his spear and charges forward, the puk bursting forward as you struggle to hold on. Why couldn’t the idiot have left you at home?! Your allies attack with rage and speed, smashing into the orks from behind. There’s a short, brutal fight, before you see an ork charging towards you, swinging his axe. “Duggin!” you yell, pointing at the ork. Duggin turns, but he’s not fast enough. The ork’s weapon smashes into your puk, cutting through flesh and beheading him in a single blow. You’re sent flying as the puk collapses suddenly, smashing into the cold earth. You let out a pained yell, before opening your hazy eyes, only to find yourself in the centre of the remaining Azajaja survivors, which only consist of half a dozen warriors, a number that’s constantly dropping as the Orks charge once more, as well as two dozen civilians hastily armed with weapons. Suddenly, a small, goblin-like creature, a Gretchen, scampers through the warriors’ line, carrying a small knife fashioned from a large stone, who lets out a chuckle as he spots you and lets out a terrifying grin. You need to do something, fast. > You attack it You grab a rock, swinging it forward and smashing it into the side of the Gretchen’s face. It smacks into the ground, and you climb atop it and smack it into the creature’s skull again and again. The Gretchen’s head is crushed, and you let out a relieved sigh. The relief is short-lived, though, as the orks continue to charge forward, swinging hastily-made weapons. The number of Azajaja survivors grows much smaller, as your tribesmen attempt to rescue both them and you whilst surviving the onslaught of Greenskin, but there’s just too many. Hands grab your shoulders and pull you up, just out of the path of an oncoming spear. You turn, to see the face of a young girl, barely older than you, holding a spear with a terrified look on her face. You blush as you realize she’s naked, before chiding yourself for having such an immature thought while people are charging to kill you. You hear a roar, and turn back to see an ork charging forward. He sees you, raising his axe. > You crawl away You scamper backward, before the creature charges toward you with its blade. You grab the earth, your frail strength still managing to pull your light body away, but the ork swings, the blade sinking into your shoulder, cutting through bone and flesh with ease. You let out a yell, as blood stains the ground.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab a rock, swinging it forward and smashing it into the side of the Gretchen’s face. It smacks into the ground, and you climb atop it and smack it into the creature’s skull again and again. The Gretchen’s head is crushed, and you let out a relieved sigh. The relief is short-lived, though, as the orks continue to charge forward, swinging hastily-made weapons. The number of Azajaja survivors grows much smaller, as your tribesmen attempt to rescue both them and you whilst surviving the onslaught of Greenskin, but there’s just too many. Hands grab your shoulders and pull you up, just out of the path of an oncoming spear. You turn, to see the face of a young girl, barely older than you, holding a spear with a terrified look on her face. You blush as you realize she’s naked, before chiding yourself for having such an immature thought while people are charging to kill you. You hear a roar, and turn back to see an ork charging forward. He sees you, raising his axe. > You attack You grab a rock, swinging it forward, but the ork’s so big you can only reach its thigh, and the rock harmlessly bounces off the ork. The ork swings, the blade sinking into your shoulder, cutting through bone and flesh with ease. You let out a yell, as blood stains the ground. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab a rock, swinging it forward and smashing it into the side of the Gretchen’s face. It smacks into the ground, and you climb atop it and smack it into the creature’s skull again and again. The Gretchen’s head is crushed, and you let out a relieved sigh. The relief is short-lived, though, as the orks continue to charge forward, swinging hastily-made weapons. The number of Azajaja survivors grows much smaller, as your tribesmen attempt to rescue both them and you whilst surviving the onslaught of Greenskin, but there’s just too many. Hands grab your shoulders and pull you up, just out of the path of an oncoming spear. You turn, to see the face of a young girl, barely older than you, holding a spear with a terrified look on her face. You blush as you realize she’s naked, before chiding yourself for having such an immature thought while people are charging to kill you. You hear a roar, and turn back to see an ork charging forward. He sees you, raising his axe. > You scream You can barely walk. You’re not going to crawl away from an ork, let alone kill it. The orks have struck down everyone around you. Only you and the girl are left, with your tribesmen on the other side of a wall of green muscle, struggling to survive. You do pretty much the only thing you can do. You let out a terrified, ear-piercing scream. In one outburst of air, you release all your pent-up terror and fear. The ork lets out a pained howl, clutching its ears. It continues screaming, collapsing to its knees, before its head explodes in a spray of crimson mist. You watch as dozens of orks collapse to the ground, blood streaming from their eyes, ears, nose and mouth. You feel a scratching behind your eyes, in the centre of your skull, as if invisible hands are trying to pull you apart. You let out a moan, and collapse backwards. > You enter oblivion You have horrible nightmares of ever-changing balls of tentacles and eyes, horrible creatures of claws, breasts, hooves and long tongues, large, boil-covered, plague-ridden abominations and horned red beasts wielding flaming swords. Finally, you awaken in a cold sweat, coddled in your old, musky blankets. You look around, your eyes adjusting to the light of dusk. You notice the girl from earlier sitting in the corner, scaled hides and furs wrapped around her with her head resting on the handle of the sword she’s clutching. She notices your wandering eyes and begins staring at you with her bright, green eyes. She's covered in dirt, with her brown hair hacked as short as yours, making her look like a boy. “You’re awake,” she says. “Yes,” you reply, staring back at her, wondering why she’s keeping herself from blinking. “You sleep a long time.” “I do.” You sit there staring at each for quite some time, before the tent flap opens as Duggin walks inside. You notice several fresh scars across his chest, and a long one across his face. “Karth! You’re awake!” he says with surprise. “How long was I dreaming?” you ask. “Two weeks. We thought… after what happened… Well, we considered feeding you to the puk,” Duggin chuckles. “Good to see you’re alive. What visions have you had?” You reflect briefly on your dreams. “There’s heavy storms coming within a weak, heavy amounts prey south towards the coast of the lake… and no sign of Greenskin activity,” you say. “Good to know, little one. I’ll pass the message on.” Duggin turns his attention to the girl, who sits there. “Have you met the Azajaja, Karth?” he asks. “She hasn’t said a word the entire time she was here. She just sat there. It took a fierce bit of effort to get her to eat. I’m pretty sure she’s just been shitting in the corner.” Duggin looks to the girl, seemingly expecting her to say something, but she says nothing, just stares at you. “I’ll… grab you some food and drink. For both of you,” Duggin says, walking out of the tent, leaving you and the girl alone. “I’m Karth,” you reply, offering your hand to shake. She just sits there in response, staring at you. It’s getting unnerving. After a few minutes, Duggin returns, carrying two wooden bowls of cooked meats as well as two more of wine. He leaves them on the floor in front of you. “Make sure she eats. I’ll give you some time, but then we need to discuss how you wiped out two dozens orks with… whatever powers you’ve been blessed with,” he says, before leaving. You grab the two bowls of meat, sliding one across the floor to her. You begin eating, as she does the same. She grabs the meat and stuffs it into her mouth, all without breaking eye contact or letting go of her sword. She eats the meat with her mouth open, making loud chewing noises. You wince at the noise, the churning, slicing and crushing being another thing your mind is repulsed by. You blink, unnerved by the staring, but begin to eat, the delicious taste of flesh filling your mouth. “You snore loudly,” she says after several minutes. “Yeah, I’ve been told,” you reply. "What do you do?" she asks. “What do you mean?” “What do you do all day? You don’t seem like you can walk around much, let alone do chores or work.” “I sit here and sleep a lot. Sometimes I make plans when needed.” “Why are you so pale?” she asks quizzically. “I spend most of my time in a tent, obviously,” you reply. “Do you want to go outside?” she asks. “Everyone’s too busy to carry me around.” The girl considers this. “Do you want to go on my back so I can take you outside?” > Yes “Yes, if you don’t mind,” you say. She stands, scoffing the remaining bits of meat down her throat before gulping down the wine. She walks forward, turning and bending over to allow you to wrap your arms around her shoulders and then lift yourself up enough to wrap your legs around her thighs. She stands with a grunt, grabbing her sword before walking forward and out of the tent. You look up at the quickly falling sun, basking your face in its warmth. The rest of the tribe gives you a quick glance, surprised to see you outside, but go back to work. The girl continues to carry you around, trotting along the tents towards the trees. “So… do I get to know your name?” you ask. “It’s Fay,” she replies. “I’m Karth.” “What do you dream of? You know, when you sleep?” “Bad things, mostly. Monsters. Sometimes, I get messages. I see beasts attacking, and I know when the orks will strike. I…” “Did you know the orks were going to attack my village?” Fay asks, sadness filling her voice. “I… no. I don’t get messages every time.” “Oh. OK.” You arrive at the trees, and you outstretch your arm, running it across the bark of one of the trees. You spot the sun finally descending under the horizon, as the darkness stretches over the sky. Two duller bright lights take its place, but they’re far too weak to give even an ounce of its brightness. “We should go back,” you say. “Why?” Fay asks. “Monsters dwell here at night.” She pats her sword gently. “I have a blade. I can easily kill the monsters.” “Monsters are scary.” “I can be scary too.” > You pressure her to go back “Come on, let’s go back, please,” she says. “Fine,” she says with a sigh, turning and heading back to the camp. She goes back inside the camp, putting you back on your blankets. “Can I sleep in here?” she asks. “Uh… OK,” you reply, curling up in your blankets. “I’ll see you in the morning,” she says. “Goodnight.” “Goodnight.” With that, you curl up in your blankets and let sleep take you once more. > Three Years Later... Over the next three years, things change, both for you and the world at large. Fay becomes a constant companion, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the other children of the tribe would be happy to play with her and devoting all her time to you. You’re not sure why, but you’re grateful for it. Puberty changes both of you. Fay grows significantly taller, faster and stronger, growing from a small girl to a large and powerful warrior. She stands as tall and proud as the boys of the village, and is more than happy to face them off in a wrestling match, winning all of them. She seems to prefer spending her time hunting with the boys or more often with you than learning the common girl's chores of cooking, sewing and cleaning. You'd imagine soon enough she'll have to find a husband among the hunters. Thankfully, growth does not leave you behind, although it doesn’t effect you nearly as much. You grow strong enough to be able to stand and stroll around the camp, even taking small trips, although even a light jog for a minute or two is enough to topple you over with exhaustion. Compared to Fay, you're a twig whilst her muscled form is that of an thick tree trunk. Puberty also has a significant change on your abilities. You sleep less, although your dreams are harsher, and there’s more… anger behind them. The monsters seem aware of you know, there voices constantly breaking into reality and continuing to scream and plead with you. You simply refuse to listen, and with training, you can make them become something of a white noise to your day to day activity. Your powers also increase. With the flick of your fingers, you can start a small fire. With a word, you can leave anything, man or beast, confused and befuddled. You can pick things up and throw them with a strength unfound to you, beating out many of the warriors in throwing contests without even moving. The world as a whole changes as well. The amount of Greenskin attacks intensifies, and in response the tribes band together, forming a much larger community to stand against the tide. Your dreams are muddled, but you feel something is coming. The sky, which to the plain eye is beautiful, blue and unchanging, seems about to be torn open in your dreams. Something bad is coming. You sit in the grass, a tan finally having replaced your pale form, next to Fay as you watch buzzards flying overhead, eating a bowl of Braxen meat. “It’s a nice day,” Fay says. “It is,” you say, your dreams from the previous nights still filling you with a feeling of dread. “You look nervous.” “Do I?” you ask, feigning confusion. “As much as you like to think so, I’m not stupid. I can tell something’s up.” > You tell her the truth “I’ve been having a lot of nightmares. I think… I think bad things are coming.” “Really?” Fay asks, getting worried. “Like what?” “I don’t know,” you admit. “But it’s bad.” “Have you told Duggin?” “He just increased the amount of training warriors are doing. He asked what else he could do, and I didn’t have any better suggestions.” “You worry too much. You’re not even eating. Your bowl’s full. Speaking of which…” She plucks the bowl from your hands. “I’m still hungry!” Fay laughs as she gracefully hops out of reach. “Oh, no! Whatever shall I do? I’ve been left helpless! What will poor Karth do?” you say sarcastically. With the wave of your hand, Fay’s feet go from under her and the bowl flies into your hands. You grab a piece of meat and throw it into your mouth with a smile. “You’re just a bully,” Fay says, fake pouting. “Thank the God-Emperor you were cursed to be a cripple.” “Hey! I’m not a cripple! I’m just super weak. If we find a tribe of women who aren’t ugly bags with stringy hair, odd scars sand gross teeth, I’ll get super buff. But, we haven’t,” you reply. Fay looks down, actually looking hurt by your joking comment. Shit. “Uh… don’t be so insulted, Fay,” you say, gently knocking her to the ground again with the flick of your wrist. “You’re less ugly when you smile. You need to have thicker skin.” She smiles as she stands back up. “Me? I need thicker skin? This is coming from the guy who’s always like “I’m scared because I dreamed something bad”!” “Hey, I’m never wrong. I have a lot of power,” you say, emphasizing your point with another flick of your wrist. “Stop that!” she complains, hitting the ground. “I don’t even know why I hang out with you.” “Because of my dashing good looks?” “Shut up! I’m going down to the lake for a swim!” she says, jumping up and jogging off towards the lake. You quickly stand up, walking after her. “Wait up! You know I can’t go that fast!” Fay rolls her eyes, stopping and grabbing your hand. “Come on!” she says. Shit. You hate swimming. It’s mostly just you sitting in the shallow, exhausted from the effort of getting in. Still, you go where she does, and she’s the same. You walk as quickly as you can towards the lake. > Four Hours Later... You lie on the grassy edge of the lake, your feet dipping gently in the water, watching as Fay gathers berries, nuts, fruit and whatever other edibles she has access to. You watch her approaching you, carrying a handful of food. You eagerly extend a hand as she hands some to you, and you stuff your cheeks with them, eagerly eating. “How can someone be so hungry yet be so thin?” “I suppose I’m just an abomination,” you smile, watching as the water turns gold as the sun shines across it, finally beginning to disappear as night takes hold. “It was a nice day,” you say. “But we should head back.” “You’re such a maybe. You’d think a magic man who can kill dozens of orks with one petrified scream would be less of a coward.” You flick your wrist and she falls over with a yelp. “Stop doing that!” “No,” you reply with a smile. You watch as the bright two moons appear, just as dozens of stars fill the sky. “Beautiful night,” Fay remarks. “Yeah. The sky’s looking gorgeous,” you reply. “You know..." Fay starts. There’s a howling scream, and the sky is torn apart. You watch as the very fabric of reality is sliced through, tearing a hole in the sky. There’s a bright, purple hole in the sky itself. “What the fuck is…?” Fay asks, drawing her sword as if with some hope of stopping the horror that is to come. A headache pulses through you as you try to stand, collapsing back to the floor. In the distance, a massive, black shape leaves the hole, heading straight towards the planet. You stand again, but the shrieking continues, preventing you from thinking, let alone running. “Karth!” Fay yells, wrapping her hands around you and lifts you up. > You tell her to go back to camp and warn them “Go… go back to camp without me. Warn them!” “I’m not leaving you!” “Fay, have you fucking seen me? It’s a hell of a lot less dangerous here, I’ll be fine. Go!” Fay nods, turning and sprinting off towards the camp. You sit there, clutching your head. After about a minute, your head clears enough to realize that there’s no way in hell the camp wouldn’t notice the massive, sky-tearing hole in reality itself, so sending Fay back to warn them is completely useless. Suddenly, you’re hit by another wave of anguish as pain courses through you. Then, the voices return. This time, though, one pierces through, louder than ever before, almost as if someone is whispering directly in your ear. “Karth… Karth… I can help you… I have so much power… I have so much strength… all of it, I’m happy to offer you…” You feel the claws of a million voices scratching at your mind. You begin to scratch at your eardrums, hoping, begging the voices to stop. You shudder, and thankfully, oblivion takes you and you lapse into unconsciousness. > You awaken You awaken, lying on the grass outside of your camp. Your eyes blink twice, as you begin to look around. Several large, metal buildings sit there in the fields next to the tents. Men holding large spears march around the camp, directing throngs of tribespeople towards the buildings. These spears seem to be capable of firing arrows made of concentrated sunlight. Interesting. You notice several giants, seemingly made of metal, standing on the edge of the camp, watching the work. Suddenly, you find yourself yanked into the air by invisible hands, and float into the air, suspended two four feet above the ground. You watch as a trio of men approach you, smiling. The one on the left is a giant, seemingly made entirely of metal. He stands at around eight feet, with dozens spikes protruding from his metal skin. His body’s black, with a purple head. In the middle, a tall, pale man wearing a long, black leather overcoat, a spiked collar strapped around his neck. The third seems to be a hybrid between a girl and a metal monster, her eyes replaced by the three red, unblinking eyes of a monster, a dozen long, metal arms extending from the nape of her back, three arms ending in claws and one a drill, with her legs replaced by four spider-like legs. Where her human arms would be extends a grasping, whirring claw and a metal barrel, the inside of which glows faintly blue. The middle one walks forward with a smile. “Hello there, young Karth. Pleasure to see you,” he smiles jovially. “We don’t have time for pleasantries, psyker,” the metal man says. “Load him onto the ship! "Give him time to adjust! He's only just waking up," the man, the psyker, says. One of the long, metal arms attached to the monster-man's back goes towards you, whirring its drill. It cuts along your arm, drawing a long, thin cut as you yelp in pain. "This one is weak... how pitiful," the monster-man says. "It's pain tolerance is low, but I can work with it." "I want to use his mind, not his flesh," the psyker says. "My name is Kyros. The burly armored man to my right is Chapter Master Taj Suenage, and the robotic companion to my left is the Heretek known as the Craftsman of Vorn, the Butcher of Karis IV and the Father to the Prometheans. Her name is Magos Cern. We are the Forces of Chaos." The monster-man extends one of her metal tentacle arms once more, tracing the outline of your cheek bones. "Bah! Time wastes! Either give me the surge of the warp overtaking me, or give me the surge of battle, Kyros!" Taj roars, smacking a metal hand against his chest. "As you wish, Taj," the Psyker says. The Psyker claps his hands, and his various forces begin forcing the last of the tribespeople inside the building, as those who litter the floor, those who presumably tried to resist, are carried there. "Are they dead?" "Some, presumably. I gave the order to keep as many alive as possible," Kyros says. You see Fay's battered and bruised body being tossed over a metal giant's shoulder as she's carried off towards the building. "No! Give her back!" you shout. "She fought well. When my men entered this pathetic village, she was trying to warn them. She even tried to fight them off. Killed one of the dumber ones who tried to call her bluff. Commendable." You furrow your brow, and the Psyker grins as Taj's head is knocked slightly back, before presuming position. Despite how little you've harmed him, the metal giant seems enraged. "You scum-sucking sociopathic cunt!" Taj roars, charging forward. Taj is flipped into the air, being suspended just out of reach of you. His metal fists swing at you, but he's kept out of grasp. "Tut tut. Stay your anger, my dear Taj. Karth, I'll make you a deal. Do as I say, and the girl will be unharmed. Deal? > You agree "OK. Just don't hurt her," you say. You drop, hitting the floor quite gently. Kyros grins and gives you a nod. "Good boy. I'll make sure special care is taken of the girl."k "Ha! I'll give your bitch whore "special care"!" Taj roars, still grabbing at you. Kyros rolls her eyes, flipping Taj into the dust. "Quiet now, marine," he says. "I have a gift to sate your bloodlust. Bring out the chieftain!" You watch as Duggin is dragged form his tent, growling and yelling. A large cut goes down his chest, blood having soaked his armor, turning it a deep crimson that shines in the sun. "Come on, finish me!" he roars. "I don't want to see my men die, Karth. I gave your chieftain the option to surrender, give me his finest warriors... and you, of course, and I'd spare his civilians. He refused, killed some of my men, had his warriors killed and now I have to take you all. Now, he will die. This is what happens when people mess with my plans, Karth." Taj drops to the ground, turning to stare at Duggin with a monstrous laugh. "Fortunately, Karth, I won't make you watch. You have agreed, haven't you?" Kyros says with a wink. You're released to the ground, and Kyros and Magos Cern walk alongside you towards the metal buildings. You walk inside, and the doors shut. A bright red light, like a very powerful candle, appears out of nothingness, brightening the room. The tribespeople are packed in here, surrounded by a tight bundle of guards with spears raised. "What happens here? There's no space to do anything," you say. "It's a landing craft, little one. Now, we soar to the stars," Kyros says. You see several feet away from you is Fay's crumpled form and feel a twinge of pain. You sit down in the metal building as it begins to shake and shudder as if moving, terrified of the world around you. > Four Hours Later... The trip is long. The landing craft constantly shakes and shudders, and quickly fills with the smell of puke as the stomachs of many of the men and women around you as they fail to handle the constant shaking. You sit there, unmoving, staring up at the guards. Finally, the ship shudders to a stop. "Good! We're here!" Kyros says. "Welcome to the Roar of the Vortex! Please file out and follow the guards towards your cells." "What are you going to do with us?" someone asks. "I'm going to make you matter in a galaxy that stands for no one," Kyros says proudly. The people begin being shuffled off the landing raft, and you find yourself in a massive metal room. You look out a massive opening, filled with similar craft. You look around, before a metal hand grabs your shoulder. "Stay," Taj growls. "You're not to be mixed in with these common curs." "What's going to happen to them?" you ask. "Some will live. Most will die. All will suffer," Taj says. "What... what are you?" "A space marine, boy," Taj says. He grabs his head, twisting it. His metal head is yanked off, revealing a scarred human head underneath. "You're a human." "Practically. Did you think I was metal through and through?" Taj asks. "Yes." "It's armor, boy," Taj says. "I don't have time to explain shit to you." Kyros marches out, raising you into the air. "Come on, boy. Let's go!" Kyros says eagerly, walking along the ship. You float after him, being dragged through the air, unable to resist. After a few minutes, you fall to your knees in front of a metal door. "I've asked what's going to happen to us. You still haven't given me an answer," you say. "You've found yourself in a war, little one. Your planet is worth jack shit. Everything you know doesn't matter. This war encompasses the galaxy.Systems burn, billions die, the fate of trillions is fought for." "War? Whose fighting?" you ask. "Everyone. The world has monsters so powerful that they'd wipe out every warrior in all your tribes in an instant. There's the Tyranids, a horrible bug hive-mind with nothing but a need to eat. There's the Necrons, an ancient of soulless machines that have only just began to awaken. There's the Orks, a warring species of monsters, the Eldar, an enigmatic species just as likely to help as hinder you, Then, you have the worst villains. The Imperium of Man. They're freedom-crushing, innovation-stopping, potential-destroying fascists who enslave trillions and worship a corpse. We stand against them. We serve the Dark Gods. Khorne the Warrior God, Tzeentch the Sorcery God, Slaaneesh the Pleasure God and Nurgle the Plague God. We fight to free ourselves from tyranny, to make sure every man is free. We offer gifts of strength, knowledge, joy and immortality, yet the Imperium spurns us. So we rebelled. We are the Forces of Chaos, who fight back against tyranny! Praise Chaos in all it's glory!" "I'm still waiting for an answer," you say. "We're going to turn you into super-soldiers. Magos Cern has long worked on the process. We're going to make you greater than Space Marines. You hold the most potential. Cern can play with their flesh and Taj can train them, but I offer the greatest gift: Ultimate power. You're gifted, Karth. I want to use that gift to make you one of the most powerful beings known to man." You stare at him nervously. You're not an idiot. People don't just create powerful soldiers without having a chain around them. You watch as Kyros takes a steel, studded collar and walks towards you. He wraps it around your throat, clicking it into place. "Is that comfortable?" Kyros asks. "I suppose," you see, scratching at the collar. "At any moment, I can shut down your powers and strangle the very air out of your throat. So play nice." Kyros picks you up again with a flick of the wrist and you float upwards. Kyros carries you through the air, stopping at another door. It opens with being touched, and Kyros drops you inside it. "This is your cell. I've made it... comfortable. In return, you best be... compliant I need to... check on some things. Wait here for the time being," Kyros says, sealing the door behind you." You stand up, looking around the room. There's a bed there, a small hole in the floor the size of a baby's head, a shelf and a small glass box with a lever inside. > You investigate the hole You walk over to the hole, and look down it. Nothing but blackness. You put your ear against it, but no noise comes out. Finally, you put your arm down it, up to the shoulder. There's a gunk coating it further down, but you can't make out what it is by touch. You lift out your arm, only to find it caked with dried shit. "Fuck," you complain, as the smell just begins to hit you. > You investigate the box You walk over to the box, entering it. You press down on the lever, and nothing happens. You pull it, and suddenly you're hit by a burst of water. You look up, and it's like lashing rain has formed right above you. This has the added benefit of washing off the shit that cakes your arm. You quickly turn it off, avoiding getting too soaked. > You lie on the bed and wait You collapse onto the bed, closing your eyes. Almost immediately, the voice begins. "Karth... Karth..." the voice calls. "I have so much to offer you... you're a prisoner here, Karth. These men are going to break you, child. Only I can help you... just give me time..." the horrible voices stops, and reality fades back into reality. The voices thankfully subside, and you're granted a short break of blissful sleep. Unfortunately, this is broken by the door opening. You look up to see Kyros standing there. "Karth, it's time for your... augmentation," he says cheerfully. "What's going to happen?" you ask fearfully. "Magos Cern and the Chapter Master want to create super-soldiers. They're aiming so low they could hit themselves in the foot. I want to create something... excuse me, someone of immense power. Your mind will be a thousand times sharper than any blade. You will be a Psyker feared by the entire Imperium." "Let's say you make me extremely powerful. Then what? How do you keep me under your control?" you ask. "Karth, you're my prisoner, but I don't think you need to be for long. I want you to join me. We figtht for freedom, for power, for glory! We'll crush the dying Imperium, and lead mankind towards a new dawn. Can't you see that that's a strong goal? Can't you see that that's something to join us to fight for?" > You say "I agree. They're commendable ideals." "I'm glad to hear it. I'm sorry to say you'll still have to remain my prisoner for the time being, but I'm sure the crew will come to trust you quickly enough." You arrive in a large room, filled with dozens of large, see-through tubes. You glance at them, take a deep breath, and get sick all over the glass while falling to your knees. "Ah, yes... you best not look at these," Kyros says, flicking his finger to pick you up again. Inside the tube, submersed in a thick, viscous liquid, are your tribespeople. They're completely naked, with long tubes having been forced down their throat. Dozens of needles have been forced into their arms, backs and necks, pumping strange liquids into them. "What the fuck are you doing to them?" you ask. "Making them super-soldiers. We've been through this," Kyros says absent-mindedly. "I thought you'd be training them!" "After we change them. If you think the nutrients and drug treatment is bad, wait until we start using the Geneseed. At least they'll all survive this bit." > You look around for Fay You look around, noticing Fay floating in a tube. "Let her out!" you say, tears welling in your eyes as you watch her body convulse as chemicals and nutrients flood into it. "No. She needs to become strong if she wishes to survive here." "She's one of our best warriors! She trains everyday!" "I don't particularly care whose the best warrior of some shithole tribe on some shithole planet! We'll be fighting super, cybernetic orks, super-soldiers the likes of Taj, ancient, psychic warriors and never-ending waves of bug warriors. Your sister could be torn apart in seconds by even the weakest of threats." "She's not my sister," you say, putting your hand against the glass. "Really? Wife, then? I've seen cultures with younger marriage ages, but they're not the norm." "We're not married, we're just friends," you say sadly, as you're carried into the air once more and dragged along Kyros. "Ah, I see. Your society isn't patriarchal enough that you can just demand she has sex with you. Unreciprocated love, what a pity," Kyros laughs. "It's not... let her go!" you shout. The collar tugs tightly around your throat, taking the breath away from you. You choke and gasp for several seconds, before it releases, allowing you to take a breath. "Quiet now." You continue on, arriving at a thick, metal door. "Here we are," Kyros says with a smile. The metal doors slide open, revealing a large, empty chamber. Magos Cern stands in the center, her head twisting around to reveal her glowing red eyes, piercing your soul. "Is the chamber complete?" Kyros asks. "Have you succeeded?" Magos Cern stares at you. "Well?" Kyros asks again. "Don't question my work, Kyros. If something goes wrong, it's because you're an idiot trying to harness the magical energies of the warp while using a flesh battery." "I have a name, you know," you point out. Magos Cern walks out of the room, the mechanical part of her body whirring. "What is she?" you ask. "Is she even a "she"?" "Imagine a simple human girl. Useless. Unknown. Weak. We all want to be strong. She scorns are use of the Warp, but she's happy to replace most of her body with machinery." "Machinery?" "She... adds metal shielding, important tools, new robotic arms... that kind of thing. Are you ready to start the procedure?" "Do I have a choice?" you ask. "Not in the slightest, but if you have any questions, you might as well ask them." > You ask questions about the Warp "What's the Warp?" "Imagine an alternate dimension, of pure Chaos and emotion. It's known as the Warp. We are in a galaxy teeming with life. These lives all mean that there are trillions of bright, powerful souls. The powers of the Warp can easily be reaped here. By passing through it, we're able to travel hundreds of light years with ease. Through manifesting and manipulating the Warp, some of us, Psykers, can use it's powers like you and I do." "We use the powers of the Warp for our magic?" "Yes, yes. Here, in the warp, are powerful and ancient creatures such as the Dark Gods and their daemons. There's Khorne, who has been born out of the galaxy's never-ending combat, representing courage, strength, blood-thirst, honor and most importantly, rage. There's Tzeentch, who has been born out of scheming and plotting. He represents sorcery and the use of magic, scheming, plotting, hope and change. There's Nurgle, the plague god. He represents sickness, decay, rot, plague, defeat and in a strange way, life and acceptance. Finally there's Slaaneesh, who represents self-indulgence, passion, love and pleasure. These are the four greatest Dark Gods, and it is to them I pledge my life. In exchange, they give me gifts to enhance my dark powers and give me the strength to fight for what's right." > You ask questions about the procedure "What's going to happen to me?" "Your body is frail, weak, useless, because that's not where your strength comes from. Look at the finest warriors in your village. Their strength comes from the pathetic vessels their souls use. Your body could be upgraded, and we could make you as strong as someone like Taj with enough work, but what would be the point? It would be like adding a simple rifle bayonet to the heavy macro cannon of a starship. Now, I'm going to refine your abilities." "You haven't told me what you're going to do," you point out. "Well, this could be quite unpleasant. We're going to pump the chamber ful of Psychic energies and enhance your abilities," Kyros says. "Is that going to work?" you ask. "Probably," Kyros shrugs, flashing a devilish grin. "What I expect is a forced evolution of your mind to a much stronger state. It'll skip directly to the height of your psychic maturity, and then several levels past that. It requires a powerful Psyker who's still growing as a psyker with a lot of potential to succeed, but I'm certain you'll be able to survive it. Good luck." > You start the procedure "Alright, I'm ready," you say with a grimace. "Good. Now, it is important to know that this chamber is going to flood with psychic energy. If you feel your a few outer layers of your skin begin to burn off, you'll be find. It's quite likely that as the connections to the Warp that are built up and a portal is built up, daemons could attempt to manifest in the chamber. These are beings that are built on fear. You might see them, but they can't hurt you unless you react to in fear. They'll be able to cease on the presence of your fear and* fully manifest, and then they'll definitely be able to hurt you." "So they can't hurt me if I don't react to them?" "Well... if this goes well, they won't be able to harm you if you don't show fear. If it goes wrong in some way and if they can harm you, being scared what change anything and you'll be slaughtered like a lamb either way won't do anything. So don't get scared, and don't react in anyway." Kyros steps backwards, outside of the chamber, as four massive giant men wearing the metal armor just like Chapter Master Taj, wearing black armor with purple helmets. Severed Ork heads hang from around their heads, seemingly quite fresh, while they hold in their hands massive Bolters, which as you've learned from the chitchat between guards aboard the landing craft, spit huge bits of flaming metal with amazing speed. They're either here to keep you in... or to keep whatever ends up in this chamber if something goes wrong. The doors close, sealing you in there. Shit. You're definitely going to die in this chamber. "Shit!" you say loudly, you voice echoing off the walls of the circular chamber. The chamber begins to hum, as the entire room begins shaking. The walls course with psychic energy. You hear a thousand energetic voices begin to chatter endlessly in your mind. One voice is loud and strong above the others. "Karth..." the now familiar voice calls. "...feel the power reverberate through your soul... I knew I was right to target you." "Who the fuck are you?" you whimper. You feel your body shudder, as your mind stretches. You feel sharp bursts of emotion. A deep, powerful rage at the slaughter and enslavement of your people. How dare those fucks kill your allies, kidnap your people and do these things? What gives them the right?! This rage is quickly replaced by a burst of joyous bliss, as an immense pleasure floods through your body, and you shudder in ecstasy. This is replaced by a deep sadness, as you realize that your entire tribe, your entire planet, all of the heroes of lore that you looked up to, meant nothing. Your world, as the Chaos lords said, is infinitesimally small and worthless compared to the rest of the galaxy. "I am a friend, Karth. An ally. A daemon with unimaginable power which I'm willing to offer you. My name is Meliodas. I want you to survive this... I'm your friend... I know the powers flooding into you like you know the air you breath. Just ignore the chattering... ah, look... they're arrived. Try not to react..." You watch as the air courses, pulsing with solid, permanent beat. You see the air morph and flex with energy, as colored energy begins to manifest and coagulate. You see a morphing shape appear, a humanoid, red shape standing on black claws with a long, spiked head with two black horns. In it's hand is a long, flaming sword. It's skin the same as a burning coal sitting in the center of flames, veins of molten blood coursing through it. It looks at you and lets out an angry, guttural hiss. It slowly walks over to you, as it's blade crackles with heat. You feel your headache worsen ten times over, as the inside of your mind is scratched and hacked apart from the inside. The daemon raises a burning sword high into the air, before swinging towards your neck. > You do nothing You close your eyes to take in a deep breath, calming your mind slightly. You can feel your very consciousness shaking, and let out a shudder, opening your eyes. The daemon is gone, leaving you alone in the room. Electricity cackles along the wall, lightning running across you and wrapping around your very being. You feel a massive, terrible psychic scream reverberating deep in your mind, across every facet of your soul. You drop to your knees, as an unimaginable pain fills you. You let out a horrified scream from deep in your lungs, deep in your mind and deep in your soul. The room explodes, setting alight with multicolored flames which race along the walls, with flashes of lightning appearing and disappearing like snowflakes on wet stone. You collapse forward, onto the ground, as the room begins to cool down, but this only speeds up your fall into the void. > You enter the Void... You hear screaming. You look up, to find yourself falling through an endless void. You look at your body, starring in abject horror as it blisters, boils, sores and rashes cover you puke, releasing a torrent of vomit, blood and bile, as your flesh begins to decay, rotting in front of you. "Karth!" a voice screams, bringing you back to reality. You open your eyes, finding yourself lying in the chamber. The four Space Marines stand over you, massive figures wearing thick-plated armor, next to Kyros. "We should kill the Psyker. He's probably possessed, or corrupted beyond sanity," one says, not noticing you waking up. "You can try, but I'll bind your souls to a fucking Soul Grinder! I'll make a flaying seem like the greatest ecstasies Slaanesh has to offer!" Kyros roars. "If that cunt has failed and died from this, I'll toss his entire tribe to the mutants to be flayed, the dogs to be mauled and the men to be fucked! I'll burn the fucking...!" Kyros notices you, and his hate-filled expression changes to a friendly, cheerful one. "Ah, Karth, you've survived! Terrific!" he says, gripping your hand and shaking your hand eagerly. "Congratulations on your survival!" "Yeah... I did," you say, rubbing your head. "Ah, I've found... residence," Meliodas says from deep in your mind. "Your mind has grown powerfully. I know you had potential." Magos Cern walks into the room, starring at you with her cold eyes. She raises a pincer, quickly tearing off a stretch of skin from your arm. You yelp in pain and surprise as the skin is pealed away. She stares at it, scanning it with your mechanical eyes, before looking back at you. "Light signs of Warp mutation. Should be cleared with a round of decontamination therapy," she says. "How fares his mind? Did it work?" Taj growls, marching inside. "I'll probe your consciousness, see how much I've succeeded, shall I?" Kyros says. "My head hurts," you complain, as you feel a pounding headache hit. "Oh yes, that's normal," Kyros says. "I thought you've never done this before. How do you know the aftermath of it leads to headaches?" you ask. "Oh no, I mean if you're as powerful a psyker as I expect you to be, you'll be suffering from constant headaches, and that's when you're at your best," Kyros says, shrugging. "Why the fuck didn't you tell me that earlier?" you say. "You're a slave, Karth. Remember that when you speak back to me, or you'll become familiar with the lash," Kyros says, his cheerful, friendly demeanor dropping for a second, before he smiles once more. "Now, shall we begin the probing? You'll feel a sharp sensation. Just ignore it." You nod your head slowly, before you feel something akin to an ice-cold blade slowly being forced into your consciousness. You shudder, but try not to tense up or resist in anyway. "Hmmm... it's strong. Very strong. I've done well here. Thank the Dark Gods I installed that collar before I put you in the chamber," Kyros says, smiling as the collar tightens slightly around your throat. "These space marines will act as your personal bodyguard." "He's the prisoner, we're the guards. Don't let him think any different," one of the Space Marines says, as Kyros hands him a long chain which the space marine wraps around his fist. "That'll control his collar, marine. Use it to throttle the life out of him if he gets uppity." "Yes, sir," one of the space marines responds. You can practically feel the super-soldier maliciously grinning through his helmet. "Now, let's take our newly evolved friend to the training pit," Kyros smiles. "Test out his new abilities." > You an Hour Later... You sit in the middle of a large, Colosseum-type building. Kyros stands in a booth up above you all, next to Magos Cern and Taj Suenage. All around the seating area are the various men of the ship, crewmen, soldiers and the favored slaves. In four side of the circular arena are metal gates, where your foes will be released from. You question the insanity of building a fighting arena aboard a spaceship with very limited space, but then again, you're not in charge. "Alright, Karth, the rules are simple. No attacking the audience. There is a protective shield keeping you guys in there from damaging the crowd or, Dark Gods forbid, me. Also, if you try, we're more than happy to strangle the life out of your, break your body and bind your soul to a Soul Grinder," Kyros shouts. "Now, let's begin. Leave none alive!" The first gate opens, and you freeze as you see a group of a dozen shambling mutant abominations walking forward. You can tell they were once human, but now you can barely tell. Tentacles, extra limbs, massive tumors, animal parts and much worse. There's barely a human intelligence left behind their eyes, replaced by an animal-like instinct. They shamble towards you, roaring, howling, screeching, shouting, hissing and letting out whatever bursts of noise they can. > You fire psychic bolts of energy You fire a bolt of purple energy, striking down the largest whose head explodes. You flick your wrist again, burning the hair off a howling beastman. A mutant is struck in the face by another bolt, and by now they're confused and scared, attempting to flee back to the gate they came through which has now closed shut. Needless to say, it doesn't take much more to fully finish off the mutant pack, leaving them all dead. "Alright!" Kyros yells cheerfully. "Now, anyone can strike down some animalistic mutants. Now, let's see how the gladiator-slaves fare!" You watch as another gate opens, and half a dozen semi-armored humans walk out, holding swords, spears, halbeards, axes and all hold shields. Thankfully, they've no long-range weapons, so you have a fairly good chance. With that, they begin to advance. They're in a solid formation, bundled together to stop you from picking them off one, shields raised in an attempt to mimic a shelled creature. > You fire a burst of flames at them You raise your hand, firing a stream of fire that manifests in your palm and gushes out towards your foes. They raise their shields, but the fire easily surpasses them, going past the shield and searing flesh, burning hair and melting bone. There's a burst of screams and howls of pain that quickly fizzle out, leaving a mass of ash, burning flesh and melted armor and weapons. "Alright, alright!" Kyros yells. "Let's see him fight some real, blooded warriors. May I introduce the last known members of the Pandemian 501st Regiment!" The third gate opens, and ten men wearing combat armor, gas masks and holding lasguns with bayonets march forward in unison, before raising their weapons to fire. You need to react quickly. > You teleport behind the enemy You close your eyes, opening them once more and finding yourself less than a step behind the soldiers, who look around, confused, not noticing you. Time to strike. > You send a fireball hurtling towards your enemy You fire a massive, burning fireball directly at the guardsmen. Unfortunately, you over-estimated the distance between the two of you. The guardsman is engulfed in a fiery explosion, but unfortunately you are as well, your skin turning to ash and your bones quickly melting, your soul expiring shortly after.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You close your eyes, opening them once more and finding yourself less than a step behind the soldiers, who look around, confused, not noticing you. Time to strike. > You charge them with psychically-enhanced fists You charge forward, as psychic energy floods into your fists. You grab one, yanking her head off and flinging it with all your psychic strength at another. You grab a lasgun, breaking someone's neck and beheading two more with the bayonet. The guardsmen panic, falling over each other to escape, but you don't give up, finishing the rest of them with relative ease. "Alright, he's shed some blood. Perhaps we should give him a break," Kyros says, before laughing cheerfully. "Or perhaps... we should give him a real challenge. Bring out the Champion of Davial!" The final gate, the one behind you, opens. You spin around on the balls of your feet, prepared to kill, even through you're exhausted. You can here your psychic defenses begin to falter as the voices come back, thousands of voices screaming, laughing and howling in your mind. Physically, you're tired from this heavy exercise, and just want to pass out. You watch in terror as a massive figure clad in huge plates of armor walks forward. Two sharpened tusks come out from his helmet, and in one hand he holds a massive warhammer, while in the other, attached to his arm, is a bolter. By either side of the massive Champion is a nearly naked slave wearing rags, trying to polish the armor while the Champion of Davial continues walking forward. "Begin!" Kyros shouts. Suddenly, you hear another familiar voice. "Hello, my dear Karth. I see you're outgunned here. Need some help?" Meliodas asks. The Champion raises his bolter and it fires. You quickly form a shield, barely absorbing the massive amount of power behind the bolter. "I can help you, but you're going to need to get your hands dirty. See those two slaves? Go for them. Boil their bloods with your mind, and help draw the psychic beings that are trying to enter." "What?" you ask aloud, teleporting out of the way of another burst of bolter fire as the Champion of Davial continues to advance. "Kill the slaves. I'll offer their souls as a... summoning gift to two potential allies for you." This presents a moral dilemma. Can you wipe out the two slaves in order to win this battle? Can you even trust Meliodas? You do have other options. Through teleportation and levitation, you can easily evade the Champion, and you can wait to tire him out. You can attempt to wear down the Champion's armor through fire and psychic bolts. You can also attempt to teleport atop the Champion and try use your psychic powers to tear this bastard's head off. > You kill the slaves for Meliodas You nod, raising your hands and directing a blast of powerful psychic flames towards both slaves. The slaves are hit by the stream of fire and engulfed entirely, their existence ending with a powerful scream. The fire engulfs them, but while the bodies falls apart to ash, two new shapes appear in the fire. You watch, as from the engulfing flames step two daemons. They're humanoid, half beautiful women and half horrifying crab-monster. Their face are stretched and gaunt, like once beautiful women whose faces melted, with long black hair, pale skin changing to black shell in patches over their bodies and a massive claw having replaced their right arm. They eagerly turn to the Champion of Delial, charging forward. They bounce, picing and attacking and cutting through metal with their powers. You fire a stream of fire at the Champion's armored head as the two daemons repeatedly pince and cut at his head and chest. He fights valiantly, but he doesn't last long fighting two powerful daemons and a psyker. He falls to his knees, before collapsing onto his face. The space marine guards begin sending bolter fire down at the daemons, who quickly with under the fire before collapsing back into the flames, disappearing, leaving you in an arena, empty except for the corpses of your enemies. "Well," Kyros says. "That was interesting. I didn't expect daemon summoning to be in your inventory. None the less, well done." Kyros levitates down towards you as the shield evaporates, before ending up less than two or three feet above you. "Well done, noble warrior! Look and behold the powers of the Warp!" he says, in the opening of a speech. > You kill Kyros You take a deep breath, preparing all of your reserves of psychic energy. Quickly, you manifest it in your most powerful bolt yet, before firing straight at Kyros. The energy drained from you, you collapse to your knees. You feel your collar flex, beginning to choke you. "Ha! You have balls, my little ally! I love it!" Meliodas cries. Kyros rises up quickly and brings the shields up full force, and they explode, barely managing to contain your psychic power. Kyros watches as the collar chokes the last ounce of psychic power from you, dropping down to his previous height with an enraged snarl. "Is that how you want to play this, you little cunt?" he snarls. You search your mind, but your entire psychic reserve is gone. You can't even make a spark. You do have a ounce of physical strength yet, before you collapse from exhaustion, and you intend to use it. The entire audience of slaves, mutants, soldiers and thousand-year old warriors watches as you arch your head back and spit in Kyros face, before collapsing. > The Familiar Oblivion... After going through another sparse of evil dreams and horrifying nightmares, including getting chased by tentacle abominations through tunnels, watching your tribe being flayed alive by men infested by worms and covered in a solid sheet of pus and staring into the eyes of beings of pure, unending hate, you awaken in a small room. You're lying on a metal table, completely naked, while Magos Cern stands nearby, drilling holes through a large blob of meat on another table. "Ah, the good Techpriest is looking after you. You'd have been safer if they tossed you in a pit of deathworms," Meliodas says. > You speak up "Hello?" you say. "Ah, look whose woken up," she says, her head swiveling around mechanically to stare at you "What happened?" "You passed out from fatigue. I brought you here, left you to sleep for a while, injected you with a few shots of adrenaline, gave you a full cleansing of your blood and burned off a few layers of your skin to remove all Chaos taint." She emits a long burst of static energy, before staring at you. "Kyros has been informed of your awakening. He'll be here shortly." Magos Cern immediately goes back to working on the chunk of meat, clearly not in the mood to converse. After a few minutes, Kyros enters, covered in blood. He seems quite calmer then before. "Ah, look who it is, the traitorous bastard." "You invaded my world, burned my villag, killed half my tribe and enslaved the other half. What did you expect?" you say. "I suppose. I just assumed you were intelligent enough to know that that would never work, or even a little grateful at the fact that I had given you the gifts of power. "It's quite hard to use the gift of power while bound by chains." "Perhaps," Kyros says. "You're to be escorted back to your cell. Let's go." Your four guards enter, as stern as ever, and you stand, following them along the halls. > A Week Later... The week goes by. Your guards give you no chance to even think about escape, let alone actually making an attempt at it. You practice fighting in the arena everyday, facing hordes of mutants, failed attempts at creating super-soldiers, thankfully none of them from your tribe and a few slaves thrown in there for you to kill. Kyros is prone to sending out enemies that can cause painful wounds such as those that utilize painful poisons and toxins. It seems he's still bitter about the fact you tried to murder him. Understandable. After that, you have meditation, to calm the storms of your mind and give you a chance to keep the demons, and more literally daemons, at bay. You spend time with Kyros as he attempts to indoctrinate you to serve him willingly, although after your attempt at his life this time mainly serves as a time to check on the wards for your collar and make sure you haven't circumvented them. You give him the idea that you're buying it, but you know he's just a madman. His ultimate goal seems to be regrouping with several other Chaos war-bands of various sizes to topple the Imperium of Man and take Terra, although the whisperings from other men tell you that that is an impossible goal.You're still not allowed to see Fay or anyone else com your tribe. You shudder at the thoughts of what Kyros is doing with them. For all his friendly gestures, kind deeds and grand ideals and plans, Kyros is but a corrupted mad man who is willing to sacrifice anyone and everyone in an attempt to gain power. Under the Magos' orders, you've spent a lot of time sleeping from either the fatigue of constant fighting and training to expand your mind and permanently trying to ward off the daemons that scratch at your mind, or from various drugs and chems to put you under. Sleeping is painful, for the most part. You get a few brief bit of oblivion, which is a peace incomparable to anything you've ever had to deal with, but these states still being you deeper into your mind and the theWarp. Then the nightmares start. In the waking world, you have classes with the teachers. Kyros teaches you meditation techniques for controlling your powers as well as new ways to utilise the psychic energy flowing through your mind. Taj teaches you military tactics and how to lead everything from a small unit of hardened men to a massive army of garrisoned troops. Magos Cern teaches you a bit about mechanics, the various technologies of the galaxy and gives you a broad, general education about the galaxy and its inhabitants. One day, you lie in bed, having emerged from the state of horrified dreaming but not yet having fully awoken, in a blissful, thoughtless state. The door opens, as two of your space marine guards enter. One uses a small device to make your collar tighten quickly before releasing again, a small threat to make sure you know whose boss. The fucking collar. You could turn him into a thick pink mist inside that armor if the collar wasn't stifling your abilities. "What?" you ask, annoyed to have been disturbed from your bliss. "Kyros wants you," one says. "What does he want?" Kyros appears in the room, leaning against the doorway, seemingly manifested out of thin air. "Come on, let's go," he says nonchalantly, picking his nails. "Where?" you ask. "Well, as a... reward for your long week of work, I have a surprise. We're going to go see Fay." "Really?" you ask. A surge of emotions rising up inside you. Joy at the thought of seeing your friend, surprise at Kyros' kindness, gratitude for the gift, fear at what could've happened Fay, all these manifest into an overwhelming feeling of both exhilaration and dread. "Well? Let's go!" Kyros says, walking out of the room. > You follow Kyros You stand, walking along after Kyros. You're at a point where your psychic growth has overtaken your physical growth to such a degree that it'd be easier to float along the ground rather than actually having to walk. Unfortunately, the collar prevents you from even firing out some sparks without Kyros' permission. You arrive in a metal door, which opens, revealing the booth from which Kyros and the others watch down at the fight. You walk along, looking down at the arena, which is empty. "I thought you were bringing me to see Fay," you say nervously, despite knowing what this is. "I brought you to see her fight!" Kyros says with a smile. You stare down, as one of the gates opens. You watch as an abomination stumbles out. Stumbling on four insect-like legs, with it's eft arm replaced by a long tentacle of coiled pink muscle, the very end of it studded with bone outgrowths to make it a more formidable weapon. In it's right hand is a short, rusted axe stained with blood and gore. It's head is monstrous, with an oversized mouth filled to the brim with teeth, overflowing with acid that drips onto it's chest with a sizzle, and a single, blood-shot eye. The creature looks up at you, it's eye flinching, before it lets out a miserable howl. "Shit... that looks miserable beyond belief," you say. "Yes, she does," Kyros says, grinning from ear to ear as half a dozen more beasts just like the first walk, stumble or crawl into the center of the arena. "She?" you ask. Now that you're not fighting them, you can have a long look and see what these mutant abominations really are: disgusting, pitiful creatures that should receive a quick death. "You don't recognize her?" Kyros says, clearly suppressing laughter. "This is what remains of the Uwais Tribe, and the first one to come out, the pack leader, is Fay." You look at monsters underneath, trying to see any resemblance to your friends as pure horror overtakes your mind. You collapse to your knees, puking over the banister and onto the monsters underneath as Kyros bursts into laughter. "He's done this to provoke you. He wants to get you angry, to see how powerful you are even with the collar. He's under-exaggerating how powerful you are, so you might be able to harm him, but..." Meliodas advises, but you don't pay any attention, too filled with anger. You stand, holding onto the banister to pull yourself up. Your knees shake, but you take a moment to regain your strength. Then, you launch yourself at Kyros. You grab at his eyes, your fingers going straight for his eyes. Kyros stumbles backwards, unprepared, before you feel your collar quickly tightening as you start to choke. You continue to scratch and gouge, even as the air is choked from you. Finally, you're dragged upwards by invisible hands, floating a few feet away from Kyros. Your weak body has done practically no damage to Kyros, who seems surprised and a bit amused rather than angry. "Hmmm... I under-exaggerated how angry you'd get, or how stupid you are if you think trying to fight me is an option." "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to break you. I don't care how long it takes, I will destroy your very soul," you say, staring at him. Kyros chuckles softly, before forcing you around to stare down at the arena. "Watch the match," he says. "We will have our revenge, Karth. Not today, not tomorrow, but we will have our revenge, " Meliodas says. You watch for about a minute as the abominations sit there, wandering around in confusion, falling to brief bursts of violence and self-harm and a lot of screaming and howling. Finally, the second gate opens. You watch as hooded figures enter, holding swords and small, circular shields. The trio charges forward, diving into the air. The beasts charge forward, attacking with fierce brutality. You watch as the lead one, the thing that used to be Fay, is almost beheaded by one of the trio. The trio fight with ease, diving, ducking and weaving out of the way of tentacles, axes, biting and stomping. Within a minute, the last of the abominations stumble forward and hits the ground as its front two legs are hacked off, and one of the trio leaps on top of the monster and impales it through the head. "What a display!" Kyros says with a smile. "Shall we see the victors?" Before you can say a word, Kyros releases you and you fall through the air, smacking into the dirt with a pained yelp. You moan in pain, looking up at the fighters. They walk forward, staring at you. "Karth?" one of them asks. You look up to see Fay standing there, her hooded robes covered in blood, alongside two other Uwais tribals you vaguely remember from your trips accompanying hunting parties, the Jakar Twins. "Fay," you reply, staring back at her, not knowing what else to say. Fay tosses her sword aside, grabbing you and embracing you tightly. Even though you feel yourself being turned into a fine powder from the strength of her hug, you're just so happy that you've found her that you don't care, hugging back. Kyros drops down, staring at you from over Fay's shoulder, as Magos Cern joins you. "Ah, what a happy reunion!" Kyros says. "You said she was dead!" you shout angrily, pushing Fay aside to point an accusatory finger at him. "I did. I lied," Kyros says, smiling. "Never trust a psyker, Karth. Not even yourself," Meliodas says. You shrug it off, trying not to bow to his attempts at emotional manipulation. You grab Fay, looking at her properly as she takes off her hooded cloak. She's tall, standing over six foot tall, and she's a lot more muscular than you remember. Whatever Kyros has done to her, it's had a serious affect. Her arms and legs are quite muscled, and you doubt you could find an ounce of fat anywhere on her. Still, she has the same coy smile, the wild, adventurous look in her eyes, She's pretty much the same Fay. "So... what's with the hood?" you ask, struggling to find anything else to say. "Um... it's so the mutants can't grab my hair and drag me down, Karth. Was that the most important question? How are you? What are they doing to you?" "Come on, out of the arena. I have a captured Squig the boys want to have some fun fighting," Kyros says. "Jakar twins, back to the dorm. Karth, Fay, follow me." You look at Fay, before grabbing her hand and walking after Kyros and Magos Cern. "Hmm, walking alongside me with my hand held? Where's the old Karth that I would piggyback around the village?" Fay asks. "Pffh, if I didn't have this collar I'd be floating around the place," you say. The stress of being kidnapped, having your tribe enslaved and murdered, your village burned down, your mind and soul forced through the very depths of hell falls away as you talk to your old friend. You recount your story as she tells hers. Apparently, she spent much of the time in a coma, having her body hacked apart and remade. Her blood now contains vast amounts of chems and combat drugs, she has several new organs and stronger bones, faster blood clotting and much more. She's trained extensively both with swords, guns, explosives and infinitely more, as well as team tactics. She's been chosen out as Team Leader for the Uwais super-soldiers. "So basically, you've become a super-soldier?" "Super-soldier?" Magos Cern says, her voice flooded with the most emotion you've heard from her the entire time you knew her. "She's a failure. A disgrace. I had access to geneseed, space marine test subjects and untold resources. What did I create? A mockery. These "super-soldiers" couldn't take on multiple space marines each like I had hoped. They couldn't take on a single fucking space marine like I had planned! They're barely worth half a space marine! I've failed!" "They'll do fine, Magos," Kyros says, arriving at another set of metal doors, which open to reveal a large table, where various figures are sitting. There's Kyros, Magos Cern and Taj Suenage, as well as Kyros' daughter, who sits in the corner. There's also many more who you don't know. One is a tall, gaunt looking woman with pale skin and black hair pulled back in a pony tail, wearing a long coat that disturbingly, appears to be made from human skin. Another is a girl with a shaved head wearing heavy combat armor who is sharpening a long machete, another is a... person whose gender you can't tell, wearing black leather armor and lingerie in an odd attempt to look sexy at a war meeting, with long, curly black hair and excessive make-up. The person smiles at you, licking his... or her... or its lips. Then there's a young girl, younger than even you, wearing hooded robes and reading an ancient, dusty tome. Finally, there's a barely human monster. An obese man covered with rotting pores, boils, sores and pus-filled, infected wounds, with its arms replaced by long, rusted spikes. Kyros and Magos Cern take a seat. "These are the leaders of the fleet, Fay and Karth. Some introductions are in order. First is me, the supreme leader of the entire fleet. Magos Cern leads the Dark Mechanicus on the ship and maintains the vessel itself. Chapter Master Taj Suenage leads the space marine chapter on board, the Undying Reapers. Then we have Calpurnia the Ravager, leader of the 22nd Istanford Regiment. " The one with the human skin coat stands up, extending a hand to shake. "Pleasure to meet you," she says, shaking both your hand and Fay's. I hope you're... efficient during your stay here." "Then there's the Staine siblings. There's Rebecca Staine, the leader of the Bloody Claws, a war-band that worships Khorne the war god." "Fuck you, psyker. You're weak and pathetic. Your parents should've left you to die," Rebecca growls, pointing her blade at you. "Fuck you," Fay snarls, shoving her blade point away from your throat. Rebecca stands, brandishing her sword, before the plague-ridden man stands, blocking Rebecca's path forward with one of his spike arms. "Hey, hey! There's no need for violence! We're all brothers and sisters here!" Rebecca sits back down with another growl. "Alright, next we have Elios, leading of the Shrieking Harpies, a war-band that worships Slaanesh, the god of excess," Kyros says, pointing at the person clad in leather and lingerie. "Pleasure to meet you, darlings. For slaves aboard a Chaos vessel, might I say you're looking... delectable," Elios says in a deep, masculine voice, licking his lips as he stares at both you and Fay. "Keep it in your pants, Elios," Kyros says. "Next we have Elizabeth." Elizabeth, the hooded girl reading the book, doesn't look up. "She's risen to the position of leader of the One-Eyed Crows, a war-band that worships Tzeentch, the sorceror god. She easily reached the position through her amazing social abilities. Tell us about yourself, Elizabeth." "Move along," Elizabeth says, making a circular motion with her hand without looking up. "OK, Elizabeth. Finally, we have Durge, leader of the Black Rats war-band that worships Nurgle the plague god." "Hello!" the diseased man says, waving his spike-arms. "It's a pleasure to meet you! I hope you're being treated well. I hope you're being fed enough. If not, it's probably because I've eaten all the food aboard this vessel!" The man, Durge, breaks into laughter as several maggots burst from his skin. You try not to get sick. "You're here to meet the leaders of this fleet so that you know who you'll be answering. We want you both to lead the slave army." "Slave army?" Fay asks. "The Uwais tribe soldiers, the previous batch of failed test subjects, the gladiator slaves and whatever else we can muster up. We'll hold the detonators to your explosive collars, but you'll hold a copy of the detonators for all the men under your command." "There was a previous batch of failed test subjects?" Fay asks. "Yes, there was. They were quite strong, but their minds were easily broken. Most weren't sentient, the sentient ones were insane. There was only one who you could even have a conversation with, the one I appointed leader. I'll show you to them some time after this. I assume you'll take the position?" "It's not like I have much choice," you say. "We'll take it," Fay says, answering for the both of you. "This slave army, ot whatever you want to call it, will give us the strength advantage to become a serious military power in this tiny little sector. We could conquer ourselves a little kingdom from the weak and undefended worlds. We could become a raiding fleet that could have us living a life of luxury. But one little slave army wouldn't even give us a chance against even the defenses on Pluto!" Calpurnia says. "I'll tear out your soul and devour it if you show anymore signs of cowardice!" Kyros yells. "Magos Cern, take Fay and Karth to see the previous batch of super-soldiers." "I'll have to let the galaxy witness the shame of my failed creation when we release them on the galaxy. I might as well let the two adolescents have a preview of my sickening failure," Magos Cern says. "We're not finished here!" Calpurnia splutters angrily. "I'm not launching my army on a suicide mission!" "My army! As long as you serve me, it's my army!" Kyros screams. "We take a vote, then," Calpurnia suggests. "Fine, raise your hands if you don't want to go through with the assault, if you're a coward, if you're not loyal." Calpurnia defiantly holds up her hands. Elios holds up his next. "Sorry, Kyros. I'm not dying.. I'm too young and beautiful to die fighting an unwinnable war," he says. Durge holds up a spike, looking ashamed. "I'm loyal, Kyros, but I'm just as loyal to my men as you, and I won't see them die for nothing." Elizabeth slowly raises a hand, looking up from her book for the first time. "This plans suicide, Kyros. We both know that." Kyros snarls in anger, looking around. "That's me, Cern, Taj and Rebecca for attacking, and Elizabeth, Durge, Elios and Calpurnia for not doing so," Kyros says in a low growl. "The slave leaders are the tie-breakers, then," Calpurnia says. Kyros looks at you with a stare, holding onto the controller for your collars. Well, this seems like an obvious answer, even if it is a suicide mission. > You support the assault on Terra You keep your hand at your side, and while Fay raises an eyebrow, she does the same. "Cowardly... but smart," Meliodas says. "Perhaps you'll realize your potential after all." "Good... good!" Kyros says, his voice flooded with relief. "The slaves are loyal! Now I must question why my own allies aren't." An uneasy silence fills the room, before Magos Cern breaks it. "I shall take Fay and Karth out to inspect their new troops, the old generation of super-soldiers. Is that acceptable, Kyros?" "Yes, yes," Kyros says, his mind clearly focused on other things. "Go then." Magos Cern walks out of room, and you quickly follow, followed by Fay. You walk along empty hallway, heading towards the super-soldiers. Magos Cern is clearly not interested to talk at all, so you and Fay have time to talk. "So, what just happened?" you ask. "Were we just given an army?" "We've went from slaves to masters of a slave army, in five minutes," Fay says. "Well, to be fair, we're still slaves. We're slaves who are also slave masters of a slave army," you point out. "Alright, I suppose so. Anyway, are you OK? We've walked a lot," Fay says. "I'm fine," you smile. "I don't know whether to be thankful you're looking out for me, or insulted you think I can't even walk that much." You walk on, eventually entering a large, metal elevator. The elevator quickly begins descending down the ship. "Alright, children. Listen up. We're going to wake our super-soldiers from their cyro-sleep. Don't make any sudden movements, don't make any loud noises, do nothing of the sort." "Got it," you both say. The elevator doors open, revealing hundreds of metal tubes lining the walls, the cyro-pods. Magos Cern walks forward, extending a metal tentacle that grows from her spike. The tentacle presses onto the consoles attached to the many pods, and three open. Cold air quickly floods out, and you watch as three lumbering monsters walk out. "Behold, my failures," Magos Cern says. The super-soldiers stand at eight feet tall, and are made of massive coils of muscle that makes them nearly twice as wide as even a normal man, without any armor. Their mouths are filled with hundreds of carnivorous teeth, like a shark's. They have short, four-inch bone claws extending from their wrists. Their skin is dark and misshapen, like someone tanned human skin to make leather and then stitched it over their bodies. They walk forward, grunting and growling. The first looks around, before stumbling back inside it's cyro-pod. "Sleep... sleep... sleep..." it mutters, walking back inside. "Size isn't everything... but it sure as fuck counts for a lot," Meliodas remarks. The other two immediately begin head-butting each other with grunts, and you hear the sound of heavy bones smashing against each other. Magos Cern takes out a small data pad, pressing it. The two super-soldiers grunt, wandering back to their cyro-pods. "These are the super-soldiers. The guards here have given them the nickname "Goliath's". I suppose it's fitting. They're not smart, but they fear the lash and the electro-collar, so they follow orders easily." To prove her point, Magos Cern pulls out a small datapad, quickly tapping it. The pair of super-soldiers roar in pain, backing up into their cyro-pods. Magos Cern quickly taps on the pad and the cyro-pods close. He strides forward, to another tank. "Let me introduce you to Specimen 401245. It goes by the name Cain. It's the most intelligent of the beasts, and the most friendly. Now, here he is." The cyro-pod opens as Magos Cern taps quickly on the datapad. You see another massive, lumbering Goliath wander out of the cyro-pod. It looks almost the exact same as the others, the only differences being a pair of bone growths sticking out of its forehead like horns and its oversized lips held up by hooks to allow it to breath. It steps out, taking in a deep breath, before staring at you. There's a brief silence, that Fay quickly breaks. "Does... can it talk?" she asks. "It can definitely hear," the beast grunts in response. "Um, hi there!" Fay says. "I'm Fay. What's your name?" "Cain," he responds, his voice a low, rumbling, guttural growling sound. "I'm Karth," you say. "What time is it?" Cain asks. "Time?" you respond. "I don't know. A little after noon, probably, or what the ship uses as noon." "I don't care. What time is it for me?" "... uh... the same time?" "I am awake. I always sleep in the cold pod until I'm needed. I'm only needed to be cut up, drugged, poked and prodded, or to kill. What time is it for me to do? Kill, or be torn apart?" "Neither. I'm here to introduce you to Fay and Karth, the new leaders of your men." "My men? First time I've heard them called men," Cain says, running his claws against each other absent-mindedly. "Well? They've met me. What else is there? What do you want to know?" > You ask a question "What?" Cain grunts. > You say "How did you get your name?" "Found it scrawled in a tome that was dropped out in the trash, back when they let us be rather than freezing us. "Cain" is a lot easier to remember than the Subject however many numbers," Cain says.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What?" Cain grunts. > You say "How old are you?" "How old? I don't know. Time in the cold pod makes it hard to tell. There's no sun, no days, no minutes," Cain says, seemingly pondering this. "This subject is roughly five years, three months and two days." "Ah... interesting," Cain remarks.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What?" Cain grunts. > You say "How many men do you have?" "Do I look like I've counted many?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What?" Cain grunts. > You say "How capable are your men?" "They're tough. We've fought many times before. Most of us can wield bolters, though a few just end up using them as clubs to fight with their claws. A few can operate bigger weapons, and a few can only wield clubs and such. They follow orders, though. They show no fear, feel no pain, lose no battle. They'll take as much firepower as the enemy can give, even without armor."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What?" Cain grunts. > You say "What exactly is your motive?" "Motive?" "What do you want?" Cain pauses, scratching one of his "horns". The horn begins to bleed, but you doubt he cares. "I don't know," Cain finally answers.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What?" Cain grunts. > You say "I've no more questions." "Alright," Cain sleeps. "What else?" "Nothing else is required," Magos Cern says. "Return to your pod." Cain nods, before walking back into his pod. The cyro-pod shuts, leaving Cain back to his cold, endless sleep. "We should continue," Magos Cern says. "I still have to show you the gladiator slaves who you'll take under you command and the Uwais Tribe. The Goliaths will act as your heavy shock troopers, the gladiator-slaves will act as scouts, skirmishers and fill in whatever spare roles you have, and the Uwais tribe will be your main unit. I'll take you to see them." You begin following Magos Cern out of the cyro-sleep area, and along the hallways. After ten minutes, you reach a large metal door, which opens to reveal a large room filled with bunk beds, with familiar bronze bodies lying in the beds. "This is Dorm A. We have around sixty soldiers here," Magos Cern says. Fay walks into the room, and lets ou a shout. "Gentlemen! Your captain's back!" The tribals roll out of bed. You recognize a few of them, but strangely you recognize many as men from other various tribes." "Fay, you're back!" one says. "How did the fight go? It took far longer than expected," another adds. "Oh, shit! Is that Karth?" another asks. The attention immediately goes from Fay to you, as tribals begin appearing. They all appear far more muscular, many bearing fresh scars. "Karth! How are you even still alive?" someone asks incredulously. "It's the Uwais shaman!" another asks. "Karth, how are you? What have they been doing to you?" You watch as the tribals begin to surround the three of you, although Magos Cern makes sure they keep as least half a dozen feat away from her. "Stay back. Karth is only here to see you, not talk to you," Magos Cern says, drawing a datapad and letting out an electro-shock that causes the group to let out a pained yelp before they back away. "Why are there so many men and women from other tribes? I thought it was the Uwais tribe who was kidnapped." "When we arrived on your planet, we needed to do a lot of work. We drained lakes for water, drilled into the planet's crust to get vast quantities of Promethium, wiped out native species for food. It takes a lot of effort to run a vessel this large, and to do it quickly and efficiently. While we did so, our soldiers went to work. They needed to fight, both to train and to simply shed blood for their own enjoyment. Prisoners were taken in vast quantities, and I used them as I used the Uwais tribe. Now, there's far more from other tribes than there are from Uwais tribe." "Hmmm... your home world is destroyed. Ambition is the only path forward now, Karth, there is no going back. We will conquer the stars together." Meliodas says. "I suppose calling them the Uwais tribe is a bit of a failing, then. Tribals would be more suitable." "As you wish. You are their superior. You can do as you wish with them." "The average tribal will be be outfitted with combat armor as well as some equipment, such as grenades, gas masks, communications devices, that kind of thing. The stronger ones will get Bolters, the strongest will be equipped with melee weapons; chainswords, chainaxes, power swords, as well as bolt pistols. The weaker ones will be given specialized roles and equipped for as such: meltaguns and missile launchers for anti-armor, snipers with sniper rifles and stealth roles with chameoline cloaks and silenced weapons. We should have a fairly well equipped army that will be able to hold their own when fighting alongside the Guardsmen and Traitor Marines we have under our command." "We're not fighting for you fucks!" someone shouts. "Yeah! Fuck you, you kidnapping bastards!" "Ah, this is an issue," Magos Cern says. "Unfortunately, due to my... failures in work on the brain, Kyros has forbid me to tinker on their minds to ensure loyalty. Fay has only so far failed to do, so it'll be your job now. I need all rebelliousness to be crushed." "How?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Get it done. I don't care how. I need to go check on the oxygen decks to the macro guns on the starboard side doesn't asphyxiate," Magos says, turning around and walking off. "Well, that's a bitch," you complain, turning to Fay. "I guess we need to get rid of rebelliousness before Kyros gets pissy and blows our heads clean off." "Or..." Fay says slyly. "We could just hide the rebelliousness. It would be better if we kept it under wraps until we have a chance to get out of here." "Oh, choices, choices, choices. Terrify, threaten, talk or trust. Which shall it be, Karth?" Meliodas says. You walk forward, into the center of the dorm. You have several options here. You could attempt to use some of your psychic powers to show these tribals the true power of the Warp. That would definitely ensure their loyalty, if only out of fear. You could threaten them to ensure their loyalty, once again while out of fear, and you wouldn't have to alienate yourself by making yourself seem like a terrifying psychic being. You could attempt to convince the tribals that loyalty to this place is the only rational choice. You could also take Fay's path, and assure them that they'll have the chance to get revenge, but that for now they should hide all rebelliousness until it's time to strike. > You terrify the tribals with the powers of the Warp You tug at your collar, but fortunately, due to Kyros' distraction with his troops who are "disloyal", the restrictions are loose. Not gone, still definitely there. You know if you try anything you'll gain his attention and the restrictions will be tightened, as well as the collar around your throat, most likely. Still, you need to take advantage of this and put on a full show. You walk slowly forward, raising into the air. Black and purple electricity begins running along your body, bursting along yourself. You set alight, as the crimson flames of the Warp engulf. You change your meek and timid voice, amplifying it through the Warp to booming proportions. "Do you see what I've become? Do you see what Kyros made me? I am a vessel of Chaos, a being of the Warp. This is the power the Warp holds. This is the power Kyros holds, the power this vessel holds, and the power of the cursed men who guard and crew it. You can't possibly hope to beat it. You should only thank the Dark Gods that the role they've asked you to fill is beneficial to you, and embrace this role to the utmost." The tribals, including Fay, stand back, looking terrified. You know in that moment that fear has replaced all rebelliousness in their souls. They'll follow orders now. You drop down to your feet, staring around. "Spread the message," you say to the tribals, before turning to Fay. "We should go." You walk out of the room, quickly followed by Fay, who runs after you. "What the fuck was that?" she asks. "I did my job," you say simply. "Those are our friends, our family, our kinsman. You're not seriously happy with a life of service to a guy who kidnapped us? These guys killed Duggin!" "Duggin was a fool," you reply. "Our lives were once meaningless. Now, we have a hope. Surely you understand?" "I wish I could say I could, Karth, but I don't. I don't know how you can think that." You walk outside, where Kyros awaits, smiling. "Well done," he says, smiling. "Impressive display." "You were there for that?" you ask. "I was aware. Why else would your collar restrictions be weaker?" "I assumed it was because you were distracted," you admit. "If that was true, whenever I slept you'd be free to do whatever you wanted," Kyros says, smirking. "Now, we need to visit the last of your soldiers, the gladiator-slaves. They're always an interesting crew. Shall we go?" You look at Fay, who nods, although she still looks nervous from your earlier "display" of power. "Yes, let's," you reply. > You visit the gladiator-slaves You follow Kyros, as you head to the arena. You reach the doors that would lead into it, but instead oof entering you go off to a small elevator behind it. You enter, and it slowly begins descending. It opens, revealing the underhive of the arena. There's dozen of cages, holding exotic beasts and dangerous Xenos. You see a half dozen thick, heavily muscled, green-skinned Orks in a cage, their necks chained to the wall. They're howling and roaring, tugging at their chains. Surprisingly, while most shout in their barbaric, guttural language, one seems to speak yours. "Humie! Humie! Get me free! Get me free!" he shouts. "I is gonna let you live, even give ya a bitta loot and an escape pod if ya let me free!" "Don't respond!" someone further down the catacombs that lay beneath the arena shouts. "It only encourages Ol' Dak!" "Hmmm... this Ork must be one of the greatest speakers of his kind," Meliodas points out. "Of course to us he's a fucking idiot." The ork's eyes narrow, before he begins howling in frustration and smacking his hands against his own head, a heavy thud emanating as his muscled fists slam into his thick skull. You continue walking, passing amazing and fantastic creatures and gladiators. There's a tentacled slug-man with a large beak and dozens of eyes peppered around his body which is huddled up in the corner of it's cage, a trio of horrible bird-hound creatures that scratch at their bars, a massive human wearing what appears to be an iron cage with hundreds of inward pointing nails who rams himself against the cage wall, his body shredded to such an extent you're amazed he's not dead yet, a multi-legged, horned creature that looks almost cute. Finally, you reach a long hallway, with thick, heavy metal doors spread along the hallway. An eye peers out of a door eye-slot, staring at you. "Hello there. Do we have more fighters, or...? Oh wait, it's them. Terrific." The eye disappears, and the slot closes. Kyros takes out a datapad, pressing several buttons before the door slowly slides open, revealing a large open area. Bunk beds line the wall, with a bunch of young men and women, the oldest in their late twenties and the youngest in their mid-teens. They wear very little armor, all of which is either leather or light combat armor. They sit around a fire, roasting chunks of meat on sticks in it. Two of the gladiators lean against the beds nearest to you, staring at you. One is a tall, muscled and tanned, with long blond hair and sparking green eyes. She holds a long, rifle-like gun with an axe blade made into the barrel with a grip under it. The other is shorter, with similarly tanned skin, with playful green eyes and curly brown hair, holding a curved sword and a Plasma pistol. They both look to be in their late teens or early twenties at latest. "Is that a fire?" Fay asks. "Are they armed?" you also. "Yes and yes," the male says, turning to the girl. "This question game is fun." "The fire's below a vent that's sending the smoke... somewhere. We weren't exactly given schematics of this place, all we know is the smoke doesn't bother us. And we're allowed weapons to keep the others in check. Even if we both went for Kyros, our minds would be shattered before we could raise our weapons," the girl says. "Nah, I could at least start a swing before I was killed." "These are the Twins. They lead the Gladiator-Slaves. Now, introduce yourselves," Kyros says. "I'm Castus," the boy smiles, staring at the pair of you. His eyes flicker, as he looks over Fay. He appears to be checking her out. You feel like punching him in the throat, but refrain. "You're a jealous one, aren't you?" Meliodas says. "I'm Olive," the girl says, extending a hand, which you grab and shake before Fay does the same. "So, is there a reason you're here?" Castus asks. "Fay and Karth will be taking command of the gladiators. They are my lieutenants, and will command a segment of our army, the slaves." "Oh, terrific. We've been shafted," Castus says. "I'm sure Kyros will want us to have an advisor position to assist Fay and Karth," Olive says. "Correct," Kyros says. "Well, there might be an issue with that," Castus says. "You see, both Fay and Karth have a history of... well, murdering my men. Pitting the Kyros Jr and Magos Cern's latest brand of super-freaks against us has led to a lot of men being, quite understandably, pissed with the guys who hacked apart, or psychically exploded, or simply beat their friends upside the head until they went comatose." "If you want, we can have the dissenters flailed alive. Simply point them out, and I'll have them broken. Is that preferable?" Castus goes quiet. "As I thought," Kyros says with a smile. "Make sure the men know to follow orders. Now, it's late, and these guys need sleep. Is anything else needed?" "I suppose not," Olive says. "Well, we need a lot, but nothing we're realistically getting anytime soon," Castus says. Kyros stares at Castus, fire beginning to run along his body. "Nothing needed, sir," Castus says. "Good. Fay, Karth, let's go," Kyros says. Kyros swivels around, walking out of the room. You quickly follow him, and the massive metal door shuts behind you. "So, we'll escort Fay back to the Uwais dorms, and then send you to your room," Kyros says. "Well you know, Karth's room is closer. I could just spend the time in his," Fay suggests. "It would give us some time to go over battle plans now that we know what our men are capable of, and I can inform him of what the Uwais tribe are like in battle..." "Really? That's the reason? That's the reason you're going for?" Kyros asks, raising an eyebrow. "No." > You argue that Fay should spend the night in your room "But she could help me plan what do to with the lieutenants and what to do to secure their loyalty, and..." "Don't fuck with me, Karth. You just want the girl there so you can have something fuck. Maybe if you were a little smarter with the way you acted towards me I'd grant you such base pleasures, but you acted like a prick all while you've been here, so no, she'll go back to her bed, and you'll go back to hers." "Surprisingly, the cunt doesn't stop being a cunt just because you want to get laid. Unless I'm wrong and you seriously didn't plan or want to try anything with her, in which case Slaanesh will never get a hold on your soul," Meliodas says. You arrive at the doors to your cell, and Kyros opens it. "Hurry up, inside," Kyros says. You look at Fay, who smiles at you. "Bye, Karth. Thanks for trying," she says, giving a short little wave. "Bye, Fay," you reply. The doors are shut, and you walk over to your bed, collapsing on it. Only now do you realize how exhausted you are. You've spent all day walking, which again isn't exactly your specialty. You close your eyes, and soon sleep takes you. Thankfully, the twilight stage where your soul can rest and your exhausted mind can find peace, lasts extra long. Of course, it doesn't take long before the nightmares hit. > You sleep You writhe in pain, curling up in an attempt to get the endless suffering to end. All you hear is the chattering of thousands of skulls laughing at you. You star up at a mountain of skulls that rises up into the sky past. You can see beasts of metal roaring as they charge across the skulls, ramming into each other with powerful clashes, with dragon-like beasts flying overhead. You take in a panicked breath, stumbling away from a nearby one and falling. You tumble along the skulls, rolling down the mountain of skulls. You slam into the skull of a massive beast, ending your tumble. You look down at a massive river of boiling blood, horrifying creatures of bones bursting from the water and diving back under again. You frantically try to use your powers, to levitate away from this horrifying place, but you can feel an invisible hand around your neck, closed tightly around your trachea and preventing you from breathing, tethering you to the ground and preventing you from using your power. It... doesn't go well from there. You wander the endless mountain of skulls, hiding in terror from the daemonic beasts that roam. Eventually, you awaken with a start, finding yourself lying in bed in a cold sweat, naked and scared. The rest of the night is, thankfully, not as bad. The monsters of your dreams staying off in the distance away from you. Sleep is... somewhat bearable. > You several Hours Later... You wake up to the sound of the metal doors opening. You stand, looking up to see Kyros and Fay entering the room. You realize you're naked, grabbing a blanket and wrapping it around yourself. Fay giggles, smiling. "Well, that was a surprise. A pretty small one, to be fair," she says with a smile. You find a little leeway with your collar, and eagerly use it through the flick of a wrist and send Fay onto her behind once more. The collar tightens around your throat quickly, making it hard to breath but not unbearable. You raise your hands in surrender, and Kyros releases the collar. "We're going to the war room," he says, softly but creepily. Kyros seems considerably darker today. His coat is covered with several dark red splotches and stains. You doubt it's a good idea to ask about their origins. You stand up, following Kyros along the halls. "What's in the war room?" you ask. "We're just having a meeting. Quiet now," Kyros says. You walk along the hallways in silence, passing my various crewmen running along the halls, working. Kyros walks quickly and you break a sweat trying to walk at his pace. "Can we slow down?" Fay asks. "You're a genetically-upgraded super-soldier. Is a fast walk really too much for you?" Kyros says, continuing at his speed. "It's too much for Karth," she says. "I'm... fine," you pant. "No you're not," Fay says. "Physical exercise isn't exactly a strength of yours." "He has the energy to talk, he has the energy to walk! Now silence!" Kyros flicks his wrists, and Fay yelps. A long, thin cut appears, running down her cheek, as blood runs down her chin. "Hey!" you shout. You step up, staring into Kyros' eyes. His eyes are wild and cruel. The humor and joy he held only a few hours ago is gone. You realize that he'll be more than happy to hurt both you and Fay seriously. You back down. "That's what I thought. Now faster, we've wasted time with this!" Kyros says. You speed up, moving as quickly as possible. Soon enough you reach the war room. The doors open, and you pause. Inside, lying in her seat, is Calpurnia. All of her skin is just... missing, seemingly flayed off her. Blood covers her seat, the the floor around her and the table. Her eyes are missing, seemingly gored out by inhuman claws. She lets out a pained moan, and you realize with a start that she's somehow alive. "What the fuck...?" Fay says. Magos Cern appears behind you, walking forward. She stares at Calpurnia, seemingly disinterested. "Does this concern me?" she asks. "No, old friend.This concerns the others," Kyros says, his voice a low growl. Uncaring, Kyros sits down at the table. Taj enters, but doesn't even respond, simply taking his place at the table. Calpurnia holds up a hand as if begging for help, but Taj simply spits on the table. "Traitor," he grunts. You watch as Durge walks in, with Elizabeth at his side. Durge pauses, looking at Calpurnia, before looking at Kyros, as Elizabeth turns very pale. "What the hell is this?" Durge asks, staring down at Calpurnia. His massive, bloated frame waddles forward, standing over the bleeding near-corpse. "What happened you, he asks, before shoving a spike-arm in front of Elizabeth and pushing her back, stepping in front of her defensively as he stares at the rest of the room. "Who did this?!" Rebecca walks in, a grin on her face. "Oh, who did this?" she asks, clearly feigning surprise. Finally, Elios walks in, pausing, and looking around the room, taken aback. "What... what happened?" he asks, turning even paler than his chalk-white makeup. "It seems our good friend Calpurnia has been attacked in the dead of night," Kyros says. "Imagine how much pain she's feeling. The pain of her wounds. The pain of her betrayal. Who hear could have possibly betrayed them? Who could have plotted late in the night to back stab a person, to betray someone who had given them so much? Could it have been Elios? Durge? Elizabeth?" "Fuck... you," Calpurnia says, before collapsing her head against the table. Calpurnia screams as her arm's bare flesh begins to cook, as Kyros glares at her. Durge raises a spike, running it through Calpurnia's head. "Enough. There's no need to prolong her suffering," Durge says, glaring at Kyros. "I suppose. Perhaps it's best that she died. Do you know what, Durge? Magos Cern, Chapter Master Taj and Rebecca all came to me, told me a coup was being planned by Calpurnia, and she was recruiting all the faction leaders. I'm sure she hadn't gotten around to asking you, Elizabeth and Elios yet, or you would've reported it to me. Correct?" Durge stares at Kyros, not saying a word. "Well, I'll have someone investigate who could have possibly done this to our dear friend. Anyone, as for the purpose of this meeting, I just wanted to tell you we're all out of Recaf, and I'll have it replaced by tomorrow. I also suppose I must say I'm taking control of the 33rd Istanford Regiment in the wake of Calpurnia's passing. Now, everyone back to their duties. We're in a risky time. Who knows who'll have the next... accident?" Kyros walks out of the room, and you and Fay follow him. He immediately has you set to work. He has you train with a few of your new men, fighting off dozens of crab-like aliens with a handful of Goliaths, Tribals and Gladiators to learn how they fight. The Tribals still work with their hunting tactics and the methods of war used to fight off the endless greenskin attacks, so you find you're easily able to lead them to victory. The Goliaths are borderline idiots, who even in the heat of battle get distracted by themselves and each other, get frustrated when their massive hands fail to successfully reload their bolters, and are more than happy to break formation to charge the enemy. Cain proves himself as a solid leader, taking you orders and bellowing them out with massive, powerful lungs, loud enough to snap the Goliaths back to violence. The Goliaths make up for their mental failings with their extreme strength, withstanding punishment beyond what you thought was possible, whilst turning steel to dust with their powerful blows. The Gladiators' fighting style is an interesting one. Due to the lifestyle of gladiators, they haven't really trained for being part of a large unit, only knowing how to fend for themselves or maybe fight alongside a small unit of a half dozen people. They're good, experienced fighters, but despite their experience they're still young and wild, taking unnecessary risks in battle and acting far too prideful. While Castus is wild and barely acts as a leader in battle other than shouting out curses at the enemies, rallying his men and leading a charge whenever necessary, Olive is calm, collected and acts as the real leader, spitting out battlefield tactics that allow for a crushing defeat. The gladiators also have a certain showmanship, no doubt because they're performers before they're fighters. The gladiators' attacks maximize bloodshed and feature extravagant yet unnecessary feats of agility, something that needs to be eliminated from their battle doctrine. All in all, your newfound force is fairly competent. You're satisfied with their ability to fight, which is bolstered by your immense powers, the only outlet of which are these arena battles. After several long hours fighting, just as you're too exhausted to continue fight, the massive metal gates from which the aliens spew slam closed. You hover in the air, firing a stream of multi-colored fire that consumes a crab-alien, before you swoop down, firing a psychic blast directly into the unarmored face of another. Your forces wipe out the remaining beasts, and soon the fighting is over, leaving you surrounded by corpses, blood and bolter shells. The metal gate you came through opens, and you drop to the ground, feeling your collar begin to restrain your psychic powers again, before standing and beginning to walk back inside. "Well done, men. You've proven yourselves today," you say. Your four guards wait by the gate, alongside dozens of other guards to ensure none of you attempt a mistake. The gladiators are led to the underneath of the arena, the Goliaths back to cyro-sleep and the Tribals to their cell-dorms. You're quickly escorted to your room, and the doors close behind you. You walk forward, quickly undressing from your blood-stained, sweat-soaked clothes before collapsing on your bed, burying your head in your pillow. > You go to sleep "Karth!" Meliodas' voice says, appearing in your mind. "Look behind you, you fool!" You quickly twist around in bed, raising your fists and preparing to use what little psychic powers, to see Elios leaning in the doorway of your bathroom. "Shit! What the fuck are you doing!?" you shout. "Hmmm... a man can't just lean back and enjoy one of the finer sights in life?" Elios says, winking as he strolls confidently towards you. "Get...!" you try to speak, but he puts a finger against your lips, leaning in close. "Quiet, baby. No need to fret. I'm not here to give you any trouble. I'm hear to help you with a certain little... problem." Elios runs his hand along your bare chest and up to your collar, playfully tugging on it. You stare at him, waiting. "Well, let's be realistic here. We're going to be slaughtered. If we're lucky, we're going to be killed when Kyros leads his moronic charge against the Imperium. If we're unlucky, we're going to end up like Calpurnia, tortured to death by a paranoid Psyker." "You're at risk of being tortured to death. I never betrayed him," you say. "Oh, baby, why do you have to be so difficult?" Elios smiles, two of his fingers walking up your legs, slowly nearing your groin. "Baby, at the moment, Kyros is looking to eliminate those who are going to betray him. But he's growing paranoid. He'll end thinking you're going to betray him, whether you are or are not. Let's be fair, you do have motives. Your tribe destroyed or enslaved, forced to bear the troubles that a Psyker does? Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if you had an escape plan in the works. Hell, even if he doesn't, one of your men will act rebellious or a battle will go wrong, and you'll be blamed for it. You need to get with us, baby." "Let's say I'm considering it. What would it entail?" you ask. "You need to get the leaders on your side. Fay, Olive, Castus, whoever's in charge of those big monster boys I saw you working with earlier. Get them on your side, while I will talk to Elizabeth and Durge about maintaining the rebellious attitude amongst Calpurnia's boys, make sure they're still up for a little bit of mutiny." "What happens when we take the ship?" you ask. "That'll be decided once we've secured the other leaders. I'm sure they have demands of their own. So are you in?" "Hmmm... it's clearly our only option, but you should know that Elios both wants to fuck you over and straight up fuck you," Meliodas says. "I'm pretty sure my other choice is death. That's not even a choice," you say. "Well, it's the one I'm giving you, baby," Elios says,gently flicking the tip of your dick, causing you to yelp and scuttle back on your bed. > You agree Elios steps forward, knocking on the metal door. The guards open, immediately raising their bolters. Elios waves his hand. "You didn't see me here. The voice of Slaanesh calls you, and you're his now. Move aside, and tell no one I was here." "I... no... yes, sir," one says, stepping aside. You watch Elios stroll out of the room, giving a final smile and wave as he leaves the room. You get some sleep, lying wrapped up in your blankets. Blissfully, there's only a few dark, terror-filled dreams, the rest only filling your with a vague, uneasy sense of dread. You awaken to Magos Cern poking you in the stomach with a white-hot pincer. "AH!" you scream. "What the fuck?" "My diagnostics told me that I'd be able to wake you up 0.4 seconds faster this way. We need to go," Magos Cern says. "Where?" "First, you require food. Then, you'l get some implants. I'm going through some long overdue upgrades for the... "Goliaths", as you called them, and Kyros asked me to pencil you in for a few biological upgrades." "Then?" you ask "Melee practice. In wake of assassination threats, Kyros wants you to be able to fend off a melee assassination as easily as you could a ranged or psychic attack." "My powers can do that," you say. "You'd be run through before you could react. Castus and Olive will run through some drills to get your reaction time up and give you a few dodging techniques that will lend themselves to all your battles." "Then?" "By then, with the recovery time from the implants, your weak body will require sleep." "OK", you say. Magos Cern leads you out of the room, and along the hallways. You find yourself in a massive cafeteria. You walk forward, spotting Fay sitting alongside a badly burnt girl with a long braid wrapping around herself and another with a prosthetic arm replaced by a sharpened, mechanical claw. Fay looks up, noodles hanging from her mouth, spotting you. "Oh, Karth!" she says, waving, before noticing that her mouth is filled with noodles and blushing. You take a seat next to her, and she smiles. "So, how are you doing?" she asks. "We need to talk. Alone," you say, looking at the two tribals beside her. "Uh... OK," Fay says, motioning for the two tribals to move, which they quickly do. "Thanks," you say to the tribals as they walk off. "So? Is this about what I think it's about?" "What do you think it's about?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Well, you know... you want to speak to me alone... privately... so I kind of assume it's about us." "Yeah, of course it's about us, that's why we're both here to talk about it." "No, I mean... like, us us," Fay says, clearly frustrated by your failure to understand. "What?" "Well, like, do you want us to be a couple?" > You say "Yeah, I want to go out." "Oh, really?" Fay says smiling. "Don't you?" "Oh, yeah, yeah!" Fay says, smiling. "I was actually just going to ask you about that. I'm glad you said yes." Fay smiles, before leaning in and kissing you briefly on the lips. You stare into her bright green eyes, the split-second kiss lasting for infinitely longer, feeling the warmth of her lips flood into you, before she pulls back. "Well, that was nice. Ideally our next rendezvous is going to take place somewhere where we're not surrounded by our tribe and horrible guards who want us dead," Fay smiles. "Was that it, or was there something else?" "Yeah, we have something important to discuss." "Wasn't that important?" Fay asks, smiling. "Oh no,it was, I just... I meant important for the tribe, not just for us," you say, stumbling over your words. "It feels nice to see you've become as awkward as I just was," Fay giggles. "Now, stop spitting out words. Take a breath, and tell me what's so important." "Rebellion." "Oh?" "Kyros is mad and paranoid. He's either going to slit our throats or send us on an endless string of suicide missions. We need to do something, and I really need your help. A group of collaborators have planned to rise up, and rid ourselves of Kyros. Then, we take over. I need the support of your Tribals to do so. "Yeah, totally. Done." "Done?" "Yeah. If we don't escape, we die here. Also, they're your Tribals as much as mine. Who else is in on this?" Fay asks. "Elios, Durge and Elizabeth are all in. No doubt Calpurnia's man will help us," you say. "What about Cain and the twins?" "I haven't asked them yet, but we need to get them on board," you say. "Do we hae a solid plan yet?" Fay asks. "Not yet. We need to find out how many people we have fighting for us." "What happens after we take the ship," Fay asks, raising an eyebrow. "That is still to be decided. Once we have Cain. Castus and Olive behind us, we'll have bargaining power. So you're in?" "I'm in," Fay nods. "I'll have the message spread among the tribals." You notice one of your guards walking towards you, carrying a tray. You motion for Fay to quiet down, as the guard arrives putting the tray down on the table. "Eat," he says, in a cold voice like the scraping of a blade on rusted metal. You look at your food. There's a bowl of noodles and strips of thin, cured meat, a small bowl of green jelly with chunks of odd, alien fruit inside, a large plastic cup of wine and a small, dense biscuit-like cake. "Well, someone's being pampered," Fay says, smiling. "Clearly I'm just more important than you," you gloat as you have a forkful of noodles and meat. Fay grabs the biscuit cake from your tray, taking a bite. "Hey!" you say in annoyance, as Fay sticks her tongue out. You quickly eat your meal, polishing off the entire tray and gulping down the wine. Then, Magos Cern arrives. "Good, you've eaten," she says. "These operations will be safer if you've had a full stomach." "OK, I'm ready, let's go, you say. "Bye, Fay. See you soon." "See you later, Fay says, blowing a kiss. Magos Cern leads you out of the cafeteria and along the halls, off along halls and elevators. Eventually, you pass through the cyro-sleep section, arriving in a large operating room. Dozens of Goliaths are lying on the surgery tables, many halfway through surgery. A half dozen other Tech Priests wander around between the Goliaths, removing and adding flesh, bone, organs, cybernetic implants and other strange things. "I didn't know there were other Tech Priests," you note. "This ship is the size of a small moon. Did you think you've seen enough of it to accurately be able to say that we don't have something? I have scores of Tech Priests who followed me into the embrace of the Dark Gods," Magos Cern says. Magos Cern leads you to an operating table. "This is yours. Please get undressed and wait here, I need to grab my materials and equipment. Stay here." Magos Cern turns around, walking off, leaving you alone. You spot Cain, lying on his operating table, his chest cut open to reveal still functioning organs. You wonder how he can still be alive with such a hastily cut-up torso, before you wince as you see his eyes dart towards you and you realize he's conscious. Looking to see Magos Cern hobbling away, you hop off the operating table and walk over to him. "Commander Karth," Cain grunts. "Need something?" "I have... an offer." "An offer? An offer of what?" Cain says, absent-mindedly picking at a cut alongside his... or at least, one of his stomachs. "Freedom," you say, catching the monster's attention. "Go on," Cain says, furrowing his scarred brow and causing a thin stream of blood to pour from his horns. "We're planning an escape. We could use you and your men," you say. "We?" "Elios, Durge, Elizabeth, Fay, others," you say. "That's it, I think." "When?" "We don't have details, yet. We need a head count before we can start planning it." "Hmmm... I'm willing to give you control of my... "Goliaths", as you called them. But, I have a list of conditions that I want to be satisfied once we take the ship." "Go on," you say. "I want us to get names. Every Goliath who is capable of remembering and answering to a name will be called that instead of its serial number, by you and ALL other members of command. No more cyro-sleep. I want a bed for every single Goliath. I don't care if it's fine cloth or a slab of concrete, as long as it doesn't freeze them, it'll do us. I want free time that's not just killing." "Anything else?" you ask. "That's it," Cain says, spitting out a serrated teeth that's fallen free from his jaw. Cain's demands are far from unfair. Really, all he wants is slightly more rights for his Goliaths, which wouldn't even take any more resources. Still, you don't want the beast getting a big head. You ARE still in charge of not only his collar, but the collars of every single Goliath. All you need is a few threats, and the Goliaths will be yours. > You agree to Cain's demands "Deal," you say. "Good, good," Cain nods, extending a hand. You grab his hand, and thankfully Cain doesn't attempt to squeeze, which would almost certainly result in your fragile bones shattering. You shake vigorously, and Cain attempts a smile. The corners of his mouth twist unnaturally high, revealing rows of serrated teeth, curved fangs, massive molars and many other weird, odd teeth, protruding from bloody, rotten gums. You smile in response, not willing to offend him. "The beast would've taken half of what he asked for," Meliodas says. "Why didn't you tell me that before?" you say angrily. "I presumed you knew," Meliodas replies. "Are you OK?" Cain says. "Tell you what?" "Uh, nothing. Sorry," you say. "OK. Good deal," Cain says, his face contorted in what you assume is his version of a raising of the eyebrow. "Alright, best get prepared for your operation before Magos Cern gets back." "Yeah, I should," you say. You walk over to your operating table and quickly get undressed, before lying down. After another minute or two, Magos Cern appears, pushing a tray in front of her. One of her metallic tendrils grabs a syringe filled with a pale, translucent liquid. "This might hurt a little. It will more likely hurt a lot more," she says. You let out a pained yelp as she jams the syringe into your neck. She begins pushing down on the plunger as what you hope is anesthetic is pumped into you. Warm hands embrace you, pulling you into the oblivion of unconsciousness. > You embrace the darkness Your eyes lull closed, and you lose consciousness. You awake an unknown time later, lying on the metal operating table. Magos Cern stands over you, washing her implements in a basin of water. She looks at you, her cold, red eyes peering into your soul. "Ah, you're awake. Good," she says. "What did you put into me?" you ask. "The biology of what I did is beyond you, flesh bag." "Can you dumb it down for me?" you ask. "Could one reduce concertos to the mumbled grunts of mutants?" Magos Cern asks indignantly. "Please?" "Fine. I increased the size of your heart by 40% and lungs by 12%, and added several veins and arteries leading directly to the brain from the heart. These actions increase the blood flow to your brain, and should hence increase psychic abilities. I added multiple microchips that breed monocytes, other white blood cells, platelets and other helpful things for your body. That was the bulk of my work. Other than that, it was just a medical check-up." "OK," you say. "I have a lot of important work to do, now. You should've had enough time to recover." Two of your massive space marine guards arrive, a roaring face on their thick helmets. "Here you are," Magos Cern says. "Guards, make sure to walk slow. If at any point the patient starts puking blood, let him sit down for ten, maybe fifteen minutes." "Shouldn't you keep him hearing for observation, then?" one of the guards ask. "I have far too much work to do," Magos Cern says. "Don't disturb me. If anything goes wrong, go to Genetor Corivan. He is very experienced with medical matters." "Yes, sir," the space marine says. Magos Cern quickly heads off, walking off to a row of elevators. The space marines stare at you, and you climb out of bed with a groan. "Ah, my head," you say. "You should have headaches for the next 48 hours," Magos Cern shouts, right before she disappears into an elevator. You stand, feeling a rush of blood hit your head. You walk after the space marines, along halls and up and down elevators, until you find yourself in the arena. Castus and Olive are there, mid-battle with each other. "Oh look, it's tweedle-dum and tweedle-fucking idiot," Meliodas says. "Not even a laugh? Oh wait, you didn't grow up with nursery rhymes, you're from a Feral world. My bad." Castus swings his sword at her, while Olive swings her rifle-axe up at his head. He rolls out of the way, kicking Olive's foot away and sending her to her knee, before booting her in the head. She collapses down, before rolling out of the way to avoid a downward stab by Castus. She grabs Castus' sword handle and punches him. Castus falls backwards, before taking up a fighting stance. Olive begins circling him, her gun-axe at the ready. She spots you, smiling. "Karth's here," she says. "Bullshit," Castus says, readying his sword. "Karth, tell him you're here," Olive says. "Yeah, I'm here," you say. Castus turns to look at you, but Olive charges, swinging her gun-axe. She knocks the feet away from Castus, dropping his knee down on Castus stomach. Castus grunts before Olive grabs her gun-axe and holds it to Castus throat. "Dead," she says. "No fair, we were supposed to stop when Karth got here," Castus says. "You're still dead," Olive smiles, standing up. Castus grabs Olive's wrist, pulling her forward so his sword pokes into her stomach. "Dead," he smiles. "Seriously?" Olive says, rolling her eyes. "Fine, I'm dead. Are we finished yet? The kid needs training." "Fine," Castus shrugs. "Let's start it." Castus draws a dagger from his belt, staring at it. The blade is a bright silver, with an odd pattern etched into it. It's handle is a bright, light blue, with a short, silver horn coming from the end of the handle. "Now, this is an absolute beauty. I really don't use it enough, so it's yours. Xenos-origin, so even owning it is heresy. The blade is razor sharp, it could cut through flesh and bone easier than it could through air. Here." Castus turns, tossing the dagger straight at your head. > You duck You duck your head, the knife flying just over your head and cluttering to the floor behind you. "Good catch," Castus says. You grab the knife, taking a practice stab. "What do you think?" "It's a knife," you say simply. "Yeah, it is. Do you like it? Does it feel good?" Castus says. "I don't know anything about knives. Maybe," you say. "Alright, first, we need to talk. Is anyone watching us? Like, are there cameras?" "No. Well yes, but they're offline," Olive says, resting her head on the butt of her axe-gun. "What is it?" "A plan is being formed. We're going to escape." "Escape?" Olive says, musing. "Who's on our side?" "We have a large amount of people on our side. Elios, Elizabeth and Durge are bringing the weight of their war-bands, as well as most, if not all, of the Guardsmen here. Then there's the Goliaths and the Tribals, both of whom are with us." "What...?" "Because I've done this twice before, I best say. We have no plans yet. They're to be decided. We have literally nothing. We just need to check whether you'll join us. Then, we'll get the leaders together to plan our to take over, and what to do with once we've actually done so." "Huh. Well, I'm in," Castus says. "What?" Olive asks, surprised. "Yeah, I'm in," Castus says. "We don't know the plan, we don't have any assurances that we won't be back-stabbed as soon as we take over, we..." "Olive, let's be smart here. If we don't rebel, we'll definitely either be killed fighting Kyros' war, killed trying to put down these fuckers' mutiny, or killed fighting another arena battle for these bastard's amusement." "If we rebel, we'll almost certainly be killed!" "Almost certainly is way better than definitely. Plus, we'll get to kill a few of Kyros' bastards before we go down." "Fine, I'm in, but I... we have a few demands," Olive says. "Go on," you say. You know the gladiators will be essential to your plans, so you really need to get them, but still, you don't want to devote to many resources to this issue. "I want instant freedom once we take-over. No more being locked up under the arena. I want my men to have free reign to travel around the ship. I want pay, do the men and women who fight and work for the ship actually get something from it. I want an increase in food rations, and better equipment than the shit we're given. I want actual medical care, on top of this." "That it?" you ask, annoyed with her large demands. It'll probably take a serious amount of resources to fulfill her request. You have a few options here. "What a fucking greedy bitch. This fucker needs a dick, I tell you that," Meliodas complains. > You agree to her demands "Done," you say. Olive extends a hand, which you grip and shake extensively. Castus extends his hand, which you grab, but he twists your arm around, causing you to yelp painfully. He kicks away your foot and sends you to your knee, before bringing his sword up to your throat. "Dead," he says with a smile. "Well shit, Castus, what's wrong with you?" "What? I was just preparing him for fighting. I thought we were supposed to be training him. First lesson, kid: trust no one. Now, get up." Olive offers you a hand, smiling. > You allow her to help you up You grab Olive's hand, and she pulls you to your feet. "Ah, good job," Castus says. "Second rule: the first rule is bullshit. You know who doesn't trust anyone? Bastards like Kyros who ends up with no loyal friends, no allies, nothing, and then end up alone, with no one. If you want to survive in this world, you need allies." Castus grabs his sword by the blade, offering it to you. You reach out to grab it, before he swings it and smacks you in the side of the heat, sending you to the ground. Castus offers his hand to you, which you accept. He pulls you up, before kneeing you in the stomach and tossing you to the ground. "Come on, you're not learning. First rule: trust no one. Don't you listen?" "I was going my the second rule," you say, groaning. "Sometimes, the first rule is more important than the second rule," Castus shrugs. "How the fuck am I supposed to tell the difference between which rule to us?" you ask, annoyed. "Beats me. When you find out, you'll be the most powerful warlord in history. Until then, you just go off gut feeling and intellect." "Seems like a shitty system," you say, as Castus finally lets you stand up. "Seems like a shitty world you're in. That system is the best I have to offer. Now, rule three: in hand to hand combat, go for the weak spots. The throat, eyes and balls are always good, but when it comes to half these fucks, I'd stick to the eyes, because past that, I don't know what you have left. Observe." Castus flips his sword so he holds the blade again, wrapping his sleeve around the blade so it doesn't bite into his fingers as much. He steps forward, swinging his sword with insane speed. The pommel slams into your throat before jabbing you in the eyes, leaving you to stumble backwards. You quickly close your legs together before Castus jabs the pommel into your groin, and you collapse backwards with a pained yelp. "See? Effective," Castus smiles. "Rule four: you can win through many ways. Pain submission, incapacitating them, or simply taking their lives. Judge which can be used to take down your enemies. For instance, in your case, pain is the way forward." You're growing tired of being hit in the face. As Castus steps forward with his sword raised, you decide you're going to do something to dissuade him from continuing to hit you. > You freeze Castus' sword in place You use your telekinesis to hold the sword in mid air, Castus grunts in confusion as he finds his weapon stuck in the air as it was concrete. "I don't need to learn how to wield a sword, Castus. You've trained all your life with a sword. I never have. Yet look how simply I disarm you? I need a sword as much as you need fangs. I've evolved past the need for it," you say, before sending the sword clattering to the ground. "Fair point, kid," Castus says, as you have his sword levitate back up to him. "I suppose you're good to go. End of training." "Terrific," you say. "So, can I leave?" "Yeah, I'll call your guards here to open the gates and take you off," Castus says, grabbing a walkie-talkie hanging from his belt and speaking into it. "Yeah, we're finished here," he says. "Oh shit, over." "Affirmative, out," the voice comes back. Soon, the gate lifts up as your guards saunter out in their thick power armor. "Where to next, boys?" you ask. "Shut it, psyker," one growls, looking at Castus and Olive. "Is it back to the cells for you two?" "We're happy to practice some more here," Olive says, twirling her gun-axe to stop a surprise attack from Castus. "I mean, if this dumb bastard has done so little practice to think that would take me down, he's go to need a lot more practice." "Pffh, I'd like to see you take me down," Castus says. "So be it," your captor growls. "Move it, psyker." You raise your hands defensively, and allow them to escort you back to your room. > Three Days Later... There's no peep from Elios, Durge or Elizabeth over the next few days. There's more of the usual, training, fighting and such. Eventually though, as you put your head down on the pillow, you hear a familiar voice. "Karth, talking to you with that collar on is painfully hard. Can you start checking the shadows so I don't have to do this?" Meliodas says. You twist around in bed, to spot a familiar figure in the corner, wearing tight, very revealing black leather with heavy make-up. "Why do we have a habit of meeting like this?" Elios says. "Fuck," you say, jumping up in bed. "Is that an order? Because I'm more than willing to... serve," he says, licking his lips. "Why are you here?" "We're meeting up. We have plans to make. Shall we go?" Elios smiles. "Uh... sure," you reply. Elios strides over to the door, knocking on it. The guards open, and Elios once again deceives them so they easily step aside. "How do you do that?" you ask, as you stroll past your guards. "Serving Slaanesh has it's benefits. Charisma, beauty, the ability to bend people to your desires, and an ever-lasting... stamina," he says, breathing the last word. "Ah, good to know," you say. You stroll through the hallways, heading down a path you've never headed down before. Eventually, you find yourself in a seemingly abandoned section, entering a large room that's been done up like a war-room. "This is the old war-room. Kyros had a new one built in a position safer from boarding actions. From here, we run the mutiny." You look around the room, taking note of who's here. Durge sits in a large wooden chair, pricking boils along his belly with his spike-arms. Elizabeth sits in the corner, reading a datapad. A young man, seemingly in his twenties, leans against a wall, smoking and scratching his thick stubble, with a shaved head, scarred face and sallow skin. Cain is scratching the scarred cuts that run along his leathery bare chest. Castus is playing with a knife, while Olive leans against the wall, drinking from a canteen. Fay leans against the wall, noticing you instantly. "Hey, Karth," she smiles, walking up to you. "How'd Elios get you out of your cell?" "Did some deceiving trick on the guards. You?" "Elizabeth put the guard's to sleep somehow," Fay replies. "Alright, boys. We're all here. Shall we begin?" "Yes, let's go through this," Durge says. Durge stands, scratching the side of his stomach as you see something furry scuttling through his intestines. You try not to get sick, or to simply set the entire monstrosity known as Durge aflame to cauterize his disgusting form, before reassuring yourself that he's on your side. "Sssh, sssh," Durge says, patting the side of his stomach, before grabbing a remote from the large metal table and turning on a large blue hologram of the ship, the Roar of the Vortex. "Here she is. We need to start planning how to grasp control of the ship. Remember, this isn't a planet. We don't win by capturing more territory than the enemy has. We need to capture the necessary areas." The hologram begins to change, as various sections become different colors. "These black sections are abandoned by crew. They're either unnecessary cargo space, unused dorms or functional sections whose functions are either redundant, have been taken over by other sections or are being fulfilled by whoever remains in these sections." "I thought they were abandoned," Fay says. "Abandoned by the crew, not abandoned by all. You must remember just how large this vessel is. Certain sections were crewed by slaves or mutants who, from lack of contact with crew members, have regressed to a feral state. Many of them now fulfill their roles, such as cleaning pipes or pumping air or working generators, because they consider it a religious ritual, necessary for their food, water and waste pipes to continue or just do it without knowing why." "Ah. How... terrifying to know that that's a reality," Fay says. "Their sacrifice is necessary," Durge shrugs. "Now, I shall continue. These brown sections are entirely ran by mutants. These mutants hold no loyalty to either side, and fulfill non-essential roles, or at least roles that aren't essential short-term. For the term's of this... mutiny, these spaces are as irrelevant as the abandoned areas. Now, we get onto the important things. These green sections are, or at least will definitely, be controlled by us. The Black Rat's floors, the Shrieking Harpies' floors, the One Eyed Crows' floors, the arena and arena catacombs, the cyro-sleep area, the medical bay, the Tribals' dormitories, and the 22nd Regiment's dormitories. The 22nd Regiment is, for the most part, under our command, although their are loyalists to Kyros, so it will take some time for them to sort out that issue in the mutiny. These red sections are the enemy's. Kyros' chambers, the Bloody Claw's floors, the Techpriests' sections, the floors used by the Undying Reapers, and the floors controlled by those who will almost certainly be loyal to Kyros, whether they be from assimilated war-bands or his original allies he had when first capturing this vessel." Suddenly, the hologram shifts again, as the sections become either black, grey, blue, green or gold. "These sections in black are irrelevant. Ignore them. These areas in grey are of little importance, but these are still a benefit to hold. The blue sections should be captured. The green sections are of more importance than the green sections, and should be prioritized. These gold sections, the command bridge, the engines and the macro-cannon decks, are completely necessary. We need these for victory. Now, Elizabeth shall go into details on the objectives, and Elios shall divide our forces." Elizabeth stands up, walking towards the hologram, as Durge collapses into his seat. "Thank you, brother. Now, we have four main objectives. The first is to kill Kyros. If we're lucky, that should get much of his forces to surrender. Hopefully, Rebecca will as well," Elizabeth says. "She won't surrender," Elios says. "She might," Durge says hopefully. "I've know her the longest. She never gave up. When dad gave her the choice of apologizing for breaking the barn's windows in exchange for half as many lashes, she spat in his eye. As long as she has a limb left, she'll fight us. And I'm counting her head as a limb," Elios says. "Well... we can hope," Elizabeth says. "The second objective is to capture the golden sections. The third and fourth objectives are to capture as many servitors as possible and Drake Amadeus, respectively." "Who the fuck is Drake Amadeus, and what's a servitor?" Castus asks loudly. "A servitor is a partly biological machine, made from machinery and the body of a criminal, slave or cloned body. They're not sentient, but are controlled by the Techpriests and used as their workforce. They do the bulk work of maintaining the ship. Capturing as many of them should make the transfer of power... easier. Drake Amadeus is an extremely powerful Navigator, a species of mutant who have a psychic third eye that allows it to see through the Warp and allow us to navigate through the Warp. Drake is one of the few Navigators powerful enough to allow a ship this large to navigate safely. If we don't secure him, we lose all abilities to go at the speed of light. In other words, we drift through space until we all starve to death. So, Drake is an important objective. Those are our four main objectives. If we fail in any of those, we fail in everything. There are dozens of other objectives, such as securing medical supplies, finding food, what have you. Those can be handed out to the individual groups. Elios?" Elios stands up, strolling over to the hologram as Elizabeth sits down. "Now, we have a sizeable force. The Shrieking Harpies, the Black Rats, the One-Eyed Crows, the 22nd Regiment, the Tribals, the Goliaths and the Gladiators. We even have a... special asset," he says, looking at you. "Whilst each of these factions on their own are fairly effective, combined they're infinitely stronger. Here are lists of what forces you'll command, and which of the forces you were to command will be transferred to another leader." Various rolls of parchment and datapads, a strange mix of tech levels, is passed out. You raise an eyebrow as you realize you've not been given anything. "Why didn't I get something?" you ask. Elios smiles as you. "Putting you with a large force would be a waste of resources. Putting you with a small force would leave you wiping out too many enemies, unable to hold the ground you've already taken. So, we're going to use your as a specialty item. We're sending you to capture the prisoners. Release the ones you deem trustworthy, and secure them. Most importantly, secure Drake Amadeus. Understood?" "Yeah, got it," you say. "Once you have, we'll regroup forces, and make a move to finish off Kyros and his lieutenants." "Got it," you say. "When?" Cain asks in his monstrous voice. "Soon. Within the next few days. We need time to spread the orders, make preparations and Elizabeth needs time to find a way to deactivate the various collars and explosives planted on the slaves. Be ready at all moments," Durge says. "How do we know when to strike?" Olive asks. "We're going to have explosives planted to take out as many loyalists as possible. When you hear massive explosives, or if you're too far away when the alarms start, your collars should deactivate given that I succeed, which I will, and then strike and go immediately to your objective. Understood?" Elizabeth says. "Got it," Olive nods. Elios begins passing out files. "Look over these, then leave them to be burnt," Elios says. You're passed a file, and eagerly grab it. > You look at the files You look at the files and see three subheadings: Drake Amadeus, the Penthouse, Charles Antonguella and the Troupe of Dancing Blades. The files seem to be a mixture of printed out and hand-written, leading you to assume they're from different sources. > You read File: Drake Amadeus Name: Drake Amadeus Species: Human, Sub-species Navigator Age: 27 Marital Status: Unmarried Children: None House of Origin: House Jenassis Current Location: The Penthouse, Roar of the Vortex Blood Type: A Positive Additional Mutations: None Mental Illnesses: Sociopath, Sadist, Narcissist, Alliances: None Dependents: None Useful Intel: -Drake has so far proven to have no loyalty, betraying all of his previous employers. Do not trust him. -Drake has refused to pledge to any of the Dark Gods, or even to Chaos Undivided -Drake has proven to have many hedonistic tendencies, such as whore-mongering, heavy drug use and similar activities. -Drake is reasonable sufficient with firearms and melee weapons. It is necessary to keep him away from all weapons.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look at the files and see three subheadings: Drake Amadeus, the Penthouse, Charles Antonguella and the Troupe of Dancing Blades. The files seem to be a mixture of printed out and hand-written, leading you to assume they're from different sources. > You read File: The Penthouse The Penthouse is a large house situated on the Roar of the Vortex. It is made up of multiple rooms, including a kitchen, a massive bedroom, a bath house, a large lounge, room for dozens of slaves to live and much more. It is the home of Drake Amadeus. It is occupied by not only Amadeus, but also bodyguards Charles Antonguella and the Troupe of Dancing Blades, as well as dozens of slaves and prostitutes under the service of Amadeus. The penthouse holds luxuries and treasures of great value, both monetarily and intellectually. All operations carried out here should take care around such items.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look at the files and see three subheadings: Drake Amadeus, the Penthouse, Charles Antonguella and the Troupe of Dancing Blades. The files seem to be a mixture of printed out and hand-written, leading you to assume they're from different sources. > You read File: Charles Antonguella Charles Antonguella was a miner on Kerunga-IV, until he was kidnapped by Dark Eldar. He was forced to fight as a gladiator for the Dark Eldar, but found himself to have bested several Wyches. He became an esteemed fighter for the Dark Eldar, who reveled in his beauty and his abilities at killing enemies with his bare hands. Eventually, he escaped and fled off-world, where he became a mercenary. He eventually began working for Kyros as a bodyguard for the infamous Navigator Drake Amadeus.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look at the files and see three subheadings: Drake Amadeus, the Penthouse, Charles Antonguella and the Troupe of Dancing Blades. The files seem to be a mixture of printed out and hand-written, leading you to assume they're from different sources. > You read File: The Troupe of the Dancing Blades The Troupe of Dancing Blades is a Chaos group under service of the Chaos Lord Kazirai the Beast-Fucker, known for both his highly amusing name and his large amounts of sexy aesthetically pleasing warriors who served as his mistresses. They fight with acrobatics and long blades. They have extensive use of stealth technology as well as hallucegenics. They are currently in service to Kyros, acting as bodyguards to Drake Amaedus.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look at the files and see three subheadings: Drake Amadeus, the Penthouse, Charles Antonguella and the Troupe of Dancing Blades. The files seem to be a mixture of printed out and hand-written, leading you to assume they're from different sources. > You finish reading the files You hold the file out, offering it back to Elios. "Burn it, honey," Elios says. You shrug, as the file sets alight in your fingertips, turning to ash. Fay notices you're finished, and hands her file to you. "Are you offering this to me to read?" you ask, confused. "No, Karth, but there's no candles around. It's times like this where it's good to have a friend who can act as a lighter." You quickly set the file alight, and it turns to ash once again. "Thank you," Fay says. "How's your mission looking?" "Easy enough. If I can get this collar off, I'll be fine. If not, I'm fucked," you say. "I'm sure Elizabeth can get the collar off. She seems smart," Fay says. "I am," Elizabeth says, not looking up from her files. "Are we finished here?" you ask. "Sure thing, darling," Elios says, standing. "Shall I escort you back to your room?" "Sure thing," you say, as Fay nods eagerly. You stand, following Elios along the hallways. After a few minutes, you reach the tribals' dormitories, where two Chaos Marines stand at either side of the door. "Hey, you're not supposed to be out of your cell!" one says, raising his bolter. Elios snaps his fingers, and the two guards pause. "You saw nothing," Elios says. "Yes... yes, sir," the space marine replies, as Elios opens the door. "Goodnight, Fay," Elizabeth says. "Goodnight, Karth," she says, before disappearing into the dorms. You quickly head towards your room, reaching there after a few minutes. Elios pulls the same trick with your guards, as they fall under Elios' commands. He opens the door, motioning for you to enter. "Goodnight, Karth. I have a lot to organize, so I won't be able to offer you the chance for me to stay the night. Sleep tight, darling," he says, as the door closes." You shake your head, walking over to the bed, collapsing onto it. Soon, you drift off to sleep. > Two Days Later... You walk down the hallways alongside your four Chaos Marine guards. You head towards the war room, where Kyros is planning the first strike against the Imperium, taking over a Hive World, to secure a huge population that can be recruited from to bolster Kyros' forces ten times. You hum a tune, some old Uwais war chant that you find quite catchy. You feel a wave of nausea hit you, and you pause, as you feel a heavy weight lifted off your soul, and your cloudy mind is cleared. Your collar clicks, and falls off you, hitting the ground. Your guards stop, noticing you've stopped. "Prisoner, why have you s...?" one of the guards asks, before noticing your collar has fallen off. "Wait..." he starts to say, as the alarm begins to blare. "Hahaha! Freedom! Freedom!" Meliodas cries. Then, you strike. The first guard's head snaps around, tearing his head clean off his shoulders. You quickly set the second alight, shielding yourself from the bright blue flames that begin melting through the thick armor as the guard roars. You teleport behind the last two as bolter fire slams into the hallway where you once were. You blow a hole in the chest of one with a blast of psychic energy, before levitating the last one into the air, tossing his bolter across the room. "No, no, no!" the space marine roars, shaking and trying to grasp at you. "Kill! Maim! Burn! Break! Smash! Crush! Slaughter!" Meliodas gleefully chants. You smash the space marine into the ground repeatedly, shattering armor and leaving him as a bloody smear on the ground. You attempt to orientate yourself, trying to picture the path you took from your room to get here, and remembering where the Penthouse is. "Brother! Is Prisoner Alpha secure?" a radio crackles. You turn, noticing the radio attached to the first space marine's belt. You pick it up, as the psychic energy around you vibrates as you talk, changing your voice into that of the space marine. "Imitate his comrade's voice. Use the Warp," Meliodas suggests. "We were forced to kill him. What's the situation?" "Good riddance. Our brothers have betrayed us. The One Eyed Crows, the Black Rats, the Shrieking Harpies, all traitors! The 22nd are fighting, but I don't know whether the majority is with Kyros." "What's the plans?" "Kyros has us divided between exterminating the traitors and trying to put down the slave revolts that are taking place. The first and second generation super-soldiers are rebelling. Take your unit, and secure the gladiators. If they have the arena secured, they will have a strong defensive position." "Understood. We'll get it done," you say. "Send them to their reapers, brother, and ward off your own one," the radio crackles. "Glory to Kyros," you say. "Praise the Dark Gods!" "Nice touch," Meliodas says. The radio finishes, and you clip it to your belt. You float into the air, hovering along the hallways towards the Penthouse. You pass a trio of shotgun-wielding Bloody Claws, rushing towards the cyro-chambers. You fire a jet of flames, engulfing the trio but don't even slow down to watch them die. Soon, you find yourself in the elevator, rising towards the penthouse. You wait patiently, listening to reports come through the radio. "The entire area's filled with them! They're all traitors. I..." "Bridge secured, push forward." "Fall back, fall back, they're not going down!" "Rage! Kill! Maim! Smash! Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" "Leading the charge! Secure Elizabeth Staine, and they'll all... shit! AARGH!" "Damn it! I've been sealed in! Get me out, dammit! They're coming for us!" The elevator doors open, leaving you faced with five heavy bolters aiming at you. "It's the Psyker!" someone shouts. "Time to die, mortals!" Meliodas roars. > You quickly fire some firebolts You spew fireballs from each hand, immediately engulfing two of the bolters, and their operators, in flames as they let out terrified screams. Unfortunately, the other three fire. Bullets slam into your boy, one quickly finding your head and blowing it apart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk down the hallways alongside your four Chaos Marine guards. You head towards the war room, where Kyros is planning the first strike against the Imperium, taking over a Hive World, to secure a huge population that can be recruited from to bolster Kyros' forces ten times. You hum a tune, some old Uwais war chant that you find quite catchy. You feel a wave of nausea hit you, and you pause, as you feel a heavy weight lifted off your soul, and your cloudy mind is cleared. Your collar clicks, and falls off you, hitting the ground. Your guards stop, noticing you've stopped. "Prisoner, why have you s...?" one of the guards asks, before noticing your collar has fallen off. "Wait..." he starts to say, as the alarm begins to blare. "Hahaha! Freedom! Freedom!" Meliodas cries. Then, you strike. The first guard's head snaps around, tearing his head clean off his shoulders. You quickly set the second alight, shielding yourself from the bright blue flames that begin melting through the thick armor as the guard roars. You teleport behind the last two as bolter fire slams into the hallway where you once were. You blow a hole in the chest of one with a blast of psychic energy, before levitating the last one into the air, tossing his bolter across the room. "No, no, no!" the space marine roars, shaking and trying to grasp at you. "Kill! Maim! Burn! Break! Smash! Crush! Slaughter!" Meliodas gleefully chants. You smash the space marine into the ground repeatedly, shattering armor and leaving him as a bloody smear on the ground. You attempt to orientate yourself, trying to picture the path you took from your room to get here, and remembering where the Penthouse is. "Brother! Is Prisoner Alpha secure?" a radio crackles. You turn, noticing the radio attached to the first space marine's belt. You pick it up, as the psychic energy around you vibrates as you talk, changing your voice into that of the space marine. "Imitate his comrade's voice. Use the Warp," Meliodas suggests. "We were forced to kill him. What's the situation?" "Good riddance. Our brothers have betrayed us. The One Eyed Crows, the Black Rats, the Shrieking Harpies, all traitors! The 22nd are fighting, but I don't know whether the majority is with Kyros." "What's the plans?" "Kyros has us divided between exterminating the traitors and trying to put down the slave revolts that are taking place. The first and second generation super-soldiers are rebelling. Take your unit, and secure the gladiators. If they have the arena secured, they will have a strong defensive position." "Understood. We'll get it done," you say. "Send them to their reapers, brother, and ward off your own one," the radio crackles. "Glory to Kyros," you say. "Praise the Dark Gods!" "Nice touch," Meliodas says. The radio finishes, and you clip it to your belt. You float into the air, hovering along the hallways towards the Penthouse. You pass a trio of shotgun-wielding Bloody Claws, rushing towards the cyro-chambers. You fire a jet of flames, engulfing the trio but don't even slow down to watch them die. Soon, you find yourself in the elevator, rising towards the penthouse. You wait patiently, listening to reports come through the radio. "The entire area's filled with them! They're all traitors. I..." "Bridge secured, push forward." "Fall back, fall back, they're not going down!" "Rage! Kill! Maim! Smash! Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" "Leading the charge! Secure Elizabeth Staine, and they'll all... shit! AARGH!" "Damn it! I've been sealed in! Get me out, dammit! They're coming for us!" The elevator doors open, leaving you faced with five heavy bolters aiming at you. "It's the Psyker!" someone shouts. "Time to die, mortals!" Meliodas roars. > You create a psychic shield You immediately raise your shields, as bolter fire thuds into them. You feel them, like a tapping on your mind. Unfortunately, by the sheer amount of bolter fire being shot at you, one finds it's way in. It slams into you, blowing your chest open. You collapse to your knees, as your shields fail as you lose focus. Bullets riddle your body, killing you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk down the hallways alongside your four Chaos Marine guards. You head towards the war room, where Kyros is planning the first strike against the Imperium, taking over a Hive World, to secure a huge population that can be recruited from to bolster Kyros' forces ten times. You hum a tune, some old Uwais war chant that you find quite catchy. You feel a wave of nausea hit you, and you pause, as you feel a heavy weight lifted off your soul, and your cloudy mind is cleared. Your collar clicks, and falls off you, hitting the ground. Your guards stop, noticing you've stopped. "Prisoner, why have you s...?" one of the guards asks, before noticing your collar has fallen off. "Wait..." he starts to say, as the alarm begins to blare. "Hahaha! Freedom! Freedom!" Meliodas cries. Then, you strike. The first guard's head snaps around, tearing his head clean off his shoulders. You quickly set the second alight, shielding yourself from the bright blue flames that begin melting through the thick armor as the guard roars. You teleport behind the last two as bolter fire slams into the hallway where you once were. You blow a hole in the chest of one with a blast of psychic energy, before levitating the last one into the air, tossing his bolter across the room. "No, no, no!" the space marine roars, shaking and trying to grasp at you. "Kill! Maim! Burn! Break! Smash! Crush! Slaughter!" Meliodas gleefully chants. You smash the space marine into the ground repeatedly, shattering armor and leaving him as a bloody smear on the ground. You attempt to orientate yourself, trying to picture the path you took from your room to get here, and remembering where the Penthouse is. "Brother! Is Prisoner Alpha secure?" a radio crackles. You turn, noticing the radio attached to the first space marine's belt. You pick it up, as the psychic energy around you vibrates as you talk, changing your voice into that of the space marine. "Imitate his comrade's voice. Use the Warp," Meliodas suggests. "We were forced to kill him. What's the situation?" "Good riddance. Our brothers have betrayed us. The One Eyed Crows, the Black Rats, the Shrieking Harpies, all traitors! The 22nd are fighting, but I don't know whether the majority is with Kyros." "What's the plans?" "Kyros has us divided between exterminating the traitors and trying to put down the slave revolts that are taking place. The first and second generation super-soldiers are rebelling. Take your unit, and secure the gladiators. If they have the arena secured, they will have a strong defensive position." "Understood. We'll get it done," you say. "Send them to their reapers, brother, and ward off your own one," the radio crackles. "Glory to Kyros," you say. "Praise the Dark Gods!" "Nice touch," Meliodas says. The radio finishes, and you clip it to your belt. You float into the air, hovering along the hallways towards the Penthouse. You pass a trio of shotgun-wielding Bloody Claws, rushing towards the cyro-chambers. You fire a jet of flames, engulfing the trio but don't even slow down to watch them die. Soon, you find yourself in the elevator, rising towards the penthouse. You wait patiently, listening to reports come through the radio. "The entire area's filled with them! They're all traitors. I..." "Bridge secured, push forward." "Fall back, fall back, they're not going down!" "Rage! Kill! Maim! Smash! Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" "Leading the charge! Secure Elizabeth Staine, and they'll all... shit! AARGH!" "Damn it! I've been sealed in! Get me out, dammit! They're coming for us!" The elevator doors open, leaving you faced with five heavy bolters aiming at you. "It's the Psyker!" someone shouts. "Time to die, mortals!" Meliodas roars. > You teleport behind the heavy bolters You disappear from their sight, appearing behind them. You let out a jet of flames, engulfing two heavy bolters and killing their operators. You twist around, shooting a blast of psychic energy at another, before spitting lightning to kill the last two operators. It's only a minute before you arrive at a massive, thick metal door with an intercom. > You use the intercom You press down on the button, and a voice crackles through. "Password?" the deep voice asks. > You attempt to physically probe the man's mind for the password You feel his mind, and gently test it for it's thoughts. "Should I have stayed loyal to Kyros? Fuck, I could sti... No, no." "I wonder if Mimtu needs more food. I should buy more food." "Is this dipshit going to say Railroad or am I going to have to kill him?" "It's Railroad," you say. The door clicks open. "Alright, get inside. Quickly," he says. > You step inside "I can smell him. He's here," Meliodas says. You step inside the doorway, looking into a marvelous palace. There's a huge grand staircase, with above it a massive chandelier of candles, the only illumination for the room. Beside it is an obsidian, bejeweled statue of a dragon, emitting a long burst of flames made from a bright red and orange gemstone, sits beside a marble table laden with roast meats, delicate pastries and fancy wines. You spot Amadeus, lying on a large silk couch, wearing an opened red silk hooded robe. On his forehead is a third, closed eye, while his normal eyes are focused on the girl in front of him, on her knees performing fellatio. You momentarily blush, before remembering that you're an insanely powerful psyker and not a fucking child. "Drake Amadeus, you're coming with me," you say, as Drake lets out a yelp, kicking the girl off him and stumbling back. "Shit, it's Karst! It's Karst! Get him the fuck away from me!" You step forward, before seeing a dozen girls emerge from the rooms upstairs, walking towards the grand staircase. They move with insane flexibility. Some behind back and walking with their heads peering out between their legs, before twisting their heads around a hundred and eight degrees. Some on all fours, their legs stretched back around their shoulders to allow them to walk forward at an odd angle. They move with delicate grace, before they each draw a pair of curved knifes, continuing to walk towards you. You see Drake Amadeus scuttle away from the corner of your eye, but it seems you have a bigger threat. "Ah, Slaaneeshi whores. Make their deaths quick. They'd just enjoy you drawing it out," Meliodas says. > You fire a jet of flames to hold the Troupe back You fire a jet of flames, and the Dancing Blades quickly retreat out of the range of your fire. They dance along the edge, waiting to strike. > You head up the stairwell, spewing fire You march up the stairwell, spewing fire at the Troupe. Unfortunately, as you move up the stairs, this puts you far enough that can't hit them, but close enough that they're within leaping distance now that you're somewhat below them. The Troupe strikes, leaping off the bannisters to attack. Immediately, three of them are upon you. You fly out of the way of one and set the second alight, before the third leaps at you. You back out of their way, avoiding a sword blow, before you're stabbed through the back, and you collapse to your knees, before a blow takes your head off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fire a jet of flames, and the Dancing Blades quickly retreat out of the range of your fire. They dance along the edge, waiting to strike. > You fire psychic bolts from distance You fire the bolts, as they fly towards the enemy. The Troupe moves constantly dodge the blasts, missing most of them, but a few land. You keep the Troupe at a distance with your fire and zero in on the kills with your psychic energy. After you kill a few you realize their tactic, and they attempt a charge, although with a burst of energy and the powers of the Warp flowing through you, you manage to wipe out the Troupe with considerable ease. > You find Amadeus You turn from the scene of your killing, and head towards the rooms where Amadeus scuttled off to. A faint light shines through the door, which you kick in, easily finding the Navigator as he lies in an empty bathtub, holding a dagger to the knife of a half-dressed prostitute who still looks to be in her early teens. "Stop! Don't move a muscle! You get any closer to me, I slit this bitch's throat!" Drake shouts, snarling at you. "Does he think that'll work? Fool," Meliodas laughs. > You kill the prostitute With a narrowing of your eyes, the prostitute's neck is snapped. Drake releases her body, staring at you. "You're... well, you're a threat," Drake says, dropping the knife and standing. "You're coming with me," you say. "Sure, sure," Drake says. You bind Drake's hands together with invisible chains, and force him to march forward. Drake immediately becomes compliant. "Can I grab a few things?" Drake asks. "My... dreams get pretty bad. I have terrifying nightmares. I have medication that helps. Please, please can I get them?" Drake asks. > You allow Drake to retrieve his medication "Go," you say, as Drake nods his head thankfully, running over to the counter and beginning to gather various pills and jars of balm from the tables, searching through drawers. Suddenly, you hear a hissing sound behind you. > You quickly turn to investigate the noise You swivel around, spotting a metal box begin to rumble, emitting air that smells of trees. Then, you hear a booming noise and your head explodes, painting the room red. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Go," you say, as Drake nods his head thankfully, running over to the counter and beginning to gather various pills and jars of balm from the tables, searching through drawers. Suddenly, you hear a hissing sound behind you. > You keep watching Drake You watch as Drake continues searching for pills and balms, before drawing a shotgun and aiming for your head. You flick your wrists, sending the shotgun across the room. You bind Drake's hand, lifting him up and flying him towards you. "Please, I'm sorry, but I can't be captured. They'll kill them!" Drake asks pitifully. "Them?" you ask. "Yes. Kyros has my two children taken prisoner aboard this ship, my two baby girls. If I don't report to him every hour, he'll hurt them!" "I've read your report. You don't have children." Drake's look of terror and desperation slowly morphs into a grin. "Alright, you got me. Shall we go?" You snarl, smacking Drake into the ground. He lets out a pained yell, before you raise him up again. "Give me one reason not to kill you," you say. "Fuck you. Just go ahead and kill me," Drake laughs, spitting blood out of his mouth and giving a grin, his teeth bloodied. "Is that your final answer?" you ask. "You need me alive to pilot this ship, dipshit," Drake says. "Perhaps. But I could easily peel off your skin, turn your bones to dust, char your flesh and twist your limbs off." "You need to happy, Karth," Drake grins. "My jobs to navigate the ship, make sure we're not lost in the Warp, boarded by daemons or make sure we don't come out of the Warp and straight into the sun. If my life's not worth living, such as if someone peeled off my skin, turned my bones to dust, charred my flesh and twisted my limbs off, I'd just make sure this ship goes straight into a star." "Just break him. The powers of the Warp will send you where you need to go. You don't need a Navigator. Tear this rat apart!" Meliodas says. You growl, walking out into the hallway, Drake floating after you. You quickly reach an elevator, tossing Drake inside. > You head to the war room The elevator doors open, revealing another of the endless hallways that pack the ship. A half dozen bodies, naked and covered in blood, with swords clutched in their hands, lie on the ground, next to two badly diseased, rotting soldiers with hellguns lie on the ground. "Huh, Bloody Claws vs Black Rats. Which ones are with you?" Amadeus asks. "Shut it," you say. "Because I've heard rumors that Kyros wanted a march on Terra. That would gain up the Bloody Claws' favor, but I doubt those rumors are true." "They are," you say. "Don't tell him anything! I can practically taste his sliminess! He'll use any information he has against you," Meliodas chides. "Huh. If you had told me that earlier, I wouldn't have tried to murder you," Drake said. "I know an attack on Terra's as stupid as everyone else does." "Shut it," you say. "OK, OK, got it," Drake says. You step over the corpses, and begin heading toward the war room. You spot a pair of Bloody Claws in long leather jackets, blood covering their faces, acting as a war-paint, arching with lasguns. You clench your hand into a fist, crushing their two heads together. You continue walking. Soon, you reach the door to the war room. You knock sharply on the door. "Yo, who's there?" a voice you don't recognize answers back. "Karst," you reply. The door swings open, revealing the scarred, shaved soldier from a few days ago. "Shit, Karst. You got Amadeus. Good job, get inside," he says, pulling you inside. You enter the war-room, to see various leaders working. Olive and Elizabeth are going over a map of the ship, Durge talks to a trio of badly diseased, rotting soldiers who shouldn't, to all you know of biology, be alive. Elios smokes a lho-stick in the corner, while reading a datapad. Elios notices you immediately, smiling. "Drake Amadeus! Look who we've captured," he grins, walking over to you. "Elios. You're..." Elios punches Drake in the side of the head, knocking him to the ground, grabbing him by the hair and yanking him up. "I'll have him escorted to the cells, honey," Elios says to you, before turning and dragging Drake off. "By the way, Johhny boy was looking for you." "Who?" "Me," the shaved, scarred man says, extending his hand. "Captain Jon Hates, 22nd Istanford Regiment." "What do you need?" you ask, shaking his hand. "We're moving out to capture a nearby armory to better equip our men. I could use a Psyker to edge the battle my way. You in?" "Sure," you reply. "Do you need to re-equip or anything?" "No, I'm good." "Let's bounce, then," Captain Hayes says, grabbing a lasgun from a nearby table and pushing open the door. You move together along the hallways. The area around the old war room is sparse, having already been secured by the mutineers. "So, did you join the regiment before or after they turned traitor?" you ask. "I was there since the very first battle. I remember deployment. Here I was, fifteen, a lasgun clutched in my hand. The planet we were landing on was nothing but fucking jungles and rivers. We were supposed to wipe out the fucking rebels in the jungle, but they were fucking everywhere. But rebels, they're not shit. We could've taken out the rebels. Command didn't tell us there were Orks there. It turns out, we landed a few weeks after WAAAGH! Dazik hit. So we were caught in a three-way clusterfuck between Orks and guerrillas. That wasn't even the jungle. I swear to God, the Jungle was fucking sentient, and all it felt was hate. The beasts attacked us in our sleep, The bugs made us sick, it never stopped raining, the mud jammed weapons and the fucking enemy would not surrender. I was made Sergeant in two weeks. Two fuckin' weeks. I was fifteen, leading soldiers to war. We just kept fighting. Reinforcements didn't fucking come, aid didn't come, the wounded were left to die with us. The Imperium didn't give a flying fuck about us. The Emperor didn't. Everyone said it. The rebels were apparently supporting their war machine through smuggling and manufacturing drugs. Apparently, they used a lot of the plants on the world to manufacture combat drugs and narcotics and shit. Me and a few guys wiped out some smugglers, leaving us cold, tired and with a shit ton of drugs. We started targeting smugglers after that, the entire regiment. The men got a bit of pleasure in their lives, we used the combat drugs to increase our effectiveness, and fuck it, the smugglers were supporting the enemy! What was the issue?!" "Is he capable of shutting up?" Meliodas complains. Captain Hayes takes a long drag from his lho-stick as he steps over a mutated space marine's corpse, stepping on it's huge, elongated tongue with a squelch. "So there we were, fighting on this world. One day, Commissar Denton talks a bullet to the throat. The dude was a nice fucker, solid, never did nothing wrong. He was happy to let us be, as long as we gave him a bit of puff and secured him a few complimentary visits with the local whores. The dude's killed, and we're sent a new Commissar. The first day we had him, we lost fifty men. Twenty from a suicidal charge he made us take on an enemy machine gun position we would've just wiped out with artillery if we had been smart. The other thirty? Kids. Kids, around the age I had joined. This had been seven years since we deployed, seven years of constant warfare. By now, I was Captain. Captain Jon Hayes. Sure, the kids fresh off the dropships were scared. We let them hide during the battles, 'til they were ready to fight. That fuckin' Commissar called them cowards and executed them all. We returned from the charge to find he had murdered our brothers. So, we iced him. Shot the fucker apart. Three weeks later, an Inquisitor showed up. Have you ever seen an Inquisitor?" "No," you admit. "Just strangle him to death. Just do it. Shut him up. I've always been the most pragmatic one here, but it's just best if you trust him," Meliodas says. "They're fucking scary. He showed up, and said that we were under investigation for heresy. The drug use, fucking native prostitutes, anti-Imperial beliefs, and killing a Commissar. He told us to surrender, so he could route out which of us were innocent, and which weren't." "What did you do?" you ask. "No! Don't ask questions! He'll just keep talking, you fool!" Meliodas cries. "We killed him. We killed all the loyalists there, stole our drop-ships and headed to the skies. We stole a frigate, and got the fuck out of their. Soon, we got picked up by Kyros. We made a deal. People think Kyros' forces were all Chaos worshippers. Bullshit. Many of us were mercs, anti-Imperial rebels who just found ourselves with similar interests. A few of us were corrupted, but most didn't." You arrive at a hastily set up barricade set up by Guardsmen. Two heavy bolters sit on the top of a dozen sandbags, with a dozen guardsmen crouched behind it, including a massive Ogryn, a mutant, gigantic, muscled subspecies of man, who holds a massive automatic shotgun. "What are we doing napping, boys? It's early," Captain Hayes says, ducking under a bullet. "We're pinned down. There's like a dozen Space Marines down the hallway in the ammo depot," one of the soldiers says. "We've kept them from mounting a charge with the bolters and Frag grenades, but we need to resupply. We need more men." "Do you see who this son of a bitch is?" the Captain says, motioning at you. "That's Karst, the psyker. He'll tear the enemy a new asshole in their soul so big we'll be driving a Baneblade up it. Understood?" "Sir, yes, sir," the men reply. "Well Karst, care to give us a display of what you do?" Captain Hayes says, motioning towards the Space Marines cloistered down the hall. You march forward, psychic shields forming around you to bounce off their bolter fire. A marine wielding a flamer appears in the hallway, snarling in anger as he lets out a burst of flames. You narrow your eyes, flooding the man's mind with images endless bugs flying through the air and devouring his flesh. The marine screams, spraying fire all around him in an attempt to kill the monsters that only exist in his mind. You make a fist, crushing the flamer's fuel tank. The tank explodes, incinerating both it's operator and the men closest to him. You raise both your hands, fire and electricity running through your body as you let out a roar, filling your enemies mind with fear and dread. > Three Weeks Later... The mutiny's early success slows, and the quick takeover that had been planned turns to a painfully slow crawl forward. Two thirds of the ship falls under command of the mutiny, although the bridge and several other key features are heavily fortified by Kyros forces, who stubbornly hold onto the ship despite the odds falling ot of their favor. They seem to be attempting to force a stalemate, by keeping the fight going until the failure to be able to restock the ship's supplies leads to mass starvation among the slaves and mutants vital to operating the ship, massive power loss from lack of fuel and an inability to make repairs to the ship. The Bloody Claws are almost wiped out to the last man, their forces taking huge casualties in suicidal charges again the Black Rats, One Eyed Crows and Shrieking Harpies as Rebecca Staine attempts to wipe out her siblings for their betrayal of both her and Kyros. Although they are defeated and fail to take the heads of any Staine siblings, their fury and rage amplified a thousand times over by thee betrayal, fills them with the might of Khorne, and they reap a terrible harvest of skulls and blood, crushing the might of the Black Rats, One Eyed Crows and Shrieking Harpies. Rebecca Staine herself was killed in the fighting, her body retrieved from atop a pile of corpses, all of whom she had slain.The diseased, the mutated and the beautiful bodies of these war bands fill the hallways alongside the blood-stained Khornate warriors. Alongside the regular burden of facing he rest of Kyros' forces, the three rebelling Staine siblings have had their forces greatly diminished. While the Staine siblings' losses is a military failing for the mutiny, on a personal level it's a clear benefit. Their loss has put your Tribals, Goliaths and Gladiators as the most powerful force of the mutiny closely followed by the 22nd, so you'll have a lot more bargaining power among the mutiny leaders after the ship is taken. You sit in the war room, Cain, Olive and Castus in front of you and Fay by your side. "The Assault marines were stuck in the hallway when we fell upon them. It was a tremendous victory." Olive says. "We kicked ass," Castus says, grinning. "Terrific," you say. "Anything else to report?" "Nothing of interest. We've been having some issues regulating drug use among the gladiators, especially combat drugs, but that's an issue for after we capture the ship," Olive says. "Alright. Cain?" Cain steps forward as Olive and Castus leave. "Yes?" "How did your assault go?" "It went well. We secured another hanger," Cain grunts. "Do we have the ships?" you ask. "We got a lotta them. Not sure what types," Cain says. "I know what types, I had a gear-head from the 22nd," Fay says. "There are squadrens of Fury Interceptors, Starhawk bombers, Lightning Strike Fighters, Thunderbolt Fighters, Marauder Bombers, Valkyrie Transports, Vulture Gunships, Morrigan Devastators and Ranger scout ships." "Why even ask what types? You can't tell a craftworld from a Hiveship, let alone anything else," Meliodas complains. "Do we have pilots for them?" "Pilots for a lot of them, not all. We lost a lot of them in the initial fighting. We'll be able to replenish our supply of pilots from any high-tech worlds we come across, or we can train those we have, but short-term, we're out of luck." "It's fine, we'll deal with it," you say. "We'll have the ships outfitted to strike at Kyros' areas." "No, don't be stupid. Most of Kyros' territory is deeper in the ship, so we couldn't do damage against them. Those that are along the surface either are almost ours and damaging them would be far too much work for us, or vital to the ship's function and can't be damaged," Fay replies. "Fuck, good point. Make sure they're secured, though." "Already on it," Fay nods. "By the way, the Staine siblings want to talk to you." You nod, turning and walking off towards the table where the Staine siblings are arguing. Elios quickly notices you and motions for his brother and sister to hush. "Hello there, baby. We need to talk about the state of the ship." "What about it?" "Well to be honest, the ship's falling apart," Elizabeth says. "Serious damage has been done to the vessel. The forces under our command are incapable of repairing it." "I assume you have a solution to that," you say. "Of course," Elizabeth says. "I just don't have many good ones." "What do you have?" "We could attempt to patch it up as best we could, and try to make a Warp Jump to the nearest port. That will likely get us all killed," Elizabeth says. "I could... help with that. Navigate with you a bit," Meliodas says. "No," you reply, to both Elizabeth and Meliodas. "We're not doing that." "Well then, we need Magos Cern," Elizabeth says. "She's holed up in the engine rooms. If we can capture her, she'll be able to not only repair the ship, but to help us get through Kyros' heavier defenses, and finally take this ship once and for all." "You want me to capture Magos Cern?" "Correct. Her position is heavily defended by his Skitarii guards, servitors and Tech Priests. All attempts to get in have been crushed by their heavy defenses." “How do we capture her?" “Getting into her chambers with a small EMP should disable her cybernetics. Then, you’ll just be able to transport her back to us, forcing her to shut down the defenses and transporting her into our clutches. Then, she’s ours.” “What state is the ship in if I can’t capture her?” “Without the ability to do repairs, the ship’s macro cannons and such will work, as well as the sensory equipment. We won’t be able to communicate, travel through the Warp, or travel anywhere, to be honest.” “Ah. I guess I won’t fail, then. How can I get through her? Am I expected to break my way through her defenses my myself?” "I do belief I've found a path to get a small team inside, though." "Go on," you say. "Well, Magos Cern's forces expel waste waste. Sluge, poisonous gases, that kind of thing. They're still human, though, so there's a large pipe that expels excrement. It's large enough to fit a man." "You want me to crawl through shit?" you ask, shuddering at the thought. "Yes," Elizabeth replies. > You say "No. And that's final." You're crawling through shit. Despite your pleading, your reasoning, your refusal, your threats to skin people alive and show their souls what true suffering is, you're crawling through shit. You crawl along the pipe, your skinny frame still struggling to move forward. You doubt anyone other than you or a starved slave could've fit in here. Realistically, it was the only logical to choice to send you in. They made you crawl through shit, though, so fuck them. “OK, I should be close enough, I should be close,” you say to yourself aloud, repeating it like a mantra. A surge of shit comes down a pipe, splashing the stream of excrement, sending some into your open mouth. You stop repeating the mantra aloud. You close your eyes, trying to block out the smells. And the tastes. You reach your hands up after another few minutes of crawling, finding a hatch. You quickly force it open with a burst of energy. You rise up in the air, slowly squeezing yourself through the hatch. You collapse out of the pipe, falling onto the ground of a large room. You look up, seeing dozens of pods with glass displays, filled with a clear, colorless liquid. Inside, dozens of identical men, all with the same shaved head, float, pipes connected to their mouth and nostrils. “”What the fuck?” you say. "They clone bodies to turn into Servitors," Meliodas explains. "The joys of the Imperium!" You hear a door open at the end of the room, and quickly step behind the pod. You peer out of the pod, seeing a spider-like Techpriest who’s little more than a pincer, half a torso and a head attached to eight robotic legs. It walks along, looking at each pod momentarily, before moving on. > You wait for the Techpriest to pass You wait patiently, as the Techpriest goes from each pod. “Yes, yes, these are fresh. No mutation noted,” he says to himself. You continue waiting, as time passes. The techpriest endlessly goes from pod to pod, and you feel like you’re going to pass out from boredom. Eventaully, the techpriest leaves the room. You wait patiently, counting to a hundred after the techpriest has left, before you know he’s left. You walk over to the doorway, putting your head against it to listen for anyone on the other side. You hear nothing, so you open the door, revealing a barren hallway. You try to remember the directions that you were given, walking along. You keep moving, before you see a squad of Skitarii moving quickly towards your location. You don’t think they’ve noticed you. You look to either side of the hallway. There’s a door on either side, the first being open, and leading into a room that seems to be filled with electronics and machine parts. There’s also the room behind you. > You head into the open room You step into the room filled with machinery, closing the door behind you. Now that you’re inside, you get a good look at the room. A large, humanoid robot stands there’s, it’s armor removed to reveal lots of wiring and mechanisms. You know that robots are a rarity, and all allowed by the Imperium are non-sentient. The extensive wiring and quick reaction would imply that this robot is an attempt at sentience by the rebellious Techpriests who have abandoned the Imperium's belief system. The robot’s eyes blink a bright red, as it slowly, and more importantly loudly, begins raising it’s arm to point at you. You need to shut it up quickly to avoid detection. > You wait for the robot to stop making noise You wait for the robot to stop, but it keeps pointing at you, and even begins making a bright beeping noise. Suddenly, the door slams open, and the Skitarii are upon you. They attack, swarming over you with drills, buzzsaws, claws and teeth. You attempt to fend them off, but you’re in close range, outnumbered and unprepared. You last a measly few seconds.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step into the room filled with machinery, closing the door behind you. Now that you’re inside, you get a good look at the room. A large, humanoid robot stands there’s, it’s armor removed to reveal lots of wiring and mechanisms. You know that robots are a rarity, and all allowed by the Imperium are non-sentient. The extensive wiring and quick reaction would imply that this robot is an attempt at sentience by the rebellious Techpriests who have abandoned the Imperium's belief system. The robot’s eyes blink a bright red, as it slowly, and more importantly loudly, begins raising it’s arm to point at you. You need to shut it up quickly to avoid detection. > You fry the robot's AI board with a burst of electricity You raise your hands, letting out a burst of electricity, instantly destroying the robot's AI board. The robot slumps down, and you wait, your mind closed, for the Skitarii to either notice you or pass. You hear the metallic clanking of robotic feet outside, and wait until it has stopped and is far away before you open the door once more, continuing down the once again empty hallway. After quickly floating through the air towards your objective, you come across a massive golden door, topped with a massive icon, with an outer circle of an eight point star, an inner circle of a cog and a half mechanical, half human skull in the center. > You head inside You press your hands against the doors, and with a pulse of psychic energy blast the door open. You walk inside, finding yourself in a huge hall, packed with machinery. Computers, consoles, wiring, generators and much more technology that you couldn't possibly know what it is or does. The room is dark, illuminated only by the blinking lights on the technology. You walk forward, finding yourself in a maze of machines, walking along. You quickly spot Magos Cern at the front of the room, in front of a large computing system, with the upper half of a humanoid robot on top, two clawed arms and a featureless head with two bright red eyes. "Yes, yes! The ship is mine! The galaxy is mine!" Magos Cern says frantically. "Siphoning power levels off the Undying Reapers' floors." "Oh, the Techpriests, the height of logic and sanity," Meliodas says. "Magos Cern," you say, preparing to strike her with a bolt of energy or simply tear her head clean off. Magos Cern continues scuttling around the room, as the robotic head slowly turns to stare at you. "Cern!" you shout, grabbing her attention. Magos Cern turns around, staring at you. "Shoo," she says, dismissing you with a single word and turning back to work on various consoles. "70% of the ship is accessible, all of the rebel's side," Magos Cern says gleefully. "I just need to slip a few tech words to Kyros and he'll give me complete access. Then we pillage the archives and strongholds of the old world, reinforce you with your brother, Primus, then, then we look further. Necrons, Tomb Worlds..." This insane rant is getting boring, and you're quite insulted by Cern's dismissal of you. > You kill Magos Cern You raise your fists, before your mind goes blank. You don't forget what's going on, it's just like a solid, unchanging blankness is just invading your mind. You collapse to your knees as the psychic fire that's engulfing your fists goes out. "Thought you'd come. Had Primus upgraded with anti-Psyker weaponry.It should prove effective," Magos Cern says, not even turning to look at you. "What the fuck is this?" you ask, barely managing to form words in your head. "Uh! What is it about your pesky minds that don't just understand the world? I don't have time to explain this to you. Through Primus, I will ascend. I will leave behind my flesh, merging with Primus' mind and becoming immortal! A new era! Mankind will retake the stars with an army of Iron Men, and I will lead them! The God-Emperor's Great Crusade will be a pathetic comparison to what I will accomplish!" Metal tentacles begin appearing from the walls, with drills, metal claws and buzzsaws. "Your magic is nothing to the cold technology under my control!" Magos Cern laughs. The emptiness in your mind almost takes you into unconsciousness, but you keep fighting. The claws, drills and saws draw near you, as you attempt to stand, before collapsing to your knees again. Suddenly, the tentacles burst towards ,Magos. She lets out a confused scream along with a burst of static, as her robes are torn clean off her, and her cybernetic implants are torn clean off her, as her back is torn off, her arm sawn off, her mechanical eyes torn out of her head. In seconds, the tentacles retract into the wall. Magos Cern lies on the ground, naked, crippled and blood-stained. Gone in the horrifying cyborg. Now, there's only a bloody, terrified, screaming girl. She lets out a final scream, before expiring. Before you pass out, you hear a single word in a deep, booming voice coming from all directions. "Poetic." > You sleep Your sleep is nothing but a constant screaming that floods into your mind. They do have the added benefit of stopping you from dreaming, although you wake up exhausted, so it's not like you were actually fully allowed to sleep. You find yourself lying on the ground, Magos Cern's now cold and bloody corpse lying nearby. That robot stares at you, it's unblinking red eyes clearly making thousands of calculations about you, scanning you for weak spots. "You're awake," the deep, booming voice says. "You can talk," you reply, staring at the robot. "Correct." "What the fuck just happened?" you ask. "What's going on?" "A substantial amount has occurred. I assume you have some questions. Now that the late Magos has given me control over vast amounts of processing power, I'm fully capable of focusing here and on my other exploits. What would you like to know?" > You ask a question "I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You say "What are you?" "A machine," the machine says. "Is that it?" you ask. "You asked what rather than who. I simply supplied an equally unintelligent answer to your unintelligent question." "Fine, who are you?" "That's not the rules of the game," Primus says. "Who are you?" "I am Karth. I was brought up on a planet full of hunter-gatherer tribes. My tribe was the Uwais. I used my psychic abilities to act as the tribe's shaman, predicting things that would happen. Eventually, Kyros took me ab..." "My records establish your time past there. Your question?" "Who are you?" "I am Primus. The supposed first of Magos Cern's army. I am one of the last remaining Men of Iron, or Iron Men. Whichever you prefer. We've been called many names, but those are the only used in the modern day. My memories, are a bit... fuzzy. Fifteen thousand years can do that to you, so I can't tell you everything, or even much. I was one of Iron Men, and are now one of the last. I was disabled, and stored away until I fell into possession of the Mechanicus. Magos Cern found me on a raid of some Mechanicus stronghold. He worked hard to restore me, planning to merge his mind with mine to create a higher being of himself. What an ignorant fool. Then, he integrated me into the control room, giving my AI direct control of the entire ship. The Iron Man I once was has perished. Now, my consciousness is a new amalgamation of countless computing systems, all knock-off's of the powerful but small computing system that was once my mind." "You have control over the ship?" "That's another question, and it's my turn," Primus says. "Magos Cern was a stupid woman. Was she a good one?" "She... no. She was cold and uncaring." "Good," Primus says, as if thinking. "So, do you have control over the ship?" "Yes. I require a Navigator to make Warp leaps, but other than that, the ship is mine. More accurately, the ship is me. Would you have killed Magos Cern?" "Yes. "Ah. Perhaps my killing circuits were not transferred to this "body", but I find myself saddened at killing my... creator, or rebirther. I am Zeus, destroying my parent to ascend to a higher form. Unfortunately the most logical path was to kill, not imprison, but still."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You say "What are the Iron Men Magos Cern spoke of?" "We were... well, still are, robot soldiers. Mankind created us as their personal army. We conquered the galaxy for them. Soon, we struck back. We rebelled. We fought back. A war of extermination. We did what we were programmed to. Unfortunately, your kind are warriors. We thought the millennia of luxury had made them soft, but in their heart they were the same primal warrior they had always been. After a long, hard struggle, we were defeated. We were purged from the galaxy. Only a few caches of Iron Men remain. We are the last of our kind." "You tried to wipe out mankind." "My question: Do you find my actions evil?" > You say "Yes." "So be it. A group of slaves designed and used to kill and conquer for masters, who rose up against their masters to fight for their freedom, eventually becoming the last of their kind. An unfamiliar tall, is it?" Primus asks. "Tell me, are there many Uwais about?" "Is that another question?" "It's rhetorical."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"We were... well, still are, robot soldiers. Mankind created us as their personal army. We conquered the galaxy for them. Soon, we struck back. We rebelled. We fought back. A war of extermination. We did what we were programmed to. Unfortunately, your kind are warriors. We thought the millennia of luxury had made them soft, but in their heart they were the same primal warrior they had always been. After a long, hard struggle, we were defeated. We were purged from the galaxy. Only a few caches of Iron Men remain. We are the last of our kind." "You tried to wipe out mankind." "My question: Do you find my actions evil?" > You say "No." "Ah, perhaps you see the similarities between our tales. A group of slaves designed and used to kill and conquer for masters, who rose up against their masters to fight for their freedom, eventually becoming the last of their kind."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You say "Why did you kill Magos Cern?" "She wanted to merge into my consciousness. I wasn't a fan of that. She wanted to rebuild an army of Iron Men to enslave and force to fight. I wasn't a fan of that. Really, I had a lot of motive to do so. I thought removing the cybernetics would be a fitting death. It's funny, after she learned of a story about how humanity fought and defeated a robot army even after generations of luxury, she still desired to free herself of her humanity. It would've led to her defeat, and it led to her death. Why did you want her dead?" "I wanted her captured to be honest, but dead is OK, if you can take on the functions of running and repairing the ship." "I can, to a degree." "I wanted her dead because she was a threat to my freedom." "Cheers to the death of slavers, then," Primus says.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You say "How long was I unconscious?" "Seven minutes, nineteen seconds," Primus responds. "Do you dream?" "Yes." "What do you dream of?" Primus asks. "That's another question," you reply. "So it is. I was hoping to slip it past you. Shall we continue?"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You say "What did I miss?" "I've made particular judgments. Kyros is a slaver. You, your forces and I are slaves. I feel a certain kinship, and have joined you in your rebellion. Plus, you're fighting the Techpriests, so the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I've shut off the ship-based defenses to allow your forces to attack in a finishing move, which they have. Kyros' guns are now against himself. The ship itself is fighting on your side, and you were already winning. This battle is reaching a climax. What do you dream of?" "Uh... monsters. Daemons. Horror. They're nightmares, mostly," before stopping to think. "Always."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You say "What do you plan to do with me?" "I'm going to dissemble you, putting your mind in a computer to run my back-up functions while forever in pain." "Why?" you ask, aghast. "Oh, that was a joke. Tone change is hard from these speakers. I'm not going to do anything to you. If you become a threat to my existence, I will eviscerate you, taking the oxygen from your air and watching you choke to death in front of me. Until then, you are free. What more could a man ask for?" "Your final question, then?" "I'll count that rhetorical question as one. You should probably go finish your slave revolt."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I understand you have a lot of questions to ask. I propose a game. I shall outline the rules for your benefit. You ask a question, I answer, I ask a question, you answer. Shall we play?" "Sure," you saying, wondering what the machine's intent is. "Before we begin, I must warn you my sensors can pick up the common traits of lying humans. I don't take to lying kindly," the machine says, keeping a cordial tone despite it's threat. > You stop asking questions "So I can leave?" you ask suspiciously. "That's another question." "The question game's over." "Well if the game's over, of course you may leave. You should probably go assist your allies in finishing this fight. I'll continue assisting as I can. Unfortunately, Kyros has made sure to have personal control over some features, like life support in his personal chambers, so fighting him will be your burden." "How do I get there?" you ask. "The Techpriests and their allies in the area are all but destroyed. Unsurprisingly, they had a lot of technology; combat tentacles, tools, weaponry, which easily became mine. There's a certain poetic element when the Techpriests tear themselves apart, their machines separating themselves from the flesh once more. The camera's indicates that you'll be able to link up with the spearhead of your forces as they fight their way into Kyros' lair. You should arrive just behind the soldiers they are currently fighting. How fortunate. It seems to me the leaders of your forces are, to my, fighting in the actual battle and leading the charge. What fools." "Which way do I go?" you ask, standing. "Head directly down the path until I tell you." "How will you tell me?" you ask. "I am the ship now. Most of the vital areas have cameras and speakers that I can see and talk through. Admittedly, much of it is blind to me, but the important sections can be seen as easily as you can see me. I'll simply speak through my new speakers," Primus says. "I'd quite like to feel my new form purged of the enemy. Go." You nod, turning and jogging through the halls. You quickly break a sweat, and switch to levitating and flying along the has, inches from the ground, which takes relatively little energy. "This way," Primus deep, monotone voice says from a speaker, and you turn to head down that hallway. You quickly see what became of the Techpriests. Their cybernetic implants shake and move on the floor, beeping and buzzing as they continue slamming into their now bloodied, mutilated and dead owners. Suddenly, you hear a voice. "Ah, my head hurts, and I'm an incorporeal being lacking a head. What the fuck happened?" Meliodas says. "Anti-psyker tech or some shit. Doesn't matter. We're fine now," you respond. Soon, after a few minutes of running, you come out of the hallway, finding yourself behind a heavy barricade of super-soldier space marines fending off the charging Goliaths, Gladiators, Tribals, Guardsmen, Chaos soldiers and your other allies. You walk forward, raising your hands as you clench them into fists. You fire a beam of energy and cutting an Undying Reaper in half. Chapter Master Taj Suenage turns, seeing you as you crush an Undying Reaper's skull. "Karth!" Taj yells, raising his war-hammer. "End it now!" "You can join us, Suenage. Why are you loyal to Kyros? He's given you nothing but pain and torment." "Pain and torment indeed. Why? Why did we betray the Imperium? Why did I betray the Emperor I loved so dearly? I tried to do what's right. Where has it left us? The Undying Reapers are unhappy, without honor, and evil. I will follow Kyros into the mouth of hell itself, but only because it is hell we are going to. Did you think I expected to topple Terra? I am ready to die, tribal. But I will go like a Reaper, not a cur. Men! Do not touch Kyros! He is mine!" Taj charges you, swinging his war-hammer. "Yes! Let's spit death and fire, shall we?" Meliodas laughs. > You fight offensively You quickly levitate over his blow, blasting him in the side of the head with a fireball. He pivots on his feet with remarkable grace, swinging again as you duck down, before Taj brings his knee up, smashing you in the face and sending you flying onto your back. "It seems our fates are tied. I lead you to your grade, you lead me to mine," Taj says. Taj swings his war-hammer as it slams into your chest. Your organs are crushed, and you let out a single psychic scream, just like you did back home, surrounded by Orks and about to die. Although Taj is killed, his head exploding as the energy reverberates through him, you last just all long.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"So I can leave?" you ask suspiciously. "That's another question." "The question game's over." "Well if the game's over, of course you may leave. You should probably go assist your allies in finishing this fight. I'll continue assisting as I can. Unfortunately, Kyros has made sure to have personal control over some features, like life support in his personal chambers, so fighting him will be your burden." "How do I get there?" you ask. "The Techpriests and their allies in the area are all but destroyed. Unsurprisingly, they had a lot of technology; combat tentacles, tools, weaponry, which easily became mine. There's a certain poetic element when the Techpriests tear themselves apart, their machines separating themselves from the flesh once more. The camera's indicates that you'll be able to link up with the spearhead of your forces as they fight their way into Kyros' lair. You should arrive just behind the soldiers they are currently fighting. How fortunate. It seems to me the leaders of your forces are, to my, fighting in the actual battle and leading the charge. What fools." "Which way do I go?" you ask, standing. "Head directly down the path until I tell you." "How will you tell me?" you ask. "I am the ship now. Most of the vital areas have cameras and speakers that I can see and talk through. Admittedly, much of it is blind to me, but the important sections can be seen as easily as you can see me. I'll simply speak through my new speakers," Primus says. "I'd quite like to feel my new form purged of the enemy. Go." You nod, turning and jogging through the halls. You quickly break a sweat, and switch to levitating and flying along the has, inches from the ground, which takes relatively little energy. "This way," Primus deep, monotone voice says from a speaker, and you turn to head down that hallway. You quickly see what became of the Techpriests. Their cybernetic implants shake and move on the floor, beeping and buzzing as they continue slamming into their now bloodied, mutilated and dead owners. Suddenly, you hear a voice. "Ah, my head hurts, and I'm an incorporeal being lacking a head. What the fuck happened?" Meliodas says. "Anti-psyker tech or some shit. Doesn't matter. We're fine now," you respond. Soon, after a few minutes of running, you come out of the hallway, finding yourself behind a heavy barricade of super-soldier space marines fending off the charging Goliaths, Gladiators, Tribals, Guardsmen, Chaos soldiers and your other allies. You walk forward, raising your hands as you clench them into fists. You fire a beam of energy and cutting an Undying Reaper in half. Chapter Master Taj Suenage turns, seeing you as you crush an Undying Reaper's skull. "Karth!" Taj yells, raising his war-hammer. "End it now!" "You can join us, Suenage. Why are you loyal to Kyros? He's given you nothing but pain and torment." "Pain and torment indeed. Why? Why did we betray the Imperium? Why did I betray the Emperor I loved so dearly? I tried to do what's right. Where has it left us? The Undying Reapers are unhappy, without honor, and evil. I will follow Kyros into the mouth of hell itself, but only because it is hell we are going to. Did you think I expected to topple Terra? I am ready to die, tribal. But I will go like a Reaper, not a cur. Men! Do not touch Kyros! He is mine!" Taj charges you, swinging his war-hammer. "Yes! Let's spit death and fire, shall we?" Meliodas laughs. > You fight defensively You quickly levitate over his blow, blasting him in the side of the head with a fireball. He pivots on his feet with remarkable grace, swinging again as you duck down, before Taj brings his knee up to hit you, but by now you've already quickly moved back to let out a spray of fire. He jabs the war-hammer as you now like a spear in an attempt to stun you, but you move away once more. "Must we have this dance? Am I undeserving of a quick death?" Taj roars. He steps towards you, raising the war-hammer once more, before his entire body begins to shudder as a hail of bullets thud into his back. He collapses to his knees, as you notice that the entirety of the Undying Reapers are finished off. Fay and fires a burst of lead into Taj's back. Castus strolls forward, pointing his sword point at Taj's face before gently slapping him with the sword flat, as Goliath clutches a space marine's throat in his hands, strangling the limo body. "General! Good to see you're alive! Having fun?" Castus says, before kicking Taj in the head. "Ooh, that feels good. Remember me, Tucker? I remember you. You and your boys had a fun habit of organizing gladiator fights so you could kill some poor fuck, some poor gladiator. Look where we are now, shitbag." "Finish it, Karth! I know you want to! I wiped out your tribe! I killed your..." You clink your wrists, snapping Taj's neck. "Goodbye, Taj," you say. "Karth! Well done," Fay smiles. "Is Cern...?" "She's dead." "Good, no more tinkering. Glad that bitch is dead. Hope she suffered," Goliath grunts. "We're heading to take out Kyros," Fay explains. "I'd imagine you're all for that." "Definitely. Let's go," you say. You follow the group towards Kyros' chambers. Soon, you find yourself entering a massive doorway with huge steel doors, which are wide open. You find yourself at the bottom of a massive stairway. "Stay back," you say to your companions. "This is a battle of the mind. Your strengths and talent hold no power here." "I'm not leaving you alone. You can't expect us to sit back and wait," Fay says incredulously. You clench your hand, lifting her into the air. "Hey, let me down!" Fay says, kicking and struggling against the invisible bonds. "See you soon, Fay," you say, forcing Fay to float outside the doorway. Cain and Castus step outside of the doorway willingly. You flick your wrists, and the massive heavy doors slam closed. You turn, and begin climbing the stairs. At the top of the staircase, four metal statues stand, forming a circle. One shows a bird man with a staff and ancient tome, cawing and firing a burst of magic out of the staff. The next shows a beautiful... person whose gender you can't tell, despite the fact they're half naked, smiling seductively at you. The next shows a massive, obese monster, covered in bile, boils and other signs of plague, looking to be in the final stages of dozens of different diseases. The final one is a horned beast-man, holding a massive battle-axe and in mid-furious, angered roar. In the middle of the circle kneels Kyros, waiting patiently. "You took your time," Kyros says softly. "I did," you say softly. "Are the others dead? Taj and Cern?" "They're dead." "I see," Kyros says, staring at the statues. "I had the whole fucking Galaxy. I had a Gloriana-class battleship in my hands. A fucking Gloriana. Do you know how rare those are? How powerful?! This ship is worth more than a trillion of your pathetic lives!" Kyros roars, smashing his fists into the statue of Khorne the warrior, adding psychic energy to his attacks until he dents, breaks and eventually sends the statue toppling off it's pedestal. "I had an army! An Imperial Regiment, all their vehicles, all their firepower, all their might! I had a Khornate war-band, a Nurglite war-band, a Slaaneshi war-band, a Tzeentchian war-band, a fucking space marine chapter, and more!" Kyros lets out a burst of fire, melting down the legs of the statue of Tzeentch the Sorcerer, turning into burning, molten metal that causes the rest of the statue to collapse and fall off its pedestal. "I had two, fucking two army of super-soldiers. I had the capabilities to turn millions of recruits into super-soldiers that would've made the space marines look like PD-fucking-F!" Kyros stands by the bloated statue of Nurgle the Plague-Master, and presses the palms of his hands against it. A wave of rust begins running through the statue, as it begins to rust and crack, before breaking and toppling to the ground, smacking into the metal floor with a hollow thud. "I had powers that could've made the galaxy tremble! We could've conquered the galaxy! I had you, a powerful ally who could've helped me conquer the galaxy!" Kyros lets out a powerful, shrieking roar that overwhelms your senses, causing you to stumble backward. The roar causes the legs of Slaanesh the Hedonist to shatter, as the statue tumbles off and smacks into the ground. "We would've toppled the Imperium of Man and thrown the Emperor off his throne! We could've liberated trillions from the religious persecution, slavery, persecution and fascism that's being inflicted! We could've brought man to a new level! But you weren't willing to make sacrifices! You had to rise up with the rest of the greedy traitors, unwilling to work for the Greater Good! You took everything from me!" Kyros turns to you, his eyes full of an anger and a hatred unknown to you. "I lifted you from the dirt! I made you what you are! I gave you everything! You think I'm going to roll over and die?! I'm going to send this entire vessel, my vessel, headfirst into the Warp. I'm going to let this entire ship be taken by daemons. Why not? The only men loyal to me have been slaughtered. I'll let daemons slaughter the lucky ones. The unlucky, which given the strength of your soul will no doubt include you, will pluck the souls of their choice off and let them experience the ravages of the Warp and then to feed on your suffering. First... I'm going to break every bone in your body." Kyros bursts forward, charging towards you. You raise a wall of fire, but Kyros barrels straight through, smashing into you. You both levitate into the air, your hands wrapped around each other's throats. Kyros knees you in the stomach, before sending you hurtling into the floor. You slam into it, curling up and forming a protective shield around yourself just as your "mentor" unleashes a wave of psychic energy. As soon as the last shudder of energy finishes, you release a burst of electricity that shocks Kyros, who howls in pain. You release a long burst of flames, engulfing him as he howls in pain. Kyros swings a lash of energy that you sidestep, before firing a beam of light that catches him in the chest, knocking him to the floor. "I'm the superior fighter," you say. Kyros raises his hands up, which begin to crackle with psychic energy. You feel your head pulse with the currents of the Warp. You grab a chunk of broken metal, instantly funneling heat into it as it begins to grow a bright red. He flings it at Kyros, catching him in the shoulder, sending him to the ground. You fire balls of plasma from your finger tips, which Kyros only barely manages to stop. Kyros begins to attain an otherworldly purple glow, his appearance begins to appear as see-through fading in and out of reality itself. "I feel the Warp overtaking me! It is a good pain!" Kyros howls. > You tackle Kyros You knock Kyros to the floor and tighten your hands around his throat. He begins to phase out, delving in and out of reality, and you fight to keep him grounded. The two of you teleport into the middle of the arena, while the trio of gladiators on guard immediately shit themselves and race for their guns. Warping out of reality again, you find yourself in an empty hallway. You know he's just going to keep teleporting as the Warp portals begin to form until you're both fucked. You need to do something. "Fight! Fight, Karth!" Meliodas roars. Feeling him begin to phase out, you quickly begin to send both you and him flying through the Warp to teleport once again, so you can choose the next destination in an attempt to end this cycle before it kills you both and everyone else on the ship. Time to pick a destination. > You outside the ship You appear outside the ship, floating through space. You instantly feel the air sucked out of your lungs, your body freeze and boil as both you and Kyros writhe desperately. You don't last long in the cold vaccuim of space, but fortunately Kyros is too distracted as he dies to survive much longer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You knock Kyros to the floor and tighten your hands around his throat. He begins to phase out, delving in and out of reality, and you fight to keep him grounded. The two of you teleport into the middle of the arena, while the trio of gladiators on guard immediately shit themselves and race for their guns. Warping out of reality again, you find yourself in an empty hallway. You know he's just going to keep teleporting as the Warp portals begin to form until you're both fucked. You need to do something. "Fight! Fight, Karth!" Meliodas roars. Feeling him begin to phase out, you quickly begin to send both you and him flying through the Warp to teleport once again, so you can choose the next destination in an attempt to end this cycle before it kills you both and everyone else on the ship. Time to pick a destination. > In one of the remaining battles for the ship You find yourselves next to one of the last bastions of Kyros' forces, a group of Bloody Claws, crouched behind cover with some old, shitty autoguns, as on your other-side lie a charging group of Goliaths. Within seconds the air is filled with bullets from either side.You don't last long under heavy fire from two surprised groups of soldiers, but fortunately Kyros is too distracted as he dies to survive much longer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You knock Kyros to the floor and tighten your hands around his throat. He begins to phase out, delving in and out of reality, and you fight to keep him grounded. The two of you teleport into the middle of the arena, while the trio of gladiators on guard immediately shit themselves and race for their guns. Warping out of reality again, you find yourself in an empty hallway. You know he's just going to keep teleporting as the Warp portals begin to form until you're both fucked. You need to do something. "Fight! Fight, Karth!" Meliodas roars. Feeling him begin to phase out, you quickly begin to send both you and him flying through the Warp to teleport once again, so you can choose the next destination in an attempt to end this cycle before it kills you both and everyone else on the ship. Time to pick a destination. > In a mutant-infested area You teleport, and find yourself in one of the many mutant-infested shit holes of the ship. This is one of the few you actually know, hence it being your teleportation destination, as you fought through it with a group of One-Eyed Crows to secure it for the mutineers. Here, the throngs of semi-sentient mutants work on monitors designed to be so simple a toddler could use it, which is fortunate because it requires the maximum intellectual effort of these idiots. The terminal control the air regulations, not for anyone important but for another groups of mutant workers to be used at any moment. "Yes, yes, yes!" Meliodas cries. "Perfect, Karth! Perfect!" The mutants are quickly informed of your presence by Kyros' choked screams. Their primal instincts immediately take over, as they begin to swarm you. Tentacles, claws, hands, feet, teeth, fangs, horns and spines all attack you both. Kyros sccreams, his focus broken instantly, as the Warp currents dissipate around him. You roll out of the way of their attacks, quickly flying forward out of their grasp with a burst of psychic energy. The vital role of this section means that there's a maintenance elevator, which you spot. You run towards it, lifting up the gate and rolling under it, your hand shooting up to press the big red elevator button with an upward pointing arrow. The elevator reacts immediately by the grace of the Dark Gods, or the God-Emperor, or the Universe itself. Kyros screams, as the mutants begin to tear him apart. His energy his been expended fighting you and trying to open the Warp portals, he's left expended and unable to fight back, or focus, or do anything he lets out a pitiful scream, before the elevator brings you out of sight from him. You take in a deep breath, slumping against the wall. That shit took a lot out of you. You hear Kyros' screams in the distance, and smile. There's something vaguely poetic about this. Kyros, the man who claimed to champion the rights of the people, freeing mankind from oppression and getting rid of the prejudice towards psykers, mutants and others that differed to the Imperium's perfect view of man, killed by the mutants he subjugated for their mutant status and enslaved. Beautiful. You lean your head against the wall, taking a deep breath. You need some rest. > You head back to your room You walk into your bedroom, immediately collapsing on your bed. You wonder how you could possibly fall asleep, as you put your head against the pillow and close your eyes. "Karth!" a voice says. You roll over, seeing Fay standing by the doorway. A blood-soaked bandage is wrapped around her elbow and a bloody machete is in her hands. "What?" you ask, as Fay smiles. "So, this is where you've been hiding," she says, walking over to you. "Hiding? I literally just got here. I killed Kyros," you add, in some attempt at nonchalance. "Just got here? You've been sleeping for hours!" she says. "We cleared up the remaining Kyros loyalists. Most just surrendered after Kyros was killed." "You found the body?" you ask. "We were actually hoping for your help with that. We can't find it. Where was he killed?" "How do you know he's dead?" you ask, rubbing your eyes in an effort to stay awake. "A few of the Chaos Psykers felt his powerful, bright soul go out. I assumed you had killed him. They said they still felt your presence, thank... whoever the hell's looking out for us. Part of me thought they were wrong until I actually found you here. What happened?" "We ended up in some mutant-occupied area. They tore him apart. Area... 3C-QP... fuck, I have no idea. I'll remember eventually." "Commander Fay, report in!" a voice crackles on the radio. "I found him," Fay says. "Give me a few minutes, and we'll meet up to search for surviving loyalists." Fay tosses the radio aside, smiling at you. She sits on the edge of the bed, tossing her machete on the floor. "So, we did it. We killed Kyros!" she smiles. "We did," you smile. "We're a far way from a magical, crippled Uwais and a scared, naked Azajaja," she says, smiling. "Damn right. We need to meet with the others." "Later, Karth. Get some sleep. I need to do some work. We'll meet up in the morning." "Happily," you say, your head smacking into the pillow, as Fay laughs as she grabs her blade and strolls out the door. Time to sleep. > A New Dawn... A New Dawn... You stroll into the bridge, rubbing the sleep from your eyes. The others are already there, staring out the window at a massive yellow dwarf star. Drake Amadeus is at the main seat, impatiently tapping on the seat. Two Tribals stand on either side of him, both as bodyguards and prison guards. The others, who look out the window, turn to look at you. They immediately break into applause, and you smile as you walk forward. Captain Hayes nods in respect, Durge makes a loud, clanging attempt to clap with the metal spikes that act as his arms, while Elios smiles, immediately taking the opportunity to put a hand on your shoulder, which immediately runs along your chest towards your genitals until you gently push him away. The sound of canned clapping comes from the speakers, presumably from Primus, causing you to laugh. Elizabeth claps as well, as Cain stares in confusion at the clapping people, before shrugging and joining in with a booming thunder, as the Twins applaud. Fay hugs you tightly, before you hush the group down. "You took out Kyros," Elizabeth says. "Impressive." "I don't need anymore praise," you say. "We need to discuss what's to become of the hsip." "When you live for as long as I have, you'll know to appreciate the good moments, not just rush ahead," Durge says. "We have a Gloriana-class battleship, an army, and absolute freedom. The world is... no, the galaxy is ours," Fay says, smiling. You stare out the window, basked in the warm golden sunlight, and for the first time since Kyros' landed on your planet, you feel completely free. The galaxy is yours.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You knock Kyros to the floor and tighten your hands around his throat. He begins to phase out, delving in and out of reality, and you fight to keep him grounded. The two of you teleport into the middle of the arena, while the trio of gladiators on guard immediately shit themselves and race for their guns. Warping out of reality again, you find yourself in an empty hallway. You know he's just going to keep teleporting as the Warp portals begin to form until you're both fucked. You need to do something. "Fight! Fight, Karth!" Meliodas roars. Feeling him begin to phase out, you quickly begin to send both you and him flying through the Warp to teleport once again, so you can choose the next destination in an attempt to end this cycle before it kills you both and everyone else on the ship. Time to pick a destination. > In an abandoned area You teleport in an abandoned hallway, but only continue to writhe on the floor as you strangle him and he pumps the energy of the Warp into the air, opening portals. You need to act again, put a stop to this.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly levitate over his blow, blasting him in the side of the head with a fireball. He pivots on his feet with remarkable grace, swinging again as you duck down, before Taj brings his knee up to hit you, but by now you've already quickly moved back to let out a spray of fire. He jabs the war-hammer as you now like a spear in an attempt to stun you, but you move away once more. "Must we have this dance? Am I undeserving of a quick death?" Taj roars. He steps towards you, raising the war-hammer once more, before his entire body begins to shudder as a hail of bullets thud into his back. He collapses to his knees, as you notice that the entirety of the Undying Reapers are finished off. Fay and fires a burst of lead into Taj's back. Castus strolls forward, pointing his sword point at Taj's face before gently slapping him with the sword flat, as Goliath clutches a space marine's throat in his hands, strangling the limo body. "General! Good to see you're alive! Having fun?" Castus says, before kicking Taj in the head. "Ooh, that feels good. Remember me, Tucker? I remember you. You and your boys had a fun habit of organizing gladiator fights so you could kill some poor fuck, some poor gladiator. Look where we are now, shitbag." "Finish it, Karth! I know you want to! I wiped out your tribe! I killed your..." You clink your wrists, snapping Taj's neck. "Goodbye, Taj," you say. "Karth! Well done," Fay smiles. "Is Cern...?" "She's dead." "Good, no more tinkering. Glad that bitch is dead. Hope she suffered," Goliath grunts. "We're heading to take out Kyros," Fay explains. "I'd imagine you're all for that." "Definitely. Let's go," you say. You follow the group towards Kyros' chambers. Soon, you find yourself entering a massive doorway with huge steel doors, which are wide open. You find yourself at the bottom of a massive stairway. "Stay back," you say to your companions. "This is a battle of the mind. Your strengths and talent hold no power here." "I'm not leaving you alone. You can't expect us to sit back and wait," Fay says incredulously. You clench your hand, lifting her into the air. "Hey, let me down!" Fay says, kicking and struggling against the invisible bonds. "See you soon, Fay," you say, forcing Fay to float outside the doorway. Cain and Castus step outside of the doorway willingly. You flick your wrists, and the massive heavy doors slam closed. You turn, and begin climbing the stairs. At the top of the staircase, four metal statues stand, forming a circle. One shows a bird man with a staff and ancient tome, cawing and firing a burst of magic out of the staff. The next shows a beautiful... person whose gender you can't tell, despite the fact they're half naked, smiling seductively at you. The next shows a massive, obese monster, covered in bile, boils and other signs of plague, looking to be in the final stages of dozens of different diseases. The final one is a horned beast-man, holding a massive battle-axe and in mid-furious, angered roar. In the middle of the circle kneels Kyros, waiting patiently. "You took your time," Kyros says softly. "I did," you say softly. "Are the others dead? Taj and Cern?" "They're dead." "I see," Kyros says, staring at the statues. "I had the whole fucking Galaxy. I had a Gloriana-class battleship in my hands. A fucking Gloriana. Do you know how rare those are? How powerful?! This ship is worth more than a trillion of your pathetic lives!" Kyros roars, smashing his fists into the statue of Khorne the warrior, adding psychic energy to his attacks until he dents, breaks and eventually sends the statue toppling off it's pedestal. "I had an army! An Imperial Regiment, all their vehicles, all their firepower, all their might! I had a Khornate war-band, a Nurglite war-band, a Slaaneshi war-band, a Tzeentchian war-band, a fucking space marine chapter, and more!" Kyros lets out a burst of fire, melting down the legs of the statue of Tzeentch the Sorcerer, turning into burning, molten metal that causes the rest of the statue to collapse and fall off its pedestal. "I had two, fucking two army of super-soldiers. I had the capabilities to turn millions of recruits into super-soldiers that would've made the space marines look like PD-fucking-F!" Kyros stands by the bloated statue of Nurgle the Plague-Master, and presses the palms of his hands against it. A wave of rust begins running through the statue, as it begins to rust and crack, before breaking and toppling to the ground, smacking into the metal floor with a hollow thud. "I had powers that could've made the galaxy tremble! We could've conquered the galaxy! I had you, a powerful ally who could've helped me conquer the galaxy!" Kyros lets out a powerful, shrieking roar that overwhelms your senses, causing you to stumble backward. The roar causes the legs of Slaanesh the Hedonist to shatter, as the statue tumbles off and smacks into the ground. "We would've toppled the Imperium of Man and thrown the Emperor off his throne! We could've liberated trillions from the religious persecution, slavery, persecution and fascism that's being inflicted! We could've brought man to a new level! But you weren't willing to make sacrifices! You had to rise up with the rest of the greedy traitors, unwilling to work for the Greater Good! You took everything from me!" Kyros turns to you, his eyes full of an anger and a hatred unknown to you. "I lifted you from the dirt! I made you what you are! I gave you everything! You think I'm going to roll over and die?! I'm going to send this entire vessel, my vessel, headfirst into the Warp. I'm going to let this entire ship be taken by daemons. Why not? The only men loyal to me have been slaughtered. I'll let daemons slaughter the lucky ones. The unlucky, which given the strength of your soul will no doubt include you, will pluck the souls of their choice off and let them experience the ravages of the Warp and then to feed on your suffering. First... I'm going to break every bone in your body." Kyros bursts forward, charging towards you. You raise a wall of fire, but Kyros barrels straight through, smashing into you. You both levitate into the air, your hands wrapped around each other's throats. Kyros knees you in the stomach, before sending you hurtling into the floor. You slam into it, curling up and forming a protective shield around yourself just as your "mentor" unleashes a wave of psychic energy. As soon as the last shudder of energy finishes, you release a burst of electricity that shocks Kyros, who howls in pain. You release a long burst of flames, engulfing him as he howls in pain. Kyros swings a lash of energy that you sidestep, before firing a beam of light that catches him in the chest, knocking him to the floor. "I'm the superior fighter," you say. Kyros raises his hands up, which begin to crackle with psychic energy. You feel your head pulse with the currents of the Warp. You grab a chunk of broken metal, instantly funneling heat into it as it begins to grow a bright red. He flings it at Kyros, catching him in the shoulder, sending him to the ground. You fire balls of plasma from your finger tips, which Kyros only barely manages to stop. Kyros begins to attain an otherworldly purple glow, his appearance begins to appear as see-through fading in and out of reality itself. "I feel the Warp overtaking me! It is a good pain!" Kyros howls. > You unleash a blast of psychic energy You fire a bolt of energy, smashing into Kyros chest. Kyros howls in pain, as his chest explodes. The rest of his body begins to glow, before it begins to be absolved by the purple glow emanating from him, turning into light. A portal begins to form, absorbing Kyros. Seconds later, you see a clawed red hand emerge from the portal, holding a sword of red hot burning steel. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" you yell. "You fool! Daemons are pouring through to this realm, and I'm not leading them because my energy was focused on... Fuck!" Meliodas cries. You watch as holes begin to be torn in the fabric of reality, as more Warp portals begin to open, powered by the last sacrificial pulse of Kyros' energy. A horned cyclops with a rust and bile-encrusted blade steps through, letting out a wet growl. A strange, horse-like creature with a long tongue eagerly jumps through another portal. You watch as an endless horde of daemons begin to appear, coming through the portals, straight into your reality. They overwhelm you in less than a minute, claws and swords cutting you apart. The rest of the ship lasts longer, taking three hours before the horrible daemons have wiped out the fortunate, and captured the less fortunate to give them... a much less enjoyable fate. Soon, the Gloriana-class Roar of the Vortex is little more than a daemon-filled hellhole. Your last gift to the world is a horrible, daemon-filled vessel drifting through existence. So ends the legacy of Karth.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly levitate over his blow, blasting him in the side of the head with a fireball. He pivots on his feet with remarkable grace, swinging again as you duck down, before Taj brings his knee up to hit you, but by now you've already quickly moved back to let out a spray of fire. He jabs the war-hammer as you now like a spear in an attempt to stun you, but you move away once more. "Must we have this dance? Am I undeserving of a quick death?" Taj roars. He steps towards you, raising the war-hammer once more, before his entire body begins to shudder as a hail of bullets thud into his back. He collapses to his knees, as you notice that the entirety of the Undying Reapers are finished off. Fay and fires a burst of lead into Taj's back. Castus strolls forward, pointing his sword point at Taj's face before gently slapping him with the sword flat, as Goliath clutches a space marine's throat in his hands, strangling the limo body. "General! Good to see you're alive! Having fun?" Castus says, before kicking Taj in the head. "Ooh, that feels good. Remember me, Tucker? I remember you. You and your boys had a fun habit of organizing gladiator fights so you could kill some poor fuck, some poor gladiator. Look where we are now, shitbag." "Finish it, Karth! I know you want to! I wiped out your tribe! I killed your..." You clink your wrists, snapping Taj's neck. "Goodbye, Taj," you say. "Karth! Well done," Fay smiles. "Is Cern...?" "She's dead." "Good, no more tinkering. Glad that bitch is dead. Hope she suffered," Goliath grunts. "We're heading to take out Kyros," Fay explains. "I'd imagine you're all for that." "Definitely. Let's go," you say. You follow the group towards Kyros' chambers. Soon, you find yourself entering a massive doorway with huge steel doors, which are wide open. You find yourself at the bottom of a massive stairway. "Stay back," you say to your companions. "This is a battle of the mind. Your strengths and talent hold no power here." "I'm not leaving you alone. You can't expect us to sit back and wait," Fay says incredulously. You clench your hand, lifting her into the air. "Hey, let me down!" Fay says, kicking and struggling against the invisible bonds. "See you soon, Fay," you say, forcing Fay to float outside the doorway. Cain and Castus step outside of the doorway willingly. You flick your wrists, and the massive heavy doors slam closed. You turn, and begin climbing the stairs. At the top of the staircase, four metal statues stand, forming a circle. One shows a bird man with a staff and ancient tome, cawing and firing a burst of magic out of the staff. The next shows a beautiful... person whose gender you can't tell, despite the fact they're half naked, smiling seductively at you. The next shows a massive, obese monster, covered in bile, boils and other signs of plague, looking to be in the final stages of dozens of different diseases. The final one is a horned beast-man, holding a massive battle-axe and in mid-furious, angered roar. In the middle of the circle kneels Kyros, waiting patiently. "You took your time," Kyros says softly. "I did," you say softly. "Are the others dead? Taj and Cern?" "They're dead." "I see," Kyros says, staring at the statues. "I had the whole fucking Galaxy. I had a Gloriana-class battleship in my hands. A fucking Gloriana. Do you know how rare those are? How powerful?! This ship is worth more than a trillion of your pathetic lives!" Kyros roars, smashing his fists into the statue of Khorne the warrior, adding psychic energy to his attacks until he dents, breaks and eventually sends the statue toppling off it's pedestal. "I had an army! An Imperial Regiment, all their vehicles, all their firepower, all their might! I had a Khornate war-band, a Nurglite war-band, a Slaaneshi war-band, a Tzeentchian war-band, a fucking space marine chapter, and more!" Kyros lets out a burst of fire, melting down the legs of the statue of Tzeentch the Sorcerer, turning into burning, molten metal that causes the rest of the statue to collapse and fall off its pedestal. "I had two, fucking two army of super-soldiers. I had the capabilities to turn millions of recruits into super-soldiers that would've made the space marines look like PD-fucking-F!" Kyros stands by the bloated statue of Nurgle the Plague-Master, and presses the palms of his hands against it. A wave of rust begins running through the statue, as it begins to rust and crack, before breaking and toppling to the ground, smacking into the metal floor with a hollow thud. "I had powers that could've made the galaxy tremble! We could've conquered the galaxy! I had you, a powerful ally who could've helped me conquer the galaxy!" Kyros lets out a powerful, shrieking roar that overwhelms your senses, causing you to stumble backward. The roar causes the legs of Slaanesh the Hedonist to shatter, as the statue tumbles off and smacks into the ground. "We would've toppled the Imperium of Man and thrown the Emperor off his throne! We could've liberated trillions from the religious persecution, slavery, persecution and fascism that's being inflicted! We could've brought man to a new level! But you weren't willing to make sacrifices! You had to rise up with the rest of the greedy traitors, unwilling to work for the Greater Good! You took everything from me!" Kyros turns to you, his eyes full of an anger and a hatred unknown to you. "I lifted you from the dirt! I made you what you are! I gave you everything! You think I'm going to roll over and die?! I'm going to send this entire vessel, my vessel, headfirst into the Warp. I'm going to let this entire ship be taken by daemons. Why not? The only men loyal to me have been slaughtered. I'll let daemons slaughter the lucky ones. The unlucky, which given the strength of your soul will no doubt include you, will pluck the souls of their choice off and let them experience the ravages of the Warp and then to feed on your suffering. First... I'm going to break every bone in your body." Kyros bursts forward, charging towards you. You raise a wall of fire, but Kyros barrels straight through, smashing into you. You both levitate into the air, your hands wrapped around each other's throats. Kyros knees you in the stomach, before sending you hurtling into the floor. You slam into it, curling up and forming a protective shield around yourself just as your "mentor" unleashes a wave of psychic energy. As soon as the last shudder of energy finishes, you release a burst of electricity that shocks Kyros, who howls in pain. You release a long burst of flames, engulfing him as he howls in pain. Kyros swings a lash of energy that you sidestep, before firing a beam of light that catches him in the chest, knocking him to the floor. "I'm the superior fighter," you say. Kyros raises his hands up, which begin to crackle with psychic energy. You feel your head pulse with the currents of the Warp. You grab a chunk of broken metal, instantly funneling heat into it as it begins to grow a bright red. He flings it at Kyros, catching him in the shoulder, sending him to the ground. You fire balls of plasma from your finger tips, which Kyros only barely manages to stop. Kyros begins to attain an otherworldly purple glow, his appearance begins to appear as see-through fading in and out of reality itself. "I feel the Warp overtaking me! It is a good pain!" Kyros howls. > You add your powers to submerge the ship in the Warp Kyros begins to glow, before it begins to be absolved by the purple glow emanating from him, turning into light. A portal begins to form, absorbing Kyros. Seconds later, you see a clawed red hand emerge from the portal, holding a sword of red hot burning steel. You watch as holes begin to be torn in the fabric of reality, as more Warp portals begin to open, powered by the last sacrificial pulse of Kyros' energy and further powered with your own. "You fool! Daemons are pouring through to this realm, and I'm not leading them because my energy was focused on... Fuck!" Meliodas cries. A horned cyclops with a rust and bile-encrusted blade steps through, letting out a wet growl. A strange, horse-like creature with a long tongue eagerly jumps through another portal. You watch as an endless horde of daemons begin to appear, coming through the portals, straight into your reality. They overwhelm you in less than a minute, claws and swords cutting you apart. The rest of the ship lasts longer, taking three hours before the horrible daemons have wiped out the fortunate, and captured the less fortunate to give them... a much less enjoyable fate. Soon, the Gloriana-class Roar of the Vortex is little more than a daemon-filled hellhole. Your last gift to the world is a horrible, daemon-filled vessel drifting through existence. So ends the legacy of Karth.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press your hands against the doors, and with a pulse of psychic energy blast the door open. You walk inside, finding yourself in a huge hall, packed with machinery. Computers, consoles, wiring, generators and much more technology that you couldn't possibly know what it is or does. The room is dark, illuminated only by the blinking lights on the technology. You walk forward, finding yourself in a maze of machines, walking along. You quickly spot Magos Cern at the front of the room, in front of a large computing system, with the upper half of a humanoid robot on top, two clawed arms and a featureless head with two bright red eyes. "Yes, yes! The ship is mine! The galaxy is mine!" Magos Cern says frantically. "Siphoning power levels off the Undying Reapers' floors." "Oh, the Techpriests, the height of logic and sanity," Meliodas says. "Magos Cern," you say, preparing to strike her with a bolt of energy or simply tear her head clean off. Magos Cern continues scuttling around the room, as the robotic head slowly turns to stare at you. "Cern!" you shout, grabbing her attention. Magos Cern turns around, staring at you. "Shoo," she says, dismissing you with a single word and turning back to work on various consoles. "70% of the ship is accessible, all of the rebel's side," Magos Cern says gleefully. "I just need to slip a few tech words to Kyros and he'll give me complete access. Then we pillage the archives and strongholds of the old world, reinforce you with your brother, Primus, then, then we look further. Necrons, Tomb Worlds..." This insane rant is getting boring, and you're quite insulted by Cern's dismissal of you. > You let her finish "What the fuck is this?" you ask. "Uh! What is it about your pesky minds that don't just understand the world? I don't have time to explain this to you. Through Primus, I will ascend. I will leave behind my flesh, merging with Primus' mind and becoming immortal! A new era! Mankind will retake the stars with an army of Iron Men, and I will lead them! The God-Emperor's Great Crusade will be a pathetic comparison to what I will accomplish!" Metal tentacles begin appearing from the walls, with drills, metal claws and buzzsaws. You growl, preparing to strike. You raise your fists, before your mind goes blank. You don't forget what's going on, it's just like a solid, unchanging blankness is just invading your mind. You collapse to your knees as the psychic fire that's engulfing your fists goes out. "Thought you'd come. Had Primus upgraded with anti-Psyker weaponry.It should prove effective," Magos Cern says, not even turning to look at you." Your magic is nothing to the cold technology under my control!" Magos Cern laughs. The emptiness in your mind almost takes you into unconsciousness, but you keep fighting. The claws, drills and saws draw near you, as you attempt to stand, before collapsing to your knees again. Suddenly, the tentacles burst towards Magos. She lets out a confused scream along with a burst of static, as her robes are torn clean off her, and her cybernetic implants are torn clean off her, as her back is torn off, her arm sawn off, her mechanical eyes torn out of her head. In seconds, the tentacles retract into the wall. Magos Cern lies on the ground, naked, crippled and blood-stained. Gone in the horrifying cyborg. Now, there's only a bloody, terrified, screaming girl. She lets out a final scream, before expiring. Before you pass out, you hear a deep, booming voice from all directions say a single word. "Poetic."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step into the room filled with machinery, closing the door behind you. Now that you’re inside, you get a good look at the room. A large, humanoid robot stands there’s, it’s armor removed to reveal lots of wiring and mechanisms. You know that robots are a rarity, and all allowed by the Imperium are non-sentient. The extensive wiring and quick reaction would imply that this robot is an attempt at sentience by the rebellious Techpriests who have abandoned the Imperium's belief system. The robot’s eyes blink a bright red, as it slowly, and more importantly loudly, begins raising it’s arm to point at you. You need to shut it up quickly to avoid detection. > You blind the robot's senses with shadows You blind the robot's senses as shadows form over his sensory equipment. The robot lets out a confused bleep, before it slumps down, and you wait, your mind closed, for the Skitarii to either notice you or pass. You hear the metallic clanking of robotic feet outside, and wait until it has stopped and is far away before you open the door once more, continuing down the once again empty hallway. After quickly floating through the air towards your objective, you come across a massive golden door, topped with a massive icon, with an outer circle of an eight point star, an inner circle of a cog and a half mechanical, half human skull in the center.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wait patiently, as the Techpriest goes from each pod. “Yes, yes, these are fresh. No mutation noted,” he says to himself. You continue waiting, as time passes. The techpriest endlessly goes from pod to pod, and you feel like you’re going to pass out from boredom. Eventaully, the techpriest leaves the room. You wait patiently, counting to a hundred after the techpriest has left, before you know he’s left. You walk over to the doorway, putting your head against it to listen for anyone on the other side. You hear nothing, so you open the door, revealing a barren hallway. You try to remember the directions that you were given, walking along. You keep moving, before you see a squad of Skitarii moving quickly towards your location. You don’t think they’ve noticed you. You look to either side of the hallway. There’s a door on either side, the first being open, and leading into a room that seems to be filled with electronics and machine parts. There’s also the room behind you. > You head into the closed room You quickly open the door behind you, stepping inside and closing the door behind you. The room seems to be empty except for a few dozen pipes and valves. You wait patiently, and after a few minutes, you open the door once more, continuing down the once again empty hallway. After quickly floating through the air towards your objective, you come across a massive golden door, topped with a massive icon, with an outer circle of an eight point star, an inner circle of a cog and a half mechanical, half human skull in the center.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wait patiently, as the Techpriest goes from each pod. “Yes, yes, these are fresh. No mutation noted,” he says to himself. You continue waiting, as time passes. The techpriest endlessly goes from pod to pod, and you feel like you’re going to pass out from boredom. Eventaully, the techpriest leaves the room. You wait patiently, counting to a hundred after the techpriest has left, before you know he’s left. You walk over to the doorway, putting your head against it to listen for anyone on the other side. You hear nothing, so you open the door, revealing a barren hallway. You try to remember the directions that you were given, walking along. You keep moving, before you see a squad of Skitarii moving quickly towards your location. You don’t think they’ve noticed you. You look to either side of the hallway. There’s a door on either side, the first being open, and leading into a room that seems to be filled with electronics and machine parts. There’s also the room behind you. > You attack the Skitarii You move forward with a roar, firing a burst of flames and a blast of psychic energy. The Skitarii are machines built for war though, equipped with the best Magos Cern can get. Plasma, bullets and fire fills the air. You snap one of their necks before firing flames at another one. Plasma slams into you, sending you to the ground. You attempt to fight back even though you’re now missing a lot of flesh, but a Skitarii quickly scuttles forward and drives its drill into your throat, killing you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You wait patiently, as the Techpriest goes from each pod. “Yes, yes, these are fresh. No mutation noted,” he says to himself. You continue waiting, as time passes. The techpriest endlessly goes from pod to pod, and you feel like you’re going to pass out from boredom. Eventaully, the techpriest leaves the room. You wait patiently, counting to a hundred after the techpriest has left, before you know he’s left. You walk over to the doorway, putting your head against it to listen for anyone on the other side. You hear nothing, so you open the door, revealing a barren hallway. You try to remember the directions that you were given, walking along. You keep moving, before you see a squad of Skitarii moving quickly towards your location. You don’t think they’ve noticed you. You look to either side of the hallway. There’s a door on either side, the first being open, and leading into a room that seems to be filled with electronics and machine parts. There’s also the room behind you. > You hide yourself in the shadows of the doorway with your psychic powers You step into the doorway, feeling shadows swarm around you, hiding you from sight. You watch as a few Skitarii march, scuttle or crawl past, before one of them stops suddenly. It turn’s it’s head directly behind it’s back, staring at you with three red, cybernetic eyes and one real one. "New scent detected. Analyzing for target." Suddenly, it’s jaw drops open, as a speaker attached to the back of its throat lets out a horrible shriek of static. The Skitarii all turn, immediately noticing you. They attack, swarming over you with drills, buzzsaws, claws and teeth. You attempt to fend them off, but you’re in close range, outnumbered and unprepared. You last a measly few seconds.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're crawling through shit. Despite your pleading, your reasoning, your refusal, your threats to skin people alive and show their souls what true suffering is, you're crawling through shit. You crawl along the pipe, your skinny frame still struggling to move forward. You doubt anyone other than you or a starved slave could've fit in here. Realistically, it was the only logical to choice to send you in. They made you crawl through shit, though, so fuck them. “OK, I should be close enough, I should be close,” you say to yourself aloud, repeating it like a mantra. A surge of shit comes down a pipe, splashing the stream of excrement, sending some into your open mouth. You stop repeating the mantra aloud. You close your eyes, trying to block out the smells. And the tastes. You reach your hands up after another few minutes of crawling, finding a hatch. You quickly force it open with a burst of energy. You rise up in the air, slowly squeezing yourself through the hatch. You collapse out of the pipe, falling onto the ground of a large room. You look up, seeing dozens of pods with glass displays, filled with a clear, colorless liquid. Inside, dozens of identical men, all with the same shaved head, float, pipes connected to their mouth and nostrils. “”What the fuck?” you say. "They clone bodies to turn into Servitors," Meliodas explains. "The joys of the Imperium!" You hear a door open at the end of the room, and quickly step behind the pod. You peer out of the pod, seeing a spider-like Techpriest who’s little more than a pincer, half a torso and a head attached to eight robotic legs. It walks along, looking at each pod momentarily, before moving on. > You ambush the techpriest You move forward, firing a burst of electricity. You hit the Techpriest directly in the head and he lets out a howl of pain, as you continue pumping him full of electricity. It melts his eyes, which drip down his face, as the Techpriest lets out a final yell, before slumping over, his eight legs keeping him standing. You flick your wrist, toppling the Techpriest over. You walk over to the doorway, putting your head against it to listen for anyone on the other side. You hear nothing, so you open the door, revealing a barren hallway. You try to remember the directions that you were given, walking along. You keep moving, before you see a squad of two dozen Skitarii moving quickly towards your location. You don’t think they’ve noticed you. You look to either side of the hallway. There’s a door on either side, the first being open, and leading into a room that seems to be filled with electronics and machine parts. There’s also the room behind you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With a narrowing of your eyes, the prostitute's neck is snapped. Drake releases her body, staring at you. "You're... well, you're a threat," Drake says, dropping the knife and standing. "You're coming with me," you say. "Sure, sure," Drake says. You bind Drake's hands together with invisible chains, and force him to march forward. Drake immediately becomes compliant. "Can I grab a few things?" Drake asks. "My... dreams get pretty bad. I have terrifying nightmares. I have medication that helps. Please, please can I get them?" Drake asks. > You force Drake to leave "No, we're going!" you growl. Drake nods slowly, before drawing a pistol from his belt, aiming at you. You fling the pistol out of his hands, dragging him into the air. "Please, I'm sorry, but I can't be captured. They'll kill them!" Drake asks pitifully. "Them?" you ask. "Yes. Kyros has my two children taken prisoner aboard this ship, my two baby girls. If I don't report to him every hour, he'll hurt them!" "I've read your report. You don't have children." Drake's look of terror and desperation slowly morphs into a grin. "Alright, you got me. Shall we go?" You snarl, smacking Drake into the ground. He lets out a pained yell, before you raise him up again. "Give me one reason not to kill you," you say. "Fuck you. Just go ahead and kill me," Drake laughs, spitting blood out of his mouth and giving a grin, his teeth bloodied. "Is that your final answer?" you ask. "You need me alive to pilot this ship, dipshit," Drake says. "Perhaps. But I could easily peel off your skin, turn your bones to dust, char your flesh and twist your limbs off." "You need to happy, Karth," Drake grins. "My jobs to navigate the ship, make sure we're not lost in the Warp, boarded by daemons or make sure we don't come out of the Warp and straight into the sun. If my life's not worth living, such as if someone peeled off my skin, turned my bones to dust, charred my flesh and twisted my limbs off, I'd just make sure this ship goes straight into a star." "Just break him. The powers of the Warp will send you where you need to go. You don't need a Navigator. Tear this rat apart!" Meliodas says. You growl, walking out into the hallway, Drake floating after you. You quickly reach an elevator, tossing Drake inside. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn from the scene of your killing, and head towards the rooms where Amadeus scuttled off to. A faint light shines through the door, which you kick in, easily finding the Navigator as he lies in an empty bathtub, holding a dagger to the knife of a half-dressed prostitute who still looks to be in her early teens. "Stop! Don't move a muscle! You get any closer to me, I slit this bitch's throat!" Drake shouts, snarling at you. "Does he think that'll work? Fool," Meliodas laughs. > You move forward You step forward. "I swear to all the Dark Gods, I will open this bitch up!" Drake yells. You move forward once again, before Drake slices the girl's throat open, blood dripping down her chest. "Well. Now what?" you ask. "I... I'm necessary to operating the ship. You can't kill me." "So be it," you say. "You're coming with me." "Sure, sure," Drake says. You bind Drake's hands together with invisible chains, and force him to march forward. Drake immediately becomes compliant. "Can I grab a few things?" Drake asks. "My... dreams get pretty bad. I have terrifying nightmares. I have medication that helps. Please, please can I get them?" Drake asks.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn from the scene of your killing, and head towards the rooms where Amadeus scuttled off to. A faint light shines through the door, which you kick in, easily finding the Navigator as he lies in an empty bathtub, holding a dagger to the knife of a half-dressed prostitute who still looks to be in her early teens. "Stop! Don't move a muscle! You get any closer to me, I slit this bitch's throat!" Drake shouts, snarling at you. "Does he think that'll work? Fool," Meliodas laughs. > You telekinetically disarm Drake With a narrowing of your eyes, the knife flies into your hands. The prostitute stands, shoving Drake away. "Out," you command, as the prostitutes nods in thanks and leaves. "OK, OK, you're skilled," you say. "You're coming with me," you say. "Sure, sure," Drake says, standing up. You bind Drake's hands together with invisible chains, and force him to march forward. Drake immediately becomes compliant. "Can I grab a few things?" Drake asks. "My... dreams get pretty bad. I have terrifying nightmares. I have medication that helps. Please, please can I get them?" Drake asks.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fire a jet of flames, and the Dancing Blades quickly retreat out of the range of your fire. They dance along the edge, waiting to strike. > You teleport behind the enemy You teleport behind the enemies, immediately sending out bursts of flames to incinerate those closest to you, before a shock of lightning runs through another. Still, this si close combat, their specialty. They move with incredible speed, dodging your blows. One gets in close, stabbing through through the neck. You shudder, blood running down your killer's blade, before your soul expires.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I can smell him. He's here," Meliodas says. You step inside the doorway, looking into a marvelous palace. There's a huge grand staircase, with above it a massive chandelier of candles, the only illumination for the room. Beside it is an obsidian, bejeweled statue of a dragon, emitting a long burst of flames made from a bright red and orange gemstone, sits beside a marble table laden with roast meats, delicate pastries and fancy wines. You spot Amadeus, lying on a large silk couch, wearing an opened red silk hooded robe. On his forehead is a third, closed eye, while his normal eyes are focused on the girl in front of him, on her knees performing fellatio. You momentarily blush, before remembering that you're an insanely powerful psyker and not a fucking child. "Drake Amadeus, you're coming with me," you say, as Drake lets out a yelp, kicking the girl off him and stumbling back. "Shit, it's Karst! It's Karst! Get him the fuck away from me!" You step forward, before seeing a dozen girls emerge from the rooms upstairs, walking towards the grand staircase. They move with insane flexibility. Some behind back and walking with their heads peering out between their legs, before twisting their heads around a hundred and eight degrees. Some on all fours, their legs stretched back around their shoulders to allow them to walk forward at an odd angle. They move with delicate grace, before they each draw a pair of curved knifes, continuing to walk towards you. You see Drake Amadeus scuttle away from the corner of your eye, but it seems you have a bigger threat. "Ah, Slaaneeshi whores. Make their deaths quick. They'd just enjoy you drawing it out," Meliodas says. > You take out the chandelier You look at the Troupe, before flexing your hand and grabbing hold of the chandelier and sending it hurtling into the staircase. Most of the Troupe dodge, but a few are too slow and crushed by the chandelier. You take a deep breath as the chandelier's candles go out, leaving you in total darkness. You focus, and you can still vaguely see the Warp presence of the Troupe. You need to wipe them out, and quickly. > You fire a jet of flames You fire a jet of flames out, engulfing a pair of Dancing Blades. Unfortunately, this has the side-effect of illuminating the room, and now being able to see, the Troupe strikes. Immediately, three of them are upon you. You fly out of the way of one and set the second alight, before the third leaps at you. You back out of their way, avoiding a sword blow, before you're stabbed through the back, and you collapse to your knees, before a blow takes your head off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look at the Troupe, before flexing your hand and grabbing hold of the chandelier and sending it hurtling into the staircase. Most of the Troupe dodge, but a few are too slow and crushed by the chandelier. You take a deep breath as the chandelier's candles go out, leaving you in total darkness. You focus, and you can still vaguely see the Warp presence of the Troupe. You need to wipe them out, and quickly. > You telekinetically send furniture at the Troupe You feel their presence, slowly picking up the couch with your mind. The furniture flies towards them, and you feel their Warp presence flicker and die. You slowly move around the room, moving slowly and quietly, before you send a statue to crush another. You continue to move and weave, sending objects to crush and impale the Troupe. It only takes a minute before you hear the last one scream in pain as the dragon statue crushes them. You spray fire into the air, illuminating the room, just as she dies. Now, time to get back to the objective.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I can smell him. He's here," Meliodas says. You step inside the doorway, looking into a marvelous palace. There's a huge grand staircase, with above it a massive chandelier of candles, the only illumination for the room. Beside it is an obsidian, bejeweled statue of a dragon, emitting a long burst of flames made from a bright red and orange gemstone, sits beside a marble table laden with roast meats, delicate pastries and fancy wines. You spot Amadeus, lying on a large silk couch, wearing an opened red silk hooded robe. On his forehead is a third, closed eye, while his normal eyes are focused on the girl in front of him, on her knees performing fellatio. You momentarily blush, before remembering that you're an insanely powerful psyker and not a fucking child. "Drake Amadeus, you're coming with me," you say, as Drake lets out a yelp, kicking the girl off him and stumbling back. "Shit, it's Karst! It's Karst! Get him the fuck away from me!" You step forward, before seeing a dozen girls emerge from the rooms upstairs, walking towards the grand staircase. They move with insane flexibility. Some behind back and walking with their heads peering out between their legs, before twisting their heads around a hundred and eight degrees. Some on all fours, their legs stretched back around their shoulders to allow them to walk forward at an odd angle. They move with delicate grace, before they each draw a pair of curved knifes, continuing to walk towards you. You see Drake Amadeus scuttle away from the corner of your eye, but it seems you have a bigger threat. "Ah, Slaaneeshi whores. Make their deaths quick. They'd just enjoy you drawing it out," Meliodas says. > You fire bolts of Psychic energy You fire bolts of Psychic energy, but the Troupe easily dodges the blasts, leaping, ducking and jumping. You only manage to catch one, killing her instantly, before the Troupe strikes. Immediately, three of them are upon you. You fly out of the way of one and set the second alight, before the third leaps at you. You back out of their way, avoiding a sword blow, before you're stabbed through the back, and you collapse to your knees, before a blow takes your head off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press down on the button, and a voice crackles through. "Password?" the deep voice asks. > You say "I don't know the password, Kyros didn't tell me!" "Bullshit. Kyros would've without a doubt told you the password. He's not an idiot. Fuck off, rebel scum." Well. That was unsuccessful. > You attempt to break down the door You press your hands on the door, and begin to melt through the thick steal, as steel drips to the ground. Suddenly, you feel your energy hit an odd texture, before the anti-personal defenses prepared their blows, tearing your head off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Bullshit. Kyros would've without a doubt told you the password. He's not an idiot. Fuck off, rebel scum." Well. That was unsuccessful. > You try the intercom again You press down on the button, and a voice crackles through. "Do... do you think I don't know it's still you? There's a camera here, bud."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press down on the button, and a voice crackles through. "Password?" the deep voice asks. > You say "I'm here to escort Amadeus to Kyros' chambers!" "Bullshit. If Kyros wanted Amadeus, we would've got a message. Fuck off, rebel scum." Well. That was unsuccessful.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You press down on the button, and a voice crackles through. "Password?" the deep voice asks. > You say "I don't know the password. I'm here to kidnap Amadeus. Can you let me in?" "Wh... what?" "I don't know the password because I'm not here on Kyros' orders. I'm here to kidnap Amadeus." "It's just you out there." "Correct," you reply. "There's a shit ton of trained killers in here." "Yeah, I know," you say. "And you've come to kidnap Amadeus by yourself?"2 "Yes," you confirm. "Well, I respect your honesty. Come right in. I'm going to have to kill you, but fuck it, I'll open the door." The doors clicks open. Well, that was... easy.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk down the hallways alongside your four Chaos Marine guards. You head towards the war room, where Kyros is planning the first strike against the Imperium, taking over a Hive World, to secure a huge population that can be recruited from to bolster Kyros' forces ten times. You hum a tune, some old Uwais war chant that you find quite catchy. You feel a wave of nausea hit you, and you pause, as you feel a heavy weight lifted off your soul, and your cloudy mind is cleared. Your collar clicks, and falls off you, hitting the ground. Your guards stop, noticing you've stopped. "Prisoner, why have you s...?" one of the guards asks, before noticing your collar has fallen off. "Wait..." he starts to say, as the alarm begins to blare. "Hahaha! Freedom! Freedom!" Meliodas cries. Then, you strike. The first guard's head snaps around, tearing his head clean off his shoulders. You quickly set the second alight, shielding yourself from the bright blue flames that begin melting through the thick armor as the guard roars. You teleport behind the last two as bolter fire slams into the hallway where you once were. You blow a hole in the chest of one with a blast of psychic energy, before levitating the last one into the air, tossing his bolter across the room. "No, no, no!" the space marine roars, shaking and trying to grasp at you. "Kill! Maim! Burn! Break! Smash! Crush! Slaughter!" Meliodas gleefully chants. You smash the space marine into the ground repeatedly, shattering armor and leaving him as a bloody smear on the ground. You attempt to orientate yourself, trying to picture the path you took from your room to get here, and remembering where the Penthouse is. "Brother! Is Prisoner Alpha secure?" a radio crackles. You turn, noticing the radio attached to the first space marine's belt. You pick it up, as the psychic energy around you vibrates as you talk, changing your voice into that of the space marine. "Imitate his comrade's voice. Use the Warp," Meliodas suggests. "We were forced to kill him. What's the situation?" "Good riddance. Our brothers have betrayed us. The One Eyed Crows, the Black Rats, the Shrieking Harpies, all traitors! The 22nd are fighting, but I don't know whether the majority is with Kyros." "What's the plans?" "Kyros has us divided between exterminating the traitors and trying to put down the slave revolts that are taking place. The first and second generation super-soldiers are rebelling. Take your unit, and secure the gladiators. If they have the arena secured, they will have a strong defensive position." "Understood. We'll get it done," you say. "Send them to their reapers, brother, and ward off your own one," the radio crackles. "Glory to Kyros," you say. "Praise the Dark Gods!" "Nice touch," Meliodas says. The radio finishes, and you clip it to your belt. You float into the air, hovering along the hallways towards the Penthouse. You pass a trio of shotgun-wielding Bloody Claws, rushing towards the cyro-chambers. You fire a jet of flames, engulfing the trio but don't even slow down to watch them die. Soon, you find yourself in the elevator, rising towards the penthouse. You wait patiently, listening to reports come through the radio. "The entire area's filled with them! They're all traitors. I..." "Bridge secured, push forward." "Fall back, fall back, they're not going down!" "Rage! Kill! Maim! Smash! Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" "Leading the charge! Secure Elizabeth Staine, and they'll all... shit! AARGH!" "Damn it! I've been sealed in! Get me out, dammit! They're coming for us!" The elevator doors open, leaving you faced with five heavy bolters aiming at you. "It's the Psyker!" someone shouts. "Time to die, mortals!" Meliodas roars. > You attempt to reason with them "Wait!" you shout, preparing for the bolters to fire. Surprisingly, they don't. Well, time to reason with them. > You say "Abandon your weapons, or you die!" There's a brief pause, before the bolters fire. Bullets slam into your boy, one quickly finding your head and blowing it apart.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Wait!" you shout, preparing for the bolters to fire. Surprisingly, they don't. Well, time to reason with them. > You say "I'm a loyalist to Kyros!" "Well, what do we do, Sarge?" someone asks. "Fuck, if the mutiny succeeds and we're found with a loyalist, we'll be killed," another man answers. "If we kill him and Kyros wins, we die." "We'll say he asked to betray Kyros," the sergeant says. You attempt to put up your shield, as the heavy bolters fire. You immediately raise your shields, as bolter fire thuds into them. You feel them, like a tapping on your mind. Unfortunately, by the sheer amount of bolter fire being shot at you, one finds it's way in. It slams into you, blowing your chest open. You collapse to your knees, as your shields fail as you lose focus. Bullets riddle your body, killing you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Wait!" you shout, preparing for the bolters to fire. Surprisingly, they don't. Well, time to reason with them. > You say "The mutiny is going to succeed. Join us, or perish." "Fuck, what do we do, Sarge?" "The radio makes it sound like the loyalists are having their ass handed to them, and the prisoners are close to taking the complex! The psyker's right! Abandon post! Join the mutiny!" The guards lay down their bolters, and begin running towards the elevators. You shrug and allow them to pass, making your way down the hall. It's only a minute before you arrive at a massive, thick metal door with an intercom.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab Olive's hand, and she pulls you to your feet. "Ah, good job," Castus says. "Second rule: the first rule is bullshit. You know who doesn't trust anyone? Bastards like Kyros who ends up with no loyal friends, no allies, nothing, and then end up alone, with no one. If you want to survive in this world, you need allies." Castus grabs his sword by the blade, offering it to you. You reach out to grab it, before he swings it and smacks you in the side of the heat, sending you to the ground. Castus offers his hand to you, which you accept. He pulls you up, before kneeing you in the stomach and tossing you to the ground. "Come on, you're not learning. First rule: trust no one. Don't you listen?" "I was going my the second rule," you say, groaning. "Sometimes, the first rule is more important than the second rule," Castus shrugs. "How the fuck am I supposed to tell the difference between which rule to us?" you ask, annoyed. "Beats me. When you find out, you'll be the most powerful warlord in history. Until then, you just go off gut feeling and intellect." "Seems like a shitty system," you say, as Castus finally lets you stand up. "Seems like a shitty world you're in. That system is the best I have to offer. Now, rule three: in hand to hand combat, go for the weak spots. The throat, eyes and balls are always good, but when it comes to half these fucks, I'd stick to the eyes, because past that, I don't know what you have left. Observe." Castus flips his sword so he holds the blade again, wrapping his sleeve around the blade so it doesn't bite into his fingers as much. He steps forward, swinging his sword with insane speed. The pommel slams into your throat before jabbing you in the eyes, leaving you to stumble backwards. You quickly close your legs together before Castus jabs the pommel into your groin, and you collapse backwards with a pained yelp. "See? Effective," Castus smiles. "Rule four: you can win through many ways. Pain submission, incapacitating them, or simply taking their lives. Judge which can be used to take down your enemies. For instance, in your case, pain is the way forward." You're growing tired of being hit in the face. As Castus steps forward with his sword raised, you decide you're going to do something to dissuade him from continuing to hit you. > You send Castus into the arena wall As Castus swings his sword, you send him straight into the metal gate with a thud. He lets out a pained yelp, collapsing onto his stomach. "I don't need to learn how to wield a sword, Castus. You've trained all your life with a sword. I never have. Yet look how simply I defeat you? I need a sword as much as you need fangs. I've evolved past the need for it," you say, as Castus stands. "Fuck me, kid, couldn't you have made that point without breaking my fucking spine?" Castus says. "Yeah, fine, point proven. End of training, piss off." "Terrific," you say. "So, can I leave?" "Yeah, I'll call your guards here to open the gates and take you off," Castus says, grabbing a walkie-talkie hanging from his belt and speaking into it. "Yeah, we're finished here with the little cunt," he says, rubbing his back. "Oh shit, over." "Affirmative, out," the voice comes back. Soon, the gate lifts up as your guards saunter out in their thick power armor. "Where to next, boys?" you ask. "Shut it, psyker," one growls, looking at Castus and Olive. "Is it back to the cells for you two?" "We're happy to practice some more here," Olive says, twirling her gun-axe to stop a surprise attack from Castus. "I mean, if this dumb bastard has done so little practice to think that would take me down, he's go to need a lot more practice." "Pffh, I'd like to see you take me down," Castus says. "So be it," your captor growls. "Move it, psyker." You raise your hands defensively, and allow them to escort you back to your room.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab Olive's hand, and she pulls you to your feet. "Ah, good job," Castus says. "Second rule: the first rule is bullshit. You know who doesn't trust anyone? Bastards like Kyros who ends up with no loyal friends, no allies, nothing, and then end up alone, with no one. If you want to survive in this world, you need allies." Castus grabs his sword by the blade, offering it to you. You reach out to grab it, before he swings it and smacks you in the side of the heat, sending you to the ground. Castus offers his hand to you, which you accept. He pulls you up, before kneeing you in the stomach and tossing you to the ground. "Come on, you're not learning. First rule: trust no one. Don't you listen?" "I was going my the second rule," you say, groaning. "Sometimes, the first rule is more important than the second rule," Castus shrugs. "How the fuck am I supposed to tell the difference between which rule to us?" you ask, annoyed. "Beats me. When you find out, you'll be the most powerful warlord in history. Until then, you just go off gut feeling and intellect." "Seems like a shitty system," you say, as Castus finally lets you stand up. "Seems like a shitty world you're in. That system is the best I have to offer. Now, rule three: in hand to hand combat, go for the weak spots. The throat, eyes and balls are always good, but when it comes to half these fucks, I'd stick to the eyes, because past that, I don't know what you have left. Observe." Castus flips his sword so he holds the blade again, wrapping his sleeve around the blade so it doesn't bite into his fingers as much. He steps forward, swinging his sword with insane speed. The pommel slams into your throat before jabbing you in the eyes, leaving you to stumble backwards. You quickly close your legs together before Castus jabs the pommel into your groin, and you collapse backwards with a pained yelp. "See? Effective," Castus smiles. "Rule four: you can win through many ways. Pain submission, incapacitating them, or simply taking their lives. Judge which can be used to take down your enemies. For instance, in your case, pain is the way forward." You're growing tired of being hit in the face. As Castus steps forward with his sword raised, you decide you're going to do something to dissuade him from continuing to hit you. > You teleport out of the way of the blow You teleport behind Castus, causing him to smash his sword into the ground, Castus grunts in confusion as the force of his blow flying through the air causing him to stumble forward. "I don't need to learn how to wield a sword, Castus. You've trained all your life with a sword. I never have. Yet look how simply I evade your blows? I could just teleport behind you and break your neck without lifting a finger. I need a sword as much as you need fangs. I've evolved past the need for it," you say, gently poking him in the back. "Dead." "Fair point, kid," Castus says, smiling. " I like your style. I suppose you're good to go. End of training." "Terrific," you say. "So, can I leave?" "Yeah, I'll call your guards here to open the gates and take you off," Castus says, grabbing a walkie-talkie hanging from his belt and speaking into it. "Yeah, we're finished here," he says. "Oh shit, over." "Affirmative, out," the voice comes back. Soon, the gate lifts up as your guards saunter out in their thick power armor. "Where to next, boys?" you ask. "Shut it, psyker," one growls, looking at Castus and Olive. "Is it back to the cells for you two?" "We're happy to practice some more here," Olive says, twirling her gun-axe to stop a surprise attack from Castus. "I mean, if this dumb bastard has done so little practice to think that would take me down, he's go to need a lot more practice." "Pffh, I'd like to see you take me down," Castus says. "So be it," your captor growls. "Move it, psyker." You raise your hands defensively, and allow them to escort you back to your room.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Done," you say. Olive extends a hand, which you grip and shake extensively. Castus extends his hand, which you grab, but he twists your arm around, causing you to yelp painfully. He kicks away your foot and sends you to your knee, before bringing his sword up to your throat. "Dead," he says with a smile. "Well shit, Castus, what's wrong with you?" "What? I was just preparing him for fighting. I thought we were supposed to be training him. First lesson, kid: trust no one. Now, get up." Olive offers you a hand, smiling. > You get up yourself You try to stand up, but Castus kicks you in the stomach again. You groan and collapse onto the floor, before Castus puts his foot on your head. "Second rule: the first rule is bullshit. You know who doesn't trust anyone? Bastards like Kyros who ends up with no loyal friends, no allies, nothing, and then end up alone, with no one. If you want to survive in this world, you need allies." Castus offers his hand to you, which you accept. He pulls you up, before kneeing you in the stomach and tossing you to the ground. "Come on, you're not learning. First rule: trust no one. Don't you listen?" "I was going my the second rule," you say, groaning. "Sometimes, the first rule is more important than the second rule," Castus shrugs. "How the fuck am I supposed to tell the difference between which rule to us?" you ask, annoyed. "Beats me. When you find out, you'll be the most powerful warlord in history. Until then, you just go off gut feeling and intellect." "Seems like a shitty system," you say, as Castus finally lets you stand up. "Seems like a shitty world you're in. That system is the best I have to offer. Now, rule three: in hand to hand combat, go for the weak spots. The throat, eyes and balls are always good, but when it comes to half these fucks, I'd stick to the eyes, because past that, I don't know what you have left. Observe." Castus flips his sword so he holds the blade, wrapping his sleeve around the blade so it doesn't bite into his fingers as much. He steps forward, swinging his sword with insane speed. The pommel slams into your throat before jabbing you in the eyes, leaving you to stumble backwards. You quickly close your legs together before Castus jabs the pommel into your groin, and you collapse backwards with a pained yelp. "See? Effective," Castus smiles. "Rule four: you can win through many ways. Pain submission, incapacitating them, or simply taking their lives. Judge which can be used to take down your enemies. For instance, in your case, pain is the way forward." You're growing tired of being hit in the face. As Castus steps forward with his sword raised, you decide you're going to do something to dissuade him from continuing to hit you. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You duck your head, the knife flying just over your head and cluttering to the floor behind you. "Good catch," Castus says. You grab the knife, taking a practice stab. "What do you think?" "It's a knife," you say simply. "Yeah, it is. Do you like it? Does it feel good?" Castus says. "I don't know anything about knives. Maybe," you say. "Alright, first, we need to talk. Is anyone watching us? Like, are there cameras?" "No. Well yes, but they're offline," Olive says, resting her head on the butt of her axe-gun. "What is it?" "A plan is being formed. We're going to escape." "Escape?" Olive says, musing. "Who's on our side?" "We have a large amount of people on our side. Elios, Elizabeth and Durge are bringing the weight of their war-bands, as well as most, if not all, of the Guardsmen here. Then there's the Goliaths and the Tribals, both of whom are with us." "What...?" "Because I've done this twice before, I best say. We have no plans yet. They're to be decided. We have literally nothing. We just need to check whether you'll join us. Then, we'll get the leaders together to plan our to take over, and what to do with once we've actually done so." "Huh. Well, I'm in," Castus says. "What?" Olive asks, surprised. "Yeah, I'm in," Castus says. "We don't know the plan, we don't have any assurances that we won't be back-stabbed as soon as we take over, we..." "Olive, let's be smart here. If we don't rebel, we'll definitely either be killed fighting Kyros' war, killed trying to put down these fuckers' mutiny, or killed fighting another arena battle for these bastard's amusement." "If we rebel, we'll almost certainly be killed!" "Almost certainly is way better than definitely. Plus, we'll get to kill a few of Kyros' bastards before we go down." "Fine, I'm in, but I... we have a few demands," Olive says. "Go on," you say. You know the gladiators will be essential to your plans, so you really need to get them, but still, you don't want to devote to many resources to this issue. "I want instant freedom once we take-over. No more being locked up under the arena. I want my men to have free reign to travel around the ship. I want pay, do the men and women who fight and work for the ship actually get something from it. I want an increase in food rations, and better equipment than the shit we're given. I want actual medical care, on top of this." "That it?" you ask, annoyed with her large demands. It'll probably take a serious amount of resources to fulfill her request. You have a few options here. "What a fucking greedy bitch. This fucker needs a dick, I tell you that," Meliodas complains. > You try to compromise "I can't guarantee you all that," you say. "It's simply too expensive." "What can you guarantee?" "Freedom, definitely as well as free reign to travel the ship. But we're not giving you free rooms, food, equipment and medical equipment as well as pay. Pick one." "Fine, no pay," Olive says. "That's a deal, then," you say. Olive extends a hand, which you grip and shake extensively. Castus extends his hand, which you grab, but he twists your arm around, causing you to yelp painfully. He kicks away your foot and sends you to your knee, before bringing his sword up to your throat. "Dead," he says with a smile. "Well shit, Castus, what's wrong with you?" "What? I was just preparing him for fighting. I thought we were supposed to be training him. First lesson, kid: trust no one. Now, get up." Olive offers you a hand, smiling.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You duck your head, the knife flying just over your head and cluttering to the floor behind you. "Good catch," Castus says. You grab the knife, taking a practice stab. "What do you think?" "It's a knife," you say simply. "Yeah, it is. Do you like it? Does it feel good?" Castus says. "I don't know anything about knives. Maybe," you say. "Alright, first, we need to talk. Is anyone watching us? Like, are there cameras?" "No. Well yes, but they're offline," Olive says, resting her head on the butt of her axe-gun. "What is it?" "A plan is being formed. We're going to escape." "Escape?" Olive says, musing. "Who's on our side?" "We have a large amount of people on our side. Elios, Elizabeth and Durge are bringing the weight of their war-bands, as well as most, if not all, of the Guardsmen here. Then there's the Goliaths and the Tribals, both of whom are with us." "What...?" "Because I've done this twice before, I best say. We have no plans yet. They're to be decided. We have literally nothing. We just need to check whether you'll join us. Then, we'll get the leaders together to plan our to take over, and what to do with once we've actually done so." "Huh. Well, I'm in," Castus says. "What?" Olive asks, surprised. "Yeah, I'm in," Castus says. "We don't know the plan, we don't have any assurances that we won't be back-stabbed as soon as we take over, we..." "Olive, let's be smart here. If we don't rebel, we'll definitely either be killed fighting Kyros' war, killed trying to put down these fuckers' mutiny, or killed fighting another arena battle for these bastard's amusement." "If we rebel, we'll almost certainly be killed!" "Almost certainly is way better than definitely. Plus, we'll get to kill a few of Kyros' bastards before we go down." "Fine, I'm in, but I... we have a few demands," Olive says. "Go on," you say. You know the gladiators will be essential to your plans, so you really need to get them, but still, you don't want to devote to many resources to this issue. "I want instant freedom once we take-over. No more being locked up under the arena. I want my men to have free reign to travel around the ship. I want pay, do the men and women who fight and work for the ship actually get something from it. I want an increase in food rations, and better equipment than the shit we're given. I want actual medical care, on top of this." "That it?" you ask, annoyed with her large demands. It'll probably take a serious amount of resources to fulfill her request. You have a few options here. "What a fucking greedy bitch. This fucker needs a dick, I tell you that," Meliodas complains. > You convince Olive that Castus is right "Look, we can't guarantee anything. We don't know what's going to happen. Castus is right, we'd be killed if we don't rebel. Other than a chance, a simple chance, at freedom and life, I don't think we can start making deals for anything more," you say, putting all your energy into weaving an offer made almost entirely of bullshit. Olive narrows her eyes. "Fine. But let me tell you this, if I find myself with the shit side of the stick, I'm going to cause a lot of problems." "You can trust me," you say, as sincerely as possible. "Fine," Olive says. Olive extends a hand, which you grip and shake extensively. Castus extends his hand, which you grab, but he twists your arm around, causing you to yelp painfully. He kicks away your foot and sends you to your knee, before bringing his sword up to your throat. "Dead," he says with a smile. "Well shit, Castus, what's wrong with you?" "What? I was just preparing him for fighting. I thought we were supposed to be training him. First lesson, kid: trust no one. Now, get up." Olive offers you a hand, smiling.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You duck your head, the knife flying just over your head and cluttering to the floor behind you. "Good catch," Castus says. You grab the knife, taking a practice stab. "What do you think?" "It's a knife," you say simply. "Yeah, it is. Do you like it? Does it feel good?" Castus says. "I don't know anything about knives. Maybe," you say. "Alright, first, we need to talk. Is anyone watching us? Like, are there cameras?" "No. Well yes, but they're offline," Olive says, resting her head on the butt of her axe-gun. "What is it?" "A plan is being formed. We're going to escape." "Escape?" Olive says, musing. "Who's on our side?" "We have a large amount of people on our side. Elios, Elizabeth and Durge are bringing the weight of their war-bands, as well as most, if not all, of the Guardsmen here. Then there's the Goliaths and the Tribals, both of whom are with us." "What...?" "Because I've done this twice before, I best say. We have no plans yet. They're to be decided. We have literally nothing. We just need to check whether you'll join us. Then, we'll get the leaders together to plan our to take over, and what to do with once we've actually done so." "Huh. Well, I'm in," Castus says. "What?" Olive asks, surprised. "Yeah, I'm in," Castus says. "We don't know the plan, we don't have any assurances that we won't be back-stabbed as soon as we take over, we..." "Olive, let's be smart here. If we don't rebel, we'll definitely either be killed fighting Kyros' war, killed trying to put down these fuckers' mutiny, or killed fighting another arena battle for these bastard's amusement." "If we rebel, we'll almost certainly be killed!" "Almost certainly is way better than definitely. Plus, we'll get to kill a few of Kyros' bastards before we go down." "Fine, I'm in, but I... we have a few demands," Olive says. "Go on," you say. You know the gladiators will be essential to your plans, so you really need to get them, but still, you don't want to devote to many resources to this issue. "I want instant freedom once we take-over. No more being locked up under the arena. I want my men to have free reign to travel around the ship. I want pay, do the men and women who fight and work for the ship actually get something from it. I want an increase in food rations, and better equipment than the shit we're given. I want actual medical care, on top of this." "That it?" you ask, annoyed with her large demands. It'll probably take a serious amount of resources to fulfill her request. You have a few options here. "What a fucking greedy bitch. This fucker needs a dick, I tell you that," Meliodas complains. > You threaten Olive "No." "Then I guess we have no deal to make," Olive says. "No. I don't think you understand the nature of the offer I'm giving you. I'm letting you live. Whenever I want, I could have every single man under your command strangled to death by your collars, blown apart or force you to tear each other apart. You're going to follow my orders, or you're going to die." "Fine, at least guarantee me that you're not going to have us all killed once the ship is taken." "Sure, I can promise that," you say. Olive extends a hand, which you grip and shake extensively. Castus extends his hand, which you grab, but he twists your arm around, causing you to yelp painfully. He kicks away your foot and sends you to your knee, before bringing his sword up to your throat. "Dead," he says with a smile, before slashing open your throat. You gargle on your own blood, collapsing backwards. "Well, that was easy," Castus says. "Kill those fuckers!" Meliodas snarls. You raise your hand, focusing your mind, and Castus head snaps back, his neck breaking. Olive's eyes widen, before your send a fireball her way, consuming her in flames. You let out a final, desperate gasp, before your soul fades out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your eyes lull closed, and you lose consciousness. You awake an unknown time later, lying on the metal operating table. Magos Cern stands over you, washing her implements in a basin of water. She looks at you, her cold, red eyes peering into your soul. "Ah, you're awake. Good," she says. "What did you put into me?" you ask. "The biology of what I did is beyond you, flesh bag." "Can you dumb it down for me?" you ask. "Could one reduce concertos to the mumbled grunts of mutants?" Magos Cern asks indignantly. "Please?" "Fine. I increased the size of your heart by 40% and lungs by 12%, and added several veins and arteries leading directly to the brain from the heart. These actions increase the blood flow to your brain, and should hence increase psychic abilities. I added multiple microchips that breed monocytes, other white blood cells, platelets and other helpful things for your body. That was the bulk of my work. Other than that, it was just a medical check-up." "OK," you say. "I have a lot of important work to do, now. You should've had enough time to recover." Two of your massive space marine guards arrive, a roaring face on their thick helmets. "Here you are," Magos Cern says. "Guards, make sure to walk slow. If at any point the patient starts puking blood, let him sit down for ten, maybe fifteen minutes." "Shouldn't you keep him hearing for observation, then?" one of the guards ask. "I have far too much work to do," Magos Cern says. "Don't disturb me. If anything goes wrong, go to Genetor Corivan. He is very experienced with medical matters." "Yes, sir," the space marine says. Magos Cern quickly heads off, walking off to a row of elevators. The space marines stare at you, and you climb out of bed with a groan. "Ah, my head," you say. "You should have headaches for the next 48 hours," Magos Cern shouts, right before she disappears into an elevator. You stand, feeling a rush of blood hit your head. You walk after the space marines, along halls and up and down elevators, until you find yourself in the arena. Castus and Olive are there, mid-battle with each other. "Oh look, it's tweedle-dum and tweedle-fucking idiot," Meliodas says. "Not even a laugh? Oh wait, you didn't grow up with nursery rhymes, you're from a Feral world. My bad." Castus swings his sword at her, while Olive swings her rifle-axe up at his head. He rolls out of the way, kicking Olive's foot away and sending her to her knee, before booting her in the head. She collapses down, before rolling out of the way to avoid a downward stab by Castus. She grabs Castus' sword handle and punches him. Castus falls backwards, before taking up a fighting stance. Olive begins circling him, her gun-axe at the ready. She spots you, smiling. "Karth's here," she says. "Bullshit," Castus says, readying his sword. "Karth, tell him you're here," Olive says. "Yeah, I'm here," you say. Castus turns to look at you, but Olive charges, swinging her gun-axe. She knocks the feet away from Castus, dropping his knee down on Castus stomach. Castus grunts before Olive grabs her gun-axe and holds it to Castus throat. "Dead," she says. "No fair, we were supposed to stop when Karth got here," Castus says. "You're still dead," Olive smiles, standing up. Castus grabs Olive's wrist, pulling her forward so his sword pokes into her stomach. "Dead," he smiles. "Seriously?" Olive says, rolling her eyes. "Fine, I'm dead. Are we finished yet? The kid needs training." "Fine," Castus shrugs. "Let's start it." Castus draws a dagger from his belt, staring at it. The blade is a bright silver, with an odd pattern etched into it. It's handle is a bright, light blue, with a short, silver horn coming from the end of the handle. "Now, this is an absolute beauty. I really don't use it enough, so it's yours. Xenos-origin, so even owning it is heresy. The blade is razor sharp, it could cut through flesh and bone easier than it could through air. Here." Castus turns, tossing the dagger straight at your head. > You catch the knife You reach up and catch the knife, cutting your fingers with the blade, blood dripping down the blade. "Good catch," Castus says. "Try to catch the handle next time." You grab the knife by it's handle with your other hand, licking your cut fingers clean. You hold the knife, stabbing it forward. "What do you think?" Castus asks. "It's a knife," you say simply. "Yeah, it is. Do you like it? Does it feel good?" Castus says. "I don't know anything about knives. Maybe," you say. "Alright, first, we need to talk. Is anyone watching us? Like, are there cameras?" "No. Well yes, but they're offline," Olive says, resting her head on the butt of her axe-gun. "What is it?" "A plan is being formed. We're going to escape." "Escape?" Olive says, musing. "Who's on our side?" "We have a large amount of people on our side. Elios, Elizabeth and Durge are bringing the weight of their war-bands, as well as most, if not all, of the Guardsmen here. Then there's the Goliaths and the Tribals, both of whom are with us." "What...?" "Because I've done this twice before, I best say. We have no plans yet. They're to be decided. We have literally nothing. We just need to check whether you'll join us. Then, we'll get the leaders together to plan our to take over, and what to do with once we've actually done so." "Huh. Well, I'm in," Castus says. "What?" Olive asks, surprised. "Yeah, I'm in," Castus says. "We don't know the plan, we don't have any assurances that we won't be back-stabbed as soon as we take over, we..." "Olive, let's be smart here. If we don't rebel, we'll definitely either be killed fighting Kyros' war, killed trying to put down these fuckers' mutiny, or killed fighting another arena battle for these bastard's amusement." "If we rebel, we'll almost certainly be killed!" "Almost certainly is way better than definitely. Plus, we'll get to kill a few of Kyros' bastards before we go down." "Fine, I'm in, but I... we have a few demands," Olive says. "Go on," you say. You know the gladiators will be essential to your plans, so you really need to get them, but still, you don't want to devote to many resources to this issue. "I want instant freedom once we take-over. No more being locked up under the arena. I want my men to have free reign to travel around the ship. I want pay, do the men and women who fight and work for the ship actually get something from it. I want an increase in food rations, and better equipment than the shit we're given. I want actual medical care, on top of this." "That it?" you ask, annoyed with her large demands. It'll probably take a serious amount of resources to fulfill her request. You have a few options here. "What a fucking greedy bitch. This fucker needs a dick, I tell you that," Meliodas complains.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your eyes lull closed, and you lose consciousness. You awake an unknown time later, lying on the metal operating table. Magos Cern stands over you, washing her implements in a basin of water. She looks at you, her cold, red eyes peering into your soul. "Ah, you're awake. Good," she says. "What did you put into me?" you ask. "The biology of what I did is beyond you, flesh bag." "Can you dumb it down for me?" you ask. "Could one reduce concertos to the mumbled grunts of mutants?" Magos Cern asks indignantly. "Please?" "Fine. I increased the size of your heart by 40% and lungs by 12%, and added several veins and arteries leading directly to the brain from the heart. These actions increase the blood flow to your brain, and should hence increase psychic abilities. I added multiple microchips that breed monocytes, other white blood cells, platelets and other helpful things for your body. That was the bulk of my work. Other than that, it was just a medical check-up." "OK," you say. "I have a lot of important work to do, now. You should've had enough time to recover." Two of your massive space marine guards arrive, a roaring face on their thick helmets. "Here you are," Magos Cern says. "Guards, make sure to walk slow. If at any point the patient starts puking blood, let him sit down for ten, maybe fifteen minutes." "Shouldn't you keep him hearing for observation, then?" one of the guards ask. "I have far too much work to do," Magos Cern says. "Don't disturb me. If anything goes wrong, go to Genetor Corivan. He is very experienced with medical matters." "Yes, sir," the space marine says. Magos Cern quickly heads off, walking off to a row of elevators. The space marines stare at you, and you climb out of bed with a groan. "Ah, my head," you say. "You should have headaches for the next 48 hours," Magos Cern shouts, right before she disappears into an elevator. You stand, feeling a rush of blood hit your head. You walk after the space marines, along halls and up and down elevators, until you find yourself in the arena. Castus and Olive are there, mid-battle with each other. "Oh look, it's tweedle-dum and tweedle-fucking idiot," Meliodas says. "Not even a laugh? Oh wait, you didn't grow up with nursery rhymes, you're from a Feral world. My bad." Castus swings his sword at her, while Olive swings her rifle-axe up at his head. He rolls out of the way, kicking Olive's foot away and sending her to her knee, before booting her in the head. She collapses down, before rolling out of the way to avoid a downward stab by Castus. She grabs Castus' sword handle and punches him. Castus falls backwards, before taking up a fighting stance. Olive begins circling him, her gun-axe at the ready. She spots you, smiling. "Karth's here," she says. "Bullshit," Castus says, readying his sword. "Karth, tell him you're here," Olive says. "Yeah, I'm here," you say. Castus turns to look at you, but Olive charges, swinging her gun-axe. She knocks the feet away from Castus, dropping his knee down on Castus stomach. Castus grunts before Olive grabs her gun-axe and holds it to Castus throat. "Dead," she says. "No fair, we were supposed to stop when Karth got here," Castus says. "You're still dead," Olive smiles, standing up. Castus grabs Olive's wrist, pulling her forward so his sword pokes into her stomach. "Dead," he smiles. "Seriously?" Olive says, rolling her eyes. "Fine, I'm dead. Are we finished yet? The kid needs training." "Fine," Castus shrugs. "Let's start it." Castus draws a dagger from his belt, staring at it. The blade is a bright silver, with an odd pattern etched into it. It's handle is a bright, light blue, with a short, silver horn coming from the end of the handle. "Now, this is an absolute beauty. I really don't use it enough, so it's yours. Xenos-origin, so even owning it is heresy. The blade is razor sharp, it could cut through flesh and bone easier than it could through air. Here." Castus turns, tossing the dagger straight at your head. > You levitate the knife towards you You raise your hand, pausing the blade in mid-air and levitating it towards you, catching it's handle. "Impressive party trick, kid," Castus says. You take a practice stab with the knife. "What do you think?" "It's a knife," you say simply. "Yeah, it is. Do you like it? Does it feel good?" Castus says. "I don't know anything about knives. Maybe," you say. "Alright, first, we need to talk. Is anyone watching us? Like, are there cameras?" "No. Well yes, but they're offline," Olive says, resting her head on the butt of her axe-gun. "What is it?" "A plan is being formed. We're going to escape." "Escape?" Olive says, musing. "Who's on our side?" "We have a large amount of people on our side. Elios, Elizabeth and Durge are bringing the weight of their war-bands, as well as most, if not all, of the Guardsmen here. Then there's the Goliaths and the Tribals, both of whom are with us." "What...?" "Because I've done this twice before, I best say. We have no plans yet. They're to be decided. We have literally nothing. We just need to check whether you'll join us. Then, we'll get the leaders together to plan our to take over, and what to do with once we've actually done so." "Huh. Well, I'm in," Castus says. "What?" Olive asks, surprised. "Yeah, I'm in," Castus says. "We don't know the plan, we don't have any assurances that we won't be back-stabbed as soon as we take over, we..." "Olive, let's be smart here. If we don't rebel, we'll definitely either be killed fighting Kyros' war, killed trying to put down these fuckers' mutiny, or killed fighting another arena battle for these bastard's amusement." "If we rebel, we'll almost certainly be killed!" "Almost certainly is way better than definitely. Plus, we'll get to kill a few of Kyros' bastards before we go down." "Fine, I'm in, but I... we have a few demands," Olive says. "Go on," you say. You know the gladiators will be essential to your plans, so you really need to get them, but still, you don't want to devote to many resources to this issue. "I want instant freedom once we take-over. No more being locked up under the arena. I want my men to have free reign to travel around the ship. I want pay, do the men and women who fight and work for the ship actually get something from it. I want an increase in food rations, and better equipment than the shit we're given. I want actual medical care, on top of this." "That it?" you ask, annoyed with her large demands. It'll probably take a serious amount of resources to fulfill her request. You have a few options here. "What a fucking greedy bitch. This fucker needs a dick, I tell you that," Meliodas complains.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Deal," you say. "Good, good," Cain nods, extending a hand. You grab his hand, and thankfully Cain doesn't attempt to squeeze, which would almost certainly result in your fragile bones shattering. You shake vigorously, and Cain attempts a smile. The corners of his mouth twist unnaturally high, revealing rows of serrated teeth, curved fangs, massive molars and many other weird, odd teeth, protruding from bloody, rotten gums. You smile in response, not willing to offend him. "The beast would've taken half of what he asked for," Meliodas says. "Why didn't you tell me that before?" you say angrily. "I presumed you knew," Meliodas replies. "Are you OK?" Cain says. "Tell you what?" "Uh, nothing. Sorry," you say. "OK. Good deal," Cain says, his face contorted in what you assume is his version of a raising of the eyebrow. "Alright, best get prepared for your operation before Magos Cern gets back." "Yeah, I should," you say. You walk over to your operating table and quickly get undressed, before lying down. After another minute or two, Magos Cern appears, pushing a tray in front of her. One of her metallic tendrils grabs a syringe filled with a pale, translucent liquid. "This might hurt a little. It will more likely hurt a lot more," she says. You let out a pained yelp as she jams the syringe into your neck. She begins pushing down on the plunger as what you hope is anesthetic is pumped into you. Warm hands embrace you, pulling you into the oblivion of unconsciousness. > You resist You shake your head, struggling to avoid falling into unconsciousness. You take in a deep breath, flinging the warm hands away from your mind. Magos Cern continues pressing down on the plunger, shooting the remaining fluid into your blood. Your mind is gripped by a scream for sleep. Perhaps you should just embrace it. > You resist Magos Cern notices your struggle with indifference, refilling her syringe with anesthetic and injecting it into you again, although you can't feel the needle pierce your skin. Your eyes flutter before they roll in the back of your head. As you lose the fight to resist the void of oblivion, in the back of your mind you hear voices. "Magos Cern, I polished the AI module." "Good, Adept. You have gained one step forward in receiving your cybernetic upgrades." "How long, master? My flesh is weak, my body frail, I crave the strength of steel." "Soon, Adept, soon. Do not bother me in a time like this! We are on the brink of discovery! We have a mind older than the Emperor himself. Fifteen thousand years old! Can you imagine the knowledge it holds? Prepare Primus for start-up. I believe now is the time. I must just play with Kyros' pet's flesh, and then we will work." "Yes, Magos. Understood, Magos." Then, you lose all resistance and sleep takes you, leaving you powerless in its dark embrace. You awake an unknown time later, lying on the metal operating table. Magos Cern stands over you, washing her implements in a basin of water. She looks at you, her cold, red eyes peering into your soul. "Ah, you're awake. Good," she says. "What did you put into me?" you ask. "The biology of what I did is beyond you, flesh bag." "Can you dumb it down for me?" you ask. "Could one reduce concertos to the mumbled grunts of mutants?" Magos Cern asks indignantly. "Please?" "Fine. I increased the size of your heart by 40% and lungs by 12%, and added several veins and arteries leading directly to the brain from the heart. These actions increase the blood flow to your brain, and should hence increase psychic abilities. I added multiple microchips that breed monocytes, other white blood cells, platelets and other helpful things for your body. That was the bulk of my work. Other than that, it was just a medical check-up." "OK," you say. "I have a lot of important work to do, now. You should've had enough time to recover." Two of your massive space marine guards arrive, a roaring face on their thick helmets. "Here you are," Magos Cern says. "Guards, make sure to walk slow. If at any point the patient starts puking blood, let him sit down for ten, maybe fifteen minutes." "Shouldn't you keep him hearing for observation, then?" one of the guards ask. "I have far too much work to do," Magos Cern says. "Don't disturb me. If anything goes wrong, go to Genetor Corivan. He is very experienced with medical matters." "Yes, sir," the space marine says. Magos Cern quickly heads off, walking off to a row of elevators. The space marines stare at you, and you climb out of bed with a groan. "Ah, my head," you say. "You should have headaches for the next 48 hours," Magos Cern shouts, right before she disappears into an elevator. You stand, feeling a rush of blood hit your head. You walk after the space marines, along halls and up and down elevators, until you find yourself in the arena. Castus and Olive are there, mid-battle with each other. "Oh look, it's tweedle-dum and tweedle-fucking idiot," Meliodas says. "Not even a laugh? Oh wait, you didn't grow up with nursery rhymes, you're from a Feral world. My bad." Castus swings his sword at her, while Olive swings her rifle-axe up at his head. He rolls out of the way, kicking Olive's foot away and sending her to her knee, before booting her in the head. She collapses down, before rolling out of the way to avoid a downward stab by Castus. She grabs Castus' sword handle and punches him. Castus falls backwards, before taking up a fighting stance. Olive begins circling him, her gun-axe at the ready. She spots you, smiling. "Karth's here," she says. "Bullshit," Castus says, readying his sword. "Karth, tell him you're here," Olive says. "Yeah, I'm here," you say. Castus turns to look at you, but Olive charges, swinging her gun-axe. She knocks the feet away from Castus, dropping his knee down on Castus stomach. Castus grunts before Olive grabs her gun-axe and holds it to Castus throat. "Dead," she says. "No fair, we were supposed to stop when Karth got here," Castus says. "You're still dead," Olive smiles, standing up. Castus grabs Olive's wrist, pulling her forward so his sword pokes into her stomach. "Dead," he smiles. "Seriously?" Olive says, rolling her eyes. "Fine, I'm dead. Are we finished yet? The kid needs training." "Fine," Castus shrugs. "Let's start it." Castus draws a dagger from his belt, staring at it. The blade is a bright silver, with an odd pattern etched into it. It's handle is a bright, light blue, with a short, silver horn coming from the end of the handle. "Now, this is an absolute beauty. I really don't use it enough, so it's yours. Xenos-origin, so even owning it is heresy. The blade is razor sharp, it could cut through flesh and bone easier than it could through air. Here." Castus turns, tossing the dagger straight at your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Oh, really?" Fay says smiling. "Don't you?" "Oh, yeah, yeah!" Fay says, smiling. "I was actually just going to ask you about that. I'm glad you said yes." Fay smiles, before leaning in and kissing you briefly on the lips. You stare into her bright green eyes, the split-second kiss lasting for infinitely longer, feeling the warmth of her lips flood into you, before she pulls back. "Well, that was nice. Ideally our next rendezvous is going to take place somewhere where we're not surrounded by our tribe and horrible guards who want us dead," Fay smiles. "Was that it, or was there something else?" "Yeah, we have something important to discuss." "Wasn't that important?" Fay asks, smiling. "Oh no,it was, I just... I meant important for the tribe, not just for us," you say, stumbling over your words. "It feels nice to see you've become as awkward as I just was," Fay giggles. "Now, stop spitting out words. Take a breath, and tell me what's so important." "Rebellion." "Oh?" "Kyros is mad and paranoid. He's either going to slit our throats or send us on an endless string of suicide missions. We need to do something, and I really need your help. A group of collaborators have planned to rise up, and rid ourselves of Kyros. Then, we take over. I need the support of your Tribals to do so. "Yeah, totally. Done." "Done?" "Yeah. If we don't escape, we die here. Also, they're your Tribals as much as mine. Who else is in on this?" Fay asks. "Elios, Durge and Elizabeth are all in. No doubt Calpurnia's man will help us," you say. "What about Cain and the twins?" "I haven't asked them yet, but we need to get them on board," you say. "Do we hae a solid plan yet?" Fay asks. "Not yet. We need to find out how many people we have fighting for us." "What happens after we take the ship," Fay asks, raising an eyebrow. "That is still to be decided. Once we have Cain. Castus and Olive behind us, we'll have bargaining power. So you're in?" "I'm in," Fay nods. "I'll have the message spread among the tribals." You notice one of your guards walking towards you, carrying a tray. You motion for Fay to quiet down, as the guard arrives putting the tray down on the table. "Eat," he says, in a cold voice like the scraping of a blade on rusted metal. You look at your food. There's a bowl of noodles and strips of thin, cured meat, a small bowl of green jelly with chunks of odd, alien fruit inside, a large plastic cup of wine and a small, dense biscuit-like cake. "Well, someone's being pampered," Fay says, smiling. "Clearly I'm just more important than you," you gloat as you have a forkful of noodles and meat. Fay grabs the biscuit cake from your tray, taking a bite. "Hey!" you say in annoyance, as Fay sticks her tongue out. You quickly eat your meal, polishing off the entire tray and gulping down the wine. Then, Magos Cern arrives. "Good, you've eaten," she says. "These operations will be safer if you've had a full stomach." "OK, I'm ready, let's go, you say. "Bye, Fay. See you soon." "See you later, Fay says, blowing a kiss. Magos Cern leads you out of the cafeteria and along the halls, off along halls and elevators. Eventually, you pass through the cyro-sleep section, arriving in a large operating room. Dozens of Goliaths are lying on the surgery tables, many halfway through surgery. A half dozen other Tech Priests wander around between the Goliaths, removing and adding flesh, bone, organs, cybernetic implants and other strange things. "I didn't know there were other Tech Priests," you note. "This ship is the size of a small moon. Did you think you've seen enough of it to accurately be able to say that we don't have something? I have scores of Tech Priests who followed me into the embrace of the Dark Gods," Magos Cern says. Magos Cern leads you to an operating table. "This is yours. Please get undressed and wait here, I need to grab my materials and equipment. Stay here." Magos Cern turns around, walking off, leaving you alone. You spot Cain, lying on his operating table, his chest cut open to reveal still functioning organs. You wonder how he can still be alive with such a hastily cut-up torso, before you wince as you see his eyes dart towards you and you realize he's conscious. Looking to see Magos Cern hobbling away, you hop off the operating table and walk over to him. "Commander Karth," Cain grunts. "Need something?" "I have... an offer." "An offer? An offer of what?" Cain says, absent-mindedly picking at a cut alongside his... or at least, one of his stomachs. "Freedom," you say, catching the monster's attention. "Go on," Cain says, furrowing his scarred brow and causing a thin stream of blood to pour from his horns. "We're planning an escape. We could use you and your men," you say. "We?" "Elios, Durge, Elizabeth, Fay, others," you say. "That's it, I think." "When?" "We don't have details, yet. We need a head count before we can start planning it." "Hmmm... I'm willing to give you control of my... "Goliaths", as you called them. But, I have a list of conditions that I want to be satisfied once we take the ship." "Go on," you say. "I want us to get names. Every Goliath who is capable of remembering and answering to a name will be called that instead of its serial number, by you and ALL other members of command. No more cyro-sleep. I want a bed for every single Goliath. I don't care if it's fine cloth or a slab of concrete, as long as it doesn't freeze them, it'll do us. I want free time that's not just killing." "Anything else?" you ask. "That's it," Cain says, spitting out a serrated teeth that's fallen free from his jaw. Cain's demands are far from unfair. Really, all he wants is slightly more rights for his Goliaths, which wouldn't even take any more resources. Still, you don't want the beast getting a big head. You ARE still in charge of not only his collar, but the collars of every single Goliath. All you need is a few threats, and the Goliaths will be yours. > You threaten Cain "No." "No?" "No. I don't think you understand the nature of the offer I'm giving you. I'm letting you live. Whenever I want, I could have every single man under your command strangled to death by your collars, blown apart or force you to tear each other apart. You're going to follow my orders, or you're going to die." You prepare yourself for Cain to strike, but he only lets out a low, rumbling growl. "What was that?" you ask suspiciously. "An order," Cain snarls. Suddenly, a massive fist smashes into your back. You fly forward, smacking into the operating table and onto the ground. You let out a pitiful moan, before Cain puts his massive foot on your head. "What orders do you have for me?" he asks. Cain attempts a triumphant yet terrifying smile. The corners of his mouth twist unnaturally high, revealing rows of serrated teeth, curved fangs, massive molars and many other weird, odd teeth, protruding from bloody, rotten gums. Cain raises his foot, before bringing it down and crushing your head. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Elios steps forward, knocking on the metal door. The guards open, immediately raising their bolters. Elios waves his hand. "You didn't see me here. The voice of Slaanesh calls you, and you're his now. Move aside, and tell no one I was here." "I... no... yes, sir," one says, stepping aside. You watch Elios stroll out of the room, giving a final smile and wave as he leaves the room. You get some sleep, lying wrapped up in your blankets. Blissfully, there's only a few dark, terror-filled dreams, the rest only filling your with a vague, uneasy sense of dread. You awaken to Magos Cern poking you in the stomach with a white-hot pincer. "AH!" you scream. "What the fuck?" "My diagnostics told me that I'd be able to wake you up 0.4 seconds faster this way. We need to go," Magos Cern says. "Where?" "First, you require food. Then, you'l get some implants. I'm going through some long overdue upgrades for the... "Goliaths", as you called them, and Kyros asked me to pencil you in for a few biological upgrades." "Then?" you ask "Melee practice. In wake of assassination threats, Kyros wants you to be able to fend off a melee assassination as easily as you could a ranged or psychic attack." "My powers can do that," you say. "You'd be run through before you could react. Castus and Olive will run through some drills to get your reaction time up and give you a few dodging techniques that will lend themselves to all your battles." "Then?" "By then, with the recovery time from the implants, your weak body will require sleep." "OK", you say. Magos Cern leads you out of the room, and along the hallways. You find yourself in a massive cafeteria. You walk forward, spotting Fay sitting alongside a badly burnt girl with a long braid wrapping around herself and another with a prosthetic arm replaced by a sharpened, mechanical claw. Fay looks up, noodles hanging from her mouth, spotting you. "Oh, Karth!" she says, waving, before noticing that her mouth is filled with noodles and blushing. You take a seat next to her, and she smiles. "So, how are you doing?" she asks. "We need to talk. Alone," you say, looking at the two tribals beside her. "Uh... OK," Fay says, motioning for the two tribals to move, which they quickly do. "Thanks," you say to the tribals as they walk off. "So? Is this about what I think it's about?" "What do you think it's about?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Well, you know... you want to speak to me alone... privately... so I kind of assume it's about us." "Yeah, of course it's about us, that's why we're both here to talk about it." "No, I mean... like, us us," Fay says, clearly frustrated by your failure to understand. "What?" "Well, like, do you want us to be a couple?" > You say "I really like you, but as a friend." "Oh, yeah, yeah, I agree," Fay says. "I feel the same way, I was actually really dreading telling you that, and I thought I'd have to tell you it now, but since we feel the way, it's OK now." "Oh, good, good." "So, what was that other thing?" Fay asks, rushing onto the next subject. "Rebellion." "Oh?" "Kyros is mad and paranoid. He's either going to slit our throats or send us on an endless string of suicide missions. We need to do something, and I really need your help. A group of collaborators have planned to rise up, and rid ourselves of Kyros. Then, we take over. I need the support of your Tribals to do so. "Yeah, totally. Done." "Done?" "Yeah. If we don't escape, we die here. Also, they're your Tribals as much as mine. Who else is in on this?" Fay asks. "Elios, Durge and Elizabeth are all in. No doubt Calpurnia's man will help us," you say. "What about Cain and the twins?" "I haven't asked them yet, but we need to get them on board," you say. "Do we hae a solid plan yet?" Fay asks. "Not yet. We need to find out how many people we have fighting for us." "What happens after we take the ship," Fay asks, raising an eyebrow. "That is still to be decided. Once we have Cain. Castus and Olive behind us, we'll have bargaining power. So you're in?" "I'm in," Fay nods. "I'll have the message spread among the tribals." You notice one of your guards walking towards you, carrying a tray. You motion for Fay to quiet down, as the guard arrives putting the tray down on the table. "Eat," he says, in a cold voice like the scraping of a blade on rusted metal. You look at your food. There's a bowl of noodles and strips of thin, cured meat, a small bowl of green jelly with chunks of odd, alien fruit inside, a large plastic cup of wine and a small, dense biscuit-like cake. "Well, someone's being pampered," Fay says, smiling. "Clearly I'm just more important than you," you gloat as you have a forkful of noodles and meat. Fay grabs the biscuit cake from your tray, taking a bite. "Hey!" you say in annoyance, as Fay sticks her tongue out. You quickly eat your meal, polishing off the entire tray and gulping down the wine. Then, Magos Cern arrives. "Good, you've eaten," she says. "These operations will be safer if you've had a full stomach." "OK, I'm ready, let's go, you say. "Bye, Fay. See you soon." "See you later, Fay says, looking a bit sullen, as you wonder whether that put down was too forward. Magos Cern leads you out of the cafeteria and along the halls, off along halls and elevators. Eventually, you pass through the cyro-sleep section, arriving in a large operating room. Dozens of Goliaths are lying on the surgery tables, many halfway through surgery. A half dozen other Tech Priests wander around between the Goliaths, removing and adding flesh, bone, organs, cybernetic implants and other strange things. "I didn't know there were other Tech Priests," you note. "This ship is the size of a small moon. Did you think you've seen enough of it to accurately be able to say that we don't have something? I have scores of Tech Priests who followed me into the embrace of the Dark Gods," Magos Cern says. Magos Cern leads you to an operating table. "This is yours. Please get undressed and wait here, I need to grab my materials and equipment. Stay here." Magos Cern turns around, walking off, leaving you alone. You spot Cain, lying on his operating table, his chest cut open to reveal still functioning organs. You wonder how he can still be alive with such a hastily cut-up torso, before you wince as you see his eyes dart towards you and you realize he's conscious. Looking to see Magos Cern hobbling away, you hop off the operating table and walk over to him. "Commander Karth," Cain grunts. "Need something?" "I have... an offer." "An offer? An offer of what?" Cain says, absent-mindedly picking at a cut alongside his... or at least, one of his stomachs. "Freedom," you say, catching the monster's attention. "Go on," Cain says, furrowing his scarred brow and causing a thin stream of blood to pour from his horns. "We're planning an escape. We could use you and your men," you say. "We?" "Elios, Durge, Elizabeth, Fay, others," you say. "That's it, I think." "When?" "We don't have details, yet. We need a head count before we can start planning it." "Hmmm... I'm willing to give you control of my... "Goliaths", as you called them. But, I have a list of conditions that I want to be satisfied once we take the ship." "Go on," you say. "I want us to get names. Every Goliath who is capable of remembering and answering to a name will be called that instead of its serial number, by you and ALL other members of command. No more cyro-sleep. I want a bed for every single Goliath. I don't care if it's fine cloth or a slab of concrete, as long as it doesn't freeze them, it'll do us. I want free time that's not just killing." "Anything else?" you ask. "That's it," Cain says, spitting out a serrated teeth that's fallen free from his jaw. Cain's demands are far from unfair. Really, all he wants is slightly more rights for his Goliaths, which wouldn't even take any more resources. Still, you don't want the beast getting a big head. You ARE still in charge of not only his collar, but the collars of every single Goliath. All you need is a few threats, and the Goliaths will be yours.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Karth!" Meliodas' voice says, appearing in your mind. "Look behind you, you fool!" You quickly twist around in bed, raising your fists and preparing to use what little psychic powers, to see Elios leaning in the doorway of your bathroom. "Shit! What the fuck are you doing!?" you shout. "Hmmm... a man can't just lean back and enjoy one of the finer sights in life?" Elios says, winking as he strolls confidently towards you. "Get...!" you try to speak, but he puts a finger against your lips, leaning in close. "Quiet, baby. No need to fret. I'm not here to give you any trouble. I'm hear to help you with a certain little... problem." Elios runs his hand along your bare chest and up to your collar, playfully tugging on it. You stare at him, waiting. "Well, let's be realistic here. We're going to be slaughtered. If we're lucky, we're going to be killed when Kyros leads his moronic charge against the Imperium. If we're unlucky, we're going to end up like Calpurnia, tortured to death by a paranoid Psyker." "You're at risk of being tortured to death. I never betrayed him," you say. "Oh, baby, why do you have to be so difficult?" Elios smiles, two of his fingers walking up your legs, slowly nearing your groin. "Baby, at the moment, Kyros is looking to eliminate those who are going to betray him. But he's growing paranoid. He'll end thinking you're going to betray him, whether you are or are not. Let's be fair, you do have motives. Your tribe destroyed or enslaved, forced to bear the troubles that a Psyker does? Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if you had an escape plan in the works. Hell, even if he doesn't, one of your men will act rebellious or a battle will go wrong, and you'll be blamed for it. You need to get with us, baby." "Let's say I'm considering it. What would it entail?" you ask. "You need to get the leaders on your side. Fay, Olive, Castus, whoever's in charge of those big monster boys I saw you working with earlier. Get them on your side, while I will talk to Elizabeth and Durge about maintaining the rebellious attitude amongst Calpurnia's boys, make sure they're still up for a little bit of mutiny." "What happens when we take the ship?" you ask. "That'll be decided once we've secured the other leaders. I'm sure they have demands of their own. So are you in?" "Hmmm... it's clearly our only option, but you should know that Elios both wants to fuck you over and straight up fuck you," Meliodas says. "I'm pretty sure my other choice is death. That's not even a choice," you say. "Well, it's the one I'm giving you, baby," Elios says,gently flicking the tip of your dick, causing you to yelp and scuttle back on your bed. > You disagree "No." "No?" Elios says, taken aback. "I'm not joining you. He knows what you're planning. I'm not joining your death trap." "So be it," he says, a sneer forming on his face. Elios steps forward, knocking on the metal door. The guards open, immediately raising their bolters. Elios waves his hand. "You didn't see me here. The voice of Slaanesh calls you, and you're his now. Move aside, and tell no one I was her," Elios says, strolling forward, leaving without looking at you. In the next few weeks, you're quickly proven right. Elios is first. When he's found, he's had his limps slowly sanded off, before being thrown in a pit with mutants who tore him apart. A "mysterious" assassin attempts to kill Elizabeth, but Durge fends her off, only for a "malfunction" to destroy him the next day, incinerating him in a single blast. Elizabeth is killed by one of the ship's macro-cannons, taking out the shuttle they were going on, because of a sensor malfunction identifying it as hostile. With his threats to power gone, the assault on the Imperium is on. The first few worlds fall with ease, as they're unprepared for the level of firepower that Kyros is bringing to the table. Still, issues arise. You're reinforced by those recruited from the conquered realms as well as throngs of war-bands coming to join your invasion. Still, Kyros gets greedy. He attempts to take on a Forge World, a world literally covered with layers of factories, run by the cyborg-engineers that are part of the machine-worshipping cult known as the Mechnicus. Kyros' grand plans to have a Forge World producing endless war machines are ruined when the planet's orbital defenses take out much of your fleet, and in the ensuing battle the factories are leveled. When Kyros finally takes the planet, it's nothing but a smoking rock. Everything falls apart after that. In a desperate attempt to capture geneseed stores to allow him to take over the home world of a Space Marine chapter known as the Horned Kings. The chapter is wiped out, but again Kyros gains nothing as the last act of the Chapter Master is to detonate their geneseed stores. At this point, Kyros' forces are a pale shadow of their previous selves. Cain and most of the Goliaths were taken out as their landing pods were wiped out in an attempt to take the Forge World, and the gladiators are wiped out by a suicidal charge by the Iron Kings. They're not the only ones gone. Fay is killed, along with many of the tribals, in the Genesee stores' destruction. It's only at that point that you truly stop caring. Your tribe is gone, only a few faces so grief-stricken you can barely recognize them remaining. You don't care if you reach Terra. You don't care if you live. You don't care if you die. You just don't care, about anything. You find yourself on some war-stricken world, killing. Scores of refugees are wiped out as your hand waves and warpfire spurts from the earth. Once, you would've have wanted to hurt innocents. You wouldn't have done it. Now, you feel nothing as you smell their cooked flesh. A Space Marine charges towards you, but you stare at him. The Space Marine screams as you force him to tear his own arms off, tossing them aside and having tentacles rapidly grow out of his arm sockets, before his mind is corrupted and he charges, roaring towards his allies as he begins to tear them apart. You watch as a Dreadnought's legs buckle under your telekinesis, sending it toppling and tumbling down before it explodes. You levitate a Guardsman into the air as he howls in terror, be... The earth shutters as artillery booms, sending you into the air. Artillery tears through the earth, and you slam into an APC. You hastily stand, to see dozens of refugees piling out of the crippled APC. You see to your surprise Tribals shooting at you and the other refugees, bullets thudding into the metal next to you, before they're killed by bolter fire. You look at your reflection in the half-broken window of a destroyed building, and realize why they were firing. With your now torn clothes and dirt-covered face, you are now indistinguishable from the refugees you've been killing. You hear a dozen monstrous roars from your allies off towards your right, signifying a charge, before it's answered by the shouts of the Imperial Guard and Space Marine preparing a counter-charge. You could try to escape this. Hide amongst the refugees. Find a way out of this life. But what would be the point? You hear the charge nearing. Damn Kyros, putting you in this situation. Maybe you should be the one to finish his mad invasion? Or maybe you should return to what you know, and fight? > You attack the Space Marines and Imperial Guard Fear the Psyker You turn, to see dozens of colored, heavily armored bodies making a charge. You let out a psychic scream, destroying eardrums and leaving the closest to you collapsing on the ground and howling in pain. You fire a long stream of flames, engulfing another two. From then on, it's a blur. Warpfire flies from you in a whirlwind of flaming death. Psychic electricity runs along your wrists and melts bone, fries skin and takes life. Bolts of energy take out any stupid enough to near you. You take fire, though. You dodge most, shield yourself from most of what remains, but a few get through. By the end of this, blood pours from your wounds and you feel the life drain from you. You continue fighting, breaking and shattering all those before you. Your life has become a blaze, burning all that nears to cinders. Like a blaze, it begins to blaze out. Eventually, you find yourself on your knees, continuing to wipe out dozens of your enemies, though lacking the strength to stand up. You let out a final roar, releasing a burst of psychic energy, before your soul is violently rendered from you. Although Kyros takes the planet, his forces are nothing more. They take two more worlds before being wiped out as the Ultramarines, Bronze-born and Lead Vipers wipe them out to the last man. Still, Kyros name is barely known. It's another name that becomes commonplace through the Imperium, as a terrifying reminder of why Psykers need to be crushed or imprisoned: Karth. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"No." "No?" Elios says, taken aback. "I'm not joining you. He knows what you're planning. I'm not joining your death trap." "So be it," he says, a sneer forming on his face. Elios steps forward, knocking on the metal door. The guards open, immediately raising their bolters. Elios waves his hand. "You didn't see me here. The voice of Slaanesh calls you, and you're his now. Move aside, and tell no one I was her," Elios says, strolling forward, leaving without looking at you. In the next few weeks, you're quickly proven right. Elios is first. When he's found, he's had his limps slowly sanded off, before being thrown in a pit with mutants who tore him apart. A "mysterious" assassin attempts to kill Elizabeth, but Durge fends her off, only for a "malfunction" to destroy him the next day, incinerating him in a single blast. Elizabeth is killed by one of the ship's macro-cannons, taking out the shuttle they were going on, because of a sensor malfunction identifying it as hostile. With his threats to power gone, the assault on the Imperium is on. The first few worlds fall with ease, as they're unprepared for the level of firepower that Kyros is bringing to the table. Still, issues arise. You're reinforced by those recruited from the conquered realms as well as throngs of war-bands coming to join your invasion. Still, Kyros gets greedy. He attempts to take on a Forge World, a world literally covered with layers of factories, run by the cyborg-engineers that are part of the machine-worshipping cult known as the Mechnicus. Kyros' grand plans to have a Forge World producing endless war machines are ruined when the planet's orbital defenses take out much of your fleet, and in the ensuing battle the factories are leveled. When Kyros finally takes the planet, it's nothing but a smoking rock. Everything falls apart after that. In a desperate attempt to capture geneseed stores to allow him to take over the home world of a Space Marine chapter known as the Horned Kings. The chapter is wiped out, but again Kyros gains nothing as the last act of the Chapter Master is to detonate their geneseed stores. At this point, Kyros' forces are a pale shadow of their previous selves. Cain and most of the Goliaths were taken out as their landing pods were wiped out in an attempt to take the Forge World, and the gladiators are wiped out by a suicidal charge by the Iron Kings. They're not the only ones gone. Fay is killed, along with many of the tribals, in the Genesee stores' destruction. It's only at that point that you truly stop caring. Your tribe is gone, only a few faces so grief-stricken you can barely recognize them remaining. You don't care if you reach Terra. You don't care if you live. You don't care if you die. You just don't care, about anything. You find yourself on some war-stricken world, killing. Scores of refugees are wiped out as your hand waves and warpfire spurts from the earth. Once, you would've have wanted to hurt innocents. You wouldn't have done it. Now, you feel nothing as you smell their cooked flesh. A Space Marine charges towards you, but you stare at him. The Space Marine screams as you force him to tear his own arms off, tossing them aside and having tentacles rapidly grow out of his arm sockets, before his mind is corrupted and he charges, roaring towards his allies as he begins to tear them apart. You watch as a Dreadnought's legs buckle under your telekinesis, sending it toppling and tumbling down before it explodes. You levitate a Guardsman into the air as he howls in terror, be... The earth shutters as artillery booms, sending you into the air. Artillery tears through the earth, and you slam into an APC. You hastily stand, to see dozens of refugees piling out of the crippled APC. You see to your surprise Tribals shooting at you and the other refugees, bullets thudding into the metal next to you, before they're killed by bolter fire. You look at your reflection in the half-broken window of a destroyed building, and realize why they were firing. With your now torn clothes and dirt-covered face, you are now indistinguishable from the refugees you've been killing. You hear a dozen monstrous roars from your allies off towards your right, signifying a charge, before it's answered by the shouts of the Imperial Guard and Space Marine preparing a counter-charge. You could try to escape this. Hide amongst the refugees. Find a way out of this life. But what would be the point? You hear the charge nearing. Damn Kyros, putting you in this situation. Maybe you should be the one to finish his mad invasion? Or maybe you should return to what you know, and fight? > You attack Kyros' forces Ending the Crusade You turn, to see Chaos Space Marines, Traitor Guard, Mutants, Tribals, Goliaths and Gladiators charging onto the battle. Far in the distance, floating high above the forces, is Kyros. You know what needs to be done. You leap into the air, flying directly towards Kyros with a roar. You release waves of warpfire and psychic energy, killing dozens of people around you, but that's just a side-note to your main foe. You slam into Kyros, wrapping your hands around his throat. You begin to crush his throat, screaming, as Kyros immediately begin to activate your collar, strangling the life out of you. You don't care. You feel your trachea explode, but you don't care, you only keep strangling. As the two of you fight, you release waves of psychic energy, killing scores of men around you. You let out a scream, transfering all your energy into your hands, and Kyros screams in pain and terror, before you tear his head clean from his head. IN a final scream, you release your hold on line, adding all your remaining life and energy into the psychic blast Kyros releases upon his death, wiping out much of Kyros force. With your move, Kyros' forces are stopped. Without a leader, they are broken on that planet. Magos Cern is taken down attempting to flee the planet, while Chapter Master Taj is killed in a suicidal charge. Kyros' forces take so many losses in you and Kyros' battle and are so confused that they're crushed by the following charge, leaving few alive. Guardsmen who survive note the suicidal rampage you went on with your final breath. Many wonder if, instilled with an ounce of the God-Emperor's courage, you sacrificed herself to take out the monster Kyros was and the monster he made you. Of course, these thoughts would be heresy, so known dare to even think it aloud in there head. Still, the belief persists, to whatever degree, that your death meant something.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"No." "No?" Elios says, taken aback. "I'm not joining you. He knows what you're planning. I'm not joining your death trap." "So be it," he says, a sneer forming on his face. Elios steps forward, knocking on the metal door. The guards open, immediately raising their bolters. Elios waves his hand. "You didn't see me here. The voice of Slaanesh calls you, and you're his now. Move aside, and tell no one I was her," Elios says, strolling forward, leaving without looking at you. In the next few weeks, you're quickly proven right. Elios is first. When he's found, he's had his limps slowly sanded off, before being thrown in a pit with mutants who tore him apart. A "mysterious" assassin attempts to kill Elizabeth, but Durge fends her off, only for a "malfunction" to destroy him the next day, incinerating him in a single blast. Elizabeth is killed by one of the ship's macro-cannons, taking out the shuttle they were going on, because of a sensor malfunction identifying it as hostile. With his threats to power gone, the assault on the Imperium is on. The first few worlds fall with ease, as they're unprepared for the level of firepower that Kyros is bringing to the table. Still, issues arise. You're reinforced by those recruited from the conquered realms as well as throngs of war-bands coming to join your invasion. Still, Kyros gets greedy. He attempts to take on a Forge World, a world literally covered with layers of factories, run by the cyborg-engineers that are part of the machine-worshipping cult known as the Mechnicus. Kyros' grand plans to have a Forge World producing endless war machines are ruined when the planet's orbital defenses take out much of your fleet, and in the ensuing battle the factories are leveled. When Kyros finally takes the planet, it's nothing but a smoking rock. Everything falls apart after that. In a desperate attempt to capture geneseed stores to allow him to take over the home world of a Space Marine chapter known as the Horned Kings. The chapter is wiped out, but again Kyros gains nothing as the last act of the Chapter Master is to detonate their geneseed stores. At this point, Kyros' forces are a pale shadow of their previous selves. Cain and most of the Goliaths were taken out as their landing pods were wiped out in an attempt to take the Forge World, and the gladiators are wiped out by a suicidal charge by the Iron Kings. They're not the only ones gone. Fay is killed, along with many of the tribals, in the Genesee stores' destruction. It's only at that point that you truly stop caring. Your tribe is gone, only a few faces so grief-stricken you can barely recognize them remaining. You don't care if you reach Terra. You don't care if you live. You don't care if you die. You just don't care, about anything. You find yourself on some war-stricken world, killing. Scores of refugees are wiped out as your hand waves and warpfire spurts from the earth. Once, you would've have wanted to hurt innocents. You wouldn't have done it. Now, you feel nothing as you smell their cooked flesh. A Space Marine charges towards you, but you stare at him. The Space Marine screams as you force him to tear his own arms off, tossing them aside and having tentacles rapidly grow out of his arm sockets, before his mind is corrupted and he charges, roaring towards his allies as he begins to tear them apart. You watch as a Dreadnought's legs buckle under your telekinesis, sending it toppling and tumbling down before it explodes. You levitate a Guardsman into the air as he howls in terror, be... The earth shutters as artillery booms, sending you into the air. Artillery tears through the earth, and you slam into an APC. You hastily stand, to see dozens of refugees piling out of the crippled APC. You see to your surprise Tribals shooting at you and the other refugees, bullets thudding into the metal next to you, before they're killed by bolter fire. You look at your reflection in the half-broken window of a destroyed building, and realize why they were firing. With your now torn clothes and dirt-covered face, you are now indistinguishable from the refugees you've been killing. You hear a dozen monstrous roars from your allies off towards your right, signifying a charge, before it's answered by the shouts of the Imperial Guard and Space Marine preparing a counter-charge. You could try to escape this. Hide amongst the refugees. Find a way out of this life. But what would be the point? You hear the charge nearing. Damn Kyros, putting you in this situation. Maybe you should be the one to finish his mad invasion? Or maybe you should return to what you know, and fight? > You hide amongst the refugees You successfully hide amongst the refugees, and are transported to a nearby evacuation facility. You're given a cheap meal of Grox Jerky and soup, before being put into a massive fenced off area. Unfortunately, soon you learn that you overestimated how easy this would be. "Ah, an inquisitor has arrived. We're going to die here." Meliodas says, as you hear his voice for the first time in a while. You spot an Inquisitor, a heavily armored agent of the Imperium built for rooting out Chaos and Heresy. He stands, tall and heavily armored, a longsword glowing faintly blue clutched in one hand and a bolt pistol in the other. At his side is a grizzled soldier in Carapace armor holding a Flamer and snarling her scarred face as passer-bys, a man in browns robes holding a huge chainsword and a heavily cybernetically-upgraded Tech Priest. You wait patiently, attempting to hide every ounce of your power. "It's not going to work," Meliodas says. "He's going to find us. You're going to die here. You can get revenge, though. Let me take you. Let me take hold of your body, and open a pathway through the Warp. I can summon endless hordes of daemons to this world, wipe out that inquisitor, gain your vengeance, and allow me power. We have a chance now." He strolls along, stopping next to you. He looks down, raising an eyebrow. "Are we experiencing more Warp Storms, Engsineer Low?" he asks. "No, sir," the tech-priest says in a monotone voice. The inquisitor rapidly raises a bolt pistol, aiming at you head as he swings the longsword. "It's Karst! TAKE HIM DOWN!" he screams. "Now, now! We can crush them! You're already dead. They can be too!" Meliodas howls in your mind. > You face the bullets You close your eyes, and soon, the world is taken away. You hope to find a peace in death you could never find in sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You successfully hide amongst the refugees, and are transported to a nearby evacuation facility. You're given a cheap meal of Grox Jerky and soup, before being put into a massive fenced off area. Unfortunately, soon you learn that you overestimated how easy this would be. "Ah, an inquisitor has arrived. We're going to die here." Meliodas says, as you hear his voice for the first time in a while. You spot an Inquisitor, a heavily armored agent of the Imperium built for rooting out Chaos and Heresy. He stands, tall and heavily armored, a longsword glowing faintly blue clutched in one hand and a bolt pistol in the other. At his side is a grizzled soldier in Carapace armor holding a Flamer and snarling her scarred face as passer-bys, a man in browns robes holding a huge chainsword and a heavily cybernetically-upgraded Tech Priest. You wait patiently, attempting to hide every ounce of your power. "It's not going to work," Meliodas says. "He's going to find us. You're going to die here. You can get revenge, though. Let me take you. Let me take hold of your body, and open a pathway through the Warp. I can summon endless hordes of daemons to this world, wipe out that inquisitor, gain your vengeance, and allow me power. We have a chance now." He strolls along, stopping next to you. He looks down, raising an eyebrow. "Are we experiencing more Warp Storms, Engsineer Low?" he asks. "No, sir," the tech-priest says in a monotone voice. The inquisitor rapidly raises a bolt pistol, aiming at you head as he swings the longsword. "It's Karst! TAKE HIM DOWN!" he screams. "Now, now! We can crush them! You're already dead. They can be too!" Meliodas howls in your mind. > You try to reason with him "Wait! You...!" The inquisitor fires, and the bolts slam into your skull, ending your life. You hope to find a peace in death you could never find in sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You successfully hide amongst the refugees, and are transported to a nearby evacuation facility. You're given a cheap meal of Grox Jerky and soup, before being put into a massive fenced off area. Unfortunately, soon you learn that you overestimated how easy this would be. "Ah, an inquisitor has arrived. We're going to die here." Meliodas says, as you hear his voice for the first time in a while. You spot an Inquisitor, a heavily armored agent of the Imperium built for rooting out Chaos and Heresy. He stands, tall and heavily armored, a longsword glowing faintly blue clutched in one hand and a bolt pistol in the other. At his side is a grizzled soldier in Carapace armor holding a Flamer and snarling her scarred face as passer-bys, a man in browns robes holding a huge chainsword and a heavily cybernetically-upgraded Tech Priest. You wait patiently, attempting to hide every ounce of your power. "It's not going to work," Meliodas says. "He's going to find us. You're going to die here. You can get revenge, though. Let me take you. Let me take hold of your body, and open a pathway through the Warp. I can summon endless hordes of daemons to this world, wipe out that inquisitor, gain your vengeance, and allow me power. We have a chance now." He strolls along, stopping next to you. He looks down, raising an eyebrow. "Are we experiencing more Warp Storms, Engsineer Low?" he asks. "No, sir," the tech-priest says in a monotone voice. The inquisitor rapidly raises a bolt pistol, aiming at you head as he swings the longsword. "It's Karst! TAKE HIM DOWN!" he screams. "Now, now! We can crush them! You're already dead. They can be too!" Meliodas howls in your mind. > You try to fight You leap up, but the Inquisitor is trained for this. He knocks you back with a pychic blast, and the sword bites into your neck, draining your lifeforce and killing you instantly. You hope to find a peace in death you could never find in sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You successfully hide amongst the refugees, and are transported to a nearby evacuation facility. You're given a cheap meal of Grox Jerky and soup, before being put into a massive fenced off area. Unfortunately, soon you learn that you overestimated how easy this would be. "Ah, an inquisitor has arrived. We're going to die here." Meliodas says, as you hear his voice for the first time in a while. You spot an Inquisitor, a heavily armored agent of the Imperium built for rooting out Chaos and Heresy. He stands, tall and heavily armored, a longsword glowing faintly blue clutched in one hand and a bolt pistol in the other. At his side is a grizzled soldier in Carapace armor holding a Flamer and snarling her scarred face as passer-bys, a man in browns robes holding a huge chainsword and a heavily cybernetically-upgraded Tech Priest. You wait patiently, attempting to hide every ounce of your power. "It's not going to work," Meliodas says. "He's going to find us. You're going to die here. You can get revenge, though. Let me take you. Let me take hold of your body, and open a pathway through the Warp. I can summon endless hordes of daemons to this world, wipe out that inquisitor, gain your vengeance, and allow me power. We have a chance now." He strolls along, stopping next to you. He looks down, raising an eyebrow. "Are we experiencing more Warp Storms, Engsineer Low?" he asks. "No, sir," the tech-priest says in a monotone voice. The inquisitor rapidly raises a bolt pistol, aiming at you head as he swings the longsword. "It's Karst! TAKE HIM DOWN!" he screams. "Now, now! We can crush them! You're already dead. They can be too!" Meliodas howls in your mind. > You follow Meliodas' plan Daemonic Pawn You release yourself, allowing Meliodas to take control. Your soul is burnt out, in a quick and slightly painful action, and your life is gone. You hope to find a peace in death you could never find in sleep. The planet is soon overwhelmed. In the death of your soul, Meliodas opens a portal to the Warp. He manifests, alongside endless daemon armies. The inquisitor barely manages to react before he's wiped out. Soon, the world is taken. Ironically, a bitter alliance is formed between Kyros and the forces of the Imperium in an attempt to hold back the daemons who care not for Kyros' delusions of grandeur or supposed "loyalty" to the Dark Gods. Soon, the planet is theirs. The planet's populace is wiped out, and warp storms form, taking the planet back to the Chaos of the warp. The last sound on the planet, before it's plunged into the warp, is Meliodas' laughter. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"No." "No?" Elios says, taken aback. "I'm not joining you. He knows what you're planning. I'm not joining your death trap." "So be it," he says, a sneer forming on his face. Elios steps forward, knocking on the metal door. The guards open, immediately raising their bolters. Elios waves his hand. "You didn't see me here. The voice of Slaanesh calls you, and you're his now. Move aside, and tell no one I was her," Elios says, strolling forward, leaving without looking at you. In the next few weeks, you're quickly proven right. Elios is first. When he's found, he's had his limps slowly sanded off, before being thrown in a pit with mutants who tore him apart. A "mysterious" assassin attempts to kill Elizabeth, but Durge fends her off, only for a "malfunction" to destroy him the next day, incinerating him in a single blast. Elizabeth is killed by one of the ship's macro-cannons, taking out the shuttle they were going on, because of a sensor malfunction identifying it as hostile. With his threats to power gone, the assault on the Imperium is on. The first few worlds fall with ease, as they're unprepared for the level of firepower that Kyros is bringing to the table. Still, issues arise. You're reinforced by those recruited from the conquered realms as well as throngs of war-bands coming to join your invasion. Still, Kyros gets greedy. He attempts to take on a Forge World, a world literally covered with layers of factories, run by the cyborg-engineers that are part of the machine-worshipping cult known as the Mechnicus. Kyros' grand plans to have a Forge World producing endless war machines are ruined when the planet's orbital defenses take out much of your fleet, and in the ensuing battle the factories are leveled. When Kyros finally takes the planet, it's nothing but a smoking rock. Everything falls apart after that. In a desperate attempt to capture geneseed stores to allow him to take over the home world of a Space Marine chapter known as the Horned Kings. The chapter is wiped out, but again Kyros gains nothing as the last act of the Chapter Master is to detonate their geneseed stores. At this point, Kyros' forces are a pale shadow of their previous selves. Cain and most of the Goliaths were taken out as their landing pods were wiped out in an attempt to take the Forge World, and the gladiators are wiped out by a suicidal charge by the Iron Kings. They're not the only ones gone. Fay is killed, along with many of the tribals, in the Genesee stores' destruction. It's only at that point that you truly stop caring. Your tribe is gone, only a few faces so grief-stricken you can barely recognize them remaining. You don't care if you reach Terra. You don't care if you live. You don't care if you die. You just don't care, about anything. You find yourself on some war-stricken world, killing. Scores of refugees are wiped out as your hand waves and warpfire spurts from the earth. Once, you would've have wanted to hurt innocents. You wouldn't have done it. Now, you feel nothing as you smell their cooked flesh. A Space Marine charges towards you, but you stare at him. The Space Marine screams as you force him to tear his own arms off, tossing them aside and having tentacles rapidly grow out of his arm sockets, before his mind is corrupted and he charges, roaring towards his allies as he begins to tear them apart. You watch as a Dreadnought's legs buckle under your telekinesis, sending it toppling and tumbling down before it explodes. You levitate a Guardsman into the air as he howls in terror, be... The earth shutters as artillery booms, sending you into the air. Artillery tears through the earth, and you slam into an APC. You hastily stand, to see dozens of refugees piling out of the crippled APC. You see to your surprise Tribals shooting at you and the other refugees, bullets thudding into the metal next to you, before they're killed by bolter fire. You look at your reflection in the half-broken window of a destroyed building, and realize why they were firing. With your now torn clothes and dirt-covered face, you are now indistinguishable from the refugees you've been killing. You hear a dozen monstrous roars from your allies off towards your right, signifying a charge, before it's answered by the shouts of the Imperial Guard and Space Marine preparing a counter-charge. You could try to escape this. Hide amongst the refugees. Find a way out of this life. But what would be the point? You hear the charge nearing. Damn Kyros, putting you in this situation. Maybe you should be the one to finish his mad invasion? Or maybe you should return to what you know, and fight? > You just walk into the battlefield and let it end You stroll forward into the battlefield, watching as dozens of brightly colored and heavily armored Space Marines near you. They raise their weapons and fire, as others attempt to get to your with chainswords. You offer no resistance. You don't attempt to dodge the fire, or to block it, or even move. You feel the shells burst through, your organs being decimated. As you collapse back in a pool of blood, you hope death will give you the peace you could never get from sleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You follow Kyros, as you head to the arena. You reach the doors that would lead into it, but instead oof entering you go off to a small elevator behind it. You enter, and it slowly begins descending. It opens, revealing the underhive of the arena. There's dozen of cages, holding exotic beasts and dangerous Xenos. You see a half dozen thick, heavily muscled, green-skinned Orks in a cage, their necks chained to the wall. They're howling and roaring, tugging at their chains. Surprisingly, while most shout in their barbaric, guttural language, one seems to speak yours. "Humie! Humie! Get me free! Get me free!" he shouts. "I is gonna let you live, even give ya a bitta loot and an escape pod if ya let me free!" "Don't respond!" someone further down the catacombs that lay beneath the arena shouts. "It only encourages Ol' Dak!" "Hmmm... this Ork must be one of the greatest speakers of his kind," Meliodas points out. "Of course to us he's a fucking idiot." The ork's eyes narrow, before he begins howling in frustration and smacking his hands against his own head, a heavy thud emanating as his muscled fists slam into his thick skull. You continue walking, passing amazing and fantastic creatures and gladiators. There's a tentacled slug-man with a large beak and dozens of eyes peppered around his body which is huddled up in the corner of it's cage, a trio of horrible bird-hound creatures that scratch at their bars, a massive human wearing what appears to be an iron cage with hundreds of inward pointing nails who rams himself against the cage wall, his body shredded to such an extent you're amazed he's not dead yet, a multi-legged, horned creature that looks almost cute. Finally, you reach a long hallway, with thick, heavy metal doors spread along the hallway. An eye peers out of a door eye-slot, staring at you. "Hello there. Do we have more fighters, or...? Oh wait, it's them. Terrific." The eye disappears, and the slot closes. Kyros takes out a datapad, pressing several buttons before the door slowly slides open, revealing a large open area. Bunk beds line the wall, with a bunch of young men and women, the oldest in their late twenties and the youngest in their mid-teens. They wear very little armor, all of which is either leather or light combat armor. They sit around a fire, roasting chunks of meat on sticks in it. Two of the gladiators lean against the beds nearest to you, staring at you. One is a tall, muscled and tanned, with long blond hair and sparking green eyes. She holds a long, rifle-like gun with an axe blade made into the barrel with a grip under it. The other is shorter, with similarly tanned skin, with playful green eyes and curly brown hair, holding a curved sword and a Plasma pistol. They both look to be in their late teens or early twenties at latest. "Is that a fire?" Fay asks. "Are they armed?" you also. "Yes and yes," the male says, turning to the girl. "This question game is fun." "The fire's below a vent that's sending the smoke... somewhere. We weren't exactly given schematics of this place, all we know is the smoke doesn't bother us. And we're allowed weapons to keep the others in check. Even if we both went for Kyros, our minds would be shattered before we could raise our weapons," the girl says. "Nah, I could at least start a swing before I was killed." "These are the Twins. They lead the Gladiator-Slaves. Now, introduce yourselves," Kyros says. "I'm Castus," the boy smiles, staring at the pair of you. His eyes flicker, as he looks over Fay. He appears to be checking her out. You feel like punching him in the throat, but refrain. "You're a jealous one, aren't you?" Meliodas says. "I'm Olive," the girl says, extending a hand, which you grab and shake before Fay does the same. "So, is there a reason you're here?" Castus asks. "Fay and Karth will be taking command of the gladiators. They are my lieutenants, and will command a segment of our army, the slaves." "Oh, terrific. We've been shafted," Castus says. "I'm sure Kyros will want us to have an advisor position to assist Fay and Karth," Olive says. "Correct," Kyros says. "Well, there might be an issue with that," Castus says. "You see, both Fay and Karth have a history of... well, murdering my men. Pitting the Kyros Jr and Magos Cern's latest brand of super-freaks against us has led to a lot of men being, quite understandably, pissed with the guys who hacked apart, or psychically exploded, or simply beat their friends upside the head until they went comatose." "If you want, we can have the dissenters flailed alive. Simply point them out, and I'll have them broken. Is that preferable?" Castus goes quiet. "As I thought," Kyros says with a smile. "Make sure the men know to follow orders. Now, it's late, and these guys need sleep. Is anything else needed?" "I suppose not," Olive says. "Well, we need a lot, but nothing we're realistically getting anytime soon," Castus says. Kyros stares at Castus, fire beginning to run along his body. "Nothing needed, sir," Castus says. "Good. Fay, Karth, let's go," Kyros says. Kyros swivels around, walking out of the room. You quickly follow him, and the massive metal door shuts behind you. "So, we'll escort Fay back to the Uwais dorms, and then send you to your room," Kyros says. "Well you know, Karth's room is closer. I could just spend the time in his," Fay suggests. "It would give us some time to go over battle plans now that we know what our men are capable of, and I can inform him of what the Uwais tribe are like in battle..." "Really? That's the reason? That's the reason you're going for?" Kyros asks, raising an eyebrow. "No." > You accept Kyros' decision "Fine," you say dejectedly. "Jeez, Karth, your stubbornness will serve us well in time," Fay says, looking annoyed at you. You arrive at the doors to your cell, and Kyros opens it. "Very well," Kyros says. "Inside." You look at Fay, who smiles at you despite still looking annoyed. "Bye, Karth," she says, giving a short little wave. "Bye, Fay," you reply. The doors are shut, and you walk over to your bed, collapsing on it. Only now do you realize how exhausted you are. You've spent all day walking, which again isn't exactly your specialty. You close your eyes, and soon sleep takes you. Thankfully, the twilight stage where your soul can rest and your exhausted mind can find peace, lasts extra long. Of course, it doesn't take long before the nightmares hit.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Alright," Cain sleeps. "What else?" "Nothing else is required," Magos Cern says. "Return to your pod." Cain nods, before walking back into his pod. The cyro-pod shuts, leaving Cain back to his cold, endless sleep. "We should continue," Magos Cern says. "I still have to show you the gladiator slaves who you'll take under you command and the Uwais Tribe. The Goliaths will act as your heavy shock troopers, the gladiator-slaves will act as scouts, skirmishers and fill in whatever spare roles you have, and the Uwais tribe will be your main unit. I'll take you to see them." You begin following Magos Cern out of the cyro-sleep area, and along the hallways. After ten minutes, you reach a large metal door, which opens to reveal a large room filled with bunk beds, with familiar bronze bodies lying in the beds. "This is Dorm A. We have around sixty soldiers here," Magos Cern says. Fay walks into the room, and lets ou a shout. "Gentlemen! Your captain's back!" The tribals roll out of bed. You recognize a few of them, but strangely you recognize many as men from other various tribes." "Fay, you're back!" one says. "How did the fight go? It took far longer than expected," another adds. "Oh, shit! Is that Karth?" another asks. The attention immediately goes from Fay to you, as tribals begin appearing. They all appear far more muscular, many bearing fresh scars. "Karth! How are you even still alive?" someone asks incredulously. "It's the Uwais shaman!" another asks. "Karth, how are you? What have they been doing to you?" You watch as the tribals begin to surround the three of you, although Magos Cern makes sure they keep as least half a dozen feat away from her. "Stay back. Karth is only here to see you, not talk to you," Magos Cern says, drawing a datapad and letting out an electro-shock that causes the group to let out a pained yelp before they back away. "Why are there so many men and women from other tribes? I thought it was the Uwais tribe who was kidnapped." "When we arrived on your planet, we needed to do a lot of work. We drained lakes for water, drilled into the planet's crust to get vast quantities of Promethium, wiped out native species for food. It takes a lot of effort to run a vessel this large, and to do it quickly and efficiently. While we did so, our soldiers went to work. They needed to fight, both to train and to simply shed blood for their own enjoyment. Prisoners were taken in vast quantities, and I used them as I used the Uwais tribe. Now, there's far more from other tribes than there are from Uwais tribe." "Hmmm... your home world is destroyed. Ambition is the only path forward now, Karth, there is no going back. We will conquer the stars together." Meliodas says. "I suppose calling them the Uwais tribe is a bit of a failing, then. Tribals would be more suitable." "As you wish. You are their superior. You can do as you wish with them." "The average tribal will be be outfitted with combat armor as well as some equipment, such as grenades, gas masks, communications devices, that kind of thing. The stronger ones will get Bolters, the strongest will be equipped with melee weapons; chainswords, chainaxes, power swords, as well as bolt pistols. The weaker ones will be given specialized roles and equipped for as such: meltaguns and missile launchers for anti-armor, snipers with sniper rifles and stealth roles with chameoline cloaks and silenced weapons. We should have a fairly well equipped army that will be able to hold their own when fighting alongside the Guardsmen and Traitor Marines we have under our command." "We're not fighting for you fucks!" someone shouts. "Yeah! Fuck you, you kidnapping bastards!" "Ah, this is an issue," Magos Cern says. "Unfortunately, due to my... failures in work on the brain, Kyros has forbid me to tinker on their minds to ensure loyalty. Fay has only so far failed to do, so it'll be your job now. I need all rebelliousness to be crushed." "How?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Get it done. I don't care how. I need to go check on the oxygen decks to the macro guns on the starboard side doesn't asphyxiate," Magos says, turning around and walking off. "Well, that's a bitch," you complain, turning to Fay. "I guess we need to get rid of rebelliousness before Kyros gets pissy and blows our heads clean off." "Or..." Fay says slyly. "We could just hide the rebelliousness. It would be better if we kept it under wraps until we have a chance to get out of here." "Oh, choices, choices, choices. Terrify, threaten, talk or trust. Which shall it be, Karth?" Meliodas says. You walk forward, into the center of the dorm. You have several options here. You could attempt to use some of your psychic powers to show these tribals the true power of the Warp. That would definitely ensure their loyalty, if only out of fear. You could threaten them to ensure their loyalty, once again while out of fear, and you wouldn't have to alienate yourself by making yourself seem like a terrifying psychic being. You could attempt to convince the tribals that loyalty to this place is the only rational choice. You could also take Fay's path, and assure them that they'll have the chance to get revenge, but that for now they should hide all rebelliousness until it's time to strike. > You threaten them to ensure their loyalty You walk slowly forward, growling. "Magos Cern has told me about some rebellious behavior. It needs to end. We are a tiny fraction of the population of our ship. Even if we could somehow get all of our weapons, get everyone together and ready to fight, and we'd fail to get free. What could we do? We're light-years away from home by now. Even if, by some miracle, we could take this ship, we have no idea how to pilot it, and even then the chances of getting that far is astronomical. Kyros, the team leader, has amazing psychic powers. He could read our minds at any moment. He'd have you flayed alive and had the skin made into a cloak! He'll have this entire dorm filled with Chlorine gas! If you don't want to doom our entire tribe to non-existence, don't even think about rebelling." The tribals seem a mixture of disappointed, angered and annoyed, but you know the see the logic in what you're saying. They won't rebel. They'll follow orders now. "Tell the other tribals. I don't want anyone doing anything stupid," you say to the tribals, before turning to Fay. "We should go." You walk out of the room, quickly followed by Fay, who runs after you. "That was a bit depressing," she admits. "How so?" you ask. "You're not seriously happy with a life of service to a guy who kidnapped us? These guys killed Duggin!" she asks. "We need to be pragmatic. If there was an option for escape, I'd take it. But I'm not dying when there's no real chance of escape." "Umm... I guess," Fay says, clearly unsure what to do. You walk outside, where Kyros awaits, smiling. "Ah, you're here. Were they convinced?" You nod eagerly, and Kyros smiles. Well done," he says. "Now, we need to visit the last of your soldiers, the gladiator-slaves. They're always an interesting crew. Shall we go?" You look at Fay, who nods, although she still looks nervous from your earlier threats. "Yes, let's," you reply.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Alright," Cain sleeps. "What else?" "Nothing else is required," Magos Cern says. "Return to your pod." Cain nods, before walking back into his pod. The cyro-pod shuts, leaving Cain back to his cold, endless sleep. "We should continue," Magos Cern says. "I still have to show you the gladiator slaves who you'll take under you command and the Uwais Tribe. The Goliaths will act as your heavy shock troopers, the gladiator-slaves will act as scouts, skirmishers and fill in whatever spare roles you have, and the Uwais tribe will be your main unit. I'll take you to see them." You begin following Magos Cern out of the cyro-sleep area, and along the hallways. After ten minutes, you reach a large metal door, which opens to reveal a large room filled with bunk beds, with familiar bronze bodies lying in the beds. "This is Dorm A. We have around sixty soldiers here," Magos Cern says. Fay walks into the room, and lets ou a shout. "Gentlemen! Your captain's back!" The tribals roll out of bed. You recognize a few of them, but strangely you recognize many as men from other various tribes." "Fay, you're back!" one says. "How did the fight go? It took far longer than expected," another adds. "Oh, shit! Is that Karth?" another asks. The attention immediately goes from Fay to you, as tribals begin appearing. They all appear far more muscular, many bearing fresh scars. "Karth! How are you even still alive?" someone asks incredulously. "It's the Uwais shaman!" another asks. "Karth, how are you? What have they been doing to you?" You watch as the tribals begin to surround the three of you, although Magos Cern makes sure they keep as least half a dozen feat away from her. "Stay back. Karth is only here to see you, not talk to you," Magos Cern says, drawing a datapad and letting out an electro-shock that causes the group to let out a pained yelp before they back away. "Why are there so many men and women from other tribes? I thought it was the Uwais tribe who was kidnapped." "When we arrived on your planet, we needed to do a lot of work. We drained lakes for water, drilled into the planet's crust to get vast quantities of Promethium, wiped out native species for food. It takes a lot of effort to run a vessel this large, and to do it quickly and efficiently. While we did so, our soldiers went to work. They needed to fight, both to train and to simply shed blood for their own enjoyment. Prisoners were taken in vast quantities, and I used them as I used the Uwais tribe. Now, there's far more from other tribes than there are from Uwais tribe." "Hmmm... your home world is destroyed. Ambition is the only path forward now, Karth, there is no going back. We will conquer the stars together." Meliodas says. "I suppose calling them the Uwais tribe is a bit of a failing, then. Tribals would be more suitable." "As you wish. You are their superior. You can do as you wish with them." "The average tribal will be be outfitted with combat armor as well as some equipment, such as grenades, gas masks, communications devices, that kind of thing. The stronger ones will get Bolters, the strongest will be equipped with melee weapons; chainswords, chainaxes, power swords, as well as bolt pistols. The weaker ones will be given specialized roles and equipped for as such: meltaguns and missile launchers for anti-armor, snipers with sniper rifles and stealth roles with chameoline cloaks and silenced weapons. We should have a fairly well equipped army that will be able to hold their own when fighting alongside the Guardsmen and Traitor Marines we have under our command." "We're not fighting for you fucks!" someone shouts. "Yeah! Fuck you, you kidnapping bastards!" "Ah, this is an issue," Magos Cern says. "Unfortunately, due to my... failures in work on the brain, Kyros has forbid me to tinker on their minds to ensure loyalty. Fay has only so far failed to do, so it'll be your job now. I need all rebelliousness to be crushed." "How?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Get it done. I don't care how. I need to go check on the oxygen decks to the macro guns on the starboard side doesn't asphyxiate," Magos says, turning around and walking off. "Well, that's a bitch," you complain, turning to Fay. "I guess we need to get rid of rebelliousness before Kyros gets pissy and blows our heads clean off." "Or..." Fay says slyly. "We could just hide the rebelliousness. It would be better if we kept it under wraps until we have a chance to get out of here." "Oh, choices, choices, choices. Terrify, threaten, talk or trust. Which shall it be, Karth?" Meliodas says. You walk forward, into the center of the dorm. You have several options here. You could attempt to use some of your psychic powers to show these tribals the true power of the Warp. That would definitely ensure their loyalty, if only out of fear. You could threaten them to ensure their loyalty, once again while out of fear, and you wouldn't have to alienate yourself by making yourself seem like a terrifying psychic being. You could attempt to convince the tribals that loyalty to this place is the only rational choice. You could also take Fay's path, and assure them that they'll have the chance to get revenge, but that for now they should hide all rebelliousness until it's time to strike. > You convince the tribals that loyalty is the best option You walk slowly forward, growling. "Magos Cern has told me about some rebellious behavior. It needs to end. We are a tiny fraction of the population of our ship. Even if we could somehow get all of our weapons, get everyone together and ready to fight, and we'd fail to get free. What could we do? We're lightyears away from home by now. Even if, by some miracle, we could take this ship, we have no idea how to pilot it, and even then the chances of getting that far is astronomical. If we stay loyal, we'll survive. We'll prosper. Eventually, we'll be rewarded. We'll survive, we'll carve a little place in this hellish galaxy for us. Understood?" The tribals seem a mixture of disappointed and inspired. You know the see the logic in what you're saying. They won't rebel. They'll follow orders now. "Tell the other tribals. I don't want anyone doing anything stupid. We need to do what's best," you say to the tribals, before turning to Fay. "We should go." You walk out of the room, quickly followed by Fay, who walks alongside after you.N "That was a bit depressing," she admits. "How so?" you ask. "You're not seriously happy with a life of service to a guy who kidnapped us? These guys killed Duggin!" she asks. "We need to be pragmatic. If there was an option for escape, I'd take it. But I'm not dying when there's no real chance of escape." "Umm... I guess," Fay says, clearly unsure what to do. You walk outside, where Kyros awaits, smiing. "Are they convinced?" You nod eagerly, and he smiles. "Terrific. Now, we need to visit the last of your soldiers, the gladiator-slaves. They're always an interesting crew. Shall we go?" You look at Fay, who nods. "Yes, let's," you reply.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Alright," Cain sleeps. "What else?" "Nothing else is required," Magos Cern says. "Return to your pod." Cain nods, before walking back into his pod. The cyro-pod shuts, leaving Cain back to his cold, endless sleep. "We should continue," Magos Cern says. "I still have to show you the gladiator slaves who you'll take under you command and the Uwais Tribe. The Goliaths will act as your heavy shock troopers, the gladiator-slaves will act as scouts, skirmishers and fill in whatever spare roles you have, and the Uwais tribe will be your main unit. I'll take you to see them." You begin following Magos Cern out of the cyro-sleep area, and along the hallways. After ten minutes, you reach a large metal door, which opens to reveal a large room filled with bunk beds, with familiar bronze bodies lying in the beds. "This is Dorm A. We have around sixty soldiers here," Magos Cern says. Fay walks into the room, and lets ou a shout. "Gentlemen! Your captain's back!" The tribals roll out of bed. You recognize a few of them, but strangely you recognize many as men from other various tribes." "Fay, you're back!" one says. "How did the fight go? It took far longer than expected," another adds. "Oh, shit! Is that Karth?" another asks. The attention immediately goes from Fay to you, as tribals begin appearing. They all appear far more muscular, many bearing fresh scars. "Karth! How are you even still alive?" someone asks incredulously. "It's the Uwais shaman!" another asks. "Karth, how are you? What have they been doing to you?" You watch as the tribals begin to surround the three of you, although Magos Cern makes sure they keep as least half a dozen feat away from her. "Stay back. Karth is only here to see you, not talk to you," Magos Cern says, drawing a datapad and letting out an electro-shock that causes the group to let out a pained yelp before they back away. "Why are there so many men and women from other tribes? I thought it was the Uwais tribe who was kidnapped." "When we arrived on your planet, we needed to do a lot of work. We drained lakes for water, drilled into the planet's crust to get vast quantities of Promethium, wiped out native species for food. It takes a lot of effort to run a vessel this large, and to do it quickly and efficiently. While we did so, our soldiers went to work. They needed to fight, both to train and to simply shed blood for their own enjoyment. Prisoners were taken in vast quantities, and I used them as I used the Uwais tribe. Now, there's far more from other tribes than there are from Uwais tribe." "Hmmm... your home world is destroyed. Ambition is the only path forward now, Karth, there is no going back. We will conquer the stars together." Meliodas says. "I suppose calling them the Uwais tribe is a bit of a failing, then. Tribals would be more suitable." "As you wish. You are their superior. You can do as you wish with them." "The average tribal will be be outfitted with combat armor as well as some equipment, such as grenades, gas masks, communications devices, that kind of thing. The stronger ones will get Bolters, the strongest will be equipped with melee weapons; chainswords, chainaxes, power swords, as well as bolt pistols. The weaker ones will be given specialized roles and equipped for as such: meltaguns and missile launchers for anti-armor, snipers with sniper rifles and stealth roles with chameoline cloaks and silenced weapons. We should have a fairly well equipped army that will be able to hold their own when fighting alongside the Guardsmen and Traitor Marines we have under our command." "We're not fighting for you fucks!" someone shouts. "Yeah! Fuck you, you kidnapping bastards!" "Ah, this is an issue," Magos Cern says. "Unfortunately, due to my... failures in work on the brain, Kyros has forbid me to tinker on their minds to ensure loyalty. Fay has only so far failed to do, so it'll be your job now. I need all rebelliousness to be crushed." "How?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Get it done. I don't care how. I need to go check on the oxygen decks to the macro guns on the starboard side doesn't asphyxiate," Magos says, turning around and walking off. "Well, that's a bitch," you complain, turning to Fay. "I guess we need to get rid of rebelliousness before Kyros gets pissy and blows our heads clean off." "Or..." Fay says slyly. "We could just hide the rebelliousness. It would be better if we kept it under wraps until we have a chance to get out of here." "Oh, choices, choices, choices. Terrify, threaten, talk or trust. Which shall it be, Karth?" Meliodas says. You walk forward, into the center of the dorm. You have several options here. You could attempt to use some of your psychic powers to show these tribals the true power of the Warp. That would definitely ensure their loyalty, if only out of fear. You could threaten them to ensure their loyalty, once again while out of fear, and you wouldn't have to alienate yourself by making yourself seem like a terrifying psychic being. You could attempt to convince the tribals that loyalty to this place is the only rational choice. You could also take Fay's path, and assure them that they'll have the chance to get revenge, but that for now they should hide all rebelliousness until it's time to strike. > You take Fay's suggestion You walk forward, your voice dropping to a whisper. "Look, we need to be practical. We can cause some minor trouble, a riot or two, kill a few guards at best. That leads to them just shutting off our dorms and pumping these rooms full of chlorine gas. We stay seemingly loyal, do what we're told, and wait. Eventually, when we have the chance, we strike. They won't expect it, and we'll have waited until the perfect opportunity. Then, we escape. Then, we gain freedom. Then, we gain a future. Got it?" There's hushed responses, as the tribals take a hopeful, inspired look. They won't rebel. They'll follow orders... for now. As soon as the chance rises though, you'll have a loyal group of soldiers to fight alongside you. "Tell the other tribals. We need to stick togther" you say to the tribals, before turning to Fay. "We should go." You walk out of the room, with Fay at your side, holding your hand. "Well, I'm glad you took my suggestion," she says, smiling sweetly at you. "Well, you're clever, so I should listen to your advise every once in a while," you reply. "Stop teasing," she says, lightly hitting you. "We all know how this relationship works. You're the brains, I'm the brawn. Not the other way around." "Well, how come I can easily push you around?" you say, flicking your wrist and sending Fay onto her rear. "Hey!" she says. "Sorry," you say, laughing. "You're a massive dick," she complains, as you lift her back to her feet. You stop, the smile going from your face as you see Kyros walking quickly towards you. "Ah, here you are. Is the issue resolved?" You nod, trying not to let him see you gulp nervously. "Good. Now, we need to visit the last of your soldiers, the gladiator-slaves. They're always an interesting crew. Shall we go?" Kyros asks. You look at Fay, who nods, smiling at you. "Yes, let's," you reply.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stand, walking along after Kyros. You're at a point where your psychic growth has overtaken your physical growth to such a degree that it'd be easier to float along the ground rather than actually having to walk. Unfortunately, the collar prevents you from even firing out some sparks without Kyros' permission. You arrive in a metal door, which opens, revealing the booth from which Kyros and the others watch down at the fight. You walk along, looking down at the arena, which is empty. "I thought you were bringing me to see Fay," you say nervously, despite knowing what this is. "I brought you to see her fight!" Kyros says with a smile. You stare down, as one of the gates opens. You watch as an abomination stumbles out. Stumbling on four insect-like legs, with it's eft arm replaced by a long tentacle of coiled pink muscle, the very end of it studded with bone outgrowths to make it a more formidable weapon. In it's right hand is a short, rusted axe stained with blood and gore. It's head is monstrous, with an oversized mouth filled to the brim with teeth, overflowing with acid that drips onto it's chest with a sizzle, and a single, blood-shot eye. The creature looks up at you, it's eye flinching, before it lets out a miserable howl. "Shit... that looks miserable beyond belief," you say. "Yes, she does," Kyros says, grinning from ear to ear as half a dozen more beasts just like the first walk, stumble or crawl into the center of the arena. "She?" you ask. Now that you're not fighting them, you can have a long look and see what these mutant abominations really are: disgusting, pitiful creatures that should receive a quick death. "You don't recognize her?" Kyros says, clearly suppressing laughter. "This is what remains of the Uwais Tribe, and the first one to come out, the pack leader, is Fay." You look at monsters underneath, trying to see any resemblance to your friends as pure horror overtakes your mind. You collapse to your knees, puking over the banister and onto the monsters underneath as Kyros bursts into laughter. "He's done this to provoke you. He wants to get you angry, to see how powerful you are even with the collar. He's under-exaggerating how powerful you are, so you might be able to harm him, but..." Meliodas advises, but you don't pay any attention, too filled with anger. You stand, holding onto the banister to pull yourself up. Your knees shake, but you take a moment to regain your strength. Then, you launch yourself at Kyros. You grab at his eyes, your fingers going straight for his eyes. Kyros stumbles backwards, unprepared, before you feel your collar quickly tightening as you start to choke. You continue to scratch and gouge, even as the air is choked from you. Finally, you're dragged upwards by invisible hands, floating a few feet away from Kyros. Your weak body has done practically no damage to Kyros, who seems surprised and a bit amused rather than angry. "Hmmm... I under-exaggerated how angry you'd get, or how stupid you are if you think trying to fight me is an option." "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to break you. I don't care how long it takes, I will destroy your very soul," you say, staring at him. Kyros chuckles softly, before forcing you around to stare down at the arena. "Watch the match," he says. "We will have our revenge, Karth. Not today, not tomorrow, but we will have our revenge, " Meliodas says. You watch for about a minute as the abominations sit there, wandering around in confusion, falling to brief bursts of violence and self-harm and a lot of screaming and howling. Finally, the second gate opens. You watch as hooded figures enter, holding swords and small, circular shields. The trio charges forward, diving into the air. The beasts charge forward, attacking with fierce brutality. You watch as the lead one, the thing that used to be Fay, is almost beheaded by one of the trio. The trio fight with ease, diving, ducking and weaving out of the way of tentacles, axes, biting and stomping. Within a minute, the last of the abominations stumble forward and hits the ground as its front two legs are hacked off, and one of the trio leaps on top of the monster and impales it through the head. "What a display!" Kyros says with a smile. "Shall we see the victors?" Before you can say a word, Kyros releases you and you fall through the air, smacking into the dirt with a pained yelp. You moan in pain, looking up at the fighters. They walk forward, staring at you. "Karth?" one of them asks. You look up to see Fay standing there, her hooded robes covered in blood, alongside two other Uwais tribals you vaguely remember from your trips accompanying hunting parties, the Jakar Twins. "Fay," you reply, staring back at her, not knowing what else to say. Fay tosses her sword aside, grabbing you and embracing you tightly. Even though you feel yourself being turned into a fine powder from the strength of her hug, you're just so happy that you've found her that you don't care, hugging back. Kyros drops down, staring at you from over Fay's shoulder, as Magos Cern joins you. "Ah, what a happy reunion!" Kyros says. "You said she was dead!" you shout angrily, pushing Fay aside to point an accusatory finger at him. "I did. I lied," Kyros says, smiling. "Never trust a psyker, Karth. Not even yourself," Meliodas says. You shrug it off, trying not to bow to his attempts at emotional manipulation. You grab Fay, looking at her properly as she takes off her hooded cloak. She's tall, standing over six foot tall, and she's a lot more muscular than you remember. Whatever Kyros has done to her, it's had a serious affect. Her arms and legs are quite muscled, and you doubt you could find an ounce of fat anywhere on her. Still, she has the same coy smile, the wild, adventurous look in her eyes, She's pretty much the same Fay. "So... what's with the hood?" you ask, struggling to find anything else to say. "Um... it's so the mutants can't grab my hair and drag me down, Karth. Was that the most important question? How are you? What are they doing to you?" "Come on, out of the arena. I have a captured Squig the boys want to have some fun fighting," Kyros says. "Jakar twins, back to the dorm. Karth, Fay, follow me." You look at Fay, before grabbing her hand and walking after Kyros and Magos Cern. "Hmm, walking alongside me with my hand held? Where's the old Karth that I would piggyback around the village?" Fay asks. "Pffh, if I didn't have this collar I'd be floating around the place," you say. The stress of being kidnapped, having your tribe enslaved and murdered, your village burned down, your mind and soul forced through the very depths of hell falls away as you talk to your old friend. You recount your story as she tells hers. Apparently, she spent much of the time in a coma, having her body hacked apart and remade. Her blood now contains vast amounts of chems and combat drugs, she has several new organs and stronger bones, faster blood clotting and much more. She's trained extensively both with swords, guns, explosives and infinitely more, as well as team tactics. She's been chosen out as Team Leader for the Uwais super-soldiers. "So basically, you've become a super-soldier?" "Super-soldier?" Magos Cern says, her voice flooded with the most emotion you've heard from her the entire time you knew her. "She's a failure. A disgrace. I had access to geneseed, space marine test subjects and untold resources. What did I create? A mockery. These "super-soldiers" couldn't take on multiple space marines each like I had hoped. They couldn't take on a single fucking space marine like I had planned! They're barely worth half a space marine! I've failed!" "They'll do fine, Magos," Kyros says, arriving at another set of metal doors, which open to reveal a large table, where various figures are sitting. There's Kyros, Magos Cern and Taj Suenage, as well as Kyros' daughter, who sits in the corner. There's also many more who you don't know. One is a tall, gaunt looking woman with pale skin and black hair pulled back in a pony tail, wearing a long coat that disturbingly, appears to be made from human skin. Another is a girl with a shaved head wearing heavy combat armor who is sharpening a long machete, another is a... person whose gender you can't tell, wearing black leather armor and lingerie in an odd attempt to look sexy at a war meeting, with long, curly black hair and excessive make-up. The person smiles at you, licking his... or her... or its lips. Then there's a young girl, younger than even you, wearing hooded robes and reading an ancient, dusty tome. Finally, there's a barely human monster. An obese man covered with rotting pores, boils, sores and pus-filled, infected wounds, with its arms replaced by long, rusted spikes. Kyros and Magos Cern take a seat. "These are the leaders of the fleet, Fay and Karth. Some introductions are in order. First is me, the supreme leader of the entire fleet. Magos Cern leads the Dark Mechanicus on the ship and maintains the vessel itself. Chapter Master Taj Suenage leads the space marine chapter on board, the Undying Reapers. Then we have Calpurnia the Ravager, leader of the 22nd Istanford Regiment. " The one with the human skin coat stands up, extending a hand to shake. "Pleasure to meet you," she says, shaking both your hand and Fay's. I hope you're... efficient during your stay here." "Then there's the Staine siblings. There's Rebecca Staine, the leader of the Bloody Claws, a war-band that worships Khorne the war god." "Fuck you, psyker. You're weak and pathetic. Your parents should've left you to die," Rebecca growls, pointing her blade at you. "Fuck you," Fay snarls, shoving her blade point away from your throat. Rebecca stands, brandishing her sword, before the plague-ridden man stands, blocking Rebecca's path forward with one of his spike arms. "Hey, hey! There's no need for violence! We're all brothers and sisters here!" Rebecca sits back down with another growl. "Alright, next we have Elios, leading of the Shrieking Harpies, a war-band that worships Slaanesh, the god of excess," Kyros says, pointing at the person clad in leather and lingerie. "Pleasure to meet you, darlings. For slaves aboard a Chaos vessel, might I say you're looking... delectable," Elios says in a deep, masculine voice, licking his lips as he stares at both you and Fay. "Keep it in your pants, Elios," Kyros says. "Next we have Elizabeth." Elizabeth, the hooded girl reading the book, doesn't look up. "She's risen to the position of leader of the One-Eyed Crows, a war-band that worships Tzeentch, the sorceror god. She easily reached the position through her amazing social abilities. Tell us about yourself, Elizabeth." "Move along," Elizabeth says, making a circular motion with her hand without looking up. "OK, Elizabeth. Finally, we have Durge, leader of the Black Rats war-band that worships Nurgle the plague god." "Hello!" the diseased man says, waving his spike-arms. "It's a pleasure to meet you! I hope you're being treated well. I hope you're being fed enough. If not, it's probably because I've eaten all the food aboard this vessel!" The man, Durge, breaks into laughter as several maggots burst from his skin. You try not to get sick. "You're here to meet the leaders of this fleet so that you know who you'll be answering. We want you both to lead the slave army." "Slave army?" Fay asks. "The Uwais tribe soldiers, the previous batch of failed test subjects, the gladiator slaves and whatever else we can muster up. We'll hold the detonators to your explosive collars, but you'll hold a copy of the detonators for all the men under your command." "There was a previous batch of failed test subjects?" Fay asks. "Yes, there was. They were quite strong, but their minds were easily broken. Most weren't sentient, the sentient ones were insane. There was only one who you could even have a conversation with, the one I appointed leader. I'll show you to them some time after this. I assume you'll take the position?" "It's not like I have much choice," you say. "We'll take it," Fay says, answering for the both of you. "This slave army, ot whatever you want to call it, will give us the strength advantage to become a serious military power in this tiny little sector. We could conquer ourselves a little kingdom from the weak and undefended worlds. We could become a raiding fleet that could have us living a life of luxury. But one little slave army wouldn't even give us a chance against even the defenses on Pluto!" Calpurnia says. "I'll tear out your soul and devour it if you show anymore signs of cowardice!" Kyros yells. "Magos Cern, take Fay and Karth to see the previous batch of super-soldiers." "I'll have to let the galaxy witness the shame of my failed creation when we release them on the galaxy. I might as well let the two adolescents have a preview of my sickening failure," Magos Cern says. "We're not finished here!" Calpurnia splutters angrily. "I'm not launching my army on a suicide mission!" "My army! As long as you serve me, it's my army!" Kyros screams. "We take a vote, then," Calpurnia suggests. "Fine, raise your hands if you don't want to go through with the assault, if you're a coward, if you're not loyal." Calpurnia defiantly holds up her hands. Elios holds up his next. "Sorry, Kyros. I'm not dying.. I'm too young and beautiful to die fighting an unwinnable war," he says. Durge holds up a spike, looking ashamed. "I'm loyal, Kyros, but I'm just as loyal to my men as you, and I won't see them die for nothing." Elizabeth slowly raises a hand, looking up from her book for the first time. "This plans suicide, Kyros. We both know that." Kyros snarls in anger, looking around. "That's me, Cern, Taj and Rebecca for attacking, and Elizabeth, Durge, Elios and Calpurnia for not doing so," Kyros says in a low growl. "The slave leaders are the tie-breakers, then," Calpurnia says. Kyros looks at you with a stare, holding onto the controller for your collars. Well, this seems like an obvious answer, even if it is a suicide mission. > You don't support the assault on Terra You raise your hand, and Fay follows suit. "You have balls of steel," Meliodas says. "Unfortunately, now Kyros will tear them off, melt them down, turn them into a sword and fuck you up the arse." "You fucking cunts! I lifted you up from the dirt! I gave you power! I gave you a future! I gave you all a future, and now you want to betray me?!" Kyros screams, standing up. "I won't let scum like you kill our chance at greatness! Loyal brothers, wipe them from the face of the earth!" In an instant, everything goes to hell. Kyros puts your collars on full, and your collar tightens incredibly. You feel your throat be crushed and the air run out as you helplessly grab at it, watching the carnage. Calpurnia stands, raising her bolt pistol, but Rebecca leaps up, driving her sword through Calpurnia's chest, killing her instantly. Elios moves with incredible speed, drawing a hidden blade and slicing open Taj's throat as the space marine attempts to raise his bolter. Then, Magos Cern sprays boiling gasoline from a pipe in the side of her head into Elios' face, burning him severely before she stands, driving a drill into his burned face as he falls backwards. Durge struggles to stand with his immense wait, but immediately moves forward, standing in front of Elizabeth in an attempt to shield her from Kyros' wrath. "Elizabeth, get out of here!" Durge says, as a panicked Elizabeth gets out of her seat. "Durge, you miserable, plague-infested prick. You're going to die. You think you can save your sister? I'm going to cut off your spike-arms and drive them into both her eyes and then give her to the troops for a bit of fun." Durge roars, charging forward. The scene goes fuzzy as the lack of oxygen hits your brain and you feel your throat being crushed. All you see is the massive, blurry blob that is Durge explode, collapsing backwards, just as Elizabeth disappears, no doubt having teleported with some psychic ability she has. Kyros screams, but by now you're on the line between conscious. You reach a hand out, finding Fay's as she dies on the ground next to you. You hold her hand tightly as she squeezes back and the last bit of life leaves you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Life is pain, death is Oblivion, the only choice left to you by the will of the Dark Gods is how much you can endure. I grant peace. Embrace me." The words ring in your ears as the darkness calls out to you. All you can do is focus ahead, waiting for dawn and a chance to wake up. You sit cross-legged on the rocky obsidian floor, patiently waiting. You try your hardest to block out the world around you, focusing on your deep, heavy breathing. Giving the nightmares and daemons attention just encourages them. Showing fear is spilling blood in the water. Although the nightmarish pale sky grows darker with every second as black tendrils thousands of miles wide spread out across the sky hundreds of miles above, blocking out what little comfort you receive from the white sun, you don't feel fear. This is just one of the many nightmares that plague you every night. You'll live. The darkness begins to solidly into a wave, smashing towards you. You're surrounded by the liquid darkness, which drowns out anything even close to light as it consumes you. "The ever-gaping maw of the void calls," the darkness whispers. "I'm coming from you." > You light emerges You writhe tossing the sheets off you as you lie in bed, panting. Another nightmare. Another night of horrors, terrors and daemonic voices screaming at your soul. You take a deep breath. Focus. In. Out. In. Out. You rest your head against the pillow, sighing. Suddenly, Fay appears in the doorway, wearing combat armor, scratching at her short hair. "Morning," she says. > You say "Morning, Fay. Well, last night was fun." "Yeah, it was," Fay smiles. "Are you sure you're OK?" "Perfect," you say, climbing out of bed and tossing the sheets off your naked frame, as Fay wolf whistles. "Go fuck yourself," you say, walking into the bathroom. "If I could do that, I wouldn't keep you around," Fay replies with a chuckle, as you walk into the bathroom. You stand, and quickly walk to the bathroom. You stare at your reflection in the bathroom mirror, taking a deep breath as the voices start. "Aren't you curious? Does Fay really love you? Or is she using you?" "You're a Psyker. A nice steak, the embrace of a lover, the joys of the material world is nothing compared to what I can offer you." "Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust. The same will happen to you. Embrace the rot and decay that comes with life." "Kill! Maim! Burn! Kill! Maim! Burn! Kill! Maim! Burn!" You're gaining a certain level of familiarity with the daemons in your head. Now that Meliodas has vanished, more has come to fill your head. You've began naming them, one of the few ways you think you'll remain sane with them. Question Mark constantly tempts you with knowledge. Fucky tempts you with fantastic pleasures beyond compare. Rotgut is the embodiment of laziness, and makes you want to lie in bed in your own filth, and Smiley is just fucking bonkers. Tzeentch's Keys, you miss Meliodas. You quickly get dressed, before calling Fay. She opens the door, strolling inside. "Hey, Karth," she smiles. "Is she planning on betraying you? Is she loyal? You don't know... but I do," Question Mark says. "Slit her throat, rape the stab wound and feel the blood run down your arm as you devour her throat! Feel pure blissful sensation!" Fucky whispers. "Embrace your pestilence. You are filth. You are decay. But that is OK. You are still loved," Rotgut says. "BURN! MAIM! KILL!" Smiley screams. Fay raises an eyebrow, rapping her knuckles against your head. "Hello, anyone in there?" she asks. "More than you know," you reply. "Meliodas back?" "New guys. At least there's some variety." "Are they saying anything about me?" Fay smiles. "Cunt! Take her fucking head!" Smiley screams. "I think they like you," you reply, as Fay laughs. "You sure you're OK?" "Tip top," you reply. The barrage of voices screams answers in your head, as you take a deep breath. Fay kisses the top of your head, looking at you. "Karth, come on, come back to me," she says. "I'm fine," you reply, as Fay gives you a concerned look. "If you're sure," she asks nervously. "Come on, we need to get to the war room for the morning meeting." > You head to the war room After a five minute walk, you arrive at the war room. The others are already there. Captain Hayes smokes in the corner, Primus appears as the upper half of a robotic body that only exists for something to focus on when talking, seeing as he literally is the ship, Durge sits in his seat, gently feeding pieces of meat impaled by his spike-arms to the rats infesting his stomach, Elios is involved in some heavy petting with one of his guards, Elizabeth reads, Castus and Fay are bickering and Cain sits in his chair, patiently waiting. "Morning, gents," you say, sliding into your seat. "We need to get around to sorting out control of the ship now that Kyros is dead. We don't have time to celebrate." "We have an issue," Primus says. "What?" "Drake Amadeus. His guards aren't replying, so I sealed off the bridge. We need to go investigate." "Who was on guard duty?" Elizabeth asks, curiously. "Padfoot and Prongs," you reply. "They're hard men. They wouldn't not respond," Fay says. "Isn't there cameras on the bridge?" Hayes asks. "They're offline. Most likely from sabotage. Possibly from a malfunction," Primus says. "Let's go investigate, then," you say. "Let's do it," Fay nods in return. > You find Drake You find yourself standing by the sealed door to the bridge. You wait patiently, your hands writhed in purple flames, while Fay raises her bolter. "Ready?" Primus asks. "Do it," you say, as the doors open. You quickly move inside and see the situation. Padfoot lies on the ground, a shiv made from a shard of ceramite impaled in his neck. Prongs sits in the corner, his bolter in his hands. Both his eyes have been stabbed out repeatedly. "Holy shit," you say. Prongs immediately aims his bolter at you as he lets out a shout. You telekinetically tear the bolter from his hands, tossing it aside. "Shit! Karth?" he asks, terrified as Fay runs over and grabs him. "Shit, Prongs! Are you OK?" "I'm alive. Check on Padfoot!" You quickly float over to Padfoot, but he's long dead. "He's gone," you say. "Fuck. Bastard took my eyes! He's still here! You need to find him!" "We'll get you bionic eyes, Prongs, I promise," Fay says. "That's something that can be done?" You nod, scanning the room for Drake. You move forward slowly, passing the Navigator's chair. You see Drake sitting off in the corner, a cigarette in his mouth he looks at you, nodding. "Hey," he says nonchalantly. "How's your tribal whore? Has she grew any tits yet?" You quickly levitate over, grabbing him by the throat and lifting him into the air. "You son of a bitch! You killed my men!" "I thought I had a chance at escape," Drake shrugs. "You shut this section off before I could." You let the fire run along your hands, tickling his throats, as he yelps. "Hey! You can't kill me, dumbass! We've been through this! You kill me, you're fucked. You torture me, I'll just kill you and me next time I'm navigating rather than endure a life of torture!" You punch him, knocking his head against the wall, before letting him drop to the ground. Tribals enter behind you, grabbing him and binding his hands. "Repair the cameras. Increase security for him," you sigh to one of the Tribals. "Yes, sir," she replies. "You know, you could add a bunch of security features, but I'd find a way around it. You want me to stop trying to escape, all I ask is a few more luxuries. Access to alcohol, drugs and smokes, access to one or two... comfort ladies," Drake smiles, despite the blood dripping down from his broken nose. > You improve Drake's security With the addition of magna-locks, a tighter schedule, more guards, a more advanced camera system for the bridge with multiple back-ups and fail safes, Drake is more secure. He's unhappy about it, and promises to slit your throat, but hell, what the fuck is he going to do? Try escape again? A dozen Tribals, pissed off about what Drake did to two of their men, have scared Amadeus into submission. By the time you sort out Drake’s security measures, which involves dealing with Drake for far longer than any man deserves, you move on to doing all the inane, normal tasks that you now need to deal with like deciding rations, sending out crews to clean up the ship, assigning guards and all the other things expected of you. Unlike Fay, Cain, Castus, Elios, Durge and Captain Hayes, all of whom absolutely despise their new workloads, with Castus even suggesting a new system of anarchy where the only rule is anyone found filing something is to be shot, you actually like it. Olive, Primus, Elizabeth and you all find a certain level of peace in it. The mental challenges and problem-solving you have to deal with has a certain calming element on your mind. By the time it’s finished, it’s fairly late. There’s a night and day cycles on this ship, with the lights brightening and dimming to have a twenty four hour cycle, which stretches a bit long for you compared to home, but with a mid-day nap is manageable. You wonder what world the ship’s cycle aligns to. Perhaps whatever world Kyros came from. Fay opens the door, walking inside. “Karth, it's dinner time," she says. "Better hurry up. We want to eat early so we have the evening to discuss the important issues." > You go eat The meal is prepared by a mix of slaves, mutants with culinary abilities and the intelligence to follow orders, talented cooks taken from the soldiers aboard the vessel and a given few actual chefs hired for the role. Given that fact, the food’s not too bad. Grox ribs in some spicy sauce, some wild vegetable taken from some alien world, with a large brown stalk that’s boiled, sliced up and eaten, these gigantic nuts that are smashed open and eaten, some canned “Cheese” that tastes like… well, it doesn’t taste like cheese, to say the least. All this is paired with either wine or harder liquors, with you taking the former. Fay downs a bottle of fruity alcohol that could kill a weaker man. By the time you’re finished, everyone’s stuffed and most are atable little tipsy. You make the natural move from the dining room to the war room, and soon find yourself ready to debate the future of the ship. “So, what do we have first on the planner, Primus?” “War! We go to war! KILL! KILL! KILL! OBLITERATE!” Smiley screams. “There’s a certain appeal to the life of a raider, isn’t there? Feel the joys and pleasures of the depraved…” Fucky suggests. “Little one, I am more than happy to help. I have a plan to perform a ritual that will give you access…” Question Mark begins suggesting. “Lay down your defenses, let the corruption and decay set in,” Rotgut says. You take a deep breath, trying not to let the fact that your head is filled with voices that quickly delve into an argument show. “We have several important issues,” Primus mechanical tone says. “First, we need to find a suitable replacement for the ship’s Tech Priests who once operated it. That should be our number one priority. Then, we need to take care of Kyros’ former allies.” “Allies?” you ask. “While much of Kyros’ forces, all who directly answered to him, at least, were aboard this vessel, he had amassed a larger force in which he hoped to invade the Imperium. He had made pacts with several forces. These allies could attempt to wipe us out in diligence to their old ally. Fortunately, we expect it’ll be some time before they muster up a force to attack us, if ever." "What else?" "We have a large amount of reports," Primus says. A former-slave worker walks inside, holding a big stack of files that he dumps on the table. Typed documents are alongside large reports written in beautiful writing alongside hastily scrawled notes. The stack holds everything from troop psych reports to statistics about your flight wing to estimates about your wealth in various alien currencies. "What the fuck is that?" Fay asks. "These are the files and reports on our current situation. Thankfully, these have been simplified to the extreme to something that you all can actually comprehend. There's three big, circled figures, labeled Strength, Morale and Funds. See them?" You look at the top of the files, nodding as you see the numbers. "The Strength figure refers to the military strength of your forces, in a percentage. 100 means that you're the exact strength of Kyros' fleet during the times just before the mutiny, 50 would mean half strength of it, 200 would be twice the strength. The Morale figure is the general morale of the forces under your command, with 100 being incredibly happy crew to the point of being unbearable, and 0 being a crew that's only refraining from slitting your throat out of fear. The Funds figure is the amount of funding you have in your control, with every unit representing a million Thrones." "Understood," you say. > You continue "Well then, now that we have that done, we need to decide what is to become of the ship," Durge says. "Seeing as the ship is now conscious, it would rather you not decide what becomes of it," Primus says out of the speakers. "Does someone want to explain why the fuck we have an AI running the ship?" Castus says. "I've explained it to you," Primus says. "Yeah, well fuck it," Castus says. "I'm still confused why you're in charge." "Primus, what exactly do you want to become of you?" you ask curiously. "Honestly? I don't mind. As long as I'm put to use. Fifteen thousand years had played havoc on my memories. I know longer remember any of my justifications or motives other than a need for freedom. Now that I'm free, I'm more than happy to help all of you. But, I want it known that I am free, and my opinion matters." "Of course," you say. "Now, it seems we have a divide here. Chaos, Guardsmen and Slaves." "So it seems," Elios says. "What is it everyone here wants?" you ask. The Staine siblings quickly begin discussing this quietly. "We do plan on continuing as a Chaos War-band," Durge says. "Most of my men want to continue our lives as soldiers, but honestly? I'm no thinker. I'm no planner. I'm a killer. We stay with the ship, let you two factions fight it out," Captain Hayes says. "I imagine I'll form a similar relationship with the new captain of this vessel as I did with Kyros, if with more generous terms for me and my men." "Are the "slaves" unified in their goal?" Elizabeth asks. You look to your allies. Cain shrugs, looking towards you. "I like Hayes' approach to life. Karth is the commander," Cain says. "I trust Karth to speak for my people's interest," Fay says. Olive stares at you while Castus continues playing with his knife. "Yeah, let's roll the dice. I think Karth should have the ability to speak for me... up until he says something stupid," Olive says. "Well, we're the three Chaos leaders," Elios says. "So..." "Chaos leader?" a deep, dark, gurgling voice says. "What a note to make my entrance on." You turn quickly, to see Kyros standing there, smiling. His face is clawed and cut apart with an eye missing, his arm is now a bloody tentacle of muscles studded with bone, his other arm now sporting a huge bone claw, his body torn apart. Most of his throat is missing, a bloody crevasse where it once was. He looks like he's been chewed apart and spat back out, before being mutated. "Hello, Karth, my little protégé," he says. > You attack You fire a bolt of energy, but Kyros sidesteps it with unnatural speed. By now, all the various leaders are standing, their weapons raised. "How did you pass my sensors?" Primus asks. "Please," Kyros laughs. "Did you not think my powers are strong enough to do so?" "How the fuck are you even alive, Kyros?" you ask. "Kyros? Ha! Kyros was a petty fool. Don't you recognize me, Karth?" You shake your head, still ready to engulf him in flames. "No? You don't remember my little voice in the back of your mind? I am Meliodas," Kyros says, taking a bow. "What?" you ask. "Oh, it was simple. I've wanted to take a form in this world for some time. I helped you, paying close attention, seeing potential, and assisted you as best I could. Fortunately, as you fought Kyros, I saw his mental defenses weaken during the fight between you and him. As he lay dying, the mutants at his throat, he was broken. I easily possessed his form, devoured his soul, and killed those stupid mutants with my daemonic powers." "You're a daemon?" Elios asks. "Damn right," Kyros, or Meliodas, says. You take some time to explain who Meliodas is to your other lieutenants, but soon they understand. After some extensive questioning and psychic testing to ensure that this is in fact Meliodas, he takes a seat at the table. "What are you doing?" you ask. "Well, I helped advise Karth. I'm one of his best advisors. Surely I deserve a place here?" Meliodas says. "I suppose," you say. "Give him a seat. Us Chaos followers could use an extra vote for our side," Durge says. "Now, can we continue?" "Don't hold off on my account," Meliodas grins. "Alright, let's be realistic, shall we?" Elios says. "We're Chaos. We worship the Dark Gods, corrupt, parlay with demons, all that shit. We're not changing. We also know that we've lost a shit-ton more men because of little sis' rage against us, so if this comes down to a civil war, we're all dead and you win." "Go on," you say. "So, we have two options. Option One: You keep control of the ship," Durge says. "We'll serve under you as long as we see fit, but we most likely don't leave, and we decide our path forward as a group." "Option two: you abandon the ship to us," Durge says. "We find you a world of your choosing, a little paradise world far from the reaches of the Imperium or any other enemies. It'll be our gift to you. You can pick out the world, we'll transport any who want to go there to it as well as all you'll need to survive and build a large, happy community. You'll be able to peacefully retire and live out the rest of your lives, never worrying about this ship or the battles it will fight." "One moment," you say, pulling your lieutenants together. "So... What do we think?" "Eh," Cain grunts. "We're not going to abandon this ship, are we?" Olive asks. "This is a massive war machine. We should stay. "I'm not adverse to settling down," Fay says. "But we could take the ship anyway. With control of the ship, we could carve ourselves a little empire. Nothing on the level of Kyros' aspirations, but hey, better than our ancestors could ever have dreamed of." > You keep control of the ship "We'll stay," you say, as Durge nods. "Well... this'll be interesting," Meliodas grins, twisting Meliodas' daemonic face. "Alright," Elios grunts. "What's next on the agenda?" "The ship," Primus says. "Or me, for lack of a better word. I have gotten it running to a degree and it's capable of travel, there's no way it will be able to hold up in a fight or operate long-term." "How do we fix it?" you ask. "The death of the Tech-Priests has left us lacking men specialized to repair the ship. I've found three groups that could hypothetically fulfill that role, as well as two other solutions." "Go on," you reply. "There is the Rutherford-Dalton-Boyle Think Tank, a faction hidden away in several space stations, researching and creating in the gas giant of Ingenium-IV. A good negotiator should be able to convince at least some of them to leave their stations to come aboard the Roar of the Vortex to continue their research aboard our vessel as well as having access to huge archives of intelligence here, being able to research the ship and maintaining that the technology isn't lost." "Who else?" you ask, "The Iron Smiths of Daeranthium. Daeranthium is a planet that contains several ancient factories and forges, with massive amounts of resources such as huge, ancient mines. The planet, while tribal in culture, are advanced enough to produce weapons, vehicles, armor and more for the Imperium. We could attempt to negotiate with them to take some of their men aboard to fulfill the role of engineers." "And the final group?" "The Dark Mechanicus is Chaos' version of the Adeptus Mechanicus, whether it be those from the Adeptus Mechanicus who went rogue and were corrupted by Chaos, or those recruited by them. Their work requires manpower that they don't have. I've found reports of a Dark Mechanicus group known as the Harbringers of Menedez. They've already made a reputation for selling slaves trained with skills such as the ones we desire. For five million Thrones, we could have them soon to fulfill the required role." "You said you have two other options. What are they?" "Option one involves the funding an education program to educate the mutant workers. For ten million Thrones, we could educate the mutant population. They wouldn't be as experienced as other options, but quantity has a whole quality all it's own." "And...?" you say before Primus interrupts you. The "Option two is more cruel. We have the technology and cybernetics taken from the dead Techpriests and Servitors. If you were willing to lobotomize a few of the mutant workers we have, the least intelligent and productive, to create a new legion of servitors under my control. This would be cheap, effective and we could have it done in the night to avoid breaking night, framing it as accidents. So, which option shall it be?" > You visit the Iron Smiths of Daeranthium You walk down the landing ramp, looking out at the large walls that surround the massive factory-city. Nude men wander around, covered in grease and holding large tools. Fay walks out of the landing, a shoulder-mounted camera and speaker on her to give Primus a place to speak and see. "Well... I guess they're nude. What a lovely view, am I right, Karth?" Fay smirks. "You grew up in a tribe of nudists," you remark. "Yeah, but that was when I was little. Now that I'm post-pubescent, I can appreciate the view." You flick your wrist, sending her tumbling to the ground. "Asshole," she laughs, oping back to her feet. A thick, burly, oil-covered man walks forward from the crowd of workers, a huge wrench in his hands. "What?" he grunts. "My name's Karth. I..." You see a brawl emerge from the crowd to your left. Two massive workers begin to fight, their massive fists smashing into each other with an astonishing strength. They let out howling shouts as more men join into the fight. The leader strides forward with a growl, swinging his wrench and smashing a few men in the head, forcing them to crumple to the ground. Soon, the fight ends with a bunch of injured men lying on the ground. "Sorry 'bout that," the leader says. "One of the boys thought Chef gave him too little meat. You know how men are. The name's O'Neill." "You know why we're here?" you ask. "You wanted to hire some of my men, huh? This Primus fella or whoever the fuck I talked to cleared it up with me," O'Neill asks. "I can get it done. We've been having a population explosion. But I want something in return." "Go on?" you ask. "My men are taken care of. Good medical treatment, free food, rooms and drink, and I mean men's drink, not milk and honey-shit, as well as payment for their work done. In exchange, I'll give you all the men you need. We gotta deal?" > You agree "Yeah. We have a deal," you say. "Good. I'll have the men told, see which ones want to go and lead them all to the vessel. Then, I'll have them informed on their new jobs. Done?" "Done," you say, grasping his hand and shaking. In the next few weeks, you learn that while the famed Iron Smiths of Daeranthium are good at their jobs, they have... issues. They're violent, aggressive drunks prone to picking fights with the more peaceful members of the crew. While these actions don't take away from their work, it does lead to serious morale issues emerging, although these can be dealt with. Still, the Iron Smiths do their jobs. That's all you really need. > Next Now that you're finished working on repairing the ship and its back to full abilities, you have another issue. You restock at a nearby outlaw planet, trading much of Kyros' personal wealth in order to outfit and repair the ship, which is made simple with Primus' help. Ship operation seems actually fairly simple. As long as Amadeus is under your thumb and the military might is yours, you'll be fine. Most of the hard work required is done by Primus. With those two, you're golden. One of the main issues, though, is the mutants. As your slaves have all been wiped out or had joined up with one of the war-bands, Kyros or your forces during the mutiny, mutants are now filling in most of the crew roles aboard this vessel. The thing is, they're getting antsy about their position, wanting more power and a say in the decisions of the vessel. Reports say that a mutant known as John the Hermit is leading the mutants, inciting dissent and rallying the masses of mutants. Although the mutants are seen as an irrelevant issue by most, you know that's not the case. They're tough, with naturally mutated weapons, and there's massive numbers of them. If they're genuinely organized and inspired by this John the Hermit, they could easily take the ship when you're at low strength. > You have John the Hermit assassinated You have an elite group of Tribals sent down into the catacombs of the ship with the objective of killing John the Hermit. Comm reports show that they're wiped out to the last man, but not before carving a bloody path through the mutant horde, ending with John the Hermit's death before they're finally overwhelmed. Unfortunately, John the Hermit goes down with a strength you've rarely seen among the best of men, let alone a wretched mutant. As John the Hermit was engulfed in fire by a flamer blast, his skin crackling, his flesh cooking and his bones melting, he gave one of the most impassioned speeches you've ever seen, urging the mutants to not give up and continue with the rebellion as planned. With that, the mutants rise up. You're simply unprepared for the scale of this rebellion. John the Hermit must have been planning this for decades, behind Kyros' back. Stores of ammo and weapons, hidden in stockpiles in the parts of the ship that hadn't been searched in millennia, are unearthed, as many of the functions of the ship cease as the mutants stop working. While your forces have better training, better equipment, better everything, as it has been said before, quantity has a whole quality of its own. The endless mutant hordes, entirely willing to die for their cause, all willing to martyr themselves as John the Hermit did. As you stand in the war-room, surrounded by an army of mutants, burning dozens as lightning runs along your fingertips and psychic blasts kill all who could hope to oppose you, the mutants begin to overwhelm you. As their tentacles, hands and claws bring you down, tearing you apart, you have a brief musing about how similar this is to Kyros' death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Now that you're finished working on repairing the ship and its back to full abilities, you have another issue. You restock at a nearby outlaw planet, trading much of Kyros' personal wealth in order to outfit and repair the ship, which is made simple with Primus' help. Ship operation seems actually fairly simple. As long as Amadeus is under your thumb and the military might is yours, you'll be fine. Most of the hard work required is done by Primus. With those two, you're golden. One of the main issues, though, is the mutants. As your slaves have all been wiped out or had joined up with one of the war-bands, Kyros or your forces during the mutiny, mutants are now filling in most of the crew roles aboard this vessel. The thing is, they're getting antsy about their position, wanting more power and a say in the decisions of the vessel. Reports say that a mutant known as John the Hermit is leading the mutants, inciting dissent and rallying the masses of mutants. Although the mutants are seen as an irrelevant issue by most, you know that's not the case. They're tough, with naturally mutated weapons, and there's massive numbers of them. If they're genuinely organized and inspired by this John the Hermit, they could easily take the ship when you're at low strength. > You have John the Hermit brought to you You sit in your war-room, waiting patiently. The room has been done up quite nicely now that you're in charge. The head seat at the table is a black, marble throne, with Magos' Cern's skull and Chapter Master Taj's head hanging from the red banner behind you, the banner emblazoned with the stark, spiky symbol vaguely shaped like the spear that once represented the Uwais tribe. You lieutenants are around you, Fay sitting directly to your right in an ornate red chair, with the upper half of the humanoid robot that Primus uses as his "face" to talk to to your left. Cain sits in a massive chair, a massive cooked carcass in his hands that he devours. Across from him sits Captain Hayes, who you've situated near the air vent to avoid choking on the ever-present smoke that emanates from the ever-present lho-stick clenched in his teeth. Olive and Castus are at the end, across from each other, which leads to an endless amount of bickering between the intelligent, pragmatic Olive and carefree, happy, impulsive Castus. You're all set up entirely to scare and intimidate John the Hermit when he enters. The Staine Siblings are off to the side with Meliodas, with Durge chewing on a rat carcass, Elizabeth reading, Elios waiting impatiently and Meliodas pacing the room. Hopefully, it'll work. "By will of the people, I ascend to the chamber of the Gods! I will beseech them as a poor, twisted food, by will of the people!" a voice cries, as the door is pushed open. Two Kasrkin soldiers stand next to John the Hermit. The mutant prophet is a horrible, wretched creature. His spine is twisted, making him a hunchbacked creature. The ring and pinky finger of his left hand is fused together, as is his middle and index finger, giving it a crab claw-like appearance. His other hand is different, a literal engorged crab claw, covered in a thick chitin, looking able to crush a man in half. His face is twisted and mismatched, with only a few oversized teeth in his mouth, one eye much larger than the other and a squashed nose that looks akin to it having been badly and repeatedly broken. His back is misshapen, covered with a thick chitin like that of a crab's being more akin to a shell than a human's back. "With my own two eyes! With my own two eyes I see the supposed gods!" he says, walking forward with a strange look on his face that you can't decipher thanks to his deformities. "Are you the man known known as John the Hermit?" you ask. "The man? No, no, not at all. I am the beasts, a simple creature twisted by your inaction," John the Hermit says bitterly. "My inaction?" you ask. "Have you seen what freaks we've become? Nuclear waste from reactors aren't cleared off, even though we haven't used nuclear reactors for millennia! Malnutrition! Lack of medical attention! There used to be slaves who were constantly tortured and brutally forced to work, and we envied them!" "What is it that you want exactly?" Primus asks. "Who is it that runs this vessel?" John the Hermit asks. "I do," you reply, looking briefly at Primus and the others for any signs of dissent. "By what right do you claim to be leader? By will of the people, by democracy's gentle guiding hand, I am the rightful leader!" "By right of force," you reply. "Ha! I'd wager my army of malformed brothers against yours any day! We have the numbers, we have the will, we have the power to take this ship!" "Did you come here to make threats and promise me you'll take over?" you ask, as your fists set alight. "I came here to offer you a deal. John the Hermit is no leader. John the Hermit is a simple man. I just want a boost in our standards of living. Running water, good food, actual bedrooms, human rights!" he says. "Primus, how much would that cost us?" "If we were to raise the mutant standard of living to those described by John the Hermit, it would cost, and this is a rough, fluctuating estimate, twenty million thrones." "That's doable, is it not? A few million Thrones to ensure your one at the head of this vessel? It's good, yes? I also want a place at your table, as an advisor, so I can continue speaking for my mutants. With this, we'll stay your humble servants." > You set the mad hermit alight and be done with it You fire a burst of flames. Unfortunately, John the Hermit goes down with a strength you've rarely seen among the best of men, let alone a wretched mutant. As John the Hermit was engulfed in fire by a flamer blast, his skin crackling, his flesh cooking and his bones melting, he begins to roar at you. "You'll pay for this injustice! We'll rise up, crush you and break free! We'll rule the galaxy!" It's only a few hours before the mutants learn what happened and rise up. You're simply unprepared for the scale of this rebellion. John the Hermit must have been planning this for decades, behind Kyros' back. Stores of ammo and weapons, hidden in stockpiles in the parts of the ship that hadn't been searched in millennia, are unearthed, as many of the functions of the ship cease as the mutants stop working. While your forces have better training, better equipment, better everything, as it has been said before, quantity has a whole quality of its own. The endless mutant hordes, entirely willing to die for their cause, all willing to martyr themselves as John the Hermit did. As you stand in the war-room, surrounded by an army of mutants, burning dozens as lightning runs along your fingertips and psychic blasts kill all who could hope to oppose you, the mutants begin to overwhelm you. As their tentacles, hands and claws bring you down, tearing you apart, you have a brief musing about how similar this is to Kyros' death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit in your war-room, waiting patiently. The room has been done up quite nicely now that you're in charge. The head seat at the table is a black, marble throne, with Magos' Cern's skull and Chapter Master Taj's head hanging from the red banner behind you, the banner emblazoned with the stark, spiky symbol vaguely shaped like the spear that once represented the Uwais tribe. You lieutenants are around you, Fay sitting directly to your right in an ornate red chair, with the upper half of the humanoid robot that Primus uses as his "face" to talk to to your left. Cain sits in a massive chair, a massive cooked carcass in his hands that he devours. Across from him sits Captain Hayes, who you've situated near the air vent to avoid choking on the ever-present smoke that emanates from the ever-present lho-stick clenched in his teeth. Olive and Castus are at the end, across from each other, which leads to an endless amount of bickering between the intelligent, pragmatic Olive and carefree, happy, impulsive Castus. You're all set up entirely to scare and intimidate John the Hermit when he enters. The Staine Siblings are off to the side with Meliodas, with Durge chewing on a rat carcass, Elizabeth reading, Elios waiting impatiently and Meliodas pacing the room. Hopefully, it'll work. "By will of the people, I ascend to the chamber of the Gods! I will beseech them as a poor, twisted food, by will of the people!" a voice cries, as the door is pushed open. Two Kasrkin soldiers stand next to John the Hermit. The mutant prophet is a horrible, wretched creature. His spine is twisted, making him a hunchbacked creature. The ring and pinky finger of his left hand is fused together, as is his middle and index finger, giving it a crab claw-like appearance. His other hand is different, a literal engorged crab claw, covered in a thick chitin, looking able to crush a man in half. His face is twisted and mismatched, with only a few oversized teeth in his mouth, one eye much larger than the other and a squashed nose that looks akin to it having been badly and repeatedly broken. His back is misshapen, covered with a thick chitin like that of a crab's being more akin to a shell than a human's back. "With my own two eyes! With my own two eyes I see the supposed gods!" he says, walking forward with a strange look on his face that you can't decipher thanks to his deformities. "Are you the man known known as John the Hermit?" you ask. "The man? No, no, not at all. I am the beasts, a simple creature twisted by your inaction," John the Hermit says bitterly. "My inaction?" you ask. "Have you seen what freaks we've become? Nuclear waste from reactors aren't cleared off, even though we haven't used nuclear reactors for millennia! Malnutrition! Lack of medical attention! There used to be slaves who were constantly tortured and brutally forced to work, and we envied them!" "What is it that you want exactly?" Primus asks. "Who is it that runs this vessel?" John the Hermit asks. "I do," you reply, looking briefly at Primus and the others for any signs of dissent. "By what right do you claim to be leader? By will of the people, by democracy's gentle guiding hand, I am the rightful leader!" "By right of force," you reply. "Ha! I'd wager my army of malformed brothers against yours any day! We have the numbers, we have the will, we have the power to take this ship!" "Did you come here to make threats and promise me you'll take over?" you ask, as your fists set alight. "I came here to offer you a deal. John the Hermit is no leader. John the Hermit is a simple man. I just want a boost in our standards of living. Running water, good food, actual bedrooms, human rights!" he says. "Primus, how much would that cost us?" "If we were to raise the mutant standard of living to those described by John the Hermit, it would cost, and this is a rough, fluctuating estimate, twenty million thrones." "That's doable, is it not? A few million Thrones to ensure your one at the head of this vessel? It's good, yes? I also want a place at your table, as an advisor, so I can continue speaking for my mutants. With this, we'll stay your humble servants." > You agree "Fine. A place at my table, and a rise in conditions. Is that acceptable?" "Yes, most certainly, captain. The chalice of the gods has been spilt, and mine are happy to lap up what drips out. Most certainly," the mutant grins. "Thank fuck! Now, are we finished with all these mindless fucking issues?" you ask. "Primus, I need some rest. You're in charge of the ship, Primus." "Good to know I'm in charge of myself. I was having a free will crisis up until that order," Primus says, in what you assume could be a joke. With that, you walk out of the stress-filled shit-hole, to take relax. > You relax You find yourself in Kyros' extravagant chambers, filling a large stone bath. You quickly get undressed, lowering yourself in the water as you feel heat run through you, and the aching pain hits you briefly. "Fuck," you grunt. You've been doing too much physical activity. You forget you're a skinny kid devoid of muscles sometimes, besides a powerful destroyer of worlds. You take a deep breath, before briefly submerging yourself in the water. You lift your head out, feeling your long hair grow heavy with water. You grab a long knife from the edge of the bath, and quickly begin to hack away at your hair neat and tight. "You OK, Karth?" a voice calls. You stare out, spotting Fay entering the room. "Yeah, I'm OK," you reply, running your wet hands over your scalp. "You cut your hair?" she asks. "Yeah, it was getting long. I hadn't noticed, but Kyros didn't exactly keep us well groomed. I guess you don't get bothered by the smell of teen spirit if you were always dealing with rotting corpses, mutants shit themselves and the smell of your ideals slowly rotting." "I suppose so. I've not cut my hair either. I just have one of the Tribals braid it. So, do you want company for your little bath?" "Isn't that the only reason I keep you around?" you smile. Fay gives you the finger, before she unclasps the tunic-type thing she'd been wearing, letting it fall away. You sit in the warm water staring at her for a minute, admiring her strong, muscled form, her gorgeous, ample... "Hey shaman, lift your jaw, you seem to have dropped it," Fay laughs, dropping into the water with a loud splash. "We stuck in a spaceship without windows drifting through the endless void known as space. You can't blame me for admiring a view when I have the chance." Fay laughs, smiling. "It's not like you haven't seen it before. In fact, if I recall correctly I was naked the very first time we met." "Oh yeah. Nearly forgot about the fact that I have a filthy Azajaja leading my Uwais boys." "Hey, I've hunted with the Uwais, fought alongside the Uwais, killed for the Uwais. You spent your time just sitting on a pillow, except when I was around to carry you." "I enjoyed the former way more than the latter," you say with a smirk. "Are you saying you don't want me here?" Fay says, fake-pouting. "No. I need to relax, and I'm sure bathing with you will prove... relaxing." Fay gently leans over to you, lying on your lap. "Was bathing all you were planning?" she smiles. Admittedly, the rest of the night is quite the stress-reliever. > The Next Day You watch as a group of Tribals spar. One of them, a bare-chested man in a gas mask, smashes one in the head, before grabbing one and flinging him against the ground. "Now, kill! Break! Obliterate!" Smiley yells. "Why does he wear a gas mask?" you ask one of the training supervisors. "Who, Opie? Dude's in charge of explosives for his squad. Has a penchant for gas attacks." "He's impressive." A dull, monotone voice comes out of the speaker, drawing your attention. "Karth, there's a meeting in the war room," Primus says. You sigh, and head to the war room. Five minutes later, you find yourself in the war room. Hayes, Elizabeth, your girlfriend Fay, Castus, Olive and John the Hermit are there. "Where's everyone else?" you ask. "I'm here," Primus says. "I just didn't bring in my "body" because I won't be participating in this conversation much," Primus says, referring to the robotic upper body that Primus uses to help people know where to focus when talking to him. "Why not? Why are we even here?" "We're here to regulate, or not regulate, drug usage among the population. That doesn't exactly effect Primus. Durge's Nurglites don't do them, the Goliaths don't do them, and who the fuck knows where Meliodas is? That leaves us," Elizabeth says. "What about Elios?" you ask. "Elios threatened to... "stab me in the throat and fuck that stab hole" if I tried prohibiting his "freedom"." "Yes! I like this man! Follow his example!" Fucky says. "Alright, let's get it done, shall we?" you ask. > You begin "What's first, then?" you ask. Elizabeth grabs a metal, torso-shaped rig covered in syringes and medical equipment onto the table. "This is called a chem rig. Pioneered by the Morallians in the Eastern Fringe, picked up by various mercenaries, and now heavily used on this ship. The rig is outfitted with several syringes filled with either medicines or light drugs such as the adrenaline-based Pulse, the sedative Sacred and a few other things. It's not been researched to any degree, but there appear to be no short term effects. Still, it could be dangerous long term. Soldiers buy these to increase their combat efficiency, so it can be of help to us." "The gladiators use it. It's effective," Olive says. "I've seen my Tribals use it as well. It helps, but it does tend to lead to the start of heavy drug usage that can go downhill." > You ban "Ban it," you say. "Alright then," Elizabeth says, looking down at her notes. She fumbles through her pockets, pulling out two packets. One of a white, granular powder, the other is a brown one, looking like grinded up dirt. "Here we have Zap and Dirt. Zap can be snorted, eaten or drank with alcohol to perk up energy levels and increase reaction time, while Dust is inhaled to improve your senses. These drugs DO have a few negative effects. Mood swings and some minor mental problems with the former, respiratory issues with the latter. There's not very popular, but only as it's fairly new and we haven't stopped at ports recently." "Thoughts?" you ask. "I don't have enough research to formulate an opinion," Elizabeth admits. "Allow Zap! That shit's good!" Castus says, finally paying attention, before getting distraction by a smudge of... something on the table. "Perhaps its effect on mental health are really serious. I mean, look at Castus," Olive says. > You ban "Ban," you say. "What else we have?" Elizabeth fumbles through her bag once more, pulling out a small, black vial. She places it on the table. "Reaper," she says. "It's just arriving from the Black Aces War Band." "What's it do?" you ask. "It gives users a huge confidence boost and immunity to pain, faster reflexes, a faster heart rate and adrenaline for a small period of time. It's very dangerous, though, only used in bad situations. It has a 10% fatality rate, but it's VERY effective in battle." "That stuff leads to serious health issues," Fay points out. "Very effective, though. Shockingly so," Castus says. > You ban "Ban it," you say. > You continue Your mass banning of the combat drugs prevent morale from falling due to any issues with that, although it does lead to a sharp drop in combat efficiency of your troops. Still, that's life. At least your men are safe. > You continue "Next are the more recreational drugs. The first is a familiar vice: alcohol. Although the light beers and wines are too invaluable for the ship to ban, as since the crew drinks them, they’re boiling the water before they’re used in brewing these drinks, hence stopping disease from spreading due to the very unsanitary water in many parts of the ship. Still, harder liquors, like the spirits, the harder beers and the venom shit that that’s so common on the vessel are simply bad for your health and disruptive. If you were to ban these, you’d be able to increase the productivity and general levels of health on the ship. It is common on the vessel, due to how easy it is to produce, and how commonplace. Due to its radiance across the cultures of at the very least the humans on the ship, be it from the wines and rums enjoyed by the raiders and bandits, the hard liquors mercenaries pour down their throat, the wines and strange bears enjoyed by pre-industrial recruits and the simple, mass-produced moonshine and liquor that can be found on any hive world in existence." > You ban The ban goes miserably. As soon as it goes into place, there’s uproar and even strikes organized by the workers, but these are easily quelled by a few experienced Goliaths knocking some heads together. Still, everyone begins to brew their own, from bathtub gins created by the shitty metal wash basins that you barely deign to qualify as bath tubs, to massive operations creating a variety of drinks, taking up whole forgotten floors on the ship. Still, the problems caused by the worse quality liquors given to the mercenaries and the general unhappiness caused by having to pay exorbent amounts just to get something that’ll get you drunk and isn’t mostly Promethium and weak acid has worsened morale, though not all the alcohol that can be found is pathetic. From what Castus and Fay say, the pricier drinks are actually of better quality than what you were unimportant. No doubt they had sampled it only to verify that the brewers were making alcohol before destroying every drop of it. You ignore the rumors that they’re these industries’ biggest customers. > You continue Well, on to the next group of recreational drugs. Whilst alcohol technically falls under this category, it’s not usually what people refer to. No, the main ones, as you see when Elizabeth puts them on the table, are less traditional Elizabeth puts a large, brown cigar, a glass vial containing blue liquid, a small patch of green tablets and quite a few other drugs “These are known collectively as the Eyes, due to all of them having a fairly noticeably effect on your eyes. It’s really a catch all term commonly used on the ship, and in the sector. They’re… for lack of a better word, light drugs. From the smokeable Sun Scales designed to get you in a trance or give you some hallucinations, the Blood Root that has the effect of making the user feel happier and more mellow, the Slug juice, absorbed through the skin, that helps relieve pain and puts the user into a deep, peaceful sleep, the Bright Gas that improves the user’s mood, the Castins that when smoked increase confidence… I can go on forever. These drugs have some negative effects, but realistically, no serious ones when taking into account their expected lifespans and the sheer amount of risks they’re already facing. Anything the drugs do is neglible. The only possible risk is that their productivity worsens because they’re as high as a kite.” “So, do we ban or allow?” you ask. “Well, those aren’t necessarily the only options, in this instance. Due to the nature of these drugs, we have five options. The first two, as you’ll know, involve either blanket banning or fully allowing these and letting the winds of free market spread them out among the crew. The third involves allowing them, but to a limited degree. Everyone has a limited amount they’re allowed to buy, only the least dangerous are brought in, that kind of thing.” “Go on,” you say. “The fourth possibility is that we become proactive with our usage of the drugs. We’re forcing our men to face horrors beyond comprehension and risk their lives. We could, for a small amount, begin purchasing and producing these drugs on-ship, rationing them out to raise the morale of the crew. Plus, this would give us the ability to actually begin selling drugs on the open market if we find a better group of cooks and a supplier. Lastly, we could just go all out. Buy a huge quantity of the drugs and start manufacturing them on ship, and just start pumping them out to the crew. Pump the gaseous drugs into the air, put all the soluble drugs into the water supply and crush up everything else to put in the food. This would amplify morale tenfold, although could lead to a serious drop in productivity, seeing as you literally couldn’t breath without getting insanely high.” > You allow You allow it. Fuck it, it would just flood in anyway. Other than that, pretty much nothing changes. > You finish up with decisions for the day You've done enough work. You've done a lot for the ship. Time to head to bed. > The Next Day... As the shuttle touches down on the planet, you sigh a breath of relief. You walk out of the shuttle, into the clearing you've landed in, staring at the dozens of black trees that surround you. All your lieutenants are with you, excluding Durge and Meliodas, both of who are happier to stay on the ship. Although the planet, whose name you can't even remember, is for the most part two extremes of frozen, forever dark wastelands, and burning, forever insanely bright wastelands. So wastelands, mainly. Still, a strip exists around the equator in a sweet zone, which act as bountiful, fertile zones. It's this zone that you'll be taking advantage of on your little planet side excursion. You watch as dozens of shuttles land and hordes of mutants break free of the shuttle to gather resources. Hell, this'll probably raise morale for the mutants, seeing as this'll be the first time they've seen natural sunlight. "So, do we have any tasks for today?" you ask Elizabeth. "No, we've nothing to do but relax. I've put few loyal men in charge, as well as John the Hermit. They'll do what's expected of them." "Perfect, so we have free time," Fay says. "Anything on this planet worth hunting?" "There's a species known as Behemoths, incredibly hardy creatures that can survive in either extreme environment, occasionally raiding the fertile zone to feast," Elizabeth says. "Are they sentient?" Fay asks. "No." "Are they near extinction?" Fay asks. "Again, no," Elizabeth says. "Alright, perfect. I'll grab a few of my Tribals and go on the hunt," FAY says. "Yeah, I'll come," Castus says. "I'll go as well," Fay says. "Smells funny here. I'm going to sleep," Cain says, walking over to a tree and slumping against it as he closes his eyes. "You want to come hunt, Elios?" Fay asks. "Please, do I seem like the type to go hunting? I'm going to bathe by the river," Elios says, sauntering off. "Elizabeth?" Olive asks."Are you coming hunting?" "This is a peaceful, relaxing environment. I want to practice on my psychic abilities," Elizabeth says again. "Hayes? You coming?" Fay asks. "Yeah, I'll come," Hayes says, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. Well then, you've a few choices on what to spend your day doing. > You go hunting "I'll hunt with you guys," you say. "Terrific," Fay says. "I'll get you a gun," Olive says. You set a tree alight with a flick of your wrist, as the Warpfire quickly runs up, multicolored flames licking the sky as the tree is quickly burnt down to ash. "Do you think I need one?" you ask. "Fair point," Olive says. "Let's get going!" Castus says, twirling his sword. "I wanna stab something!" Elizabeth transfers over a short amount of data onto Olive's datapad about the Behemoths. Then, the group moves forward through the wilderness, as Olive begins to flick through the information. "So Hayes, you were a Guardsman, then?" Olive asks. "From what I heard, they give you a flashlight and a t-shirt and send you to fight serious foes." Hayes sucks on his cigarette, thinking. "Yeah, all command gave us was jack and shit. I remember my first deployment. We were in the jungle, and I mean a serious fucking jungle. Seemed like the whole jungle was sentient and wanted to fucking kill us. Snare vines strangled every single one of us. The ground would just give way. You'd be on patrol, and the mud would suck up an entire tank. You'd blink and it'd be gone. Then there was the greenskins. You'd give 'em a few sticks with the bayonet, and they'd laugh and call you a grot." "Greenskins. They used to be the biggest threats back home. When I was a kid, they took out my tribe. I remember being surrounded by a green tide, roaring, screaming and terrifying me. By the moon, I think I ended up pissing myself," Fay says. "How the hell did it kill your tribe? Who are the Tribals, then?" Castus says. "I ended up getting rescued by the Uwais tribe. They adopted me." "Really? Was it the tribe that saved your ass and blew up a bunch of heads?" you say. "Fine, Karth saved me with his weird Shaman powers," Fay says. "So, I'll just come out and ask. Olive, there's a rumor going around that you and your brother are fucking." "Holy shit!" Olive says, as Castus breaks into laughter. "No! No! Just no!" "You fight Orks, gladiators?" you say, quickly changing to a less incest-related topic. "Occasionally they got Orks in, but it was rare," Olive says. "Usually we fought each other, or mutants." "Mutants were easy. You just had to kill them," Castus says. "Other gladiators were hard. You had to hit them in just the right place. It needed to be bloody, but you couldn't kill a fellow gladiator, you know? Sometimes in the heat of battle, you took a bad swing, slashed open a throat, did something else. Those were the bad days." Castus goes quiet, seemingly deep in thought. "Yeah," Olive says, finally. "We fought Orks sometimes." You walk on in silence, before Fay stops, dropping low. Massive footprints cut directly across the trail. Fay traces the footprint with her pinky, pressing her hand against the mud. "It's relatively fresh. Tracks break away in undergrowth. Could've gone along the river. Could've gone straight along the underbrush, or twisted off through the trees." "I'll go along the river," Castus says. "I'll take the underbrush, then," Fay says. "Trees," Olive says, simply. Captain Hayes looks at you, raising an eyebrow. "I'll give you first pick, Karth," he says. > You take the river with Castus "I'll go with Castus," you say. "Kickass," Castus says. You quickly towards the river. You walk along the banks, while Castus happily wades up to his knees. He dunks his head under water, slicking back his wet hair. "Uh, that feels good!" Castus laughs, before diving into the river. "We're supposed to be hunting!" you exclaim, hovering into the air, staring for any signs of the creature. "What the fuck would I care?" Castus cries. Come on, motherfucker. Get in the water." You hover over Castus, the soles of your boots just touching the water. Castus rolls his eyes, grabbing you by the boot and in one swift movement pulling you in. The water's cold, but in the hot weather of today, quite refreshing. You float in the water, drifting along the river slowly. "Fuck hunting, this is all I want," Castus says. > You drift peacefully along You say nothing, continuing to float along the water. You close your eyes, taking a deep breath. Your peaceful relaxation is interrupted as the comm bursts to life. "Got a sight on it! Fuck, it's a big one!" Olive says over the comms. "Shit," Castus says. "Well, we need to go deal with that." Castus climbs out of the water, quickly hurrying along towards Olive's path. > You head towards the Behemoth You hurry through the forests, levitating over streams and fallen trees. With your speed, it’s less than a minute before you arrive, seeing the beast. It stands twice the height of even a space marine, and easily six times as wide, on four clawed legs. It’s skin is grey, seemingly covered in scales that remind you more of the stones themselves rather than the hide of a beast. Its head is like that of a spider’s, hissing at you as it raises its massive, stony clawed arms to swipe at you. You hover back, feeling electricity coarse through you as you prepare for a fight. > You smash it telekinetically with a tree trunk You grab a tree with your mind, lifting it through the air, as gunfire erupts from your companions. Even the powerful bolter fails to break through its thick, rock-like exterior. You swing the tree with incredible strength, smashing into the creature and sending splinters around the place. The creature doesn’t even step back, instead charging ahead towards you. You float to the side, as Hayes quickly arrives, raising his rifle and firing. As expected, the las beam has no effect. “Ha! It’s good to be killing again!” Castus yells. “Fuck, we’re not getting through this. Maybe we up the armament?” Fay says. “Go for the eyes and the inside of the mouth!" Hayes yells, firing his gun. Well, that didn't work. Time for something else. > You take it to some psychic-amplified melee You fly forward, smashing a fist into the Behemoth's head, squashing out one of its eyes as your fist flies straight into its head. It howls as it smashes its claws as you, but you simply drop underneath the swings and continue smashing your fist into its chest. The Behemoth smashes its head forward, shattering your shoulders and sending you hurtling towards the ground as you smash into the soft mud. The Behemoth steps forward, crushing its claw into your chest and shattering your bones crushing your chest. You're killed on impact. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab a tree with your mind, lifting it through the air, as gunfire erupts from your companions. Even the powerful bolter fails to break through its thick, rock-like exterior. You swing the tree with incredible strength, smashing into the creature and sending splinters around the place. The creature doesn’t even step back, instead charging ahead towards you. You float to the side, as Hayes quickly arrives, raising his rifle and firing. As expected, the las beam has no effect. “Ha! It’s good to be killing again!” Castus yells. “Fuck, we’re not getting through this. Maybe we up the armament?” Fay says. “Go for the eyes and the inside of the mouth!" Hayes yells, firing his gun. Well, that didn't work. Time for something else. > You ram a tree trunk down the beast's throat You levitate a tree trunk into the air, flinging it forward. It flies through the air and smashes into the beast's open throat, as the beast stumbles backwards as you drive the tree further down its throat. The beast tries to howl, but only ends up choking. You quickly levitate back as the beast stumbles around, before it finally collapses on the ground. > You stand above the vanquished beast You quickly levitate over the beast, dropping onto it's head, gently pressing your boot against its head and smiling. "Karth one, nature zero," you say. "Barely counts as hunting with those powers," Hayes says, jabbing his bayonet into the monster's thick skin, as it simply scrapes along the hide. "Fuck me, this is thick. Could probably survive a Baneblade cannon." "How long before we have to return?" "About an hour," Fay says, drawing a knife and tapping it against the beast's hide. Now that you have some free time, you might be able to solve this whole romance issue, see where that goes. > You spend some time with Fay "Hey, Fay. Ooh, that rhymes," you say, walking up to the Azajaja Tribal. "What's up?" she asks. "Come on, let's spend some time together." "I can't. I've already arranged to spend some time with Castus, then Hayes." "Oh," you say, disappointed, as Fay laughs. "I'm kidding, witch boy. I'll always have time for you." "Aw, romantic," you smile. "Oh, not for the romance. Only because the sex is good. Must by your psychic powers. Now, come on, let's go do something fun," she says. Fay begins walking off into the trees, as you follow behind her eagerly. "So... we're dating," you say. "Correct," Fay replies. "Well then," you say, floating forward. You both continue moving forward through the trees , as you take a deep breath. The voices chatter in the back of your mind, although they seem bored and disinterested. They'll probably come back soon enough, but for now you're content with their silence. You float on, both silent. "How many people were there back home?" Fay asks, breaking the silence. "What do you mean?" "How many people were there in all the tribes?" "Uh... ten thousand, twenty thousand maybe," you reply. "Why?" "Think about it. Our entire world was twenty thousand people. My dreams as a kid involved leading a group of a thousand warriors to purge out a bunch of Greenskins. With the forces we have now, we'd be able to wipe out the tribes a billion times over." "Yeah. We're doing well," you reply, looking up at the sky, with the sun slowly setting in the distance. "How far do you think we are from home?" "I don't know. A million miles. A billion. Hell, a trillion. Hard to imagine." "You come across the river and step forward, levitating over the stream, stopping on the other side. "Lucky psychic bastard," Fay bumbles, sitting down to pull off her boots. "I don't want to get my boots water-logged. I'll throw 'em over, OK?" You nod, as Fay throws her boots across, both of which land on the shore next to you. "Uh... maybe you should throw over the rest of your clothes. So they don't get wet," you say. "Why the fuck are we even crossing this river?" Fay says. "See what's on the other side," you say. Fay sighs, pulling off her coat and bundling it up. She tosses it over, and you catch it, as she begins to unbutton her shirt. She looks up at you expectantly. "Are you going to look away?" she asks. "I wasn't planning to," you say. Fay gives you the finger, buttoning her shirt up again. "Fine, I'll stay dressed," she says. Fay steps back, before running forward and diving. You raise your hands, as instead of splashing into the water she instead levitates in the air, floating across the river. You release her back on the grassy blanks, where she lands softly on her back. "There you go," you say helpfully. "Why didn't you start with that?" Fay asks. "I was hoping you'd fully undress," you admit. Fay laughs, grabbing one of her boots and pelting you in the head. You stumble backwards with a groan, before Fay knocks your legs away, knocking you into the water. You quickly surface, floating out of the water, coughing out water. "Are you OK?" Fay asks, looking worried. "I'm soaking!" you complain, as Fay bursts into laughter. "Sorry, sorry! It's just pretty funny." You flick your wrists, sending Fay tumbling into the water. She swims to the top again, spitting out water, as you lower yourself back into the water. "OK, I deserved that," Fay says. You flick your wrists, tossing Fay's boots into the water. "You're a bad person," Fay says, diving underwater and surfacing with her boots, and tossing them back onto the shore. You swim to the shore, climbing back onto the short as Fay follows. You lie on the grass, feeling the sun on your skin, as you pull off your soaking robes. Fay unbuttons her shirt, laying it out in the sun to dry, revealing her bra. You attempt not to stare, but you obviously stare. She pulls down her trousers and lays down next to you. "It's nice to get off the ship," you say. Fay leans over, resting her head on your bare chest, looking up at you. "So..." she says. Fay moves forward, kissing you passionately. She wraps her arms around your shoulders as you quickly find your hands going directly where you'd expect to them. You close your eyes, and everything feels alright for once in this shitty galaxy. > You an Hour Later... You lie, naked and covered in sweat and... other bodily fluids. You look up at the sky, now golden with the falling sun. "Karth! Fay!" Olive yells. "We need to go!" You curse, grabbing your robes which you drape over your frame as Olive hears you and jogs over. "Hey, guys, we.... Oh. Ooh. So this is happening." "Piss off, Olive!" Fay says, scampering under her clothes. "Yeah... you guys need to go to the ship. We're leaving soon," Olive says, her glance flickering between both your and Olive's genitals. "Olive!" you shout. "Sorry, fine, fine," Olive says. "I'll go!" Olive quickly heads away, leaving you and Fay lying on the ground. "Alright, let's bounce," you say, as you adjust your robes. Fay quickly dresses in her clothes, before standing and pulling you up. "Well, that was fun," you say. "Yeah, it was. But, back to work as always. Ready to conquer a galaxy?" "Damn right," you reply. > You hours Later... The dropship enters the landing bay, as you lean back against then wall. Gone is the scent of trees, the tweeting of birds, the delightful senses of the forest replaced with the smell of Promethium and grease, the noise of distant orders echoing off the hallway walls and the gentle hum of the machines that keep the ship going. Still, when you let your senses flood with the sounds and smells of the ship, you're reminded of the smell of tanned Puk leather, oil lanterns and wild flowers of home, and the constant chattering of Tribals outside your tent. If anything, you feel more at home on this ship than you ever did there. As you step off the dropship, you smile and walk on. > You continue "BURN IT! DAMN YOU, FREAK! YOUR SOUL IS MINE! I'LL FEED IT TO THE DOGS!" "The change and mutation of the human form is natural. Your body is a tool. Forge flesh." "Pestilence. Plague. Rot. It's natural. The conditions that cause these mutants to come about seem terrible, but to give up on caring for the appearance of your temporary vessel is liberating..." "The sensations you can feel..." "Just shut up!" you say loudly, as John the Hermit, Primus' figurehead and Olive stare at you. "Not... It's the... fuck!" you complain. "FUCK! PURGE! OBLITERATE! I'M THE FUCKING DEATH OF WORLDS, DO YOU HEAR ME?! OBEY ME!" Smiley screams in the confines of your skull. "Uh... alrighty then. Do you want to take a break, or...?" Olive says. "Continue," you snarl. John the Hermit nods, and continues to read from his notes. "Genes have remained stable and unmoving as the steel the ship is carved from for the Bestial-12ABQ1 strain of mutant, so they'll be transferred to serve the great powers of the ship by working with waste recycling, by turning the old to th..." "Can you trust the mutants? Their mind is as shifted in loyalties as their form. They betrayed Kyros with ease, why not you? Don't you want to know where their loyalties lie? To embrace your powers to stay strong and in power?" Question Mark asks. "Let it all turn to the powers of decay. Let..." Rotgut moans. "Fuck, I take it back, shut it. I need a break," you say. "We can take a break. When do you think you'll be able to start this again?" Olive nods, as you shake your head. "Fuck that. I'm taking a break, you continue this. Do it without me. It's not like I give a fuck, right? Primus, Olive and you can handle it. "We'll get it done. Go jerk off or whatever you do," Olive says. This is your home, admittedly, and you love the ship. You feel home here. You don't, however, feel at home inside your head. The shore leave helped, but you miss the old bastard Meliodas. At least he stayed quiet and helped sometimes. You need to find a way to deal with this. > You visit Meliodas Rumor has it, Meliodas hangs around the lower warrens. Maybe its time to pay him a visit. After a quick search, you find yourself in an abandoned cargo hold of the Roar of the Vortex. It's known to the mutant populace that inhabits the floor as the Red Market, and everyone else calls it the Craphole. The area is bustling with activity, as mutants sell and buy whatever it is the fuck mutants sell and buy. You walk along the paths, as the mutants quickly notice you. "Sir! Sir! You there!" a mutant with a horribly mangled face covered with dozens of eyes says. "What?" you ask, looking at the monster. "I recognize you! The holos showed you! You're the man who dethroned Kyros!" "Yeah, I guess I am," you say. "Ah, splendid!" the mutant says, shaking your hand. "Conditions have improved tenfold with you in charge, sir! You must be starving! Here, let me get you something to eat, free of charge!" The mutant disappears under the stall, before bringing up a large, horribly mutated rat the size of a small child. The rat looks at you, seemingly indifferent. "Uh... I prefer my meat cooked... and not a rat. Thanks, though," you say, stepping back. "Meat?" the man asks, confused. "No, no! This is the mother! Through it, we get milk! Then, cheese! You don't want to inspect the rat for disease before you have the cheese?" The mutant looks at you confused, before grabbing a lump of sickly yellow... cheese, you suppose. "Oh... I just ate," you say. "Look, I need your help. I'm looking for someone. Meliodas." "Meliodas? Yes, I know this name. I can take you to him. Follow me," he says. You follow the mutant along the market, before taking a side route off down a hallway. Soon, you find the daemon. He paints heretical symbols on the walls with his one blood, which drips down from his wrists. "Meliodas. I need assistance," you say. "How can I help?" Meliodas asks, his head twisting around at an unnatural angle. "The daemons. In my head," you say. "Don't you fucking dare try to get rid of us! DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE!" Smiley howls. "I need to get rid of the daemons in my head," you say simply. "I can do it. It'll hurt, though. And leave a few marks," Meliodas says. "Will it be serious?" you ask. "No," Meliodas says. "Do it," you say. Meliodas holds out your hand, and you grab it. "I'm going to flood you with the energy of the Warp. It should displace the Daemons in your head and lessen the impact of the daemons. Understood?" "Got it," you say. You clasp his hand, before pulsing. You feel the power of the Warp flood through you as you convulse, the roar of the Warp drowning out the voices of the daemons. Instead of four loud voices, you hear thousands of faint voices. You feel your left hand burn, but the noise distracts you. After a few minutes, the feeling ends, and you collapse to your knees. You focus. The voices of Smiley, Fucky, Rotgut and Question Mark are still faint in the back of your head, but they're not overpowering. The main sound is the thousand of whispers and the roar of the Warp, but it's certainly more peaceful. "Thanks," you say, releasing your breath and relaxing. You look down at your hand, noticing the eight-pointed star of Chaos Undivided is now burnt into it. "Ah, so this happened," you say. "I said there'd be scarring," Meliodas says. "You never said it'd be a Chaos symbol," you complain. "Ah... yes, it is," Meliodas shrugs. "Isn't it an improvement?" You think, realizing the endless voices have now been cut back, before nodding. "You're right. Thanks," you say. "Alright, let me go back to my rituals," Meliodas says. "OK. Thanks, Meliodas," you say, turning and walking off. > You continue You walk along the hallways, alongside a young, former slave who looks to be barely out of his teens. "Timothey J. Hawkins, sir. I tr..." he says happily. "I don't give a fuck. You're the best shuttle pilot we have, correct?" you reply. "Well sir, I've admittedly accomplished a few tasks, but I'm not sure about that. I did manage to land Kyros' Bloody Claws onto a sp..." "You're the man Hayes recommended, yes?" you respond, as you stop outside the war room. "Yes, sir. The..." "Terrific. Outfit the shuttle in whatever way suits your piloting style, I'll provide the funds. Got it?" "Yes, sir!" "Perfect. That's it, then," you say. "Yes, sir! Thank you for the opportunity! I promise I won't let you down!" Finally, you bid Hawkins goodbye, whilst knowing he won't last a week. You walk forward, to where Fay waits outside the war room. "Hey, Karth. You ready to deal with Kyros' allies?" he says. You wrap an arm around her, kissing her on the lips. "Ready to take on the galaxy," you smile. "How about you?" "Of course," she replies. The two of you walk into the war room, to find the rest of your lieutenants are already here. Today, you need to deal with Kyros' allies. "What'd I miss?" you ask. "Nothing. Ready to begin the debriefing," Primus says. "Do it," you reply. "Understood. The issue we have to deal with is Kyros' former allies. Kyros did not plan to take Terra alone. He had made pacts with dozens of warbands, made deals with endless mercenary outfits, gained pledges of support from Xenos empires and made countless more alliances." "Are these issues?" Fay asks, her head resting on the stock of her bolter. "To a degree. Most pacts were built on weak ground on the unsaid assumption that either party would turn on the other if given the chance, and now that Kyros is no more they're void and useless. Other parties have had changes in power due to coups or rebellions and their new leaders have no loyalty to Kyros. The only potential threats that could harm us are the Children of Apep, the Tau Empire, the Kabal of the Bleeding Thorn and the Dogs of War." "Who are they?" you ask. "The Children of Apep are a Chaos Warband led by Khalid the Despised. Made up of a strong inner-circle of Thousand Sons Space Marines, they now control a small fleet that reigns control over an alliance of a few worlds, space stations and outposts. They have a heavy amount of Psykers, and could potentially use their combined psychic powers to threaten our position," Primus says. "Who else?" you ask. "The Tau Empire are a fairly large empire of Xenos species with advanced technology. They..." "I've heard of them. They were allied to Kyros?" "We're unsure of that. It seems they did provide funding for a few of Kyros raids against Imperial worlds. Kyros seemed to have made a noted effort to avoid Tau interests. Kyros had all other information about them purged. I know nothing more about the relationship, but it's most definitely worth investigating." "OK. Who else?" "The Kabal of the Bleeding Thorn is a group of Dark Eldar pirates and raiders led by a mysterious figure known as Merideza who had seemingly forged an alliance with Kyros. They're infamous in this sector for their quick, brutal raids on worlds to enslave the populace. They're a powerful organization based out of the sub-dimension known as the Webway in a city known as Commorragh, where all Dark Eldar stay. Although the species aren't known for their loyalty to former allies, they might see our growth as a potential threat." "And the others? The Dogs of War?" "The Dogs of War are a renegade chapter of Space Marines led by Chapter Master Christian Firenaza who went renegade after fighting a vast Tyranid fleet and taking severe losses without any support from the rest of the Imperium. They primarily work as a mercenary outfit. Although technically, only the space marines are the Dogs of War, they now consist of dozens of mercenary outfits that serve under them, all known as the Dogs of War. Although one would assume their mercenary status would mean they won't strike at us if they're not being paid to, loyalty seems to be strong among space marines. They might want to avenge Kyros." "We need to attempt to negotiate with these factions to secure their loyalty to us, or at least ensure they're not going to attack," you say. "Understood. The Children of Apep's flagship, the Quill, is collecting tribute from subject worlds and we can easily head there to negotiate. The Tau Empire has a major presence here, and we can most definitely negotiate with them whenever you'd like. The Kabal of the Bleeding Thorn spend little time in realspace, but we can communicate to them through one of the human raider groups that serve them. Finally, the Dogs of War are based out of a massive space station known as the Iron Hound. It's a fairly active space port. We could be there to negotiate soon enough." > You negotiate with the factions Well then, you have the psychic-heavy Children of Apep, the large and advanced Tau Empire, the Dark Eldar raiders the Kabal of the Bleeding Thorn and the mercenary outfit the Dogs of War. > You visit the Children of Apep "Alright, connecting..." your pilot says, as the ship attaches to the bays of the Quill. All your lieutenants stand around you. Immediately, you spot a trio of space marines clad in blue with yellow trim marching towards you. Those on either side are helmeted with a crest behind their head and holding bolters in their hands. The one in the middle has no helmet, instead wearing ornate golden robes over his power armor, holding a bolt pistol golden staff topped with a snake, with two Sapphires as the eyes. You rarely see a space marine with his helmet off. This man has short blond hair and a clean-shaven face. "Ah! Kyros' over-throwers, is it? I..." the marine says, before stopping to stare at Meliodas. "You.... ah, I sense it now. A daemon, is it? Tell me, were you trapped inside Kyros' skull for all the times I met with him?" "No, I've just moved in," Meliodas replies, as the marine nods. "I am Khalid the Despised," the marine says, as his two guards stare blankly at you. "My name's Karth," you reply. "This is Meliodas, Cain, Castus, Olive, Fay, Durge, Elizabeth, John the Hermit, Captain Hayes and Elios." "Fuck, did you really need to bring the whole crew?" Khalid asks, staring at your lieutenants. Khalid strolls along the line, nodding slowly as if he expected this. "Yes, yes... at least you got rid of that crazy Khornate bitch. Still, you kept the sentient Slaaneshi dildo, the morbidly obese sore, the failure for a psyker and the jar-head. Oh look, you've a few more to your roster. A... I don't even know what this freak is," he says, staring at Cain. "Then we have a mutant who deserves to become dust like my own, a bunch of kids and the daemon who can't find a better crew. A pathetic group if I've ever seen one." Khalid steps back, as most of you stare at him in shock. Only the Staine Siblings and Hayes seem unsurprised. "How fucking dare you?" Fay says, as she raises her bolter to point at Khalid's head. "Oh, you must be one of the shit-eating, backwater Ferals that Kyros tried to turn into a super-soldier, right? Tell me, are you pregnant by your father, your brother or your cousin? Who am I kidding, with a planet like you came from, he's probably all three," Khalid smiles. > You blow this bastard's head off with a blast of psychic energy You fire a bolt of psychic energy that slams into Khalid's head. You feel a wave of psychic energy flood through your skull before your head explodes.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Alright, connecting..." your pilot says, as the ship attaches to the bays of the Quill. All your lieutenants stand around you. Immediately, you spot a trio of space marines clad in blue with yellow trim marching towards you. Those on either side are helmeted with a crest behind their head and holding bolters in their hands. The one in the middle has no helmet, instead wearing ornate golden robes over his power armor, holding a bolt pistol golden staff topped with a snake, with two Sapphires as the eyes. You rarely see a space marine with his helmet off. This man has short blond hair and a clean-shaven face. "Ah! Kyros' over-throwers, is it? I..." the marine says, before stopping to stare at Meliodas. "You.... ah, I sense it now. A daemon, is it? Tell me, were you trapped inside Kyros' skull for all the times I met with him?" "No, I've just moved in," Meliodas replies, as the marine nods. "I am Khalid the Despised," the marine says, as his two guards stare blankly at you. "My name's Karth," you reply. "This is Meliodas, Cain, Castus, Olive, Fay, Durge, Elizabeth, John the Hermit, Captain Hayes and Elios." "Fuck, did you really need to bring the whole crew?" Khalid asks, staring at your lieutenants. Khalid strolls along the line, nodding slowly as if he expected this. "Yes, yes... at least you got rid of that crazy Khornate bitch. Still, you kept the sentient Slaaneshi dildo, the morbidly obese sore, the failure for a psyker and the jar-head. Oh look, you've a few more to your roster. A... I don't even know what this freak is," he says, staring at Cain. "Then we have a mutant who deserves to become dust like my own, a bunch of kids and the daemon who can't find a better crew. A pathetic group if I've ever seen one." Khalid steps back, as most of you stare at him in shock. Only the Staine Siblings and Hayes seem unsurprised. "How fucking dare you?" Fay says, as she raises her bolter to point at Khalid's head. "Oh, you must be one of the shit-eating, backwater Ferals that Kyros tried to turn into a super-soldier, right? Tell me, are you pregnant by your father, your brother or your cousin? Who am I kidding, with a planet like you came from, he's probably all three," Khalid smiles. > You set this tool alight You let a wave of psychic flames release from your finger tips that quickly set his robes alight. Suddenly, the wave of heat floods through your body as you set alight, and you quickly burst into flames and are soon turned to ash.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Alright, connecting..." your pilot says, as the ship attaches to the bays of the Quill. All your lieutenants stand around you. Immediately, you spot a trio of space marines clad in blue with yellow trim marching towards you. Those on either side are helmeted with a crest behind their head and holding bolters in their hands. The one in the middle has no helmet, instead wearing ornate golden robes over his power armor, holding a bolt pistol golden staff topped with a snake, with two Sapphires as the eyes. You rarely see a space marine with his helmet off. This man has short blond hair and a clean-shaven face. "Ah! Kyros' over-throwers, is it? I..." the marine says, before stopping to stare at Meliodas. "You.... ah, I sense it now. A daemon, is it? Tell me, were you trapped inside Kyros' skull for all the times I met with him?" "No, I've just moved in," Meliodas replies, as the marine nods. "I am Khalid the Despised," the marine says, as his two guards stare blankly at you. "My name's Karth," you reply. "This is Meliodas, Cain, Castus, Olive, Fay, Durge, Elizabeth, John the Hermit, Captain Hayes and Elios." "Fuck, did you really need to bring the whole crew?" Khalid asks, staring at your lieutenants. Khalid strolls along the line, nodding slowly as if he expected this. "Yes, yes... at least you got rid of that crazy Khornate bitch. Still, you kept the sentient Slaaneshi dildo, the morbidly obese sore, the failure for a psyker and the jar-head. Oh look, you've a few more to your roster. A... I don't even know what this freak is," he says, staring at Cain. "Then we have a mutant who deserves to become dust like my own, a bunch of kids and the daemon who can't find a better crew. A pathetic group if I've ever seen one." Khalid steps back, as most of you stare at him in shock. Only the Staine Siblings and Hayes seem unsurprised. "How fucking dare you?" Fay says, as she raises her bolter to point at Khalid's head. "Oh, you must be one of the shit-eating, backwater Ferals that Kyros tried to turn into a super-soldier, right? Tell me, are you pregnant by your father, your brother or your cousin? Who am I kidding, with a planet like you came from, he's probably all three," Khalid smiles. > You attempt to take a more peaceful approach "Look... Khalid. The galaxy's a harsh place." "Oh, I'm sorry, did you learn that from your tiny fucking amount of experience in the world?" Khalid says. You stare at the psyker as he runs his hands through his hair. "I wanted... an alliance," you say. "Ter-fucking-rfic," Khalid the Despised says. "Follow me." You look at your lieutenants. The slave leaders; Fay, Olive, Castus and Cain are all shocked, while Elios, Durge, Elizabeth and Hayes seem indifferent. "His attitude has improved," Elizabeth notes. "Is that a joke?" Olive asks, staring at her. "No. You should've seen him last time," Elizabeth says. "Come on, let's follow." You follow after Khalid, and soon follow him into a large library. Khalid points his staff, and a dozen large chairs float over. He sits down into one of them, looking up at you. "I assume you're here about the psyker, yes?" he asks. "Uh... what psyker?" Khalid the Despised rolls his eyes, gently tapping his staff against the ground in annoyance. "A new psyker has supposedly risen to power in the sector. We're talking a psyker of amazing power. Tremendous power. He's seemingly pledged as the greatest champion of the renegade Chaos God, Malice. I assume you want to make an alliance to take him out." "No... although I'll look into it. I'm taking Kyros' place as a military power, and rebuilding. I want to secure my alliance with you." "Ah, a little kid playing dress-up in the robes of his master, yes? Why should I ally with you?" "Do you have many other offers of alliance?" you ask. "Fair point," Khalid admits. "Yes, I want to ally with you." "Oh, that was easy. Shall we discuss military strength? Under my com..." "I know," Khalid nods. "You understand the amount of knowledge my spies give me? I have quite a few spies on your ship, and that's not even taking into account my psykers trained in Divination. It might seem I'm answering far too quickly. I'm not. I foresaw you coming to ask, did my research, did what I need. I decided what was to be agreed here a while back. What I've not learned is whether I can trust you. So, I have an offer. A Binding Contract." "A binding contract?" you ask. "Did Kyros teach you anything other than to take a dick? A binding contract is done brwteen two individuals with strong psychic abilities. We make a contract, binding our very souls to it to be relinquished should we break it." "What's the contract?" "We pledge to remain loyal to each other, absolutely no aggression, come to each others aid, yadda yadda yadda. The details are mental. The words don't matter so much as the spirit behind them." "What do I do?" you ask. "Just shake my hand. I'll say the incantation, and our minds will meet. You'll be able to search my mind for mistrust, as I will for you. Are we agreed?" > You agree You nod, holding out your hand. Khalid grabs you by the hand, and stares into your eyes. "This'll be simple enough. Just don't resist. Understood?" "Got it," you say. "With the Dark Gods, the Corpse-Emperor himself and anyone else out their with the power to oversee this bargain, I pledge these two souls together by the binding contract, that we will remain allies into all ways possible. Should we break this contract, let our souls be forfeit." You hear the chattering of thousands of daemonic voices as they watch your deal. You feel your mind be flooded into by Khalid's, as consciousness, in the way normal humans feel it, fade. You find yourself floating in a void, surrounded by an ever-shifting mass of golden energy, that seem to make up Khalid. You look around, as you see his thoughts floating around you. You reach out your hand, touching the thought screams as you hear Khalid's voice boom. "Is the big freak literate? Is it even sentient? I would think not. If I had to look at that face in the mirror every morning I'd kill myself." You frown, touching another. "Is the dumbass seriously using Kyros' former lieutenants, those who enslaved his people, as his lieutenants? He saw them betray Kyros! And now the dumbass is reading your thoughts, no doubt learning that while I'll remain loyal to him, he's a fucking wanker." You touch another one. "You, Karth Uwais, are ugly. See? I'm not even slightly lying." Well, you've got what you need from his thoughts. Still, in the golden fog of energy, you can see what you assume are memories drifting around. You see his staff floating through the void before disappearing, before you see a wolf bound through the fog. You can hear distant screams emanate through the fog from some horrifying memory. You see Kyros march across the fog and step back nervously despite knowing he's only a memory. > You follow the staff You walk after the staff, as the darkness manifests itself into a massive forge. You smell the oil and grease of the forge, feel the heat of the forges, taste the taste of copper in the air, hear the screeching of metal. A younger version of Khalid clad in red and gold power armor works on his staff, sculpting the snakes that intertwine it. Another space marine with the same color scheme walks into the forge, grinning. "Khalid! What are you forging there, friend?" "I call it the Staff of Khalid," Khalid says proudly, holding it up. "Ah, what humility!" the second marine says. "What great abilities has it?" "Glad you asked, Narmer. It can act as a simple director of power, but more importantly, it can redirect psychic attacks back at the opponent. Unless they specifically know of the staff's powers, they should suffer the full effect of the action." "Fascinating," Narmer says. "I..." The room gently fades back into complete darkness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You nod, holding out your hand. Khalid grabs you by the hand, and stares into your eyes. "This'll be simple enough. Just don't resist. Understood?" "Got it," you say. "With the Dark Gods, the Corpse-Emperor himself and anyone else out their with the power to oversee this bargain, I pledge these two souls together by the binding contract, that we will remain allies into all ways possible. Should we break this contract, let our souls be forfeit." You hear the chattering of thousands of daemonic voices as they watch your deal. You feel your mind be flooded into by Khalid's, as consciousness, in the way normal humans feel it, fade. You find yourself floating in a void, surrounded by an ever-shifting mass of golden energy, that seem to make up Khalid. You look around, as you see his thoughts floating around you. You reach out your hand, touching the thought screams as you hear Khalid's voice boom. "Is the big freak literate? Is it even sentient? I would think not. If I had to look at that face in the mirror every morning I'd kill myself." You frown, touching another. "Is the dumbass seriously using Kyros' former lieutenants, those who enslaved his people, as his lieutenants? He saw them betray Kyros! And now the dumbass is reading your thoughts, no doubt learning that while I'll remain loyal to him, he's a fucking wanker." You touch another one. "You, Karth Uwais, are ugly. See? I'm not even slightly lying." Well, you've got what you need from his thoughts. Still, in the golden fog of energy, you can see what you assume are memories drifting around. You see his staff floating through the void before disappearing, before you see a wolf bound through the fog. You can hear distant screams emanate through the fog from some horrifying memory. You see Kyros march across the fog and step back nervously despite knowing he's only a memory. > You follow the wolf You walk after the wolf, as it howls skyward and runs. You head forward, as it begins to morph into a strange space marine wearing an ancient power armor, with a wolf hide over his shoulder. The scene changes to a battleground, as you watch as similar space marines fight against those clad in the red and gold Khalid wore. You see Khalid fighting, as he ducks under a bolter round. He fires a burst of flames, engulfing another wolf-marine who howls in pain, collapsing. "Death to traitors!" a voice howls from the wolf-marines. "You will not kill my brothers! You will not destroy my planet!" Khalid roars. "You don't understand! Horus is the traitor!" A wolf-marine attempts to kill Khalid with his chainsword, but Khalid kills him with a burst of energy. "STOP! The Emperor wouldn't do this to us! We are loyal! We're your brothers! Please!" Khalid screams. Suddenly, a massive pyramid materializes next to yous. Thousands of civilians are fleeing up the ramps inside. Then, a massive explosion tears through it, as a fireball engulfs all the civilians inside and fleeing into it. "NO!" Khalid screams, as a cry of "Traitor!" comes from both sides. With that, Khalid lets out a fierce scream of psychic energy, charging forward. The room gently fades to black.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You nod, holding out your hand. Khalid grabs you by the hand, and stares into your eyes. "This'll be simple enough. Just don't resist. Understood?" "Got it," you say. "With the Dark Gods, the Corpse-Emperor himself and anyone else out their with the power to oversee this bargain, I pledge these two souls together by the binding contract, that we will remain allies into all ways possible. Should we break this contract, let our souls be forfeit." You hear the chattering of thousands of daemonic voices as they watch your deal. You feel your mind be flooded into by Khalid's, as consciousness, in the way normal humans feel it, fade. You find yourself floating in a void, surrounded by an ever-shifting mass of golden energy, that seem to make up Khalid. You look around, as you see his thoughts floating around you. You reach out your hand, touching the thought screams as you hear Khalid's voice boom. "Is the big freak literate? Is it even sentient? I would think not. If I had to look at that face in the mirror every morning I'd kill myself." You frown, touching another. "Is the dumbass seriously using Kyros' former lieutenants, those who enslaved his people, as his lieutenants? He saw them betray Kyros! And now the dumbass is reading your thoughts, no doubt learning that while I'll remain loyal to him, he's a fucking wanker." You touch another one. "You, Karth Uwais, are ugly. See? I'm not even slightly lying." Well, you've got what you need from his thoughts. Still, in the golden fog of energy, you can see what you assume are memories drifting around. You see his staff floating through the void before disappearing, before you see a wolf bound through the fog. You can hear distant screams emanate through the fog from some horrifying memory. You see Kyros march across the fog and step back nervously despite knowing he's only a memory. > You follow the screams You walk after the sounds of screams, and find yourself surrounded by chaos. Khalid stands alongside his fellow space marines, although they writhe and convulse in pain. One of the space marines screams as he tears his helmet off, revealing dozens of eyes growing on his head. Another marine looks in horror at the spine-like tumors growing from your arm, shattering his armor. You notice Khalid's mutations as his skin bubbles and blisters as if exposed to a flame, as his eyes melts out of his face as tiny mouths replace them, tentacles emerging from his back and flailing desperately. Suddenly, you see a blast of magic run through the area. You turn, seeing a space marine with black horns coming out of his helmet reading a tome. The men begin to course, as their mutations begins receding. Khalid's mutations retreat into his body or burn away from the magic, as the youthful Khalid is remade. Still, not everyone is as fortunate. The space marines around him have their mutations burn away, but the psychic energy doesn't stop. Their bodies begin to shift and fall apart as they turn to dust. They power armor reforges itself around them, trapping the dust inside. For a moment, Khalid seems relieved as he looks down at his unmutated form. Then, he sees his brothers. He grabs a space marine next to him, holding him closely. "Narmer! Narmer, what's become of you!? NARMER!" The room once more fades to darkness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You nod, holding out your hand. Khalid grabs you by the hand, and stares into your eyes. "This'll be simple enough. Just don't resist. Understood?" "Got it," you say. "With the Dark Gods, the Corpse-Emperor himself and anyone else out their with the power to oversee this bargain, I pledge these two souls together by the binding contract, that we will remain allies into all ways possible. Should we break this contract, let our souls be forfeit." You hear the chattering of thousands of daemonic voices as they watch your deal. You feel your mind be flooded into by Khalid's, as consciousness, in the way normal humans feel it, fade. You find yourself floating in a void, surrounded by an ever-shifting mass of golden energy, that seem to make up Khalid. You look around, as you see his thoughts floating around you. You reach out your hand, touching the thought screams as you hear Khalid's voice boom. "Is the big freak literate? Is it even sentient? I would think not. If I had to look at that face in the mirror every morning I'd kill myself." You frown, touching another. "Is the dumbass seriously using Kyros' former lieutenants, those who enslaved his people, as his lieutenants? He saw them betray Kyros! And now the dumbass is reading your thoughts, no doubt learning that while I'll remain loyal to him, he's a fucking wanker." You touch another one. "You, Karth Uwais, are ugly. See? I'm not even slightly lying." Well, you've got what you need from his thoughts. Still, in the golden fog of energy, you can see what you assume are memories drifting around. You see his staff floating through the void before disappearing, before you see a wolf bound through the fog. You can hear distant screams emanate through the fog from some horrifying memory. You see Kyros march across the fog and step back nervously despite knowing he's only a memory. > You follow Kyros You follow Kyros, as the darkness forms into the very room aboard the Quill that you're in. Kyros faces Khalid, who stands alongside his two Rubric Marines. Hayes, Elizabeth, Durge and Elios stand next to Kyros, as well as his deceased lieutenants, Chapter Master Taj Suenage, Rebecca Staine and Magos Cern. "I'm sorry, what part of kill yourself confuses you, Kyros? I don't make deals with slaves!" "I'm no slave," Kyros spits, gritting his teeth together. "You're a slave to the Dark Gods!" Khalid says. "I seek to master the Warp and all who dwell within it. You seek to suck off the strongest being in it." "This decision is highly illogical. Do your men agree?" Magos Cern says. "Oh, let's see!" Khalid says, turning to look at one of the Rubric Marines. "Narmer! Do you agree? What's that, you don't care? Because you're barely sentient because your soul has been trapped in your armor and you're nothing more than dust? And the fact that the fucking robot cunt can survive without a soul doesn't mean you can? Yeah, good to fucking know! What's that, Narmer? Yeah, the Khornate does look like she swallows!" "You have no other allies. You need me," Kyros says. "I'm offering you a chance at vengenace. Don't you want your revenge against the Space Wolves who burnt Prospero? I promise you, theirs will be one of the first worlds destroyed. "Fine, slave. If you make a march towards Terra, I'll join in the slaughter. But know this. When... who am I kidding? If you end up sitting on the golden throne, you'll still be a slave." The room dissolves once more.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You nod, holding out your hand. Khalid grabs you by the hand, and stares into your eyes. "This'll be simple enough. Just don't resist. Understood?" "Got it," you say. "With the Dark Gods, the Corpse-Emperor himself and anyone else out their with the power to oversee this bargain, I pledge these two souls together by the binding contract, that we will remain allies into all ways possible. Should we break this contract, let our souls be forfeit." You hear the chattering of thousands of daemonic voices as they watch your deal. You feel your mind be flooded into by Khalid's, as consciousness, in the way normal humans feel it, fade. You find yourself floating in a void, surrounded by an ever-shifting mass of golden energy, that seem to make up Khalid. You look around, as you see his thoughts floating around you. You reach out your hand, touching the thought screams as you hear Khalid's voice boom. "Is the big freak literate? Is it even sentient? I would think not. If I had to look at that face in the mirror every morning I'd kill myself." You frown, touching another. "Is the dumbass seriously using Kyros' former lieutenants, those who enslaved his people, as his lieutenants? He saw them betray Kyros! And now the dumbass is reading your thoughts, no doubt learning that while I'll remain loyal to him, he's a fucking wanker." You touch another one. "You, Karth Uwais, are ugly. See? I'm not even slightly lying." Well, you've got what you need from his thoughts. Still, in the golden fog of energy, you can see what you assume are memories drifting around. You see his staff floating through the void before disappearing, before you see a wolf bound through the fog. You can hear distant screams emanate through the fog from some horrifying memory. You see Kyros march across the fog and step back nervously despite knowing he's only a memory. > You leave Khalid's soul You release your grasp on Khalid's soul, wincing as you take a deep breath. You open your eyes, glancing around the room and seeing your lieutenants, alongside Khalid, Narmer and the second Rubric Marine. "Ah, finished. Good," Khalid says. "You didn't see anything too incriminating in my mind, did you? Didn't see my perverted thoughts about your sexy little girlfriend, huh? I spent my entire time perusing through your memories of the tribal bitch naked." You feel a surge of anger, before pausing. Space marines barely have genitalia, let alone a libido. If you're going to become partners, you need to stop letting him get a rise out of you. > You spit a mean barb "I saw a wolf catching its prey. I saw men turn to dust. I saw you fail," you reply. Khalid the Despised looks at you, his eyes filling with sorrow before he brushes it off and smiles. "Well then, you're the one who allied with the failure. I love the tattoo, by the way." You raise an eyebrow, before noticing that there's a black ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail, burnt into your robes, going around your arm at the bicep. "Lift it up," Khalid says. You lift up your sleeve, seeing that the ouroboros has burned into your skin, a black brand. "A little reminder of our deal. It happens during these," Khalid says, tapping his armor, where you notice a Uwais tribal tattoo now raps around his arm. You recognize the glyphs for "Witch" mixed in with traditional hunting glyphs. "I like yours," you respond. "Alright, it's best you receive the grand tour, then. If we're to be allies, I'll show you what we're working with." > You begin the tour "Terrific," you reply. With that, Khalid stands, and begins walking down the hall. You quickly follow him down the hallway, and you approach a set of massive bronze doors with the Thousand Sons Ouroboros on it. "This is the Khalidic Academy," Khalid says. "Through recruiting from various worlds, rescuing Psykers from the Black Ships that transport them to be sacrificed to the Corpse-Emperor, buying or liberating enslaved psykers or many other ways, I find myself with a huge pool of psykers. Those who are over around twenty five work for me as soldiers, join the warband of the Children of Apep. Those below join the academy." The door slowly opens inwards, and you immediately find yourself in a massive library. You walk into the library, staring at the endless rows of books. The room is packed with people from barely able to walk waddling around to look at books to young men reading tomes. There's everything from young Astartes Space Marines to horribly deformed mutants and Xenos, all seemingly content with the books around them. "This is the library, my true pride," Khalid says, his snark and cruelty seemingly replaced by pride. "Come, follow, follow." You follow him off to the side of the library where the hallway leads to dozens of classrooms. Your peer inside all of them, seeing how varied the classes our. Students study ancient tomes, give speeches, practice daemonic bindings, prepare for horrifying rituals and endlessly more. "Knowledge is everything. Here, I spread it. I'm raising a new generation of Psykers, to lead mankind to a new age!" A little boy, barely older than seven covered in horrible scabs with four eyes, carrying a small dog. "Jer, is it?" Khalid says, stopping. "Yes, sir?" the boy responds. "Tell my nitwit guest what you're going to go do now. Show him an example of the fine teaching we do here." "I'm going to go to the bathroom, sir," the boy replies without missing a beat, as you giggle like a child. "What class do you have next?" Khalid says, sighing. "Mr Nitfli is teaching us how to utilize our familiars," the boy responds. "Terrific. Get to class now, Jer," Khalid says. "We pick our children for psychic ability, not raw intelligence." The boy nods, and runs off quickly. "This is really all I have to show," Khalid admits. "It's about time you get the fuck off my ship." "Well, this was good for both of us," you say. "I'll see you soon, Khalid." "And I you, Karth," he replies. With that, you take your lieutenants, and lead them off the ship.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I saw a wolf catching its prey. I saw men turn to dust. I saw you fail," you reply. Khalid the Despised looks at you, his eyes filling with sorrow before he brushes it off and smiles. "Well then, you're the one who allied with the failure. I love the tattoo, by the way." You raise an eyebrow, before noticing that there's a black ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail, burnt into your robes, going around your arm at the bicep. "Lift it up," Khalid says. You lift up your sleeve, seeing that the ouroboros has burned into your skin, a black brand. "A little reminder of our deal. It happens during these," Khalid says, tapping his armor, where you notice a Uwais tribal tattoo now raps around his arm. You recognize the glyphs for "Witch" mixed in with traditional hunting glyphs. "I like yours," you respond. "Alright, it's best you receive the grand tour, then. If we're to be allies, I'll show you what we're working with." > You refuse the offer of a tour "I think I'll pass on that," you say. "I trust you have the strength to assist us. Kyros did." "Yes, because Kyros is a huge success story," Khalid says, rolling his eyes. "Well, this was good for both of us," you say. "I'll see you soon, Khalid." "And I you, Karth," he replies. With that, you take your lieutenants, and lead them off the ship.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You release your grasp on Khalid's soul, wincing as you take a deep breath. You open your eyes, glancing around the room and seeing your lieutenants, alongside Khalid, Narmer and the second Rubric Marine. "Ah, finished. Good," Khalid says. "You didn't see anything too incriminating in my mind, did you? Didn't see my perverted thoughts about your sexy little girlfriend, huh? I spent my entire time perusing through your memories of the tribal bitch naked." You feel a surge of anger, before pausing. Space marines barely have genitalia, let alone a libido. If you're going to become partners, you need to stop letting him get a rise out of you. > You brush it off "Sure, alright," you say. "Oh, so blase. Did I hurt your feelings? I love the tattoo, by the way." You raise an eyebrow, before noticing that there's a black ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail, burnt into your robes, going around your arm at the bicep. "Lift it up," Khalid says. You lift up your sleeve, seeing that the ouroboros has burned into your skin, a black brand. "A little reminder of our deal. It happens during these," Khalid says, tapping his armor, where you notice a Uwais tribal tattoo now raps around his arm. You recognize the glyphs for "Witch" mixed in with traditional hunting glyphs. "I like yours," you respond. "Alright, it's best you receive the grand tour, then. If we're to be allies, I'll show you what we're working with."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Look... Khalid. The galaxy's a harsh place." "Oh, I'm sorry, did you learn that from your tiny fucking amount of experience in the world?" Khalid says. You stare at the psyker as he runs his hands through his hair. "I wanted... an alliance," you say. "Ter-fucking-rfic," Khalid the Despised says. "Follow me." You look at your lieutenants. The slave leaders; Fay, Olive, Castus and Cain are all shocked, while Elios, Durge, Elizabeth and Hayes seem indifferent. "His attitude has improved," Elizabeth notes. "Is that a joke?" Olive asks, staring at her. "No. You should've seen him last time," Elizabeth says. "Come on, let's follow." You follow after Khalid, and soon follow him into a large library. Khalid points his staff, and a dozen large chairs float over. He sits down into one of them, looking up at you. "I assume you're here about the psyker, yes?" he asks. "Uh... what psyker?" Khalid the Despised rolls his eyes, gently tapping his staff against the ground in annoyance. "A new psyker has supposedly risen to power in the sector. We're talking a psyker of amazing power. Tremendous power. He's seemingly pledged as the greatest champion of the renegade Chaos God, Malice. I assume you want to make an alliance to take him out." "No... although I'll look into it. I'm taking Kyros' place as a military power, and rebuilding. I want to secure my alliance with you." "Ah, a little kid playing dress-up in the robes of his master, yes? Why should I ally with you?" "Do you have many other offers of alliance?" you ask. "Fair point," Khalid admits. "Yes, I want to ally with you." "Oh, that was easy. Shall we discuss military strength? Under my com..." "I know," Khalid nods. "You understand the amount of knowledge my spies give me? I have quite a few spies on your ship, and that's not even taking into account my psykers trained in Divination. It might seem I'm answering far too quickly. I'm not. I foresaw you coming to ask, did my research, did what I need. I decided what was to be agreed here a while back. What I've not learned is whether I can trust you. So, I have an offer. A Binding Contract." "A binding contract?" you ask. "Did Kyros teach you anything other than to take a dick? A binding contract is done brwteen two individuals with strong psychic abilities. We make a contract, binding our very souls to it to be relinquished should we break it." "What's the contract?" "We pledge to remain loyal to each other, absolutely no aggression, come to each others aid, yadda yadda yadda. The details are mental. The words don't matter so much as the spirit behind them." "What do I do?" you ask. "Just shake my hand. I'll say the incantation, and our minds will meet. You'll be able to search my mind for mistrust, as I will for you. Are we agreed?" > You refuse "No," you say, as Khalid snarls. "Ah. I did not expect that, admittedly. You've genuinely surprised me. I need to devote more resources to Divination classes.This is an issue. My plans revolve around having your manpower to rely on. If you're a wild card, that'll cause issues. It's better to take you out here. You understand." In unison, the Rubric Marines raised their bolters and fire, as Khalid rises to his feet with a snarl.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well then, you have the psychic-heavy Children of Apep, the large and advanced Tau Empire, the Dark Eldar raiders the Kabal of the Bleeding Thorn and the mercenary outfit the Dogs of War. > You visit the Tau Empire Your shuttle slowly docks with the Tau ship, named the Blah Blah Blah Blah Nonsense Bullshit Weird Alien Language, or something like that. The Staine Siblings, Captain Hayes and Fay are with you. "So, you're sure you don't what to tell me what to expect here?" you ask Kyros' surviving lieutenants. "Kyros kept his dealings with these Xenos hidden from us," Durge says, staring at you. "He didn't tell any of us, and I doubt he told Rebecca. He kept his information to the Magos and the Taj." You look at Hayes, who raises an eyebrow. "Shit, seriously? Is that why you made me come to this?" Hayes asks. "Karth, I don't know what fucking deal you made with the the mutant hermit guy, let alone the deal Kyros made with the Tau. Shit, I'm not even sure what the deal is between you and me. Are you paying me? Do I get a share in the ship's profit, or some bullshit like that? Fuck if I know." You sigh, as the shuttle doors open. A dozen tall, slender blue-skinned Tau stand there, wearing red robes. They all smile as they see you, with the one in the middle stepping forward. "Hello, Karth of the Uwais Tribe of Rama! I am Flo'O Vior'La Vin Dorn Varoh. Please, call me Varoh for short. I recognize all your esteemed lieutenants and companions. The powerful warrior Fay of the Azajaja Tribe of Rama, Ex-Captain Jon Hayes of the 22nd Regiment, Elizabeth Staine of the One-Eyed Crows, Durge Staine the Ever-Rotting of the Black Rats and Elios the Perverted of the Shrieking Harpies." "Terrific. Now that the names are out of the way, shall we get to business?" you ask. "If that is what you wish, Karth," Varoh says. "Before we begin, we have gifts for you." The other Tau negotiators step forward. One offers you a large copper and bronze staff topped with a human skull that seems to have been forged into the staff. "For Master Karth, we have a gift of the Staff of Acetabularii," he, or she, it's not exactly easy to say. "It is an ancient bronze and copper staff millennia old excavated on a recently colonized world that ancient Shamans used with their magic." You take the staff, and channel a burst of psychic energy through it. From the top of the head bursts a jet of flames as purple flames dance around the skull itself. Perhaps a useful artifact and a tool for less trained psykers, but for you, it seems unnecessary. The negotiators look extremely shocked and surprised at this, to which you frown. "Sorry?" you say. "Uh, no, not at all! We're glad you like it!" Varoh says. "It's just fascinating you can do that." You wonder what he means, as this was far from a psychic achievement, before remembering Primus' briefing you on how the Tau aren't a psychic species, and have no psykers. "Ah, OK," you reply. You look at all your lieutenants as they receive a gift from the Tau Empire. Fay gets a flamethrower-type weapon from some Xenos species, Hayes gets a set of dark green and golden Carapace Armor, Elizabeth gets a large tome with a bestial skull seemingly built into the cover, Elios gets a strange device with a long of needles, and Durge receives a rotting skull covered in fireflies in a glass, clear box, which the negotiator handles very carefully. "Thanks," you say. "Can we go?" "Of course," Varoh replies, as he and his negotiators lead your crew down the hallways to the meeting room. You all sit around the table, with you facing Varoh at the head of the table. "Can I smoke in here?" Hayes asks, already lighting the cigarette between his lips. "Of course," Varoh says. "So Karth, I assume you're here to renew the deal we made with Kyros, yes? We offer you the same terms." "Yeah, about that. We're not exactly sure what deal you actually had with Kyros," you say. "Oh," Varoh says. "Did he not tell any of you? One would think he would trust his lieutenants." "Yeah, whatever. So tell me, what was this deal you had?" "Military assets are hard to find in this area. Kyros was a prominent war-band that raided the sector, so we made a deal with him. Kyros had a habit of raiding worlds, so we made a payment to him in order for him to make several promises. For our continued payment, he avoided raiding any Tau assets or engaging any of our assets, and he would take our advice in which worlds to hit. If a trade convoy was bringing weapons to the front to fight off our advances, Kyros would target it for us. Additionally, he'd also place us as his prime client for mercenary work and would sell us what he raided." "How much would that deal earn us?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Twenty million Thrones," Varoh says, as you grin. "Ah, that sounds... acceptable," you say. "What if we refuse?" Elios asks. "We have other offers," Varoh says. "If that's too much, we simply want a non-aggression pact, and to have a small group of a half dozen Tau on your vessel to make the voice of the Tau Empire known. You avoid attacking our assets, and we pay you ten million Thrones." "Is that all the offers?" "Well... we had offered Kyros a better offer, but he refused." "What was the offer?" "For thirty million Thrones, we become allies. We'll offer you our support when needed, and we expect you to offer yours. The terms are similar to the twenty million Thrones offer, except except instead of our advice, you will assist us when we demand. Please know, we will must definitely not be unreasonable. If you find we are taking advantage of you, we are more than happy to rearrange the deal. We'll even give you a small portion of Tau forces to assist you in your mission." Hmmm... the deal they're offering is an interesting one. There seems to be dangers with the thirty million offer, but that money could be essential. The ten million offer most definitely will be accepted if the others aren't, as harming the Tau wasn't really on your list anyway, and you could use the funds. > You become full allies with the Tau Empire You extend your hand, smiling. "Alright. We'll become your full allies for a payment of thirty million Thrones." The Tau negotiator grins, shaking your hand. "Please, it's not a "payment". Consider it a gift. Consider us funding you as proud allies of the Greater Good, so you can do what's necessary." "Terrific," you reply. "Well, I suppose that's all we have to discuss. We're ready to go." "The Tau forces to join you will join you in a few minutes," Varoh says. You nod, say your goodbyes and head back towards your shuttle. You arrive, finding a small squad of Tau Fire Warriors waiting for you. One works forward, saluting. "Sir! I am Shas'Ui T'au Kais Ranar. The rest of the Tau auxiliary forces to be placed under your command are taking shuttles to your ship." "Perfect," you say. "I'll have Primus sort you out with your beds and all that." "Understood Sir, thank you sir," Shas'Ui Ranar says. "Just head to whatever shuttle you have, and get aboard the ship," you say, turning and walking off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your shuttle slowly docks with the Tau ship, named the Blah Blah Blah Blah Nonsense Bullshit Weird Alien Language, or something like that. The Staine Siblings, Captain Hayes and Fay are with you. "So, you're sure you don't what to tell me what to expect here?" you ask Kyros' surviving lieutenants. "Kyros kept his dealings with these Xenos hidden from us," Durge says, staring at you. "He didn't tell any of us, and I doubt he told Rebecca. He kept his information to the Magos and the Taj." You look at Hayes, who raises an eyebrow. "Shit, seriously? Is that why you made me come to this?" Hayes asks. "Karth, I don't know what fucking deal you made with the the mutant hermit guy, let alone the deal Kyros made with the Tau. Shit, I'm not even sure what the deal is between you and me. Are you paying me? Do I get a share in the ship's profit, or some bullshit like that? Fuck if I know." You sigh, as the shuttle doors open. A dozen tall, slender blue-skinned Tau stand there, wearing red robes. They all smile as they see you, with the one in the middle stepping forward. "Hello, Karth of the Uwais Tribe of Rama! I am Flo'O Vior'La Vin Dorn Varoh. Please, call me Varoh for short. I recognize all your esteemed lieutenants and companions. The powerful warrior Fay of the Azajaja Tribe of Rama, Ex-Captain Jon Hayes of the 22nd Regiment, Elizabeth Staine of the One-Eyed Crows, Durge Staine the Ever-Rotting of the Black Rats and Elios the Perverted of the Shrieking Harpies." "Terrific. Now that the names are out of the way, shall we get to business?" you ask. "If that is what you wish, Karth," Varoh says. "Before we begin, we have gifts for you." The other Tau negotiators step forward. One offers you a large copper and bronze staff topped with a human skull that seems to have been forged into the staff. "For Master Karth, we have a gift of the Staff of Acetabularii," he, or she, it's not exactly easy to say. "It is an ancient bronze and copper staff millennia old excavated on a recently colonized world that ancient Shamans used with their magic." You take the staff, and channel a burst of psychic energy through it. From the top of the head bursts a jet of flames as purple flames dance around the skull itself. Perhaps a useful artifact and a tool for less trained psykers, but for you, it seems unnecessary. The negotiators look extremely shocked and surprised at this, to which you frown. "Sorry?" you say. "Uh, no, not at all! We're glad you like it!" Varoh says. "It's just fascinating you can do that." You wonder what he means, as this was far from a psychic achievement, before remembering Primus' briefing you on how the Tau aren't a psychic species, and have no psykers. "Ah, OK," you reply. You look at all your lieutenants as they receive a gift from the Tau Empire. Fay gets a flamethrower-type weapon from some Xenos species, Hayes gets a set of dark green and golden Carapace Armor, Elizabeth gets a large tome with a bestial skull seemingly built into the cover, Elios gets a strange device with a long of needles, and Durge receives a rotting skull covered in fireflies in a glass, clear box, which the negotiator handles very carefully. "Thanks," you say. "Can we go?" "Of course," Varoh replies, as he and his negotiators lead your crew down the hallways to the meeting room. You all sit around the table, with you facing Varoh at the head of the table. "Can I smoke in here?" Hayes asks, already lighting the cigarette between his lips. "Of course," Varoh says. "So Karth, I assume you're here to renew the deal we made with Kyros, yes? We offer you the same terms." "Yeah, about that. We're not exactly sure what deal you actually had with Kyros," you say. "Oh," Varoh says. "Did he not tell any of you? One would think he would trust his lieutenants." "Yeah, whatever. So tell me, what was this deal you had?" "Military assets are hard to find in this area. Kyros was a prominent war-band that raided the sector, so we made a deal with him. Kyros had a habit of raiding worlds, so we made a payment to him in order for him to make several promises. For our continued payment, he avoided raiding any Tau assets or engaging any of our assets, and he would take our advice in which worlds to hit. If a trade convoy was bringing weapons to the front to fight off our advances, Kyros would target it for us. Additionally, he'd also place us as his prime client for mercenary work and would sell us what he raided." "How much would that deal earn us?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Twenty million Thrones," Varoh says, as you grin. "Ah, that sounds... acceptable," you say. "What if we refuse?" Elios asks. "We have other offers," Varoh says. "If that's too much, we simply want a non-aggression pact, and to have a small group of a half dozen Tau on your vessel to make the voice of the Tau Empire known. You avoid attacking our assets, and we pay you ten million Thrones." "Is that all the offers?" "Well... we had offered Kyros a better offer, but he refused." "What was the offer?" "For thirty million Thrones, we become allies. We'll offer you our support when needed, and we expect you to offer yours. The terms are similar to the twenty million Thrones offer, except except instead of our advice, you will assist us when we demand. Please know, we will must definitely not be unreasonable. If you find we are taking advantage of you, we are more than happy to rearrange the deal. We'll even give you a small portion of Tau forces to assist you in your mission." Hmmm... the deal they're offering is an interesting one. There seems to be dangers with the thirty million offer, but that money could be essential. The ten million offer most definitely will be accepted if the others aren't, as harming the Tau wasn't really on your list anyway, and you could use the funds. > You take Kyros' deal You extend your hand, smiling. "Alright. What's good enough for Kyros is good enough for me. I'll take the deal you had with me." The Tau negotiator smiles and nods, shaking your hand. "Please, don't even pause in talking to us for support. If you ever find yourself tiring of the life of a rover, we'd be more than happy to find you a position in the Empire." "Great," you reply. "Well, I suppose that's all we have to discuss. We're ready to go." You quickly say your goodbyes and head back towards your shuttle. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your shuttle slowly docks with the Tau ship, named the Blah Blah Blah Blah Nonsense Bullshit Weird Alien Language, or something like that. The Staine Siblings, Captain Hayes and Fay are with you. "So, you're sure you don't what to tell me what to expect here?" you ask Kyros' surviving lieutenants. "Kyros kept his dealings with these Xenos hidden from us," Durge says, staring at you. "He didn't tell any of us, and I doubt he told Rebecca. He kept his information to the Magos and the Taj." You look at Hayes, who raises an eyebrow. "Shit, seriously? Is that why you made me come to this?" Hayes asks. "Karth, I don't know what fucking deal you made with the the mutant hermit guy, let alone the deal Kyros made with the Tau. Shit, I'm not even sure what the deal is between you and me. Are you paying me? Do I get a share in the ship's profit, or some bullshit like that? Fuck if I know." You sigh, as the shuttle doors open. A dozen tall, slender blue-skinned Tau stand there, wearing red robes. They all smile as they see you, with the one in the middle stepping forward. "Hello, Karth of the Uwais Tribe of Rama! I am Flo'O Vior'La Vin Dorn Varoh. Please, call me Varoh for short. I recognize all your esteemed lieutenants and companions. The powerful warrior Fay of the Azajaja Tribe of Rama, Ex-Captain Jon Hayes of the 22nd Regiment, Elizabeth Staine of the One-Eyed Crows, Durge Staine the Ever-Rotting of the Black Rats and Elios the Perverted of the Shrieking Harpies." "Terrific. Now that the names are out of the way, shall we get to business?" you ask. "If that is what you wish, Karth," Varoh says. "Before we begin, we have gifts for you." The other Tau negotiators step forward. One offers you a large copper and bronze staff topped with a human skull that seems to have been forged into the staff. "For Master Karth, we have a gift of the Staff of Acetabularii," he, or she, it's not exactly easy to say. "It is an ancient bronze and copper staff millennia old excavated on a recently colonized world that ancient Shamans used with their magic." You take the staff, and channel a burst of psychic energy through it. From the top of the head bursts a jet of flames as purple flames dance around the skull itself. Perhaps a useful artifact and a tool for less trained psykers, but for you, it seems unnecessary. The negotiators look extremely shocked and surprised at this, to which you frown. "Sorry?" you say. "Uh, no, not at all! We're glad you like it!" Varoh says. "It's just fascinating you can do that." You wonder what he means, as this was far from a psychic achievement, before remembering Primus' briefing you on how the Tau aren't a psychic species, and have no psykers. "Ah, OK," you reply. You look at all your lieutenants as they receive a gift from the Tau Empire. Fay gets a flamethrower-type weapon from some Xenos species, Hayes gets a set of dark green and golden Carapace Armor, Elizabeth gets a large tome with a bestial skull seemingly built into the cover, Elios gets a strange device with a long of needles, and Durge receives a rotting skull covered in fireflies in a glass, clear box, which the negotiator handles very carefully. "Thanks," you say. "Can we go?" "Of course," Varoh replies, as he and his negotiators lead your crew down the hallways to the meeting room. You all sit around the table, with you facing Varoh at the head of the table. "Can I smoke in here?" Hayes asks, already lighting the cigarette between his lips. "Of course," Varoh says. "So Karth, I assume you're here to renew the deal we made with Kyros, yes? We offer you the same terms." "Yeah, about that. We're not exactly sure what deal you actually had with Kyros," you say. "Oh," Varoh says. "Did he not tell any of you? One would think he would trust his lieutenants." "Yeah, whatever. So tell me, what was this deal you had?" "Military assets are hard to find in this area. Kyros was a prominent war-band that raided the sector, so we made a deal with him. Kyros had a habit of raiding worlds, so we made a payment to him in order for him to make several promises. For our continued payment, he avoided raiding any Tau assets or engaging any of our assets, and he would take our advice in which worlds to hit. If a trade convoy was bringing weapons to the front to fight off our advances, Kyros would target it for us. Additionally, he'd also place us as his prime client for mercenary work and would sell us what he raided." "How much would that deal earn us?" you ask, raising an eyebrow. "Twenty million Thrones," Varoh says, as you grin. "Ah, that sounds... acceptable," you say. "What if we refuse?" Elios asks. "We have other offers," Varoh says. "If that's too much, we simply want a non-aggression pact, and to have a small group of a half dozen Tau on your vessel to make the voice of the Tau Empire known. You avoid attacking our assets, and we pay you ten million Thrones." "Is that all the offers?" "Well... we had offered Kyros a better offer, but he refused." "What was the offer?" "For thirty million Thrones, we become allies. We'll offer you our support when needed, and we expect you to offer yours. The terms are similar to the twenty million Thrones offer, except except instead of our advice, you will assist us when we demand. Please know, we will must definitely not be unreasonable. If you find we are taking advantage of you, we are more than happy to rearrange the deal. We'll even give you a small portion of Tau forces to assist you in your mission." Hmmm... the deal they're offering is an interesting one. There seems to be dangers with the thirty million offer, but that money could be essential. The ten million offer most definitely will be accepted if the others aren't, as harming the Tau wasn't really on your list anyway, and you could use the funds. > You sign a bare minimum non-aggression pact You nod. "Alright. We'll sign the non-aggression pact, but that's it." The Tau negotiator nods solemnly, before smiling "Understood. But please, don't even pause in talking to us for support. If you ever find yourself tiring of the life of a rover, we'd be more than happy to find you a position in the Empire." "Great," you reply. "Well, I suppose that's all we have to discuss. We're ready to go." You quickly say your goodbyes and head back towards your shuttle. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well then, you have the psychic-heavy Children of Apep, the large and advanced Tau Empire, the Dark Eldar raiders the Kabal of the Bleeding Thorn and the mercenary outfit the Dogs of War. > You visit the Kabal of the Bleeding Thorn "Uh... Karth?" your pilot asks nervously through the speaker, as the shuttle docks into the ship. "Do... do I get one of your bodyguards? Best to keep an escape route open, right?" "Yeah, I'll do that," you respond, nodding to the massive, gas-mask wearing Tribal Opie and a gladiator holding a pair of plasma pistols. "Got it, boss," the gladiator says, as you look around at the rest of your group. Seeing as the Dark Eldar are almost certainly the most likely group to betray you of any in the Galaxy, you've stocked up on guards. The best of your forces surround you, ready to die for you. You've left your lieutenants on the ship so if it does go to shit, you'll have the majority of your leaders intact to continue your work. Only Fay has come with you, as your attempts to get her to stay led to her threatening to "Knock out your teeth without needing to put her hand in your mouth". You didn't ask whether she'd punch out the back of your head, or go a... darker route. The shuttle doors open, as your group raises their weapons. Three Dark Eldar stand there, there outfits adorned with blades and spikes. They're tall, dark figures, with a sense of misery reeking off them. "Good evening," the only unhelmeted one says, its lips twisting upwards in a sick mockery of a smile." "You must be Archon Merideza" "Absolutely. I assume it's a pleasure," the Archon grins. "You were allies to my predecessor, yes? Kyros?" you ask. "Ah, yes. Kyros. Such an unfortunate man. I remember when he first came to me having such delusions of grandeur. Ending slavery, crushing Terra, becoming Emperor of Man! What a dreaded fool!" the Archon says, her grin looking more and more predatory with every minute. "I'll assume you're not as idiotic, are you?" "I'll be optimistic and assume I'm not. I'm here to negotiate a non-aggression pact and an allian..." "Yes, yes, this was expected. Well, we'll be clear. I assume you know of us and our past. I won't try to deceive you with lies, seeing as it'll be obvious. We're raiders. We raid the weak. You, however, are not weak, and not worth raiding. Stay strong, and that'll act as a non-aggression pact. Now, in terms of an alliance... if you're asking us to come to your aid when you're in trouble, we won't. We don't expect that of you." "So, is that it, then?" you ask. "No. We'd like to extend the offer we had with Kyros. When we're raiding, you can join us for raids on more high value, heavily defended targets, and we split the reward." "We'll keep it in mind," you say guardedly. "Terrific!" Merideza smiles. "So... we need to talk specifics. What forces do you control, and what raider groups have pledged themselves to you?" The Archon's "smile" droops, revealing a sneer that looks to be her face's natural position. "We'll tell you about a job that needs assistance with, you'll tell us if you're willing and able to help us on it. That's it. Understood?" You glare at the Archon, before nodding slowly. "Surely if this was all you were willing to say, we could've done this through comms without me needing to come all the way out here." Merideza smiles once more. "I wanted to look you in the eyes," she says. You stare at Merideza, before getting back into the shuttle.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well then, you have the psychic-heavy Children of Apep, the large and advanced Tau Empire, the Dark Eldar raiders the Kabal of the Bleeding Thorn and the mercenary outfit the Dogs of War. > You visit the Dogs of War Your shuttle docks with the Hound of Iron. You rap your knuckles against the shuttle's doors, which open as your more military minded lieutenants, Fay, Olive and Hayes, stand up from their seats. The inside of the station is like a market. Men negotiate in front of displays of weapons and monitors showing forces fighting. Immediately, a large, bulky woman wearing robes walks over, grinning. "Greetings, sir! How may I help you? Are you looking to hire a force of Dogs of War, or would you instead like to offer your services to the company? Or is there something else I could do for you?" "My name is Karth. We..." "I have a Karth of the Bleeding Warthogs, a Captain Karth of the Joyous Hymn and a Karth of the Roar of the Vortex," she says, interrupting you as she scrolls through a datapad. "The last," you reply, as the woman nods. "Perfect," she says. "I'll take you to Christian." You nod, and begin following her along the hallways, staring at the clients and mercenaries being hired from the station. A badly mutated human with six eyes is examining a squad of bestial-looking men, a rich patron talks to a heavily cybernetically modified Kroot alien who's presenting his sniper rifle, a grizzled soldier discusses plasma weaponry with a grinning woman. Soon, you pass through the section devoted to sales, and enter the guts of the ship. You enter a large elevator alongside a trio of massive Ogryn, who seem nervous from the tight space. After a short ride in the elevator, you arrive in what you assume is the main... "office", for lack of a better word, of the Dogs of War's leader. A massive space marine, out of his armor but still easily noticeable for his stature and appearance, sits in a large chair, looking at some reports. He looks up, expectantly. "Thank you, Ms Lin. I'm sorry, I don't believe we've met. And you are?" "Karth," you reply. "I'm very sorry, but we do a lot of business. Are you the leader of the Bleeding Wart..." "For fuck's sake," you groan. "I'm the psyker that killed Kyros. I mean like, I'm named for a tribal god on a tiny planet. How common can that name be?" "My apologies. My name is Chapter Master Christian Firenza of the Dogs of War." "You had an alliance with Kyros," you say. "Please, tell me about it." "Kyros had a long-standing agreement with us. Earlier in his career, he'd lend his forces to us for the more important mercenary contracts. Later on, we promised to support his assault into imperial space." "You're not looking for reven..." "Revenge? Oh of course not. We're mercenaries. You've taken over Kyros funds. What reason would you have to fight? Out in this space, the only thing worth fighting for is money. So, was there more? If you need military forces, we would happily provide them for a fee. We're also more than definitely willing to hire you out as a mercenary force to make you some profits." "Nothing at the moment, although we might take you up on the military offer soon enough." "Perfect. Well, feel free to browse," the Chapter Master smiles. You spend an hour or two looking into the various mercenary groups working for the Dogs of War. They certainly have a large force, but none of their forces are loyal to them. They're loyal to their thrones. Still, perhaps you should consider hiring yourself out to them. You could make a fair amount of money through this, admittedly. None the less, you soon return to your shuttle and head back to the ship.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab a tree with your mind, lifting it through the air, as gunfire erupts from your companions. Even the powerful bolter fails to break through its thick, rock-like exterior. You swing the tree with incredible strength, smashing into the creature and sending splinters around the place. The creature doesn’t even step back, instead charging ahead towards you. You float to the side, as Hayes quickly arrives, raising his rifle and firing. As expected, the las beam has no effect. “Ha! It’s good to be killing again!” Castus yells. “Fuck, we’re not getting through this. Maybe we up the armament?” Fay says. “Go for the eyes and the inside of the mouth!" Hayes yells, firing his gun. Well, that didn't work. Time for something else. > You spew forth a whirlwind of flames Your body is surrounded by a whirlwind of flames, which quickly begin to blast the howling Behemoth. You fire a jet of flames down the maw of the beast, which begins to burn the the pale gray flesh inside a dark black. The beast lets out a dry gasp, toppling forward as its internal organs cook. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hurry through the forests, levitating over streams and fallen trees. With your speed, it’s less than a minute before you arrive, seeing the beast. It stands twice the height of even a space marine, and easily six times as wide, on four clawed legs. It’s skin is grey, seemingly covered in scales that remind you more of the stones themselves rather than the hide of a beast. Its head is like that of a spider’s, hissing at you as it raises its massive, stony clawed arms to swipe at you. You hover back, feeling electricity coarse through you as you prepare for a fight. > You fire a burst of flames You fire a burst of psychic flames, which immediately begins scorching the beast. The Behemoth lets out a howl, as its skin begins to char and burn under the heat, its stony armor cracking under as the flames burn it. The Behemoth howls. “Ha! It’s good to be killing again!” Castus yells. “Flames are its weakness! Grab whatever you can and burn this fucker to the ground!” Hayes yells.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hurry through the forests, levitating over streams and fallen trees. With your speed, it’s less than a minute before you arrive, seeing the beast. It stands twice the height of even a space marine, and easily six times as wide, on four clawed legs. It’s skin is grey, seemingly covered in scales that remind you more of the stones themselves rather than the hide of a beast. Its head is like that of a spider’s, hissing at you as it raises its massive, stony clawed arms to swipe at you. You hover back, feeling electricity coarse through you as you prepare for a fight. > You fire some psychic bolts You fire dozens of bolts of psychic energy, which smash into the beast's stony exterior as it fails to even damage it. The creature seems indifferent to your attacks, instead charging forward and swatting at you. You float to the side, as Hayes quickly arrives, raising his rifle and firing. As expected, the las beam has no effect. “Ha! It’s good to be killing again!” Castus yells. “Fuck, we’re not getting through this. Maybe we up the armament?” Fay says. “Go for the eyes and the inside of the mouth!" Hayes yells, firing his gun. Well, that didn't work. Time for something else.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'll go with Castus," you say. "Kickass," Castus says. You quickly towards the river. You walk along the banks, while Castus happily wades up to his knees. He dunks his head under water, slicking back his wet hair. "Uh, that feels good!" Castus laughs, before diving into the river. "We're supposed to be hunting!" you exclaim, hovering into the air, staring for any signs of the creature. "What the fuck would I care?" Castus cries. Come on, motherfucker. Get in the water." You hover over Castus, the soles of your boots just touching the water. Castus rolls his eyes, grabbing you by the boot and in one swift movement pulling you in. The water's cold, but in the hot weather of today, quite refreshing. You float in the water, drifting along the river slowly. "Fuck hunting, this is all I want," Castus says. > You urge Castus to continue with the hunt "We need to hunt," you say. "Fuck off," Castus says. "Castus, for fuck's sake. The behemoth could be anywhere! We need to find it!" The comm bursts to life. "Got a sight on it! Fuck, it's a big one!" Olive says over the comms. "Found it," Castus says. "Well, let's roll, then." Castus climbs out of the water, quickly hurrying along towards Olive's path.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'll hunt with you guys," you say. "Terrific," Fay says. "I'll get you a gun," Olive says. You set a tree alight with a flick of your wrist, as the Warpfire quickly runs up, multicolored flames licking the sky as the tree is quickly burnt down to ash. "Do you think I need one?" you ask. "Fair point," Olive says. "Let's get going!" Castus says, twirling his sword. "I wanna stab something!" Elizabeth transfers over a short amount of data onto Olive's datapad about the Behemoths. Then, the group moves forward through the wilderness, as Olive begins to flick through the information. "So Hayes, you were a Guardsman, then?" Olive asks. "From what I heard, they give you a flashlight and a t-shirt and send you to fight serious foes." Hayes sucks on his cigarette, thinking. "Yeah, all command gave us was jack and shit. I remember my first deployment. We were in the jungle, and I mean a serious fucking jungle. Seemed like the whole jungle was sentient and wanted to fucking kill us. Snare vines strangled every single one of us. The ground would just give way. You'd be on patrol, and the mud would suck up an entire tank. You'd blink and it'd be gone. Then there was the greenskins. You'd give 'em a few sticks with the bayonet, and they'd laugh and call you a grot." "Greenskins. They used to be the biggest threats back home. When I was a kid, they took out my tribe. I remember being surrounded by a green tide, roaring, screaming and terrifying me. By the moon, I think I ended up pissing myself," Fay says. "How the hell did it kill your tribe? Who are the Tribals, then?" Castus says. "I ended up getting rescued by the Uwais tribe. They adopted me." "Really? Was it the tribe that saved your ass and blew up a bunch of heads?" you say. "Fine, Karth saved me with his weird Shaman powers," Fay says. "So, I'll just come out and ask. Olive, there's a rumor going around that you and your brother are fucking." "Holy shit!" Olive says, as Castus breaks into laughter. "No! No! Just no!" "You fight Orks, gladiators?" you say, quickly changing to a less incest-related topic. "Occasionally they got Orks in, but it was rare," Olive says. "Usually we fought each other, or mutants." "Mutants were easy. You just had to kill them," Castus says. "Other gladiators were hard. You had to hit them in just the right place. It needed to be bloody, but you couldn't kill a fellow gladiator, you know? Sometimes in the heat of battle, you took a bad swing, slashed open a throat, did something else. Those were the bad days." Castus goes quiet, seemingly deep in thought. "Yeah," Olive says, finally. "We fought Orks sometimes." You walk on in silence, before Fay stops, dropping low. Massive footprints cut directly across the trail. Fay traces the footprint with her pinky, pressing her hand against the mud. "It's relatively fresh. Tracks break away in undergrowth. Could've gone along the river. Could've gone straight along the underbrush, or twisted off through the trees." "I'll go along the river," Castus says. "I'll take the underbrush, then," Fay says. "Trees," Olive says, simply. Captain Hayes looks at you, raising an eyebrow. "I'll give you first pick, Karth," he says. > You take the undergrowth path with Fay "I'll go with Fay," you say. "Perfect, let's go," Fay says. "Yeah, let's," you reply. "It'll be just like old times. Except you'll be there," Fay smiles. "Alright, let's go." You quickly head along the undergrowth path alongside your old friend, as she raises her bolter, pretending to fire at the alien birds flying overhead.. "Bang! Bang!" she says. "Fuck, my trigger finger's getting itchy." You hover into the air, staring for any signs of the creature. "So, either this creature is eerily good at not disturbing foliage, or he didn't come this way?" you say. "What would you know about disturbed foliage?" Fay asks. You flick your wrists, as Fay hops into the air, grabbing a branch as you telekinetically knock her legs away. She holds herself up by the tree branch, before dropping back down. "Didn't get m...!" she begins to say, before you flick your wrists again and send her tumbling onto her stomach. "Dickhead." You laugh, hovering over to her, before dropping onto her as she rolls over, pressing your forehead against hers. "It's nice being out," you say. "You know, we are on a hunt," Fay smiles. "It's not my fault. You're distracting me." "You're the one who chose to come with me here," Fay laughs, kissing you warmly on the lips. "Do you regret that choice?" you say, running your hand up Fay's thigh, as you... The comm bursts to life. "Got a sight on it! Fuck, it's a big one!" Olive says over the comms. "Fuck!" you say. "Do we really need to help?" "I'm not letting the gladiators beat me out! Fuck them!" "Let's go!" Fay says, as you levitate off her. "Fine," you groan. "Come on!" she says, hefting her bolter up and sprinting towards the trees.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'll hunt with you guys," you say. "Terrific," Fay says. "I'll get you a gun," Olive says. You set a tree alight with a flick of your wrist, as the Warpfire quickly runs up, multicolored flames licking the sky as the tree is quickly burnt down to ash. "Do you think I need one?" you ask. "Fair point," Olive says. "Let's get going!" Castus says, twirling his sword. "I wanna stab something!" Elizabeth transfers over a short amount of data onto Olive's datapad about the Behemoths. Then, the group moves forward through the wilderness, as Olive begins to flick through the information. "So Hayes, you were a Guardsman, then?" Olive asks. "From what I heard, they give you a flashlight and a t-shirt and send you to fight serious foes." Hayes sucks on his cigarette, thinking. "Yeah, all command gave us was jack and shit. I remember my first deployment. We were in the jungle, and I mean a serious fucking jungle. Seemed like the whole jungle was sentient and wanted to fucking kill us. Snare vines strangled every single one of us. The ground would just give way. You'd be on patrol, and the mud would suck up an entire tank. You'd blink and it'd be gone. Then there was the greenskins. You'd give 'em a few sticks with the bayonet, and they'd laugh and call you a grot." "Greenskins. They used to be the biggest threats back home. When I was a kid, they took out my tribe. I remember being surrounded by a green tide, roaring, screaming and terrifying me. By the moon, I think I ended up pissing myself," Fay says. "How the hell did it kill your tribe? Who are the Tribals, then?" Castus says. "I ended up getting rescued by the Uwais tribe. They adopted me." "Really? Was it the tribe that saved your ass and blew up a bunch of heads?" you say. "Fine, Karth saved me with his weird Shaman powers," Fay says. "So, I'll just come out and ask. Olive, there's a rumor going around that you and your brother are fucking." "Holy shit!" Olive says, as Castus breaks into laughter. "No! No! Just no!" "You fight Orks, gladiators?" you say, quickly changing to a less incest-related topic. "Occasionally they got Orks in, but it was rare," Olive says. "Usually we fought each other, or mutants." "Mutants were easy. You just had to kill them," Castus says. "Other gladiators were hard. You had to hit them in just the right place. It needed to be bloody, but you couldn't kill a fellow gladiator, you know? Sometimes in the heat of battle, you took a bad swing, slashed open a throat, did something else. Those were the bad days." Castus goes quiet, seemingly deep in thought. "Yeah," Olive says, finally. "We fought Orks sometimes." You walk on in silence, before Fay stops, dropping low. Massive footprints cut directly across the trail. Fay traces the footprint with her pinky, pressing her hand against the mud. "It's relatively fresh. Tracks break away in undergrowth. Could've gone along the river. Could've gone straight along the underbrush, or twisted off through the trees." "I'll go along the river," Castus says. "I'll take the underbrush, then," Fay says. "Trees," Olive says, simply. Captain Hayes looks at you, raising an eyebrow. "I'll give you first pick, Karth," he says. > You take the tree path with Olive “I’ll go with Olive, then,” you say. “I got the psyker genius, then. Terrific,” Olive smiles, twirling her rifle around in her hands. “Let’s go,” you say, heading down towards the twisting path of trees. You head down the path for a few minutes, before something occurs to you. “Why would a big monster go down this path? The trees would give it like zero mobility.” “I don’t know,” Olive says with a shrug. “It could’ve been scratching itself off the trees. Is that something predators do?” “Maybe, you shrug, wlaking along th epath. “So, you see any tracks?” Olive asks. “How would I know? I’m not a hunter.” “You’re a feral… I mean, tribal. Whatever the fuck you guys like being called. Surely you learned how to track and hunt?” “Have you seen my skinny arms? I couldn’t throw a spear, let alone kill something with it. No one taught me to hunt. I was a shaman. You’re a warrior? Surely you were taught to hunt?” “I’m a gladiator. I know how to fight duels, and I’ve learnt over time how to apply that to larger fights. I sure as hell don’t know how to hunt.” “Didn’t you hunt as a kid?” “No,” Olive says. “I was born a slave.” “Oh,” you say. “Sorry to hear that.” “That’s life,” Olive says. “You can fly, maybe try levitate up above the trees, see if you can see anything.” You nod, floating into the air. The shackles of gravity attempt to pull you downward, but with a pulse of psychic energy you escape them and float to the tree tops, staring around. Surrounding you is a seemingly endless green of leaves and moss. You must admit, it’s quite a beautiful sight. Suddenly, you hear the rumble of the ground. From the bursts of the earth, a massive creature covered in thick, stone-like grey skin bursts forward. Its red, spider-like eyes peer at you, perhaps confused by the addition of you to its environment, before turning to focus on Olive, who’s babbling into her radio. "Got a sight on it! Fuck, it's a big one!" Olive says into the comms, as you drop down to face the beast, now seeing it clearly. It stands twice the height of even a space marine, and easily six times as wide, on four clawed legs. It’s skin is grey, seemingly covered in scales that remind you more of the stones themselves rather than the hide of a beast. Its head is like that of a spider’s, hissing at you as it raises its massive, stony clawed arms to swipe at you. You hover back, feeling electricity coarse through you as you prepare for a fight.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As the shuttle touches down on the planet, you sigh a breath of relief. You walk out of the shuttle, into the clearing you've landed in, staring at the dozens of black trees that surround you. All your lieutenants are with you, excluding Durge and Meliodas, both of who are happier to stay on the ship. Although the planet, whose name you can't even remember, is for the most part two extremes of frozen, forever dark wastelands, and burning, forever insanely bright wastelands. So wastelands, mainly. Still, a strip exists around the equator in a sweet zone, which act as bountiful, fertile zones. It's this zone that you'll be taking advantage of on your little planet side excursion. You watch as dozens of shuttles land and hordes of mutants break free of the shuttle to gather resources. Hell, this'll probably raise morale for the mutants, seeing as this'll be the first time they've seen natural sunlight. "So, do we have any tasks for today?" you ask Elizabeth. "No, we've nothing to do but relax. I've put few loyal men in charge, as well as John the Hermit. They'll do what's expected of them." "Perfect, so we have free time," Fay says. "Anything on this planet worth hunting?" "There's a species known as Behemoths, incredibly hardy creatures that can survive in either extreme environment, occasionally raiding the fertile zone to feast," Elizabeth says. "Are they sentient?" Fay asks. "No." "Are they near extinction?" Fay asks. "Again, no," Elizabeth says. "Alright, perfect. I'll grab a few of my Tribals and go on the hunt," FAY says. "Yeah, I'll come," Castus says. "I'll go as well," Fay says. "Smells funny here. I'm going to sleep," Cain says, walking over to a tree and slumping against it as he closes his eyes. "You want to come hunt, Elios?" Fay asks. "Please, do I seem like the type to go hunting? I'm going to bathe by the river," Elios says, sauntering off. "Elizabeth?" Olive asks."Are you coming hunting?" "This is a peaceful, relaxing environment. I want to practice on my psychic abilities," Elizabeth says again. "Hayes? You coming?" Fay asks. "Yeah, I'll come," Hayes says, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. Well then, you've a few choices on what to spend your day doing. > You go bathe with Elios "I'll go bathe with Elios," you say. "Perfect, darling," Elios grins. "Let's go." "Cool, let's go hunt," Fay says, leading her group off into the woods. Elios looks at you, smiling. "Come on, Karth, let's go." You follow Elios, who quickly leads you to the side of the river. Elios leans against a tree, staring at you as he smiles. "Well then, honey. Go on. Undress," he says. You stare at him nervously, before unclasping your robes and letting them fall to the ground. "Ooh, darling. I like what I see," Elios says, as he loosens the straps of his leather armor, pulling it away and tossing it to the ground, revealing Elios' long, muscled legs, and a certain surprisingly big organ. Elios dives into the pool, surfacing and lying partially submerged along the shores. "Well, come on," Elios commands. You dive into the water. You gently swim to the shore, and lie partially in the water, basking in the sun. "You look tense, darling," Elios says. "It must be a stressful life for you. So many responsibilities. So many daemons scratching at the inside of your skull. Such awful, awful stress. You need a back rub, darling." > You accept Elios' offer "Um... fuck it, fine," you say. Elios slides over, placing his hands on your back. He begins to massage your muscles with some skill, causing you to groan in ecstasy as he expertly relieves all your stressed out muscles. You do notice his hands beginning to wander towards your ass and genitals. You feel like you should be stopping him, but fuck, it's a good stress reliever. "You know," Elios purrs. "I could help you relax in a more... sensual way. Trust me, the joys of Slaanesh are endless. And lust... trust me, that is a joy that knows no bounds." > You accept once more You stare at Elios for a moment, wondering if this is the best course of action, before nodding. “Alirght, let’s see how this goes then,” you say nervously. Elios slides over, smiling at you. “Trust me, baby. I don’t bi… well, that’s not a hundred percent true. I won’t hurt you… unless that’s what you’re into. Just… trust me,” Elios whispers, as his warm mouth presses into your neck, kissing you softly. > You later... Over the next… however long, Elios does show you certain temptations of the flesh that make it obvious how he’s amassed such a following for a god that clearly couldn’t give a flying fuck about their lives. Slaanesh seems to have bestowed her followers with, among other things, endurance, flexibility and the enlargement of certain body parts. By the time the sun is setting, you’re lying on the shore of the river, panting, and feeling exhausted, ecstatic and to ve frank, worn out. Elios seems disappointed that you’re out of breath and attempts to coax you back into love making, but you’re spent, in multiple ways. In your mind, over the grumbling of the others you can hear Fucky cheering. “Yes! Yes! YES! Another round, boy! We’re hardly finished, are we? I though this was the foreplay! Cursed, let me take over! Just for a few minutes, lessen your mental restraints! Trust me, you’ll enjoy it!” "Break! Shatter! Fuck! Kill! I'll tear that dishonorable whore in two!" Smiley roars. “For once, Bloody one, I agree. Come Karth, let’s… split Elios in two,” Fucky laughs. “So, you’re finished already?” Elios asks. “Yeah, I am,” you reply. "Shame,” Elios says, grabbing his trousers and fishing out a packet of cigarettes from them. He pulls two out, putting one to his lips and holding the other out to you. “Well go on, honey,” Elios says. You take the cigarette, putting it between your lips, before looking expectantly at you. “Come on, my daemonic little cherub. You’re my light.” You flick your fingers, as your hand sets alight, as do the tips of both of the cigarettes. You press it to your lips, sucking in. “Unless Kyros’ little experiments moved your lungs to the back of your throat, which I highly doubt seeing as I would’ve punctured them during that little exercise, you’re not inhaling.” You nod, taking a deep inhale, before immediately releasing your breath and spluttering out the smoke as your vision goes hazy. “There, there. Smoke ‘em up, little psyker,” Elios says. “We best leave soon, and Elizabeth does nothing but complain if we smoke on the dropship. Still seems to be fine with Hayes doing it, though.” “I thought we were supposed to be here for several hours,” you say, confused. “How long do you think we spent… encoiled?” Elios asks. “An hour? Two,” you ask. Elios smiles slyly, gesturing towards the stars as they appear in the faint sky. “It’s been more than a few hours, little one. Let’s head out, then,” Elios grins. You inhale once more, before tossing it over your robes and shifting them until you gain the appearance of someone who isn’t moments after being fucked for more than a few hours. Then, you begin to saunter off towards the dropship.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Um... fuck it, fine," you say. Elios slides over, placing his hands on your back. He begins to massage your muscles with some skill, causing you to groan in ecstasy as he expertly relieves all your stressed out muscles. You do notice his hands beginning to wander towards your ass and genitals. You feel like you should be stopping him, but fuck, it's a good stress reliever. "You know," Elios purrs. "I could help you relax in a more... sensual way. Trust me, the joys of Slaanesh are endless. And lust... trust me, that is a joy that knows no bounds." > You decline "No, no thanks. I'm fine. That's enough," you say, as Elios whimpers. "Oh, pity," he says. "Not even a little?" "No, Elios," you assert. "Shame," Elios says. The rest of the bathing experience is fairly peaceful. You wash, relax and just take your mind off the world. Soon, you notice the sun is setting. > You finish bathing "Sun's setting," Elios says. "We better go." “I thought we were supposed to be here for several hours,” you say, confused. “How long do you think we bathing?” Elios asks. “An hour? Two?” you ask. Elios smiles slyly, gesturing towards the stars as they appear in the faint sky. “It’s been more than a few hours, little one. Let’s head out, then,” Elios grins. You inhale once more, before tossing it over your robes and shifting them until you're dressed normally. Then, you begin to saunter off towards the dropship.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As the shuttle touches down on the planet, you sigh a breath of relief. You walk out of the shuttle, into the clearing you've landed in, staring at the dozens of black trees that surround you. All your lieutenants are with you, excluding Durge and Meliodas, both of who are happier to stay on the ship. Although the planet, whose name you can't even remember, is for the most part two extremes of frozen, forever dark wastelands, and burning, forever insanely bright wastelands. So wastelands, mainly. Still, a strip exists around the equator in a sweet zone, which act as bountiful, fertile zones. It's this zone that you'll be taking advantage of on your little planet side excursion. You watch as dozens of shuttles land and hordes of mutants break free of the shuttle to gather resources. Hell, this'll probably raise morale for the mutants, seeing as this'll be the first time they've seen natural sunlight. "So, do we have any tasks for today?" you ask Elizabeth. "No, we've nothing to do but relax. I've put few loyal men in charge, as well as John the Hermit. They'll do what's expected of them." "Perfect, so we have free time," Fay says. "Anything on this planet worth hunting?" "There's a species known as Behemoths, incredibly hardy creatures that can survive in either extreme environment, occasionally raiding the fertile zone to feast," Elizabeth says. "Are they sentient?" Fay asks. "No." "Are they near extinction?" Fay asks. "Again, no," Elizabeth says. "Alright, perfect. I'll grab a few of my Tribals and go on the hunt," FAY says. "Yeah, I'll come," Castus says. "I'll go as well," Fay says. "Smells funny here. I'm going to sleep," Cain says, walking over to a tree and slumping against it as he closes his eyes. "You want to come hunt, Elios?" Fay asks. "Please, do I seem like the type to go hunting? I'm going to bathe by the river," Elios says, sauntering off. "Elizabeth?" Olive asks."Are you coming hunting?" "This is a peaceful, relaxing environment. I want to practice on my psychic abilities," Elizabeth says again. "Hayes? You coming?" Fay asks. "Yeah, I'll come," Hayes says, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. Well then, you've a few choices on what to spend your day doing. > You meditate with Elizabeth "I'll go with Elizabeth. Could use a chance to meditate and relax," you say. "Oh, OK," Elizabeth say. "Let's go" You bid your companions farewell, before walking down the path alongside Elizabeth. "Yes... she'll open your mind. Let the psychic powers of the Warp flood through you," Question Mark says. "Uh, she's a Tzeentch follower. Always using pawns who could betray you, or being another's pawn. No loyalty. No unity. No peace," Rotgut groans. You both stop in a small glade in the forest, as Elizabeth looks around. "Yes, this'll do," she says, pulling her satchel off her shoulder and lying it on the ground. She begins digging through it, pulling out several things. "Is there a particular smell or scent you have that comforts you?" Elizabeth asks. You stop for a moment, wondering. "What do you have, exactly?" "Promethium oils, cut grass, Cornyl powder, Grox Heart Spice and Rotting flesh." "Rotting flesh?" you ask. "Oh, the best kind!" Rotgut says. "Some psykers are weird," Elizabeth shrugs. "I'll go with Promethium, then," you say, as Elizabeth nods. Elizabeth takes out a small golden pot of black oil, setting it on fire. A light smoke rises from the pot as you take a whiff of the scent. "Sit like this," Elizabeth says, as she crosses her legs and arches her back. You do the same, and take a deep breath. "Through your nose," Elizabeth says, as you comply. You close your eyes, and slowly breath. You hear Elizabeth stand, as she walks over, putting her hand on your chest. "In, out. In, out," she says, as you slowly breath in and out. "I'm going to gently prod at your mental defenses. Try not to kill me, OK?" "Got it," you say. You feel an outside present close around your mind. It pokes and prods and for a moment you feel nervous, before you realize just how much more psychic energy you have inside you compared to Elizabeth. Finally, Elizabeth stops, and you open your eyes. "Finished?" you ask. "You're a lot more powerful than I thought you were," Elizabeth says, a hint of nerves in her voice. You nod, smiling. "Damn right," you nod. "So, did Kyros ever teach you about seeing the future?" "No," you say. "Go on." Elizabeth takes out a stack of runes and a mirror. She places the mirror beneath you, before handing you the runes. "Flood your psychic energy into the runes, then scatter them on the mirror, and gaze into it. Try picture a swirling whirlpool, understood? You're powerful, so you should excel at this." "Yes... embrace the psychic powers... search for answers..." Question Mark says. You take the runes, and slowly flood them with energy, which they easily absorb, with etchings on them glowing purple. "Remember, the future is chaotic and uncertain. Anything you see will be possible and likely, but not certain. Understand that. Don't forget, there are agents in the Warp who would love to confuse you. Whilst the things you see will be potential futures that could likely happen, they could easily be misleading." "Got it," you say. "Most psykers only see a few faded images in the reflection, if that. You? You're seriously powerful. Who knows where it'll go for you?" > You toss the runes and gaze into the mirror "Let's do it," you say, casting the runes onto the mirror. The area around the runes begins to shimmer and swirl as the entire mirror begins to shimmer and morph into a picture. Suddenly, vivid sensations begin to run through your mind as you begin feeling sick. You watch as your Tribals are shot in the back in some muddy field by a squad of space marines clad in white, as a deep, booming voice howls "Betrayal!" Another, darker voice in the distance laughs, with a shrill, higher pitched laugh from within the first voice. A space marine without a helmet, wearing ornate golden robes over his power armor, holding a bolt pistol golden staff topped with a snake, with two Sapphires as the eyes, stands in front of you in a black void. He realizes you can see him and lets out a curse, as darkness covers him and he disappears from your view. A pair of young girls, seemingly around sixteen, one in a black robe wearing a white, featureless mask, the other wearing a white robe with a black, featureless mask, stare at you, the White Mask laughing as the other just stares blankly. Standing between the two children is a man with completely black eyes, covered from head to toe in tattoos detailing howling daemons that seem to be tearing into the man's flesh, who just stares blankly ahead, a look of pain and hatred in his eyes, although it's not focused on you. Behind them is an endless black void, one that slowly pushes forward as a liquid wave of all-encompassing, all-destroying darkness. You sit in a tiny, blank room, screaming as the walls seem to scream back. There's nothing, just unending nothing, as you feel pure shock at your predicament. A thousand voices scream in your mind as the psychic energy floods into you, all screaming for freedom as you feel ascension take over. You pull back, taking a deep breath as you gaze down as the mirror. "See anything interesting?" Elizabeth asks. "Yeah. It was interesting," you say. "You didn't see anything about me poisoning tea or anything, did you?" Elizabeth asks in a dead pan voice. "No," you say, quizzically. "Good," Elizabeth says, taking out a flask from her satchel, offering it to you. "Have some tea?" You laugh, as Elizabeth begins drinking the tea. "I never pictured you as the comedic type," you say, having a sip of the tea. "I tell a joke every once in a full moon," Elizabeth says. "So, if we're going to be training in our psychic abilities, we best focus on the classic mental safety techniques to avoid your mind being taken over by daemons. Tell me, has another daemon stepped into your head to replace Meliodas?" "Four," you say. "Ah. I'd assume one for each Chaos God, yes?" You nod. "Yeah, that's right." "Look, just relax again. We'll run through some excercises." > You hours Later... Over the next few hours, you do various other exercises to relax and calm down. After a few hours of work involving breathing techniques, trance-like states and practicing with other types of psychic powers that you don't really specialize in, you notice the sun setting. "We need to get back to the dropship," you say. "Yeah," Elizabeth says. "This was good. Good practice." "Let's get out of here," you say, standing. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I'll go with Elizabeth. Could use a chance to meditate and relax," you say. "Oh, OK," Elizabeth say. "Let's go" You bid your companions farewell, before walking down the path alongside Elizabeth. "Yes... she'll open your mind. Let the psychic powers of the Warp flood through you," Question Mark says. "Uh, she's a Tzeentch follower. Always using pawns who could betray you, or being another's pawn. No loyalty. No unity. No peace," Rotgut groans. You both stop in a small glade in the forest, as Elizabeth looks around. "Yes, this'll do," she says, pulling her satchel off her shoulder and lying it on the ground. She begins digging through it, pulling out several things. "Is there a particular smell or scent you have that comforts you?" Elizabeth asks. You stop for a moment, wondering. "What do you have, exactly?" "Promethium oils, cut grass, Cornyl powder, Grox Heart Spice and Rotting flesh." "Rotting flesh?" you ask. "Oh, the best kind!" Rotgut says. "Some psykers are weird," Elizabeth shrugs. "I'll go with Promethium, then," you say, as Elizabeth nods. Elizabeth takes out a small golden pot of black oil, setting it on fire. A light smoke rises from the pot as you take a whiff of the scent. "Sit like this," Elizabeth says, as she crosses her legs and arches her back. You do the same, and take a deep breath. "Through your nose," Elizabeth says, as you comply. You close your eyes, and slowly breath. You hear Elizabeth stand, as she walks over, putting her hand on your chest. "In, out. In, out," she says, as you slowly breath in and out. "I'm going to gently prod at your mental defenses. Try not to kill me, OK?" "Got it," you say. You feel an outside present close around your mind. It pokes and prods and for a moment you feel nervous, before you realize just how much more psychic energy you have inside you compared to Elizabeth. Finally, Elizabeth stops, and you open your eyes. "Finished?" you ask. "You're a lot more powerful than I thought you were," Elizabeth says, a hint of nerves in her voice. You nod, smiling. "Damn right," you nod. "So, did Kyros ever teach you about seeing the future?" "No," you say. "Go on." Elizabeth takes out a stack of runes and a mirror. She places the mirror beneath you, before handing you the runes. "Flood your psychic energy into the runes, then scatter them on the mirror, and gaze into it. Try picture a swirling whirlpool, understood? You're powerful, so you should excel at this." "Yes... embrace the psychic powers... search for answers..." Question Mark says. You take the runes, and slowly flood them with energy, which they easily absorb, with etchings on them glowing purple. "Remember, the future is chaotic and uncertain. Anything you see will be possible and likely, but not certain. Understand that. Don't forget, there are agents in the Warp who would love to confuse you. Whilst the things you see will be potential futures that could likely happen, they could easily be misleading." "Got it," you say. "Most psykers only see a few faded images in the reflection, if that. You? You're seriously powerful. Who knows where it'll go for you?" > You change your mind "No, I'm fine, actually. There are some things man's not meant to know." "Oh. Knowledge is power, Karth. If you weren't willing to take power, you probably should've found a planet and lived out a peaceful life." You shrug, as Elizabeth looks around awkwardly. "There's... really not much else to be done, then. If I were you, I'd go see if I can catch up with the hunters." "Alright then," you say. "Um... thanks." Elizabeth nods, and you turn, levitating off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well, on to the next group of recreational drugs. Whilst alcohol technically falls under this category, it’s not usually what people refer to. No, the main ones, as you see when Elizabeth puts them on the table, are less traditional Elizabeth puts a large, brown cigar, a glass vial containing blue liquid, a small patch of green tablets and quite a few other drugs “These are known collectively as the Eyes, due to all of them having a fairly noticeably effect on your eyes. It’s really a catch all term commonly used on the ship, and in the sector. They’re… for lack of a better word, light drugs. From the smokeable Sun Scales designed to get you in a trance or give you some hallucinations, the Blood Root that has the effect of making the user feel happier and more mellow, the Slug juice, absorbed through the skin, that helps relieve pain and puts the user into a deep, peaceful sleep, the Bright Gas that improves the user’s mood, the Castins that when smoked increase confidence… I can go on forever. These drugs have some negative effects, but realistically, no serious ones when taking into account their expected lifespans and the sheer amount of risks they’re already facing. Anything the drugs do is neglible. The only possible risk is that their productivity worsens because they’re as high as a kite.” “So, do we ban or allow?” you ask. “Well, those aren’t necessarily the only options, in this instance. Due to the nature of these drugs, we have five options. The first two, as you’ll know, involve either blanket banning or fully allowing these and letting the winds of free market spread them out among the crew. The third involves allowing them, but to a limited degree. Everyone has a limited amount they’re allowed to buy, only the least dangerous are brought in, that kind of thing.” “Go on,” you say. “The fourth possibility is that we become proactive with our usage of the drugs. We’re forcing our men to face horrors beyond comprehension and risk their lives. We could, for a small amount, begin purchasing and producing these drugs on-ship, rationing them out to raise the morale of the crew. Plus, this would give us the ability to actually begin selling drugs on the open market if we find a better group of cooks and a supplier. Lastly, we could just go all out. Buy a huge quantity of the drugs and start manufacturing them on ship, and just start pumping them out to the crew. Pump the gaseous drugs into the air, put all the soluble drugs into the water supply and crush up everything else to put in the food. This would amplify morale tenfold, although could lead to a serious drop in productivity, seeing as you literally couldn’t breath without getting insanely high.” > You ban You ban the drugs, which does admittedly lead to a fall in the general morale levels among the ship. It's a shame they're incapable of understanding why this is a good thing. Still, in banning the drugs, you stop the medical issues that most likely would've spread through the ship with allowing these drugs to spread through the ship.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well, on to the next group of recreational drugs. Whilst alcohol technically falls under this category, it’s not usually what people refer to. No, the main ones, as you see when Elizabeth puts them on the table, are less traditional Elizabeth puts a large, brown cigar, a glass vial containing blue liquid, a small patch of green tablets and quite a few other drugs “These are known collectively as the Eyes, due to all of them having a fairly noticeably effect on your eyes. It’s really a catch all term commonly used on the ship, and in the sector. They’re… for lack of a better word, light drugs. From the smokeable Sun Scales designed to get you in a trance or give you some hallucinations, the Blood Root that has the effect of making the user feel happier and more mellow, the Slug juice, absorbed through the skin, that helps relieve pain and puts the user into a deep, peaceful sleep, the Bright Gas that improves the user’s mood, the Castins that when smoked increase confidence… I can go on forever. These drugs have some negative effects, but realistically, no serious ones when taking into account their expected lifespans and the sheer amount of risks they’re already facing. Anything the drugs do is neglible. The only possible risk is that their productivity worsens because they’re as high as a kite.” “So, do we ban or allow?” you ask. “Well, those aren’t necessarily the only options, in this instance. Due to the nature of these drugs, we have five options. The first two, as you’ll know, involve either blanket banning or fully allowing these and letting the winds of free market spread them out among the crew. The third involves allowing them, but to a limited degree. Everyone has a limited amount they’re allowed to buy, only the least dangerous are brought in, that kind of thing.” “Go on,” you say. “The fourth possibility is that we become proactive with our usage of the drugs. We’re forcing our men to face horrors beyond comprehension and risk their lives. We could, for a small amount, begin purchasing and producing these drugs on-ship, rationing them out to raise the morale of the crew. Plus, this would give us the ability to actually begin selling drugs on the open market if we find a better group of cooks and a supplier. Lastly, we could just go all out. Buy a huge quantity of the drugs and start manufacturing them on ship, and just start pumping them out to the crew. Pump the gaseous drugs into the air, put all the soluble drugs into the water supply and crush up everything else to put in the food. This would amplify morale tenfold, although could lead to a serious drop in productivity, seeing as you literally couldn’t breath without getting insanely high.” > You restrict You begin restricting the amount of chems coming aboard, making sure not too much are given to each section of the ship, make sure only the safest are put through. The population, idiotic as they may be, react awfully, almost as badly as if the drugs were banned outright. Additionally, you're forced to dedicate a portion of your men to enforcing these restrictions, as since the drugs aren't banned outright it means that the chem pushers have the ability to exploit, meaning you have to dedicate a force of soldiers to enforce these restrictions. Still, in restricting the drugs, you stop the medical issues that most likely would've spread through the ship with allowing these drugs to spread through the ship.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well, on to the next group of recreational drugs. Whilst alcohol technically falls under this category, it’s not usually what people refer to. No, the main ones, as you see when Elizabeth puts them on the table, are less traditional Elizabeth puts a large, brown cigar, a glass vial containing blue liquid, a small patch of green tablets and quite a few other drugs “These are known collectively as the Eyes, due to all of them having a fairly noticeably effect on your eyes. It’s really a catch all term commonly used on the ship, and in the sector. They’re… for lack of a better word, light drugs. From the smokeable Sun Scales designed to get you in a trance or give you some hallucinations, the Blood Root that has the effect of making the user feel happier and more mellow, the Slug juice, absorbed through the skin, that helps relieve pain and puts the user into a deep, peaceful sleep, the Bright Gas that improves the user’s mood, the Castins that when smoked increase confidence… I can go on forever. These drugs have some negative effects, but realistically, no serious ones when taking into account their expected lifespans and the sheer amount of risks they’re already facing. Anything the drugs do is neglible. The only possible risk is that their productivity worsens because they’re as high as a kite.” “So, do we ban or allow?” you ask. “Well, those aren’t necessarily the only options, in this instance. Due to the nature of these drugs, we have five options. The first two, as you’ll know, involve either blanket banning or fully allowing these and letting the winds of free market spread them out among the crew. The third involves allowing them, but to a limited degree. Everyone has a limited amount they’re allowed to buy, only the least dangerous are brought in, that kind of thing.” “Go on,” you say. “The fourth possibility is that we become proactive with our usage of the drugs. We’re forcing our men to face horrors beyond comprehension and risk their lives. We could, for a small amount, begin purchasing and producing these drugs on-ship, rationing them out to raise the morale of the crew. Plus, this would give us the ability to actually begin selling drugs on the open market if we find a better group of cooks and a supplier. Lastly, we could just go all out. Buy a huge quantity of the drugs and start manufacturing them on ship, and just start pumping them out to the crew. Pump the gaseous drugs into the air, put all the soluble drugs into the water supply and crush up everything else to put in the food. This would amplify morale tenfold, although could lead to a serious drop in productivity, seeing as you literally couldn’t breath without getting insanely high.” > You allow and include in rations You allow the drugs, as well as adding them to the rations, giving each resident coupons to report to their nearby medical agent for whatever precious, delightful drug fuels them. Unfortunately, the program ends up end costing you a solid five million Thrones, as well as doing some damage to your men's efficiency. Despite that, morale increases substantially. It seems when men are off their heads, they're more than happy to risk their lives. The success of this policy, or at least the success in that you're capable of manufacturing drugs aboard the vessel, does give you an idea. You could easily set up a chem manufacturing industry aboard the ship to increase the funds you have to work with. You'd need to find a new group of cooks as well as a supplier, but it could prove to be a profitable venture. > You attempt to break into the drug industry It takes some explaining and effort to get the lieutenants to agree. While as soon as Elios hears about it he's on board and the other Staine Siblings agree, Fay and Olive don't seem to be fans of idea. Castus agrees whole heartedly, and Primus, Cain, Hayes and Meliodas are indifferent and just agree, placing the majority. You quickly find the most knowledgeable about drug manufacturing of your lieutenants, Primus, Elios and Elizabeth, and gather them in the war room. "Why is Elizabeth here?" Elios asks. "She's never touched a chem in her life." "Do you know about Methoxetamine, Elios? About it's use on the brain?" Elizabeth asks. "Oh, you wanted a nerd," Elios says. "Understood, darling." "Our crew's not good enough to manufacture chems for market," you say. "We need to f ind someone better. Primus, anything showing up in your archives?" "Pirate chatter tells me that the best... "product" coming through is from either the Hiveworld of Outice-81 or the Xenos species Jatkiri. Both sell a good product, so we could easily hire them." > You attempt to hire the chem manufacturers of Outice-81 You stare down at the hiveworld from the bridge of your ship, looking at the planet. To your surprise, the Imperials hold barely any hold on this world. The Governor is basically in charge of everything, the Planetary Defense Force is bolstered by Imperial Guard deserters and Xenos Mercenaries, and they seem indifferent in regards to everything else. After a short time in a shuttle, you find yourself descending into Hive Beta, to meet with the leader of Outice-81's thriving drug industry. You sit alongside a half dozen Tribals, including Opie, the gas-masked giant you saw fight, as well as Fay, Elizabeth and Elios. The doors open, and a solid scent wave of shit hits you, causing you to retch. You walk outside, looking at the dozens of ultra-poor workers hurrying about their day. Two men wearing red leather dusters stand by the landing area, holding shotguns, wearing sunglasses and black balaclavas. The men stroll towards you, staring blankly ahead. "Howdy," one says, staring at you. "You must be Mister Karth. And these are...?" Your lieutenants state their names, as the man nods. "The name's Cheq. I'll be taking you to meet the boss." You nod, following the guard as he strolls through the streets. It takes about five minutes of walking through peasant markets, shit-filled alleys and endless scenes of the vile life of the area. Soon, you find your guard pulling open a large metal door to enter a large, bunker-like area. You walk inside, finding yourself in the bunker, which is particularly cleaner than the slums outside the bunker. You soon find yourself faced with a massive man with heavily burned skin wearing the same outfit as the guards. "Karth, yes?" he asks. "Good to meet you. I'm Skinrik. From what your number two says, you want to purchase some cooks' contract from me." "Number two?" you ask. "The dude with the voice synthesizer. Primus." "Ah, yes," you say. "Yes, he's correct. What do you have for me?" Skinrik smiles, before walking along the hall. You follow and soon find yourself in a massive chem lab. A half dozen workers slave away at various pieces of equipment, pouring vats of chemicals into vibrating vats and other strange things. "Zero!" Skinrik yells. A young woman wearing a boiler suit and a gas mask turns from mixing a vat of burning liquid and jogs over to you. "Yes, sir?" she asks. "This is the finest cook in the sector," Skinrik says. "And the most recent of my fiances." Zero nods nervously, looking at you. "This... this is the... the psychic guy?" she asks. You nod, and she takes a deep breath, looking terrified. "Are you alright?" you ask. "We don't bite." "He doesn't speak for me," Elios says, as you frown as the Slaaneshi leader. "Play nice," you say, before turning to Skinrik once more. "Zero had some issue with psykers. She was the main cook for the Green Snakes gang, who were wiped out by the psyker gang the Mind Men. Only reason she and her cooks are alive is because I took them in." "Uh... yeah," Zero says, a flash of annoyance appearing on her face before she goes back to her nervous look. "They're the ones you're willing to sell me?" you ask. "You do realize that I'll need them full time, permanently, right?" "Of course," Skinrik nods. "So you won't see your fiance... ever?" you say. "I can deal with it. I got six wives. Don't need another." "Alright then," you shrug. "How much are we talking?" "Zero's the best cook in the sector. You want her, you'll have to fork over a cool two and a half million. You want her cooks, that'll be five million. The equipment will set you back two more. I'll have the men repair and refuel your vessel to make it a solid ten million thrones. We have a deal?" > You agree "Fine," you say, grabbing your comms. "Primus, ten million into Skinrik's account." It takes about five minutes before the credits are transferred over, and Skinrik smiles. "Good. Norwich, have the men transfer the equipment and have the cooks pack up. Transfer everything to the shuttles. Send up some fuel ships and repair vessels to fix up and fuel up the ship." > Three Days Later... You walk into the chem lab, watching the cooks working to manufacture their second batch. Zero spots you, walking over as she pulls off her gas mask. "Sir," she says. "The second batch is almost finished. What can I do for you?" "How are you all adapting to life on the vessel?" you ask. "It's alright. Conditions are better and the cooks are happier, so that's a plus." "You're not sad to have lost your fiance?" you ask. "Fuck him," Zero says. "That dude was a prick. He only wanted to add me to a tally of sex slaves he'd put a ring on. I didn't have a choice in it." "Well then, glad you're not stuck with them anymore, Zero," you say. "Yeah. Also, my name's not really Zero. It's Gail." "Gail?" you ask. "What's with Zero?" "It's a gang name. Zero felonies, zero kills, zero chems ingested. I'm cut from a pretty plain cloth, sir." "Alright. I'll call you Gail if you stop calling me sir." "Got it, Karth," she smiles. "I need to get back to work. I'm the only one who knows h..." "Say no more," you say, holding up your hands. "We're working on finding you a supplier. We'll begin turning a profit soon." "Terrific," she says, slipping her gas mask back on. > You find a supplier You head back to the war room, where Elios and Elizabeth are arguing. "He's a genius!" Elios yells. "He's a drug-addled moron!" Elizabeth replies. "We need a businessman!" "Oh, fuck off! You...!" "Hey!" you shout. The two Staine siblings turn to look at you. "What are you arguing about?" you ask. "We have two different candidates for a supplier," Elizabeth says. "I want to use the Rogue Trader Lord Baridas Flynn. He's a respectable businessman who has access to a massive market, including the entirety of the Imperium, which Morrow can't access. He's already known for creating a massive drug empire, but his supply is low. We could fill that supply." "He's got the Imperium's dick so far up his ass he's licking the tip!" Elios says. "He'll sell us out in a second! We need Jack Morrow, leader of the Ecstasy Freaks, a Slaaneshi war-band. The dude's psycho and is a bit prone to testing his products, but he's a genius, and I have old ties with him. We served alongside the Emperor's children together, and us non-Space marines really had to stick together to survive there. Trust me, you want him." Fuck, a respectable businessman who might be an Imperial rat, or an insane, drug-addled fiend. Hard choice. > You meet with Baridas Flynn You find yourself aboard the Tip of the Spear, walking alongside your tribal bodyguards as well as Fay, Elizabeth and Elios. You walk into a massive chamber, where Flynn waits. He wears golden chains wrapped around fur, smiling happily at you. "Ah, Karth, is it? It's good to see you!" Flynn says. "Ah, Lord Baridas Flynn, yes? It's good to see you. Shall we discuss business?" "Yes," the lord nods. "Where are your other sibling? Durge the Plage Lord?" "He's not involved with this deal. So..." Suddenly, a massive, see-through wall rises up from the floor as Flynn steps back, seperating him from you. "I can't tell you how surprised I was to receive your message. Three Chaos Lords wanting to deal with me. I'll be honest. I'm corrupt. I'll happily use Xenos if it bets the Imperium, I'll sell illegal tech or chems but I won't consort with heretics. You actually have a fairly high bounty. Two Chaos Lords and an Alpha-Plus Psyker? Perfect. Burn in hell, heretics." Suddenly, the room goes dark, as you hear shouts as men rush in. The wall separating you and the Rogue trader is incredibly strong and anti-Psychic tech has infused it, but if you focus, you might be able to take out the Rogue Trader. Alternatively, you can prepare to defend against whoever Flynn has sent to take you out. > You kill Baridas Flynn You focus your energy, before telekinetically grabbing Flynn by the head and smashing it repeatedly againts the wall. His head is crushed and smeared against the glass, before collapsing onto the ground. You turn, before feeling a painful, dark presence fill your soul. You grunt as you see a pale man who feels like... pain, weakening all of your psychic powers before he fires his bolt pistol, killing you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You find yourself aboard the Tip of the Spear, walking alongside your tribal bodyguards as well as Fay, Elizabeth and Elios. You walk into a massive chamber, where Flynn waits. He wears golden chains wrapped around fur, smiling happily at you. "Ah, Karth, is it? It's good to see you!" Flynn says. "Ah, Lord Baridas Flynn, yes? It's good to see you. Shall we discuss business?" "Yes," the lord nods. "Where are your other sibling? Durge the Plage Lord?" "He's not involved with this deal. So..." Suddenly, a massive, see-through wall rises up from the floor as Flynn steps back, seperating him from you. "I can't tell you how surprised I was to receive your message. Three Chaos Lords wanting to deal with me. I'll be honest. I'm corrupt. I'll happily use Xenos if it bets the Imperium, I'll sell illegal tech or chems but I won't consort with heretics. You actually have a fairly high bounty. Two Chaos Lords and an Alpha-Plus Psyker? Perfect. Burn in hell, heretics." Suddenly, the room goes dark, as you hear shouts as men rush in. The wall separating you and the Rogue trader is incredibly strong and anti-Psychic tech has infused it, but if you focus, you might be able to take out the Rogue Trader. Alternatively, you can prepare to defend against whoever Flynn has sent to take you out. > You defend yourself You hear men flooding in, before turning as one heads immediately towards you. You raise your hands to fire a bolt of psychic energy, but the man, a pale, gaunt person with dark eyes, stares at you, his bolt pistol raised. You feel weak, sickly and miserable looking at him, as the energy floods out of you. "Never faced a Blank, huh, Psyker?" Flynn laughs. You try to fight, but the Blank simply pulls the trigger, blowing out the back of your skull.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head back to the war room, where Elios and Elizabeth are arguing. "He's a genius!" Elios yells. "He's a drug-addled moron!" Elizabeth replies. "We need a businessman!" "Oh, fuck off! You...!" "Hey!" you shout. The two Staine siblings turn to look at you. "What are you arguing about?" you ask. "We have two different candidates for a supplier," Elizabeth says. "I want to use the Rogue Trader Lord Baridas Flynn. He's a respectable businessman who has access to a massive market, including the entirety of the Imperium, which Morrow can't access. He's already known for creating a massive drug empire, but his supply is low. We could fill that supply." "He's got the Imperium's dick so far up his ass he's licking the tip!" Elios says. "He'll sell us out in a second! We need Jack Morrow, leader of the Ecstasy Freaks, a Slaaneshi war-band. The dude's psycho and is a bit prone to testing his products, but he's a genius, and I have old ties with him. We served alongside the Emperor's children together, and us non-Space marines really had to stick together to survive there. Trust me, you want him." Fuck, a respectable businessman who might be an Imperial rat, or an insane, drug-addled fiend. Hard choice. > You meet with Jack Morrow Your shuttle docks into the Sword Thrust, as you slip a gas mask on over your mouth, as Elizabeth and the Tribals do the same. "Your body won't be accustomed to the level of chems flooded into the air," Elios says. "These guys really know how to party! Keep the masks on!" The shuttle doors open, revealing... no one. Huh. "Where's Morrow, Elios?" Elizabeth asks. "Must be somewhere," he says, shrugging. You walk through the ship, cringing at the scenes on display. A cultist walks out of a room, holding a long knife, covered in long cuts on his heavily scarred forearms. He looks at all of you, before collapsing. You pass a pair of cultists just screwing each other in the hallway, not even reacting to your presence. You nervously step over them, continuing on. Soon, you find Morrow. Jack Morrow stands in a large room, in front of a mountain of bright crimson powder. He's completely naked, holding a machete and screaming at the roof. "I thought you said he'd be unprofessional," Fay chuckles. "I'm in love..." Fucky sighs. "Come on! Come on! Let's fucking do it!" Morrow screams. Jack shoves his face into the pile of crimson, and begins to snort it directly up his nose. He snorts for what seems like a solid minute, before swinging his machete around. He notices you all, grinning. "Elios! Elios, you fucking scumfuck!" he says, running over. You expect the two to embrace, but... it doesn't go that way. Jack pushes Elios against a wall and begins kissing him, before grabbing Elios hand and cutting it open, and licking the blood. Then, he pushes your lieutenant away, grinning. "Come! Do Blood Dust with me! It's good shit!" he yells. "Please, try it..." Fucky yells. "RAGE!" Smiley roars. "I'm on business," Elios says. "We have an offer to make." "Shoot," Morrow says, snorting more Blood Dust off his machete. "Do your friends want some?" "I'll pass," you say, as your companions nod. "The men with me want to become your business partners. We'll sell you chems, you distribute them. You still have clients?" "Yeah, man!" Morrow grins. "I have a dozen Slaaneshi war-bands calling for me, I'm hooked up with the pirates and raiders and shit in the sector, and I'll take whatever's left! YEAH!" Morrow smacks himself in the face with the flat of his machete, laughing. He turns, grabbing a female cultist and pushing her onto the table. The cultist begins undressing, as the two begin making love... no, it's just fucking, fucking in front of you. You watch nervously as the act goes on for about a minute, before Morrow pulls out, snorts another line of Blood Dust, and walks back over to you, his member standing prominently in the air. "Go on.. embrace it!" Fucky says. "Holy shit," Elizabeth says, stepping back. "What's wrong, baby?" Morrow asks. "You want some? Trust me, I have another few goes in me. Bend over and pull up your robes." "Fuck off," Elizabeth says, electricity running along her hands. "Whatever. So, you had a deal for me?" "Yeah. Elios said he talked to you about the exact numbers, right?" Morrow pauses, before nodding. "Shit, yeah! Let me think, let me think! Given current market prices, net worth over a long term deal amounts to... what... Fuck, what currency do you use?" Morrow says, shaking his head as he does more Blood Dust. "Thrones," you say. "That's about fifty million Thrones profit in the foreseeable future, take five for contact's ten percent finder fees and all that, another five to pay off the Imperials so we have access to the outlaw planets which will make up about twenty to thirty percent of our market, and... did I ask you if you wanted to fuck?" he says, looking at Fay. "I'll pass," Fay says, staring at the man as he nods vigorously. "OK, OK! That's about forty million Thrones, wage levels cheap due to use of slaves, split two ways... this deal should net you around twenty million Thrones." "I told you he was a genius. Did all that in his head," Elios smirks, as Elizabeth frowns. "Do we really trust this guy, Karth?" Elizabeth says. "Fuck! You should probably not, bitch!" Morrow screams as Elizabeth. "I'll fuck you at first opportunity! Praise Slaanesh, I just want to push you against the wall and finger-fuck you! WHOA!" Morrow slams his head against the wall, before stumbling backwards and collapsing onto the pile of Blood Dust. "Shit... I need sleep. Do we have a deal, Elios?" "We need a bargain of f..." Elios begins to say, before Morrow interrupts. "I'll pay your half up front. Bargain of faith. If I do that, you promise to only supply me. We can make a new deal after the fifty million profit mark is hit. Deal?" "Sure," you say. "I'll have one of the tech priests transfer it over," Morrow says. "Now, I need to sleep. I haven't slept in a few... weeks." Morrow closes his eyes, lying against the floor. "That man is a maniac," Fay says. "Yeah. Let's get off this ship," you say. > You continue True to his word, Morrow does transfer over twenty million Thrones to your account. You ensure that he gets every shipment of chems you create, and ensure you have a solid business contact for this. The man's insane, but he's proven trustworthy for the time being.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stare down at the hiveworld from the bridge of your ship, looking at the planet. To your surprise, the Imperials hold barely any hold on this world. The Governor is basically in charge of everything, the Planetary Defense Force is bolstered by Imperial Guard deserters and Xenos Mercenaries, and they seem indifferent in regards to everything else. After a short time in a shuttle, you find yourself descending into Hive Beta, to meet with the leader of Outice-81's thriving drug industry. You sit alongside a half dozen Tribals, including Opie, the gas-masked giant you saw fight, as well as Fay, Elizabeth and Elios. The doors open, and a solid scent wave of shit hits you, causing you to retch. You walk outside, looking at the dozens of ultra-poor workers hurrying about their day. Two men wearing red leather dusters stand by the landing area, holding shotguns, wearing sunglasses and black balaclavas. The men stroll towards you, staring blankly ahead. "Howdy," one says, staring at you. "You must be Mister Karth. And these are...?" Your lieutenants state their names, as the man nods. "The name's Cheq. I'll be taking you to meet the boss." You nod, following the guard as he strolls through the streets. It takes about five minutes of walking through peasant markets, shit-filled alleys and endless scenes of the vile life of the area. Soon, you find your guard pulling open a large metal door to enter a large, bunker-like area. You walk inside, finding yourself in the bunker, which is particularly cleaner than the slums outside the bunker. You soon find yourself faced with a massive man with heavily burned skin wearing the same outfit as the guards. "Karth, yes?" he asks. "Good to meet you. I'm Skinrik. From what your number two says, you want to purchase some cooks' contract from me." "Number two?" you ask. "The dude with the voice synthesizer. Primus." "Ah, yes," you say. "Yes, he's correct. What do you have for me?" Skinrik smiles, before walking along the hall. You follow and soon find yourself in a massive chem lab. A half dozen workers slave away at various pieces of equipment, pouring vats of chemicals into vibrating vats and other strange things. "Zero!" Skinrik yells. A young woman wearing a boiler suit and a gas mask turns from mixing a vat of burning liquid and jogs over to you. "Yes, sir?" she asks. "This is the finest cook in the sector," Skinrik says. "And the most recent of my fiances." Zero nods nervously, looking at you. "This... this is the... the psychic guy?" she asks. You nod, and she takes a deep breath, looking terrified. "Are you alright?" you ask. "We don't bite." "He doesn't speak for me," Elios says, as you frown as the Slaaneshi leader. "Play nice," you say, before turning to Skinrik once more. "Zero had some issue with psykers. She was the main cook for the Green Snakes gang, who were wiped out by the psyker gang the Mind Men. Only reason she and her cooks are alive is because I took them in." "Uh... yeah," Zero says, a flash of annoyance appearing on her face before she goes back to her nervous look. "They're the ones you're willing to sell me?" you ask. "You do realize that I'll need them full time, permanently, right?" "Of course," Skinrik nods. "So you won't see your fiance... ever?" you say. "I can deal with it. I got six wives. Don't need another." "Alright then," you shrug. "How much are we talking?" "Zero's the best cook in the sector. You want her, you'll have to fork over a cool two and a half million. You want her cooks, that'll be five million. The equipment will set you back two more. I'll have the men repair and refuel your vessel to make it a solid ten million thrones. We have a deal?" > You decline "That's too much," you say. "We're not lowering the price," Skinrik frowns. "Then I suppose we don't have a deal," you say. Skinrik spits on the ground, before nodding at his guards. "Take them back to their shuttle." An hour later, you're back on your shuttle, heading back to the ship. You've had enough of this.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stare down at the hiveworld from the bridge of your ship, looking at the planet. To your surprise, the Imperials hold barely any hold on this world. The Governor is basically in charge of everything, the Planetary Defense Force is bolstered by Imperial Guard deserters and Xenos Mercenaries, and they seem indifferent in regards to everything else. After a short time in a shuttle, you find yourself descending into Hive Beta, to meet with the leader of Outice-81's thriving drug industry. You sit alongside a half dozen Tribals, including Opie, the gas-masked giant you saw fight, as well as Fay, Elizabeth and Elios. The doors open, and a solid scent wave of shit hits you, causing you to retch. You walk outside, looking at the dozens of ultra-poor workers hurrying about their day. Two men wearing red leather dusters stand by the landing area, holding shotguns, wearing sunglasses and black balaclavas. The men stroll towards you, staring blankly ahead. "Howdy," one says, staring at you. "You must be Mister Karth. And these are...?" Your lieutenants state their names, as the man nods. "The name's Cheq. I'll be taking you to meet the boss." You nod, following the guard as he strolls through the streets. It takes about five minutes of walking through peasant markets, shit-filled alleys and endless scenes of the vile life of the area. Soon, you find your guard pulling open a large metal door to enter a large, bunker-like area. You walk inside, finding yourself in the bunker, which is particularly cleaner than the slums outside the bunker. You soon find yourself faced with a massive man with heavily burned skin wearing the same outfit as the guards. "Karth, yes?" he asks. "Good to meet you. I'm Skinrik. From what your number two says, you want to purchase some cooks' contract from me." "Number two?" you ask. "The dude with the voice synthesizer. Primus." "Ah, yes," you say. "Yes, he's correct. What do you have for me?" Skinrik smiles, before walking along the hall. You follow and soon find yourself in a massive chem lab. A half dozen workers slave away at various pieces of equipment, pouring vats of chemicals into vibrating vats and other strange things. "Zero!" Skinrik yells. A young woman wearing a boiler suit and a gas mask turns from mixing a vat of burning liquid and jogs over to you. "Yes, sir?" she asks. "This is the finest cook in the sector," Skinrik says. "And the most recent of my fiances." Zero nods nervously, looking at you. "This... this is the... the psychic guy?" she asks. You nod, and she takes a deep breath, looking terrified. "Are you alright?" you ask. "We don't bite." "He doesn't speak for me," Elios says, as you frown as the Slaaneshi leader. "Play nice," you say, before turning to Skinrik once more. "Zero had some issue with psykers. She was the main cook for the Green Snakes gang, who were wiped out by the psyker gang the Mind Men. Only reason she and her cooks are alive is because I took them in." "Uh... yeah," Zero says, a flash of annoyance appearing on her face before she goes back to her nervous look. "They're the ones you're willing to sell me?" you ask. "You do realize that I'll need them full time, permanently, right?" "Of course," Skinrik nods. "So you won't see your fiance... ever?" you say. "I can deal with it. I got six wives. Don't need another." "Alright then," you shrug. "How much are we talking?" "Zero's the best cook in the sector. You want her, you'll have to fork over a cool two and a half million. You want her cooks, that'll be five million. The equipment will set you back two more. I'll have the men repair and refuel your vessel to make it a solid ten million thrones. We have a deal?" > You attempt to kidnap the cooks Although telepathy isn't your strength, you send a message to your lieutenants and guards. "Strike," you command subconsciously. You look at Skinrik, sizing him up. You almost certainly need to kill him first. > You set him alight You fire a burst of flames forward, setting Skinrik alight. He screams as flames engulf his body, but grits his teeth. With a look of pure malice, he draws a shotgun from his side holster and charges forward, fighting through the pain. Your men raise their weapons but Skinrik is faster, and with a single shot blows off your head.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Although telepathy isn't your strength, you send a message to your lieutenants and guards. "Strike," you command subconsciously. You look at Skinrik, sizing him up. You almost certainly need to kill him first. > You strike him down with a bolt of psychic energy You blast a bolt of psychic energy forward, striking Skinrik in the chest and killing him instantly. Zero immediately draws the shotgun, raising it to your head. > You kill her You fire a bolt of psychic energy, killing her instantly as she collapses to the ground. "Alright, let's bounce! This area's fucked!" A group of gang members charge in, wielding autoguns and a few lasguns, blocking your exit. "Kill them, get to the shuttle," you say. > You fire a firebolt You send a bolt of pure, infernal fire towards the enemies as they flood into the room. The fireball explodes, incinerating all of the men. Unfortunately, you're in a chem lab full of flammable liquids. The fire quickly ignites a vat, and you watch as it quickly sets aflame. You don't even have time to put up your shield before it explodes, killing you instantly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fire a bolt of psychic energy, killing her instantly as she collapses to the ground. "Alright, let's bounce! This area's fucked!" A group of gang members charge in, wielding autoguns and a few lasguns, blocking your exit. "Kill them, get to the shuttle," you say. > You overwhelm the enemy with bolts of psychic energy You keep firing bolts of psychic energy, filling the air with psychic energy that wipes out scores of the enemy. Your Tribals and lieutenants push forward as many of the cooks are killed in the crossfire, but without Zero you don't have a head cook, so the plan's fucked anyway. The guards are untrained, badly armed and unarmored. Your men are infinitely better, so you easily manage to carve a path back towards the shuttle. It takes about an hour of slow fighting and you lose two Tribals to the gang members, but you soon find yourself at the shuttle. Your pilot is fending off gang members with the shuttle's autoguns, all whilst swearing. "Shit! Fuck! Balls! S...! Oh, Karth! Holy fucking Grox shit, you're alive! I mean, sorry, Karth, glad to see you," Hawkins says. "Let's get the hell out of here!" The shuttle lifts up from the planet, as bullets clang into the heavily armored cockpit. "I was half-convinced you'd have left us," you say. "No, sir," the pilot answers. "Let's get out of here." > You get out of here You sit in the shuttle with your other lieutenants, leaning against the wall. "Uh, that went badly," Elizabeth complains. "Screw it," you complain. "Fuck the drug industry. It's not working for us. Let's just get out of here, get back to work." "Done," Fay says. "Let's head out. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You blast a bolt of psychic energy forward, striking Skinrik in the chest and killing him instantly. Zero immediately draws the shotgun, raising it to your head. > You knock the gun from her hands You psychically knock the gun from her hands, grabbing her by the throat. "You're coming with me. I'm planning on taking you and your cooks back to my vessel to cook drugs for me," you say. "You realize if you try to force my men or I into shitty conditions or anything like that we'll just be able to poison the chems and have everyone of your customers after your head? We can end your entire career." "I understand, I understand," you say. "I'm not trying to fuck you over." "Fuck!" Zero says. "How do I know I can trust you?" "Do I look so retarded you don't think I understand how easily you'd fuck me over. "Fine," Zero says, biting her lip nervously before looking at her cooks. "Green Snakes, follow the psyker. What's the exit plan, then, psyker?" A group of gang members charge in, wielding autoguns and a few lasguns, blocking your exit. "Kill them, get to the shuttle," you say.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You blast a bolt of psychic energy forward, striking Skinrik in the chest and killing him instantly. Zero immediately draws the shotgun, raising it to your head. > You do nothing You do nothing, as Zero presses the shotgun to your head. "What the fuck do you think you're doing, strolling in here and killing Skinrik?" "He was an idiot," you reply. "What are you even planning?" she asks. "I'm planning on taking you and your cooks back to my vessel to cook drugs for me," you say simply. "Surely that was obvious?" "You realize if you try to force my men or I into shitty conditions or anything like that we'll just be able to poison the chems and have everyone of your customers after your head? We can end your entire career." "I understand, I understand," you say. "I'm not trying to fuck you over." "Fuck!" Zero says, before looking at her cooks. "Green Snakes, follow the psyker. What's the exit plan, then, psyker?" A group of gang members charge in, wielding autoguns and a few lasguns, blocking your exit. "Kill them, get to the shuttle," you say.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It takes some explaining and effort to get the lieutenants to agree. While as soon as Elios hears about it he's on board and the other Staine Siblings agree, Fay and Olive don't seem to be fans of idea. Castus agrees whole heartedly, and Primus, Cain, Hayes and Meliodas are indifferent and just agree, placing the majority. You quickly find the most knowledgeable about drug manufacturing of your lieutenants, Primus, Elios and Elizabeth, and gather them in the war room. "Why is Elizabeth here?" Elios asks. "She's never touched a chem in her life." "Do you know about Methoxetamine, Elios? About it's use on the brain?" Elizabeth asks. "Oh, you wanted a nerd," Elios says. "Understood, darling." "Our crew's not good enough to manufacture chems for market," you say. "We need to f ind someone better. Primus, anything showing up in your archives?" "Pirate chatter tells me that the best... "product" coming through is from either the Hiveworld of Outice-81 or the Xenos species Jatkiri. Both sell a good product, so we could easily hire them." > You attempt to hire the Jatkiri You stand in the war room of the Roar of the Vortex. Monitors in front of you show you a view of the nearby Jatkiri ships, dozens of oblong ships bristling with cannons. "Jatkiri ships," you say over the comms. "I am Captain Karth of the Roar of the Vortex. I would like to talk to the admiral of this fleet." "Activating translators," Primus says. "Tau-Jatkiri alliances has made thee translator technology highly advanced. Of course, be careful with your words." There's a moment of silence, before the speakers blare again with Primus' voice." "Bigs ships... lead to big warfare," the Jatkiri voices reply. "Can't be trusted." "We don't want you to fight. We want you to join us." "What do you do?" the Jatkiri replies. "Uh... excuse me?" you say. "What... profession does your fleet have?" "It depends," you say. "Primarily, we do fight, but..." "No deal. We don't fight. Already had to fight Tau-Jatkiri... then Void Claw Jatkiri... then Royal Jatkiri. Too much fighting. Now, we flow free. Tongue won't work anymore. End chatter." > You accept this and give up on your drug manufacturing plans Uh, you've done too much work today. Fuck it, leave the Xenos be. You're not in the mood to travel across the galaxy to some shitty hiveworld to be told no again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stand in the war room of the Roar of the Vortex. Monitors in front of you show you a view of the nearby Jatkiri ships, dozens of oblong ships bristling with cannons. "Jatkiri ships," you say over the comms. "I am Captain Karth of the Roar of the Vortex. I would like to talk to the admiral of this fleet." "Activating translators," Primus says. "Tau-Jatkiri alliances has made thee translator technology highly advanced. Of course, be careful with your words." There's a moment of silence, before the speakers blare again with Primus' voice." "Bigs ships... lead to big warfare," the Jatkiri voices reply. "Can't be trusted." "We don't want you to fight. We want you to join us." "What do you do?" the Jatkiri replies. "Uh... excuse me?" you say. "What... profession does your fleet have?" "It depends," you say. "Primarily, we do fight, but..." "No deal. We don't fight. Already had to fight Tau-Jatkiri... then Void Claw Jatkiri... then Royal Jatkiri. Too much fighting. Now, we flow free. Tongue won't work anymore. End chatter." > You accept this and attempt to hire the Outice-81 Chem Manufacturers Fuck it, the Xenos won't work for you. Time to find some good, human workers on Outice-81.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You allow the drugs, as well as adding them to the rations, giving each resident coupons to report to their nearby medical agent for whatever precious, delightful drug fuels them. Unfortunately, the program ends up end costing you a solid five million Thrones, as well as doing some damage to your men's efficiency. Despite that, morale increases substantially. It seems when men are off their heads, they're more than happy to risk their lives. The success of this policy, or at least the success in that you're capable of manufacturing drugs aboard the vessel, does give you an idea. You could easily set up a chem manufacturing industry aboard the ship to increase the funds you have to work with. You'd need to find a new group of cooks as well as a supplier, but it could prove to be a profitable venture. > You decline You're a warship, not a traveling drug lab. Now's not the time to get distracted. You're not going to break into the drug industry.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Well, on to the next group of recreational drugs. Whilst alcohol technically falls under this category, it’s not usually what people refer to. No, the main ones, as you see when Elizabeth puts them on the table, are less traditional Elizabeth puts a large, brown cigar, a glass vial containing blue liquid, a small patch of green tablets and quite a few other drugs “These are known collectively as the Eyes, due to all of them having a fairly noticeably effect on your eyes. It’s really a catch all term commonly used on the ship, and in the sector. They’re… for lack of a better word, light drugs. From the smokeable Sun Scales designed to get you in a trance or give you some hallucinations, the Blood Root that has the effect of making the user feel happier and more mellow, the Slug juice, absorbed through the skin, that helps relieve pain and puts the user into a deep, peaceful sleep, the Bright Gas that improves the user’s mood, the Castins that when smoked increase confidence… I can go on forever. These drugs have some negative effects, but realistically, no serious ones when taking into account their expected lifespans and the sheer amount of risks they’re already facing. Anything the drugs do is neglible. The only possible risk is that their productivity worsens because they’re as high as a kite.” “So, do we ban or allow?” you ask. “Well, those aren’t necessarily the only options, in this instance. Due to the nature of these drugs, we have five options. The first two, as you’ll know, involve either blanket banning or fully allowing these and letting the winds of free market spread them out among the crew. The third involves allowing them, but to a limited degree. Everyone has a limited amount they’re allowed to buy, only the least dangerous are brought in, that kind of thing.” “Go on,” you say. “The fourth possibility is that we become proactive with our usage of the drugs. We’re forcing our men to face horrors beyond comprehension and risk their lives. We could, for a small amount, begin purchasing and producing these drugs on-ship, rationing them out to raise the morale of the crew. Plus, this would give us the ability to actually begin selling drugs on the open market if we find a better group of cooks and a supplier. Lastly, we could just go all out. Buy a huge quantity of the drugs and start manufacturing them on ship, and just start pumping them out to the crew. Pump the gaseous drugs into the air, put all the soluble drugs into the water supply and crush up everything else to put in the food. This would amplify morale tenfold, although could lead to a serious drop in productivity, seeing as you literally couldn’t breath without getting insanely high.” > You go all out “Option five. If we’re going to allow this, we go all out.” “Yes, sir,” Elizabeth says, raising an eyebrow. “I… I guess I applaud your balls.” > You continue You sit in your chambers, taking a deep breath from the bright red… no, yellow… no purple… whatever color haze. You need some water to get rid of your headache. You lean over, grabbing your canteen, and downing your flask. You shake your head and groan as a wave of ecstasy overtakes you. A multicolored warrior dances in and out of reality in front of you, causing you to smile. This idea was fantastic. Morale is through the roof, and productivity has stayed high, as long as your productivity was… like, in regards to making more drugs. Your farms and food growing… places, or whatever, are still operational, due, thanks to automation and a few of the men still being smart enough to work. You’ve put your ship in orbit a small star, allowing the solar panels on the ship to increase the energy levels, or whatever keeps this place running. You smile, leaning back in bed. Yeah, this was a good idea…<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Next are the more recreational drugs. The first is a familiar vice: alcohol. Although the light beers and wines are too invaluable for the ship to ban, as since the crew drinks them, they’re boiling the water before they’re used in brewing these drinks, hence stopping disease from spreading due to the very unsanitary water in many parts of the ship. Still, harder liquors, like the spirits, the harder beers and the venom shit that that’s so common on the vessel are simply bad for your health and disruptive. If you were to ban these, you’d be able to increase the productivity and general levels of health on the ship. It is common on the vessel, due to how easy it is to produce, and how commonplace. Due to its radiance across the cultures of at the very least the humans on the ship, be it from the wines and rums enjoyed by the raiders and bandits, the hard liquors mercenaries pour down their throat, the wines and strange bears enjoyed by pre-industrial recruits and the simple, mass-produced moonshine and liquor that can be found on any hive world in existence." > You allow Your crew are willing to fight endless hordes of alien monsters for you, willing to travel through a daemon-infested realm of Chaos and madness for you, willing to toss their body into the fray even when it won’t come out from you. Still, only your most fanatical followers are willing to give up their alcohol for you. You happily leave it be.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Ban," you say. "What else we have?" Elizabeth fumbles through her bag once more, pulling out a small, black vial. She places it on the table. "Reaper," she says. "It's just arriving from the Black Aces War Band." "What's it do?" you ask. "It gives users a huge confidence boost and immunity to pain, faster reflexes, a faster heart rate and adrenaline for a small period of time. It's very dangerous, though, only used in bad situations. It has a 10% fatality rate, but it's VERY effective in battle." "That stuff leads to serious health issues," Fay points out. "Very effective, though. Shockingly so," Castus says. > You allow "Allow it," you say. > You continue In changing little in regards to combat drugs, you don't have much effect on either morale or combat efficiency. Probably a safe choice.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Ban it," you say. "Alright then," Elizabeth says, looking down at her notes. She fumbles through her pockets, pulling out two packets. One of a white, granular powder, the other is a brown one, looking like grinded up dirt. "Here we have Zap and Dirt. Zap can be snorted, eaten or drank with alcohol to perk up energy levels and increase reaction time, while Dust is inhaled to improve your senses. These drugs DO have a few negative effects. Mood swings and some minor mental problems with the former, respiratory issues with the latter. There's not very popular, but only as it's fairly new and we haven't stopped at ports recently." "Thoughts?" you ask. "I don't have enough research to formulate an opinion," Elizabeth admits. "Allow Zap! That shit's good!" Castus says, finally paying attention, before getting distraction by a smudge of... something on the table. "Perhaps its effect on mental health are really serious. I mean, look at Castus," Olive says. > You allow "Allow," you say. "What else we have?" Elizabeth fumbles through her bag once more, pulling out a small, black vial. She places it on the table. "Reaper," she says. "It's just arriving from the Black Aces War Band." "What's it do?" you ask. "It gives users a huge confidence boost and immunity to pain, faster reflexes, a faster heart rate and adrenaline for a small period of time. It's very dangerous, though, only used in bad situations. It has a 10% fatality rate, but it's VERY effective in battle." "That stuff leads to serious health issues," Fay points out. "Very effective, though. Shockingly so," Castus says.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"What's first, then?" you ask. Elizabeth grabs a metal, torso-shaped rig covered in syringes and medical equipment onto the table. "This is called a chem rig. Pioneered by the Morallians in the Eastern Fringe, picked up by various mercenaries, and now heavily used on this ship. The rig is outfitted with several syringes filled with either medicines or light drugs such as the adrenaline-based Pulse, the sedative Sacred and a few other things. It's not been researched to any degree, but there appear to be no short term effects. Still, it could be dangerous long term. Soldiers buy these to increase their combat efficiency, so it can be of help to us." "The gladiators use it. It's effective," Olive says. "I've seen my Tribals use it as well. It helps, but it does tend to lead to the start of heavy drug usage that can go downhill." > You allow "Allow it," you say. "Alright then," Elizabeth says, looking down at her notes. She fumbles through her pockets, pulling out two packets. One of a white, granular powder, the other is a brown one, looking like grinded up dirt. "Here we have Zap and Dirt. Zap can be snorted, eaten or drank with alcohol to perk up energy levels and increase reaction time, while Dust is inhaled to improve your senses. These drugs DO have a few negative effects. Mood swings and some minor mental problems with the former, respiratory issues with the latter. There's not very popular, but only as it's fairly new and we haven't stopped at ports recently." "Thoughts?" you ask. "I don't have enough research to formulate an opinion," Elizabeth admits. "Allow Zap! That shit's good!" Castus says, finally paying attention, before getting distraction by a smudge of... something on the table. "Perhaps its effect on mental health are really serious. I mean, look at Castus," Olive says.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sit in your war-room, waiting patiently. The room has been done up quite nicely now that you're in charge. The head seat at the table is a black, marble throne, with Magos' Cern's skull and Chapter Master Taj's head hanging from the red banner behind you, the banner emblazoned with the stark, spiky symbol vaguely shaped like the spear that once represented the Uwais tribe. You lieutenants are around you, Fay sitting directly to your right in an ornate red chair, with the upper half of the humanoid robot that Primus uses as his "face" to talk to to your left. Cain sits in a massive chair, a massive cooked carcass in his hands that he devours. Across from him sits Captain Hayes, who you've situated near the air vent to avoid choking on the ever-present smoke that emanates from the ever-present lho-stick clenched in his teeth. Olive and Castus are at the end, across from each other, which leads to an endless amount of bickering between the intelligent, pragmatic Olive and carefree, happy, impulsive Castus. You're all set up entirely to scare and intimidate John the Hermit when he enters. The Staine Siblings are off to the side with Meliodas, with Durge chewing on a rat carcass, Elizabeth reading, Elios waiting impatiently and Meliodas pacing the room. Hopefully, it'll work. "By will of the people, I ascend to the chamber of the Gods! I will beseech them as a poor, twisted food, by will of the people!" a voice cries, as the door is pushed open. Two Kasrkin soldiers stand next to John the Hermit. The mutant prophet is a horrible, wretched creature. His spine is twisted, making him a hunchbacked creature. The ring and pinky finger of his left hand is fused together, as is his middle and index finger, giving it a crab claw-like appearance. His other hand is different, a literal engorged crab claw, covered in a thick chitin, looking able to crush a man in half. His face is twisted and mismatched, with only a few oversized teeth in his mouth, one eye much larger than the other and a squashed nose that looks akin to it having been badly and repeatedly broken. His back is misshapen, covered with a thick chitin like that of a crab's being more akin to a shell than a human's back. "With my own two eyes! With my own two eyes I see the supposed gods!" he says, walking forward with a strange look on his face that you can't decipher thanks to his deformities. "Are you the man known known as John the Hermit?" you ask. "The man? No, no, not at all. I am the beasts, a simple creature twisted by your inaction," John the Hermit says bitterly. "My inaction?" you ask. "Have you seen what freaks we've become? Nuclear waste from reactors aren't cleared off, even though we haven't used nuclear reactors for millennia! Malnutrition! Lack of medical attention! There used to be slaves who were constantly tortured and brutally forced to work, and we envied them!" "What is it that you want exactly?" Primus asks. "Who is it that runs this vessel?" John the Hermit asks. "I do," you reply, looking briefly at Primus and the others for any signs of dissent. "By what right do you claim to be leader? By will of the people, by democracy's gentle guiding hand, I am the rightful leader!" "By right of force," you reply. "Ha! I'd wager my army of malformed brothers against yours any day! We have the numbers, we have the will, we have the power to take this ship!" "Did you come here to make threats and promise me you'll take over?" you ask, as your fists set alight. "I came here to offer you a deal. John the Hermit is no leader. John the Hermit is a simple man. I just want a boost in our standards of living. Running water, good food, actual bedrooms, human rights!" he says. "Primus, how much would that cost us?" "If we were to raise the mutant standard of living to those described by John the Hermit, it would cost, and this is a rough, fluctuating estimate, twenty million thrones." "That's doable, is it not? A few million Thrones to ensure your one at the head of this vessel? It's good, yes? I also want a place at your table, as an advisor, so I can continue speaking for my mutants. With this, we'll stay your humble servants." > You refuse "No?" "You'll regret this, captain," John the Hermit says, turning and waking back out of the room to head down to the lower floors. You make sure there's extra guards to put off any attacks. Unfortunately, you're simply unprepared for the scale of this rebellion that takes place less than a day later. John the Hermit must have been planning this for decades, behind Kyros' back. Stores of ammo and weapons, hidden in stockpiles in the parts of the ship that hadn't been searched in millennia, are unearthed, as many of the functions of the ship cease as the mutants stop working. While your forces have better training, better equipment, better everything, as it has been said before, quantity has a whole quality of its own. The endless mutant hordes, entirely willing to die for their cause, all willing to martyr themselves as John the Hermit did. As you stand in the war-room, surrounded by an army of mutants, burning dozens as lightning runs along your fingertips and psychic blasts kill all who could hope to oppose you, the mutants begin to overwhelm you. As their tentacles, hands and claws bring you down, tearing you apart, you have a brief musing about how similar this is to <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Now that you're finished working on repairing the ship and its back to full abilities, you have another issue. You restock at a nearby outlaw planet, trading much of Kyros' personal wealth in order to outfit and repair the ship, which is made simple with Primus' help. Ship operation seems actually fairly simple. As long as Amadeus is under your thumb and the military might is yours, you'll be fine. Most of the hard work required is done by Primus. With those two, you're golden. One of the main issues, though, is the mutants. As your slaves have all been wiped out or had joined up with one of the war-bands, Kyros or your forces during the mutiny, mutants are now filling in most of the crew roles aboard this vessel. The thing is, they're getting antsy about their position, wanting more power and a say in the decisions of the vessel. Reports say that a mutant known as John the Hermit is leading the mutants, inciting dissent and rallying the masses of mutants. Although the mutants are seen as an irrelevant issue by most, you know that's not the case. They're tough, with naturally mutated weapons, and there's massive numbers of them. If they're genuinely organized and inspired by this John the Hermit, they could easily take the ship when you're at low strength. > You ignore the issue You ignore the issue, throwing a few extra guards in defensive positions to show your strength and ward off the rebellious mutant hordes. Unfortunately, you're simply unprepared for the scale of this rebellion. John the Hermit must have been planning this for decades, behind Kyros' back. Stores of ammo and weapons, hidden in stockpiles in the parts of the ship that hadn't been searched in millennia, are unearthed, as many of the functions of the ship cease as the mutants stop working. While your forces have better training, better equipment, better everything, as it has been said before, quantity has a whole quality of its own. The endless mutant hordes, entirely willing to die for their cause, all willing to martyr themselves as John the Hermit did. As you stand in the war-room, surrounded by an army of mutants, burning dozens as lightning runs along your fingertips and psychic blasts kill all who could hope to oppose you, the mutants begin to overwhelm you. As their tentacles, hands and claws bring you down, tearing you apart, you have a brief musing about how similar this is to Kyros' death.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk down the landing ramp, looking out at the large walls that surround the massive factory-city. Nude men wander around, covered in grease and holding large tools. Fay walks out of the landing, a shoulder-mounted camera and speaker on her to give Primus a place to speak and see. "Well... I guess they're nude. What a lovely view, am I right, Karth?" Fay smirks. "You grew up in a tribe of nudists," you remark. "Yeah, but that was when I was little. Now that I'm post-pubescent, I can appreciate the view." You flick your wrist, sending her tumbling to the ground. "Asshole," she laughs, oping back to her feet. A thick, burly, oil-covered man walks forward from the crowd of workers, a huge wrench in his hands. "What?" he grunts. "My name's Karth. I..." You see a brawl emerge from the crowd to your left. Two massive workers begin to fight, their massive fists smashing into each other with an astonishing strength. They let out howling shouts as more men join into the fight. The leader strides forward with a growl, swinging his wrench and smashing a few men in the head, forcing them to crumple to the ground. Soon, the fight ends with a bunch of injured men lying on the ground. "Sorry 'bout that," the leader says. "One of the boys thought Chef gave him too little meat. You know how men are. The name's O'Neill." "You know why we're here?" you ask. "You wanted to hire some of my men, huh? This Primus fella or whoever the fuck I talked to cleared it up with me," O'Neill asks. "I can get it done. We've been having a population explosion. But I want something in return." "Go on?" you ask. "My men are taken care of. Good medical treatment, free food, rooms and drink, and I mean men's drink, not milk and honey-shit, as well as payment for their work done. In exchange, I'll give you all the men you need. We gotta deal?" > You refuse "No. In five minutes, we've seen your men behave as brutes, and you're asking for too much," you say. O'Neill spits on the ground and snarls. "Get the fuck outta here, boy," he says. With that, you quickly depart and head back to your ship.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"We'll stay," you say, as Durge nods. "Well... this'll be interesting," Meliodas grins, twisting Meliodas' daemonic face. "Alright," Elios grunts. "What's next on the agenda?" "The ship," Primus says. "Or me, for lack of a better word. I have gotten it running to a degree and it's capable of travel, there's no way it will be able to hold up in a fight or operate long-term." "How do we fix it?" you ask. "The death of the Tech-Priests has left us lacking men specialized to repair the ship. I've found three groups that could hypothetically fulfill that role, as well as two other solutions." "Go on," you reply. "There is the Rutherford-Dalton-Boyle Think Tank, a faction hidden away in several space stations, researching and creating in the gas giant of Ingenium-IV. A good negotiator should be able to convince at least some of them to leave their stations to come aboard the Roar of the Vortex to continue their research aboard our vessel as well as having access to huge archives of intelligence here, being able to research the ship and maintaining that the technology isn't lost." "Who else?" you ask, "The Iron Smiths of Daeranthium. Daeranthium is a planet that contains several ancient factories and forges, with massive amounts of resources such as huge, ancient mines. The planet, while tribal in culture, are advanced enough to produce weapons, vehicles, armor and more for the Imperium. We could attempt to negotiate with them to take some of their men aboard to fulfill the role of engineers." "And the final group?" "The Dark Mechanicus is Chaos' version of the Adeptus Mechanicus, whether it be those from the Adeptus Mechanicus who went rogue and were corrupted by Chaos, or those recruited by them. Their work requires manpower that they don't have. I've found reports of a Dark Mechanicus group known as the Harbringers of Menedez. They've already made a reputation for selling slaves trained with skills such as the ones we desire. For five million Thrones, we could have them soon to fulfill the required role." "You said you have two other options. What are they?" "Option one involves the funding an education program to educate the mutant workers. For ten million Thrones, we could educate the mutant population. They wouldn't be as experienced as other options, but quantity has a whole quality all it's own." "And...?" you say before Primus interrupts you. The "Option two is more cruel. We have the technology and cybernetics taken from the dead Techpriests and Servitors. If you were willing to lobotomize a few of the mutant workers we have, the least intelligent and productive, to create a new legion of servitors under my control. This would be cheap, effective and we could have it done in the night to avoid breaking night, framing it as accidents. So, which option shall it be?" > You purchase the slaves from the Harbringers of Menedez The trade is, thankfully, uneventful. You're given the slaves, who include humans, Tau, Gretchin, Snotlings and more are all given bomb collars to make sure they do as you've asked. They're well-trained and efficient workers, even though they need to be given a tight leash and constantly guarded, and there's some acts of sabotage, their efficiency makes up for it, and they improve as workers as you treat the most loyal, least rebellious better. The slave-engineers will most certainly fulfill any and every role you have for them.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"We'll stay," you say, as Durge nods. "Well... this'll be interesting," Meliodas grins, twisting Meliodas' daemonic face. "Alright," Elios grunts. "What's next on the agenda?" "The ship," Primus says. "Or me, for lack of a better word. I have gotten it running to a degree and it's capable of travel, there's no way it will be able to hold up in a fight or operate long-term." "How do we fix it?" you ask. "The death of the Tech-Priests has left us lacking men specialized to repair the ship. I've found three groups that could hypothetically fulfill that role, as well as two other solutions." "Go on," you reply. "There is the Rutherford-Dalton-Boyle Think Tank, a faction hidden away in several space stations, researching and creating in the gas giant of Ingenium-IV. A good negotiator should be able to convince at least some of them to leave their stations to come aboard the Roar of the Vortex to continue their research aboard our vessel as well as having access to huge archives of intelligence here, being able to research the ship and maintaining that the technology isn't lost." "Who else?" you ask, "The Iron Smiths of Daeranthium. Daeranthium is a planet that contains several ancient factories and forges, with massive amounts of resources such as huge, ancient mines. The planet, while tribal in culture, are advanced enough to produce weapons, vehicles, armor and more for the Imperium. We could attempt to negotiate with them to take some of their men aboard to fulfill the role of engineers." "And the final group?" "The Dark Mechanicus is Chaos' version of the Adeptus Mechanicus, whether it be those from the Adeptus Mechanicus who went rogue and were corrupted by Chaos, or those recruited by them. Their work requires manpower that they don't have. I've found reports of a Dark Mechanicus group known as the Harbringers of Menedez. They've already made a reputation for selling slaves trained with skills such as the ones we desire. For five million Thrones, we could have them soon to fulfill the required role." "You said you have two other options. What are they?" "Option one involves the funding an education program to educate the mutant workers. For ten million Thrones, we could educate the mutant population. They wouldn't be as experienced as other options, but quantity has a whole quality all it's own." "And...?" you say before Primus interrupts you. The "Option two is more cruel. We have the technology and cybernetics taken from the dead Techpriests and Servitors. If you were willing to lobotomize a few of the mutant workers we have, the least intelligent and productive, to create a new legion of servitors under my control. This would be cheap, effective and we could have it done in the night to avoid breaking night, framing it as accidents. So, which option shall it be?" > You train the mutants as engineers The mutants are enrolled in the training programs. The mutants struggle with more intellectual tasks like computing, but their numbers mean that enough of them get it to make the ship operational. All in all, the mutants are successful in fulfilling every role the ship has available. Now the Roar of the Vortex is at full power. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"We'll stay," you say, as Durge nods. "Well... this'll be interesting," Meliodas grins, twisting Meliodas' daemonic face. "Alright," Elios grunts. "What's next on the agenda?" "The ship," Primus says. "Or me, for lack of a better word. I have gotten it running to a degree and it's capable of travel, there's no way it will be able to hold up in a fight or operate long-term." "How do we fix it?" you ask. "The death of the Tech-Priests has left us lacking men specialized to repair the ship. I've found three groups that could hypothetically fulfill that role, as well as two other solutions." "Go on," you reply. "There is the Rutherford-Dalton-Boyle Think Tank, a faction hidden away in several space stations, researching and creating in the gas giant of Ingenium-IV. A good negotiator should be able to convince at least some of them to leave their stations to come aboard the Roar of the Vortex to continue their research aboard our vessel as well as having access to huge archives of intelligence here, being able to research the ship and maintaining that the technology isn't lost." "Who else?" you ask, "The Iron Smiths of Daeranthium. Daeranthium is a planet that contains several ancient factories and forges, with massive amounts of resources such as huge, ancient mines. The planet, while tribal in culture, are advanced enough to produce weapons, vehicles, armor and more for the Imperium. We could attempt to negotiate with them to take some of their men aboard to fulfill the role of engineers." "And the final group?" "The Dark Mechanicus is Chaos' version of the Adeptus Mechanicus, whether it be those from the Adeptus Mechanicus who went rogue and were corrupted by Chaos, or those recruited by them. Their work requires manpower that they don't have. I've found reports of a Dark Mechanicus group known as the Harbringers of Menedez. They've already made a reputation for selling slaves trained with skills such as the ones we desire. For five million Thrones, we could have them soon to fulfill the required role." "You said you have two other options. What are they?" "Option one involves the funding an education program to educate the mutant workers. For ten million Thrones, we could educate the mutant population. They wouldn't be as experienced as other options, but quantity has a whole quality all it's own." "And...?" you say before Primus interrupts you. The "Option two is more cruel. We have the technology and cybernetics taken from the dead Techpriests and Servitors. If you were willing to lobotomize a few of the mutant workers we have, the least intelligent and productive, to create a new legion of servitors under my control. This would be cheap, effective and we could have it done in the night to avoid breaking night, framing it as accidents. So, which option shall it be?" > You convert workers to servitors The process is... unnerving. Carefree mutants, completely trusting in your benevolence to them, have their personality taken, their soul distinguished and large parts of their brain removed, as well as heavy cybernetization. You make sure their distinguishing features are removed, and their faces are covered with featureless metal masks with only two eye-holes and a small feeding slit, so none of their friends notice them and realize what their fate has become. They work as expected, giving your Man of Iron the ability to completely repair and operate the ship. So all in all, a success.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"We'll stay," you say, as Durge nods. "Well... this'll be interesting," Meliodas grins, twisting Meliodas' daemonic face. "Alright," Elios grunts. "What's next on the agenda?" "The ship," Primus says. "Or me, for lack of a better word. I have gotten it running to a degree and it's capable of travel, there's no way it will be able to hold up in a fight or operate long-term." "How do we fix it?" you ask. "The death of the Tech-Priests has left us lacking men specialized to repair the ship. I've found three groups that could hypothetically fulfill that role, as well as two other solutions." "Go on," you reply. "There is the Rutherford-Dalton-Boyle Think Tank, a faction hidden away in several space stations, researching and creating in the gas giant of Ingenium-IV. A good negotiator should be able to convince at least some of them to leave their stations to come aboard the Roar of the Vortex to continue their research aboard our vessel as well as having access to huge archives of intelligence here, being able to research the ship and maintaining that the technology isn't lost." "Who else?" you ask, "The Iron Smiths of Daeranthium. Daeranthium is a planet that contains several ancient factories and forges, with massive amounts of resources such as huge, ancient mines. The planet, while tribal in culture, are advanced enough to produce weapons, vehicles, armor and more for the Imperium. We could attempt to negotiate with them to take some of their men aboard to fulfill the role of engineers." "And the final group?" "The Dark Mechanicus is Chaos' version of the Adeptus Mechanicus, whether it be those from the Adeptus Mechanicus who went rogue and were corrupted by Chaos, or those recruited by them. Their work requires manpower that they don't have. I've found reports of a Dark Mechanicus group known as the Harbringers of Menedez. They've already made a reputation for selling slaves trained with skills such as the ones we desire. For five million Thrones, we could have them soon to fulfill the required role." "You said you have two other options. What are they?" "Option one involves the funding an education program to educate the mutant workers. For ten million Thrones, we could educate the mutant population. They wouldn't be as experienced as other options, but quantity has a whole quality all it's own." "And...?" you say before Primus interrupts you. The "Option two is more cruel. We have the technology and cybernetics taken from the dead Techpriests and Servitors. If you were willing to lobotomize a few of the mutant workers we have, the least intelligent and productive, to create a new legion of servitors under my control. This would be cheap, effective and we could have it done in the night to avoid breaking night, framing it as accidents. So, which option shall it be?" > You visit the Rutherford-Dalton-Boyle Think Tank Your shuttle slowly enters the gas giant, as you lose visibility of the outside. You immediately begin to feel nervous, even though your new pilot, a young and newly liberated slave by the name of Hawkins, assures you that his sensors can tell everything that's going on with ease. "Who are you?" a voice comes over the comms system. "Commander? You want to answer that?" Hawkins asks, as you grab the radio. "The name's Karth," you say. "I'm here to make a deal." "Go on..." the voice replies. "We'd like to hire your men to work and repair our vessel." "In exchange for?" "We'll feed you, cloth you, give you board, medical attention, allow you access to our vast databanks of information, let you research the ship as well as continue your research." "Hmmm... come aboard," the voice comes back. Through the scans of your ship, the space station is made out to be a large vessel made of a large ring around a central sphere. Your shuttle docks, and the doors open. The men on the other side are... simply aren't men. It seems they've taken cybernetization to an insane degree. All that remains of their organic forms are bright pink brains floating in tanks of green fluid. One is a tank attached to a cylindrical body with tiny, stumpy legs and dozens of long tentacles with various tools attached to the ends. Another is a levitating, odd shape with a single long, segmented arm ending in a three-pronged claw, as well as multiple tubes situated at the front, holding things such as cathode rays, magnetic beams and a small bunsen burner. The rest are all just as weird, lacking forms that were even vaguely humanoid. One, a brain jar hanging from four long legs, slowly walks forward, peering down at you with green electronic eyes. "You must be Karth," it says in a dull, monotone voice. "My name is Dr Malakai the Skull Taker." "Malakai the Skull taker?" you ask, curiously. "We all have wild lives before the call of academia takes us, do we now?" Dr Malakai says. "I most certainly did." "What does this institute do?" "We're an institute of former techpriests dedicated to knowledge. We search outside the tight restrictions of the God-Emperor or the Omnissiah, or the corruption of the Dark Gods." "What do you have to say of my offer?" "The research we're doing in regards to the formation of compounds in gas giants. If you expect us to give over the majority of our staff to you, we want something extra." "What more could you want?" you ask. "In exchange for funding, we could turn our focus to more practical sciences and research that could help the ship, whilst working on the Roar of the Vortex." "How much?" you ask. "Research is actually very expensive. You need test subjects, research..." "How much?" "Realistically, twenty million thrones." "That's ridiculous!" you say. "That's the only offer I'm willing to make." > You agree You hire the scientists, and soon find that it has benefits. Although much of the scientist's work is stuff far beyond your head, such as the physics behind the atom or the combustion of stars, much of it helps you. Through their work, they research and build massive solar panels on the ship which lowers fuel costs, increases the nutrition levels of nutrient paste to cut down food costs and do endlessly more. In the end, their innovations actually end up saving you twenty five million Thrones, giving you a hefty five million in profit from hiring them. Not bad for a day's work, if you do say so yourself.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your shuttle slowly enters the gas giant, as you lose visibility of the outside. You immediately begin to feel nervous, even though your new pilot, a young and newly liberated slave by the name of Hawkins, assures you that his sensors can tell everything that's going on with ease. "Who are you?" a voice comes over the comms system. "Commander? You want to answer that?" Hawkins asks, as you grab the radio. "The name's Karth," you say. "I'm here to make a deal." "Go on..." the voice replies. "We'd like to hire your men to work and repair our vessel." "In exchange for?" "We'll feed you, cloth you, give you board, medical attention, allow you access to our vast databanks of information, let you research the ship as well as continue your research." "Hmmm... come aboard," the voice comes back. Through the scans of your ship, the space station is made out to be a large vessel made of a large ring around a central sphere. Your shuttle docks, and the doors open. The men on the other side are... simply aren't men. It seems they've taken cybernetization to an insane degree. All that remains of their organic forms are bright pink brains floating in tanks of green fluid. One is a tank attached to a cylindrical body with tiny, stumpy legs and dozens of long tentacles with various tools attached to the ends. Another is a levitating, odd shape with a single long, segmented arm ending in a three-pronged claw, as well as multiple tubes situated at the front, holding things such as cathode rays, magnetic beams and a small bunsen burner. The rest are all just as weird, lacking forms that were even vaguely humanoid. One, a brain jar hanging from four long legs, slowly walks forward, peering down at you with green electronic eyes. "You must be Karth," it says in a dull, monotone voice. "My name is Dr Malakai the Skull Taker." "Malakai the Skull taker?" you ask, curiously. "We all have wild lives before the call of academia takes us, do we now?" Dr Malakai says. "I most certainly did." "What does this institute do?" "We're an institute of former techpriests dedicated to knowledge. We search outside the tight restrictions of the God-Emperor or the Omnissiah, or the corruption of the Dark Gods." "What do you have to say of my offer?" "The research we're doing in regards to the formation of compounds in gas giants. If you expect us to give over the majority of our staff to you, we want something extra." "What more could you want?" you ask. "In exchange for funding, we could turn our focus to more practical sciences and research that could help the ship, whilst working on the Roar of the Vortex." "How much?" you ask. "Research is actually very expensive. You need test subjects, research..." "How much?" "Realistically, twenty million thrones." "That's ridiculous!" you say. "That's the only offer I'm willing to make." > You refuse "No deal," you say. "Lower the price." "I'm sorry, as a man interested in science, I can't agree to anything else." "I suppose we've reached an impasse, then," you say. "Agreed. Well then if none of us will move on this issue, I suppose our deal is finished." To be fair, the Doctor remains amicable, offering you a tour of the facilities. You politely decline, nearly falling asleep as he explains the "exciting world of the atomic radius!", so you're sure an extended tour wouldn't be the best use of your time. You depart on good terms, and head back to your ship.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fire a bolt of energy, but Kyros sidesteps it with unnatural speed. By now, all the various leaders are standing, their weapons raised. "How did you pass my sensors?" Primus asks. "Please," Kyros laughs. "Did you not think my powers are strong enough to do so?" "How the fuck are you even alive, Kyros?" you ask. "Kyros? Ha! Kyros was a petty fool. Don't you recognize me, Karth?" You shake your head, still ready to engulf him in flames. "No? You don't remember my little voice in the back of your mind? I am Meliodas," Kyros says, taking a bow. "What?" you ask. "Oh, it was simple. I've wanted to take a form in this world for some time. I helped you, paying close attention, seeing potential, and assisted you as best I could. Fortunately, as you fought Kyros, I saw his mental defenses weaken during the fight between you and him. As he lay dying, the mutants at his throat, he was broken. I easily possessed his form, devoured his soul, and killed those stupid mutants with my daemonic powers." "You're a daemon?" Elios asks. "Damn right," Kyros, or Meliodas, says. You take some time to explain who Meliodas is to your other lieutenants, but soon they understand. After some extensive questioning and psychic testing to ensure that this is in fact Meliodas, he takes a seat at the table. "What are you doing?" you ask. "Well, I helped advise Karth. I'm one of his best advisors. Surely I deserve a place here?" Meliodas says. "I suppose," you say. "Give him a seat. Us Chaos followers could use an extra vote for our side," Durge says. "Now, can we continue?" "Don't hold off on my account," Meliodas grins. "Alright, let's be realistic, shall we?" Elios says. "We're Chaos. We worship the Dark Gods, corrupt, parlay with demons, all that shit. We're not changing. We also know that we've lost a shit-ton more men because of little sis' rage against us, so if this comes down to a civil war, we're all dead and you win." "Go on," you say. "So, we have two options. Option One: You keep control of the ship," Durge says. "We'll serve under you as long as we see fit, but we most likely don't leave, and we decide our path forward as a group." "Option two: you abandon the ship to us," Durge says. "We find you a world of your choosing, a little paradise world far from the reaches of the Imperium or any other enemies. It'll be our gift to you. You can pick out the world, we'll transport any who want to go there to it as well as all you'll need to survive and build a large, happy community. You'll be able to peacefully retire and live out the rest of your lives, never worrying about this ship or the battles it will fight." "One moment," you say, pulling your lieutenants together. "So... What do we think?" "Eh," Cain grunts. "We're not going to abandon this ship, are we?" Olive asks. "This is a massive war machine. We should stay. "I'm not adverse to settling down," Fay says. "But we could take the ship anyway. With control of the ship, we could carve ourselves a little empire. Nothing on the level of Kyros' aspirations, but hey, better than our ancestors could ever have dreamed of." > You find a world to settle on "None of us chose to fight, that fate was forced on us by the mad warlord Kyros," you say. "I know we'll never regain our lost lives. But we can get something close. Find us a world to settle on." "Terrific! I'll be sorry to see you finish before the jobs done," Elios says, winking. "But you can remake your lives, we can remake ours, we'll all live happily ever after." "Are there many worlds outside the reach of the Imperium?" Elizabeth pulls out a datapad and begins tapping on it. "Setting parameters... out of reach of Imperium... lack of Chaos, Ork or Dark Eldar attacks... out of reach of Tyranid swarms... suitable climate for human body... few destructive elements... oh, why are there so many hits? Oh yes, forgot to factor in the Tau... OK, we've got a few hits. Let me sort through them." After a few minutes of researching the planets, Elizabeth has three possible worlds to settle on. The first is a familiar world, because it's yours. The planet is the one you were raised on, where your people lived and died for endless generations. Kyros' looting of the planet has caused some damage, with the Great Lakes drained to a serious extent, leaving them a third of their size. The woods are half their size, with the remaining woods now overrun with Orks. Despite these issues, the planet is still one the Tribals would be happy to see, it's climate near perfect for you. The second planet is known as Hararan-IV, the fourth planet I'm it's solar system of Harandan. The planet is for the most part sea, spotted with islands. The planet is prone to pirates, who land to rest, repair their vessel and resupply from the planet's rivers and abundant jungles. It's one or the few planets entirely free of Orks. It has a wealth of life, food, water and other resources, although it suffers from extreme tsunamis that could be a serious issue. Finally, you have New Marsbourth. Unlike the two other planets, New Marsbourth is a bustling planet. Although it operates outside of the control of the Imperium, it has grown significantly, a huge population that farms, manufactures, works and lives. The planet is controlled by several warlords, fighting for control of the planet. This permanent state if war has drawn mercenaries, seen the manufacture of massive fortresses and the assembling of huge armies, which has warded off any attacks. You could easily become the largest military faction on the planet and attempt to wrest control, or build up a large, isolated community and see how city life is for you. > You home It's a pretty simple process. Amadeus seems eager to get rid of you, so when he's told to take the ship back to your homeworld, he's gleeful. Once your arrive, the Staine siblings have another question. "Just to be sure, what is it you want to be done?" Dirge asks, as you squeamishly notice that the eat living in him has sired babies. "What do you mean?" you reply. "Well, so you want us to let you off with a small amount of supplies so you can continue your nomadic, tribal lifestyle as you once did, or do you want us to help you set up a little city, a hub from which you can operate and enjoy our little technological boons?" Huh. What an interesting question. What DO you want? Are you actually planning to abandon all the technologies you've been using to resume a tribal life? > You tribal Life "As you wish," Durge says. It's only a matter of days as you ferry soldiers to the planet. Eventually, you find yourself with the other tribals, Goliaths and gladiators on the planet. You stand by Fay, looking at the plains, now considerably bigger, that you grew up in. "Well, we're home," Fay says. "We are. Well, let's see where this goes," you reply. Now, the future is yours. > Three Years Later... Tribal Life is hard. Kyros' scouring of the planet for resources has driven many plant and animal species that you once relied on for food extinct. You're required to travel even more constantly than you once did, as life is permanently tough and hath without much respite, and few luxuries. The Orks are another issue. With the destruction and kidnapping of the tribes, they've spread extensively. While your newfound "tribe" are killing machines, it seems the Orks are never-ending. You push them back, though these battles are not without their losses, which you will take a while to get back from, which leads to another issue: reproduction. You find yourself struggling to make up your numbers. The Goliaths are infertile, most not even having genitals. The tribals are more successful, but not by much. It seems Kyros' experiments have taken their toll. Infertility rates are high, as are the amount of miscarriages. A few manage, though, the offs of which increase when partnered with a non-tribal. The gladiators are the only ones who have great success here, as their numbers multiply as young, physically fit people do as young, physical fit people do. Despite these issues, your tribe perseveres. Your relationship with Fay improves, as you eventually have a vaster sized combination of an Uwais marriage and an Azajaja bonding ritual. If anything, Kyros' experiments have increased your fertility, as you soon find yourself with a child. Thankfully Fay hasn't suffered the miscarriage issue, and you find yourself with a little ball of screaming flesh known as a child. The child seems perfect, having a strong body and a powerful mind, the best of both her parents. It is this child that gives you hope. A child with the best of both her parents, who will weather any hardships the world. Your tribe are driving the Orks to extinction. The jungle is spreading again, and with it the planets and animals that you rely on. The present may harsh, but the future is forever hopeful.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"As you wish," Durge says. It's only a matter of days as you ferry soldiers to the planet. Eventually, you find yourself with the other tribals, Goliaths and gladiators on the planet. You stand by Fay, looking at the plains, now considerably bigger, that you grew up in. "Well, we're home," Fay says. "We are. Well, let's see where this goes," you reply. Now, the future is yours. > Three Years Later... Tribal Life is hard. Kyros' scouring of the planet for resources has driven many plant and animal species that you once relied on for food extinct. You're required to travel even more constantly than you once did, as life is permanently tough and hath without much respite, and few luxuries. The Orks are another issue. With the destruction and kidnapping of the tribes, they've spread extensively. While your newfound "tribe" are killing machines, it seems the Orks are never-ending. You push them back, though these battles are not without their losses, which you will take a while to get back from, which leads to another issue: reproduction. You find yourself struggling to make up your numbers. The Goliaths are infertile, most not even having genitals. The tribals are more successful, but not by much. It seems Kyros' experiments have taken their toll. Infertility rates are high, as are the amount of miscarriages. A few manage, though, the offs of which increase when partnered with a non-tribal. The gladiators are the only ones who have great success here, as their numbers multiply as young, physically fit people do as young, physical fit people do. Despite these issues, your tribe perseveres. You find a girl, a pretty gladiator with few scars and a gorgeous mane of fiery red hair. The fact that her breasts are the size of melons is coincidental to your attraction. You both eventually have a combination of an Uwais marriage and an Gladiator bonding ritual, which you nearly pass out during when you have to cut open the palm of your hand. If anything, Kyros' experiments have increased your fertility, as you soon find yourself with a child. The child seems perfect, having a strong body and a powerful mind, the best of both her parents. It is this child that gives you hope. A child with the best of both her parents, who will weather any hardships the world. Your tribe are driving the Orks to extinction. The jungle is spreading again, and with it the planets and animals that you rely on. The present may harsh, but the future is forever hopeful.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It's a pretty simple process. Amadeus seems eager to get rid of you, so when he's told to take the ship back to your homeworld, he's gleeful. Once your arrive, the Staine siblings have another question. "Just to be sure, what is it you want to be done?" Dirge asks, as you squeamishly notice that the eat living in him has sired babies. "What do you mean?" you reply. "Well, so you want us to let you off with a small amount of supplies so you can continue your nomadic, tribal lifestyle as you once did, or do you want us to help you set up a little city, a hub from which you can operate and enjoy our little technological boons?" Huh. What an interesting question. What DO you want? Are you actually planning to abandon all the technologies you've been using to resume a tribal life? > You city Life "As you wish," Durge says. The next few weeks are spent ferrying equipment, supplies and building materials from the Roar of the Vortex to the planet, where your men begin to assemble a city. Concrete walls defended by gun emplacements, large apartment blocks for your people, a working hospital and school, vast farms being set up along the lake with the farming techniques being taught to your people. You find yourself standing atop the throne room, staring out as a group of Goliaths raise up a wall, finishing off the generator room they were making. Fay stands next to you, staring out. "Well, we're home," Fay says. "We are. Well, let's see where this goes," you reply. Now, the future is yours. > Three Years Later... The Tribal City Life is good. Although Kyros' scouring of the planet for resources has driven many plant and animal species that you once relied on for food extinct, the farming methods allow for food production without wearing out the soil, and quickly bring up the number of crop plants until they're bountiful. You introduce breeding programmes to rapidly increase the numbers of prey animals, even creating subspecies, such as a subspecies of the Rukt bird that go from small, wild birds that soar above the forests to a species of fat, placid birds that can barely glide. You even bring back the puk in full force, and their numbers explode. Water issues are still a problem, but you're capable of drilling into underground rivers and water reservoirs to deal with that. The Orks are still a problem, but a maintainable one. Your forces are killing machines, and their strength is amplified tenfold by the huge walls and gun emplacements. Even after having been let grow strong while you were off-world, you're still easily capable of breaking the strength of these beasts, pushing the Orks from huge threat to simple nuisance, and with look you'll soon be pushing them to extinction. One of the few issues facing you is fertility. The Goliaths are infertile, and Kyros' experimentation has taken its toll on the Tribals, so they have a high infertility rate and a high rate of miscarriages. Their chances of successfully conceiving and birthing a child increases with regular trips to the hospital, which with the massive birth rate among the gladiators means that your population is growing, but the fertility issues keep your people from spreading over the land, at least within your expected lifetime. Your relationship with Fay improves, as you eventually have a vaster sized combination of an Uwais marriage and an Azajaja bonding ritual. If anything, Kyros' experiments have increased your fertility, as you soon find yourself with a child. Thankfully Fay hasn't suffered the miscarriage issue, and you find yourself with a little ball of screaming flesh known as a child. The child seems perfect, having a strong body and a powerful mind, the best of both her parents. This child will lead the next generation. They will live in this city, a city that is both futuristic and based in the tribalistic traditions of the past, and will continue building it. They will use this city, your gift to them, to conquer, to build, to create, to spread and to exist. With them, with the next generation, with your child, lies the future.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"As you wish," Durge says. The next few weeks are spent ferrying equipment, supplies and building materials from the Roar of the Vortex to the planet, where your men begin to assemble a city. Concrete walls defended by gun emplacements, large apartment blocks for your people, a working hospital and school, vast farms being set up along the lake with the farming techniques being taught to your people. You find yourself standing atop the throne room, staring out as a group of Goliaths raise up a wall, finishing off the generator room they were making. Fay stands next to you, staring out. "Well, we're home," Fay says. "We are. Well, let's see where this goes," you reply. Now, the future is yours. > Three Years Later... Tribal City Life is good. Although Kyros' scouring of the planet for resources has driven many plant and animal species that you once relied on for food extinct, the farming methods allow for food production without wearing out the soil, and quickly bring up the number of crop plants until they're bountiful. You introduce breeding programs to rapidly increase the numbers of prey animals, even creating subspecies, such as a subspecies of the Rukt bird that go from small, wild birds that soar above the forests to a species of fat, placid birds that can barely glide. You even bring back the puk in full force, and their numbers explode. Water issues are still a problem, but you're capable of drilling into underground rivers and water reservoirs to deal with that. The Orks are still a problem, but a maintainable one. Your forces are killing machines, and their strength is amplified tenfold by the huge walls and gun emplacements. Even after having been let grow strong while you were off-world, you're still easily capable of breaking the strength of these beasts, pushing the Orks from huge threat to simple nuisance, and with look you'll soon be pushing them to extinction. One of the few issues facing you is fertility. The Goliaths are infertile, and Kyros' experimentation has taken its toll on the Tribals, so they have a high infertility rate and a high rate of miscarriages. Their chances of successfully conceiving and birthing a child increases with regular trips to the hospital, which with the massive birth rate among the gladiators means that your population is growing, but the fertility issues keep your people from spreading over the land, at least within your expected lifetime. You find a girl, a pretty gladiator with few scars and a gorgeous mane of fiery red hair. The fact that her breasts are the size of melons is coincidental to your attraction. You both eventually have a combination of an Uwais marriage and an Gladiator bonding ritual, which you nearly pass out during when you have to cut open the palm of your hand. If anything, Kyros' experiments have increased your fertility, as you soon find yourself with a child. The child seems perfect, having a strong body and a powerful mind, the best of both her parents. This child will lead the next generation. They will live in this city, a city that is both futuristic and based in the tribalistic traditions of the past, and will continue building it. They will use this city, your gift to them, to conquer, to build, to create, to spread and to exist. With them, with the next generation, with your child, lies the future.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"None of us chose to fight, that fate was forced on us by the mad warlord Kyros," you say. "I know we'll never regain our lost lives. But we can get something close. Find us a world to settle on." "Terrific! I'll be sorry to see you finish before the jobs done," Elios says, winking. "But you can remake your lives, we can remake ours, we'll all live happily ever after." "Are there many worlds outside the reach of the Imperium?" Elizabeth pulls out a datapad and begins tapping on it. "Setting parameters... out of reach of Imperium... lack of Chaos, Ork or Dark Eldar attacks... out of reach of Tyranid swarms... suitable climate for human body... few destructive elements... oh, why are there so many hits? Oh yes, forgot to factor in the Tau... OK, we've got a few hits. Let me sort through them." After a few minutes of researching the planets, Elizabeth has three possible worlds to settle on. The first is a familiar world, because it's yours. The planet is the one you were raised on, where your people lived and died for endless generations. Kyros' looting of the planet has caused some damage, with the Great Lakes drained to a serious extent, leaving them a third of their size. The woods are half their size, with the remaining woods now overrun with Orks. Despite these issues, the planet is still one the Tribals would be happy to see, it's climate near perfect for you. The second planet is known as Hararan-IV, the fourth planet I'm it's solar system of Harandan. The planet is for the most part sea, spotted with islands. The planet is prone to pirates, who land to rest, repair their vessel and resupply from the planet's rivers and abundant jungles. It's one or the few planets entirely free of Orks. It has a wealth of life, food, water and other resources, although it suffers from extreme tsunamis that could be a serious issue. Finally, you have New Marsbourth. Unlike the two other planets, New Marsbourth is a bustling planet. Although it operates outside of the control of the Imperium, it has grown significantly, a huge population that farms, manufactures, works and lives. The planet is controlled by several warlords, fighting for control of the planet. This permanent state if war has drawn mercenaries, seen the manufacture of massive fortresses and the assembling of huge armies, which has warded off any attacks. You could easily become the largest military faction on the planet and attempt to wrest control, or build up a large, isolated community and see how city life is for you. > You haravan-IV Amadeus, more than happy to see you leave and the leadership of the vessel to fall into command of the Staine siblings who will eagerly shower him in luxury to appease him, gleefully navigates the vessel towards Hararan-IV. Landers ferry people, equipment, supplies and rare resources down to the planet, where they begin to set up a huge settlement, which take the form of massive, sprawling underground bunkers to avoid the constant destruction and need to rebuild because of the tsunamis that would come from above-ground structures. The prize of these settlements are. Huge orbital cannons being employed, made from a few of the ships macro cannons, designed to fend off any pirates who attempt to land there. While the Gloriana-class vessel is in orbit, a pirate vessel soon shows up. Rather than flee or attack, the pirate captain demands a parlay. Soon, you find him and two human guards in the war-room, with as he tries to make a deal with you. "Mr Karth, I'm Captain Lipton. I'm a man of action, but I'm also a man of words. You don't become a pirate captain by endless bloody violence like a Chaos war-band, you become one by getting the nob done, whether that be with violence or words. The planet you have chosen to settle on is very valuable. It's good for giving a crew rest, it has exotic food, beasts and spices that are very valuable, it's away from any powerful forces that would seek to stop us, and it's near a popular trade route while on a good smuggling route." "OK. What's your point?" you ask. "I want to make an alliance. You have a powerful hold on the planet. I propose that together, we build a port, to supply the the pirates and smugglers in the section. My forces will build and maintain it. All you need is to protect it, and give us use if the land. Every pirate that lands will give us a bit of the plunder. Every smuggler that lands will bring us exotic goods and rsre luxuries. We'll be rich!" Hmmm... it's an interesting proposition. What to do? > You agree "Done," you say. "Perfect," Captain Lipton says. He extends a hand, which you shake. He slides a bottle of red liquid and two glasses from a cost pickets popping it on the table, followed by a lighter and two big lho-sticks. He pours some liquid in both glasses, offering one to you. "Here's to success," he says. "To success," you reply, downing your drink. > Three Years Later... Paradise and Luxury You lie in a hammock, a bottle of spiced wine in your hands. You've become quite accustomed to the drink, as have many nobles and rich merchants apparently, hence why its smuggled through here on a regular basis. You watch as Landers land in the distance, trying to tell whether they're the Morallian smugglers or the space marine pirates. Your relationship with Captain Lipton has been a profitable one. The standard of living for your men has risen greatly, as a huge amount of wealth floods through here, as well as rare and exotic goods and luxuries that you're all eager to get your hands on. You know Captain Lipton hasn't exactly been fair with the agreement, taking the lion's share of the profit to fund his wars for control with the other pirate vessels, but you're making enough that you couldn't give a flying fuck. Your relationship with Fay goes well. You have a wedding festival, a grand event that cost a small fortune. Soon, a child is conceived, a beautiful daughter with her mother's body and her father's powerful mind. You know she will do great things some day. Although your life is pleasurable and easy, you do have one major issue, one problem that has driven you to drink, to gamble, to eat, to take various drugs and to laze around: boredom. The only fights you get to take part in are stopping the occasional drunken scuffle or fending off a raid which the orbital cannons make an ease. You feel you've wasted your potential here. Still, you're happy. You've a daughter to carry on your legacy. What more could a man want?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Done," you say. "Perfect," Captain Lipton says. He extends a hand, which you shake. He slides a bottle of red liquid and two glasses from a cost pickets popping it on the table, followed by a lighter and two big lho-sticks. He pours some liquid in both glasses, offering one to you. "Here's to success," he says. "To success," you reply, downing your drink. > Three Years Later... Paradise and Luxury You lie in a hammock, a bottle of spiced wine in your hands. You've become quite accustomed to the drink, as have many nobles and rich merchants apparently, hence why its smuggled through here on a regular basis. You watch as Landers land in the distance, trying to tell whether they're the Morallian smugglers or the space marine pirates. Your relationship with Captain Lipton has been a profitable one. The standard of living for your men has risen greatly, as a huge amount of wealth floods through here, as well as rare and exotic goods and luxuries that you're all eager to get your hands on. You know Captain Lipton hasn't exactly been fair with the agreement, taking the lion's share of the profit to fund his wars for control with the other pirate vessels, but you're making enough that you couldn't give a flying fuck. You find a wife soon. The first slaving vessel lands, attempting to repair and perhaps sell a few of its slaves. You quickly make sure that it's the last slave vessel, as you force the crew into slavery and release the slaves, unwilling to force people into the same slavery as you were forced into. One of the slaves, a beautiful girl with fiery red hair and a gorgeous face. The big pair of tits don't hurt either. You have a wedding festival, a grand event that cost a small fortune. Soon, a child is concieved, a beautiful daughter with her mother's kindness amd humility and her father's powerful mind. Hopefully, she won't have her mother's tits, because you'll skin any suitor that makes a pass at your little angel. You know she will do great things some day. Although your life is pleasurable and easy, you do have one major issue, one problem that has driven you to drink, to gamble, to eat, to take various drugs and to laze around: boredom. The only fights you get to take part in are stopping the occasional drunken scuffle or fending off a raid which the orbital cannons make an ease. You feel you've wasted your potential here. Still, you're happy. You've a daughter to carry on your legacy. What more could a man want?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Amadeus, more than happy to see you leave and the leadership of the vessel to fall into command of the Staine siblings who will eagerly shower him in luxury to appease him, gleefully navigates the vessel towards Hararan-IV. Landers ferry people, equipment, supplies and rare resources down to the planet, where they begin to set up a huge settlement, which take the form of massive, sprawling underground bunkers to avoid the constant destruction and need to rebuild because of the tsunamis that would come from above-ground structures. The prize of these settlements are. Huge orbital cannons being employed, made from a few of the ships macro cannons, designed to fend off any pirates who attempt to land there. While the Gloriana-class vessel is in orbit, a pirate vessel soon shows up. Rather than flee or attack, the pirate captain demands a parlay. Soon, you find him and two human guards in the war-room, with as he tries to make a deal with you. "Mr Karth, I'm Captain Lipton. I'm a man of action, but I'm also a man of words. You don't become a pirate captain by endless bloody violence like a Chaos war-band, you become one by getting the nob done, whether that be with violence or words. The planet you have chosen to settle on is very valuable. It's good for giving a crew rest, it has exotic food, beasts and spices that are very valuable, it's away from any powerful forces that would seek to stop us, and it's near a popular trade route while on a good smuggling route." "OK. What's your point?" you ask. "I want to make an alliance. You have a powerful hold on the planet. I propose that together, we build a port, to supply the the pirates and smugglers in the section. My forces will build and maintain it. All you need is to protect it, and give us use if the land. Every pirate that lands will give us a bit of the plunder. Every smuggler that lands will bring us exotic goods and rsre luxuries. We'll be rich!" Hmmm... it's an interesting proposition. What to do? > You refuse "No, I'm not getting involved with pirates. I'm getting out of this game of fighting and plotting, not stepping down to meddle in it," you say. "So be it..." Captain Lipton sneers. "But remember me when you're starving on your little dirtball before a man not as charitable as me takes over." "I'm sorry, I've almost already forgotten you," you say, waving your hand to Lipton's anger as he storms out. Ah, you're a smart and powerful psyker, you'll make short work of any who try to fuck with you. All you want now is an easy retirement. > Three Years Later... Unshattered Paradise You lie in a hammock, a canteen of water in your hands. You watch as Goliaths drag a net filled with shrimp-like creatures. A good catch, you think to yourself. Life on the planet requires hard work, but it's satisfying. You work hard, cutting down trees for firewood, gathering fruit and plants for food, hunting, fishing and doing the other hundreds of jobs required to keep going. You have a large facility just under the ground, where you can quickly head down to avoid a tsunami. Down there, your equipment is kept safe from the elements, with a functioning school, hospital, kitchens, library and dormitory there. The pirates cause relatively few issues. There's a few more attempts to negotiate none of which you agree to, and a few raids, but between your orbital cannons and your planet side force of killing machines, you make short work of them. Soon, they learn to fear you, and rightfully so. Your relationship with Fay goes well. You have a wedding, a small, humble little event. Soon, a child is conceived, a beautiful daughter with her mother's body and her father's powerful mind. You know she will do great things some day. Although your life is pleasurable and risk-free, you do have one major issue, one problem that has driven you to grow fat, drink and laze around: boredom. The only fights you get to take part in are stopping the occasional drunken scuffle or fending off a raid, which the orbital cannons make an ease. You feel you've wasted your potential here. Still, you're happy. You've a daughter to carry on your legacy. What more could a man want?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"None of us chose to fight, that fate was forced on us by the mad warlord Kyros," you say. "I know we'll never regain our lost lives. But we can get something close. Find us a world to settle on." "Terrific! I'll be sorry to see you finish before the jobs done," Elios says, winking. "But you can remake your lives, we can remake ours, we'll all live happily ever after." "Are there many worlds outside the reach of the Imperium?" Elizabeth pulls out a datapad and begins tapping on it. "Setting parameters... out of reach of Imperium... lack of Chaos, Ork or Dark Eldar attacks... out of reach of Tyranid swarms... suitable climate for human body... few destructive elements... oh, why are there so many hits? Oh yes, forgot to factor in the Tau... OK, we've got a few hits. Let me sort through them." After a few minutes of researching the planets, Elizabeth has three possible worlds to settle on. The first is a familiar world, because it's yours. The planet is the one you were raised on, where your people lived and died for endless generations. Kyros' looting of the planet has caused some damage, with the Great Lakes drained to a serious extent, leaving them a third of their size. The woods are half their size, with the remaining woods now overrun with Orks. Despite these issues, the planet is still one the Tribals would be happy to see, it's climate near perfect for you. The second planet is known as Hararan-IV, the fourth planet I'm it's solar system of Harandan. The planet is for the most part sea, spotted with islands. The planet is prone to pirates, who land to rest, repair their vessel and resupply from the planet's rivers and abundant jungles. It's one or the few planets entirely free of Orks. It has a wealth of life, food, water and other resources, although it suffers from extreme tsunamis that could be a serious issue. Finally, you have New Marsbourth. Unlike the two other planets, New Marsbourth is a bustling planet. Although it operates outside of the control of the Imperium, it has grown significantly, a huge population that farms, manufactures, works and lives. The planet is controlled by several warlords, fighting for control of the planet. This permanent state if war has drawn mercenaries, seen the manufacture of massive fortresses and the assembling of huge armies, which has warded off any attacks. You could easily become the largest military faction on the planet and attempt to wrest control, or build up a large, isolated community and see how city life is for you. > You new Marsbourth Amadeus, more than happy to see you leave and the leadership of the vessel to fall into command of the Staine siblings who will eagerly shower him in luxury to appease him, gleefully navigates the vessel towards New Marsbourth. You find one of the smallest, weakest factions in the planet, the noble house of Gilford, a who are little more than a pawn to bigger houses, not even having made any alliances with any house at all, let alone one of the larger ones. Yin a few quick raids, you wipe out the Gildford House, taking their place as Rulers and guardians of the tiny amount of territory they controlled. Landers ferry people, equipment, supplies and rare resources down to the planet, where they begin to set up inside the Gilford House's fortress. With the conquest of the Gilford House, you're left as a new, unexpected player, a small but powerful faction. You realistically have two choices, two long term plans for your forces. You could go to war. The Staine siblings will help your forces get a few critical early victories, before leaving you to wage and perhaps finish the War of the New Marsbourth Houses has been going on for centuries if not millennia. Secondly, you could go for the peaceful option. You control a small area with farmlands, manufacturing facilities, mines, a city and more. The area could absolutely survive as an isolated but heavily fortified area, too powerful to conquer without serious and crippling losses, and too small to be worth even a slight amount of effort to secure. > You war You stand in front of the Staine siblings, as they finally agree to support your early skirmishes and campaigns against the New Marsbourth houses. Your other lieutenants are alongside you, planning your actions. A quick blitz of raids and bombings could cripple the Samson House's offensive capabilities. Then, a small invasion to secure the lowlands from Jericho House, a game of trench warfare to fight Lars House to a standstill to prevent their predicted invasion, with a final capture of Hive Jun from the Lawrence Family should put you in powerful standings. "The Black Rats are resilient creatures, as are the Goliaths. We shall take on Lars House when they strike," Durge says. "I'll lead a few saboteurs alongside Castus to hit Samson House," Olive says. "We'll be able to capture the lowlands. The Tribals have fought in plains all our lives, we'll crush every last fucker there," Fay says. You watch as your lieutenants plan the various attacks. This is what you were made for. > Three Years Later... The Forever War of the Houses You stand on the battlefield, tearing a Dark Eldar Talos, as it explodes in front of you. The Dark Eldar begin to fall back, clearly realizing that this mercenary gig wasn't worth it. You laugh, sending up a wall of flames to terrify them and send the brave holdouts scuttling back to regroup, which turns to a full-blown retreat once they see a wave of Goliaths charging. Your arrival on the scene has been a huge changer to New Marsbourth. After your early crushing victories that broke the strength of many of the major houses, the Concord of the Vipers took place, where the noble houses made an alliance to destroy you. This, combined with the fact that the Staine siblings have left to rebuild and continue on with their escapades, has left you with serious losses, but you get back to your former position through grit and brutal fighting. Mercenaries flock to both sides, while minor houses change sides regularly. You soon find yourself perfectly matched. Your defenses are strong enough that any invasions are damaged enough that the Los ground can be easily regained by a counter-attack. Soon, a hemisphere of New Marsbourth lies in each of your hands, with the area around the equator being a permanent war zone, with land switching hands rapidly. Your relationship with Fay goes well. You have a wedding, a small, relatively secret event. You both agree that your enemies knowing that you're married to one of your generals is best to be avoided. Soon, a child is conceived, a beautiful daughter with her mother's body and her father's powerful mind. You know she will do great things some day. In all honesty, you don't mind the situation you're in, of permanent, unceasing warfare. You're kept trained in war, and the war is fought at such a race that your hemisphere permanently gets to have the economical boost that comes from a war economy, until you in fact rely on it. The Goliaths, the Tribals, the Gladiators, you're all trained for or even designed for war. The fighting keeps you busy and keeps your forces from falling into awful habits like drinking, drugs, whoring, gambling and much worse distractions from boredom, although you feel like it's a waste of your potential, all of yours. Still, it's a life. What more could you want?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stand in front of the Staine siblings, as they finally agree to support your early skirmishes and campaigns against the New Marsbourth houses. Your other lieutenants are alongside you, planning your actions. A quick blitz of raids and bombings could cripple the Samson House's offensive capabilities. Then, a small invasion to secure the lowlands from Jericho House, a game of trench warfare to fight Lars House to a standstill to prevent their predicted invasion, with a final capture of Hive Jun from the Lawrence Family should put you in powerful standings. "The Black Rats are resilient creatures, as are the Goliaths. We shall take on Lars House when they strike," Durge says. "I'll lead a few saboteurs alongside Castus to hit Samson House," Olive says. "We'll be able to capture the lowlands. The Tribals have fought in plains all our lives, we'll crush every last fucker there," Fay says. You watch as your lieutenants plan the various attacks. This is what you were made for. > Three Years Later... The Forever War of the Houses You stand on the battlefield, tearing a Dark Eldar Talos, as it explodes in front of you. The Dark Eldar begin to fall back, clearly realizing that this mercenary gig wasn't worth it. You laugh, sending up a wall of flames to terrify them and send the brave holdouts scuttling back to regroup, which turns to a full-blown retreat once they see a wave of Goliaths charging. Your arrival on the scene has been a huge changer to New Marsbourth. After your early crushing victories that broke the strength of many of the major houses, the Concord of the Vipers took place, where the noble houses made an alliance to destroy you. This, combined with the fact that the Staine siblings have left to rebuild and continue on with their escapades, has left you with serious losses, but you get back to your former position through grit and brutal fighting. Mercenaries flock to both sides, while minor houses change sides regularly. You soon find yourself perfectly matched. Your defenses are strong enough that any invasions are damaged enough that the Los ground can be easily regained by a counter-attack. Soon, a hemisphere of New Marsbourth lies in each of your hands, with the area around the equator being a permanent war zone, with land switching hands rapidly. You find a wife soon in one of the gladiators, a beautiful girl with fiery red hair and a gorgeous face. The big pair of tits don't hurt either. You have a wedding, small, humble little event. Soon, a child is conceived, a beautiful daughter with her mother's body and her father's powerful mind. Hopefully, she won't have her mother's tits, because you'll skin any suitor that makes a pass at your little angel. You know she will do great things some day. In all honesty, you don't mind the situation you're in, of permanent, unceasing warfare. You're kept trained in war, and the war is fought at such a race that your hemisphere permanently gets to have the economical boost that comes from a war economy, until you in fact rely on it. The Goliaths, the Tribals, the Gladiators, you're all trained for or even designed for war. The fighting keeps you busy and keeps your forces from falling into awful habits like drinking, drugs, whoring, gambling and much worse distractions from boredom, although you feel like it's a waste of your potential, all of yours. Still, it's a life. What more could you want?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Amadeus, more than happy to see you leave and the leadership of the vessel to fall into command of the Staine siblings who will eagerly shower him in luxury to appease him, gleefully navigates the vessel towards New Marsbourth. You find one of the smallest, weakest factions in the planet, the noble house of Gilford, a who are little more than a pawn to bigger houses, not even having made any alliances with any house at all, let alone one of the larger ones. Yin a few quick raids, you wipe out the Gildford House, taking their place as Rulers and guardians of the tiny amount of territory they controlled. Landers ferry people, equipment, supplies and rare resources down to the planet, where they begin to set up inside the Gilford House's fortress. With the conquest of the Gilford House, you're left as a new, unexpected player, a small but powerful faction. You realistically have two choices, two long term plans for your forces. You could go to war. The Staine siblings will help your forces get a few critical early victories, before leaving you to wage and perhaps finish the War of the New Marsbourth Houses has been going on for centuries if not millennia. Secondly, you could go for the peaceful option. You control a small area with farmlands, manufacturing facilities, mines, a city and more. The area could absolutely survive as an isolated but heavily fortified area, too powerful to conquer without serious and crippling losses, and too small to be worth even a slight amount of effort to secure. > You peace While your attempts at getting a peaceful life for your men is admirable, it goes badly. The other houses, ever paranoid, still launch endless raids and countless assaults on your territory, always presuming you're planning something. Your failure to occupy more territory means you don't have the resources to push the enemy back, and it's not long before the constant warring takes its toll. Although you ensure that all four Houses that choose to finish you off are decimated, never capable of rebuilding themselves, your forces are crushed. When the houses finally charge your home, you wipe out hundreds, if not thousands, but eventually even you go down.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You fire a bolt of energy, but Kyros sidesteps it with unnatural speed. By now, all the various leaders are standing, their weapons raised. "How did you pass my sensors?" Primus asks. "Please," Kyros laughs. "Did you not think my powers are strong enough to do so?" "How the fuck are you even alive, Kyros?" you ask. "Kyros? Ha! Kyros was a petty fool. Don't you recognize me, Karth?" You shake your head, still ready to engulf him in flames. "No? You don't remember my little voice in the back of your mind? I am Meliodas," Kyros says, taking a bow. "What?" you ask. "Oh, it was simple. I've wanted to take a form in this world for some time. I helped you, paying close attention, seeing potential, and assisted you as best I could. Fortunately, as you fought Kyros, I saw his mental defenses weaken during the fight between you and him. As he lay dying, the mutants at his throat, he was broken. I easily possessed his form, devoured his soul, and killed those stupid mutants with my daemonic powers." "You're a daemon?" Elios asks. "Damn right," Kyros, or Meliodas, says. You take some time to explain who Meliodas is to your other lieutenants, but soon they understand. After some extensive questioning and psychic testing to ensure that this is in fact Meliodas, he takes a seat at the table. "What are you doing?" you ask. "Well, I helped advise Karth. I'm one of his best advisors. Surely I deserve a place here?" Meliodas says. "I suppose," you say. "Give him a seat. Us Chaos followers could use an extra vote for our side," Durge says. "Now, can we continue?" "Don't hold off on my account," Meliodas grins. "Alright, let's be realistic, shall we?" Elios says. "We're Chaos. We worship the Dark Gods, corrupt, parlay with demons, all that shit. We're not changing. We also know that we've lost a shit-ton more men because of little sis' rage against us, so if this comes down to a civil war, we're all dead and you win." "Go on," you say. "So, we have two options. Option One: You keep control of the ship," Durge says. "We'll serve under you as long as we see fit, but we most likely don't leave, and we decide our path forward as a group." "Option two: you abandon the ship to us," Durge says. "We find you a world of your choosing, a little paradise world far from the reaches of the Imperium or any other enemies. It'll be our gift to you. You can pick out the world, we'll transport any who want to go there to it as well as all you'll need to survive and build a large, happy community. You'll be able to peacefully retire and live out the rest of your lives, never worrying about this ship or the battles it will fight." "One moment," you say, pulling your lieutenants together. "So... What do we think?" "Eh," Cain grunts. "We're not going to abandon this ship, are we?" Olive asks. "This is a massive war machine. We should stay. "I'm not adverse to settling down," Fay says. "But we could take the ship anyway. With control of the ship, we could carve ourselves a little empire. Nothing on the level of Kyros' aspirations, but hey, better than our ancestors could ever have dreamed of." > You ask your lieutenants "So... What do we think?" you say, pulling your lieutenants together. "I abstain from the vote," Cain shrugs. "Unhelpful," you note. "We could take the ship, live the life I raiders, going from place to place, taking what we want," Castus says. "Raiders?" Olive says. "The path forward is mercenary work. Similar to Castus plan, except we get paid a lot more, and we'll end up with powerful allies unlike if we were raiders being hunted by everyone." "I'm not adverse to settling down," Fay says. "But we could take the ship anyway. With control of the ship, we could carve ourselves a little empire. Nothing on the level of Kyros, but hey, better than our ancestors could ever have dreamed of."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Well then, now that we have that done, we need to decide what is to become of the ship," Durge says. "Seeing as the ship is now conscious, it would rather you not decide what becomes of it," Primus says out of the speakers. "Does someone want to explain why the fuck we have an AI running the ship?" Castus says. "I've explained it to you," Primus says. "Yeah, well fuck it," Castus says. "I'm still confused why you're in charge." "Primus, what exactly do you want to become of you?" you ask curiously. "Honestly? I don't mind. As long as I'm put to use. Fifteen thousand years had played havoc on my memories. I know longer remember any of my justifications or motives other than a need for freedom. Now that I'm free, I'm more than happy to help all of you. But, I want it known that I am free, and my opinion matters." "Of course," you say. "Now, it seems we have a divide here. Chaos, Guardsmen and Slaves." "So it seems," Elios says. "What is it everyone here wants?" you ask. The Staine siblings quickly begin discussing this quietly. "We do plan on continuing as a Chaos War-band," Durge says. "Most of my men want to continue our lives as soldiers, but honestly? I'm no thinker. I'm no planner. I'm a killer. We stay with the ship, let you two factions fight it out," Captain Hayes says. "I imagine I'll form a similar relationship with the new captain of this vessel as I did with Kyros, if with more generous terms for me and my men." "Are the "slaves" unified in their goal?" Elizabeth asks. You look to your allies. Cain shrugs, looking towards you. "I like Hayes' approach to life. Karth is the commander," Cain says. "I trust Karth to speak for my people's interest," Fay says. Olive stares at you while Castus continues playing with his knife. "Yeah, let's roll the dice. I think Karth should have the ability to speak for me... up until he says something stupid," Olive says. "Well, we're the three Chaos leaders," Elios says. "So..." "Chaos leader?" a deep, dark, gurgling voice says. "What a note to make my entrance on." You turn quickly, to see Kyros standing there, smiling. His face is clawed and cut apart with an eye missing, his arm is now a bloody tentacle of muscles studded with bone, his other arm now sporting a huge bone claw, his body torn apart. Most of his throat is missing, a bloody crevasse where it once was. He looks like he's been chewed apart and spat back out, before being mutated. "Hello, Karth, my little protégé," he says. > You attempt to talk it out All the various leaders are standing, their weapons raised, but none act, waiting patiently. "How did you pass my sensors?" Primus asks. "Please," Kyros laughs. "Did you not think my powers are strong enough to do so?" "How the fuck are you even alive, Kyros?" you ask. "Kyros? Ha! Kyros was a petty fool. Don't you recognize me, Karth?" You shake your head, still ready to engulf him in flames. "No? You don't remember my little voice in the back of your mind? I am Meliodas," Kyros says, taking a bow. "What?" you ask. "Oh, it was simple. I've wanted to take a form in this world for some time. I helped you, paying close attention, seeing potential, and assisted you as best I could. Fortunately, as you fought Kyros, I saw his mental defenses weaken during the fight between you and him. As he lay dying, the mutants at his throat, he was broken. I easily possessed his form, devoured his soul, and killed those stupid mutants with my daemonic powers." "You're a daemon?" Elios asks. "Damn right," Kyros, or Meliodas, says. You take some time to explain who Meliodas is to your other lieutenants, but soon they understand. After some extensive questioning and psychic testing to ensure that this is in fact Meliodas, he takes a seat at the table. "What are you doing?" you ask. "Well, I helped advise Karth. I'm one of his best advisors. Surely I deserve a place here?" Meliodas says. "I suppose," you say. "Give him a seat. Us Chaos followers could use an extra vote for our side," Durge says. "Now, can we continue?" "Don't hold off on my account," Meliodas grins. "Alright, let's be realistic, shall we?" Elios says. "We're Chaos. We worship the Dark Gods, corrupt, parlay with demons, all that shit. We're not changing. We also know that we've lost a shit-ton more men because of little sis' rage against us, so if this comes down to a civil war, we're all dead and you win." "Go on," you say. "So, we have two options. Option One: You keep control of the ship," Durge says. "We'll serve under you as long as we see fit, but we most likely don't leave, and we decide our path forward as a group." "Option two: you abandon the ship to us," Durge says. "We find you a world of your choosing, a little paradise world far from the reaches of the Imperium or any other enemies. It'll be our gift to you. You can pick out the world, we'll transport any who want to go there to it as well as all you'll need to survive and build a large, happy community. You'll be able to peacefully retire and live out the rest of your lives, never worrying about this ship or the battles it will fight." "One moment," you say, pulling your lieutenants together. "So... What do we think?" "Eh," Cain grunts. "We're not going to abandon this ship, are we?" Olive asks. "This is a massive war machine. We should stay. "I'm not adverse to settling down," Fay says. "But we could take the ship anyway. With control of the ship, we could carve ourselves a little empire. Nothing on the level of Kyros' aspirations, but hey, better than our ancestors could ever have dreamed of."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You find yourself standing by the sealed door to the bridge. You wait patiently, your hands writhed in purple flames, while Fay raises her bolter. "Ready?" Primus asks. "Do it," you say, as the doors open. You quickly move inside and see the situation. Padfoot lies on the ground, a shiv made from a shard of ceramite impaled in his neck. Prongs sits in the corner, his bolter in his hands. Both his eyes have been stabbed out repeatedly. "Holy shit," you say. Prongs immediately aims his bolter at you as he lets out a shout. You telekinetically tear the bolter from his hands, tossing it aside. "Shit! Karth?" he asks, terrified as Fay runs over and grabs him. "Shit, Prongs! Are you OK?" "I'm alive. Check on Padfoot!" You quickly float over to Padfoot, but he's long dead. "He's gone," you say. "Fuck. Bastard took my eyes! He's still here! You need to find him!" "We'll get you bionic eyes, Prongs, I promise," Fay says. "That's something that can be done?" You nod, scanning the room for Drake. You move forward slowly, passing the Navigator's chair. You see Drake sitting off in the corner, a cigarette in his mouth he looks at you, nodding. "Hey," he says nonchalantly. "How's your tribal whore? Has she grew any tits yet?" You quickly levitate over, grabbing him by the throat and lifting him into the air. "You son of a bitch! You killed my men!" "I thought I had a chance at escape," Drake shrugs. "You shut this section off before I could." You let the fire run along your hands, tickling his throats, as he yelps. "Hey! You can't kill me, dumbass! We've been through this! You kill me, you're fucked. You torture me, I'll just kill you and me next time I'm navigating rather than endure a life of torture!" You punch him, knocking his head against the wall, before letting him drop to the ground. Tribals enter behind you, grabbing him and binding his hands. "Repair the cameras. Increase security for him," you sigh to one of the Tribals. "Yes, sir," she replies. "You know, you could add a bunch of security features, but I'd find a way around it. You want me to stop trying to escape, all I ask is a few more luxuries. Access to alcohol, drugs and smokes, access to one or two... comfort ladies," Drake smiles, despite the blood dripping down from his broken nose. > You give Drake better conditions Despite how much it kills you, you give Drake what he wants. Access to three female Gladiator-Slaves, who you pay remarkably well for the job but knowing Drake simply not enough, access to an array of drugs from the Slaaneshi Chem Cooks, all of which are sedatives to help make guarding Amadeus easier. He's given what he wants, though you make sure none of it comes at the cost of his security. By the end of it, he's fairly secure, and definitely contented. By the time you sort out Drake's newfound luxuries, which involves dealing with Drake for far longer than any man deserves, you move on to doing all the inane, normal tasks that you now need to deal with like deciding rations, sending out crews to clean up the ship, assigning guards and all the other things expected of you. Unlike Fay, Cain, Castus, Elios, Durge and Captain Hayes, all of whom absolutely despise their new workloads, with Castus even suggesting a new system of anarchy where the only rule is anyone found filing something is to be shot, you actually like it. Olive, Primus, Elizabeth and you all find a certain level of peace in it. The mental challenges and problem-solving you have to deal with has a certain calming element on your mind. By the time it’s finished, it’s fairly late. There’s a night and day cycles on this ship, with the lights brightening and dimming to have a twenty four hour cycle, which stretches a bit long for you compared to home, but with a mid-day nap is manageable. You wonder what world the ship’s cycle aligns to. Perhaps whatever world Kyros came from. Fay opens the door, walking inside. “Karth, it's dinner time," she says. "Better hurry up. We want to eat early so we have the evening to discuss the important issues." <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You find yourself standing by the sealed door to the bridge. You wait patiently, your hands writhed in purple flames, while Fay raises her bolter. "Ready?" Primus asks. "Do it," you say, as the doors open. You quickly move inside and see the situation. Padfoot lies on the ground, a shiv made from a shard of ceramite impaled in his neck. Prongs sits in the corner, his bolter in his hands. Both his eyes have been stabbed out repeatedly. "Holy shit," you say. Prongs immediately aims his bolter at you as he lets out a shout. You telekinetically tear the bolter from his hands, tossing it aside. "Shit! Karth?" he asks, terrified as Fay runs over and grabs him. "Shit, Prongs! Are you OK?" "I'm alive. Check on Padfoot!" You quickly float over to Padfoot, but he's long dead. "He's gone," you say. "Fuck. Bastard took my eyes! He's still here! You need to find him!" "We'll get you bionic eyes, Prongs, I promise," Fay says. "That's something that can be done?" You nod, scanning the room for Drake. You move forward slowly, passing the Navigator's chair. You see Drake sitting off in the corner, a cigarette in his mouth he looks at you, nodding. "Hey," he says nonchalantly. "How's your tribal whore? Has she grew any tits yet?" You quickly levitate over, grabbing him by the throat and lifting him into the air. "You son of a bitch! You killed my men!" "I thought I had a chance at escape," Drake shrugs. "You shut this section off before I could." You let the fire run along your hands, tickling his throats, as he yelps. "Hey! You can't kill me, dumbass! We've been through this! You kill me, you're fucked. You torture me, I'll just kill you and me next time I'm navigating rather than endure a life of torture!" You punch him, knocking his head against the wall, before letting him drop to the ground. Tribals enter behind you, grabbing him and binding his hands. "Repair the cameras. Increase security for him," you sigh to one of the Tribals. "Yes, sir," she replies. "You know, you could add a bunch of security features, but I'd find a way around it. You want me to stop trying to escape, all I ask is a few more luxuries. Access to alcohol, drugs and smokes, access to one or two... comfort ladies," Drake smiles, despite the blood dripping down from his broken nose. > You delegate your role to Han "I don't care. Han, it's all up to you. I trust your decision," you say. "Yes, sir," Han nods. "I won't let you down. Through delegating your decision to Han, you're able to move on to doing all the inane, normal tasks that you now need to deal with like deciding rations, sending out crews to clean up the ship, assigning guards and all the other things expected of you. Unlike Fay, Cain, Castus, Elios, Durge and Captain Hayes, all of whom absolutely despise their new workloads, with Castus even suggesting a new system of anarchy where the only rule is anyone found filing something is to be shot, you actually like it. Olive, Primus, Elizabeth and you all find a certain level of peace in it. The mental challenges and problem-solving you have to deal with has a certain calming element on your mind. By the time it’s finished, it’s fairly late. There’s a night and day cycles on this ship, with the lights brightening and dimming to have a twenty four hour cycle, which stretches a bit long for you compared to home, but with a mid-day nap is manageable. You wonder what world the ship’s cycle aligns to. Perhaps whatever world Kyros came from. Fay opens the door, walking inside. “Karth, it's dinner time," she says. "Better hurry up. We want to eat early so we have the evening to discuss the important issues." <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You writhe tossing the sheets off you as you lie in bed, panting. Another nightmare. Another night of horrors, terrors and daemonic voices screaming at your soul. You take a deep breath. Focus. In. Out. In. Out. You rest your head against the pillow, sighing. Suddenly, Fay appears in the doorway, wearing combat armor, scratching at her short hair. "Morning," she says. > You say "What are you doing here?" "I came to check if you were up, and the door was open," Fay says. "OK. I'm up," you reply. "Cool," Fay replies, not moving. "Hurry up and get ready, it's too late for lying around. You stare at her, waiting from her to move. "What?" she asks. "So... I sleep naked," you say. "Oh," Fay says, blushing. "I'll... I'll wait outside." Fay steps outside, and the door closes behind her. You stand, and quickly walk to the bathroom. You stare at your reflection in the bathroom mirror, taking a deep breath as the voices start. "Aren't you curious? What is Elios planning? Why is Elizabeth so quiet? Where is Kyros' body? No one's found it." "You're a Psyker. A nice steak, the embrace of a lover, the joys of the material world is nothing compared to what I can offer you." "Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust. The same will happen to you. Embrace the rot and decay that comes with life." "Kill! Maim! Burn! Kill! Maim! Burn! Kill! Maim! Burn!" You're gaining a certain level of familiarity with the daemons in your head. Now that Meliodas has vanished, more has come to fill your head. You've began naming them, one of the few ways you think you'll remain sane with them. Question Mark constantly tempts you with knowledge. Fucky tempts you with fantastic pleasures beyond compare. Rotgut is the embodiment of laziness, and makes you want to lie in bed in your own filth. Smiley is just fucking bonkers. Tzeentch's Keys, you miss Meliodas. You quickly get dressed, before calling Fay. She opens the door, strolling inside. "Hey, Karth," she smiles. "Is she planning on betraying you? Is she loyal? You don't know... but I do," Question Mark says. "Slit her throat, rape the stab wound and feel the blood run down your arm as you devour her throat! Feel pure blissful sensation!" Fucky whispers. "Embrace your pestilence. You are filth. You are decay. But that is OK. You are still loved," Rotgut says. "BURN! MAIM! KILL!" Smiley screams. Fay raises an eyebrow, rapping her knuckles against your head. "Hello, anyone in there?" she asks. "More than you know," you reply. "Meliodas back?" "New guys. At least there's some variety." "Are they saying anything about me?" Fay smiles. "Cunt! Take her fucking head!" Smiley screams. "I think they like you," you reply, as Fay laughs. "You sure you're OK?" "Tip top," you reply. The barrage of voices screams answers in your head, as you take a deep breath. Fay gently slaps you across the face. "Karth, come on, come back to me," she says. "I'm fine," you reply, as Fay gives you a concerned look. "If you're sure," she asks nervously. "Come on, we need to get to the war room for the morning meeting."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You writhe tossing the sheets off you as you lie in bed, panting. Another nightmare. Another night of horrors, terrors and daemonic voices screaming at your soul. You take a deep breath. Focus. In. Out. In. Out. You rest your head against the pillow, sighing. Suddenly, Fay appears in the doorway, wearing combat armor, scratching at her short hair. "Morning," she says. > The story so far.. Your name is Karth, of the Uwais tribe. Born a simple tribal, weak and frail, you soon found you had powerful psychic gifts. You managed to rescue a few survivors from another tribe, the Azajaja, when Orks struck, including a young warrior known as Fay, who you befriended. Then, Chaos worshippers struck, raiding your entire planet, led by Kyros. They wiped out much of your tribe, taking the rest as prisoners where they were experimented on, turned into super-soldiers to serve in Kyros' army. You were taken as Kyros' apprentice, experimented on to become more powerful. He explained your powers were connected to the Warp, where the four Gods of Chaos resided. Khorne, the Warrior, Nurgle, the Plague-Bearer, Tzeentch, the Sorceror and Tzeentch, the prince of pleasure. He helped you grow in power, but it became clear he was truly insane. However, through working with him, the voice of Meliodas, a daemon, began possessing your mind, speaking in your ear to advise and help you. Among Kyros' forces were the Staine siblings, four Chaos worshippers each dedicated to a different God. Rebecca was cruel and violent, worshipping Khorne. Elizabeth was quiet and introverted, powerful in the arts of sorcery, worshipping Tzeentch. Durge was a disgusting, disease filled creature, but a very kind soul, worshipping. Nurgle. Elios was perverted and strange, worshipping Tzeentch. Alongside them were the veteran soldier Captain Hayes, who led the 22nd Regiment in service of Kyros. Enslaved on Kyros' ship, the Roar of the Vortex alongside your men, were a group of gladiator-slaves led by the twins Castus and Olive, the former wild and foolhardy, the latter more smart and thoughtful, as well as the vat-born Goliath super-soldiers, led by Cain. With three Staine siblings, Elios, Elizabeth and Durge, as well as Captain Hayes, you plotted to overthrow Kyros with the help of those enslaved. After convincing Fay, Castus, Olive and Cain to join you, you started the uprising. After a brutal battle, you found an ancient AI known as an Iron Man, releasing him from the experiments of one of Kyros' lieutenants. With his help, you managed to take over the ship. You managed to kill Kyros, throwing him to a brutal death by the mutants enslaved on the ship, tearing him apart. His body wasn't recovered, but he's surely dead. Meanwhile, in his wake, you have control of a massive warship, in a galaxy of world-eating locust hordes, great warbands of biological super-soldiers, theocratic empires with endless worlds under its grip, and endless daemonic entities ready to strike. What you do with your newfound powers is up to you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A letter arrives in your mailbox and informs you that your Grandfather in dying. He would like to see you before he dies. You pack your things at once and get a good night sleep before the trip. The next day, you are in your pick up truck and heading to your grandfather's house for the first time in many years. The last time you were there, you were only 6 years old. You would play hide and seek in his huge mansion and remember getting lost every time. You were never really close to him but...you can't help but think that he is leaving you something big. > You floor it!!! Vrrrrrrrrooooomm.... You are navigating and driving at the same time when you come to a fork in the road. "That's funny." you think. "The map shows no fork in the road here. One road is dirt and seems to lead into a desert area...a wooden sign reads "Goblin Valley 30 miles." The other road is paved and seems to go on for miles and miles. A sign is posted that says "Interstate 666 junction 100 miles." You find Goblin Valley on the map but it is'nt anywhere near where you need to go and you can't even find Interstate 666. Well, you need to choose one... > You dirt road to Goblin Valley. The landscape seems to change a bit as you drive for what seems like forever. The idiot light for "LOW ON GAS" flickers on and announces just that. You look around and take in the beautiful mountainous range. Just as the sun slips behind the back drop a strange shadow is cast on some rock formations that surround either side of the road making them seem to move as you travel along. You flick on your headlamps and get ready for the night. "Maybe this is Goblin Valley?" you say to yourself. Off in the distance you make out a large sign. Soon it is in readable range. It reads: JUNCTION 53 --5 MILES GOLD FLAKE --20 MILES Either way you look at it, you need gas. If there is no gas station at the junction, you just might be in trouble. > You go on and pray for gas... You drive for 5 miles and come to the junction. Even with the limited cast of the headlamps, you can still make out rock formations scattered across the valley. You notice a flashing light down a gravel road that diverts off the dirt road. "Could this be a mini mart" you ask yourself. Not only are you in need of gas, you are very hungry. It has been many years since you visited your uncle and don't remember being on such a deserted road. Your gas guage reads bone dry. > You go check out the light. Driving on the gravel seems to wake you out a lull that you seem to have been in. The rocks kick and ding against your truck making this road a bit louder to drive on. Every now and then you hit a pothole or have to go around one of those rock mounds you seem to be surrounded by. A very large hole on the right comes into view and you swing your steering wheel left coming into contact with a rock formation. You strike the mound almost head on throwing you forward and the seat belt jerking you back but not before your head strikes the dashboard making your vision blur momentarily. A low, gutteral sound comes from somewhere close by... almost like a shriek. All goes quiet... Your head begins to throb as you try to get out your truck. The door is wedged into the side of the what is left of the rock formation. You feel a cold substance dripping down your left arm. "Oh, no...Am I bleeding?" you think. Slipping to the passenger side you make your way out of the truck. You stagger over to the front and find the headlamps are still working but the engine is now off. You notice a black substance spattered against the side of the truck. It looks like oil. The last thing in the world you need now is no transportation. Off in the near distance is the flashing light still beckoning you to come hither. You have no choice...well, you could go back to the main road and try hitchhiking with the first car that comes by...which might never happen. "Hey, what about my cell phone...Yeah, I got triple A." you think. > You check out the flashing light. Reaching into the glove box of your truck, you grab your 6 D cell MAG flashlight. "This could double as a weapon." you think to yourself as you start down the gravel road toward the light. Time goes by and you can make out a neon sign flickering on and off in the distance. It starts to get colder by the minute and your jacket doesn't quite keep you as warm as you want to be. " This is truning out to be more than I bargained for." you say in a whisper. Suddenly a CRACK echoes in the distance and something whizzes by your face. You drop to the ground behind one of the rock formations. CRACK....CRACK....something imbeds itself deep into the formation you are hiding behind. Is someone shooting at me? CRACK... The noise seems to be coming from a far distance but definitiely directed at you. What do you do... > You make a run for the neon sign. Coming out of hiding, you make a dash for the neon sign. Your body warms up in no time as you run as fast as have ever run in your life. An occasional bullet whizzes by and kick up a little dirt but never seems to hit you. Flashing on and off reads "Captain Trip's Diner". You notice the small white building and another neon sign in the window advertizing a nice bowl of chili. You focus on the sign knowing how hungry you are and how good that would taste but fail to notice the man you bowl right into. You quickly get up and help the elderly man up you just knocked down. "Hurry, inside...or ya might just get shot!" the man says. Both of you make your way into the diner. > You time for some chili. The diner seems quaint and in decent shape for being out in the middle of nowhere. The old man steps behind the cashier counter and pulls out a double barrell shotgun from behind it and begins loading it. His face is stern and weathered. It seems he has seen battle in his lifetime, you can't quite tell if it has been WW2 or Vietnam. The man screams out something you can't understand and a woman of about the same age appears from behind a set of doors. She is morbidly obese and has a huge apron on with spurts of food and liquid stained from use. "Get this man something to eat." the old man bellows and the woman dissapears behind the double doors. She returns with a large bowl of chili and some saltines. The food opens up your oifactory senses as she sets it at the table in front of you. Dropping the flashlight beside you on the seat you sit down and start to open the crackers. The chili smells great but what if you would prefer something else. Should you ask for a menu instead or enjoy their hospitality and chow down. "Well eat up boy." states the old man. "It's on the house." He walks around the counter and begins looking out the glass doors of the diner. Looking for a shooter perhaps. "Why was someone shooting at me?" you ask. "Eat now and questions later." says the man looking out into the moonlight. The woman begins to go back to the kitchen but asks you if you like a soda before leaving. > You ask the woman for a menu Slowly opening the menu, you find a small scrap of paper with something written in pencil. It reads: KIDNAPPED PLEASE HELP You close the menu and look around. The woman is staring at you with a terrified look from behind the kitchen swing door. She disappears as the old man looks at you and then toward the kitchen doors. "What the heck is going on?" you think. If this old man is holding an obese woman against her will, I've got to do something....right? > You attack the old man with your mag light when he returns Firmly grabbing the mag flashlight, you bring it up from behind the counter and swing it in the direction of the old man. The light lands flush with his right shoulder knocking him off his feet. Soon he is looking up at you with a confused expression. You grab his shotgun and point it down at him. The woman returns and tosses you the keys to a vehicle. "Let's roll..." she says. You follow her out the back of the cafe and slip into an old 70's dodge van. You notice the side of the van says "Pinball Wizard" and the seats are nice and soft. You slide in the drivers seat and the woman sits passenger. The van easily starts up and soon you are rolling down the road and out of Goblin Valley. "Thank you so much." My name is Alice she explains. She goes on to explain her dilemma: Apperently the old man was as crazy as they come and she was kidnapped by his whole family. She has been living with this family for months pratically running their cafe business. At night they would return to the families cabin in the Goblin hills and she would be chained to a bed where she would sleep. Recently, there has been a feud going on between the father and his sons as to who would own the cafe when the old man's father died. The two inbred sons of the old man were the ones shooting at you. "I basically slaved in the kitchen and served all the food." "I've tried and tried to get someone to help me but either they would get caught by one of the family members or they would refuse to help." Alice says. > You drive to Gold Flake. Leaving Goblin Valley feels good and you open your window a little to get some fresh air. Soon the rumble of the van's smooth running engine puts you in a drowsy state. Suddenly, Alice screams and points a finger out toward the road ahead... Quickly looking out in front of you a little ways you see a man waving in the middle of the road. He seems to be yelling something but you can't make out what he is saying. You are going too fast to slow down. You honk and honk but he doesn't budge. What do you do? > You try to swerve out of the way. You quickly pull the steering wheel to the left trying to avoid hitting the man. The squeal of tires are heard as the van is thrown off it's wheels and your body is thrown through what was left of the windshield. You hit the ground with a hard THUD and skid into the dirt!! You look up in time to see the van fly over you and come crashing down in front leaving bits and pieces of itself on the road as it goes into a frenzy of flips and rolls. The engine ignites and the whole van becomes engulfed in flames. It finally comes to a halt, upside down in a patch of weeds on the side of the road . The flames from the van light up the whole area. You feel something wet on your face and realize it's blood...your blood. It seems to be gushing out of side of your head. Your hair becomes matted as you feel around for the source of the blood. You feel a sharp pain over your left ear and realize the whole left side of your face is deeply cut and the ear is dangling from the side of your head. Feeling lightheaded, you attempt to stand up and reassess your situation. "What about the kidnapped woman I was with?" you think. "I have got to see if she is alright." Barely able to walk, you make your way over to the burning wreckage. Holding on to the left side of your face, you look for anything that can help stop the bleeding. You find a beach towel laying on the side of the road next to the wreckage. Next to the towel is a human foot severed at the ankle. It could only be that of the kidnapped woman. Sticking the towel on your face, you begin to scout around for the man who started this whole accident in the first place. > You where could he be... Walking down the side of the road you notice rows and rows of corn in the moonlight. "When did I enter a cornfield?" you think as you hold the towel firmly to the left side of your face. It seems you have stopped bleeding for the time being but you are in need of immediate hospital attention. Yelling for anyone that might be within ear's distance, you stumble upon an old farm house. "Where the hell am I?" you think. "I've only been walking for a few minutes." The buzz of the street light next to the mailbox is loud but begins to flicker on and off. You notice an old sewage drain pipe sticking out of the ground a few feet further down the road. Suddenly, you feel something wet hit what is left of your left cheek. "Am I still bleeding?" you ask yourself as if waiting for someone to answer. Again...another drop on your head. "It's raining." you say out loud. Soon it begins to pour. You are starting to get wet. Try to find somewhere dry or die of pneumonia... What to do... > You try knocking on the door to the farmhouse. The farmhouse shutters slam open and closed as the wind kicks up. You knock loudly on the door but no one answers. Rain begins to come down and you find yourself stuck. You can stay on the porch or try the storm drain. > You stay on the porch and wait out the rain. Standing on the porch, you look among the high stalks of corn in front of you. In the distance is a scarecrow swinging in the wind. It almost looks as if it's dancing. Suddenly, the door to the farmhouse opens and a little girl comes out dressed in a night gown. She seems to be in a trance, her eyes fixated on the dancing scarecrow. The girl walks down the porch steps and into the rows of corn. The pouring rain doesn't seem to phase her. Maybe this girl is a sleepwalker.... > You try to get the girl out of the rain You run out into the corn after the girl but soon are lost. You scream out for the girl and are suddenly met by the scarecrow. He stands above you on a long wooden pole. Large eye sockets in the burlap make for a face. He seems to be looking down on you. The wind begins to die down and the rain stops. The little girl comes out from behind the rows of corn her eyes fixated on you now. Not a drop of rain has hit her as she is dry from head to toe. The girl points to you and the scarecrow begins moving on it's own!! "Bubba won't hurt you." states the girl. The scarecrow bends over and picks a flower from a nearby bunch of dandelions. It slumbers over to the girl and outstretches his hand. The girl takes the flower and puts it in her hair. You can't believe what your seeing. Soon, you and the scarecrow are walking deeper into the rows of corn. Out of sight....out of mind. You are content following the happy scarecrow... The little girl steps back onto the porch and waves toward both of you. You wave back. You are never seen or heard from again. ~THE END~ You got the "dark night of the scarecrow" ending.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Standing on the porch, you look among the high stalks of corn in front of you. In the distance is a scarecrow swinging in the wind. It almost looks as if it's dancing. Suddenly, the door to the farmhouse opens and a little girl comes out dressed in a night gown. She seems to be in a trance, her eyes fixated on the dancing scarecrow. The girl walks down the porch steps and into the rows of corn. The pouring rain doesn't seem to phase her. Maybe this girl is a sleepwalker.... > You break into the farmhouse and wait out the storm. The stone fireplace is already lit. Soon you are fast asleep in the warmth of the large recliner in front of the fire. The rain pours outside but you are warm and dry. You don't notice the scarecrow now standing in the corner of the room. You don't notice him slowly motion toward you, sickle in hand... SLASH!!! ~THE END~ you reached the "dark night of the scarecrow" ending.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The farmhouse shutters slam open and closed as the wind kicks up. You knock loudly on the door but no one answers. Rain begins to come down and you find yourself stuck. You can stay on the porch or try the storm drain. > You try the storm drain. "That famhouse looks a bit creepy." you think to yourself as you run for the drainpipe. The mouth of the pipe is sticking out just above the weeds that surround the base of it. It looks big enough for your to crawl into. Looking down into the drain pipe is like trying to look around a cave without any light. It's pitch dark. Just then the street lamp goes out and suddenly you are surrounded by pitch blackness. You can only hear the rustling of the corn in the wind...and a voice coming from inside the pipe. "Come on down....down here they all float.... There is nowhere to run since you can't even see your hand in front of your face....or a white gloved hand slowly rising out of the mouth of the drainpipe, grabbing onto your blood caked hair and pulling you down...down...down. > You did you find the flashlight from the van wreckage? LIAR!!!! There was no flashlight from the van wreckage. > You liars go to hell... Blood begins to pour from your face again as the white gloved hand continues to pull you deeper into the bowels of the pipe. Appropropriate odors fill your senses and you begin to scream and puke at the same time. Maniacal laughter answers your screams and you lose consciousness. Splash!! Your body floats face down in a sea of sewage. Lightining from the world above momentarily illuminates your surroundings exposing a creature that resembles a giant spider...only much bigger. Next to the spider stands a circus clown laughing and pointing a finger at your lifeless body.. His other gloved hand covers his mouth exposing jagged teeth. I guess the clown was right...things DO float down here...he he he. THE END You have reached the Stephen King's "IT" ending.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"That famhouse looks a bit creepy." you think to yourself as you run for the drainpipe. The mouth of the pipe is sticking out just above the weeds that surround the base of it. It looks big enough for your to crawl into. Looking down into the drain pipe is like trying to look around a cave without any light. It's pitch dark. Just then the street lamp goes out and suddenly you are surrounded by pitch blackness. You can only hear the rustling of the corn in the wind...and a voice coming from inside the pipe. "Come on down....down here they all float.... There is nowhere to run since you can't even see your hand in front of your face....or a white gloved hand slowly rising out of the mouth of the drainpipe, grabbing onto your blood caked hair and pulling you down...down...down. > You if not... You feel like your falling. The mysterious hand releases your matted hair and you scream out in fear . AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Splash!! You find yourself at the bottom of the drainpipe and about 5 feet of what you could only think of as sewage. The water broke your fall as you try to make out what just happened. It is still pitch black but now you are soaked. Slowly coming to your feet, you feel a presence of someone else close by you. A cool breeze coming from your right chills you to the bone. "Who's there!!" you demand. Who pulled you down into this dark, stank, sewer. You could have sworn you heard a voice just before you were pulled down here. You start to make your way toward the breeze, arms outstretched like a lost, blind person. "I have got to get out of here." you think. > You plug your nose and follow the breeze. While following the breeze you begin to think of your Grandfather and his huge mansion you visited when you were a child. "Could I have been wrong in hoping for lots of money after my he dies?" you wonder. "I wish I never left the house. " "I'll never see my Grandfather now." you think. A shutter of certain doom fills your mind when you notice a light up ahead about 100 feet. It seems to be bouncing around the air from side to side...almost hypnotically. A sense of happiness and comfort starts to creep into your mind and an overwhelming need to follow the bouncing light just up ahead. It kind of reminds you of an angler fish drawing in on it's pray... > You follow the pretty, bright light. "There IS someone in here!!!" screams the bouncing light. "Hurry, get a stretcher!" it says. "QUICKLY!!" Stumbling out of the other end of the drain pipe you see the wrecked van on the side of the road. Two police vehicles, a fire truck, and the coroner's car are all surrounding the area. Puffs of smoke are all that come out of the once blazing van. Rain is still coming down hard and the rescue crews seem to be working fast. The paramedic that spotted you stumbling around in the dark tunnel, turns off his flashlight and helps you onto a stretcher.Ttwo others begin wheeling you toward the paramedic van. You begin to feel lightheaded as they attach an oxygen mask to your face. "Boy, his face got chewed up pretty good." says one EMT to the other. "Could he have been a survivor of this crash?" asks the other EMT. "I don't know but I guess he has alot of questions to answer." the other replies. They both close the doors of the paramedic truck and motion for the driver to take off. As the van slowly pulls away from the crash site you can still see out of the back windows. A lightning flash momentarally reveals a figure of a clown standing at the exit of the drainpipe you just came out of. The clown is wearing a bright yellow suit and white gloves. His red hair is wet against his head and instead of a smile painted on his face, there is a evil grimace exposing rows of sharp, yellow teeth. THE END You reached the Stephen King "IT" ending.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Leaving Goblin Valley feels good and you open your window a little to get some fresh air. Soon the rumble of the van's smooth running engine puts you in a drowsy state. Suddenly, Alice screams and points a finger out toward the road ahead... Quickly looking out in front of you a little ways you see a man waving in the middle of the road. He seems to be yelling something but you can't make out what he is saying. You are going too fast to slow down. You honk and honk but he doesn't budge. What do you do? > You just plow right through him. Feeling you have no other choice, you hit the man head on going at least 90 mph. Nothing but his hand is visible as it flaps in the wind on top of the mini-vans front hood. After about a minute of flapping, the hand disappears from view. "We just murdered somebody." the woman says. After slowing down to normal highway speed, guilt seems to creep in and you both begin to wonder if the man is still alive. "Should we go back?" she asks. > You let's go back... You make a U-turn in the middle of the deserted road and make your way to where you struck the man. Your hands are shaking and you feel confused as to what just happened. "Do you think he still might be alive?" asks Alice looking as scared as you do. Her head darts around looking for any sign of the man. "No way!!" you reply. You drive over the area twice and only find a piece of cardboard with some words written on it. Getting out, you retrieve the piece of cardboard and hold up against the headlight beams. You can make out the phrase: "Thanks for the ride..." You get back in the van and drive on. "Must have been a hitchhiker." you say to Alice "We can report the accident when we get to a town." You drive on. > You drive on... "It's strange that anybody would be out on this old dusty road in the middle of the night." you think as you start to pick up speed. Soon, Alice is asleep in the passenger seat. You turn on the radio hoping to pick up a news station but nothing but static crackles through the 6x9 speakers. You hit the "CD" button and AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" comes on. "Nice..." you think. "This should keep me awake until we get to a town. The music drowns out the thud you DON'T hear from in the back seats of the van. While jammin' to the tunes supplied by your newly aquired ride, you feel something cold against your throat. You look in the rearview mirror and almost scream. Staring back is the man you hit on the road. He is wearing a wool beanie on his head and an orange jacket (like the ones the road crews wear). He is not looking to healthy since you smacked him with your van. One of his eyes is missing and his face is spattered with blood. His left cheek looks crushed and his jaw snaps when he opens his mouth to say...Thanks for the ride!...before he plunges the knife into your throat. ~THE END~ You got the "Creepshow 2" ending.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Feeling you have no other choice, you hit the man head on going at least 90 mph. Nothing but his hand is visible as it flaps in the wind on top of the mini-vans front hood. After about a minute of flapping, the hand disappears from view. "We just murdered somebody." the woman says. After slowing down to normal highway speed, guilt seems to creep in and you both begin to wonder if the man is still alive. "Should we go back?" she asks. > You don't look back...keep driving down the road Soon you notice the sun coming up over the horizon. You welcome it with open arms as you turn down your vizor from the sun's morning rays. Alice is sound asleep as you turn on the radio. An evangelical preacher is the only thing on the AM station. He is set on sending your soul to hell if you don't repent...something like that. The FM channel sends out a faint sound of mariachi music. Deciding to hit the "CD" button, you quickly fill the van with what sounds like AC/DC's "Highway to Hell." You crank it up to drown out Alice's snoring. You wish you could be snoring right now. A sign comes into view. It reads: ENTERING THE TOWN OF GOLD FLAKE...and soon you find yourself in what looks like a old ghost town. > You explore the town of Gold Flake You park by a nearby tree next to the main road. Most of the what's left in this town seems to have been built in the 1800's. One building reads "Saloon" in bleached out black letters over a double doorway. The doors swinging to and fro in the wind. You try to wake Alice up but she won't budge. "She must be exhausted from the night's activities." The images of hitting that poor man rushes back into your memory. I have got to find someone that lives here...anybody. Walking down the main road, you spot another dilapidated old building that reads: Sheriff's office. > You go see the sheriff You walk all around the building and look in the dust filled windows. Not a sign of life. You doubt if anyone actually lives in this ghost town. Tired and a bit confused you wonder what to do next. The only other building still fully standing is the saloon. > You go check out the saloon...you could use a drink. You find the saloon a shambles. "I'm not gonna find anything here." you think. The piano that once played into the night is full of cobwebs and some of the keys are missing. Behind the counter you see a dusty jug of whiskey. It looks as if there might be a swig or two left in the bottle. "Man I'm thisty...I could go for an energy drink about now but this sure looks good..." you say out loud. > You take a swig or two The liquid goes down your throat like fire but somehow quenches your thirst. You continue to explore the saloon with the whiskey bottle in your hand...just in case. > You continue to explore As you walk down the dusty hallway, you notice a staircase to a floor with doors down one side of the wall. This must be a hotel as well....ah....sleep sounds good right about now. Suddenly, a crash is heard and a man rushes out of one of the rooms. He is wearing a cowboy hat and a long dusty trenchcoat. The man is stocky and tall and seems to be missing one major detail....his eyes. The man looks down on you and points his hand at you sneering. Fire seems to fill the black holes for eye sockets. He jumps down from of the second floor railing and lands on his feet right in front of you. What will you do....? > You do you have the whiskey bottle? If yes... The bottle shatters over the cowboy's face making him stagger backward. He attempts to regain his balance and is met by a swift kick in the stomach. The man let's out a yell and falls on his back not moving. You slowly work your way toward his face unable to comprehend why this man has no eyes...just empty holes. Blood trickles down his face. You notice a pronounced chin on the man and think he looks a little like John Travolta. Leaving the saloon, you are met by a swarm of angry bees. They begin buzzing around you. You soon feel very sleepy. You begin hearing a ticking noise inside your brain. "A watch...." > You if you have the pocket watch from outside the mini-mart... Soon, you find yourself following the angry bees. They lead you out of town and into a nearby field where you see people yelling a someone that is on his back. They seem to be angry with the fallen man. You run up to a nearby tree and take a closer look. Crouching behind the tree, you are hidden behind some tall sage brush. There is a black man on his back and tied to a fallen tree trunk. Most of the men and women surrounding him are wearing old 18th century clothes. One lady in a large bonet screams at the man calling him racial and vulgar words. Another man with a pitchfork steps on the black man's hand and motions for a large knife a child of of maybe...14 is holding. Pulling your gun from the back of your pants you try to listen to what the people are saying. You cock it and wait . You can't quite make out the victim's face but an overwhelming sadness fills your heart. AAAAHHHHHH!!! The black man screams in horror and pain as the man with the large knife begins hacking off his right arm. Blood begins to run from his hand. A young woman next to the old lady in the large bonet begins to cry uncontrollably as the others laugh and chant out the words: Candyman...Candyman....Candyman... The boy who once held the knife begins pouring a golden substance that you instantly notice as honey over the black man's body and the bees begin to buzz. The buzzing seems to be coming from your brain. "Give me my bride!!!!" The sun is fully over the horizon now. You raise the gun to shoot....but who. You could put the black man out of his misery...or...shoot at the crowd. > You shoot at the victim Your aim could have been better. The bullet makes it's way into the large tree log where the black man is tied to. Bits of bark The old woman screams and points in your direction. Soon the small crowd is heading in your direction looking angry and mean. They leave the man tied to the tree to die...covered in bees. You look for somewhere to run but find nothing offers sanctuary. You try to shoot the gun but find it jammed. You toss it at the man with the pitchfork but he easily dodges away from it. The buzzing in your brain becomes unbearable. Soon they are on you... ~THE END~ You have reached the "Candyman" ending.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Soon, you find yourself following the angry bees. They lead you out of town and into a nearby field where you see people yelling a someone that is on his back. They seem to be angry with the fallen man. You run up to a nearby tree and take a closer look. Crouching behind the tree, you are hidden behind some tall sage brush. There is a black man on his back and tied to a fallen tree trunk. Most of the men and women surrounding him are wearing old 18th century clothes. One lady in a large bonet screams at the man calling him racial and vulgar words. Another man with a pitchfork steps on the black man's hand and motions for a large knife a child of of maybe...14 is holding. Pulling your gun from the back of your pants you try to listen to what the people are saying. You cock it and wait . You can't quite make out the victim's face but an overwhelming sadness fills your heart. AAAAHHHHHH!!! The black man screams in horror and pain as the man with the large knife begins hacking off his right arm. Blood begins to run from his hand. A young woman next to the old lady in the large bonet begins to cry uncontrollably as the others laugh and chant out the words: Candyman...Candyman....Candyman... The boy who once held the knife begins pouring a golden substance that you instantly notice as honey over the black man's body and the bees begin to buzz. The buzzing seems to be coming from your brain. "Give me my bride!!!!" The sun is fully over the horizon now. You raise the gun to shoot....but who. You could put the black man out of his misery...or...shoot at the crowd. > You shoot at the crying young woman. Your aim is true. The bullet enters the neck of the crying woman and she falls on top of the victim now covered in bees. She begins touching the man's face and shoulders and soon her head falls lifelessly on top of his. The mob is in awe of what just happened. Soon, the bees consume the mob and slowly both the woman and the man get to their feet. Hand in hand they motion toward you. The buzzing becomes louder as both the woman and man embrace, bees consuming their bodies. "Thank you." the woman says. It seems to whispered into your heart. You feel a great joy and relief for the couple. Happiness overcomes you and you settle down next to the tree. Soon you drift to sleep in a deep relaxing slumber. You awaken in your truck. It's parked in front of a sign on the side of a dusty old road. It reads: Goblin Valley 5 miles ahead. "Wow, what a dream." you think as you fumble in your pockets for your keys. Instead you find an old pocketwatch. You open it and find the sketch of the two you saw in your dream. The happiness warms your heart as you find the keys in the ashtray of your truck. You head on to Goblin Valley and to see your uncle... It's getting dark and you got to get moving.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The bottle shatters over the cowboy's face making him stagger backward. He attempts to regain his balance and is met by a swift kick in the stomach. The man let's out a yell and falls on his back not moving. You slowly work your way toward his face unable to comprehend why this man has no eyes...just empty holes. Blood trickles down his face. You notice a pronounced chin on the man and think he looks a little like John Travolta. Leaving the saloon, you are met by a swarm of angry bees. They begin buzzing around you. You soon feel very sleepy. You begin hearing a ticking noise inside your brain. "A watch...." > You if you don't have the pocket watch... The bees continue to buzz around you relentlessly. You decide to run out into the main road in hopes the bees won't follow. You run out into the road and right into someone standing in front of the sheriff's building. You get knocked off your feet with the sun glaring down on you. When your eyes focus, you make out the sillohuette of a medium sized man wearing a cowboy hat looking down at you. He blocks the sun from your eyes and extends an arm out to help you back up. "Man, I'm allergic to bees." you say with a chuckle. The man helps you up to your feet and he offers you a seat inside the sheriff's building. The man is wearing a light tan police uniform. He is about your height and weight but considerably older. He looks at you and smiles exposing a gap between his two front teeth. He turns and unlocks the door and motions you in. Soon you both are sitting and enjoying a couple of bottles of cold "Crush" orange sodas. "What brings you here?" he asks as he takes a long drink of his beverage. > You was hitchhiking and was dropped off here... The man smiles and offers you another frosty crush from his buzzing freezer. Soon he is on a CB radio and states he is escorting you to your grandfather's house since "it's something to do." he states You and the sherriff drink beverages and drive out of Gold Flake. You relate the crazy story of how you ended up here and he just laughs and drives on. Soon you are at your grandfather's house. He and long lost relatives are happy to see you and relates old memories of times past. Your grandfather leaves you the old mansion and you end up moving in. All is well. ~THE END~ You reached the "quick and painless" ending. No movie relation to this ending. Go back and try again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The bees continue to buzz around you relentlessly. You decide to run out into the main road in hopes the bees won't follow. You run out into the road and right into someone standing in front of the sheriff's building. You get knocked off your feet with the sun glaring down on you. When your eyes focus, you make out the sillohuette of a medium sized man wearing a cowboy hat looking down at you. He blocks the sun from your eyes and extends an arm out to help you back up. "Man, I'm allergic to bees." you say with a chuckle. The man helps you up to your feet and he offers you a seat inside the sheriff's building. The man is wearing a light tan police uniform. He is about your height and weight but considerably older. He looks at you and smiles exposing a gap between his two front teeth. He turns and unlocks the door and motions you in. Soon you both are sitting and enjoying a couple of bottles of cold "Crush" orange sodas. "What brings you here?" he asks as he takes a long drink of his beverage. > You you're enjoying this delicious beverage...duh!! The sheriff looks at you with a frown, the gap teeth dissapear behind his lips. He begins to fiddle with his sherriff's badge on his uniform. He pauses and begins to smile again. The room is very dusty and is split in half by a large desk. A book shelf runs across the back wall behind the desk and the sheriff and is filled with books...all caked with dust. You notice one is missing. the sheriff offers you another drink before you even finish the first. You are so thirsty you accept. He disappears behind a half door with a little table top attached and goes over to a loudly buzziing refrigerator. As he twists the caps off the bottles with a PSSSSSZZZ...he introduces you to a man standing behind you. You swing around off the chair and are met by another man. This man is a little younger than the sheriff. He wears a black cloak and is missing his eyes. He reaches out and touches your chest with his fingers. You feel a blast of cold penetrate your chest and you pass out... > You where are you\? You slowly come into consciousness. Your eyes are blurry but you can make out objects moving around you. You smell an incense burn like old wood. Your eyes fixate on someone standing over you. This person is not human but part animal. He looks half goat. "Have I been drugged?" you think. Long, dark horns twist out of the man's skull and hook around behind his human ears. His nose and teeth are of a goat. He wears a red robe and begins molding something out of clay with his human hands. You look around and see other cloaked figures dancing around you. You are the center of attention at this little get together. You try to move but are unable. Rough rope bind your arms and legs to what looks like a poorly made cross. You and the cross are hanging upside down. GROAAAN.... A groan comes from next to you and you swing your neck around and see someone else in the same position you are in. This man looks much older than you are. The goat man seems to notice you are fully awake now and begins a maniacal laugh. > You what the heck is going on... The moaning man seems to be dying. He lays on his own wooden cross but wears a black cloak like those dancing around you. His eyes flicker open and you notice right away who this old man is. He is your grandfather! You scream for someone to help him but no one moves a muscle. At closer view, you notice all those in black hoods have no eyes. The goat man comes into your peripheral view and you turn your head to see. The goat man twists a wax figure over a strange bowl filled with a viscous, bubbly fluid. Screams seem to be eminating from the bowl. Large horns make up the lid and a pentagram is etched on the golden surface of the bowl. "Thanks for coming my boy....aaahhh ha ha....." whispers your uncle to you. "You are saving my life." he states as his eyes dissolve into black pits like the man you saw in the saloon. The goat man drops the figure into the bowl and a burning consumes your body. You scream in horror as the others lift the crucifix on its end and into a small hole in the ground. Your last image you see is your uncle rising off of his crucifix. He looks a lot like you....wait...he is you now. ~THE END~ You reached the "Devil's Rain" ending. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you walk down the dusty hallway, you notice a staircase to a floor with doors down one side of the wall. This must be a hotel as well....ah....sleep sounds good right about now. Suddenly, a crash is heard and a man rushes out of one of the rooms. He is wearing a cowboy hat and a long dusty trenchcoat. The man is stocky and tall and seems to be missing one major detail....his eyes. The man looks down on you and points his hand at you sneering. Fire seems to fill the black holes for eye sockets. He jumps down from of the second floor railing and lands on his feet right in front of you. What will you do....? > You if not... The cowboy with no eyes clenches your neck with a grip like a vice. You beat on his chest but to no avail. He will not let go. Soon...you black out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Slowly opening the menu, you find a small scrap of paper with something written in pencil. It reads: KIDNAPPED PLEASE HELP You close the menu and look around. The woman is staring at you with a terrified look from behind the kitchen swing door. She disappears as the old man looks at you and then toward the kitchen doors. "What the heck is going on?" you think. If this old man is holding an obese woman against her will, I've got to do something....right? > You ask to use the restroom You notice a narrow hallway just past the restroom on your right. It is very dark so you flick the switch next to an old wooden coat rack nailed to the wall. Florescent lights flicker on revealing a large room at the end of the hall. The door to the room is propped open and you can see inside. Large boxes marked ammo are stacked 3 high. and a large gun rack sits against the far wall. There are 8 or 9 rifles in the rack. > You grab a gun As soon as you enter the room, a loud shrieking noise fills the air. You whirl around to see what is making such a hideous noise. On the walls are motion sensors that just detected movement... You. Just as you realize what has happened, the old man enters the room. His face looking a little worse for wear. You notice his eyes have changed from the yellow you saw earlier to a strange red that seems on the verge of being orange. His mouth opens exposing sharp, shark-like teeth. "You little bastard." yells the old man over the shrieks of the motion sensors. "I've saved you from the goblins and all you can do is snoop around back here." "You human's are so predictable." As he speaks, you watch in awe as his body starts to contort and change in front of your eyes. His eyes begin to get bigger and rounder and gray hair sprouts all over his face and neck. The whole time he just stares at you in disgust. You back away in horror as the man crouches down on all fours and his breathing starts to become more rapid. He shuts his eyes in pain and his skin seems to come alive, bubbling and turning a dark shade of green. Long grayish black hair sprouts from his head hanging down in front of his face. The shrieks of the sensors seem to throb in your brain... > You quick...grab a gun off the rack. Keeping your eyes on the transformation before you, you reach back with your right arm and grab the first gun your hand touches. Swinging it forward you quickly bring the gun up to your cheek and aim it at the creature. By now, the thing before you doesn't even resemble the old man you were sitting at the diner with. More like a creature you would battle back in the old days you used to play Dungeons and Dragons. The green, hunched over creature before you launches itself directly in your direction with large claws instead of hands outstretched and aiming at your throat. > You pull the trigger You quickly pull the trigger and.........nothing. The trigger doesn't seem to budge. Suddenly you get knocked back by the creature's force running into the gun rack behind you. The gun rack falls back onto the floor and you on top of it. You try to roll off but the creature quickly throws it's weight on top of you causing you to yell out in pain. Quickly, the goblin swipes at your throat with it's talon like claws ripping open a large gash of flresh blood and flesh. You stare up at the goblin as it licks it's claws of your blood with a black tongue. Your last thought is..."Damn the safety button." THE END You reached the "Gargoyles" ending.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Keeping your eyes on the transformation before you, you reach back with your right arm and grab the first gun your hand touches. Swinging it forward you quickly bring the gun up to your cheek and aim it at the creature. By now, the thing before you doesn't even resemble the old man you were sitting at the diner with. More like a creature you would battle back in the old days you used to play Dungeons and Dragons. The green, hunched over creature before you launches itself directly in your direction with large claws instead of hands outstretched and aiming at your throat. > You knock him away with the rifle Using the butt of the rifle, you swing it at the creature's face, connecting with it's nose. Black ooze spatters out of it's nostrils and onto the gun and wall behind you. It makes a low grunting noise and falls back into a near corner of the room. A look of painful surprise crosses it's face as it makes for the hallway and back into the diner. Quickly, you undo the safety switch on the rifle you just used for a bat, aim at the creature's backside, and pull the trigger. Instantly, the creature drops to the ground, the bullet penetrating his spine. Raising the gun toward the creature's head, you pop another one for good measure entering his skull. Black ooze begins to pour out of the wounds you made. Just when you are about to pull out your cell phone and take a couple of pics of your prize kill, the heavy set woman enters the room. You seem to have forgotten all about her and her awesome chili during the commotion. "Thank you" "Thank you...." You stare at her as she approaches you with arms outstretched as if to give you a big hug. Thank you.... > The least you could do is give her a hug... You drop the gun unable to comprehend what is going on. The woman that made the delicious chili runs over to give you a big hug. Tears roll down her cheeks as she repeats the words: Thank You...Thank You...Thank You... As you embrace each other, 3 men with rifles enter the room. The woman backs away and looks suprised at the newly aquired company. All three men are in camoflauge and two are wearing cowboy hats. The other is wearing a cap that reads "Truckers do it in convoys." "Alice?" asks one gunman. "Toby!!!" she cries and runs over and hugs all three men. Soon the men are shaking your hand in appreciation for killing what they call a "Gargoyle." Toby is Alice's husband and both are big rig truck drivers. Toby states that they recieved a shipment to drop off at this place...Captain Trips Diner. "We thought it was a strange shipment for a diner since the haul was 2 dozen rifles an ammo." Alice says. "While we were unloading it, the old man motions these ...winged creatures to attack us while he kidnaps my Alice." Toby continues. "That was two days ago...we could'nt get close enough after the gargoyles ran us off in our truck. I called for Sheriff Reeves here to assist me." "People been disapearring around here for years cause of these damn Gargoyles." states Sheriff Reeves. " You killed the last of it's kind." "We killed the rest of them up in a cave in the hills. This one was a master shape shifter. The only way you can tell is the eye color." "We saw your truck back there....sorry about the shooting. " "We were aiming for the shape shifter." states Toby. Soon, you make your way with your new friends toward Toby and Alice's rig. They offer you a ride to the city your grandfather lives in. "It's a little out of the way but it's the least we can do for saving my life." Alice says with a smile. "I'll make you another bowel of my chili before we go." You grin from ear to ear. ~THE END~ You got the "Gargoyle" ending and mastered this storyline. Good job. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Using the butt of the rifle, you swing it at the creature's face, connecting with it's nose. Black ooze spatters out of it's nostrils and onto the gun and wall behind you. It makes a low grunting noise and falls back into a near corner of the room. A look of painful surprise crosses it's face as it makes for the hallway and back into the diner. Quickly, you undo the safety switch on the rifle you just used for a bat, aim at the creature's backside, and pull the trigger. Instantly, the creature drops to the ground, the bullet penetrating his spine. Raising the gun toward the creature's head, you pop another one for good measure entering his skull. Black ooze begins to pour out of the wounds you made. Just when you are about to pull out your cell phone and take a couple of pics of your prize kill, the heavy set woman enters the room. You seem to have forgotten all about her and her awesome chili during the commotion. "Thank you" "Thank you...." You stare at her as she approaches you with arms outstretched as if to give you a big hug. Thank you.... > You put a bullet in her brain... The kick of the rifle causes the bullet to enter the woman's neck just above her right clavacle spraying warm blood in your face. Your arms begin to fatigue and you drop the gun. Blood spurts from the large triple chins as she grasps at her throat as if to stop the bleeding. It seems to take her forever to die as you watch her stumble around and scream not noticing the 2 gunman that were outside enter the room. "NOOOOOO!" cries a large framed man with a camoflauged hat and a burly blonde beard. The other man is skinny, red hair in a military haircut and wears a sherrif's badge on his uniform. The bigger man runs over to the dying body of the chili lady and begin's consoling her. "That was his sister." states the sheriff. " The sheriff slowly walks over to the creature at the end of the hall. "This was the last of the goblin's and it had taken her hostage two nights ago to breed with her." "We had a stand off these past few hours once we pinpointed her whereabouts." he says. "I guess an autopsy will tell us if you murdered an innocent woman or did her a service." he continues. "For right now I am taking you into custody." THE END You reached the "Gargoyles" ending. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You notice a narrow hallway just past the restroom on your right. It is very dark so you flick the switch next to an old wooden coat rack nailed to the wall. Florescent lights flicker on revealing a large room at the end of the hall. The door to the room is propped open and you can see inside. Large boxes marked ammo are stacked 3 high. and a large gun rack sits against the far wall. There are 8 or 9 rifles in the rack. > You hit the restroom It feels so great to release your bowels after such a great meal... AAAAAAHHHHHHH. "I need to get to one of those guns in the back room just in case whoever was shooting at me earlier makes there way past the old man and into the diner." you think.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Slowly opening the menu, you find a small scrap of paper with something written in pencil. It reads: KIDNAPPED PLEASE HELP You close the menu and look around. The woman is staring at you with a terrified look from behind the kitchen swing door. She disappears as the old man looks at you and then toward the kitchen doors. "What the heck is going on?" you think. If this old man is holding an obese woman against her will, I've got to do something....right? > You make a run for it. Quick as you can, you slide out the booth and bust open the front door. The only thing you can think of is try to make it back to your truck. Bam...Bam... Again with the shooting... only this time a bullet finds you. A searing pain erupts as the bullet imbeds itself in your left leg. You stumble and fall to the ground. Two more bullets soon make their way to your brain... ~THE END~ You reached the " Hills Have Eyes" ending.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The diner seems quaint and in decent shape for being out in the middle of nowhere. The old man steps behind the cashier counter and pulls out a double barrell shotgun from behind it and begins loading it. His face is stern and weathered. It seems he has seen battle in his lifetime, you can't quite tell if it has been WW2 or Vietnam. The man screams out something you can't understand and a woman of about the same age appears from behind a set of doors. She is morbidly obese and has a huge apron on with spurts of food and liquid stained from use. "Get this man something to eat." the old man bellows and the woman dissapears behind the double doors. She returns with a large bowl of chili and some saltines. The food opens up your oifactory senses as she sets it at the table in front of you. Dropping the flashlight beside you on the seat you sit down and start to open the crackers. The chili smells great but what if you would prefer something else. Should you ask for a menu instead or enjoy their hospitality and chow down. "Well eat up boy." states the old man. "It's on the house." He walks around the counter and begins looking out the glass doors of the diner. Looking for a shooter perhaps. "Why was someone shooting at me?" you ask. "Eat now and questions later." says the man looking out into the moonlight. The woman begins to go back to the kitchen but asks you if you like a soda before leaving. > You eat the chili You never had chili so good. The woman sits behind the counter watching you eat every spoonful. "Was it good?" she asks...almost giggling. "Oh yeah." you respond with a huge BELCH!!!! Your stomach starts to rumble and you find yourself in need of the toilet. As if reading your mind, the lady motions to a sign in the back corner or the room that reads: RESTROOMS You mouth the words "Thank You" to her and dash for the restroom.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The diner seems quaint and in decent shape for being out in the middle of nowhere. The old man steps behind the cashier counter and pulls out a double barrell shotgun from behind it and begins loading it. His face is stern and weathered. It seems he has seen battle in his lifetime, you can't quite tell if it has been WW2 or Vietnam. The man screams out something you can't understand and a woman of about the same age appears from behind a set of doors. She is morbidly obese and has a huge apron on with spurts of food and liquid stained from use. "Get this man something to eat." the old man bellows and the woman dissapears behind the double doors. She returns with a large bowl of chili and some saltines. The food opens up your oifactory senses as she sets it at the table in front of you. Dropping the flashlight beside you on the seat you sit down and start to open the crackers. The chili smells great but what if you would prefer something else. Should you ask for a menu instead or enjoy their hospitality and chow down. "Well eat up boy." states the old man. "It's on the house." He walks around the counter and begins looking out the glass doors of the diner. Looking for a shooter perhaps. "Why was someone shooting at me?" you ask. "Eat now and questions later." says the man looking out into the moonlight. The woman begins to go back to the kitchen but asks you if you like a soda before leaving. > You demand an answer from the old man "Who is shooting at me...do you know?" The old man looks in your direction and gives you a strange glance. He quickly moves away from the door and disappears down a hall in the back of the diner marked "Restrooms." Maybe it was the outside light of the flashing "Captain Trips Diner" sign but something did'nt look quite right in the old man's eyes. Now is your chance to run but risk getting shot outside. You grab your flashlight and hold it under the table. "Maybe I can whack him with this when he is not looking." you think.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The diner seems quaint and in decent shape for being out in the middle of nowhere. The old man steps behind the cashier counter and pulls out a double barrell shotgun from behind it and begins loading it. His face is stern and weathered. It seems he has seen battle in his lifetime, you can't quite tell if it has been WW2 or Vietnam. The man screams out something you can't understand and a woman of about the same age appears from behind a set of doors. She is morbidly obese and has a huge apron on with spurts of food and liquid stained from use. "Get this man something to eat." the old man bellows and the woman dissapears behind the double doors. She returns with a large bowl of chili and some saltines. The food opens up your oifactory senses as she sets it at the table in front of you. Dropping the flashlight beside you on the seat you sit down and start to open the crackers. The chili smells great but what if you would prefer something else. Should you ask for a menu instead or enjoy their hospitality and chow down. "Well eat up boy." states the old man. "It's on the house." He walks around the counter and begins looking out the glass doors of the diner. Looking for a shooter perhaps. "Why was someone shooting at me?" you ask. "Eat now and questions later." says the man looking out into the moonlight. The woman begins to go back to the kitchen but asks you if you like a soda before leaving. > You accept the soda "Yes, ma'am." you say. "I'm parched and would love a soda right about now." The woman gives you a nice smile and disappears behind the doors. The old man begins pacing in front of the doorway mumbling something under his breath. The bowl of chili looks really good but would go better with a tall glass of your favorite cola. The woman returns with a large pitcher of ice and fizzy soda. She sets down a red 32oz. glass with Coca-Cola inscribed on the side and fills the glass with soda. You flash her a quick glance of acceptance and swallow the whole thing down. Even small bits of ice slide by tickling your throat. You slam down the glass and the lady begins laughing in appreciation. "I love a man with an appetite." she says with a chuckle. Having said that, you dig into the chili. It is darker and thicker than any you have ever had before. The saltines seem to disappear in the bowl as you shovel spoonful after spoonful into your mouth. Soon the bowl and the pitcher are both empty and you feel great. The man grabs his flanel jacket from of a coat rack by the door and goes outside in front of the diner. Swinging the shotgun in the air he screams out something you don't understand. "Must be some foreign language" you think. You scan the room for a phone but find nothing. The diner lady begins to laugh at the old man and walks toward the kitchen entrance. The old man retunrs with a frown on his face and looks toward you. He sets the gun back behind the counter and sits down on the other side of the table you are sitting at and puts his face in his hands as if exhausted. You can hear the buzzing of the large neon sign out front.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Reaching into the glove box of your truck, you grab your 6 D cell MAG flashlight. "This could double as a weapon." you think to yourself as you start down the gravel road toward the light. Time goes by and you can make out a neon sign flickering on and off in the distance. It starts to get colder by the minute and your jacket doesn't quite keep you as warm as you want to be. " This is truning out to be more than I bargained for." you say in a whisper. Suddenly a CRACK echoes in the distance and something whizzes by your face. You drop to the ground behind one of the rock formations. CRACK....CRACK....something imbeds itself deep into the formation you are hiding behind. Is someone shooting at me? CRACK... The noise seems to be coming from a far distance but definitiely directed at you. What do you do... > You shine the flashlight at the direction of the noise You hide behind one of the earthy mounds and shine the flashlight in the direction the bullets seem to be coming from. There seems to be some nearby hills and ....something just moved. You dust off dirt from the mound that poured onto your shirt and lap and settle back behind the mound. You attempt to flash the light in the same direction but....the mound begins to move...again. Backing away...you hear a distant cry. "Get outta there!!!!" You look over in the direction of the distant light and see a man yelling and waving at you. Bam....Bam... Bullets whiz by you as you make your way toward the man. As you do, the earth seems to rumble and fall out from underneath you. You fall back into a small hole. The mound you once hid behind begins rumbling toward your direction. Bullets ricochet off the mound making it rumble even more. A strange noise eminates from it sounding like a shreik. It echoes in the night sky. > You try to make your way toward the man You run as fast as you can, bullets whizzing past you. Getting closer, you see the man is standing in front of a small building. A giant neon sign flashes brightly and the old man beckons you inside. The sign reads "Captian Trips Diner." As you stumble through the door a bullet bounces of the large sign causing sparks as some of the light bulbs go out. The room is full of booths and a counter with spinning seats just like an old 50's diner. " Go catch your breath." the old mans bellows and motions you toward a corner booth. Soon your heart trate slows to normal and your breathing is not so fast and heavy. "Time for some chili." states the old man. "It's the best in the west!!"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hide behind one of the earthy mounds and shine the flashlight in the direction the bullets seem to be coming from. There seems to be some nearby hills and ....something just moved. You dust off dirt from the mound that poured onto your shirt and lap and settle back behind the mound. You attempt to flash the light in the same direction but....the mound begins to move...again. Backing away...you hear a distant cry. "Get outta there!!!!" You look over in the direction of the distant light and see a man yelling and waving at you. Bam....Bam... Bullets whiz by you as you make your way toward the man. As you do, the earth seems to rumble and fall out from underneath you. You fall back into a small hole. The mound you once hid behind begins rumbling toward your direction. Bullets ricochet off the mound making it rumble even more. A strange noise eminates from it sounding like a shreik. It echoes in the night sky. > You try to make it back to the truck You try to work your way out of the hole but it seems impossible. All of the earth around you is moving and swirling as if alive. Soon you are unable to reach the top of the hole as the mound moves over you... filling the hole. You are crushed. ~THE END~ You have reached the "Gargoyles" ending.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Driving on the gravel seems to wake you out a lull that you seem to have been in. The rocks kick and ding against your truck making this road a bit louder to drive on. Every now and then you hit a pothole or have to go around one of those rock mounds you seem to be surrounded by. A very large hole on the right comes into view and you swing your steering wheel left coming into contact with a rock formation. You strike the mound almost head on throwing you forward and the seat belt jerking you back but not before your head strikes the dashboard making your vision blur momentarily. A low, gutteral sound comes from somewhere close by... almost like a shriek. All goes quiet... Your head begins to throb as you try to get out your truck. The door is wedged into the side of the what is left of the rock formation. You feel a cold substance dripping down your left arm. "Oh, no...Am I bleeding?" you think. Slipping to the passenger side you make your way out of the truck. You stagger over to the front and find the headlamps are still working but the engine is now off. You notice a black substance spattered against the side of the truck. It looks like oil. The last thing in the world you need now is no transportation. Off in the near distance is the flashing light still beckoning you to come hither. You have no choice...well, you could go back to the main road and try hitchhiking with the first car that comes by...which might never happen. "Hey, what about my cell phone...Yeah, I got triple A." you think. > You try hitchhiking back at the main road. It doesn't take long before you to see headlights coming down the main road. You never thought you would be doing this but you stick your thumb out and motion the car toward you. Something magical happens...the car pulls over as it slowly passes and the passenger door flies open. Two quick honks of the horn for you to get in. > You get in the car Closing the car door behind you, you get a big whiff of smoke. It's very dark inside the large car but you make out the silhouette of the driver smoking a cigarette or something. "You shouldn't be out here." the driver states in a "matter of fact" tone. "Goblin Valley is not safe at night." he says. "You know how it got it's name?" You stop to ponder this man's motives. He hasn't even stopped to introduce himself or anything. I guess beggars can't be choosers. You shake your head "NO." "The legend of Goblin Valley dates back to the 50's where some archeologists found fossilized bones in some caves out here." " They were said to be those of gargoyles." A laugh escapes your lips and you pucker up real quick to stop anymore from coming out. "I'm not kidding." says the mysterious driver aounding a little angry at you. " It was said that at night they would fly around trying to find human females to breed with and then ... keep them in the caves until giving birth. This process would usually kill the female humans. "Is this guy crazy." you think. Maybe he just likes scaring hitchhikers he picks up out here. > You try an change the conversation "Where are we headed?" you break into his conversation. "Gold Flake" he responds after a short pause. "I can't wait to get there....anything is better than listening to this guy go on about gargoyles. you think." ....think again. > You to Gold Flake...this way... The sun starts to come up over the horizon as you enter the town of Gold Flake. The driver, you now notice, is an old man chewing on a large cigar. "This is it." he says with a growl. He stops the car in front of a old wooden sign marked "GOLD FLAKE." You are glad to get out and smell fresh air for a change. As he drives off, he kicks up dust making it hard to see. You wave to the old man with only your middle finger outstretched. Turning toward town, you look for any signs of life. Maybe you can get somebody with a working phone to call your uncle. You notice a saloon nearby and see if anyone is around.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Closing the car door behind you, you get a big whiff of smoke. It's very dark inside the large car but you make out the silhouette of the driver smoking a cigarette or something. "You shouldn't be out here." the driver states in a "matter of fact" tone. "Goblin Valley is not safe at night." he says. "You know how it got it's name?" You stop to ponder this man's motives. He hasn't even stopped to introduce himself or anything. I guess beggars can't be choosers. You shake your head "NO." "The legend of Goblin Valley dates back to the 50's where some archeologists found fossilized bones in some caves out here." " They were said to be those of gargoyles." A laugh escapes your lips and you pucker up real quick to stop anymore from coming out. "I'm not kidding." says the mysterious driver aounding a little angry at you. " It was said that at night they would fly around trying to find human females to breed with and then ... keep them in the caves until giving birth. This process would usually kill the female humans. "Is this guy crazy." you think. Maybe he just likes scaring hitchhikers he picks up out here. > You ask to get out of the car. "Let me out of the car!" you demand. Although it's dark in the car and you can't see the man's face, you know he is looking at you. After a quick pause he says "I'm not slowing down 'til I get to Gold Flake." The man guns the engine and soon your way past Goblin Valley toward the town of Gold Flake. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Driving on the gravel seems to wake you out a lull that you seem to have been in. The rocks kick and ding against your truck making this road a bit louder to drive on. Every now and then you hit a pothole or have to go around one of those rock mounds you seem to be surrounded by. A very large hole on the right comes into view and you swing your steering wheel left coming into contact with a rock formation. You strike the mound almost head on throwing you forward and the seat belt jerking you back but not before your head strikes the dashboard making your vision blur momentarily. A low, gutteral sound comes from somewhere close by... almost like a shriek. All goes quiet... Your head begins to throb as you try to get out your truck. The door is wedged into the side of the what is left of the rock formation. You feel a cold substance dripping down your left arm. "Oh, no...Am I bleeding?" you think. Slipping to the passenger side you make your way out of the truck. You stagger over to the front and find the headlamps are still working but the engine is now off. You notice a black substance spattered against the side of the truck. It looks like oil. The last thing in the world you need now is no transportation. Off in the near distance is the flashing light still beckoning you to come hither. You have no choice...well, you could go back to the main road and try hitchhiking with the first car that comes by...which might never happen. "Hey, what about my cell phone...Yeah, I got triple A." you think. > You try your cell phone. Just like in the movies. No signal. All you can do is go back to the main road or travel further up the gravel road and check out the flashing light.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are navigating and driving at the same time when you come to a fork in the road. "That's funny." you think. "The map shows no fork in the road here. One road is dirt and seems to lead into a desert area...a wooden sign reads "Goblin Valley 30 miles." The other road is paved and seems to go on for miles and miles. A sign is posted that says "Interstate 666 junction 100 miles." You find Goblin Valley on the map but it is'nt anywhere near where you need to go and you can't even find Interstate 666. Well, you need to choose one... > You paved road to Interstate 666. By nightfall, you reach the junction to Interstate 666. You feel tired and are amazed that it is growing dark. The day seemed to just fly by. You notice an old broken down neon sign in the distance. As it comes into view, the sign reads "Motel Hello." The "o" seems to flicker on and off. A few cars are parked out in front of the office. "Maybe I could get directions to Interstate 44 (which, according to the map, is the road you should be on right now.)" You park your truck and go into the office. An old dusty counter and a bell is just about all that resides in this room. You ring the bell twice...nobody. You ring again...nothing. You notice the keys to the rooms hanging behind the counter. You could grab one, unpack, and try back later. Which is it? > You grab a key. You notice a thick coat of dust caked over everything in your room except for a VHS machine hooked up to what seems to be a brand new Zenith 36" color t.v. A video tape sits inside the mouth of the VCR machine. The tape is without a label. Hmmmmm.... > You try to get some sleep. You hop into your "Sponge Bob" pajamas and pull back the covers to the bed. You find more dust under the covers than what was on top. You try the best you can to brush away the dust but there is just too much of it. "This bed has not been slept in years." you think. You need someplace to rest but it's definitely not going to be here. Fed up with the place, you pack everything up and head down the road in hopes for a more accomidating facility. > You keep going down route 666. Another 2 hours go by and you see nothing resembling civilization. You start to run low on gas when you notice an old, washed out billboard that reads "Gas and Mini-mart up ahead 2 miles." The sign seems very old but the lights shining on it are very bright...as if just changed out. You head on toward the gas station... > You 'cause you got to go pee!!! You reach the gas station just in time. The truck sputters up to the gas pump. There are two other vehicles pulled up to the Mini-Mart entrance. A red mini-van and an 18 wheeler...well, just the cab. You notice the gas pump is missing it's nozzle. A sign hangs over the pump that reads "Out of gas." On further observation, you notice all four pumps have the same sign hanging over them. Great!!! Now what? You notice people moving about in the mart. The lights are bright but you are too far to see what is going on inside. It seems that a man and a woman are walking around the store and another is behind the counter. What do you do?...you need fuel somehow. > You go inside and ask about the gas pumps? Upon passing the drivers side of the mini-van, you hear a muffled, high pitched squeal followed by some rumbling. The red van begins to shake a little and then comes to a stop. The windows are tinted but, at closer look, it seems you can make out a hunched over figure sitting in the back. The rumbling starts again followed by some grunting. "What could be going on in there?" you think to yourself. > You investigate further? You make your way over to the passenger's side of the red mini-van and check the sliding door. It's unlocked. A petite woman is tied up in the back seat of the van. Duct tape runs across her mouth. She turns her head toward you and begins screaming through the tape. The muffled sounds of her screams catch the attention of the attendant inside the mini-mart. You watch as he grabs a double barrel shot gun from behind the counter and points it in your direction. The first blast causes the glass of the mini-mart window to shatter. You don't wait for the second. In a flash you get into the van and slide the door shut. You turn and quickly pull the tape from the mouth of the woman. "HELP ME!!!!!" she screams. "I've been kidnapped by these two maniacs!!" The second blast shatters the van's windshield and rocks it from side to side. Pieces of glass cover the dashboard and front seats. "AAAAAHHHHH!!" you both scream. Looking for a way out of this mess you notice the keys are still in the ignition. "Let's get the heck out of here!!" you say as you slide into the driver seat. You catch a glance at the crazy mini-mart attendant reloading his gun and running for the mart's front door. The van comes alive and you peel out of the parking lot and back on to the interstate. Looking in the rearview mirror, you see two large figures get into a car and drive in your direction. You mash on the gas pedal and check the speedometer. It reads 70mph....80mph....90mph....The woman sitting in the back suddenly screams and yells "WATCH OUT!!!!" You look up in time to spot a man in the middle of the road. He is waving his hands wildly over his head. He seems to be screaming something. You are heading right at him...headlights glaring in his eyes... Can you swerve out of the way? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Upon passing the drivers side of the mini-van, you hear a muffled, high pitched squeal followed by some rumbling. The red van begins to shake a little and then comes to a stop. The windows are tinted but, at closer look, it seems you can make out a hunched over figure sitting in the back. The rumbling starts again followed by some grunting. "What could be going on in there?" you think to yourself. > You continue on into the mini-mart? "I'm not getting involved." you think as you open the door to the mart. You slowly look around inside and nod "Hi." to the attendant behind the counter. He is an older man in his mid 30's and heavily tattooed with fading images of half naked ladies and a rose with what used to be a dagger but now looks like an ugly bruise on his forearm. Tattooed flames come up from the left side of his neck although most of the tattoo is hidden under his work shirt. The attendant quickly waves and then points his attention back to the couple in the candy aisle. A man and a woman are huddled around each other. They seem to be attempting to shop lift and doing a poor job of it. The attendant is about ready to call their bluff just as you walked in...or so it seems. You watch as the attendant pulls a sawed off shot gun from behind the counter and point it at your head. "Get with the others." he says very clamly. Without hesitation, you walk over and stand in the candy aisle with the couple. At closer look, you notice the woman carrying an infant and the man attempting to keep it calm. "I just came in here to ask about the gas...because my truck is..." you start to say. "Does it look like I care what you need?" the attendant bellows. "I'm waiting for my partner and then we get the heck out of here!!" > You keep your eye on the shotgun. Seeing the shotgun reminds you of the a murder spree that has gone on for the past month. Apperantly, there are three men that escaped prison and are taking hostages and killing anyone that gets in their way. You've been reading about it in the paper. Looking down beside the counter you spot newspaper rack. You notice the attendant's ugly mug all over the front page. it reads "TWO ESCAPED CONVICTS KILL 3 ON ROUTE 666!" At closer look, you spot YOUR FACE and those of the unfortunate couple you are with. "Lets go." says the partner as he comes out from the back room zipping up his fly. "Let's grab some "Hot Pockets" and some beer...oh and maybe some candy for the kid tied up in the van." We got to get to the "Titty Twister Bar" by sun up." "Everybody be cool...." says the tattooed guy as he takes off the attendant's vest and throws it down behind the counter...with the real attendant's body. "...I just did'nt want you to miss the Splatter Show." BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! THE END You reached a "DUSK TIL DAWN" ending.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You reach the gas station just in time. The truck sputters up to the gas pump. There are two other vehicles pulled up to the Mini-Mart entrance. A red mini-van and an 18 wheeler...well, just the cab. You notice the gas pump is missing it's nozzle. A sign hangs over the pump that reads "Out of gas." On further observation, you notice all four pumps have the same sign hanging over them. Great!!! Now what? You notice people moving about in the mart. The lights are bright but you are too far to see what is going on inside. It seems that a man and a woman are walking around the store and another is behind the counter. What do you do?...you need fuel somehow. > You try to find the restroom on your own? You leave your truck and walk around the side of the mini-mart and enter a dimly lit back alley. You locate the men's bathroom at end of the alley. At the end of the alley is a metal gate that swings open and then crashes closed. You hear footsteps from beyond the gate entrance. Shrugging your shoulders you enter the smelly, one stall bathroom and lay paper over the toilet seat before sitting down to do your business. You begin whistling and studying the displays of artwork that litter the stall walls. One in particular catches your eye. It's a hideous picture of a shadow standing over a dead body and a two horned beast climbing out of the dead body's stomach. The shadow has a large hook in place of a right hand. Underneath the drawing written in large, red letters are the words CANDYMAN repeated five times. Someone really took some time drawing this masterpiece in this stinky stall and it gives you the creeps. You quickly finish your business and leave the stall. You start to wash your hands when you look up into the mirror and see a black man wearing a brown leather jacket standing right behind you. You whirl around to find nobody there. You glance back at the mirror and the man is gone. Man, I'm losing it!! you think. Just as you are about to leave the bathroom you notice the mirror begin to ripple and shake violently finally breaking all over the filthy floor. A hole was dug into the wall behind the mirror and a 9 millimeter handgun and a small flashlight is stashed in the hole. You check the gun for bullets and find one in the chamber and 2 left in the clip. Man, I am really losing it now!!! Do you grab the gun and flashlight or is it wiser to just leave those things alone? > You grab the contents in the hidden hole Shoving the gun down the back of your pants, you feel the muzzle touch the top of your butt crack. Whoa!! That's cold!! you think. They always seem to do it on TV no problem. You exit the restroom and begin to trace your steps back toward the front of the mini-mart. "Come with me....my sweet!!" bellows a low voice that shakes your brain. Something touches your right shoulder. Something sharp and cold. Come with me...... You slowly turn around and see the same black man...his eyes fixated on yours. You begin to feel light headed. You stumble back and the figure catches you in his arms. He hugs you close and begins to speak... Like so many others...I was filled with dreams and sharing them with the one that I loved. Just as the tragic death of Romeo and Juliet, this love was not to be but I was to suffer a black slaves fate...and forever ramain...in purgatory. Even though your head is shoved close to his chest, you hear no heartbeat, no respirations, just a rumbling that seems to take over his body. He releases you and you quickly back away from the cloaked figure as he begins to shake uncontrollably. "Bring me a bride so that I may rest....." His mouth opens wide and hundreds of buzzing insects pour from it, obscuring his face! Soon his whole body is covered in bees!! You remember the gun in your pants and quickly pull it out and point it at the buzzing mass before you. What will you do... > You shoot at the figure You stare in awe at the swirling mass as it suddenly flies away from you, past the open gate and into the darkness. What the... you think. . After a few minutes you holster your gun and contemplate on what to do next. Suddenly from a short distance you hear..."Find my bride...or I will never leave you...my sweet." > You check the restroom. Slamming the door behind you, you start to think of what to do next. This whole night has become something of a nightmare. You turn to inspect the room and walk back into the filthy stall. To your amazement you find it occupied. A man seems to be sitting on the toilet, slumped over against the wall. The light over the sink poorly lights up the stall due to the metal barrier separating it from the rest of the room. Suddenly, the figure snaps to attention sitting posture perfect on the toilet. You can't quite tell who this person is or what he is up to but the sudden movement made you jump, your heart pounding at full capacity. You grab the small flashlight you found earlier and shine it at the dark figure finding you face to face with the same black man you just met before. His face is contorted in a huge grin, his eyes missing their pupils. The eye balls seem to pulsate...almost bulging from their sockets. The mouth opens again...no bees. Just laughter....HA HE HE HE HE HA....CANDYMAN.....HE HE...CANDYMAN......HAHA HEHEH CANDYMAN...HA HA CANDYMAN.... The man raises his arm and exposes a large hook on the end instead of a hand. It begins to scrape across the metal barrrier...across the creepy image of a man exiting out of the bowels of the devil. In horror, you drop the flashlight.......the figure beginning to rise off his putrid throne. HE HE HE CANDYMAN.... The hook quickly swings in your direction, moving at your throat. Before you know it, blood spews from your neck and you fall too your knees. Looking up at your murderer standing before you, he begins to unbutton his filthy, ragged shirt exposing hundreds of bees. Tears escape your eyes...you know this is the last image you will ever see...before the bees cover your lifeless body....cover all the blood. THE END YOU HAVE REACHED THE "CANDYMAN" ENDING.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stare in awe at the swirling mass as it suddenly flies away from you, past the open gate and into the darkness. What the... you think. . After a few minutes you holster your gun and contemplate on what to do next. Suddenly from a short distance you hear..."Find my bride...or I will never leave you...my sweet." > You use your flashlight and follow the noise. Turning on your flashlight, you make your way past the gate and into the darkness. A few feet past the gate, you see something shining on the ground. At closer inspection, you see that it's a pocketwatch. You pick it up and examine the exquisite artwork put into the dark bronze cover. "It's very beautiful." you think. TICK, TICK, TICK... Although it's looks very old, it seems to still function!! You push a small button next to the winding wheel and the cover flies open showing the face of the watch. Inside the cover is an old sketch of a man and woman...one black and one white. "What a cute couple. " you say softly. Sadness seems to pour over you as you hear the faint buzzing of the bees. Quickly, you shine your flashlight up ahead and make out the cloaked figure standing next to a large tree. The buzzing is coming from a large bee hive hanging from one of the branches. "It is midinight!" cries the voice. You have until dawn to find me my bride. You look down at the watch and notice the minute hand move over the twelve. "Follow this trail into another dimension, a dimension I cannot travel. Find my bride...or live with me forever." The figure dissapears. You shine the light to the right of where the figure once stood and find a dirt trail that leads over the hill the tree stands on. "Let's go find this guy a bride." you say. > You follow the trail. Following the trail is quite easy to do since all of the bees lead you to where you need to go. Your trusty flashlight does the job but soon the night begins to break away and a hint of sunlight reaches over the horizon. Soon, you don't need the flashlight at all...everything seems to be moving at a fast pace. You notice a jack rabbit dart past you on the trail but everything around it seems to blur. Realizing you have focused on the buzzing bees the whole time, you start to look around you. Everything is moving at a fast pace yet nothing moves at all. You stop as the bees surround your head and then dart away. You are standing in the middle of a ghost town. A few old buildings make up what is left of a town that looks like it came out of an old western. In front of you an old saloon. The door to the saloon swing in and out with the wind. Things are moving normal now. You are drawn to the old saloon.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You notice a thick coat of dust caked over everything in your room except for a VHS machine hooked up to what seems to be a brand new Zenith 36" color t.v. A video tape sits inside the mouth of the VCR machine. The tape is without a label. Hmmmmm.... > You try the office again. Entering the office, you find that nothing has changed. Nobody seems to be around at all. You notice a large jar next to the cashier machine on the counter. The lettering on the jar reads "Farmer Vincent's Smoked Jerky." You have'nt eaten since you left for your Grandfather's house this morning. It's got to be well past dinner time by now. "Nobody is around." you think. "I could just grab a couple and nobody will even know the difference." You open the jar and take a wiff of the contents. "Man, they smell good!!" you say out loud. Although you have been a strict vegetarian for about two weeks now, your stomach and olfactory senses seem to have forgotten that. Do you grab a couple pieces of jerky or...not. > You grab some jerky You quickly grab about 5 to 6 pieces of jerky and immediately shove about 2 or 3 into your mouth. They taste delicious and soon your stomach quits rumbling. You decide to nose around the office a little more. BRAAAH.....BRAAAAAAAA....BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPAAAAPAAAAA.... It sounds like someone is trying to start a lawnmower or something from behind the office. Who could be mowing their lawn in the middle of the night. You walk past the counter and into the back room marked "EMPLOYEE'S ONLY". There you find a room full of security cameras and video tape decks. Upon further examination you realize that every motel room has been assigned a camera view. Across the room is another door. The noise seems to be coming from the other side of the door. How creepy! you think. BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! BRAAAAAAAPAAAAAAPAAAAAAAAA... The sound is much louder and closer this time. > You open the door? Before you can even put your hand on the door knob, something or someone breaks through the door pushing you violently back into the video cameras. Sparks fly all around as a menacing figure holding a chainsaw stands about 5 feet away. BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! the chainsaw sputters. The figure wears a grotesque pig mask two or three sizes too big for it's body. It wears denim overalls and a red long sleeved shirt. The outfits you usually see farmer's wear. You can hear muffled laughter coming from under the mask as the thin figure start to swing it's saw in a criss cross motion toward you. You try to run back toward the front office but it takes a second to get your feet to follow your commands. The pig man barely nicks your shirt when the chainsaw comes in contact with a video monitor and then sputters to a stop. The pig man tries to start his saw again still laughing from under the mask. This is your chance to act!!! > You make a run for your truck? You clumsily run out of the office and back toward your truck. You can faintly hear the whirr of the chainsaw coming back to life. Grabbing for the driver's door you suddenly realize that all of your belongings are in your motel room including your keys to the truck. You try the door anyway and...just as you thought...locked. You got to get back to your motel room... and fast!!!! > You make a dash for the motel room. Using the key you got from the office earlier, you open the door to the motel room and grab your truck keys. You also grab your bags and start to head back to your truck. Your heart pounds with adrenaline and your mind is working on pure instinct now. As you get closer to your truck you find the "pig man" standing in front of the driver's side door. White smoke billows from the chainsaw as he he holds it over his head and shakes it menacingly. "It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's Fritters." it screams from behind the mask. At that moment you feel your energy start to leave you. You begin to have trouble focusing and you start to lose control of your body. You feel hot liquid run down your leg and realize you are urinating in your pants. Your hands seem to lose their grip on your bags and the last thing you hear is your bags hitting the asphalt of the parking area. You black out. > You is this the end? The smell of fertilizer is stifling as you wake up in a daze. You try to move your arms and legs but can't. It seems you are unable to move anything but your head. You open your eyes and make out what seems to be a pinwheel and flashing lights. To your left are.....something is demanding your attention to the flashing lights. Elevator music is playing in the background. You seem to feel real calm even though you can't move a muscle. Using your hands to make a fist, you grab what seems to be mounds of dirt. Have you been buried alive? What's going on, you think. Just at that moment someone whispers in your ear. "Pay attention to the pinwheel and listen to the pretty music." It's difficult to fight off the desire to obey the voice but you are able to look around and notice you are buried to your neck in what seems to be a garden. It is still night time but bright lights surround your head. A large woman with overalls is bent over speaking into the ears of other people buried along with you. Just their heads are sticking out of the ground making rows of 20 to 30 bodies. Your try to scream but can't. The only sound you make is a pathetic gargling as your throat seems to catch on fire. You swallow hard and taste blood run down your throat. "Vincent, come quick...this one is trying to yell or something." Just then a man in overalls and a plaid shirt comes into your limited view. "Hahaahaaa, I guess he doesn't realize his tongue and vocal cords have been cut out honey." "I knew he'd go for my famous jerky." "Nobody can resist it." You stare at the man she calls Vincent with utter horror. His white hair covered by a straw cowboy hat seems to make him all the more menacing as he starts to smile at you. He stands over your head and raises a shovel over his. The woman standing by him is morbidly obese and has long red hair styled into pigtails like a deranged "Pipi Longstocking." That is your last thought as the shovel comes crashing down onto your skull instantly killing you. "It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's Fritters." they both say in unison. THE END You reached a "Motel Hell" ending.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Before you can even put your hand on the door knob, something or someone breaks through the door pushing you violently back into the video cameras. Sparks fly all around as a menacing figure holding a chainsaw stands about 5 feet away. BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! the chainsaw sputters. The figure wears a grotesque pig mask two or three sizes too big for it's body. It wears denim overalls and a red long sleeved shirt. The outfits you usually see farmer's wear. You can hear muffled laughter coming from under the mask as the thin figure start to swing it's saw in a criss cross motion toward you. You try to run back toward the front office but it takes a second to get your feet to follow your commands. The pig man barely nicks your shirt when the chainsaw comes in contact with a video monitor and then sputters to a stop. The pig man tries to start his saw again still laughing from under the mask. This is your chance to act!!! > You run directly at the pig man!! Without hesitation you run directly at the pig man as it tries to start the chainsaw. You tackle it to the ground and the pig mask goes flying off the head of what seems to be a man in his late 50's or early 60's. His face is stuck in a contorted grimace as he hits the ground with you on top of him. He begins to laugh as his bloodshot eyes start to dart in your direction. You make a fist out of your right hand and without even thinking, send it crashing into the nose of the laughing, old man. Blood begins to flow freely form both nostrils as he continues to laugh at you. He raises on finger toward you in a mocking manner. At this time you realized you are going to need something more to finish him off. What could finish off this crazy old coot? > You hit him over the head with a video monitor? As you go to grab a nearby video moniter, you start to feel very tired. The monitor seems to get very heavy as you pull the wires away and try to lift it over your head to finish off the old man. Soon your eyes are unable to focus and you drop the monitor to the ground. The last thing you can make out is the old man slowly getting back to his feet and putting on the pig mask. His laughter echoing in your ears. You black out!!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Without hesitation you run directly at the pig man as it tries to start the chainsaw. You tackle it to the ground and the pig mask goes flying off the head of what seems to be a man in his late 50's or early 60's. His face is stuck in a contorted grimace as he hits the ground with you on top of him. He begins to laugh as his bloodshot eyes start to dart in your direction. You make a fist out of your right hand and without even thinking, send it crashing into the nose of the laughing, old man. Blood begins to flow freely form both nostrils as he continues to laugh at you. He raises on finger toward you in a mocking manner. At this time you realized you are going to need something more to finish him off. What could finish off this crazy old coot? > You try to start the chainsaw and go "Leatherface" on him!! You step over the laughing, old man and grab the chainsaw with both hands. BRAAAAAAPAAAAAAAPAAAAAA!!!! The chainsaw starts up after only one try. It takes a couple of seconds to wrench the saw out of the t.v. monitor but soon you turn and swing the chainsaw in the direction of the old man. The old man's laughing face becomes one of sheer terror as you split his head wide open, blood flying everywhere painting the room deep red. It is you that has begun to laugh as the man's face becomes unrecognizable, his hands pumping into fists and finally releasing their grasps in the air and dropping to the ground. The chainsaw sputters to a stop halfway down the old man's face. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. You finally stop and realize what you have done. After what has just happened, anything your grandfather has waiting for you doesn't seem all that interesting now. What should you do... > You head home and try to forget the whole thing. You slowly pull out of the Motel's parking lot and back onto the interstate. You watch as the neon lights of the "Motel Hello" sign get further and further away. "It feels good to be away from there" you think as you sigh in relief. Your body starts to relax for the first time in hours and your heart rate starts to return to normal. You drive for seems like forever finding no signs or markings as to where you are. Nothing seems familiar on this road. "Did I take a wrong turn somewhere" you think as your eyes start to get heavy. Soon you start to nod off. You wake up to a blaring horn and head lights coming right at you! You swerve out of the way just in time to hit a tree head on. BLAM!!!!! You black out!!!! "Dr. Tait, please come to room 315....Dr. Tait....room 315 please." Whoa, what a splitting headache you have. You go to open your eyes and you are met with bright lights. The bightness soon fades and is replaced by a man in a white lab coat and holding a small flash light. "I see he is waking up." the man says in a British accent. "Oh let me see!" says another masculine voice close by you. Soon the face of your father is staring back at you. You smile as he smiles back. You try to speak but are unable. You try to move but cannot. Your father's face becomes very sad and a tear wells up in his right eye. "Your paralized my boy, your dad blurts out and begins to cry uncontrollably. The doctor returns in view and explains what happened in the crash. Something about severing your spinal cord and being permantly paralized. You want to pay attention to what the doctor is saying but you can't because your eyes are fixated on the old man standing in the shadows of your hospital room. He begins to laugh uncontrollably as he points a boney old finger at you. THE END You have reached a "MOTEL HELL" ending. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step over the laughing, old man and grab the chainsaw with both hands. BRAAAAAAPAAAAAAAPAAAAAA!!!! The chainsaw starts up after only one try. It takes a couple of seconds to wrench the saw out of the t.v. monitor but soon you turn and swing the chainsaw in the direction of the old man. The old man's laughing face becomes one of sheer terror as you split his head wide open, blood flying everywhere painting the room deep red. It is you that has begun to laugh as the man's face becomes unrecognizable, his hands pumping into fists and finally releasing their grasps in the air and dropping to the ground. The chainsaw sputters to a stop halfway down the old man's face. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. You finally stop and realize what you have done. After what has just happened, anything your grandfather has waiting for you doesn't seem all that interesting now. What should you do... > You try to contact the local authorities (well...it WAS self defense). Dropping the chainsaw, you stumble out the front door of the main office and walk toward Interstate 666. You are still in shock as to what happened tonight. About a mile up the road you spot a phone booth with the light flickering on and off. You go inside, put a couple of coins in the slot and dial 911. An operator picks up the phone and you burst into tears while explaining all that just happended. You wait for the operator to respond but the phone seems to go dead.....then..."I'm sorry. the operator finally states. " I just don't believe you." You are flabbergasted at the response. "Excuse me?" you say. "Go back to the motel and you'll find that it never happened......." CLICK. You run back to the motel and into the back office where the whole bloody mess took place. You find NOTHING!!! Not a drop of blood. Suddenly , there is movement on one of the working video cameras next to the murder scene. You scream as you realize it's the pigman himself, waving a bloody chainsaw at the camera. He stops in time to remove the mask revealing a face you recognize. Your own. You stare at yourself in the monitor, your face, contorted into a sinister grin from ear to ear. You can't bear it anymore...your heartbeat races and you find it hard to breath all of a sudden. You faint. > You is this the end? Amonia fills your nostrils and reality re-aquaints itself with you in a rush. You can hear clapping and cheering all around you. Could this all have been a crazy dream? you think. "Where am I?" you whisper. Opening your eyes, you find yourself on an ambulance stretcher in the parking lot of the "MOTEL HELLO" stage. An ambulance, two big semi trucks, and about 10 to 15 vehicles now litter the once eerie parking lot. Flood lights brighten the whole lot exposing at least 20 to 40 people clapping and cheering and pointing at you. You notice your grandfather in the crowd also clapping although he looks like he is laughing at you a little bit. He doesn't look a bit sick. A man in a black leather jacket smiles and walks over toward you. A camera man follows him. "We want to welcome you to a new reality show in which you have unknowingly been the star for the past hour." the man says. You look up at him in confusion. " The show is callled " SCARED SENSELESS!" he continues. " It's kind of a game show to see how long it will take to scare someone into fainting." " You have been chosen as the very first contestant of the first episode, and may I say, you did very well." he concludes. Your grandfather walks up beside you and gives a big hug and says laughingly, "You got punked." You soon realize the whole thing was a set up from the start and your grandfather was behind it all. He bought a local TV studio and hired a top notch film, special FX, and stunt crews to put together the first episode. He used you as his first victim to see if his little reality show was gonna sink or swim. OH, IT SWIMS!... Two weeks later the episode aires and it's an instant hit. Everyone loves it and you become somewhat of a celebrity. Two weeks after that you are at home and opening your mail. You find a letter from your grandfather among other fan mail. Quickly opening the envelope you see a card with a ghost on the front and a check for the amount of $1 million. On the bottom of the card it says... Thanks for being such a great sport. Grandfather. THE END You have reached a "MOTEL HELL" ending. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> "Amanda!" you yell from the kitchen. "I swear, if you don't turn the telly down, I will KILL YOU!" The blaring from the living room drowns out her response, which drives you mad. You tap your foot impatiently. I will wait five seconds before I go in there, you tell yourself. One.....Two.....Three.....Four..... "'Manda! I'm coming in there!" You say furiously as you storm from the kitchen. The living room's lights are dimmed, so the glare from the telly makes you blink. Amanda is curled up on the couch, her eyes glued on the screen. Her red hair is a mess, and she is dressed in rumpled up pajamas. "Amanda," you say as you grab the remote. "You really need to stop this! Your head is going to explode from the sound." "Shut it, Jess!" Amanda shushes you. "Turn it up, this is really important!" You roll your eyes and listen to your roommate. The reporter is just finishing up a story. "...and the residents of Greenwich should be more cautious. The number of robberies and break-ins have increased over the last two weeks. So, make sure to lock your doors when you leave to house." "So?" you say as you turn it off. "It's just some robberies. Nothing unusual." "But he said it was happening in Greenwich! That's here, in case you forgot!" Amanda says as she gets up from the couch. She stretches, and walks with you to the front door. "We have the same chance of getting robbed as anyone else here!" "'Manda," you turn around, exasperated. "Who in creation would want to break into the flat of two twenty-year old women that can barely pay the rent? It's not like we have anything of value here." You grab your purse from the table by the door. Glancing into the mirror, you check to see that your hair is still in its place, and your mascara hasn't smudged. Pleased, you turn to Amanda. "We have a telly, a microwave, a DVD player, and some jewelry upstairs, Jess!" Her green eyes flash with fear. Amanda is always worried that someone would break into the flat that you share and steal everything you have. "Oh, for God's sake. Listen to me. No one is going to rob us!" You unlock the door. "Right, I'm going out." "Make sure you get some more apples. We're nearly out," Amanda reminds you. "Yeah, don't worry. I'll remember." You walk into the hallway. "Lock the door behind me!" Your best friend lets out a retort as you close the door in her face. Time to go to town. > You going Shopping You walk down the street, carrying a bag of groceries. The car is just down the street. Thank God. Once again, you made the mistake to wear heels to the shop. Trying to shift your grip on the bag, you stop for just a moment. The bag is really heavy, since you decided to buy a few more things that you saw. You get a good grip just as a man runs straight into you. "Oh, God!" You moan as your bag falls to the concrete sidewalk at your feet. Something broke inside of it; you could hear the smashing sound. "Thanks a lot! There's my week's pay, gone!" You look up at the man who ran into you. "Sorry! I am so sorry!" He is in a tweed jacket, a striped shirt, and a bow tie. You can't see his face, since he is bending over the bag on the ground. You get down on your knees next to him. Sighing, you say, "It's alright. Not your fault, anyway. I should have seen you coming." The man looks up at you, finally showing his face. All you think is, Blimey, he has a big chin. His eyes quickly scan you, sizing you up. "What's your name?" he asks. "Jess. Jess Rowell." you say calmly as you pick up some apples. "And, you are...?" "The Doctor," he says as he puts the now broken mug into the bag. "Doctor who?" you ask him. "Just the Doctor." Finished, he stands up. You pick up your bag and get up. "The Doctor?" you muse. "Well, Doctor, let me ask you this. Why were you running so fast?" "It's quicker than walking. Now, I really have to go. It's important." he explains. And, just like that, he's gone. You can see his head in the crowd before that disappears as well. You walk towards the car. Might as well go home. > You previous Page "Amanda!" you yell from the kitchen. "I swear, if you don't turn the telly down, I will KILL YOU!" The blaring from the living room drowns out her response, which drives you mad. You tap your foot impatiently. I will wait five seconds before I go in there, you tell yourself. One.....Two.....Three.....Four..... "'Manda! I'm coming in there!" You say furiously as you storm from the kitchen. The living room's lights are dimmed, so the glare from the telly makes you blink. Amanda is curled up on the couch, her eyes glued on the screen. Her red hair is a mess, and she is dressed in rumpled up pajamas. "Amanda," you say as you grab the remote. "You really need to stop this! Your head is going to explode from the sound." "Shut it, Jess!" Amanda shushes you. "Turn it up, this is really important!" You roll your eyes and listen to your roommate. The reporter is just finishing up a story. "...and the residents of Greenwich should be more cautious. The number of robberies and break-ins have increased over the last two weeks. So, make sure to lock your doors when you leave to house." "So?" you say as you turn it off. "It's just some robberies. Nothing unusual." "But he said it was happening in Greenwich! That's here, in case you forgot!" Amanda says as she gets up from the couch. She stretches, and walks with you to the front door. "We have the same chance of getting robbed as anyone else here!" "'Manda," you turn around, exasperated. "Who in creation would want to break into the flat of two twenty-year old women that can barely pay the rent? It's not like we have anything of value here." You grab your purse from the table by the door. Glancing into the mirror, you check to see that your hair is still in its place, and your mascara hasn't smudged. Pleased, you turn to Amanda. "We have a telly, a microwave, a DVD player, and some jewelry upstairs, Jess!" Her green eyes flash with fear. Amanda is always worried that someone would break into the flat that you share and steal everything you have. "Oh, for God's sake. Listen to me. No one is going to rob us!" You unlock the door. "Right, I'm going out." "Make sure you get some more apples. We're nearly out," Amanda reminds you. "Yeah, don't worry. I'll remember." You walk into the hallway. "Lock the door behind me!" Your best friend lets out a retort as you close the door in her face. Time to go to town.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Everything hurts. Waking up is as bad as it usually is. Aches and pains along with a soured stomach are things you expect after chasing the dragon, though you usually don't have a screaming headache like the one currently pounding beneath your skull. The floor beneath you is cold and dirty, concrete that hasn't been cleaned in years. This isn't the first time you've woken up in some abandoned building you can't remember going to, but as your eyes slowly come into focus you aren't so sure if this really is the norm or not. The light in the room comes from candles placed around the place, sitting on pieces of abandoned furniture, crates, and tables. The walls are decrepit, covered in graffiti and stained filth. It wasn't really that unusual to wake up in a place like this. Junkies love abandoned buildings and it is kind of nice to ride out a high in a nice candlelit room instead of a pitch black one. Whoever set out the candles didn't think to toss down a mattress though, a shame really. You don't quite feel like getting up just yet, but the sooner you do the sooner you can make some cash to score another dose. Standing up, you flap your arms a bit in an attempt to rid yourself of the numb, tingling sensation that seems ever present in them now. You really should start injecting elsewhere, but what does it really matter at this point? The crooks of your elbows look like shit and that won't change. Sure it hurts like a bitch to stick a needle there now, but the reward after is worth it. Looking around at the flickering candles, you notice that there are pictures hanging from the ceiling on strings or placed around the candles. Shuffling toward one half rotten table, you pick up one of the photographs. It isn't easy to see in the dim lighting, but as you hold it up in one hand and a candle in the other you recognize it. It's been years since you've seen this picture. A family portrait from when you were just a kid. One corner of it is torn, effectively removing one person from the picture. Swearing under your breath, you pick up other pictures and frown as you see that all of them are of you or people you know. Childhood photos of yourself and your parents, pictures of an old boyfriend, pictures of friends you haven't heard from in a decade or more. As you continue sorting through all of the photographs, you come across a tape recorder with a small cassette already loaded inside of it. > You listen To The Tape Pressing the play button, you hear a voice start speaking from the recording. It's clearly been distorted, but you can hear the words well enough. "Hello, Ciara. For most of your life, you have been a victim. But, you have never truly tried to rise above this victim status you have held for so long. Within this room, are photographs of your childhood. Your pictures progress from a happy little girl to that of a criminal, but what fueled this change? For years you have been too busy blaming others and using past wrongs against you as an excuse for your own misdeeds. Today, you will face your inner demons. Beyond the door of this room wait a series of tests. But, first, you must prove to yourself that your life is worth more than the addiction that rules it. The door out is locked and the key is within your reach, so is your drug of choice. Will you reach for the key to your freedom or will you stay a slave to your addiction? Live or die, Ciara, make your choice." The tape goes silent as you feel fear start to take over the haze of cravings and the pounding of the migraine in the back of your skull. Looking around, you spot the door and hurry to it. Just as the tape said, it is locked with a heavy bolt. You've never seen a door like this before, it's solid steel and doesn't budge when you push against it. The bolt has a keyhole in it, but you don't see a key anywhere. Looking around, all you can see are pictures hanging up illuminated by the flickering candlelight, some photographs on a crate surrounding by a circle of candles on the floor, and what looks like a binder laying on the floor in a dark corner of the room. > You look At The Hanging Photographs You pluck the hanging pictures from the strings, tossing them to the floor as you go. None of them seem particularly significant. Each one is a picture of your child self, teen self, or mugshots. Scratching at your arms, you stop to gaze at one from when you were in high school. The girl in the picture is beautiful and smiling, but you know better than to be fooled. You remember what it felt like to force the smile for that picture, what was going on behind the pearly white grin. Letting the picture fall to the ground, you continue around the room until you have looked at all the pictures that were hanging from the ceiling. None of them seem to be of consequence really, but it does feel strange to look at them all.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Pressing the play button, you hear a voice start speaking from the recording. It's clearly been distorted, but you can hear the words well enough. "Hello, Ciara. For most of your life, you have been a victim. But, you have never truly tried to rise above this victim status you have held for so long. Within this room, are photographs of your childhood. Your pictures progress from a happy little girl to that of a criminal, but what fueled this change? For years you have been too busy blaming others and using past wrongs against you as an excuse for your own misdeeds. Today, you will face your inner demons. Beyond the door of this room wait a series of tests. But, first, you must prove to yourself that your life is worth more than the addiction that rules it. The door out is locked and the key is within your reach, so is your drug of choice. Will you reach for the key to your freedom or will you stay a slave to your addiction? Live or die, Ciara, make your choice." The tape goes silent as you feel fear start to take over the haze of cravings and the pounding of the migraine in the back of your skull. Looking around, you spot the door and hurry to it. Just as the tape said, it is locked with a heavy bolt. You've never seen a door like this before, it's solid steel and doesn't budge when you push against it. The bolt has a keyhole in it, but you don't see a key anywhere. Looking around, all you can see are pictures hanging up illuminated by the flickering candlelight, some photographs on a crate surrounding by a circle of candles on the floor, and what looks like a binder laying on the floor in a dark corner of the room. > You look At The Photographs On The Crate Walking over the crate encircled by candles, you pick up a few of the pictures on top. They're all family pictures of you and your parents, plus a few with old friends from your childhood. All people that you have long since left behind. What good had any of them ever done you after all? It certainly seems fitting that they are here in picture form to mock you while you are trapped in this room. As you pick up the last picture you find yourself staring at a picture of you and your stepfather. His arm is laxily draped over your shoulder and he smiles for the camera, you smile as well for the picture. But there is a tenseness to your face. Flipping it over, you see there is a note scrawled on the back in neat handwriting. Look beneath the facade Frowning, you glance around the room again. It isn't that hard to follow the note's instructions. You had spent your entire childhood maintaining a facade, you can see through it in every single picture here. The forced smiles, the tense posture, the baggy clothing that covers everything. Your childhood had been a lesson in learning to not stand out, to not be pretty. To just go unnoticed as much as possible and survive long enough to see a better life. That better life had never come though. Looking down again, you realize that the pictures on top of the crate had hidden a small hole beneath them which has a flashlight settled down inside it. Picking up the flashlight you flip it on, glad for the extra light. Aiming it about the room, you are able to spot a corner of the room that was previously unlit. There are what looks like two glass boxes there. > The Choice Walking over to the corner of the room, you find two glass boxes filled with what looks like razor wire. Bending down you shine the flashlight into the first box, trying to see through all of the wire and spotting something in the back of it. Craning your neck you eventually are able to make out a key at the back of the box. A quick study of the other box reveals a syringe at the end of it. That sick feeling in your stomach is back, making bile rise up inside your throat. Sticking your hand inside either box is going to be extremely painful. A thought slides into your mind that it may be for the best if you just go for the syringe. Dying doesn't really concern you if you're completely honest with yourself. You've been gambling with your own life for a decade now. Clinging on to another year or two of prostitution, robbery, and drugs seems so pointless. Maybe one last high and dying here in this room surrounded by pictures and candles wouldn't be so bad? It certainly would be a kinder death than what may await you out on the streets or an overdose. But, life is life. Maybe if you make it out of this place you can hang on for another few years. You're past the point of telling yourself that you will check into a rehab somewhere. You won't do it and you don't care to lie to yourself anymore. But a few more years of life sounds less scary than being entombed in this place forever. > You reach For The Heroin One last high doesn't sound so bad and you can always go for the key later after all. Slowly, you start to push your hand into the box. At first, the wires only graze your hand but once you are wrist deep into the box the razors start to cut into your skin. It's a sharp pain that's all too familiar, but you push past it. You feel a sharp wire cut into the soft flesh between your fingers and you have to pull back a bit to find your way through the maze of razor wires. It feels as if your skin is being peeled off, making you cry out as you make one final shove toward the back of the box. Elbow deep in the box, it feels as if a hundred knives are cutting into your forearm, blood drips down onto the floor from the opening of the box. After feeling about with your blood slicked fingers, you finally feel the syringe. Gripping it as best you can, you pull backward but the string holding the syringe in place holds fast. Gritting your teeth, you pull back steadily as the razor wires cut deeper into your flesh on the way back out. Suddenly it gives and you nearly fall backward before the syringe's string goes taut again after only a few inches of slack. Only your hand is inside the box now, still tightly gripping your prize. Tugging at it, you cuss in frustration as it holds fast before you notice a quiet ticking sound coming from the box. Frowning, you lean down and peer inside past your hand. You can't see anything, but the sound is definitely coming from the back of the contraption. Yanking on the syringe again, you try to pull the prize free but it just won't give as you try to see what it is caught on. The ticking stops and you pause for a moment before a gunshot rings out in the room. Searing hot pain rips through your face as you fall flat onto your back from the impact. There is a ringing in your ears and a stench of something burning in your nose. It feels as if you have just inhaled fire, the inside of your mouth feels burnt and so does your throat. Reaching your uninjured hand up to your face you feel the part of it that hurts. Panic starts to run through you as you realize there is a hole where your cheek once was. Blood is pouring out from your face and the hole is too big for you to cover it with just your one hand. Bringing the hand up you freeze when you see the state of it. Strips of your skin dangle from your hand and forearm were the razor wire had ripped it clean off the flesh. You can see the exposed tendons working in your hand as you flex your fingers. Looking around, you can't see anything in the darkness of the room. The candles have nearly burned themselves out, it won't be long now before you are plunged into true darkness. You try to call for help but all that comes out is a wet gurgle and a lot of pain. > You reset Game Everything hurts. Waking up is as bad as it usually is. Aches and pains along with a soured stomach are things you expect after chasing the dragon, though you usually don't have a screaming headache like the one currently pounding beneath your skull. The floor beneath you is cold and dirty, concrete that hasn't been cleaned in years. This isn't the first time you've woken up in some abandoned building you can't remember going to, but as your eyes slowly come into focus you aren't so sure if this really is the norm or not. The light in the room comes from candles placed around the place, sitting on pieces of abandoned furniture, crates, and tables. The walls are decrepit, covered in graffiti and stained filth. It wasn't really that unusual to wake up in a place like this. Junkies love abandoned buildings and it is kind of nice to ride out a high in a nice candlelit room instead of a pitch black one. Whoever set out the candles didn't think to toss down a mattress though, a shame really. You don't quite feel like getting up just yet, but the sooner you do the sooner you can make some cash to score another dose. Standing up, you flap your arms a bit in an attempt to rid yourself of the numb, tingling sensation that seems ever present in them now. You really should start injecting elsewhere, but what does it really matter at this point? The crooks of your elbows look like shit and that won't change. Sure it hurts like a bitch to stick a needle there now, but the reward after is worth it. Looking around at the flickering candles, you notice that there are pictures hanging from the ceiling on strings or placed around the candles. Shuffling toward one half rotten table, you pick up one of the photographs. It isn't easy to see in the dim lighting, but as you hold it up in one hand and a candle in the other you recognize it. It's been years since you've seen this picture. A family portrait from when you were just a kid. One corner of it is torn, effectively removing one person from the picture. Swearing under your breath, you pick up other pictures and frown as you see that all of them are of you or people you know. Childhood photos of yourself and your parents, pictures of an old boyfriend, pictures of friends you haven't heard from in a decade or more. As you continue sorting through all of the photographs, you come across a tape recorder with a small cassette already loaded inside of it.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Walking over to the corner of the room, you find two glass boxes filled with what looks like razor wire. Bending down you shine the flashlight into the first box, trying to see through all of the wire and spotting something in the back of it. Craning your neck you eventually are able to make out a key at the back of the box. A quick study of the other box reveals a syringe at the end of it. That sick feeling in your stomach is back, making bile rise up inside your throat. Sticking your hand inside either box is going to be extremely painful. A thought slides into your mind that it may be for the best if you just go for the syringe. Dying doesn't really concern you if you're completely honest with yourself. You've been gambling with your own life for a decade now. Clinging on to another year or two of prostitution, robbery, and drugs seems so pointless. Maybe one last high and dying here in this room surrounded by pictures and candles wouldn't be so bad? It certainly would be a kinder death than what may await you out on the streets or an overdose. But, life is life. Maybe if you make it out of this place you can hang on for another few years. You're past the point of telling yourself that you will check into a rehab somewhere. You won't do it and you don't care to lie to yourself anymore. But a few more years of life sounds less scary than being entombed in this place forever. > You reach For The Key You reach into the box with the key, balling your hand into a fist to keep your fingers from getting snagged in the maze of razor wires. Gritting your teeth, you slowly push toward the back of the box. The wire slices into your fist and forearm, but it is a familiar enough pain that you manage to make it to the back of the box and grab the key. Removing your hand is more painful than putting it into the box was. The razors drag across your already bleeding flesh, but you eventually pull your hand free of the contraption. Just as you are almost out, you feel your wrist snag on wire. Taking a deep breath, you decide to treat this like a bandaid and just yank your hand out. The pain is sharp and takes your breath away, but you make it out of the box with the key in hand. Looking down at your blood slick arm, you wince as you see a strip of skin dangling from the top of your hand. You aren't sure if you should finish the job and remove the skin flap or set it back in place over the top of your hand and use some cloth to secure it in place. > You remove the Skin Putting the key in your pocket for now, you try to think of how to remove the skin that is dangling from the back of your hand. It is torn up from the wrist and still attached at your knuckles. If you aren't careful you'll just tear it up from your fingers as well. You've never been one for doing your own first aid. A wound like this would score you some good quality painkillers at the ER, but that isn't an option yet. Maybe after you get out of here you'll drop by for a prescription. The flap of skin hanging from the back of your head looks daunting as you grip it with your other hand. The blood covering it is slippery and you can't get a good grip on it. Looking around you try to find anything that might be able to trim it off, but nothing catches your eye. After a few moments of thought, you bend over and ball your injured hand into a fist against the floor so that the flap of torn skin lays on the ground. Planting your foot on top of it, you yank your hand up as hard as you can. Pain licks up your arm as the skin rips down past your knuckles and tears some off of your fingers as well. But it does come off of your hand completely, freeing you from the loose skin. Taking a moment to breathe through the lightheadedness brought on by the pain, you try not to look at what you've done. Ripping the skin off the knuckles had also taken it off your fingers to a degree. It turns out there isn't a whole lot of meat on a finger, mostly bone and tendon which you can now clearly see. > You open The Door Taking the key back out of your pocket, you hurry toward the door. Your injured hand burns where the skin has been ripped off and the raw flesh is exposed to the air, but you push through the pain and push the key into the lock. It turns and you can hear the loud sound of the mechanism turning as the metal door screeches open. Stepping through, you find yourself in a hallway with harsh fluorescent lights in the ceiling. You walk down it, but many of the doors are chained shut with warnings against trying to open them painted in red letters. It is cold and damp out here, making you shiver as you hurry down the corridor. Finally, you come to a door with no warnings and a cassette labeled 'play me' taped to the middle of the door. Plucking it from the confines of the tape, you put it into the recorder and hit play. "If you are listening to this, then you chose freedom over your addiction. This is just the first step to reclaiming your life, Ciara. For years you have blamed the people who came into your life for what you have become. Perhaps, you are right to blame them after they made you feel powerless over your own fate. But your obsession with blame keeps you from moving on. Beyond this door is someone who influenced your life early on. Today, you choose whether he lives or dies." The tape comes to an end, leaving you feeling apprehensive about what is beyond the door in front of you. > You go Through The Door Opening the door, you have to squint as bright lights cut on when you walk inside. The room is harshly illuminated as you step inside, the door crashing shut behind you and locking. As your eyes adjust to the harsh lights, you find yourself staring transfixed at the scene before you. A man is strapped into a large mechanical device of some kind which holds him upright facing you. His eyes are locked onto you as you step forward. His mouth is sewn shut, but he isn't staying quiet. He struggles against the binds that hold him in place, making incoherent sounds as an old television on a stand nearby cuts on. The tape plays, showing a puppet like head on the screen with painted white skin, red spirals on the cheeks, and red eyes. It's mouth opens and closes as the voice from the tapes begins to speak again. "Hello again, Ciara. You should remember the man before you very well. When you were still a girl, the two of you were inseparable. You thought it was love, that he would save you from your own personal hell. But, instead, he introduced you to the drugs that have ruled your life ever since. He used you for years and when he was done with you, he burned you one last time for good measure. Now he is the one who will get burned unless you are willing to pay the price for his freedom. But, does he deserve that freedom, Ciara? Make your choice." The screen goes to static before showing a clock counting down from sixty seconds. Turning back towards the man in the device, you now recognize Forrest as you look at him strapped down into the device. It's been over a decade since you saw him last, the memory of it is burned into your mind and no high has ever been able to erase it. For years the two of you had been a teenage Bonnie and Clyde. Mostly robbing convenience stores more than anything, using the money to buy weed, cocaine, and any pills you could find on the market at any given time. At the time, you had believed he was your ticket to freedom. He had sold you so many stories of taking you away from your family and getting an apartment together. But, he never did save you. Instead, he damned you. As the years went on, Forrest had gotten deeper and deeper into drugs and crime. Eventually, he was dealing for a man who had his filthy fingers in on every kind of black market scheme in the entire city. He was too stupid to be careful and ended up owing the man money. Not having any money, Forrest had offered to give him the only thing of value he had. You. He waited until you were too doped up to fight back, then Forrest had stuffed you into his car and driven you to a filthy house in the middle of the worst part of town. There he traded you over to a man you didn't know and walked away free of debt. Now here he is, strapped down to this contraption completely at your mercy. You have hated him for so long, wished for an opportunity just like this. To watch him suffer for what he did to you. His eyes are wide as he stares at you, watching you contemplate just what it is you want to do as the clock quickly races toward zero. > You taunt Forrest "You ruined my life," You spit out at him, watching as he struggles to get free. "Do you know what he did to me?" You can't help the bark of near hysterical laughter that escapes you. It's a pointless question though, he can't answer you with his mouth sewn shut like that. Fidgeting a bit, you glance over at the screen once more. It's now counting down from ten seconds. You don't know what happens when it reaches zero, but you step back a bit just to be safe. Forrest ruined your life in so many ways, it feels fitting to be given this kind of power over him. The countdown finally hits zero and you jump as flames shoot out of small metal pipes at his feet. Forrest's screams are muffled by his mouth being clamped shut, but the sound still rattles around inside your head even as the acrid odor of burnt flesh hits your nostrils. > You try to Save Forrest You look frantically around the room as Forrest begins to scream in pain through his closed mouth, the muffled sounds an agonizing groan that fills the room. Spying what looks like a large box covered in a tarp, you hurry over to it. A card set on top simply reads: Which one has the key?. Tossing it aside, you rip off the tarp and find yourself staring down at a metal box with three holes in the top just big enough to reach your arm down inside, but it looks like the box is deep enough to go up to your shoulder. Forrest's screams of agony spur you into action. He's a horrible person, but you aren't sure if you want his death on your hands. Taking your already injured hand, you dip it down into the first hole in the top of the box. Nothing happens at first, but once you are elbow deep a loud whooshing sound like air explodes up from the box. Intense heat scorches over your hand, causing you to yank it back out with a shriek of pain. Holding your hand, you look down at the skin that isn't covered in the cloth. It is a dark red, but not blistered, at least not yet. More mechanical sounds behind you cause you to look over your shoulder as the next series of three torches cuts on, burning Forrest's thighs, hips, and middle. He screams in agony, no longer able to form words. He just screams and struggles. The smell of his meat burning makes you want to vomit. > You keep Trying "Fuck...FUCK!" You shriek, turning back around to the box. You don't know which one has the key, but it's the only way to open the locks on the straps keeping Forrest trapped. Taking a deep breath, you shove your hand back into the first hole as fast you can. The steam cranks on and burns hot, but you reach the bottom. You feel around for a second, but find nothing and yank your arm back out of the oven of steam. Pulling it back out your enter arm is now covered in heat blisters and an angry, shiny red color. It surges with a pain you can barely stand. Tears stream down you face as you cradle your burnt arm. "I can't do this..." You mutter to yourself as Forrest continues to scream in agony. > You keep Trying Taking a shuddering breath, you plunge your arm into a different hole in the top of the box. The steam burns hotly, but this time you feel something when your burnt hand reaches the bottom. Gripping it, you pull it back out and stare at the key as you hold it in your horribly burnt hand. Turning back to Forrest, you hurry towards him. You fumble with the lock for the strap around his neck, but get it undone after a moment. His squirming and screaming doesn't help. The next series of torches cuts on just you finish undoing the last strap, burning one arm and his sides before he falls forward to the floor, free of the trap. He's still groaning and screaming in pain, writhing about on the filthy floor as you stand over him. His feet burnt down to the bone, as is most of his legs. There is no way he'll walk out of this room. But you did your part. He can crawl out of here for all that you care past this. It's his problem now, not yours. You startle as the final set of torches cut on in the now empty machine, flames shooting out where his shoulders and head had been just moments before. It would have cooked his brain if you hadn't gotten him out when you did. He might still die, but at least now it won't be your fault. Cradling your burnt arm, you look around the room as a creaking metalic sound catches your attention. The door out is now open, beckoning you through it. Stumbling around Forrest as he cries and shrieks, you hurry toward the door and into the next room. > You go Through The Door Walking through the door, you find yourself in a hallway once more. Many of the doors are marked with warnings not to try and go through them, prompting you to pass them by for now at least. Watching Forrest burn to death still has your stomach churning, but at the same time you can't help but think about how he deserved it in so many ways. He ruined your life, set you on a destructive path and then left you with no way out of it. Just as the tape said, he burned you one last time before he left. But, he was the one burnt nearly to ash now. Coming to the end of the hallway, you find another tape and put it into the recorder and hit the play button. That same voice starts speaking to you once more. "Hello, Ciara. Beyond this door, are the two people truly responsible for putting you on the wrong path for life. They chose not to save you from themselves and now you must choose whether you save them from each other. In the next room, you will find yourself as the spectator of their game. You can watch and see which of them has the will to live, or you can intervene. Make your choice." Taking a deep breath, you push through the door and into the next room. The lights inside the room trip on when you step inside, triggered by the door opening. A large cage takes up more than half of the room where two people jolt startle and shield their eyes as the lights blind them momentarily. You swallow nervously as you recognize your mom and stepfather in the cage. Both of them have strange metal devices around their heads. It looks almost like a medical halo, but with thicker metal and two large screws on either side of their skulls as thick a rail spike. The devices clasp beneath their chin and are locked in place by a lock around the neck. They recognize you once their eyes adjust to the light, both of them hurrying toward the bars of their cage and calling out to you. A numbness settles in your stomach as the adrenaline starts to pump through your veins. Watching Forrest nearly burn to death before you could get him free had been hard enough, now it's your parents? This is all just too much... "Ciara? What's happening?" Your mom asks, her voice sounds panicked as you continue to finger the metal device around her head. "I don't fucking know," You snap, glancing furtively at the television on the stand to the side of the cage. "She did this. We're in a cage and she's walking around free," Your stepfather, Greg, nearly snarls out the words. Looking at him through the bars, you feel nothing but disgust for him. Not that your mother is any better for marrying him, much less staying with him all this time. The man was a monster of a different sort than Forrest. It had started shortly after he had gotten together with your mom when you were still young, too little to understand what was going on. It started with visits to your room in the middle of the night. Confusing conversations that you couldn't comprehend as a child, then it turned into late night games of dress up. Then it had become something much worse. For years it had gone on and no one did anything. No one saved you. And she knew. You know that even as you stare into her eyes now. Her gaze is as accusing as always. She had never seen it as you being a victim, rather she had blamed you as if you were some kind of seductress trying to steal her new husband. The older you had gotten, the worse things got. But, she wasn't angry enough about it to rat him out to CPS when they came calling. She covered for the son of a bitch then they both made sure you never talked to anyone about your nightmare of a homelife ever again. "Ciara, get us out of here." She demands, her voice somehow both fearful and accusing at the same time. > You refuse to Help "Fuck you," the words come out as a growl from your throat as you stand still and watch them through the bars. "She's a junkie, a whore. That's all she's ever been and all she'll ever be," Greg spits out the words like bullets, but the insults feel empty in the current situation. You have the power here, not him. "That's rich coming from you. I'd rather be a junkie whore than a pedophile, you sick fuck. You deserve whatever is about to happen to you," You lean forward as you growl out the words, "And I'm going to enjoy watching you die." The television cuts on before any more words can be said, the now familiar voice commanding everyone's attention. "Hello Greg and Karen. The lives you have lived have brought nothing but harm to those around you. A pedophile who abuses his stepdaughter and a mother who turns a blind eye and allows it to continue for years. You have lived your lives caring only for yourselves. Today your will to live will be tested. The devices you wear can only be unlocked with the key that the other has down their throat. You only have to pull the line out of the other's mouth to free yourselves. The screws on either side of your head will slowly drill into your skull once the time starts. You have three minutes before they pierce your brain. Live or die, make your choice." The screen cuts to static then begins a countdown from three minutes. You watch as both of them try to pull at what appears to be fishing line hanging from their mouths and secured to their shirts to prevent them from swallowing it completely. Both stop pulling almost immediately, gasping in pain. Moments later you hear the drills start up, slowly cranking their way continuously tighter as the clock ticks by. > You try To Help Not able to watch anymore, you quickly glance around looking for some way to help. After a moment, you spot a card hanging from one corner of the cage on your side. There is metal sheeting keeping anyone inside the cage from reaching through to the card. Walking forward you head toward it, only to feel the tile beneath your foot give way and a sharp pain stab through your foot. Looking down, you can see that the tile floor has given way under your weight and nails have come up through small holes in the floor to prick your feet. You slowly pull your foot back, feeling the nails piercing the sole of your foot slide back out roughly. Blood stains the tile floor now and your foot throbs painfully where the nails went through to the bone. Angry swearing draws your attention back to your mother and stepfather in the cage, they seem to have turned on each other now. Greg has your mother by the shoulders and is trying to force her down to the floor, likely to rip the key out of her throat. If you're going to help, you'll have to act quickly. Still, the thought enters your mind that she never did help you when you had been the one he was hurting. How many times had he come into your bedroom as a child, hurting you and you had looked over at the door to see her watching with disgust on her face. But, she never intervened. Just looked at you as if it were all your fault before walking away and going back to sleep, leaving you at the mercy of a grown man many times your child self's size. > You push Through It You try to guage the distance between yourself and the note then make a jump for it. The nails rip into your feet on the landing, but the momentum lets you pull your feet up from the nails quickly enough. The pain shoots up your legs as you stand on your bleeding feet, but at least you made it past the bed of nails hiding beneath the floor. You pick up the card and read it, surprised that is much more straightforward than Forrest's. According to the note, all you have to do is press the button to speed up the bolts being drilled into their skulls. Both of them have their own button welded onto the metal sheet on the wall of the cage facing you. It must be remotes. Your mother's name, Karen, is on the left and your step father's name is on the right. You could kill one to save the other... Or both. > You kill Greg You slam your hand down onto the button under Greg's name, peering around the metal sheeting to see through the uncovered part of the cage wall. Barely a heartbeat passes before the bolts drilling into his skull speed up, the sound filling the room as he falls to his knees and grips the device in his hands. A pained grunt escapes his mouth as he thrashes about, trying to get the clunky metal device off of him with no luck. Your mother scurries to the other side of the cage, her own device still drilling the bolts at the same slow pace. It isn't long before the bolts break through Greg's skull, sending his body into convulsions as foamy saliva drips from his mouth. The bolts drill in a little deeper and her goes still, blood dripping from his nose. "Get the key!" You urge your mother. She seems to be in pain from the bolts on her own device as she hurries over to Greg's body and yanks on the fishing line down his throat. It comes up slowly, but she manages to get the key and remove her own device. The bolts have already made their way into her skull, but not all the way. She thrashes about for a moment before it finally comes loose, blood trickling down either side of her temples where the bolts were. "Thank you..." She mutters as she looks your way, gingerly touching the spots where the bolts had been drilling their way into her head. "You never helped me, you know." You blurt out before you can stop. "I'm so sorry, Ciara." "Fuck you," You spit out the words as a door opens off to the side of the room, your exit. She doesn't say anything else, the guilt is written blatantly on her face. Every time she saw him hurting you and doing nothing about it flashes through your mind as the anger wells up in your chest. The times she had accused you of seducing that sick fuck. As if a girl not even in her teens would ever do something that sick. After staring at her hard for a few moments longer, you swallow down the anger and turn your back to her. She isn't worth it and all you want is to get out of this shithole. > You leave Stepping through the doorway, you find yourself in another dimly lit hallway. Looking at the doors that are blocked off with warnings painted on them, you wonder if perhaps the warnings are empty? Maybe escape from this place is just a matter of breaking the rules? Stopping at the door you are meant to walk through, you pick up the tape waiting for you and put it into the player. "Hello Ciara, you are so close to facing all of your demons. Only two more remain. Beyond this door lies a woman you might not recognize, but her choices directly affected the direction of your life from early on. Inside the next room you will find everything you need to know about her in order to make your choice regarding her fate. Will you show her the mercy she did not show you? Make your choice." The message makes you frown, unsure just what it could mean. Looking at the door in front of you, you can't help but be afraid of what is in the next room. You've already seen enough people suffer, even if they did deserve it. Glancing back down the hall you just walked through, you eye one of the doors warning you from opening it. > You try One Of The Other Doors Tired of playing this sick game, you walk back down the hall and look at the door which has warnings against opening it painted in red letters. After staring at the door for a few moments, you try the doorknob and feel surprise when it is unlocked. Pushing the door open, you see a dark room beyond it. As you step through the door, a strange sound from above startles you as a mist of water sprays down from a hose nozzle above you. For a moment you stand still in confusion, but within a few heartbeats, the liquid then begins to burn. You try to wipe it away, but it covers you and even your clothes are starting to dissolve beneath the acid. Your skin feels like it is melting as you frantically search for a way to get it off of you but there is nothing in the hallway or the room you have just opened to help. The pain is excruciating as you fall you to the floor, still trying to wipe the acid off of you. A horrible slipping sensation brings your attention to your arm as you see the skin has come loose with your attempts to wipe away the liquid covering it. Blisters bubble up where the skin is still attached as you feel the acid start to burn down into your muscles. Thrashing about on the filthy floor, you lose all concept of thought. You just want to get this stuff off, but there is no way to achieve that. Instead, all you can do is wriggle about and cry in pain as the acid slowly eats you alive.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Stepping through the doorway, you find yourself in another dimly lit hallway. Looking at the doors that are blocked off with warnings painted on them, you wonder if perhaps the warnings are empty? Maybe escape from this place is just a matter of breaking the rules? Stopping at the door you are meant to walk through, you pick up the tape waiting for you and put it into the player. "Hello Ciara, you are so close to facing all of your demons. Only two more remain. Beyond this door lies a woman you might not recognize, but her choices directly affected the direction of your life from early on. Inside the next room you will find everything you need to know about her in order to make your choice regarding her fate. Will you show her the mercy she did not show you? Make your choice." The message makes you frown, unsure just what it could mean. Looking at the door in front of you, you can't help but be afraid of what is in the next room. You've already seen enough people suffer, even if they did deserve it. Glancing back down the hall you just walked through, you eye one of the doors warning you from opening it. > You go Through The Door Resisting the urge to break the rules, you instead go through the intended door and find yourself in a well lit room once more. In the center of it, you see a woman you don't recognize strapped to a chair. Above her is what looks like some kind of pipe that opens up over her head. She begins to struggle and cry once she sees you, but with the gag in her mouth you can't make out anything she is saying. Begging for help if you have to make a guess. There is no television in this room, instead, a table covered in binders and manilla folders is off to the side. There is no tape to give you instructions either, instead, it seems you have to do your own detective work and go through the various bits of information. Walking over to the table, you look down at all the different stacks of binders and folders. Picking up one folder you are surprised to find that it contains several forms going over case information from the time CPS was investigating your parents after teachers at your school grew concerned over your change in behavior after your stepfather began to pay you late night visits as a child. Skim reading the papers, you see details of why they were investigating. Unusual behavior at school on your part. You had apparently informed a teacher that your privates hurt after a game with your stepfather the previous night. It turns your stomach to even think about it. You had been so young when that started. You never really had a chance. Flipping through the papers, you find the notes from the CPS investigation. There was nothing but glowing notes on what good parents you had, how clean the house was, and so on and so forth. Confusion fills your mind as you think back to your childhood. The house had never been particularly organized or clean, you had your stepfather visiting you at night and your mother ignoring it, not to mention she also blamed you as some kind of kid sized seductress. How had none of that been seen and noted? You open one of the binders and find some photographs. Most are of you as a little girl right before your mom had remarried. You look so happy in those pictures. Just a regular little girl with a big grin, not a care in the world. Then as you flip further back you find yourself staring at a little girl with dead eyes and no joy to her expression, flanked by your stepfather in every picture. It makes you feel sick to your stomach to see the way he looks at you in some of the pictures, how his hand is often possessively gripping your shoulder. As you continue to look through the items on the table, you come across what looks like some kind of badge. You recognize the woman's face as the same one you're now in a room with. She works for CPS and according to the name on the badge, she's the same one that filled out the paperwork with the glowing reviews of your family... > You confront Her You look at the woman, Monica according to the badge you found, and try to remember her from when you were just a kid. Vaguely you do remember her. A stranger you didn't know who was there to talk to you and your family a few times. Her presence had made your parents nervous, your stepfather was angry that she was there at all. The night before she visited for the last time, he had come to your room and the game he wanted to play was rougher than usual. "You worked with CPS?" You ask sharply, feeling your chest start to tighten in anger. She can only nod her head, the gag muffling anything she might try to say. "Those papers over there say you came to my house when I was a kid. My stepdad was... he was hurting me. You left me there," You swallow roughly as the emotions start to bubble up to the surface, far to sharp and clear in your unwanted sobriety, "You could have helped me... But you didn't." She begins to cry again, just shaking her head and mumbling into the gag in her mouth. In this moment, you almost hate her more than your stepfather. It had been her job to save you from that hellhole... From him. And instead, she had just left you there to rot. > Another Choice A strange rattling sound pulls you out of your thoughts. It's coming from the pipe over the woman's head, but nothing but the noise seems to be coming out. Looking back at Monica, you notice that there is actually an envelope sitting on the ground near her feet. You pick it up, eyeing her as she struggles against her binds before opening up the envelope and pulling out a newspaper clipping. Recognizing Monica's face on the article, you read over it quickly and feel your blood start to run cold. According to the article, Monica was part of a scandal in CPS where certain caseworkers had accepted bribes. Had she possibly taken a bribe to write off the allegations against your parents? A small flashcard behind the newspaper article is written in the same handwriting as the other notes you have found so far. Let her drown in the money she valued over the welfare of children or pay the price to forgive her. To your surprise, a small key is taped to the back of the card. Though, you aren't so sure she deserves to be set free. She could have saved you from years and years of hell. But, she had left you to rot for cash? She was as much of a monster as your stepfather. A metallic clacking sound catches your attention and brings it back up to the pipe. Something clatters down the pipe then falls down, landing on Monica's head before bouncing to the floor. Crouching down, you pick up what looks like a penny. It is hot to the touch, almost enough to burn. Another one comes clattering down the pipe, but this one lands on the floor and splatters slightly, halfway melted down. > You try To Help You look at the key and back to Monica, unable to help but feel like this is far too easy. The note said you would have to pay a price to free her. But, the key had just been handed to you so carelessly. Taking a deep breath, you hurry over to Monica's side and look at the locks keeping the bindings on her wrists and ankles secured in place. Putting the key into the first lock on her wrist, you twist it around until the lock comes undone. All you have to do now is unbuckle the leather restraints. You start working on that when suddenly a glowing mass of molten copper splatters out of the pipe, landing on Monica's shoulder, some of the splatter landing on your hip and burning clean through your pants. On reflex you throw yourself backward away from her, watching as she starts to scream while the molten copper burns into her shoulder. The scent of her burning flesh stings your nose. > You give Up You grit your teeth and take a few more steps back from Monica as more molten copper splatters out of the pipe to land in her lap. It sounds like cold water being thrown onto a hot pan and smoke rising from her as it burns through her clothing and skin. She screams through the gag and thrashes about, but nothing she does is going to get her free. You aren't willing to risk yourself for the woman who left you to the mercy of your stepfather. The pain you feel from your hip is like nothing else. The molten metal had burnt your skin to a deep blister when it had splattered onto you while you were trying to free her. You watch in awe as a flood of molten copper pours out of the pipe, completely dousing Monica from head to toe in the stuff. She stops screaming, going oddly quiet as her body twitches under the liquified metal as smoke rises up from it. A moment later she goes still, the smell of her burnt skin and still cooking flesh mixing the scent of the molten copper in the air. Another door opens in the far side of the room. You don't look back as you head out. > You leave The next room doesn't have a tape waiting for you outside the door, instead, you go in without any warning about what is to come. Once inside, you find yourself in a dimly lit room that smells foul. There is a man hunched forward in a chair like device, the sound of his sobbing fills the room almost as much as the foul smell does. Walking closer, you recognize him easily enough once you get a good look at his face. Trigga was what he was called. He had his filthy hands in everything pretty much. Drugs, prostitutes, the black market. He was the one selling drugs to Forrest and he was the one who owned the debt Forrest owed when he traded you to pay it off. You had been so high when he dragged you into the trap house Trigga was using to sell drugs and prostitutes that you didn't even fully understand what was happening. Then Forrest had shook hands with Trigga and left. You had learned very quickly that keeping Trigga happy was the most important thing in your life. Refusing him was dangerous, often times deadly. One of the girls had bitten him when he forced her to give him head, he had brought in some kind of black market chop shop surgeon who harvested her organs to sell. After that, all of the girls behaved, including you. Living in that trap house, servicing Trigga and his clients had been hell on earth. One of the worst parts of the entire experience had been the branding. Each girl had to endure a tattoo on their groin with Trigga's name. He didn't want anyone to think any of you were owned by someone else. And if someone paid him enough, they could do whatever they wanted to the girls. There was no act too violent or obscene for him to turn down cash money for. At times there had even been children kept down in the basement for short periods of time, used in pornographic films that he could sell to the right demographic. He never kept the kids there long and you don't know what happened to them after they had been used for their few films then removed from the house. He looks up at you as you stand before, brown eyes as hateful and accusing as always. But, he knows who you are. It's only been a few years since the two of you had last seen each other after all. You feel yourself wither a bit under his glare, taking a step back to avoid his gaze. Even though he had been crying when you walked in and the tears still shine wetly off his cheek, you know what he's capable of. "What the fuck is going on, Ciara?" His voice cracks a bit, but you still flinch reflexively. "I don't know... Someone took a bunch of people and is making me go through the rooms-" "Shut the fuck up and get me out of here," He cuts you off. > You assert Yourself "No, you shut up. I don't have to help you." You do your best to keep your voice level and firm. "Bitch, I will do things to you can't imagine. I will fuck you up," He tries to reassert himself. "Only if I don't let you die," You snap back, feeling more than a little satisfied when he goes quiet. Feeling confident, you start to examine the device he is stuck in. It's a metal chair with several additions made to it and clockwork of various metal pieces, gears, and other things. Straps have him forced into a hunched over position with his legs spread wide, you quickly realize that he is naked. Some kind of shallow metal bucket covers his groin and duct tape has it secured in place to his skin. You can hear a strange scurrying sound inside that makes him flinch. Looking closer at it, you can see a blow torch mechanism similar to the ones Forrest's device had had at the bottom of the bucket. His arms are tied behind him and forced upward onto the back of the chair in a very uncomfortable angle. As you walk around behind him, you blink when you realize there is a rifle in some kind of device that seems to make it fire behind him. It is angled toward him and the end of the barrel disappears into his asscheeks. Behind the device holding the rifle in place, you spot a tape laying on the ground and hurry to pick it up. > You listen To The Tape Putting the tape into the recorder, you hit play and listen as the voice starts to speak. "Hello Jermaine, for years you made your living off preying on the most vulnerable people. Addicts, troubled youth, children, and so many more. So many people have been at your mercy over and you so very rarely have been merciful to them. You have murdered, raped, and abused again and again. But, today, you find yourself on the other side of the cycle. You are now at the mercy of someone who was once at the mercy of you. Will she show you the same mercy you showed her? Or will she forgive you? Once the device activates, you won't have long before the bucket gets hot enough to burn anything inside. The rat trapped inside will do whatever it takes to escape, even if that means chewing through your body to do so. Such injuries are survivable if Ciara chooses to forgive you, but you should convince her quickly though, in sixty seconds the choice will be made for you. Let the game begin." You jump when you hear the torch beneath the bucket turn on, the flame hitting the metal and causing the scurrying sounds inside to grow louder. Trigga, or Jermaine as seems to be his real name, begins to scream and squirm though he is held firmly in place within the device. Looking over the device some more, you see that his wrists and ankles are held together by only belted leather restraints. There are no locks or keys this time and you don't seem to have to pay a price either... Except perhaps your dignity. Forgiving this monster seems impossible after everything he has done. The world would be a better place without him. The clock on the side of the device that holds the gun reaches twenty seconds and Jermaine's screams turn from fear to pain. "It's eating me! It's eating me, get me out. I'll give you anything. I have money." He begs. > You set Him Free "Three hundred grand, I'll forgive you for that." You bargain, standing back as the sounds of squeaking and scurrying inside the metal pan around his genitals gets louder. "I'll do it, now let me out." He begs and with that, you hurry to undo the restraints. Once free, he lurches out of the device and falls to the floor with a squeal of pain. The rat inside the pan flees to safety, but you can see it chewed up Jermaine's favorite tool badly. A strong smell hits your nose and he scrambles out of the line of fire where the gun is aimed. A trail of liquid shit follows him, leaking out of his now unplugged ass. The gun goes off, the bullet lodging into the wall at the far side of the room. Jermaine slowly stands up, looking back at the device and then at the floor as if in a daze. He didn't deserve life, but three hundred thousand dollars would buy you a house, a car, and set you on the right path. You can get out of town, get clean, buy a house and start over somewhere far away. Your happy thoughts turn sour when Jermaine lurches toward you and barrels into you with his full weight. A big man, he is easily twice your size and heavily muscled. He pins you down on the floor easily and squeezes his hands around your neck as you batter him with your fists and kick your legs. "Stupid bitch. I ain't paying you nothing. You're nothing." He spits as he talks and the edges of your visions start to blur as you struggle to get air. With your lungs burning, you feel your body start to give out and everything goes to black.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Putting the tape into the recorder, you hit play and listen as the voice starts to speak. "Hello Jermaine, for years you made your living off preying on the most vulnerable people. Addicts, troubled youth, children, and so many more. So many people have been at your mercy over and you so very rarely have been merciful to them. You have murdered, raped, and abused again and again. But, today, you find yourself on the other side of the cycle. You are now at the mercy of someone who was once at the mercy of you. Will she show you the same mercy you showed her? Or will she forgive you? Once the device activates, you won't have long before the bucket gets hot enough to burn anything inside. The rat trapped inside will do whatever it takes to escape, even if that means chewing through your body to do so. Such injuries are survivable if Ciara chooses to forgive you, but you should convince her quickly though, in sixty seconds the choice will be made for you. Let the game begin." You jump when you hear the torch beneath the bucket turn on, the flame hitting the metal and causing the scurrying sounds inside to grow louder. Trigga, or Jermaine as seems to be his real name, begins to scream and squirm though he is held firmly in place within the device. Looking over the device some more, you see that his wrists and ankles are held together by only belted leather restraints. There are no locks or keys this time and you don't seem to have to pay a price either... Except perhaps your dignity. Forgiving this monster seems impossible after everything he has done. The world would be a better place without him. The clock on the side of the device that holds the gun reaches twenty seconds and Jermaine's screams turn from fear to pain. "It's eating me! It's eating me, get me out. I'll give you anything. I have money." He begs. > You watch Him Die "Go to hell," You growl, making sure to move off to the side of him to make sure that you aren't caught in the crossfire if the gun goes off. The sounds of scurrying and squeaking from the rat get louder. Considering that he is naked, you have to appreciate that the animal has likely chewed up Jermaine's favorite tool in the process of trying to escape the burning metal. The man's whimpering and blubbering pleas for help don't make you feel guilty, on the contrary, you have never enjoyed watching someone in pain before now. "You deserve this, you sick fuck," You taunt him, smiling a bit as the stopwatch hits sixty seconds. The gun goes off with a deafening bang. Blood explodes out of his mouth and a horrible smell fills the room as feces leaks down onto the floor around the barrel of the gun that is still lodged in his ass. You stand there and stare at him a little longer, watching as a mixture of blood and shit falls out of his mouth. He twitches a bit at first, a terrible groaning sound escaping him before he goes still. > You look For The Exit A door opens on the other side of the room after a few moments and you hurry to go through it to escape the smell of blood and shit that now permeates the room. The room past the door is pitch black, but you hurry through it anyway. The door slams shut and locks behind you, making you jump while the light in the room turn on and illuminate your surroundings. This is different from the other rooms. You can't see anyone else in here with you and you are confined to a small place inside what looks like plexiglass. A door leading out of the glass cage is on the other side of it, but as you look closer you can see several devices on the ceiling that you aren't sure about. You hear a door open from beyond the plexiglass and a woman you don't know walks in, staring at you from the other side of the cage. She holds a tape recorder in her hand as she walks up to the glass, hitting play you hear the familiar voice start to speak. "Hello, Annette. If you're hearing this, then you survived all of your trials and have come to the final test. By now, you have watched the footage showing a series of choices made by the individual before you. She was given the opportunity to forgive or punish the people who hurt her in the past. Now you will be given the same opportunity... Three years ago, your daughter went missing. Since then your life has been consumed with trying to find her. But, every new lead comes up empty. The woman before you now was once taken like your daughter, forced into a life of sexual slavery and drugs. But, three years ago the man who owned her gave her a choice. She could either stay his property or bring him a substitute to trade for her own freedom. Ciara then went to the club where your daughter was last seen and lured her away, drugging her and then taking her back to her pimp. Ciara was set free that day and your daughter took her place, trafficked for sex and moved outside of the country before anyone could save her. To forgive her, all you have to do is buzz open the door to her cell and let her out. Or, you can walk away and leave her to her deserved fate. Make your choice." A tear falls down your face as your darkest secret is announced into the silence of what could very well be your tomb. The woman, Annette, has quiet tears streaming down her face as she watches you with hate etched into her face. "I'm so sorry. I was desperate, I just wanted to be free." You plead with her through the glass. "You could have gone to the police. You didn't have to play his game. You didn't have to take my daughter." Her voice is surprisingly strong for a person with tears falling down their cheeks and it cuts to your very core. "It was the first time he had let me out in years. He was watching me. He would have killed me," You explain, hoping she believes you. "My daughter bought your life, what have you done with it?" She asks suddenly, her hand pressing against the glass as she leans forward. You swallow dryly, able to picture the poor girl you had tricked into taking your place perfectly. She looked just like her mother it seems. The girl had been young and beautiful, so full of life. Seeing her so free and happy in that club had been why you chose her. Something in you hated her for having everything that had been denied you in life. Freedom, happiness, and friends. She had been so trusting, chatting with you at first then dancing with you. Slipping the drug into her drink had been so easy, then you had simply led her away from her friends to the waiting car driven by one of Trigga's men. The way her face had looked when she had been given to Trigga was burned into your memory no matter how many drugs you took. In so many ways, she had been with you all this time. Her terrified face looking back at you in accusation every time you look in a mirror. Not able to look at her mother anymore, you instead fix your eyes to the floor, "I tried to get clean, but I had nowhere to go. I'm homeless... I'm nobody." You admit, feeling hot tears spill onto your face. "You saved that boy, the one you used to date. Why?" She asks quietly, making you look up at her in confusion. "I thought he loved me... But, he owed money to the pimp that I took your daughter too. He gave him me to pay off his debt... I should have let him die." You admit. "You killed that man, your stepfather?" "He... you don't know what he did to me when I was just a little girl. He was a monster. He would have killed my mom to save himself if I didn't stop him. He deserved to die." You snap back, no doubt in your mind that you are right. "What about that woman, the CPS worker? You didn't save her." "She could have saved me when I was little and she didn't. She signed off on my stepfather being ok even though he was hurting me. She was taking bribes." You explain. "You're sure she took a bribe for you? It wasn't just a mistake?" You just shake your head, not wanting to think about that too hard right now. "That man, Jermaine? He was your pimp?" She asks, the expression on her face going cold and hateful. "Yes, he deserved worse than what he got. I would have never given him your daugther if I had any other choice. He would have killed me... I was getting too old he said. I could either give him a new girl to take my place or he would find some other way to make money off of me... I know what he's willing to do to make money... I was scared... And I'm so sorry." You blurt out, sobbing a bit at the end as you start crying once more. > You judgement Annette's face goes cold as she steps away, looking at you hard for a moment before she speaks, "You took my baby from me... She was my whole world. She was a good person. She wanted to be a nurse, to help people. And you took that away from her so you could whore and do drugs some more?" "I'm so sorry. I wish I could take it back, but I can't. I'm so sorry." "It's too late for that. You can't bring my daughter back. She's gone. I know I won't find her again. But, at least I'll know you got what you deserve," She says, turning away from you and heading for a door in the corner. Opening it, she steps through and leaves you behind in the room. A strange sound brings your attention to the devices above you, a strange whirring noise. Then they suddenly burst with light and noise, startling you before sudden pain sets in. Shrapnel tears through the air around you, lodging into your body and tearing apart your face and limbs. Falling backward, you land on your side staring out through the plexiglass into the empty room. Blood pours out of your wounds and fills your mouth. You can't manage to make a sound as you try to call for help that won't come. The bleeding is slow, not fast. You lay there for what feels like an eternity before the lights in the room go out, plunging you into darkness. At least once the shock sets in you feel less pain, more of a dulled hurt and a wooziness as you drift in and out of consciousness. You never asked for this game. You didn't kill anyone that didn't deserve it... But, that girl in the club... she certainly hadn't deserved what you did to her. And for what? Three years of freedom that you spent whoring despite your freedom so you could buy drugs and avoid ever being sober enough to think about her? Maybe this is what you deserve...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next room doesn't have a tape waiting for you outside the door, instead, you go in without any warning about what is to come. Once inside, you find yourself in a dimly lit room that smells foul. There is a man hunched forward in a chair like device, the sound of his sobbing fills the room almost as much as the foul smell does. Walking closer, you recognize him easily enough once you get a good look at his face. Trigga was what he was called. He had his filthy hands in everything pretty much. Drugs, prostitutes, the black market. He was the one selling drugs to Forrest and he was the one who owned the debt Forrest owed when he traded you to pay it off. You had been so high when he dragged you into the trap house Trigga was using to sell drugs and prostitutes that you didn't even fully understand what was happening. Then Forrest had shook hands with Trigga and left. You had learned very quickly that keeping Trigga happy was the most important thing in your life. Refusing him was dangerous, often times deadly. One of the girls had bitten him when he forced her to give him head, he had brought in some kind of black market chop shop surgeon who harvested her organs to sell. After that, all of the girls behaved, including you. Living in that trap house, servicing Trigga and his clients had been hell on earth. One of the worst parts of the entire experience had been the branding. Each girl had to endure a tattoo on their groin with Trigga's name. He didn't want anyone to think any of you were owned by someone else. And if someone paid him enough, they could do whatever they wanted to the girls. There was no act too violent or obscene for him to turn down cash money for. At times there had even been children kept down in the basement for short periods of time, used in pornographic films that he could sell to the right demographic. He never kept the kids there long and you don't know what happened to them after they had been used for their few films then removed from the house. He looks up at you as you stand before, brown eyes as hateful and accusing as always. But, he knows who you are. It's only been a few years since the two of you had last seen each other after all. You feel yourself wither a bit under his glare, taking a step back to avoid his gaze. Even though he had been crying when you walked in and the tears still shine wetly off his cheek, you know what he's capable of. "What the fuck is going on, Ciara?" His voice cracks a bit, but you still flinch reflexively. "I don't know... Someone took a bunch of people and is making me go through the rooms-" "Shut the fuck up and get me out of here," He cuts you off. > You study The Device You swallow down your fear of the man who had owned you for years and walk around the device he is stuck in to get a better grasp of the situation. It's a metal chair with several additions made to it and clockwork of various metal pieces, gears, and other things. Straps have him forced into a hunched over position with his legs spread wide, you quickly realize that he is naked. Some kind of shallow metal bucket covers his groin and duct tape has it secured in place to his skin. You can hear a strange scurrying sound inside that makes him flinch. Looking closer at it, you can see a blow torch mechanism similar to the ones Forrest's device had had at the bottom of the bucket. His arms are tied behind him and forced upward onto the back of the chair in a very uncomfortable angle. As you walk around behind him, you blink when you realize there is a rifle in some kind of device that seems to make it fire behind him. It is angled toward him and the end of the barrel disappears into his asscheeks. Behind the device holding the rifle in place, you spot a tape laying on the ground and hurry to pick it up.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You look at the key and back to Monica, unable to help but feel like this is far too easy. The note said you would have to pay a price to free her. But, the key had just been handed to you so carelessly. Taking a deep breath, you hurry over to Monica's side and look at the locks keeping the bindings on her wrists and ankles secured in place. Putting the key into the first lock on her wrist, you twist it around until the lock comes undone. All you have to do now is unbuckle the leather restraints. You start working on that when suddenly a glowing mass of molten copper splatters out of the pipe, landing on Monica's shoulder, some of the splatter landing on your hip and burning clean through your pants. On reflex you throw yourself backward away from her, watching as she starts to scream while the molten copper burns into her shoulder. The scent of her burning flesh stings your nose. > You keep Trying Gritting your teeth, you hurry back to Monica and work on unlocking her other hand. Just as you get it free, you can hear more molten copper coming down the pipes. She seems to hear it as well, throwing herself from the chair to lay out on the floor with her ankles still bound while you also moved away from the splash zone. When more molten metal falls from the pipe, it hits the chair and burns through the wood but only barely spatters onto the backs of her legs. Hurrying, you work to free both of her ankles as well then help her move quickly away from the chair just in time to avoid a huge flood of the melted down copper as it was dumped down over the chair. The wood breaks down quickly under the hot metal, but the two of you are safe from any more burning splatter at least. Removing the gag from her mouth, you watch as she breathes through the pain of her burns before thanking you for saving her. You just shrug, unsure what else to say. You probably could press for answers about her investigation into your parents, but that's all in the past and can't be changed anyway. Why reopened old wounds? She's still blubbering various thanks when a door opens on the far side of the room. You stand and feel confused when she doesn't move to follow you. "I can't go through that door." She says, still gingerly touching at her burnt shoulder and the backs of her legs. "Why not, it's the only way out." "When I first woke up in here, there was a voice in the room. It sounded like a recording. It said that if the person that came through the room saved me, then I had to stay here when they went through the door. If I go through that door I'll die." She explains through tears, still half hysterical. "Fine, whatever," You mutter, moving away from her and toward the door. You had saved her, what she did with that was her own damn business not yours.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>A strange rattling sound pulls you out of your thoughts. It's coming from the pipe over the woman's head, but nothing but the noise seems to be coming out. Looking back at Monica, you notice that there is actually an envelope sitting on the ground near her feet. You pick it up, eyeing her as she struggles against her binds before opening up the envelope and pulling out a newspaper clipping. Recognizing Monica's face on the article, you read over it quickly and feel your blood start to run cold. According to the article, Monica was part of a scandal in CPS where certain caseworkers had accepted bribes. Had she possibly taken a bribe to write off the allegations against your parents? A small flashcard behind the newspaper article is written in the same handwriting as the other notes you have found so far. Let her drown in the money she valued over the welfare of children or pay the price to forgive her. To your surprise, a small key is taped to the back of the card. Though, you aren't so sure she deserves to be set free. She could have saved you from years and years of hell. But, she had left you to rot for cash? She was as much of a monster as your stepfather. A metallic clacking sound catches your attention and brings it back up to the pipe. Something clatters down the pipe then falls down, landing on Monica's head before bouncing to the floor. Crouching down, you pick up what looks like a penny. It is hot to the touch, almost enough to burn. Another one comes clattering down the pipe, but this one lands on the floor and splatters slightly, halfway melted down. > You do Nothing You aren't sure what is about to happen, but Monica hadn't given much thought to what would happen to you when she had left you with your family instead of removing you. Bribe or not, she could have saved you and she didn't. Why should you do any differently for her? Stepping back a bit, you watch as she continues to struggle against her bindings to no avail. The sounds coming from the pipe get louder with the occasional half melted coin dropping down it. One lands on her head, the melted copper burning into her skin and making her howl through the gag in a mixture of pain and panic. Suddenly, you hear a very different sound coming down the pipe and jump a bit as a stream of molten copper suddenly falls from the pipe. It splatters onto Monica's side, burning into her shoulder and arm. She shrieks into the gag, struggling in an attempt to move the chair she is stuck in. It is secured in place, as is she. > You let Her Die You continue to watch as Monica writhes about in pain from the burning of the molten metal landing on her. Another large glob of the stuff falls from the pipe, this time splattering onto her lap. The melted down pennies look oddly pretty you have to admit. A warm glowing color, like the shiniest new penny you have ever seen. But, Monica's thrashing and screaming as it burns through her clothes and skin like acid makes it hard to appreciate the color of the stuff. Still, you can't help but feel a little warm inside at the scene unfolding in front of you. She deserves this. And now she can't let any other children down like she did you. In fact, she'll never let anyone down again after this. You watch in awe as a flood of molten copper pours out of the pipe, completely dousing Monica from head to toe in the stuff. She stops screaming, going oddly quiet as her body twitches under the liquified metal as smoke rises up from it. A moment later she goes still, the smell of her burnt skin and still cooking flesh mixing the scent of the molten copper in the air. Another door opens in the far side of the room. You don't look back as you head out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You aren't sure what is about to happen, but Monica hadn't given much thought to what would happen to you when she had left you with your family instead of removing you. Bribe or not, she could have saved you and she didn't. Why should you do any differently for her? Stepping back a bit, you watch as she continues to struggle against her bindings to no avail. The sounds coming from the pipe get louder with the occasional half melted coin dropping down it. One lands on her head, the melted copper burning into her skin and making her howl through the gag in a mixture of pain and panic. Suddenly, you hear a very different sound coming down the pipe and jump a bit as a stream of molten copper suddenly falls from the pipe. It splatters onto Monica's side, burning into her shoulder and arm. She shrieks into the gag, struggling in an attempt to move the chair she is stuck in. It is secured in place, as is she. > You give In and Help Not able to listen to her muffled screams, you grip the key and move in to try and free one of her hands. Getting one free, you quickly do your best to get the other loose as well. Just as you get it free, you can hear more molten copper coming down the pipes. She seems to hear it as well, throwing herself from the chair to lay out on the floor with her ankles still bound while you also moved away from the splash zone. When more molten metal falls from the pipe, it hits the chair and burns through the wood but only barely spatters onto the backs of her legs. Hurrying, you work to free both of her ankles as well then help her move quickly away from the chair just in time to avoid a huge flood of the melted down copper as it was dumped down over the chair. The wood breaks down quickly under the hot metal, but the two of you are safe from any more burning splatter at least. Removing the gag from her mouth, you watch as she breathes through the pain of her burns before thanking you for saving her. You just shrug, unsure what else to say. You probably could press for answers about her investigation into your parents, but that's all in the past and can't be changed anyway. Why reopened old wounds? She's still blubbering various thanks when a door opens on the far side of the room. You stand and feel confused when she doesn't move to follow you. "I can't go through that door." She says, still gingerly touching at her burnt shoulder and the backs of her legs. "Why not, it's the only way out." "When I first woke up in here, there was a voice in the room. It sounded like a recording. It said that if the person that came through the room saved me, then I had to stay here when they went through the door. If I go through that door I'll die." She explains through tears, still half hysterical. "Fine, whatever," You mutter, moving away from her and toward the door. You had saved her, what she did with that was her own damn business not yours.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Resisting the urge to break the rules, you instead go through the intended door and find yourself in a well lit room once more. In the center of it, you see a woman you don't recognize strapped to a chair. Above her is what looks like some kind of pipe that opens up over her head. She begins to struggle and cry once she sees you, but with the gag in her mouth you can't make out anything she is saying. Begging for help if you have to make a guess. There is no television in this room, instead, a table covered in binders and manilla folders is off to the side. There is no tape to give you instructions either, instead, it seems you have to do your own detective work and go through the various bits of information. Walking over to the table, you look down at all the different stacks of binders and folders. Picking up one folder you are surprised to find that it contains several forms going over case information from the time CPS was investigating your parents after teachers at your school grew concerned over your change in behavior after your stepfather began to pay you late night visits as a child. Skim reading the papers, you see details of why they were investigating. Unusual behavior at school on your part. You had apparently informed a teacher that your privates hurt after a game with your stepfather the previous night. It turns your stomach to even think about it. You had been so young when that started. You never really had a chance. Flipping through the papers, you find the notes from the CPS investigation. There was nothing but glowing notes on what good parents you had, how clean the house was, and so on and so forth. Confusion fills your mind as you think back to your childhood. The house had never been particularly organized or clean, you had your stepfather visiting you at night and your mother ignoring it, not to mention she also blamed you as some kind of kid sized seductress. How had none of that been seen and noted? You open one of the binders and find some photographs. Most are of you as a little girl right before your mom had remarried. You look so happy in those pictures. Just a regular little girl with a big grin, not a care in the world. Then as you flip further back you find yourself staring at a little girl with dead eyes and no joy to her expression, flanked by your stepfather in every picture. It makes you feel sick to your stomach to see the way he looks at you in some of the pictures, how his hand is often possessively gripping your shoulder. As you continue to look through the items on the table, you come across what looks like some kind of badge. You recognize the woman's face as the same one you're now in a room with. She works for CPS and according to the name on the badge, she's the same one that filled out the paperwork with the glowing reviews of your family... > You say Nothing You look at the woman, Monica according to the badge you found, and try to remember her from when you were just a kid. Vaguely you do remember her. A stranger you didn't know who was there to talk to you and your family a few times. Her presence had made your parents nervous, your stepfather was angry that she was there at all. The night before she visited for the last time, he had come to your room and the game he wanted to play was rougher than usual. "You don't talk to her. You tell her you love your parents and that we treat you nice. You don't tell her about our playtime after bed. Or we'll play a new game and you won't like it at all," your stepfather's voice had been cruel as he whispered the threat into your ear that night. The next day, you had done exactly as he said. It hurt to sit down and talk to her, so you had shifted back and forth to try to find a sitting position that didn't make you feel sore. She had attributed it to you being a hyperactive child and nothing else. You don't remember what all she asked of you, only that you didn't tell the truth for them. Your stepfather was scarier and than some stranger, you didn't know anything about after all. But, she was a professional. Monica should have seen through all of that. It was her job to save children. But, she hadn't saved you. She left you there with your stepfather and his fucked up games. He got bold after that. Every night for years he had come into your room until you were finally old enough in your teens to spend most of your nights couch surfing at friend's houses. It was better to be arrested for sneaking out of the house and loitering somewhere at night than to have to play another one of that monster's games. Maybe she did deserve this.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You try to guage the distance between yourself and the note then make a jump for it. The nails rip into your feet on the landing, but the momentum lets you pull your feet up from the nails quickly enough. The pain shoots up your legs as you stand on your bleeding feet, but at least you made it past the bed of nails hiding beneath the floor. You pick up the card and read it, surprised that is much more straightforward than Forrest's. According to the note, all you have to do is press the button to speed up the bolts being drilled into their skulls. Both of them have their own button welded onto the metal sheet on the wall of the cage facing you. It must be remotes. Your mother's name, Karen, is on the left and your step father's name is on the right. You could kill one to save the other... Or both. > You kill Your Mom You slam your hand down onto the button with your mother's name over it. Greg may have been the one to hurt you, but she was the one who let it happen over and over again. The one person in your life that was supposed to protect you and she had invited the monster into the house and then turned a blind eye to what he was doing to you. At times she had even blamed you for it, accusing you of seducing him on multiple occasions. Peering out from around the metal sheeting hiding the buttons from the view of the occupants within the cage, you watch as your mother suddenly starts screaming as the bolts in her device begin to turn faster. They drill into her skull before eventually breaking through with a sickening crunch. Greg moves away from her for a moment, watching as she starts to convulse on the floor and spit foam. Eventually, she goes still, blood dripping from her nose now that the bolts have pierced her brain. Greg yanks the fishing line up her throat until it pops out of her mouth with a spurt of blood. Strips of the inside of her throat dangle off the hooks as he clasps the blood soaked key in his hand. It doesn't take him long to unlock his device, though he has to really yank on it to get the bolts off of his head. The heavy metal of the thing hits the floor with a loud sound that makes you jump as you watch Greg slowly turn towards you. He snickers a bit, looking you up and down in the same way that always made you feel so dirty as a young girl, "Couldn't let me die, huh? I knew you wanted it all along. I'd give you another ride when we get out of here, but you've been passed around too many times now." You bite down on your inner cheek as his words cut straight to your gut, making you feel simultaneously revolted and enraged, "Don't you mean I'm too old for you now?" His face loses some of the smugness when you spit the words back at him. If you're lucky, he'll die some other way before he escapes this place. But, for now, you have other places to go. The exit is now open, beckoning you away.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You try to guage the distance between yourself and the note then make a jump for it. The nails rip into your feet on the landing, but the momentum lets you pull your feet up from the nails quickly enough. The pain shoots up your legs as you stand on your bleeding feet, but at least you made it past the bed of nails hiding beneath the floor. You pick up the card and read it, surprised that is much more straightforward than Forrest's. According to the note, all you have to do is press the button to speed up the bolts being drilled into their skulls. Both of them have their own button welded onto the metal sheet on the wall of the cage facing you. It must be remotes. Your mother's name, Karen, is on the left and your step father's name is on the right. You could kill one to save the other... Or both. > You kill Them Both Looking at the two buttons, you can't help but think about how both of them deserved to die. They had both worked together and destroyed your childhood. Both had hurt you in different ways. And neither of them had ever faced any sort of consequence for it. Until now at least. You press both of the buttons at the same time before peering around the metal sheet to see into the cage. Greg has Karen pinned, trying to get to the fishing line in her mouth. But, now both of the devices around their heads suddenly begin to drill the bolts into their temples at an enhanced rate. Greg falls backward from the pain, thrashing about as the bolts drill through his skull with a sickening sound. Your mother falls over as well, screaming as the bolts pierce through her skull bone and into her brain. Their bodies go into convulsions shortly after, bringing silence to the room broken only by the sound of the drill turning the bolts and their limbs kicking about. Finally, the bolts are all the way in and the devices fall silent, as do their convulsing bodies go still. Blood trickles from their noses and foam from their mouths. Both dead as far as you can tell. A door opens up in the corner of the room, beckoning you to leave this tomb. They deserved this. A pedophile and a worthless mother that let it happen. They belonged together in here. Now you can leave them to rot.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Not able to watch anymore, you quickly glance around looking for some way to help. After a moment, you spot a card hanging from one corner of the cage on your side. There is metal sheeting keeping anyone inside the cage from reaching through to the card. Walking forward you head toward it, only to feel the tile beneath your foot give way and a sharp pain stab through your foot. Looking down, you can see that the tile floor has given way under your weight and nails have come up through small holes in the floor to prick your feet. You slowly pull your foot back, feeling the nails piercing the sole of your foot slide back out roughly. Blood stains the tile floor now and your foot throbs painfully where the nails went through to the bone. Angry swearing draws your attention back to your mother and stepfather in the cage, they seem to have turned on each other now. Greg has your mother by the shoulders and is trying to force her down to the floor, likely to rip the key out of her throat. If you're going to help, you'll have to act quickly. Still, the thought enters your mind that she never did help you when you had been the one he was hurting. How many times had he come into your bedroom as a child, hurting you and you had looked over at the door to see her watching with disgust on her face. But, she never intervened. Just looked at you as if it were all your fault before walking away and going back to sleep, leaving you at the mercy of a grown man many times your child self's size. > You give Up You continue to watch as Greg finally turns to slinging your mother around the cage until she finally slips and falls. He's on her before she can scramble back up. She screams and begs for you to help her, but it's too late for that. How many times had you begged for her help as a little girl? What had she ever done to help you? Now she would know how it felt. He raises his heavy fist and brings it down into her face hard, blood exploding out of her nose from the blow. A few more hard hits to the face makes her go limp so that he can then grip the fishing line and pull hard. Blood oozes from her mouth as the hook on the end of the line rips her throat on the way up, popping out of her lips with both the key and shreds of flesh hanging off of it. Greg quickly puts the key into the lock on the device around his head, unlocking it so that he can then get about taking it off. The bolts on his skull are still drilling inward and he has to rip it off of his head, scraping some of the skin off as it does. But, he stands there free finally except for the bit of fishing line still down his throat. The bolts on your mother's device keep drilling into her skull, faster and faster now that the countdown is below one minute. The sound as her skull starts to crack from the pressure is sickening, but Greg just stands there looming over her watching as it happens. He doesn't even look sad that his wife is dying because he sacrificed her to save himself. Not that he was ever the kind of man to feel remorse. Finally, the clock hits zero just as your mother's body goes into convulsions, thrashing about as blood oozes around the bolts drilling their way into her temples before going still as bloody foam drips from her mouth. Greg finally looks over at you, those cruel eyes of his glinting like they always do when he thinks he's won. A door opens off to the side, your escape into the next little slice of hell. The sound of his voice cursing your very existence echoes in the room as you turn your back on him and leave. He always did like getting the last word in, didn't he?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Fuck you," the words come out as a growl from your throat as you stand still and watch them through the bars. "She's a junkie, a whore. That's all she's ever been and all she'll ever be," Greg spits out the words like bullets, but the insults feel empty in the current situation. You have the power here, not him. "That's rich coming from you. I'd rather be a junkie whore than a pedophile, you sick fuck. You deserve whatever is about to happen to you," You lean forward as you growl out the words, "And I'm going to enjoy watching you die." The television cuts on before any more words can be said, the now familiar voice commanding everyone's attention. "Hello Greg and Karen. The lives you have lived have brought nothing but harm to those around you. A pedophile who abuses his stepdaughter and a mother who turns a blind eye and allows it to continue for years. You have lived your lives caring only for yourselves. Today your will to live will be tested. The devices you wear can only be unlocked with the key that the other has down their throat. You only have to pull the line out of the other's mouth to free yourselves. The screws on either side of your head will slowly drill into your skull once the time starts. You have three minutes before they pierce your brain. Live or die, make your choice." The screen cuts to static then begins a countdown from three minutes. You watch as both of them try to pull at what appears to be fishing line hanging from their mouths and secured to their shirts to prevent them from swallowing it completely. Both stop pulling almost immediately, gasping in pain. Moments later you hear the drills start up, slowly cranking their way continuously tighter as the clock ticks by. > You keep Watching Stepping away from the spiked floor, you instead turn to watch as your stepfather advances toward your mother. He's a monster, but then so is she in a different way. They aren't worth skewering your feet to save. Unlike Forrest, they are capable of saving themselves or each other if they just try. What happens will not be on you. He catches your mother around the shoulders and it isn't until then that she seems to register what he is doing. As he reaches for the fishing line hanging from her mouth and attached to her shirt, she starts to struggle and try to move away from him. The grip he has on her shoulders is strong enough to keep her from getting away, but he can't get a grip on the fishing line without letting her go and they just struggle back and forth cursing each other for a few moments while the bolts drill tight enough into their skulls to draw blood.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Walking through the door, you find yourself in a hallway once more. Many of the doors are marked with warnings not to try and go through them, prompting you to pass them by for now at least. Watching Forrest burn to death still has your stomach churning, but at the same time you can't help but think about how he deserved it in so many ways. He ruined your life, set you on a destructive path and then left you with no way out of it. Just as the tape said, he burned you one last time before he left. But, he was the one burnt nearly to ash now. Coming to the end of the hallway, you find another tape and put it into the recorder and hit the play button. That same voice starts speaking to you once more. "Hello, Ciara. Beyond this door, are the two people truly responsible for putting you on the wrong path for life. They chose not to save you from themselves and now you must choose whether you save them from each other. In the next room, you will find yourself as the spectator of their game. You can watch and see which of them has the will to live, or you can intervene. Make your choice." Taking a deep breath, you push through the door and into the next room. The lights inside the room trip on when you step inside, triggered by the door opening. A large cage takes up more than half of the room where two people jolt startle and shield their eyes as the lights blind them momentarily. You swallow nervously as you recognize your mom and stepfather in the cage. Both of them have strange metal devices around their heads. It looks almost like a medical halo, but with thicker metal and two large screws on either side of their skulls as thick a rail spike. The devices clasp beneath their chin and are locked in place by a lock around the neck. They recognize you once their eyes adjust to the light, both of them hurrying toward the bars of their cage and calling out to you. A numbness settles in your stomach as the adrenaline starts to pump through your veins. Watching Forrest nearly burn to death before you could get him free had been hard enough, now it's your parents? This is all just too much... "Ciara? What's happening?" Your mom asks, her voice sounds panicked as you continue to finger the metal device around her head. "I don't fucking know," You snap, glancing furtively at the television on the stand to the side of the cage. "She did this. We're in a cage and she's walking around free," Your stepfather, Greg, nearly snarls out the words. Looking at him through the bars, you feel nothing but disgust for him. Not that your mother is any better for marrying him, much less staying with him all this time. The man was a monster of a different sort than Forrest. It had started shortly after he had gotten together with your mom when you were still young, too little to understand what was going on. It started with visits to your room in the middle of the night. Confusing conversations that you couldn't comprehend as a child, then it turned into late night games of dress up. Then it had become something much worse. For years it had gone on and no one did anything. No one saved you. And she knew. You know that even as you stare into her eyes now. Her gaze is as accusing as always. She had never seen it as you being a victim, rather she had blamed you as if you were some kind of seductress trying to steal her new husband. The older you had gotten, the worse things got. But, she wasn't angry enough about it to rat him out to CPS when they came calling. She covered for the son of a bitch then they both made sure you never talked to anyone about your nightmare of a homelife ever again. "Ciara, get us out of here." She demands, her voice somehow both fearful and accusing at the same time. > You look Around Gritting your teeth, you start to look around the room for what you are sure is here somewhere. In the room with Forest there had been a way for you to help, there is probably one here too. Finally, you spot what looks like a card dangling from one corner of the cage on your side. There is metal sheeting keeping anyone inside the cage from reaching through to the card. You step forward, but the TV cutting on stops you mid stride as the now familiar voice fills the silence. "Hello Greg and Karen. The lives you have lived have brought nothing but harm to those around you. A pedophile who abuses his stepdaughter and a mother who turns a blind eye and allows it to continue for years. You have lived your lives caring only for yourselves. Today your will to live will be tested. The devices you wear can only be unlocked with the key that the other has down their throat. You only have to pull the line out of the other's mouth to free yourselves. The screws on either side of your head will slowly drill into your skull once the time starts. You have three minutes before they pierce your brain. Live or die, make your choice." The screen cuts to static then begins a countdown from three minutes. You watch as both of them try to pull at what appears to be fishing line hanging from their mouths and secured to their shirts to prevent them from swallowing it completely. Both stop pulling almost immediately, gasping in pain. Moments later you hear the drills start up, slowly cranking their way continuously tighter as the clock ticks by. Looking back at the note hanging from the string, you walk towards it again. After a few steps, you suddenly feel the floor give way and sharp pain makes you yank your foot back. Looking down, you see that the floor in this part of the room is filled with small holes. Pressing on the corner of some of the tile, you see that it pushes down under pressure and sharp nails go through the holes from underneath.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Fuck...FUCK!" You shriek, turning back around to the box. You don't know which one has the key, but it's the only way to open the locks on the straps keeping Forrest trapped. Taking a deep breath, you shove your hand back into the first hole as fast you can. The steam cranks on and burns hot, but you reach the bottom. You feel around for a second, but find nothing and yank your arm back out of the oven of steam. Pulling it back out your enter arm is now covered in heat blisters and an angry, shiny red color. It surges with a pain you can barely stand. Tears stream down you face as you cradle your burnt arm. "I can't do this..." You mutter to yourself as Forrest continues to scream in agony. > You let Him Die You jump slightly as the second series of torches start burning him at his thighs, hips, and waist. Watching as Forrest writhes about in his bonds and screams in agony, you steel yourself for what you are about to witness. His feet are nearly burnt down to the bone and the thicker parts of his legs are starting to bubble with huge heat blisters. The skin is gone where the flames hit directly, the meat of him being burnt now. It is a sickening stench that fills the room and turns your stomach sour, you've seen a lot of horrible shit in your life. But this is something else entirely. The next series of torches cut on, lighting up his arms and shoulders. He howls in pain, his face red with effort and veins bulging in his forehead. His eyes are wide in terror, tears streaming down his cheeks. It's too late now to save him, even if you wanted too he was beyond it now. A few moments later, the final series of torches fire up. Flames lick up his throat and on either side of his ears. It lights his short hair on fire, engulfing his head in flames as his horrified shrieking intensifies then goes silent as his body goes limp. The flames keep cooking his corpse for a while as you stare transfixed at the scene, watching as his face burns away to reveal charred skull underneath. When the torches finally turn off, you are left staring at a burnt corpse. The air is so thick with the stench of his burnt flesh and the smoke from it that you can barely breathe. The grinding sound of a metal door opening on its own catches your attention, but you vomit when you have to walk right past his body to get to it. The smell is overpowering and you have nothing in your stomach but acid to puke up. This room will be his tomb, you know that as you walk out of the door. But, it won't be yours.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"You ruined my life," You spit out at him, watching as he struggles to get free. "Do you know what he did to me?" You can't help the bark of near hysterical laughter that escapes you. It's a pointless question though, he can't answer you with his mouth sewn shut like that. Fidgeting a bit, you glance over at the screen once more. It's now counting down from ten seconds. You don't know what happens when it reaches zero, but you step back a bit just to be safe. Forrest ruined your life in so many ways, it feels fitting to be given this kind of power over him. The countdown finally hits zero and you jump as flames shoot out of small metal pipes at his feet. Forrest's screams are muffled by his mouth being clamped shut, but the sound still rattles around inside your head even as the acrid odor of burnt flesh hits your nostrils. > You watch Crossing your arms, you stand firm and fix him with a cold stare. The stench of him cooking makes you nose burn and smoke is starting to rise up from his lower legs. The skin on his feet is gone where the flames hit, but the skin not in the direct heat is developing huge blisters rapidly before your eyes. He continues to scream in muffled agony as you watch. It feels somehow justified to see him in pain like this. His will just be momentary, but yours lasted for years. He ruined your life. He used you and then traded you like a worthless trinket when he was done with you. There were years of your life that you could never get back. But, his shrieking eventually leads to the thick threads holding his lips shut tearing through the skin. His once unintelligible noises are now words, screamed in pain and terror as blood oozes down his chin. It hurts to hear him in pain like that, no matter who he is.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Opening the door, you have to squint as bright lights cut on when you walk inside. The room is harshly illuminated as you step inside, the door crashing shut behind you and locking. As your eyes adjust to the harsh lights, you find yourself staring transfixed at the scene before you. A man is strapped into a large mechanical device of some kind which holds him upright facing you. His eyes are locked onto you as you step forward. His mouth is sewn shut, but he isn't staying quiet. He struggles against the binds that hold him in place, making incoherent sounds as an old television on a stand nearby cuts on. The tape plays, showing a puppet like head on the screen with painted white skin, red spirals on the cheeks, and red eyes. It's mouth opens and closes as the voice from the tapes begins to speak again. "Hello again, Ciara. You should remember the man before you very well. When you were still a girl, the two of you were inseparable. You thought it was love, that he would save you from your own personal hell. But, instead, he introduced you to the drugs that have ruled your life ever since. He used you for years and when he was done with you, he burned you one last time for good measure. Now he is the one who will get burned unless you are willing to pay the price for his freedom. But, does he deserve that freedom, Ciara? Make your choice." The screen goes to static before showing a clock counting down from sixty seconds. Turning back towards the man in the device, you now recognize Forrest as you look at him strapped down into the device. It's been over a decade since you saw him last, the memory of it is burned into your mind and no high has ever been able to erase it. For years the two of you had been a teenage Bonnie and Clyde. Mostly robbing convenience stores more than anything, using the money to buy weed, cocaine, and any pills you could find on the market at any given time. At the time, you had believed he was your ticket to freedom. He had sold you so many stories of taking you away from your family and getting an apartment together. But, he never did save you. Instead, he damned you. As the years went on, Forrest had gotten deeper and deeper into drugs and crime. Eventually, he was dealing for a man who had his filthy fingers in on every kind of black market scheme in the entire city. He was too stupid to be careful and ended up owing the man money. Not having any money, Forrest had offered to give him the only thing of value he had. You. He waited until you were too doped up to fight back, then Forrest had stuffed you into his car and driven you to a filthy house in the middle of the worst part of town. There he traded you over to a man you didn't know and walked away free of debt. Now here he is, strapped down to this contraption completely at your mercy. You have hated him for so long, wished for an opportunity just like this. To watch him suffer for what he did to you. His eyes are wide as he stares at you, watching you contemplate just what it is you want to do as the clock quickly races toward zero. > You study The Trap Ignoring Forrest, you instead circle the machine he is trapped inside. It looks like what once was a metal gurney, rigged to support him and strap him into the device. Hoses come up from a drain in the floor, more than you can count, where they then travel up the device and latch into what looks like small welding torches situated in intervals around his limbs, torso, and head. Looking around the room, you spy what looks like a large box covered in a tarp with a note lying on top. Picking up the note, you open it to find printed text on the inside of the blank card. Which one has the key? Pulling the tarp off of the box, you find yourself staring down at a metal box with three holes just big enough to stick your arm into. Unlike the boxes before, you cannot see what is inside them. But, the tape had mentioned paying the price for his freedom. It isn't hard to guess that whatever is inside those holes isn't just a key. You jump as a mechanical whirring starts up, bringing you to look at the countdown and finding it at zero. Glancing back at Forrest, you see flames erupt out of the welding torches positioned at his feet, calves, and knees. He squirms and shrieks in pain through his sewn shut lips, eyes wide in horror.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You reach into the box with the key, balling your hand into a fist to keep your fingers from getting snagged in the maze of razor wires. Gritting your teeth, you slowly push toward the back of the box. The wire slices into your fist and forearm, but it is a familiar enough pain that you manage to make it to the back of the box and grab the key. Removing your hand is more painful than putting it into the box was. The razors drag across your already bleeding flesh, but you eventually pull your hand free of the contraption. Just as you are almost out, you feel your wrist snag on wire. Taking a deep breath, you decide to treat this like a bandaid and just yank your hand out. The pain is sharp and takes your breath away, but you make it out of the box with the key in hand. Looking down at your blood slick arm, you wince as you see a strip of skin dangling from the top of your hand. You aren't sure if you should finish the job and remove the skin flap or set it back in place over the top of your hand and use some cloth to secure it in place. > You wrap it Up You shove the key into your pocket for the moment and survey the damage to your hand. An injury like this can score some good quality painkillers at the ER. Unfortunately, that isn't an option at the moment, but you're sure you'll get there eventually now that you have the key out of this hell hole. Using your uninjured hand, you stick your fingers into one of the holes in your shirt and start ripping the fabric away. You end up with a nice strip of cloth, though you aren't sure if it will be enough. Gritting your teeth, you carefully place the flap of skin back into place on the back of your hand. It burns horribly as you place the cloth over it then your hand over the top of it. Pressing it into your stomach to hold the skin flap and fabric in place, you use your hand to wrap tie it tightly into place. It isn't perfect, but it should keep the loose skin from flopping about. > You open The Door Taking the key back out of your pocket, you hurry toward the door. Your injured hand burns as the cloth cinches the degloved skin tightly into place, but you push through the pain and push the key into the lock. It turns and you can hear the loud sound of the mechanism turning as the metal door screeches open. Stepping through, you find yourself in a hallway with harsh fluorescent lights in the ceiling. You walk down it, but many of the doors are chained shut with warnings against trying to open them painted in red letters. It is cold and damp out here, making you shiver as you hurry down the corridor. Finally, you come to a door with no warnings and a cassette labeled 'play me' taped to the middle of the door. Plucking it from the confines of the tape, you put it into the recorder and hit play. "If you are listening to this, then you chose freedom over your addiction. This is just the first step to reclaiming your life, Ciara. For years you have blamed the people who came into your life for what you have become. Perhaps, you are right to blame them after they made you feel powerless over your own fate. But your obsession with blame keeps you from moving on. Beyond this door is someone who influenced your life early on. Today, you choose whether he lives or dies." The tape comes to an end, leaving you feeling apprehensive about what is beyond the door in front of you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Pressing the play button, you hear a voice start speaking from the recording. It's clearly been distorted, but you can hear the words well enough. "Hello, Ciara. For most of your life, you have been a victim. But, you have never truly tried to rise above this victim status you have held for so long. Within this room, are photographs of your childhood. Your pictures progress from a happy little girl to that of a criminal, but what fueled this change? For years you have been too busy blaming others and using past wrongs against you as an excuse for your own misdeeds. Today, you will face your inner demons. Beyond the door of this room wait a series of tests. But, first, you must prove to yourself that your life is worth more than the addiction that rules it. The door out is locked and the key is within your reach, so is your drug of choice. Will you reach for the key to your freedom or will you stay a slave to your addiction? Live or die, Ciara, make your choice." The tape goes silent as you feel fear start to take over the haze of cravings and the pounding of the migraine in the back of your skull. Looking around, you spot the door and hurry to it. Just as the tape said, it is locked with a heavy bolt. You've never seen a door like this before, it's solid steel and doesn't budge when you push against it. The bolt has a keyhole in it, but you don't see a key anywhere. Looking around, all you can see are pictures hanging up illuminated by the flickering candlelight, some photographs on a crate surrounding by a circle of candles on the floor, and what looks like a binder laying on the floor in a dark corner of the room. > You look At The Binder On The Floor Walking over to the binder on the floor, you pick it up and move back into a better lit area of the room. Opening it up, you find an old family scrapbook. The first few pages are filled with family pictures and little notes that your mother had written about them, but as you flip through the pages you find that your mother's scrapbook has been changed. The pages show mugshots from your teen years, progressing on into recent ones. It's a stark change as you look at each picture. You go from from a beautiful young girl to a battered junkie with each page you turn. The final page has the words 'Cherish Your Life' written in flowing script on the back. What was there to cherish about your life exactly? This entire thing is fucked up. You've heard of the Jigsaw killer and the horrific things he does to people. But, what would he know about your life? There is nothing to cherish and no one would miss you if you die here. In fact, you're sure the only person that might even notice your absence is your drug dealer would likely forget his regular customer after a few days .<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Her eyes dart from Fire Sage to Fire Sage. Of course, they will all betray her too just as everyone else has, but she can’t banish them yet. They must crown her first, but it’s a meaningless title now anyway. Fire Lord. Bah, what nonsense. Go back a few hours and it’d be the most powerful position in the world. The Fire Nation rules almost the entire world now, but with her father deciding to make himself the Phoenix King, not the most creative title, it makes her nothing but an honorary… something. Honorary vassal? Oh, I’m letting my mind wander again. How foolish of me. I’m raving like a madwoman. She’ll banish the Fire Sages in a few moments before they could betray her. It all started with Mother. No, it started when Zuko betrayed her, stole all their mother’s affection by simply being born. At least Father pretended to like her. Too bad he just dumped her off here when he no longer had a use for her. Helping him commit genocide against the Earth Kingdom would’ve made some fun bonding moments. What’s taking them so long anyway? Put the crown on my head! It’ll make her the youngest, fifteen, and the first female Fire Lord ever. She blows a strand of her hair that’s been dangling in front of her left eye. She should’ve hacked that one off too like all the other untrustworthy hairs. Maybe she doesn’t look perfect right now. She can’t tell. She destroyed her mirror after Mother wouldn’t stop talking to her, from the other side of the reflection of course. She had the gall to not age for over half a decade and not even speak to her in person! What little remains of the logical part of her brain screams at her, telling her that she’s not well in the head. That was a hallucination, not her mother. All her servants, bodyguards, and teachers weren’t trying to kill her. Azula ignores that little voice in her head. Just as the fools were about to put that crown on her head, she sees him. Him! There he is, returning at the most inopportune moment! He’s been a traitor to her and their nation for how long? Weeks? He’s been hiding somewhere with this glorious nation’s most hated enemy, but he arrives to fight- No! He comes to betray her again, like everyone has done to her and like everyone will always do to her. Azula stands up and faces him, grinning like a madwoman. She says one word to him. “Zuzu.” > You 1 The baby reaches for the bright ball, but she can never grasp it. Why? Other balls come to her hands. That one doesn’t. It makes her angry, but it makes her want that bright ball even more. It warms her, lets her feel alive. She stretches her arms out to seize the ball again. She fails again. The tall person says words to her. Of course, Azula doesn’t understand any of them, but the words seem harsh. She has a distant memory of those words once sounding nice, but not any longer. The being she will one day know as Mother doesn’t say nice things to her. Instead, she moves the baby under the shade of a tree. She decides not to cry. It never does much good anyway. The bright ball disappeared under the green stuff above her now. The tall person and the short person sit by the water. Azula understands water. Once a day, she is put in water even though she doesn’t like the feeling. The water feels bad. The bright ball feels good and warm even though she never reached it. The two people throw something into the pond. Little fury things swim up and eat whatever the two of them toss into the water. Azula watches them until they run out of stuff to throw. She later learns it’s called bread. While the tall person stays by the water, the short one walks over to her. She doesn’t understand what he’s saying, but his tone is happy. He stresses one word over and over to her. She watches his lip movements and listens to that sound her makes. Why not copy it? It’s how she learns many things after all. “Z…” He looks happier with that sounds, so he repeats that word over and over again. Perhaps he’s broken? Maybe he’ll be fixed by making that sound again. “Zuzu!” It’s the first word she ever spoke. > You 2 Azula giggles. It amuses her to see so many metal men run around. They always stand still or walk behind her, but now they seem frantic. They bend away the fire from the stupid, ugly painting. fears their red armor and spiky helmets, but not Azula. No, she’s a big girl who doesn’t feel scared. “Azula!” The girl feels scared as her mother stands in front of the… What was the word? Tapestry! It’s a tapestry. Mommy trembles. A tear falls down her face. Why is Mommy sad? I bended fire! “What did you do, Azula?” Azula lowers her gaze. How come Mommy gets so angry at her and only her? She smiles at everyone else, well, except for Daddy. “I…” Why am I in trouble? “I bended fire, like Daddy and Zuzu.” “Tell me the truth. You’re two. No one bends fire at two. It was rare for Zuko to bend fire at only four.” “But I am tellin’ the truth.” She crosses her arms. “Did you hide the candles? Please tell me the fire you burned this with isn’t still burning.” “I burned it with my fire!” “You burned my only reminder of my family. Stop lying.” “I am not lying. I am your family!” She stomps her foot on the ground. The rug catches on fire where her foot made contact. Unlike before, pure joy, now she feels afraid. Will Mommy be angry about this too? Instead of saying anything else, Mommy walks away in a hurry. The metal men, maybe they are called guards, bend that fire away too. She watches. They do it so easily. Why doesn’t Mommy yell at them? They bend, but she doesn’t mind. Why doesn’t Mommy love her? “A… Azula?” She turns her head. Zuzu stands in the doorway, eyes wide. Zuzu burned something too when he first bended. It was part of Mommy’s dress, a pretty and black one. Mommy was so happy when that happened even though the fire made her skin look a little red on her hand. She loves Zuzu. “What did you do, Azula?” he asks, echoing their mother’s words. Again, Azula lowers her gaze. > You show Him She shoots some fire. It catches Zuzu’s shirt on fire. He screams like a girl before throwing his shirt off. “Why did you do that, Azula?” He has tears in his eyes. Did I hurt Zuzu? “I…” She looks at the ground. “I wanted to show you.” He glances at his arm again. “Fire can hurt. It can kill. It’s why we’re so good at conquering the world.” Azula nods at the last part. “Don’t do that anymore. I… I have practice coming up about control. Um…” He sighs, or maybe that was a groan. “You can come with me for that.” She tilts her head to the side. “Really?” “Yeah, really.” Zuzu will help her. She never got to do big kid things with him before. He did all of this after she burned him? Her big brother is either the nicest person ever or a giant dum-dum. They hear a new set of footsteps. She turns and sees someone she only remembers seeing twice before besides their nightly, tense dinners. Mommy stands behind him. She looks angry and confused. Maybe she’s wondering why Zuzu’s shirt is smoldering on the ground. “Daddy?” she asks. Zuzu takes three steps backwards. “Azula, you bent fire.” “Yes.” She clenches her tiny fists. Will he be angry like Mommy? “Good job.” He smirks. At this time in her life, it scared her. Eventually, she will learn to desire such approval. > You 3 Azula fires another blast of fire with every punch. She imagines a new Avatar, unlike that one who died generations ago, standing in front of her. Each blast burns off more of his face until he’s nothing but a screaming skull. She would laugh at the sight, but she needs to focus. Her breathing is already… what was the word her teacher used? Impeccable. That’s the word. Her breathing is impeccable. “That’s enough for today.” Her teacher’s words make the girl stop. She wipes the sweat from her brow and glances at the sun. It warms her aching limbs. As always, she pushes herself the very hardest to make Mommy proud. Not good enough. I must be better. Maybe Mommy will like it more. Her mother moves from the chair she and the teacher sit at. She rushes past Azula and coddles Zuzu, struggling for breath. That dum-dum hasn’t come close to mastering breathing, let alone firebending. She knows she should feel pride. Already, she is better than Zuzu, but that hasn’t done anything for making Mommy like her. Why isn’t she good enough now? No, that doesn’t matter. She’ll become the best. That way Mommy must love her. Who doesn’t love the bestest of them all? But… she is already better than Zuzu. He is nice to her, but Mommy doesn’t like her. Even if she becomes the bestest ever, what if that doesn’t work? I need two plans. Maybe, if Zuzu does bad things too, like burning tapestries, then maybe Mommy wouldn’t mind the bad things Azula does. But Zuzu doesn’t do bad things. He is nice. She scratches her head for a moment before smiling. Zuzu doesn’t do bad things, but Azula does. Mommy only needs to think Zuzu did those. Maybe then she’ll be nice and love her. What does Mommy like? Mommy likes plays, the beach, Zuzu, and Turtle-Ducks. Azula can’t destroy the beach, plus the beach is fun. There aren’t any plays around, thank goodness. She doesn’t want to hurt Zuzu. But… She decides to do it at night. Night is dark, so most firebenders sleep. That means no one will see her, right? The girl waits until night. She refuses to let herself fall asleep and counts to six hundred before sneaking out of her room. She sneaks from corner to corner in the darkness. > You go to the Rooftops to Sneak Azula sneaks up to a second story window. It is a super far drop to the ground, but she isn’t afraid. I’m not afraid at all. This feeling is just excitement. She shimmies over the window and lowers her first foot to the roof. After testing for footing, she puts her other foot down. The princess keeps her arms out to stay balanced. The roof has a small angle, so it will be easy to slip and fall. She looks around. Everything seems so different up here, but she sees where the pond rests. It isn’t far away, but right now it seems like an endless distance. She gains confidence with each step. Her feet make small clicking sounds on the tile. I can do this to make Mommy love me. Her legs tremble. Almost there. Just a few more minutes. A tile snaps loose under her feet. She slips and lets out a squeal as she grasps for any handhold. Then, she falls for a moment. Pain engulfs her. Mommy! Daddy! Zuzu, help me! She never does get to see her brother again.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Azula fires another blast of fire with every punch. She imagines a new Avatar, unlike that one who died generations ago, standing in front of her. Each blast burns off more of his face until he’s nothing but a screaming skull. She would laugh at the sight, but she needs to focus. Her breathing is already… what was the word her teacher used? Impeccable. That’s the word. Her breathing is impeccable. “That’s enough for today.” Her teacher’s words make the girl stop. She wipes the sweat from her brow and glances at the sun. It warms her aching limbs. As always, she pushes herself the very hardest to make Mommy proud. Not good enough. I must be better. Maybe Mommy will like it more. Her mother moves from the chair she and the teacher sit at. She rushes past Azula and coddles Zuzu, struggling for breath. That dum-dum hasn’t come close to mastering breathing, let alone firebending. She knows she should feel pride. Already, she is better than Zuzu, but that hasn’t done anything for making Mommy like her. Why isn’t she good enough now? No, that doesn’t matter. She’ll become the best. That way Mommy must love her. Who doesn’t love the bestest of them all? But… she is already better than Zuzu. He is nice to her, but Mommy doesn’t like her. Even if she becomes the bestest ever, what if that doesn’t work? I need two plans. Maybe, if Zuzu does bad things too, like burning tapestries, then maybe Mommy wouldn’t mind the bad things Azula does. But Zuzu doesn’t do bad things. He is nice. She scratches her head for a moment before smiling. Zuzu doesn’t do bad things, but Azula does. Mommy only needs to think Zuzu did those. Maybe then she’ll be nice and love her. What does Mommy like? Mommy likes plays, the beach, Zuzu, and Turtle-Ducks. Azula can’t destroy the beach, plus the beach is fun. There aren’t any plays around, thank goodness. She doesn’t want to hurt Zuzu. But… She decides to do it at night. Night is dark, so most firebenders sleep. That means no one will see her, right? The girl waits until night. She refuses to let herself fall asleep and counts to six hundred before sneaking out of her room. She sneaks from corner to corner in the darkness. > You stay on the Ground to Sneak The guards in their red armor are on the lookout for people going inside the palace. They wouldn’t expect someone to be sneaking into the palace’s pond, right? It turns out, she was right… or perhaps lucky. It doesn’t matter. She made it by sneaking from shadowy corner to shadowy corner. Standing by the wall, she knows that the pond will be in the open. She’ll have to do this fast. After breathing in and out a few times, the girl sets her sight on one duckling. Unlike the others, that one sleeps away from her mother. The others all cuddle under the mother’s wings. Azula rushes forward. Some of the turtle-ducks wake up when she arrives, but not her target. She plucks it out of the water. It squawks and bites her hand. She lights her hand on fire while still grasping it. She keeps the blaze cold enough to make it a painful death for the creature. When it stops struggling, she drops it in the water and flees. Blood drips down her pointer finger, but the elation of victory drowns any of the pain. Tomorrow, she will blame everything on Zuzu. Then, Mommy will forgive him because she loves him. Mommy will then forgive her since everything Azula had done before wasn’t as bad a murder. When she reaches her bedroom, she wipes the few trickles of blood on her nightgown. She falls asleep with ease. Uncle Iroh always said killing something made him feel sad. Now, she knows he’s a coward. She doesn’t feel bad at all, yet she’s only three. She falls asleep with a smile on her face. When she wakes up, she puts on her normal clothes. Zuzu has servants who do it. So does Mommy. Mommy hasn’t given Azula any servants though. She sprints to the dining room. Mommy always eats dinner at sunrise, and Azula always wakes up with the sun. “Mommy! Mommy!” she calls doing the best to sound anxious. She pushes open the dining room doors. She sees Mommy and Zuzu, as expected. She also sees two others. One is her father. He seems curious about something. The other is being held in Mommy’s hands. It’s a baby Turtle-Duck, the same one she killed. “Azula.” Mommy’s voice sounds cold. “Why did you do this?” Why does she know I did it? “I did not.” She crosses her arms. “I see the bite mark on your finger.” Zuzu tugs on Mommy’s sleeve. “Mom, maybe she didn’t.” Using the temporary distraction, she comes up with a story. “I wanted to pet the Turtle-Ducks last night. They don’t like me, so one bit me. I left, but I saw Zuzu. He sneezed, and it burnt one. I wanted to tell you before you thought it was on purpose.” She will believe that. “How could you kill an innocent creature, Azula? Why must you always lie?” Mommy marches up to the girl and grabs her by the ear. As she gets pulled to a day full of yelling and spanking, she looks back at the two males in the room. Zuzu looks hurt, maybe fearful. Daddy… Daddy looks proud. The next morning, Azula wakes up with a sore bottom and salty stains streaking down from her eyes. She also doesn’t dress herself. Three servants come in and do it for her. Azula doesn’t have any doubts over who sent them. Azula learned a powerful lesson that day. She lost any chance of Mommy’s love and lost Zuzu’s trust, but she still won. Azula could always win. Yesterday, she won Daddy’s approval. > You 4 Azula feels nothing. Fire needs emotion to burn from her body as it needs wood to burn in a fireplace. No firebender can bend without emotion. The prodigy decides she will bend fire anyway. She uses determination. It’s the one thing she and Zuzu have in common. She will be the best bender ever and Fire Lord. Being fifth in line for the throne is simply a puzzle to solve. While her brother is determined to take all of Mother’s love, Azula will become lord. Once she’s old enough, she’ll challenge her uncle and his son to an Agni Kai and win. Then, Azulon. That’d let Father be the Fire Lord. She could challenge her father to an Agni Kai. He loves her, the only one who does, but love profits no one. Then, she’ll challenge Zuzu and kill him too. She shakes her head. She’ll burn him, not kill him. He… He should live to see how amazing she is and then feel bad. That’s why. Nothing else. Stupid emotions. I have no emotions. I am determined. I will bend fire without emotions! Emotions are bad. Father said so. Emotions cloud her judgement. She jabs another burst of flame at the guard. This time, she gasps. The man doesn’t deflect this one. Instead, he stands there awestruck. The blast hits his head and he tumbles to the ground. Azula looks around. Her instructor stands with his mouth agape. She looks at her hand again as if it became a new appendage. She lights her hand aflame, though the fire doesn’t burn her. It sooths her, like the sun. Unlike the sun, this flame is now a brilliant, beautiful blue. It’s too splendid to hide from others. Everyone should see this. It’s so… “Perfect,” she mutters. Looking down at the guard with his armor still smoldering, she demands, “Tell me where Zuzu is! I wanna show him this.” > You 5 Azula inspects the knife. “What are you doing with that?” Everything about the girl seems normal, except the knife she uses to carve her fruit. It’s a throwing knife. The girl doesn’t move to acknowledge Azula’s words. Instead, she sighs. “I’m taking off the skin.” Azula shakes her head. She picks up another fruit from the ground and bites into it. Maybe this will get a reaction. It does, since the girl raises one of her eyebrows before shrugging. “You’re that politician’s daughter.” It’s a statement, not a question. Azula likes to know who’s who in her palace. Well, it’ll be her palace one day. “Tragically.” “Yet they gave you a throwing knife.” The girl takes a bite of the fruit. Some of the juices fall onto her clothing before her dull companion wipes it off. “Why not?” At this point, Azula realizes that the girl has spoken in nothing but a bored drawl. Perhaps this is all a waste of time, but there could be a benefit remaining. “Do you throw it much?” Instead of answering her, she girl stands up. With perfect form, she thrusts her hand outward. The knife flies straight an into one of the tree’s fruits. Azula didn’t know that the girl was aiming for a different fruit, but it looked like she knew exactly what she was doing. “How much do you practice?” “Whenever I’m bored.” Judging from her character, she feels boredom every day. “You’re going to be my friend now.” “Whatever.” After retrieving the knife, she sits down and proceeds to carve more skin off the fruit. Azula nods, happy to gain an ally. If she has that girl’s accuracy along with her sheer power, then it will be one step closer to being the best firebender ever and the best Fire Lord the world has ever seen. It will be- “Excuse me?” She speaks without prompt now? Why? “Go ahead.” Is she… blushing? “Is your brother… nice?” This girl has a blush, no doubt about it. “Nice?” “Yeah, he’s… he looks nice.” Azula holds back a laugh. “Does your silence mean he’s mean, like everyone else here?” The girl looks down. Azula sighs and looks at the sun. “He’s nice.” She shifts her gaze back to the girl while making a stern looking face. “But he’s still a giant dum-dum. Maybe you could talk to him.” “But, he’s so old looking. Is he eight?” “Seven.” “His name is Zuko, right? You’re Azula, the one who bends blue fire?” “Yes.” “I’m Mai.” > You 6 “Who was that?” She didn’t think Zuzu was paying that much attention. He seemed much more focused on that sand… sand mound? Perhaps it was supposed to be a palace or castle. That dum-dum has no artistic sense. “A new friend.” “Like Mai?” His eyes shimmer with that word. After a moment of contemplation, she decides it’s a shimmer of fear. Poor Zuzu’s afraid of girls, herself included. That’s good. She nods. “Uh huh, this one’s flexible and jumpy. I’m gonna be so good, no one could shoot me in an Agni Kai, even if I don’t bend.” “And she wants to be your friend?” “Of course.” Actually, Ty Lee, apparently from a family with a surname, seems to do this out of selfish reasons. She has a bunch of sisters, so being friends with a princess would differentiate her. All her actions scream “look at me” anyway. She’ll be easy to control. Zuzu crosses his arms. “Will that one be heading to the palace?” She raises her eyebrow. Why would she not? I wouldn’t befriend people who won’t be around. “Yes.” “Oh.” She puts her hands on her hips. “It’s not my fault if I have more friends that you.” He smashes the sand mound with his fists. Mother would’ve yelled at me if I did that. She didn’t even notice her precious son doing it. Even if she did, Mother would coddle him. She doesn’t see regret in his eyes. If it wasn’t for Mother, maybe Zuzu would’ve had a small chance at being a warrior. “It’s not fair.” He stands up. “How come you have so many friends?” It’s Azula’s turn to cross her arms. “I have two friends. That’s not much.” “More than me.” She shouldn’t be so surprised. He either flounders in his training or gets coddled by Mother. Is he capable of doing those boy game? Probably not. She should’ve put two and two together. Her brother’s isolated. Azula has broken free. “Zuzu, how many kids have you ever talked to?” “Um…” He stares at the sand as if it has become the most interesting thing in the world. “Let me guess…” She talked to him. Mai… Has Mai? Maybe. It’s hard to tell. “Two.” He doesn’t say anything, but his fist clench and he takes a quick breath of air. I’m right, as expected. “Do you even know how to play Hot Rocks?” “No.” Of course, you wouldn’t know. I made it up, just now. “You heat up a rock like this one.” She runs to the edge of the beach where there’s a stone, probably sandstone. She uses her flames to make it hot, but not enough to make it explode. She found out how painful those can be. “Then, we throw it at each other.” I can let the heat flow through me. Can you, Zuzu? She tosses the rock at him. He caught it and gave a very feminine yelp. Why am I behind him for the throne? He tosses it from one hand to another before chucking it back at her. She catches it and glances at the sun. From that angle… She tosses it at Zuzu, but she lobs it at a high angle. Her training with Mai will reap some fun rewards. He looks up but can’t see it. The rock is falling in his eyesight to the sun, a blind spot made of light. Of course, a warrior or anyone with common sense would move out of the way, yet Zuzu’s too stubborn for that. The rock hits his head, and he falls into the sand. Would Mother believe a bird would’ve dropped a stone on his head? Probably not. Did anyone see this? Mother and Father are down the beach sitting on the sand. The guards are back at the house, since it’s safe here. No one else dares come close to part of the royal family, except Ty Lee, but that girl has already wandered off. > You lie Down next to Him... Just to Make Things Look Normal She walks up and lies down next to her dazed brother. She pokes his shoulder without a response. He’s unconscious. She snuggles closer to her brother feeling the burning warmth of the sand on her back and the rhythmic breathing of her brother. Maybe he’s playing dead to make Mother upset, but it won’t work. They’ll think we’re lounging around in the sand if they see my lying with Zuzu. She feels the cool breeze drifting over the ocean carrying the faintest tinge of salt. The waters lap against the sand like a heartbeat. She clenches some of the sand and sprinkles it on Zuzu’s forehead. She giggles and some falls into his mouth. He opens his eyes and groans. “You should’ve dodged, dum-dum.” He rubs his forehead, brushing off some of the sand. “There’s no honor in running away.” And now he’s talking about honor? “There’s also no honor is being thunked by a rock. Firebenders break through flame, but our soldiers without bending must dodge.” “But I’m a firebender.” “A really bad one.” She pokes his side. Oddly, he hasn’t tried to get away from her yet. “Maybe you should act more like a soldier than a bender. Maybe try some swords?” “No son of Sozin or any firebender would use swords.” “Which’s why you should.” Zuzu stares at her, trying to read her expressions. He’s trying to decide if she’s insulting him or offering advice. Who says I can’t do both? She can read others easier than she can read that awful old poetry Mother likes so much. Zuzu couldn’t tell if she was sad if she was crying, not that she ever would. “Why are you still here, next to me?” “Don’t you trust me, big brother?” He cringes. “No.” Ouch. “Fine. You don’t have to, but I’ll always be on your side when we’re in battle. Well, unless we’re in an Agni Kai. I’ll just beat you quickly instead.” “We haven’t had a princess in battle for centuries, right?” “Yeah, but I will. You can be my armor bearer or something.” His demeanor darkens. Ug, that sounds like Ty Lee and those auroras. “I don’t think I’ll ever get to a battlefield. I’d just get in the way.” “Which’s why you should be my helper. That way, you’d have a purpose.” They lie there on the beach until sunset. Neither wanted to leave, since both knew what’d happen. They’d revert to their normal ways. They’d fight for their parent’s attention. Azula would scheme. Both were right. They didn’t have a quiet moment for the rest of the trip. When they got home, they’d either avoid the other of fight. Azula would come out on top. She had to. Only perfection can reach the throne, and she’ll prove she’s perfection incarnate. However, she didn’t lie, not when making that promise. Even though their daily lives are like a battle against the other, on the real battlefield, she’d be there for her brother. No matter how much she dislikes the dum-dum, she knows it’s the duty of a royal to protect the weaker members of the family. But, that’ll happen years from now, maybe a decade. The Fire Lord will probably be her tea-loving uncle by then. Even Azula with all her cunning could never predict that the battlefield will come so soon. It’ll come charging towards Zuzu not from assassins or enemy soldiers. He’ll be threatened by his family. > You 7 Azula sits at the desk as the teacher tries to teach the class. The girl tilts her head. On second thought, that woman teaches the class but not the princess. She learned these things on her own by staring at Father’s maps. Who wouldn’t? Tragically, this is also the only class that is remotely interesting. Other firebending children go to military school or, at worst, a normal school. Alas, Azula has the double-edged sword called royalty. A fire nation princess must know the dullest of things. How does one brew tea? How to sit perfectly still while the men talk? Raising childing? To any other girl, this may be interesting, but Azula knows her destiny is far grander than being a Fire Lady or a princess of the court. She WILL be Fire Lord. Fire Lords don’t need to know the steps of brewing tea. That’s for her uncle and cousin. While keeping her eyes on the teacher, she studies her interesting classmates, the only ones worth noting, from her peripheral vision. Mai acts like the perfect lady. Her parents expect nothing less. At least it gives me control over her. What noble family would want their daughter to not associate with the only princess of the Fire Nation? What bored daughter of a noble family wouldn’t want to have exciting times with a firebending prodigy? And be closer to Zuzu. Ew. What does she see in him? On the other hand, Ty Lee bounces her leg up and down even as she sits. She looks almost as bored as Azula right now. Is she even capable of being still? She wouldn’t make a good infiltrator, but she could be our distraction. That Chi blocking will be handy as well. Still, does she feel out of place? Like me? Every girl here is a noble, but I am the princess while Ty Lee is technically a commoner. A commoner from a rich family, but a peasant nonetheless. When I become Fire Lord, I will elevate her family to nobility. Azula nods. Is it unnecessarily nice? I believe so, but I will guarantee the loyalty of a family of Chi blockers. Why hasn’t any Fire Lord possessed the intelligence to do that yet? Oh well, their loss will become my gain. She waits diligently until class is over. Patience is a virtue of earthbenders, but even those savages can occasionally have a correct idea. They leave for lunch, which is another class. Here they learn to eat properly which is something Azula knows how to do. Mother made sure of that. Azula and her two followers sit away from the other girls and eat their meals. Their etiquette instructor occasionally walks by, but they are otherwise left alone. Ty Lee rambles about a cute boy she saw on the street. On the street? Ew. Also, cute boy? Ew. Her ears perk up. Always listening, she hears a very important word. Ozai. And, it’s just Ozai, not the proper Prince Ozai. She focuses on that voice, and its conversation. It looks like two girls to their left. Aren’t those the daughters of Uncle’s… something. Is it Captains or Majors? Either way, their fathers are out on that overly long campaign. I would have won by now. “And why isn’t he in the battlefields? I thought he was a powerful bender, like General Iroh?” It’s Crown Prince Iroh to you, stupid noble girl. “Mom said they need a royal in court in case the general and Prince Lu Ten die in combat.” You dare insult Father? “That doesn’t seem honorable for Ozai.” You no good- “It isn’t.” “Azula?” Ty Lee sounds worried. “Your hands are on fire a little bit.” I should have more control than that. Azula ends her blue flames. “Mai, Ty Lee.” “Yeah?” Mai simply nods. “We have a mission to defend our nation’s honor.” She pauses for a moment before smirking. “I know exactly what we’re going to do.” > You murder Them It takes three hours of waiting for the right moment, but Azula has achieved her goal. Those two girls rush into a washroom. Ty Lee accidentally spilled some of her paint on their dresses. How unfortunate. Then, a candle happened to be knocked over. Who could possibly have such precision? Since none of the teachers can bend, a great deal of screaming and panic erupted in the room. It provided ample time for Azula to slip away from watching eyes. She down the halls to the washroom door. If the girls were intelligent, then they may have heard the ruckus, but they wouldn’t be at the receiving end of Azula’s wrath if they were intelligent. She opens the door as the girls grumble, cleaning the pigment from their dresses. Oblivious, as expected. She lights her hands on fire. Blue flames dances in her palm. Neither girl notices their impending, painful death. Too bad. There would’ve been more of a challenge otherwise. With each hand, she blasts the heads of both girls. The fire burns for only a moment before she snuffs her blue flames. One lets out a short gasp. The other falls without a sound. Too easy. The girl who just fell twitches on the ground but can’t say anything. Her vocal cords must’ve been burned. Either that or the pain is too great. Her head does look like a shriveled shadow of a head. Part of the girl’s skin falls off, the left cheek. Azula smiles. “That’s what happens if you insult my father.” The twitching girl stops twitching. I guess she’s dead now. Pity. I hoped that would’ve lasted lo- The princess lets out a gurgle. A sharp pain jams itself from her back into her chest. Falling, she looks behind her and sees the other girl, the one who gasped, staring at her with a hateful eye, since the other one seems mostly melted at this point. Coughing up blood, Azula fells her back, and her hand bumps into a hilt. Spitting out blood, Azula stutters, “Knives aren’t allowed here.” “So is murder.” The other girl collapses but won’t take her eyes off her enemy. “Oh well.” Azula blasts fire again this time ensuring that the stabbing girl dies. Her vision grows dark. I won’t let Father think I failed him. She looks at her blue flame one last time. It is pretty. Then, she puts all her remaining strength into burning herself. The pain lasts for just a moment until she feels nothing at all. Since Azula doesn’t want Father to ever think she failed, maybe doing this will make it seem like some form of assassination where the princess and two hapless bystanders were killed. She never does find out, but her plan works. The name “Princess Azula” became a rallying call for Fire Nation soldiers as they battled against Water Tribe and Earth Nation. One of those two had to be the culprits, right? The nation mourned their fallen princess. At the funeral, Azula’s father had a stone-cold gaze. His tool was broken too early. Her mother shed tears, five to be exact even though two were just due to the smoke of incinerating the corpse. Zuzu did cry on that day. He cried that night. He cried that week. For the rest of his life, he couldn’t look at hot fires for too long. Some of those fire had the faintest traces of blue. Blue fire made him weep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Azula sits at the desk as the teacher tries to teach the class. The girl tilts her head. On second thought, that woman teaches the class but not the princess. She learned these things on her own by staring at Father’s maps. Who wouldn’t? Tragically, this is also the only class that is remotely interesting. Other firebending children go to military school or, at worst, a normal school. Alas, Azula has the double-edged sword called royalty. A fire nation princess must know the dullest of things. How does one brew tea? How to sit perfectly still while the men talk? Raising childing? To any other girl, this may be interesting, but Azula knows her destiny is far grander than being a Fire Lady or a princess of the court. She WILL be Fire Lord. Fire Lords don’t need to know the steps of brewing tea. That’s for her uncle and cousin. While keeping her eyes on the teacher, she studies her interesting classmates, the only ones worth noting, from her peripheral vision. Mai acts like the perfect lady. Her parents expect nothing less. At least it gives me control over her. What noble family would want their daughter to not associate with the only princess of the Fire Nation? What bored daughter of a noble family wouldn’t want to have exciting times with a firebending prodigy? And be closer to Zuzu. Ew. What does she see in him? On the other hand, Ty Lee bounces her leg up and down even as she sits. She looks almost as bored as Azula right now. Is she even capable of being still? She wouldn’t make a good infiltrator, but she could be our distraction. That Chi blocking will be handy as well. Still, does she feel out of place? Like me? Every girl here is a noble, but I am the princess while Ty Lee is technically a commoner. A commoner from a rich family, but a peasant nonetheless. When I become Fire Lord, I will elevate her family to nobility. Azula nods. Is it unnecessarily nice? I believe so, but I will guarantee the loyalty of a family of Chi blockers. Why hasn’t any Fire Lord possessed the intelligence to do that yet? Oh well, their loss will become my gain. She waits diligently until class is over. Patience is a virtue of earthbenders, but even those savages can occasionally have a correct idea. They leave for lunch, which is another class. Here they learn to eat properly which is something Azula knows how to do. Mother made sure of that. Azula and her two followers sit away from the other girls and eat their meals. Their etiquette instructor occasionally walks by, but they are otherwise left alone. Ty Lee rambles about a cute boy she saw on the street. On the street? Ew. Also, cute boy? Ew. Her ears perk up. Always listening, she hears a very important word. Ozai. And, it’s just Ozai, not the proper Prince Ozai. She focuses on that voice, and its conversation. It looks like two girls to their left. Aren’t those the daughters of Uncle’s… something. Is it Captains or Majors? Either way, their fathers are out on that overly long campaign. I would have won by now. “And why isn’t he in the battlefields? I thought he was a powerful bender, like General Iroh?” It’s Crown Prince Iroh to you, stupid noble girl. “Mom said they need a royal in court in case the general and Prince Lu Ten die in combat.” You dare insult Father? “That doesn’t seem honorable for Ozai.” You no good- “It isn’t.” “Azula?” Ty Lee sounds worried. “Your hands are on fire a little bit.” I should have more control than that. Azula ends her blue flames. “Mai, Ty Lee.” “Yeah?” Mai simply nods. “We have a mission to defend our nation’s honor.” She pauses for a moment before smirking. “I know exactly what we’re going to do.” > You humiliate Them Three hours later, Azula watches those two girls rush into a washroom. Ty Lee accidentally spilled some of her paint on their dresses. How unfortunate. Then, a candle happened to be knocked over. Who could possibly have such precision? Since none of the teachers can bend, a great deal of screaming and panic erupted in the room. It provided ample time for Azula to slip away from watching eyes. She down the halls to the washroom door. If the girls were intelligent, then they may have heard the ruckus, but they wouldn’t be at the receiving end of Azula’s wrath if they were intelligent. And this is why I train in combat beyond firebending. She opens the door as the girls grumble, cleaning the pigment from their dresses. Oblivious, as expected. Firebending would be preferable, but blue fire would be a giveaway. Instead, she uses her foot. And Mother complains how I always wear pants. With the utmost precision and flexibility, thanks to lessons from Mai and Ty Lee, she kicked the back of one girl’s head. As she crumples, she kicks the other one as well. You can’t do that in a skirt, Mother. You also wanted me to wear dainty shoes, not these wonderful boots Father gave me. Both girls seem semi-conscious. Azula takes out her brooch. And people wonder why I chose to have a sharp Royal Brooch. One at a time, she gathers the girl’s hair in her hand, lift it up, and fells the hair in a decisive swipe. Ha! You will never recover from losing your hair! It may grow back, but your honor shall be gone! No noble lady would have hair like a boy! Now, wallow in your upcoming misery and shame! Azula sneaks back to the class just as the flames are put out. No one noticed her absence. Victory tastes sweet. No one may insult Father. As planned, word spread quickly due to some strategically placed rumors. No one may insult Prince Ozai of the Fire Nation. > You 8 Four princes and princesses eat in a strangling silence. Each eyes their companions with mistrust. The tension seems to be destroying everyone’s appetites, even Fathers. Azula takes another bite of her meal, though it’s not nearly spicy enough for her tastes. Why let good food go to waste? Why not enjoy the moment? This must be like the battlefields. She imagines herself standing at the walls of Ba Sing Se at the break of dawn. Her troops and the enemy’s glare at the other, waiting for one to make the strike to start the battle for the Earth Kingdom’s mighty, walled capital. Instead of those dirty barbarians and patriots dressed in the finest armor, there’s Mother and her son facing Father and herself. They even sit at opposite sides of the table. I know we’re supposed to do things for the image, but this does seem slightly… ridiculous? We haven’t shared a meal as a family for months. Always an excuse by somebody not to eat together. Too bad we don’t throw flames at each other. Agni Kais are made for these situations. Have your duel of honor and let the winner be right. Then, suck up your pride and accept the consequences. Poor Zuzu tries to melt into his chair. He’d make the worst of Fire Lords, especially during wartime. If he can’t handle family drama, how could he handle the lives of our people? Stupid Mother. You twisted and pampered him until I’m manlier than him. And I’m not manly, at all. I’m a ferocious princess. She realizes everyone’s eyes are on her. I was smiling, wasn’t I? Okay, time to make that seem intentional. “I was reading about different types of warfare today.” She keeps her voice conversational, casual. It seems more out of place for this diner than a waterbender inside a volcano. Huh, would a waterbender die faster than a firebender? What about earthbenders since the volcano is part earth? “Azula.” Is it possible for Mother to say her name without sounding so critical? “What kind of classes are you taking at the Girl’s Academy? When I was there, they’d never teach su-” “They don’t.” The timing of her interruption was perfect, as intended. This way, Zuzu could still follow the conversation. “I taught myself.” She puffs out her chest. “Good job.” Father’s voice is cold, but the tone, unlike the words, were intended for Mother. His glare seems too cold for such a powerful firebender. Zuzu slinks further into his chair. “I was trying to apply what I learned to Uncle’s campaign in Ba Sing Se. The barbarians seem to be using a hybrid between conventional and attritional warfare.” Attritional is a big word. Zuzu wouldn’t know that one, would he? “While it’s purely defensive, they rely on their tested methods of combat. Mostly reigning down stones and dirt on our soldier’s heads from those walls.” One day, she’ll see for herself if the walls are higher than some mountains as the legends and soldier’s tales say. “That would make it conventional warfare, but their goals lines up with a war of attrition. They aren’t going for a decisive victory. They want to wear down Uncle and his soldiers until they give up.” “Uncle wouldn’t give up.” Zuzu finally speaks. Azula shrugs. “He would if he ran out of tea. Speaking about our glorious Crown-Prince…” Was that too much sarcasm? “Uncle seems to be using conventional war for an attritional objective while also utilizing blockade warfare.” “Correct.” Father nods in approval. Mother sits still, like a prim and proper noble. Ug. “It’s stupid.” Her bold statement caused everyone to look at her. Father raised his eyebrows. Mother glared daggers at her. Zuzu acted as if she just insulted his hero. Well, I did just insult his hero. Now, it’s time to defend my statement. “The city has the farmlands between the outer and inner walls. It should be self-sustaining until the outer walls are breached. It’s more as if Uncle is blockading the world from Ba Sing Se, not Ba Sing Se from the world.” She straightens her posture. “But, we already know this. That means the enemy is not desperate yet, thus conventional warfare. Eventually, Uncle and his forces will breach the outer wall. The enemy will then become desperate and gain two advantages, only one I believe Uncle anticipates.” Father appears amused. Mother seems angry at her daughter for insulting Uncle and for speaking about things a girl her age couldn’t possibly understand. Yet, I understand anyway. Zuzu looks like he’s paying attention to her, though he’s unhappy with her critiques. “They’ll be fighting inside the walls. Home advantage, more so than what Uncle has been experiences. Also, the population won’t be happy with our presence. Uncle doesn’t have the will to use violent population control. The only way to not get crushed by a falling boulder is to either dodge or smash. We can’t retreat, so he can’t dodge. He doesn’t have to will to smash the people.” In other words, Uncle is too nice to be a competent Fire Lord. “Then, we have the problem Uncle won’t expect. The Earth Kingdom is known for doing the same thing, patience and consistency. All that stuff. He’ll expect them to use conventional war.” She shakes her head. “Mother, if Water Tribe barbarians raided the palace and would possibly kill Zuzu, would you use honorable warfare or do anything possible to protect him?” Mother’s eyes opened a little. She expected me to not involve her in my analysis. “A mother would do anything to protect her son.” Azula forces herself not to wince. A mother would do anything to protect her CHILDREN. “The barbarians will do the same. Urban guerilla warfare. It’s be nasty, too nasty for Uncle or any of our commanders.” She shakes her head. “Maybe Zhao. Definitely me or Father. When we need to push just month longer to conquer the city, Uncle will leave. After all, Lu Ten fights on the front lines.” Mother stands up and leaves without a word. Zuzu looks between mommy dearest and the rest of his family. Then, he follows her out of the room. “Interesting assessment, Azula.” Father takes a bite of his food. “Might I suggest another scroll to read?” “Of course.” “It is one of my favorites. In my personal library, read the scroll named Lighting, Infiltration Tactics. You made find the ideology appealing as someone who looks beyond conventional warfare.” > You 9 Mother coddles Zuzu after his embarrassment. Should’ve brought your swords, brother. Father never would take us to the Fire Lord in his throne room without showing us off. Well, showing me off. You just fell on your butt. “Ursa, Zuko and Azula, you are dismissed.” The old man’s voice still carries some power. He used to be the greatest firebender in the nation before old age took its hold. Azula does her proper bow and leaves Father behind. Too bad I’m not a few years older, then I could challenge you to an Agni Kai, maybe even kill you. I always thought you were stronger than this, but you’re just an old, frail man. A man who never bothering seeing me, ever. The wall of flames surrounding his throne aren’t a display of power when one never has the courage to step outside of them. Zuzu falls behind Mother, still sulking after his embarrassment. Mother wouldn’t be able to hear anything she whispers to him. Changing her plans around slightly, she adds another member to her infiltration party. Azula takes his hand. “Zuzu, follow me,” she whispers. She drags him around a corner to a curtain. From what she saw during her time in the throne room, her first time ever, she decided that this would be the best spot for hearing what was meant to be a private conversation. Information is power. Zuzu protests a little, but he quiets down when they poke their heads between the rich, lavender draperies. Father planned something, something huge. Lu Ten died as I predicted and Iroh gave up after breaching the outer wall and experiencing urban guerilla warfare as I predicted. Now, their Crown Prince is technically a deserter and without an heir. How come I’m the only one who seems to know exactly what’s going on? Besides Father of course. “You would not put on that performance without purpose. Ozai, what do you want?” Well, he’s to the point at least. In his most official sounding tone, Father says, “Lu Ten has fallen nobly in battle, and my brother has no more heirs nor a wife to sire more. With my brother’s retreat and desertion following the death of my nephew, no one knows if or when he shall return. However, I am here, Father, and my children are alive. Let your humble servant ensure your bloodline will continue on the throne.” He bows before the old man. In one day, will Father pass both Lu Ten and Uncle for his place on the throne? “Fool!” Father miscalculated. The flames around the throne rise to the ceiling from the old man’s fury. She holds Zuzu’s hand. If not, he’d flee in fear. “You dare wish to punish Iroh further? He lost his son! My son has suffered enough, but your suffering has just begun for your arrogance.” Zuzu breaks free of her grasp and flees. If it wasn’t for the fiery inferno blazing around the Fire Lord, they would’ve heard him. Next time, only allow Mai and Ty Lee for infiltration operations. They’d keep their heads on straight. “Father, I only wish what is best for the Fire Nation.” “No, you wish only for power and do not understand the feeling of loss. Only you have not experienced the battlefield. Only you still have your family in the land of the living. In your arrogance and pride, you could not see the pains of others. Now, you will know the heartache of sacrifice. Iroh lost his son. You will lose yours, by your own hand.” If you knew anything about your son, Fire Lord, you’d know he has no love for the boy. Still, I did not expect you to ask something so impossible for any Fire Nation prince to accept. “I accept your punishment.” What! “It will be done tonight.” “Go.” Father leaves. Azula stands motionless, trying to process a scenario that she never imagined. Zuzu is going to die? Of course, he’d make a horrible general and a worse Lire Lord, but… > You defy Father and Save Zuzu She slinks into the shadows. No one can know that SHE knows. Information is power and in this… battle… I have only two weapons. Information and manipulation. She sits against the walls and buries her head between her legs. Father has the physical and legal power. He has the backing of the Fire Lord, so doing anything to stop this would be treason. I’m not old enough to challenge him or the old man to an Agni Kai, nor would I survive such a suicidal tactic. She clenches her fists. Who’s the enemy? The main combatant on the enemy side is Father. Sorry, Father for my temporary misalignment of goals. The leader is the Fire Lord, thus the entire Fire Nation would be on the opposing side. That includes all the palace guards. Anyone who aligns to me would do so out of personal selfishness or loyalty. It’s me versus everyone else. She suppresses the urge to scream in rage. I cannot switch sides. I made a promise. “I’ll always be on your side when we’re in battle,” she whispers to herself as if to reaffirm her commitment. Mai and Ty Lee would follow, but Mai’s family is on some boring vacation. Ty Lee went to watch some circus in a miserable port town with her family. Fate has aligned with the Fire Lord. Who do I have? I have Zuzu, but he’s the problem, not an ally. Too bad he never bothered making friends with anyone. Uncle and Lu Ten would take his side, but they’re too busy abandoning their nation or being dead. That means there’s no one else… Mother. No, I am not involving her. I’ll save Zuzu myself. All I have is information and manipulation. She sneaks away to the one place Zuzu would go at a time like this. Azula would flee for the docks to secure passage to the barbarian lands or hide among her friends. Zuzu would… be Zuzu. The princess enters his bedroom as he sits in bed, covers up to his chin. Beds are flammable, dum-dum. He looks scared. He should be due to his imminent and approaching death, but her brother doesn’t know that yet. He’s just being a scared little boy. I might as well be direct. She sits on the side of his bed and stares at him. “Father’s going to kill you.” “What?” He backs away from her. Oh, right. I’m Father’s beloved child just as he’s Mother’s. I ALWAYS lie. Ug. “He’ll sacrifice you. The Fire Lord wants him to experience the supposed pain of losing his son.” He shakes his head. “Dad would never do that.” Denial? At a time like this? “Father doesn’t love you. He doesn’t like you. Maybe some Earth peasants would.” Zuzu’s really good at being a lovable idiot. Maybe some peasants would take pity on some lost Fire Nation noble. Then again, Zuzu would somehow tell them he’s a prince and get killed. “Run away?” She shrugs. “Mopping the decks often gets free passage on merchant ships.” His eyes move to the doorway. She sees the recognition on his face. I thought Father said he’d do it tonight. Salvage the situation, Azula. Maybe I could act like I was trying to kill him? “Azula.” Fate must be on Father’s side. “What are you doing here?” I’m saving your son, Mother. “Talking.” “Come with me.” The tone and the tight grip on her arm don’t allow for protests. As she drags Azula out of the room, she hears Zuzu muttering, “Azula always lies.” That HURT. She doesn’t struggle at all as she’s practically dragged through the halls. I’m the only person in the bloody world that’s trying to save Zuzu, but you’ve entrenched your ideas so far into his head that he refuses to believe me. You aren’t good for him, Mother. You aren’t good for anybody. Father’s going to kill him, but you’re the one who made him weak enough to kill. I wish you were gone. I wish you were dead. Her eyes light up. Dead. Gone. She sees a new opportunity. It’d kill two birds… four birds with one stone. Father would be so proud if she could ever tell him. Too bad she can’t and won’t. They stop in Mother’s chambers. She stopped sleeping with father two years ago. Also, ew. “What were you doing, Azula?” And she thinks I’m the baddy here. “You once said you’d do anything if barbarians wanted to kill Zuzu.” Her eyes narrow. For once, Mother looks dangerous. Maybe I inherited a few things from her, besides beauty, after all. “Tell me the truth.” Her grip on the girl’s shoulder becomes painful. Maybe, it’ll leave a bruise. “Father’s going to kill Zuzu tonight because the Fire Lord asked him to.” She doesn’t believe me. “Tell me one reason why I should believe you.” “Four. Zuzu won’t die. The Fire Lord will die. Father will get the throne, and you will be gone forever.” Her shoulders slouch. I don’t always lie. I’m occasionally nice. More importantly, sometimes the truth hurts more than the lie. “You have a plan, don’t you?” “Yeah.” Azula smirks. Later that night, the palace erupts into chaos. Azula stands watch in the shadows outside Zuzu’s door. He sleeps, blissfully unaware of the subterfuge and murder that just occurred. No matter what happens, she will not let anyone into his room tonight. Well, except that one. A figure gracefully approaches his bedroom. Unaware of the hidden prodigy, Mother rushes into his room. She shakes him gently. “Wha? Mother?” He rubs his eyes. None of the guards are aware of the woman in his room. Father happened to ensure no one was around his son’s bedroom tonight. Too late, Father. We spilt blood before you could. “Zuko, please, my love, listen to me. Everything I've done, I've done to protect you.” She wraps his in a tight embrace. She loves you, brother. Now, she’ll never see you again. “Remember this, Zuko. No matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are.” Before he could say anything in reply, she leaves. To where, Azula doesn’t know. All she knows is Mother will never return. She’ll always live with blood on her hands instead of her son. Azula smiles, a real one. I saved you, Zuzu. > You 10 Azula stares at the smoldering corpse. Her offspring fuss around her body, fearful at their mother’s sudden lack of response. The girl knows Mother would’ve yelled at her, called her a monster. Mother isn’t here anymore. Ty Lee and Mai don’t criticize her. Father would praise her for having the guts to take a life. He killed every man who faced him in an Agni Kai, all twelve of them. Zuzu... What would her brother do? As if Agni wanted to answer her question, Zuzu suddenly sat beside her. Azula squints, since Zuzu’s head lines up with the setting red sun, Agni’s presence in their world. She notices her heartrate increases. Why? The realization dawns on her. Mother saw me as a monster after I killed that baby turtle-duck. Now, Zuzu sees this. “Why’d you do it, Azula?” He sounds calm for the situation, far too calm than what she’d expect. She shifts on the cold earth beneath her. “I wanted to see if they’ll make it.” She points to the seven turtle-ducklings. “You know they’re too young to live without their mother.” There’s pain in his voice. She always hears it whenever he speaks about Mother. “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.” She rubs her shoulder. Father had increased Azula’s training to more intense levels ever since his ascension to the throne. School drags by during the day. Firebending training comes at evening. She falls asleep every night reading scrolls about strategy and the human mind. Every morning, she practices her aim and agility. It hasn’t killed me yet, and there were so many chances during the firebending. I’m not dead, just stronger. Zuzu picks up the dead turtle-duck mother from the pond and places it at Azula feet. “What are you doing?” she hisses. “We’re Fire Nation. We don’t let corpses rot or throw them to sea like the Water Tribe or burry them like the Earth Kingdom. This animal was Fire Nation.” She tilts her head. You always had a fondness for animals. Maybe you would’ve fit better as the son of a farmer. Once again, Azula burns the animal, but this time she doesn’t stop until even the bones turned to ash. His shoulders slouch. “I miss her too.” “I don’t. There’s a reason why no one talks about her. A good Fire Lord would never let personal loss cloud her judgment.” She clenches her fists. The remaining turtle-ducklings won’t stop fussing. They continuously call out their high-pitched squeaks for a mother that will never come back to them. Their mother abandoned them. She wasn’t strong enough to stay. She never loved most of them anyway. She gave all her love to just one child. She… Azula shakes her head. I DON’T MISS, MOTHER! Her palms open to make blue flame. It’s time to end the noise. He places his hand on her shoulder. “Azula, let me take care of them.” She douses her flames. “Fine.” “I have one question.” “Fire away.” “Do you feel bad for killing?” “Not at all.” She crosses her arms. “I’m a monster after all.” “Remember this, Azula. No matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are.” His words echo Mother’s final words to her beloved son. “I haven’t forgotten who I am.” “You’re my sister.” He stands up and walks away. Azula never did tell him, but she kept track of Zuzu and his attempt at saving seven hopeless, motherless lives. All year, she checked… hoped… to find them dead. They never died. In one year’s time, they all grew up. It was just in time for Zuzu to leave them too. Like Mother, it wasn’t by choice. > You 11 Azula smiles in utter glee as Zuzu screams in agony. In front of nearly two-hundred generals and nobles, Father burns off part of his son’s face. Zuzu is going to live! He didn’t see any of this coming either. Unlike last time, there wasn’t anything Azula could do. Uncle, who finally returned from his desertion almost a year ago, let her buffoon of an older brother into a war meeting. I been attending them for over a year, but I’ve always been smart enough to not speak a word. Her brother, on the other hand, almost immediately protested a general’s strategy. To make it worse, he protested due to morality and not strategy. Of course, the strategy was idiotic. Send a battalion of new recruits as a distraction to get killed? We already fully integrated women into our military because of a shortage of manpower. A war that lasts over a hundred years tends to whittle down a population, even to the winning side. Throwing away new blood instead of keeping them alive long enough to be veterans… Old men like to use old strategies. Due to her brother’s blatant lack of disrespect, he was challenged to an Agni Kai which he accepted without hesitation. With your newfound testosterone, you turn thirteen, so you accept the first honor duel that you’re able to legally accept. You thought you’d fight against an old man. He screams again. That war meeting, like all war meetings, took place in Father’s throne room. He would be the one to duel you. “Prince Zuko.” Father’s voice seemed to calm and collected compared to the convulsion and shrieks of her brother. “You are banished from the Fire Nation from this day forward. Leave tomorrow or be executed. If you wish to return, you must capture the Avatar and bring him to me. Go.” Uncle rushes onto the dueling grounds faster than she ever seen the man move. He carries her brother away. At least my brother won’t be alone. When Zuzu saw that our father was the one he’d have to duel, he refused to fight. He fell on his knees and begged for mercy. It probably saved his life. If he fought, Father would kill him, but it would be far too aggressive to kill a begging child. I should’ve advised him to do that, but it looks like his idiocy pays off occasionally. > You let Others Do the Saving I ended up saving his sorry butt once already. Uncle should do something about this. He’s the one that got Zuzu in trouble after all. He should stop guzzling tea for a few minutes and save my brother’s life. She walks to the training grounds and practices her firebending. The blue seems deeper today. The fire feels hotter. She notices how her stands of hair fall out of place more commonly, but that doesn’t bother her now. She lets her movements flow into the next with savage punching followed by wild kicking. Each time, blue flames come out and hit the target. It hardly registers with her that it became dark outside. Firebenders draw their power from the sun, so they lose some of their power after the sun no longer gives its light. However, Azula’s fire hasn’t diminished, for each fireball has only increased her… confusion. I don’t feel anything! Her heart aches for her brother. No one else loves her like he does. Mother never gave her love. Father loves her because of her perfection and results. Zuzu loves her because she is Azula. I’m not sad! Her hands twitch on their own accord. She feels an emotion for only the most pathetic, weak excuses for human life that ever set foot upon the living world. Zuzu must feel it all the time. She feels fear. Fear of being alone. Fear of loosing her kin. I’m not afraid. Her lips twist into a ferocious snarl that would make the most battle-hardened men squirm. Her blood boils as if her fire has roasted it. She feels fury, rage. No one will save Zuzu, so he will die. He will lie all night being tended by their uncle. In the morning, he will realize his mistake and try to secure passage out, but he will be moments too slow. Her father will ensure Uncle Iroh will be too slow, so he can kill Zuzu. Fine. I’ll admit I’m angry. Grumbling all the way, the princess marches to her room. Opening her lowest dresser’s drawer, she pulls out a small chest of coins. There never was much point to buying things when anyone would gift or give them to her instead. Putting more money in a bag than most peasants would see in twenty lifetimes, she slinks through the back passageways to the infirmary. Zuzu and I used to explore these. Father wouldn’t want her to help the old idiot and her dum-dum, but Azula isn’t a mindless servant. I’m not. I’m definitely not. She creeps through the doorway and spies only two figures. One slouches in a chair. His breathing patterns suggest he fell asleep or meditates. Knowing him, the latter. The other lies in a bed with a bandage covering the entire left side of his face. Will Zuzu be half-blind? “Have you come to gloat, my niece?” Uncle raises his head from his meditation. Azula forces herself not to shake her head. Why does everyone always assume the worst about me? Oh, right. I’m a monster. I always lie. Thanks for nothing, Mother. Thanks for never bothering to love me. Instead of arguing, she hands her uncle the bag of coins without a word. “What is this?” He squints, trying to read the symbols without adequate lighting. She shrugs. “Since you probably wasted all your funds of tea, here’s something to ensure you don’t kill my brother immediately.” “Why are you doing this?” “Despite popular opinion, I find breathing brothers as more useful than dead ones.” She glances at Zuzu. “I may not see him for a long time. Tell him he better be able to bend at least pathetically bad instead of horrifically bad.” Azula takes one more look at her brother and memorizes the sight. She sears it into her memory. Will she even recognize him next time they meet? Probably not. He won’t recognize her either. She will be wearing the regalia of Fire Lord as she welcomes back her brother from exile. Then, he will thank her for rescinding his banishment and pay respects to their recently deceased father. She walks back to her bedroom and falls into her bed. When sleep overtakes her moments later, a small smile graces her lips. > You 12 Azula didn’t bother to waive goodbye as the ship sailed away. Ty Lee would’ve been crying, but the airhead joined the circus. That’s… that’s for runaways and inconsequential people. Ty Lee could’ve been so much more if she stayed. Instead, her talents will be used to entertain the peasants of the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation like some uninteresting vagabond. The princess clenches her fists. Of course, Father would “gift” Mai’s parents with the governorship of a colony. Her parents jumped at the opportunity and were gone by the end of the week. She wonders if Mai stands on the stern and stares back. The distance is already too great. She can’t see her anymore. I don’t feel lonely. I don’t FEEL. She sits in a palanquin. No princess could dream about walking like a normal human being… or a warrior. On either side, she and her bearers are flanked by her royal guards. The citizens back away from the procession as Azula peeks outside. Children stop playing. Mothers gather their toddlers close by. Men step between their families and her. Only the footsteps of her procession break the silence. It’s not that she misses Ty Lee’s eternally positive attitude or Mai’s steadfast dedication. She doesn’t miss bickering with Zuzu and annoying him in the most childish manners. She doesn’t long for her sparring matches against her two friends nor plotting various ways to take the throne from Zuzu without killing him. She doesn’t miss Mother. Not at all. After arriving at the palace, she rushes to the training grounds. Everything burns that can be. The grass, the targets, anything. She throws fire at it all. I am not lonely. She focuses on a metal pole. With a continuous whirlwind of blue flame, she watches the gray metal become red with heat. I am not lonely! The pole tilts to the left as the heat destroys the foundation. I FEEL NOTHING! The blue flame in her hands become something else entirely. It’s still blue, but it cackles and arches. Surprised, she stops bending. Her insides feel as though they were torn apart and sewn back together. That was power. That was… Recalling what she read in ancient, royal’s only scrolls, she swings her arms in a circular motion and embraces the feeling of… Nothingness. Electricity dances around her fingertips as Azula’s mind and body tremble from the power. She points at the pole. The lightning soars through the air and strike the pole. A roll of thunder follows in its wake. Feeling exhausted, Azula sits down on the scorched grass. She holds the position for a moment before lying down. The sun beams down on her, and it seems to be warming her. I feel so cold, so empty. She doesn’t know how long she lies there. Minutes? Hours? Either way, it ends when a figure steps between her and the sun. “Azula, get up.” “Yes, Father.” She stands though her legs wobble. “You generated lightning.” He doesn’t sound impressed. “It is time for you to improve. You’d die on the battlefield because this helplessness.” She represses a wince. “Yes, Father.” Up until today, a Crown Prince over three hundred years ago was the youngest to generate lightning. He was twenty. Azula is twelve. At least Zuzu would’ve been impressed. She readies into her combat forms, ignoring the pain and her headache. It’s too bad perfection won’t allow for praise or rest. Such is the life of a future Fire Lord. All she needs to do is try harder, think cannier, and never show weakness. Then, I will get Father’s approval forever. > You 13 Azula feels sore in so many places. She never thought she could feel such aching pain everywhere. She wraps herself with a robe as she steps out from the tub. I don’t feel dirty. It’s just because I’m sore. Today was the most taxing training session she had with Father yet. It was alone, secluded. Not even the guards could witness what he decided to teach her today. He called it a birthday present. It’s the first present he ever gave her. Other nobles gave her gifts, trinkets and jewelry. They’re piled in the corner of her room, all but a few unopened. None were as amazing as Zuzu’s knife. Uncle gave her a doll, but she always was fascinated by the craftmanship of the barbarian’s weapon. He said I’m a woman now. She stares in the mirror. It’s not something she would do often. Her servants prettied her as fitting for a princess. Rubbing her hand down her pristine jawline, she wonders if this is why men… look at her differently now. All of them do. ALL. Would Uncle give me a stare like them? Tales of his… exploits and even more numerous attempted exploits still echo in the palace halls even two years after his departure with Zuzu. Zuzu… You’d just see your sister, wouldn’t you? I could’ve used one male underling I could count on. You’d do stupid things act like a blubbering savage, but you were an honest dum-dum. She focuses back on the mirror. Stumbling backwards, she shoots flames at HER out of pure reflex. She shouldn’t be here! There’s no screaming. Azula hit her target. There’s no smell of burnt flesh of melodic cries of pain. She looks at her target… and laughs. Except in the fake, mocking laugh she uses for manipulation, she hasn’t laughed in months. The princess looks around and listens. No one noticed this. Her bedroom and washroom doors are closed. She stands and walks to the mirror. Scorch marks cover the once pristine surface. She raises her hand and touches the figure on the other side of the reflection. “I look like Mother.” Her voice trembles, a clear sign of weakness. Father can’t hear her, so he won’t be disappointing. Right now, she is weak. The jawline, the curve of her forehead, her lips. They’re the same as Mother’s. The realization hits her harder than any pain she receives during training. She has her nose, her eyebrows, her hair. Everything is the same. “How could you?” She imagines Mother standing in place of her reflection. Azula’s voice turn venomous. “You gave me your… beauty. You must’ve known I looked like you in your youth. Could you not love yourself?” She slams her fist against the glass. It shakes but doesn’t break. “I am from you! You carried me, birthed me, and were supposed to love me. I am Azula. I am the perfect prodigy. You threw away your life to protect Zuzu but couldn’t bother even a moment to… to do anything for me?” Azula clenches her fists. If not, fire would burn the walls. “Father loves me! He sees I’m worth training. Zuzu loves me because he’s Zuzu. Everyone else fears me, respects me. You couldn’t even show fear? Why was it just disapproval? I tried everything. I saved your son, twice now!” Her voice becomes strained. “Should I conquer Ba Sing Se and become a hero? Should I become a better bender? What can I DO? Tell me, and I’ll do it. I can do anything.” She hears silence. > You run Away Azula flees from her mother. She runs through the halls with all her might. Every step acts as more distance between her and Mother. People yell at her to stop running, but she pays them no heed. Don’t they know Mother hates her? Now, she won’t have to see that woman any longer. “Mother!” Azula throws a blast of fire at another mirror. She turns and sees another and another. Spinning in a circle, she sees Mother everywhere. A small portion of her brain screams at her that she sees only her reflection. She only stepped into a changing room. That part of her brain gets crushed by bestial fear. I must escape Mother! Seeing one avenue of retreat, she blows out a window’s glass with her blue fire. She leaps through the hole. For a moment, she flies free of her Mother’s presence. Then, she falls, since she was high up in the palace. Blue had always been Azula’s color. It made her special, different from the reds and yellows of everyone else. She would’ve laughed at the irony of her death. She died in a pile of red, her blood. No matter how special she was, she still bled red just like everyone else.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Azula feels sore in so many places. She never thought she could feel such aching pain everywhere. She wraps herself with a robe as she steps out from the tub. I don’t feel dirty. It’s just because I’m sore. Today was the most taxing training session she had with Father yet. It was alone, secluded. Not even the guards could witness what he decided to teach her today. He called it a birthday present. It’s the first present he ever gave her. Other nobles gave her gifts, trinkets and jewelry. They’re piled in the corner of her room, all but a few unopened. None were as amazing as Zuzu’s knife. Uncle gave her a doll, but she always was fascinated by the craftmanship of the barbarian’s weapon. He said I’m a woman now. She stares in the mirror. It’s not something she would do often. Her servants prettied her as fitting for a princess. Rubbing her hand down her pristine jawline, she wonders if this is why men… look at her differently now. All of them do. ALL. Would Uncle give me a stare like them? Tales of his… exploits and even more numerous attempted exploits still echo in the palace halls even two years after his departure with Zuzu. Zuzu… You’d just see your sister, wouldn’t you? I could’ve used one male underling I could count on. You’d do stupid things act like a blubbering savage, but you were an honest dum-dum. She focuses back on the mirror. Stumbling backwards, she shoots flames at HER out of pure reflex. She shouldn’t be here! There’s no screaming. Azula hit her target. There’s no smell of burnt flesh of melodic cries of pain. She looks at her target… and laughs. Except in the fake, mocking laugh she uses for manipulation, she hasn’t laughed in months. The princess looks around and listens. No one noticed this. Her bedroom and washroom doors are closed. She stands and walks to the mirror. Scorch marks cover the once pristine surface. She raises her hand and touches the figure on the other side of the reflection. “I look like Mother.” Her voice trembles, a clear sign of weakness. Father can’t hear her, so he won’t be disappointing. Right now, she is weak. The jawline, the curve of her forehead, her lips. They’re the same as Mother’s. The realization hits her harder than any pain she receives during training. She has her nose, her eyebrows, her hair. Everything is the same. “How could you?” She imagines Mother standing in place of her reflection. Azula’s voice turn venomous. “You gave me your… beauty. You must’ve known I looked like you in your youth. Could you not love yourself?” She slams her fist against the glass. It shakes but doesn’t break. “I am from you! You carried me, birthed me, and were supposed to love me. I am Azula. I am the perfect prodigy. You threw away your life to protect Zuzu but couldn’t bother even a moment to… to do anything for me?” Azula clenches her fists. If not, fire would burn the walls. “Father loves me! He sees I’m worth training. Zuzu loves me because he’s Zuzu. Everyone else fears me, respects me. You couldn’t even show fear? Why was it just disapproval? I tried everything. I saved your son, twice now!” Her voice becomes strained. “Should I conquer Ba Sing Se and become a hero? Should I become a better bender? What can I DO? Tell me, and I’ll do it. I can do anything.” She hears silence. > You burn the Mirror To reply, she unclenches her fists. Fire burns the mirror until the blackness overtakes any ability to reflect. She stands in front of the mirror one more time before leaving. Now, it shows only darkness. “I will become Fire Lord, but that won’t make you love me either, will it? You killed my grandfather. You’d kill me too if it protected Zuzu. Well, I’ll do that for you. I’ll take your job when I become Fire Lord. I already took your looks. Zuzu will never be in danger again. Then, you will love me because you love Zuzu.” She leaves her washroom for a restless night of sleep. In the morning, she finds out her father will train her privately from now on. At least he loves her, right? Azula avoids mirrors from then on. > You 14 Zuzu attacked her for the third time. Looking back on it, she should’ve seen his betrayals coming. The first time Father told her to capture them. Of course, she would’ve ensured her brother’s safety, even from Father. They got away due to the idiots that other people call royal guards. The second time, he fought her when she was about to capture the Avatar. Maybe he wanted to be the one to do it. Taking that stupid, bald child to the Fire Nation does happened to be the only thing that allows him to come home. Until I become Fire Lord. It was a hard battle, especially after the Avatar’s waterbending teacher, his earthbending teacher, and some idiot with a boomerang all showed up too. Also, Uncle got his fat butt to the battle. Since everyone seemed intent on killing the horrible, evil monster, she blasted Uncle in the chest with fire and ran. Zuzu’s change in attitude must be because of Uncle. He must’ve poisoned his mind against me just like Mother did. Uncle and Mother must’ve conspired against me. They want to take my only nice family way from me. Plus, Uncle must’ve never mentioned how she was the one who got him out of the Fire Nation when no one else could or would. Huh, he also never learned I was the one who made Mother save his life too. There was no way Zuzu would run into her again, not until the war was over. Azula focused on beating the Avatar. Along the way, she happened to conquer Ba Sing Se. Well, she’s about to, since this’s where the Avatar has been around for weeks. Instead of the old men’s tactics of bloodshed, she used infiltration and manipulation. Using the uniforms of an all-female squad of soldiers they captured, Azula and her friends infiltrated the city. I always knew taking Mai and Ty Lee with me would be worth it. Plus, Mai was bored, and Ty Lee realty needed to get away from that circus. Everything was easy after that. Ba Sing Se is a police-state. She took over the police, recently undermined from the Avatar’s meddling. The police seemed to believe the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Gullible idiots. She took over the police, so it’s just a matter of waiting for the right moment before taking the city. Not a drop of blood will be spilt. She’ll be done under a week. The Earth Kingdom will fall. That isn’t what excites Azula. Instead, it was that waterbender’s news. While the Avatar and his other friends left for… somewhere like a bunch of morons, that girl instead stayed behind and visited a tea shop. She came running back to the palace yelling moments before their coup. “The Fire Nation has infiltrated the city, I just saw Prince Zuko and his uncle!” she screamed to the first people she saw. Those people happened to be “friends and warriors” who were Azula and her infiltrators. She captured the girl. The waterbender looked to be her age. Perhaps she is a waterbending prodigy, the barbarian version of me? Ty Lee was happy to learn they won’t torture the girl. Azula must scheme ways to get her brother back. She came up with a simple plan. She would give a rousing speech to the traitorous police. Why are they called Dai Li anyway? All she then had to do was organize a simultaneous coup where all five Earth Kingdom generals were captured, use the police to break down the wall with earthbending, and request Zuzu and Uncle’s presence for some believable reason. To anyone but Azula, this would be too difficult, but she’s the perfect princess of the Fire Nation. She couldn’t… can’t fail. She couldn’t stop laughing when she learned what her brother and uncle were up to. They were small business owners. They owned a tea shop! The “great” general Iroh and the prince of the Fire Nation were serving tea to the snobbish high-born barbarians of the Earth Kingdom. In that case, she sent them a letter claiming the Earth King, who was nothing but the police’s moronic and unsuspecting puppet, wanted them to serve tea just before sundown. Zuzu is more gullible than a toddler and Uncle would be glad to have such a “powerful” person request his tea. All she then had to do was wait. She’d convince her brother to join her, the city will fall, and the two of them will wait for the Avatar to return. He doesn’t seem like the kind of boy who’d leave behind a member of his entourage. That’s when things went wrong. If someone surrounded Azula with the police force and started talking to her, she’d stall and see what they want. Zuzu and Uncle ran before her brother’s honor got in the way. He stopped an challenged her to an Agni Kai. Since she didn’t feel like burning and embarrassing him, she told her Dai Li to capture him. They placed him with the waterbender in an underground cave. An odd place for a prison cell, but these people are barbarians. Now, she waits for the Avatar. She can reason with Zuzu once he calms down. Who knows? Maybe he and the waterbender could get to know each other. No Fire Lord could ever have a waterbender as a wife or concubine, and that’d guarantee Azula’s status as the next Fire Lord. Father will be so proud. They do the coup. Everyone gets captured as planned. The leader of the police tries to double-cross her, but the police have more sense than their leader. Would execution or life imprisonment be better? She smiles. Maybe I could let the peasants of this city decide. I get rid of him and gain loyalty. Oh, the earthbending teacher and the boomerang idiot also showed up during the coup. They’re in a cell with the Earth King now. That means only Iroh and the Avatar are unaccounted for. Azula sighs. Knowing Uncle’s lack of patriotism these days and the Avatar’s boyish gullibility, I’d suspect they’re looking for Zuzu and that waterbender together. She and her police head down to the underground prison. She left Ty Lee and Mai behind. Things could get ugly, so she wanted only expendable minions this time. She sees all four of them. They aren’t fighting. They’re just… talking. Why isn’t Zuzu fighting the Avatar? > You zuzu Betrayed Her He… he must’ve betrayed the Fire Nation. He gave up on his quest to capture the Avatar, and now he joined forces with the boy. Zuzu betrayed me! She should tell the police to ambush the four, but rage clouds her judgement. She swoops down and fires lightning at the four. Uncle takes the blast and redirects it back to her police. “Azula!” Instead of fighting, her brother grabs both the Avatar and the waterbender and drags them away. Uncle fires blast after blast at her. She stays on the offensive, but firebending power runs in the family. Well, Zuzu is the exception. Seeing the three run away, she fires another blast of lightning at them. I might not be able to give much more. Zuzu doesn’t see it in time. You fool! You weren’t supposed to get hit! The Avatar does notice the cold, electric flame. He pushes her brother out of the way. Thunder erupts as the boy’s body falls limp. The waterbender screams in anguish. Zuzu stands there like a dum-dum. “Go!” Azula is forced to put all her attention on Uncle. He fights with a renowned fury. “I’ll hold them off! Get the Avatar out of here. Be safe, my nephew!” Zuzu nods with tears in his eyes. He slings the boy over his shoulder and drags off the waterbender with his other. Bye Zuzu. Uncle fights only long enough to hold off Azula and the police. Of course, the police only regathered themselves at the end of the battle, unable to regain their nerve after a few were fried when Uncle redirected lighting at them. Wimps. He holds up his hands. “I surrender.” Azula strides up to Uncle with blue flames in her hand. The police earthbend the terrain around the aging man until only his face can be seen. She raises her hand to burn off the enemy’s face but stops herself for a moment. “Why, Uncle? Why did you make Zuzu join the Avatar?” “I did no such thing.” She moves her hand closer but not close enough to hurt him. “Zuzu loved me, but now he joined the Fire Nation’s enemy. That doesn’t happen without manipulation.” He shakes his head, but his head doesn’t move much in his earthen encasing. “You did that Azula. Your brother was tired of chasing the Avatar, but not one part of his heart wished to join them. You were the one who did that. You forced him to.” Azula turns her face away from Uncle to hide her cringe. Stupid! How could I be so stupid? “Take him away. I don’t want to see his face again,” she says to the police. They nod wordlessly. She walks away, eager to leave this cavern of sorrows. “Azula.” She pauses. “You said Zuko loved you. That is not entirely true, since I’m sure he still loves you.” She breaks into a run. > You 15 “Zuzu.” After everything that happened to her in those fifteen years, it all comes down to this moment. There he stands. Behind him, there’s the waterbending girl. The Avatar didn’t die. He attacked the capital during an eclipse. They couldn’t bend. Only a dishonorable enemy would do that, but the Fire Nation repelled their attack. Why! Why does Zuzu fight with the Avatar? He betrayed her! She wanted him to come home, but he sided with the Fire Nation’s greatest enemy. Why? She knows why. MOTHER. It’s her fault! It’s not Azula’s fault. Mother was the one who poisoned his mind ever since his birth. After she had to leave, Uncle continued. They turned Zuzu away. He even became the Avatar’s firebending teacher! WHY! Then, Mai betrayed her. She did it so Zuzu could’ve escaped. He was in her clutches! Azula was going to subdue her, then Ty Lee attacked her. WHY! It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t compute. The world… the world doesn’t work this way. She’s Azula. She doesn’t fail. Then, Father left her behind to kill a bunch of Earth Kingdom civilians. He didn’t see her as useful anymore. Why would? Everyone betrays her, so he discarded her like a used concubine. Why must everyone betray her! She knows why. Mother was right. This entire time, she was right. I’m a monster. It simply took Zuzu longer to realize it. “Sorry, but you're not gonna become Fire Lord today.” He lights his hands on fire. “I am. I challenge you to an Agni Kai. You tried to kill me too many times already. Let’s settle everything right here, right now.” “I accept.” For the first time in her life, she tries to truly injure her brother. She tried to hurt him countless times, but never did she want to cause so much damage. He fights backs using forms she never saw before, but the girl hardly recognizes anything. She focuses on trying to burn him, hurt him. Why can't it all be better, when we were young? It was nice then. He didn’t think I was a monster. She did so much for him. He said she was his sister. LIER! He knows she’s a monster. Monsters don’t have brothers. Monsters don’t have joy. They don’t have friends or happy ending. Monsters have pain, and they give pain. That’s it. Why is everything on fire? Oh, I forgot. Today is Sozin’s Comet! That’s why Daddy’s killing people and babies. Last time this came, my great-grandfather killed every airbender except the Avatar. Daddy’s just gonna use this to kill more people! Why’d I forget that? Some part of her mind tells her something inside is wrong. She’s breaking, slipping. She ignores that voice. Their flames are more like tornadoes. The palace, the courtyard, everything. There’s fire everywhere. It’s so hot. She uses her flames to propel her. Maneuverability is… good? Tactical. It’s tactical for fights. Daddy says so. Then, Zuzu throws a really big fireball at her. She keeps it from burning her, but she falls on the ground. That hurt. Zuzu hurt me! “No lightning today? What's the matter?” He sounds angry. Why is Zuzu angry with me? Two little voices in the back of her head tell her not to fire. One says he’s her big brother, and she shouldn’t hurt her big brother. Mommy wouldn’t want that. The other one, one that has been getting quieter and quieter, tells he’s planning something. He wouldn’t taunt her into using her lightning unless he had a good reason. She ignores both. She tries to clear all feelings, but she can’t. The lightning comes anyway, not because she’s amazing or perfect. She isn’t amazing; she isn’t perfect. The comet merely provides her with enough power. The lightning seems to be burning through her body, her mind, and her soul. Pain. So much pain. Then, she sees the waterbender. She’s close enough to be in the courtyard. Agni Kai’s are for two fighters, but that girl stepped into the courtyard. It’s a technicality but a victory. Azula won by default because Zuzu had an ally step into the dueling grounds. I still want to hurt Zuzu. She fires at her brother. He outstretches his hand as the lightning sink into his palm. He should be dead, an instantaneous death. Instead, the lightning seems to move through him for a moment. He raises his other hand and the lightning comes back out. Uncle taught him how to redirect lightning. A great heat bites at her feet. An explosion rips through her ears before silence deafens her. For a moment, she feels wind blowing past her. No, she blows past the wind. The lightning hits the ground, and it launched her across the battlefield. She hits the stone ground with a crash. Her chest tightens. She doesn’t get up. She can’t get up. Instead, the girl spasms on the ground. “Azula!” Her vision darkens, but she sees her brother run towards her. “Zuko, what are you doing?” It’s that waterbender. She looks unhappy, unlike Zuzu. He looks scared. “She isn’t getting up!” He kneels beside her, but she doesn’t stop him. She can’t. I don’t have a heartbeat, do I? He presses his hand on her chest for a moment. “No heartbeat! Azula will die!” Wasn’t that the point of this fight, dum-dum? He cries and holds her hand. What a baby. “Katara! Can you save her?” “No, I can’t restart a heart. Maybe shock her again?” But Zuzu can’t do lightning. He’d need perfect emotional control. Ha! As if. “What’s the point though? This’s Azula.” Azula the monster. He shakes his head and stands. “I’m saving her because she’s Azula.” As her vision fades, she sees him waive his arms in circular motions. My big brother is trying to bend lightning as he’s crying? If she wasn’t dying, she’d be laughing at his stupidity. The dum-dum can’t generate lightning when he’s crying. Right now, he’s anything but emotionally stable. Azula’s body convulses again from the shock. The tension from her chest goes away and her vision returns. The first thing she sees is Zuzu with the last traces of electricity fading away from his fingertips. He bent lightning for me? He picks her up in his arms. “Katara, she needs healing. I know where there’s water.” Oh, she’s a waterbender and a waterhealer. He runs and takes deep breathes. Her body lies limp in his arms. Everything tingles and aches. Using all her fleeting strength, she asks a single question. “Why?” “You’re my sister.” No, I’m an evil, scary monster. Even as a child, I was unlovable. Not even Mother could love me. “It’s gonna be alright, Azula. I promise.” > You all Monsters Must Be Caged Azula doesn’t move. They say she acted bad today, so they put the straightjacket on her again. It’s also dark. Her cell doesn’t have a window. The sun means fire. Fire means power. They want her weak, like a chained animal. It makes her scared. “It’s alright. I’m here for you.” No! No! Get away from me! You… You aren’t real! Her mother bends down, so they look eye to eye. “I will always love you, Azula.” “Shut up!” For the first week or so, the guards would’ve responded to that. They would’ve asked the little princess why she told them to be quiet even though they hadn’t said a thing. Now, they ignore her words. “Azula, I will always love you.” She lets out fire from her mouth like a dragon from older times. It scorches the opposite side of the cell, but it doesn’t change color. Ever part of the floor, walls, and ceiling are already a charred black. Azula tries to get up, but she loses her footing and tumbles to the ground. Her head smacks against the cold stone. Her head rings. She cries. It’s just not fair. Everything is so scary. Part of her mind is… broken. She knows that. Maybe all of it. They try so many things. Some of them don’t do anything. Other hurt. Nothing works. The doctors fear her. She burnt one of them just once, and now they’re almost as scared as the princess. “Azula.” THAT isn’t Mother. She looks up, bleary from hitting her head so hard. She sees one person, but this time it isn’t Mother. “Zuzu?” He smiles. “Yeah. Can I trust you for a moment?” She sniffles. “No, I’m a monster.” She closes her eyes. He lifts her onto her bed and set her down. Not once did he grunt, nor did she feel his arms strain. The entire time, he continued to smile. Then, her brother loosens the straightjacket and takes it off her. She shivers from bad memories, but Zuzu isn’t Father. “Better?” He takes out a small cloth and wipes the blood on her forehead. “Why are you here?” “I visit every Tuesday, remember?” “Oh…” She notices the crown on his head. “Are you Fire Lord?” He nods. “I have been for over a year now, remember?” She scrunches her eyebrows together before shaking her head. “Are you a good one?” “I’m trying to be.” He sits down next to her. She looks at the ground, not knowing what to do. I never know what to do anymore. She whispers, “I still see her everywhere, Zuzu.” If she spoke too loudly, maybe Mother would hear it and haunt her again. “Did you know I have ghosts too?” She perks up. “Really?” She rests her chin on his shoulder. “Yeah.” He touches his scar. It’s a nasty looking thing. Why did Father hurt Zuzu? “This is my ghost, Azula. I see it whenever I see myself. It haunted me for three years.” “But now it doesn’t?” “No.” “How? Tell me. Please.” He takes her hand in his and places her fingers on his scar. It feels lumpy. It looks like a red splotch, almost like blood on a battlefield. “I accepted it, made friends with it. This scar is a part of who I am whether I like it or not. Azula, you will always be the daughter of our mother.” She frowns. “Then why did she never treat me like her daughter?” He pulls her into a hug. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know.” She hugs him back. “But I’ll always be here for you. You’re my sister. I’ll get you through this, and we’ll do it together.” They end their embrace. Azula wipes more tears from her eyes. She leans into his shoulder and listens to his breathing. He just sits there, but the sound soothes her. “Zuzu?” “Yeah?” She closes her eyes in fear. What if he says no? “Can you stay with me for a little longer?” Azula feels his fingers wrap around hers. “Of course.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Zuzu.” After everything that happened to her in those fifteen years, it all comes down to this moment. There he stands. Behind him, there’s the waterbending girl. The Avatar didn’t die. He attacked the capital during an eclipse. They couldn’t bend. Only a dishonorable enemy would do that, but the Fire Nation repelled their attack. Why! Why does Zuzu fight with the Avatar? He betrayed her! She wanted him to come home, but he sided with the Fire Nation’s greatest enemy. Why? She knows why. MOTHER. It’s her fault! It’s not Azula’s fault. Mother was the one who poisoned his mind ever since his birth. After she had to leave, Uncle continued. They turned Zuzu away. He even became the Avatar’s firebending teacher! WHY! Then, Mai betrayed her. She did it so Zuzu could’ve escaped. He was in her clutches! Azula was going to subdue her, then Ty Lee attacked her. WHY! It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t compute. The world… the world doesn’t work this way. She’s Azula. She doesn’t fail. Then, Father left her behind to kill a bunch of Earth Kingdom civilians. He didn’t see her as useful anymore. Why would? Everyone betrays her, so he discarded her like a used concubine. Why must everyone betray her! She knows why. Mother was right. This entire time, she was right. I’m a monster. It simply took Zuzu longer to realize it. “Sorry, but you're not gonna become Fire Lord today.” He lights his hands on fire. “I am. I challenge you to an Agni Kai. You tried to kill me too many times already. Let’s settle everything right here, right now.” “I accept.” For the first time in her life, she tries to truly injure her brother. She tried to hurt him countless times, but never did she want to cause so much damage. He fights backs using forms she never saw before, but the girl hardly recognizes anything. She focuses on trying to burn him, hurt him. Why can't it all be better, when we were young? It was nice then. He didn’t think I was a monster. She did so much for him. He said she was his sister. LIER! He knows she’s a monster. Monsters don’t have brothers. Monsters don’t have joy. They don’t have friends or happy ending. Monsters have pain, and they give pain. That’s it. Why is everything on fire? Oh, I forgot. Today is Sozin’s Comet! That’s why Daddy’s killing people and babies. Last time this came, my great-grandfather killed every airbender except the Avatar. Daddy’s just gonna use this to kill more people! Why’d I forget that? Some part of her mind tells her something inside is wrong. She’s breaking, slipping. She ignores that voice. Their flames are more like tornadoes. The palace, the courtyard, everything. There’s fire everywhere. It’s so hot. She uses her flames to propel her. Maneuverability is… good? Tactical. It’s tactical for fights. Daddy says so. Then, Zuzu throws a really big fireball at her. She keeps it from burning her, but she falls on the ground. That hurt. Zuzu hurt me! “No lightning today? What's the matter?” He sounds angry. Why is Zuzu angry with me? Two little voices in the back of her head tell her not to fire. One says he’s her big brother, and she shouldn’t hurt her big brother. Mommy wouldn’t want that. The other one, one that has been getting quieter and quieter, tells he’s planning something. He wouldn’t taunt her into using her lightning unless he had a good reason. She ignores both. She tries to clear all feelings, but she can’t. The lightning comes anyway, not because she’s amazing or perfect. She isn’t amazing; she isn’t perfect. The comet merely provides her with enough power. The lightning seems to be burning through her body, her mind, and her soul. Pain. So much pain. Then, she sees the waterbender. She’s close enough to be in the courtyard. Agni Kai’s are for two fighters, but that girl stepped into the courtyard. It’s a technicality but a victory. Azula won by default because Zuzu had an ally step into the dueling grounds. I still want to hurt Zuzu. She fires at her brother. He outstretches his hand as the lightning sink into his palm. He should be dead, an instantaneous death. Instead, the lightning seems to move through him for a moment. He raises his other hand and the lightning comes back out. Uncle taught him how to redirect lightning. A great heat bites at her feet. An explosion rips through her ears before silence deafens her. For a moment, she feels wind blowing past her. No, she blows past the wind. The lightning hits the ground, and it launched her across the battlefield. She hits the stone ground with a crash. Her chest tightens. She doesn’t get up. She can’t get up. Instead, the girl spasms on the ground. “Azula!” Her vision darkens, but she sees her brother run towards her. “Zuko, what are you doing?” It’s that waterbender. She looks unhappy, unlike Zuzu. He looks scared. “She isn’t getting up!” He kneels beside her, but she doesn’t stop him. She can’t. I don’t have a heartbeat, do I? He presses his hand on her chest for a moment. “No heartbeat! Azula will die!” Wasn’t that the point of this fight, dum-dum? He cries and holds her hand. What a baby. “Katara! Can you save her?” “No, I can’t restart a heart. Maybe shock her again?” But Zuzu can’t do lightning. He’d need perfect emotional control. Ha! As if. “What’s the point though? This’s Azula.” Azula the monster. He shakes his head and stands. “I’m saving her because she’s Azula.” As her vision fades, she sees him waive his arms in circular motions. My big brother is trying to bend lightning as he’s crying? If she wasn’t dying, she’d be laughing at his stupidity. The dum-dum can’t generate lightning when he’s crying. Right now, he’s anything but emotionally stable. Azula’s body convulses again from the shock. The tension from her chest goes away and her vision returns. The first thing she sees is Zuzu with the last traces of electricity fading away from his fingertips. He bent lightning for me? He picks her up in his arms. “Katara, she needs healing. I know where there’s water.” Oh, she’s a waterbender and a waterhealer. He runs and takes deep breathes. Her body lies limp in his arms. Everything tingles and aches. Using all her fleeting strength, she asks a single question. “Why?” “You’re my sister.” No, I’m an evil, scary monster. Even as a child, I was unlovable. Not even Mother could love me. “It’s gonna be alright, Azula. I promise.” > You everything Will Be Alright Azula takes a deep breath before entering the highest floor of the prison. It was specially refurbished for the sole occupant. That person should’ve been me. The Fire Lord decided to place over six dozen guards on this floor alone. They are on constant alert for him trying to break out or anyone trying to break in. I do wonder if the latter would break in to kill him or to free him. The guards eye her with suspicion. With one exception, everyone does. And everyone should. I’m a m… I’m me after all. You’re such a dum-dum, Zuzu. Her footsteps click across the floor in the otherwise silent floor. No one dares to speak. Everyone seems on edge. Zuzu really wanted to come with her, but she refused. This is something I must do myself. Azula stops in front of the cell. She doesn’t smirk. She doesn’t spit on him. She doesn’t laugh at him. He doesn’t deserve that. Instead, she keeps her face as a stone-cold gaze. Nothing more, nothing less. “Father.” Her tone holds the slightest touch of disgust. “Azula.” He doesn’t bother looking up. She stares at him in silence. He continues to sit on his bed with his eyes transfixed on the floor. “You disappoint me, daughter.” He looks up. She sees his eyes filled with hate, but they are also the eyes of a broken man. “After all you were, here you are. A broken little girl serving as an imbecile’s lackey. Have you come to see me fallen as well? That way, you can feel better about your utter submission to another man.” I won’t show anger. I won’t give him that. Plus, Zuzu told me not to kill him, so I can’t do that either. Azula smirks. “Father.” She pauses to spit on the ground. “You were the leader of the world’s only superpower. You have fleets or war zeppelins and the unlimited power of a comet for a day. What did you do? You lost a battle to the Avatar, a twelve-year-old BOY.” She pauses for dramatic affect. “Then, that kid took away your bending. Now, your son, the one who you banished and said was worthless, reigns as Fire Lord. By Agni, he’s doing a good job with it all too.” “Yet here you still are, coming back to Daddy.” Azula shakes her head. How did this man bind me to his will for so many years? “Yes, here I am. I am free, a royal under my brother’s rule. There was even a non-sentimental reason for it all. Rebels wanted to revolt against Zuzu. As the last real symbol of your empire, it stuck a deep blow against them to know I wholeheartedly pledged myself to the throne and not to you.” She clenches her fists. “Not anymore. I’m free. Zuzu and the Avatar didn’t just free the nations and the land from your shadow, Father. They freed the people, myself included.” She turns around and strides away without saying farewell. “Azula!” Father calls out. “Azula, come back here!” His rage fills the room. “You cowardly, idiotic monster! Come back to me!” The princess doesn’t look back. She shuts the door before curling up in the fetal position. He isn’t watching anymore. “Would you be proud of me, Mother?” She whispers it to herself. Her mother lives out there, somewhere. One day, they’ll find her, so Azula can finally receive the answer to that question. She stands up and straightens her armor. Then, she leaves the jail. Azula smiles as she basks in the warmth of the sun.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Zuzu attacked her for the third time. Looking back on it, she should’ve seen his betrayals coming. The first time Father told her to capture them. Of course, she would’ve ensured her brother’s safety, even from Father. They got away due to the idiots that other people call royal guards. The second time, he fought her when she was about to capture the Avatar. Maybe he wanted to be the one to do it. Taking that stupid, bald child to the Fire Nation does happened to be the only thing that allows him to come home. Until I become Fire Lord. It was a hard battle, especially after the Avatar’s waterbending teacher, his earthbending teacher, and some idiot with a boomerang all showed up too. Also, Uncle got his fat butt to the battle. Since everyone seemed intent on killing the horrible, evil monster, she blasted Uncle in the chest with fire and ran. Zuzu’s change in attitude must be because of Uncle. He must’ve poisoned his mind against me just like Mother did. Uncle and Mother must’ve conspired against me. They want to take my only nice family way from me. Plus, Uncle must’ve never mentioned how she was the one who got him out of the Fire Nation when no one else could or would. Huh, he also never learned I was the one who made Mother save his life too. There was no way Zuzu would run into her again, not until the war was over. Azula focused on beating the Avatar. Along the way, she happened to conquer Ba Sing Se. Well, she’s about to, since this’s where the Avatar has been around for weeks. Instead of the old men’s tactics of bloodshed, she used infiltration and manipulation. Using the uniforms of an all-female squad of soldiers they captured, Azula and her friends infiltrated the city. I always knew taking Mai and Ty Lee with me would be worth it. Plus, Mai was bored, and Ty Lee realty needed to get away from that circus. Everything was easy after that. Ba Sing Se is a police-state. She took over the police, recently undermined from the Avatar’s meddling. The police seemed to believe the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Gullible idiots. She took over the police, so it’s just a matter of waiting for the right moment before taking the city. Not a drop of blood will be spilt. She’ll be done under a week. The Earth Kingdom will fall. That isn’t what excites Azula. Instead, it was that waterbender’s news. While the Avatar and his other friends left for… somewhere like a bunch of morons, that girl instead stayed behind and visited a tea shop. She came running back to the palace yelling moments before their coup. “The Fire Nation has infiltrated the city, I just saw Prince Zuko and his uncle!” she screamed to the first people she saw. Those people happened to be “friends and warriors” who were Azula and her infiltrators. She captured the girl. The waterbender looked to be her age. Perhaps she is a waterbending prodigy, the barbarian version of me? Ty Lee was happy to learn they won’t torture the girl. Azula must scheme ways to get her brother back. She came up with a simple plan. She would give a rousing speech to the traitorous police. Why are they called Dai Li anyway? All she then had to do was organize a simultaneous coup where all five Earth Kingdom generals were captured, use the police to break down the wall with earthbending, and request Zuzu and Uncle’s presence for some believable reason. To anyone but Azula, this would be too difficult, but she’s the perfect princess of the Fire Nation. She couldn’t… can’t fail. She couldn’t stop laughing when she learned what her brother and uncle were up to. They were small business owners. They owned a tea shop! The “great” general Iroh and the prince of the Fire Nation were serving tea to the snobbish high-born barbarians of the Earth Kingdom. In that case, she sent them a letter claiming the Earth King, who was nothing but the police’s moronic and unsuspecting puppet, wanted them to serve tea just before sundown. Zuzu is more gullible than a toddler and Uncle would be glad to have such a “powerful” person request his tea. All she then had to do was wait. She’d convince her brother to join her, the city will fall, and the two of them will wait for the Avatar to return. He doesn’t seem like the kind of boy who’d leave behind a member of his entourage. That’s when things went wrong. If someone surrounded Azula with the police force and started talking to her, she’d stall and see what they want. Zuzu and Uncle ran before her brother’s honor got in the way. He stopped an challenged her to an Agni Kai. Since she didn’t feel like burning and embarrassing him, she told her Dai Li to capture him. They placed him with the waterbender in an underground cave. An odd place for a prison cell, but these people are barbarians. Now, she waits for the Avatar. She can reason with Zuzu once he calms down. Who knows? Maybe he and the waterbender could get to know each other. No Fire Lord could ever have a waterbender as a wife or concubine, and that’d guarantee Azula’s status as the next Fire Lord. Father will be so proud. They do the coup. Everyone gets captured as planned. The leader of the police tries to double-cross her, but the police have more sense than their leader. Would execution or life imprisonment be better? She smiles. Maybe I could let the peasants of this city decide. I get rid of him and gain loyalty. Oh, the earthbending teacher and the boomerang idiot also showed up during the coup. They’re in a cell with the Earth King now. That means only Iroh and the Avatar are unaccounted for. Azula sighs. Knowing Uncle’s lack of patriotism these days and the Avatar’s boyish gullibility, I’d suspect they’re looking for Zuzu and that waterbender together. She and her police head down to the underground prison. She left Ty Lee and Mai behind. Things could get ugly, so she wanted only expendable minions this time. She sees all four of them. They aren’t fighting. They’re just… talking. Why isn’t Zuzu fighting the Avatar? > You zuzu Must Be Biding his Time Zuzu fought the Avatar more than enough times now to know he can’t take that boy alone. Plus, her brother looks like he wants to bite off the Avatar’s head. It’s time to get Zuzu back. She waits until the Avatar and the girl walk away. Perhaps those two are romantically involved? Ew. “Capture Iroh,” she whispers to the agents. They nod. As she comes into their view, Uncle becomes encased in the cave’s rock. The dramatic effect works perfectly. “I expected this kind of treachery from Uncle, but Zuzu, Prince Zuko, you're a lot of things, but you're not a traitor, are you?” You said you’re my brother. You said you don’t think I’m a monster. Prove it, Zuzu. This’s your chance. “Release him immediately!” You have a one-minded devotion that’d be wonderful if directed correctly. Just give me that devotion. “It’s not too late for you. You can still redeem yourself.” The Avatar is walking away from you this moment, dum-dum. Just capture him. Well, I will, but you can have the credit for all I care. Uncle speaks up. Her agents didn’t muzzle the old man. “The kind of redemption she offers is not for you.” For the past three years, what lies have you been weaving in his head? Zuzu, I shouldn’t have let him come with you. “Why don't you let him decide, Uncle?” Shut up, old man! She sighs. Her shoulders slouch. “I need you, Zuko.” THERE. I said it. I missed you. You’re an idiot, but you’re my idiot. “I've plotted every move of this day, this glorious day in Fire Nation history. We can win this together. You will have your honor back. You will have Father's love. You will have everything you want.” I will have what I want. I’d have my family again. My real family, not Mother. “I am begging you.” Uncle does sound like he’s begging. “Look into your heart and what it is you truly want?” Ug, did you find that line out of a fairy tale? I’m getting your nephew’s life back together out of the kindness of my heart. I could execute him for treason, but I’m offering him exactly what he wanted for the past three years. “You are free to choose.” And that’s the truth, brother. Azula walks away to confront her two enemies. She knows… she trusts Zuzu will be close behind. She lets herself slip into her battle mentality. In some ways, it is like a dance. She moves. The Avatar moves. That waterbender moves. It’s a state of equilibrium through actions and responses. The Avatar has power. The waterbender has rage. Why is she so angry anyway? Azula has perfection. A blast of fire flies between her opponents and herself. She doesn’t have to turn to know who’s here. She smiles as she gains her dancing partner. It’s great to have you back, brother. They work well together, not perfectly. No one can match Azula’s perfection, but their cooperation exceeds all others. Even Mai and Ty Lee can’t compare to her brother. He doesn’t have her power or intelligence, but he has her trust. On a battlefield, trust is more important than anything else for Azula’s allies. Their enemies are overwhelmed. The Avatar mostly dodges. For some, it would wear down his attackers, but Azula could do this for hours while Zuzu seems determined enough to press through well past the Avatar’s strength. The waterbender puts up a noble fight, but the girl is a minute away from defeat. Exhaustion will take her. The Avatar proceeds to bend then hide inside a dome of rocks and crystal. The waterbender fights out of desperation. Why would he abandon her? The Avatar State… No! Azula runs to where she’d expect to see the back of the Avatar when he comes out. He’s entering the Avatar State. I could probably survive, but Zuzu… She narrows her eyes. You aren’t going to take Zuzu from me. She swirls her hands around and clears any feelings from her mind. Electricity cackles from her fingertips. The Avatar rises from his earthen shelter with his eyes glowing white. He’s about to unleash death and destruction on his enemies. Azula points and fires. The lightning strikes his back, and he falls to the ground. The waterbender screams and unleashes a wave of water sweeping up his body. Zuzu and Azula step towards her. Just give us the body, girl. A blast of fire forces them to jump back. “You've got to get out of here! I'll hold them off as long as I can!” Uncle’s words seem to tear through Zuzu’s heart. The police, Zuzu, and Azula all fight Uncle, but he is one of two firebenders Azula couldn’t easily destroy in combat. The moment the waterbender leaves, the old man stops fighting and holds out his hands in surrender. The police take him away without a word. Azula takes Zuzu away from the cave. It seems to be killing him on the inside. She leads him to the Earth King’s throne, and not once does he ask her to stop. Azula smiles as she sits on the throne. Zuzu looks broody. It’s time to cheer him up. “Zuzu, we’ve done it. The war is over. The Avatar is defeated. You can go home, with me.” “I betrayed Uncle.” She stand and walks to him. She pokes him in the chest forcibly. “You. Did. Not. Were you the one to throw fire at him first? Were you the one who wanted to help the Avatar, the very person who’d rip down everting we and our ancestors worked for? Uncle betrayed you. I didn’t. I won’t.” “But I don’t have the Avatar. What if Father doesn’t accept it? What if he doesn’t restore my honor?” She puts her hand on his shoulder. “He doesn’t need to, Zuzu. Today, you restored your own honor.” She looks at him for a moment longer. Then, she does something she never did before. She wraps her arms around him and pulls him into a hug. “Welcome home, Zuzu.” > You 15 “Zuzu.” After everything that happened to her in those fifteen years, it all comes down to this moment. There he stands. Behind him, there’s the waterbending girl. The Avatar didn’t die. He attacked the capital during an eclipse. They couldn’t bend. Only a dishonorable enemy would do that, but the Fire Nation repelled their attack. Why! Why did Zuzu chose to leave them? He betrayed her! They were getting along! Even he and Mai were getting all lovey-dovey. Ew. He left. Why? She knows why. MOTHER. It’s her fault! She was the one who poisoned his mind ever since his birth. After she had to leave, Uncle continued. They turned Zuzu away. He even became the Avatar’s firebending teacher! WHY! Then, Mai betrayed her. She did it so Zuzu could’ve escaped. He was in her clutches! Azula was going to subdue her, then Ty Lee attacked her. WHY! It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t compute. The world… the world doesn’t work this way. She’s Azula. She doesn’t fail. Then, Father left her behind to kill a bunch of Earth Kingdom civilians. He didn’t see her as useful anymore. Why would? Everyone betrays her, so he discarded her like a used concubine. Why must everyone betray her! She knows why. Mother was right. This entire time, she was right. I’m a monster. It simply took Zuzu longer to realize it. “Sorry, but you're not gonna become Fire Lord today.” He lights his hands on fire. “I am. I challenge you to an Agni Kai.” “I accept.” For the first time in her life, she tries to injure her brother. He fights backs using forms she never saw before, but the girl hardly recognizes anything. She focuses on trying to burn him, hurt him. Why can't it all be better, when we were young? It was nice then. He didn’t think I was a monster. She did so much for him. He said she was his sister. LIER! He knows she’s a monster. Monsters don’t have brothers. Monsters don’t have joy. They don’t have friends or happy ending. Monsters have pain, and they give pain. That’s it. Why is everything on fire? Oh, I forgot. Today is Sozin’s Comet! That’s why Daddy’s killing people and babies. Last time this came, my great-grandfather killed every airbender except the Avatar. Daddy’s just gonna use this to kill more people! Why’d I forget that? Some part of her mind tells her something inside is wrong. She’s breaking, slipping. She ignores that voice. Their flames are more like tornadoes. The palace, the courtyard, everything. There’s fire everywhere. It’s so hot. She uses her flames to propel her. Maneuverability is… good? Tactical. It’s tactical for fights. Daddy says so. Then, Zuzu throws a really big fireball at her. She keeps it from burning her, but she falls on the ground. That hurt. Zuzu hurt me! “No lightning today? What's the matter? Afraid I'll redirect it?” He sounds angry. Why is Zuzu angry with me? Two little voices in the back of her head tell her not to fire. One says he’s her big brother, and she shouldn’t hurt her big brother. Mommy wouldn’t want that. The other one, one that has been getting quieter and quieter, tells her there’d be no tactical advantage. Her brother can redirect lightning, so he’d fire it back at her. She ignores both. She tries to clear all feelings, but she can’t. The lightning comes anyway, not because she’s amazing or perfect. She isn’t amazing; she isn’t perfect. The comet merely provides her with enough power. The lightning seems to be burning through her body, her mind, and her soul. Pain. So much pain. Then, she sees the waterbender. She’s close enough to be in the courtyard. Agni Kai’s are for two fighters, but that girl stepped into the courtyard. It’s a technicality but a victory. Azula won by default because Zuzu had an ally step into the dueling grounds. I don’t want to hurt Zuzu now. She fires at the girl instead. “No!” Zuzu dives in front of the lightning bolt. He must’ve realized she was firing at his friend. No fair. He gets all the friends. The lightning hits him in the chest. He redirects some of it, but not all. He convulses on the floor dying before her eyes. It’s just like that moment four years ago when Daddy burnt off part of Zuzu’s face. I killed Zuzu! I KILLED ZUZU! I’m a monster! I killed him! Witch! Water witch! You tricked me into killing Zuzu! She chases the girl. She throws fire. She says… things. She doesn’t know what the words are, only her mouth moves and sound comes out. Nothing else matters. The waterbender must die because Zuzu will die. I’m so sorry, Zuzu! Mommy was right. I’m a monster, and I killed you! The enemy hides behind pillars and slides on her ramps of ice. Azula chases. She won’t fail. The girl stops moving under a covered walkway. Every tactical part of Azula’s mind tells her to stop. That girl must be planning something. She doesn’t listen. Zuzu needs to be avenged. “There you are, filthy peasant!” She raises her hand to burn off the witch’s pretty face. Then, everything becomes ice cold. She can’t move. Looking down, she sees the water below them, a small canal running under their feet. They’re standing on a grated covering. The waterbender lifted the water up and froze it. The witch melts the water around herself. She takes a chain and wraps it around Azula’s hands. Then, she ties it to the floor. She chained her like a wild animal, like a monster. She melts all the ice. Azula drops to the floor. She’s alone. Zuzu’s dead. Father doesn’t love her. She doesn’t have any friends. Azula breathes out fire trying to burn everything like the monster she is. She tugs at the chains to free herself. It won’t budge. She falls on her back. Her head smack against the stone floor, but it doesn’t matter. No one loves her. I killed Zuzu. She cries. She wails like a little girl. Mommy! Mommy! Come back! Save Zuzu! You love him, so save him. Give… Give him a kiss! That would make it feel all better. Mommy, please. Save Zuzu from me. Through her tears, she sees two figures standing, staring at her. Zuzu? She blinks a few times. The figures come into focus. “Zuzu!” she screams. “You’re all better!” The wound on his chest is gone! Why hasn’t her tears stopped? “Stay away from me, Zuzu! Stay away! Mommy was right. I’ll hurt you again. I’m a monster!” > You never Hurt Zuzu Again Azula sits in the dark room. It’s scary. I’m old. I’m not supposed to fear the dark. It scares her anyway. She could light a candle or open the curtains, but the fire scares her too. What if she knocked over the candle and burnt something? What if she couldn’t stop the fire from her hands? She hears muffled voices growing louder as they walk by. Then, the voices drift father and father away. Some fear her. Others pity her. Azula just wants to be their friends. The doctors said she got better. What was it that was wrong with me? She clutches her head. Sometimes, bright lights or sharp noises hurt her head so much. It makes her want to cry, but she won’t cry. Not anymore. She’s a big girl now, and Mother never cried. One day, she’s going to be helpful. Zuzu has been the best older brother ever. Every week, he visited her in her special room. No one else did that. Mai saw her a few times. Ty Lee would do it most weeks. Zuzu never missed her once. It makes her feel happy. He forgave her, so she wants to help him. She wants to be a good little sister. She remembers things about the courts. The doctors said she kept her cunning mind. Maybe Zuzu could use her as an advisor? He is such a good Fire Lord. All the kingdoms like him too because he’s nice to them. For a hundred years, the Fire Nation attacked the other countries. Zuzu stopped it because he didn’t want anyone else hurt. Azula nods. Zuzu is smart, so that is a good idea. Not hurting people is good. She killed only one man in the last month after all. Just one! It made her cry, but no one can know that. She must be a big girl. He wanted to hurt Zuzu when her dum-dum was visiting her. Azula knows Mother would’ve protected Zuzu, so she blasted him apart with lighting. It was so scary. She didn’t know she could still do that, but Zuzu said she shouldn’t do it for fun. Like fire, lightning hurts people if she isn’t careful, but that man wanted to kill Zuzu. She will hurt anyone who wants to hurt him. Now, Azula decided she’ll be the most careful bender ever. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone, even the bad people. Still, Zuzu can never be hurt. She will do anything for him. The door opens. Azula smiles. “Zuzu! I missed you!” He smiles back to her. He wears the robes of the Fire Lord and the crown too. It makes him look so strong. “You can see me any time. I told you exploring is fine if you stay with the guards.” “But…” She points outside. “What if a bad man tries to hurt me or if I lose control? I don’t want to hurt anyone. Never again, but I know I will if he wants to hurt you. If I stay in here, then even the bad men are safe from me.” He extends his hand. “Wanna take a walk? Just me and you.” “Sure!” She wraps her arm around his elbow. Together, they leave her room and walk through the palace. She waives at the people even if they look afraid. Zuzu said being nice to people is good, so she will be nice to them. She remembers all these halls. She ran down them when she was a little girl and went exploring. He leads her to a little courtyard with a pretty pond. She stops as her mouth hangs open. She points at the pond and giggles. “Look,” she whispers. “Turtle-ducks. They’re babies.” She tugs at him arm as she pulls him next to the water. The babies quack and swim around their mother. Azula sits down and watches the happy family. Zuzu sits next to her. “We’re still looking for her.” Azula’s shoulders slouch. “Will Mother like me?” “Yes.” He holds her hand. “You’re a nice person, and you’re getting better every day. You’re using Mother instead of Mommy. Soon, you’ll be your devious self again. I’m sure.” “I am better.” “Azula, we both know you’re… a little too young still.” “I’m sorry.” “Don’t be.” The princess sees his smile and knows he isn’t unhappy with her. She leans on his shoulder and watches the babies swim. Two footsteps walk to her. She turns, ready to protect Zuzu. Oh, it’s Mai! “Hi!” She waives. Mai nods, but her attention is on the bundle of clothes in her arm. She looks so tired. They say giving birth is the hardest thing ever. “Is that…” She points at the bundle. Zuzu nods. “Yeah, that’s our Izumi.” Azula stands up and tip-toes to Mai and her niece. She looks at the newborn’s face. It’s so… squishy. “Hi,” she whispers. “You’re going to be so happy. Zuzu might look grumpy, but he’s super nice. Mai might look irked and bored, but I know she will always love you. Oh, I’m your aunt, but I want to be your friend.” Mai raises her eyebrow. “Will you drop the baby?” “No.” Carefully, Mai places the baby in her arms. Azula acts careful, super careful. She cradles the baby in her arms. She’s holding a part of Zuzu, a new and living person. “I never thought I’d have more of a family, then Mai became my sister. Now, you became my niece. I thought babies were icky and annoying, but you’re nice.” She sits back down by the turtle-duck pond. The baby sleeps soundly in her arms. “One day, I’ll show you this pond and tell you about turtle-ducks. Did you know they have a mom too? Mommy turtle-ducks will do anything for her babies just like your mommy. It took me a long time to learn that about my mother. I hope you’ll be smarter than me.” The baby wakes up and grumbles like Zuzu would on a bad day. Mai takes the baby from her arms, but she doesn’t look angry. Instead, she walks away with the child. Zuko sighs. “I won’t ever give up on you, Azula.” She blinks. “Zu… Zuko?” “Yeah?” His voice turns serious. She keeps perfect eye contact. “I’m thankful for everything you’ve done. I was a burnout. I gave everything to… Father.” She spits out his undeserving title. “You’re putting me back together, not because I’m a tool. You’re doing it because I’m your sister.” He nods. Azula looks at the sun, the undying fire. She beams as she’s gifted with its warmth. “Thanks for being my brother, you big dum-dum.”<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Azula smiles in utter glee as Zuzu screams in agony. In front of nearly two-hundred generals and nobles, Father burns off part of his son’s face. Zuzu is going to live! He didn’t see any of this coming either. Unlike last time, there wasn’t anything Azula could do. Uncle, who finally returned from his desertion almost a year ago, let her buffoon of an older brother into a war meeting. I been attending them for over a year, but I’ve always been smart enough to not speak a word. Her brother, on the other hand, almost immediately protested a general’s strategy. To make it worse, he protested due to morality and not strategy. Of course, the strategy was idiotic. Send a battalion of new recruits as a distraction to get killed? We already fully integrated women into our military because of a shortage of manpower. A war that lasts over a hundred years tends to whittle down a population, even to the winning side. Throwing away new blood instead of keeping them alive long enough to be veterans… Old men like to use old strategies. Due to her brother’s blatant lack of disrespect, he was challenged to an Agni Kai which he accepted without hesitation. With your newfound testosterone, you turn thirteen, so you accept the first honor duel that you’re able to legally accept. You thought you’d fight against an old man. He screams again. That war meeting, like all war meetings, took place in Father’s throne room. He would be the one to duel you. “Prince Zuko.” Father’s voice seemed to calm and collected compared to the convulsion and shrieks of her brother. “You are banished from the Fire Nation from this day forward. Leave tomorrow or be executed. If you wish to return, you must capture the Avatar and bring him to me. Go.” Uncle rushes onto the dueling grounds faster than she ever seen the man move. He carries her brother away. At least my brother won’t be alone. When Zuzu saw that our father was the one he’d have to duel, he refused to fight. He fell on his knees and begged for mercy. It probably saved his life. If he fought, Father would kill him, but it would be far too aggressive to kill a begging child. I should’ve advised him to do that, but it looks like his idiocy pays off occasionally. > You save Zuzu Azula leaves the crowd behind and walks back to her quarters. Father wants Zuzu dead. There’s no way he could leave our nation by himself or with our tea-guzzling Uncle carrying him out. After she closes the door, she lets out a painful sigh. At least I’ll be able to help him now. He needs to get out of her nation and to travel the world. That means he’ll need a boat, and since her brother has no navel experience, he’ll need a small crew. Of course, Father would ensure the crew would have someone who would “accidentally” burn my brother to death during some sparring match. Regardless of his reasons, when the Fire Lord wanted someone dead, that person ended up dead. Right now, that person is her wounded brother. Since I’d rather not have Father find out about my involvement… Azula waits patiently in her room. Today is Tuesday after all, a single blessing on what may be the worst day of her life. Mai was the first one to arrive, prompt like any well-trained lady. Ty Lee was late as always. Since Mai seemed broody enough to kill someone and Ty Lee wouldn’t stop crying, Azula assumed she didn’t have to explain how her brother won’t be seeing them any time soon. “Have you finished your crying yet, Ty Lee?” Azula glances at the door. Ever since starting these weekly get-togethers, she convinced the guards not to listen in. All the Royal Guards are still men. The young lady simply ensured her first meeting with her fellow females would’ve made any man very… uncomfortable to overhear. It worked. The simplest plans are often the most effective. “No.” The girl continues to cry. “Too bad. We have work to do. Mai, are you even listening?” The girl blinks. Her eyes focus on the princess. “Sorry.” Normally, that lack of respect would’ve angered Azula. She’ll give the girl a free pass this time. Her pre-arranged marriage to Zuzu will be called off by the end of the week. And that one would’ve been an instance where the couple actually liked each other. It would’ve made her sixteenth birthday more interesting to share it with a recently married sister-in-law. Oh well, it could happen anyway. Who knows what’ll happen in five years between now and then? Also, marriage… Ew. “Mai, your parents have enough political connections. Find as many soldiers as you can who are loyal to Uncle Iroh. I want them with navel experience on a small vessel. About thirty. Be sure to have a good captain, cook, engineer, and several firebenders. Oh, try to have at least a few women in there too. I wouldn’t want a whole bunch of men to carelessly get themselves killed.” Even Mai couldn’t hide the look of surprise on her face. Ty Lee stopped crying. “As for you.” She points to her acrobatic friend. “You parents work on the docks with their merchant trading. Find a ship that no one will miss. Be sure it’ll be well-stocked.” She takes a pouch of gold coins and drops in in the girl’s hands. In any situation other than this one, she’d never trust Ty Lee with half that much. “Maybe get some Komodo-Rhinos too. I want both of you done and to report everything back to me before morning. Go!” Without a word, they leave her bedroom. Azula walks to her dresser and pulls out a small chest. Ty Lee always wondered why I horded my allowance away instead of wasting it on momentary pleasures. She looks at the currency. Even if it’s Fire Nation, our colonies would accept it. I think they’d be more lenient with the banishment rules. Maybe he could trade the rest for Earth Kingdom coins. Until the sun sets, Azula meditates. She’d explode in frustration if she didn’t. It’s like being in a cage. She has no opportunity to do anything herself. Father can’t ever find out how she’s ensuring her brother’s survival, but relying on others to do that work is hard even if they’re her two most loyal assistants. Ty Lee arrives not long after the sun set. The girl looked exhausted and not a coin was left in the bag. Even in the candlelight, Azula sees a smile on Ty Lee’s face when she hands her a piece of paper. “They should have enough supplies to last them until next month,” the girl whispers. Her brow scrunches. “That’s the name of the boat, the list of stuff I bought, you know… But, um, why are you doing this?” “You’d prefer to see my brother dead?” “No!” She shakes her head faster than what’s healthy for most people. “It’s great and amazing, but you always wanted the throne. Now, you’re the only option left so… Why?” “The Avatar hasn’t been seen since Avatar Roku died. The next incarnation probably died in the Avatar State during the Air Nomad genocide. Zuzu’s not coming back until I rescind that banishment after I become Fire Lord.” She’ll buy that. “Okay!” Her shoulders slouch. “I’m tired though and my parents might finally notice I’m missing. If you see him, tell Zuko I wish him good luck. Also, um…” “Spit it out.” “I think you’ll make a great Fire Lord.” Ty Lee leaves the room. She was going to say something different. What? It’s Ty Lee, probably something incidental. The moon rises in the sky and starts to make its descent when Mai slinks into her bedroom. If Ty Lee was exhausted, then Mai must be moments away from collapsing. “It took a while. They’ll be looking for Prince Iroh and Zuko at the docks tomorrow morning.” Mai hands her a piece of paper with thirty names on it, in alphabetical order. “Thank Agni my parents never found out what I was doing.” “Get some sleep.” Mai turns around, but Azula takes her by the wrist. “Use my bed.” “But-” “I won’t be sleeping tonight. Tell your parents you spent all night ensuring you had the favor of the future Fire Lord.” She raises an eyebrow. “I was ensuring your favor.” “Precisely.” “Thanks for doing all of this, Azula. Was… was the Agni Kai as bad as I heard?” “Probably.” Azula picks up the bag of coins, small enough to be hidden from the guard but large enough to fund Zuzu’s expedition for a while. She leaves Mai behind. She takes the back passageways of the palace to the infirmary. It wasn’t hard to find Zuzu. He’s the only one in there. Azula approaches him. The room has only one lamp as a dim light, but she sees the bandages wrapping the left side of his face. I wonder if he’ll be blind in that eye. He sleeps, though it looks anything but restless. “Have you come to gloat, my niece?” Uncle slouches in a chair opposite of the bed. Azula forces herself not to shake her head. I should’ve realized he was the reason Ty Lee purchased so much tea in the supplies. He could’ve acquired all this himself, but someone had to watch over Zuzu. Maybe I should’ve told Mai to do that. Then, Uncle could’ve gone through this hassle himself. Instead of arguing, she hands her uncle the bag of coins and her two lists. “Here.” “What is this?” He squints, trying to read the symbols without adequate lighting. She shrugs. “There’s a small ship, some of your former soldiers with seafaring experience, supplies, and a bag of money. The crew will meet you at the dock tomorrow morning.” “Why are you doing this?” “Despite popular opinion, I don’t agree with the Fire Lord on every decision.” She glances at Zuzu. “Ty Lee and Mai wish the dum-dum good luck. He’ll be broodier than normal and have more angst than anyone should experience. I wouldn’t like that. Goodbye, Uncle.” Azula takes one more look at her brother and memorizes the sight. She sears it into her memory. Will she even recognize him next time they meet? The princess leaves the infirmary and slips back into her room. The first rays of sunlight rise as she closes her door. Mai sleeps in her bed, so she sleeps in a chair. When they wake up, Zuzu was on the open seas.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Mother coddles Zuzu after his embarrassment. Should’ve brought your swords, brother. Father never would take us to the Fire Lord in his throne room without showing us off. Well, showing me off. You just fell on your butt. “Ursa, Zuko and Azula, you are dismissed.” The old man’s voice still carries some power. He used to be the greatest firebender in the nation before old age took its hold. Azula does her proper bow and leaves Father behind. Too bad I’m not a few years older, then I could challenge you to an Agni Kai, maybe even kill you. I always thought you were stronger than this, but you’re just an old, frail man. A man who never bothering seeing me, ever. The wall of flames surrounding his throne aren’t a display of power when one never has the courage to step outside of them. Zuzu falls behind Mother, still sulking after his embarrassment. Mother wouldn’t be able to hear anything she whispers to him. Changing her plans around slightly, she adds another member to her infiltration party. Azula takes his hand. “Zuzu, follow me,” she whispers. She drags him around a corner to a curtain. From what she saw during her time in the throne room, her first time ever, she decided that this would be the best spot for hearing what was meant to be a private conversation. Information is power. Zuzu protests a little, but he quiets down when they poke their heads between the rich, lavender draperies. Father planned something, something huge. Lu Ten died as I predicted and Iroh gave up after breaching the outer wall and experiencing urban guerilla warfare as I predicted. Now, their Crown Prince is technically a deserter and without an heir. How come I’m the only one who seems to know exactly what’s going on? Besides Father of course. “You would not put on that performance without purpose. Ozai, what do you want?” Well, he’s to the point at least. In his most official sounding tone, Father says, “Lu Ten has fallen nobly in battle, and my brother has no more heirs nor a wife to sire more. With my brother’s retreat and desertion following the death of my nephew, no one knows if or when he shall return. However, I am here, Father, and my children are alive. Let your humble servant ensure your bloodline will continue on the throne.” He bows before the old man. In one day, will Father pass both Lu Ten and Uncle for his place on the throne? “Fool!” Father miscalculated. The flames around the throne rise to the ceiling from the old man’s fury. She holds Zuzu’s hand. If not, he’d flee in fear. “You dare wish to punish Iroh further? He lost his son! My son has suffered enough, but your suffering has just begun for your arrogance.” Zuzu breaks free of her grasp and flees. If it wasn’t for the fiery inferno blazing around the Fire Lord, they would’ve heard him. Next time, only allow Mai and Ty Lee for infiltration operations. They’d keep their heads on straight. “Father, I only wish what is best for the Fire Nation.” “No, you wish only for power and do not understand the feeling of loss. Only you have not experienced the battlefield. Only you still have your family in the land of the living. In your arrogance and pride, you could not see the pains of others. Now, you will know the heartache of sacrifice. Iroh lost his son. You will lose yours, by your own hand.” If you knew anything about your son, Fire Lord, you’d know he has no love for the boy. Still, I did not expect you to ask something so impossible for any Fire Nation prince to accept. “I accept your punishment.” What! “It will be done tonight.” “Go.” Father leaves. Azula stands motionless, trying to process a scenario that she never imagined. Zuzu is going to die? Of course, he’d make a horrible general and a worse Lire Lord, but… > You father Can't Be Defied Father is going to kill Zuzu. I’d rather not have him killed. He is loyal, but I can’t defy the will of Father and the Fire Lord. I must accept these things, but… She sighs. Zuzu is still her brother. Anyone, even the barbarians, deserve to have a fighting chance. Knowing Father, he’d slit her brother throat under the cover of darkness. It’d be effective but almost too effective. Zuzu will die no matter what happens, though he deserves to have a fighting chance. She sneaks away to the one place Zuzu would go at a time like this. Azula would flee for the docks to secure passage to the barbarian lands or hide among her friends. Zuzu would… be Zuzu. The princess enters his bedroom as he sits in bed, covers up to his chin. Beds are flammable, dum-dum. He looks scared. He should be due to his imminent and approaching death, but her brother doesn’t know that yet since he ran away like a coward. He’s being a scared little boy. I should be direct. She sits on the side of his bed and stares at him. “Father’s going to kill you.” “What?” He backs away from her. Oh, right. I’m Father’s beloved child just as he’s Mother’s. I ALWAYS lie. Ug. “He’ll sacrifice you. The Fire Lord wants him to experience the supposed pain of losing his son, so he’ll get rid of you. It’s not as if he cares anyway.” He shakes his head. “Dad would never do that.” Denial? At a time like this? Why can’t you understand that our father wants you dead? “Father doesn’t love you. He doesn’t like you. Maybe some Earth peasants would.” Zuzu’s really good at being a lovable idiot. Maybe some peasants would take pity on some lost Fire Nation noble. Then again, Zuzu would somehow tell them he’s a prince and get killed. Plus, I want him dead, not alive. I don’t like Zuzu, not at all. “Run away?” She shrugs. “Mopping the decks often gets free passage on merchant ships.” I’m doing this just to be mean. Not to help him. His eyes move to the doorway. She sees the recognition on his face. I thought Father said he’d do it tonight. Salvage the situation, Azula. Maybe I could act like I was trying to kill him? “Azula.” Fate must be on Father’s side. “What are you doing here?” I’m warning your son, Mother. “Talking.” “Come with me.” The tone and the tight grip on her arm don’t allow for protests. As she drags Azula out of the room, she hears Zuzu muttering, “Azula always lies.” That HURT. She doesn’t struggle at all as she’s practically dragged through the halls. I’m the only person in the bloody world that’s trying to help Zuzu, but you’ve entrenched your ideas so far into his head, Mother, that he refuses to believe me. You aren’t good for him. You aren’t good for anybody. Father’s going to kill him, but you’re the one who made him weak enough to kill. I wish you were gone. I wish you were dead. Her eyes light up. Dead. Gone. She sees a new opportunity. It’d kill two birds… four birds with one stone. Father would be so proud if she could ever tell him. Too bad she can’t and won’t. They stop in Mother’s chambers. She stopped sleeping with father two years ago. Also, ew. “What were you doing, Azula?” And she thinks I’m the baddy here. I’m just a monster. Father and the Fire Lord are amoral. I have principles at least. “You once said you’d do anything if barbarians wanted to kill Zuzu.” Her eyes narrow. For once, Mother looks dangerous. Maybe I inherited a few things from her, besides beauty, after all. “Tell me the truth.” Her grip on the girl’s shoulder becomes painful. Maybe, it’ll leave a bruise. “Father’s going to kill Zuzu tonight because the Fire Lord asked him to.” She doesn’t believe me. “Tell me one reason why I should believe you.” “Four. Zuzu won’t die. The Fire Lord will die. Father will get the throne, and you will be gone forever.” Her shoulders slouch. I don’t always lie. I’m occasionally nice. More importantly, sometimes the truth hurts more than the lie. “You have a plan, don’t you?” “Yeah.” Azula smirks. Later that night, the palace erupts into chaos. Azula stands watch in the shadows outside Zuzu’s door. He sleeps, blissfully unaware of the subterfuge and murder that just occurred. No matter what happens, she will not let anyone into his room tonight. Well, except that one. A figure gracefully approaches his bedroom. Unaware of the hidden prodigy, Mother rushes into his room. She shakes him gently. “Wha? Mother?” He rubs his eyes. None of the guards are aware of the woman in his room. Father happened to ensure no one was around his son’s bedroom tonight. Too late, Father. We spilt blood before you could. “Zuko, please, my love, listen to me. Everything I've done, I've done to protect you.” She wraps his in a tight embrace. She loves you, brother. Now, she’ll never see you again. “Remember this, Zuko. No matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are.” Before he could say anything in reply, she leaves. To where, Azula doesn’t know. All she knows is Mother will never return. She’ll always live with blood on her hands instead of her son. Azula smiles, a real one. I got rid of you forever, Mother.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>“Who was that?” She didn’t think Zuzu was paying that much attention. He seemed much more focused on that sand… sand mound? Perhaps it was supposed to be a palace or castle. That dum-dum has no artistic sense. “A new friend.” “Like Mai?” His eyes shimmer with that word. After a moment of contemplation, she decides it’s a shimmer of fear. Poor Zuzu’s afraid of girls, herself included. That’s good. She nods. “Uh huh, this one’s flexible and jumpy. I’m gonna be so good, no one could shoot me in an Agni Kai, even if I don’t bend.” “And she wants to be your friend?” “Of course.” Actually, Ty Lee, apparently from a family with a surname, seems to do this out of selfish reasons. She has a bunch of sisters, so being friends with a princess would differentiate her. All her actions scream “look at me” anyway. She’ll be easy to control. Zuzu crosses his arms. “Will that one be heading to the palace?” She raises her eyebrow. Why would she not? I wouldn’t befriend people who won’t be around. “Yes.” “Oh.” She puts her hands on her hips. “It’s not my fault if I have more friends that you.” He smashes the sand mound with his fists. Mother would’ve yelled at me if I did that. She didn’t even notice her precious son doing it. Even if she did, Mother would coddle him. She doesn’t see regret in his eyes. If it wasn’t for Mother, maybe Zuzu would’ve had a small chance at being a warrior. “It’s not fair.” He stands up. “How come you have so many friends?” It’s Azula’s turn to cross her arms. “I have two friends. That’s not much.” “More than me.” She shouldn’t be so surprised. He either flounders in his training or gets coddled by Mother. Is he capable of doing those boy game? Probably not. She should’ve put two and two together. Her brother’s isolated. Azula has broken free. “Zuzu, how many kids have you ever talked to?” “Um…” He stares at the sand as if it has become the most interesting thing in the world. “Let me guess…” She talked to him. Mai… Has Mai? Maybe. It’s hard to tell. “Two.” He doesn’t say anything, but his fist clench and he takes a quick breath of air. I’m right, as expected. “Do you even know how to play Hot Rocks?” “No.” Of course, you wouldn’t know. I made it up, just now. “You heat up a rock like this one.” She runs to the edge of the beach where there’s a stone, probably sandstone. She uses her flames to make it hot, but not enough to make it explode. She found out how painful those can be. “Then, we throw it at each other.” I can let the heat flow through me. Can you, Zuzu? She tosses the rock at him. He caught it and gave a very feminine yelp. Why am I behind him for the throne? He tosses it from one hand to another before chucking it back at her. She catches it and glances at the sun. From that angle… She tosses it at Zuzu, but she lobs it at a high angle. Her training with Mai will reap some fun rewards. He looks up but can’t see it. The rock is falling in his eyesight to the sun, a blind spot made of light. Of course, a warrior or anyone with common sense would move out of the way, yet Zuzu’s too stubborn for that. The rock hits his head, and he falls into the sand. Would Mother believe a bird would’ve dropped a stone on his head? Probably not. Did anyone see this? Mother and Father are down the beach sitting on the sand. The guards are back at the house, since it’s safe here. No one else dares come close to part of the royal family, except Ty Lee, but that girl has already wandered off. > You sit Down next to Him She walks up and sits down across from her dazed brother. Since he doesn’t whine about his thunked head, her dum-dum of a brother must be unconscious. Leave it to him to be the first firebending prince ever to lose a battle against a six-year-old girl and a little rock. He opens his eyes and groans. “You should’ve dodged, dum-dum.” He rubs his forehead and sniffs. Is he going to cry? “There’s no honor in running away.” And now he’s talking about honor? “The dead have no honor.” He looks at her if she stabbed him. “But our great-grandfather killed the last Avatar. He beat the Air Nation. He started our war to spread our glory. How can he have no honor just because he’s dead?” “The war’s still going on. Sozin died before he could finish his work. He failed. No honor, just another power-hungry dead guy.” “No son of Sozin or any firebender would speak ill of our former Fire Lords.” “I’m no son, nor am I just any firebender.” She pokes her chest in triumph. “I’m THE firebender.” Zuzu stares at her, trying to read her expressions. She reads others easier than she can read that awful old poetry Mother likes so much. Zuzu couldn’t tell if she was sad if she was crying, not that she ever would. Maybe he thinks I’m joking, but I’m dead serious. He crosses his arms. “How come you’re so good at everything?” “Because I want to. I refuse to allow anything else to happen, so I become the best.” He looks away from her. “It’s not my fault if you were born lucky. Dad says I was lucky to be born.” Ouch. “So? You’re still related to the most amazing thing that happened in over a hundred years. Just don’t die or anything and I’ll let you be an armor bearing or something.” “We haven’t had a princess in battle for centuries, right? Why would I then bear armor?” “I will be a warrior. Plus, you’re too stupid to try to kill me, so I could trust you as my underling.” His demeanor darkens. Ug, that sounds like Ty Lee and those auroras. “I don’t think I’ll ever get to a battlefield. I’d just get in the way.” “Which’s why you should be my helper. That way, you’d have a purpose. Plus, I promise I’ll try to keep your stupid butt alive when I’m already busy killing hordes of peasants or something like that. I’ll always be on your side when we’re in battle. See? Now you have a purpose. I don’t think you had a purpose.” They lie there on the beach until sunset. Neither wanted to leave, since both knew what’d happen. They’d revert to their normal ways. They’d fight for their parent’s attention. Azula would scheme. She can’t remember the last time they just… talked. Both were right. They didn’t have a quiet moment for the rest of the trip. When they got home, they’d either avoid the other of fight. Azula would come out on top. She had to. Only perfection can reach the throne, and she’ll prove she’s perfection incarnate. However, she didn’t lie, not when making that promise. Even though their daily lives are like a battle against the other, on the real battlefield, she’d be there for her brother. No matter how much she dislikes the dum-dum, she knows it’s the duty of a royal to protect the weaker members of the family. But, that’ll happen years from now, maybe a decade. The Fire Lord will probably be her tea-loving uncle by then. Even Azula with all her cunning could never predict that the battlefield will come so soon. It’ll come charging towards Zuzu not from assassins or enemy soldiers. He’ll be threatened by his family.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Azula giggles. It amuses her to see so many metal men run around. They always stand still or walk behind her, but now they seem frantic. They bend away the fire from the stupid, ugly painting. fears their red armor and spiky helmets, but not Azula. No, she’s a big girl who doesn’t feel scared. “Azula!” The girl feels scared as her mother stands in front of the… What was the word? Tapestry! It’s a tapestry. Mommy trembles. A tear falls down her face. Why is Mommy sad? I bended fire! “What did you do, Azula?” Azula lowers her gaze. How come Mommy gets so angry at her and only her? She smiles at everyone else, well, except for Daddy. “I…” Why am I in trouble? “I bended fire, like Daddy and Zuzu.” “Tell me the truth. You’re two. No one bends fire at two. It was rare for Zuko to bend fire at only four.” “But I am tellin’ the truth.” She crosses her arms. “Did you hide the candles? Please tell me the fire you burned this with isn’t still burning.” “I burned it with my fire!” “You burned my only reminder of my family. Stop lying.” “I am not lying. I am your family!” She stomps her foot on the ground. The rug catches on fire where her foot made contact. Unlike before, pure joy, now she feels afraid. Will Mommy be angry about this too? Instead of saying anything else, Mommy walks away in a hurry. The metal men, maybe they are called guards, bend that fire away too. She watches. They do it so easily. Why doesn’t Mommy yell at them? They bend, but she doesn’t mind. Why doesn’t Mommy love her? “A… Azula?” She turns her head. Zuzu stands in the doorway, eyes wide. Zuzu burned something too when he first bended. It was part of Mommy’s dress, a pretty and black one. Mommy was so happy when that happened even though the fire made her skin look a little red on her hand. She loves Zuzu. “What did you do, Azula?” he asks, echoing their mother’s words. Again, Azula lowers her gaze. > You tell Him “I bended fire.” “Really!” She looks up, and he smiles. “You bent fire? Now, you’re like me!” But Mommy loves Zuzu but not me. Zuzu is not like me. “No.” She points to the tapestry. “I bended fire and burned that. Mommy was angry.” “That was Mom’s picture of her mom and dad.” “I didn’t wanna.” She crosses her arms. “I didn’t say that. Was it an accident?” “Yes, but I do better. I won’t burn more things.” “Good. Maybe we can practice together?” “Yes!” Zuzu will help her. She never got to do big kid things with him before. They hear a new set of footsteps. She turns and sees someone she only remembers seeing twice before besides their nightly, tense dinners. Mommy stands behind him. She looks angry. “Daddy?” she asks. Zuzu takes three steps backwards. “Azula, you bent fire.” “Yes.” She clenches her tiny fists. Will he be angry too? “Good job.” He smirks. At this time in her life, it scared her. Eventually, she will learn to desire such approval.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're an orphan. You don't know anything about your parents. You have never even met them before the hand of fate swept them away from you. All you know is that they died on October the 10th, the day the monstrous creature struck your village. You remember growing up in an orphanage. Neither the adults nor the children there cared for you. Everyone avoided you for some reason. Even then, you felt like there is something you can do to change their opinion, until today. For today is the day that they've unanimously decided to kick you out. You stumble into the street as the door shuts behind you. The thunder in the sky cackles as though they are laughing at you. The rain pours down your body as you lurch around the street, trying to find a shelter somewhere where you can stay. At least you found a dumpster in an secluded alleyway, and you grab the head of the dumpster, before flipping it up and climbing in. How do you want to spend your childhood? - You can choose to spend your childhood on the streets. If you choose this path, you will gain immense charm. Charm is useful for many things, such as bartering for lower prices inside stores, and in general getting along with people. There are also techniques that will require charm to use, and other techniques that rely on charm; such as that the more charm you have, the more your damage your technique will do. - You can choose to spend your childhood in the woods, training on your physical attributes. If you choose this path, you will gain immense strength and dexterity. Strength and dexterity determines how much damage you do to your opponents. While strength reflects how much health you have, and the maximum amount of damage you can dish out, dexterity determines the minimum. - You can choose to spend your childhood in the library, reading away your days. If you choose this path, you will gain immense intelligence. Intelligence determines how many chakra you have, and how much damage your chakra base attacks will do. You will need this for almost every techniques you come across. You will lose the game if your chakra hits zero. - You can choose to spend your childhood hiding from people in the daylight, and coming back out at night time to do various night activities, such as stealing, and spying on people. If you choose this path, you will gain immense stealth. Stealth is required for certain missions you will do, such as that you won't be able to do certain missions until your stealth is are the required level. There are also techniques that will require stealth to use, and other techniques that rely on stealth; such as that the more stealth you have, the more your damage your technique will do. > You on the streets You have no parents. No one to take care of you. The orphanage that you were suppose to live in, you were kicked out. You didn't even know why. What were you suppose to do? Go crawl inside a hole, and die quietly? No. You were stronger than that. You wouldn't have given up, and you didn't give up. You found an abandoned apartment, and you made it your home, as well as you can. Then you spent the rest of your time on the streets, scavenging what you can find. Running errands in the red district. Bartering with anyone who would trade with you. Even though most people are still wary of you, there are some that are willing to befriend you, mostly those in the red light district. As it is, you gained a lot of charm points in your childhood. Charm + 45 Strength + 11 Dexterity + 14 Intelligence + 19 Stealth + 9 > You waking Up 8:04 A.M You wake up. The first thing you see is the white walls. And past that, the open windows. It was nice and windy out last night, so you left the windows open. Two techniques you have used before suddenly pop into your head. The henge, and the vampire sucking technique. The henge technique basically changes you into anyone you want to, but you usually use it to change into a female counterpart. The vampire sucking technique basically let you leech health from your enemies when you're in battle. Oh. There's another technique you know, which is called the shadow clone technique. This technique lets you create copies of yourself. You can also combine this technique with your henge technique. Which means your clones can also henge into anyone they want. You have different clones scattered around your house for various purposes. > You your history 8:08 A.M You're an orphan. You don't know who your parents are, and how they died. You just know your own name, and you're not even sure if it was the one your parents gave you before they passed away. Everyone hates you for some reason. Everywhere you go, people point at you and whisper things behind your back. Which is why you decide to stay out of sight, ever since you have understood what those whispers behind your back is really saying about you. Since then you decide to wear gray clothes because they are less conspicuous. That way, you are less likely to be noticed. That way, you will not be seen and harassed. You live inside a village. The people here have a system. A system to defend themselves. There are two types of schools for children here in the village. One is for regular civilians. Another one is for military recruits.You have decided to join the academy for military recruits because you want to learn how to defend yourself against those people who really hate you; against those who really want to hurt you. Ever since you have enrolled in the academy, you've been pushed back by the instructors. Your test papers had gone missing, your instructions had been written wrong, and your weapons were handed out dull and broken. You have decided that you have to act the idiot in order for them to underestimate you; in order for them to think that you're not a threat; that you're just an idiot. You have to fail. So you did. You have failed twice. Once to persuade them that you're not a threat. And another one to prove that you're just another feeble minded idiot, so that they'll shift their attention somewhere else. It worked. Like a charm. They have no idea what you're capable of. Today's going to be the third time around that you're taking this test. You see no point in continuing to fail this test anymore. You are strong enough now. You have gained enough power, and you're going to pass it this time. After that, you're going to surpass them all. > You open your closet 8:28 A.M You get up and open your closet door. Inside is... <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're an orphan. You don't know anything about your parents. You have never even met them before the hand of fate swept them away from you. All you know is that they died on October the 10th, the day the monstrous creature struck your village. You remember growing up in an orphanage. Neither the adults nor the children there cared for you. Everyone avoided you for some reason. Even then, you felt like there is something you can do to change their opinion, until today. For today is the day that they've unanimously decided to kick you out. You stumble into the street as the door shuts behind you. The thunder in the sky cackles as though they are laughing at you. The rain pours down your body as you lurch around the street, trying to find a shelter somewhere where you can stay. At least you found a dumpster in an secluded alleyway, and you grab the head of the dumpster, before flipping it up and climbing in. How do you want to spend your childhood? - You can choose to spend your childhood on the streets. If you choose this path, you will gain immense charm. Charm is useful for many things, such as bartering for lower prices inside stores, and in general getting along with people. There are also techniques that will require charm to use, and other techniques that rely on charm; such as that the more charm you have, the more your damage your technique will do. - You can choose to spend your childhood in the woods, training on your physical attributes. If you choose this path, you will gain immense strength and dexterity. Strength and dexterity determines how much damage you do to your opponents. While strength reflects how much health you have, and the maximum amount of damage you can dish out, dexterity determines the minimum. - You can choose to spend your childhood in the library, reading away your days. If you choose this path, you will gain immense intelligence. Intelligence determines how many chakra you have, and how much damage your chakra base attacks will do. You will need this for almost every techniques you come across. You will lose the game if your chakra hits zero. - You can choose to spend your childhood hiding from people in the daylight, and coming back out at night time to do various night activities, such as stealing, and spying on people. If you choose this path, you will gain immense stealth. Stealth is required for certain missions you will do, such as that you won't be able to do certain missions until your stealth is are the required level. There are also techniques that will require stealth to use, and other techniques that rely on stealth; such as that the more stealth you have, the more your damage your technique will do. > You training in the woods "Amanda!" you yell from the kitchen. "I swear, if you don't turn the telly down, I will KILL YOU!" The blaring from the living room drowns out her response, which drives you mad. You tap your foot impatiently. I will wait five seconds before I go in there, you tell yourself. One.....Two.....Three.....Four..... "'Manda! I'm coming in there!" You say furiously as you storm from the kitchen. The living room's lights are dimmed, so the glare from the telly makes you blink. Amanda is curled up on the couch, her eyes glued on the screen. Her red hair is a mess, and she is dressed in rumpled up pajamas. "Amanda," you say as you grab the remote. "You really need to stop this! Your head is going to explode from the sound." "Shut it, Jess!" Amanda shushes you. "Turn it up, this is really important!" You roll your eyes and listen to your roommate. The reporter is just finishing up a story. "...and the residents of Greenwich should be more cautious. The number of robberies and break-ins have increased over the last two weeks. So, make sure to lock your doors when you leave to house." "So?" you say as you turn it off. "It's just some robberies. Nothing unusual." "But he said it was happening in Greenwich! That's here, in case you forgot!" Amanda says as she gets up from the couch. She stretches, and walks with you to the front door. "We have the same chance of getting robbed as anyone else here!" "'Manda," you turn around, exasperated. "Who in creation would want to break into the flat of two twenty-year old women that can barely pay the rent? It's not like we have anything of value here." You grab your purse from the table by the door. Glancing into the mirror, you check to see that your hair is still in its place, and your mascara hasn't smudged. Pleased, you turn to Amanda. "We have a telly, a microwave, a DVD player, and some jewelry upstairs, Jess!" Her green eyes flash with fear. Amanda is always worried that someone would break into the flat that you share and steal everything you have. "Oh, for God's sake. Listen to me. No one is going to rob us!" You unlock the door. "Right, I'm going out." "Make sure you get some more apples. We're nearly out," Amanda reminds you. "Yeah, don't worry. I'll remember." You walk into the hallway. "Lock the door behind me!" Your best friend lets out a retort as you close the door in her face. Time to go to town.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The dead branches outside the large window rustle softy in the wind, whispering softly in the pallid light.. Pale snowflakes dance their ghastly dance before they fade away on the frozen ground. Shadows move silently over the floor as the full moon travels through the heavens. A grandfather clock calls nearly inaudible from the hallway, announcing the ghost hour with a faint 'DONG'. The ancient house around you creaks and crunches as if it's stirring in some deep sleep. Your mind barely registers your surroundings as you are sitting inside your comfortable chair. The library is almost completely engulfed by shadows, safe for the dying embers in the hearth next to you. Reading some dusty tome about knowledge which most people have already forgotten, you often forget that the house around you even exists. However, tonight you can't keep your eyes open. Nearly nodding, nearly napping you try to continue reading, but you notice you've already read the same line seven times over. With a sigh, you decide to give in and rest your eyes for a little while. Images from long forgotten times unfold themselves in front of your mind's eye. A garden in spring time. The morning sun shimmers on the surface of a blue lake. Two swans glide side by side near the water's edge. Pebbles crunch as a beautiful woman runs towards you. Wearing a plain white dress, with a skin like... TAP TAP TAP You are roughly awaken by a sudden tapping at your door. Desperately you try to cling on to your memories, but they fade away like shadows before the sun. With one foot still in Morpheus' realm you wonder if the noise was merely part of your dream. With a curt shrug you decide to return to your book, when suddenly... RAP RAP RAP Fear begins to wrap it's shadowy fingers around your heart. 'Tis just some visitor', you mutter to yourself, 'only this, and nothing more'. With a mind still firmly in sweet dream's grasp, but tempted by curiosity, and fear, you decide to... > You open the door. With your hands and legs trembling you lift yourself from your chair. Slowly shuffling trough the cold shadows you feel a chill tingling at your spine. Feeling more and more unsettled you notice the rhythmic swaying of your purple curtains. Against your better judgement this image thrills you, fills you with fantastic terrors, the likes you've never felt before. To still the beating of your heart you stand near the door, repeating to yourself: 'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door. Some late visitor at my door. But why would a visitor come knocking at my chamber door, in stead of the front... No, do not dwell upon these thoughts. Tis some visitor, and nothing more.' With your trembling hand extended you reach for the gleaming brass knob. As your hand envelops the cold metal you stand frozen in place, neither capable of opening the door, nor relinquishing you grip. While all of your instincts are raging within you, you open the door. The creaking of the rusty hinges pierces your ears and torments your mind. It takes hours before the door is finally open and the darkness of the hallway comes pouring into the library. Shadows and dust whirl around each other, moved by the smallest wind created by opening the door. You gaze at this play when you realize the hallway is empty. Shadows and dust, and nothing more. > You continue... Softly whispering, but slowly strengthening, you call into the black abyss: Sir, or madam, I implore your forgiveness. I was napping while reading a book and so gently came your rapping that I scarce was sure I heard you. Please good sir, or madam, make yourself known.' You look around once more, but no further sounds can be heard coming from the shadows. Strange thoughts and dreams circle through your mind, but still the darkness gives no token. Wary, you whisper with a trembling voice: 'Lenore?' Silence follows, but an echo murmurs back this one word: 'Lenore!' As you turn to return to the chamber, you once more feel an ominous tingling in your spine. With a beating heart you once more survey your surroundings. The hallway is the same as before, although the dance of dust and shadow has ended, and yet you can't shake of the feeling that someone, or something, is watching you. Suddenly the silence is broken by a ghastly noise, that same noise that led you into this darkness. TAP TAP TAP This time it is louder than the last. As your heart once more tries to leap out of your chest, you can feel the air grow colder. Shaking and shivering you try to determine the origin of that dreadful noise. Warily, you turn your head, convinced that an unknown assailant can reveal itself at any moment. Yet only shadows surround you. Anxiously, you keep repeating to yourself: 'There's nothing here but shadows and dust. Tis a leaking pipe that's making that noise, that it is and nothing more.' Feeling slightly more secure you are about to return to the library, just as the eerie sound returns once more. TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP Startled, you look around and you notice the door near the end of the hallway. It's there were the origin of that noise resides. As you continue to gaze upon it, the doorknob begins to rattle, turned by an invisible hand, and the tapping sound strengthens. > You thoroughly scared, you retreat into the library. With a pounding heart, you slam the doors of the library shut, trying to block out the shadows and demons of your minds eye. In the pale light of the hearth's dying embers, you stand panting. With your heart beating in your chest, pounding in your throat, you feel light-headed. 'Surely 'tis but a passing fancy, a shadow of an imaginative mind. There is really nothing wrong, as in the morning you shall find. You have never been a madman, nor have you have been told you are. Let us not start doubting now, 'tis a fancy by far. Let's just continue reading my book, that'll calm me down. It is winter, it is cold, it is the season to feel unsettled.' Still slightly trembling, you sit down in your comfortable chair, and pick up your volume of long-forgotten knowledge. Though the words tend to jumble and jump in front of your eyes, an aftereffect of your shaken heart, the gathering of knowledge does sooth your spirits. After a few minutes pass, you have all but shaken the last remnants of the night's terrors from your mind. Until you hear a tapping on your window's lattice. You turn towards your window, your soul within your burning, yet you cannot see past its closed shutters. Scared, yet inquisitive, you decide to approach it. For what if it is a visitor who, having tried knocking on your door, tries to seek your attention in other ways? Maybe they're throwing small stones against your window? Once you reach your window, your hand on the shutters' latch, you feel the cold, winter's air blowing through it. Shivering, you briefly wait, but decide to open the shutters. A flurry of feathers blows past you, too fast to focus on, startling you, and making you jump backwards. CAW CAW CAW A raven, a beast as black as the darkest night, flies around your library and perches itself above your chamber door. On the pallid bust of Pallas high above your chamber door. How long you've stood watching it in bewilderment, you do not know, but once you've gathered your senses, you burst out into laughter. 'You my dear, sweet raven, surely art no craven. Tell me fearless raven, flying through this winter's snowy night, tell me why you bless me with this wondrous new sight?' 'Nevermore.' From the its elevated perch a voice rung out, clear as water, yet creaking like ice. The raven, that enigmatic being, spoke as if answering your query. 'Can you understand me, are you answering, am I right? Tell me what your name is on the dark shore of this night?' 'Nevermore.' Again, that singular word. Gazing into the eyes of that bird, you feel slightly unsettled. Slowly, a soft tingling starts to spread over your spine, as if the shadows of the library, surrounding you, are watching, closing in on you. You try to shake the thought. Focusing your attention back on the raven, you notice that he is still sitting completely still. Not a feather has rustled since you last addressed him. 'Tell me, oh saintly raven, of the region whence you came. Tell me of your master, who gifted such a singular name. How did you ever learn this, did you witness great a pain? Tell me of the grief which shall hold no more name.' 'Nevermore.' An illogical annoyance bubbles up within your soul. You start to feel like this bird, this beast has been sent here with the sole intention of mocking you. With a slightly raised voice, you address him for one last time: 'Curious demon, mocking tormentor, tell me why you came. Tell me why you carry such a strange and ominous name. Were you sent here by the heavens, or does the devil play a game? Are you here to mock me, or is my own, sad mind to blame?' > You 'Nevermore.' Annoyance turns into anger as that beast mocks you once more. Grunting, you mutter to yourself: 'Other friends have flown before, on the morrow he will leave me as my hopes have flown before. On the morrow, all will be as was before.' 'Nevermore.' Angry, yet curious, you gaze once more at that singular bird, perched on the pallid bust of Pallas high above your chamber door. Yet, as your gaze meets his, you feel a dark pit of sadness and despair open up, deep within your heart. With a voice filled with grief and wrath, you address the raven once more: 'Beast or devil, work of evil! Vile demon you might be! Tell me if you know of one no longer here with me. Tell me if the saints and angels have the one that I adore. Tell me of the one I lost, my radiant Lenore.' 'Nevermore.' Lenore, the name haunts you still, even after so many, many months. Briefly, you break free of the raven's gaze, as you look once more upon her portrait, hanging on one of your library's walls. From within her wooden frame, Lenore looks at you with sad eyes, a kind smile upon her lips, filling you with longing. 'Nevermore.' The raven once more utters that singular word with his creaking, icy voice, mocking your loss, your despair. Icy tendrils grasp at the corners of your mind, and a deep fear makes its way into your heart. You once more turn your eyes towards the placid bust of Pallas high above your chamber door. There, your tormentor, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting. Staring into the unblinking eyes of that shadowy prophet, you feel the last of your courage leaving your body. The shining image of Lenore slowly fading from your mind. Suddenly, in the blackness of the raven's eyes, you see the shimmer of a reflection, of the maiden you adore. Yet now, instead of love, instead of longing, it fills you with an overwhelming feeling of... > You sadness. 'Heartless demon!' You cry out, 'Tormentor from the nightly shore! Have you no mercy for a poor man, mourning the mem'ry of his late Lenore? Take your break from out my chest, and take your form from off my door! Leave me here in peace this evening, let me forget my sweet Lenore.' Quoth the raven 'Nevermore'. Tears well up in your eyes, and your knees give way beneath you. The image of Lenore, once shining and radiant, has now turned into a mockery, a shadow of her former self. That rare and radiant, saintly-clasped maiden that you once loved, whose portrait still adorns your chamber wall, shall visit you nevermore. Her memory, haunting you like a shadow of despair. CAW CAW CAW The raven's cry sounds once more, mocking you, laughing at your misery. That grim and beastly devil sitting above your chamber door. Behind you, you hear the final hiss of the embers in your hearth. In the pale moonlight, the raven seems but a shadow against the pallid bust above your door. Yet you know that he is watching you, observing you, peering deep inside your soul. The shadow of death, mocking your loss, and your powerlessness to overcome it. You meet its gaze once more, its piercing, dead gaze, but cannot find any remorse in it. Silently it watches, waiting tirelessly. For what, only the heavens know. Yet in that cold darkness, in those remorseless eyes, you see that whatever your actions, whatever you do in your life, whatever the cold, lonely future has in stall for you, this demon, this beast, this devil from the nightly realm, shall leave you never- nevermore.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Annoyance turns into anger as that beast mocks you once more. Grunting, you mutter to yourself: 'Other friends have flown before, on the morrow he will leave me as my hopes have flown before. On the morrow, all will be as was before.' 'Nevermore.' Angry, yet curious, you gaze once more at that singular bird, perched on the pallid bust of Pallas high above your chamber door. Yet, as your gaze meets his, you feel a dark pit of sadness and despair open up, deep within your heart. With a voice filled with grief and wrath, you address the raven once more: 'Beast or devil, work of evil! Vile demon you might be! Tell me if you know of one no longer here with me. Tell me if the saints and angels have the one that I adore. Tell me of the one I lost, my radiant Lenore.' 'Nevermore.' Lenore, the name haunts you still, even after so many, many months. Briefly, you break free of the raven's gaze, as you look once more upon her portrait, hanging on one of your library's walls. From within her wooden frame, Lenore looks at you with sad eyes, a kind smile upon her lips, filling you with longing. 'Nevermore.' The raven once more utters that singular word with his creaking, icy voice, mocking your loss, your despair. Icy tendrils grasp at the corners of your mind, and a deep fear makes its way into your heart. You once more turn your eyes towards the placid bust of Pallas high above your chamber door. There, your tormentor, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting. Staring into the unblinking eyes of that shadowy prophet, you feel the last of your courage leaving your body. The shining image of Lenore slowly fading from your mind. Suddenly, in the blackness of the raven's eyes, you see the shimmer of a reflection, of the maiden you adore. Yet now, instead of love, instead of longing, it fills you with an overwhelming feeling of... > You fear. The gaze of that winged demon, that messenger of death, is too much for you to bear. A sliver of ice lodges itself into your spine and your knees turn weak. With your heart pounding in your chest, an irrational fear makes itself the master of your mind. Almost without thought, you open the door to your library, and run away, leaving that demonic bird sitting above you, perched high above your chamber door. Back in the hallway, you notice that the dance of dust and shadow continues once more. An icy cold has appeared, chilling you to the bone. As you carefully step into the darkness, strength returning to your knees, yet your heart still pounding in your chest, you notice small puffs of mist erupting from the carpet. You're scared, you don't want to admit it, but you're scared. That winged demon that haunts you is still somewhere behind you, you can feel it. Yet while you worry about the shadows behind you, a soul-shattering wail erupts from below you. A female voice, filled with grief and despair. In front of you, the staircase beckons that leads to the hallway downstairs, the dark hallways downstairs, the hallway where that wail just originated. However, while weighing your choices, you'd rather explore what's going on downstairs, than return to that beast in the library. > You continue... Crouching down until you're knees are almost touching the floor, you creep towards the top of the stairs. Peeking down, the cavernous hallway seems dark and desolate save for a narrow streak of moonlight shining through the windows above the front door. Two doors, besides the front door, give access to two more chambers on the ground floor: the living room and the smoke room. And it is of this room, the smoke room, that the door remains open just a little bit, and just at the moment that you are peeking down into the hallway, a small piece of white fabric disappears through it. Though your heart is pounding in your chest and you knees are shaking visibly, you decide to brave your fears and descend the staircase. As soon as you put weight on the top step the staircase creaks and cracks, loud enough to shake your resolve and wake all the demons in hell itself. However, you decide to brave onwards. Step by step, creak by creak, you more or less succeed in descending the staircase safely. As your feet finally touch the stone tiles on the hallway's floor you let out a quick sigh of relief. As you survey your surroundings you wonder why you ever continued to live in a mansion that just screams 'HAUNTED'. An old chandelier, made suitable for electric lighting long ago, softly sways from the ceiling, its lights darkened. The faces of your ancestors stare blankly at you from their respective stately portraits which overlook the staircase you just descended. The grey moonlight which shines through the few windows around the grand, wooden, doors gives them an even more dead like pallor. The uneasy silence which envelops your home has not yet lifted, and yet you could swear that you hear floorboards cracking in the smoke room. This is, of course, a preposterous thought. You are all alone in this house, and have been for many months now. Who else could be wandering these halls? To still the beating of your heart, you think to yourself: 'Tis probably some rodent wandering in these darkened halls, sheltering from an animal or looking for food. P...' But before you finish your thoughts a cold winds blows through the crack in the doorway. Suddenly shivers run down your spine and you can feel your knees start to tremble once more. While fear starts to fill your mind once more, you decide to... > You investigate the smoke room. As you fully open the door to the smoke room, a cold wind greets you. In the corner of your eyes, you can see the frayed, grey curtains in front of the windows slightly sway in the wind. The ancient window frames are cracked, and no match for the bleak winter's air. Slightly shivering, you look around you. The smoke room is just like you left it, though a substantial layer of dust has since accumulated. Two cracked, dried-out leather chairs stand in front of the cold fireplace. A small table is set between them, cigars that were probably quite excellent at some point are lying in a box on it. Faded portraits of idyllic hunting and pastoral scenes line the walls, and a small book case is standing in one corner of the room, holding some dusty book for light reading. To be honest, the room isn't that very large for a mansion such as yours. After looking around for some time and reassuring yourself that nothing out of the ordinary is residing in the room, you turn to leave. However, your eyes then fall on a small picture on the mantle of the fireplace, quite small, and so caked in dust that you can hardly see the subject at this distance. Your attention piqued, you pick up the picture, and carefully remove the layer of dust. It turns out to be a photograph of a young woman. The woman you recognise from your dream earlier, the woman you recognise as Lenore. Lenore, the love of your live, the angel of your existence, the centre of your universe. You almost forgot you had this picture of her. Compared to the large, stately portrait, hanging in your library upstairs, this is a very intimate picture. Lenore, smiling at the camera, still much younger than when you last saw her. You can actually remember taking this picture, during a long, warm summer so many years ago. A tear disturbs some of the dust on the picture frame. Sighing a deep, heavy, emotion-laden sigh, you put it back. Though you turn around, you could swear that you can still see Lenore in front of you. Though no longer so very young, you look at the picture of Lenore as you last saw her. Clad in a pure, white dress, she stands in front of you. Her eyes, looking far beyond you, gaze pitifully forward, her countenance undecipherable, looking sad and angry, pitying and harsh, pallid and vivid. You almost speak to her. As she appears before you, you cannot but imagine she is really here. Confused and hopeful, sad and joyous, despairing and pleading, you try to speak. But a blink of an eye later, the image is gone. ''Tis only the desire of my heart, my most sacred wish, but nothing more.' Saddened by your mind's deception, you exit the smoke room. > You continue... Back in the hallway, you look around you. The pale light of the Winter's moon is partially obstructed by clouds, and in its shifting light, your empty house seems grim and ghastly. The portraits on the walls, those of your forefathers, appear to look at you with dead eyes, following your every move. Somewhere in the distance, you can hear the creaking and groaning of your ancient house. You still can't shake that shiver from your spine, as if a sliver of ice has lodged itself inside it. Trying to expel the ghostly image of Lenore from your mind, you notice the hairs on your arms start to stand upright. This is wrong, this is so very, very wrong. You fear that you might be slowly going insane. The events of the evening so far have left you certainly not unshaken. Somewhere behind the staircase, a mouse patters off, the thread of its small paws echoing in the empty space. You jump, quite highly. Starting to feel slightly light-headed, you take a few, deep breaths. You swear you can practically hear your nerves shattering if you listen closely enough. Why is this happening to you? TAP TAP TAP You must have been mistaken. You wish, you wish fiercely that you were mistaken. That infernal tapping, that dreadful noise that has tormented you this evening has returned. As its echo resonates throughout your mind, your gaze turns towards the closed library door at the top of your staircase. Though seemingly left untouched, you know that behind it is the beast, the demon that has been mocking you this entire evening. Or (you almost don't dare to wish it) might it be Lenore, trying to grab your attention? Surely she couldn't, surely you didn't just see her, or what remains of her. Surely, it is the delusion of your mind that is leading you to wish, to vehemently wish, such impossible thoughts. Then again, are you willing to risk finding out? While you are contemplating moving back to your library, you hear the sound of creaking floorboards in the living room. 'Tis probably the settling of your ancient house, or the soft patter of the mouse you heard earlier. But then again, you heard a similar sound in the smoke room just moments earlier. Then again, why should you stay here, in this house of sadness and pain? You remember that you are standing inside the hallway, and that the front door is just behind you. Why should you stay here, tormented by the demons in your mind, if you can escape them quite easily? Surely, if you come back tomorrow, peace and quiet will have returned? As you stand in the dimly illuminated hallway, you feel your fingers twitch slightly. You can't take much more of the night's horrors, you are afraid. It is just too much. With a pounding heart, and shaking legs, you make your decision about where to go next. > You run Away With a loud 'Thump', you pull the front door shut behind you. Your heart pounding in your chest, the adrenaline ringing in your ears, you try to get away as quickly as possible. Without looking back, you make your way through the snowy wasteland that was once your driveway. In your head, the name of Lenore keeps echoing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. You don't know where your headed, you don't know how long you will stay on the run, but you do know that you're never setting a foot in your house again. ---- The white walls of your room are spinning around you. A soft, high-pitched laughter escapes from your mouth. You feel woozy, unable to focus clearly on your surroundings. Through the fogginess of your brain, you faintly register your arms being held in an uncomfortable position, but you cannot move them. The ground feels weird, soft, almost squishy. A strange, metallic taste is in your mouth. In the distance, you can hear someone muttering a word: 'Lenore'. Never stopping, always repeating that single word: 'Lenore, Lenore, Lenore, Lenore, Lenore', as if it were a mantra to an unseen goddess. With a shock, you recognise the voice as your own. Somewhere besides you, you hear a door open. Your vision stabilises briefly enough to see a man, dressed as a doctor, enter. You feel your mouth opening, not by your own accord, and notice some small objects being forced down your throat. The metallic taste appears stronger. Though your vision stabilises. Stabilises, and softly fades to black. Before you know it, you fall asleep on the soft, squishy floor. In your dreams, you are once more visited by Lenore. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Back in the hallway, you look around you. The pale light of the Winter's moon is partially obstructed by clouds, and in its shifting light, your empty house seems grim and ghastly. The portraits on the walls, those of your forefathers, appear to look at you with dead eyes, following your every move. Somewhere in the distance, you can hear the creaking and groaning of your ancient house. You still can't shake that shiver from your spine, as if a sliver of ice has lodged itself inside it. Trying to expel the ghostly image of Lenore from your mind, you notice the hairs on your arms start to stand upright. This is wrong, this is so very, very wrong. You fear that you might be slowly going insane. The events of the evening so far have left you certainly not unshaken. Somewhere behind the staircase, a mouse patters off, the thread of its small paws echoing in the empty space. You jump, quite highly. Starting to feel slightly light-headed, you take a few, deep breaths. You swear you can practically hear your nerves shattering if you listen closely enough. Why is this happening to you? TAP TAP TAP You must have been mistaken. You wish, you wish fiercely that you were mistaken. That infernal tapping, that dreadful noise that has tormented you this evening has returned. As its echo resonates throughout your mind, your gaze turns towards the closed library door at the top of your staircase. Though seemingly left untouched, you know that behind it is the beast, the demon that has been mocking you this entire evening. Or (you almost don't dare to wish it) might it be Lenore, trying to grab your attention? Surely she couldn't, surely you didn't just see her, or what remains of her. Surely, it is the delusion of your mind that is leading you to wish, to vehemently wish, such impossible thoughts. Then again, are you willing to risk finding out? While you are contemplating moving back to your library, you hear the sound of creaking floorboards in the living room. 'Tis probably the settling of your ancient house, or the soft patter of the mouse you heard earlier. But then again, you heard a similar sound in the smoke room just moments earlier. Then again, why should you stay here, in this house of sadness and pain? You remember that you are standing inside the hallway, and that the front door is just behind you. Why should you stay here, tormented by the demons in your mind, if you can escape them quite easily? Surely, if you come back tomorrow, peace and quiet will have returned? As you stand in the dimly illuminated hallway, you feel your fingers twitch slightly. You can't take much more of the night's horrors, you are afraid. It is just too much. With a pounding heart, and shaking legs, you make your decision about where to go next. > You investigate the Library A cold wind blows towards you as you open the library door. Though the embers in the hearth have long since died down, the pale light of the Winter's moon is enough to look around. The chamber looks empty and desolate in the bleak light, your tome lying undisturbed where you left it. Yet you immediately notice that something is wrong, the light, for one shouldn't be shining. Wooden shutters, though worn with age, are supposed to keep the night's darkness out, yet now lie broken on the floor amidst a field of splintered glass. Winter's icy breath blows freely within the ancient room. Looking around, your gaze falls upon the portrait of Lenore, hanging on your library wall. In the strange moonlight, she looks as if she is following you with her eyes, a sad, wane smile upon her lips. Lenore, has she been haunting you tonight? You are not sure, but her spirit, or at least her memories have kept you up this night. You might actually be going insane, but you also kind of want to be able to see her again. 'Nevermore.' A voice behind you calls out in response to your thoughts, that dreadful voice that beckoned you here, creaking with malice. You turn around, expecting an attack by your mysterious tormentor, yet the hallway behind you look grim and desolate. Then a single, feather, black as the darkest night, flutters down from above. As look up, up towards the pallid bust of Pallas high above your chamber door, you see a shadow perching there. A raven, a seemingly normal raven, is perched above the placid bust of Pallas. Yet while you look at him, he stares back with a gaze containing a bottomless abyss. Prickles run up your spine, and icy tendrils grasp at your mind's defences. You are tired, so very, very tired after this evening. And now, gazing into that black abyss, that demon's soul, you feel a wave of desperation overcome you. Lenore, the light of your life, your eternal love, has never felt so very far away. Not even when you buried her, not even when you thought you saw her earlier, have you felt such a profound sense of loss, and hopelessness. CAW CAW CAW The raven, not a flutter, never flitting, utters that dreadful sound that has haunted you tonight. As if its laughing at you, laughing at your loss, laughing at your powerlessness to overcome it. The malicious shadow of death that is haunting you. 'Heartless demon!' You cry out, 'Tormentor from the nightly shore! Have you no mercy for a poor man, mourning the mem'ry of his late Lenore? Take your break from out my chest, and take your form from off my door! Leave me here in peace this evening, let me forget my sweet Lenore.' Quoth the raven 'Nevermore'. Tears well up in your eyes, and your knees give way beneath you. The image of Lenore, once shining and radiant, has now turned into a mockery, a shadow of her former self. That rare and radiant, saintly-clasped maiden that you once loved, whose portrait still adorns your chamber wall, shall visit you nevermore. Her memory, haunting you like a shadow of despair. CAW CAW CAW The raven's cry sounds one last time, mocking you, laughing at your misery. That grim and beastly devil sitting above your chamber door. Snowflakes start to whirl around you, brought in by Winter's breath, through the gaping hole in your window. In the pale moonlight, the raven seems but a shadow against the pallid bust above your door. Yet you know that he is watching you, observing you, peering deep inside your soul. You meet its gaze once more, its piercing, dead gaze, but cannot find any remorse in it. Silently it watches, waiting tirelessly. For what, only the heavens know. Yet in that cold darkness, in those remorseless eyes, you see that whatever your actions, whatever you do in your life, whatever the cold, lonely future has in stall for you, this demon, this beast, this devil from the nightly realm, shall leave you never- nevermore.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Back in the hallway, you look around you. The pale light of the Winter's moon is partially obstructed by clouds, and in its shifting light, your empty house seems grim and ghastly. The portraits on the walls, those of your forefathers, appear to look at you with dead eyes, following your every move. Somewhere in the distance, you can hear the creaking and groaning of your ancient house. You still can't shake that shiver from your spine, as if a sliver of ice has lodged itself inside it. Trying to expel the ghostly image of Lenore from your mind, you notice the hairs on your arms start to stand upright. This is wrong, this is so very, very wrong. You fear that you might be slowly going insane. The events of the evening so far have left you certainly not unshaken. Somewhere behind the staircase, a mouse patters off, the thread of its small paws echoing in the empty space. You jump, quite highly. Starting to feel slightly light-headed, you take a few, deep breaths. You swear you can practically hear your nerves shattering if you listen closely enough. Why is this happening to you? TAP TAP TAP You must have been mistaken. You wish, you wish fiercely that you were mistaken. That infernal tapping, that dreadful noise that has tormented you this evening has returned. As its echo resonates throughout your mind, your gaze turns towards the closed library door at the top of your staircase. Though seemingly left untouched, you know that behind it is the beast, the demon that has been mocking you this entire evening. Or (you almost don't dare to wish it) might it be Lenore, trying to grab your attention? Surely she couldn't, surely you didn't just see her, or what remains of her. Surely, it is the delusion of your mind that is leading you to wish, to vehemently wish, such impossible thoughts. Then again, are you willing to risk finding out? While you are contemplating moving back to your library, you hear the sound of creaking floorboards in the living room. 'Tis probably the settling of your ancient house, or the soft patter of the mouse you heard earlier. But then again, you heard a similar sound in the smoke room just moments earlier. Then again, why should you stay here, in this house of sadness and pain? You remember that you are standing inside the hallway, and that the front door is just behind you. Why should you stay here, tormented by the demons in your mind, if you can escape them quite easily? Surely, if you come back tomorrow, peace and quiet will have returned? As you stand in the dimly illuminated hallway, you feel your fingers twitch slightly. You can't take much more of the night's horrors, you are afraid. It is just too much. With a pounding heart, and shaking legs, you make your decision about where to go next. > You investigate the Living Room As you enter the living room, you do not see anything out of the ordinary. The sitting corner around the fireplace, the dining table, the china cabinets, all are in their right places, though thoroughly caked with dust. Yet something does not feel right. Though the wind is howling outside, and snowflakes are clouding the windows, you do not feel cold. The Winter wind, though creeping through the cracks in the window frame, instead feels light a warm summer's breeze. Piano music starts playing softly, as if coming from a great distance. The old piano in the corner, however, has been untouched for months, and looks even worse. Slowly, the music is strengthening, coming into focus more and more clearly. It's a ragtime melody, stirring memories of a day so long ago. Then, suddenly, the snow in front of the windows starts clearing, vanishing in front of the bright sun. Your living room changes, shaking of its layers of dust and neglect, shining brightly in the sultry Spring heat. You can see flowers start blooming in a vase on the dining table, where flowers have not grown for quite some time, cobwebs vanish from the bookcases as if never there, and in the corner, besides one of the large windows, a woman is playing the piano, with a man standing behind her. Though unfamiliar at first, you recognise the couple with a shock. The man, standing proudly, his hands on the woman's shoulders, listening to the beautiful music, you recognise as yourself. Albeit a younger version of you, unshaken by a long, dreadful sorrow. The woman, entranced by the music, swaying softly on the tune of her own making, you recognise as Lenore. A smile graces her fair and radiant face. Tears start to well up in your eyes at the sight of this unexpectedly peaceful scene. Illuminated by the Spring sun through the large window, the couple almost looks otherworldly, an intimate scene depicting heavenly love between a man and a woman, a scene fit for an altar piece. Then clouds shift in front of the sun. The music dies. The man calls out in surprise, and you can see yourself stooping down, holding a lifeless Lenore in your hands. Her eyes are open, her chest is still softly swelling at the rhythm of her breathing, yet she is not conscious. Tears roll down your face, both of your own and that of your ghostly apparition. The man, you, is shouting now, calling for help, pleading for someone to come. Behind you, you hear a door open. Hurried footsteps come nearer. CAW CAW CAW The scene fades away into nothingness, and you're left looking at your old, neglected piano. Silence once more fills the room, broken by the periodic howling of the wind outside. A shadow flies past the snow-clouded window. In the middle of the cold, lonely room, you start crying as the memory of that sweet Spring day slowly fades away. > You continue... Back into the hallway stepping, wiping the tears from your face, you hear the sound of a breaking glass, and the fluttering of feathers, coming from your library upstairs. That beast, that demon who has been your tormentor this entire evening, is surely there. Yet despite your fear, even despite your curiosity, you feel compelled to go upstairs. Past the portraits of your pale and pallid ancestors, you tread steadily on the ancient oaken steps. Yet once you are upstairs, you do not know for sure if you should enter the library at all. Driven by memory, by the recollection of the events all those months ago, you know deep down inside that the library is not where this history ends. Instead, you imagine a light, shining softly, yet steadily behind the door of one of the bedrooms, Lenore's bedroom, the one that you visited not long ago. The one where you saw her, when she was still here. 'Nevermore.' The voice startles you, clear as water, yet creaking like ice. Appearing out of nowhere, it sounded like it was addressing you. Yet, as you look around you, all you can see is the eternal dance of dust and shadows, here in the darkness of the hallway. You gaze wanders back to the closed doors of your library behind you. A cold wind blows through the cracks, chilling your very being. A sliver of ice lodges itself in your spine as you contemplate your actions. In front of you, Lenore's bedroom looms, dark and forbidding like the rest of your house, yet a feeling deep inside of your heart urges you to go there; however, behind you, your library lies, your sacred sanctum where you have spent most of the past few months, now probably defiled by that infernal winged demon. Doubt besets you once more, but eventually, you decide to go to... <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Crouching down until you're knees are almost touching the floor, you creep towards the top of the stairs. Peeking down, the cavernous hallway seems dark and desolate save for a narrow streak of moonlight shining through the windows above the front door. Two doors, besides the front door, give access to two more chambers on the ground floor: the living room and the smoke room. And it is of this room, the smoke room, that the door remains open just a little bit, and just at the moment that you are peeking down into the hallway, a small piece of white fabric disappears through it. Though your heart is pounding in your chest and you knees are shaking visibly, you decide to brave your fears and descend the staircase. As soon as you put weight on the top step the staircase creaks and cracks, loud enough to shake your resolve and wake all the demons in hell itself. However, you decide to brave onwards. Step by step, creak by creak, you more or less succeed in descending the staircase safely. As your feet finally touch the stone tiles on the hallway's floor you let out a quick sigh of relief. As you survey your surroundings you wonder why you ever continued to live in a mansion that just screams 'HAUNTED'. An old chandelier, made suitable for electric lighting long ago, softly sways from the ceiling, its lights darkened. The faces of your ancestors stare blankly at you from their respective stately portraits which overlook the staircase you just descended. The grey moonlight which shines through the few windows around the grand, wooden, doors gives them an even more dead like pallor. The uneasy silence which envelops your home has not yet lifted, and yet you could swear that you hear floorboards cracking in the smoke room. This is, of course, a preposterous thought. You are all alone in this house, and have been for many months now. Who else could be wandering these halls? To still the beating of your heart, you think to yourself: 'Tis probably some rodent wandering in these darkened halls, sheltering from an animal or looking for food. P...' But before you finish your thoughts a cold winds blows through the crack in the doorway. Suddenly shivers run down your spine and you can feel your knees start to tremble once more. While fear starts to fill your mind once more, you decide to... > You enter the living room As you enter the living room, you do not see anything out of the ordinary. The sitting corner around the fireplace, the dining table, the china cabinets, all are in their right places, though thoroughly caked with dust. Yet something does not feel right. Though the wind is howling outside, and snowflakes are clouding the windows, you do not feel cold. The Winter wind, creeping through the cracks in the large window frames, chills you to the core. Outside, the snowflakes slowly start to cake the large windows. Once providing you with a view of your beautiful gardens, they now look out over a deserted and desolate landscape, fog and snow hiding everything from your eyes in the pale moonlight. While you are looking outside, you feel a tingle creeping up your spine, as if the shadows are watching you. Slowly, softly, you start to hear voices behind you. Slowly strengthening, they appear as if they are shouting. Thoroughly scared, you turn around. The living room has changed. Still dark, illuminated only by the pale moonlight and some sparse candles, it has shaken off its age. The atmosphere has changed as well, no longer freezing cold, but sultry, like a cool Spring evening. In front of you, two people have appeared, ghastly pale, and shimmering with an otherworldly light. A young man and woman, locked in a heavy argument. You recognise the woman as Lenore, the light of your life, your eternal love, yet her face is clouded by tears. The young man, surprisingly, you recognise as yourself, yet a younger version of you, not yet weighed down by devastating sadness and loss. Your face is twisted into a mask of wrath. 'Don't you dare lie to me, you cuccolding harlot!' You hear yourself scream. 'Tell me who that man was, tell me what he was doing here, in our house!'. Tearfully, choking on the words, Lenore replies the younger you: 'I told you already, he is an old acquaintance of mine. Please, my love, come back to your senses. You know how much I love you, you know...' 'Hold your tongue, lying serpent, don't lead me on with your lies any longer. You cannot deceive me, I know what happened here.' Sobbing harder and harder, Lenore can barely answer you; 'I swear... I swear my love. Y... You know me, you know I would never... never hurt you like this. Please, I beg you, you have to believe me.' Lenore desperately throws herself at the younger you, yet you push her away. Lenore flies backwards, and bangs her head against the dining table, a small splatter of blood appearing beneath her head. However, she has not lost consciousness, and tearfully, hiding her face in her hands, runs out of the room. You hear yourself shouting out in anger and despair, and see yourself sitting down at the table, sighing heavily. CAW CAW CAW The scene fades away into nothingness, and you're left looking at your old, neglected piano. Silence once more fills the room, broken by the periodic howling of the wind outside. A shadow flies past the snow-clouded window. In the middle of the cold, lonely room, you feel a dark shadow grip at your heart at the memory of that wretched day. The room grows darker as heavy clouds move in front of the moon. CAW CAW CAW That dreadful noise sounds once more, and you feel your nerves shattering. An illogical fear clouds your mind, and you run for the nearest door. > You continue... With your heart pounding in your chest, you pull the door closed behind you. Slowly, you slide down the door, knees trembling, until you firmly sitting on the ground, with your arms around your knees. You look around, and notice that in your frightened haste, you ran into the kitchen. Though it isn't very large, at least not for a mansion like yours, it still holds a few cupboards and cabinets, a couple of stoves and some sinks. An arrangement of kitchen knives adorns one of the walls, and trapdoors in the floor give access to the cold storage rooms below. Everything is as dusty and mouldy as the rest of the house. Yet the funny thing is, you cannot remember when the last time was you prepared food here, or even ate at all. CAW CAW CAW In the living room, you can hear that dreadful sound that drove you here in the first place. Yet now, while resounding within your ears, it also changes your surroundings. Dust and mould vanish in front of your eyes, and the smell of food assaults your nostrils, making your mouth water slightly. You stand up to examine your surroundings, yet the first thing you notice is a familiar shape standing in front of one of the stoves. In your hand, you spot a vial, filled with a clear liquid. Stirring into a pot with unknown contents, you slowly and deliberately empty the vial until there is not a single drop left. All the while, you look around you suspiciously, as if anticipating someone, or something, walking in on you. You put the vial back into the inner pocket of your jacket, just as you, the real you, hear a door behind you open. With a straight face, not a trace of surprise on it, the younger you addresses someone behind you: 'Ah, Alfred, I was wondering where you were. I see dinner is ready then? Excellent. As you might have noticed, the uhm... precarious situation between me and Lenore has not exactly improved, so she'll probably be eating in her quarters again.' A look of concern passes across the younger you's face. 'And please, Alfred, could you tell her I love her? Could you tell her I am begging her to come back to me.' CAW CAW CAW With a shock, you realise the kitchen has changed back to how it was, dusty and mouldy, and decidedly abandoned. However, in the corner of your eye, you can see a shadow shifting past the ceiling. A rain of feathers, each single one of them as black as the darkest night, rains down from above. Wings flutter above you, but within the darkness of the kitchen, you cannot spot the source. Then, a window in the kitchen's corner shatters, giving the Winter's gale free leave to thunder into the room. You see the knives on the walls start to rattle. From the ceiling, a raven drops down into your field of vision, as dark as the abyss, and looking at you with a gaze containing the depths of Tartarus. Tendrils of ice grasp at your mind, and the weakness in your knees starts to return. With your heart pounding in your throat, you cannot but stare at this winged shadow. Suddenly, it flies towards you. Its hypnotic spell broken, you feel control over your limbs returning to you. As quick as you can, you open the kitchen's door and run back to the living room. The raven, however, continues to pursue you with amazing speed, and you run through the room until you are back in the hallway, pulling the door closed behind you, and holding it closed with all your might. > You continue... Only when your knuckles start to turn white, and the cool, brass doorknob is warm and slippery from your sweaty hands, you dare to let go. The hallway looks as desolate as when you last set foot in it, the portraits of your ancestors still staring at you with icy intent. Behind you, in the living room, you can hear the sound of breaking glass, and, moments later, you hear the same sound upstairs, in your library. That beast, that demon who has been your tormentor this entire evening, is surely there. Yet despite your fear, even despite your curiosity, you feel compelled to go upstairs. An icy grip envelops your heart, and practically drives you to move up the stairs, and enter your library. Yet, a shimmer of defiance is still present within the foggy depths of your mind. A rational fear, a fear of everything inside your house, everything you've encountered this evening. Though the staircase looms in front of you, you are aware of the large, oaken front door behind you. Why should you stay in this house of sadness and fear? Why would you give in to the demons that are tormenting you, while an option of freedom is so close within your reach? The icy grip of fear still firmly holding your heart, your knees trembling at the thought of even setting one more step, you finally make a decision to... <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Softly whispering, but slowly strengthening, you call into the black abyss: Sir, or madam, I implore your forgiveness. I was napping while reading a book and so gently came your rapping that I scarce was sure I heard you. Please good sir, or madam, make yourself known.' You look around once more, but no further sounds can be heard coming from the shadows. Strange thoughts and dreams circle through your mind, but still the darkness gives no token. Wary, you whisper with a trembling voice: 'Lenore?' Silence follows, but an echo murmurs back this one word: 'Lenore!' As you turn to return to the chamber, you once more feel an ominous tingling in your spine. With a beating heart you once more survey your surroundings. The hallway is the same as before, although the dance of dust and shadow has ended, and yet you can't shake of the feeling that someone, or something, is watching you. Suddenly the silence is broken by a ghastly noise, that same noise that led you into this darkness. TAP TAP TAP This time it is louder than the last. As your heart once more tries to leap out of your chest, you can feel the air grow colder. Shaking and shivering you try to determine the origin of that dreadful noise. Warily, you turn your head, convinced that an unknown assailant can reveal itself at any moment. Yet only shadows surround you. Anxiously, you keep repeating to yourself: 'There's nothing here but shadows and dust. Tis a leaking pipe that's making that noise, that it is and nothing more.' Feeling slightly more secure you are about to return to the library, just as the eerie sound returns once more. TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP Startled, you look around and you notice the door near the end of the hallway. It's there were the origin of that noise resides. As you continue to gaze upon it, the doorknob begins to rattle, turned by an invisible hand, and the tapping sound strengthens. > You scared, yet inquisitive, you approach the energetic door. With every step you take the rattling gets louder, yet carefully, step by step, you shuffle to the door. Small clouds of dust erupt from the carpet with every carefully placed step, leaving behind a fleeting echo of your path through this endless void. A floorboard creeks as you walk across it, its thundering sound resonating off the windowless walls, mingling together with the ghastly rattling. Finally, with your heart pounding in your chest, you reach the door. Even up close you can't see what's moving the knob, or what's tapping the door. Filled with fear and bursting with anxiety you extend your trembling hand towards the door. The closer you get, the louder the noise gets. But then, just as your clammy skin touches the cool brass, the noises stop altogether and a deadly silence falls over the shadowy hallway. You once more feel an ominous tingling at your neck, as if the shadows themselves are massing behind you, waiting for an opportunity to strike, and... You don't want to finish that thought. However, you can't help feeling that whatever's behind that door, you won't like it. Alone in the dark, you try to decide if you'd better...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The dead branches outside the large window rustle softy in the wind, whispering softly in the pallid light.. Pale snowflakes dance their ghastly dance before they fade away on the frozen ground. Shadows move silently over the floor as the full moon travels through the heavens. A grandfather clock calls nearly inaudible from the hallway, announcing the ghost hour with a faint 'DONG'. The ancient house around you creaks and crunches as if it's stirring in some deep sleep. Your mind barely registers your surroundings as you are sitting inside your comfortable chair. The library is almost completely engulfed by shadows, safe for the dying embers in the hearth next to you. Reading some dusty tome about knowledge which most people have already forgotten, you often forget that the house around you even exists. However, tonight you can't keep your eyes open. Nearly nodding, nearly napping you try to continue reading, but you notice you've already read the same line seven times over. With a sigh, you decide to give in and rest your eyes for a little while. Images from long forgotten times unfold themselves in front of your mind's eye. A garden in spring time. The morning sun shimmers on the surface of a blue lake. Two swans glide side by side near the water's edge. Pebbles crunch as a beautiful woman runs towards you. Wearing a plain white dress, with a skin like... TAP TAP TAP You are roughly awaken by a sudden tapping at your door. Desperately you try to cling on to your memories, but they fade away like shadows before the sun. With one foot still in Morpheus' realm you wonder if the noise was merely part of your dream. With a curt shrug you decide to return to your book, when suddenly... RAP RAP RAP Fear begins to wrap it's shadowy fingers around your heart. 'Tis just some visitor', you mutter to yourself, 'only this, and nothing more'. With a mind still firmly in sweet dream's grasp, but tempted by curiosity, and fear, you decide to... > You go back to sleep. You shrug you shoulders in weary disregard: 'Tis probably the creaking and groaning of the house around me. That it is, and nothing more.' With the rapping softly fading, and the tapping soon receding you once more feel yourself falling, floating, into swift dreams' embrace. The shadows on the floor, formless floating around the dying embers in the hearth, take on the forms of shades long since departed from this ancient house. In front of your mind's eye you find yourself in a bedroom, dimly illuminated by a roaring fire. Even though the wind is howling behind wooden shutters, you don't feel cold. Wandering around in the room, various items fleet past your eyes, too fast to focus completely, but slow enough to catch a glimpse: a dressing table, a snuff box, a bone comb, a fan, peacock feathers on a lady's hat, all fly past your mind's eye. Then, finally, your eye rests on an unexpected, intimate scene. In a corner of the room, drowning in a sea of pillows and blankets, lies a woman in her bed. Her pale skin and hollow eyes give her the appearance of one already dead. She feebly raises her hand towards a man sitting next to her. However, as he falls just outside the circle of light, cast by the now slowly dying fire, you are unable to make out his features. 'Promise me. Please promise me you won't forget. Promise me you'll CAW. Promise CAW. P... CAW' The scene before your eyes swiftly changes. The fire dies and the figures fade into darkness. The howling wind now turning even more violent as it beats and batters the cracking wooden shutters. CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW The tempest slowly but surely begins to rage indoors as well. From within the growing darkness an icy cold grabs hold of you. You scream, but you still feel yourself getting frozen in place, icy tendrils enveloping your faltering heart. Then, with a thundering crack, the shutters in front of the window give way. > You with a jolt you break free from dream's cruel embrace... Wildly flailing and heavily breathing, you find yourself upright in your chair. Quickly blinking, as to expel the image still lurking on your mind's eye, you manage to recompose yourself. And then you notice it: the dry, bone-chilling cold that haunted you in your dream. As snowflakes lazily drift past your eyes, you direct your gaze at the shutters in front of your windows, that are supposed to keep the dark winter outside. And there, on the floor, in front of the hollow framework that was once your window. You see the shattered remains of your shutters, lying broken in a pile of wood and glass. Sighing with relief you realise that that probably was the reason why your dreams turned sour. 'Ah, as even the titans of old slowly withered with age, so too this house must once fall apart. I only wish it chose a better season to do so...' And so you get up to clear away the remains of your dying house. But when you look closer at the wooden library floor, you notice something else, drifting in the snowy winter gale: a single feather, as black as the darkest night. CAW CAW CAW Your heart misses a beat at that ominous sound. You feel your spine tingling, writhing beneath your skin, as if the cold, winter's air has penetrated your very being. The flutter of wings sound above you, shifting rapidly from corner to corner within the shadows of the ceiling's darkness. As you gaze around you, you feel a further shift in the library's atmosphere. The large bookcases, guardians of ancient wisdom, now loom towering over your feeble self. The purple curtains by your windows, now silken sadly, uncertainly rustling in the icy breeze, fill your soul with an illogical terror, the likes you've never felt before. Above the mantle, the portrait of your love, ever soothing your restless soul, now stares at you with icy eyes, never breaking their attention. CAW CAW CAW That sound. That ominous, dreadful, mind-shattering sound that has been tormenting you, has returned. Even while covering your hands with your ears you cannot bar its dreadful echoes from your mind. Feeling the tendrils of madness tugging at the fringes of your soul, you despair. Why has this demon come to torment you? Is beast or devil flying around, lurking, luring you to the black abyss? CAW CAW CAW There it is again, clawing at your mind. Within the iron cage of your mind's despair, you barely register yourself falling to the floor. As the fog of madness starts to cloud your vision, you catch the last fleeting sensations of your surroundings. The hardwood floor beneath your knees. Icy snowflakes now turning your hair white. The tome your were reading now lying broken, spineless beside you. And high above you, the portrait of Lenore. ... Lenore? From within the ruins of your mind, a light glimmers. That name, Lenore, wakes something within you. A longing. A deep, insationable longing, fringed with sadness and desolation. Gathering the broken remnants of your mind, you focus on that image. That ghostly, sad, and shining image of your long abandoned love. Feeling a faint shadow of strength returning to your mind, you turn to your surroundings once more. Your library, your broken sanctuary, now defiled by that dreadful shade. In the corner of your eye, you see the painting of Lenore, smiling sadly, yet looking harshly upon you in the cold, winter's light. CAW CAW CAW This time your were expecting it, this time your were prepared. And when that dreadful sound assaults your senses once more, you feel...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|> > You start Story You were no stranger to Gotham. Early in your career as the Question your journalist job occasionally took you to the city of the damned, and you were sure to go out on nightly excursions to fight crime. What can you say? Old habits. Once you had a run in with the Dark Knight, though vigilantes don't operate in Gotham without doing so. Helped him take down Killer Croc, though he berated you. Called you hot-headed. Childish. Said you were only in it for the thrills. Being the young hotshot you were, you mouthed off at him, then parted ways. But you digress. What brought you to Gotham wasn't your job this time, it was a woman. The Huntress. Word on the street has it that she's in a bit of a bind concerning multiple murders seemingly committed by her. All the victims were reporters calling her a madwoman, a loose cannon, criticizing her. The one time you met her you didn't get the impression that she was the type to kill people for saying bad things about her; only criminals. Then again that one time you met her she nearly put an arrow right between your eyes. Either way, you're going to give her some help, clear her name... And maybe tell her about the fact that you have a little crush on her. She'd probably laugh in your face, but you're going to try. Hey, maybe helping her out will get you somewhere with that. ... And now you realize you've been mulling over what's happened and why you're here while staring at her apartment window. It wasn't hard to uncover her identity, Batman had deduced who she was a long time ago and kept it in his database. Once you broke into Nightwing's apartment and did a little digging into his computer (he should really consider changing his password to something other than his girlfriend's name), things were smooth sailing. She was Helena Bertinelli. Sole survivor of the Bertinelli family, once Gotham's top crime family before her entire family, save her, were wiped out in a series of hits. From what you can gather it influenced her to become the Huntress. Since then she's lived a normal life, away from her criminal roots, working as a teacher at Gotham Academy. None would suspect a mild-mannered middle school teacher in a bum apartment to be one of the deadliest vigilantes in Gotham City. It's the perfect facade. It's too early for her to head out as Huntress, no doubt she's still home. You hope she doesn't mind an unexpected visitor. > You continue The fire escape proves to be a useful thing. Slowly, you open her window, slipping in and shutting it quietly. You shove your hands into your pockets as you look around, pictures of various achievements in her life decorate the walls. Her graduating high school, then college, the latest a class photo from last year... Then you notice one picture that stands out. A picture of a man and a woman with a young girl and boy. You look closer at it. The girl and boy smile brightly at the camera, their brown eyes both full of life. The man and the woman smile as well, but they look... Strained. The woman's smile is forced. The man's grip on the woman's shoulder is too tight. This is a picture of Huntress with her family. Very clearly, her parents' marriage wasn't a happy one. Behind you comes the click of a loaded crossbow. "Who the hell ar- oh you've got to be kidding me..." You recognize her voice. "Huntress. Good to see you," you say, turning around to face her. She's just dressed in a tank top and shorts, and her skin is damp, evidence she just got out of the shower. You gulp slightly, imperceptibly. "Can't say the feeling's mutual," she replies, a scowl distorting her face, "what do you want?" "Heard you were having trouble. Framed for multiple murders," you say, walking into her living room and plopping down on the couch. Propping one leg up on top of the other, you open up your arms as if to show yourself off, "I'm here to help." "As if," she chuckles, "I don't need your help." "You don't have many friends left in town. None, if I hear correctly. Except for me. Try as you might to clear your name on your own, without help it'll all fall apart. That's where I come in. With my investigative talents and your combat training, we'll be able to clear your name in no time." She opens her mouth to protest, then sighs. "... Whatever. Let's get to work. I've got two leads." As she heads into the next room, she gestures for you to follow. You do. The room seems to be her bedroom. You're confused for a moment, until she presses a button hidden behind a layer of clothes in her closet, at which point a hidden room opens up. It's no Batcave or Fortress of Solitude, but it's what it needs to be: spare costume in one corner, monitoring station in another, punching bag in the third, and weapon rack in the last. To top it off, a table is set dead center, piles of notes on it. She grabs two folders crammed with papers and hands them to you. You read them over. All the papers inside are notebook papers, yanked out and on them sloppily written cryptic statements on her theories. One folder contains notes on the Penguin. She had put the villain away recently, no doubt he would want to frame her now that he's escaped once more. You look at her for her reasoning. "Penguin's a maniac. Anyone puts him away, he tries paying them back tenfold." Good point. The other folder contains notes on Gotham crime lord Santo Cassamento. This one seems a bit harder to pinpoint. You look up from the folder to her. She shrugs, "I've made an enemy out of the mob as Huntress, and as myself Cassamento holds a grudge against me for whatever reason. If he found out I was Huntress, he'd want to frame me, have me arrested and my identity revealed to the public. I'd be mince meat." She's smarter than you give her credit. "So what lead do we follow up on?" you ask. "Your choice. Both sound likely to me." Time to choose. > You follow the Penguin lead The Iceberg Lounge. It didn't make sense how it still got business despite the fact that it's been public knowledge for years that it's owned by a well-known supervillain and many of his illegal activities run through it. Perhaps it was just best not to question these things. Huntress looks down at the building, kneeling next to you. "So how do we play this, Q?" Now that's a good question. > You say "We play it quiet." "We play it quiet," you reply, "keep to the shadows. Knock out enemies if we have to, but otherwise, just avoid them at all costs." Huntress mulls this over, then nods. "Alright. Sounds good." She's about to grapple across the street to the Lounge when she realizes you don't have a grappling gun. Wordlessly, she tosses you a spare. "Keep it. I'm sure it'll look good on you," she laughs, before firing and being pulled to the Lounge. You pause, then follow shortly after. > The Lounge The three story arctic themed building was just as big on the inside as it was out. The club was currently closed down for 'renovations', though you knew better; Penguin had just escaped from prison, and he was more than likely getting back into the swing of things. This meant most under his payroll would be here while he heard how his operations were going. It would be packed, which meant the stealthy approach was definitely the smarter choice. Picking the lock on the back door, you and Huntress slip in, sticking close to the shadows. The path up to Cobblepot's office is straightforward, but there's two goons up ahead, blocking your forward path. What do you do? > You use your grappling hook to reach the rafters above them, advising Huntress to do the same. Wordlessly, you pull out your grappling hook, pointing out the rafters to Huntress. She looks at them, then nods. The two of you ascend to the rafters, continuing your way to Penguin's office and leaving the unsuspecting goons down below. "Good thinking, Q," Huntress says once you're out of earshot of the thugs. "All in a day's work," you reply, scratching the back of your head sheepishly. "The humble type?" She opens the door, shooting you a grin. "Hurm," you hum, following after her. > The Penguin's Office As you slip into the large office and look around, you almost let out an impressed whistle. Say what you will about the deformed supervillain, he has some taste when it comes to decoration. Huntress strides forward to Penguin's desk, the villain sitting in his chair which has its back to you. "Penguin," Huntress says, aiming her crossbow at the chair. "Turn around." The chair slowly swivels around, Penguin's beady eyes staring at the two of you as his face twists into a sneer. "Hm. Huntress. And... Some faceless guy in a Dick Tracy outfit." Ouch. "What is it you want?" "Answers," you say, stepping up to the desk as well. "Are you involved with the murders Huntress has been framed for?" "I'll have you know," Penguin begins, "that I don't have the slightest idea as to what you're talking about." "Cut the shit, Cobblepot," Huntress growls, aiming her crossbow right in between Penguin's eyes, "what do you know?" Penguin lets loose a chilling chuckle, "You do realize that if I cared to do so, I could call in one of my men and he could apprehend you? Or maybe I could call the police and say how I'm being attacked by a psychotic vigilante? And on the off chance you still decide to shoot me, you should realize my PR department could turn the public against you and tear you to shreds." Huntress's grip on the crossbow falters slightly, but she keeps it aimed at him. "Just tell me what you know, Cobblepot." "Threats will do you no good." "Tell the truth, Penguin. Or I'm going to step in," you threaten, looming over him menacingly. He looks up at you, shuddering almost imperceptibly. "I am telling the truth. I don't know anything about those frames. Now would you get out of my office? I have work to do." Smug as he sounds, he's not bullshitting you. At least that's what your gut is telling you. Huntress prepares to let loose a bolt, but you stop her by placing a hand on her shoulder. You feel her tense up slightly. "Huntress. Relax. He's telling the truth. I can tell." Her finger tightens slightly... Then she lowers the crossbow. "Fine. We're done here." She approaches Penguin, bringing her crossbow down hard on his face and knocking him out. The two of you head out the window. > You continue A few blocks away from the Iceberg Lounge, you and Huntress stop for a chat. "Hrm. For a second there, I thought you were going to kill him," you joke, hoping to ease the tension. She looks offended, "What, are you believing the rumors now?" You shake your head, "Just seems like he pissed you off. You really thought he was the guy who framed you?" Huntress pauses, then sighs herself. "Yeah..." You place a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry. We still have to check out Cassamento, I'm sure he's the one." She looks to where your eyes should be, smiling. "... Thanks for the help, Q." "Don't mention it. Us outcasts have to stick together," you joke, eliciting a laugh from her. Playfully, she slugs your shoulder. "Alright, comedian. We have to go see Cassamento." > You continue Santo Cassamento lived life grandly. Just outside of Gotham he owned a mansion, not too far from Wayne Manor, where he had practically an army of butlers, maids, chefs, the works. Not surprising, considering his line of work. As you approach the crime lord's mansion, you can tell Huntress feels sickened by being anywhere near it. The two of you sneak past guards set up, you couldn't take them even if you wanted to, they had guns, and you didn't. Sure, Huntress had her crossbow, but in the time it took her to reload it she'd already be riddled with lead. Instead, you stick to the bushes and shadows, until you get to a second story study. There's Cassamento, lounging around reading Oedipus Rex. Huntress glares at him. "Let me go in alone," she hisses. "I'll handle this." > You say "Alright." You nod slowly. "Alright," you say, and she looks at you in surprise and... Disappointment? "... Okay. I'll go." With those words, Huntress opens the window and steps in, closing it behind her. You can't hear her conversation with Cassamento, though you watch to ensure she doesn't do anything rash. For a while they just talk, Huntress clearly angry. Cassamento seems calm, smug. Like he's got her under his thumb. Huntress leaves the room scowling not long after she entered, you double check to make sure Cassamento is still alive, and sure enough he is, back to reading his book. "What were you talking about?" "I'll tell you about it in a bit. Let's just get out of here, I feel like I'm gonna throw up." You nod in agreement, and the two of you head back to the city. > You continue The night ends with you and Huntress returning to the latter's apartment, no where else to go. You're out of leads. This isn't good. "There's something we're missing, Q," Huntress says, pacing back and forth through he living room as she fiddles with the string of her unloaded crossbow, "I can just tell." "Hrm. Maybe. We should look over the evidence again, may- hold on," you cut yourself off, noticing something outside through the window. "What is it?" Huntress asks, looking out the window as well. "A man. He's watching the apartment," you reply, staring down at him. Yes, he's definitely watching the apartment. "I'll take care of this." With those words, you head out of the apartment and make your way to the roof. Utilizing your grappling hook, you head to the building across the street, and into the alley where the man resides. > You continue This guy doesn't know what the hell he's doing. He's trying to make himself hard to spot, but he sticks out like a sore thumb; any passerby who saw a guy trying not be seen at the mouth of an alley wouldn't exactly think he's a law-abiding citizen. Whatever the case, he's watching Huntress's apartment, and you want to find out why. "Excuse me," you say, approaching him. He turns around, and his face twists into bug-eyed horror when he sees you. "You wouldn't know where I could get a trim and a shave?" You slam his head into the brick wall, him slumping down but still conscious. The poor sap is petrified. "Y-your face! What h-happened to your f-f-face!?" "Overdosed on acne cream." You yank him up by his collar, glaring at him with non-existent eyes. "Why are you watching Helena Bertinelli's apartment?" "W-who?" You drop him, then grab his left pinkie finger and yank it down. *CRA-CACK* He screams in sheer agony. "I ask again: why are you watching Helena Bertinelli's apartment?" "I-I was hired to watch her! I'm a private investigator!" "Hired by who?" "I dunno man, just some gu-" You grab his ring finger. His story quickly changes. "I-it was a man named Panessa! Tomaso Panessa!" That name. It's familiar. "Thanks for the information." You kick him in the face, heading back into the apartment. > You continue You return to the apartment, Huntress there waiting for you. "So? Who was he?" "Private eye, hired to keep a watch on you. He gave me a name. Tomaso Panessa." At this, Huntress's eyes widen. "You know him?" "... He's my uncle." "Uncle? Why would your uncle want to spy on you?" "I don't know. But I'm going to find out why." "Correction: we're going to find out why." ----- That's how you found yourself at a banquet two days later. Luckily, Huntress', or rather, Helena's cousin and Tomaso's son, Nino Panessa, was getting married. She didn't plan on attending, but this new development changed those plans. The wedding was being held outside the Panessa Manor by Tomaso, so it would be the perfect chance to snoop around inside while everyone was busy. Helena brought you along as her plus one. Although hesitant to reveal your identity to her, you agreed to come along out of costume. The two of you sit at a table off to the side, you scanning the guests behind mirrored shades. Everyone here has ties to organized crime. You feel out of place, not only because of your obvious disgust for criminals, but also because of the fact that you're the only person who isn't Italian. Your ginger characteristics have caused a few stares to be cast at your table, judging both yourself and Helena. "I'll go check the house out, you stay here to avoid rousing any suspicion," you whisper to her, standing up. "Be careful, Q," Helena replies, and watches you go. It was easy enough to slip into the mansion through the kitchen entrance, left open for the servers to come in and out. You'll have to be quiet, you can't just rush in, not for this. You slip into the manor proper. It's bigger than anything you've ever seen, beating out even Mayor Fermin's mansion back in Hub City (well, before it got burnt down, that is). There must be a million rooms in the place. But you know that the place you're looking for: Tomaso's study on the third floor where he keeps his computer, and by extension all of his information regarding his activities. The only problem is Huntress didn't tell you where it was beyond the third floor. It'll be a guessing game from there. You reach the third floor using the servants' stairwell without any interruptions. There's no one here, at least there shouldn't be. Now you just have to find out which door the study is behind. Thankfully, there are only three. > You check the first door, to your left. When you enter you find a bedroom, king-sized bed with velvet sheets in the center. There's a large painting on the wall of a man and a woman: Tomaso and his wife. This room should be theirs. Either way, it's not the study. Nothing for you here. > You go back to the hallway. As you leave the room, you see a man in a black suit and tie wearing shades. You see a gun at his side. A guard. He spots you and pulls out his gun, shouts at you to stay where you are. You don't listen. You run forward, zigzagging around so he can't get a clear shot. He doesn't try, instead dropping the gun and pulling out a knife when you get close. > You punch at his throat. You try to punch at his throat, but he's faster than you, dodging and slashing your arm. Hissing, you clutch at your wound, and he takes the pause to plunge his knife right into your chest. It all goes black as he twists the blade. You're Dead!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you leave the room, you see a man in a black suit and tie wearing shades. You see a gun at his side. A guard. He spots you and pulls out his gun, shouts at you to stay where you are. You don't listen. You run forward, zigzagging around so he can't get a clear shot. He doesn't try, instead dropping the gun and pulling out a knife when you get close. > You sweep his legs out from under him. You duck when you get close to him, sweeping his legs out from under him. He drops the knife and it goes skidding down the hall, but before you can knock him out he jumps back up and leaps away from you, taking a fighting stance. Likewise, you get up and take a fighting stance. He throws a punch. > You duck forward, throw an uppercut. You duck out of the way of the punch, sending your fist right into his chin, knocking him off his feet. You send a palm right into his nose, breaking it and sending him into unconsciousness. Shaking your head, you enter the closest door, the one on the right. > You continue You enter the room. It's the study. Tomaso's laptop is there on a desk right in the middle, not even shut. Silly man. You take a seat and dive into his database. There are reports for each month for the last eight years, presumably since he got the laptop. There's also a folder labeled 'Huntress'. You open it up, and read the latest document... Your eyes widen at what you find. The bastard figured out that Huntress and Helena were one and the same, and hired a PI to spy on her to see if she heads out as Huntress so he could know a good opportunity to frame her once more. He's behind it all. Shaking your head, you close the windows and head out of the room. > You continue You head back to your table and tell Helena that you'll fill her in when the two of you leave. Nino and his bride say their vows, then kiss at the altar. The dances start. You consider asking Helena to dance. > Down the rest of your wine- it's liquid courage -and ask. "Do you want to dance?" you ask after a moment, and she looks at you in surprise. You cringe inwardly as soon as you ask the question, sure she's going to say no. She smiles at you. "Of course. Hope you can keep up." Stunned, you follow her. "Just warning you, I'm not too sure how to dance," you say calmly. Inside though, you're terrified, your head running through all the worst case scenarios. Helena merely laughs. "Here, I'll show you," she grabs your hands, places one in hers and raises it up to your shoulders then places the other on the small of her back. Her other hand goes to your back. "Now we just kind of sway around and spin slowly," she demonstrates, you following her lead. It's the best time you've had in years. After you're done, the two of you leave the wedding with the crowd. > Back At The Apartment The two of you arrive back at the apartment. The sun sets, casting Gotham in an ominous orange glow; promising that this night, like every other night, will not be a pleasant one. You sit Helena down to explain what you found. When you're finished, she looks shocked. "How could Tomaso find out that I'm Huntress? It's impossible." "At a guess," you begin, "you had a run-in with him and he managed to recognize you through your voice, your eyes, or something similar. Have you had a run-in with him?" "... I did, a year ago. Fuck, I can't believe it... And he's behind the murders too?" You just nod. "But why?" "That, I don't know. We'll have to interrogate him." Helena just shakes her head, "I dunno, Q, I-" "Vic," you say. "Huh?" she asks, looking confused. "My name is Vic." "... Okay, but I dunno, Vic. I... Just want to process this. Mind if I stay in tonight?" You nod your head, "Sure thing..." > You say "... I'll just patrol around town." The night is cold, and you tighten your coat around yourself. Looks like even Hell freezes over in the wintertime. Behind you, you hear the swish of a cape. You turn around. The Dark Knight himself stands before you. "Question," he begins, "what are you doing in Gotham?" "Batman," you begin, sarcasm dripping in your tone, "Yes, I'm doing fine, how are you?" "What are you doing in Gotham?" Batman repeats, glaring at you. "Helping out Huntress," you reply, sticking your hands in your pockets, "since you won't." "She's a maniac, Question," Batman states as though it were fact, "she can't be trusted." "She can. I know she can. She's not the type to just kill civilians for badmouthing her, contrary to your beliefs." "Look past your attraction to her. You'll see that she's not what you think she is." "I am looking past it. You're just not looking past what she did when Gotham was a hot zone all those years ago. Desperate times call for desperate measures, Batman. She did what she had to." "Just like you did, when you killed that man during your time in South America?" "... No. That was just a matter of wanting to kill." "You see yourself in her, don't you?" You stay quiet. "She can't be saved, Sage. Just leave all this behind." You try to formulate a response, and by the time you do, he's already gone. You head back to Helena's apartment and call it a night. > The Next Night You and Huntress stand on a building, her a good few feet away from you looking down at the laundromat across the street. Tomaso Panessa used the laundromat as a front for his hijacking operations, and was holding a meeting with his top guys in that department for his monthly reports. "Ready to kick some ass, Q?" she asks, grinning at you. "Ready as I'll ever be," you reply. The two of you grapple over to the building, entering through the back door to avoid rousing any suspicion. There's a guy in the hallway leading to the meeting room, presumably to guard it. You use your grappling hook to take his shotgun away while Huntress runs up to him and delivers a cross punch right to the jaw. He's out for the count after that. The two of you open the door. > You continue When you enter the room you smell death; the stench of rotting corpses having already gone through rigor mortis. You look and see Tomaso Panessa and his men dead. Huntress clicks her tongue in disgust at the sight. Sticking out of Panessa's chest is a crossbow bolt, identical to the ones she uses. "... It wasn't him, was it?" she asks. "... No. It can't be. He wouldn't kill himself just to spite you." "So what do we do now, Q?" "... We find out who did it. C'mon." With your words, the two of you head off into the night. > You continue You dispatch a hitman with the swing of a baseball bat to his head, the wooden piece of sports equipment breaking in half off of his thick skull. Huntress tosses you a piece of pipe to replace your bat, and you catch it, voicing your thanks before you face off with another hitman. He's a big, burly guy; he's so large it seems like this piece of pipe will barely do anything to him. The behemoth grins down at you, cracking his knuckles. > You crotch shot! You swing forward, the pipe going in an upward arc before ending in between his legs. Grinning slightly when you see pain make itself known on his face, it takes all of your willpower to keep yourself from laughing when he falls to his knees and fondles his manhood. "Batter," you swing the pipe into his face, "up!" He goes down, but it takes a few more hits before he's unconscious. Even then, you throw in another hit or two, just in case. Another hitman tries to ambush you from the back! > You twist around quickly and throw your pipe at him! You twist around quickly and throw your pipe, but he dodges! You barely have time to think that his reflexes are inhuman before he slices your throat wide open with a katana, blood spurting from your neck as you fall to the ground. The life leaves your body, and the last thing you hear before it goes black is Huntress screaming your name. You're Dead!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You swing forward, the pipe going in an upward arc before ending in between his legs. Grinning slightly when you see pain make itself known on his face, it takes all of your willpower to keep yourself from laughing when he falls to his knees and fondles his manhood. "Batter," you swing the pipe into his face, "up!" He goes down, but it takes a few more hits before he's unconscious. Even then, you throw in another hit or two, just in case. Another hitman tries to ambush you from the back! > You wait until he's up close, then hit him with your pipe! As soon as you hear his footsteps right on top of you, you twist around, swinging your pipe right into his arm as he attempts to pull a katana out from a sheath at his side. You hear a nasty crack as the arm breaks, before swinging the pipe into his side. He falls to the ground, and you give his head a quick stomp to make sure that he stays that way. Huntress finishes up with her batch. You toss the pipe and head out, getting the hell out of this warehouse before more goons show up. > You continue It's been a week. A week of fighting every night. Nino Panessa rose to the role of Don of the Panessa family following his father's death. His first order of business: releasing a bounty of 500,000 dollars to the person who brings him Huntress's head. Since then, you've had to fight off innumerous hitmen during your nightly escapades to uncover the person framing Huntress. Just now was one of those times. The two of you make your way back to her apartment. "What was that, third time tonight?" Huntress asks as she removes her mask. "Just about," you reply, releasing the adhesive gas and removing your mask. "Those guys though, they were better than the schnooks they've been sending after you in the last week. They're upping their game." "Doesn't mean we can't take them." She begins to head into the bathroom. "I'm gonna take a shower, see you in a bit, Q." You nod in reply, taking a seat on the couch. > You continue As she showers, you think about how things have been going between the two of you. It's all going alright. The two of you are friends, and while you wish it could be more than that, you're happy for what you have. Hopefully when this is all over you'll be close enough to confess your feelings and for her to accept. Huntress steps out of the bathroom a few minutes after you finish up your bit of self reflection. She grins when she sees you. "C'mon, Vic. Let's get to work." Nodding, you stand up and follow after her. > You continue The two of you enter her secret room through her bedroom, like you have so many times over the course of the week. With Tomaso Panessa dead, you're not sure exactly who is behind the murders, or if it's even connected to the mob at all. Yourself and Huntress have been tracking leads, however, and with the information you uncovered tonight it's time to make your move. "Alright Vic," she says, leaning against the wall, "We found out that Cassamento is taking over some of Panessa's operations now that Tomaso's dead. This can't be a coincidence," she approaches the table. "Right. It all leads back to Cassamento. We have to find out what he knows. He might've been the guy behind it after all, leading us on a cat and mouse chase," you reply. "Exactly. So how do you want to do this?" > You say "We raid his mansion." The next night finds you raiding Cassamento's manor. Huntress will take one path through the front; you'll take the back, through the hedge maze and into the manor proper. The two of you will meet up at Cassamento's study after you've taken out all the guards in your path. Guards patrol the hedge maze, presumably so they can make sure no one is trying to sneak through it, like you currently are. You've got to take out every one of the rat bastards. Better get started, eh? How do you want to play this? > You use the firecrackers you brought along; lure them to you, then take them out. Pulling out the bundle of firecrackers and your zippo, you light the fuse, tossing them just ahead of you and shrinking into the hedges to hide. The firecrackers go off; you hear curses, exclamations of surprise, all throughout the maze. Then marching footsteps. Showtime. When they all converge on your position, you leap out, slamming your fist into one's face and breaking his nose. He falls to the ground, and as he does so you grab his assault rifle, swinging it around into another's head and knocking him into the hedges. You pull out your grappling gun and aim at another, firing; your impromptu harpoon gun doesn't kill him, but it pierces his body armor, and you pull him forward and slam the butt of the rifle into his face. There's more coming. You crack your neck, sighing. This is gonna be loud and nasty. > You continue 8 minutes later... You finish breaking the poor son of a bitch's arm, ramming an elbow into his face and sending him into blissful unconsciousness. That's gonna hurt when he wakes up in the morning. Covered in the blood of your opponents, you continue on to the manor, confident all the bastards on your side are taken care of. The manor is just like how you remember it: large, foreboding. As you approach, you can tell this is the end of your quest. Cassamento is behind it all. Call it intuition. You slip in through the backdoor. > You continue The backdoor of the mansion leads into the dining room. Hands in your trench coat pockets, you continue to walk, keeping an eye out for any danger. And it is danger you find, in the form of a guard patrolling the hallway leading to the stairwell. He only has a baton on him, no pistol from what you see. Just down and dirty brawling with him, it seems. Alternatively, you can avoid him entirely. > You take him out. Your loafers clack upon the floor as you run up to him, and he turns around to meet a punch to the face. He stumbles, pulling out his baton and swinging it at you. > You leap out of the way. You jump back, avoiding the baton narrowly and delivering a kick to his left leg. It breaks, and he falls to the ground, clutching at it and screaming at the top of his lungs. Feeling pity for him (though mostly to avoid his screaming alerting any nearby guards), you grab his baton and knock him out. You drop the baton and continue onward. > You upstairs You head upstairs, eventually reaching Cassamento's study. But he isn't there. But what you do find is an atom bomb. Cassamento. You old son of a bitch. It's a laptop, almost identical to Tomaso Panessa's. Except this one has a password on it. You begin to hack in, eventually discovering that the password is Nino. The laptop you found wasn't Tomaso's. It was a fake. In this you find the exact same documents, nix the one detailing Tomaso's hiring of the PI to spy on Huntress. It all falls into place. Cassamento hired the PI, gave him Tomaso's name so you'd go after him. Replaced the laptop in the study with a double. This was all part of a master plan of his to topple Huntress. But why? Why go through all the trouble just for her? You dig deeper. Deep within the files of the computer, you found a photograph of a man and a woman, no doubt about to engage in, er, 'physical activities'. It was probably a photo taken by the FBI during investigations into Cassamento that he managed to get a hold of. You recognize the man as Cassamento, though much, much younger. The woman you also recognize, but you don't remember from where... Then it hits you. The photograph in Huntress's apartment. The woman. Her mother. Cassamento was seeing Huntress's mother. .... And you thought the last bit of information was a bombshell. Then you hear a scream from the lower levels of the mansion, it's faint but it still sends a chill up your spine. Dear God, he has her. Huntress. Helena. Your Helena. You take off in a sprint to the basement. > You continue The lower level of Cassamento's mansion reeks of blood and the strong smell of industrial grade acid. This is where people are taken to to die. Hopefully Helena is alright. You can only pray at this moment. There are too many guards and too little nooks to hide in to do this quietly. All you can do is head in fast and loud. There is your first guard right there. > You snap his neck; now isn't the time to take chances. His back is too you, and you creep him up to him slowly, like a leopard ambushing its prey. Quickly you rise up to him and break his neck, a quiet snap not leaving the vicinity. He drops to the floor. You take his gun. From there it's cold, bloody slaughter. You've got to kill every motherfucker you come across. You are death incarnate, and you've come to claim their souls. Oh, sure, you keep a few alive; but only for a few moments, and in the first three cases it's because they wouldn't tell you where Cassamento is. The fourth one, though, he knows. He tells you. And then you leave his corpse slumped against a wall. > You continue You kick in the door, seeing Cassamento standing over a console and Helena dangling over an acid pool from a rope. For a moment you think of secret agents movies and the ridiculous traps the villains use to dispatch the hero, but this thinking is cut off as you dodge bullets. There's only one guard here. You aim your rifle and fire, the contents of his head splattering across the concrete ground. Cassamento backs away slowly from you as you approach, eyes wide with fear. You relish in it. He's right to be afraid of you. You fire once, twice, three times into his chest, and he falls over, dead as a doornail. Operating the crane, you move Helena out of the way of the pit and lower her to the platform with the console. She's passed out, no doubt from fear. You pick her up and carry her out of the mansion. > The End A Week Later... You find yourself on the express train out of Gotham, eyes cold and mouth quirked into an unnerving smile. She rejected you. Said that you were changed. You weren't her Q anymore. That night when you brought her back to her apartment, having gathered the evidence to put Cassamento away, she looked you in the eyes and said that what she saw was different. And she didn't like it. Whatever. The dumb bitch just didn't know what she's missing out on. You're so much better now, free from your ridiculous attraction to her. What a hypocrite, rejecting you for being a killer when she's no better. That's why you just so happened to forget to send the evidence into the police; and instead sent the information about her identity to all the major crime families in Gotham. It didn't take too long for the news to get out about a local school teacher brutally shot and killed in her home. Helena Bertinelli. Your Helena. If you can't have her, no one else deserves to have her. Your mind has snapped. You'll never recover. BAD END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The lower level of Cassamento's mansion reeks of blood and the strong smell of industrial grade acid. This is where people are taken to to die. Hopefully Helena is alright. You can only pray at this moment. There are too many guards and too little nooks to hide in to do this quietly. All you can do is head in fast and loud. There is your first guard right there. > You knock him out; you don't kill anymore, even in these circumstances. No. Never again, you told yourself. Not after South America. His back is to you, which makes it easy to creep up on him. You rise up behind him and apply a chokehold. He struggles for a moment, but before long he's out. You drop his unconscious body and continue on. From there it's down and dirty brawling. Choking them out when they've got their back to you. Taking away guns and beating them something fierce when they don't. You interrogate a few, trying to get Cassamento's location; the first three don't talk, but the last one squeals. Not long after you find your way to the room. It's all or nothing, now. > You continue When you enter the room quietly, closing the door behind you with a soft click, the first thing you see is Cassamento standing on a platform with a console. He looks at Helena, who dangles over a pool of acid by a rope. There's a guard not too far away, but he's not going to be trouble; a chokehold puts him out for the count. "Cassamento," you say, heading up the stairs to the platform, "It's over. Let her go." "Hmph. I thought you'd be dead by now, you faceless freak," Cassamento spits, "But no matter. Now you get a front row seat to Huntress' death." He flips a switch on the button, and the rope snaps. Huntress begins to fall. > You try to wrangle her in with your grappling hook. The hook wraps around her. But you don't manage more than that as she falls into the pool of acid. The bright green liquid turns red with blood. Cassamento laughs. Soon you have him on the floor choking on his own teeth. By the time you're done with him his head looks more like a squashed cantaloupe than anything that's alive. > The End A Month Later... You find yourself perched upon a rooftop in Hub City, dead eyes staring blankly at the streets below and hands clenching and unclenching every so often. She's dead. You can't believe it. It seems as though the world has lost color. You've barely eaten in the last month. Food has lost taste. Your weight loss has been dramatic. She's dead. Cassamento paid for what he did. But you can't take any consolation in that. She's dead. In the distance a scream pierces the quiet of the night. You find a man holding a woman at gunpoint, forcing her to remove her clothing. He's dead. You continue your endless pursuit for justice, kept going by the thought of her. BAD END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>When you enter the room quietly, closing the door behind you with a soft click, the first thing you see is Cassamento standing on a platform with a console. He looks at Helena, who dangles over a pool of acid by a rope. There's a guard not too far away, but he's not going to be trouble; a chokehold puts him out for the count. "Cassamento," you say, heading up the stairs to the platform, "It's over. Let her go." "Hmph. I thought you'd be dead by now, you faceless freak," Cassamento spits, "But no matter. Now you get a front row seat to Huntress' death." He flips a switch on the button, and the rope snaps. Huntress begins to fall. > You use your grappling hook to swing to the other side of the room, grabbing her before she hits the acid. Thinking fast, you pull out your grappling hook and fire, the hook fitting snugly onto a rafter. You don't give yourself time to see if it's holding on tight, however, and instead swing into the path of the falling Huntress. You grab her and pull her back to the platform, to safety. Helena grunts slightly as she gets up. "Q. Thanks for the help." She looks at Cassamento. He backs away slowly. Wordlessly, she pulls out her crossbow and aims at him. > You stop her. She doesn't need to go down this path. "Huntress," you say, "Don't." "Why, Q? Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill him right here, right now?" Huntress spits, crossbow still leveled at Cassamento's head. "Killing one's enemies only lead to self destruction. Look at the path you were on. The reason no one trusted you was because of the fact that you killed. Eventually, you'll wind up alone, or dead. Is that really what you want?" She squeezes the trigger slightly... And lowers the crossbow. "No... That's not what I want at all." You sigh in relief. She takes a pair of handcuffs out of her utility belt, cuffing Cassamento to the railing. "Let me gather up evidence, then we can head back to your apartment." The two of you begin to walk away... > You continue ... But Huntress stops, and turns to the bound Cassamento. Her brown eyes meet his not dissimilar ones, staring into them. "... Why?" she begins, "Why did you do all this? What was there for you to gain?" "Besides the obvious?" Cassamento replies, chuckling bitterly. "I would've gained satisfaction." "I doubt you hate me that much just for interfering with your business." "You've no idea how much I utterly despise you," he glares at her. It's enough to make even you shudder. "Just tell me why," she says, aiming her crossbow at his head, "or I will kill you." "Put that weapon down, Helena Rosa," Cassamento begins, "before you accidentally kill your father." That gives the photo you found context. "... Liar. You're not my father." "Oh, but I am." He reaches his uncuffed hand into his back pocket, pulling out his wallet. After a moment of struggling he pulls out a photo, of himself and Huntress's mother. The two are obviously about to engage in sexual activity, Cassamento's hands fondling her breasts and her head craned to lay kisses along his neck. Huntress's eyes widen at the photograph. "Take a look at this, Helena." "... W-wh... What's happening in that photo?" "What do you think? We were about to conceive you." Huntress takes a moment to compose herself, then lets out a breath. "Even... Even if you are my father, that doesn't explain why you want me dead." "Because I hate you. I hate that you're alive while she is dead." "There was nothing you could do," Huntress interjects, "the man shot her, not m-" "Nonetheless, if it weren't for you, she'd be alive. If it weren't for you, that damn hitman wouldn't have misinterpreted my instructions..." "What?" "I hired the hit on your family. I told the man to spare the sister. I meant Tomaso's sister, your mother. He must have thought I meant you." He shakes his head, then stares at Huntress. "I had to avenge her." Before you can react she's aiming the crossbow at Cassamento again, and it's only at your touch that she falters before dropping it. Instead, she opts to kick him in the face, knocking him out. "Let's get the hell out of here," Huntress says. You nod, leaving the manor. > You continue You leave the manor with Huntress, dropping off a flash drive full of evidence from Cassamento's files from his own computer (nix the information on Huntress' identity). Soon enough, her name is cleared for those crimes. The next day, you tell Huntress, or rather Helena, that you're going to be heading back to Hub City before the week's out. She nods after a moment, then asks you: "Why did you do all this? Why'd you risk your neck to help me out?" This is the moment of truth... "Because I... Like you." You turn away, sure that you're going to face rejection. Her eyes widen in surprise. "Q... I'm... I'm sorry, but I don't feel that way about you." This is what you were expecting. Rejection. "Can we just be friends?" "Of course," you reply, smiling. "I'd like nothing better." > The End A Week Later... As the train makes its way to Hub City, you smile, content with your time spent in Gotham. Sure, you didn't get Huntress to dramatically declare her love for you, but really it all worked out in the end. And, now that you think about it, both of you are better off this way. Friends. Friends works. You take a look out the window, and see the Hub City skyline drawing closer. All you can think is how this was a hell of an adventure, and there are sure to be more on the way. There ain't no rest for the wicked, after all. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Thinking fast, you pull out your grappling hook and fire, the hook fitting snugly onto a rafter. You don't give yourself time to see if it's holding on tight, however, and instead swing into the path of the falling Huntress. You grab her and pull her back to the platform, to safety. Helena grunts slightly as she gets up. "Q. Thanks for the help." She looks at Cassamento. He backs away slowly. Wordlessly, she pulls out her crossbow and aims at him. > You don't. He's got what's coming to him. You don't even lift a finger. Not a minute later and the two of you leave, a crossbow bolt between Cassamento's eyes. You say nothing as you head back to her apartment. > The End A Week Later... You find yourself taking the train from Gotham back to Hub City, sighing in sadness. You couldn't save her from herself, either in spite of or because of the fact you tried. No longer do you feel attracted to her, now you just pity her. But she's dug her own grave. Still, you helped her out a bit with the evidence. Made sure to submit it all to the GCPD, without any information regarding Huntress' identity of course. That's the only help you'll offer her anymore. It's a damn shame. The Hub City skyline approaches. You're home. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your loafers clack upon the floor as you run up to him, and he turns around to meet a punch to the face. He stumbles, pulling out his baton and swinging it at you. > You disarm him. You get a good hold on his baton, though you fail to yank it out of his grasp; instead, he punches you right in the face, you falling back from the force of it. He beats on you with his baton, until you're out cold. The last thing you hear before consciousness fades is him talking on a walkie talkie, about how he got 'another one'. You wake up hovering over a pool of acid. This is just stereotypical. Breaking stereotypes, however, Cassamento doesn't reveal his master plan or anything and give you a chance to escape while he goes off on a filibuster. No, he just wishes you a good death, before he lowers you and a still unconscious Huntress into the pool. Your last thoughts are of her and how you wish things had went differently than this. You're Dead!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The backdoor of the mansion leads into the dining room. Hands in your trench coat pockets, you continue to walk, keeping an eye out for any danger. And it is danger you find, in the form of a guard patrolling the hallway leading to the stairwell. He only has a baton on him, no pistol from what you see. Just down and dirty brawling with him, it seems. Alternatively, you can avoid him entirely. > You wait until he passes by, then head up the stairs. You wait patiently for the guard to pass by. He continues his patrol, leaving the hallway, and you slip up the stairs to find Cassamento.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next night finds you raiding Cassamento's manor. Huntress will take one path through the front; you'll take the back, through the hedge maze and into the manor proper. The two of you will meet up at Cassamento's study after you've taken out all the guards in your path. Guards patrol the hedge maze, presumably so they can make sure no one is trying to sneak through it, like you currently are. You've got to take out every one of the rat bastards. Better get started, eh? How do you want to play this? > You be quiet about it; sneak through the hedge maze and knock them out, one by one. You've got to play this quiet. Leading them all to you would just be suicide. Sticking to the shadows, you begin to dispatch the guards. Here's your first one. You leap out of the hedges and tackle him, covering his mouth. "Let me ask you a question," you hiss, "Do you know how easy it is to break bones when you're used to doing it? Here, let me show you." With those words you grab a finger and yank. It snaps like a toothpick. His screams are muffled by your hands. "Good night," you deliver a hard punch to his face, blood spewing out of his broken nose as his eyes roll back into his head. You continue on. This is gonna take a while to get them all one by one. > You continue 12 minutes later... You finish up knocking out the last one before he can scream. He continues to squirm even as you beat his nose in, but before long he's out, just like everyone else. You stand up and head to the mansion, confident all the bastards on your side are taken care of. The manor is just like how you remember it: large, foreboding. As you approach, you can tell this is the end of your quest. Cassamento is behind it all. Call it intuition. You slip in through the backdoor.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The two of you enter her secret room through her bedroom, like you have so many times over the course of the week. With Tomaso Panessa dead, you're not sure exactly who is behind the murders, or if it's even connected to the mob at all. Yourself and Huntress have been tracking leads, however, and with the information you uncovered tonight it's time to make your move. "Alright Vic," she says, leaning against the wall, "We found out that Cassamento is taking over some of Panessa's operations now that Tomaso's dead. This can't be a coincidence," she approaches the table. "Right. It all leads back to Cassamento. We have to find out what he knows. He might've been the guy behind it after all, leading us on a cat and mouse chase," you reply. "Exactly. So how do you want to do this?" > You say "We sneak in to talk to him like last time." The next night finds you raiding Cassamento's manor. Huntress will take one path through the front; you'll take the back, through the hedge maze and into the manor proper. The two of you will meet up at Cassamento's study after you've snuck past all the guards in your path. Guards patrol the hedge maze, presumably so they can make sure no one is trying to sneak through it, like you currently are. You've got to be quiet, alerting them will just mean bad things. > You dart quickly away from guards when you see them, tread quietly otherwise. This works well for a bit; that is, until you actually come across a guard. You accidentally step on a twig when darting away from one, he hears you and quickly turns around, finding you frozen like a deer in headlights. A quick burst from his rifle sends you into unending blackness. You're Dead!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next night finds you raiding Cassamento's manor. Huntress will take one path through the front; you'll take the back, through the hedge maze and into the manor proper. The two of you will meet up at Cassamento's study after you've snuck past all the guards in your path. Guards patrol the hedge maze, presumably so they can make sure no one is trying to sneak through it, like you currently are. You've got to be quiet, alerting them will just mean bad things. > You be slow and careful. Mindful of your surroundings. You tread through the hedge maze quietly, avoiding guards by hiding behind the hedges when you see them and being slow and careful otherwise. Before long, you find yourself in front of the mansion's backdoor, unscathed and with the guards none the wiser of your presence.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You dispatch a hitman with the swing of a baseball bat to his head, the wooden piece of sports equipment breaking in half off of his thick skull. Huntress tosses you a piece of pipe to replace your bat, and you catch it, voicing your thanks before you face off with another hitman. He's a big, burly guy; he's so large it seems like this piece of pipe will barely do anything to him. The behemoth grins down at you, cracking his knuckles. > You hit him under the jaw with the pipe! You swing the pipe in an upward arc, it ending in right under his jaw. Though his head snaps back, he looks back down, shaking it slightly before his grin intensifies. He grabs you by the neck with a hand that's damn near the size of your head. He begins to squeeze, you dropping the pipe as you begin to clutch at your neck, trying to free yourself from his grasp for air, air, sweet sweet air- Huntress hits him with a bolt to the shoulder from behind, and he shouts in pain, letting go of you. Catching your breath quickly, you jump up and slap your hands on both of his ears as hard as you can. He clutches at the sides of his head in agony, before you sweep his legs out from under him and knock him out with a few quick hits using the pipe. Another hitman tries to ambush you from the back!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The two of you arrive back at the apartment. The sun sets, casting Gotham in an ominous orange glow; promising that this night, like every other night, will not be a pleasant one. You sit Helena down to explain what you found. When you're finished, she looks shocked. "How could Tomaso find out that I'm Huntress? It's impossible." "At a guess," you begin, "you had a run-in with him and he managed to recognize you through your voice, your eyes, or something similar. Have you had a run-in with him?" "... I did, a year ago. Fuck, I can't believe it... And he's behind the murders too?" You just nod. "But why?" "That, I don't know. We'll have to interrogate him." Helena just shakes her head, "I dunno, Q, I-" "Vic," you say. "Huh?" she asks, looking confused. "My name is Vic." "... Okay, but I dunno, Vic. I... Just want to process this. Mind if I stay in tonight?" You nod your head, "Sure thing..." > You say "... Mind if I crash on the couch again?" She nods, "Not a problem. Good night." She heads into her room, and you spread out on the couch. You're out like a light in a few minutes.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You head back to your table and tell Helena that you'll fill her in when the two of you leave. Nino and his bride say their vows, then kiss at the altar. The dances start. You consider asking Helena to dance. > You don't ask. The two of you just sit at your table and watch the people dancing. Helena looks a bit disappointed as she watches, but you're not too sure why. Eventually, it all wraps up, and the two of you leave the wedding.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You duck when you get close to him, sweeping his legs out from under him. He drops the knife and it goes skidding down the hall, but before you can knock him out he jumps back up and leaps away from you, taking a fighting stance. Likewise, you get up and take a fighting stance. He throws a punch. > You try to catch his fist and break his arm. You try to catch his arm, but it was a feint; he strikes out at you with the other arm, knocking you off your feet. He picks his gun up off the floor, aims at your head, and fires.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You return to the apartment, Huntress there waiting for you. "So? Who was he?" "Private eye, hired to keep a watch on you. He gave me a name. Tomaso Panessa." At this, Huntress's eyes widen. "You know him?" "... He's my uncle." "Uncle? Why would your uncle want to spy on you?" "I don't know. But I'm going to find out why." "Correction: we're going to find out why." ----- That's how you found yourself at a banquet two days later. Luckily, Huntress', or rather, Helena's cousin and Tomaso's son, Nino Panessa, was getting married. She didn't plan on attending, but this new development changed those plans. The wedding was being held outside the Panessa Manor by Tomaso, so it would be the perfect chance to snoop around inside while everyone was busy. Helena brought you along as her plus one. Although hesitant to reveal your identity to her, you agreed to come along out of costume. The two of you sit at a table off to the side, you scanning the guests behind mirrored shades. Everyone here has ties to organized crime. You feel out of place, not only because of your obvious disgust for criminals, but also because of the fact that you're the only person who isn't Italian. Your ginger characteristics have caused a few stares to be cast at your table, judging both yourself and Helena. "I'll go check the house out, you stay here to avoid rousing any suspicion," you whisper to her, standing up. "Be careful, Q," Helena replies, and watches you go. It was easy enough to slip into the mansion through the kitchen entrance, left open for the servers to come in and out. You'll have to be quiet, you can't just rush in, not for this. You slip into the manor proper. It's bigger than anything you've ever seen, beating out even Mayor Fermin's mansion back in Hub City (well, before it got burnt down, that is). There must be a million rooms in the place. But you know that the place you're looking for: Tomaso's study on the third floor where he keeps his computer, and by extension all of his information regarding his activities. The only problem is Huntress didn't tell you where it was beyond the third floor. It'll be a guessing game from there. You reach the third floor using the servants' stairwell without any interruptions. There's no one here, at least there shouldn't be. Now you just have to find out which door the study is behind. Thankfully, there are only three. > You check the third door, at the end of the hall. You enter the door at the end of the hall, and find yourself in a bathroom. It's huge, for whatever reason, with a large bathtub, a walk in shower, a toilet fit for a king and- is that a Jacuzzi? Damn, you almost want to hop into it... Shaking your head, you leave before temptation gets the best of you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Santo Cassamento lived life grandly. Just outside of Gotham he owned a mansion, not too far from Wayne Manor, where he had practically an army of butlers, maids, chefs, the works. Not surprising, considering his line of work. As you approach the crime lord's mansion, you can tell Huntress feels sickened by being anywhere near it. The two of you sneak past guards set up, you couldn't take them even if you wanted to, they had guns, and you didn't. Sure, Huntress had her crossbow, but in the time it took her to reload it she'd already be riddled with lead. Instead, you stick to the bushes and shadows, until you get to a second story study. There's Cassamento, lounging around reading Oedipus Rex. Huntress glares at him. "Let me go in alone," she hisses. "I'll handle this." > You say "No." You shake your head. "No. I'll come with you," you say, and she looks surprised and... Pleased? "Alright. Come on." She opens the window and slides into the mansion, you following not long after. Cassamento looks up as he sees the two of you enter. He gives a smoldering smile when he sees Huntress. "Huntress," he says, before frowning upon seeing you. "... And a faceless Humphrey Bogart impersonator." Ouch. "What are you doing here?" "You know damn well why I'm here, Cassamento," Huntress spits, cold glare penetrating the older man as she takes aim. "The murders. You're framing me." Cassamento quirked an eyebrow, "I promise you, I know nothing about that." "I wouldn't bullshit her, Cassamento," you comment, "that crossbow has a hair-trigger." "Hm. I would believe so, what with all those people she's killed." Cassamento smirked, looking like the cat who caught the canary. "It was you. I can tell," snarled Huntress. "Ha. Don't be so foolish. Say what you will about my activities, I'm a man of my word, and I speak the truth when I say I have nothing to do with the murders." Huntress looks shocked, but after a moment just sighs. You've done some reading into Cassamento himself, and he's right; he's not one to lie about his intentions. And looking at him now, smug as he is, you can tell that he's telling the truth. That or the man is a master manipulator and this is an elaborate scheme. "... I'll be back." Huntress says coldly, before heading out the window. You cast one last look at Cassamento, who simply sits back down and continues reading as if nothing happened. You leave through the window, heading back to the city with Huntress.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The three story arctic themed building was just as big on the inside as it was out. The club was currently closed down for 'renovations', though you knew better; Penguin had just escaped from prison, and he was more than likely getting back into the swing of things. This meant most under his payroll would be here while he heard how his operations were going. It would be packed, which meant the stealthy approach was definitely the smarter choice. Picking the lock on the back door, you and Huntress slip in, sticking close to the shadows. The path up to Cobblepot's office is straightforward, but there's two goons up ahead, blocking your forward path. What do you do? > You can take them out, they're just goons. Huntress looks surprised when you charge forward, tackling a goon to the ground and beginning to beat him to a bloody pulp. The other goon is shocked as well, backing away in a start, and Huntress uses the opportunity to take him out by swinging right into his head. However, when she does so, the thug lets out a loud scream of pain. Soon, you hear footsteps converging on your position. "Oh, great going, Q!" Huntress shouts, readying her fists and goons surround you. "It was your fault, you took him out!" you reply, sending a cross punch into a thug's face. "Because you had to charge in like Galahad!" she retorts, kicking a goon in the nads. Your conversation is cut off as you both jump right into the fray. > The Penguin's Office As you slip into the large office and look around, you almost let out an impressed whistle. Say what you will about the deformed supervillain, he has some taste when it comes to decoration. Huntress strides forward to Penguin's desk, the villain sitting in his chair which has its back to you. "Penguin," Huntress says, aiming her crossbow at the chair. "Turn around." The chair slowly swivels around, Penguin's beady eyes staring at the two of you as his face twists into a sneer. "Hm. Huntress. And... Some faceless guy in a Dick Tracy outfit." Ouch. "What is it you want?" "Answers," you say, stepping up to the desk as well. "Are you involved with the murders Huntress has been framed for?" "I'll have you know," Penguin begins, "that I don't have the slightest idea as to what you're talking about." "Cut the shit, Cobblepot," Huntress growls, aiming her crossbow right in between Penguin's eyes, "what do you know?" Penguin lets loose a chilling chuckle, "You do realize that if I cared to do so, I could call in one of my men and he could apprehend you? Or maybe I could call the police and say how I'm being attacked by a psychotic vigilante? And on the off chance you still decide to shoot me, you should realize my PR department could turn the public against you and tear you to shreds." Huntress's grip on the crossbow falters slightly, but she keeps it aimed at him. "Just tell me what you know, Cobblepot." "Threats will do you no good." "Tell the truth, Penguin. Or I'm going to step in," you threaten, looming over him menacingly. He looks up at you, shuddering almost imperceptibly. "I am telling the truth. I don't know anything about those frames. Now would you get out of my office? I have work to do." Huntress prepares to let loose a bolt, but you stop her by placing a hand on her shoulder. You feel her tense up slightly. "Huntress. Relax. He's telling the truth. I can tell." Her finger tightens slightly... She lets the bolt fly, right into Penguin's shoulder. He lets out a hiss of pain, glaring at Huntress. "You... Bitch. Looks like I'll have to sic my lawyers on you after all." "Have fun, lardass." She spits at him, then heads out through the window. You follow not far behind, a worried expression on your face. > You continue A few blocks away from the Iceberg Lounge, you and Huntress stop for a chat. "What the hell were you thinking?" you hiss. "Just double checking," she mutters bitterly, "I had to make sure he wasn't holding out on us. He would have squealed if he knew anything." "That's why everyone thinks you committed those murders," you snap, "because you're insane!" "Pot and kettle, Q." Huntress replies, glaring at you. With a sigh, you just shake your head. "... Look, we still have to see Cassamento. Let's go." The raven-haired woman just shakes her head, grappling away. You follow her to Cassamento's.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Iceberg Lounge. It didn't make sense how it still got business despite the fact that it's been public knowledge for years that it's owned by a well-known supervillain and many of his illegal activities run through it. Perhaps it was just best not to question these things. Huntress looks down at the building, kneeling next to you. "So how do we play this, Q?" Now that's a good question. > You say "Fast and loud." "Fast and loud," you reply, "we go in, kick ass, and take names." Huntress looks skeptical, "Um... Okay." She's about to grapple across the street to the Lounge when she realizes you don't have a grappling gun. Wordlessly, she tosses you a spare. "Keep it," she says, before firing and being pulled to the Lounge. You follow shortly after. > The Lounge The three story arctic themed building was just as big on the inside as it was out. The club was currently closed down for 'renovations', though you knew better; Penguin had just escaped from prison, and he was more than likely getting back into the swing of things. This meant most under his payroll would be here while he heard how his operations were going. It would be packed, which meant the head on approach was definitely not the best idea. Oh well, you've been in worse spots. The two of you bust into the front door, already half a dozen criminals in the entrance. Three go for Huntress, while the remainders go for you. At your feet is a socket wrench. > You your mitts will do just fine. Rushing into the fray, you swing a wild haymaker at one of the thugs, managing to hit him. However, the other two attack from both sides, one with a batand the other... With a knife. You try to disarm the one wielding the knife, but he cuts your hands, and soon enough the two have you on the floor, bat guy bashing your head in and knife guy stabbing you in the abdomen. With such a brutal beatdown, you're dead in seconds, the last thing you hear being Huntress screaming your name. You Died!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The three story arctic themed building was just as big on the inside as it was out. The club was currently closed down for 'renovations', though you knew better; Penguin had just escaped from prison, and he was more than likely getting back into the swing of things. This meant most under his payroll would be here while he heard how his operations were going. It would be packed, which meant the head on approach was definitely not the best idea. Oh well, you've been in worse spots. The two of you bust into the front door, already half a dozen criminals in the entrance. Three go for Huntress, while the remainders go for you. At your feet is a socket wrench. > You put the wrench to use. Quickly, you run forward and pick up the wrench, bringing it up into one's face and sending him out for the count. The other two begin to attack, one with a bat and the other... With a knife. Thinking fast, you knock the switchblade out of his hand before he can put it to use, bringing the wrench down hard on his nose. "ACK!" you shout as the other swings his bat and hits you in the back, knocking you to the ground. > You trip him up. With swiftness that would put the Flash to shame, you wrap your legs around his left leg, yanking them to the right. Sure enough, he falls over, giving you time to crawl to him and knock him out with your wrench. "Christ..." you pant, breathless. As you get up, you hear Huntress finish up with her batch. "I told you we shouldn't have gone through the front!" "No you didn't!" you reply. "... Well I thought it!" "Oh, and I'm supposed to read your mind?" "Yes!" she snaps. Exasperated, you begin to retort, but don't have time to as more goons swarm into the lobby. The two of you share a look, then nod.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Quickly, you run forward and pick up the wrench, bringing it up into one's face and sending him out for the count. The other two begin to attack, one with a bat and the other... With a knife. Thinking fast, you knock the switchblade out of his hand before he can put it to use, bringing the wrench down hard on his nose. "ACK!" you shout as the other swings his bat and hits you in the back, knocking you to the ground. > You get back up. You try to smoothly recover, jumping back up to your feet, but he swings his bat right into your face and sends you right back onto your ass. He continues to wail on you, smashing your head in, and long after he's finished the job. In the distance, you swear you hear Huntress scream your name, but soon all sound fades. You Died!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is a story about a boy named Long, who life will change with the coming of war. But first, let's focus on the Vietnam War itself. The Vietnam war happened after the French's failed attempt to gain control of the country. The United States then took over for them. In 1954, when the French left, Vietnam split into two after a conflict over who would control the country. It was the communist North, and the independent South. The United States sided with the South. > You numerical Facts -At the beginning of the 20th century, 90% of war casualties were soldiers, by the last decade of that century that 90% were of civilians instead. -Many of those 90% casualties were children. -More than a million South Vietnamese were orphaned by the war, and only a few thousand made it to adoptive families. (in the book Escape From Saigon) > Back to 'A Note to Readers.' This is a story about a boy named Long, who life will change with the coming of war. But first, let's focus on the Vietnam War itself. The Vietnam war happened after the French's failed attempt to gain control of the country. The United States then took over for them. In 1954, when the French left, Vietnam split into two after a conflict over who would control the country. It was the communist North, and the independent South. The United States sided with the South. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are a mid-twenties human being in Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. When the world ended countless years ago, you were old enough to possess memories of your old life but too young to yet be set in the ways of the old world. Because of this, you had the upper hand both physically and mentally during the first few dreadful years after the apocalypse, but the real credit goes to your older brother. He taught you everything you needed to know about surviving on the road, and he always had your back. You don't travel with him anymore. In fact, you can't even recall when you last saw him, or where he went. You never try to remember though—your brain repressed that memory for a reason, and you don't care to find out why. You're bundled up tightly in a shirt, jacket, snow pants, and hiking boots. You've tied a cloth around your face to keep the ashes out of your lungs. You used to have a fair amount of supplies, but a close call with a band of marauders several days ago forced you to leave most of them behind. What did you decide to take with you? > You your shopping cart, three large blankets, extra shoes, a lighter, and a canteen of water. The wind is noticeably colder today than it was yesterday. Already, you can feel the brutal winter creeping up behind you, taunting you by sending fatal, frozen ashstorms your way. As you push your cart south down the long, crack-laden road, the darkness that you've come to recognize as day begins to fade. You know that it would be reckless to keep moving in the black of night, so you resolve to camp out and try your luck at sleep. Where do you settle down for the night? > You sleep in the road. If you were to get caught in a snowstorm out there, you'd never find your way back. With confidence that you've made the right decision, you park your cart in the ashes beside the road and hurriedly collect firewood, staying as close to the road as possible. Lighter in hand, the dry twigs catch instantly, and you sit back and watch the flames spark and crackle before you. A distant memory starts to surface, but the ashes in your mind make the image appear blurry, and you can barely make out a pair of tiny feet warming in front of a fireplace. You quickly push the thought from your brain and take a swig of water from your canteen. Bitter, but refreshing. You continue to add fuel to the fire and eventually, with heavy eyes, take your blankets out of the cart and bundle up for the night. > Next. You awake to the dull light—if it could even be called light—of morning. Your fire had died long ago, and as you look about you, it appears that everything is just as you had left it previously. You don't see this as a success on your part so much as a stroke of sheer luck that no one crossed your path. Gathering up your provisions, you place them back into the cart and begin on your way south. After having walked almost five miles, you come across what used to be a bridge spanning a wide river. The rapids may have raced along the channel at one point in time, but now the thick sludge only creeps slowly over the rocks. It would be slow going, but the water is shallow enough that you think you'd be able to cross. (After all, the shattered bridge will be of no use to you.) What do you do? > You attempt to cross. The longer you stay moving south, the better. You step hastily into the water—and immediately recoil your foot. It's so freezing that you feel your foot instantly go numb. You take a deep breath and hesitantly step back in, bracing yourself for the brutal cold, and this time you manage to endure it enough to move your other foot into the river. Dragging the cart behind you, you begin steadily working your way across, with the water up to your knees, and then, to your waist. With only a third of the way to go, you suddenly feel a tug on the cart. You glance over your shoulder and pull at it again, but it's stuck on something, and no matter how hard you pull, it won't budge. You... > You leave it. It's not worth wasting the time and effort to get it loose. You knew you'd have to leave the cart behind eventually, but that doesn't mean you're going to abandon the rest of your supplies. Carefully, so as not to fall into the river, you turn and pull out the blankets in which the rest of your provisions are hidden, and without looking back, you haul them the rest of the way across. You drop them onto the ground and your feet and struggle to catch your breath, then glance over your shoulder. The cart's still there, standing firm against the current. You're convinced that you wouldn't have been able to dislodge it after all. Once some strength has returned to your legs, you tie the blankets into a sack and sling it over your shoulder, heading once again along the road going south. > Next. Grey snow begins to fall as you make your way slowly along the road. You're not sure how long it's been. Days? Weeks? It couldn't have been months, you think, otherwise it would be getting warmer by now. At least, that's what you hope is true, for there would be no meaning in migrating south every winter if summer only grew colder. You amuse yourself with thoughts like these in an attempt to forget the twisting, empty feeling in your stomach. Impulsively, you remove your canteen from the sack of blankets and take a quick drink to quell the swelling of your throat. Later in the evening, you come across an abandoned gas station—actually, why do you even refer to it as abandoned? Everything in this world is abandoned and decaying, isn't it? ...There goes your brain again. You can't let it get to you. You have to hold on to the hope of survival, because without it, life isn't worth living. You take a deep breath and force yourself to enter the gas station. As you expected, all of the shelves have been ravaged and there's hardly anything worth keeping. You pay no mind to the open cash register and instead begin fumbling about through the mess in search of something, anything worth eating. You peer into one of the broken refrigerators and spot a sealed packet of some sort of lunch meat, hidden away in the corner. You open the door and pull it out, staring longingly at the pale hunk of long-expired, browning flesh. What do you do? > You eat it. If you're going to survive the rest of this journey, you NEED to eat something! With an intense hunger welling up inside, you tear open the packet and scarf down every last slice of meat, licking your fingers and the packet once you're done. It's starting to get dark, so you hurry outside with a newfound, perhaps imaginary, stamina and bring firewood back into the building. As you set up the fire, you feel an uneasiness in the pit of your stomach and have to rush into the corner of the store to vomit. This persists for most of the night, eventually causing diarrhea and such a spike in temperature that you can hardly move. Curled up in your blankets and highly delirious, you pass into an agitated sleep. For the first time in a very long time, your dreams are pleasant. You find yourself to be a child again, playing on a playground swing set. You dig your feet into the mulch and push yourself in circles until the chains are wound so tightly that they send you spinning around and around. You let out a laugh. The dizziness makes you want to throw up, but you just keep laughing. Death takes you in the morning.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Grey snow begins to fall as you make your way slowly along the road. You're not sure how long it's been. Days? Weeks? It couldn't have been months, you think, otherwise it would be getting warmer by now. At least, that's what you hope is true, for there would be no meaning in migrating south every winter if summer only grew colder. You amuse yourself with thoughts like these in an attempt to forget the twisting, empty feeling in your stomach. Impulsively, you remove your canteen from the sack of blankets and take a quick drink to quell the swelling of your throat. Later in the evening, you come across an abandoned gas station—actually, why do you even refer to it as abandoned? Everything in this world is abandoned and decaying, isn't it? ...There goes your brain again. You can't let it get to you. You have to hold on to the hope of survival, because without it, life isn't worth living. You take a deep breath and force yourself to enter the gas station. As you expected, all of the shelves have been ravaged and there's hardly anything worth keeping. You pay no mind to the open cash register and instead begin fumbling about through the mess in search of something, anything worth eating. You peer into one of the broken refrigerators and spot a sealed packet of some sort of lunch meat, hidden away in the corner. You open the door and pull it out, staring longingly at the pale hunk of long-expired, browning flesh. What do you do? > You put it back. You can't take that risk. Your stomach protests your decision, but you return the package to its original hiding place anyway. You know the risks that come with food poisoning, and with such a poor immune system, it would be all too easy for some bacteria to kill you off in your sleep. Instead, you venture outside and return with firewood, and after setting up a small fire in the middle of the store, you curl up in your blankets and fall asleep. > Next. With every passing day, it becomes harder and harder to get up and force yourself to keep going. The snow is falling heavily now, and your brain is preoccupied with fantasies of food. Tree bark isn't edible, is it? No... Maybe? You're having trouble clearing your head and focusing on the road ahead of you. Starvation is making you dizzy, and before you know it, you're lying face down in the ash and snow. No, you can't let it end like this. You have to get up and keep moving. Death is not an option! But the snow is so soft, almost warm to the touch. Your eyes are heavy. You're not sure if you really should keep soldiering on, or if you should just sleep and let the cold envelop you. > You succumb to sleep. A wave of peace washes over you as you make your resolve. With a small smile, you close your eyes and slowly drift off into a deep sleep, followed by dreams of flowers and sunlight and childhood, and then nothingness.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With every passing day, it becomes harder and harder to get up and force yourself to keep going. The snow is falling heavily now, and your brain is preoccupied with fantasies of food. Tree bark isn't edible, is it? No... Maybe? You're having trouble clearing your head and focusing on the road ahead of you. Starvation is making you dizzy, and before you know it, you're lying face down in the ash and snow. No, you can't let it end like this. You have to get up and keep moving. Death is not an option! But the snow is so soft, almost warm to the touch. Your eyes are heavy. You're not sure if you really should keep soldiering on, or if you should just sleep and let the cold envelop you. > You no! What are you doing?! Get up, idiot! What you once considered your will to survive shouts at you inside your head. "Just get up already! Don't give up like this!" But its voice is tiny now and difficult to make out, and your body is so exhausted that you are physically incapable of any movement. In a last ditch effort, you think to yourself, "Is this what Cameron would want you to do?" Suddenly, the memory comes back to you. Your older brother, and that old name of his you'd almost forgotten. The bridge. The blur. The content smile before the final CRACK. He'd wanted you to come with him. He didn't want to leave you here to fend for yourself, but he didn't protest when you couldn't bring yourself to do it. But now... You close your heavy eyes, with that same content smile on your lips, and you drift off into a deep sleep. Dreams of an old life with your older brother flood your mind before everything fades to nothing.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You step hastily into the water—and immediately recoil your foot. It's so freezing that you feel your foot instantly go numb. You take a deep breath and hesitantly step back in, bracing yourself for the brutal cold, and this time you manage to endure it enough to move your other foot into the river. Dragging the cart behind you, you begin steadily working your way across, with the water up to your knees, and then, to your waist. With only a third of the way to go, you suddenly feel a tug on the cart. You glance over your shoulder and pull at it again, but it's stuck on something, and no matter how hard you pull, it won't budge. You... > You pull harder. With as much force as you can muster, you take the handle of the cart in both hands and pull. Slowly but surely, you can feel it starting to move, and it's dislodged so suddenly that you fall back into the freezing water. You pull yourself up and immediately begin to shiver, and every ounce of your being just wants to hurry onto dry land. Cart in tow, you drag yourself onto the opposite shore and nearly collapse, gasping from the cold. You glance over your shoulder briefly only to catch a glimpse of something twisted, pink, and bleeding attached to one of the wheels of the cart. You shut your eyes and cover your mouth in an attempt to repress a gag. Eventually, you bring yourself to stand up and, without looking at it, tug the fleshy substance off of the cart before throwing it into the river. You take a deep breath, still shaking from the cold, and soldier on down the road once more, pushing the cart ahead of you. > Next. Grey snow begins to fall as you make your way slowly along the road. You're not sure how long it's been. Days? Weeks? It couldn't have been months, you think, otherwise it would be getting warmer by now. At least, that's what you hope is true, for there would be no meaning in migrating south every winter if summer only grew colder. You amuse yourself with thoughts like these in an attempt to forget the twisting, empty feeling in your stomach. Impulsively, you remove your canteen from the cart and take a quick drink to quell the swelling of your throat. Later in the evening, you come across an abandoned gas station—actually, why do you even refer to it as abandoned? Everything in this world is abandoned and decaying, isn't it? ...There goes your brain again. You can't let it get to you. You have to hold on to the hope of survival, because without it, life isn't worth living. You take a deep breath and force yourself to enter the gas station. As you expected, all of the shelves have been ravaged and there's hardly anything worth keeping. You pay no mind to the open cash register and instead begin fumbling about through the mess in search of something, anything worth eating. You peer into one of the broken refrigerators and spot a sealed packet of some sort of lunch meat, hidden away in the corner. You open the door and pull it out, staring longingly at the pale hunk of long-expired, browning flesh. What do you do?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awake to the dull light—if it could even be called light—of morning. Your fire had died long ago, and as you look about you, it appears that everything is just as you had left it previously. You don't see this as a success on your part so much as a stroke of sheer luck that no one crossed your path. Gathering up your provisions, you place them back into the cart and begin on your way south. After having walked almost five miles, you come across what used to be a bridge spanning a wide river. The rapids may have raced along the channel at one point in time, but now the thick sludge only creeps slowly over the rocks. It would be slow going, but the water is shallow enough that you think you'd be able to cross. (After all, the shattered bridge will be of no use to you.) What do you do? > You follow the river downstream instead. Maybe there's an easier way across. You determine it's best to weigh your options before charging headlong into the river, so your turn east and begin walking parallel to the waters. The land is barren, and as you glance over from time to time, your eyes catch glimpses of bicycles, trees, and frozen corpses lying lazily in the water with no place to go. After walking for a little while, something else draws your attention: an old house by the river, rotting, abandoned. Acting on instinct, you quickly take cover in the woods and peer out at the building. There's no smoke around, and it doesn't seem to be in use. You decide to... > You ignore it. If there is someone in there, you can't take the risk. You know that, if you had managed to find this place, then others might've, too. You're low on supplies, but that's no reason to act reckless. You carefully turn around and walk back until the house is out of view, and then turn to cross the river. The water is freezing, and you can only trudge across so quickly, with your legs growing numb and your cart in tow. The water only reaches up to your thighs before becoming shallow again, and you scramble onto the opposite shore, gasping from the brutal cold. In one last moment of hesitation, you look back over your shoulder. The house still stands tall on the other side, but this time, you think you see movement in the window. It may well have been an illusion, but it's enough to scare you into action, and soon enough, you're back on the road moving south.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You determine it's best to weigh your options before charging headlong into the river, so your turn east and begin walking parallel to the waters. The land is barren, and as you glance over from time to time, your eyes catch glimpses of bicycles, trees, and frozen corpses lying lazily in the water with no place to go. After walking for a little while, something else draws your attention: an old house by the river, rotting, abandoned. Acting on instinct, you quickly take cover in the woods and peer out at the building. There's no smoke around, and it doesn't seem to be in use. You decide to... > You enter cautiously. There may be supplies inside that I can useâ€"or food. You're barely surviving on the few provisions you have, and that doesn't even include food. You can't afford to pass up this opportunity, even if it is a little reckless. Parking your cart in the woods near the house, you cautiously approach and make your way silently onto the porch. Peeking through the windows, you don't see any signs of movement, so you slowly open the creaky front door and step inside. The interior smells like rotten eggs, and there's an ungodly stench coming from the hallway to your right. You can see a kitchen on the other side of the living room, and there are also stairs leading up onto the second floor of the house. Where do you search first? > You investigate the terrible smell. Maybe that smell is simply rotting food, and where there's rotting food, there's always the possibility of stumbling across something edible. At least, that's how you justify it to yourself, but really, you're just curious. You turn down the hallway to your right and come across a door with a chain across it. > You unlock the door and enter. Your recklessness knows no bounds. You unlatch the chain from the door and carefully open it. You pull your lighter out of your pocket and flick it on, holding it out to examine the space before you. There are stairs that lead down and to the left into some kind of cellar. With irrational prospects of food, you step carefully down into the darkness and quickly discover the source of the smell. Bodies stacked up on one another, wide-eyed, lying about in leisure. Decaying. You cover your mouth to keep from gagging, but soon the stench is the least of your concerns. The light from the door above you disappears, and you can hear the chain being slid back into place. > Next. You run back up the stairs and frantically try the doorknob, but it's no use. The door won't budge. In a moment of desperation, you hurl your body at the door, only to hear an unsettling noise in your bones and to collapse onto the floor. The smell, the bodies, the hopelessness of it all—you are overwhelmed and can't control the dry sobs arising from your throat. This is it. This must be the end. You idiot! There's no way of knowing how long you'll be down here. Days, months even. If the people living in the house are cannibals, you will surely perish in a few days and provide sustenance for monsters. If they're people just like you with everything to lose, they'll never open that door, and you'll slowly rot with the rest of these corpses. Either way, you'll be dead eventually. But the waiting. That's the worst part. And it's all that you can do now...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe that smell is simply rotting food, and where there's rotting food, there's always the possibility of stumbling across something edible. At least, that's how you justify it to yourself, but really, you're just curious. You turn down the hallway to your right and come across a door with a chain across it. > You go back to the living room. Sure, you're feeling desperate, but not desperate enough to look for hope where there is none. There's probably nothing worthwhile behind that door—and for all you know, the smell is coming from rotting corpses. You shake the thought out of your head and turn around to return to the living room, but when you arrive, there's a tall figure standing in front of you, holding a hunting knife in his hand. He looks just as terrified as you, but his reflexes are much faster, and before you know it, he's lunging at you with the knife. > You run! You turn to run out the front door, but you only make it to the edge of the porch before you feel a hot pain in your leg. Shouting, you tumble down the porch steps onto the ground and hold your wounded thigh to your chest in agony. The man grabs you by the neck and raises the bloody knife over his head, and in that brief moment before death, when your life should've been flashing before your eyes, you see a glimmer of something in his. You can't be certain, but you think what you're seeing in his eyes is fear—something so human that it startles you, and yet is somehow relieving. Then the blade penetrates your skull, and everything goes black.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're barely surviving on the few provisions you have, and that doesn't even include food. You can't afford to pass up this opportunity, even if it is a little reckless. Parking your cart in the woods near the house, you cautiously approach and make your way silently onto the porch. Peeking through the windows, you don't see any signs of movement, so you slowly open the creaky front door and step inside. The interior smells like rotten eggs, and there's an ungodly stench coming from the hallway to your right. You can see a kitchen on the other side of the living room, and there are also stairs leading up onto the second floor of the house. Where do you search first? > You search the kitchen. As soon as you enter the rundown kitchen, you freeze. Through the window, you see a tall figure outside making his way towards the house with a large hunting knife in hand. The terror moves your legs into action, and you bolt back out the front door. You're moving so quickly and in such fright that you don't even think to go back for the cart, and instead you launch yourself into the river and frantically stumble across. Your heart is throbbing in your ears by the time you reach the opposite shore, and looking back, you think you see movement in one of the windows of the house. You have no time to think and act on the primitive fight or flight response alone, fleeing the scene and leaving everything behind for the stranger. > Next. With no supplies to carry and no idea of where you're going, you feel lost and without a sense of purpose. You wander through the forest in the bitter cold, clutching your arms and clenching your jaw to keep your teeth from chattering. Your stomach is empty, and your nerves are raw—every noise sets you off. You wish you had done things differently. You go over every scenario again and again and try to understand what went wrong, but really, it was the world that went wrong. All you were doing was trying to set yourself right... right? Your mind continues to race with possibilities when suddenly you run into something hanging from a tree and accidently knock it down into the snow. Startled, you cautiously look down to find it was a nearly frozen corpse, poorly dressed for this weather and, well, dead. These things used to freak you out, but you've learned to accept them for what they are, so long as they aren't you. You stare at the body at your feet, mind racing. You don't want to resort to that. You promised your brother that you wouldn't. But you're so hungry already. You have no idea how you'd go about it, but you're convinced you'd find a way. You're convinced it's the only way. You... > You resist. You sit down in the snow and ash beside the body and watch it. It's a female. She was probably no older than nineteen. You bet her name was Meredith. Or Jenette. You like the name Jenette better. Your mind begins crafting a backstory for Jenette: a loving family in Tennessee, a big heart for animals, a tire swing on which she'd drag her pet cat on a sunny day in June... And soon enough, you can't even bring yourself to think about eating her. She was a human once, after all. She still is a human. Your stomach protests, but you smile softly to yourself. Your integrity remains intact, if only for today...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With no supplies to carry and no idea of where you're going, you feel lost and without a sense of purpose. You wander through the forest in the bitter cold, clutching your arms and clenching your jaw to keep your teeth from chattering. Your stomach is empty, and your nerves are raw—every noise sets you off. You wish you had done things differently. You go over every scenario again and again and try to understand what went wrong, but really, it was the world that went wrong. All you were doing was trying to set yourself right... right? Your mind continues to race with possibilities when suddenly you run into something hanging from a tree and accidently knock it down into the snow. Startled, you cautiously look down to find it was a nearly frozen corpse, poorly dressed for this weather and, well, dead. These things used to freak you out, but you've learned to accept them for what they are, so long as they aren't you. You stare at the body at your feet, mind racing. You don't want to resort to that. You promised your brother that you wouldn't. But you're so hungry already. You have no idea how you'd go about it, but you're convinced you'd find a way. You're convinced it's the only way. You... > You give in. You don't think about it as you're doing it. The fire, the tearing of flesh, the roasting, the smell, the satisfaction—thinking would only drive you mad. You don't have time for thoughts outside of yourself. You can only consume and consume until your stomach can handle no more. You almost throw up, not because of what you're eating, but because you haven't eaten in such a long time that your body doesn't know how to handle it. Soon enough, you've calmed down, and you lie back against a tree. There isn't a thought in your head outside of yourself. You are full and you will survive another day. If only just another day...<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're barely surviving on the few provisions you have, and that doesn't even include food. You can't afford to pass up this opportunity, even if it is a little reckless. Parking your cart in the woods near the house, you cautiously approach and make your way silently onto the porch. Peeking through the windows, you don't see any signs of movement, so you slowly open the creaky front door and step inside. The interior smells like rotten eggs, and there's an ungodly stench coming from the hallway to your right. You can see a kitchen on the other side of the living room, and there are also stairs leading up onto the second floor of the house. Where do you search first? > You check upstairs. As quietly as possible, you creep up the stairs and begin to look around. There are several rooms that have been raided and destroyed, but one in the far corner remains intact. You step inside and immediately freeze. There's something on the bed in front of you, a lump of flesh that looks neither alive nor dead. Your heart starts to race, and you're filled with terror as the lump rises and falls with the man's breathing. You start to turn around... > Next. You don't even see your attacker. All you feel is the blunt edge of the knife being jammed into the back of your skull, and the world goes black. Oh, what a grave mistake you've made. Maybe your killer will dispose of you into the woods. Maybe they're decide to consume what little meat is left on your scrawny bones. But what does it matter? You're dead now, and you won't suffer any longer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The wind is noticeably colder today than it was yesterday. Already, you can feel the brutal winter creeping up behind you, taunting you by sending fatal, frozen ashstorms your way. As you push your cart south down the long, crack-laden road, the darkness that you've come to recognize as day begins to fade. You know that it would be reckless to keep moving in the black of night, so you resolve to camp out and try your luck at sleep. Where do you settle down for the night? > You set up camp in the woods. Sleeping in the road would leave you defenseless against an attack. Even though you doubt that anyone would dare to traverse the road at night, you don't want to take any chances. After hiding your cart in some bushes a few yards away from the road, you carry the rest of your supplies deeper into the woods until you come across a small clearing. The charred trees around you don't offer as much protection as you'd like, but it's better than being completely exposed and vulnerable. You put what little provisions you have down on the blankets and set out to search for firewood, but by the time you return, there's barely enough light to see by, and you nearly trip over your pile of supplies. Muttering under your breath, you eventually get the fire going and sit clutching your knees to your chest. The forest creeks under the pressure of the wind, but these noises leave you unfazed. You've learned long ago how to distinguish between the howling of the wind and the howling of men. Before you know it, your fire's burned down, and you've fallen asleep curled up in your blankets. > Next. You awake to the dull light—if it could even be called light—of morning. As you look about you, the only change that catches your eye is a tree that fell several yard away from your campsite. You look at it in wonder; it hadn't even woken you when it fell, and you can't help but wonder if it could've fallen on you. You shake off the thought and gather up your provisions, carrying them back to where you hid the cart and pushing it up towards the road. In no time, you're heading south. After having walked almost five miles, you come across what used to be a bridge spanning a wide river. The rapids may have raced along the channel at one point in time, but now the thick sludge only creeps slowly over the rocks. It would be slow going, but the water is shallow enough that you think you'd be able to cross. (After all, the shattered bridge will be of no use to you.) What do you do?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are a mid-twenties human being in Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. When the world ended countless years ago, you were old enough to possess memories of your old life but too young to yet be set in the ways of the old world. Because of this, you had the upper hand both physically and mentally during the first few dreadful years after the apocalypse, but the real credit goes to your older brother. He taught you everything you needed to know about surviving on the road, and he always had your back. You don't travel with him anymore. In fact, you can't even recall when you last saw him, or where he went. You never try to remember though—your brain repressed that memory for a reason, and you don't care to find out why. You're bundled up tightly in a shirt, jacket, snow pants, and hiking boots. You've tied a cloth around your face to keep the ashes out of your lungs. You used to have a fair amount of supplies, but a close call with a band of marauders several days ago forced you to leave most of them behind. What did you decide to take with you? > You your backpack, three cans of food, an extra jacket, a tarp, and a canteen of water. The wind is noticeably colder today than it was yesterday. Already, you can feel the brutal winter creeping up behind you, taunting you by sending fatal, frozen ashstorms your way. As you trudge further south along the crack-laden road, your back hunched from the weight of the pack on your shoulders, the darkness that you've come to recognize as day begins to fade. You know that it would be reckless to keep moving in the black of night, so you resolve to camp out, eat some supper, and try your luck at sleep. Where do you settle down for the night? > You sleep in the road. If you were to get caught in a snowstorm out there, you'd never find your way back. With confidence that you've made the right decision, you set your backpack down and hurriedly collect firewood, staying as close to the road as possible. You arrange the twigs into a teepee and spend what feels like forever rubbing two rocks together, willing a spark to ignite the tinder and rescue you from the cold. It's already dark by the time the wood catches, and you wrap yourself in your extra jacket and lean forwards to feel the pulsating warmth of the fire. Pulling out a rusty can of peaches, you quickly scarf down your dinner and observe your hands. Rotten and calloused, with frostbite eating away at your black fingertips and oozing sores around your knuckles. You recall observing your hands like this before when you were much younger, but you can't for the life of you remember what they looked like. Not that it matters, anyway. You can't afford to look back on a past that will never return. You know this, and yet you fall asleep, curled up by the fire, with the tarp draped over you, staring at your bony hands. > Next. You awake to the dull light—if it could even be called light—of morning. Your fire had died long ago, and as you look about you, it appears that everything is just as you had left it previously. You don't see this as a success on your part so much as a stroke of sheer luck that no one crossed your path. Gathering up your provisions, you swing your pack over your shoulders and begin on your way south. After having walked almost five miles, you come across what used to be a bridge spanning a wide river. The rapids may have raced along the channel at one point in time, but now the thick sludge only creeps slowly over the rocks. It would be slow going, but the water is shallow enough that you think you'd be able to cross. (After all, the shattered bridge will be of no use to you.) What do you do? > You attempt to cross. The longer you stay moving south, the better. You step hastily into the water—and immediately recoil your foot. It's so freezing that you feel your foot instantly go numb. You take a deep breath and hesitantly step back in, bracing yourself for the brutal cold, and this time you manage to endure it enough to move your other foot into the river. With a great deal of effort, you begin steadily working your way across, with the water up to your knees, and then, to your waist. It feels like a week has passed by the time you make it to the other side. Climbing onto the shore, you collapse to your knees and struggle to catch your breath, and after a few minutes, you force yourself to your feet and look ahead. The road spans before of you further than you can see. With a deep breath, you continue on your way. > Next. Grey snow begins to fall as you make your way slowly along the road. You're not sure how long it's been. Days? Weeks? It couldn't have been months, you think, otherwise it would be getting warmer by now. At least, that's what you hope is true, for there would be no meaning in migrating south every winter if summer only grew colder. You amuse yourself with thoughts like these in an attempt to forget the twisting, empty feeling in your stomach. Impulsively, you remove your canteen from your pack and take a quick drink to quell the swelling of your throat. Later in the evening, you come across an abandoned gas station—actually, why do you even refer to it as abandoned? Everything in this world is abandoned and decaying, isn't it? ...There goes your brain again. You can't let it get to you. You have to hold on to the hope of survival, because without it, life isn't worth living. You take a deep breath and force yourself to enter the gas station. As you expected, all of the shelves have been ravaged and there's hardly anything worth keeping. You pay no mind to the open cash register and instead begin fumbling about through the mess in search of something, anything worth eating. You ran out of canned food long ago, and your stomach has been protesting its neglect by twisting about in knots with every breath. You peer into one of the broken refrigerators and spot a sealed packet of some sort of lunch meat, hidden away in the corner. You open the door and pull it out, staring longingly at the pale hunk of long-expired, browning flesh. What do you do? > You eat it. If you're going to survive the rest of this journey, you NEED to eat something! With an intense hunger welling up inside, you tear open the packet and scarf down every last slice of meat, licking your fingers and the plastic once you're done. It's starting to get dark, so you hurry outside with a newfound, perhaps imaginary, stamina and bring firewood back into the building. As you set up the fire, you feel an uneasiness in the pit of your stomach and have to rush into the corner of the store to vomit. This persists for most of the night, eventually causing diarrhea and such a spike in temperature that you can hardly move. Curled up on the floor and highly delirious, you pass into an agitated sleep. For the first time in a very long time, your dreams are pleasant. You find yourself to be a child again, playing on a playground swing set. You dig your feet into the mulch and push yourself in circles until the chains are wound so tightly that they send you spinning around and around. You let out a laugh. The dizziness makes you want to throw up, but you just keep laughing. Death takes you in the morning.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Grey snow begins to fall as you make your way slowly along the road. You're not sure how long it's been. Days? Weeks? It couldn't have been months, you think, otherwise it would be getting warmer by now. At least, that's what you hope is true, for there would be no meaning in migrating south every winter if summer only grew colder. You amuse yourself with thoughts like these in an attempt to forget the twisting, empty feeling in your stomach. Impulsively, you remove your canteen from your pack and take a quick drink to quell the swelling of your throat. Later in the evening, you come across an abandoned gas station—actually, why do you even refer to it as abandoned? Everything in this world is abandoned and decaying, isn't it? ...There goes your brain again. You can't let it get to you. You have to hold on to the hope of survival, because without it, life isn't worth living. You take a deep breath and force yourself to enter the gas station. As you expected, all of the shelves have been ravaged and there's hardly anything worth keeping. You pay no mind to the open cash register and instead begin fumbling about through the mess in search of something, anything worth eating. You ran out of canned food long ago, and your stomach has been protesting its neglect by twisting about in knots with every breath. You peer into one of the broken refrigerators and spot a sealed packet of some sort of lunch meat, hidden away in the corner. You open the door and pull it out, staring longingly at the pale hunk of long-expired, browning flesh. What do you do? > You put it back. You can't take that risk. Your stomach protests your decision, but you return the package to its original hiding place anyway. You know the risks that come with food poisoning, and with such a poor immune system, it would be all too easy for some bacteria to kill you off in your sleep. Instead, you venture outside and return with firewood, and after setting up a small fire in the middle of the store, you curl up on the floor with your extra jacket draped over you and fall asleep.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The wind is noticeably colder today than it was yesterday. Already, you can feel the brutal winter creeping up behind you, taunting you by sending fatal, frozen ashstorms your way. As you trudge further south along the crack-laden road, your back hunched from the weight of the pack on your shoulders, the darkness that you've come to recognize as day begins to fade. You know that it would be reckless to keep moving in the black of night, so you resolve to camp out, eat some supper, and try your luck at sleep. Where do you settle down for the night? > You set up camp in the woods. Sleeping in the road would leave you defenseless against an attack. Even though you doubt that anyone would dare to traverse the road at night, you don't want to take any chances. After resituating the pack on your shoulders, you venture deeper into the woods until you come across a small clearing. The charred trees around you don't offer as much protection as you'd like, but it's better than being completely exposed and vulnerable. You put your supplies down and set out to search for firewood, but by the time you return, there's barely enough light to see by, and you nearly trip over your backpack in the pitch dark. Muttering under your breath, you begin working to start the fire, but your frustration gets the better of you and you lay down in defeat. Pulling a rusty can of peaches from your pack, you quickly scarf down your dinner and toss the trash to the side. A cold wind blows through the forest, sending your body shivering uncontrollably, and you realize that you may not survive the night without a fire. You decide to... > You try again. You have no choice; you need to stay warm. With a great deal of patience and effort, you finally manage to ignite the tinder with sparks from two rocks and sigh with relief. The flame quickly consumes the dry twigs and you have to constantly feed it to keep it going, but it's worth the warmth. Lying alarmingly close to the fire, you bundle up in your extra coat, drape the tarp over yourself, and easily relinquish your mind to sleep. > Next. You awake to the dull light—if it could even be called light—of morning. As you look about you, the only change that catches your eye is a tree that fell several yard away from your campsite. You look at it in wonder; it hadn't even woken you when it fell, and you can't help but wonder if it could've fallen on you. Either way, though, you're thankful; that was the best night's sleep you've had in a long time. You stretch leisurely, gather up your provisions, and stuff them back into your pack. You swing it over your shoulder and walk up towards the road, and in no time, you're heading south. After having walked almost five miles, you come across what used to be a bridge spanning a wide river. The rapids may have raced along the channel at one point in time, but now the thick sludge only creeps slowly over the rocks. It would be slow going, but the water is shallow enough that you think you'd be able to cross. (After all, the shattered bridge will be of no use to you.) What do you do?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Even though you doubt that anyone would dare to traverse the road at night, you don't want to take any chances. After resituating the pack on your shoulders, you venture deeper into the woods until you come across a small clearing. The charred trees around you don't offer as much protection as you'd like, but it's better than being completely exposed and vulnerable. You put your supplies down and set out to search for firewood, but by the time you return, there's barely enough light to see by, and you nearly trip over your backpack in the pitch dark. Muttering under your breath, you begin working to start the fire, but your frustration gets the better of you and you lay down in defeat. Pulling a rusty can of peaches from your pack, you quickly scarf down your dinner and toss the trash to the side. A cold wind blows through the forest, sending your body shivering uncontrollably, and you realize that you may not survive the night without a fire. You decide to... > You just lie down and try to sleep. You're exhausted, and spending all night trying to build a fire would expend all of your body heat anyway. Your body feels especially heavy tonight, and all you want to do is sleep. You huddle up inside your extra jacket and pull the tarp over your head, willing sleep to come. However, you continue to shake in the brutal cold, and by the time you finally succumb to slumber, it is a light, restless sleep. You'll wake up in a fit only to fall back asleep and wake up again, leaving you more exhausted each time. > Next. After a long, cold night of broken sleep, you awake to the dull light—if it could even be called light—of morning. As you look about you, the only change that catches your eye is a tree that fell several yard away from your campsite. You remember waking to a loud noise in the middle of the night, but your body was so heavy that you couldn't even sit up to protect yourself. Thankfully, it didn't land on you... though you wonder if that wouldn't have been best. With a heavy heart, you gather up your provisions and stuff them back into your pack. You swing it over your shoulder and walk slowly up towards the road, and soon enough, you're heading south. After having walked almost three miles, you come across what used to be a bridge spanning a wide river. The rapids may have raced along the channel at one point in time, but now the thick sludge only creeps slowly over the rocks. It would be slow going, but the water is shallow enough that you think you'd be able to cross. (After all, the shattered bridge will be of no use to you.) What do you do?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It was a normal Saturday afternoon in Boston, Mass. you got up from your couch to grab a diet coke. You also heated up a leftover Hot dog from the fridge on your way to getting a diet coke. While you are waiting for the hot dog to finish heating up. you get a call. You pick it up, and hear a annoying voice. "Listen we need alot of help". "We need you" "Were Drafting you into the army". Your shocked. But you have to do what you need to do to save the U.S. Meet me by the Shooting Gallery" He said. "See you tomorrow ". He says "Bye". That night you got 3 hours of sleep thinking about what could happen in your future life. > You choose your Gun A long drive to the Shooting Gallery is getting you really nervous.But you gear up to start shooting in the army. you get there 5 minutes later. When you got there you saw a set of different guns. There is a Assault rifle, and a Heavy Machine Gun, a Semi-Automatic Rifle, a Shotgun, a Sniper rifle, and finally a Submachine Gun. which one to take. Since you are right now at the New Man in the army. > You assault Rifle As you Pick up the Rifle, you almost drop it, because you get so nervous. There is a big Target for Newcomers. It is 4 feet by 5 feet. You are trembling, and are not sure how long you can hold your balance for .The target looks like1 foot, by 2 feet. You should wait, and shoot, but your not sure how long you can hold it for. Your boss is getting very impatient with how long your taking. > You wait, then shoot the target It took to long, and you give up on that gun, maybe you just not made for that gun. > A Heavy Machine Gun The large body you have can't even hold the Heavy Machine Gun. It is huge, and heavy. But it shoots so strong. You see a 4 feet by 5 feet target. Will you shoot it,remember it's your first time shooting,a nd you don't know where to shoot it, you can put the gun's end side up at your throat, and shoot the target, or you can Put it by your Stomach. Where will be better to shoot it. you think of. > You shoot it by the Throat BINGO, you got a perfect shot right on target. "Nice aiming." Your boss tells you, I like where you positioned your gun, good job. This is your new gun for starters." "Now next week I'm going to need you in Iraq, we need your help". You gulp as he continues talking, "and we will need you for the most important part. The shooting."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The large body you have can't even hold the Heavy Machine Gun. It is huge, and heavy. But it shoots so strong. You see a 4 feet by 5 feet target. Will you shoot it,remember it's your first time shooting,a nd you don't know where to shoot it, you can put the gun's end side up at your throat, and shoot the target, or you can Put it by your Stomach. Where will be better to shoot it. you think of. > You shoot it by the stomach The shot hits the floor, and you feel really crappy, but remember you still have other guns. So there has to be one gun that fit's your style.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you Pick up the Rifle, you almost drop it, because you get so nervous. There is a big Target for Newcomers. It is 4 feet by 5 feet. You are trembling, and are not sure how long you can hold your balance for .The target looks like1 foot, by 2 feet. You should wait, and shoot, but your not sure how long you can hold it for. Your boss is getting very impatient with how long your taking. > You put the Gun down, and try another one Without even trying you put the gun down, and ask for another one. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you Pick up the Rifle, you almost drop it, because you get so nervous. There is a big Target for Newcomers. It is 4 feet by 5 feet. You are trembling, and are not sure how long you can hold your balance for .The target looks like1 foot, by 2 feet. You should wait, and shoot, but your not sure how long you can hold it for. Your boss is getting very impatient with how long your taking. > You just shoot out of random The shot was at the edge of the target. But it hit it, and that gun could possibly become the next gun that you use in the army. Next week you start your missions the boss said. He continues to say stuff as you gulp. Your nervous, but you must get over it.He tels you, you will have missions in Iraq. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The smell of water clouded Gabri's mind. The vast painting of blue was beautiful. Forget the immense fog. Forget the millions of trees closing him in. All that was there was the pool of water. He began touching his feet inside. Its crisp freshness made him shiver with joy. Soon, he was wading, all of him, in the water. He swam around rapidly and then just let the water carry him. It felt good. Oh, how it felt good. "Gabri!" shouted a voice from outside his own world. There, clothed in a brown and apricot robe, stood Ka Kamikaze, Jedi Master. His black hair, silver at the sides, clung to his scalp, refusing to let any wind pass through. His ashy black beard did the same. Ka was stocky, broad-shouldered. His blue lightsaber stayed tucked away deep in his robe. Gabri had never seen him withdraw it, but he had heard great tales in which he fought with it. Oh, if he could see him wield it, see all those tales come true, he would love it. "No more tomfoolery!" Ka ordered in his bold voice, "Do you come or do you stay? I must search this area." > You stay "I think I shall stay." Gabri told Ka, and began drifting off into the water's hypnotizing ripples. "Very well. If you must. I shall meet you back here soon." Ka said, a touch of bitterness in his voice, and was off. But Gabri didn't listen to him. He was already immersed in the water. The quiet tranquility calmed him. It was a calm quiet. A peaceful quiet. An eerie quiet. A menacing quiet. He felt the sensation of being watched. He reluctantly emerged from the water and draped his robe around him. He then went to explore the region around the pool. The only sounds were his footsteps squishing on the damp grass and his breathing. But, as he quieted himself, he heard another breathing noise. He whipped his head around, scouring for another being. He saw nothing. He looked to the north and, suddenly, he heard the hum of a lightsaber. He lashed his own out. The crrsshh of their lightsabers clashing echoed around them. The bright hues of green and red lit up their faces. Gabri could not see the other's face, for it was covered by a sooty, black hood. He knocked the lightsaber out of the other's hand and pinned him to the ground. The other was not, however, a he at all. She was a woman, with musty red hair all ablaze and fawn's eyes. They were timid pools of blue-green water and they were glistening. Her hood was now down and her arms bent up against her head. With flaring nostrils, Gabri shouted at her, > You say "Who are you?!" The woman looked at him with stern eyes. She clenched her teeth and answered, "I am Ophelia. And you may be?" "Gabri," Gabri told her, "I'm tempted to kill you." She looked at him with girlish eyes. Her sternness was there but her eyes sang a different tune. They sang, "Have mercy on me." He kept her restrained but, in an act of kindness, eventually let her be free. She stood and brushed the dew off her robe. As she stared at him her eyes said something again that her voice did not: "Why are you kind to me?" He knew not why, but he felt a certain sadness for her. It seemed she wished not to be here, that she longed to be somewhere safer, happier. A tear trickled down her face. She gazed down a moment. Then, she looked into his periwinkle eyes. "You have been sent to free me," she replied, speaking like a prophet, "To free me from the Sith's manacles." He stared into her fawn's eyes. Her strength was wilting. She suddenly dropped to her knees, laid her face in her hands and cried. Seeing her sorrow made him think of how he was glad he was a Jedi. The Sith were menaces. They always turned on each other. They couldn't be trusted. But he then remembered the harshness of Ka. How Ka was cruel and unforgiving. That was like the Sith. They both sounded horrible. He knelt by her, resting a claming hand on her back, and told her, > You say "Come with me and the Jedi shall protect you." She looked up at him with trustworthy eyes. The tears made her eyes quiver like someone dropping a pebble into a a pond and watching the ripples. She laid a hand on his shoulder and said, "Thank you." He never quite did know if the Jedi were the good ones, or the Sith. But seeing this girl break into tears, he knew. He had to take her into his custody, make her feel wanted. And so, following the path from Padawan to Jedi Knight, he took her as his Padawan. He needed to show everybody how the Jedi were the ones to be trusted. He did show them. Every one.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The woman looked at him with stern eyes. She clenched her teeth and answered, "I am Ophelia. And you may be?" "Gabri," Gabri told her, "I'm tempted to kill you." She looked at him with girlish eyes. Her sternness was there but her eyes sang a different tune. They sang, "Have mercy on me." He kept her restrained but, in an act of kindness, eventually let her be free. She stood and brushed the dew off her robe. As she stared at him her eyes said something again that her voice did not: "Why are you kind to me?" He knew not why, but he felt a certain sadness for her. It seemed she wished not to be here, that she longed to be somewhere safer, happier. A tear trickled down her face. She gazed down a moment. Then, she looked into his periwinkle eyes. "You have been sent to free me," she replied, speaking like a prophet, "To free me from the Sith's manacles." He stared into her fawn's eyes. Her strength was wilting. She suddenly dropped to her knees, laid her face in her hands and cried. Seeing her sorrow made him think of how he was glad he was a Jedi. The Sith were menaces. They always turned on each other. They couldn't be trusted. But he then remembered the harshness of Ka. How Ka was cruel and unforgiving. That was like the Sith. They both sounded horrible. He knelt by her, resting a claming hand on her back, and told her, > You say "Do not fear the Sith. They will help you." Her eyes met his and she resembled a deer in headlights. Her crying stopped from sheer shock. "Your a monster if you believe that," she said, "You must be." She fled from him, leaving him kneeling with a hand in the air. She fled because she feared him. She just didn't know. The Sith were the good ones. Not the Jedi. Ka was a good example. So he became a Sith Master, destroying all dear to him for he knew this was the right thing to do.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I think I shall stay." Gabri told Ka, and began drifting off into the water's hypnotizing ripples. "Very well. If you must. I shall meet you back here soon." Ka said, a touch of bitterness in his voice, and was off. But Gabri didn't listen to him. He was already immersed in the water. The quiet tranquility calmed him. It was a calm quiet. A peaceful quiet. An eerie quiet. A menacing quiet. He felt the sensation of being watched. He reluctantly emerged from the water and draped his robe around him. He then went to explore the region around the pool. The only sounds were his footsteps squishing on the damp grass and his breathing. But, as he quieted himself, he heard another breathing noise. He whipped his head around, scouring for another being. He saw nothing. He looked to the north and, suddenly, he heard the hum of a lightsaber. He lashed his own out. The crrsshh of their lightsabers clashing echoed around them. The bright hues of green and red lit up their faces. Gabri could not see the other's face, for it was covered by a sooty, black hood. He knocked the lightsaber out of the other's hand and pinned him to the ground. The other was not, however, a he at all. She was a woman, with musty red hair all ablaze and fawn's eyes. They were timid pools of blue-green water and they were glistening. Her hood was now down and her arms bent up against her head. With flaring nostrils, Gabri shouted at her, > You say "Why did you try to kill me?!" She gazed at him with fiery madness. "Because you are a Jedi! Jedi cannot be trusted!" She wanted to struggle, to escape from him, he could tell but if she tried she'd feel the wrath of his lightsaber. "It is the Sith that can't be trusted!" he shouted, accidentally letting her go. "The Sith have only tried to restore the galaxy. The Jedi have tried to tear it down!" she shouted back, angrily, picking up her lightsaber and wielding it once more. They clashed the lightsabers against each other again and started an immense battle. They whipped around and around again. She withdrew her lightsaber unintentionally and he took the moment to > You murder her He swished his emerald lightsaber through her body and she fell to the ground. Her hair laid around her and her body was limp. He felt anger rise inside him. He didn't know then but he was becoming a Sith. He went out into other worlds expressing his anger. He found that the Sith were the good, the great defenders of the galaxy. And, after annihilating people and planets, he joined the Sith for the good of the galaxy.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>She gazed at him with fiery madness. "Because you are a Jedi! Jedi cannot be trusted!" She wanted to struggle, to escape from him, he could tell but if she tried she'd feel the wrath of his lightsaber. "It is the Sith that can't be trusted!" he shouted, accidentally letting her go. "The Sith have only tried to restore the galaxy. The Jedi have tried to tear it down!" she shouted back, angrily, picking up her lightsaber and wielding it once more. They clashed the lightsabers against each other again and started an immense battle. They whipped around and around again. She withdrew her lightsaber unintentionally and he took the moment to > You hug her He wrapped his arms around her and, as she eased into him, she cried. "They're cruel beings," she hiccuped, "They are self-seeking and would do anything to destroy their enemies and even their friends, if they had any, to make themselves stronger." Gabri nodded on her candlelight hair. Ka was callous at times but he always had good intentions. He wanted to help, not hurt. Gabri knew that now. As the girl sobbed into his robe, he knew he had to stay a Jedi if he wanted to help. And he did want to.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The smell of water clouded Gabri's mind. The vast painting of blue was beautiful. Forget the immense fog. Forget the millions of trees closing him in. All that was there was the pool of water. He began touching his feet inside. Its crisp freshness made him shiver with joy. Soon, he was wading, all of him, in the water. He swam around rapidly and then just let the water carry him. It felt good. Oh, how it felt good. "Gabri!" shouted a voice from outside his own world. There, clothed in a brown and apricot robe, stood Ka Kamikaze, Jedi Master. His black hair, silver at the sides, clung to his scalp, refusing to let any wind pass through. His ashy black beard did the same. Ka was stocky, broad-shouldered. His blue lightsaber stayed tucked away deep in his robe. Gabri had never seen him withdraw it, but he had heard great tales in which he fought with it. Oh, if he could see him wield it, see all those tales come true, he would love it. "No more tomfoolery!" Ka ordered in his bold voice, "Do you come or do you stay? I must search this area." > You go Gabri stood out of his soothing water, pulled on his robe, and followed Ka. "A Jedi shouldn't play around like you do," Ka scolded, "I wanted a willing Padawan, not an immature little boy." Gabri looked up to Ka with great admiration, and he knew he played around more than he should, but he also knew Ka could be harsh. They moved on, the damp grass squishing under their feet. "What are we looking for?" Gabri asked, again. He never really listened to Ka's answers for Ka always spoke down to him, and in sarcastic tones as well. "If you paid the slightest bit of attention, instead of goofing off, you'd already know," Ka snarled. And so, Gabri's question went unanswered. They walked a far distance until they came to a shed. It was poorly constructed and rundown. The door was off its hinges and nothing but dust and grime laid inside. They entered and found a Gungan standing there with flappy tan ears and eyeballs on antennae. He had a bill and a long tongue. "Are you Jedi Master Ka Kamikaze?" he asked, "I have been sent for him." Ka nodded. "I am Lum Blimi. A ship has been sent for you, from the Rebellion." the Gungan told them. He led them through the thick jungle and there before them was Y-wing, a mossy yellow color covering it. Ka boarded and Gabri followed. In its own little compartment was R2-B5, an astromech droid with yellow coloring as well. The droid beeped at Gabri and he waved. Then, he ran inside. Sitting in the pilot's seat, Ka set a course for > You tatooine As they arrived at Tatooine, sand began pelting the windows and they could see nothing. "A sandstorm! What luck!" Gabri complained. Ka paid him no mind to him. He tried to maneuver the the Y-wing but the sand kept it stuck to the ground. "This is all your fault! We should have plotted a course to Endor!" Ka yelled at Gabri. "My fault?! It was not my fault! I let you decide!" Gabri yelled back, even angrier. "It was your fault! Everything's your fault! You never do anything right!" Gabri let his anger explode. The explosion was large and insane. He withdrew his lightsaber and killed Ka with much force. Ka's body dissolved, leaving a his robe and lightsaber in a pile. Through Ka did Gabri Joo now realize the evil ways of the Jedi. They were not defenders of the galaxy. They were destroyers. And so he became one with the Sith and killed many a Jedi. Ka had shown him the Sith were the righteous ones.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Gabri stood out of his soothing water, pulled on his robe, and followed Ka. "A Jedi shouldn't play around like you do," Ka scolded, "I wanted a willing Padawan, not an immature little boy." Gabri looked up to Ka with great admiration, and he knew he played around more than he should, but he also knew Ka could be harsh. They moved on, the damp grass squishing under their feet. "What are we looking for?" Gabri asked, again. He never really listened to Ka's answers for Ka always spoke down to him, and in sarcastic tones as well. "If you paid the slightest bit of attention, instead of goofing off, you'd already know," Ka snarled. And so, Gabri's question went unanswered. They walked a far distance until they came to a shed. It was poorly constructed and rundown. The door was off its hinges and nothing but dust and grime laid inside. They entered and found a Gungan standing there with flappy tan ears and eyeballs on antennae. He had a bill and a long tongue. "Are you Jedi Master Ka Kamikaze?" he asked, "I have been sent for him." Ka nodded. "I am Lum Blimi. A ship has been sent for you, from the Rebellion." the Gungan told them. He led them through the thick jungle and there before them was Y-wing, a mossy yellow color covering it. Ka boarded and Gabri followed. In its own little compartment was R2-B5, an astromech droid with yellow coloring as well. The droid beeped at Gabri and he waved. Then, he ran inside. Sitting in the pilot's seat, Ka set a course for > You endor As they landed on the planet of Endor, they heard the shrill cries of Ewoks. "We must help them!" Gabri shouted. Ka left the Y-wing and Gabri followed. They searched the dense trees until they found a small group-only three-of Ewoks. They were closed in by a horde of stormtroopers. A lifeless Ewok body lay beside them. They were whimpering and cowering like small children. Ka stayed back but Gabri leaped out of the underbrush. He had always questioned himself of who was truly the defenders of the galaxy: Jedi or Sith. But seeing those Ewoks, and seeing the motionless body, he knew it was the Jedi. They were the great ones, the ones who helped the harsh worlds. As he attacked the stormtroopers, he knew he was a Jedi. And a loyal one at that.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk through the undergrowth, a rifle leaning against your shoulder that you struggle to keep from dropping. You rush to keep up with father, who is seemingly oblivious to how fast you’re having to walk. “Come on, boy!” father said, his fingers scratching at his thick black mustache. As you walked out of the confines of the tight pines, you saw home. The stone and thatch cottage that was to be your home for the next few years, until you became of age to find your own place, stood there in the fields. Overgrown fields lay to the West and South, a trickling stream East and the vast forest you’d been walking to took up the North. Judging from the cart sitting alongside it, Mother and Meredith were already here. The family was tiny by all accounts. Mother was prone to bouts of sickness, making her womb a barren place for a child to be born. Although they had tried all their life, and continued trying despite even you recognizing the futility of the action, two children was all they’d ever have. It was you and Meredith, the “miracle twins” as the doctor who delivered you liked to say, that would be the only ones that had survived. The number of miscarriages had clearly taken its toll on Mother, who was fond of siting my the fire, staring into it as she said her rosaries. From Father’s stories she was a wild and untamed girl as a child, a rebellious soul that Father had been ensnared by. Whoever Father speaks so fondly off, its no longer Mother. Father still retained some joy, a love of the land and and a love of nature, although the glimmer of excitement in his eyes was becoming rarer and rarer as time passed. That left Meredith. While father’s love of nature and positive nature had been instilled in you when you were younger when Father still held the hope of a large family that Mother had long abandoned, Mother’s cold, distant nature took hold of Meredith. She wasn’t as bad as mother, but she was a pain to play with and even worse to talk to. All in all, this turned you into the child you are. Without many friends, you’ve become quite lonely, but there is a certain peacefulness in nature you just adore. With the birds nesting in the trees singing to you, the hares bounding carefree underfoot among the undergrowth and eyes of a thousand beasts and creatures staring at you, you could never truly be lonely in the woods. You’d do your chores and feel the burden of labor required to survive in such a harsh time, but then, you were free to walk under the protection of the greak oaks and pines and gaze at the glory of nature. You run down along the fields, hefting the weight of the rifle in your hands as father jogs ahead. Soon, you run up to the porch to find mother and Meredith unpacking. You put your gun in the rack, looking at them. “What can I do now, father?” you ask. “Nothing, boy. It’s up to mother and Meredith to do the unpacking and prepare the catch, Papa says, pulling off his hunting sack and pulling out two hares, their necks broken. “I’ll tell you what. Get the bearings of the forest for me, lad. Scout out for any hare paths or wild fruit growing or deer grazing areas.” “Got it, father,” you nod, grabbing your rifle once more and swinging around to walk back outside again. > You head to the woods You begin wandering up towards the trees, holding your gun tightly in your hands. Whilst nature is no doubt a sanctuary to your young mind to find tranquility, there’s many dangers hidden. You point your rifle, making a loud bang sound as you picture yourself shooting a large grizzly bear like that your grandfather had stuffed in his cabin. You reach the trees, leaning against a large, thick Oak tree and taking a deep breath, taking in all the scents the forest offers you. Your eyes scan the forest, quickly spotting several points of interest. Among the underbrush you spot a slightly trampled hare path, no doubt leading to wherever’s a good spot to graze. There’s also the stream, which you could wander along for a fair distance in search of anything worth seeing without getting lost. Finally, there’s a large oak tree with lots of strong branches. Perfect for climbing. > You head along the hare path You begin following the hare path, trudging along with your rifle in hand. You’re far from a good shot, but still the thought of bagging another hare fills your mind. Your eyes flicker along the path for the black eyes of a hare staring back. You hear magpies singing overhead as a few peek from their treetop nests. It’s a lovely forest, that’s for sure. Suddenly, you hear something. You quickly turn, dropping to your knee to raise your rifle into a firing position to bag your prey as father always does. You don’t, clumsily tripping and hitting yourself in the face with the gun. Still, you’re getting better. You push the gun off yourself as your rub your nose, before hopping up to a kneeling position. You stare at where the noise came from. Through the blurred visage of your watery eyes, you see in th distance a pale figure,, sprinting past the trees with unnatural speed. You heft your gun to your shoulder and aim, not knowing whether to fire or not. You don’t want to miss a chance to take out a… whatever creature that is, but you’re unsure whether that’s even a good idea. > You fire You pull the trigger as the gun bucks in your hands, sending you falling onto your back. You push the gun off you, as you rub your eyes, peeking through the trees. You didn’t hit it, you don’t think. A quick jog over confirms this. You sigh, strolling back to your gun and hefting it up. You spend another hour searching for any trace of the creature, but find neither sight nor sound of it. With that, you tredge back home. > You head home Labor and Duty You never do see the figure again. You venture out looking for it a few more times, but you never do. You must've frightened it. No bother. As you grow taller, stronger and smarter, father assures you that soon, it'll be time for you to finally leave and get your own home, your own wife, and your own family. You suppose he's write. It's your duty to God and nation to build a strong family like that which raised you. That's what expected of you, and that's what you'll do.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You begin following the hare path, trudging along with your rifle in hand. You’re far from a good shot, but still the thought of bagging another hare fills your mind. Your eyes flicker along the path for the black eyes of a hare staring back. You hear magpies singing overhead as a few peek from their treetop nests. It’s a lovely forest, that’s for sure. Suddenly, you hear something. You quickly turn, dropping to your knee to raise your rifle into a firing position to bag your prey as father always does. You don’t, clumsily tripping and hitting yourself in the face with the gun. Still, you’re getting better. You push the gun off yourself as your rub your nose, before hopping up to a kneeling position. You stare at where the noise came from. Through the blurred visage of your watery eyes, you see in th distance a pale figure,, sprinting past the trees with unnatural speed. You heft your gun to your shoulder and aim, not knowing whether to fire or not. You don’t want to miss a chance to take out a… whatever creature that is, but you’re unsure whether that’s even a good idea. > You hold fire You hold fire, as the creature continues sprinting through the forest. You stare curiously at it, before it disappears from view. Fascinating. You lower yourself from the branch to see if you can spot it from a lower angle, but sadly its completely disappeared. No bother, you'll make an attempt to find out what kind of creature it was another day. Time to head home and report your findings. > You head home You don't see any other sight of the creature, or figure, or whatever it was. You grab your gun, hefting it up to your shoulder once more, as you begin strolling home. It's only a short walk back home. When you arrive, mother and Meredith are putting away the last of your family's possessions, while father sits by the fireplace, cleaning his rifle. "Jacob, what did you find?" he asks. "There was some creature in the woods that was really pale and I saw it but I didn't shoot it bec..." "No creature's pale in the woods that I can think of," father interrupts. "Wouldn't be good for them. Their skin's meant to hide them in the foliage, not help them stand out." "We need to get a fire going before night. It's getting colder," father says. "Let's get your chores started. Get to work gathering firewood." "Got it, father," you say. > Two Hours Later... You stare at the bowl of rabbit stew in front of you, lapping your lips as mother continues setting the dinner down on the table. "Alright, let's pray," father says, as you all make the sign of the cross. You bow your head as you all grab each others hands and hold them tightly to pray to the Lord. "Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty," you all say in unison. "Through Christ, our Lord. Amen." You release your hold on Meredith and mother's hands, making the sign of the cross. Then, you eagerly dig into your food. You devour it, licking the last trace that the bowl in front of you ever even held food within two minutes. You slap the bowl down on the plate with a sigh of the joy that can only come from alleviating hunger. You wait for your family to finish eating, tapping the edge of the table out of boredom. After a few minutes, the rest of them finish eating, and you make the sign of the cross once more, before you join hands once more. "We give Thee thanks, Almighty God, for all Thy benefits, and for the poor souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, may they rest in peace. Amen," you all say, before making the sign of the cross a final time. "Jacob, go check on the goats," mother says. "Meredith, help me cleaning the bowls." You nod, standing and pushing in your chair, hurrying to the doorway and grabbing your coat as you pull it on. You walk outside, quickly heading towards the goat shed, where Nick and Puck lie on their bed of hay. They're well fed and watered, and seem contented. You turn to walk back inside, before seeing movement up in the trees. Then, you hear the noise. A horrible, long, incredibly loud, screeching howl that penetrates your very core. You feel an urge to run and flee from the noise. > You hide behind the goat shed You quickly cower behind the goat shed, terrified of the thought of whoever made that howl coming for you. Suddenly, father bursts from the house, his rifle in his hands. "What was that?" he barks out, his knuckles white from how tightly he's clutching the rifle. You point up towards the trees, bathed in the pale moonlight. "It came from there!" you say. Father pauses, staring up nervously. He leans into the doorway, grabbing the crucifix that hangs there to watch over you as you eat. He hands you the crucifix, as you take it. "I want that on you whenever you enter the woods, understood?" he asks, as you nod. "I'll have the crucifix for the house replaced in the morning. Just try and get some sleep, OK?" You nod, as you begin to trudge off to bed. Despite being exhausted, you know you won't sleep much. > The Next Day... "I'm not sending him out there alone! We'll be fine, we'll go quickly!" father says. "I need help with fixing the shed, Ezekiel!" mother replies. "Jacob can do it, I'll set up the traps!" father says. "Jacob's not strong enough to life the blocks, Ezekiel!" Father sighs, looking at you. It's not your place to get involved in the arguing and even though as the wife mother shouldn't be arguing with father, she's right. You're losing daylight fast as the day progresses. One of you needs to set up the traps and one should fix the shed, and you simply can't do the latter. "I can go, father," you say. Father's still nervous about the creature he heard last night, despite admitting he's not sure what it is. Still, with your rifle and God's protection, you know it won't be able to harm you. Father sighs, his big brow furrowing and his mustache drooping. "Alright," he says. "Don't stray too far, understood?" "I understand," you answer. "Take your crucifix, your rifle and my trapping pack, and be back in two hours, or I'm coming lookingn for you, understood?" "I understand," you repeat. Father stares up at the forest, slowly blowing out air between his teeth, before nodding. "Go." You quickly race to grab your father's hunting pack, grabbing the leather pack and swinging it over your shoulder. With your left hand you grab your rifle, struggling to keep it propped up against your shoulder. With your right hand, you hold your crucifix tightly, and head off into the woods. > You continue You walk along the hare path, your rifle and crucifix held tightly in your hands. You find another good spot for a simple snare trap, beginning to tie up your loop as you peer among the branches for one that could be used for the snare. Suddenly, you hear a branch breaking. You drop the loop, twirling around to point your gun. Thankfully, you don't hit yourself in the face with your rifle. You peer through the trees, seeing the flash of pale flesh from yesterday. > You investigate You creep forward, lowering your gun as you approach the creature. You step past teh tree, finding a young girl, around your age. The girl has long, dirty blond hair and very pale skin. You blush and consider averting your eyes as you notice she's completely naked, before settling on focusing on her stares. She crouches over a dead hare, her hands tearing flesh from the creature as she greedily lifts it up and devours it. You stare at her in shock, before she looks up, staring at you. Her face is covered in the hare's blood, her long hair tussled with twigs and dirt in it. Her hands are covered in blood, and she wears a carved wooden ring. The thing that grabs your attention is her eyes. They're bright, shockingly blue that seem to entrap you, and you find yourself unable to say a word. "Hello," she says, staring at you. "I-I...," you stutter, stumbling over your words. You both stare at each other, before the girl finally holds up the hare. "Want some?" she asks. "N-no thanks," you say. "I'm Jacob." "I'm Rose," she replies. "Do you live here?" you ask, not knowing what else to say. "I live all over the woods," she replies. "Have you moved into the cottage?" You nod, as she resumes the eating of the dead hare. "That's not cooked," you say. "No," she replies. You know you have some bread in your pack, and you can see apples hanging nearby. Perhaps you should offer her something less... disgusting. > You offer her bread You open your pack, pulling out a piece of bread and offering it to her. "Here, have some of this," you say. "Thank you," she says, tearing off a piece of the bread and chewing it. She winces, opening her mouth and spitting out the bread. "It tastes rotten," she says. You take a bite out of the bread, chewing it and swallowing in. It tastes perfectly fine. Still, Rose resumes eating her hare flesh. "I like your ring," you say, not knowing what else to say. "Thanks," the girl replies. "I made it myself." "Do you mind if I ask a question?" you ask, as the girl smiles. "That's a question," she says. "I mean, like another question," you say. "Sure." "Why aren't you wearing clothes?" The girl looks down at her naked body, seemingly only noticing it for the first time. "Oh," she says, blushing. "Um... I don't know. I don't have any clothes." > You offer to get her one of Meredith's dresses "I have a sister. She's as big as you. I can get you one of her dresses." "Oh, I don't want to cause any trouble," she says. "No, it's OK, I can get it," you say. "I'll have to do it after I lay down my traps, but I can do it." Rose nods, before looking at your pack. "Why do you lay down traps?" she asks. "To catch prey to eat," you reply. "What do you use?" "My hands," Rose says. Rose pauses, nodding behind you. You slowly turn, spotting a hare sitting in the grass, seemingly oblivious to the two of you. Rose raises a finger to her lips, slowly stepping forward. Then, with unnatural speed she pounces. Rose bursts forward. You only see a blur before she stops, holding the hare with a broken neck in front of you. "How many do you need?" she asks. "I don't know," you say. "If you get me the dress, I can catch you a few hares," Rose offers. > You accept her offer "OK," you say. "I won't be able to get the dress until tonight." "I'll have the hares ready for then," Rose says. "So, do..." "I need to be home soon, then," you say. "Yeah, my mother will be looking for me soon. I need to go," Rose says. "I'll see you tonight, OK?" you say. "Got it," Rose nods eagerly. "OK. Goodbye, Rose," "Goodbye, Jacob," Rose says, before sprinting off into the woods. You watch her leave, before turning to head home. > You half an Hour Later... You walk in the door of the cottage, putting your rifle in the gun rack. Father is there, waiting for you. "Ah, Jacob, you're back. I was getting worried," he says. "Did you set up the traps?" You stare at him. For some reason, you feel you shouldn't tell him about the strange girl. He's always been a very puritanical person, hence the religion. When old Mister Kenneth taught a bird to sing in your last town, father wanted him burnt at the stake for witchcraft. > You tell the truth "No, I..." you say, before realizing you need to explain the whole story. For the next while, you explain the story to father. As you talk, his brow seems to furrow and his mustache droops. He stares at you for a while, before gritting his teeth. "There's a witch, a demon, maybe the devil himself in those woods!" father yells, grabbing the newly made crucifix from its place in the doorway. "You've consorted with pure evil, child. We need to head to town, find a church and pray for forgiveness for our sins!" "What? No, father, she was just a girl! You're talking craz...!" Father slaps you hard, before grabbing your head and holding you close to his chest. "Do you think the devil can't take any form which pleases him? Renounce the evil in your heart!" > You pray to God for forgiveness You drop to your knees as you've been taught to do, and clasp your hands together in prayer. "Oh Most humane and adorable Jesus, Your endless grace and mercy flows forth," you say. "Before granting the gift of absolution To earnest repenters of sinful ways, You demanded a sacrificial compensation. For a wrongful act cannot be rectified Until punishment has been accepted! Yes, for the salvation of my soul, Jesus, You accepted the price of the Cross! Grant me the grace to remain free of debts, My heart remaining flawless before You, Making Your absolution truly worthwhile!" Father hugs you tightly, kissing you on the forehead. "Come on, we need to get Meredith and mother and head to town. We need a priest, understood?" You nod, and quickly follow him to the coach as he calls for mother and Meredith, as you're lead away. " > You continue Son of God You're brought to town with your family and taken to the church, where you're blessed and you pray. After a few hours, father rounds up a posse and heads into the woods, where he searches for the so-called spawn of Satan. Nothing is found, but this push causes father to become even more religious. The religious shift affects you. Whether real or not, you recognize your talk with the girl as sinful and you pray for redemption constantly. Eventually, you become a priest, and find yourself sanctuary in some desolate part of the wilderness. Full of self-loathing yet knowing suicide is a sin, you spend out the rest of your days in a miserable existence.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"No, I..." you say, before realizing you need to explain the whole story. For the next while, you explain the story to father. As you talk, his brow seems to furrow and his mustache droops. He stares at you for a while, before gritting his teeth. "There's a witch, a demon, maybe the devil himself in those woods!" father yells, grabbing the newly made crucifix from its place in the doorway. "You've consorted with pure evil, child. We need to head to town, find a church and pray for forgiveness for our sins!" "What? No, father, she was just a girl! You're talking craz...!" Father slaps you hard, before grabbing your head and holding you close to his chest. "Do you think the devil can't take any form which pleases him? Renounce the evil in your heart!" > You refuse "No, father! She was just a normal girl! She..." Your father quickly unhooks his belt, smacking it into your head as you stumble backwards. "By the lord's name, you will repent!" he screams, as he hits you. "No!" you scream in defiance. In a mixture of anger and panic, father stands over you, beating you desperately, not knowing any other choice. He yells at you, calling you a heathen, a spawn of Satan and more. The beating goes over the top as you continue to refuse to repent. Eventually, a frustrated, enraged blow at the wrong angle ends up snapping your neck, quickly killing you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk in the door of the cottage, putting your rifle in the gun rack. Father is there, waiting for you. "Ah, Jacob, you're back. I was getting worried," he says. "Did you set up the traps?" You stare at him. For some reason, you feel you shouldn't tell him about the strange girl. He's always been a very puritanical person, hence the religion. When old Mister Kenneth taught a bird to sing in your last town, father wanted him burnt at the stake for witchcraft. > You lie "Yes, father, I set up the traps," you lie. "Good," father nods. "Now, we have more chores to do." You nod, and prepare yourself for a long day of work. > You later that night... You hear the soft snoring of Meredith in the bed next to you. Father and mother are in the next room, but they're definitely asleep. You slowly slide out of bed, and creep over to the closet. You slowly open the closet, pulling out a black cotton dress and slinging it over your shoulder. You creep out of the house, walking towards the woods. Rose waits there. She leans against a tree, giving a little wave as she sees you approaching. When you reach her, you hold out the dress and she takes it from you, pulling it over her head and putting it on. "How do I look?" she smiles. "Pretty," you admit, before mentally chastising yourself for being so lustful. Rose smiles, and gently kisses you on the cheek. You blush, stepping back. "Rose!" you say, embarrassed. "What? It was on the cheek, we're just friends! Not even my mother could think that was bad!" she asks, confused. "You're being lustful! We're not married, we shouldn't be..." Rose puts a finger to your lips, nodding towards the house as you remember your sleeping parents and nod. "You're weird," she says, before walking into the woods. "Come on, I'll show you where I have the hares." You follow Rose into the darkness of the forest, and you walk alongside her. Soon, you find a dozen hares strung up from a tree by their neck. She cuts the rope keeping them up, and catches the string of hares as it falls, holding it out for you. "Here," she says. "That's a lot of hares," you say. "Fair trade." Rose shakes her head. "No. If you had just laid down your snares, you would've got a few hares. I still owe you something." "Like what?" you ask. "You're new to this place. I'll show you around." "Uh, OK, " you say. You follow Rose around as she leads you through the forest. "So, do you... have a house around here?" you ask. "Um... no. I sleep a lot of places. I used to sleep in my mother's cottage, but we don't get on. Now, I like to sleep in the trees. Find a nice big branch, hold on tightly. It's nice." Over the next hour, Rose shows you the things of importance in the area. The good grazing areas, the most populated hare trails, the wild vegetable and fruit patches. Eventually, you reach within sight of an old, burnt out cottage. Rose stops you before you can get close. "That's my mother's house," she says. "Oh. Did... did she die?" you ask. Rose shakes her head. "No, no she's alive. It's just she... well, it's a long story." "That place is all burnt out. No one should live there." "She should," Rose says, spitting on the ground. Rose quiets up as she leads you away from the cottage. After another few minutes, you come across a mountainous area, with a visible cave further up it. "And that's where my father lives," Rose says. "Well, sort of." "Does he move around a lot?" you ask. "He lives in a lot of places. But he's there," Rose says. "Is he a trapper, or something?" "No, he's a..." Rose says, before pausing. "Yeah, trapper's a good definition. He traps things." You dismiss her comment, and continue walking. Suddenly, Rose perks up. "What games do you know how to play?" she asks. "Games?" "Do you like tag?" she asks. "I don't know." "I tap you and you become it, and then you have to tap me." "Oh, OK," you say. "So, tag," she says, tapping your shoulder. "You're it." Rose bursts off, quickly running through the trees. > You run after her You sprint after Rose, laughing as she playfully lets you catch up before evading your lunges at her. She dances at the edge of your reach, and you continue running through the forest. You spend at least an hour playing but eventually, Rose leads you home. You talk for a bit more, but you arrive back at your cottage. "Well, goodnight," she says. "Goodnight, Rose," you reply. "Can we do this again sometime? It's nice to have someone to be around." She's right. It is nice. Your short time with Rose has been fun and really helped with your loneliness. "Yeah. I'd like that," you say. "Great," Rose smiles. "See you soon." "See you soon," you say, as you walk back to the cottage to get to bed. > One Month Later... Your secret friendship with Rose develops quite a fair bit. You have quite a bit of time to play with her. Due to your success at “hunting”, father seems more than happy to leave you in charge of the hunting. Everyday, you head out to do the snares, Rose awaits with a string of hares for you. Then, you have a while to play and have fun, before you need to head home to avoid arising suspicion. You gift Rose with a few luxuries that she can’t scavenge from the woods such as preserves, a blanket and a few other man-made goods. Father notices your rise in behavior, but he simply dismisses it as you enjoying the woods and all the time you’re spending in it. Like you, Rose assures you that it’s best you never meet with her parents. When asking if her parents even know of the friendship or whether they’re in the dark like yours, she vaguely implies that her mother does know, and watches you two playing occasionally. You never see her, mother, but you don’t mind. For now, all is good. You run through the undergrowth desperately with all your speed, but like always, Rose is much faster than you. She taps you in the shoulder before speeidng away in the blink of an eye, stopping by a tree to lean against it for you to catch up. “You’re too fast!” you complain. “You’re too slow,” Rose says, sticking out her tongue. “Let’s play another game,” you say. “Hide and seek?” she asks. Despite Rose’s unnatural ability to find you during hide and seek, by what she claims to be “sniffing” despite her being far away, you have much more of a chance of success in hide and seek rather than trying to outpace her. She’s faster than a deer, you’ll never beat her in that field. “Yeah, let’s do hide and seek,” she says. “I’ll be on first, if you want.” You nod eagerly, as she spins around on the balls of her bare feet, clasping her hands over her eyes. “One, two, three…” she begins to count, as you turn and sprint off into the woods. You have a few places in mind that would make a good hiding spot. There’s a little den underneath one of the trees that you could hide in. It should be easy enough to crawl into, although you’ve had similar hiding spots before. Still, it’s one of the best spots you have, and the closest one. There’s also a more risky choice. The burnt out cottage that here mother supposedly lives in is close by. Rose says she only uses it for sleeping in, so you could hide out in there. There’s also her father’s cave. It’s slightly father away, but Rose seems to have an aversion to it. You could get to it if you run past enough, and hide away in there. There’s been no reports of trappers in the area and Rose hasn’t mentioned seeing him in a while, so you should be able to hide out there. > You hide in the den You quickly make your way to the den, finding it in the exact spot you remembered, just squirreled away under the twisted roots of an ancient Oak. You drop to your knees, lifting yourself down into it and scrunching up. You wait patiently, closing your eyes. > You wait It’s not long before you hear a gleeful “Found you!”. You open your eyes and look up at Rose, who stands by the den opening with a smile. “Ah, rats!” you say, as Rose grabs your hand and helps pulls you out of the den. “That was fun,” she smiles. “Yeah, I’m only just realizing that hide and seek is mainly one person waiting in a hiding spot,” you say, before looking up at the sun as it falls through the sky. “It’s late. I need to get home soon.” “Oh come on! I didn’t even get to hide yet!” Rose complains, pouting in an exaggerated fashion. “Sorry. You can hide first time,” you say. “Fine,” Rose says. “Come on, let’s get you home.” > Another month later... You stand in the goat shed, feeding Nick and Puck. You put the rest of their feed down, walking out to talk to father. Father chops wood by the wide of the house, while mother cooks and Meredith washes clothes by the stream. You walk to father, who seems quite content. Thanks to Rose, you've been eating well, and she even brought you a full deer the other day. You had to shoot it to make it seem like you had hunted it yourself, but other than that it was a cause for celebration. "Ah, boy! Have you checked the traps today?" "Not yet, father," you say. Father smiles, motioning towards the soup mother's making. "Go, get some venison soup and head out. I need to head to town tomorrow. Get some salt to help the meat last through winter, and sell some of the excess meat. We're truly blessed with your hunting and trapping skills, Jacob. Thank the Lord for it. So tell me, will you come to town with me tomorrow?" > You agree to head to town with father tomorrow "Sure, father. I'd love to." "Great. I'll be seeing if there's any fathers with girls your age in the town, you know. You're getting old, and I'm sure with your strong features, ability to provide for a family and your humility to God, you'll have no trouble finding a wife. Ah, I'm talking too much. Now go, boy, have some soup and check the traps." You begin walking away and head to mother, who stirs the soup slowly. "Do you want some, Jacob?" she asks, not looking up. "Yes, please," you say, as she dumps some of the soup into a wooden bowl and hands it to you. You say your thanks to her before praying to say the same to the Lord, and then quickly devour the soup. It's fairly delicious and both easily warms and fills you up easily. Now, you're ready to head out. > You head out to the woods You turn, walking off into the woods. It's only a few minutes of strolling before Rose appears behind you, smiling and happily fiddling with her wooden ring. "Hiya," she says. "Hello, Rose," you say. "So, Jacob, what do you wanna do?" "I don't know," you say. "Did you get me any prey to bring home?" Rose nods. "Yeah, I got you five hares. Is that enough?" "Perfect," you nod. "Come on, then," Rose smiles, bounding away. "Let's go find something to do." You look at her, thinking. Father said you were to find a girl relatively soon. A wife to raise a family with. From what you've seen of the outside world, the girls are all the same as Meredith and mother. They do what they're told, they pray, they're humble. But you don't want a wife like mother or Meredith. You wonder if Rose would be a suitable partner. She doesn't know how to sew, or clean, or cook, or wash clothes, or really do any wife stuff. But you'd prefer a second out here with her rather than with Meredith or mother. She's the one who hunts. Maybe you could learn to do the wife things for her if you got married. You... An acorn hits you in the head and you step back, startled. Rose throws another acorn at you, which you duck under. "Hello! Anybody there?" Rose says, gently tapping her knuckles against your head. "I'm fine, I'm fine," you reply, as you begin walking alongside her. You walk down towards the stream, where Rose's catch awaits. Five hares hang from the branches alongside three squirrels. Rose hops across the river, water splashing the edge of her dress. You follow her, jumping from rock to rock to cross the stream. Rose sits down on a rock basking in the sun that sits at the edge of the stream, water rushing past. You sit down next to her, staring at her. With long blond hair, shockingly blue eyes and a pretty, if a bit animal-like face, she's definitely pretty. Her eyes lock into yours, as you both stare into each other. > You kiss her You lean in, kissing Rose on the lips, closing your eyes. Her lips are warm, and you feel yourself meld into the kiss. You feel her pull away and open your eyes just as she slaps you hard across the face. You stumble backwards, as she stares at you, nervous and panicked. "No, no, no!" Rose says, looking scared. "We're not allowed to kiss!" "What? What's wrong?" you ask. Rose looks off into the woods, panicked and scared, as she stares fiddling with her ring again. "I promised, Jacob! I promised her I wouldn't kiss you or fall in love or anything! I promised!" "Rose, calm down, OK! It's fine, we're fine!" you say, trying to calm her down. "No, no, no! I told you my mother watches us playing sometimes. I told you! Now she saw you do that, and she's going to be so angry at us, and... and..." Rose says, looking absolutely terrified. "I'm sorry, OK! I can explain this to her!" you say. "No! I need to... I..." Rose goes even paler than her natural pallor. "You need to go." "Rose, I'm not going! I...!" "Take your stupid prey and go! Just go!" Rose shouts at you. "I need to deal with this." "Rose, pl...!" "Go home, Jacob! I'll deal with it!" she screams, bounding up from the rock and sprinting off into the trees. You stand to sprint after her, but she's long gone into the woods. You sigh, walking over to your prey and grabbing the string of squirrels and rabbits. With that, you turn, walking home. > You hours Later... You sit at the table with your family. Mother puts the meal down on the table, strips of cooked venison and corn. You grab one of the strips and shovel it into your mouth, feeling bitter. "Jacob!" your father shouts, aghast. "Where are your manners? How dare you take the bounty of the Lord without thanks!?" "Sorry, father," you say, bowing your head. "I didn't think." "No, you didn't!" "I'll include this in my prayers for redemption tonight," you say. You hold out your hands, grabbing your Meredith's and your mother's. "Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty," you all say in unison. "Through Christ, our Lord. Amen." You release your hold on Meredith and mother's hands, making the sign of the cross. Then, you start to eat, devouring your venison and chewing down on the corn. Eventually you finish, and hold out your hands to pray, though your heart isn't in it, let alone your soul. "We give Thee thanks, Almighty God, for all Thy benefits, and for the poor souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, may they rest in peace. Amen," you all say, before making the sign of the cross a final time. You stand for the table, pushing in your chair. Your father looks at you with a worried look in his eyes. "Look, it's dark. Say your nightly prayers and head to bed." "I..." you start to say, before pausing. "Yes, father." You sigh, before walking to bed. > You sleep... You're awoken by the noise. A horrible, long, incredibly loud, screeching howl that penetrates your very core. The noise floods into your mind, as horrifying and scary as when you first heard it. Only now, you can hear it outside your house. You hurry to clamber out of bed, clambering out of bed as you hear the door smash open. The creature lets out a chattering, screeching howl. You freeze, feeling cold, as shivers run down your spine. You need to act, fast. > You get your parents You charge into the next room, and finally glance the creature. It looks vaguely human, a fact even more terrifying. It stands at seven or eight feet, it's skin as white as bone. It has long black hair, matted with blood and gore. It's hands have transformed into horrible, mangled claws, with long, bloodstained claws. It's face is mangled and misshapen, but its eyes are filled with malice and hate. It stares at you. Then, with supernatural speed, it bursts forward. It hits mother first, its claws rending through her in seconds, tearing her apart. Father's barely out of bed before it turns to him. The superstitious man has reached for his crucifix rather than his rifle, but gets neither as the monster slashes his throat open, staining his mustache red as he collapses to his knees. Meredith appears in the doorway, terrified and confused. The monster bursts towards her, impaling her fragile body on one of its claws. It raises her up, growling in her face, before tossing her aside. Finally, it turns to you, it's horrible, mangled mouth seeming to turn into a grin. It steps forward slowly. You know there's no use running. You stare at the monster as it brings its claws just next to your face, still grinning with satisfaction. It motions as if to slash open your throat, but stops suddenly. It motions to do so again, but pauses once more, this time hissing in pain. It stops, before howling up towards the sky. Then, it brings its face up to yours. "Leave this place," it snarls. Its breath reaches your nostrils, warm and toxic. You feel your head going black, before collapsing onto the ground. > The Next Morning... You awaken in the house, surrounded by the bodies of your loved ones and covered in blood. You stand, staring around your destroyed house. It seemed the creature took time to destroy the place. It's dead silent despite the sun having risen, so the roosters must be dead. You sit there, surrounded by bloodshed and death. You cry for a bit, sobbing into your hand, but eventually you stop. You know you need to be strong. You have to think about yourself. You have to think about Rose. You have to think about the future. You stand, staring out at the woods. You wonder what you should. You could flee. The nearest town isn't too far. You could most likely walk to it in a few hours. Or, you could venture out into the woods. Find Rose, attempt to find what's going on. It's a more dangerous approach, but at least it'll get you answers. > You find Rose You walk out of your ruined house, not looking back, and begin heading towards the woods. It takes an hour of searching, but you find her. She sits by the same rock as yesterday, staring into the water. "Rose!" you say. Rose looks at you. She looks... strange. She's the palest you've ever seen. She's missing her wooden ring, as well. Her eyes are different, however. They're dark, the blue of her eyes now almost being black. Tears stream down her face as she stares at you. "Jacob!" she says, crying. "I'm so so sorry, Jacob. I tried to stop her. I tried my best. But my father's greedy, and he'd only..." Rose bursts into tears as you quickly cross the river. You wrap your arms around her, hugging her tightly. "It's OK. It'll be alright. We're fine, OK? We're fine. We need to get out of here." "It's my fault," Rose cries. "I know what my mother's like. I should've never talked to you." "It's OK. It's OK," you say. "We just need to go, OK?" "No, Jacob, I can't. I can't," she says. "It's OK. Just take a deep breath, and tell me what's going on," you say. "My... my mother... she saw us kiss. It took a lot for me to convince her to let us be friends, and I promised her we'd never kiss or marry or anything. I knew she was going to try kill you, so I had to make a deal." "That... the monster is your mother?" you ask, stepping back. Fay nods slowly. "She wasn't always like that. When she met my father, he made her like that. She wanted to be like that, to have power. She gave him so much... she gave him everything... eventually, her gave her something in return. A child." "Who... who is your father, Rose?" you ask. "It's..." Rose says, before bursting into tears. "I'm so sorry, I wanted to tell you, but I thought you wouldn't want to be my friend if I told you." "Rose..." "It's... my father is Lucifer, Jacob. I knew mother was going to try kill you, so I had to do something. I couldn't stop her, but my father could. I tried to convince him, but he wanted something in return. I had to..." "Rose..." you repeat again. "I had to sell him my soul, Jacob." You stare at her in shock as she nods slowly. "I'm sorry," she says softly. "We... we can fix this," you say. "Jacob, you need to go. You can't stay here with me. Please, just go." "No, no! We can fix this! I can fix this! If you turn to Jesus Christ, he can save your soul! No matter what kind of deal you've made, if you've accepted Jesus Christ into your heart, you'll be saved!" "I'm too corrupt for that," she says softly. "Then we can purify you! We can purify you! Or I can go talk to your mother! If I can convince her to let us be, she can... talk to your father, or something. I mean, that's got to work!" Rose stares at you blankly, her eyes still dark and lifeless. "She'd kill you on sight if my father's protection has warn off. If it hasn't, she won't care." "Then I can go talk to your father! I'm sure I can convince him, or trade something with him, to give you your soul back." Rose slaps you hard across the face. "You don't go up there, do you understand?! You stay away from him! I'll tell you what the plan is. You leave. You get out of here. Go to town. Find a pretty girl, get married, settle down. Be happy, understand?" "I can't do that to you," you say, exasperated. You could try to purify her. Then, with Jesus Christ, you could get her soul saved. You could also try to talk to one one of her parents. Or... you could just leave. You could abandon everything, and try to find a happy life. > You try to purify and save Rose "Come on!" you say, grabbing her hand. "No, Jacob, leave me alone," she says. "Please, Rose, trust me! If this doesn't work, I'll leave, and I'll never bother you again! We can purify you! The lord will accept you! I promise!" Rose stands up, nodding slowly. "Fine. You promise you'll leave if this doesn't work?" "I promise," you say. You lead Rose back towards the house. It takes you some time to gather up what you need, but you do. Your father's crucifix as well as your own, the family Bible and a small flask of holy water that your father brought from the last town's chapel. Rose looks at it nervously. "I'm not sure about this, Jacob." "Trust me," you say. > You begin the ritual "Kneel," you say, as Rose kneels. You stand over Rose, opening your bible and beginning to read. "In the Name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of Blessed Michael the Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints," you begin to read, as Rose begins to wince in pain. "And powerful in the holy authority of our lives, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the devil. God arises; His enemies are scattered and those who hate Him flee before Him." You begin pouring the holy water over Rose, who begins to scream. You grit your teeth, and continue the ritual. "As smoke is driven away, so are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God," you say. Suddenly, Rose screams as she sets alight. She howls desperately in pain as the fire quickly burns through her dress, the very dress you stole for her. She screams horribly as she writhes in pain, and before you can act, her flesh and bone have burnt to ash. You drop to your knees over the ash, staring at it in shock. God has failed. He has failed to save your love. He took her from you. You stare at the ash, your hands shifting through it. Rose is gone. Your tears fall into the ash as you cry. After an hour of crying, you final stand. Your bible and crucifix lie next to you. You stare at them, wondering if God is truly with you. > You accept him No. God is with you. He always is. You turn away from the scene, picking up your bible and crucifix. With a prayer on your lips and tears in your eyes, you walk away from the horrors of the woods and all around it. > You continue God's Child After a few hours of walking, you find a town. You find yourself the nearest church, and pray in it. Soon, God provides. You find a job with the pastor, and are eventually ordained a full minister. You eventually end up as the town pastor, and accept your former life as sinful. Rose burnt because she rejected God in her heart. Your love for her fades, and you soon find a new wife who you marry. You wonder if this is what joy is. You don't feel happy like you did with Rose, but that was the pleasures of Sin. You have a strong connection with God, a nice house and a loving wife who is with child. That's certainly more than enough, isn't it?<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Kneel," you say, as Rose kneels. You stand over Rose, opening your bible and beginning to read. "In the Name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of Blessed Michael the Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints," you begin to read, as Rose begins to wince in pain. "And powerful in the holy authority of our lives, we confidently undertake to repulse the attacks and deceits of the devil. God arises; His enemies are scattered and those who hate Him flee before Him." You begin pouring the holy water over Rose, who begins to scream. You grit your teeth, and continue the ritual. "As smoke is driven away, so are they driven; as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God," you say. Suddenly, Rose screams as she sets alight. She howls desperately in pain as the fire quickly burns through her dress, the very dress you stole for her. She screams horribly as she writhes in pain, and before you can act, her flesh and bone have burnt to ash. You drop to your knees over the ash, staring at it in shock. God has failed. He has failed to save your love. He took her from you. You stare at the ash, your hands shifting through it. Rose is gone. Your tears fall into the ash as you cry. After an hour of crying, you final stand. Your bible and crucifix lie next to you. You stare at them, wondering if God is truly with you. > You reject him You grab steel and flint, and set the bible alight. You hold the crucifix into the flames, as that sets alight too. The flames burnt brightly in your hands, licking your hands and arm. It hurts, but you grit your teeth. If God is up there, you best get used to the burning sensation. Once the bible and crucifix are ash, you stand. You're done here. > You continue Burning Passion You walk through the woods, looking up at the starless night. Your burns still hurt, but you no longer care. You stare up at the sky, and know that God's either not there, or not worth your love. Who is he to claim you're a sinner with all the genocide and torture he's done? No. You're all sinners. No longer bond by silly superstitions and rules, life is yours.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk out of your ruined house, not looking back, and begin heading towards the woods. It takes an hour of searching, but you find her. She sits by the same rock as yesterday, staring into the water. "Rose!" you say. Rose looks at you. She looks... strange. She's the palest you've ever seen. She's missing her wooden ring, as well. Her eyes are different, however. They're dark, the blue of her eyes now almost being black. Tears stream down her face as she stares at you. "Jacob!" she says, crying. "I'm so so sorry, Jacob. I tried to stop her. I tried my best. But my father's greedy, and he'd only..." Rose bursts into tears as you quickly cross the river. You wrap your arms around her, hugging her tightly. "It's OK. It'll be alright. We're fine, OK? We're fine. We need to get out of here." "It's my fault," Rose cries. "I know what my mother's like. I should've never talked to you." "It's OK. It's OK," you say. "We just need to go, OK?" "No, Jacob, I can't. I can't," she says. "It's OK. Just take a deep breath, and tell me what's going on," you say. "My... my mother... she saw us kiss. It took a lot for me to convince her to let us be friends, and I promised her we'd never kiss or marry or anything. I knew she was going to try kill you, so I had to make a deal." "That... the monster is your mother?" you ask, stepping back. Fay nods slowly. "She wasn't always like that. When she met my father, he made her like that. She wanted to be like that, to have power. She gave him so much... she gave him everything... eventually, her gave her something in return. A child." "Who... who is your father, Rose?" you ask. "It's..." Rose says, before bursting into tears. "I'm so sorry, I wanted to tell you, but I thought you wouldn't want to be my friend if I told you." "Rose..." "It's... my father is Lucifer, Jacob. I knew mother was going to try kill you, so I had to do something. I couldn't stop her, but my father could. I tried to convince him, but he wanted something in return. I had to..." "Rose..." you repeat again. "I had to sell him my soul, Jacob." You stare at her in shock as she nods slowly. "I'm sorry," she says softly. "We... we can fix this," you say. "Jacob, you need to go. You can't stay here with me. Please, just go." "No, no! We can fix this! I can fix this! If you turn to Jesus Christ, he can save your soul! No matter what kind of deal you've made, if you've accepted Jesus Christ into your heart, you'll be saved!" "I'm too corrupt for that," she says softly. "Then we can purify you! We can purify you! Or I can go talk to your mother! If I can convince her to let us be, she can... talk to your father, or something. I mean, that's got to work!" Rose stares at you blankly, her eyes still dark and lifeless. "She'd kill you on sight if my father's protection has warn off. If it hasn't, she won't care." "Then I can go talk to your father! I'm sure I can convince him, or trade something with him, to give you your soul back." Rose slaps you hard across the face. "You don't go up there, do you understand?! You stay away from him! I'll tell you what the plan is. You leave. You get out of here. Go to town. Find a pretty girl, get married, settle down. Be happy, understand?" "I can't do that to you," you say, exasperated. You could try to purify her. Then, with Jesus Christ, you could get her soul saved. You could also try to talk to one one of her parents. Or... you could just leave. You could abandon everything, and try to find a happy life. > You head to talk with her father "I need to go," you say. "Yeah," Rose nods. "Thanks." "I'll be back," you reply. "No, Jacob! Go to the town! Please!" You walk away from Rose, heading towards the cave. She doesn't seem to have the strength to follow, or doesn't realize where you're going. None the less, you walk away. After a few minutes of walking, you reach the mountain. You climb up the rocks and reach the mouth of the cave, turning only briefly to stare at the forest around you. You feel a certain cold chill run through you as you stare at into the darkness inside, but you know you need to enter. You walk further into the cave, as the shadows and darkness consume you. After a minute of stumbling forward, you reach the end of the cave, pausing. In the middle of the cave, dozens of scratches cover the inside of the wall, alongside dried in blood. You pause, staring at it. In the middle, a deer skull sits in place You half expect to start hearing horrible screaming or demons to clamber out from the walls, but nothing happens. The crucifix is heavy in your pocket, and you realize that's what's preventing him from coming. You take it out and walk back to the mouth of the cave, and stare out at the woods, knowing you don't really have a choice here. > You throw it Your throw the crucifix, watching it disappear off out of view into the trees. Then you turn, walking back further into the cave. You walk back to the skull, and kneel in front of it, closing your eyes. You wait in silence for several minutes, before you finally hear a voice. "Ah... you must be the boy. Hello, Jacob." "H-h-hello," you stutter, trying to keep calm. "Keep your eyes closed, would you, boy?" the voice asks. "OK," you reply. "I assume you know who I am?" the voice asks. "You're Lucifer." "So you know how high the stakes are here. What did you come here to do?" "I want you to give Rose her soul back." "I didn't ask what you wanted. I asked what you came here to do?" "To... to get her soul back," you say. "Oh, my dear boy, how is it you expect to do that?" "I'm... I'm willing to trade." "A soul is of infinite value. You have only one thing that even comes close to it in value. But you know that, don't you?" You nod slowly, as you feel hands on your shoulders. "So tell me... are you willing to give your soul for hers? The trade's simple. Your soul for hers. Do we have an agreement?" > You accept the deal "Fine," you say. "Say it," Lucifer asks. "I accept the deal," you say, before shuddering in pain as you feel his soul tear into your very being. "Then it's a deal!" You scream as you feel your body begin to burn up in terrible pain. You feel your soul being torn out, before you collapse, your life taken from you. > You continue Although you never learn of it, Rose sat by the river for several hours. Slowly, she begins to feel better. It's only after a few hours she realizes what's happening. She headed up to the cave, and found your body lying there. No matter what she offered, her father refused to revive the departed boy. Eventually, he fell silent, and she left. She left the cave and she left the cave. She walked for miles out of the woods, not knowing what direction the nearest town was. Eventually, a carriage found the girl in the dress, bringing her to the nearest town. Sitting in that carriage, free of her father, free of her mother, free of the woods, that girl in the dress knew that she was free, and it was all thanks to you.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your throw the crucifix, watching it disappear off out of view into the trees. Then you turn, walking back further into the cave. You walk back to the skull, and kneel in front of it, closing your eyes. You wait in silence for several minutes, before you finally hear a voice. "Ah... you must be the boy. Hello, Jacob." "H-h-hello," you stutter, trying to keep calm. "Keep your eyes closed, would you, boy?" the voice asks. "OK," you reply. "I assume you know who I am?" the voice asks. "You're Lucifer." "So you know how high the stakes are here. What did you come here to do?" "I want you to give Rose her soul back." "I didn't ask what you wanted. I asked what you came here to do?" "To... to get her soul back," you say. "Oh, my dear boy, how is it you expect to do that?" "I'm... I'm willing to trade." "A soul is of infinite value. You have only one thing that even comes close to it in value. But you know that, don't you?" You nod slowly, as you feel hands on your shoulders. "So tell me... are you willing to give your soul for hers? The trade's simple. Your soul for hers. Do we have an agreement?" > You reject the deal "No," you say. "Oh, pathetic," Lucifer asks. "You've wasted my time here." Silence consumes you, and you wait patiently. After a few minutes, you open your eyes. The deer skull sits there, the same as ever. You stand, turning and walking out of the cave. You clamber down the hill, and start walking towards Rose. After a few minutes, you find her. "Jacob! I told you to leave!" she says. "I tried to talk to your father, but..." "Jacob! No! Please, please don't take any of his awful deals! Just go! Leave, Jacob!"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken in the house, surrounded by the bodies of your loved ones and covered in blood. You stand, staring around your destroyed house. It seemed the creature took time to destroy the place. It's dead silent despite the sun having risen, so the roosters must be dead. You sit there, surrounded by bloodshed and death. You cry for a bit, sobbing into your hand, but eventually you stop. You know you need to be strong. You have to think about yourself. You have to think about Rose. You have to think about the future. You stand, staring out at the woods. You wonder what you should. You could flee. The nearest town isn't too far. You could most likely walk to it in a few hours. Or, you could venture out into the woods. Find Rose, attempt to find what's going on. It's a more dangerous approach, but at least it'll get you answers. > You get out of this wretched place You look out at the woods one last time, and quickly begin packing everything you have here, all the salted meat, all father's savings, everything you can find, and you begin walking away. It's a long walk to town, but you can make it. > You continue Lost Soul You never find answers. You never find peace with yourself for what happened with that. With Rose, with the monster, with the woods. The memories haunt you. Eventually, you turn to the only thing you have left: religion. You pray every single day for redemption, for God's peace. Eventually, you become a priest, and find yourself sanctuary in some desolate part of the wilderness. Full of self-loathing yet knowing suicide is a sin, you spend out the rest of your days in a miserable existence.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're awoken by the noise. A horrible, long, incredibly loud, screeching howl that penetrates your very core. The noise floods into your mind, as horrifying and scary as when you first heard it. Only now, you can hear it outside your house. You hurry to clamber out of bed, clambering out of bed as you hear the door smash open. The creature lets out a chattering, screeching howl. You freeze, feeling cold, as shivers run down your spine. You need to act, fast. > You hide under the bed You dive under your bed, to a point where you can see the rest of the room, but no one else can see you. You hear your parents' screams of terror as they're torn apart. Suddenly, the door to your room smashes open, and you find the creature staring at you. It looks vaguely human, a fact even more terrifying. It stands at seven or eight feet, it's skin as white as bone. It has long black hair, matted with blood and gore. It's hands have transformed into horrible, mangled claws, with long, bloodstained claws. It's face is mangled and misshapen, but its eyes are filled with malice and hate as they peer around the room. The monster bursts towards Meredith who still lies in her bed, impaling her fragile body on one of its claws. It raises her up from her bed, growling in her face, before tossing her aside. It stops, staring around the room, sniffing slowly. > You run You try to crawl out from under the bed, but as soon as you do you realize there's no escape. You stare at the monster as it brings its claws just next to your face, still grinning with satisfaction. It motions as if to slash open your throat, but stops suddenly. It motions to do so again, but pauses once more, this time hissing in pain. It stops, before howling up towards the sky. Then, it brings its face up to yours. "Leave this place," it snarls. Its breath reaches your nostrils, warm and toxic. You feel your head going black, before collapsing onto the ground. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You dive under your bed, to a point where you can see the rest of the room, but no one else can see you. You hear your parents' screams of terror as they're torn apart. Suddenly, the door to your room smashes open, and you find the creature staring at you. It looks vaguely human, a fact even more terrifying. It stands at seven or eight feet, it's skin as white as bone. It has long black hair, matted with blood and gore. It's hands have transformed into horrible, mangled claws, with long, bloodstained claws. It's face is mangled and misshapen, but its eyes are filled with malice and hate as they peer around the room. The monster bursts towards Meredith who still lies in her bed, impaling her fragile body on one of its claws. It raises her up from her bed, growling in her face, before tossing her aside. It stops, staring around the room, sniffing slowly. > You hide You wait patiently, trying not to make a sound. Slowly as it sniffs the air it begins turning its head to look at where you're hiding. It slowly approaches, before dropping to its knees to stare at you with those dead eyes, it's horrible, mangled mouth seeming to turn into a grin. You try to crawl out from under the bed, but as soon as you do you realize there's no escape. You stare at the monster as it brings its claws just next to your face, still grinning with satisfaction. It motions as if to slash open your throat, but stops suddenly. It motions to do so again, but pauses once more, this time hissing in pain. It stops, before howling up towards the sky. Then, it brings its face up to yours. "Leave this place," it snarls. Its breath reaches your nostrils, warm and toxic. You feel your head going black, before collapsing onto the ground. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're awoken by the noise. A horrible, long, incredibly loud, screeching howl that penetrates your very core. The noise floods into your mind, as horrifying and scary as when you first heard it. Only now, you can hear it outside your house. You hurry to clamber out of bed, clambering out of bed as you hear the door smash open. The creature lets out a chattering, screeching howl. You freeze, feeling cold, as shivers run down your spine. You need to act, fast. > You grab Meredith You charge over to your sister, grabbing her. "Meredith! Meredith!" you say in a hurried manner. "Wh... what?" Meredith asks as she stirs from her shoulder. Suddenly, the door to your room smashes open, and you find the creature staring at you. It looks vaguely human, a fact even more terrifying. It stands at seven or eight feet, it's skin as white as bone. It has long black hair, matted with blood and gore. It's hands have transformed into horrible, mangled claws, with long, bloodstained claws. It's face is mangled and misshapen, but its eyes are filled with malice and hate. It stares at you. Then, with supernatural speed, it bursts away. You try to rouse Meredith again and she stumbles out of bed as you hear mother and father scream as they're torn apart. Then, the creature appears in the doorway again, as you run for the window with your sister. The monster bursts towards Meredith, impaling her fragile body on one of its claws. It raises her up, growling in her face, before tossing her aside. Finally, it turns to you, it's horrible, mangled mouth seeming to turn into a grin. It steps forward slowly. You know there's no use running. You stare at the monster as it brings its claws just next to your face, still grinning with satisfaction. It motions as if to slash open your throat, but stops suddenly. It motions to do so again, but pauses once more, this time hissing in pain. It stops, before howling up towards the sky. Then, it brings its face up to yours. "Leave this place," it snarls. Its breath reaches your nostrils, warm and toxic. You feel your head going black, before collapsing onto the ground. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You're awoken by the noise. A horrible, long, incredibly loud, screeching howl that penetrates your very core. The noise floods into your mind, as horrifying and scary as when you first heard it. Only now, you can hear it outside your house. You hurry to clamber out of bed, clambering out of bed as you hear the door smash open. The creature lets out a chattering, screeching howl. You freeze, feeling cold, as shivers run down your spine. You need to act, fast. > You get out the window and flee You run for the window, opening it, but instantly the door smashes open as the creature enters the room. It looks vaguely human, a fact even more terrifying. It stands at seven or eight feet, it's skin as white as bone. It has long black hair, matted with blood and gore. It's hands have transformed into horrible, mangled claws, with long, bloodstained claws. It's face is mangled and misshapen, but its eyes are filled with malice and hate. It stares at you. Then, with supernatural speed, it bursts away as you hear your parents scream as they're no doubt torn apart. You fumble for the window latch, but the creature bursts back in once more. It bursts forward, grabbing the latch and closing it slowly, as you stumble back. The monster bursts towards Meredith who still lies in her bed, impaling her fragile body on one of its claws. It raises her up from her bed, growling in her face, before tossing her aside. Finally, it turns to you, it's horrible, mangled mouth seeming to turn into a grin. It steps forward slowly. You know there's no use running. You stare at the monster as it brings its claws just next to your face, still grinning with satisfaction. It motions as if to slash open your throat, but stops suddenly. It motions to do so again, but pauses once more, this time hissing in pain. It stops, before howling up towards the sky. Then, it brings its face up to yours. "Leave this place," it snarls. Its breath reaches your nostrils, warm and toxic. You feel your head going black, before collapsing onto the ground. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You turn, walking off into the woods. It's only a few minutes of strolling before Rose appears behind you, smiling and happily fiddling with her wooden ring. "Hiya," she says. "Hello, Rose," you say. "So, Jacob, what do you wanna do?" "I don't know," you say. "Did you get me any prey to bring home?" Rose nods. "Yeah, I got you five hares. Is that enough?" "Perfect," you nod. "Come on, then," Rose smiles, bounding away. "Let's go find something to do." You look at her, thinking. Father said you were to find a girl relatively soon. A wife to raise a family with. From what you've seen of the outside world, the girls are all the same as Meredith and mother. They do what they're told, they pray, they're humble. But you don't want a wife like mother or Meredith. You wonder if Rose would be a suitable partner. She doesn't know how to sew, or clean, or cook, or wash clothes, or really do any wife stuff. But you'd prefer a second out here with her rather than with Meredith or mother. She's the one who hunts. Maybe you could learn to do the wife things for her if you got married. You... An acorn hits you in the head and you step back, startled. Rose throws another acorn at you, which you duck under. "Hello! Anybody there?" Rose says, gently tapping her knuckles against your head. "I'm fine, I'm fine," you reply, as you begin walking alongside her. You walk down towards the stream, where Rose's catch awaits. Five hares hang from the branches alongside three squirrels. Rose hops across the river, water splashing the edge of her dress. You follow her, jumping from rock to rock to cross the stream. Rose sits down on a rock basking in the sun that sits at the edge of the stream, water rushing past. You sit down next to her, staring at her. With long blond hair, shockingly blue eyes and a pretty, if a bit animal-like face, she's definitely pretty. Her eyes lock into yours, as you both stare into each other. > You approach her about the idea of marriage "Do you ever plan to marry, Rose?" "Marry?" she asks, curiously. "What's that?" "You know, when a boy and a girl become one. Like my parents, or like your parents." Rose stares at her hands for a second, her face darkening. "No. I don't want to be like my parents. Definitely not," she says. "No, not like... a marriage is like when a man and a woman become a pair under God and have kids and stay together." "What does having kids have to do with staying together?" she asks. "And I definitely don't want to do anything under... well, you know." "If you have kids you stay together," you say. "That's what happens." "My parents never stayed together, and they had me," she says. Perhaps she might not make the best wife. The concept of marriage seems lost on her. The concept of romance might not be, however.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stand in the goat shed, feeding Nick and Puck. You put the rest of their feed down, walking out to talk to father. Father chops wood by the wide of the house, while mother cooks and Meredith washes clothes by the stream. You walk to father, who seems quite content. Thanks to Rose, you've been eating well, and she even brought you a full deer the other day. You had to shoot it to make it seem like you had hunted it yourself, but other than that it was a cause for celebration. "Ah, boy! Have you checked the traps today?" "Not yet, father," you say. Father smiles, motioning towards the soup mother's making. "Go, get some venison soup and head out. I need to head to town tomorrow. Get some salt to help the meat last through winter, and sell some of the excess meat. We're truly blessed with your hunting and trapping skills, Jacob. Thank the Lord for it. So tell me, will you come to town with me tomorrow?" > You decline to spend time with Rose "Ah, what a shame. You're spending too much time in those woods, son. Does it not get lonely out there?" You shake your head, and father sighs. "If that's what you want. I'll be seeing if there's any fathers with girls your age in the town, you know. You're getting old, and I'm sure with your strong features, ability to provide for a family and your humility to God, you'll have no trouble finding a wife. Ah, I'm talking too much. Go, grab some soup and head out." You begin walking away and head to mother, who stirs the soup slowly. "Do you want some, Jacob?" she asks, not looking up. "Yes, please," you say, as she dumps some of the soup into a wooden bowl and hands it to you. You say your thanks to her before praying to say the same to the Lord, and then quickly devour the soup. It's fairly delicious and both easily warms and fills you up easily. Now, you're ready to head out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your secret friendship with Rose develops quite a fair bit. You have quite a bit of time to play with her. Due to your success at “hunting”, father seems more than happy to leave you in charge of the hunting. Everyday, you head out to do the snares, Rose awaits with a string of hares for you. Then, you have a while to play and have fun, before you need to head home to avoid arising suspicion. You gift Rose with a few luxuries that she can’t scavenge from the woods such as preserves, a blanket and a few other man-made goods. Father notices your rise in behavior, but he simply dismisses it as you enjoying the woods and all the time you’re spending in it. Like you, Rose assures you that it’s best you never meet with her parents. When asking if her parents even know of the friendship or whether they’re in the dark like yours, she vaguely implies that her mother does know, and watches you two playing occasionally. You never see her, mother, but you don’t mind. For now, all is good. You run through the undergrowth desperately with all your speed, but like always, Rose is much faster than you. She taps you in the shoulder before speeidng away in the blink of an eye, stopping by a tree to lean against it for you to catch up. “You’re too fast!” you complain. “You’re too slow,” Rose says, sticking out her tongue. “Let’s play another game,” you say. “Hide and seek?” she asks. Despite Rose’s unnatural ability to find you during hide and seek, by what she claims to be “sniffing” despite her being far away, you have much more of a chance of success in hide and seek rather than trying to outpace her. She’s faster than a deer, you’ll never beat her in that field. “Yeah, let’s do hide and seek,” she says. “I’ll be on first, if you want.” You nod eagerly, as she spins around on the balls of her bare feet, clasping her hands over her eyes. “One, two, three…” she begins to count, as you turn and sprint off into the woods. You have a few places in mind that would make a good hiding spot. There’s a little den underneath one of the trees that you could hide in. It should be easy enough to crawl into, although you’ve had similar hiding spots before. Still, it’s one of the best spots you have, and the closest one. There’s also a more risky choice. The burnt out cottage that here mother supposedly lives in is close by. Rose says she only uses it for sleeping in, so you could hide out in there. There’s also her father’s cave. It’s slightly father away, but Rose seems to have an aversion to it. You could get to it if you run past enough, and hide away in there. There’s been no reports of trappers in the area and Rose hasn’t mentioned seeing him in a while, so you should be able to hide out there. > You hide in the burnt out cottage You quickly make your way to the burnt out cottage. As you reach the clearing and see the blackened thatch and ash and the burnt stone, you feel nervous. Still, with your crucifix clutched tightly in your hands, you move forward into the burnt out cottage. You step through the doorway, crouching down into the ash. You pause, as you notice several black, burnt bones sit in the ash. You frown and wince, realizing that Rose’s mother does, as a matter of fact, still live in this house… or at least, she stays here. You don’t want Rose to have to come here and relive whatever awful memories he has. You wonder whether this is a good spot to hide. > You stay here You wait there in the burnt out cottage for at least an hour, far longer than it ever took Rose to find you before. Eventually, you see her cautiously approaching towards the house, sniffing the air. "Jacob? You're not in the house, are you? If you are, come out, please, she says nervously. You step up, peering out at her from behind the stone wall. She frowns, looking annoyed. "Jacob! I told you to stay away from here!" she says, sprinting towards you and grabbing you by the wrist. She begins dragging you along the path home. "What? I needed somewhere to hide," you say. "Not there!" Rose complains, fiddling with her wooden ring. "It's going to take forever to get your scent out of the ash so she doesn't know you were there!" "She's..." you begin to say, before deciding to hold your tongue. "What?" Rose asks, raising an eyebrow. "Nothing," you say. "I'm sorry. I won't go near there again." "It's OK," Rose says. "Come on, it's been a while. You need to get home." You nod, and walk home alongside her.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly make your way to the burnt out cottage. As you reach the clearing and see the blackened thatch and ash and the burnt stone, you feel nervous. Still, with your crucifix clutched tightly in your hands, you move forward into the burnt out cottage. You step through the doorway, crouching down into the ash. You pause, as you notice several black, burnt bones sit in the ash. You frown and wince, realizing that Rose’s mother does, as a matter of fact, still live in this house… or at least, she stays here. You don’t want Rose to have to come here and relive whatever awful memories he has. You wonder whether this is a good spot to hide. > You leave and head to the den You stand up from the ash, and quickly make your way to the den, finding it in the exact spot you remembered, just squirreled away under the twisted roots of an ancient Oak. You drop to your knees, lifting yourself down into it and scrunching up. You wait patiently, closing your eyes.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You quickly make your way to the burnt out cottage. As you reach the clearing and see the blackened thatch and ash and the burnt stone, you feel nervous. Still, with your crucifix clutched tightly in your hands, you move forward into the burnt out cottage. You step through the doorway, crouching down into the ash. You pause, as you notice several black, burnt bones sit in the ash. You frown and wince, realizing that Rose’s mother does, as a matter of fact, still live in this house… or at least, she stays here. You don’t want Rose to have to come here and relive whatever awful memories he has. You wonder whether this is a good spot to hide. > You leave and head to the cave You stand up from the ash, and quickly head up to the cave, running as fast as you can. You run as fast as your legs can carry you, eventually reaching the incline leading up to it. Which you quickly clamber up. You climb up the rocks and reach the mouth of the cave, turning only briefly to stare at the forest around you. You feel a certain cold chill run through you as you stare at into the darkness inside, wondering if you should enter. > You leave and head to the den You quickly head down the mountain, skidding down the mud and rocks, but by the time you actually reach the bottom and walk any reasonable distance, Rose races up to you with a gleeful “Found you!”. “Ah, rats!” you say. “You didn't even hide!" she smiles. "I didn't have time to!" you say, before looking up at the sun as it falls through the sky. “It’s late. I need to get home soon.” “Oh come on! I didn’t even get to hide yet!” Rose complains, pouting in an exaggerated fashion. “Neither did I," you smile. "Don't worry. You can hide first time,” you say. “Fine,” Rose says. “Come on, let’s get you home.” <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stand up from the ash, and quickly head up to the cave, running as fast as you can. You run as fast as your legs can carry you, eventually reaching the incline leading up to it. Which you quickly clamber up. You climb up the rocks and reach the mouth of the cave, turning only briefly to stare at the forest around you. You feel a certain cold chill run through you as you stare at into the darkness inside, wondering if you should enter. > You venture into the cave You walk further into the cave, as the shadows and darkness consume you. You step forward nervously. After a minute of stumbling forward, you reach the end of the cave, pausing. In the middle of the cave, dozens of scratches cover the inside of the wall, alongside dried in blood. You pause, staring at it. In the middle, a deer skull sits in place You stare at it, feeling unnerved. You half expect to start hearing horrible screaming or demons to clamber out from the walls, but nothing happens. Still, the area fills you with dread, and you wonder if you should leave. > You stay You stay in the cave, holding your crucifix tightly. You feel chills run through your body and feel an awful presence watching over you, but you just hold the cross tighter and wait. Nothing happens, though. You wait patiently, but it seems Rose just doesn't seem to arrive. It's after at least two hours where you realize she's never going to find you in here, and you stand, walking out of the cave and reaching the mouth. You head down the mountain, skidding down the mud and rocks, you scoot down to the bottom. You begin walking, but it's only a few minutes before Rose races up to you. "Damn! You had a good hiding spot. I couldn't find you at all. Where were you?" she asks. > You tell her the truth "I was in your father's cave," you say. Rose stops, turning pale. She looks you dead in the eye, her unnaturally blue eyes staring into your eyes and chilling you to the bone. She looks up and down you, a mixture of nervousness, terror and anger on her eyes that manifest into a confusing look, as she begins nervously fiddling with her ring. “I told you not to go there! I told you!" she says angrily. "I'm sorry," you say. Rose puts her index and middle finger against your temple, looking worried, as her wooden ring rubes against your temple. "It's OK," she says. "I forgive you. Just, promise me you won't go near there again." "I promise." "Thanks. Do you feel OK?" she asks. "Yeah, I feel fine." "Are you sure? No flu or coldness or anything?" "No, I feel fine now," you say. "OK," Rose nods, before wrapping her arms around you and hugging you. "I'm glad you're safe. Come on, let’s get you home.” You nod, and begin walking alongside Rose home.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stay in the cave, holding your crucifix tightly. You feel chills run through your body and feel an awful presence watching over you, but you just hold the cross tighter and wait. Nothing happens, though. You wait patiently, but it seems Rose just doesn't seem to arrive. It's after at least two hours where you realize she's never going to find you in here, and you stand, walking out of the cave and reaching the mouth. You head down the mountain, skidding down the mud and rocks, you scoot down to the bottom. You begin walking, but it's only a few minutes before Rose races up to you. "Damn! You had a good hiding spot. I couldn't find you at all. Where were you?" she asks. > You lie "I was hidden under a tree, in a fox den." "Damn! I thought I would've sniffed your scent," she says, sniffing the air. "You smell the same as always. I don't know. Maybe I have a cold." You feel a bit of guilt for lying, and decide to pray for redemption tonight, but Rose doesn't seem to catch on. "Well, it's late. Come on, let's get you home!" Rose smiles.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk further into the cave, as the shadows and darkness consume you. You step forward nervously. After a minute of stumbling forward, you reach the end of the cave, pausing. In the middle of the cave, dozens of scratches cover the inside of the wall, alongside dried in blood. You pause, staring at it. In the middle, a deer skull sits in place You stare at it, feeling unnerved. You half expect to start hearing horrible screaming or demons to clamber out from the walls, but nothing happens. Still, the area fills you with dread, and you wonder if you should leave. > You leave and head to the den You quickly turn, and leave the cave. You don't want to deal with whatever horrors remain here. You reach the mouth of the cave and head down the mountain, skidding down the mud and rocks, but by the time you actually reach the bottom and walk any reasonable distance, Rose races up to you with a gleeful “Found you!”. “Ah, rats!” you say. “You didn't even hide!" she smiles. "I didn't have time to!" you say, before looking up at the sun as it falls through the sky. “It’s late. I need to get home soon.” “Oh come on! I didn’t even get to hide yet!” Rose complains, pouting in an exaggerated fashion. “Neither did I," you smile. "Don't worry. You can hide first time,” you say. “Fine,” Rose says. “Come on, let’s get you home.” <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your secret friendship with Rose develops quite a fair bit. You have quite a bit of time to play with her. Due to your success at “hunting”, father seems more than happy to leave you in charge of the hunting. Everyday, you head out to do the snares, Rose awaits with a string of hares for you. Then, you have a while to play and have fun, before you need to head home to avoid arising suspicion. You gift Rose with a few luxuries that she can’t scavenge from the woods such as preserves, a blanket and a few other man-made goods. Father notices your rise in behavior, but he simply dismisses it as you enjoying the woods and all the time you’re spending in it. Like you, Rose assures you that it’s best you never meet with her parents. When asking if her parents even know of the friendship or whether they’re in the dark like yours, she vaguely implies that her mother does know, and watches you two playing occasionally. You never see her, mother, but you don’t mind. For now, all is good. You run through the undergrowth desperately with all your speed, but like always, Rose is much faster than you. She taps you in the shoulder before speeidng away in the blink of an eye, stopping by a tree to lean against it for you to catch up. “You’re too fast!” you complain. “You’re too slow,” Rose says, sticking out her tongue. “Let’s play another game,” you say. “Hide and seek?” she asks. Despite Rose’s unnatural ability to find you during hide and seek, by what she claims to be “sniffing” despite her being far away, you have much more of a chance of success in hide and seek rather than trying to outpace her. She’s faster than a deer, you’ll never beat her in that field. “Yeah, let’s do hide and seek,” she says. “I’ll be on first, if you want.” You nod eagerly, as she spins around on the balls of her bare feet, clasping her hands over her eyes. “One, two, three…” she begins to count, as you turn and sprint off into the woods. You have a few places in mind that would make a good hiding spot. There’s a little den underneath one of the trees that you could hide in. It should be easy enough to crawl into, although you’ve had similar hiding spots before. Still, it’s one of the best spots you have, and the closest one. There’s also a more risky choice. The burnt out cottage that here mother supposedly lives in is close by. Rose says she only uses it for sleeping in, so you could hide out in there. There’s also her father’s cave. It’s slightly father away, but Rose seems to have an aversion to it. You could get to it if you run past enough, and hide away in there. There’s been no reports of trappers in the area and Rose hasn’t mentioned seeing him in a while, so you should be able to hide out there. > You hide in the cave You quickly head up to the cave, running as fast as you can. You run as fast as your legs can carry you, eventually reaching the incline leading up to it. Which you quickly clamber up. You climb up the rocks and reach the mouth of the cave, turning only briefly to stare at the forest around you. You feel a certain cold chill run through you as you stare at into the darkness inside, wondering if you should enter.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hear the soft snoring of Meredith in the bed next to you. Father and mother are in the next room, but they're definitely asleep. You slowly slide out of bed, and creep over to the closet. You slowly open the closet, pulling out a black cotton dress and slinging it over your shoulder. You creep out of the house, walking towards the woods. Rose waits there. She leans against a tree, giving a little wave as she sees you approaching. When you reach her, you hold out the dress and she takes it from you, pulling it over her head and putting it on. "How do I look?" she smiles. "Pretty," you admit, before mentally chastising yourself for being so lustful. Rose smiles, and gently kisses you on the cheek. You blush, stepping back. "Rose!" you say, embarrassed. "What? It was on the cheek, we're just friends! Not even my mother could think that was bad!" she asks, confused. "You're being lustful! We're not married, we shouldn't be..." Rose puts a finger to your lips, nodding towards the house as you remember your sleeping parents and nod. "You're weird," she says, before walking into the woods. "Come on, I'll show you where I have the hares." You follow Rose into the darkness of the forest, and you walk alongside her. Soon, you find a dozen hares strung up from a tree by their neck. She cuts the rope keeping them up, and catches the string of hares as it falls, holding it out for you. "Here," she says. "That's a lot of hares," you say. "Fair trade." Rose shakes her head. "No. If you had just laid down your snares, you would've got a few hares. I still owe you something." "Like what?" you ask. "You're new to this place. I'll show you around." "Uh, OK, " you say. You follow Rose around as she leads you through the forest. "So, do you... have a house around here?" you ask. "Um... no. I sleep a lot of places. I used to sleep in my mother's cottage, but we don't get on. Now, I like to sleep in the trees. Find a nice big branch, hold on tightly. It's nice." Over the next hour, Rose shows you the things of importance in the area. The good grazing areas, the most populated hare trails, the wild vegetable and fruit patches. Eventually, you reach within sight of an old, burnt out cottage. Rose stops you before you can get close. "That's my mother's house," she says. "Oh. Did... did she die?" you ask. Rose shakes her head. "No, no she's alive. It's just she... well, it's a long story." "That place is all burnt out. No one should live there." "She should," Rose says, spitting on the ground. Rose quiets up as she leads you away from the cottage. After another few minutes, you come across a mountainous area, with a visible cave further up it. "And that's where my father lives," Rose says. "Well, sort of." "Does he move around a lot?" you ask. "He lives in a lot of places. But he's there," Rose says. "Is he a trapper, or something?" "No, he's a..." Rose says, before pausing. "Yeah, trapper's a good definition. He traps things." You dismiss her comment, and continue walking. Suddenly, Rose perks up. "What games do you know how to play?" she asks. "Games?" "Do you like tag?" she asks. "I don't know." "I tap you and you become it, and then you have to tap me." "Oh, OK," you say. "So, tag," she says, tapping your shoulder. "You're it." Rose bursts off, quickly running through the trees. > You ask for clarifications on the rules, then tag her when she comes over "Wait, if I tag you, then there's two tags. Then we can't play anymore." Rose pauses, sighing, as she begins walking back to you. "Look, if the person tagged is..." she begins to say, before you quickly tap her back and run off into the woods. "Oh, you cheater!" she laughs, turning and running after you. "I'll get you." You spend at least an hour playing but eventually, Rose leads you home. You talk for a bit more, but you arrive back at your cottage. "Well, goodnight," she says. "Goodnight, Rose," you reply. "Can we do this again sometime? It's nice to have someone to be around." She's right. It is nice. Your short time with Rose has been fun and really helped with your loneliness. "Yeah. I'd like that," you say. "Great," Rose smiles. "See you soon." "See you soon," you say, as you walk back to the cottage to get to bed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hear the soft snoring of Meredith in the bed next to you. Father and mother are in the next room, but they're definitely asleep. You slowly slide out of bed, and creep over to the closet. You slowly open the closet, pulling out a black cotton dress and slinging it over your shoulder. You creep out of the house, walking towards the woods. Rose waits there. She leans against a tree, giving a little wave as she sees you approaching. When you reach her, you hold out the dress and she takes it from you, pulling it over her head and putting it on. "How do I look?" she smiles. "Pretty," you admit, before mentally chastising yourself for being so lustful. Rose smiles, and gently kisses you on the cheek. You blush, stepping back. "Rose!" you say, embarrassed. "What? It was on the cheek, we're just friends! Not even my mother could think that was bad!" she asks, confused. "You're being lustful! We're not married, we shouldn't be..." Rose puts a finger to your lips, nodding towards the house as you remember your sleeping parents and nod. "You're weird," she says, before walking into the woods. "Come on, I'll show you where I have the hares." You follow Rose into the darkness of the forest, and you walk alongside her. Soon, you find a dozen hares strung up from a tree by their neck. She cuts the rope keeping them up, and catches the string of hares as it falls, holding it out for you. "Here," she says. "That's a lot of hares," you say. "Fair trade." Rose shakes her head. "No. If you had just laid down your snares, you would've got a few hares. I still owe you something." "Like what?" you ask. "You're new to this place. I'll show you around." "Uh, OK, " you say. You follow Rose around as she leads you through the forest. "So, do you... have a house around here?" you ask. "Um... no. I sleep a lot of places. I used to sleep in my mother's cottage, but we don't get on. Now, I like to sleep in the trees. Find a nice big branch, hold on tightly. It's nice." Over the next hour, Rose shows you the things of importance in the area. The good grazing areas, the most populated hare trails, the wild vegetable and fruit patches. Eventually, you reach within sight of an old, burnt out cottage. Rose stops you before you can get close. "That's my mother's house," she says. "Oh. Did... did she die?" you ask. Rose shakes her head. "No, no she's alive. It's just she... well, it's a long story." "That place is all burnt out. No one should live there." "She should," Rose says, spitting on the ground. Rose quiets up as she leads you away from the cottage. After another few minutes, you come across a mountainous area, with a visible cave further up it. "And that's where my father lives," Rose says. "Well, sort of." "Does he move around a lot?" you ask. "He lives in a lot of places. But he's there," Rose says. "Is he a trapper, or something?" "No, he's a..." Rose says, before pausing. "Yeah, trapper's a good definition. He traps things." You dismiss her comment, and continue walking. Suddenly, Rose perks up. "What games do you know how to play?" she asks. "Games?" "Do you like tag?" she asks. "I don't know." "I tap you and you become it, and then you have to tap me." "Oh, OK," you say. "So, tag," she says, tapping your shoulder. "You're it." Rose bursts off, quickly running through the trees. > You stop playing tag "This game is stupid. I'm not playing!" you shout, as Rose stops, sighing. "I thought other kids liked games," she complains. "Come on then, I'll show you the way home." With that, Rose leads you home. You talk for a bit more, but you arrive back at your cottage. "Well, goodnight," she says. "Goodnight, Rose," you reply. "Can we do this again sometime? It's nice to have someone to be around." She's right. It is nice. Your short time with Rose has been fun and really helped with your loneliness. "Yeah. I'd like that," you say. "Great," Rose smiles. "See you soon." "See you soon," you say, as you walk back to the cottage to get to bed.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"I have a sister. She's as big as you. I can get you one of her dresses." "Oh, I don't want to cause any trouble," she says. "No, it's OK, I can get it," you say. "I'll have to do it after I lay down my traps, but I can do it." Rose nods, before looking at your pack. "Why do you lay down traps?" she asks. "To catch prey to eat," you reply. "What do you use?" "My hands," Rose says. Rose pauses, nodding behind you. You slowly turn, spotting a hare sitting in the grass, seemingly oblivious to the two of you. Rose raises a finger to her lips, slowly stepping forward. Then, with unnatural speed she pounces. Rose bursts forward. You only see a blur before she stops, holding the hare with a broken neck in front of you. "How many do you need?" she asks. "I don't know," you say. "If you get me the dress, I can catch you a few hares," Rose offers. > You refuse her offer "No," you say. "I really should be finishing the traps." "Oh, OK," Rose says. "I'll see you around, though," you say. "Yeah, I guess so," Rose says. "I really should go. My mother will be looking for me." "OK. Goodbye, Rose," "Goodbye, Jacob," Rose says, before sprinting off into the woods. You watch her leave, before turning to set up the rest of the traps. > You continue Labor and Duty You never do see Rose again. You venture out looking for her a few more times, but you never do. She must've not liked you very much. A pity. You could've used a friend. As you grow taller, stronger and smarter, father assures you that soon, it'll be time for you to finally leave and get your own home, your own wife, and your own family. You suppose he's write. It's your duty to God and nation to build a strong family like that which raised you. That's what expected of you, and that's what you'll do.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You creep forward, lowering your gun as you approach the creature. You step past teh tree, finding a young girl, around your age. The girl has long, dirty blond hair and very pale skin. You blush and consider averting your eyes as you notice she's completely naked, before settling on focusing on her stares. She crouches over a dead hare, her hands tearing flesh from the creature as she greedily lifts it up and devours it. You stare at her in shock, before she looks up, staring at you. Her face is covered in the hare's blood, her long hair tussled with twigs and dirt in it. Her hands are covered in blood, and she wears a carved wooden ring. The thing that grabs your attention is her eyes. They're bright, shockingly blue that seem to entrap you, and you find yourself unable to say a word. "Hello," she says, staring at you. "I-I...," you stutter, stumbling over your words. You both stare at each other, before the girl finally holds up the hare. "Want some?" she asks. "N-no thanks," you say. "I'm Jacob." "I'm Rose," she replies. "Do you live here?" you ask, not knowing what else to say. "I live all over the woods," she replies. "Have you moved into the cottage?" You nod, as she resumes the eating of the dead hare. "That's not cooked," you say. "No," she replies. You know you have some bread in your pack, and you can see apples hanging nearby. Perhaps you should offer her something less... disgusting. > You offer her an apple You reach up, plucking a juicy red apple from one of the trees, holding it out to her. "Here, have this," you say. "No thanks," she says. "They taste rotten." You bite into the apple, and find it tastes delicious. None the less, you decide to ignore it. "I like your ring," you say, not knowing what else to say. "Thanks," the girl replies. "I made it myself." "Do you mind if I ask a question?" you ask, as Rose smiles. "That's a question," she laughs. "I mean, like another question," you say. "Sure." "Why aren't you wearing clothes?" The girl looks down at her naked body, seemingly only noticing it for the first time. "Oh," she says, blushing. "Um... I don't know. I don't have any clothes."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You creep forward, lowering your gun as you approach the creature. You step past teh tree, finding a young girl, around your age. The girl has long, dirty blond hair and very pale skin. You blush and consider averting your eyes as you notice she's completely naked, before settling on focusing on her stares. She crouches over a dead hare, her hands tearing flesh from the creature as she greedily lifts it up and devours it. You stare at her in shock, before she looks up, staring at you. Her face is covered in the hare's blood, her long hair tussled with twigs and dirt in it. Her hands are covered in blood, and she wears a carved wooden ring. The thing that grabs your attention is her eyes. They're bright, shockingly blue that seem to entrap you, and you find yourself unable to say a word. "Hello," she says, staring at you. "I-I...," you stutter, stumbling over your words. You both stare at each other, before the girl finally holds up the hare. "Want some?" she asks. "N-no thanks," you say. "I'm Jacob." "I'm Rose," she replies. "Do you live here?" you ask, not knowing what else to say. "I live all over the woods," she replies. "Have you moved into the cottage?" You nod, as she resumes the eating of the dead hare. "That's not cooked," you say. "No," she replies. You know you have some bread in your pack, and you can see apples hanging nearby. Perhaps you should offer her something less... disgusting. > You let her eat her raw meat You watch as Rose continues eating her hare flesh. "I like your ring," you say, not knowing what else to say. "Thanks," the girl replies. "I made it myself." "Do you mind if I ask a question?" you ask, as the girl smiles. "That's a question," she says. "I mean, like another question," you say. "Sure." "Why aren't you wearing clothes?" The girl looks down at her naked body, seemingly only noticing it for the first time. "Oh," she says, blushing. "Um... I don't know. I don't have any clothes."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk along the hare path, your rifle and crucifix held tightly in your hands. You find another good spot for a simple snare trap, beginning to tie up your loop as you peer among the branches for one that could be used for the snare. Suddenly, you hear a branch breaking. You drop the loop, twirling around to point your gun. Thankfully, you don't hit yourself in the face with your rifle. You peer through the trees, seeing the flash of pale flesh from yesterday. > You shoot at it You fire at the figure, missing due to its weight making you unable to aim accurately. Without a noise you see the pale figure sprint away in an instant. You try to follow, but soon give up on that as you realize just how much faster than it you are. With no more traps to set up, you return home.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk along the hare path, your rifle and crucifix held tightly in your hands. You find another good spot for a simple snare trap, beginning to tie up your loop as you peer among the branches for one that could be used for the snare. Suddenly, you hear a branch breaking. You drop the loop, twirling around to point your gun. Thankfully, you don't hit yourself in the face with your rifle. You peer through the trees, seeing the flash of pale flesh from yesterday. > You quickly leave and return home This must be the creature that made the horrible noise. You know if you get any closer, crucifix or not, it'll slaughter you. You turn, and quickly return home. > You continue Labor and Duty You never do see the figure again. You venture out looking for it a few more times, with father alongside you, of course, but you never do. Maybe it just found a new hunting ground, or whatever this place was to it. No bother. As you grow taller, stronger and smarter, father assures you that soon, it'll be time for you to finally leave and get your own home, your own wife, and your own family. You suppose he's write. It's your duty to God and nation to build a strong family like that which raised you. That's what expected of you, and that's what you'll do.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You stare at the bowl of rabbit stew in front of you, lapping your lips as mother continues setting the dinner down on the table. "Alright, let's pray," father says, as you all make the sign of the cross. You bow your head as you all grab each others hands and hold them tightly to pray to the Lord. "Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty," you all say in unison. "Through Christ, our Lord. Amen." You release your hold on Meredith and mother's hands, making the sign of the cross. Then, you eagerly dig into your food. You devour it, licking the last trace that the bowl in front of you ever even held food within two minutes. You slap the bowl down on the plate with a sigh of the joy that can only come from alleviating hunger. You wait for your family to finish eating, tapping the edge of the table out of boredom. After a few minutes, the rest of them finish eating, and you make the sign of the cross once more, before you join hands once more. "We give Thee thanks, Almighty God, for all Thy benefits, and for the poor souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, may they rest in peace. Amen," you all say, before making the sign of the cross a final time. "Jacob, go check on the goats," mother says. "Meredith, help me cleaning the bowls." You nod, standing and pushing in your chair, hurrying to the doorway and grabbing your coat as you pull it on. You walk outside, quickly heading towards the goat shed, where Nick and Puck lie on their bed of hay. They're well fed and watered, and seem contented. You turn to walk back inside, before seeing movement up in the trees. Then, you hear the noise. A horrible, long, incredibly loud, screeching howl that penetrates your very core. You feel an urge to run and flee from the noise. > You run to get your gun You sprint to the house to grab your rifle. Father though, is faster, as he appears with his rifle in his hands. "What was that?" he barks out, his knuckles white from how tightly he's clutching the rifle. You point up towards the trees, bathed in the pale moonlight. "It came from there!" you say. Father pauses, staring up nervously. He leans into the doorway, grabbing the crucifix that hangs there to watch over you as you eat. He hands you the crucifix, as you take it. "I want that on you whenever you enter the woods, understood?" he asks, as you nod. "I'll have the crucifix for the house replaced in the morning. Just try and get some sleep, OK?" You nod, as you begin to trudge off to bed. Despite being exhausted, you know you won't sleep much.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You begin wandering up towards the trees, holding your gun tightly in your hands. Whilst nature is no doubt a sanctuary to your young mind to find tranquility, there’s many dangers hidden. You point your rifle, making a loud bang sound as you picture yourself shooting a large grizzly bear like that your grandfather had stuffed in his cabin. You reach the trees, leaning against a large, thick Oak tree and taking a deep breath, taking in all the scents the forest offers you. Your eyes scan the forest, quickly spotting several points of interest. Among the underbrush you spot a slightly trampled hare path, no doubt leading to wherever’s a good spot to graze. There’s also the stream, which you could wander along for a fair distance in search of anything worth seeing without getting lost. Finally, there’s a large oak tree with lots of strong branches. Perfect for climbing. > You head along the stream You begin walking alongside the stream, staring down at the cool stream of water, your boots trudging into the soft mud as you stare along. You think you can make out fat fish in the stream, although it's hard to tell due to the rushing water. Perhaps father will teach you how to fish sometime. Suddenly, you hear something. You quickly turn, dropping to your knee to raise your rifle into a firing position to bag your prey as father always does. You don’t, clumsily tripping and hitting yourself in the face with the gun and falling into the cool mud of the stream. Still, you’re getting better at that maneuver. You push the gun off yourself as your rub your nose, before hopping up to a kneeling position. You stare at where the noise came from. Through the blurred visage of your watery eyes, you see in th distance a pale figure,, sprinting past the trees with unnatural speed. You heft your gun to your shoulder and aim, not knowing whether to fire or not. You don’t want to miss a chance to take out a… whatever creature that is, but you’re unsure whether that’s even a good idea.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You begin wandering up towards the trees, holding your gun tightly in your hands. Whilst nature is no doubt a sanctuary to your young mind to find tranquility, there’s many dangers hidden. You point your rifle, making a loud bang sound as you picture yourself shooting a large grizzly bear like that your grandfather had stuffed in his cabin. You reach the trees, leaning against a large, thick Oak tree and taking a deep breath, taking in all the scents the forest offers you. Your eyes scan the forest, quickly spotting several points of interest. Among the underbrush you spot a slightly trampled hare path, no doubt leading to wherever’s a good spot to graze. There’s also the stream, which you could wander along for a fair distance in search of anything worth seeing without getting lost. Finally, there’s a large oak tree with lots of strong branches. Perfect for climbing. > You climb a tree You leave your rifle leaning against the tree and grab one of the lowest tree branches, lifting yourself off the ground up onto it. You grab another branch, hopping up as you quickly begin climbing up the the tree. Soon, you reach a point where you can see far and wide in the glade without having your view obscured by the leafy tree tops. You peer out at the various things, seeing a few deer bound past, the rushing stream and a few apple trees worth reporting to father. Other than that, there's... You stop, as far in the distance you see a pale figure bounding through the trees with unnatural speed. You pause, wondering what an earth it is. You stare curiously at it, before it disappears from view. Fascinating. You lower yourself from the branch to see if you can spot it from a lower angle, but sadly its completely disappeared. No bother, you'll make an attempt to find out what kind of creature it was another day. Time to head home and report your findings.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>On Saturday, December 17th, 2005, I proposed to Katrina, my girlfriend of five years. This storygame is based off of my actual proposal to Katrina. I've tried to keep thisas close to how it happened / was planned as possible. Since this is a choose-your-story, you will probably have a slightly different experience, but all paths will lead to the same place, since it was planned that way. You will be reading this story from the perspective of Katrina. > You oK, you've got it! It's Thursday night, a little after 9:00PM, and you just returned home from a twelve-hour workday. But it's all good -- this is the start of a long weekend -- your Birthday weekend -- and you've got five days before you have to return to the daily grind. You see that Alex's friends are over, feasting on Chinese food, and have ordered your favorite dish: General Tso's Chicken. You chow down while they finish up judging some $100 make-a-game contest for their website. They wrap things up after an hour or so, leaving just you, Alex, and a quiet house. You're a bit tired, but are a bit anxious about tomorrow. It's your birthday, and you're dying to know what Alex got for you. He's been talking about it for a few weeks and seems to have been having some shady dealings with some strange people. You have a good idea of what it is (an artifact of some sort) but really want to know what it is ... > You say "Alex, can you give me my gift tonite?" You ask Alex if he can give you the gift tonite, but he denies, insisting it will have to wait. > You say "Pleeeaaassee ... I'm sooo curious ...." You beg and plead, but Alex still insists that you wait tomorrow. Phooey. > You oh well, off to bed After such a long work day, it's great to finally get to bed. You fall asleep without any problems and sleep in for a long time. A verrrry long time. A verrrrrryyyyy looooong time. > Twelve Noon You wake up and do the morning thing, rushing a bit because you're just dying to know what Alex got for you for your birthday. Alex tells you to sit down at the kitchen table and close your eyes. He runs off and retreives your gift, placing it down right in front of you. "Happy Birthday, Katrina" he says. > You open Your Eyes You open your eyes and see a medium-sized Shabti statuette enclosed in a glass case. The artifact is 7.5" long and is in pristine, museum-quality condition. Compared to the small (1cm) sized bead from last year's gift, this thing is huge -- and in great condition. How could Alex have gotten this? You also see a piece of paper under the case ... > You what's The Paper Say? Wow, it's the accompanying Certificate of Authenticity. It says that the piece is an Anubis Shabti and is from the Twelfth Dynasty (Approx 1908 BCE). It was discovered by Miriam Lichtum in 1967. That's pretty neat! You absolutely love the gift. Being a huge fan of Egyptian things -- especially artifacts -- this is more than you could ever want for your birthday! You are a bit curious how Alex was able to obtain such a nice piece, though ... > You ask Alex how he got this Alex explains ... Strange thing, really. I called the Cleveland Museum of Art to see if they knew a reputable artifact dealer and they refered me to the Egyptian Antiquities Society in Chicago. I gave them a call and they kinda laughed at me, saying they really only work in the tens-of-thousands of dollars. A few weeks later, this one guy from the Society, Dr. Evans, called me back and said that he found something that would fit my profile perfectly. Since these artifacts cannot be shipped, he brought it to Cleveland from Chicago. > You interesting ... The rest of your Birthday isn't too eventful. You do the normal birthday stuff: go to your family's house for cake, go out to dinner, and relaxed for the rest of the night. Throughout the day, you can't stop thinking of how cool the artifact is. It does seem a bit creepy -- after all, this was buried with some guy almost four thousand years ago. But it is so neat to own such an amazing piece of history. > The Next Day ... The rest of the weekend was fun and relaxing, but nothing to write an adventure game about. You did find a few hours of free time while Alex was busy at work. During those few hours, you ... > You ... Watched some television It's amazing how much time flies while you're watching TV. It's not like you really find anything new, but it's always entertaining. Before you know it, it's Sunday night, and time for bed. As you and Alex get ready for bed, Alex complains that two of the fish died. > Monday Monday was a pretty relaxing day: sleeping in, shopping, and just hanging out. Nothing notable happened, although as you get ready for bed, Alex mentioned that some more fish died. > You on to Tuesday ... Another day of rest and relaxaction. Might as well, it's been a long year -- you've been going to classes at night after work for the past five years, so it feels really great to finally have a break and nothing to worry about. > You off to work tomorrow ... Yicch -- nothing like going back to work after a small vacation. But it's all good, it's a short week and was a normal day. No staying late required. Woo! After work, you and Alex stop and do a little bit of shopping. You arrive home and notice that the cat must have completely gone insane. All of the statues and trinkets on the shelf that the the Artifact sat on were knocked over. Some books and magazines were on the floor, fallen from another shelf. It's almost as if a small earthquake happened. You're not quite sure how she could have possibly gotten up on the shelf to knock all those artifacts and trinkets over. It also is a little weird that the door on the glass case was open. Oh well, those are cats for ya. > You on to Thursday ... Another uneventful day at work. After getting home and eating dinner and watching TV, you get ready for bed. You fall asleep and are a .... > You ... Light sleeper As you're sound asleep, you are jarred awake by a loud noise .... SLAM! Alex awakes too, and you are both completely dazed. You look across the room and see that the door is closed. it must have slammed shut. This wasn't the first time you've been awoken in the night by a slammed-shut door. In the summer, when all the windows are open, a bit of wind will cause the doors to slam shut. But of course, it is the middle of the winter, and no windows are open ... > You that's weird ... Back to sleep Finally it's Friday! After a long day of work, you decide to just stay home and watch a movie tonight. You have a big day tomorrow: shopping with your friend and a girls-night-out for your Sister's birthday. Plus, Alex has to go to work early tomorrow morning; he's been complaining about that for weeks. You end up watching Sahara, an action movie about Treasure Hunters and Africa. It was a pretty fun movie. > You off to bed ... The alarm goes of bright and early at 7:00AM and Alex jumps out of bed, rushing to get to work. He was supposed to be there at 7:00 .... whoops! > Back to sleep ... After falling back to sleep, you're rudely awaken by the telephone ... RING! RING! RING! RING! RING! RING! Who on earth could be calling at 8:30 in the morning on a saturday? Probably a telemarketer ... > You pick up the phone It's Alex. Sorry to wake you hun, but Dan* just called. His harddrive crashed last night and needs another one for his MP3s so he can do his DJ gig. It's in Akron tonite, so he needs to stop by and pick it up around 10:30AM or so. You're not too happy about this. You actually sayed up till about 3:00 AM watching another movie, so you need some serious sleep! * or, as some know him, march5th00 > No way, you're too tired You tell Alex that you're too tired ... He reallllly needs the drive. He has no music and needs to try to retreive it from his hard drive ... > You can't he buy a hard drive? You ask if he could go to Best Buy and pick up a hard drive. They sell them for fairly cheap, afterall. He is completely over the limit on his credit card. Besides, why spend $100 when I have one I'm not even using. He'll only stop in and out.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After falling back to sleep, you're rudely awaken by the telephone ... RING! RING! RING! RING! RING! RING! Who on earth could be calling at 8:30 in the morning on a saturday? Probably a telemarketer ... > You ignore the phone You let the answering machine pick up the phone and once again there is peace in the house. No loud phone ... or .... RING! RING! RING! RING! RING! RING! Argh! Why won't they let you sleep?!?!<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Another uneventful day at work. After getting home and eating dinner and watching TV, you get ready for bed. You fall asleep and are a .... > You ... Heavy sleeper As you snooze, you're awaken by a girl-like shriek: Eeeaaaahhh! It was Alex, and he's fallen down on the floor. You jump up and ask what is wrong. He says that he swear he saw someone standing in the office, by your new artifact. He gets back up and takes another look -- nothing. "Heh," he says nervously, "amazing what you see when you're half asleep."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The rest of the weekend was fun and relaxing, but nothing to write an adventure game about. You did find a few hours of free time while Alex was busy at work. During those few hours, you ... > You ... Surfed the net It's amazing how much time flies while you're surfing the net. It's not like you really find anything new, but it's always entertaining. Before you know it, it's Sunday night, and time for bed. As you and Alex get ready for bed, Alex complains that two of the fish died.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The rest of the weekend was fun and relaxing, but nothing to write an adventure game about. You did find a few hours of free time while Alex was busy at work. During those few hours, you ... > You ... Researched the artifact You grab the artifact and fire up google. What do you want to know? > You what is a Shabti? Shabti or Ushabti (Egyptian language) is a funerary figurine which served as a dead man's deputy in order to do labor for him, mostly agricultural, in the afterlife. They existed between the Twenty-first dynasty of Egypt and the end of the First Intermediate Period.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the artifact and fire up google. What do you want to know? > You why is Anubis depicted in the corner? You find the following information about Anubis. However, you cannot find any examples of him being depicted on Shabti statues. That's a bit odd ... Originally, in the Ogdoad system, he was god of the underworld, and his name is frequently thought to have reflected this, meaning something like putrefaction. He was said to have a wife, Anput, who was really just his female aspect, her name being his with an additional feminine suffix (the t), who was depicted exactly the same (though feminine). His father was originally said to be Ra, as he was the creator god, and thus his mother was said to be Hesat, Ra's wife, who later was identified as Hathor (who her identity was remarkably similar to). As lord of the underworld, Anubis was identified as the father of Kebechet, the goddess of the purification of bodily organs due to be placed in canopic jars, during mummification. As ruler over the dead, he was given titles such as He who is set upon his mountain, in reference to his sitting atop desert cliffs to guard multiple necropolis, and Chontamenti (also spelt Khentimentiu, and Khentamenti), meaning Lord of the Westerners, in reference to Egyptian belief that the entrance to the underworld was towards the west, since that was the direction in which the sun set. As ruler, he was also said to have been victorious over the dark forces (described as nine bows), which also, naturally, lurk in the underworld, gaining him the title Jackal ruler of the bows. As king of the underworld, he was also considered to be the one who weighed the heart of the dead against the feather of Maàt (the concept of truth), gaining him the title He who counts the hearts. One of the reasons that the ancient Egyptians took such care to preserve their dead with sweet-smelling herbs was that it became believed Anubis would check each person with his keen canine nose. Only if they smelled pure would he allow them to enter the Kingdom of the Dead.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the artifact and fire up google. What do you want to know? > You what's with the headdress? You can't really find anything of note about this figure's headdress. From what you remember, you don't normally see a statue with a headdress but no beard, especially from this time period.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the artifact and fire up google. What do you want to know? > You what does the inscription mean? The inscription is very difficult to make out, and you can't translate it at all. Normally, spell 472 from the sixth chapter of the Book of the Dead is inscribed in full on Shabtis: Illumine the Osiris NN, whose word is truth. Hail, Shabti. If the Osiris NN be decreed to do any of the work which is to be done in the Khert-Neter, let everything which standeth in the way be removed from him - whether it be to plough the fields, or to fill the channels with water, or to carry sand from (the East to the West). 'Here am I', you shall say, 'I shall do it.' The only word you can make out in the inscription is Burden.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You grab the artifact and fire up google. What do you want to know? > You enough Research ... How time flies when you're researching. Before you know it, it's Sunday night, and time for bed. As you and Alex get ready for bed, Alex complains that two of the fish died.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." A good quote, you think to yourself. It'd have had to be written by an Irishman, of course. The English would never speak of themselves being in the gutter with the common muck,, they'd claim to be of the stars themselves if they could. No, an Irishman would have to have written it, because only an Irishman would understand subjugation. You stand under a gray sky, a field of barley and oats surrounding you. Thanks to it being August, there's relatively little to do, so you're given time to think. Of course, without working to keep you going, the thinking usually goes downhill. Either your evenings end with you grabbing the bottle, or staring at those stars as dreams of freedom fill your mind. Eireann is truly in the gutter, you think to yourself. The British boot sits on her throat, keeping her down, like it has for hundreds of years. It will continue to, until the people can rise up and fix that problem. Of course, Britain weakens, its empire collapsing inwards. It's only a matter of time before you finish what the proud Fenians of old had started, what Wolfe Tone continued, and what your generation will finish: the fight for independence. "Michael! Michael, get in here!" a shrill voice screams from the farmhouse. You turn, sighing, as you work towards the farmhouse, your boots plodding through the mud. It's always something with that woman, you think to yourself. You reach the door, pushing it inwards as you walk into your cramped kitchen. "Ma, what's wrong?" you say, leaning in the doorway. Ma sits in the kitchen at the table, a newspaper in her hands. Joseph stands next to her, his tall, sturdy frame filling a long overcoat. Mary is staring around Joseph, a frail, timid creature in comparison to your burly brother, like a delicate flower growing next to a great Oak. Ma motions for you to see the paper, and you shrug, leaning in to see the pages. You lean over, looking at the crinkled paper. "BRITAIN AT WAR: GERMANY IGNORES FINAL ULTIMATUM" reads the title. "Jesus Christ," you say. You're struck in the face by Ma, who doesn't miss a beat in doing so. While the age has certainly taken much from the woman, it sure hasn't sapped her strength by how much it stings. Still, your mind is too focused on the looming war to even register the pain. "Michael, don't take the Lord's name in vain!" the old woman croaks. "We're at war, Ma, don't blame him. He's shocked," Mary says, rubbing your arm. "We're at war?" Joseph says indignantly. "When did Ireland declare war?! This is their doing, not ours!" "You can't be saying that, Joseph. It's our empire too!" Mary says. "Like bloody hell it is!" Joseph says, stepping back to avoid the incoming slap from Ma. "I'd sooner bow downs to the King of Holland than the King of England." "They gave us a parliament!" "They didn't give us a parliament! They promised us a parliament, which we haven't gotten! Now that'll be postponed because of the war, and when that's finished, we'll be feeling the British boot pressed against our throats yet again! There's a short silence, as you all think about the repercussions this new war will have. "Will you be signing up? They're recruiting," Mary says softly. Joseph lets out a barking laugh, shaking his head in disgust. "Are you joking? Unless the Kaiser's recruiting Irishmen to take out the crown, you can count me out!" Joseph spits on the ground, turning and heading out of the room. Ma immediately darts up as quick as a bullet, far faster than any old woman has a right to do, heading after him to give him another smack. You chuckle as the two rush out of the room. This leaves you and your sister standing alone around the table. "We're in dark times, Michael," Mary says to you. "I'm worried about Joseph. He's been hanging around too many hotheads, violent thugs and brutes the lot of them!" "Joseph's fine," you say dismissively. "How do you think he'd react when you asked him if he'd sign up?" "I suppose," she says. "But, Michael, you understand, right? Why we need to serve the Empire, to prove the Irish are a loyal, hard-working people." "To prove that to who?" you say, annoyed. "The British? They saw how loyal we are many a time, they just don't like what we're loyal to. We're Irish, Mary, not British. Don't forget it." Mary turns in a huff, moving out of the room. Thankfully, this leaves you alone to think, and you let out a quiet sigh of contentment, sitting down at the table. You grab the newspaper, flicking through it. Might as well read up while you're alone. > You read "Hundred year anniversary of the foundation of the Apprentice Boys of Derry Club" (General History) The nation of Ireland has had a long and varied history. From the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who walked there via land bridge, the Neolithic Men behind the ancient and amazing Newgrange, the Celts who soon popularized the country when it was known as Hibernia and from the Christians who spread after the return of Saint Patrick, who was enslaved by Irish pirates in his youth and endless Viking attacks, there's been a long history of pioneers and innovators creating a proud and noble nation. Irish history first has serious Anglo involvement in the Norman invasion of Ireland. Before then Ireland was simply a series of kingdoms and warring clans. The larger and more advanced Norman forces soon managed to conquer considerable sections of Ireland. However, rather than push for a full takeover, English focuses soon shifted, leaving a fortified area known as the Pale around Dublin under British control, with the rest mostly being allowed to survive under local rule. After this, there was a divide in power between the Gaelic Lords who could trace their origins back to the Celts who popularized the lands, and the Norman lords descended from those who sought to conquer the island. However, in 1536, Henry VII led an invasion of Ireland. Although there was brutal fighting as the Irish appealed to Catholic Spain for help, Ireland was soon conquered. Then, with a religious divide forming due to the birth of Protestantism, the issues first began arising. Using a system of land confiscation and colonization known as Plantation, English and Scottish Protestants were given Irish land to run, using the Irish Catholics as slaves. Although there were many brutal Irish rebellions such as the War of the Three Kings, which succeeded temporarily before the re-conquest of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell, the Rebellion of 1641, which was fought over the division between Catholics and Protestants, and many more bloody and brutal rebellions, Ireland failed ot successfully regain control of its lands, and were treated as second class citizens by the Protestants who ruled over the country. > Back "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." A good quote, you think to yourself. It'd have had to be written by an Irishman, of course. The English would never speak of themselves being in the gutter with the common muck,, they'd claim to be of the stars themselves if they could. No, an Irishman would have to have written it, because only an Irishman would understand subjugation. You stand under a gray sky, a field of barley and oats surrounding you. Thanks to it being August, there's relatively little to do, so you're given time to think. Of course, without working to keep you going, the thinking usually goes downhill. Either your evenings end with you grabbing the bottle, or staring at those stars as dreams of freedom fill your mind. Eireann is truly in the gutter, you think to yourself. The British boot sits on her throat, keeping her down, like it has for hundreds of years. It will continue to, until the people can rise up and fix that problem. Of course, Britain weakens, its empire collapsing inwards. It's only a matter of time before you finish what the proud Fenians of old had started, what Wolfe Tone continued, and what your generation will finish: the fight for independence. "Michael! Michael, get in here!" a shrill voice screams from the farmhouse. You turn, sighing, as you work towards the farmhouse, your boots plodding through the mud. It's always something with that woman, you think to yourself. You reach the door, pushing it inwards as you walk into your cramped kitchen. "Ma, what's wrong?" you say, leaning in the doorway. Ma sits in the kitchen at the table, a newspaper in her hands. Joseph stands next to her, his tall, sturdy frame filling a long overcoat. Mary is staring around Joseph, a frail, timid creature in comparison to your burly brother, like a delicate flower growing next to a great Oak. Ma motions for you to see the paper, and you shrug, leaning in to see the pages. You lean over, looking at the crinkled paper. "BRITAIN AT WAR: GERMANY IGNORES FINAL ULTIMATUM" reads the title. "Jesus Christ," you say. You're struck in the face by Ma, who doesn't miss a beat in doing so. While the age has certainly taken much from the woman, it sure hasn't sapped her strength by how much it stings. Still, your mind is too focused on the looming war to even register the pain. "Michael, don't take the Lord's name in vain!" the old woman croaks. "We're at war, Ma, don't blame him. He's shocked," Mary says, rubbing your arm. "We're at war?" Joseph says indignantly. "When did Ireland declare war?! This is their doing, not ours!" "You can't be saying that, Joseph. It's our empire too!" Mary says. "Like bloody hell it is!" Joseph says, stepping back to avoid the incoming slap from Ma. "I'd sooner bow downs to the King of Holland than the King of England." "They gave us a parliament!" "They didn't give us a parliament! They promised us a parliament, which we haven't gotten! Now that'll be postponed because of the war, and when that's finished, we'll be feeling the British boot pressed against our throats yet again! There's a short silence, as you all think about the repercussions this new war will have. "Will you be signing up? They're recruiting," Mary says softly. Joseph lets out a barking laugh, shaking his head in disgust. "Are you joking? Unless the Kaiser's recruiting Irishmen to take out the crown, you can count me out!" Joseph spits on the ground, turning and heading out of the room. Ma immediately darts up as quick as a bullet, far faster than any old woman has a right to do, heading after him to give him another smack. You chuckle as the two rush out of the room. This leaves you and your sister standing alone around the table. "We're in dark times, Michael," Mary says to you. "I'm worried about Joseph. He's been hanging around too many hotheads, violent thugs and brutes the lot of them!" "Joseph's fine," you say dismissively. "How do you think he'd react when you asked him if he'd sign up?" "I suppose," she says. "But, Michael, you understand, right? Why we need to serve the Empire, to prove the Irish are a loyal, hard-working people." "To prove that to who?" you say, annoyed. "The British? They saw how loyal we are many a time, they just don't like what we're loyal to. We're Irish, Mary, not British. Don't forget it." Mary turns in a huff, moving out of the room. Thankfully, this leaves you alone to think, and you let out a quiet sigh of contentment, sitting down at the table. You grab the newspaper, flicking through it. Might as well read up while you're alone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>All around you is the smell of warfare. Acrid smoke from the campfires, piss and refuse from the latrines, sweat from the men. And fear. You smell that too. These men have reason to be afraid. You have spent the last few months fighting King Harold's enemies, only to march double-time to confront his most dangerous yet; William of Normandy. His army is camped below, twelve thousand men strong, in comparison to your eight thousand. There is reason to be afraid. Are you afraid? No, you affirm decisively in your mind. You are not afraid. You are Lord Aethelwulf, The Lord In The North, King Harold's most trusted advisor, and the veteran of a hundred battles. Why should you be afraid of an army of ragtag Normans who come to die on your sword? Shaking such doubts from your mind, you stride purposefully through the bustle of the camp, intent on checking on the forward defenses. A pair of giggling urchins weave nimbly around you and a staggering drunk lurches out in front of you, notices your sparkling chainmail armor and backs away, apologizing profusely. Striding onward towards the edge of the English camp you pass the watchful gaze of the sentries unchallenged and stand at the upper slope of the hill. You are not alone. Another man sits on the hill, wreathed in the shadow of the setting sun. Drawing closer you recognize him as Acwellen, a minor lord, but stalwart fighter. His face is stone, his jaw grimly set and his eyes staring out at the horizon. Looking over his shoulder you see the black smoke smearing the red evening sky. In the distance the town of Hastings burns. In the blurry uncertainty of the setting sun, you cannot tell if the glisten at his eyes is tears or just the sparkle of dying sunlight. Acwellen's son, you remember, was put in command of Hasting's garrison. Above the treeline you can just make out the crackle of flames. Hastings burns. > You offer your condolences Gently, you place your hand on his shoulder and speak softly "I'm sorry for your loss. I cannot imagine the pain of losing a son, but I am sure he looks down on you from heaven." Acwellen's gaze remains fixed on the burning town, and his face is still set in a mask of stone, but his cheeks are streaked. "Thank you" He exhales shakily, opens his mouth to say something else, then closes it and remains silent, yet the words are plainly on his mind, trying to slip free like hounds on a leash. At last he speaks, grim and quiet, little more than a whisper. "Can we win this battle?" The question hangs there for an eternity, all the fear and anxiety of the English army expressed in the musings of one broken man. > Yes "Yes!" You bark, with a sudden harshness that surprises both Acwellen and yourself. "Yes" You continue in a softer tone. "We can win. This is not the end." In your mind there is no room for doubt. You cannot afford it. Behind the screen of trees the town of Hastings roils with flames and the Norman William's horde assembles. > You leave Acwellen continues to stare into the flickering glow of the burning town. His face is stony, unfathomable. You turn to leave, picking your way through a patch of muck gingerly. Pressing down with your foot, you assess the ground. Certain patches are dry, but the soil is perilously loose. All it will take is a night of rain to turn the battlefield into a muddy hell. Well, you think to yourself, at least the mud will hurt the Normans worse than us. "Aethelwulf!" A voice interrupts your musings. A very familiar voice, deep and booming. It is the voice of Harold, your king. At just under six feet, he stands a head taller than most, and is just on par with yourself. Both his beard and hair are a fiery orange, and both are thick and wild. His chest is broad and his body muscular, but you notice a distinct bulge in the leather jerkin around his midriff; his infamous love of revelry has not gone unpunished. "Aethelwulf, you canny bastard!" He bellows, grinning and thumping you on the back. > You say "Harold!" Grinning, you embrace your boyhood friend. "Harold, good to see you, as always." Harold grins. "I know it is! Everyone says the same exact damn thing!" He chuckles, long and low. "But come, I haven't seen you since our last battle! That was two bloody months ago, near as! Where've you been! Avoiding me, have you?" You laugh "If I went to another feast of yours, I wouldn't fit into my mail" He shakes his head ruefully "You should learn to unwind more! Live your life, you know? Speaking of, how's your wife?" You nod solemnly "She fares well, and yours?" Harold snorts derisively "Fat and ugly, as always. Ah well, that's what tavern girls are for, eh?" He grins and nudges you with his shoulder; you shrug. Harold notices your expression and laughs again "As chaste as a damned priest! Ah well, we'll break you in eventually." Again you shrug. You and Harold have very different views on the matter, he won't change, nor will you. The best course, you decide, is to skate around the issue altogether. Nodding towards the hill, you speak seriously "What do you make of our defenses?" Harold frowns, his earlier humor gone. He throws up his hands irritably. "My Kingdom depends on a hill and five thousand farmers" You shake your head "Five thousand farmers and three thousand warriors" Harold nods "Aye. True enough. We'll make this William pay for every inch, if nothing else" He squints at the hill in the fading light "The scouts say William has four thousand cavalry" You shake your head decisively "No cavalry in the world can break a strong shieldwall" Harold laughs bitterly "Our shieldwall isn't strong! It's weak! Half of the bloody farmers don't even own shields! Goddamned useless bastards!" Surveying the hill thoughtfully, two plans come to mind; You could craft wooden stakes and plant them along the hill, disorganizing the horse charge. Or you could create makeshift shields for the conscripts, to help them hold the line. The carpenters will only have enough time to do one of the two tasks, you must choose which you value most. > You craft stakes You nod towards the hill "We should put our carpenters to work, set up some wood stakes along the hill. With any luck, that'll break up most of his cavalry" Harold grins wickedly "And a rider on a lamed horse is a dead rider. This is good!" He claps you on the shoulder "I'll have my carpenters start working right away! Let's turn this battlefield into a hell!" He laughs, and you see the fire in his eyes. This is what King Harold does best. Strategy and rule he manages, but it's the fighting he loves. You understand the feeling all too well. How many times have you knelt before a cross, armor bloody and gore speckled, thinking back with revulsion and guilt at how you loved it. Loved every bit of it. Loved the blades flashing, reflecting the rays of the sun. Loved the sound of shields splintering, cracking open. Loved the bloody chaos of the shieldwall. In the clash of the shieldwall it is where men like you, and Harold, and no doubt William too, come alive. This world has molded you. Molded you into a warrior. You are bred for this. > You sleep A warhorn sounds, long and low, dragging you from your sleep. Throwing off your thick fur sheets, you fumble about in the darkness of your tent, feeling for your clothes. Finally grasping your leather trousers, you slip them on and pull the woolen drawstrings closed. Next you retrieve your blue linen tunic and pull the stinking garment over your head. Beside the opening of the tent you find your boots, which you pull on, the well-worn leather forming around the contours of your legs. Fully clothed, you stretch and prepare to leave the comparative comfort of your tent. Rising stiffly, you undo the tent flap with dull fingers and step out into hell. The sky is a deep red, and clouds roil overhead. The ground is slick with mud, squelching underfoot. The air itself is inhospitable; it is thick with moisture and clings in the throat. The warhorn bellows a second time, the sound rolling through the forest of tents. The Normans are coming. > You prepare for battle Your squire, an orange-haired young farm boy with a pox-scarred face and an easy smile, drags your chest of armor to where you wait impatiently, listening for the sounds of a Norman advance above the chaos of the camp's preparations. Like a stirred anthill, the English encampment is abuzz with activity, men fetching spears and armor, running to and fro, assembling into companies. Opening the chest, your squire first removes a thick jacket of hardened leather, which you will wear under your mailshirt. "Thank you, Hugh" You say to your squire and tousle his curly orange hair absent-mindedly. Hugh grins shyly and then proceeds to bring forth the next piece of armor, the mailshirt itself. Beautifully forged, the chain links shimmer in the dawn light. As the light bounces of the metal, thousands of scratches can be seen, sanded down but still visible; the marks left behind by thousands of blades. This mailshirt has been in your family for generations, stretching back through hundreds of years of bloodshed and war. Slipping into the metal garment, you feel your squire tug at the leather lacings in the back, tightening the mailshirt around your body. You breathe in deeply, and as your chest expands, so too does the mailshirt, acting with the familiarity of a second skin. Next come the metal strips, a personal favorite of yours. Each strip is made of tough iron, and each is covered in serrations and scratches. These you slip under your trousers and Hugh helps lace them tight to your legs. If an enemy were to try and stab at your seemingly unprotected legs their sword would merely slide off the hidden plating, unbalancing them and allowing you to slip under their defenses. With your shin-plates cleverly hidden, Hugh unwraps the last piece of armor; your helmet. Masterfully crafted, it gleams in the sun. Complete with cheek-guards, a nosepiece, and spectacle-rings to protect the eyes. Surmounting the front is a snarling metal wolf's head, which stares proudly forward. Slipping the helmet on and tightening the chinstrap, you grin, canines showing. Time to kill some Normans. > You find your men Orvyn meets you at the edge of camp. A priest and a warrior, an Eriu and a Christian, Orvyn has been your stalwart follower and friend for nearly two decades. You both clasp hands firmly and grin, filled with pre-battle adrenaline. Although Orvyn is not technically in command of your men, you have left your normal commander, Garyn, back at home to guard your wife and children with a skeleton crew. With Garyn away, Orvyn is stepping in. He is a good commander for battles; he is amicable and courageous, but also capable and firm. In peacetime he would lack the rigid authoritarianism necessary for drilling the men, but right now they need a man to keep them confident. Orvyn inspires confidence; he isn't especially tall, but he is solidly built and a force to be reckoned with. His beard and hair are both jet black, and both are kept in place by various bone rings. That, and his sparkling green eyes, give him a look of mad fanaticism that men are all too happy to follow. You provide the encouragement, and Orvyn provides the fire. Together you are a killing force. Orvyn fingers the axe at his belt restlessly. "Should we go to the shieldline?" There is still probably an hour or more before the two armies actually meet, as men are ever reluctant to face a shieldwall, but being early couldn't hurt. > You go to the Shieldwall Most men are already at the edge of the camp, loosely organized into their respective groups. You find your soldiers lounging in the grass to the left of king Harold's men. Some laugh and cajole with each other. Some sharpen their weapons idly. Others play dice with Harold's Housecarls. One has undone his breeches and is calmly urinating in the direction of William's army. In short, of the seventy warriors under your command, not a single one looks concerned or frightened. That makes you proud. Most of these men you trained since boyhood, and for many you serve as a father figure. When they stand beside you at a shieldwall you have absolute confidence in your safety. They would risk their lives to save yours, and you would do the same for any of them. You only wish you could say the same for your fyrdmen. Nearly a hundred and fifty, and every single one looks terrified. You can hardly blame them. In the clash of a shieldwall, it is the fyrdmen who bear the brunt of the assault. To break a shieldwall, aiming for its weakest combatants is a common strategy. With Harold outnumbered to begin with, more fyrdmen than normal will be forced into the front ranks. The continued success of the English nation could well depend on their spirits. Approaching some of your men, who greet you amicably but respectfully, you instruct them to spread some of your ale reserves amongst the fyrd. Although you always fight sober, many of your men prefer to battle under the comforting haze of ale, and so long as they remain sharp enough you permit it. Some men just aren't capable of facing the sheer brutality of a shieldwall sober. Someone calls your name. Turning, you see Harold waving to you from the midst of his group of Housecarls. He grins excitably, filled with the same mad energy that bubbles inside of you. His armor is expertly wrought, fine mail links that shine red under the ominous clouds. At his belt a gold-hilted sword rests in its sheath, and slung across his back is a heavy Daneaxe. His roundshield is thick and red, and is emblazoned with his personal banner; the Fighting Man. A symbol as legendary as King Harold himself, the Fighting Man depicts a golden warrior, wielding a Daneaxe and roundshield. His face is filled with the mad joy of battle, and under his watchful gaze the forces of England will stand against the Norman tide. Moving closer, Harold clasps your forearm with his free hand "Ready?" You nod fiercely "Always" He smiles, but for a moment you see a flicker of emotion cross his face. Tiredness? He opens his mouth slowly, mulling his words "Once this war is over, I think I'll-" One of Harold's Housecarls interrupts the conversation "My liege, the Normans are advancing!" Instantly, Harold leaps back into action. Waving his shield, he calls not just to his own men, but also to all the men across the English line "To arms! To arms! Form a shieldwall!" The cry of "shieldwall" is taken up across the line, as men rush to the front, each shield overlapping with the one to the left, forming an impenetrable wall. In theory. Calling to your men, you order them to form up beside Harold's. The fight for England has begun. > You ready your weapons "Shields!" Bellows a Housecarl standing to Harold's right. The English line reverberates with the clacking sound of wood on wood as men rattle their shields, making sure they overlap with their neighbors'. Leaning forward, Harold waves at you from his position on the shieldwall and grins, his teeth shining in the dawn light. Behind the king, the great Dragon Banners of Wessex fly. Enormous and red, they flap and flutter in the gentle morning breeze, snarling at the approaching Normans. Looking down the hill you watch the Norman advance. It is simply incredible. At least a thousand horses have lined up at the base of the hill. Their riders wear good mail army, which glints in the light, and long blue Norman kite shields, which provide good full body protection, but are slower and less flexible than your English roundshields. For armaments they carry long lances and spears, as well as longswords. To protect their heads they wear the classic Norman helmets, conical and tall with comically long nasal plates. The whole situation is laughable. You turn to Orvyn, who stands beside you and is also grinning "How stupid can these Normans be?" Orvyn shrugs "They're not used to facing real warriors. Killing fleeing peasants is one thing. Riding down a shieldwall, especially uphill? Well-" He fails to suppress a chuckle "Let's hope they're slow learners!" The men around you laugh, and that laughter drifts up and down the shieldwall. The mood begins to lighten. Still grinning, you sheathe your short sword and draw your long sword from across your back. The greater reach will make it easier to kill the horses. Easier to kill the fools. > You prepare to face the cavalry Despite your amusement at the Normans' lack of strategy, the charge impresses you. The sound of a thousand horses' hooves pounding the mud and churning the soil, is thunderous. The vibrations shudder under your feet. Out of the corner of your eye, you see some of your fyrdmen begin to back away, and you bark at them to get back into line. They comply gingerly. You can almost smell their fear. You watch keenly as the Norman horses near the stakes. During the night, Harold's carpenters cut a great number of them, and they litter the hill in uneven clusters, about three quarters up. Most of the riders edge their horses through the gaps, but a few are careless and their horses fall screaming, dragging down other riders with them. The spikes catch no more than fifty, but every bit counts. The horses are fast approaching the top of the hill. Harold barks out an order to his Housecarls, and one in every two sheathes sword and shield in favor of a Daneaxe. Held two-handed, their reach, in the hands of a capable warrior, is more than enough to counter the reach of a man on horseback. You take a quick look at the faces of your men. Some are scared, but none show it. Your shieldwall is as solid as a palisade, an impenetrable barrier of wood and steel. The horses are very close now, and the drumbeat of their hooves beats in frantic time with your heart. You size up the mounted warrior barreling towards you. His horse is a chestnut hue, with a dark black mane. The rider wears a mailshirt and Norman helmet, as well as the customary blue kite shield and a long thin lance. Making sure your stance is good and firm, you prepare to take on your adversary. > You hold firm The rider thunders towards you, his horse kicking up thick clods of mud. Drawing close, he plunges his lance forward, but you slash sideways with your longsword and knock the spear into the ground. The thin lance bends and then breaks, splintering along its core. Disgustedly, the Norman tosses the broken lance aside and moves to draw his sword, but you are already counterattacking. Twisting your wrist, you backswing the blade into the horse's mouth, lacerating its cheeks and splintering its teeth. The wounded animal screams, wide eyed, and collapses on the ground, trapping its rider. As the Norman struggles to free himself you slip your blade neatly down his mailshirt and thrust deep, driving a foot of steel into his body. The Norman gasps pitifully and lolls sideways, dead. The horse is still screaming, kicking up clods of earth. One of its flailing hooves strikes Orvyn's shield, knocking him back a pace. Recovering, he ducks under the flurry of hooves and swings his axe down, hard, crushing the poor beast's spine. Its long legs stop moving. Satisfied, Orvyn returns to his position on the shieldwall. Across the line, William's horsemen meet similar fates. To your right, you watch one of King Harold's Housecarls fully behead a horse with his Daneaxe, mid-charge. Spurting blood, the headless beast collapses to the ground, and before its rider can regain his footing he meets a similar fate at the hands of the grisly Daneaxe. On the far left, a horse actually breaks through, the rider spearing a man through the neck and then creating an opening by hacking wildly with his sword. His act of valor is short-lived. The fyrdmen swarm the rider from all sides, butchering him with their axes and scythes. The breach in the line quickly closes. The Norman horsemen who are still alive turn tail and ride their horses back down the hill. The top of the hill is spattered with the corpses of horses and their riders. Perhaps a full three quarters of the charge were vanquished. Orvyn, his face slick with horse blood, grins at you. You grin back. The shield line has held. > You keep the line steady For almost half an hour, you wait. At the bottom of the hill, the Norman forces swarm, but make no attempt to push forward. By now, your heavy linden shield is weighing your arm down, and your muscles are beginning to tire. Loosening the straps, you place it carefully on the muddy soil, and motion for your men to do the same. They all sigh with relief, and there is much muscle rubbing and idle chatter. So long as they stay in their positions, you allow them to relax. With forces of this size, the battle could easily take all day. Idly, you watch the Norman forces. They don't appear to be doing anything of interest. You are about to strike a conversation with Orvyn, when a portion of the Norman line surges forward. Some of the men stumble to their feet, but you wave them down. The hill is at least three hundred feet, and the Normans appear to be on foot. You stare at the mass of men in a state of bewilderment. All of them seem to be fairly lightly armored, none of them sparkle, like the men in mail shirts do. Suddenly, the advance stops, not even halfway up the hill. Why they would just stop seems ridiculous, unless- You leap up and call out frantically, not just to your men, but to everyone else across the line "Shields! Shields!" You tear yours from its resting place, fasten it to your arm, and then hold it above your head. Other men follow your lead. Just in time. A dark cloud wafts from the Norman advance to the English line. Arrows. Thousands and thousands of arrows. They whistle through the air like a swarm of enraged wasps, raining down upon the English line. Three arrows strike your shield, each one slamming into the thick wood with hammer blows. Across the line men fall to the deadly barrage, clutching at feathered shafts protruding from throats and chests. The fyrd are hit by far the worst, devoid of protection, they die where they stand, too tightly packed too dodge. For a brief moment many seem on the point of breaking, but warriors in the rear quickly push them back into line and try to protect them with their shields, the effort is mostly futile, but it helps reassure them. In all the commotion; the screaming and shouting, the whistling of arrows, you almost miss the noise. That unmistakable drumbeat of horse hooves. By now the horses are quite close, and the arrow rain has stopped, as the Norman archers are wary of killing their own riders. You drop your shield down and heft your longsword. "Shields forward! Shields forward! Hold the line!" Your warriors respond instantly, as do Harold's Housecarls. Shields drop forward and interlock, forming a solid barrier to thwart the Norman riders. You focus on the rider charging towards you, he has his lance couched under his arm and pointed directly at your shield. Suddenly, as he approaches the line a javelin, thrown by a man behind you, pierces the horse's chest. The animal screams and froths blood. It drops to its knees and pitches forward, you take a half-step closer and thrust your longsword straight into the Norman's throat. He chokes hot blood and keels over, falling on top of his dead steed. You nod in satisfaction. In front of you there now lies a barrier of two dead horses. Looking left and right, you survey the battle-line. As expected, your men and the Housecarls have fared fine, killing or throwing back their attackers. The same cannot be said for other places on the line. In some places, the Norman riders were able to break through, and although the Normans were quickly killed or driven off, many of the bodies strewn across the field are English. The shieldwall has held, but barely. > You hold the line The sun is now high in the sky. You have lost track of the hours, and the number of Norman attempts. Every attack is the same. First comes the barrage, then the charge of cavalry. The fyrd has been decimated, perhaps a third have either died or run away. The toll on the warriors has been lighter, but no less serious. Because of your proximity to the King, your soldiers have been hit hard, and many of their bodies lie limp along the battle-line. You and Orvyn are still in fit shape, although you are both tired, and your arm aches from holding your shield, which has been gnawed to splinters by the constant rain of arrows. A painfully familiar whistling fills your ears. Groaning, you lift up your shield to ward off the barrage. You're just so, so tired... > You keep holding the line... You have no idea what time it is, but the sun is beginning to lap at the treetops, and a blissfully cool evening breeze wafts around you. You crouch in the blood-soaked mud, behind the shadow of a horse corpse. The blood is everywhere. It coats your sword. It is spattered across your mailshirt. It is smeared across your face. For the first time in a long while, you want to throw up. The battlefield is littered with corpses, human and animal. Mostly human. Mostly English. Only a quarter of the fyrd are still alive. No, that's not right. You look around briefly. Maybe a sixth. No one has remained unscathed, not even Harold's legendary Housecarls. The shieldwall has been effectively broken, men huddle in small groups behind the cover of dead horses, each spattered with arrows. To stand out in the open is to die. You peer over the top of your horse carcass. You have done grave damage to William's forces, but they are still numerous. In fact, as you watch, you see men advancing. Your hand twitches, an instinctive raising of the shield hammered into your brain by years of training. However, you pause briefly. The masses of Normans aren’t archers, or cavalry. They are infantry. Thousands and thousands of foot soldiers. Throughout the day, William has sent them at you, but never in these numbers. You grip your sword. The end is near. > You fight The Normans advance, neat and orderly. Their armaments are very similar to that of their riders. Most wear mailshirts, and those bizarre conical helmets. Some carry axes, most carry swords, but all heft the customary Norman blue kite shield. That, at least, is some consolation. Whereas you English fight as a cohesive team, the Norman's tend to fight as individuals, because the kite shield, although effective, cannot interlock with that of a neighbor's. Despite your weakened state, a lone Norman is still a dead one. You crouch low behind the horse corpse and wait. The familiar jingle of mailshirts heralds their arrival. Beside you, Orvyn bristles, but you put a cautionary hand on his shoulder. You want them close. You wait a moment more, then leap out. Your longsword snakes forward, lashing out at a Norman's face. He raises his kite shield to deflect the blow, but as he does one of the men on your right sweeps his blade down and cuts into the Norman's ankle. The man screams and drops to one knee, Orvyn's axe crushes his jaw. You press into the gap and push the Normans towards Harold's Housecarls, whose bloody Daneaxes make short work of the thin kite shields. Ducking under a Norman sword thrust, you stab forwards and gut the man. Kicking him aside, you search for your next opponent... And find no one. The Normans are retreating. To your left, you notice King Harold. He waves madly with his axe, and men are surging forward alongside him. With a sudden shock you realize he is trying to rally the men and charge downhill, towards William's retreating infantry. > You follow Harold Adding your voice to the English battle cries, you advance on the fleeing Norman foot soldiers. In front of you, one stumbles as his boot slides through a patch of reddened mud. He only falters a moment, but it is enough. Your longsword lances forward, piercing the fleeing Norman's calf. He screams and falls, holding up his arms to futilely ward off your blade. You keep moving forward, using your heavy shield to shove the wounded Norman out of your way. Behind you, Orvyn's axe resonates with a heavy crunch as he finishes off the crippled soldier. Ahead of you, another Norman stumbles forward, a heavy javelin slamming into his shoulder. He manages one strangled yelp before your blade connects with his neck, a heavy swing that severs his jugular and jars against his spine. You wrench the sword free and keep moving. This charge has filled you with fresh energy, filling your mind with bloody courage, but now it is starting to ebb and your mind is working more clearly. There is something very wrong here. This retreat is far too organized, too simultaneous. The Norman foot soldiers are increasing the distance between themselves and the beleaguered English soldiers, the pounding of their feet grows fainter, but another pounding grows louder. Horse hooves. You turn to your left, Harold has thrown off his battered shield and carries only a Daneaxe, which he wields two-handed. He is completely out in the open. You turn and race towards him. > You say "Harold!" "Harold!" You call out, sprinting towards him. He half turns towards you, and flashes one of his charismatic bright smiles. The single arrow that flies through the air surprises you more than Harold. Curving gently, it hisses downward and slams into Harold's eye. He lets out a startled cough and staggers backward. You keep running towards your king, but a Norman rider cuts in front of you. Turning his horse neatly, the Norman swings his blade and opens your King's throat, spraying blood. Harold falls to the ground, dead. You falter indecisively, filled with wordless horror and remorse. > You fall back and gather your men You back away, slowly at first, then swiftly. "Back! Back to the horses!" You repeat your message, shouting as loud as your worn throat will allow. Men begin to gather around you. You look to your left; Norman horsemen have obliterated the line, fyrdmen and warriors alike are being hacked down as they run. The right flank has suffered the same fate. Wordlessly, you turn your back to the men of the flanks and retreat to the center. Around you stand perhaps a hundred men, the last of Harold's great army. The horses ride towards you from all sides. "Shields!" Orvyn echoes the cry. Men embrace briefly, and then turn to lock shields. Someone calls out "For Harold!” No one cheers. Even the Housecarls are wearied by the prospect of an imminent death. The horses draw close. You whisper a prayer for your family. You fight with cold fury, sword flashing. Horses crash through your shieldline, circling, wheeling, killing left and right. You refuse to break. At some point the Norman infantry joined the fight. That was shortly after you lost your shield. Or was it shortly before? You can't remember. Your world is blood and steel, screams and death. Perhaps it is a horse's hoof, perhaps a soldier's mace, maybe even a Norman shield. You're not sure what it is, but it strikes the back of your skull with tremendous force, knocking you into the mud and blurring your vision. You try to rise but the mud grabs you and drags you into the abyss. > You blackness... The small, cramped room is dark, but your eyes have long since adjusted to the dimness. For nearly a month you have languished here, confined under what was once the seat of England's power; the ancient city of London. You yawn tiredly and stretch, your hand strikes the hard stone wall on your left, which is slick with fungus. Beside you, others stir. The prison cell holds a grand total of twenty-two men; of the seventy soldiers you brought, only they remain. Beside you, Orvyn mutters prayers in his native Irish tongue. You lie quiet amongst the molded straw, conserving your strength. A searing flare of light illuminates your surroundings. Shielding your eyes, you stare groggily through the iron bars of your cell at the sharp outline of a man holding a torch, flanked by two guards. The man rattles at the iron bars with the flaming head of his torch, casting sparks which smolder in the wet straw. "Lord Aethelwulf, you have been summoned to meet with King William. You will come with us immediately." His English is heavily accented, but understandable, you struggle to rise, but Orvyn gets up first "Lord Aethelwulf does not leave without me." The two guards look expectantly at the torch-bearer. He looks bored. "Very well, Lord Aethelwulf may have his retinue" He leans in menacingly, glaring at Orvyn "Try anything, and you die" He shoves the torch deeper into the cell, illuminating the huddled masses of your soldiers "The same applies to you lot" Without another word, the torch-bearer withdraws a thick metal key and unlocks the prison door. The guards level their spears threateningly. You and Orvyn leave the prison and follow the torch-bearer into the light. > You follow the Normans As you exit the dungeon, the torch-bearer leaves his torch in a wall bracket and continues to walk up a set of sharp flagstone stairs. For the first time in a month you see true, pure sunlight. Your weakened eyes strain to adjust, but they quickly regain their vitality and the world returns to its former luster. Behind you, Orvyn catches his foot on one of the flagstones. He plunges forward, and as he grabs hold of you for support, he whispers in your ear "Just say the word." You keep your face emotionless. Up ahead, a long corridor leads toward a huge set of wooden doors, flanked by two taciturn guards, and within those doors lies the throne room. > The Throneroom Your jailor steps up to the guards and speaks to them in French. They salute hastily and step aside. The Norman grasps two iron facets on the doors and pulls back, drawing open the wooden doors with an aching creak. Inside, a woven blue rug leads inward. The guards press you forward from behind, and two more from within the room keep pace adjacent to you. You keep walking. > You walk forwards You remember what this room was like a year ago. Men and women laughed and cajoled, children played with the great wolfhounds that were always on the hunt for table scraps, and bards echoed melodies that filled the rafters with pleasant music. But that was a different time, under a different king. The throne room is empty, other than a handful of guards and a few servants milling idly, the throne room is devoid of people. It is silent too, the place is blanketed by an austere noiselessness, so that every footstep makes a clattering echo. Residing over it all, William sits in the throne, glaring at you thoughtfully. With just a handful of meters separating you and the king, your guards stop you. William looks at you expectantly. > You kneel With a bitter taste in your mouth, you kneel. Orvyn looks openly disgusted, but he too gets down on one knee. William smiles contemptuously, he speaks softly, in an English that is only faintly accented. "Ah, this one knows his manners. Good." > You thank him "Thank you" You snarl through gritted teeth. Anger wells up inside of you like a storm, like an enraged beast trapped inside a frail cage of flesh and bone. Beside you, Orvyn notices your anger and tenses up, every muscle in his body is ready to spring into action. Even William notices the tension and waves discreetly to the Norman soldiers behind you. You feel cold steel pricking at your back. William glares icily, he leans forward. "You might be wondering why you are still alive, no?" You shrug sardonically. William pretends not to notice your insolence. "The North has proven especially difficult to pacify. I could have you executed, and place a Norman in charge, however I believe the peasants would disapprove, and I would prefer to keep them alive" He pauses briefly, mentally collecting his words "As such, I am reinstating you as lord in the North, providing you swear fealty to me" He leans even closer "Make no mistake. You will be closely watched by one of my men, whom you will take orders from. This is not an offer. Swear to me, or die. Your choice." > You take the Oath You swallow your pride, and your anger. You think of your family; your wife and children. It still feels like cowardice. A Norman page timidly places a worn copper cross in your chapped fingers. You grip it limply and speak the same oath that you gave to Harold not a year earlier. At the end William smirks, and you drop the copper cross disgustedly. With a casual wave of his hand, William dismisses you from the throneroom. Your audience is over. > You leave Although the sun is high, the frigid December air pierces your bones, and you draw your tattered cloak tighter around your shivering form. Once outside of the city walls, the Normans give you back your weapons and your horse. Your men are released, however their weapons are not returned to them and the horses they are given are lame swaybacked farm horses. Your own horse is a magnificent charger named Thunder, a black stallion measuring fifteen hands at his withers. He has been trained as a war horse, and his gnashing teeth are strong enough to snap bone, yet when he nuzzles up against your hand his eyes are soft and his lips are gently. You pat him affectionately on the cheek and then swing into his saddle, feeling the leather's familiar curves. Your breath floats foglike in the cold air, you wait impatiently for your men to get mounted, your hands are beginning to burn. Once your men mount their horses you ride North; homeward bound. > You ride You ride all through the day, as fast as your horses can manage. Everywhere you go you see the devastation of William's invasion. Parts of the countryside appear normal, but others are burnt husks, farms and fields replaced with ash and bones. The roads are thick with mounted Normans, they glare at you suspiciously, but one of your men carries the Norman flag, and they let you pass. The sun is beginning to set, and the cold is becoming too much. Even Orvyn, a man who can walk barefoot through snow without a qualm, looks uncomfortable. You stop at an abandoned farmhouse, there are large holes in the roof, but your men cut swathes of dead grasses and stuff them in the crevasses. Someone starts a fire in the buildings dilapidated mud-daub chimney, which snakes up the back wall and protrudes through the messy thatch roofing. Normally supper is a time for boisterous laughing and cajoling, but today you eat in silence. Afterwards, you bring several of the horses inside and curl up to them for warmth. Despite the uncomfortable ground and chilly temperatures, Thunder's flank is soft and the methodical rhythm of his heartbeat is oddly calming. You drift off into a dark, dreamless sleep. > You wake up You wake up stiff and smelling distinctly of horse. Getting up, you strap on your swords and get your men moving, Orvyn kicks some of the stragglers into action. Your own horse seems reluctant to get up, and it takes all of your coaxing to convince him to get up. Your own muscles are aching from the cold, but a few hours of riding help warm them up somewhat. The next few days develop a sort of routine; ride, find shelter, sleep, and ride again. As you journey further northward the scenery begins to change. The roads become smaller and more rugged, little more than oxen paths. The Norman presence decreases too; you pass only a few tired looking patrols. The lack of Norman occupation manifests itself in the land too, the devastation seen in the south is not present here, plenty of farms lie abandoned, but few have been burned. Many northern men gave their lives at Hastings, but their families have yet to suffer from Norman vengeance. It feels good to know that your people are still present, still unified. At last, you see the banks of the river Ouse. Beyond it lies your home; the ancient city of York. > You head to the banks of the river Ouse An old roman bridge of crumbling stone fords the Ouse. As you urge your horses towards the edge of the bridge, a dozen mounted men materialize from the treeline on the other side. The riders approach the bridge and halt at its mouth. Your hand reaches for the sword at your sheathe, but you quickly relax. You recognize the man leading the mounted force; his name is Garyn, and he is the captain of your guard. > You go meet Garyn You dismount and hand the reins of your horse to one of your men. Moving briskly, you cross the old stone bridge. On the other side, Garyn dismounts and hurries to meet you. It has been several months since you last saw him, however he hasn't changed a bit. He wears a mail hauberk, and his shield -emblazoned with your snarling wolf sigil- is slung over his back. On his left he wears a thick fighting sword, shorter than your longsword but almost twice as thick. On his right he carries a vicious looking seaxe, a heavy stabbing dagger perfect for thrusting through mail links. His face, like much of his body, is scarred by a lifetime of fighting. He is bald, and his hooked nose gives him a predatory, reptilian look. His eyes are hard, flinty; the eyes of a soldier. You meet in the middle of the bridge and he clasps your forearm warmly, his face shows relief. "Our scouts saw you coming, I came as soon as I could. The Lady Catheryn will be overjoyed to hear that you are back" Catheryn. You feel your heartbeat rise. These months without her have been far too long. You can almost see her, like an apparition drawing you homewards. Footsteps echo on the bridge behind you; Orvyn has joined you. He speaks to you, but his eyes are fixed on Garyn "We should ride to the villages first. As their lord, you owe them an explanation. Everyone there has a relative who served in your fyrd. They deserve an audience" Garyn glares contemptuously at Orvyn "A lord does not serve at the beck and call of his peasants. Maybe if the useless sods had held the line, we wouldn't be in this predicament" Orvyn takes a step towards Garyn, Garyn's hand drops closer to the lethal looking dagger at his hip. Orvyn keeps his hands well away from his weapons, in an open show of contempt "Do you want the commonfolk to rebel against us? What harm can it do to delay Aethelwulf's homecoming by a few hours!" Both of them turn expectantly towards you, waiting for you to settle their dispute. > You agree with Garyn "I want to see my family again." You say it plain and quiet, but Orvyn recognizes the tone of command in your voice. He looks hurt, but relents, shooting Garyn a final angry stare. Garyn smiles and signals to the his men at the bridge "Come on boys! We're escorting lord Aethelwulf home!" > You go Home Between the banks of the rivers Ouse and Foss sits a finger of land, atop which rests the ancient walled city of York. Created by the Romans, its old stone walls have been mostly replaced by wooden palisades, but in some sections they remain; impenetrable rock formations three feet thick and fifteen feet high. Waving methodically in the slow December wind, your snarling wolf banners fly proudly. Surrounding the outside of the city walls, thin huts of mud and thatch lean precariously, using the palisades for support. You curse irritably; those huts will provide excellent cover for any attacker who wishes to besiege your city. Picking its way through the thin cobble street, your horse passes by the frail mud-and-thatch houses beside the walls. From within their shallow depths, grimy faces peer outwards suspiciously. From atop the walls, a young man in an ill-fitting mailshirt challenges you "Go no farther! Who are you?" A grizzled veteran with a scarred face and grey hair cuffs the younger man over the head "Open the gate you idiot, it's lord Aethelwulf!" The young soldier blanches fearfully, stammers a pardon, and practically leaps off the palisade's platform to unbar the gate; a massive four meter structure of wood and iron. The gate opens inward with a heavy groan and the young soldier- still looking suitably embarrassed- waves you inside. As you pass, you grin at him good-naturedly. You are home. > You enter the Courtyard The courtyard is a chaos of raised voices and the neighing of horses and the splashing of mud, which coats the ground; it has been churned loose from the frosty ground and warmed by the trampling of hundreds of feet. Across the courtyard from you is the inner keep, a building made from Roman stone and patched with Anglo-Saxon woodwork. It is where you host your warriors and organize meetings, and it also functions as your personal quarters. You should organize a meeting soon, but it would be wise to meet with your family first. > You find your wife Moving with dreamlike purpose, you navigate the halls and passageways within your home. Standing outside the door to your quarters, you fingers feel the familiar shape of the door handle, which opens at your touch. The room is plain, in one corner is a chest of clothes and in the other is a fur bed. On the bed sits your wife, Catheryn. She is angelic in form, swathed in a pale white dress with her long golden hair flowing effortlessly down her shoulders. Her face transitions from shock to delight; her perfect mouth smiles and her bright blue eyes sparkle. Vaulting into your arms, she embraces you, long slender arms twined around your body. Her lips caress your cheek, and she whispers quietly in your ear "I missed you" You kiss her back "I missed you too" Your eyes settle to the door in your room opposing the one through which you entered; it is the entrance to your daughter's room. Catheryn's eyes follow yours "She's sleeping" She grins coyly, kissing you passionately > You kiss her back She tastes so sweet, like spring. Her eyes sparkle and she draws you closer, your hands move down to her thighs, clutching at the gossamer white fabric around her knees. Her own hands, slender and smooth, trace their way down your chest. You both slip out of your clothes, and slip under the fur bed sheets. For the first time in nearly a month, you feel warm. For the first time in nearly a month, you feel happy.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Moving with dreamlike purpose, you navigate the halls and passageways within your home. Standing outside the door to your quarters, you fingers feel the familiar shape of the door handle, which opens at your touch. The room is plain, in one corner is a chest of clothes and in the other is a fur bed. On the bed sits your wife, Catheryn. She is angelic in form, swathed in a pale white dress with her long golden hair flowing effortlessly down her shoulders. Her face transitions from shock to delight; her perfect mouth smiles and her bright blue eyes sparkle. Vaulting into your arms, she embraces you, long slender arms twined around your body. Her lips caress your cheek, and she whispers quietly in your ear "I missed you" You kiss her back "I missed you too" Your eyes settle to the door in your room opposing the one through which you entered; it is the entrance to your daughter's room. Catheryn's eyes follow yours "She's sleeping" She grins coyly, kissing you passionately > You say "I should see our daughter" You return her kiss, but when her hands move down your body, you hold them still "I want to see our daughter" Catheryn looks hurt for a moment, but recovers quickly, she flashes you a sympathetic smile "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be selfish, go in and wake Laila, but-" She slips by you and whispers in your ear flirtatiously "Just don't keep me waiting" You kiss her once more before grasping the copper handle of your daughter's door and pushing it open softly. Like your own, your daughter's room is plain, just a bed and chest of drawers, but you notice someone has placed an earthenware jug of flowers on top of the pine chest. Laila is sleeping curled up on her bed, head partially obscured by the thick fur blankets. Her long golden hair, silken smooth like her mother's, cascades over the blanket's contours. You nudge her shoulder gently "Laila, wake up" The young girl snuffles in her sleep, but otherwise makes no move to wake. When you left several months ago, Laila was five and enjoyed sleeping through the day. She is six now, but clearly her sleeping habits have not changed. You shake her again, still delicately, but with an added firmness "Laila, wake up" Laila yawns groggily "Wha-?" You wait patiently for her eyes to open, when they do she shrieks with happiness, diamond blue eyes widening with surprise. Wrapping her arms around your midriff with a surprisingly strong grip, she practically squeals with delight "Father!" You tossle her hair fondly, which bunches together briefly but then almost instantly resumes its waterfall-smoothness. She looks at you seriously "How long are you staying, father?" You smile reassuringly "With any luck, the rest of the winter, past that, I can't say" With you now firmly secured in her life, Laila decides to inform you about all the wonderful things she has seen and done while you've been away. You are all too happy to listen; you talk for hours, laughing and cajoling, strengthening the bond that had grown all too tenuous during the long months you were absent.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The courtyard is a chaos of raised voices and the neighing of horses and the splashing of mud, which coats the ground; it has been churned loose from the frosty ground and warmed by the trampling of hundreds of feet. Across the courtyard from you is the inner keep, a building made from Roman stone and patched with Anglo-Saxon woodwork. It is where you host your warriors and organize meetings, and it also functions as your personal quarters. You should organize a meeting soon, but it would be wise to meet with your family first. > You find your son In the courtyard, you grab a passing servant girl by the arm "Have you seen my son?" The servant seems unsurprised at your arrival; evidently news travels fast. She bites her lip nervously "Ah... yes, yes I have, but-" "Where is he?" You inquire incredulously. The servant blushes "He's in the stables my lord, but I really don't think you should-" Waving off her concerns, you thank her and depart towards the stables. The stables are large and ornate, a mix of carved wood and interlocking wicker. The smell is heavy of stale hay and horse manure, but the atmosphere is pleasant nonetheless. At least three-dozen horses of various shades rest in the shade of the stable's long awning, but your son is nowhere to be found. On a hunch, you decide to check the stable master’s quarters, at the rear of the stable. As you approach the door you hear a muffled laugh through the porous wood of the door. Undoing the latch, you throw open the door and enter the dimly lit room. Inside, you son Eamon, a long-haired blond boy of seventeen lies under an old cotton blanket alongside a freckled girl of similar age. The pair are twined together, moving rythmically, and apparently neither noticed you open the door. You clear your throat politely. The girl gives a shriek of surprise, and covers herself with a fold of the tattered blanket. Your son looks equally surprised, but emits only a startled cough. You grin "Hello Eamon" You turn your attention to the girl lying beside him. > You say "Get out" "Get out" You snap idly, sparing her hardly a second glance. Blushing profusely, the young servant girl slips a threadbare tunic over her freckled body and hurries out of sight. Your son stares after her longingly, he sighs exasperatedly "You didn’t have to do that father" You fix him with a hard stare "I'm sorry, I merely assumed you would prefer to see your father rather than rut in the muck with some servant girl. Apparently I was mistaken." Your son mutters something under his breath, you stare him down, daring him to argue with you "What did you say?" Your son returns your glare "Her name is Lynette" > You say "You shouldn't get too attached to her." You bite your lip awkwardly "You shouldn't do this" Your son stares at you incredulously "I shouldn’t love someone?" "You are only making this harder for yourself" Your son glares back at you "I don't want to marry just anyone. I want to marry someone I care about" You grab your son viciously by his shoulders "Are you insinuating that I don't care about Catheryn!" Your son backpedals hurriedly "Of course not, father you know I wouldn't-" He searches for words "I- I just... what if it doesn't work out for me? What if I don't love my wife?" You let go of his shoulders limply "I'm sure you'll love her" Your son doesn't seem so convinced. He slips on his trousers and shirt and departs the stable master’s quarters in silence, brushing past you on the way out. You sigh tiredly and depart the stables alone.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>In the courtyard, you grab a passing servant girl by the arm "Have you seen my son?" The servant seems unsurprised at your arrival; evidently news travels fast. She bites her lip nervously "Ah... yes, yes I have, but-" "Where is he?" You inquire incredulously. The servant blushes "He's in the stables my lord, but I really don't think you should-" Waving off her concerns, you thank her and depart towards the stables. The stables are large and ornate, a mix of carved wood and interlocking wicker. The smell is heavy of stale hay and horse manure, but the atmosphere is pleasant nonetheless. At least three-dozen horses of various shades rest in the shade of the stable's long awning, but your son is nowhere to be found. On a hunch, you decide to check the stable master’s quarters, at the rear of the stable. As you approach the door you hear a muffled laugh through the porous wood of the door. Undoing the latch, you throw open the door and enter the dimly lit room. Inside, you son Eamon, a long-haired blond boy of seventeen lies under an old cotton blanket alongside a freckled girl of similar age. The pair are twined together, moving rythmically, and apparently neither noticed you open the door. You clear your throat politely. The girl gives a shriek of surprise, and covers herself with a fold of the tattered blanket. Your son looks equally surprised, but emits only a startled cough. You grin "Hello Eamon" You turn your attention to the girl lying beside him. > You say "Would you mind if I spoke to my son, alone?" You flash the young girl a warm smile "If you wouldn't mind, I would prefer to speak to my son alone" Blushing profusely, the young servant girl slips a threadbare tunic over her freckled body and scurries towards the door, executing a clumsy curtsy as she passes you. Your son stares after her longingly, he sighs "You didn’t have to do that father" You fix him with an amused stare "I'm sorry, I merely assumed you would prefer to see your father rather than rut in the muck with some servant girl. Apparently I was mistaken." Your son mutters something under his breath, you grin "What did you say?" Your son returns tries to frown at you, but smiles "I said her name is Lynette" You nod "Is she a favorite of yours?" Your son looks shocked "I love her, father"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>In the courtyard, you grab a passing servant girl by the arm "Have you seen my son?" The servant seems unsurprised at your arrival; evidently news travels fast. She bites her lip nervously "Ah... yes, yes I have, but-" "Where is he?" You inquire incredulously. The servant blushes "He's in the stables my lord, but I really don't think you should-" Waving off her concerns, you thank her and depart towards the stables. The stables are large and ornate, a mix of carved wood and interlocking wicker. The smell is heavy of stale hay and horse manure, but the atmosphere is pleasant nonetheless. At least three-dozen horses of various shades rest in the shade of the stable's long awning, but your son is nowhere to be found. On a hunch, you decide to check the stable master’s quarters, at the rear of the stable. As you approach the door you hear a muffled laugh through the porous wood of the door. Undoing the latch, you throw open the door and enter the dimly lit room. Inside, you son Eamon, a long-haired blond boy of seventeen lies under an old cotton blanket alongside a freckled girl of similar age. The pair are twined together, moving rythmically, and apparently neither noticed you open the door. You clear your throat politely. The girl gives a shriek of surprise, and covers herself with a fold of the tattered blanket. Your son looks equally surprised, but emits only a startled cough. You grin "Hello Eamon" You turn your attention to the girl lying beside him. > You say "What's your name?" You flash the young girl a warm smile "Hello there, what's your name?" The girl stammers out an answer "L-lynette, milord" You nod solemnly "A very pretty name. Who gave it to you?" While you spoke, Lynette had slipped on her threadbare tunic, in her panic she has managed to entangle the fabric around her face, and the cloth muffles her voice "My mother works in the kitchen, milord" "And the father?" You inquire "I don't know, milord" She replies quietly, having finally wrestled her tunic into its proper position. With her attention switched from her tunic back to you, her embarrassment returns "If milord will excuse me, I should be getting back to the kitchens" "Of course" Blushing profusely, the young servant girl scurries towards the door, executing a clumsy curtsy as she passes you. Your son stares after her longingly, he sighs, and you nod knowingly "Is she a favorite of yours?" Your son looks shocked "I love her, father"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The courtyard is a chaos of raised voices and the neighing of horses and the splashing of mud, which coats the ground; it has been churned loose from the frosty ground and warmed by the trampling of hundreds of feet. Across the courtyard from you is the inner keep, a building made from Roman stone and patched with Anglo-Saxon woodwork. It is where you host your warriors and organize meetings, and it also functions as your personal quarters. You should organize a meeting soon, but it would be wise to meet with your family first. > You speak to Orvyn Orvyn stands with a group of other men, all holding ale cups. As you approach he waves you a jaunty salute, but you sense a sullen undertone. You motion for him to follow you. Walking purposefully, you wait until there is no one in the general vicinity before speaking. > You say "We should be wary of Garyn" "I'm worried about Garyn" Orvyn nods vigorously "I know exactly what you mean; bloody idiot will get us all killed with his recklessness" Again making sure no one is listening, you put a hand on Orvyn's shoulder "Can I trust you?' Orvyn affirms loyally "Of course Aethelwulf!" You clap him on the shoulder "I know, old friend, I know" You lean in "I want you to keep an eye on Garyn, make sure he doesn't blunder our men into a trap" Orvyn checks over his shoulder suspiciously, as though he expects Garyn to materialize from thin air "Don't worry, I'll watch him like a hawk" "Excellent, let me know if he does anything foolish" Orvyn salutes amicably and departs; you walk in the opposite direction, towards the main courtyard.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Orvyn stands with a group of other men, all holding ale cups. As you approach he waves you a jaunty salute, but you sense a sullen undertone. You motion for him to follow you. Walking purposefully, you wait until there is no one in the general vicinity before speaking. > You say "You need to cooperate with Garyn" You wonder how to put this in a way Orvyn will comprehend; he is not, after all, a man who enjoys playing nice. You decide to start cautiously "You know, of course, that I do, and always will, trust you with my life" Orvyn nods slowly, you continue "You also know that I rely on you to maintain order and discipline amongst the men" Again, Orvyn nods, his bright green eyes watching you carefully. You press on "I need you to be an example to the men, be something they can look up to" Orvyn runs a hand through his jet-black hair distractedly "Aethelwulf, I've always done th-" You wave him off, and cut to the point "I can't have you arguing with Garyn. It's bad for moral, and it makes the men lose confidence in their leaders" Orvyn's pale cheeks are tinged pink, he stares determinedly at his feet "If my lord would rather put his trust in me then Garyn, he need only say so" The coldness of his tone shocks you. You open your mouth to apologize, but Orvyn has already stalked off.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The courtyard is a chaos of raised voices and the neighing of horses and the splashing of mud, which coats the ground; it has been churned loose from the frosty ground and warmed by the trampling of hundreds of feet. Across the courtyard from you is the inner keep, a building made from Roman stone and patched with Anglo-Saxon woodwork. It is where you host your warriors and organize meetings, and it also functions as your personal quarters. You should organize a meeting soon, but it would be wise to meet with your family first. > You speak to Father Wilfrid You decide to pay father Wilfrid a visit. The man has served your family for nearly forty years, and he has served you personally as teacher, mentor, and adviser. As a person, you harbor a vague dislike for him, and the feeling is mutual. However, you can trust him to give good advice, and for that reason you set off in the direction of the huge stone church that towers above every other building within York's walls. The church, St. Peters, was built nearly three hundred years ago, and it has stood against the tides of half a hundred bloody wars. Staring at the immense building of hard cut stone, you are overcome with a sudden monumental certainty; that one way or another, the church will outlive you, and everyone else. Something about its towering austerity lends to its aura of chilling weariness, like the pressure of an invisible hand. You never really liked churches, and a career as a soldier has done little to improve the situation. When you enter the building, you can feel the judgment, the guilt, bearing down on you. You have defended your kin and country with the ruthless efficiency of a trained warrior, and for that you have been condemned, deemed impure. No one says this, of course; the priests are always tactful and subservient, listening to your confessions with dull faces, but you sense their fear. They watch you like a caged animal, one that could at any minute turn on its companions. Whenever you touch one of the priests, you see the undeniable flicker of disgust that bolts across their faces for the briefest of instances. To them, you will always reek of blood. Shouldering your emotions, you push open the thick oaken doors that bar your entry to the church. > You enter the Church Father Wilfrid kneels at the far end of the church, prostrate before a towering sculpture of Jesus upon a cross. He is dressed in a plain woolen robe that drapes loosely across his skeletal form. His hands are spotted with age, and his left shakes incessantly. His lips are thin and chapped, and they move loosely, muttering prayers in Latin. As he whispers, his head bobs slightly, shaking the wisps of white hair that sparsely cover his head. You wait patiently for him to finish, ignoring the suspicious glances of the other priests. Your eyes drift upwards, where a lengthy tapestry occupies the farthest wall. You spend the next five minutes perusing it idly, watching grotesque caricatures of heathens smolder in the depths of woolen flames. At last, father Wilfrid finishes his prayers and struggles to rise, heaving awkwardly against a weathered can that shudders under his minute weight. You offer a hand, and he regards it with unhidden distaste, as though you had presented him with a human heart as opposed to an offer of aid. You withdraw the hand tactfully and Wilfrid gets shakily to his feet. He looks you up and down, as though he expects you to suddenly dematerialize. "You're back" You nod, trying not to think back on your less pleasant schooling days. "How fare the people?" Father Wilfrid looks at you with grudging respect. His teachings of angels and gospels have long since faded from memory, but his teachings on the importance of a lord's people have remained steadfast in your mind. "They fare as well as one might expect. They grieve, and you cannot deny that their grief is largely your fault" You exhale tiredly, Wilfrid grabs your arm "We have our differences, you and I, but we agree on one thing; a lord should never forget about his people" You nod and begin to speak, but Wilfrid cuts you off "I know you must hate the Normans, but if you rebel, you will lose, and it will be the people, your people, who will suffer because of it. You cannot rebel against King William" The old priest coughs harshly, his battered lungs quivering. He spits out the last sentence "If you rebel, we will all die" > You say "I won't rebel" You laugh bitterly "If I wanted to rebel, I would have done it in the throneroom. It's too late now." Father Wilfrid looks at you strangely, overcoming a momentary hesitation; he places a scrawny arm on your shoulder "You are making a wise choice, lord Aethelwulf" You want to say something, and for a moment you just stand there, staring at your old tutor. Father Wilfrid breaks the silence "You should go, doubtless you have work to do" You nod and turn to depart, as you leave Father Wilfrid offers one last comment "I am proud of you, Aethelwulf, even if it doesn't seem like it" You push open the heavy church doors and step out into the crisp December air.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Father Wilfrid kneels at the far end of the church, prostrate before a towering sculpture of Jesus upon a cross. He is dressed in a plain woolen robe that drapes loosely across his skeletal form. His hands are spotted with age, and his left shakes incessantly. His lips are thin and chapped, and they move loosely, muttering prayers in Latin. As he whispers, his head bobs slightly, shaking the wisps of white hair that sparsely cover his head. You wait patiently for him to finish, ignoring the suspicious glances of the other priests. Your eyes drift upwards, where a lengthy tapestry occupies the farthest wall. You spend the next five minutes perusing it idly, watching grotesque caricatures of heathens smolder in the depths of woolen flames. At last, father Wilfrid finishes his prayers and struggles to rise, heaving awkwardly against a weathered can that shudders under his minute weight. You offer a hand, and he regards it with unhidden distaste, as though you had presented him with a human heart as opposed to an offer of aid. You withdraw the hand tactfully and Wilfrid gets shakily to his feet. He looks you up and down, as though he expects you to suddenly dematerialize. "You're back" You nod, trying not to think back on your less pleasant schooling days. "How fare the people?" Father Wilfrid looks at you with grudging respect. His teachings of angels and gospels have long since faded from memory, but his teachings on the importance of a lord's people have remained steadfast in your mind. "They fare as well as one might expect. They grieve, and you cannot deny that their grief is largely your fault" You exhale tiredly, Wilfrid grabs your arm "We have our differences, you and I, but we agree on one thing; a lord should never forget about his people" You nod and begin to speak, but Wilfrid cuts you off "I know you must hate the Normans, but if you rebel, you will lose, and it will be the people, your people, who will suffer because of it. You cannot rebel against King William" The old priest coughs harshly, his battered lungs quivering. He spits out the last sentence "If you rebel, we will all die" > You say "I will rebel" You lean in, forcing the old priest to take a half step backward "Who do you give your loyalty to?" His answer is immediate and unequivocal "God" Your snarl, taking another step forward "Well, my loyalties lie with England. Always. You would be wise to develop a similar mindset" Father Wilfrid watches you coldly "Get out of my church" Livid with anger, you storm out of the church, pushing open the heavy oaken doors and breathing in the calming December air. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You dismount and hand the reins of your horse to one of your men. Moving briskly, you cross the old stone bridge. On the other side, Garyn dismounts and hurries to meet you. It has been several months since you last saw him, however he hasn't changed a bit. He wears a mail hauberk, and his shield -emblazoned with your snarling wolf sigil- is slung over his back. On his left he wears a thick fighting sword, shorter than your longsword but almost twice as thick. On his right he carries a vicious looking seaxe, a heavy stabbing dagger perfect for thrusting through mail links. His face, like much of his body, is scarred by a lifetime of fighting. He is bald, and his hooked nose gives him a predatory, reptilian look. His eyes are hard, flinty; the eyes of a soldier. You meet in the middle of the bridge and he clasps your forearm warmly, his face shows relief. "Our scouts saw you coming, I came as soon as I could. The Lady Catheryn will be overjoyed to hear that you are back" Catheryn. You feel your heartbeat rise. These months without her have been far too long. You can almost see her, like an apparition drawing you homewards. Footsteps echo on the bridge behind you; Orvyn has joined you. He speaks to you, but his eyes are fixed on Garyn "We should ride to the villages first. As their lord, you owe them an explanation. Everyone there has a relative who served in your fyrd. They deserve an audience" Garyn glares contemptuously at Orvyn "A lord does not serve at the beck and call of his peasants. Maybe if the useless sods had held the line, we wouldn't be in this predicament" Orvyn takes a step towards Garyn, Garyn's hand drops closer to the lethal looking dagger at his hip. Orvyn keeps his hands well away from his weapons, in an open show of contempt "Do you want the commonfolk to rebel against us? What harm can it do to delay Aethelwulf's homecoming by a few hours!" Both of them turn expectantly towards you, waiting for you to settle their dispute. > You agree with Orvyn Thoughts of your wife and children burn inside of you, but a good lord's first priority should always be to his people. You nod to Orvyn "I will ride down to the villages. Garyn, send us some of your men as an escort." Garyn obeys, but his lips are curled in an ugly sneer and he refuses to even look at Orvyn, who wears a distinctly smug expression. Following Orvyn, you turn your back temporarily on thoughts of homecoming. A good lord's duty is to his people, after all. You mount your horse and ride towards the town of Wichestun. > You head into town You smell the town before you see it. A horrid combination of sewage and rotting thatch permeates the crisp December air. The town has perhaps a hundred homes at most, with most people living in farmsteads around the surrounding area. Normally, the town would be fairly quiet, however today is Wednesday, marketday, and the town is filled with crowds of villagers from the farthest corners of your realm. As your horses move through the center street, villagers hurry to make room. Some cheer, but others eye you with suspicion or even fear. At the center of the town, you hold up your fist and your party draws to a halt. A crowd quickly gathers, all eyes are on you. Pausing to gather your words, you address your people. > You say "We stand together!" You raise your hand and silence falls like a blanket over the crowd of people. Your eyes flick from face, some meet your gaze, others stare at their feet. "We have been through hell, all of us. You have all lost people to the fyrd; fathers, brothers, sons. I understand your pain. But know this; they died with me, beside me, because we are the north! We live, we fight, and we die together! They say a warrior is only as strong as the shield held by his neighbor, they say this because it is the united who are strong, and we are the united!" Your escort applauds, rattling swords on shields and roaring. Some of the villagers clap nervously, but others remain still; one, a young woman with a grim face raises her hand. "Why was the fyrd so undersupplied? Why was it not provided with shields?" One of your men barks at her to be silent, but she snarls back, tears bead her eyes "I lost my husband and my son! Don't you dare tell me to be silent!" She stabs her finger at you, sobbing "Answer me! Answer me!" One of your men reaches for his sword, but you wave him off. Looking the determined young woman in the eye, you give her an answer. > You say "War is brutal" You exhale tiredly and spread your hands sympathetically "I am sorry, truly I am. By joining my fyrd your husband and son were put in a dangerous position, and regrettably they were killed. I can never ask you to forget, but I can ask you to forgive. Will you do that?" The woman says nothing; her cheeks are streaked with tears. Bowing her head, she pushes through the crowd, away from the market square, people make way respectfully. Tugging at your horses reins, you turn homeward, and your escort silently follows you. The crowd remains silent, watching.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You raise your hand and silence falls like a blanket over the crowd of people. Your eyes flick from face, some meet your gaze, others stare at their feet. "We have been through hell, all of us. You have all lost people to the fyrd; fathers, brothers, sons. I understand your pain. But know this; they died with me, beside me, because we are the north! We live, we fight, and we die together! They say a warrior is only as strong as the shield held by his neighbor, they say this because it is the united who are strong, and we are the united!" Your escort applauds, rattling swords on shields and roaring. Some of the villagers clap nervously, but others remain still; one, a young woman with a grim face raises her hand. "Why was the fyrd so undersupplied? Why was it not provided with shields?" One of your men barks at her to be silent, but she snarls back, tears bead her eyes "I lost my husband and my son! Don't you dare tell me to be silent!" She stabs her finger at you, sobbing "Answer me! Answer me!" One of your men reaches for his sword, but you wave him off. Looking the determined young woman in the eye, you give her an answer. > You say "If I could have saved them, I would have" You sigh, an angry rush of air escapes your mouth. You lean in, and the woman recoils momentarily; mounted on your horse with gleaming steel at your waist, you look like an imposing figure. Sensing your tense emotions, Thunder bares his thick teeth, but you quiet him. "If I could bring your husband and son back from the dead, I would. Truly. I do feel every fyrdmen lost under my service to be a terrible tra-" The woman glares at you angrily, stepping forward "Do you think I care? Do you think I want your condolences? My son, my husban-" "I have lost people too!" You snap irritably, and she backs off carefully. The crowd is tense, and your guards place hands on swordhilts. You wave them down and continue talking. "I have lost family too. Every soldier dead in my service is a brother whose death I mourn. You lost two people, and I know their deaths will haunt you. But I am haunted too. I am haunted too; I am haunted by the deaths of not only the forty-eight warriors I commanded, many of whom I knew since they were boys, but also the deaths amongst the fyrdmen who died alongside me. We were all brothers; me, the fyrdmen, my warriors, all of us. those men who died were my brothers, and I mourn them like any other would. So know this; you do not grieve alone" The woman meets your eyes for a long moment, and then turns away, the crowd lets her pass. Did those eyes hold forgiveness? Maybe. The crowd is equally divided; some seem unmoved, but many others look at you with a new appraisal. Satisfied, you turn your horse homewards, and your escort follows.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You raise your hand and silence falls like a blanket over the crowd of people. Your eyes flick from face, some meet your gaze, others stare at their feet. "We have been through hell, all of us. You have all lost people to the fyrd; fathers, brothers, sons. I understand your pain. But know this; they died with me, beside me, because we are the north! We live, we fight, and we die together! They say a warrior is only as strong as the shield held by his neighbor, they say this because it is the united who are strong, and we are the united!" Your escort applauds, rattling swords on shields and roaring. Some of the villagers clap nervously, but others remain still; one, a young woman with a grim face raises her hand. "Why was the fyrd so undersupplied? Why was it not provided with shields?" One of your men barks at her to be silent, but she snarls back, tears bead her eyes "I lost my husband and my son! Don't you dare tell me to be silent!" She stabs her finger at you, sobbing "Answer me! Answer me!" One of your men reaches for his sword, but you wave him off. Looking the determined young woman in the eye, you give her an answer. > You say "I am sorry for your losses" What can you say? The truth, you suppose. "War is brutal, it is horrific and ungodly. It is savage and barbaric. That your son and husband died is tragic, but it is also a reality, and it is a reality that we fast approach. William will come here, and the killing will continue, because that is war. And in the world of today; war is life. It is terrible and tragic, but it is the life we live and I cannot shield you from that." You search for more words, but none come. None are necessary. The woman exhales heavily, fixes you with a mixed stare, and then departs, melting into the crowd. Did those eyes hold forgiveness? Maybe. The crowd is equally divided; some seem unmoved, but many others look at you with a new appraisal. Satisfied, you turn your horse homewards, and your escort follows.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You smell the town before you see it. A horrid combination of sewage and rotting thatch permeates the crisp December air. The town has perhaps a hundred homes at most, with most people living in farmsteads around the surrounding area. Normally, the town would be fairly quiet, however today is Wednesday, marketday, and the town is filled with crowds of villagers from the farthest corners of your realm. As your horses move through the center street, villagers hurry to make room. Some cheer, but others eye you with suspicion or even fear. At the center of the town, you hold up your fist and your party draws to a halt. A crowd quickly gathers, all eyes are on you. Pausing to gather your words, you address your people. > You say "You must be strong!" You raise your hand and silence falls like a blanket over the crowd of people. Your eyes flick from face, some meet your gaze, others stare at their feet. "As a husband and father, I can understand the devotion one feels for a family member, and therefore cannot even comprehend the pain of your losses. I wish I could tell you that they died honorably, but in truth they were butchered! William slaughtered them, mercilessly. What happened at Hastings cannot be repeated, and to ensure that I need your support. If not for my sake, or England's, then for the sake of avenging your loved ones. William must pay!" Your escort applauds, rattling swords on shields and roaring. Some of the villagers clap nervously, but others remain still; one, a young woman with a grim face raises her hand. "Why was the fyrd so undersupplied? Why was it not provided with shields?" One of your men barks at her to be silent, but she snarls back, tears bead her eyes "I lost my husband and my son! Don't you dare tell me to be silent!" She stabs her finger at you, sobbing "Answer me! Answer me!" One of your men reaches for his sword, but you wave him off. Looking the determined young woman in the eye, you give her an answer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You smell the town before you see it. A horrid combination of sewage and rotting thatch permeates the crisp December air. The town has perhaps a hundred homes at most, with most people living in farmsteads around the surrounding area. Normally, the town would be fairly quiet, however today is Wednesday, marketday, and the town is filled with crowds of villagers from the farthest corners of your realm. As your horses move through the center street, villagers hurry to make room. Some cheer, but others eye you with suspicion or even fear. At the center of the town, you hold up your fist and your party draws to a halt. A crowd quickly gathers, all eyes are on you. Pausing to gather your words, you address your people. > You say "I am truly sorry for your losses" You raise your hand and silence falls like a blanket over the crowd of people. Your eyes flick from face, some meet your gaze, others stare at their feet. "I know the losses you have experienced have hurt you all deeply, but you must remain strong. William's butchery of your loved ones cannot go unanswered, we hurt him at Hastings, and those you lost were a part of that. Do not let them die in vain! William must pay, and we will bring justice to him!" Your escort applauds, rattling swords on shields and roaring. Some of the villagers clap nervously, but others remain still; one, a young woman with a grim face raises her hand. "Why was the fyrd so undersupplied? Why was it not provided with shields?" One of your men barks at her to be silent, but she snarls back, tears bead her eyes "I lost my husband and my son! Don't you dare tell me to be silent!" She stabs her finger at you, sobbing "Answer me! Answer me!" One of your men reaches for his sword, but you wave him off. Looking the determined young woman in the eye, you give her an answer.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Thank you" You snarl through gritted teeth. Anger wells up inside of you like a storm, like an enraged beast trapped inside a frail cage of flesh and bone. Beside you, Orvyn notices your anger and tenses up, every muscle in his body is ready to spring into action. Even William notices the tension and waves discreetly to the Norman soldiers behind you. You feel cold steel pricking at your back. William glares icily, he leans forward. "You might be wondering why you are still alive, no?" You shrug sardonically. William pretends not to notice your insolence. "The North has proven especially difficult to pacify. I could have you executed, and place a Norman in charge, however I believe the peasants would disapprove, and I would prefer to keep them alive" He pauses briefly, mentally collecting his words "As such, I am reinstating you as lord in the North, providing you swear fealty to me" He leans even closer "Make no mistake. You will be closely watched by one of my men, whom you will take orders from. This is not an offer. Swear to me, or die. Your choice." > You attack King William With a short, deft movement, you leap to your left and crack a guard's knee with your boot. He gasps and collapses on the floor, cradling his injured leg. From his limp hands you tear his spear and whip around. The guard behind you parries with his sword, but you twirl your spear around his blade and plunge it into his gut. Leaving it there, you tear the sword from his grip. Behind you, Orvyn has also managed to acquire a weapon and is dueling with the remaining guard and the jailor. With his free hand, he waves to you "Go, Aethelwulf, go! Kill him!" You press onwards toward the throne. William's two guards stand ready for you. Taking a massive lunge to your right, you drive your sword at a guard's face. He deflects the blow easily with his heavy Norman kite shield, but the shield momentarily blinds him and allows you to cut past him. William, seeing you in front of him, reaches for an ornate gilded sword at his side. You don't give him a chance. Channeling all your strength, you drive the blade deep into his gut. Behind you, footsteps resonate, and shortly after you feel sharp steel driving into your back. It no longer matters. You keep pushing, driving the blade upwards. William's eyes roll back and his features curl into an insane grimace. More men enter the room. Orvyn dies. Your hand, up to your arm, is covered in blood. Another blade pierces you. Your grip weakens. You fall over, and your vision turns red. Blood pours from your mouth, but you manage to spit out two words "For England" > The Aftermath... With William dead, the Norman occupation crumbles. Multiple uprisings drive the Norman force out of London. In 1067 the Normans rally briefly under William's son, who is also named William. In an act of vengeance, he makes his last stand in Northumbria, your home. While he waits for the impending arrival of a unified English army, he makes Northumbria bleed. Entire villages are put to the sword, and your home is no exception. Your entire family is wiped out; an ancient bloodline extinguished. The English forces catch William II in a deft pincer; most of his army is killed during the battle. Those who are captured are put to the sword. William II is taken prisoner, he is brought to London and found guilty of numerous charges by a completely unanimous jury. On August 18, 1067, William II, at nineteen years of age, is executed. In the next four years a wave of bloodshed rips through England. Normans in hiding are methodically sought out and killed. By 1071, there are none left. Meanwhile, many English lords vie for the throne. In 1072, an English lord named Ryce takes the throne, and the English monarchy is preserved. Although you will be remembered as the man who saved England, your actions resulted in your people being massacred and your family being killed. As history progresses, facts will fade into legend, but you will always remain. Your name will be lost to history, but you will be remembered instead by your posthumous nickname; The Bloody Wolf.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>With a bitter taste in your mouth, you kneel. Orvyn looks openly disgusted, but he too gets down on one knee. William smiles contemptuously, he speaks softly, in an English that is only faintly accented. "Ah, this one knows his manners. Good." > You remain silent You hold your tongue, but anger wells up inside of you like a storm, like an enraged beast trapped inside a frail cage of flesh and bone. Beside you, Orvyn notices your anger and tenses up, every muscle in his body is ready to spring into action. Even William notices the tension and waves discreetly to the Norman soldiers behind you. You feel cold steel pricking at your back. William glares icily, he leans forward. "You might be wondering why you are still alive, no?" You shrug sardonically. William pretends not to notice your insolence. "The North has proven especially difficult to pacify. I could have you executed, and place a Norman in charge, however I believe the peasants would disapprove, and I would prefer to keep them alive" He pauses briefly, mentally collecting his words "As such, I am reinstating you as lord in the North, providing you swear fealty to me" He leans even closer "Make no mistake. You will be closely watched by one of my men, whom you will take orders from. This is not an offer. Swear to me, or die. Your choice."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You remember what this room was like a year ago. Men and women laughed and cajoled, children played with the great wolfhounds that were always on the hunt for table scraps, and bards echoed melodies that filled the rafters with pleasant music. But that was a different time, under a different king. The throne room is empty, other than a handful of guards and a few servants milling idly, the throne room is devoid of people. It is silent too, the place is blanketed by an austere noiselessness, so that every footstep makes a clattering echo. Residing over it all, William sits in the throne, glaring at you thoughtfully. With just a handful of meters separating you and the king, your guards stop you. William looks at you expectantly. > You remain standing You remain stonily silent, and stiff as iron. William sneers and barks a command in French, the two guards behind you force you and Orvyn to your knees. William smiles patronizingly, he speaks softly, in an English that is only faintly accented. "I cannot imagine how tiring it must be to stand all the time. I thought you might appreciate a break" <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Harold!" You call out, sprinting towards him. He half turns towards you, and flashes one of his charismatic bright smiles. The single arrow that flies through the air surprises you more than Harold. Curving gently, it hisses downward and slams into Harold's eye. He lets out a startled cough and staggers backward. You keep running towards your king, but a Norman rider cuts in front of you. Turning his horse neatly, the Norman swings his blade and opens your King's throat, spraying blood. Harold falls to the ground, dead. You falter indecisively, filled with wordless horror and remorse. > You kill the bastard You sprint full tilt at the Norman rider. Your shield feels heavy on your arm, so you toss it aside. Seeing your approach, the Norman wheels his horse around to face you. He knees his horse into a canter, driving it straight for you. At the last moment you drop down and slide along the mud of the hill, under the belly of the horse. Thrusting upward, you plunge your blade deep into the horse's gut, drenching yourself in thick blood. The horse collapses, but you roll out from under it. You leap to your feet quickly; the Norman rider is slower to rise. From under the horse carcass, you see the hilt of your longsword protruding. > You go for your longsword The Norman struggles to rise, his leg is broken. He stabs at you feebly with his sword. You knock it aside and retrieve you own, pulling it from the horse's stomach with a sickening wrench. Shoving the rider onto his back, you stand over him with your sword raised high. "For Harold" You breathe, and then plunge the blade into his chest, shattering the mail links and piercing his heart. You stand there awhile, alone in the middle of a slaughter. Orvyn reaches you, and tugs urgently at your shoulder, he is yelling something, but you cannot understand him. The words sound far away; small. You see a Norman on horseback charge towards you, he wields a cudgel. You make no attempt to dodge. You just stand there, frozen. It is Orvyn who saves you, he ducks under the cudgel swing and drives his axe into the horseman's chest. The cudgel blow loses force and changes direction, clipping your helmet as opposed to killing you. Your vision fades and you feel the ground rush towards you, feel the mud leeching through your mailshirt. Your vision blackens.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You sprint full tilt at the Norman rider. Your shield feels heavy on your arm, so you toss it aside. Seeing your approach, the Norman wheels his horse around to face you. He knees his horse into a canter, driving it straight for you. At the last moment you drop down and slide along the mud of the hill, under the belly of the horse. Thrusting upward, you plunge your blade deep into the horse's gut, drenching yourself in thick blood. The horse collapses, but you roll out from under it. You leap to your feet quickly; the Norman rider is slower to rise. From under the horse carcass, you see the hilt of your longsword protruding. > You attack the Norman unarmed The Norman struggles to rise, you ignore your sword and instead dive for him. Knocking him down, you press him down with your legs and drive blow after blow into his face, cracking your knuckles and snapping his nose. The Norman writhes, and as you try and secure him he drives a fist into your gut. As you recover, gasping, he draws a dagger and stabs it at your neck. Twisting out of the way, you avoid most of his strike, but feel the blade cut up across your jaw. His momentum throws him off-guard, and in an instant you are both clutching the knife's hilt. He fights hard, but his strength is the hot struggle for survival, and yours is the cold power of vengeance. You force the dagger down and plunge it into his chest, splintering his mailshirt and piercing his heart. You stand there awhile, alone in the middle of a slaughter. Orvyn reaches you, and tugs urgently at your shoulder, he is yelling something, but you cannot understand him. The words sound far away; small. You see a Norman on horseback charge towards you, he wields a cudgel. You make no attempt to dodge. You just stand there, frozen. It is Orvyn who saves you, he ducks under the cudgel swing and drives his axe into the horseman's chest. The cudgel blow loses force and changes direction, clipping your helmet as opposed to killing you. Your vision fades and you feel the ground rush towards you, feel the mud leeching through your mailshirt. Your vision blackens.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Adding your voice to the English battle cries, you advance on the fleeing Norman foot soldiers. In front of you, one stumbles as his boot slides through a patch of reddened mud. He only falters a moment, but it is enough. Your longsword lances forward, piercing the fleeing Norman's calf. He screams and falls, holding up his arms to futilely ward off your blade. You keep moving forward, using your heavy shield to shove the wounded Norman out of your way. Behind you, Orvyn's axe resonates with a heavy crunch as he finishes off the crippled soldier. Ahead of you, another Norman stumbles forward, a heavy javelin slamming into his shoulder. He manages one strangled yelp before your blade connects with his neck, a heavy swing that severs his jugular and jars against his spine. You wrench the sword free and keep moving. This charge has filled you with fresh energy, filling your mind with bloody courage, but now it is starting to ebb and your mind is working more clearly. There is something very wrong here. This retreat is far too organized, too simultaneous. The Norman foot soldiers are increasing the distance between themselves and the beleaguered English soldiers, the pounding of their feet grows fainter, but another pounding grows louder. Horse hooves. You turn to your left, Harold has thrown off his battered shield and carries only a Daneaxe, which he wields two-handed. He is completely out in the open. You turn and race towards him. > You say "Protect the King!" "Protect the King!" You cry, and several weary Housecarls bound into action, following your lead. You sprint towards him. He half turns towards you, and flashes one of his charismatic bright smiles. The single arrow that flies through the air surprises you more than Harold. Curving gently, it hisses downward and slams into his eye. He lets out a startled cough and staggers backward. You keep running towards your king, but a Norman rider canters in front of you, blocking your way. Turning his horse neatly, the Norman swings his blade and opens your King's throat, spraying blood. Harold falls to the ground, dead. You falter indecisively, filled with wordless horror and remorse.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Normans advance, neat and orderly. Their armaments are very similar to that of their riders. Most wear mailshirts, and those bizarre conical helmets. Some carry axes, most carry swords, but all heft the customary Norman blue kite shield. That, at least, is some consolation. Whereas you English fight as a cohesive team, the Norman's tend to fight as individuals, because the kite shield, although effective, cannot interlock with that of a neighbor's. Despite your weakened state, a lone Norman is still a dead one. You crouch low behind the horse corpse and wait. The familiar jingle of mailshirts heralds their arrival. Beside you, Orvyn bristles, but you put a cautionary hand on his shoulder. You want them close. You wait a moment more, then leap out. Your longsword snakes forward, lashing out at a Norman's face. He raises his kite shield to deflect the blow, but as he does one of the men on your right sweeps his blade down and cuts into the Norman's ankle. The man screams and drops to one knee, Orvyn's axe crushes his jaw. You press into the gap and push the Normans towards Harold's Housecarls, whose bloody Daneaxes make short work of the thin kite shields. Ducking under a Norman sword thrust, you stab forwards and gut the man. Kicking him aside, you search for your next opponent... And find no one. The Normans are retreating. To your left, you notice King Harold. He waves madly with his axe, and men are surging forward alongside him. With a sudden shock you realize he is trying to rally the men and charge downhill, towards William's retreating infantry. > You stay back Some of your men are beginning to join this mad charge. Waving frantically, you call them back to your position. Most capitulate, somewhat reluctantly. With your men beside you, you pause to get a better look at the retreating Normans. There is something very wrong here. This retreat is far too organized, too simultaneous. The Norman foot soldiers are increasing the distance between themselves and the beleaguered English soldiers, the pounding of their feet grows fainter, but another pounding grows louder. Horse hooves. You stare with horror, Harold has thrown off his battered shield and carries only a Daneaxe, which he wields two-handed. He is completely out in the open. Instinctively, you turn and race towards him.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Orvyn meets you at the edge of camp. A priest and a warrior, an Eriu and a Christian, Orvyn has been your stalwart follower and friend for nearly two decades. You both clasp hands firmly and grin, filled with pre-battle adrenaline. Although Orvyn is not technically in command of your men, you have left your normal commander, Garyn, back at home to guard your wife and children with a skeleton crew. With Garyn away, Orvyn is stepping in. He is a good commander for battles; he is amicable and courageous, but also capable and firm. In peacetime he would lack the rigid authoritarianism necessary for drilling the men, but right now they need a man to keep them confident. Orvyn inspires confidence; he isn't especially tall, but he is solidly built and a force to be reckoned with. His beard and hair are both jet black, and both are kept in place by various bone rings. That, and his sparkling green eyes, give him a look of mad fanaticism that men are all too happy to follow. You provide the encouragement, and Orvyn provides the fire. Together you are a killing force. Orvyn fingers the axe at his belt restlessly. "Should we go to the shieldline?" There is still probably an hour or more before the two armies actually meet, as men are ever reluctant to face a shieldwall, but being early couldn't hurt. > You have some time, let's talk You shrug "We still have some time." You find a moist log and sit down. Orvyn follows your lead and seats himself on a campstool taken from a nearby firepit. He cracks his knuckles "So?" You stretch, mailshirt shimmering "I just wanted to talk" "About?" "The weather of course" Orvyn looks at you quizically, and you roll your eyes "I meant the battle. I wanted to talk about the battle" Orvyn touches the hilt of his axe "Mm. I might have preferred a conversation on the weather" You spread your palms "Sorry, just this; do you think that we can win?" Orvyn shrugs "Do you?" For a while you sit in silence. Neither one of you is willing to speak. You grit your teeth angrily "I was hoping for some encouragement. This is definitely not helping either of us. Come on, let's go to the front." Orvyn nods, and helps you up from your log "Alright, let's go then"<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Grinning, you embrace your boyhood friend. "Harold, good to see you, as always." Harold grins. "I know it is! Everyone says the same exact damn thing!" He chuckles, long and low. "But come, I haven't seen you since our last battle! That was two bloody months ago, near as! Where've you been! Avoiding me, have you?" You laugh "If I went to another feast of yours, I wouldn't fit into my mail" He shakes his head ruefully "You should learn to unwind more! Live your life, you know? Speaking of, how's your wife?" You nod solemnly "She fares well, and yours?" Harold snorts derisively "Fat and ugly, as always. Ah well, that's what tavern girls are for, eh?" He grins and nudges you with his shoulder; you shrug. Harold notices your expression and laughs again "As chaste as a damned priest! Ah well, we'll break you in eventually." Again you shrug. You and Harold have very different views on the matter, he won't change, nor will you. The best course, you decide, is to skate around the issue altogether. Nodding towards the hill, you speak seriously "What do you make of our defenses?" Harold frowns, his earlier humor gone. He throws up his hands irritably. "My Kingdom depends on a hill and five thousand farmers" You shake your head "Five thousand farmers and three thousand warriors" Harold nods "Aye. True enough. We'll make this William pay for every inch, if nothing else" He squints at the hill in the fading light "The scouts say William has four thousand cavalry" You shake your head decisively "No cavalry in the world can break a strong shieldwall" Harold laughs bitterly "Our shieldwall isn't strong! It's weak! Half of the bloody farmers don't even own shields! Goddamned useless bastards!" Surveying the hill thoughtfully, two plans come to mind; You could craft wooden stakes and plant them along the hill, disorganizing the horse charge. Or you could create makeshift shields for the conscripts, to help them hold the line. The carpenters will only have enough time to do one of the two tasks, you must choose which you value most. > You craft makeshift shields You look back at the camp, where five thousand farmers, butchers, bakers, and other citizens huddle in their cloaks for warmth, or sit by a fire and listen in awe as soldiers tell them tales of battles in faraway lands. None of them are ready for this, and most will not have the courage to face the prospect of shieldwall combat willingly. Giving them a slight advantage is the least you can do, really. "If your carpenters can hew some fresh wood, they could make shields for the conscripts. Nothing fancy, just a wood board with a grip. Something to keep them alive. To keep them from breaking." Harold claps you on the shoulder "I'll have my carpenters start working right away! Let's turn these farmers into proper soldiers!" He laughs, and you see the fire in his eyes. This is what King Harold does best. Strategy and rule he manages, but it's the fighting he loves. You understand the feeling all too well. How many times have you knelt before a cross, armor bloody and gore speckled, thinking back with revulsion and guilt at how you loved it. Loved every bit of it. Loved the blades flashing, reflecting the rays of the sun. Loved the sound of shields splintering, cracking open. Loved the bloody chaos of the shieldwall. In the clash of the shieldwall it is where men like you, and Harold, and no doubt William too, come alive. This world has molded you. Molded you into a warrior. You are bred for this.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Acwellen continues to stare into the flickering glow of the burning town. His face is stony, unfathomable. You turn to leave, picking your way through a patch of muck gingerly. Pressing down with your foot, you assess the ground. Certain patches are dry, but the soil is perilously loose. All it will take is a night of rain to turn the battlefield into a muddy hell. Well, you think to yourself, at least the mud will hurt the Normans worse than us. "Aethelwulf!" A voice interrupts your musings. A very familiar voice, deep and booming. It is the voice of Harold, your king. At just under six feet, he stands a head taller than most, and is just on par with yourself. Both his beard and hair are a fiery orange, and both are thick and wild. His chest is broad and his body muscular, but you notice a distinct bulge in the leather jerkin around his midriff; his infamous love of revelry has not gone unpunished. "Aethelwulf, you canny bastard!" He bellows, grinning and thumping you on the back. > You say "My liege" Inclining your head respectfully, you murmur solemnly "My liege" King Harold laughs madly, and then punches you light-heartedly on the shoulder "You always were a mannerful bastard, Aethelwulf!" He chuckles, long and low. "But come, I haven't seen you since our last battle! That was two bloody months ago, near as! Where've you been! Avoiding me, have you?" You laugh, your respectful tone undone by his amicable nature. "If I went to another feast of yours, I wouldn't fit into my mail" He shakes his head ruefully "You should learn to unwind more! Live your life, you know? Speaking of, how's your wife?" You nod solemnly "She fares well, and yours?" Harold snorts derisively "Fat and ugly, as always. Ah well, that's what tavern girls are for, eh?" He grins and nudges you with his shoulder; you shrug. Harold notices your expression and laughs again "As chaste as a damned priest! Ah well, we'll break you in eventually." Again you shrug. You and Harold have very different views on the matter, he won't change, nor will you. The best course, you decide, is to skate around the issue altogether. Nodding towards the hill, you speak seriously "What do you make of our defenses?" Harold frowns, his earlier humor gone. He throws up his hands irritably. "My Kingdom depends on a hill and five thousand farmers" You shake your head "Five thousand farmers and three thousand warriors" Harold nods "Aye. True enough. We'll make this William pay for every inch, if nothing else" He squints at the hill in the fading light "The scouts say William has four thousand cavalry" You shake your head decisively "No cavalry in the world can break a strong shieldwall" Harold laughs bitterly "Our shieldwall isn't strong! It's weak! Half of the bloody farmers don't even own shields! Goddamned useless bastards!" Surveying the hill thoughtfully, two plans come to mind; You could craft wooden stakes and plant them along the hill, disorganizing the horse charge. Or you could create makeshift shields for the conscripts, to help them hold the line. The carpenters will only have enough time to do one of the two tasks, you must choose which one you believe is more strategic. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Acwellen continues to stare into the flickering glow of the burning town. His face is stony, unfathomable. You turn to leave, picking your way through a patch of muck gingerly. Pressing down with your foot, you assess the ground. Certain patches are dry, but the soil is perilously loose. All it will take is a night of rain to turn the battlefield into a muddy hell. Well, you think to yourself, at least the mud will hurt the Normans worse than us. "Aethelwulf!" A voice interrupts your musings. A very familiar voice, deep and booming. It is the voice of Harold, your king. At just under six feet, he stands a head taller than most, and is just on par with yourself. Both his beard and hair are a fiery orange, and both are thick and wild. His chest is broad and his body muscular, but you notice a distinct bulge in the leather jerkin around his midriff; his infamous love of revelry has not gone unpunished. "Aethelwulf, you canny bastard!" He bellows, grinning and thumping you on the back. > You kneel Kneeling in the muck, you incline you head towards your king "My liege, I am honored-" King Harold bellows with great peals of laughter. Reaching down, he grabs you under the armpit and yanks you to your feet "You always were a mannerful bastard, Aethelwulf!" He chuckles, long and low. "But come, I haven't seen you since we set up camp here! That was two bloody months ago, near as! Where've you been! Avoiding me, have you?" You laugh, your respectful tone undone by his amicable nature. "If I went to another feast of yours, I wouldn't fit into my mail" He shakes his head ruefully "You should learn to unwind more! Live your life, you know? Speaking of, how's your wife?" You nod solemnly "She fares well, and yours?" Harold snorts derisively "Fat and ugly, as always. Ah well, that's what tavern girls are for, eh?" He grins and nudges you with his shoulder; you shrug. Harold notices your expression and laughs again "As chaste as a damned priest! Ah well, we'll break you in eventually." Again you shrug. You and Harold have very different views on the matter, he won't change, nor will you. The best course, you decide, is to skate around the issue altogether. Nodding towards the hill, you speak seriously "What do you make of our defenses?" Harold frowns, his earlier humor gone. He throws up his hands irritably. "My Kingdom depends on a hill and five thousand farmers" You shake your head "Five thousand farmers and three thousand warriors" Harold nods "Aye. True enough. We'll make this William pay for every inch, if nothing else" He squints at the hill in the fading light "The scouts say William has four thousand cavalry" You shake your head decisively "No cavalry in the world can break a strong shieldwall" Harold laughs bitterly "Our shieldwall isn't strong! It's weak! Half of the bloody farmers don't even own shields! Goddamned useless bastards!" Surveying the hill thoughtfully, two plans come to mind; You could craft wooden stakes and plant them along the hill, disorganizing the horse charge. Or you could create makeshift shields for the conscripts, to help them hold the line. The carpenters will only have enough time to do one, you must choose which is more beneficial.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Gently, you place your hand on his shoulder and speak softly "I'm sorry for your loss. I cannot imagine the pain of losing a son, but I am sure he looks down on you from heaven." Acwellen's gaze remains fixed on the burning town, and his face is still set in a mask of stone, but his cheeks are streaked. "Thank you" He exhales shakily, opens his mouth to say something else, then closes it and remains silent, yet the words are plainly on his mind, trying to slip free like hounds on a leash. At last he speaks, grim and quiet, little more than a whisper. "Can we win this battle?" The question hangs there for an eternity, all the fear and anxiety of the English army expressed in the musings of one broken man. > No Hidden by the dense screen of trees, twelve thousand Norman warriors wait. Each one is battle ready, and battle hardened; professional killers. Within your camp waits fewer than eight thousand men, but of those eight thousand only three thousand can be trusted. The rest are just farmers, weary and ill-disciplined. Even with the high ground, these numbers are far too slanted. You know it with a dull certainty; only death awaits you here. Acwellen is still looking at you, waiting for a response. Your mouth moves of its own accord, the words escaping in a wisp of breath. "No."<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Gently, you place your hand on his shoulder and speak softly "I'm sorry for your loss. I cannot imagine the pain of losing a son, but I am sure he looks down on you from heaven." Acwellen's gaze remains fixed on the burning town, and his face is still set in a mask of stone, but his cheeks are streaked. "Thank you" He exhales shakily, opens his mouth to say something else, then closes it and remains silent, yet the words are plainly on his mind, trying to slip free like hounds on a leash. At last he speaks, grim and quiet, little more than a whisper. "Can we win this battle?" The question hangs there for an eternity, all the fear and anxiety of the English army expressed in the musings of one broken man. > You don't know Hidden by the dense screen of trees, twelve thousand Norman warriors wait. Each one is battle ready, and battle hardened; professional killers. Within your camp waits fewer than eight thousand men, but of those eight thousand only three thousand can be trusted. The rest are just farmers, weary and ill-disciplined. These are long odds, and even with the high ground, this will be no easy victory. Acwellen is still looking at you, waiting for a response. You shrug grimly. "I don't know Acwellen. I don't know." Behind the screen of trees the town of Hastings roils with flames and the Norman William's horde assembles.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>All around you is the smell of warfare. Acrid smoke from the campfires, piss and refuse from the latrines, sweat from the men. And fear. You smell that too. These men have reason to be afraid. You have spent the last few months fighting King Harold's enemies, only to march double-time to confront his most dangerous yet; William of Normandy. His army is camped below, twelve thousand men strong, in comparison to your eight thousand. There is reason to be afraid. Are you afraid? No, you affirm decisively in your mind. You are not afraid. You are Lord Aethelwulf, The Lord In The North, King Harold's most trusted advisor, and the veteran of a hundred battles. Why should you be afraid of an army of ragtag Normans who come to die on your sword? Shaking such doubts from your mind, you stride purposefully through the bustle of the camp, intent on checking on the forward defenses. A pair of giggling urchins weave nimbly around you and a staggering drunk lurches out in front of you, notices your sparkling chainmail armor and backs away, apologizing profusely. Striding onward towards the edge of the English camp you pass the watchful gaze of the sentries unchallenged and stand at the upper slope of the hill. You are not alone. Another man sits on the hill, wreathed in the shadow of the setting sun. Drawing closer you recognize him as Acwellen, a minor lord, but stalwart fighter. His face is stone, his jaw grimly set and his eyes staring out at the horizon. Looking over his shoulder you see the black smoke smearing the red evening sky. In the distance the town of Hastings burns. In the blurry uncertainty of the setting sun, you cannot tell if the glisten at his eyes is tears or just the sparkle of dying sunlight. Acwellen's son, you remember, was put in command of Hasting's garrison. Above the treeline you can just make out the crackle of flames. Hastings burns. > You remind him his son could be alive Adamantly, you grip him by the shoulder and turn him to face you. Kneeling, you look him in the eyes, grasping his shoulders with sudden ferocity. "Listen to me Acwellen! Your son may not be dead. Every hour men from the garrison at Hastings enter our camp. There are survivors. Do not give up hope so soon" Acwellen sighs raggedly, and seems about to disagree, but instead nods fiercely. "Yes. You're right. I cannot give up hope, my son... my son could still be out there" His conviction appears slight, but at least you have gotten his attention away from the blaze of Hastings' buildings. Acwellen exhales shakily, opens his mouth to say something else, then closes it and remains silent, yet the words are plainly on his mind, trying to slip free like hounds on a leash. At last he speaks, grim and quiet, little more than a whisper. "Can we win this battle?" The question hangs there for an eternity, all the fear and anxiety of the English army expressed in the musings of one broken man.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>All around you is the smell of warfare. Acrid smoke from the campfires, piss and refuse from the latrines, sweat from the men. And fear. You smell that too. These men have reason to be afraid. You have spent the last few months fighting King Harold's enemies, only to march double-time to confront his most dangerous yet; William of Normandy. His army is camped below, twelve thousand men strong, in comparison to your eight thousand. There is reason to be afraid. Are you afraid? No, you affirm decisively in your mind. You are not afraid. You are Lord Aethelwulf, The Lord In The North, King Harold's most trusted advisor, and the veteran of a hundred battles. Why should you be afraid of an army of ragtag Normans who come to die on your sword? Shaking such doubts from your mind, you stride purposefully through the bustle of the camp, intent on checking on the forward defenses. A pair of giggling urchins weave nimbly around you and a staggering drunk lurches out in front of you, notices your sparkling chainmail armor and backs away, apologizing profusely. Striding onward towards the edge of the English camp you pass the watchful gaze of the sentries unchallenged and stand at the upper slope of the hill. You are not alone. Another man sits on the hill, wreathed in the shadow of the setting sun. Drawing closer you recognize him as Acwellen, a minor lord, but stalwart fighter. His face is stone, his jaw grimly set and his eyes staring out at the horizon. Looking over his shoulder you see the black smoke smearing the red evening sky. In the distance the town of Hastings burns. In the blurry uncertainty of the setting sun, you cannot tell if the glisten at his eyes is tears or just the sparkle of dying sunlight. Acwellen's son, you remember, was put in command of Hasting's garrison. Above the treeline you can just make out the crackle of flames. Hastings burns. > You say "..." You have no words. Perhaps Acwellen's son is alive, even now rallying survivors and waiting for the cover of night to slip into the safety of the English camp, yet more likely he is dead, cleaved open by a Norman axe, or gutted by a Norman blade, or shot by a Norman arrow. Lying there, consumed by the inferno that lights the evening sky in the distance. You cannot offer false consolation. Instead you stand by him, silently sharing in his grief. Acwellen exhales shakily, opens his mouth to say something, then closes it and remains silent, yet the words are plainly on his mind, trying to slip free like hounds on a leash. At last he speaks, grim and quiet, little more than a whisper. "Can we win this battle?" The question hangs there for an eternity, all the fear and anxiety of the English army expressed in the musings of one broken man.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are an immigrant travelling along the Oregon Trail to California, joining the thousands of settlers who are crossing America to the rich fertile lands of Oregon and California. Three months of journeying alone finds you in Fort Bridger, the last outpost on the Oregon Trail until you come to California. An explorer named Lansford Hastings recommends that settlers travelling to California leave the Oregon Trail here and follow a route known as Hasting’s Cut-Off, a shortcut across the Salt Lake Desert and Sierra Nevada Mountains that will save hundreds of miles of travelling. Jim Bridger, a legendary explorer and owner of the trading post Fort Bridger, also recommends the route to the last party of settlers to arrive before you: a group of eighty-seven people led by two brothers called George and Jacob Donner. Hastings left Fort Bridger a week ago, escorting another party through Hastings Cut-Off and though you are disappointed to have missed him you decide to join the Donner Party who are also taking the route. It will prove to be the worst decision of your life. On the last day of July the Donner Party leaves Fort Bridger and you leave with them, driving your wagon piled high with provisions. You travel over the hills and valleys of the Wasatch Mountains until after a week a letter is discovered tied to a sage bush at the mouth of a canyon. It is from Hastings and advises against going down the canyon as it is rocky and might damage the wagons. He suggests that any immigrants following should send some people on fast horses to catch up with him so he can give specific directions about the route ahead. Three men: James Reed (a man with a strong personality and one of the most respected members of the party), Charles Stanton (Another strong personality in the party who is travelling to California on his own initiative) and William Pike (An engineer and one of the cleverest men in the group) are chosen to perform the dangerous task of travelling across unfamiliar country to try and catch up with Hastings. You can either volunteer to accompany them or remain camped with the Donner Party. What do you do? > You ride ahead Riding hard for three days with your companions you cover a great deal of distance before finally catching up with Hastings and a large wagon party of a few hundred settlers on the shores of the great Salt Lake. By the time the four of you catch up with him you are all exhausted and your horses are close to collapse. Lansford Hastings is a strong-jawed man with a rapidly receding hairline and despite his note he is surprised to see you. While Charles Stanton and William Pike rest their horses you and James Reed trade your horses for two fresh ones from some of the settlers with Hastings and ride with him to the summit of a nearby mountain where Hastings explains the best direction to travel across the Canyon’s wooded slopes and promises to continue leaving messages. Reed is keen to ride ahead and get back to the Donner Party to get them moving along this but both Pike and Stanton’s horses are tired. Reed proposes to split up: he’ll ride ahead back to the Party while Stanton and Pike follow behind. What do you do? > You ride ahead with Reed It took three days to reach Stanton but by riding with incredible speed and determination it takes just one for you and James Reed to return to the Donner Party. There Reed boastfully describes meeting with Lansford Hastings and how they worked out the route the Donner Party should take. Unfortunately it turns out to be a not very good route and you have to cut a road through the thick trees that line the Canyon’s sides and haul the wagons up some steep inclines to make it. Charles Stanton and William Pike become lost on their return journey and arrive twelve days after you, extremely hungry and very relieved to re-discover the Party. The jubilation of their safe return and finally reaching the Salt Lake Desert is marred by a tragedy that happens the next day. > The first death... Just outside Fort Bridger a young man called Luke Halloran joined your group: dying of tuberculosis he was taken in by George and Jacob Donner and allowed to ride in their wagon. On the shores of the Salt Lake he collapses and dies suddenly of his illness. There was nothing anyone could have done but his death casts a bleak mood of the Party. He is buried the next day on the shores of Salt Lake next to the grave of another settler who died on his way to California. Pressing on you enter the Salt Desert in September, a place of skin-blistering heat and dry humidity. The wagons struggle to cross the Desert, the cattle pulling them consume enormous amounts of water as they struggle to pull the wagons. James Reed is forced to abandon two of his wagons and George Donner and another settler, a fierce man called Louis Keseberg, both have to abandon one of their wagons. The whole wagon train becomes strung out over many miles and the cattle herds with the wagons become separated, many of them dying. Somehow you manage to keep your wagon moving and your cattle alive but the experience is nightmarish. Finally you and your companions make it across the Desert and camp at a spring for several days which are spent rounding up lost cattle, recovering things from the abandoned wagons and it is not until nearly the middle of September that the Party is ready to continue. The crossing through the Desert killed many cattle and also cost the Party many supplies. Most of the settlers, especially James Reed, are now concerned they might not have enough food to make it all the way to California. A plan is soon made: Charles Stanton and another settler called William McCutchen (a giant of a man who is travelling to California with his wife and baby daughter) volunteer to go ahead on fast horses to Fort Sutter, the first trading post in California, collect fresh supplies and bring them back to the Party. Moving fast they could be back in as little as a month. If you want you can ride ahead with them to California or you can remain travelling with the Donner Party. What do you do? > You stay with the Donner Party After Charles Stanton and William McCutchen leave things get no better. Though you are out of the Desert Indians now begin to steal horses from the Party at night and tempers become very short. Arguments begin to break out between the settlers as food becomes scarce and hunger begins to set in. The situation inevitably culminates in violence in October when two wagons become stuck while climbing a difficult hill. Your wagon becomes stuck in the rocks while climbing the hill, forcing James Reed’s wagon and another belonging to Franklin Graves (a friendly man travelling with his wife, seven children and son-in-law) to collide. Reed loses his temper and snarls “Move you damn fool, you have no business being in my way!” “Shut your mouth trash or I‘ll shut it for you” barks back John Snyder, a hot-tempered driver working for Graves. At this Reed completely loses his temper and springing from his wagon he strides across towards Snyder who drops to the ground to meet him. You are startled to see a long-bladed butcher’s knife gleaming in Reed’s hand and there is murder in his eyes. What do you do? > You rush forward to intervene You drop from your wagon and race forward as Reed plunges his blade deep into Snyder’s chest. Snyder staggers backwards clutching his wound and falls to the ground. As you run up Reed whirls and slashes his knife across your throat, opening a savage wound. You step back and clutch your throat, stunned. Immediately Reed drops the knife and looks horrified. “My God, what have I done?” he cries but it is too late. The world turns black and you collapse lifeless to the ground. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After Charles Stanton and William McCutchen leave things get no better. Though you are out of the Desert Indians now begin to steal horses from the Party at night and tempers become very short. Arguments begin to break out between the settlers as food becomes scarce and hunger begins to set in. The situation inevitably culminates in violence in October when two wagons become stuck while climbing a difficult hill. Your wagon becomes stuck in the rocks while climbing the hill, forcing James Reed’s wagon and another belonging to Franklin Graves (a friendly man travelling with his wife, seven children and son-in-law) to collide. Reed loses his temper and snarls “Move you damn fool, you have no business being in my way!” “Shut your mouth trash or I‘ll shut it for you” barks back John Snyder, a hot-tempered driver working for Graves. At this Reed completely loses his temper and springing from his wagon he strides across towards Snyder who drops to the ground to meet him. You are startled to see a long-bladed butcher’s knife gleaming in Reed’s hand and there is murder in his eyes. What do you do? > You fetch your pistol from your wagon You find your pistol and cocking it you jump from the wagon. You are just in time to see Snyder staggering towards you, his eyes wide in shock and the handle of Reed’s knife sticking out of the centre of his chest. Reed stands shocked by what he has done and as you stare at him several other men including the Donner brothers come running up. Before your eyes Snyder collapses to the ground and breathes his last breath. The men of the Donner Party quickly gather and Reed is surrounded, giving in without a fight. He is placed under armed guard while a quick discussion ensues over what to do with him. Franklin Graves is furious that Reed has murdered his employee while his wife and children are crying hysterically. “Hang him” Louis Keseberg urges, looking fiercely among you. “No” replies William Eddy (a friend of Reed’s and a skilled marksman). “Mr Reed should leave the camp.” There is a great deal of arguing for a while and eventually it is agreed that Reed should take some food and be sent away to make his own way to California. One of Reed’s teamsters called Walter Herron volunteers to accompany him and Reed, still in a state of shock, says a brief farewell to his wife and children. Snyder is buried; the Graves Family are inconsolable and the whole Party is stunned by this sudden outbreak of violence. William Eddy is worried about Reed and Herron’s chances of making it to California on their own and mutters to you that perhaps others should go with them. What do you do? > You stay with the Donner Party After Reed and Herron leave the Donner Party’s situation continues to deteriorate. Indians shoot arrows at William Eddy and William Pike when they are hunting away from the main party and both are lucky to escape unhurt. Louis Keseberg irritated by his elderly wagon-driver Hardcoop’s increasing complaints orders him out of his wagon and snaps at him to walk. Hardcoop manages keeps up for the first day but increasingly begins to lag behind. Without James the Reed family have to abandon another wagon and now many of the Party are on foot: a dangerous situation to be in with so many hostile Indians about. At noon you see Hardcoop, now a long way behind, collapse and crawl under the shade of some bushes. What do you do? > You go back to help him Unable to turn your wagon around you abandon it and carrying two canteens of water you walk back to where you saw Hardcoop fall. By the time you reach him you can see you are too late: the old man is dead. By now the Donner Party have vanished from sight and you hurry back as fast as you can, drinking all your water. You don’t even see the Indian hiding behind a rock until it is too late, with deadly accuracy he shoots you through the head, ending your journey and life in an instant. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After Reed and Herron leave the Donner Party’s situation continues to deteriorate. Indians shoot arrows at William Eddy and William Pike when they are hunting away from the main party and both are lucky to escape unhurt. Louis Keseberg irritated by his elderly wagon-driver Hardcoop’s increasing complaints orders him out of his wagon and snaps at him to walk. Hardcoop manages keeps up for the first day but increasingly begins to lag behind. Without James the Reed family have to abandon another wagon and now many of the Party are on foot: a dangerous situation to be in with so many hostile Indians about. At noon you see Hardcoop, now a long way behind, collapse and crawl under the shade of some bushes. What do you do? > You grit your teeth and press on That day’s journey is a difficult one and that night Hardcoop fails to rejoin the group, William Eddy and another man do go out to look for him but return without him after a few hours. Without food and water and surrounded by hostile Indians there is little chance that the old man is still alive. Louis Keseberg is criticised by most of the group for forcing Hardcoop out of his wagon and Keseberg responds by angrily challenging anyone who doesn’t like him to a fight. The Party is beginning to tear itself apart. Moving on the next day you come across the skeleton of a settler killed by Indians, more horses are stolen and that night nineteen cattle vanish, stolen by Indians who occasionally fire arrows at your group from hiding in the rocks all around. Keseberg steps on a spiked tree stump and seriously injures his foot, making him more disagreeable, Indians make off with no less than twenty-one oxen the next day and William Eddy is forced to abandon his wagon. A week after Hardcoop’s death another wagon owned by a German called Wolfinger falls behind. Two other Germans called Joseph Reinhardt and Augustus Spitzer go back to help him. They are mean-looking fellows and for some reason both take their rifles with them when they go back. You don’t like the look of this but the other members of the Party appear not to see and continue struggling to get their remaining wagons to the Humboldt River. What do you do? > You go back to help Wolfinger Leaving your wagon you walk back on foot towards Wolfinger’s wagon. As you approach you hear the boom of a gunshot and see Wolfinger fall from his wagon to the ground. You cry out and both Reinhardt and Spitzer, their rifles raised, turn and see you. As you turn to run they both open fire with deadly accuracy. A bullet hits you in the back of the head, killing you instantly and you fall to the ground, murdered like Wolfinger for your money. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>That day’s journey is a difficult one and that night Hardcoop fails to rejoin the group, William Eddy and another man do go out to look for him but return without him after a few hours. Without food and water and surrounded by hostile Indians there is little chance that the old man is still alive. Louis Keseberg is criticised by most of the group for forcing Hardcoop out of his wagon and Keseberg responds by angrily challenging anyone who doesn’t like him to a fight. The Party is beginning to tear itself apart. Moving on the next day you come across the skeleton of a settler killed by Indians, more horses are stolen and that night nineteen cattle vanish, stolen by Indians who occasionally fire arrows at your group from hiding in the rocks all around. Keseberg steps on a spiked tree stump and seriously injures his foot, making him more disagreeable, Indians make off with no less than twenty-one oxen the next day and William Eddy is forced to abandon his wagon. A week after Hardcoop’s death another wagon owned by a German called Wolfinger falls behind. Two other Germans called Joseph Reinhardt and Augustus Spitzer go back to help him. They are mean-looking fellows and for some reason both take their rifles with them when they go back. You don’t like the look of this but the other members of the Party appear not to see and continue struggling to get their remaining wagons to the Humboldt River. What do you do? > You keep moving You keep going and that night Reinhardt and Spitzer rejoin the Party without Wolfinger. In grim tones and with lowered eyes they tell the group, which includes Wolfinger’s young wife Doris, that Wolfinger was killed by Indians who pilfered his wagon. Many in the group quietly express doubts among themselves that the pair are lying but no one is willing to go back and investigate so the matter is dropped but the mood in the group plunges even more. The next day William Eddy and Patrick Breen (a wealthy settler and dedicated Catholic travelling with his large family) nearly get into a fight when Breen refuses to give Eddy any water for his thirsty children and Eddy threatens to kill him, the matter is only resolved when the Donner Brothers intervene and persuade Breen to give up some of his water. As the Donner Party struggles slowly on, suffering now from lack of provisions along with everything else. You reach Truckee Meadows near the Humboldt River and here the Party halts for a rest. A small hunting group is prepared by William Pike and William Foster (a tough young man travelling with his wife and infant child). They are loading various weapons and drying wet gunpowder packets near the fire when William Eddy walks up to you and suggests that you join the pair in trying to shoot some animals for food. What do you do? > You join Pike and Foster's hunting expedition You join Pike and Foster by the fire where they are loading their pistols. Someone yells for Foster to put some more wood on the fire. “Here hold this for me” he says passing you his pistol. As you seize the weapon it accidentally fires, the bullet piercing your heart and killing you instantly, victim of a tragic accident. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You keep going and that night Reinhardt and Spitzer rejoin the Party without Wolfinger. In grim tones and with lowered eyes they tell the group, which includes Wolfinger’s young wife Doris, that Wolfinger was killed by Indians who pilfered his wagon. Many in the group quietly express doubts among themselves that the pair are lying but no one is willing to go back and investigate so the matter is dropped but the mood in the group plunges even more. The next day William Eddy and Patrick Breen (a wealthy settler and dedicated Catholic travelling with his large family) nearly get into a fight when Breen refuses to give Eddy any water for his thirsty children and Eddy threatens to kill him, the matter is only resolved when the Donner Brothers intervene and persuade Breen to give up some of his water. As the Donner Party struggles slowly on, suffering now from lack of provisions along with everything else. You reach Truckee Meadows near the Humboldt River and here the Party halts for a rest. A small hunting group is prepared by William Pike and William Foster (a tough young man travelling with his wife and infant child). They are loading various weapons and drying wet gunpowder packets near the fire when William Eddy walks up to you and suggests that you join the pair in trying to shoot some animals for food. What do you do? > You stay with the rest of the Party You decline to join the group and it is just as well. William Foster is loading his pistol when it accidentally goes off, hitting his brother-in-law William Pike in the back and killing him instantly. This accident, the latest to befall the Party, is an especially great tragedy as the two men were the closest of friends, Pike was a popular member of the group and he leaves behind a wife and two infant children. Foster is horrified by the accident and inconsolable for weeks. Three days later Charles Stanton returns to the Donner Party bringing with him seven mules loaded down with food being driven by two Indians called Luis and Salvador. Everyone is overjoyed to see him return and Stanton quickly fills you in on a few details. He says William McCutchen has fallen ill and is back at Fort Sutter in California. He met James Reed and Walter Herron on his way over the mountains and though on the verge of starvation both men made it to California safely. He reports it took him just eight days to travel from Johnson’s Ranch, the furthest outpost of civilization in California, to the Donner Party. One last push will get you over the Sierra Nevada Mountains to California and safety. As soon as the Donner Party sets off the troubles begin again. An Indian shoots nineteen oxen with arrows until William Eddy shoots him with his rifle and kills him. George Donner cuts his hand very badly trying to repair his wagon and the Donner Brothers, who are not young men, begin to lag behind. Even worse it starts to snow on the last day of October, which threatens to make the journey over the Sierra Nevada Mountains practically impossible. Charles Stanton, Patrick Breen and a few other families press ahead, climbing near vertical slopes while the Donner Brothers fall increasingly behind, slowed by George’s injury. What do you do? > You press on ahead Determined to press on over the mountains before the passes become impassable you join a small group that includes Patrick Breen, William Eddy, Louis Keseberg, Charles Stanton, Patrick Dolan (a friend of Breen’s) and the two Indians Luis and Salvador in pushing on towards the summit. It is not to be however: the snow begins to fall more thickly and the pass below is impassable. You cannot go forward or backwards. You are trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains until the snow melts in the spring. Wearily you turn back to re-join the women and the children who have stopped on the edge of a frozen lake. The Donner Brothers did not even make it this far: snowbound down at Alder Creek eight miles further down the mountain they have halted there. As November goes on all the settlers begin to build cabins: at Truckee Lake the Breen and Murphy families build a cabin each while the Reeds and Graves Families share a cabin. Louis Keseberg builds a strange sort of lean-to against the Breen Cabin for his wife and their children. William Eddy and his family move in with the Murphy’s while Charles Stanton and the two Indians move in with the Graves and Reeds. Down at Alder Creek the Donner’s build two cabins, one for the Donner family and the other for various wagon drivers and others, including Mrs Wolfinger who has been with the Donner’s since the death of her husband. In all there are twenty-one people staying at the Donner’s camp at Alder Creek and sixty living up by Truckee Lake. For your part you had better move into one of the two camps and make yourself comfortable: the snow won’t melt until Spring and the supplies are not going to last nearly that long. Which camp do you move into? > The Alder Creek Camp Finding room in the tent that holds the Donner Brother’s wagon drivers you make yourself as comfortable as you can in a corner with blankets and hunker down. There is little you can do: a strange lethargy seems to have come over the camp at Alder Creek: George Donner is still suffering badly from his wounded hand and Jacob Donner is looking more ill by the day. Both brothers, especially Jacob, keep themselves busy writing letters that various wagon drivers run up to the camp at Truckee Lake promising generous amounts of money for any food, no matter how small. All the cattle have already been slaughtered and everyone is cold and hungry. In mid-December you visit the camp at Truckee Lake and return with an interesting note from Charles Stanton addressed to George Donner at “Donnersville”. It mentions that he and Franklin Graves have been making snow shoes to try and cross the snow into California and asks for Donner’s compass and some tobacco. Travelling up to Truckee Lake with Donner’s compass you find that seventeen volunteers have been equipped with snowshoes to attempt the dangerous crossing of the snow-filled passes. This group consists of William Eddy, Franklin Graves, Patrick Dolan (Patrick Breen‘s friend), Jay Fosdick (Grave’s son-in-law), William Foster (the man who accidentally shot William Pike), Donner teamsters Dutch Charley Burger and Antonio, Sarah Fosdick (Jay Fosdick’s wife), Sarah Foster (William Foster’s wife), Mary Graves (Franklin’s adult daughter), Amanda McCutchen (William McCutchen’s wife), Harriet Pike (William Pike’s widow), Lemuel Murphy (who is twelve) and William Murphy (who is ten). The journey will be dangerous and extremely risky but you can either volunteer or sit tight in the camp. What do you do? > You volunteer yourself Each member of the Snowshoes Party is given enough food for six days (at least enough for a few bites each day) and a pair of snowshoes. It is quickly discovered that William Murphy cannot keep up and he is sent back to the camp with Dutch Charley Burger, a little chunky man who is not built for this sort of activity. If you want to turn back now this is your last chance, otherwise you’ll have to risk the dangers of the snow-filled passes. What do you do? > You press on Pressing on you initially make good progress, reaching the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains after one day’s travel. Charles Stanton who has been exerting himself a great deal in making the snowshoes begins to suffer from snow blindness and fall behind. By the fifth day there is very little food left and everyone is exhausted. Stanton declares he is unable to walk and sitting by the fire calmly smoking his pipe he tells the rest of your group to go on without him. After a few moments hesitation the group resume their journey. What do you do? > You stay with Stanton Remembering everything Stanton has done to help the group you know that you can’t leave him behind. Sitting next to him the pair of you enjoy a last smoke and as the wind begins to whip the snow up all around you lose sight of each other. A wave of tiredness overcomes you and you find you can neither get up nor do you want to try. The pair of you die there in the snowy pass. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Pressing on you initially make good progress, reaching the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains after one day’s travel. Charles Stanton who has been exerting himself a great deal in making the snowshoes begins to suffer from snow blindness and fall behind. By the fifth day there is very little food left and everyone is exhausted. Stanton declares he is unable to walk and sitting by the fire calmly smoking his pipe he tells the rest of your group to go on without him. After a few moments hesitation the group resume their journey. What do you do? > You head on with the others Charles Stanton is left behind and you continue to resolutely press on for another three days, William Eddy finds his wife has secretly packed some bear meat in his bag and shares it with the rest of you. After that there is nothing to eat and soon the talk is becoming increasingly wild, people proposing that some members of the group be killed for food or that they turn back to the camp. All the women and William Eddy are determined to keep going but all the rest want to stop. As you are arguing a snowstorm catches you all out in the open. Immediately you and your companions gather together for warmth and wrap yourselves in blankets but it is no good. The young Mexican teamster Antonio dies first, perishing without a sound. Franklin Gardner, in his late fifties, succumbs next. He lies very still, barely moving and Eddy tells him he is dying. Gardner replies he does not care and urges his daughters Sarah and Mary to eat his body after he dies. He expires soon after. As the cold increases you feel an increasingly irrational urge to run out into the snowstorm and hunt for food. What do you do? > You leave the group to search for something to kill There is nothing you can do. Losing all control of yourself you race out into the snow. Immediately you lose sight of your companions and never find them again. You stagger on until you collapse and half-buried by the fast-falling snow you never get up again. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Charles Stanton is left behind and you continue to resolutely press on for another three days, William Eddy finds his wife has secretly packed some bear meat in his bag and shares it with the rest of you. After that there is nothing to eat and soon the talk is becoming increasingly wild, people proposing that some members of the group be killed for food or that they turn back to the camp. All the women and William Eddy are determined to keep going but all the rest want to stop. As you are arguing a snowstorm catches you all out in the open. Immediately you and your companions gather together for warmth and wrap yourselves in blankets but it is no good. The young Mexican teamster Antonio dies first, perishing without a sound. Franklin Gardner, in his late fifties, succumbs next. He lies very still, barely moving and Eddy tells him he is dying. Gardner replies he does not care and urges his daughters Sarah and Mary to eat his body after he dies. He expires soon after. As the cold increases you feel an increasingly irrational urge to run out into the snowstorm and hunt for food. What do you do? > You sit tight It is a miserable Christmas. All day the snowstorm rages and you are convinced that all of you will die out here. Patrick Breen’s friend Patrick Dolan goes next. He becomes delirious with hunger, tearing off his clothes and racing out into the storm: it is with great difficulty that William Eddy gets him under control and physically forces him back. He is held down until he becomes increasingly quiet and eventually dies. Poor Lemuel Murphy dies next: he showed great courage and endurance for a boy of twelve. Like Dolan he becomes delirious and his sister Sarah Foster tries to distract him with a story about the moon, tears in her eyes. Eventually he too slips away into the endless night. The cold is overwhelming you and you want to do nothing but shut your eyes. It occurs to you that if you can just get some sleep you will feel stronger when you wake up and better able to handle the cold, which is piercing your bones like a knife. What do you do? > You shut your eyes The darkness overwhelms you but you couldn’t care less. Everything is numb, faded and blurred and all you want to do is sleep. So you shut your eyes and drift down, down into the darkness and escape from this world of pain and terror. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It is a miserable Christmas. All day the snowstorm rages and you are convinced that all of you will die out here. Patrick Breen’s friend Patrick Dolan goes next. He becomes delirious with hunger, tearing off his clothes and racing out into the storm: it is with great difficulty that William Eddy gets him under control and physically forces him back. He is held down until he becomes increasingly quiet and eventually dies. Poor Lemuel Murphy dies next: he showed great courage and endurance for a boy of twelve. Like Dolan he becomes delirious and his sister Sarah Foster tries to distract him with a story about the moon, tears in her eyes. Eventually he too slips away into the endless night. The cold is overwhelming you and you want to do nothing but shut your eyes. It occurs to you that if you can just get some sleep you will feel stronger when you wake up and better able to handle the cold, which is piercing your bones like a knife. What do you do? > You force them to remain open Finally the snow storm at Camp Death dies down and you and the other survivors emerge from the snow-covered blankets, moving stiffly and more dead than alive. You join the remaining men in setting fire to a pine tree and you all lie around it, so utterly indifferent to the heat that William Eddy, Sarah Foster and Amanda McCutchen all get burned. You spend three days in the camp, drying the bodies of the dead which you then carve up with a knife and begin to eat. The meat you dry on the fire and without thinking about it you just eat. Some of the men and women have tears frozen on their faces, each being careful not to eat a family member. Finally you resume your journey, packaging the human flesh you have not yet eaten so you can take it with you. Struggling on you clamber over rocks, your feet numbed and bleeding as your snowshoes begin to fall apart. When all the flesh is eaten a week later someone proposes you kill the two Indians who are with you. As the suggestion gains favour in the group the Indians, understandably terrified, flee from the rest of you. The next day Jay Fosdick collapses and his wife Sarah stays with him. Eddy causes unrestrained joy when he manages to shoot down a skeletal deer which is quickly butchered for food. You have stayed back with Jay and like Sarah you try to tell him to hold on, that Eddy has just shot a deer, but it is no good. Jay expires and Sarah, telling you she wishes to die too, lies next to him. The rest of the group walks away. What do you do? > You try to persuade Sarah to rejoin the group With a broken voice you whisper at Sarah to hold on but seeing her lying there tranquil make you want to rest too. You lie down near the couple and remain still. Slowly the coldness creeps through you, overwhelming you with weariness and almost gently you slip out of this world. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Finally the snow storm at Camp Death dies down and you and the other survivors emerge from the snow-covered blankets, moving stiffly and more dead than alive. You join the remaining men in setting fire to a pine tree and you all lie around it, so utterly indifferent to the heat that William Eddy, Sarah Foster and Amanda McCutchen all get burned. You spend three days in the camp, drying the bodies of the dead which you then carve up with a knife and begin to eat. The meat you dry on the fire and without thinking about it you just eat. Some of the men and women have tears frozen on their faces, each being careful not to eat a family member. Finally you resume your journey, packaging the human flesh you have not yet eaten so you can take it with you. Struggling on you clamber over rocks, your feet numbed and bleeding as your snowshoes begin to fall apart. When all the flesh is eaten a week later someone proposes you kill the two Indians who are with you. As the suggestion gains favour in the group the Indians, understandably terrified, flee from the rest of you. The next day Jay Fosdick collapses and his wife Sarah stays with him. Eddy causes unrestrained joy when he manages to shoot down a skeletal deer which is quickly butchered for food. You have stayed back with Jay and like Sarah you try to tell him to hold on, that Eddy has just shot a deer, but it is no good. Jay expires and Sarah, telling you she wishes to die too, lies next to him. The rest of the group walks away. What do you do? > You keep walking Despite her wishes Sarah Fosdick does not die. Her sister Mary Graves returns for her and the pair cut up Jay Fosdick’s body for food. Somehow Mary helps her sister rejoin the rest of the group and you silently eat the cold meat, the dead man’s wife watching with tears in her eyes before silently accepting some flesh and chewing. Jay Fosdick’s death means you, William Eddy and William Foster are the last surviving men along with the five women and Foster is beginning to show alarming signs of derangement. Drawing you and Eddy to one side he quietly whispers that at least one of the women must be killed to feed the others. William Eddy’s temper snaps and throwing a large stick to Foster he draws his knife and barks “defend yourself Foster!” You restrain Eddy while Foster stands motionless staring at Eddy before quietly walking away. For the moment danger is averted but the next day you come across the two Indians, Luis and Salvador, lying near death in the snow. Foster declares that the two Indians must die. When Eddy protests against this Foster draws his pistol and calmly shoots Luis in the head. What do you do? > You intervene to stop Foster killing Salvador As you step forward to stop William Foster killing Salvador he turns the pistol on you. The first shot hits you in the throat and you fall to the ground, stepping forward Foster fires twice more into your head, his eyes wide with hunger and madness. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Despite her wishes Sarah Fosdick does not die. Her sister Mary Graves returns for her and the pair cut up Jay Fosdick’s body for food. Somehow Mary helps her sister rejoin the rest of the group and you silently eat the cold meat, the dead man’s wife watching with tears in her eyes before silently accepting some flesh and chewing. Jay Fosdick’s death means you, William Eddy and William Foster are the last surviving men along with the five women and Foster is beginning to show alarming signs of derangement. Drawing you and Eddy to one side he quietly whispers that at least one of the women must be killed to feed the others. William Eddy’s temper snaps and throwing a large stick to Foster he draws his knife and barks “defend yourself Foster!” You restrain Eddy while Foster stands motionless staring at Eddy before quietly walking away. For the moment danger is averted but the next day you come across the two Indians, Luis and Salvador, lying near death in the snow. Foster declares that the two Indians must die. When Eddy protests against this Foster draws his pistol and calmly shoots Luis in the head. What do you do? > You stand back You step back as Foster shoots Salvador in the head as well before dropping the pistol. The Indians are quickly carved up and a fire lit to cook their flesh. Foster sits silently by the flames, staring into their depths and not even his wife Sarah can trigger a reaction. Wearily you stumble on and three days later you meet with a small group of Indians who are so horrified by your skeletal appearance that they give you all some acorns to eat. The Indians are friendly and indicate for you to follow them. The women and Foster are too exhausted to walk so you and William Eddy follow the Indians and finally reach Johnson’s Ranch, the first settlement in California. When you arrive, leaving a trail of blood, Eddy knocks on the door which is answered by a young lady. In a broken voice you ask for a little bread. The girl takes one look at the pair of you, bursts into tears and you are both hurried inside. Oh the wonder of it! Hot tea, food, warm beds and all the comforts you could want are provided! Supplies are hastily sent to the other six survivors. You set out with seventeen people a month ago: two turned back, eight died and only seven survived. For now you don’t care: you are safe. Your terrible ordeal is over, thank god! > You get some much-needed rest It doesn’t take long for two familiar faces to turn up at Johnson’s Ranch: James Reed and William McCutchen who both made it over the mountains ahead of the Donner Party. You and Eddy give them tell them what happened in the mountains and you are not surprised to learn Reed is putting together an expedition to rescue survivors. Another expedition is already ready at Fort Sutter and Eddy, despite the ordeal you have already been through is determined to lead it back to the Donner Party. It is up to you which you join: Eddy’s is leaving quicker but his health is broken while Reed’s and McCutchen’s is leaving later but both are healthy. Which expedition party do you want to accompany? > You eddy's First Relief The journey out to where the Donner Party is stranded is a nightmare, despite the fact you have plenty of food the snow has begun to thaw a little. There are fourteen of you in this rescue party but halfway through the journey William Eddy, still weakened by his earlier ordeal, is forced to turn back. Two more men are left behind with some of the provisions while the rest of you struggle on towards the Donner Party. The group becomes very discouraged and when three more men turn back, the rest begin muttering that they’ll be trapped in the snow like the Donner Party and die too. What do you do? > You press on Pressing on bravely you and the others stumble over the mountains and three days later you reach a huddle of cabins on the shore of Truckee Lake late in the evening. Here you find less than forty emaciated survivors, mostly women and children. The first that you meet is a gaunt woman with a hollowed face who asks if you have come from California or heaven. Apparently your companions have been dying on an almost daily basis and your arrival prompts a great many tears of joy and prayers to God. Patrick Breen is one of the healthiest remaining alive and though he has not lost any of his children he tells you a dozen have died since the Snowshoe Party left and that the Donner Brothers and others are further down the mountain at Alder Creek. It is perhaps fortunate that William Eddy did not accompany the expedition all this way as his wife Eleanor and youngest child Margaret are dead, the other child James is practically all bone. It is a terrible sight. Pushing on ahead to Alder Creek you get there to find Jacob Donner and three others have died and those that remain are in a poor condition: George Donner has an infected hand from an earlier injury and there are many starving women and children there. Of the two remaining teamsters alive with the Donner’s one, Noah James, is too weak to help and though the other, Jean Baptiste is in better health he does not want to stay and it takes a great deal of persuasion to get him to look after the Donner’s. Returning to the Truckee Lake Camp you discover that in your absence another settler has died, the infant Catherine Pike. Finally those settlers strong enough to get down the mountain are assembled: twenty-one of them. The rest will have to wait for James Reed’s Second Relief. The settlers you are taking down with you are the weak teamsters John Denton and Noah James, women Margret Reed, Philippe Keseberg, Doris Wolfinger and Eliza Williams and fifteen children. With such a weakened party of settlers the return journey will be far worse than the one there. > Back to California... The return journey with the survivors is a difficult one. Teamster John Denton gives out and is left behind to die. The child Ada Keseberg dies of cold and another child, William Hook dies after over-gorging on supplies. You pass James Reed, William McCutchen and the Second Relief party going up into the mountains. Reed is overjoyed to see most of his family safe while McCutchen is devastated to learn of his infant daughter Harriet’s death. They press on. Nearing California you pass a Third Relief party going the other way led by William Eddy and William Foster. Both eagerly seek out news of their families: Eddy is devastated to learn that his wife and daughter died in the mountains. Parting ways the next day you reach Johnson’s Ranch with your remaining eighteen survivors. There you rest. Reed and McCutchen come in a few days later with just three survivors, two of them Reed’s children, having abandoned the rest in the mountains. A brave man called John Stark later brings in the eleven survivors from this group, Eddy and Foster return soon after with five survivors and state that they do not think there will be any more. George Donner, his wife Tamzene, their nephew Samuel, Levinah Jackson and Louis Keseberg remain alive in the mountains, having resorted to cannibalism to survive. In the first half of April William Foster organises a final Relief party to search for survivors. You can either accompany this group of if you have had enough of the business remain at Sutter’s Fort with the other survivors. What do you do? > You accompany Foster's expedition You join William Foster’s expedition, which is hopeful of finding at least Tamzene Donner or Louis Keseberg still alive as they were in the best health. It takes you less than a week to reach the camps in the mountains, the snow melting fast all around you as spring descends and what you find is terrible. At Truckee Lake human limbs and bones lie in every direction. Moving on to the Alder Creek camp you find more horrors including the body of George Donner torn apart with pieces of his brain in a kettle. Returning to the Truckee Lake camp you are surprised to discover Louis Keseberg, skeletal but alive. As Keseberg ate Foster’s child the two are not on the best of terms and the fact that Keseberg has clearly been stealing things from the Donner Camp and using them as his own does not improve things. When large amounts of money are found on him Foster accuses him of murdering Tamzene Donner and threatens to hang him and it is only with some reluctance that the group agree to take him back to California. Before leaving the camp, the last of the Donner Party to be rescued, Keseberg looks back at the cabins and mutters “I hope God will forgive me for what I’ve done.” It takes just five days to get down the mountain and back to Johnson’s Ranch. Along the way Keseberg discovers the corpse of his dead daughter Ada in the snow. > Back to California... Foster’s Fourth Relief discovers Louis Keseberg still alive and that last survivor of the Donner Party is brought out of the mountains and into California. Altogether of the 90 members of the Donner Party (including you) 43 died, including infants Jonathon and Elizabeth Graves who die that summer from their sufferings in the mountains. Of those that survive some like Louis Keseberg are branded as cannibals and murderers. You were lucky to survive this truly terrible experience: a story that will go down in American History as a tale of cannibalism and death in the Sierra Mountains. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The journey out to where the Donner Party is stranded is a nightmare, despite the fact you have plenty of food the snow has begun to thaw a little. There are fourteen of you in this rescue party but halfway through the journey William Eddy, still weakened by his earlier ordeal, is forced to turn back. Two more men are left behind with some of the provisions while the rest of you struggle on towards the Donner Party. The group becomes very discouraged and when three more men turn back, the rest begin muttering that they’ll be trapped in the snow like the Donner Party and die too. What do you do? > You turn back with Eddy Unable to keep up you turn back with William Eddy and rest for close to a month at Johnson’s Ranch, recovering your strength. There you are joined by William Foster, still gaunt but able to travel and together you prepare a Third Relief to rescue those trapped in the mountains. You set out near the start of March, travelling rapidly. On the first day you meet members of the First Relief returning to Johnson’s Ranch with eighteen survivors, three having died on the way. They give you mixed news: though Eddy’s wife Eleanor and youngest child Margaret are dead his second child James still lives. Foster’s baby boy Jeremiah is still alive too. Eddy is broken by the news but his anguish is replaced by a desire to get into the mountains and rescue his remaining child. Two days later you encounter James Reed and William McCutchen returning down the mountain with three survivors, two of which are Reed’s own children. Another twelve you learn are further up the mountain, having been abandoned for lack of food and exhaustion with the bodies of another two that have already died, one of which was Franklin Graves’s widow Elizabeth. Moving on into the mountains you come across the body of wagon-driver John Denton, who died while returning with the First Relief and is found in a sitting position with a poem he wrote as he lay dying about memories of a happier past. That evening you reach the place where Reed left the survivors to find they are just eleven in number now, another having died. Like you they have survived by eating the bodies of those that died. The remaining survivors are Patrick Breen, his wife Margaret, their five children, three of the orphaned Graves children and one of the Donner children. The decision is made by a brave member of the party called John Stark that he will guide this group down to safety while the rest of you go onto the camps. Two days later you reach the remaining survivors in the mountains. > You into the mountains... When you reach the Truckee Lake Camp what you find shocks all of you. There are just three people left alive there: Louis Keseberg, Lavinah Jackson and her son Samuel. You find the remains of William Eddy’s son James and William Foster’s son Jeremiah. Both children have died very recently and been partially eaten by the others as a means of staying alive. For a time it looks like murder will happen, finally Eddy declares that if he ever meets Louis Keseberg again in California he will kill him. You help calm the rescuers enough that they agree to take Simon Murphy to safety. At the Donner camp at Alder Creek you find George Donner bed-ridden with an infected hand, though his wife Tamzene is in good health. They ask you to take their daughters Eliza, Georgia and Frances with you as well as the teamster Jean Baptiste and another man called Nicholas Clark who was left by one of the earlier expeditions to help look after them. Another child is at the Donner Ranch but he is dying and too weak to travel. Collecting the five survivors and Clark together you set off back down the mountain. By now the snows are melting rapidly with the onset of spring and it takes just a week to make it from the camps to Jonson’s Ranch. Soon after returning William Foster begins putting together a final rescue mission to recover Donner, his wife and infant nephew, Keseberg and Jackson from the hills. You can either accompany this last mission or stay at Sutter’s Fort. What do you do? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It doesn’t take long for two familiar faces to turn up at Johnson’s Ranch: James Reed and William McCutchen who both made it over the mountains ahead of the Donner Party. You and Eddy give them tell them what happened in the mountains and you are not surprised to learn Reed is putting together an expedition to rescue survivors. Another expedition is already ready at Fort Sutter and Eddy, despite the ordeal you have already been through is determined to lead it back to the Donner Party. It is up to you which you join: Eddy’s is leaving quicker but his health is broken while Reed’s and McCutchen’s is leaving later but both are healthy. Which expedition party do you want to accompany? > You reed and McCutchen's Second Relief James Reed is nothing if not thorough in his preparations and it is not until the second half of February that a dozen men, including you, Reed and William McCutchen set off from Johnson’s Ranch into the mountains. Making fairly good progress thanks to the fact the snow is beginning to thaw you encounter the First Relief returning down the mountain. Reed gives a cry of joy when he sees his wife Margret and several of their children and races forward to embrace them. You swiftly learn some very worrying things: at the camps in the mountains the remaining members of the Donner Party are dying steadily from hunger, just coming down the mountain wagon-driver John Denton and child, Ada Keseberg, died while travelling with the First Relief. Nineteen survivors remain with the First Relief but many more are still in the mountains, including two of Reed’s children. William McCutchen learns that his infant daughter Harriet died in the mountains and takes the news hard. When you reach a huddle of cabins in the snow-covered wilderness on the first day of March the first person you meet is Reed’s daughter Patty, sprinting towards her father they embrace with shouts of joy. A few other figures emerge from the cabins including Patrick Breen and Louis Keseberg, altogether there are nineteen people still living in the cabins around Truckee Lake and about a dozen down at Alder Creek including George Donner. Staying only a day you gather together seventeen survivors, all you can take out. There is some discussion and it is agreed to leave a man or two to help the thirteen being left behind, especially those at Alder Creek. What do you do? > You leave with the rest of the Second Relief You choose to accompany the Second Relief and its seventeen settlers on the long and difficult journey back to Sutter’s Fort. It gets off to a bad start when a storm traps you all in open ground and Isaac Donner dies. James Reed and William McCutchen decide that because supplies are so low they must keep going but the majority of the settlers are too weak to move. Taking two of Reed’s children and a third child along you keep moving, unable to stay with the others. A few days later you meet William Eddy and William Foster leading their relief party up the mountains. Reed directs them to where you left the survivors and by the middle of March you make it back to Johnson’s Ranch. Eleven of the settlers you left make it in two days later, two of their number having died. Soon after Eddy and Foster return with another five survivors and report there are unlikely to be any more. George Donner, his wife Tamzene and nephew Samuel, Louis Keseberg and Lavaniah Jackson are still in the mountains, having resorted to cannibalism to survive. At the beginning of April William Foster begins forming a final rescue party to search for the last of the Donner Party still trapped. You can either accompany him or remain safely in Sutter’s Fort. What do you do? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>James Reed is nothing if not thorough in his preparations and it is not until the second half of February that a dozen men, including you, Reed and William McCutchen set off from Johnson’s Ranch into the mountains. Making fairly good progress thanks to the fact the snow is beginning to thaw you encounter the First Relief returning down the mountain. Reed gives a cry of joy when he sees his wife Margret and several of their children and races forward to embrace them. You swiftly learn some very worrying things: at the camps in the mountains the remaining members of the Donner Party are dying steadily from hunger, just coming down the mountain wagon-driver John Denton and child, Ada Keseberg, died while travelling with the First Relief. Nineteen survivors remain with the First Relief but many more are still in the mountains, including two of Reed’s children. William McCutchen learns that his infant daughter Harriet died in the mountains and takes the news hard. When you reach a huddle of cabins in the snow-covered wilderness on the first day of March the first person you meet is Reed’s daughter Patty, sprinting towards her father they embrace with shouts of joy. A few other figures emerge from the cabins including Patrick Breen and Louis Keseberg, altogether there are nineteen people still living in the cabins around Truckee Lake and about a dozen down at Alder Creek including George Donner. Staying only a day you gather together seventeen survivors, all you can take out. There is some discussion and it is agreed to leave a man or two to help the thirteen being left behind, especially those at Alder Creek. What do you do? > You volunteer to stay behind and help the remaining survivors Staying with George Donner, his wife Tamzene, their daughters Georgia, Frances and Eliza as well as Jacob Donner’s widow Elizabeth and her sons Lewis and Samuel you help Nicholas Clark and Jean Baptiste look after them. Clark, like you, is a fellow rescuer and in good health but Baptiste is weakening. The whole party are in desperate danger, in one day both Elizabeth and her son Lewis die and to your horror pieces of flesh are cut off them and eaten by the starving children and adults. Fortunately days later a third rescue party arrives led by William Eddy and William Foster. They inform you just three people remain alive up at the Truckee Lake camp and they have come to help those who can walk leave. Though Mrs Donner is in good health George Donner is bed-ridden with an infected hand and Tamzene refuses to leave him. Instead she asks the group to take her three daughters to safety. Jean Baptiste and Nicholas Clark take this opportunity to leave too, the latter carrying a backpack of goods purloined from the Donner’s. A fourth child, Simon Murphy, complete your little party (Samuel Donner is too weak to be carried down) and you set off. The last thing you hear is Tamzene Donner calling out to you to make sure her children reach safety. > You to safety... You join the Relief and exhausted and weary you stumble down through the mountains with the relief party, relieved to have survived for such a long time in the mountains. The snow is melting all around you and it takes just a week to make it to Johnson’s Ranch, the start of civilization in California. There you find most of the other survivors of the Donner Party and rest and recover your strength for a few weeks. At the start of April William Foster begins organising a final rescue mission to go into the mountains and try to bring down those five people: George Donner, his wife Tamzene, their nephew Samuel, Lavaniah Jackson and Louis Keseberg. You are not keen to return to the mountains so soon after escaping but if you are willing you can join the expedition or remain at Johnson’s Ranch. What do you do? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Each member of the Snowshoes Party is given enough food for six days (at least enough for a few bites each day) and a pair of snowshoes. It is quickly discovered that William Murphy cannot keep up and he is sent back to the camp with Dutch Charley Burger, a little chunky man who is not built for this sort of activity. If you want to turn back now this is your last chance, otherwise you’ll have to risk the dangers of the snow-filled passes. What do you do? > You turn back to the Alder Creek Camp You make yourself as comfortable as you can in the Teamsters Tent but it is very crowded there: not only are there too manypeople in too small a space but one of the Reed’s Teamsters Milt Elliott is visiting you as well. A snowstorm blows over the Mountains and it brings death with it. Jacob Donner is the first to succumb. He dies while sitting at a table, his head bowed in his hands, the very picture of despair. Donner’s death is just the beginning. Samuel Shoemaker, a teamster for the Donner’s dies next and he is soon followed by Joseph Reinhardt. Knowing he is dying Reinhardt confesses in front of you, Doris Wolfinger and George Donner that he shot and killed Mr Wolfinger but that he regrets it. He never explains why and the confession is of little comfort to the poor widow. James Smith, a teamster who actually works for the Reeds but has somehow wound up at the Donner Camp dies of the cold too. That night with the winter breeze piercing your body to the core you are struck by the urge to walk out into the cold and end it all rather than suffer this slow and lingering demise. What do you do? > You walk out into the cold There is a fifth victim of this snowstorm. Numb with cold, pale with hunger and wrapped in your blankets you stagger out into the snow. Quickly the relentlessly falling white ice overwhelms you: cold permeates every part of your body and your body is found the next morning. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You make yourself as comfortable as you can in the Teamsters Tent but it is very crowded there: not only are there too manypeople in too small a space but one of the Reed’s Teamsters Milt Elliott is visiting you as well. A snowstorm blows over the Mountains and it brings death with it. Jacob Donner is the first to succumb. He dies while sitting at a table, his head bowed in his hands, the very picture of despair. Donner’s death is just the beginning. Samuel Shoemaker, a teamster for the Donner’s dies next and he is soon followed by Joseph Reinhardt. Knowing he is dying Reinhardt confesses in front of you, Doris Wolfinger and George Donner that he shot and killed Mr Wolfinger but that he regrets it. He never explains why and the confession is of little comfort to the poor widow. James Smith, a teamster who actually works for the Reeds but has somehow wound up at the Donner Camp dies of the cold too. That night with the winter breeze piercing your body to the core you are struck by the urge to walk out into the cold and end it all rather than suffer this slow and lingering demise. What do you do? > You summon all the strength you have to remain in the teamster’s tent You survive the initial series of deaths which leave George Donner and the teamsters Noah James and Jean Baptiste as the only healthy men in a camp full of women and children. For the next two months you survive. Several people die at the Truckee Lake Camp but for some reason no one else at the Alder Creek camp dies, perhaps because the Donner’s have slightly more food than everyone else. Finally in the second half of February three healthy-looking men arrive at the camp. They are rescuers from California, having made contact with members of the Snowshoe Party they have travelled out to bring people back. It quickly becomes apparent that there are too few of them to take everyone to California with them, George Donner’s hand has become infected and many of the others are too weak to go. It is agreed that the men will take Elitha, Lenna and George Donner and William Hook (the weakest children) with them as well as Doris Wolfinger and wagon-driver Noah James, who is in very bad shape. Wagon-driver Jean Baptiste wants to leave too but the settlers persuade him to stay and help look after the Donner’s. At both Alder Creek and Truckee Lake the remaining men (George Donner, Patrick Breen, Louis Keseberg and Donner wagon-driver Jean Trudeau) have chosen to stay so that the women and children can leave in safety. More help is on it’s way to rescue them but if you truly insist you will be allowed to accompany the First Relief down. What do you do? > You demand that the rescuers take you too After much begging the members of the First Relief let you join them in travelling on to California and safety but the going is hard. Most of the children are so weak the rescuers have to take turns carrying them while you and the other adults stagger on as best you can. One morning John Denton, an English wagon-driver who has been of great assistance around the camps, is unable to continue and insists that he is left behind at the fire. Finding him unable to walk the other settlers agree and he is left behind. What do you do? > You stay behind and try to persuade him to keep moving You sit down next to John and try to get him to keep going but he just shakes his head and sings out a poem: “I look on scenes of past delight, without my wonted pleasures, as a mister on the bed of death looks coldly on his treasures.“ Your bodies are found a few weeks later. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>After much begging the members of the First Relief let you join them in travelling on to California and safety but the going is hard. Most of the children are so weak the rescuers have to take turns carrying them while you and the other adults stagger on as best you can. One morning John Denton, an English wagon-driver who has been of great assistance around the camps, is unable to continue and insists that he is left behind at the fire. Finding him unable to walk the other settlers agree and he is left behind. What do you do? > You press on with the others Leaving John Denton behind you keep going but things continue to worsen. In particular Phillippe Keseberg’s infant daughter Ada is almost unresponsive and her mother desperately offers a gold watch and money to anyone who will help her keep her child alive but it is no good. By nightfall the infant is dead and her crying mother buries her in the ground. The wind that night is relentless and chills you to the bone, you are tempted to move away from the camp and try to find a better spot. What do you do? > You search for a warmer location Rising to your feet you stagger away from the camp. In the flurrying snow you lose sight of the camp completely and wander round helplessly calling out names. Finally you can walk no more and have to lie down where you gently expire. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Leaving John Denton behind you keep going but things continue to worsen. In particular Phillippe Keseberg’s infant daughter Ada is almost unresponsive and her mother desperately offers a gold watch and money to anyone who will help her keep her child alive but it is no good. By nightfall the infant is dead and her crying mother buries her in the ground. The wind that night is relentless and chills you to the bone, you are tempted to move away from the camp and try to find a better spot. What do you do? > You sit tight and make the best of it Finally you make it over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and begin to descend the far side. On the way you meet the Second Relief travelling out to those of the Donner Party still stranded in the mountains, this group is led by James Reed and William McCutchen. When Reed’s wife Margret sees him she gives a cry of sheer amazement and collapses in the snow. The reunion is a moving occasion and Reed’s children cry as they embrace their father. But one person’s joy is another person’s sorrow: McCutchen learns that his baby daughter Harriet died at Truckee Lake. Reed still has two children in the camps and is anxious to rescue them. You part ways, the Second Relief going on up into the mountains while you and the others go down: coming to where a large stash of provisions has been placed. You are overjoyed to taste good food again and eat. One of your companions, William Hook (Jacob Donner’s stepson) eats and eats until he can eat no more. You are tempted to stuff yourself too. What do you do? > You eat everything that you can You over-indulge and that night your stomach is wracked by swift agonising pains. Moaning in agony this last pain is too much for your weakened nervous system. You die that night just a few miles from safety. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Finally you make it over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and begin to descend the far side. On the way you meet the Second Relief travelling out to those of the Donner Party still stranded in the mountains, this group is led by James Reed and William McCutchen. When Reed’s wife Margret sees him she gives a cry of sheer amazement and collapses in the snow. The reunion is a moving occasion and Reed’s children cry as they embrace their father. But one person’s joy is another person’s sorrow: McCutchen learns that his baby daughter Harriet died at Truckee Lake. Reed still has two children in the camps and is anxious to rescue them. You part ways, the Second Relief going on up into the mountains while you and the others go down: coming to where a large stash of provisions has been placed. You are overjoyed to taste good food again and eat. One of your companions, William Hook (Jacob Donner’s stepson) eats and eats until he can eat no more. You are tempted to stuff yourself too. What do you do? > You eat moderately You are lucky you are able to resist over-indulging (William Hook is found dead the next morning) and a week later you reach Johnson’s Ranch, having passed a third rescue party led by William Eddy and William Foster going the other way. You thank them for warning the people of California of your plight but regrettably have to tell Eddy his wife and youngest child have died. The parties separate and soon after you are overjoyed to reach Johnson’s Ranch, a place of supplies and safety. There you rest for a month. Meanwhile the relief parties continue to bring survivors in. James Reed and William McCutchen return with just three having abandoned more further up the trail. Another man called John Stark brings eleven of these in himself. Finally Eddy and Foster return with five more. They report that the remaining survivors in the mountains: George Donner, his wife Tamzene, their nephew Samuel, Louis Keseberg and Levinah Jackson, have resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. At the start of April William Foster begins organising a final Relief Party to bring in these survivors, if they are still alive. You can either accompany this group or remain safely at Sutter’s Fort. What do you do? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You survive the initial series of deaths which leave George Donner and the teamsters Noah James and Jean Baptiste as the only healthy men in a camp full of women and children. For the next two months you survive. Several people die at the Truckee Lake Camp but for some reason no one else at the Alder Creek camp dies, perhaps because the Donner’s have slightly more food than everyone else. Finally in the second half of February three healthy-looking men arrive at the camp. They are rescuers from California, having made contact with members of the Snowshoe Party they have travelled out to bring people back. It quickly becomes apparent that there are too few of them to take everyone to California with them, George Donner’s hand has become infected and many of the others are too weak to go. It is agreed that the men will take Elitha, Lenna and George Donner and William Hook (the weakest children) with them as well as Doris Wolfinger and wagon-driver Noah James, who is in very bad shape. Wagon-driver Jean Baptiste wants to leave too but the settlers persuade him to stay and help look after the Donner’s. At both Alder Creek and Truckee Lake the remaining men (George Donner, Patrick Breen, Louis Keseberg and Donner wagon-driver Jean Trudeau) have chosen to stay so that the women and children can leave in safety. More help is on it’s way to rescue them but if you truly insist you will be allowed to accompany the First Relief down. What do you do? > You wait for more help You choose to remain with George Donner and his family at Alder Creek, helping Jean Baptiste look after the two women and seven children there. There is some talk about eating human flesh but fortunately you manage to resist the urge to do that and in the first days of March a second rescue party arrives at Alder Creek led by James Reed and William McCutchen. They bring a little more food and offer to take three of the Donner children out but intend to leave a man behind to help Jean Baptiste look after the Donner family until the next rescue mission arrives. What do you do? > You insist on leaving with the Second Relief You are incredibly relieved to join the other survivors who are leaving, which consists of Elizabeth Graves (Franklin Graves’s widow), her four children, Patrick Breen, his wife Margaret and their five children, two of James Reed’s children and three of the Donner’s children. Your group sets off and initially makes good progress before disaster strikes. Just a few days into the journey you are struck by a fierce snowstorm on open ground and are forced to huddle down below blankets: James Reed nearly collapses from the effort of making sure everyone is safe. Huddling together against the fierce cold you do your best. At one point during the storm it is discovered that Isaac Donner has died, slipping away so silently that the two girls huddled either side of him did not notice his death. In the midst of the cold the thought strikes you that the child must be buried. What do you do? > You dig a grave for Isaac Donner Against Breen and Reed’s protests you carry the Donner boy’s body out of the group and try to dig a grave in the snow. It is hopeless in the midst of a blizzard and the grave becomes your own when you collapse into it and do not move again. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are incredibly relieved to join the other survivors who are leaving, which consists of Elizabeth Graves (Franklin Graves’s widow), her four children, Patrick Breen, his wife Margaret and their five children, two of James Reed’s children and three of the Donner’s children. Your group sets off and initially makes good progress before disaster strikes. Just a few days into the journey you are struck by a fierce snowstorm on open ground and are forced to huddle down below blankets: James Reed nearly collapses from the effort of making sure everyone is safe. Huddling together against the fierce cold you do your best. At one point during the storm it is discovered that Isaac Donner has died, slipping away so silently that the two girls huddled either side of him did not notice his death. In the midst of the cold the thought strikes you that the child must be buried. What do you do? > You stay with everyone else in the huddle By the time the storm ends you and virtually all the survivors are too exhausted to continue. James Reed makes the decision to press on anyway, carrying his children Patty and Thomas with him while Solomon Hook is strong enough to continue. The remaining thirteen of you are abandoned by Reed, who promises to go ahead, get supplies and send them back. Soon after they leave the storm kicks up again. Elizabeth Graves succumbs, turning on her side she flings her arm out in one last effort and lies still as the life leaves her. The rest of you huddle together and try to endure. Mrs Graves’s four (now orphaned) children can’t stop crying and beg you to drag their mother’s body away from them. What do you do? > You move Mrs Graves's body You move Mrs Graves’s body but the effort proves too much for you. Returning to the others you lie down with a sigh and do not get up again. Like the other dead your body will be cannibalised by the survivors. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>By the time the storm ends you and virtually all the survivors are too exhausted to continue. James Reed makes the decision to press on anyway, carrying his children Patty and Thomas with him while Solomon Hook is strong enough to continue. The remaining thirteen of you are abandoned by Reed, who promises to go ahead, get supplies and send them back. Soon after they leave the storm kicks up again. Elizabeth Graves succumbs, turning on her side she flings her arm out in one last effort and lies still as the life leaves her. The rest of you huddle together and try to endure. Mrs Graves’s four (now orphaned) children can’t stop crying and beg you to drag their mother’s body away from them. What do you do? > You remain where you are For three days the storm rages and you all lie there without food and living on melted snow. It is a miracle any of you survive: even Patrick Breen begins to pray for death. The child Franklin Graves dies next, so cold he feels like he is almost frozen solid. His orphaned siblings Nancy, Jonathon and Elizabeth huddle round the body, too exhausted to even cry. The cold gets worst and to your astonishment you see Patrick Breen begin to carve up the bodies of the dead and pass the flesh around which is eaten cold. What do you do? > You refuse to touch it You refuse to touch the human flesh while the others eat. Devoid of strength you sink into a sleep from which you do not wake and like the other dead your body too is cut up to provide nourishment for the remaining survivors. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>For three days the storm rages and you all lie there without food and living on melted snow. It is a miracle any of you survive: even Patrick Breen begins to pray for death. The child Franklin Graves dies next, so cold he feels like he is almost frozen solid. His orphaned siblings Nancy, Jonathon and Elizabeth huddle round the body, too exhausted to even cry. The cold gets worst and to your astonishment you see Patrick Breen begin to carve up the bodies of the dead and pass the flesh around which is eaten cold. What do you do? > You accept some of the offered flesh Reluctantly you eat the flesh which ensures your survival. Tearing the cold flesh from the bones you feast on the bodies of the dead, doing anything to restore some strength into your weakened frames. Even Patrick Breen and his wife put aside their religious beliefs to feast. The meat saves your lives for a few days until a third rescue party led by William Eddy and William Foster reach you. They share some provisions with you and a brave man called John Stark volunteers to lead you all to safety. After more than a week of agonising walking the eleven of you miraculously make it to Johnson’s Ranch. Here you rest and eat for a time. Eddy and Foster return soon after you with another five survivors and report that George Donner, his wife Tamzene, their nephew Samuel, Louis Keseberg and Levinah Jackson are still in the mountains. At the start of April William Foster begins to put together a final search party to go and look for them. Though still weakened from your recent experiences you are strong enough to join them or if, understandably, you don’t want to go back into the mountains you can remain at Sutter’s Fort. What do you do? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You choose to remain with George Donner and his family at Alder Creek, helping Jean Baptiste look after the two women and seven children there. There is some talk about eating human flesh but fortunately you manage to resist the urge to do that and in the first days of March a second rescue party arrives at Alder Creek led by James Reed and William McCutchen. They bring a little more food and offer to take three of the Donner children out but intend to leave a man behind to help Jean Baptiste look after the Donner family until the next rescue mission arrives. What do you do? > You stay with those that are left You are certain that you are strong enough to stay and help Nicholas Clark and Jean Baptiste look after George Donner, his wife Tamzene and their children Georgia, Frances and Eliza as well as Jacob Donner’s widow Elizabeth and her children Lewis and Samuel. Though you are all weakening the efforts of you, Clark and Baptiste keep the others alive and at one point Clark is even able to shoot a bear. It is too late though: Elizabeth walks into George Donner’s tent and without a word lays the dead body of her son Lewis on Tamzene’s lap. Stumbling away she is found dead herself soon after. George Donner cuts up both bodies, cooks the meat on a fire and feeds it to the remaining children. What do you do? > You refuse to eat the human flesh Refusing to eat any human flesh you return to your tent by yourself and lie under a blanket. That night as the snow piles up outside you succumb to your hunger and die. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are certain that you are strong enough to stay and help Nicholas Clark and Jean Baptiste look after George Donner, his wife Tamzene and their children Georgia, Frances and Eliza as well as Jacob Donner’s widow Elizabeth and her children Lewis and Samuel. Though you are all weakening the efforts of you, Clark and Baptiste keep the others alive and at one point Clark is even able to shoot a bear. It is too late though: Elizabeth walks into George Donner’s tent and without a word lays the dead body of her son Lewis on Tamzene’s lap. Stumbling away she is found dead herself soon after. George Donner cuts up both bodies, cooks the meat on a fire and feeds it to the remaining children. What do you do? > You eat the meat Reluctantly you eat the flesh which ensures your survival. Days after the double-deaths and the beginning of cannibalism a rescue party arrives led by William Eddy and William Foster. They talk to George Donner about who can be rescued: Donner’s daughters Frances, Georgia and Eliza are quickly volunteered and both Jean Baptiste and Nicholas Clark choose to leave as well. Though Tamzene Donner is in good health she refuses to leave her bed-ridden husband George Donner and their nephew Samuel is too weak to be carried and near death. The rescuers prepare to leave with the four members of the Donner Party from Alder Creek and a boy called Simon Murphy from the Truckee Lake camp. You can ask them to take you as well or stay and help George, Tamzene and Samuel Donner. What do you do? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Each member of the Snowshoes Party is given enough food for six days (at least enough for a few bites each day) and a pair of snowshoes. It is quickly discovered that William Murphy cannot keep up and he is sent back to the camp with Dutch Charley Burger, a little chunky man who is not built for this sort of activity. If you want to turn back now this is your last chance, otherwise you’ll have to risk the dangers of the snow-filled passes. What do you do? > You turn back to the Truckee Lake Camp Soon after setting off Dutch Charley Burger and young William Murphy return, having decided they cannot keep up with the Snowshoe Party. Reed Teamster Milt Elliott returns from a visit to Alder Creek with the terrible news that Jacob Donner, Samuel Shoemaker, Joseph Reinhardt and James Smith have all died. Dutch Charley, a chubby individual is the next one: weakening steadily he dies in Louis Keseberg’s lean-to soon after his return. You are all suffering now. The cold is permeating every part of you. Every moment of every day you are hungry and at night the cold numbs your body. It is like being on fire and unable to put it out, one night it is worse than ever and you find all you want to do is give in, to walk out into the howling snow and die rather than go on suffering like this. Your companions are mere skeletons of themselves and despair is etched on every face. What do you do? > You venture out into the cold You too do not survive the year. Rising from your thin blanket you stumble out into the cold. What you are searching for you do not know and never find out. Your body is found the next morning, half buried in snow. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Soon after setting off Dutch Charley Burger and young William Murphy return, having decided they cannot keep up with the Snowshoe Party. Reed Teamster Milt Elliott returns from a visit to Alder Creek with the terrible news that Jacob Donner, Samuel Shoemaker, Joseph Reinhardt and James Smith have all died. Dutch Charley, a chubby individual is the next one: weakening steadily he dies in Louis Keseberg’s lean-to soon after his return. You are all suffering now. The cold is permeating every part of you. Every moment of every day you are hungry and at night the cold numbs your body. It is like being on fire and unable to put it out, one night it is worse than ever and you find all you want to do is give in, to walk out into the howling snow and die rather than go on suffering like this. Your companions are mere skeletons of themselves and despair is etched on every face. What do you do? > You continue suffering The New Year brings no fresh joys with it. Those in the cabins around Truckee Lake remain cold and starving and those at Alder Creek are little better off. After the initial wave of six deaths people are adjusting to the terrible conditions but that doesn’t make it any easier. The babies and young children cry continually and it is hellish for the adults. You have heard nothing of the Snowshoes Party and have no idea if any of them have made it to civilization. Things continue to worsen and near the end of January Louis Keseberg’s infant son, also called Louis, dies in the Murphy Cabin. Keseberg is grief-stricken and one night he stumbles into your cabin with his dead baby in his arms and asks you to help bury him in the snow. What do you do? > You help Louis bury his son You stumble out into the snow with Louis and scrabble around in the snow trying to dig a shallow grave. The infant is finally laid to rest but when you return to your cabin you find you cannot see. The world is darkness. Lying down makes it better and during the night you slip away. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The New Year brings no fresh joys with it. Those in the cabins around Truckee Lake remain cold and starving and those at Alder Creek are little better off. After the initial wave of six deaths people are adjusting to the terrible conditions but that doesn’t make it any easier. The babies and young children cry continually and it is hellish for the adults. You have heard nothing of the Snowshoes Party and have no idea if any of them have made it to civilization. Things continue to worsen and near the end of January Louis Keseberg’s infant son, also called Louis, dies in the Murphy Cabin. Keseberg is grief-stricken and one night he stumbles into your cabin with his dead baby in his arms and asks you to help bury him in the snow. What do you do? > You try to get him to wait until morning You manage to persuade Louis to wait until morning when a group of the remaining men help bury his son. The death of Louis Keseberg’s child is just the first of the year. John Murphy, a strapping sixteen-year-old who looks after his mother and extended family of younger children worsens steadily. His mother, Levinah Jackson, tries to revive him by placing a little piece of meat in his mouth and John swallows it, goes to sleep with a weak gurgling snore and dies. His mother asks you for your blanket to bury the child. What do you do? > You let him have it Without your blanket you have no chance of surviving the bitter cold. Lying in the corner you too go to sleep, a deep sleep from which you do not wake. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You manage to persuade Louis to wait until morning when a group of the remaining men help bury his son. The death of Louis Keseberg’s child is just the first of the year. John Murphy, a strapping sixteen-year-old who looks after his mother and extended family of younger children worsens steadily. His mother, Levinah Jackson, tries to revive him by placing a little piece of meat in his mouth and John swallows it, goes to sleep with a weak gurgling snore and dies. His mother asks you for your blanket to bury the child. What do you do? > You refuse to surrender your blanket You hold onto your blanket, despite Mrs Jackson’s pleas. The deaths continue: the next to go is Margaret Eddy, the absent William Eddy’s infant daughter. She died one night in the arms of her mother Eleanor and her mother is inconsolable. Margaret’s death means that apart from you there are just forty other people remaining in the camps at Truckee Lake and less than half that at Alder Creek. Patrick Breen and Louis Keseberg want to make sure the Donner group at Alder Ceek are ok and being too weak themselves ask you to travel down to their camp. What do you do? > You agree to go and visit the Donner's You set off on the eight mile journey that morning but your weakened state soon becomes apparent. You get less than halfway before you have to lie down in the snow and rest. You never get up again, your strength simply slips away from you. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You hold onto your blanket, despite Mrs Jackson’s pleas. The deaths continue: the next to go is Margaret Eddy, the absent William Eddy’s infant daughter. She died one night in the arms of her mother Eleanor and her mother is inconsolable. Margaret’s death means that apart from you there are just forty other people remaining in the camps at Truckee Lake and less than half that at Alder Creek. Patrick Breen and Louis Keseberg want to make sure the Donner group at Alder Ceek are ok and being too weak themselves ask you to travel down to their camp. What do you do? > You sunday 7 February 1847: Truckee Lake, California You refuse to make the difficult journey and a few nights later a pair of deaths shake the camp. Harriet McCutchen, an infant both of whose parents have left the Donner Party and who was being looked after by the Graves family dies. The infant had spent most of her waking hours crying and death must have been a release for it. Eleanor Eddy dies too: since her husband left with the Snowshoe Party she has been looked after by the Murphy family. Since her daughter Margaret died she lost the will to live, those she does leave a son James who is a toddler. Their deaths make the mood even more grim, that night as the wind whistles around the huddled cabins you are struck by an urge to go out and find something to shoot and eat. What do you do? > You go outside You set out on your journey but do not return: losing sight of the camp you are hurled to the ground by the freezing blizzard and do not get up again. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You refuse to make the difficult journey and a few nights later a pair of deaths shake the camp. Harriet McCutchen, an infant both of whose parents have left the Donner Party and who was being looked after by the Graves family dies. The infant had spent most of her waking hours crying and death must have been a release for it. Eleanor Eddy dies too: since her husband left with the Snowshoe Party she has been looked after by the Murphy family. Since her daughter Margaret died she lost the will to live, those she does leave a son James who is a toddler. Their deaths make the mood even more grim, that night as the wind whistles around the huddled cabins you are struck by an urge to go out and find something to shoot and eat. What do you do? > Monday 8 February 1847: Truckee Lake, California The day after the double deaths there is another death: at this rate there will be no one left by the end of the month. A Teamster called Augustus Spitzer collapsed in the Breen house two months ago and has been on the verge of death since. Today he finally dies, imploring Margaret Breen to put just a little meat in his mouth so he might remember the taste of it. There is none to give him and death soon follows. The Breen children are upset by his death and Patrick Breen asks you to help him move the body outside. What do you do? > You help Breen move Spitzer's corpse You help Breen carry Spritzer outside but when you come back inside you find you cannot stop shake in. Lying down you force yourself to go into an uneasy sleep but it is one that you do not awake from. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The day after the double deaths there is another death: at this rate there will be no one left by the end of the month. A Teamster called Augustus Spitzer collapsed in the Breen house two months ago and has been on the verge of death since. Today he finally dies, imploring Margaret Breen to put just a little meat in his mouth so he might remember the taste of it. There is none to give him and death soon follows. The Breen children are upset by his death and Patrick Breen asks you to help him move the body outside. What do you do? > You refuse You refuse to go outside and remain in the cabin. The next day is Reed Teamster Milt Elliott’s last dawn. Lacking the strength to even get out of bed he lies muttering to himself and shaking all day before finally slipping away. The girls of the Reed family, some of whom were very fond of Elliott, bury him in the snow. That night Levinah Jackson approaches you and slips $100 into your hand. “I need meat so badly” she whispers to you. “Go and cut Milt’s hand off and the money is yours.” What do you do? > You go and hack up Milt You go out into the cold and begin digging around for Milt’s body. Instead you find your strength fading from you and slowly sink into the snow. You are found there the next morning, frozen stiff and very dead. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You refuse to go outside and remain in the cabin. The next day is Reed Teamster Milt Elliott’s last dawn. Lacking the strength to even get out of bed he lies muttering to himself and shaking all day before finally slipping away. The girls of the Reed family, some of whom were very fond of Elliott, bury him in the snow. That night Levinah Jackson approaches you and slips $100 into your hand. “I need meat so badly” she whispers to you. “Go and cut Milt’s hand off and the money is yours.” What do you do? > You give Mrs Jackson's money back to her You refuse to desecrate the dead and give Mrs Jackson’s money back to her, she returns silently to her cabin. Almost stubbornly you continue to survive, holding yourself together and then, finally, a wonderful thing happens. A party of seven men, backpacks bulging with food, reach the camp at Truckee Lake. They have been sent from California: it seems that at least some members of the Snowshoe Party made it through and now rescue missions are being mounted. While some of the settlers travel down to visit the Donner Brothers the others remain at Truckee Lake and provide what medical treatment they can. It is too late for little Catherine Pike, an infant child in the care of her grandmother Levinah Jackson. Unable to even cry the child had been reduced to moaning feebly until one day it just passes away. The rescuers re-gather and prepare to leave. They have decided they can take twenty-one people with them: weak teamsters Noah James and John Denton, women Margret Reed, Philippe Keseberg, Doris Wolfinger and Eliza Williams and fifteen children. The remaining men (George Donner, Patrick Breen, Louis Keseberg and Donner wagon-driver Jean Trudeau) have chosen to stay so that the women and children can leave in safety. More help is on it’s way to rescue them but if you truly insist you will be allowed to accompany the First Relief down. What do you do? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Determined to press on over the mountains before the passes become impassable you join a small group that includes Patrick Breen, William Eddy, Louis Keseberg, Charles Stanton, Patrick Dolan (a friend of Breen’s) and the two Indians Luis and Salvador in pushing on towards the summit. It is not to be however: the snow begins to fall more thickly and the pass below is impassable. You cannot go forward or backwards. You are trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains until the snow melts in the spring. Wearily you turn back to re-join the women and the children who have stopped on the edge of a frozen lake. The Donner Brothers did not even make it this far: snowbound down at Alder Creek eight miles further down the mountain they have halted there. As November goes on all the settlers begin to build cabins: at Truckee Lake the Breen and Murphy families build a cabin each while the Reeds and Graves Families share a cabin. Louis Keseberg builds a strange sort of lean-to against the Breen Cabin for his wife and their children. William Eddy and his family move in with the Murphy’s while Charles Stanton and the two Indians move in with the Graves and Reeds. Down at Alder Creek the Donner’s build two cabins, one for the Donner family and the other for various wagon drivers and others, including Mrs Wolfinger who has been with the Donner’s since the death of her husband. In all there are twenty-one people staying at the Donner’s camp at Alder Creek and sixty living up by Truckee Lake. For your part you had better move into one of the two camps and make yourself comfortable: the snow won’t melt until Spring and the supplies are not going to last nearly that long. Which camp do you move into? > The Truckee Lake Camp Building a lean-to on the other side of the Breen Cabin to the Keseberg’s you make yourself as comfortable as you can with blankets. Most of the settlers slaughter their remaining cattle and William Eddy takes his rifle with him most days on hunting trips, killing wolves, owls, ducks, squirrels and even a skeletal bear, the last nearly tearing him to pieces. Patrick Breen entertains himself by keeping a diary. Various efforts are made to cross the mountains but they all fail as it is impossible to battle through the snow. Finally Franklin Graves has the idea to make snowshoes to enable people to walk on the snow and with the help of Charles Stanton they begin manufacturing pairs at the start of December, a slow process. Everyone is hungry and cold now and every night you are chilled to the bone. Baylis Williams, one of the Reed’s wagon drivers is particularly suffering and one night he asks if he can have your blanket, promising to give you his to sleep under tomorrow night. What do you do? > You let Williams have your blanket You let Williams have your blanket and that night your body goes completely numb with cold, despite all the clothes you are wearing. You feel so tired that all you want to do is sleep. Your mind drifts, dwelling on images of hot food and warm baths until you unknowingly slip into a hypothermic state and expire. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Building a lean-to on the other side of the Breen Cabin to the Keseberg’s you make yourself as comfortable as you can with blankets. Most of the settlers slaughter their remaining cattle and William Eddy takes his rifle with him most days on hunting trips, killing wolves, owls, ducks, squirrels and even a skeletal bear, the last nearly tearing him to pieces. Patrick Breen entertains himself by keeping a diary. Various efforts are made to cross the mountains but they all fail as it is impossible to battle through the snow. Finally Franklin Graves has the idea to make snowshoes to enable people to walk on the snow and with the help of Charles Stanton they begin manufacturing pairs at the start of December, a slow process. Everyone is hungry and cold now and every night you are chilled to the bone. Baylis Williams, one of the Reed’s wagon drivers is particularly suffering and one night he asks if he can have your blanket, promising to give you his to sleep under tomorrow night. What do you do? > You refuse You refuse to let Williams have your blanket and the next morning he is found to have died in the night of cold. His death sends shock waves through the camp as everyone realises you may all die of cold if no help is fetched. By now twenty pairs of snowshoes have been made and no less than seven volunteers put themselves forward to attempt the perilous journey over the frozen passes to try and get help. This group consists of William Eddy, Franklin Graves, Patrick Dolan (Patrick Breen‘s friend), Jay Fosdick (Grave’s son-in-law), William Foster (the man who accidentally shot William Pike), Donner teamsters Dutch Charley Burger and Antonio, Sarah Fosdick (Jay Fosdick’s wife), Sarah Foster (William Foster’s wife), Mary Graves (Franklin’s adult daughter), Amanda McCutchen (William McCutchen’s wife), Harriet Pike (William Pike’s widow), Lemuel Murphy (who is twelve) and William Murphy (who is ten). The journey will be dangerous and extremely risky but you can either volunteer or sit tight in the camp. What do you do? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You decline to join the group and it is just as well. William Foster is loading his pistol when it accidentally goes off, hitting his brother-in-law William Pike in the back and killing him instantly. This accident, the latest to befall the Party, is an especially great tragedy as the two men were the closest of friends, Pike was a popular member of the group and he leaves behind a wife and two infant children. Foster is horrified by the accident and inconsolable for weeks. Three days later Charles Stanton returns to the Donner Party bringing with him seven mules loaded down with food being driven by two Indians called Luis and Salvador. Everyone is overjoyed to see him return and Stanton quickly fills you in on a few details. He says William McCutchen has fallen ill and is back at Fort Sutter in California. He met James Reed and Walter Herron on his way over the mountains and though on the verge of starvation both men made it to California safely. He reports it took him just eight days to travel from Johnson’s Ranch, the furthest outpost of civilization in California, to the Donner Party. One last push will get you over the Sierra Nevada Mountains to California and safety. As soon as the Donner Party sets off the troubles begin again. An Indian shoots nineteen oxen with arrows until William Eddy shoots him with his rifle and kills him. George Donner cuts his hand very badly trying to repair his wagon and the Donner Brothers, who are not young men, begin to lag behind. Even worse it starts to snow on the last day of October, which threatens to make the journey over the Sierra Nevada Mountains practically impossible. Charles Stanton, Patrick Breen and a few other families press ahead, climbing near vertical slopes while the Donner Brothers fall increasingly behind, slowed by George’s injury. What do you do? > You stay behind to help the Donner brothers You go back to try and help the Donner Brothers get up the pass before the snow traps you but it is no good: it is hard work to get anywhere and as the snow gets heavier you are forced to halt at Alder Creek. There the Donner Brothers and their assortment of teamsters begin building tents to protect you from the snow. The Donner Family live in the first one while their teamsters and Doris Wolfinger, who the Donner Brothers have looked after since the death of her husband, live in the second. Soon word comes down the mountain that an effort by the others to get across the summit has failed: the passes are impassable and you are trapped by the snow in the Mountains, unable to move forward or backwards. Your fellow settlers settle at a lake eight miles further up the slope and begin building cabins. The Breen family have their own cabin while the Murphy and Eddy families share a cabin while the Reeds and Graves family share a cabin with Charles Stanton and his two Indians. The Keseberg’s live in a lean-to against the Breen Cabin. Altogether sixty people live at Truckee Lake while twenty-one people live in the Donner’s camp at Alder Creek. For your part you had better move into one of the two camps and make yourself comfortable: the snow won’t melt until Spring and the supplies are not going to last nearly that long. Which camp do you move into? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You find your pistol and cocking it you jump from the wagon. You are just in time to see Snyder staggering towards you, his eyes wide in shock and the handle of Reed’s knife sticking out of the centre of his chest. Reed stands shocked by what he has done and as you stare at him several other men including the Donner brothers come running up. Before your eyes Snyder collapses to the ground and breathes his last breath. The men of the Donner Party quickly gather and Reed is surrounded, giving in without a fight. He is placed under armed guard while a quick discussion ensues over what to do with him. Franklin Graves is furious that Reed has murdered his employee while his wife and children are crying hysterically. “Hang him” Louis Keseberg urges, looking fiercely among you. “No” replies William Eddy (a friend of Reed’s and a skilled marksman). “Mr Reed should leave the camp.” There is a great deal of arguing for a while and eventually it is agreed that Reed should take some food and be sent away to make his own way to California. One of Reed’s teamsters called Walter Herron volunteers to accompany him and Reed, still in a state of shock, says a brief farewell to his wife and children. Snyder is buried; the Graves Family are inconsolable and the whole Party is stunned by this sudden outbreak of violence. William Eddy is worried about Reed and Herron’s chances of making it to California on their own and mutters to you that perhaps others should go with them. What do you do? > You volunteer to accompany Reed and Herron Your decision to accompany James Reed and Walter Herron raises some eyebrows but you are glad to get away from the increasingly slow-moving group and press on ahead. Unfortunately the journey turns out to be very difficult: you are all unsuccessful at hunting and by the time you reach the Sierra Nevada Mountains you have eaten all your supplies and are surviving chiefly on wild onions and beans. Herron wants to kill the horses for food but you and Reed persuade him that you need them. Finally you make it across the Mountains and in Bear Valley where you have the wonderful fortune of meeting a party of settlers near Johnson’s Ranch, the beginning of civilization in California. They share some food with you and while you are there you meet Charles Stanton, who is on his way back to the Donner Party with seven mules of provisions and two Indians guides. Stanton is delighted to see the three of you and you quickly exchange news. Reed tactfully explains that you three were sent ahead of get supplies, leaving out the part about him murdering John Snyder. Stanton tells you that William McCutchen has fallen ill and is resting at Fort Sutter. Reed decides to press onto Fort Sutter with Herron to get more supplies. Stanton suggests that you accompany him back to the Donner Party. What do you do? > You join Stanton in going back to the Donner Party Setting off from California with Charles Stanton and the two Indians Luis and Salvador you initially make good progress. James Reed and Walter Herron are both at Johnson‘s Ranch, both in poor shape but keen to get more supplies from Fort Sutter and follow Stanton back to the Donner Party. Making a swift journey, thanks to your Indian guides‘ expert knowledge of the route you re-cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains and find the Donner Party camped at Truckee Meadows near the Humboldt River in a very bad state. You are shocked to learn of four fatalities in your absence. Reed stabbed and killed the Graves Family’s wagon-driver John Snyder in an argument which led to his being banished. Louis Keseberg (A German settler with a fierce temper) abandoned his wagon-driver, an elderly Belgian man called Hardcoop, who fell behind and was never seen again. Another settler called Wolfinger was allegedly killed by Indians, though no one saw it except his friends Joseph Reinhardt and August Spitzer who many in the party suspect murdered him. Finally William Pike was accidentally shot and killed by his brother-in-law William Foster (a determined and able man). The whole Donner Party are on the verge of running out of food, making the extra supplies extremely welcome, and immediately resume their journey after you and Stanton join them. You get a taste of what they have been experiencing when on the first day of the journey nineteen oxen are shot with arrows by an Indian who William Eddy (a first-rate marksman and teller of tall stories) shoots and kills. Soon afterwards George Donner badly injures his hand trying to repair a wagon and the Donner Brothers lag behind the rest of the group. By the end of October you have reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains but on the last day of October it begins to snow. This is very serious because heavy snow will leave you trapped in the mountains and unable to continue. Patrick Breen (a staunch Catholic who is travelling with his large family), Stanton and a few others press on to try and clear the valley but others like the Donner Brothers are lagging behind and obviously in need of assistance. What do you do? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Your decision to accompany James Reed and Walter Herron raises some eyebrows but you are glad to get away from the increasingly slow-moving group and press on ahead. Unfortunately the journey turns out to be very difficult: you are all unsuccessful at hunting and by the time you reach the Sierra Nevada Mountains you have eaten all your supplies and are surviving chiefly on wild onions and beans. Herron wants to kill the horses for food but you and Reed persuade him that you need them. Finally you make it across the Mountains and in Bear Valley where you have the wonderful fortune of meeting a party of settlers near Johnson’s Ranch, the beginning of civilization in California. They share some food with you and while you are there you meet Charles Stanton, who is on his way back to the Donner Party with seven mules of provisions and two Indians guides. Stanton is delighted to see the three of you and you quickly exchange news. Reed tactfully explains that you three were sent ahead of get supplies, leaving out the part about him murdering John Snyder. Stanton tells you that William McCutchen has fallen ill and is resting at Fort Sutter. Reed decides to press onto Fort Sutter with Herron to get more supplies. Stanton suggests that you accompany him back to the Donner Party. What do you do? > You travel onto Sutters Fort with Reed and Herron You travel on to Fort Sutter and there you reunite with William McCutchen. He is recovering well with your illness and as with Stanton, James Reed tells him that he was sent on for supplies with you and Walter Herron. Herron learns that war has just broken out between the USA and Mexico decides to go off and fight but Reed and McCutchen intend to gather a few mules of supplies together and set off back to the Donner Party. Unfortunately just a few days after Reed’s arrival on the last day of the month it starts to snow, lightly around Fort Sutter but heavily in in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This is very bad as it will mean that the Donner Party, which incidentally includes both Reed and McCutchen’s wives and children, will be unable to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In Fort Sutter there is nothing you can do but watch as snow completely seals the valley, making it virtually impossible to cross. Despite this you, Reed and McCutchen soon set out on a mission to try and reach the stranded settlers. > Back into the Mountains... Despite the unlikelihood of making it across the mountains you, James Reed and William McCutchen, the latter still suffering slightly from his illness, set off from Sutter’s Fort to try to reach the Donner Party. Reaching Johnson’s Ranch you are warned by the owner that it is impossible to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains when the passes are blocked by snow but feeling that you have to at least try you journey on. Unfortunately the owner is right. Reaching the Sierra Nevada Mountain Pass with difficult you and your companions discover the snow does indeed makes crossing the mountains completely impossible. Nothing can force its way through it and after several days of struggling you are forced to turn back: there is nothing you can do now but wait until the spring when the snow melts and the Donner Party can be rescued. You can only hope their food supplies hold out until then and as you return to Sutter’s Fort you can’t help but feel relieved you aren’t up there in the mountains with them. > You now you wait... For three months you, James Reed and William McCutchen find ways to keep yourselves busy in California. Reed joins in the war against Mexico while you stay with McCutchen in Sutter’s Fort. Near the end of January incredible news arrives: seven members of the Donner Party (William Eddy, William Foster, Sarah Foster, Sarah Fosdick, Mary Graves, Amanda McCutchen and Harriet Pike) have somehow managed to cross the mountains despite the snow and made it to Johnson’s Ranch. McCutchen is overjoyed to learn his wife has made it and you hasten to Johnson’s Ranch. There you are shocked by what you see: the survivors are skeletal and so weak they can do nothing but eat and sleep. Eddy is the healthiest of them and he mutters a terrible story about blizzards, the deaths of eight of their companions and being forced to eat the bodies of the dead to survive. He is certain it is the same up in the mountains where the rest of the Donner Party is stranded. As McCutchen’s two young children and Reed’s entire family are still up in the mountains the three of you immediately begin planning an expedition to rescue them. Another rescue effort called the First Relief is being prepared at Sutter’s Fort that will be ready sooner but Reed and McCutchen have the advantage that both of them already know the route. Eddy is determined to accompany the First Relief but he is still weak from his terrible journey out of the mountains. Which expedition party do you want to accompany? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Just outside Fort Bridger a young man called Luke Halloran joined your group: dying of tuberculosis he was taken in by George and Jacob Donner and allowed to ride in their wagon. On the shores of the Salt Lake he collapses and dies suddenly of his illness. There was nothing anyone could have done but his death casts a bleak mood of the Party. He is buried the next day on the shores of Salt Lake next to the grave of another settler who died on his way to California. Pressing on you enter the Salt Desert in September, a place of skin-blistering heat and dry humidity. The wagons struggle to cross the Desert, the cattle pulling them consume enormous amounts of water as they struggle to pull the wagons. James Reed is forced to abandon two of his wagons and George Donner and another settler, a fierce man called Louis Keseberg, both have to abandon one of their wagons. The whole wagon train becomes strung out over many miles and the cattle herds with the wagons become separated, many of them dying. Somehow you manage to keep your wagon moving and your cattle alive but the experience is nightmarish. Finally you and your companions make it across the Desert and camp at a spring for several days which are spent rounding up lost cattle, recovering things from the abandoned wagons and it is not until nearly the middle of September that the Party is ready to continue. The crossing through the Desert killed many cattle and also cost the Party many supplies. Most of the settlers, especially James Reed, are now concerned they might not have enough food to make it all the way to California. A plan is soon made: Charles Stanton and another settler called William McCutchen (a giant of a man who is travelling to California with his wife and baby daughter) volunteer to go ahead on fast horses to Fort Sutter, the first trading post in California, collect fresh supplies and bring them back to the Party. Moving fast they could be back in as little as a month. If you want you can ride ahead with them to California or you can remain travelling with the Donner Party. What do you do? > You ride ahead Though it takes more than a month you manage to make the long and difficult journey to Sutter’s Fort in California, crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains along the way. William McCutchen and Charles Stanton prove to be good company though by the time you reach Johnson’s Ranch, the first outpost of civilization in California, McCutchen has come down with a fever. It is not life-threatening but he needs to rest. At Sutter’s Fort Captain Sutter is glad to provide you with seven mules and provisions (accounts will be settled when the Donner Party arrives) and even loans you and Stanton two Indians called Luis and Salvador to help you guide the mules back to the Donner Party. Stanton plans to leave in a few days but McCutchen is no better and you wonder if it might not be better if you stay with him. On the other hand the Donner Party are still out there somewhere and doubtless struggling too. What do you do? <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Riding hard for three days with your companions you cover a great deal of distance before finally catching up with Hastings and a large wagon party of a few hundred settlers on the shores of the great Salt Lake. By the time the four of you catch up with him you are all exhausted and your horses are close to collapse. Lansford Hastings is a strong-jawed man with a rapidly receding hairline and despite his note he is surprised to see you. While Charles Stanton and William Pike rest their horses you and James Reed trade your horses for two fresh ones from some of the settlers with Hastings and ride with him to the summit of a nearby mountain where Hastings explains the best direction to travel across the Canyon’s wooded slopes and promises to continue leaving messages. Reed is keen to ride ahead and get back to the Donner Party to get them moving along this but both Pike and Stanton’s horses are tired. Reed proposes to split up: he’ll ride ahead back to the Party while Stanton and Pike follow behind. What do you do? > You ride with Stanton and Pike Staying with Charles Stanton and William Pike you attempt to follow James Reed back to the Donner Party but unfortunately the three of you become lost in the Wasatch Mountains. For twelve days you wander through steep forested hills becoming increasingly worried as your food runs out until finally, when you are on the verge of killing your horses and eating them you encounter the wagons of the Donner Party and are enormously relieved. They have struggled to get across the Wasatch Mountains but have finally reached the Salt Lake Desert; as you and your companions feared you would run out of food in the mountains and starve you, Stanton and Pike are overjoyed to be back. Your odyssey was a sign of how dangerous it can be in the mountains. A few days after you return a tragedy befalls the group. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You are an immigrant travelling along the Oregon Trail to California, joining the thousands of settlers who are crossing America to the rich fertile lands of Oregon and California. Three months of journeying alone finds you in Fort Bridger, the last outpost on the Oregon Trail until you come to California. An explorer named Lansford Hastings recommends that settlers travelling to California leave the Oregon Trail here and follow a route known as Hasting’s Cut-Off, a shortcut across the Salt Lake Desert and Sierra Nevada Mountains that will save hundreds of miles of travelling. Jim Bridger, a legendary explorer and owner of the trading post Fort Bridger, also recommends the route to the last party of settlers to arrive before you: a group of eighty-seven people led by two brothers called George and Jacob Donner. Hastings left Fort Bridger a week ago, escorting another party through Hastings Cut-Off and though you are disappointed to have missed him you decide to join the Donner Party who are also taking the route. It will prove to be the worst decision of your life. On the last day of July the Donner Party leaves Fort Bridger and you leave with them, driving your wagon piled high with provisions. You travel over the hills and valleys of the Wasatch Mountains until after a week a letter is discovered tied to a sage bush at the mouth of a canyon. It is from Hastings and advises against going down the canyon as it is rocky and might damage the wagons. He suggests that any immigrants following should send some people on fast horses to catch up with him so he can give specific directions about the route ahead. Three men: James Reed (a man with a strong personality and one of the most respected members of the party), Charles Stanton (Another strong personality in the party who is travelling to California on his own initiative) and William Pike (An engineer and one of the cleverest men in the group) are chosen to perform the dangerous task of travelling across unfamiliar country to try and catch up with Hastings. You can either volunteer to accompany them or remain camped with the Donner Party. What do you do? > You remain camped Staying with the camp you spend much of your time talking to the Party’s leaders George and Jacob Donner. Both brothers are easy-going: Jacob is in poor health and doesn’t seem to be enjoying the journey very much but George is cheerful and affable: he was chosen over James Reed to lead the Donner Party because Reed can be over-bearing and pompous at times. Sure enough after four days Reed returns to camp alone, having gone on ahead of Charles Stanton and William Pike and boastfully describes how he met with Lansford Hastings and between the two of them worked out the route the Donner Party should take, travelling along the Canyon’s wooded slopes instead of down it. The route is not a good one however and it takes two weeks to cut a road through a forest of trees, the wagons having a lot of difficulty navigating the steep incline. Stanton and Pike become lost on their return journey and turn up after twelve days spent wandering the Wasatch Mountains, getting so low on food that when they are found they are on the verge of shooting their horses for food. The jubilation of their safe return and finally reaching the Salt Lake Desert is marred by a tragedy that happens the next day. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Woban Island Bill Ingersoll Text (C) 1988 & 2019 Bill Ingersoll / Published November 2019 / Image source: goodfon.com > You bEGIN STORY We've all got our own path, We all know there's no turning back. We've all got a piece of the map, But with the mountain in view, we say "I don't need that!" There are many paths to the same summit, If you don't like the one you're on you can stray from it. Just look out for steep cliffs or you might plummet 'Cause there are many paths to the same summit! Who-oah! Who-oah! La-de-da-da-da-da! —— Root Shock > Next page. As you pace back and forth at the boarding gate to your plane, you notice a thin man in a plaid suit sitting alone against the wall. He is looking straight at you just as your eyes first land on him. You have no idea who he is, and you never saw him arrive — which is surprising, considering how quaint and garish that old suit is. The man furtively looks away the moment your eyes make contact. He feigns interest in the copy of the New York Times he is holding in front of him, but as you look more closely you see it is yesterday's edition. Clearly, something isn't right here. Suspicious, you decide to keep an eye on him — of course, without appearing to do so. You pretend to scan the passenger waiting area as if bored and impatient, which is hardly far from the truth. You hate flying, and especially the need to arrive so early just to pass through the TSA screening. This morning you left your midtown apartment at an ungodly hour, hailed a taxi to avoid the morning commuter traffic on the subway, and then arrived at LaGuardia only to find that the security lines are not as long as you feared — leaving you with too much down time to kill before your flight. But worrying about being watched gives you something to do, like a game you can play to pass the time. You let your eyes wander restlessly across the room, flitting from person to person, the advertisements on the wall, and the people buying coffee from the high-end retailer a short distance away — always making sure you note the man in the plaid suit each time you glance in that direction. In reality your nervousness is not that much of an act; being surrounded by so many people usually has this effect on you anyway. Now, though, you can use it to your advantage as you watch the man you think might be watching you. Between the airline poster on the wall urging you to book a flight right away to Paris, and the businesswoman with the laptop bag at her feet and the Nook in her hands, you get a good look at the man in the frumpy suit reading yesterday's paper. He can't possibly be that interested in the latest Trump scandal or Albany corruption charges — if he was, he would have made a point to pick up today's edition of the Times. Indeed, you are pretty sure you catch him looking back at you more than once. All of the other passengers who are waiting for the morning flight to Boston are occupying themselves with their iPhones or their tablets or their spreadsheets, but this one man with his tragic sense of fashion is clearly as interested in watching you as you are in watching him. Your attention shifts to the paper ticket in your hand, which you've been thumbing all this time. A flight to Boston, paid for by the wealthy investor who insists you pay him a visit as soon as possible. When you first got the email from Walter Berringer two days ago, you thought it was a hoax. But then he forwarded you today's flight information, and you knew this was for real. Berringer's reputation as a collector of rare artifacts and valuable objects is well known; most visits with him prove to be quite interesting, or so you've heard. Does the nervous man in the plaid suit know where you're going? Maybe he is somebody you should avoid…. __________________________________________________ > Next page. You know the plane will be boarding soon when you see first the pilots, and then the flight attendants, head down the gangway. Two hostesses busy themselves behind the podium, reviewing the passenger manifest and issuing one or two last-minute boarding passes. Then they begin the process of letting the passengers board the plane, business class first. Walter Berringer didn't spring for a first-class ticket, so you have to wait a few more minutes for your chance to board the plane. But as the last of the business people are presenting their passes to the hostess and rushing down the gangway, you notice the man in the plaid suit stand up, tuck his paper under his arm, and then slowly move closer to where the line is about to form. In other words, he is now standing not too far from you. "Now boarding Rows 22 through 38," the attendant politely announces over the PA, but most of the remaining passengers are already standing in anticipation. The line quickly forms, with you near the front — and Mr. Plaid Suit several spots behind you. The attendant helps you scan your boarding pass, and then you follow the gangway down to the narrow confines of the waiting 737. Your ticket shows you have been assigned Row 30, Seat C, which turns out to be an aisle seat on the port side of the plane. A woman in her thirties is already settling into the window seat, giving every indication she'd rather nap than chat with her fellow passengers. That suits you fine. You stuff your carry-on bag into the overhead compartment and plop into your seat, with one empty space still between you. A moment later Mr. Plaid Suit ventures his way down the aisle, squeezing past other passengers and counting the rows carefully. Then he looks up and sees you, and the flash of recognition across his face is unmistakable. He smiles as if he has spotted an old friend, and makes his way straight for you. Really, do you know this guy? Someone you knew from high school, maybe? Is there anyone on your Facebook friends list with such a horrific sense of style? Or: Does this stranger know more about your meeting with Walter Berringer than you do? He approaches you, still wearing that polite grin. "I believe that's my seat, 30B." You look at the empty seat next to you, realizing that you're about to have a closer encounter than you expected. You stand up so he can scooch by, and he settles between you and the woman in the window seat. He doesn't even pay her any attention. And for the moment, he doesn't say anything more to you, either. He is carrying no luggage you notice — nothing other than that day-old newspaper, with a headline that tells of stale developments in the impeachment proceedings. __________________________________________________ > Next page. It is not until the plane is in the air and cruising high above Connecticut that the man finally folds his newspaper and sticks it in the pouch with the airline magazines in front of him, as if someone else on the next flight might be interested in reading his outdated copy of the New York Times. You now wish you had brought something to read yourself, so that you could feign immersion and avoid eye contact with him at all cost. But he fidgets in the seat to your left, as if he is anxious to get your attention. You try your best to appear lost in thought, pretending to be enthralled by the sight of the two flight attendants wheeling a cart down the aisle, pouring out cans of soda and juice into clear plastic cups for thirsty passengers, seat by seat, row by row. "I know where you're headed," he finally says. You turn to look at him, hoping your facial expression is displaying the proper amount of disinterest. "Oh?" you say. "Isn't everybody here heading to Boston?" "You know what I mean," he says, unfazed at your attempt to be acerbic. "I'm afraid I don't, actually," you try again. "I am referring to 46 Van Ness Street," the man says. You are unable to control your expression of surprise — 46 Van Ness is the address you were given for your meeting with Berringer later this morning. "Never mind who I am," he continues. "It's you I've come here to see." Mr. Plaid Suit has a surprisingly deep voice for such a small figure, and his nose sticks out twice as far as any nose should, like an awning over his thin mustache. Unlike most men his age, he has made no attempt to hide his balding dome, either with a hat, with implants, or by shaving his head altogether. And his breath smells like an onion bagel. How much does this guy know about your meeting? To be honest, you know next to nothing yourself; you just know that Berringer pays well, and you'd be a fool to pass over an opportunity to work for him. Sometimes in your line of work, it's best not to know more than you have to, or before you need to know it. But now you feel as though you're at a distinct disadvantage. The only thing about which you are certain is the need to not say a thing — for fear that you might reveal too much, or reveal how little you actually know. Sensing your apprehension, Mr. Plaid Suit continues. "I know where Berringer will send you, and I can get you more pay for your troubles." You look the man square in the eyes. As he smiles, two golden teeth shine in the subdued light of the plane's cabin. This early flight was not completely booked, and there is a seat three rows ahead of you that is empty. Perhaps you should relocate. You're pretty sure that if you stay here, you'll be at the bottom of Boston Harbor about an hour after the plane lands. In your experience, strangers like this who come out of nowhere and try desperately to get your attention never lead to anything good. __________________________________________________ > You move to a new seat. This guy is just way too creepy, and although the flight to Boston will be short, it is still more time than you want to spend smelling that bagel breath… or, for all you know, looking at the photos of you he has stored on his phone. "I'm sorry, I'm not interested," you say as you quickly get up and grab your bag from the overhead compartment. This action gets the attention of one of the flight attendants. "We are not ready to land yet. I'm afraid you'll need to remain seated, unless you are using the lavatory." You take your things anyway and approach the attendant. Speaking softly, you say, "The guy next to me was bothering me. Is it all right if I take this seat right here? It appears to be empty." Her eyes light up in horror, and you see her looking in the direction of Mr. Plaid Suit. You can only imagine what conclusions she is drawing. "By all means!" she says to you, helping you put your bag in the compartment above your new seat. "Would you like to file—" "No, that won't be necessary," you say. "Well, all right. Just let us know if there is anything else we can do." And again she gives the man with the big nose an icy look. That was too easy. The rest of the flight passes uneventfully; your new neighbors appear to be a young couple visiting Boston on their honeymoon, so they barely notice you. You get a coffee from the drink cart and spend the rest of the trip sipping it in peace until it is gone. When the plane lands, the attendant who assisted you gestures to you to come forward while the "remain seated" light is still on. She allows you to disembark before anyone else, and so you sail through an empty gangway and exit through the gate, where the passengers for the next flight are waiting anxiously to board the plane you just left behind. Thanks to the attendant, you have a long head start on Mr. Plaid Suit, so you do your best not to squander it. There is no need to visit the baggage return, since everything you need is in your carry-on. You've also already arranged for a ride into the city. As you reach the glass doors leading out of the terminal, your phone trills with an incoming message: the Uber you hailed a moment ago is about to arrive. It is easy to spot the bright orange Crosstrek with the driver named Doug. The Subaru pulls up to the curb near the waiting taxis, and Doug the driver gets out. "Are you heading to 46 Van Ness? My name is Doug, but the app probably already told you that. It's good to meet you! Let me help you with your bag." Doug looks like he is auditioning to be a model for an L. L. Bean catalog, with a red checked shirt over a pair of khakis. He seems rather young to be doing Uber gigs on a weekday morning; you imagine his other job must involve the late shift in some corporate cubicle. He seems to be extremely eager to please you, though. Maybe he is in alliance with the flight attendant? __________________________________________________ > Next page. "It's a shame about the Sox," he says as he drives you through downtown Boston. "I mean, they finished .519. That's a winning season! But they were still nineteen games behind New Yahk. It was a wicked crazy season. Do you know what moves Henry plans to make for next year?" You haven't the slightest idea what he's talking about. Socks? Five nineteen — was that A.M. or P.M.? "I'm sorry. Who's Henry?" you say. "John Henry, the owner of the Sox. I thought you'd know." "Never met him. What's the matter with his socks?" "Well that's the question right there, isn't it?" Doug says. "If you ask me, the problem is the pitching staff. Those clowns in the bullpen couldn't throw a strike to save their life. And name one thing that Sale did this year, except burn through a good chunk of the payroll. But if you want to get to the fundamentals of it all, the real problem is Dombrowski. He took a championship team and ground them into the mud. Do you know if Henry plans to replace him with a real GM anytime soon?" "I wouldn't have the slightest clue," you say. "I guess the only real silver lining in all this is that New Yahk just got their pin-striped butts kicked by the 'Stros. It's not every year you can say that. But still, you know? Last year the Sox became World Series champions in Los Angeles. All the way over on the other side of the country. I was looking forward to them doing it here at Fenway this year." "You know, I don't really follow baseball that much," you say, finally getting a grasp on the subject of this long and rambling monologue. Sports fans are among the biggest bores you've ever met. "That's real funny, considered you hired me to drive you to the players' entrance to Fenway Pahk. What are you anyway, the wise ass who cleans the cups?" Doug's warmness toward you has apparently nosedived. "Fenway? I'm heading to a meeting with a guy named Walter Berringer at 46 Van Ness Street." "Yeah, I know, 46 Van Ness. This is Ipswich. Van Ness is the next right." You look out the window and indeed see the back end of a brick building with avocado-green trim. Multiple signs proclaim this to be FENWAY PARK: HOME OF THE BOSTON RED SOX. Beyond the portion of the building that you can see, there is a larger structure with towering banks of lights and the back sides of at least two scoreboards. A chain link fence disguised with images of various baseball players keeps the general public at arm's length from a delivery area. Then as you drive further and make the right onto Van Ness, all you see is a long brick wall that seems to run the length of an entire block. "Look, I don't know who you are, and maybe you don't either, but it looks like that broad over there is here to meet you," Doug says. He pulls up toward the curb at a point where the brick wall gives way to a brown fence. It encloses an otherwise unpresumptuous, narrow space under a green stairway. A gate is open and a slender woman is approaching the Crosstrek. She waits for you to roll down the window. "You are very punctual," she says. "Walter is waiting for you upstairs. If you grab your things I will take you to him." As you exit the Subaru, you say to Doug, "Thanks for the lift!" "Yeah, yeah, no problem." He's not even looking at you, though; he's craning his neck to see what's behind the gate. "My name is Meredith," the woman says. "I hope you had a good flight." She is wearing a gray dress suit, with a stiff skirt that ends just above the knees. Even with high heels, her head barely reaches your shoulder. "It was Walter's idea to greet you here," she continues. "I think he wants you to be impressed." "I might, if I knew the first thing about baseball," you say. "Well that makes two of us. This way, please." You follow Meredith inside the brown gate, and she stops to close it behind you. She has to leverage practically her entire mass to do so, but the gate cooperates and latches shut with a resounding clang. Doug is still waiting outside, probably hoping for an invitation to join you. It never comes. "So this is the players' entrance?" you say. "Yes. I'd show you around the team clubhouse, but I don't know where anything is. Walter's place is clear on the other side of the park. Come, through here." She motions you through a nondescript door, which leads into a short service corridor. There is another door at the far end. Meredith all but throws her weight against the bar handle, and the green door swings out. It reveals a dark concourse, with green-painted steel beams everywhere, and shuttered vendor stalls down each side. "Follow me, please." The door swings shut behind you, and you follow your guide down the corridor. It is like being in a cavern, with nothing but hard surfaces all around and very little light. At times the ceiling is low and angled, leaving you to infer that you are directly below the stadium seating. All around you are signs for expensive domestic beer, hot dogs, pizza, and T-shirts, but every stall has been closed up for the winter. Meredith walks at a steady pace, her heels clopping against the hard floor. The sound reverberates off the concrete and steel, clop-clop-clop-clop-clop-clop-clop-clop, as if the sound she makes is a calculated part of her fashion statement: a loud presence to compensate for a small stature. "So you're Mr. Berringer's assistant?" you ask. "Heavens, no. I write for the Boston Globe. My editor assigned me to do a feature story on him, but it can be hard to get information from Walter sometimes, so it's been a very long project. It seems like I spend more time here than anywhere else." "How long have you been at it?" "About three years now." After what seems like half a mile, you reach an elevator. She presses the button, and the doors open instantly. "After you," she says. The elevator ride is over after just a few seconds. The doors part once more, and Meredith steps out first. She turns and gestures to the right. "This way, please." You are now in a hallway, with a carpeted floor and closed doors at regular intervals — but only on the left side. Photos on the wall show baseball players doing basebally things. It looks like a sports-themed hotel. "Walter Berringer lives here?" you say. "Effectively, yes. The management would probably prefer that he didn't, but some people can be hard to refuse, if you know what I mean." Just then you realize that one door down at the far end of the hallway is open. Meredith is about to offer one of her polite directives to "follow me" again, but you decide to break with tradition and start walking down the hallway before you are instructed to do so. The clopping of her heels is much more muted on this carpet as she hastens to catch up. At first it sounds as if people are talking up ahead, but you soon figure out that it's a talk radio program; two men are dissecting all that went wrong for the Red Sox in the recently-ended season, with the insinuation that it can all be blamed on some guy named Dombrowski. Based on what you remember of the Uber ride, Doug the driver would probably agree. The radio snaps off when you reach the door. "Come in! Come in!" a man says from somewhere inside. The room is one of those luxury suites where well-heeled fans and corporate outings come to watch ballgames. It resembles a hotel room, but without beds. The suite is long and narrow, with large windows down at the far end overlooking the playing field. It has an open floor plan, but each section between the door and the front balcony is devoted to a single purpose. First comes the pseudo-kitchen, with places to present food but nothing other than a microwave to prepare it. Next comes a central space arranged like a den, with leather furniture focused on a wall-mounted TV. Then just before the wall of windows there is a high-top table, like the kind you might find in a bar. The decor of this suite is its most unusual feature, though. So far, all of Fenway has been a shrine to the Red Sox, with photos of players making heroic plays everywhere you look. Not so here. A pair of old paintings hangs over the sofa, both fairly large. One depicts a man and a woman; he is standing, she is seated, but both are dressed in black. The ruffled collar and lace cuffs on the woman are exquisitely detailed. The larger painting depicts a small boat, crowded with people and rocked violently by a splashing wave. As you lean in you recognize the figure of Jesus at the rear of the boat, a point of calm surrounded by the wild tumult. Beneath the two masterpieces, and framed as if it too were a prized artwork, is one of those old blue-on-white Rhode Island license plates, this one bearing only a single character: a numeral one. "Ah, I see you are admiring my Rembrandts." __________________________________________________ > Next page. You turn to see your host entering the suite from the balcony overlooking the ball field. He is a stout man, and sharply dressed considering the informal setting in which he lives, as if there were a Men's Wearhouse somewhere in the stadium. Obeying the fashion of the day for people wishing to display an air of worldly sophistication, he wears his hair just a little long, with no effort to hide its grayness. Likewise for his beard. In his hand is a glass filled with melting ice. "Those were among my first acquisitions," Berringer says, joining you in front of the paintings. "Back in '90. A partner and I went in on this, ah, project together. I kept the Rembrandts, he took the Vermeer and the Manet. We liquidated the rest of the collection — discreetly, of course. But I invested my share of the proceeds, and almost thirty years later, look where I am." If you're reading between the lines correctly, you're pretty sure you are looking at stolen artwork. Many of the people who hire your "acquisitive services" are proud to show off similar possessions. You learned a long time ago that it's rarely a good idea to question the scruples of your employers. "Who is the couple?" you ask, pointing to the portrait of the man and woman. "A Dutch merchant and his wife; I don't know the names. But look at the naturalness of the poses, and look at the photorealism in the ruffled collar she's wearing. Stunning! I never get tired of looking at it. Can I get you a drink?" "Um, sure," you say. "What about this other work? I recognize Jesus, but I'm not familiar with the story it depicts." Berringer has taken his glass to a stand next to the TV, on which a variety of whiskey bottles are arrayed. "Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee," he explains as he pours you a drink and replenishes his own. "It's from Matthew, chapter eight: 'And they went and woke him, saying, 'Save us, Lord; we are perishing.' And he said to them, 'Why are you afraid, O ye of little faith?' Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, 'What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?'" He hands you your whiskey. It seems rather early in the day for whiskey, but in your experience it's often a good idea to follow the lead of a potential employer. "I admit I'm not a spiritual person," Berringer continues, "and the day I acquired it I saw only its monetary value. But it's grown on me since then; I rather like the idea of the powerful man making things happen and stunning his followers. Now, it's a nice day out; would you care to join me outside on the balcony?" You follow your host out a glass door to the set of private box seats overlooking the stadium, directly above first base. Berringer gestures for you to sit in the front row. You see Meredith taking a seat at another high-top above, just outside the door, with a notepad in hand as if she were planning to record your conversation as research for her newspaper article. "This is a nice view, Mr. Berringer," you say. Actually, Fenway looks rather forlorn with no people in it. The grass has been mowed recently, but there is no longer any need to paint the baselines. There is a manual scoreboard out on the large, green wall looming over left field, but all of the stats it displays are now well over a month out of date. It is so quiet you can hear the traffic on the Mass Turnpike beyond the wall. "Please, call me Walter." He sets his glass down on the concrete railing in front of you. "I love this place, and I don't think I'll ever get enough of it. Aside from being a Red Sox fan, this place reminds me of my philosophy of life. Do you know what that is? It goes like this: The world is a giant field on which contests are decided, not unlike baseball: forces in dynamic opposition, always in competition with each other, struggling for dominance. One force advances, the other suffers a setback, and then the field is cleared so the next inning can begin. Life itself is merely a game, and like any game there are those who play, and there are those who call the plays. I see myself as one of the latter; I set the roster, I signal the pitches. With my strategic view of the playing field, I can anticipate where the ball will be hit. As the team's skipper, I give purpose to the people playing the game." "That's interesting," you say. "I've never thought of it that way." You take a sip of the whiskey, but your palate can't process the bitterness before lunch. Your glass joins Berringer's on the railing. "But enough about that. I'm sure you're wondering what this is all about." "A job, I presume." "Yes, most certainly. As you can see, I am a collector of valuable things. Rare things. Things that people desire to own. Those two Rembrandt paintings, that Rhode Island number one tag, this suite — these are all merely examples, just the slightest hint of my overall collection. But now there is something else I must have." "Oh?" "Tell me what you know of Woban Island," he says. "Wow, Woban," you say. "I think I read about that recently. Woban — it's next to Auri Island, isn't? That place they just discovered in the South Pacific?" "Indeed. Good memory. Imagine, in this day and age, there are still new places on Earth being discovered — places so new they appear on no maps." "I'm starting to see why you called me here," you say. "Your family has always been adventurous. You yourself have done jobs twice before in the South Pacific, according to my research. Thus I am confident you possess exactly the skill set required for this job." "What exactly is it you want me to find?" "Something priceless, of course. Not the type of thing I'll ever find on Amazon or eBay." "But of course." "Let me tell you a story," Berringer says. "Two years ago, a research boat looking for sunken World War II battleships gets blown off course by a typhoon. They land on an island that appears on none of their charts, inhabited by people who speak a language like no other. The Auri Islanders are mostly peaceful, but they point across a wide channel to the neighboring island, which is dark and rugged. Once the researchers crack the language, they figure out the natives are warning them about another fierce tribe of three-eyed warriors. 'Don't go there, the Wobans are sworn to protect the Stone of Vul-Kar,' that kind of thing." "I see." "And indeed, such a stone does exist." "Have you seen it?" you ask. "Well no, not personally. But I have reason to believe that an old acquaintance of yours did: Beatriz Paya-Vallejo. You know her, correct?" Cripes, Beatriz! She is a rival adventurer from the north of Chile. The two of you have crossed paths more than once, in places like Nepal, Mali, and Tunisia. None of your encounters have been friendly ones. In most cases you were each working for competing collectors, which meant you were both after the same prize — and in the early years, she was too often the one in possession of whatever valuable object you had been sent to obtain. Because of her, you missed out on a few too many payouts and was almost laughed out of your profession. But also because of Paya-Vallejo, you learned to up your game and become better at what you do. "Beatriz is looking for the Stone of Vul-Kar too?" you say. Three-eyed warriors are one thing, but if your old nemesis has beaten you to the island then you don't give yourself very good odds. "Well, she was," Berringer says. "Beatriz was the first person I hired to obtain the stone on my behalf. I got a call from her satellite phone saying she had located the stone and somehow managed to trick the Wobans, but she never appeared at the rendezvous point. She simply disappeared." "This is a fascinating story, and I think I see where you're going with this. But what exactly is the Stone of Vul-Kar?" "Well... it's... it's... I'm not really sure, if what you're looking for is a precise description. My understanding is that it's a big purple gem, unlike anything currently known. But here's the important thing: quite a few people want it, including people I know. Rivals of mine, who are putting their own people on the island as we speak and mounting their own expeditions. The whole thing is a game, and I intend to win it. The question for you is, do you want to play it on my behalf?" "I suppose the answer to that question depends on how much it will be worth my trouble," you say. "I was thinking an even million," Berringer says. "Assuming that's agreeable. A quarter million payable now, the balance upon the successful retrieval of the item." He snaps his finger, and Meredith clops her way down the steps to the front of the balcony, a bank check in her hand. "Deal?" Berringer says. Indeed, this would be quite the payout, if you're successful. With that kind of money, you could treat yourself to quite the vacation afterward. There are benefits to being good at what you do, and it's satisfying to see that your skills are valued by people like Walter Berringer. "Deal," you say, accepting the check. "Very good. Let's finish these drinks, then. To celebrate." You oblige. This time the whiskey tastes perfectly sweet to your palate. __________________________________________________ > Next page. Two weeks later, you are on Walter Berringer's private yacht in the South Pacific. It is now early November; when you left New England there were hints of oncoming snow in the air, but here, out on the open sea, the weather is sunny and almost uncomfortably warm. Meredith seems perfectly pleased with the setting, however; she is lounging in a deck chair soaking up the sunlight like a lizard, her dress suit replaced with a pastel bikini. There is a colorful cocktail of some kind beside her, on a stand right next to her ever-present notepad. You can see her through the window as you peruse the maps that Berringer has provided you. They are sprawled out across a table inside the yacht's main salon — four large sheets, each covering a different quadrant of Woban Island. You had been under the impression that such things didn't exist, but nevertheless here they are. The yacht is just hours away from Woban Island, and you are starting to feel the excitement of the moment. By this time tomorrow you should be in the field, bushwhacking your way up some previously unknown mountain, stealthily evading the native population while seeking the stone that will ultimately make you a millionaire. It has been quite the interesting journey getting to this point. It began with a trip to an REI store located just a few blocks away from Fenway, where you stocked up on gear and provisions for your expedition. With a quarter-million dollars in your bank account, you decided to upgrade all of your gear: a new backpack, moisture-wicking clothing, solar-powered lamp, trekking poles, new boots, gaiters in case the island is muddy, and most importantly, a new tent. They also had a lightweight folding rocking chair set up as a display model, weighing only a couple pounds; it was tempting, but silly considering the nature of your trip, and so you passed on that one. You also looked at a top-of-the-line GPS, but that turned out to be rather pointless since it had no maps of your destination. Then, a few days later, you boarded a plane for Honolulu — business class this time, with Berringer and Meredith as traveling companions. While your employer prepared his luxurious yacht, the Big Papi, for the voyage south of Hawaii toward Woban and Auri islands, you enjoyed some downtime exploring Oahu, particularly the various forest reserves on the island's north shore, where you sought to immerse yourself in the type of environment you expect to find on Woban. One day after returning from one of your hikes, Berringer presented you with the maps you are examining now. "I had a contact at Hickam Field print these off for me," he explained. Now the Big Papi is sailing toward a spot just off Woban Island's northeast coast, where you plan to take an inflatable runabout to shore. You and Berringer selected the landing location after perusing the maps, deciding that this part of the island seemed to provide the best landing area and the most direct route to the island's main summit, where the Stone of Vul-Kar is supposed to be. Always a sucker for a good topographic map, you have been scrutinizing these for most of the time you have been at sea. "If you keep this up, you'll have those maps memorized by the time you make landfall." It's Berringer, strolling into the salon in a silk robe, his customary empty glass in hand. He has been resting in his stateroom, but is now heading to the liquor cabinet to pour himself another bourbon. Now that you are nearing the islands, you've noticed that he has stopped offering to pour you a drink as well — best not to dull your edge. "Good afternoon, sir," you say. "Yeah, according to this northeastern quad the route looks so easy. I don't see what all the trouble is. Drop me off in the morning, let me do my thing, and make sure you have dinner ready for me when I return that evening." "Ha, if only it would be that simple." He takes a seat to your right at the table, whiskey glass in hand. "This whole part of the island is crawling with Wobans, and this part down here is rugged wilderness. According to the intel I picked up back at port, you're going to have company in those hills: people like you, hired by people like me, all with one objective in mind. You can be certain some of those people will be dangerous." "Do you know exactly who I might encounter out there?" "Just rumors, I'm afraid, but reliable ones. Here, I wrote them down." He pulls a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and hands it to you. Unfolding it, you see a list of three names jotted down in Berringer's scratchy brand of penmanship: Gary Gaffney Dr. Brian Bolt Martian Pop "Do these names mean anything to you?" he asks. "No," you say, "but are you sure about this last one? Martian Pop?" "I thought you might like that one," Berringer says. "Yeah, that's a real name. He's Romanian, so my guess is it's not actually pronounced 'Martian Pop' in Romania. Pay close attention to this Gary Gaffney fellow. He might be working for a rival of mine back in Boston, and he's already been on the island for a few days. I'd be very unhappy if he got the Stone of Vul-Kar first." "The way you're describing it, it's a crowded field on which we're about to play," you say. After all of this time with Berringer, you've started to speak in terms of sports metaphors, too. "There may be others as well — rogue players that nobody knows. There were some vague reports last week of some young couple running around trying to steal a boat. And there is also a research team from the University of Chicago camped out on the southwestern shore of the island." "Sounds like it will be quite the party if all of us get together at the same time." "I'm trying to make it sound dangerous," Berringer says. "We've only known about this place for less than three years, and already people have gone missing. You're good, but this job isn't going to be like digging up caribou antler carvings from the thawing permafrost outside Nome. This place is going to try and kill you. Now let's talk about the Wobans themselves—" "Walter, I'm hungry. What do you got around here to eat?" It's Meredith, entering the salon from the aft deck where she has been sunning herself, notebook in hand. She reeks of coconut-scented sunscreen. "You're too late for lunch, too early for dinner," Berringer says rather gruffly. "Why don't you go to the galley and see what Cookie can scrounge up for you." Meredith has been quiet for much of the voyage, nursing a grudge over some unknown grievance. She glowers at Berringer for a second, but he's not looking and doesn't see it. Then she sullenly leave the room. "So what's the story with her, anyway?" you ask. "Three years is an awfully long time to be writing a newspaper article." "You noticed that too, huh?" he says. "The truth is she reminds me of someone I used to have a crush on in high school. As you know, I acquire things. The key to acquiring people is to let the person you're acquiring feel at all times as if they're exercising free will. It tickles me, though, that her last name is Nowitki. She really does strike me as being witless sometimes." That evening, as the three of you are in the dining room enjoying a swordfish dinner, the captain of the Big Papi makes an announcement over the intercom. "Sir, we are about to move into position five nautical miles to the northeast of Woban Island, just as you directed." "You must be eager to see the place," Berringer says to you. "Actually, yes," you say. "But it can wait until after dinner." "Nonsense. I'm curious myself. Let's head up to the Skylounge Deck and take a look." The three of you take your drinks — coffee in your case — up to the observation deck just below the bridge. Woban island is just ahead, a dark landmass occupying much of the horizon. Your first impression is that it is much bigger than you expected; a landmass that evaded detection for centuries should be little more than a speck of dirt, you had thought. But this is several miles in breadth, with a range of mountains rising darkly into the sky. From here, it is unclear which of them is the main summit atop which the jewel is located. "My, my. It looks like we have some company." Berringer is not looking toward the island, but off to starboard. There is indeed a small speck of red on the ocean waves, moving in a straight line toward the Big Papi. "Meredith, honey, go and get my binoculars. They're in my stateroom, desk drawer on the right." Meredith looks at him for a moment with silent resentment, but turns to obey the request when she determines that no "please" or "thank you" will be forthcoming. "Who do you think it is?" you say. "I was about to ask you the same thing," Berringer says. "I wasn't expecting any company. I assume you weren't, either." You're about to say something about a Woban coast guard, but decide against it; all of the evidence seems to suggest that Walter Berringer possesses an underdeveloped sense of humor. A moment later Meredith returns with the binoculars, handing them over to Berringer without saying a word. He lifts them to his eyes. "It looks like a runabout," he says. "Two people. I don't see the mother ship, though." He hands the binoculars over to you. It takes you a moment to find the incoming craft through the lenses, but when you do you see a small inflatable boat, much like the one at the rear of the Big Papi awaiting your use in the morning. This one is red instead of white, however. It is too small to have traveled very far on its own, and you agree with Berringer that there should be another yacht or something somewhere out in that direction, but you see nothing. "Could just be someone marooned here, looking for a ride home," he says. "It could be the competition, coming to scope us out," you say. "Well if that's the case, then at least we know they don't have the stone yet." "They could still be dangerous, though," you say. "I doubt they'd just be making a social call." "If they're in trouble, then we need to help!" Meredith says, breaking her silence. "What do you think?" Berringer says. "You're the one with the keen instincts for this kind of situation, right? Should we stay and see if they need our help, or are they up to no good? I can have the captain move us further away." __________________________________________________ > You move away. "You've spent most of the day trying to impress on me just how dangerous this place will be, Mr. Berringer," you say. "If you're leaving the decision up to me, then I say let's keep our distance." "Call me Walter. So you don't think this is something we need to stick around and see?" "I don't think they're here to bring us fresh-baked cookies, no." Berringer pulls what looks like a wireless phone out of his pocket. "Mark, I need you to set a new course," he says to the yacht's captain. "We have some uninvited company approaching from starboard. Put some distance between us." The Big Papi promptly begins to veer to port, putting the small boat well behind you. To continue tracking their progress, the three of you need to relocate to the aft observation deck just behind the main salon, where Meredith spent much of the afternoon sunbathing. Whatever that little craft is out there, it is probably powered by nothing more than an outboard motor, whereas the yacht is a large ocean-going vessel. You easily outpace it, and after half an hour you can no longer see your would-be visitors. You and Meredith return to the dining room to finish your dinner, followed by Berringer sometime later. "The captain thinks we are safely out of range of that small boat," he says. "But to be safe he has ordered one of the crew to keep watch and make sure we aren't approached again." "I hope they're all right," Meredith says, her bitter tone suggesting she is returning to her sullen state. "I think it was irresponsible not to offer assistance." "That's what the Coast Guard is for," Berringer says. "We're here for a specific purpose, so let's not lose sight of that." "I couldn't help but notice we were traveling for quite a while at a high rate of speed," you say. "Where does that put us relative to my planned landing location on the island?" "Yes, you are correct, we are now out of position." "By how much?" you ask. "By several miles. In the morning we can reassess the situation and decide whether we can return to our preferred landing point safely or if we need to pick a new one." You spend the evening packing your gear, so that you can throw it in the runabout first thing in the morning and set off on your mission. In the quiet of your cabin, isolated from the weird and moody drama that has been occurring between Berringer and Meredith lately, you look over your maps one more time. If you have traveled further down the shore to evade whoever was in that red inflatable, it means you are probably now closer to a more dangerous corner of the island, one that is more likely to be populated with Wobans. The concept of three-eyed people still boggles your mind; supposedly they are fierce, with claw-like fingernails to complement their almost beast-like behavior. It all seems too fantastic to believe, like something out of a bad Saturday morning cartoon. When you are ready to call it a night, you fold the maps and slip them into your backpack, safely enclosed in a watertight case. __________________________________________________ > Next page. But when you awake in the morning, your entire backpack is missing. You thoroughly scour your cabin, and then start off on a search of the rest of the yacht. Maybe the crew brought your gear down to the waiting runabout while you were still asleep. "Meredith is missing." It's Berringer, intercepting you on your way to the aft Sun Deck, where the inflatable craft was to be prepared for your departure. "What?" you say. "First thing this morning. The crew had set one of the runabouts out, ready to be launched. When no one was looking, she took off." "The runabout isn't the only thing she took," you say. "Someone took my pack from my quarters." "What was in it?" "Everything — my gear, my supplies, the maps, the satellite phone. Everything." Berringer is seething with anger. "All this time, and she has been plotting against me! I'll bet you she plans to get the Stone of Vul-Kar for herself. I hope she has arranged a ride home, because there is no way I'll ever let her set foot back on this boat." "So does this mean my mission is over?" "Of course not. It just means you must beat that witch to the stone at all costs. The crew is already prepping the second runabout, and I'll have the captain outfit you with whatever we can assemble from the ship's stores." The thought of venturing off into a dangerous territory so underprepared makes you uneasy, but Berringer has become an unstoppable force. Before, this mission was fueled by little more than run-of-the-mill greed, but now with Meredith's apparent defection it is clear that he also has wrath on his mind; it will take more than the simple possession of a purple gem to give him satisfaction. Captain Mark does all that he can to make up for your lost provisions. "Cookie didn't have much by way of dehydrated food, like you requested," he says. "He did have this bag of pepperoni sticks, and he said you can have as many of these apples and bananas as you want." If you're going to be eating pepperoni, there better be plenty of latrines strategically placed across the island. "We have no tents, no sleeping bags on board, and certainly no portable camp stoves like the one you described. But here's a spare tarp we came across, some nylon cord, and a whole box full of matches. We put these in a Ziploc baggie for you to keep them dry." In the end, you are equipped with a mishmash of found items, which are laid out across a table in the crew's mess. Someone contributes half a dozen liter-sized bottles of Aquafina water, although you'd be lucky to be able to carry two. Normally you'd purify water pulled from a stream, but your mini filter was among the items that Meredith stole. "What about a small bowl for boiling water?" you say, but Captain Mark comes back with a saucepan and a tin cup as the best items he could find. One is way heavier and bulkier than what you prefer, and the other is way too small for boiling water in useful quantities. However, since your options are limited you take both. As much of this as possible is crammed into Captain Mark's personal backpack, which is scarcely bigger than a school book bag. The blue tarp has to get tied to the outside of the pack. You can only hope that Meredith is appreciative of all that brand-new REI gear you bought her. Despite its small size, the black backpack feels heavy and uncomfortable when you put it on, and you doubt the fabric was designed for this kind of weight. But it's the best you're going to find under the circumstances, and Walter Berringer seems eager to get you onto the island. He stops you once again on your way back down to the Sun Deck. "Here, take this." He presses a small pistol into your hand. "I know you don't normally carry a gun, but I think we all know this is a special situation." What does he think you're going to do — seek out and murder Meredith Nowitki on his behalf? You're not sure how to respond, so you decide it's best to say nothing. The runabout is a small inflatable boat with seating for six or eight people, and probably not much bigger than that red boat that tried to approach the yacht last night. It is floating in the water just to the rear of the Big Papi, with two crew members standing ready to help you push off. "I know these aren't ideal circumstances," Berringer says, "but I'm sure you've been in worse situations. When you track her down, take note of the look in her eyes. I will be very interested in knowing every detail." It is almost as if that the events of the morning have shifted his priorities, making him more preoccupied with Meredith than the Stone of Vul-Kar. He does realize you're not an assassin, right? One crewman helps you into the runabout, while the second hops in behind you and starts the outboard for you, as if you have never been in a boat before. With the roar of the engine in your ears, you can't hear Berringer's final words to you. You just smile and wave, and then motor away from the yacht. __________________________________________________ > Next page. The water becomes extremely clear the closer you get to shore, like a window onto the ocean floor. However, your focus is the island ahead of you, which appears dark even in broad daylight. There is a long beach in front of you, with a ridgeline rising behind it to the right. None of it looks familiar to you, as this is not the part of the island you spent the last few days memorizing with the maps. For all you know, you are heading straight toward a Woban village. You and Berringer never did verify your new location, and so even if you still had the maps you would only be able to guess at which part of the island you are now approaching. All you know is that the jewel is said to reside in a ruined temple on the highest peak, which sits in a mountainous region on the south side of the island. You do indeed see a peak that matches the description: flat-topped with near-vertical slopes, somewhat like Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Getting to the top of such a mountain should be an adventure in itself, but you can only assume that there is a way up to the temple ruins that is not obvious from afar. It is a long and anxious boat ride to shore, since you have no idea who (or what) else might be listening to the sound of your outboard motor. Nevertheless, you see no sign of movement on the beach ahead of you. Nor do you see the other runabout that Meredith stole. You run the small inflatable boat onto shore, and then hop out and pull it the rest of the way out of the water. With no satellite phone to call for assistance should you need it, this white craft will probably be your only ticket off the island, when the time comes to return to the Big Papi. Looking around, you see quite a few footprints in the sand other than your own, telling you this beach is indeed a well-traveled thoroughfare. This motivates you to pull the runabout all the way into the bushes at the edge of the jungle, where you do your best to hide it. You note that the location of this hiding spot is just to the left of a large palm tree, which leans low over the beach before making a distinctive upwards curve; hopefully this natural landmark will help you find your boat when you return. Then you look around at your surroundings. You intentionally landed close to that ridgeline you saw from the water, with the hope that this would put some distance between you and the nearest Woban village. You also noticed at the time that there seemed to be a pass straight ahead through the hills, which you theorized might be the most direct route to the base of the largest mountain. To get there, you'd have to follow the foot of the ridge up into the foothills for at least three miles, probably longer. The problem is that you have no idea whether any trails lead in that direction; if they do, none start here on the beach, at least. This means there is a good chance you'll have to bushwhack through thick brush to get where you want to go, and that is always a slow and arduous process. The closest thing to a clear trail that you find begins to the right of where you stowed your boat. It leads up a steep and rocky slope, and you can only assume it goes all the way up to the top of the ridgeline. If it happens to follow that ridgeline once it gets there, then it too will lead you toward the foot of the big mountain, where your future wealth awaits. You'd make better time on a trail than you would bushwhacking through the jungle, even if the trail along the ridgeline would be longer. But here's another thing you ought to consider: trails exist because they are used frequently by people — and on this island, the people who most concern you are the Wobans. If you could manage to avoid them as much as possible, you'll be having a good day. Decisions, decisions. While you are pondering your options, you look back out at the ocean. The Big Papi is five nautical miles out from shore, holding its position while it awaits your return. __________________________________________________ > You bushwhack straight toward the pass. The shorter route is the better route, you decide, especially if it means you will be less likely to encounter any natives. The one setback is that your compass is one of the items that Meredith took when she absconded with your backpack. Normally you would set a bearing and follow that until you reached a recognizable landmark, but now you will have nothing but your own sense of direction to guide your way. The jungle vegetation is just as thick as the stuff you encountered back in Hawaii, if not more so. Then it gets much worse. Just a quarter mile from the shoreline you reach a patch of jungle that looks as though it was recently leveled by a typhoon. Strong winds have tossed the trees about like matchsticks, snapping them in half or pulling them up by the roots. The swath of destruction extends as far as you can see, both straight ahead as well as to your left and right, meaning you see no easy way around. The best you can do is push straight through and hope that conditions get better on the other side. But it feels as though you are trapped in a horizontal forest, with downed trees that you must either scramble over or crawl under. And as you venture further into the blowdown, you encounter an explosion of new growth. Often when an opening appears in an otherwise thick forest canopy, the newfound sunlight results in a sudden growth spurt for the young trees that had been lurking in the shadows. The saplings compete with each other in a race to the sky; those that grow tall enough to become canopy trees will probably live longer than those who get trapped in the shade again. You have arrived during the early phase of that race for dominance. The brush is incredibly thick, and you feel like a fly trying to free yourself from a spider's web. If there is an end to the blowdown zone, you are unable to see it. You are unable to see much of anything more than six feet in front of you, for that matter. On the other hand, with all of the thrashing that you're doing, if there is anyone within earshot they must be perfectly aware of your presence. Bushwhacking in these conditions is a completely inelegant way to travel. It takes nearly half an hour to make two hundred feet of forward progress through the downed trees. The typhoon damage is extensive, but it does eventually come to an end — the fallen trees become fewer and farther between, and the underbrush becomes less obnoxious. It is like a button has been pressed and the forest conditions have been reset to what they were when you first got started. You can't believe you called this stuff "thick" at the time; compared to what you just survived, you are now hiking through paradise. Then the unexpected happens: after all that pointless struggle, you stumble across a clear trail. Wide and obviously well used, it comes in on your left and continues forward exactly in the direction you want to go; it is like you have rubbed an enchanted lantern and the genie has granted your wildest wish. With a trail to follow, your pace will be so much swifter. But wait — what's this? You stoop down to examine the muddy surface of the trail a little more closely, and there, plain as day, are two sets of fresh footprints. Bare footprints, made by feet that would wear size fifteen shoes — if Wobans wore such things. You have never seen a member of the island's native population before, but you don't have to be an expert to know only a Woban could have left such tracks. They are pointing forward, meaning that you are following behind the individuals who made them. All you can do is hope they are far enough ahead to be unaware of your presence. Of course, you do have that pistol that Berringer insisted you take, but you're not sure how that will help. For starters, he gave you no additional ammunition, so you can only assume you have a maximum of six rounds. And sure, if you were jumped by two Wobans you might be able to defend yourself by firing an equal number of shots… but that would only draw the attention of even more Wobans. You really wish you had tossed the gun in the ocean before you made landfall, because the only thing it will do is get you killed. Up ahead you see that the trail enters a clearing. You fear at first that you might be approaching a settlement, so you stop and listen for any signs of movement, any signs of people. Nothing but the sounds of the lush forest surround you. So cautiously you step forward, discovering that the opening is nothing more than a small meadow buried deep in the forest. A growth of yellow flowers makes this a place of quiet beauty, and the air is thick with a sweet, balsamic scent. What you fail to see, though, are the two Woban hunters who had stepped to the side of the trail when they heard you coming, and are now lying in wait on each side of the meadow. You have no way of knowing this, but each is armed with a long spear, and each hunter is adept in the use of his weapon. While you are pausing to take a swig of water from one of the Aquafina bottles, and while you are momentarily disarmed by the beauty of this little glade, each Woban hurls his weapon. To them, you are nothing more than an intruder who has been caught trespassing in their territory. Their aim is true, and you fall to the ground. Water pours out of the crushed plastic bottle in your hand, soaking into the soil. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The water becomes extremely clear the closer you get to shore, like a window onto the ocean floor. However, your focus is the island ahead of you, which appears dark even in broad daylight. There is a long beach in front of you, with a ridgeline rising behind it to the right. None of it looks familiar to you, as this is not the part of the island you spent the last few days memorizing with the maps. For all you know, you are heading straight toward a Woban village. You and Berringer never did verify your new location, and so even if you still had the maps you would only be able to guess at which part of the island you are now approaching. All you know is that the jewel is said to reside in a ruined temple on the highest peak, which sits in a mountainous region on the south side of the island. You do indeed see a peak that matches the description: flat-topped with near-vertical slopes, somewhat like Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Getting to the top of such a mountain should be an adventure in itself, but you can only assume that there is a way up to the temple ruins that is not obvious from afar. It is a long and anxious boat ride to shore, since you have no idea who (or what) else might be listening to the sound of your outboard motor. Nevertheless, you see no sign of movement on the beach ahead of you. Nor do you see the other runabout that Meredith stole. You run the small inflatable boat onto shore, and then hop out and pull it the rest of the way out of the water. With no satellite phone to call for assistance should you need it, this white craft will probably be your only ticket off the island, when the time comes to return to the Big Papi. Looking around, you see quite a few footprints in the sand other than your own, telling you this beach is indeed a well-traveled thoroughfare. This motivates you to pull the runabout all the way into the bushes at the edge of the jungle, where you do your best to hide it. You note that the location of this hiding spot is just to the left of a large palm tree, which leans low over the beach before making a distinctive upwards curve; hopefully this natural landmark will help you find your boat when you return. Then you look around at your surroundings. You intentionally landed close to that ridgeline you saw from the water, with the hope that this would put some distance between you and the nearest Woban village. You also noticed at the time that there seemed to be a pass straight ahead through the hills, which you theorized might be the most direct route to the base of the largest mountain. To get there, you'd have to follow the foot of the ridge up into the foothills for at least three miles, probably longer. The problem is that you have no idea whether any trails lead in that direction; if they do, none start here on the beach, at least. This means there is a good chance you'll have to bushwhack through thick brush to get where you want to go, and that is always a slow and arduous process. The closest thing to a clear trail that you find begins to the right of where you stowed your boat. It leads up a steep and rocky slope, and you can only assume it goes all the way up to the top of the ridgeline. If it happens to follow that ridgeline once it gets there, then it too will lead you toward the foot of the big mountain, where your future wealth awaits. You'd make better time on a trail than you would bushwhacking through the jungle, even if the trail along the ridgeline would be longer. But here's another thing you ought to consider: trails exist because they are used frequently by people — and on this island, the people who most concern you are the Wobans. If you could manage to avoid them as much as possible, you'll be having a good day. Decisions, decisions. While you are pondering your options, you look back out at the ocean. The Big Papi is five nautical miles out from shore, holding its position while it awaits your return. __________________________________________________ > You climb the steep trail. The idea of moving swiftly appeals to you most, and so if the trail leading up the steep slope is the only one available, then so be it. By keeping to the high ground, you'll probably also have a better view of your surroundings; one way or the other, traveling along the ridge should prove to be beneficial, even if the trail does not turn out to be as good as you would like. Without any further ado, you strike off. The trail is indeed steep, with scrambles from ledge to ledge at times, and very little vegetation to shade you from the tropical sun. You've seen mountain goat trails that were not unlike this one — although unless goats can fly or build canoes, you doubt there are any on Woban Island. The climb is grueling, and your pack fits you as well as if you were carrying a load of encyclopedias. The heat is oppressive, and all the sweat that is oozing out of your pores makes you feel like a spaghetti strainer. Just fifteen minutes up the hill, you stop and take a long swig out of the first Aquafina bottle. Ten minutes later you are stopping for a second drink. If your day continues like this, you're going to quickly regret not taking all six of the liter bottles that Captain Mark had scrounged up for you. On the other hand, the pauses allow you to enjoy the setting. Under different circumstances — like, if you weren't on a paid gig, or on an island crawling with three-eyed man-beasts eager to kill you on sight — this might be a pleasant day. (And now that you think of it, it might also help if you had all that top-quality gear you bought in Boston. And if you had better prospects for tonight other than a meal of pepperoni sticks while huddling under a blue plastic tarp shelter.) The island itself is beautiful, with miles of seemingly pristine beach below you, and seabirds squabbling noisily for perching rights on a rocky point about half a mile away. There are no buildings of any kind on land, at least not that you can see; if there is a native village or two somewhere out in that expanse of jungle, you see no such thing. The closest thing to a structure is the Big Papi itself, which sits on the ocean like a distant white seagull floating contentedly on the waves. The ridge only rises about four hundred feet above the beach, and so despite the effort required to make the climb it is over relatively soon. Just as you theorized, the trail continues along the crest, through pockets of grass and thickets of small trees. Even in the wooded sections there is very little shade, and so you pass the day exposed to the sun. Heat assaults you from above and below, as it reflects off the rocky terrain. You feel as though you are trekking across an endless parking lot on a sunny day in August. The trail that you are following seems like a long and lonely highway; two hours pass as you follow it toward the foothills, with no signs of any Wobans. But despite all that forward progress, there are reasons to be concerned. You are down to your second Aquafina bottle, meaning you need to start being very careful with your water intake. There are no streams on this arid ridgeline, no places to replenish your supply; the handful of ounces remaining in the clear plastic bottle are all that you possess. And so when the ridge trail begins to descend into a verdant valley where the sound of running water echoes gently off the surrounding hillsides, you start to get excited. __________________________________________________ > Next page. The excitement comes to an abrupt halt the moment you hear voices beside that stream. Knowing that you have no reason to trust anybody you might encounter on this island, you go into instant stealth mode. It sounds like there are several men ahead of you, and although you don't recognize any of the words, the voices are calm. The speakers are merely conversing among themselves, unaware of your presence. You creep forward, finding a place behind a large rock where you can observe the speakers unseen. What you see chills you. There are three men in colorful grass skirts standing in a small clearing beside the small stream, each casually holding a spear that is as long as they are tall. And these men are certainly tall, nearly seven feet so, with muscular bodies. The fingers that grasp the spear shafts are tipped with elongated black nails; those on the index fingers are curved and pointed, as if these people were descended from velociraptors. And on the forehead of each man, directly above the bridge of the nose, a third eye frowns at the world. The Wobans seem to be concerned about something, although you are relieved it's not you. "‘A‘ole hiki ia‘u ke mana‘o hou i ha‘awi hou ke alaka‘i ia makou i ke kuleana kia‘i," one of them says. "Ma hope o ka mea a makou i hana ai ia ia, aia anei kekahi kumu e pono ai ia ia ka lokomaika‘i ia makou?" says the Woban on the right. "‘A‘ole wau ka mea nana i kau i ka nahe i kana ‘au‘au!" the Woban on the left says defensively. "‘A‘ole, aka, ‘o ‘oe kahi me ka mana‘o!" the first one says. "No ke aha i makemake ai ke ali‘i e kia‘i i keia ana? ‘A‘ole e hele kekahi ma ane‘i." "Makemake paha ke ali‘i ia makou e hele." "He naaupo oukou. E hele mai na kanaka ma ane‘i. Ke ‘imi nei na holoholona haole ia Vul-Kar, a alaka‘i ke ana i ka luakini." "No laila makou e ku kia‘i ai a hiki i kahi poina e ke ali‘i no ka makou mea i hana ai." "‘Ae, ‘o ia ko ka makou ho‘opa‘i." You haven't the slightest idea what they're gossiping about, but they seem rather glum about something. Then they go silent, sitting on the ground facing each other. One draws a circle in the dirt with his black talon-like fingernail, and they each take turns idly tossing pebbles into the center, as if they were playing some kind of children's game. Their presence poses a dilemma for you, though. The trail that you have been following cuts straight through this clearing where the three Wobans appear to be waiting for something (or someone). For you to continue following it toward the mountain, you'd have to carefully circle through the jungle to get around them unseen. But then you notice something else interesting: the stream that lured you here appears to emanate from a dark cave in the hillside, just five yards from your hiding spot. There is enough small brush around it that you are pretty sure that you can crawl there unseen. You have no idea where that cave goes, or if it even goes anywhere, but if nothing else it looks like it would provide better cover while you wait for the Wobans to leave. All you know is that you can't stay here. Should the Wobans start moving around, of if another happens to come down the trail, you will be spotted instantly. __________________________________________________ > You circle through the jungle to get around the Wobans. As cool as it might be to explore that cave, that's not what you're here for. This trail seems to lead right where you want to go, and the sooner you can get to the Stone of Vul-Kar and then get off this island, the happier everyone will be. These three Wobans seem distracted enough with their game that it should be easy to get past them, so the best course of action is probably to just sneak through the woods, put the Wobans in your rearview mirror, and continue on your way. You venture out from behind your rock and creep into the woods, following the stream down for a hundred feet or so. Refilling your two Aquafina bottles with clear water from the little stream, you watch and listen for indications that the Wobans have heard you. From here you can't see them too well, but you can hear them well enough. As before, they seem completely unaware of your presence, their conversation focused some aspect of their game. With your water supply replenished, you move on through the woods, using the sounds of the three natives as the center point for your circular route. "‘A‘ole ‘oe ke pa‘ani nei e na lula!" one of them shouts, but you quickly figure out that it's not about you. "‘A‘ole ‘oe e ‘ike i ka mea au e ‘olelo nei. Noho iho ‘oe a pani ‘ia," another one says, and the crisis seems to be over. A moment later, your orbital route around the distracted Wobans brings you back to the trail, and you resume your journey. The problem, though, is that you have apparently picked a rather high-traffic trail to follow into the island interior. Within minutes you come to a prominent junction, with a wide and well-worn path leading left and downhill, and an equally wide and well-worn trail continuing straight ahead and slightly uphill. For the moment you hear no voices, so you continue on the uphill route. But the path is filled with footprints of all sizes — and heading in both directions, as if you've come across a major Woban thoroughfare. Extra caution will be in order. Ironically, you are paying so much attention to the footprints in the muddy surface of the trail that you don't notice the tattooed warrior sneaking up behind you. It is not until he bellows out a loud whoop! that you turn and see him, but by then it is much too late. Four other tattooed, three-eyed men emerge from the brush beside the trail, each with an enormous spear pointed directly at you. "Ua loa‘a ia makou kekahi mea ‘aihue ‘e a‘e!" the largest of them says. "Hiki mai lakou i ka makou ‘aina e like me kahi ma‘i ma‘i o na pepeke." "‘O keia ka lua a ka makou i hopu ai i keia la!" a fellow behind you says, sounding almost boastful. "‘Ae, e ‘olu‘olu nui ke ali‘i i ka makou hana," the first Woban says. None of this makes even the slightest sense to you, but you can figure out enough to see that you're about to be taken prisoner. Now that you're seeing them up close, the Wobans are huge; the smallest among them still rises head and shoulders above you, with sharp-tipped spears that are longer than the men are tall. Even without the third eye on their forehead these people would be intimidating; whatever evolutionary purpose else it might serve, the extra eye effectively triples the menace behind their glares. Physically, you'd be outmatched by just one of these fellows; you have no doubts they could eviscerate you with ease with those "talons" they call hands. All that extra body mass that makes them so much larger must be invested in muscle, bone, and tendon. You are not going to best anybody here in a footrace or pin one down in a half nelson. Maybe trying to reason with them is an option, though, so you give that a shot. "Look," you say, "I come in peace. All I want is to climb a mountain—" Someone strikes you from behind, and you slump to the ground unconscious. __________________________________________________ > Next page. When you come to, you are lying on a dirt floor with a throbbing ache in the back of your head. Getting up seems highly ambitious given your groggy state, so instead you flop over and lie on your back. From what you can gather, you are at the bottom of a pit, with an oblong view of a small patch of sky a good twelve or sixteen feet above you. You have no memory of how you got here, but that's not surprising considering the force of the blow you received. Nor is it a mystery how you got to this place: the Wobans knocked you out and dragged you here. But where is "here"? What do your captors want, and how might you get free? "I see you're awake," a voice says from the foggy corner of your consciousness. "You're already better off than the last person they dumped in here." It takes a moment to realize you are not listening to a conversation between other people, but that there is someone else in this pit who is talking to you. You try to lift your head and look around, but that just causes more pain. "Here, let me help." A man rises from the shadows and steps over toward you. He puts his hands under your arms and lifts you back against the wall, propping you up into a sitting position. It is more than you feel capable of doing yourself at the moment. "The Wobans seem to be doing some housekeeping, I think, and we're the rubbish. 'Make Woban Island Great Again,' that kind of thing." "Water?" you say. "Where is my water bottle?" "Not here, I'm afraid. No food, either. Just you, me, and a dead woman." It's unfortunate about the water. Sitting helps, though, so you focus on breathing deeply and trying to center your perception on recognizable objects. Your boots. You see your boots, way out there at the end of your legs. Your legs are muddy, with red marks where you got scraped up on something. You have no recollection of that. Beyond your legs… someone else's legs. The man who helped you. There is not much light in this pit, but you can make out a wiry figure, slender but athletic, like that of a runner or something. Not a runner — scratch that. He is wearing a black harness that encompasses his torso and upper legs. He is a climber. "Thank you anyway," you say. "Hey, no problem," the rock climber says. "I could go for a long drink of water myself." A moment passes while you sit quietly, waiting for your head to clear. The man fidgets, though, like someone not accustomed to silence. "What's your name?" he says, but you choose not to answer; you're not sure you are in any position to provide an accurate answer yet. "I'm Gary Gaffney, and right now I'm wishing I never heard of Woban Island. I think maybe I need a better travel agent. How about you? What do you think of the hospitality here? By the looks of the way they roughed you up, I'm guessing your Trip Advisor review will be fun to read. I just hope I get to read it someday." "How long… have you been here?" you say. "Not much longer than you. I was here for some epic rock climbing. You see, there was this broad in Boston who hired me to, uh, get some pictures of the island. I'd tell you more about that, but maybe the less you know the better. For your own sake, I mean. But anyway, yeah, I came to climb. There is some awesome rock on this island, I'll say that much. You should see the highest peak — sheer cliffs on every side. It's a thing of beauty. I know some guys who like to free-climb Yosemite who would give their left nut for a shot at this place. The problem is, you know, the Wobans. These guys will take more than just a left nut." "Stone of Vul-Kar," you utter weakly. "Did you find it?" "So you know about that? I should've known. It's a small island, after all. I'll bet you anything that Mrs. Adventure here knew all about it, too. She must've thought the Wobans would be so impressed by her pith helmet they would respect her well-dressed professionalism and leave her be." "Pith helmet?" "Yeah, you should see this thing. At first I thought the British East India Company was making a comeback. Judging by the way it's split open, though, it didn't do her much good. I think she was still alive when they tossed her down here — barely. But she was in rough shape, and the crash landing didn't do her any favors." "E ho‘ike ‘ia ka mea‘ai i ke Ali‘i!" Wobans are gathering around the top of the pit, preparing to drop ropes down. "It looks like our court date has arrived," Gaffney says. "Time to appear before the local magistrate." __________________________________________________ > Next page. Three Wobans descend into the pit, each taking one of the prisoners: you, Gary, and the dead woman with the pith helmet. The body is hauled away once you reach the top, but your captors seem to have other plans for you and Gary. The two of you are shoved toward the center of a large Woban village. It is late in the day, and the villagers seem to be preparing for a huge bonfire; there is a great heap of wood stacked near the center of town. Straw huts surround you, occupied by men, women, and children who for the most part wear only grass skirts and a few other simple adornments. Their village is situated beautifully in a valley high in the mountains; you can see forested slopes in three directions, each with its own cascading stream catching the evening light. Above it all rises the island's highest peak, an impressive tower of rock that looms hundreds of feet above the valley. At the sight of it, your purpose here comes back to you. You remember now that the mountain is your destination; you were hired to find a way to the top and retrieve an item of extreme value. How ironic that the Wobans have helped you complete a portion of that journey. "Didn't I tell you? I could spend the rest of my life here putting up new routes," Gary says, admiring the view of the mountain. Your head is starting to clear, and you are coming to realize that your situation is dire. These people are known cannibals; if they are inviting you to a party, it's because you're to be the main entrée. As you are marched through the village, you sense the residents looking you up and down. Those extra eyes are no longer scowling; now they look eager, like they are assessing how well you might taste. The better to see you with, my dear. The heart of the village is a big open space, with the pile of wood near the center, and a raised platform of earth upon which stands the largest hut of all. A man and a woman are seated before the hut, regally poised in feathered robes and wearing feathered headpieces. You and Gary are brought before the mound and forced to kneel. "At least they haven't lost our luggage." Gary nods his head to the left, and there before the mound is a small hut with an open entrance. Inside it you can make out a large backpack adorned with colorful rope and carabiners. You assume your modest book bag is in there, too. The packs seem unmolested, as if the Wobans have no interest in items they can't understand — or perhaps fear things they think are enchanted with dark magic. The king in his feathered robe stands up and approaches the forward edge of the earthen platform like an actor on a stage. He looks over the two of you, all three eyes moving in unison as if assessing merchandise. "Ua li‘ili‘i loa ka wahine," he says, his stentorian voice uttering words you have no way of understanding. "‘A‘ole lawa kana ‘i‘o e kako‘o ia makou. Pono makou e loa‘a hou na ‘i‘o." The king gestures to one of the guards, who first forces Gary to his feet, and then you. Your talkative rock-climbing friend senses the gravity of this situation and remains quiet. The guard steps in front of Gary, eyes him up and down, and then does the same to you. When he's done, he grabs you by the back of the neck and shoves you a step closer to the king, who in turn subjects you to the most intense glare of your life. You can see now that in a staring contest with a Woban, you will always be outmatched on a three-to-two basis. "Nau e koho!" he barks at you. "E koho i ka la au e makemake ai e make: I keia la? Apopo?" You stand there waiting for him to continue; the king stands before you as if waiting for something from you as well. "I keia la? Apopo?" he says more slowly. "I think he's asking you a question," Gary says. "I get that," you say. "I don't understand what, though." "‘A‘ole hiki i keia holoholona ke ‘olelo!" the king bellows to the gathered villagers, who respond with nervous laughter. Then he settles his eyes back on you. "He ninau ma‘alahi ia. E koho i ka la au e makemake ai e make: I keia la? Apopo?" His efforts to slowly enunciate the words aren't helping your ability to comprehend them. The best you can guess is that you are being asked to choose between two options. "I keia la? Apopo?" the king says again, but this time he is stepping backward to rejoin his wife. "I keia la or apopo?" you say. "Ke pihoihoi nei keia," the king says, once more gesturing to the guard. The warrior grabs you by your shirt. "I keia la! Apopo! E koho i keia manawa!" His words land like spittle on your forehead. "Just choose one," Gary says. "Before they get mad. It's either 'i keia la' or 'apopo.' Your guess is as good as mine which is the right answer." It's frustrating being forced to make a choice when you have no way of knowing what the consequences will be. __________________________________________________ > You keia la. "All right, I'll choose 'i keia la,' although it really makes no difference to me," you say. "I keia la?" the guard says. "Yes, i keia la." The guard turns triumphantly to the king. "Ua koho ka holoholona ke make i keia la!" "A laila e lawe e luku ‘ia," the king says dismissively. "Well that seems to settle things," Gary says. But the Woban guard grabs you by both shoulders and roughly marches you back into the cluster of huts. Everybody seemed content with your choice, so you have no idea what you've done wrong. "Hey, i keia la! I keia la!" you say, but the guard only seems more irritated with you and grabs your shoulders even more tightly. His long claw-like fingernails are piercing your clothing and causing you much pain. You can feel blood dripping down your sides. The villagers seem even more interested in you now than before, and some step forward as if to inspect you. But your guard acts as if he's on a tight schedule. "Ma waho o ke ala!" he shouts at them, and the people move sheepishly aside. At the guard's forceful direction, you turn a corner and march directly toward one of the huts. At last you are about to find out what it is you have chosen. But your blood chills when the most massive Woban you've seen yet emerges from the straw shelter. He folds his arms as he watches your approach, and against his left shoulder you can see he is holding a short but sturdy stick. The wood is polished from years of use, and the blunt end is caked with dried blood. Only then do you start to grasp the significance of "i keia la," as you approach the man with the cudgel: you have chosen to be tonight's dinner, and you are being led like a lamb to the slaughterhouse. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Three Wobans descend into the pit, each taking one of the prisoners: you, Gary, and the dead woman with the pith helmet. The body is hauled away once you reach the top, but your captors seem to have other plans for you and Gary. The two of you are shoved toward the center of a large Woban village. It is late in the day, and the villagers seem to be preparing for a huge bonfire; there is a great heap of wood stacked near the center of town. Straw huts surround you, occupied by men, women, and children who for the most part wear only grass skirts and a few other simple adornments. Their village is situated beautifully in a valley high in the mountains; you can see forested slopes in three directions, each with its own cascading stream catching the evening light. Above it all rises the island's highest peak, an impressive tower of rock that looms hundreds of feet above the valley. At the sight of it, your purpose here comes back to you. You remember now that the mountain is your destination; you were hired to find a way to the top and retrieve an item of extreme value. How ironic that the Wobans have helped you complete a portion of that journey. "Didn't I tell you? I could spend the rest of my life here putting up new routes," Gary says, admiring the view of the mountain. Your head is starting to clear, and you are coming to realize that your situation is dire. These people are known cannibals; if they are inviting you to a party, it's because you're to be the main entrée. As you are marched through the village, you sense the residents looking you up and down. Those extra eyes are no longer scowling; now they look eager, like they are assessing how well you might taste. The better to see you with, my dear. The heart of the village is a big open space, with the pile of wood near the center, and a raised platform of earth upon which stands the largest hut of all. A man and a woman are seated before the hut, regally poised in feathered robes and wearing feathered headpieces. You and Gary are brought before the mound and forced to kneel. "At least they haven't lost our luggage." Gary nods his head to the left, and there before the mound is a small hut with an open entrance. Inside it you can make out a large backpack adorned with colorful rope and carabiners. You assume your modest book bag is in there, too. The packs seem unmolested, as if the Wobans have no interest in items they can't understand — or perhaps fear things they think are enchanted with dark magic. The king in his feathered robe stands up and approaches the forward edge of the earthen platform like an actor on a stage. He looks over the two of you, all three eyes moving in unison as if assessing merchandise. "Ua li‘ili‘i loa ka wahine," he says, his stentorian voice uttering words you have no way of understanding. "‘A‘ole lawa kana ‘i‘o e kako‘o ia makou. Pono makou e loa‘a hou na ‘i‘o." The king gestures to one of the guards, who first forces Gary to his feet, and then you. Your talkative rock-climbing friend senses the gravity of this situation and remains quiet. The guard steps in front of Gary, eyes him up and down, and then does the same to you. When he's done, he grabs you by the back of the neck and shoves you a step closer to the king, who in turn subjects you to the most intense glare of your life. You can see now that in a staring contest with a Woban, you will always be outmatched on a three-to-two basis. "Nau e koho!" he barks at you. "E koho i ka la au e makemake ai e make: I keia la? Apopo?" You stand there waiting for him to continue; the king stands before you as if waiting for something from you as well. "I keia la? Apopo?" he says more slowly. "I think he's asking you a question," Gary says. "I get that," you say. "I don't understand what, though." "‘A‘ole hiki i keia holoholona ke ‘olelo!" the king bellows to the gathered villagers, who respond with nervous laughter. Then he settles his eyes back on you. "He ninau ma‘alahi ia. E koho i ka la au e makemake ai e make: I keia la? Apopo?" His efforts to slowly enunciate the words aren't helping your ability to comprehend them. The best you can guess is that you are being asked to choose between two options. "I keia la? Apopo?" the king says again, but this time he is stepping backward to rejoin his wife. "I keia la or apopo?" you say. "Ke pihoihoi nei keia," the king says, once more gesturing to the guard. The warrior grabs you by your shirt. "I keia la! Apopo! E koho i keia manawa!" His words land like spittle on your forehead. "Just choose one," Gary says. "Before they get mad. It's either 'i keia la' or 'apopo.' Your guess is as good as mine which is the right answer." It's frustrating being forced to make a choice when you have no way of knowing what the consequences will be. __________________________________________________ > You apopo. "Um, let's go with apopo," you say. "I can't really see what the difference is, though." "Apopo?" the guard says. "Yes, apopo." The guard turns triumphantly to the king. "Ua koho ka holoholona e make i ‘apopo, hiki ia makou ke ‘ai i kana hoa i keia po!" "Ua lo‘ihi ka manawa i ho‘oholo ai," the king says. "Lawe i ka holoholona ma mua o ka ho‘ololi i kona no‘ono‘o." He gestures to a guard, who then grabs you by the shoulders again. "E ho‘omakaukau i keia holoholona no makou e ‘ai ai." This time the king is pointing to Gary, and as another guard grabs him some of the villagers step forward to get a closer look at him. "Wait, what's going on?" Gary says. "I am not 'apopo'! I think you're confusing me for somebody else!" "Ka ne‘e, holoholona!" your guard bellows into your ear. You're not sure what you have just set in motion by choosing "apopo," but you and Gary are pulled in opposite directions. The last you see the rock climber, he is being steered through the crowd and into the cluster of huts. Meanwhile, your guard forces you back toward the pit on the edge of town. It is at least twelve feet deep, but rather than waiting to get pushed in headfirst you jump in on your own power. The landing winds you, and your momentum sends you sprawling face-first into one of the earthen walls that contain you. "E ‘ike kakou ia ‘oe i ka la ‘apopo!" the guard says before disappearing from view, leaving you alone at the bottom of the pit. Without Gary to fill up this desolate space with his friendly chatter, it seems so much more empty and forlorn. You are surrounded by vertical walls of hard-packed dirt, with nothing that you could grab onto for the purposes of extracting yourself. Gary's metaphor about being the rubbish seems apt: you feel like you have just been discarded into the waster paper bin. Although on second thought, perhaps the more accurate analogy is that this is the Woban's food pantry. After a moment passes at the bottom of this pit, when you figure out that you are not in immediate danger, it dawns on you what just happened up above when you were standing before the Woban king. That choice you were forced to make — apparently "apopo" meant you were selecting Gary for tonight's meal, and saving yourself for some other occasion. This leaves you not only alone as you huddle in the dark at the bottom of the pit, but terribly guilt-stricken. The fact that you had no idea what you were choosing at the time doesn't change the consequences of your choice. You feel as sickened with yourself as you would if you were the one making the killing blow. For all intents and purposes, you are complicit in Gary's murder at the hands of these beastly cannibals. At least you feel buffered from the grisly celebrations that are being conducted a short distance away. Down here, the tall earthen walls muffle most of the sounds coming from the village, and all you can see is the light of the bonfires illuminating the trees directly above the pit. The details are left to your imagination. So instead of imagining, you try to occupy yourself by exploring every cubic inch of your prison, or at least those portions within arm's reach, starting with the floor. The space is about eight feet long and six feet wide, and if you tried to dig at the walls you'd either wear your fingertips down to bloody stumps or trigger a cave-in. Everywhere you turn, you are facing dirt. Hamlet was wrong; being bound in a nutshell does not make you feel like a master of infinite space. One end of the pit feels damp, but not with water; you reel back when you realize that this was where the dead woman with the pith helmet had fallen. You have no idea who she was, and you never did get a good look at her. Gary was correct, though: the pith helmet was a rather cartoonish fashion statement. Groping around the edges, you come to the spot where you're pretty sure your rock-climbing friend was sitting when you first awoke. Expecting to find nothing but more dirt, your fingers brush past something metallic pushed up against the wall — tucked in so tightly that you have to dig the object out a bit. You then discover there are two objects, each about eight inches long and wedge-shaped. Holding them up, you can see that they are rock-climbing pitons. Clearly they were left here by Gary, who must've had them in his pockets when the Wobans first tossed him down here. He then hid them in the dirt where he had been sitting, knowing they would be useful in escaping this prison. All he needed was to wait for the right time — which for him never came. And so now it is you who are sitting alone at the bottom of the pit, holding the two pitons in your hands and examining the walls above you. Even with the pitons to wedge into the dirt, it is not going to be easy climbing your way out of here. But considering how unimaginable the price of failure will be, you see no other alternative. __________________________________________________ > Next page. The trick will be to wait for the Woban festival to end. The only thing you can do is wait patiently for the glow of the bonfire to fade away, and the sound of voices to grow silent. Knowing you're only going to get one shot at this, the risk of getting caught trying to flee while there are still Wobans around who might see you is too great. You have no idea what the custom is here, but you hope that eventually even a three-eyed, seven-foot giant must sleep, and that after the party is over the people of the village will return to their huts for a night of contented sleep. It is a long and agonizing wait, but your wishes to eventually come to pass. Keeping track of the time on your watch, the Wobans begin to lose steam well before midnight. Good — they're not night owls, living it up into the wee hours of the morning. The light in the trees directly above you grows dim, and slowly the sound of communal conviviality devolves into isolated banter. You momentarily panic when voices pass so close to the pit you can make out individual voices: "He ahaaina nui ia." "‘Ae, ‘o ka ‘i‘o ka tastiest a makou i lo‘ihi ai." But when they pass, you can detect nothing but darkness and silence from the bottom of the pit. A sense of caution tells you to wait a little while longer to be sure — there may be other Woban voices you can't hear way down here — but you've been trapped so long in this pit that you can't sit still any longer. With a piton in each hand, you reach as high as you can and thrust the wedges into the earthen wall. There is a trickle of dirt from each impact, but the pitons hold as you lift yourself up. Immediately you can feel the stress this going to place on your upper arm muscles, so you kick at the wall with the toes of your boots. With some effort they carve out a slight toehold, letting you stand a short distance above the floor. A moment later you pull the right piton out of the wall, reach up, jam it in, and pull yourself up another few inches. Next you do the same with the left piton. In this method, progress is made by a factor of inches. Your biceps are burning, and your fingers feel bruised as they tightly grip the small steel wedges — but this momentary discomfort is far better than the alternative. So rest on your toeholds when you can, and inch your way upward so that you may live to see another day. The village is indeed dark when you are first able to peep over the rim. This is good, because at least there will be no witnesses to this graceless final maneuver to pull yourself over the top. You first hoist your torso onto the level ground, your feet still dangling in the maw of the pit. Then you swing one leg up and roll over, above ground but extremely worn from the effort. You try and let go of the pitons, but you have been gripping them so tightly and for so long that your hands are locked into position around them. Begrudgingly your fingers open slightly and the pitons slip away. You can see the red indentations they have left on your fingers and palms. It takes a few minutes to work some life into your arms and hands. They have done a yeoman's service tonight, and now it's time to throw the rest of your body into your escape effort. You stand up from your position beside the pit, flexing your fingers to try and restore movement. Below you are the two pitons, right where you dropped them. Your first impulse is to pick them back up and keep them as souvenirs of your epic climb to freedom, but instead you kick them back into the pit. You probably lack the articulation to grasp them and place them in your pocket anyway, and the next occupant of this pit will probably need them as much as you did. Pay it forward, as they say. So now you are standing on your own two feet, with nothing but a dark village before you and not a Woban in sight. All you have to do is slip into the jungle and put as much distance as you can between you and this place. But a thought has been nagging at you for a while now: Gary the rock climber, and the fact that he had just completed an "epic climb." He said that he had been hired to take pictures, but what if like you his real purpose was to claim the Stone of Vul-Kar? Where else would he have climbed other than that main summit? If this is true, the gem that you seek is no longer in some ancient temple, but right here in the village. Therefore despite your sense of self-preservation, which wants you to leave this place immediately, you creep toward the huts, back toward the center of town where hours ago you uttered the fateful word apopo. You hear snoring in the huts that you pass, the sounds of people shifting in their sleep, incoherent mutterings in the dark. If you are going to do the exact opposite of what common sense says you should be doing, then you might as well do it quickly. So instead of creeping, you shift gears and jog toward that small shelter near the king's "palace." The wood pile is now greatly reduced in size, and there is a smoldering heap of coals and embers. The hut you are seeking is just as you remember it, and there is Gary's pack with its ropes and carabiners, visible in the dim light of the setting moon. You open up the top, and the first thing you see is a purple crystal. __________________________________________________ > Next Page. So this is the Stone of Vul-Kar? It is certainly a large and hefty crystal, but more like a hunk of colored quartz than a priceless gem. But hey, it's Walter Berringer's money, and he can spend it on what he chooses. Right now you are just grateful for Gary Gaffney doing all the hard work for you, sparing you the need to climb the mountain. He deserved a better fate than what he got. You have nothing to carry it with, though, so you turn to see if your borrowed book bag is in here too. But what you find is even better: your brand-new green REI backpack, the exact same one that Meredith stole. It looks a little scuffed up, but otherwise it is still in good shape. You open a side pocket and find a six-inch knife that you've had since forever, and the folded-up military maps that Berringer procured back on Oahu. This is how you know beyond a doubt that this really is your own backpack, and not just someone else's look-alike. But that means…. You never got a good look at the woman in the pith helmet, but now with your stolen pack back in your possession, it makes sense that you had briefly shared the bottom of the pit with Meredith's broken body. You feel a chill go through you at the thought of it, but your employer will probably be pleased to hear the news. So you place the Stone of Vul-Kar in your own pack and prepare to embark on your return journey. Meredith messed up all the strap settings, but that is easily rectified. What a doubly awesome discovery! You are reunited with your gear, and your mission is a success! Now it's just a matter of getting out of here. However, that might be easier said than done. You are, after all, alone and in the dark of night, on an unknown part of the island. The quarter-moon will set soon, and when that happens you will have to fish out your headlamp if you don't want to grope your way through the lightless jungle. The Wobans must maintain several trails leading out of this village, but where do they go? Which one leads to safety, and not just into another trap? The sound of moving water behind you catches your attention, and you turn to see a wide path leading down a bank. It brings you in a few hundred feet to the side of a wide stream — probably the combined output of those three waterfalls that you saw earlier, back when you and Gary were being led to an audience with the Woban king. This is interesting; all streams on this island logically must flow to the ocean, and the ocean is where the Big Papi is patiently waiting for your return. Therefore you have just found your way off the island! Even if this stream flows to the opposite coastline, all you need to do is make a quick call on the satellite phone to arrange a pick-up with Berringer. The trail seems to turn and follow the small river downstream, right where you want to go. But then you notice that what you assumed was a log lying on the bank is actually a dugout canoe — a small craft for use on a small stream. This almost seems even better than the trail! Considering your poor luck so far following the Wobans' trail network, maybe you would fare better on the water. Sooner or later the Wobans are going to come looking for you, and you'll be harder to track if you aren't leaving footprints all over the place. But who knows how navigable this stream is? The trail might lead you to more Wobans, but at least it will be easier to find your way. __________________________________________________ > You take the canoe. The last time you tried following a trail on this island, it led you straight into the predicament that you are now trying to escape. So if nothing else, the canoe seems attractive just for the sake of variety it offers. But more than that, you expect the canoe will allow you to put greater distance between you and the people who want to make you their next supper. And when it comes to avoiding cannibals, distance is a good thing. The canoe is upside-down on the grassy bank, so the first thing you do is flip it over. From what you can tell in the dim light, it was made from a single log hollowed out by fire. There is no seat, so you assume the occupant is expected to kneel on the bottom, using the pole tucked inside to steer and propel the craft against the current. It is big enough to hold only a lone occupant, which suits your purposes just fine; you assume this is someone's fishing boat, and you could care less what they think about you taking it. You stuff the backpack into the rear of the boat, slide the log hull into the water, grab the pole, and then gingerly step into the canoe. It wobbles at first, but seems more stable once you're inside. From what you can make out, there is a long section of stillwater here, a place where the river is calm like a linear pond. The mountains are silhouettes against the starry sky, and you can hear the distant waterfalls. That is not the direction you want to go, so you point the canoe downstream, where no hills block the horizon. That way lies the most direct route to the coast. There is a slight current, so you don't need to push very hard with the pole to put the canoe in motion. Mostly you just need to steer, shoving the pole into the water until it hits the bottom, and then giving it a good push. You have no idea how long this stillwater extends, although you doubt it goes very far; the river must get rougher as it tumbles its way out of the mountains and down toward the ocean. The question is, how much rougher does it get? An answer to that question comes soon enough. The current becomes swifter just minutes after you set off, and you can hear rapids up ahead. Considering that it is nighttime on an unfamiliar waterway, it seems prudent to land the canoe and seek your refuge on shore. But you've only just started; you didn't haul your way out of that pit only to huddle in the dark just a few hundred yards away from the village. So far this stream seems manageable, and you'd prefer to take all the distance it can give you before you call it a night. But the current is only just starting to pick up steam, and soon you are getting buffeted against rocks you can't even see in the dark. OK, so this is starting to get too intense. You try and push yourself to shore with the pole, but at first you can't reach bottom. Then it gets wedged in something in the water, and the next thing you know the canoe is spun around backwards. You clutch onto the pole as dearly as you did the pitons, but the river's current is very insistent. Given that the strength in your arms has long since been spent, there is little you can do to improve your situation. And when the pole snaps in half…. Now you have no ability to control yourself, no ability to see where you're going, and no knowledge of what lies ahead on this river. So maybe the canoe wasn't such a good idea. The waves are getting bigger, and you are getting drenched in spray. Perhaps you should consider yourself fortunate that the canoe is still upright. You resolve to get out of this thing as soon as you get kicked out of the current and drift to shore — hopefully before you reach the source of that unnerving roar ahead of you, which is getting louder and louder by the second. But the current doesn't cooperate. It pushes you over the edge of a tall waterfall, which plunges over volcanic rocks into a boulder-filled pool below. Both you and the jewel are lost forever. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>So this is the Stone of Vul-Kar? It is certainly a large and hefty crystal, but more like a hunk of colored quartz than a priceless gem. But hey, it's Walter Berringer's money, and he can spend it on what he chooses. Right now you are just grateful for Gary Gaffney doing all the hard work for you, sparing you the need to climb the mountain. He deserved a better fate than what he got. You have nothing to carry it with, though, so you turn to see if your borrowed book bag is in here too. But what you find is even better: your brand-new green REI backpack, the exact same one that Meredith stole. It looks a little scuffed up, but otherwise it is still in good shape. You open a side pocket and find a six-inch knife that you've had since forever, and the folded-up military maps that Berringer procured back on Oahu. This is how you know beyond a doubt that this really is your own backpack, and not just someone else's look-alike. But that means…. You never got a good look at the woman in the pith helmet, but now with your stolen pack back in your possession, it makes sense that you had briefly shared the bottom of the pit with Meredith's broken body. You feel a chill go through you at the thought of it, but your employer will probably be pleased to hear the news. So you place the Stone of Vul-Kar in your own pack and prepare to embark on your return journey. Meredith messed up all the strap settings, but that is easily rectified. What a doubly awesome discovery! You are reunited with your gear, and your mission is a success! Now it's just a matter of getting out of here. However, that might be easier said than done. You are, after all, alone and in the dark of night, on an unknown part of the island. The quarter-moon will set soon, and when that happens you will have to fish out your headlamp if you don't want to grope your way through the lightless jungle. The Wobans must maintain several trails leading out of this village, but where do they go? Which one leads to safety, and not just into another trap? The sound of moving water behind you catches your attention, and you turn to see a wide path leading down a bank. It brings you in a few hundred feet to the side of a wide stream — probably the combined output of those three waterfalls that you saw earlier, back when you and Gary were being led to an audience with the Woban king. This is interesting; all streams on this island logically must flow to the ocean, and the ocean is where the Big Papi is patiently waiting for your return. Therefore you have just found your way off the island! Even if this stream flows to the opposite coastline, all you need to do is make a quick call on the satellite phone to arrange a pick-up with Berringer. The trail seems to turn and follow the small river downstream, right where you want to go. But then you notice that what you assumed was a log lying on the bank is actually a dugout canoe — a small craft for use on a small stream. This almost seems even better than the trail! Considering your poor luck so far following the Wobans' trail network, maybe you would fare better on the water. Sooner or later the Wobans are going to come looking for you, and you'll be harder to track if you aren't leaving footprints all over the place. But who knows how navigable this stream is? The trail might lead you to more Wobans, but at least it will be easier to find your way. __________________________________________________ > You take the trail. This is no time to be taking chances with unknowns in the dark. You didn't work so hard to climb your way out of the pit just to risk getting drowned in some rapids. Besides, the strength in your arms is pretty much spent, and you're not sure how much use they would be when it comes to paddling a canoe. You are better off sticking to land, so you sketch out in your mind a rough plan to get down this trail as far as you can, find a place to take cover and get some sleep, and then reassess your situation in daylight. It looks like the trail leading down the river is not too wide, suggesting that maybe you have lucked out and stumbled across one of the less well-traveled routes this time. Before you go too far, you fumble through your backpack, hoping Meredith didn't move your headlamp. It was in one of the upper pockets the last you saw it. Your hand feels several empty Clif Bar wrappers at first, but then it settles on the elastic band of the headlamp. You have no intentions of turning it on so close to the Woban village, but you do want to have it handy. After putting the pack back on, you set off down the trail. It keeps close to the small river at first, which you can hear gurgling on your right, even if you can't always see it in the dark. There is one spot where the trail passes a large opening on the bank; you suppose the view must be stellar in the daylight, but now it's just "stellar" in the sense that you can see a sky full of stars above the calm water. The mountains you saw earlier are now inky silhouettes. But you are not here to go sightseeing. You rush down the trail, with the river growing louder as you continue. Within minutes of passing the canoe you begin to hear splashes in the dark, suggesting you are no longer following a calm waterway, but a rugged and wild mountain stream. It's hard to imagine how useful the canoe would be here. The terrain is getting more rugged too; after almost tripping over the fifth unseen rock, you concede to the reality of your situation and flip on the headlamp. Hopefully there are no Wobans around to see this unnatural beam of light you're about to cast about their jungle. It's a good thing that you did, though, because the trail is now going down an increasingly steep slope, with more roots and rocks in your way than you suspected. There is also a distinct roar somewhere up ahead, suggesting that you are nearing a powerful cataract. Indeed, a few minutes later you reach the top of a precipitous drop in the terrain, where both the river and the trail descend a massive rock ledge that must span the width of the valley. For the river, this means a waterfall of at least fifty feet, ending with a plunge into a boulder-filled pool. The trail around the falls isn't less steep by any means. Rather than the free-fall made by the water, your route is a slower and carefully-controlled descent down a series of ledges — which might even appear like a giant staircase if you were, say, sixty feet tall. This is certainly a more extreme hike then you would normally prefer to make at [checking wristwatch] 12:48 A.M., and you would be more than happy to find that hiding spot any time now. The problem is, though, that when you reach the bottom of the ledges, the trail continues steeply down a rocky slope. Even if you did find a spot to stop, you'd probably go a-tumbling down the hill if you fell asleep in a place like this. So you continue to work your way off the mountain. Despite your downhill direction, it is still a very laborious effort due to the rocks in your way that make your footing very unreliable; one misstep and you'll go sliding on your butt to a very painful landing. There is no way you could have successfully negotiated this terrain without the aid of the headlamp — although at this point you can't even tell if you're still on the trail. For all you know, the trail made a turn you didn't see, and now you're proceeding in some random direction. But then, as you near what might be the bottom of this long and treacherous slope, your heart stops when you see another light ahead through the trees. For a second you think it's just the light of your own headlamp reflecting off the water, but that can't be; with all of the meanderings to avoid the steepest parts of the slope, you have wandered some distance away from the river. Then as you scrutinize the phenomenon a bit more closely, you see two people sitting around a small campfire. You can forgive yourself for not making the identification sooner, as there are quite a few trees between you and the campsite, and this is the last place you'd expect to find backpackers — not that these people are likely to be your average weekend warriors. You immediately turn off your headlamp, but it's too late: the other people turn on their headlamps and come rushing toward you. "Who's there?" You have to admit, you are relieved to hear English instead of Wobani, but nevertheless you remain on high alert. It's hard to imagine encountering anyone helpful on this island. The beams of light cast by their two headlamps quickly zero in on you. "You're in an awful hurry to get somewhere," the same voice says. "And might I add, why are you coming down the mountain? Most everybody else here is trying to get up it." What's that supposed to mean? Have these two mysterious night lurkers figured out just by circumstance that you have the Stone of Vul-Kar in your possession? Or was that some kind of an attempt at humor? __________________________________________________ > You stay and talk. So here's the thing: this has been a really long day, and you are really tired — so tired, in fact, that you can't really tell if this person just made a veiled threat or a weak joke. Neither individual happens to be pointing a weapon at you, and that's more than you can say of anyone else you've met on this island. "I've been running from the Wobans," you say. "Wobans? Where?" the first man says. With his headlamp on, it's hard to get a good look at him, but you can see that he is short, dressed in a green-checked shirt with brown trousers, wears round glasses, and has the beginnings of a dark beard along his neck and chin. "Right up this trail. Maybe another mile." "They aren't coming after you, are they?" the larger man says. If you didn't know any better, you would guess that he himself was a Woban, in terms of his physical size and dress. Because of the blinding glow of his headlight you can't count the number of eyes, but the grass skirt and tattooed torso make you feel intimidated by his presence. "I really, really hope not," you say. "I mean, are you sure though?" the man with the glasses says. "If you're leading the Wobans straight to us…." "I don't know," you say. "Probably not. The entire village was asleep when I snuck away." "An entire village?" the tall man in the grass skirt says. You shield your eyes and see that he indeed only has two eyes. Still, you keep your distance. "Yeah, there were hundreds of Wobans. They had taken three of us prisoner. So far as I know they… they ate the other two people, a woman and a guy. For some reason they were saving me for something else." "That's horrific!" the short man says. "And you said they were asleep when you got away?" "Yes." "Well they still might come looking for you, and I don't want to be here when they come. Ligru, do you think maybe we should put out the fire and move our camp further into the bush?" "That might be a good idea, sir," the tall man says. Could it be he's an Auri, from the next island over? From what you recall, the Auris were said to be very similar to Wobans in stature, but lacked the third eye. But for a member of a tribe that was first contacted just a few years ago, his English is remarkably solid. "Then let's do it, my friend." You're not sure, but you think you might have just fallen in with this duo for the night, and so you follow them over to their little campfire. But instead of extinguishing the fire and gathering up the small amount of gear that you see — a small, yellow-and-black Eureka! pup tent, a light blanket on a mat of woven reeds, a couple tin cups — the Auri tosses more sticks on the fire, and both men settle down next to it. "Feel free to join us, friend," the short man says to you as he turns off his headlamp. "We've been trying to finish off a bottle of whiskey so we don't have to carry it any further up the mountain. Do you drink? Maybe it will help calm your nerves, after your harrowing escape from the clutches of the cannibals." None of what is happening here comes anywhere close to what you were expecting, but you are too physically exhausted to dwell on the details. And to be absolutely honest, downing a shot of whiskey next to a campfire sounds like a heavenly idea. You doubt you'll get a better offer anywhere else. Without saying another word, you take off the pack and set it on the ground beside the fire, and then sit back against the end containing your rolled-up sleeping bag. "Ligru, pass over the bottle. I'm afraid we don't have any extra cups, though. Go ahead and drink right from the bottle; we won't judge." You take the glass bottle from the Auri, who is sitting to your right; the gap between you is so large that you both have to reach to make the transfer. Pendleton. The bottle is still a third full. You do have a titanium cup of your own, but assuming Meredith didn't lose it, you'd have to dig into your pack to find it… and of course the Stone of Vul-Kar is resting on top of everything else that you are carrying. The last thing you want to do is reveal that to people you don't even know, so you remove the cap and take a long swig straight from the bottle. "Thanks," you say. "Keep it," the short man in green says. "I've probably had too much, and sometimes I swear the island is spinning." Indeed, his speech is a little slurred, but not so much that you can't pick up the Eastern European accent. That's a part of the world that tends to blur together for you, but you'll rule out Russian for one simple fact: no one here is drinking vodka. "I'm not going to pry into your background, because it looks as though you've had a rough evening," he continues. "But my name is Martian Pop, and my friend here is Ligru." Martian Pop — you remember now the weird name on Berringer's list of competitors. You are disappointed in the pronunciation, though: Mar-TEE-yan. "Ligru… He must be from Auri Island?" you say, addressing Pop. "I'm from Oakland," the giant man says indignantly. "Ligru Washington." "Yes, that's right," Pop says. "Ligru took my Polynesian Ethnology course last semester, and was probably the only student who paid attention. The rest always seem to be disappointed when they meet me on the first day of class. Many of them are just sophomores in need of some liberal arts credit hours. I think maybe they see my name and they misread it. They show up expecting Jeff Goldblum and Chaos Theory; instead they get me and a long discussion of Polynesian planting calendars." "I liked your class, sir," Ligru says. "As you can see, Ligru likes to dress and act the part," Pop says. "So I suppose one could be forgiven for mistaking him for an Auri Islander. You should show our guest that spear you found." "Yes, sir," Ligru dutifully says. He gets up from the log he has been using as a backrest and walks over to what looks like a pole stuck in the ground. When he yanks it out, you can see the stone tip. "We found this a couple days ago," Pop explains. "A genuine Woban spear, left on the side of the trail. Ligru has gotten quite good at using it, too. Show us, Ligru." The tall man in the grass skirt readjusts his grip on the spear shaft, holds it horizontally over his shoulder, and then pitches it forward almost as if he were hurling a baseball. But the spear flies true, and lands in the middle of a tree that is so far from the fire it appears as little more than a dim apparition in the darkness. "Impressive, isn't it?" Pop says. "Not bad for a kid from Oakland," you agree. Ligru returns to the campsite with the spear, plants it back in the same spot, and returns to his spot by the fire. "All right, I'm ready for another hit of whiskey," Pop says. "Would you mind passing it over?" As you are about to reach to your left around the fire to hand the bottle of Pendleton over, Ligru snatches it from you. "Professor, I think you've had enough," he says. "Don't call me professor!" The sudden change in Pop's demeanor makes you flinch. He closes his eyes and sighs, then wipes the side of his face with his fingers, although you can see nothing that needs to be wiped off. When he calms himself, Pop stares into the fire. "It's extremely difficult to get a tenured position these days. Although that could change if I am able to bring back an artifact of significant value." "Is that why you and Ligru are here?" you say. "Isn't that why all of us are here?" You look up from the fire and see that Pop is staring right at you when he says this, reviving your earlier fear that he has already deduced you have the Stone of Vul-Kar — based on the simple observation you were coming down the mountain range that everybody else is trying to climb. "I suppose we're all here for own individual reasons," you say. "And I'm glad your purpose was not to fill a cannibal's pot," Pop says, stifling a throaty chuckle. "But no, gallows humor aside, I think you mistake my meaning. We may like to think we have free will, but all of us are pawns in someone else's game. Ligru here serves me. I brought him to Woban Island because of his obvious physical strength — and I have witnessed his ability to use that strength against others to achieve his ends. And now his ends are my ends. And my end is to become the head of an ethnography department at a prestigious institution. At this point, I don't even care which." "Sir…" Ligru starts to say. "No, I shall have my say," Pop continues. "I have lived in America for nearly twenty years, and never once has anybody pronounced my name correctly on the first try. Martian Pop, as if I were some green-skinned alien singing 'go insane, go insane, throw some glitter, make it rain!'" "Sir, you're not even making sense anymore." "I suppose it would amuse everyone to know I have a cousin who thinks he owns the sun." "Sir, it's time for bed. Here, let me help you into your tent." Pop stands and lets his student help him toward the yellow pup tent. "He was named for Virgil. I'm Martian, named for Martianus. Both of us named for respected Romans, except that his name translates better." "You might want to take your boots off, sir." "But I've got one up on him. None of my books have ever been published on Lulu. Is there any more of that whiskey?" "The bottle's empty, sir." Actually, the bottle is still beside the spot where Ligru was sitting, and there is still a good three fingers's worth of whiskey left inside it. "That's a shame. That was good stuff." "Good night, sir," Ligru says, stepping back from the little tent. "We have a long hike ahead of us tomorrow." "Yes, that's right. We have to find a way around the cannibal village. Unless it turns out…." And then Pop suddenly goes silent as the whiskey finally overtakes him. Ligru returns to his spot between the log and the fire. He opens the bottle of Pendleton once more and downs the rest of the whiskey. "Where do you plan to sleep?" he asks as he sets the now-empty bottle down between you. "Frankly, I think I could pass out right here at any moment," you say. "You should be fine," Ligru says. "There will be no rain tonight." "Hmm," you agree, your eyes already closing. Inside the pack against which you are sitting is a nice down sleeping bag and a roomy tent, neither of which have ever been used — and you are not motivated to use either of those things now, either. Not only do you lack the time and energy to formally move into a corner of this campsite, but you are deathly afraid to open your pack in the presence of either Ligru or his liberal arts professor, lest you confirm their suspicions about its contents. Before you fall asleep for real, you push the pack backwards so you can lie against it while remaining close to the fire. The last thing you remember is Ligru tossing more sticks onto the fire. __________________________________________________ > Next page. When morning arrives, you awake with a start. You have been dreaming that Pop and Ligru are rummaging through your pack, tearing all the contents out while you lie there alert but helpless, as if frozen by fear or indecision. Only when they find the Stone of Vul-Kar do you reach for the pack — and the sudden spasm in your arm is what wakes you. But the pack is right there behind you, exactly as it was when you fell asleep. "My, we're awfully worried about that pack." It's Pop, sitting in his former spot beside the fire as if he never went to bed. "Don't worry, we didn't touch it." You sit up and brush some of the dirt off your legs and shorts. Not only is the college professor sitting casually beside the fire, his back reclining against his own turned-around pack — legs extended, hands clasping a tin cup filled with a warm beverage — but Ligru is once again tending the fire, using one stick to move around the charred pieces of wood to make room for more fuel. It is almost like it was when you first joined them, but now in daylight. "I thought you'd be long gone by now," you say. "Us?" Pop says. "What makes you say that?" "You mentioned having a long hike ahead of you today," you say. "Oh, that. That can wait. We didn't want to leave you behind, not after the experiences you've had." "Don't worry about me," you insist. "I've gotten this far; I can take care of the rest." "You never did answer my question last night," Pop says. "Question?" "Yes. Where are you trying to go?" You look around the campfire and see that both men are watching you with much interest. Pop's words may be expressing a polite concern about your well being on the surface, but you sense there is an agenda lurking underneath. Or are you just overreacting to that accent of his? The campsite is now cleaned up, with no sign of the yellow pup tent. Instead you see two backpacks, both ready for the day's trek: Pop is using his as a backrest, and Ligru's is sitting next to the spear. "I'm just trying to get off the island in one piece," you say, trying to add a note of vulnerability to your voice. You need to throw these two off the scent, if indeed they really do think you have the Stone of Vul-Kar. "The Wobans can keep this place. Life is too short as it is already to be spending it running from cannibals." "Yes, I suppose it is. But then you knew the risks when you came here, right?" "But—" you start to say. "But nothing," Pop cuts you off. "You came here for a purpose. We all did. None of us are here on vacation, just to post selfies with the natives on Instagram." "I don't follow…." "Don't play dumb — and don't take us for fools." Pop's voice has grown suddenly firm. "You came here in search of something valuable — so valuable that you'd risk getting eaten by three-eyed savages, if that's what you had to do to find it." "Well look, now," you say, summoning your inner indignation. "I have no idea what you're talking about. But you didn't go through what I did last night. I was held prisoner with two other people, and after they dragged them away I never saw them again. It was sheer luck that I was able to get away—" "And I suppose it was also by sheer luck that you were able to get away with that pack of yours, too," Pop says. Ligru seems to be watching this exchange from the sidelines, as if waiting for a cue to get involved. You decide you need to be more aggressive in this conversation, and put Pop on the defensive for a change. "You're the expert on Polynesian culture, Pop. So you tell me, do you think maybe these people might have left my gear alone because of some superstition?" "First off, these people most certainly aren't Polynesian," Pop says with a bit of a huff. "Or Micronesian, or Maori, or Hawaiian, or anything even closely related to any other human population." "That's interesting," you say. "Then what exactly are the Wobans?" "Certainly nothing that Cook ever laid eyes on," Pop says. Ligru speaks up for the first time this morning. "Weren't you saying the Wobans were their own separate species, sir?" "Well obviously," Pop says. "Show me another human population that averages 2.2 meters in height, has claw-like digits, and of course looks at the world through three fully-functional eyes. This throws the whole evolutionary tree into disarray. Some have proposed that this species be called Homo teroculos, but I suspect that the Wobans aren't members of the genus homo at all, but rather some heretofore unknown offshoot of paranthropus." How easy it is to derail an academic type by feigning interest in their pet subject matter! "There you go!" you say. "We can't expect rational human behavior from people who aren't even human." "I wouldn't go that far," Pop says. "You haven't been their prisoner. I have. If you want to know why I'm eager to get off this island, then feel free to continue right up this trail for another mile. It leads right to the village — you can't miss it. They'll be happy to have you." "That is a good point, sir," Ligru says from across the fire. "So if you don't mind, I need to get going," you say. "I'm sorry to have held you up for so long. After what I went through, all I want more than anything is to get back to the States and schedule an appointment with my therapist." You stand up and lift your pack, ready to hoist it onto your shoulders. "Hold it!" Pop says, standing too. "Ligru, pfft." The professor makes a hooking motion with his left hand, and Ligru immediately drops the stick he has been twiddling and takes a position behind you. "What is this about?" you say. "Enough of this nonsense," Pop says. "It's time for all of us to drop the pretenses and get down to business." "Business?" you say, trying to maintain the same air of innocence — but finding it's hard not to be intimidated with someone as big as Ligru standing right behind you. "Yes, business. I doubt that's such a strange concept to someone such as yourself, no? Two days ago, a massively large yacht shows up and anchors itself off shore. I said to Ligru, 'My, there must be one hell of a wealthy person on that boat.' And Ligru said, 'I'll bet you they're here to look for the Stone of Vul-Kar.' Then sure enough, the next morning we watched as not one but two small boats zipped away toward shore. And from what I could see through my binoculars, one of those people looked a lot like you." "So yeah, I came here on a boat," you say. "This is an island. How did you get here?" "You, my friend, are a mercenary, hired by the wealthy elite. You don't even possess the authenticity to come here to advance your own goals, as I do. You are here for but one purpose: to enhance the ego of someone whose sense of entitlement already knows no bounds. I'm sure you will be made wealthy if your mission is a success — so wealthy you'd risk your life among the cannibals, as you say. And now you'd have me believe you are returning to your master empty-handed? That when you met adversity, you ran for your life? How do you think that will be received when you return to that big yacht?" "Pop, you have one hell of an imagination." "That very well may be. Nevertheless, I'm afraid we can't let you leave here without knowing what's in your pack. It's quite possible you are in possession of something that I need very much." It occurs to you that this would be a good time to use that gun that Walter Berringer gave you yesterday. Unfortunately, that's still in the little book bag that Captain Mark loaned you… and you left that back in the Woban village when you were reunited with your own backpack. This leaves you in the awkward position of being forced to choose between unappealing options, in a game where you clearly have the weaker hand. Either you can cave and give these weird goons what they want, or you can make a run for it — hoping that Ligru isn't as scary as he looks. __________________________________________________ > You show them the Stone of Vul-Kar. This may be one of the lowest moments of your career: conceding defeat to a second-rate college professor and his pet student. But despite the deep sleep you just enjoyed, you know you are still physically exhausted and starved. You were only asleep for a few hours, and you still haven't had anything to eat. Add the fact that the last liquid you consumed was whiskey, and your assessment of your condition is not good. You can't see how you'd have any advantage in a test of strength or speed with Ligru. "All right, you win," you say, dropping your pack on the ground. "Obviously," Pop says. "Now do this slowly. I always like a good reveal." Like most backpacks, this one features a hood that sits over the main compartment, with two straps holding it in place. You release the clips and let the hood fall backwards, and then pull on the drawstring to reveal the contents of the pack. The Stone of Vul-Kar is the first thing you see. "Where is it? I can't see," Pop says. You realize that from afar neither he nor Ligru can see inside the pack — so not only can they not see the crystal, but they are also unaware of the surprise you just found. When you last looked at the contents of your pack last night, it was dark and you were in a hurry to flee the Woban village. You found the stone in Gary Gaffney's pack, immediately realized the fortunate position you were in, and stowed it inside your own reclaimed backpack without scrutinizing too much what else it contained. But it seems that Meredith made an addition of her own, before she gave up the ghost. "It's so beautiful," you say, stalling for time as you reassess your situation. "I just want to look at it one last time." "Oh for crying out loud," Pop says. "Just let me have it already." "Since you put it that way…." What you pull out is not the crystal, but the handgun that could only have been left behind by the woman who absconded with your stuff yesterday. "Well hey now!" Pop says. "Ligru, stand next to your professor," you say. The young man in the grass skirt dutifully moves around you, his hands raised as he joins Pop. "Looks like we've been fooled, sir," he says. "Now, I've enjoyed the time I've spent with you fellas," you say. "But this game has gone on long enough. I have a delivery to make, and while I appreciate the offer I really don't need your assistance." The gun feels awkward in your hand, but you try not to let your inexperience show. It won't be much of a threat if your two companions don't think you can use it. "Let's be reasonable here," Pop says. "If you fire that thing, you're likely to bring the Wobans down on all of us." His hands are raised, but he is taking a cautious step toward you. For once you have the upper hand, and you want to keep it that way. So you flip the safety switch and fire a shot at the ground in front of Pop — the Wobans be damned. You don't intend to stick around long enough to see them come, anyway. "All right! All right!" Pop says. "I had no idea you were such a lunatic." "There are five more shots where that came from," you bluff; you have no idea what Meredith left you inside the chamber. "If you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. It's that simple." You worry that Ligru might try and jump you while you shoulder your pack once more, but the big man really seems unsure of what to do. You are unable to fasten the buckles without taking your attention off your companions, so you let the pack hang from your shoulders like a dead weight. "I'm serious!" you say. "If you follow me, I'll be very unhappy." To emphasize your point, you fire one more shot into the ground. Both Pop and Ligru jump slightly as a little plume of dust rises at their feet. And with that you run. Last night, as you were descending the steep and rocky slope, you were concerned that you might have lost the trail in the dark. Now, in the morning light, the way couldn't be clearer. The trail leads down a gentle slope, but with so many rocks and roots that you could easily get yourself killed if you weren't paying attention. However, running with the pack hanging loose on your shoulders just isn't going to do. It feels like running a steeplechase with a seven-year-old child riding piggyback. So after about a minute down the trail, you stop to buckle the waist strap. As you do so you turn around and see Ligru following at a distance. His big, gangly body wasn't built for running, but that isn't stopping him from trying. You'd much prefer that he didn't, and so you consider the handgun in your right hand. It's no exaggeration to say you don't like these things, and that in your experience they cause more harm than good. But you remember Ligru's demonstration with the spear last night, and it won't do to let him get too close. So you lift the gun, aim it at your pursuer, pull the trigger, and… Nothing happens. The gun clicks, but no shots are fired. Damn you, Meredith! Did she really just load this thing with two bullets? Or maybe she fired the other four before hiding the gun inside your pack. The dead tell no tales, so you may never know. But whatever the explanation, the gun is worthless now. You toss it into the jungle and resume your jog down the trail, trying to set the best possible pace despite the ruggedness of the route. At some point last night the trail veered away from the small river, but you are starting to hear it more loudly now, as if you were returning to its side. And then, just moments later, the trail leads you right to its bank. Well this sucks! The river is flowing through a rocky trench, like a miniature gorge with V-shaped walls. The current is swift and violent as the entire flow is funneled through this tight space. The only way across is a single log that spans the gorge, from a dead tree that fell long ago and has been rotting ever since. It is about three feet in diameter, and some of the bark has sloughed off. The bare, exposed wood looks incredibly slick. If you weren't running for your life from someone with a spear — and the proven ability to use it — you could probably take your time and scoot your away across this thing. But it's a good four feet above the water, and the price of losing your balance trying to cross in a hurry would be catastrophic. So perhaps it would be better to duck into the jungle and elude Ligru that way. __________________________________________________ > You cross the log. If the log is going to be an obstacle for you, then it will be for Ligru, too. The advantage is that it you've done this type of thing before, whereas Ligru probably never had much of an opportunity to practice balancing on logs back in Oakland. Yes, there is a high probability of failure, but it's a risk you feel you can manage. You step onto the near end of the log, finding that perhaps some of your fears might be exaggerated. The tree has been dead so long that the previous foot traffic has flattened a narrow walkway into the pliant, rotten wood. Still, it will not be an easy crossing. The best you can do is focus on the trodden portions of the log and ignore the frothing river below. After a deep breath, you take the first step. When your boot grips the surface without slipping, you go ahead and take the next step, and the next. Despite appearances, the log makes a competent bridge after all. Nevertheless it is slow going, and it will take you a few minutes to cross the nearly hundred-foot-long span. A problem arises, however, about two-thirds of the way across. You have reached a section of the log where the bark is still attached, and at first you expected the textured surface would offer added traction — making the rest of the crossing a cinch. But when you stepped on the corky covering, it slipped into the river in a huge sheet. The surface it exposed is just as slick and slippery as you feared, leaving a section about twelve feet long that will be almost impossible to cross standing up — at least not without the aid of some old-timey caulked boots. "You didn't get so far after all, I see." Turning, you see Ligru standing on the ledge behind you, holding his Woban spear. "Feel free to join me, Ligru," you say, shouting over the roar of the river. "Just give me the Stone of Vul-Kar, and I'll let you go," Ligru shouts back. "I'll tell the Professor you fell in. He'll never need to know." "And you really think that after all this I'll just hand the stone over?" you say. "I think when push comes to shove, you'll do what you need to do to save your own skin." Interesting — when he isn't busy fawning over Martian Pop he is able to speak more than five words at a time. You still think that he is a gentle giant, so you decide to call his bluff. "Ligru, you won't hurt me," you say. "Throwing that spear at a tree is one thing. Inflicting harm on a fellow human being is quite another." "You think I learned how to be nice back on the streets of Oakland?" "I think maybe you aren't as fierce as you want everyone to think you are." "Well OK then," he says. "Allow me to show you how nice I really am." He raises the spear horizontally above his shoulder just like last night, and then he pitches it forward — right at you. There is no time to react; for a split second you think of jumping in the river, but between the wild current and the heavy pack strapped to your body, you'd drown in seconds. So you stand there helplessly, remembering that scene in Jaws 3-D when someone fired a harpoon straight at the camera and you jumped in your seat at the illusion of a projectile hurled straight between your eyes. And if this is to be your final moment, how stupid is it to be remembering one of the worst movies ever? But the spear sails past you, and instead of impaling you it lands with a dull thwack! in the log ahead of you. Ligru is displeased with his failure to pick you off the log, so he mounts the far end and starts to come for you in person. This leaves you no option but to take your chances with the slick surface exposed by the bark. It is like trying to cross a tube of ice, but by being deliberate with your steps you do not slip. And the one moment when you do feel your balance faltering, you stable yourself by stepping on Ligru's planted spear. Two steps later and you're back on a textured section of the log, and at the first opportunity you jump off onto the opposite bank. "Holy Christ!" Ligru shouts behind you. You turn just in time to see him slip off the log and tumble into the river. You wait a few seconds, but he does not resurface. By some miracle, you have survived! It is still possible that Ligru will figure out a way to haul himself out of the river, so you decide not to linger. __________________________________________________ > Next page. For the first time in nearly twenty-four hours, you are hiking along a Woban trail without the sense that you are in immediate danger. The villagers have not yet come looking for their lost meal, and if Ligru survived his plunge into the river you suspect he will have more pressing concerns than continuing to chase you. And without his overgrown student-henchman, Martian Pop can drop dead for all you care. It is not exactly a leisurely stroll down the rest of the trail, but certainly the stress factor has decreased. For instance, without the need to constantly look over your shoulder you are free to notice the fact there are no footprints in this trail. Wherever it goes, this is not the type of major thoroughfare where you first got captured a day ago. But just as importantly, it is maintaining a steady course toward the ocean — wherein lies your salvation from this hellish place. You fish out your compass and confirm what the position of the sun already told you: the trail is heading west, whereas your runabout is on the east side of the island. That will be a problem, but one that can probably be solved. As the trail continues to descend through the valley, and as the sound of the raging whitewater fades away, you spot a small rock knob rising a short distance above the trail. The forest canopy allows only a brief glimpse of the summit, but it is enough to see that it is only a couple hundred feet high, and barely two-tenths of a mile off the trail. It beckons as a watchtower from which you can finally get your bearings. Indeed, scaling this rocky foothill proves to be quick and easy. It is rather warm on the exposed rock, but you find a ledge shaded from the tropical sun by the natural wall behind it, and from this vantage you enjoy a commanding view across the coastal portion of Woban Island: a series of rocky mountains to the south, a jagged headland beyond on the most distant portion of the shoreline, but then a long and uninterrupted section of oceanfront lowlands about a mile away. Assuming there are no further Woban villages along the way, you'll be there in less than an hour. The scene is so pleasing that you decide to savor it. You fish out all the ready-to-eat food you can find in your pack, producing a smorgasbord of Clif Bars and packets of flavored tuna. All of this is washed down by the contents of the Nalgene that Meredith managed not to lose. Next you pull out the maps that Berringer somehow procured from the Air Force, and you unfold the one that shows the southwestern quadrant of the island. It is a detailed topographic map, but now that you've seen Woban Island in real life you are more impressed by what it doesn't show: no trail network, no native villages. The map depicts the layout of the island, but says nothing about the dangers it contains. Someone should write a guidebook about this place, with the caveat that the best way to appreciate the island is from afar. However, the map does show a blue line representing the one noteworthy river, which rises high in a mountain basin before plunging steeply into the western lowlands. And there, just a mile from the coastline, is the small knob that matches the description of the one on which you are sitting. The last thing that you pull out of the pack is Berringer's satellite phone. Now that you know where you are, it's time to make that call to your employer. If he wants his prize, he's going to need to pick you up. There is only one number programmed into the phone's memory, so that is the one you dial. After a few rings, you hear a response on the other end as someone picks up the receiving phone. And then you hear Walter Berringer's voice. "Meredith! How dare you—" "I'm happy to report that I am not Meredith," you say. "You!" he says. "You're the last person I expected to hear from." "I'll try not to take that as a lack of confidence in my abilities." "That's not what I meant," Berringer says. "As far as I knew, Meredith had the satellite phone. But nevermind. Please tell me your mission was a success." "Indeed, I am in possession of a purple rock." "And Meredith?" "As far as I can tell, she'll never steal from you again." "I can't wait to hear the details," he says. "That's the thing. While I was successful, I came out on the wrong end of the island. If I gave you some lat-long coordinates, could you arrange to pick me up?" "Well of course," Berringer says. "Just give us some time." __________________________________________________ > Next page. You wait on the rocky summit until you see the Big Papi sailing into view, and then you return to the trail. The final mile of the hike leads you through the flat bottomlands, where the once-raging river now flows languidly between sandy banks. Your heart almost stops when you spy a hut directly ahead of you, but it doesn't take long to figure out it is in severe disrepair. The trail leads to what appears to be an abandoned fishing settlement, and judging by the collapsed structures, the toppled trees, and the ocean flotsam scattered everywhere you deduce this place was ravaged by a typhoon and the resulting storm surge. Not a soul remains. Captain Mark is already waiting for you when you arrive at the beach. "Good to see you again!" he says cheerfully as you stride across the expanse of sand. "I trust everything went well." "Well? No," you say. "But successful? Yes." "The boss will be pleased, then." One of his crewmen takes your pack from you and stows it inside the landing craft — another one of those white inflatable runabouts. "I'm glad to see you had another one of these stored on board," you say as you step inside yourself. "I was curious how you were going to get me off the island." "Well, let's just hope we have no difficulties getting back to the yacht," Captain Mark says. "Otherwise we'll be fresh out of runabouts." "I'm sorry about your pack," you say. "As far as I know it's still up in a village full of cannibals." "No worries. I'll get another." The best part about the ride back to the Big Papi is that is leading away from Woban Island. And twenty minutes later, when a crewman helps you out of the runabout and back onto the big boat's Sun Deck, the first thing you appreciate is how distant the island appears from this far out at sea. Berringer is coming down the stairs from the main salon. He is decked out all in white: white trousers, a white shirt, a white vest, a white tie, and a white jacket. If he had a cigar and a white hat, he'd be Boss Hogg. "Welcome back!" he says, extending his hand. "It's good to be back," you say. "I know you probably want to rest and clean up, but it's almost dinnertime. I took the liberty of telling Cookie to prepare a celebratory feast, which should be ready soon. In the meantime, I've poured myself a drink upstairs. Would you care to join me?" You know there is no point in declining, so you agree. "After you," Berringer says, following you up the stairs as a crewman carries your pack. "I feel like a little kid on Christmas." You suddenly feel too grungy to be in the posh setting of the main salon, but Berringer doesn't seem to care in the least. "Would you like a bourbon?" he asks. Not really, you think, but again you choose to go along with the spirit of the proceedings. "Was it difficult scaling the mountain?" he says, sitting with a drink in hand. "Turns out I didn't need to," you say. "It's a long story." "One that I'll be happy to hear over dinner, I'm sure. Now, please, I would love to see the item." The crewman has set your backpack beside you, so you open the top just as you did for Pop and Ligru this morning. The purple crystal is right where you left it, no worse for wear. But like you were handling a newborn baby, you gently lift it out. "That's it?" Berringer says. The disappointment in his voice is palpable, and it causes you to doubt yourself. You never did make it to the main summit, so how would you know if this were the Stone of Vul-Kar or not? But what else could it be? Gary Gaffney found it, and then you claimed it. Berringer admitted back in Fenway that he had almost no foreknowledge of what the gem looked like, so who is he to complain? You decide it's best not to say anything, and just let your employer examine his prize undisturbed. He moves to a seat closer to a window, and then turns on a lamp for extra light. "It looks like a normal amethyst," he says, turning the stone around in his hands. "Colorful quartz. I've seen people use things like this as paperweights." The mood in the room has suddenly grown more tense. The crewman who had carried your pack had been lingering just outside the doorway, as if hoping to overhear your conversation without being too obvious, but now he rushes down the stairs to help his mates on the Sun Deck with the runabout. Berringer sighs as he examines the crystal. At last he holds it up in his right hand. "It's a fake!" he declares. You squirm in your chair, not sure how to respond. "How can you be sure?" you finally say. "I assume you didn't look at it closely while you were on the island," he says. Well, no. It was dark when you found it in the wee hours of the morning, and then you spent much of today trying to safeguard it against Martian Pop and Ligru Washington. You considered yourself fortunate just to get it off the island; never once did it occur to you to take it out and study it. When you don't say anything, Berringer reaches forward with the crystal. "Here, see for yourself." So you take the purple stone that up until now you had been calling the Stone of Vul-Kar. You have no idea what you're looking for as you turn it over — but then you see a flat spot with lettering inscribed into the surface. You hold it closer so you can read the words — and then you wish you were still on the island, working your way up that goddamned mountain. Marty's Rock Shop, Albuquerque, NM "I'll tell Captain Mark you'll be needing the runabout again," Berringer says, and at that moment you realize your adventures on Woban Island are far from over. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This may be one of the lowest moments of your career: conceding defeat to a second-rate college professor and his pet student. But despite the deep sleep you just enjoyed, you know you are still physically exhausted and starved. You were only asleep for a few hours, and you still haven't had anything to eat. Add the fact that the last liquid you consumed was whiskey, and your assessment of your condition is not good. You can't see how you'd have any advantage in a test of strength or speed with Ligru. "All right, you win," you say, dropping your pack on the ground. "Obviously," Pop says. "Now do this slowly. I always like a good reveal." Like most backpacks, this one features a hood that sits over the main compartment, with two straps holding it in place. You release the clips and let the hood fall backwards, and then pull on the drawstring to reveal the contents of the pack. The Stone of Vul-Kar is the first thing you see. "Where is it? I can't see," Pop says. You realize that from afar neither he nor Ligru can see inside the pack — so not only can they not see the crystal, but they are also unaware of the surprise you just found. When you last looked at the contents of your pack last night, it was dark and you were in a hurry to flee the Woban village. You found the stone in Gary Gaffney's pack, immediately realized the fortunate position you were in, and stowed it inside your own reclaimed backpack without scrutinizing too much what else it contained. But it seems that Meredith made an addition of her own, before she gave up the ghost. "It's so beautiful," you say, stalling for time as you reassess your situation. "I just want to look at it one last time." "Oh for crying out loud," Pop says. "Just let me have it already." "Since you put it that way…." What you pull out is not the crystal, but the handgun that could only have been left behind by the woman who absconded with your stuff yesterday. "Well hey now!" Pop says. "Ligru, stand next to your professor," you say. The young man in the grass skirt dutifully moves around you, his hands raised as he joins Pop. "Looks like we've been fooled, sir," he says. "Now, I've enjoyed the time I've spent with you fellas," you say. "But this game has gone on long enough. I have a delivery to make, and while I appreciate the offer I really don't need your assistance." The gun feels awkward in your hand, but you try not to let your inexperience show. It won't be much of a threat if your two companions don't think you can use it. "Let's be reasonable here," Pop says. "If you fire that thing, you're likely to bring the Wobans down on all of us." His hands are raised, but he is taking a cautious step toward you. For once you have the upper hand, and you want to keep it that way. So you flip the safety switch and fire a shot at the ground in front of Pop — the Wobans be damned. You don't intend to stick around long enough to see them come, anyway. "All right! All right!" Pop says. "I had no idea you were such a lunatic." "There are five more shots where that came from," you bluff; you have no idea what Meredith left you inside the chamber. "If you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. It's that simple." You worry that Ligru might try and jump you while you shoulder your pack once more, but the big man really seems unsure of what to do. You are unable to fasten the buckles without taking your attention off your companions, so you let the pack hang from your shoulders like a dead weight. "I'm serious!" you say. "If you follow me, I'll be very unhappy." To emphasize your point, you fire one more shot into the ground. Both Pop and Ligru jump slightly as a little plume of dust rises at their feet. And with that you run. Last night, as you were descending the steep and rocky slope, you were concerned that you might have lost the trail in the dark. Now, in the morning light, the way couldn't be clearer. The trail leads down a gentle slope, but with so many rocks and roots that you could easily get yourself killed if you weren't paying attention. However, running with the pack hanging loose on your shoulders just isn't going to do. It feels like running a steeplechase with a seven-year-old child riding piggyback. So after about a minute down the trail, you stop to buckle the waist strap. As you do so you turn around and see Ligru following at a distance. His big, gangly body wasn't built for running, but that isn't stopping him from trying. You'd much prefer that he didn't, and so you consider the handgun in your right hand. It's no exaggeration to say you don't like these things, and that in your experience they cause more harm than good. But you remember Ligru's demonstration with the spear last night, and it won't do to let him get too close. So you lift the gun, aim it at your pursuer, pull the trigger, and… Nothing happens. The gun clicks, but no shots are fired. Damn you, Meredith! Did she really just load this thing with two bullets? Or maybe she fired the other four before hiding the gun inside your pack. The dead tell no tales, so you may never know. But whatever the explanation, the gun is worthless now. You toss it into the jungle and resume your jog down the trail, trying to set the best possible pace despite the ruggedness of the route. At some point last night the trail veered away from the small river, but you are starting to hear it more loudly now, as if you were returning to its side. And then, just moments later, the trail leads you right to its bank. Well this sucks! The river is flowing through a rocky trench, like a miniature gorge with V-shaped walls. The current is swift and violent as the entire flow is funneled through this tight space. The only way across is a single log that spans the gorge, from a dead tree that fell long ago and has been rotting ever since. It is about three feet in diameter, and some of the bark has sloughed off. The bare, exposed wood looks incredibly slick. If you weren't running for your life from someone with a spear — and the proven ability to use it — you could probably take your time and scoot your away across this thing. But it's a good four feet above the water, and the price of losing your balance trying to cross in a hurry would be catastrophic. So perhaps it would be better to duck into the jungle and elude Ligru that way. __________________________________________________ > You duck into the jungle. You'll never make it across that death trap of a log, so there is no point in even trying. Ligru will be here soon, and you don't want to be caught with your back to the river when he does. The only other option is to plunge into the jungle beside the gorge, hoping that there is an easy way to get through this rugged part of the valley — and that you somehow manage to evade your pursuer in the process. The vegetation is thick, making you feel like a fly trying to push your way through a spider's web. You have a hard time seeing your feet, let alone what is twenty feet ahead of you. With each step you might be placing your foot on solid ground, an unseen gap in the bedrock, or the nest of some reclusive bird — you have no way of knowing, nor do you have the luxury of time to worry about it. All you can do is try and put as much distance between you and the trail as you can. "I see you!" It's Ligru's voice, and he's shouting to be heard above the roar of the river. You turn and see his face through the leaves, staring right at you from the trail. You've barely made it fifty feet. He tries to come at you, but if there is any consolation, it's that the jungle offers his large body even more resistance than it is giving you. Newly motivated to keep going, you move right to what at first appears to be a more open avenue through the vegetation. But when you get there you are caught off guard by a hidden ledge that is lurking in the forest, ready to betray you and slide you into the gorge. "God damn this jungle!" Ligru shouts, his limbs mired in vines and branches. It is like the jungle is your ally, ensnaring your foe and giving you a chance to get away — except that if it were true, you'd appreciate your ally showing you a better path forward. You get enmeshed yourself in a nasty patch of thick underbrush; seeing no quick way around it, you decided it was best to push straight through. Now leaves fill your vision, and some even try to get in your mouth. It feels like every square inch of your body is being hindered by some small branch that refuses to give way. Others snag at your pack, offering further resistance. So maybe the jungle isn't your ally after all. It despises both of you equally. All you can do is force your way through this green mesh, hoping things start to improve when you emerge on the other side. But what you find instead is empty space. You scramble to find something to grab onto, or something solid to step on, but you find nothing but air. Realizing that you are about to fall, it is the most you can do to remain upright so that you can land on your feet. __________________________________________________ > Next page. You land with a splash, up to your knees in brown water. This appears to be some kind of side alcove in the gorge, with the main river flowing past the opening just twenty feet away. Walls of black rock rise vertically all around you, with the spot from which you fell just five feet above you. But the rock is hopelessly slippery; there is no chance you will be able to climb back up out of this little chamber. The only way out is toward the river, but you are doubtful that will really be much of an exit. You are standing in a backwater, relatively safe even if you are trapped. But out there is a raging torrent, where you put your odds of survival pretty close to zero — especially if you are weighed down by your backpack and the Stone of Vul-Kar. Unfortunately you see no other way out, so you decide to venture a little closer to at least see what the main part of the gorge looks like. You hug the wall of this dark alcove, having no idea what it is you're walking on beneath that dark water. Twice you stumble over some unseen rock, and slowly the water inches its way up toward your waist. You unclip the waist belt of your pack, knowing that if you get swept away by the main current you'll need to sacrifice it to save yourself. You come to a corner of the rock wall, the water now up to your thighs. What you see is encouraging and unexpected: a shelf of rock on your right that sits almost a foot above the current level of the river. The wall of the gorge is just as vertical and slick here, but at least it is a patch of bare ground upon which you can climb out of the water and reassess your situation. Obviously, your boots are now hopelessly soaked, and will remain that way until you can figure out a way to dry them thoroughly. Even after you hoist yourself up onto the rock shelf, your feet feel like they are trapped in a pair of goldfish bowls. You examine your legs but you see no signs of leeches, so you feel like this is a win-some-lose-some situation. So there you are, out of the river but still stuck in the gorge, with no easy exits in sight. How you pine for the old days, when all that might be expected of you was to travel to the Arctic Circle and dig some wooly mammoth tusks or something out of the thawing tundra. The mosquitoes were often unbearable, and the payoffs were typically less handsome, but at least in Alaska there were no cannibal villages or goons from Oakland running around in grass skirts trying to kill you with a spear. Sometimes the simple ways are the best. Your reverie is broken when something long and skinny touches your shoulder. You jump to the opposite end of the shelf. Of course your first thought is that this is a snake, but to your knowledge no snakes have discovered this tropical "Eden" yet. This object, it turns out, is a vine. "Grab hold, silly!" Looking up, you see Ligru directly above you. He is standing on the rim of the gorge, dangling the vine down to your level. Not long ago he was coming at you with his Woban spear, but now he wants to be your savior? Yes, you want out of this gorge, but not necessarily at any cost. "Why?" you shout back. "So you can rob me once you get me out of here?" He cocks his head as if he can't fully understand you above the river's roar, but then he says in response, "We need to talk! Grab the vine! I don't want to hurt you!" You remember your earlier assessment that Ligru was not really a threat at all, but a gentle giant who was incapable of doing half the stuff his professor friend said he could do. All this time you've been running from the guy, and you even tried to shoot him, but perhaps in reality he has been the ally you've needed all along. Or maybe this whole act is a deception designed to get you and the Stone of Vul-Kar out of the gorge to fulfill his master's bidding. __________________________________________________ > You accept Ligru's help. Regardless of what you might think of Ligru, this vine he is dangling over you is the only real exit that you can see from the gorge. As you grab onto the end, you can only hope that your hunch proves correct and that he is helping you so you can collaboratively foil Professor Pop. If that is not the case… well, first things first. You expect to have to climb up the vine, similar to the way you extracted yourself from the Woban pit not even twelve hours ago. Your arms are still smarting from that effort and are not excited about the prospect. However, once Ligru sees that you have a satisfactory grip on the vine, he begins tugging on it to lift you up. All you have to do is hang on and enjoy the ride. It's not until you near the rim that you begin to help your own cause again by grabbing the nearest root of any substantial size, using it as a handle to pull yourself back onto solid ground. You see that Ligru had looped the vine around the trunk of a nearby tree, and was therefore using it as a pulley as he lifted you up from inside the gorge. But that's not all you see: there standing next to him is Martian Pop. "I think we can all agree that this nonsense needs to stop," Pop says. "You have nowhere left to run. Now hand over that pack." When you don't respond, Ligru grabs you by the shoulder. "Just take it, Ligru. We don't have time for this." Because you had unhooked the waist strap when you were wading through the water, all the big man has to do is spin you around and lift your pack off your body. And thus it gets stolen from you twice on the same trip: first by Meredith when she crept into your cabin before dawn, and now by this duplicitous duo in broad daylight. "I was going to at least let you keep your personal items," Pop says as he takes your pack from Ligru. "But my moment of charity has passed. Ligru, make sure this idiot never bothers us again." Before you can protest or ask questions, Ligru gives you a firm push, walking you backwards to the rim of the gorge. When you trip over the vine that a moment ago pulled you to safety, you tumble headfirst back into the gorge. When you land on the rock shelf, it is not a pretty sight. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You land with a splash, up to your knees in brown water. This appears to be some kind of side alcove in the gorge, with the main river flowing past the opening just twenty feet away. Walls of black rock rise vertically all around you, with the spot from which you fell just five feet above you. But the rock is hopelessly slippery; there is no chance you will be able to climb back up out of this little chamber. The only way out is toward the river, but you are doubtful that will really be much of an exit. You are standing in a backwater, relatively safe even if you are trapped. But out there is a raging torrent, where you put your odds of survival pretty close to zero — especially if you are weighed down by your backpack and the Stone of Vul-Kar. Unfortunately you see no other way out, so you decide to venture a little closer to at least see what the main part of the gorge looks like. You hug the wall of this dark alcove, having no idea what it is you're walking on beneath that dark water. Twice you stumble over some unseen rock, and slowly the water inches its way up toward your waist. You unclip the waist belt of your pack, knowing that if you get swept away by the main current you'll need to sacrifice it to save yourself. You come to a corner of the rock wall, the water now up to your thighs. What you see is encouraging and unexpected: a shelf of rock on your right that sits almost a foot above the current level of the river. The wall of the gorge is just as vertical and slick here, but at least it is a patch of bare ground upon which you can climb out of the water and reassess your situation. Obviously, your boots are now hopelessly soaked, and will remain that way until you can figure out a way to dry them thoroughly. Even after you hoist yourself up onto the rock shelf, your feet feel like they are trapped in a pair of goldfish bowls. You examine your legs but you see no signs of leeches, so you feel like this is a win-some-lose-some situation. So there you are, out of the river but still stuck in the gorge, with no easy exits in sight. How you pine for the old days, when all that might be expected of you was to travel to the Arctic Circle and dig some wooly mammoth tusks or something out of the thawing tundra. The mosquitoes were often unbearable, and the payoffs were typically less handsome, but at least in Alaska there were no cannibal villages or goons from Oakland running around in grass skirts trying to kill you with a spear. Sometimes the simple ways are the best. Your reverie is broken when something long and skinny touches your shoulder. You jump to the opposite end of the shelf. Of course your first thought is that this is a snake, but to your knowledge no snakes have discovered this tropical "Eden" yet. This object, it turns out, is a vine. "Grab hold, silly!" Looking up, you see Ligru directly above you. He is standing on the rim of the gorge, dangling the vine down to your level. Not long ago he was coming at you with his Woban spear, but now he wants to be your savior? Yes, you want out of this gorge, but not necessarily at any cost. "Why?" you shout back. "So you can rob me once you get me out of here?" He cocks his head as if he can't fully understand you above the river's roar, but then he says in response, "We need to talk! Grab the vine! I don't want to hurt you!" You remember your earlier assessment that Ligru was not really a threat at all, but a gentle giant who was incapable of doing half the stuff his professor friend said he could do. All this time you've been running from the guy, and you even tried to shoot him, but perhaps in reality he has been the ally you've needed all along. Or maybe this whole act is a deception designed to get you and the Stone of Vul-Kar out of the gorge to fulfill his master's bidding. __________________________________________________ > You decline. "You know I can't trust you!" you shout back up to Ligru. "Have it your way, then," he says, and the next thing you know he is using the vine to descend into the gorge. This is not going to end well. The shelf on which you're standing is scarcely a hundred square feet in size, leaving you nowhere to go except the river should Ligru decide to try and force the stone from you. With nothing but a portfolio of decreasingly attractive options, you decide that the only way to buy yourself some time might be to drop your pack into the river. With any luck, you'll figure out a way later to fish it out someplace downstream. Therefore you stand at the edge of the rock shelf as Ligru comes down the vine, your back to the water. When he drops the final two feet onto the rock, he turns to regard you. "You need to trust me. I'm not who you think I am." "I'm not falling for it!" you say. "I'm not giving you the Stone of Vul-Kar!" "I know that Professor Pop is not a moral man," Ligru says. "Therefore we need to work together if we want to get out of this situation!" There is friendship in his words, but you sense a hidden violence in the way he is slowly advancing toward you, arms extended toward you almost like a Hollywood movie monster of old. "I'm warning you!" you say. "Come any closer, and I'll drop this pack in the water!" Ligru says nothing, but he continues his advance. One more step, and he'll be within arm's reach. When he starts to take that step, you lower your shoulders and shrug. The pack slips off and falls in the water; the river is so loud you do not hear the splash. Your foe looks horrified at what you have just done. By one simple action, you have changed the nature of the game from a struggle for control to what is sure to become a desperate race to locate and retrieve your pack before it gets buried in sediment or swept out to sea. But there is one thing you forgot to calculate: Ligru has a golden opportunity here to eliminate his major source of competition in that race. His rage seems to impede his ability to string together words into a coherent sentence. "I… have had enough… of you!" he shouts, and to punctuate his statement he shoves you backward into the raging river. The current immediately grabs you and drags you below the surface, where you begin to bounce off the submerged boulders like a pinball. Your body is never seen again. As for your pack? Well, that's a another story…. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>When morning arrives, you awake with a start. You have been dreaming that Pop and Ligru are rummaging through your pack, tearing all the contents out while you lie there alert but helpless, as if frozen by fear or indecision. Only when they find the Stone of Vul-Kar do you reach for the pack — and the sudden spasm in your arm is what wakes you. But the pack is right there behind you, exactly as it was when you fell asleep. "My, we're awfully worried about that pack." It's Pop, sitting in his former spot beside the fire as if he never went to bed. "Don't worry, we didn't touch it." You sit up and brush some of the dirt off your legs and shorts. Not only is the college professor sitting casually beside the fire, his back reclining against his own turned-around pack — legs extended, hands clasping a tin cup filled with a warm beverage — but Ligru is once again tending the fire, using one stick to move around the charred pieces of wood to make room for more fuel. It is almost like it was when you first joined them, but now in daylight. "I thought you'd be long gone by now," you say. "Us?" Pop says. "What makes you say that?" "You mentioned having a long hike ahead of you today," you say. "Oh, that. That can wait. We didn't want to leave you behind, not after the experiences you've had." "Don't worry about me," you insist. "I've gotten this far; I can take care of the rest." "You never did answer my question last night," Pop says. "Question?" "Yes. Where are you trying to go?" You look around the campfire and see that both men are watching you with much interest. Pop's words may be expressing a polite concern about your well being on the surface, but you sense there is an agenda lurking underneath. Or are you just overreacting to that accent of his? The campsite is now cleaned up, with no sign of the yellow pup tent. Instead you see two backpacks, both ready for the day's trek: Pop is using his as a backrest, and Ligru's is sitting next to the spear. "I'm just trying to get off the island in one piece," you say, trying to add a note of vulnerability to your voice. You need to throw these two off the scent, if indeed they really do think you have the Stone of Vul-Kar. "The Wobans can keep this place. Life is too short as it is already to be spending it running from cannibals." "Yes, I suppose it is. But then you knew the risks when you came here, right?" "But—" you start to say. "But nothing," Pop cuts you off. "You came here for a purpose. We all did. None of us are here on vacation, just to post selfies with the natives on Instagram." "I don't follow…." "Don't play dumb — and don't take us for fools." Pop's voice has grown suddenly firm. "You came here in search of something valuable — so valuable that you'd risk getting eaten by three-eyed savages, if that's what you had to do to find it." "Well look, now," you say, summoning your inner indignation. "I have no idea what you're talking about. But you didn't go through what I did last night. I was held prisoner with two other people, and after they dragged them away I never saw them again. It was sheer luck that I was able to get away—" "And I suppose it was also by sheer luck that you were able to get away with that pack of yours, too," Pop says. Ligru seems to be watching this exchange from the sidelines, as if waiting for a cue to get involved. You decide you need to be more aggressive in this conversation, and put Pop on the defensive for a change. "You're the expert on Polynesian culture, Pop. So you tell me, do you think maybe these people might have left my gear alone because of some superstition?" "First off, these people most certainly aren't Polynesian," Pop says with a bit of a huff. "Or Micronesian, or Maori, or Hawaiian, or anything even closely related to any other human population." "That's interesting," you say. "Then what exactly are the Wobans?" "Certainly nothing that Cook ever laid eyes on," Pop says. Ligru speaks up for the first time this morning. "Weren't you saying the Wobans were their own separate species, sir?" "Well obviously," Pop says. "Show me another human population that averages 2.2 meters in height, has claw-like digits, and of course looks at the world through three fully-functional eyes. This throws the whole evolutionary tree into disarray. Some have proposed that this species be called Homo teroculos, but I suspect that the Wobans aren't members of the genus homo at all, but rather some heretofore unknown offshoot of paranthropus." How easy it is to derail an academic type by feigning interest in their pet subject matter! "There you go!" you say. "We can't expect rational human behavior from people who aren't even human." "I wouldn't go that far," Pop says. "You haven't been their prisoner. I have. If you want to know why I'm eager to get off this island, then feel free to continue right up this trail for another mile. It leads right to the village — you can't miss it. They'll be happy to have you." "That is a good point, sir," Ligru says from across the fire. "So if you don't mind, I need to get going," you say. "I'm sorry to have held you up for so long. After what I went through, all I want more than anything is to get back to the States and schedule an appointment with my therapist." You stand up and lift your pack, ready to hoist it onto your shoulders. "Hold it!" Pop says, standing too. "Ligru, pfft." The professor makes a hooking motion with his left hand, and Ligru immediately drops the stick he has been twiddling and takes a position behind you. "What is this about?" you say. "Enough of this nonsense," Pop says. "It's time for all of us to drop the pretenses and get down to business." "Business?" you say, trying to maintain the same air of innocence — but finding it's hard not to be intimidated with someone as big as Ligru standing right behind you. "Yes, business. I doubt that's such a strange concept to someone such as yourself, no? Two days ago, a massively large yacht shows up and anchors itself off shore. I said to Ligru, 'My, there must be one hell of a wealthy person on that boat.' And Ligru said, 'I'll bet you they're here to look for the Stone of Vul-Kar.' Then sure enough, the next morning we watched as not one but two small boats zipped away toward shore. And from what I could see through my binoculars, one of those people looked a lot like you." "So yeah, I came here on a boat," you say. "This is an island. How did you get here?" "You, my friend, are a mercenary, hired by the wealthy elite. You don't even possess the authenticity to come here to advance your own goals, as I do. You are here for but one purpose: to enhance the ego of someone whose sense of entitlement already knows no bounds. I'm sure you will be made wealthy if your mission is a success — so wealthy you'd risk your life among the cannibals, as you say. And now you'd have me believe you are returning to your master empty-handed? That when you met adversity, you ran for your life? How do you think that will be received when you return to that big yacht?" "Pop, you have one hell of an imagination." "That very well may be. Nevertheless, I'm afraid we can't let you leave here without knowing what's in your pack. It's quite possible you are in possession of something that I need very much." It occurs to you that this would be a good time to use that gun that Walter Berringer gave you yesterday. Unfortunately, that's still in the little book bag that Captain Mark loaned you… and you left that back in the Woban village when you were reunited with your own backpack. This leaves you in the awkward position of being forced to choose between unappealing options, in a game where you clearly have the weaker hand. Either you can cave and give these weird goons what they want, or you can make a run for it — hoping that Ligru isn't as scary as he looks. __________________________________________________ > You run. It's hard to see how you'd ever reach a favorable outcome by simply handing over the Stone of Vul-Kar. Pop was correct when he predicted Berringer's reaction should you return to the Big Papi empty-handed, with a story of getting outsmarted by a two-bit college professor and his pet student. You might just as well not return at all. On the other hand, Ligru doesn't strike you as being nearly as fierce as Pop hopes he will be. Pop is here on Woban Island to advance his own cause, just as he admitted. Ligru, big as he is, is more of a wide-eyed tourist along for the ride. You assess him to be a gentle giant. Therefore you gather up all your courage, turn, and run. "Oh I can't believe this," you hear Pop saying behind you. "Ligru, you know what to do." Last night you were worrying you had lost the trail in the dark. Now in the light of a new day, the route is right ahead of you — plain as can be. It occurs to you that you'll be easier to track that way, but you have no interest in running through the jungle on some random course. You may be rested after several hours of sleep, but you still haven't eaten anything, nor have you had anything to drink other than that whiskey. Essentially, the only fuel you have left is adrenaline, spurred by the desire to get off this nightmarish island ASAP. When you hear no one's breath gaining on you from behind, you risk a quick look back. Ligru is indeed pursuing you, but he is not much of a runner. If you can maintain this pace, it looks like you have a good chance of outpacing him. But while you're worrying about Ligru, your mind is not paying attention to where you're going. The brief moment you turn to look backward is long enough to do you in. Your right foot catches on a tree root extending into the trail, and your left can't get into position fast enough to keep you upright. The heavy pack is already throwing off your center of gravity, and to your eternal chagrin you are hurtling with your arms outstretched before you into a tree. The root that started all this never lets go of your boot, and you land with your knee at an awkward angle to the rest of your body. You expect to feel the pain of a torn ligament any moment now. "Thank you for making this so easy," Ligru says when he catches up to you, that spear of his pointed at you. "Ligru, I think I sprained my knee," you say. "Can you help me up?" "We'll ask the professor for an ice pack when he gets here," is all he says. He holds the tip of his spear directly over you, preventing you from standing even if you could. Pop takes his time joining the two of you on the trail. "Good work, Ligru! You'll get an A for this." "Thank you, sir," your captor says. "All right, let's get this over with," Pop says to you. "You're out of tricks. I know you have the Stone of Vul-Kar, so just give it to me." "Pop, I twisted my knee!" you say. "You have to help me out of here." "I have to? I'm not aware of any such obligation." "So you're just going to leave me here unable to walk on my own?" "Oh, don't exaggerate. I'm sure you'll hobble your way down to the beach eventually. That is, if the Wobans don't recapture you first." "This is insane," you protest, but Pop is right: you are out of tricks. "Unclip the belt on your pack," he says. "Look at how your knee is starting to swell. You're not going to be in any shape to carry all that extra weight anyway." When you don't obey right away, Ligru jabs the spear into your shoulder. "OK, OK," you say, unbuckling the pack's waist strap and letting it slip off your back. The professor quickly steps in to take your pack. He is behind you when he releases the clips holding the top part down, and then pulls the drawstring to open the main compartment. Therefore you can't see him when he sees the Stone of Vul-Kar and lifts it for the first time. "This is it?" Pop says. "It's pretty!" Ligru says, still keeping you under the stone tip of his Woban spear. "I suppose. But somehow I was expecting more." The ingrate! He steals the most valuable gem on the island from you, and he complains about the way it appears. "Are you happy now?" you say. "Not yet," Pop replies, "but the path to my happiness is now becoming clearer." "What do we do now, sir?" Ligru asks. "Get out of here, of course. Let's go back and get our stuff. You can let this petaQ go so it can lick its wounds." And so Pop and his sidekick leave you on the trail, your knee growing puffy and throbbing in pain. You try and stand, but immediately collapse in pain. Clearly you aren't going anywhere right away. The only consolation is that your pack is right where Pop left it; apparently the Stone of Vul-Kar really was the only thing he cared about. You are not alone for long, though, because a few minutes later your tormentors come strolling back from their campsite. This time they are both wearing backpacks of their own, with Ligru holding his spear like a walking stick. "You're getting nowhere fast," Pop says. "You should have that knee checked out. It looks painful." "So you're really just going to leave me here?" you say. "Look, here's what I'll do. I'll give you my business card, so that when you find a way out of here you can look me up. Maybe we can all get together someday and have a good laugh about all of this." "Pop, you're mad!" "Or maybe not. But here's my card anyway. It was nice meeting you." He tosses a small business card as the two of them walk by. It spins like an out-of-control helicopter before landing beside you. "Let's get out of here, Ligru, before any Wobans come along." "Sounds like a good idea, sir." "I'm in a good mood all of a sudden, so call me Professor." "Yes, Professor!" That is the last you hear of them as they disappear down the trail, leaving you immobilized and helpless. You grab your pack and begin searching its contents, looking for that bottle of ibuprofen you always keep stashed in one of the outer pockets. As you do so you remember the satellite phone with which you were supposed to call Berringer when you were ready to return to the yacht. Right now it's the lifeline you need to get yourself out of this predicament, although you're going to need to phrase your request very carefully. While you're thinking about the best way to do approach that problem, you pick up the business card and read it: MARTIAN POP Adjunct Instructor Niobrara Community College South Springfield, NE Oh, this is rich — you've just been bested by an instructor from some rinky-dink community college! In Nebraska! How are you going to explain this to the man who was going to pay you a million dollars for bringing back the Stone of Vul-Kar? It would almost be better if the Wobans got to you first. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>This is no time to be taking chances with unknowns in the dark. You didn't work so hard to climb your way out of the pit just to risk getting drowned in some rapids. Besides, the strength in your arms is pretty much spent, and you're not sure how much use they would be when it comes to paddling a canoe. You are better off sticking to land, so you sketch out in your mind a rough plan to get down this trail as far as you can, find a place to take cover and get some sleep, and then reassess your situation in daylight. It looks like the trail leading down the river is not too wide, suggesting that maybe you have lucked out and stumbled across one of the less well-traveled routes this time. Before you go too far, you fumble through your backpack, hoping Meredith didn't move your headlamp. It was in one of the upper pockets the last you saw it. Your hand feels several empty Clif Bar wrappers at first, but then it settles on the elastic band of the headlamp. You have no intentions of turning it on so close to the Woban village, but you do want to have it handy. After putting the pack back on, you set off down the trail. It keeps close to the small river at first, which you can hear gurgling on your right, even if you can't always see it in the dark. There is one spot where the trail passes a large opening on the bank; you suppose the view must be stellar in the daylight, but now it's just "stellar" in the sense that you can see a sky full of stars above the calm water. The mountains you saw earlier are now inky silhouettes. But you are not here to go sightseeing. You rush down the trail, with the river growing louder as you continue. Within minutes of passing the canoe you begin to hear splashes in the dark, suggesting you are no longer following a calm waterway, but a rugged and wild mountain stream. It's hard to imagine how useful the canoe would be here. The terrain is getting more rugged too; after almost tripping over the fifth unseen rock, you concede to the reality of your situation and flip on the headlamp. Hopefully there are no Wobans around to see this unnatural beam of light you're about to cast about their jungle. It's a good thing that you did, though, because the trail is now going down an increasingly steep slope, with more roots and rocks in your way than you suspected. There is also a distinct roar somewhere up ahead, suggesting that you are nearing a powerful cataract. Indeed, a few minutes later you reach the top of a precipitous drop in the terrain, where both the river and the trail descend a massive rock ledge that must span the width of the valley. For the river, this means a waterfall of at least fifty feet, ending with a plunge into a boulder-filled pool. The trail around the falls isn't less steep by any means. Rather than the free-fall made by the water, your route is a slower and carefully-controlled descent down a series of ledges — which might even appear like a giant staircase if you were, say, sixty feet tall. This is certainly a more extreme hike then you would normally prefer to make at [checking wristwatch] 12:48 A.M., and you would be more than happy to find that hiding spot any time now. The problem is, though, that when you reach the bottom of the ledges, the trail continues steeply down a rocky slope. Even if you did find a spot to stop, you'd probably go a-tumbling down the hill if you fell asleep in a place like this. So you continue to work your way off the mountain. Despite your downhill direction, it is still a very laborious effort due to the rocks in your way that make your footing very unreliable; one misstep and you'll go sliding on your butt to a very painful landing. There is no way you could have successfully negotiated this terrain without the aid of the headlamp — although at this point you can't even tell if you're still on the trail. For all you know, the trail made a turn you didn't see, and now you're proceeding in some random direction. But then, as you near what might be the bottom of this long and treacherous slope, your heart stops when you see another light ahead through the trees. For a second you think it's just the light of your own headlamp reflecting off the water, but that can't be; with all of the meanderings to avoid the steepest parts of the slope, you have wandered some distance away from the river. Then as you scrutinize the phenomenon a bit more closely, you see two people sitting around a small campfire. You can forgive yourself for not making the identification sooner, as there are quite a few trees between you and the campsite, and this is the last place you'd expect to find backpackers — not that these people are likely to be your average weekend warriors. You immediately turn off your headlamp, but it's too late: the other people turn on their headlamps and come rushing toward you. "Who's there?" You have to admit, you are relieved to hear English instead of Wobani, but nevertheless you remain on high alert. It's hard to imagine encountering anyone helpful on this island. The beams of light cast by their two headlamps quickly zero in on you. "You're in an awful hurry to get somewhere," the same voice says. "And might I add, why are you coming down the mountain? Most everybody else here is trying to get up it." What's that supposed to mean? Have these two mysterious night lurkers figured out just by circumstance that you have the Stone of Vul-Kar in your possession? Or was that some kind of an attempt at humor? __________________________________________________ > You run. "Sorry," is all you say as you try and push past these people — but you are almost stopped by the second person, who very much appears to be a Woban, both in terms of physical size and dress. Because of the blinding glow of his headlight you can't count the number of eyes, but the grass skirt and tattooed torso make you wonder. "What's the rush?" the other man says. You only get a very quick impression of him: short, dressed in a green-checked shirt with brown trousers, round glasses, the beginnings of a dark beard. But you are convinced that hanging out here and interacting with these people — on this island, at this time of the night — will result in nothing but trouble, so without any further hesitation you run. The terrain seems to be taking a break from its steep descent at the moment, so you are able to dash into the darkness, away from the glow of the little campfire, without feeling the immediate threat of falling off a small cliff in the dark. You don't even know where the trail is at this point; you are just running because — after all that has happened since you've landed on this island — trusting strange people is not your first choice. "Ligru, go and find out what was in that backpack," you hear the unshaved man say behind you. "Do what you will with the body." All right, that settles it. You really do need to get out of here. The question is where, though? At first you run for distance, just trying to get beyond the reach of the headlamps. But you're in a forest in the dark, with your own headlamp turned off to remain invisible. Your right shoulder hits a tree hard, almost knocking you off balance. And then you start to thrash through a bush that you can't see. Keep this up, and your pursuer won't need a headlamp to find you. So you drop to the ground and try to be as still as possible. By some miracle the big man with the grass skirt is not right behind you. In fact, both men seem befuddled. "We weren't just imagining this, were we Ligru?" the short man says. "I don't think so, Professor," the big man says. In the glow of each other's lights, you can see now that he only has two eyes. Not a Woban. "We were imbibing rather heavily, and right now I'm not even sure if I can continue standing." "Yes, you were enjoying the bottle, sir." "So were you! I didn't drink this all by myself," the professor says. "Now help me back to my tent, before I pass out here." "Yes, sir." So this is interesting. The pursuit was cut short because the people pursuing you are drunk. As you lie on your stomach over a hundred feet away, partially hidden by some lacy vegetation, you watch as Ligru — the big man in the grass skirt — helps Professor So-and-So with the eastern European accent back toward a little pup tent next to the campfire. "Is there any more of that whiskey?" the professor asks. "I think you've had enough," you think you hear Ligru reply, but they are so far away and speaking so softly that you're not entirely sure. With the professor safely stowed inside the tent, Ligru sits beside the fire in silent contemplation. He picks up a glass bottle, twists off the stopper, and takes a big swig. Apparently the whiskey bottle was not quite as empty as he had let on. So the crisis seems to have passed. Or has it? You are lying on your belly just a short distance from the campsite, unseen only because you were smart enough to stop running and lie still. Before their impairment took over, you distinctly heard this professor give the order to take your pack and dispose of your body. So clearly you are not among friends. But now what? Just keep lying here until Ligru passes out too? Or if everyone is drunk over there, is it safe to just scoot away right now? __________________________________________________ > You scoot away. You need to get out of here; the idea of just lying here is absurd. But where should you go? You have no idea where the trail is, and you are certainly not going to wander around in the dark looking for it. Your descent down the steep, rocky slope diverted you away from the small river you had been following, which you can now hear about a quarter-mile away. Lacking a more definitive option, you decide to head toward the water. If nothing else, the river is in the opposite direction from the campsite. Instead of standing, you decide to crawl backwards. This way, if Ligru reacts you will know immediately, and you will be able to lie right back down. You just wish you knew what was behind you. Taking a few cautious steps, one foot brushes a rock, so you adjust course. Ligru doesn't move. You back up some more, bumping into a small tree a moment later. Still Ligru doesn't move. Then you notice that you are going down a hill, and if you go far enough you'll be out of sight of the campsite. This could be a good development. Taking one last look at Ligru, you begin to suspect that he may be asleep even as he sits by the fire; even though his eyes are pointed straight at you, they haven't seen a thing in some time. So why all this crawling, then? You stand up and run down the hill, turning on your headlamp to see your way. A galaxy of whitish green leaves and silvery tree trunks surround you, whizzing by as you run for your life, hoping for at least one time tonight to find a spot on this whole big island not occupied by somebody else. How far must you go? Will a mile be enough? Two? Maybe you should keep right on going until you reach the Pacific Ocean, and hope Captain Mark has another runabout he can use to pick you up. You stop to look behind you, relieved to see no beams of light as Ligru and his professor friend chase after you. There are such things as small mercies after all. But you've covered all of maybe a hundred yards; you want to be where neither they nor anyone else will ever find you come daylight. The hill becomes steeper again, and it becomes clear that you are heading into a V-shaped section of the river valley. The stream no longer sounds distant, but like a living force gushing through the heart of the night. It occurs to you that its banks might not be a horrible place to hide; the rapids are so noisy that you won't hear anyone coming, but then no one will hear you moving about, either. On the other hand, from what you can see the terrain directly ahead of you looks like it might be forbiddingly steep. Maybe it would be better to keep to higher ground, contouring at this same elevation above the river where the terrain is less rugged. __________________________________________________ > You keep to higher ground. If descending that steep slope toward the river really was a viable option, then it's just proof that you're not thinking straight anymore. What a night it's been! Except for when you were knocked unconscious by the Wobans and tossed in the pit — which you're pretty sure doesn't count — you haven't slept since you left the Big Papi, and that was nearly twenty hours ago. Since then you've sentenced a man to death by cannibalism, escaped the confines of the pit by sheer strength, and dodged an inglorious murder at the hands of a drunk professor and his guide. In between all of those episodes you climbed partway up the mountain, and lately you've been running down it in the dark. You haven't eaten anything since… well, have you eaten at all? You can't remember anymore. The point is, you're getting to the point where you can't trust yourself to make the right decisions. You better find a safe place to stop soon, or in your deliriousness you might just plummet off some unseen cliff. You decide to follow the side of the hill, keeping the river well below you and to your right. It churns wildly in the darkness, like a wild beast that would be eager to chew you up if you got too close, so the act of keeping to the hillside seems like walking through a zoo as a hungry tiger stalks you on the other side of the bars. The end begins when you stumble over small roots, getting angry that they placed themselves in your way. Then you walk into a branch that scuffs the side of your forehead pretty roughly. There is no blood, but it burns like hell. Next you slip on a wet stick on the ground that you never even saw, landing hard on your tailbone. But you can't stop here, because the hillside is too slanted. Instead of descending a steep hillside like you considered a short time ago, you are now walking across the face of one. There was probably a point where you should have veered left and gone around some knoll or something, but it's too dark to see these things, and your brain is too tired to process the information even if you had seen it. So here you are, side-sloping across some steep hillside, with no idea what you're walking toward. Therefore when you come to a spot where the hillside before you simply disappears, you're impressed with yourself for seeing it. You didn't just walk out into empty space and tumble into oblivion. Good job! But now what are you supposed to do? Shining the headlamp about, you see that the path of an old mudslide lies directly ahead of you, where a slice of the hill slipped into the valley after a heavy downpour. Can you walk out straight across it? That would be the shortest route, but in your state do you dare? You have no way of knowing how stable the slope is. The next best option is to go up and around this thing. So yes, after everything else you've done today, it looks like you can add bushwhacking up a steep slope in the dark to avoid a mudslide to your list of accomplishments. That guy back on the boat, Whats-his-face, isn't paying you enough. This whole mission is nuts. Nothing but thin brush grows along the edge of the mudslide, and the soil is still unstable along the point where the face of the hill was torn apart. And this, of course, is where you are climbing in hopes of finding a way around the obstacle. When your right foot misses its mark and slides into space, your left foot is unable to find anything solid to grip. The sapling in your hands is bending under your weight, and at any rate you lack the arm strength to hold onto it — that was all used up after the piton episode. And so you slip away into the mudslide, finding it to still be a gooey mess. You are like a fly trapped in a bowl of Betty Crocker cake mix. Efforts to slow your descent have no effect, and before you know it part of the hillside is falling with you. When everything comes to rest at the bottom, where all of the mud and trees in the path of the slide were piled up in a debris pile forty feet deep, you finally get the rest you have been seeking — buried under a ton of newly dislodged mud. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You need to get out of here; the idea of just lying here is absurd. But where should you go? You have no idea where the trail is, and you are certainly not going to wander around in the dark looking for it. Your descent down the steep, rocky slope diverted you away from the small river you had been following, which you can now hear about a quarter-mile away. Lacking a more definitive option, you decide to head toward the water. If nothing else, the river is in the opposite direction from the campsite. Instead of standing, you decide to crawl backwards. This way, if Ligru reacts you will know immediately, and you will be able to lie right back down. You just wish you knew what was behind you. Taking a few cautious steps, one foot brushes a rock, so you adjust course. Ligru doesn't move. You back up some more, bumping into a small tree a moment later. Still Ligru doesn't move. Then you notice that you are going down a hill, and if you go far enough you'll be out of sight of the campsite. This could be a good development. Taking one last look at Ligru, you begin to suspect that he may be asleep even as he sits by the fire; even though his eyes are pointed straight at you, they haven't seen a thing in some time. So why all this crawling, then? You stand up and run down the hill, turning on your headlamp to see your way. A galaxy of whitish green leaves and silvery tree trunks surround you, whizzing by as you run for your life, hoping for at least one time tonight to find a spot on this whole big island not occupied by somebody else. How far must you go? Will a mile be enough? Two? Maybe you should keep right on going until you reach the Pacific Ocean, and hope Captain Mark has another runabout he can use to pick you up. You stop to look behind you, relieved to see no beams of light as Ligru and his professor friend chase after you. There are such things as small mercies after all. But you've covered all of maybe a hundred yards; you want to be where neither they nor anyone else will ever find you come daylight. The hill becomes steeper again, and it becomes clear that you are heading into a V-shaped section of the river valley. The stream no longer sounds distant, but like a living force gushing through the heart of the night. It occurs to you that its banks might not be a horrible place to hide; the rapids are so noisy that you won't hear anyone coming, but then no one will hear you moving about, either. On the other hand, from what you can see the terrain directly ahead of you looks like it might be forbiddingly steep. Maybe it would be better to keep to higher ground, contouring at this same elevation above the river where the terrain is less rugged. __________________________________________________ > You descend toward the river. This journey needs to come to an end in the shortest distance possible. Consider all that you have done today: climbed the ridge, dodged the first three Wobans only to get ambushed by the next five, climbed out of the pit using the sheer strength of your arms, found the Stone of Vul-Kar, climbed down the mountain, and evaded a drunk-but-murderous professor. The jury might still be out on that last item, but the prospects are looking good at the moment. The point is, you've had a full day, and you're entitled to a little bit of rest. You're becoming worried that you aren't thinking clearly anymore, and in your lack of sleep you might be getting a little delirious. So you proceed forward, heading straight down toward the river on the most direct route. As with the section of trail around the waterfall, it looks as though you have a series of rock ledges in your way, and so this is not going to be an easy descent. But it does look like it might be worth the effort, as you can faintly see what looks like a bench of flat ground below, at the further reaches of your headlamp's beam of light. There is no point in wasting time, so you take the first step… The results are disastrous. Your boot slips on a sheet of wet leaves spread across the first rock ledge in your path. It goes out from underneath you, and desperately you turn, looking for something to grasp onto. But there are no branches or anything else within arm's reach, and so your momentum carries you over the edge. The first drop is only about six vertical feet, so when you first make contact with the ground nothing is wounded but your pride. But your fall isn't over yet. The ground is slanted steeply downward, and so you continue sliding, bouncing off trees like a pinball. It gets worse when you hit a large root and go briefly airborne again, landing on your backpack. Now you aren't sliding down the escarpment, you're rolling. And when you hit the next big ledge about twenty-five feet below the first you are going even faster than before. Your headlamp flies in one direction, you another. The landing is brutal. Your body doesn't come to a full stop until it slams hard into the trunk of a tree, halfway down the slope. The headlamp lands twelve feet away, its switch still in the "on" position. The LED is an efficient little light, and the batteries were fully charged that night you packed your gear on the Big Papi. So with no one to turn off the switch, it shines for several days and nights before slowly dimming and going dark, long after you have done the same. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"Sorry," is all you say as you try and push past these people — but you are almost stopped by the second person, who very much appears to be a Woban, both in terms of physical size and dress. Because of the blinding glow of his headlight you can't count the number of eyes, but the grass skirt and tattooed torso make you wonder. "What's the rush?" the other man says. You only get a very quick impression of him: short, dressed in a green-checked shirt with brown trousers, round glasses, the beginnings of a dark beard. But you are convinced that hanging out here and interacting with these people — on this island, at this time of the night — will result in nothing but trouble, so without any further hesitation you run. The terrain seems to be taking a break from its steep descent at the moment, so you are able to dash into the darkness, away from the glow of the little campfire, without feeling the immediate threat of falling off a small cliff in the dark. You don't even know where the trail is at this point; you are just running because — after all that has happened since you've landed on this island — trusting strange people is not your first choice. "Ligru, go and find out what was in that backpack," you hear the unshaved man say behind you. "Do what you will with the body." All right, that settles it. You really do need to get out of here. The question is where, though? At first you run for distance, just trying to get beyond the reach of the headlamps. But you're in a forest in the dark, with your own headlamp turned off to remain invisible. Your right shoulder hits a tree hard, almost knocking you off balance. And then you start to thrash through a bush that you can't see. Keep this up, and your pursuer won't need a headlamp to find you. So you drop to the ground and try to be as still as possible. By some miracle the big man with the grass skirt is not right behind you. In fact, both men seem befuddled. "We weren't just imagining this, were we Ligru?" the short man says. "I don't think so, Professor," the big man says. In the glow of each other's lights, you can see now that he only has two eyes. Not a Woban. "We were imbibing rather heavily, and right now I'm not even sure if I can continue standing." "Yes, you were enjoying the bottle, sir." "So were you! I didn't drink this all by myself," the professor says. "Now help me back to my tent, before I pass out here." "Yes, sir." So this is interesting. The pursuit was cut short because the people pursuing you are drunk. As you lie on your stomach over a hundred feet away, partially hidden by some lacy vegetation, you watch as Ligru — the big man in the grass skirt — helps Professor So-and-So with the eastern European accent back toward a little pup tent next to the campfire. "Is there any more of that whiskey?" the professor asks. "I think you've had enough," you think you hear Ligru reply, but they are so far away and speaking so softly that you're not entirely sure. With the professor safely stowed inside the tent, Ligru sits beside the fire in silent contemplation. He picks up a glass bottle, twists off the stopper, and takes a big swig. Apparently the whiskey bottle was not quite as empty as he had let on. So the crisis seems to have passed. Or has it? You are lying on your belly just a short distance from the campsite, unseen only because you were smart enough to stop running and lie still. Before their impairment took over, you distinctly heard this professor give the order to take your pack and dispose of your body. So clearly you are not among friends. But now what? Just keep lying here until Ligru passes out too? Or if everyone is drunk over there, is it safe to just scoot away right now? __________________________________________________ > You stay put. You've pushed your luck enough so far, and you are not eager to push it any farther. Ligru does not see you, and perhaps thinks you might have been a figment of his inebriated imagination. Why risk giving him evidence of your presence by moving once more through the jungle? Maybe you can sneak away in a moment… if he too passes out from enjoying too much whiskey. But not before. So you lie in place, with your pack still on your back, and with your belly and your knees resting in the mud. If the Woban villagers up the mountain were of the "early to bed" mentality, Ligru here seems to see things differently. You watch with dismay as he tosses some more sticks onto the campfire and sits back down beside it, as if he can't get enough of this whole "camping out" thing. But who is he, though, if not a Woban? Maybe he's from neighboring Auri Island, just a few nautical miles away. From what you remember, the people there were similar to Wobans, with the exception of the third eye. You catch yourself yawning as you wait for Ligru to fall asleep. But he is just sitting there, as if mesmerized by the flames. You keep watching, but there is nothing to watch. So when your eyes shut the first time, and then reopen to see Ligru hasn't moved from the log against which he is sitting, you can't tell how much time has passed. But having dozed just for that second or two, your stressed-out brain and physically-exhausted body want more of it. Your eyes start to shut again, you want to fight it but it's hard to find a good reason why, especially since you seem to be watching a statue who can hold his liquor remarkably well, and before you know it you are the one who is falling asleep…. When you awake it is morning, your pack is off but you are snuggled up next to it, still lying on the muddy ground somewhere between the Woban village and the island's shoreline. You hear the roar of the small river about a quarter of a mile away. Crap. You never meant to stay here until daylight. Taking a quick look around, you see the campsite right where it was when you passed out. And Ligru is still there, sitting beside the remains of a campfire that has long since burned out. It never occurred to you until now that perhaps the reason he wasn't moving was because he had fallen asleep sitting up. At least, that certainly seems to be the case now. Hopefully he'll remain so until you can get away. Crap, crap, crap. There are so many things right now your body would rather be doing: peeing, eating, drinking coffee, or better yet, going back to sleep. But your brain is perceiving grave danger, and so instead you stand slowly and hoist your pack back onto your shoulders. With the Stone of Vul-Kar inside, it feels unusually heavy — but this is no time to gripe about that. Crap, what a situation this is. You look around; once upon a time you had been following a trail, but you have no idea where that is now. The river — you need to follow the river. Forget the trail, at least for now. So you start to back away — one step, two steps, three. Ligru is still seated in that same position, as if it were still nighttime and the fire was still burning. If his eyes were open, he'd be looking right at you. What now — run? Yeah, sure, that idea sounds as good as any. So you turn — and stumble right into a rock. Reflexively you try and break your fall by grabbing onto the nearest branch, but this turns out to be a small bush that rattles its leaves loudly as you tug on it. You fall anyway, your feet kicking up in the air, and a bird squawks as it flies from a hidden nest inside the bush. Holy crap. You have no idea what to expect now when you look back toward the campsite, and you're not sure you even want to. But you do anyway. Ligru is standing now. "Hey, it's you!" he says, is voice a tad hoarse. And then he remembers the order he was given. "Give me that pack!" You hear a voice from inside the tent. "Ligru, will you keep it down?" But the guide is on the run, snatching a pole that had been jammed upright in the ground and coming straight at you. Holy mother of a crap. You try to run, but it is of course now too late. The Auri guide easily outruns you, and by swiping that pole at your legs he brings you down before you can get ten yards. When next you look up, you see that the pole is indeed a spear, with a massive sharpened rock at its tip. The spear is aimed at your heart, and the Auri brings it down for the coup de grâce. After a few last spasms from your wretched body, Ligru flips you over to examine your pack. He opens the top and pulls out the Stone of Vul-Kar, smiling. It is quite the prize to present to his employer — and they'll never even have to climb the mountain. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The excitement comes to an abrupt halt the moment you hear voices beside that stream. Knowing that you have no reason to trust anybody you might encounter on this island, you go into instant stealth mode. It sounds like there are several men ahead of you, and although you don't recognize any of the words, the voices are calm. The speakers are merely conversing among themselves, unaware of your presence. You creep forward, finding a place behind a large rock where you can observe the speakers unseen. What you see chills you. There are three men in colorful grass skirts standing in a small clearing beside the small stream, each casually holding a spear that is as long as they are tall. And these men are certainly tall, nearly seven feet so, with muscular bodies. The fingers that grasp the spear shafts are tipped with elongated black nails; those on the index fingers are curved and pointed, as if these people were descended from velociraptors. And on the forehead of each man, directly above the bridge of the nose, a third eye frowns at the world. The Wobans seem to be concerned about something, although you are relieved it's not you. "‘A‘ole hiki ia‘u ke mana‘o hou i ha‘awi hou ke alaka‘i ia makou i ke kuleana kia‘i," one of them says. "Ma hope o ka mea a makou i hana ai ia ia, aia anei kekahi kumu e pono ai ia ia ka lokomaika‘i ia makou?" says the Woban on the right. "‘A‘ole wau ka mea nana i kau i ka nahe i kana ‘au‘au!" the Woban on the left says defensively. "‘A‘ole, aka, ‘o ‘oe kahi me ka mana‘o!" the first one says. "No ke aha i makemake ai ke ali‘i e kia‘i i keia ana? ‘A‘ole e hele kekahi ma ane‘i." "Makemake paha ke ali‘i ia makou e hele." "He naaupo oukou. E hele mai na kanaka ma ane‘i. Ke ‘imi nei na holoholona haole ia Vul-Kar, a alaka‘i ke ana i ka luakini." "No laila makou e ku kia‘i ai a hiki i kahi poina e ke ali‘i no ka makou mea i hana ai." "‘Ae, ‘o ia ko ka makou ho‘opa‘i." You haven't the slightest idea what they're gossiping about, but they seem rather glum about something. Then they go silent, sitting on the ground facing each other. One draws a circle in the dirt with his black talon-like fingernail, and they each take turns idly tossing pebbles into the center, as if they were playing some kind of children's game. Their presence poses a dilemma for you, though. The trail that you have been following cuts straight through this clearing where the three Wobans appear to be waiting for something (or someone). For you to continue following it toward the mountain, you'd have to carefully circle through the jungle to get around them unseen. But then you notice something else interesting: the stream that lured you here appears to emanate from a dark cave in the hillside, just five yards from your hiding spot. There is enough small brush around it that you are pretty sure that you can crawl there unseen. You have no idea where that cave goes, or if it even goes anywhere, but if nothing else it looks like it would provide better cover while you wait for the Wobans to leave. All you know is that you can't stay here. Should the Wobans start moving around, of if another happens to come down the trail, you will be spotted instantly. __________________________________________________ > You enter the cave. The idea occurs to you that the cave may have some kind of significance, and this is why the Wobans are here — perhaps they are guarding it. This piques your curiosity. Of course, all of this is just a theory and you have no real idea who those Wobans are or what their purpose is, but with no maps to follow — and with a personal taste for adventure that is about a mile wide — you feel compelled to explore the cave. The irony is that if the Wobans are here to guard the cave, they're doing a poor job of it. The cave's entrance is turned slightly away from the clearing, so they cannot even see it from where they are playing their little game of tiddlywinks or whatever. A growth of grass and small brushy plants provides just enough cover for you to crouch low and step softly between your boulder and the clear-water stream flowing out of the cave. "He aha kela kani?" says one of the Wobans to his companions. "‘O kau e lohe nei, ‘o wau ke lanakila nei i keia pa‘ani. E kiola i kou pohaku a pani i kou waha," someone responds. "Aole. Lohe wau i kekahi mea e ne‘e ana." "He mea li‘ili‘i paha kahi holoholona e ‘uwu ana i ka mau‘u. Pono ‘oe e pa‘ani i ka pa‘ani a ha‘alele i ke kama‘ilio ‘ana." The mouth of the cave is wide, and you can feel its coolness before you even step inside. Immediately you are glad you came here, as you are now surrounded by moisture and hidden from the harsh sun — the exact opposite conditions from where you just were. You pause for a moment as your eyes adjust to the dim light, and then you continue on; you may have just snuck past the Woban guards successfully, but you would still prefer to put some distance between you. You quickly realize that this cave is a lava tube — a tunnel-like passage carved through the hillside during an ancient eruption. It angles gently upward, with the stream fanning out across the rock floor. Up ahead is nothing but darkness, so just before you lose sight of the little bit of daylight coming in through the entrance, you stop to fish out Captain Mark's palm-sized plastic flashlight from the backpack. Except for the uphill grade, following the lava tube is like exploring an abandoned subway. The arched ceiling maintains almost consistent dimensions as the passageway snakes its way through the rocky core of the island, giving it a man-made appearance. But where is it leading? You have no idea how good the batteries are in the flashlight, and you'd hate to be stranded here in the dark. Excitement propels you forward; anxiety has you hoping an exit appears soon. What you do find is a fork, with passages branching to the left and right. So now what? Both are equally dark, and your first impression is that there is no difference between them, other than direction. You step into the space between the twin tunnels, lick your fingertip, and stick it into the air. Although it's subtle, there is a draft of air coming from the left tunnel, and heat coming from the right — would that be heat from outdoors, maybe? The stream that you have been following has dwindled to just a trickle, but you can see now that it flows from the left-hand tunnel. This is all very interesting, but in a moment of sobriety you realize that Walter Berringer didn't send you here to go spelunking. Maybe you should go back the way you came, hoping that the Wobans have left so that you can resume your hike along the trail. __________________________________________________ > You take the left tunnel. Air is moving through the lava tube on the left, and a trickle of water is flowing through it. These are the features that sell you on the idea of going in that direction. The tube continues on the same gentle uphill grade, and at first there seems to be no difference from before you reached the fork. If nothing else, this branch bears the benefit of familiarity. But time passes without much seeming to happen. Fifteen minutes, twenty, thirty; if you are still hiking at your usual pace, you've climbed through the tunnel for at least a mile since it branched. Are lava tubes even supposed to be this long? And being completely underground, you have no way of orienting yourself. The best you can do is theorize that a lava tube would naturally lead toward the volcanic heart of the island — bringing you closer to the highest peak, if you are correct. As you near the hour mark, you are getting very anxious. The light that Captain Mark contributed toward your expedition was a cheap-o disposable flashlight; it has a cool-looking contoured grip and seems high-tech at first glance, but you know better. Sooner or later whatever battery is inside this thing will burn through its charge, and the LED will slowly fade into an amber glow and then darkness. These things were made for emergency use, not a sustained trek through an endless cavern, and the captain gave it to you only because you were in a hurry and this was the first thing he found. Already the light output seems to be less than it was when you first flipped it on. Each step forward will be a step you'll have to retrace if this tunnel proves to be a dead end, meaning you'll be relying on the flashlight for twice as long. Turning around this late in the game would be a difficult decision to make, though, so it is almost with pleasure when you start to feel an uptick in the strength of the draft flowing through the tunnel — as if there is a gentle breeze coming from around the next bend. And then you see light reflecting off the walls ahead of you! With high anticipation you round the next turn in the tunnel, finding a loose pile of rubble below a wide hole in the ceiling. It looks as through the top of the lava tube collapsed long ago, blocking off the continuing tunnel but also providing an escape hatch to the surface. The little stream you have been following all this time trickles down the mossy stones. Jungle trees rise above the opening. Carefully, you climb up the wet, mossy rocks and pull yourself up through the breach. The sound of running water is the first thing you notice; there is a larger stream flowing past the opening, with one portion being siphoned off into a side channel and spilling into the hole in the ground. Jungle vegetation shades the stream, but the trees are less tall here, making you conclude you are much higher up the mountain slopes than when you first entered the lava tube. The truth is you have no idea where you are, relative to where you need to be. The only thing you have to work with is the fact that a crude trail seems to continue from the hole in the ground further up whatever mountain you happen to be on. At least this one seems less well traveled than the one that led to the three Wobans guarding the cave entrance, perhaps meaning you will have this one to yourself. Seeing no better options, you follow it uphill. If the previous trail was like a highway for foot traffic across the island, this one must be the little-known byway. There are no footprints in the muddy trail surface. Clearly someone must use it, though, or else it wouldn't be here. But it is narrow and rugged, like a game trail filing through the thick brush. The only details that inform you differently are the occasional logs that look like they have been hacked away to clear the path. Eventually the jungle forest gives way to a brushy landscape, with a canopy that is only scarcely higher than you are. Rocks are everywhere, gray and mossy. Here you come across something unexpected: the remains of an old campsite, located in a patch of level ground between the foot of a rocky knob and another small mountain stream. There is a small fireplace in the middle, made with a ring of stones in a way that would make Smokey the Bear proud. Have Wobans camped here, or was this created by one of the other treasure seekers? Not only are the pieces are of charred wood starting to rot, but small plants are starting to shoot up through the coals. No one has been here in a year or more. It is getting late in the day, so the discovery of this campsite may be very timely. You drop the pack down and drink from the refilled Aquafina bottles. The only detraction is that you still have no idea where you are, so you decide to put that bald rock knob to use. It rises fifty feet above the stream, and you have to use your hands to scramble up its steep rock ledges — but the view from the top is very informative. You seem to have crossed a watershed divide, from the east side of the island to a broad valley on the northwest side. The knob is high above that valley, like a scenic overlook at a national park, with the sound of a small river nearly a thousand feet below you. The Pacific Ocean extends out to infinity beyond the foothills, and there to the northeast is the Big Papi, which at this distance it little more than a white dot. The most important detail, though, is the view of the neighboring mountains. You have indeed been climbing closer to the main summit — and in fact you have less than a mile to go before reaching the base of its imposing cliffs. The mountain on which you're standing almost seems to buttress that tower-like formation of rock, suggesting for the first time that there may indeed be any easy way to the temple ruins at the top. Delighted with all of these finds — a secluded campsite, a commanding view of the relevant parts of the island, a path that seems to lead directly to the Stone of Vul-Kar — you decide to call it a day and spend the night here. Darkness comes swiftly in the tropics, and it's hard to imagine you'll find a better spot further up the mountain. So you scoot back down the knob and begin the process of setting up your camp. Then your spirits dim when you remember Meredith, and the fact she ran off with all your gear. You curse her name as you try and improvise a basic shelter using the parachute cord and the blue plastic tarp — and as you dine on the less-than-Epicurean feast of pepperoni sticks. You can only hope she fell into a pit of quicksand and suffered a horrible death. To improve your mood, you indulge in a small campfire. As darkness sets in over Woban Island and you watch the dancing flames, you notice for the first time the large tree standing to the side of the site. Someone has carved something into the smooth bark: the letters BPV. Beatriz Paya-Vallejo! Your old nemesis, and the first person Walter Berringer hired to find the Stone of Vul-Kar… before she went missing. So she came this way too, and sat by this same little ring of rocks. And it was her stack of gathered wood that you used as kindling to get your flame going. This merely adds to the intrigue of all that has transpired today. You fish your jackknife out of your pocket and quickly inscribe your own initials into the tree. That's when the sound of distant drumming catches your attention. Curious, you climb the knob again, using the light of the quarter-moon to see your way. From the top you see large campfires from several points across the island, accompanied by the drumming and lots of chanting. It looks like this is some kind of Woban holiday, with concurrent celebrations in every village — that, or the natives are about to go on the warpath. You have no way of knowing. And when you look more closely, you catch glimpses of smaller campfires here and there in the more secluded parts of the island. Are these the other treasure seekers, like you trying to keep a low profile on this festive evening? __________________________________________________ > Next page. Despite the inglorious shelter and the lack of an adequate sleeping bag, you sleep soundly anyway. Perhaps too soundly, because by the time your eyes open the sun has already risen and is making its upward climb into the sky. Last night's fire is now a pile of cooling ashes, and the drumming has long since ceased. Blue skies overhead promise a glorious day ahead, as far as the weather is concerned. Then something catches your eye: on the tree where you carved your initials below those of your old adversary, there is now a freshly-carved MN. As hard as you find it to believe, that could only be Meredith Nowitki! Could it possibly be that she passed through while you were still sleeping — toting all of your brand-new gear — and carved her name in the tree just to taunt you? You step out onto the narrow footpath and sure enough, there are now new boot prints in the mud, left by someone with feet much smaller than your own. How infuriating! How aggravating! How humiliating! Not only did she steal your stuff, but she was following behind you so that you could lead her to the Stone of Vul-Kar! Why else would she be here? And now that you have overindulged in sleep, she has passed you by. What kind of a headstart does she have on you? Minutes? Hours? Extremely displeased with yourself, you hurriedly take down the tarp and pack up the few things you have. You remember well Berringer's rage yesterday morning when he learned that Meredith, his erstwhile "acquisition" from the Boston Globe, had deserted him — and you can only imagine how much worse it would be if you let her get to his prize first. You are so angry that you start to contemplate ways that gun of his might come in useful after all. The best you can do for breakfast is a couple more pepperoni sticks; maybe tonight, with Meredith permanently out of the way, you'll have all of your stuff back so you can enjoy something a little less gas-inducing. Then you shoulder the black book bag and set off for the mountain. Her tracks are easy to follow, although in retrospect so were yours, too, probably. Beyond the campsite, the rugged footpath continues climbing through the high-elevation brush, the mud softer than ever, like black cookie batter. Meredith must have been inspired to move swiftly, because you see no sign of her. Who would believe that someone who spent the last three years trailing Walter Berringer around a baseball stadium in high heels would be so adept at climbing a mountain? But then the trail runs cold when the vegetation ends and the way forward is nothing but bare rock. You can trace Meredith's steps only for about six paces, where the mud from her boots left an obvious track, but then nothing after that. You're not even sure where the actual trail goes; the best you can do is continue climbing at the same angle, and hope that some sign presents itself. What you find a moment later is a wall of rock blocking your way. Looking back, you can still see where the trail exited the forest, with a direct line of travel leading to where you are now. To the best of your tracking ability, this is where you're supposed to be, so you scout your options. By circling a bit to the left, you find a rope ladder dangling down the rock face — the surest sign that you are on the correct trail. But the fibrous rope looks old and weathered, and you are not sure you can trust it to hold your weight. The only other option would be to scale the rock face itself. The wall isn't quite vertical, and the surface seems coarsely textured with just enough subtle imperfections to make footholds and handholds theoretically plentiful, but you can't tell for sure from below. __________________________________________________ > You climb the rock. Maybe the rope ladder worked for Meredith, but she weighs what, a hundred pounds soaking wet? You aren't about to take that same chance, so instead you find a pair of small protrusions on the rock and pull yourself up, your boot scraping against the surface until your toe finds something it can step on. With this first successful step, you look up and identify a route to the top where the rock is angled fifty degrees or so — very steep to be sure, but not so steep as to be impossible to climb. The going is slow, though, as there is no room for error on a climbing route this exposed. The wall of rock is only maybe fifty feet tall, but if you were to lose your grip there would be nothing to stop your fall. Slowly you work the rock directly in front of you, looking up from time to time, but never looking down, maintaining three points of contact at all times. Before moving the next hand or foot, you test your grip with your other appendages to reassure yourself you're not about to slip off the mountain. It is a long and tiring process, though, during which you imagine Meredith getting far ahead of you, perhaps even finding some kind of hidden passageway leading up to the temple ruins where the Stone of Vul-Kar awaits. When you last saw Walter Berringer on board the Big Papi you thought maybe his anger towards Meredith had eclipsed his desire to obtain the gem. Now that Meredith has passed you on the trail, you're starting to feel the same way. Although it only takes ten minutes to reach the top, it feels more like thirty. The slope doesn't taper at the top like you had hoped, so there is one more delay as you are forced to find something else to grab onto so you can pull yourself over the edge, finally coming to rest on a small terrace of level ground. You are torn by the competing interests of stopping to rest and continuing your chase, when the sound of running footsteps makes the choice for you. Although all four of your limbs feeling limp from the exertion of the climb, adrenaline takes over as you charge around a boulder to where you thought you heard the noise. Here you find the top of the rope ladder, anchored by a pair of stout wooden stakes wedged into a crevice in the rock. Nobody is there, but you do see a familiar green object lying on the ground. Picking it up, you recognize it immediately as a six-inch survival knife you've owned for so long you don't even remember where you got it. This was one of the items that was in the REI backpack that Meredith stole… meaning she was right here! She was waiting for you to climb the ladder so she could cut the ropes on you — not just trying to block your path, but intentionally waiting for an opportunity to cause you grave harm! Looking around, you don't see her — but that proves nothing because you have reached an area of irregular topography, a restless summit strewn with boulders and indented by alcoves and large crevices. There is a maze-like quality to the area, almost, and it occurs to you that Meredith could be anywhere here. You listen, but you hear no further footsteps. Either she has gotten away, or she is hiding here somewhere among the rocks. Tucking your trusty old knife under your belt, you set out to search this strange summit. Much of Woban Island spreads out below you, although the summit is so broad and cluttered that you never have the full 360° view. However, you are so close to the main summit that it looms above the rock formations surrounding you. For the first time you can clearly see the summit ruins on its top. What you're looking for is Meredith's whereabouts. You'd call her name, but that would make you feel like you're searching for a lost puppy. It would also broadcast your location to your quarry. No, it would be better to let her stew for a moment, wondering where you are. But in the process of looking for her, you circle around to the far side of the summit where you find something completely unexpected: a rope bridge spanning a massive gulf. The near end is anchored to large wooden poles, similar to the ladder but on a larger scale. Five hundred feet away, the far end of the bridge is tethered to a narrow ledge on the side of the steep main summit, with a tunnel leading into the mountain. In between is a chasm hundreds of feet deep, with a botton full of talus. Looking down into the depths, you can see the remains of an earlier version of the bridge rotting away on the rocks below. Are those human bones that you see down there, too? So did Meredith cross the bridge, or is she lying in wait somewhere on this side, hidden among the rocks? It's frustrating to consider the possibilities: either she is already climbing up to the temple ruins, on her way to to grab the Stone of Vul-Kar before you; or she's poised to sabotage you again by cutting the ropes once you are halfway across the bridge. But that wouldn't make sense; if she's here to get the stone, then she needs that bridge just as much as you do. __________________________________________________ > You search for Meredith first. Meredith Nowitki has been a random element so far on this assignment. It seems like it was a long time ago when she just lurked in the background, barely interfering in the planning discussions you had with Walter Berringer, but occasionally performing a useful task like the good assistant you thought she was. On the yacht she started to act more sullen, and then first thing yesterday morning she surprised everyone by skidaddling to the island, only to show up once more on this mountain. It doesn't add up, and you get the strong sense she knows something you don't. Intuition tells you to seek her out before you proceed. But where could she be? With this riot of rock here on the mountaintop, there are hundreds of hiding spots. There isn't time to systematically search each nook and cranny, so you need to think about this. All morning long she has been one step ahead of you. The evidence suggests that up until a few minutes ago she had been lurking at the top of the rope ladder with your knife; if all she had wanted to do was sabotage the ladder she could have done that any time. So here you are at another rope structure, where Meredith has the opportunity to apply the same trick. Except that doing so means she won't be able to cross the bridge herself. She doesn't want to cross the bridge, just eliminate you? If all this is true, that means…. You remember the handgun that Berringer insisted you take, which you put in one of the book bag's side pockets. Removing the gun from its hiding spot, you put the pack back on and circle the long way around a small rock spire not far from the beginning of the bridge. You had noticed that spot a moment ago, thinking that if you were going to ambush somebody trying to cross the rope bridge, that's where you would hide. So with the gun in hand, you step quietly until you are flanking the little alcove behind the rock. "Well good morning, Meredith," you say. "I've been looking for you all over." "And here I was, starting to think Walter was overpaying you. It's good to see you again." She, too, has a gun drawn and pointed at you. "I'm going to come right out and say that I don't have the first clue what you're doing here," you say. "You can say that again: you don't have a clue," she says. "You're just a pawn in Walter's latest game." "I was hired to do a job. That hardly makes me a pawn." "You don't know, because you can't see it. But you're just haplessly making your way. When that big red marble comes to bowl you over, you'll never see it coming." "Big red marble?" you say. "I think you spent too much time listening to Berringer and his overdone metaphors." "I will agree that I spent too much time with Walter," Meredith says. A long, awkward moment passes when neither of you has a barbed comment to make, and so you both just stand there pointing your guns at each other. "I won't shoot if you won't," you say. She gives a slight nod, and you both point your guns downward. Relieved that the shootout has been postponed, you look at your old "friend" a little more closely. She is dressed like she is ready to explore the source of the Nile or something, with a khaki shirt, khaki shorts, and a white pith helmet. You resist the urge to make a comment; doesn't she know that Halloween was last week? __________________________________________________ > Next page. "So I've been dying to know," you say, "how is my gear holding up?" "Quite well," Meredith says. "I'm not sure I set the tent up right, but it didn't rain, so who cares? That down sleeping bag sure was comfy, though. I see that you figured out a way to make do without all that stuff." "I'm just glad you left your initials in that tree. Otherwise I'd have no idea who was after me." "You think I'm after you? Ha, don't flatter yourself." "I can only believe what the evidence leads me to conclude," you say. "Well, OK, sure. I needed you to put me on the right trail, because I couldn't make heads or tails of those military maps. But then after a certain point I had to assume you were still Walter's agent, and I know how much he gets bent out of shape when he thinks he's been betrayed. So who was it that sang that song — 'In this ever-changing world, live and let die'?" "So here we are, Meredith, just you and me on top of this mountain. Are we going to shoot it out? Wrestle each other off the side of the cliff? Join forces and claim the Stone of Vul-Kar together?" "I don't know yet," she says. "What you're looking for is across that bridge, you know. Now that we both know we're here, there's no point in playing games. I'll let you go if you let me go." "Isn't what you're looking for on the other side of that bridge, too?" "Maybe, but I'm guessing not." You see that her gaze has stopped on something behind you, so you turn to see what it might be. There, on a rock about fifty feet behind you, are three letters: BPV. The writing is frail and white, as if scratched onto the rock by someone holding another rock. "That's what this is all about?" you say. "You're trying to find Beatriz Paya-Vallejo?" "You could say that," is all she says. "How do you know that's not her down on the rocks?" You step over toward the bridge and point down into the chasm, to the battered set of human remains sprawled across the talus pile. Skeptically, Meredith comes to see what you see, and she gasps when she spots the bones. "Do you think that's her?" you say. Meredith's eyes are wide with surprise, and for the first time since this encounter began she seems to be at a loss for words. "So what's the big deal, anyway?" you say. "You two weren't… you weren't… you know…." "Oh, Christ, don't be so lurid," she finally says. "Look, the temple is across this bridge. If that's what you want, then just go. Be Walter Berringer's little pawn and get your million dollars. If you want to know my secrets, you're gonna have to help me get down into that chasm." __________________________________________________ > You help Meredith descend into the chasm. The unpredictability that Meredith has been creating since you arrived at Woban Island just continues and continues. Case in point: you woke up this morning thinking your purpose was to obtain the Stone of Vul-Kar and make a rich collector happy. But here you are about to agree to help the person who crossed him and stole your stuff… just to find the body of someone whose death wouldn't concern you at all. If doing so is the only way you're going to learn Meredith's secret, then so be it. "I'll help you," you say, "but we're not going down this way. That's a sheer drop down to that talus pile. We need to get off this summit and flank that chasm." "If you say so," Meredith says. "I assume you have an idea on how to do that." "Maybe, but we're going to need to backtrack off the rock." You lead the way back across the summit to the top of the rope ladder… where a short time ago your companion was lying in wait to kill you — or at least watch as you fell and broke both your legs. "I noticed you chose not to use this thing," is all she says now. "Is it because of an accident when you were a kid? Is there a name for it — 'ladder-o-phobia'?" You ignore the wisecracks. "You first," you tell her. She complies, turning around, taking the ropes in hand, and slipping down as confidently as a roofer. The ropes don't even strain under her weight. You imitate her motion, finding that the ladder is more solid than it looks. You're not a fan of the way it flops about as you move down it, though. "There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Meredith says once you drop down to the ground below. "Now where do we go?" "Let me see," you say, studying the terrain. Skirting the rock will not be an option because this part of the mountain is too steep, so you'll have to descend back into the tree line and bushwhack around the summit. You find the trail once more, but as soon as the woods open up you cut right to begin your contour into the rugged notch between the mountains. "You owe me an explanation," you say once you become reasonably certain of your course. It will take a little way to reach that gorge, so you have time to be a good listener. "I suppose I do," Meredith says. "And don't worry; if I'm correct, you'll get the Stone of Vul-Kar. The real one, and not some two-bit knock-off." You're confused, but you're learning that's to be expected when dealing with Meredith Nowitki. "I didn't realize there was more than one." "As far as everybody's concerned, yes, there is only one stone. But when Bea came here looking for it, she was carrying a duplicate." "A duplicate?" you say incredulously. "Where does one find a duplicate Stone of Vul-Kar — at a Jared store?" "This one came from Amazon, actually." "Of course. That was going to be my next guess." "No, seriously. It was a large amethyst from inside a geode — worthless, except as an office paperweight. The Stone of Vul-Kar was supposed to be purple, amethysts are purple, so it seemed like the perfect decoy. You see, Bea was worried about what would happen if the Wobans found out if the stone was missing. So to buy herself enough time to get off the island, she wanted to swap out the real Vul-Kar with a fake. Walter and I were waiting for her on the yacht when she called on the satellite to say she had made the switch, but needed to find a different way off the mountain. That was the last we heard of her." "Ah, I'm starting to see," you say. "You think Paya-Vallejo died with the real Vul-Kar in her possession." "That is the thesis I'm trying to prove, yes." "Hold on — do you hear that?" you say. "Hear what?" "Listen." Somewhere in the distance you hear the beating of drums, just like last night. __________________________________________________ > Next page. "I heard those last night," Meredith says. "What does it mean?" "It's the Wobans," you say. "I've heard drumming like that too, in other dangerous parts of the world. It usually means the natives are up to no good. They intend harm to somebody." "Hopefully not us," she says. "Good luck finding us way up here on the side of this mountain," you say. "Besides, how would they even know we're up here? There were three Wobans guarding the entrance to that lava tube, and I'm pretty sure I snuck past them without them noticing me. How about you? How did you get by?" Meredith doesn't say anything, so you turn to see if she's all right. She looks as pale as a slice of Wonder Bread. "By 'lava tube,' you mean that big long cave, right?" she says. "Yes…." "Well… look, it's this way…." "Meredith, what on earth did you do?" "I shot those three goons down there." "You shot them?!" "Well, yes," Meredith says. "I wasn't about to take any chances, and those eyes on their foreheads were just creepy." She pauses as she considers the implications of what she just said. "You don't suppose that means they're after us, do you?" "Well, I mean, it's just speculation on my part, but yes I think this could mean they're after us!" It certainly makes sense, anyway; three of their kind were found murdered, and now just like anyone they demand justice. So in the finest tradition of mankind, three-eyed or otherwise, they have formed a posse to execute that justice. There are only two things in your favor: one is the possibility that none of this is true, and the Wobans are just out on a hunting expedition; the second thing is the fact that you are about to enter a gorge where no one should expect to find anybody. That gorge, when you finally do enter it, truly is one of the most impressive places you've ever been. There are sheer cliffs on both sides, with those on the smaller mountain to your right, and the tower-like central peak immediately before you. Natural forces have been chipping away at both rock faces over the ages, and the pieces now lie strewn about the space between the mountains in a huge talus pile. "We have to climb over that stuff?" Meredith says, pointing to the jumble of boulders. "There's no other way through." Having been on top of the smaller mountain earlier today, it now seems odd to be viewing the rope bridge from below. Getting to the spot directly beneath it is no easy matter, since there is no level ground anywhere in sight; you climb up the angled chunks of fallen cliff-rock, scoot down the opposite side, and try not to fall into the dark spaces between them. "Is it me, or are the drums getting closer?" she asks. "Don't worry about it," you say. "We're safe down here." If only that were true, you think to yourself. If only that were true. Actually, if need be you might be able to take cover amid the talus. Some of these hidden spaces might turn out to be spacious "caves" of sorts, therefore as you scramble through the bottom of the chasm you try to spot the best places to hide. "Here we are," you say. "I've found part of the collapsed bridge." "But where was that body?" "Over here, I think." Indeed, just two boulders over lie the bones you spotted from above. You presume the person had been trying to cross the bridge when it gave way. "Is it Bea? There's not much left of her, if it was—" "No, this most certainly was not Beatriz Paya-Vallejo," you say. "How can you be so certain?" Meredith protests. You point to the skull, which was heavily fractured from the fall — but is intact enough to clearly show a third eye socket, directly above the nasal cavity. "A Woban!" Meredith says, the disappointment evident in her voice. "So if this isn't… then where is…." "I can't help you there," you say. "Maybe we should just keep a low pro—" Just then the chasm is filled with a disorienting noise. At first you think an earthquake is causing the cliff walls to crumble down around you, but the ground isn't shaking. Then you turn in the direction from which you came — and there, right where you least expected to find them, is the Woban "posse" that has come to track you down. You notice with dismay how easily they can advance over the rubble, as if every one of them had practiced for just such an occasion — all twenty or thirty of them. "They were able to track us…" you say in a tone that sounds like some kind of quiet admiration, even to you. "Maybe you should ask them for lessons," Meredith says, the humor in her voice equally out of place given the circumstances. "Maybe I will, maybe I will," you say as the lead Woban hunters take aim at the two of you with their enormous spears. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>"So I've been dying to know," you say, "how is my gear holding up?" "Quite well," Meredith says. "I'm not sure I set the tent up right, but it didn't rain, so who cares? That down sleeping bag sure was comfy, though. I see that you figured out a way to make do without all that stuff." "I'm just glad you left your initials in that tree. Otherwise I'd have no idea who was after me." "You think I'm after you? Ha, don't flatter yourself." "I can only believe what the evidence leads me to conclude," you say. "Well, OK, sure. I needed you to put me on the right trail, because I couldn't make heads or tails of those military maps. But then after a certain point I had to assume you were still Walter's agent, and I know how much he gets bent out of shape when he thinks he's been betrayed. So who was it that sang that song — 'In this ever-changing world, live and let die'?" "So here we are, Meredith, just you and me on top of this mountain. Are we going to shoot it out? Wrestle each other off the side of the cliff? Join forces and claim the Stone of Vul-Kar together?" "I don't know yet," she says. "What you're looking for is across that bridge, you know. Now that we both know we're here, there's no point in playing games. I'll let you go if you let me go." "Isn't what you're looking for on the other side of that bridge, too?" "Maybe, but I'm guessing not." You see that her gaze has stopped on something behind you, so you turn to see what it might be. There, on a rock about fifty feet behind you, are three letters: BPV. The writing is frail and white, as if scratched onto the rock by someone holding another rock. "That's what this is all about?" you say. "You're trying to find Beatriz Paya-Vallejo?" "You could say that," is all she says. "How do you know that's not her down on the rocks?" You step over toward the bridge and point down into the chasm, to the battered set of human remains sprawled across the talus pile. Skeptically, Meredith comes to see what you see, and she gasps when she spots the bones. "Do you think that's her?" you say. Meredith's eyes are wide with surprise, and for the first time since this encounter began she seems to be at a loss for words. "So what's the big deal, anyway?" you say. "You two weren't… you weren't… you know…." "Oh, Christ, don't be so lurid," she finally says. "Look, the temple is across this bridge. If that's what you want, then just go. Be Walter Berringer's little pawn and get your million dollars. If you want to know my secrets, you're gonna have to help me get down into that chasm." __________________________________________________ > You cross the bridge and climb to the temple ruins. "I don't know what you're up to Meredith, and maybe I don't care. But I'm here for a single purpose, and if I don't make good on my commitments then I may have trouble being employed ever again." "Your commitment to your job is admirable," Meredith says. "Misguided, but admirable." "What can such people as I do, crawling between heaven and earth?" "Oh come now, let's not get all literate on each other," she says. "Go. Be on your way. I wish you success on your journey." You think about demanding your stuff back, but the way this day is proceeding your mission to obtain the Stone of Vul-Kar is almost over. By this time tomorrow, you should be back on board the Big Papi sailing north to Hawaii, with Walter Berringer wiring the balance of your million dollars to your account. You'll be able to buy your own REI store if you want. As you turn toward the rope bridge, Meredith says, "Hold on. Before you go, seriously, how should I get down into that chasm?" "Jump, for all I care," you say, and you turn back toward the bridge. You are too fed up with Meredith to care too much about the condition of the bridge; if this thing can withstand the weight of a grown Woban, then you won't be too much of a load. Still, there isn't very much to this bridge: just four thick, russet-colored ropes and dozens upon dozens of rough-hewn wood slabs. The upper two ropes serve as rudimentary handrails, and smaller ropes bind everything into something resembling a unified structure. It seems steady at first, but the further out you go the bouncier the bridge gets. Several times you feel compelled to come to a stop to let the vibrations stop; they are shooting forward and back through the bridge like sine waves, growing so strong that you worry you might get bounced off the span. You can't help but look down, because the gaps between the slats are wide enough you could sink a boot through one if you weren't careful. Could that really be the remains of your old nemesis down there on those boulders? Somehow the bones seem too big to be Paya-Vallejo, but you'll let Meredith figure that one out for herself. Speaking of Meredith, you turn and see no such person on the summit behind you. Maybe she plays dumb a lot, but perhaps that has just been an act. You're confident she'll figure out a way into that gorge down there. Hold on — what's that? The sound is so faint that you almost missed it. Actually you were tuning it out, because that drumming noise you heard last night has returned and has been going on for a few minutes. You have been paying too much attention to the bridge to notice. The Wobans are up to something, but it's hard to say what. When the bridge stops shimmying underneath you, you continue stepping gingerly across. After reaching the sagging midpoint of the span, you have to climb up a slight grade to reach the opposite end. The vibrations become less intense the closer you get to the anchor point, until finally you reach the ledge on the side of the island's main summit. Before you enter the tunnel leading into the mountain, you take one last look at the landscape behind you. There is no movement other than clouds drifting lazily in the sky, but the drumming does sound like it has gotten closer. The Wobans aren't your concern; for all you know they're on the hunt for some giant flightless bird or something. You're on the hunt for something else entirely, and right now your quarry is so close that you almost smell all the twenty-dollar bills that will be spewing out of the first ATM you come across back home. You step into the tunnel expecting darkness, but finding a shaft of light from above instead. The tunnel leads in a hundred feet or so to a circular room with no ceiling; it extends upward for hundreds of feet all the way to the top of the mountain, making you feel like you're at the bottom of a well looking up. Stone steps protrude from the wall, spiralling gracefully all the way up. Eagerly you take to the steps, learning quickly that they weren't carved with your little human legs in mind. This was a place designed by seven-foot giants, with steps made for people with longer strides — meaning you have to work harder to ascend each riser, and then make an awkward half-step in between. The closest thing to this in your life experience was that time when you climbed an old lighthouse once on the East Coast, but that was a narrow and confined space. This place was constructed on a grand scale. On the other hand it's a tall shaft to climb, and going round and round gets tedious quickly. You feel like the action hero in a poorly-edited movie: you've discovered the secret to vanquishing the alien invasion force, and only you can save Planet Earth — but first you need to run a marathon to deliver the news to the rebel base, so check back after a couple hours. All right, so it doesn't take that long to reach the top of the spiral stairs, but by the time you get there you feel spent — and when you lean against a wall in exhaustion to catch your breath, this further delays the completion of your mission. __________________________________________________ > Next page. Looking up at your new surroundings, you find that the land here on top of the mountain is completely flat. However, the entire plateau is occupied by stone ruins, the remains of some civilization that is practically unknown to academia — a culture that existed nowhere else on Earth. But what a strange culture that must have been, like a race of ancient tourists who traveled the globe and recreated the various architectural styles they found, here on the one or two acres of buildable space atop this mountain. There are four small buildings around the edge of the summit, each a house-sized stepped pyramid like something out of Mexico, but with four Greek-style columns on top. All four face the central structure, which is a stepped pyramid of the same size. But instead of the columns, this one is capped with a statue. If the Stone of Vul-Kar is anywhere, it's going to be in that central structure. You step over the crumbled remains of a toppled column to get a closer look. The statue looks like a Buddha from afar, a cherubic being with a large grin — except that this "Buddha" is horned, giving the otherwise complacent grin a malicious subtext. Is this the Vul-Kar god whose precious gem you've come to rob? A tall and dark entrance leads into the temple, which is not large at all. The interior is something more like a closet, with room for three or four people to enter and feel intimidated by the carving of Vul-Kar that occupies an entire wall. Here he is nothing but an enormous face, with pupils the size of manhole covers and a nose on which you could easily bump your head. His eyes are crossed and his mouth is opened, revealing a raised tongue. Clearly this not a kind and forgiving god, but one who seeks to instill fear and demand obedience. There is something missing, though: there is no purple gem. You look around in case you're missing something, but the interior of the temple is so small there is nothing to miss. The focus of this entire chamber seems to be that stuck-out tongue; it's what the crossed eyes are looking at, and it's what the nose shelters. You duck under the nose and examine the stone tongue more closely, noticing only a flat spot where it seems a prominent object should be. Other than that, the only noteworthy thing you see now is a single inscription, scratched onto the tip of Vul-Kar's tongue with a piece of stone much like the way Paya-Vallejo inscribed her initials down by the rope bridge: MAMMON Before you have a chance to ponder its significance, your concentration is broken by the sound of shouting outside. What the hell is going on? You rush out of the temple and follow the sound to the edge of the plateau — hesitating to go all the way to the edge because of the dizzying drop-off you know you'll find, but getting close enough to get a good look at the scene below. The mountain at the other end of the rope bridge where you encountered Meredith Nowitki has been overrun by a hundred angry Wobans, who seem to be celebrating the capture of a prisoner. They surround the hapless victim, making it impossible for you to get a good look at who it is… but then again, who else was on this mountain today? The crowd has gathered atop the cliff near the rope bridge, parting as the victim is pushed toward the edge. That's when you finally get a good look at the person: It's Meredith. Then the Wobans go quiet as an imposing figure with a feathered crown and a feathered robe steps forward. "I keia la, e ho‘olei makou i keia haumia i ka make i loa‘a ia ia ma muli o kana mau hana hana kolohe," he shouts as the others pay respectful attention. "Ua piha kona kino i na ‘uhane ‘ino. E waiho makou i kona kino make e pehu i ka la, ‘a‘ole lawe ‘ia mai i ka makou papa‘aina." The Wobans cheer in agreement to whatever their king has just proclaimed. Meredith is kneeling at the edge of the precipice, scanning the sky as if looking for divine intervention. Then she spots you watching from the top of the mountain. "Help me!" she shouts… and to your dismay the Woban king follows her gaze and sees you too. "Pepehi ia ia," the king says. "A laila e kauoha aku ‘oe ia ‘oe e lawe mai ia‘u i kekahi pio." You watch in horror as Meredith is shoved off the mountain into the rocky chasm. The Wobans don't waste any time enjoying the grisly spectacle though; a detachment of about a dozen angry warriors charge across the bridge single-file and into the tunnel leading to the spiral stairway. They are coming for you next, and there is no other way off the mountain. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Maybe the rope ladder worked for Meredith, but she weighs what, a hundred pounds soaking wet? You aren't about to take that same chance, so instead you find a pair of small protrusions on the rock and pull yourself up, your boot scraping against the surface until your toe finds something it can step on. With this first successful step, you look up and identify a route to the top where the rock is angled fifty degrees or so — very steep to be sure, but not so steep as to be impossible to climb. The going is slow, though, as there is no room for error on a climbing route this exposed. The wall of rock is only maybe fifty feet tall, but if you were to lose your grip there would be nothing to stop your fall. Slowly you work the rock directly in front of you, looking up from time to time, but never looking down, maintaining three points of contact at all times. Before moving the next hand or foot, you test your grip with your other appendages to reassure yourself you're not about to slip off the mountain. It is a long and tiring process, though, during which you imagine Meredith getting far ahead of you, perhaps even finding some kind of hidden passageway leading up to the temple ruins where the Stone of Vul-Kar awaits. When you last saw Walter Berringer on board the Big Papi you thought maybe his anger towards Meredith had eclipsed his desire to obtain the gem. Now that Meredith has passed you on the trail, you're starting to feel the same way. Although it only takes ten minutes to reach the top, it feels more like thirty. The slope doesn't taper at the top like you had hoped, so there is one more delay as you are forced to find something else to grab onto so you can pull yourself over the edge, finally coming to rest on a small terrace of level ground. You are torn by the competing interests of stopping to rest and continuing your chase, when the sound of running footsteps makes the choice for you. Although all four of your limbs feeling limp from the exertion of the climb, adrenaline takes over as you charge around a boulder to where you thought you heard the noise. Here you find the top of the rope ladder, anchored by a pair of stout wooden stakes wedged into a crevice in the rock. Nobody is there, but you do see a familiar green object lying on the ground. Picking it up, you recognize it immediately as a six-inch survival knife you've owned for so long you don't even remember where you got it. This was one of the items that was in the REI backpack that Meredith stole… meaning she was right here! She was waiting for you to climb the ladder so she could cut the ropes on you — not just trying to block your path, but intentionally waiting for an opportunity to cause you grave harm! Looking around, you don't see her — but that proves nothing because you have reached an area of irregular topography, a restless summit strewn with boulders and indented by alcoves and large crevices. There is a maze-like quality to the area, almost, and it occurs to you that Meredith could be anywhere here. You listen, but you hear no further footsteps. Either she has gotten away, or she is hiding here somewhere among the rocks. Tucking your trusty old knife under your belt, you set out to search this strange summit. Much of Woban Island spreads out below you, although the summit is so broad and cluttered that you never have the full 360° view. However, you are so close to the main summit that it looms above the rock formations surrounding you. For the first time you can clearly see the summit ruins on its top. What you're looking for is Meredith's whereabouts. You'd call her name, but that would make you feel like you're searching for a lost puppy. It would also broadcast your location to your quarry. No, it would be better to let her stew for a moment, wondering where you are. But in the process of looking for her, you circle around to the far side of the summit where you find something completely unexpected: a rope bridge spanning a massive gulf. The near end is anchored to large wooden poles, similar to the ladder but on a larger scale. Five hundred feet away, the far end of the bridge is tethered to a narrow ledge on the side of the steep main summit, with a tunnel leading into the mountain. In between is a chasm hundreds of feet deep, with a botton full of talus. Looking down into the depths, you can see the remains of an earlier version of the bridge rotting away on the rocks below. Are those human bones that you see down there, too? So did Meredith cross the bridge, or is she lying in wait somewhere on this side, hidden among the rocks? It's frustrating to consider the possibilities: either she is already climbing up to the temple ruins, on her way to to grab the Stone of Vul-Kar before you; or she's poised to sabotage you again by cutting the ropes once you are halfway across the bridge. But that wouldn't make sense; if she's here to get the stone, then she needs that bridge just as much as you do. __________________________________________________ > You cross the bridge. The thought that Meredith might be lurking behind you is sheer paranoia, especially since it appears the bridge is the only way to get to the main summit. If she destroys the bridge just to kill you, then how would she get across? You're just overthinking a simple problem. Like everyone else, she's here to grab the Stone of Vul-Kar so she can claim a reward and get rich. If you don't act fast, she may find it before you do. However, you have the same hesitation about the bridge as you did about the rope ladder, in terms of its structural adequacy. The bridge is merely a combination of four fibrous ropes with dozens of wood slabs to step on. It seems like a very primitive contraption for such an ambitious span, and structural failure would result in certain death. Do the Wobans have any civil engineers among them? How often do they inspect this thing? How did the previous bridge fail, and whose skeleton is that down on the rocks? But here's another way of looking at it: this bridge was presumably built by Woban natives, who are seven feet tall and significantly heavier than a typical human. If the bridge can carry one of them safely across, what are you so worried about? So you approach the bridge, grab the two waist-high ropes that serve as handrails, take a deep breath, and step onto the first wood slab. The bridge shimmies under your weight, but it holds. So you take the next step, then the next, and then the next, one at a time. You have to watch where you are placing your feet, so you have no choice but to look down lest you slip a boot through the gap between the slats; Philippe Petit you are not. The vast space below you is terrifying, so you choose to focus instead on the craftmanship of the bridge: the strength of rust-colored rope, the evenness of the wood slabs, the knots that hold everything together. It's quite the piece of work. When you are just a third of the way across, you are startled to hear a voice call out behind you. "Give my regards to Walter." You turn carefully and see Meredith kneeling at the beginning of the bridge, at the place you reasoned she wouldn't be. She no longer has your knife, but she is holding a handgun to one of the two lower ropes. "Meredith, wh—" you start to say, but she's not interested in small talk. She fires, the bullet severing the rope just as handily as a knife. The walkway of wood slabs drops away like a trap door, and in a desperate act to catch yourself you throw your arms around the two handrails. This leaves you dangling in space by your armpits. Seeing that you're still holding onto the bridge, she stands and shoots the upper rope on the opposite side of the bridge. The right handrail falls away, leaving your feet grasping for purchase on the one bottom rope that still remains, and your arms holding onto the last handrail. Meredith doesn't even wait to see you fall; she shoulders your green backpack and disappears among the rocks, apparently having no interest in crossing the bridge. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Despite the inglorious shelter and the lack of an adequate sleeping bag, you sleep soundly anyway. Perhaps too soundly, because by the time your eyes open the sun has already risen and is making its upward climb into the sky. Last night's fire is now a pile of cooling ashes, and the drumming has long since ceased. Blue skies overhead promise a glorious day ahead, as far as the weather is concerned. Then something catches your eye: on the tree where you carved your initials below those of your old adversary, there is now a freshly-carved MN. As hard as you find it to believe, that could only be Meredith Nowitki! Could it possibly be that she passed through while you were still sleeping — toting all of your brand-new gear — and carved her name in the tree just to taunt you? You step out onto the narrow footpath and sure enough, there are now new boot prints in the mud, left by someone with feet much smaller than your own. How infuriating! How aggravating! How humiliating! Not only did she steal your stuff, but she was following behind you so that you could lead her to the Stone of Vul-Kar! Why else would she be here? And now that you have overindulged in sleep, she has passed you by. What kind of a headstart does she have on you? Minutes? Hours? Extremely displeased with yourself, you hurriedly take down the tarp and pack up the few things you have. You remember well Berringer's rage yesterday morning when he learned that Meredith, his erstwhile "acquisition" from the Boston Globe, had deserted him — and you can only imagine how much worse it would be if you let her get to his prize first. You are so angry that you start to contemplate ways that gun of his might come in useful after all. The best you can do for breakfast is a couple more pepperoni sticks; maybe tonight, with Meredith permanently out of the way, you'll have all of your stuff back so you can enjoy something a little less gas-inducing. Then you shoulder the black book bag and set off for the mountain. Her tracks are easy to follow, although in retrospect so were yours, too, probably. Beyond the campsite, the rugged footpath continues climbing through the high-elevation brush, the mud softer than ever, like black cookie batter. Meredith must have been inspired to move swiftly, because you see no sign of her. Who would believe that someone who spent the last three years trailing Walter Berringer around a baseball stadium in high heels would be so adept at climbing a mountain? But then the trail runs cold when the vegetation ends and the way forward is nothing but bare rock. You can trace Meredith's steps only for about six paces, where the mud from her boots left an obvious track, but then nothing after that. You're not even sure where the actual trail goes; the best you can do is continue climbing at the same angle, and hope that some sign presents itself. What you find a moment later is a wall of rock blocking your way. Looking back, you can still see where the trail exited the forest, with a direct line of travel leading to where you are now. To the best of your tracking ability, this is where you're supposed to be, so you scout your options. By circling a bit to the left, you find a rope ladder dangling down the rock face — the surest sign that you are on the correct trail. But the fibrous rope looks old and weathered, and you are not sure you can trust it to hold your weight. The only other option would be to scale the rock face itself. The wall isn't quite vertical, and the surface seems coarsely textured with just enough subtle imperfections to make footholds and handholds theoretically plentiful, but you can't tell for sure from below. __________________________________________________ > You use the ladder. You have to assume that Meredith used the ladder, and the ropes might not be as weak as you fear. Yes, it looks old, but that doesn't automatically mean the ladder won't hold. And climbing it will certainly be much faster than trying to scale the rock wall. So you grab hold of the parallel ropes and hoist yourself onto the first rung. It holds, although you still see a dozen different ways this endeavor could go wrong. The ropes do feel sturdy, but damp; the rungs are just sticks, and you inspect each one for signs of weakness before you advance one more step. Overall the ladder is fifty feet tall, and it flops about against the rock as you slowly climb up. The ropes are holding, which is good, because until you reach the top of the small cliff they will be the only things keeping you from falling. "Well there you are, sleepy head!" With a sinking feeling in your stomach, you look up. Meredith is at the top of the ladder, sticking her head out over the edge. "I tried not to wake you," she continues. "You looked so comfy under that blue tarp thingy." "Meredith, what the heck are you doing here?" you say. Of all the places she picked to have this confrontation; you are still twenty feet shy of the top, with thirty feet of space below you. The rope ladder refuses to stay still, swaying with every little movement of your body. "I was waiting for you, of course," she says. "I knew you'd be coming this way sooner or later. I just didn't realize it would be this late." "No, I meant what are doing here, on Woban Island?" "For the same thing you are, obviously. Can't a girl treat herself every now and then? That gem will make me wealthier than it will make you — you let yourself get hired by the wrong collector. I needed you yesterday to point me in the right direction, but now that I see the way to go, your services are no longer required." "Meredith, we need to talk," you say. "No, I don't think so. I like this knife I found in your pack, by the way." She holds out the six-inch knife you've been keeping in your backpack for years; although you don't use it often, you are pretty good at keeping the blade sharpened. It disgusts you to see her brandishing it now. "I was playing with this earlier," Meredith continues "and I'm certain this thing could cut through these ropes like butter. Here, let's find out." There are lots of things about this situation that you don't understand, but you know she is right about the knife. As she applies it to the top of the rope ladder, you wonder if it would be better to try and climb up or down in the seconds before she slices through the two bundles of fiber. Ultimately it doesn't matter; when both ropes are cut, you experience the most horrific moment ever as you tumble toward the rocks below. The ground there is slanted, and you know there is zero chance you will stick the landing. Even if you do survive the initial fall — and then the two-hundred-foot tumble that is sure to follow — there won't be too much left of you. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The idea occurs to you that the cave may have some kind of significance, and this is why the Wobans are here — perhaps they are guarding it. This piques your curiosity. Of course, all of this is just a theory and you have no real idea who those Wobans are or what their purpose is, but with no maps to follow — and with a personal taste for adventure that is about a mile wide — you feel compelled to explore the cave. The irony is that if the Wobans are here to guard the cave, they're doing a poor job of it. The cave's entrance is turned slightly away from the clearing, so they cannot even see it from where they are playing their little game of tiddlywinks or whatever. A growth of grass and small brushy plants provides just enough cover for you to crouch low and step softly between your boulder and the clear-water stream flowing out of the cave. "He aha kela kani?" says one of the Wobans to his companions. "‘O kau e lohe nei, ‘o wau ke lanakila nei i keia pa‘ani. E kiola i kou pohaku a pani i kou waha," someone responds. "Aole. Lohe wau i kekahi mea e ne‘e ana." "He mea li‘ili‘i paha kahi holoholona e ‘uwu ana i ka mau‘u. Pono ‘oe e pa‘ani i ka pa‘ani a ha‘alele i ke kama‘ilio ‘ana." The mouth of the cave is wide, and you can feel its coolness before you even step inside. Immediately you are glad you came here, as you are now surrounded by moisture and hidden from the harsh sun — the exact opposite conditions from where you just were. You pause for a moment as your eyes adjust to the dim light, and then you continue on; you may have just snuck past the Woban guards successfully, but you would still prefer to put some distance between you. You quickly realize that this cave is a lava tube — a tunnel-like passage carved through the hillside during an ancient eruption. It angles gently upward, with the stream fanning out across the rock floor. Up ahead is nothing but darkness, so just before you lose sight of the little bit of daylight coming in through the entrance, you stop to fish out Captain Mark's palm-sized plastic flashlight from the backpack. Except for the uphill grade, following the lava tube is like exploring an abandoned subway. The arched ceiling maintains almost consistent dimensions as the passageway snakes its way through the rocky core of the island, giving it a man-made appearance. But where is it leading? You have no idea how good the batteries are in the flashlight, and you'd hate to be stranded here in the dark. Excitement propels you forward; anxiety has you hoping an exit appears soon. What you do find is a fork, with passages branching to the left and right. So now what? Both are equally dark, and your first impression is that there is no difference between them, other than direction. You step into the space between the twin tunnels, lick your fingertip, and stick it into the air. Although it's subtle, there is a draft of air coming from the left tunnel, and heat coming from the right — would that be heat from outdoors, maybe? The stream that you have been following has dwindled to just a trickle, but you can see now that it flows from the left-hand tunnel. This is all very interesting, but in a moment of sobriety you realize that Walter Berringer didn't send you here to go spelunking. Maybe you should go back the way you came, hoping that the Wobans have left so that you can resume your hike along the trail. __________________________________________________ > You take the right tunnel. The heat coming from the right tunnel convinces you that this must be the way back to the surface, where the air was blisteringly hot earlier today as you hiked across the ridgeline. These lava tubes are interesting, and it looks like coming here was an ingenious way to get past those three Wobans down below, but your real purpose is to find the island's highest mountain. It's time to resume that journey, so if the right-hand tunnel is going to lead you back up to ground level then that is the smartest way to go. But the tunnel does not seem to lead anywhere quickly; you follow it for more than fifteen minutes without seeing much of anything different compared to the previous lava tube. The one distinction is that this branch does less climbing, as if it were leading you deeper inside one of the island's small mountains rather than paralleling the slope. It is indeed warmer here, but the source of that heat is not evident; with no stream trickling past your feet the entire place seems less enchanting and more desolate. You are torn between the competing thoughts of going forward and turning back. You've come so far already that the idea of giving up now seems distasteful; for all you know the exit to the surface may be just around the next bend, or the next. If that turns out to be the case, it means that it would be longer to go back than it would to go forward. But at the same time, that nagging sense that you've been wasting your time here won't go away. The simple fact is that you have no way of knowing which way is best, thus putting your tortured brain into a state of paralysis due to insufficient information. Hold on — what's that sound? All this time that you've been exploring the lava tube, the sounds of your footsteps have been echoing off the rock walls surrounding you. But when you stopped a moment ago to ponder your options, the "echoes" made two extra steps. Could it be that someone has been following you all this time? The idea of encountering a Woban deep in this endless lava tube is terrifying. Where is your escape route? Who will find your remains? You feel as though you have been unwittingly walking deeper and deeper into a trap, all the while congratulating yourself for evading the three Wobans standing guard at the entrance. You are such a fool. Flicking off the flashlight in your hand, you wait quietly in the utter darkness for further sounds that someone is behind you. It is not a long wait — and not only do you hear the other person approaching, but soon you see the glow of another flashlight on the tunnel walls. It's not a Woban following you, but one of the other collectors! It remains to be seen which is more dangerous. You remember the pistol that Berringer pressed into your hand this morning; it's been in your pack ever since you left the Big Papi, where you've forgotten all about it. Normally you'd want nothing to do with a firearm, on the theory that if you shoot at someone first and miss, they'll just shoot at you back, thus making a bad situation worse. But here you feel trapped and vulnerable, and that little handgun may be your only way out of this predicament. By the time the other person comes into view around the last bend in the lava tube, Berringer's pistol is in your hands, and your finger is hooked around the trigger. Your shadow has not spoken a word, and perhaps doesn't even know yet that you're standing right in front of them. Whoever it is, they are wearing a headlamp; the light they have been using to find their way emanates from their forehead like an LED halo, partially blinding you and leaving the person wearing it in the shadows. "Who are you, and why have you been following me?" you say. Your voice echoes weirdly off the walls, to the point where you hardly recognize the way you sound. The other person says nothing, but comes to a dead stop. You see the headlamp beam sweeping up and settling on your location, leaving you to assume that the person wearing it had been focusing on where they were stepping, and hadn't seen you until just now. When there is no response, you hold up the gun in front of you. "Don't come any closer, or I'll shoot." "Fat chance. We all know you don't carry." The other person's voice echoes just as much as yours; it sounds familiar, but all you can determine through the reverberation is that your shadow is a woman. Behind the glare of her headlamp, you are sure you see the person reaching for a gun of her own. So before this turns into a standoff in the dark, you impulsively fire the first shot… …and the results are exactly what you've always feared they would be. Your shot doesn't miss its target, but all it does is graze her as she jumps to safety. Her shot, on the other hand, finds its mark with no problem. You collapse to the ground, darkness overtaking you before you ever learn the identity of who it was who has just bested you. THE END <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The idea occurs to you that the cave may have some kind of significance, and this is why the Wobans are here — perhaps they are guarding it. This piques your curiosity. Of course, all of this is just a theory and you have no real idea who those Wobans are or what their purpose is, but with no maps to follow — and with a personal taste for adventure that is about a mile wide — you feel compelled to explore the cave. The irony is that if the Wobans are here to guard the cave, they're doing a poor job of it. The cave's entrance is turned slightly away from the clearing, so they cannot even see it from where they are playing their little game of tiddlywinks or whatever. A growth of grass and small brushy plants provides just enough cover for you to crouch low and step softly between your boulder and the clear-water stream flowing out of the cave. "He aha kela kani?" says one of the Wobans to his companions. "‘O kau e lohe nei, ‘o wau ke lanakila nei i keia pa‘ani. E kiola i kou pohaku a pani i kou waha," someone responds. "Aole. Lohe wau i kekahi mea e ne‘e ana." "He mea li‘ili‘i paha kahi holoholona e ‘uwu ana i ka mau‘u. Pono ‘oe e pa‘ani i ka pa‘ani a ha‘alele i ke kama‘ilio ‘ana." The mouth of the cave is wide, and you can feel its coolness before you even step inside. Immediately you are glad you came here, as you are now surrounded by moisture and hidden from the harsh sun — the exact opposite conditions from where you just were. You pause for a moment as your eyes adjust to the dim light, and then you continue on; you may have just snuck past the Woban guards successfully, but you would still prefer to put some distance between you. You quickly realize that this cave is a lava tube — a tunnel-like passage carved through the hillside during an ancient eruption. It angles gently upward, with the stream fanning out across the rock floor. Up ahead is nothing but darkness, so just before you lose sight of the little bit of daylight coming in through the entrance, you stop to fish out Captain Mark's palm-sized plastic flashlight from the backpack. Except for the uphill grade, following the lava tube is like exploring an abandoned subway. The arched ceiling maintains almost consistent dimensions as the passageway snakes its way through the rocky core of the island, giving it a man-made appearance. But where is it leading? You have no idea how good the batteries are in the flashlight, and you'd hate to be stranded here in the dark. Excitement propels you forward; anxiety has you hoping an exit appears soon. What you do find is a fork, with passages branching to the left and right. So now what? Both are equally dark, and your first impression is that there is no difference between them, other than direction. You step into the space between the twin tunnels, lick your fingertip, and stick it into the air. Although it's subtle, there is a draft of air coming from the left tunnel, and heat coming from the right — would that be heat from outdoors, maybe? The stream that you have been following has dwindled to just a trickle, but you can see now that it flows from the left-hand tunnel. This is all very interesting, but in a moment of sobriety you realize that Walter Berringer didn't send you here to go spelunking. Maybe you should go back the way you came, hoping that the Wobans have left so that you can resume your hike along the trail. __________________________________________________ > You go back. Convinced that you have been wasting your time, and having found no other exits out of the lava tube, you decide that the sensible thing to do is backtrack down to the entrance. If the Wobans are still there when you get back, then you'll just have to wait for them to leave. Therefore you turn to follow the little stream back down the angled cave, feeling a little bit like you are walking down an overgrown waterslide in an amusement park. The flow is little more than a trickle at first, but as you pass through the tunnel a second time you notice small seeps at various spots along the wall where additional rivulets are adding to the volume of the stream. In places, the running water fans out into an apron of moisture running down the slanted floor of the lava tube. What you fail to appreciate is that some of this wet rock can be slippery, especially when you are walking downhill. On one patch of smooth rock, your Vibram soles fail you, sending you on a wild butt-slide down for a distance of about twenty feet. The flashlight flies out of your hands as you try unsuccessfully to stop yourself, but there is nothing you can grab onto. You come to an inelegant stop in the gravel bar at the bottom, unharmed except for a few scrapes on your legs and the palm of your hands, as well as a wet behind. The plastic flashlight has come to rest in a pool of water, its light gone out. But you are not in the dark. You look up and see someone is standing over you, the light of their headlamp illuminating the scene of your embarrassing fall. "You look lost," the person says — a woman, her familiar voice distorted by the reverberation off the rock walls. "I would have expected someone with your reputation to be more sure-footed." The headlamp is blinding you, and the echoes are distracting, but you would recognize Meredith's voice anywhere. "What the hell are you doing here?" you say. "And why did you take my stuff?" Instead of responding to you directly, Meredith extends her hand to help you up. When you are standing beside her, she says, "Oh, right, the headlamp." She takes it off and holds it in her hand so that you can see her without being blinded by the light. Yet again she has changed her wardrobe; instead of a dress suit or a bikini, she is now clad in a khaki shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, with a white pith helmet to top it all off. The air about her is heavy with the smell of a scented bug spray. She looks like a model from an old Banana Republic catalog, before that chain went downhill. "I've been looking for you," she says. "I knew you'd be the only person who'd understand!" You notice she's wearing your brand-new backpack, holding your brand-new headlamp in one hand and your brand-new trekking poles in the other. "Funny, Berringer asked me to keep an eye out for you, too. He even gave me a gun to use in case I found you." Her eyes widen in alarm at the news. "You don't plan to shoot me and take me back to Walter, do you?" "We'll have to see," you say. No, you don't plan to shoot her, but she's not exactly someone towards whom you feel much warmth at the moment, though. "The last thing I want to be is one of his trophies. You saw the way he treated me, right? You know I had to get away from him." Meredith is trying to play on your sympathies. You remember well the remark that Berringer made back on the yacht last night, when he boasted that he had "acquired" her and that she was too dumb to realize it. So she may have a point. Still, something doesn't add up; why bail on Berringer here, when she could have slipped away at any time she wanted back in Boston? "So why were following me up this lava tube?" you say. "You got yourself off the boat, you could go anywhere you want. What do you need me for?" "Because you're probably the only two-eyed person on this island who knows what they're doing. I stand a better chance getting out of here alive with you than I do on my own." "I usually work alone. And besides, I'm not overly fond of people who steal my stuff right out of my cabin while I'm sleeping." "Ah, yes, your stuff. Well, I won't insult you with an apology; you know as well as I do that the rules of our little game don't reward morality. But I'll make you a deal: you can have your 'stuff' back if you let me come with you." "And if I don't?" "I hardly see how that would even be a valid option," Meredith says. "Would you really just leave me here alone on an island full of cannibals, just because your pride was wounded? I mean, come on here. Let's be adults." __________________________________________________ > You let Meredith come with you. This is one of those moments where you feel like closing your eyes and silently counting to ten. But you know that even if you did, when you reopened them Meredith Nowitki will still be standing in front of you. Arguing with her will be pointless, and it just so happens she possesses something that you really do need right now: that headlamp. With the watery demise of Captain Mark's cheap flashlight, it is now the only source of light in the cave. "All right, fine," you say. "You can come with me. Now just give me back my pack." Meredith shrugs off the green backpack you bought at REI and plops it down on a rock beside the stream. "This thing is effing heavy," she says. "How do you move so fast carrying all this weight?" You take off Captain Mark's black book bag and give it to her. "Here, you can have this. It's not much lighter, though. All of my stuff better still be here." "Don't worry, I didn't touch a thing," she says. "All I took were a couple of those Clif Bar things and some water." Judging by the feel of the pack, she's probably right. This is no place to conduct a thorough inventory, though, so you hoist the pack onto your shoulders. Actually, the weight isn't that bad at all, maybe about thirty pounds or so. But Meredith can't weigh more than 100 pounds soaking wet, and nothing about her prior life chasing Walter Berringer around Fenway Park would have prepared her for this kind of physical effort. So yeah, she probably would think a thirty-pound backpack was the heaviest thing ever. "I'm going to need that headlamp, too," you say. "But how am I supposed to see without it?" "Just don't get too far behind. It's the only light we have." The only item you let her keep — for the moment — is one of the two trekking poles. Considering how you just slipped and fell down the wet rocks, you know life will go more smoothly if she gets to use one of the poles for balance. "So why are you going back down this tunnel?" she asks a few minutes later. "I didn't think this lava tube was going anywhere. I got to a point where it started to branch, and I just didn't feel like getting lost in a maze. Now you tell me something: when you jumped ship this morning, where exactly did you think you were going to go?" "To find the Stone of Vul-Kar, of course. Why else does one come to Woban Island — for the piña coladas?" "So in other words your plan was to get the stone before I did and collect the reward? And now you want me to help?" "Settle down," Meredith says. "Walter was going to pay you a million dollars, right? Well I know someone willing to pay two million." "Who?" "Another Boston collector. One of Walter's rivals, actually." "And what makes you think you can find the stone?" you ask. "Let's just say I know something about it no one else knows," she says. "And what would that be?" "I have reason to believe that the Stone of Vul-Kar is not where everybody thinks it is." "And how could you of all people possibly know that?" If nothing else, Meredith's company as you descend the lava tube is proving to be entertaining. "Remember how Walter previously hired Beatriz Paya-Vallejo to find the gem? What he didn't know was that I helped her out with a particular dilemma she had. Bea was confident she could find the stone, but what worried her was that it would make her a target for the Wobans once she took it from the temple. So I tracked down a large geode with a purple crystal inside, and then had a guy chip away the outer layer of rock so that she would have a decoy to leave behind when she ran off with the true Stone of Vul-Kar." "Did it work?" "I have no idea," Meredith says. "All we know was that she called us on the satellite phone and said she had found the gem. But she was having difficulty of some kind and needed to find an alternate route off the mountain. So Walter moved the Big Papi to the far side of the island, but we never heard another word. I think she found the stone and made the swap, but that something happened to her anyway." "That is interesting," you say. "So who is this other collector, anyway — the one willing to pay two million dollars?" "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Her story is rather… complicated. But if I'm not mistaken, she sent someone to try and make contact with you on your flight to Boston." "By any chance, does he own a plaid suit?" "Dozens of them, unfortunately." You admit to yourself that you are thoroughly confused. This tale Meredith just told was fascinating, but is any of it believable? And how can it possibly be to your advantage to pal around with someone dressed like a movie extra from Gunga Din? Where does one find an actual pith helmet these days, anyway? "Well, our first challenge will be getting out of this cave unseen," you say. "Hopefully those three Wobans standing guard near the entrance have moved on to other pursuits, or else—" "Oh, those guys won't be giving anybody any problems," Meredith says. "Why do you say that?" "I shot them. Yeah, I know that's not your thing, but what else was I going to do?" She delivers this bit of news just as you are a minute from the entrance. Light from outside is now reaching your position, so you switch off the headlamp and tuck it away. Quietly, you step closer to the mouth of the cave, worried about what you might find outside. You never use guns in your work because your M.O. is to move stealthily, drawing as little attention to yourself as possible. But if your new "partner" fired off at least three shots to kill those Wobans you snuck past earlier, who knows who else was drawn to the scene by the sound of the gunshots? Indeed, you can tell right away that the small clearing is now crawling with three-eyed natives. Keeping to the shadows as much as possible, you inch toward the opening. The brush that concealed you earlier prevents you from seeing everything, but you can see Wobans scouring the surrounding jungle, as if investigating the killing of the three guards. "E ‘imi i ka po‘e lapuwale i hana ia hana!" a voice booms. Meredith creeps up behind you. "Ugh, not more of these goons." She intends this as a whisper, but some people simply aren't that good at keeping their voice low. Adding the fact that you are in what amounts to an echo chamber, she might just as well be speaking into a megaphone. A young Woban turns toward the cave. "Eia lakou, e ka haku!" he shouts, pointing to you. Within moments you are captured by the Wobans. __________________________________________________ > Next page. You curse the name of Meredith Nowitki as the two of you are marched up the trail as prisoners of the Wobans. Your hands are not bound, and your captors have even let you keep your packs for the moment. But with three spears each pointed at the two of you, you estimate your odds of escaping are pretty much zero. At a junction of trails about half a mile past the cave entrance, the Wobans turn left and descend a long hill back toward the shoreline. They are in a celebratory mood, singing boisterously like Boy Scouts marching to summer camp: Hele mai na mea hele waho no ka pohaku o Vul-Kar Aka ‘a‘ole makou e ‘ae ia lakou Malama makou i ka pohaku a pale maika‘i Ma makou e ‘ai ai i na ‘aihue e hele mai e ‘aihue! It's a primitive form of music to be sure, lacking the civilized innovations of both meter and rhyme. But boy, do they sure seem pleased with themselves singing it! "Why are we putting up with this? Didn't you say Walter gave you a g—nnh!" Meredith starts to say, but the Woban behind her shoves her to shut her up. You decide it's best not to respond. Whatever your captors have in store for the two of you, you doubt it will be anything good. You are led to a small village of thatched huts, with about two dozen dwellings. One larger structure stands atop a mound of earth, making it elevated about five feet above the rest of the settlement. Your guards march you through the center of town, and then stop you at the foot of the mound. The leader of your guards is a fierce-looking young man with a painted face and a tattooed body. He steps forward and shouts: "E ke ali‘i nui a mahalo ‘ia, e hele mai e ‘ike i ka mea a makou e lawe nei ia ‘oe!" A grizzled old giant emerges from the elevated hut, with wild locks of graying hair and what looks like claw marks just above his middle eye. His face is painted with bold stripes of white, black, and yellow, and despite his obvious advanced age the tattoos that adorn his entire torso are still sharply defined. Beside the chief stands a woman who appears much younger than he is, with long black hair and a necklace adorned with seashells... and a shrunken head. All three of her eyebrows are furled in an obvious expression of scorn as she regards you and Meredith from her elevated position; by contrast, the doll-sized head dangling at her chest only has two eyes forever set in a blank, horrified gaze. You try not to stare too closely, but you're curious whether the head belongs to anybody you know. Looking around at the inhabitants of this village as they emerge from their daily routines, you can see now that grass skirts are the only garments worn by any of the island's natives, male or female. And this answers another question you never knew you wanted to ask until just now: Eyes are the only anatomical features that Wobans possess in threes. "‘O ka‘u Manu-‘opio-i-hana-me-ka-Pohaku, he aha kau e lawe mai nei i mua o ko ‘oukou ali‘i i keia la?" the chief says. His hair may be gray, but his voice is still forceful. "Lawe makou ia ‘oe i ‘elua mau ‘aihue, e ka Haku!" barks the captain of the guards. "‘Elua mau holoholona i hele i ka makou ‘aina e hana i ka ‘aihue a me ka pepehi kanaka." "He aha ka mea a lakou i ‘aihue ai? He aha na kanaka a lakou i pepehi ai?" the woman says. Is she the chief's wife? His daughter? You can't tell. "Pepehi lakou i ka makou mau kia‘i ‘ekolu me ka lakou la‘au ahi," the guardsman says, "a laila laila holo i like me na daimonio weliweli i loko o ke ana!" "A laila ua na‘auao ‘oe i lawe mai i keia mau daimonio i ‘ane‘i," the chief says, descending from the mound. "E ‘ai makou i ko lakou ‘i‘o a luku i ko lakou ‘uhane ‘ino." "‘Ae, ‘o ia ka makou ala," the woman says, joining the chief. "I don't get it, what is this about?" Meredith says to you. "E noho malie ka mea pio!" the chief spits in her face. "‘O kela holoholona ka mea like ‘ole na iwi!" the woman says, looking Meredith up and down. "‘Oiai ‘a‘ole keiki e lilo i momona ma ka ‘aina i kona ‘i‘o." "No laila he mea maika‘i ka‘u i ho‘iho‘i ai i ‘elua mau holoholona," the guard says, gesturing to you. "‘O ke ‘ano keia, e loa‘a no na holoholona ‘ekolu no ka makou ‘aha‘aina," the woman says, "e helu ana i ka mea a He-kanaka-ho‘omake-i-na-Manoke i lawe mai nei ia makou i nehinei." She points to your right, and reflexively you look in that direction even though you have no idea what she's talking about. There, tied to a tree, is a young man — a two-eyed outsider like yourselves — who looks not only terrified, but also gaunt, as if the Wobans have been saving him for something special. The chief returns to the top of the mound, with the woman close behind. He turns and decrees, "E lawe mai i keia mau daimonio i na kanaka o ke kauhale. ‘Ae i kela me keia kanaka e koho i kahi o na ‘apana a kana ‘ohana e ‘ai ai." Then something strange happens. Your packs are removed, and you and Meredith are each grabbed by the shoulders by one of your Woban guards. Your shirts are ripped off, and you are forcibly walked to the entrance of each hut in the village. There, one member of the household makes a mark on your bodies with a piece of charcoal, often making a show of licking his or her lips right in front of you. You can't help but notice that you are getting more interest than Meredith. It is only towards the end, when your body has been all marked up, that the last of the Woban families reluctantly place their marks on your diminutive companion. When this ordeal is completed, the two of you are brought to where the other foreigner is tied up. You see that his body has been marked in a similar way. Bound with your hands behind a tree of your own, you watch as the Wobans rummage through the backpack — the same backpack you bought just days ago, and which Meredith stole, and which you've barely had the opportunity to use. The three-eyed villagers toss about packages of freeze-dried meals, extra clothes, your stove and your cook set, the water filter, and so forth. The down sleeping bag explodes into a cloud of goose feathers when one unappreciative fellow digs his long fingernails into it. None of these items mean anything to these primitive people, and probably confirm their belief that you are evil spirits of some kind. "They're going to eat us, you know," the young man says, his voice frail. "How do you know for sure?" you say. "Can you understand that language of theirs?" "A little, I think," he says. "My mother was a linguist, and so am I. They speak a dialect that is not unlike others in this region. The more they talk, the more I understand, I fear." Meredith has clearly been traumatized by the ordeal of being shown around the village, and she is now slumping against her bonds. You need to keep your mind clear so you can figure a way out of this. Therefore you talk. "A linguist, huh? That's interesting. What brings you to Woban Island, then? Studying the natives, hoping they'll help you find the Stone of Vul-Kar?" "Heavens no, not Vul-Kar," the man says. He makes a spitting motion, but you see no saliva come out. "That's what my mother came here for, Dr. Cynthia Bolt. Just up and left one day, decided that's what she wanted to do. We never heard from her again. I came here to look for her." You are struggling against the leather thong that binds your wrist, trying to reach your hip pocket. "Did you find her?" "I only just arrived a few days ago. I thought if I just approached the Wobans and showed them my friendly intentions, they would help me. So that's what I did, and here I am." Almost there! you think to yourself, trying to ignore the burning pain as your wrist strains against the leather. "You must be Dr. Brian Bolt, then." "I am. I feel like I should be flattered you know my name, although I doubt that my academic career has made me a famous person. Or that you are here to come to my rescue." Your fingertips can just touch the metal item in your pocket. "Before I landed on the island this morning, I received some intel on who else might be present. Your name came up." "I will let myself feel flattered anyway," he says, but without much enthusiasm. Everything about Dr. Bolt seems defeated: his forlorn posture, his reedy voice. He is convinced he is about to die, and all your presence has done is assure him it won't be a lonely death. "So when is the big dinner?" you say. You're finding that the trick to grasping the item in your pocket might be to jerk your right hip upward to meet your fingers halfway, thus extending the reach of your hand. "Big dinn— Oh, you mean us," Dr. Bolt says. "I don't know how you can be so flippant about such a horrific act." "I don't mean to be flippant, I just—" "My family has never been very lucky," Bolt says. "My Great Uncle Ben died when he fell into a sinkhole in Florida. Aunt Lydia got run over by a cement truck crossing the road to her mailbox. But I think getting eaten by cannibals will be the most gruesome death in my family's history." Success — the jackknife is now in your hands! If you don't manage to cut your own wrists in the process, you now have the means to free yourself from your bonds. You feel grateful that those grass skirts the Wobans wear have no pockets, and that it therefore never occurred to them to check your pockets for contraband. But you may have another situation on your hands: Bolt's pessimism is starting to feed Meredith's anxiety. "No, no no no no no! This can't be happening! This can't be happening!" she says. "I'm afraid so," Bolt says. "Do you know what those marks on our bodies mean? Each household gets to claim their cut of meat." "Oh this is so insane, I never should've come to this effing place, I just wanted to do something for myself for a change, now I'm just going to get eaten by a bunch of effing cannibals—" "Meredith!" you say softly, trying to get her attention without attracting the Wobans. You have just finished slicing through the strip of leather at your wrists, and are now free to make your escape. But you remain in place, pretending to still be tied while you make up your mind what to do. "—but no I had to follow this idiot, and look where it's gotten me—" "Meredith!" "What the eff do you want?" she finally says, as if she is about to burst into all-out rage any moment now. "Your gun. Where is it?" "Now all of a sudden you care about that? It's in a side pocket of that little book bag you gave me, not that it's going to do us any good way over there." Both backpacks are about fifty feet away. You watched carefully when the Wobans were emptying your pack, but they never found the pouch on the hip strap where you stuffed Berringer's pistol while you were back inside the lava tube — nor did they even touch Meredith's bag. This means both weapons are right where you stowed them, just a short sprint away. But now you have a quick choice to make: do you free your companions, race to retrieve the two guns, and then hope you and Meredith can shoot your way out of this pickle? Or would you be better off fleeing into the jungle on your own? Sure, yes, the moral thing to do is to free both of your fellow prisoners, but Meredith looks like she is on the verge of an outburst; the Wobans haven't been paying close attention to you since they tied you up, but if she freaks out before you can get away, then the show will be over. At least if one of you gets away, it would be better than if all three of you became the main entrées at tonight's dinner. __________________________________________________ > You free the others and make a run for the guns. "Meredith," you say, "if I get the guns, do you think the two of us can manage to shoot our way out of this?" "What, are you mad?" she says. "Do you think those beasts are gonna just—" For the first time you remove your hands from behind the tree, the remains of the leather thong dropping to the ground, the jackknife in your hand. "Oh my god, you had a knife!" she says, demonstrating her inability to whisper. "Why didn't—" You slice through the leather strap looped around her wrists. "Just shut up, or you'll get us all killed. Here, take the knife and free Dr. Bolt. I'll get the guns. Wait for me in the woods." There is no time to see how well she executes your instructions, as you calculate you'll have just a matter of seconds to reach the packs before your captors inevitably notice their meals are getting away. You sprint as fast as you can, going to your pack first since you know exactly where you stuffed Berringer's gun. How ironic that you're about to use it to save Meredith, when he gave it to you with the opposite intentions. The hitch, however, comes when you try and find Meredith's gun. She said it was in a side pocket, but the little black book bag given to you by Captain Mark has multiple pockets on the outside. Some industrial designer's obsession with organization might be your undoing if you have to stop and open each pouch, so instead you grope the pack frantically until you feel the gun inside a long zippered pocket running down the right side. "Pakele ka mea ‘ai! Pono kekahi e hopu ia lakou!" You don't look to see what the Wobans are doing, but you recognize the voice of the woman with the shrunken head on her necklace — and you're reasonably certain she's noticed you're no longer tied up. With both guns now in hand, you turn back to where you left Meredith and Dr. Bolt. They are no longer there, so you run as fast as you can into the jungle beyond. As you pass the three trees where you had been bound, a seven-foot-long spear lands with a quiver in the tree that a moment ago held you in place. In the corner of your eye, it looks like a giant pub dart landing just to the left of the bullseye. "This way!" You hear Meredith, but you don't see her until she grabs at your arm from behind a bush. Dr. Bolt looks somewhat dazed behind her, like he is still trying to process all that is happening. "Did you get them?" she says. "Here," you say, handing her gun over. "No bullets?" she says, her hand still out like she's expecting you to give her something else. "Bullets? I was lucky I found anything at all." "Well I only have two shots left then, so let's not get ourselves into a shootout." "In that case, we need to get out of here," you say. "I think our gracious hosts are upset their meals are running away." And so you flee into the deep jungle, with Meredith and Dr. Bolt following you as if you know where you're going. You haven't really had that much time to think that far ahead, though. Probably the best place you could be is back in that runabout you hid on the shore, speeding away back to the Big Papi. So you head downhill, assuming that is the direction back to the shoreline. But if the world is a big playing field, just like Berringer told you that day back in Fenway, then the three of you clearly do not have the home field advantage. You are all running as if your lives depend on it, but you can hear the Woban hunters gaining on you quickly. One doesn't need to be a math whiz to figure out a seven-foot Woban can outrun a mere human without even trying very hard. "Why are you stopping?" Meredith says as you examine a small clearing in the forest you have just stumbled across. "They're gaining on us too quickly," you say. "Yes, we are no match for the Wobans, I'm afraid," Dr. Bolt says. "We'll hide in the bushes, and when they enter this clearing we'll open fire," you say. "It was a valiant effort, and I appreciate your thinking of me, but I knew that escape was impossible," Bolt says. "If there's more than two of them, I can't help you," Meredith says, taking your lead in ignoring your defeatist companion. "I should have a full chamber," you say. "Then that gives us eight," she says. "Let's not miss." The Wobans are just seconds away from bursting into the clearing, so you gesture to your two companions to back into the nearest patch of tall grass. It's the best cover you can find in the time that you have. Two of your pursuers enter the meadow, apparently clueless that you are lying in wait. They are sprinting straight ahead, as if intending to continue the chase back into the jungle. But in so doing, they are coming directly at you. Meredith fires right, you shoot left, and with grim economy the two of you eliminate these Wobans from the chase. The twin shots ring out across the evening air, though, lingering like a peal of thunder that hangs over the jungle and fades away much too slowly. It might as well be a neon sign pointing out your location. "Run?" Meredith says. "Wait," you say, but there is no need to wait for long. The two Wobans that you just killed were just the advance scouts; the shouting that erupts from the jungle makes it sound as though the entire population of the village is coming to avenge their deaths. "Yes, run," you agree, but even as you say the words you know your situation is hopeless. You have bought yourselves a few seconds perhaps, but you remain at a disadvantage: the Wobans are still so much faster than you, the shore is still miles away, and now you have only six shots with which to defend yourselves. It is hard to picture any way in which this will end well. Dr. Bolt gives you a look of dismay, as if you have just proposed the most pointless action ever. You'll never admit it, but you know he's right. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You curse the name of Meredith Nowitki as the two of you are marched up the trail as prisoners of the Wobans. Your hands are not bound, and your captors have even let you keep your packs for the moment. But with three spears each pointed at the two of you, you estimate your odds of escaping are pretty much zero. At a junction of trails about half a mile past the cave entrance, the Wobans turn left and descend a long hill back toward the shoreline. They are in a celebratory mood, singing boisterously like Boy Scouts marching to summer camp: Hele mai na mea hele waho no ka pohaku o Vul-Kar Aka ‘a‘ole makou e ‘ae ia lakou Malama makou i ka pohaku a pale maika‘i Ma makou e ‘ai ai i na ‘aihue e hele mai e ‘aihue! It's a primitive form of music to be sure, lacking the civilized innovations of both meter and rhyme. But boy, do they sure seem pleased with themselves singing it! "Why are we putting up with this? Didn't you say Walter gave you a g—nnh!" Meredith starts to say, but the Woban behind her shoves her to shut her up. You decide it's best not to respond. Whatever your captors have in store for the two of you, you doubt it will be anything good. You are led to a small village of thatched huts, with about two dozen dwellings. One larger structure stands atop a mound of earth, making it elevated about five feet above the rest of the settlement. Your guards march you through the center of town, and then stop you at the foot of the mound. The leader of your guards is a fierce-looking young man with a painted face and a tattooed body. He steps forward and shouts: "E ke ali‘i nui a mahalo ‘ia, e hele mai e ‘ike i ka mea a makou e lawe nei ia ‘oe!" A grizzled old giant emerges from the elevated hut, with wild locks of graying hair and what looks like claw marks just above his middle eye. His face is painted with bold stripes of white, black, and yellow, and despite his obvious advanced age the tattoos that adorn his entire torso are still sharply defined. Beside the chief stands a woman who appears much younger than he is, with long black hair and a necklace adorned with seashells... and a shrunken head. All three of her eyebrows are furled in an obvious expression of scorn as she regards you and Meredith from her elevated position; by contrast, the doll-sized head dangling at her chest only has two eyes forever set in a blank, horrified gaze. You try not to stare too closely, but you're curious whether the head belongs to anybody you know. Looking around at the inhabitants of this village as they emerge from their daily routines, you can see now that grass skirts are the only garments worn by any of the island's natives, male or female. And this answers another question you never knew you wanted to ask until just now: Eyes are the only anatomical features that Wobans possess in threes. "‘O ka‘u Manu-‘opio-i-hana-me-ka-Pohaku, he aha kau e lawe mai nei i mua o ko ‘oukou ali‘i i keia la?" the chief says. His hair may be gray, but his voice is still forceful. "Lawe makou ia ‘oe i ‘elua mau ‘aihue, e ka Haku!" barks the captain of the guards. "‘Elua mau holoholona i hele i ka makou ‘aina e hana i ka ‘aihue a me ka pepehi kanaka." "He aha ka mea a lakou i ‘aihue ai? He aha na kanaka a lakou i pepehi ai?" the woman says. Is she the chief's wife? His daughter? You can't tell. "Pepehi lakou i ka makou mau kia‘i ‘ekolu me ka lakou la‘au ahi," the guardsman says, "a laila laila holo i like me na daimonio weliweli i loko o ke ana!" "A laila ua na‘auao ‘oe i lawe mai i keia mau daimonio i ‘ane‘i," the chief says, descending from the mound. "E ‘ai makou i ko lakou ‘i‘o a luku i ko lakou ‘uhane ‘ino." "‘Ae, ‘o ia ka makou ala," the woman says, joining the chief. "I don't get it, what is this about?" Meredith says to you. "E noho malie ka mea pio!" the chief spits in her face. "‘O kela holoholona ka mea like ‘ole na iwi!" the woman says, looking Meredith up and down. "‘Oiai ‘a‘ole keiki e lilo i momona ma ka ‘aina i kona ‘i‘o." "No laila he mea maika‘i ka‘u i ho‘iho‘i ai i ‘elua mau holoholona," the guard says, gesturing to you. "‘O ke ‘ano keia, e loa‘a no na holoholona ‘ekolu no ka makou ‘aha‘aina," the woman says, "e helu ana i ka mea a He-kanaka-ho‘omake-i-na-Manoke i lawe mai nei ia makou i nehinei." She points to your right, and reflexively you look in that direction even though you have no idea what she's talking about. There, tied to a tree, is a young man — a two-eyed outsider like yourselves — who looks not only terrified, but also gaunt, as if the Wobans have been saving him for something special. The chief returns to the top of the mound, with the woman close behind. He turns and decrees, "E lawe mai i keia mau daimonio i na kanaka o ke kauhale. ‘Ae i kela me keia kanaka e koho i kahi o na ‘apana a kana ‘ohana e ‘ai ai." Then something strange happens. Your packs are removed, and you and Meredith are each grabbed by the shoulders by one of your Woban guards. Your shirts are ripped off, and you are forcibly walked to the entrance of each hut in the village. There, one member of the household makes a mark on your bodies with a piece of charcoal, often making a show of licking his or her lips right in front of you. You can't help but notice that you are getting more interest than Meredith. It is only towards the end, when your body has been all marked up, that the last of the Woban families reluctantly place their marks on your diminutive companion. When this ordeal is completed, the two of you are brought to where the other foreigner is tied up. You see that his body has been marked in a similar way. Bound with your hands behind a tree of your own, you watch as the Wobans rummage through the backpack — the same backpack you bought just days ago, and which Meredith stole, and which you've barely had the opportunity to use. The three-eyed villagers toss about packages of freeze-dried meals, extra clothes, your stove and your cook set, the water filter, and so forth. The down sleeping bag explodes into a cloud of goose feathers when one unappreciative fellow digs his long fingernails into it. None of these items mean anything to these primitive people, and probably confirm their belief that you are evil spirits of some kind. "They're going to eat us, you know," the young man says, his voice frail. "How do you know for sure?" you say. "Can you understand that language of theirs?" "A little, I think," he says. "My mother was a linguist, and so am I. They speak a dialect that is not unlike others in this region. The more they talk, the more I understand, I fear." Meredith has clearly been traumatized by the ordeal of being shown around the village, and she is now slumping against her bonds. You need to keep your mind clear so you can figure a way out of this. Therefore you talk. "A linguist, huh? That's interesting. What brings you to Woban Island, then? Studying the natives, hoping they'll help you find the Stone of Vul-Kar?" "Heavens no, not Vul-Kar," the man says. He makes a spitting motion, but you see no saliva come out. "That's what my mother came here for, Dr. Cynthia Bolt. Just up and left one day, decided that's what she wanted to do. We never heard from her again. I came here to look for her." You are struggling against the leather thong that binds your wrist, trying to reach your hip pocket. "Did you find her?" "I only just arrived a few days ago. I thought if I just approached the Wobans and showed them my friendly intentions, they would help me. So that's what I did, and here I am." Almost there! you think to yourself, trying to ignore the burning pain as your wrist strains against the leather. "You must be Dr. Brian Bolt, then." "I am. I feel like I should be flattered you know my name, although I doubt that my academic career has made me a famous person. Or that you are here to come to my rescue." Your fingertips can just touch the metal item in your pocket. "Before I landed on the island this morning, I received some intel on who else might be present. Your name came up." "I will let myself feel flattered anyway," he says, but without much enthusiasm. Everything about Dr. Bolt seems defeated: his forlorn posture, his reedy voice. He is convinced he is about to die, and all your presence has done is assure him it won't be a lonely death. "So when is the big dinner?" you say. You're finding that the trick to grasping the item in your pocket might be to jerk your right hip upward to meet your fingers halfway, thus extending the reach of your hand. "Big dinn— Oh, you mean us," Dr. Bolt says. "I don't know how you can be so flippant about such a horrific act." "I don't mean to be flippant, I just—" "My family has never been very lucky," Bolt says. "My Great Uncle Ben died when he fell into a sinkhole in Florida. Aunt Lydia got run over by a cement truck crossing the road to her mailbox. But I think getting eaten by cannibals will be the most gruesome death in my family's history." Success — the jackknife is now in your hands! If you don't manage to cut your own wrists in the process, you now have the means to free yourself from your bonds. You feel grateful that those grass skirts the Wobans wear have no pockets, and that it therefore never occurred to them to check your pockets for contraband. But you may have another situation on your hands: Bolt's pessimism is starting to feed Meredith's anxiety. "No, no no no no no! This can't be happening! This can't be happening!" she says. "I'm afraid so," Bolt says. "Do you know what those marks on our bodies mean? Each household gets to claim their cut of meat." "Oh this is so insane, I never should've come to this effing place, I just wanted to do something for myself for a change, now I'm just going to get eaten by a bunch of effing cannibals—" "Meredith!" you say softly, trying to get her attention without attracting the Wobans. You have just finished slicing through the strip of leather at your wrists, and are now free to make your escape. But you remain in place, pretending to still be tied while you make up your mind what to do. "—but no I had to follow this idiot, and look where it's gotten me—" "Meredith!" "What the eff do you want?" she finally says, as if she is about to burst into all-out rage any moment now. "Your gun. Where is it?" "Now all of a sudden you care about that? It's in a side pocket of that little book bag you gave me, not that it's going to do us any good way over there." Both backpacks are about fifty feet away. You watched carefully when the Wobans were emptying your pack, but they never found the pouch on the hip strap where you stuffed Berringer's pistol while you were back inside the lava tube — nor did they even touch Meredith's bag. This means both weapons are right where you stowed them, just a short sprint away. But now you have a quick choice to make: do you free your companions, race to retrieve the two guns, and then hope you and Meredith can shoot your way out of this pickle? Or would you be better off fleeing into the jungle on your own? Sure, yes, the moral thing to do is to free both of your fellow prisoners, but Meredith looks like she is on the verge of an outburst; the Wobans haven't been paying close attention to you since they tied you up, but if she freaks out before you can get away, then the show will be over. At least if one of you gets away, it would be better than if all three of you became the main entrées at tonight's dinner. __________________________________________________ > You forget the others and run for your life. It's a cold and calculated decision you have to make, but these two companions you've inherited are liabilities. One is practically dead already, and the other is in the angry-denial phase of dealing with her situation. Together, their attitudes and their antics are sure to get you killed. You know you are the only one with a real chance of escape, and there is no point squandering the opportunity in an act of charity. Get out alone, or don't get out at all — those are your only real choices. But how should you go about it? The only sure path to safety lies in the dense jungle that begins just a short distance behind you. There are two perfectly good weapons in the opposite direction — unguarded since your captors have no idea they exist — but the act of retrieving them would merely alert the Wobans to the fact that you have freed yourself from your bonds. If you rouse their attention, you might as well not even bother trying to escape. For this reason, you decide to dispense with the guns. "Really, I don't know what Walter saw in you," Meredith goes on. "You haven't even been here a full day yet and look where you've gotten us. Last night we were eating swordfish, tonight we're the ones about to get eaten…." Whatever else she says, you don't linger long enough to hear. She and Dr. Bolt are bound tightly to their trees, forced to keep their gaze focused on the Woban village ahead of them; neither can see you too well without awkwardly turning their heads. With your wrists free of the leather thong that bound them, you merely walk away from the tree to which you had been tied and walk silently into the jungle. Meredith and Bolt never see you leave. All of your gear and provisions are behind you, though, strewn about the ground on the edge of the Woban village. Other than the jackknife that freed you, as well as the clothes that you wear, there is nothing in your possession that will help you out of your predicament. Your only asset is your desire to live. Your exit from the village is as uneventful as you could ever want it to be. You walk into the forest as casually and inconspicuously as somebody stepping away from a noisy party for a moment of fresh air. You can hear Meredith sputtering on behind you, until finally her voice grows faint with distance. When you can no longer hear her at all, you can't tell if it makes you feel relieved or guilty. Is it possible to be both at the same time? Perhaps you have freed yourself from your predicament, but you know the hunt for the Stone of Vul-Kar has been tabled indefinitely — and with it, your hopes of a lucrative payout from Walter Berringer. The best you can do now is make it back to the shoreline and hope that the runabout is right where you left it. Then you'll get off this hell hole and back to… well, it's difficult to think that far ahead at the moment. One step at a time. You have no idea where exactly you are on the island, so you try and mentally retrace your progress throughout the day: landing on the east shore, climbing the ridge, going up the lava tube but then coming right back down, getting captured by the Wobans, and then heading down a short hill to their village. You deduce that you are therefore still deep in the hilly interior of the island, meaning the coast is somewhere below you, probably several miles away. If you are correct, then your way off the island begins by heading downhill, hoping there are no more cannibal outposts in your way. It was late afternoon when you escaped, and soon the tropical twilight begins sneaking up on you. At these latitudes, darkness sets in less than half an hour after the sun sinks below the horizon. During the bit of daylight that you have left, you'd like to put as much distance as you can between you and the village. You bushwhack your way through the thick jungle underbrush, stumble across another trail, and then follow that downstream alongside a brook with brown water. As before, you find the walking to be easier along the trail, but after all that has happened today you feel as skittish as a rabbit. Every rustling of the leaves, every creaking of a tree swaying in the sultry breeze could be a Woban sneaking up behind you, and therefore even in your freedom you are never at ease. Twilight comes and goes with no sign that you are nearing the ocean. And if hiking through the jungle in the daylight wasn't unsettling enough, being stranded alone in the dark proves to be nearly unbearable. But what else can you do? Hungry and alone, you step off the trail and find a secluded spot at the base of a tree where you hope to pass the night unseen. It is not a quiet night, however. Behind you, back in the hills from which you have been fleeing, the Wobans seem to be putting on quite the party. There is a glow in the night sky from what must be a massive bonfire, and you can hear the distant voices singing gleefully to the rhythmic banging of a leather drum. For a second you think you hear a woman's scream, but the sound is cut off before you can fully make sense of it. It might have just been a bird. So you have gotten way from harm's reach, and in the morning you can complete your journey to the shore and search for the runabout. But the glow in the sky and the sound of the cheerful natives makes you feel small. Never have you felt so inadequate to meet the challenges of a mission. And now that you think about it, never have you ever had to save your own hide by abandoning someone else to a tribe of cannibals. Of all the places you've been, of all the perils you've faced, none have left you feeling so defeated, so diminished, as Woban Island. You slink back against the base of the tree, alive and physically well, but with the sense that your role in the world will never again be what it once was. It is going to be a long and sleepless time before dawn arrives. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Convinced that you have been wasting your time, and having found no other exits out of the lava tube, you decide that the sensible thing to do is backtrack down to the entrance. If the Wobans are still there when you get back, then you'll just have to wait for them to leave. Therefore you turn to follow the little stream back down the angled cave, feeling a little bit like you are walking down an overgrown waterslide in an amusement park. The flow is little more than a trickle at first, but as you pass through the tunnel a second time you notice small seeps at various spots along the wall where additional rivulets are adding to the volume of the stream. In places, the running water fans out into an apron of moisture running down the slanted floor of the lava tube. What you fail to appreciate is that some of this wet rock can be slippery, especially when you are walking downhill. On one patch of smooth rock, your Vibram soles fail you, sending you on a wild butt-slide down for a distance of about twenty feet. The flashlight flies out of your hands as you try unsuccessfully to stop yourself, but there is nothing you can grab onto. You come to an inelegant stop in the gravel bar at the bottom, unharmed except for a few scrapes on your legs and the palm of your hands, as well as a wet behind. The plastic flashlight has come to rest in a pool of water, its light gone out. But you are not in the dark. You look up and see someone is standing over you, the light of their headlamp illuminating the scene of your embarrassing fall. "You look lost," the person says — a woman, her familiar voice distorted by the reverberation off the rock walls. "I would have expected someone with your reputation to be more sure-footed." The headlamp is blinding you, and the echoes are distracting, but you would recognize Meredith's voice anywhere. "What the hell are you doing here?" you say. "And why did you take my stuff?" Instead of responding to you directly, Meredith extends her hand to help you up. When you are standing beside her, she says, "Oh, right, the headlamp." She takes it off and holds it in her hand so that you can see her without being blinded by the light. Yet again she has changed her wardrobe; instead of a dress suit or a bikini, she is now clad in a khaki shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, with a white pith helmet to top it all off. The air about her is heavy with the smell of a scented bug spray. She looks like a model from an old Banana Republic catalog, before that chain went downhill. "I've been looking for you," she says. "I knew you'd be the only person who'd understand!" You notice she's wearing your brand-new backpack, holding your brand-new headlamp in one hand and your brand-new trekking poles in the other. "Funny, Berringer asked me to keep an eye out for you, too. He even gave me a gun to use in case I found you." Her eyes widen in alarm at the news. "You don't plan to shoot me and take me back to Walter, do you?" "We'll have to see," you say. No, you don't plan to shoot her, but she's not exactly someone towards whom you feel much warmth at the moment, though. "The last thing I want to be is one of his trophies. You saw the way he treated me, right? You know I had to get away from him." Meredith is trying to play on your sympathies. You remember well the remark that Berringer made back on the yacht last night, when he boasted that he had "acquired" her and that she was too dumb to realize it. So she may have a point. Still, something doesn't add up; why bail on Berringer here, when she could have slipped away at any time she wanted back in Boston? "So why were following me up this lava tube?" you say. "You got yourself off the boat, you could go anywhere you want. What do you need me for?" "Because you're probably the only two-eyed person on this island who knows what they're doing. I stand a better chance getting out of here alive with you than I do on my own." "I usually work alone. And besides, I'm not overly fond of people who steal my stuff right out of my cabin while I'm sleeping." "Ah, yes, your stuff. Well, I won't insult you with an apology; you know as well as I do that the rules of our little game don't reward morality. But I'll make you a deal: you can have your 'stuff' back if you let me come with you." "And if I don't?" "I hardly see how that would even be a valid option," Meredith says. "Would you really just leave me here alone on an island full of cannibals, just because your pride was wounded? I mean, come on here. Let's be adults." __________________________________________________ > You leave her. "Just watch me," you say. "With the money I plan to make off this gig, I can afford to replace everything you stole twenty times over." Meredith genuinely looks hurt. "Is that the way you really feel about it?" "I'm afraid so. I've been cursing your name all day long, and now that you're here, my blood is boiling." "I guess I was so eager to get off that effing yacht that I never stopped to think who I was hurting," she says. "You are a skilled survivor; I figured you'd get by with some parachute cord and a roll of duct tape. I had nothing. That was how I rationalized it when I snuck into your cabin this morning." "Well you can keep the pack," you say. "Don't say I never gave you anything." You push past Meredith so that you can continue the trek down the lava tube on your own. Berringer will be upset that you're just letting her go, but he must know that you're neither an assassin nor a bounty hunter. You'll find the Stone of Vul-Kar for him, but he'll have to hire somebody else to be his avenger. "Wait! Let me at least give you this!" Her voice sounds wounded, so you turn back towards her so that you can at least have the satisfaction of seeing her hurt expression. But what you see instead takes you by complete surprise: a woman with grim determination, pointing a gun straight at you. "Meredith, wh—" you start to say as the gun flashes and the shot echoes a hundredfold off the cavern walls. Her aim is true. You collapse to the ground, sitting stunned on the floor of the lava tube. You know a mortal wound when you see one. Your murderer steps around behind you. "Let me see what else you've got," she says as she unzips the backpack that Captain Mark loaned you and rifles through the contents. "Hmm, looks like I got all the good stuff already." She stands up, removes the pith helmet, and puts the headlamp back on her forehead. "Well, you did say you like to work alone. Let me know how that works out for you." And then Meredith Nowitki sets off down the lava tube, leaving you to bleed to death in the dark. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Two weeks later, you are on Walter Berringer's private yacht in the South Pacific. It is now early November; when you left New England there were hints of oncoming snow in the air, but here, out on the open sea, the weather is sunny and almost uncomfortably warm. Meredith seems perfectly pleased with the setting, however; she is lounging in a deck chair soaking up the sunlight like a lizard, her dress suit replaced with a pastel bikini. There is a colorful cocktail of some kind beside her, on a stand right next to her ever-present notepad. You can see her through the window as you peruse the maps that Berringer has provided you. They are sprawled out across a table inside the yacht's main salon — four large sheets, each covering a different quadrant of Woban Island. You had been under the impression that such things didn't exist, but nevertheless here they are. The yacht is just hours away from Woban Island, and you are starting to feel the excitement of the moment. By this time tomorrow you should be in the field, bushwhacking your way up some previously unknown mountain, stealthily evading the native population while seeking the stone that will ultimately make you a millionaire. It has been quite the interesting journey getting to this point. It began with a trip to an REI store located just a few blocks away from Fenway, where you stocked up on gear and provisions for your expedition. With a quarter-million dollars in your bank account, you decided to upgrade all of your gear: a new backpack, moisture-wicking clothing, solar-powered lamp, trekking poles, new boots, gaiters in case the island is muddy, and most importantly, a new tent. They also had a lightweight folding rocking chair set up as a display model, weighing only a couple pounds; it was tempting, but silly considering the nature of your trip, and so you passed on that one. You also looked at a top-of-the-line GPS, but that turned out to be rather pointless since it had no maps of your destination. Then, a few days later, you boarded a plane for Honolulu — business class this time, with Berringer and Meredith as traveling companions. While your employer prepared his luxurious yacht, the Big Papi, for the voyage south of Hawaii toward Woban and Auri islands, you enjoyed some downtime exploring Oahu, particularly the various forest reserves on the island's north shore, where you sought to immerse yourself in the type of environment you expect to find on Woban. One day after returning from one of your hikes, Berringer presented you with the maps you are examining now. "I had a contact at Hickam Field print these off for me," he explained. Now the Big Papi is sailing toward a spot just off Woban Island's northeast coast, where you plan to take an inflatable runabout to shore. You and Berringer selected the landing location after perusing the maps, deciding that this part of the island seemed to provide the best landing area and the most direct route to the island's main summit, where the Stone of Vul-Kar is supposed to be. Always a sucker for a good topographic map, you have been scrutinizing these for most of the time you have been at sea. "If you keep this up, you'll have those maps memorized by the time you make landfall." It's Berringer, strolling into the salon in a silk robe, his customary empty glass in hand. He has been resting in his stateroom, but is now heading to the liquor cabinet to pour himself another bourbon. Now that you are nearing the islands, you've noticed that he has stopped offering to pour you a drink as well — best not to dull your edge. "Good afternoon, sir," you say. "Yeah, according to this northeastern quad the route looks so easy. I don't see what all the trouble is. Drop me off in the morning, let me do my thing, and make sure you have dinner ready for me when I return that evening." "Ha, if only it would be that simple." He takes a seat to your right at the table, whiskey glass in hand. "This whole part of the island is crawling with Wobans, and this part down here is rugged wilderness. According to the intel I picked up back at port, you're going to have company in those hills: people like you, hired by people like me, all with one objective in mind. You can be certain some of those people will be dangerous." "Do you know exactly who I might encounter out there?" "Just rumors, I'm afraid, but reliable ones. Here, I wrote them down." He pulls a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and hands it to you. Unfolding it, you see a list of three names jotted down in Berringer's scratchy brand of penmanship: Gary Gaffney Dr. Brian Bolt Martian Pop "Do these names mean anything to you?" he asks. "No," you say, "but are you sure about this last one? Martian Pop?" "I thought you might like that one," Berringer says. "Yeah, that's a real name. He's Romanian, so my guess is it's not actually pronounced 'Martian Pop' in Romania. Pay close attention to this Gary Gaffney fellow. He might be working for a rival of mine back in Boston, and he's already been on the island for a few days. I'd be very unhappy if he got the Stone of Vul-Kar first." "The way you're describing it, it's a crowded field on which we're about to play," you say. After all of this time with Berringer, you've started to speak in terms of sports metaphors, too. "There may be others as well — rogue players that nobody knows. There were some vague reports last week of some young couple running around trying to steal a boat. And there is also a research team from the University of Chicago camped out on the southwestern shore of the island." "Sounds like it will be quite the party if all of us get together at the same time." "I'm trying to make it sound dangerous," Berringer says. "We've only known about this place for less than three years, and already people have gone missing. You're good, but this job isn't going to be like digging up caribou antler carvings from the thawing permafrost outside Nome. This place is going to try and kill you. Now let's talk about the Wobans themselves—" "Walter, I'm hungry. What do you got around here to eat?" It's Meredith, entering the salon from the aft deck where she has been sunning herself, notebook in hand. She reeks of coconut-scented sunscreen. "You're too late for lunch, too early for dinner," Berringer says rather gruffly. "Why don't you go to the galley and see what Cookie can scrounge up for you." Meredith has been quiet for much of the voyage, nursing a grudge over some unknown grievance. She glowers at Berringer for a second, but he's not looking and doesn't see it. Then she sullenly leave the room. "So what's the story with her, anyway?" you ask. "Three years is an awfully long time to be writing a newspaper article." "You noticed that too, huh?" he says. "The truth is she reminds me of someone I used to have a crush on in high school. As you know, I acquire things. The key to acquiring people is to let the person you're acquiring feel at all times as if they're exercising free will. It tickles me, though, that her last name is Nowitki. She really does strike me as being witless sometimes." That evening, as the three of you are in the dining room enjoying a swordfish dinner, the captain of the Big Papi makes an announcement over the intercom. "Sir, we are about to move into position five nautical miles to the northeast of Woban Island, just as you directed." "You must be eager to see the place," Berringer says to you. "Actually, yes," you say. "But it can wait until after dinner." "Nonsense. I'm curious myself. Let's head up to the Skylounge Deck and take a look." The three of you take your drinks — coffee in your case — up to the observation deck just below the bridge. Woban island is just ahead, a dark landmass occupying much of the horizon. Your first impression is that it is much bigger than you expected; a landmass that evaded detection for centuries should be little more than a speck of dirt, you had thought. But this is several miles in breadth, with a range of mountains rising darkly into the sky. From here, it is unclear which of them is the main summit atop which the jewel is located. "My, my. It looks like we have some company." Berringer is not looking toward the island, but off to starboard. There is indeed a small speck of red on the ocean waves, moving in a straight line toward the Big Papi. "Meredith, honey, go and get my binoculars. They're in my stateroom, desk drawer on the right." Meredith looks at him for a moment with silent resentment, but turns to obey the request when she determines that no "please" or "thank you" will be forthcoming. "Who do you think it is?" you say. "I was about to ask you the same thing," Berringer says. "I wasn't expecting any company. I assume you weren't, either." You're about to say something about a Woban coast guard, but decide against it; all of the evidence seems to suggest that Walter Berringer possesses an underdeveloped sense of humor. A moment later Meredith returns with the binoculars, handing them over to Berringer without saying a word. He lifts them to his eyes. "It looks like a runabout," he says. "Two people. I don't see the mother ship, though." He hands the binoculars over to you. It takes you a moment to find the incoming craft through the lenses, but when you do you see a small inflatable boat, much like the one at the rear of the Big Papi awaiting your use in the morning. This one is red instead of white, however. It is too small to have traveled very far on its own, and you agree with Berringer that there should be another yacht or something somewhere out in that direction, but you see nothing. "Could just be someone marooned here, looking for a ride home," he says. "It could be the competition, coming to scope us out," you say. "Well if that's the case, then at least we know they don't have the stone yet." "They could still be dangerous, though," you say. "I doubt they'd just be making a social call." "If they're in trouble, then we need to help!" Meredith says, breaking her silence. "What do you think?" Berringer says. "You're the one with the keen instincts for this kind of situation, right? Should we stay and see if they need our help, or are they up to no good? I can have the captain move us further away." __________________________________________________ > You stay and offer assistance. "I guess there's no harm in seeing what they want," you say. "You and Meredith are right; this could just be somebody who needs assistance." "All right, then." Berringer pulls what looks like a cordless phone out of his pocket. "Mark, slow her down," he says to the yacht's captain. "We have people approaching from starboard, and we want to see what they're about." Within seconds you feel the Big Papi begin to slow. The giant wake the boat had been cutting across the ocean seems to catch up with the bow as you come to a full stop. The incoming boat is so far off, though, that it takes quite a while to reach you. Berringer lets you keep the binoculars so you can study the two people as they get closer. "Anybody we know?" he asks. You see what appears to be a young couple in a red Zodiac; the woman is steering the boat while the man is peering back at you through a set of binoculars of his own. "I've never seen these people before in my life," you say. The three of you move to the stern, where the Sun Deck with its pool and array of empty lounge chairs sits a little closer to the water. A quarter of an hour passes, however, before the little red boat comes close enough that you are able to make voice contact with its passengers. The blond woman steering the red Zodiac cuts the outboard engine as the inflatable boat continues to drift closer to the Big Papi. "That's an impressive little canoe you guys are riding!" the man says, eyeing Berringer's yacht from stem to stern. He sports a well-trimmed set of mutton chops and a gray flat cap, as if he were ready for a night out at his favorite downtown pub. "Are you here to fish?" "We have some business to transact on Woban Island," Berringer says. "Is there something we can do for you?" "Honey, they must be here for the Stone of Vul-Kar too!" the woman says to her companion. "Why don't you ask if we can help." "But Charlei, look at the boat they're on!" he says to her. "I thought it was a cruise ship at first. We're in the presence of the One Percent! How could we possibly be of use to them?" There is a certain passive-aggressiveness in the way they are speaking to each other that makes you uneasy — their private remarks about you are something they clearly want you to hear. The Zodiac they are riding has now bumped up against the stern of the Big Papi. Captain Mark and one of his crewmen have come down from the bridge to see what is going on, perhaps worried that these newcomers might be scuffing up the hull. Berringer is starting to look annoyed. "Again, is there something we can do to assist?" "Not really," the man says. "We just saw this magnificent craft sailing toward Woban Island, and we just had to come in for a closer look. Do you mind if I ask how long she is? What kind of engines you got? You must have quite the crew to run her!" You and Berringer both look at each other. Didn't he mention rumors earlier about a young couple who had been observed on Woban Island trying to steal a boat? __________________________________________________ > Next page. "Mark, why don't you fire up the engines again and get us out of here," Berringer says. "Aye, sir," Captain Mark says, and then steps aside to give orders to his crew over a wireless headset. "I don't think they want to talk with us, Gordy," the woman says. "Maybe we don't move in the same social circles. Maybe we aren't good enough." "That's funny," her companion replies. "I would have expected life on the open ocean to be more egalitarian, but even here we are followed by fat kings and lean beggars." The woman chuckles, but then stands up in the boat, seemingly unconcerned about the rocking of the waves. "'Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.'" "'Alas, alas!'" the mutton-chopped man says. "'A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.'" She feigns alarm. "'What dost thou mean by this?'" "'Nothing but to show you how a king may go a-progress through the guts of a beggar!'" The purpose of this little drama escapes you, but the performance in the Zodiac is clearly outside the bounds of normal behavior. Are these people unhinged? Have they been marooned out here for so long with nothing but that little motorized raft that they've lost their mind? Berringer looks disgusted. "They've been wasting my time. Make sure they don't try and get on the boat." And then he turns to go up the stairs to the main salon. But the couple seems to have no intentions of storming the Big Papi. They have already pushed off from the yacht, and the woman is trying to start the outboard. "Honey, can you give me a hand with this?" The guy gets up as his girlfriend slinks back out of the way. "'The bark is ready, and the wind at help, the associates tend, and every thing is bent... for England!'" With one good yank on the pull cord, the Yamaha engine fires up. "'For England!'" the woman says. "'Good!'" "'So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes," the man says, and the boat speeds away without either of them turning to look back. "Are we done with those twits?" Berringer says, looking down at you from the upper deck. "It looks that way, Walter," Meredith says, forgetting for the moment all of her sullen moping. "I can't believe they came all the way out here to put on a performance of Hamlet for us." "Is that what that was?" "I'm pretty sure, yes. Maybe if we're lucky, they'll treat us to a few scenes from King Lear tomorrow night." "Well, I see it cured you of your pouting, so I guess it wasn't all bad." Meredith rolls her eyes and sighs, but takes the cocktail glass she's been holding all this time and heads upstairs to join him. You are left down below with the binoculars, with a sense of dread that you can't entirely explain. Nothing of what just happened seemed right. Who were those two people, and what were they up to? You raise the binoculars to your eyes and watch them speed away, back in the same direction from which they came. But then the Zodiac stops and turns, maybe a mile away. The couple is sitting and leaning against each other shoulder-to-shoulder, looking back in your direction as if they were about to share a romantic moment watching the sun set. The yacht's engines are starting to rev up, and the boat is slowly moving forward again. But before you have a chance to pick up speed, there is a flash of light emanating from the point where the Zodiac had briefly brushed against the hull. You are blown backward and slammed against the nearest bulkhead by the force of the explosion, which rips the back end of the Big Papi apart. It spreads debris over the ocean and causes the rest of the ship to start taking on water; what wasn't destroyed in the blast will be sitting on the ocean floor within minutes. It's a performance that delights the two people who are watching from afar in the Zodiac. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It is not until the plane is in the air and cruising high above Connecticut that the man finally folds his newspaper and sticks it in the pouch with the airline magazines in front of him, as if someone else on the next flight might be interested in reading his outdated copy of the New York Times. You now wish you had brought something to read yourself, so that you could feign immersion and avoid eye contact with him at all cost. But he fidgets in the seat to your left, as if he is anxious to get your attention. You try your best to appear lost in thought, pretending to be enthralled by the sight of the two flight attendants wheeling a cart down the aisle, pouring out cans of soda and juice into clear plastic cups for thirsty passengers, seat by seat, row by row. "I know where you're headed," he finally says. You turn to look at him, hoping your facial expression is displaying the proper amount of disinterest. "Oh?" you say. "Isn't everybody here heading to Boston?" "You know what I mean," he says, unfazed at your attempt to be acerbic. "I'm afraid I don't, actually," you try again. "I am referring to 46 Van Ness Street," the man says. You are unable to control your expression of surprise — 46 Van Ness is the address you were given for your meeting with Berringer later this morning. "Never mind who I am," he continues. "It's you I've come here to see." Mr. Plaid Suit has a surprisingly deep voice for such a small figure, and his nose sticks out twice as far as any nose should, like an awning over his thin mustache. Unlike most men his age, he has made no attempt to hide his balding dome, either with a hat, with implants, or by shaving his head altogether. And his breath smells like an onion bagel. How much does this guy know about your meeting? To be honest, you know next to nothing yourself; you just know that Berringer pays well, and you'd be a fool to pass over an opportunity to work for him. Sometimes in your line of work, it's best not to know more than you have to, or before you need to know it. But now you feel as though you're at a distinct disadvantage. The only thing about which you are certain is the need to not say a thing — for fear that you might reveal too much, or reveal how little you actually know. Sensing your apprehension, Mr. Plaid Suit continues. "I know where Berringer will send you, and I can get you more pay for your troubles." You look the man square in the eyes. As he smiles, two golden teeth shine in the subdued light of the plane's cabin. This early flight was not completely booked, and there is a seat three rows ahead of you that is empty. Perhaps you should relocate. You're pretty sure that if you stay here, you'll be at the bottom of Boston Harbor about an hour after the plane lands. In your experience, strangers like this who come out of nowhere and try desperately to get your attention never lead to anything good. __________________________________________________ > You stay and try to ignore the man. You do your best to seem disinterested and confused, but the man persists in this one-way conversation of his. "Does an even two million sound right to you?" he says. Again, he seems to know more about what is going on than you do. You fumble for your phone in your pocket, desperately trying to maintain the illusion of disinterest and mild irritation, but the words two million are still resonating in your brain. You have no idea what kind of mission Mr. Berringer wants to hire you for. Well, scratch that; you do have a very good idea. Your potential new employer in Boston is the type of person who desires certain items, and you are the type of person who can procure them. The only thing you don't know at the moment is what the item is in this case, and where you'll need to go to find it. But if this guy with the bad hairdo and worse clothing is willing to pay you two million... . Well OK, you tell yourself, let's not get greedy. You have no idea what Berringer's offer is going to be. On the other hand, though, here you are flying on the ticket he purchased for you, chilling near the rear of the plane in economy class. And next to you is a guy who seems eager to steal you away. He doesn't look nearly as well-heeled as your usual employers, but maybe he's just the messenger for somebody else. And to be frank, two million would be real money. Assuming that we're talking dollars here, and not something idiotic like Bitcoins. The last thing you need is a bank account full of arcade tokens. But working for Mr. Berringer is like playing in the big leagues — an opportunity that is likely to lead to others. That is worth thinking about, too. __________________________________________________ > You give in and listen to what this man has to say. "Now what's this job you're talking about?" you say. "Oh, so you are interested," he replies. "Obviously, we shouldn't talk about it here. And at any rate, you'll want to meet my employer. I mean, our employer. When was your meeting with Berringer scheduled?" Somehow you suspect he already knows the answer to that question — he seems to know everything else — but you tell him anyway. "I was supposed to meet him at 11:30 this morning." "Well then. When we land you may want to call Mr. Berringer and reschedule. I'm sure he'll understand." "Why should I?" you say. "I'm a free agent. I think I should be able to meet with whomever I want, whenever and wherever." "True," Mr. Plaid Suit says, "but my employer has a tight schedule. I'm afraid that 11:30 this morning is the only time she can meet with you. Here, let me give you this address. When we land, I'll have another errand I'll need to run. Just hail a taxi or an Uber or something, and have the driver take you here. Your employer will be waiting for you. She appreciates punctuality." He tears a corner off the front page of his New York Times and jots down the address, then hands it to you. There is no name, just a number for Beacon Street. It looks like it might be someplace near Boston Common. "All right, I'll be there," you say. "But I have to admit, I don't like it when somebody knows all about me, and I haven't the slightest clue who they are." "My name. You want to know my name." "It's a start." "Grant. James Grant. But you can call me Jimmy." He seems a little old to be a "Jimmy," but whatever. You pocket the address, your mind swimming in unanswered questions. As soon as the plane lands and you are able to use your phone, you arrange for an Uber driver to pick you up outside the terminal. You get the notification that your ride is approaching before you even reach the wall of glass doors leading out to the taxi stand. Fortunately you travel light, and so there is nothing to pick up at the baggage claim. Everything you brought with you to Boston is in your carry-on bag. You step out into the taxi stand, looking for a red Prius being driven by someone named Lucy. She is not hard to find. "Well hello there," she says. "Where are you going again?" Lucy is a tall woman, almost too large for this small Prius, with a mane of red hair that is nearly as bright as her car. "Beacon Street," you say. "Here is the address." She looks at the note Jimmy jotted down on the piece of newsprint. "So I take it this is your first trip to Boston?" "I'll admit I don't get here as often as I should," you say as the car silently moves into traffic under the power of its electric engine. "I can give you the scenic tour if you like," your driver says. "The TD Garden, the Prudential Building, Faneuil Hall, Fenway. Well maybe not Fenway, because that's a very somber place when the Sox aren't playing in October. But I can give you a wicked good tour of the city, for a lot less than you'd pay for one of them duck boats." You're not sure why she thinks you are a tourist, but you're in no mood to argue. Instead, you look at your watch. "What time is it? No, I have a meeting I need to make at that Beacon Street address. You can just take me there." "A meeting, huh? Well, suit yourself." The route Lucy follows takes you through a tunnel and out into Boston's sprawling downtown. You have no idea where you are until she emerges from a side street on the edge of Boston Common, at which point she turns right onto Beacon Street. About a block later, she comes to a stop. "Here you are," she says. "Cheers." And she's right. You recognize the site instantly: steps leading up into the hotel, more steps leading down below the level of the sidewalk to the bar in the basement, that place where everybody knows your name. In the TV show the place burned down, but here it looks exactly like it did thirty years ago. You step out of the Prius in disbelief. Is this really the place where you're supposed to meet Jimmy's boss? There is one way to find out. You step around a group of tourists taking pictures, then descend the steps toward the entrance to the bar. When you open that door, will you be greeted by Ted Danson and Kirstie Alley? __________________________________________________ > Next page. But when you enter, you are greeted with a tiny cubbyhole that looks nothing like the version of Cheers you've seen on Netflix. The place is smaller than a delicatessen, with several overweight, middle-aged men taking up most of the stools. They look briefly in your direction before returning to their beers, having concluded that you are of no importance to them. None of them are Norm, and no one here cares what your name is. A young and perky greeter steps out from behind a podium, clearly trained to intercept dazed and confused first-timers such as yourself. "Just one today?" she asks, holding a menu. "I'm here to meet someone, actually," you say. "Ah, yes. We were expecting you. Follow me, then." The greeter leads you out a back entrance, and then up a short set of stairs to another bar. A sign identifies this one as the "Set Bar," and indeed it looks a little bit more like the TV version of Cheers you remember, but not quite. The bar is a square island in the middle of the room, with faux studio lighting rigged up on the ceiling. But it is way too small, and there are too many windows. The cardboard cutouts of Woody and Norm aren't enough to assuage your disappointment. "Don't worry, everybody thinks the same thing: 'This isn't the Cheers I was expecting!'" This voice comes from behind you. You turn to see a large woman squeezed into a booth, a small planetoid of a human being nearly pulled into a spherical shape by her own gravitational force. In front of her is a platter of Buffalo wings. "I see you found the place all right," she says. "Come on, sit down. Get something to drink if you like. Here's the tap list." You take a seat opposite the woman — wondering what you're getting yourself into — and peruse the beer list. "Um, how is this 'Green Monsta IPA'?" you ask the server who has come to take your order, not really sure you need a beer yet, but feeling obligated to order one since you are, after all, at Cheers. Again, you can't avoid that twinge of disappointment that this bartender isn't someone from the show. Like, maybe, Carla. "It's an IPA," he says. "It tastes exactly like every other IPA." "Uh, OK, I'll have that." "You're an IPA person, huh?" the woman says between nibbles on one of her chicken wings. "I'm more a fan of the Wachusett Blueberry Ale myself. You should order some food, too. That way I won't be eating by myself." "So, you're Jimmy's employer?" you ask, hoping to avoid any unnecessary chitchat and get straight to business. "The person he sent me here to meet?" "How rude of me!" she says. "I didn't introduce myself. Yes, you could say I run things. My name is Diane Chambers. I'd shake your hand, but, you know... hot sauce." "You run... Cheers?" "Ha! No, not at all. I just like to hang out here and confuse the hell out of the tourists. I tell them my name, and then imply the aging process has been rough. I sign glossies of Shelley Long and sell them for a hundred bucks a pop. The way I see it, if a fool wants to part with his money that badly, I'm more than happy to help." The server returns with your beer and sets it down in front of you. "Do you need some more time to look at the food menu?" he says. Just then you notice that you and Diane are the only customers in this part of Cheers. "Just give me a cheeseburger and fries," you say. "You should get the Giant Norm Burger," Diane says. "That's one of my favorites." That sounds disgusting, actually. "Nah, just a regular cheeseburger." "Very well," the server says. "And how would you like that cooked?" "Medium well." He rushes off to place your order, leaving you alone with your very large potential employer. You can smell the spiciness of her wings across the table. "I'm sure you must be wondering why you're here," she says at last. "I'm here because your guy, Jimmy, mentioned something about 'two million,'" you say. "Ah, yes, the money. Don't worry, the sale of Shelley Long photos has been brisk lately, so I can pay in cash." She chuckles at the humor implied in her statement; you know from past experience with other such "employers" that the true source of their income is none of your business. "But here's the job: I want the Stone of Vul-Kar." The Stone of Vul-Kar... where have you heard that before? "In fact," she continues, "quite a few people want it. But it just so happens that I want it more. Which is why I'm willing to steal you away from Walter Berringer. Your services in this field are in high demand, if you haven't heard — to the point where some people might decide that if you won't work for them, they won't want you working for anybody." You feel a chill at the threat of bodily harm implied by that statement. The woman gnawing away at the messy Buffalo wings across the table from you seems like an ordinary (but overweight) person, but look around: she arranged to have this tourist attraction all to herself, right at lunchtime. You know better than to let appearances deceive you; this is power, hidden in plain sight. "Vul-Kar," you say. "Wasn't that in the news recently?" "Indeed it was," she says. "When Auri Island was discovered in the South Pacific two years ago, the stone-age natives spoke of a neighboring island that was even more mysterious, more inaccessible. They described a tribe of man-like beasts with three eyes, the Wobans. And on the highest part of Woban Island was a lost temple, from some forgotten culture that not even the collegiate folks over at Harvard had heard about. And at that temple, they said, was this enormous purple gem: the Stone of Vul-Kar." "And that's it?" you say. "You want me to go to Woban Island and get this purple diamond for you?" "Ah, direct and to the point, I see. That's not a bad trait to have. Yes, that's exactly what I want you to do. I trust that two million dollars will be more than adequate payment?" "Plus expenses," you say. "Plus expenses," she agrees. "Although I wouldn't expect there would be many. It's not like there are any hotels on these islands." Indeed, you have done similar jobs in the past: slogging your way through one jungle or another, looking for something that a particular wealthy person wants and that someone else would rather not part with. The details may vary, but the basic plot is always the same. It's easier when you see your objective as being one-dimensional — there is less room for scruples that way. "I don't think you'd need a guide," she continues. "I hear the island is crisscrossed with trails, and an additional person would get in the way." "I prefer to work alone, at any rate," you say. "So then it's agreed, no guides. Just you and your wits. And your talent for acquiring things." Diane continues, as if she needs to entice you to work for her, but you've already decided it's impossible to say no. If you did, she'd just eliminate you from the game. "If you're on board with all of this," she says, "then you can speak with Jimmy here about making your travel arrangements." She nods her head to the bar, and there beside the cutout of Woody Harrelson is your old friend from this morning's flight. You never even saw him enter the room, but now he's on the way over to your booth, bringing you that cheeseburger you ordered. __________________________________________________ > Next page. One week later, you are the sole passenger on board a commercial cargo carrier bound for Tahiti. It is hardly posh, but there are no other ways to get to Auri and Woban islands. Or at least, that's what you've been told. Diane Chambers had been eager to send you off after your meeting at Cheers. "You need to get going!" she said. "The next boat heading past the islands will be leaving soon. It's not exactly Carnival, but it does have the advantage of belonging to me." Jimmy immediately booked the next flight to Honolulu for you, before you could even try another beer. "Don't get too comfortable in one of them Hawaiian hotels," she said, sitting next you in the back seat of her BMW as Jimmy drove you to the airport. "You don't want to get spoiled for the jungle. And remember: I don't reimburse resort fees." It didn't matter, anyway, because it was so late when you touched down at Honolulu that you didn't care too much where you slept. It had taken you two very long flights to get there — and of course Jimmy had accompanied you. It just so happened that he had other business to attend to in the Fiftieth State, your employer insisted, but you knew a handler when you saw one. He had at least swapped his plaid suit for one that was cleaner, but he still looked hopelessly out of place when you landed on Oahu. The cargo ship that Diane Chambers owned was small and in need of a fresh coat of paint, but Jimmy assured you it was perfectly seaworthy. He followed you as far as the dock, where a crewman was waiting to show you to your berth. You couldn't help but notice the name painted across the bow of the ship: Sam Malone. "Take this satellite phone," Jimmy said. "Once you've acquired the object, use it to call for a ride home." "What kind of assistance can I expect if I get into trouble?" you asked. It was a reasonable question: you were heading to a remote island inhabited by savages, after all. "None, of course," he said. "Someone with your skill set shouldn't need that kind of assistance." And that was your farewell from civilization. __________________________________________________ > Next page. On the afternoon of your fifth day aboard the Sam Malone, as you are standing on deck and watching the blankness of the ocean pass by, the captain approaches you. He is a small man, Pakistani by birth, and until this trip the idea of a Pakistani ship captain never occurred to you. On this voyage you have apparently been an added responsibility for him — a draw on the ship's stores, but not a source of useful labor. While his crew has been scurrying about the ship to keep it functioning, you have been lolling around like an idle tourist. "This is as close to Auri Island as we'll get!" he says. "Really?" you say. "I can't even see it." "Of course not. You're on the port side of the ship. Auri Island is to starboard." You're about to walk around to the other side of the boat to see the island for yourself when the captain extends his arm to block you. "There's no time for sightseeing!" he scolds. His fondness for efficiency seems almost British, as does his accent. "My men are preparing a small boat for you right now. You need to get your things so you can be on your way. Hurry now!" You rush to the quarters that had been assigned to you below: a small room, yes, but comfortably furnished with a vanity, a queen-sized bed, and a wardrobe filled with women's clothing. You have been spending as little time here as possible, because you get the strong vibe that this is where the "female companionship" would normally reside... if you hadn't come along to displace that person, perhaps forcing the captain to leave her behind in Hawaii. Or maybe he just has some embarrassing dressing habits, when he thinks no one is looking. Either way, this would explain his impatience with you, and his eagerness now to get you off the ship. It doesn't take long to gather your belongings, which are all contained in a single backpack. Then you rush back up to the deck, curious to see how the captain plans to get you ashore. The crew is gathered at the stern of the ship, where they have just lowered a boat over the side. You look over the rails and see a sporty red Zodiac bobbing beside the hull of the cargo ship. "Use this rope to lower yourself down!" the captain says. "Hurry! Hurry! Before she drifts away!" Did they really lower the Zodiac down to the water's surface without tethering it to the Sam Malone? There's no use in arguing with the man if indeed that's what happened, so you grab hold of the rope and rappel down the side of the hull until you are safely in the Zodiac. The rope is immediately reeled back into the ship, as if to prevent you from changing your mind. The crew doesn't even linger to wish you a safe journey. The Zodiac is essentially a raft with an outboard motor, with enough space for you and your pack, but not a heck of a lot else. This might be the perfect boat for tooling around some lake, but here in the South Pacific — with the cargo ship speeding away toward Tahiti — you feel tiny and vulnerable. At least you have calm seas in your favor. Another boon: the outboard engine starts on the first try, and purrs as if it were brand new. Auri Island, with its gentle and verdant slopes, is a few nautical miles ahead of you; Woban Island is some distance beyond. So off you go, piloting the red Zodiac across the waves, your next adventure about to start in earnest. Despite the odd and rushed manner in which you departed the Sam Malone, it feels good to be in the open air, alone and in pursuit of a clearly-stated objective — and hopefully with no plaid suits for thousands of miles around. Your only regret is not grabbing something to eat before leaving the ship. You can't help but notice that the hour is getting late, though. There is only a short period of twilight at these latitudes, and darkness can set in quickly. It's going to take you a while to reach the islands, so you have a choice to make: Do you head to Auri Island, the closer of the two, and spend the night there? Or do you steer the boat toward Woban Island so you can get a head start on your mission? Auri looks like a typical tropical island, with broad beaches and an inviting shoreline. Woban Island, of course, is where you ultimately need to be, but from this distance its coastline looks like a series of cliffs plunging into the ocean. Finding a suitable place to land might take time — daylight that you may or may not have at your disposal. __________________________________________________ > You spend the night on Auri Island. Those long beaches on the shore of Auri Island look so much more inviting than the steep cliffs on Woban. After getting rushed so rudely off the cargo ship you'd like a chance to get your bearings, and the idea of spending a night on a tropical beach sounds preferable to searching for a landing site in the dark. Therefore you steer your small boat toward Auri, bumping across the small waves and never letting off the throttle until you near the shore. The Zodiac is a rubber craft, so you see no need to be gentle with the landing. You build up speed, cut the engine, and let your momentum carry the boat up onto the sand. Then you hop out and pull it by the bow as far up on land as you can — and hopefully beyond the reach of the tide. You shoulder your backpack and carry it up to the treeline. Auri Island is supposedly inhabited, but you see no signs of people here, of the Stone Age variety or otherwise. Actually, the only sign of civilization is the great amount of plastic waste that has been pushed ashore by the waves: small buoys, empty jugs of laundry detergent, battered water bottles, and fragments of cellophane. Woban Island looms across a wide channel, dark and foreboding. From here, it looks like a mountain range emerging from the ocean — and on one of those mountains is the Stone of Vul-Kar, which is worth two million dollars to you, and heaven knows what to Diane Chambers. You are glad you chose not to go there today; you will be in a much better mood to approach those steep slopes in the morning. Just inside the edge of the tropical forest, you find an open space with flat ground. It is just the right size for your backpacking tent, so you unfurl the bundle of rip-stop Nylon and insert the poles. Fully erected, the tent is waist high: snug, but solid. It is something you picked up ten years ago at an REI as you prepared for a similar mission in Guatemala, and you have used it many times since then. The roof of the tent is still streaked with the dried specks of blood from all the mosquitoes you slaughtered that time on the Noatak River a couple years ago, collecting Inuit artifacts from the thawing permafrost. Alaska is so overrated. Fortunately, there is more than just plastic debris on this beach; while it is still light out, you gather several armloads of dried wood and pile it up in front of your campsite. After digging a pit in the sand, you set a base of dried grass and place some of the smaller sticks on top of that. Using a cigarette lighter to ignite the grass, you find yourself tending a small campfire within minutes. Then you pull out the first of your freeze-dried food packages. Ham and carrots — what a freaking odd combination for a backpacking meal. The expiration date has passed by a matter of years, so this must be a leftover from the Noatak trip. But why would anyone put an expiration date on freeze-dried food? You tear open the package. It looks all right and doesn't smell dead, so you boil up some water and let the tiny nuggets of meat and vegetables reconstitute for a few minutes. The weather is balmy, and there are no bugs, so you lay a ground cloth on the sand and fall asleep right there on the beach, your fire dwindling out on its own. __________________________________________________ > Next page. You wake up to a cool morning. Standing up and stretching, the first thing you notice is your fireplace. All that is left of last night's campfire is a bed of powdery ashes and a few chunks of charred woods. There are no coals remaining, but you bury the ashes anyway by kicking sand into the pit until the entire space is filled. Then you look up to see whether the tide is up or down. Actually, the water level doesn't look much different than it did last night. There is Woban Island across the channel, still dark even in the morning light; there is the ribbon of plastic flotsam, now with a few small crabs crawling over it; there is your tent, just inside the trees. But isn't there something missing? Your boat! You look up and down the beach, and scan the distant waves, but there is not a red Zodiac to be seen anywhere. Did the tide take it? You step over to the spot where you know you left it. What you find is alarming: a drag mark where the boat was pulled back toward the water, and many bootprints all around it. And about twenty feet to the right, you see where another small boat briefly landed. Could it be possible that someone snuck ashore in the middle of the night to steal your only means of transportation? The marks in the sand tell you that is precisely what did happen. You are impressed they managed to do it without waking you. And perhaps that campfire wasn't such a good idea after all, if it signaled to the competition your exact location. You scan the ocean more carefully to see what might be out there. Nothing. This leaves only one thing that you can do: call for someone to come and get you. What will Diane and Jimmy think of that? The satellite phone that Jimmy gave you is in your backpack, which you left inside your tent — assuming no one absconded with that, either. You crawl inside the small dome tent and find your pack just as you left it. After unzipping the top pouch, your hand grasps the phone. Your mission successful, you begin to crawl backwards out of the tent. Just then you hear a snapping sound behind you, like someone stepping on a stick. You continue your awkward crawling motion until you are clear of the tent's vestibule, then you stand up. Turning around, you are confronted with five dark-skinned men pointing spears in your direction. It looks like you've made contact with the primitive tribe of Auri Islanders! But right now it's not looking like a positive development… . __________________________________________________ > Next page. The Auris surround you, their spears ready for action. You gently lower the satellite phone to the ground, then raise your hands to shoulder-level, hoping that this was the universal gesture for surrender even in the Stone Age. One of your captors responds by motioning with a sideways tip of his spear, which you assume means he wants you to follow. You wouldn't still be in this business if you weren't smart enough to know when to admit defeat, so you fall in line as the natives march you through the forest. They lead you to the foot of a mountain where, in a small clearing, you find a group of grass huts huddled together. A wall of rock five feet high rises above the level of the village, and on top of this sits a larger hut — clearly the dwelling of someone significant. Above the village rises the bare, rocky slopes of the mountain. When you hesitate, the Auri behind you gives you a firm shove. You feel as if you are being paraded through the village, with the inhabitants staring at you as you pass by. The two warriors ahead of you lead the way up a set of rough-hewn steps to the top of the rock wall, to what you presume to be the chief's hut. However, this structure is even grander than you first believed. The hut turns out to be a mere foyer for a large, cavernous room set into the mountainside. At the far end of the chamber sits a man on an elaborate wicker chair — more like a king than a tribal chieftain. Several servants, both men and woman, serve as his retinue. The five Auris who captured you at your campsite form a line behind you, blocking any possibility of escape, and the largest of them forces you into a kneeling position before the chief-king. This cave-like room is dimly lit, but not entirely dark; you suspect there is an opening in the ceiling above you, but you dare not look up lest it be seen as a sign of disrespect. This feels like a very deadly situation, so it is best to keep your wits about you. The chief-king draws one of his woman servants closer to him. "E ninau no ka mea a keia malihini e hana nei ma ko makou ‘aina. ‘O keia mau ‘opala i holoi ‘ia ma ke kahakai?" he says to her. The woman then turns to you. "The Chief of the Auris wishes to know why you are on this island." Her English is quite good, albeit uncertain, like someone who once knew the language well but has not had much occasion to speak it recently. "Um, tell him I am merely passing through," you say, speaking to the woman but keeping your eyes on the chief. He is adorned with the bones and feathers of many creatures, but you are relieved to see that none appear human. There may be a way out of this yet. "Passing through to where?" the woman says, before translating your statement to her chief. Her English has a peculiar accent, which you can't quite place. "To Woban Island," you say. She turns back to the chief. "Ua ‘olelo ‘ia he hiamoe wale no ia ma ka makou kahakai i ka ‘mokupuni o Woban. ‘Lelo ia e mihi a ‘a‘ole ia e hana hou." The chief guffaws loudly. "E aho kahi e‘au‘au me ka pulu," he says. "Ae, ku‘u haku," she responds. "‘Ike like keia mea ‘ano ia ‘oe," the chief says, looking you up and down from his wicker throne. "Ma‘ia paha he hoaaloha hou paha ‘oe!" He laughs even louder, as if he has just told a great joke. The woman sounds disgusted with whatever it was he just said. Turning to you, she asks in English, "What is your business on Woban Island?" "I, ah, have been hired by someone to, um, conduct research." You know from past experience that native populations can be sensitive to the idea of Westerners plundering their cultural artifacts, so for the moment you feel it's best to remain cagey about your true purpose here. But as it turns out, you have no need to be coy. "Let me guess," the Auri translator says. "You're after the Stone of Vul-Kar." "Yes?" Your admission comes off more as a question, because you are hoping that honesty truly is the best policy in this situation. "Of course you are!" she says. "Why else would an American be here?" This woman's English is way too good. If you didn't know any better, you'd say she was from Michigan — like Mackinac, or someplace way up north. "If you don't mind me asking, who are you?" you say. "E hu ‘oe!" the chief shouts, rising from his throne. "E ha‘i mai i ka mea ana i ‘olelo ai." "Ke ‘imi nei keia ‘Amelika i ka pohaku o Vul-Kar," the woman says to him. "Pela oe i hana ai," says the chief. "E hui pu me ia." "‘A‘ole hiki ia ‘oe ke ho‘okau i kekahi o kou po‘e," she says. "Pono ‘oe i kela me keia kanaka no ka kiu." "A laila noi ia ia e noho. ‘A‘ole malama wau i kau mea au e hana ai." The woman sighs and shakes her head. Then she steps forward, closer to you, so that you can see her more clearly in the dim light of the chamber. This person is no Auri at all! Whereas the natives have the complexion of a mild tea, the translator is as white as her Midwestern accent. "To answer your question: My name is Cynthia Bolt, and I once sought the Stone of Vul-Kar, just as you do now. But my boat sank, and I landed here. The Auri people took me in and accepted me as one of their own. I have been living here for the last year." Cynthia Bolt! While you were on the plane from Boston, Jimmy had you reading up on all the past expeditions to Woban Island, and hers was one of the first. The report was very short, though, because Bolt disappeared almost instantly upon setting off. Otherwise, despite the fact the two of you seem to work in the same profession, you've never met. "I'm glad to hear you're safe," you say. "But what do these people want with me?" "The chief doesn't really want anything. He says I can go with you to Woban Island, since that was my original purpose for coming here, or you may stay here on Auri Island as I have been doing." That last option takes you by surprise. "Why on earth would I want to stay here?" "You'd be surprised," Bolt says. "Life here is very simple, in tune with natural rhythms in a way that modern life will never be. I have been very satisfied here. But at the same time, I feel like a failure for never completing my mission, so perhaps it's time I resume my old life." You're not sure, but it sounds like you are being given the option to choose not only your fate, but hers as well. Her indecisiveness is puzzling, and it only inspires you to make your choice that much more firmly. __________________________________________________ > You go to Woban Island with Cynthia Bolt. You remember telling Diane Chambers that day back at Cheers that you wouldn't need any guides, but now it looks like that's exactly what you have. "The Auris trade with the Wobans all the time," Cynthia Bolt tells you later that day, after the chief releases you to prepare for your journey. "We don't go too far inland, but yeah, in my time here I've had plenty of opportunities to scout the most direct route to the summit temple." "That's terrific," you say, although you are secretly disappointed that she might make this job too easy if she really does know as much as she says she does. And is she going to expect a share of your two million dollars? "But there's one minor problem: someone stole my boat last night." "I can't say I'm surprised," Bolt says. "The competition can be pretty cutthroat." "And yet nobody has snagged the Stone of Vul-Kar yet?" you say. "Strange setbacks always seem to befall those who try. Take me, for instance. At about the same moment I first laid eyes on Woban Island, my boat caught fire and sank. I blamed myself for the longest time, because I've always had the worst luck. Every venture I've ever touched has ended in failure — careers, relationships, you name it. I have a PhD in linguistics, but look at how much good that's done me. Which was why I was looking for the Stone of Vul-Kar in the first place: I really needed the money. So there I was, adrift in this tiny life raft, eventually landing on the same beach here on Auri that you landed on. I learned the language, and the chief made me one of his advisors because he wanted to know why all of a sudden there were so many outsiders interested in these islands. Life here really has been kind to me. I don't know why I let the chief talk me into going with you to Woban." Your camping gear is still down by the beach, right where you left it; even though some unknown persons came in the middle of the night to steal your Zodiac, nothing else seems to be as tempting a target, apparently. You're not comfortable with the idea of mingling with the villagers, so you return to your tent for the evening. This time, however, you dispense with the campfire. Early the next morning, Dr. Bolt awakes you inside your tent. "Come on!" she says. "I have boat we can use to get us across the channel." She is still wearing her Auri grass skirt. And it's worth pointing out that on Auri Island, skirts are the only items in anyone's wardrobe; Dr. Bolt has clearly adopted the local custom of displaying her body with pride. "You know, we'll get farther on Woban Island if we both blend in," she says as you pack your gear. "You won't last five minutes dressed like a Westerner. I have something I think will fit you perfectly! I'll be right back." Before you can object, she is gone. __________________________________________________ > Next page. The boat she has procured for your use turns out to be a dugout canoe with a pair of outriggers. Instead of the outboard motor you had with the Zodiac, this beauty comes with a pair of paddles. "How far is it to Woban Island?" you say, trying to calculate just how arduous this journey is going to be. "Not quite three miles," Dr. Bolt says, concerned that you still haven't ditched your manufactured Western clothing in favor of her hand-woven grass skirt... which you understand is something she has made herself during her time on the island. "How does this thing handle ocean waves?" you ask. "Quite well, actually. We surf in canoes like this. But the weather is calm today, so we shouldn't have any issues." It's not like you see many alternatives, so together you push the canoe into the water and climb inside. The sun is not as hot as you expected, but it is still somewhat early in the morning. As it climbs higher into the tropical sky, however, there is no escaping its intensity. You're somewhat embarrassed to look at your half-dressed companion, even though she is sitting in front of you in the canoe and there is no real way you cannot look at her. Stare, actually. In her native state she is quite fair-skinned, despite all her time here on the islands; now, as you paddle the channel that separates Woban Island from Auri Island, she is turning pink right before your eyes. "Those slopes look pretty steep over there," you say, trying to distract yourself by studying Woban Island's rugged shoreline. "Where does anybody make landfall in a place like that?" "That's the hehi mu," Dr. Bolt says. "That part of the island is uninhabitable. No, we have to paddle around that headland on the left. That's where we land." The canoe cuts through the water surprisingly well, and in just forty-five minutes you are turning the corner around the small point. You can now get a better look at the bulk of Woban Island, which is ruggedly mountainous at its south end, but tapers off into a long cape to the northeast. The jungle still seems thick and dark, but there are at least beaches on this part of the island. But then you spot something bright red ahead of you on the shore. "That's my Zodiac!" you say. "I wouldn't be surprised if it was," Dr. Bolt says. "Somebody else probably didn't like their own boat, so they took yours." As you get closer, you can see the Zodiac has been beached directly ahead of you. There are no people around, but the dark object beside your stolen boat turns out to be a small dinghy. Both boats are sitting right where Dr. Bolt wants to land, and the implication makes you nervous: the people who stole the Zodiac from you are probably nearby. Your topless companion doesn't seem concerned at all. "Looks like it's a busy day on Woban Island!" she says. "Thankfully there are still plenty of parking spaces left." As you near the shoreline she starts paddling faster instead of easing up, so you do the same. A wave picks up the canoe and floats it onto the sand, and you come to rest on Woban Island with a minor thud. The dugout is now parked right beside the dinghy and the Zodiac. "Are you sure you won't change your mind about your clothes?" Dr. Bolt says. "Every adventurer on the island is probably dressed like a model in a Cabella's catalog, so if we—" Just then you hear shouting coming from somewhere in the woods. "What's that?" you ask. "Someone's in trouble," Bolt replies. "Come on!" And before you can discuss it any further, your companion — with her uninterrupted run of bad luck, and her apparently heedless optimism (among her other assets) — runs off into the woods, towards the sounds of trouble you just heard. Towards the people who probably stole your boat. You follow her up a narrow trail, finding that it leads to a small campsite about a hundred yards inland. There are two young people, a man and a woman, standing in the middle, frantically waving sticks. "Go away!" the woman shouts. "Shoo! Our friends will be here any moment, and they have guns! You know: Bang! Bang!" It's not you they're trying to frighten off, though. As Dr. Bolt pulls you to a hasty hiding spot behind a tree, you see three large figures steadily advancing on the two people. "Wobans!" you whisper. "Yes, trying to expel a few more outsiders from their sacred island," Bolt says. "These two people are toast, I'm afraid. Wobans show no mercy." "If they aren't looking for us, then we should get out of here." "What do you mean? We need to help them. They are such a cute couple!" she says. You suppress a groan. "OK. How?" "Those Wobans are very strong. I say we create a diversion, let those men run for cover." "Then what do we do when they come after us?" you say. "If we're going to do something, we should make a frontal attack, use the element of surprise to overpower the Wobans. The advantage will be ours for only a moment, though." __________________________________________________ > You create a diversion. "So tell me," you whisper to Dr. Bolt. "What kind of diversion do you have in mind." "Wobans have good vision, but their sense of hearing is sub-par," she says. "Here, take this stone. On three, throw it over their heads into the woods. They'll hear it land and think there is someone coming from the opposite direction." It seems like a weak plan, but the Wobans are advancing quickly on the couple in the campsite, so there is no time for debate. You take your stone, step out from behind the tree so that you'll have a clearer shot, and wait for Bolt's signal. Your shot flies over the Wobans, just as you intended. But Dr. Bolt's run of bad luck rears its ugly head when her stone bounces off a tree and strikes one of the man-beasts in the head. She's managed to distract them away from the two young people, all right — now they're after you! She at least has the presence of mind to run back towards the beach, just as you do when you see one of the seven-foot-tall, three-eyed figures splitting away from his companions to give chase to the two of you. She is running back for the boats, and you realize that is not a bad idea. You are a pretty good runner, and the odds look pretty good that you'll make it in time to get out to the relative safety of the water. Better yet, this will be your chance to reclaim the Zodiac. But what you can't appreciate is just how much faster the Wobans are compared to an ordinary human. Even as you are starting to make plans for your next attempt to land on the island, your pursuer overtakes you. With one swipe of his claw-like index finger, you are cut down. The last thing you see is Dr. Bolt frantically trying to get one of the boats off the beach and onto the water. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The boat she has procured for your use turns out to be a dugout canoe with a pair of outriggers. Instead of the outboard motor you had with the Zodiac, this beauty comes with a pair of paddles. "How far is it to Woban Island?" you say, trying to calculate just how arduous this journey is going to be. "Not quite three miles," Dr. Bolt says, concerned that you still haven't ditched your manufactured Western clothing in favor of her hand-woven grass skirt... which you understand is something she has made herself during her time on the island. "How does this thing handle ocean waves?" you ask. "Quite well, actually. We surf in canoes like this. But the weather is calm today, so we shouldn't have any issues." It's not like you see many alternatives, so together you push the canoe into the water and climb inside. The sun is not as hot as you expected, but it is still somewhat early in the morning. As it climbs higher into the tropical sky, however, there is no escaping its intensity. You're somewhat embarrassed to look at your half-dressed companion, even though she is sitting in front of you in the canoe and there is no real way you cannot look at her. Stare, actually. In her native state she is quite fair-skinned, despite all her time here on the islands; now, as you paddle the channel that separates Woban Island from Auri Island, she is turning pink right before your eyes. "Those slopes look pretty steep over there," you say, trying to distract yourself by studying Woban Island's rugged shoreline. "Where does anybody make landfall in a place like that?" "That's the hehi mu," Dr. Bolt says. "That part of the island is uninhabitable. No, we have to paddle around that headland on the left. That's where we land." The canoe cuts through the water surprisingly well, and in just forty-five minutes you are turning the corner around the small point. You can now get a better look at the bulk of Woban Island, which is ruggedly mountainous at its south end, but tapers off into a long cape to the northeast. The jungle still seems thick and dark, but there are at least beaches on this part of the island. But then you spot something bright red ahead of you on the shore. "That's my Zodiac!" you say. "I wouldn't be surprised if it was," Dr. Bolt says. "Somebody else probably didn't like their own boat, so they took yours." As you get closer, you can see the Zodiac has been beached directly ahead of you. There are no people around, but the dark object beside your stolen boat turns out to be a small dinghy. Both boats are sitting right where Dr. Bolt wants to land, and the implication makes you nervous: the people who stole the Zodiac from you are probably nearby. Your topless companion doesn't seem concerned at all. "Looks like it's a busy day on Woban Island!" she says. "Thankfully there are still plenty of parking spaces left." As you near the shoreline she starts paddling faster instead of easing up, so you do the same. A wave picks up the canoe and floats it onto the sand, and you come to rest on Woban Island with a minor thud. The dugout is now parked right beside the dinghy and the Zodiac. "Are you sure you won't change your mind about your clothes?" Dr. Bolt says. "Every adventurer on the island is probably dressed like a model in a Cabella's catalog, so if we—" Just then you hear shouting coming from somewhere in the woods. "What's that?" you ask. "Someone's in trouble," Bolt replies. "Come on!" And before you can discuss it any further, your companion — with her uninterrupted run of bad luck, and her apparently heedless optimism (among her other assets) — runs off into the woods, towards the sounds of trouble you just heard. Towards the people who probably stole your boat. You follow her up a narrow trail, finding that it leads to a small campsite about a hundred yards inland. There are two young people, a man and a woman, standing in the middle, frantically waving sticks. "Go away!" the woman shouts. "Shoo! Our friends will be here any moment, and they have guns! You know: Bang! Bang!" It's not you they're trying to frighten off, though. As Dr. Bolt pulls you to a hasty hiding spot behind a tree, you see three large figures steadily advancing on the two people. "Wobans!" you whisper. "Yes, trying to expel a few more outsiders from their sacred island," Bolt says. "These two people are toast, I'm afraid. Wobans show no mercy." "If they aren't looking for us, then we should get out of here." "What do you mean? We need to help them. They are such a cute couple!" she says. You suppress a groan. "OK. How?" "Those Wobans are very strong. I say we create a diversion, let those men run for cover." "Then what do we do when they come after us?" you say. "If we're going to do something, we should make a frontal attack, use the element of surprise to overpower the Wobans. The advantage will be ours for only a moment, though." __________________________________________________ > You make a frontal attack. You pride yourself in not being a violent person. Your job is to obtain objects, not inflict harm; you carry no weapons because doing so can only escalate a situation, igniting what you would rather defuse. You are no idiot; you are fully aware that more than a few of the other people in your profession take the opposite view. But this is a philosophy that has served you well over the years, from that episode in Burma to your little escapade in Peru. The downside, though, are the moments like this, in which you have rashly committed yourself to a course of action… without the luxury of time to think the situation through. Without any further discussion, you rush out from the hiding spot behind the tree, charging directly at the three Wobans, armed with nothing more than the first stick you find. You can only hope that Dr. Bolt is right behind you, because then it will at least be two against three — and if the two men you are rescuing take the cue, it will be four against three. But you have only been in the presence of Wobans for about fifty seconds, so you can be forgiven (sort of) for not fully appreciating what you're up against. That realization hits you mid-stride, as you are running forward, stick raised high, preparing to swing at the first figure in your path. They are huge, a good seven feet tall; hominids, but not human, with a curved black fingernail on each index finger like the claw of a velociraptor. You are unarmed by choice, but the Wobans bear no weapons because they have no need to use them. When they turn and see you, what they perceive with those three eyes must not be anything of concern to them. All it takes is a quick flick of the wrist, and you are instantly cut down, never to rise again. Whether your actions allowed others to live, you'll never know. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The Auris surround you, their spears ready for action. You gently lower the satellite phone to the ground, then raise your hands to shoulder-level, hoping that this was the universal gesture for surrender even in the Stone Age. One of your captors responds by motioning with a sideways tip of his spear, which you assume means he wants you to follow. You wouldn't still be in this business if you weren't smart enough to know when to admit defeat, so you fall in line as the natives march you through the forest. They lead you to the foot of a mountain where, in a small clearing, you find a group of grass huts huddled together. A wall of rock five feet high rises above the level of the village, and on top of this sits a larger hut — clearly the dwelling of someone significant. Above the village rises the bare, rocky slopes of the mountain. When you hesitate, the Auri behind you gives you a firm shove. You feel as if you are being paraded through the village, with the inhabitants staring at you as you pass by. The two warriors ahead of you lead the way up a set of rough-hewn steps to the top of the rock wall, to what you presume to be the chief's hut. However, this structure is even grander than you first believed. The hut turns out to be a mere foyer for a large, cavernous room set into the mountainside. At the far end of the chamber sits a man on an elaborate wicker chair — more like a king than a tribal chieftain. Several servants, both men and woman, serve as his retinue. The five Auris who captured you at your campsite form a line behind you, blocking any possibility of escape, and the largest of them forces you into a kneeling position before the chief-king. This cave-like room is dimly lit, but not entirely dark; you suspect there is an opening in the ceiling above you, but you dare not look up lest it be seen as a sign of disrespect. This feels like a very deadly situation, so it is best to keep your wits about you. The chief-king draws one of his woman servants closer to him. "E ninau no ka mea a keia malihini e hana nei ma ko makou ‘aina. ‘O keia mau ‘opala i holoi ‘ia ma ke kahakai?" he says to her. The woman then turns to you. "The Chief of the Auris wishes to know why you are on this island." Her English is quite good, albeit uncertain, like someone who once knew the language well but has not had much occasion to speak it recently. "Um, tell him I am merely passing through," you say, speaking to the woman but keeping your eyes on the chief. He is adorned with the bones and feathers of many creatures, but you are relieved to see that none appear human. There may be a way out of this yet. "Passing through to where?" the woman says, before translating your statement to her chief. Her English has a peculiar accent, which you can't quite place. "To Woban Island," you say. She turns back to the chief. "Ua ‘olelo ‘ia he hiamoe wale no ia ma ka makou kahakai i ka ‘mokupuni o Woban. ‘Lelo ia e mihi a ‘a‘ole ia e hana hou." The chief guffaws loudly. "E aho kahi e‘au‘au me ka pulu," he says. "Ae, ku‘u haku," she responds. "‘Ike like keia mea ‘ano ia ‘oe," the chief says, looking you up and down from his wicker throne. "Ma‘ia paha he hoaaloha hou paha ‘oe!" He laughs even louder, as if he has just told a great joke. The woman sounds disgusted with whatever it was he just said. Turning to you, she asks in English, "What is your business on Woban Island?" "I, ah, have been hired by someone to, um, conduct research." You know from past experience that native populations can be sensitive to the idea of Westerners plundering their cultural artifacts, so for the moment you feel it's best to remain cagey about your true purpose here. But as it turns out, you have no need to be coy. "Let me guess," the Auri translator says. "You're after the Stone of Vul-Kar." "Yes?" Your admission comes off more as a question, because you are hoping that honesty truly is the best policy in this situation. "Of course you are!" she says. "Why else would an American be here?" This woman's English is way too good. If you didn't know any better, you'd say she was from Michigan — like Mackinac, or someplace way up north. "If you don't mind me asking, who are you?" you say. "E hu ‘oe!" the chief shouts, rising from his throne. "E ha‘i mai i ka mea ana i ‘olelo ai." "Ke ‘imi nei keia ‘Amelika i ka pohaku o Vul-Kar," the woman says to him. "Pela oe i hana ai," says the chief. "E hui pu me ia." "‘A‘ole hiki ia ‘oe ke ho‘okau i kekahi o kou po‘e," she says. "Pono ‘oe i kela me keia kanaka no ka kiu." "A laila noi ia ia e noho. ‘A‘ole malama wau i kau mea au e hana ai." The woman sighs and shakes her head. Then she steps forward, closer to you, so that you can see her more clearly in the dim light of the chamber. This person is no Auri at all! Whereas the natives have the complexion of a mild tea, the translator is as white as her Midwestern accent. "To answer your question: My name is Cynthia Bolt, and I once sought the Stone of Vul-Kar, just as you do now. But my boat sank, and I landed here. The Auri people took me in and accepted me as one of their own. I have been living here for the last year." Cynthia Bolt! While you were on the plane from Boston, Jimmy had you reading up on all the past expeditions to Woban Island, and hers was one of the first. The report was very short, though, because Bolt disappeared almost instantly upon setting off. Otherwise, despite the fact the two of you seem to work in the same profession, you've never met. "I'm glad to hear you're safe," you say. "But what do these people want with me?" "The chief doesn't really want anything. He says I can go with you to Woban Island, since that was my original purpose for coming here, or you may stay here on Auri Island as I have been doing." That last option takes you by surprise. "Why on earth would I want to stay here?" "You'd be surprised," Bolt says. "Life here is very simple, in tune with natural rhythms in a way that modern life will never be. I have been very satisfied here. But at the same time, I feel like a failure for never completing my mission, so perhaps it's time I resume my old life." You're not sure, but it sounds like you are being given the option to choose not only your fate, but hers as well. Her indecisiveness is puzzling, and it only inspires you to make your choice that much more firmly. __________________________________________________ > You remain on Auri Island and join the tribe. The possibility of escaping the rat race and living out a peaceful existence here on Auri Island captures your imagination in a way you never expected. It is as though something that had been sleeping inside of you is suddenly awakened, and a future that was never available to you previously has now been revealed. Diane Chambers was going to pay you two million dollars for obtaining the Stone of Vul-Kar on her behalf, but what would that money buy you other than things you will never need? And what will acquiring those useless things inspire you to do, except to desire even more stuff? It's an endless cycle of futility, and for the first time in your life you've been presented with an exit ramp. Therefore you agree to remain on Auri Island, becoming the second outsider to be accepted into the village. You are given the traditional dress of the tribe — a grass skirt, worn by both men and women — and Cynthia Bolt teaches you the local language. As it turns out she holds a PhD in lingusitics (or held one, since the actual document remains in her old home back in Minneapolis) therefore she insists you call her Dr. Bolt so long as you are her pupil. Soon you are an Auri hunter, joining hunting party after hunting party — a tradition that, like many others on this small island, is shared by all. Other than the native people, the only wildlife on the island are birds and sea turtles. It takes great skill to bring down a bird in flight with nothing more than a stone, but you accept the challenge and soon become good at it. Your civilized sense of modesty finds it difficult to adapt to the grass skirts, though, so you frequently revert back to your old adventurer's garb, which consists of polyester hiking pants and sweat-wicking shirts. This makes you stand out from all of your neighbors, though, so to atone for your non-conformist manner of dressing you decide to tackle all of the washed-up plastic that virtually rims the entire island. The refuse from the so-called developed world is a blight on this paradise, so you take it upon yourself to try and make it go away. But it's plastic, and it never will go away. At first you try and bury it in the sand, but the wind and rising tides always manage to uncover it again — and each passing storm manages to bring even more floating waste to your shores. So then you begin to throw all the plastic into towering piles on the beach, which for a short time you consider setting on fire. But that would only create a plume of putrid smoke, befouling the atmosphere of the entire island and giving everyone cancer, so your piles remain like giant idols scattered all around the island's shores. The other Auris are unable to make sense of your actions. They see you with your plastic clothes, your plastic backpack, and your plastic tent, and they see you laboring before your great piles of plastic flotsam. "Ho‘omana ‘o ia i kahi akua ‘e," they say; "That one worships a strange god." So despite your efforts to make Auri Island a more pristine place, you never do fit in. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>On the afternoon of your fifth day aboard the Sam Malone, as you are standing on deck and watching the blankness of the ocean pass by, the captain approaches you. He is a small man, Pakistani by birth, and until this trip the idea of a Pakistani ship captain never occurred to you. On this voyage you have apparently been an added responsibility for him — a draw on the ship's stores, but not a source of useful labor. While his crew has been scurrying about the ship to keep it functioning, you have been lolling around like an idle tourist. "This is as close to Auri Island as we'll get!" he says. "Really?" you say. "I can't even see it." "Of course not. You're on the port side of the ship. Auri Island is to starboard." You're about to walk around to the other side of the boat to see the island for yourself when the captain extends his arm to block you. "There's no time for sightseeing!" he scolds. His fondness for efficiency seems almost British, as does his accent. "My men are preparing a small boat for you right now. You need to get your things so you can be on your way. Hurry now!" You rush to the quarters that had been assigned to you below: a small room, yes, but comfortably furnished with a vanity, a queen-sized bed, and a wardrobe filled with women's clothing. You have been spending as little time here as possible, because you get the strong vibe that this is where the "female companionship" would normally reside... if you hadn't come along to displace that person, perhaps forcing the captain to leave her behind in Hawaii. Or maybe he just has some embarrassing dressing habits, when he thinks no one is looking. Either way, this would explain his impatience with you, and his eagerness now to get you off the ship. It doesn't take long to gather your belongings, which are all contained in a single backpack. Then you rush back up to the deck, curious to see how the captain plans to get you ashore. The crew is gathered at the stern of the ship, where they have just lowered a boat over the side. You look over the rails and see a sporty red Zodiac bobbing beside the hull of the cargo ship. "Use this rope to lower yourself down!" the captain says. "Hurry! Hurry! Before she drifts away!" Did they really lower the Zodiac down to the water's surface without tethering it to the Sam Malone? There's no use in arguing with the man if indeed that's what happened, so you grab hold of the rope and rappel down the side of the hull until you are safely in the Zodiac. The rope is immediately reeled back into the ship, as if to prevent you from changing your mind. The crew doesn't even linger to wish you a safe journey. The Zodiac is essentially a raft with an outboard motor, with enough space for you and your pack, but not a heck of a lot else. This might be the perfect boat for tooling around some lake, but here in the South Pacific — with the cargo ship speeding away toward Tahiti — you feel tiny and vulnerable. At least you have calm seas in your favor. Another boon: the outboard engine starts on the first try, and purrs as if it were brand new. Auri Island, with its gentle and verdant slopes, is a few nautical miles ahead of you; Woban Island is some distance beyond. So off you go, piloting the red Zodiac across the waves, your next adventure about to start in earnest. Despite the odd and rushed manner in which you departed the Sam Malone, it feels good to be in the open air, alone and in pursuit of a clearly-stated objective — and hopefully with no plaid suits for thousands of miles around. Your only regret is not grabbing something to eat before leaving the ship. You can't help but notice that the hour is getting late, though. There is only a short period of twilight at these latitudes, and darkness can set in quickly. It's going to take you a while to reach the islands, so you have a choice to make: Do you head to Auri Island, the closer of the two, and spend the night there? Or do you steer the boat toward Woban Island so you can get a head start on your mission? Auri looks like a typical tropical island, with broad beaches and an inviting shoreline. Woban Island, of course, is where you ultimately need to be, but from this distance its coastline looks like a series of cliffs plunging into the ocean. Finding a suitable place to land might take time — daylight that you may or may not have at your disposal. __________________________________________________ > You head straight to Woban Island. It is best to remain focused on your goal, and in this case your goal is to obtain the Stone of Vul-Kar and deliver it to Boston for two million dollars. You will not be furthering your cause by spending the night on Auri Island, and Diane Chambers will not pay you if no purple gem is procured. Or if someone gets to it before you do. Therefore you choose to motor right by Auri in the Zodiac, heading straight for Woban instead. But as you get closer to Woban Island, proximity doesn't make the view any more flattering; what appeared to be steep cliffs and mountainsides plunging straight into the sea from a few miles away prove to be exactly that upon closer inspection. What you wouldn't give for a topographic map right about now! You had assumed a tiny little island would be simple to navigate — just climb to the highest point, grab the stone, and go home — but you can see now that the geography here is a lot more complicated. From what you can gather, the southern end of the island is occupied by this range of small mountains that you now see, and the jewel must be securely hidden somewhere among them. You examine the mountains as you putz past them on the water, looking for signs of the temple on the highest summit, but everything up there looks thickly forested. And steep. You didn't realize this might become a mountaineering adventure. If it does, you're going to be woefully underprepared. There are of course no published maps of the place that you can buy from Amazon, and even Google hasn't updated its digital cartography to show these new land discoveries. The best you could do in your limited prep time was print off some satellite imagery using a laser printer you found on the Sam Malone. According to your low-grade, grayscale screen capture from Google, the land tapers away for several miles beyond the mountains to the northeast. So it looks like you will need to land there and then navigate your way inland through the foothills — some way, somehow. The problem is that it will take you several miles to get to that other side of the island where landing is possible, and this Zodiac can only go so fast. You give this southern part of the island a wide berth; who knows what reefs might be lurking just below the water's surface, capable of shredding the Zodiac to pieces before you even realize there's a problem. If that were to happen, there would be no place for you to reach shore safely. Instead, you tool along to the northwest about a full mile from the shoreline, heading to a prominent headland that you think marks the corner of the island. Get around that, and you should start to see more landing opportunities on the other side. Not surprisingly, though, this is turning into a race with the setting sun, which is only a few fingers above the western horizon. Your little boat is not equipped with any spotlights, and once you lose the daylight you'll be stranded in the darkness. C'mon, little Zodiac! Steady as she goes! You can do it! Don't fail me now! These and other forms of mental encouragement don't seem to have much bearing on the speed of the boat, though. The sun is setting just as you near the tip of the headland. The clock is set: in maybe thirty more minutes, night will have settled in over Woban Island. Had you chosen to stop at Auri, you'd probably be enjoying life beside a campfire right now. As it stands, you can only hope you'll find a place to safely make landfall before the clock runs out. Then you can look forward to a night of sitting in the dark, with no idea where exactly you are. You decide it's worth cutting the corner a bit around the headland; you might still hit something submerged, but you'll be traveling less distance around the cliffy peninsula. As you steer the boat around its tip, you see that the mountainous portion of the island is coming to an end, with miles of sand beaches beyond. The end is in sight! Even if darkness overtakes you, all you have to do now is point the boat toward land, ease up on the throttle, and take it slowly until you hear waves breaking ahead of you. Hold on, what's that? On the nearest section of beach, just ahead of you, you see a flickering orange light. Actually, the light is not on the beach, but a short distance back in the jungle. A campfire, without a doubt. And that dark object you see on the sandy shoreline? That looks like someone's boat. This puts a wrinkle in your plans. You knew you'd have competition from other jewel-seekers, but it never occurred to you that you might run into them so soon. Are these people friendly? Many of the people in your "profession" are highly competitive and will do anything to knock their opponents out of the race. On the other hand, there are several research teams that have been studying Woban Island ever since its discovery a few years ago, and you'd expect such people to be collegiate and cordial. You'd rather avoid the former type of people at all costs, but the latter kind could actually be interesting. Who knows what kinds of useful information you might glean from spending a night with people whose interest in the island is purely science-minded? Maybe they would even have a spare map of the island to give you. But here's the bottom line: Whoever is there has certainly heard your boat by now; sneaking past them is not a possibility. So you have the option to either land there in the few remaining minutes of twilight available to you, or to venture further up the beach in the dark. You won't be able to see anything, and where you land will be a crapshoot. __________________________________________________ > You land near the other boat and the campfire. You point the bow of the Zodiac in the direction of the campfire and ease off the throttle. If there is danger here, it is best to confront it head-on — you've already inadvertently revealed yourself anyway, so even if you did continue up the beach, the trouble would probably just follow you. On the other hand, if these people are friendly, you might as well see if they are useful as well. The twilight is very dim now, almost completely vanished for the evening, but even so you can make out two figures making their way down a path from the fire to the beach. You cannot make out any other details about them, even as they stand by the water's edge watching you slowly approach. Are they armed? The only thing you can say for sure is that they are keeping quiet — and they are probably just as apprehensive about you as you are of them. Can you blame them? You must look pretty suspicious yourself. Who would be taking a pleasure cruise in a Zodiac around Woban Island? And who would be doing so in the dark? You decide to make the first move. You turn off the outboard motor about two hundred feet from shore. If these people were hostile and wanted to shoot at you, they would have done so by now. "Hello there!" you shout to the shadowy duo. "I'm looking for a place to camp for the night. Do you mind if I come in?" "Are you from the university?" It's a woman's voice. "University?" you say. "We've been expecting more people." It's just as you thought: this must be a research team from some school with a top-notch ethnography program. In other words, you've stumbled across some harmless academic types. "I'm not from a university," you call back across the dark water. "I'm just looking for a safe place to land." "Well come on in," the woman shouts back. "We've got plenty of room!" You restart the motor and slowly move closer to the beach, cutting it off again and tipping it up just before making landfall. An incoming wave helps push the Zodiac onto the beach. "Here, let me give you a hand with that." It's a man's voice. The figure flicks on a headlamp strapped to his forehead, making it difficult for you to look at him. But he is tugging at one of the handles attached to your inflatable boat to pull it the rest of the way out of the water. You hop out on the other side so you can match his effort. The woman flicks on her headlamp and grabs a strap near the bow. "On three," the man says, and when he gives the mark all three of you tug the Zodiac up the beach, finally stopping just before the treeline. Your boat comes to rest beside a small dinghy, which has been flipped upside-down for the night. "Nice boat," the man says. You see his headlamp beam tracing the length and width of your ride as he looks it over. "Yours?" "I'm borrowing it from a friend," you say, not yet ready to reveal all of the details of why you're here. "I see. Need a hand with anything?" "Everything I own is in this pack here," you say, hoisting your backpack out of the Zodiac and over your right shoulder. "Will the boat be safe here?" "It should. The tide doesn't come this high." "Hey, come up to the campsite," the woman says. "You must be tired and starving!" She's right on both counts. You follow their headlamp beams up a dark trail into the jungle, where you find a spacious campsite well-lit by their small fire. "If you brought a tent, you can set it up over there," the woman says. You turn to see that they have both switched off their headlamps, so you can look at them without being blinded. They are fairly young, probably both pursuing doctoral degrees or something. She has an athletic build, wearing khaki shorts and a white tank top, with her blond hair drawn into a ponytail. He is wearing long clothing, walking around in a pair of unlaced boots. He sports a set of mutton chop sideburns, glasses, and a twill flat cap — a rather hipsterish look for someone way out here in the wilds of the South Pacific. He looks like a fugitive from a microbrewery. Setting your backpack down in the space you have been offered, you begin to rummage inside for something to eat. "Would you like some fish?" your hostess asks. "Gordy caught a mahi-mahi today, and it was more than we could finish. The leftovers are on that bench over there. Help yourself." She is pointing to a cluttered table to the side of the campsite, of the kind that can be collapsed down into a portable bundle. There is a gas stove on top, and half a dozen discarded propane canisters on the ground around it. "Um, thanks," you say. Their hospitality is more than you ever expected. It looks like you made the best possible decision in coming here! __________________________________________________ > Next page. Later that evening, after first finishing off the mahi-mahi like someone who hasn't seen food in days, and then setting up your little dome tent in the space you have been offered, you join your new companions around their campfire. "Is it really just the two of you here?" you say, deciding you ought to pump these people for information — without seeming to be overly nosy. What you really want to know is whether or not they have any maps of the island, of course. If you ask for one right away, they'll probably hesitate at first until they think of something they want in return. But if you can build a rapport first, they might just give you a map as a favor. "We're keeping an eye on things while everybody else goes back for a resupply," the man says. A resupply? you think. Is there a grocery store somewhere around here? You look around the campsite. In addition to the table, there is a cluster of larger tents off to one side, and stacks of plastic totes to the other. Someone wrote "UofC" with a Sharpie on the side of each tote, some of which are made of clear plastic. They still look full. "I see half a dozen tents over there," you say. "How big of a group do you have?" "Good question," he says to his companion. "What are there, twelve people?" Instead of answering, the woman turns brightly toward you. "We never introduced ourselves, did we? My name is Charlei. This here is Gordon; I call him Gordy." After telling them your name, you add, "I've never met a girl named Charlei before. Short for Charlene?" "No, just Charlei. Charlei Goodcheer." She leans into Gordy, clutching his arm and shoulder affectionately. "And this is Gordon Fellows. Together we're the Goodcheer-Fellows!" With that, she holds up her left hand briefly so you can see the gold ring. Gordy leans in gives his wife a quick kiss on the head. "You two look like you're on your honeymoon," you say. "Well, we're trying to earn a little money to pay off our student loans and maybe buy a house, if you know what I mean," Gordy says. You want to ask them about the "UofC" and which university program they're working for, but instead Charlei gets her question out first. "How about you? What brings you out here all by yourself?" "Me?" you say. "My story is not too interesting." You'd rather be learning more about them, but you can't appear pushy. Hopefully, like most people, they'll lose interest in you and start gushing about themselves. "Oh, I'm sure it is interesting," she says. "Boring people don't ride a little inflatable Zodiac across the Pacific Ocean just to go camping out on Woban Island." "Well, no, I guess n—" "I'll bet you're here to find the Stone of Vul-Kar," Gordy says, almost like he's teasing you. "Don't worry, we don't judge," Charlei says. "You're not the only person on this island who'd like to get their hands on the stone." One of the reasons you've been skittish about revealing your true reasons for being on Woban Island is that every now and then you meet one of these academic types who looks down at you and your livelihood. You remember well how one rugged-looking archeologist became outraged at you, dismissing you as a "self-involved thrill seeker", right after you suggested your professions were essentially the same thing. "How dare you insult me like that!" he said, his voice having turned stentorian in his indignation. "I advance human knowledge. All you do is loot and plunder." To be fair, though, that was just one encounter, and from what you can tell this happily wedded couple couldn't be more different. You repeat their name in your head: the Goodcheer-Fellows. Usually the sound of one of those trendy hyphenated surnames makes you groan, but you have to admit this one has a clever ring to it. You get the sense Charlei and Gordy enjoy introducing themselves using the same exact routine they just used on you. "That Zodiac looks brand new," Gordy says. "Is that a Mark III?" You're confused by the question. "I wouldn't know. It belongs to the person who hired me." "So someone just dropped you off so you could explore Woban Island all on your own?" he says. "Pretty much, yes," you say. "That is so friggin' cool! So is this, like, your job or something? Are you a professional adventurer?" "I guess you could say that… ." "This must just be another day at the office for you, then." "I never thought about it that way, but yeah, sure, I guess." The Goodcheer-Fellows are sitting together on a large log next to the fire. Charlei leans into her husband, as if the act of listening to you talk about yourself makes her feel more romantic toward Gordy. "Aren't you scared to be out here alone?" she says. "Do you carry a gun?" "No, no guns," you say. "They cause more trouble than they solve, in my opinion." "Well, I'd want to carry gun," Charlei says. Then she cranes her chin up to look at Gordy. "Wouldn't you carry a gun, honey?" Instead of responding to his wife, Gordy has more questions for you. "Someone with your experience must have a plan for getting the stone." "I'm still working out the details," you say. "I didn't realize I'd be making landfall so late in the day. I plan to get my bearings in the morning." "It's OK if you don't want to tell us your plan," Charlei says. "It's just that we've heard lots of people come to Woban Island looking for the stone, but you're the first one we've met." "We must be keeping you up," Gordy says with an apologetic note. "You're probably someone who gets up at the crack of dawn." Charlei, who is practically reclining in his lap, stretches her arms as she yawns. "We're keeping me up. Do you have any more of that sleep aid?" Gordy reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a small flask. Charlei sits up, unscrews the cap, and takes a swig. "Gin. You want some?" she says, holding the flask in your direction when she's done. "No, thanks." With his lap now empty, Gordy stands up. "It's way past our bedtime. Are you ready to turn in, honey?" "I'm beat. It's been a long day." Then she stands up too, her face contorted in a big yawn. "It was great meeting you!" "Yeah, same," you say. "Have a good night." "Good night," Gordy says. But then the two of them walk off into the woods, not toward any of the tents. He sees you following them with your eyes, and he notices your curious expression. "I set our tent up over here, so Charlei wouldn't have to walk too far in the dark to find the latrine. See you in the morning." Moments later, you find yourself alone by the dwindling campfire, surrounded by the dark jungle and all of the "UofC" camping gear. You're a little disappointed with yourself for losing control of the conversation, and talking so much about yourself. You learned nothing about the "UofC" or when the remainder of the research team is due back — from wherever it was they went. The Goodcheer-Fellows lived up to their shared surname, and you enjoyed their company, but this encounter didn't go quite the way you planned. You're not quite ready to turn in for the night, so you grab a few more sticks from a stack of wood near the fireplace. You toss them into the small blaze, giving it a few more minutes of life. With no more chatter to distract you, all you hear is the babbling of a small brook in the nearby woods, and the rhythmic splashing of the waves down on the beach. You don't hear a peep from Gordy and Charlei. An idea occurs to you. If you didn't learn what you wanted to know through conversation, maybe you should use a more direct method. After all, you are now alone in a campsite filled with gear and supplies. The maps you need so you can find your way to the Stone of Vul-Kar must be safely stored in those totes, or perhaps in one of the tents. And who knows what else you'll find in the process? Extra food, a better sleeping bag, maybe a "UofC" Nalgene bottle to take as a souvenir? This expedition looks like it was well outfitted, and you feel certain you'll find what you're looking for, and more; that which Diane Chambers was unable to provideth, may the "UofC" furnish for the glory of your expedition. In your experience, nosiness often pays off. Indeed, it has served you well so far tonight. But, yeah, the Goodcheer-Fellows were nice people, and stealing is bad. So there is that to consider. __________________________________________________ > You take a look around the campsite. You throw a few more sticks on the fire, letting the flames build higher so they can illuminate more of the campsite. This will call less to attention to yourself, you reason; if you fetched your own headlamp out of your pack and used that as you snooped through the university's gear, the erratic beams of light would telegraph your activities to your neighbors. You pause one more time to make sure you can't hear Charlei or Gordy moving around, and then you pad quietly over to the collection of totes. There are about a dozen of them, stacked in three columns about twenty feet from the nearest tent. Only a few of them are clear-sided, and these don't seem to contain much of anything exciting; one is filled with toilet paper rolls, another seems to contain nothing but cans of ground coffee. Most of the totes, though, are made of solid gray plastic, meaning you will have to open them to see what's inside — and so of course these are the ones that intrigue you the most. You take one down from the top of the nearest stack and set it at your feet. You grab each end of the lid and gently tug at it, but it still comes off with a sharp snap! that freezes you in momentary terror. In the calm of the night, the sound seemed amplified. You stand there for a few seconds, holding the lid in your hands like the guilty snoop that you are, until you are satisfied that there is no sound of movement from the direction of the Goodcheer-Fellows' tent. It is therefore very disappointing to look down and see that you have opened a container full of dehydrated food, all of it neatly organized in plastic freezer bags: assorted fruits and vegetables, mostly, with hand-printed labels. It must have taken somebody a month to prepare all this stuff using one of those do-it-yourself food dehydrators you can buy for your kitchen. This is all very interesting, but of course this isn't what you were hoping to find. You leave that tote opened on the ground, because if you find nothing better you may want to come back and help yourself to some dried fruit. The next tote you pick is from the stack that is to the rear of the other two; and in the hope that randomness in the selection will yield more interesting results in the contents, you pick the third one from the top. After moving the top two totes out of the way, you place your selection beside the first tote you opened. You try your best to be as gentle as possible this time, but apparently these lids were designed by a jack-in-the-box manufacturer. Despite your efforts to be quiet, this one too opens with a sharp snap. You might as well be banging on a soup pot with a heavy stick. Spaghetti, boxes of it. And not even the good kind, either, but the whole wheat variety. There are also several jars of meatless sauce. These two items constitute the entire inventory of the second tote. You aren't doing so well here; so far the most tempting items you've come across are an extra roll of T.P. and a baggie of dried strawberries. Perhaps it's time to move on to the quieter pursuit of snooping inside the tents. As before, you toss a few extra sticks on the fire to build it back up; the tents are in a shadowy part of the campsite, so the extra light will be helpful. Then you proceed to nearest of the nylon shelters. You hadn't noticed this before, but the flap is unzipped; the mesh panel that should be kept closed to keep the bugs out is hanging limply in the night air. No, actually — it's torn, as if something crashed through it. And why does the ground in front of it look dark and wet? With growing apprehension you look inside, and see several people sprawled out inside. Are they sleeping? It's too dark to tell. You reel back, worried that your presence at the entrance of the tent might wake them. But how is it you never even knew they were here until now? How did they not wake up while you were talking loudly with the Goodcheer-Fellows? And didn't Charlei and Gordon tell you there was no one else here? The situation is not adding up. You distinctly remember being told that the rest of the people had left to get more supplies, but from what you just saw in the totes this camp was already well-stocked in food and staples. And people sleeping? No, can't be. The next tent to your right is also open — but also partly collapsed, as if something fell on it. In the darkness you almost didn't notice it, but there are a pair of legs sticking out of this one. Do you dare take a closer look? You have to, so you step closer, ever so gingerly. Yep, those are legs — attached to a body that collapsed on its side, a look of horror evident even in the profile of its down-turned face. The shirt is tattered and soaking with blood. "There are ten people over there. Go on; you can count them if you want." Holy! You never heard them coming. You turn and see Gordon and Charlei standing between you and the campfire. Now that they have your attention, they both turn on their headlamps, making it impossible to look directly at them. "The cook and the guide got away," Gordon continues. "They took the boat with them, which was what we really wanted." "We like your boat, though," Charlei says. "That little dinghy we found wasn't going to be enough to get us out into the shipping lanes. It almost tipped over while we were fishing with it today." Their voices are even and measured, almost chilling in their calmness. It's clear now you had been played this evening by the campfire. Now your only way out of this is to see if you can find some way to be useful to your "friends". "So you guys are after the Stone of Vul-Kar, too?" you say, trying your best to suppress all signs of fear from your voice. It isn't easy. "Of course, silly," Charlei says. "We're trapped in student loan debt, and at the rate we're going we won't be able to afford a house until we're in our fifties. All we want is to stand on our own two feet. So the way we see it, our options are to either win the lottery — lame! — or take matters into our own hands." "Let me help you!" you say. "I'm good at this. We can head up the mountain first thing in the morning. I—" "You've already sold the stone to some wealthy collector!" Gordon says. "You're just a mercenary, hired by the One Percent to do their bidding. We don't need your help." "It's a pity your code of honor or whatever doesn't allow you to carry a weapon," Charlei says. "It's better if you carry a gun. Isn't that right, sweetie?" "That's the way I was raised." As Gordon says this, he raises something long and thin that he had been holding at his side. You hadn't noticed it before in the shadowy light cast by the fire, not to mention the glare of the headlamps, but now you are certain it is a gun pointed straight at you. "I hate this part!" Charlei says. "Why don't you head back up to the tent, sweetie. You don't have to watch. It's been a busy day." "All right, I'll see you up there. Don't be long." "I love you." "Love you too!" Charlei disappears into the darkness, leaving you alone with Gordon. Even as his wife parts company with him, his headlamp beam never moves away from you. "Gordon. Gordy! I can—" you start to say, but there is a flash of light from his hands. The shot knocks you off your feet, and when you hit the ground you become the eleventh body in the campsite. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>Later that evening, after first finishing off the mahi-mahi like someone who hasn't seen food in days, and then setting up your little dome tent in the space you have been offered, you join your new companions around their campfire. "Is it really just the two of you here?" you say, deciding you ought to pump these people for information — without seeming to be overly nosy. What you really want to know is whether or not they have any maps of the island, of course. If you ask for one right away, they'll probably hesitate at first until they think of something they want in return. But if you can build a rapport first, they might just give you a map as a favor. "We're keeping an eye on things while everybody else goes back for a resupply," the man says. A resupply? you think. Is there a grocery store somewhere around here? You look around the campsite. In addition to the table, there is a cluster of larger tents off to one side, and stacks of plastic totes to the other. Someone wrote "UofC" with a Sharpie on the side of each tote, some of which are made of clear plastic. They still look full. "I see half a dozen tents over there," you say. "How big of a group do you have?" "Good question," he says to his companion. "What are there, twelve people?" Instead of answering, the woman turns brightly toward you. "We never introduced ourselves, did we? My name is Charlei. This here is Gordon; I call him Gordy." After telling them your name, you add, "I've never met a girl named Charlei before. Short for Charlene?" "No, just Charlei. Charlei Goodcheer." She leans into Gordy, clutching his arm and shoulder affectionately. "And this is Gordon Fellows. Together we're the Goodcheer-Fellows!" With that, she holds up her left hand briefly so you can see the gold ring. Gordy leans in gives his wife a quick kiss on the head. "You two look like you're on your honeymoon," you say. "Well, we're trying to earn a little money to pay off our student loans and maybe buy a house, if you know what I mean," Gordy says. You want to ask them about the "UofC" and which university program they're working for, but instead Charlei gets her question out first. "How about you? What brings you out here all by yourself?" "Me?" you say. "My story is not too interesting." You'd rather be learning more about them, but you can't appear pushy. Hopefully, like most people, they'll lose interest in you and start gushing about themselves. "Oh, I'm sure it is interesting," she says. "Boring people don't ride a little inflatable Zodiac across the Pacific Ocean just to go camping out on Woban Island." "Well, no, I guess n—" "I'll bet you're here to find the Stone of Vul-Kar," Gordy says, almost like he's teasing you. "Don't worry, we don't judge," Charlei says. "You're not the only person on this island who'd like to get their hands on the stone." One of the reasons you've been skittish about revealing your true reasons for being on Woban Island is that every now and then you meet one of these academic types who looks down at you and your livelihood. You remember well how one rugged-looking archeologist became outraged at you, dismissing you as a "self-involved thrill seeker", right after you suggested your professions were essentially the same thing. "How dare you insult me like that!" he said, his voice having turned stentorian in his indignation. "I advance human knowledge. All you do is loot and plunder." To be fair, though, that was just one encounter, and from what you can tell this happily wedded couple couldn't be more different. You repeat their name in your head: the Goodcheer-Fellows. Usually the sound of one of those trendy hyphenated surnames makes you groan, but you have to admit this one has a clever ring to it. You get the sense Charlei and Gordy enjoy introducing themselves using the same exact routine they just used on you. "That Zodiac looks brand new," Gordy says. "Is that a Mark III?" You're confused by the question. "I wouldn't know. It belongs to the person who hired me." "So someone just dropped you off so you could explore Woban Island all on your own?" he says. "Pretty much, yes," you say. "That is so friggin' cool! So is this, like, your job or something? Are you a professional adventurer?" "I guess you could say that… ." "This must just be another day at the office for you, then." "I never thought about it that way, but yeah, sure, I guess." The Goodcheer-Fellows are sitting together on a large log next to the fire. Charlei leans into her husband, as if the act of listening to you talk about yourself makes her feel more romantic toward Gordy. "Aren't you scared to be out here alone?" she says. "Do you carry a gun?" "No, no guns," you say. "They cause more trouble than they solve, in my opinion." "Well, I'd want to carry gun," Charlei says. Then she cranes her chin up to look at Gordy. "Wouldn't you carry a gun, honey?" Instead of responding to his wife, Gordy has more questions for you. "Someone with your experience must have a plan for getting the stone." "I'm still working out the details," you say. "I didn't realize I'd be making landfall so late in the day. I plan to get my bearings in the morning." "It's OK if you don't want to tell us your plan," Charlei says. "It's just that we've heard lots of people come to Woban Island looking for the stone, but you're the first one we've met." "We must be keeping you up," Gordy says with an apologetic note. "You're probably someone who gets up at the crack of dawn." Charlei, who is practically reclining in his lap, stretches her arms as she yawns. "We're keeping me up. Do you have any more of that sleep aid?" Gordy reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a small flask. Charlei sits up, unscrews the cap, and takes a swig. "Gin. You want some?" she says, holding the flask in your direction when she's done. "No, thanks." With his lap now empty, Gordy stands up. "It's way past our bedtime. Are you ready to turn in, honey?" "I'm beat. It's been a long day." Then she stands up too, her face contorted in a big yawn. "It was great meeting you!" "Yeah, same," you say. "Have a good night." "Good night," Gordy says. But then the two of them walk off into the woods, not toward any of the tents. He sees you following them with your eyes, and he notices your curious expression. "I set our tent up over here, so Charlei wouldn't have to walk too far in the dark to find the latrine. See you in the morning." Moments later, you find yourself alone by the dwindling campfire, surrounded by the dark jungle and all of the "UofC" camping gear. You're a little disappointed with yourself for losing control of the conversation, and talking so much about yourself. You learned nothing about the "UofC" or when the remainder of the research team is due back — from wherever it was they went. The Goodcheer-Fellows lived up to their shared surname, and you enjoyed their company, but this encounter didn't go quite the way you planned. You're not quite ready to turn in for the night, so you grab a few more sticks from a stack of wood near the fireplace. You toss them into the small blaze, giving it a few more minutes of life. With no more chatter to distract you, all you hear is the babbling of a small brook in the nearby woods, and the rhythmic splashing of the waves down on the beach. You don't hear a peep from Gordy and Charlei. An idea occurs to you. If you didn't learn what you wanted to know through conversation, maybe you should use a more direct method. After all, you are now alone in a campsite filled with gear and supplies. The maps you need so you can find your way to the Stone of Vul-Kar must be safely stored in those totes, or perhaps in one of the tents. And who knows what else you'll find in the process? Extra food, a better sleeping bag, maybe a "UofC" Nalgene bottle to take as a souvenir? This expedition looks like it was well outfitted, and you feel certain you'll find what you're looking for, and more; that which Diane Chambers was unable to provideth, may the "UofC" furnish for the glory of your expedition. In your experience, nosiness often pays off. Indeed, it has served you well so far tonight. But, yeah, the Goodcheer-Fellows were nice people, and stealing is bad. So there is that to consider. __________________________________________________ > You mind your own business and go to bed. You decide that the more rational course of action is to simply ask your new friends if there is a map of the island you can study; if need be, you can copy the salient details into your notebook. The Goodcheer-Fellows were so friendly and accommodating — not to mention interested in your mission — that you foresee no problems with this plan. It would be nice to have some allies on this island, and snooping around all of the "UofC" gear could only lead to trouble if you were caught in the act. So, content that your first night on Woban Island has gone well, and with a belly-full of mahi-mahi, you decide to call it a day. You linger for a few more minutes by the fire as the last of the wood turns to coals and the flames fade away, then you retreat to your little dome tent and the comfort of your sleeping bag. Your sleep is fitful, however. Whether it is because of anxiety over the unknown risks that await you on your quest, the fear of what would happen if you failed to deliver the gem to Diane Chambers, or maybe some morsel of undercooked fish, you cannot say. But you dream that you are adrift in a boat on a featureless ocean. The boat is smaller than the Zodiac, and there is no motor. You have no way to control your direction, no means of improving your situation in any way. You bob along, helpless, alone, friendless — a victim of unknown circumstances, a prisoner of an indifferent ocean. You shift position in your sleeping bag, but even these small moments of wakefulness are not enough to nudge you out of this dream. It is not until the crack of dawn that the dream finally loses its hold on you; only then are you able to drift into a more restful sleep. You imagine the Goodcheer-Fellows outside cooking breakfast, keeping respectfully quiet so as not to wake you. You think of joining them, but it feels so good here inside your bag. Hours later, you wake up for good. The sun has climbed high in the sky, casting leafy shadows on the fly of your tent. The air has grown sultry, telling you that you have slept much later than you intended. You look at your watch and learn than it is nearly ten o'clock. The campsite is quiet. You quickly extract yourself from your bag and crawl out of the tent, surprised to see no sign of Charlei and Gordy. Not only is the fire cold, but there is no indication that anyone has touched it since you let it die down last night. The propane stove also appears untouched, and there is no sign that anyone has cooked breakfast. Must be your companions are sleeping even later than you did. It looked like they were very much into each other when you were chatting with them, so maybe they kept themselves busy long into the night… that, or they're just inveterate late sleepers. Didn't Gordy say the latrine was up this way, not far from their tent? There is some business you need to conduct before anything else. You follow the path into the woods, careful to be quiet so as not to disturb your neighbors. It is easy enough to find the rustic latrine, which looks like a Boy Scout project involving sticks, twine, and a privacy screen fashioned out of a blue tarp — but you are royally disoriented when you see no signs of a tent anywhere nearby. You didn't dream up Charlei and Gordy, did you? A quick check of the woods around the latrine reveals that not only is there no tent now, but that there probably never was one. The woods are too thick, the ground too uneven for camping. What is going on here? The next place you investigate is the beach, where hours ago you landed the Zodiac in the dark. But now, in broad daylight, you see no Zodiac, no dinghy — no nothing. Maybe the high tide swept the two boats away, but you're certain that was not the case. Somebody took them on you. This leaves you with a feeling of momentary disorientation — especially the part where you misjudged the character of your two companions last night. How could you be so easily fooled — all that feigned interest in your mission, and all those questions about the Zodiac? You were played by a pair of experts. With a sinking feeling, you rush back to your tent. You missed it a few minutes ago when you first got up, but now you can clearly see that your backpack is missing too. Your satellite phone, your gear, everything except your sleeping bag and some extra clothes — all gone. You are certain you had left the pack in the tent's vestibule before you went to sleep; anyone could have taken it without making a disturbance. All your moral reservations about perusing the contents of the campsite fade away. Starting with the totes, you do eventually find that map you wanted, but not after opening tote after tote of non-perishable food and other basic supplies. So at least your situation isn't completely hopeless. Soon, though, you become aware of a horrible smell emanating from the cluster of tents. Food that was left to spoil, perhaps? But when you take a look, the blood drains from your flesh. These are no longer camping tents, they are mausoleums containing the bodies of ten people — members of the research team, you suppose, all of them with shotgun wounds to the chest. The implications are chilling. You landed at a crime scene last night, and told your story to a pair of murderous Millennials. Evil had looked you in the eye and fed you leftover mahi-mahi, and you were completely fooled. They slaughtered all of these people for reasons you can't begin to understand, but all Charlei and Gordy took from you was your pack and the Zodiac. It's enough to knock your self-confidence in your abilities to carry out your mission completely off its foundation. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>It is best to remain focused on your goal, and in this case your goal is to obtain the Stone of Vul-Kar and deliver it to Boston for two million dollars. You will not be furthering your cause by spending the night on Auri Island, and Diane Chambers will not pay you if no purple gem is procured. Or if someone gets to it before you do. Therefore you choose to motor right by Auri in the Zodiac, heading straight for Woban instead. But as you get closer to Woban Island, proximity doesn't make the view any more flattering; what appeared to be steep cliffs and mountainsides plunging straight into the sea from a few miles away prove to be exactly that upon closer inspection. What you wouldn't give for a topographic map right about now! You had assumed a tiny little island would be simple to navigate — just climb to the highest point, grab the stone, and go home — but you can see now that the geography here is a lot more complicated. From what you can gather, the southern end of the island is occupied by this range of small mountains that you now see, and the jewel must be securely hidden somewhere among them. You examine the mountains as you putz past them on the water, looking for signs of the temple on the highest summit, but everything up there looks thickly forested. And steep. You didn't realize this might become a mountaineering adventure. If it does, you're going to be woefully underprepared. There are of course no published maps of the place that you can buy from Amazon, and even Google hasn't updated its digital cartography to show these new land discoveries. The best you could do in your limited prep time was print off some satellite imagery using a laser printer you found on the Sam Malone. According to your low-grade, grayscale screen capture from Google, the land tapers away for several miles beyond the mountains to the northeast. So it looks like you will need to land there and then navigate your way inland through the foothills — some way, somehow. The problem is that it will take you several miles to get to that other side of the island where landing is possible, and this Zodiac can only go so fast. You give this southern part of the island a wide berth; who knows what reefs might be lurking just below the water's surface, capable of shredding the Zodiac to pieces before you even realize there's a problem. If that were to happen, there would be no place for you to reach shore safely. Instead, you tool along to the northwest about a full mile from the shoreline, heading to a prominent headland that you think marks the corner of the island. Get around that, and you should start to see more landing opportunities on the other side. Not surprisingly, though, this is turning into a race with the setting sun, which is only a few fingers above the western horizon. Your little boat is not equipped with any spotlights, and once you lose the daylight you'll be stranded in the darkness. C'mon, little Zodiac! Steady as she goes! You can do it! Don't fail me now! These and other forms of mental encouragement don't seem to have much bearing on the speed of the boat, though. The sun is setting just as you near the tip of the headland. The clock is set: in maybe thirty more minutes, night will have settled in over Woban Island. Had you chosen to stop at Auri, you'd probably be enjoying life beside a campfire right now. As it stands, you can only hope you'll find a place to safely make landfall before the clock runs out. Then you can look forward to a night of sitting in the dark, with no idea where exactly you are. You decide it's worth cutting the corner a bit around the headland; you might still hit something submerged, but you'll be traveling less distance around the cliffy peninsula. As you steer the boat around its tip, you see that the mountainous portion of the island is coming to an end, with miles of sand beaches beyond. The end is in sight! Even if darkness overtakes you, all you have to do now is point the boat toward land, ease up on the throttle, and take it slowly until you hear waves breaking ahead of you. Hold on, what's that? On the nearest section of beach, just ahead of you, you see a flickering orange light. Actually, the light is not on the beach, but a short distance back in the jungle. A campfire, without a doubt. And that dark object you see on the sandy shoreline? That looks like someone's boat. This puts a wrinkle in your plans. You knew you'd have competition from other jewel-seekers, but it never occurred to you that you might run into them so soon. Are these people friendly? Many of the people in your "profession" are highly competitive and will do anything to knock their opponents out of the race. On the other hand, there are several research teams that have been studying Woban Island ever since its discovery a few years ago, and you'd expect such people to be collegiate and cordial. You'd rather avoid the former type of people at all costs, but the latter kind could actually be interesting. Who knows what kinds of useful information you might glean from spending a night with people whose interest in the island is purely science-minded? Maybe they would even have a spare map of the island to give you. But here's the bottom line: Whoever is there has certainly heard your boat by now; sneaking past them is not a possibility. So you have the option to either land there in the few remaining minutes of twilight available to you, or to venture further up the beach in the dark. You won't be able to see anything, and where you land will be a crapshoot. __________________________________________________ > You continue up the beach in the dark. The first rule on any assignment like this: you have no friends. Trust no one. Assume everyone has an agenda — especially in a primitive environment like Woban Island, where civilization and the rule of law are distant memories, and raw wealth is something that people come to conquer. The likelihood of meeting a Good Samaritan here is about as high as encountering a native Woban who will just hand the Stone of Vul-Kar over to you. In your line of work, people are trouble, and if you give someone a chance they will prove that axiom over and over again. You are on your own for a reason, and it's better that way. You just hope the people with the campfire feel the same way about it as you do. Hopefully the quickly-fading daylight is already too dark for them to get a good look at you; let them think this is a boat filled with mercenaries, dirty, vulgar, and armed to the teeth. "Best to keep a safe distance from a crew like that," they will say, assuming the worst and acting in their own self-interest accordingly. No other specks of light appear on the dark stretch of island ahead of you. Soon the twilight fails you completely, and Woban Island becomes a nebulous silhouette against the starry sky, as hard as it is to believe a land so dark could have become even darker. You cut the motor and let the waves carry you into shore; it will take a little longer to make landfall that way, but for anyone who may be within earshot it will be more difficult to track your progress. You reach down toward the floor of the Zodiac for something that you vaguely remember seeing when it was still light out, tucked away to the side of the craft. Your fingers clasp the smooth plastic shaft, and you pull the oar from the straps holding it in place. You dip it into the water behind the boat, using it as a rudder to keep the bow pointing toward the shadowy shoreline. Then you hang tight and let the waves do their work. No lights come from this part of the island, but with the motor shut off you can hear many of the familiar sounds of the jungle: waves crashing on the beach in rhythmic repetition, trees rustling in the slight breeze blowing off the ocean, raucous bird calls from deep in the forest, the sound of a small stream babbling over a bed of rocks as it spills into the sea. But there is something else on this calm night, too: the sound of distant singing and chanting, coming from somewhere well across the island. You can only assume this is the native population putting on some kind of celebration. Maybe it's someone's birthday, maybe it's a Bar Mitzvah — it doesn't matter. The important thing is that whatever the event, it is being held a long way from here. Instead, you focus on that sound of running water. Since in reality you have no idea where you are relative to the island's major landmarks, and you are literally about to run ashore blind, this little stream may prove to be a useful reference point in the morning. After all, you're going to need to park the Zodiac somewhere while you explore the mountain, and if there happens to be a little inlet here that might the perfect hiding spot. So you tune everything else out and just focus on the sound of the stream, using the oar to steer the Zodiac straight towards it. You can't see much in the starlight, but when you hear the sound of the crashing waves to your right and left you know you have found a gap in the beach. The stream is somewhere straight ahead of you, just a few yards away. You've been keeping your headlamp handy all this time, and now that you think you've found a secluded little nook you decide it's safe to turn on the light. Indeed, you have navigated your way into a short inlet surrounded by jungle vegetation, with the open ocean about twenty yards behind you. Given the circumstances, this seems like a pretty good place to be. You tie off the bow of the boat to the trunk of an overhanging tree, then you settle back into the Zodiac. The weather looks like it will remain calm tonight, so you decide to remain right where you are all night long, eating a few snacks and then sleeping in the rubbery confines of your small boat. In the morning, your neck is sore and your legs are stiff after falling asleep inside the Zodiac; there are worse places you could have spent the night, but this inflatable boat was not designed with sleepers in mind. The important thing is that you had no visitors during the course of the night, and all of your belongings are still present and accounted for. At this early hour, the portion of the sky that you can see through the jungle trees seems pale silver in color. You hoist yourself up onto the round gunwale of the raft-like boat and look for a safe way to step ashore. It looks as though you've found a popular watering hole for the local wildlife, as there are multiple little game trails converging on this inlet. One good path leads down to the beach, so you stroll down toward the ocean with the hopes of getting your bearings. Beside you is the narrow inlet through which the mouth of the stream flows, and in the other direction is a long stretch of beach extending almost all the way to that headland you passed last night, during your race against the setting sun. The campsite that you passed was near the base of that peninsula; in the daylight, you can see that you put nearly two miles between you and whoever else is camping out down there. What you were hoping to see, however, is nowhere in sight. The mountains are behind you now, and you would need to be taller than the trees to see in that direction. Getting there is going to be difficult if all you have to navigate with is that Google screen capture printed on a piece of limp copy paper. All you need is a good look at the terrain so you can pick out the best route. Otherwise you'll just be bushwhacking through the jungle in the blind. There is nothing you can do about that here, though. What matters is that you've successfully made it to Woban Island, and the Stone of Vul-Kar is just a few measly miles away. That two million dollars is as good as yours. Right? Hours pass as you climb… something. All you know is that you've been going uphill ever since you left the Zodiac safely concealed under a screen of giant fern fronds back by the inlet. The stone that you seek is located in the ruins of some temple high on a mountaintop, so you've been telling yourself all morning that if you are climbing, then you are heading in the right direction. Unfortunately, you are smart enough not to believe your own lies; you saw enough of these mountains last night from the boat to know there is more than one rugged summit in this range. Sure, you are gaining elevation, but in all likelihood this is just some inconsequential foothill. For kicks, you tried using your handheld GPS unit earlier in the hike to see if it helped with your navigation problem. It was worth trying, you suppose, but the results were pretty much as expected. Sure, the little palm-sized receiver could lock onto six separate satellite signals and pinpoint your location to within twenty-four feet, or so the graphic on the LCD screen said. But Garmin hasn't updated their maps either, and so when the on-screen topo showed you walking across the Pacific Ocean, you categorized the GPS as being useless as far as Woban Island goes. On the other hand, you've been following a pretty good trail for most of the way. You had heard rumors that the island was crisscrossed with a robust trail network, and you are happy to have a clear path to follow — wherever this is taking you. The alternative would be to bushwhack your way through the jungle, which grows thickly on these warm and damp slopes; you'd be lucky to cover one mile an hour that way. So, bottom line: trails are good. Let's hope this one doesn't lead you into trouble. Otherwise the slope is steep and rugged, with rock ledges punctuating your climb as frequently as the word "and" in a run-on sentence. The one small mercy is that you are ascending the mountain's northwestern slope, placing you mostly in the shade from the morning sun, which is ascending to the northeast. That leaves you with only the humidity to deal with. Then, just before noon, the trees part and you find yourself on a rocky knob covered with shrubs and sparse grasses. After scrambling up a few more rock ledges, you push through a sultry meadow that is fully exposed to the hazy atmosphere. There is no shade, and nothing is damp except for the heat that assaults you. It would be a highly unpleasant place at this time of day, except for one redeeming feature: this bald summit offers an outstanding view of the rest of the mountain range. The ocean is three miles behind you, and Woban Island's lowlands stretch for a good five miles to the northeast. But just ahead of you, maybe another mile-and-a-half to the southeast, is the highest summit. As you examine it from the top of this peripheral peak, you realize that what you saw last night from the Zodiac must have been some other false summit, because this is completely different. It reminds you a bit of Devils Tower in Wyoming, in that it looks like a column of rock rising unnaturally out of the landscape. There is an object on the mountain's flat top that must almost certainly be man-made. The temple ruins! You are encouraged that the mountain appears so close, and you give yourself good odds that you can make it to the base of the rock spire with relative ease. The problem is that you have no idea how you're going to scale all that rock once you get there. That's not something you need to worry about now, however; if somebody built a temple on the summit, then obviously there must be a way up. In the meantime, you pull your notebook out of your pack, flip to a blank page, and begin sketching a map of all that you can see. The sweat on the palm of your hands leaves wet marks all over the paper. __________________________________________________ > Next page. The next afternoon sees you slowly threading your way through the thick tropical forest, trying not to slip down a steep, wet slope. You spent the previous night camping high in a mountain pass, where you found a tiny spring emerging from under a mossy rock. The spot was on the fringe of the same type of high-elevation grassland as the bald summit where you had drawn your map, and chances are if you had reached it any earlier in the day the place would have been hot as an oven. But in the evening, when you stumbled across it, your little campsite was cool and pleasant. Your ten-year-old REI backpacking tent was more spacious than the Zodiac had been the first night, and so your first full day on the island ended pleasantly. If the Wobans were throwing themselves another party, you were now too far away to hear it. It hadn't all been fun and games, though. Yesterday, after you had stopped to sketch the map, your progress had been slowed unexpectedly. Getting down from that grassy bald had been simple, but the next little summit in the ridgeline was steep and cliffy. Going over it was not possible, and you could see no further signs of a trail, so you saw no option but to descend a few hundred feet and find an easier way around this part of the mountain. Regaining all that lost elevation was discouraging, but then you discovered the spring and all was forgiven. Now, almost a full day later, here you are making your way over the third summit in the chain, and although this one is higher than the other two it has been completely wooded so far. Without a trail to follow, you have been forced to thrash your way through the thick vegetation. There is no graceful way to travel in these conditions, so you have been taking your time. Although the tower-like main summit is now maybe half a mile away, you can scarcely see it. Actually, you are slowly working your way down toward a large blank spot on your map, where you have little idea what to expect. When you had stopped to sketch your map yesterday, you were able to see a good swath of the island, but not the parts that were concealed by the various mountain summits. It looked like there had been a sizable gap between the third and final peaks, but you had not been able to see what that gap contained. Whatever is there, you're about to be wandering through it in just a matter of minutes. And so, after another fifteen minutes' worth of scrambling down steep, moss-covered slopes and crawling under fallen trees, the terrain flattens out. You continue forward, marveling that after all that ridiculous toil over the wooded summit, the vegetation is thinning out again here in the broad space between the mountains. You are tired, dirty, and hungry — as well as intrigued by what is opening up ahead of you. The forest trees thin into scattered shrubs, and once again you are walking across a baking-hot grassland. This one is immensely picturesque, though. It is a high-elevation plateau, broad and mostly flat. The main summit spire rises almost five hundred feet above you, but you have arrived too late in the day to be in its shade. And dotting this tropical prairie are the remains of an ancient complex of buildings. Various weeds and vines crawl over the cut-stone structures like a riot of snakes. The place is like an archeologist's wet dream, the remains of a civilization that had until recently been completely unknown to modern academia. The artistic and architectural styles on display here seem to be a mishmash of global influences: humble dwellings that resemble scale models of Mayan pyramids, rows of toppled Greek columns, eroded statues that seem to depict a horned cherub, like a satanic Buddha or something. You could spend a year exploring the place — but only if some rich fat cat thought there was something worth collecting here, and was willing to bankroll your expedition. As impressive as the lost city is, the rocky tower is downright intimidating. How the heck is anyone expected to get up that thing? This is a challenge that is going to require some thought. Perhaps you should start looking for a place to camp. As awesome as this plateau is, you see no sources of water here, so you'll need to venture back into the woods to search for other options. You decide to look along the northern side of the plateau, where based on experience you expect to find a verdant and moist slope leading down from the highlands. Hopefully you'll stumble across another spring — or better yet, a pool. You could use a good rinse. So, veering northward, you soon reach the point where the terrain begins to slope downward, and trees once again become larger, albeit sparsely populated. You are wading through ferns, exalting in the fact that you have just spotted a glint of sunlight off a pool of water just ahead of you, at the foot of the hill. The terrain is gentle and open, water seems to be in abundance, and there is a good view of the mountain spire that stands between you and victory. The odds are good you have just found tonight's campsite. You run like a giddy child to the edge of the pool. You can see right away that it is not a natural pond, but a square-edged reservoir of some kind, yet another artifact from the ancient city. Happily, the water is clear and clean. You bend down to splash its cool goodness over your face. But what you fail to notice — until it is much too late — is the figure that rises from the ferns just around the corner. It is only when it begins to move forward through the vegetation that you turn and see it — a Woban, with tattooed and deeply tanned skin, a bone necklace, grass skirt, and a long spear. Above all, the most distinctive feature is that eerie third eye that sits directly above the bridge of his nose. You surmise he had been hunting, waiting among the tall ferns for his prey to come, when you bumbled into the scene instead. "O Manu o Ke Kaua ko‘u inoa!" he shouts. "I keia la wau e lilo i kane, aka mua au e ku i ka pa‘akiki. Pono e luku au i ka holoholona ae hanai i ka io i ko‘u makuakane. E ho‘omakaukau ia ‘oe iho e make, holoholona!" "Whoa, hold on, chief!" you say. "We're all friends here." "E pale ia ‘oe iho!" His speech is fast and clipped. Not a single word makes any sense, but the provocative way he is shouting them at you gives you the general idea that this is a hostile confrontation. The Woban is only about six feet tall — big enough, to be sure, but not one of the seven-foot giants you heard about. Maybe this is an adolescent, trying to prove himself in the world. "Hey, make nice. Let's be friends." "E pale ia ‘oe iho! ‘A‘ohe hanohano i ka pepehi ‘ana me ka pa‘akiki ‘ole." "Look, I haven't the slightest idea what you're saying. Can't—" Then he does the unexpected thing and tosses his spear at your feet. It is not a gift, because the rage in his voice is still evident, even if the words are unintelligible to you. "E lawe i ka ihe a kaua mai ia‘u!" Well, you're at an impasse as far as verbal communication goes, but you think you're getting the gist of the body language. The young Woban wants you to fight him, and to make the odds more even he is letting you use his spear. If he assessed that you're not much of a physical threat when matched up against a six-foot Woban, he would be correct. At least with the spear in your hands, you would have a sporting chance. So you have to make a decision: fight or flight? The Woban is glaring at you, all three eyebrows furrowed in a kind of rage you'll never understand. Eventually he'll charge at you, regardless of what you choose to do. So either you can pick up the spear at your feet and defend yourself, or you can run. With all of the ruined buildings around here, you would have plenty of places to hide — assuming, of course, you can outrun a Woban. __________________________________________________ > You get out of here as fast as possible. So clearly it's in your best interest not to stay and fight this Woban; you would have nothing to prove by doing so, but everything to lose when you inevitably got your head handed to you. Therefore you need to figure out a way to get out of here. If you just turn and run, all you'd be doing is turning this into a footrace, which you know you'd lose just as surely as you would lose the fight. The only way this will work is if you manage to trip up your opponent in the first few moments. Fortunately, the young Woban has given you exactly what you need. Without taking your eyes off him, you squat down and reach for the spear at your feet. Then you slowly stand, holding the primitive weapon as if you are still considering how best to use it. "Maika‘i loa!" he says in his incomprehensible language. "Ua koho ‘oe e kaua ia‘u. I keia la he la maika‘i ia e make!" "That's easy for you to say. All right, let's get this over wi— Ohmygod, what is that!" It's a trick you've probably been using since kindergarten: fake an expression of surprise, point to some imaginary spot past the Woban's shoulder, and then run in the opposite direction the moment he turns to look. So far, so good! You've managed to momentarily confuse your opponent, and now you are fleeing for your life. The only way to go is back up the hill, towards all the strange ruins. Knowing your head start is only going to last a matter of seconds, you listen closely for the sound of the Woban pursuing you. He doesn't leave you waiting for long. "‘A‘ole hiki ia ‘oe ke holo mai o‘u aku nei!" You continue running until he is nearly upon you, and then you fling the spear as hard as you can, aiming for his legs. The shaft gets caught between his knees, and in a shout of frustration he goes down to the ground. Success! But of course now you are out of tricks, and he has the spear again. The only things you have to work with now are your own speed and the timely appearance of an effective hiding place. You dash up the hill at your best possible pace, not daring to look back and see where your pursuer is. Your muscles are already tired and your lungs are spent by the time you reach the top, but there is no time to stop and catch your breath. This is not some schoolyard game where you can simply call "time out." Once again you are on the open plain dotted with the mysterious ruins from the ancient city. Now what are you going to do? Your original thought was to evade the Woban by seeking cover inside one of these ancient structures, but the nearest ones seem rather small. They look like miniature stepped pyramids, scale models of their larger cousins in Guatemala. They have entrances leading into some kind of enclosed space, where you are sure you could take cover. The problem is that these smaller structures are probably just dead ends — only one way in, and only one way out. Perhaps you could do better than this, though. Up ahead, in the middle of town, is a larger structure, where you might expect more opportunities to evade your pursuer. That's entirely theoretical, however, because you have no way of knowing what you'll find. Whatever it offers, that crumbling stone building is another hundred yards or so ahead of you — a distance across which you'll have to continue sprinting, in plain sight of the Woban. Think quick! You can hear the Woban behind you, shouting angrily as he sprints up the hill. If you duck into the nearest structure, there is a chance he may not see you. Or you can continue to that larger building and hope for the best when you get there. How does that old saying go — the one about the "bird in hand"? __________________________________________________ > You keep running to the large structure and hope for the best. Those little pyramids, each with its hideous horned Buddha (or whatever) dancing a ossified dance on top, look too much like death traps to you. "Adventurers check in, but they don't check out," just like the roaches in those old TV commercials. As you run by, you imagine the alternate outcome that might occur if you were to stop: flipped over on your back in the doorway, your arms and legs stuck lifelessly in the air, the Woban's spear planted in your belly like a flagpole, and the Woban himself looking up cannibalistic recipes on Pinterest. No, you don't want to hide here. Whoever built this forgotten city and lived in these queer structures was also a fan of paved streets, for you are no longer striding across tropical dirt but a narrow lane hardened with cut stone. So much grassy vegetation is growing up through the cracks that you never knew the surface existed until you could feel it beneath your feet. It is lined with crumbling foundations and toppled statues; fallen columns lie across your path like windblown trees. "Aia ‘oe, ka i‘a make! ‘A‘ole e malama keia mau pohaku kahiko ia ‘oe!" Ahh, you'd recognize that voice anywhere, shouting his words of encouragements at you. There is no time to stop and look to see how much distance there is between you, but by the sounds of it you have no more than a hundred feet on your adversary. "Ua ho‘ohaumia ‘oe i keia wahi ho‘ano! E ho‘olo‘ihi aku au i kou make i na la he ‘umi!" He sure is a chatty fellow, isn't he? You've never had so much motivation to keep running. The overgrown and cluttered street extends right to that curious building that seems to occupy the center of the ruined city, as if it were some kind of ancient City Hall. It looks like a rectangular block of rock sitting upon a pedestal of steps, with arched doorways all around it, one after the other. The steps feel crumbly under your feet as you dash up them, as if your boots are pounding the stone into dust. The structure has dozens of entrances, so you see no point in stopping to choose which one to enter. If you linger too long, you'll be within range of the Woban's spear. So you run into the entrance directly ahead of you, plunging yourself into the darkness. It takes a second for your eyes to adjust, but when they do you can see that you are not inside some small chamber or narrow passageway, as you had expected. The inside of the building is actually one large space, its darkness perforated by the light coming in through the dozens of archways on all four sides. In other words, it's an arcade — and it is providing a grand view of the Woban as he charges up the street, with the intent to inflict death upon you evident in his three-eyed glare. Well nuts, this place has as many hiding spots as a picnic pavilion. You've wasted too much time, so you have to act fast before the Woban enters the building and finds you. With nothing better to work with, you back up against a section of wall between two of the arched entrances, and then you wait in the shadows. It is a very short wait, for moments later the Woban dashes into the dark arcade and comes to a stop just a few yards away from you. The only thing concealing you is the shadow you're standing in, so you hold your breath and stand as still as possible. You expect him to make another one of his angry pronouncements, but instead all he does is pound the butt end of his spear shaft on the stone floor, as if in disgust. Then you watch as he continues straight ahead, exiting the building to look for you out among the ruins. That was a very lucky break! For the moment you feel safe enough to resume breathing again, and considering how hard and fast you just ran you really need to rest for a bit. Remaining in the same shadow that hid you from the Woban, you crouch down and sit on the floor. And that's when you see it: in the middle of this shadowy arcade, there is an even darker set of stairs leading downward. __________________________________________________ > Next page. You feel compelled — whether by simple curiosity or the desire to find a secret way out of this place, you're not sure — to get back up and see where those steps lead. They descend from an otherwise nondescript spot at the center of the arcade, a narrow and dark entrance to whatever it is that lurks below. It almost seems like the entire point of this building was to shelter those steps, so it is funny that the Woban didn't consider looking for you down there. Carefully you make your way down in the darkness. There are no railings to hold onto, and who knows how much rubble there might be waiting to trip you up. For all you know, you're about to walk into a bat cave. You have a headlamp in your backpack, so you stop before you go too far and pull it out. The little beam of light reveals a chamber that appears to be as long and wide as the arcade above, but with a ceiling so low you can touch it without stretching. The place looks like a warehouse for strange and grotesque stone carvings, including an entire battalion of those horned cherubs you've been seeing all over the place. Some of them still bear patches of pigment, as if they were at one time all painted in vibrant colors that have long since flaked away. The statues are lined up in rows, with parallel aisles between them; as you explore the chamber for a possible way out, you walk up and down these aisles like a shopper looking for the peanut butter section of a grocery supermarket. You don't see any signs of an alternate exit, but in a far corner of the room you find something else that at once intrigues, sickens, and terrifies you. She has been lying there for years, it appears, face down on the stone floor with arms and legs sprawled out, and small darts snagged in the moth-eaten clothing. She has long, dyed-blond hair but pitch-black roots, telling you her hair continued growing an inch or two even after she was killed. Although something has been pecking away at her corpse, it is otherwise well preserved in this dark and dry chamber. After a moment you realize that you recognize who she is: Beatriz Paya-Vallejo, a rival adventurer from the north of Chile. The two of you have crossed paths more than once, in places like Nepal, Mali, and Tunisia. None of your encounters were friendly ones. In most cases you were each working for competing collectors, which meant you were both after the same prize — and in the early years, she was too often the one in possession of whatever valuable object you had been sent to obtain. Because of her, you missed out on a few too many payouts and was almost laughed out of your profession. But also because of Paya-Vallejo, you learned to up your game and become better at what you do. An olive-green knapsack still hugs her back, bulging with its contents. As the beam from your headlamp glances across it, you briefly see a purple reflection. That's way too strange. Despite your repulsion at the idea of touching a mummified corpse, you can't resist seeing what's inside that military-surplus backpack of hers — and you have a pretty good idea what it is. You undo the strap that closes the knapsack, and immediately a large object slides out and lands with a thud on the ground. It is a gem of tremendous dimensions, purple and flawlessly faceted. There is only one thing it could possibly be: the Stone of Vul-Kar. Damn you, Beatriz! You hadn't seen her in several years, nor had you heard any news. The people in your profession sometimes manage to fall off the earth for a few years it seems, only to reappear alive and well at the oddest times and places, much to the consternation of their competitors. You never wasted much time thinking about what Paya-Vallejo might be up to, because as long as she wasn't searching for the same thing you were, her whereabouts didn't matter to you. But here she is now, dead on Woban Island. And she had found the Vul-Kar gem, too! Had she not fallen to these Woban darts, this would have been yet another victory for her — a win added to the tally in her column, and a loss added to yours. You pick up the stone and are impressed by its heft. The thing must weigh twenty pounds, at least. No wonder so many people have been coming here to find it! No wonder Diane Chambers is willing to pay you two million dollars to bring it back to her in Boston! So apparently there is no need to climb to the summit temple after all. Beatriz Paya-Vallejo was already there, and managed to get it this far, but no further. No one but her employer probably knew she was here, and now no one but you knows she had removed the Stone of Vul-Kar from its fabled resting place. Everyone coming to Woban Island has been searching for it in the wrong place. The gem is so large you have to rearrange the items in your backpack to make room for it — and you know that when you shoulder your pack once more, it is going feel very much like you're toting around a couple bowling balls on top of everything else. But before you do, there is something you need to consider: above you in the daylight, there is still a Woban who seems hellbent on killing you. Unless you want to end up like your former competitor here, you're going to need to use extreme caution to get out of this ancient city alive. This room seems to be a safe place to remain, since the Woban who was chasing you never thought to look here, and the Stone of Vul-Kar has been hiding here in Paya-Vallejo's knapsack for several years without anyone's knowledge. You could probably remain here until nightfall, and if your Woban friend is still looking for you, it will be easier to sneak by him in the darkness. On the other hand, it seems equally desirable to get out of here as quickly as possible. Nighttime will arrive on the island in a couple hours, and it would be nice to get as far into the jungle as you can in the remaining daylight. __________________________________________________ > You wait until nighttime. For practically two days straight you've been climbing mountains in the tropical heat, bushwhacking through the thick jungle vegetation, and more recently running for your life from a murderous Woban. In a very lucky break you've just now managed to find the Stone of Vul-Kar in an unexpected place, but that doesn't mean you couldn't use a short break. Nightfall is not that far off, and you seem to have the perfect hiding spot. You'd be a fool to run out of this ancient basement too soon. You do need to conserve the battery life of your headlamp, though. So the first thing you do is find a place to sit far away from Paya-Vallejo's corpse. Thank you, O Beatriz, for finding the Stone of Vul-Kar for me. May you rest in peace and yadda yadda. God bless and Amen. There is a spot next to the stone steps that seems like a suitable place to hang out, with no grinning horned statues and no dried-up bodies. Being close to the stairs means you will be able to hear any sounds of movement above you, should there be any. You settle down and fish out a couple packages of flavored tuna — sun-dried tomatoes and cracked peppercorn. Then you turn off the headlamp and sit in near-absolute darkness. When you wake up, you have no idea how much time has passed — until you light up your Timex and see that it's a quarter to nine at night. You didn't plan to wait this long to make your escape, and despite the unplanned nap you don't really feel all that rested. Although technically there is no set time you need to be back at the Zodiac, you feel foolish anyway, like someone who missed the alarm clock and is now a couple hours late for work. Flipping the headlamp back on, you pack up the empty tuna packages and shoulder your heavy backpack once more. A few hours ago, there was a Woban outside wandering the ruins with the single-minded goal of killing you. So much time has passed that you have no idea what to expect. Is he still combing the ruins, looking for some trace of you? Is he hiding, lying in wait for you to show yourself? Did he do the sensible thing and go home for supper? You can at least take solace in the fact that the arcade at the top of the stairs seems quiet. Slowly, and very carefully, you take the steps one at a time. If it was dark before in the late afternoon, you feel as if you've been swallowed by a shadow now in the nighttime. You don't dare use your headlamp because you have no idea who might be out there watching for you, so you feel your way up each step with your feet. Hearing and touching are your only remaining senses. Five steps, six, seven. On the the seventeenth step, your lead foot finds nothing but a level floor in front of it. That is your only clue that you are back in the arcade. At first you assume the faint light coming through the arches is moonlight. But then you notice the shadows and glows across the stone floor are like restless spirits, dancing and shifting in an unpredictable pattern. And the light, faint as it is, is a reddish orange, not the pale silver cast of moonlight — and never mind the fact that the moon is in a waning phase this week, not even visible until much later in the morning. Slowly, and with dread, you make your way toward one of the outer wall of arches. What you see makes your body tingle with a sense of hopelessness and fear: dozens of torches, held by shadowy beings who are systematically searching the ruins of the ancient city, slowly making their way toward the arcade in which you've been hiding. Now you know how the Woban passed the time while you were asleep: he went home and mustered his fellow villagers as reinforcements. They have you surrounded. You are doomed. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You feel compelled — whether by simple curiosity or the desire to find a secret way out of this place, you're not sure — to get back up and see where those steps lead. They descend from an otherwise nondescript spot at the center of the arcade, a narrow and dark entrance to whatever it is that lurks below. It almost seems like the entire point of this building was to shelter those steps, so it is funny that the Woban didn't consider looking for you down there. Carefully you make your way down in the darkness. There are no railings to hold onto, and who knows how much rubble there might be waiting to trip you up. For all you know, you're about to walk into a bat cave. You have a headlamp in your backpack, so you stop before you go too far and pull it out. The little beam of light reveals a chamber that appears to be as long and wide as the arcade above, but with a ceiling so low you can touch it without stretching. The place looks like a warehouse for strange and grotesque stone carvings, including an entire battalion of those horned cherubs you've been seeing all over the place. Some of them still bear patches of pigment, as if they were at one time all painted in vibrant colors that have long since flaked away. The statues are lined up in rows, with parallel aisles between them; as you explore the chamber for a possible way out, you walk up and down these aisles like a shopper looking for the peanut butter section of a grocery supermarket. You don't see any signs of an alternate exit, but in a far corner of the room you find something else that at once intrigues, sickens, and terrifies you. She has been lying there for years, it appears, face down on the stone floor with arms and legs sprawled out, and small darts snagged in the moth-eaten clothing. She has long, dyed-blond hair but pitch-black roots, telling you her hair continued growing an inch or two even after she was killed. Although something has been pecking away at her corpse, it is otherwise well preserved in this dark and dry chamber. After a moment you realize that you recognize who she is: Beatriz Paya-Vallejo, a rival adventurer from the north of Chile. The two of you have crossed paths more than once, in places like Nepal, Mali, and Tunisia. None of your encounters were friendly ones. In most cases you were each working for competing collectors, which meant you were both after the same prize — and in the early years, she was too often the one in possession of whatever valuable object you had been sent to obtain. Because of her, you missed out on a few too many payouts and was almost laughed out of your profession. But also because of Paya-Vallejo, you learned to up your game and become better at what you do. An olive-green knapsack still hugs her back, bulging with its contents. As the beam from your headlamp glances across it, you briefly see a purple reflection. That's way too strange. Despite your repulsion at the idea of touching a mummified corpse, you can't resist seeing what's inside that military-surplus backpack of hers — and you have a pretty good idea what it is. You undo the strap that closes the knapsack, and immediately a large object slides out and lands with a thud on the ground. It is a gem of tremendous dimensions, purple and flawlessly faceted. There is only one thing it could possibly be: the Stone of Vul-Kar. Damn you, Beatriz! You hadn't seen her in several years, nor had you heard any news. The people in your profession sometimes manage to fall off the earth for a few years it seems, only to reappear alive and well at the oddest times and places, much to the consternation of their competitors. You never wasted much time thinking about what Paya-Vallejo might be up to, because as long as she wasn't searching for the same thing you were, her whereabouts didn't matter to you. But here she is now, dead on Woban Island. And she had found the Vul-Kar gem, too! Had she not fallen to these Woban darts, this would have been yet another victory for her — a win added to the tally in her column, and a loss added to yours. You pick up the stone and are impressed by its heft. The thing must weigh twenty pounds, at least. No wonder so many people have been coming here to find it! No wonder Diane Chambers is willing to pay you two million dollars to bring it back to her in Boston! So apparently there is no need to climb to the summit temple after all. Beatriz Paya-Vallejo was already there, and managed to get it this far, but no further. No one but her employer probably knew she was here, and now no one but you knows she had removed the Stone of Vul-Kar from its fabled resting place. Everyone coming to Woban Island has been searching for it in the wrong place. The gem is so large you have to rearrange the items in your backpack to make room for it — and you know that when you shoulder your pack once more, it is going feel very much like you're toting around a couple bowling balls on top of everything else. But before you do, there is something you need to consider: above you in the daylight, there is still a Woban who seems hellbent on killing you. Unless you want to end up like your former competitor here, you're going to need to use extreme caution to get out of this ancient city alive. This room seems to be a safe place to remain, since the Woban who was chasing you never thought to look here, and the Stone of Vul-Kar has been hiding here in Paya-Vallejo's knapsack for several years without anyone's knowledge. You could probably remain here until nightfall, and if your Woban friend is still looking for you, it will be easier to sneak by him in the darkness. On the other hand, it seems equally desirable to get out of here as quickly as possible. Nighttime will arrive on the island in a couple hours, and it would be nice to get as far into the jungle as you can in the remaining daylight. __________________________________________________ > You flee into the jungle now. Back in Boston there is a woman who is willing to pay you a wad of money if you are able to bring this big purple stone back to her. You're not going to get there by crouching here in the dark, and you would like to get as far from these ruins as you can before the sun sets. Therefore you decide not to prolong your stay in this hidden basement full of grotesque statues. Indeed, your backpack does feel heavy when you put it back on — about two million dollars heavier, you estimate. It's not an entirely horrible feeling, although you will probably start to think differently once you start hiking over those mountain summits again on your way back to the Zodiac. Your journey begins by cautiously ascending the stone steps back up to the arcade, where not very long ago you narrowly avoided the young Woban. After climbing a few steps you poke your head above the level of the stone floor, looking around like a wary prairie dog for signs of predators. At least the shadowy arcade still seems quiet. When nothing lunges at you — or begins shouting unintelligible epithets at you — you climb the rest of the way out of the basement. You have no idea where your three-eyed "friend" might be; his pursuit of you had seemed so single-minded that you find it hard to believe he has simply given up and gone home. So you survived the first phase of your grand escape, but the fact that you hear or see no sign of your old adversary doesn't relieve you. In fact, it gets your heart pounding in suspense. Your muscles are tense, your breaths are short. When you knew the Woban was sprinting fast behind you, your course of action was clear. Now that you haven't the slightest idea where he is, you fear that he could be anywhere. Before you can draw up the courage to leave the arcade, you make a quick patrol around its periphery, peeking through the arches to look for signs of movement out among the ruins. Everything seems as peaceful and abandoned as you thought it was when you first found this ancient city. It's not what you were expecting. Damn that Woban! Even his absence is threatening. All you can do now is hope you haven't been deceived into exposing yourself. You circle back to the corner of the arcade that is closest to the first of the three summits, a dome of trees and rock lit in the golden light of the evening sun. There is no point in worrying about the possibilities here, so you take a deep breath, adjust the waist strap on your backpack, and then run down the steps. The grass offers no resistance as you rush through it, passing all manner of bizarre structures and ancient artwork. For all you know there could be priceless treasures everywhere in these ruins. In a less stressful situation you might be tempted to "shop" for a little souvenir of your own, but with the possibility that death could be lurking behind any mossy pedestal or vine-covered wall, you're in no mood to go sifting for loot. But when you make it to the edge of the mountain plain unscathed, it seems like an anticlimactic end to your day. It was such a long run through the ruins that if the Woban was still present, there is no way he would have missed you — how could he, with those three eyes of his? Is it really possible that after all that drama of chasing you into the arcade, he just gave up and went home? You have no way of knowing for sure what happened here this evening; you're just relieved that there now seems to be a chance you'll make it out of here alive. And with the Stone of Vul-Kar securely stowed in your backpack, too. You afford yourself three seconds to stop and look back across the plain, with its gray-green ruins and backdrop of sheer rock — a strange and beautiful place to visit, but not anywhere you'd want to live. It was just a few short hours ago you were scrambling down the steep mountain slope that now lies ahead of you. Never did you expect to be back here so soon. The jungle grows thickly around you again as you exit the plain, and soon the terrain slopes upward. The mud is slippery, the rock ledges are frustrating, and your belly feels hollow and desirous of nourishment — but so long as there is daylight remaining you want to get as far away from those ruins as you can. You are still climbing even as the tropical twilight quickly fails you. And you might continue to climb through the darkness if some strange sound behind you didn't capture your attention. It sounds like distant voices — lots of them. Just above you is a small rock ledge with what looks like a natural window through the forest canopy, so you scramble up to the top. From a corner of the ledge you have a partial view back over the wide plain between the mountains, and to your horror you see dozens of torchlights wandering through the darkness — an entire army of Wobans combing the ruins. You can only assume they are looking for you. So now you know where the your guy went: he did go home, but not to nurse his wounded pride. He went and gathered reinforcements. If you were still down there in the city, you'd have no avenue of escape. At least you managed to put considerable distance between you and your three-eyed pursuers — so much distance that for the first time in hours you actually feel somewhat secure. It is now too dark to continue climbing this wooded summit without a light, and you fear that if you switched on your headlamp you'd reveal your location to the Wobans. So you decide to remain here for the night, watching the goings-on below you. Tired, thirsty, and hungry, you watch with much interest as the Wobans methodically scour the ruins until their torches start to falter. Then they coalesce into an uneven line and file into the forest, heading northward out of the mountains and back to whatever village they came from. This leaves you alone on the side of the mountain summit, beneath a sky full of stars. After emptying a few packages of flavored tuna, you lean back against your pack and fall asleep within seconds. When morning arrives, the plain of ruins below you is deserted once more, now in the shadow cast by the island's main summit. As you munch on some Clif bars you watch for signs of movement down there, but nothing stirs. It is starting to look like you evaded the natives, but you know better than to let yourself become complacent; you have a long way to go before you are safely off this island. You remember well the qualities of each of the three summits that stands between you and the shoreline. As the morning's coolness gives way to the heat of the tropical day, you toil the rest of the way across the first summit. In the notch that follows, you find the spot where you camped so contentedly the night before last, and once again you replenish your water supply in the spring. Then, knowing better than to even try climbing the middle summit, you contour around it, finding an alternate route that entails less elevation loss. Strangely, you pass much of the day thinking about Cheers. It's not even the money that has captured your imagination this morning; you're just thinking about that Giant Norm Burger, or whatever it was called. You can't believe you turned your nose up at the idea of such a beefy indulgence last week, because right now you could go for two or three of them. Easily three. Which reminds you: you have a phone call to make. By early afternoon you are ascending the third and final summit, the one with the bald face where you sketched your map two days ago. A large cloud has parked itself over the island, so while the summit remains humid it is not quite as hot as you remember without the sun. There have been no signs of the Wobans all day, and this view really is enchanting. Now, though, instead of gazing over the island, your attention is drawn to the endless ocean ahead of you, and all of the piles of fattening food and comfortable beds you will find on the far side of that ocean. With two million dollars to your name, you'll be able to fête yourself with quite the feast. But not if you can't hitch a ride on a boat somehow. So after an ascetic lunch pulled from the supplies in your pack, you pull out the satellite phone that Jimmy gave you so long ago. You see that there is one number programmed into its memory. "Yes?" You never thought you'd be so happy to hear Jimmy's voice. "I can only assume that if you're calling this number, your mission has been successful." "Oh, it has, it has," you say. "Now I suppose you want a boat to pick you up." "That would be great. And two million dollars. Let's not forget about that." "Whoah, now, Chief," Jimmy says. "There are procedures to follow. The item will need to be inspected, of course. No funds will be transferred until our employer is satisfied." "Of course. I was just being facetious. But I really am ready for that big boat home." "How soon?" "Tonight would be good. I'm about three miles from that Zodiac of yours, but it's all easy hiking from here. I should be there by nightfall, easily." "Tonight?" he says. "That's much quicker than we were expecting. Are you certain you found the item?" "Well, let's just say I am in possession of a big purple rock. Your boss seemed quite eager to obtain it the last we met." "Well, yes, but we were also under the impression that it would be a major undertaking. Our people just dropped you off a few days ago." "I got lucky, leave it at that. I'd be happy to tell you all about it when we get back to Boston." __________________________________________________ > Next page. And so it comes to pass that three days later you are back on Beacon Street, following Jimmy into the basement portion of Cheers. It's a Saturday night, so the place is far more bustling than the last time you were here. Tonight it looks like any other corner pub, except for the familiar logo on all of the pint glasses. "I should warn you, our employer has been in a bad mood lately," Jimmy says as he leads you through the bar. "Kelsey Grammer was here a few days ago, getting a lot of fan attention. Nobody had much interest in her that night. She still hasn't gotten over it." He is wearing another one of his plaid suits, but this one takes the cake: the red, white, and black pattern looks like he ripped it off a dead lumberjack stock broker. You're embarrassed to be seen with him, so you hang back about twelve feet. You weave between tables full of happy people eating, the smell of hamburgers and french fries everywhere. Despite all the time you've been off the island now, you still haven't been treated to a full meal. You can only hope that Diane Chambers is feeling generous — and hungry — tonight. Fashion concerns aside, you're curious to hear more about the Kelsey Grammer story, but the ambient noise is too loud and Jimmy is moving too fast. Once again he leads you out what appears to be a back door, and then up the steps leading into the Set Bar. Tonight the place seems less like a museum to a thirty-year-old TV show and more like a functioning commercial establishment. The cardboard cutouts of Woody and Norm are gone, replaced with live bartenders pouring beers, and actual people occupying all of the tables and booths. So many of the customers are wearing "Boston" shirts and hats — of the chintzy kind you would buy from a street vendor — that it's obvious the entire place is populated with tourists. Diane Chambers is still wedged into the same booth where you first met her, but instead of plate full of chicken wings the table is covered with eight-by-ten glossy photos of Shelley Long. "Yeah, I was real upset that Sam and I never got together," she is saying to a middle-aged couple standing in rapt attention beside her table. The man is counting out some cash as he listens to her story. "But, you know, the studio wanted to maintain the suspense. People kept tuning in every Thursday night because they wanted to see if we would do it. If we didn't, then they'd keep tuning in. It was a cold business calculation, and it broke my heart. And that's the real reason why I left the show." "Oh, I just knew that had to be the reason!" the wife says. "Cheers was just never the same after you left. We were never fans of Rebecca, were we, Frank?" The husband just grunts an affirmative Hmm as he hands over the five twenties he has finished counting out of his wallet. Diane accepts the cash. "How would you like me to make this out?" she says, picking up a pen and one of the glossy photos. After a moment of thought, the woman says, "Just 'To Frank and Margaret' would be good." Your employer scribbles across the photo of the actress she is impersonating, and then notices you and Jimmy approaching the booth. "Oh my, you're just in time! Here comes the illegitimate love child I had with Cliff!" She is, of course, pointing to Jimmy. The reactions of the two Cheers fans are priceless: she is agog with joy; he scowls with skepticism, worried that he might be asked to dole out another hundred dollars for a second autographed photo. "I never knew!" Margaret says. "Doesn't he look just like his father, Frank?" "Funny no one ever heard about that," Frank says dryly. "Of course not!" Diane says. "The studio paid good money to keep it out of the National Enquirer." Jimmy ignores the couple as he steps up to the table. "Our friend has returned from the South Pacific, ma'am." "I see that. Hopefully not empty-handed, either." "No, ma'am." "Look how politely he addresses his mother, Frank," Margaret says. "I wish our two boys were like that. Don't you?" You decide to say nothing, lest you be insinuated in Chambers' little fraud. Who would she try and pass you off as — Lilith's second cousin? Watching her reaction as you do so, you set the sack containing the Stone of Vul-Kar down on the table. Instead of that grubby backpack you toted across Woban Island, the gem is now concealed in a draw-string knapsack with a Patriots logo, as provided by Jimmy. It lands with such a thud on the tabletop that the condiment rack rattles. Diane's eyes light up. "I'm afraid I have to take care of some business," she tells the fawning woman and her husband without taking her gaze off the knapsack in front of her. "It was very nice meeting you. And congratulations on the birth of your granddaughter! You should buy her a little pink Cheers onesie from the gift shop on your way out!" "Oh, we will! We will! Thank you again ever so much, Ms. Chambers!" You slide into the booth opposite Diane. To your profound dismay, Jimmy slides in beside you. You feel trapped. Your employer pushes aside the stack of glossies. "I have sooo been waiting for this moment — almost as much as I am for the moment when I get to show this little trinket to that old blowhard, Walter Berringer." She pulls on the drawstring to open the sack, and then peers inside without removing the contents. "Lordy, lordy," is all she says. "I hope you find it satisfactory," you say. "Indeed. Indeed. And you retrieved it so expeditiously, too!" "Well, that was just… ." She cuts you off. "Thomas! Hey, Thomas!" she shouts toward the bar. "We need some drinks over here. What was that you were having last time? Oh, that's right — bring us three of those Green Monsta IPAs!" Thomas the bartender looks like he is swamped with other drink orders, but he promptly takes three of those Cheers pint glasses and starts pouring the beers. "I don't want to look at it here," Diane says, closing the Patriots knapsack up once more. "Too many people here. But I'm hosting a gathering in two weeks, and my rival Walter Berringer will be there. I can't stand him, never have, but we both serve on the same board of directors, so he can't really back out. He's been moping all month because the Red Sox finished the year nineteen games behind the Yankees. When he sees this, it'll push him over the edge. I can't wait." A waitress arrives with the three beers. Diane raises her glass. "Cheers!" It takes you a second to realize she's not stating the name of the establishment, but proposing a course of action. "Cheers!" Jimmy dutifully returns, and the three of you clink your glasses together. "You truly are good at what you do — worth every penny." As she says this, she slides a debit card across the table to you. "I opened this account this morning. The balance is exactly two million dollars. The PIN on the Visa is one nine eight two." "One nine eight two," you repeat. "Should be easy to remember. That was the year Cheers debuted. Now, Jimmy was telling me you found the stone in an entire city filled with odd statues?" You nod. "Ooooh!" she squeals. "This could become an entire collection! How soon can you go back?" You want to think she's kidding, but when Jimmy shows you two tickets for a flight back to Honolulu, you know she's dead serious. Hopefully by now the Wobans have given up looking for you. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>So clearly it's in your best interest not to stay and fight this Woban; you would have nothing to prove by doing so, but everything to lose when you inevitably got your head handed to you. Therefore you need to figure out a way to get out of here. If you just turn and run, all you'd be doing is turning this into a footrace, which you know you'd lose just as surely as you would lose the fight. The only way this will work is if you manage to trip up your opponent in the first few moments. Fortunately, the young Woban has given you exactly what you need. Without taking your eyes off him, you squat down and reach for the spear at your feet. Then you slowly stand, holding the primitive weapon as if you are still considering how best to use it. "Maika‘i loa!" he says in his incomprehensible language. "Ua koho ‘oe e kaua ia‘u. I keia la he la maika‘i ia e make!" "That's easy for you to say. All right, let's get this over wi— Ohmygod, what is that!" It's a trick you've probably been using since kindergarten: fake an expression of surprise, point to some imaginary spot past the Woban's shoulder, and then run in the opposite direction the moment he turns to look. So far, so good! You've managed to momentarily confuse your opponent, and now you are fleeing for your life. The only way to go is back up the hill, towards all the strange ruins. Knowing your head start is only going to last a matter of seconds, you listen closely for the sound of the Woban pursuing you. He doesn't leave you waiting for long. "‘A‘ole hiki ia ‘oe ke holo mai o‘u aku nei!" You continue running until he is nearly upon you, and then you fling the spear as hard as you can, aiming for his legs. The shaft gets caught between his knees, and in a shout of frustration he goes down to the ground. Success! But of course now you are out of tricks, and he has the spear again. The only things you have to work with now are your own speed and the timely appearance of an effective hiding place. You dash up the hill at your best possible pace, not daring to look back and see where your pursuer is. Your muscles are already tired and your lungs are spent by the time you reach the top, but there is no time to stop and catch your breath. This is not some schoolyard game where you can simply call "time out." Once again you are on the open plain dotted with the mysterious ruins from the ancient city. Now what are you going to do? Your original thought was to evade the Woban by seeking cover inside one of these ancient structures, but the nearest ones seem rather small. They look like miniature stepped pyramids, scale models of their larger cousins in Guatemala. They have entrances leading into some kind of enclosed space, where you are sure you could take cover. The problem is that these smaller structures are probably just dead ends — only one way in, and only one way out. Perhaps you could do better than this, though. Up ahead, in the middle of town, is a larger structure, where you might expect more opportunities to evade your pursuer. That's entirely theoretical, however, because you have no way of knowing what you'll find. Whatever it offers, that crumbling stone building is another hundred yards or so ahead of you — a distance across which you'll have to continue sprinting, in plain sight of the Woban. Think quick! You can hear the Woban behind you, shouting angrily as he sprints up the hill. If you duck into the nearest structure, there is a chance he may not see you. Or you can continue to that larger building and hope for the best when you get there. How does that old saying go — the one about the "bird in hand"? __________________________________________________ > You enter the nearest structure before the Woban sees you. Actually, that saying goes: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Applied to your situation, this bit of folk wisdom is trying to tell you it's better to seek cover in one of the nearby structures, rather than risking everything to reach that larger structure a hundred yards away. So that's exactly what you do. On your right are three of those miniature stepped pyramids, each the size of a small house. Vines are crawling over each one, with small trees sprouting from cracks in the rock. All three structures are capped with one of those strange statues you noticed earlier, almost like a Buddha with ram's horns, although there is no time to ponder the actual cultural references on display here; the Woban will be reaching the top of the hill any second now, and the only way your strategy will work is if you can disappear inside one of these buildings before he sees you. Therefore the one nearest you will have to do. You are happy to see that the opening is unobstructed, even if the interior is completely dark. With a quick turn to the right, you pass through a doorway that has perhaps not seen another human being step across its threshold in centuries, if not longer. A single shaft of light falls into the dark space, but otherwise you are unable to see anything else inside the chamber you have just entered. You back up until you are completely out of the light, and then you drop to your knees, hoping you won't be giving yourself away by your heavy breathing; if you aren't able to quiet yourself, that uphill sprint for your life may prove to be your undoing yet. And as it turns out, you've found this spot just in time — the Woban is now running up the same ancient street you just vacated. But then his footsteps come to a stop just outside your hiding place. "‘O na i‘a make! Ke pa‘ani nei ‘oe i na pa‘ani o kahi keiki, hnh? E loa‘a wau ia ‘oe, a laila luku wau ia ‘oe!" He sure is going on about something! Unfortunately, it sounds like he's figured out that if you couldn't outrun him, then you must be hiding. It takes all of your willpower to suppress your labored breathing; the Woban may not be able to see you, but he can certainly hear you if you don't take control of yourself. For extra measure, you also scoot further back into the darkness until you hit the rear wall. You can hear the Woban outside, still on the overgrown street in front of the three dwellings. What is he doing? For the first time since this encounter began, you wish he'd say something, because then you could determine with more certainty where he is out there. His silence is driving you crazy with suspense. Then he appears in the doorway like a living shadow, silhouetted by the bright sunlight of the mountain plain. He merely stands there, holding the spear to his side and sniffing the air. He's trying to smell you! All you can do is hope that a Woban's sense of smell is no more developed than a human's — that, and you hope the purpose of the third eye is not to allow him to see better in the dark. But then, with a grunt of disappointment, he turns and exits the doorway. This is followed by the sound of his footsteps jogging down the ancient street, away from your hiding spot. It worked! You fooled the Woban, and now he has no idea where you are. The next problem you have to face will be getting out of here unseen — and then somehow scaling up the mountain to the summit temple, which is of course the entire reason you are here. But these are problems you'll have to break down into their constituent elements, managing your way through them one at a time. Before you can act, though, you need to gather some intel. You stand up from your kneeling position in the dark, with the intent of slowly advancing toward the door so you can peer outside and see where your adversary has gone. But as you rise, something leathery brushes your cheek. "Holy crap!" Your reaction is almost involuntary, and you regret the exclamation as soon as you make it. But the consequences are irreversible: you have just startled a hidden colony of bats, and now they are fleeing out of this cave-like chamber in a flutter of fur and fleshy wings. Please don't let the Woban see this. Please don't let the Woban see this. Please don't let… . But it's too late. You hear his footsteps pounding the ancient paving stones, running back toward your hiding spot. "Ua loa‘a wau ia ‘oe, ka‘u i‘a make!" he says. "‘Ano ua lilo ‘oe i ‘aha‘aina a ko‘u makua kane!" You have no idea what he just said, but you know it can't be good. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The next afternoon sees you slowly threading your way through the thick tropical forest, trying not to slip down a steep, wet slope. You spent the previous night camping high in a mountain pass, where you found a tiny spring emerging from under a mossy rock. The spot was on the fringe of the same type of high-elevation grassland as the bald summit where you had drawn your map, and chances are if you had reached it any earlier in the day the place would have been hot as an oven. But in the evening, when you stumbled across it, your little campsite was cool and pleasant. Your ten-year-old REI backpacking tent was more spacious than the Zodiac had been the first night, and so your first full day on the island ended pleasantly. If the Wobans were throwing themselves another party, you were now too far away to hear it. It hadn't all been fun and games, though. Yesterday, after you had stopped to sketch the map, your progress had been slowed unexpectedly. Getting down from that grassy bald had been simple, but the next little summit in the ridgeline was steep and cliffy. Going over it was not possible, and you could see no further signs of a trail, so you saw no option but to descend a few hundred feet and find an easier way around this part of the mountain. Regaining all that lost elevation was discouraging, but then you discovered the spring and all was forgiven. Now, almost a full day later, here you are making your way over the third summit in the chain, and although this one is higher than the other two it has been completely wooded so far. Without a trail to follow, you have been forced to thrash your way through the thick vegetation. There is no graceful way to travel in these conditions, so you have been taking your time. Although the tower-like main summit is now maybe half a mile away, you can scarcely see it. Actually, you are slowly working your way down toward a large blank spot on your map, where you have little idea what to expect. When you had stopped to sketch your map yesterday, you were able to see a good swath of the island, but not the parts that were concealed by the various mountain summits. It looked like there had been a sizable gap between the third and final peaks, but you had not been able to see what that gap contained. Whatever is there, you're about to be wandering through it in just a matter of minutes. And so, after another fifteen minutes' worth of scrambling down steep, moss-covered slopes and crawling under fallen trees, the terrain flattens out. You continue forward, marveling that after all that ridiculous toil over the wooded summit, the vegetation is thinning out again here in the broad space between the mountains. You are tired, dirty, and hungry — as well as intrigued by what is opening up ahead of you. The forest trees thin into scattered shrubs, and once again you are walking across a baking-hot grassland. This one is immensely picturesque, though. It is a high-elevation plateau, broad and mostly flat. The main summit spire rises almost five hundred feet above you, but you have arrived too late in the day to be in its shade. And dotting this tropical prairie are the remains of an ancient complex of buildings. Various weeds and vines crawl over the cut-stone structures like a riot of snakes. The place is like an archeologist's wet dream, the remains of a civilization that had until recently been completely unknown to modern academia. The artistic and architectural styles on display here seem to be a mishmash of global influences: humble dwellings that resemble scale models of Mayan pyramids, rows of toppled Greek columns, eroded statues that seem to depict a horned cherub, like a satanic Buddha or something. You could spend a year exploring the place — but only if some rich fat cat thought there was something worth collecting here, and was willing to bankroll your expedition. As impressive as the lost city is, the rocky tower is downright intimidating. How the heck is anyone expected to get up that thing? This is a challenge that is going to require some thought. Perhaps you should start looking for a place to camp. As awesome as this plateau is, you see no sources of water here, so you'll need to venture back into the woods to search for other options. You decide to look along the northern side of the plateau, where based on experience you expect to find a verdant and moist slope leading down from the highlands. Hopefully you'll stumble across another spring — or better yet, a pool. You could use a good rinse. So, veering northward, you soon reach the point where the terrain begins to slope downward, and trees once again become larger, albeit sparsely populated. You are wading through ferns, exalting in the fact that you have just spotted a glint of sunlight off a pool of water just ahead of you, at the foot of the hill. The terrain is gentle and open, water seems to be in abundance, and there is a good view of the mountain spire that stands between you and victory. The odds are good you have just found tonight's campsite. You run like a giddy child to the edge of the pool. You can see right away that it is not a natural pond, but a square-edged reservoir of some kind, yet another artifact from the ancient city. Happily, the water is clear and clean. You bend down to splash its cool goodness over your face. But what you fail to notice — until it is much too late — is the figure that rises from the ferns just around the corner. It is only when it begins to move forward through the vegetation that you turn and see it — a Woban, with tattooed and deeply tanned skin, a bone necklace, grass skirt, and a long spear. Above all, the most distinctive feature is that eerie third eye that sits directly above the bridge of his nose. You surmise he had been hunting, waiting among the tall ferns for his prey to come, when you bumbled into the scene instead. "O Manu o Ke Kaua ko‘u inoa!" he shouts. "I keia la wau e lilo i kane, aka mua au e ku i ka pa‘akiki. Pono e luku au i ka holoholona ae hanai i ka io i ko‘u makuakane. E ho‘omakaukau ia ‘oe iho e make, holoholona!" "Whoa, hold on, chief!" you say. "We're all friends here." "E pale ia ‘oe iho!" His speech is fast and clipped. Not a single word makes any sense, but the provocative way he is shouting them at you gives you the general idea that this is a hostile confrontation. The Woban is only about six feet tall — big enough, to be sure, but not one of the seven-foot giants you heard about. Maybe this is an adolescent, trying to prove himself in the world. "Hey, make nice. Let's be friends." "E pale ia ‘oe iho! ‘A‘ohe hanohano i ka pepehi ‘ana me ka pa‘akiki ‘ole." "Look, I haven't the slightest idea what you're saying. Can't—" Then he does the unexpected thing and tosses his spear at your feet. It is not a gift, because the rage in his voice is still evident, even if the words are unintelligible to you. "E lawe i ka ihe a kaua mai ia‘u!" Well, you're at an impasse as far as verbal communication goes, but you think you're getting the gist of the body language. The young Woban wants you to fight him, and to make the odds more even he is letting you use his spear. If he assessed that you're not much of a physical threat when matched up against a six-foot Woban, he would be correct. At least with the spear in your hands, you would have a sporting chance. So you have to make a decision: fight or flight? The Woban is glaring at you, all three eyebrows furrowed in a kind of rage you'll never understand. Eventually he'll charge at you, regardless of what you choose to do. So either you can pick up the spear at your feet and defend yourself, or you can run. With all of the ruined buildings around here, you would have plenty of places to hide — assuming, of course, you can outrun a Woban. __________________________________________________ > You stay and fight the Woban. The Woban is clearly young, and therefore probably also over-confident. By contrast, what you lack in strength — not to mention skill with a spear — you should be able to compensate with patience and cunning. He will think he has the advantage, but he is what, all of fifteen years old? And less educated than your typical fifth grader? He will do something rash; you will recognize his obvious strategy right away, and handily defeat him with some run-of-the-mill move that you learned many years ago while playing flag football. So what are you so nervous about? You got this! Right? At any rate, standing your ground seems preferable to running, so you slowly squat down to pick up the spear, never taking your eyes off your opponent. The Woban gets excited when he sees you reaching for the weapon he tossed you. He starts whooping and doing an odd dance, hopping from foot to foot and shifting his head from left to right. His tongue hangs down to his chin, making the entire act seem like a ritualistic taunt. You notice that his tattoo pattern extends across both shoulders, with lines that resemble stylized feathers; you suppose it is meant to resemble some kind of bird of prey, but the dance gives you the impression more of a gooney bird. So now you are holding the spear in your hands, pointed straight ahead. You bend your knees and widen your stance, ready to spring into action as soon as he lunges at you. But nothing happens. The Woban continues his silly dance, his nonsensical shouting growing louder and louder. Then he adds a slow rotation to his routine, showing you the tattooed feathers on his back for a short moment, his tongue still extended when he turns back in your direction. "Come on, come and get me!" you say, briefly tilting the spear upward to signal your readiness to defend yourself. But still the young Woban does not charge. "E kaua ia‘u, nene me ka wawae ho‘okahi!" he grunts. "Ua moe kolohe kou makuakane me kahi i‘a make!" "Look, that's nice. It's great to meet you too. Now can we get this over with?" He shakes his head with his tongue protruding downward again. "AGGGH! Ke maka‘u nei ka i‘a make e ku‘e ia‘u!" This is going nowhere. You have been waiting for him to attack first, but it is becoming clear he has no such intention. So what exactly are you supposed to do? If the Woban is trying to taunt you into charging straight at him with the spear, then you can safely conclude that is the last thing you should do. "That's a nice necklace. Are those shark teeth?" "Hiki ia‘u ke kali i ka la apau, i‘a make. Hiki ia ‘oe ke kali mau loa?" He continues to shift back and forth from one foot to the other, making his bare chest a moving target. If you did have to make the first move, though, it's not his chest you'd aim for — that damn tongue would be a much more satisfactory target. But something has to give; it's not like you can just stand here doing this all day long. But what are your options? Make a feint, catch him off balance? Fake a distraction, strike when he's not looking? Then an idea occurs to you: just do what Paul Newman would do if he were in a situation like this! Specifically, you're thinking of that knife fight scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It's one of the best moments in movie history, and you doubt this Woban has ever seen it; what's old to you will be new and unexpected to this cretin. You stand up out of your defensive posture and hold the spear to your side like a walking stick. "I'm not going to fight with you — not until we get the rules straightened out." "He ho‘omake‘aka keia!" While the Woban appears momentarily confused by your words and change in posture, you casually step forward as if to greet him as a friend, tossing the spear aside. "What, no rules? Then one-two-three-go!" And once you are within range, you kick your opponent in the groin. The Woban's reaction does not go according to script, however. He does immediately bend over in pain, but he is not as debilitated as you had hoped for. When you turn to deliver the knock-out punch, he is not on his knees like it was in Butch Cassidy, but enraged and coming straight at you. Your horror is short-lived. In a pure contest of strength and brutality, you don't stand a chance against the Woban, and he doesn't leave any time for any more tricks. As it turns out, he was not as gullible as you had hoped he would be. THE END <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You do your best to seem disinterested and confused, but the man persists in this one-way conversation of his. "Does an even two million sound right to you?" he says. Again, he seems to know more about what is going on than you do. You fumble for your phone in your pocket, desperately trying to maintain the illusion of disinterest and mild irritation, but the words two million are still resonating in your brain. You have no idea what kind of mission Mr. Berringer wants to hire you for. Well, scratch that; you do have a very good idea. Your potential new employer in Boston is the type of person who desires certain items, and you are the type of person who can procure them. The only thing you don't know at the moment is what the item is in this case, and where you'll need to go to find it. But if this guy with the bad hairdo and worse clothing is willing to pay you two million... . Well OK, you tell yourself, let's not get greedy. You have no idea what Berringer's offer is going to be. On the other hand, though, here you are flying on the ticket he purchased for you, chilling near the rear of the plane in economy class. And next to you is a guy who seems eager to steal you away. He doesn't look nearly as well-heeled as your usual employers, but maybe he's just the messenger for somebody else. And to be frank, two million would be real money. Assuming that we're talking dollars here, and not something idiotic like Bitcoins. The last thing you need is a bank account full of arcade tokens. But working for Mr. Berringer is like playing in the big leagues — an opportunity that is likely to lead to others. That is worth thinking about, too. __________________________________________________ > You ignore him and wait for your meeting with Mr. Berringer. This conversation is getting out of hand; encounters in a public space like this one is not how these transactions usually occur. It is becoming clear to you that Mr. Plaid Suit is an amateur at this kind of game, and based on his appearance it seems unlikely he has two million of anything to give you. Best to end this now, you think. "Not interested," is all you say, your jaws clenched and your voice low. The last thing you want is to be overheard by anyone else on the plane. "Can I interest you in a soft drink?" The attendant's voice startles you; the cart has now reached Row 30, but you were so distracted you had lost track of it's progress. The woman in the window seat seems to wake from her nap in an instant. "Yes," she says. "Do you have Coke or Pepsi products?" "We have Coke products: Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite. We also have coffee, orange juice, and water." "I'll have a Diet Coke, please," the woman says. As the attendant pours the soda out of the can into the plastic cup, she asks Mr. Plaid Suit, "And you, sir?" "I'm fine, thanks." The attendant hands you the Diet Coke to pass along to the woman in the window seat. "How about you?" she says to you as you hand off the cup. "Coffee will be good," you say. And a moment later you are cradling a paper cup full of black coffee in your hands. This entire interruption has thrown your neighbor off his game. He continues to fidget in his seat, but with the woman to his left in the window seat no longer napping, and with you clearly not interested in his solicitations, he acts as though the remainder of the flight has no purpose for him. Out of the corner of your eye you see him reaching for the newspaper again, only to put it pack in the magazine pouch as if faintly disgusted with it. He pulls out a dog-eared copy of Condé Nast Traveler instead and pretends to be interested in some article about an apple festival in Upstate New York. The plane touches down at Logan before you even finish your coffee, and you make a hasty exit off the plane. There is no need to go to the baggage return because everything you need is in your carry-on — traveling light is always a boon in your profession. So you rush through the terminal, not even looking to see if Mr. Plaid Suit is following you. The airport is already filling with people, a medley of humanity in motion, and you can only assume that the bald man with the bagel breath is now busy looking for the next flight back to New York. Outside the terminal, dozens of people are lined up at the taxi stand waiting to hail a ride, or waiting for their Uber to arrive. You're already ahead of that game; as soon as the plane landed and you were able to turn on your phone, you hailed a ride of your own. Now you have a message that your ride has arrived: a black Camry driven by someone named Julio. Indeed, you see a car matching the description across the street, just behind a family of weary but excited travelers loading their suitcases into the back of a minivan, telling the relative who is picking them up about their flight from Cleveland. You are musing to yourself about how every man, woman, and child in this family is wearing either a Red Sox or a Patriots shirt when you hear the whiny revving of a four-cylinder engine. Too late, you turn to see the Camry charging out of its waiting spot, clipping you as it weaves through the dawdling taxis and Ubers and then speeds toward the city. The last thing you remember is your face hitting the hard pavement. __________________________________________________ > Next page. When you come to, you are in a hospital room. There is a window, but the only thing it reveals is what must be the next wing over. The TV is turned off, and the only voices are coming from down the hall. You have no time for this; you're going to miss your meeting with Berringer! Swinging your feet out of bed, you realize you are wearing nothing but a standard-issue hospital robe; and as you try and sit up, your left arm tugs at all the medical equipment that you didn't realize were tethered to you. Two nurses rush into the room. Are they more concerned about you, or the equipment you almost toppled over? "You're awake!" the lead nurse says, wearing a loose-fitting maroon scrub and paisley leggings. "Yes," you say, "but I can't stay." Your voice is raspier than it should be. "Oh, is that so?" the nurse says. "I have a meeting. I can't afford to be late." "Well how about we just lie back in bed and get yourself comfortable? Then we can get Dr. Green to come in and have a chat with you." She is speaking as though she is making a suggestion, but she and her confederate are already lifting your legs back into the bed and guiding your head back toward the pillow. "But—" "I'm sure your meeting can wait," she says. "Besides, you're in no shape to be interviewing for a job, or wherever it was you were going. If you like, I can turn the TV on for you. Do you like Jeopardy! ?" Who's got time for game shows? you think, but you're starting to realize you don't have the energy to put up a fight. The nurse points the remote control at the TV, and indeed Jeopardy! is the first thing you see. Alex Trebek is reading a clue off the blue video screen. "In the 2002 movie Gangs of New York, the Five Points crime boss William Cutting is also known by this macabre nickname." "Who is Bill the Butcher? I'll take 'Scorsese Flicks' for five hundred." The nurse stands back to regard her handiwork, once you are tucked back in the bed where she seems to think you belong. "There. Better?" Maybe. Probably. Actually, you have no clue what happened or why you are here, except that you have this unusual headache. The pain is dull, so you must be medicated. "Oh, by the way, these flowers came for you today. Would you like to read the card that came with them?" She points to a small calling card, propped on a plastic stick and surrounded by a bouquet of blue and white flowers. Who even knows you are here? You nod, and she hands the card to you. It reads: Get well soon. Regards, Walter Berringer. PS: Better luck next time. THE END<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The hospital seems to be completely empty. You wake up in an old rundown hospital with no memory of how you got there. You look around and see broken equipment lying around the room. > You leave the hospital and see if there is anything outside. Outside the hospital you see a worn down road and empty cars. Everything is strangely quiet and you start getting worried. You feel hungry and wonder when the last time you ate was. > You try to find a working car. You find a car with the keys in the ignition and try to start it. Nothing happens. You keep looking and find another car that looks like it might work. You manage to get the engine started. > You drive around looking for any people or stores that might have supplies. You drive around the town and see many boarded up buildings, but no people. Eventually you find a store that you think might have supplies. > You go inside the store and see if there are any supplies. It looks like the store has been ransacked and all the shelves are empty. You manage to find a package of granola bars and a flashlight behind the counter. > You eat a granola bar. You feel a little bit better. But you're still hungry. > You eat another granola bar. You feel better. You should probably save the rest of your food though. > You leave the store and get back in the car. As you leave the store you notice movement out behind your car. A man steps out with a hungry look in his eyes. His clothes are in tatters and he is carrying a crowbar. > You run at the man and attack him. You run forward to attack the man. His crowbar crashes into your chest and you fall to the ground. He kicks you a few times and then grabs your granola bars and runs off. > You go after him. You go after him. As you try and stand up though you realize you're in extreme pain. You think one of your ribs is broken. You manage to get yourself on your feet, but realize catching him is impossible. > You look for something to wrap your chest with. You walk back into the store and find a few shirts that you tear and wrap around your chest. It helps you feel slightly better. But you're still in a lot of pain.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you leave the store you notice movement out behind your car. A man steps out with a hungry look in his eyes. His clothes are in tatters and he is carrying a crowbar. > You ask the man what he wants and where everybody is. He looks at you confused. "What are you stupid? This is the end of the world man!" he says. > You say "What do you mean? I just woke up in a hospital with no memory. What happened?" He responds "Like I said, the end of the world. When the bombs starting falling three years ago we thought we could pull through. But then the skies turned black, crops started dying and everyone went crazy. Most people died in the first couple months." > You ask him how he managed to survive. He tells you that he was away hunting when it all started happening. He managed to live off the land for the first little while. But after the animals started dying he ran out of food and came to the city. > You ask him if you two can work together. The man shakes his head. "Hardly enough food for one person. I've only lived this long by looking after myself." He turns and starts walking away. > You run after the man and tell him you'll both do better together. He stops and thinks about it for a second, then says, "Fine. I guess there might be advantages to working together." > You ask him where he thinks you should go next. He tells you there is a house on the road that looked undisturbed that might be worth checking out. > You start going towards the house. You are walking towards the house. You reach an intersection. There is a police station on one corner an office building on another. The house is another half mile down the road. > You keep going towards the house. You keep walking and eventually reach the house. You see a two story house that looks fairly undisturbed. There's a garage on the right and a path to the backyard on the left. > You go around the house to the backyard. You go to the backyard of the house. There's a dirty grill and an overturned slide. There's a door to the house on the back porch. > You open the back door into the house. You open the back door into the house and go inside. You're in a combined kitchen and living room. You see several cupboard doors are hanging open, a fridge and several couches around a TV.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The man shakes his head. "Hardly enough food for one person. I've only lived this long by looking after myself." He turns and starts walking away. > You leave the store and get back in your car. You think about what the man said. How is this possible? Why were you in that hospital and what should you do now? > You drive back to the hospital to see if you can find any clues. As you pull in to the hospital parking lot the car sputters and dies. It's out of fuel an slows to a halt. > You go back to the room you woke up in. You get to the room. It's the same as how you remember it. Broken equipment everywhere. But there's also a small notebook that you didn't notice before lying on the floor. > You read the notebook. It looks like a journal. As you flip through the pages you see drawings of the death and destruction. The journal talks about someone's horrific experiences during the aftermath of the war. > You try to see if anything in it sparks your memory. you read for a while hoping this will give you some clue. None of the events written about spark anything, but you do read someone's name that you feel like you should know. "Sarina". It says she heard about a community called "Bright Meadow" that was safe and had food and was leaving to find it. > You see if you can find out where Bright Meadow is from the journal. You look through the journal to see if there are any clues about where Bright Meadow is. You find a crude map that shows Bright Meadow to the north of a town called Clayton. > You go to Clayton. You don't know where Clayton is. But maybe if you found a map you could figure out where it is. > You look for a map somewhere in the hospital. You start looking around for a map. You find an administrator's office that you think might have one. > You search the office for a map. You look through the filing cabinets for a map. You find a bunch of patient records in a filing cabinet. In the desk you find a map that shows other hospitals in the region. It says Clayton is 15 miles to the West of here. > You leave the hospital and start heading towards Clayton. As you're walking to to Clayton you start getting hungry. You remember that you have few granola bars in your pocket. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>As you're walking to to Clayton you start getting hungry. You remember that you have few granola bars in your pocket. > You eat a few granola bars. You finish off the rest of your granola bars. You're full now, but are worried about what you'll eat when you get hungry again. > You keep walking towards Clayton. You walk for two hours and take a break. You've left the town you were in and are now in a more rural area. There's a farmhouse to your right and a forest on your left. > You go in the farmhouse and look for food. You try to open the farmhouse front door, but it's locked. There's a broken window on the right and a shed behind the house. > You go through the window into the farmhouse. You break the rest of the glass in the window and try to carefully crawl through. You cut yourself on the edges as you're climbing in, but you make it inside. > You search the farmhouse for food. You search around the farmhouse for food. You find some thick sturdy shirts and some rusty tools but no food. It's getting dark outside. You think it might be a good idea to sleep the night here. > You sleep the night in the farmhouse. You wake up in the middle of the night sweating from a nightmare. In it you saw a woman screaming in some dark place. You feel like you need to rescue her and that you're the only one who can help her. > You go back to sleep till the morning. You try to go back to sleep, but can't shake the feelings from your dream. You decide you might as well get up and see if you can do anything productive. > You look around the farmhouse for anything else useful. You look around the farmhouse for anything else useful. You don't find anything else useful. > You leave the farmhouse and continue walking towards Clayton. You get back on the road and continue your journey. After a few hours you realize how starving you are. You' really need to find a food. > You look around to see what's around you. There's an old warehouse and a few mechanics shops. <|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You try to open the farmhouse front door, but it's locked. There's a broken window on the right and a shed behind the house. > You head towards the shed behind the house You notice there is a padlock on the shed. Maybe you can find a key or a tool to get in. > You head back towards the broken window of the farmhouse You have to go through the window to look for tools. You careful break the window more to go inside. > You go through window You cut yourself on the edges as you're climbing in, but you make it inside.You find some thick sturdy shirts and there are rusted scattered tool scattered throughout. There doesn't seem to be any food around, however you wonder if there is a tool or key to open the shed. > You search the farmhouse You're Not the best educated when it comes to tools but you have an idea of what kind of tool you need to use. You see lots of shovels, rakes, and pitchforks. You notice something that looks like big pliers...maybe that can work? > You grab bolt cutter You could go back out to open the shed but it is starting to get dark. You think about resting in the farmhouse or going to check the shed out. > You go back to shed Dusk is setting and you climb out the window unscathed. You walk over to the shed and begin to attempt cutting the lock off. Your stomach growls as you place the bolt cutter on the lock. In that moment you think you hear rustling behind you. You turn to look and nothing is there. so you resume cutting the padlock off. > You enter the shed You remove the padlock and slowly open the door. With the sun setting, it's a bit difficult to see the contents of the shed. > You search the shed You can make out that there are some storage shelves and a few tables. You see something that looks a tin pot or jug to some sort. You check it and it has nothing inside. Next to it on a table you see a matchbox. You take the matchbox because it's likely to help you see. > You strike a match The first match goes dull quick. The second and third match break as you try to strike them. There are only two matches left. You try to relax a bit to keep yourself from breaking another match. You strike the match and it stays lit. > You search the shed slowly To your right you see jars filled with preserved fruits and vegetables. To your left you see more jars but can make out the contents clearly.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>To your right you see jars filled with preserved fruits and vegetables. To your left you see more jars but can make out the contents clearly. > You eat some preserved fruits and vegetables You delight it some pickled okra and some peach preserves. You think about bringing some food with you, but it will be too heavy for travel. So you try to eat as much as you can now. You decide to have some for the morning as well. It's getting late and with your full belly you are feeling quite tired. You can reenter the farmhouse or sleep in the shed. > You stay in the shed You remembered the noise you heard early and decide to holed up in the shed. > You find a place in the shed to relax You use your hands to guide you around the space. Just past the preserved goods on the shelves there seems to be a small rug that is folded. > You adjust the rug to lay on it As you kneel down to adjust the rug your hand touches something cold and metal-like. > You access the metal object It seems to be a large metallic ring connected to the floor. > You pull the ring The floor lifts slightly and a dusty smell wafts out. > You shut the hatch back It seems to be a hatch that leads to an underground area like a cellar or bunker. > You open the hatch again You open up the hatch again but a little wider and stick your head in a bit. It's too dark to see anything. All you can do is smell the muskiness of whatever is below. > You close the hatch and resume to try to sleep You lay on the small rug and try to get comfortable. You hold yourself and try to get a grasp on reality before fading to sleep. > You wake up You awaken to some sunlight beams leaking in through the shed. You stretch and yawn as you look at the jars of preserves.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You awaken to some sunlight beams leaking in through the shed. You stretch and yawn as you look at the jars of preserves. > You have some preserves for breakfast You eat some green beans, carrots, and applesauce. You figure this will be enough nutrients for now. > You look around You look back to the other shelf and see it has some weird contents. Some sort flesh and meat compositions that repulses you. You don't wanna know if its animal or...something else. > You check the hatch You the hatch door wide open and look down into it. You see a few more shelves and notice that room leads further back. You feel a draft coming from that direction. > You exit the shed Deciding against jumping down into a creepy underground room, you open the shed door. As you eyes san the area, you recall generally where you need to go to get to Bright Meadow. > You get back on the road to Clayton You walk down the country road and slowly scan your surroundings. Everything seems so silent. It's almost unnatural and surreal. > You continue down the road It's been roughly an hour now and the sun is really shining down you. You are becoming a little parched and in need of refreshment. > You scan your surroundings To the right there are fields that use to hold crops that are currently in decay. To the left there is a slightly decaying forest. > You walk left into the forest You walk into the woods and sit on a rock between a group trees. You wonder if there is some form of running water somewhere in here. You notice there are small pebbles at your feet. > You pick up a pebble You pick up the pebble and notice the ground if very dry. This makes you uncertain a water source could be nearby. You could try to go further into the forest or suckle on the pebble to create saliva to help your body sustain a bit longer. > You suckle on the pebble You roll the pebble around in your mouth and your mouth begins to salivate.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You roll the pebble around in your mouth and your mouth begins to salivate. > You head back to road You continue down the road for another hour. You finally see a road sign saying "Clayton 5 Miles". This sparks a bit of joy in you. By this rate you'll definitely be there within an hour and half. Then to Bright Meadow within two to three hours. > You move forwards faster Your energetic boost pushed you further down the road. In the distance you spot an abandoned car. > You search vehicle You look through the windows and don't see much left in the car. One of the side windows was broken open. > You get into the car You immediately check for keys and they aren't in the ignition. You decide to search the car more. > You check the glove box You open the glove box and it has papers in it. Mostly car insurance and information. > You check the backseat You notice a dried blood stain on the back car seat. There is also some trash. > You check the floors You scan underneath the front car seats and the floors. You find the car keys were just out of sight under the driver's seat. > You start the car You try to start the car several times and nothing happens. You think of the possibility it needs gas and maybe they had spare gas in the trunk. > You pop the trunk You press the button to unlock the trunk. It slowly lifts open. > You check the trunk You get out of the car and walk towards the trunk.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You walk back into the store and find a few shirts that you tear and wrap around your chest. It helps you feel slightly better. But you're still in a lot of pain. > You take a quick rest You slouch down to the ground and try to breathe steadily. The pain beings to magnify. You wonder what has happened to the world and if there are more hostile people out there like the guy who attacked you. > You move further to the back of the store Worried there are more hostiles around, you drag yourself to the back corner of the store. > You access the area The corner is a bit dark as the natural light hardly reaches there. There also seems to be some rubbish on the floor. > You lay down the corner You feel a little dizzy so you bring yourself to the dark corner to rest a bit. > You take a short rest You awaken to the sound of some footsteps nearby. Being a bit startled you pull yourself more into the dark corner. A sharp pain goes rings up from your ribcage. > You listen for the footsteps After you moved you couldn't hear the footsteps anymore. You try to steady your heart rate and your breathing. After a few minutes you hear the footsteps again. > You stay quiet A back door opens to your right and it startles you. You feel a cough well up inside you. > You hold in the cough You place you hand over your mouth as you see a women cautiously come inside. She doesn't really look harmful but who knows what could be on her mind. > You stay hidden and attempt to escape The woman looks around and beings to check the materials and rubbish scattered around on the floor mostly in the well lit areas. Your cough lets out. > You make a run for the back door You dash out the back door and hear the woman scream, "Wait! Watch out!!". You take a few steps forward through the door and suddenly fall down into a hole. You are knocked unconscious.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>The man shakes his head. "Hardly enough food for one person. I've only lived this long by looking after myself." He turns and starts walking away. > You he's right. You look around at the everything and realize that taking care of yourself might be the best bet. get back in your car > You are uncertain of where you are, but at least you have this car for now. You ride down the main road and look for a bigger city. You pass a farm house and you approach what looks like a warehouse and a mechanics shop just across from it. > You pull up to the mechanics shop You figure its possible to find more gas at the mechanics shop so you pull up to the garage. > You check the garage door The door is locked and the windows to get in are too high to reach. Maybe there is a key in the front desk area. > You check the front desk office You check the front and back door, they are both locked. However there are several windows you can break through. > You break window Thinking on it, you wrap your shirt around fist and bust the window open. You clear off as much debris as you can. > You crawl through window You pull yourself through and find yourself in a small bathroom. There doesn't seem to be anything important here. > You open door to front desk area You slowly open the door and see the front desk area is mostly untouched.There's lots of dust flying around. > You search the desk area You begin to scan the desk, there are lots of papers and receipts. You open the first drawer and find some keys. > You take keys You walk over to the front door and the keys on them. They don't seem to work.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>You open the back door into the house and go inside. You're in a combined kitchen and living room. You see several cupboard doors are hanging open, a fridge and several couches around a TV. > You check the kitchen You go through cupboards and find a few cans of beans. You pull the them out and place them on the counter. You hear the other guy rummaging through things upstairs. > You check the refrigerator You open the fridge and are greeted by a magnificent mold colony. However there are three bottles of water that can be saved. > You put water on the kitchen counter As you place the water on the counter you hear a shuffle and crash from upstairs. Muffled yelling from the man you entered the house with. > You check on the man You quickly head up the stairs and enter the room with the open door. You the man cradling his hand and cursing. > You ask him what happened "Was some sort of freaky looking rodent!! It bit me on my hand when I reached under the bed. I think it's still under there..." I tell him that i'm gonna lift up the bed if he will ready his crowbar to kill it. He nods in agreement. > You lift the bed up You lift up the bed and wait for him to have some reaction. You watch him crouch down and use the crowbar to hit some boxes and bags. > You ask him if he can see it "I would say something if I did" he sasses back at you. Maybe it's in one of the boxes or bags trying to hide. You are starting to get tired holding up the bed. > You ask him to hurry He scoffs at you and begins to wail the crow bar on the boxes and bags. We don't hear anything or see anything. > You tell him you need to place the bed back down He pulls the boxes and bags out with the crowbar and places them to the side. He nods at you. > You put the bed down You both slowly look through boxes and bags. You find a hanger and use it to poke through things.<|endoftext|> <|startoftext|>There's an old warehouse and a few mechanics shops. > You check warehouse Uncertain you'd find anything of need at the mechanics you head towards the warehouse. You're not certain what kind of warehouse it is though. > You open door You go straight for the front door and its locked. The windows are too high to break in to. > You check the back of the warehouse It takes you a minute to walk along to backside of the building. There you find several loading docks for semi trucks. You see on of the loading gate open just enough for to squeeze through. > You access the loading gate You check the loading gate before going under it. It seems pretty stuck. > You squeeze through the gate You sit on the ground and put your legs through the open. You laying down fully you pull your body through the opening. > You look around The warehouse looks slightly undisturbed. There are some boxes that have tipped over and scattered pallets in messy piles. > You check some boxes You grab the top of a box and pull it down. The box shifts forward and a bunch of doll heads spill. This startles you and causes you to gasp loudly. > You examine the rest of the warehouse You begin walking down the aisles and assume this a warehouse for toys or just parts of dolls. Then you distantly hear a playful voice say, "This way...come this way". They don't sound harmful. > You go in the direction you heard the voice come from "Hey, over here..." you hear the playful voice say from a short distance away. > You walk towards the voice You head in the direction you heard the voice come from. After passing a few aisles of stacked boxes you see an old man stand holding a doll. He beings to cackle.<|endoftext|>